- As this occasion brings you to Austin, and you talked about some of our folks that have moved to Texas, I wanted to ask you about your view on our OG, Michael Dell.

And someone that's been in and around tech for three-to-four decades, that you've been around.

- Yeah, I did.

I wrote about him a lot.

- What's your view of, like you said, the ruthless truths, or the positives?

- He's a tough customer, as you know.

He's a really...I thought he innovated hugely in that area for a while.

I think Dell certainly lost its step, obviously.

Everyone had a Dell, and then they didn't.

Which is, in technology, the young eats its old, that's really pretty much how it goes.

And I think he's a really interesting investor.

He's done a lot of different investments.

What happens is, these guys get really rich, and then they become investors, and then they start to buy sports teams, or whatever the heck they wanna buy.

And so, I don't think he's doing much.

But I do give him credit for really introducing... - You know, does his staying power, 40 years now I believe, since the company was created.

- Yeah.

- I mean, you acknowledge- - No, he is.

- Respect, right?

- He's a great entrepreneur, he really has been.

I just think there's very few that stay focused on what they were doing at the beginning.

And Tim Cook was one, he was early on.

I consider him one of the early people at Apple.

So, you try to think of people who have stuck with it.

They tend to get other interests.

Some of them like Mark Cuban get into new ideas, like Cost Plus, which I think is cool.

He had a bunch of stuff that he was doing.

And then, didn't work.

And then this seems to be catching on.

- I remember Mark Cuban back in the day when he was trying to disrupt- - Broadcast.com.

- radio, right?

- Yeah, broadcast.com.

- Broadcast.com, right?

Yeah.

- He made a fortune doing that.

I think Michael Dell's an innovator, and I haven't really checked in on him in a long time, but I did write about it at the time.

- The idea of, he was a little bit more like Henry Ford, assembling things, right?

That's assembling.

It really wasn't innovation.

- Democratizing access, protecting, (indistinct).

- Yes, exactly.

But it was assembling things, it wasn't innovating.

I think Apple did it later on the computer, itself; and so did others.

I think he, he's a little more like Henry Ford in that way.

Is that he understood the assembly and logistics.

Same thing with Bezos, who I consider one of the great innovators in terms of commerce.

Boy, did he see a lane.

- [Host] He changed everything, didn't he?

- He did a lot around, I call him a logistics company.

That's what, he innovated logistics.

What a really, man he is.

But, anyway.

- Do you feel good about him right now?

How do you feel about him in this moment?

- I think he's having the best midlife crisis I've ever seen.

(audience laughing) He seems to be enjoying himself.

- [Host] Doesn't he?

- He does!

People are all like trash him on that picture with the Texas hat and things like that.

I was like, "I love it."

There's nothing that I don't love about- - Did you read the Marty Baron book about the post-Bezos's- - Yeah, he's been a good owner.

- I thought that actually he came out of that book really good.

- Yeah, he's been a good.

He's a tough, speaking of tough, he's a tough guy.

I mean, I know he does that maniacal laugh, and he seems friendly, but he's really, I called him Pharaoh when I met him.

I was like, "Whoa!

This guy..." Because he was older, he was an older guy, right?

And so, he wasn't like the kids that I was dealing with.

- [Host] You meant it as a compliment.

- I did.

Because I thought he was pretty clear about his aims.

He never said, "Cara, I'm here to change the world."

He never did.

Now, I would of slapped him if he did.

He was just like no.

But he, I think he's having a...

I don't know, I think he's having a great time.

And godspeed.

- Sir?

- First Cara, thank you very much for coming here.

- [Cara] Your welcome.

- And for all your work and your contributions, I never miss a spot that you're ever on TV.

- [Cara] Thank you.

- So the question I have, it's a very general question that probably can take an hour to answer.

But, it's important to my opinion here.

So with the advent of artificial intelligence that we have right now.

We have elections coming up, and so on.

And a bigger, more broader scheme, of course, there's so much disinformation out there.

Now you throw this on top, and who knows what you have, and so on.

