All-In PodcastAI Bubble Pops, Zuck Freezes Hiring, Newsom’s 2028 Surge, Russia/Ukraine Endgame
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
140 min read · 28,048 words- 0:00 – 1:59
Bestie intros
- JCJason Calacanis
In confidence, Sax told me he's a little broken up about the empty-nest kinda thing. And by empty nest, I mean his bulldog, Moose, is coming to live on the ranch.
- DSDavid Sacks
Has the moose landed?
- JCJason Calacanis
The moose is landing next week. We're giving him a three-month trial. If he's on his best behavior, he stays.
- DSDavid Sacks
He's gonna be great. He's so well-trained.
- DFDavid Friedberg
What's goin' on?
- DSDavid Sacks
Moose is our, our bulldog.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah?
- DSDavid Sacks
And-
- JCJason Calacanis
Moose is loose.
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs) He needs the space. He needs a ranch. He's a very athletic bulldog.
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sacks
This dog is not a couch potato. He's, like-
- JCJason Calacanis
Au contraire.
- DSDavid Sacks
... very active, and he just needs the space to run around.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Why don't you just buy a ranch and give him his own ranch?
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
Why buy a ranch when Nebessie has him a ranch?
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah. Nebessie, who loves bulldogs.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
But no, he's a, he's a spectacular specimen of a bulldog.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Oh, he is.
- DSDavid Sacks
I mean, this is-
- JCJason Calacanis
Stunning bulldog.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah, he's a beautiful dog.
- JCJason Calacanis
Great bulldog. He's a great bulldog.
- DFDavid Friedberg
This is a trial adoption? A Sax-
- JCJason Calacanis
Trial adoption.
- DFDavid Friedberg
... Calacanis adoption cycle?
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Oh my God, this is sad.
- 1:59 – 9:02
What's new with the All-In Summit
- JCJason Calacanis
all in.
All right, everybody. Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world. We got a banger episode for you today. All the topics that you wanna hear about in the world. And with us, our amazing crew. Our chairman dictator, Chamath Palihapitiya, enjoying the final moments of summer. How you doin' there, brother? Well, I come back in a couple days. Mm. Mm. You getting a little melancholy there, brother? You a little sad? I mean, I think it should- everybody should have a two to three-week vacation in August. I think it should be mandatory around the world. (laughs) I think the world should stop- Hm. ... and we should all go on vacation. Yeah, well, you proved that to the audience by not showing up for the show for a couple of weeks. Yeah. (laughs) It's the best time to go on vacation. The best time. I agree. I agree. I just literally got back from a little- Work your ass off through the end of July- Yeah. ... and take two weeks off with your family is nothing better. I, I just did a, a little s-, uh, visit down to Mexico City, which was absolutely... The life of Rome is amazing. Have you been there before, Chamath? No, but I've heard it's incredible. I heard the food scene in Mexico City is bananas. It was bananas, and, um- That's what I've heard, yeah. The startup scene there is amazing. It's kinda like if Spain and Williamsburg, Brooklyn had a baby, like, that would be Mexico City. It's super hip, super fun, lots of young people, lots of energy. Hey, speaking of, uh, young people with lots of energy. Hey, Freyberg's back with us in his cell, working throughout August to get incredible things done, like our AI summit and the All In summit. Freyberg, uh, you gave up your summer once again for the All In crew and for the audience. How do you feel? You're resentful or you, you feel good about your decisions?
- DFDavid Friedberg
I live for the work, J-CALF.
- JCJason Calacanis
You do. How's Ohala doing? It seems like you're, um, doing a lot of work there. You got your head down. Uh, just give us a little update on the company.
- DFDavid Friedberg
I appreciate the ask. There's a lot going on. We're very busy. I actually had a really cool test tube here that we had a customer visit today.
- JCJason Calacanis
Hm.
- DFDavid Friedberg
I'll go find it. The world's first true potato seed, and we are ramping up production. A lot going on. It's pretty exciting.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah, sounds-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Pretty awesome.
- JCJason Calacanis
... sounds thrilling. Sax, any, uh, thoughts there on, uh, potatoes and just how thrilling this, uh, exercise has been?
- DSDavid Sacks
What are we talking about?
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs) We're just talking about Ohala. He... Freyberg had a thrilling summer. He's, he's got a new potato in a test tube that he's working on. Just-
- DSDavid Sacks
Wait. Did we invest?
- JCJason Calacanis
I can see your-
- DSDavid Sacks
Is that an inve- what's going on with that?
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah. You're a shareholder.
- DSDavid Sacks
I'm in. Okay. All right.
- DFDavid Friedberg
You're in.
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, okay. I care about this now.
- JCJason Calacanis
Chamath, are you in?
- DFDavid Friedberg
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
Uh, no. He did not-
- DSDavid Sacks
I know we wanted to.
- JCJason Calacanis
... he did not offer me an investment.
- DFDavid Friedberg
(laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
I didn't get any. That might be now, right?
