Zohran Mamdani: US Midterms, The Democratic Future of America & The AI Economic Bubble

Okay.

I'll start doing my job now.

Mayor Mamdani, thank you for taking the time.

Very welcome, thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me. [Zohran laughs]

It's going really well so far.

Yeah, great.

So it was almost exactly this time last year that WIRED

and I interviewed you in your campaign office.

And I remember that for two reasons.

One, it was just before the election,

but two, you had a birthday. Yes.

And I was remembering this this weekend

because I was in Sunset Park on Saturday on a walk.

Sunset Park, for those who don't know,

is the best park in Brooklyn and actually all of New York.

I'm sure you agree.

And I saw you being serenaded with happy birthday.

So you have just now turned a year older, I did not join.

I kept walking, I was like, I'm going to see this guy.

I was wondering, like, Who's that woman

who's not singing along?

With the really excited nine-year-old who was trying to...

And she was like, No, we're going to keep going.

That was me. All right.

All right, good to know.

But I'm curious, it's been a year.

Do you feel a year older or older than that?

How has the last year of your life been?

It's been a pretty incredible year.

It has also been probably

the most transformative year that I've lived in my life

in terms of what my life was versus what it is now.

And much of that year has been having the privilege

of having the greatest job in the world.

And to lead the city and now to be 35.

35.

35. 35.

35. And how old do you feel?

I think 35.

It's a funny thing because in the world of my friends,

this is an age that there's a lot

of existential questions that come with it.

In the work that I do, most people are

significantly older than me.

And so the meaning of the age,

it doesn't really live in a professional setting.

Do you ever feel like your age is

a barrier to you in politics?

No, I think...

[Zohran chuckles]

When I met Lula and we met during the UN General Assembly,

he was very excited by the fact,

that I was young, he kept coming back, So young.

I don't think it's a barrier.

I think that it's been one

that has also illuminated both the promises

and the betrayals of politics.

To be 35 means you grew up through

the housing crisis, you grew up through the Iraq war,

you grew up through so much of

what has shaped our country's politics

over the last few decades,

have been these kind of formative moments in mine

and so many other people's lives.

And I think that too often politics is shaped

by those for whom these are issues

that simply just affect other people,

not ones that have been all consuming.

We spent quite a bit of time last year talking about

social media and your campaign's use of it.

WIRED declared you the internet's mayor.

That was before you even won the election, it was a gamble.

We felt pretty good about your odds.

This is not sponsored by Kalshi.

Absolutely not, and never. Yeah.

Now you told us then that you wanted your campaign

to not just do social media better than other candidates,

but you said to really quote, Own the medium,

and you're still at it.

How are you thinking about social media as a tool now

for governance versus a tool for campaigning?

What are the differences? What are the similarities?

I think the similarity is that you have to continue

to recognize the fact that for many New Yorkers,

this is how they engage with the world.

It is yet another medium that has to be treated

with the same legitimacy and respect as traditional mediums.

And I say that because if your goal is to reach

as many New Yorkers as possible to tell them about a policy

that you are unveiling that they could stand

to benefit from, your responsibility is then to communicate

through every conceivable measure.

So social media means that we can make a video

that could reach, that will reach,

almost every video will reach more than a million people.

And that's just on one specific medium.

And also it means that you have to continue

to work your way backwards from,

how are New Yorkers consuming media?

It's not that we have the right answer,

it's just that we're listening.

So for example, with a lot of our Spanish language outreach,

we heard from a number of Spanish speaking New Yorkers that

if you really want to communicate

with a specific constituency

that you're not reaching right now,

you need to make a WhatsApp channel.

So we made a WhatsApp channel, El Chisme,

and on that channel we will share directly

with Spanish speaking New Yorkers information

that we're putting out, and you will hear voice notes

of me speaking in incredibly halting Spanish

about what that policy is.

And I think for too long there's been a sense of

pat myself on the back in government where it's like,

I put out the paper press release, people should just know.

I put this in one obscure place

that people could find if they were looking for it.

We have to make politics

and political decisions something

that reach people wherever they already are as opposed

to the condescension that comes with,

If you're not reading this, then it's not meant for you.