So, could you address that a little bit here on how you know, and somewhat?

And I know it's- - [Cara] No, it's not!

(crosstalk drains out dialogue) As luck may have it on Thursday, I did an entire show on it.

And I had Barbara McQuade, who's a U.S. attorney.

- [Guest] Oh yeah, I know.

- [Host] Who was just here.

- She just written "Attack From Within."

- [Host] She was here two weeks ago.

- Sasha Eisenberg, who's an astonishing writer about, he just wrote "The Lie Detectives."

And Nina Jankowitz, who was running the Disinformation Governance Board, the worst-named agency in the government that she got right-winged, they got her, really.

She didn't do anything that they accused her of.

It was crazy.

It just was, they created fear.

So there's a whole show on it, and they each have a different perspective of the dangers that are coming.

I think Sasha thought down-ballot elections were really prone...

He thinks most people at the top levels, and that's what his book is about, have figured out disinformation, how to push back on it quickly.

But all these down ballot races, where people don't have digital expertise.

They're gonna get AI'd, and they're not gonna know what to do.

- What does that look like?

What does it mean to be AI'd?

- Well, conspiracy theories go out, and false information, robo calls, things like- - Similar to what happened to Biden in New Hampshire.

- Biden, that's like Neanderthal where it's going.

Like you know, what if on the election... Well, that's a national thing, what if on election day they said one of the candidates was dead, and they made it seem real?

They could do that.

And then you're like, "What?"

And then, the electorate may not vote, and everything is thrown into chaos.

And they can seem real, like they can do that.

I think it will be a little shame.

So Barbara was much more focused on disinformation and voting, making people not wanna vote, like tricking them.

She was very interested in that.

And Nina thinks the quashing of academics studying this stuff, speaking of which, Elon just lost a lawsuit.

He's trying to sue people who said Twitter's become a toxic waste dump, which it has.

But he tried to sue the academic group trying, showing just data that was there.

But he lost, and oddly enough Roberta Kaplan was their lawyer who did the case, E. Jean Carroll case.

- E. Jean Carroll, right, yeah.

- She's fantastic.

- So, there's lots of different things that could happen.

I think mostly you're gonna see what already happened before.

Propaganda has been with us...

I call it propaganda, not disinformation.

Disinformation, it's propaganda, is what it is.

And I think you're just gonna see it amplified.

And so, they'll be able to go to people, and really, it will be fast, compared to before.

Before it was a little harder.

You know, you had a billboard, and then you had flyers, and then you had calls.

Now you can do these messages really quick to people, and influence populations pretty quickly.

- Thank you very much.

- It's scaling speed, is where we're at.

- Hi.

- Hi.

- Hi Cara.

Thanks very much for coming and doing this.

It's really great to have you here.

- [Cara] Thank you.

- I'm kind of curious of your opinion of this dogmatic rush that we have towards STEM education at the expense- - [Cara] Of the humanities.

- Of the liberal arts and the softer-skilled types of education.

- Yeah, I would be happy to have that.

I wrote a column, actually in the "New York Times" saying that I think all tech should take ethics courses.

You know, ethics matter.

And history courses.

And one of the issues I've had with a lot of them, they don't know Combs.

They don't know, I had a very famous interview with Mark Zuckerberg in which we were arguing about Alex Jones, who had been violating all their rules on the plat, this is the guy, as you know who- - [Host] Well, he's ours.

He's here now, he's here.

- [Group Member] He's here now.

- I shouldn't say this, but that man can't die soon enough.

(all laughing) (audience applauding) - [Guest] Thank you.

- Sorry.

(audience applauding) I don't even mean slightly injured, I mean like "See 'ya."

The great beyond for him.

- [Guest] It's a very PBS comment.

- Well.

(audience laughing) I don't know what to say.

You're not supposed to, but I think that's fine to do that on some people.

So, let me get back.

So we were arguing on Alex Jones and why he hadn't thrown him off the platform after violating.