- DSDavid Sacks
Wait, did I... Wait, is this a source subject?
- JCJason Calacanis
No.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Why are you... (laughs)
- 9:02 – 30:49
AI Mania hits the brakes: sign of a bubble or a healthy correction?
- JCJason Calacanis
All right, we gotta talk about AI. AI mania hit a bit of a detour this week. All over the, you know, three or four days, AI stocks were down across the board because of this MIT study that went viral, as well as Sam Altman's comments about a bubble, and Zuck instituting a hiring freeze in AI after going on a complete blitzkrieg. So let's get into it. Act one, Monday, Fortune dug up a generative AI study that MIT published last week, or last month I should say. In that study, MIT found that 95% of gen AI pilots are failing to make it to production because of employee resistance, poor quality output, and the most interesting problem seems to be resource misallocation. According to the study, 70% of gen AI budgets are going towards things like building sales and marketing tools, which have poor ROI. The highest ROI was found in back office optimization, like automating tasks that cut back spends, you know, on various departments. Basically, these pilots aren't working, Chamath, is what the study found. They evaluated 300 AI implementations and interviewed 150 leaders across 52 companies. You've been grinding it out with your own software company now called Eighty90. Does this align with what you're seeing on the field, Chamath?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I think what I would tell you is that I think the first wave was just a lot of boards who read the words "AI" somewhere in an article and then went to a board meeting and turned to the CEO and said, "What's your AI strategy?"
- JCJason Calacanis
Mm-hmm.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
And then the CEO turns around and sends that down into their org, and it eventually hits the CTO's desk. And I think the first wave is mostly people just spending money, because they had large existing budgets and so they were like, "Let's just go and try a bunch of different things." And I think now we're going through the sorting function of realizing that there's a big difference between probabilistic software and deterministic software. That's probably the biggest reason why you're seeing so many failure modes in sales and marketing. It's very hard to codify sales and marketing into a set of heuristics that never change. But back office processes, why they're so good and a great target for AI is ultimately you have so many people that have been hired to deal with edge cases, right? I think, like, that's what people do in most companies is they're in charge of a process and they're, they're dealing with edge cases, and I think that you can get extremely high rates of accuracy if you implement AI correctly in back office tasks. I think the real question is, like, what happens to all of this revenue that has been generated? You're seeing companies generating $50, 100 million of ARR in a matter of months and then raising huge rounds. I think what we haven't seen is whether there'll be any sort of either logo churn or dollar churn as new companies come in with even cheaper solutions, the foundational models move up the stack and just absorb capability, or things just don't work and they get abandoned. All of that churn happened in social. I remember when I was in the middle of helping build Facebook, we went through that whole cycle. There was 7,000 or 8,000 social companies-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yep.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... and-... within six years, there was five of us left. It happened in SaaS when I was investing in SaaS. There's a couple of very early and important successes like Yammer, which Sachs started, which I was very lucky to be an investor of. But then it took many years for the handful of winners to get really sorted out. And I suspect we're about to go through that same cycle in AI. So, I think that article basically paints a very accurate picture. There's been a lot of trialing and experimentation. We now need to go through a sorting and a cleansing, and then we'll rebuild from first principles around the-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah, not surprising to our sultan.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... the businesses that are good.
- JCJason Calacanis
Not surprising to our sultan of SaaS, David Sachs, because the sales and marketing departments, they, they're very promiscuous when it comes to new tools, getting a great lead, closing a sale, you can directly connect it, so we always see them test stuff out. Doesn't surprise me that we'd see sales and marketing go after this first. But what do you think about the brittleness of this revenue, the churn? Sachs, are we gonna see a lot of these companies rocket up to 100 and come back down to 50? I- is this something you're seeing, uh, or your, your firm, which I don't know your status at the firm, maybe you could tell us how, how that's working out in terms of your intelligence there. But what is Craft seeing on the field there?
- DSDavid Sacks
I think we're seeing a lot of interesting AI applications being developed, but it's still very early days. And I think that over the past week or so, there was a correction in sentiment towards AI, but I think it was a healthy correction. I don't think this was the beginning of a bust cycle or something like that. I s- I still think that we're in a boom, I still think we're in an investment supercycle, but I think there was a healthy dose of skepticism applied to some of the more fantastical claims that have been made about AI. And I think this is why you saw there was, like, roughly, what, like, a 10% correction in public AI stocks. And there was that, uh, MIT report that said that 95% of, of projects that companies are, are not making it to production yet, and so forth and so on. So, I feel like we're getting in the weeds a little bit here, and what we should be talking about is just sort of where we are in this, um, in this AI supercycle.
