YouSaid · the spoken record

Scott Galloway

lines on the record: 150
first: 2026-05-04
most recent: 2026-05-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“100%. If you look at the greatest spends on infrastructure, when they get above two or three percent of GDP, there's almost always a crash afterwards. It happened in the railroads. It happened in electrification. It happened in the internet. It happened in the huge telco buildout of global crossing.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you feel it? So 50% of consumer spending in the US is the top 10%. The top 10% don't give a shit if gas is at $6 a gallon. It doesn't matter. Poor people, lower income people spend 22% of their household income on energy. And when energy prices are going up, it really impacts them. So unfortunately, we've again outsourced the downside of war to less wealthy nations who are very oil dependent to the Gulf, which is incurring damage here. But America is somewhat sequestered other than reputational risk and who gets elected president. We're somewhat sequestered. Again, we've outsourced the pain to military families, to people who spend a disproportionate amount of their income, low-income households on energy. But it's somewhat dangerous that the most powerful people in the world and to a certain extent, the most powerful nation in the world, seems to be unaffected by some of this.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I find the most interesting thing about this, one of the most interesting things is someone who follows the markets. If you didn't know there was a war in Iran that threatens geopolitical... I don't know, safety world oil flows. If you looked at the market, would you know? The market just hit an all-time high in the US. And again, it goes back to something very unhealthy, and that is there's certain elements of our economy, specifically the wealthy, that have totally disassociated from”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That I think, or a threat to. I think that brings them to the table. I think that's the most optimistic scenario is the straits open by a multinational force and there's a feeling of safety because it's enforced. Iran agrees to keep it open. And somehow we develop a series of objectives that we claim those boxes we've been checked and we declare a victory and get the hell out of Dodge. But every day this goes on, we see it, in my opinion, advantage and power to the IRGC because they just look like they're winning.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's a fair point. And actually, not that many ships have gone down, but it's actually an insurance problem. Because if you have two million barrels on a tanker, You've got $160 million payload. Someone has to take receipt of that. Someone has bought it. So there needs to be middlemen in the form of insurance. And no one wants to insure. Take that kind of risk right now. So it's a lack of insurance more than it is, a lack of safety from the threat. But I do think the reality is the Iranians, the IRGC, I say the bottom line is you go after the money. You don't bump civilian infrastructure. That's a war crime. But making it very difficult for them and creating a carrot, you can have free flow of oil. If you look at the Arab Spring, if you look at revolutions, they're usually a function of unemployment or economics. So if you were to inhibit their ability to export oil, that brings them to the table because the IRGC has been able to survive because millions of families in Iran are dependent upon the IRGC for their check. They control the most profitable biggest parts of the economy. So if you cut off their economics,”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're going to be out very soon, which is why we need to continue this war. The communications here in thinking has been so sclerotic and difficult to track. I'm like, who's boarding what ships? Is it a ceasefire? Isn't it a ceasefire? He claims that them commandeering to Western vessels is not a violation of the ceasefire. Of course it is. That's actually an act of war. So we don't even know what to look for. You asked me how does this turn out? I think a multinational force that opens.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stops up. So I think ideally the optimistic scenario is there's a multinational force that enforces the Strait of Hormos. He comes up with a series of objectives. If he had in his first, if he had outlined, we're going to take out most of their Navy, we're going to give the Iranian people an opportunity to overthrow the IRGC. We're going to take out the majority of the missile capability. And after 72 hours said, this is a win and got the hell out and coordinated with Gulf states to say, what can we do to ensure your safety? I think it would have been a win. But now I don't even know what his objectives are. Can you list what his objectives are? I don't know what they are. They seem to keep.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have always enforced, we've gone to war over this basic notion of freedom of navigation that pretty much any ship goes to go anywhere with pretty much anything on it. So I think that European nations, Asian nations all have a vested interest in ensuring the Strait of Hormuz is open. The way to do that is by sequestering or blocking, offloading and onloading of oil into Iranian ports. Because at some point it not only shuts them off economically, I didn't know this, but within, I think about 12 weeks, if you can't offload the oil and get it somewhere, it backs up and actually starts to damage the source well.