Dueling Presidential interviews, SpaceX’s big catch, Robotaxis, Uber buying Expedia?, Nuclear NIMBY

1. 0:00 – 2:01

   Bestie intros

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      Freeberg's channeling Tim Walz over there.

   2. DFDavid Friedberg0:01

      I know. Wow. (laughs) He's as excited as Tim Walz.

   3. JCJason Calacanis0:04

      Got your flannel on. Do you know what a venture capitalist is, Freeberg?

   4. DSDavid Sacks0:07

      Oh, he's shilling Supergut.

   5. DFDavid Friedberg0:09

      Well, as of last week-

   6. DSDavid Sacks0:10

      No good.

   7. DFDavid Friedberg0:10

      ... when J Cal decided to turn All-In into a commercial, I was actually gonna do a Supergut background.

   8. JCJason Calacanis0:16

      Mm.

   9. DFDavid Friedberg0:16

      We're launching Supergut nationwide in Target this week. Any Target in the United States, you can go into and pick up Supergut.

   10. JCJason Calacanis0:23

       You're kidding. That's great.

   11. DFDavid Friedberg0:23

       You can buy the GLP-1 booster. You can buy the prebiotic shake.

   12. JCJason Calacanis0:29

       I have that, actually. Is that the chocolate or do you have the mocha?

   13. DFDavid Friedberg0:31

       It is the chocolate.

   14. JCJason Calacanis0:32

       W- I mean, I like the mocha.

   15. DFDavid Friedberg0:33

       This one's chocolate.

   16. JCJason Calacanis0:34

       Okay. Mocha is good, too. All right. Let's get started.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg0:36

       Well, thanks for the support, J Cal. I appreciate it.

   18. JCJason Calacanis0:37

       Of course. Of course, of course.

   19. DSDavid Sacks0:39

       We're cutting all this out.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg0:41

       No way. This is why I do this.

   21. DSDavid Sacks0:43

       Next time, plug a company I have a stake in.

   22. DFDavid Friedberg0:47

       I'm goin' all in. Don't let your winners ride. Rain Man David Sachs. I'm goin' all in. And I said-

   23. DSDavid Sacks0:55

       We open-sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

   24. DFDavid Friedberg0:59

       WSI.

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:00

       Queen of quinoa.

   26. DFDavid Friedberg1:01

       I'm goin' all in. Also, All-In election night live stream is coming November 5th. You can watch live. Sacks will be hosting.

   27. DSDavid Sacks1:10

       Oh, we're doing that?

   28. DFDavid Friedberg1:11

       (laughs)

   29. DSDavid Sacks1:11

       Yeah.

   30. DFDavid Friedberg1:11

       We're doing it. You're hosting it. Your team said you're doing it.
2. 2:01 – 16:06

   Polls vs Prediction markets, dueling interviews, election update

   1. JCJason Calacanis2:01

   2. DFDavid Friedberg2:01

      Do you guys think polly market is, like... Why do you think it's different from the polls? Are we talking about this today? Polly market's showing like 60/40 or 65/35 now, right?

   3. DSDavid Sacks2:12

      Yeah, because they're measuring different things. I've explained this before. The polly market is people betting on the outcome, so 58% think Trump's gonna win. Whereas the polls in a particular state show the percentage of how each person's gonna vote.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg2:26

      Mm.

   5. DSDavid Sacks2:26

      So if for sure you knew the election was 51/49, the betting markets would swing to 100/0.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg2:32

      But, but let me ask you this. So Nate Silver's model, which takes the poll from each state and builds in a, uh, kind of a, a Monte Carlo-

   7. JCJason Calacanis2:39

      Super poll. Yeah.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg2:40

      ... of, you know, super poll, like a super model for the whole country. Why is his estimate 50/50 right now while the polly market is betting at 60/40?

   9. DSDavid Sacks2:50

      It's possible he's laggy in his estimates.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg2:53

       Mm-hmm. Got it.

   11. DSDavid Sacks2:54

       In the betting markets. The betting markets seem to, uh, go based on momentum.

