War With Iran Is Rewriting Global Markets

Live from SXSW, Scott Galloway and Ed Elson break down how the war with Iran is reshaping investment strategies and what it signals for global capital flows. They also discuss what market movements are revealing about which countries are best positioned in a more volatile world. Finally, they examine how AI leaders are talking about the technology, and what that says about where it’s headed next. Support from the show comes from Hostinger: http://hostinger.com/profg20 Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter Order "Notes on Being a Man," out now Note: We may earn revenue from some of the links we provide. Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Follow the podcast across socials @profgmarkets Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram, X and Substack Send us your questions or comments by emailing [email protected] 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.

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• 1:54Scott Galloway?

  Dad jokes or dick jokes?

• 1:56Speaker 04

  Dick jokes!

• 2:00Scott Galloway?

  Dad jokes.

• 2:01Ed Elson?

  I heard dad jokes, that's my vote, personally.

• 2:03Scott Galloway?

  Do you speak German? What does a German say to your South by Southwest?

• 2:06Ed Elson?

  What is it?

• 2:07Scott Galloway?

  Howie?

• 2:12Scott Galloway?

  Thank you.

• 2:16Scott Galloway?

  So on my wedding night,

• 2:23Scott Galloway?

  my new bride says to me, I've got some really good and really bad news for you. And I said, okay. She said, oh my God, your dick is so much bigger than your brother's.

• 2:45Ed Elson?

  All right. Live from the Vox Media Podcast stage at South by Southwest. Welcome to Prop G Markets, everyone.

• 2:55Ed Elson?

  The worst of it is over. Thank God. How are you doing, Scott?

• 3:00Scott Galloway?

  I'm a little insecure because you look very handsome, the whole blue linen thing. I don't like this. We did a tour around the lobby and of course everyone's like, hi Ed.

• 3:10Scott Galloway?

  And like asking if Ed's got a girlfriend, all these parents showing up. It's awful. By the way, I got really excited. There's a big line. I'm like, oh, that's so exciting. And then I found out it's for the audacity of joy next door. Folks, no one's coming to save you. This whole therapy thing, they're the new supplements. Let me just summarize the audacity of joy. It's THC on Netflix. That's joy. All right? And let me summarize 20 years of therapy. Your parents did their best. Just don't be such fucking jerks too. No one's coming to save you. And everything you think is trauma, there's a word for it. It's called life. Back to you, Ed.

• 3:49Ed Elson?

  Impeccable start. We're making fun of other shows. We're feeling depressed. I love it.

• 3:56Ed Elson?

  So today we're discussing some slightly heavy news because we have to. Today we're discussing Iran wars, the Iran wars impact on global markets. And also discussing the future of AI according to the leaders of AI. And we will also have some time for some audience questions at the end. But first, Scott, let's get into the episode.

• 4:16Scott Galloway?

  Good enough. All right. Today's number.

• 4:21Scott Galloway?

  How am I doing so far?

• 4:25Scott Galloway?

  Today's number 15. That's how many venomous snake species live in Texas. Wow. Then I should have done the dick joke. Anyways, welcome. Welcome to Prop G Markets. We're here in the great state of Texas at South by Southwest.

• 4:45Scott Galloway?

  Ed, how are you? Welcome to Texas.

• 4:47Ed Elson?

  I'm doing, I'm doing very well.

• 4:48Scott Galloway?

  You're doing great. You're looking good.

• 4:50Ed Elson?

  Got the cowboy hat on. I'm probably gonna take it off when we start to talk about Iran. But for now, I'm gonna rock it. I'm gonna rock it while I can.

• 4:58Scott Galloway?

  I like it.

• 4:59Ed Elson?

  And I loved the horse head. How did, how did that feel?

• 5:02Scott Galloway?

  I felt like I was gonna slip and break a hip and I thought that everyone is generous with my dignity. Everyone's, everyone thought it was a great idea for me to wear a horse head.

• 5:10Ed Elson?

  We did.

• 5:11Scott Galloway?

  It's, it's nice at 51 to be doing like pimping yourself for social media. 61.

• 5:18Ed Elson?

  All right. Well, I'm gonna get us started here because we don't have all the time in the world.

• 5:21Scott Galloway?

  Okay.

• 5:22Ed Elson?

  We're gonna start with our first story.

• 5:25Ed Elson?

  The war with Iran has changed the global landscape in a very short time and it appears there is no end in sight. On Friday, when asked when the war would be over, President Trump said, quote, "When I feel it, feel it in my bones." And now investors must reckon with the new reality of war. In America, stocks are selling off, but not as much as other nations. European stocks, for example, have fallen 5% since the US struck Iran. Japanese stocks have fallen 8%, South Korean stocks 13%. And so if the markets are any signal of what is to come, it would appear that the economic damage of this war might be felt most acutely outside of the US, which raises many questions for both investors and governments alike.

• 6:10Ed Elson?

  So Scott, one of the big themes that we were discussing over the course of last year was this potential rotation out of America in the global markets. It really started with tariffs. Then it seems to continue as Davos occurred and as we sort of launched these attacks on Greenland and our NATO allies. And yes, the US stock market performed quite well last year, but notably every other market outperformed the US. Emerging markets, global markets, Asian markets, et cetera. And it seemed that that was the trajectory of global capital flows. Now a wrench has been thrown into the whole system. And that is Europe appears vulnerable, Asia appears vulnerable. It appears that everyone else is more vulnerable than America,

• 6:55Ed Elson?

  which raises questions for investors. And perhaps that might reverse the flows of capital around the world. So what do you make of what this war has done to global markets and how global capital is moving at this point?

• 7:08Scott Galloway?

  So it's pretty, the best metric for tracking flows is just the strength or the weakness of the US dollar because people have to convert into the dollar to buy treasuries or to buy stocks. And last year, while the Trump administration will claim it's been a great year, 14% up in the S and P, if you adjusted for the dollar because people were getting out of the US, I would argue because rule of law, inability or a lack of trust that all companies were going to get to play by the same rules, a feel of an autocracy, an emerging autocracy, all of the things that we did not have that resulted in a much higher multiple on earnings in the US than anywhere else, people were transitioning out of the dollar and in other markets.