You also talked last year about your time campaigning

and feeling like you needed to put yourself out there

on social media in different ways, quote,

Many of which are embarrassing.

[Zohran chuckles]

What does it look like to be less embarrassing

on social media now that you're the mayor?

You're asking the wrong guy. Have you tried

to clean up your act a little bit?

I feel like I'm equally embarrassing.

[both laughing]

I think there's a part

of social media which is all about the presentation

of cool and mystery, and that's not a part-

I don't know that that's so much what you're delivering.

That's not where I live. No.

I don't live there.

We're not living in mystery. I live in the world

where you will know everything about me

and I have to utilize that to try

and share the message of

what we're doing and why we're doing it.

And I think that in some ways means abandoning any fear

of embarrassment or what it means for perception

and thinking about, if the way

that you can learn about the rent guidelines board is me

jumping into freezing cold water, then so be it.

And that's what it was when I was running for office.

And I think today we're still taking the same approach of,

how can we communicate with as many people as possible?

How can we not veer into a place of complacency that, oh,

now that we're the mayor, it means that everything has

to conform to a traditional outreach.

And the reality is that part of the reason why

so many people feel so ambivalent at best about politics

is that there's a sense of irrelevance.

And some of that irrelevance comes from the focus

of politics, but some

of it also comes from the methods of politics.

If politics continues to present itself in a way

that it did 20 years ago, that is ignoring the fact

that we are living in a very different world today.

And that's the world that we should be speaking to

and that's the world whose concerns we should be reflecting.

And I would just say that in the years since we sat down

together, there's been a lot of focus on our use

of the medium as if that is more important than the message.

And I think that it's important to focus on the use

of medium, the respect for the medium,

and also to understand that

putting tired old ideas into a short form version

in a vertical video does not answer

the critical issue with politics today.

It's not just the presentation, it's also the substance.

Now, your use of social media

has not been without criticism.

And I want to ask you a little bit about that.

So the New York Times published a story in September

about your office's work with creators,

some of whom receive talking points around initiatives.

They're invited to cover events, sometimes events

where maybe traditional journalists,

people like myself would not be present.

So among the concerns raised in that piece is the idea

of this distinction between journalist and creator.

So if your office sent me talking points

before this interview, I would've shredded them

and then I would've come and just done the interview anyway.

I understand wanting to leverage social media

to reach people in new ways.

I think that's really laudable.

But how do you think about that distinction

between quote unquote, Professional journalism,

and content creation, right?

Because I think for the average person,

and people are very smart, New Yorkers are smart people,

but that line has become incredibly blurry.

They don't necessarily know when they open TikTok

whether they are watching someone

who is a journalist at the New York Times

or someone who is a creator who doesn't have

that same background, how do you think about that?

I would push you a little bit.

Push, push away. In that talking points

are essentially the basis of a press release, right?

When we announce a new policy,

we'll put in the press release,

there'll be the quotes from myself

and other relevant agency heads

and other relevant politicians.

And then there'll also be a description as to

what the policy is.

And to me, that is so critical

because we're looking to demystify politics.

And some policies are pretty self-explanatory,

and other policies are ones that frankly,

if I didn't have talking points,

then I wouldn't even be able to formulate what that is.

So earlier this week, we announced that we were going to

deliver on an innovative solution

to flooding in Central Park.

We were going to be able

to lower the water levels in three key water bodies

to ensure that we would do so in advance of a storm

and then prevent the typical storm water runoff.

You need to be able to explain that

before you have a conversation about it.

So that's where I would push a little bit on the idea of

what talking points are and what they serve.

I think to your question, you have to be able to treat

all of these different mediums with respect

and understand the differences of them.

So if we were administration that exclusively engaged

with digital first creators, then that would be an issue.

But what I see as important is we have to speak

to journalists for whom their medium is television,

newspaper, radio, digital, magazine, as well as those

for whom their only medium might be TikTok or Instagram

or Twitter or Blue Sky or whatever it may be.

It cannot be a choice any longer,

because I think as you've said, for many New Yorkers,

there is a sense that all of this is media.

And I think that we have to have a respect for that

as opposed to what has long been

a political condescension about which media is legitimate

and which media is illegitimate.

