Pivot · Mar 11, 2022

Let's Say Gay, The U.S. Bans Russian Oil, and Guest Jeffrey Sonnenfeld

Automatic transcript of the end of the episode, from 48:15. Speakers are labeled by software and may contain errors. Highlighted passages are Scott’s predictions.

Guest · 48:15 All say what we will on other occasions about Meta and Google and things, they were right out front. Did this hurt shareholders? No. I think it was brand enhancing. And many of the ways where Tim Cook has been such a a forceful, as you both have talked about, defender of privacy, Sometimes it cost them a little in the short term, but it was a huge return, they thought, for reinforcing the value of the brand. I think these companies have done their shareholders themselves, their reputations a lot Kara Swisher · 48:38 of And they needed that. And they sort of needed that, correct? They did. In some way. Some of them did, for sure. And I think Facebook moving quickly, and I suspect that's Nick Clegg's influence. Guest · 48:47 You know, even IBM moved right away, right up front, and HP and their competitors. Yeah, I admire that Scott Galloway · 48:53 social What two or three companies would have the most impact who have not acted? If you could pick two or three companies to to stop doing business tomorrow that would have the most impact who have yet to seize operations there, what would those two or three Guest · 49:06 companies be? Scott Galloway · 49:07 Some of Guest · 49:07 them wouldn't have the greatest consumer awareness, but enough ad agencies that haven't left. Like, WP did leave that took out Ogilvy and Mather and JW J. Waller Thompson and Younger Rookie. That was great, but late. But companies that are there, Dentsu, it's just some very bad stuff that's being produced with slick propaganda. Dentsu should not be there. Interpublic group, Shame on them. How could they still be there? That would have some tangible effect. Burger King, you you talk about the franchise arrangements they have. You know? Well, others with franchises have figured this out. Starbucks and McDonald's, which didn't have much as franchises. They figured out how to work around this. Yum Brands has has figured out some bypasses, buybacks, curtailing new investment. Burger King defiantly staying in there is, I think, symbolically a bad thing. But AbbVie and AmerisourceBergen and some players that are that are quite large there. What... Ferragamo. It's least 1% of Ferragamo's business. It's just symbolically stupid. Why are they there? So those are some that I would go for, offhand that Kara Swisher · 50:07 just Right away. Guest · 50:08 Does to me. And then the oil services companies, what what are they doing now with the blockades of Halliburton and, you know, bay... And and, Baker Hughes and others? Kara Swisher · 50:17 Yeah. Okay. So if you were a Russian CEO... This is my last question, and Scott may have one more. If you were a Russian CEO in tech or finance or consumer goods, how would you respond to these sanctions? What is happening within Russia? There's obviously, Wall Street banks are buying up the debt of Russian companies right now. What would... How would you deal right now as a Russian CEO? Guest · 50:38 I would I would try for asylum as fast as possible. It's hard to operate at the top of these companies in an honest, transparent way. You're you're... Right now, the the leaders of those companies, it's like being this... The CEO of IG Farben under Hitler. What should the CEO of IG Farben do to survive? Scott Galloway · 50:55 Oh god. Guest · 50:56 They should they should resign and and surrender their citizenship and get the hell out of Dodge. Kara Swisher · 51:01 What do you really think, Jeffrey? Stop being so coy, would you please? Guest · 51:05 God. They're Scott Galloway · 51:06 being How can you not love this guy? Sorry. Go ahead, Jeff. Kara Swisher · 51:10 I'm replacing Scott with you now. That was a good one. That Scott Galloway · 51:15 happened ten years ago and it's still happening. Jeff, use this as weapons. Let's just assume people buy into this, are inspired by the leadership you and many of these CEOs have demonstrated. What can people in the media, what can people with platforms, what can consumers do? Guest · 51:32 There are a lot of ways by taking a look at this list, and again, it's continually updated so we don't hear from too many attorneys within an hour, is that they certainly affect their buying decisions, their employment decisions. This is one thing that I think the three of us have had mixed feelings about some of the generational attributes that come along in consumer marketing theories. But when it comes to Gen Z, I think sometimes the baby boomers drop the ball. Consciousness three has been knocked unconscious. But when it comes to Gen Z, at least for now, overwhelmingly, it affects where they buy, where they seek employment, and where they invest. So I would I would certainly heavily market towards where a lot of your audience is is a is a younger, influential, enormous audience. And and the people who who pay attention to to to your show, your operation, your podcast are the people that I think should be paying attention to these lists and affecting their decisions. That's in a major way. I also would like, you know, Gina Raimondo in the in the commerce department to have a a sharper eye on what some of these companies are doing. Just between us, there's some universities that we should be holding accountable. Up until last week when I outed, don't cut me off on this, but MIT actually had Victor Bechelsberg on their board while as... While knowingly a sanctioned oligarch until we pointed that out, and then he was removed. And they still took hundreds of millions of dollars from him and others without without publicly