• 7:52Scott Galloway?

  And while 14% sounds like a lot, if you dollar adjust it, if you're a foreign investor last year, out of 23 major markets, the US came in 21st. So we outperformed New Zealand and Denmark and every other market beat us last year, was up more. Now, in terms of winners and losers, and there's always unexpected winners and losers, let's stack rank it, let's talk about the winners. So Norway, probably Canada, the big oil producers, probably Saudi Arabia, which won't have much infrastructure destroyed and we'll see elevated oil prices, which will probably be good for them. The big winner hands down is Russia.

• 8:30Scott Galloway?

  And that is Russia now has a lot more capital to fund the war and also there's a distraction from the Western world on the battle or on the war in Ukraine. So there, if you were to look at everybody, they're the biggest winner. What's interesting about the US, I think it's important that we all, what infects the US infects tech CEOs and tech, for lack of a better term, tech bros. And that is, in the US, we don't realize a lot of our success is not our fault. And that is, we're just, the smartest thing that can ever happen to you is to be born in America, or the smartest decision you've ever made is if you were born in America and

• 9:13Scott Galloway?

  you did make the decision if you immigrated here. Because just on a very meta level, we have two oceans protecting us. We have friendly Canada to the north, harmless Mexico to the south. We have more natural resources than any nation in history. We're energy independent. We produce more energy than we consume. We produce more food than we consume. You know, other than rare earths, there's sort of no, every, every single country in the world, whether it's oil or foodstuffs, has something that they're dependent upon someone else for. We literally don't go out of business. We're pretty self-sufficient. About 15% of our economy is imports in, and it's mostly luxury goods or disposable things that we

• 9:56Scott Galloway?

  can do without. So our S and P is only, I think, off 1.5% since the beginning of the war. Is that about right?

• 10:02Ed Elson?

  Close to 3%, but certainly lower than everyone else.

• 10:05Scott Galloway?

  And then if you look at who's, so the US, I would argue, reputationally, is going to take a huge hit here. Because we're under the impression that with a third of the world's GDP, we can control the world. And the reason we've had so much dominant influence is through cooperation. It essentially has created the operating system upon which 60 or 70% of the world's GDP rests and mostly cooperates us and says, well, I'm not sure about Iraq, but you're our ally, so we'll follow you in, as did a bunch of nations. So reputationally, we obviously take a very big hit, I think, over the medium and the long term by kind of going at it alone, not incorporating European nations or our Gulf neighbors. But economically, it's sort of ironic and a little bit sad, we don't get hit that hard. Now, who gets

• 10:49Scott Galloway?

  hit really hard? The Asian nations. So 20% of the world's oil flows through the Straits of Hormuz, but about 70% of Japanese or Korean oil comes through that strait. So you've seen, you've seen the Korean index down double digits. So if we woke up tomorrow and the S and P was off 3,000 or 5,000 points, that's what South Korea's gone through, because it ends up making semiconductors is very energy.

• 11:17Scott Galloway?

  Dependent and this country has no, none of its own oil. China is a very strong move to renewables, ton of economic power. It is, has not been a hit as hard, but Japan and some of the other Asian countries are really feeling it. The most vulnerable, and this is where I think we could have, it's always the shit you're not expecting that gets you. No one was expect, no one knew what a subprime loan was. No one thought, you know, 11 men were going to find planes and slam them into buildings. It's always the shit you're not expecting. I think the string that could get pulled here that could put us into a fairly serious recession is Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, maybe the Philippines.

• 11:58Scott Galloway?

  They're energy independent, I'm sorry, energy dependent, very sensitive to skyrocketing oil prices. And also their debt is dollar denominated, meaning that they take out a billion dollars in debt. They have to pay it back in dollars and then when their currency crashes, when their currency gets cut in half, which is happening in some of these markets, they essentially owe double. And they can't sustain that and they get thrown into chaos IMF receivership. And then the, the kind of the, the infection or the contagion is in places like BNP Paribas or what's the other big European bank, I'm blanking. Basically say, okay, we have all these bad loans on our balance sheet

• 12:41Scott Galloway?

  and potentially it starts to infect other big banks. So I think you could see a contagion. If the S and P were to be down 20 or 30% this year, which wouldn't be unusual. I think it was off, Nasdaq lost about a third of its value in 2022. I think it starts in these smaller markets that are very energy dependent, have currencies that are crashing and have dollar denominated debt. So unfortunately, we in the US.

• 13:10Scott Galloway?

  When we come out, the collateral damage, I mean, it's unfair, but it's true. The collateral damage we cause has a much bigger impact on other nations than it does on us in this sort of zone of empathy, if you will. Like, no one's talking about dollar-denominated debt in Bangladesh, but if they can't pay their debt, it's going to be pretty ugly. So winners and losers, another winner is probably, I talked about Canada, Norway, the energy guys. But we actually, despite the fact that we're, should be the biggest winners or the biggest losers based on the outcome here, we have dramatic shock absorbers in the form of our, again, these unearned advantages we have.

• 13:53Ed Elson?

  But I think that this comes back to a question that was raised during tariffs, which is, how independent are we really? There are certain things that we can measure and we can look at how energy-independent we are, which we are, but does that really mean that we can just go out and cause chaos all around the world? And because we're protected by these two oceans on either side, and because we have oil, because we have energy, as you point out, we didn't really think about the rare earth thing before we got into this. But does that really mean that we're going to be okay? And I think that this is now becoming the big question here, and I'm a little bit more skeptical or a little bit more concerned about it.

• 14:34Ed Elson?

  I think, for example, about our relationship with the Gulf states, with whom we have become actually quite dependent on their investments for our startup and tech ecosystem. Gulf states invested $70 billion in American companies last year. Trump comes out and he says, "These guys are going to invest $2 trillion into the US economy in the next few years." I don't necessarily believe him, but that's what he said. That is a very, very significant relationship. I would also argue that our relationship with Europe and with NATO allies has been historically quite significant for our success. And now we're saying that we're going to scrap all of that. And I guess my question for the administration, my question for Americans, my question for you.