And Mark in the middle of it shifted to, "Let's talk about the Holocaust."

And I was like, "Oo, no, no, don't do that.

"Because I happened to be minored in that in college, "and you don't know anything.

"This is gonna go badly for you."

And he was doing it because he was Jewish, and he was trying to show that he was opened-minded, letting everybody speak, even people he hates.

Right, that was his play there.

And he wasn't deft enough to do it, especially with someone like me.

And so, he ended up saying Holocaust deniers don't mean to lie and stuff.

And he just didn't have the history, he just didn't have the base in the history.

And so I was literally like, "Could you had stayed at Harvard for one more semester "and taken Holocaust studies course?"

Here's a bookmark, like kind of thing.

And so the lack of the ability to understand history and philosophy, and stuff among tech people is...

I think STEM is very important.

I think we're way behind other countries, we really are.

And, it's critically important moving forward.

But, you also have to round out the education for those STEM people.

- You're saying its not either/or, it's both then.

- Yeah exactly.

And I think people in humanities should understand digital.

I don't, I've always urged reporters to do it.

I urge reporters to learn about business and stuff.

So I think, like my son...

I have one son who's a liberal arts person, and the other is a computer.

He's taking advanced calculus right now.

He's doing, he's a computer geek, essentially.

And I required, and he loves taking, he has to take, he's at Michigan.

He has to take a philosophy course every semester, an art course, a history course, or I ain't paying.

I was like, "You need to take that."

And, he loves it by the way.

- This is not their requirement, it's yours?

- It's mine, but we encouraged it.

Now, he loves it, too.

And if he has a wider range of information about the world, he'll be better when he starts to create things.

That he understands humans.

Psychology, anything like that.

- Thank you, Cara.

- So, I think it's got to be a combination.

But humanities people should also not disdain math and science, and such.

- Absolutely, thank you.

- All right.

(audience applauding) - Math and science!

- Hi, so I've had this idea since last summer.

And I haven't had no clue where to share, because there's no actual place to go to see change on your phone.

The way it's set up, you have to push accept, before you even know if you like an app.

And they're monitoring and they're selling your information all the time.

And there's no way, or there's no where to go to collectively put our foot down and say like, "Stop!

"You know, you can't do that."

But the idea is for a global payback paycheck.

That information, that money that they're making and selling, that has to be quantifiable somehow.

- It is quantifiable, actually.

It's funny, because there's a scene in the book, where Steve Case is talking about how he makes $50 off of each AOL user.

This is way back in the day.

And I put my hand, it was an investment conference.

And I put up my hand, and I go, "Where's my $25?"

And he's like, "What?"

And I said, "It's my stuff you're making money off of.

"Why don't you give me some?"

You should be able to be paid for your information.

It's not like selling a kidney.

You should be able to like, you should get some of the money they're making off of you, or else, they shouldn't be able to do it.

Now, there's a new online privacy bill that's finally possibly gonna be able to pass in Congress, lead by Maria Cahill.

- [Host] Maria Cahill.

- Who I'm gonna interview Friday.

I've know her for years, she was at Real Network- - [Host] She's smart!

- She's a tech executive.

- [Host] She's very smart.

- And, she's a lawyer, so she knows.

So there's some ideas of not paying, but in terms of, but being able to be sued if they use it without your permission.

So you should, there should probably be a permission structure where you can get paid for what you wanna give, or what you're giving there.

Because it- - [Guest] Yeah!

Be a part of it, you know?

- [Cara] If you want to, right.

- Select what information- - It could take a bad turn.

You know, people could give up all kinds of, it could turn into a "Black Mirror" episode very quickly I think.

But it's, I always say to tech people, 'cause they're very hard to like get them to, with literature and (indistinct) references.

I'm like, "Okay, imagine your product "is a 'Black Mirror' episode-" - [Host] They totally get it, they always get the reference.

- What's the worse thing that could happen?

- And they're like, "Oh."

And I said, "Don't make that, okay?"

Don't make a "Black Mirror" episode.

