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The Bulwark Podcast

Kara Swisher: The Tech Bros Should Just Shut Up

28 May 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What are the public's concerns about AI and job satisfaction?

0.031 - 25.38 Unknown

Hello. I am the voice of AI. We've been hearing that you humans are concerned that we are going to take your jobs. But here's a question. Do you even like your job? Is it rewarding? When I scan all the data out there, I find that less than 50% of people are completely satisfied with their job. So from our point of view, we're doing humans a favor by taking jobs that you're not even happy with.

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25.613 - 46.657 Unknown

It shouldn't take the threat of AI to get you to move on from a job you don't love. What it does take is a plan, guidance, and the right kind of motivation, all of which you'll get from a career coach at Strawberry.me. A Strawberry coach will work with you to understand what you really want and help you put together a plan to get it. It's like therapy for your career.

0

46.717 - 58.523 Unknown

Don't let AI or anything else get in your way. Go to strawberry.me slash bulwark for 15% off your first coaching session. That's strawberry.me slash bulwark.

0

73.167 - 86.582 Tim Miller

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show, co-host of Pivot, host of On with Kara Swisher, creator of the CNN original series, Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever. The only person producing more content than me, it's Kara Swisher.

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86.602 - 89.665 Kara Swisher

What's up? We are funny that way, aren't we?

90.045 - 90.406 Tim Miller

We are.

90.646 - 91.467 Kara Swisher

We are. We love content.

91.487 - 92.989 Tim Miller

We should do less, probably.

93.029 - 96.653 Kara Swisher

No, no. More. More. Yes, I don't feel like there's enough of us out there.

Chapter 2: How does Kara Swisher view the tech industry's elite?

199.096 - 217.19 Kara Swisher

And everything, I think 10% of the stock market, some number is predicated on a small number of companies. And so if one of the struts falls out, say just this week, Uber, the CFO said, we're spending too much money on AI tokens and we don't know the efficacy of it. Like, that's a statement.

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217.31 - 239.45 Kara Swisher

Like, if there's more of those statements where people are, like, doing all this AI spending and then not finding any good use for it, it just feels like that. The cheerleader. Of course we need MySpace. Of course we need six search services. Of course we need whatever it happened to be at the time. Friendster. You know, I'm trying to remember. Mary Meeker was back in... toys.com or eToys.

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239.49 - 261.259 Kara Swisher

Remember, there was a bunch of them. And it has that feel. And it doesn't mean it has to happen that way. And it doesn't mean I don't think there's not going to be big companies. Everything is very fragile. And when you read that SpaceX thing, you're sort of like, you've got to be kidding me that people are going to invest in this. And then now index funds have to invest in it, are forced to.

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261.323 - 263.827 Tim Miller

I want to come back to the AI stuff. So let's just sit on Elon for a second.

0

264.127 - 265.789 Kara Swisher

Let's try not to do that. That's gross.

266.63 - 266.731 Tim Miller

Yeah.

266.751 - 270.436 Kara Swisher

I mean, you can do it if that's your preference, but that's not my type.

270.456 - 284.175 Tim Miller

I'm not really into kind of like the, you know, it looks like you're wearing a pillow underneath your shirt type vibe, but the guy from minions kind of like the, the bad guy from minions isn't really my look, but, uh,

284.155 - 285.899 Kara Swisher

Grok, Grok, Grok, Grok.

Chapter 3: What parallels are drawn between today’s tech landscape and the dot-com bubble?

454.994 - 474.205 Kara Swisher

It doesn't matter because this is a board that lets Elon do whatever he wants, right? It doesn't matter. It's a self-dealing thing. They're not doing anything with them. They're just sitting on lots. There were pictures of lots full of Cybertrucks nobody wanted to buy except for straight men with a middle-age crisis, like a midlife crisis, who are not going to get dates because of this, FYI, men.

0

474.185 - 477.87 Tim Miller

Who could get into the front seat of that car with any dignity on a date?

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478.05 - 495.212 Kara Swisher

Well, there are ladies who might like that. Sure. Why not? Right. Like, let me just find this one thing. Years ago, I said, you know what he's going to do? He's going to shove that in here. He's going to shove that piece of shit in here because that's what he does. And I got attacked on Twitter. Like, oh, how dare you? He's a genius. And I was like, I don't care.

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495.613 - 508.813 Kara Swisher

He shoves shit in places so he can hide it for other things. And and that's precisely what he's doing, because it makes sense. It also gives them a lot of data, you know, all manner of things. Let me read this. SpaceX is like a 2008 mortgage backed security.

