How China’s AI Efficiency Could Gut the U.S. Economy

Scott Galloway and Ed Elson dig into China’s AI efficiencies and whether those innovations will be enough to take on American companies. Then, they look at why private security is on the rise and consider how to invest in the space. Finally, they break down reports that Warner Bros. Discovery might be up for sale and debate whether there are really multiple bidders for the company. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter Order "The Algebra of Wealth," out now Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Follow the podcast across socials @profgmarkets Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram and X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:30Scott Galloway?

  Today's number, 12 million. That's how many pigs there are in Denmark. Twice the number of human inhabitants. True story, had someone ask me how many sexual partners I'd had, and I started counting them and fell asleep.

• 1:53Scott Galloway?

  Get it? Takes a minute.

• 1:54Ed Elson?

  Got it. I mean, it should be counting sheep, not pigs, right?

• 1:57Scott Galloway?

  Right, but that's the point, that when I'm talking about my sexual partners, I start counting them, and I'm counting sheep, Ed.

• 2:04Ed Elson?

  I got it, but we're talking about pigs here, no?

• 2:06Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I couldn't find, I couldn't find a good pig joke.

• 2:12Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I was accused of performing acts of bestiality at the London Zoo, and supposedly they saw me trying to escape while getting into a jaguar.

• 2:26Scott Galloway?

  That's better. We should have led with that one.

• 2:28Ed Elson?

  Testing the material.

• 2:29Scott Galloway?

  How are you, Ed? What's going on?

• 2:30Ed Elson?

  Um, what is going on? Doing some more speaking stuff. Spoke at Aspen Ideas Festival, New Jersey, which is a spin off of the real Aspen Ideas Festival.

• 2:40Scott Galloway?

  I'm sorry, the Ideas Festival, New Jersey?

• 2:43Ed Elson?

  That's right.

• 2:43Scott Galloway?

  Wow, I think that's probably the weakest flex you've ever made.

• 2:49Scott Galloway?

  Hey, I spoke at the Ideas Festival in New Jersey.

• 2:52Ed Elson?

  In New Jersey. And then the other, the other side note is that I wasn't, I was, there was, I didn't realize this. There was the main room. And I didn't realize while I was speaking, Mark Zandi, who is of course our, our big guest, he was in the main room. And I was off in the side room with Kyla Scanlon, so.

• 3:08Scott Galloway?

  The first time I spoke at South by Southwest, I looked at the schedule and of course, uh, they scheduled at the same time, uh, Al Gore, and this is back when anyone, everyone, anyone cared about the environment.

• 3:21Ed Elson?

  Speak for yourself.

• 3:22Scott Galloway?

  That's right. You're young. I'm old. I don't care. I'm going to be dead by the time. Yeah, we all have to engage in mass migration and super, super fires. And I'm not, and they put me in a room that held like 1400 people and I'm not exaggerating. I think 18 people showed up and like, nine of them were from Vox. It was so humiliating. I'm like, should we bother? Should we just go get drinks at this point? When did you do this, Ed? And what was your topic?

• 3:49Ed Elson?

  Uh, we talked about the casino economy, uh, specifically Gen Z's perspective on all of this. And it was me and Kyla Scanlon. We keep on doing, uh, events together. We, we, we did a.

• 4:01Scott Galloway?

  Really? You guys are the voice of Gen Z, you and Kyla.

• 4:03Ed Elson?

  Exactly. We, we're sort of the double header. Um, been on TV together a couple of times. She's great. Um, but yeah, we spoke about Gen Z. We spoke about the casino economy.

• 4:14Scott Galloway?

  What is the casino economy?

• 4:15Ed Elson?

  The gambling and the options trading and the sports betting, et cetera, and the crypto.

• 4:21Scott Galloway?

  Do you do any gambling or buy options, which is essentially gambling? Like, do you have any sort of a gambling bag?

• 4:26Ed Elson?

  No, I don't. I, I, I've never been interested in gambling.

• 4:30Scott Galloway?

  Really?

• 4:31Ed Elson?

  Strangely, yeah. And I have a lot of friends who love gambling. They love sports betting. Um, they find it fascinating. They find it fun. I've never been interested in it. I've never found it fun. So I guess I'm kind of lucky in that regard because most of them lose money.

• 4:47Scott Galloway?

  Trying to find like what you're you're like, you're one of those guys. You're like a Stepford wife. Like, I want to stab you with a fork to see if like wires come out because everything I have learned about you so far, you are remarkably like well balanced and stable and have a good relationship with your parents and you're very humble and you're living with a woman and you seem to have a nice relationship and I just don't buy it. Something's going on here. We're going to find out. You're like

• 5:13Ed Elson?

  Having sex with Jaguars.

• 5:14Scott Galloway?

  Going to kids' birthdays parties dressed up as a clown and then taking them home and like killing them and eating them.

• 5:20Ed Elson?

  I'm the Ed Guine of financial markets.

• 5:22Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, something, something's going on here. We're definitely, I don't know what it is.

• 5:27Ed Elson?

  No, but it's, it's fair. I mean, I, I like, look, I like partying. I like drinking, but gambling has never been a vice that I've been interested in. I, I'm really not sure why.

• 5:38Scott Galloway?

  I don't think I've ever really seen you drink. People don't like to drink around me. People don't like to drink around their boss. I think they're going to get in trouble.

• 5:44Ed Elson?

  What are you up to? This is one of the first times we've talked a bit more about me than we have you.

• 5:48Scott Galloway?

  It feels alien, doesn't it?

• 5:51Scott Galloway?

  I'm in London where it's starting to get cold and dark and I started to realize I'm, I'm really excited to get back to America. So the countdown has already started and I went to a dinner last night and I met the, the general manager. Is that called the coach of Arsenal? He's like a lovely guy.

• 6:09Ed Elson?

  You met Mikel Arteta?

• 6:11Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I met him.

• 6:12Ed Elson?

  You met Mikel Arteta last night at dinner?

• 6:15Scott Galloway?

  I did, yeah. I think I peaked. It's time for me to leave London, right?

• 6:18Ed Elson?

  Just so we're clear, that's the coolest flex you've said on the podcast probably of the year, at least in my book. Mikel Arteta is very, that's, that's awesome.

• 6:29Scott Galloway?

  Well, his kids go to the same school as my kids and he and his wife are really lovely.

• 6:33Ed Elson?

  He's a good looking guy too, right?

• 6:34Scott Galloway?

  Oh my God, he's dreamy. I barely, he would start talking and he has

• 6:37Ed Elson?

  He's sort of the hot throb of, of, of England right now.

• 6:40Scott Galloway?

  And he has this Spanish accent and you're like, what? I don't, I see his lips moving, but I can't, I can't focus on what he's saying. He's so good looking. He's very dreamy. He could be, he's like James Bond kind of looking guy.

• 6:50Ed Elson?

  And he's an incredible manager. He studied under Pep Guardiola for his age.

• 6:56Scott Galloway?

  Is he the most successful person in the prem right now? He's they they don't get trophies, but they're always at the top.

• 7:02Ed Elson?

  Yes, they're top of the table.

• 7:04Scott Galloway?

  I was at the top of the table.

• 7:05Ed Elson?

  And he turned around a mediocre team and turned them into a world-class team. That's amazing. So you had a conversation with him, you know, did he know who you were?

• 7:14Scott Galloway?