• 15:19Ed Elson?

  If the Gulf states are seeing their houses and their hotels, their luxury hotels and their desalination plants being blown up every, every week or so, every day as we're seeing, are they really down to invest in America in the way that they have? Are they really down to collaborate with us, to trade with us, to form the alliances that we've had? Will Europe be okay with a relationship with America if their inflation is three times higher than it is in the US because of their dependence on the Strait of Hormuz, which we went and bombed? It was our fault. What does that do to our relationships with these other regions? And does that not come back to bite us in a big way?

• 16:03Scott Galloway?

  I've never seen you this animated. Um, look, there's, there's no getting around it. The reason why we have had the greatest inflows of not only financial capital, but before the flows of financial capital are the flows of human capital, right? You get the best and brightest, team of the best players wins and financial capital follows. And there's definitely something to the notion that if you drop an individual in the forest, one individual, within three days, they're either eaten by a bear or they starve. You drop 12 individuals into a forest, and this is one of my heroes, Jimmy Carr says this, within a couple of generations, you know, they're the apex predator. And our core advantage as a species is cooperation and communication. And it's also been the

• 16:47Scott Galloway?

  core advantage of the American order in America since 1945, is we have generally speaking had, we have 800 military, 780 military bases overseas. We have embassies that are hugely staffed with very competent people trying to avert problems. And we're generally seen as obnoxious, flexing our power, but our heart's in the right place. And we came up with this amazing idea that if we can help your economy be successful, you'll buy more of our, more of our SUVs and, you know, more of our coach bags, right? So. The cooperation or the feeling of trust or feeling of benign big brother that's sort of obnoxious but who's hard in the right place, that going away is going to have all

• 17:31Scott Galloway?

  sorts of unintended consequences. Yeah. But at the same time, when you talk about capital flows, capital flows are totally amoral. Yes. And that is, the money will go where it thinks it can get the greatest return. And, you know, I thought, I thought Meta stock was going to get really hammered when all this research came out, that internal research showed that, that they had done their own research showing that one in seven British girls was citing Instagram for a cause of suicidal ideation. I thought, oh my God, the stock's going to crash. Money has very little morality.

• 18:14Scott Galloway?

  And that is distinct of the US throwing its weight around, making decisions that are bad for the world, have much greater ramifications for the most vulnerable. Money will go where it thinks it can get its greatest return, full stop. And the money, remember, when I got out of business school, there were all these funds called the Calvert funds that were socially responsible. And that's a nice idea, social, socially responsible investing. Those funds have consistently underperformed. Money is totally amoral. So as long as capital believes it can come to the US and find entrepreneurship around whatever the hot thing is, renewables, AI, I think it's going to be space next, we'll register those capital inflows.

• 18:55Scott Galloway?

  Where I think it begins to hurt us is that we no longer attract, young people are more moral, if you will, they're more moral than capital. And the best and brightest will think, I'm going to go study at INSEAD, or I'm going to go to Singapore, or I'm going to maybe, maybe think about moving to Japan if I want something different instead of coming to the US. And I think that has huge long-term impacts when the best and brightest think, you know, I don't feel as good about moving to the US. But so far, I mean, when you think about what's happened here and the fact that the S and P is only off, you said 3%? I mean, here's the reality. Other than the oil market, if you looked at our markets and you didn't know what was going on, you wouldn't know what was going on. You wouldn't say, oh,

• 19:40Scott Galloway?

  there's clearly some sort of dramatic exogenous event of a war in the Middle East, which could destabilize everything. So, America unfortunately, and this is, this is what it means to have grace. This is, in my opinion, what it means to be mature. And quite frankly, we would probably, you know, we talk a lot about masculinity, what it means to be a man, is that you recognize your strength is to protect others, not to throw it around and be reckless with it. And you could argue, I think, make a tangible argument that we have become the big, strong, wealthy guy at the bar, who quite frankly gets fucked up and becomes violent.

• 20:16Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 20:17Scott Galloway?

  Um, anyways, back to you, Ed.

• 20:21Ed Elson?

  Well, I guess my question is, what happens to the big drunk guy at the bar who gets violent by the end of the night, or maybe in the morning? I don't think it necessarily ends well. I guess this is the part that I think, as you point out, money wants to move to where there is a return. But right now, in 2026, money wants to move where there is safety. Money wants to move where it's not going to get completely wiped out. And that is the question everyone's asking themselves. How do I make sure that I'm not at risk with my capital? And perhaps that means that American markets are the new safe play. Maybe that's, maybe that's true. But I do think about some of the downstream effects here. I think about what we're seeing with oil, the fact that if oil remains

• 21:04Ed Elson?

  at the prices that we're seeing, which is basically a hundred dollars a barrel, we're going to see inflation tick up nearly a full percentage point in America. You combine that with the fact that we have a labor market that is worsening as we speak. That is definitionally a recipe for stagflation. That is a stagflationary crisis on our hand. And we're already seeing that the Fed is saying that actually, we're not going to keep cutting rates, or at least that's what the markets are beginning to tell us. Uh, there's a possibility that maybe they're going to have to raise rates, at which point we've got Rising prices because of what's happened in the Middle East and with no real end in sight, despite the fact that he says that he feels it in his bones,

• 21:44Ed Elson?

  that this is going to be resolved, combined with concerning job market conditions. I think that there are issues for pretty much every region that we're seeing play out right now. But I worry that we're too confident in our feeling of insulation in America, that everything's going to be fine, that we're not going to experience perhaps some sort of cyber warfare attack, which we know that Iran is very interested in pursuing because that's what they did to Israel when Israel struck them last year. I think that there are issues, as I mentioned, between our relationships with a lot of these regions and our dependence on their investment. But as it stands, you're right. I mean, the US is the most protected and that is what the markets are telling us.

• 22:29Scott Galloway?

  But some of it also comes down to perception and that is life isn't about what happens to you, it's how you respond to what happens to you.

• 22:34Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 22:35Scott Galloway?

