The chief technology officer of X used foul language to slam brands that had pulled their advertising after his post on the social media platform.
Vice President Kamala Harris, President Isaac Herzog of Israel, Elon Musk and other leaders in business and politics spoke on everything from artificial intelligence, economic tensions between the United States and China, and Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel at the annual DealBook Summit in New York on Wednesday.
The event, hosted by The New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, has taken place since 2011.
Here are the takeaways:
Elon Musk, the owner of X, used an expletive to dismiss a move by big brands to pull their advertising from the platform after he endorsed antisemitic remarks. He apologized for the post but accused the companies of “blackmail,” and said the public would blame them if the platform died because of the lost revenues. His blunt directive added to the challenges facing Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive who was in the audience. She has been tasked with wooing advertisers back to the platform after many were spooked by Mr. Musk’s erratic posts.
[For select interviews from today’s DealBook Summit, follow and listen to our limited podcast series.]
Vice President Kamala Harris defended the Biden administration’s economic record, as polls show that the president trails Donald J. Trump in battleground states ahead of the 2024 election. Ms. Harris said President Biden has done more to tackle inflation “than most advanced economies” but more work was needed to convince voters.
Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, said on Wednesday that discussions about extending a cease-fire with Hamas were continuing, as it seeks to bring more hostages home. Mr. Herzog said that Israel was doing “whatever we can to increase and upgrade the humanitarian aid to Gaza,” where local health officials say at least 13,000 people have been killed during the Israeli military response. “But we have to do the job, and get Hamas out of there,” he said.
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the former Republican Speaker of the House, did not commit to running for re-election next year after being pushed out of the position last month. But he said that if he were to step back from electoral politics, he would like to focus on artificial intelligence. Mr. McCarthy said he would support Mr. Trump for president, and questioned President Biden’s ability to govern at his age.
Jensen Huang, chief executive of chipmaker Nvidia, said that it will be a decade before A.I. companies achieve so-called artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., the state at which a computer could approach tasks the way a human brain does. Mr. Huang also said that his company wasn’t worried about competition in the industry.
Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said the bank would “punch back” over Texas’s 2021 efforts to restrict the state’s business with financial firms that embrace environmental, social and governance policies. Texas passed two laws in 2021 that limit the state’s work with banks that regulators determine restrict their work in the energy and firearms industries.
Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan, said that she does not expect any imminent invasion from China because of the mainland’s economic troubles. Ms. Tsai also said that she was not worried that plans by the United States to bolster its domestic semiconductor industry could threaten Taiwan’s chip-making sector.
David Zaslav, chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, defended unpopular decisions made to bring down the colossal debt inherited from Warner Media. Those decisions included canceling the release of the movie “Batgirl” and letting go executives and personalities at CNN. “When we took over the company, we said there are no sacred cows,” Mr. Zaslav said.
Bob Iger, chief executive of Disney, denied that any of the company’s media assets were up for sale after publicly speculating about potentially trimming the company’s portfolio. Mr. Iger said he “did not want to get accused of being an old media executive” who was afraid to make bold decisions.
Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, elaborated on her antitrust-enforcement philosophy. Agencies, she said, have to ask, “is it better to get it wrong in the direction of acting, or is it better to get it wrong in the direction of not having acted?” After the government’s long-term hands-off approach, Ms. Khan said people were realizing that “bias in favor of inaction” had “enormous costs across our economy.”
Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour, said he was working on finalizing a deal with its Saudi-backed rival, LIV Golf, before the end of the year. Mr. Monahan took a leave of absence a week after a tentative deal was reached, and on Wednesday shared that he was struggling with mental health issues at that time.
Shonda Rhimes, the creator of shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Bridgerton,” described the transition from network TV to the streaming giant Netflix, saying the latter has given her more creative liberty and resources. When asked about the recent writers’ strike, she said the labor action “wasn’t complicated at all,” adding, “I consider myself to be a writer first and foremost.”
Elon Musk called the recent leadership fight at OpenAI “troubling,” saying the split between some of its top executives and board member may have reflected a push to put profits ahead of ethics and security.
Mr. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 before leaving the company three years later. He told the DealBook Summit in New York on Wednesday that the ouster of Sam Altman as chief executive, and his reinstatement days later, set a concerning precedent.
“I’m quite concerned that there’s some dangerous element of A.I. that they’ve discovered,” Mr. Musk said.
OpenAI, which was a solely nonprofit organization when it was founded before a for-profit unit was added to the structure, was given its name because it was interested in pushing open-source advances. Its creation was intended to be a counterweight to for-profit companies like Google DeepMind. But Mr. Musk said that name no longer suited the company. “The whole arc of OpenAI, frankly, is a little troubling,” he said.
Mr. Musk has taken a particularly cautious approach to A.I., and was one of more than 1,000 tech leaders who signed a letter in March calling for a pause in the development of the most advanced systems. The letter claimed the technology poses “profound risks to society and humanity.”
He added that he had “mixed feelings” about Mr. Altman, who many tech executives see as a skilled Silicon Valley dealmaker. He said he held more trust in Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist and another co-founder. Mr. Sutskever sat on the board and initially pushed to remove Mr. Altman before regretting the decision.
While he acknowledged that he had previously overstated how quickly that technology would develop, Mr. Musk did give a bullish timeline for the development of “artificial general intelligence,” an advancement where computers can mimic problem-solving functions similar to a human brain. So called A.G.I., he said, was less than three years away.