  Well, of course he did. That's why he came. It's he wanted a chance to meet a professor. No, he had no idea who it was, but he's very friendly. And I asked him, I said, what's it like? What's it like now? He was a player for 17 years or something. And then he went right into coaching. And I said, what's it like? What are the young people like today versus, you know, because they're all young men. What are the players like today versus when you were playing? And he said, it's a much more chaotic environment now. There's the money, the fame, the social media. They're just, it's like constantly, there's no rest and no break for them. And I could kind of see that. It's so competitive and their careers are so short-lived. And the difference between making the league minimum of whatever it is, 150,000 pounds and making 30 million is not that great.

• 7:59Scott Galloway?

  It's like when you get to those levels, it's like the best golfers in the world are on average score, you know, 0.4 strokes less than the the guys who never get their PGA card. So, you know, what I need, well, this is all a way of saying, I need you just to make a little bit more effort in this podcast. I need you just to go that extra mile. Yeah, I like what you're wearing today. You look very stylish. We're clearly paying you too much. What are you wearing? Let's do a shout out. Let's do, what are you wearing? I'll tell you what I'm wearing today. I'm wearing Brunello Cucinelli, which makes me feel 59 again. And then I'm wearing Viori pants because A, they're a sponsor and B, this douche wear athleisure is so comfortable. I'm turning into a doctor's housewife.

• 8:43Scott Galloway?

  I'm on my way to do Pilates.

• 8:45Ed Elson?

  Pilates and Brunello, that sounds good. Well, they should be, they should be really sponsoring us if you're going to give a shout out. This is, this is Drake's. And again, they should sponsor us as well, which is an English brand that you probably love.

• 8:57Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, it's very handsome on you. Well done.

• 8:59Ed Elson?

  Thank you very much. Okay, shall we talk business?

• 9:02Scott Galloway?

  Sure.

• 9:04Scott Galloway?

  Now is the time to fly. I hope you have plenty of the world at all.

• 9:11Ed Elson?

  The top open source AI models used to be American. Now that is changing. Today, the top five open source AI models are all Chinese. And that is not the only story of AI evolution coming out of China. Chinese companies are also showing that they can do more with less. DeepSeek is using a new format that has allowed their training models to run 30% faster. Meanwhile, Alibaba last week said that its new computing pooling system cut the number of GPUs needed to run its AI models by 82%. So this is quite significant, Scott, following the conversation we had last week about how

• 9:52Ed Elson?

  we're seeing all of this data center demand and we don't really have enough energy to power the data centers. Energy costs where data centers are being built have tripled. And as a reminder, if you want to build AI, you need to build the data center that powers the AI. OpenAI wants to build a chip network that would consume 250 gigawatts of energy, which is equivalent to a quarter of America's entire grid capacity. Point being, a lot of AI and not enough energy to power the AI. And then we asked this question, okay, well, then maybe we need to figure out a way to either get more energy through solar or nuclear or perhaps drill, baby drill, or you figure out a way to make the AI models more efficient.

• 10:37Ed Elson?

  You figure out how to consume less power, how to do more with less. And it appears that China is making some headway on that front. Alibaba just last week announcing this new system. It cuts their GPU usage by 82%. Basically, they can use 200 GPU chips and they'll perform at the same level of 1,200 GPU chips. Don't ask me why or how they can do that, but that is what they're saying. It appears that this may be a trend in China. So Scott, your initial reactions to China winning the efficiency race or so it appears?

• 11:12Scott Galloway?

  I was thinking in the editorial call yesterday when we were going over the stories, I kind of got my mind blown thinking about as I heard you guys talk about. AI and the energy requirements and open source slash open weight models. And I've got this, what I think is this, I don't want to call it revelation, but something that I thought was really exciting. And I thought, wow, maybe we do see something here in the matrix. And that is while everyone's talking about the gating factor is going to be energy and that there's no way that there'll be enough nuclear power coming online to to quench the thirst of Sam Altman's unbelievable juggernaut called OpenAI. And I thought, well, maybe he's just trying to manifest it. And these big energy projections that are running up the stocks of electric companies and scaring everyone that we're not going to have enough power.

• 11:57Scott Galloway?

  I wonder if, well, innovation can come from the other side. And that is people can start producing chips and LLMs that just require dramatically less energy. And then the other thing that sort of blew my mind, and now I think as I thought about it and stepped on it, I think it's actually a pretty decent thesis is that if you look at the US economy, it's run for profits and shareholder value. The life in America is so much better if you're wealthy than if you're middle class and your life in the middle class is so much better than if you're in a low income household that we make a series of incremental justifications every day where it's all about, America's now all about the shit you have, or specifically your ability to to buy more shit.

• 12:38Scott Galloway?

  Our economy and our society is run for profit. The Chinese economy is run for control and also long-term geopolitical power. They make 50 and 100 year plans, which we would never have the ability to do. And part of that is because we pay the price for having governments, democracies that turn over and sometimes go zig and zag. But what I think is going on, or what I think is going to happen is the following. China is really fed up and sees America as their enemy or is sick of America having this sclerotic trade policy that is really damaging them and then saying you can't have our chips. And they've said, okay, we've had it with these guys. So what do they do? They're much more strategic.

• 13:20Scott Galloway?

  And quite frankly, Xi is 10 times smarter than Trump and also has this incredible weapon in that he's willing to kind of think middle and, you know, think kind of medium and long term, which Trump has absolutely no ability to do. And I think what they've decided to do is the following. I think they are going to flood the market with cheap, open weight models, AI models. And if I were advising Xi and I said, okay, if you think of America as an adversary or America, essentially, America has become a giant bet on AI. Specifically, 40% of their entire market is from the valuations, the exceptional valuations of 10 companies related to, directly related or related adjacent to AI.

• 14:04Scott Galloway?

  And if we take down, if those 10 companies go down 50, 70, 90% like they did in the dot com era, they are in a global recession. Trump is out of vogue. We don't even need to stop buying soybeans. They're in a world of fucking hurt. How can we do that? Pretty easy. Let's start pumping out a bunch of models that require less electricity, less power, less processing power, and are 90% as good. And another personal anecdote, my first strategy client, I started a strategy firm called Profit when I was 26, and my first client was The Gap. And they wanted a new brand. And we came up with, working with this really intelligent guy named Mark Bucko, was that a strategy there at the time? We came up with what I thought and ended up being a great strategy.

• 14:49Scott Galloway?

  And that was, I just read Peter Drucker's book, and he said, every major business shift in society is largely reverse engineered to a demographic shift. And as someone who had personal experience with this, I said, one of the biggest demographic shifts in America, and this is 1993, is the explosion in single parent homes. And it's almost, when we say single parent, we mean a single mother. And single mothers, we did some research and some focus groups, are very cognizant, self-conscious and focused on dressing their kids well because they're insecure and self-conscious about the fact they don't have as much money and the dad isn't around and they want the kid to feel good about themselves. And so we identified this segment and it was this fast-growing segment and we said, okay, here's the positioning, 80% of the gap for 50% of

• 15:31Scott Galloway?

  the price. And that positioning took Old Navy from zero to a billion dollars faster than any retailer in history. And that is probably, if you look at the fastest growing businesses in the world, oftentimes they're that 80% of the biggest airlines, America, Delta and United for 50% of the cost, that's Southwest, now the most valuable, or was the most valuable domestic airline. I think that the Chinese tax sector, under the direction and encouragement of the CCP, is about to Old Navy the shit out of the US economy. And they've done it across BYD, electric vehicles, they generally, that's their business strategy, whether it's cell phone towers or clothes. But I think they are going to spend a ton of money and time and put their most talented scientists, of which there

• 16:13Scott Galloway?

  are a ton, to work on the following. Let's fucking go, we've been going for the heart and lungs after red states with these trade policies, whether it's rare earth minerals or cancelling our contracts for soybeans. Now let's go for the fucking jugular and let's neuter their AI industry, specifically the valuations, and let's release a ton of near premier quality LLMs, open weight that anyone can use for near free, that maybe requires much more energy but most likely don't, and certainly aren't nearly as expensive. And let's fuck with America's big bet here. Let's make this big bet not pay off.

