All-In Podcast12 Day War, Socialism Wins in NYC, Stocks All-Time High, AI Copyright, Science Corner
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,000 words- 0:00 – 1:38
Bestie intros: The Core Four is back!
- DSDavid Sacks
Did you guys see this, uh, White House video?
- JCJason Calacanis
Oh, is there a White House video?
- DFDavid Friedberg
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sacks
I honestly think that was the funniest post by a White House ever, was the Daddy's Home video.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
When they say Daddy's home, I'm coming in.
- JCJason Calacanis
Oh.
- DSDavid Sacks
I feel like popping bottles to this.
- JCJason Calacanis
Come on, now. Up in the club. Oh, in the VIP, popping bottles with the Rain Man. Let's buy two bottles of that All In Tequila. Can we get a... Can we get a double?
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs)
- DFDavid Friedberg
That is the best.
- DSDavid Sacks
The backstory to that is that Mark Ruta, who's the Secretary General of NATO, called Trump "Daddy" at the summit.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah, he called him Daddy.
- JCJason Calacanis
Uh-oh.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah. (laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
That got weird.
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
Freeberg, you missed it.
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
We were just up in the club. You wanna go back to the club for a second? (laughs)
- DFDavid Friedberg
I do. I love the club.
- JCJason Calacanis
You ready?
- DFDavid Friedberg
I love the club.
- DSDavid Sacks
Popping some bottles with the NATO summit.
- JCJason Calacanis
We're doing it again? Come on, Freebird.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
When they say Daddy's home, I'm coming in.
- JCJason Calacanis
Let me see you stand up, Freebird. You're soaking up science.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I'm coming in.
- DFDavid Friedberg
What club are we going to this weekend?
- JCJason Calacanis
Oh, Daddy's home.
- DFDavid Friedberg
We are gonna bring the club to us.
- 1:38 – 7:01
Launching All-In Tequila!
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
in.
- JCJason Calacanis
All right, everybody. Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world, the All In podcast, your favorite podcast. We're back. We got the original quartet here, and everybody's really excited because we had a fun time on Saturday night. What a party we had at Delilah. All four besties there. Step and Repeat. Freebird, you lost a bunch of money playing bompots with me and Rob Goldberg. You drank a lot.
- DFDavid Friedberg
I hate bompots.
- JCJason Calacanis
You looked great. Your impressions of this evening.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Oh, I loved it.
- JCJason Calacanis
Uh, but-
- DFDavid Friedberg
It was great.
- JCJason Calacanis
Mm-hmm.
- DFDavid Friedberg
I think the tequila turned out fantastic.
- JCJason Calacanis
Mm.
- DFDavid Friedberg
This tequila has been... I mean, you guys realize when we first started talking about this, this was like two and a half, almost three years ago when we first started talking about this. And it is finally here.
- JCJason Calacanis
Huh.
- DFDavid Friedberg
It took forever to get through this, uh, this kind of design, development process. But man, I think it turned out great. I thought it was awesome.
- JCJason Calacanis
You can't rush.
- DSDavid Sacks
Everybody at the, everybody at the party was surprised by how good it was, 'cause they thought-
- JCJason Calacanis
Mm.
- DSDavid Sacks
... that, I don't know, we were just doing this as a gimmick or something. But we actually put in the time to make it great.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Took a lot of time.
- DSDavid Sacks
A lot of time, so... And the packaging was amazing.
- JCJason Calacanis
Talk a little bit about the sourcing, 'cause I think that that sourcing was very important.
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, we went down to Tequila, Mexico. There's only one part of Mexico that's even allowed to be called, uh, tequila. And we found a distillery that had been aging some agave in American oak whiskey barrels for five years.
- JCJason Calacanis
Hm.
- DSDavid Sacks
And normally, Extra Añejo is aged for three years, so it was pretty rare to find a cache of five-year aged. And so we basically bought it all. But there's only enough for 7,500 bottles, so that's what we did. But, you know, this is not about creating some large, new tequila label. This is more about creating something that we ourselves like. And that's what we did, sort of a small batch product. I mean, the money is not gonna change anyone's life, you know, except maybe yours-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah, absolutely.
