Galloway, Kisin & Priestley: Why the West chose decline

1. 0:00 – 2:20

   Intro

   1. SBSteven Bartlett0:00

      The world is absolutely crazy right now. This is one of the most interesting moments of social, cultural, and economic transition that I have ever seen. So I wanted to do something that I've never done before. I called upon three of the leading voices on the social, cultural, business and economic issues, to give their unfiltered, uncensored points of view, so that we can all make sense of all of this craziness happening before our eyes. They don't always agree on much, but today they thrash it out to see if they can agree on something. We go through the economy, Trump, Elon Musk, EEI, censorship, wokism, and why so many men are struggling. Why are tens of thousands of millionaires running away from the UK? The terrifying truth and opportunity in AI. And I ask all of them, what is the most important thing in 2025 that nobody is talking about? With the aim of reaching clarity, agreement, and having a laugh in the process. This is the episode you probably didn't know you needed. This has always blown my mind a little bit, 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to this show. So could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like this show and you like what we do here and you wanna support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is, if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much. You guys are three of the best commentators, the most articulate people I know, that also have the most interesting broad experience, and also, I think, political background. So I wanted to talk to you about everything that's going on in the world, and I wanted to ask you guys some of the dumb questions that I ponder alone with myself and with my dumb friends in my WhatsApp group. It feels to me that the world is at a real moment of transition in many regards, so like social transition, cultural transition, economic transition, and I think the US has been a catalyst for all of that, so that's why I wanted to have this conversation today. We've got an American here, Scott. I think Scott's the only American here. Um, we've got Konstantin, we've got Daniel, who are two Brits but spend a lot of time between America as well. And so I, I wanna come to Scott first and ask Scott a question, which is a very big broad question,

2. 2:20 – 5:05

   What's the Big Picture as It Relates to This Election?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:20

      which is, from your perspective, Scott, you know, when I talk about this feeling of transition that seems to be like almost inside my chest, that we're at a really historic moment, what is your analysis on this? What is the big picture here? What, what, wha- what's happened over the last three, four, five, six, seven months, and how is that gonna impact all of us around the world?

   2. SGScott Galloway2:40

      Well, if you, if you think of the US as setting, setting the tone economically and maybe even culturally for the West, there's definitely a reversion away from, people feel that, quote unquote, "wokeism", and I don't like to use that word but I'll use it here, was this sort of over-correction to systemic racism, and then it began to cause more damage than it was, um, or cause more problems than it was solving. And I think there's been a serious kind of lurch back, if you will, whether it's executive actions declaring the border a state of emergency, you know, stuff around saying that gender is a thing, there's male and female, uh, and most of these issues the actually American public supports. I would say on a more cynical level, America used to be a platform for prosperity, the protection of civil rights, the projection of women's rights and power and democracy abroad. And I would argue that it s- it feels like a pretty quick transition to almost like a, you know, I call it a kleptocracy, but America's become a platform for, um, acquiring wealth and then leveraging that wealth, uh, as a means or a proxy of power. And the ultimate example of that was the launch of two meme coins, the Trump coin and the Melania coin, the day before the presidency, such that this conversation could have already or might happen this week, and I'll finish here. "President Trump, it's Vlad. Uh, we're thinking about stabilizing our currency or trying to stem the outflows of our, of our reserves, so we're thinking about pulsing in about 600 billion rubles into the Trump coin, which, based on my economist estimation, would take the value of it to a $20 or $30 billion market cap, making you one of the wealthiest men in the world, Mr. Trump. And none of this would be disclosable or transparent. Also, in unrelated s- news, we'd really appreciate you seizing arm shipments to Ukraine." So, I, I think we've gone kind of full kleptocracy, is the way I would, I would describe it.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett4:47

      Are you optimistic, Scott?

   4. SGScott Galloway4:49

      Oh, I'm a glass half empty kinda guy.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett4:51

      (laughs)

   6. SGScott Galloway4:51

      I don't, I, I don't know if I'm just getting older, but no, I don't, I don't see a man convicted of sexual abuse or found liable who inspired an insurrection retaking the White House as a point of light for the American experience.

3. 5:05 – 9:19

   The Things Trump Is Promising Are Things That Should Happen

   1. SGScott Galloway5:06

   2. SBSteven Bartlett5:06

      Konstantin? I-

   3. KKKonstantin Kisin5:08

      Yes.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett5:08

      ... I suspect you have a slightly different view on all of the above. How are you feeling about everything that happened yesterday? Did you watch the o- inauguration? What is your big picture, 30,000 feet view?

   5. KKKonstantin Kisin5:19

      Yeah, I think it's incred- incredibly unwise to make, you know, bold predictions about what's gonna happen over the next six to seven months. I do think, uh, what America had at the election and what the election of Donald Trump represents is something that we in the UK don't have, which is choice. Uh, they had a very clear choice between two very different perspectives on the world, between two very different approaches, between two very different candidates. And ultimately, uh, criticisms of President Trump, uh, are necessary and legitimate. Of course they are. But at the end of the day, I, I believe, having spent quite a lot of time in America around election time and also just generally, and traveling around real America, not just in, you know, DC and, and LA and New York, um, the, the reason that he was elected was that...The American people are not prepared to accept what Europeans have decided they're prepared to accept, which is managed decline. The American people do not want their country to become weaker, they do not want it to become poorer, they do not want to impoverish their fellow citizens through net zero. What they want is their country to be great, their country to be powerful, their country to be influential. Um, the economic realities for most Americans are not really reflected in the figures that we are told. So when people talk about inflation, um, the reality of people's lives on the ground is that their cost of living has gone up very, very significantly over the last few years. Um, and that's not always reflected directly in the, in the overall inflation figure the way it's shown because certain things are much more influential in people's lives than others. Um, and so, uh, whether the decision to elect President Trump ends up being, um, this positive, uh, thing for which the- there, there should be lots of optimism is a matter of, uh, the next four years. Are we going to see, um, a presidency that really does everything it promises? And by the way, you know, if you look at the things that Donald Trump is promising, uh, I think whether you're left or right, you have to acknowledge that they are things that are worth doing. Uh, having a secure border so that people don't come into your country illegally is a basic duty of government. Uh, economic prosperity is a basic duty of government. Uh, withdrawing America from, uh, a kind of simultaneously aggressive but weak posture around the world where America sort of says, "Yeah, yeah, we're gonna get involved in these foreign conflicts, but we're not actually gonna then practically help Ukraine win that war," is, is a kind of stupid position on both, whichever side you're on. Um, so on all of these things... And, and of course, you know, Scott mentioned wokeness. I think he's absolutely right that, that there is a massive backlash happening around the world because lots and lots of people who were completely apolitical, uh, until the last three or four years, or 10 years until 2016, just feel like the world has gone crazy and suddenly they're supposed to pretend that men can change sex and become women and now they're entitled to be in female prisons. And, you know, if your teenager says that they are the opposite sex, you're supposed to chop their breasts off, and all of this other stuff that ordinary people just look at and go, "This is crazy." Like, I am liberal but th- this isn't liberal. This is some kinda weird thing that's going on. And I see, I see the, the, the backlash against all of that all over the, the, the Western world, and I think Donald Trump signifies that, that people are fed up of that. And, uh, I have been warning for a very long time that if the, the, the woke left continues to exercise this level of influence on our public debate, the reaction will be the rise of the right, and, uh, Donald Trump is one of the most, uh, diplomatic and pleasant versions of what you're likely to get if the left keeps going crazy. We will see what challenges th- the world throws at him over the next four years and whether he's capable of responding

4. 9:19 – 13:33

   Has the Left Lost Its Way?

   1. KKKonstantin Kisin9:19

      to them.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett9:20

      Scott, has the left lost its way, in your view? And if so, how did that happen? And just to respond on some of Konstantin's points about Trump being the best of a sort of right-wing collective. Are we gonna see right-wing sort of ideology spread throughout the Western world over the coming years? What's your take on all of the above?

