Scott Galloway Says Tech CEOs Are Exhibiting ‘Cowardice Domino’

• Scott Galloway, host of The Prof G Pod, ripped into tech CEOs throughout his SXSW speak on Saturday.
• Galloway mentioned tech leaders are taking part in “dominos of cowardice,” each following the opposite.
• He mentioned he refused to normalize actions taken by Elon Musk.

Since Donald Trump’s victory, tech CEOs have graced the President’s inauguration, Jeff Bezos overhauled The Washington Publish’s op-ed part, and X CEO Linda Yaccarino reportedly pressed one of many world’s greatest advert teams to extend spending on Elon Musk’s X.

What do these seemingly disparate occasions have in frequent?

Scott Galloway, NYU Stern advertising and marketing professor and host of The Prof G Pod, mentioned enterprise leaders — notably tech CEOs — are complacently taking part in America’s “gradual street to fascism.”

Throughout his SXSW speak on Saturday in Austin, Galloway mentioned tech leaders enormously affect society and that their “character issues.”

However to this point, Galloway mentioned, “We have now seen a rare sort of what I name ‘cowardice domino,'” displaying a slide picture of distinguished tech leaders represented as mentioned dominos, together with Jeff Bezos, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Musk, Tim Cook dinner, and Yaccarino.

Spokespeople for The Washington Publish, Microsoft, OpenAI, Meta, Alphabet, and Apple didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Galloway mentioned examples of the “dominos of cowardice” included enterprise leaders texting his co-host on the tech podcast Pivot, Kara Swisher, that they “hate to be on the inauguration, however I am doing it for shareholders.”

He continued: “And this successfully emboldens the CEO of X to then demand that IPG promote on her platform; in any other case, she is going to get her boss to dam the merger. Which ends up in one of many world’s wealthiest males, who owns one of the crucial necessary newspapers, to say, ‘We’re not going to speak about opinion.’ There may be one sort of fascist domino following one after the opposite.”

Galloway gave the impression to be referring to a current Wall Road Journal report that mentioned Yaccarino and her associates had pushed Interpublic Group, a big promoting firm, to promote on X. The strain comes as IPG seeks a deal to promote itself to its competitor Omnicom. The deal may wish regulatory approval from the Trump administration, with which Musk works carefully.

Musk and a spokesperson for X didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Galloway took a second to single out Musk and his current gesture at Trump’s inauguration, which some have interpreted as a fascist salute.

“I had a working loop of Musk doing the Nazi salute, and I believed, ‘I refuse to normalize this bullshit,'” he mentioned. “Take into consideration what cash has accomplished to us.”