- DSDavid Sacks
... soon, but-
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs) I don't know. Uber hit another record today. So-
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
... Uber passed 88. You guys are all, "Hmm, I don't need to be here anymore." (laughs)
- DSDavid Sacks
Uh, my God. But look, we do things 'cause they're fun, and it was fun to create this. Here, I've got the...
- DFDavid Friedberg
It is fun. It was really fun.
- 7:01 – 29:48
US negotiates ceasefire: what it means for the future of the region
- JCJason Calacanis
go. All right, there's lots to discuss in the news. We'll shift from conspicuous consumption and talk about the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. It's two weeks later, obviously. A quick recap here, and then we'll get the besties take on where we're at today, June 26th, when we tape this. Friday, June 13th, Israel launched a surprise attack, took out a bunch of, uh, Iranian military officials, some folks who worked on the nuclear program, and, uh, they traded missiles for about a week before. Everybody debating if this was gonna be World War III. And on Saturday, June 21st, quite shockingly, the US jumped in and carried out Operation Midnight Hammer.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I've had a couple weekends in Vegas that have been called Midnight Hammer.
- JCJason Calacanis
Oh, yes. (laughs) Midnight Hammer, also known... Wow, there we go, folks. Um, over a dozen bunker buster bombs on two, maybe three, of Iran's key nuclear facilities, Fordow and Natanz. These bombs weigh 15 tons each. They'll go deep underground. Israel doesn't have them, and that's the reason we're given of why we were pulled into this is 'cause we're the only people in the world who could have taken these out. On Thursday morning, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Quinn showed a video. If you haven't seen it, folks, this came out this morning. Here's the video.
- DSDavid Sacks
It's a video of a, of, uh, what they call a massive ordnance penetrator.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
It basically goes through the ground, and I think in this case, it's going through a ventilation shaft.
- JCJason Calacanis
Wow.
- DSDavid Sacks
And it doesn't immediately go off. It basically burrows to its maximum depth and then goes off.
- JCJason Calacanis
This looks like a test to me.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
This is just demonstrating it.
- JCJason Calacanis
This is a demonstration, yep.
- DSDavid Sacks
Demonstrating how it works.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah. And so, uh, here's the before and after photos you've probably seen. Kind of hard to understand what's going on here except for the discoloration. Obviously, we're going for things underground. And then, shockingly, Iran did a, um, a, I don't know what you'd call this, a ceremonial response, Sacks, where they sent some missiles to one of our bases in Qatar. They gave us a ton of notice. None of them landed. And then, uh, both countries have been bombing each other a little bit after Trump said he negotiated a ceasefire, which made our president a little bit upset. Here's the clip of the president not dropping a MOAB, but dropping an F-bomb.
- GUGuest
Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I've never seen before. The biggest load that we've seen. I'm not happy with Israel. You know, when, when I say, "Okay, now you have 12 hours," you don't go out in the first hour and just drop everything you have on them. So I'm not happy with them. I'm not happy with Iran either.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah.
- GUGuest
We basically have two countries that ha- have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing. Do you understand this?
- DSDavid Sacks
Whoa.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Do you understand kind of what's going on here?
- JCJason Calacanis
Trump is not happy. He did the lean in. Did you notice the lean in there, Sacks, when he dropped the F-bomb?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, in, in fairness, President Trump's not the first president to drop an F-bomb in frustration with Netanyahu. It was reported back in the '90s that Bill Clinton, when he had to deal with Netanyahu as being very obstinate and was basically rejecting all of Clinton's entreaties and plans, Clinton is reported to have said, "Who's the fucking superpower here?"
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sacks
You know, in frustration. So, this is not the first time that, uh, an American president has gotten frustrated with Netanyahu. But I think people reacted quite well to that on the whole, because it showed that President Trump was willing to, to-
- JCJason Calacanis
He cares.
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, first, first of all, he negotiated the ceasefire-
- JCJason Calacanis
Right.
