Podcast: Brave new big tech world: Nicholas Thompson's perspective

TRANSCRIPT: Brave new big tech world: Nicholas Thompson's perspective

Nick Thompson:

The problems that Facebook creates are fixable, and I'm extremely interested in those solutions. I don't just dismiss Facebook as some evil tobacco company poisoning our minds.

Ian Bremmer:

Hello, and welcome to GZERO World. I'm Ian Bremmer. And today, how big tech is reshaping our global order. At a time when companies like Facebook and Google have never been more influential, they're also facing increased government scrutiny. In the piece I just wrote for Foreign Affairs Magazine, I discuss why some of the biggest tech companies are essentially becoming digital nation states. They generate more revenue than the GDPs of many countries and their diplomatic priorities are, of course, very different than the governments that are supposed to regulate them. There's a lot to unpack here, and I've got just the guy to do it. Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic and former Wired editor-in-chief. Let's get to it.

Announcer:

The GZERO World podcast is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company understands the value of service, safety and stability in today's uncertain world. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more. GZERO World would also like to share a message from our friends at Foreign Policy. The Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Deal - you rarely hear what happens behind the closed doors of the world's biggest agreements, until now. On the new podcast, The Negotiators, Foreign Policy is teaming up with Doha Debates to put listeners in the room. Listen to new episodes every week on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ian Bremmer:

Nick, we've known each other a long time. I mean, probably longer time than anyone that's been on the show, like a solid 30 years. And I want to ask, what's the thing that has changed your life the most in terms of technology?

Nick Thompson:

Well, I've worked in media more or less the whole time that I've known you. I met you as an undergraduate and I started working in media right after graduation. And so the way technology has changed media is interesting in that the work actually hasn't really shifted that much. The kinds of stories that I edited when I was 24 years old versus 44 years old are not different really in any way. I hope they're better because I'm better at it, but it's more or less the exact same stories of the same length, which is surprising because you would've thought that technology would change our attention spans.

Ian Bremmer:

It'd get shorter.

Nick Thompson:

Right, and it's just not the case. And it's one of the most interesting things about technology, that it both massively distracts us, but also increases our ability to comprehend complex thoughts for reasons we could get into. But net net, it means that the form of narrative journalism has stayed more or less in steady state since I started, which is super interesting, but the distribution has turned upside down, the way we read them. And we read them all on phones, we get the key ideas parsed out on Twitter. The way that they're distributed and consumed has completely changed and the way that the economics of the industry have completely changed.

So technology, the way magazines were supported when I started, people entirely supported them through advertisements because if you wanted to reach people who liked golf, well, one way to do it was to put an ad in a magazine about golf. If you wanted to reach people about, I don't know, any kind of bundle of humans, magazines were created to create bundles of humans, and then the internet came along and there were much better ways to create bundles of humans. So the whole business model got completely turned upside down, turned inside out, changed completely, whereas the content really didn't change at all. So it's changed a lot and not a lot about my professional life.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, when I think about Wired and when Wired first came into my consciousness, I thought about a magazine that was about people that geeked out on gadgets, it was tech boosterism. That is not what Wired was when you were at the helm. How do you think we think about technology now, both through your role there and more broadly?

Nick Thompson:

Yeah, the story of Wired is a pretty good story, I think, in some ways about the way the role of technology in American life. It did very much start out as that. Wired is the place... Wired is the land west of California called the Future, and it was a magazine about optimism and it was the notion, "Change is good". That was one of our slogans early on, and that was a good marketing slogan. It was believed by the early founders of Wired, but by the time I took the helm of Wired, I became the editor-in-chief in 2017. Right after I started, my last day at The New Yorker, two days before I started at Wired was the inauguration of Donald Trump. It was pretty hard to argue that change is good at that point. And so I would joke that the slogan of my predecessor was, "Wired is where the future's realized." And under me, it was going to be, "Wired as where the future is realized and the president is fixed."

