 Welcome, everyone. This is the 31st and final future tense social distancing social. We have been holding these since mid March. And because this is our last one, I actually want to start by thanking all of our new America events and production staff who have worked really hard over 31 different events to make sure that we can do them when we are all wherever we happen to be located. And just to remind you that future tense is a partnership between slate and Arizona State University and New America, and it we explore the impact of technology on society and on policymaking. So you just, you can follow future tense is content on Slate's website and also on Twitter, and you just heard the details of the zoom webinar. So our topic today is will 2020 that roller coaster year that we're not even quite yet half through will 2020 change American tech, and it's been a roller coaster if you just think about where we were in January to march to now. The year starts with the Democratic primary still in full swing with Elizabeth Warren calling and Bernie calling for breaking up big tech. I then through the onset of the pandemic, we become ever more dependent certainly on the tech we're using right now, all the different versions of how we can virtually communicate and hang out and also on Amazon and other e retail to deliver all sorts of goods. And then with the social justice protests with the murder of George Floyd and a renewed focus on systemic racism. We've also seen a wave of opposition to hate speech to what it how content is being moderated. And of course we've got tracing apps for how we're going to control the pandemic going forward. So there've been some good things, there've been some bad things we in many ways have also seen an acceleration to the future of work. And we're still in an election year which is given the role of certainly Facebook and Twitter in electing Donald Trump. That's part of the mix. So we're going to be talking about what's the balance was is this a good year or a bad year for tech too soon to tell, and what are the other implications. We have a wonderful interviewee read Hoffman, who is the co founder of LinkedIn, who's a partner at Greylock Ventures a venture capital firm, and most importantly, although that doesn't mean we'll give him an easy time a board member at New America. So read welcome and thanks so much for doing this. I want I do want to start just by asking you to give, give us your sense of what that balance is if you think about sort of the tech clash that wasn't just this year it's been last year as well as this year. And then then the pandemic, the role of the tech companies, big tech we're talking about in the in through the the co vid and then again now suddenly the role of social media platforms in particular, it's not just about advantaging social movements in some ways but also the tension around hate speech so just give us your starting sort of overview. So, I think that we are broadly still unfortunately in tech clash and I say that unfortunately not because I don't think there are obvious and definitive ways that tech industry can't needs to improve how it functions within society within democracy. There's been various kind of questions around, you know, the ethics around technology for, for example, racial justice or other kinds of things. And I think there's, you know, there's definite, you know, substantial room for improvement there. But, you know, as you know, my point of view is that look at almost anything you care about for betterment in the future, whether it's climate change, whether it's, you know, economic justice and and kind of creation of Jim new economic opportunity, whether it's, you know, you literally probably even racial justice, the strong technological component. And so, where where the tech clash becomes kind of anti technology, it becomes a serious problem. Now, when it's a look, we would prefer the tech firms to do X versus Y in the following way. I think that's part of a good part of a society and a, and a democracy, but if it's just like shut down technology shut down, you know, our ability to be global competitors just just shut it down. It's actually in fact doing substantial more harm than good. And I think we're still in it. And I think the only reason why we're why it's not as immediately apparent that we're in it is because of pandemic. The clarity of like our civil rights movement version to hopefully in this time actually in fact really catching. Now, of course, part of what enables this take of the civil rights moment was the fact that we have smartphones and cameras. And we can say, Oh my God, that is like evil and terrible and we should do something about it and it isn't just they are just talking about like, I can see it. And so it's part of the benefit that technology can bring in these circumstances. And so we're just not seeing as much the tech last year, I think it's just still there, you know, behind the whole thing, because the attention is on public health and and and it's, you know, it's ongoing, you know, train wreck disaster. The economic income impacts of the pandemic, which you know GDP down by 3030 plus percent when previously a quarter rise was one, you know, and obviously disproportionately hitting, you know, communities of color service industry, you know, lower income Americans are just just just terrible. And, of course, a political system where it's operating where the, you know, the president is emphasizing reality television and discord, and nothing regards to a intelligent response these crises that we're in. So let's so. So yeah, so we are still in tech lash I would I would agree with that. But let's go somewhere in between the Luddite sort of view so my son my 23 year old son gave up his iPhone for a smart for a flip phone halfway through college he's in the, you know, he writes letters with stamps with something that his father and I have done for 10 years. So there's that the sort of anti tech back to the land back to some mythical past. And then there's the Silicon Valley sort of or all embrace what about that intermediate position of nope it's big tech we don't like we're all for tech but we don't like big tech and big tech has gotten even bigger. In this moment right the Amazon has gotten bigger we we are more dependent on than ever on the those really big firms what are we seeing any shift there. I don't think we are. Although once again, I'd say our point my my view about what we were we should decide should be on the big tech question should be. We live in a multipolar world, we have intense fine competition for American economics, American power and prestige American influence on the