- DSDavid Sacks
... which was amazing. Then what happens is that, you know, there was this deadline, and it's like in a, in a fight where they ring the bell and the fighters keep slugging with each other.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
It's like they both wanna get a, a few extra hits in.
- JCJason Calacanis
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Sacks
And, uh, that's what-
- 29:48 – 39:58
How markets digested the last few weeks in the Middle East, crucial role of energy independence
- JCJason Calacanis
Let's move on. In the docket, we've got a lot of other, uh, topics to talk about. Obviously, oil prices. Chamath, you had talked about those in relation to this action. You said, "Hey, if this goes poorly, we could be looking at $100 a barrel oil." Quite, um, interestingly, while it did spike a little bit up to $74, almost hit your $100, Chamath, racing up from, uh, the $60 mark, you know, we come back down now, and I think people, our energy independence here in the United States makes us, not immune to this, but w- we're somewhat protected, and I think that's the great thing about energy independence.... but here we are, the markets have digested this, priced it in, processed it in a way that I think maybe none of us thought it would. So, maybe you could unpack your thinking now on the market's reaction to the war.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
The fear that I had was that if there was a protracted conflict, what you effectively would see is a bunch of supply go offline, and if that supply went offline, and a- as long as the demand stayed even roughly the same, you would see prices go up. My thought was the, the price of oil could double. I think Goldman had it slightly under a doubling. So, that was definitely the, the fear what folks had going into that weekend. But coming out of it, this is where I think you have to be very respectful of the fact that the market is really the sum of many, many, many millions of informed opinions, and I think what they saw was that Iran was not really in a position to do anything but capitulate and give up.
- JCJason Calacanis
Hmm.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
And I think that what they also saw, whether you agree with the Israeli policy or not, was that they had systematically gone from where they are and marched eastward essentially. They effectively decapitated Hamas, they effectively decapitated Hezbollah, they effectively decapitated the Houthis. I think finally putting a nail in the coffin of this Iran nuclear ambition program was not just important for them, but it's critical for Saudi and the UAE.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yes.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
You know, MB- MBS had an incredibly powerful quote which was, "If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, we will have no choice but to get our own." Right? So, by taking all of that risk off the table, what you're now talking about is an enormous supply that could essentially service world productivity needs unhindered, because it's not just Iranian supply. You're talking about Emirati supply and you're talking about Qatari supply and you're talking about Saudi supply. So, I think what the market realized was, okay, now the Middle East is the closest it's ever been to fully monetizing the oil that they have and to invest aggressively into their own people. The second thing is that Steve Witkof spoke about the fact that you should expect the Abraham Accords to expand. So, if you think about that one-two punch, not necessarily from a geopolitical lens, but from an economic lens, the first punch is neutering the Iranians' ability to be chaos monkeys in the region. But the second punch is the one that then now creates normalization across the region with Israel. It double and triples down the ability to monetize oil and start to invest those returns in future projects that have a much better ROI.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
All of that leads to cheaper energy.
- JCJason Calacanis
And Iran becomes the odd person out here in this new, you know, federation of people in the Middle East who want peace and normal relations-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
... I think.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
It's a phenomenal question, Jason, but I think that's what the market sniffed out.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
And I think that's what the market is now saying, like, that this is a chapter that we can close and move on.
- JCJason Calacanis
This could be a big paradigm shift, and Freiberg-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Huge.
- JCJason Calacanis
... the major part of this paradigm shift that we're seeing here comes from an investment in energy in the United States since the Iraq War, since the Afghanistan War. We now are energy independent. We're a net exporter. We've invested in solar, we've (laughs) invested in wind, we are doing more drilling, nat gas, and this week, uh, I think we saw some new starts for nuclear as well. So, this time around, when we look at our Middle East policy, it is not informed by our need for that oil. Is that correct, Freiberg, in your mind?
- DFDavid Friedberg
Well, I think you have to look at it on a global basis. Iran exports $60 billion a year.
- JCJason Calacanis
Mm-hmm.