Jensen Huang, the chief executive of A.I. chipmaker Nvidia, said earlier in the summit that it would be about a decade until that technology was available.
Jay Monahan, Commissioner of the PGA Tour, decided to seek help for his mental health struggles soon after the group had reached a proposed agreement with LIV Golf, its Saudi-backed rival.CreditCredit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan spoke of his mental health challenges after the group signed a tentative deal with its Saudi-backed rival LIV Golf, in some of his first public comments since taking a leave of absence from his position a week after the agreement was announced.
“When you don’t sleep at night, when you’re constantly ruminating, you can’t do anything other than think about work for more than ten minutes,” he told the DealBook Summit on Wednesday. “It took its toll on me.”
Mr. Monahan said he decided to get help after taking a long walk on June 11, days after reaching a proposed agreement with LIV. “I came home and, to my wife’s surprise, I said, ‘Honey, I need help,’” he recounted. “And she said, ‘What do you mean?’” he said.
“I said,” he continued, “I need help.”
Mr. Monahan returned to the role in July and is working to finalize the deal ahead of a Dec. 31 deadline, which he asserted was important for the sports’s future. He said he would meet next week with Yasir al-Rumayyan, who heads Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
“I knew in the short term it was going to be difficult because it was something that was going to be a surprise to people,” Mr. Monahan said. “But I firmly believed that the decision that I was making, and that I was committing to, as was Yasir, was the right decision for the game.”
As part of Monahan’s efforts to finalize the deal, he is deploying skills that he developed at an in-treatment facility while on medical leave, including journaling and working out in the gym.
The executive said his employer supported his decision to step back. But he added that he had to make a “difficult call” to Ed Herlihy, chairman of the PGA Tour’s board, and a partner at the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
“It’s a very difficult call to make — but it was a call I had to make,” Mr. Monahan said. “And I felt fully supported.”
Michael de la Merced
DealBook reporter
Pervading Musk’s appearance was the sense of grievance and worry that drives his businesses and his worldview, from the advertiser pullout at X to his fears about A.I. advancements.
Kenneth Chang
Musk talked repeatedly about “double-edged swords” (tech that can be used for good and evil) and “single-edged swords” (inherently good tech), and he seems to see himself as always on the side of good. He assiduously sidestepped questions about whether he has too much power.
Kate Conger
One of the more memorable moments: Musk’s blunt directive to brands — “Don’t advertise.” It leaves X’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, in a tough position. She has been tasked with wooing advertisers back to the platform after many have been spooked by Musk’s erratic posts.
The chief technology officer of X used foul language to slam brands that had pulled their advertising after his post on the social media platform.
Elon Musk hit out at brands that have pulled their advertising from X after he endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory on the social media platform.
Mr. Musk apologized for the post at the DealBook Summit in New York on Wednesday, but said that the advertisers were attempting to “blackmail” him. His message for those brands was simple: “Don’t advertise” and used an expletive multiple times to emphasize his point.
About 200 big advertisers, including Disney, Apple and IBM, stopped spending on X after Mr. Musk agreed with a post that accused Jewish communities of pushing “hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” If the freeze continues, it could end up costing the company up to $75 million this quarter, according to internal documents seen by The New York Times.
Although Mr. Musk acknowledged that an extended boycott could bankrupt X, he suggested that the public would blame the brands rather than him for its collapse.
Mr. Musk singled out Bob Iger, the Disney chief executive, who told the event earlier that “the association with that position, and Elon Musk, and X was not necessarily a positive one for us.”
Mr. Musk said that, in retrospect, he should not have replied to that particular post and “should have written in greater length what I meant.”
He added, “I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me and to those who are antisemitic and for that I am quite sorry.”
Investment banks sitting on billions in debt that helped enable his acquisition of the company last year will probably not be happy about Mr. Musk’s aggressive stance. Advertising accounts for most of X’s revenue and Mr. Musk hired an industry veteran, Linda Yaccarino, to help mend ties with big brands. Ms. Yaccarino was in the audience when he made his comments.
Lauren Hirsch contributed reporting.
Shonda Rhimes, the TV producer and screenwriter behind hit shows such as “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Bridgerton,” shared that she only makes shows that she’s “obsessed with.”CreditCredit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Shonda Rhimes, the prolific television maker and media mogul, has written and produced some of television’s most noteworthy shows. But she offered one major plot twist at the DealBook Summit on Wednesday: “I’m not watching television, and I know that sounds crazy,” she said. “I wanted to give my brain a break.” Instead, she is working through a stack of books.
Ms. Rhimes jolted the television industry in 2017 when she signed a nine-figure deal with Netflix after more than a decade with ABC and Disney, where she created hits like “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal” and “How To Get Away With Murder.” She has at least eight series either produced or in the works with the streaming platform, including “Bridgerton,” an adaptation of romance novels set in the English Regency era that became an instant hit.
Ms. Rhimes is known for not shying away from contentious topics in her work. One big difference now: she doesn’t face creative pushback at Netflix. While working with major networks, she had “many interesting conversations” about storylines, “mostly having to do with queer stories, and anything about involving abortion.”
But Ms. Rhimes said she was most concerned with telling a good story, and not about ratings or audience concerns.
“Quality control is important,” she said. “I only make shows that I am obsessed with, that I want to watch.”
Ms. Rhimes supported the Writer’s Guild of America strike, telling CBS News that she would not “be putting pen to paper” as writers demanded fair wages. But work continued on her murder-mystery series, “The Residence.”
