YouSaid · the spoken record

Bill Ackman

lines on the record: 257
first: 2024-02-20
most recent: 2024-02-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Made terrorists are ostracized that this October 7th experience on the Harvard Pen MIT Columbia, unfortunately, other campuses is a wake-up call for universities generally. People see the problems with DEI but understand the importance of diversity and inclusion, but not as a political movement, but as a way that we've returned to a meritocratic world where someone's background is relevant in understanding their contribution, but it's not, we don't have race quotas and things that were made illegal years ago actually being implemented in organizations on campus. So I think there's, if we can go through a corrective phase, and I'm an optimist, and I hope we get there.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Today you make, you know, her world is a world where the existence of the new car actually is better for the environment than if the new car hadn't existed. And think about that in every product scale. That's what she's working on. I don't want to give away too much, but you're going to see some early examples of what she's working on. So again, I get excited about the future. And crises are sort of a terrible thing to waste. And we've had a number of these here. I think this disaster in the Middle East, my prediction is the next few months, this war will largely be over in terms of getting rid of Hamas. I think I can envision a world in which Saudi Arabia, some of the other Gulf states come together, take over the governance and reconstruction of Gaza, security guarantees are put in place. The Abrahamic Accords continue to grow a deal.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Business, I have an incredible team. It's tiny. We're one of the smallest firms relative to the assets we manage. It's a bit like the Navy SEALs, not the U.S. Army. We have only 40 people at Persian Square. So it's a tight team. I think we'll do great things. I think we're early on. My ambitions investment-wise, I've always wanted to, I've always said I'd like to have a record as good as Warren Buffett's. The problem is each year he adds on another year. He's now in his 93rd year. So I've got 36 more years to just get where he is. And I think he's going to add a lot more years. I'm excited about seeing what Nary's going to produce. She's building an incredible company. They're trying to solve a lot of problems with respect to products and buildings and their impact on the environment. Her vision is how do we design products that by virtue of the product's existence, the world is a better place?”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I do think the internet revolution was had a lot of good, obviously some bad. I think the AI revolution is going to be similar, but we're at this other really interesting juncture in the world with technology. And we're going to have to use it for our good on the media front. I'm happy about X. And I think Elon's going to be successful here. I think advertisers will realize it's a really good platform. The best way to reach me, if you want to sell something to me, I've actually bought stuff on some ads in X. I don't remember the last time I responded to a direct response advertising. You know, in terms of...”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An enormously rich country. Capitalism still works effectively here. I get optimistic about the world when I talk to my friends who are either venture capitalists or my hobby of backing these young entrepreneurs. I talked to a founder of a startup if you want to get optimists about the world. So I think technology is going to save us. I think AI, of course, has its frightening terminator-like scenarios. But I'm going to take the opposite view that this is going to be a huge enabler of productivity, scientific discovery, drug discovery, and it's going to make us healthier, happier, and better.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we've gone through a really difficult period, and it's time. We need a break. But look, I think the United States is incredibly resilient country. We have some incredible moats among them. We have the Atlantic and the Pacific, and we have peaceful neighbors to the north and the south.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I would say I do, and by the way, if anyone's ever interested in a fun, they should always read the prospectus carefully, including the risk factors. That's very, very important. But I like the idea of democratizing access to good investors. And I think that's an interesting trend, so we want to be part of that trend. In terms of... Financial markets generally, the economy, you know, a lot of it is going to depend upon the next leader of the country. So we're kind of right back there. The leadership of the United States is important for the U.S. economy. It's important for the global economy. It's important for global peace.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think about it this way. When Biden present now, you saw his recent impromptu press conference, which he did after the special prosecutor report, basically saying the guy was way past his prime. And then he confused the president of Mexico and the president of Egypt. So they're very careful when they roll him out, and he's scripted and he's always reading from a lectern. Imagine the care they have in exposing him. And when they expose him, it's terrible. Okay, imagine how bad it is for real. Really bad for America, and I'm upset with him and upset with his family. I'm upset with his wife. This is the time where the people closest to you have to put their arms around you and say, you know, dad, you know, honey, you've done your thing. This is going to be your legacy and it's not going to be a good one.