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

Jason Calacanis 0:00 Freeberg's channeling Tim Walz over there.

David Friedberg 0:01 I know. Wow. (laughs) He's as excited as Tim Walz.

Jason Calacanis 0:04 Got your flannel on. Do you know what a venture capitalist is, Freeberg?

David Sacks 0:07 Oh, he's shilling Supergut.

David Friedberg 0:09 Well, as of last week-

David Sacks 0:10 No good.

David Friedberg 0:10 ... when J Cal decided to turn All-In into a commercial, I was actually gonna do a Supergut background.

Jason Calacanis 0:16 Mm.

David Friedberg 0:16 We're launching Supergut nationwide in Target this week. Any Target in the United States, you can go into and pick up Supergut.

Jason Calacanis 0:23 You're kidding. That's great.

David Friedberg 0:23 You can buy the GLP-1 booster. You can buy the prebiotic shake.

Jason Calacanis 0:29 I have that, actually. Is that the chocolate or do you have the mocha?

David Friedberg 0:31 It is the chocolate.

Jason Calacanis 0:32 W- I mean, I like the mocha.

David Friedberg 0:33 This one's chocolate.

Jason Calacanis 0:34 Okay. Mocha is good, too. All right. Let's get started.

David Friedberg 0:36 Well, thanks for the support, J Cal. I appreciate it.

Jason Calacanis 0:37 Of course. Of course, of course.

David Sacks 0:39 We're cutting all this out.

David Friedberg 0:41 No way. This is why I do this.

David Sacks 0:43 Next time, plug a company I have a stake in.

David Friedberg 0:47 I'm goin' all in. Don't let your winners ride. Rain Man David Sachs. I'm goin' all in. And I said-

David Sacks 0:55 We open-sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

David Friedberg 0:59 WSI.

Jason Calacanis 1:00 Queen of quinoa.

David Friedberg 1:01 I'm goin' all in. Also, All-In election night live stream is coming November 5th. You can watch live. Sacks will be hosting.

David Sacks 1:10 Oh, we're doing that?

David Friedberg 1:11 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:11 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:11 We're doing it. You're hosting it. Your team said you're doing it.

David Sacks 1:13 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:13 And so you'll either get to see-

Jason Calacanis 1:16 Sacks.

David Friedberg 1:17 ... Sachs-

David Sacks 1:17 Well, if things continue to look good for Trump-

David Friedberg 1:21 (laughs) Oh, imagine.

David Sacks 1:21 ... I- I might go to Mar-a-Lago. I might.

Jason Calacanis 1:23 Oh, gee. Yeah. Okay, so you're a maybe.

David Friedberg 1:25 Well, I mean, you come to Mar-a-

David Sacks 1:26 Chris-

David Friedberg 1:26 ... Mar-a-Lago, you're a maybe. If you go to Mar-a-Lago, you're excused.

David Sacks 1:28 I could live stream from Mar-a-Lago.

Jason Calacanis 1:30 Oh, that would be amazing.

David Friedberg 1:31 Live from Mar-a-Lago?

Jason Calacanis 1:31 Absolutely amazing. I'll go to Mar-a-Lago.

David Friedberg 1:33 Yeah, that'd be fun. Yeah, if it looks good, I'll go. So maybe that's, um- (laughs) Just go. Jason's like, "I'll just go."

Jason Calacanis 1:38 November 5th. Of course I'm invited. I talked to Jared. Jared picked me.

David Sacks 1:40 If things look as good as they do right now, then-

David Friedberg 1:43 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:43 ... I mi- I think I'm gonna have to go to Mar-a-Lago.

Jason Calacanis 1:44 I think we should all be in Mar-a-Lago yeah. That's gotta be the only-

David Sacks 1:46 It's gonna be a unique experience.

Jason Calacanis 1:47 Oh my God. Can you imagine being in Mar-a-Lago and he loses? (laughs) Oh my God.

David Sacks 1:52 Well, that's why I don't wanna go.

David Friedberg 1:52 That would be dark. (laughs) Yeah.

David Sacks 1:53 Unless this thing is in the bag.

David Friedberg 1:55 Exactly.

David Sacks 1:55 It's gotta be too big to rig. If it's too big to rig, I'm going to Mar-a-Lago.

Jason Calacanis 1:58 Too big to rig. (laughs)

David Friedberg 2:01 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?

David Sacks 2:12 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.

David Friedberg 2:26 Mm.

David Sacks 2:26 So if for sure you knew the election was 51/49, the betting markets would swing to 100/0.

David Friedberg 2:32 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-

Jason Calacanis 2:39 Super poll. Yeah.

David Friedberg 2:40 ... 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?

David Sacks 2:50 It's possible he's laggy in his estimates.

David Friedberg 2:53 Mm-hmm. Got it.

David Sacks 2:54 In the betting markets. The betting markets seem to, uh, go based on momentum.

David Friedberg 3:00 Mm.

David Sacks 3:00 So it, like, it indicates the swing in momentum. And then the polls obviously take a week or two-

David Friedberg 3:03 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?

Jason Calacanis 3:11 I don't think so. I think it's all baked in now.

David Friedberg 3:14 Mm-hmm.

David Sacks 3:15 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-

David Friedberg 3:22 Yeah.

David Sacks 3:22 ... off a little behind, started doing interviews to catch up, and now she's a lot behind.

David Friedberg 3:27 Mm.

David Sacks 3:27 I don't think the Bret Baier interview is gonna help her.

David Friedberg 3:30 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?

David Sacks 4:15 Well, the question is, what appeals to that small sliver of independence?

David Friedberg 4:20 Yeah.

David Sacks 4:21 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-

David Friedberg 4:34 Yeah, who reported that?

David Sacks 4:35 ... and trying to cut the interview off.

David Friedberg 4:36 Who said that? Who said, who said that was the case?

David Sacks 4:37 Bret Baier said it.

Jason Calacanis 4:38 He did. Bret Baier said it.

David Sacks 4:38 Bret Baier said it. So-

David Friedberg 4:39 Yeah.

David Sacks 4:39 ... it was like in Rocky IV when Apollo Creed's corner is, like, yelling-

David Friedberg 4:45 (laughs)

David Sacks 4:45 ... throw in the damn towel.

David Friedberg 4:46 Throw in the towel.

David Sacks 4:46 Throw in the damn towel.

David Friedberg 4:47 Throw in the towel.

David Sacks 4:47 They couldn't wait to get her off the stage-

David Friedberg 4:49 Right.

David Sacks 4:49 ... after 26 minutes. I just think that if it was going that great-

Jason Calacanis 4:52 Allegedly. Allegedly.

