The Dangers of Elon Musk and Donald Trump's Growing Alliance | Pivot

1. KSKara Swisher0:00

   Brazil's Supreme Court has unanimously, uh, voted to uphold a nationwide ban on Elon Musk's X. The social platform was suspended in Brazil late last week over concerns about disinformation and X's refusal to appoint a local legal representative. Elon's other companies are also impacted. SpaceX has moved to evacuate workers from Brazil, it's quite dramatic of them, um, and warned employees against traveling to the country. Starlink initially said they would defy the ban, but later backtracked and is now complying. Starlink is, uh, is a division of SpaceX, by the way. Um, talk a little bit about this. Uh, do you think the ban is justified? It will set a precedent for other, uh, countries to deal with Elon. Now, I'm gonna te- say two things before we go, because the Washington Post had the single stupidest editorial that I've seen of this. You might agree with Elon on this one, but he goes around the world and does- censors when certain countries ask him to and doesn't when others do. So his whole free speech warrior thing is a canard. And, and I, I will not accept anyone saying, uh, that he's- he could- a broken clock could be right twice, uh, twice a day, but in this case when he's in India or Turkey, he completely cooperates and, and actually X is one of the bigger cooperators with autocratic, uh, governments in, in censoring. So his excuse here is 'cause he doesn't like the government. Uh, but go ahead.

2. SGScott Galloway1:16

   Y- you just stole all my thunder. Uh, y- I think you're exactly right. Your point is he's incredibly cynical, 'cause when Erdogan or Modi or any other autocrat says, "I'd rather you just not do this," he's like, "No problem." (laughs) No problem. So this- i- he's totally inconsistent here. And to be clear, what they asked him to do was they asked him, um, to appoint a legal representative to deal with reque- to deal with requests to take down accounts allegedly involved in spreading political misinformation. They didn't, they didn't mandate they take it down. They're like, "We just want somebody to deal with..." And here's the thing-

3. KSKara Swisher1:50

   Well, it's because they're scared about them being arrested, 'cause, you know, they were arrested-

4. SGScott Galloway1:54

   That's a fair point.

5. KSKara Swisher1:54

   ... in other parts of the world. Um, it- this is China, though. Come on. Brazil is not gonna arrest-

6. SGScott Galloway1:59

   No, I don't think so either.

7. KSKara Swisher1:59

   ... the, the representative from, from X.

8. SGScott Galloway2:02

   But-

9. KSKara Swisher2:02

   They're just not gonna do it. And that's, that's the re- that's his excuse, just so you're aware. I just wanna be fair.

10. SGScott Galloway2:08

    But I was down there. I, I think he'd have a solid case in court, but to your point, it's just totally inconsistent. And I don't know how he behaves in other countries is relevant in a Brazilian court. But here's the thing. I was in Brazil when this happened and this is pulse marketing. I talked to quite a few people at this conference. I went to the XP Conference, that's 50,000 people there, and no one- we're talking more about it than they are. You know why? They don't care. They use WhatsApp, they use Instagram.

11. KSKara Swisher2:35

    They moved to, they moved to, um, uh, Bluesky. A lot of the- Bluesky and Threads saw a big bump, but especially Bluesky.

12. SGScott Galloway2:42

    But it's just not-

13. KSKara Swisher2:43

    Just for people who-

14. SGScott Galloway2:43

    It's just not a relevant... It's a platform that is either not used or is easily substitutable. So it wasn't like people were running around angry at the government that they don't have their Twitter. Uh, I think this is, this is part of a more meta-trend, and it's the following. Whether it's the CEO of Telegram being arrested, whether it's Google being found guilty of monopoly maintenance, uh, whether it's a, a DOJ reaching out to NVIDIA, people have just decided they're fed up with a distinct set of rules and behavior for someone who is in technology versus the rest of us or technology firms. And I think this is just a continuation of that strategy. And his, his lack of concern around, I don't know if he's trying to be brilliant here and get a lot of press and say, "I'm a free speech warrior, I'm not afraid to take on Brazil," but he's gotten into- if you were a board, you'd be- say, "Why are you get- personalizing this and getting into a pissing match with a judge in Brazil?"

15. KSKara Swisher3:39

    Yeah.

16. SGScott Galloway3:39

    How does that serve shareholder value?

17. KSKara Swisher3:41

    He also acts li- he also treated it as if he was gonna invade Brazil. But, uh, this is- I thought was the best quote, was Brazilian president, uh, let me pronounce this correctly, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

18. SGScott Galloway3:52

    Lulu.

19. KSKara Swisher3:52

    Um, he said, "The Brazilian just-"

20. SGScott Galloway3:54

    Lula.

21. KSKara Swisher3:55

    Lulu. Uh, Lula, Lula. "The Brazilian justice system may have, uh, given an important signal that the world is not obliged to put up with Musk's extreme right-wing anything, anything," sorry, "anything goes just because he is rich." I thought he- that was a perfect sentence, as far as I th- I, I thought it was a great sentence.

22. SGScott Galloway4:11

    Well, but, but the fear here, or the bigger concern in my view, is what happens when Starlink, which is a superior product, is, uh, contracted, engaged, and used to download important data, uh, and basically operate or be the b- backbone of say hospital systems in Rio, and something like this happens. And I wouldn't put, put it past Musk to say, "You know what? I'm gonna turn off Starlink. And oh, if that means a bunch of hospital systems and your aircraft can't land, so be it."

23. KSKara Swisher4:40

    Yeah.

24. SGScott Galloway4:41

    And this is, this is the danger when one person aggregates too much wealth or power. I think the, I think the leverage he's gonna have, quite frankly, around Starlink is much more frightening. And th- the fact that he...

25. KSKara Swisher4:56

    Well, they- though the country threatened to take over the land.

26. SGScott Galloway4:58

    Well, the cash, right?

27. KSKara Swisher4:59

    Uh, there, there's a bunch of, uh, uh- no, no, not just the cash, but there's installations in Brazil that allow it to work better and they were just gonna take over their like-

28. SGScott Galloway5:07

    Well, well, well, they have leverage over him right now because of nascent Starlink assets.

29. KSKara Swisher5:11

    Mm-hmm.

30. SGScott Galloway5:11

    At some point, I think he's gonna have leverage over nations because of Starlink.

Episode duration: 8:07