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Won't vote for Trump Also from the Democrats. So I think he's a really interesting candidate, but we've got to get the word out.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Haley, who I like and who I've supported, does not look like she's going to make it Trump is really kind of running the table. And so vote for Haley as an independent Michigan maybe throw away your vote. I think it increases the likelihood that Dean can get those independent votes. If he could theoretically, again, he needs money. He could beat Biden in Michigan. Biden's doing very poorly in Michigan. His polls are terrible. The Muslim community is not happy with him. And he really has spent no time there. And so if he's embarrassed in Michigan, it could be a catalyst for him withdrawing. Then Dean will get funding. If he wins Michigan or shows well in Michigan and people say he's viable, he's the only choice we have. He'll attract from the center. He'll attract from people, Republicans who won't vote for Trump at which they're a big percentage could be 60% or more. It could be 70%.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100%. So what has to happen is New Hampshire, he went from zero to 20% of the vote and 10 weeks with no name recognition. I helped a little bit. Elon helped. We did a spaces for him. We had 350,000 people on the spaces, some originally 40,000 live or something, and then the rest after. And then he was on the ground in New Hampshire. And New Hampshire is one of the states where you don't need to be registered to a party to vote for that candidate. So it's like Jumpall. And he got 20%. And that's with a lot of independence and Democrats voting for Haley.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Few days ago, and people were like, Bill, how can this guy be your president? And it's a bit like, again, I go back to my business analogy, being a CEO is like a full contacts board. Being president of the United States is like some combination of wrestling, marathon running, you know, tribe being a triathlete. I mean, you've got to be serious physical shape. And at the top of your game to represent this country. And he is a far cry from that and is just getting worse and it's embarrassing. And he cannot be, and by the way, every day he waits, he's handing the election to Trump because it's harder and harder for an alternative candidate to surface. Now, Dean is the only candidate left on the Democratic side that can still win delegates. He's on the ballot in 42 states. And the best way for Biden to step aside is for Dean to show well in Michigan.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And by the way, the other thing to point out here is, and I have been pointing this out as of others, Biden, I think, is done. I mean, it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing for the country having him as a presidential candidate, let alone the president of the country. It's crazy. And it's just going to get worse and worse. And he should, you know, the worst of his legacy is his ego that prevents him from stepping aside. And that's it. It's his ego. And it is so wrong and so bad and so embarrassing. You know, you talk to people, I was in Europe, I was in London.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If they want to have a chance to stay in office or run in the future, but he's very principled, I think he would be a great president, but he needs his shot is Michigan, but he needs to raise money in order to, he's only got a couple weeks, and he's got to be on TV there. That's expensive. So we'll see.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Considered, I think, the second most bipartisan member of the Congress. I'd love to have a bipartisan president. That's the only way to kind of go forward. But we'd enormously benefit if we had a president that chose policies on the basis of what's best for the country as opposed to what his party wanted. What I like about him is he's financially independent. He's not a billionaire, but he doesn't need the job. The party hates him now because he challenged the king, right? And so but he's willing to give up his political career because what he thought was best for the country. He tried to get other people to run who are a higher profile, had more name recognition. None would. No one wants to challenge Biden.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think he's an honest, smart, motivated, capable, proven guy as a business leader. And I think in six, almost in his three terms in Congress, he ran when Trump was elected. He said kids cried, his daughters cried, inspired him to run for office, ran in a Republican district in Minnesota for the last 60 years, was elected in a landslide, has been re-elected twice, moved up the ranks in the Congress. respected by his fellow members of Congress, advanced some important legislation during COVID, you know, senior roles on various foreign policy committees centrist.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The problem is the party system is so screwed up and the parties are self-interested and there's another governance problem, an incentive problem. Michael Porter, who was one of my professors at Harvard Business School, wrote a brilliant piece on the American political system and all the incentives and market dynamics and what he called a competitive analysis. And it's a must read. I should dig it up and send it around on X, but it explains how the parties and the incentives of these sort of self-sustaining entities that were the people involved are not incentivized to do what's best for the country. It's a problem.