On a crisp fall day in Midtown Manhattan, some of the most powerful people in sports gathered for a meeting of NBA owners.
Former Microsoft CEO and current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers Steve Ballmer was in attendance, walking the hallways with a folder and his phone, fulfilling his duties as the chairman of the audit committee.
Since leaving his post at Microsoft, Ballmer has been sharing his time between basketball and his not-for-profit venture USAFacts. The billionaire, who is estimated to be one of the richest people in the world, has turned his love of computers, data, and facts into crunching government statistics into digestible information for the public.
He spoke with Scripps News’ Disinformation Desk about getting real information out to Americans and combating disinformation.
Here is Liz Landers' conversation with Ballmer from Monday, Sept. 9, 2024:
Liz Landers: Was there a moment or incident that spurred you to start USAFacts and doing these Just The Facts videos?
Steve Ballmer: Yeah, there were two things. I got started on USAFacts when my wife and I were talking about our philanthropy, focused in on economic mobility. And I said, 'Look, the government takes care of all that.' And my wife said, 'No, we're going to do philanthropy.' But I really wanted to understand government's impact in this specific area. And then that got me generally interested in where does government raise its money, what does it spend it on and what kind of outcomes. And I found that hard to answer. Hence, started USAFacts. We're now since I started that, we're nine years further in, now almost 10 years actually further in, and that's evolved to how do we help educate the American public on these issues, particularly in a year like this, an election year. And we came to the video format as a good tool, which is why we produced our "Just the Facts" series.
Liz Landers: These videos are highly produced. They're very slick. But false information and disinformation spreads really quickly online. How can this project counter the virality of bad info?
Steve Ballmer: I don't know that anything will stop people, if you will, exercising their First Amendment rights with untruths. I don't know that. I mean, in some instances what is true isn't even known. I mean, you could look outside on a gray day with a little mist and say, it's raining today. And I could look outside because there's no drops and say, no, it's not raining today. And neither one of us would perceive right or wrong. We've kind of defined what we think of as a fact. It's something that happened in the past, not in the present or the future. It's something you can measure numerically and put in context, and it's something that's published by the U.S. government. That's what we've decided a quote fact is.
Liz Landers: How will these videos, this information reach people in an age where everybody is getting their news on TikTok, X, etc.?
Steve Ballmer: Well, one of the places people are receiving their news is YouTube. And if you look at, so far, the consumption of the videos we're producing on so far, we've talked about immigration, economy, budget, etc. You know, we've had, I don't know, 14 million people come take a look. We'll have, what, 150, 160 million maybe people vote in the election, but 14 million is not bad. It's not bad.
Liz Landers: How do you think people are using this information? Do you think it's mostly average people who just want to know a little bit more about the government or these government officials? Are they journalists? Who's the consumer?
Steve Ballmer: No, primarily it's people who are interested in their government, what it does and how it functions. There aren't enough people in government to give you 14 million views on on a video. I mean, so it's not just for what I would call the inside baseball people. Now, glad to have them use it. But our design point is for the people who are willing to look at a couple of numbers or charts, who are interested in really understanding the problem without a partisan bias. I think we have tens of millions of people in the country who fall into that category, and we'll keep focusing there.
Liz Landers: I know one of your videos said you're not running for president. Are you endorsing anybody for president?
Steve Ballmer: That would be partisan and USAFacts is a nonpartisan activity.
Liz Landers: So you're sticking very much in the middle for this election?
Steve Ballmer: We're publishing the data that exists. Now will I vote? Sure, I'm a citizen. I'll go privately and I'll vote. There are issues on which I have clear public opinion. Do I think our country needs to spend more on preschool for less affluent kids? I will say that. And it turns out, by the way, that's a nonpartisan issue. Both parties have belief in that — whether people are willing to budget for it and pay for it is a different matter. But it's not an issue on which parties tend to disagree.
Liz Landers: We're in the middle of an election year. Fact checkers are ramping up their work. How do you see how the news business is fact checking right now? Are we doing a good job?