David Sacks 4:53 Yeah. I don't think Bret Baier's gonna lie about that. I think-

David Friedberg 4:55 I don't know why he would lie about that. That makes sense. Yeah.

David Sacks 4:57 Why, why would, why would they get her off the stage after 26 minutes if it was going so great? I'm not saying it went as horrible as some of the partisans on the other side are, are saying, but I don't think it went that great. Trump-

David Friedberg 5:06 Do you give her any credit for going into-

David Sacks 5:08 Trump-

David Friedberg 5:08 ... the lion's den like she did?

David Sacks 5:09 Well, I, I think that she went... She did the interview precisely to get the talking point that she does adversarial interviews because that talking point was hurting them. And so you saw, like, all of her fans and the media were saying, "Well, see, she can walk into the lion's den." But again, she did the shortest interview possible. I don't think she answered the questions directly. I think she filibustered a lot. She deflected a lot. Uh, I don't think she was particularly persuasive. I don't think she convinced anybody. So I think that what you saw there was somebody who just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible to check the box on, okay, does adversarial interviews. Trump, on the other hand, he, he actually likes doing these things. The Bloomberg interview-

Jason Calacanis 5:52 (laughs) And there's no filibustering there, right? (laughs)

David Sacks 5:54 Well, no. He's crisp in his answers.

Jason Calacanis 5:56 It's all filibuster. Come on.

David Sacks 5:57 No, he's crisp.

Jason Calacanis 5:58 It's all anecdotes.

David Sacks 5:59 He can do-

Jason Calacanis 5:59 (laughs) Chris.

David Sacks 6:00 He can do the weave, he can do the anecdotes, but-

Jason Calacanis 6:02 Yeah.

David Sacks 6:02 He's also very good at coming back on the interviewer when they get adversarial.... and the audience was with him, they gave him a standing ovation. He went for 64 minutes compared to her 26. I just think there's no comparison. I think Trump is someone who relishes walking the line and doing those interviews. I think Harris did it because she felt like she had to.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:22 What do you think, Zach? What, what do you think, Chamath? Do you see it or no? Do you have any opinion?

Guest 6:25 I watched the whole interview. It was clear in, in the interview, he mentioned the fact that he was being waved off, and then he said it after the fact as well. That's not alleged. I think that that did happen. I would say two things. I thought that she was composed, and she maintained her cool. So I think from a stylistic perspective, I thought that she did well. From a substance perspective, it was pretty lacking because if you actually listen to the answers, there, there was just a ton of non-answers. And they were two very basic questions that I think a lot of s- people, even if you're not a swing voter, I think would probably wanna know the answer to. Meaning, did she have any regrets about what's happened in the last three and a half years? Did she have any regrets about what she's done on the border? Has she not noticed that Biden was wavering before he was hot-swapped? I think that you could have predicted that these questions were going to come, so I think I was surprised that there wasn't a crisp answer that they had practiced for that. The second thing I'll say is then David is right. Everybody then gets very tribal in how they interpret it. I think I saw one tweet from Elon about how all of the newspapers characterized her interview with Bret Baier as, quote-unquote, "testy," and it was sort of like that was the way that the mainstream media framed it. I suspect if somebody looked at how Trump's interview with Bloomberg was analyzed, it probably had some similar verbiage that was repeated there as well. So, I think you are right, Jason, that the mainstream media can't be trusted to tell the truth. I would just encourage people to watch it. I think, like I said, stylistically, I think she did well and remained composed. Substantively, I think it was nonexistent.

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:19 Yeah, it would have been nice to have another debate between these two. Totally honest.

David Sacks 8:22 She still can't really explain how she's different than Joe Biden other than the fact that he's a white male and she's a woman of color. So, beyond the sort of, the superficial differences, she can't explain on a policy level what she would do differently. She's had so many opportunities to say that. They asked her on The View, they asked her on Stephen Colbert, Bret Baier asked her in his way, and she still can't explain what she would do differently. And I think that is the fundamental problem she has in her campaign, is voters still don't know who she is or what she would do.

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:52 Yeah. What did you think of, uh, JD Vance saying he wouldn't, uh, have certified the election? They seem to be going after him on that over and over again. Sachs?

David Sacks 9:01 (laughs) You're the only person talking about that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:03 No, no. Literally every interview they've been chasing him down the hall asking him. It's not, I'm not the only person. I may have started it, but what'd you think of him saying he wouldn't have certified-

David Friedberg 9:10 That is kind of like, when he's in a combative reporting-

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:13 Yeah.

David Friedberg 9:14 ... moment, that is the question he gets a lot.

David Sacks 9:16 That's not-

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:16 Yeah.

David Sacks 9:16 ... that's not the interview I saw. I saw him, th- the interview he just did with Martha Raddatz was, she was saying that Trump was exaggerating-

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:23 No, but the question I asked you, Sachs, was, I asked you, Sachs, about him saying-

David Sacks 9:27 You're fixated on that whole thing.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:28 ... saying he wouldn't certify January 6th.

David Sacks 9:28 You're the only one who's fixated on it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:29 No, I'm just curious.

David Sacks 9:30 No one, no one who-

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:30 Well, me and the other journalists. What do you think, Friedberg?

David Sacks 9:32 No one who, uh, no one who is persuadable, who doesn't have TDS cares about that topic anymore.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:37 What do you think, Friedberg, about him saying he wouldn't certify January 6th? Like, you're certain?

David Sacks 9:40 Okay, it's not, it's not what they're asking JD. If you wanna talk about interviews that JD Vance has done, talk about the one that's actually going viral right now, and that was the interview he did with Martha Raddatz where she starts saying that, you know, "We've only had a few of these apartment buildings taken over by foreign gangs." And he's like, "Do you realize what you're saying?" You know, there's no comeback from that. He destroyed her.

David Friedberg 10:01 It was very compelling what he did. It was very compelling.

David Sacks 10:04 And every interview he does is like that.

David Friedberg 10:06 Yeah. I mean, she was basically saying that she spoke to, what was it, the city manager, and she's like, "He said only a handful of buildings have been taken over."

David Sacks 10:15 (laughs)

David Friedberg 10:16 And JD Vance was like, "What do you mean? Like-"

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:18 Yeah, once too many.

David Friedberg 10:19 "... only a handful of buildings?" Like, isn't that, anything more than zero, like, too much? Or anything more than one is obviously a problem. Like, it was just such an obvious rebuttal to the, the narrative that they're kind of over-exaggerating a particular issue. I have no data on this, but he was very compelling in that, uh, response. I thought it was pretty strong. But I will say, like, generally, neither candidate seems to be introducing a new message or seems to be introducing new content. They're just kind of standing up, you know, kind of repeating things that they've said, showing that they can handle and manage different kind of combative reporting tactics, and that's kind of what's going on, and everyone seems to have made up their mind. I don't, I see a lot of people on both sides say, again, "This side, this person did great, my person did great against this combative reporter, and the other person did poorly against their combative reporter," and everyone's kind of biased in their view. I, it just feels like this election's baked and we should just go to the polls and be done.

