The Tucker Carlson Show - Pavel Durov

00:00:00.260 Growth is essential for every entrepreneur. At BDC, we get that. And the businesses we support grow at double the average rate. Accelerating the pace, we're on it. BDC. Financing. Advising. Know-how.

00:00:13.960 Telegram is one of the fastest growing and biggest social messaging apps, text apps in the world. Popular all around the world, including in the United States, but almost nothing or very little seems to be known about the company.

00:00:39.900 It's headquartered in Dubai, where we are now. It is run and owned, and the software is designed, written by Pavel Dharov, who began it some years ago, who almost never does interviews.

00:00:52.820 It turns out he's in a very interesting person, extremely interesting person. We learned that the other day while talking to him, and he has agreed to sit down and tell us about himself and his company, and we thought it'd be definitely worth hearing.

00:01:04.060 And with that, Pavel, thank you for joining us.

00:01:06.040 Well, thank you for having me.

00:01:06.960 So, I confess, I've used Telegram. I didn't know anything about you or the company, and I was just kind of amazed by your story.

00:01:15.460 And if you wouldn't mind just recreating it a little bit for our audience, where are you from, how did you start this, and why?

00:01:22.580 That will be a long story.

00:01:23.980 That's okay.

00:01:24.800 I was born in 1984 in the Soviet Union, so it was a fun year to be born.

00:01:30.040 And back then, I could witness the deficiencies of the centralized system we had in the Soviet Union.

00:01:38.520 When I was four years old, my family moved to Italy, where I could compare what I saw in Turin, Italy, with what I experienced in the Soviet Union.

00:01:46.960 And I thought the capitalist system, the free market system, is definitely better, at least for me.

00:01:55.380 And I went to school in Italy.

00:01:57.140 I became sort of a part of the European as a result.

00:02:03.440 But then, when the Soviet Union collapsed, we decided to move back to Russia.

00:02:10.980 In Italy, though, me and my brother, we had a lot of fun time.

00:02:17.440 He was shown live on Italian TV as a young prodigy kid who could solve cubic equations in real time, being just 10 years old.

00:02:31.300 And that was considered to be impossible back then in Italy.

00:02:35.120 I don't know what a cubic equation is, so yeah, it sounds difficult.

00:02:38.880 Definitely.

00:02:39.580 And when I first went to school, I didn't know how to speak Italian.

00:02:43.560 I didn't know a single Italian word.

00:02:45.420 And a lot of teachers said, like, this guy, well, this kid will not be going to be successful in our school.

00:02:52.520 By the end of the first year, I was second best.

00:02:54.580 By the end of the next year, I was the best student in our class.

00:02:59.780 So, it also showed me that, well, you could excel, you could compete.

00:03:05.380 I liked that competitive environment.

00:03:08.040 And then, when we got back to Russia, it was a little bit chaotic.

00:03:11.980 The only reason we got back is my father got an offer to run one of the departments in the St. Petersburg State University.

00:03:20.200 He's one of the famous scholars and writers dealing with ancient Roman literature.

00:03:27.060 And that experience was very different, and I still enjoyed it, because in Russia, in the 90s, you had these experimental schools where you were taught everything.

00:03:42.040 Like, we had six foreign languages.

00:03:44.360 We had math, like, very specialized.

00:03:46.820 Six foreign languages at once? 0.80

00:03:48.260 Six foreign languages in parallel.

00:03:50.400 You would have math similar that you would have in specialized math schools.

00:03:54.920 And, like, chemistry at the same level, you would have at schools specialized in chemistry and biology.

00:04:00.840 So, that was really intense.

00:04:03.520 My brother, he became world champion in maths, in the International Olympics, in maths and programming many times in a row.

00:04:14.560 Absolute best myself.

00:04:16.600 I was just the best student at my school.

00:04:19.040 Also did some victories in local competitions in several areas.

00:04:25.940 But we both were very passionate about coding and designing stuff.

00:04:32.180 And because we brought this IBM PC XT computer from Italy back in the early 90s, we were one of the few families in Russia who could actually teach ourselves how to program.

00:04:49.160 And we started to do that.

00:04:50.920 I was in the university, I was building websites for my fellow students.

00:04:57.920 And as a result, you know, I started a company that became what they call the Facebook of Russia.

00:05:05.900 We don't like to name it that way because we actually managed to do a lot of things before Facebook.

00:05:15.220 And that defined how the social media industry developed in the years to come.

00:05:22.920 The company's name was VK.

00:05:24.360 I started it when I was 21 years old.

00:05:27.180 I just graduated university.

00:05:29.100 And it eventually became the largest social network, the most popular social network in Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Kazakhstan and a bunch of other post-Soviet countries.

00:05:40.660 That was a significant effort on my side because I, at a certain point, was the sole employee of the company.

00:05:51.300 I would write the code myself.

00:05:53.500 I would do the design myself.

00:05:55.380 I would manage the servers myself.

00:05:58.420 It was quite intense.

00:05:59.500 I even responded to customer support requests.

00:06:04.180 Barely slept.

00:06:05.040 But that was a fun time when I was 21, 22 years old.

00:06:09.920 And then the company grew, like I said, to somewhere about 100 million active users, which was a lot back then.

00:06:18.140 It was, I think, 2012 or 2011 when we faced our first issues in Russia.

00:06:29.360 Because, you see, I was still a big believer in these values of free market, freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly.

00:06:38.940 So when the Russian opposition started to use VK to organize large protests in Russia, where, like, almost half a million people would go and protest on the main square or some of the main squares of the city.

00:06:53.000 We were requested to ban these communities on VK by the government, and I refused.

00:07:02.540 So the government asked you to shut down communications between their opponents.

00:07:08.640 Well, VK is a social networking platform.

00:07:10.680 Right.

00:07:10.860 So they have this large public communities that anybody can join, anybody can read what people are discussing or what the administrators are posting.

00:07:22.460 They can comment, they can share.

00:07:24.360 So it was a tool for these protesters to organize themselves.

00:07:28.680 Back then, it wasn't about us, you know, siding with one side, with one part of the political fight or the other.

00:07:36.900 But it was us defending the freedom of speech and the freedom of assembly, which we believed was the right thing.