   12. DFDavid Friedberg3:00

       Mm.

   13. DSDavid Sacks3:00

       So it, like, it indicates the swing in momentum. And then the polls obviously take a week or two-

   14. DFDavid Friedberg3:03

       How do you think things are gonna... How do you think they're gonna change after the interviews in the last couple of days? Trump on Bloomberg and Kamala on Fox. Do you think that's gonna change anything?

   15. JCJason Calacanis3:11

       I don't think so. I think it's all baked in now.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg3:14

       Mm-hmm.

   17. DSDavid Sacks3:15

       Well, Trump over the past few weeks seems to have had a surge owing to the fact that Kamala's interviews generally don't go well. So I think she started-

   18. DFDavid Friedberg3:22

       Yeah.

   19. DSDavid Sacks3:22

       ... off a little behind, started doing interviews to catch up, and now she's a lot behind.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg3:27

       Mm.

   21. DSDavid Sacks3:27

       I don't think the Bret Baier interview is gonna help her.

   22. DFDavid Friedberg3:30

       Well, let me ask you this. I... So my, my observation as... I don't know, I'm not, like, a super political person or, um, whatever, uh, party oriented person. I looked at the, uh, a lot of the media on both sides and it seems like everyone on the left says Kamala did an amazing job on Fox. She defended herself, she showed her skills and her competency. And then everyone on the right is like, "She embarrassed herself. She fell apart." And then the same thing happened with the Trump interview on Bloomberg. People are like, on the left they say, "Look at how he couldn't handle the interviewer and he fell apart and all his lies were exposed." And everyone on the right is like, "Look at him, he got a standing ovation." It's almost like everyone's just kind of, like, self-asserting their, their beliefs that they already hold when they judge these people on these interview shows at this point. Is it, is it already baked at this point? Like, is anyone actually gonna change their view based on these interviews happening?

   23. DSDavid Sacks4:15

       Well, the question is, what appeals to that small sliver of independence?

   24. DFDavid Friedberg4:20

       Yeah.

   25. DSDavid Sacks4:21

       The question I would ask back to you is, if the Bret Baier interview was going so well for Kamala, why was her staff on the sidelines waving to try and end the interview? They, apparently they had, like, four people, you know, waving-

   26. DFDavid Friedberg4:34

       Yeah, who reported that?

   27. DSDavid Sacks4:35

       ... and trying to cut the interview off.

   28. DFDavid Friedberg4:36

       Who said that? Who said, who said that was the case?

   29. DSDavid Sacks4:37

       Bret Baier said it.

   30. JCJason Calacanis4:38

       He did. Bret Baier said it.
3. 16:06 – 27:36

   Tesla's Robotaxi event and SpaceX's Starship catch

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya16:06

      All right, our boy Elon had a, a big week. Tesla unveiled two new concepts at its WeRobot event and Elon, Elon caught a 23-story rocket, the Starship. Here's, uh, the robo-taxi and the robo-bus. Both of them look really (laughs) awesome. And, uh, he caught one of the s- the, the, I think this is the fifth Starship, or the fourth launch?

   2. DFDavid Friedberg16:28

      Fifth. Oh, God, it's so (censored) incredible.

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya16:30

      The fifth, right? And then, look at this.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg16:32

      It's so incredible.

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya16:32

      Unbelievable. It's like chopsticks catching 23-story buildings. (laughs)

   6. DFDavid Friedberg16:34

      Forget about whatever your issues are with Elon and his politics, just to appreciate, and we can talk about why this is so important-

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya16:42

      Yeah.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg16:42

      ... in this segment, but technically, the achievement of this, like, skyscraper falling out of the sky and perfectly aligning-

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya16:49

      Wow.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg16:49

       ... itself to go into that chopstick catching device-

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya16:53

       Wow.

   12. DFDavid Friedberg16:53

       ... it is an absolute marvel of human ingenuity. I mean, just, and the work and the effort that people put into this over, you know, several decades, it's just such an incredible feat. Look at this thing. I don't know if you guys were as emotionally moved by this as I was. I thought it was incredible.

