The AI race between the US and China is the defining competition of our age. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, advisor to the Pentagon, and current CEO of Relativity Space joins Rapid Response live from Masters of Scale Summit to give his most unvarnished assessment yet. He reveals that the gap he once estimated at two years has narrowed to six months. Schmidt also takes on the open source question that’s keeping Silicon Valley up at night, explains why kicking China’s best PhD students out of the country is one of America’s dumbest own goals, and shares the one thing he believes could keep this from becoming a zero-sum game — even if the current political environment makes it nearly impossible.

This conversation was recorded live as part of Masters of Scale Summit on October 22, 2026 at the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco.

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Jennifer Ferro is the former board chair of NPR and president of Southern California’s iconic public radio organization: KCRW. Ferro talks with Masters of Scale host Jeff Berman about how nearly two decades as the founder’s deputy taught her to lead, why she thinks we deserve a better internet, and how the best defense of getting ignored is simple: Don’t be boring.

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Few companies have as much influence over AI’s trajectory as OpenAI. Reid Hoffman sits down with CFO Sarah Friar to understand the precipice of the moment we are in and the decisions that could shape what comes next for each of us.

This conversation was recorded live as part of Masters of Scale Summit on October 21, 2026, at the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco.

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REI has been around for 88 years. Mary Beth Laughton wants to make sure it’s around for 88 more. The CEO of America’s largest consumer co-op joins Rapid Response to talk about what it actually takes to revive an iconic business — without shareholders, without quarterly earnings calls, and with 26 million members who hold you to a higher standard than any Wall Street analyst ever could. She explains why her first act as CEO was to publicly break ties with a Trump cabinet secretary, and how the co-op structure gives REI a kind of clarity that most retailers can’t buy. Plus lessons drawn from Nike, Sephora, and Athleta on what it really means to lead a mission-driven brand when the values are battle tested, not just stated.

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Barbara Peng spent years running one of the most recognizable brands in business media. Newly out of the CEO seat at Business Insider, she joins Rapid Response for a candid conversation about the state of journalism, the future of trust, and what leaders in every industry need to understand about operating in an AI world. She reflects on her tenure at Business Insider — the pivot back to the brand’s core, the layoffs, the AI-powered paywall that actually worked — and makes the case that media’s resistance to AI isn’t a journalism problem, it’s a business problem. Peng also lands on the insight that may be the most important thing any leader needs to hear right now: it doesn’t matter how fast the technology moves if your organization is too afraid to experiment with it. The sweet spot isn’t the capability. It’s the rate of digestion.

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Renee Wegrzyn spent her career building the future of American science — including ARPA-H, the White House agency created to accelerate health breakthroughs. Then the Trump administration showed her the door. Wegrzyn co-founded Transfyr to tackle what she calls one of the most overlooked issues in science: the magic hands problem. She joins Rapid Response to explain why fixing this unglamorous bottleneck is the prerequisite for everything AI promises to deliver in medicine, what the federal funding cuts are really costing science, and why she can feel the next Sputnik moment coming — even if she can’t quite name it yet.

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This episode of Rapid Response first aired in 2025.

Live on stage at Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky explores what role business could and should play in building the future. He shares his candid perspective on politics, creativity, and AI — taking listeners from Airbnb’s humble beginnings to bold plans for the company’s future. Through a designer’s lens, Chesky also reveals the single question leaders must ask themselves, and explores how best to make tricky decisions in a volatile climate.

For more conversations like this, join us at this year’s Masters of Scale Summit, coming up October 20-22 in San Francisco.

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Prediction markets incentivize truth. Everything else incentivizes clickbait. That's the core argument Luana Lopes Lara makes for Kalshi — the prediction market platform she co-founded that has gone from $5 billion to $22 billion in valuation in under a year, and is now being sued by New York's attorney general for $36 billion. Luana joins Rapid Response to make the case that Kalshi is fundamentally different from DraftKings — even though 75% of its volume is sports — explain why George Santos got banned for trying to trade on his own congressional attendance, and share what Kalshi's data actually says about the midterms. Plus the Timothée Chalamet dentist-chair ad, what ballet taught her about running a company, and what it's actually like to become the world's youngest self-made female billionaire.

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