- JCJason Calacanis
And where do you perceive us at? We're in the experimentation phase, we're in the pilot phase, but this issue around probabilistic versus deterministic makes it hard to trust the software. Is that what you think the key issue is?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, let me tell you why I think that this correction is actually healthy, is that after ChatGPT launched at the end of 2022 and then throughout 2023, the dominant narrative in AI is that AGI was just two to three years away. And everyone kind of had their own definition of what AGI was, but it was kind of this idea of smarter-than-human superintelligence, and kind of magic AI, AI would be able to do everything. And as a result of that, you kind of had both utopian and dystopian narratives really proliferated. And so, you know, you started getting this, like, job loss narrative that within a few years, 50% of knowledge workers would be out of jobs. You got this rapid takeoff narrative that basically the leading AI models would be able to turn their intelligence towards improving themselves, towards recursive self-improvement, and therefore, within a couple of years, the leading models would basically achieve superintelligence and leave everyone else in the dust, and then capture all the value of humanity. And then based on that narrative, which, again, w- it was the same underlying narrative that fueled both utopian and, and dystopian or doomer takes on AI. You got, I think, a huge backlash, which has already been forming, where you have a thousand bills running through state legislatures right now, and you have all this AI safety legislation. You got bills, like in California, the SB-1047, which would have applied a tremendous amount of, of new regulation to AI. So, you saw this policy backlash happen as well, and it was all based on these fantastical and kind of magic views of what AI was gonna do in just the next two to three years. And I think that the reason why this recent skepticism is healthy is because I think it's rebutting all of that.
- JCJason Calacanis
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Sacks
And it's showing that, you know, AI is a powerful tool. I mean, I, I definitely think it's a new and important form of computing and it is gonna unlock tremendous value in the economy, but it's gonna take us a while to get there. I mean, you can't just tell the AI, you know, "Be a sales rep. Be a customer service rep." And kind of throw it over the wall and expect that it's gonna replace a human. It takes a lot of prompting and iteration and validation to make the AI work, to make it generate business value. And if we were on a path towards rapid takeoff, then what you would see is that the leading AI models would be increasing the distance between... Like, the top one or two models would be increasing the distance between, you know, the rest of the models. And instead, what we're seeing is a clustering of model performance around the same performance benchmarks.
- JCJason Calacanis
It's incremental, right? They're incrementally getting better.
- DSDavid Sacks
The progress seems to be a little bit more incremental.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
It's more evolutionary rather than revolutionary. And I, I think this really crystallized around the launch of ChatGPT-5, where a lot of people were expecting GPT-5 to be this huge breakthrough. Sam Altman was sort of teasing this concept by posting photos of the Death Star.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah. (laughs)
- DSDavid Sacks
The, the idea that this model was gonna blow everybody else away, and the reviews ended up being very mixed, and then we saw that on the performance evaluations. It's not that the model didn't represent progress, it just fell short of these-
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sacks
... lofty expectations that had been created.
- JCJason Calacanis
So, Friedberg, let me get you in on this.
- DSDavid Sacks
This is... Sorry. I've been kind of long-winded here, but just let me just sum this up which is...
- JCJason Calacanis
Please.
- DSDavid Sacks
I think that what people can now see is that we're not in, like, a, a loop of recursive self-improvement. We're seeing that there are a handful of, of great model companies. But the development of this technology is gonna be a more normal technology race. It's not like the leading players just all of a sudden are gonna achieve AGI just very quickly. And as a result of that, I, I think because it is a more normal technology race, I think we can apply a more normal logic to it from both an investment and a policy standpoint.And I think that a lot of the narratives that were hyped up about imminent doom or imminent utopia, depending on what side you were on, were just massively overhyped. And th- this is why I think it's just a very healthy thing.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
By the way, the other concerning thing is, it's concerning when models successively don't get meaningfully better, especially because there's a tendency for incremental models to get overfit to benchmarks. That's another concerning thing that I think people were, like, scratching their heads about. And if you look at the last big set of model updates, X and Grok, they didn't really meaningfully improve their separation from the last generation model on the big benchmarks that matter. And that's also very concerning, because they tend to overfit to begin with.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah, and I would just say that, you know, another just piece of evidence here is that the model companies are still leapfrogging each other to some degree with their latest versions, and again, that should not be possible if one model achieved rapid takeoff. The other thing you're seeing is that it's not like one model is dominating all the other models. You're seeing that models are developing areas of competitive advantage. They're becoming increasingly specialized. They have different personalities. If ChatGPT has been accused of being sycophantish, Grok is maybe more based. I mean, they have different modes that they excel at. Google, I think, has gotten really good at video, for example. Anthropic is, is really good at coding. The specialization really belies this idea of one model becoming all-knowing and all-powerful. We're seeing a proliferation out of specialization.
- JCJason Calacanis
Let me try and get Freeberg in here. Altman appeared to compare the AI craze to the dot-com bubble, according to CNBC. Here's the quote, "Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes." And then a quote from Sam Altman, another quote, "I think we totally screwed up some things with the rollout of GPT-5," so he's kind of admitting that. Freeberg, what does this mean in terms of the massive investment? You, you, OpenAI was talking about $500 billion. So is this in h- do you think, if you were to game what Sam is saying here, maybe he wants it to cool off? Maybe these investments are too large, given the problem and the progress? What, what's the game on the field here, Freeberg, in terms of the m- massive investment that people are claiming this is gonna require if we're not seeing the results in corporations?
