So welcome to the bubble. This is Andy. Slavitt and Zach. We have a great many episode for you today Kara Swisher. If you don't know her she was the founder of recode which is a premier digital Tech business kind of political observation publication. It's now part of vocs. She is the co-host of an award-winning podcast herself.
Called pivot. She's an editor at large in New York Magazine reason we're having her on is because technology is such a interesting interplay with so much of what is happening in response to the coronavirus. How did the tech companies fit in what's going to happen in the next period of time if we are not able to get back to our normal lives quite as much as we hope can technology play a role she is
Incredibly thoughtful and I want you to stay for the end because her last 5 minutes are some of the best five minutes on our society and our behavior that I think I've heard in a long long time, and I think it's great. So, let's bring up Cara.
Late to our own event. So sorry no problem. Thanks for coming on so you become a quite a respected voice. If not, one of the most important voices and helping us understand the interplay of technology and politics so great to have you join us and I can't think of anybody less trusted then the federal government except maybe the big tech companies. So now we have a panda.
Like where trust becomes the essential ingredient to Public Health help us understand your big overview shot of how the tech companies trust government are playing a role here.
Well government should always be trusted when it comes to a pandemic. This is an unusual situation where the government is been incompetent to the task and almost willingly so willingly not leading this. It's not been LED on a federal level there now of course starting to scratch
Amble the Jets because they realize their poles are off and everything is done with a political calculation in mind or stock market calculation versus help Public Health, which is I think most governments whatever side they whether they're Republican or Democrat tend to rise to occasions when there's Wars when there's pandemics. This one has not and so trust the government is something that you know, you would normally have in your normally assume the government would be on it on testing on accurate information and they've done things like leave it to States.
States of which have done a good job. In other states have not. I'm looking thinking about Florida right now where the the person who was in charge of the data had to was fired for wanting to do correct data and she started her own her own service. So it's a really unusual situation when it comes to government and pandemics. I think most people tend to believe the government when it comes to issues like this. Maybe not a lot of other things but you know, it's been many years of the sort of wearing down the role of the Federal Government under the truck.
In so, you know, we can't turn to them. And so then you have tech companies who aren't really responsible for public health. This is like, they're not the same way. They're not responsible for public dialogue because they don't because they have a profit motive and so and their private companies and their own by very wealthy people. And so there's a lot of the tech can do to help but it always also has to be in cooperation with government and and government entities to do so, you can't really have Tech take over here and then you have at the same time a Time.
When Tech is under much more scrutiny than ever before because of things it's done before the pandemic and so in an area where they can help us like the pandemic they should be able to rise to the occasion and and they certainly can and certain ways they have in other ways. They haven't they've been better on the on the bad information for sure, but they haven't been as you know, they thought their role to be leaders here. I think so, it's unfair to make them that way.
Yeah, so we have this voice.
Void that you speak of and whether we like it or not or For Better or Worse, we've got a large part of the market cap of the stock market in these sort of handful of very powerful companies and you know part and parcel with that. Of course, you can have an argument about our that what responsibility do they have responsibility don't they have but they have a lot of cash access resources and means like for example when I couldn't get something early on in this pandemic out happening from the government. I called Google because
I felt like they could be helpful. Yeah, I mean, what do you do? You see that happening? Do you see them playing these kinds of roles? What kind of responsibility do they have here?
They don't have any they don't have any responsibility in this case. This is a gutful for government. This is a role for government place. You can't give responsibility to billionaire owned companies that have a profit incentive to do things now, they might do it because they want to and these companies are powerful as nation-states. Some of them are
it's worth as much as Nations. I think Amazon's worth as much as Norway. There's some like I forget maybe Jeff just Jeff Bezos, but you know, they have a responsibility as corporate citizens as most corporate citizens do is all companies do but they certainly shouldn't be relied on to be anything but what they are which is in their own interest and their shareholders interest. And so I think it's a mistake to rely on them to do anything except what's going to be good for them and maybe we'll get a nice thing out of them like a like a
Bunch of money and individually, I think it's great. If they contribute like Reed Hastings giving a hundred twenty million dollars to historically black colleges and universities and that's great. That's great. I think some of these donations are great. But again, that should be aside from what these companies can do to help. But again, they have to work in concert with publicly elected officials because none of these companies were publicly elected and whether you like your public elected officials or not. That's something you have to do it with about bucks. Nobody at these tech companies.
