Goodbye TikTok, Ni Hao RedNote? + A.I.’s Environmental Impact + Meta’s Masculine Energy

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

Hi, Casey.

Hello, Kevin.

How’s it going?

Well, it’s going all right. There’s a lot of sad news in the world right now. Of course, my thoughts are with everyone affected by these LA wildfires. And whenever something bad has happened this month, I just think, I can’t believe they’re doing this to us during dry January.

[LAUGHS]:

Do you know what I mean? I’m doing dry January this year and —

How’s it going?

Well, the unfortunate news is that it’s going fantastic.

[LAUGHS]:

I had assumed that each day I would wake up thinking, oh, it would be nice to crack open a beer with my friends tonight or something. But instead, I’m just like, I feel so incredibly well rested.

Aw.

So that has been an interesting learning.

Do you plan to continue it beyond January?

Well, I don’t think I’m going to go 100 percent dry, but I have actually been thinking about, what if I did a dry February, too? So I don’t know. I don’t know. Changes could be on the horizon.

What would happen to your wine tap?

I might have to replace it with seltzer or something dramatic. It could be crazy.

The horror.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I’m Kevin Roose, the tech columnist at “The New York Times.”

I’m Casey Newton from “Platformer,” and this is “Hard Fork.” This week, TikTok enters its final hours in the United States, and Americans are flocking to a new Chinese app. Then, Hugging Faces’ Sasha Luccioni joins us to help us understand the environmental impact of AI. And finally, my idea is to bring more masculine energy to Meta. It’s time to man up, Kevin.

Let’s go, bro.

Well, Casey, the major, major news in tech this week is that we might actually get a TikTok ban.

It’s true. And I feel like we’ve probably started at least seven segments of the show that way over the years, Kevin. But this really is looking like the final, final, final version of, yes, TikTok could be banned.

Yes. This is TikTok ban v-12, final-final, use this one.docx.

That’s right.

[LAUGHS]: And we have talked so much about how we came to this point, the law that Congress passed to ban TikTok.

PAFACA.

PAFACA, technically, to force it to sell. That law is supposed to go into effect on January 19th, which is this Sunday, the day before Donald Trump’s inauguration. And as of this taping, it appears that, barring some last minute intervention, TikTok’s time as one of the most popular social media apps in the United States may be coming to an end.

And you want to talk about a roller coaster, the number of twists and turns this story has taken from when Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok in his administration, to Joe Biden putting the brakes on that and exploring other alternatives, to that process going off the rails, and Congress passing the first piece of tech related legislation in the past decade to make this thing happen. Then, Donald Trump reverses himself, says, I’m going to save the app. Then, that doesn’t work. And finally, last week, it all ends up at the Supreme Court. So yes, if you wonder why we keep doing this segment over and over again, it’s because very few things have changed as much in the past half decade or so as the fate of TikTok.

It’s truly nuts. So when we started recording this segment on Wednesday, the Supreme Court had not made a decision yet on this case. But as of Friday, the justices did issue an opinion upholding the law and denying ByteDance’s challenge. So, Casey, we’re going to talk about all of this, but let’s start by analyzing a little bit of what happened at the Supreme Court, and then talk about where we go from here.

OK, so last Friday, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in “TikTok v. Merrick Garland.” Merrick Garland, of course, is the attorney general. And this was a lawsuit brought by ByteDance to try to get the Supreme Court to step in at the last minute and overturn this law, and basically say, ByteDance is allowed to own TikTok in the United States, or at least to delay the ban from going into effect. And did you actually listen to the oral arguments? I know you’re a noted Supreme Court watcher.

I did not listen to the Supreme Court arguments live, Kevin, but I did catch up on them later. And I have to say, I was surprised by the tenor of the discussion.

Say more.

Well, I just thought that we would see a bit more deference to the First Amendment that we got. Justices seem to think that the speech issues involved in the case were not relevant. Because the way that the law is written says that as long as ByteDance divests this app, all of the speech on the app remains. So they swept that away.

And again, if this is somewhat surprising that we’re talking about, it is only because the court did not have to hear this case. The last time we talked about this potential ban, we said, hey, look, the court could just defer to the lower court, not hear this argument, and just let the law go into effect. But instead, they did take it up, which made some people think, aha, maybe they have something to say about it. But I did predict at the time that really you just had a lot of justices that wanted to give TikTok the finger. And that does seem like what happened last week.

Yeah. So let’s live in the world right now in which all of this goes as it looks like it’s going to go. ByteDance is forced to comply with this law. What happens next?

So ByteDance has said that it will block access to the app for Americans beginning on Sunday. So you will open your TikTok app and it will not refresh. It will not be populated with new content.

Now under the law, ByteDance doesn’t actually have to do that. The way the law is written, it is actually intended to force Apple and Google, the two big App Store providers, to remove TikTok from the App Store. But ByteDance got ahead of that and said, we’re just going to shut the thing off, which some people have speculated is essentially a move to get some leverage. Because you’re going to make so many Americans so mad that maybe that might generate some political goodwill for the company.

Right. I’m imagining something like what Uber used to do back in the day when it was fighting with governments, where you’d open your app, and you’d see a little pop up that said, we don’t have Uber in your city. If this makes you mad, here are some numbers to call to contact your local legislators and yell at them about it.

Yeah. And ByteDance has tried stuff like that in the past in the United States, and it has backfired. But at this point, what does it have to lose?

Right. So the other possibility for an outcome here, I suppose, is that ByteDance could agree to sell TikTok, that it would divest, as this law was intended to force them to do, and that that would be how TikTok survives. Now, we should say, I think time is running out for any kind of deal like that. But maybe we should run down a few of the possible ways that this could end with a new owner of TikTok in the United States, rather than the app just going dark.

Let’s do it.

So one group that has lined up to say that they are interested in possibly acquiring TikTok is a group of investors led by the billionaire Frank McCourt, who is the former owner of the LA Dodgers. He sent ByteDance a letter last week expressing his interest in acquiring TikTok. He said that he would acquire it even without the algorithm that determines what people see in their For You pages. And he said that he would cobble the money together for the sale from private equity funds and other ultra wealthy investors, including Kevin O’Leary, the investor who goes by Mr. Wonderful on “Shark Tank.”

Sharks, I’m coming before you today because I’d like to buy TikTok from the Chinese Communist Party. That would be a great episode. I’d watch it.

Yeah. It sounds like this is a hastily arranged sale meant to avert a catastrophic legal outcome. And for that reason, I’m out.

I’m out.

Another potential buyer is the YouTuber celebrity MrBeast, who said that he had had billionaires contacting him about buying TikTok after he posted about it on X. I don’t know how serious this is, but I think we should just say MrBeast would be, I think, a pretty good owner of TikTok.

I don’t know. After I heard what happened on his “Beast Games” show on Amazon Prime, where many of the contestants were lucky to survive, I’m not sure we want this man running a large tech platform, Kevin.

Well, I don’t think we have to think about it that hard because I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Me either.

