Rapid Recap: Google’s exodus, Spider-Man’s odyssey, Taco “Hell”, and more

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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**Bob Safian** (2:01)
Hey, I'm Bob Safian and we have a special episode of Rapid Response today. I'm joined by my senior producer, Alex Morris. Alex, say hello to everybody.

**Alex Morris** (2:12)
Hey, Bob. Happy to be back here doing this again. It's been a few months.

**Bob Safian** (2:16)
Yes. I figured every now and then, Alex can ask me some questions and we'll let you guys listen in on the kinds of conversations we have internally.

**Alex Morris** (2:25)
Absolutely.
We're in the middle of summer right now. Obviously, everybody's heard of what is the song of the summer. What to you is the business story of the summer right now?

**Bob Safian** (2:40)
Thank goodness you didn't ask me the song of the summer. I definitely wouldn't have gotten that right.
Listen, I can't not start with the Strait of Hormuz. I think what's happening there in the Mideast, no one knows what's going to happen next. As we're talking now, it seems like maybe there's going to be a resolution, and the straits going to open again. But by the time this reaches listeners, who knows what the situation is going to be? We had a guest on Amy Harder from Axios, as you recall, who talked about like, this, it's never going to go back to normal. And so anybody who thinks the oil markets and the energy markets and what's happening there are going to go back to normal, are kind of, you know, deluding themselves. I think she's probably right. You know, we're in a different kind of world. And to me, that's the story that a lot of different things are hinging on.

**Alex Morris** (3:38)
I've heard you say before that it's like the only certainty now is uncertainty.
It's easier said than done to tell a leader, like, that's what you need to now get comfy with. It's just that being the new normal. What advice do you have for CEOs to be able to kind of get comfier with that?

**Bob Safian** (3:57)
It's not just the international geopolitical environment. Everything is moving really fast, right?
And I just think that's what's required of a leader right now. You know, and if you're not comfortable being uncomfortable as a leader, then you have to maybe ask yourself whether, you know, am I the right person to be leading this organization, this enterprise, this effort right now, because there's very little that we can rely on, you know, firmly or at least we have to be extremely focused about what are the things that we can control as opposed to the things that are, you know, that we're gonna have to respond to or moving, you know, moving around, around us.

**Alex Morris** (4:40)
I was surprised that you didn't answer that the story of the summer is still AI. Are you feeling like AI is not the main headline of the year right now?

**Bob Safian** (4:50)
I guess I feel like AI is like, it's less of a story and more of a deluge. This is a seismic shift that just keeps surprising us, right? We had Uber COO Andrew Macdonald on the show back in the spring, and he talked at one point about token costs for AI, which seemed kind of wonky in some ways, but suddenly it was everywhere, right? Everyone is talking about the cost of AI, which wasn't talked about just before that. We had Arvind Krishna, the CEO of IBM, I talked to, and he talked about how people look at their AI the wrong way. It's like if you took an 18-wheeler to take your kid to school, you'd be like, yeah, you could get to school that way, but it's not the right tool necessarily, the right vehicle, ideally for that task. And so that conversation is part of what's happening in the AI world right now. What's the right kind of AI?