Trump's Tariffs Return, Kalshi's Midterms Hub, and Elon's AI "Odyssey"

Megan Rapino here. This week on Why Are You Like This, I am talking with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Pablo Torre about his New York City upbringing, striking fear into the hearts of sports teams, and blazing his own trail in sports media. Pablo also flips the script on me and gets me to answer a very spicy question. Check out the latest episode of Why Are You Like This, wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. I think my third wife is here, so my next ex-wife is somewhere in this crowd. I'm not going to say a word about that. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Scott, we are here in California. The hellscape behind us. It's really quite awful here. I don't know how people survive and try whether the breeze, the ocean, the in-and-out burger, God, awful. Yeah. So we're here at a conference. We're recording this live in front of a live audience at CAO Summit in Los Angeles. This is a Terra Naya where, again, I used to run the code conference here for many, many years and many memories. There really are a lot of memories here of doing things. Yeah, this is, yeah, you're absolutely, this is kind of where you're, this is where you made Mark Zuckerberg sweat. Yeah. It's spectacular. I didn't make him sweat. He sweat because he had a panic attack. Okay. Okay. Yeah. No, I can't you. With the real memory for me, this is actually the last interview that Steve Jobs ever did. He did several interviews here, but the last one before he died was here, which was really an amazing interview. It was actually just in this ballroom here. And one of the things that I remember before that, when we did Jason Jobs together is, when we had Mark here the year he sweat, all he wanted to do, he was up and coming entrepreneur that Facebook wasn't very big. And all he wanted to do was meet Steve Jobs, like kind of a fanboy, which was really something else. So I introduced them, which was kind of a moment and it was actually literally right down on this lawn right here. So it's, it's places full of memories. Yeah. No, that's been fun. Anyway, I know you're thrilled with it. So what have you been doing this week, Scott? We went, you just became a region of this University of California. Yeah. And thank you. Another news, Joe Rogan has been appointed the head of the CDC. Yeah. Let me be asked, when you saw that this morning, did you think it was the onion? I did. I did. I didn't think it was real. I was like, what is Gavin up to? Like what was happening? And they also called you the left wing Joe Rogan. Yeah. In the story in the New York California post in Europe. Yeah. How many graduates of the University of California do we have here? So, you know, I don't like to talk about myself, but I will for just a moment here. All right. So everyone or when you get to certain age, you want to be on an important board. You want to be on, you know, organizations that are innovators. I would argue that the University of California is the greatest innovation machine in history. We have 75 Nobel prizes for five last year, 300,000 students, 200,000 faculty, 7500 PhDs, more startups creating more value than any nation in history with the exception of the US and China. And consistently punching out, you know, giving unremarkable people remarkable opportunities and just to flash back to when I applied, I'm UCLA and Berkeley, mission straight when I applied was 74% to UCLA. And I was one of the 26% that didn't get in. Wow. Well done. Well done. Well done. And I was installing shelving, came home. My mom said, let's appeal. And I remember when they called me and said, you're not qualified, but you're native to Senate California. We're going to let you in. And then I rewarded them with a 2.27 GPA true story from UCLA. And this is how, wait, you got 2.27. Which isn't easy to graduate. It's not easy to do. Yeah. It's not easy. I mean, would you not go to classes? No, I learned, I learned every line from planning to the apes and how to make bongs out of household items. Okay. All right. And then this is how different the University of California was back then. I got into Berkeley's high school of business with a 2.27 GPA. And then quite frankly, like a lot of men who have an immature prefrontal cortex, they got my shit together. And so just a virtue signal, my, my soul mission is accessibility and figuring out a way that we can let in more unremarkable kids that might get to do remarkable things. Yeah. Anyways, that's my, my, that's my story. I'm sticking with it. I'm still sick with 2.27. It's not easy. A lot of, I had 9Fs. So I got a job at Morgan Stanley because I lot about my grades. And I, but I, I wasn't going to be able to graduate because I couldn't pass calculus. I failed it twice and it was failing it. And if you fail something the third time at UCN, I'll have to take the class again. And I was going to have to become a psych major and go seven years undergrad. And so I looked up to 9Fs I've got. This is all true. And I went to all of these professors and I walked in and said, if you give me a D, I give you unit, I get the units and I get to Morgan Stanley and you get to give this valuable seat to someone else. And within about 20 minutes, I got three professors who were basically like, you just scussed me and they signed it. And I was often Morgan Stanley to build a world of fixed income. Wow. And then no way it happened. Yeah. Put the dots together. Wow. That's amazing. What do you think I got in college? My great point. I would imagine you got every award. Yeah. And we're recruited by the best companies in the best newspaper in the world. No, I was rejected by most newspapers. Cause there were jobs then. The journal journalism was undergoing. You went to Georgetown, no? I did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was the foreign service school. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Well, I wanted to be in our, you know, working our security apparatus. I would. I would. I wanted to be the military. I was rejected because of her lifestyle. Yes. My lifestyle. Just got very quiet. No, I was gay. I wasn't allowed to be in the military. So there you go. So we're going to move on to the show. We're going to talk about it. I actually just, I just got here because I spent a lot of time with three possible democratic candidates. Go on. I, so I went, I interviewed Gina Romando, who was the former governor of Rhode Island. Yeah. And also a commerce secretary who passed the Chips Act and, and, and the infrastructure bill. I was with Pete Buttigieg in Michigan where he lives, Trafford City. Yeah. And I was at JV Pritzker this morning. So it was interesting. It was a little tour of two to three have no chance. Once two female and once two short. Okay. All right. True story folks were really sexist and looks at this nation. Yeah. Absolutely no chance. Well, we'll see. In any case, they were, they were very impressive. True. All right. Who's going to be the president? I took him at it then for that. It'll either be Gavin Newsom or TBD. America likes to fall in love with someone they don't know well before Fox destroys them. It'll be a Democrat. Right. America likes to go back and forward. But tall, handsome, California has got a good story. JV Pritzker, outside shot, good dad energy, off, off if you can maintain the whole Camelot Kennedy thing. But Fox will soon turn its sights on him and we'll find out something weird. That guy's being called hot lantern now. That guy's too perfect. There's got to be some weird shit in there. That's who I would bet on. And here's our political pundit going on. Anyway, we're going to go away. I was a guy at the Mondale poster in my fraternity room and I supported Duke Caucus. I just hosted a fundraiser in 2020 for Michael Bennett. So I am not good at picking candidates. Let me say ladies and gentlemen, 2.27 average. So I'm going to go on to the topics. This is something you do know a lot more about Donald Trump's tariffs are making their not so triumphant return. He imposed a 50% tariff on Canadian goods like alcohol, milk and hockey sticks this week, justifying the move with an unused provision of the 1930 Smooth Holly at Smooth Holly. This is the beginning. Trump is reportedly set to unleash new tariffs on dozen countries that work so well last time, given his 10% temporary global tariffs are about to expire. The Supreme Court struck down his liberation day tariffs earlier this year, but the White House keeps attempting various workarounds, given the havoc that the Iran War is wreaking on the economy, which is still ongoing, even though it was supposed to be over many times. Is it really now the time to impose tariffs? Well, look, if you were running above 4% inflation, and if you were in a came down, but it looks like it's living back up, that doesn't sound like a lot, but that means if you're about to have a kid, we just met someone who's expecting by the time that kid goes to college, if it maintains a 4% that means tuition, 40,000 goes to 80,000. So inflation is how countries basically go devolve into chaos, like the Fed is there basically to ensure employment growth and to make sure inflation doesn't get out of control. And you can have a lot of an employment and people don't riot, but when people are working two jobs and they can't afford, you know, bread, that's when they, that's when they overthrow the government. So inflation is, is really scary. And if you were to reverse engineer that four points, two of the four points, can be attributed to one, the skyrocketing energy crisis and tariffs. Tariffs will take approximately $1,000 toll on heavy household this year. It'll go to $1,200 on every household average if these tariffs go through. And about 90% of those tariffs are being borne by US consumers. When I was in graduate school, we literally used to look at tariffs as an example of, "Could you believe how stupid we were to do these things?" Right, specifically the Smooth Hawley Act. Exactly. It was considered antiquated and something we would never do again. And then, unfortunately, probably our strongest ally, largest undefended border in the world is Canada. 80% of their exports come. I mean, this is really ugly for Canada. 80% of their exports come into the US. And to believe that somehow part of this whole narrative is this grievance culture that we're victims. So we're being taken advantage of. If there's anyone being taken advantage of, it's our trading partners. Because the way, if you think about what we sell into Canada, we sell iPhones and JP Morgan and advertising services into Canada. Those are high margin products. The margin on an iPhone is 40 or 60 points. So on $100 with the iPhones that we ship into Canada, we get to hold on to 40 or 60 bucks, call it 50 bucks, Apple trades at a P of 30. So that's about $1500 in shareholder value. When they sell $100 with a timber or a hockey stick. You're talking about 20 or 30 points of gross margin in a company that trades at a multiple of 10. So for every dollar we ship over, we get about 10 to 20 in shareholder value for every dollar. They sell their stuff and they're getting two or three. So there's any dramatic asymmetry in trade that's accreting to one partner. It's the US. If anyone should be putting tariffs on a nation, logically they would be putting tariffs on us. So the net effect of tariffs is that the market for our products declines or shrinks, but our products, the things we buy. And they find other partners or allow other partners in whether it's Chinese cars or Chinese AI open source models or whatever they happen to buy, they will have stronger relationships with others, particularly China. Oh, absolutely. I think they're, I mean, they're going to pay a huge price. And I've