Philip Morris ($PM) podcast mentions

1. And so I think it is a complete hornet's nest that they have kind of like kicked to the ground, because on the one hand you have rational people who want to build a business for which you need enormous amounts of capital that is only available in the public markets. But the process of doing that requires you to underwrite risk, absorb liability, disclose that properly, and then allow people to know what they're buying. But what we have is this weird version now where it's almost like an example of like Philip Morris, where it's like, we know that the cigarettes are bad for you. We know that the cigarettes will kill you. And we're going to say it, but we're not going to disclose it yet. We're going to take the company public and allow you to own the stock, and then we're going to just figure it all out later. This is not a tenable position, friends.

   Chamath Palihapitiya · All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg · AI Kills Everybody or Doomer Psyop? OpenAI's Math Breakthrough, Nike's $200B Collapse · 2026-09-11

2. But imagine if I responded by deploying publicists and lobbyists to smear them, conceal our culpability, promise to do better, and engineer legislative paralysis such that ProfG Media operated with impunity. How big would the fine have to be to deter my behavior. ProfG Media generates $20 million in annual revenue with an operating margin of 60%. Its valuation is around $100 million. Meta's 2025 revenue was $200 billion with an operating margin of 41%. Its market cap is $1.4 $1.5 trillion. A $17 billion fine scaled down to Prop G Media and spread out over 10 years would equal a $256,000 annual hit to our operating profit. That's not a deterrent, but a green light to move faster and break more things. The 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement levied a fine of $206 $420 billion adjusted for inflation, payable over 25 years against the 4 largest cigarette makers. 2 of those companies, Philip Morris, now Altria, and R.J. Reynolds, are still selling cancer sticks. The other 2, Brown Williamson and Lorillard, are now owned by R.J. Reynolds. Regulatory friction catalyzes consolidation. Since 1998, federal taxes on cigarettes have increased fourfold, while state taxes on average have increased by 6x. Smoking rates among adults dropped 73% between 1965 and 2022, and rates for teens fell by 86% from 1997 to 2021. But The tobacco companies didn't stand still. They innovated. In 2019, 1 in 3 American teens reported using e-cigarettes, which are taxed at lower rates than the analog version. The numbers have fallen thanks to some states banning flavored e-cigs, but curbing the negative externalities of tobacco is a game of whack-a-mole. As Stanford historian Robert Proctor told the New York Times, Today is not the beginning of the end for social media, any more than 1998 was the beginning of the end of big tobacco. Americans still smoke more than 170 billion cigarettes every year and inhale tons of additional nicotine from electronic variants. The picture is even grimmer if you widen the lens. Globally, 1 out of every 5 adults is a customer, and 80% of them live in low- and middle-income countries. This is by design, as tobacco companies pivoted to developing nations with a continued emphasis on targeting young customers. Big Tobacco is still killing it, i.e., others. The media business is built on the back of an attention-to-profits arbitrage.

   George Hahn · The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway · No Mercy / No Malice: Little Tobacco Moment · 2026-09-05