- DFDavid Friedberg
And about 55 billion of that goes to China. And that number is up from, I believe, sub 30% just a few years ago, or sub 20%. So, the relationship between Iran and China and the importance of that relationship to China's economy and productivity, I think cannot be understated. So, independent of the United States, on a global stage, the situation with the supply of energy and the partnership on energy with what is effectively the US's largest rival now, is critical to take into account when doing the calculus on how to resolve forward here. Which is also why, and I don't think that we have perfect information, I don't think the public has been given perfect information about the statesmanship that's gone on-
- JCJason Calacanis
Hmm.
- DFDavid Friedberg
... between the United States and China, or the conversations that gone on at a high level between the US and China, or at a high level between the US and Russia, regarding what is the right way to transition the region. When I look at the region, and when you hear about other leaders in that region speaking publicly, the King of Jordan, MBS from Saudi, the Omanis, from Bahrain, all of the other leaders in that region, even the Qataris who seem to kind of try to straddle both sides here, they all seem to have a very strong imperative and incentive to modernize the Middle East, to bring those economies into the global stage, to bring them into kind of a, a modern economy. Well, Jason, I know you've talked about this and you've visited and the rest of us obviously have relationships there, but there's a strong demand and a strong interest in this region in modernizing. And that modernization is gonna benefit the world, because they will ultimately be net exporters, they will ultimately net, net producers of things that everyone else will buy and participate in, and they will also be very big consumers. They are already-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DFDavid Friedberg
... very big buyers of American technology and American businesses, and also big financiers of global capitalism. So-In that context, I don't think it's just about, "Hey, we gotta go get the oil." Or-
- JCJason Calacanis
Hm.
- DFDavid Friedberg
... "Hey, we gotta go get the energy." It's about, how do you balance China's need for energy? How do you balance the Russian incentives? And how do you help the rest of that region modernize? And I think that's where there's a very complex dance underway that we have very little insight into the details of those conversations, and I'm not gonna just sit here and be, like, very flippant about, "Oh, we should do this, or we should do that," because there's a lot at play. And I think that that is, in my opinion, the net calculus, the bigger picture calculus that's underway-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yes.
- DFDavid Friedberg
... in trying to transition the region.
- JCJason Calacanis
Sacks, let me ask you a question here, leveling it up. Pretty well known, the Israelis have nuclear weapons and many of them, and they have for some time, even though they're not part of any of the treaties, and they will claim they don't or, or be a little coy about it. What is the argument for nobody else in the region being allowed to have one if the Israelis have many? And would you be okay with Saudi having nuclear bombs? And what is the argument we would make to them as the West, Americans, people who have nuclear (laughs) weapons? Russia, China have them. Why can't Saudi have them? What's your best argument to them of not acquiring them if Is- the Israelis have dozens to hundreds?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, nuclear proliferation is just not in our interest. We don't want more countries getting nuclear weapons. Obviously, some countries have them, but if you use that as the rationalization for everyone being able to have them, then you're gonna end up with 200 countries that have nuclear weapons. So I think the nuclear nonproliferation regime is in the interests of the United States. We all understand the danger of these weapons. The more countries that have them, the more dangerous the world becomes. Now, it is true that unofficially, the Israelis have nuclear weapons. But like you were saying before, if Iran gets nukes, then Saudi Arabia will be forced to get nukes and so on down the line. And so there will be a domino effect. With each country that gets nuclear weapons, more countries around them will feel the need, that are threatened, to have their own deterrent. And the question is just where you stop this, and I think we just wanna stop it here. We don't want more countries getting nuclear weapons, particularly ones that we have hostile relations with.
- 39:58 – 1:06:02
Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani upsets Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic Primary for NYC Mayor
- DSDavid Sacks
weapons.