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:13 Yeah.

David Friedberg 11:14 I don't hear anything if you-

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:14 What do you think, Friedberg, though of this?

David Friedberg 11:15 But, but there, there's no October surprise coming out, right, Sachs? Chamath? Jay, Jay Kalanick?

David Sacks 11:19 Not till three weeks.

David Friedberg 11:20 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:20 Yeah, anything can happen.

David Friedberg 11:21 But there hasn't been anything, right? Like, that's kind of a shocking moment yet this month, right?

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:26 But, Friedberg, the question I was gonna ask you is-

David Friedberg 11:28 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:28 ... since you're not, like, hosting Trump, you know, fundraisers, w- do you think, what did you think when JD Vance said he didn't think that Trump lost the 2020 election? Does that concern you at all?

David Friedberg 11:41 Um, there's no, there's no way to answer this, um, with, with the kinda clean framing I think you're looking for. What, what I saw from JD is that he wants the reporter and the people that he's talking to, and I hear this from him-

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:58 Yeah.

David Friedberg 11:58 ... to zoom out a little bit and recognize that there are significant control and, uh, control systems and biases that he believes and others believe are strongly affecting the election process, and as a result, the election outcome.... and I think that that message isn't, uh, is lost because people want him to say, "Trump lost the election. You're not admitting it, you're bad." But those people also aren't hearing the point that he's making, which is that there are biases.

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:28 Mm.

David Friedberg 12:28 And we heard these biases, by the way, with Democrats in prior elections as well, where they highlighted that they believed that there were biases with respect to misinformation being amplified on social media. And then the next election cycle, they were able to step in and influence what was being changed on those social media platforms. And so there's this big s- kind of, war, media war going on-

Guest 12:49 Yeah, that's what I'm questioning.

David Friedberg 12:50 ... through social media platforms, and I think that that's what both sides are highlighting is their big concern, and now there's this other big concern about, is there appropriate voter verification that the people who are voting? And it's a, it's a, it's a question to ask that shouldn't be dismissed, it is a good question to ask.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:07 Yeah.

Guest 13:07 Yeah, it's a great question.

David Friedberg 13:08 So as a, as a, as a person who doesn't have a, a, like a, a strong bias for a political party here, I feel like I wanna hear answers to those questions. Like, (laughs) wha- wh- you know, what is the structure of how the, the, the way that most people are getting their media today, which is through social media platforms, what is the mechanism for censorship, what is the mechanism for filtering, for moderation, and be public and transparent about it? And then separately, what are the mechanisms for, for deciding who gets to vote and how they get to vote?

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:35 Yeah.

David Friedberg 13:35 And I think those are both really good things to ask.

Guest 13:37 I would just like to take a step back and say that that was one of the most incredible answers I've ever heard. Friedberg, unfortunately it may not land for the reductive masses.

David Friedberg 13:50 Okay.

Guest 13:50 But it was exceptionally powerful and thoughtful. Thank you.

David Friedberg 13:55 That's what I'm here for, Timo.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:56 Yeah, I think that-

David Friedberg 13:56 I'm here for you.

Guest 13:57 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:57 Well, I, I, I, m- I mean, independent of who wins, we need to get this, uh, rules of elections really tight starting next year, I think. Make it a federal holiday, require people to have ID, that doesn't seem like such a big deal. I don't know. Sacks, what else should happen? Federal holiday, making-

David Sacks 14:15 Well, right now, you've got Biden's DOJ is literally suing the state of Virginia, which is required by Virginia law to clean the voter rolls of illegal immigrants, and they've been doing that, and Biden's DOJ has sued to stop that. In California, like you said, we now have a new law signed by Gavin Newsom to make it illegal to ask for voter ID. So, Democrats seem to be undermining the integrity of elections, not fortifying it. So when you ask, you know, w- why do Republicans distrust elections, maybe it has something to do with the way that Democrats are acting. But I agree with you. I think that cleaning up the voter rolls, having a minimum standard for voter verification is something that I think should be done. According to the Constitution, the states basically run their own elections, but it doesn't make sense to me that in a one-party machine politics state, where basically one party controls the state, that they could set up a system that effectively entrenches their power forever in federal elections. It just seems to me that the federal government has a compelling interest that must be constitutional in ensuring a minimum standard of honesty in federal elections. So I think it would be great to do something about this next year. I think that if you want people to stop questioning elections or engaging in election denial, you need to make the elections above reproach. So let's do that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:44 So anyway, Heritage Foundation, uh, which is obviously right-leaning, has a bunch of election fraud cases they've been documenting, and they basically cannot come up with, like, um, actual evidence that this is changing any election results, but we should make it above reproach. I agree.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:06 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?

David Friedberg 16:28 Fifth. Oh, God, it's so (censored) incredible.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:30 The fifth, right? And then, look at this.

David Friedberg 16:32 It's so incredible.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:32 Unbelievable. It's like chopsticks catching 23-story buildings. (laughs)

David Friedberg 16:34 Forget about whatever your issues are with Elon and his politics, just to appreciate, and we can talk about why this is so important-

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:42 Yeah.

David Friedberg 16:42 ... in this segment, but technically, the achievement of this, like, skyscraper falling out of the sky and perfectly aligning-

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:49 Wow.

David Friedberg 16:49 ... itself to go into that chopstick catching device-

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:53 Wow.

David Friedberg 16:53 ... 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.

Guest 17:06 It was incredible. I think I've probably watched this a hundred times.

David Friedberg 17:09 Totally. From every angle.

Guest 17:11 Every angle.

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:12 Yeah.

David Friedberg 17:12 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:12 And so-

David Friedberg 17:13 Look at that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:13 ... 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-

Guest 17:32 Yeah, you don't-

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:32 ... and he can start lifting his rockets-

Guest 17:33 ... To be more specific, you don't want it to have feet.

David Friedberg 17:38 Mm.

Guest 17:38 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:49 Unbelievable.

Guest 17:49 Unbelievable.

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:50 Right, you just catch it and go again.

David Friedberg 17:51 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:01 Yeah.

David Friedberg 21:01 The economics are legit. I mean, this is like 1,000X reduction in cost. It's incredible.

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:06 Yeah, it's gonna be amazing. And they're gonna do some, I guess, new stuff with Starlink, some even lower Earth orbit satellites that go even faster, uh, and have less latency, so that's gonna be super exciting.