But the real wild card here, the one that I actually do take somewhat seriously, is that on Monday, “Bloomberg” published a story suggesting that the actual preferred acquirer for TikTok might be Elon Musk. “The Wall Street Journal,” shortly afterward, put out their own reporting with largely the same information. According to the “Bloomberg” article, senior Chinese officials had already begun to debate contingency plans for TikTok as part of an expansive discussion on how to work with Donald Trump’s administration, one of which involves Musk. This is according to anonymous sources who asked not to be identified, revealing confidential discussions.

Yeah, I bet they did.

[LAUGHS]: So, Casey, what do you think of this theory that Elon Musk could acquire TikTok?

Every once in a while, something happens in the universe and I think, was this done to upset me specifically? That’s how I felt when I read the story that said that Elon Musk was going to take over a second beloved social platform in the United States, and presumably apply his signature brand of content moderation, and other fun tricks to the app. So I have to say, Kevin, of everything that has happened in the TikTok story so far, this truly might be the craziest because of the different players here, who we think knows what, what has been said about it.

I can absolutely see a world where this is plausible. I can just as easily see a world where this is a nothing burger. And we’re just going to have to get a little bit more information. But what was your reaction?

So I was somewhat skeptical when I first saw this, in part because TikTok came out right away and said that this was pure fiction. But it was written in such a way that it felt like the message of the stories that I read was that actually TikTok may not be involved in these discussions. This may be happening at the level of the Chinese government, who is deliberating about what to do.

And that’s very telling. Obviously, there’s this theory that I subscribe to, and that I think a lot of people subscribe to, that ByteDance is not really in control of its own destiny here. Because there’s this government control of all Chinese social media platforms, but especially this one, which seems strategically important to the Chinese government.

And under Chinese law, ByteDance would need the government’s permission to divest TikTok. So that’s a very real thing.

Right. I can also see this making sense for Elon Musk. He’s said before that he wants X to operate more like TikTok. It’s obviously a social network that’s very popular. They’ve obviously cracked the code on algorithmic presentation of content. I also think that he would be a more palatable American acquirer for the Chinese government than any other potential acquirer.

So yeah, so sketch this case out. What would the Chinese government have if Elon owned TikTok?

So I think one thing that we know about Elon Musk is that he does a lot of business in China. Tesla has a lot of operations and entanglements in China. Elon Musk has also been very deferential to the Chinese government when it comes to doing things that he needs to do to continue operating his companies in China. And I think if you’re the Chinese government looking at, well, OK, which American acquirer would allow us to continue to exert influence over the user base of TikTok in America? I think they have points of leverage on Elon Musk that they do not have over, say, Frank McCourt.

Right. On one hand, Kevin, it seems a little crazy to me that the Chinese government thinks, essentially, we will turn Elon Musk into a soft Chinese agent to do our bidding in the United States. That seems a little bit far fetched.

On the other hand, if you look at Musk’s behavior over the past few years, which I think has been really erratic in a lot of ways, he’s always extremely careful about what he says about China. He truly almost never says anything remotely critical of that government. And if you’re the Chinese government, maybe you look at that and you appreciate it. And you think, yeah, sure, let that guy take it.

Totally. So those are the acquisition scenarios. But I think we should say, I don’t believe any of these are likely to happen by the time this deadline hits. I think that no matter what acquirers might be interested in buying TikTok, A, ByteDance does not seem interested in selling it. B, the Chinese government does not seem interested in letting ByteDance sell it. And C, I don’t think anyone could put together a deal quickly enough to actually get this done by the 19th.

Yeah, that’s right. Also, I just want to acknowledge the American-centricness of this conversation. TikTok is available in many other markets where it is not banned. And while the United States is a very lucrative market and a great place to run an e-commerce operation the way that TikTok is doing, it is operating in many other countries in the world. I read this week that its largest market right now is actually in Indonesia. There are more users in Indonesia than in the United States. And so if you’re ByteDance, just from a pure dollars and cents perspective, you may just look at this and think, we can actually make more money operating in the countries where we already exist, and just give up on America and we’ll be fine. So that’s another scenario here.

Yeah. So now let’s talk about the user response because this has been truly wild. I know you are not a TikTok addict, but presumably —

Despite my best efforts. Yes, I tried to get addicted to it on this very show.

You did.

Yeah.

But the people on TikTok are starting to, I would say, panic over the impending possible loss of their favorite app, their favorite platform. And a lot of content creators on TikTok are starting to try to bring their audiences over to other platforms, like YouTube or Instagram. Some are saying they’re going to use VPNs to get around this ban. And the most fascinating development to come out of all of this, in my opinion, has been that there is now this new trend of TikTok refugees downloading a Chinese social media app called Xiaohongshu, or RedNote.

Yes. This is truly one of the funniest and most unexpected stories of the young year so far, Kevin.

Yes. So as of yesterday, at least when I checked, the Xiaohongshu app was the number one free app on the iOS App Store. It has gotten a ton of downloads from people who are saying, basically, screw the US government. Screw this TikTok ban. I’m going to protest this by going over to this explicitly Chinese app that does not even have an English name in the App Store.

That’s right. Now, obviously, I have installed this app, which I’m going to call RedNote, even though I believe that that’s just an American nickname for it.

Yes, the literal translation is Little Red Book, which is also not subtle. That is also the name given to the book of quotations from Chairman Mao that was distributed during the Cultural Revolution.

So tell people what RedNote is, Kevin.

So RedNote is essentially a TikTok-like app. It is not owned by ByteDance. But if you open it, you see a feed that looks very much like For You feed of trending videos. It basically has the same platform mechanics as TikTok. And until this week, most of the content there was people in China speaking Chinese and talking about China.

Absolutely. And I downloaded it. I installed it, signed up for an account, and immediately started watching a bunch of videos from refugees, as they’re calling themselves, from TikTok over to RedNote. And they seem like they’re having a great time over there.

But in addition to this migration, Kevin, what was truly so funny was there were so many posts on X of people bragging about how they were racing to share all of their data with a new Chinese app. They were posting screenshots of themselves with the Apple AppTrackingTransparency screen. Apple sends you this big, scary warning — hey, are you sure that you want to share your data?

And people are like, hell, yeah, I want to share it, brother. I’ll give you everything. I saw a TikTok from this one girl who was like, I would fly to China and hand my Social Security number to Xi Jinping before I would ever use Instagram Reels. That’s where the user base is at, Kevin.

Right. So I also thought I should probably download and install this Xiaohongshu, RedNote app just to see what all the fuss is about. And can I tell you the first three videos that I saw on my feed?

Please.

Number one was a clip from “Modern Family.”

That is the sourdough starter of the modern video-based social network, is just clips of “Modern Family.”

Number two was a Chinese language clip of a dog at the vet having its anal gland expressed.

Oh, perfect. Express yourself.

And number three was someone making latte art of Luigi Mangione, the [LAUGHS]: suspect in the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO.

[SIGHS]: So I think it just goes to show you how quickly you can create an American social network. In just three videos, you’ve captured a shocking amount of the zeitgeist, Kevin.