For Ms. Rhimes, the labor action “wasn’t complicated at all,” adding, “I consider myself to be a writer first and foremost.” But she acknowledged that she wasn’t as exposed to the economic hardships as many on the picket line.
Kate Conger
After arriving about 10 minutes late, Musk has spoken directly — and at times confrontationally — about his companies and the wider technology sector for roughly 90 minutes. His interview concludes the DealBook summit.
Kate Conger
Responding to criticism following reports of grisly deaths of monkeys in Neuralink testing facilities, Musk likens the labs to a “monkey paradise.” He says Neuralink’s brain implant devices have not led to deaths of monkeys, but rather they have been installed on monkeys that were terminally ill and died of other causes.
Kate Conger
In August, X throttled access to the New York Times’s website, causing links to load about 4.5 seconds slower. Other news organizations, and X rivals such as Facebook and Substack, were throttled as well. Musk said it was because The Times did not subscribe to X. “It wasn’t specific to The Times,” Musk said, adding that subscribing was a “low-cost freedom” that would boost subscribers’ posts on X.
Jack Ewing
Musk says he disagrees with the idea of unions because they “try to create negativity in a company, and create a sort of lords and peasants situation.” Unions are gearing up to organize Tesla, and can expect Musk to do everything he can to stop them.
Kate Conger
Asked about his support for Vivek Ramaswamy, given Ramaswamy’s claim that climate change is a “hoax,” Musk dodged. The Tesla chief says he hasn’t endorsed anyone for president, and then pivots to talking about government interference with Twitter, and Ramaswamy’s comments about government overreach. He says he would not vote for Biden and hesitated at the idea of voting for Trump.
Jack Ewing
Musk is still aggrieved that he wasn’t invited to a White House electric vehicle summit early on in the Biden administration, even though Tesla is far and away the leader in making electric cars. He’s suggesting this accounts for his move to the political right.
Michael de la Merced
DealBook reporter
When asked about TikTok, the X owner points to A.I., which powers the technology that serves up videos to users based on their viewing habits, as his reason for avoiding it: “I stopped using TikTok when I felt the A.I. probing my mind.”
Michael de la Merced
DealBook reporter
Musk has long been more worried than most about the speed at which artificial intelligence is advancing. His prediction about when the technology can reach what’s known as “artificial general intelligence” — in his words, the point at which it “can write as good a novel as, say, J.K. Rowling, or discover new physics, or invent new technology” — is less than three years from now, which skeptics would say is highly optimistic.
Bernhard Warner
Earlier in the day, Jensen Huang of Nvidia reckoned that artificial general intelligence wouldn’t be fully realized for another decade.
Jack Ewing
The Tesla chief deflected a question about whether Beijing has leverage over him because the market is important to Tesla.“The same is true, by the way, of all the other car companies,” he says, adding, “If that’s a problem for Tesla, it’s a problem for every car company.” China accounts for only about a quarter of Tesla sales, he says.
Kate Conger
Musk says he has “mixed feelings” about Sam Altman, the recently ousted and then restored chief executive of OpenAI, which Musk helped co-found. He suggests the power Altman has accumulated corrupted him.
Kenneth Chang
Which is interesting given how Musk sidestepped Sorkin’s questions about Musk’s own power.
Michael de la Merced
DealBook reporter
Musk’s discussion of what happened at OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is a reminder of how he has openly and frequently spoken about the dangers of artificial intelligence for humanity. It stands in contrast to comments by Vice President Kamala Harris, who played down worries about A.I. becoming the Terminator over less fantastical scenarios like grandmothers getting scammed.
Jack Ewing
Musk, who has been startlingly direct so far, is evading questions about how much power he has accumulated and his potential to influence world events.
Kenneth Chang
This interview features what some Musk observers see as the “Good Elon” v. “Bad Elon” conundrum. Bad Elon came on stage, cursing critics. Now he has shifted to the Elon that can be humble, hopeful and thoughtful.
Kate Conger
Musk is returning to a philosophical framing that he often uses when talking about how all his businesses — Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and X — connect. He likes to say that the universe is the answer, and his businesses are all focused on what questions to ask in order to learn more about that answer.
Jack Ewing
Musk is waxing about interplanetary civilization. For people who buy into his vision, it’s a big reason why they buy his cars and Tesla stock. They believe they’re part of a grand mission.
Lauren Hirsch
DealBook reporter
Musk’s mood and demeanor noticably changed as the topic went from the challenges at X to his emotional state and childhood. He is now reflective as he talks about what drives him.
Kate Conger
The conversation began with a series of confrontational answers and banter, but when asked about his emotional state, Musk goes silent for a moment — his first real pause in about a half-hour conversation. He admits to being unhappy and says some of it stems from a difficult childhood.
Michael de la Merced
DealBook reporter
Musk’s self-assessment about his childhood and the “demons” in his mind — and how he believes they drive his successes — hew closely to the assessment of the executive in Walter Isaacson’s recent biography.
Jack Ewing
For someone whose company will be launching a major new product tomorrow, Musk is talking an awful lot about X and all his critics. Tesla investors are unlikely to be pleased.
Kate Conger
Musk said his post endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory was “one of the most foolish” he’s ever shared on X. In 2018, he tweeted that he would take Tesla private. The deal never materialized, and resulted in S.E.C. fines for Musk and Tesla.