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so the honest answer is I don't know because he's unpredictable. If I had to pick anything, I think there'll be a multinational force that has a vested interest in ensuring the Strait of Hormuz is open. There's so many things we've taken for granted in the West, and one of them is freedom of navigation. If Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia decide we need money or we need geopolitical power, we're going to close the Straits of Malacca or the Straits of Singapore. What if China closes off certain straits in the South China Sea where something like 60% of trade goes through?”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Tehran, figuring out AI-driven means highly produced, highly effective, very strong message going right after the portrayals of the Epstein Island. And I mean, they are doing a much better job because as Lincoln said, and it goes back to basics, you can't win a war without public support and you can't lose a war with public support. And right now, Iran is winning what you would call the sloppy granda war. They're putting out better information and propaganda than us right now.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do we negotiate with? And by the way, you got to look at incentives. If I'm the IRGC, I'm like, all we need to do is survive. Every day this goes on. And by the way, we're in the middle of what I'd call the first AI meme war. And that is Trump is communicating with Truths on Truth Social and these macho videos and memes of him as Jesus Christ. But he's been bested by kind of the slopaganda or the AI memes of the IRGC. Have you seen these Legos memes? They understand him better than he understands them. They are outstanding. And it's a group of 18 to 25 year old, probably people who look like this group.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For our diplomatic corps in the engine room, like actually working with people and talking to them, I think this level of incompetence and arrogance is all bubbling up. And you're right. They don't even know who to talk to. They don't even know”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can affect regime change from the air. The Iranians are smart. They have distributed power. There's no kind of head of the snake to cut off, but also a lot of this is incompetence on our part. Do you know what we have done in the US to our diplomatic corps? We've absolutely gutted it. When Vance goes to Islamabad thinking he's going to do a deal, if you look at the history of every truce, of every deal, of every summit, 97% of the work is done before they hit the tarmac by diplomats who go through line by line and iron out and talk to each other and negotiate. We've gutted our diplomatic corps. Our counterintelligence operations have been gutted. So we're kind of flying blind without instruments. And they think that JD Vance going to Islamabad for a TikTok moment where he tries to look presidential and then blames it on the IRGC, it is not going to work. So I think a lack of investment in key areas, a lack of soft power, whether it's through cutting USAID, a lack of respect.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're leaving the world a much more insecure place, much more economically vulnerable. Gulf states thought that having a U.S. military base was Kevlar and ended up just putting a giant bullseye on them. So people are going to think twice before they cooperate with our U.S. military by hosting bases. We appear to have not thought through getting our expats out of the Gulf, protecting the Gulf states. And I'm biased. I think the Trump administration will be known for criminal, for corruption and incompetence. And that incompetence is bubbling up”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Americans' tolerance for pain, and I'm not suggesting that we should go on military at misadventures, but this right now is no doubt turning out to be a giant win for the IRGC and a pretty severe loss for America that further alienates us from our allies and shows kind of our soft tissue around our willingness to actually finish the job. The other statement that kind of perfectly summarizes this war is we broke it. Now you fix it.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“70% of the IEDs in Iraq were built in Iran. We have been at war with Iran for a long time. The question is whether or not this military action slash war was worth it. And it looks as if it was so poorly executed on a strategic level that it has really diminished our brand. And we're now in the definition of a quagmire. If we leave, we look weak in any nation we perform military action against just says start firing missiles at their neighbors. You know who summarized every war for the US right now is in this war was Ho Chi Minh when he was describing Vietnam. He said they will kill a lot of our people. We will kill some of theirs. They will tire. They will go home. We killed a million people in Vietnam. We lost 58,000 and we left.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To the argument, we should have just continued with economic sanctions. But I have to own it. I thought military action was a good idea. I would argue, I apologize for the Lord Salad here, that we've been at war with Iran for 47 years. Their first action.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Around the world. And so we've essentially given them potentially a weapon that's more powerful than a nuclear weapon. And also, we look like we have a bit of a glass jaw. We go in, we lose 14 soldiers, tragedy for them and their families. The Russians are losing a thousand people a day and they don't show any signs of giving up. We look like this giant boxer who's the most skilled and biggest boxer in the world. We go in argument over whether we should go in or not. But now if we withdraw, what incentive do the Iranians right now have to negotiate when every day this goes on, they look like the little guy that stood up to the evil American Israel. I think this has been a disaster from a U.S. brand standpoint. And I would argue that them blocking inbound and outbound traffic from Iranian ports is actually the way to go. But that lends it.