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay. Let's, um, get onto this Democratic socialist who's on the (laughs) verge of becoming New York City's mayor. Little-known New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani took the internet by storm this week, shocked the world, beating out Andrew Cuomo for the Democratic nomination. Here's the Polymarket chart. Just crazy. One month ago, Cuomo was at 93%. Zohran had a 6% chance. My Lord, what a flip. A couple of things happened that led to this. Obviously, a bunch of viral moments. He's a great speaker. Reminds me of Vivek in, in that regard. Really good, uh, you know, in debates and, and speaking publicly. Started rising in the polls. Got a ton of endorsements from Millennials, Gen Z. AOC endorsed him as well. And, uh, now, he is, Mamdani is the 75% favorite to beat Eric Adams, but looks like Eric (laughs) Adams is gonna get a shocking amount of support because people don't want a Democratic socialist who's got some really unique and colorful history of becoming the mayor of one of the greatest cities in the world, my hometown. He wants to have free buses. Doesn't sound like that big of a deal. He wants to freeze (laughs) rent and triple the development of affordable housing. City-owned government grocery stores? That sounds crazy. A $30 minimum wage. New York's at $16.50, by the way. Uh, he wants to defund the police, replace the cops with social workers in high-crime areas, a bunch of really wacky, interesting proposals. And, uh, you were, I think, onto this early, Friedberg, in your predictions. Last year, you saw this coming. Again, if you listen to the number one podcast in the world, you're gonna get this information a year earlier than everybody else. That's why we are the number one podcast in the world. Friedberg, maybe you'll talk a little bit about your prediction last year (laughs) and, uh, where we are right now and your reaction to this. I don't know. Perplexing? Shocking? Is this perplexing, shocking, or obvious to you?
- DFDavid Friedberg
For me, it feels like actually a little bit of a beginning of a wave that's gonna continue to sweep over this country, starting in cities, and I think that we're at the very early stages. I think we'll look back, and I jokingly say that Kamala Harris is gonna look like a Conservative candidate pretty soon.
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs)
- DFDavid Friedberg
And I do think that this is a broad kind of reaction to the economic condition of the United States, and I've talked... A- a lot of people don't quite recognize and see how important the debt and the deficit is with respect to how it's ultimately going to lead to socialism as it has every single time in history when you've had a free voting democracy or representative democracy that becomes encumbered.... with too much debt. So, Nick, if you'll pull up this chart, I'll just show you a microcosm of it and specifically how it played out in New York, and how it will continue to play out in cities. This is the total amount of student loan debt. In the last 20 years, the student loan debt has ballooned from 500 billion to two trillion. Four million college graduates per year in the United States, about 40% of them have student loan debt that they leave. That means that in the last 20 years, 80 million people, young people, have graduated from college and they've accrued $1.5 trillion of new debt. And based on the percentage and the distribution, that means the average debt for these individuals is sitting around $60,000. So you're a young person, where do those young people go? Where do they live? And remember, there's about 32 million of them. They live in cities. They don't go back to rural towns. Most of that population sits in cities. It sits in New York, sits in Los Angeles, sits in Seattle, sits in San Francisco, sits in Portland, and sits in Chicago. And what we're seeing in those cities is a massive political shift. People call it left, but it's actually quite different than just being more traditionally left. It's really a revolution against the system that brought them to this moment. Because the promise that we gave in America, the American dream was if you will go to college, you will graduate, you will have income, you will have stability, you will be able to buy a home. And what we did is we increased the government's role in making that dream possible. And in doing so, we created effectively a system where we gave unrestricted access to capital, which inflated the cost of education. People could go to school like Zoran and major in African studies at Bowdoin College. They could get a, a loan and graduate with $200,000, $300,000 of debt, and then never get a job. The guy has not had a real job. And this is the truth for 32 million young Americans. They find themselves living in places where they cannot afford to pay their bills every month, and they will never get out of the debt cycle that they were thrust into, and believed that they were going to be able to graduate from and excel in the world, and increase. They all have what is called negative capital. They have debt, and they will never be able to get out of that cycle. So where do you turn in that moment? You don't go turn to corporations to solve your problems. You don't go turn to your friends and your siblings and your family. They're not gonna bail you out. You turn to the voting booth, and you hear a guy like Zoran show up and say, "There can be a better path forward. The better path forward is the government can and should do more to help. And in doing more to help, we will increase government, we