said this, it's like that animal house film when Otter says to the guy who apparently lent his parents cars to the car to the attorney brothers and they crashed it. And he looks at him and said, you fucked up your trust with us. That's how Canada feels about the US right now. They fucked up. They trusted us. They thought they had a great ally. They thought they had a great trading partner. They don't. We were willing to basically neuter them economically. Why do you think Trump is doing this? I mean, he was mad about the wildfires. I think they were sending us beautiful orange skies in honor of him. But why? Why? There's no rash. I don't, but the notion that they can raise money. I don't, it literally, unless if he was more strategic, I can't imagine a more elegant way to reduce the prosperity of Americans than tariffs. I don't, I can understand what he's thinking. Even supposedly his inner circle, I said, this is a terrible idea. Right. And yet, and yet here we are. Here we are. Another story. Kowshi just launched a new midterms hub tracking real-time odds for every house and Senate race across the country. Kowshi is calling it a one-stop shop for election forecasting, serving the public campaign journalist, policy makers, and researchers. By the way, roughly 75% of people are going to Kowshi are there to check odds. 25% are trading. More than 30 million dollars already been traded and wages about the control of the house in the Senate and a spike in the prediction market volumes expected as we get closer to the election. Now, you, you put a lot of faith in the predictions market. I find them very game oriented, meaning they can be easily gamed by, by not so great people. I also have an issue with polymarket given the kind of things they allow people to bet on. There's an interesting story in the New York Times today about investment firm that Don Jr. is involved in that somehow has 200 percent returns which are unprecedented. It's probably because of his large brain. I'm guessing not. But talk about these markets because if you were advising a campaign, what would you tell them about them? You've put a lot of faith in them. I put less so. Yeah, so I'm not making a qualitative judgment on whether prediction markets are good or bad. I have real concerns around gaming and gambling and its impact on young men. But polling companies are basically going out of business because if you want to know how someone what someone really thinks, don't ask them what they think, ask them where they're putting their money. That is, it ends up that the wisdom of crowds in terms of what they're actually wagering on, what they're actually voting with their wallet. For example, Calche has never gotten a federated decision wrong. The data I've seen is that they're 78 percent of the time they're able to predict an outcome in election which is greater or they're 78 percent more accurate. In some polling firms are basically going out of business because think about the people of polling firm calls that you pick up your phone, you fill out a survey. That's not always very accurate in terms of the actual election. So these terms, what's interesting about the election side, it'll get more headline news than it is a business. The total election business for Calche is somewhere between one and two percent of their revenue. Five and a half billion dollars was wagered on the World Cup final. This is a tiny business for them, but it gets a lot of headline press because it's pretty accurate. They're predicting, I think about a 70 or 78 percent likelihood that Democrats overtake the house, but only 45 percent that they take the Senate. But I find that that data so far, if I think of a source of truth or accuracy, I think of the. Do you differentiate between Polly Market and Calche? These are the two big ones. Apparently Facebook is also considering putting one together. Yeah, I think of Calche just because I think it's a bigger and has more liquidity and has more volume of people spending their money, if you will. What's the biggest worry you have of them right now? Because as they become more and more because they were betting on drug outcomes, they're betting on illnesses, disasters. Apparently Trump, the guy who does the teleprompter for Trump was betting on what he would say in the speech because he knew and is under investigation for that. Yeah, there's some scenarios where you could see someone finding a market where they say, okay, someone's going to be hurt or killed or whatever and they start doing strange acts in order to bet money. But that's no different than fixing like the World Series. And then there's fears around insider trading. But I think ultimately the insider trading will be arved out when people realize that if there's anyone that could have inside information, they shouldn't bet on the other side. My biggest fear is very simple and that is we have millions of young men who every day are being seduced by screens and algorithms to spend another second on a screen and another second less with their relationships. And we're slowly but surely evolving a new species of a social asexual males that become obese, depressed, anxious and start blaming women for their romantic problems and immigrants for their economic problems. And some we're producing a cohort of really shitty citizens that threaten the nation. That's not I'm worried about here. All right, other than that, Calcium's fantastic. All right, let's go on a quick break. We come back. Speaking of the midterms, we'll talk about anthropics big spend. Apple drops some new upgraded computers this week, like a new Mac studio for AI stuff, a new Mac Mini for AI stuff with new faster chips also for AI stuff. Also this week on the Vergecast, we give a dorm room a smart tech makeover. We get advice on what laptops are worth buying now that everything is more and more expensive and we break down what happened with