Michael de la Merced
DealBook reporter
Musk’s interview underscores his defensiveness about groups that have criticized him, such as the Anti-Defamation League. “What I was saying was that it’s unwise to support groups that want your annihilation,” he says.
Jack Ewing
Musk obviously doesn’t agree with investors and critics who say that his statements are hurting Tesla sales, especially among the majority of electric vehicle buyers who lean left.
Jack Ewing
The Tesla chief says that, by selling more electric vehicles than other carmakers combined, he has done more for the environment “than any human on earth.” The launch of the Cybertruck Thursday “will be the biggest product launch of anything by far on earth this year.”
Jack Ewing
This is his only mention of the Cybertruck so far, but it’s a bold statement that contrasts with his earlier attempts to tamp down expectations.
Kate Conger
Musk’s view is that advertisers are trying to silence his speech. He appears confident that the public will support his view and join him in blaming advertisers if X goes under.
Lauren Hirsch
DealBook reporter
Investment banks currently sitting on billions in Twitter debt are likely not happy to hear Musk’s aggressive stance to advertisers who have left the platform. Advertising still makes up a majority of the company’s revenue.
Michael de la Merced
DealBook reporter
The crowd in the auditorium noticeably gasped and tensed up after Musk declared, emphatically and profanely, that he did not care about companies withholding their advertising.
Kate Conger
In response to advertisers that have backed away from X because of his comments, Musk said he views their pauses in spending as “blackmail.” He followed up with an expletive.
Kate Conger
Musk does apologize for his post endorsing the white-nationalist theory. If it encouraged antisemites, he says,“I am quite sorry,” adding, “I should in retrospect not have replied to that particular post.”
Jack Ewing
“Essentially I handed a loaded gun to the people who hate me,” Musk says of the controversial post. The media ignored his attempts to clarify, he says.
Jack Ewing
“We make the best cars,” the Tesla chief executive says about the animosity he has created. “Whether you hate me, like me or are indifferent, do you want the best car or not the best car?”
Jack Ewing
The X owner says his trip to Israel was “not an apology tour” in response to the controversy he created with a post widely seen as endorsing antisemitism.
Kate Conger
Musk is asked about his endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory that caused advertisers to pause spending on X. “I have no problem being hated,” Musk said.
Jack Ewing
Musk is wearing a bomber jacket and looking relaxed.
Remy Tumin
Elon Musk has taken the stage.
Ravi Mattu
Several of our reporters will be following the interview with Elon Musk. Here’s what they’re watching for.
Kate Conger
Musk will likely have to address his recent posts on X, which have boosted conspiracy theories and endorsed antisemitic content. The posts have led to an advertiser exodus from the platform, which could cost the company up to $75 million in lost revenue this quarter.
Jack Ewing
Tesla is launching the much delayed, long awaited Cybertruck tomorrow. Musk has been lowering expectations about how well the pickup will sell and how fast Tesla can make them. Will he sound more optimistic today?
Kenneth Chang
SpaceX conducted the second test launch of its next-generation Starship rocket system this month. Musk wants to eventually send people to Mars on Starships, but that’s years and many launches away.
Jack Ewing
The United Automobile Workers union said Wednesday that it was beginning a drive to organize at plants owned by nonunion automakers, including Tesla. It will be interesting to hear how he reacts to that.
Michael de la Merced
DealBook reporter
Musk may be asked whether he believes X’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, can turn around the company. She’s here at the summit.
Kate Conger
Elon Musk appears to be running late. An Instagram account that tracks the whereabouts of his private jet showed that it landed at Teterboro, New Jersey 30 minutes ago. He was scheduled to appear at 5 p.m.
Bob Iger, the chief executive of Disney, said the company is constantly evaluating its assets and their value.CreditCredit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Bob Iger, chief executive of Disney, is looking to make more big changes at the media giant after returning from retirement but rejected suggestions that any of its properties were up for sale.
Mr. Iger stepped away from Disney in 2021 and returned to the company less than a year later. In his latest stint, he has cut $7.5 billion in costs and more than 8,000 jobs, and publicly speculated about selling some of the company’s assets.
Bob Chapek was handpicked by Mr. Iger to be his successor, but Disney’s streaming services started bleeding money and the company missed earnings targets during his tenure, aggravating shareholders and some of the company’s veteran executives.
“I was disappointed in what I was seeing, both during the transition period when I was still there, and while I was out,” Mr. Iger told the DealBook Summit on Wednesday.
Mr. Iger said that he has spent the past year “fixing a lot of problems that the company has had, and dealing with a lot of challenges, some that were brought on by decisions that were made by my predecessor, some that are just basically the result of a tremendous amount of disruption in the world and in our business.”
In July, Mr. Iger told CNBC that Disney would consider selling its ABC network and other assets. But he said that those properties were not for sale.
Mr. Iger explained that he made the statements about potentially offloading media properties to remind investors that the company was willing to consider bold deals. “I did not want to get accused of being an old media executive, that we were a company that had already shown an ability to basically adapt to new circumstances,” he said.
Mr. Iger also addressed Disney’s recent decision to pull its ads from X after Elon Musk endorsed antisemitic statements on the social media platform. The company was one of several brands to do so amid concerns that X wasn’t doing enough to police hate speech, especially after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Mr. Iger said “the association with that position, and Elon Musk, and X was not necessarily a positive one for us.”
Mr. Iger also addressed Disney’s legal fight in Florida over the state’s so-called Don’t Say Gay legislation, which bedeviled Mr. Chapek. He said that the company was steadfast in defending its right to take a public stand and willing to go to court to do so. He added that Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, declined an invitation to meet with him.