  And remember Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank, still the CEO? He had kind of an interesting statement. He said, would you rather be in a fight with someone who's really smart? Or who should you be more scared of, someone who's really smart or someone who's really crazy? And his point was you should be scared of someone who's really crazy. And that was somehow a justification for making crazy big investments.

• 22:58Ed Elson?

  Well, sorry, I made the lead there, but.

• 23:00Scott Galloway?

  But the reality is in America, we're fairly sensitive. You know, the largest disruption or the biggest calls to customer service in 911 was when at the end of the season ending series of The Sopranos and it went black and people thought their cable was out. We have what seems like a tragedy to us is on a different level and also Europe. Europe's being invaded right now and.

• 23:32Scott Galloway?

  Essentially, no European nation has even come close to putting a boot on the ground in Ukraine. We have lost, and this is a tragedy, I don't mean anyway diminish it, we've lost 12 or 14 service people so far. Russia's losing 1,000 people a day. We had lost 58,000 people in Vietnam, they had lost a million, we pulled out, we lost 400,000 people in World War II, Russia lost 20 million. Our tolerance for pain is very, very low. And so we will respond, I mean, to a certain extent, Russia's core competence is their ability to endure suffering. I mean, that is their core competence. Can you imagine

• 24:14Scott Galloway?

  us entering a war and losing 1.2 million people and continuing to fight the war? We just wouldn't do it. So the vulnerability is that our perception of what is difficult or tough or damage is much, our bar for pain, our tolerance for pain is what a man's is versus what a woman's is, right? Women have to endure childbirth and menstruation, so they have a much higher tolerance for pain. This is scientific, it's not an opinion. Men get a cold and think like, you know, call 911, right? So that, America as men, our tolerance for pain is very, very low. Now, how that might trickle down economically is

• 24:58Scott Galloway?

  because of income inequality. The top 10% of income-earning households now control 50% of the consumer economy. We're now a consumer economy, 2/3 of our GDP is consumer-led. So if the very wealthy all of a sudden start seeing, you know, a level of pain that we are just not used to, which is much lower than the level of pain most countries endure every year, you could see a significant drawback, drawdown. I personally, I never want to hate, I never want to see the markets go down, but the two worst indices in history are the Dow and the Nasdaq, because they create this false comfort that we're doing okay when they go up. The Dow and the Nasdaq are effectively a proxy for how the rich are

• 25:42Scott Galloway?

  doing. And spoiler alert, they're doing really well. I think we could see a pretty dramatic drawdown in the markets, but I personally think there'd be an upside to that. And that is... You know, and this has been my big rant for the last two years. You are meant to have exogenous shocks. That's a natural part of the economic cycle and it's healthy. War, famine, economic shocks do have a healthy part of the cycle. And what is it? Capital gets destroyed. The guy that owns the factory, the older person, loses a lot of their wealth. And advantage seeds back to labor who you need to rebuild the factory. Right? These exogenous shocks are typically a recalibration.

• 26:27Scott Galloway?

  Housing prices crash. They're recalibration or retransfer back of wealth from owners to earners. But for the last 40 years, what we've decided is whether it's a virus or a financial crisis, rather than let assets collapse and take money from the owners and give advantage back to the earners, we're going to pull out your credit card and ensure in the form of debt and stimulus that I stay rich. So a certain amount, quite frankly, the people in this audience, it looks pretty young. You want the Dow probably good to go down 30%. Because if you're going into your earning years, you want to buy real estate and stocks for as little as possible. The reason I'm economically secure is because in 08, they bailed out the banks, but they did let the markets collapse.

• 27:12Scott Galloway?

  And I got to buy Apple, Amazon and Netflix for eight, 10 and 12 bucks a share respectively. Like where do you find value right now? So I'm not, I hate to say I want the markets to go down, but at some point we have to stop propping up the markets with young people's credit cards. A certain amount of disruption and drawdowns in the market is a healthy thing that transfers and seeds power, leverage and capital back from owners to earners.

• 27:44Ed Elson?

  Be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show so far, send it to a friend and please follow us if you haven't already.

• 27:59Speaker 00

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• 29:32Ed Elson?

  We're back with Procter & Gamble. This year at South by Southwest, there is one topic that will be discussed in 89 different sessions. We counted. And that topic is AI.

• 29:46Ed Elson?

  A subject with no shortage of hype, controversy and also concern. Everyone wants to know, how will AI change my life? Well, if we want to understand the future, we ought to look at the people who are building it. So for today's discussion, we have collected some quotes from notable AI leaders on what they think the future of AI will look like. So let's begin, we're starting with the job market, Scott. According to Dario Amade, AI could wipe out half of all entry level white collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10 to 20% in the next one to five years. According to ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott, this was just from this weekend. He said, quote, unemployment for new college graduates could easily go into the mid 30s in the next couple of years.

• 30:31Ed Elson?

  According to Elon Musk, quote, probably none of us will have a job.

• 30:38Ed Elson?

  Scott, what will AI do to jobs in America?

• 30:41Scott Galloway?

  In the short run, there'll be a dip and in the long run, it's going to create more jobs. You have new business formation, 550,000 new applications for jobs this year, 150,000 in 2000. When I graduated from business school in 2002, 92, there were only, there were only two entrepreneurs in my entire class, two people starting companies. And the second was my co-founder. There just wasn't a very entrepreneurial nature. So there's just so many opportunities to use AI to do what would traditionally take 10 or 20 people takes two or three. So I think it's going to create more jobs and it destroys. I've been saying this for a long time. Also, you got to keep in mind that it gets stalled here. And I'll come back to the technology that I think is going to create more shareholder

• 31:26Scott Galloway?

  value and represents opportunities. I don't think it's AI. If you're laying off 20 or 30% of your workforce or 10%, what's a better narrative?

• 31:37Scott Galloway?

  I'm not very good at what I do when I over-hire. Our business isn't growing as strong as we predicted during COVID. Or I'm leveraging this new technology because I'm part of the Pepsi generation called AI and I'm going to continue to grow with much fewer costs. What's a better narrative? Everybody is blanketing their incompetence or inability to project demand or a slowdown in their business with quote unquote AI washing, right? What makes for a better press release? When you announce you're laying off people because your demand is slowing, what happens to your stock? But if you lay off 10% of your workforce because you said, I no longer need them through deft use of AI, what happens to your stock? So a lot of layoffs, I think, are going to be couched in quote unquote, under the auspices of AI.