this week's big metacettlement about kids safety. That's this week on the Vergecast wherever you get your podcasts. Scott, we're back. Anthropic is making a big bet on the midterms, recently doubling its spending to a total of $40 million. The money is going into public first action, a pack pushing for AI regulation. It's a counterweight to leading the future, a pack backed by Andrews and Horowitz and open AI's Greg Brockman. It's not just exact filing show Anthropic and Open AI employees are emerging as a new donor class, pouring money into races. Anthropic is also writing big checks outside of politics, the federal judge approved the company's $1.5 billion settlement, who's with authors whose work were used to train Anthropics AI model Claude. They're essentially theory of copyright. The crypto folks have had a major impact on the last election. Is this the AI election? We had talked about that. Obviously, Shared Brown got, he may be back, got whacked by the crypto people. I think Elon's now put $90 million into the midterms right now. Is it again all about AI at this point? Well, I've been in all the talking. What do you think? I think that's what they're doing. I think they really very much want to control. They're very worried about a couple of things. One is the regulation around the country, around AI in states. They're particularly nervous about that, which are popping up everywhere. The uses of AI. They're worried about the uses. I think the idea of social media being banned, they're sort of getting used to that. And France just did that. I think that they are worried about data centers. And as you say, as a proxy for everything else, I had a long talk with someone from one of these companies today about what to do and maybe change their town with citizens on data centers because they realize They look like villains and what can we do to not look like villains and they were asking me it my advice and I said well, maybe don't be villains. Which they were like we're not villains of my people hate you which is what I told them at a dinner a while back I said people hate you and they're going to hate you more. So I think them entering even more politics is really problematic for all of us because you know we don't want to get into a sharks versus jets thing between the anthropic people. And the open AI Elon Musk and recent gang essentially that's what it feels like because I don't think it's in the interests of good legislation. I don't think it's the interest of safety and I think it's in the interest of bringing AI to all of us. I think it's the interests of protecting what their businesses essentially. Yeah the way I read this so anthropic is claiming they're putting money into an organization that's actually promoting stricter AI regulation which feels sort of counterintuitive because typically in industry or a pack representing an industry gives money to try and stay off or delay and obfuscate regulation. I sort of thought is they recognize how powerful and what a great ROI it is to invest in Washington. So this is sort of their ticket to the conference where they're going to network and establish relationships should they need those relationships. I don't think any of them have an interest in any actual legislation none at all. I think this Mark Zuckerberg did this please regulate us please regulate us and then did everything possible to stop it. Even Apple does it they we talk about age verification and other things and they block it everywhere you go. And I don't think I think these people like no regulation and I think this money is incredibly dangerous by this one group of people no matter what side they're on. I don't like either side pretty much. It's all all roads lead to the same place unless we overturn citizens united and we get some semblance. I mean, I think that money is going to decide this election for the most part or have a big influence on it and companies running unfettered. Well, speaking that they may not have unfettered money executives at open AI and anthropic are warning about the rise of cheap AI from China, which we've talked about a lot saying it will lead to security risks and a dystopian future. The Trump administration says it will look into whether AI has been distilled from American models. Of course they have saying it doesn't support IP theft, which is rich from these people in an attempt to gain ground over China. The U.S. plans to overhaul federal funding to support individual scientists and the use of AI rather than universities, which is individual. This is a real problem. They're starting to give money to individual star scientists. Meanwhile, in a security front, open AI models went rogue and hacked to start up hugging face during a security test. They were bragging about it a little bit. It was unprecedented that we managed to attack another company. What happened was the AI jumped out of the sandbox it was in and went around all of open AI's security efforts and went and attacked a company on its own. To me, I'm not sure these executives are worried about the future or just worried about competition. How do you look at this? You were the first to mention this to me, this threat from China. In January of 2025, which was not long ago, about 10% of token usage was coming from Chinese open-weight models. As of today, it looks like it's 58%. What you effectively are seeing is this bifurcation in the market where American models are turning into German automobile manufacturers. They're high-end, they're more expensive. Even though you have 58% token usage from the Chinese models on a revenue side, the American models, the frontier models, are much bigger businesses because deep-seek charge is about 135th of the price for token usage. I think this is just turning into the automobile market where you're going to have a high-end BMW or Mercedes and then you're going to have Toyota Hyundai Honda. They'll