SNL’s Spycraft Cold Open Puts Tech CEOs Through an Awkward National Security Lesson
Saturday Night Live opened with host John Mulaney teaching a group of socially awkward tech leaders how to distinguish genuine romantic interest from a spy attempting to extract sensitive information—a scenario framed around ousted Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Mulaney, playing a CIA officer, summons Peter Thiel (James Austin Johnson), Sam Altman (Ben Marshall), Dario Amodei (Jane Wickline), Mark Zuckerberg (Andrew Dismukes), and Elon Musk (Jeremy Culhane) to agency headquarters for a national security briefing.
“America needs you to learn the difference between a woman who would actually want to have sex with you, and a woman who is clearly a spy,” Mulaney says. He then asks the group what lesson they should take from Huang’s downfall.
“Never date a Chinese woman,” Amodei says.
“Never date a human woman,” Zuckerberg answers.
“Never date anyone, lest they become the antichrist,” Thiel says.
Mulaney then tries to make his point with a Venn diagram. It shows two circles that do not overlap at all: “beautiful women” and “your interests and opinions.”
“So,” he asks the group, “if someone is both of these things, then they are a what?”
“An angel,” Amodei replies confidently.
When told that such a person would be a spy, Musk launches into a rambling James Bond detour, prompting Mulaney to squirt him with a water bottle until he stops.
A second Venn diagram appears after Zuckerberg says that if a woman approached him, he would take it as a sign that she “wanted to sleep with the man who created the Metaverse, as all women do.” This diagram also features “beautiful women” in one circle. In a much smaller circle to the right labeled “people who like the metaverse,” there is an image of Zuckerberg alone.
“Maybe it would help if I handed this over to someone who learned this lesson the hard way,” Mulaney says, as former SNL cast member Bowen Yang enters as Huang.
“Ladies, when you invite Jensen over, you know what’s about to go down: the S&P 500,” he says. “That’s right, I’m into BDSM: breaking the stock market. Fellas, don’t be like me. Remember, women don’t like guys like us. That’s how we became guys like us.”
