Hard Fork

Ever since Russian forces invaded Ukraine late last month, President Biden has been toeing a fine line between providing support to the Ukrainians and averting kinetic, nuclear and cyber conflict between superpowers. In this conversation, Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, unpacks how this conflict is evolving in the cyber realm.

Kara Swisher asks Neuberger how, in the face of attacks on Ukrainian banks and the Defense Ministry, the U.S. government “is working directly with Ukraine on cybersecurity” and why the Russians didn’t strike early on with the large-scale cyberattacks many experts had expected to see — similar to the 2015 attack that took out Ukraine’s electrical grid. They discuss how cyber tensions between Russia and the U.S. may escalate, with Neuberger clarifying that when the secretary of state reaffirmed this week that the U.S. and NATO “will defend every, every inch of NATO territory should it come under attack,” he was speaking not only of ground attacks, but also cyberattacks. And Kara presses Neuberger on whether the administration should have responded to the SolarWinds hack that infiltrated the Pentagon and the State Department with more than economic sanctions — and whether U.S. cyber policy has enough teeth to really deter Putin.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.

On Friday, the Kremlin blocked access to Facebook inside Russia and passed a law making it illegal to spread what the government determines to be “false information” about the country’s armed forces. It was the latest move in President Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on dissent, which may be working. TikTok announced on Sunday that it is suspending livestreaming and new posts from Russia in response to the new disinformation law.

But Clint Watts, a former FBI special agent who is now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, believes that ultimately this crackdown could backfire. He says Putin “has a disaster on his hands,” noting that a country cannot disinformation its way out of fallen soldiers — the Mothers of Russia will push back. And Watts believes platform interruptions and restrictions to operations of many Western companies — including Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Oracle, Cogent, Visa and Mastercard — mean Putin is playing a dangerous game at home. The result could be disastrous: “We’re worried about Kyiv falling today. I’m worried about Moscow falling between day 30 and six months from now.”

In this conversation, Kara Swisher and Watts discuss the evolving information crackdown in Russia and what actions Putin may take if he is backed into a corner. They also discuss the threat of cyberwarfare and why alarm bells should be going off in the West when it comes to Russia, and to China.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.

As he wages a war against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is finding strange allies on U.S. soil — from former President Donald Trump to the Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Jon Stewart wasn’t surprised. The Daily Show comedian and host of the new Apple TV + series “The Problem With Jon Stewart” believes a certain subset of the right has long viewed Putin as “an ideological brother,” noting that “for years it’s been pretty clear that they would much rather do a deal with Putin than Pelosi.”

In this conversation, Stewart tells Kara Swisher why it’s important to distinguish people like Carlson — who he calls a “dishonest propagandist” — from their audiences, many of whom are “redeemable.” They also tackle the fire Stewart came under when he trod into the Joe Rogan/Spotify controversy, how enragement drives engagement in modern media and why the 24/7 news cycle can be so destructive — “unless it’s 9/11 or an invasion of a sovereign country, because now the gravity of the situation matches the urgency that they gin up.”

This episode contains strong language.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.

Rewarding as it is, motherhood can be an uphill battle. In the pandemic, we heard this in the stories of mothers struggling to juggle child care and schooling with work and other responsibilities at home. But the pandemic simply lifted the curtain on an underrepresented reality for many parents. Actor, writer and director Maggie Gyllenhaal seeks to capture the messiness of motherhood in her new film “The Lost Daughter.” It’s an adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel that explores the story of an “unnatural mother” named Leda, who finds parenting to be a “crushing responsibility.” Gyllenhaal imagined playing scenes of a mother ignoring her daughter’s cries or rejecting her injured child’s pleas for a kiss — things we’re taught “we’re not allowed to think or feel” — would be “radical” for a film, especially if women watched with their mothers, partners or children.

In this conversation, Kara talks to Gyllenhaal about her transition to directing, how she got the infamously private Ferrante to offer her blessing for the film and why the domestic is “high art.” They also discuss the power and importance of women’s storytelling and whether anyone is an unnatural mother — which, as Gyllenhaal muses, begs the question: “Well, what is a natural mother?”

This episode contains strong language.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.

President Biden has interviewed at least three candidates for the Supreme Court seat vacated by Justice Stephen Breyer and has committed to nominating a Black woman to fill it. As the country awaits his selection, Kara Swisher turns to the law professor Anita Hill - host of the new podcast "Getting Even" - who testified during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation 30 years ago, accusing him of sexual harassment.

The all-white, all-male Senate committee that interrogated Hill asked her whether she was a “scorned woman” and to recount her “most embarrassing” moment with Thomas. Reflecting today, she says, “There are those who are trying to put Black women in a box, whether it’s a Black woman who comes forward to talk about their experience of harassment or whether it’s a woman who will be considered for the Supreme Court.” And Hill argues this has consequences today: “Those boxes that we are put in has allowed for this country to lack a diverse judicial system that speaks to the population and represents the population.”