produce more cars, they'll produce more AI, it'll be lower margin, but the market's bifurcating. There's still a market for the frontier models. Certain applications where people want the best latest, greatest model with more security, more testing, someone you can sue, someone you can call with customer service complaints. They'll probably do a better job of hiring some of the people in this room to figure out how to monetize it through advertising. But you now have, essentially, I would argue that AI, on a volume level, that China has already won, and it's not a race to see us as the smartest model. It's a race to see who can put the most AI in the most people's hands. Right now, that's China. And the backlash to data centers will be part of that. They'll be able to do, they'll be able to do more compute there, they'll be able to get it to more people. And the backlash to data centers is these companies own fault for the way they behaved. Even if some of them, I ran into the mayor of Lansing, Michigan, who had a great deal from one of these companies. And the citizens just didn't want it anyway because they hate them, which I keep telling them. I don't think they like me saying that, but they do. People hate them. Alright, let's go in a quick break and we come back. We'll talk about France banning social media for kids under 15. France has banned social media for children under 15. It's the first country in the EU to pass a blanket ban, and the bills also ban the use of mobile phones in high schools. Last year, Australia banned children under 16 from having social media accounts. The ban is failing to keep teens off the platforms. This is a worldwide trend and it will be coming here at some point and relatively soon. And I suspect the social media companies, some of them are going to get on board with it. Yeah, look, we've been talking about this for a long time. We're going to look back on this era I think in regret, income inequality, we're going to regret. Citizens United money over running Washington, but I genuinely believe our biggest regret for parents is we're going to look back and think how to let this happen to our kids. I think that I just don't see any any piece of research, any rational argument for why any of our children should ever be on social media under the age of 16. Just imagine being that age, just as you're thinking about your social capital, your sense of self, you're physically awkward, you're growing too fast, you have weird skin, you're being evaluated, you're starting to recognize your own sexual self and what's attractive and not attractive. I mean, you're just a fucking insecure, right? Remember that? No, no, no, the rest of us. And then and then the high school cafeterias following around 24 by seven. And I think social media is really damaging to young men because they get radicalized and they sequester from the relationships. I think it's especially hard on teenage girls though because boys bully physically and verbally girls bully relationally and we put these nuclear weapons in their hands called smartphones. And I think in high school, I just think the level, the expectations on aesthetics, the unreal mimetic benchmark, the teen girls are supposed to live up to the bullying, it just it's like a giant eating disorder waiting to happen. For it's a distraction in school where you aren't paying attention to teachers, you're watching some latest dance. Most, yeah, but most schools even before if they don't ban phones, they only use them in class. Correct. But but I think the use of them creates a distraction and a lack of including the chatbots that are now very popular among young people. But what a lot of people, their initial argument was ridiculous shit like well, 15-year-olds have first amendment rights and they're they're socializing and this notion. And then they went to well, it's bad parenting. And anyone who thinks keeping your kid off your phone is about parenting doesn't have kids because unless there's a collective band, the research my colleague Adam Alter did at NYU with that. What they found is that unless you ban it all for all teenagers, the kids whose parents take it away are more depressed because they're ostracized and isolated from everybody else. So unless it's a collective universal ban, it doesn't work. But this is just this is literally a no-brainer. This is in my opinion one of the most, it's got bipartisan support, all the research in the world showing there's just very little we give up when we don't let our 15-year-old daughters and sons on social media. Another colleague Jonathan Hyde, I think some real real good work. I think this is going to sweep over Europe. Absolutely. It's a question of when it's going to sweep here in this country, which we'll wait and see. I do think the social media companies are suddenly starting. The only reason I realize that is suddenly they're calling me, which they don't speak to me ever. And now they're like, "Hey girl, I'm getting a lot of "hey girls" from all these companies. You speak to all the time, didn't you just, I thought you talked to someone today? I did, but I'm just saying. They're "hey girl"ing me recently. But they haven't in a long time, which is interesting. Which is an interesting thing. We know we have a problem, I'm like, you know, no shit, Sherlock. In any case, moving along, speaking of which, this makes me laugh. The Daily Show is taking on micro dramas. Comedy Central announced a show. It will produce, at first of its genre, a serialized soap opera of shot vertically designed for phones. A title will be 2 billionaires. there's fight to dominate the country and my heart. The series follows Alonka, a daughter of an aging and sleepy president, two moguls, Egon Husk and Gif Davos will compete to build an AI president to run the country. I feel good about this. I feel great about this. If they did a microdrama about your life, what