disclosing this, for very sensitive work on AI, cryptocurrency, and some much scarier things I won't mention on air that we uncovered that MIT was doing in a large way that other universities were retreating from. And universities that we talked about in China similarly have made... Been making mistakes. I don't think they were trying to actively sabotage national security, but there's a naivete and recklessness in the university world that we need to be, you know, you remember Voltaire's Candide, there was philosopher in there called Pangloss, who's his mentor advisor. Pangloss in Greek means windbag. What Candide's lesson was that I guess what we have to do with all the horrors in the world is clean up our own act. It was cultivate your own garden, Voltaire had said. And I really think that's also important takeaway. We should look in our own employers, our own institutions. How well are we doing? And I think in the university world, I think we need to match the standards that we often use when we're criticizing corporations. Kara Swisher · 53:57 Well, that is speaking to the choir of Scott Galloway. Scott, start to look into NYU immediately. Anyway, Jeffrey, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. For anybody who wants to find this, the list is online. We'll put the link in our show notes. But Jeffrey, you're doing really great work, and it's really important to just, you know, show, not just tell, just show what they're doing. That's the reason Scott Galloway · 54:19 Stay strong, my brother. Stay Kara Swisher · 54:21 strong. Drop it. Guest · 54:22 Just drop it. I'll send the attorneys your way. Scott Galloway · 54:24 Thank you, Thank Kara Swisher · 54:25 you. All right. Scott Galloway · 54:25 Thanks, Jeff. Well done. Guest · 54:26 Thanks, bye bye. Kara Swisher · 54:27 All right, Scott. One more quick break. You really love him, don't you? He really is. Scott Galloway · 54:31 I think Professor Sonnenfeld is the most influential academic in the world today. When when shit gets real, we're talking about pandemic response. We're talking about invasions of sovereign nations. He is the only person that can overnight get 50 of the 100 biggest CEOs on a on a Zoom call that night. I Yeah. I have a lot of interaction with Jeff. He gets together not only in the business world, in the academic world. He brings together twice a year the presidents, chancellors, and provosts of kind of the 100 biggest universities in the nation. And he invites me to these things. And he calls me before and says, I'll say, what do you want me to do? And he's like, I want you to provoke and anger them. Kara Swisher · 55:09 Oh, no. That's why you like him. Scott Galloway · 55:11 And then I say something stupid, and he steps in and protects me. Kara Swisher · 55:14 He Scott Galloway · 55:16 really wants to catalyze a conversation, and he's not afraid to call these CEOs out by name and say, hey, Cloudflare, get out of Russia. And by the way, I would just want to say to all these companies, you're eventually going to leave. Just get out of there. Just do it now. Anyway, but professor Sonnenfeld, he really is... Real... He is making an enormous difference. Kara Swisher · 55:41 Alright, Scott. I'm glad that that's your hero. We'll be back for predictions. [Ad break] — Predictions segment begins — Kara Swisher · 57:25 Okay, Scott. Predictions? Predict something. We did very well last week. Two of our things went well. Scott Galloway · 57:30 Well, no. I'm just doubling down. I I can't... So for the life of me, I can't figure out when... So when Russia absorbed or usurped or whatever the term is, Crimea Crimea Crimea, it... I I could sort of. He thought, okay. The the... On a risk adjusted basis, maybe this made sense for them. For the life of me, I can't understand the endgame here because a stat that has just really stuck in my mind is it takes five times as many troops to occupy a nation as to invade it. This is supposed to be the easiest easy part. I mean, look at how fast we we invaded Iraq, and then look at how damaging and how difficult it was to try and occupy it or nation build and all the other brain dead things we did over there. But I don't understand the endgame here, and the only thing I can think of... And we talked about this on Tuesday, and it's my prediction. I think the world's largest leveraged buyout is Putin is gonna take the largest companies in Russia, take them private, and then he's gonna redol out these companies to the new generation of oligarchs. So my prediction is Oh, sort of Kara Swisher · 58:36 he's gonna find new oligarchs. Scott Galloway · 58:38 Well, this is my prediction. I think an influencer is about... A really big influencer in social media, who's maybe Russian or maybe not, is about to become a billionaire. Kara Swisher · 58:49 Oh, interesting. Scott Galloway · 58:50 Because Putin is basically gonna reabsorb all the industrial conglomerates, buy them on the cheap, and then he's gonna start doling them out again. Dictators and oligarchs are very smart at rewarding their allies. They are very smart. So Abramovich, who owns Chelsea FC, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe he isn't a the genius businessman that his tens of billions would connote, but he happened to be Yeltsin's roommate and told Yeltsin to pick Putin, and Putin rewarded him with the ability to buy yachts and huge townhouses and one of the better Premier League teams. So he's gonna do the same thing. He's gonna take that shit back. Putin came to power Kara Swisher · 59:28 This is interesting. Scott Galloway · 59:29 By diminishing some oligarchs and ascending others, and he's about to do the same thing again. Kara Swisher · 59:34 Alright. I like it. I like it. I think they'll be in... I can't wait