And it became clear to me as editor-in-chief that one of the roles of this publication was to explain the deep problems that technology has used as practiced to explain those deep problems and explain how to fix them, but also to maintain the soul of Wired. We were people who... The people who worked at Wired and certainly me, are people who love technology, who love to take apart devices and see how they work, who are fascinated by the inner working of algorithms. And so I tried very hard in the people I hired and the way I edited to make sure that we wanted to fix technology because we loved it, not because we hated it. And my first job out of college, I worked for a Linux hardware company. So that was a really hard balance to manage as editor-in-chief, but that was one of the things I thought about and tried the hardest to do.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, one of the covers that was most famous, certainly got the most notoriety under your tenure, was showing Mark Zuckerberg beaten and bruised. And yet, if you did that cover today, you probably would've added a few more marks to his face. How do you think about... When you put that together, I mean, you knew that this was going to blow up in pretty extraordinary fashion. What kind of a corporate citizen is Facebook and is Mark today in your view?

Nick Thompson:

Yeah, it's so interesting. There are a lot of interesting elements to that story. So that was in 2018, and it was a story about what had happened to Facebook basically following the election in '16 through the following year. And it was a story about a company that was trying to figure out its role in society. It was a company struggling to understand itself. And the arc of the story described the way that Facebook, in a desperate attempt to appease or keep Republicans at bay, willfully blinded itself to what was happening on the platform during the election. That was one of the core themes of it. What's so interesting to me now, I'll talk about one specific thing. So at the end of that story, there's a long section about the algorithmic changes that Facebook was making, and they were doing something called meaningful social interactions.

And the idea then was they were going to change the core algorithm of the newsfeed to prioritize reactions among family and friends, and the idea was to make Facebook better. This would be a way to solve some of the fake news problems, some of the Russian misinformation problems, some of the hostility problems. And so that cover of Zuckerberg beaten and bruised, he's actually smiling. So we took an image of Zuckerberg, we got an actor, we beat up the actor, we put makeup on him so it looked like he was beat up. We merged them together and then we flipped the mouth to make it look like it was smiling, to try to convey a little bit the sense in the story, the optimistic last section of the story.

So that was our story as it ran in 2018. One of the things that's so interesting to me right now is that those algorithmic changes, the things that made up the last section of the piece, we finally know what their effect is because of the documents released by the whistleblower two weeks ago. And it turns out that those algorithmic changes were totally baleful. They actually didn't do anything good. What happened was by prioritizing comments and engagement across friends and family, it seemed to fill Facebook with actually more posts where people were just screaming at each other. And posts where people would say toxic things did very well under those algorithmic changes. So it's quite interesting to me that in retrospect-

Ian Bremmer:

Which you think was intentional?

Nick Thompson:

No, it wasn't intentional at all. I'm completely convinced it wasn't intentional. I think in some ways, my view of Facebook, I'm much more... Strangely for the guy who put a bloody Mark Zuckerberg on the cover, I am much more a defender of Facebook than the vast majority of my colleagues in journalism in that I don't think the intentions were ever malevolent, or I don't think they were ever... I think they just created something they couldn't control, and I think they didn't grasp what was happening until too late, and then I don't think the measures they took were enough, and I don't think they understood the core problem. Those are separate problems from they're malevolent.

Ian Bremmer:

And to be fair, there's nothing the whistleblower said directly that would lead you in any other direction than that, right?

Nick Thompson:

Yeah. I mean, the whistleblower actually in a way has a view of Facebook somewhat similar to mine in that as she said, Frances Haugen goes on in the testimony and she says, "Look, I don't want to destroy Facebook. I want to fix Facebook." And my view is the same. I think that there're changes that could be made at Facebook. If I had a job at Facebook, I would work to change a whole bunch of things. I think it is a fixable... The problems that Facebook creates are fixable, and I'm extremely interested in those solutions. I don't just dismiss Facebook as some evil tobacco company poisoning our minds.

Ian Bremmer:

So a couple of things I'm trying to grapple with as we think about not just Facebook, but all of these very, very large and powerful technology companies, most of which are in the United States and China, is first that they operate in this digital world that they create. And as a consequence, they exercise a level of sovereignty that makes it very hard both to understand what is driving their business and to think about how one might go about regulating it. How do you think about this new type of virtual or digital power that is exerted by these corporations?

Nick Thompson:

I mean, I think it's something we've never grappled with. And I actually think it's now, some point in the last couple years, it's gotten even crazier. Because back when I was reporting on that first Facebook story, the way the Facebook algorithm worked is there were a bunch of inputs and a bunch of levers. And you can imagine somebody in a control room and they're like, "You weight likes by 5%, or you weight them by 4% and you weight re-shares by 3%, and you have a bunch of outcomes you're looking for." And now, it's just an AI system optimized for whatever it's optimized for. The most interesting question in Facebook is like, "Does anybody know exactly what this algorithm is optimized for?" Presumably, it's optimized for money or it's optimized for engagement, but-

Ian Bremmer:

For engagement.