will tax the rich, we will tax the corporations, we will take all of that capital and we will redistribute it in the form of services and checks and support for all of the people that find themselves unable to take care of themselves." And this becomes a tipping point when the majority of the voter base ends up in that situation where they're that deeply in need, where they have negative capital. And that is the situation America finds itself in today. There is no easy answer and there is no easy solution out of this. But I can tell you one thing for sure, that in historical perspective, we have seen it time and time again across dozens of countries that have embraced socialism to get out of the debt cycle that ultimately absorbs and, and swallows up the young. It swallows up every family. It swallows up every person in the working class with debt. They're swaddled with it, and they all try and get out of it by increasing government and embracing these socialist concepts, and it has never ever worked. More government is not the answer. Less government is. We can get into that, but if you look at the results, Zoran won 61 to 39 with college-educated. Young people voted for him. Old people did not as much. White people voted for him because they went to college. Non-white people did not as much. At the end of the day, young, college-educated white people elected this guy. And that is the beginning of a wave that will sweep over America, and I really do worry about where this takes us. So, uh, you know, for-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Way to go, dummies. (laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah, I mean, the... You're correct. He won amongst Asians, whites, college-educated. And to put a finer point on it, Freeburg, it really isn't just college, it's the cost of college. Increases in the cost of college degrees have outpaced the wage growth of entry-level salaries by 10X over the last 20 years. You could go 300,000, 400,000, not in debt, but that might be what you paid for those degrees in those major cities, and you don't believe in capitalism anymore and you believe that you need to tax the rich. Just o- one warning (laughs) for people in these states, in these cities. We saw this, Sacks, in San Francisco. We saw the, the, the doom spiral. You and I worked on the Chesa Boudin recall, and now they have Dan Lowry there, and things are starting to slowly turn around a bit. In Los Angeles, we saw this with Karen Bass. They didn't vote for Rick Caruso. He would have been an amazing mayor. They voted for incompetence. And these people are voting for incompetence and a plan that will not work, because two-thirds of the tax base in New York is paid for by the top 10% who are leaving. People will leave. They will see that Austin and Miami are fantastic cities to live in at half the price, a third of the price, and you get a tax break, and you can always go back to New York and California and hang out for a month and get whatever value's left in those cities that hasn't been destroyed by these socialists and the incompetent people running them. Sacks, what are your thoughts-
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
... on what's happening in New York City, specifically?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, you're right that every generation seems to need to learn this lesson for themselves, because they don't study history and they, they don't see that socialism always fails wherever it's tried. San Francisco went through this. I mean, it was a doom spiral. Uh, now I think we've turned the corner. LA is in the midst of going through it, and a large portion of LA just burned down because there's no water in the fire hydrants. Basically, all the public services have been looted. And New York is about to learn this for themselves. So, it just seems like every generation just has to learn this. There's no way to teach them.So I do think that, that is one thing that's going on. I, I do agree with Freeberg that a, a big underlying root cause here is the student debt, it's the fact that these kids have negative capital. They've got no skin in the game. They graduate from college with worthless degrees and massive amounts of debt. That debt was not used to make their education better. Universities have been using the spiraling tuitions to fund massive amounts of bureaucracy, you know, for DEI and woke and all sorts of stuff like that. And th- these kids have no prospect of getting out of debt or, or being able to buy a home, so they just have no skin in the game. And so this is part of why they're, they're turning against capitalism. One thing we need to do, by the way, is we need to make the student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy. It's one of the only-
- DFDavid Friedberg
100%.
- DSDavid Sacks
... it's the only kind of debt that you can't get out of through bankruptcy. And if we were to make that change, at least these kids would have a way out.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
They have no skin in the game. The universities have-
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs)
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... absolutely no incentive to keep prices down and create a competitive or economic incentive for making sure that their degrees work. The only group that possibly could would be true capital lenders, people like banks or underwriters that are saying, "Here's a loan because I expect you to be able to pay it back."
- DSDavid Sacks
Right.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
There's no underwriting in student loans today.