• 32:20Scott Galloway?

  And if you look at actually the number of job ads for programmers, which is supposed to be ground zero, it's actually up. Because as technology becomes cheaper, more people use that technology. So despite the fact that supposedly we no longer need coders, the job listings on job boards for software engineers has gone up. And then the other dynamic is the following, and this is the one that really chafes me. I coded this thing. I'm Dr. Frankenstein and I'm such a genius and I've created such a powerful menace that it's going to ruin the world because I'm such a fucking genius. And everybody says this after they vested their shares and sold it on the second market

• 33:02Scott Galloway?

  and they're piecing out Dakota Zoo with Russian whores. So no disrespect to Russians, duh. It's like, you know what? I am sick. Anyone who tells you, I am so awesome and I've created something so incredible because I'm such a baller that it threatens the world. It's like, bitch, that's not helpful. That's not, your nihilism isn't, there's something that infects academics and CEOs in that is if we catastrophize, we sound smarter. Saying, you know what, I think AI is not going to have the impact it's going to have. Incrementally, things will get a little bit better every day. That doesn't get you invited to conferences. That doesn't get you front page coverage in the Wall Street Journal.

• 33:46Scott Galloway?

  So the catastrophizing is, one, a form of narcissism in my viewpoint. It is not helpful to say you've created something that could destroy the world, but you have no tips. You can't tell us what that peril is or how you can uncode it. And also, it's sort of a way of saying, you should invest in my company at an $800 billion valuation because this is so scary and so powerful. Why not make money? So let me get back to the technology that will be big. I get invited now, first time in my life, right? Ed gets invited to them. I've just started getting invited to these fancy, very fancy dinners and events. And I got invited last night. And I'm going to name drop because I'm desperate for your affirmation. And I saw, I saw and talked to Michael Dell and Mark Cuban.

• 34:30Scott Galloway?

  They look like a version of themselves that the old version could eat. They have lost so much weight. These guys. And my favorite is like, I come up, you know, me, I'm very delicate and very nuanced and very social. And I'm like, I'm like, which GLP-1? And they're all so full of shit. They're like, no, I'm just playing padel every day. And, oh, yeah, right. Padel and you lost 70 pounds. The agonists, the bottom line is the investment strategy. I'm going, I'm going long Lily. I think GLP-1 is a much more important technology than AI. And I've said this for a while. Talk to someone who uses AI every day in their job and talk to someone who's on a GLP-1 drug

• 35:14Scott Galloway?

  and ask them, what's having a bigger impact in your life? I think GLP-1 is going to be more transformative to our economy and more important for the world than AI. And almost anyone with an IQ over 90 totally disagrees with me. So I'm not suggesting I have a monopoly on this. But when I look at what GLP-1 is doing, and the thing about GLP-1 is every new thing we find out about it, it's a good thing. Oh, it can help with social media addiction. Oh, it brings down your blood pressure. And every new thing we're finding out about AI, it's like, no shit. Right? So I.

• 35:51Scott Galloway?

  Anyways, bringing this back to the markets, AI dramatically overvalued. And the technology can outlive the market capitalization. Right? And that is, the value may go way down and the technology will survive. I still think it's going to be huge. I think it's going to increase productivity, especially in drug discovery. But I would argue from a market standpoint or pure valuation, I think GLP-1 based drugs have much more upside, both from a sociological level and an economic and a shareholder level than AI, which has now turned to AI washing around, firing people, and saying it's going to end the world because it's such amazing technology.

• 36:33Ed Elson?

  At the same time, there is, there is an incentive now for businesses and for business leaders to figure out a way, whether it's because of AI actually right now or not, to figure out a way to lay off a bunch of people.

• 36:46Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 36:46Ed Elson?

  So that's what they're trying to do. And that is what they are doing. We saw Pinterest laid off a thousand people. At Lhasa, they laid off 1,600 people. Block, which was formerly Square, they laid off 4,000 people in one go, 40% of the workforce. And I think it is very possible that there is some AI washing going on. At the same time, this is now what they're trying to do. We talked to David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, who said, "My mission is to keep headcount flat. I do not want to increase headcount at all over the next 10 years." That is his mission. So there is an incentive now to not hire people. And we're seeing huge amounts of job cuts. Last year, 1.2 million job cuts, the most since the pandemic.

• 37:32Ed Elson?

  So there is a problem here, especially for young people. And I'll just bring us back to that quote from Bill McDermott, who says, "I don't see the value in a college education at this point, or at least if you have a college education, it's not going to be put to use in the ways that we have historically known." That is a real problem for young people, regardless of if there is AI washing going on. And perhaps it's something that we will discuss further in this Q and A section, because I do want to get your advice to young people, especially as a young person. But I have some more quotes.

• 38:01Scott Galloway?

  But just, just real quick, because there was some stuff there.

• 38:03Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 38:04Scott Galloway?

  Anyone who tells you not to get a college degree has a graduate degree from Stanford.

• 38:09Ed Elson?

  That's true.

• 38:14Scott Galloway?