Is accountable for anything nor should they be their private companies? I think in the past there have been public private Partnerships created that have been very effective in this particular Administration. They've been mostly should window dressing and you know this remember that I don't know if you remember that testing PR thing, it didn't happen. It didn't have Walmart. They dragged the poor CEO of Walmart up there without without a mask shaking hands all over the place, which is just like all the messages. You don't want to send so real public-private Partnerships.
Be very effective and once they're brought into place in the even the Google one the one about Google creating a website. It wasn't even existing. I mean, it's is all just smoke and mirrors. So we need to begin with a federal government that really does understand its responsibility to the people that elected it which is why we pay taxes
presumably right in the states can become better Partners, but you're talking about should and I think we have a void and so the question is I think to some extent how to people fill those voids, you know.
And I agree with you. I don't think the public looks to the tech companies but I do think we unknowingly rely on them and use them every day for a lot of these
things. Well, I rely on my grocery store, but I don't expect it to solve the pandemic. Like, I'm sorry. I don't expect mayor can express the solve the pandemic. I like my American Express card think of it that way. It's not their job.
Yeah. I don't I don't think anybody has that expectation of the tech companies, but I think the tech companies at least the ones that I've talked to sit around and say
Okay, we don't have great reputations with American public for a variety of reasons. We have a lot of assets what can and you know, I think they're problem solvers to boot. I mean, yeah, probably more than anything these people see problems and say, you know, we're good at solving problems. We've got reach you've got access. What can we do here and some of them have the luxury of saying we can do some things and figure out the profit later if they're heading Us in the right direction.
Well, are they good at solving problems? I don't think they're that good at solving problems. Some of them are
They're good at solving their problems, you know, you can look at what's happened with social media. They've installed they the minute they have a problem. They say it's really hard. Otherwise, they're very very smart. You know what I mean? Like when it gets to the hard part, which is figuring out things like how to conduct social media or you know, does Robin Hood app or a kid committed suicide, you know, they're real good at raising money in the real good about doing other things, but when there's an actual problem, it's really hard. And of course it is because these are massive societal problems that I think the issue we have with a lot of these companies is they don't
Stand the consequences of their actions and this has been going on, you know, like the videos that were used with the killers in the murder in New Zealand. They should have anticipated that and they didn't they just put out the product. That's what Silicon Valley does is good at releasing product without thinking about the repercussions of those products or the possible consequences because that's a bummer to think about that some major things that you make could have negative consequences.
back with our guest after the break
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We're
seeing a lot of startups also in this space kind of healthcare Tech startups that are looking at how they build a business in meeting. Some of the needs that aren't whether it's you know surveillance intelligence around, you know, digital fever apps or whether it's contact tracing. Do you think there's promising areas where some of the newer ideas can be filled that way?
Some of it, you know, there's some interesting stuff around say these the things you wear the watches of the Rings you wear with, you know, collecting information as long as it's done with great privacy, you know, in terms of anonymizing the information contact tracing by the way has gone on for decades like for decades and decades and decades and you know paper works just fine in contact tracing. I think there are ways to do it faster it did. There's no like Silver Bullet that technology brings to the situation. I think it's just that that it could be done faster and
Riot although contact tracing is tough. You can see some recent stories that people don't want to be contacted and a lot of was about contact tracing is really good people who are doing it who are actually getting there getting in there and getting the information properly so it could help with technology sure, but it doesn't it doesn't mean that technology is the only solution here some of the other things certainly people there's some self-reporting apps. How do you feel there's some ways to look at how people at what questions people are asking on Twitter. There's really interesting.
Project going on around climate change where they were studying when people are asking. Hey the weather's too hot today. Here's this there's all kinds of ways to do it. It's just not a silver bullet for actual on-the-ground data collection that needs to be done so that we get the right data out. I think one of the problems is relying too much on technology will make us feel that we know what's going on when we actually don't necessarily we have to combine it with human intervention and human activity that will balance it out for sure nothing wrong with it.
