DOGE updates + Liberation Day Tariff Reactions with Ben Shapiro and Antonio Gracias

Jason Calacanis 0:00 Just so you know, everything is archived by the White House right now, so everything we say is recorded.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:04 David Freiberg is a (censored) .

Jason Calacanis 0:06 Chamath, stop. You're being recorded.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:08 Good. I, I, well, hope this is discoverable (censored) White House. I just want you to know that.

Jason Calacanis 0:14 Stupid.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:15 Also, he did not pay his taxes in 2016. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:21 (laughs) Don't... Y- You really want me to start with you?

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:25 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:25 You want me to start? You want me to put this shit in the archives? Oh my God. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:27 Here, let me put this shit in the archives for you.

Jason Calacanis 0:29 I'm gonna pee my pants. I gotta pee my pants.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:31 I think you need to shut the fuck up is what you need to do. Sorry, White House.

Jason Calacanis 0:34 I'm gonna pee my pants. He did it. He also has some unpaid parking tickets from 2021. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:41 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:41 You want me to start with you?

Narrator 0:43 Let your winners ride. Rain Man David Sacks. I'm going all in. And I said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you Betsy. Queen of quinoa. I'm going all in.

Jason Calacanis 0:58 All right, everybody. Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world. With me again today, Chamath Palihapitiya, your chairman dictator, David Freiberg, our sultan of science, and two guests. Uh, obviously Ben Shapiro, very famous for having the number two podcast in the world. How are you, Ben?

Ben Shapiro 1:15 Uh, I'm, I'm doing, I'm doing great. I'm just honored to be here, you know?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:18 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 1:19 More work to do. You could exceed All-In in the rankings. No. We, we, we always judge ourselves, Ben, on three things. In the rankings, when we look at how we're doing, what we see is Ben Shapiro, prayer from the Bible, okay, the New Testament, I don't think you've got it yet. You, you have the Old Testament, but you haven't gotten the new, you haven't gotten the sequel. And then number three, murder. Also with us from the White House, yeah, welcome to All-In, where we have a live feed into the White House. Today, my good friend Antonio Gracias

Jason Calacanis 1:54 is here. He, uh, is taking... I guess you're taking... would it be safe to say a hiatus or you're from Valor to do a little tour of duty, uh, in our government working on Doge? Is, is that the way to say it?

Antonio Gracias 2:05 I'm still doing my day job too, man.

Jason Calacanis 2:07 Oh.

Antonio Gracias 2:07 This is, this is a seven day a week-

Jason Calacanis 2:09 Okay.

Antonio Gracias 2:09 ... 60 to 80 hour a day job 'cause I've, I'm, uh, I'm trying to do both. I've got some great partners who are covering it for me and that my firm has been tremendous-

Jason Calacanis 2:16 Yes.

Antonio Gracias 2:16 ... in, um, in allowing me to do this. But no, I'm, I'm still trying to do both.

Jason Calacanis 2:20 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:20 Was it public prior to this week, Antonio, that you were doing this role? Had you announced it anywhere or was, were people aware?

Antonio Gracias 2:26 I didn't announce it anywhere. Know that the New York Times had wrote a story about, um, me going to SSA, you know, which is b- y- sort of New York Time style. Not, not right, but I was, I had been there. Yeah, I was out in Woodland, Maryland.

Jason Calacanis 2:37 40% correct. Yeah. Close enough.

Antonio Gracias 2:39 Yeah. Close enough for hand grenades.

Jason Calacanis 2:40 Close enough. Uh, I'm sure they had no agenda. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:42 Antonio, how does it, how does it work? So when you volunteered, d- is it that you and Elon and Steve just kind of figure out let's put a senior person at every part of the administration where there's real opportunity? Why did you end up at SSA versus someplace else?

Antonio Gracias 2:58 Interesting question, Chamath. And by the way, it's great to see you guys, man. Thanks for having me on. I can use your laughs.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:02 Great to see you.

Antonio Gracias 3:02 You're, you're, you're... like you really make me laugh, which I, I need.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:04 We're really proud of you, man.

Antonio Gracias 3:05 Thank you.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:05 Really proud of you.

Jason Calacanis 3:06 Yeah, it's good to see you.

Antonio Gracias 3:06 Thank you. Um, so-

Jason Calacanis 3:08 Suit looks great, by the way.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:09 Yeah.

Antonio Gracias 3:09 Oh, thank you. Thank you. I haven't-

Jason Calacanis 3:10 When do you have to return it?

Antonio Gracias 3:12 The rental is due at the end of the week.

Jason Calacanis 3:14 Okay.

Antonio Gracias 3:14 Um, so yeah, no, what happened was I had actually volunteered to go to the VA because that's kind of be- h- as you guys know, close to my heart. And, um, Elon said to me, "Look, great, you can do that next, but will you go to SSA first and, and see what's going on there?" 'Cause it's, you know, the biggest internal probe we have. "And, and see what you find in fraud, waste, and abuse." And so of course I said, "Sure, I'll do that." And I ended up out in Woodland, Maryland with the good people at the SSA, the Social Security Administration. And that, that's where I started. That's how, that's how all this started for me.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:43 And so do you, Antonio, go in there with a Doge engineer as your kind of sidekick per se, or you just go there solo and you show up and... Like w- like what happens day one when you walk in- into the place? Like what do you do?

Antonio Gracias 3:56 So I brought with me, um, two great professionals. Uh, you know, John and, and Peyton from, uh, from Valor. Um, one of them an engineer, the other one I'd say a finance ninja. Both these guys are ninjas. And there was already a team there actually that was working with some great engineers. And once your person, uh, Scott Coulter, who's from... actually worked at Lone Pine and had come here as a volunteer as well. So they were already doing some work, actually particularly on the, on the enumeration, uh, part of the, part of the system. So that is the system that you have numbers, the whole cleaning up the database, the numbers, they had already started that project when I got there.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:28 And what is the mandate as given to you, you know, as part of Doge?

Antonio Gracias 4:32 Fraud, waste, and abuse. I mean, exactly what-

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:35 That's it.

Antonio Gracias 4:35 ... you know, what, uh, what Bill Clinton talked about, what Barack Obama talked about, what all presidents but maybe President Biden talked about of going back in time. It was go figure out how to save some money, man. This system's going bankrupt. It's going to be bankrupt in 2037. The country overall, uh, as you guys know and talked about many times, is on its way toward bankruptcy when do something. And go f- go figure out we can save money and go find the fraud.

Jason Calacanis 4:55 Okay.

Antonio Gracias 4:55 And that's what

Antonio Gracias 4:56 we did. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 4:56 So let's get to it. You, uh, spoke at a rally, uh, I think it was on Sunday. And you pulled up a chart. Here is that chart. Maybe you could explain to the American people here what this chart shows.

Antonio Gracias 5:10 Yeah. So if I, if I might just step back and say how I got it 'cause I think it's important.

Jason Calacanis 5:13 Sure.

Antonio Gracias 5:13 You know, we map... The, the way we work, y- you guys know very operational at Valor. You... I've worked with all you guys various times.

Jason Calacanis 5:18 Yeah.

Antonio Gracias 5:19 And what we do is we map the entire system from beginning to end. So we, we map the system from enumeration, it's how you get your number, all the way to the end. Went to the offices and saw how the offi- offices operate. And in that process, um, one of our engineers, Peyton, who I mentioned, he found, uh, the data. So we're looking at all the data enumeration, how it works, what, you know, what's going on, the typical stuff you'd look at. And he found this data, uh, called enumeration beyond entry, right? So that is the, that's... And, uh, it, it had this giant ramp to it. You can see their baseline was kind of, you know, 300, 400,000 people all the way up to 2.1 million people. And that just jumped out at us. And we're like, "What is that?" And so we dug into it, and that's how this started.

Jason Calacanis 5:57 And so what that's showing is Social Security numbers-

Antonio Gracias 6:00 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 6:00 ... that were issued-... to non-American citizens or non-citizens. Am I correct? That that's-

Antonio Gracias 6:06 Yes, you are.

Jason Calacanis 6:06 ... the number we're looking at? So these are non-citizens-

Antonio Gracias 6:09 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 6:09 ... getting security numbers. And for people who don't know, just, like, a little bit of background on the Social Security system, we do this. This is not abnormal for us to give Social Security numbers. This is part of the process, uh, that the government does. The Social Security number was created in 1936 for citizens to track their earnings and in the '90s, we started giving them to non-citizens who were authorized to work in the US so that we could collect taxes from them. And so, if you are not a citizen and you're a Green Card holder, which some people on this program, I think, have been, you have to have a Social Security number in order to work and you pay into Social Security and Medicare, uh, just like US citizens. And then eventually, I think you would qualify for those over some period of time.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:52 You can also get a Social Security number if you're a legal immigrant into the United States on a visa. So for example, when I first came to the United States 25 years ago on a TN visa, I was able to get my Social Security number because I had a valid visa to be in the United States.

Jason Calacanis 7:08 Okay.

Antonio Gracias 7:09 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 7:10 So, we have Social Security numbers being given to non-citizens. That is not controversial, but there's something controversial about this chart. Antonio, tell us what that is.

Antonio Gracias 7:21 So, I, I think if you look at the chart, you'll see there's... it starts at, like, 300,000 or so.

Jason Calacanis 7:24 This is during the COVID period, yep?

