Chapter 1: What is the main topic of the Iran conflict discussed in this episode?
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This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. So I just flew in from San Francisco and boy, are my arms tired. I've heard that joke before. I know. I don't know why I keep doing the night flights things.
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Chapter 2: How does Trump's endgame influence the war in Iran?
I just keep, I think I'm getting too old for it. But I had, as you can hear, everybody, I have a cold, and I actually was there to interview Gavin Newsom for his book, Young Man in a Hurry, which is now, I guess, Old Man in a Hurry. And so I went in to do that, and it was actually a fantastic interview. We'll talk about it. Yeah, it's got a lot of news. Yeah, I did. I'm a newsmaker, my friend.
Just to be clear, to give you insight into our relationship, someone put out a thing saying that he changed his tone or he's in support of regime change. I wrote smart and you berated me. Not publicly. We're going to talk about it. We'll get into it. I didn't berate you. It just was inaccurately depicting the interview I had just done. Because I wrote the word smart?
No, because you were tweeting an inaccurate report. That's all. What was it? Who, who wrote out the inaccurate report? I don't know. It just was weird. It was weird because it was so not what he said. Um, and so it just annoys me. It just annoys me. I mean, I definitely, definitely made a lot of news in that interview.
Um, by the way, we talked, we talked a lot about his book, which was interesting. But he's definitely not running for president because no president ever puts out a book before they run for president. I know. Well, no, he kept saying that he wasn't sure. It was really funny.
Chapter 3: What are the economic impacts of the Iran war on global oil prices?
And then right afterwards, it's actually, I like the book. It's gotten some bad reviews, but I think they've just decided who he is and are reviewing it based on sort of that unctuous, toady, slick image versus a lot of stuff that he's done that's brave. He's a very complex person like yourself, Scott Galloway. I've heard it's actually pretty authentic. Yeah.
Yeah, let me just characterize this discussion. The book I really like, I have to say, and I think I found out a lot of things about him that I didn't know about his mother. I knew a little bit about his mother's assisted suicide, but it was really interesting to talk about, a lot about his own struggles.
And not, it wasn't the dyslexia part, we didn't talk a lot about that, but a lot about, I didn't know his wife had had a miscarriage, for example. He has four kids, he almost had five. There's a lot in there. There was a lot in there. And one of the things that struck me, which brings me back to you, which I know how you like that, is he was the son of a single mom who was not wealthy.
And he has a lot of resonances with your mom. You know what I mean? Like your story with your single mom who was struggling, father who was distant, and who he desperately wanted to be with. It reminded me a lot of you, actually. I think people underestimate Newsom, and I think they underestimate DeSantis and Rubio.
But I think right now, I think Governor Newsom, hands down, is the leading candidate on the Democratic side. And not only that, I know a little bit about his personal story, and I actually think it's quite compelling. And a lot of his personal failings, I think, will come across as a bit authentic. People know about them.
Also, I think California is going to begin, not to peak, but to recover at just the right moment for him. Yeah, I suspect. Anyway, it was really interesting because I did feel like I was having the same discussion you and I have had about single moms. No. Look, we're the same person except she's much more talented and handsome and higher character than me. Other than that, we're the same guy.
That's what he suffers from. That's why everybody is sensitive to you and not to him.
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Chapter 4: How does the conflict affect U.S. military strategy and operations?
He definitely played into it. We talked about that. It was a very personal thing, but we did get a lot of news in too. Yeah, I'm reading about it everywhere. I know. I literally see Gavin Newsom and this 11-year-old boy on stage, and I'm like, oh, I know her. And my voice is so—for those listening to it, I apologize. This is a good version of my voice.
I was absolutely dead horse three hours before, and I thought I'd have to cancel, but I did all manner of things to my voice to allow it to work. And he got to over—and I said, you're lucky today, I've never had a man over-talk me, so you're going to get some chance to do that today, which was funny. And he does talk a lot, let me just say. So let's get right into it.
President Trump says the U.S. military intends to continue its assault on Iran for four to five weeks if necessary. He keeps changing his tune. We'll get to that in a second. The U.S. and Israel— began strikes on Saturday, killing Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah, as well as several senior officials. Iran is retaliating all over the place with missiles and drones, targeting Israel, the U.S.
bases in Gulf countries, Dubai, all manner of places. Four American service members have been killed, and Trump says there will likely be more, but, quote, that's the way it is. Kind of a callous way to put it. Three U.S. jets were also shot down in a friendly fire incident over Kuwait. The crew members got out safely, thank goodness. These are $90 million jets, so that's $270 million.