00:07:43.960 But that didn't go too well with the government.

00:07:48.560 And they were not too happy about that, I would say.

00:07:51.920 And in a few years from then, in 2013, we had a similar situation, where, you know, you had these protests in Ukraine, where people, again, would use VK to organize themselves and go to the main square of the city and show their disagreement with the government.

00:08:13.440 And we received a request slash demand from the Russian side saying, you have to give us the private data of the organizers of this protest.

00:08:27.360 And our response was, wait, wait a minute, this is a different country.

00:08:31.540 We won't betray our Ukrainian users because you asked us to do that.

00:08:36.940 We decided to refuse and that didn't go too well with the Russian government as well.

00:08:43.580 So at the end of that year, I had to make a difficult decision because I was offered basically a choice between two suboptimal options.

00:08:55.000 One of which was, I would start complying to whatever the leaders of the country told me to do.

00:09:03.680 The other one was, I could sell my stake in the company, retire, resign as the CEO and leave the country.

00:09:16.960 I chose the latter.

00:09:18.140 If I could just ask you to pause, it's a little strange because I have heard people say that Telegram is a part of the Russian government.

00:09:28.620 And you're describing the opposite.

00:09:30.360 You're saying you had to leave the country because you wouldn't bow to their demands.

00:09:34.340 Well, exactly like you're saying.

00:09:36.060 People who have very limited knowledge of where Telegram came from, they would make these claims.

00:09:43.940 They could be encouraged by our competitors who see it as an easy way to discredit us because, you know, Telegram is spreading like forest fire.

00:09:54.040 Two and a half million users sign up every day and we're sort of a threat.

00:09:58.600 So I'm not surprised there's this perception because our competitors, they spend tens of billions on marketing and they're known for using PR firms to also engage in campaigns like that.

00:10:13.080 So how much do you spend on marketing?

00:10:15.900 Zero.

00:10:17.000 Zero dollars in dollars?

00:10:18.940 Zero dollars.

00:10:20.220 We've never spent anything on acquiring users for marketing purposes.

00:10:26.040 We never promoted Telegram, you know, on other social platforms in any way.

00:10:33.220 This is very different from other apps.

00:10:36.940 You could see them being promoted here or there.

00:10:40.700 Telegram is different.

00:10:41.400 All of our growth is purely organic and we got to almost 900 million users without having to spend anything on ads to promote Telegram.

00:10:56.880 Amazing.

00:10:57.660 I'm sorry to interrupt your narrative.

00:10:59.380 No, it's just interesting because I have heard people say that, but it sounds like the opposite of the truth.

00:11:03.660 So you decided to sell the company, resign as CEO and leave your country. 0.95

00:11:09.700 Yes, that's what I did.

00:11:11.520 It was a bit painful because obviously my first company was my baby.

00:11:16.100 I created my stuff.

00:11:17.180 There was a lot of creativity, time and effort invested in that platform.

00:11:22.200 But at the same time, you know, I understood that I would rather be free.

00:11:28.460 I would want to take orders from anyone.

00:11:31.620 And I left behind probably a comfortable life.

00:11:35.280 But for me, it was never about becoming rich.

00:11:41.540 For me, everything in my life was about becoming free.

00:11:44.960 Yes.

00:11:45.180 And to the extent it is possible, my mission in life was to allow other people to also become free in a sense.

00:11:54.400 And using the platforms that we created or I created, my hope was that they could express their freedoms.

00:12:05.680 This is the mission of Telegram.

00:12:07.700 And it was also, in part, the mission of my previous company, BK.

00:12:12.800 We wanted to pause this interview just for a minute to point something out.

00:12:15.700 When the Russian government asked Pavel Durov to use his social media company to censor its political opponents, he refused.

00:12:23.160 He said he would rather resign and leave the country where he was born than participate in something like that.

00:12:29.580 Such was his commitment to free speech.

00:12:32.020 Now, you've got to compare that, what he did, what Pavel Durov did, to what Mark Zuckerberg did or Praag Agarwal, the guy who ran Twitter before Elon Musk bought it.

00:12:40.420 But both of them have collaborated with governments to censor people, and that's shameful.

00:12:47.960 So we believe Pavel, when he says that his app, Telegram, will be a bastion of free speech because it has been.

00:12:54.540 And we believe him because he's shown how committed to that he is.

00:12:58.120 So we've decided that we're going to launch with pride our own Telegram channel to give one more avenue to reach people with our content free from censorship.

00:13:05.960 So if you're on Telegram, we ask that you would subscribe to our new channel by searching for our username listed below.

00:13:13.600 We're honored to be doing this.

00:13:15.460 We're going to get back to our conversation with Pavel Durov.

00:13:17.860 So you start Telegram after you leave Russia, correct?

00:13:21.380 Yeah.

00:13:21.680 So the idea for Telegram came when we were still based in Russia, because at some point we had this very stressful situation where armed policemen would come to my house, try to break in, because I refused to take down this opposition groups that I mentioned earlier.

00:13:46.220 And I realized there is no secure means of communication.

00:13:50.060 I realized I want to tell my brother what's going on to coordinate whatever we want to do.

00:13:57.040 And every tool to communicate I could use was not really secure, not encrypted.

00:14:05.020 It was not safe to use them.

00:14:06.920 So I thought, hmm, it could be a good idea to actually come up with a decently encrypted messaging app.

00:14:14.260 And my brother, being the genius that he is, he was able to create this encryption standard that we're using up until this day with minor changes.

00:14:25.860 So your brother wrote the encryption?

00:14:28.220 Yes.

00:14:29.120 Well, my brother had two PhDs in maths, super smart.

00:14:32.840 He could, you know, he's an expert in cryptography.

00:14:36.420 He designed the basic principles of the Telegram's encryption.

00:14:42.520 I was more on the user interface side, the way how the app works, the features, etc.

00:14:50.560 He was responsible for the encryption side.

00:14:54.500 So where did you go when you left Russia?

00:14:56.460 We tried several places.

00:14:59.620 We first went to Berlin.

00:15:01.820 We tried to set up a company in Berlin.

00:15:04.300 We then tried London, Singapore, San Francisco.

00:15:08.700 You name it, we've been everywhere.