world order. The tech industry is actually one of the places where we have a very strong position, although the Chinese competition is coming hard and fierce and I think there will be even broader than that. And so I think our view that even though it's I think a fact that big tech continues compounded these very high scales. Our question shouldn't be the okay how do we go hit big tech with a stick. It should be the how do we make it better for American democracy American society American values to the world. And what is the ways that we interact in order to make that happen. And that's unfortunately, I think the tech class against big tech is still basically like they're in the same muddled way it was in the last couple years before the pandemic. Because you know you have this weird by valence of both. Ooh, you know I know that like Google is doing something with my data. You know, like I know that like they're like I see all these bad headlines, but on the other hand, you know, your son very rare trade back to flip phones. I'm not even sure I was aware you could get a flip phone. It's hard. But you know, very, most people go oh my God I love my smartphone. Oh my God I love my free search. You know, oh my God I use social networks and I use communication tools and, and this enables me and I really like it. And so there's, I have some, you know, impression that there's something bad with these tech firms. And by the way it doesn't mean that I'm not in the tech firms are they like not making mistakes of various forms and aren't there isn't a better way for a society to have a dialogue with them to improve where society is in terms of shaping what's going on, potentially within democracy. And there's also questions that artificial intelligence, the question about, you know, which kind of development of which systems like if it perpetuates racial and bias, you know, the rage, the racial bias and judicial and other kinds of systems terrible, like you know, you really need to fix that. And so anyway, so I think that the big tech lash is still there. Again, not as much paid attention to not as much top of news headlines. The top of news headlines are so occupied with. Oh my gosh, our society and asteroid is hit the well functioning while it wasn't necessarily well functioning before, but whatever degree was functioning before was really well compared to where it is now. So I want to, I mean, we're going to come back to talking about some of the questions of algorithmic bias and some of the more more specific questions but I want to push you on the competition with China point this is a probably a place you and I may disagree so the, there's no right there. US and China are the big tech competitors. The EU is a competitor in tech regulation but much less in actually having its own homegrown tech companies and we'll see with India and others but so the argument often is, and you alluded to it, look, China is huge right we got all about Ali Baba we got 10 cent by do these are enormous companies, we can only compete with them if we're enormous too. I guess the so so their group of people at New America saying what we actually need there's the Chinese model of the internet where you know the government can do pretty much whatever it wants. So there's a lot of regulation of how Chinese companies actually interact with Chinese consumers but it's basically an authoritarian vision of what the internet is and an increasing surveillance society. The European view which is highly very protective of privacy but also, you know, given Europe's own experiences with the state, you know, really very, very nervous, more so than most Americans, and that what we actually need is not to just free our companies to compete with China unrestricted but we need our own distinctive American vision of what the internet and what what a virtual world a digital world looks like that builds in privacy, equality, a measure of justice that that actually we know what we don't want but we don't have a positive view of what we do want. So I think, you know, I think about level description I probably agree with you. My one asterisk would be that to some degree, your ability to imbue the tech platforms of the world with your value structure depends a lot on on being able to get very broad adoption. So for example, you know, while we can have this discourse about like, well, what should kind of social media and communications clients kind of be when we're trying to return our democracy to a healthy state where we think that they're actually in fact discourse is leading towards increasing belief and truth in various ways. And you say well, what would our discourse be like if our communications platform or 10 cent right versus the ones that we have. And the answer is very different, because our ability to influence it would be actually in fact a lot less. And that's actually of course one of the reasons why the Europeans are, are, you know, deeply concerned about the global strength of the US tech industry because I like well we have these values, and, and, and we have a very limited ability to influence it, because the firms that are creating the platforms that we're operating on are all based in, you know, the West Coast of the US versus versus here. And, you know, look, I'm sympathetic and I think that there's, we're much closer to the European and a variety of value systems. And so I think that that that's a navigable thing. And that's the reason why I do take as primary, making sure that you have the kind of winning tech ecosystem, because without that, you can talk as much as you like, and there's very little you can do. So, now, that being said, do I say do I want a Chinese, you know, ecosystem, you know, as the one that that that is the one that we're kind of build our, you know, a system of progressive and liberal values, I don't mean that as anti conservative. It's kind of a traditional American sense of a set of values. No, no, no, no. We want those and we want to have the right discourse and that the, the ethical tempo of it should be by a well functioning society and should be by a well functioning government. How do we get to a well functioning society and the well function government are very big and challenging problem. But like the question about like, well, where should individual liberties and privacy be and where should that be against society and what what function should the government have in this and what kinds of things as on limits and off limits for companies to build. Those are really good questions that should that need development. But, like, again, like, for example, if you were, you know, let's go to another country