David Friedberg 21:17 Starlink's apparently, I mean, S- I know everyone here is a share- shareholder in SpaceX, but Starlink's running at four million subs right now. That's like 100 bucks a month, four million subs. And if you do the math, I mean, how many people have ISPs that are slower than Starlink, right? How many people have cell phone providers that they're paying roughly the same amount that aren't as good as Starlink? If we can get satellite to phone and you can get Starlink more broadly available, this could be a 100 million subscriber business. I mean, this could be-

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:46 Absolutely.

David Friedberg 21:47 ... one of the biggest-

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:47 It could be the largest-

David Friedberg 21:47 ... businesses on the, on the, on the Earth. Like, it's insane.

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:50 It could be the largest subscription business in the history of humanity. I think the largest ones right now are like Netflix, you know, 250; Disney+, 150; Verizon, 100 million. So yeah, it's, could be hundreds of millions of subscribers. It could even be-

David Friedberg 22:04 This is crazy. And, and, and we'll look back on-

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:05 It could be the first 500 million subscriber product in the world.

David Friedberg 22:08 We could look back one day and be like, "Why did we run all this copper wire everywhere?" (laughs) You know? Like-

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:12 Well-

David Friedberg 22:12 ... we don't need it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:13 Uh, yeah, obviously, for sure.

David Friedberg 22:14 It's crazy.

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:15 Especially if it can get to your phones.

David Friedberg 22:16 Like, it would be, like, crazy that we were, like, ever... I mean, the whole nutty thing about this past week, it's like we could look back one day and be like, "Why did we ever drive cars, and why did we ever have copper wire laid all over the Earth to like move internet signals around?" You know, this, uh, this efficiency gain that's gonna be realized over the next decade is in- just in- incredible. Just incredible.

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:33 Chamath, any thoughts on the, uh, Robovan or the Cybercab, the Model 2, I guess some people are calling it, but it's j- you know, the Cybercab specifically, not calling it number two, and doesn't have a steering wheel or pedals? I would have bought two of those immediately if it had a steering wheel and pedals.

David Friedberg 22:51 So beautiful.

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:51 I wanna drive it, yeah. It looks like the hybrid of, like, a Model Y and the Cybertruck, so I kinda really love the aesthetics of it.

David Friedberg 22:58 So beautiful.

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:59 Yeah, you like it?

Guest 23:00 My, my, my reaction was actually... I don't know, just seeing these releases now over 10 or 15 years plus of knowing him, nothing... It's, it's, I guess, it's, like, not that surprising. I- maybe, it's, uh, uh, it's weird to say, like, I just expect him and his teams to figure it out, like, they're just all so good. It's, and, uh, the thing to remember, it's not just him that's incredible, but he attracts a kind of technical and operational wunderkind people.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:35 For sure, yeah.

Guest 23:36 And that's just, that's just a really special thing. So I had, I had that reaction, which was, I was really proud and happy for them.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:45 For the team, yeah, for sure.

Guest 23:46 For the team and for him. These guys are, like, incredibly fearless. Fail bigly, right?

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:52 Yeah, big time.

Guest 23:52 If you're gonna fail, fail bigly.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:54 Yeah.

Guest 23:55 And then the other thing that I thought was crazy was how many people were trying to dunk on him this weekend.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:01 Yeah, it's weird.

Guest 24:03 And that surprised me and caught me off guard, because I think that they were personalizing a lot of anxiety that they are feeling through these companies' successes, which didn't make much sense to me.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:16 Well, in fairness, he did hurt some people's feelings with posting of memes, so (laughs) yeah. I mean, it's, it makes no sense, like, the guy's, like, gonna save 30,000 road deaths a year in the United States with self-driving, and people are losing their minds over a couple of memes or who he's voting for for president. I don't think you have to worry about that.You can just look at the products, they speak for themselves. Anything, um, Sachs, any response, uh, on the, uh, on the Tesla front? Any thoughts on the, the bus or Optimus?

David Sacks 24:45 I mean, they are both very exciting products. I don't think I've got a lot to add.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:49 Yeah. I love the bus, Freeberg. I think that thing could become like mobile homes, our, you know, ADUs, and you could just send them to-

Guest 24:58 But can you, can we buy them or no?

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:00 N- n- well, no, not right now, but I think that might be, you know, that, that's gonna be a big question.

David Friedberg 25:06 Chamath's gonna put all his kids in one.

Guest 25:08 I, I need it for all my kids.

David Friedberg 25:09 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:10 Well, see, if this was a platform like the Mercedes Sprinter vans have become, uh, that you see-

Guest 25:14 Oh my God.

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:14 ... a lot in Europe, then-

Guest 25:15 Oh my God.

David Friedberg 25:16 Wow.

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:16 ... you could buy and empty one of these.

David Friedberg 25:18 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:18 It's got enough battery life-

David Friedberg 25:20 I'd take one.

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:20 ... to last a month.

David Friedberg 25:21 I'd take one.

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:21 And then let's say you had your in-laws over and there was one that was set up as like a one bedroom, you could click on Airbnb or, you know, Tesla B&B, press a button, and the thing could drive to your driveway. You could rent it for a week, and then it could leave. Or-

Guest 25:35 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:35 ... let's say 1,000 people or 10,000 people were displaced because of a hurricane, Freeberg, you could send 100,000 of these to the parking lots at Walmart, which typically does a good job in, in feeding people and getting them supplies after hurricanes since those are so ubiquitous. You could put 100 of these in every parking lot and have a place for people who are fleeing, uh, natural disasters to stay. So I thought that was, like, the most compelling product of the whole thing for me, was the possibility of a sled, like a skiff that you could do anything you want with, would be really exciting for society. So congratulations to the team. And it's, it's gonna take a while, but I, I, I could see them having that s- robo-taxi-

Guest 26:13 Also, I think, I think congrats to Omid. He just got promoted.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:16 I saw that. Yeah, he's in charge of all AI?

Guest 26:19 I think he's in charge of all manufacturing and sales in North America now.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:23 Oh, okay. Well, there it is. Uh, so-

Guest 26:25 So shout out to Omid Afshar. Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:27 I mean, listen, the, the-

David Friedberg 26:28 Guys, I have, uh, I have big news. I just bought my first Tesla.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:32 Oh, you did? Did you go with the-

David Friedberg 26:33 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:33 ... Plaid Model S?

David Friedberg 26:35 Model S Plaid, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:36 Yeah, that's a-

David Friedberg 26:37 I, uh, test drove it-

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:38 ... perfect car.

David Friedberg 26:38 ... for two weeks and sold itself.

Guest 26:41 Yeah, I was-

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:42 And, and are you using the FSD? I use FSD every day.

David Friedberg 26:44 Mm-hmm. I use FSD and it was, like, really impressive, so-

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:47 Super impressive.