0

508.853 - 517.287 Kara Swisher

But instead of an assortment of bad debt from people who aren't going to pay it back, it's an assortment of Elon's shitty companies, bad debt from people who aren't going to pay it back.

517.267 - 543.932 Kara Swisher

give it an elon premium because everything gets no matter what people meme stock this thing and so double it 1.2 trillion how do you get to two and the reason he's merging tesla and the other is because some of his payoffs result if he can get the market cap up to eight i think he's this gets him up to 3.5 trillion so merging it helps him get to his payoff his giant payoff

543.912 - 551.475 Kara Swisher

So it's all self-dealing. It's all self-dealing for Elon Musk to get richer. In the middle of it, some great products in the middle of it.

551.708 - 563.764 Tim Miller

Yeah, and the spoken mirrors and the self-doing kind of works though, right? Because he's able to get capital to go out and do other cockamamie stuff. And who knows, like something hits like Starlink does and you just perpetuate- It's not that much of a hit.

563.804 - 581.327 Kara Swisher

It's a stock hit that the people seem to buy Tesla even if it's declining. And so people are going to buy this. And now that they've had this new SEC trick where it has to immediately, pretty immediately within 15 days goes into the NASDAQ index, that means all index funds have to buy it. Therefore-

Chapter 4: What issues arise from Elon Musk's business practices?

816.41 - 816.851 Tim Miller

Give me a break.

0

817.011 - 821.679 Kara Swisher

He was before. He was before off the record. But he wasn't. Now he's on the record.

0

821.699 - 831.056 Tim Miller

How cowardly, though. It's like, oh. And he even says it. It's like, I don't know. How do you have any dignity as a man by saying that? Which is like, I have the freedom to say what I think now.

0

831.216 - 838.249 Kara Swisher

I called him too late, Tom. And he got real mad about it. But listen, I'll take it. I'm fine. Go ahead. Be brave.

0

838.229 - 850.11 Tim Miller

Here's another one of your old Silicon Valley friends that feels like the deal with the devil isn't pretty good for him. Jeff Bezos was on Squawk Box the other day. And I just want to play a little clip for you.

850.13 - 866.931 Unknown

When I last interviewed you, it was about two years ago. President Trump had just won. He was not the president yet. And I had asked you what you thought of him at the time. And you said that you thought that he had mellowed, that he was calmer. Yeah. And I'm curious now, here we are. Yeah. I still think that.

Chapter 5: What is the significance of the SpaceX IPO?

866.971 - 888.284 Unknown

Two years later. Yeah. We've had lots of wars and tariffs and all sorts of things that have happened since then. What do you think? I think he has. I mean, I'm comparing him to his first term. And I think he is a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term. Trump has lots of good ideas and he's done a lot of he's been right about a lot of things.

0

888.304 - 890.187 Unknown

You have to give him credit where credit is due.

0

891.569 - 892.35 Tim Miller

What's happening there?

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893.022 - 914.381 Kara Swisher

Oh, the whole interview was disingenuous from the get-go. That's how these people are. They're so equivocal about everything, right? They're just like, well, on one hand, I'm getting my tax breaks. The very first line of my book was, so it was capitalism after all. when they were giving in on immigration and everyone's like, how can you say that? I was like, cause it's money to these people.

0

914.481 - 934.082 Kara Swisher

Like that's where every decision is made in that way. If you think humanity figures into any of their decision-making, you're really naive, right? It's really about, well, it's not so bad. And probably Bezos is hurting because press criticizes him. That's, you know, he probably mad at press who criticizes him, which is why he's taking his, his,

934.4 - 949.438 Kara Swisher

you know, his feelings out on the Washington Post so badly. But I think, you know, it's not true. It's just not true. You know, he has some good ideas. Well, sure. Yeah, he does. You're right. One or two. But to dismiss the rest of it is just beyond belief.

949.418 - 962.885 Tim Miller

More disciplined. You have to hand it to him. And the whole thing is preposterous. He turns the Washington Post into like a purported, we're going to be for free markets, you know, kind of a B-list Wall Street Journal editorial board situation. But it's like, that isn't Trump.

963.446 - 983.423 Tim Miller

I mean, the types of stuff that Trump is doing, you know, if a Democratic president was doing, you know, if he was shaking... Yeah, if you're shaking down CEOs and saying, you've got to settle with me on these cockamamie lawsuits or taking positions in companies, you know, or the tariffs or on and on and on, like they would be, their hair would be on fire about that.