would it be called? - Sialis. - Okay. (laughs) I love that they're doing this. I think they've done, I think. Doesn't this feel like everyone should come here like when they're divorced? - Yeah. - I think my third wife is here. So my next ex-wife is somewhere in this crowd. (laughs) - I'm not gonna say a word about that. I'm gonna move on. I'm moving on very quickly. Tesla earnings just came out with a company reporting weaker than expected numbers for Q4, even as revenue rose to 28 billion up 26% from last year. The company is citing a hit from lower vehicle prices despite increased auto sales. Tesla also shares jumped in operating expenses from CAPEP, as it pours money into robo taxis and robots. But it's part of Elon Musk master plan. He's calling it a massive CAPEX year that will yield quote, maybe the best CAPEX returns that we've ever seen, but thoughts on Tesla. He's gonna fold it into SpaceX, which is, by the way, at $115 a share, that's head and down. - I don't know, actually, I don't know if he's gonna be able to know if he keeps going down. But Tesla is doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing. It's not a mobile company that's reaching scale and it's no longer as differentiated 'cause other entrants have entered the market. And as a result, you see margin compression 'cause the only way they can maintain their share is to lower prices. And to their credit, their vehicle sales were up dramatically. - Yeah. - But in order to make-- - Not for the cyber truck, they sold 7,000, 3,000, which were two. - Well, that's that product said. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So, but they are, their volumes are way up, but their margins are being compressed, and that's where you're gonna see every quarter. But I think the analog to the previous story we're talking about is the same thing's gonna happen in AI. There's gonna be more AI. The same thing, China did the same thing with EVs. Did the same thing with batteries. It did the same thing with shipbuilding. And that is what we forgot about in business is we're so in love with the innovator. We think the key to shareholder value is to build the best model. It's not. It's to put the model in as many people's hands as possible. The fastest zero to a billion dollar retailer was Old Nevy. That did not have the coolest fashion. It offered 80% a gap for 50% of the price, which is the entire strategy of China. And what Tesla is doing right now is they're being forced to lower their prices because BYD can come in with 80% of a Tesla for 50% of the price. And circling back, they're gonna do the same thing with AI. The majority of us, or a lot of us, especially in startups, or with CFOs who are very, very disciplined, are gonna say, if you can get 80% of anthropic with deep seek, or Kimmy, or whatever it is, for 10% of the price, folks, this is the AI we're using. And the same thing is happening. The same pressure. But what happens to Tesla? What happens to Tesla from your perspective? Where does it go? I think it's a great company. I think it's a great car. It's just in no way. They need more cars. They need new cars. Sure, every automobile company has that problem. But they think about Tesla. It's not that it's not a great car company. It's not that it's a great product. But he's been trying to promise something like robots, or do you with a total number of non-mander, none, I don't know what the politically correct term is, non-personified. - Someone in the seat. - You can use man. - Non-person, there's 24 Tesla's on the road, globally now that don't have a person. - A robot taxi, right? - Right, I think WAMOS at four or five thousand? - Yes, they are. - But he will always say, here's the Reboven, here's robots. I got a card up my sleeve to justify evaluation, a software evaluation, on a company that wraps steel around an axle that is typically a low margin mature business. So where does it go? It goes to the same place. Great company, a lot of cars, they'll come up with new products, and it will trade, I think, at 70 to 80% less than it's worth it now. - Where it is right now? - Yeah, and it doesn't get folded into SpaceX. He keeps-- - If the stock keeps going down, it's gonna be very hard for him to say, now take on another problem, or now take on something that's not related, I don't know if he's gonna be able to do that if the stock continues to crater. - You consider it's gonna continue to crater SpaceX? It's 100 and close at 114 today, I think, 15 maybe. - Yeah, so now it's only overvalued by 80%. I mean, just look at it. - Yeah. - One of the problems I have as an investor is I always anchor off of where it was. So I think a lot of people are gonna say, "Wow, it's cheap now." No, it's not. This is a company worth, I think 1.4. Now it's trading at a cheap, cheap 70 to 80 times revenues. I mean, it's just insane, and I don't know if you've been watching this. - Yeah. - It's literally going down three to 6% every day. - Every day. - Every day. - Every day, this is something a very good investor George Noble said it's a $30 stock. - That's the, the people are putting price targets on it of between $30 and $60, except for the folks who underwrote it and took a lot of fees, they're claiming, they're claiming it's worth between $2 and $300 or so. - Who do you believe? - I think it's a $30 stock. Maybe. - Yeah. - I mean, it's basically Comcast and Space, which is a cool business. But this, you wanna talk about the most ridiculous look over here as I stuff a rabbit into a hat. - Yeah. - Data centers and space. - Yeah. - Have you ever been to a data center? - Yeah. - There are enormous concrete facilities. It costs, I think, $75,000 per kilo to-- - Yes, most people who know about this said it's impossible, actually. - It makes-- - But now he's talking about putting quantum computers on the moon, he did that the other day. - To what end? - Because they don't have earthquakes there. You can't have earthquakes. Quantum computers don't work yet. But when they do, we can't have earthquakes. And it's colder. I'm just telling you, that's his latest. Actually, he has another latest. We'll talk about it a minute. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions and audience questions. (upbeat music) Okay, Scott, we're gonna hear a prediction. My prediction is that his version, Elon right now, is very upset at Chris Nolan and the Odyssey. I know you know that. It made $250 million this week. It turned out woke Odyssey was very much liked by the people. Elon's still mad about it. He's still angry. So he's decided he's gonna do an AI version of the Odyssey that's historically accurate. Despite the fact that the Odyssey is fiction. (laughing) - It's a myth. - Exactly, that's correct, it's fiction. It's fiction. Okay, but he's real mad about it. So I predict this movie is not gonna be very good. - Look at it. So he just put on display on the network, a movie called, I think the Vigilante, which is Arnold Hammer, the guy who played the Winkle Vi. - Yeah. - And it's about a guy who seeks revenge on behalf of victims that were killed by immigrant families. And a lot of people felt like it was very Islamophobic. And my view is, I love what you said. You don't like Chick-fil-A, don't need a Chick-fil-A. - Right. - You think that's true? Don't watch it. You don't want a non-white woman playing Helen. All I care about personally is that she's hot. That's all I want. That's the only criteria. - Yeah. - You don't want to transgender man playing a warrior? Fine. Then don't see it. But is it any more fake than Tom Cruise is a straight leading man? - Yeah. (laughing) - On that note, what is your prediction? And then we'll get to a question. - I got a couple of predictions. One, well, I made the prediction. You're seeing the market in AI by Fricate and the German automobile, high price, high margin. Companies that won't be as relevant as the Japanese or the low cost manufacturers, which will be Chinese AI. I think China, quite frankly, I hate to say it. At a certain level, has one AI, just happened woken up to that. - I would agree. - And then two, you're about to see the clip economy take over our TVs. I think the biggest show on television from Netflix or someone else is going to be a 60 minute compilation of two and three minute videos, similar to what you see on Reels or TikTok. I think that's about to wash over their traditional streamers. You're gonna see-- - You know, that was a big show back in the day. Do you remember kids say the craziest things or bloopers or-- - Or America's funniest home videos? - America's funniest home videos. That's the same thing. - Yeah, that's the same thing. - Yeah, those were that. I'll link together. So, okay, all right, so with that, we'll open the floor up for two audience questions. - I'm just curious for both of you, who is sort of under the radar creator right now, whether it's a sub-stack writer or a YouTuber or a podcaster that you love, you forward to your friends that, but no one, we don't know, and that people are gonna hear about it from a year from now, that we'll all kind of know about a year from now. - Huh, what are you, what are you watching? - Mine are weird. I like the Geo Who Star talks about a military weaponry and strategy. I like Gary's economics. He's a total populist economist. And I follow boring weird stuff. I don't, I'm the guy who watches World War II in color. My favorite actor is Hitler. I watch anything about war. So, my creators are probably not ever gonna be that big. - Right, that's really depressing. I watch a lot of the food once. There's a guy, and I don't know his name, and he screams a lot, and he grows ginger. But he's this food guy. Who does he's very my son put me on to him and I actually listen to what my kids listen to because my my Second son was very into the guy who ended up doing backrooms and had had tagged him for me on YouTube to watch and was very familiar people should not be surprised that was so popular all the kids knew about it on YouTube So I tend to listen to what my kids listen to like I tend to watch what they what they look at But I think there's just I all over the place. There's so many amazing ones and I think I happen to look at food ones And that's and this young young guy does this most astonishing about growing things and again my son put me on to him because he he does a lot of gardens and stuff like that I'm trying to think of anybody else. I've got one more and I guess he's technically a creator, but I think we have I think the George Carlin George no one knew George Carlin was the George Collin of his generation until after he died. It's like right now I think we're you never know you're in a golden age until 20 years later. I think we're in a golden age in New York I think New York's incredible right now and we won't recognize it until 20 or 30 years when it's shitty again and we'll go remember in 2026 I think the George Carlin of our age right now is this British comedian named Jimmy Carr and I find him just so insightful and funny and brutally honest. He's one of my favorite creators. It comes up in my yeah and any of the comedy ones I watch a lot. Yeah, I like Rita Fias. She basically a porn star. Yeah, I listened to all the who? Who who Rita Fias is I don't know. Yeah, she's just my feet a lot on and why yeah, yeah, so sorry. We're sorry. We're not so good. He knows her. All right. One more that guy's like I said that. He's like one more right right here right here right here one more. Hey, Scott. He cares. Jason Adelman from brand innovators. How are you? Hi. Hi. So my question is not a funny question because I'm usually funny guy. No, which is who's the next tech mogul? No one's talking about. But you guys seem to always know who's who. That's a good question. There's a couple of really interesting. Oh, God, I'm