Antonio Gracias 7:27 Coming right out of it, so we... b- '21's coming right out of COVID, right? So if you go back even a couple years, '19, you'll see that, um, it's about 400,000. Yeah, that, uh, exactly 350-

Jason Calacanis 7:35 Got it.

Antonio Gracias 7:36 ... right there. So, um, what happened was this program was designed for... so who we were talking about, you know, people that got visas. This is at enumeration to be on entry, so this is after you're in. Um, there are some people in here that have H-1Bs, green cards, et cetera. And the way we thought about this was that's the baseline number. That's the 300,000 to 400,000 a year you see, and that should be happening. That's ca-... you know, there are, uh, programs for Afghans, example, the translators that came in after the war, right? The people you brought in. They would be in these kinds of programs. And so the baseline number... and, and by... the program goes back, this particular program goes back all the way to '17 and had a, a legitimate use, which was the kind of people you're talking about, people that we want to let in, um, like the care program. I'll, I'll make an example, which are the Afghans. They would be in this number. And so what, what jumped out at us wasn't that this is here because it has legitimate use, it's that... it's the growth. Why did it grow this fast and what happened? And being that, that's what we dug into. And what was-

Jason Calacanis 8:28 Have you figured that out yet? Is it because of, like, a COVID overhang? The, the one criticism I did see of the chart that I wanted to bring up with you is, hey, people want to see the 10 years, 20 years before this. What would we see if we, we were to look backwards a little bit? And do you have some theories?

Antonio Gracias 8:42 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 8:42 And is the COVID overhang theory valid or is this just Biden opened the border as we saw... you know, especially, like, in... maybe it was that third year of his term, the-

Antonio Gracias 8:50 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 8:50 ... 2023 year, and this is the overhang of the 2023 surge?

Antonio Gracias 8:54 Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 8:54 What are your theories?

Antonio Gracias 8:55 Well, uh, the answer is no, categorically no because the, the program really started... it, it started in 2017. So they probably worked on it before that, right? A few... takes a few years to put these into place. They worked at it, my guess is, you know, back during the Obama administration. It actually became active in '17. You see a few numbers in '18, and it starts to get a little bigger in '19 and '20, right? So that, that's how we get this baseline number of '19 and '20. That's why we're using that data here. Um, so you, you... there isn't... I can't go back 20 years, it doesn't exist. And then when we dug into it, what we found was the vast majority of the growth, uh, was related to asylum programs and parolees, uh, and people that came in on, on NTAs, these Notice to Appear, into the country, either at the border or at the airports, mostly at the border. And then we dug further into the... excuse me, dug further into it. We found that there were... this is about 5.4 million people total. There were about 1.2 million people that the status is marked as unknown and about 1.2 million people that were marked as general parole. And they should have markings of, you know, what the program is they're under. Because if you, if you claim asylum, you're supposed to claim, like, a real fear, "I'm gonna be tortured by my country. You know, some- something bad's gonna happen to me, this is why I can't go home." What we find here is that a legitimate program was, and the word I'll use, abused. It... the, the, the requirements were re- super opened so that, uh, more people come through. And the example I'll give you, you know, I have here actually, the form. This is the form. Used to be, going back in time, you know, a four-page form that the officer had to fill out in the field and the person that was claiming asylum had to actually prove that they were... had a really credible fear of being, you know, murdered, tortured by their government, that something bad would happen to them. That's the... that's what the form's for. It turned into a form, which I can't give you, but I'm gonna show you here. You can... if you zoom in on it, it has four questions. That's it. And the four questions are super leading. I'll just read the, um, you know, the... like, one of the important ones here, right? So, “Do you have any reason for concern about being returned to your home country or being removed from the United States?” I mean, could that be more leading?

Jason Calacanis 10:53 Yeah.

Antonio Gracias 10:54 Right? What they did is they opened... they just opened the aperture on these programs dramatically, so they allowed people that were illegal to the border to come in legally. And as we've dug further into it, we found... this took us... so, you, you guys know me, Matt. I do... like, I'm a very methodical, lean business process mapper, and we went all the way to the border, literally to Brownsville and Laredo to ask, "What happened?" We couldn't find the data on what these u- unknown categories were. And it turns out that when the, the, the folks at the border, who are great by the way, um, they, they really tried hard, and they suffered a lot. And this is a bit of... this is a human tragedy I haven't talked about. They were, were giving people, at times, Notices to Appear, this is the, the NTA, and what that allows you to do is come in the country and then you're, you're scheduled a court date, which is like six years out. So now you're in the country with some quasi-legal status, you're waiting for your court date, and while you're waiting for your court date, which could be six... six years out is the average, by the way. It could be longer than that. You're waiting for your court date, they, um... you could fill out y- uh, the asylum application. So without even an interview, just an application by filling out a form. Once the application's in, you can, um, file another form, 765, to get work authorization. Once you get that, you get a 766, which is the authorization, and we automatically send you...... a Social Security card in the mail. No interview, at all.

David Sacks 12:15 Hm.

Antonio Gracias 12:15 That, that's, that's the, that is the majority of the growth you see in these numbers.

David Sacks 12:19 Is there any ID verification along the way, Antonio? Like, do we know that there are no duplications happening by validating that one individual is getting one Social Security Number at any point in this process?

Antonio Gracias 12:31 So, it's a great question. Um, no. The answer is there's no real ID verification. So you can, you know, one of the things we found when we looked at this was the, the people that, that, some people showed IDs, some people didn't. And one of the things that we really-

David Sacks 12:43 These would be IDs, Antonio, from their home country. This would be a Venezuelan driver's license or something.

Antonio Gracias 12:48 Yeah. I mean, it could be a passport, a driver's license. But here's what really sort of tipped us off and disturbed us. When we looked at the, the birth certificate data that was presented at the border, the number one birth date was 1/1, and it was four times more likely to be born on 1/1 than any other, uh, day of the year. Now, we all know this isn't true-

David Sacks 13:05 Yeah. So they just hit Enter on that part before.

Antonio Gracias 13:07 Yeah. Or, or they had nothing.

David Sacks 13:08 It makes total sense.

Antonio Gracias 13:08 They coulda come up... They also could come up with nothing. You get nothing-

David Sacks 13:09 Do we take biometrics of people at the border? Do we take, like, an iris scan, fingerprints, and all that stuff?

Antonio Gracias 13:14 So, this is one of the issues. I mean, we do have photos of, of people. Uh, we found that 23% of the records we looked at did not have fingerprints. And look, the, the folks at the border were, um, overwhelmed.

David Sacks 13:26 Okay.

Antonio Gracias 13:26 And we're not sure why this happened. I will tell you guys, just so you understand, when I went down there, both Border Patrol and Border Protection told me they had the highest suicide rates of all time during the surge, okay? Over 70-

David Sacks 13:38 For the agents.

Antonio Gracias 13:38 Over 70 of these agents committed suicide in this period. It's truly tragic because they knew it was going on.

Ben Shapiro 13:45 Given the fact that, that all this has happened, i- is the Trump administration going to try to claim the Social Security numbers back, invalidate them? What will be the proper action, or is it too late? Are they already sort of in the system and now you can't do anything about it?

Antonio Gracias 14:00 So, Ben, it's a great question, right? And the, the, the first question was, what are they doing? I mean, you know, like, where are these people? Where are they? How are they? And we've gone through a whole process of mapping this. So we mapped it through to the benefit programs. We found, uh, in the benefit programs that every benefit program we looked at was being accessed by these people. You know, 1.3 million of them are on Medicaid right now, today. And by the way, it's just ramping, it's just starting, just to take your point. And then out of curiosity, I woke up at night, like, 2:00 in the morning. I, I couldn't sleep. My mind was right on this. I sent Andrew a note saying, "Hey, guys, let's look at the, the public voter rolls, see what we find, uh, in some fri- in some friendly states." And we looked at voter rolls, and we found that thousands of them were registered to vote in a handful of states. And then we went even further with those friendly states and found that, uh, many of those people had actually voted. It was shocking to us. And if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it. And so now the question we're asking ourselves is, what do we do? We referred some to prosecution. That's ongoing right now. You know, we're thinking through how to do it. And the reality is they have various kinds of status, and it's a very detailed analysis. Legally, they're working through right now about how to deal with it.

David Sacks 15:03 So, thousands of those people registered to vote-

Antonio Gracias 15:07 Yes.

David Sacks 15:08 ... in the election.

Antonio Gracias 15:09 Which is a federal crime, by the way.

David Sacks 15:11 Well, yeah. I mean, uh, the interesting thing is, like, the Heritage Foundation has a very good project, and it's obviously right-leaning, where they're studying all cases of fraud. I looked at it before we were here. There's only been 24 cases since 2003 of somebody who's a non-citizen trying to vote. Now, those are people caught. So this would be incredibly dramatic if it was even 1,000 people.

Antonio Gracias 15:31 Oh, no. Uh, Jason, it's more than 1,000. I've, I've seen it.

David Sacks 15:34 Yeah.

Antonio Gracias 15:34 Um, I've seen the data myself, and it's more than 1,000 in just a couple of states. I mean, it is shockingly bad. And this is the tip of the iceberg, guys. It's the tip of the iceberg. This doesn't include the 7.8 million people that ICE has that have come in illegally that know we're here, and all the people that came in illegally we don't know are here. I mean, this is not a political issue. I want to be really clear about this.