00:15:11.360 Why didn't you stay in any of those places?

00:15:14.460 Oh, because the bureaucratic hurdles were just too difficult to overcome.

00:15:20.100 Now, I was bringing the best in class programmers in the world to these places, and I was trying to hire them from a local company.

00:15:33.160 And the response I got in places like Germany, for example, is that, no, no, no, you can't hire people from outside of the European Union,

00:15:41.700 because you should first run some newspaper ad in the local magazine or whatever, and then for six months nobody responds from the engineers that are available inside the European Union and Germany.

00:15:57.500 Then you're allowed kind of to hire outsiders, and I thought it was a crazy idea because...

00:16:03.540 Why didn't you just say they were illiterate refugees? 0.87

00:16:08.040 Well, because we didn't consider ourselves refugees.

00:16:10.100 We were, you know, very successful people.

00:16:13.320 We could have gone anywhere.

00:16:15.940 No, but if you told them you were illiterate refugees, they would let you stay. 1.00

00:16:21.780 Yeah.

00:16:22.680 So you go from Germany to Singapore to London to San Francisco.

00:16:28.640 What happened in San Francisco?

00:16:30.220 In San Francisco, we really thought it would be the place for us to be in because all the tech companies are there or around San Francisco.

00:16:40.100 And there were two things that happened that made us think twice.

00:16:47.620 Well, one thing is pretty obvious.

00:16:49.560 I was in San Francisco.

00:16:51.280 I got attacked on the street after visiting, I think it was Jack Dorsey in Twitter, in the Twitter's office.

00:17:01.580 And I was walking back at 8 p.m. to my hotel, and I got attacked in the street.

00:17:08.720 This is the only country where I got attacked in the street.

00:17:12.680 What happened?

00:17:13.420 Just three big guys tried to grab my phone from my hands.

00:17:18.680 I was tweeting about the fact that I just met the founder of Twitter.

00:17:23.800 That seemed like a right idea for me back then to do.

00:17:28.560 And I got attacked.

00:17:30.420 I didn't want to let them have my phone.

00:17:33.060 They probably didn't expect resistance.

00:17:38.240 So I snatched my phone back.

00:17:40.240 There was a short fight with the guys.

00:17:42.240 There was a little bit of blood involved.

00:17:44.320 But I managed to run away and decided I should probably stay.

00:17:50.120 They probably don't mug a lot of Russians.

00:17:51.560 They might have been surprised.

00:17:52.400 Well, they were much taller than me, I must admit.

00:17:56.780 And there were three of them.

00:17:58.100 But I think I put up a good fight.

00:18:01.320 Were you surprised that this happened in San Francisco?

00:18:03.640 Completely.

00:18:04.560 Yeah.

00:18:05.240 It was a shock to me because I traveled a lot.

00:18:09.180 That was the first place I got attacked.

00:18:12.420 And I thought, all right, maybe we shouldn't look at San Francisco.

00:18:18.060 Maybe there are other places in America where…

00:18:20.400 Where you don't get attacked?

00:18:21.900 Yeah, exactly.

00:18:24.640 But there's this second part, which was probably more alarming there in the U.S.

00:18:32.200 We got too much attention from the FBI, the security agencies, wherever we came to the U.S.

00:18:40.600 So to give you an example, last time I was in the U.S., I brought an engineer that is working for Telegram.

00:18:48.340 And there was an attempt to secretly hire my engineer behind my back by cybersecurity officers or agents, wherever they are called.

00:18:59.380 The U.S. government should hire your engineer?

00:19:01.480 That's my understanding.

00:19:02.560 That's what he told me.

00:19:04.240 To write code for them or to break into Telegram?

00:19:07.440 They were curious to learn which open source libraries are integrated to the Telegram's app, you know, on the client side.

00:19:16.680 And they were trying to persuade him to use certain open source tools that he would then integrate into the Telegram's code that, in my understanding, would serve as backdoors.

00:19:30.620 Would allow the U.S. government to spy on people who use Telegram?

00:19:34.840 The U.S. government or maybe any other government, because a backdoor is a backdoor, regardless of who is using it.

00:19:40.640 That's right.

00:19:42.960 And that's a little surprising to hear.

00:19:45.740 Maybe it's not surprising.

00:19:46.760 It's offensive.

00:19:48.560 You're confident that happened?

00:19:51.040 Yes.

00:19:52.120 There is no reason for my engineer to make up the stories.

00:19:56.320 Also because I personally experienced similar pressure in the U.S.

00:20:02.580 Whenever I would go to the U.S., I would have two FBI agents greeting me at the airport, asking questions.

00:20:08.960 One time I was having my breakfast at 9 a.m., and the FBI showed up at my house that I was renting.

00:20:21.120 And that was quite surprising.

00:20:23.440 And I thought, you know, we're getting too much attention here.

00:20:27.280 It's probably not the best environment to run.

00:20:30.520 Why had you committed a crime?

00:20:33.260 No.

00:20:33.900 They were interested to learn more about Telegram.

00:20:36.820 They knew I, you know, left Russia.

00:20:40.440 They knew what we were doing, but they wanted details.

00:20:45.980 And my understanding is that they wanted to establish a relationship to, in a way, control Telegram better.

00:20:54.100 I understand that they were doing their job.

00:20:57.120 It's just that for us running a privacy-focused social media platform, that probably wasn't the best environment to be in.

00:21:06.140 We want to be focused on what we do, not on government relations of that sort.

00:21:12.040 Government relations.

00:21:13.260 So, then you came to UAE, to Dubai.

00:21:17.820 Yes.

00:21:18.500 Seven years ago, we moved here.

00:21:22.100 We first wanted just to try it for half a year, see if it works out.

00:21:27.900 And it turned out to be a great place.

00:21:29.820 We never looked back, and we never wanted to change the UAE for any other way after that.

00:21:37.920 Why?

00:21:39.060 Well, for a number of reasons.

00:21:40.560 First, the ease of doing business here is so high.

00:21:44.940 For example, you can hire people from anywhere in the world.

00:21:48.100 As long as you're paying them a good salary, the residence permits are granted automatically.

00:21:54.180 It's very different.

00:21:55.240 If you try to do that in Europe and some other countries, it's very different from them.

