Rapid Recap: Iran, Anthropic vs. Pentagon, Paramount’s win, and more

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/fa7a0a0e752e1b46

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I'm Alex Morris, the lead producer here at Rapid Response, and I'm joined today by your host of Rapid Response, the voice of the show, Bob Safian. Bob, how are you doing?
I'm good Alex, thank it's fun to be doing this uh a little differently this time.
Absolutely. We are gonna be doing something that we're calling the rapid recap. This is where we go through the buziest stories, trends, key indicators from the business world recently.
Hit me with what you got.

Well, unfortunately we do have to start with the news over the weekend. We saw uh the US and Israel launch joint attacks on Iran, sparking a wider conflict throughout the Middle East. Are there any indications about w what impact this could have on the business world?
Yeah, so
As I'm sure everybody listening realizes, it's hard to know what the implications are.
from this are gonna be in the long run at this point.
What I'd say is the the one clear lesson
for all of us is that disruption isn't slowing down anywhere, right? I mean, we saw this with tariffs recently, right? With the Supreme Court denial, not to mention
You know, advances in AI. Uh, for for listeners, we recently had Corey DeBrawa on the show, the Burson CEO, former comms chief at Google and Starbucks and Salesforce. And he he started listing all the things that are moving around us these days, you know, all the uncertainties and the ambiguities. And and it can make your head spin.
Right. And the question sort of becomes, right, like how do we act?
In a world seemingly without rules.
And and I think that's the question that that a lot of us are asking ourselves and trying to get to get comfortable with.
How much of that do you think, though, is
acting in a world without rules versus the rules are just gonna be changed. There are that there will be new rules.
Well, I I I guess when you when you think back to
You know
Several months ago where
President Trump made it sound like
there wasn't gonna be any US involvement in overseas, you know, activities and now we we see action in Venezuela and we see action in in Iran and
You know.
That's why I sort of say
rules, expectations
Um
Yeah, on all kinds of fronts are are hard to are hard to to anchor on.
So
I I caution folks about making
You know, making quick judgments about what the impact of this is gonna be on politics, on the economy. You know, this is one of these times where we have to learn to be.
um flexible about it and be on our toes.
Mm-hmm. When you were back at First Company, you wrote about this idea of
generation flux. Is this kind of what you're referring to here as well?

Yeah, so this is going back, you know, more than a decade I I started writing about this idea of generation flux about sort of a group of people
And businesses that were defined not by sort of their
their chronological age this generation, but more by their ability to deal in a time of chaotic change. Um I I didn't realize how quite pressure that that was being, you know, but today we're all in sort of generation flux 2.0. And so
We have to learn to live inside it, right? To be open to more fluid.
situations and structures and systems and open to learning new skills with AI and new different kinds of career paths. And
And I and I think about this as sort of we all need to be entrepreneurial, whether we're
entrepreneurs or not.
Right. We have to have that kind of agility. And as I as I've talked about this idea of generation flux over the years, one of the questions I get is like, you talk about chaos so much, like what do you like about chaos?
And
And my response is it's not that I like chaos. It's just that it's a reality of the environment, right? And and we we have to learn to live in that.
In that reality.
I wanna move on to the news that we saw come through on Friday talks fell through over Anthropic's contract with the government to use their tech
They were concerned about their technology being used for mass surveillance, for autonomous drones. Um
Once they pulled out.
Very quick from Sam Altman and OpenAI to pull in and say, Well, we can do that. Um
I'm curious what you
Think about this story? What does it indicate about Anthropic's brand? Is it good for their brand, but bad for their business? What's going on here?
In a lot of ways we were talking about the idea of generation flux. I mean, in a lot of ways, this is a sort of quintessential example of flux and what I call flux leadership. Because
In an environment of chaos and change what
What anchors us is our principles. It makes me think of when Ken Frazier was on our show, he said and I still
Honestly, think about this every week. He said a value isn't a value until you're willing to lose something for it. Otherwise it's just a preference. Yeah. So so eloquent, right?
