No. of Recommendations: 19
Great meeting. Most of what was said was, happily, pretty routine. I’m sure others will discuss other particulars, but the fake video really got me.
1. A video was shown of Warren asking Greg the very first question of the meeting. But it wasn’t a regular video, it was a deep fake. The image and voice were stitched together to make it look and sound like Warren.
Although the fake Warren looked a bit younger, and said things he never said in that context, one could easily dismiss those things unless you are alert to the possibility of deep fakes and scrutinize videos carefully. I did and was shocked.
Warren is a genius. He produced his own example of a deep fake for us. It was effective and it was a shock. The subject is not taken lightly. It looks like Greg is on the same page.
It was doubly disturbing because earlier this week I watched the podcast, Invest Like the Best, with Paul Tudor Jones, where he mentioned that he appeared on Squawk Box and talked about his worries about AI. Warren saw it and wrote him a letter about his deep concerns about AI, believing the genie was out of the bottle. I’d also previously read that Warren was worried about the deep fakes of him circulating the internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S31J5ACsOqU (Invest Like the Best) A great interview for a lot of reasons.
1) Greg brought a lot of granular coverage to some of the companies, like Alleghany and the bolt-on’s, or subsidiaries, that produce valuable and needed products, in their own right.
2) The question of succession is covered by the deep benches for both Jain and Greg.
3) Greg has plenty of wisdom around him to draw on, as well as Buffett, for now. And, he can always do what Mark Zuckerberg is thinking of, like making an AI interactive version of himself. Last sentence is a joke. He didn’t say that.
4) There will be no breakup to unlock anything since the whole is greater than the sum of its parts for this company.
5) It was good to hear from Katie Farmer and Adam Johnson, the new president of consumer products, services and retailing. Got some good info on he effects of tariffs.
6) The interview with Becky was notable because we can’t know from where the catalyst for the next market crisis will come: literally out of the blue—or the green screen. Also, for the things that are too awful to talk about, no sense mentioning them. Except in allusion….
So, back to business as usual—and yet, the baton has been passed. We are at a juncture of intense change in world order, national financial systems and technological power. So much has changed, yet Berkshire is Berkshire. The “pressure,” some may feel from the enormous amount of cash in Berkshire Hathaway is not a bug but a feature, a blossom, the result of the foresight and wisdom of Warren, Charlie and the people who helped them build this amazing collection of companies. There are no called strikes.
Fruit will bear out, when the time is right….