Make the good one, (indistinct), that one was nice.

But yes, they could do that.

They should do that.

- Do you see that changing anytime soon?

- [Cara] No.

- For us, the user?

How can we make that happen?

Is there a way.

- [Cara] Your legislators.

Don't let them take your information, and then...

If they're not allowed to take your information, they may have some offers for you, where you willingly- - [Host] Write to your Congressman.

- Okay.

- [Cara] No, with this privacy bill, they're gonna be a little bit of trouble.

They'll have to find another way to get you to give your information.

- [Guest] Good.

- [Host] We have time to take more?

I just wanna be sure?

We're okay on time.

- Yep, it's fun.

- [Host] Good, I mean if Cara's got time, I got time.

- You've talked mostly about men.

- [Cara] Yes, I have.

- Talk about the women involved.

(Cara chuckling) - Yes, I have.

- It's about time.

- I have lived the longest sausage fest in history.

(audience laughing) And I have three sons and only one daughter.

That's my fate.

I, I'm sorry to tell you, it is a man's world there.

It's shocking.

Like, lots of other industries, even finance, Hollywood.

I mean, Hollywood is much more diverse in all kinds of ways than tech is.

Tech is a real non-diverse place.

And that's one of the things I've said is, they think it's a meritocracy and it's a mirror-tocracy.

Right?

They get ahead because they're all like each to her.

And then don't ever see it, because why would they, right?

And so one of the things, at one point when Meg Whitman was made head of HP, she ran Ebay, did a great job of it.

And then had later moved over to run HP, Hewitt-Packard, the original tech company of Silicon Valley, really.

And I called Cheryl Sandburg who was the COO of Facebook at the time and I said, "It looks like you're the second-most "powerful woman in tech now."

And she goes, "I would like to the be the eighth."

Right?

So there's not that many.

There's some in the lower levels, Susan; Not lower levels, Susan Wojcicki, who just left YouTube.

She was one of the early people at Google.

- Who was the woman at Open AI?

- Open AI.

- Ermira Murati.

- Ermira Murati is a young woman.

There's a lot more in certain places, but there's still not- - But the fact that we can sit here and go, "Oh, right, that one-" - Lisa Su runs AMD.

- Means there are not that many.

- Lisa Su is a big chip company.

Jensen Huang is getting all the attention right now for Nvidia.

You know, there's not that many.

They're in the middle areas.

And they're not, there's many more tech people, because you have to be a tech person if you want power.

If you're in, a lot of the women were sort of relegated to HR and PR, or marketing, the softer, which you are saying the softer jobs there.

And so, because these are the founders, there's also a system where venture capitalists, one of the things I've always advocated is getting on the cap table of these companies.

And if you're on the cap table, you matter.

And then you can reinvest in things.

And there's no women on cap tables.

Like if you go look, really there's very few on the cap tables of things.

That said, Lorraine Powell Jobs is doing a lot of investing and focusing on women more diverse people.

It's always women doing it, right, of course?

Melinda Gates has got a group called Pivotal Ventures.

And she's focused almost solely on women, that women startups, or more diverse startups.

Aileen Lee is another venture capitalist, who's had a bunch of success with a bunch of things.

But it really is, it's always, women are always second or third.

And facilitator helpers, Cheryl was the perfect example of that.

As much power as she had, Mark ran the show, no matter what you do.

That's why I always focus.

I focus less on her culpability, which she has, then him.

Because they're always like, "Well Cheryl."

And I'm like, "He cannot be fired, she can be fired."

He cannot be fired.

So, I focus on the person who owns control of the company.

That's what I tend, and it tends to be men.

- We started with leaders, we end with leaders.

- Leaders, yeah.

That's what it is.

- Hopefully it matters.

- It's a kinship.

These companies are kinships right now.

- All right, we gotta get Cara back to the LBJ Library for her event tonight.

- Thank you.

- Please give her a big hand.

Thank you for being here.

See some of you over the course of the next couple of days, thanks a lot.

(audience applauding)