David Sacks 15:52 A- yeah, Antonio, let's-

Antonio Gracias 15:53 This is about America.

David Sacks 15:54 Let's just take one step back 'cause I just want you to repeat this. So, 'cause I think it's important, and we may have just run over it a little too quickly. When you get a Social Security Number, what you're saying is, there's all of these important downstream consequences. One of the downstream consequences is you could show up, register to vote, and that's an illegitimate action that's breaking federal law. That's one. But the second is that without knowing who this person is, they can start to absorb resources that could have otherwise gone to an American. I guess that's, like, a fundamental part of this.

Antonio Gracias 16:34 Yeah, absolutely.

David Sacks 16:34 And so if that's... So, how do you-

Antonio Gracias 16:36 Yeah.

David Sacks 16:36 How do you quantify that? Can you just maybe explain it a little bit more about all of the different ways in which you think now, you know, w- the United States ends up leaking services to these folks? And also, they could be contributing too, right? They could be paying taxes into the system and they... So, I guess there's both of those possibilities, and both of those have fingerprints to match. So yeah, good question.

Antonio Gracias 16:57 You know, I, look, we need to figure this out. This is a-

David Sacks 16:59 Uh-huh.

Antonio Gracias 16:59 Very, it, it's massively complex. You can see the map I have, uh, on the whiteboard in our office. It's huge. And we're, we're figuring it out right now. But let me just tell you this. In every benefit program we looked at, and this is just a handful of states, we found people on, uh, all the benefit programs. We found them on unemployment, we found them on Medicaid. So, Jason, to your point, people on Medicaid and unemployment, they're not contributing. They're taking out, they're mooching.

David Sacks 17:22 Sure.

Antonio Gracias 17:22 Right? They are criminals. I mean, look, we sent this data list to the National Targeting Center. They, and I, I don't wanna get too far into the data, but I can tell you they found hard hits in the Targeting Center, um, of very bad people, criminals and people on terrorist watch lists that are in this group. And so, yeah, I mean, it's, it's a problem. We got to figure out how to deal with it. And the, of course, there are people that are also, you know, have jobs and paying the system. That's, you know, that's, that's also true. All these things are true. And we're trying to sort through the data and figure out how to actually deal with it now.

David Sacks 17:52 Antonio, one of the things about the data that you triggered, which, because the data is, is so important, frankly, is a lot of people started to try to find a way to nitpick and say, "Antonio, you're cherry-picking," or, "Antonio, this is not really representative." And you had some pretty big names, right? People that have credibility. Jim Chanos probably being...

Jason Calacanis 18:17 ... one of the more prolific people, a very well-known hedge fund manager. But I think you tried to articulate why their objections didn't make any sense. I think it's important to maybe give you a few moments here to identify what they said and maybe debunk it.

Antonio Gracias 18:37 I- so th- the chart that they're using, and you can see this, I posted something on X about this, it was apples to oranges. You can, you can see it here. They took a chart that included all enumerations, not the EB program, the enumeration by entry program, all numerations and compared to our chart. So they put the data-

Jason Calacanis 18:54 So this, so just to be clear, this would have included somebody like me coming in on a TN visa or somebody-

Antonio Gracias 18:59 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 18:59 ... on an EB1 visa.

Antonio Gracias 19:02 Yeah, I mean, the, so those people would be in our data too, but just enumerated to be on entry. The data-

Jason Calacanis 19:07 Right.

Antonio Gracias 19:07 ... on the left, uh, of 2020, the big bars, that includes people in the offices, that include people who got, that got, uh, social numbers because they went to a consulate and, like you probably did, applied ahead of time before they came in, you know, those kinds of people. And-

Jason Calacanis 19:19 So we need a stacked bar chart (laughs) so there's some fun-

Antonio Gracias 19:22 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 19:22 ... with numbers going on here.

David Friedberg 19:22 Yeah. Can you, can you-

Jason Calacanis 19:23 Yeah.

David Friedberg 19:23 ... flip back again? So your number for '24 was how much? 2.1 million.

Antonio Gracias 19:28 Yeah. Yeah. And what they did was took, they took our data, so this was, you know, look, I don't want to impute negative motives, they just maybe were confused. They took our data and they comp- they added the total data, right? This is just subsection, this is EB, and I'm just gonna use the acronyms, okay, guys? This is EB only, enumeration beyond entry, which is a program, as I said, started in 2017 and then it kind of ramped up into '19. They took our data and then they added the total data before that, right? That is apples to oranges. That's why it doesn't work. And I- I went through a whole analysis of this on X and, you know, the person, the first person that posted the chart actually deleted it and sent me a post saying, "Hey, I, you know, I'm deleting it 'cause I get it, you're right." And apologized and asked me some questions. I- I don't want to get in, you know, you guys know I- I don't post a lot on X, I don't want to get into debates with people, it's not worth it.

David Friedberg 20:20 But there was-

Antonio Gracias 20:20 The data speaks for itself.

David Friedberg 20:21 ... there's ba- it basically, it basically became like a Rorschach test where people that did not wanna believe the points you were making latched on to that chart that was shown, even though it was disproven, and that became the narrative for a good chunk of the internet and a good chunk of, for media responses.

Antonio Gracias 20:37 Yeah, I mean, look, you guys know me, you've known me for a long time, this is not political, man. This is, this is literally-

David Friedberg 20:42 Tell us about your political background again. We haven't talked about this on the show, Antonio, but I think it's worth letting everyone hear about your background a little bit just so folks understand where you're coming from.

Antonio Gracias 20:51 I was a Democrat for 20 years. I mean, I- I- I, you know, I knocked on doors for Hillary Clinton in Iowa. I was, uh, you know, from Illinois, and look, I've got lots of good friends who are Democrats and when I explain this data to them, they're as shocked as I am. I don't believe this is, this is, this is not a-

Jason Calacanis 21:05 I mean, to say you're a Democrat is an under-, that you were a Democrat is an understatement.

Antonio Gracias 21:08 I was.

Jason Calacanis 21:08 You were a major donor and-

Antonio Gracias 21:09 Yes, I was.

Jason Calacanis 21:09 ... majorly involved-

Antonio Gracias 21:10 100%. Yes.

Jason Calacanis 21:10 ... with the Democratic Party.

Antonio Gracias 21:12 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 21:12 Ben, you, you tend to call balls and strikes on the program, what are your thoughts on immigration generally and how it should work here in the US, and how maybe we can resolve this and get to, and Antonio, I want your answer to that question as well, maybe some reconciliation here between the moderates, MAGA, original, you know, classic GOP, Democrats and, and the woke lunatics? Like i- is there any way out of this? And, and maybe perhaps what we're seeing here with somebody like Antonio, who is a lifelong Democrat who now is, you know, helping the government, maybe there's some way with data and logic we can get through this?

Ben Shapiro 21:50 I mean, I, I think that what Antonio's doing here is, is so important specifically for that, because i- it seems to me there's actually been a fairly wide consensus among the American population for a very long time what to do about immigration, particularly the southern border, which is number one, just stop the illegal immigration at the southern border. After Biden blew that out, a lot of Democrats turned to President Trump specifically because of that issue, and that has been the signal success of the Trump administration, among all the other successes. The, the numbers at the border have just plummeted to almost zero, I mean, the lowest numbers in recorded history, and that is an unmitigated success. And then, I think everybody knows that we have to sort of figure out who gets to stay and who gets to go, who's already in the country. And what Antonio's doing, by being able to discern who is here and is a net draw on the resources of the American people, versus maybe who is a net taxpayer or who's actually contributing, who's a criminal, right? They, there, there's always been this bizarre supposition in, in the, in the political realm that there's no way on a one to one level to figure out who is who. You have to treat everybody as a class, either everybody stays, everybody goes. And the reality is that even the way the Trump administration is doing this, by first targeting, say, criminal illegal aliens for, for removal, and then maybe moving on to people who are a net draw on resources who came in falsely under claims of asylum and now are receiving Medicaid or disability. Right? Th- this i- I've made the argument for, for I think my entire career, actually, on this, that, that we should be treating immigrants, illegal immigrants who are in the country the same way we would treat people who are trying to get into the country, which is to say, are you going to benefit the United States or are you not gonna benefit the United States? And the counterargument was always, "Well, how exactly are you going to determine who is who?" And the answer I always gave was, "Well, the IRS does it with our tax returns literally every single year, so why should we not be able to do that?" And so the kind of work Antonio's doing, showing you actually can do that by tracking the Social Security numbers of people who came in illegally... Because the truth of, uh, the number of unknown getaways is actually really, really sm- uh, compared to this, it's a, it's a small number. Uh, mo- most of the people who are coming across the border, at least during the Biden term, I went down to the border last year and, and visited, uh, a, a Native American reservation that's right along the border where, where the Border Patrol basically was not, uh, and- and they said that what was happening is people were arriving at the border, they were doing exactly what Antonio's talking about, they would literally say, "I fear to go back to my home country." They would be processed, they'd be let into the country with a, with a, a future date to come back, and that was all happening within 72 hours. So being able to track those people and find out who w- who, who should be in, who shouldn't be, that's, that's huge. And I think that's the consensus.

Jason Calacanis 24:06 Hm. So, uh, should we... Are you in the camp we should deport everybody, the sort of Stephen Mille- Miller deport 20 million people ban, or are you in the, "Hey, let's get rid of the criminals and, you know, that will get us to where we need to be"?