   13. GUGuest17:06

       It was incredible. I think I've probably watched this a hundred times.

   14. DFDavid Friedberg17:09

       Totally. From every angle.

   15. GUGuest17:11

       Every angle.

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya17:12

       Yeah.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg17:12

       Yeah.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya17:12

       And so-

   19. DFDavid Friedberg17:13

       Look at that.

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya17:13

       ... the reason this is so important is because these things cost a lot of money, and when they land here, you can clean them up, and I guess his goal is to have them take off again after he fills them with propellant an hour later, Friedberg. So on a science base, (laughs) this is extraordinary what, uh, you know, if this works-

   21. GUGuest17:32

       Yeah, you don't-

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya17:32

       ... and he can start lifting his rockets-

   23. GUGuest17:33

       ... To be more specific, you don't want it to have feet.

   24. DFDavid Friedberg17:38

       Mm.

   25. GUGuest17:38

       A, it's heavy, and then B, you have to lift them up in a way that just complicates the entire refueling and cycle time process. So by catching it, you put it right back into place and just go again.

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya17:49

       Unbelievable.

   27. GUGuest17:49

       Unbelievable.

   28. CPChamath Palihapitiya17:50

       Right, you just catch it and go again.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg17:51

       I can kind of walk through these numbers. So, obviously the big objective over time is how cheap can you get it to put material into space. We need a lot of material to go into space if we're gonna do things in space, particularly if we're gonna go build a colony on Mars. And so this shows you over time the cost per kilogram, which is the key metric in this industry to launch material...... into low Earth orbit. And you can see here how SpaceX has dramatically reduced the cost. I remember when the SmallSat era began in the 2010s. Do you guys remember all these startups that were starting to build, like, little SmallSats and put them up to do imaging and comms and stuff? When this took off, it was about 10,000 bucks a kilogram to put a SmallSat into space, or to put material into space. And then SpaceX has dropped the cost to the point that it's now close to $1,000 a kilogram, so a 10X reduction in cost in just the last decade or so. And that's why SpaceX just dominates the, the launch market. But Elon's always said that $1,000 a kilogram is too high, that his objective has been to get the cost down to 10 bucks a kilogram. 'Cause at 10 bucks a kilogram, you could launch what some people estimate is needed to get to Mars, which is about half a million tons of material and people to set up a colony on Mars. And it actually becomes feasible to get, you know, half a million tons of material at, at 10 bucks a kilogram. So if you look at this new Starship and Starship Heavy booster, it's about 150, 200-ton payload. The booster holds, you know, 3,400 tons of propellant, and, uh, the cost of that propellant is pretty low. You know, it's, uh, it's only about a million dollars in fuel. So then if you can get the cost of the booster and the Starship down enough, and you can reuse it enough, and you amortize the cost of making that device over the, the lifetime of, of the device, the cost per launch comes down, and that's what brings the cost per kilogram down. So the booster, there's a group called Payload, and they do estimates on this, so I won't speak out of turn in terms of, like, having inside knowledge. But, uh, Payload has estimated that Starship and the booster cost about 90 million bucks today, and they think that they have a path to getting it down to 35 million. So if you can reuse that thing 10 times, that's a $3.5 million cost per launch, plus a million for fuel. You could easily s- And this thing can launch 200 tons. That's how you start to get to 10 bucks a kilogram over the next couple of years. But it was critical to be able to reuse that Heavy Booster, and that's what Elon just demonstrated, is we can actually catch that Heavy Booster, refuel it, and launch it an hour later. And if you can do that over and over again, you're spending 10 bucks a kilogram to put material into space. You can get fuel into space and then get those Starships to fly off to Mars and deliver all this material, including setting up a base that would allow you to actually make more fuel on Mars, 'cause everything we need to make fuel is on Mars. So it's the beginning of the next series of really important milestones that'll hopefully get humanity onto Mars. It was just so amazing to see it come together.