But I would say, after I scrolled more and more, I did start to see these so-called TikTok refugee videos, these Americans who are coming over to RedNote from TikTok, and basically trying to make sense of this new thing, and participating in almost a cultural exchange. So why don’t we play a couple videos that have been making the rounds on RedNote?

Let’s do it.

[LAUGHS]:

Xiaohongshu.

So it inserts the little Xiaohongshu at the end of every video. That’s the watermark.

That’s great because now I actually feel like I can pronounce it.

So, Casey, what do you make of the Xiaohongshu, RedNote trend?

I have to say, this is why I love Americans. The absolute irreverence that they are bringing to this conversation, I find such a refreshing change of pace. So much of the discussion, and certainly I participate in this, is in terms of the rights involved, the equities, speech versus security. What are the national security implications?

And Americans are truly just rolling their eyes out of the back of their heads with this discussion. And they’re saying, oh, you want to ban one Chinese app? We are going to flock to another one. And I just think it’s amazing.

Totally. It’s also very interesting to me that the response from American TikTok users is not the response that TikTok had hoped for, which was that Americans get outraged that their favorite social media app is disappearing, and band together to storm the streets, and try to save TikTok, and overturn this law. It’s like, no, we’re just going to pack up and move to another platform. I think it really speaks to the fragility of social media right now, and the fact that these platforms are seen as somewhat interchangeable and commoditized. And so if one of them gets banned by the government, you just pack up and move over to another one.

Yeah. Although, of course, there are several American apps that folks could have chosen to move over to. And I think it is extra funny that instead of doing that, Americans were like, no, find us something that looks exactly like TikTok, but is even more Chinese.

Even more Chinese, and even less — it makes even fewer promises about data privacy.

Yeah, exactly. Now some people might ask, doesn’t PAFACA ban RedNote as well? And my understanding is that, no, PAFACA primarily applies to ByteDance and TikTok. But when it comes to other apps that are owned by a company in a country that the United States considers a foreign adversary, it is up to the president to decide that it represents a national security threat. And I imagine it’s going to be some time before RedNote is come to be seen that way.

Right. So in addition to packing up and moving over to Xiaohongshu, other TikTok users are participating in the Chinese spy meme. Have you seen this one?

I love this meme so much.

OK, explain what’s going on.

So people are saying goodbye to their Chinese spy. This is another irreverent American joke. Basically, they’re making fun of the fact that members of Congress are constantly saying that the Chinese government is using TikTok to spy on Americans.

And the Americans are now just making videos saying, hey, I’m so glad we got to spend this time together, my Chinese spy. I will always remember you. And then you also have Chinese people, and these could be Chinese people from all over the world, but they’re making memes pretending to be the Chinese spy, saying, hey, I really loved spying on you for all these years.

And maybe call your mother a little bit. And this message goes out to Laura from New York, and that sort of thing. So yeah, saying goodbye to my Chinese spy, I do think is one of the best TikTok memes of all time. Coming in hot right at the end.

It’s so good. So we’ve talked a lot in the past about the free speech implications about all this, about whether this is the first of many conflicts between the US and China over emerging platforms. But Casey, where are you right now, days away from the likely end of TikTok as a major presence in US social media? What are you thinking about?

My feeling has been, and I’ve gone back and forth on this, but where I netted out was I do think there are good reasons for the United States to restrict foreign ownership of these kinds of apps, particularly from its adversaries like China. But I really hate the way that they went about it. And I worry about the implications for other speech platforms in the future.

People are saying, well, this one is really easy because of the Chinese control angle, but I don’t know. If this incoming administration decides it doesn’t like a lot of the content on an American-owned app and says, you know what? We’re actually just going to make you change ownership the same way that we did with ByteDance and TikTok.

And now the Supreme Court has essentially rubber stamped that argument and said, yeah, there are no speech concerns. Because as long as you sell the app, all that speech can remain. You can imagine a lot of really dark outcomes for that kind of thinking. So I personally, as an older American who tried and failed to get addicted to TikTok, am not going to miss it that much day to day.

But TikTok was an engine of culture that we are going to miss out on in this country. Those folks are going to have to find a new home. It really sucks for all of those creators. And so yeah, I think there’s going to be a lot of really sad fallout from this. What do you think, Kevin?

So I still think there’s a chance that Donald Trump decides to intervene and try to save TikTok in the United States. This week, we got some news that Shou Chew, the Chief Executive of TikTok, is going to be at Trump’s inauguration, sitting with a bunch of other VIPs. And some people have interpreted that as Trump saying he supports TikTok and might try to save it.

He obviously made promises about saving TikTok during his campaign. Obviously, a lot’s changed since then. But I do think that he understands that a lot of young Americans care deeply about the fate of TikTok. And then maybe he can build some goodwill with those young Americans by stepping in at the last minute to heroically save TikTok.

Now there are some different ways he could do that. He could instruct the Justice Department in his administration not to enforce the ban on TikTok. He could also try to arrange some kind of deal, potentially selling TikTok to Elon Musk, or someone else who he trusts, and say, that is enough of a divestment for me. That satisfies the requirements of PAFACA.

And he is, after all, Kevin, the author of “The Art of the Deal.”

Exactly. So I do think there’s a chance that Donald Trump keeps TikTok around in some form after all. But I’m not sure about that. And I think it’s equally plausible that TikTok actually does go away, and that it becomes this free-for-all in the social media world as different companies race to Hoover up the users who had previously spent hours a day on TikTok.

Yeah. And when TikTok was banned in India, we saw what happened there, which was that YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, which were Google and Meta’s answers to TikTok, exploded in popularity. So one way that you should be thinking about this is, if this goes into effect, this is truly one of the greatest gifts for Google and Meta that you can imagine.

And that is just really interesting, given the strong bipartisan feeling in Congress that Google and Meta specifically ought to be reined in and actually even broken up. When you think about who is on TikTok, it is the younger generation of Americans. So if Meta and Google can now go out and further entrench themselves into the lives of Generation Z, they’re going to have essentially monopolies over those folks, at least in terms of short form video consumption, for the foreseeable future.

Yeah. I think that’s totally possible. I think there are probably a lot of executives at Meta who are licking their chops about this, who are very excited about the potential. Because their platforms, Facebook and Instagram, are aging. Facebook is for Boomers and Gen X. Instagram is for millennials.

And until now, Gen Z has been the TikTok generation. And if Meta can suck up those users, it can extend its dominance for another generation. But I think that the past week has made me less sure that that’s going to be the outcome here. Because what we have seen on TikTok as this ban has approached is not people saying, oh, everyone move over to Instagram Reels.

It’s saying, let’s move over to this obscure Chinese language app that no one’s ever heard of. That’s how badly we don’t want to be on Instagram. I think part of the Gen Z identity is about not just embracing TikTok as a platform, but rejecting the platforms that people older than you use. And so I think it’s equally plausible that those younger users do not go to Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts, that they instead go to some new app that may have most of the features of TikTok but is different in some way. Maybe we’re finally going to get a new American social media app.

