B&T was honoured (and quite star-struck) to catch up with the legendary Kara Swisher on her recent Australian tour promoting her new book.
If you want a straight-shooting, no-nonsense take on Big Tech and all the bro-ligarchs who run it, look no further than Kara Swisher. Dubbed the most feared and respected journalist in Silicon Valley, Swisher has never been one to mince words. She’s grilled everyone from Mark Zuckerberg to Elon Musk, and if there’s one thing she can’t stand, it’s hypocrisy—or as she puts it, “people who claim they’re simple while hoarding unimaginable wealth.”
Now, in her latest book, Burn Book, Swisher unleashes her most blistering commentary yet on the tech moguls she’s covered for decades. The inside cover alone features a series of withering quotes—ones she’s lobbed at various CEOs and public figures over the years—that set the tone for the entire read. Among them:
“You’re either literally ignorant or just stupid.” – to a tech PR flack on CNN.
“You’re a f***ing idiot.” – to Mark Zuckerberg regarding Tiananmen Square.
“Stop talking about things you know nothing about.” – to a hedge fund manager.
Swisher’s now-famous barbs adorn the front pages of Burn Book, a signal that readers are in for a very candid, very Kara experience.
Swisher has been covering tech since the early 1990s, first at The Wall Street Journal and later as co-founder of the influential tech conference All Things D. She’s interviewed Apple’s Steve Jobs and Microsoft’s Bill Gates on stage—together—when they were still sworn rivals, and has had countless run-ins with Facebook’s (now Meta’s) Zuckerberg.
But somewhere along the way, Swisher grew tired of Silicon Valley’s self-congratulatory vibe. She moved to Washington, D.C. during the COVID-19 years, partly for family reasons—her ex-wife had worked for President Obama—and partly because she was “so sick of Silicon Valley and what it had become.” Yet the Valley followed her to the nation’s capital, and her publisher at Simon & Schuster urged her to write about it.
“I realised how important these people were becoming to the rest of society,” she says. “They weren’t just making trouble on the West Coast; they were intent on affecting everything.”
For Burn Book, Swisher found inspiration in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, The Great Gatsby. Specifically, the line about Tom and Daisy Buchanan being “careless people” who “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money”. In Swisher’s view, that sums up the ethos of certain tech titans all too well.
“These moguls have enormous power and couldn’t care less about people,” she says. “It’s an age-old story: the wealthy and powerful come to rule over everyone else, and then they dodge accountability. It happened in ancient Rome, it happened during the Gilded Age, and it’s happening again with Big Tech.”
This is where her no-holds-barred approach kicks into high gear. Swisher, who’s known for peppering interviews with blunt observations and the occasional expletive, says she took a page out of Gatsby by positioning herself as the Nick Carraway figure: the observer travelling through a world of power, money and (often) moral vacancy.
One of the key themes in Burn Book is how tech leaders love to “cosplay” simplicity—wearing hoodies, T-shirts, or casual sneakers—while owning private jets and super yachts. Swisher recalls Google’s campuses with their rainbow-coloured bikes and scooters, describing them as “aggressively adorable” and “offensively inauthentic”.
“It’s like, ‘We’re just simple folks in comfortable clothes who eat burritos for lunch!’” she says, rolling her eyes. “Then they hop on a plane to go yacht-hopping in the Mediterranean. Just admit you’re rich. Stop pretending.”
Swisher has also skewered Zuckerberg for his infamous photo ops, from running through Tiananmen Square (“Mark, historically… you were used like a tool by the Chinese Communist Party,” she told him)
One of Swisher’s more memorable metaphors in Burn Book is what she calls the “cashmere prison”.
She notes that many tech billionaires live in a bubble—going from office to car to private plane to penthouse—without ever encountering real people or genuine dissent.
She tells a story of watching powerful figures like Zuckerberg or Elon Musk surround themselves with yes-men (and yes-women) who never question their decisions. As a result, these leaders can make colossal missteps—like tolerating Holocaust deniers on Facebook or stoking conspiracies on Twitter—without anyone internally pushing back.
“They have the power to shape communication for billions of people,” she says, “and yet they exist in an airless bubble of their own making.”
Swisher is quick to dismantle claims that Big Tech is overregulated. “I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard some PR hack say, ‘We need to reduce tech regulation,’” she writes. “What regulation? There’s virtually none. In the US, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act actually protects these companies from liability. They get immunity from user-generated content.”
She recounts a CNN appearance where a conservative commentator insisted there were “hundreds” of tech regulations hamstringing innovation. Her retort: “Zero. Unless you count the one that benefits them.”
In Burn Book, Swisher argues that if Big Tech wants to claim free speech rights, it should also accept the responsibilities that come with publishing content. She points out how Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News was forced to pay out nearly a billion dollars over false election claims, while Facebook repeatedly let conspiracy theorists and hate groups thrive on its platform with minimal repercussions.
Despite the cynicism, Swisher doesn’t think the Valley is devoid of decent humans. She highlights the philanthropic work of people like MacKenzie Scott (Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife), Laurene Powell Jobs (Steve Jobs’ widow), and Melinda French Gates. These women, she says, are putting their massive fortunes toward tackling inequality, women’s health, and education—quietly, without seeking a spotlight or “pretending to be something they’re not.”
On the men’s side, she gives nods to folks like Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder) and Mark Cuban, who’ve made attempts to push back against extremist rhetoric and invest in ventures that aim to serve the public good. Still, she wishes more high-profile founders would take a page from these examples.
With Burn Book, Swisher is going beyond the page. She’s gearing up for a worldwide tour to discuss the perils of unregulated tech power, the hypocrisy she’s witnessed firsthand, and how she believes we can still salvage something positive from Silicon Valley’s innovation machine. Expect more of her trademark wit, blistering candour, and perhaps a fresh batch of insults aimed at anyone too arrogant—or ignorant—to face the consequences of their actions.
“Burn Book is me at my rawest,” she says. “I’m done letting them pretend they’re innocent disruptors who don’t owe society anything. I want them to feel the heat. Careless people with too much money and too little empathy—that’s what I’m fighting against,” she says.
“They might retreat into their cashmere prisons, but I’ll keep kicking down the door.”
Nancy Hromin is Irresistible Magazine’s global editor-at-large.