• 16:57Ed Elson?

  I think that is exactly what is happening. I would add that part of the reason why this has happened is because of the export controls that we put on ships to China. And this was the deep sea story that we discussed at the beginning of the year, where China had less capable and fewer chips to work with because of these export restrictions. And it forced them to get leaner and more efficient and work with what they had. That is exactly what they've done. And I think to your point, they are doubling down on that. And I'm just going to go through some of the data that we've seen on how China is winning in this AI efficiency game.

• 17:37Ed Elson?

  So I just talked about Alibaba and their AI model, which is called Qwen. They're using eighty two percent less GPU chips because they figured out the system that helps them do that. Again, as I said, I don't know exactly how that system works, but that's what they've told us. DeepSeek, they are also optimizing for efficiency. They're using this thing called the FP eight format, which essentially just cuts down the number of the decimal count on all of these long numbers that go into these models, which allows them to reduce the amount of usage of memory. And it allows them to run their training models a lot faster. GLM is a model that is produced by this other Chinese AI company called ZAI.

• 18:21Ed Elson?

  They are also using a lot less energy. And all of these efficiencies are being reflected in the costs of these models. So just to go through the costs here, the cost per million tokens, if you're using OpenAI's model, which is GPT five, the cost per million tokens is ten dollars. Compare that to ZAI's model, which is called the GLM four point six model. The cost is one dollar and seventy five cents. For Alibaba's model, Qwen plus, it is one dollar and twenty cents. For DeepSeek, it is one dollar, ten cents. Put another way, all of these Chinese models are nearly ten times cheaper than their equivalents in the US.

• 19:01Ed Elson?

  Now, I'm sure the US models are better and we'd want an AI engineer to come on and confirm that to us. But what is clear is that they are putting exactly, as you say, the Old Navy strategy. Eighty percent of the value or the quality or whatever you said for not fifty percent of the price, but for ten percent of the price. So they are doing to AI the same thing that they did to electronics, the same thing that they did to apparel, the same thing they did to consumer goods. It's the same thing again. It is reduce the costs dramatically. And at the same time, and Sort of upstream of that, reduce the amount of energy required to create these

• 19:40Ed Elson?

  models dramatically. And they seem to be way ahead of the ball on this. And I do agree with your point that this could be, it could gut the American economy, which, as you say, has become incredibly reliant on AI. Now, I want to go through in a second just the history of efficiency in the business world, but I will pause there and see if you have any reactions to those numbers.

• 20:07Scott Galloway?

  So earlier in the year, we predicted that the rivers of capital into the US were going to reverse flow. That was mostly sort of right. And that is EU stocks have done really well. But also, to be fair, American stocks are up 12, 13%. The S and P is up. So clearly, the flows of, there's still massive flows of capital into the US. The most dangerous own goal over the medium and long term is there really has been a chill placed on the inbound rivers of human capital, the inflow. And that is some schools, some colleges are projecting there's going to be 20 to 40% fewer foreign applications. Every talented PhD student and every world-class researcher in the world had one thing in

• 20:51Scott Galloway?

  common. They had either come through US universities, been trained here, or would seriously consider coming to work for our universities. And now what's happened? China's figured this out. China produces 120,000 PhDs every year. That's three times what the US produces. In 2024, China's AI research publications, the output, the amount of peer-reviewed credible research matched the combined output of the US, UK, and European Union, and now commands more than 40% of global citation attention. And AI, which let's be honest, is very IP and research-heavy, technical-heavy.

• 21:29Scott Galloway?

  They've got more coal in the furnace and they're going to use it strategically to reach that type of scale that you're about to talk about. Talk about the importance of scale in our winners.

• 21:40Ed Elson?

  What I would describe is versus scale is the importance of efficiency. And if you look back through basically every great company in history and what they were good at and where they innovated, they all basically have one thing in common. And that is they were all incredibly innovative when it came to cutting down costs. And we can go back as far as the invention of the car. When you look at Ford as a great example, their great innovation was the conveyor belt, the assembly line. And they basically, what they did was revolutionize how you make a car. And what used to take 12 and a half hours of manual labor, they were able to reduce

• 22:24Ed Elson?

  it to just 90 minutes. And because of that, in less than a decade, Ford cut the price of cars in half. And then a decade later, they cut the price of cars in half again, to the point where by the twenties, more than one in two cars in the world was a Ford. That's how they did it. They just innovated on, let's make it more efficient to build this thing, not let's make the coolest and sexiest and fastest car in the world. McDonald's, same thing. They reinvented the kitchen assembly line. They reduced the menu to just a few items. They cut the cost of the hamburger in half. They became the biggest restaurant chain in the world. IKEA, another great example. Their big innovation was just how you ship the product. Let's put them in flat, small packages.

• 23:08Ed Elson?

  They shrunk the size of the box by 50%, which cut the logistics costs almost in half. And they can now ship 10 times more furniture than their competitors for the same amount of gas. Now it's the largest furniture retailer in the world. Walmart, another good example too. Cutting down logistics costs so they can sell products cheaper than their rivals. SpaceX, a newer example. Their big innovation, let's just reuse the rocket. Let's make it cheaper and more energy efficient to do this. And they cut the cost of launching stuff into space by more than 95%. And as we've discussed, now they have 90% of the space launch market. So I think what, when we look through history.

• 23:51Ed Elson?

  The most impactful companies, the companies that achieve the most amount of significance and dominance and revenue, it's the companies that figure out a way, how can we do more with less? And I think that is the big question that America now needs to ask itself, especially when we look over what's happening in China, where China is laser focused on addressing this problem. And I think if you look through history, what you would, what you would assume is that they're going to win on AI if they figure that out before we do.

• 24:22Scott Galloway?

  So there's this great economist at Stern named Bruce Buchanan, and he absolutely blew my mind and gave me a model that through which I run almost every strategy and every decision I make economically or in terms of positioning a company. And that is all shareholder value, all stakeholder value is a function of the relationship between three lines. At the very top, perceived value. In the middle, the price you're charging and the bottom line is the cost to produce that product. And companies can only increase stakeholder value by doing one of two things. They either push down the cost line, right, through scale.

• 25:04Scott Galloway?

  That's what we're talking about now. Hamburgers for less money, putting satellites into space, payload into space at a lower cost per kilogram, assembling a computer for less than anyone else, Dell, right? That, and then once you push that line down, you can pass on the savings as Walmart does and immediately lower the price concurrently. And that creates a gap between the price you're charging and the perceived value, which is greater, which should result in more market share, which is how these companies have created hundreds of billions of shareholder value. It's like, oh my God. So the, the old ad that was most effective for Walmart was if you start shopping at Walmart, it's like getting a promotion. And that is your quality of life, you're, you're not going to have to buy Budweiser, you can buy Heineken, you can now buy.

• 25:46Scott Galloway?

  Steaks instead of hamburger. It's like you got promoted because of that scale, because we're able to lower our costs, we're merely going to pass it on lower prices and the margin, if you will, of perceived value relative to price is greater, more market share. The flip side, and what actually America is, I would argue, better at, is taking the top line or perceived value and pushing it up through branding, through merchandising. Loosely speaking, or very reductively, China wins by pushing the bottom line down. Scale and passing along those price advantages to their customer. And America, generally speaking, has value add products through advertising, strategy, distribution, whatever

• 26:30Scott Galloway?

  it might be. Scarcity or artisanship pushes the perceived value line up.