Nick Thompson:

Right. They've set...

Ian Bremmer:

What does it mean? Yeah.

Nick Thompson:

What does it mean? How does it work? And what is it actually measuring? We have no idea anymore. People are always talking about, well, the way to fix these companies to get explainability on their AI algorithms. And the truth is no one at Facebook. The whole point is that the AI is thinking and processing information in ways that no humans can't. So nobody understands. They've just set the algorithm in a certain direction and it will lead us in ways that no one there can explain. So that gets back to your question of how you think about or how you manage a world in which these companies that are guiding our lives with these algorithms that they don't entirely understand, and it's extremely complicated. You can try to push for more algorithmic transparency. You can, if you are working inside of those companies, try to optimize those algorithms for the most virtuous things possible. You can regulate outcomes and therefore put some boundaries on what the algorithms do, but it is a much harder system to maintain than it was even three or four years ago.

Ian Bremmer:

So let's then go from there to the tech companies themselves. So tech companies start out and it's "don't be evil," and it's, "I want to make the place a better planet". There's this incredible techno utopianism, which still of course exists among people that are promoting their companies. But I mean, the reality is that these tech companies have very different models. And I'm wondering which models you think are likely to be most successful? I mean, is it that the tech companies just become the biggest, baddest versions of... And I don't mean bad in a negative way, but just biggest, strongest versions of multinational corporations in the private space, and they lobby really effectively and they get the regulations that they want and they just make the shareholders really happy? Or do you see them aligning more with governments? Do you see them becoming more national champions with the US or with democracies, with China, with the Belt and Road? Or is it going to be a very different model where digital space just becomes something completely other and separate from governments that don't work very well? What do you think about that?

Nick Thompson:

On the companies, it's super interesting because I think that there are... If you look at the US companies, there're quite different models for how they've dealt with those challenges. To some degree, they've all pursued the same. They all have drifted away from idealism, they all have hired lots of lobbyists, they all have started working with the government to some degree, they all are oppositional to the government to other degrees. But I actually think if you look more carefully and you put the big companies under more of a magnifying glass, Google has probably worked harder to maintain its culture and the sense of creative geniuses still taking Fridays off, and some of the "don't be evil" aesthetics. I think Microsoft has probably worked most successfully to become a partner of the United States government, and a company that is seen as a champion for freedom and democracy, and all the work they do against hackers.

Again, it's not like there's a clear line between the choices Microsoft has made and the choices Google has made, but I see Microsoft as much more in line with that. Facebook has, I think, obviously been a company that has struggled the most, where it's earned the admonition of everybody across government, where a lot of the internal culture has become frayed. Obviously, it needs to repair on both of those issues. So I think you... I could go through the other large tech companies, but I think if you look, they have different approaches. So then to your question of where does this go, I think that where it goes is, you have a very helpful framework for potential outcomes where do the tech companies, do they... Right now, they're subservient to the state.

My guess is that over time, the large tech companies, whether it's in the United States, China's a whole different matter so let's just talk about the US, just gradually become more and more powerful and the state becomes less and less powerful relative to them. But there's no backlash where they all get wiped away and we're living in a world run on Ethereum, there's no massive breakup of the tech companies by the government that reduces their power and shifts things back to the government. I think in 10 years, 15 years, the set of decisions over which... The set of decisions that matter to American citizens, you have more influence over it if you're a top executive at Google than you do if you're in the Senate.

Ian Bremmer:

China has a robust private sector that is the largest part of their economy. It's certainly the most productive part. And in the digital space, it has played a very strong role that now the Chinese government is increasingly uneasy with trying to reign in in lots of ways, whether it is stopping IPOs in the United States, or it's saying that kids can only spend three hours playing video games, you name it. Do you think about this fundamentally, what kind of frame do you have for the state capitalist techno surveillance model?