- DSDavid Sacks
That's right.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
There's no underwriting. The student loan program, the federal student loan program needs to go away because when it goes away, if it goes to zero, and people might say, "Oh, that's awful. You're taking away education," what will happen is the capital markets will flood to fill that hole. Banks and lenders will show up, and they will say, "You know what? We'll underwrite the loans," but they'll underwrite it by saying, "Good colleges get the, get, get loans, and bad colleges- Right.
- DSDavid Sacks
... don't. Good degrees get the loans."
- DFDavid Friedberg
Absolutely.
- DSDavid Sacks
"Bad degrees don't." And people that are expected to pay back the loans will now get loans, and all of the rest of the money that's caused everyone to end up in this debt spiral will stop-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Right.
- DSDavid Sacks
... and we'll be able to kind of recover from it.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
It's ironic that a problem that is being caused by government is gonna lead to socialism. It's gonna lead to maximum government-
- DFDavid Friedberg
(laughs) That's right.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... which will then create the next spiral of problems, but I agree with you. I think this is very sad. But let me, let me also say, I think there's one other thing going on here, which is beyond just sort of the lack of skin in the game here, which is the failure of the Democratic establishment. It's basically completely antiquated, desiccated, and out of touch, and who was Mamdani running against? Andrew Cuomo, who is really a perfect avatar for this establishment. He's a retread. He's been around for decades. He'd probably be finishing his fourth term as governor, except for a harassment scandal that forced his resignation. He's 67, which is something of a spring chicken by the standards of Democrat gerontocracy, but he's twice the age of Mayan Dami, who's 33. And Cuomo hasn't even lived in New York City for three decades. He wanted to mount a political comeback that no one was asking for, and the Democratic establishment just fell in line rather than having a proper contest to choose a less damaged, more dynamic candidate, and-
- DFDavid Friedberg
He's a nepo baby too.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Right. So, you know, does this sound familiar? I mean, this is exactly what happened with Biden, is that no one wanted him to run again. He was obviously a, a very weak candidate, but the Democratic establishment just fell in line and covered up his weaknesses, and they used law fair to take out his opponents-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Totally.
- 1:06:02 – 1:18:09
Science Corner: Stem cell-driven aging reversal out of China
- JCJason Calacanis
- DFDavid Friedberg
You guys wanna talk about age reversal?
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay, yeah, let's talk about age reversal while I hit this (beep) .
- DFDavid Friedberg
As is the case with most cutting edge science nowadays, it is coming out of China and not out of the United States. So, this research study was done on age reversal. We've talked about using these Yamanaka factors to change the epigenome on cells and make them youthful again. In this particular case, the study was done on engineering stem cells that were then placed into the bodies of monkeys and reversed the age of these monkeys on the order of what would be the equivalent in humans of several decades of age reversal. It's a pretty amazing and astounding result. So, cell therapy is the modality that would be kind of employed at scale for humans to utilize this tool. There's a lot of work that's been done in age reversal in mice, some work in primates, some work in humans now, and there's obviously a few startups doing this based on the studies and research around Yamanaka factors. So, kind of changing the epigenome and effectively getting cells to act youthful again.In this particular case, this team focused on a specific gene that it is known that when this gene is expressed or overexpressed, meaning the gene is turned on, it actually creates a whole bunch of signaling molecules, little tiny molecules that then get absorbed by other cells and tell those cells to start to act young again and reset those cells. And that gene is called FOXO3. So what this research team did is they took stem cells, and they engineered them using CRISPR to get them to overexpress FOXO3. And so now these cells start making this FOXO3 protein, and when that cell starts making that FOXO3 protein, it actually makes a whole bunch of other molecules, little small proteins, little molecules. They then get packaged up into what are called exosomes. These are like little packets that get sput out of the cell and they get absorbed by other cells and trigger those cells, we don't know how, we don't know why necessarily, to start acting young again. So they engineered these stem cells, overexpressed FOXO3, and then put these stem cells in these monkeys. And these monkeys were kind of the equivalent of being 60 years old, and then they looked at what happened. So what happened? Well, they looked at tissue, they looked at blood, and they did MRIs and scans of the brain, and what they found is that the monkeys' brains effectively started to get completely rewired and act like young brains again. They were able to increase their memory, increase their responsiveness. Their