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which letter to pick. Here we had an incredibly close election, which itself is a problem. So, you know, my dream and what I've tried a little bit played politics in the last little period to support some alternatives to Trump so that we have a president. I use the example. Imagine you woke up in the morning. It's election day, whatever it is, this November 4th, whatever 24, and you still haven't figured out how to vote for because the candidates are so appealing. That you don't know which lever to pull because it's a tough call. That's the choice we should be making as Americans. It shouldn't be a member of this party and I'm only going to vote this way. I'm a member of that party going to vote the other way. And I hate the other side. And that's where we've been, unfortunately, for too long.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he's been a very imperfect president, and also, I think, contributed to the extreme amount of divisiveness in our country. So I was ultimately disappointed by the note of optimism. And again, I always support the president. I trust the people ultimately to select our next leader. It's a bit like who wants to be a millionaire. When you go to the crowd and the crowd says certain thing, you got to trust the crowd. usually in who wants to be a millionaire, it's a landslide in one direction so you know which”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“January 6th, he could have done a lot more to stop a riot. I don't consider it an insurrection, but a riot that takes place in our capital and where police officers are killed or die, commit suicide for failure as they sought to do their job, he stepped in way too late to stop that. He could have stopped it early. You know, many of his words, I think, inspired people, some of whom with malintent to go in there and cause harm and literally to shut down the government. There were some evil people, unfortunately, there.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do think it's important. I do think he was attacked very aggressively by the left, by the media that made him paranoid. It probably interfered with his ability to be successful. He had the Russian collusion investigation overhang. And when someone's attacked, they're not going to be at their best, particularly if they're paranoid. I think there's some degree of that. But I'm giving kind of the best of defense of Trump just you look at how he managed his team. Very few people made it through the Trump administration without getting fired or quitting. And he would say they're the greatest person in the world when he hired them and they're total disaster when he fired them. It's not an inspiring way to be a leader and to attract really talented people. I think the events surrounding the election.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When Trump was president, and that's true for other minority groups, he was good for the economy. And he recognized some of the challenges and issues and threats of China early. He kind of woke up NATO. Again, the way he did all of this stuff you can object to. But NATO actually started spending more money on defense in the early part of Trump's presidency because of his threats, which turned out to be a good thing in light of the ultimately the Russia-Ukraine war. And I think if you analyze Trump objectively based on policies, he did a lot of good for the country. I think what's bad is he did some harm as well. I do think civility disappeared in America with Trump's president. A lot of that's his personal style and how important is civility.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just changed the tone on being a pro business president, I thought would be good for the country. And that's basically what I said. And I would say Trump did a lot of good things. And a lot of people you can get criticized for acknowledging that. But I think the country's economy accelerated dramatically. And that, by the way, the capitalist system helps the people at the bottom best when the system does well and when the economy does well.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And those conditions were present in 2020 as well. They're just, I would say, worse now. And I said, look, it's a great thing that we have a businessman as president. And in my lifetime, it's really the first businessman as opposed to, I mean, maybe Bush to some degree was a business person. But I thought, okay, I was one of the CEO to be CEO of America. And now we have Trump. Look, he's got some personal qualities that seem less ideal, but he's going to be president of the United States. He's going to rise to the occasion. This is going to be his legacy. He knows how to make deals. And he's got he's going to recruit some great people into his administration, I hoped. And, you know, growth can solve a lot of our problems. So if we can get rid of a bunch of regulations that are holding back the country, we can have a president, Obama, was a, I would say, not a pro-business president. He did not love the business community. He did not love successful people. And having a president who”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think what I said at the time was the United States is actually a huge business. And it reminds me a bit of the type of activist investments we've taken on over time, where this really, really great business has kind of lost its way. And with the right leadership, we can fix it. And if you think about the business of the United States today, right, you've got $32 trillion worth of debt, so it's over-leveraged, or it's highly leveraged, and the leverage is only increasing. We're losing money, i.e. revenues aren't covering expenses. The cost of our debt is going up as interest rates have gone up and the debt has to be rolled over. We have enormous administrative bloat in the country. The regulatory regime is incredibly complicated and burdensome in impeding growth. Our relations with our competitor nations and our friendly nations are far from ideal.