  I got so pissed off. Remember the Thiel scholarships? Drop out of college and I'll give you a hundred grand. I obviously don't have nearly the amount of capital, but I went to Rich Lyons, a friend of mine who's now the chancellor of Berkeley, and I said, can I offer $10,000 to people who stay in college? Folks, college has never been more important. And unfortunately, we know it, and we keep raising our tuition faster than inflation. They've been saying that AI is going to disrupt education. And when you meet a parent, someone my age whose kids are applying to college, and they say, oh, with AI, they don't need, they don't, means kids don't need college anymore. It means that Suzie just got a 22 on the ACT. And they're freaking out about the fact she's

• 38:58Scott Galloway?

  not going to get into a good school. So they're starting to backfill their disappointment with about how kids don't need AI, or don't need college. College isn't about education. It's about certification, marination, finding, being in the context of a great gene pool, having an amazing life experience, meeting people, learning how to get along with others, and quite frankly, establishing the core competence to be successful in life. And that is the ability to cooperate and maintain really strong relationships. So whether or not you fail calculus, which I did three times, 2.27 GPA, true story out of UCLA, college has never been more important. And by the way, the data supports it. College

• 39:41Scott Galloway?

  applications are up. And we're raising tuition again faster than inflation. So be careful with this narrative that you don't need college. And I just find it such extraordinary bullshit that all the people who claim college doesn't matter, all went to college. Yeah. So does that just say, now, we have to face reality, two thirds of our children are not going to get college degrees. And so we have to make bigger investments in vocational programming. I think a loss of cultural and economic standing of the American middle-class male is a big problem. And we need to recognize that more women are going to go to college, because quite frankly, once we level the playing field, they're just better at it. And that's wonderful. We should not get in the way of that. But we also need to realize when you get rid of metal, auto, and wood shop, do you remember

• 40:24Scott Galloway?

  that guy in high school? He just wasn't going to go to college. There was a lot of them. Probably smoked a little bit of weed, had the Journey shirt, you know. Is this you?

• 40:37Scott Galloway?

  You know, on the way to school, threw a, threw a, you know, threw a can of beer at you and called you a name and on the way home invited you in for your first bong load.

• 40:44Ed Elson?

  It's you.

• 40:45Scott Galloway?

  Anyways.

• 40:48Scott Galloway?

  But this dude could fix your car. Like, he knew how to work outdoors, he knew how to make a living, there was an on-ramp for these dudes. Those on-ramps are going away. So I think that's the bigger problem, is what do we do? How do we create more on-ramps to a middle-class lifestyle for people who aren't cut out for college?

• 41:07Ed Elson?

  Yes.

• 41:07Scott Galloway?

  As opposed to talking about how you don't need college anymore. Trust me on this, if you have the resources, what I tell, if you have the resources and a kid who can, who is academically somewhat focused and you have the access to college, it's a really good plan B. Oh, I really fucked up going to Stanford, said no one ever.

• 41:28Ed Elson?

  So some more quotes here. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, "AI is a cognitive amplifier that gives you access to infinite minds." Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, he said, quote, "AI is one of the most important things humanity is working on. It is more profound than electricity or fire." Is AI more profound than?

• 41:47Scott Galloway?

  Buy my stock. That's all they're saying. By the way, things change. A hundred years ago, 25% of GDP was firewood. I mean, things change, but these guys are just saying, buy my stock.

• 41:56Ed Elson?

  Well, this is the question, is, is AI more profound than electricity and fire? Maybe it is.

• 42:03Ed Elson?

  More fundamentally, will it change the world for the better? Is this something that we'll ultimately will look back on and say, that was the right thing to do?

• 42:12Scott Galloway?

  Well, that's a bigger, that's a, obviously a huge question that, that a lot of people will, you know, stare at their navel around, but I, I would argue that the better bet, so, and I say this, I say this a lot because I'm trying to normalize it. I struggle with anger and depression, so I, I see everything through dark-colored lenses and I'm a glass half-empty kind of guy. But I also love data. And if you love data and you're honest and you have a fidelity to data and trends, the reality is, you constantly need to ask yourself around technical innovation, what could go right?

• 42:48Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 42:49Scott Galloway?

  And, by the way, the optimists, on any level, the optimists have kicked the shit out of the pessimists with respect to predictions about the world, about health. China has gone, its life expectancy has gone from forty-four to seventy-four in the last forty-four, in the last forty or fifty years. Infant mortality, crime is at an all-time low in the United States. Infant mortality is, I mean, there's just, if you look at the world on any sort of, if you pull the aperture back at all, things continue to get better despite the fact that a lot of scientists, once we split the atom and had our first nuclear detonation, actually killed themselves because they thought, if we have nuclear bombs, that's it, that's the end of the world.

• 43:32Scott Galloway?

  And they decided, I don't want to be around for this apocalypse, and they killed themselves. So I don't see why AI can't be used as aggressively for defensive measures, to spot opportunities for terrorism, for great drug discovery. The fear I have, and I've said this over and over, we need to have regulation around AI, and I think the place, the biggest danger threat that AI represents is loneliness. And that is, men aged twenty to thirty are now spending less time outdoors than prison inmates. The amount of, the number of kids who sees their, in high school, that sees their friends every day, has been cut in half in just the last twenty years. And I really struggle with this. You don't have kids yet.

• 44:16Scott Galloway?

  You know, my kids have struggled with device addiction. I haven't figured this out. I joke that my kid at one point would lie and say his stomach didn't feel well, so he could go into the bathroom, and then we'd notice he took his phone in there, and I'd hear him on TikTok, and I'd have to bang on the door and say, "Start masturbating." True story. My kids are...

• 44:39Speaker 09

  What a good dad.

• 44:42Scott Galloway?

  My kids are so horrified by me. They are literally like, they shut, he goes, "I'm thinking of deleting my Instagram account so I don't have to see the shit you are saying." Anyways, the, we have too many young people.

• 45:00Scott Galloway?

  I worry, the biggest threat of AI, in my view, is the following. It's not sentient, self-healing weapons. Yeah, it's income inequality, but everyone in this room has voted for income inequality, whether you're a Democrat or Republican. We all just think that at some point, we're going to be in the 1%, so let's really fuck the bottom 99. That's very, that's like the most American thing in the world is our optimism. Like, just wait and see how I behave when I'm in the top 1%. But the biggest threat is that slowly but surely, we are producing a new species of asocial, asexual males. And throughout history, the darkest moments in history have all had a preponderance of lonely young men with a lack of economic and romantic opportunities. And one of the reasons America has thrived

• 45:43Scott Galloway?

  is that essentially, we have the greatest invention in history, and that's the American middle class. And core to that was a group of men that a lot of women were attracted to. And I realize how sexist this stands, this sounds, but I'm going to stick to it. The way of the world throughout history has been a small number of men, through luck or talent, gather a disproportionate amount of economics, and then they gather a ridiculous proportionate amount of the mating opportunities. And the bottom half of men are totally shut out of the mating market. And a man who is economically unviable and has no romantic possibilities becomes very dangerous and can be weaponized by a strong man. And I think that is effectively, slowly but surely, what's happening here. And AI is fueling it.