Nick Thompson:

It's so interesting because up until, I don't know, six months ago, I would've said the model in China's completely different. They're state champions. They're working with the large tech companies to help advantage them over the American tech companies. And then Jack Ma disappears and it's like, "Wait, wait, what's going on?" There's been a massive shift that I did not anticipate in the way that the CCP views its tech sector. And one of the interesting questions will be what is the... There is a chance it ultimately makes the Chinese tech sector more efficient. If you have less government championing of particular winners, maybe you have more competition.

There are a number of people who've written about China who actually feel like this could be a useful move to increase the relative power of Chinese tech because you won't have large, inefficient companies that are beholden to the government and the government is beholden to. My guess though is that, I mean, there's been, what, a trillion dollars in market cap valuation wiped away over the last few months in China because of the moves of the government. In an interesting way, the executives at Microsoft and Amazon and Google and Facebook must be thinking, "Hmm, this is..." Or maybe even more importantly at Ericsson, which is getting beaten by Huawei and lots of direct competition are like, "Huh. Well, maybe if the Chinese government isn't backing them all, maybe we can win in more markets."

Ian Bremmer:

LinkedIn has actually just said that they are shuttering their social media operations in the People's Republic because of complications of being able to operate there, and a number of journalists have been de-platformed recently as questions around why. Tell me how you think about these companies, the interoperability of these interactions of human beings that should be connected between our two countries.

Nick Thompson:

Yeah, so I have a minority view among my peers that operating in China is a huge social good for the world. And I wish Google did more in China, I wish Facebook, Facebook obviously wants to be in China, can't remotely be in China. I'm glad Apple sells a lot of phones in China. The question is, operating in China requires you at a certain point to weigh those benefits against holding your principles. And so I don't know... And obviously, there's a line that you can't cross. And it sounds like what happened at LinkedIn is they probably went in with something like a philosophy-like mine of, "This is good for the world net net to connect people."

I certainly want people in China to be able to see the things I put on LinkedIn. I think it's good for them to see it. I think it's good for me to see reciprocal things in China and it's good for me to connect with people in China. It makes the world better, but if indeed LinkedIn has been... The Chinese government has said, "You have to de-platform these people, you have to delete these posts," at some point, you cross a line you can't justify.

Ian Bremmer:

If you were the CEO of one of these enormous technology companies, what is the one no-regrets move that you would really like to make that you think would make a positive difference?

Nick Thompson:

Well, I would overhaul the way the core algorithm works at either YouTube or Facebook. And I would optimize it not for engagement or money, but I would optimize it for whatever the most sophisticated metric I could come up with for deep human satisfaction. And so I would change the way, the fundamental nature of the way the core product works, and I'm convinced that would be the right thing to do.

Ian Bremmer:

Secondly, if you were the United States president, you would respond to that question in what way?

Nick Thompson:

I'll go back to creating massive federal repositories of data that are made, available to all American tech companies, or even international tech companies that do business in the United States that allow them to build, optimize AI algorithms in ways that allow them to compete with the giant conglomerates.

Ian Bremmer:

Okay. And now the easiest question, because it's the one most aligned with who you are. If you were back at Wired and you were completely unresourced constrained, what is the biggest story that you would want to get into right now?

Nick Thompson:

What the Chinese government is doing to the tech companies. If I could report on anything, the mystery of exactly what is happening, the decisions that have been made, the long-term planning, understanding that. I mean, we have 1% insight into what's going on. If I could have reporters in China unresourced, not just unresourced constrained, but I'm convinced that my reporters won't get jailed. And when we run the story, the rest of Condé Nast won't be banned from China. Give me those two other freedoms, then that's the story I want to pursue.

Ian Bremmer:

There you go, the last story Nick Thompson will ever write. You heard it here on GZERO World. Good to be with you, my friend.

Nick Thompson:

Oh, it's so awesome to be with you, Ian. Thanks for having me on.

Ian Bremmer:

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World podcast. Like what you've heard? Come check us out at gzeromedia.com and sign up for our newsletter Signal.

Announcer:

The GZERO World podcast is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company understands the value of service, safety and stability in today's uncertain world. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more. GZERO World would also like to share a message from our friends at Foreign Policy. The Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Deal. You rarely hear what happens behind the closed doors of the world's biggest agreements, until now. On the new podcast, The Negotiators, Foreign Policy is teaming up with Doha Debates to put listeners in the room. Listen to new episodes every week on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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