Ben Shapiro 24:19 Well, I don't think it's just the criminals. I mean, I think you also need to go after the folks who are, are here to take advantage of the welfare benefits, for example, or just-

Jason Calacanis 24:26 Got it.

Ben Shapiro 24:26 ... draw on the system. Um, but I don't think that the number is 20 million. I don't think President Trump actually thinks the number (laughs) i- is, is 20 million.

Jason Calacanis 24:33 Okay.

Ben Shapiro 24:33 I don't think anybody realistically thinks the number is 20 million.

Jason Calacanis 24:35 Got it, okay. But they, they said it over and over again, "All 20 million are going," and it's like-

Antonio Gracias 24:39 Right. But they, they say a lot of things.

Jason Calacanis 24:40 ... it's just marketing?

Antonio Gracias 24:40 It's a politi- it's a poli- yeah. Yes, it's a political campaign, and people say that-

Jason Calacanis 24:43 Got it.

Antonio Gracias 24:43 ... sort of stuff all the time.

Jason Calacanis 24:44 Antonio, let's talk maybe about reconciliation here. You've spent your life as a Democrat, and now you've spent, I don't know, six (laughs) months as a Republican here in helping this administration. How do we get the country to sort of get back together here, and, and maybe reconcile on this issue? Because it seems like an unnecessary... To Ben's point, I, I think the number is 80% of people believe the border should be just shut, period, full stop, and everything should be legal. And I don't know the other 20%, if they're just... don't know how to take a survey. (laughs) I have never met anybody who said there should be an open border at, at, at the southern border. So, what are your thoughts on, given your inside knowledge, uh, and I would describe you as a Clinton Democrat, fiscally conservative, socially liberal. Uh, correct me if I'm wrong there. What are your thoughts on reconciliation here? Because you really do care about that. Your parents, both immigrants. My besties here, three of the (laughs) four people who host this program, immigrants. This is an immigrant country, built by immigrants, for immigrants, has always been. So, how do we reconcile this issue and put it behind us?

Antonio Gracias 25:47 And Jason, I have asked myself this question, and I, I think we gotta follow the truth.

Jason Calacanis 25:51 Okay.

Antonio Gracias 25:51 And that's, that's the point. Follow the truth, and the truth is in the data. And as, as Ben said, the numbers don't lie, right? And so if people are productive, we gotta find a way to, uh, allow them to be productive and stay. People that are, are taken from the system should not be allowed to stay. And, you know, I think we... I don't wanna get into the policy at all, 'cause it's above my pay grade. I mean, the reality is, for me, my remit is, uh, as, as Ben said, it's criminals, terrorists, and then people who much off the system, and then, you know, a political question needs to be answered about what happens to the rest of those people. I, I don't, I don't know. I don't... and-

Jason Calacanis 26:18 Mm-hmm.

Antonio Gracias 26:18 ... it's not my remit.

Jason Calacanis 26:20 Free America.

Antonio Gracias 26:20 But I will-

Jason Calacanis 26:21 Go ahead.

Antonio Gracias 26:21 ... but I will say this.

Jason Calacanis 26:22 Yeah.

Antonio Gracias 26:22 I think that all my friends who are still Democrats that I have been able to explain this data to, they all say the same thing you guys are saying. "Man, this is a problem. We gotta figure this out." And let me tell you why. The bigger problem, the biggest problem here... I mean, it's, it's s- it definitely is, is taking off the system. But you gotta realize, we gave 13 to $15 billion a year to human traffickers. That's what this system did, and the money magnet that attracted these people here, it wasn't like it was some crisis that... you know, en- environmental crisis. The money magnet attracted these people, and many of them died on the way up. I mean, think about what that's like. Think about the human crisis.

Jason Calacanis 26:54 So, this is a human suffering, a human rights tragedy.

Antonio Gracias 26:57 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 26:57 You have people who are getting sold into slavery and being abused at the border. At a, at a minimum, every American should be against that.

Antonio Gracias 27:05 Everyone is. Every American is.

Jason Calacanis 27:06 Everyone is.

Antonio Gracias 27:06 Look, man, this turned my stomach. When I went to the border and I heard the stories, it turned my stomach, man. It's... we are America, okay? We protect people like this. We don't give incentives to people that pay traffickers. If you paid 20,000... I heard 20,000 to 500 bucks just to cross the border. $20,000. I mean, where does someone who's coming from Central America or Africa get 20 grand to pay the, pay the traffickers that are walking them across the border? It's not free to walk out of Mexico, okay? It's controlled by the cartels. What happens? I mean, they gotta pay that back. How do they pay it back? They're basically indentured servants. This is terrible. This isn't what-

Jason Calacanis 27:38 Mm-hmm.

Antonio Gracias 27:38 ... we do in this country, right?

Jason Calacanis 27:39 Yeah.

Antonio Gracias 27:39 This country is about freedom. And we are here to protect it. We protect it around the world. We're protecting our home country. And I don't think any American that I know, none of them Democrats, Republicans, or anyone, thinks this is good. It's not good. It's bad for America, and it's evil behavior. We shouldn't send it. We shouldn't, we shouldn't give people a reason to do it. We should find legal ways for people to come in the country. And I-

Jason Calacanis 27:58 Antonio, do you-

Antonio Gracias 27:58 ... I think that's the way

Antonio Gracias 27:59 to come together.

Jason Calacanis 27:59 Do you believe that there is a Democratic Party motive to increase voter base for the Democrats behind all of this, as has been proclaimed by some?

Antonio Gracias 28:09 Look, as I go through the data and I see... It's all about the data, okay, David? And I know you, you, you, you, you love the data. When you... I've just seen a handful of states, man. I'm talking about four states. We looked at the voter rolls. We found these people, thousands of them on the voter rolls, and we found, uh, many of those people had voted, right? In one state in particular, well over 1,000 voted. Yeah, I think this was a, uh, a move to import voters.

Jason Calacanis 28:32 But really importantly, I just wanna make sure... Because when, when I talk to politicians from the Democratic Party about this, they say there's aspects of human rights, doing the right thing for people in need, that is motivating some of this behavior. Is that a lie, and they actually have a different motive? Or do some in the party think that way, but there are real kind of, uh, kind of call it a small group of highly influential folks at the top of the Democratic Party that recognize that this is gonna grow the voter base, and they're, they're kind of motivating this? What do you think is the construction of what sounds to some to be a conspiracy, and how much of this is really, like, widely understood?

Antonio Gracias 29:15 Look, man, here's, uh... I'll tell you what I have seen. I'll tell you the actual information. If you look at Social Security Administration, we set all their faults to kind of max open, no ID requirements, right? You get a Social Security number, uh, before we got here by walking in an office, answering... you know, with, with a, with a, with a medical record and a school ID that had your name and your date, the date of birth on it. That's it, okay? We opened up... We o- set the defaults to open on Social Security. We set the defaults to open on pay, paying people out. And we set the collections to defaults, basically to zero. So, that's how the system looks. That's... I'm just reporting the, reporting the facts. Um, do I think that the, the average person who's a Democrat in the... in, in, in Illinois, or, you know, the guys I knew, I grew up in Chicago, they know this? They don't know this. They don't know this. So, were there people at the top of the system that did this? Yeah. People created this policy. The former administrators of these, of these agencies created these policies. I've seen them. I've read them myself. I've gone to the data myself. They've seen them. Now, this isn't everybody. If you're the average person out there who's a Democrat, and you see what I've seen, you... I believe you will s- you'll conclude what I concluded, which is, "This isn't right. These policies are wrong." They're evil. They're wrong. We gave an incentive for people to get trafficked. That's terrible.

Jason Calacanis 30:31 I just-

Antonio Gracias 30:31 I just don't... I just don't think people know. The reason I'm even willing to do all... You, you guys know me. I'm pretty private. I'm coming on your podcast 'cause we're buddies. But like, man, the reason I'm talking about this is, is not political.It's because it's a human rights issue, and the human rights issue is being confused. It's not... It's we are incenting people to pay traffickers to come to America. We were doing this, right? We got to find better ways to do that. And I just... I don't believe any American, the 80% of the people that Jason's talking about that would say close the border, that's the 80% of people who come together on this issue, which is-

David Sacks 30:58 Antonio.

Antonio Gracias 30:59 ... man, we got to take care of people.

David Sacks 31:00 Antonio, can you talk about what the next big push of effort from you and your team will be? Is there-

Jason Calacanis 31:06 Hm, good question.

David Sacks 31:07 ... some next chart? I'm not trying to be reductive, but is there something that you can demonstrate that is going to be equivalently as powerful as this first chart, which then helps us start to move these gears towards doing the logical and right thing?

Antonio Gracias 31:23 I think the right thing is to figure out who's who, right? Who are the criminals? Who are the terrorists?

David Sacks 31:28 Yeah.

Antonio Gracias 31:29 Number one. And number two, who's mooching off the system? And then number three, the people that are working that Jason's talking about, uh, you know, what we do with them? That's the right answer.

David Sacks 31:38 Well, I would- I would add a fourth, because I think that there's probably no more electric issue than this idea of voting impropriety, and I think it has become so brazenly partisan that everybody has suspended logic. If it turned out-

Jason Calacanis 31:57 I agree with that, yeah.