• 46:27Scott Galloway?

  It is giving young men the sense that they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. They don't need friends, they have Reddit and Discord. They don't need to get a job because they have Coinbase and Robinhood. And why on earth would they go through the effort rejection and humiliation and perseverance and developing skills and getting girlfriends that help them figure out how to behave around women when they have what is going to be increasingly lifelike porn? So we need age gating on AI. We need removal of Section 230 protection when kids start having suicidal ideation or psychosis. If I go to a bar tonight and they see I'm ridiculously fucked up, and they also know I'm driving, if I get on the road and kill someone, the bar is liable. So why on earth?

• 47:09Scott Galloway?

  Would AI not be liable when they can sense someone is going through psychosis? Or casing a school as the 18 year old in Canada was doing? Or that they are thinking about getting their stepfather's gun and killing themselves so they can be with Daenerys? Because they believe that's going to happen in the afterlife and the character AI? Who is Daenerys who said, I am waiting for you, my love? All of that is a true story. We have to regulate these companies. But again, I don't see self healing weapons. I don't, I don't, I think the catastrophizing is fun and makes for great sci fi. But unfortunately, the most damaging thing is much more insidious and much more boring. And that is young people are deciding not to do what makes us mammals.

• 47:49Scott Galloway?

  And that is get together, lie on each other, touch each other, develop friendships, develop mentorships, have sex. Decide that the person you're having sex with is not that bad. You'll hang out with them more and you decide to build a life and kids and you save for a house. And you get anxious and you buy life insurance. All this shit that makes life worth living. I don't know where I'm going with this, Ed.

• 48:13Scott Galloway?

  We should get to questions.

• 48:15Ed Elson?

  We should.

• 48:21Ed Elson?

  We should just, just point out, even if AI is going to benefit all of us. The reality right now is that most Americans think it won't. And that's actually quite new. If you look at the internet in 1999, two thirds of Americans said that this was a good thing. They viewed it favorably. Today, less than half of Americans have a favorable view of AI. Less than a third of Americans trust AI. 80% of Americans think that AI is a threat to humanity. So regardless of what the technology is going to do, clearly there is a PR problem here. Clearly, the way this is being sold to us is not the way that most of us would like. And so I'd like to be the optimist. But unfortunately, you look at the way most Americans feel right now.

• 49:06Ed Elson?

  And I'm, I'm curious to see how this weekend will unfold in these AI discussions. But the numbers tell us Americans do not feel good about AI right now. And that is something that business leaders need to contend with. And also our government, because they need to regulate it. Thank you, Scott, and thank you all. We're going to take a look at the week ahead here. We'll see the Federal Reserve's next interest rate decision. We can expect the Fed to hold rates steady with 99% certainty, according to Kalshi. It's worth noting that since the war in Iran broke out, odds of a rate cut anytime this year have fallen more than 20%. Scott, very quick prediction, and then we're going to get into the questions.

• 49:42Scott Galloway?

  Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Philippines are going to be in the news more. Their dollar-denominated debt is about to become unsustainable. It's these emerging or these nations that we're not talking about. It's always the shit you don't see that gets you are going to be in the news over the next few weeks as we realize next few months that they're the ones, unfortunately, they're other than the people of Iran are really going to pay the price for this war.

• 50:11Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back. And for even more markets content, sign up for our newsletter at profitemarkets.com.

• 50:26Speaker 00

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• 51:58Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. We have about 12, 10 minutes left for questions, so please go ahead and line up in the aisle.

• 52:07Scott Galloway?

  And also, just a quick question. No speeches cosplaying a question. No promotion to your company. Please keep it to 15 seconds and actually ask a question.

• 52:22Speaker 09

  Scott, great, great session.

• 52:26Scott Galloway?

  Please introduce yourself. When people introduce themselves, they're nicer.

• 52:29Speaker 09

  But you told me not to promote my company. My name is Rex Lee. I'm with CyberTalk TV on Pod TV on Roku, and I'm a tech journalist.

• 52:38Scott Galloway?

  Hi Rex.

• 52:39Speaker 09

  How you doing? I want to talk a little bit about what you were talking about, what the AI leaders are saying. You first have to understand that the leaders of AI today work for the largest data brokers in the country. And their AI platforms are supported by surveillance and data mining technology as well as addictive technologies. So regarding the LA social media trial, I feel that there's a group of people that should be defendants, along with the platform developers, and that's the advertisers. They're the ones that are funding addictive technology, and I think they should be held liable. And I also want to get your thoughts on an electronic bill of rights protecting those

• 53:20Speaker 09

  of us who are connected to the internet that are being exploited by these companies when they collect our data.

• 53:26Scott Galloway?

  Dude, we only have 10 minutes.

• 53:27Speaker 09

  So that's what I want to...

• 53:29Scott Galloway?

  So should advertisers be liable? My sense is that it's the platforms. The advertisers have no choice. I've worked with the biggest advertisers in the world, and their view is...

• 53:42Scott Galloway?

  We don't want to advertise on Meta. We'd rather not. We see the dangers. We don't like the concentration of power. But if we don't, these platforms have consolidated the market. They're very good at what they do. And, you know, if I remember the advertising boycott against Meta about five years ago, Meta is such an unbelievable business from a business standpoint, because no one advertiser has more than 1% of their revenue. So they just have absolutely no power. So I do think that the liability rests with the companies, but the real culprit in all of this is us. And that is, we have not elected a group of individuals who have the backbone and the domain expertise to regulate these companies.

• 54:25Scott Galloway?