Mr. Iger noted with some frustration that he inherited the Disney controversy. “When I came back, what I have really tried to do is to return to our roots, which is we have to entertain first,” Mr. Iger said. “It’s not about messages.”
Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, defended the agency’s aggressive strategy despite a series of losses in court cases challenging deals involving Microsoft and Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram.
“Whenever we bring a case, we want to win it,” she said at the DealBook Summit in New York.
Ms. Khan, 34, has been at the forefront of the Biden administration’s attempts to block more corporate deals and take companies to court for allegedly violating antitrust law. Her rise to the top of the F.T.C. followed a rapid ascent that began when she wrote a critique of Amazon’s power while in law school.
Ms. Khan has had mixed success. Companies including the chipmaker Nvidia and Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor, abandoned big deals in response to scrutiny by the F.T.C. But the agency also lost a novel legal challenge to Meta’s purchase of a virtual reality startup and failed to block Microsoft from buying the videogame publisher Activision Blizzard.
“Big picture, there is a fundamental question in antitrust enforcement, which is, ‘When faced with uncertainty, how do you balance the error costs?’” she said. “Is it better to get it wrong in the direction of acting, or is it better to get it wrong in the direction of not having acted?”
Ms. Khan said that a longtime “bias in favor of inaction” had significant costs for the economy. Now, there is a “rebalance” occurring, whereby the government is reversing course, she said.
The courtroom losses did not stop the agency from filing a lawsuit against Amazon in September arguing that the ecommerce giant had squeezed small merchants and artificially inflated prices for consumers. Ms. Khan defended the agency’s argument that Amazon competes in the market for “online superstores,” rather than facing a broader set of competitors — a distinction that could be crucial to how a judge analyzes the lawsuit.
Asked if she subscribed to Amazon Prime, the company’s subscription service, she said she did not.
“This is not an area where I believe people, through their consumer experiences, need to stand up,” she said. “But just personally, I haven’t.”
Vice President Kamala Harris pointed to victories by Democrats in recent elections when asked about former President Donald J. Trump beating the Biden-Harris ticket in recent polls.CreditCredit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Vice President Kamala Harris said on Wednesday that the Biden administration had done more in the past two years to wrangle rising inflation “than most advanced economies,” but admitted that more needed to be done to convince a deeply pessimistic public that the president’s policies had been beneficial to Americans.
Ms. Harris, speaking at the DealBook Summit in New York, said that a strong economy bolstered by record-low unemployment and stable wages was not enough to “connect with the heart and the experience and the feelings of the American people.”
She also noted that prices remained too high for many. “We still have work to do to address that,” Ms. Harris added.
The vice president echoed comments by President Biden in recent days, as a slate of polls show him trailing former President Donald J. Trump in battleground states ahead of the 2024 election. Ms. Harris also took a swipe at focusing on polls to determine what will happen next year.
“If I listened to polls, I would have never run for my first office or my second one, and here I am as vice president,” she said.
But she also used her appearance at the economy-focused gathering of business leaders and politicians, operated by The New York Times, to make a case for herself and hit back at political criticism.
Ms. Harris, who has faced questions about her ability to govern and her potential as Mr. Biden’s heir apparent, seemed slightly exasperated when asked if a vote for Mr. Biden was a vote for President Harris.
“A vote for President Biden is a vote for President Biden and Vice President Harris,” she said. “We are a ticket. It’s called Biden-Harris. That’s the administration that is on the ticket. Yes, I was elected. And I intend to be re-elected, as does the president.”
Ms. Harris also downplayed concerns about Mr. Biden’s age raised by Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the former House speaker, during an interview earlier in the day. Mr. McCarthy, discussing talks he had with Mr. Biden over the federal debt limit this spring, said that the president, 81, “talked from cards” during negotiations. (Mr. McCarthy previously said that Mr. Biden had been “very professional, very smart, very tough” during their talks.)
Ms. Harris, referring to Mr. McCarthy being ousted from the speakership, said that “when anyone who has had the experience that he has most recently had, I don’t think he’s a judge of negotiations.”
The vice president was less definitive when asked about other hot-button issues, including the war in the Middle East, Elon Musk and antisemitism, and how social media platforms could undermine national security.
She sidestepped a question about Mr. Musk’s sharing of antisemitic tropes on X, even though the White House has condemned his actions. And she dodged another about whether TikTok should be regulated.
The vice president also did not directly answer questions about whether Israel had abided by international law in its war against Hamas, and did not venture from other senior officials’ responses in recent weeks.
“When you are in the midst of attempting to leverage whatever influence or authority you have in a relationship, in a way that it will impact decisions, it is counterproductive to do that publicly,” Ms. Harris said. “It doesn’t mean it’s not being done.”
President Isaac Herzog of Israel said that in order “to change the equation” in the Middle East, Israel has to “uproot” Hamas.CreditCredit…The New York Times
President Isaac Herzog of Israel said Wednesday that talks were underway for a possible extension of the cease-fire with Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that led a deadly cross-border assault during which Israeli officials say about 1,200 people were killed and roughly 240 were taken hostage.
“We want to see the hostages back as soon as possible,” he said in a video interview at the DealBook Summit in New York.