00:21:59.760 Second, it's very tax-efficient.

00:22:02.580 Third, the infrastructure is great.

00:22:05.120 You get a lot for the minimum amount of taxes you're paying.

00:22:11.440 The roads, the airports, the hotels, everything.

00:22:15.520 I think you witnessed it yourself.

00:22:17.080 Yes.

00:22:18.100 But I think more importantly is that it's a neutral place.

00:22:21.280 It's a neutral country.

00:22:22.140 It's a small country that wants to be friends with everybody.

00:22:27.660 It's not aligned geopolitically with any of the big superpowers.

00:22:34.000 And I think it's the best place for a neutral platform like ours to be in

00:22:39.780 if we want to make sure we can defend our users' privacy and freedom of speech.

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00:24:27.340 So in the time that you've been here, there have been a number of wars and threats of war, precursors to war.

00:24:37.080 Have you had any pressure from the government here?

00:24:39.540 Honestly, any pressure from the government here to reveal a backdoor into Telegram or to ban anyone or to make any changes to your business?

00:24:48.480 Zero.

00:24:49.380 That's the best part.

00:24:51.180 For all the seven years we've been here, there's been zero pressure coming from the EUAE towards Telegram.

00:24:58.800 They've been very supportive, very helpful, and it's a big contrast from whatever we've experienced before.

00:25:06.440 What about what you've experienced since, since you moved here in those seven years?

00:25:10.400 Have you come under pressure from other governments under whose jurisdiction you don't fall, but to accommodate their demands?

00:25:17.700 Well, of course.

00:25:18.700 Well, Telegram is a large platform.

00:25:22.800 We are popular in many, many countries.

00:25:25.040 And we've been receiving a lot of requests, demands.

00:25:33.600 Some of them were legitimate.

00:25:35.140 If there was a group of people who was promoting violence, there was terrorist activity that was spreading violence in some parts of the world, publicly posting things that any decent human being would disallow or wouldn't want to be posted, we would help them.

00:25:58.020 Well, in some other cases where we thought it would be crossing the line, it wouldn't be in line with our values of freedom of speech and protecting people's private correspondence, we would ignore those.

00:26:15.180 Can you give us an example of a request that you thought crossed into censorship and spying, violating people's privacy?

00:26:22.700 Well, there's a, I would say, a very funny story related to your home country.

00:26:30.700 After the events of January the 6th, we received a letter from, I believe, congressmen of the democratic side.

00:26:41.760 And they requested that we would share all the data we had in relation to what they called this uprising.

00:26:53.640 And we checked it with our lawyers and they said, you better ignore it.

00:26:58.820 But the letter seemed very serious and the letter said, you know, if you fail to comply with this request, you will be in violation with the U.S. Constitution or something like that.

00:27:15.240 So they wanted data on people who voted for the other guy in the election?

00:27:18.600 Well, they wanted the data of people, yeah, who were demonstrating in Washington or wherever they were doing.

00:27:28.280 You're probably right.

00:27:29.760 I'm not an expert in U.S. politics.

00:27:32.340 Yeah.

00:27:32.460 What was funny about it is two years, exactly two, sorry, two weeks after that letter, we got another letter, a new letter from the Republican side of the Congress.

00:27:48.720 And there we read that if we give out any data according to the previous request, we would be in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

00:28:00.440 So we got two letters that said, whatever we do, we'd be violating the U.S. Constitution in a way.

00:28:10.740 That was my understanding of these letters.

00:28:14.240 From the same legislative body, both from the U.S. Congress?

00:28:16.780 Yes.

00:28:17.800 So how do you respond to that?

00:28:19.360 Well, the same way we respond to most such requests, we decided to ignore them because it's such a complicated matter related to internal politics in the U.S.

00:28:33.980 We don't want to take any...

00:28:35.560 If you, I believe this strongly, if you ignore your problems, most of them do go away.

00:28:40.700 That's very true.

00:28:41.740 It is.

00:28:42.140 It was very...

00:28:42.940 No one says it, but it's true. 0.99

00:28:44.360 Oh, that's amazing.

00:28:46.680 Have you ever had demands that you can't ignore?

00:28:50.780 Well, it depends, right?

00:28:52.900 Unreasonable demands.

00:28:54.040 So I would say the largest pressure towards Telegram is not coming from governments.

00:29:00.940 It's coming from Apple and Google.

00:29:04.180 Huh.

00:29:04.340 So when it comes to freedom of speech, those two platforms, they could basically censor whatever you can read, access on your smartphone.

00:29:17.100 So, I mean, do you run the risk of being thrown out of their stores?

00:29:21.260 Exactly.

00:29:21.780 That's what they make very clear, that if we fail to comply with their guidelines, so they call it, Telegram could be removed from the stores.

00:29:32.660 Well, that would be not a small thing for you, right?

00:29:36.460 Well, it won't be a small thing for us, because obviously a big chunk of the world's population will lose access to a valuable tool that they're using every day.

00:29:46.540 But, you know, it will not also be a small thing for them.

00:29:50.740 I mean, there should...

00:29:52.660 I believe there must be finding some compromise in such cases.

00:29:56.720 But Apple and Google are not very compromising when it comes to their guidelines.

00:30:01.520 If they believe some content is against their rules, they will see to it that all the apps that are distributed to their stores comply with these rules.

00:30:14.820 Are any of those rules or do you interpret any of those rules?

00:30:18.400 Do you believe any of them to be political in nature?

00:30:22.620 Some of them, but it's not the rules.

00:30:28.020 It's the application of the rules.

00:30:29.900 The rules themselves, they're pretty general, right?

00:30:34.700 So there must be no violence, discrimination, publicly available child abuse materials.

00:30:45.280 It's hard to disagree with that.

00:30:46.820 Yes.

00:30:47.780 But then when they start to apply those rules, sometimes we are not agreeing with their interpretation.

00:30:56.980 And we try to get back to Apple or Google, wherever it is, and say, look, we think you got it wrong.

00:31:06.460 We think actually this is a legitimate way of people expressing their opinions.

00:31:12.500 And sometimes they do agree to their credit.

00:31:15.360 Sometimes they disagree.

00:31:16.520 And we still have to take some content down, at least in the version of Telegram that is distributed through their platforms.