And I think that's the perspective, that's the step that Anthropic took with the Pentagon.
Right.
It was in service of their business.
The the choice they made, and it had a cost.
Right. Um, and I think it it helps define their brand even more strongly than before.
Open AI made a different choice.
Reflecting
Different kinds of principles.
Um, that will have different implications for their brand and their business over time. They may have more of a business with the federal government going forward. Again, these things, none of these things are are secure. The upshot to me is that
Leaders will face more of these kinds of moments.
In this environment of chaos and and in the future.
Right. And so as a leader
The lesson to me is be clear about what your own principles are for yourself and for your business. So that when events like this come up,

This is a principal decision and here are my principles and here's how I act on it.
Hm. Does it concern you?
About
open AI, the fact that they were so quick to be like, whatever Anthropic has a problem with, we're cool with. Or is that too
Simplistic.
I I mean I think
You know, Sam Altman is more
comfortable being more um
Fluid.
uh around certain kinds of things and having certain kinds of business arrangements that he can move to his advantage, which is not always
Bad for business.
Um
You know.
his and open AI's contention is that they have the same philosophy about about autonomous
You know
killing machines and whatnot as as Anthropic does, and that they are protected on their agreement with uh the Pentagon. It it's it's hard to know w what about this is just sort of
Two groups getting crossways, which is
Some of the ways it's being described now is almost personality driven, was what the the breakdown was with uh with anthropic. Um
But you know, clearly
Uh
Sam is more willing to
play ball and uh and that was more palatable to to the
Department of Defense, Department of War.
My fear is that in a world right now where everything is being so politicized and polarized,
Do you think we'll reach a point where
The left are fans of Claude.
The right use OpenAI.
And
Insane people use grok.
You know, where are we?
I
I don't think people are gonna make their uh tech tools decisions based on politics.
I think they're gonna make them based on which of the tools they help them get the job done that they need done best.
Again, it's more about branding, who's gonna come work for your organization, um, maybe what kind of sponsors you have if you have that kind of an ad business as as OpenAI has. But um, but I think it's more about talent and and maybe about
you know, once these companies become public, sort of what kind of multiples they get for their brand.
But we're really early in all those days in figuring that out. There's so many things that go into feeding that, and this is just this is just
one data point that we're obsessing about now and with good reason.
Um
But uh but it may not be the definitive one.
I want to stay in the world of AI. Last week FinTech uh firm block run by Jack Dorsey, formerly of Twitter. Um
let go of four thousand staff members out of their ten thousand person workforce. Jack Dorsey in a statement uh cited the reason being because of games from AI.
Um
Is this a sign of things to come, do you think?
Well, you and I have talked before about whether layoff attributed to AI are actually one to one, right? Because AI is doing those jobs as opposed to the result of disruption, of which AI is a part.
But this disruption sort of demands a new structure. And and I'm not saying that Jack is lying when he points to AI.
I'm just not sure that applying
This
situation to every other business as some news reports worry about is necessarily apples to apples. It may be that these are one to one jobs at block, but that doesn't mean that everyone's gonna have, you know, a a huge layoff sp because of
of AI. I I would say that in
in my conversations, I think there are a bunch of tech leaders
Fit.
ultimately just don't care if jobs go away from AI. I mean some some of them rationalize that like this always happens with tech waves, but but many of them are really driven by what's good for them.
Right. There there is a race for billions for for building and owning the next railroads and
If there's collateral damage in that as they're growing, I don't know that they really
Ultimately make that a priority.
We've seen this kind of thing from Silicon Valley.

Taking responsibility for the societal impact of tech while enjoying the fruits of it.
I I remember talking to Mark Zuckerberg in probably
twenty seventeen and I asked him about whether, you know
As beneficiaries of tech
We have a responsibility to help those being left behind.
And he said yes, that there was, but he certainly didn't commit resources to that the way he did to say developing the metaverse, right? So uh and and we've seen the impact of social media fueled polarization and
societal anger and frustration, fear about changes that that have driven us apart.