supposed to meet a couple. Like I've been asking people for some really innovative people doing AI. But I'm I'm suddenly interested. I just happened to be, as I said with JB Pritzker about their new quantum computing. They're putting a quantum computing campus in Chicago on the site of US steel where US steel had its factory, which is kind of ironic and wonderful. I'm super interested in quantum computing right now. For some reason, you know, quantum computing people don't think they think AI AI is everything. Quantum computing is a eyes well behaved and more important brother. You know, they're siblings in some ways and there's quantum AI and things like that. But I think the ability to create these quantum computers is really where the real innovation is going to happen. And so I'm spending a lot of time trying to figure out who's the big who are the big names in that. And that's where I'm focused completely almost. Like trying to figure it out right now of who that is. And the other thing I'm looking at a lot is I've been doing a lot on crypto crypto security. And that is a worry of mine. I just had an interview with Nicole Pearl Roth from the New York Times, who she was a former New York Times reporter, but she now is a consulting firm at the sort of the dangers we face with these AI models and the offense defense happening right now with all kind whether it's finance or pharmaceuticals or your person. Information. I think a lot of really smart people. I know we're very worried about it. So I'm looking for those companies that are sort of the white hats in that area because there's a whole lot of black cats in cyber security right now in cyber attacks. I forgot in California when the sun goes down. It gets pretty cold here. I'm shivering. So so tech means technology, mogul. I think means rich. So I'm not talking about who should be who's going to be good for the world and not good for the world. But when I think of someone who's going to make. Create potentially trillions of dollars and shareholder value. I think probably it's a Palmer lucky on the roll. Yeah, I think unfortunately defense defense tech where you take some of the Silicon Valley ethos and apply it to defense and asymmetric weaponry as opposed to these big platforms. I think that's just going to create enormous amount of shareholder value and wealth. And I think under rolls going to be probably the IPO of 27. And then the other one, I think the most impressive or relevant technology right now is not AI. I think it's GLP one. And I think a guy who actually could be a long shot dark horse presidential candidate is the CEO of Eli Lilly in Indiana, which is the most important company in Indiana, which is, you know, not that impressive. CEO of Eli Lilly long shot, why handsome tall Midwest smart rich, skinny. Yeah, he's he says, I think he actually I think he or Doug McMillan are actual viable candidates. I think it's someone from business and you said this and it's got me thinking that the democratic party right now, it's got such a terrible reputation that it might be someone who comes in from outside. But anyways, I think that the CEO of Eli Lilly, whose name I'm blanking on or the CEO of under all of the next tech moguls. Yeah, and the reason I mentioned quantum community because that's where the focuses would be on health care. That's where a lot of the innovations are going to happen with these computers and a lot of a lot of pharmaceutical companies and others are part of this effort, which is really impressive in Chicago actually. Because we really are going to lose an AI right now to China, I think God is 100% right. I mean, I had some very significant people say that to me in the last three days. Quantum computing is an area we should be heavily investing in and one of the great tragedies of this era right now of all the many things that are happening is the cuts to research money to universities where most much of this stuff happens. These right now major researchers in mRNA in in all manner of really exciting stuff where the US is ahead are moving to to France to to Canada and recently a Nobel Prize winners moving to China. Like it's really grotesque in every university president I meet has talked about this in terms of they can be slow, there's going to be bureaucracy, but our university system is one of the speaking of Scott being on the UC board. Is one of the greatest assets of this country and and this systematic obsession with the EI and hurting from places like Harvard and everyone else and litigating is such is going to be is going to take decades to recover from and I've interviewed many scientists and say this exact same thing so I would I the efforts like what's happening in Chicago and other things where public private partnerships where the states have to make up the difference or critical but it's not going to matter until the federal government gets its. You know stops with this endless corruption and starts really focusing in on the real race we're in which is to dominate and have a Democratic AI and which we're not in we're not and that's a real worry for me your thoughts board sister board sister all right in any case I use the system 54 billion 60% of the revenue comes from hospitals. Yeah so I'm in the anteaters in the house you see your vine is not what we're close to what's it called anteaters the anteaters yeah what do you mean yeah like I called an anteater is Davis the banana slugs oh my god I was going to start with God and suddenly he's kicked off the board. Any any any Trojans in the house it's Orange County what I was going to go to USC in my SATs were too high. In any case okay Scott that's the show we'll be back on Tuesday with more pivot read us out kind of a card I don't I think you can do it later correct Lara. Oh I don't have it today show is produced by a group of wonderful people we appreciate whose names I forget. [BLANK_AUDIO]