Can Europe escape American tech dependency?
6/7/202642 min
Why did Nick Clegg quit Meta, and what does he really think about Silicon Valley? Why are tech bosses so greedy? And how can Europe catch up in the AI race?
Robert sits down with Nick Clegg (former UK Deputy Prime Minister and Meta's ex-President of Global Affairs) to discuss how the UK can once again become a tech and economic powerhouse.
The Rest is Money is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain’s smart energy pioneer.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsNick Clegg· Guest0:01
Where is the intellectual energy from the left and the center left? If you keep miscasting the past, you don't have the intellectual wherewithal to ask what you need to do next, which is why they're now gover-governing in this haphazard way. They've replaced policy with sanctimony, and if you replace policy with sanctimony, you don't produce better policy. And this is where we're stuck at the moment. And certainly, and I, you know, I led a center-left party for eight years, and the whole of Silicon Valley, not just Mark Zuckerberg, but the whole... All of you saw that in the inauguration, have decided to, rather than shun politics, have decided to embrace at least MAGA, uh, politics for, for a whole bunch of reasons. Single biggest thing that drives their behavior is competition with each other. And remember, the Brexit wars were basically a battle. It was a triumph of nostalgia over a claim of the future.
Robert Peston· Host0:47
The economy was growing again. We were looking more competitive as a nation, and then we voted to leave the European Union.
Steph McGovern· Host0:56
We're delighted to say that this year The Rest Is Money is powered by Octopus Energy, so we're joined by its founder and CEO, Greg Jackson. Hiya, Greg. Um, you traveled with Prime Minister Keir Starmer on his latest trip to China. Why?
Greg Jackson1:10
There's a lot of people who quite rightly think we're naive if we don't understand the threats we face from China. But it's equally naive not to understand that Chinese, uh, technologies, uh, can now transform so many industries. And if we don't understand what they're doing and find ways to work with them, we're gonna get left behind. Look, the reality is it used