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I was interviewed by Andrew Sorkin a week after Trump won the election Made my case for why I thought he could be a good president”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm getting my own version of that in terms of some negative media articles. I don't know what's next. But yeah, if you stick your neck out in today's world and you go against the establishment or at least the existing administration, you can find yourself in a very challenged place. And that discourages people from sharing stuff. And that's why anonymous speech is important, some of what you find on Twitter.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And where the mainstream media has kind of toe the line in many extents to the government's action. So having an independently owned, powerful platform is very important for truth, for free speech, for hearing the other side of the story, for counterbalancing the power of the government. Elon is getting a lot of pushback. The SpaceX and Teslas of the world are experiencing a lot of government questions and investigations and even the President of the United States came out and said, look, he needs to be investigated.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He did a lot of things perhaps deserving of being discredited by a very imperfect, in some cases harmful leader. But everything from pre-election, the Hunter Biden laptop story in the New York Post that then Twitter made difficult for people to share and to read COVID. The J Matajars of the world questioning the government's response, questioning long-term lockdowns, questioning keeping kids out of school, questions about masks, about vaccines. Which are still not definitively answered. No counterbalance to the power of the government when the government can shut down avenues of free speech.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100%. And I think it's a really important one. And it's really been eye opening for me to see how stories get covered in mainstream media. And then you actually, what I do on X is I follow people on multiple sides of an issue. And you can, or I post on a topic and I get to hear the other side. You know, I read the replies. And the truth is something that people have had a lot of question about, particularly in the last, I would say, five years. beginning with Trump's talking about fake news and a lot of what Trump said about fake news is true. The world, a big part of the world hated Trump and did everything they could to discredit him, destroy him.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Least we now have some ability to fight back. We have a platform we can surface our views. The typical old days they write an incredibly damning article and you point out factual errors and then like two months later they bury a little correction on page whatever by then the person was fired or where their life is destroyed or their reputation is damaged. It was with Warren Buffett talking about media. It's something a business he really loves. He says, you know what, Bill? He said a thief with a dagger. The only person who can cause you more harm than a thief with a dagger is a journalist with a pen. Those were very powerful words”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I didn't think the story was a fair story. So within a few hours of the story being written, I'm able to put out a response to the story and send it to a million 200,000 people. And it gets read and reread. I haven't checked, but probably 5 million people saw my response. Now, those are the people on X. It's not everyone in the world. There's a disconnection between the X world and the offline world. reputation in my business is basically all you have. And as they say, you can take a lifetime to build reputation and take five minutes to have it disappear and the media plays a very important role. And they can destroy people”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kids school the epithet for the school or the saying is go forth unafraid I think it's a good way to live and again words can't harm me you know the the power of X and we do owe Elon enormous thanks for this is now so for example the Washington Post wrote a story about me a couple days ago”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This intentional in order to be a crime, an academic crime, you got to prove that they intentionally stole. Look, in some cases it's obvious, in some cases it's very subtle. And they take this stuff super seriously. But they basically accused Narrative academic crime. And then 92 minutes later, they said she committed an academic crime. And that should be a crime. And that should be punishable with litigation. And there should be a real cost. And we're going to make sure there's a real cost reputationally and otherwise to business insider and to Axel Springer because ultimately you got to look to the controlling owner. You know, they're responsible.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Following day, 5 19 p.m., the email comes in, not to Nary, not to her firm, but to my communications person who tracks us down by 5.30, 10 minutes later. And they publish their story 92 minutes. And they sent us, we're going to surface all these documents in our demand. Read the email they sent, whether you could even decipher it. Was no, and by the way, there's a reason why academic institutions, when professor is accused of plagiarism, why they have these very careful processes with multiple stages, and they can take a year or more because it depends on intent.