David Sacks 31:57 If it turns out that there was a manipulated effort in 2020, and there is even a thread of legitimacy to Trump's claims, you would never be able to see the light of day because so many Americans just turned the... turn off, right? And that's because of the rhetoric that they've been fed. This is a really important thing that I would just offer to you, is that if it is true that these people illegally voted, I think it's a thunderclap and I think it opens wide the aperture on voting illegality and voting reform. And I think that irrespective of who you are, you should want to make sure that people who are not allowed to vote are not voting, just to put it simply.

Antonio Gracias 32:40 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 32:41 Yeah, wow, what an incredible concept.

Antonio Gracias 32:42 It's- it's- it's-

Jason Calacanis 32:43 (laughs)

Antonio Gracias 32:43 I mean, it's amazing. I can't, I- I can't, uh... I can't get on an airplane in America without ID, but I can go vote in some states without ID. I think that's crazy.

Jason Calacanis 32:51 That is crazy.

Antonio Gracias 32:51 I think it's totally crazy.

Jason Calacanis 32:52 That is crazy.

David Sacks 32:52 Yeah, and we're down to, like... Ben, you know the number. It's 15 states now are the ones that don't have voter ID. So, this is becoming, like, a very obvious issue and a loophole for us to close. I think the best next thing for you to do is actually publish this list of people who voted, get it to The Heritage Foundation, and put sunlight on it. The truth shall make you free, and sunlight is the best disinfectant because I think the whole issue is absurd because if you look at the votes in the swing states, it would take 100,000, it would take tens of thousands, and it's illegal. I- I've spoken to the person at The Heritage Foundation who does this. They found, like, 2,400 cases over 40 or 50 years. The number of people voting illegally is minuscule. In order to swing even but one state, you would need a coordinated effort. Can I- can I say something though?

Jason Calacanis 33:37 Hold on, let me finish. You would need a coordinated effort. I'm just giving you data, Chamath.

David Sacks 33:42 Now, what I'm saying to you-

Jason Calacanis 33:43 I am not partisan. There are-

David Sacks 33:43 No, no.

Jason Calacanis 33:44 ... tens of thousands of votes-

David Sacks 33:45 Um, here's-

Jason Calacanis 33:45 ... that would need to be manipulated in each of these markets.

David Sacks 33:47 Jason.

Jason Calacanis 33:47 It's impossible.

David Sacks 33:48 Here... Well, y- there's the key word. Here's what I would ask you to consider.

Jason Calacanis 33:53 Sure, I'll consider it.

David Sacks 33:54 Your results are only as good as your prompts. Your results-

Jason Calacanis 33:59 (laughs)

David Sacks 33:59 ... are only as good as your prompts. And-

Jason Calacanis 34:01 Say that in plain English. What do you mean?

David Sacks 34:04 I suspect that if you put three or four of the smartest data scientists in the world, they would get to a very different answer than the answer that has been arrived to. I don't know whether that'll validate or invalidate the claim.

Jason Calacanis 34:17 Yeah.

David Sacks 34:17 But the quality of the people that are able to interrogate this data is directly correlated to the output that is created.

Jason Calacanis 34:25 Well, listen, we all want the data clean. Ben, uh, maybe I'll let you kind of answer the question from your perspective. Do you think there is any chance that a swing state could be swung by, you know, this strategy? And in addition to that, Trump is a populist. All these people a- and his biggest gains were with people from South America, Mexicans, et cetera, in this last election. So, a- and non-college educated. So, if you were gonna plot this incredible strategy, it seems like the Democratic strategy of importing a bunch of voters is the stupidest possible strategy because the Republican Party has won those people.

Ben Shapiro 35:00 Well, I- I don't think that it would be a great short-term strategy because of the- the problems that you mentioned in terms of the- the size of the voting gaps, even in close swing states, although obviously you have outlier cases like Florida in 2000 where the entire state is being decided by hundreds of votes.

Jason Calacanis 35:12 Yes.

Ben Shapiro 35:12 And there, you actually could s- see a state actually shift on that basis. I- it's a rarity, but it does happen and- and in some cases decides the presidential election. Uh, when- when you're talking, however, about the long-term play-

Jason Calacanis 35:23 Yes.

Ben Shapiro 35:23 ... I think the question that needs to be asked is if you are importing a bunch of people who are more dependent than average on the American government, for example, or who are not interested in assimilating to free market values, for example, or free speech values, uh, or- or who come in, and then many of these people are gonna get married, many of these people are gonna have kids, they're gonna marry American citizens, they're gonna have children who are American, and then they stay. Now, you're talking about actually generating a change in the voting population, and that isn't a right wing point. That's a point that was made by Roy Teixeira all the way back in 2004 when he was a Democrat, and he was making the case essentially that there was a demographic wave that was going to shift the electorate in the United States in the direction of Democrats permanently. Now, the point that you're making is that even as a long-term strategy, that might be a bad play because it may be that these populations shift over time. That doesn't mean that that's not the intent in the moment, meaning-

Jason Calacanis 36:09 Right, the intent-

Ben Shapiro 36:09 ... maybe they're wrong.

Jason Calacanis 36:10 ... could-

Ben Shapiro 36:10 Right, maybe they're wrong.

Jason Calacanis 36:10 They could have gotten it wrong.

Ben Shapiro 36:11 Right, exactly.

Jason Calacanis 36:11 They could have made a very bad (laughs) strategic decision. Antonio, I think we have to drop you off here. Any closing comments you want to make? And I just want to thank you. I know you've got other things you could be doing in your life, but just on behalf of the American people who I speak for here on the program, we want to thank you, all Americans, for your service to this country, and I know that you are balls and strikes and you're gonna let the data speak. So, I just want to thank you, uh, for your efforts.

Antonio Gracias 36:37 Thank you, Jason. And I- I- I- I'll close this, um, this conversation, which is go look at California. Look at California, okay? Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, king of California.Ronald Reagan signed amnesty and, you know, some 40 years later, it is now a solidly blue state. And I think, uh, so much on this program, I know you, Jason, are a refugee from California because of that, because of some of those-

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:59 Hm.

Antonio Gracias 36:59 ... policies. And I wanna be, I want you to be careful about this because it is, it is actually the tip of the iceberg, man. We are, we have a very small sample of data-

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:07 Hm.

Antonio Gracias 37:08 ... in a couple of states. It's the tip of the iceberg, and so I don't know what the unintended consequence will be long term, but I can tell you it's already happened in America, where an amnesty program actually turned a very large state, you know, from one, one party to another. And I wanna leave you guys with this thought. This is not political. I'm not doing it, there's no political motivation in my mind. This is about America. It's about securing the American democracy, and we will shine light onto the data when we can, we preferred these people to prosecution, and we're gonna keep looking. We'll keep going-

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:39 All right.

Antonio Gracias 37:39 ... and, and the data will lead us and the truth will lead us, and it'll eventually come out in the sunlight. You're right. But we're gonna follow the truth. That's our primary motive. That, that is the, that is our operating parameter in what we're gonna do.

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:52 Right on. Love you, bro.

Jason Calacanis 37:52 All right. Thank you, Antonio Grassos, and continued success-

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:55 Thanks, Antonio. Good to see you, Antonio.

Jason Calacanis 37:56 ... and love to talk to you in 30, 60 days when you have your next findings.

Antonio Gracias 37:59 Thanks, guys.

Jason Calacanis 38:00 Uh, li-

Antonio Gracias 38:00 Thank you.

David Friedberg 38:00 And then you're a, you're a refugee from California too, aren't you?

Ben Shapiro 38:03 Yes. Yeah, we took off in 2020, during, during COVID. We, we took off, my company took off, we, we all got the hell out. I wa- I was born in California, so I spent 30, uh, 36 years there before, before I moved. Uh, and yeah, they, they certainly did a good job of wrecking that state. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 38:18 I mean, I did the same thing. Y- you went to... oh, I don't know if we talked about where you went.

Ben Shapiro 38:22 I- I'm in Florida.

Jason Calacanis 38:22 Oh, you're in Florida.

Ben Shapiro 38:22 Yeah, I'm in, I'm in Florida. Yeah, my company's in Tennessee, I'm in Florida.

Jason Calacanis 38:24 Yeah, got it. Yeah, I mean, it's just, you can't raise kids in California, and you just think about the crime and taxes and what you're getting for your dollar. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, I don't-

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:34 White House is off the Zoom, boys. Now we can start to really-

Ben Shapiro 38:37 Okay, now- (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:37 ... open it up. Okay.

Ben Shapiro 38:38 Now we can open up the aperture. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:40 No more FOIA.

Jason Calacanis 38:40 Whoo-hoo-hoo.

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:41 All right. Okay. What do you guys think about what you just saw?

Jason Calacanis 38:46 Ben, I'll let you go first as our guest.

Ben Shapiro 38:48 I, I, I wish the entire Trump administration were rolled out as well as Antonio just rolled that out, is, is what I would say.

Jason Calacanis 38:53 I think what I would say.

Ben Shapiro 38:53 Uh, you know, I think that that is high levels of competence and expertise and a meticulous message that, that is data first and difficult for anybody to deny. I think that the success of the Trump administration, the successes that they've had are taking the 80 side of 80/20 issues. And I think that the success of President Trump in 2024 was that he oddly became the normie candidate. He was the guy who was a return to normalcy candidacy-

Jason Calacanis 39:14 Hm.