to see what Russian star gets that Scott Galloway · 59:39 permission. He's gonna take all these assets back, and he's gonna say, alright. Sell it back to me for pennies on the dollar, or you're found dead on a bench in a London park, and you'll still be... Maybe it'll be be worth 1,000,000,000, not 10,000,000,000, and then he'll start redoling it out to the next generation of influence. Kara Swisher · 59:53 Loyal to him. He can't wait forever. Anyway, interesting. Stephanie Ruhl last night on the eleventh hour, which I watch regularly. Scott Galloway · 1:00:01 What time is it on? Kara Swisher · 1:00:02 11:00. The eleventh hour. Scott Galloway · 1:00:03 Oh, thank you. Thank you. Kara Swisher · 1:00:04 Okay. Thank you. The former ambassador to the to the Ukraine, whomever had got... Fell into Rudy Giuliani's crosshairs, Marie, Yovanovitch, was on, and she said Russians might win this war, but they'll never win the peace. I thought that was a great lie. Scott Galloway · 1:00:21 Well, when do we... When do they and when do we learn? I mean, we both went into Afghanistan and then tried to Guest · 1:00:29 hold it. Scott Galloway · 1:00:29 That didn't work out well. Kara Swisher · 1:00:30 It's their turn next. Scott Galloway · 1:00:31 It's also, quite frankly, it's a time for some soul searching and some uncomfortable mirror gazing about what we did in Iraq and how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis we killed. And by the way, fortunately for us, social media wasn't there. These people just didn't float off to a better place. They were brutally killed. They died under rubble. Yeah. Kara Swisher · 1:00:48 Although, nonetheless, it's tragic what's happening to these people's lives and pointless. I keep thinking this is pointless. This is so stupid to do this, and and there... And here we are. And he... No one's gonna win anything. Scott Galloway · 1:01:00 It's like Trotsky said, you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. And it's kind of the failure of our species, if you will. And that is that we can... If we can't figure out ways to solve stuff politically, economically, we go to it militarily. And amongst other things, war turns good people into murderers. And it absolutely ravages a generation of young people who were born at the wrong place in the wrong time. Kara Swisher · 1:01:25 Exactly. Scott Galloway · 1:01:26 It's kind of the failure of our species, is that it still is we kind of go through can we solve it this way? Can we solve it this way? And then we go to military. And it's just military. And I can't, for the life of me, figure out what his endgame is here. I just don't get it. I also believe that we are, and I'm going, geopolitically making a big mistake, and that is we're rewarding his reputation for being crazy. We're saying, okay, don't do this because he's crazy. Kara Swisher · 1:01:55 And I don't think he's crazy. Scott Galloway · 1:01:56 Anyway, but I I I don't... This will impact us probably in more ways than just increased gas prices. — Predictions segment ends — Kara Swisher · 1:02:02 Indeed. In any way. We love hearing from our listeners. So if you have ideas for cities, we got so much response. It was crazy. And and so many great responses. We're not, you know, we're not gonna be like... We're never going to pick a perfect place, but we are looking for one. We're dating right now. We're dating. We're going to find one. Scott Galloway · 1:02:18 Toronto would be nice. I love Montreal too. Montreal in the Good Kara Swisher · 1:02:22 bagels, stuff like that. Scott Galloway · 1:02:23 Good food. Hottest women in the world. Oh my god, I feel triggered. Kara Swisher · 1:02:26 All right. Anyway, we love hearing from our listeners. Even if we don't agree with you, we love hearing from you. We love hearing from you. If we agree with you, obviously, more, and please send us suggestions. And if you've got a question for us, go to nymag.com/pivot or call 85551 The link is in our show notes. Okay, Scott. That's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday for more. Please read us out. Scott Galloway · 1:02:48 Today's show was produced by Lara Naaman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Indratot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mia Silverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Cara, have a great rest of the week and a good weekend.

Came true

Resolved Dec 2022 · about 9 months after it aired

Pivot #284 · Aired Mar 11, 2022

Vladimir Putin will effectively take the largest companies in Russia private (a leveraged-buyout-style move) and redistribute ownership of them to a new generation of oligarchs loyal to him.

Putin is using de-privatization to create a new generation of loyal oligarchschathamhouse.org

4 more sources

How we graded it

Counts as true if: Credible reporting confirms that Putin's government has nationalized or seized major Russian companies and reassigned their ownership/control to a new set of Kremlin-aligned businesspeople.

Extensive reporting confirms Russia seized/nationalized major foreign and domestic companies and handed control to Kremlin-loyal managers and a new business elite, starting in 2022 and accelerating through 2023-2026 (Chatham House, FT/Newsweek, Moscow Times, Meduza). Leadership of firms like Lukoil, Fortum/Uniper assets, Danone, Carlsberg, and in 2026 Nestlé, Auchan, and others were reassigned to Kremlin-connected figures, matching Galloway's prediction of a de facto leveraged buyout and redistribution to new loyalist oligarchs. While not a literal LBO, the substance of the claim—state seizure followed by handoff to a new loyalist ownership class—clearly materialized.

Researched and graded by AI on Oct 13, 2026

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