Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Vox Media Podcast Network

Technology, Business

4.3 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2018

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Former deputy CTO of the United States Nicole Wong talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about the future of tech policy and why content moderation is more complicated than many people think. In this episode:01:29 - How Wong became a First Amendment lawyer04:12 - Why she took a job at Google07:05 - "You can’t be the lawyer that says no all the time.”08:30 - Why she left Google09:34 - The White House phone call12:19 - Making the government more technologically literate14:42 - Post-government life17:48 - Congress, Sheryl Sandberg and Jack Dorsey21:26 - “You don’t create solutions in a hearing”26:33 - Is it time for a "slow food movement for the Internet?”31:01 - Algorithmic “bias” and the danger of blunt instruments34:46 - The social media “cleaners” in the Philippines41:22 - Techlash44:11 - China’s quicker road to tech dominance46:17- With no American CTO, who’s in charge?48:30 - Google and China 52:59 - Diversity in tech Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Sabotage hired goons and a landfill in Utah.
0:05.0	How Steve Jobs' revolutionary catastrophe of a computer, the Apple Lisa, earned a brief
0:10.7	second life and then was buried for good.
0:14.8	Watch the Verges documentary, Lisa's final act, now on YouTube.
0:19.8	Hi, I'm Cara Swisher, Editor at Large of Recode.
0:25.1	You may know me as Vox Media's CTO, which stands for Chief Tweeting Officer, but in my spare
0:29.3	time I talk tech and you're listening to Rico D-Code from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:33.6	Today in the red chair is Nicole Wong, the former Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the
0:37.9	United States.
0:39.0	She served under President Obama from 2013 to 2014, but before that worked for Google and
0:44.7	Twitter in very critical positions, I've known her for a long time.
0:47.9	Thank you, Nicole, for coming on to Rico D-Code.
0:49.7	I'm delighted to be here.
0:50.7	I have drag goons here because there's so many topics that you are an expert on and that you've
0:55.4	been inside the belly of the beast, you've been outside in government.
0:58.4	There's a lot of things we've got to talk about.
1:00.0	Everything from election issues, to content moderation, to what these companies are doing,
1:04.7	to the legislation that's maybe coming for these tech companies, probably not because
1:08.8	Congress is a bunch of idiots.
1:10.9	That's my opinion.
1:11.9	So let's start first by talking about your background.
1:13.6	So people get an idea of where you've been.
	...

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