Weeks of Israeli airstrikes and a ground invasion followed the Oct. 7 attack, before lengthy talks mediated by Qatar and Egypt resulted in a temporary cease-fire that began on Friday. During the pause in fighting, Hamas had released 60 Israeli women and children through Tuesday, with 10 more expected to be freed on Wednesday. Israel has released 180 Palestinian women and minors being held in its jails, with 30 more expected on Wednesday.
In addition, Hamas has released, through separate negotiations, more than two dozen people who were either not Israelis or had dual citizenship.
The initial four-day cease-fire was extended into Wednesday. For every extra day, Israel and Hamas have agreed to exchange roughly 10 Israelis for 30 Palestinians jailed by Israel.
Mr. Herzog highlighted the case of Aisha Alziadna, a 16-year-old Bedouin Muslim citizen of Israel who was kidnapped along with her father, Yousef, and two brothers, Bilal and Hamza, from Kibbutz Holit along the border with Gaza. The Alziadna family has been calling for more action from the Israeli government to free them.
Israel must “change the equation in the Middle East,” Mr. Herzog said. “We have to uproot this machine of terror and this jihadist culture.”
He added that Israel was acting “on behalf of the free world,” and reiterated the Israeli position that terrorism is a threat to Europe and the United States.
In response to a question about pressure from the Biden administration to exercise restraint and fight surgically in Gaza — where local heath officials say at least 13,000 people have been killed during the Israeli response — Mr. Herzog said that nations have been in continuous dialogue.
“We are doing whatever we can to increase and upgrade the humanitarian aid to Gaza,” he said. “But we have to do the job and get Hamas out of there,” he added.
Mr. Herzog also addressed the recent visit to Israel by Elon Musk, the owner and chief technology officer of the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Mr. Musk toured sites of the Oct. 7 massacre and met with Israeli politicians and the families of those taken hostage.
Mr. Herzog said he “appreciated” the visit, and spoke with Mr. Musk about accusations of antisemitism leveled against the billionaire entrepreneur, both in his own statements and his handling of posts on X.
But the Israeli president stopped short of saying whether he thought Mr. Musk would actually fight antisemitism on the platform.
David Zaslav, chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, said that a series of cuts, including scrapping the “Batgirl” movie and firing close friends, were necessary business decisions.CreditCredit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, defended cuts he made after taking hold of the company last year, saying they were necessary to restore the entertainment company to financial health. Mr. Zaslav, who was named chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery after the two media giants merged a year ago, has made a series of cuts at the conglomerate that owns brands including Max, TLC, Food Network, CNN and DC Comics. Mr. Zaslav was previously chief executive of Discovery.
One of Mr. Zaslav’s biggest challenges is bringing down the colossal debt inherited from Warner Media. The company has paid off $12 billion since Mr. Zaslav took over, leaving it with $45.3 billion in gross debt at the end of last quarter.
“When we took over the company, we said there are no sacred cows,” Mr. Zaslav said. “Let’s start today. What does this business look like if we were going to start today?”
Mr. Zaslav achieved those changes through a series of cuts, some unpopular, like canceling the release of the movie “Batgirl.”
A shake-up at CNN also generated headlines. Its former chief executive, Chris Licht, and one of its top anchors, Don Lemon, are now out, among others.
Mr. Zaslav was asked about the firing of close friends like Mr. Licht and Jeff Zucker, the former president of CNN. “Sometimes when you make a business decision, or sometimes when a business decision is made by your team, your friends can take it personally,” he said.
The media giant also faced contentious negotiations with writers and actors, who staged the first industrywide shutdown in Hollywood in 60 years. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing tens of thousands of actors, and the Writers Guild of America, the union that represents screenwriters, reached deals with the studios only after staging monthslong strikes.
Mr. Zaslav, along with other studio executives, played a big role in the negotiations. The use of artificial intelligence and residual payments were among the main sticking points during those talks.
Mr. Zaslav said the industry still faced “an existential moment,” noting uncertainty around the economics of streaming and the role A.I. could play in creating content. “There’s going to be big winners and big losers,” he said.
Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, said that he believed the United States was at least a decade away from breaking its dependence on chips created overseas.CreditCredit…Amir Hamja/The New York Times
In the year since OpenAI sparked an artificial intelligence boom with its popular ChatGPT chatbot, start-ups and tech giants have been scrambling to develop semiconductors to power the buzzy technology, hoping to muscle in on Nvidia’s market dominance.
But Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, said on Wednesday that he’s not worried about the rising competition. His company, he said, has had a decade head start, embarking on its first supercomputer in 2012. The machine, which was delivered five years later, changed the way computers worked, allowing them to generate sentences, images and videos.
“We realized that deep learning and A.I. was not a chip problem. It’s a reinvention-of-computing problem,” Mr. Huang said, speaking at the DealBook Summit in New York. “You can’t solve this new way of computing by just designing a chip. Every aspect of the computer has fundamentally changed.”
Mr. Huang said that it will take time for competitors to catch up. The company currently sells its supercomputers for $250,000. They have 35,000 parts, and are put together with robots like an electric car, he said.
Demand for Nvidia’s machines has fueled a nearly 240 percent increase in the company’s share price this year, making Nvidia the world’s most valuable listed semiconductor maker. Mr. Huang, who founded the company and steered its bet on A.I., has a personal worth of roughly $40 billion.
Mr. Huang said that it will be a decade before A.I. companies achieve so-called artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., the state at which a machine could break down tasks the way a human brain can. Until then, he predicted that businesses will develop custom A.I. capabilities to perform a specific aim such as drug research or design semiconductors. Nvidia already relies on A.I. for its core business, he said.