I would love to believe everything that you’re saying, and I think that it absolutely could come to pass. But I also think it’s true that most members of Gen Z who have TikTok on their phone probably have Instagram as well. And it’s just going to be really hard for them to avoid taking a look at that as they look elsewhere to get their fix.

But at the same time, we’re also seeing, separately from all of this, a boom in the Fediverse and people building on protocols. And that is rooted in the exact same frustration with these apps that are controlled by billionaires and giant, faceless corporations. So I agree with you. There is a lot of frustration among all sorts of Americans on that point. And so who knows? Maybe we do get an American owned alternative to TikTok that is not YouTube or Meta.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When we come back, we answer one of the most common questions we get from listeners. What is the environmental impact of AI?

Well, Casey, for basically the entire time we have been making this podcast, we have gotten emails from listeners who want us to talk about the environmental impact of AI.

Yeah. This might be the question that we’ve gotten the most that we have not yet devoted a segment to.

And I would say my own reluctance to talk about this topic on this show so far has been some insecurity on my part about not being an expert in climate science or the relevant information here. But also, it is very hard to get good and authoritative data about this subject in particular. It is just not something that there is a large body of reliable literature about.

And the companies that have the best data, by and large, are not disclosing any of that data. And so that means that a lot of what we talk about when we talk about the environmental impact of AI is based on estimates that may or may not be close to the mark.

Yeah. But I’m sure you have observed, as I have, that the issues around the environment and AI have only gotten more important to people. This really came to a head last week when the wildfires started burning in Los Angeles.

I saw so many people posting on social media about what they viewed as a link between AI use and the wildfires. And I’ll just read you one meme I saw in my feed that was liked and shared millions of times. This was posted by a guy named Matt Bernstein. And I’ll just read it to you.

It said, “One search on ChatGPT uses 10 times the amount of energy as a Google search. Training one AI model produces the same amount of carbon dioxide as 300 round-trip flights between New York and San Francisco, and 5 times the lifetime emissions of a car. We don’t need AI art. We don’t need AI grocery lists. We don’t need AI self-driving cars. We don’t need ChatGPT, or Gemini, or Grok, or DALL-E, or whatever revolutionary technology already exists inside our own human brains. We need the Earth.”

And then below this meme was a picture of a blazing fire. So clearly this idea has taken root in culture that there is some kind of link between the disasters that we are seeing in places like Los Angeles, and the use of AI for basic, everyday tasks.

Yeah. And I think today, we want to see what we can find out about how true some of the ideas in that post are.

Yeah. So to shed some light on this very hot topic of AI and energy use — I realized that I just used light and heat. That was not intentional.

But we’re going to hope we shed more light than heat in this discussion, Kevin.

Yes. Today, we are talking with Dr. Sasha Luccioni. She is an AI Researcher and the Climate Lead at Hugging Face, which is an AI company that offers tools to developers for building AI models. She has been researching and talking about AI’s environmental impact for many years, and also developing tools to help developers understand the impacts of their own systems on the environment.

Yes. And Kevin, this might be a good time to dust off my shiny, new disclosure. Because when we talk about AI issues, I will sometimes remind people that my boyfriend is a software engineer at an AI company called Anthropic. My full ethics disclosure is that “Platformer” are not news/ethics.

And my past disclosure is that I work at The New York Times Company, which is suing OpenAI and Microsoft over issues of copyright violations.

Perfect.

All right. Let’s bring in Sasha Luccioni.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Sasha Luccioni, welcome to “Hard Fork.”

Thanks for having me.

So I’m very excited to have this conversation. This is one we’ve been looking forward to for a while, and are frankly overdue in having. And I want to start by reading you an email that we recently got from a listener.

This comes from a listener named T. Morris, and it says the following. “As a tech content marketer, I feel increasingly conflicted about using AI. On the one hand, it’s been an amazing writing partner for big tasks, like brainstorming, and editing tech articles, and smaller copywriting tasks, like drafting social media posts.”

“On the other hand, I see climate disasters like the North Carolina floods and LA fires linked with the amount of water and natural resources it takes to sustain AI infrastructure, and feel myself rationing my AI use, questioning whether the time saved is worth the environmental trade-offs. How do I navigate this new world where AI is everywhere while staying true to my environmental values?” So Sasha, we’ll dive into some of the specifics in just a minute, but I want to just start with this question from our listener. What advice would you give T Morris?

I’m generally very skeptical of individual culpability when it comes to the climate crisis. Yes, of course, we all contributed, but I think that we’re all also part of systems. And we have professions that require usage of technologies. Some people drive for a living and we can’t spend our time feeling bad.

I’m much more of a fan of, well, requiring accountability from companies and requiring transparency. Because I think that especially around climate change, but also a lot of aspects of society, we just don’t have the numbers to make informed decisions. And that doesn’t mean you need to care, but you should have the information necessary for caring. So I’m more about ask for accountability, ask for transparency when using these technologies, instead of psyching yourself out about them.

Got it. So I thought one way to frame this discussion would be to split it into, essentially, two parts, the micro and the macro. Micro being this question of, what do we know about the environmental impact of AI at the level of the individual user, the individual question that you might ask to ChatGPT, or Gemini, or Claude, and getting a response to that?

And then macro being this larger question of, what is the AI sector’s energy footprint more broadly? What do we know about where all the energy is coming from to run these very powerful models? And what can we do as a society and as big corporations to position ourselves better for the future? And with your permission, Sasha, I want to start with the micro.

So one of the statistics that people will often throw out when talking about the energy demands of AI is this figure that a ChatGPT query, or something like it, costs somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 times more energy than a traditional web query on something like Google. Now I asked Google about this figure, and they wouldn’t say exactly how much energy it takes to query Gemini versus to run a traditional web search. But they did say that those numbers are much larger than what they’ve seen internally. But Sasha, where did that figure come from, and what do we know about how accurate it is?

I think the initial Google search query is actually pretty old, and it was part of a study to greening the web type situation. And they made an estimate. And once again, they didn’t really have the numbers, but they tried to extrapolate.

And then for ChatGPT, it was a similar, kind of, assuming that somebody is querying a model that is running on this type of hardware, and assuming that the latency is x, and blah, blah, blah. And they extrapolated that. There are other models that do similar things.

So maybe even if you don’t know exactly ChatGPT inherently, you have other models that will do similar tasks. And so you can get a range. And I think that that range is more interesting than trying to chase down the exact number and compare the two. And also, it’s probably not a single number anyway. And so that’s why it’s so hard to pin down this number. And that’s why it’s going to be always possible for them to say, oh, no, that’s not the number. That’s not the exact number.

And I think that your point earlier that one of the things that we need on this subject is just a lot more transparency is really well taken. I know that Google has folks who work on climate issues. But I’m curious, as you look across the industry, maybe at some of the newer, smaller AI labs, or just, I don’t know, companies other than Google, do you get the sense that people are paying attention to this, that they are taking these sort of measurements, that they even have a sense of the per query energy usage of one of their products?

