The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
00:39:39 · Scott Galloway
[00:39:39] S3: I wanna propose a scenario and have you respond to it. It's it's the thirties. We're contemplating reentering Europe, paid a huge price from World War one. It's a very unpopular idea to go back where it feels like we just left. And this innovator, Charles Lindbergh, is saying, no, we should partner with the Germans. Imagine if you will, that Charles Lindbergh was able to raise a ton of money and buy McDonnell Douglas, an aircraft manufacturer, and put in place this unbelievably innovative guidance system. And FDR decided to loan to the RAF B-17s, an amazing bomber in defense of Europe as this fascist begins to invade Europe. And then the CEO of McDonnell Douglas decides mid flight to turn off the guidance systems. And as a result, the blitzkrieg increases in fury and UK citizens are killed. I believe that has almost exactly played out in the last few weeks with Elon Musk throttling back Starlink. And my question is, or my thesis is, we took the Rosenbergs and put them up against a wall and executed them for being traitors. And I realize this is an incendiary statement, but I'll make it and I believe it. I think Elon Musk is a traitor to the West. And I think what is even more dangerous is this zeitgeist within America that the idolatry of innovators and money has created a cloud cover such that traders to the West are not seen as traders to the West. That if it... This had happened in any other age where we were not obsessed with innovators and money, a much different reaction would be playing out to Elon Musk. Your thoughts on Elon Musk's actions, America's response, and if you're willing to speculate what might happen if the Democrats take control of Congress. A lot there. I apologize for the word salad.
00:41:46 · Fareed Zakaria
[00:41:46] S4: There is a lot there. Look, I think you are, first of all, a 100% right on this really sad spectacle in America where people who manage to get very rich are then idolized as geniuses about everything. I think Elon Musk is one of the world's great engineers, one of the world's great technologists, one maybe one of history's great technologists, but he does not have the depth of understanding on complicated issues of politics like identity, you know, Islam, Europe. And you can see that when he when he talks about them. He's often wrong with... In terms of the statistics he uses. He's often wrong with the... About the history he uses. Give me one example. He retweeted on a tweet of these before and after photographs of a few African countries. You know? Johannesburg before the end of apartheid and after. And the before picture is this beautiful, manicured picture of a lovely, stately, British, you know, colonial sort of set of buildings and then, you know, ugly, dirty modern South Africa today. You know? So you get the point. What he doesn't seem to understand is the nature of societies like South Africa and Rhodesia and Kenya was that you had a small... I'm talking 5% of the of the population that was white, privileged, had first class citizenship status, was allowed to own as much of the land of the country as they were able to, And the other 95% of blacks were were literally slaves and servants to these to these people and were supporting that lifestyle. You can have a very good photograph when you have those dynamics. You know? The Pyramids look fantastic, but, you know, it was it was built for one person by hundreds of thousands of workers. Is that the society you're really advocating? Or take a look at his Doge nonsense, right? He comes to... Comes in and says, I'm gonna cut $2,000,000,000,000 out of the federal treasury. Only somebody who knows nothing about the the budget of The United States could could imagine that. And he thought he was gonna find it by reducing admin costs, you you know, not understanding that the the the federal government is basically an insurance company with an army. If you're going to reduce costs in the in the federal government, it's not by taking out people at the Social Security Administration. It's by cutting people's Social Security checks. The the the money is not in the people writing the checks.
00:44:26 · Fareed Zakaria
The money... The the money is on the... Those checks that, you know, the people... The benefits people are getting. He understood none of this. And so the idea that he, as a private citizen, should have these kind of powers to decide what is a life and death struggle for an ally of The United States, you know, one of the most important allies of Europe, is totally tragic. I completely agree with you that that it has been, you know, a a huge body blow to the Ukrainians, but it's also been terrible for The United States. I tell you a story about India. Again, the India... Musk tried to do one of his very Musk like efforts to rattle the Indians. He applied for... He thinks that Starlink biggest market outside of America would be India. And he's correct on that because, you know, China won't let him. So India, 1,400,000,000 people, it would be a gold mine for Starlink. So they applied for it. They followed all the rules that the Indians wanted them to, which is to set up a separate company for digital privacy reasons and such. And it was stuck in the application process. And meanwhile, a big Indian company, the biggest Indian company, Reliance, decided it was going to launch. It's a... It has a telecom brand... A a wing called Jio. They were gonna launch low low orbit satellites. And so then Musk's tweets out saying the owner of the of the Indian company is called... Is Mukesh Ambani. Dear prime minister Ambani, because I know that's where the real power of of India lies, Please allow Starlink in. It would be so good for the, you know, the many peasants and farmers of India to get connected. He thought he was doing this genius, you know, hail Mary, getting around... The ordinary Indians to rally for him. It totally backfired. Everybody rallied around Ambani and Jio, this... You know, India's richest man, Asia's richest man, Musk. Why? Because it became a point of nationalism, and they look at how Trump and Musk wield Starlink, and they say, do we Indians wanna be vulnerable the way the Ukrainians are? If we got into another skirmish with Pakistan, do we want the Indian army to be dependent on a... On... For its communications on a satellite system that con... That Trump and Musk control?