   30. CPChamath Palihapitiya21:01

       Yeah.
4. 27:36 – 45:19

   Uber reportedly looking into acquiring Expedia

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya27:36

      In other news, Uber is exploring a bid to purchase Expedia. Breaking news, this was dispelled, uh, as we got here on the show. They said this was, like, very preliminary third party talks and that there's no serious talks going on about this. Financial Times reported that advisors were trying to look at if a deal structure would be possible between Uber and Expedia. Expedia's got a $20 billion market cap. They popped 8% on the news, obviously. Uber, on the other hand, trading at 170 billion market cap or so. That dropped 3%. If you didn't know, Dara was the CEO of Expedia from 2005 to 2017. He's still on the board. And it looks like this was a trial balloon. You know, Uber's two biggest businesses, rides and Uber Eats, but they also do freight and train bookings. Dara's been pretty clear he wants to create a super app, like you have in China or some other markets. Expedia's got a lot of cool products, hotels.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, Aur. Uh, and I think the most interesting one, Freeberg, you and I were talking about, this is VRBO, Vacation Rental By Owner. It was like Airbnb before Airbnb existed. And if you look at this chart, since Dara left, the Dara effect, Expedia has gone exactly sideways, but the revenue has grown modestly. What do you think of this deal? Chamath, I'll just go right to you with this one since you like to-

   2. GUGuest29:03

      Stupid.

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya29:04

      Stupid. Okay. There you have it, folks. Reason number one, it's stupid. Uh, and reason number two, it's stupid.

   4. GUGuest29:11

      I mean, this is a $20 billion market cap business. You probably have to pay a control premium of 50%, so the question is, if you were going to spend $30 billion today in the public markets, what would you spend it on? And I think the most important lens that you have to use to answer that question is, what reinforces a moat that I have while also being inoculated from the risks of AI? And I cannot think of a more fragile business model than the UI layer on top of widely available data. So the problem that Expedia has is the same that Booking and a bunch of these other folks have, which is that the principal heartbeat of the company, flight information and other things, are licensed to them by third parties. And so what they are is a UI and a front door. I think it's way too early in the evolution of AI to know that that's safe. And in fact, I think a more reasonable assumption is that those things are pretty fragile. And part of what may explain the doldrums of the stock is that I think people are anticipating a world where, for example, I don't know if you saw, but Perplexity launched something this week. It's just in test mode. They whitlisted me into it, but it's basically a checkout concept. So you tell Perplexity what you would like it to buy, and then it will go and complete the transaction for you. So in the example of flight bookings, you could go directly to United...... because A, Perplexity will just show you all of the flights, they'll show you the exact prices, and then it'll go and execute that for you with your payment method. In a world that looks like that, where these companies have the money to pay for the data feeds, the existing V1.0 generation UIs, I think are in trouble. So, it would just be a very bad capital allocation decision. Now, that's okay to get things wrong but not for $30 billion wrong. You can probably do it for a couple hundred million dollars wrong or maybe even a billion dollars wrong, 'cause you can absorb that as a $150 or $60 billion company, but 30 billion is too big of a price to pay for that kind of risk.

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:25

      I would agree with you. And there's other things they could buy, like WeRide or Pony.ai, and a bunch of these AI companies that are doing self-driving, so why not double down on that? Freeberg, the one thing you and I talked about was kind of VRBO, which is a very cool marketplace and that feels directly in the Uber kill zone. What do you think about them just maybe carving out and buying VRBO and having an Airbnb, uh, contemporary-

   6. GUGuest31:48

      Wait, why don't they just buy Waymo? Why don't they just go to Google and give them $30 billion-

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:52

      I- I- That's-

   8. GUGuest31:52

      ... of Uber stock and just carve in Waymo? Isn't that the better idea?

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:55

      I think that's what's gonna happen. I've been hearing rumblings of that, so.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg31:59

       So, I think that Dara knows Expedia better than anyone. He ran the business for what, a decade or- or so?

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya32:07

       Yep. More.