   3. SGScott Galloway9:39

      Um, you definitely... You know, we Democrats, we get it right and then we just go too damn far.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett9:46

      (laughs)

   5. SGScott Galloway9:46

      And, and so I, I look at... I'm a, I'm a professor on a campus. DEI, 60 years ago there were 12 Black people at Princeton, Yale and Harvard combined. That was a problem. Race-based affirmative action makes sense. This year, more than half of Harvard's freshman class identifies as non-white. But 70% of those non-whites come from dual-income homes in the upper quintile of income-earning homes. The academic gap between Black and white used to be double what it was between rich and poor. It's now flipped. So DEI was a good idea that, quite frankly, has gone insane and now just represents the same racism it was trying to, uh, do away with. So... And then we created two candidates who were the only candidates who could make t- make each other viable. Uh, Vice President Harris, given the hand she dealt with, did the best she did. I think President Biden should be buried in a crypt, an entitled narcissist who decided that it made sense for him to, to go back on his pledge to be a transition candidate and gave us a British-style election timing on the Democratic side without... In a, in a marketplace where you need time and money. Uh, so it was not... We did not have a great candidate. There is a, a, a, an understandable swing back from what is an over-correction around some of these issues. Um, you know, parents, we gave them a huge issue with transgender rights. There's a hundred... There's more padel players in California than transgender people, and yet the Democrats decided to conflate it with the civil rights movement and think that it was okay for a woman who, uh, transitioned, a transgender woman, to enter a bicycle race and finish five minutes before everybody else and then we all bark up the same tree and decide that it's inspiring. And parents all over the nation are saying, "What has..." You know, we've literally gone crazy. Where I would disagree a little bit with Konstantin is that America choosing economic growth and prosperity, there are 190 sovereign nations in the world, 189 would change places with America over the last four years. Uh, we hit 71 new record highs in the markets. 97% of all AI... We've created more market capitalization in a seven-mile radius of SFO International Airport than Europe's created in the last 20 years. We have the lowest inflation in the G7, we have the highest growth. We've grown 10% since 2020. That's triple the rate of Europe. Biden was unable to communicate any of that (laughs) effectively because there's this psychological dynamic that when your wages go up, you credit your own grit and character, and when the price of cereal goes up, you blame the president.... now, similar to the future or what, how William Gibson described the future, it's here, it's just not evenly distributed. Prosperity is unprecedented in the US over the last four years. It just wasn't e- it just wasn't evenly distributed. Now, having said that, in America, you can stop working in August and you've produced more and made more money than you have in Europe the whole year, and it has gotten better. It's got, it says things are less bad than anywhere in the world in the US. Biden was unable to communicate it, and then talking about how great the economy is when rents were skyrocketing, tuition was going up, it was an ineffective strategy. But I don't think it's fair to say Americans chose prosperity. We have prosperity. I would argue that, quite frankly, some of the Republican ideals around deficit spending, which are nothing but taxes on future generations pulled forward, I mean, we'll see how that works, but the, his signature policies, a clampdown on immigration, tariffs, um, these things are wildly inflationary. So, uh, Constantine's right, it's gonna be difficult. It's, you don't know what's gonna happen, but it feels to me, I would argue th- that my favorite appointment in the Trump administration in the adult in the room is the 10-year bond, which is gonna say, "Sorry, girlfriend," when, uh, I believe the president tries to implement some of these economic policies.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett13:32

      Constantine,

5. 13:33 – 17:15

   Did Trump Just Have a Better Marketing Campaign?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett13:33

      is that true? 'Cause what I heard there is that effectively Trump had a better marketing campaign, um, and that reality is somewhat different from what the Americans were sold in the, in the last election cycle.

   2. KKKonstantin Kisin13:45

      Well, politics is about marketing, uh, and Trump is the marketer-in-chief. He's very good at branding and selling ideas, and partly that's what politics is about. Uh, but in terms of the economy, I- I think that Scott is entirely right, it's one of the reasons I- I admire America so much, the sense of dynamism and economic growth and the desire to create things and build things. It's an observation I've had every time I've been there. You know, if you, if you have a successful restaurant in the UK, you go, "Well, I've got a successful restaurant." In America, if you have a successful restaurant, you open a second one and a third one-

   3. SBSteven Bartlett14:16

      (laughs)

   4. KKKonstantin Kisin14:16

      ... and you create a chain, right? So their attitude to business more broadly is- is f- is fantastic and I love it, but I think the difference is that I don't think Americans were comparing the American economy under Joe Biden to the European economies. They were comparing the American economy under Joe Biden to the American economy under Donald Trump in his first term, and also what they expect him to do for the future when they look at the fact that he's got real business leaders in government now, like Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, talking about government efficiency. We have to admit that all Western countries have a massively bloated civil service, what we call civil service in the UK and the administrative state in the US, that wastes a huge amount of money, uh, that produces very little in terms of output in many cases, and that needs to be slimmed down, and people, I think, are very excited about that. And when I talk to business leaders in America, including ones that were never on the Trump train, so to speak, so many of them went over to his side in this election cycle because they just felt that he was going to, uh, continue to accelerate American growth, uh, and continue to deliver prosperity for the American people. Now, Scott's point about tariffs and all of these other things, uh, you know, I- I- I am, uh, I've listened to Donald Trump enough now to know that you not necessarily, should not necessarily be taking him literally. Uh, I think many of the things he said, says our negotiation tactics and signaling. So when he says, "I'm going to build this or do that or do this," you have to sort of read between the lines. When he says, you know, "This will be the worst thing that..." He'd just go, he's saying to people, like, "You better work with me, otherwise this is gonna work out badly for you," on all of these things. Um, and so it remains to be seen whether he's successful in those tactics at getting what he wants. Look, America is always going to be an unequal society. It's designed in a way that is going to make it that way. In America, the focus is, how do we grow the pie? In Europe, the focus is, how do we divide it up so everyone gets their fair little share, right? So Americans are about expanding the pie, and then the people who m- b- bake the pie get as much of it as they possibly can. Um, but the question is, can there be a sense in America that the American dream is alive, that you do not have to work three gig economy jobs to pay your rent, that you're gonna be able to buy a house, that you're gonna be able to afford to have children, that you're going to be able to raise a family perhaps on a single income, something that most people only dream about nowadays? That's really what this whole economic conversation is about, and we will see over the next four years if Donald Trump is able to slightly even change the direction of travel towards those things that actually Americans of my generation and older used to take for granted as the promise of the country that they

6. 17:15 – 20:07

   Millionaires Are Leaving the UK

   1. KKKonstantin Kisin17:15

      live in.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett17:16

      I've- I've thought a lot about this over the last couple of weeks in particular because we're hearing these big headlines in national papers in the UK that millionaires are leaving the UK in historic numbers. I think it's 10,800 millionaires left last year, which is an increase of about 160% versus the previous year, and the general sentiment in terms of business confidence in the UK is at a- a several year low, so I think it's at the lowest it's been since j- just post-pandemic. Um, there's this, I think it's the Institute of Accountants, they call up a thousand accountants every year and they get, they run a survey to see how much confidence they have in business in this country, and it's fallen 14 points to 0.2% confidence, um, in terms of business. There's, but there's this bigger narrative emerging amongst my entrepreneurial friends that if you wanna start a business right now, the best place to be in the world is to be in America, is to get over to America and to leave the UK. Now, Dan, how does that square, I know you have an accelerator, you speak to lots of entrepreneurs, how does that e- sort of compare or contrast with what you're seeing?... at the moment?

   3. DPDaniel Priestly18:17

      Yeah, 100%. The value proposition for the UK has dropped through the floor. Uh, very, very high tax. The e- uh, the ecosystem of business is in decline. Some of the smartest people are now in Dubai. Um, uh, some incredible creators that I know have moved to Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai. Um, many are going to the USA. Um, so if people are interested in bigger markets and bigger opportunities, they're into the USA. If they're interested in lower tax and more, um, fringe opportunities, they're in the Middle East. Um, and, uh, essentially, you know, the UK hasn't found a place in the world. I think there are three business models the UK could go for, um, which is either the b- uh, the head office of Europe, which is what we were when we were inside the EU and everyone used to come here, uh, to build a European business. Um, we could be the back office of the USA, um, so the incubator for the USA. A lot of, a lot of smart companies, uh, get to their first 50 million of value here in the UK, and then sell to a US private equity firm or a US listed company. Um, and a lot of US companies are now actually coming here to poach talent or to outsource things to the UK, uh, ch- more cheaply than they could do it in the US. Um, the, the, the wages in the U- in the UK are through the floor compared to what you would pay in the US, especially, you know, in tech roles. So, very smart people in the UK are massively devalued. Um, and then the third option would be to be an independent, uh, tax haven and to go with the, uh, low crime, low tax, uh, model of Dubai, Singapore, uh, you know, those kind of options. So I, we haven't really picked one of those three yet. We're still, you know, all these years after Brexit and we haven't said which of those three models we wanna, uh, adopt.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett20:06

      Scott, you moved

7. 20:07 – 23:19

   Is the UK Still a Good Place for Business vs. the US?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett20:07

      here a couple of years ago to the UK. Um, and despite everything that's going on in the UK, are you still bullish on this being a place for entrepreneurship and business? Um, I- I was looking at some stats before we started this conversation around the sort of key areas of concern for me. Business stats, I've talked about there, the- the- the drop in business confidence, the entrepreneur exodus that we're seeing. But things like knife crime in the UK are up, um, 81% over the last decade, which I think is a symptom probably of something else. Um, and one of the big things I think a lot about as an entrepreneur at the moment is artificial intelligence. And our investment in artificial intelligence from a global perspective is, is down about 2,000% versus a country like America. So, you've moved here. You've brought your family here. Are you bullish on the UK versus the US from an entrepreneur's perspective?