• 26:37Ed Elson?

  I mean, OpenAI appears to be the king of the perceived value in the AI space. I mean, we keep on seeing these benchmarks and in a lot of cases, different models are actually beating GPT when it comes to reasoning and speed, all these things. And yet, OpenAI is the premier brand in AI. And I wonder if that is a function of, as you said, maybe they are really good at doing the stuff that Apple's really good at, which is the branding and pushing up the perceived value. But I wonder if, when you're talking about gigantic revolutionary technologies that expand beyond just retail, something like this, something

• 27:21Ed Elson?

  like AI, which is supposed to take our entire economy, the global economy, into an entirely different direction, whether it is imprudent of America to spend their time on perceived value versus figuring out, okay, how can we deliver this to the most amount of people for the least amount of money possible? That, to me, seems like the right direction to go with when it comes to AI, especially if this is going to be as transformative as they say it is.

• 27:51Scott Galloway?

  It's an interesting question, but traditionally, the American economy has been about value add as opposed to scale. The Chinese So think of value add is synonymous with brand value. Name a global brand that's come out of the second largest economy, China.

• 28:09Ed Elson?

  It's, it's tough.

• 28:10Scott Galloway?

  Isn't that weird? Think about it. Great. There's great French brands. Louis Vuitton.

• 28:15Ed Elson?

  BYD, I think, is, is probably the sexiest brand coming out of China right now.

• 28:19Scott Galloway?

  We hadn't heard about that till 24 months ago. Some people say TikTok. Some people say Alibaba, but America probably has a, whether it's Coca-Cola or Harvard, America has like hundreds of amazing, we're really good at media. We're really good at creating value add. At the end of the day, our consultants are the most expensive in the world. Right? Our schools are the most expensive in the world. The digital world, I think to your point, has become more about scale. And OpenAI was first zero to kind of, you know, whatever, zero to, what is it? Zero to a million users in like five hours or something? Whereas other technologies have taken months, if not years. Zero to 10 billion in revenues faster than anybody else.

• 29:04Scott Galloway?

  So these digital products that are frictionless, I agree with you. It's more about scale, but generally speaking, American products are usually considered globally the premium product at a, at a higher price and greater margin.

• 29:18Ed Elson?

  Just to put a button on this, where do you stand on the US-China AI race? I mean, China is winning on energy capacity and energy build out. They're also winning on efficiency. We are probably winning on quality and in some cases, scale and brand value. We do have some progress on efficiency. Google's developing these alternatives to the GPU called the TPU. I think you're going to hear a lot about this TPU over the next few months. And they are more energy efficient. They just had this deal with Anthropic. Amazon is working on their training in chips, which are supposedly more efficient as well. We're getting there, but I think it's safe to say

• 30:03Ed Elson?

  China's winning on efficiency and they're winning on energy. So given that, where do you stand on the race? What's going to happen, do you think?

• 30:13Scott Galloway?

  My emotional reaction is China's going to beat us because I think Donald Trump's policies are just incredibly sclerotic and short term and just head up your assery like nothing before. The biggest own goals in history have been committed, in my view. Having said that. I have a tendency, and I think we have a tendency to overestimate the policies of a current administration relative to the underlying economy, which just churns on and the US economy, biggest gears in the world to grind on more. It's like, have you seen those TikTok videos of those things that crush metal? Like you put a car into the thing and it starts like eating it alive like it's a tomato? I mean, it barely even feels it. It's like, oh my God, watch this. What? It can do, I mean, it can just eat

• 30:54Scott Galloway?

  anything. That's like the US economy. The US economy just appears to be so resilient and so powering on. So my answer would be, okay, does China win with scale and low cost? Or does America win in AI with value add? I think the answer is yes. And that is, if you want to order a puffy winter jacket, it's going to be hard to get something for less than if you get it from Shein or another company that has manufacturing in Southeast Asia. At the same time, people are still going to love North Face. The existential threat here is a function of our valuations. And we've been saying this forever, that the cloud cover for the Trump administration right now and the cold comfort that people

• 31:36Scott Galloway?

  have in terms of confidence to spend more money, especially the wealthy, who the top 10% now account for 50% of the consumer spending, which is basically the economy's resting on the top 10%. The top 10%'s consumer confidence comes from where the stock market is. And the stock market is up solely, solely because of 10 companies, you know, 77% of that growth. So they don't need to win. All they need to do is show that these companies aren't going to dominate the world. Built into these valuations is an assumption that these 10 companies are going to own all of it, all of it. And so if, if they still have

• 32:20Scott Galloway?

  the niche products, still amazing businesses, still get premium margin because people want to say, I'm on ChatGPT or Claude, I don't want to be on DeepSeek, I don't want to be on, you know, it's not great self-expensive benefit, or if you're an American company, there might be security concerns. Fine. But all they need to do is say, we're eating into their share. So I don't think there's a winner and a loser here. What I think is Both will find their niches, if you will, or both will find a market. The problem is, is that these companies get cut in half and the stock market goes way down. And when it becomes clear, these companies aren't going to have like 97 points of share of the global AI market.

• 33:03Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back after the break. If you're enjoying the show so far, be sure to give Prof G Markets a follow wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:20Speaker 00

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• 34:56Ed Elson?

  We're back with Profty Markets. Four thieves carried out a daring heist at the Louvre in Paris last week. In just seven minutes, they broke in and stole eight of France's crown jewels valued at more than $100 million. While that burglary drew international attention for its scale and audacity, it does come amid a string of far more troubling crimes. In the US, we've seen several high-profile murders in the last year. Political commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September. Over the summer, Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered in their home. And late last year, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered just before the company's annual investor conference. So these incidents raise questions about how institutions, individuals,

• 35:41Ed Elson?

  and even private companies can address safety concerns. As a result, one sector in particular has seen growing investment, and that is private security. So Scott, we have been talking about this for a while. And we've been bringing up the possibility that in a less structurally sound society that is ailed with issues mostly to do with income inequality, that leads to more crime, that leads to more violence, which in turn leads to a need and demand for security. Now, I just want to go through a couple of statistics here. One, this comes from Goldman Sachs, which surveyed a bunch of companies, public companies, private companies, nonprofit companies.

• 36:27Ed Elson?

  And basically, they found that three years ago, 17% of CEOs of the companies surveyed, 17% had private security. As of last year, that number had risen to 27%. So it went from 17% to basically a third in two years. A third of companies in America are hiring private security professionals to protect the lives and the safety of CEOs.

• 36:58Ed Elson?

  We've also seen residential security demand skyrocketing. Demand for residential security rose 20% last year. Also, after the UnitedHealth CEO shooting, there's this security company of a big company called Allied Universal. And they said that their executive travel protection business grew by 300%. So it quadrupled right after this. So we are seeing a lot of demand for security, for private security. And you actually called this right after the shooting in December.

• 37:31Scott Galloway?

  I would imagine the first reaction is we need to keep our executives safe. Those numbers that you quoted around CEO security are about to explode. That's a good business to be in right now, offering executive security.

• 37:41Ed Elson?

  That is exactly what we're seeing. And we're seeing more and more high profile crime, specifically attacking high profile individuals or high profile institutions. Scott, your reactions?

• 37:54Scott Galloway?