of great values, you go to New Zealand and say, Okay, well, you can, you know, you can say, Well, we think is what the following things of what should be true of all internet browsers. Well, that's very nice. You know, great country, very wonderful, wonderful people, wonderful government, wonderful country, not going to mean anything. So I mean, you know, it's interesting. I was thinking about you could imagine American tech companies competing against Chinese companies around the world on we can safeguard your privacy better. Right. And there are there are many people, you know, that is something we should be able to compete on. On the other hand, of course, from our own government's point of view, we have not hashed that out. There's Apple would say that there are many people not new America but there are others who would say but that compromises our security so there is this interplay between domestic, you know, the domestic tradeoffs and I take your point of, if you want to, if you want the world if you want to spread the values you've also got to spread the system but you also have to make sure the system reflects the values. Let me put let me push on the big medium. So, again, the counter vision that we have not seen except maybe in a few cases is, yeah, we, we definitely do need to compete with China, but we could have multiple smaller interoperable systems rather than this is the baby Bell's argument. I guess I want to sharpen that question though by asking so we're on zoom. Right. Zoom was, you know, Microsoft has its teams you're on the board of Microsoft Microsoft has his teams we got Google Hangout we got I don't I don't use the Facebook products but whatever they are. Zoom in my experience is really better. So, is zoom a kind of one off or is this actually an example of the argument that no you can compete even if you are smaller you really you just have to, you know, seize that market niche because one of the most compelling arguments I always find is that you know so many of the startups are in Silicon Valley are just waiting to get bought they don't actually want to build and and and create a whole new ecosystem but zoom zoom's like right now you're seeing a company grow very very fast that wasn't a big company. So, and by the way it's not just zoom. I mean, there's slack. You know, in the previous thing, there is, you know, like people said all dominance of Facebook and then snap came about, you know, there's a stack of things and I think that the thing that the, the most the folks in in kind of antitrust thinking haven't made two important upgrades and no thinking. One of them we've already talked about a little bit which is global like this is not an American run universe anymore. And so, as it were the so goes America so goes the rest of the world is not actually the way it plays so you kind of say well look at it looks like it's dominant here. So we should try to unwind it and I think about, like, is China going to go say oh we're going to go break apart 10 set right and the answer is not really. And by the way, I don't think the Europeans would do it either if they had it as well. I think it's kind of the question of the of that kind of competition. Then the second thing is, is that you know what we have call it, you know, five plus large tech firms. I think that's five plus large tech firms going to 10, not going to two to three. And when you have a number of them that they're all competing really ferociously with each other that competition creates lots of space not just in the competition between the large firms themselves, but for startups. So, you know, why is it that, you know, zoom says, look, we got a much better product. There's this open platform called the internet, we can deliver across it. We're going to move fast, be very focused exploit that opportunity, but also, you know, slack snap. Right. I think there's more of a challenge on mobile than there is on internet it's more of a question of iOS and Google and like stores and so forth. But you basically say look, this is a growing number and there's room for competition. Now, to the last point that you were mentioning, look, there's some Silicon Valley firms as a number of them that go I love to be acquired it's a good outcome. But Silicon Valley, I think fortunately for the US and fortunately for all a lot of people here very ambitious everyone's like I'm going to establish the new platform. The majority of the companies I personally invest in have that as a goal and a characteristic. I think that's generally to across a lot of the top tier venture firms. And so, and the thing that's interesting is now, we kind of have like multiple platforms that are interleaving. It's not just like one. It's not just like, you know, windows is the only platform that Internet is a platform to some degree cloud with artificial intelligence is another platform. And so you have these kind of platform set of technologies which then gives more space for creation of more for the competition of it. And so part of the reason why zoom comes about is neither Google, which their modern product is called meat, by the way, Hangouts is the kind of weird deprecated one shows you where are you or Microsoft or zoom, right? Like, like, like when zoom was going, neither Microsoft nor Google were really focused on it until like zoom and already built up an intense momentum, and a product really going and now of course, by scrambling to compete that's the competition that creates better products for society. And as part of the thing that is the, the insight of capitalism in providing value back to society. So can I just ask you said you're going from five to 10 rather than five to three that was what you want to want to let us in on the there are five you expect to grow. Yeah, well so I mean exactly which ones I think is unclear. But like for example where will Salesforce end up. It's been growing it's been acquiring, you know, a bunch of things and it has a substantial market cap. You know you could see what depending pre pandemic. Because basically once you get a tech company to be growth it tries to grow into as many niches as it can. So if Uber weren't dealing so intensely with its drop of passenger vehicles, it would be, you know, kind of similarly, you know, kind of operational in this. There are a bunch of companies that are competing for what is the platform for autonomous vehicles. Obviously Google is there with Waymo but the investments I've made in in Aurora and neuro as as kind of as as as super interesting and and leading elements of this so I think there's a stack of things to make AI. So, you know, you've got these mega giants both in the