age-related atrophy reversed, so their brains actually grew. Uh, their bones started to grow. Their muscles started to grow. Their blood cells started to reverse aging signals. So across... Bone degeneration reversed. They looked at 61 different tissues from 10 distinct systems in the, uh, the bodies of these monkeys after they received the stem cell treatment, and, uh, 54% of the tissue examined showed reversal of age. In the case of lungs, they saw... In monkeys it was a four-year age reversal, which is 12 years in humans. Skin reversed by six years, which is the equivalent of 18 years in humans. So imagine a 60-year-old person taking that suddenly they're 40 years old in their skin. Skeletal muscle went by five years in the monkeys, which is the equivalent of 15 years in humans. So imagine going from being 60 years old to having the body of a 45-year-old in terms of muscles. The spleen, the brain, all across these different systems, they saw significant signals of age reversal. And then they identified these little exosomes. These are like little sacs that are spun out of the cell, and then they go into other cells and they start to trigger all of this age reversal cascade that happens. And by the way, they saw no side effects. They saw no negative health effects. There was no increase in cancer. These are the sorts of things you typically look for. And in tissue, in, uh, blood cells, in MRI, across the board, they saw age reversal. So it was a really kind of incredible result, and I think that it opens up the door for this idea of using cell therapy based on stem cells that are engineered to be injected into blood to actually reverse aging in humans. And I think that we should expect over the next couple of years these sorts of trials to kind of begin to see if we can see similar results. There's a lot of background work, by the way, in FOXO3, in this particular gene, a lot of background work in engineering stem cells, a lot of background work obviously in Yamanaka factor and other age reversal that predicated this. But this particular paper, I think, put a lot of things together and showed some, some pretty nice results.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Do you think Yamanaka factors are the thing still or do you think that there's going to be a lot of other genetic manipulations that advance age reversal before Yamanaka factors do?
- DFDavid Friedberg
The latter is more of this, what we call like a complex cascade of proteins and molecules that we haven't identified yet, that we don't know how or why they do what they do. That's what we just saw with this study. We don't know what's in those exosome sacs, and we don't know why they cause s- other cells to reverse their age. We don't quite understand the mechanism. It's really hard. So I think that this becomes sort of, call it an easier path. Whereas with the Yamanaka factors, if you apply too much, the cells don't just rejuvenate. They can become-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Yeah.
- DFDavid Friedberg
... you know, cancerous. So this, yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Let me, let me, let me ask it more directly. Other than the novelty of all of this, do you think there will be something in the market, some injectable or something, that's average people like us can take in the next five or 10 years to solve a problem that we have or to live longer with higher health?
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yes. There are clinicals underway right now. And I know of the clinical trials that are underway.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Like in stage III, you're saying? Phase III clinical trials?
- DFDavid Friedberg
Early stage I in humans.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Like 1As?
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah. Very early.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
So maybe a decade from now.
- DFDavid Friedberg
I think that's right. Well, look, I mean, let's see what the FDA does. But the FDA is trying to accelerate outcomes here, as you know.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Blake Byers-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... came to my house for poker. He's sponsoring a study at UCSF, which I thought was incredible. You know the gene that allows Donald Trump to sleep four hours?
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
They've isolated that gene.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Clinton had that gene too. And Blake is sponsoring a trial to basically edit a handful of subjects who want that gene to see if they can sleep four hours and be rested. So I don't know if you guys know this, and he explained this to me, and it makes so much sense, but I didn't realize it. We sleep... 20 years of our life we're sleeping.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
And so if you can cut it in half, you get an extra 10 years of living. If you think about it like that way, that is an incredible reason to, you know, do the gene editing to get the Trump gene. But the, the thing that nobody knows is what the-
- DFDavid Friedberg
What could go wrong?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Well, so this is the thing.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Where you could ski all day-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
The pro-
- DFDavid Friedberg
(laughs) ... and play poker all night.
Episode duration: 1:47:32
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