   12. DFDavid Friedberg32:08

       And so he knows how that business operates. And so if he's looking at this thing and the stock price has been flat roughly since he left in 2017, if you look at the underlying financial performance, you could kind of start to construct a rationale for buying Expedia this cheap, and it would be very accretive to Uber, even if there are these big strategic risks on the horizon. So, just to give you some numbers on it all. Uber has got about 150 million monthly active users. Expedia has about 45, 50 million customers a year that use the service and pay for stuff. So, there's a real opportunity to think about the Uber customer base that's installed as being almost an opportunity to market to them Expedia services and cross-sell. So Expedia, on an annualized basis, is spending about eight billion a year in sales and marketing, and about 720 million a year in GNA costs. So, and they're running about three billion EBITDA right now, run rate. So if you cut about half the GNA in an acquisition, 'cause you don't need all the people that overlap with Uber's people, you know, and you cut about 30% of the sales and marketing dollars, because you can cross-sell into the Uber install base, you could see a scenario where you could increase Expedia's EBITDA by 75 to a 100%, maybe getting in as high as $6 billion. And while Expedia's market cap trades at two- 20 billion, this is off of, you know, obviously the recent news that they might get acquired, if you kind of assume a 40, 50% price premium to the last 90-day average of the stock price, which is kinda typical or common for a deal like this, they're probably paying 26 billion for the company. And they got about four billion in net cash, so you're kinda paying about 22 billion enterprise value f- to buy Expedia. So, 22 billion of enterprise value, and if you can bump the EBITDA up to six billion a year, that's a pretty low multiple. I mean, you could kinda see yourself rationalizing this just from a financial basis, that you're paying four times EBITDA to buy this thing.

   13. GUGuest34:12

       Mm-hmm.

   14. DFDavid Friedberg34:13

       And Dara knows this thing and he would have great command over what needs to be done over there, and he would have a great sense of what to change and what's gone wrong.

   15. GUGuest34:23

       Mm-hmm.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg34:23

       And there's a lot of interesting assets inside of Expedia. VRBO is a great one that's been under-monetized and under-utilized. I don't know if you've used the UX on VRBO versus Airbnb. There's obviously some influence Dara could have with people that he knows well that could go in and fix that- that interface and make it a better service. And even as AI starts to step in and hotels maybe integrate better with agents and so on, and they show up in a more ubiquitous way, there's other things that Expedia does, like build vacation packages and travel packages that are high margin products that they sell that are a little bit different than what you're used to with, uh, just booking a flight. Booking flights makes no money for anyone, but vacation packages is where all the money's at. And so, theoretically, Expedia could be smarter about how they build vacation packages and personalize them for families, and that's where they can make real margin, like 20, 30% margin. So, I could see a story where this all starts to click for the board at Uber saying, "Maybe it makes sense. Dara knows what he's talking about. We could buy this thing for four times, you know, pro forma EBITDA. This could be hugely accret- accretive for us." So I think that's why this is happening, why this conversation may be happening.

   17. GUGuest35:25

       Hm.

   18. DFDavid Friedberg35:25

       That- that's just me trying to understand-

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:26

       I think it's a good steal, man.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg35:27

       ... you know, what the rationale might be.

   21. DSDavid Sacks35:28

       Can you just go back and explain how would they drive up EBITDA so much?

   22. DFDavid Friedberg35:32

       So they're spending about, um, eight billion a year run rate on sales and marketing at Expedia right now, and Uber has got 150 million active installed users that are using this, the- the Uber services every month.

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:44

       Customers.

   24. DFDavid Friedberg35:44

       So the idea would be-

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:45

       Actually-

   26. DFDavid Friedberg35:45

       ... customers, yeah.

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:45

       Yeah, beyond users.

   28. DFDavid Friedberg35:46

       Actually paying customers.

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:47

       Yeah.

