Inside the Hive

Kara Swisher on Donald Trump’s Depravity, Elon Musk’s Ego, and Making Mark Zuckerberg Sweat

The tech writer imparts a few lessons on how to see through Big Tech’s BS and delivers a blunt message for the industry’s biggest buffoons: “I’m not your friend.”
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From Jason Mendez/Getty Images.

On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, host Brian Stelter talks to Kara Swisher, the crusading tech journalist, ahead of her forthcoming release, Burn Book, a no-holds-barred accounting of the tech titans who are wresting more and more control over the American economy—and attention span. They discuss the absurd antics of Elon Musk, the follies of Mark Zuckerberg’s privacy policies, and why the industry is in dire need of more capital-A adults. “They don’t feel like they have any responsibility for the things they say and the impact it has in the real world,” she tells Stelter. “And that’s always been a pressing issue for me as 2016 dawned, when you could see the implications of it.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Swisher talks about the powerful possibilities of artificial intelligence. “There is so much that could be done here. I just don’t know who’s going to do it and how, right?” she says. “It also has huge potential for danger. That’s very easy to see. The danger stuff is bright red and blinking at you. But there’s also potential for great things. There’s a lot of green lights everywhere. That’ll matter on how much our government and our democratic process is part of the development of [AI] and puts guardrails in place.”