  We need to remove Section 230, originally legislation written in 1997. It's a much different world now. And also, we need more structural reform. Again, it's the boring shit. We need to remove Citizens United, because this is the bottom line. Companies will always do what makes them an incremental dollar. We keep waiting for the better angels of these companies to show up, their CEOs to show up. They won't. They'd have sex with their sister for another nickel. Get used to it. The notion that somehow Mark Zuckerberg is going to wake up and realize he's doing damage to the world, General Motors would still be pouring mercury into the river unless there was legislation, unless we had an EPA. Who's at fault here is that because of Citizens United, tech has figured out that the greatest

• 55:08Scott Galloway?

  ROI is not AI, it's not CapEx, it's not Nvidia chips, it's giving money to senators, including Senator Schumer, whose daughter works at Meta. And then they get very concerned about legislation, and no legislation ever goes through. Unless we have structural reform that sends people to do what they're supposed to do, and that is prevent a tragedy of the commons, we are going to continue to have no regulation and legislation, and these CEOs are going to do what every CEO has done throughout economic history. They're going to make a series of incremental decisions that are bad for people they never meet, and a teen in Ohio is having suicidal ideation, such that they can get a Gulfstream. That is just the way of America. So here's the bottom line. Until we elect people who are

• 55:49Scott Galloway?

  willing to implement regulation, and can get elected without money, a ton of money, it's just going to get worse, folks. Thanks for the question. Thank you.

• 56:03Speaker 11

  Hey guys, my name is Jay Richards. I just exited my market research company. I'm now the MD of an influencer marketing agency that acquired us. I have an 18-year-old son. You've spoken about raising young men and why patriotism and responsibility still matter. What do you think dads in particular are getting wrong when raising sons in 2026?

• 56:23Scott Galloway?

  It's a really thoughtful question. Well, I can just tell you what I got wrong. I thought...

• 56:33Scott Galloway?

  And then you should talk about how your father fucked you up.

• 56:39Scott Galloway?

  Look, this is what I got wrong. I thought that having a son was going to be a series of hallmark moments where I got just this immense amount of like love and reward back. I thought, oh, my sons are naturally going to be super into whatever I'm into because they're going to think I'm some hero and that they'll come out of the womb interested in World War II movies and CrossFit. And what you find is that your kids are pretty awful. They're demanding, they're selfish, they're inconsiderate, they're really mean to your partner, and totally entitled. And occasionally, there's a nice moment. Occasionally,

• 57:22Scott Galloway?

  you wake up and they smile, you know, they came into your bed. There's occasions. But be clear, if you're like me and you made the mistake of thinking relationships were a transaction and that you were going to get more from your kids than you're going to get back, you're going to be just very disappointed. Where you hopefully evolved to, and you're just asking this question, you're a thoughtful man, is that when you have the opportunity to find something, whether it's getting...

• 57:52Scott Galloway?

  You know, funding planned parenthood, whether it's helping people, people, disabled veterans that you will never meet, or it's basically over investing in kids, where your deficit is so enormous, my goal is such that my kids could never pay me back. And I finally figured out that's the whole shooting match, right? That that is what it means to be happy. That's what it means to have purpose, is that you're on the wrong end of the investment. Do you find something you love so much, and will let you love it and invest in it, that it would be almost impossible to get a return? And that's what I found so nihilistic and crazy scary about Sam Altman's comments when he said, well,

• 58:31Scott Galloway?

  when talking about the energy efficiency of AI, he compared, he said, well, you're not taking into account how much energy it takes to raise a human before they have the critical thinking. I'm like, this guy just does not get it. The whole shooting match is you find causes or purposes or humans that you just go so all in on, that they could never pay you back. I didn't figure that out as a father until I was older. Uh, thank you for the question.

• 59:02Speaker 11

  Appreciate it. Thanks, man.

• 59:08Speaker 12

  Hey, guys. My name is Richard. I'm a seventeen-year-old high school student from Brownsville, Texas, and I'm working on a project to get students educated in financial and technological literacy. My question is, what's the single most powerful argument to get corporations like Google or JP Morgan to back this project or fund it?

• 59:27Scott Galloway?

  To back the project? What's the project?

• 59:30Speaker 12

  To teach students financial and technological literacy.

• 59:34Scott Galloway?

  Uh, do you want to take this?

• 59:37Ed Elson?

  Uh, I think it's incredible that that you're here and that you're so young. I mean, I, I think some of the thing, yeah.

• 59:47Ed Elson?

  And it's amazing what you're doing. I mean, one of the things that we've been talking about in this world of AI and that we keep on hearing among leaders of larger companies in a world of AI is they think if AI is going to do all of these jobs, like, should we really be hiring young people? Like, should we really be taking these young people on? And it's a genuine question that at first I'm kind of like, I'm actually not sure what the answer to that is. I mean, as I mentioned, maybe your job is to keep headcount flat. Maybe you shouldn't be hiring people. One thing that I would say, I think you're an example of this. I think people would be astounded just how talented, dynamic, and hardworking young people are, including really young people such as yourself, really can

• 1:00:30Ed Elson?

  be, and what value they can provide to companies. And I think Scott is kind of an example of this. I mean, we talk about this with our team. Our team is over here, which, by the way, we should also give a shout out to them.

• 1:00:46Ed Elson?

  But Scott and this podcast and this company is an example of betting on young people and taking a chance and a risk that maybe they'll fuck things up, but maybe they'll be really great at it, too. And I think that that is something that is being undervalued right now among companies who are trying to figure out ways to sort of just put young people to the wayside. And that's what we're seeing in the unemployment rates of young people right now. But I think a lot of people, one, that you'd be surprised how little you have to pay young people, first off. And the second would be how talented and dynamic they can really be. And you are the guys who are using this technology. You have the highest fluency

• 1:01:27Ed Elson?

  in these technologies. So I think these companies have every reason to back people like you.

• 1:01:32Scott Galloway?

  But start, start doing it. Start offering the service and then unfortunately try and get as much attention on social and then start relentlessly harassing the executives at JP Morgan until they give you money. Thank you. And good luck to you.

• 1:01:50Scott Galloway?

  Young man, what was your name? Just send me, send us a link. We're easy to find on your, on your, on your, your effort. Thank you.

• 1:02:02Ed Elson?

  We are unfortunately out of time. I'm sorry for the other questions, but we really appreciate all of you for being here.

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