  I just went to one of these master, the universe conferences where, I don't know, probably 12 of the 30 wealthiest people in the world were there. And there was just security everywhere. And it's a real shame. And I think these people can't just take a walk. And something that always struck me is my father said to me, he said, the key to happiness is to be rich and anonymous. And that always struck me as very insightful that because he said, famous people who are rich and famous, eventually there's an industrial incentive to go after them and tear them down. Or that they become targets or, you know, they get sued more easily. He said, you want to be rich and anonymous. And I said, how about if I'm famous and not rich? Anyways.

• 38:40Ed Elson?

  That's what we're going for on this podcast.

• 38:42Scott Galloway?

  Someone said to me, oh, your son's so smart, he'll probably be famous. I'm like, as long as he's not infamous.

• 38:49Scott Galloway?

  But look, when you have guns everywhere, when you have income inequality, when you have people who can go down rabbit holes and get radicalized and go after famous people because they think in some sort of historic act of violence, they're going to regain social capital among a group of people that they think they've lost capital with and they suffer from mental illness and, you know, guns everywhere. What I'd be interested in knowing, it's like, okay, this is a market show. How do you make money? Are there public companies or places you can invest that's that make the supplies of the materials for security, right? I gotta think home security and things like that are gonna are just gonna boom because the number of wealthy people, just on a lighter note, when I was in Ibiza

• 39:34Scott Galloway?

  this summer, I saw a friend of mine and he had a table up front and he had these two enormous security guards. And I said to him, I'm like, dude, you're not that famous. You don't need security. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. He's like, it's a chick magnet. It means I'm really important. And I'm like, let me get this. You're doing this for women? He's like, yeah, it's amazing. He's like, everybody thinks I'm super famous. And he goes, but next year, he's like, the gangster move. I'm like, could these dudes be any bigger? And he's like, no, no, no, no, the new, this guy's really funny. He's like, the new gangster security is to have a hot Israeli woman who worked in the Mossad. And she just has kind of this resting bitch face. And, and I'm like, oh, my God. So could

• 40:18Scott Galloway?

  you be any douche here? You're walking around with huge guys right now, but next year you gotta find an Israeli security woman. Because that's the new flex.

• 40:26Ed Elson?

  This guy would like pay to be on the Epstein list.

• 40:28Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, this guy. That's funny. Pay to be on the Epstein list. That's funny. I gotta tell him that. I'm gonna text him that. That's funny.

• 40:36Ed Elson?

  I want to hear more about this Master of the Universe conference you went to and all of the security that was there. I assume there are a bunch of tech billionaires in this room and you're observing, you're saying that you saw more security than you've ever seen. Is that, is that right?

• 40:51Scott Galloway?

  It's a strange kind of security, though. There's no metal detectors. So we're all staying at some, we're all staying at the same hotel, but I'm not exaggerating. Every eight feet, if I was wearing a long sleeve shirt and you have your wristband, the identifier you're supposed to be there. If your shirt was covering your wristband, some guy in plain clothes that looked like he's been on human growth hormone for the last 20 years, you know, like got. Got cut after his first season at the New York Giants and has been pretty much just working out his whole life. Comes up to him and goes, oh, can I see your, can I see your wristband? I mean, everywhere in the bathroom, there were all these guys doing their best to be kind of out of the way and not obtrusive, but everywhere. I remember thinking, I remember,

• 41:36Scott Galloway?

  you know, you have this, I'm like, what if I just, like, I wanted to go up and meet one of these guys. And I thought, I need to walk slowly because I think if I walk a little too fast, I'm going to get shot towards, I'm going to like be tackled and tased. And then if I, you know, if my wristband isn't present, they're just going to, you know, there was so, and you can understand these people, A, they have the money, and B, when they see that, that these horrific events where a guy, the CEO of a publicly traded company who's anonymous is walking down the street in Manhattan and is executed. So I don't know, some of it, but anyways, back to the market standpoint, these have got to be great businesses because they're pretty, I would imagine, pretty high margin.

• 42:19Scott Galloway?

  I would imagine there's a lot of people who are looking for work like this. The people who don't want to round up our farmers and our servers and occasionally a US citizen while wearing a mask would probably rather do private security for a very wealthy person. And by the way, what I would tell anybody, and this is kind of sad, but it's true, go to work for wealthy people. And that is, there's this cartoon that wealthy people are awful and Monty Burns, I have generally found that really super wealthy people are generous and nice and treat their employees really well. And I just don't buy this notion.

• 43:00Scott Galloway?

  I'm like, if, and all, not only that, if your boss is making 10 million bucks a year, it's not easy for him to pay you $7.25 an hour.

• 43:09Ed Elson?

  I think that's the more important point. It's like, it would be uncomfortable not to pay you well.

• 43:15Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, let's not even say it's the character thing. It's just that it's, you can't have people in your home organizing your jewels, you know, and picking up your kid from a school to, and then, and then, you know, you can't pay your nanny 40,000 bucks a year when you're spending that, you know, when you're spending a hundred thousand dollars to get to Saint Tropez. So, and, and also just generally speaking, I have found.

• 43:43Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I'll stick by it. Really, really wealthy people get there, not kids who've inherited money. I can't get over what fucking douchebags some of these rich kids are that I meet and how out of touch and non-empathetic and how, I don't know, just, they're just so tone deaf as to their privilege and to the fact that, yeah, you'd be maybe the number two salesperson at Subaru of West Hollywood if your father wasn't a fucking billionaire. And, but they're under the impression that it was their grit and character that got them where they are. Anyways, those people, I generally believe the cartoon is pretty accurate, but the self-made billionaires, quote unquote, are, have been put in a room of opportunities constantly that they're not in physically because they're good people. And also, I think when you get

• 44:28Scott Galloway?

  a little bit older, you get excited about the opportunity to share time and work by giving, you know, by paying people well. But they're, you know, and that's what's so disappointing. I was about to go on my socialist rant, but I'm not going to do it. But, but generally speaking, we were talking about, there's a lot of opportunities probably for these guys.

• 44:52Scott Galloway?

  Or, and they're usually guys unless you're a female former Mossad. I want to hire the K-pop demon hunters to be my security guards. I have a 3D anime following me around. I wonder, I would like to have, I don't know, who would I like to have as my security guard?

• 45:08Ed Elson?

  I'd like to have Erling Haaland.

• 45:09Scott Galloway?

  I think Scott Baio or maybe David Hasselhoff. I'd like to get David Hasselhoff incredibly fucked up and have him just walk around and introduce himself as my security. Or Bette Midler. Bette Midler should be my security. Anyways.

• 45:24Ed Elson?

  The number of ultra-high net worth individuals surged 21% last year. The top 1% owns half of the market cap of the entire S and P 500. The top 19 households own 2% of all household wealth in America. 50 years ago, it was 0.1%. So their share of the pie has 20xed in the past 50 years compared to the bottom half of Americans who control roughly the same amount. So you've got 19 households versus several hundred million households who control the same amount of money. And then you ask the question, like, what's good with all the crime? Like, why? Why are people shooting each other in the street? Why are we seeing like Hollywood style heists capturing hundreds of millions of dollars

• 46:09Ed Elson?

  worth of of royal jewelry? And I think it's not a stretch to make the connection between what we're seeing with inequality and what we're seeing with crime and therefore what we're seeing with the demand for executive security and private security. In fact, studies have shown that as the Gini inequality index rises, so too does the number of private security employees per capita. And of course, so too does crime in general. I just want to point you to this stat. There are now more than a million privately employed security guards in the US, which is more than the number of high school teachers in America.

• 46:50Ed Elson?

