285. Can Europe escape American tech dependency?
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Why did Nick Clegg leave Meta and what are his thoughts on Silicon Valley?
Where is the intellectual energy from the left and the centre-left? If you keep miscasting the past, you don't have the intellectual wherewithal to ask what you need to do next, which is why they're now governing in this haphazard way. They've replaced policy with sanctimony. And if you replace policy with sanctimony, you don't produce better policy. This is where we're stuck at the moment. And I led a centre-left party for eight years. And the whole of Silicon Valley, not just Mark Zuckerberg, but all that you saw in the inauguration, have decided to, rather than shun politics, have decided to embrace at least MAGA politics for a whole bunch of reasons. The single biggest thing that drives their behaviour is competition with each other.
And remember, the Brexit wars were basically a battle. It was a triumph of nostalgia over a claim of the future.
The economy was growing again. We were looking more competitive as a nation. And then we voted to leave the European Union.
We're delighted to say that this year the rest is money is powered by Octopus Energy. So we're joined by its founder and CEO, Greg Jackson. Hiya, Greg. You travelled with Prime Minister Keir Starmer on his latest trip to China. Why?
There's a lot of people who quite rightly think we're naive. if we don't understand the threats we face from China. But it's equally naive not to understand that Chinese technologies can now transform so many industries. And if we don't understand what they're doing and find ways to work with them, we're going to get left behind. Look, the reality is it used to be about China stealing our secrets. But now their own investment in technologies means that solar panels are 400 times cheaper than they were 40 years ago. Batteries for electric cars are 10 times cheaper than they were 12 years ago. If we can find ways to work with this, we can bring costs down for British people. And that's got to be a good thing.
Greg, thank you very much. Now on with today's episode.
Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Money with me, Robert Peston. Today, I'm delighted to be joined here at the South by Southwest Tech Conference in trendy East London. I'm joined by the former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, also the former, I don't know whether he's the right hand or left hand person of Mark Zuckerberg at Meta. And we've had the most... gripping conversation about why he left Meta. I think he was slightly more revealing about the circumstances and what he really thinks about Silicon Valley than I might have anticipated. But then the meat of what we talked about was this AI industrial and social revolution that we're living through and whether the UK and Europe can compete, whether it's too late and how important it is to create tech champions in the UK and Europe if we're going to get our living standards up.
How is competition among tech companies influencing their behavior?
So an absolutely fascinating conversation. Here's my conversation with Nick Clegg. Former deputy prime minister, former leader of the Lib Dems. I mean, people describe you, I don't know if it's quite right, as a sort of number two meta left as Trump was taking power. It's weird that Zuckerberg moves into Trumpian mode. Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg leaves the company. As you say, yeah. Can't believe the events were connected.
No, of course they were. I mean, so when I arrived in Silicon Valley, so Miriam and myself and our three boys, we moved, physically moved there in the autumn of 2018. It was a completely different time. Silicon Valley was still quite sort of, Quite sort of happy, clappy, bit hippy, dippy, you know, very much left leaning for sure, for better or for worse. But crucially, social media was a social thing. It was like about human beings. Fast forward to now and the whole of Silicon Valley, not just Mark Zuckerberg, but all of you saw that in the inauguration, have decided to, rather than shun politics, which is what they did for a long time, in my view, They've decided to embrace at least MAGA politics for a whole bunch of reasons, some no doubt high minded and some more self-interested.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Why did Nick Clegg leave Meta and what are his thoughts on Silicon Valley?
0:00–3:10
2
How is competition among tech companies influencing their behavior?
3:10–13:25
3
How does the dependency on American technology affect Europe?
13:25–14:33
4
What challenges does the UK face in the AI race against the US and China?
14:33–39:22
Speakers
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