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Against the IRGC to diminish their Navy, diminish their nuclear capabilities, diminish their missile launch capability. I think there was real justification for that. The problem was the strategic incompetence here, not going to not enlisting some European allies, not briefing Congress, not coordinating with Gulf allies, not recognizing the game theory around what happens if they start firing at ships in the Strait of Hormuz. It just was strategically incompetent. And now we're in a situation where we want to diminish their nuclear capacity, but the reality is if they can maintain an ability to turn off and on the Strait of Hormuz, that is probably more powerful than them having nuclear weapons. If you look at what happens if the fertilizer or the products that create fertilizer are further sequestered, you could have a mass starvation event.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not a single American soldier killed lifted him out. I mean, that was an incredible operation. I think he got drunk on that macho and that success and thought, well, I can do the same thing. And the problem with wars is that the enemy has a say. And what we have found since, I think a lot of our leaders believe that wars could ultimately, if you have a bigger army, will result in unconditional surrender on the other side. And there really hasn't been unconditional surrender since World War II. And all the enemy needs to do, whether it's the Viet Cong or the Taliban or the IRGC, all they need to do is survive and they win. In addition, I would describe the war as being operational excellence and strategic incompetence. I actually believe there was justification and some merit to the idea of a military operation that tried to take advantage of a weakened Iran where its air defenses were down to take out the IRGC or at least maybe provide cloud cover for a revolution.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not kind of. That was arguably one of the greatest military operations in history, but it was a military operation. It wasn't a war. I mean, supposedly his guards didn't know what happened. All of a sudden they were on the floor throwing up because there was some sort of crazy radiation or radio waves.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that he was talked into by some of his security advisors in Netanyahu that his legacy could be restoring or making the Middle East more peaceful and being the president that severely diminished the capacity of what has been arguably the number one source of terror in the region and maybe even around the world for a long time that this was his defining moment as a president to go in, that they were weakened, they were hobbled and we had the military assets and the intelligence to go in and topple the regime. And he would be known as the president that liberated the Middle East. I think he bought into that.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you have lifelike synthetic porn, and the young male brain, I think is especially susceptible to this, men age 20 to 30 are spending less time outdoors than prison inmates. 42% of men, 18 to 24, and we talked about this on your last show, have never asked a woman out in person. So people are starting to believe they can have a reasonable facsimile of life. And what they need to know is that 40% of the S&P, our economy, is trying to sequester you from the most important and rewarding thing in your life, and that is your relationships. So my prediction for America is we will never be as prosperous, incredible prosperity, incredible economic growth, and massive loneliness, depression, anxiety, and obesity.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is pushing people towards the middle. It's actually having a moderating effect, which I find very encouraging. I think old people in senior care who maybe have lost family members or don't have a lot of relationships in their life, I can see AI characters playing a big role in their life. I believe for a long time that the biggest danger of AI is not weapons. It's not income inequality. We voted for income inequality or contamination of our elections. I mean, all of these things are big issues. The biggest downside of AI, in my view, is loneliness. And that is, and we talk about this a lot, AI is convincing people they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. Why go through the effort of having forensic Discord and Reddit? Why go through the hassle of getting a job when you can make money on Coinbase or Robinhood supposedly? And why would you go through the effort of trying to have a romantic relationship?”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll get served a video of Ted Cruz or Victor Orban looking like an ass because that I'm a progressive and that makes me happy. And then they elevate content of some progressive of AOC calling out somebody. And I start to hate the other side. What they're finding with AI is it's actually people who spend more time on AI. It's actually moderating their views because AI is about taking the medium or the average of every piece of data. Also, if you notice how nice AI is? Great question, Steven. No matter what you say or how stupid it is, I won't say that's a really stupid idea, Stephen. It'll say, I can understand why you're asking this question. And generally speaking, because it looks for the median of things, it looks for the average. What is the most often used seventh word after these six words are strung together?”