00:46:56 · Fareed Zakaria, Scott Galloway
And so it completely backfired in a predictable way for anyone who understood nationalism and the history and the India Pakistan thing, which of course Musk doesn't understand at all. [00:47:09] S3: Curious, Fareed, as someone who's an immigrant and has been successful, on a deeper level, you look at stuff and you have to be pretty PG 13 and reasonable. But how does what is going on resonate with you personally? You have seen, you're obviously you have this incredible sort of intellectual perspective on the world and the role America plays in it. [00:47:38] S4: But what does this [00:47:40] S3: all mean for you as someone who's come here and has been successful and has seen where we are? I know you used to my understanding is your mom passed away during COVID, but she was still in India. Is that correct? [00:47:52] S4: Correct. Yep. [00:47:53] S3: Like, how does this hit you personally?
00:47:57 · Fareed Zakaria
[00:47:57] S4: I think for me, as probably for many immigrants, this is all heartbreaking because the reason we came to America, the reason we left behind, you know, people forget immigrants, yeah, it's a happy story of coming to America and the great adventure of America, which I massively have benefited from and enjoyed. But you're also leaving something behind. You're leaving behind a country, a culture, a family, friends that you love. And the reason we did it was was we believed America was this city on a hill, this extraordinary country, unlike other countries that welcome people in, that had this distinctive role in the world, that was able to really live up to its enlightenment ideas that all men are created equal. You know, so there's a certain amount of maybe excessive belief in that that I think we all have and that I certainly have and I believe is still largely justified. But to see this side of America, you know, the nastiness, the the crudeness, the the the decimation of USAID, for example, I was always very proud that The United States was the richest country in the history of the world, but it's also the most generous country in the history of the world. We invented foreign aid. Foreign aid as a thing didn't exist. The idea that the rich countries of the world had some moral obligation to the poorest countries in the world is an American idea. It actually begins after World War I with Herbert Hoover administering the largest aid relief program. And then after 'forty five, we almost make it one of those norms and it becomes, you know, part of the whole industry. And has there been abuse? Sure. But has it also lifted huge numbers of people out of both poverty and just ill health? Undoubtedly, yes. And there's overwhelming evidence for that. And the idea that we would not only do it, but we do it so callously, or the way in which people now routinely talk about immigrants, talk about Hispanics, talk about Indians, talk about Muslims, all of this has become much more crude, sort of upfront. People almost gloat in their ability. It's, you know, apparently this is now the new sort of, you know, we're not gonna be BC, so we're all gonna be openly racist. And you see that in so many places, and it's very sad because it's definitely not the America I came to in 1982.
00:50:34 · Fareed Zakaria
I came to Ronald Reagan's America, a conservative Republican, but a conservative Republican who deeply believed in America's special mission, in America as the place that welcomed people from all over the world. The last speech Reagan made was all about how you can come from anywhere in the world and you can be an American. And now we have the vice president of The United States saying, no. No. No. If you came, you know, if you came a generation ago, you're not as American as my family that came eight generations ago. So all of it, yeah, very, very disheartening. I wouldn't say... I wouldn't go so far as to say disillusioning because I still have so much faith in America. I still think this is a passing phase. I still think most Americans don't feel this way. I think there's a lot of anger and confusion and hurt. And it's easy to... When when in those circumstances to get people to blame somebody else and and things like that. So I I think it I think it comes back. I know it comes back. It's... I mean, it's one of the reasons I've never even remotely contemplated leaving. You know, people will say, oh, if Trump gets elected or reelected or something happens, I'm gonna I'm gonna go to Canada. I've never had that feeling at all. I mean, I feel like I made my decision, this is my country, I will try to work for it to be a better place, but, know, in the worst case scenario, I'm going down with the ship.