Trump has justified the attack on Iran, which did not receive congressional approval, by citing, quote, imminent threats, though he had not provided evidence, and it looks like he doesn't have any. That said, a lot of people are celebrating the death of the Ayatollah. Defense Secretary Pete Hegsatz held a presser a little while ago.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of banning Anthropic and its impact on AI?
He said this is not so-called regime change war, but a regime sure did change. Not clear of either of them is true because Trump has talked about regime change and it doesn't appear as the regime has changed. Hegsatz was also asked about the timeline. Let's listen to what he said if we can hear him directly. To the media outlets and political left screaming endless wars. Stop. This is not Iraq.
This is not endless. I was there for both. Our generation knows better, and so does this president. He called the last 20 years of nation-building wars dumb, and he's right. This is the opposite. Well, it's nice to hear from a Stoke Boats model who doesn't know what he's talking about.
But I also want to note about this interview I did with California Governor Gavin Newsom over the weekend for the latest episode of On with Kara Spisher. It's really interesting because one of the issues was all the misinformation online. It was really quite, it wasn't just something you tweeted, but it was all over the place, misreporting where he stands on all this.
Let's listen to what he told me. And this was just a small piece of it because he went on for a while decrying Donald Trump's action. Let's go. And that's Donald Trump, the chaos president, this wrecking ball president across the board. Destruction is not strength.
And once again, we've seen him destroy not only our allies in relationship to the rest of the world, but we're seeing him destroy any capacity to explain fundamentally what the core American interest is at this moment to declare war, to go to war with the regime. And all of this is playing out in real time.
News posted on X over the weekend, the corrupt and oppressive Iranian regime must never have nuclear weapons. Leadership of Iran must go. But that doesn't justify the president of the United States engaging in a legal, dangerous war. Very similar to what Senator Warner said. All the senators pretty much said this guy deserved to die. And at the same time, this seems like a chaotic mess.
Let's talk a little bit about it, and especially the economic impact.
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Chapter 6: How is OpenAI's partnership with the Pentagon evolving?
The fighting has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which carries one-fifth of the world's oil supply, as it's recording oil prices are up about 7%. Gas futures jumped as much as 9%. Spike in energy prices, supply chain strain, broader ripple effects across the global economy, especially because of the uncertainty. And the last thing I would note,
And it's interesting, because Trump does respond to this, is that there's much reporting, including in the Washington Post, about how he was convinced to do it through Mohammed bin Salman and Benjamin Netanyahu, and even J.D. Vance and General Kane did not want to do this. But here we are. So talk a little bit about where it's going to go from here and your thoughts.
Well, the honest answer is I have no idea, or I have a vision for where you hope it goes. But I'm sympathetic to Governors Newsom and Senator Warner, the notion that we're going to end up, after Trump is gone, we have to be thoughtful about how we
improve the tensile strength of our democracy by stopping the slow but steady leak of power from Congress, which is the people, to the president under the auspices or cold comfort that they will stick to certain norms. Because effectively, a president should not be able, military action you can maybe justify, but this is war. He used the word war. I know, this is war. It is war.
And I'm sympathetic to the notion that the reason we have 535 members of Congress representing two per state in the Senate and one for every 750,000 people as the American people are supposed to have a say. But Democrats, it's 7 percent are actually in favor of this. The best thing we could do coming out, or one of the best things I think coming out of the Trump administration,
and this highlights that, is to have structural reform around gerrymandering, Citizens United, and that Congress has to be involved or briefed, or that we have to go back to this notion where only Congress can decide if in fact we go to war. Now, where could this go? As you know, I'm in favor, loosely speaking, around this action because I always like to ask myself what could go right.
Iran is 90 million people, sits on the second largest natural gas reserves, the third largest oil reserves, incredible science, incredible universities, incredible entrepreneurial spirit, actually quite a non-secular. It was, that's for sure. Well, I would argue, anyways, fairly non-secular, a lot less anti-West than people have been led to believe by what I think is one of the most oppressive
brutal regimes in history. What could go right? You could have one of the largest economies in the Middle East become more pro-West. It's been punching below its weight class for 20 or 30 years now because of poor technology and sanctions. you could immediately see it come up and be an economic power that is pro-West, pro-trading, pro-capitalist.
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Chapter 7: What are the financial repercussions for Netflix after the Warner Bros. deal?