And to me, if a New Yorker spends a minute

of their time watching something

or reading something, I need to know what that is

and I need to make sure we're engaging with that too.

How do you separate audiences in your mind when you think

about maybe what you would say on TikTok

or Instagram, what you would say to a journalist,

what you would say behind a podium?

Do you think about those distinctions?

Not so much.

I think if you try to calibrate yourself

for every single constituency,

you are losing sight of why people will want to listen.

It starts to veer into an imitation as opposed to

a presentation of the facts.

And I think there's a difference in that, you know,

we'll sit down for 48 minutes.

If I put out a video on Instagram

for 48 minutes, is it going to do well?

No.

But if I'm thinking

that I should speak like this over there

and that I should speak like this over here, you're going

to end up kind of twisting and turning yourself into knots.

Now, last question on this. Please.

I want to move to the midterms, but last year we spent

some well-earned time talking

about Eric Adams' social media campaign.

He did incredible things on those platforms, remarkable.

Michael Bay. Phenomenal.

His life has been changed by that one video.

Who is the Eric Adams of the midterms on social?

Oh.

We all need someone to follow and have a laugh at.

Who's your Eric Adams this year?

I will say that the social media

that I am still confused by- Sure.

Is that of the departing Congressman Shri Thanedar.

Tell us more. In Michigan.

I don't know about this one.

I just never fully... [Interviewer laughs]

I never fully understand what I'm looking at.

What are you looking at?

What's happening in the videos?

Sometimes it's even just still images.

Incredible. And I'm...

Are we in carousel mode or is it just a single photo?

No, it's typically solo style.

Okay. I would invite others

to take a look and I would say that I'm very excited

as well about the incoming congressman.

I will take a look.

There is some remarkable AI-generated

social media content from some candidates,

some of which includes AI-generated versions of you

talking about, I think it was a delusion pill.

[Zohran] I haven't seen that one.

[Interviewer] You and Governor Hochul,

you're talking about taking the delusion pill

where you think that having higher taxes

and less money is a good thing, you should check this out.

[Zohran] Was this from Bruce Blakeman?

Yes. I'm sure it was.

It's incredible stuff. Mr. AI.

It looks just like you. Yeah, yeah.

It's incredible.

Now, you are not on the ballot

for the midterms this November, but this is a big one.

This is coming up next week. Yeah.

This episode will come out the day of the midterms.

And in the last year, you have become one

of the most influential people in politics.

Whether you agree with me saying that

or not, I think there is consensus.

You've been described repeatedly as something

of a power broker within the Democratic Party.

An endorsement from you matters.

I'm curious to start about your decision to endorse

and campaign for Governor Hochul, she's seeking reelection.

You were critical of her before taking office.

Can you talk us through that calculus

and what changed there?

I think the key thing that my endorsement

is a reflection of, is just how productive

our working relationship has been.

And frankly, it is a stark contrast to that

of the typical working relationship between the mayor

of New York City and the governor of New York State.

You look through the years, frankly,

and you will find mayor and governor after mayor

and governor who are seemingly forever at loggerheads.

And what I've found in working with Governor Hochul

is that we can deliver on material wins

for working class New Yorkers.

And to me, the single most exciting one of those

is Universal 2K.

On the eighth day of our administration,

she agreed to deliver $1.2 billion

to make universal childcare a reality

for two-year-olds in this city.

And the two of us spent a morning, maybe about a week

or two ago with a family whose child was enrolled in 2K,

and they told us that before that, they had

to send their child to a different state.

That his grandmother had to drive him at 4:00 AM for him

to get to a childcare that they could afford.

And they were still paying $2,300 a month.

And so that partnership delivered this family

more than $20,000 of savings

that they can now save to put towards a house.

And that to me is what politics has to be.

It has to mean something for working people.

You don't have to translate to them

what 2,300 a month means.

They feel it, they know it.

And that's what I'm excited to build on.

And to me, it's her track record, it's her commitment

to this city, one that continued in the budget that we had

where we were facing a significant fiscal deficit,

and she was a real partner in ensuring

that we could deliver a balanced budget.

