Kara Swisher: On how Big Tech has contributed to the rise of the right

"As it turned out, it was capitalism after all.” That’s how Kara Swisher opens her latest book, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story. From inside the tech ecosystem, she describes how innovation gurus - and tech billionaires - such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman helped shape the rise of the political right and Donald Trump in the United States.

It’s not about innovating to make the world better or complex things simpler; it’s about making money. A lot of money. And it’s about power and influence.

Award-winning and world-famous, Kara Swisher is the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post journalist who moved to Silicon Valley to cover the tech revolution from the inside. For more than three decades, she has delivered uncompromising journalism at the intersection of technology, media and politics, becoming personally well acquainted with the key figures shaping today’s America.

Highly respected by many and feared by some, she is known for legendary interviews -such as putting archrivals Steve Jobs and Bill Gates on the same stage, and confronting a young Mark Zuckerberg, who visibly broke into a sweat when she challenged him on privacy issues. Fearless and deeply knowledgeable, she has held tech giants, editors, and politicians alike accountable for the power and responsibility they wield. In recent years, she has delighted listeners with the podcasts Pivot with Scott Galloway and On with Kara Swisher.

We are absolutely thrilled to finally welcome Kara to Bergen! We’ve invited her to the Nordic Media Days to talk tech and politics - about how to save journalism, including Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post, which she wants to buy. Does she still believe technology is a force for good? How will AI shape the media? And what’s really the deal with her long-running beef with her former good friend, Elon Musk?!