Definitely. Because unlike Google, or Microsoft, or any of the big tech companies, usually smaller companies are a lot more compute restrained. So they’re doing more with less because they have to. They don’t always come at it from a sustainability perspective.

They’re not like, oh, yeah, we want to protect the planet, but there is a part of that. It’s like frugality. It’s like, we want to be more efficient because we only have GPUs to work with.

And this seems like maybe one positive thing that I’m hearing so far is that it sounds like the incentives for all of these companies are to get the amount of compute and energy that they are using over time down as quickly as they can.

Another claim that you often hear from people who are worried about the environmental impacts of using AI on a micro or personal level is about water use. There’s this statistic, I’m sure you’ve seen it around, that using an LLM is like pouring out a bottle of water, or half a liter of water, I’ve seen going around. Where did that figure come from? And why do these AI models need water? And is that statistic true?

So that paper is, once again, an extrapolation. It takes some of the work that I did about an open-source model where we measured how many kilowatt hours of energy were being used to query it. And essentially what happens in data centers is that they have an amount, like a liter of water per kilowatt hour of energy. It’s like a water efficiency. They call it water use efficiency. And essentially, depending on where your data set —

Sorry, why do they need water in the data centers?

Mostly for the cooling. This hardware heats up. I don’t know if you’ve ever visited a data center. If you can, I highly recommend it. It is like an overwhelming experience. The noise, the heat, and just the general buzz of electricity is pretty overwhelming. Anyway, so you need a lot of cooling. And essentially how that’s usually done is with water cooling.

You pump in cool water and there’s a bunch of pipes. And it goes through all of the hardware, and then it either — a part of it evaporates completely. And a part of it has to be cooled down before either reused or put back into nature, or whatnot. And so that whole process is hugely water consumptive.

And of course, not all the water evaporates, but a fair amount of it does just because the hardware heats up so much. Once again, it’s — so I go back and forth on this a lot, whether putting out statistics like this that are based on estimates or not is useful for the conversation. Because on one hand, it’s really easy for the companies to say, no, you guys are tripping. That’s not at all the true number, which then it cuts the conversation.

And on the other hand, they do become like urban legend. And so now I hear this 500 milliliter per conversation number a lot. And it’s like, well, actually it’ll depend on so many different things. So it’s definitely not systematically 500 milliliters, but it is a non-negligible amount of water. And depending on where the data center is located, that can become an issue. So we’ve seen places where the data centers have put a strain on the towns around them that have water shortages because the water is being pumped into a new data center that has been powered up.

You said earlier, understandably, that you’re not a huge fan of thinking about these issues at the individual level. I’m still curious, when you are considering your own personal use of AI, where water usage fits into things. Is that, for you, a reason to send fewer queries to ChatGPT or an equivalent?

I’m, in general, such a — I don’t use AI that often, I mean, generative AI that often. The one use case that I found was really something that actually is useful in my life is when I read an article or a research paper, putting in the abstract and getting a fun title. I’m so bad at generating fun titles, but ChatGPT is really good. And it can come up with puns, and stuff like that.

But what really kills me is people who switch to generative AI for things that don’t really need it. My pet peeve example is calculators. People use ChatGPT as a calculator now. And that’s really like, that’s really terrible. You really don’t need it. Not only is it bad at arithmetic, it’s literally not made to do math. But it’s also orders of magnitude more energy, and a crazy amount of water for something that doesn’t need water.

Well, I have to say, I’m going to admit something, which is, I’ve talked before on the show about how I use this app called Raycast, which is plugged into OpenAI’s model. And I can just summon it on my keyboard with command-space. And I do probably ask it four or five questions a day. I am definitely using it for things I can Google. One of my toxic traits is I’m curious how old people are. And so sometimes I’ll just be like, how old is Billy Crystal, or whatever?

Do you check the answers and they’re all accurate?

It’s not that I check the answers. It’s that I don’t really care that much. So when the LLM says that Billy Crystal is, I don’t know, 70, or whatever he is, I’m like, yeah, that’s the right ballpark. And then I move on.

I’m realizing that I sound very silly as I’m saying this, but I’m saying it because I suspect other people may be doing the same thing. And I think there is a case that, you know what? Maybe I should actually Google that, in part for environmental reasons.

I want to just embody the other side of this. Because what I’m hearing from you is, generative AI is not useful enough in many cases to justify the energy costs of engaging with an LLM. And I’m a person who uses AI every day.

I generally find it quite useful in my life. I use it to accomplish a lot of tasks that I could not use equivalent tools for. I don’t just run, “how old is Billy Crystal” searches over and over again.

To be clear, I only ran it once.

[LAUGHS]: And I would say that my own usage of this is to do new things that I couldn’t do before, mostly. And if people don’t find generative AI useful, they shouldn’t use it. But if people do find it useful but are worried about the environmental costs, I’m just not entirely convinced that we’re thinking about the costs of AI in the sense of energy at the right scale.

I recently was reading a Substack post by a guy named Andy Masley, where he basically broke down the best data and estimates we have about the environmental costs of using AI. And he compared it to some other activities, like sending emails, or streaming a video on Netflix, or driving a car a very short distance. And basically, what he found is that compared to all these other activities, the energy required to generate an answer on ChatGPT or a similar system is just infinitesimally small, that if we are worried about our own personal environmental footprint, we could do much more to help the environment by cutting out meat from our diets, or by taking fewer trips in cars or on airplanes.

And basically, the argument that he made that I am tempted by is that all of this talk about personal responsibility is just neglecting to look at AI use in the context of all the other things that we do in our lives that require energy. And I’m wondering, Sasha, what you make of that argument.

It builds upon what I said at the beginning. But in general, when you talk to people around the issue of climate change and mitigation, it’s like, we’re bound by the structures in which we operate and live, and the constraints that we have. So of course, I’m not going to be like, oh, yeah, don’t take that plane to take a well-deserved vacation, and spend your time worrying about climate change. Because that’s not a productive state of mind.

But on the other hand, we can make decisions with the environment in our minds. So for example, nowadays, a lot of people have ChatGPT open as the de facto source of information on the internet. And I do think that, yes, of course, little by little, that the individual energy consumption of each query is not that much. But if we start using it as literally our rubber duck, and our bouncing board, and our companion, and then people also will use ChatGPT to build tools.

Nowadays, people are building therapists, and whatnot, companions using, and then that incrementally becomes a deal. Personally, I try to focus on a specific task you want to do, for example, searching the internet, or answering a question, and then comparing what you would use, option A and option B. And then what’s the difference? And then it’s up to you to decide whether that difference is worth it based on the advantage that the technology gives you. But I don’t think it makes sense to compare meat and email, or Netflix and taking your car. Because I feel like they’re incomparable actions.

Right. People aren’t choosing between, well, should I drive to work today, or should I ask ChatGPT that question?

Yeah, exactly. So I feel that I understand where he’s coming from in his argument, but I don’t feel that that helps us make choices any better. It makes us feel bad all around.