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The problem is the defamation law in the US is so favorable to the publisher, to the media, and so unfavorable to the victim. And the incentives are all wrong. When you went from a paper version of journalism to digital and you could track how many people click, and it's a medium that advertising drives the economics. And if you can show an advertiser more clicks, you can make more money, right? So a journalist is incentivized to write a story that will generate more clicks. How do you write a story that will generate more clicks? You get a billionaire guy, and then you go after his wife and you make a sensationalist story and you give them no time to respond, right? You know, look at the timing here. On the first story, they gave us three hours. On the second one, the”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She's full speed ahead in her work. She's built an amazing team. She's hired 30 scientists. Roboticists, people who, biologists, plant specialists, material scientists, engineers, really incredible crew. She's built this 36,000 square foot lab in New York City. That's one of a kind. They're working out of it. It's still under construction while they're working out of it. And so she's going to do amazing things. But as I said, she's an extremely sensitive person. She's a perfectionist. Imagine thinking that the entire world thinks you committed academic fraud. And so that was very hard for her. She's a very positive person, but I saw her and I would say her darkest emotional period, for sure. Doing much better now But you can kill someone.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're amazing. You're incredible. You're incredibly talented, but you're mostly known in the design world. Now, everyone in the universe has heard of Nary Oxman. We're going to get this thing cleared up. You're going to be doing an event. In six months, where you're going to tell the world, you're going to go out of stealth mode, you're going to tell the world about all the incredible things that you're building and you're designing and you're creating. And it's going to be like the iPhone launch because everyone's going to be paying attention and they're going to want to see your work. And that's how I try to cheer up. But I think it's true.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Made us prove to us you should no longer on the MT faculty because they wanted to get her fired. And by the way, malice is one of the important factors in determining whether defamation has taken place. And this was a malice-driven, this was not about news. And the unfortunate thing about journalism is business insider made a fortune from this. This story was published and republished by thousands of media organizations around the world. It was the number one trending thing on Twitter for like two days. Every newspaper, it was on the front page of every Israeli newspaper, you know, was on the front page of the Financial Times. And she's building a business if your CEO of a science company and you committed academic fraud, that's incredibly damaging. But I ultimately convinced her that this was good. Sweet”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a political agenda. She doesn't like me. Okay. And she was trying to hurt me and they couldn't find plagiarism, my thesis. And, you know, being the subject of short, being a shortseller, the herbalife battle went on for years. They tried to do everything to destroy my reputation. So they'd already gone to my trash. They'd already done all that work. Anything they could possibly find, you know. I've always lived a very clean life, thankfully. And if you're going to be an activist short sell, you better because they're going to find out dirt on you if it exists. And so they're like, how can we really hurt Bill? And by the way, Neri had left MIT years earlier. The reporter found out she was no longer a member of the MIT faculty, they were enraged, they didn't believe us.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look at it, we're going to surface all this stuff publicly ultimately. The email was not to narry, saying there was pledges in her work. The email came from a reporter named Catherine Long, and the headline was Your Wife committed plagiarism, shouldn't she be fired from MIT? Just like you caused Clauding to be fired from Harvard.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a certainty we're moving forward. There's a step we can take prior to suing them. Where we basically send them a letter demanding they make a series of corrections. If they don't make those corrections, the next step is litigation. I hope we can avoid the next step. And I'm just making sure that when we present the demand to business insider and ulstimate to Axel Springer, that it's incredibly clear how they defamed her, the factual mistakes in her stories, and what they need to do to fix it. And if we can fix it there, we can move on from this episode and hopefully avoid litigation. So that's where we are.