Steve Ballmer: I think it's tough to be in the news business these days because the consumption pattern that the political environment is taking advantage of, of small snack clips, numbers, you know, using social media. The media is having to use the same tools. And to actually do fact-checking isn't just the number was six instead of five. That's a fact-check, if you will. But it often relates to context. You know, we talk about gas prices. Gas prices, inflation-adjusted are not actually at a high if you look over the course of the last 25 years. And yet, I think most people will say they are at a high, but not inflation-adjusted. I was shocked to learn that Americans today only spend 4% of their, on average — averages are tough, too — but we can give you a more detailed breakout on energy. And that number was 8% if you go back to 1980. So context winds up important. And is it easy to, quote, fact-check context? It's a little harder to go do that. And it's a little harder than for the media to have the space to do that on social media, for example.
Liz Landers: Something that I hear, as a journalist, is fact-checking, can be kind of anti-free speech. Do you worry about that with your work in your organization? How do you balance that?
Steve Ballmer: Again, if you say what happened yesterday by the numbers produced by professional statisticians, I would say fact-checking that there's no, there's no, notion of offending somebody's free speech. You could still say it. You said, 'Hey, you know, last year we spent $5 on national defense.' And I come along and say, 'No, we really spent more like $800 billion on national defense.' I can say that. You could say what you said. And I'll say, and my source is the OMB production of the budget from last year, the actual expense data. That's my source. What was your source? We can have that dialog. There's nothing anti-free speech in that.
Liz Landers: How much money are you willing to put behind this project?
Steve Ballmer: I'm investing tens of millions of dollars a year. It varies. Not hundreds, but tens. And it varies. Election year, we'll spend a little more. I'm not saying all I'll spend arbitrarily large numbers every year, but I think we can do a good job creating stuff that is relevant, important with the dollars we're investing. We'll get better and better, more prolific, if you will, using A.I. tools. And the more we see market response and interest, these videos have been an amazing thing for us, but the more we see that kind of interest, the more I would of feed the project if you will.
Liz Landers: Why did you decide to fund this initiative over, say, local journalism, which is really struggling to pay the bills but has an important role in society and getting facts out to people?
Steve Ballmer: We had, I had a specific point of view about what a fact was. So I fund this. Now at the same time, my wife and I actually fund a little bit of local journalism too. We believe in economic mobility. We are funding projects, with appropriate separation, at the Seattle Times, so they can provide more coverage. And they're raising money in a variety of places, whether it's education, mental health. So it's not for us because we've been financially blessed either/or and they serve very different purposes. What we're trying to do is very different than the things that local journalism needs to do.
Liz Landers: So you do still see an important role for local journalism and journalism in general in this facts ecosystem?
Steve Ballmer: I think the role of journalism needs to evolve, will evolve. I mean, capitalism says it will evolve and people will find various niches in the world. I don't think the old local journalism form factor necessarily is appropriate for tomorrow. And I think just saying, 'Hey, let's keep the old newspaper alive as it was or just take it online.' That may not be the formula of the future now. Are people still interested in what happens locally? Yes. Do they want to be educated? Yes. And so the question is, how do these things evolve? You know, right now, if I want to know something in real time, I'm less likely to go to any media source than I am to go to Twitter, to X, to see, because they'll capture something is late-breaking and it may or may not be accurate. And I don't trust it necessarily to be accurate because I don't necessarily know who the source is, but at least I can get a sense of trend. And so how does local media evolve in that world? You know, there's a car accident on interstate, blah, blah, blah. You know, who knows that first? If you want to know about car accidents, Google Maps. The first place you're asking you to know about car accidents, probably, or at least traffic stoppages. It's Google Maps.
Liz Landers: Or the local sheriff will have tweeted or something like that.
Steve Ballmer: Exactly.
Liz Landers: Speaking of X, Elon Musk purchased the platform. He is another billionaire. He's taking his money in a different direction. There's been a lot of disinformation and misinformation that has been spread on that platform. You were just alluding to that. How do you see his impact on the information sphere right now?