So, Sasha, can I try to summarize what I’m hearing from you on the point of individual use, the micro question about the environmental impact of AI? What I’m hearing you say, I believe, is that the individual costs of using LLMs may not move the needle on climate one way or the other, but that people should be conscious of what they are using AI for. And maybe use the smallest model that will allow them to get the task done that they are looking to do. And that maybe we shouldn’t be tearing our hair out over people using ChatGPT if they’re using it to do stuff that is genuinely useful to them.

Exactly.

Is that an accurate reflection of your sentiment?

It’s a great reflection. And I think that often we forget our power as consumers and users of technology. And I think that putting pressure on companies and being, hey, we care. We want this number. Stop bullshitting us.

You have the number somewhere of the average energy. Even if it’s not a single number, if it’s a range, give us the range. And then we’ll make our informed decisions. Because people are more and more aware of relative comparisons, like, a mile driven in a car, or a steak, or whatever. We need to add, even if it’s a range, AI to those options that people have so that they can actually make informed decisions. We should stop just feeding them shit and keeping them in the dark.

OK, so that is the micro picture of the AI energy story. Now let’s talk about the macro. There was recently a report just last month from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory about the power that is currently needed to run the data centers in this country, and the power that will soon be needed as the AI boom sparks demand for more and more of these data centers.

This report said that between 2018 and 2023, the power to run data centers around the US went from 1.9 percent of total annual electricity consumption, to 4.4 percent, more than double. And this report estimated that the energy demands of data centers, of which AI is a major part, will continue to increase over the next few years, and could, by 2028, make up between 6.7 percent and 12 percent of total US electricity consumption. So, Sasha, let’s zoom out a little bit and talk about the energy needs of the AI industry as a whole. Where are we? Do these companies know where they are going to get all this energy to build these incredibly powerful AI models?

Yes and no. We currently have a certain infrastructure. But the problem is the growth of the infrastructure is kicking into high gear. And so what’s interesting is that the big tech companies are the largest purchasers of renewable energy credits, which are like offsets for energy. And also, they make a lot of power purchase agreements, which are essentially ways of promising to buy energy, especially renewable energy, into the future.

So they’ve been, I’ll give them that, that they’ve been actually on top of things. But then this year, I mean, this past year, both Google and Microsoft actually put out reports saying that they’re not meeting their own sustainability targets. They dropped the ball on their own energy and carbon goals because of AI. Because they were not ready themselves for the amount of energy that they would need, and where that energy is coming from, the renewable energy offsetting things, weren’t covering.

And so I think that the latest and greatest in the trends in terms of energy generation has been nuclear. All the big tech companies have signed nuclear agreements, power purchase agreements in the last couple of months. And the general messaging is that that’s going to solve the issue in terms of energy demand growth.

And when Microsoft and Google said, hey, we’re not going to make our targets, was it nuclear that they were pointing to? Did they say, don’t worry, we’re going to fix this, we have a new strategy? Or did they say, we might just never hit these targets because our values have changed?

So they were, like, well, these were very ambitious targets that we set back in 2018 or 2019. And oh, technology moves at such a fast pace. But no, nuclear actually entered the chat relatively recently.

I think that the reports came out in around May of last year, of 2024. And then, a couple of months later, it was, Microsoft announced that they are recommissioning Three Mile Island. Google signed a partnership with, I don’t remember what nuclear generator.

Kairos.

Yeah, exactly. And so they’re saying that, well, this is the new direction we’re going. Because the thing is, sadly, building out renewable energy infrastructure does take time. And also, the problem with data centers and renewable energy is that data centers need energy 24/7. And the cycles aren’t necessarily predictable as heating and cooling, for example. When the temperature drops, people will turn on their heating systems. You have these models that have worked pretty well historically. But for data centers, they don’t work. And renewable energy tends to vary, if there’s wind, if there’s sun. And so there are a lot of challenges. You can’t just heat a bunch of solar panels and expect them to respond to the demand of your data centers. It’s much more complicated. And so that’s why nuclear has emerged as a potential solution.

So my understanding, Sasha, is that a lot of the big AI companies are now just racing to get as much energy capacity as they can. And that one of the worries is that they are tapping out the infrastructure for clean or renewable energy. And so they are starting to go into these dirtier forms of energy that we have these harmful environmental costs because there just isn’t enough renewable energy. And adding more takes time, as you said.

Yeah. Also, the thing is, with data centers, is that they’re a very concentrated, very intense energy sink. So making that connection, I was talking to some energy grid operators in Paris. And they were saying, even if we did have the capacity, the actual megawatt hours, distributing it in a way that all of that extra capacity goes towards the data center in whatever rural area they build it in is a challenge in itself.

I was talking with someone the other day who works at an AI company. And one of the arguments that they made for why we shouldn’t worry so much about the energy costs associated with AI is that basically our electrical grid in America has been in desperate need of modernization, that we have this creaky, old electrical grid that has not been growing nearly as quickly as it needs to. And that basically, because AI now exists and demands all of this energy, we are starting to do things that we probably should have done a long time ago as far as investing in new sources of energy, in these mini nuclear reactors, in trying to scale up things like solar and wind power.

And so, yes, these models are demanding a lot of energy. But they are forcing us to modernize our infrastructure and our energy grid in ways that will benefit us as a country down the line. What do you make of that argument?

Well, so what’s interesting about the United States, particularly, is that it’s not a single energy grid. There’s a lot of energy providers in the United States. There’s a really nifty website called Electricity Map, and they map out electricity. And what’s interesting, when you zoom in on the US, it’s like patchwork.

There’s some states that have 12 different grids. And then there’s some, actually, multiple states have a single grid. And what’s interesting is that, for example, Canada has one per province. In Europe, it might be one per country. France has a single one.

And so, yeah, they’re probably right to an extent. But modernizing the US energy system network of grids is actually really difficult because it’s so heterogeneous. And because even if you update one part of the grid, that doesn’t mean, for example, smaller energy grids don’t have that much capacity. And the bigger ones will take time to update. So I think, it’s like, yes, in theory, it would be good to overhaul the US energy grid. But in practice, it’s a lot of small problems that are harder to solve.

One other thing I’ve heard from people who work in the AI industry, or are not as worried about the environmental impact of AI, is that, yes, this stuff costs energy. Yes, we need to find new sources of energy. But ultimately, AI is going to be more of a help in addressing the climate crisis than it will hurt. What do you make of that argument? Is that just self-serving?

I don’t think it’s self-serving, but I think it’s a false dichotomy. Because the AI systems that are the most energy intensive, like large language models, are the ones that have yet to prove their utility in fighting climate change. I think that the issue here is that we’re using these big models for tasks that are not helping the fight against climate change.

And compared to that, the models that are helping climate change aren’t the ones that are the issue. And so the problem with AI being an umbrella term makes it very, very hard to have this discussion. But it’s like, essentially, large language models are not solving the climate crisis anytime soon. And the models that are helping are not the ones that are contributing, most of the energy and carbon issues that we’re seeing.