   2. SGScott Galloway20:55

      So the, the, the question I get most frequently when I speak here is to compare and contrast the US with the UK, and I use a personal anecdote. My parents immigrated to the US from Glasgow and London when they were 19 and 22. They took enormous risks. I've been an entrepreneur my whole life. I like to think that's s- a lot of my success isn't my fault, that I inherited sort of that risk-taking DNA. And when I speak to people in the UK, I say, "The primary difference is you're the ones that stayed." And that is, it kinda comes down to a risk appetite. The US has five times per capita the number of entrepreneurs. It has five times the dollar volume per startup. There's $5 million in venture capital waiting to be deployed for every startup in the US versus 1 million in Europe. Eh, uh, I- I loved what Konstantin said about a restaurant. I went into this great little restaurant in Soho a few weeks ago called Dig In, and I loved it so much, I said... I left my card and said, "Can I have the owner? I'd like to fund the, the... I'd like to open another one. Does he need money?" Eh, I would never... I just would never do that here. (laughs) I thought that was a really interesting insight. And the, and the, the collision of risk, crazy ideas that occasionally become crazy genius, um, and technology and intellectual property and great universities results in a company that no one had heard of five years ago being worth more than the entire UK stock market, NVIDIA. So, there's just a, an enormous difference. The way I would summarize my impression of the UK economy, I'll, uh, I'll just say London. I have no experience in the, uh... I- I- I- I- I don't go anywhere that's not walking distance from Marylebone, so my bubble is pretty opaque. But the way I would describe the economy here is I love the term the butler economy, and that is all the money I see being made here is people servicing wealth created somewhere else. Uh, you're either in financial services servicing wi- rich people, you're either opening a restaurant or hospitality servicing pe- rich people, but I don't see a lot of organic wealth creation. I interviewed the two, quote-unquote, "inventors" of AI at one of your prestigious universities. And my first question is, "How the hell were you not able to make any money if you invented AI? Why haven't you been able to capture any money?" But just for your listeners, my summation of Europe versus the US after molesting the Earth for the last 35 years is US is still the best place to make money and Europe is still the best place to spend it.

8. 23:19 – 24:46

   Is the UK a Failing Nation?

   1. SGScott Galloway23:19

   2. SBSteven Bartlett23:19

      Is this a failing nation, Scott?

   3. SGScott Galloway23:22

      I think you have too much going for you to be described as a failing nation. You still have amazing universities. It's the second... London's still the second-best city in the world. Premier League, it's an unbelievable export. I know how ridiculous that sounds. People wanna be here. There's still rule of law, rule of play. You still produce amazing rock and roll. I just don't, I just don't see how you could say this is a failed... Uh, you know, I- I would argue that the second only to our entry into Iraq, the greatest self-inflicted wound was Brexit. Like, just, I- I... an American can't understand why you would decide to increase your prices while reducing productivity in one fell swoop. We ca- it's difficult for us to wrap our heads around some of the economic decisions the UK has made. But I think a, a lot of people are kind of betting or hoping that the UK begins to grow again. Uh, so I'm, I- I'm... in a weird way, I- I'm sort of, I would call myself cautiously optimistic about the UK. I think at some point, it registers, i- it begins to occupy the place it could, i- it should command, if you will.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett24:26

      Constantine, uh, I would ask the same question to you as well. Do you think the UK is a failing nation? And Scott described self-inflicted wounds there. I've heard you speak of self-inflicted wounds when you talk more broadly about the West and what the West needs to do to turn itself around. Um, and also just layer a third point on top of that, which is somewhat, um, linked to this, is Elon Musk has tak- taken

9. 24:46 – 26:02

   Elon Musk's Attack on the UK

   1. SBSteven Bartlett24:46

      a particular interest in the UK over the last month in particular, um, and he's started to describe it online, it seems, as a failing nation. What's your view?

   2. KKKonstantin Kisin24:56

      Well, I'm glad you asked me about Elon Musk, because the thing that I love most about the media having this massive meltdown about, "Oh no, these Americans are interfering in our political..." These are the same media commentators who are constantly banging on about American politics and saying, "Donald Trump needs to do this. You need to vote for this." Like, all of this stuff is ridiculous. The reality is, we download our culture, our politics, our music, almost everything from America, right? They... America has become what Britain used to be, which is the center of Western civilization. And my request and ask and begging of British people is, if we're going to download American culture and politics, let's at least take the good stuff instead of all this terrible woke shit that we downloaded from them, the DEI and all this other nonsense, and actually take the entrepreneurial spirit and all this oth- all these other things that are really great about America, the optimism, the positivity, the willingness to, to have a go, to take a risk as S- Scott, Scott was talking about. Um, so I, I wish we took more of that. And, and it speaks to your question about

10. 26:02 – 27:57

    The UK's Attitude Toward the Rich Is Wrong

    1. KKKonstantin Kisin26:02

       are we a failing nation? Look, uh, I think it's a s- deliberately inflammatory question, which I don't want to, uh, kind of actually accept it in, in that way. But what I think we should acknowledge is, are we trending up or are we trending down? And when you talk about over 10,000 millionaires have left, I hear that through a normal British person's ear, and I worry that there's quite a lot of British people who will hear that and say, "Oh good, all of these rich parasites have left." Because that's our attitude in the UK to a very large extent. We see wealthy people not as what they are, which is for the most part, not everybody, but for the most part, people who've created a tremendous amount of value for their fellow human beings, and as a result of that have been rewarded. We see them, because we, you know, we have this history of the landed gentry, and so to us, a millionaire is someone who has these ill-gotten gains that they don't deserve, right? That is not really the world we live in. When I talk to wealthy people in this country and pretty much everywhere else, for the most part, especially in the Western world, these are people who've created something that has fundamentally helped other human beings do something better, do something easier, buy products cheaper, whatever it is. That's who the successful people really are, and we just need an attitude shift. That's what we should be downloading from America. What we should be saying inside our heads is, "This person is successful because they've helped other people. Great, we want... How do we get more of those people into our country?" And I'm afraid I'm telling you something that you know better than anyone, Stephen. If you don't have entrepreneurs in your country creating businesses and creating jobs, the economy is gonna stagnate for the rest of eternity. We have to get smart, talented, driven people into our country instead of chasing

11. 27:57 – 31:02

    Is the British Attitude Holding Us Back From Our Potential?

    1. KKKonstantin Kisin27:57

       them out.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett27:58

       Dan, I know this is a subject that you're very passionate about, and, um, Constantine's articulated it really, really well.

    3. KKKonstantin Kisin28:03

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett28:03

       I've seen lots of your posts about this subject, Dan. What are you seeing? And is it true that the British attitude is a form of self-harm that's holding us back from our potential?

    5. DPDaniel Priestly28:14

       There, there are definitely attitudinal factors, but you'll also get the most incredibly entrepreneurial people here in London. London is a melting pot for creativity. You've got... Sitting in one city, you've got people who are phenomenal at media, finance, uh, technology, entertainment, politics, defense, like all of this... Like, if you take the best of LA and Washington and New York and Miami and kind of start moving it into one city, you know, you get elements of that in London. Um, it's a very diverse city from that point of view, and it creates an entrepreneurial melting pot. The issue is taxes. Um, nobody wants to pay 60% of their income in taxes. Uh, and as soon as you hit... You know, in, in the US, you don't hit the top tax rate until you are six times the average wage. Here in the UK, it's two and a half times. So as soon as you're two and a half times, uh, the average wage, you are, you're in real trouble. Um, there are so many people in the UK who deliberately hold their income at 50,000 pounds, because after 50,000 pounds, you get taxed 40% of your income. So people just give up and they say, "I'm not going..." I know some really smart, really talented people who could be earning a lot more and they refuse to pay the 40% rate, so they, like, keep everything small because they don't want to go from 20 to 40% at the 50 grand rate, which is crazy. Um, and I've employed people who have said, "Can I have a day off a week rather than going over that threshold?" Uh, so, uh, you know, that's, that's a huge issue, the tax issue. Um, the company rate tax is high. The, the corporate, uh, capital gains rate is tax- taxed very high. The VAT is high. The council tax is high. All of these additional taxes just keep piling up. Um, and then the other cost at the moment, if we want to have an AI economy, we need cheap electricity. One thing that Trump has committed to is, is really, really cheap energy. There is no such thing as a fast growth, high, you know, high octane economy that has expensive energy. Uh, cheap energy equals fast growth. Um, and we have the most expensive energy in the world. We can't run data centers here, uh, because the energy cost is gonna be too high. So if we want to have an AI-driven economy, you know, we can't do it with windmills and solar panels that have got frost all over them.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett30:31

       Scott, you look, um, like a lot of- a lot of thoughts are going through your head following those two comments. What are you thinking?