What effectively might be one of the biggest tax cuts in history, if you saw more consistent flows of oil and technology and a great trading partner, I actually think Europe would be the biggest beneficiary, and turn what has been the primary agent of chaos and terror in an unstable region into something resembling, I don't even call it pro-West, but neutral West.
So I think there's a lot that could go right here. And I think the risk assessment provided to the president, in my view, had a lot of asymmetric upside. Now, having said that, what they missed here was part of the PAL doctrine, and that is you have to have clearly articulated objectives. Or plans for next, beyond the bomb. Well, they haven't.
And to your point, they just haven't been able to articulate in the last 24 hours What is the off ramp and the objective here? Is it regime change? Is it a more friendly regime? Is it, I mean, what exactly? And not only that, you're not gonna get this notion that all of a sudden we're gonna provide air cover and the Iranian people are gonna rise up
and overtake 150,000 members of the IRGC who are deeply integrated into- They have outside plans. There's some great reporting on this, by the way, by legitimate news organizations. They have contingency plans in place for what happens if the Ayatollah dies, and they're carrying them out. Okay, but in Syria, Libya, in Iraq, these were autocracies with a central figurehead.
The IRGC is very deeply embedded into the economy. So when your mortgage and your salary is being paid by the ROGC, it's not like, oh, okay, the top guy, Assad, is gone and boom. It's a new administration. So there's a lot about the ground game. There's a lot about intelligence assets. And if they had said, we are going to, for example, a potential off ramp, we're going to neuter their Navy.
We're going to diminish their air defense capabilities. We're going to make sure for sure there is absolutely no ability to create or enrich nuclear stockpiles, and then we're gonna leave it up to the Iranian people, that's technically an off ramp. But I have seen in the last 24 hours them talk about regime change. No, this isn't regime change.
So they haven't been able to articulate what is next. Well, I don't believe they thought about it. I mean, one of the things that a lot of people are pointing out is the involvement of Netanyahu and the head of Saudi Arabia, who publicly had said he was against this, but privately was quite for it and pressing for it.
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Chapter 8: How does the podcast wrap up the discussion on current political and economic trends?
The linkage between the corruption with the Trump family and this coin-operated presidency that I talk about all the time is really very clear because most— I would say they're trying to come up with a story after the fact. Oh, it hasn't worked. It isn't an endless war, although it feels kind of like an endless war. It feels very Bushian, right? You definitely had echoes of that.
I think he thought it was going to be like Venezuela, right? That it was like, just take that guy out. And by the way, he's in business with the Maduro administration. He didn't regime change that place at all. Like speaking of regime change. This is much more complicated. I agree, but I think he thought it was like that. No, I'm agreeing with you.
This is not take out Maduro, and this is much more... He just has cowed the regime into it, but it's the same regime. In this case, it's really fascinating how they have put themselves into this economy in a way that's very hard to... To get them out, right? You know, of course, this is their point of these very corrupt and I would say evil mullahs in Iran.
But one of the things that's fascinating to me is one, the continued corruption of Trump's family and Trump within this region. And second of all, that he keeps calling. Have you noticed he's calling all, I'm waiting for a call from him myself. Like he called Jake Tapper. He called, you know, a bunch of John Carl.
He's called all the regular old media people essentially, or the people he decries all the time. And it seems like he's workshopping different reasons. Like it's, that's so disturbing. Yeah, he's trying to figure out what people want. But there is, again, what could go right here? The most powerful instinct is survival.
And what we pulled off here, and when I say we, I actually think it was more the Mossad than us, We effectively, and I don't think people really register how profound this was, within about two hours, we took out the equivalent of the president, the secretary of defense, and the head of the joint chiefs. Right, they were all in the same place, but yes.
And then, and what has got to be the strategic mistake of I would say the last five years, other than the decision by Hamas to go into Israel, geopolitically, they started attacking civilian targets within the Gulf. Farid Zakaria noted that this was their mistake. I mean, that's just, okay, you want to isolate yourself from your... from who should naturally be sympathetic to you.
Now, going back to this notion of survival instinct, at some point, you gotta think the next level down. And I don't know if it's 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 or 150,000 IRGC say, okay, we too really like our families and this thing called life. Maybe we need to come to some sort of accommodation with the U.S. and the West. Well, that would require, as you know, boots on the ground.
And Trump didn't even rule that out again. Like, here's what really drives me crazy. This idea, they're like, it's not endless war. The other presidents were just dumb. It's the same thing. You know, they're just trying very hard to spin it. And by the way, you noted a poll that half Americans supported. It's actually not the case. Many of the polls are showing 25%. I didn't say that.
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