All right. One more argument that I want to have you address, which is about the efficiency of AI over time. We’ve heard from companies that they are making their models much more efficient because they are creating these algorithmic breakthroughs, doing things like model distillation. The chips themselves are also becoming much more energy efficient.

And so there’s this argument that you’ll hear from folks in the industry that, actually, we’re running on outdated information when we say that AI is a risk to the climate. Because the energy needs are scaling down over time per use, and that actually we’re just worried because our information isn’t up to date. So do you think about efficiency in those terms, or how should we think about that?

So efficiency is interesting because I think that a lot of what people talk about when they talk about technological progress is some form of efficiency. It’s like, oh, we’re using less time. We’re using less fuel. We’re less using less energy, for example.

And I think in AI we are seeing this. But what’s interesting, I’ve been really going down the rabbit hole in terms of macroeconomic literature on this. There’s this really interesting paradox that’s called Jevons paradox. What Jevons observed in the 19th century was that we’re actually still using more and more coal, despite using it more efficiently.

And so this kind of phenomenon has been observed a lot with different kinds of efficiency gains, whether it be time, whether it be, for example, cars. Now that we can drive farther on the same amount of fuel, we’ll actually go to more places. And so I think what we’re seeing a lot in AI is this rebound effect that, yeah, we can do more AI for the same amount of computer money.

But that means we’re going to do even more. We’re going to put AI into even more things. And so those efficiency gains are lost because now we’re using LLMs for things that we didn’t use LLMs for before.

Casey, do you want to try repeating back what we’ve heard about the macro picture when it comes to AI and energy?

Well, the macro picture of AI and energy is that the construction of data centers does actually put a strain on the grid. We’re seeing many more of them. And that even as individual usage of AI gets more efficient, it seems likely that we’ll just use a lot more of it. And so this is one that it seems like we do have to watch and take the environmental claims seriously. That’s what I feel like I heard. Does that sound right?

Yes, it does. I think you summed it up really well.

Got it.

And I think what we can agree on, whether or not we think that the individual or the macro use of AI across the economy is dangerous for the environment, is that AI companies should be required to disclose a lot more data about the energy use of their models. It just seems like the data we have, a lot of it is based on estimates from the outside. A lot of it is outdated. A lot of it is sort of gone through this game of telephone where, all of a sudden, every time people use ChatGPT, they think they’re burning down a forest. And it seems like this could all be solved by just having much better and more transparent data from the AI companies themselves about how much energy they’re using.

Agreed, and giving users more agency when it comes to generative AI. And even having a toggle when it comes to, whatever, AI generated summaries in Google. Just giving people a little bit more control over how they use — we don’t want to stop using Google, or most people don’t. So let us use Google in a way that is coherent with our values or the things that we want to optimize for.

Well, Sasha, thank you so much for enlightening us on this subject. It is one I imagine we will return to because I don’t think this debate is going away anytime soon. But I really appreciate your expertise and your time.

Thank you for the great questions. [MUSIC PLAYING]

When we come back, put on your gold chains, insert your Zyns, and let’s do some jujitsu. We’re talking about masculinity in the tech industry.

Well, Kevin, did you see the Mark Zuckerberg interview with Joe Rogan?

I did. And I assume that that’s why we’re sitting here in our oversized, baggy t-shirts, and our gold chains.

That’s right. Yes. Thank you for agreeing to this costume change. Listeners should know that we are wearing very boxy black t-shirts right now and gold chains to try to get us into the mindset of what I’m hoping we can do today.

Yeah. Should we pop a Zyn, too?

If you have any on you, go for it.

I’ve got four. I’ve got Upper Deckys here, but if you want one, I’m happy to provide.

Upper Deckys?

You never heard of Upper Deckys?

No.

Dawg. [LAUGHS]

What’s an Upper Decky?

Let me teach you something about straight culture.

Please do.

You’re always enlightening me about gay culture. Upper Deckys are when you put a Zyn nicotine pouch in your upper lip.

That is perfect, Kevin. That is exactly the right spirit that I want to take into this segment. So you watched the Mark Zuckerberg interview on Joe Rogan?

I did.

And what did you think?

I thought it was very long. That was my main thing, was this meeting could have been an email.

Well, I think that’s a fair point, Kevin. But to me, I was so pleased to hear it. Because finally, someone in Silicon Valley was willing to say what we’ve all been thinking for years now, which is that this town does not have enough masculine energy. You know what I mean? Kevin —

Yes.

Sometimes I will visit a company in Silicon Valley and see as many as one female executive. And finally, people like Mark Zuckerberg are starting to ask, when did things get this out of control? And I know you’ve thought the same thing. You’ve said that to me off mic.

[LAUGHS]: I don’t think I have, but go on.

Now some people get confused. Because the most recent time that Meta shared numbers, it had about two men at the company for every one woman. But this just highlights how powerful feminine energy is, Kevin. What Zuckerberg is saying is that to counteract the presence of even one woman at Meta, at least three men are needed to restore balance. Now just to give listeners a bit more of a sense of what we’re talking about, I think we should play Mark Zuckerberg talking about masculine energy on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

Let’s do it.

There is something about being punched in the face that makes you think, my culture has been neutered. You know what I mean?

So, yes. I did hear this part of the interview. This went viral. Everyone on my feeds has been talking about these comments that Mark Zuckerberg made about masculine energy being missing from many of our greatest corporations.

And this is in the context of all the moves that he’s been making to try to make Meta more palatable to people on the right, including the incoming Trump administration. And this was him saying to Joe Rogan, in a way that people mercilessly mocked, the real problem in corporate America is that we’ve been letting this feminine energy take over. And we need to assert masculine energy, and that’s our path back to greatness.

Exactly, Kevin. And so, as we so often try to do on this show, I’ve spent all week thinking, how can we be part of the solution here? And so I have come up with a list of ideas that we can bring to the Meta corporation to help them restore masculine energy to Meta.

Oh, boy.

We’re going to give Meta a masculine makeover, and I would love to share some of the ideas that I have with you right now.

Please.

Number one, modify the Facebook Like button to display a bulging vein, reflecting long hours spent in the gym. What do you think?

[LAUGHS]: I like it.

Something else, whenever you tap it, your phone grunts.

[LAUGHS]:

Number two, let’s just say the poke is going to work a little differently now, but I can’t say how on this podcast. Number three, transform every conference room at Meta into an octagon, Kevin. Remind workers at every meeting that work is a combat zone, and Mark Zuckerberg can strike at any time.

I like this.

We’re also changing the name of the finance department to MMA, mixed martial accounting.

[LAUGHS]:

Number four, Meta acquires 4chan. It’s the largest repository of disturbed 17-year-olds in the world, Kevin. And they could be part of the solution, too. Now the obvious thing to do would be to let them run the human resources department. But I’m proposing that Meta goes further and puts them in charge of content moderation. That would be some masculine energy.

It sure would.

Number five, no more of these beta team building activities, like making pottery and volunteering, Kevin. Instead, we’re going on a wild boar hunt.

Yes.