“None of our chips are possible today without A.I.,” he said.
Huang has a fairly unusual management style. Unlike many chief executives, who have a dozen or so direct reports, he has 50 people reporting to him. Such a structure is preferable, he said, as it has fewer layers, allowing more efficient flow of information.
“The people that report to the C.E.O. should require the least amount of pampering,” he said. “They should be at the top of their game, incredibly good at their craft. They should require very little management.”
Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan, said internal economic and political challenges in China, as well as international pressure, has made a major invasion by China unlikely.CreditCredit…Amir Hamja/The New York Times
Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan, said Wednesday that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, was unlikely to try to invade Taiwan soon because he is grappling with domestic economic and political challenges.
“I think the Chinese leadership at this juncture is overwhelmed by its internal challenges,” Ms. Tsai said, in a recorded video interview that was broadcast at the DealBook Summit in New York on Wednesday. “And my thought is that perhaps this is not a time for them to consider a major invasion of Taiwan.”
The president did not go into detail, but the top ranks of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government have been roiled this year by dismissals and corruption scandals. Mr. Xi removed two top aides in recent months: Qin Gang, the foreign minister, and Li Shangfu, the defense minister.
Chinese officials announced in September that Mr. Li was being placed under investigation; it was unclear whether the decision was related to reports of corruption within the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, and Mr. Xi’s replacement over the summer of the top two commanders in that unit.
Mr. Xi and other Chinese leaders have said they intend to bring Taiwan, a democratic island, under the rule of the Communist Party of China and have threatened to use force if necessary. Mr. Biden has said four times that the U.S. military would defend Taiwan if China were to try to invade it, but U.S. officials have not said the American policy on Taiwan, which does not explicitly call for the military defense of the island, has changed.
Ms. Tsai avoided answering a question on her thinking on the U.S. defense policy on Taiwan, but said, “We are clearheaded about the fact that one is responsible for protecting one’s own homeland.” Ms. Tsai has been making policy changes to bolster Taiwan’s military readiness, including extending compulsory military service to one year from four months starting in 2024.
When Ms. Tsai was asked whether President Biden’s plans to build up a semiconductor industry in the United States would affect the value of Taiwan’s industry, she said there were some things Taiwan does that other nations and foreign companies cannot emulate. She said the move by Mr. Biden was a good one, since it would help “our allies and our friends in terms of building the supply chain resilience.”
“At the same time,” she added, “we’ll be able to use resources available in the United States, especially human resources and talent.”
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California has filed re-election paperwork, but has until Dec. 8 to make a final decision on if he will run.CreditCredit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Representative Kevin McCarthy, the former Speaker of the House, said on Wednesday that he had not decided whether he would seek re-election in 2024. He said the decision would be a “gut call.”
Mr. McCarthy’s future has been the subject of speculation since October, when he became the first House speaker in U.S. history to be removed from the position. The California Republican has filed re-election paperwork but has until Dec. 8 to make a final decision.
“If I’m walking away from something that I spent two decades at, I don’t want to look back and say I made an emotional decision,” he said at the DealBook Summit in New York.
Mr. McCarthy has spent two decades in Washington rising to the highest position in Congress through prolific fund-raising and tireless campaigning to reshape the Republican Party. He highlighted his party’s achievements under his leadership, pointing to a record number of Republicans in the House who are women and minorities.
But since Republicans won back the majority last year, Mr. McCarthy has watched the party he helmed for 10 months fall into disarray as party infighting plunged Congress into chaos.
Speaking to a room of business leaders, Mr. McCarthy said that if he were to exit elected office he would like to focus on artificial intelligence, both on helping it grow and building guardrails around it.
Beyond the question of his political future, Mr. McCarthy covered a wide range of topics, from the ongoing tension among members of his own party to the likely presidential rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. He likened the House of Representatives to “eating breakfast at a truck stop” and delivered a lukewarm endorsement for Mr. Trump, affirming his support but stopping short of calling him the best choice for the job. “He’d be a better president than what we’re having,” Mr. McCarthy said.
Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, said that there would be “consequences” for the state’s attempts to restrict business with banks that embrace environmental, social and governance policies.CreditCredit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said on Wednesday that he would now “punch back” over Texas’s 2021 efforts to restrict the state’s business with financial firms that embrace environmental, social and governance policies.
Texas passed two laws in 2021 that limit the state’s work with banks that regulators determine restrict their work in the energy and firearms industries. JPMorgan spent much of 2022 on the sidelines from underwriting municipal bonds in the state.
Mr. Dimon has called the Texas laws bad for business, highlighting the work the bank does to fund schools, hospitals and other businesses.
“I don’t know exactly why they’re upset with us and they’ll probably reconsider that at one point,” Mr. Dimon said, speaking at the DealBook summit in Manhattan.
Mr. Dimon also addressed a wide range of topics including the economy, geopolitics and Elon Musk. He expanded on previous comments he had made in which he called our current moment one of the most dangerous in decades. The biggest risks for mankind, he said, are “nuclear proliferation, climate change, and another pandemic.”
“We should not be complacent,” Mr. Dimon said. “The world is always a dangerous place. We just forgot.”
Mr. Dimon said his other concerns included what would happen if China invaded Taiwan — a move he said would cause a “major depression” — and profligate U.S. government spending, which he likened to “drugs injected directly into our system.”
When pressed on the bank’s relationship with ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok that various states have sought to ban over its Chinese ties, Mr. Dimon said that while the bank did not comment on client relationships, it did thorough vetting.