In this conversation, Kara and Hill talk about the barriers to a more diverse judiciary, whether she would take a call from Biden to consider the role and how the process has (or hasn’t) changed since the Thomas and Kavanaugh hearings. And they discuss whether cancel culture can actually hold the powerful accountable for their actions.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.

From Snoop Dogg to Melania Trump, it seems like everyone has gotten into the NFT craze in the last year, with billions of dollars worth of sales made in 2021. NFTs may be colloquial now, but the craze really picked up almost a year ago, when an artist named Michael Winkelmann (also known as Beeple) sold his work, “EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS,” for a whopping $69 million — the third-highest auction price involving a living artist, after Jeff Koons and David Hockney.

So this week, Kara is revisiting her March 2021 conversation with Beeple. They talk about whether his virtual collage, which stitches together 5,000 images (including lactating humanoid breasts and Buzz Lightyear with a bloodied chain saw) is actually worth $69 million, how he grapples with the environmental impact of crypto minting, and how NFTs will change how we buy and flaunt digital ownership.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.

Keith Rabois minted his wealth with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and other members of the so-called “PayPal Mafia.” Now, though, he’s moved to Miami and become one of the city’s biggest hype men. He believes Florida — which has already seen an influx of tech bros, venture capital investments and cryptocurrency plays during the pandemic — offers a better home to tech than California can, largely because of the politics. He tells Kara Swisher: “The mayor of Miami, the governor of Florida treat citizens like customers. ‘What can we offer you? How can we help?’ That’s their goal, and that’s how they frame everything.”

In this conversation, Kara presses Rabois whether tech’s doubling down on Florida is all just about escaping high taxes. They also discuss whether venture capital is what investment banking was in the 2000s. And they catch up on the news, from stock fall-offs in big tech to why Peter Thiel will be stepping down from Meta’s board.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died of opioid overdoses in the past 20 years — and the crisis has only worsened during the pandemic. In September, the Sackler family, which was behind the OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma and helped create this overdose epidemic, finally agreed to disband the company and to pay a settlement of $4.5 billion. That may sound like a whopping amount of money, but as the journalist Patrick Radden Keefe points out, it’s arguably not. He profiled the Sacklers’ rise in his book “Empire of Pain” and points out: “They’re paying it out over nine years; they have an $11 billion fortune. They can just pay it with the returns.” Plus, as part of the settlement, the Sacklers were granted sweeping immunity from opioid-related lawsuits. (In December, a federal judge overturned this decision, saying the family could not be released from civil claims related to the opioid epidemic. Purdue Pharma is appealing.)

In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Radden Keefe why and how the Sacklers got off relatively scot-free. They discuss the challenge of holding power to account when corporations like Purdue Pharma and regulators like the F.D.A. can paint themselves as a “driverless car,” as though there are no decision makers at the wheel. They consider the justice that’s playing out through popular opinion and culture, as museums from the Met to the Tate remove the Sackler name from their walls. And they discuss how the family warded off would-be whistle-blowers and surrounded itself with enablers willing to treat a national health crisis as just a “PR problem.”

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.

From the big lie to Bill Gates’s supposed Covid vaccine microchips, the internet loves a conspiracy theory. In this conversation, Kara Swisher revisits one that is almost a decade old: that Sandy Hook was a hoax. After a shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School killed 26 people, including Noah Pozner, his father, Leonard Pozner, began seeing online musings that the tragedy was a production of crisis actors and part of a scheme to attack Second Amendment rights. The conspiracies were rampant on Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, WordPress blogs and YouTube videos — and they were amplified in particular by the far-right broadcaster and conspiracist Alex Jones on his media outlet Infowars.

Kara asks Pozner why he “respected the possibility that people had questions” about the massacre and how he engaged with Sandy Hook deniers. She and Pozner cover the lawsuits that he and other Sandy Hook parents are pursuing against Jones. And they discuss the responsibility borne by platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which hosted Jones for so long. As Pozner points out, “The focus for all of these platforms is growth and expansion. They really don’t want to deal with the cleanup at all.”

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.

Brands like Gucci, Nike and Ralph Lauren are already flooding virtual worlds like Roblox and Fortnite with digital goods and advertising. But the designer and podcaster Debbie Millman thinks these emergent virtual worlds run the risk of the same problems many see with social media platforms like Instagram — particularly if users are put in environments that lend themselves to comparison. “I don’t know very many people that come away from 30 minutes on Instagram feeling really good about who they are,” says Millman. And she’s not bullish about web 3.0 solving the problem: “That experience in A.R., V.R. is going to ultimately have the same thing happen.”

In this conversation, Kara Swisher and Millman discuss the impact — and limits — of brands in shaping our lives and what that means in an age where people increasingly refer to themselves as brands. They grapple with the economy of influencers, the illusions of Insta-happiness and Facebook’s recent rebranding to Meta. The two veteran podcasters also swap notes on interviewing, the art of conversation and Wordle.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.