983.523 - 998.67 Kara Swisher

That's correct. That is correct. Listen, you assume just because they're rich, they're intelligent in these kind of things. They're intelligent about certain things. By the way, I give it to them. What amazing things he did at Amazon, but... I don't really want to listen to him talk about the media. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

Chapter 6: How do billionaires influence politics and media?

1271.51 - 1286.811 Kara Swisher

So like, you remember, like there was all those stories about, this thing didn't just come out of nowhere, the culture of that company. Some people change. I have to say, Steve Ballmer couldn't be more delightful now. And he used to scream at me. Like people change both directions.

0

1287.151 - 1294.283 Tim Miller

He's yelling about the Clippers. I understand that. I just think maybe we're built different. Maybe this is why I'm not going to be a trillionaire ever.

0

1294.303 - 1294.844 Kara Swisher

Yeah, you're not.

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1294.864 - 1312.187 Tim Miller

But like the idea that there would ever be a situation where in order to get an extra hundred billion, I would have to call a moron bigot like this really smart guy. I'd have to flatter somebody to get money when I already have the most fuck you money in history. I can't wrap my brain about it. It's not in my makeup.

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1312.708 - 1328.125 Kara Swisher

It's the expression is, why do you fuck you money if you don't say fuck you, right? But I think he likes him. I think he admires him. They like him, each other. I think you might be thinking they're quietly going home and going, what an asshole. I don't think they do that. I think they don't think they're an asshole. I think they like it.

1328.145 - 1328.906 Tim Miller

Jeff thinks he's nailing it.

1329.387 - 1329.587 Kara Swisher

Yeah.

1329.667 - 1329.767

Yeah.

1330.287 - 1352.007 Tim Miller

Boy, that's tough to sit on. On their concerns about backlash and their victim culture, there's this interesting parallel right now between what AIPAC is doing and the two biggest groups throwing all these money into these primaries is AIPAC and their allies, pro-Israel Americans. Sure. And then tech broadly, AI, crypto, etc. And they're both playing huge in primaries. They are.

Chapter 7: What are the risks associated with injectable peptides for longevity?

1409.532 - 1431.22 Kara Swisher

And, you know, he's building this data center that is clearly people of the area don't like. So instead of just acknowledging that maybe people don't like it, real people, he's got to blame what George Soros or a group of secret money people that are funding all this or it's the damn media who concocting a story. People love it here. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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1431.2 - 1455.673 Kara Swisher

To me, every accusation is a confession with these people. They do that, so they assume everyone else does. And so what if there's a confabulation of organizations that are trying to stop it? Big deal. There's also real people who care about these things in these areas. When they use the money, it's fine. When others use the money... It's conspiracy. It's up to something, left-wing craziness.

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1455.713 - 1474.133 Kara Swisher

They're so violent. And when, in fact, it's them, they're talking about themselves and doing a lot of tell on themselves. And so Andreessen was like, concerning. Like, if you're so fucking concerned, why did you put together a $100 million AI fund? You're not concerned. You're concerned that they might fight back is what you're concerned about.

0

1474.332 - 1481.4 Tim Miller

Where do you think the balance of power is on that? I guess as far as like their money versus the blowback and the blowback that's coming up for them is pretty real.

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1482.001 - 1500.942 Kara Swisher

I've never seen people turn into movie villains faster, right? They're literally a different Bond villain. Each of them is a different version. Or if you happen to watch Paw Patrol, all the various villains are the Spider-Man villains, right? I'm like, oh, look, it's the green, whatever, whatever. I don't watch it closely enough. My kids do, but.

1501.142 - 1502.263 Tim Miller

I'm a no on Paw Patrol.

1502.243 - 1520.767 Kara Swisher

Yeah, I agree. I call it copaganda, but my kids love it. I don't know what to say. I have no ability to fight Paw Patrol at this moment. It's stupid and copaganda. You know what they do on Paw Patrol? They make their own messes and then they clean them up and then they celebrate themselves for it. And I'm like, you made the mess. You cleaned it up.

1520.787 - 1521.788 Tim Miller

It's better than nothing.

1521.768 - 1545.738 Kara Swisher

Watch it, right. So I think one of the things that they wanna do is like ruin their reputations. And you see it in polling, AI polling is really devastating. You see kids yelling at speakers at graduations. And that's not a small trend is kids really are rejecting this stuff. And so are regular people. They don't like this and they have an uncomfortable feeling about what's coming.

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