   30. DFDavid Friedberg35:48

       So, if Uber could cross-sell some number of Expedia services to their installed base at Uber, which they could test and, you know, do a little experiment and see if it works, they may be able to reduce the marketing dollars that Expedia is spending to acquire customers through other third-party sources, like Google and Bing and other places. So, there's a rationale-
5. 45:19 – 1:11:10

   Nuclear Vibe Shift? Big tech is looking toward nuclear solutions to power AI, Nuclear vs NIMBY debate

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya45:19

      docket. All right, this, uh, big tech investing in nuclear power is off to the races, Chamath. Amazon just announced a $500 million investment in three nuclear power projects. All of these are focused on SMRs. Those are the small modular reactors. Amazon is working with Dominion Energy to develop a small modular nuclear reactor near an existing nuclear power plant in Virginia. In total, Amazon plans to invest 35 billion in Virginia-based data centers by 2040, and they want to power these by SMRs. And this is a big trend, Google is purchasing energy directly from Kairos Power, another company building SMRs. Microsoft, as you heard, is reviving one of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plants. So, this is kind of interesting, Chamath. We went from nuclear not being on the table, everybody being against it, the Germans shutting down their reactors post-Fukushima, and now big tech is the customer for these with AI, and they're putting down very large deposits and payments to build them in America, and I haven't heard any opposition. Maybe you could just speak to, Chamath, what, what we've seen here-

   2. GUGuest46:32

      Well, I'm... look, I'm generally-

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya46:32

      ... in terms of opposition to these versus the opportunity, and everybody's writing checks.

   4. GUGuest46:37

      Yeah. Well, they're not writing checks. That's, so, this is what I... I don't want to be a Debbie Downer here, but these press releases need to have an asterisk on them. So, in the hierarchy of deals, right, just to unpack this for a second, there are deals where you give me X and I give you money. That's not what this is. Then, if you degrade that kind of deal structure, in a lot of heavy industry, you have deals that are called take or pay, which is there is something that's working, and you need to basically take this or you need to give me the monetary equivalent of what I'm selling you. That's not what this is. What this is, is sort of this conditional obligation where the beginning of the deal starts with a very important statement, which is, if it works and if these approvals happen, and there's a whole bunch of nested ifs, then payments can happen. So, while these are important deals because they show that there are potential buyers at the finish line, what it doesn't do is solve the two things that you need to get to the finish line, which is the actual risk capital to finish building these things and technically de-risk them and then the regulatory approval that you need to make sure that they're allowed. So, I think that these deals are good. I think it's a great signaling, but I think it's important to understand the nuances of these things. These are not things where there's money really trading hands. And until that you see that, where irrespective of what happens, the balance sheet is investing from an Amazon or a Google, where there's corp dev folks writing hundred million dollar or billion dollar checks into these companies, it's not yet quite there. This is more the step before, which is sort of can you create some marketing and, and some buzziness to hopefully induce somebody to then rip in billions of dollars of risk equity capital?

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya48:38

      Freeberg, your thoughts on SMRs and these customers showing up, and then I guess you could comment on the nature of the deal structure here, because some of them are, you know, contingent on the nuclear power plant turning on. Some of them do have deposits, is my understanding. We'll look that up and fact-check it. There could be a range of deals here.

   6. GUGuest48:57

      Yeah, I don't know the nature of the deals. I did, I think, talk about this a year ago. It's, it was also like one... my prediction for the year was to buy the uranium stocks.