- DSDavid Sacks
Like the big CapEx investment? 'Cause most of the capital that's been raised has been raised by the model companies, and most of-
- 30:49 – 39:09
Meta's AI hiring freeze: are the AI talent wars slowing down?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
sorted out.
- JCJason Calacanis
The last piece is the talent war. On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Meta was looking at downsizing its AI division as part of a larger restructuring. Wall Street Journal then reported Meta has a hiring freeze across the AI div- divisions, which is just crazy because just eight weeks ago, Zuck went crazy. He was trying to buy Ilya's, uh, super intelligent startup, you remember? Ilya declined, so Zuck poached Daniel Gross. Meta aqua-hired the Scale AI team, and then they agreed to invest 14 billion in that. Sam Altman claims Zuck was making $100 million offers regularly for OpenAI talent. I'm curious, you know, what you think of that, Sacks? Does the... Talent war seemed to go insane for a couple of months, and now is pausing. What, what's your take on all this, I don't know, uncertainty, boom-bust cycle in such a compressed period of time, or is this just-
- DSDavid Sacks
I mean, you, you are seeing founders turning down multi-billion dollar acquisition offers for startups that hadn't even released a product yet, as if those types of offers grow on trees, and they don't. I mean, these types of-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
They do not.
- DSDavid Sacks
... 100 million or a billion dollar job offers, they don't come along very often. I mean, you have to be at kind of the sweet spot of a boom cycle, and you need a huge company with tons of money that feels like it's strategically vulnerable and is at risk of being left behind. And if you get a confluence of those factors, then you can get kinda crazy offers like that, but they don't come along very often. I think that what Meta is doing is probably digesting a little bit. They've now made a bunch of talent acquisitions. They've done some aqua hires at, you know, very expensive aqua hires, and they're probably just consolidating a little bit. Like I said, I don't think this is the best part of the cycle. I don't think that a bubble has popped or anything like that. I actually think that we're still probably early to the middle of this investment supercycle, and it's just a healthy correction in sentiment here, that people are realizing it's gonna be a little bit harder and take more work than just, "Oh, the AI is gonna figure out how to improve itself, and we'd get to superintelligence." That was always a little bit of a fantasy, I think.
- JCJason Calacanis
You think, uh, Mirror should have taken the billion-dollar offer from Zuck, or Ilya should have taken the 30 billion (laughs) Zucks? I mean, these things never happen, and as you're saying this-
- DSDavid Sacks
I mean, I, I guess it depends how much they have in the bank account, you know? If, if they're already, like, millionaires from whatever they did before, then, then maybe it doesn't matter. But if you were just starting out, for example, and didn't have any money in the bank, that's a pretty hard thing to turn down. I mean, realistically.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah, it's just-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
They probably, they probably sold a bunch of OpenAI equity-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... at 300 and 500 billion.
- DSDavid Sacks
They're both OpenAI co-founders, so...
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
They seem like they're free rolling, so they have-
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... no incentive to sell.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah, which is fine. It's just that there's a lot of people who've never been through a bust cycle before, and-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
... if they think that this is the normal state of the world, they're gonna be sorely mistaken.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
By the way, you're right, Sacks. It's hard to build, as you know, 'cause you did it, a billion-dollar company that then exits for (laughs) more than a billion dollar. It is hard.
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs) Right-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
It's really hard.
- DSDavid Sacks
... where you justify that valuation based on fundamentals. So right now, we're in a part of the cycle where you can justify that valuation based on its strategic value to a multi-trillion dollar market cap company. But that only lasts while those companies are in the market for strategic acceleration.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Yeah, if they're-
- DSDavid Sacks
And if-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... behind, if they're stuck-
- DSDavid Sacks
... and if you turn that down-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... they'll make a risky bet, yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
... then you have to make your company work on its own as an actual business, and to get to a $30 billion evaluation based on fundamentals? That is extraordinarily difficult. I mean, that implies, you know, multiple billions of revenue, actual revenue.