    7. SGScott Galloway30:36

       Well, with respect to energy, Trump issued an executive order calling it an energy crisis. Gasoline in the US on an inflation-adjusted basis is less expensive than it was 50 years ago. We are now the largest oil producer in the world. I would argue- I would argue that we have, um, a housing crisis and that the executive order should have been around that. Just going back to the US, and I'm curious of the same dynamics and whether Konstantin and Daniel

12. 31:02 – 37:04

    Young Men Are Struggling in America

    1. SGScott Galloway31:02

       agree with this, I believe this, the election in the US was supposed to be a referendum on women's rights. Women's rights did not show up. This was a referendum on young men, in my view. And that is, if you look at the two cohorts that swung most from blue to red versus 2020, two of the three cohorts, other than Latinos, was people under the age of 30, who in the US are 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago. People over the age of 70 are 72% wealthier. Our tax code is basically an attempt to shove money from the young to the old. And two, 45 to 64 year old women, who I would affectionately describe as their mother, and that is when your son's in the basement vaping and playing video games, and I think a lot about struggling young men, you don't give a flying fuck about territorial sovereignty in the Ukraine, or Ukraine, excuse me, or transgender rights. All you know is your kid isn't doing well and 210 times a day, your kid's getting a notification that somebody he knows is on a golf stream or partying in St. Barts and it's not him or her. And so we not only have young people not doing as well, this pornographic wealth is just shoved in their face and you end up with, uh, uh, in my opinion, uh, kind of a young, struggling young men. No group has fallen further faster in the world, I would argue, than young men in America. They are... If you go into a morgue in the United States and there's five people who've died by suicide, four of them are men. One in three men under the age of 30 has a girlfriend. Two in three women under the age of 30 has a boyfriend. Why? You think that's mathematically impossible? 'Cause women are dating older 'cause they want more economically and emotionally viable men. There's one in five men live at home at the age of 30. One in three under the age of 25. They're not having sex. They're more obese, they're more depressed. When women don't have a relationship, they oftentimes channel that energy into their professional lives. More women own s- single women owned homes in the US than single men. Women in urban areas under the age of 30 are making more money than men. When men don't have the guard rails of a relationship or a job or being in school, they pour that energy sometimes into unproductive things. Misogyny, nationalism or extreme nationalism, conspiracy theory. In some, they become really shitty citizens. They become sequestered from society. So I'm worried in the US, our biggest threat is a new species of asexual, asocial young men who are incredibly dangerous, have lost, have opted out of America. 60% of 30 year olds used to have one child in America, now it's 27%. So people, I think, in the US, and I'm- I am... It's a genuine question, I don't know if it's the same problem here, our tax policies have taken money from the young, stuffed them in the pockets of old people so nana and pop-pop can upgrade from Carnival to crystal cruises. Meanwhile, young people can't afford education, they can't afford housing. And we- we especially see this really acute emerging crisis among young men who are just opting out of America, who don't even wanna try and date, don't even wanna enroll in school, don't wanna even try and get a job, just stick in their basements and go on Reddit or Discord or why go try and shower or work out and get a relationship when you have YouPorn? Why get a job when you can trade stocks or crypto on Coinbase or Robinhood? I think this is, in my opinion, this is the most dangerous trend in America right now.

    2. KKKonstantin Kisin34:23

       It was almost like demonizing men for decades, uh, has consequences. Uh, I mean, this- (laughs) this is what's been happening. Men are the root of all evil, the root of all evil, the root of all evil. Every advert is about, you know, the woman is strong and capable, the guy is pathetic. Uh, in every movie, the woman's kicking ass and the- the man is pathetic. This has been going on for decades. It's a cultural thing as well as an economic thing. Um, and many of us have been saying that when you take meaning, uh, and opportunity away from men, if you create an education system that punishes boys for being boys, uh, if you create a society in which traditional masculine virtues become vices, uh, then you will create exactly the sort of thing that Scott is talking about. It's a terrible thing that has been done. Uh, having said that, my message is always the same to young men who, who I hope are listening, which is the answer to your problems is never going to be, as Scott says, porn and this and that. The answer to your problems is going to take responsibility, go out and get a job or create a business and- and actually make your life better. No one's coming to save you. No one's coming to help you. There is no, uh, you- you... The- the sort of programs that we have for women where we sort of go, "Well, you know, let's give them an opportunity here," no- none of that's happening for men. It's not going to happen because for evolutionary reasons, we just don't feel sorry for men the way that we do for women. That's the reality. I know it sucks, but the answer for men is gonna be the- the answer that's always been the answer for men, which is for you to get off the sofa, to get off the couch and go out and actually do and create and build and find your own way through it, even if you have to acknowledge that the society you live in has been conditioned for quite a long time to think that you're a piece of shit 'cause- 'cause you happen to have the genitalia that you do. Now-That, I th- I think is the harsh reality of it. And I think Scott is right to point this out as a problem, and I hope that we start to have, uh, both in terms of economic policy but in terms of also just the cultural conversations and the way we talk about these issues. We come back to something that human beings have known through the entire history of our species, which is men and women are both good and need to work together in order to thrive and succeed together, in order to have families, in order to have children. And in order for us to have healthy communities and healthy societies, you need healthy femininity and you need healthy masculinity, and they need to come to- together and work together. That's what we're supposed to do. And these stupid gender wars and this idea that men as a group are this and women as a group are that, all of that just needs to end.

13. 37:04 – 44:02

    The Rollback of Trump's DEI Measures

    1. KKKonstantin Kisin37:04

    2. SBSteven Bartlett37:04

       I was watching last night as Trump sat there signing all of those executive orders, and I also watched his inauguration speak where he said, "We will forge a society that is color-blind and merit-based." And he signed a bunch of executive orders last night to elimin- eliminate a variety of different DEI programs from the federal government, directing agencies to dismantle these practices within 60 days. And then over the last couple of months, we've seen Meta come out and dismantle and reverse some of their DEI programs. We've seen McDonald's, Walmart, Ford, Harley-Davidson, Boeing, Amazon, Toyota. It feels like there's a real shift happening in both how, you know, sort of, um, identity politics, but also in the sort of corporate environment that those identity po- politics have really emerged from. Are you supportive of Trump's move to roll back DEI measures?

    3. SGScott Galloway37:54

       So I- I think there's a lot of nuance here. I would argue that universities, we've, DEI is used as a giant misdirect from people such as myself who are enforcers of the caste system, and wake up every morning and look in the mirror and ask ourselves the same question, "How do I increase my compensation while decreasing my accountability?"

    4. SBSteven Bartlett38:11

       (laughs)

    5. KKKonstantin Kisin38:12

       (laughs)

    6. SGScott Galloway38:12

       And what I found is the ultimate strategy is to create an LVMH rejection as bullshit, elitist strategy, where Dartmouth sits on a endowment of $8 billion and lets in 500 kids. So th- the conversation around who gets in is a misdirection when the important question now is how many. If you are not growing your endowment or your freshman class faster than population, you should lose your tax-free status. We should be letting in more gay kids, more trans kids, more white Republicans from rural s- You know who doesn't talk about DEI? Junior colleges, 'cause there's no admissions. They don't have a problem with DEI. So I think DEI on campus has ended up eating its own tail, started out with the right idea, now it's nothing. And I would- I would argue the same is somewhat true of the Democratic Party. I went to the- the Democratic National Convention. On the dnc.org website, it lists 17 special interest groups and it says explicitly who we serve, Asian Pacific Islanders, seniors, veterans, Black Americans, the disabled. It basically lists, I added this up, 76% of the population. And when you see you're actively advocating for 76% of the population, you're not advocating for 76% of the population, you're discriminating against the 24%. It's gone too far. I would argue in the workplace, having served on seven public company boards, and I'm gonna do a lot of boasting here, 'cause I'm desperate for all of your affirmation, and 12 private company boards. There's still work to be done in the private sector. There still is a cycle, 40% of all venture capitalists and probably 70% or 80% of all venture capital deployed are white guys from just two universities, Stanford and Harvard. So I would argue universities, it's gotten out of control. I'd love to see the DEI apparatus disassembled, as- along with the ethics department, the sustainability department, the leadership department. These are all bullshit, where we hire formerly important people with no standards, they never get fired. It just translates to more student debt. In the boardroom, in corporations, in certain sectors, I do think there is a need to be thoughtful about broadening the aperture of the lens and bringing in people who are underrepresented. There's still a dearth of women raising venture cap. I- th- so I- I think it's nuanced based on sector, um, but to just say all DEI is bad, I want to move to where the University of California did in 1997. They don't have race-based affirmative action. They have adversity-based affirmative action. I'm a beneficiary of affirmative action. I had something called Pell Grants. I was raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died a secretary, so I got grants. I had unfair advantage because I came from a household that was low income. And I think that there should be affirmative action, and I think it should be based on color, but that color is green. It- i- y- the poor need our help. The moment you start advocating for special advantage based on any external factors, I think at this point in our society, it probably causes more problems than it solves.