And then also there's the stark contrast

with her opponent who's a little more busy

with AI generated videos of the two of us.

He's been very busy. He's been very busy.

Making AI generated videos.

And defending ICE,

and I could go on. Yes.

Which is a combination

that I think most New Yorkers would not want

to see in the governor's office.

And I also think that his response

to universal childcare was to say this was a delivery

of a benefit to lazy parents.

And I have yet to meet a lazy parent in New York City.

I meet people who are exhausted by the fact that our city

and our country has made parenthood something

that is incredibly difficult to do,

and seen as if it's purely an individual responsibility

when it's the benefit of our whole city

if children can be raised here.

He said he would cut that program.

He said he would cut Medicaid in half.

I mean, times are tough as they are,

and to have a gubernatorial candidate running on an agenda

of, I'm going to make working people's lives harder

and more expensive, I want to find the consultant

who sold him that dream,

'cause they must have had an incredible pitch

because it makes no sense to me.

Now, if Governor Hochul is reelected,

where do you hope to take that partnership?

Where do you want to see that collaboration focus next?

I would say continuing on childcare.

What we have delivered funding for is enough

to take a program for 2,000 two-year olds.

Next year we're taking it to 12,000 two-year olds.

We want to deliver this

for every single two-year old in New York City.

And as of now, we're scheduled to expand to all

of the Bronx, all of Staten Island.

We want it to be every single borough,

every single two year old.

And the governor has said she's committed

to the expansion of this program.

And to me, when we're talking about a cost of living crisis,

we're talking about the most expensive city in America,

childcare is the second leading expense

for working families in the city.

If we can deliver that, what we are really delivering

to New Yorkers is a more affordable life.

That has to be the job.

Talk to me about the DSA.

Now, your name has become synonymous in many ways

with that movement.

It has been one of the dominant political stories

of the last year, this rise of

DSA candidates winning races across the country.

Why do you think now is the time for that organization?

Why now? Why not five years ago?

Why not 10 years ago?

Why not five years from now?

Why in this moment do you think that that movement

and those candidates are seeing so much traction?

I think precisely because the movement is built

around delivering dignity to working class people.

And today's politics is an illustration of

the betrayal of the working class.

And so never before has there been such an urgent demand

for a new kind of politics.

And here in New York City, the problems

that working class people are facing

are in many ways the problems

that working class people are facing across the country,

an inability to afford their rent, their childcare,

their groceries, their electricity bills.

And so that message of fighting for working class Americans,

it's compelling wherever you are.

And that's what drew me to DSA in the first place,

was that this was an entire organization built

around an understanding that this had to be the focus

of our politics, that politics had to mean material wins

for working class people,

and that we had to be willing to fight for it.

And that's one of the things that I really love

so much about what it means to be a DSA member,

is the D stands for democratic.

The organization does what its members decide to do.

And I think a lot of politics, a lot of organizations now,

it feels like there's the set of people

who make the decisions and there's everybody

else who has to go along with them.

And the whole point of this is democracy,

that people should be able to choose their own future.

People should be able to not just choose their own leaders,

but also take that democracy and extend it

from the ballot box to the rest of their lives.

On that note, we've been doing a lot of coverage at WIRED

of Data Centers, and there is something so interesting

to me about how that has become such a bipartisan issue.

And how, yes, it is a national issue,

but it feels so hyper-local.

This is about people in their communities reacting

to something happening very much on the ground,

very adjacent to where they live, to where they work.

I would be so curious to hear your point of view on

the data center movement,

and why you think that specific issue has become

such a flashpoint, such an issue in this election.

Where do you think that comes from?

I think the movement to oppose data centers is one

that gives me a real sense of hope.

Why? Because it shows

the ways in which this fight is

cutting across the typical lines that separate Americans.

As you've said, it's a bipartisan fight.

Me and Ron DeSantis don't have much in common,

and yet there is a similar opposition

to the development of these kinds of data centers.

And so what you're seeing in opposition

from Americans across the country is an opposition for what

these data centers would mean in their day-to-day lives,

what it would mean in their electricity rates,

what it means in terms of the impact on their environment.