US and in China which by the way I think require a huge scale, and, and in the kind of the small fragmented firms basically don't succeed, mostly on that. But then of course you've got open AI, which is out there and and and going really, going really well with us and so anyway so that's the reason why I'd say like the most of the all my god they're so powerful. That's an issue it was like well they're defining the medium in which we're operating that medium is super important to the health of society, but actually in fact they're not. They're not mono polar right they're actually competing with each other and they're creating a bunch of space for other startups that are up and coming. So let's let's turn to the social justice side of things. I mean we've got twin pandemics and the you know there are a number of ways in which I think people worry, or argue that the tech companies, big and small are making racial inequities much worse. So let's just start there was a story in the New York Times of it you know at the guy who was picked up because of facial recognition software and African American man, we know that facial recognition works much better on whites than on people of color. And you know the skies actually picked up and taken to jail and he finally says no so the whole there there's the whole issue of algorithmic bias, which we know is the people who make the algorithms. And this goes, you know, not being able to ask a ask Alexa or Siri about you know rape is a way with what they're all sorts of examples, but then there's also the sort of tremendous divide in terms of jobs right the really good tech jobs, the really bad gig economy jobs that are just plain service jobs, and that that's disadvantaging people of color who are already at the bottom of the educational heap and this is just making that that much worse. And then, and then related of course algorithmic bias is just the this is Silicon Valley is has tremendous racial disparities and you are starting to see people, you know, agitating from within. Is this a moment that really impels tech to change me all of us I run an institution, you're on the board of it we are looking at how do we really transform ourselves how do we make sure as you said, this time around. We're not looking 50 years from now and saying oh yeah there was a big civil rights movement in 2020 and you know there was a little. Now schools are more segregated than they were in 1970 how does tech grapple with this. So, look, it is my ardent hope and also work and I think yours and New Americas as well that now that we're in kind of the civil rights moment to that we will actually go and get some more substantial progress on this. Versus the kind of a oh look it'll kind of work out and it's, and that's fine and I think that one of the reasons why I think that the modern language of saying it's important to be an anti racist, not just not a racist is correct. And I think one of those problems where if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem. So if you're kind of sitting around quietly saying look I took my hidden bias training and I make sure that I interview proportionately for positions across you know gender people of color and so forth and in and making sure that I'm kind of cross checking our policies are modern and so look I'm doing my part and that that's it in the system will ultimately work out. The problem of course is this allows those key places which are systemically biased against a disenfranchised class, or those those number of people who are bad actors who are in and within the system who create that oppression. Right, so, you know the weathered up their, their police officers who have multiple infringements, who are like, Okay, I'm always using terrible force against, you know, black people and black men. You know, whether it's because of public unions or because of policies or anything else I'm allowed to keep doing it. And it's like no no that creates an environment of fear and terror and it's part of the, the, the, the overall disenfranchisement of the class. And so we all have to be working on that. And then that is true, obviously for the tech industry as well. And, you know, there's, there's a set of things within the kind of philanthropic set so it's everything from as you know opportunity at work which is, you know, kind of spot up within New America with Byron geese is kind of making sure that we have kind of diverse inclusion within tech jobs and making sure that there is a path for getting those skills getting those jobs and being part of the economic growth and the economic wealth that is created within these to make sure that that's, you know, kind of broad within distribution. So, you know, folks, howdy part of these code or let's make sure that computer science is taught in every single high school, including every single, like every single public high school, every single high school in the poor communities which of course frequently overlap with the tech companies and let's make sure that's there and so that opportunity is there. You know, there's a various organizations within within Silicon Valley like a code 2040 and other things that are like okay let's make sure that those tech things are there. Then when you get to the tech companies. I think that one of the things that you know is really good is that the tech companies are now thinking okay so how do I disproportionate like how do I target to make sure that recruiting is working how do I go to historic black universities and colleges. You know how do I, you know how do I do these things how do I make that happen more. And how do I make sure that there's the right support groups so it doesn't just like the, like the, like the voice can be heard within the organization and I think that I see that every organization I'm touching so I think it's really really awesome. You know the CEOs of community are committed so now getting to the tech and the algorithmic side. Clearly, I actually think that the facial recognition one while it's obvious and visible to do like okay they trained on all these corporates are white faces, and all this other shitty things that lead to the bad training because of that. The more deep ones are like for example, and this is not really AI but but within machine learning is like what happens in parole judgment software or sentencing recommendation software, which is really hard to to cross check. When people have done the work, they realize that actually in fact, because it's, it's going over the heavily policed, you know, kind of black sub community that it's being it's it's hardening biases hardening injustice in that arena. But you know, okay, that