    7. KKKonstantin Kisin41:17

       That- that's exactly right. That's exactly right, Steven. And I think, uh, if we take a step back and look at why DEI has become such a big part of the conversation, it's precisely because instead of addressing the reality, uh, of people's lives, which is some people are disadvantaged and some people are advantaged, uh, actually what we've mainly done, and- and Scott alluded to, uh, uh, at the very beginning of our discussion, is we've given a leg up to very wealthy mi- ethnic minority people from successful families. And they now, their children now get into prestigious universities, uh, which they probably would have done anyway, uh, some of them, because they come from very advantaged backgrounds. And the kids that are growing up in poverty, Black and white, have no shot whatsoever. But the reason that it's become such a big issue around the Western world, actually I don't think is, it's the nuances that we've delved in- into here, but actually something else, which is, we have created......the most ethnically diverse societies in history, and what I mean by that is not that we've created societies in which there are large groups of people who are different from each other. But for the first time probably in human history, we've created societies in which there is a lot of ethnic diversity, and there is no overt discrimination against some groups of people in the sense of, you know, the imperial societies in the past would have had one dominant ethnic group, which is, you know, the Russians in the Soviet Union or the, the Turks in the Ottoman Empire or the Brits in the British Empire, whatever. That was the ethnic group that was, like, the dominant one, and everybody else was a kind of second-class citizen, and everybody knew it, right? We don't have that anymore. We have highly diverse societies where people of every single background exist, in which we have this idea, um, that we're all supposed to be equal. And when we have programs that explicitly discriminate against people, there were times when the discrimination was explicit against Black people. Well, we've got, we've gone full circle now where the discrimination was going the other way in university admissions, in hiring, in all sort, in corporate America, in government, in all sorts of things. You know, in this country, the BBC has internships that aren't available to white people, et cetera. When you get to that point, as Scott said earlier on, everyone just goes, "Look, I know I'm not supposed to say this, but the reality is this is racism. This is a form of racism, and I thought we were trying to get away from the racism." So to the extent that the, the, the elimination of DEI is about creating a merit-based society, uh, in which people are given an opportunity, uh, because

14. 44:02 – 47:44

    Trump's Move Toward a Merit-Based Society

    1. KKKonstantin Kisin44:02

       they're skilled and talented and they have the potential to actually achieve things and, uh, create wealth. You know, we all know this. We all employ people, right? Uh, h- how many of us are thinking about the races of the people we hire? I don't think we think about that at all. What we're thinking about is, "I run a business. I need the very best persable, very best possible person for this job at the price I'm willing to pay. I don't care if they are purple, green, blue, white, what, whatever. It doesn't matter. What matters is are we getting the best person for the job." And my concern about identity politics has always been that if we do not adopt that worldview, then what we will do is create a worldview in which we have different racial groups competing with each other on the basis of race, and that is a very, very dangerous mix for a multiethnic society like ours, which is why I've been begging people to let go of this stupid idea of identity politics and to say, first and foremost, "We are all Brits," or, "We are all Americans." We have this umbrella identity under which we all operate, and our personal ethnicity or sex or, or whatever is secondary to that, and actually, for the purposes of employment, for the purposes of college admission, et cetera, is irrelevant. Yes, if there is disadvantage, if we grew up in a single-parent home with a low income, we may need some extra support there. If we had terrible schooling or our education was not good, we may need extra support. If there's certain things that make it easier for us because of, of the disadvantages we've had to fulfill our talent and potential, I'm all for that. But what we've created, uh, uh, so far, and that's why I'm delighted it's being eliminated is an anti-meritocratic system which says, "We don't care what you bring to the workplace. We don't care whether you deserve this place, and we don't care about the potential you have. Actually, we just needed a insert category tick box to fill this slot. Uh, and you fill that.

    2. DPDaniel Priestly46:05

       Mm-hmm.

    3. KKKonstantin Kisin46:05

       You, doesn't really matter that you're not doing your job very well, because now we can say, you know, 'We're a diverse company.'" I don't care about that, and we shouldn't care about that as a society, and thank God that's now gone.

    4. DPDaniel Priestly46:16

       Yeah, I think the worst part about it too is that it, um, calls into question when someone does succeed, um, and they're from a diverse background, you know, it calls into question why they got that job in the first place, which I think is horrible. Um, you know, the, I, I just hired, uh, from two candidates, the final two candidates. Um, was a, was a guy and, and a woman. Um, I would hate if the woman felt that she got the job because she's a woman and not because she's best. She, turns out she was by far the best in the process, and I would love for her to know that there was absolutely nothing that changed our view. We weren't trying to fill a, a position with a woman. We were trying to fill the position with the best, and she should know she was the best. Um, I think the contrast that was really fascinating was between Trump's website and, um, the Democrats' website. So in the, in the Democrats' website, it was who we're for, which was what Scott was saying, but the Trumps' w- Trump's website was the 20 things we're gonna do, and it was just a list of 20... These are the 20 action points. This is what we're gonna, we're gonna do this, and we're gonna do this, and we're gonna do this, and we're gonna do this. So it was a to-do list as opposed to, uh, the identities where hel- that, that we want to advantage list. Um, and I think that was the choice. You know, at the beginning, Konstantin, you said, you know, America had a choice, and for me, when I looked at those two websites, I saw this choice between the identities being the main thing or the to-do list, uh, being the main thing, and they're very different approaches.

15. 47:44 – 52:40

    Masculinity and Identity Issues

    1. DPDaniel Priestly47:44

    2. SBSteven Bartlett47:44

       Scott, I, um, when I was listening to that Zuckerberg interview talking about, um, masculinity and identity issues, one of the lines he said in there sounded like something you've said on my show before, where he said, "I think having a culture that celebrates that aggression a little bit more," talking about masculinity, "has its own merits that are really positive." Now, Mark Zuckerberg isn't necessarily someone that I saw closely aligning to your worldview. Am I right in thinking that that's something you agree with? 'Cause I remember you saying to me you, you think people should be able to walk in a room and kick everyone's ass (laughs) -

    3. SGScott Galloway48:17

       What I've said on your show is that I think the male form, especially under the age of 30, with its bone structure, incredible double twitch muscle, and then this amazing, amazing chemical called testosterone, you're gonna look back at your 25-year-old self and think, "Why wasn't I a fucking monster like Steve Barley?"

    4. SBSteven Bartlett48:35

       (laughs)

    5. NANarrator48:35

       Mm-hmm.