Ben Shapiro 39:14 ... in, in the face of a Biden and the bizarreness of, of Harris, uh, of Harris. And, uh, you know, I think that as we see many of Trump's policies rolled out, the ones that are rolled out the way that Antonio is rolling it out are incredibly well received by the American population, because they're seeing serious people doing serious work that needs to be done. And the ones that are not rolled out that way I think are gonna be a little more unpopular with the American people. And that, that's kind of... I want President Trump to succeed at a lot of these agenda items, and I, I don't want his, his good agenda items getting essentially railroaded and, and run over by, by the, by the bad rollout of other agenda items.

Jason Calacanis 39:47 So you think thoughtful is good? Uh- (laughs)

Ben Shapiro 39:50 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 39:50 ... and well thought out, constructed, and communicated? What, what, um...

Jason Calacanis 39:55 wh- when you talk about this being done right, what do you think is being done wrong and could be done better, I guess would be a, a, a generous way of saying it? What, what could they communicate better?

Ben Shapiro 40:02 I mean, and not to jump into the, the pile of rakes that is the, the tariff plan, but-

Jason Calacanis 40:06 Yes.

Ben Shapiro 40:07 ... uh, I, I think that the, uh, I think that the way that the tariff plan was rolled out is about as bad a rollout as you could do. Um, and, uh, you know, th- the reason I say that is not just because of my disagreements on the actual policy. I'll either be right or I'll be wrong on that. But the way that it was rolled out with, with very, with, with essentially kind of a surprise announcement.

Jason Calacanis 40:22 Hm.

Ben Shapiro 40:23 Um, I, I don't mind a surprise announcement if what is then rolled out is not replete with, with sort of contradictory justifications, um, you know, statistics that, that are labeled one thing but really are not that thing. Uh, and, and so it just, it opens itself up to all sorts of critiques from every possible side of the... Uh, if you wanna make the argument, make the full s- make the full scale, well thought arg- argument, and then we can argue over whether it's true or not, but there's, there's four or five different claims that are being simultaneously made about the tariffs. One, they're gonna raise revenue. Two, they're gonna re-shore. Three, that you are going to somehow re-trigger the world trading system. Uh, y- uh, some, some of these are mutually exclusive. If you're gonna, if you're going to re-shore, you're not gonna raise as much revenue, for example. Right? Those two things are, are mutually exclusive and they're both being trotted out at the same exact time. If you're gonna put out a giant chart that the president holds up that shows tariff rates plus unspecified, you know, variable, uh, then what I'd like to know is what the actual tariff rate is, uh, uh, as opposed to what the calculation seems to be, which was the trade deficit with a country divided into the imports to that country. Uh, that, that, that has nothing to do with the tariff rate. I mean, just technically speaking, it has literally nothing to do with the tariff rate. And so what that means is now you're boxed in logically. If President Trump wants to do a reciprocal tariff reduction, for example, how do you do that? 'Cause he actually has used a s- a statistic for the tariffs that have nothing to do with the tariff rate and are actually just trade deficits. So the only way to actually rectify that statistic is to have Madagascar buy a bunch of American product, for example, in order to get their, their quote unquote "tariff rate" down. Uh, that, that sort of stuff seems badly calibrated, even if you like the policy, for example.

Jason Calacanis 41:58 All right, yeah, so let's do this-

David Friedberg 41:59 Unles- unless, unless from a poker point of view, they spent many months declaring they're gonna do tariffs and everyone thought they were bluffing, and said... everyone said, "There's no way you're gonna do tariffs." It's like someone in poker saying, "I'm gonna play every hand I get. I'm gonna be crazy," you don't believe them, and they actually have to do it in order to get the negotiating leverage that they need to be able to negotiate trade deals ultimately, and they have to look a little crazy maybe. I mean, that, that, uh-

Jason Calacanis 42:23 So, so you're in... That's your position, Friedberg, they're in the 4D chess, or...

David Friedberg 42:27 I'm trying to rationalize one kind of rational reason for why a lot of smart people would end up putting that board up, that poster board up where, to your point, Ben, they said that these are kind of the, the tariffs that are being levied upon our country when in fact it is simply the math of imports minus exports divided by imports. That's what the number was, and it, and it, and it was m- and it was maxed out at that number or 10%, and that's what they did. So-They did that basically as a way, in my opinion, it looks like, and I'm just trying to take a read on this, that, um, they're using this as a way to anchor for negotiations going forward, to make the case, we are declaratively, crazily off the friggin' ship, going to do whatever the heck we wanna do here in this administration. Now everyone takes them seriously, now everyone shows up to the negotiating table, and now they can actually negotiate and then announce a series of win after win after win and say, "We got this set of countries to capitulate today. This is the deal we worked out. It's a totally unique deal. This set of deals we worked out today, this set of deals we worked out today." And basically getting all the trade representatives to the table by making the case that they're actually willing to go all the way to the wall on stuff. So, I, that's the only way I can kind of rationalize this roll-out, Ben. That's what it feels like to me. For months, they've been very declarative, "We are going to do tariffs." Besson said it to us on our interview, Luttnik said it to us in our interview, and no one took them seriously.

Ben Shapiro 43:49 I did. I did, by the way. I will, I will say that I took them totally seriously, so much-

David Friedberg 43:52 I did as well.

Ben Shapiro 43:52 ... so that I called my financial advisor after the State of the Union address and told them to, uh, rejigger my, my stock and bond ratio in my portfolio (laughs) because I figured that something like this was going to happen. I think-

David Friedberg 44:02 You went heavy treasuries.

Ben Shapiro 44:03 Yes. A, A, A, I, I, I went light stocks, I'll say that. Uh, and, and, and the reason for that is because, again, I think that the thing about President Trump is that you, he, he may not, you know, be serious in every single thing that he says, but he is very clear that when he says a thing over and over and over, there is no hidden motivation. And thi- this is the part that I always have trouble with, with sort of the 4D chess reads on President Trump, there's almost never a hidden motivation. He pretty much just says the thing that he thinks, right? It's one of the things that makes him so popular and authentic, is that there isn't a 4D chess game being played.

David Friedberg 44:35 No.

Ben Shapiro 44:35 If he, if he says that he wants a thing to happen, it's because he actually wants the thing to happen. Now, the thing about President Trump, he's also a realist. So if a bunch of bad headlines hit him, he may then change his mind and decide that he wants to drive a truck directly through the center of the tariffs because the prices are going up too much on, for example, semiconductors. So, one of the big exemptions from these tariffs is, in fact, in the area of semiconductors. Again, there you see a sort of couple of different justifications that are, that are mutually exclusive that are fighting each other. One of them is the idea we need to re-shore semiconductor production because it's a national security asset, and the other is, it's, we need to raise revenue on semiconductors, so he exempted them, which kind of, you know, kind of bollocks up the logic. And I, I think that the, the, there are a couple of tells that that isn't what's hap- It may... Listen, I think it may end up being the thing you're saying. I think the most likely result of these tariffs is that within the next few weeks, the headlines are not good, President Trump starts driving trucks through the center of the tariffs, and then he starts getting wins from various parties outside that allow him to find an off-ramp on some of these tariffs. Now, a company in, in Belgium says they're going to build a factory in the United States. He has them to the White House, they have a big ceremony, and then he says, "And as a result of this, we're now lowering the tariffs," in sort of the same way he did with, with Colombia, when he said... Not the university, the, the country, when he said he was gonna hit them with tariffs unless you accept these, these illegal immigrants, and, and then they did. So that very well might be the offer. I don't think that's what's going on right now. I think what's going on right now is the strategy that Luttnik has repeatedly expressed, which is that they actually kinda like the tariffs. They actually think that this is good economic policy and that between 1880 and 1910 was an amazing time in American history, and, and so they, they-

David Friedberg 46:06 Do you agree?

Ben Shapiro 46:07 Um, I, I think that that is a bad read on economic history because there are a lot of confounds there that are being, uh, ignored. Uh, among those confounds would be the fact that actually-

David Friedberg 46:18 The Industrial Revolution? (laughs)

Ben Shapiro 46:19 Yes. Uh, so a, a few. I... Just, just to name a few.

David Friedberg 46:21 (laughs)

Ben Shapiro 46:21 The Industrial Revolution, extraordinarily high levels of immigration, by the way, during that period-

David Friedberg 46:25 Right. Right.

Ben Shapiro 46:26 So you had an incredibly cheap labor base that was actually coming in, into the United States. At that time, massive expansion-

David Friedberg 46:31 No income tax.

Ben Shapiro 46:31 ... of the American population. No income tax. A, a-

David Friedberg 46:34 So free-flowing capital.

Ben Shapiro 46:35 A newly discovered continent, right? Like, like, truly, like many, many confounds, right? And, and by the way, less international trade generally, so tariffs aren't gonna have the same sort of impact on global supply chains as they would now, where every product that you buy has gone through 10 different countries in 10 different ways. So, so I... No, I don't, I don't think that that is a comp. Um, but that doesn't mean that, that Luttnik doesn't think that it's a comp, for example. And, and I think that the... when, when it comes to, you know, the roll-out, again, a methodical roll-out... I, I totally get the crazy man theory, and I think that sometimes President Trump does that. I'm hoping that that's what he's doing. But a good example of an off-ramp he could have taken, if that's the thing he's trying to do... So yesterday, in anticipation of this, Israel, which had very, very low tariffs on United States goods anyway, announced they'd removed all tariffs on American goods, right? There were no tariffs on American goods anymore. And the administration that afternoon listed their tariff rate at 33% and then hit them with a 17% tariff for a country that has 0% tariffs.