   7. DFDavid Friedberg49:07

      ... predicated on what I think is a really important point, which is as GDP per capita grows, energy consumption per capita grows. And if you looked at the projections of GDP per capita in industrialized nations, there was no way, there is no way to meet the energy demand, and this was even pre all this crazy AI buildout, which is probably part of the GDP growth. But there is no way to meet the energy demand without nuclear. Uh, there is not enough solar, geothermal or wind buildout potential that's happening, that the stop-gap measure is going to have to be, and probably the right long-term solution, is to have a significant amount of baseload come from nuclear. And so what's the fastest way to do that nuclear buildout? Well, in China, they have the regulatory authority and the mandate stated they're gonna build 300 gigawatts with 300 facilities or whatever the number is, and that's what they're doing, very large facilities that make a gigawatt of power each. In the US, it seems that because of the regulatory structure here and the way that utilities are regulated and the way that the states have authority and the environmental laws and all the other things, that it might be the fastest path to solving this energy gap problem is SMRs. And that's why we... And these things produce tens of megawatts. So again, a gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts, and, you know, we need to kind of probably grow our energy production in the United States by several terawatts over the next decade or two. So, this SMR may be the fastest path. Now, that could change, meaning we could end up seeing much larger facilities get built out if there's regulatory change in the US and there's more availability. But fundamentally, we are going to need to use uranium to make electricity to meet the demand of the growing the GDP that it seems we're going to, to be growing in. I think this is just such a necessity. It's great to see the SMRs getting some attention. I just don't know if they're actually gonna get turned on, how long it's gonna take, and, you know, I don't know what this election cycle is gonna bring in terms of regulatory change. I think we talked about it with several of the candidates when we were doing the interviews.

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:23

      Sacks, if we are able to get a bunch of these SMRs built here in the United States, maybe if Europe follows suit, what would this do on a geopolitical basis to our relationship with the Middle East, our energy independence, and of course, the AI race to, you know, general intelligence? I'll let you take it, whichever direction you want to go.

   9. DSDavid Sacks51:47

      Well, I don't think we're going to, because I don't think anyone wants a nuclear power plant in their backyard. It's really simple. I mean, no matter what the benefits are for AI or for America's global competitiveness, I just don't think your typical community wants a nuclear power plant in their backyard. And I don't think it matters that much if it's a small modular one either.

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:06

       So you think they'll get blocked by local communities?

   11. DSDavid Sacks52:09

       Yeah, and probably for good reason. I mean, I don't want a nuclear power plant in my backyard. Do you? I feel like this has suddenly become a little bit of a luxury belief, where liberal elites are always talking about how we need to have nuclear power now. But they know they're not gonna have a nuclear power plant in their backyard. So it's easy for, for all of us to genuflect about what a great idea this is. But let's face it, these things are gonna be built probably in poorer or working class communities, and inevitably there's gonna be some accident. I mean, you can tell me how safe they are till you're blue in the face. I don't believe it. You know, planes aren't supposed to fall out of the sky either, and it does happen. And, you know, they're gonna set up a, a power... One of these power plants somewhere. And, you know, it's probably gonna have a DEI program and something's gonna happen.

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:58

       (laughs)

   13. DSDavid Sacks52:59

       Something's gonna happen. And then the, the fallout-

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya53:03

       (laughs) .

   15. DSDavid Sacks53:03

       ... it's, it's literally gonna fall out on, on the people in that poor community. So-

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya53:07

       (laughs)

   17. DSDavid Sacks53:08

       ... I don't think this is gonna happen.

   18. DFDavid Friedberg53:09

       This show really has a diversity of views, doesn't it?

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya53:11

       Yeah.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg53:11

       It's like, yeah.

   21. DSDavid Sacks53:12

       Look, this is a perfect example of liberal business elites demanding something-

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya53:17

       (laughs)

   23. DFDavid Friedberg53:18

       (laughs)

   24. DSDavid Sacks53:18

       ... that isn't gonna affect them. It's not gonna affect them.

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya53:20

       Freeberg, your take on a non-binary, trans lesbian with purple hair-

   26. DFDavid Friedberg53:27

       No comment. Whatever you're saying, no comment.

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya53:28

       ... putting, uh, putting (laughs) putting a small nuclear reactor 200 miles outside of Austin, Texas, go. (laughs) Put your tinfoil hat on, Freeberg.

   28. DSDavid Sacks53:37

       Yeah, how close do you want it to your ranch, dude, cal?

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya53:40

       I mean, I think there's plenty of land outside of the triangle here in Texas where there is no density and you could put one and I have no problem with there being one 100 miles, 200 miles.

   30. DSDavid Sacks53:52

       Who's gonna work there? Who's gonna service it?

Episode duration: 1:18:43