really needs to not happen. Like it's already, it's already operational and that needs to be changed, like today, yesterday, tomorrow is too late. And so, and so I think there's a set of things there and I think one of the things is good is all with the attention is like okay. I want to be deploying a software systems that have economic impact or social justice impact. You need to proactively prove that you are good right on the civil rights vectors you have to prove they say, we actually cross checking to see if there's racial bias or cross checking to see if there's gender bias. And you know that will require some work from society which numerical probably be the, the spirit of to say, well, what, what is the test bed what is algorithm look like what are the kinds of things that say no no actually in fact, even if that judgment happens to judge you know this specific class that that's actually in fact okay out of all the data sources, right, or no, the moment that you have any disparity from a demographic average, right, you have a problem with your algorithm. And how do you and how do you do that and that's going to be super important to do. Now, the good news is of this is the bad news is if you institutionalize parole like judgment software, you can institutionalize racism across the entire country. In one pieces off or be distributed. That's the terrible news, which is really important. The good news is, when you fix it, you can also be like pushing back and being anti racist across the whole society. And it's one of the reasons why I still tend to be a call it a techno optimist not a techno utopian what you build a technology is not necessarily the right values, but you can do things that are substantially better by doing it. And that's the work that I think we want to take in this, this kind of civil rights movement to, in order to say that that's the thing that we need. And the good news is, as far as I can tell across all the tech companies on, you know, have any relationship with the go. Yeah, that sounds like a really good idea we should do that. I can actually imagine something like a lead certification system right with with various kinds of tech where you actually have an anti racist filter, or civil justice civil civil rights and civil justice filter. There are questions coming in but I want to ask you just a couple more. One is, you know, when you were talking about the civil rights movement I can I went to college at the very really at the end I'm in the 70s, but I cut my teeth on divestment in South Africa and the sort of center of the administration and I mean this was the late 70s. And of course, it takes another decade. But I, you know, I'm looking at what's happening with Facebook right now the drop in advertising revenue over Facebook's, you know, decision not to take Trump's tweets down, having to mark them in some ways but basically not to respond in ways that internally they've got there's an employment issue like I you know people from the inside saying act, you know, becoming more and more activist, but really what is striking is suddenly advertisers undoubtedly responding from pressure among their employees saying we're not going to advertise. Could this be like a divestment moment. It could could escalate. And I do think that by the way some of the employees within the advertisers who are, who are pulling down probably there are some movement there I actually think this is a, this is a good corollary just as as the anti apartheid movement is a good corollary to the social movements because the social movements went and realized to say, well actually back there's all these companies that spent a lot of money in the brand, part of their brand has to be, but we are, we are, we are, we are society positive we are, we are race positive we are gender positive these are things that map like we, we, we, we go 10 out of 10 on goodness in these vectors and they went to them and said look you're, you're, you're advertising on a system which is allowing a range of hate speech that's much worse than you'd like. It's, it's some of that speech might be juxtaposed to your advertising. You know, is this really where you want your brand to be. I think that's the actual the central, the central movement of this. And I think they, you know, a bunch of the companies kind of went, yeah, right. I, that's not what I want to be associated with and I think that kind of movement it's one of the, the kind of boycott movements against kind of like organizations that is actually I think one of the things that is a classic kind of Western American and European, you know, effort that by which people express their, their change the change in values on an economic basis. And I think that's, that's like happening in a good way and frankly, on a political side, you know one of the things I've been thinking about trying to go and assimilate for the, you know, next month is, is an anti Trump boycott, you know, because it's kind of like okay that the, that the various forms of enrichment with moral logo and all the rest that should not be part of an American political system should be protested in an economic ways as well as in political ways. But anyway, that's what I actually that's from what I'm not deep student of that that's what I see happening and I think that is effective in various ways because as the say look we, we're only going to put our brands in places that have a, you know, essentially reflect the values of the brand that we want. And if we believe that kind of the, the, the boycott movement saying like the hate speech regulation here is not good enough. Right. Then we're going to act and I think that's what you see happening and now how like I hope that it makes certain changes but I think that's like TBD, the depth of the changes so far. Yeah, although it is interesting because the classic boycott is a straight consumer one. This is more of a, you know, again the employee, you're, you're a company and you need to keep your employees on site so it isn't just the consumers it's actually people who can operate through their own organizations. Just because it's super important it's also you need to keep your brand aligned a certain way to your entire not just your employees to the world and to other consumers, and we're going to highlight where you're misaligning your brand. Maybe we won't advertise there. Yep. It's interesting. Okay, so one last question and I'll turn to the two questions from the audience. So, there, even before COVID, there were articles sort of the end of 2019 saying Richard Florida wrote one saying you know, young people are starting to move to a whole group of medium