Steve Ballmer: I think on each of the social media platforms, people can express themselves. And what people would express, whether it's on X or TikTok or Instagram, will reflect their view of reality. And sometimes it won't match what I might see as reality. Probably the most different thing about X is it actually is textual, as opposed to video or as opposed to primarily photographic, because the kinds of things that people use in these evaluations tend to be more textual. I mean, would you turn, for the latest car accident, would you turn to X? Would you turn to Google Maps? Or would you turn to Instagram? Probably not Instagram. Yeah. Probably not TikTok. X? Yes. So has it by its market positioning it has a little bit different role. Do I generally believe people ought to be able to express themselves? Yes. Do I think there are certain, you know, hate speech, etc.? No. But I'm glad we have a platform in which we can all register our opinions. Exactly how that should be regulated? That's up to our democracy to decide.
Liz Landers: So you think he's running things OK there right now? He's out there for Trump at this point. He could be very influential in this election.
Steve Ballmer: The fact he said that is interesting. And Twitter, X users, they know that. And so you can put a filter and say, is this man influencing what appears in any way that may express his political opinions and you might make a different set of judgments and how you read things on X or not. But it's a decision he got to make and it's a decision his customers get to make. Is he running his business the right way? I don't know. It's his business.
Liz Landers: He's losing money.
Steve Ballmer: You know, that's his business. If consumers don't think he's doing the right job for them, guess what? They will leave or they will put less importance on what they read on X. And it is unusual, I think, for CEOs of most companies to so blatantly express political points of view. But you find it more in the media business. I mean, at least historically, I think you've had a lot of editors with power who it was clear with their political perspectives were. This may be just the modern-day equivalent of that.
Liz Landers: Your videos focus on issues. One issue that I have not seen you do a video on that I'm curious to hear you talk about is artificial intelligence and how do you see artificial intelligence impacting the way we think about facts, data, information?
Steve Ballmer: I think of artificial intelligence as a tool. This is going to sound maybe blah blah blah, but it's a tool that helps people do their jobs better or to live better. But at this stage, it is not an absolute delivery vehicle of at least the kinds of things we call facts, i.e. numbers that are produced by the U.S. government presented in context. Now we are trying to use those tools to help us do our job better. Can we use A.I. techniques to collect government data better? Maybe we can. To assemble it? Maybe we can. But we're still going to have fact-checking after fact-checking. I mean, in some senses, you could take the results you get out of one A.I. system and pump them right into another. You run them through three systems and you're fact-checking every place along the way. Then you can have humans fact-check as opposed to having to do everything from ground up. So I think we should be able to get to a point where we have more accurate information, more readily available than we do today because of A.I. techniques.
Liz Landers: How are you using AI in your life?
Steve Ballmer: Well, I'll point to the two concrete things: Number one, for me personally, I generally don't start with search engines now. When I am interested in looking something up, if I'm just going to navigate to the Amazon site, probably the search engine. But if I really have a question, you know, I cooked for my wife's birthday, I started with Microsoft Copilot. No surprise on that, I do have some bias. I'm all in for Microsoft, but I started there. I wanted to look at the market caps of a set of companies as opposed to going to search engine one by one by one. No, I asked Copilot to go do that job for me. So I use the tools, the AI tools, as a productivity aide for me today. I do like the way Copilot and a number of the other tools, they’ll now give you sources. They'll say this number was sourced from blah, blah, blah. And you can decide on whether you believe the accuracy of that source, which I think is a key place for the A.I. tools to go.
Liz Landers: It sounds like you're using A.I. in your USAFacts nonprofit work.
Steve Ballmer: We are, and yet I want to emphasize we take no risk on the accuracy of the numbers we present. And so we do use them to enhance our productivity. We do not use them today to give a definitive answer to what government numbers say.
Liz Landers: Are you concerned that artificial intelligence could impact these upcoming elections?
Steve Ballmer: I think fakes can. I mean, artificial intelligence is a big, broad word. You know, will there be fake speeches and... Yeah, there probably will be. And will they affect the election? Partisans on both sides will use those to feed the base, if you will. Will that swing the elections? I don’t know, you have to ask pollster types that question. I hope the center can stay grounded in reality and that people in the center will spend the time... They're in the center for a reason. That is: they haven't decided. And they'll spend the time to accurately and sort of dispassionately analyze what you know, what's true.