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just with social media, it has some real upsides. I would argue at this point Meta is actually a net negative. It's, I think, done so much damage. But with AI, there's a lot of upsides. A really encouraging piece of data I saw is that when you spend time on social media, it takes you to the extremes. The algorithms see money and more Nissan ads in figuring out if you're conservative or liberal and then demonizing the other side and tickling your sensors, right? Yeah.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's so competitive that it's just easier for them to give money, some strategic money to keep people, and ensure that they're not regulated such that they can get to be billionaires. Because all the incentives are do whatever is required to win. Sam Altman isn't going to be remembered for being a good or a bad guy. He's going to be remembered for the guy who either was the number one AI company or blew it. That's what he's going to be remembered for. And right now he's blowing it, it appears, right? But people are going to look back and say, well, He didn't get public Anthropic ended up being worth more. It was kind of a disappointment financially, but he was a good guy. That's not what he's going for, and quite frankly, that's not what our society rewards.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think they just get caught up in this competition and they lose all sight. Also, my co-host on the Pivot podcast said something that was illuminating to me. During COVID, I was walking down the street with my sister and a homeless person kind of stirred. There was a lot of homeless people because they took the homeless shelters turned out everybody. And she jumped out of her skin. And I said, well, that was a bit of an overreaction. He's not going to hurt us. And she said, You know, you're 6'2190. Easy for you to say. You understand? Women walk around in a constant state of fear. And that fear is rational. And it really struck me. And then Kara said, these guys don't understand anything about victimization because they've never been victims. They're traditionally white males who have grown up in upper income households and they've never really understood what it's like to be a victim. So they don't put in place the safeguard.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's so competitive, and there's fewer and fewer winners that become much bigger, right? It used to be five companies, one and got hundreds of millions of dollars. Now one company wins and gets tens of billions. So you can see how incrementally this path to Darth Vader is pretty tempting.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is dramatic. And it's all the same thing. The bottom 99 of Western societies are essentially being optimized and monetized to make the life of the 1% just unbelievable. The life you can lead in the 1% is so dramatic and so incredible. Broader selections had a mates. Your kids have better health care, better educational opportunities. You have influence. People want to know you. The incentives to not be rich, but to be very rich are so incredible. And the way you get very rich is through stock options typically in technology that I think the incentives are so great that people will make incremental decisions and ignore the fact that, oh, one in 18 girls who are self-harming in the UK cite Instagram as a reason for that. Well, let's find research that maybe creates some doubts because once I become a billionaire, I'll be a better person. And they're getting so much criticism and so much shit.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a devastating, traumatic, humiliating experience. Now, if I need, I take Lunesto and I travel because I have trouble sleeping, I have a medical concierge company. They get me, did the drug delivered within two hours to my house. I have NAD treatments. They arranged for someone to come to my house when it's convenient for me and do it in my living room. I can text my doctor. I have a medical kit with all these things in it. If I'm abroad, I can text my doctor and say, my son's not feeling well. They FaceTime me. I open the kit. They can tell me exactly what to do. The healthcare I am receiving right now, I have my blood taken every three months. They send it to some bond lair in Noraway with PhDs who can tell me that I have less than a 0.7% chance of any cancers as evidenced by a lack of whatever it is antibodies, the cancer cells. The healthcare now, for the 1%.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Air transportation. Flying on Spirit Airlines is a humiliating, dangerous experience. United Airlines, economy, economy comfort, economy plus, business class, first class. Oh, wait, that's not enough. Let's go to private. There's charter. There's fractional. There's Assessance Citation. There's a Bombardier Challenger 300. There's a Global 650 now. There's a new G7. The delta in your life, in your healthcare. My mom was very sick when I was very young. And when I think about how humiliating it was for the two of us having heard to endure cancer when we were underinsured.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or they, the incentives, like in the United States, when I was growing up, my dad's boss had a slightly bigger house and he drove a Cadillac and we drove a Gran Torino. But we were members of the same country club and his house was a five-minute drive away. And maybe my dad's boss got to fly business class and we flew coach. The delta in having money, having a middle class life and an upper class was like this. Now the delta is this. Let's look at.