Probably
helps I completely agree with you. If you think about a kind of a prolonged period of time where we're just not able to do certain things for example attend large events in stadiums travel to a certain extent or maybe some of us will be able to travel and some of us it'll be too much of a risk to travel go to church, you know, it's a big part of a lot of people's lives but they're being told is it's risky if they're older or what have you and I know that like going to
Average day like I mean I will get calls from like a Broadway Theater trying to figure out how whether they can come back and spend some time talking to sports leagues by what they need to do are these kinds of problems the kinds of things that Tech can be good at solving?
Well, yeah, maybe they could be good at you know, they definitely you a lot of stuff that we've already sort of gone down that Highway its accelerating trends that were already happening like think about the trends you were already sort of using Amazon now, you're really using Amazon.
You're already sort of using Zoom meetings and slack and things like that. Now you're really using them. You can't replace some analog things like a concert, but you could have a version of it. It's just not the same thing. Same thing with a well you really can't do a bar. Can you people have been doing the zoom cocktails, but it's not the same thing. And so the question is, what does this if you look at every business, what does it accelerate where the businesses were going to be 10 years from now? I think that's what we're doing. We're like, I always thought that retail was in real trouble and I think many people were seeing
Seeing the writing on the wall. It's just now really really in trouble and that was happening anyway, and so what's really interesting to me is the education stuff, which is really bad. I mean if anyone who has a kid knows them going to school online has been terrible experience and is it because the the technology is bad? Yes. Is it because they don't know how to quite engage kids. Yes, is it because of this and so there's an opportunity there to create a good experience, although I think there's it's really hard to get in the way of real teaching and person.
To make it as good as that but you know, so I think just what you're seeing is an acceleration of trends that were already occurring becoming more accelerated with covid. I don't think people are not not going to travel some day. They will when this is over they'll be a vaccine and people will travel again people will go to bars again people go to restaurants, but the businesses of these things are going to be affected in really important ways. How does that of on what happens to Airlines? What happens to restaurants? What happens to in the in the period and
the time frame and so you have to either decide is a company going to be affected overall in a real structural way or they going to be affected in a cyclical way. It's a very long and ugly cycle, but it's still a cycle and that's what you have to sort out.
I think one value proposition that I think most companies are going to have to add to their existing value propositions is making people feel safe. Yes, so you come work in my call center. I make sure that you feel safe. You come to my clinic youth
I am I airplane and some of it is going to be important perceptions and a lot of it is going to be real reality. So if I go to a restaurant and my more likely to go to one where if I as I walk in it reads my temperature and asked me three simple questions or my more likely to go to the restaurant that doesn't sure but those are the kinds of things that companies that have I would say a workflow mentality kind of job.
ABS problem-solving mentality, which Silicon Valley is probably can play a
role many many people need to be physically at a job. And so that's the people we have to protect a lot of stuff cannot be replicated anywhere but in a physical space And so there's been really creative stuff around. I've seen a lot of stuff just in supermarkets and offices and restaurants DC is now opening up and they have some very good ideas of what to do and it certainly you know, as long as you're a creep. I don't think you have to be a
Company to understand, you know every I've seen so much creativity from all kinds of companies in this idea. And I think it's just people being very clear that we have that they have to get people like look at what happened with AMC theaters that idiot. CEO initially said, I don't want to get political and then he's like, oh we talked to doctors maybe I mean that was an insane remark that he made there's nothing political about public health there. Isn't there just really there is but there it has become that but there
isn't it seems like you didn't quite succeed.
Did he
know he pulled back because most people said what if you're an idiot, you saw a different response from someone like Alamo Drafthouse, which of course is a very creative new movie going experience. They had a very good response to it. Like they had a really smart creative Innovative response to it was that that which is either they're going to do separation. They were going to do all these different things wearing masks they were do you know what I mean? And they weren't good at they work arguing whether their customers were going to wear them rather like you're wearing a more you're not watching the movie.
You can
take them off when you eat but as long as you're six feet away from people, then you put them right back on like it's fine like or don't come to our movies are you know what I mean? Like this is the rules of the road and I think what's hard is that people are giving into incredibly selfish people, you know, it's not give me liberty or give me give me my no Liberty from wearing a mask and give me death. It's ridiculous. I mean they look so stupid like Patrick Henry must be like spinning in his grave, you know, 20 times over over dumb people want more.
