It’s a relief that Mark Zuckerberg is finally facing an existential crisis.

The problem is that his existential crisis — instead of being about the damage his giant social media company might be causing our society — is all about the trustbusting stylings of Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Thanks to Casey Newton of The Verge — a tech news organization that I work with in my role as an editor for Vox Media, the parent company of The Verge — this week we got to hear what Mr. Zuckerberg really thinks. On Tuesday, the Verge released an audio recording of the Facebook chief executive talking to employees in a closed-door Q. and A. session. Mr. Zuckerberg’s frank words were not meant for public consumption.

Ms. Warren, the intense and substantive politician who has morphed into the Teddy Roosevelt of the digital age, is clearly top of mind for Silicon Valley’s man-boy king. From the sound of it, she really, really bugs him. Consider this stemwinder from Mr. Zuckerberg, someone who usually is at a loss for words:

So there might be a political movement where people are angry at the tech companies or are worried about concentration or worried about different issues and worried that they’re not being handled well. That doesn’t mean that, even if there’s anger and that you have someone like Elizabeth Warren who thinks that the right answer is to break up the companies … I mean, if she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge. And does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government. I mean, that’s not the position that you want to be in when you’re, you know, I mean … it’s like, we care about our country and want to work with our government and do good things. But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.

[Kara Swisher answered your questions about this column on Twitter.]

This scoop was a favor to all of us for allowing a glimpse at what Mr. Zuckerberg truly thinks and says when he is comfortable and voluble at his fanciful park-topped headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.

Usually, we see him when duded-up in coat and tie and an awkward plastered-on smile under klieg lights at a hearing room on Capitol Hill, a situation that seems to render him incapable of saying anything that is not anodyne. Yes, Senator. No, Congressman. I’ll get my staff to get back to you on that, Mr. Chairman.