  Compared to the past two decades, the number of security guards in America has doubled. And for context, you might say, well, the population's grown. No, the population has grown only 16% since then. So you've got America's population up 16% and the American security guard population up 100% over the past two decades. So it does appear that we are entering into a sort of, I don't know, post-law society where every man for himself and every man needs to get their own former Mossad agent to protect themselves, to protect their home and protect their jewelry.

• 47:34Ed Elson?

  And to your point about, you know, can this be an investment thesis? Which I believe it can. It's a it's a highly cynical investment thesis, but it's a real one. And that that might that could be something to discuss. We we have a few names that we could mention, but I use first, let's just get your reaction to that number, you know, more than a million security guards in America.

• 47:58Scott Galloway?

  That stat blew my mind. More security guards than teachers. Like, this is the erosion of a society, but it's a continued pattern. And that is. Very talented, hardworking and lucky people garner disproportionate amount of their resources. They incrementally come up with candidates and ideas to lower their tax rates and make it such that they can sequester from the rest of society with private air travel, private infrastructure, private security. They don't need cops, they don't need teachers, they don't need the FAA, they don't need, they have their own, they have their own healthcare. They don't need hospital, rural hospital systems can be shut down. It doesn't affect them. These huge cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, they don't affect

• 48:43Scott Galloway?

  them because they have their own concierge healthcare. They have doctors coming to their house. Oh, teachers don't make enough money? I don't care. I've got, my teachers at my private school make plenty of money. Oh, we're making cuts to the police force or fire department? That's okay. I've got my own, I've got my own security. So this separates the people with the power from the realities of our society and makes them less invested in our society. And they keep on just voting for and giving money to people who will cut their taxes because the decline in the civility and social services they're immune from. And I'm not proud of this, but I don't know where to put my money right now. I don't,

• 49:27Scott Galloway?

  I think the markets are overvalued. So what I've been doing, and I've told you this, I've been buying real estate in what I call 0.1% communities. And when I meet with someone to talk about, I'm like, I say, this is simple. This house, I'm ultimately going to sell this house. I don't know if it's going to be three years or 10 years or 20 years, but who's it for? It's for a new billionaire. The only thing I'm fairly certain of is in the next 10 to 20 years, the regulatory capture, the income inequality is only going to get worse globally. And as capital becomes more global, they all want to live in the same small number of places, and they are price insensitive when it comes to their home. And

• 50:08Scott Galloway?

  so that's the best bet I can find right now, is that, you know, it's why these, it's what private air travel is surging. And this is the dark side of that. And that is, the same pattern emerges. At some point, people realize that if the one man is worth more than the lower 52% of America, the easiest thing to double our wealth, 160 million people, is to take his shit away. And that's a form of revolution and it keeps happening over and over, but revolutions take on different complexions. And I've said this before, the Me Too movement, Black Lives Matter, the execution of a healthcare CEO. These are all forms of small revolutions.

• 50:51Scott Galloway?

  And that's not to say that Black Lives Matter and the Me Too movement didn't have righteous components to them. But effectively, what they, they weren't going after sexual harassment, managing a taco truck. They weren't going after the racist small business owner. They were going after rich people. So there is this populist anger. Mamdammi is probably going to win the mayoral race of a city that has a larger GDP than I think all but, you know, 12 or 14 countries on the notion of essentially income inequality and unaffordability. People are angry and it, the income inequality isn't just about the poor versus the very rich. It trickles up. What do I mean by that?

• 51:32Scott Galloway?

  There are so many people of your generation living in New York that are, they play by the rules. They've gone to great, they've worked their asses off in high school. They're good people. They got into amazing schools. Their parents borrowed money for them to get through those schools and they worked hard and they got scholarships. They got out, they got great jobs and they still can't fucking afford to live in New York or San Francisco. I mean, they still can't afford, when I moved to New York, granted, I had to have two roommates, but I could afford to live in New York making, back then I was working at Morgan Stanley, like 50, 55 grand a year. You have to either be in technology at, with Meta or Google, working at JP Morgan, or

• 52:16Scott Galloway?

  have rich parents who are putting you through New York and San Francisco. So it's not just poor people deciding to break into a jewelry store or committing crime. It's general dissatisfaction among New York voters who are like, fuck, I've played by the rules. I'm making a great living and I can't live here, but I see this pornographic wealth being shoved in my face 210 times a day. And I see people aggregating the GDP of a Latin American nation who are paying their lowest taxes ever. So this revolution is like happening kind of up and down the income ladder. People are dissatisfied who are making six figures right now. Like, okay, I was supposed

• 52:57Scott Galloway?

  to live a better life than this. The extraction of so much value in capital is going so much, not to the top 10%, but the top 0.1%, that even if you're in the 90th percentile right now, you're starting to feel pissed off.

• 53:12Ed Elson?

  That's what, that's what the, so interesting about Mamdani, people like, why is this, why is this message working in New York? Why are people in Manhattan voting for this? It's like, even the people who are making good livings feel that the city is unaffordable. That's why it resonates. It doesn't just resonate for the, for the, for the bottom 50, it resonates for the bottom 90. I think it's an important point. So now, uh, we get to the part of the show where we make, uh, investment trades based on the collapse of society. So,

• 53:47Ed Elson?

  how do you invest in private security? Short answer is it's pretty hard.

• 53:52Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, most of it's private, right?

• 53:54Ed Elson?

  Exactly. The, most of them privately owned. The biggest one is Allied Universal. They have 26% market share. They're still private, but they said they're considering an IPO maybe next year or the year after because of course they're doing very well. There are some publicly traded stocks. Um, there is Brink's. They provide ATM services and armored trucks. There's Securitas onsite guarding, uh, and remote monitoring services. There's ADT, which provides professional home security. Uh, these are, we haven't done proper diligence on these companies. Um, but

• 54:30Ed Elson?

  So these are not, this is not investment advice. Certainly go look into this yourself. But you know, those are a few of the names that are publicly traded. If you want to get that exposure. Also, there are a lot of private equity firms that are, that are investing in these kinds of security companies and some of them are publicly traded. Ares, as an example, they invested in this company called Convergent and they're sort of the global leader in building security. Apollo is a major investor in ADT. That's one of those private security companies. So there are some ways to get some, some distant forms of exposure. And there are some ways to get involved in the public markets.

• 55:11Ed Elson?

  But again, not, not investment advice that I'm not saying you should go buy these stocks.

• 55:17Scott Galloway?

  So when my mom was diagnosed, when her cancer recurred, she went in for her second mastectomy. And while she was in the hospital, somebody broke into her condo. So obviously it was an inside job, right? Did somebody at the hospital knew the names and addresses of people who are undergoing surgery and was providing it to other people to break into their homes, knowing that no one would be there, which is pretty depraved, but pretty obvious. And my mom had rented out my room, you know, total cliche. The moment I go to call, she rents out my room because she needed the money to this lovely PhD student. And she was home and she heard something and opened the door and saw this guy and screamed and closed the door and the guy ran out of the house. And my mom was totally freaked out.

• 56:01Scott Galloway?

  Like she'd just come home from surgery. The house had been broken into. She was just, you know, as you can imagine, upset, paranoid. And so my answer, being creative and of course to protect her was I went across the street to the Johnsons who were total fucking assholes and I stole their ADT sign and I planted it in front of her house. That this home is protected by ADT. I'm like, we're fine because it's clearly the sign that scares people off.

• 56:25Ed Elson?

  I love that.

• 56:26Scott Galloway?

  Anyways, that was, that's my home security story, Ed.

• 56:29Ed Elson?

  You were a master of branding from a very young age.