00:31:23.160 So there are a number of conflicts going on around the world right now, and that may accelerate.

00:31:32.140 So would you expect that the number of demands and the intensity of those demands, the persistence of those demands, would increase as the wars become more intense?

00:31:44.380 Let's see.

00:31:45.040 I'm really hopeful that the past is behind us.

00:31:47.840 I want to be optimistic.

00:31:49.040 I think now we've reached a point where politicians and societies know what to expect from social media platforms and where the red lines are.

00:32:07.880 Yes.

00:32:08.160 We also learned much more about the requirements coming from both them and Google slash Apple.

00:32:17.820 And our users get better educated as well at what is allowed and what is not allowed.

00:32:23.240 So I don't necessarily believe that things are going to get worse.

00:32:27.980 It does seem like the red line for governments is allowing organized opposition to their rule.

00:32:35.460 That's what you saw in Russia with Navalny and the Ukraine crisis in 2014.

00:32:39.660 That's what you saw from that Democratic member of Congress after January 6th, 2020.

00:32:45.860 Definitely.

00:32:46.480 There's a pattern here.

00:32:47.880 Telegram has been used by protesters in places like Hong Kong, Belarus, Kazakhstan.

00:32:54.580 Even in Barcelona back in the day.

00:32:57.800 Yes.

00:32:58.180 So it's been a tool for the opposition to a large extent.

00:33:03.560 But it doesn't really matter whether it's opposition or the ruling party that is used in Telegram.

00:33:11.300 For us, we apply the rules equally to all sides.

00:33:15.400 We don't become prejudiced in this way.

00:33:19.160 It's not that we are rooting for the opposition or we are rooting for the ruling party.

00:33:22.400 It's not that we don't care, but we think it's important to have this platform that is neutral to all voices because we believe that the competition of different ideas can result in progress and a better world for everyone.

00:33:42.400 That's in stark contrast to, say, Facebook, which has said in public, you know, we tip the scale in favor of this or that movement in this or that country.

00:33:52.860 All far from the West and far from Western media attention.

00:33:56.400 But they've said that.

00:33:58.120 What do you think of that?

00:33:59.580 Tech companies choosing governments.

00:34:01.480 Well, I think that's one of the reasons why we ended up here in the UAE out of all places.

00:34:09.400 So you don't want to be geopolitically aligned.

00:34:12.400 You don't want to select the winners in any of these political fights.

00:34:19.340 And that's why you have to be in a neutral place.

00:34:21.480 But I think Facebook in particular has a lot of reasons, apart from being based in the U.S., for doing what they're doing.

00:34:33.280 I think every app and platform plays its own role.

00:34:38.340 And we believe that humanity does need a neutral platform like Telegram that will be respectful to people's privacy and freedoms.

00:34:48.640 Maybe from a political perspective, it seems like the most provocative thing Telegram does is offer something called channels, which seem sort of ready-made for organizing groups of people.

00:35:02.020 Can you explain to viewers who aren't familiar with them what a Telegram channel is?

00:35:06.120 Yes, so Telegram channel is a one-to-many broadcast tool that allows people to quickly disseminate any message to millions of people.

00:35:19.560 So there's a channel, people subscribe to it.

00:35:22.520 It's a one-way communication, meaning a channel can be used by, say, a president or a head of state.

00:35:32.160 And everybody else will not be able to send a message to the president, but the president will be able to send a message to all of the people who subscribe to his channel or her channel.

00:35:43.440 So the point here is, channels are so easy to use, and they're so deeply integrated in the messaging user interface that they became extremely popular.

00:35:56.640 So you receive it like a text.

00:35:58.760 Exactly.

00:35:59.140 So it's a very familiar form for a lot of people.

00:36:03.020 And since we launched channels eight years ago, I believe a few other apps, popular apps, followed in our footsteps and copied that feature as well.

00:36:14.480 Not nearly as advanced as it was we have, but it shows that it's a really high-quality and demanded feature that the world needs.

00:36:25.800 I think it's interesting, and you don't have to answer any of these questions if you don't want it, if it's too personal, but you're the owner.

00:36:32.460 You own it.

00:36:33.740 And it's very unusual, in fact, I've never seen it, to have a large business like this owned by one person.

00:36:41.840 Why didn't you take, and you could have cashed in on private equity money along the way, but you didn't.

00:36:46.620 Why didn't you?

00:36:49.200 Well, that's true.

00:36:49.880 As of now, Tilgrim was 100% owned by myself, which is, like I said, quite unusual.

00:36:57.100 I've never heard of that before.

00:36:59.160 The reason I tried to, you know, stay away from venture capital money, at least at the early stages of our development, is because we wanted to be independent.

00:37:11.240 And we knew that our mission and our goals are not necessarily consistent with the goals of funds that could be investing into us.

00:37:24.560 And also, for me, it was never about money, right?

00:37:26.960 So, I have a few hundred million dollars in my bank account or in Bitcoin since 10 years ago, and I don't do anything with it.

00:37:36.600 I don't own any real estate, jets, or yachts.

00:37:43.520 I don't think this lifestyle is for me.

00:37:47.600 I like to focus on what we are doing with Tilgrim.

00:37:50.480 You don't own anything?

00:37:53.720 Like big assets?

00:37:55.120 No big assets.

00:37:56.260 You don't own an island in Hawaii?

00:37:58.000 No.

00:37:58.400 No, no land, no real estate, nothing.

00:38:02.700 Why?

00:38:04.100 Well, because for me, my number one priority in life is my freedom.

00:38:08.140 And once you start buying things, first, it will tie you down to a physical location.

00:38:15.580 In my view, it's my personal view, I don't have nothing against people who are buying real estate, but in my personal view, it would be like this for me.

00:38:23.980 And the second reason is I like to stay focused on what we do at Tilgrim.

00:38:29.200 So, I know that if I buy a house, I buy a jet, something like that, I would be spending time on trying to make it nice.

00:38:39.500 Yeah.

00:38:40.920 This will require a lot of time and effort.

00:38:42.980 Would you go with leather seats or velvet seats?

00:38:45.480 Exactly.

00:38:47.060 You're not even going to choose.

00:38:48.480 Yes.