And it's also a repudiation of

what has been a governing politics

for the last few years when it comes to AI,

which is our risk, their reward.

And I think you're seeing it whether you're in Florida,

whether you're in New York, across the entire country.

And even in California, we've seen municipalities

that have started to ban the construction

of data centers entirely.

Now, you've supported New York State setting

a one-year pause on data center construction.

What next? What comes after that?

I mean, what to you is the solve for this?

I think one of the solves is a recognition

of the costs that come with AI.

So much of what we are talking about

is based on a very limited amount

of information that we have.

And that is by design, because when we're talking

about these incredibly powerful companies,

we also are talking about a level of opacity

that renders it almost impossible for us

to make an informed conclusion as to

how much this query is actually costing us as a society.

You mean sort of an absence

of data about energy use and things like that?

Or do you mean the idea that this technology is

sort of mythical rather than infrastructure?

I mean the former, and I think that frankly,

there's an attempt to make this technology seem

as if it is mythical. Absolutely.

As if it is divine. Yeah.

There is a real investment. Unknowable.

Exactly, there's an investment in the idea that this is

so complicated that the only rational response should be

that we trust those who created it.

And in many ways, it's what Facebook was arguing in 2008,

that they should be able to regulate themselves.

And yet what we need to see is a response that

grasps the scale of the adoption of this technology

and the incentives that are driving a lot

of this technology at this time,

and the fact that we are now at a point

where there are far too many similarities

between the housing bubble

and the state of AI in our economy today.

You worry that we're in a bubble?

Yes.

You worry that bubble's going to pop?

Yes.

Do you trust the Sam Altmans of the world?

No.

Do you trust the Sam Altmans of the world?

I'm not the one being interviewed.

No. But no, I don't.

[Zohran chuckles]

I'm curious about, in the context of AI,

you focus obviously on New York.

What is your role in shaping how AI affects New Yorkers?

How do you think about that?

I think it's a role on a practical level,

and I also think it's a role

that reckons with the enormity of AI's impact.

Now, on the practical level, it means formulating one

of the most comprehensive AI moratoriums

in any American school system,

which we put forward that would ban the use

of generative AI for students from 2K through eighth grade.

Ban it because we need students to be given the room

to be students, students to be able to try and fail

and learn, and also to bring an end to the use

of our students as guinea pigs for the profit motives

of technology companies.

There's been this strange thing over the last few years,

maybe last few decades, where while we would not be willing

to have a pharmaceutical company help

to write the curriculum of a science class,

we have been all too willing to partner

with technology companies to not just inform the products

that are used in the classroom,

but also how they are taught.

And then to the second point, the fact that the impact

of AI is not purely an economic impact

or an ecological impact, it is also an emotional impact.

For all of the focus on job numbers

and what jobs will be replaced by AI, there also has

to be a reckoning with job satisfaction.

There are a lot of jobs where the very purpose of the job

is starting to be stripped away by artificial intelligence.

There was recently an interview that The Daily conducted

with a mathematics professor.

Oh, in tears. In tears, speaking about

AI's newfound ability to solve this age old problem

that inspired a crisis for him

and for other mathematicians as to what were they doing now?

What purpose did they have?

And I think that that is a question

that should be at the forefront of how we respond to AI.

Because for too long we've treated it in your language

as a mythical thing, as an unknowable thing.

And in fact, it is a thing very much within human control.

And that means that we have to

answer these questions also thinking about humanity

as the primary responsibility.

You've said that citywide AI policy has been guided

by the question of quote, What we can do in the face

of a complete abdication of federal law.

How does that affect your ability

to reign in the technology on a municipal level?

Like, what does that dynamic look like,

and where are you held back from being able

to do what you would like to do?

In other words, how would you like

to see the federal government

handling this technology right now?

I would like to see them reckon with the questions

of the similarities between the housing bubble

and the nature of AI in the economy today.

I would like to see them reckon with the

wildly varying estimates of actual profitability

of these companies and the ways in which so much

of their business dealings are attempts at continuing

to prop up a completely artificial valuation of themselves

that justifies the amount of money

that they're spending on a daily basis.

And I would like to see them reckon with the fact

that the application of AI has already been seen

to have fatal consequences.