David Friedberg 26:47 I, I've tried Tesla a couple times over the years and I never really, never really worked for me. The quality just didn't feel like what I, like given what I had before, the car-wise.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:56 You were an Audi guy, right?

David Friedberg 26:57 But... Audi guy, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:58 Yeah.

David Friedberg 26:58 Always loved Audis.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:59 Audi guys are neat guys.

David Friedberg 26:59 And so I was-

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:00 Yeah. That's-

David Friedberg 27:01 You know?

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:01 That's like a thing, right?

David Friedberg 27:02 Anyway, it's, uh, it was a big milestone. I really-

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:04 I mean-

David Friedberg 27:05 I thought the FSD was the selling... And then the speed on the Plaid is, is just insane. It's better than my RS7, like-

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:10 I, um-

David Friedberg 27:11 It's incredible.

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:11 ... with all of my Teslas, I put it in chill mode because when it's in that Plaid mode or whatever, like coffee goes flying.

David Friedberg 27:16 It's my favorite. I love it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:18 The kids-

David Friedberg 27:18 I get on the-

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:18 But if you have passengers, the kids in the back seat will get, like, literally nauseous because it's too fast.

David Friedberg 27:23 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:23 You gotta be-

David Friedberg 27:24 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:24 You gotta be, uh, careful with the passengers there, it's so fast.

David Friedberg 27:26 Oh, it was awesome. Awesome.

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:29 All right. Well, there you have it. Robo-taxi story, we didn't get to it last week. We almost put the show back a day or two just to do it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:36 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-

Guest 29:03 Stupid.

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:04 Stupid. Okay. There you have it, folks. Reason number one, it's stupid. Uh, and reason number two, it's stupid.

Guest 29:11 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 31:25 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-

Guest 31:48 Wait, why don't they just buy Waymo? Why don't they just go to Google and give them $30 billion-

Chamath Palihapitiya 31:52 I- I- That's-

Guest 31:52 ... of Uber stock and just carve in Waymo? Isn't that the better idea?

Chamath Palihapitiya 31:55 I think that's what's gonna happen. I've been hearing rumblings of that, so.

David Friedberg 31:59 So, I think that Dara knows Expedia better than anyone. He ran the business for what, a decade or- or so?

Chamath Palihapitiya 32:07 Yep. More.

David Friedberg 32:08 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.

Guest 34:12 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 34:13 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.

Guest 34:23 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 34:23 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.

Guest 35:25 Hm.

David Friedberg 35:25 That- that's just me trying to understand-

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:26 I think it's a good steal, man.

David Friedberg 35:27 ... you know, what the rationale might be.

David Sacks 35:28 Can you just go back and explain how would they drive up EBITDA so much?

David Friedberg 35:32 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:44 Customers.

David Friedberg 35:44 So the idea would be-

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:45 Actually-

David Friedberg 35:45 ... customers, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:45 Yeah, beyond users.

David Friedberg 35:46 Actually paying customers.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:47 Yeah.

David Friedberg 35:48 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-

David Sacks 36:07 That's where I think the logic breaks down. I don't think Uber customers wanna be cross-sold on booking a hotel. See, this is where-

David Friedberg 36:14 Yeah.

David Sacks 36:14 ... I think like MBA thinking is very different than product thinking. Like, an MBA looking at this would say, "Well, you know, Expedia and Uber are both in the travel business. Their apps both involve booking trips, so we can-

David Friedberg 36:28 Right.

David Sacks 36:28 ... we can cross-sell Expedia from Uber, and then cut Expedia's marketing budget." I think that's how an MBA would sort of hand wave over it. I think the way, like, a product manager would look at this is to say, "What does the user wanna do?"

David Friedberg 36:42 Mm-hmm.

David Sacks 36:43 And I know that when I use the Uber app, I just wanna basically make a couple of clicks, set my destination, get my car, and then move on.And there was a, there was a product initiative a few years back at Uber where they tried to capture the user's attention during the ride and they, you know, they added-

David Friedberg 37:00 That's right.

David Sacks 37:00 ... like, this, this ent-

David Friedberg 37:00 Yeah, they had that whole ad thing that adds-

David Sacks 37:02 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:02 Yeah, it's making a ton of money.

David Sacks 37:04 ... that adds, and, and, um-

David Friedberg 37:04 It's actually printing money for them.

David Sacks 37:05 ... one that was like, it was like an entertainment stream or something-

David Friedberg 37:08 Right.

David Sacks 37:09 ... inside the app. No, but they dialed it way back because I don't see it anymore. It was just clutter.

David Friedberg 37:13 Would you tru- trust Dara's judgment on this, Sax? Like, if Dara were to li- think about what the Uber user would want and he could rationalize some percentage of them, they could cross-sell Expedia services in too? I mean, ultimately, I think it's, it's his decision, right? Like, if he believes-

David Sacks 37:27 Well, I mean, what you're describing is basically a private equity play.

David Friedberg 37:31 Right.

David Sacks 37:31 Like, Dara's gonna come in as, like, a private equity buyer effectively, and he knows the business and will run it to reduce cost, maybe boost some revenue. And maybe there is a justification for that. But if you're trying to justify it based on cross-selling, I don't think users of the Uber app want to be cross-sold when they book a taxi, okay? They just want to be able to effect their transaction as efficiently as possible. And just to finish the point I was making on that whole entertainment stream that they had, they dialed that product way back 'cause it got in the way. You'd be, you know, in the Uber app trying to figure out how to change your destination or something and all of a sudden you're being shown, like, some entertainment product. It's not what users wanted. Um, and it was always kind of a, a bananas idea to think that just because the user books an Uber that you own their attention during that ride because during that ride you're really competing with every app on the iPhone, right?

David Friedberg 38:27 Yeah.

David Sacks 38:27 I mean, and that's the problem is you wanna get in and out of the Uber app. It's about transacting efficiently.

David Friedberg 38:32 What about not the moment when you're, when you're riding in an Uber, but the moment when you say as an Uber user, "Hey, I need to book travel. I gotta go on a vacation to Austin this weekend and play poker."

David Sacks 38:41 I'm never gonna think to go on my Uber app for that. The only time I open-

David Friedberg 38:44 But what if they put that feature in there? What if they had a tab-

David Sacks 38:46 No.

David Friedberg 38:46 ... that said book your travel here?

David Sacks 38:47 You know when I open the Uber app? When I wanna hail a taxi. (laughs) That's when. It's like, I'm ready to go.

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:52 Well, that's you, but I, there are a large number of people who maybe don't have a, you know, an assistant to book their hotels in advance and, like-

David Friedberg 38:59 That would be most people, JKell. (laughs)

David Sacks 39:02 (laughs) I would not think to go into Uber to do that. It would just be clutter.