- JCJason Calacanis
Does somebody want to underwrite 500 billion for OpenAI common shares? Anybody think that that is a good trade?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I'll make the-
- 39:09 – 54:03
Gavin Newsom is the early favorite to be the 2028 Democratic nominee
- JCJason Calacanis
Let's talk a little politics here. According to Polymarket, Gavin Newsom is the early favorite in the 2028 Democratic presidential race. So, who gets the nomination? So, here's some background. Newsom is surging in a couple of polls this week. Uh, here's one from Politico that asked California Democrats and left-leaning independents who their preferred candidate would be in 2028. Newsom came in first with 25% of the vote, then Kamala, your favorite, Sax, and Pete Buttigieg. AOC, your favorite, Chamath there. Tim Walz, another one of Sax's favorite. And the odds have jumped ab- about nine percentage points on Polymarket. Here's your Polymarket. Newsom at 28, AOC at 14, and a bunch of people, you know, in the single digits that you could probably guess. So, your thoughts on the early information here. Does this- is any of this even valid, Sax, in your mind, or is it just too much time between now and then?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, I think it's valid in the sense that you're seeing Democrats react positively to what Newsom is doing. And what, what Newsom is doing is mirroring Trump's style in an attempt to, to again give Democrats what they want, which is, they, they want a Trump of their own. And despite Democrats feigning objections to Trump's style, th- this is really what they want, is they, they want someone who they perceive to be a fighter. That said, I think there are two problems with presumptively crowning Gavin as the nominee three years in advance. One is that what Newsom is doing here is completely performative. Everyone can see that he's acting and he's aping Trump's style, or what he thinks is Trump's style. Whereas Trump is completely authentic. Trump is always Trump and everyone understands that, and there's something very authentic and likable about that. Whereas I think that Gavin comes across as being synthetic or plastic, and you don't really have a sense of who the real person is. And I think trying to pretend to be the less version of Trump only, I think, reinforces that, that problem that he already had. So, one is authenticity. The other is that I think that Democrats make a huge mistake if they think that Trump's popularity is based on his style. I mean, it's true that Trump has a trillion-dollar personality, and that is very helpful in politics. But ultimately, I think the reason why Trump has done so well for a decade is because he's been on the right side of a bunch of core issues in American politics that other people just weren't focused on or weren't talking about.
- JCJason Calacanis
Safety in cities seems to be one that heads up versus Gavin Newsom will become one of the attack vectors or one of the grand debates. You have Friedberg, you have California's, you know, descent into madness in the major cities, and then obviously Trump is cleaning up DC from a very first principled basis. Like, "Hey, you can't camp here. Period. Full stop." So, what do you think the chances are here, Friedberg, that this new strategy, going on the podcast, having a podcast, being spicy on social media is gonna work for Gavin, or are you in Sax's camp, it's a bit performative and maybe not fake? And by the way, Gavin Newsom, can't wait to have you on the pod. Go ahead, Friedberg.
- DSDavid Sacks
I would say that the current polling is a reflection of the non-Trump aligned markets' response to Trump. And so it will change certainly over time as the results of the administration's actions bear out, et cetera. One way to think about this, or forecast this, is what is the reaction going to be to this administration? I think...There's a, as I've talked about many, many times, a very high probability that someone who's a little bit more socialist aligned is gonna end up being kind of thrust forward here, and I think AOC fits the bill there. So then I think the question is, what's the Republican response going to be to the choice they may have in trying to prop up or frame up one of those two candidates? And I think, frankly, there may be some group that would say, "We would rather be up against a socialist 'cause they're gonna look like idiots and we're gonna win." And so there's gonna be, weirdly, support for a socialist-like candidate. The other side is the honest moderate question, which is who would you rather have as president, a socialist or Gavin Newsom? And I do think a lot of moderates would say, "If I had to pick between those two, excluding the Republican candidate," I would wanna pick the moderate. I would wanna pick Gavin.
- JCJason Calacanis
Chamath, what issue will determine the midterms and then the 2028 election? Look in your crystal ball there, Chamath, and tell us what you see-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
That's a really good question.
- JCJason Calacanis
... at the US election. Yeah. Midterms might be easier to, to think about, right?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I think the midterms are going to be about the economy, but the economy is going to be a window into a lot of these other issues, the safety security issue, the immigration issue, the tariff issue, rates. I think rates are gonna be an enormous swing factor here. I think Powell is really holding on white-knuckled to a position that probably doesn't underlie the, the data. So I think in the short term, it's just gonna be more of an economic up or down vote for the Trump administration. Many things, I think, are positive and in their control, but there are a few things that are not in their control. In 2028, I don't know. The one thing I would say about the candidacy, though, is like, I, I, if... I don't know if you guys remember, but when the Republican primary process started, the person at the top of the polls at the time was Ron DeSantis. And I said, "You do not wanna be ahead early 'cause people never win." They never win.
- JCJason Calacanis
They take all the arrows and peak too early?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
No. It's, it's not even that. It's just like they never win. So if I had to apply that rubric here, what I would say is, the practical choice that the Democratic voters will have is to actually ask whether they want a replay of California on an American 50-state scale. And if you look at it through that lens, I think Gavin Newsom is going to have a very difficult path because of what has transpired over his tenure as the governor, and he's gonna have to explain away a lot. So, I think that in the absence of real choices, I think that he's c- the clear winner. What is that phrase? In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king sort of a thing?
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I think when you actually go into the election cycle starting after '26 and '27, honestly, it's gonna be up in the air. What I will tell you is that the way that the electoral college is set up and the voting dynamics for the presidency is set up, a socialist cannot win. But the way that the Democratic primaries are set up, a socialist can absolutely win. So, this is to sort of sack this point, which is, I think for the Republican side, the best outcome is a very radical agenda that isn't really supported by substantive facts and is more supported by vibes. "This is what I feel. I just feel it should be right." And I think that those things may win a primary, but will just get destroyed in a federal election. What about you, the world's greatest moderate? What do you think?
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs) Pretty clear that the socialist movement is happening, and that is gonna inspire a lot of young people to come out like they did in New York for Mandami. And I think you have to think about what the platform is. I agree the economy will determine the midterms. But I would look ahead at the core issues we've discussed here many times, Treeberg, and if I was advising the Democrats, I would smash the Republicans where they don't speak up about important issues to the American voter and where young people feel they are being ignored. So, what would I say if I was them, if I was running their platform in 2028? I would go with real wages that are stagnant, and Trump doesn't talk about that. In fact, he's cutting taxes on the rich. They got a credible attack vector right there that nobody's talking about the minimum wage and Trump doesn't care. JD doesn't care about you or the minimum wage or your wages. I would go after education being unaffordable. And again, Trump and JD don't talk about that. Then I would go after housing. Republicans don't talk about that. They don't talk about housing. And then I would go right at the immigrant issue and I'd say, "Listen, America's for immigration. This country was built off of immigrants and JD and Trump wanna pull up the ladder behind everybody and not allow other people to immigrate to this country after they benefited from it." That's the perfect attack vector for beating the Republicans in 2028. Housing, wages, education, and healthcare. These are things you never hear Trump talk about. You never hear JD talking about these. And I think that that's the way to... if they wanna beat -No, they, they talk about them all the time. -MAGA, they go... It's, it's way down the bottom of the list. (laughs) They talk about them all the time. No, they talk... They don't. They... When's the last time... What's... Okay, so tell me, Chamath, what is the proposal-
- DSDavid Sacks
Real wages went up significantly in Trump's first term, and then they started stagnating again under Biden. And that's the whole purpose of his trade policy is to encourage reassuring of manufacturing-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
He just passed a huge tax bill.
- DSDavid Sacks
... in the United States.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
He passed a huge tax bill that locked in all these gains, no tax on tips. So, you can debate the impact to the broad population-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... but there are enough examples where actual take-home wages are higher than what they would be in a counterfactual.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah. And by the way, Gavin Newsom has a super majority in the California legislature. He can run the state however he wants. He also has a very compliant court that will rubber stamp his decisions. Completely different-... than Trump, w- who has a very narrow majority and s- and he has a court that basically tries to stop everything he does. So Gavin Newsom can run this state. He could be operating this state for the benefit of its citizens instead of holding all these performative press conferences and doing podcasts and tweeting all day. So where, where is the program that you're talking about? It doesn't exist.
- JCJason Calacanis
It's a fine criticism. But if, if the r- I'm talking about the Democrats as a group. If the Democrats came out and just said, "We're gonna add a dollar to the federal minimum wage every year for the eight years we're in office," that would fly with the American public.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
That doesn't actually sustain.
- DSDavid Sacks
Because if they said, "We're gonna build-"
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
That's not a strategy that sustains.
- JCJason Calacanis
Sure, you can, you can make that argument. I'm just telling you-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
It's not a strategy.
- JCJason Calacanis
... what the winning argument is. The winning argument is-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Well, no, you're just saying-
- JCJason Calacanis
... you're gonna make trade schools free.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... whatever it takes to get elected. But giving stuff away is not how adults make hard decisions.
- 54:03 – 1:11:44
Russia/Ukraine: Trump's two summits, what endgame to expect?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
- JCJason Calacanis
So Trump had a busy week. He met with Putin, then Zelenskyy and some of the leaders in Europe. Sachs, this is your time to shine. We didn't talk about this yet 'cause it happened after we taped, but last Friday, Trump met with Putin in Alaska, a lot of hand-wringing around that, lasted about three hours. No ceasefire was reached. That was, uh, the stated goal of it, and, uh, on Monday, Trump met with-
- DSDavid Sacks
That was not the state of the goal.
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay. Th- I'm just going by what Trump said when he was on his way there, that he wanted a ceasefire. And then the, uh... on Monday, Trump met with Zelenskyy and a bunch of European leaders at the White House. First in-person meeting since that argument. You remember, back in the overall office in February. And, uh, included the EU president, NATO secretary general, chancellor of Germany-... Italy and UK showed up as well. Your, your thoughts on where we're at with the Ukraine and if we're going to get a ceasefire, a peace negotiation, or a peace settlement, or if the United States is just gonna walk away because it seems like Trump is a little perturbed by the progress here and he has said, you know, maybe it's just up to them to figure it out and he'll be done with the whole thing. Your thoughts, Sachs?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, I think that the, the Alaska summit was major progress. I think that, first of all, the president deserves enormous credit for reestablishing diplomacy and communication with the Russians. There literally hasn't been a meeting between the US president and the Russian president since 2021 while this war is going on and while the war has continued to escalate. I guess the Biden administration's policy was just to ignore the Russians and roll their dice and hope that the war didn't escalate out of control. In any event, I think Trump deserves a lot of credit for, again, reestablishing that diplomatic connection and trying to use diplomacy to end the war. And it was shocking to see how much Democrats and the media w- were openly rooting for him to fail in these efforts to end this war. I mean, effectively, they're rooting for hundreds of thousands of more people to die or get maimed.