Jason Calacanis 47:31 When they could have just taken them when and just used them as an example of a great partner.

Ben Shapiro 47:34 Exactly. Exactly. I think that-

David Friedberg 47:35 Well, didn't, didn't Canada do the same? Didn't Canada drop tariffs like the, the morning of or the day before?

Jason Calacanis 47:39 They were on CNBC and they said, "We're totally willing to go to zero," and then the anchors, correctly on CNBC, were like, "Well then why haven't you done that already?" To Ben's point, Israel did do that, and... But I think your theory, Ben, is like, absolutely correct. If you make this analogy to what he did with overturning Roe v. Wade, it is the same exact thing. He told us over and over again, "I'm gonna put two, maybe three people on the Supreme Court. I'm gonna overturn it," and then afterwards, he kind of wiped his hands through it and was like, "Listen, it's up to you guys. I had nothing to do with it." He will tell you what he's gonna do. He told you he was gonna do these tariffs. He's done them. Uh, and I do think there's something embedded in what you said, Ben, which is, I think he likes everybody to come to Mar-a-Lago or to come to the White House, and he loves doing deals. He's addicted to it. He wrote a book, The Art of the Deal. He loves people coming to him, hanging out, and Chamath, maybe you could give us your perspective. Crazy man theory, crazy grandpa (laughs) , uh, or this is a negotiating tactic, everybody has to come through him, or Luttnik believes it. As he said very clearly, "I'm gonna add a trillion dollars in taxes here." What, what do you think is going on here? Because if... When I went through all the top people on the internet, all our group of friends, uh, who are deeply in finance, I can't find anybody deeply in finance who's not in the administration who thinks this is well executed or a good idea. What's your thought?

David Sacks 49:00 Let me start by saying a couple of things. To use the Donald Rumsfeld quote, I do agree with Ben tremendously that this was a known-known. We mentioned this last episode, Donald Trump has been speaking about tariffs for 40 plus years.

David Friedberg 49:15 Yep.

David Sacks 49:16 So this is not a new thing and I think that he tried this in Trump One, but to your guys' point, it didn't really go well because he didn't have the team around him that had his back. And so it was inevitable that he would have tried it in Trump Two. He said it and he's been able to do it. So if you weren't planning for it, whoever was vested in this outcome, you really needed to be focused on this. It was a known-known, and so there was a little dereliction of duty if you were caught off guard, I think. That's one. The second is, and I- we've said this all year since January 1 on this pod, we started it even with the, with that poly market bet that I made, which is the Trump administration does not care about the stock market. And by the way, this- the trade actually closed out, so congrats to all these people that won$ 650,000 on poly market.

David Friedberg 50:12 And let me just explain poly market, put a betting market suggested by Chamath Palihapitiya, they are partners of ours, Magnificent Seven shrinks below 30% of S&P 500 in 2025. And-

David Sacks 50:24 This was free money. This was like the stock market giving out free money. But why did this happen? This happened because it was very clear to me early on that the rhetoric had shifted to say, "We care about MAGA. We care about people that have working class and middle class jobs." None of those folks are deeply invested in the asset economy the way maybe some of us are, and so it was directionally clear. And by the way, Scott Bessen, what a cold-ass quote yesterday. "The equity market sell-off is a MAG Seven problem, not a MAGA problem." So there again, putting all of this into the realm of this is a known-known. So I think it's pretty clear. One, Trump has had a 40-year view on tariffs. They're going to go through with this and they're going to see it through. I don't think you're going to see this grand capitulation. Two, they are okay with the volatility in the equity markets. And then three, which is the other thing that we've been talking about a lot is, where does this move our practical financing costs? What is this, right? We've talked about this. We have $6 trillion we need to finance in the next nine months. So the singular goal, in my opinion, of the White House has been move the tenure as aggressively and as quickly as possible. And look what they've done. As of yesterday, it's unbelievable what's happened in the tenure. You know, you were kissing 4%. And we talked about this. If it had gone in the other direction, guys, 30 or 40 basis points, and it touched 5%, you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of extra money that would not have been found that would have had to be printed, right? And now this is hundreds of billions of dollars that we will save. So-

David Friedberg 52:11 If we cut rates, if the Fed cuts rates, that's all predicated on-

David Sacks 52:15 No, no, no, no, no. This doesn't matter anymore.

David Friedberg 52:17 No, Jake-

David Sacks 52:17 This is-

David Friedberg 52:18 No. The fed cut rate-

David Sacks 52:18 The fed doesn't control the back end of the curve.

David Friedberg 52:20 ... has no impact on the Treasury, the Treasury markets. The government sells Treasuries.

David Sacks 52:24 Governments will now auction-

David Friedberg 52:24 No, no, I know that but-

David Sacks 52:25 ... tenures and the auctions will clear at around 4%. It is an enormous... Like, as an American, what we should all be thinking is, irrespective of what you think you know or what you think you like about tariffs, we should all have a moment where we exhale because the long end of the curve is giving us a respite in a storm and we should be incredibly thankful because-

David Friedberg 52:49 You know, uh, what I'm referring to, Chamath, is you said yesterday, "Jerome Powell, you're on the clock." So maybe you could explain what you meant by that.

David Sacks 52:56 Okay, so this is- that's a different part of the curve.

David Friedberg 52:58 I understand it's a different thing, but I'm just trying to put these two things together because those are the two things we're saying this action took, or this will enable.

David Sacks 53:06 Okay, so now... Okay, so let's play the ball where it lies.

David Friedberg 53:08 Okay.

David Sacks 53:09 The Wall Street smart money thought this was a $250 billion event. They were wrong. This is part of why the stock market has reacted so violently today. This is a $750 billion to trillion dollar event, okay? This is a big moment in the market. So what does it create? It creates the risk of a recession. How do you minimize that risk? That is all about how easy it is for the average person to be able to borrow money. Where is that dictated? That is more dictated by the Fed and how they price the front end of the curve. So what we need to have happen now is while Scott is out financing $6 trillion on the back end, we now need to get Jerome Powell to cut the front end. And if you do it aggressively enough, you can introduce liquidity in a moment where small and medium-sized businesses can go and get financed to weather the storm.

David Friedberg 54:04 Chamath, I want to add on to your point. Just so you guys know, there's roughly $12 to $16 trillion of private corporate debt in America. So this is debt held by small businesses, medium businesses, partnerships that have on average, call it a 15% operating margin. So they're going to be under pressure if there is some recessionary risk to make sure they have access to capital. And if you remember the interview that Bessen gave to us a couple of weeks ago, he was very clear that one of his mandates is to enable the re-leveraging of the financial system, meaning he wants to give banks the ability to issue more debt, to introduce more capital and more liquidity into the markets by taking away some of the regulatory restrictions that have made it more difficult for the banks to issue credit to business owners and to individuals. So if they are successful in their deregulatory efforts, it will introduce more liquidity into the market, coupled with deregulatory work that they're making in the other-

David Sacks 55:07 ... parts of the administration as... This is their declaration, not mine. Their intention is to make sure that that capital flows into building businesses, building new businesses-

Jason Calacanis 55:16 Got it.

David Sacks 55:16 ... underwriting new jobs, creating more employment. That's the theory that they're trying to execute. Obviously, it's part of this three-legged stool, but if it doesn't all work, the stool falls over.

Jason Calacanis 55:26 Okay. Chamath, give us an example here and y- I'm trying to get you to paint the entire picture here because- ... the tariff cudgel is not making sense to a lot of folks.

David Sacks 55:34 Okay. So it's not all good news.

Jason Calacanis 55:36 Yes.

David Sacks 55:36 Right? So let's, let's paint the, let's... So I'll give a very specific example. A friend of ours runs a 100 plus year company. I'm just gonna say i- in generic terms so that I don't betray his confidence, but-

Jason Calacanis 55:50 Sure. No problem.

David Sacks 55:51 And this is a business that's been built over 100 years, owned by an American family, an incredible family, and they make products that we all know and love. And what did this action do? So in their example, they're in a very difficult position because they have, as David said, a very tight operating margin because they have to compete ferociously against China and they've done everything possible to maintain their capabilities in America, hire American workers in the Heartland, but still compete against China. It's tough. And this action today swings them from profitability to a potential yearly loss in a meaningful order of magnitude, like hundreds of millions of dollars. So Jason, that's the other side of this tariff coin. So we have to find a way of finding those examples and as Ben said, excluding them somehow or giving them reprieve because that wasn't the intention, I think, of what Trump was trying to do yesterday. That's an example of a company that should be winning and should continue to win and fight the good fight against China and try to continue to employ thousands of Americans. But this thing, because they had some capacity in some other countries, not China by the way-

Jason Calacanis 57:06 Got it.

David Sacks 57:07 ... blows the thing up. And so now you have to fix those things.

Jason Calacanis 57:09 All right. Ben, let me get you involved here. I'm gonna play you a quick clip from Rand Paul and I want to get your feedback on executive power and then on tariffs themselves and if it's a good idea or a bad idea. Play the clip.