00:38:48.860 For me, I would rather make decisions that would influence how a billion people communicate rather than choosing the color of seats in the house that only I and my relatives or probably a bunch of my friends will see.

00:39:10.960 Interesting.

00:39:11.440 And you didn't take, because I just have to say the third time, haven't seen this before.

00:39:17.460 You obviously were famous as a young man, as a company builder and entrepreneur.

00:39:22.320 And so, you could have really taken a lot of money and you didn't because you didn't want to be controlled?

00:39:27.340 I just didn't see any reason to do that, you know, I had enough money to get by.

00:39:33.720 Well, to be completely fair, Telegram did take outside money.

00:39:38.440 We issued bonds three years ago.

00:39:40.740 So, we raised debt.

00:39:42.980 And that was...

00:39:43.720 And before that, we had a cryptocurrency project that also raised some funds.

00:39:51.400 So, there were instances where we raised outside funding.

00:39:56.920 But when it comes to company's equity...

00:40:00.660 Yeah, you didn't give up ownership.

00:40:01.780 We didn't give anyone ownership or voting control or anything like that.

00:40:05.860 Because we also believe in efficiency.

00:40:09.060 I think that having myself as the sole owner, director, and product manager for this extensive period of time in the company's development allowed us to move faster.

00:40:22.180 How could you be the only product manager?

00:40:25.220 Are you still the only product manager in the company?

00:40:27.360 Well, exactly.

00:40:28.800 I still come up with most of the features.

00:40:32.300 I still work directly with every engineer, every designer who is implementing these features.

00:40:40.320 I'm running this company because I enjoy it.

00:40:42.580 I'm the only product manager because I think this is the way I can contribute.

00:40:49.640 How big is your HR department?

00:40:52.240 Zero.

00:40:52.580 Well, you could say it's me.

00:40:54.140 Because the way we hire engineers...

00:40:57.260 No, no.

00:40:57.580 You need a big HR department, you don't think?

00:40:59.720 You don't suffer without one?

00:41:02.600 We, in a way, decentralized that.

00:41:05.140 We started a platform where we host contests for engineers.

00:41:11.880 It's actually contest.com.

00:41:13.660 We have this separate platform for that.

00:41:16.580 And we select the best of the best engineers as a result of the competitions that we organize.

00:41:24.560 We hold them every month or two months.

00:41:27.920 So, after a series of these competitions, we select the best of the best of the best.

00:41:32.880 And they then maybe can join our team, which is just about 30 engineers.

00:41:40.740 So, it's a really compact team.

00:41:43.000 Super efficient.

00:41:43.980 It's like a Navy SEAL team.

00:41:47.340 And this is how we operate.

00:41:49.540 We don't need HR department to find super talented engineers.

00:41:55.460 Why doesn't everyone do this?

00:41:58.740 I mean, I look at some of these tech companies.

00:42:00.260 Elon Musk famously, when he showed up at Twitter, I mean, there were people doing things that he didn't even know what they were doing.

00:42:05.580 And they didn't know what they were doing.

00:42:07.580 They were like, there was a world peace department and a foosball department.

00:42:11.220 And why doesn't everybody run their business like you?

00:42:15.760 Well, it's an interesting question.

00:42:18.560 I think it all boils down to the question of independence, in a way.

00:42:24.480 I asked this question to the predecessors of Elon.

00:42:28.120 Jack Dorsey.

00:42:29.000 Jack and his predecessor as well.

00:42:35.080 What did you say?

00:42:35.900 Dick Kostler, I think, was his name.

00:42:37.720 And this Jack, he told me that if...

00:42:42.800 I told him, look, you can run this company with 20 people.

00:42:44.980 You don't need so many people.

00:42:47.700 And the response was, I agree with you, but if we start firing so many people, it will make the Wall Street scared.

00:42:58.040 They will think something's very wrong with the company.

00:43:00.840 And we don't want to do that.

00:43:02.760 And that's why we got to keep all these employees around. 0.79

00:43:06.880 So to keep the stock price high, he had to run it inefficiently.

00:43:12.420 I mean, that's what you're saying.

00:43:13.740 If I understood him correctly, that's what...

00:43:17.320 But to his credit, Elon has to take Twitter private before he could do all the...

00:43:25.640 Well, I mean, there's something sort of profound in what you're saying.

00:43:30.460 I mean, the whole point of a publicly traded company, or one of the points, so the public can participate in the ownership of the company,

00:43:35.900 but also so outsiders can assess the operations of the company.

00:43:39.680 And so there's transparencies.

00:43:41.420 We know how the company is run because it's owned by the public.

00:43:45.480 And so it would be, by definition, more efficient, you would think.

00:43:49.400 But you're saying that it's wildly less efficient that you wind up with the foosball department when it's publicly traded,

00:43:55.620 but when it's privately held, you don't.

00:43:57.180 I mean, that's kind of the opposite of what you would think, right?

00:43:59.100 Well, I guess most tech founders would actually agree that running a public company is less efficient than running a private company

00:44:10.120 because you have to be accountable to much more people.

00:44:14.180 There's a lot of redundancy bureaucracy involved.

00:44:16.720 So from a purely efficiency standpoint, I would argue, and I think a lot of people would agree with me,

00:44:24.520 that running a public company is suboptimal.

00:44:28.080 However, there are other advantages of getting listed.

00:44:34.020 And, of course, that is relevant when you want to acquire other companies.

00:44:38.400 Well, cash.

00:44:39.220 Yes, you can have access to cheap capital.

00:44:42.260 There's a lot of things you can do.

00:44:43.900 But you don't want to do any of those things.

00:44:48.360 Well, not presently, definitely.

00:44:50.780 I am enjoying running my company in the way it is.

00:44:53.340 Well, who knows what the future holds.

00:44:55.380 But as of now, I think we are doing a great job with Telegram.

00:45:00.320 900 million users will probably cross a billion monthly active users within a year from now.

00:45:09.220 I think we are doing great.

00:45:10.340 Why would we lose this momentum right now?

00:45:13.900 Can I just go back to something you said at the outset?

00:45:17.220 You don't have an HR department.

00:45:18.420 You only have 30 engineers working for you.

00:45:22.560 You run the products.

