Intel CEO Tan’s Trump problem, AT&T CEO Stankey’s memo, and Duolingo’s new “manbro” language

Story of the Week (DR):

1. Trump Demands Intel CEO’s Resignation, Says He’s ‘Highly CONFLICTED’ AND Eric and Donald Trump Jr. to Own Millions of Shares in New U.S. Manufacturing SPAC MM

1. ESG Analyst Tom Cotton: Trump's attack, posted on Truth Social Thursday, came two days after GOP Sen. Tom Cotton flagged Tan's prior investments in Chinese companies and his previous leadership at Cadence Design Systems, which recently pleaded guilty to unlawfully selling its tech to a blacklisted military university in China.

2. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan (~$70M golden hello in March; max potential $400M) directly addressed employees on Thursday after Donald Trump demanded his resignation over national security concerns, saying he has the full support of the board.

3. Tan set up a venture firm called Walden International based in San Francisco that pumped more than $5 billion into over 600 companies. More than 100 of those investments were made in China, including deals with once-obscure startups such as Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.—today China’s largest chipmaker—where he served on the board for a decade and a half.

1. Today, the executive is still chairman of Walden International. And he’s the founding managing partner at Walden Catalyst Ventures, which focuses on investments in the U.S., Europe and Israel. He also serves in that role at another venture fund, Celesta Global Capital.

2. Tan stepped out of the venture world and joined the chip industry full-time when he became interim head of San Jose, California-based Cadence Design Systems Inc. in 2008. The executive, who had previously served on the board, went on to take the permanent CEO job the next year. He stayed in the role until 2021, when he transitioned to executive chairman, and is widely credited with restoring the company’s fortunes. 

3. In late July of this year, the Department of Justice announced a plea deal that cost Cadence more than $100 million in fines. Employees at Cadence’s China unit allegedly hid the name of a customer—the National University of Defense Technology—from internal compliance in order to keep supplying it. That organization had been put on the Department of Commerce’s blacklist in 2015. The Chinese university was one of a group of supercomputer operators there that had conducted simulations of nuclear explosions, the DOJ said.

2. Shares of American Eagle surge 20% after Trump calls Sydney Sweeney campaign 'hottest ad out there' AND Epstein victims are a growing political threat to Trump

1. The Fall 2025 campaign, titled "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans," centers on a deliberate pun between "jeans" and "genes."

2. "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color... My jeans are blue."

3. All the hallmarks of a dick-tatorship:

1. American Eagle gender influence gap is -36%: Jay L. Schottenstein

1. Mr. Schottenstein has served as our Chief Executive Officer since December 2015. Prior thereto, he served as our Interim Chief Executive Officer from January 2014 to December 2015. He has served as Chairman of the Board since March 1992. He previously served the Company as Chief Executive Officer from March 1992 until December 2002 and as a Vice President and Director of the Company’s predecessors since 1980

2. Creepy nepobaby son: The grown son of an Ohio billionaire is a hooker-loving drug addict who threatened to destroy the renowned Manhattan psychiatrist his parents enlisted to help him, according to bombshell court papers. Dr. Paul Conti, a Stanford-educated psychiatrist from Oregon, alleges in a federal suit that the son also gambled away millions of dollars during trips to Las Vegas while running up credit bills and borrowing money from mobsters.

3. SB360 Capital Partners: owned by Jay and his 3 sons (sorry wife): 13 listed executes: all white men

2. last time there was a vote on Jay (2023)

3. CEO/Chair control: has been CEO 3 times; chair since 1992; $300k security; 2,011:1 ceo pay ratio; 7% of shares (passive BlackRock/Vanguard/Dimensional/Wellington: 41%; 71% board influence

4. Audit Committee Chair (which net 20 times last year) and Lead independent Director Noel Spiegel is 77 and over a decade of service

5. Nominating chair Janice Page is 76 and has served for over 2 decades

6. Compensation Committee chair has served for nearly 2 decades

3. Uber’s Sexual Assault Problem AND Uber beats on revenue, announces $20 billion stock buyback

1. A recent New York Times investigation revealed that Uber has been dealing with a significant sexual assault problem. From 2017 to 2022, the company received over 400,000 reports of sexual assault or misconduct in the United States, which averages to about one incident every eight minutes.