    6. SGScott Galloway48:36

       Because... And also, there, there is, uh, uh, you know, some masculinity when Russian soldiers pour over the border in Ukraine, you want some of that big dick energy that Daniel was, was talking about. In the case of Zuckerberg, I, I don't think, I don't think he really understands an aspirational view of masculinity. I think when he couches immediately kind of trying to kiss Trump's ass because Trump threatened to put him in prison, and what he used to call moderation he's now calling censorship, and when you have an algorithm that elevates incendiary, hateful content, I would not describe that as masculinity. For me, masculinity comes down to protection, providing, and procreation. And I don't think i- it's a... I think to talk about gender in a workplace in the context of trying to excuse, um, uh, a f- a, a total elimination of what I would think is probably healthy moderation, uh, imagine Daniel and Konstantine might have a different view, I don't... I, I think he's just couching his, his, his supplicant, obsequious, kiss-ass behavior under the auspices of masculinity. It just doesn't ring true for me. And I'm not sure we need to man up or fem up organizations and companies right now. When I talk about masculinity, you know, there's... If I say at a conference, "Oh, women are better managers," everyone goes, "Yes, that's right. That's right." Right? That's okay. If I say, "Men are more risk aggressive and make better entrepreneurs," you're a misogynist, y- you're out. And the reality is men and women bring different attributes. But the masculinity and femininity, I think masculinity is a wonderful thing and I think we need a different image of it. I think people born as male have an easier time leaning into those things. Having said that, I work out at a CrossFit with a bunch of lesbian firefighters. They bring great masculine energy, and they could carry my ass out of a fire. So, a lot of men demonstrate wonderful feminine qualities. A lot of women demonstrate wonderful masculine qualities. I don't think these things are sequestered to anyone born as a specific, a specific gender. What I think, when I talk about masculinity, I don't talk about it in the role of corporations. I think that's, I, I, I think that's just fraught with risk and not worth talking about. It should be about shareholder value or stakeholder value. I think young men need a code. We're going to church less. We have fewer relationships. So, what's the code you hold in- onto in terms of creating behaviors that are productive for you, yourself, society? And I think masculinity needs to be redefined as something more aspirational where you're celebrated for being really fucking strong. You're celebrated for not complaining. You're celebrated for creating surplus value. Create more tax revenue than you absorb. You're celebrated for being aggressive. You're celebrated for breaking up fights at bars, not s- not, not starting them. You're celebrated for protecting your country, not shit-posting it. You know, there's... You're, you're celebrated for approaching strange women and expressing romantic interest. That's, that's not a crime. And if she's not interested and you're rejected, you're both gonna be fine. Uh, you know, you're celebrated for getting out of the house. You're celebrated for working. You're celebrated for making money and liking money. I think there just needs to be a redefinition of masculinity in the context of helping young men find a code that they used to get from the Armed Services or from dual, dual-parent households. And I, I've, I feel like they're struggling. So, I like the idea of something that they feel in their bones and in their, in their body and in their DNA that they can lean into that we celebrate. And the conversation has flipped entirely. Five years ago, I was called a misogynist for talking about masculinity. Now, the conversation is being led and advocated by one group, and it's mothers, who are like, "I- my son is not doing well. I got three kids, two daughters. Daughter's in PR, with the other ones at pen, and my son is in the basement vaping and playing video games. He needs something to latch onto. He needs a code." Anyways, but... I apologize. Word salad. Zuckerberg and masculinity? Give me a fucking break. He looks like a Chechen molly dealer.

16. 52:40 – 55:53

    Trump's Stance on Masculinity

    1. SGScott Galloway52:40

    2. SBSteven Bartlett52:40

       (laughs)

    3. SGScott Galloway52:40

       Sorry. Back to you, Steven. (laughs)

    4. SBSteven Bartlett52:45

       (laughs) Well, it's, it's interesting when you speak, Scott, because your views on masculinity, um, s- appear to me to be most better represented by the right side of politics than the left side of politics. They both have their own vision of masculinity, and yours seems to be a Republican view of masculinity.

    5. SGScott Galloway53:00

       They flew... Uh, to, to Trump's credit, he fl- he saw the opportunity and he flew right into the manosphere. Rockets, crypto, Joe Rogan, uh, Theo Von. He said, "No, I'm, I'm, I'm not gonna run from this. I'm gonna fly right into it." Now, I would argue that his vision of masculinity has too much coarseness, too much cruelty, too much bullying. I don't think that's masculinity. I think when we talk about Elon Musk taking risks, sending rockets that are captured by scissors coming down, inspiring the EV race, taking an enormous risk, making a shit ton of money, yeah, that's a great form of masculinity. Accusing men trying to save Thai soccer players, calling them pedophiles, calling your employees, uh, sex criminals such that they have to leave their house, having 13 kids by five women, or three women, none of which you live with, living next to, sleeping next to a loaded gun, losing control of your, of your, your, your, your self-control because of addiction, I don't think that's a great role model. I, I think it's an amazing r- role model for boys. I don't think it's a great role model for men.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett54:05

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17. 55:53 – 58:38

    Elon Musk and Censorship

    1. SBSteven Bartlett55:53

       the link below. Konstantin, Elon Musk, censorship. The word censorship was used there by, um, Scott. We've seen this reversal in Meta's attitude, Facebook's attitude that had been built up over a decade, where it, it almost felt like if you had sort of right-leaning views, or really any unaccepted views and you posted those on Facebook, you would face maybe having the post deleted or your account suspended. This new world of s- um, of speech, of free speech, and as it pertains to masculinity, do you think Elon Musk's decision to buy X, which I know, Scott, you'd left X, you no longer post or tweet on X anymore. Do you think Elon's decision to buy X is a net positive for society?

    2. KKKonstantin Kisin56:37

       Uh, net, yes. But I think what people hear when you say that is, there's no problems with this system than, you know, compared to the ones we had before. Uh, there are definitely disadvantages to a free platform like, uh, X now. And one of them is, inevitably when you remove censorship, one of the things that censorship was doing was keeping all, all the deeply unpleasant, uh, people, uh, away from being able to shove things in your face. And that happens quite a lot on X. So, I don't enjoy that aspect of it. Uh, but I've always said that would be the price that we would pay for freedom. Uh, freedom al- freedom always has a price, and that's what we're seeing. Uh, as for Zuckerberg, his miraculous transformation into a free speech warrior is just wonderful, and I- I'm delighted to welcome him. I'm sure it's entirely genuine and-

    3. SBSteven Bartlett57:30

       (laughs)

    4. KKKonstantin Kisin57:30

       ... not anything to do with the election results we've just seen in any way whatsoever. And the fact that the culture shifted, and those of us who were being censored by people like him for years actually winning the argument. Well, what it shows you is, we've won the argument on free speech when it comes to the big tech platforms. Um, and it's gonna be messy. Uh, and I always said it was gonna be messy because inevitably when you create these large platforms that are algorithmically driven, uh, where the truth and the moderate reasonable take is not what usually gets attention, you're going to see a lot of unpleasantness. I value the ability to hear and communicate truthful, uh, ideas and facts over my own subjective feelings, "Oh, someone said a, a thing I don't like," or, "Someone was racist," or, "Someone was misogynistic." I don't enjoy the fact that that happens, but I would rather that happened and also we were not being censored from saying, you know, "COVID probably came from a lab in China," which we were. Uh, you know, the, the, the, the Hunter

18. 58:38 – 1:00:45

    The Power of Freedom of Speech

    1. KKKonstantin Kisin58:38

       Biden laptop story isn't Russian disinformation, actually it's an important piece of, uh, information that American voters need to hear when they're making their decision about the election. Uh, and all of these other things that were being suppressed and censored across social media for years, um, they're not anymore, and I think that's a good thing, and I think that's helpful. And if you look at, you know, to bring it back to the UK for a moment, Stephen, uh, as you know, on Triggernometry we've tried to cover the grooming gangs, uh, scandal, and is, is an outrage what happened in this country over decades. We've, we've been covering that for years, since about 2019, 2020, to very little purchase. And one of the reasons is, it was just something that the media sort of covered and then moved on, when it actually should've been something we talked about on a daily basis until serious action was taken and we saw real, real change. Real change in policing, real change in social work, real change in government, real change in the way that these racially aggravated hate crimes were treated. Um, well none of that was really being talked about seriously until Elon kicked up a fuss, amplified the voices of survivors, amplified the voices of campaigners on X, which he bought, and now the British government is forced to do whatever it can to actually address those issues, uh, to, to, to the extent that it will. You know, a lot of people will say it still doesn't go far enough. Well, if it doesn't go far enough, we now have a platform from which we can continue to have that conversation until there is the sort of inquiry and the sort of outcomes that people want to actually deliver real change. So, is that a positive? God, yes. God, yes. We needed that. Those women who were raped on a mass scale needed their voices to be amplified by someone like Elon Musk, on a platform like, uh, X, which is now free.... to the point where Keir Starmer is forced into defensive action. That, I wish that was around 30 years ago because a hell of a lot of young girls and women wouldn't have suffered the way they did if we had the opportunity to get that message out. So, God, yes, it's a net positive.

19. 1:00:45 – 1:03:49

    Why Has Elon Chosen Now to Raise These Issues?

    1. KKKonstantin Kisin1:00:45

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:45

       Just to pick up on that, Konstantin. I- I've had a question on my mind for a while, um, regarding the scandal, which is horrific, I think something we all definitely agree on, is why has Elon chosen now? And why has he chosen Keir Starmer as the sort of central target of this flurry of tweets around the grooming scandals? Because there's clearly... Y- you, Elon's a, I think an individual which you can kind of see thinking in real time. (laughs) Like, if you go back through his tweets, 'cause there's so many of them and they kind of come in these spurts, you can almost see what he's getting at. Is there an underlying reason why he's made this a central issue over the last couple of weeks?

