Tech journalist, media entrepreneur and podcast host Kara Swisher has been reporting on the internet and Silicon Valley since the early ’90s.
The co-founder of online tech website Recode, and host of podcasts Pivot and On With Kara Swisher, has interviewed everyone from pop culture figures John Legend and Martha Stewart to politicians Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She’s also interviewed tech titans Mark Cuban, Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Her relationship with Musk has gone from cordial to hostile. He called her “an asshole” and she proudly printed the barb on the back cover of her 2024 memoir Burn Book: A Tech Love Story referring to him simply as “Elon Musk, Twitter guy”.
Her career has more highlights than a Stabilo warehouse: she famously made Mark Zuckerberg sweat on stage in 2010, orchestrated a historic interview between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in 2007, and broke the news around Sam Altman’s Open AI board ousting and rehire in 2022.
Swisher is visiting Australia next month for talks at Sydney Opera House’s All About Women conference, The Wheeler Centre in Melbourne and as part of Adelaide Writers’ Week. We connected with Swisher to get her thoughts on Musk, why she’s no longer optimistic about tech and The Thorn Birds.
You chose to cover the tech industry instead of politics while working at the Washington Post in the 1990s. What was the reaction like from other journalists when you made that choice?
Nobody was covering it the way I did it. A lot of people covering tech at the time were, typically, young men covering the technology of it, or else being incredibly kiss-ass to the people they covered. I covered it like a business story. I also morphed it into a society impact story, because it was obvious that these technologies were going to affect people across the globe.
I focused on the deals and the personalities, too. A lot of people covering tech were just covering the tech of it, and I saw it as a bigger societal story with characters. I tended to cover things as if the people mattered quite a bit, and so I got to know the people really well and wrote about them. I was on the ground floor of something – the internet – when other people weren't really paying attention, and I think I understood the impact of it, and others did not.
What impact has Burn Book had on Silicon Valley since its release?
I don’t know if it’s had an impact. I was quite worried about the growing power of these tech people. I opened Burn Book with them acquiescing to Trump in the first term. And of course, they’ve done it in the second term. I think at the time when I wrote that, people thought I was very hard on them, and I was like, “No, I’m not hard enough, because they’re going to allow for terrible things to happen in the name of growth”. And I think I turned out to be right.
What were your feelings about Silicon Valley when you first started covering it?
I had hoped that it would be better. There are all kinds of things in tech that have huge promise, and they continue to do so. But I think I hoped they would move to use it as a tool, not a weapon. It’s been turned into a weapon.
Are you able to stay optimistic about the tech industry today?
No. Not now, not today. I’m considered a negative force. Look at Elon Musk running ragged over our government and taking it over. So no, not today, not this week. Maybe another week.
Did you ever think the tech and politics would collide like they have now?
I moved here to Washington to get away from them and [now] I’m like, ‘Oh fuck, they’re here as well.’ Politics is easier to cover than tech in many ways.
Why is that?
Because everybody’s an attention whore. They love to talk. They’re just easy to get information out of.
Is there a publication people should be paying more attention to?
Wired. Anyone in Australia reading about what’s happening with Elon Musk: I think Wired’s done a spectacular job.
What do you say to people who find the news too exhausting and want to disengage?
Do not. Do not. Do not. You cannot get tired. They depend on your exhaustion. They are flooding the zone. It’s an old Steve Bannon thing, flooding the zone to exhaust you. You cannot get exhausted, because they move with speed and mass, and [exhausting you is] the goal here.
Your book has so many references to literature and poetry. What are you reading?
I just read Daniel Mason's North Woods and I loved it. I’m right now reading Becca Rothfeld, she’s a book critic who I like a lot. I’ll probably read All Fours [by Miranda July] – that might be too sexy for Kara Swisher. Probably something pleasant [next]. I’ll probably read The Thorn Birds again because it probably drives you Australians crazy. It was a big book about a love affair between a Roman Catholic priest and a lady who had a big ranch out there in Australia. I’m sure you Australians hate it. It’s kind of like Gone With the Wind for Australia.
Is there anything happening in the Australian tech world that you’re interested in right now?
I interviewed the Atlassian founder many years ago. I interviewed your Canva founder. I wouldn’t say Australia’s the centre of internet entrepreneurship, but you’ve got a few big companies. A lot of these countries need to get more active in their innovation. [The space] shouldn’t be dominated by China and the US.
What do you hope your impact will be?
I hope people are listening to what I say, because I think I have credibility at this point and what I said happened. I think people should pay a lot of attention to what’s happening with [the US] government. We’re in the middle of a constitutional crisis, and to pretend it’ll be okay – maybe you have that luxury, but I don’t. I don’t assume it’s going to be okay. And I know how these people behave. The world is not enough, to quote a James Bond movie. Now that they’ve had a taste of political victory here, they’re going to Germany. Elon is going to Germany. And they’re going to Australia. They’re going to India. They’re going to go all over the world to try to do what they’ve done here. Pay attention.
See Swisher in Adelaide on March 4 as part of Adelaide Writers’ Week, at City Recital Hall in Sydney on March 5 for All About Women, and at RMIT in Melbourne on March 6.