2. The investigation, based on thousands of internal documents, found that while Uber studied the issue and even developed potential safety features like in-car cameras and a feature to match female drivers with female passengers, the company chose not to implement these safeguards because they were concerned about their bottom line and potential lawsuits.

4. Tesla Grants Musk $29 Billion in Stock to Keep ‘Elon’s Energies Focused’ AND Elon Musk Accused of Stiffing Small Businesses for Millions of Dollars, Causing Some to File for Bankruptcy AND Elon Musk Shares Shockingly Sexist Tweet About Woman Being Property. This one's disgraceful, even for Musk AND "This Will Open the Floodgates": Tesla In Trouble as Jury Orders It to Pay $329 Million After Autopilot Death AND Tesla withheld data, lied, and misdirected police and plaintiffs to avoid blame in Autopilot crash AND Elon Musk Appears to Now Be the Most Hated Person in America, According to New Research

Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):

1. DR: Waste from Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factories is now powering the Vermont grid

1. Now that the ice cream waste can travel by pipe to become biogas, Ben & Jerry’s can also make 600 fewer truck journeys a year, reducing the company’s carbon emissions.

2. DR: Gates Foundation is giving $2.5 billion to fund women’s health research

3. MM: Musk, Bezos, and Zuck are going full alpha male. America's girlbosses are fed up.

1. When companies won't offer work-from-home policies or the flexibility that working parents need, it can embolden people to become more entrepreneurial and build under their own terms.

2. This is the greatest backlash - if every woman in a “masculine default”, “founder mode” 13 year old man baby culture where “Jamie Dimon says” and John Stankey (see assholiest) says “maybe you don’t fit” goes and founds there own firms, I’m giddy to see them wipe the floor with those smug billionaire assholes.  

3. Side note - I missed this quote from January FT article in the post-Zuck-on-Rogan “masculine energy” interview, but it would have been assholiest of the decade:

1. “I feel liberated,” said a top banker. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled . . . it’s a new dawn.”

4. MM: In that vein - A long-running anti-DEI lawsuit could help companies defend themselves from reverse-racism claims DR MM

1. Hello Alice as goodliest of the week - take down that fucknut Stephen Miller and his fake Nazi manboys.

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

1. Alex Karp and the men who go to elite universities and say elite universities are bullshit manbabies

1. Palantir CEO says working at his $430 billion software company is better than a degree from Harvard or Yale: ‘No one cares about the other stuff’

2. Karp went to Haverford, then Stanford for a JD where he met Peter Thiel (who also doesn’t like elite education)

3. This past spring, the company also notably established the Meritocracy Fellowship, a four-month, paid internship for high school graduates who may be having second thoughts about higher education. Program admission is solely based on “merit and academic excellence,” but applicants still need Ivy League-level test scores to qualify. This includes at least a 1460 on the SAT or a 33 on the ACT, which are both above their respective 98th percentiles.

4. According to Karp, the internship was created in direct response to the “shortcomings of university admissions.”

5. Here’s the problem: there ARE shortcomings to elite colleges, mostly that they exude exclusivism and a commodity - but it’s still a pretty rich for a guy who WENT to Stanford where he met his future funder and mentor to talk about how bullshit it was

2. John Stankey and the re-rise of the Jack Welch man-directive manbabies MM

1. It is incredibly encouraging that 73% of our employees took the time to respond to the survey, with 79% of those respondents feeling committed and engaged with their work at AT&T. While this is reassuring, especially considering the amount of change we've navigated as a company recently, it wasn't a surprise to me that we fell short of our engagement goal.

1. TRANSLATION: I’m not surprised so many of you think we suck, I’ve been here 5 years as CEO and I’m not awesome at my job… but hold your breath while I tell you how it’s your fault

2. This note may also help you identify areas where your professional expectations might be misaligned with the strategic direction of this company.

1. TRANSLATION: It’s your fault

3. I understand that some of you may have started your tour with this company expecting an "employment deal" rooted in loyalty, tenure, and conformance with the associated compensation, work structure, and benefits. We have consciously shifted away from some of these elements and towards a more market-based culture — focused on rewarding capability, contribution, and commitment.