00:45:24.080 You own the company.

00:45:25.120 Such a tight organization.

00:45:27.000 But how do you get new users if you spend zero money for acquisitions?

00:45:32.500 If you're not advertising, if you're not paying to bring people in, how do you do that?

00:45:36.220 How do you get to a billion for free?

00:45:39.040 Well, because people love our product.

00:45:40.540 What we realized pretty early on is that people are smart.

00:45:44.740 People like to use good things.

00:45:49.180 And they don't like to use inferior things.

00:45:53.180 That's why whenever you have a person who started to use Telegram and they're there for a while and they start to discover all the features, all the speed, the security, the problems, everything that we have.

00:46:08.880 They don't want to go back and they start inviting their friends, recommending them, you should really check this app out because it's so much better than everything else.

00:46:19.120 And also because people realize that whatever messaging apps they're using right now, they're like five, six years behind.

00:46:27.480 They're copying what we did six years ago.

00:46:30.860 And that's not a very high quality copy that they make of our features.

00:46:36.740 So people love quality.

00:46:38.220 That's why they move.

00:46:39.200 They also love the independence.

00:46:40.660 They also love the privacy.

00:46:42.460 They love the freedom.

00:46:43.380 There are a lot of reasons why somebody would switch to Telegram from other apps.

00:46:48.540 So one of the things we learned when Elon Musk bought Twitter is that the intel agencies, not just U.S., but a bunch of other countries, the usual suspects, were all over the company.

00:46:59.720 I mean, some of them were present working at the company.

00:47:02.280 They had access to the direct messages.

00:47:04.100 You can just imagine, well, you know because you run one.

00:47:06.780 But the wealth of data flowing through would be of great interest to governments.

00:47:13.840 Does that make you paranoid that you'll be penetrated?

00:47:17.000 I mean, I assume governments would like to know what's going on sort of privately on Telegram.

00:47:24.120 Well, there's definitely a lot of responsibility that we have on our shoulders.

00:47:28.540 And I wouldn't say we are paranoid, but I think it makes sense to stay prudent and not being too accessible, not traveling to weird places.

00:47:43.340 You don't travel to weird places?

00:47:44.520 I hope not.

00:47:47.520 I travel to places where I have confidence that those places are consistent with what we do and our values.

00:47:59.020 I don't go to any of the big geopolitical powers of the countries like China or Russia or even the U.S.

00:48:06.520 You don't go to the U.S.?

00:48:08.520 I try not to.

00:48:10.140 I can go, but, you know, it's too much attention like I've described before.

00:48:15.020 Yeah, because at some point if you run something like this, you're a player in world politics.

00:48:19.740 I mean, whether you want to be or not, don't you think?

00:48:22.700 We definitely don't want to be a player.

00:48:24.280 We want to be a neutral platform that is impartial and doesn't take any side.

00:48:32.280 But you're probably right that there's some role we have to play.

00:48:36.400 Well, not taking a side is the one thing you're not allowed to do, right?

00:48:40.480 I mean, aren't you required to take a side in the modern world?

00:48:44.660 I think that's a big problem because I think that kind of attitude can result in our world becoming a more dangerous place.

00:48:54.860 Because at the end of the day, we all have to try to understand each other and try to get closer to each other in terms of getting to know the positions of the other people, even though they're drastically different from our own positions.

00:49:13.220 And that's how we get to some compromise and move forward.

00:49:17.000 If we're strictly divided and everybody is required to take a side, we can't take a side because we are this platform that people should use to collaborate and to find common ground and hopefully to move forward.

00:49:35.520 If we lose that, we can end up in a much more dangerous place.

00:49:39.880 How often do you intersect with the National Security Agency, NSA?

00:49:51.720 And I ask that as someone whose texts were read by them.

00:49:54.120 So I know that they're very active in this world.

00:49:57.400 What's your experience been?

00:49:59.600 Well, I think the NSA is not an agency that works with you directly, right?

00:50:07.160 You're not coming here.

00:50:08.620 You're so diplomatic.

00:50:10.280 I love it.

00:50:11.780 The NSA is not an agency that works with you directly.

00:50:13.900 No, that is true.

00:50:15.120 That is true.

00:50:17.100 So my knowledge of my interactions with the NSA is very limited.

00:50:21.680 Yes.

00:50:22.540 I could read something in the newspapers about, you know, my phone being penetrated with Pegasus or something like that.

00:50:31.280 I have no idea whether it's true or not, but this is the only source of information I can have about me personally being of interest to any of the secret agencies.

00:50:45.160 But you've got to think, even though you haven't done an interview in seven years-ish, you know, it's widely known by people who are interested in who you are and your role in this.

00:50:55.760 I mean, you've got to think you're under just crazy amounts of surveillance, wouldn't you think?

00:50:59.480 That's probably true.

00:51:01.200 So, you know, it would sound funny, but I assume by default that the devices I use are compromised.

00:51:11.240 Because you will still use an iPhone or an Android phone.

00:51:14.580 And, you know, after experiencing what I experienced in the U.S., I have very limited faith in platforms developed in the U.S. from a security standpoint.

00:51:28.720 Yes.

00:51:29.260 Privacy standpoint.

00:51:30.120 Exactly.

00:51:30.900 Yeah.

00:51:31.840 Because in a lot of countries, ours, America included, spying is described as, quote, security.

00:51:38.980 You're looking at it from the other perspective.

00:51:40.620 You're assuming that security is privacy and my right not to be spied upon.

00:51:45.280 But big governments describe spying upon you as security.

00:51:49.480 Thank you for this correction.

00:51:53.440 So, last question.

00:51:54.800 Do you, since you've done this since you were in college and you've been at the center of it, where do you see it going?

00:52:01.400 And by this, I mean the free exchange, the private exchange of information between sovereign individuals, human beings, non-slaves.

00:52:11.500 When I was a child, that was possible.

00:52:13.400 It's increasingly difficult.

00:52:15.120 Are we moving toward a world where there just is no private communication?

00:52:18.000 Or do you think that privacy will remain, despite, say, AI or just massive increases in computing power?

00:52:28.920 Well, this depends on the extent of privacy.

00:52:34.040 When you say privacy will remain, do you mean that we have absolute privacy now?