Yes, but we've got to get back to this idea that we can be Innovative and dealing with this and we can cope with it and we can also cope with it for a very short amount of time and it's not even though it feels like a long time. It's not that long. I'm out of time and it will save lives and so we have to get that idea of civic duty and civic pride and I think we've lost quite a bit of that if we had it in the first place, but I think we did look at Germany their smartphone app that helps trays coronavirus infections, and it was downloaded 6.5 million times in the first
Hours, it's not as much of the population as you need but it's a good start. It's like 10% of the population. So you want to have a copulation that understands that it's in their economic interest to do this to its you're in your civic interest your economic interest your social
interest in our country. Unfortunately, you have to help people understand why it's in their economic interest in other countries and they in many other countries helping people understand what's good for society is enough. And now I think we have a culture that as you said is not just
I'm here for my freedom and I distrust government. I distrust think big but it's also I want it now and I want every brand of it. I could have down that's what I'm used to having. And so helping someone understand an adjustment. Even if it's a short term adjustment require someone to walk people through it to empathize to understand that these are changes that we got to take people through.
Yes. Absolutely 100% I mean, I do think that again, I don't want to just bang on about tech but they do have they could do a lot of good
things. Would you like to see him?
I think
right now it's hard because the government the federal government is not got his act together. So it's really hard to know. I suppose pick out really good States and work with them and give proof of concept kind of stuff is what I would do if I were them there's certain States Ohio that are run, you know bipartisan pick like States like Massachusetts run by a republican Ohio run by Republican pick, Illinois and California and you know some other state New York that you can really work with and make a make a case study.
Be in those things. I think they were doing that. But that's what I would do. If you can't get your cooperation for the federal government, the federal government politicizes every little thing and you have President saying it's going to go away you don't deal with them you deal with you know, where it will work and then the other states could will look upon that and eventually hopefully not commit suicide. You know what I mean? Not allow their citizens to commit suicide which is really what those governors are doing.
All right time for your 22nd hand wash. We'll be right back.
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you know, I think one of the questions I just want to close with it's a little bit more on a personal reflection front which is there's this sort of notion now of coronavirus fatigue and people feeling like okay I've been able to do this for so long and I can make some adjustments but I didn't really prepare to do this forever plus, you know, I the things I've observed aren't exactly the way things told me they would be you paint a little bit of a
Sure of how you have reacted initially made adjustments to the pandemic and then how you feel that changing what you feel like I'm ready to take risks on this. So I'm ready to let up on that or that sort of thing.
I'm not and not but I'm not a giant big baby. Look I want to go out. I want to go to restaurants. I literally want to see Top Gun 2. I do I really do not an AMC theaters by the way, but but
But you know, I really do want to do these things. But this is a by the virus doesn't care doesn't care that you want to see a movie the virus does there's just keeps on going and it doesn't care how you feel about this thing. It doesn't care that you're impatient. It doesn't care of anything. It just wants to keep going and it will keep going and so you can make whatever ridiculous justifications you want it will get you if it wants to it. If you put yourself In Harm's Way, and you may have a different reaction to the virus than other people you may do. Okay you may not but you certainly will put other people at risk if
Not careful, and I think if that should that didn't stop you cold. Then you're I don't know what you who you are as a person. If you're not worried about your parents, you know, if you're not worried about people who have immune deficiencies, if you're not worried about those who have cancer there's something wrong with you. And so I don't know what to tell you about that. You should seek, you know seek religious or psychological help go right ahead. But but the fact that matters you're not going to get out of it. You can do certain things like go to stores. Yes. I've gone to store as I buy things I get in and out, you know.