sized cities that have highly educated working forces at that point high employment that that that has changed lower cost of real estate and there are a whole list of some in the heartland some in a lot in the southwest but these are not the kind of Austin Boston Silicon Valley Seattle Denver concentrated geography of jobs. And now you have remote work Facebook is saying and Twitter you know we expect that 50% of our people will keep working remotely that's a dramatic change from campuses. And indeed, you know, Microsoft huge campus LinkedIn has a nice campus. Suddenly those engineers can actually move back to where many of them were trained, which is the Midwest, it's Michigan and Purdue and Illinois, they've got kids their kids their parents are aging the good reason to be closer. And the quality of life is much higher so my question is, are we finally going to see a meaningful shift in what more ready calls the job, the new geography of jobs which has not only increased inequality but of course has created huge problems for those cities I mean homeless homelessness and traffic and high housing prices all interlinked in various ways. So, I think the answer is we will see something of a shift. I think that shift will be somewhat enabled, especially because, you know, part of during the pandemic, we'll get a reset by which a bunch of people will move and will and then the organizations will adapt to having offices work, etc. Now that that being said, I don't think the pandemic shifts the reason why we have what I think of as the densification of networks, which essentially leads to the urbanization. Anyway, which is what happens as we live in more and more of a network world, you know, kind of the network to age. And actually, in fact, being close to the center nodes of the network is super important for economics economic opportunity power and influence, kind of position within whatever tribe you're talking and I tried could be, you know, a country I tried could be a company could be a group, you know, whatever that is. And so that will continue and I don't think that we have. I don't think that the, the fact that we will now been kind of forced to develop our markets through, you know, a lot of zooms and teams and meets and so forth, that those principles of relation relational kind of combination within tribes for it, and they proximity even though proximity through these zoom things as far out proximity still really matters. That's the reason why if you look at what the engines of economic growth tend to be, especially within new firms and technology emails that tends to be within urban areas. Yes, we get some energy things and we get, you know, kind of natural resources and some other things. But by the way, when you get to like, okay, we're now inventing new energy. Well, that tends to be centers of jazz agreed same thing that generates universities is you get an aggregation of a certain kind of nodes of networks and connections certain other nodes and that's what drives it and so that those forces are still there. It may be that the absolute intensity of the forces has been diminished by the development of tools that the realization of the value of having distributed nodes. I myself have been working in a lot of ways to create entrepreneurship in places outside of Silicon Valley, you know, within the US and globally, it's endeavor it's key but it's a whole stack of things because I think the more entrepreneurial hubs we have the better off we are as a society. I think that's actually a super important thing. And that's just one area of it I think the same thing is true of having multiple areas of doing science multiplayer is doing tech multiplayer like this is this is like a really good thing. But it's too easy for us to draw the straight line and say oh look this is going to reset so now it's totally different you're like, you know, the same forces that lead to why there is so much new tech company creation and Silicon Valley will continue to create that kind of tech combination within Silicon Valley. We want to create as many others as possible, but the forces are still there. Interesting. All right, we've got lots of questions and you've got some tough ones, or just really excellent questions so one from Rebecca McKinnon. A Washington Post editorial on Monday criticized both Trump and Biden for having the wrong position on wanting to revoke section 230 for different reasons, which as you well know shields internet platforms from liability for what their users do so they both want to revoke it different reasons. The question is if Vice President Biden were to ask you for your advice on what his policy should be on the internet platform regulation specifically 230 what would you tell him. So, let's see, I'll make a couple of first comments so one is the funny way that and 230 obviously is the, we don't edit editorial eyes and and don't monitor it then we're free from the accountability and the liability of things that things that are set. And the short answer by the way is, we actually already forced the platforms to do some monitoring the oh we don't do monitoring they monitor for porn and child porn they monitor for terrorism they monitor for, you know, kind of commercially bad speech including like copyright violation and and some other things. They got monitoring functions right so the 230 as no monitoring function is this one this weird illusion that everyone talks about the real question is just where do you set the lines. And where do you set the lines between saying hey look we're going to enable as actually broadly diverse speech as possible. I don't know you're, you're responsible for this in the traditional way that publishers are responsible. Right. And so every single speak piece of content is as if you paid for it, and it was your employee who put it up out of your organization, which of course is where media would like because they would like it all to be like them. And so, and the question is as where in that in that line and I think that the answer is, look what we should, the real dialogue and this gets is, is where should we say, here is the places where we should say, in these forms, you have some less restrictive publisher liability, less absolute than publisher liability, but more than no liability. And here is what those should look like so that we have the better balance of things. Because by the way we're already doing that even though 230 says well, you know, like, like you don't monitor, you're not watching, and you're not editing actively so you don't have accountability well the answer is they are watching and they are editing. Because they're already doing it for