• 56:32Scott Galloway?

  I'd love to see the data, but these home security systems are ineffective in my view and play on nothing but fear.

• 56:39Ed Elson?

  And, and that might be right. And it could be that a lot of these billionaires who are hiring these 12 person security teams, maybe you don't actually need them, but the fact is they're scared and they're worried.

• 56:49Scott Galloway?

  I know, but what I'm saying is. Somebody, okay, you have an alarm system, maybe that works fine. But the idea, those commercials are like, we see an intruder and this nice lady is like, we're deploying the police now. Okay, folks, if you want it, if you look at the data, you know, hands down, and by the way, people think a good home security is a gun. No, that means you're much more likely to be shot. The moment you get a gun, you're much more likely to be shot because you don't sit there cocked with your gun cocked, waiting for a criminal, right? And generally speaking, criminals aren't there to kill you. They're there to steal your shit unless you show up with a gun and then they shoot you. The most effective home security system, hands down, hands down is what, Ed?

• 57:33Scott Galloway?

  You just want me to get a dog, man? A dog? Hundred percent. They've done all these surveys. They've done all these surveys of people who've been incarcerated for home invasion or theft, and they all say the same thing. We don't go in our houses with dogs. I'm gonna get a pet Chihuahua. If you get a Chihuahua, get one that is exactly 2.2 pounds, name it Kilo. I think that is the best dog name I've ever heard. So this is really an investment trade on, buy on dogs. How do we get along dogs? Well, actually, pet food companies, pet supplies companies have been amazing investments. People will start eating cat food themselves before they cut off their cat's cat food. Seriously, people have had, it's been a great, a great sector, but I don't know how to invest.

• 58:18Scott Galloway?

  I don't know how to invest across this sector. Even like the TSA is all illusion. It's not. But fear is a powerful thing and it makes, it makes a lot of money. Yeah, hundred percent, hundred percent. We'll be right back and for even more markets content, sign up for our newsletter at profitemarkets.com/subscribe.

• 58:51Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends. Like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest, or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

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• 1:00:26Ed Elson?

  We're back with Profty Markets. It was a big week for streaming, and the industry looks closer than ever to consolidation. Warner Brothers Discovery stock jumped more than 9% after the company hinted it was open to a sale. Reports emerged that Paramount has already made three offers to buy it, all of which were rebuffed. Meanwhile, CNBC reported that Netflix could be a potential buyer. Netflix also made headlines of its own. Its third quarter earnings missed expectations, but mainly because of a $619 million tax settlement. With Brazil, but beyond that, it was a solid quarter. Revenue rose 17% to 11 and a half billion dollars. So Scott, a lot of news in streaming and in entertainment, another turn in the Warner Brothers saga. Earlier this year, they announced they were

• 1:01:11Ed Elson?

  going to split into two entities. Then we learned their fielding interest from Paramount Skydance, AKA David Ellison. And now we learn they are getting, quote, unsolicited interest from multiple parties. They say they are open to a sale. And then we're hearing from CNBC that among the interested parties are Netflix, also Comcast. Now, you actually highlighted Warner Brothers as one of your top stock picks for 2024. Here's what you said back in January of 2024.

• 1:01:45Scott Galloway?

  I think Disney and Warner Brothers Discovery are going to do really well this year. I think they're both going to be put into play. They have become distressed assets. They are now trading at some of their lowest multiples in history. It's not because these guys will do anything that deft or that brilliant. It's because, quite frankly, they've just gotten so cheap, they're going to attract a lot of sharks. They also are single class shareholder companies, meaning that they're breakable, if you will, that someone can come in and start rattling their cage.

• 1:02:09Ed Elson?

  So Warner Brothers has doubled since then, and it now looks like it will be acquired by someone. Your reactions?

• 1:02:18Scott Galloway?

  So Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg have made more money while doing more damage to young people than any people in history. But from a shareholder perspective, they deserve every penny. With respect to shareholder value, the person who added the lease value destroyed a ton of value, took EBITDA, cut EBITDA in half and like almost fucked up the tax ramifications of their asset, which was Japan, the Japan division of the company. As Marissa Mayer for coming in and fucking up Yahoo, walked away with a quarter of a billion dollars.

• 1:02:47Scott Galloway?

  She's about to be bested by David Zaslove, who has already earned somewhere between a quarter and a third of a billion dollars for getting the stock back to where it was when he came up with this idea to merge the two. And I have no doubt that he has, quite frankly, trying to figure out a way right now to get some crazy golden, I don't know, exit package from this acquisition. And for basically selling the company for the same price, he convinced shareholders to pay for it when this ill-fated dumbass merger was formed several years ago. This is gonna happen. They are leaking false information. Comcast is smart.

• 1:03:29Scott Galloway?

  Comcast isn't gonna buy this company because the only people who are willing to spend $24, $26 a share for this thing is the Ellison's, because the kid wants to go to the Academy Awards and wants to spend dad's money to be a media mogul. And the father, just who made $90 billion in one day, probably says, "Okay, we're gonna sell the shitty cable assets, and we're gonna take Warner and HBO, and we're gonna AI the shit out of the content side of this, and it'll be really interesting, and we'll see if we can do something." And my son, who's a good kid, you know, gets to go play in traffic. But the idea, they are leaking information that there's multiple suitors here. Bullshit. This thing makes no financial sense. And there's a reason that the only people involved in these companies are all the children of billionaires,

• 1:04:12Scott Galloway?

  because no one else that has to answer to shareholders is willing to show up and pay anything, anything, close to this price. So Zaslove is leaking rumors that this is a multiple-party bidder. There's one bidder, and his last name is Ellison.

• 1:04:26Ed Elson?

  Yes.

• 1:04:27Scott Galloway?

  It'll end up going, they're trying to play the reluctant bride, so they come up to $24, $26 a share. They will buy the thing. And right now, all Zaslove is doing is feathering his bed for a deal that he walks away with a quarter, another 100 to 500 million dollars for basically adding no value. And these are trophy assets.

• 1:04:50Scott Galloway?

  They will. I don't think it's a Machiavellian strategy for the Ellison's to control media. What this will be is an interesting application of AI and potentially taking colliding Warner Brothers and great content and IP with their US division of TikTok if they get control of that.

• 1:05:07Ed Elson?

  I totally agree with. Well, you said two things. One, they're pretending that there are multiple bidders. I 100% agree with that. I think that's definitely right. Second thing you said is that it will happen. It will get sold. I'm not 100% sure.

• 1:05:21Scott Galloway?

  Why is that? What do you think is getting in the way of it?

• 1:05:22Ed Elson?

  Well, they've rejected the offer three times already.

• 1:05:25Scott Galloway?

  That's a reluctant bride.

• 1:05:27Ed Elson?

  Just to play this out. So Warner Brothers says, we're open to a sale and here are some bidders that may or may not be involved. And it gets leaked to the press and then now we're on the podcast talking about, oh, maybe Netflix will buy it, maybe Comcast will buy it, et cetera. You're saying Zaslav wants to sell. He wants to create an illusion of an auction and that's why this is happening and Netflix isn't actually interested. I completely agree. What is interesting is the fact that the stock went up 10% on the news. So the market says, oh my gosh, something's happening. They're open to a sale. And what you're saying is they were always open to a sale. They were dying for a sale, Zaslav

• 1:06:10Ed Elson?

  specifically, and they're kind of pretending as if something has changed and nothing's really changed here. And yet the stock has gone up 10%. So that in and of itself is very interesting. They were seeing this stock explosion on not really anything at all, or at least something that appears to be kind of manufactured. But it does raise this question. Ellison has come to him and he's given him a few offers. He first offered $19 per share, then $22 per share, then $23.50 per share. Zaslav said no every time.