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The article. So it's basically Neri committed plagiarism. That's story one. Nerry admits to plagiarism. She admits to plagiarism. She admitted to making a few clerical errors. That's the only thing she admitted to. And she graciously apologized. So they said, Nary admits to plagiarism, apologizes for plagiarism. That's incredibly damning. And by the way, we're doing an investigation because we're concerned that there might have been inappropriate process, but the facts of the story have not been disputed by Nerry Oxman or Bill Ackman. And that was totally false. I had done it privately. I'd done it publicly on Twitter, on X. I laid out, I have a whole tech stream, a WhatsApp stream with the CEO of the company. And they double down and they double down again. And so I don't sue people lightly. Stay tuned”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Laying out the factual errors in the article, business insider, when public, after they said Nerry committed academic fraud and plagiarism, and said we never didn't challenge any, the facts remain undisputed.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's not even that. I mean, yes, I have said that we're going to sue business insider. And in 35 years of my career of someone who has not every article has been a favorable one, not every article has been an accurate one. I've never threatened to sue the media, and I've never sued the media. But this is so egregious. It's not just that she did nothing wrong, but they accused her of academic fraud. They did it knowing they make reference to MIT's own handbook. So they had to read all the same stuff that I read in the handbook. They did that work. Then after I escalated this thing to Henry Blodge, the chairman of Business Insider, to the CEO of Axel Springer, I even reached out to Henry Kravis at a certain point in time, one of the controlling shareholders of the company through KKR.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the using the same words, she referred to clinic or whatever, some kind of 3D printer. She was the stratus 3D printer. And she quoted from the manual right away, stratus is a company you consulted for. You don't need to, that's not something, you're not stealing their ideas, you're describing a nozzle for a device you use in your work and a footnote. That's not a theft of idea, right? And so I'm like, this is crazy. And so this has got to stop. And so I reach out to Agay I knew who was on the board of business insider, the chairman. And his name is going to come public shortly. I committed to that time to keep his name confidential. It's now surfaced publicly in the press.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they make very clear academic fraud is, and they list plagiarism, you know, research theft, a few other things, but it does not include honest errors. Honest errors are not plagiarism under MIT's own policies. And in the handbook, they also have a big section of what they call common knowledge And common knowledge depends on who you're writing your thesis for. And so if it's a fact that is known by your audience, you're not required to quote or cite. And so all those Wikipedia entries were for things like sustainable design, computer-aided design. She just took a definition from Wikipedia. Common knowledge to her readers, no obligation under the handbook, totally exempt.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they can't. This is wrong, right? This is not academic fraud. Okay, these are inadvertent mistakes. And the Wikipedia entries, Narry actually used Wikipedia as a dictionary. This is the early days of Wikipedia. And they also referred to the MIT handbook, which has a whole section on plagiarism, academic handbook. If you read it, which I ultimately did, they make clear a few things. Number one, there's plagiarism, academic fraud, and there's what they call inadvertent plagiarism, which is clerical errors where you make a mistake, and it depends on intent. And there's a link that you can go to, which is a section on if you get investigated at MIT, what happens, what's the procedure, what's the initial stage, what's the investigative stage, what's the procedure if they identify it.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to do a review of every MIT professor's dissertations, every published paper, AI has enabled this. And so I put out a tweet basically saying that. And we're doing a test run now because we have to get it right. And I think will be useful exercise. Provide some context, if you will. And then this thing goes crazy viral. Nary is a pretty sensitive person, pretty emotional person, and someone who's a perfectionist and having everyone in the world thinking you committed academic fraud is a pretty damning thing. Now, they did say they did a thorough review of all of her work, and this is what they found. I'm like, sweetheart, that's remarkable. You did 130 works, 73 of which were peer-reviewed, blah, blah, blah, and she's published in Nature Science and all these different publications. That's actually a pretty good batting average.”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then they said, and then the next day at 519 p.m., I remember the timeline pretty well, an email was sent to Fran McGill saying, we've identified two dozen other instances of plagiarism in her work, 15 of which are Wikipedia entries where she copied definitions. And the others were mostly software hardware manuals for various devices or software she used in her work. Most of which were in footnotes where she described a nozzle for a 3D printer or something like this. And they said we're publishing tonight. The email they sent to us was 6,900 words, it was 12 pages, it was practically indexable. You couldn't even read it in an hour. And we didn't have some of the documents they were referring to. I'm like, Narry, you know what I'm going to do? I think it will be useful to provide context here”
2024-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #413 – Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source