very, very selective things that everyone goes he ever like everybody should do that course. So that's the mods that should happen now broadly speaking. I think that part of the virtue of the American entrepreneurial system the virtue of the American free speech system is we say restrictions on these things we show we we choose them very carefully. Right, as opposed to saying, we have a centralized bureaucracy that makes all these decisions for us, we say look, we try to allow the system including crazy people people who think we never went to the moon and so forth. We allow crazy people. Right. But that's because we want to make sure that we're not locking down what we can discover that the new important thing that might otherwise be eliminated by a central bureaucracy. It's not very choiceful about how you move it out. But I think some choices of how to move it out of good things now obviously I think both the reasons you know just as Rebecca said hi Rebecca, both, both, you know, both of those two positions seem to be badly put from an American values perspective. So we've got an interesting question from Esther Dyson says, do employees in tech companies matter more than shareholders. In other words, will human capital supersede financial capital. Are we going to move them to talentism. Well, the human and financial capital is a whole other thing that we can spend a whole hour talking about. And that's our question. The high Esther, the. And so what I would say is broadly speaking, I think it's always been the case that to some degree companies are more responsive in some ways to employees than shareholders, partially because shareholders as a block tend to be we have one fairly easily mechanism which is, are you leading the business in a way that increases the value of the stock, like you're increasing revenue increasing, you're increasing operating margin, you're operating ways your brand is increasing the belief in the future relative competitors, and that tends to be the the totalizing factor across all of them. And when, and when barring very large malfeasance like whether it's climate change or, you know, bad interactions. It's really like, you know, suppressing indigenous communities or other kinds of things that are like, okay, you know, this, we can create a thing that that tar is the whole company. Stockholders tend to have that shape, whereas employees tend to be the well we work here we choose to work here. You hear our voices all the time our degree of morale, and, and, and willingness to work really hard and do innovation and invest in the future the company really really matters. So, I think it's actually frankly more revealed now in weird ways because it because this kind of loop for like, it's easier for for employees to do a walk out, for example or a virtual walk out to express their, their point of view. But I think that's kind of broadly speaking, always been the case. And I think that, in a sense, one of the things where the trend lines going is where you get to, you know, MBA schools and leadership schools is actually next I think there's going to be need to be more attention put to this, because I think it's part of how you create actually really great companies is is is where they, the culture and the employees are like we're working for the mission. There's a mission to this company about what it's doing in the world and we're doing that. And that naturally goes to, I'm not sure talentism is the right word but I think it goes in that direction I think that there are many good things with it, even though there's also some really kind of weird things with it too. So I've got a question here from Baldas, this is back on on sort of tech and social justice so Robert Smith has suggested take 2% of a business's bottom line and put it to work for minorities. Netflix did this this morning it gave a percentage of its bankable monies to minority run banks so is this what tech should do just take a, you know, a 6% and say we are going to affirm as you said race positive we're going to do something that affirmatively helps minorities. I'm not surprised that Robert Smith has a super smart suggestion, I interviewed him from Massachusetts scale that's how I got to know him. Very, very smart man. And I think that's a good idea. I think it's a good idea to say, look, what part of the, because, because part of of course how you begin to really like an American way to systemically think about how do we change racial justice is to say, well let's be co owners. I'm not sure that they have not just, you know, kind of like economic opportunities and pads, but if they're co owners of society they're bought into it, along with everyone else. It's the same reason why we, we value homeownership and we value like community ownership was like, Okay, so let's make the financial institutions that help elevate the black community and we want it'll be such a better society if they're calling us with it so it's an excellent idea and actually in fact, I'll talk to Robert about it next time I talk to him. So then a question from Mia Armstrong is back to China. Any thoughts on how tick tock plays into all this. What's the credit for its huge success but to go over the last few months I can tell you that we're all sitting on screens. But does that say anything about the future of Chinese tech companies in the US market. Well I think we're beginning to see it so previously like five, 10 years ago, the where Chinese companies were very strong but where they were diamond was China, and now we're beginning to see them going to other places. And tick talk I have some knowledge of because actually that came from a investment that Greylock made in a Shanghai company where other investors to go we were investors called musically, which, which generated tick talk and it's now part of bite dance. And, and so I think that what you're going to see is you're going to see more, not just innovations because our innovations coming out of China that US tech firms actually go that's good. And the way tech competition happens is not only do we copy it, but we take it and we rebuild we build the next version of it. That's, that's the progress of this kind of competition. And I think you'll see, you've already been seeing that, but now you actually see presence of these platforms presence of these of these of these applications and I think you'll see more and more of it. And yes, we don't see as much of it within the US, because we have a strong kind of tech industry. It isn't the most natural place for the Chinese firms to most often go where they most go and compete is the rest of the world. And like, for example, areas where the