• 1:06:44Ed Elson?

  Supposedly, according to Rich Greenfield, who's a great media analyst, he thinks that Zasloff wants $30 per share. Before all of this was happening, Warner Brothers was at 11. So we've gone from 11, we're now looking at $21 per share. And I wonder if he's overplaying his hand here. I wonder if he's getting a little carried away with it. He loves saying no. He goes out and says, no, no, Comcast really wants us. Netflix really wants us. And I wonder if at some point David Ellison says, you know what, dude? Let's quit fucking around. Netflix doesn't want you. They want IP. They don't want your shitty TV networks. Amazon can't buy you. That's going to be a whole antitrust concern. I'm sick of this game.

• 1:07:28Scott Galloway?

  At the end of the day, really, the most important job of an investment banker is to create the illusion of multiple bidders. Companies are bought, not sold. And people say, well, I'll decide to sell. No, you don't get to decide when to sell. People get to decide when to buy. And what you need is when you get a, you have to have a credible inbound opportunity and offer. You give that credible inbound opportunity, a chance to take you off the market at what you would call a rich, even irrational price. Otherwise, you're going to investigate other suitors. Fine, they don't want to give you an irrational price upfront. You get it. You get a first strike opportunity. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. When I sold my first company to Dentsu, I said, here's a price.

• 1:08:12Scott Galloway?

  It's above market, but if you take it, we won't talk to anybody else and it's yours. They did that. Great. With L2, we had a credible inbound opportunity. I countered at a much higher price. They said, no, we can't do that. I said, fine, but just FYI, we're going to do a market check. Go out with a book, data room, have people sign LOIs. Seven players signed LOIs. It's a great business. We got three term sheets, including the existing inbound offer. One was from Gartner, one was from Accenture, and one was from Corporate Executive Board.

• 1:08:47Scott Galloway?

  And I wake up and Accenture basically said, this is so exciting. You're going to love this, Scott. We do business with 400 of the 500 global, you know, biggest, the Fortune 500 globally. We want to take your thought leadership and introduce you to everyone from, you know, De Beers in South Africa to Samsung. And they were acting as if, what a thrill for you as a professor. You're going to get to molest the globe and share your thought leadership with CEOs all over the world. And I thought, I can't imagine anything I would less rather do than get on a plane again for the rest of my life and be in shitty corporate hotels. Again, renting my

• 1:09:31Scott Galloway?

  brain to old white guys or old brown guys around the world. I'm just done. I'm fucking done. And they made it sound like I would love that. And I'm like, so I went back to him and I said, look, this isn't for me. And then I wake up on fucking Monday morning and there's an announcement that Gartner has acquired corporate executive board. So in about 72 hours, I go from three suitors to one. And I remember that thinking that I have to give them the impression that there are multiple suitors here. Otherwise, I'm fucked. And basically, I tried to talk my, there's only two things you have to remember in any negotiation. One, don't let emotion get involved. Don't make it about win lose. You're all good people. And if there's not a fit, there's not a fit, but don't, don't think of it as a win lose.

• 1:10:16Scott Galloway?

  Two, always show a credible willingness to walk away. Always show a credible willingness to walk away. And the way you can do that, or go with another partner is the illusion of multiple bidders. Or, you know, they get the sense, the tone of your voice, that you're willing to walk. And the only way Gartner closed was I walked. They kept coming back with additional terms and conditions. And at one point, I said, I need you to let me out of this exclusive because I'm done. I'm kind of done going back and forth. And then the CEO called me and said, okay, let's close the deal. It's very rare that a deal closes without one party walking away at some point because basically your sharks bumping each other to see, you know, to kind of bump each other and see if you respond. These guys, in my view, and I don't know the situation,

• 1:11:01Scott Galloway?

  nobody can rationalize to their public shareholders, whether it's Ted Sarandos or the Armstrongs at Comcast, can get on an earnings call and justify anything close to this. So Zaslav is, in my opinion, and his bankers are playing a total game. It was at 11 bucks. If all of a sudden Ellison announced they were dropping out, I think this thing goes down 30% and maybe more. And within three months, it's back to 11. Maybe not back to 11 because it's still in play.

• 1:11:31Ed Elson?

  Kind of. I mean, we're saying that there's one bidder. He's pretending that he's got five. And if suddenly people start to connect the dots and say, actually, hold on, this doesn't work. This doesn't work. This doesn't work. There's only one bidder. Then suddenly that transforms the transaction in a huge way. And suddenly David Ellison has the leverage.

• 1:11:50Scott Galloway?

  If you look at Warner Brothers stock, right? In April of 25, in April of this year, I mean, eight months ago, it was at eight bucks a share, right? In October of 24, it was at 740. By the way, the business was better then. This business gets worse every month because they're in the business of ad-supported cable. So when the business was better at seven bucks a share, the only thing that's changed here is there's a kid with a preloaded credit card of $40 billion that showed up.

• 1:12:21Ed Elson?

  And Zaslav is saying it's not good enough. He's saying it's not good enough at 23.

• 1:12:25Scott Galloway?

  That's the whole point of negotiation. It's never good enough. They're going to play the reluctant bride and pretend that there's other idiots out there willing to pay 24 bucks a share, 26, 30. No, there aren't. And if Ellison tomorrow announces, we're out, we're moving on, this thing is down 30%. And most likely, I would bet it's down to 11 or 12 bucks again in three to six months. So they're all, and good for them. That's their job. He's trying to get the maximum. He's trying to get the maximum value for his shareholders. It's a trophy asset. There are some assets here that are non-replicable. I get it. But be clear, there's only one irrational buyer right now.

• 1:13:09Scott Galloway?

  And his last name is Ellison.

• 1:13:12Ed Elson?

  All right, let's take a look at the week ahead. We'll see earnings from big tech with Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft all reporting. We'll also hear the Federal Reserve's October interest rate decision. Traders are betting on a quarter point cut with near 100% certainty. Scott, any predictions?

• 1:13:28Scott Galloway?

  Well, we talked about it earlier. I think that she is going to come for the jugular, and you're going to see a flurry of open weight LLMs. The Old Navy of AI is about to come from the East, and I think it's going to have a pretty serious, could have a serious impact on the companies that are totally dependent upon AI projections, which could have a big impact on the market. I think that China is, what was it that Tyrion Lannister said about, I forget that character's name, he said, "This is a very serious man." I think she is very serious, and I think they are being very strategic. I think it's

• 1:14:10Scott Galloway?

  no accident they went after the soybeans in red states. And I think that they, again, I just makes, if I was advising she, this is exactly what I'd do. Flood the market with cheap AI LLMs that are irresistible to use, and these companies don't live up to the already irrational expectations, and all of a sudden GDP growth in the economy in the US goes into recession right away, and this guy loses all of his cloud cover for these bullshit sclerotic irrational geopolitical decisions around tariffs. And I think that's exactly what they're going to do. And he has the power to say to these companies, maybe it's not good for shareholder value, but you're going to come up with an amazing, with amazing

• 1:14:52Scott Galloway?

  LLMs and AI models that require less energy, and you're going to make them for free.

• 1:15:01Ed Elson?

  This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alison Weiss. Mia Silverio is our research lead. Our research associates are Isabella Kinsel, Dan Chalon, and Kristen O'Donoghue. Drew Burrows is our technical director, and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from Prof G Media. Tune in tomorrow for a fresh take. On the markets.

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