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Security. Where I live in Soho, there's no homeless, as far as I can tell, there's no crime, there's no cops. There's cameras everywhere and dormant everywhere. My point is they are no longer invested in the well-being of America. They've totally dissociated from the investments required to make America a better place because they're sequestered from it. They're no longer invested in the well-being of America. And what I find strange about this nihilism is that these individuals think that they are no longer as invested in the well-being or the safety of the world. I think that's very unhealthy.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would imagine 300 of them give money. They're responsible for 20% of all political donations. And that 20% number is misleading because they can be more strategic. So unions are big givers, but they just give money to whoever's pro-union. So it's not that strategic. Billionaires can allocate capital to a specific issue, really ramp it up. So they have a disproportionate amount of control over our elected population. And the problem is the point 1% are not invested in the health of America. Why? They don't have to put up with TSA lines. They fly private. They don't have to put up with shitty health care. They have concierge medicine and access to the best medicine in the world. They don't have to put up with 40% of third graders can't read or write. Their kids go to amazing schools that spend on average $75,000 a year on their kid versus $15,000 at a public school, $10,000 at a public school in Alancom area. They don't need police. They have dormant.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Efforts in capital, if you're really focused on your own future, whether you're wealthy or not wealthy, that your resources and your talent should be allocated towards trying to make this place a little bit more habitable, not trying to colonize Mars, not having a go-bag. And this is part of the problem with the 0.1%. There are 900 billionaires in the United States.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, outlined his plan. His plan B if things get really ugly, right? And my view is okay, boss, let's play this out. Something happens. There's an event. It's too dangerous to stay here. You meet your pilots at the airport. I mean, shit really gets real. People scouring for food. People become feral. You don't think your pilots are going to kill you and fuck your wife? Do you think is going to happen? You don't think the people in New Zealand are going to be like, let's go take the rich guy's shit. It strikes me that these are such misallocated.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, okay, you're Oppenheimer. It's going to take three million American deaths to invade Japan. Japan will not surrender. And you've been charged with splitting the atom. There was much more than a 1% chance that our ability to split the atom and then show we would use it against a civilian population would result in the end of the world. Should he have stopped development of it? So a lot of scientists, nuclear scientists killed himselves. They committed suicide because they were convinced once we'd split the atom and used it against civilians, it was the end of the world. It was just a matter of time before we were all using nuclear devices. So I don't think you keep moving forward. Nihilism, where nihilism impacts these people, let me go back to the go bag. I talk to one of these people. He outlined his plan for me, right?”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a lot of Go plans amongst the wealthy, and sometimes it's not as dramatic. Sometimes it's just a home nuclear attack, cyber attack, revolution. But I would say amongst billionaires, I would bet conservatively one in three have some sort of go plan. And that's nihilist. And also to a certain extent, I think wanting to be an interplanetary species is a little bit nihilist.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's a nihilist vein running through big tech where a lot of them have go bags. They have a plan for if shit gets real, if there's a zombie apocalypse or there's a revolution or there's a massive pandemic, they have definitive plans and they've spent tens of millions of dollars. They meet their pilots at Oakland Airport. They get on their Gulf Stream 650. They fly to New Zealand to Auckland and they have a bunker built out.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought, you can't do that in the US. You know, Obama's kids still have secret service protection. So there's definitely something I quite frankly blame it on big tech that tries to convince people that this person is their enemy and this person is evil. Sam's not evil. I don't know him personally. I sat next to him at this party I went to, but he's doing his job, quite frankly. We're not doing ours.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the more famous you get, quite frankly, the more personal risk there is because someone is going to decide that taking you out for whatever reason is going to restore their social capital. Actually, if you look at assassination attempts and violence, it's actually gone down. But these stories are cinematic and very interesting, and they get a lot of attention. But I think it's a shame we live in a society where, especially in the West, where they have to endure that kind of risk, one of the really most lovely moments I've seen, I don't know if it was the Danish or the Norwegian prime minister who stepped down, they applauded, and he got on a bike and rode home.