00:52:38.420 I don't think that we do.

00:52:40.120 And I think the world is becoming less amenable.

00:52:42.720 Government's becoming less tolerant of privacy.

00:52:45.700 And that's clearly the trend because they have more technological power.

00:52:50.720 But will they win?

00:52:52.420 I guess, will there ever be a way to preserve privacy?

00:52:58.340 You know, is there a place for it?

00:53:00.780 I believe in that.

00:53:02.080 I'm an optimist.

00:53:02.920 I think some new secure hardware communication devices will be created in a similar way that now we have hardware wallets to store your cryptocurrency.

00:53:17.040 Yes.

00:53:17.440 Maybe we'll have secure communication devices, you know, to send messages or do voice calls.

00:53:28.740 It's possible.

00:53:29.540 I do believe that, you know, the world develops in cycles.

00:53:36.080 And if things seem to go in one direction today, doesn't mean that tomorrow they will go the same direction.

00:53:45.540 I also feel that at some point people will get tired of what they experience today and they would decide to, you know, move to some other direction.

00:54:00.720 So it's, I've seen it after COVID, for example.

00:54:05.160 During COVID, you had a lot of restrictions.

00:54:07.940 Also on social media platforms, you, on most social media platforms, you were not really allowed to express doubt in relation to lockdowns, vaccines or masks.

00:54:22.560 And at some point I could feel like the sentiment changed.

00:54:29.400 People started to feel very, very tired and sometimes angry with the fact that they were not allowed to express their opinions.

00:54:37.580 Particularly after the end of the pandemic, a lot of people started to be even more skeptical about the restrictions in their freedoms that they experienced during the pandemic.

00:54:56.620 What was your position as a business owner during COVID?

00:55:02.080 Did, you must have come under pressure to censor opinions on lockdowns, vaccines, masking.

00:55:08.100 How did you respond?

00:55:09.280 So our position is pretty straightforward.

00:55:12.440 We're a neutral platform.

00:55:13.860 We were helping governments to spread their message about the lockdowns and masks and vaccines.

00:55:19.740 We had dozens of governments who we really helped, you know, disseminate their information.

00:55:25.380 But we also didn't want to restrict the voices that were critical of all these measures.

00:55:31.700 We thought it made sense for these opposing views to collide and hopefully see some truth come out of those debates.

00:55:44.000 And of course we got criticized for that.

00:55:46.620 But looking back, I think it was the right strategy.

00:55:50.040 So you allowed people to voice doubts about the so-called science throughout the experience?

00:55:55.560 Exactly.

00:55:56.560 During the pandemic, we, I think, were one of the few or maybe the only major social media platform that didn't take down accounts that were skeptical in relation to some of these measures.

00:56:15.160 So why are you not famous and treated as a hero in the United States?

00:56:21.640 Shouldn't there be a parade in your honor?

00:56:23.380 If you're, if you're the only social media platform not to take down what turned out to be true or to some extent true, certainly more true than the CDC guidance, I mean, why weren't you Times Man of the Year?

00:56:38.300 Why isn't your face on the nickel?

00:56:44.160 I'm not an expert in the U.S. politics.

00:56:46.080 But to be fair, you have now Twitter or Axe that seemingly becoming more pro-freedom of speech.

00:57:01.100 I think it is.

00:57:02.280 It's a great development.

00:57:03.980 And then back to our earlier discussion about how all of this is developing in cycles.

00:57:12.540 Things are starting to change, it seems.

00:57:15.980 So do you, I mean, but in some ways, Elon buying Twitter sort of ends your monopoly, but you still greet it cheerfully.

00:57:28.580 You're still in favor of it.

00:57:29.600 Definitely, we will love the fact that Elon bought Twitter.

00:57:34.240 We thought it was a great development for a number of reasons.

00:57:38.020 The first reason is just innovation.

00:57:40.480 You could see Axe doing, trying a lot of things.

00:57:44.240 Some of them will turn out to be mistakes.

00:57:47.380 Some of them will work, but at least they're trying to innovate.

00:57:50.700 That's something we didn't have outside of Telegram and a few other companies in this industry for the last 10 years.

00:57:57.840 What you saw from the big players, they would rather copy the proven models, the features that apps like Telegram launched and just scale them on a larger audience.

00:58:13.980 These features will be pale reflections of what we built, but this was the way those companies operate and still operate.

00:58:22.700 What Axe is trying to do is in line with what we are building, innovation, trying different things, trying to give power to the creators, trying to get the ecosystem economy going.

00:58:38.860 Those are all exciting things, and I think we need more companies like that.

00:58:44.260 I don't know if it's good for humanity that Elon is spending so much time on Twitter making it better, but it's definitely good for the social media industry.

00:58:53.960 When you see the guys who run these other companies, do you know them, and do you ever talk about freedom of speech?

00:59:04.120 I mean, if you're running, you don't have to answer, of course, if you don't want, but if you're into Mark Zuckerberg.

00:59:08.820 Yeah, we met with Mark more than 10 years ago.

00:59:14.720 I was still running VK, and I told them, I told Mark and his colleagues about our app platform.

00:59:24.780 We launched an app platform.

00:59:26.000 I think it was 2009 at VK.

00:59:28.260 They were very interested.

00:59:30.020 It was an interesting meeting.

00:59:30.980 They ended up trying to copy, not what we did, but what I told them we did.

00:59:41.260 It was funny.

00:59:43.280 I remember him asking me whether we were planning to start something on a global basis, on the global level, like go for international expansion.

00:59:57.540 I said, no, and I asked him whether he was going to try to capture more of my domestic market, where I was working on.

01:00:09.100 And he said, no, and we both ended up doing exactly that in two or three weeks.

01:00:15.920 So I'm thinking I shouldn't go into business with Mark Zuckerberg?

01:00:22.340 No comment.

01:00:23.240 Pavel Jarop, thank you very much.

01:00:29.220 It was a great conversation.

01:00:30.280 I appreciate it.

01:00:30.840 We're rooting for you.

01:00:31.840 Thank you for having me.

01:00:32.920 Of course.

01:00:33.280 We'll be right back.

The Tucker Carlson Show - April 16, 2024

Pavel Durov

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