When we're talking about AI hallucinations,

this is not just of intellectual interest.

It's also something that almost led us to war with China.

When we're talking about AI's use of outdated information,

that's what led to our government

bombing an Iranian children's school.

This is right now, this is not a hypothetical in the future.

And what we're doing here in New York City is we're looking

to utilize every tool we have

in the face of that application.

Some of those tools are very practical.

It's the implementation of a new rule by our Department

of Consumer and Worker Protection,

that realtors cannot use AI generated images of apartments.

Ah, those images did look incredible.

They looked incredible, but they were not real.

No, they were not. They were not real.

They were not honest.

And yet the housing market is tough enough.

You don't need to wonder if your dream

apartment is actually a dream.

You should know that it is something that exists.

Similarly, a lot of New Yorkers have been trapped

in these doom loops with chatbots,

so we've put together another rule

that puts a limitation on that.

These are the kinds of day-to-day actions that we can take.

However, what we are talking about is something

of international importance,

and yet all too often when it is raised at that level,

it is caricatured as this is...

Everything that we're doing is critically important

because we are in a race with China.

And that kind of an arms race terminology is used

to justify every abdication of duty in this country.

Now, you have a bafflingly good

relationship with the president.

Have you talked to him about AI?

We've had conversations about a lot

of different topics that affect the city.

Do you feel confident in his administration's ability

to get a handle on that technology?

I think that federal policy has been

lacking thus far on this.

And I think that the critiques that I've just leveled,

those are, that is how I honestly feel about

what federal policy has been thus far.

Now, I want to ask you about

a different use of technology.

WIRED has reported extensively this year on the surveillance

tech at Madison Square Garden.

We've described it as a panopticon, among other things.

We've published several stories about this.

We're actually being sued

by James Dolan over that reporting.

Thank you, James.

I want to know what you think about what is happening there.

And I'm curious about your view

on whether a private citizen,

whether someone like James Dolan should be able to wield

that kind of surveillance power over everyday New Yorkers.

No, I don't think that that should be allowed.

I think that it is indicative of much that is wrong

in our country today in terms of the use of technology.

How does one, say, the mayor of New York City

address something like that?

I think first they would do it in a WIRED interview,

and then there is also legislation

that council member Shahana Hanif has introduced.

And I think that that's an important

response to this kind of an issue.

And I think it's an issue that has frankly been true,

not just at Madison Square Garden,

I think also at Radio City Music Hall.

Or I think there was at one time reporting

of a mother taking her child to see a show

and then being barred from entering.

Yes.

Because of her professional work.

So last year I asked you if technology was making

democracy stronger or weaker.

You told me weaker in its current use, what about today?

Still weaker. Why?

What stands out to you?

I have family members sending AI videos of me

to me thinking that it's real.

[Interviewer laughs]

I mean, it's not funny. I have a family member

who complimented me on a 45-minute debate that I had

with a European member of parliament.

How'd you do? And I watched the video.

I was like, This is not me.

Apparently I did well, defeated my European AI counterpart.

But no, it wasn't real.

And I think that there is a real crisis of faith

as to what is real right now.

And some of the application of it is, you know,

it's lighthearted, it's funny,

but it is quite terrifying to think

that in an age of such little faith

in traditional institutions,

how even that could be diminished further by

the application of this technology in that way.

We need to close by talking about the future.

Okay. Democratic Party is

going through a lot of change right now.

As I mentioned earlier, democratic

socialists are having a moment.

Let's fast forward say a decade.

Okay. It's 2036.

Wow. What do you hope

that party looks like and who's running it?

I hope that party looks like one

that realizes the only majority in this country

is the working class and that it fights for it,

and that it understands that no longer can

an ambitious version of the party only be one

that we find in history books.

There's too many monuments in this city,

two incredible figures who showcase what it could look like

to fight for working class people.

We need that to be a living, breathing politic.

I think the people who run it have

to be the American people.

What are you doing in 10 years?

I don't know.

Hopefully I will have finished a second term,

but can never take that for granted.

Mayor Mamdani, thank you so much for your time.

It's a real pleasure, thank you so much.

Thank you.

[soft music]