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's no justification for a healthcare executive being executed in the streets. There's no justification for violence against Sam or attempted violence against Sam and his family. I think it's young men with a lack of opportunity, mental illness, and unfortunately access to firearms everywhere. But it's always happened. I don't make the connection that somehow it's more justified. I think famous people, one in three presidents has been shot at.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A number of people who are likely, I don't know about the perpetrator here who are mentally ill and who will find an excuse, essentially the makeup usually of these perpetrators or these criminal actors is they're usually young men looking to restore their social capital through what they perceive as a historic act of violence against a famous person. This has gone on for a long time. He's now famous. I don't think it's fair. I've seen some people try to equate AI's dangers as if there's acts of violence are somehow justified. They're not.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We don't want to be that nation, or we don't. In the West, we have asserted if you're operating with a confines of the law, which Sam is, he deserves to live in peace. It is sad. Do you realize in the U.S. now there's no more people working in private security than there are cops? Really? Because there's always going to be...”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Free with no regulation, they do bad things. So Sam Altman is the latest person we've discovered as Darth Vader, who's gone to the dark side. It happens with all of them because they're doing their job. We as citizens aren't doing our job, and that is we're not putting in place elected officials that regulate these companies. So, yeah, can we trust Sam Maltman? No, but we shouldn't need to trust him. We should be able to trust that we have smart elected officials that will regulate these companies. Did you see this article he wrote in response to having a molotov clock doctor in his house? I read this article without reading it. So there's been death threats on his life. And let me be clear, there's absolutely no justification whatsoever for this. And it needs to be, I don't even like it when people yell at JD Vance when he's skiing with his family.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's the good guy now. The villain's journey in tech is the same. Some compelling person we think is a wonderful guy and it's almost always a guy, occasionally a woman. You know, we need to do better gender balance. That was Cheryl Sandberg in the workplace. And then we find out that they are doing their job and that is doing anything they can legally to increase shareholder value regardless of whether it prevents a tragedy of the commons or not. And then we get angry at them. The journey from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader gets shorter and shorter, but they all follow the same path. And then 18 months later, we realized that they, too, will say and do whatever they can to try and delay an obfuscate regulation and that sometimes when we don't have a government with a lack of domain expertise, with a lack of insight, with people who are crossed between the land of the dead and the golden girls and don't understand these technologies, then when these technologies are allowed to run just”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These guys would sleep at their cousin for a nickel. That's their job is to increase earnings. They're not here to save us. We're supposed to elect people who put in guardrails for them. So everyone is saying or asking me, can we trust Sam Allman? I'm like, no. And we shouldn't have to. We should have regulators putting in guardrails on AI. We should be testing these things. Government agencies should be testing these things. We should be ensuring that these technologies are not used to surveill Americans, right? We would still have cartoons like characters on cigarettes marketing to 12-year-olds if we hadn't put in place regulation. And the tobacco executives would claim that they weren't marketing to young people. Ford would still be pouring mercury into the river if we didn't have an EPA and regulation. So Sam is doing exactly what he's supposed to be doing. The latest hero that's going to save us is Dario Amode. We've decided.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Keep thinking that the newest tech CEO is going to save us, that this guy cares. Sam Altman was the gay son we all wanted, like super nice, super friendly, hush voices, well, senator, I'm worried about that as well, right?”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct answer. So the new Jesus Christ was born in the 90s, and that was Steve Jobs. And he was taken from us early like Jesus Christ. The idolatry of innovators is absolutely gone crazy. And the new Jesus Christ, if you will, are these tech CEOs. And here's what we fail to understand. They do not have our best interests at heart. They are not concerned with our emotional well-being. They are not going to comfort us when we're older. They are there and they play a key component in capitalism to do anything that is required to get their earnings up one cent per share every day. And they will make incremental decisions that justify the harming and self-harm of teen girls, Cheryl Sandberg, the weaponization of our platforms to make the coarsening of our discourse. Mark Zuckerberg, I mean, the radicalization of young men, the people running YouTube, they, we.”
2026-05-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Scott Galloway: AI Wasn’t Built For You. The Rich Don’t Need You Anymore! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT