Why the 2026 GDP boom could reshape California taxes

David Friedberg 0:00 This is what we need. Let him go.

Jason Calacanis 0:01 All right, here we go.

David Friedberg 0:02 This is Jason-

Jason Calacanis 0:03 In three-

David Friedberg 0:03 -in the corner warming up

Jason Calacanis 0:04 ... two, shut the [beep] up, Friedberg, it's my show. [laughing] Three, two. All right, everybody, welcome back to the number one podcast in the world, the podcast I, Jason Calacanis, named, created-

David Friedberg 0:14 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 0:14 -and I'm the executive producer for life. With me, my three miscreant friends, Chamath Palihapitiya, our dictator. Love you, brother. Good seeing you in Tokyo.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:22 Love you.

Jason Calacanis 0:23 Uh, David Friedberg, our sultan of science, and, yeah, the tsar, yeah, who's now made his way down to Austin. Welcome, brother. Let's go shooting. Let's get those beef ribs. David Sacks, how are you, how are you, uh, how are you settling in to the great state of Texas? Everybody wants to know, David.

David Sacks 0:43 I'm loving the 70-degree weather. Is it like this all year round? [chuckles]

Jason Calacanis 0:47 You know, it's, uh, this is a very wonderful time of year. Uh, you miss the two weeks where it goes to freezing temperatures. We have 10 days of freezing temperatures, and then we have 80 days of 100-degree temperatures, but you'll be on a yacht or Italy or somewhere, uh, during that, like the rest of us. That's basically all you need to know about Austin. Just get out during the summers, 'cause it's brutal. That's it.

David Sacks 1:09 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:09 Everything else is fan-freaking-tastic. But in all seriousness, you're here. You're here. You're... Y- you've moved, you've domiciled in Texas.

David Sacks 1:17 Oh, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:17 This is, this is, this has happened. Two or three Besties.

David Sacks 1:20 No, it happened, it happened in December.

Jason Calacanis 1:23 Yes.

David Sacks 1:24 And so we closed on a new house, moved in, went to the DMV.

Jason Calacanis 1:29 Wow.

David Sacks 1:29 I signed a lease for an Austin office for Craft.

Jason Calacanis 1:32 Nice!

David Sacks 1:33 It's done.

Jason Calacanis 1:34 It's done?

David Sacks 1:35 It's done.

Jason Calacanis 1:36 Okay. I'm gonna... I, I'll get you a dentist and whatever else you need.

David Sacks 1:38 [chuckles] I got a doctor, too. I've been-

Jason Calacanis 1:41 Okay. Does this mean I have to bring Moose back?

David Sacks 1:43 [chuckles]

Jason Calacanis 1:43 This has been the big discussion in our house. Does this mean we lose Moose, or-

David Sacks 1:47 No, he needs-

Jason Calacanis 1:47 ... do we have joint custody?

David Sacks 1:48 He needs a significant acreage to run around. We know that.

Jason Calacanis 1:52 Oh, he does. He does.

David Sacks 1:53 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:53 But he misses you, and I... And we'll definitely bring him by-

David Sacks 1:55 Oh, okay

Jason Calacanis 1:55 ... for a visit, and we'll, we'll be playing some backgammon, smoking some cigars.

David Sacks 1:59 Yeah, you gotta come by.

Jason Calacanis 2:01 Cannot wait.

David Sacks 2:02 I can't believe you haven't come by yet.

Jason Calacanis 2:03 Cannot wait. Friedberg and Chamath, what about you guys? You guys gonna come down? Two of four Besties.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:07 Matt and I started the process in December. We are coming to check things out. We have not made any final decisions, though.

Jason Calacanis 2:13 Okay. Shout-out to our boy Ro Khanna for driving everybody out of the state.

David Sacks 2:17 So here's the funniest thing, is we're all in the chat group discussing the California wealth tax, whether people are gonna leave or not.

Jason Calacanis 2:23 Yeah.

David Sacks 2:24 So Chamath-

Jason Calacanis 2:25 [chuckles]

David Sacks 2:25 ... he's making a big show: "I'm gonna stay and fight. I'm not leaving my home."

Jason Calacanis 2:29 [laughing]

David Sacks 2:29 "They can't drive me out." And then meanwhile, I get a call from my broker-

Jason Calacanis 2:34 [laughing]

David Sacks 2:34 ... who says she's helping Chamath find a place!

David Friedberg 2:37 Oh, oh. [laughing]

David Sacks 2:38 What's going on?

Jason Calacanis 2:39 Oh, is Chamath doing a backdoor trade?

David Sacks 2:41 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 2:41 I'm shocked that Chamath tells you one thing and is doing another.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:44 Oh, my God.

David Sacks 2:45 He is at least hedging his bets.

Jason Calacanis 2:46 He's hedging his bets, as are many.

David Sacks 2:48 A lot of people are hedging their bets. A lot of people are hedging.

Jason Calacanis 2:50 I mean, Sergey's in Florida. He got a... Oh, I'm sorry, uh, Larry's got a beautiful place in Florida, I see, according to the news. A lot of people... And I saw Governor Abbott, uh, reached out to you?

David Sacks 3:01 That's right. He welcomed me to Texas on X.

Jason Calacanis 3:05 Amazing.

David Sacks 3:05 A lot of people did.

Jason Calacanis 3:06 Michael Dell.

David Sacks 3:07 Michael Dell did, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 3:08 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:08 Ted Cruz.

David Sacks 3:09 Ted Cruz, and yeah-

Jason Calacanis 3:10 Mm

David Sacks 3:10 ... it was a real welcome reception. It's funny, I never got anything like that when I was in California.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:14 Jason, I, I put it, I put this on-

David Sacks 3:15 For some reason, the politicians [chuckles] were never-

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:18 They weren't embracing you. [chuckles]

David Sacks 3:19 Yeah, they didn't embrace me. I don't know why.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:21 [chuckles] Who knows?

Jason Calacanis 3:22 I put this on X, but when you look at our friends that have all explicitly left, it's about half a trillion of net worth-

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:31 Wow

Jason Calacanis 3:31 ... which I think is very bad for the long-term budget of California. Then, I can pick about 25 people, just off the top of my head, and then if you think about all the people that will stay and fight, I still-

David Sacks 3:45 Mm

Jason Calacanis 3:45 ... intend to stay and fight, but we're... If we're forced to look down the barrel of a, an asset tax that has God knows what methodology-

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:55 Mm

Jason Calacanis 3:55 ... it's the only thing that's united everybody on the left and the right. Even Reid Hoffman thinks this is insane. I think a lot of other people will leave. It's probably half the total wealth that the budget estimated would be available to be taxed will be gone.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:10 Wow. I mean-

Jason Calacanis 4:11 These are... I, I don't understand.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:13 That has huge implications to the social programs and the general budget of California.

David Sacks 4:17 Listen, I think this is gonna be a topic... This is a prediction. I think this is gonna be a topic throughout the year, because it's not going away.

Jason Calacanis 4:24 Right.

David Sacks 4:24 They're gathering signatures right now.

Jason Calacanis 4:26 I agree.

David Sacks 4:27 And we're gonna find out in, say, April, whether it's on the ballot. Now, it's possible they don't gather the signatures, but they only need about 850,000 of them. If it gets on the ballot, you know, again, we'll know in just a few months, there's gonna be a huge freak-out, and I think there'll be a lot of people who will say, "I can't take the risk," they're gonna leave the state. So I think there's gonna be a rush to the exits. There's gonna be all sorts of repercussions from that. Then there'll be an election in November, obviously. We'll find out if it passes or not, and then there'll be legal challenges. So this is gonna be a saga. I don't think this is over by a long shot, and quite frankly, even if it's beaten in 2026, I think a lot of people expect that some version of this comes back in 2028, which is the thing that kind of pushed me over the edge, in terms of leaving, is I don't think this problem is going away.

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:14 It's very difficult if you're a, an entrepreneur with a good idea to start building here. Because y- if you get stuck in success with a bunch of illiquid stock and have no way to pay 5% of that value, you're going to bankrupt your own company. Just doesn't make any sense.

David Sacks 5:31 And what if your company goes to zero the next year, which can totally happen with private companies? You still owe the tax bill.

Jason Calacanis 5:37 Yeah, I don't know how that reverses itself. It's a terrible idea. I mean, I was talking to Ro Khanna and, uh, Eric Swalwell, uh, who we had on the program, and I told these guys, like, "These dopey Democrats, you have to stop fraud first before you start [chuckles] seizing people's assets or start a discussion about raising taxes." And, you know, we had Nick Shirley on last week, who was doing his investigative journalism. Shout-out to Shirley. And, uh, how do we sell to the American public-... that we want to seize their assets while, uh, and then sending it out the back door, door to fund fraud. That makes no sense. It's a leaky bucket, so fix the bucket first, and then let's have an honest discussion about what the right tax rate is. And, and why do this with a unique tax? Why not just put a point onto capital gains or income tax and, and have that discussion?

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:30 That's a great point. You could also do what Bill Ackman suggested, which is stop allowing these margin loans. There's a lot that actually live off of margin. Is it a good idea? Yes and no, depending on the asset base you have, and if the tax laws changed, we would all change the approach.

David Sacks 6:46 You mentioned that Larry and Sergey have left the state, and they're probably getting dragged for that. But one of the reasons why I think they kind of have to is because the super voting stock provision in this thing, where the way they calculate the value of your stock is not based on its liquid market value, but if you own super voting shares, they multiply your ownership, your super voting, by the market cap of the company- ... and they deem your shares to be worth that. Yeah!

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:12 Oof.

David Sacks 7:12 So for example, Larry and Sergey, I think they combined, have voting power of about 52% of Google. So what's Google worth these days? About four trillion?

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:21 Three and a half trillion. Four trillion.

David Sacks 7:22 Okay, so now I think... I mean, they're, they're very wealthy guys. I think they're each, each worth, whatever, 100 billion-ish or whatever it is.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:30 200, I think. Yeah, 200.

David Sacks 7:31 200. But now their net worth will be deemed to be, I guess, each one of them would be deemed to be roughly one trillion each, not the call it 200 billion. So the 5% tax for them is more like a 25% tax of all their net worth. So, I mean, look, this-

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:48 Well, it becomes, it becomes 50 because you'd have to sell more than that to overcome the drag of selling to generate 25 billion or 50 billion of net worth.

David Sacks 7:56 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:56 You have to sell two X that 'cause you have to pay taxes on that.

David Sacks 7:59 Right. So now what, what is the point of having that super voting provision in there? It's just totally punitive and vicious, I think.

Jason Calacanis 8:06 All right, so let's just go with a quick prediction here.

David Sacks 8:08 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 8:09 I'm gonna call an audible. We're gonna get into the prediction show, folks. We've been delaying this prediction show because the world [chuckles] is moving at an incredible pace, and the news is just... Let's just call it what it is. It's just intense, and we have a lot of stories you all want us to, to cover. We will cover them, but we're gonna start with our prediction show. Just lightning round prediction here. Does this seizure tax-- I'm gonna call it what it is, it's a seizure tax. They're seizing assets. Does the seizing assets tax go into effect or not? Does it pass or not? Friedberg, you're first. Yes or no? Give us a percentage PolyMarketed.

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:42 Well, does it get on the ballot first, and then does it pass?

Jason Calacanis 8:44 Well, we know it's gonna get on the ballot. I think we agree with that, right?

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:46 I don't know.

David Sacks 8:46 That is not correct.

Jason Calacanis 8:47 Oh, we don't know.

David Sacks 8:48 I'm not sure.

Jason Calacanis 8:48 Okay, so then I'll make it a two-parter. Fine. Does it get on the ballot? Does it pass? Chamath, you seem ready to go. Go.

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:54 No, Friedberg, go ahead.

David Sacks 8:55 I don't think it's gonna get on the ballot-

Jason Calacanis 8:57 Oh.

David Sacks 8:58 I agree with that.

8:59 In California.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:00 100%.

Jason Calacanis 9:01 All right, here's your PolyMarket, everybody. Shout out to Shane.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:04 This is to make the ballot.

Jason Calacanis 9:05 My guy, Shane, Knicks fan.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:06 This is to make the ballot.

Jason Calacanis 9:07 This is the question: Will the billionaires to Austin tax, wealth tax, drive people? Uh, will it make it onto the California ballot? Lightly traded, currently at 69%.

David Sacks 9:20 Did you see how much lower it was? That spike happened after Ro Khanna elevated the issue. So when it became a cause celeb among progressives and Bernie Sanders weighed in, it spiked up from-

Jason Calacanis 9:31 Mm

David Sacks 9:31 ... what was it, like 45% to 80%.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:34 Okay, so when Ro Khanna committed political seppuku, uh, it drove up. [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 9:39 Maybe he had a bet. Maybe he placed a bet.

David Sacks 9:41 I don't think it's political suicide for him. There's only two ways it doesn't get on the ballot, right? One is-

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:47 Negotiation

David Sacks 9:47 ... if the SEIU UHW, which is the union that-

Jason Calacanis 9:51 The union

David Sacks 9:51 ... supported this, proposed it, doesn't have the money to pay to collect the signatures. But I... You would think that they would, right?

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:59 Mm-hmm.

David Sacks 10:00 8 million or so is roughly what it costs to gather the signatures for these types of things. Clearly, they can find 850,000 people in California who support it-

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:09 Definitely

David Sacks 10:09 ... if they're willing to put the effort in. The other possibility is that the powers that be, let's call it Gavin Newsom and the machine, are able to negotiate-

Jason Calacanis 10:19 Mm

David Sacks 10:19 ... with this union to get them to stand down, and I don't have any insight into that because that's obviously Democrat politics, not Republican politics.

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:28 Hmm. But Friedberg and Chamath might have some information.

David Sacks 10:31 Maybe you have some insight.

Jason Calacanis 10:32 Okay, we'll leave it at that.

David Sacks 10:32 I don't know.

Jason Calacanis 10:33 We're gonna l- we're gonna leave it at that.

David Sacks 10:34 But if it does get on the ballot, what do you think the odds are that it passes?

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:37 [exhales] I think it's gonna be a, a really important-

David Sacks 10:41 40%

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:41 ... moment for people to vote the ability to be industrious and have agency, or what did Mamdani say? It's rugged individualism versus-

Jason Calacanis 10:53 Collectivism-

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:54 Collectivism

Jason Calacanis 10:54 ... also known as communism, as in collect. We collect your assets, Chamath.

David Sacks 10:58 He said that-

Jason Calacanis 10:59 Collectivism

David Sacks 10:59 ... we're gonna replace-

11:00 The frigidity

11:01 ... The frigidity-

11:02 The frigidity

11:02 ... of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 11:07 I mean, at least he's saying it out loud.

David Sacks 11:10 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 11:10 I, I like this new... I like these new politicians just telling you straight up [chuckles] what we're doing.

David Sacks 11:16 Well, his new housing commissioner, have you seen this?

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:18 Yeah, the white lady's like, "White people must suffer," and then she's like-

David Sacks 11:21 [chuckles]

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:21 ... she had these things where she's like, "I see white babies in the airport, and it makes me mad." And I'm like, "Really?" [chuckles] This is crazy.

Jason Calacanis 11:29 Okay, um-

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:30 What man broke up with this lady? [laughing] Because that dude-

David Sacks 11:34 Right

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:34 ... has created a monster.

David Sacks 11:35 Didn't she say something like, "We need to introduce a, a new relationship between-

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:40 White

David Sacks 11:40 ... white people and property, and their property rights or something like that?"

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:43 Yeah, exactly.

Jason Calacanis 11:44 I mean, they're saying it out loud now, and then I guess she had a mental breakdown and started crying when they came to see her. I, I, I don't know what's going-

David Sacks 11:51 No, no, what happened is they pointed out that her parents own-

Jason Calacanis 11:54 Oh

David Sacks 11:54 ... a multimillion-dollar home, and then she broke down in tears. [laughing]

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:57 Oh, her mom's a white supremacist? I didn't realize her mom was a white supremacist. [laughing]

David Sacks 12:01 That explains it all! This is all about her mommy issues.

12:04 I feel bad for her parents.

Jason Calacanis 12:07 ... Can you imagine your k- [chuckles] imagine when your kids goes and does this and says, "We have to go collect your houses"? I mean, hey, listen, let's do it. Let's do it. Everybody wants to hear our predictions for 2026. We've been pushing it off. We're gonna give it to you right now. We always like to start since, uh, you know, we got into politics here on the program at some point.

Jason Calacanis 12:27 The biggest political winner. Last year's prediction for biggest political winner for 2025, to remind everybody, Friedberg said, "Young candidates." Well done. Gavin, who was on the show sitting in for Sacks, who was busy joining the administration, he said, "Trump and centrism would be the biggest political winner." Chamath, you said, "Fiscal conservatives, uh, who asked for restrained spending." Mm, it was a good thought. And I said, "Gen X and elder millennials, the J.D. Vance, Tulsi Sachs group." So let's go around the horn here. I wonder, Friedberg, who you think will be the biggest political winner of 2026? Friedberg, your chance.

David Friedberg 13:07 Democratic Socialists of America, the DSA, just like the MAGA movement, took over the Republican Party. I think the DSA is taking over the, the, the Democratic Party, and I think that's the move we'll see solidified in 2026.

Jason Calacanis 13:17 Okay, tight is right. Well done. Chamath, who do you got for biggest political winner, 2026?

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:23 Whoever is going to fight waste, fraud, and abuse at the-

Jason Calacanis 13:26 Ah

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:27 ... federal, state, and local level.

Jason Calacanis 13:29 Got it. So it's an open lane to anybody.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:31 It's an open lane. It's a political gambit that I think will work really well in '26.

Jason Calacanis 13:38 Very nicely done. David Sacks, gosh, I can't imagine who you would pick-

David Sacks 13:42 [chuckles]

Jason Calacanis 13:42 ... as a political winner in 2026. [chuckles]

David Sacks 13:44 Well, I'm gonna-

Jason Calacanis 13:45 But go ahead. [chuckles]

David Sacks 13:46 I'm gonna say that the Trump boom is gonna be the biggest political winner of 2026.

Jason Calacanis 13:51 [chuckles]

David Sacks 13:52 The good economic news has started breaking out before 2025 was even over. We have 2.7% inflation, core CPI 2.6. Both those are 40 basis points below expectations. 4.3% GDP growth in Q3, lowest trade deficit since 2009. The Challenger Gray report out today show that job cuts dropped 50% from November, which was itself down about 50% from October.

Jason Calacanis 14:16 Give us a number for the boom. What is it gonna be?

David Sacks 14:18 Hold on. The S&P 500 keeps making record highs. People are paying less for gas. Mortgage costs have fallen by $3,000. Real wages are up over $1,000. And by June, I predict we will see more rate cuts, possibly 75 to 100 basis points, and big tax refunds are coming in April, thanks to a bigger standard deduction and no tax on tips, overtime, and Social Security. So I think there is so much good economic news coming, and it's already started, and I think that it's gonna have a huge impact, not just on the economy, but also on political perceptions for next year.

Jason Calacanis 14:53 Pick your GDP for this boom year, three, four, five, or six points. Sacks, I'm pinning you down. Pick a-

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:58 Oh, wait, well, if you-

Jason Calacanis 14:59 Three, four, five, six

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:59 ... if you make it a prediction, then I, I'd like to pick as well.

Jason Calacanis 15:02 Okay, I'm gonna go Sacks first.

David Sacks 15:03 I'm gonna go for 5%.

Jason Calacanis 15:05 Ooh!

David Sacks 15:05 Within a rounding error, I believe 5%.

Jason Calacanis 15:06 Sure, sure, sure, plus or minus. Chamath, do you wanna pick a number? You said you did.

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:11 I think the lower bound is five. I think the upper bound is six, too.

Jason Calacanis 15:14 Wow, incredible. Well...

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:16 Just to put that in perspective, if we print six, the only country in the modern world that we think of as a quasi-peer competitor that has printed six is the Chinese, in a period where it had complete and total coordination and domination of a federal, state, and local economy. And the fact that we can do it under democracy and capitalism is outrageous.

Jason Calacanis 15:43 Friedberg, do you want to take a stab at that?

David Friedberg 15:44 2026 growth?

Jason Calacanis 15:45 Yeah.

David Friedberg 15:45 4.6%.

Jason Calacanis 15:47 Okay, I was gonna go with between four and five as well. In terms of my prediction for the big political winner, I went back and forth between the Emperor's Apprentice, Darth Vance, J.D. Vance-

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:57 [chuckles]

Jason Calacanis 15:57 ... or the Mondame moment. I said Darth Vance for a couple of reason. Uh, you know-

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:03 [chuckles]

Jason Calacanis 16:03 ... he is out there defending Trump, uh, and he's surging on Polymarket and in the polls. He's obviously the co-pilot of MAGA. He's done a great job of being second seat. He is not usurping President Trump, which would be a big political mistake. He's really navigating being the co-pilot there. But he is the most popular politician, clearly, at Turning Point USA, and he is the OG in the America First, America Only moment. But I'm gonna give the edge to the Mondame moment. He's 34 years old. He's got Ro Khanna at 49, pivoting into a socialist, and I think that's because Democrats believe the easiest way to win in 2026 is to go full socialist. And Trump has, I think, given this lane because he's forgotten about the working man and woman in America. Net disapproval for Trump on the economy, 58% inflation. Despite what Sacks is saying there, it's still closer to 3% than 2%, and Trump just announced he wants to increase the military budget by 50% while people are still complaining about their healthcare. And Trump has turned into a complete neocon, bombing seven countries this year and, uh, threatening to take over Colombia and Greenland. Who knows if that's Trump being Trump or if that's reality? But Trump becoming a neocon was not on anyone's bingo card, and, uh, I think Trump may have incited and given a bunch of fuel to the Mondame moment by not addressing the American people's needs and going for the international interventionism. Okay, now, go for big-

David Sacks 17:36 That was, like, three different answers right there.

Jason Calacanis 17:38 My answer is clearly Mondame. My second place, though, I like to always explain my thinking, is Darth Vance, J.D. Vance.

Jason Calacanis 17:45 Biggest political loser. Last year's predictions, I said Putin, Gavin said Putin. Chamath, you said progressivism. Mm. And, uh, Friedberg, you said the pro-war neocons would be the biggest political losers. Uh, let's get into who we think will be the loser this year. Uh, Sacks, why don't you start? Who's your big political loser in 2026, you think?

David Sacks 18:06 Well, I said Democratic centrism or Democratic centrists, which is sort of the flip side of you guys saying that socialism or progressives are-... uh, winners.

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:18 Hmm.

David Sacks 18:18 And there's two reasons for this. One is because the socialist ideology has sort of ascended among the Democratic base, especially the young people who support Mamdani, things like that. Unfortunately, our universities, our woke madrassas, have done a terrible job educating these students, and they've brainwashed a lot of them into this woke ideology. But also, there's the fact that there's so few House districts anymore that are truly competitive. So both the Cook Political Report and Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, they say that there's fewer than two dozen House races that are genuinely competitive going into 2026. That's because of, uh, gerrymandering and so on. So if you're a Democrat incumbent who is in one of these districts, like all but a couple dozen of them, your only real threat to losing your office is from the left, right? It's some young AOC type coming up to challenge you, and so you don't wanna expose your left flank. So even the Democratic moderates have been shifting further and further to the left, and so you see this AOC Mamdani effect happening there. So I'm kind of in the same camp as you guys, as this is not a good trend, but, uh, I put this as biggest political loser.

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:31 Biggest political loser?

David Sacks 19:32 Democratic centrism.

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:33 Got it. Chamath, what do you got? Can I just go back and just nitpick with you a little bit? Why do you think progressivism didn't fail? And the only reason I ask you that is, outside of a few pockets of progressivism, and specifically Mamdani, if you look at the elections in Virginia or the elections in New Jersey, those are more centrist than progressive.

David Sacks 20:00 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:00 And if you look at the general approval rates of Democrats, they trended consistently down through 2025 as they hand-wrung themselves about leaving centrism and embracing progressivism. So the more talking points around progressivism that emerged, the poorer they performed. So I know your perception or some people's perceptions may be different based on one localized win, but if you look at the broad trend, it didn't work. I just put that out there- Yeah, sure ... just as, just as the facts and not the vibes.

David Sacks 20:31 Well, I don't want it to be true, just to be clear. I would-

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:33 Oh, I'm, I'm, I'm picking bullets

David Sacks 20:34 ... I would love for the Democratic Party to be as centrist as possible.

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:36 No, I don't want it to be true either, but it does seem like that part is certain. No, but you twisted it like it was wrong, and it wasn't wrong, so- Well, I... It might be a jump ball. It might be the best way to describe it, because you have the Mamdani effect- It's not a jump ball. I, I was right. And- Okay. Just look at the numerical numbers. Okay. The trends were horrible. Like, meaning wherever the Democrats started, the more progressive talking points they added, the poorer and poorer they performed. The approval ratings went down; the disapproval ratings went up. I'm not saying that they didn't win a mayoral race. They did do that. I'm just saying, broadly speaking, nationwide, is the Democratic Party and its embrace of progressivism, at least at the federal level, has it paid off over 2025? And I would say categorically, mathematically not. Okay. Okay, now going to 2026, what is- Yeah ... my biggest political loser? What I would say is the biggest loser of '26 is the Monroe Doctrine. I think that when historians look back on the Trump presidency, they're going to rewrite it. I think people have tried to minimize Trump's worldview as a Trump corollary. I don't think that's what this is. They even try to minimize it by calling it the Donroe Doctrine. I don't think that's what this is. I think that there is a clear Trump doctrine that trumped the Monroe Doctrine, and I think that is the political loser because there is a huge body politic that has been built around the Monroe Doctrine. How do we view wars? How do we view our spheres of influence? How do we view economic multilateralism versus unilateralism? All of that is out the window. You know, we view this as hemispheric dominance. That's Trump. We view it as proactive and, in very specific cases, interventionist. We intervene against drug cartels. We control immigration. We secure vital assets. That was, you know, not really the scope of the Monroe Doctrine. We have more transactional relationships, quite honestly, which allows us to react in the moment. So I think the Monroe Doctrine is the biggest loser of 2026. Friedberg, your biggest loser, 2026.

David Friedberg 22:42 My biggest political loser of 2026 is the tech industry. I think AI-

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:46 Mm-hmm

David Friedberg 22:46 ... and tech wealth have become the lightning rod for populism on both sides of the aisle. I think, um, the right is fracturing a bit, where this call it alliance between tech and MAGA seems to be getting a really strong challenge from the more populist movement. In the same sense, the left is turning hard on tech because of tech's alignment with the right, and so I think we're gonna see, in the midterms, a really big referendum against the tech industry coming out of-

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:14 Good one

David Friedberg 23:15 ... this populist movement.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:15 That's a great one. Can I tell you guys a little story from yesterday? I had a meeting with three very senior sitting senators before I flew back to California. These are Republican senators. And Friedberg, I was surprised, exactly what you said. There is a couple of companies that have exacerbated their frustration. They view those companies, these are techs and the tech leaders of these companies, as just not trustworthy, and they've largely been grin [beep] these guys for a long time, and they're pretty frustrated with it. So to your point, it is palpable.

David Sacks 23:52 Look, I can tell you that the natural ally for tech is with MAGA because we still believe in property rights and innovation, and if the Democratic Party is truly going progressive, which means socialist, they want to rewrite your relationship to property rights, whatever that means, and impose wealth taxes and unrealized gains taxes, and all the rest of it. So look, I don't think tech has that much of a choice. As Arnold Schwarzenegger said in one of those movies, "Come with me if you want to live."

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:21 Come with me if you want to live.

David Sacks 24:23 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:23 Get in the choppa.

David Sacks 24:25 ... But let me say this: the reason why there's anger on the populist right is because they remember the censorship and the deplatforming and the shadow banning and all that kind of stuff, and what there needs to be is, I think there just needs to be some meetings, some truth and reconciliation that happens between some of these tech leaders and some of these conservative influencers.

David Friedberg 24:45 Guess what, David Sacks? I know one guy who can help make that happen. [laughing]

David Sacks 24:49 No, I would, I would like to host some of these meetings in 2026 and get these people together. 'Cause I think that the tech companies have either realized their mistake or they were pushed into it, in a lot of cases, by the-

David Friedberg 25:00 That's right

David Sacks 25:00 ... Biden administration.

Jason Calacanis 25:02 Get a gun to their head, yeah.

David Sacks 25:03 They had a gun to their head. Now, I also think that one other mistake they've made is, quite frankly, they've been donors to only left-wing causes. And so if you listen to Cernovich's account, he's like: "Look, guys, you banned us. You cost us our livelihood for years."

Jason Calacanis 25:20 Debanked us.

David Sacks 25:21 Debanked us. Where's the restitution?

David Friedberg 25:23 I think the asset, the asset-

David Sacks 25:23 Or at least, at least start giving some support-

David Friedberg 25:27 Yeah

David Sacks 25:27 ... to our conservative cultural policies.

Jason Calacanis 25:28 You nailed it... By the way, you nailed it on the head.

David Friedberg 25:29 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 25:29 The senators that I talked to, that's exactly what they want. They just wanted an apology. Just be honest and say you did it.

David Friedberg 25:36 This asset seizure tax proposal in California and the conversation about other states, I think is bringing a lot of people to that table, Sacks, at least the tech people, to say, "Wait a second, maybe I shouldn't have been only left-donating over all these years."

David Sacks 25:50 Yeah.

David Friedberg 25:50 "Maybe, maybe I shouldn't have done this." And I think, contrary to what people may think, it may actually be doing a lot more positive for the right side than the left by putting this forward. This may actually be catalyzing a big change in Silicon Valley.

Jason Calacanis 26:07 Yeah, and if you, if you think about it, if you were Zuckerberg or you were, you know, the Google executives, and the FBI is telling you, "Hey, we need you to take care of these censorship issues. We need you to label these things," et cetera, you know, it puts you in a pretty tough situation if the FBI's calling you, if you're trying to do M&A, and then, you know... Look now, M&A, under Trump, is on fire. We'll talk about that more in our prediction show. For me, I was going back and forth in my biggest political loser with these dopey Democrats who are centrists and the n- the new neo-con Trump. Now, I don't know if Trump will continue these neo-con ways, so I'm gonna just align with Sacks here that the centrist Democrats are gonna be this year's biggest political-

David Sacks 27:01 All right, well-

Jason Calacanis 27:01 ... losers.

David Sacks 27:02 Now that you've mentioned twice that-

Jason Calacanis 27:04 Twice

David Sacks 27:05 ... Trump is a neo-con, I have-

Jason Calacanis 27:06 Yes

David Sacks 27:06 ... to respond to this.

Jason Calacanis 27:08 No, you don't. You don't have to, but go ahead. [laughing]

David Sacks 27:10 Okay, look, the, the problem with neo-con regime change operations was, I'd say, threefold. Number one, the invasion. You have this giant invasion, land armies, huge numbers of people getting killed, took, you know, months or a year. Took them, like, a year to get Saddam, right? Number two, you then have an occupation, because whoever you then put in power only stays in power if you have American GIs there pointing the guns, so you end up with a 10- or 20-year occupation. And then third, you have nation-building, which is you end up spending trillions of dollars basically trying to turn them into us, so that our troops can leave. That was the mistake of Afghanistan and Iraq. But look, what has Trump done that is like any of those things? There's been no invasion, no occupation, and no nation building. This war, I guess, with Venezuela, if you wanna call it that, it was a flawless operation. It lasted three hours.

Jason Calacanis 28:05 Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah.

David Sacks 28:05 I mean, I woke up, and it was like, what... You know the meme where it's like, "Wake up, honey?" It's like: "Wake up, honey, Trump's won another war." It was over before it even started. They went in there, and they basically captured Maduro. No Americans were killed. It was a absolutely flawless operation, and they are bringing him to justice. By the way, he begged for it, and he's on tape talking a lot of smack at rallies, saying, "Come get me," you know?

Jason Calacanis 28:31 Hmm.

David Sacks 28:32 Calling the Americans chicken and so on. So in any event, he was begging for it. We can go into a lot more of the, the reasons for doing it and defending it, but I just don't think this is a neo-con policy, and, in fact, it's the Democrats who've been calling to put in this, uh, Nobel Prize winner that you interviewed, Friedberg, right? What's her name, Maria Conchita Alonso?

Jason Calacanis 28:53 Machado.

David Sacks 28:54 Machado.

Jason Calacanis 28:54 Machado.

David Sacks 28:55 Okay. Anyway, [laughing] oh.

Jason Calacanis 28:58 [laughing]

David Friedberg 28:58 Hector Elizondo. I think it's Hector Elizondo. [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 29:01 I mean, he did somebody from the Brat Pack.

David Sacks 29:04 No, she was in Running Man, I think. Anyway-

Jason Calacanis 29:06 [laughing] Exactly.

David Sacks 29:08 But, [laughing] but the-

David Friedberg 29:10 You're talking about the Cuban-Venezuela actress?

David Sacks 29:13 I thought her name was Maria Conchita Alonso. Okay, Maria Karina Machado. Sorry.

Jason Calacanis 29:18 [laughing]

David Sacks 29:18 That's just what I thought of. Uh-

David Friedberg 29:20 You mean Miss World, Miss World Venezuela 1975 winner, Maria Conchita Alonso? [laughing]

David Sacks 29:24 Look, the Democrats are, are criticizing the administration for not putting her in power, but look, here's the problem. Nobel Prizes don't keep people in power. Men with guns keep people in power, and she doesn't have the men with guns, so it'd be American GIs there would have to be the guns to keep her in power, and the administration has not done that. They're looking to basically work with the existing regime, and the big reason why we got sucked into Iraq is 'cause of that whole de-Ba'athification process, where we didn't just get rid of Saddam, we took out the entire elite of the country, which created a huge insurgency. So there's been nothing like that, JCal, is what I'm trying to tell you. In this case, it's a whole different paradigm, is what I'm trying to tell you. We're gonna need a new name for it. Maybe Chamath is right. It's definitely not neo-con.

David Friedberg 30:12 Not neo-con.

Jason Calacanis 30:12 Yeah, we might need a new branding for it. It depends on, you know, if Trump is cosplaying neo-con when he says he's gonna take Greenland, when he says he's gonna take Colombia next, when he says he's gonna take Cuba. He's certainly playing the character of neo-con, uh, publicly here, and who knows? That could be Trump just positioning himself and anchoring future negotiations. But if I was telling you-... you know, before the election, when you were saying, "Hey, do not let certain people become president, Nikki Haley, et cetera, because they're neocons, and they're gonna go to war with Venezuela. They're gonna go to war with Iran." Well, that's exactly what Trump has done, and as flawless as our troops did, and my, my Lord, the- we have the greatest military ever, so just incredible job, and shout-out to them. To do this and lose no American lives was just unbelievable, and it just says something about the dedication of these individuals. But things can go wrong, no matter how good you are. We could be sitting here right now with 12 captured Delta Force. We could have 50 dead Americans.

David Sacks 31:10 But it didn't happen. Where's the war?

Jason Calacanis 31:10 It didn't happen, but if that did, this is where you have to be intellectually honest. If we were dealing with a situation where they didn't pick up the target, and we had lost American troops, and God forbid, they had taken hostages, we would be sitting here with a much different discussion, and so we have to be very careful-

David Sacks 31:26 Of course, but we're not.

Jason Calacanis 31:27 I give... But we're not, I give Trump, but that is an equal possibility-

David Sacks 31:29 This is like-

Jason Calacanis 31:30 -or certainly a non-zero possibility. Things can go sideways.

David Sacks 31:33 You sound like when Sam Harris was saying that, "Imagine if COVID actually killed a lot of people, then the conversation would be different." Well, it didn't. There was no war here, and by the way-

Jason Calacanis 31:44 Nope

David Sacks 31:44 ... with Denmark-

Jason Calacanis 31:44 And let's hope there isn't, and let's hope there isn't. You know, this is why I'll give Trump a lot of credit. He has been strategic. I do give you that.

David Sacks 31:50 Stick and move. Stick and move is-

Jason Calacanis 31:51 Stick and-

David Sacks 31:52 ... is the game plan.

Jason Calacanis 31:52 I, I pray that he can continue this-

David Sacks 31:54 And by the way, on Greenland-

Jason Calacanis 31:55 -record streak.

David Sacks 31:56 First of all, even if we took Greenland, it's not gonna be a neo... There's 30,000 people who live there.

Jason Calacanis 32:00 [chuckles]

David Sacks 32:00 But I think it's more likely that we'll, we'll make a deal. I think we're gonna make an offer they can't refuse.

Jason Calacanis 32:06 Okay, Ken Howery. Shout-out to our guy, Ken Howery.

David Sacks 32:08 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 32:08 Maybe you can make a deal. Let's make a deal.

David Sacks 32:10 Make them an offer they can't refuse. [chuckles]

Jason Calacanis 32:11 Yeah, I mean, how much could it cost?

David Sacks 32:13 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 32:13 I mean, there's nothing there. [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 32:15 Biggest business winner for 2025, uh, looks like Friedberg picked robots and autonomous hardware, year of the robot. I think, uh, if you include robotaxi there, you nailed it. Certainly, next year will be the year of Optimus, uh, 2027. Chamath, you said dollar-denominated stablecoins. I think, uh, given what we've seen with regulation, that was spot on. Gavin, shout-out to our friend, Gavin, he said, "Big businesses that use AI thoughtfully," another great one. I picked Tesla, which is at an all-time high, and Google, which of all of the Mag Seven-

David Sacks 32:52 Crushed

Jason Calacanis 32:53 ... is the biggest winner, and they did 65%, so I nailed both of those. We did-- I think all, all of us crushed that one. Who do you have, Friedberg, as your biggest business winner prediction for 2026? Go ahead, Friedberg.

David Friedberg 33:04 I couldn't decide. My number one is Huawei, which I've mentioned in the past, out of China. I think Huawei's-

Jason Calacanis 33:10 Hmm

David Friedberg 33:10 ... effort to partner with SMIC to go deeper in the chip stack, and they're just firing on all cylinders. I do think keep an eye on Huawei over the next year. It's, um, it's gonna outperform expectations, at least the Western expectations, and the second is, uh, Polymarket. I think Polymarket's evolved from being kind of this one-off, quirky prediction market to actually really providing insights into current events and the news in a way that none of us anticipated.

Jason Calacanis 33:36 Hmm.

David Friedberg 33:36 And I do expect that after the deal we saw with NICE, that all of the exchanges, and we're already seeing this with Robinhood and Coinbase, and we should expect something from Nasdaq this year. Dina Friedman talked to us about this. But I do think that prediction markets could become not just markets, but also news, and I think Polymarket's, um, just in such a position to have a breakout year.

Jason Calacanis 33:59 Okay, great one. Chamath, biggest business winner for 2026 after yourself. Who do you got?

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:06 Yeah, it's hard. Uh, I mean, I will pick me.

Jason Calacanis 34:09 Yep, we knew that. [chuckles]

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:10 It's already done.

Jason Calacanis 34:11 I knew that was coming. [laughing]

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:12 It's already in the books.

Jason Calacanis 34:13 Don't hurt your elbow. Don't hyperextend your elbow.

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:16 Already in the books, so okay, it's all downhill from here. [chuckles]

David Sacks 34:20 Nick, we need to use that meme of Obama giving himself a medal. [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 34:24 [laughing] Chamath is giving himself... [laughing]

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:27 I will pick copper.

Jason Calacanis 34:29 Okay, copper.

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:31 We are still completely underestimating how short we are in terms of the global demand-supply dynamics of a handful of critical elements that we need. Again, in the Trump doctrine view of the world, that is no longer as multilateral as it was, and we need to have unilateral national security, and if you look through that lens, the asset that is set up to go absolutely parabolic is copper. And the reason is that it is, at least as it stands today, the most useful, cheap, amenable, conductive material that we have. That material manifests in everything from our data centers, to our chips, to our weapons systems. It's just everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, and right now, Jason, we are on a path by 2040, where we will be short about 70% of the global supply at current course and speed. [microphone static] And, uh-

Jason Calacanis 35:36 Copper

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:36 ... so I will pick copper.

Jason Calacanis 35:39 Sacks, what do you got? Biggest business winner, 2026, your prediction.

David Sacks 35:42 I said the IPO.

Jason Calacanis 35:44 Hmm.

David Sacks 35:44 I think 2026 is gonna be a big year for IPOs. I'm not gonna say which ones.

Jason Calacanis 35:49 Ooh, great one.

David Sacks 35:49 I think there's gonna be a bunch of them, a bunch of successful ones, and I think we could see trillions of dollars of new market cap created of public companies.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:58 Totally.

David Sacks 35:58 For a while, people were concerned that the number of public companies was shrinking. Public companies were actually being taken private. This is gonna be a big reversal of that trend, so I think this is-

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:07 Mm-hmm

David Sacks 36:07 ... gonna be part of that Trump boom will be the IPO.

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:09 I love that one. I like that one.

Jason Calacanis 36:10 Yeah, great one. Uh, I went with, uh, since I nailed the Mag Seven for last year and picked the highest performer with Google, and I placed a bet on that, so I'm feeling pretty good about it. Uh, my prediction for 2026 is that Amazon is gonna have a massive year-

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:23 Interesting

Jason Calacanis 36:23 ... as they continue to replace humans-

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:25 Why? Why?

Jason Calacanis 36:26 ... with robots. That's why. Here's a chart for you. I've been talking about this a little bit. I think this is the most important company to watch-

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:32 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 36:33 ... because-... Zoox, their self-driving is working, and they're making great progress with it. And here, when you look at this chart, you can see they're essentially flat in terms of hiring humans, and they're surging in deploying robots. And they did their whole PR comms strategy of calling them cobots and donating to Toys for Tots, et cetera. I think they'll be the first corporate, uh, singularity, which is to say, the first company to have more robots driving their bottom line than humans. So that's my prediction for 2026 is Amazon, and I'm going to place a bet on that.

David Sacks 37:09 My prediction is that J Cal is such a luck box, that he'll end up being right-

Jason Calacanis 37:12 [laughing]

David Sacks 37:12 -about Amazon, but not having anything to do with the reason he gave. [laughing]

David Friedberg 37:16 [laughing] Yeah, right. He'll hire a billion humans to go do something, and it'll be for a different reason. I am a luck box. That is true.

Jason Calacanis 37:22 It'll just be better free cash flow, and all of a sudden-

David Sacks 37:25 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 37:25 -more people using AWS, and J Cal will be right. [laughing]

David Sacks 37:28 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 37:28 Well, I- actually, I think the reason is, if you just-- if you think about it, I don't know if you guys have had this experience, but with the delivery business, which was kind of a dog for a long time, obviously, AWS is crushing it. But that delivery business, here in Austin, we get everything the same day. You're gonna experience this, David. There are s-- Because of the, I think, the geography here and the ability to have depot centers very close, everything you order on Amazon comes within the same day.

David Sacks 37:53 You know what?

Jason Calacanis 37:53 It is bizarre.

David Sacks 37:54 I've already... I've already started ordering things from Amazon. You're right, it was all same day. I'm like: "Wait, what is going on?"

Jason Calacanis 37:59 That's-

David Friedberg 37:59 What it is, is we have a lot of space fifteen miles outside of the city center, twenty cent, and they built these huge, um, warehouses. So you just get everything within four hours. They're like: "We'll be right there." It's very bizarre.

Jason Calacanis 38:11 So Jason, you'll buy, like, virtues at, like, eight AM, and it'll arrive by noon?

David Friedberg 38:16 Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Jason Calacanis 38:18 And, uh, when you put your order in for ethics and morality, it just never shows up.

David Sacks 38:22 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 38:22 I don't know. It's lost again.

David Friedberg 38:23 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 38:24 Who knows? It's just incredible. [laughing] We're just both ends of the spectrum here. [laughing] Moral-- It's like, Chamath's like: "Hello, customer support? I ordered a moral compass two years ago. It still hasn't arrived."

David Sacks 38:34 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 38:34 Okay, biggest business loser. [laughing] I love you, Chamath.

David Sacks 38:37 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 38:37 It- It hid behind the twenty billion. [laughing]

David Sacks 38:39 [laughing]

David Friedberg 38:39 It did. It did, absolutely.

Jason Calacanis 38:41 I couldn't see it-

David Friedberg 38:42 All I know is I got my beak wet, so I hope your compass never shows up. [laughing]

David Sacks 38:46 You got your beak wet on that deal?

Jason Calacanis 38:48 Well, uh, Sundeep came to Besties, and he wanted to collect all Besties. We all got to place a little bet, and then, uh-

David Sacks 38:54 Well, by the way, by the way

Jason Calacanis 38:55 ... it just got bought.

David Sacks 38:56 I divested. I divested my Grok shares as part of joining the government-

Jason Calacanis 39:00 [gasps]

David Sacks 39:00 -back in, like, February or March.

Jason Calacanis 39:02 Oh, God!

David Sacks 39:03 So...

Jason Calacanis 39:03 Oh, by the way, by the way-

David Friedberg 39:05 What did-- Would that cost you, like, what, the last triple up?

David Sacks 39:08 No, uh, it was-

David Friedberg 39:08 Last quad triple

David Sacks 39:09 ... it was a small position that came from-

David Friedberg 39:11 Okay

David Sacks 39:11 -Grok acquiring Sonny's old company. We didn't invest in Grok, so it wasn't big, but the point was-

Jason Calacanis 39:16 Yeah, it's just another example of you sacrificing for the country, which I give you a lot of credit for.

David Friedberg 39:20 It's good for Sacs to put that on the record.

Jason Calacanis 39:22 Yeah.

David Friedberg 39:23 Yeah.

David Sacks 39:23 Well, it's just so ridiculous-

Jason Calacanis 39:24 And it's true

David Sacks 39:24 ... because I'm accused -

Jason Calacanis 39:25 It's true

David Sacks 39:25 - of somehow doing this job for money when it just keeps costing me money.

Jason Calacanis 39:28 It's negative, it's negative money.

David Sacks 39:29 xAI just raised an up round at twice the valuation from the last round, and we had to divest that, too.

Jason Calacanis 39:35 You sat that out?

David Sacks 39:35 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 39:36 [chuckles]

David Sacks 39:36 No, no, we didn't sit it out. Hold on. Let's be clear.

David Friedberg 39:39 Well-

David Sacks 39:39 We didn't sit it out.

Jason Calacanis 39:39 We divested.

David Sacks 39:40 We divested it.

Jason Calacanis 39:41 You-- Oh! So you placed the bet, and then before you get to collect the ticket, you lose the last double up or triple up.

David Friedberg 39:49 The economic cost to Sacs will probably exceed a billion dollars by the time he leaves. Personally, this is crazy. I mean, people need to know this.

Jason Calacanis 39:56 It's crazy.

David Friedberg 39:56 It's a very important thing to put on the record. I think it's important for the public.

Jason Calacanis 39:58 Yeah, I think everybody should know.

David Sacks 39:59 I do.

Jason Calacanis 39:59 All these dumb reporters-

David Sacks 40:00 And I do

Jason Calacanis 40:00 ... don't get it, but Sacs has sacrificed financially an enormous amount to work on behalf of the government and the people.

David Sacks 40:08 Mm-hmm.

Jason Calacanis 40:08 That's, that's really amazing.

David Sacks 40:10 I appreciate that. It's fine.

Jason Calacanis 40:10 So let's just think about this.

David Sacks 40:10 I wouldn't even say anything about it if it weren't for the fact that we got these mainstream media reporters lying and saying the opposite, that somehow this job is making me money.

David Friedberg 40:19 Right.

David Sacks 40:19 I wouldn't say a word about it otherwise.

Jason Calacanis 40:21 All right.

David Sacks 40:21 Anyway, keep going.

Jason Calacanis 40:22 Biggest business loser, twenty twenty-five. Gavin said, "Federal go- government service providers," I guess because of Doge and them being held to the fire, uh, feet to the fire there to give us a better deal. Old Guard defense contractors like Boeing and Lockheed was yours, Friedberg. And Chamath, you said the Max Seven, you expected a decrease in, uh, the record concentration. I said OpenAI, which would see a peak valuation, and obviously I got that wrong.

Jason Calacanis 40:51 What do you got this year, Friedberg? Who do you think is gonna be the biggest business loser of this year?

David Friedberg 40:55 To follow up on Chamath and my conversation at the Christmas dinner, I think the state governments are gonna have a real problem with finding financing, because what's going on with the exposés that are underway on waste, fraud, and abuse in state agencies, I think is going to lead to a conversation that's gonna cause folks to question the long-term solvency and operations, because the response won't be, "Hey, let's cut out the waste, fraud, and the abuse." The response is gonna be, "We got to keep it going." And that is what is gonna give people fear, is that if they did respond, call it equivocally, to the discoveries that the governments did, then I think that there's an opportunity to continue to be able to borrow and access capital markets. But I do worry a lot about state governments, um, borrowing. I think the other thing that's gonna hit the, the fan this year in state governments is all of these, um, unrealized pension liabilities. I think when these numbers start to come out this year, and a lot of people are now digging deep into it, folks are gonna wake up and be like: "Holy [beep] ! There's a ginormous hole in these states and their obligations."

Jason Calacanis 41:58 And why does the government have to do these pensions? Why can't we do superannuation like Australia does? We have to get this out of the... I love that pick.

David Friedberg 42:06 That's called a defined contribution instead of a defined benefit.

Jason Calacanis 42:08 Exactly.

David Friedberg 42:08 And if you get this defined contribution model and then just have good management, it all works out. So this is basically the problem with Social Security. Social Security is a defined benefit, and then all the money just doesn't sit anywhere. It doesn't exist.

Jason Calacanis 42:21 Right.

David Friedberg 42:21 If it was a defined contribution-

Jason Calacanis 42:22 It's just a liability

David Friedberg 42:23 ... Li- And let me, let me give a shout-out. If it was a defined contribution, like Invest America accounts or Trump accounts, as they're being called, and you put the money in, and you see how much you have, and every year you track it, and that's what your retirement is gonna be, just like w-we might have with our 401 (k) s or our IRAs-... that is a system that actually has true solvency. Otherwise, it becomes this runaway train of liability, and that's effectively what the states have set up, and it's very dangerous.

Jason Calacanis 42:44 And if we were to take government out of it, and then every American just had to put ten, twelve, fourteen percent into their retirement account, and it was forced, you would have happy people who feel some agency in their lives, which the people of Australia do. Chamath, who's your loser twenty twenty-six?

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:03 I will pick the software industrial complex. So these are the companies that sell licensed SaaS to the corporations of America. It's about a three to four trillion dollar a year economy that is separated into three buckets. Bucket one, which is the smallest, is the initial licensing. That's probably five to ten percent. Buckets two and three, where all the money is made, is what's called maintenance and migration, which is, how do I just maintain this big, bulky license that I just bought for three hundred million dollars, as an example?

Jason Calacanis 43:41 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:41 Or how do I migrate it from product A to product B? Those last two buckets represent ninety percent of all the dollars in revenue that's generated in software. And because of the advancement of these models and the advancement of these technological techniques that we are all uncovering, building agents, building systems, I think you're going to see that total economic opportunity shrink and contract aggressively. The companies will still be able to do their business. It'll just be at a much, much lower incremental revenue. The customers will be able to do their business. They'll have a lot more flexibility, and a lot of upstarts, I think, will have opportunity. I'm speaking my book, obviously, but I'm seeing it on the ground with eighty/ninety-

Jason Calacanis 44:30 Because you have a company building software.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:32 Our entire business, eighty/ninety's business, has basically migrated to disrupting maintenance and migration patterns. I cannot describe how much opportunity there is. It's very tactical, mundane, not very sexy work, but it's incredibly lucrative, and so I expect that that thing is gonna shrink. It's gonna impact SaaS companies, public SaaS companies, particularly quite severely in twenty twenty-six.

Jason Calacanis 44:55 Who do you got, Sacks, for your biggest business loser of twenty twenty-six prediction?

David Sacks 44:57 For me, we already talked about this, but it was California because of the wealth tax and also the onerous regulations driving business and capital out of the state. I hope you guys are right, that it does not make the ballot. If it does, I think there will be a panic and rush for the exits. Regardless, there's two major refineries closing by the spring. Higher gas prices will be the result. I just think that the politicians are not doing a good enough job in California dispelling the fears-

Jason Calacanis 45:24 Hmm

David Sacks 45:24 ... and the actual hostility of the business environment.

Jason Calacanis 45:27 That's a great one, and I went with young white-collar workers in America. I think they're gonna be the biggest business loser. I think it's getting really hard for them to get entry-level, uh, jobs. I'm seeing that all over the place because companies are having an easier job, uh, just automating with AI than training up Gen Z graduates. That's my belief. That's why I'm launched founder university on three continents. If you are a young person, you gotta be resilient. You're gonna have to be self-reliant, independent of what Mondami, Mondami says about collectivism. It's easier to use AI than it is to train up, and we don't have professional development. That needs to come back. I just did an interview with the CEO of McKinsey, which you may have seen on the feed, and this is the big challenge in corporate America is they're taking out the bottom two or three rungs and automating stuff, and we really need to develop young people so that they have a path to take the CEO jobs eventually, and I don't think they're gonna have an easy time doing that. That's why I think all young people should start companies. I am talking my own book. I am talking about founder.university. Please apply, Japan, Saudi, and in America. We're gonna help you build companies. Thank you for my promo.

David Friedberg 46:37 Jason, I got a text last night from a friend, and it's in response to your comments about young people not being able to find jobs because of AI, which is the statement you've made a couple times. He said, " [beep] went to a roundabout of fifty CEOs of public and private companies and asked everyone if they were hiring junior engineers. Everyone said they are still, but not as much as before, because during COVID, every college lowered the bar on admissions, and the talent just isn't as good anymore." My friend went on, and he said, "You should talk about this to counter JCal's point about AI taking young people's jobs. We see this with financial analysts, and we see this with salespeople we hire. The Gen Z kids are all really challenging to hire because of cultural issues, not because we're not hiring them due to AI. So we try and hire older people primarily to s-- to fill those roles." So there's a real interesting point that he was making. I texted a couple of their friends to ask them their opinion, and I've heard this concurrence, JCal, which is like a lot of people think that recent grads out of college, and this may be a, a Covid-era phenomenon, they just don't seem to have the temperament, the motivation, the organizational skills-

Jason Calacanis 47:45 Executive function, yeah.

David Friedberg 47:47 Executive function, and by the way, some of our friends who I've talked to who have kids graduating college, there's even a conversation about none of these kids are motivated to get jobs or to make money. There's a very weird phenomenon in the youth right now, and this may be a Covid phenomenon, and it may be a cultural thing that's part of the long form of what's going on in our society, or it may be a socialist trend, or it may be a populist trend, or it may just be that people have gotten too wealthy and the nation has truly split, and you can't climb the ladder anymore. There's a bunch of things going on here, but I do not think, and I think a lot of people are echoing this, JCal, that challenges that young people are having finding employment is purely rooted in, in an AI and automation phenomenon, but it may be a cultural phenomenon, and so I just put that on the plate for you to consider that there's something else going on here.

Jason Calacanis 48:30 I do think it's both. I do think it is partially what you're saying, is that maybe these young folks, um, have-... you know, they, they're just either entitled or their parents have enough money for them to escape and go sideways and maybe not be as career-motivated. It could be a social thing, it could be a Covid thing, it could be all of those, and it's certainly multifactor. I just know what I see on the ground, which is, you know, so many companies coming to me saying, "We can replace the bottom third of these tasks," and that those bottom third of tasks are typically done by young people out of school. So I think both things are probably true to a certain extent, and time will tell. I do think it's gonna be challenging and continue to be challenging, and you see that in the numbers from, you know, Google, Uber, Coinbase, all these companies are doing more with less. And, and maybe that's just the nature of AI. Maybe the first thing you do is cut costs, and maybe the second thing you do is hire people who know how to use these tools. If you are a young person who uses AI tools, you're gonna find a job. If you're a young person who isn't motivated and doesn't use AI tools, you're gonna have a hard time. Let's

Jason Calacanis 49:34 go with the biggest deal. Last year's predictions for biggest deal for twenty twenty-five, traditional auto OEM consolidation. That was you, Chamath. I think that we haven't seen exactly the consolidation, but we have seen those businesses come apart, so I think it's-- I give you definitely two-thirds of a credit there. Uh, Gavin said a tidal wave of M&A. I think he's not wrong there. That has started to happen, certainly. Friedberg, you said massive compute build-out deals. Of course, you nailed that one. I said consolidation in, uh, amongst the on-demand economy. That hasn't happened, but we do see a lot of deals occurring. And I said also Apple would buy Warner Brothers. I got that like a... I guess, uh, that wound up going to Netflix, so I'll give myself a half point for that. What do you have as your biggest deal for twenty twenty-six, David Sacks?

David Sacks 50:21 Well, I don't want to get-

Jason Calacanis 50:22 Your prediction.

David Sacks 50:22 I don't want to get too specific here in terms of names of companies and that sort of thing.

Jason Calacanis 50:26 Oh, yes, because of your role. Yeah.

David Sacks 50:26 But, uh, what I would say is that I think there was a breakthrough in the last couple of months in terms of these coding assistants, where they've been around for a while, but there seems to have been another level of quality achieved just in the last month or so, and you're really starting to hear-- I mean, maybe a lot of it is hype, but there is... I think a lot of people are getting very excited about the potential here, and part of it is coding, part of it is just tool use. You can download the programs, and so it has access to your file drive, and it can take actions on your computer. This trend feels to me like chatbots did at the end of twenty twenty-two, going into twenty twenty-three, where it's like people were really hyped about it, but then it continued to play it out, play out in the next year. And so I think these, let's call it coding assistant/tool use, I think will get bigger and bigger this year.

Jason Calacanis 51:16 Friedberg, what do you got? Biggest deal.

David Friedberg 51:19 Uh, Russia, Ukraine. I think it's gonna settle out this year. I think there's a lot of motivating factors to get it settled out this year, economic and other political factors, but I do think it's gonna settle out this year, and it's gonna bring a bit more stability to that region, and there's a whole reset that's underway this year, I think, in terms of geopolitics and where the powers all sit.

Jason Calacanis 51:39 Trump can stop that war.

David Sacks 51:40 It's a good one.

Jason Calacanis 51:40 He would be two for two.

David Sacks 51:41 That's a good one.

David Friedberg 51:42 I, I think this one's gonna settle.

Jason Calacanis 51:43 That would be, that would be great. He may not have done it on day one, but if he gets it done in, in, you know, year two, uh, that's good enough for me. Chamath, biggest deal, twenty twenty-six, what do you got?

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:53 It's not a specific deal, but it's an approach. I think that M&A cannot happen, and so it's the IP license M&A workaround, and I think you're going to see hundreds of billions of dollars of these kinds of deals. So this is the deal that Google did with Character AI. It's the same thing that they did-

Jason Calacanis 52:11 Microsoft did it, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:12 Microsoft did it. It's obviously what NVIDIA did with Grok. Why are these deals happening? Well, if you just look at what Facebook tried to do, they tried to buy Manus for two and a half billion dollars. Manus was a Chinese company that then left China and essentially rebuilt itself as a Singaporean business. The Chinese have now said, "We're gonna look at this." They are going to actively import export controls. They're going to actively look at which technologies, and even which researchers, are working on things that are critical enough that it just can't go abroad in this existential fight that they believe they're in with the United States. The United States is in equivalent such position. All of this leads me to believe that traditional M&A is effectively dead. I think it's going to be impossible to get a large transaction done. So how will you do it? You'll do what Sundar did. You'll do what Satya did. You'll do what Jensen did. You'll do what-

Jason Calacanis 53:03 Which is a licensing deal

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:03 ... Mark did with scale AI, these huge licensing deals that basically replace M&A, and I think that that, as a deal type, will get better and more refined and tighter and better executed. We were the third or fourth of these kinds of deals, and even the third or fourth iteration was quite good. By the time that you're into the middle part of next year and you've done fifteen or twenty of these things, I think the lawyers that work on these things and the accountants will just be bold.

Jason Calacanis 53:31 The, the tax treatment is not ideal, but the speed at which you can do them is phenomenal because the next day, somebody like Sandeep can be working for Jensen, which is what Jensen wants. They want the talent. Zuckerberg wants the talent working there the next day.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:45 And the IP. And the IP.

Jason Calacanis 53:46 And the IP, of course. Um, you know, for twenty twenty-six, I think we're gonna see some massive M&A. It doesn't matter to me how it occurs, but I do think we're gonna see a fifty billion-plus deal, and I think it could be, uh, one of the Mag Seven, an Apple, a Meta, a Microsoft, or an Amazon going out and trying to buy xAI, Mistral, Perplexity, Anthropic. One of those four comes to mind. I know most of them probably want to go public and, uh, go it alone, but I think an offer could come in, and during that race for which six or seven large language models, and man, it is a, it is a battle where they are moving up and down the rankings and beating each other out, you know, on the testing-

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:27 Can I ask you a question?

Jason Calacanis 54:28 And I think one of them is gonna-- I think one of them is gonna go for it. I, I, I think it could wind up being Apple-

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:33 I, I-

Jason Calacanis 54:33 ... Meta or Amazon who buys an Anthropic or a Perplexity.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:36 I started where you were, but this is why I went to this deal type as the biggest business winner, because if any of those companies tried to buy, let's just say, Anthropic, I think it's three years of antitrust, minimum.... It's worse than when Microsoft tried to buy Activision, because that was a niche product, and even that took almost two years and, like, three or four months, if I'm getting it right. It-- or it was about two years. It's a huge slog because it's a, it's about global coordination of multiple regulators.

Jason Calacanis 55:07 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:08 And eventually-

Jason Calacanis 55:08 You do have to get through the EU and everything else.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:09 And eventually, one of them takes the lead pole position. But in the Microsoft case, it wasn't just one. You had to navigate China, you had to navigate Europe. So I, I agree with you because I think there's companies with so much cash on their-

Jason Calacanis 55:23 Yes

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:23 ... balance sheets that are effectively getting debased every day. The markets will start to punish these companies. It just seems like you're right. There's going to be a hundred billion dollar transaction. I just suspect it'll end up as an IP license.

Jason Calacanis 55:37 Yeah, and I think President Trump, one of his great strengths is that he moves quickly. Man, what a first year! Whether you like the decisions or not, he, he makes decisions. I think this is one of the things the Democrats are learning, is that you've got to actually get things done for the American people. I think he might instruct our government to let M&A be great again, and that would be great for American exceptionalism. These companies do need to merge a- and to continue to grow, and we should go try to get from a Mag Seven to a Mag Seventeen. We need more, bigger companies with bigger footprints taking on global

Jason Calacanis 56:15 markets. Most contrarian belief, most contrarian belief, people like this one. I said, OpenAI loses its lead in the AI race. Uh, and in fact, that has happened. If you look at the, um, arenas and you look at their market share, they are being challenged. Chamath, you said the banking crisis in one of the major mainline banks. Gavin said, one year of five percent [chuckles] plus GDP growth at one point over the next couple of years. Well done to Gavin. Friedberg, you said socialism rises back, another amazing prediction. What's your prediction for this year, since you crushed it last year, Friedberg? Go ahead.

David Friedberg 56:49 My prediction is based on the premise that I think there is gonna be this revolution in Iran, and the ayatollahs are gonna be out. That's not the contrarian belief. I think that's the standard belief, and I, I think that is gonna happen, and that's the premise. But a lot of people think that Iran is part of the destabilizing force in the Middle East. And I do think that there is already an anticipation of the turnover with the ruling parties in Iran. There is already this brewing conflict amongst the other Arab states. So I think that between UAE, Saudi, Qatar, and this fraction in Yemen, and then I don't know if you guys have followed, but there's this kind of emerging independence movement for Somaliland, which is kind of north of Somalia, that there may be more conflict brewing in the Middle East than anyone anticipates for this year, that will not necessarily involve Israel and/or Iran. It will actually be amongst the other Gulf states as they vie for influence and power, and that the contrarian point may, in fact, be that Iran has been a stabilizing force in that region. And by removing Iran and by changing over Iran, and they become this kind of independent democratic state, and this particularly is gonna be heightened as there's gonna be this battle for who's gonna take care of the Palestinians as the two-state solution emerges. And what's the role that Jordan's gonna have to play versus Egypt versus Saudi? And it's gonna lead to a lot of questions about resource allocation. So I think that this year could end up being a little bit nastier than folks anticipate in the Middle East as Iran turns over.

Jason Calacanis 58:23 Sacks, you got a contrarian belief for twenty twenty-six?

David Sacks 58:26 Yes. I said that AI will increase demand for knowledge workers, not decrease it.

Jason Calacanis 58:33 Mm.

David Sacks 58:33 I would refer you to Aaron Levy's post called Jevons Paradox for Knowledge Workers. And the point of Jevons Paradox is that, as the cost of a resource goes down, the aggregate demand for it actually increases because you discover more and more use cases. So I think this will certainly happen with code. In the past, it's been very expensive to generate code. You have to hire engineers, there's not enough of them. It's an expensive resource, so the amount of software generated in the economy was limited by that. I think it's gonna increase massively now because the cost of generating code is coming down so much. But there's other examples, too. You take a field like radiology, that's frequently cited as a profession that AI is gonna put out of business. That's not what the data shows. The data shows that the number of radiologists is increasing. Why? Because the number of scans that people wanna make is increasing. And it's true that AI can do some of the work, but you still need a doctor to prompt the AI, to interpret the AI, to validate it. So you get more efficient, the cost of scans goes down, and instead of it being a super specialty, that happens very rarely, that you need, like, a referral on top of a referral to get, it becomes something that's normalized and everyone starts doing it, and you start getting more and more scans that leads to better and better outcomes. So I think there's gonna be a lot of those examples through the economy, and we're gonna look back and see that the job loss narrative was not only wrong, but we actually got job gains.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:01 Okay, and for those of you who want to understand Jevons Paradox a little more, you can look at something like electricity or steel or concrete. When we lowered the cost of those things, people didn't use less of it. They built skyscrapers, and we had more routes for more airplanes to take you, uh, on more vacations, and that went from being something only rich people did to everybody. So Jevons Paradox is definitely at work. What do you got, uh, Chamath? Which on-- What's on your, uh, contrarian belief?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:26 Gosh, I have two.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:27 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:27 Well, I'll give you them both, and you can just see. My contrarian belief number one is I don't think SpaceX will IPO. I think that it will reverse merge into Tesla, and I think Elon will use it as a moment to consolidate control and power of his two seminal assets into one cap table.

David Friedberg 1:00:42 Oh, my God, I love that! Wow.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:44 Well, he's talked about that before. He's talked about having a holding company for years. Of all of the collection, you could put Neuralink in there, too, right, Chamath? You could put in The Boring Company as well.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:56 ... Sure, I'm just giving you my contrarian take. There will be no IPO for SpaceX. I think it will just be-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:01 Wow! Wow.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:01 It specifically will be a reverse merger.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:03 There you go.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:05 The second contrarian take is that I think the central banks will realize that there are limitations to gold and limitations to Bitcoin, and will, as a result, seek out a completely new cryptographic paradigm that they can control on their balance sheet, that is fungible, that is tradable, and that is completely secure and private. And I think the reason why that privacy needs to exist is that for the sovereignty of a country, you need to be in a position where you have assets that are not easily disclosed to anybody else, friends or enemies alike. And then separately, cryptographically, if you're going to own a currency, you need to hedge against the eventual risk in the next five to ten years that there's a quantum chip that can challenge the existing cryptographic schemes that are used.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:13 And, uh, for my contrarian, I was thinking about [chuckles] going with OpenAI losing their lead and not being the, uh, number one company again, uh, because I do think that will be the trend, that they will have the-- they'll continue to give up their market share to other players, including Google and Gemini and xAI, et cetera. But I'm gonna go with a, a pretty wild card here. I think the standoff with China is gonna be largely resolved, and I think President Trump's, when he makes his visit there, I don't know if you're gonna go on that one, Sacks, but I, I think he should be included in it, obviously, because of the AI race. I do think that the standoff, um, and the issues around Taiwan are going to be resolved, and I think this could be the signature issue of Trump's second term, is that we work out a working relationship where both China and America win without one of us losing.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:05 Best performing asset. Best performing asset. Last year's prediction, I said Mag Seven, which was up twenty-two percent versus the S&P five hundred at plus seventeen. Chamath, you were long CDS for a potential run on a major bank. You said it was a long shot. Gavin said high bandwidth memory makers like Micron, which was up two hundred and thirty percent. That was a great call. And Friedberg, you said Chinese tech stocks and ETFs. Alibaba was up eighty-five percent, Chinese tech ETF up forty-seven percent versus the S&P five hundred at plus seventeen. So I guess that means Gavin, Friedberg, and then myself. What do you got for this year's best performing asset, Friedberg?

Speaker 1:03:47 Polymarket. Polymarket's on a tear. M- network effects, replacing media, replacing markets.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:54 Congrats to our friend Shane at Polymarket. Do you have a best performing asset for twenty twenty-six?

Speaker 1:03:59 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:59 Go ahead, Chamath.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:00 I would pick a basket of critical metals.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:03 Okay. Basket of critical me- uh, metals. What do you got, Sacks?

David Sacks 1:04:07 It's getting a little bit redundant for me, but I just said the expanding super cycle in tech. I mean, again, this is just another-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:12 Okay

David Sacks 1:04:13 ... facet of the boom. But actually, let me just show you some data that literally just came out. I feel like this is breaking news.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:18 Oh, breaking news?

David Sacks 1:04:19 Nick, can you pull this up? US productivity just surged four point nine percent, the strongest-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:24 Wow!

David Sacks 1:04:24 ... reading in nearly six years. And this is the news item, is that the Atlanta Fed, their forecast for Q4 GDP just climbed to five point four percent. Can that be right?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:38 Yes.

David Sacks 1:04:39 Can we get a fact check on that?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:40 Five to six is, I think, where we're gonna see it, guys. We're gonna see some sixes get printed.

David Sacks 1:04:46 I mean, we said-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:48 January eighth, twenty twenty-six, the Atlanta Fed's-

Speaker 1:04:49 Here's like, you know, Sacks-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:50 ... GDP now model estimate for real GDP growth in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty-five is five point four percent. Significant jump-

Speaker 1:04:56 Look, you're gonna-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:56 ... from the previous estimate of two point seven percent on January fifth.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:59 You have to remember that there's going to be a hundred and fifty basis point correction in Q4 GDP because of the government furlough, okay? So let's say that GDP was probably, call it four. You're gonna see a print of two and a half. So you need to readjust that because now all the government workers are back, they're recounted in GDP. If you look through twenty twenty-six, there's a handful of things that I think people do not understand well. Number one, all of non-farm payrolls has been completely reset and rebased, and the reason why is because of immigration. So what used to be a hundred to a hundred and fifty number print is now a forty to fifty number print. Why is that important? Because when you look through earnings and you look at the lower twenty-fiv- five percent quartiles of earnings growth, they're off the charts. There's all of these anecdotal examples now of earnings just exceeding expectations. There was an article on the front page of The Wall Street Journal yesterday about Ford trying to pay mechanics a hundred and sixty thousand dollars a year and having five thousand openings. So to Sacks' point, we are a coiled spring. Closing the border, plus adding productivity lifts through AI and other things, have created a growth dynamic in the United States that will really start to show itself in twenty-six. So I think that you should be not short [chuckles] the US economy here. It is ready to rip.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:31 And, uh, adding to all that, and just giving my pick, I think if we are in a rate cut environment and the tailwinds keep happening and people have a little bit of cash laying around, my pick for best performing asset will be the Robinhood Polymarket prize picks, gambling, wagering, uh-

Speaker 1:06:49 That's a good one

Jason Calacanis 1:06:49 ... space, because people will be able to have a little cash around to make some bets.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:53 By, by the-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:54 You can put Coinbase in there, too, I guess.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:55 By the way, the corollary to what we just talked about, if you see five and a half and six and a half prints and these employment numbers, a lot of this affordability stuff may be-... not as accurate as we think it is. Everybody right now is trying to figure out, okay, well, where are the pockets of unaffordability? And there are clearly some, but those are narrow, and they can be fixed. But on a broad-based basis, what Sacks says is right. You have this combination of earnings growth, productivity growth, and now this overlay where you have these tax cuts that are gonna hit in '26. My gosh, I mean, asset prices in general I think will do well. Now, you'll also see potentially home prices correct, because if the president is successful in making sure Blackstone can't buy houses, but on the other side, people are earning more, and they can enter with interest rates that are now 100 to 150 basis points lower, you'll see a boom in housing, where it's not the corporations that are buying the houses, but individuals. Uh, there's a lot of variables here that can, that can break in America's favor. This is why I think 6% is not unrealistic, which would be absolutely nuts.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:01 Okay,

Jason Calacanis 1:08:02 let's move on to the worst-performing asset. Last year's predictions for worst-performing asset of 2025, I said legacy car companies and real estate. Both of those turned out to be correct. Chamath, you said enterprise SaaS and the software industro- industrial complex. Again, that, uh, looked correct as well. Gavin said enterprise SaaS, and Friedberg, you said vertical SaaS. So we had three SaaS, and I had legacy car companies and real estate. We all-

David Friedberg 1:08:25 Let me give you... JCal, let me just give you-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:27 Nailed those.

David Friedberg 1:08:27 Yeah, let me just give you some numbers on that to show you.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:29 Sure.

David Friedberg 1:08:30 ServiceNow down 30%, Workday down 18%, DocuSign down 23%, Dropbox down 9%, and Box down 6%, while the S&P was up 17%. I think it's worth highlighting, like, it was a challenging year for this enterprise SaaS, but there's-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:45 Especially with the per-seat pricing as opposed to consumption-based pricing. If you have a static number of employees or less employees, like many of these companies do, there's just less seats to sell. So their whole growth was based on land and expand. You land the client, and then you expand the client because they're adding staff. If you're not adding staff, you can't a- uh, you know, you don't have more people using Salesforce. Okay, so let's talk about our worst-performing asset predictions for 2026. What do you got? Sacks, worst-performing asset of 2026.

David Sacks 1:09:15 Well, I just said California luxury real estate because of the overhang of the wealth tax and all the things we're talking about. [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 1:09:21 Yeah. That one hits close to home, I think. [chuckles]

David Sacks 1:09:23 Now... Now, yes, it does, actually. What I'm hoping for is a dead cat bounce. If you guys are right that the ballot initiative fails-

Jason Calacanis 1:09:31 Mm

David Sacks 1:09:31 ... then the overhang will be lifted, and maybe I can-

Jason Calacanis 1:09:36 Clear some real estate

David Sacks 1:09:37 ... clear some. [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 1:09:39 [laughing] It's not easy being-

David Sacks 1:09:41 [chuckles]

Jason Calacanis 1:09:41 It's not easy being right sometimes.

David Sacks 1:09:43 No.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:43 Friedberg, what do you got? Worst-performing asset, 2026.

David Friedberg 1:09:47 I mean, Sacks, Sacks, what, what, like, what, what's your discount price on that asset right now? I mean, like, I might make a bid, you know, if you give me a-

Jason Calacanis 1:09:54 Ooh

David Friedberg 1:09:54 ... give me a good clearing price.

David Sacks 1:09:55 You got $100 million laying around?

David Friedberg 1:09:57 Yeah, I'm not paying 100. [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 1:09:58 Okay, here we go.

David Sacks 1:09:59 [chuckles]

Jason Calacanis 1:09:59 Bestie negotiations occur.

David Friedberg 1:10:01 All right, um-

Jason Calacanis 1:10:02 Give him the bestie price, the buy it now bestie price.

David Friedberg 1:10:04 No-

Jason Calacanis 1:10:04 What's the buy it now price?

David Friedberg 1:10:05 No, no, no.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:06 Yes.

David Friedberg 1:10:06 Okay, by the way, you know, Ca- San Francisco has that insane luxury tax, which they have in LA, too. You gotta pay 5% on any piece of real estate over $2.5 million.

David Sacks 1:10:14 Oh, my gosh, it's like 6% in San Francisco.

David Friedberg 1:10:16 6%.

David Sacks 1:10:16 Do you know that?

David Friedberg 1:10:16 Which makes it even harder for these high-end places to trade.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:19 So wait, you're saying if I s- if I bought Sacks' house for 100, I'd have to spend 106-

David Friedberg 1:10:24 He's gotta pay 6%.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:24 Oh, he has to pay 6%.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:26 6%, yeah.

David Friedberg 1:10:26 To the city.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:27 And then you gotta pay your broker 6%. I mean, they're just basically freezing the market.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:30 Okay, not the buyer.

David Friedberg 1:10:32 Well-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:33 Okay

David Friedberg 1:10:33 ... you can negotiate who pays it.

David Sacks 1:10:34 The 5%, you know, quote-unquote, "mansion tax" has just killed LA real estate. You talk to brokers down there, 'cause people used to flip houses a lot more, now you just can't afford to do that.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:44 Unintended consequences, folks.

David Sacks 1:10:45 Really bad for the market.

David Friedberg 1:10:46 Wait, you're telling me taxes slow down transaction volume and reduce the growth of the economy? [laughing] That's great. I had no idea.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:53 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:10:53 Sacks-

Jason Calacanis 1:10:53 Well, now-

David Friedberg 1:10:53 ... you should write that down. We should do a whole thing on that.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:55 Yeah, maybe we should write that down.

David Friedberg 1:10:56 That is great. I had no idea.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:57 Yeah, somebody make a note. [chuckles]

David Friedberg 1:10:59 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:00 So worst-performing asset, Chamath, what do you think? Worst-performing asset.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:04 I won't say the worst-performing, but I think a very poor-performing asset will be hydrocarbons. I just think that the trend in oil is inexorable, and it's down, and the reason it's down is, irrespective of your thoughts on climate change, the trends on electrification and energy storage are just unstoppable.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:31 Mm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:31 And so what that does is it shrinks the surface area of where oil is useful. It's not like a cataclysmic thing, but it's sort of a melting iceberg, where does it see $65 or $45? And I would say on, on a per barrel basis, I think it's more likely to see 45 than 65.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:52 Okay. I went with the US dollar in different permutations of how you can buy it because our debt continues to grow unabated, and, you know-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:02 The debasement trade, JCal. JCal owning the debasement trade.

Jason Calacanis 1:12:05 I, I just think it's gonna be hard for, you know, the, the USD because we're talking about... We've been at it-- I think we're gonna add 2 trillion in debt this year, and then if we're increasing, and again, I, I know Trump says, or President Trump says a lot of things, but if we're increasing the military budget [chuckles] by 50%, uh, that means, uh, that's gonna be straight to our debt line. So it's gonna be harder and harder for the dollar. Doesn't mean that America's not gonna do great, but the value of the American dollar is gonna be challenged, which we see in people moving to gold and silver, and perhaps copper. Okay, if you could give us your worst-performing asset of 2026, David Friedberg.

David Friedberg 1:12:41 It would be Netflix if they don't close the Warner Brother deal.

Jason Calacanis 1:12:44 Oh.

David Friedberg 1:12:44 I do think Netflix's service is being challenged from all sides with deep content libraries, and I think we're seeing a great commoditization happening. I've also heard directly from folks in Hollywood, the creators of new content, that people would prefer not to work with Netflix. They only ch- uh, pay creators' cost plus 10% now, and so as a creator, you're actually better off not doing deals with Netflix anymore. So their content library is gonna shrink because of the natural economic forces underway.... alternative, if they do close on Warner Brothers, I think they've got some good runway in terms of that content library, and they'll be fine. And in that case, my worst-performing asset would be traditional media stocks, and I do think that they're gonna underperform. There is just such an incredible, a variety of high-quality content that's emerging from independent creators that are leveraging their own distribution platforms through YouTube and others. And I think that, um, traditional media is gonna continue to be deeply challenged, as we've seen, for example, just in the news segment with the rise of citizen journalism. So that's the- that's what I would kind of-

Jason Calacanis 1:13:45 Yeah, and, you know, the, the Netflix, uh, observation, I think, is, was well-founded because they're also, in terms of expanding their library, they just did a deal with Bill Simmons, I see, and with, um, Barstool Sports to move over their sports shows, podcasts, video shows from YouTube, and they're gonna take them off YouTube and put them on Netflix exclusively. So that's a really interesting trend as well to keep an eye on. Okay.

David Sacks 1:14:11 By the way, before we move off asset, just on best-performing asset, there's one category we didn't talk about, but I think it's kind of interesting, which is the category of assets that qualify for accelerated depreciation, capital equipment.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:14:23 Ah, yes. Yes, yes, yes.

David Sacks 1:14:24 That includes things-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:14:25 Ah

David Sacks 1:14:25 ... like planes, so forth. There's now 100% accelerated depreciation-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:14:29 Boats

David Sacks 1:14:29 ... for certain kinds of capital equipment because of the big beautiful bill, and, you know, it kind of goes along with some of the tax cuts that we talked about. But man, that is making those markets super hot right now.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:14:39 Absolutely. Yeah, try buying a plane these days. Very difficult.

Jason Calacanis 1:14:42 P-PNE-

David Friedberg 1:14:43 It's not... No, Jason, it's not planes. It's like Caterpillar-

Jason Calacanis 1:14:46 PNE. No, no, it's everything

David Friedberg 1:14:46 ... It's tractors.

Jason Calacanis 1:14:47 I'm being facetious. Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:14:48 It- yeah, it's generators. It's Siemens. This is why Siemens' stock is through the roof. All of this capital equipment, you get to write it off 100% in year one. It's creating a massive infrastructure build-out in the US, so-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:14:59 Absolutely

David Friedberg 1:14:59 ... there are some companies that are huge beneficiaries of this, obviously, 'cause they're the sellers of the capital equipment.

Jason Calacanis 1:15:04 And, and of course, this is one of the reasons GDP is going up, is people are actually investing in business again. Okay, most anticipated trend-

David Friedberg 1:15:11 By the way, this is the corollary of the statement that if you reduce taxes, the economy grows, [chuckles] so-

Jason Calacanis 1:15:16 There we go.

David Friedberg 1:15:16 [chuckles]

David Friedberg 1:15:17 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:15:18 Most anticipated trend of 2025, I said the wrath of Linacon ending and M&A and IPOs being back. I get some credit there. Chamath, you said the end of the deep state. I think you get a lot of credit there. Gavin said AI makes more progress per quarter in 2025 than it did in 2023. That's a great one. Friedberg, you said the nuclear power build-out. I think you get some credit there, too, yeah?

David Friedberg 1:15:40 Eh, not sure. Not sure. We got some work to do there.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:15:43 Massively-

Jason Calacanis 1:15:44 We, we definitely saw some-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:15:45 Massively short nuclear.

Jason Calacanis 1:15:46 You're still short nuclear, but I know-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:15:48 It's about this

Jason Calacanis 1:15:49 ... my guy, Howard Lutnick, when I talked to him-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:15:51 It's a big zero.

Jason Calacanis 1:15:51 I talked to Howard Lutnick as well. He said he's all in on nuclear.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:15:55 Friedberg, can I tell you why I'm short nuclear?

David Friedberg 1:15:57 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:15:57 I think that we're in the very delicate part of the cycle where they've missed the window. So by the time that they deliver working SMRs at scale, the problem is that the marginal cost of electricity will effectively be zero, and it'll have gone to zero because of a combination of solar and storage, as well as coal and oil. And so it's just in a very delicate place where the large form factor nuclear reactors make zero economic sense by 2032 or 2035, which is when, through the Byzantine permitting and building, they get it done. And then the SMRs, by the time that they get it done, they may not be able to meet the market either. So I think it's a very complicated moment for nuclear, actually. Not scientifically, economically-

David Friedberg 1:16:38 Yeah

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:16:38 ... just does not hang together mathematically.

David Friedberg 1:16:41 I think that's if you assume, um, no shift in the demand curve. And I think that, like, if you, if you look at China going to eight terawatts of production and by 2040 or whatever it is, and we're sitting at one, and we're not moving, we are gonna have a big catch-up to do, and the question is, can we really build out two, three terawatts of electricity generation? How are we gonna build out two to three terawatts of electricity generation? The amount of land that you would need with solar, and what's it gonna take to get all of that installed, and so on. And by the way, there's a lot of this stuff in China if you look at all the big solar build-outs that they did, where they're ripping it up now. Uh, uh, this is a longer conversation, but I really do question whether we can pin everything on solar. It's gonna be a mix of stuff. And so your point may be right that in the near term, to meet the current kind of demand curve, nuclear is gonna be economically challenged, but at some point here, there's an inflection that we have to meet.

Jason Calacanis 1:17:33 So what's your most anticipated trend of 2026, Friedberg?

David Friedberg 1:17:37 Iran becoming an independent democratic state.

Jason Calacanis 1:17:40 Wow!

David Friedberg 1:17:40 I think... I'm just speaking generally anticipated. I think a lot of people are anticipating that that's going to happen this year. There's an uprising in the streets. There is a weakening of the ayatollahs, and there seems to be a moment underway.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:17:54 And the demographics, our destiny, there's a lot of young people in Iran, and they do not want to live under-

David Friedberg 1:17:59 And, and, and look-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:17:59 ... the current rule. They want to be free.

David Friedberg 1:18:01 But there is a major economic problem in Iran in terms of affordability. You think we have an issue of affordability in the US, in Iran, it's very hard for people just to buy their basic necessities, basic needs, to the majority of people, so that, that's why they are taking to the street. There's a real economic crisis underway that is motivating this turnover. Every year, everyone, like, anticipates some big change in the Middle East, but this could be the biggest rewriting of the Middle East in a long time.

Jason Calacanis 1:18:25 Okay, Sacks, what do you got?

David Sacks 1:18:27 For what category?

Jason Calacanis 1:18:29 Most anticipated trend of 2026. What do you got, Sacks?

David Sacks 1:18:32 I said auditing government spending at all levels.

David Friedberg 1:18:36 Mm.

Jason Calacanis 1:18:36 Mm.

David Friedberg 1:18:36 That's a good one. That's a good one.

David Sacks 1:18:37 Decentralize Doge.

David Friedberg 1:18:39 Love it! Love. Yes!

David Sacks 1:18:40 Let a thousand Nick Shirleys bloom.

David Friedberg 1:18:43 Love.

Jason Calacanis 1:18:43 Let's do it. Audit everything.

David Sacks 1:18:45 Audit everything. We need to normalize independent audits-

Jason Calacanis 1:18:48 Audit everything

David Sacks 1:18:48 ... across the board.

Jason Calacanis 1:18:48 Whistleblowers, let's go.

David Sacks 1:18:50 It is not acceptable for Gavin Newsom, for example, to prohibit audits, as he did with homeless spending. All government spending needs to be opened up and audited by the public, we need people to see where it's going, and that, that's just got to happen.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:19:03 Love it.

David Friedberg 1:19:03 The Pentagon, when's the Pentagon's... Wh- when are they gonna pass an audit, right? I mean, that's one of our biggest line items.

David Sacks 1:19:08 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:19:08 Let's get them to be audited. Hey, there's something President Trump could do.

Jason Calacanis 1:19:11 They're actually at least trying.

David Sacks 1:19:13 [chuckles] They're at least failing the audit. [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 1:19:16 They're at least failing the audit. [laughing]

David Sacks 1:19:18 Gavin, this is prohibiting the audit.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:19:19 Start where you're prohibiting them first, how about that?

David Sacks 1:19:22 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:19:22 Yeah, I mean, just audit everything, I think would be... I love it. What do you got, Chamath?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:19:26 I have a corollary to Friedberg's, which is, I think it's the expansion of this Trump doctrine. Independent of your politics, if you are an economic actor, you own a business, you invest in the stock market, whatever it is, you speculate cryptocurrencies, you must understand the movements on the chessboard in »2026. The best framework that I have used to organize myself is this idea of unilateralism, economic resilience. It's just a ginormous trend, and I think the output of it is gonna be massive GDP prints on top of everything else.

Jason Calacanis 1:20:00 Yeah, and I think I'm gonna stick with my last year's prediction going into »2026 again, the wrath of Linacon ending. We saw the M&A train start with Groq, obviously, uh, Netflix and Warner Brothers, Google and Wiz. So many deals are ready to be done, and they're starting to pop off in M&A. Uh, we can debate w- what structure they are, and, and regulators, et cetera, but they're happening. But I'll go with IPOs coming back. Right now, you've got to anticipate one of the following two will file: SpaceX, Anduril, Stripe, Anthropic, and OpenAI. I think two of those file, and it is going to be gangbusters. The public wants these shares. They're buying them in the secondary markets. We have half as many publicly traded companies. The public would like to participate, and this is something Trump can uniquely do, that the Democrats were trying to stop and slow down, which was M&A and IPOs. I think this will be the year of the mega IPOs. It's gonna be very exciting for Silicon Valley. It's gonna be very exciting for the employees at these companies and for the pension funds and the endowments that own shares in these companies. They're gonna be able to take that money and put it to good use, hopefully. So SpaceX, Anduril, Stripe, Anthropic, OpenAI, those are on the shortlist, obviously, of ones that could go public this year.

Jason Calacanis 1:21:18 All right, fun one we like to do is the most anticipated media. That's a fun one, you know? What are you looking forward to in »2026? Last year, I said Superman and Andor Season 2. Turns out Superman did great, Andor did amazing. It's the best TV show of the twenty-first century, I think. Chamath, you said, uh, enormity of the files [chuckles] that will be declassified, Epstein files, halfway there. JFK files, we haven't seen those. Gavin said 1923, Season 2. I don't even know what that is, but okay. And then- David Friedberg: That's a Taylor... That's a Taylor Swift- Oh, that's the Taylor one. Yeah, yeah. Uh, you watching Landman? Landman's pretty great. Um-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:21:55 I have not watched that.

Jason Calacanis 1:21:55 ... Friedberg, you said AI video games. What do you got this year, Friedberg? You, you love the media. You're, you're a cinephile. What are you looking forward to in media in »2026? David Friedberg: This isn't as much as what I'm looking forward to, but I do think the big trend in media is gonna be the citizen journalism doing exposés. Hmm. David Friedberg: I think that we're just at the beginning of the exposé marathon. Man on the street. David Friedberg: Man on the street, pushing stuff, getting cameras in people's faces. The work of journalism has been decentralized, and I think there's gonna be so much more that's gonna be kind of shared and covered this year. Okay. Do you have one, uh, Chamath? David Friedberg: And by the way, the, the, the difference, I would say, in terms of what Nick Shirley's doing and what we've seen maybe in the past but is gonna be the new trend, is much of the citizen journalism in the past has been, to some degree, a little bit more passive. It's sort of like, "Hey, I caught this thing, and I observed it." But now there are people that are gonna actively take a camera and say, "Hey, I'm gonna go discover this thing. I'm gonna go deep on it," and that's what I think we're gonna see happen in a big way this year. Well, and there's a monetization path. You have Substack, where people can give donations, GoFundMes, and, uh, on top of that, YouTube allowing you and X allowing you to share revenue on this particular category, which they previously didn't, as Nick Shirley pointed out, means there is a path to profitability there. Get more clicks, get more views, you make more money, and then you can reinvest it. So I think I like your choice a lot. Chamath, you have something you're anticipating?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:23:19 The exact same thing as Friedberg. I'll just double down and-

Jason Calacanis 1:23:22 Okay, and what about you, Sacks? You got something you want to double down on, investigative journalism?

David Sacks 1:23:28 No, I thought we were talking about entertainment here.

Jason Calacanis 1:23:31 Well, yeah, I thought I... It's okay. These guys went-- These guys zigged where we zagged, but- David Friedberg: One of my weird, like, things that I watch on TikTok that I got stuck on, and TikTok just keeps showing me them, is these auditing videos. Have you guys ever seen these? First, First Amendment auditors. So these are people who take a camera, they stand on the street, and they just point the camera into someone's store or into a bank's window- Oh, I've seen it David Friedberg: ... and they just film the people in the bank. Yes, yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:23:54 And then they wind up spraying each other [chuckles] with the pepper spray.

Jason Calacanis 1:23:56 You know, when-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:23:56 Somebody comes out.

Jason Calacanis 1:23:57 Yeah. David Friedberg: There's always people that come out. They're like: "You can't do that. You're not allowed to do that." They're like, "Okay, I think I would like you to leave. I don't want to talk to you." And they just do this, and they instigate people to call the police, and what they're doing is they're auditing whether the police understand First Amendment rights, and then how the police react is basically the end of the video. Sometimes the police are like: "You can't do that," and they're like, "Yes, I can. Call a supervisor." And then they teach the police officer that you're allowed to stand in public places and film. Otherwise, they're just like, "Hey," they go to the business owner, and they tell the business owner, "This guy's allowed to do this. Leave him alone." I don't know why, but these videos are so [chuckles] entertaining.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:24:28 Yeah, there, there's some, there's some great ones.

Jason Calacanis 1:24:29 Well, there's tension. There's a lot of tension there- David Friedberg: Yeah ... and there's something, freedom of speech- David Friedberg: There's so much drama. Yeah ... which is the First Amendment for a reason.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:24:36 The store owner, the store owner comes out, sometimes tries to physically confront the guy. David Friedberg: Yes. But then you'll have, like, a woman walking with her, like, two-year-old child, and then she'll get into it, and she'll be like, "Hey- David Friedberg: Exactly ... you don't violate his constitutional rights." [chuckles] David Friedberg: Exactly, exactly. "He's allowed to do this." It's the best. [chuckles] David Friedberg: Exactly. It's the best, yeah. David Friedberg: It's so good, you never know what's gonna happen. It's so good, yeah. David Friedberg: Each one of them is like a whole new adventure. Yeah. David Friedberg: I j- I don't know why. It's such an interesting form of content. I agree. David Friedberg: I like love watching it.

Jason Calacanis 1:24:58 It's a uniquely American phenomenon-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:25:01 I agree

Jason Calacanis 1:25:01 ... to, yeah, um, establish your freedom, your, your First Amendment rights. And, and they even go into, like... The really dicey ones are where they go to, like, the parking lot of a prison or into the lobby of a police station and do it, and it gets pretty-... spicy. What do you got, Sacks? You got, you got any media you're looking forward to? Uh, the- these guys are going First Amendment, investigative journalism, yada, yada. What do you got, Sacks?

David Sacks 1:25:24 Well, the new Christopher Nolan movie's coming out, The Odyssey. Looks interesting.

David Friedberg 1:25:27 Ah, great call.

David Sacks 1:25:28 So-

David Friedberg 1:25:28 Great call.

David Sacks 1:25:29 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:25:29 That's mine.

David Friedberg 1:25:30 Great call.

Jason Calacanis 1:25:31 Yeah, so-

David Friedberg 1:25:31 What is it?

Jason Calacanis 1:25:31 I went with The Odyssey, so go ahead.

David Friedberg 1:25:32 What is it? What is that, what is that about?

Jason Calacanis 1:25:33 The Odyssey?

David Friedberg 1:25:34 Oh, come on. Chamath?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:25:35 The Homer's Odyssey?

Jason Calacanis 1:25:38 Yes, but as interpreted by the great director of our time, Christopher Nolan. [laughs]

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:25:42 Have any of you idiots actually read The Odyssey?

Jason Calacanis 1:25:44 [laughs]

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:25:44 This is not great... I'm sorry, but [laughs] The Odyssey is a terrible book.

Jason Calacanis 1:25:51 Hmm. All right. [laughs] Wait, wait. Okay, so we're gonna get some good comments there.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:25:55 You guys are all such wannabe poser intellectuals.

Jason Calacanis 1:25:58 No, it's just Christopher Nolan is just great. It's IMAX. It's gonna be epic.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:26:02 It's-

David Friedberg 1:26:02 Yeah

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:26:03 ... trash. That book is blech. [laughs]

Jason Calacanis 1:26:05 Okay. Uh, you know-

David Sacks 1:26:06 You don't like iambic pentameter? [laughing]

David Friedberg 1:26:10 [laughing]

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:26:10 So, so the idea of some confused person making a movie about it is also just, how do I short that? Okay, that is absolutely-

David Sacks 1:26:16 [laughs]

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:26:17 Can I short that? Can I short that movie?

Jason Calacanis 1:26:20 Uh, I- on a poly market, I'm sure there will be.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:26:22 Okay, well somebody should-

Jason Calacanis 1:26:23 You can bet on the, bet on the box office. Pull it off, Nick.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:26:25 Zero. I bet zero.

Jason Calacanis 1:26:26 Okay. [laughs] It's gonna be a lot more than zero, I'm sure. I, I'm, uh, also a, um, a big fan of Timothée Chalamet, and Dune: Part Three's coming out.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:26:36 Oh, really?

Jason Calacanis 1:26:36 I also like Avengers: Doomsday.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:26:37 Wait, Dune 3's coming out?

Jason Calacanis 1:26:39 And-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:26:39 Ooh, I love Dune.

Jason Calacanis 1:26:41 Dune: Part Three's coming out.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:26:42 I love Dune 1 and 2 so, so much.

Jason Calacanis 1:26:44 Two was great. I think w- one was a little bit of slow burn, but both were fantastic.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:26:47 I, I love them both.

David Sacks 1:26:47 D- Doomsday will be good. Doomsday, actually, I go with that.

Jason Calacanis 1:26:50 Avengers: Doomsday is gonna be, I think, fantastic.

David Sacks 1:26:52 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:26:52 Robert Downey Jr. as Dr. Doom, setting up secret wars, and then you're gonna tie up all the previous Marvel strings into one bow.

David Friedberg 1:26:59 Oh, look at, look at, look at, look at The Odyssey, zero. [laughing]

David Sacks 1:27:02 They're gonna use, they're gonna use Doomsday to bring back all the characters they killed.

Jason Calacanis 1:27:06 Hey, uh, besties, uh, here's a little something. I think we're about to hit today one million YouTube subscribers. Before we do our Netflix deal and take the show off of YouTube, we hit a million, uh, before we announce-

David Sacks 1:27:20 Well, it took some time.

David Friedberg 1:27:20 Yeah, wasn't it supposed to happen, like, a year and a half ago? We're gonna have, like, a million subscriber-

Jason Calacanis 1:27:24 Mm-hmm

David Friedberg 1:27:24 ... party a year and a half ago?

David Sacks 1:27:25 You know why?

David Friedberg 1:27:26 Ask me, ask me what I think, Jason.

Jason Calacanis 1:27:27 No, tell me why. Tell me why, Sacks.

David Sacks 1:27:29 'Cause we never tell our subscribers to hit the like button or smash the subscribe button whatever.

Jason Calacanis 1:27:34 We don't pan them.

David Sacks 1:27:35 Yeah, every other podcast I watch on YouTube, and I watch them all, they're always like, "Hit the like button. Hit the like button."

Jason Calacanis 1:27:41 Oh, God.

David Sacks 1:27:42 So I'll do it if I want to.

Jason Calacanis 1:27:42 Well, you know what they're doing now, too, is the, the, the big trend now is to just do 10-minute quick hits as news breaks, so you, y- you, uh, this is just-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:27:50 Jason-

Jason Calacanis 1:27:50 ... people are flooding their channels

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:27:51 ... ask me what, ask me, ask me what I think about getting to a million subscribers. [laughs]

Jason Calacanis 1:27:53 Chamath, any thoughts on this seminal moment for the All-In pod hitting one billion subscribers on YouTube? Go ahead. I'm sorry, one million.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:28:01 You're welcome. [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 1:28:03 [laughing] Chamath said, "You're welcome." You're welcome. [laughing] You're welcome. Yeah.

David Sacks 1:28:08 What's that, what's this week at?

Jason Calacanis 1:28:10 Hmm. Oh, this week it starts with a quarter million. Don't worry about it. Um, it's a niche show. Don't worry about it.

David Sacks 1:28:15 Not bad.

Jason Calacanis 1:28:15 It's a franchise. Not bad, not bad. Hey, listen, I love doing it. Uh, the reason we do the podcast is because we enjoy it.

David Sacks 1:28:19 So there's four of us. There's four of us-

Jason Calacanis 1:28:21 Yeah, quarter million

David Sacks 1:28:21 ... one of you, so we have four times the subscribers.

Jason Calacanis 1:28:25 Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Hey, listen, one of the great things you, you learn in media is when you build a super team, a super band, you know, you can actually do better than, uh, everybody individually. So collectively, we can do better, and listen, it's not for me to say.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:28:40 Listen, you s- I think you've adjusted to being Ringo Starr incredibly well. [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 1:28:44 [laughing] Uh, listen, I... Everybody says the same thing to me.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:28:48 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 1:28:48 Without the show, this would be propaganda, and it would be-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:28:51 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 1:28:51 ... uh, a, a, a, the Trump's personal, uh-

David Friedberg 1:28:54 Who says that to you?

Jason Calacanis 1:28:55 P- everybody.

David Friedberg 1:28:56 Whoever comes to the house-

Jason Calacanis 1:28:57 Everybody in our group

David Friedberg 1:28:57 ... to walk Moose. Come on, Moose's dog walker tells you that?

Jason Calacanis 1:28:58 Everybody says, "I'm the drink that's... I'm the stir in the drink. I'm the, I'm the thing-

David Sacks 1:29:03 Yeah

Jason Calacanis 1:29:03 ... that stirs the drink."

David Sacks 1:29:03 You're keeping the private equity wives watching. Great job.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:29:06 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:29:06 Absolutely, I'm keeping them in. All the private equies love it.

David Sacks 1:29:09 For every left-winger you, that you keep watching the pod-

Jason Calacanis 1:29:12 Hmm

David Sacks 1:29:12 ... we probably lose five MAGA people.

Jason Calacanis 1:29:15 Oh, no.

David Sacks 1:29:16 If we were just a MAGA show-

Jason Calacanis 1:29:17 I can tell you certainly, the people, the MAGA people, they love hating me. They love hating me, and they love to come back every week to hate-watch me and my takes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:29:26 [laughing] They hate-watch.

Jason Calacanis 1:29:26 They do. They, just like they hate-watch you, Chamath.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:29:29 Oh.

Jason Calacanis 1:29:30 The private equity wives call-

David Friedberg 1:29:30 But it's for a different reason.

Jason Calacanis 1:29:32 They tune in to hate you [laughs] and hate me. Uh, well, listen, it's been a great year. It's been a great year. Great job, besties. We kept the band together for one more year. Let's do a poly market. Chances [laughs] the All-In Podcast makes it to 2027.

David Friedberg 1:29:46 Honestly-

Jason Calacanis 1:29:47 I don't know. Maybe that's even hundred

David Friedberg 1:29:47 ... honestly, it's not 100%. It's not.

Jason Calacanis 1:29:50 It's never 100%.

David Sacks 1:29:51 Never 100.

Jason Calacanis 1:29:51 Um, it's never 100%.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:29:52 Never.

Jason Calacanis 1:29:53 We'll do the best we can. You guys love the show. Smash the like button, comment, link, subscribe, whatever you wanna do, write a review. Tell everybody how much you love Chamath sweaters, and we'll see you-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:30:05 Love you, boys

Jason Calacanis 1:30:05 ... next week on another amazing All-In Podcast.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:30:09 Bye bye. [upbeat music]

David Sacks 1:30:12 Let your winners ride.

Jason Calacanis 1:30:15 Rainman, David Sacks.

David Sacks 1:30:17 I'm going all in!

1:30:19 And instead, we open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.

Jason Calacanis 1:30:23 Love you, West Coast.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:30:24 Queen of Kin Law.

David Sacks 1:30:25 I'm going all in! Let, let your winners ride. Let your winners ride.

Jason Calacanis 1:30:32 Besties are back. [laughing]

David Friedberg 1:30:34 [laughing] That is my, uh, dog taking a piss in your driveway, Sacks. [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 1:30:38 Oh, yeah. [laughing]

David Sacks 1:30:40 Oh, man.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:30:40 My haberdasher will meet me at Linda's- We should all just get a room and just have, like, one big, huge orgy, 'cause they're all just these just... It's like this, like, sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.

David Sacks 1:30:50 Let your feet be. Let your feet-

1:30:54 Let your feet be. Let-

David Friedberg 1:30:55 [laughing] We need to get merch.

David Sacks 1:30:57 Besties are back. I'm going all in! [upbeat music] I'm going all in