- JCJason Calacanis
They were pretty hysterical, right? On the news. It was pretty crazy.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah. And by the way, they, they claim that they care about the Ukrainian people but the Ukrainian people, by large majorities now, want this war to end and they're willing to make meaningful concessions to do it. So there was a poll by Gallup which, Nick, maybe you can throw this on the screen, where a year or two ago, something like 70% of Ukrainians wanted to keep fighting the war. Now that number is down to 24%. Again, the vast majority are looking to achieve a peace. And I think that President Trump and President Putin made some important progress in terms of getting to an eventual peace deal, and I think there are a few planks here. Number one was the recognition that we should try to get to a comprehensive peace deal, not a ceasefire. A ceasefire is temporary and the Russians have already said they wouldn't do it because they understand from their point of view that this would just give the Ukrainians time to regroup and re-arm and try to reset but it wouldn't end the war. And the truth of the matter is that when you're fighting a war and losing, you don't get to call a timeout. So, the Russians have been rejecting this idea of a ceasefire for months, and I think that it was wise, if our ultimate goal is to get to a deal, to recognize that a comprehensive peace deal is what we wanna get to. So that's point number one. Point number two is that President Trump acknowledged that Ukraine would not be joining NATO, which was the key source of the friction and is the thing that ultimately led to this war. So I think that definitively taking NATO off the table I think was a very important precondition to getting to an eventual peace. And then I think the third thing was that the parties, both the Russians and the Americans, agreed that there would have to be territorial concessions of some kind. And we don't know all the details yet. There was some conversation about land swaps. But the point of the matter is that we're not going back to the pre-war status quo ante. The Russians have taken the big chunk of territory. The Ukrainians have not been able to get it back. People are trying to blame Trump for this somehow, but the real cause of this is the failure of the counteroffensive in the summer of 2023. Remember, we gave the Ukrainians something like $100 billion worth of weapons to retake that territory and it was an abysmal failure. They didn't even make it past the first Surovikin line. That is the real cause of why the Ukrainians are gonna lose territory in this war, is they're simply not able to retake it. And I think there was a, a general recognition coming out of that Alaska summit that there would have to be territorial concessions. And I think in these three pillars, I think you have the basis for a comprehensive peace deal which is, again, number one, we're going for a peace deal not a ceasefire, number two, no NATO, and number three, we have to recognize the realities on the ground. Now, I think the big question mark, I think we could get to a peace deal pretty quickly if Zelensky and the Europeans were willing to acknowledge these three points. But so far, they have not been willing to acknowledge those three points, and I think this is one of the things that, if you were listening to the remarks the following Monday when the Europeans came to the White House, there was no recognition. They were still clamoring for a ceasefire, you know, again, which the Russians have rejected, uh, as opposed to a comprehensive peace. They were still clamoring for NATO and they were still rejecting the idea of any territorial concessions, including even Crimea which was lost over a decade ago. So, I think that the issue we have right now is that Zelensky and the Ukrainian government, not the people but the Ukrainian elite and some of these European countries that are backing him, are not willing to make the compromises necessary to achieve a peace deal. And as President Trump has said, at the end of the day, you need the Russians and the Ukrainians to agree. So I think that President Trump deserves enormous credit here for reestablishing diplomacy, for making substantial progress towards a comprehensive peace deal. But at the end of the day, unless Zelensky starts being willing to make compromises, I don't know how you're gonna get to that deal.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah. Freiberg, Dave, any thoughts on this-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
No.
- JCJason Calacanis
... negotiation? Chamath, anything?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Well, I was pretty curious about the historical pattern of this so I just went back, and here's what I learned. What's interesting to note is that since 1945, so not assuming, you know, conflicts in Africa because they are not really quite part of the Western political global order per se, it's important to ask the question, like, how have other territorial disputes panned out? So, there are disputes that end in stalemates, and when you end up in a stalemate you basically arrange a DMZ, demilitarized zone, type arrangement. So, there's one in Korea, right, 1953 to now, there's one in Cyprus, 1974 to right now, and there's one in Kashmir, 1947 to today. And then there's this kind of thing in- between Israel and Lebanon.... and then second, there are disputes where there is some action taken by one country to take something by force, but then there's no consensus internationally as to who owns a territory. So Crimea, as Sax mentioned, 2014 to present, and then Israel and West Jer- uh, East Jerusalem. Sorry. So I think the point is that unless President Trump figures out a way to do something that's frankly truly unprecedented, the historical pattern is that it's been nearly impossible for even the most powerful and influential person in the world to, frankly, draw deals in these kinds of situations, especially when they become protracted. And I think that's what he's getting to when he reinforces, "These things never would have started or gotten this far had I been president," ha- you know, that's what he says, in quotes. And I think this is what he's referring to, which is that the longer these things get drawn out, and particularly with Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Gaza, you're talking about conflicts and historical issues that have been simmering for hundreds of years and, in some cases, thousands of years, all the way back to the antiquities. So I don't know. I j- I just think that it's an incredibly, incredibly difficult position. And I just don't know what's gonna happen. But I think that for modern progress to happen, I think it's important for both of these two issues to get put to bed as quickly as possible.