Try to minimize the things it's not the way we want to live our lives, but it's the way that will get us back to regularity sooner but nothing's really going to happen until they get a vaccine. Let's be honest, right? You can't like this is only mitigation. And and of course they're getting into mitigation techniques around that just like with you remember with AIDS. There was a really terrible period where a lot of people are just dying and then they figured out how to treat it and I think that's sort of living it was called live eventually called living with AIDS. Well, this is living with coronavirus. It doesn't mean
Secured it means we've figured out mitigation techniques how to get the treatment down what we did wrong when we were treating and that's that's part of a discovery thing of medicine medical people and I really am admiration of how quickly they've sort of begun to understand what works and doesn't I was just astonished that they keep doing this given all the pressures that are on them, but I think you just have to say to yourself. Look most people many people are in a position of luck that they can Shield themselves from this they can be online they can work from home.
A lot of people aren't and you have to start thinking of those people. They are not we call them essential workers and Nicole Hannah Jones in a podcast with me called them sacrificial workers. They're not your sacrificial workers. You know what I mean? And so anything to do to make the people in the grocery store or someone pump the in a gas station or someone that has to be at a hospital or someone that has to help the homeless anything to help them. I think you can take a moment and not have to go to a bar and drink you don't have to do that.
And I know you're there sort of like I'll do what I want, but that's not how Society works. It's how you know, the very worst chat groups on Reddit work. I can say whatever I want but you really can't you really can't you can but you can't and it depends on what kind of person you want to be. So I really want to get out but I can have self-control because I'm an adult and so you have to really have to think about that and it's the same thing with these tech companies. They've got a really start to find out where they aid society and where they
Don't help society. And that's that to me is the trade-off that you have and you can also say I'll finish with this you can say it sucks and you can say this is you can grieve about it. Like I was thinking my son this weekend so one he was graduating high school. This is not a big deal. It's a little thing missed his high school graduation. He had to do a drive-through. He was so sunny and happy during it like he just had the attitude. Okay, this is what it is. He took it for the best he could and then this weekend he did a little prom for him and his girlfriend put up some lights some crepe paper.
They did a prom. You know, look this is a small thing in the long life that he gets a disappointment doesn't get to go to a senior prom. Oh, well, he's a lucky kid. Otherwise the white can't America some money. He's not going to things are not going to go badly for my son most likely but this was a small thing that he just did and he didn't whine about it and he didn't like stamp his feet and he didn't feel the need to suck the oxygen out of other people's lives to do it. He just dealt with it. He made the best of it. He had his adorable prom.
Fine and I think a lot of people can do that. What can they do to make it better for someone else? What can they do to make it better for themselves? And I think people can if they try real hard they can figure out a way to be a better Citizen and I think that's really the lesson here is how can we be better citizens to each other not just offline, but online how can we be nicer to people in line? How can we facilitate actual change and not just hashtag of ism, you know, and that's what people should be thinking about right now. This is an opportunity to really think
About what you can do to impact the world in substantive ways. Thank you. That's my TED Talk me welcome to my tip top.
I think everybody should listen to those last five minutes and I'm going to go back and listen to me because I think those are things that needed to be said quite frankly. And you said I'm with the kind of authority that they need to be said with.
Well I learned from my son. My son teaches me a lot of things. I'll tell you that that's a great way
does well good for you for listening to your son. I'd do the same with mine.
I try to well, thanks so much Cara for joining us and it was really really really nice to hear you.
All right. Thanks a lot.
Oh my God, that was about the best five minutes of schooling. I think I remember hearing her long time. I'm gonna play that over and over again. Gera is amazing. She's a hero. So awesome having her on and I'm so glad we got to that last bit. So we got another
Sewed coming up on Wednesday as we usually do this time. It's Larry brilliant the scientists who carried smallpox who is going to tell us everything. We know everything. We need to know everything. We don't know about coronavirus. He is awesome. And I think you're going to love that show we bumped him from last week in order to run Bernie Sanders, but I think you're going to be thrilled with this one. Have a great day and over and out.
Thanks for listening to in the bubble. Hope you write us highly we're production of lemon out of media. Chrissy peas is our producer Ivan. Korea have is their editor Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie widows wax executive produced the show and run our lives. My son Zack slavit is my cool co-host and on-site producer music is by Dan Malad and Oliver Hill. You can find out more about our show on social media at lemon out of media and you could find me.
Me at a slavit on Twitter or at Andy slavitt on Instagram if you like what you heard today, please tell your friends to come listen, but tell him at a distance and for now stay safe share some joy, and we will get through this together and hash tag. Stay home.