As Mark shared on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” one of the greatest challenges in his life is that his ranch in Kauai is absolutely beset by an invasive species of wild boars. And for years now, Zuckerberg has been spending his downtime hunting them with bow and arrows. In fact, do we have a clip of that?

If you work at Meta, I think this should be your problem, too. Whether you want to use a bow and arrow or a rifle, report to the Zuckerberg ranch for further instructions.

Now do we know what happens if you are a Meta employee and you actually bring a hunting bow into the office?

That’s actually one of the main ways to get promoted now. Number six, replace the water in Meta’s data centers with Mountain Dew Code Red.

Oh, I like this one.

Me too. Number seven, in the 2019 film “Joker,” Kevin, Joaquin Phoenix’s character does a famous dance down a set of stairs to signify that he is fully transformed into the Joker. My proposal, we bring those steps to the Meta campus in Menlo Park. You have a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg. Guess what, Kevin? You have to walk up the “Joker” steps.

I like that.

Because Mark is the Joker now. Number eight, in what many people perceived as a cruel and pointless attack on trans people, Meta instructed managers to remove tampons from the male restrooms at their campuses. But this is a half measure, Kevin. Because let’s face it, real men don’t use toilet paper.

True.

Get rid of it.

Yeah. Are we doing bidets, or are we just going rawdog?

Bidets, are you kidding me? There will not be one French thing in those restrooms, as long as I’m suggesting ideas. Number nine, employees will now get one extra day off a year to do one of the following three activities — mow the lawn, watch the game, or hang with the boys. Which one of those would you pick, Kevin?

Hang with the boys, for sure.

Do you even have any boys?

Come on, I’ve got you.

That’s true. We can hang together on our day off. Now I have one last suggestion to bring up the masculine energy at Meta, Kevin, and it goes like this. We’re going to have a hackathon for women. Doesn’t that sound nice?

Yeah.

Yeah. And at the end, we’re going to take all the best ideas from their hackathon and give them to Meta’s male executives. Because what kind of energy is more masculine than taking credit for a woman’s idea? Anyway, just my thoughts, Kevin. Do you have any ideas as well?

[LAUGHS]: No, I think that basically covers it. I think with these changes, the Meta corporation will be fully — what’s the opposite of emasculated?

It will be emanulated.

Emanulated. And we will have a glorious future run by men. There used to be a time at Meta when people like Sheryl Sandberg had a seat at the table, and famously told women there to lean in. What’s happening with that now?

I’m being given word that they’re being asked to lean out actually, maybe all the way out. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg announced this week that he was going to cut 5 percent of what he called the low performers at the company. And that is the ultimate, lean out is a layoff.

Yeah. I did see some Meta employees posting that the way they were going to avoid getting laid off is by getting extremely jacked. So that’s an idea there.

That is now something that we can respect in culture is we can say, if you have visible muscles, maybe you belong around here.

Casey, I have to ask. Since we are in the Zuckerberg uniform now, minus the $900,000 watch. This is just my Apple Watch. How do you feel? Do you feel more masculine sitting in the studio today?

I am having an almost uncontrollable desire to just wrestle you to the ground and force you to submit. How are you feeling?

I’m feeling like I’m a little insecure, honestly.

Really?

Yeah.

Why?

Because I don’t think I can pull this off.

You can absolutely pull it off. Everyone looks good in a black t-shirt and a gold chain.

Yeah? Including me?

Yes.

I’m not a big man jewelry guy.

You know what? I haven’t been either. But then for our anniversary, my boyfriend and I got little chains. Isn’t that so cute?

That is cute.

Yeah, and manly in a different way, in, kind of, like, a gay, manly way. This is what I love. You start off, you’re talking about something super manly, but then you get into it in any degree of detail, and you realize, no, it’s masculine and feminine energy together in the same place. And isn’t that beautiful?

Now, Casey, the one serious thing that I do want to say about this is that it clicked for me when I heard Mark Zuckerberg on “Joe Rogan” talking about masculinity and masculine energy that this is what founder mode was.

Yes.

You can look back at our shows that we did about founder mode last year, and to my recollection, not one of the people in Silicon Valley calling for the return of founder mode was a woman. And I believe that that is because founder mode was an elaborate way of saying, we’re big boys, and we would like to run our companies like big boys.

Yeah. And look, I don’t want to completely dismiss the idea that people should get in touch with masculine energy. That is a fine thing to do, no matter who you are. I get really concerned when somebody who employs tens of thousands of people starts talking about this in the context of corporate culture, and amid a series of initiatives that includes killing off the DEI program, and firing your, quote, unquote, low performers. A clear message is being sent, and the message is not, women are welcome at Meta.

One thing that also struck me as I was listening to Mark Zuckerberg is that it also reminded me of a conversation that Jeff Bezos had at the DealBook Conference just a few weeks ago that I heard where I was actually surprised. Jeff Bezos was the original tech founder who got super masculine. He turned from this scrawny nerd into this jacked dude who lifts weights, and has these bulging muscles, and embraced a masculine aesthetic, I think, earlier than a lot of other tech executives.

But I was also struck by his comments at DealBook, where he basically talked about his feelings a lot, and how he had started becoming more emotionally open at work about feeling scared or feeling vulnerable. And it just really struck me that that is a person who is actually comfortable with masculinity, when you can talk about emotions in the context of a business meeting. And you could talk about them on stage at a business conference. This LARPing that Mark Zuckerberg is doing, where he is pretending to be super masculine all of a sudden, and enjoy bow hunting, and hanging out with the bros, it just feels very insecure to me, and very, very much like this is a person who has not yet actually become at peace with his own self.

Yeah. I think that there is something to that. I can’t even make a joke about that because it’s actually kind of terrifying.

[LAUGHS]: Yes.

To be 40 and still be trying to work out, hmm, what are my values? And could I just replace them wholesale almost overnight with a different set? That’s kind of a scary proposition for somebody who runs a set of platforms used by billions of people.

Yes. And I hope that whatever Mark Zuckerberg is looking for, he finds it. And I hope that it does not come at the expense of a lot of boars who might needlessly die.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

One last thing before we go. Our colleagues over at the “Matter of Opinion” podcast just published an extensive interview with the tech Investor Marc Andreessen about his support for Donald Trump, and what he sees as the emergence of a new conservative tech right. If you’re interested in checking out that show, you can search for the “Matter of Opinion” podcast, or click the link in our show notes.

“Hard Fork” is produced by Whitney Jones and Rachel Cohn. We’re edited this week by Rachel Dry. We’re fact checked by Caitlin Love. Today’s show was engineered by Brad Fisher. Original music by Rowan Niemisto and Dan Powell.

Our executive producer is Jen Poyant. Our audience editor is Nell Gallogly. Video production by Ryan Manning and Chris Schott. You can watch this full episode on YouTube at YouTube.com/HardFork. Special thanks to Paula Szuchman, Pui-Wing Tamm, Dahlia Haddad, and Jeffrey Miranda. As always, you can email us at [email protected]. Send us your ideas for how to make “Hard Fork’s” masculine energy more palpable.

What if we had a third male co-host?

Oh, no. [LAUGHS]