It's hard not to feel like we're on a similar track with AI, perhaps even on a larger scale. For all the billions being invested in AI systems and data centers, how much is being committed to reskilling?
You know, do tech leaders.
Really feel a responsibility to help the overall population win in an AI race.
Or they just
Battling each other.
To win.
And and my suspicion is
It's more the latter.
I wanna move into the media business.
Last week we saw uh Netflix bow out of the race for Warner Brothers. If we go back a month, Netflix looked like a sure thing to land the deal. Uh were you surprised by the outcome?
I I I was I was a bit. I mean, it has been a fascinating game.
to watch. I will say
That as it comes to Netflix.
I sort of applaud them not getting drawn into
Bidding too much. It's it's kind of a rare discipline in corporate acquisitions like this for a for a uh an uh
A bitter to just say, You know what?
Too rich for my blood. Um
Paramount Sky Dance, like
They needed the deal more. This is something we had a d uh discussion a a while back with uh Janice Minn at the Anchor, who was explaining like that that
Sky Dance needs the deal.
They need the scale to be competitive. Um now that that doesn't mean that
You know
buying Warner Brothers Discovery will turn out to be worth what they're paying for it.
You know, and I could see that part of Netflix's calculation is that uh
David Ellison won't be able to make it work and they'll be able to buy what they want later at a better price, right?
The wild card of of course is that the the Ellison family has so much money.
courtesy of Larry Ellison's Oracle Fortune. And so
Anything might happen. Has this made
David Ellison, the most powerful person in media.
It's made him a player.
I I don't know that I would say he's the most
powerful person in media, I think
That will depend.
On how they execute.
on whether you know this combination of assets that they've brought together really is an effective you know uh accumulation and not just, you know, a house of brands.
And a lot of those brands being troubled in different ways.
I'm seeing a lot of people
fearful of the fact that part of the deal comes with CNN, you know, we've seen how they've run CBS News and what's happened over it sixty minutes. Um
The v very small silver lining that I'm holding on to is
So I'm
Twenty eight.
N very few people I know or younger than me watch TV news. And so the power of CNN and the power of CBS news, I'm trying to just hold on to the fact that maybe that's a relic of media at a different time.
And that's not where people might get our news. Oh, I I mean, do I think a lot of people are are watching T V news and that it's gonna be a growing area? No.
But I do think that
Um professional journalism.
Environments.
drive the news cycle in so many ways. So that so many of the folks that you're seeing in the channels that you're looking at, they're getting their starting point, their basis from established news channels.
Is CNN at risk? I mean
CNN has a devoted audience of a certain kind.
And
It would be bad business for them to disrupt that unless they felt like there was a better audience that they could find in a different way.
I don't think
They're gonna disrupt that just
for the purposes of keeping one political party happy or not. I d I I just don't think that will work on on a business front. I think they you know that that's what's gonna end up driving
ultimately the de s decisions they make. Now, it may be that they decide we don't want to be in the news business as much and pull back resources in that.
would certainly be, you know, disappointing.
Um
And and I know it makes sense for journalists to
worry and lament and push back over those things because that's the only way to stay protected in this area. Um, but I I tend to believe that
At the end of the day, quality journalism will be valued.
Um will be around and it may not be as big in the
Buckets as TV News once was, but I still think it will be among the more dominant places that people go to.
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We so
Jeff Bezos and the post uh let go of uh
hundreds of journalists shuttering the sports section, the book section.
Yeah.
shrinking uh local and foreign coverage. Um
What does this indicate to you about
The media business.
Well I I'll I'll say that I I've been
You know.
disappointed by the Jeff
Bezos era at at the Washington Post. I I sort of thought that having, you know, one of the richest
people in the world by the Washington Post meant that um that there would be that much more investment and resources behind a a great journalism organization. I mean when when I
Worked at
at Fast Company, I was fortunate enough to work for, you know, a successful business person, one owner, a guy named Joe Mansueto, who was incredibly supportive of our investments in journalism. And
you know, Jeff Bezos has way more money than than Joe does. And so I I was really hoping that he was gonna bring that along.