He said that if clients were “doing things that we think are truly bad,” JPMorgan would not bank them.
As for politics, Mr. Dimon said he urged even “very liberal Democrats” to help the Republican candidate Nikki Haley. He did not take the position that the nominee should be anyone but Donald Trump.
“He might be the president,” Mr. Dimon said. “I have to deal with that, too.”
Mr. Dimon was also asked about the bank’s lawsuit against Elon Musk over a 2018 tweet. “We’ll win,” Mr. Dimon said of the suit.
This year’s DealBook Summit will include conversations with global leaders and powerful figures from Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Each has been at the heart of the news this year and will be at the center of some of the biggest events in the months ahead.
Here are the guests speaking with DealBook’s founder, Andrew Ross Sorkin:
Kamala Harris was elected vice president of the United States in 2020, after serving as a senator, the attorney general of California and the district attorney of San Francisco. Ms. Harris is expected to play a vital role in the 2024 presidential race. She will be tasked with helping to win over voters worried about President Biden’s age, squeezed by inflation and disconcerted by administration policies, including strong support for Israel in its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Tsai Ing-wen has been president of Taiwan since 2016, following a career as a civil servant and law professor. Ms. Tsai has recalibrated relations with the United States and China as growing tensions between the world’s two most powerful countries have put Taiwan at center of a geopolitical fight. She will step down as president in January, at the end of her second term.
Elon Musk oversees some of the world’s biggest and most consequential technology companies: Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink and X. The world’s wealthiest man with an estimated net worth of more than $242 billion, Mr. Musk is also a deeply divisive figure. X, formerly known as Twitter, has seen a sharp drop in core advertising revenue since his $44 billion takeover of the company, including a backlash over his endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Jamie Dimon has been the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase since 2006 and its chairman since 2007, making him one of Wall Street’s longest-serving banking leaders. This year, he led efforts to come up with a rescue deal to the regional bank crisis that culminated in JPMorgan’s acquisition of First Republic.
Jensen Huang founded Nvidia in 1993 and is the company’s president and chief executive. The Silicon Valley company has been a pioneer in making chips used in artificial intelligence applications, such ChatGPT. This year, it became the first publicly traded chipmaker to be valued at $1 trillion.
Bob Iger returned as Disney’s chief executive last year, after stepping down from the role in 2020. Long one of the media industry’s most prominent leaders, he spearheaded multibillion-dollar takeovers of Fox, Marvel and Pixar that cemented Disney’s status as a Hollywood hit factory. But Mr. Iger now faces challenges at the box office, in core television properties like ESPN, and in streaming. He’s also dealing with scrutiny from activist investors.
Lina Khan was sworn in two years ago as chair of the Federal Trade Commission, where she has earned a reputation as one of the most active antitrust regulators in recent years. She was an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School but rose to prominence long before then, when as a law student she wrote an article about the new antitrust threat raised by tech companies like Amazon that offer consumers services at no cost and instead profit from the data they collect. As head of the F.T.C., Ms. Khan has tested her legal theories out in a series of court cases, prompting accusations by business groups that she has “radically departed” from the F.T.C.’s mission.
David Zaslav orchestrated Discovery’s takeover of WarnerMedia and became the chief executive of the new company, Warner Bros. Discovery, last year. The transaction helped transform his modest cable television company into an empire that includes the Warner Bros. movie and TV studios, HBO and CNN. His leadership of the media giant faces significant hurdles, however, including paying down billions of dollars in debt and managing turmoil at key properties including CNN.
Jay Monahan was forced to deal with an existential threat as commissioner of the PGA Tour: LIV Golf. With the backing of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the upstart competitor began hosting tournaments last year. But in June, Mr. Monahan struck a tentative deal to end the rivalry — and took a medical leave of absence days after the announcement rocked the sports world. This will be one of his first in-depth interviews since his return.
Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, served as speaker of the House from January until October, when he was ousted by far-right members of his own party — the first time the House has voted to remove its leader. Mr. McCarthy has found himself increasingly out of step with parts of the Republican Party and must soon decide if he will run for re-election.
Shonda Rhimes is the chief executive of Shondaland and the first woman to create three television dramas — “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Private Practice” and “Scandal” — to achieve the 100-episode milestone. In 2017, Ms. Rhimes left network television to produce streaming content exclusively for Netflix, and her work has touched on major political issues, including abortion and gun laws.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the convicted crypto mogul, admitted that he “screwed up” in an interview with DealBook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin at last year’s summit.Credit…Winnie Au for The New York Times
Last year’s DealBook Summit concluded with a wide-ranging interview of Sam Bankman-Fried, just a couple of weeks removed from the spectacular collapse of his FTX crypto exchange.
Mr. Bankman-Fried told DealBook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin that he had “screwed up” but “did not try to commit fraud on anyone.” Earlier this month, Mr. Bankman-Fried was convicted in a federal fraud case that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life when he’s sentenced on March 28.
Since 2011, the DealBook Summit has brought together the biggest newsmakers in business, policy, culture to speak candidly about the global economy and the forces shaping it. Prominent interviewees have ranged from the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Gwyneth Paltrow and Kim Kardashian.
Held in New York City, the one-day conference has also included interview with Adam Neumann, who gave DealBook his first public interview after leaving WeWork in 2019, the Blackstone chief executive Steve Schwarzman, the Fox chairman Lachlan Murdoch, and the BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink.