    3. KKKonstantin Kisin1:01:23

       I, I think there are several reasons. One of the reasons that it's happening now is actually most Americans were completely unaware of this issue until recently. I remember a year ago being, speaking at a private event in New York, and somebody said to me, "Well, you know, w- what is the consequence of political correctness? W- why, why are you so against it? Why are you so against censorship?" And I talked about the grooming gangs and, and people were horrified. They hadn't even h- and these are well-informed, educated people who are media savvy and whatever. So one of the reasons is, I think, to a lot of Americans, this issue's only coming to the fore now in front of their mind. Uh, the second issue, I think, is that Elon Musk, uh, understands what I said earlier, which is we have a global Western culture now. Uh, and so what happens in Britain matters just as much as what happens in America because we are, we are symbiotic with each other now. When there's a, a restriction of speech in the UK, when we have laws about what people are and aren't allowed to say, that has an impact across the world. When you see the European Union trying to pass legislation about online censorship, that has an impact because if something e- exists in the UK and in many European countries, it's only a matter of time before people in America are gonna say, "Well, look, they've got this in Europe, why don't we bring it over here?" And vice versa. So what happens in America affects us in Europe and in the UK, and what happens in Europe and the UK affects America. So what Elon, I think, is trying to do is to say, "We care about our civilization." Elon doesn't really talk that much about the United States. He talks about our civilization, as I do, because I believe that we are now one thing to a very significant extent. Now, from our civilizational point of view, is it a good thing that mass rape gangs in the UK are being insufficiently investigated and treated improperly by the police and the government? No, it's not. It's a very bad thing. So how do we address that? Well, we address that by putting pressure on the government of the day. Now, I don't see the grooming gangs as a party political issue. The Tories didn't really do anything about it properly either, although there were individual members of, of the Cabinet that tried to, to do something, like Suella Braverman. Um, but he's putting pressure on the government of the day. You can see him going a- after Nigel Farage, of all people, and saying, "Nigel Farage is not the right leader for reform." So he's pl- he's in- he's attempting to shape British politics in the direction that he feels is the right way,

20. 1:03:49 – 1:06:38

    What Does Elon Musk Want?

    1. KKKonstantin Kisin1:03:49

       but-

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:49

       What does he want? What outcome does he want?

    3. KKKonstantin Kisin1:03:51

       Well, I think... Uh, look, I don't know what Elon Musk wants. I don't know him personally. I haven't even yet had a chance to interview him, which I really look forward to doing, 'cause I think he's one of the, the great visionaries of our time. Whether you like him or not, I think that's undeniably true. Um, but my sense is he's trying to, uh, talk about all the things that we've been discussing. Freedom of expression, the end of identity politics and the pursuit of meritocracy. A piring- pioneering, inspiring vision of the future, which is why he's t- talking about Mars and, and a vision for our civilization that goes beyond the narrow squabbling that we do here on Earth. Um, a- and, and the, the understanding that human beings a- are meant... We, we left the cave. We're not supposed to stay in a place with the walls closing in on us and feel like we're in decline. We're not supposed to be a civilization that has 1.5 children per woman and that is simply just leaving the planet Earth because we can't reproduce. We're supposed to look at the future with hope and optimism. We're gonna, we're supposed to say, "I want things to be better. I want things to be better for my children. I want to have children. I want the vision of our society b- being one of positivity and optimism and a sense of a pioneering vision and inspiration." That's what I think he wants, and, um, I don't really see any of that in the current government in the UK, and I think he's right to go after them and say, "You are destroying your country's economy, you're destroying its culture, you're destroying its sense of cohesiveness by allowing illegal immigration. You're destroying, uh, that sense of optimism and vision and you're not saying to people, 'Let's build something better.' You're saying, uh, 'Let's stay small, let's play small, let's not rise above our station.'" And I think, uh, we need people like that, imperfect as they may be in all sorts of different ways, to drive our civilization forward. To say to us, "There is an inspiring vision to which we're all moving," as opposed to just sitting there and waiting to die, which is what we've been doing for far too long.

    4. DPDaniel Priestly1:05:55

       Yeah, I think, I think Elon is v- um, take him at his word. You know, he said a year ago that he was gonna absolutely dismantle the woke mind virus globally and he was going to ensure meritocracy and free speech. Um, and he, when he sets his mind on something, he has the ability to stay focused on it for a very long time to a degree most people can't fathom. Um, you know, and he's e- and he's absolutely willing to endure pain. He loves a fight. He, he obviously has the kind of mind that can't relax unless he's kind of grinding up against some gear, um, as well. Like, the way he, the way he works needs stress in his life. He needs a big enemy, he needs a big fight t- to engage with. Um, and I think Keir Starmer just ticked all of his boxes as someone to go up against.

21. 1:06:38 – 1:10:00

    Big Tech Cosying Up to Trump

    1. DPDaniel Priestly1:06:38

       Um, I think, I think what's interesting is we talk about these big tech... I love that Scott has previously talked about breaking up big tech and I think there's potential for that in the next four years. All of these guys like Trump and JD Vance and, uh, all of them have, have, uh, locked horns with big tech and they've come, you know, this is their chance to get revenge on big tech. In the next four years they could do a little, you know, you might see Google have to, um...... you know, spin off YouTube, or you might see AWS have to come away from Amazon or something like that. Who knows? But, um, it's interesting that- that a lot of these big tech guys, they're probably cozying up to Trump, um, because, you know, that could be on the cards as well.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:20

       There's been a lot of, um, uh, Trump butt kicking- butt kissing over the last couple of weeks. I think Trump's almost bragged about the fact that everybody's flown down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss his butt and to cozy up with him. And there's now headlines saying that there's this tech oligarchy forming in the United States where Bezos and Elon and Zuck are all now friends, and they're stood behind Trump as this unifying force. Just to- just to touch on a few points of that, but also on Constantine's message that Elon is doing this for the betterment of humanity, to further humanity, his involvement with the UK, but his broader involvement in politics now. Scott, does that square with how you think about Elon? And I am quite, um, curious to ask you why you made the decision to leave X and to go to Blue Sky and Threads and things like that?

    3. SGScott Galloway1:08:04

       Yeah, I can't speculate on what motivates Elon Musk. I- I just, I quite frankly just don't get the guy, and I don't... Also, I don't- I don't have the domain expertise to comment on the rape gangs. It's such a serious, upsetting issue, I- I don't know it well enough to speak intelligently to it. The disc- the topic of- of censorship though, as it relates to Meta, uh, a hallmark of a free society and a democracy is that pretty much anyone can say pretty much anything about pretty much anybody. I- I believe that. The question is do machines and bots have free speech rights? Because if I say something... I- I believe, and I- I may be paranoid, but it doesn't mean I'm wrong. I believe VCs who, uh, whose portfolio companies I've said have overvalued have enlisted thousands of bots to basically just shit post me over and over on X to diminish my credibility. I think because I've been critical of Putin that the GRU has hired troll farms to create lists of thousands of people to weaponize bots to say disparaging things about them. Do those bots have free speech rights? In addition, when Fox News distributes information to its anchors saying Dominion voting machines were weaponized by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, despite the fact they knew that was not true, but they tell their broadcasters to do it anyways. And then Dominion says, "This hurt our business, and you knew it was false, and you decided to (laughs) communicate it anyways," their courts find them liable, and they have to pay three-quarters of a billion dollars. What happened at Fox News was a dumpster fire compared to the nuclear mushroom cloud on Meta. So, a- a lot of what we're talking about here... I- if you wanna say that MRNA vaccines alter your DNA, I think you- you should have the right to say that. The dissenter's voice is important, 'cause occasionally, the conspiracy theorist ends up being correct. The question is, when you have a business model that elevates the most incendiary,

22. 1:10:00 – 1:16:04

    Living in an Echo Chamber With Algorithms

    1. SGScott Galloway1:10:00

       ugly content beyond its organic reach, should you then be exonerated from all liability and slander that traditional media companies are liable to? If we were to say that Elon Musk is a pedophile and state- start stating facts in evidence of it, and he could show that it's hurt his ability to raise money for Tesla, and he filed legal action against this podcast, I think we would be in a world of hurt. And- and- and it would... That- that legal liability is warranted. But the most powerful media companies in the world have Section 230 protection, so they can... They have a business model where conspiracy theory or novel content, which is Latin for bullshit and lies, and the more angry it is, it gets elevated beyond its organic reach. So, while I'm kinda down with the notion that we should have free speech and anybody should be able to say pretty much whatever they want, there's something wrong when we have algorithms that have a profit incentive around rage, conspiracy theory and lies, and two-thirds of Republicans believe that the election was stolen. And when one- one in five Americans think that 9/11 was an inside job, I mean, they- w- we are at-

    2. KKKonstantin Kisin1:11:16

       Let's be honest, they thought that before the internet. I remember watching all the 9/11 truther movies and all of that. But y- your point overall is right. I- I totally agree. And by the way, Elon agrees with you. When he bought X, he talked about the bot problem, he talked about the amplification of outrage. He hasn't done as much as I- I hoped he would have done so far, but I- I hope that they do address that, because that isn't a- an Elon or an X problem. It's a technology problem of the modern world. The reality is that the more we live our lives online, the more you're going to have a cr- the problem of the ability of foreign governments, of individual people to create fake accounts...