Um you know.
He he hasn't.
I when Bezos bought the post, I s sort of thought like this was his
You know, a way to marry his uh
His tech influence with influence through media.
Which is something that
You know, Elon Musk did
By buying Twitter.
W
Seemed crazy at the time, but actually probably
Has worked out.
m more influential for him in some ways than the post has been for for Bezos. And now in in this discussion, I guess you c sort of have to include the Ellisons who we talked about.
Right, as a media influencer alongside tech. I'm not sure who the James Bond villain is in all this, uh, but there is some, you know, dystopic quality to it.
I I hope
for the best owners with the best intentions in safeguarding our news stories.
That was my experience at Fast Company. It it's not at all clear that that's what we're getting from these sort of these these mega owners in this way.
Before we move on from
Jeff Bezos. You know
Blue Origin last year he sent up uh K Katie Perry and a few other famous people um into the edge of the earth's
Atmosphere.
I was a
party a few weeks ago, and I was speaking to somebody who works as a costume designer here in um Hollywood.
And she said that she'd worked on the Blue Origin flight.
I was asking her, Oh wow, so like
Were you having to work with I don't know, just like the science of space suits? And she says to me, like, no, it was just like any other like film costume. Which I think was kind of telling in a way.
Blue Origin is not winning in the battle with SpaceX right now, right? They're they're just not. And they need
All of the buzz that they can generate.
There's a lot of money that's floating around and will float space related initiatives and Blue Origin may, you know, may be one of those players in the long run.
One thing that we've w uh learnt is that rich billionaires love space. They love the idea of being the guy to go to space.
So one last story in media that I want us to hear is changeover at Disney. Bob Iger finally uh picked his replacement, um, Josh DeMaro, who was running the Theme Parks and Consumer Products Division. Um
You know, we had seen so many rumors about who could fill this position.
Uh
Even friends of the show, Brian Chesky at Airbnb, Andrew Wilson at EA, Jimmy Pitaro at ESPN. Um
Were you surprised by the decision?
You can't be surprised that, you know, a leader at that level inside would be would be the choice. Granted
the previous, you know, time they tried to succeed uh I with someone from inside. It didn't work out quite the way they they wanted. I I assume their um
You know, their due diligence this time around was m more intense or had different parameters around it.
Okay.
You know, what I what I really think of with with the this changeover at Disney, it makes me think about
The
the changeover that we're seeing across CEOs more broadly, the number of CEOs being replaced in the last year going way up. The strains that CEOs have had to manage through over the last five or six years have been so intense.
That
Yeah, it's not surprising that certain folks are saying
I I'm out of here. Or that other folks are saying like we need someone
newer, younger, fresher with more energy to take on, you know, the nonsense and the craziness that that is that is in the future. There is a new generation of leadership that is coming across corporate America. I'm gonna be keeping my eye on that because I I'm not sure who the
you know, the Bob Iger of the future is gonna be, and you know, Bob Iger is a tremendous leader. Is his successor gonna be that person, or is it gonna be someone from somewhere else? That's the sort of the um you know the parlor game that uh that I'm engaged in out of all of this.
So much of the mission of
The show has been about
trying to cut through the noise. Um, and you know, it's so hard nowadays to know what's noise versus what is worth paying attention to.
Yeah. Which is why I wanted to end on a really quick Rapid Fire game with you, if that's okay. Uh
Okay. Great.
Um
I'm calling it noise or legit.
I will throw out some fun, buzzy stories um of late and I want you to tell me whether it's noise or whether it's legit meaning. Uh there's more of a
indication about something that we should be paying attention to for the world ahead.
Okay. All right. Great. Let's do it.
The first one
Uh the viral Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise AI video. So that was
Produced by this
Chinese enabled by this Chinese.
Uh
Resource C dance.