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:05 Well, no, but they're h- they already have a hotels.com partnership, and then the Uber One membership's been growing pretty nicely, and the advertising's doing a billion dollars a year. And that is just a money printing machine because you know that this person's in an Uber Black, you know that they're going to the Four Seasons. Like, these users who are, you know-

David Friedberg 39:22 They have a real ad business at Uber.

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:24 Yeah, yeah.

David Sacks 39:24 The more Uber tries to promote some unrelated product, and what I mean by unrelated is it doesn't help you get to where you're going that moment-

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:33 Mm-hmm.

David Sacks 39:33 ... it's clutter in the app.

David Friedberg 39:34 But what about Uber Eats, Sax?

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:36 Yeah.

David Friedberg 39:36 U- Uber Eats working pretty well.

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:37 It's working great, yeah. No, the cross-promotion's working.

David Sacks 39:40 That is highly related too. That's basically booking a car to pick up some food.

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:44 Yeah.

David Sacks 39:45 It's still the taxi business basically.

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:47 I think the hotels integration is good, yeah.

Guest 39:49 I think there's something here. We have gone through a cycle where apps and attention were highly consolidated with a few. Now, the pendulum has swung the other way and apps are very narrow features that are really well described. Okay, so that's sort of where we are. That's why we have the billions and billions of apps in the App Store. The question is, does the pendulum swing back to these super apps? And I think the big question is not whether it swings back to the super apps, but whether there's a new substrate that puts itself between the user and all of these services so that they become data-oriented services. And this is where the question is if you rely on an agent or you rely on a beefed-up version of search, whether that's ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever, why would you care where all of this stuff was done? You're not gonna care. And this is, I think, the big mistake in this thinking is that that real estate is actually much more fragile than I think we all think it is. And I think a much better way to think about this is in the future, none of this UI real estate is actually worth anything. The question is, do you have a data asset that's valuable or do you as- do a service that's valuable? Because agentically, there'll be all of these unemotional bots and workflows doing this work for you. So I think Sax is right in the sense that whether it's there or not, it won't matter. Could, could he run it like a private equity business where now Uber Corporation owns two services? Sure. But you're probably just better off for these agents to go and cannibalize all of search because you'll be able to just get a data feed for what Expedia has to create Expedia for a few million dollars or tens of millions of dollars. You don't need to pay 20 or $30 billion for this.

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:38 Yeah, I, I, the thing that I've talked to Dara about is when, they said, he told me when they do something that's adjacent to what they're already doing, it explodes in terms of engagement. So, like, they're doing, like, teens and rental cars and then package delivery, and every time they do one of those adjacencies, it just takes off with the membership. And to your point, Freiberg, they have those 150 customers who have their credit cards in there and man, it just, it's explosive. So that's what I think they're doing.

David Sacks 42:06 I don't think booking a vacation is an adjacency-

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:08 I-

David Sacks 42:08 ... to ordering food.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:09 I think hotels would be. I don't think flights would be 'cause I think the flights work really well with the existing apps, but things where you have proprietary inventory like VRBO or hotels, I think those would be very powerful, and those have 20, 30% commissions which are in line with the commissions that Uber's already getting. And the commissions on things like flights is very small, like a couple of dollars, so I think for hotels and VRBO it would be brilliant. For the other stuff, I'm not so sure, to your point. Chamath?

David Sacks 42:37 Well, just to finish my, my thought.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:38 Yeah, yeah. Please.

David Sacks 42:39 Was that you'll notice that Uber Eats is a separate app from Uber, right? I mean, I know you can get to the Eats part within Uber, but they created a separate app for a reason. It's because whether you're using Uber Eats or Uber, the goal is immediate gratification. I wanna get to where I'm going, I don't book it six hours in advance. I call it right now-... and the most important thing to me is wait time. This is why Uber is beating Lyft is-

Guest 43:02 But Sax, you, you-

David Sacks 43:03 ... the wait time, oh, and the wait time is lower.

Guest 43:04 Yeah, yeah.

David Sacks 43:04 Same thing with food. I'm not thinking about booking my dinner right now. I'm not gonna do it-

Guest 43:08 Mm-hmm.

David Sacks 43:08 ... in advance. If you browse through the restaurants, the most important piece of data they show you, in addition to the rating, is the number of minutes it takes for it to get to you. So, those apps are all about immediate gratification, and that's why you don't want other things getting in the way of them. Now, I guess the claim is somehow you're gonna be able to cross-sell the booking of a vacation or a hotel that you have to think about days or weeks in advance. It's just a completely different state of mind. I just don't think that there's much opportunity to cross-sell that. Or, or, or to use the brand technical jargon-

Guest 43:42 Hey, what about the brand, what about the brand?

David Sacks 43:42 ... I don't think the attach rate is gonna be high.

Guest 43:45 Yeah. What about the brand value, Sax? So, 'cause you know those people are going to another app to book their flight and their hotel. What if that other app was called Uber Travel?

David Sacks 43:53 There might be some value in that. I can see that.

Guest 43:55 Yeah.

David Sacks 43:56 If-

Guest 43:56 I think, uh, that would be the rationale where I could see the Expedia brand, you know.

David Sacks 44:00 Yeah. So maybe, maybe what you could do is take VRBO, rebrand it as Uber Hotel or Uber Travel, whatever you wanna call it.

Guest 44:07 Exactly. Exactly.

David Sacks 44:08 And then maybe you could push people to download that app.

Guest 44:12 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:12 Well, the thing I, you know, I would... the counter I would give to this-

David Sacks 44:15 You could quantify the, the value of the installs, right? So...

Guest 44:18 Yeah, exactly. I mean, well, you could qualify because Expedia's spending on it every year right now.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:22 I use the Bonvoy app to book hotels. I use United to book my flights, and I use Uber to do my rides and obviously for eats. When you are using it, there's a tab up top, and the UI is quite nice in Uber where it's Rides and Eats right next to each other. I could see a third one, like Hotels or Travel being right there, and all of a sudden, yum yum, you just get all that inventory right in there. And I frequently will book my hotel, and I'll book my ride for the next day in advance on Uber, and I do those things. And then when I get to my hotel, I'm ordering food to my room. So, I think this actually could work really well as a third tab in the app for travel.

Guest 45:00 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:00 And you could actually... 'cause when you use Eats in the Uber app, it's its own tab, and it's the exact same experience. I, I believe in super apps, um, and they just launched a bus that's like a bus service in New York for 18 bucks to go to JFK, and that's really awesome. I think we're a little bit disconnected 'cause we don't book our own travel. But okay, let's keep moving here down the

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:19 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-

Guest 46:32 Well, I'm... look, I'm generally-

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:32 ... in terms of opposition to these versus the opportunity, and everybody's writing checks.