- DSDavid Sacks
Jake L., what do you think? And we saw the media attacking Trump for even daring to hold negotiations with the Russians. Do you think this was a good idea or do you think that somehow, uh, Trump was caving to Putin?
- JCJason Calacanis
I give Trump a lot of credit. He is incredibly good at foreign policy and specifically with dictators. If you look at our past presidents, they didn't want to meet with Putin, they didn't want to meet with Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il. They thought, uh, isolation was the best policy. It's not. I think talking to these folks and trying to find common ground is the best policy, even if it's a 5% chance of it actually working out, which is what I think any president dealing with a dictator and a despot like, you know, Putin is gonna have. I think you have a 5 or 10% chance. And I think Trump and Biden actually had a lot in common that worked. The loan leasing of the weapons and not costing the American taxpayer any money, where a lot of partisan people said, "Oh my God, this is costing the Americans so much," it's actually, Trump has figured a way to make it profitable. He's selling more weapons to Ukraine and he got us the mineral rights. It turns out Trump was able to turn a cost center, or a supposed cost center, into a profit center in terms of this specific war. And if you look at the sanctions, Trump has increased the sanctions. So Trump had my exact position that I fought for here on this podcast for the past couple of years in this conflict, which was keep the pressure up on Putin, and Trump took it over the top by going to Putin's main client for his oil now, which is India, and putting a massive tariff on them and threatening them with a huge tariff. That was a bold, audacious way to deal with Putin. So I give Trump a ton of credit for trying to make peace here.
- DSDavid Sacks
Okay. So, so here's my question-
- JCJason Calacanis
And Putin has been... Hold on, let me just finish.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
And Putin has been absolutely humiliated. He can't even get to Kiev, let alone take over Finland or Poland. And this has cost Russia their greatest customer, which is the EU, Germany. These people are never gonna buy his oil again, not after what happened here. And that you can give a lot of credit to Trump because he told them when they built their oil pipelines that the Germans were lunatics for doing that and for creating a massive revenue stream for a dictator who is, in my mind, a war criminal. What he did in invading Ukraine makes him a war criminal. What he did in kidnapping these children makes him a war criminal. I think it's awesome that Trump is doing this intervention, even if it has a 5 or 10% chance of working. And then making the NATO alliance pay their fair share and selling them more weapons, I think also brilliant. So I, I give Trump a lot of credit here. He's aligned exactly what I said we should be doing, which is holding dictators who invade other countries accountable for it, and he's added to it the fact that he can connect with people. So I give him a ton of credit for it, Sax. I know that's maybe not the answer you want, but that's how I personally feel.
- DSDavid Sacks
No, look, I think you use this highly moralistic language and you engage in a lot of name-calling, and I actually think that's counterproductive.
- JCJason Calacanis
Which one? Which name is inaccurate, please? Dictator or war criminal?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, look, you're complimenting Trump for engaging in diplomacy with Putin, but then at the same time you want to call him a dictator and war criminal, and that's not gonna be conducive to actually trying to reach a peace agreement. Now, it's fine for you to-
- JCJason Calacanis
But I'm not doing the negotiation. If I was doing the negotiation, I wouldn't come in and say, "Hey, dictator war criminal, let's fight for peace." I'm giving you my personal belief-
- DSDavid Sacks
Okay, that's fine.
- JCJason Calacanis
... as the person not negotiating here.
- DSDavid Sacks
Right. So you're praising, and you're praising Trump for increasing the pressure and leverage that he has-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yes.
- DSDavid Sacks
... with the Russians, which I think is fine. My question for you is, would you increase the pressure or leverage with respect to Zelenskyy? So for example, would you tell Zelenskyy in no uncertain terms, "Listen, stop demanding to be part of NATO because it's not happening"? In fact, the president has done that. Uh, what about, um-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah. The a- the answer to that question is yes. I would say, "Listen, it's not realistic to join NATO. You can get some security guarantees." There's sort of talk of this NATO light, so I would agree with that. I would say, "Listen, we're gonna take N-" I, and I said this on a previous episode, "We should just take off NATO inclusion for, like, 20 years."
- DSDavid Sacks
Okay. So here's a hard one.
- JCJason Calacanis
Because that would be the lifespan of-
- DSDavid Sacks
What a- what about territorial concessions?
Episode duration: 1:11:44
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