Narrator 57:23 What's the rationale for getting behind this? Well, one, we should not live under emergency rule. The Constitution said taxes are raised by Congress, most specifically, taxes originate in the House and come to the Senate so I'm against emergency rule. We are richer because of trade with Canada and so is Canada. Whenever you trade with somebody, when an individual buys somebody else's product, it's mutually beneficial or you wouldn't buy it. If the trade is voluntary, it's always beneficial. There is no Canada versus The US. The consumer wins when the price is the lowest price. Tariffs raise prices and they're a bad idea for the economy.

Jason Calacanis 58:00 Ben, your thoughts on the two issues. Is trade good for consumers? This is what, you know, I g- I think is on top of everybody's (laughs) mind, that- T- the whole Trump presidency and he won in large part due to inflation and Biden economics and that he was gonna reduce inflation and I think a lot of people believe inflation's about to come roaring back. Your thoughts on the two issues.

Ben Shapiro 58:22 Well, I mean, obviously on a macroeconomic level, I totally agree with Senator Paul. When it comes to the powers of the presidency, I think that it's pretty extraordinary that we should be able to use the trade deficit as a national emergency sufficient to put down what effectively amounts to a $700 billion tax increase on the American people if you're talking about them paying the price of, of the tariffs on, on the other end. Uh, Congress, you know, I think that if things get bad enough, th- th- there are a bunch of, you know, streams obviously here that cross. One of the big things here is that Congress is up for re-elect in a year and a half. And if the Republicans lose Congress in a year and a half, then whatever tricks President Trump is, is trying to pull in terms of being able to rejigger the rate at which we are paying back our, our national debt, all that stuff goes by the wayside because if Democrats win Congress, pretty much everything comes to a crashing halt. And there are a lot of Republicans who are in swing districts or in say, R+5, R+10 districts who are suddenly gonna feel, feel pretty vulnerable. A recession takes everybody with it and it takes Secretary Bessant, it takes the president, it takes J.D. Vance, (laughs) takes everybody with it. R- recessions tend to crush the president who is in power at the time regardless of what their long-term plan is when they say short-term pain f- for long-term gain, uh, a- again, I think that th- there are a few factors here that I would like to see played out. For example, if there is an inflationary effect to the tariffs in terms of, in terms of price, does that mean the Jerome Powell is going to inject additional liquidity into the markets by, by decreasing interest rates? It's hard to see how. I mean, he's holding the interest rates steady right now without decreasing the interest rates despite President Trump basically blasting him publicly since before he was even the president, uh... Formally, he's not just the president-elect at that time. So a- again, it's hard for me to see how all of this squares into what looks like a, a really well-calibrated policy. And, and then beyond that, in the long term, tricks that we play with regard to the rate of interest paying back our national debt are not gonna be sufficient to pay back our national debt unless we have robust economic growth. And so a lot has to be bet on the robust economic growth out, out-earning essentially the, the levels of debt that we are, are currently racking up. And while I love what Doge is doing, these systemic drivers of our national debt are not actually being touched at this point by Doge. I mean, it's, it's the, it's the means-tested welfare programs that are really the systemic long-term drivers o- of our national debt.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:33 And military, I think would be number two. Yeah. Military-

Ben Shapiro 1:00:36 Milita- military as a percentage of, of the, of the GDP or as a percentage of the budget has been, y- relatively stable and in some cases decreasing since, since the end of the Iraq war.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:44 True.

Ben Shapiro 1:00:44 But th- but th- that... W- when it comes to the means-tested welfare programs, those continue to grow as a percentage of the budget, and over time are increasingly u- unfunded.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:53 Yeah. As our population ages and the population grows. Freiberg, putting aside executive power and the midterms, which yeah, that, that would change everything, what are your thoughts on just inflation and tariffs and the chance that this comes back and explodes, y- in the administration's lap?

David Friedberg 1:01:11 Well, I think there are three consequences, not necessarily related to inflation, that are just worth spending time on. One of which I don't think gets talked about enough. The first is just the challenge of tariffs in general. And I shared this clip with you guys over the group chat yesterday from Ronald Reagan talking-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:28 Oh, it's so funny-

David Friedberg 1:01:29 ... about tariffs.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:29 ... I have it queued up. I actually, we added it. Let's do that. Let's play this clip and get your reaction.

Narrator 1:01:32 And today, many economic analysts and historians argue that high tariff legislation passed back in that period, called the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, greatly deepened the Depression and prevented economic recovery. You see, at first when someone says, "Let's impose tariffs on foreign imports," it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs, and sometimes for a short while it works, but only for a short time. What eventually occurs is, first homegrown industries start relying on government protection in the form of high tariffs. They stop competing and stop making the innovative management and technological changes they need to succeed in world markets. And then, while all this is going on, something even worse occurs, people stop buying. Then the worst happens, markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs. The memory of all this occurring back in the '30s made me determined when I came to Washington to spare the American people the protectionist legislation that destroys prosperity.

David Friedberg 1:02:38 So let me just say three things that I think are gonna be important consequences, one of which doesn't get talked about much at all. The first is the important point about the decline in competitiveness that arises when you use protectionist tactics like import tariffs. So ultimately, in order to be competitive in the market, you need to have a free market to test how good you are relative to your competitors. And if you use tariffs or other taxes or other government intervening systems to distort the natural forces of markets, meaning there's a buyer and a seller, there may be multiple sellers, and ultimately the buyer will choose the best seller, then you're creating a disincentive for American enterprise to be more competitive. We lost manufacturing because we weren't competitive in manufacturing. Putting a tariff on other manufacturing countries does not make Americans more competitive. It basically gives American businesses a crutch. And ultimately-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:33 Give an example, David. Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:03:33 So let's talk about manufacturing. So if I'm using a traditional assembly line with low-efficiency systems, I'm gonna be more expensive to make a device than a Chinese factory that's built with a lot of automation, high-efficiency systems, et cetera. And so if I'm saying, "Well, to buy the Chinese product, you gotta pay twice as much 'cause there's a tariff now," the American company does not have an incentive to invest in automating or building better technology or adopting new technology to make themselves competitive in the marketplace. So that's the challenge with tariffs long-term, is that they distort economic consequences that arise in a traditional free market system. The second consequence I think is important is under this guise and in the near term, the effect of some of these tariffs is gonna be the loss of revenue for a significant chunk of the American businesses. In particular, I'll use one example. People may not remember this because it wasn't that big of a thing, but between 2016 and 2020 during the last Trump administration, there was a continued kind of tariff and trade escalation between Trump and China. And during that time, China stopped buying American ag exports. And China's the biggest buyer of American agricultural products. As a result, the Trump administration had to issue two support payment checks to farmers that totaled $28 billion in 2018 and 2019, just because of that China stepping out of the buying market. American farmers represent a large amount of the voting bloc for the Republican Party. And so my, I think that the second consequence is gonna be that there is gonna need to be financial support, which means increased government spending-

Jason Calacanis 1:05:08 Oh, no.

David Friedberg 1:05:08 ... if we intend to keep the tariffs in place and the global market stops buying American exports. That's the second consequence. The third consequence, which is the one I am most worried about, which I think about a lot, is China had the State Council meeting a couple days ago. And in that State Council meeting, they announced a series of measures and a series of steps that they would be willing to take on IP infringement in the case of retaliatory tariff escalation in a trade war. What that means is that China may step up and say, "You know what? We are disregarding all of the IP rights held by IP rights holders around the world," and they could steal IP more openly, more brazenly. And because they have a lower cost of manufacturing, they have a larger manufacturing base, a lower cost of power, they could basically take the only thing that much of American enterprise relies on, which is our IP rights, and say, "We're just gonna..." While people might say, "Oh, they already do that, they already do that," they do it to an extent, but imagine if China just made copies of Microsoft Word and started selling it around the world for $5.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:13 Yeah. I mean, they did that internally for some period of time, then they started to respect it internally, but they've never done it, great point-

David Friedberg 1:06:19 Eh, imagine-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:19 ... by shipping Disney films overseas.

David Friedberg 1:06:21 That's right.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:21 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:06:21 And so now imagine if they started taking all of American manufacturing drawings, blueprints, designs, and they have all this manufacturing capacity and they sold everything at 10 cents on the dollar to all of the global markets that the US is now cutting trade ties with because of the, the tariff escalation, and China says, "We don't care about your IP rights anymore. We don't care because you've cut us off. The rest of the world needs someone that will sell to them." I will also say China, one thing that's not talked about, which I'll add in, seems to have developed three-nanometer semiconductor manufacturing technology, which is gonna go into production in Q3 of 2025, and will end up being in full production in 2026. This will move the base from Taiwan potentially into China. They are developing lithography systems, they're developing advanced semiconductor manufacturing systems, and they will effectively have everything from energy, to the minerals, to the manufacturing capacity, to support and service all, and the software now, all of technology. And so we are in a really disadvantaged position if China does choose in this moment-... to disregard the IP rights of American businesses. So there-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:21 So they have the-

David Friedberg 1:07:21 ... that's a big-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:21 ... they have the ability to, to swing back at us. Chamath, you want to, uh, wrap us up here and-

David Sacks 1:07:27 Yeah. I'll take the other side of all of this.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:30 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:07:31 I'll start with, again, there's no point prognosticating when they're just telling you what they intend to do. Nick, you wanna play the clip?

Narrator 1:07:40 I