Liz Landers: You know computers intimately. You say you love computers, facts, data. Did you think that we would get to a point in the U.S. where we would be arguing about what the facts are? Did you foresee this moment coming? Could anything have stopped this?
Steve Ballmer: Did I foresee it? No. Should I? Should any of us have doubted that this is an issue? Go back to Daniel Patrick Moynihan saying we're all entitled to our own opinions, we're just not entitled to our own facts. So this is somehow not a new topic. I don't know when he said it sometime in the '60s, but the notion that says we're not agreeing on the current state of affairs as we talk about our opinions for the future, that it's been true for decades, it may just be more pronounced now.
Liz Landers: But it's really bad now, don't you think?
Steve Ballmer: It certainly feels a lot worse. I'm 68. It certainly feels a lot worse than any time in my life. And let's say I got cognizant of these things probably in the late '60s so in my, whatever, 50-odd years of taking a look at this stuff. Yeah, it seems more severe.
Liz Landers: What's Steve Ballmer's information diet? When you were a young man, what did you read to learn about the world?
Steve Ballmer: The first thing I started reading was the International Herald Tribune. My dad had been transferred to work in Brussels and we lived in a neighborhood basically with no English-speaking people but we did get the International Herald Tribune every day, and I read the baseball scores and my father owned about five stocks, so I'd check those out. And whatever interest I had in world news and current events, in fifth grade, it was all the International Herald Tribune. That's where I started. We came home from Europe and I would say it was network news and our local paper. By college, then it looked like national papers and less broadcast news. And it continues to evolve today. Everything basically I consume would be online. And you know, on X, for example, there's probably 20 news sources that I follow. So I can say, 'Hey, what is it that Scripps says? Hey, what is it that The New York Times says? Hey, what is it that Bloomberg's saying?' But I follow a number. That becomes my news diet. Oh and sports bloggers, because of my involvement with the Los Angeles Clippers.
Liz Landers: Can I ask you a bonus question about the Clippers?
Steve Ballmer: Yes, ma'am.
Liz Landers: I feel like it's acceptable while we're here for the NBA owners meeting. The Clippers have had a number of stars who are good, but what does it take for the team to go from being a good team to being a great team?
Steve Ballmer: The history of the Clippers has much to it. I really just think about my 10 years with the team. We have had some outstanding players. When I originally bought the team, we had three All-NBA players, which is phenomenal, but we didn't win. We never got out of the second round of the playoffs. We've had three outstanding players last year. We got nipped by injury. So what does it take? It takes great players, good role players, good support from staff, a lot of luck on the injury front. You know, even who you play first, second, third in the playoffs matters a lot because teams match up differently against one another. So I would say luck, skill. Even the players you get, the people who are going through the draft, are they, I'll say bad the right year? Tim Duncan of San Antonio was great. They had David Robinson. He gets hurt, they go down, they get a top pick, they pick Tim Duncan and they're even greater. You know, there's an element of luck involved in all of this... and obviously, at the end of the day, it's you got to have the players who play well together.
Liz Landers: The WNBA is starting to catch up with you guys, maybe not catch up, but people have seen a really renewed interest in seeing the women play. What do you attribute that to?
Steve Ballmer: Well, I think, I think it's phenomenal. And when you say we, the NBA owns a piece of the WNBA, so we're all in on the W. I think it's like the NBA. It's a star-driven league. And there's a lot of stars. I mean, Caitlin Clark may have been the let's say the match that lit the fuse and she's phenomenal. But you have other players now. People say, OK, well, we can, we're going to take more of a look at Angel Reese. We're going to take more of a look at A'ja Wilson. We're going to take more of a look at even Breanna Stewart, former Seattle Storm, but she's moved to New York. And I think once you trigger that interest in the stars because unless you're passionate locally, we tend to be star-driven leagues. It's different than a lot of sports because there's few players, at least versus other men's sports. You don't wear a helmet. People recognize you and becomes much more a star-driven thing than some other sports.