Guest 46:37 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?

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:38 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.

Guest 48:57 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.

David Friedberg 49:07 ... 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:23 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.

David Sacks 51:47 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:06 So you think they'll get blocked by local communities?

David Sacks 52:09 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:58 (laughs)

David Sacks 52:59 Something's gonna happen. And then the, the fallout-

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:03 (laughs) .

David Sacks 53:03 ... it's, it's literally gonna fall out on, on the people in that poor community. So-

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:07 (laughs)

David Sacks 53:08 ... I don't think this is gonna happen.

David Friedberg 53:09 This show really has a diversity of views, doesn't it?

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:11 Yeah.

David Friedberg 53:11 It's like, yeah.

David Sacks 53:12 Look, this is a perfect example of liberal business elites demanding something-

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:17 (laughs)

David Friedberg 53:18 (laughs)

David Sacks 53:18 ... that isn't gonna affect them. It's not gonna affect them.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:20 Freeberg, your take on a non-binary, trans lesbian with purple hair-

David Friedberg 53:27 No comment. Whatever you're saying, no comment.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:28 ... putting, uh, putting (laughs) putting a small nuclear reactor 200 miles outside of Austin, Texas, go. (laughs) Put your tinfoil hat on, Freeberg.

David Sacks 53:37 Yeah, how close do you want it to your ranch, dude, cal?

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:40 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.

David Sacks 53:52 Who's gonna work there? Who's gonna service it?

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:54 I mean, literally, you would have to... It doesn't take that many people to, to service these. So, yeah. I think there's plenty of space in the United States to put these, and maybe, Freeberg, you could talk and educate us on the safety here. Do you believe what Sacks is saying, that it's going to have a meltdown, and he doesn't believe it?

David Friedberg 54:14 I think Sacks' point of view, to be honest, is the point of view that will be held by a large number of people, just like they have been with a lot of other kind of, uh, pro-

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:25 Is it the right point of view, though? Tell us from a science perspective.

David Friedberg 54:27 Well, no, no, I don't, I don't think it is. I think that the same argument would have been made around we shouldn't have airplanes at all because they can fall from the sky. We should keep everyone on the ground where they're safe. Why would you want to get on an airplane? Why would you want to have airplanes flying over your home? We should all ban airplanes flying over our home. They could crash in our home. It's the same sort of argument. And the reason I'm not gonna argue the point is 'cause I, I, the, 'cause of the point I made earlier, which is that it ultimately becomes an economic necessity, that for us to meet all of the demands of AI, all of the demands of industry, we want to re-industrialize the United States, et cetera, et cetera, we need to increase electricity production capacity on the continent, and there is no way to generate enough electricity on this continent fast enough using other means than there would be if we just got these, these systems set up. So-

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:13 So you believe-

David Friedberg 55:13 ... I think there will end up being a panic.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:13 ... they will go through out of necessity?

David Sacks 55:16 ... that's your take.

David Friedberg 55:16 I think globally, this is the case and we're seeing it in China. Now, whether the- whether the US ends up becoming a Luddite-

David Sacks 55:21 Yeah, China doesn't have to worry about a NIMBY problem. The CCP just says-

Guest 55:23 That's right. They don't have to- (laughs)

David Sacks 55:23 ... "This is what we're gonna do."

Guest 55:25 Yeah, that's right.

David Friedberg 55:25 (laughs) That's great.

Guest 55:25 And- and- and we may- we may end up being the- They are... China is the M in NIMBY. Bye. (laughs)

David Friedberg 55:30 We may end up being the Luddite state and we'll end up just saying, "You know what? We're not gonna adopt new technology, including things like-"

Guest 55:37 They put the now in NIMBY.

David Friedberg 55:37 "... gene editing and cell- cell therapies." And I'll go through the list of new technologies, Sax.

Guest 55:41 I think there's-

David Friedberg 55:42 You could make the argument-

Guest 55:43 I think-

David Friedberg 55:43 ... that there's a low probability of a high-risk event, but the fact is that the progress that it enables is worth so much more than the risk that we would be taking on.

Guest 55:52 There's a simpler solution to all of this without having to go and create these reactors, which is, I don't think that we have a very good grasp of the material science, broadly speaking. I don't think we really understand how to build next-generation materials. I don't think our specialty chemicals capabilities are all that strong t- the way that they're going to be over the next five or 10 years, just with better compute. So, I think that there's gonna be a lot of interim steps that increase the generally available energy density without going to nuclear. And I think there's gonna be a lot of businesses to do that. That'll be much safer, easier to regulate, easier to test, easier to underwrite- And I think the government will get behind this. So, I'm not as negative as you are on the only solution being nuclear.

David Friedberg 56:32 The countries and, uh, the businesses that have a lower cost of electricity and a more abundant source of electricity will end up winning as the economy continues to progress towards a much more kinda digital state and automated state over the next decades. So, if we're gonna be slower, we're gonna suffer the consequences of that as a country, so we'll see how it plays out. I just think that economic incentives will ultimately drive, hopefully, a change here.

Guest 56:56 Would a, um, possible solution be to give an economic incentive to the people who would be in the surrounding areas? Obviously, these things could be 50 or 100 miles from, you know, anybody's homes, but even the people who work there or people who might have, I don't know, some homes that were near it, could you give them no taxes, ex- et cetera, essentially give them incentives to allow this to go through? Friedberg, in your mind, do you think that kind of incentive would work? Taxes or some kinda payoff or subsidy?

David Friedberg 57:28 I- I'm not sure. I haven't thought much-

Guest 57:29 Yeah.

David Friedberg 57:29 ... about, like, what- what the incentives or subsidies would be.

David Sacks 57:32 Yeah, you're gonna have to give them an incentive 'cause no one's gonna wanna live within 200 miles of one of these things.

Guest 57:37 What would be the number, Friedberg, in your mind-

David Friedberg 57:38 I think Sax is right. I think that people- people have a very deep fear of, you know, what is deemed to be cataclysmic technology. I do think a lot of this was rooted in the evolution of the atomic age, where we basically have these nuclear warheads mounted to missiles that can travel at 20 times the speed of sound and land on your city and wipe out your city. I mean, that- that is also nuclear technology, and people conflate the two as being similar. And even Three Mile Island, there were, you know, no deaths. It was a shocking, scary thing for people, but statistically speaking and historically speaking and technically speaking, it's a lot more complicated to explain to people what happened and why and why now is different, and no one has the time for that. No one wants to hear that (censored) . They wanna hear a very simple, "Do you really want a nuclear power plant in your backyard?" "No way." "What about you?" "No way." "All right, let's- let's vote to stop it."