    3. SGScott Galloway1:11:56

       Right.

    4. KKKonstantin Kisin1:11:56

       ... bot farms, et cetera, uh, to influence the way we look at all of these things. Um, and, uh, we are gonna have to come to terms with that reality, because it's a te- it's a technological issue that we're gonna have to solve for and we haven't yet.

    5. DPDaniel Priestly1:12:10

       It's also very easy for people to get caught in their own bubbles as well, which is a new phenomenon. There was a time where if you believed crazy things, you still had to sit next to someone else in church and...

    6. SGScott Galloway1:12:20

       100%.

    7. DPDaniel Priestly1:12:20

       ... talk to them about their life and what they believe, and you encountered dissenting voices, you d- you encountered sane, rational people who had very different views to you that you had to be friends with long-term. Uh, whereas where we are right now is if you've got some sort of a crazy view, you can find yourself only talking to people who s- who share those views, um, and only sharing content that reinforces those views until such time that you become extremely radicalized.

    8. SGScott Galloway1:12:47

       I think that's such an important point, because I think it's a real shame that AI LLMs aren't crawling the real world. I was at Grainger's yesterday, someone comes up to me, "Love your content. W- let's take a picture." They're so nice. Another person comes up to me and said, "I disagree with your view on this," but we have a civil conversation. And then I come home to 40 bots telling me I'm professor genocide.I mean, people in the real world, generally speaking, I don't know if it's because of the threat of physical violence or they wanna have sex with you or maybe they think at some- some point you'll hire their kid. Or generally just a comedy of man, but people in real life, I find, are just lovely and wonderful. And it's a shame that these LLMs aren't crawling this 'cause the trafe and some of the vile shit they're- they're crawling online, which I don't even think reflects our species. I think it reflects technology that has a profit motive around promoting the most incendiary, hateful content. So there's gotta be some sort of medium speed here. And also, I got off at Steve because you don't like Chick-fil-A, don't eat at Chick-fil-A. I- I- I think if- if Musk wants to pay $44 billion and turn it into a Nazi porn bar, that's his right. I don't think there's... I don't think it's illegal. I don't think the government should step in. But I don't have to paint his fence. And I can go to another platform. That's my right too. And everyone says, "Oh, you're against free speech." I'm like, "No I'm not. I'm against being on a platform that makes me feel bad." Uh, so he- he has the right. And all this notion around meta free speech, it's a little different because they control so much of the media. But these are media companies and they should be liable for slander or defamation, the same way traditional media companies are involved. I think we could solve a lot of this problem by just removing 230 protections for algorithmically elevated content. If you decide to elevate content beyond its organic reach, then you are making an editorial decision and you should be liable if that in fact is slanderous or defamatory.

    9. DPDaniel Priestly1:14:45

       I think that's really fascinating, uh, as a way of handling it. And also we're living in a world where, as of this year, some of the most phenomenal content you will read will be algorithmically generated, um, and some of the most compelling content. So this idea that Scott's talking about of should bots have free speech, it sounds like a kind of, you know, intellectual, kind of pseudo-intellectual topic, but it's absolutely a very practical topic in the sense that, uh, bots now can generate conversations very easily and some of it, you know, you could spend all day talking to a bot and not know.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:20

        It's funny this is- this subject has come up because in the last week, I've had a flurry of messages on WhatsApp from friends, actually had two tweets yesterday which you could probably see if you just search my name. Because on X at the moment, there's multiple ads running that are fake articles with fake BBC headlines with my face in. So it says things like, "The Bank of England is suing Steve Bartlett." And this is running as a sponsored ad on X. And people are tweeting me these things. My friend says every time he refreshes the feed, he sees a new sponsored ad of a fake article of me. And sometimes it's like, "Can't believe this happened to Steve," and it's a BBC article. You click on it, you get scammed. I think it's a crypto scam, I don't wanna click. You- I'll send the link to you guys so you can click on it for me. But, um, I just... It really has...

23. 1:16:04 – 1:24:05

    Social Networks Are Becoming Political Environments

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:04

       'Cause that is a bot. There's multiple of them, multiple accounts that have been spun up. They're all verified accounts and it's AI generated imagery with a paid ad behind it.

    2. DPDaniel Priestly1:16:13

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:13

       That's the bit that really gets me. I get people can post shit, but- (laughs) but sponsoring, sponsoring it is a new, a new level of- a new level of, uh, like defamation.

    4. DPDaniel Priestly1:16:23

       Mm-hmm.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:23

       Um, one of the big macro things I've been thinking a lot about that I haven't shared yet is just the- the amount of social networks that have emerged. In the last 10 years, there's been a 50% increase so far in new social networks that have emerged, and we're seeing this splintering now of the Rumbles, the Blueskies, the Threads. And it almost seems, talking about echo chambers, that social networks are becoming sort of political environments and you're choosing your social network now based on your politics.

    6. DPDaniel Priestly1:16:48

       Mm-hmm.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:48

       This doesn't seem like a net positive thing for society.

    8. KKKonstantin Kisin1:16:54

       Nope. No, I- I think we're living through an era of the fragmentation of our reality and it- and it comes... You know, Scott's point about, uh, people behaving better in person is true, although I would say, uh, there is the windscreen effect or the windshield effect, which is if you- someone cuts you up in traffic and you feel that there's some kind of physical separation between the two of you, most people behave slightly differently in that context than they would if they were sitting next to somebody face-to-face in a bar. So it's- it's there's something about being physically present with other people that changes it, which is one of the reasons, you know, I know you have pretty much all your interviews face-to-face and we do as well because I- generally speaking, it's very difficult to connect authentically with people. Obviously, we've managed to do it in the course of this conversation but beyond that, it's difficult. Um, and so we're gonna have to work on that. But I just... What the point I'm trying to make is this isn't a political issue, it's not an X issue, it's not an Elon Musk issue, it's a technological issue. We're living through, uh, or probably already have lived through most of- of the digital revolution. And I used to, as a kid, love Isaac Asimov's science fiction books and one of the reasons I did enjoy reading them so much is it was a world in which there was an exploration of what does the creation of robots, which is what we're living through, mean for morality? What does it mean for philosophy? What does it mean for humanity? What does it mean for, uh... What... How do we build rules in a world in which you have these machines that take every rule literally and suddenly you find the, uh, you know, the desire to protect humanity results in the end of humanity? How do you- how do you navigate all of this? And that is what we're living through. We are also living through a period when our realities are being fragmented and so, uh, we- we- w- we- we believe a very small set of things that other people like us somewhere in a very different part of the world, as Daniel was saying earlier, also believe in. We now live in this not... We don't live in- i- in England or in Scotland or in America. We live almost like in a world of people who think like us in the West.... and then other people live right next door to us who live in a whole different world, because they consume a whole different set of information. Um, that is the reality. Uh, we can complain about it. That is not going to change. And I, th- the only thing I, I really wanna, uh, raise, where I disagree with what, with Scott, um, about this idea that Facebook and X, et cetera, are, uh, they are publishers and not platforms. I don't think you can apply the same media organization section to th- to them. It, it just, I, I don't think it's appropriate. They are platforms in which people publish information. The, the artificial amplification is a fair point. Um, we need to deal with that. We need to deal with the bot problem. Uh, that's a very difficult one, because, uh, one of the challenges is the only way to really deal, that I can see, with the bot problem is to get people to verify their identity online. That obviously has a lot of questions around that, because once you start forcing people to give their identity over to some anonymous blob online, who's collecting that data? What are they doing with it? And, you know, if you don't like Elon Musk, or if you don't like the previous Twitter regime, as I didn't, then the question for you is, well, you know, let's say right now I look at Twitter and I'm like, "Yeah, I'm happy to verify my identity. I'm happy to confirm who I am." Well, what if, you know, George Soros buys X off Elon at some point? Are you still happy that that information is being held? Are you still happy that the anonymous account you've n- now made confirmed? You know, what happens to the anonymous activists speaking about, uh, the Ayatollah's regime in Iran? What happens to them when they've had to verify their identity and the wrong person buys that platform, or someone hacks it, et cetera? So, it's a conversation that's, uh, that's not... If there were easier solutions on these issues, they would've been solved by now. This is a very difficult thing for humanity to navigate, and we're gonna have to find a way to do it, uh, and incrementally so.

Episode duration: 1:40:29