1. TRANSLATION: Fuck your job, this is a meritocracy now.  A manly meritocracy.

4. I understand that many may find the demands of your daily lives challenging and difficult. Elder care, job stress, child rearing challenges, economic uncertainty, community unrest, technology anxiety — the list can get long…We run a dynamic, customer-facing business, tackling large-scale, challenging initiatives. If the requirements dictated by this dynamic do not align to your personal desires, you have every right to find a career opportunity that is suitable to your aspirations and needs. That said, if a self-directed, virtual, or hybrid work schedule is essential for you to manage your career aspirations and life challenges, you will have a difficult time aligning your priorities with those of the company and the culture we aim to establish.

1. TRANSLATION: We know your life is hard, but shut the fuck up about it because I don’t care.

5. WHERE THE FUCK IS THIS BOARD?

1. Here are the “go hard or go home” board members

2. Bill Kennard, lead "independent" director connected in 13 loops to other directors, been there for 11 years, who got his undergrad in communications from Stanford and worked at the FCC and was an ambassador - proving once again that “communications” isn’t a qualification for communicating?

3. Marissa Mayer - maybe this business thing isn’t for you?  

4. Mike Mcallister, ex Humana CEO, who was investigated for duping elderly into thinking Obamacare’s passage would cut Medicare?

5. Scott Ford, who lead the biggest landline company before pivoting to selling coffee, as your bright star into the future of tech?

6. That’s where the board is - unqualified for the moment, highly interconnected, with long careers of average performance

3. Luis von Ahn and the tech bro “sorry, not sorry” we were just “being edgy” no but seriously I know what’s best for you secretly manbabies

1. Duolingo's CEO says he learned a hard lesson about 'edgy posts' and going viral

2. First, says Duolingo, the app for learning languages, would be “AI-first”

3. Then says they’re not hiring anymore as long as it can be done by AI

4. Then says schools will really just be childcare with AI teachers, and teachers will just “take care of the children” and you need schools for the “childcare”

5. In his apology, he said sorry for being “edgy”

1. Yes, it was the edginess, not the assholery

6. If you want to quickly identify a manbaby, it’s easy: first they “say” something they really think, then their apology basically is “sorry you didn’t get it, I won’t say it again”

Headliniest of the Week

1. DR: Shareholders Judge Directors by Their Faces, Study Finds

2. MM: Trump calls for Intel CEO to 'resign immediately'

1. More ESG analysis:

1. Boeing’s ex-CFO

2. BlackRock’s ex founder

3. The former CEO at Jack Dorsey’s Square

4. A partner at Sequoia

5. A Princeton professor

6. The former CEO of HP

7. The chair who’s a VC and has been there since 2009

Who Won the Week?

1. DR: Boston Mayor Michelle Wu for calling out the billionaire Kraft family regarding the new stadium proposed for the New England Revolution: “We haven’t asked for anything out of the ordinary for any significant development, much less a mega-development like this one … To this day, the Kraft Group has provided the city no meaningful technical information … What we’ve heard has stayed at a conceptual level that is insufficient for any serious negotiation.

1. Citing the proposed figure of $750,000 that the Kraft Group would pay to Boston as a mitigation fee, Wu said, “It is an unserious proposal … the figure is “just 1.1 percent of the $68 million mitigation package that was paid for the Everett casino project right nearby years ago.”

2. Wu, who as the incumbent is also campaigning against Josh Kraft (son of Revolution owner Robert Kraft) in Boston’s mayoral race, didn’t miss a chance to land a political dig at her opponent: Referencing the proposed mitigation fee, she said that “$750,000 is just one-and-a-half month’s of a billionaire son’s allowance. It is nowhere near the scale of what we need to address the plans that have already been laid out by our residents, with our traffic engineers, with the coordination of the entire region.”

2. MM: Jamie Smith at EY for writing the only other 2025 US proxy review that included a whole section on director votes

Predictions

1. DR: Trump tries to fit into a pair of Sydney Sweeney’s jeans (re: the OJ glove) to prove he did not know Epstein. The American Eagle stock surges

2. MM: Duolingo releases a new language choice, “Manbro”, in which it teaches how to apologize, how to be more intense, and why you should bow to your AI overlords