I I think it's probably noise for now. You know, Hollywood is clamping down on that sort of stuff. Guardrails will come in. I mean, what's legit is the long term transformation that AI will enable in
you know, creating compelling content.
um costs down and and broadening creator impact and all of that. But
We're not there yet. It's a scare at this point, but it but it's not legit yet.
Alright. Elon Musk merging XAI and SpaceX.
Nois or legit.
Oh.
That is noise, but a lot of noise, what I'd say. Like this this is financial engineering.
It's gonna have an impact on how other companies. It'll give Musk more leeway and flexibility, potentially help him hit some of his enormous personal compensation targets.
But
Like
Does it make Tesla a better car?
Does it make Starlink a better service service, right? Like those are the things that are gonna matter in the long run. Um, and you know, just merging the companies doesn't necessarily do that.
Mm.

The vibe coding wave.
Uh I think vibe coding is totally legit.
I mean, especially with the ongoing advances, even even the last few months. As you know, Alex, the the company that that uh that runs uh rapid response in master scale, wait what? We recently did a three day AI sprint, right? And folks with no technical background were able to create prototypes in days and hours.
Um
Now, what does it take to make those prototypes ready to deploy, especially on mid mission critical work? Like I'm not sure Vive Coding is yet up to that task, you know, without bringing in a quality human engine, human designer to make it feel effective and distinctive, but the tools are getting
better much, much faster. And um
So it's it's totally legit.
Social media on trial.
Well
Alas.
I think I have to say this is noise.
I I know. I I mean I'm not saying that the social media companies are gonna win at trial. They may lose
But they they have enough money to pay off what's required. And in the big picture, I kind of think the social media genie.
is out of the bottle, you know, it would require
more aggressive government backed
Action to really
turn things around. I know there are analogies made to cigarette smoking and
You know how the courts helped.
businesses make businesses more accountable, but
I uh this is more nuanced territory and and even cigarette companies, if you notice, they're still around. People are still smoking.
I I I wish I I didn't think it was noise, but um
But I I suspect that in the long run it may end up being.
Next one, the introduction of the GLP one.
Hell.
Oh, uh
I so here in New York City there are these subway ads that a ro has up with uh with Charles Barclay and Serena Williams. They're they're everywhere. They're great. They're not about the pill, but
GLP ones are legit. The pills will make them more legit. Um
You know, we we had uh New York Times writer Sarah Cliff on the show earlier this year and we talked about
The new food pyramid and new vaccine rules and the Maha movement and you know, they're all these things that seem like they're
questionable that some people raise about what it's doing to to our health, new surgeon general.
But like th the GLP one pills
reinforce that science keeps moving forward and um and that that that's really gonna gonna be the impact. And you can't
you know, look at Charles Barclay on uh on you know, inside the NBA and not say
Wow, these things really really have an impact.
Alright, and finally, Multbook, the social network for AI agents. Noise a legit.
Oh gosh, I I love this story. Um
Because it's noise.
Right. Th I I mean there was this great uh Nick Thompson post uh CEO of The Atlantic who does, you know, his most important thing in tech and he did this great
video debunking, basically explaining why Multbook
wasn't the uh the big event that everyone was afraid it was.
Um, and so on that end, moldbook is noise. The legit part is really Nick's post, which is
That AI is susceptible to hype, you know. Is there gonna be a SAS pocalypse?
Software as a service is not going away.
The businesses may change, but it it's not gonna go away. Um, so I I I I feel like
Finding the hype.
That is definitely
Legit.
You know, Multbook itself.
Yeah, it was nice.

Well
Bob, as always, thank you so much for going through all this with me. Uh happy March and here's to another month of the show.
Well thanks Alex. Always fun. Always fun.
Rapid response is a wait what original.
I'm Bob Safian. Our executive producer is Eve Tro. Our producer is Alex Morris. Associate producer is Mashumaku Tonina.
Mixing and mastering
By Aaron Bastanelli.
Our theme music is by Ryan Holiday.
Our head of podcasts is Le Tal Malad.
For more, visit rapidresponse show.com.
Yeah.