US tech industry is failing very badly is in the payments OS for the rest of the world. This tends to be Alipay. And actually, in fact, you said, well, what, what might determine the future of a reserve world currency, right, because we all go where we live in this very comfortable spot where the dollar is the reserve currency. Well, actually, in fact, tech, it may be the thing that changes that. And it may be the fact that when that when it's a Chinese tech platform and the entire rest of the world that does all the payments infrastructure, that may just go, Well, look, we've got to automatically shift to the R&B. That's the reserve world currency. And by the way, that would change the economic futures of absolutely everyone in the United States, as an example. Right, we, we have this fortune, more than, you know, that benefits us more than every other country in the world because the reserve currency. And so I actually think that the what's really going on most Americans, like you see tick tock. But actually, in fact, that's already massively going on in all of the rest of the world. And, you know, that's a game that, you know, like, I'd say many Silicon Valley people think we can be in that game. But by default, that's part of the reason I was like, leave us alone, let us compete with China, which is not what we should care about society. But like, if you don't do that, we're going to lose and that that that won't just affect the tech companies that will affect the entire country. Well, that leads perfectly to the next question, which says it seems people might agree with you that we need to occupy the primary technological position if we want to have any real influence. But it of late, it doesn't seem that we're sufficiently using that position to advance the values we hold dear, how should we do that better. Great question. So, of course, the really top level asterisks is have more unity as a society. Which like how do you do that, because given like how much like, like part of the problem about having a president who is who is divide and conquer who is who is discord in chief leads that enormous repercussions across the entire thing we definitely want to have kind of like, look, how do we get to the bases or working together and have more unity and by the way, that starts with the Congress like we're fundamentally a Congress run country. And so you have to work on the Congress and you have to improve unity of relationship with the Congress one of the things we agree on in order to make those things happen whether that's right choice voting time electoral vote popular vote all these kinds of structural things. Now, within the technology space. I think the, it comes down to saying look, we think that the following things are the values of America, both internally and also what we want to advocate globally. And then, then, for example, you could this is one of the things that when I was talking to the Obama administration, which was, you know, very forward looking and discourse on this I say look, I would start opening up discourse I'd start with discourse I would start with that company saying, look, this is this kind of stuff we care about. What can you do to help with it. Right. And by the way, if you can't do things to help with it then we have to start regulating we have to start saying look we're going to start opposing opposing accountancy driven metrics for you on certain kinds of things. We want the reduction of hate speech within your platform. We're going to use AI to do send an analysis the following way. And if you're not showing your metrics going down on hate speech year by year. This is the kind of financial penalty that's going to result from it, which is something you could kind of easily do. There's a lot of detail on that, in order to get it right. But there's stuff you could do. But I think you start with, hey, you guys are the innovators. These are the things we care about. What can you do for us. What can you do to make that happen. Because by the way, you might be surprised at like, oh, a much better idea. The problem is the old fangled regulation was, thou shall only do the following thing and the following process. The problem of course is we're evolving and changing and when you do that you lock in the past against the future you need to continue to innovate. So do it against targets doing against things that you measure and say, hey, how you get there is how you get there. But these are the metrics that you do it against and that's the kind of thing that I think is the discourse that needs to happen between essentially the government the public institutions and the and the companies, the technology companies, all companies. So we have two minutes. So I'm going to ask a question. Do you believe that the US will be the hub of global tech innovation in 25 years from Victoria Jackson. I think that we're strong enough and we have enough of, even though we're trying desperately to kill ourselves on this. Like, example, the superpower of America is immigration. It's one of the things that for example when you say well, what would be the thesis by which this would be true against China for example is that we continue to do a hey we're a great place for people and bright minds to come from around the world, and the universities participate in the startups participate in the tech companies, and that's our superpower and that if we're doubling down on that superpower I think the answer is yes. If we continue to do what we're doing, which is to say, oh let's actually in fact take the thing that we have the best competitive edge, when you consider us against China, when you consider us against Russia when you consider us against any of these other forces, and let's actually break it. Let's, let's break our, our position let's make it let's make ourselves like throciously xenophobic and anti immigrant. Let's make ourselves anti the Statue of Liberty. Then I think that there's a good, there's a good possibility the answer to that question is no. That is not a good techno optimist and to note to end on but it is. I think we can do it, but we need to like row in the right direction and I'm going to this is the way we need to row. Great. And I would say, yes embracing the way we both reflect and connect the world and frankly addressing our own unity problems but race problems. There's no there's no way otherwise. So read Hoffman thank you thanks to the audience there were great questions there were more than I could ask. And thanks to slate and ASU and again our tech staff and Faith Smith and Andres Martinez who make this happen and Tori Bosch on the slate side. So thanks all. Thank you.