David Sacks 58:26 And they're right.

David Friedberg 58:29 I mean, you- you-

David Sacks 58:29 I mean, you compare it- you compare it to commercial airlines, but commercial airlines, that's a technology that's been around for what, like, 100 years? It's been- it's been-

David Friedberg 58:36 Sax, do you have any data on the safety record of nuclear technology? 'Cause I'm not sure you do. I think my point is, like, you're just making a statement out of fear.

David Sacks 58:42 Okay, let's see the- let's see the data. Where's the data?

Guest 58:44 Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it right now. I mean, I- I think this is an important discussion. I'd like to actually-

David Sacks 58:48 My point- my point about commercial airlines is we've had that technology for ho- over a hundred years. It was honed and refined over many decades, and commercial airlines now have become, Boeing notwithstanding, it's-

David Friedberg 58:58 Sax, this is going on almost a hundred- this is going on a hundred years of use, right? You know that.

David Sacks 59:02 There've been incidents every decade or two and that is why-

David Friedberg 59:05 That's not true. That's not true. You're say- you're saying something that's not true.

David Sacks 59:09 The reason nuclear has been discredited is because of Three Mile Island and Fukushima and-

David Friedberg 59:13 It has not been... First of all, it's not been discredited. It's- it- it-

David Sacks 59:15 ... Chernobyl. I mean, these names live in infamy.

David Friedberg 59:18 No, it's- it's social fearmongering, like you are doing right now, with no data and no facts to try and make it a political issue that drives everyone to one side-

David Sacks 59:26 I'm just-

David Friedberg 59:26 ... shut their minds down, and not listen to the actual facts and data. And this fearmongering is what keeps us from being competitive and qu- keeps us from having progress. You talk a lot about people talking shit about Elon-

David Sacks 59:35 I'm not fearmongering. I'm just... Listen, listen, I- I'm- I'm just saying I don't want one near me.

David Friedberg 59:40 Okay.

David Sacks 59:41 Now, if there... Hold on a second. I'm not saying you can't-

Guest 59:42 Let me get- there were 46 deaths at Chernobyl.

David Sacks 59:44 Hold on. I'm not against doing it somewhere where the community is in favor of doing it. So, if you can find a place that wants to do this, I would not stop it, just to be clear.

David Friedberg 59:54 And- and-

David Sacks 59:54 I'm just saying I don't want one near me.

Guest 59:55 L- let's get to facts. Yeah, we got you.

David Friedberg 59:57 S- J-Kel, just give me a second.

Guest 59:58 Yeah, yeah.

David Sacks 59:58 I don't think you're gonna find many takers even among poor communities.

Guest 1:00:02 It's a great adversarial point. Let's go to the facts.

David Friedberg 1:00:05 There's 440 nuclear power reactors operating in 32 countries around the world. Since the time that we first had nuclear reactors, which has now been almost a century, there have been three incidents, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island.

David Sacks 1:00:18 Oh, no.

David Friedberg 1:00:18 At Three Mile Island, there were zero deaths.

David Sacks 1:00:20 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:00:20 At Fukushima, there was one death, and at Chernobyl, there were 46 deaths. The fallout from those events has been that we shut down energy production, we shut down nuclear reactor technology, and we fearmongered our way into losing the most abundant available low-cost source of energy.

Guest 1:00:36 Can I just ask a question?

David Friedberg 1:00:37 Yeah.

Guest 1:00:37 Do those deaths actually include the second and third order effects of all this radiation?

David Friedberg 1:00:41 At Chernobyl, there were 15 people who got thyroid cancer, 35 operators and first responders who got radiation sickness, and then the background radiation effects, there's a lot of kind of noise around this, but it's not a significant number as you may otherwise think. Same with Fukushima.

Guest 1:00:56 Why is it that whole region is still uninhabited then?

David Friedberg 1:00:59 They had a radiation event. There's radioactive material that has covered that area that will be radioactive for a long period of time. Now, to understand what happened there and why that won't happen again requires talking about the difference in the technology between gen one, gen two, gen three, and gen four systems. A lot of what's being rolled out now are these gen three nuclear reactors, and the gen four systems, which we highlighted a little while ago, do not have a meltdown possibility, right? We- we talked about this, the one that went online in China in December.... those new systems, the gen four reactors cannot melt down. You cannot have an incident like you did with the gen one and gen two systems. And the gen three systems are abundantly safe. China is building hundreds of them. It is a, it is a totally, like, understandable science. If we wanna spend the time looking at the data and understanding the engineering and the material science work and all the effort that's gone in, billions of dollars over decades, the biggest stumbling block and the biggest wall has been the fact that people have this fearmongering activity that they tell people, "Just dismiss it. It's too scary. We don't want it in our backyard. Let's move on to the next opportunity." That's what's killed it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:04 And if you just put these things 50 miles away, the radiation, even in the meltdowns, didn't go past those is my understanding.

David Friedberg 1:02:12 No. No.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:12 So, the- we- we- even if you wanna just... The easiest steel man of this-

David Friedberg 1:02:16 The new systems don't melt down. You don't have that possibility. And the SMRs have-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:20 I agree. I am in to 100% agree with you.

Guest 1:02:21 The new systems don't even work. These SMRs, uh, they don't work.

David Friedberg 1:02:23 That may be another point.

David Sacks 1:02:24 If they're so new, how can you say for sure what the safety record's gonna be?

David Friedberg 1:02:27 Oh, that's-

Guest 1:02:28 Just to be clear, SMRs don't work yet. We have theoretical ways in which we can profile and model that they work, but we don't have a functional one that e- people can look at and inspect. As part of that, we haven't been able to test how they fail. Those are also theoretical. So, I think let's put SMRs off, and let's just be very accurate. We don't have a functioning, working version of one because they don't work yet. Maybe they'll work in the future. Let's hope that they do.

David Friedberg 1:02:54 There's about six-

Guest 1:02:54 What you're talking about, Freeberg, is a, is a-

David Friedberg 1:02:56 Yeah.

Guest 1:02:56 ... step before that, which is the gen three reactor, which has a different safety net.

David Friedberg 1:03:00 Yes. There are, there are SMRs operating in China, Russia, and India today, and there's about 65 being built at this moment, right? So... And that's ex- outside the US. So, that's why the US is pr- is, uh, is kind of observing and trying to catch up and adopt these technologies that are being used by, call it, economic competitors and economic partners around the world. It's important for economic prosperity in the US for us to have a degree of competitiveness in electricity prices. If China races towards five cents per kilowatt hour for electricity, and we're sitting here at 20 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity, what's that-

Guest 1:03:31 Well-

David Friedberg 1:03:31 ... gonna do to our economic competitiveness?

Guest 1:03:33 ... we are, we are at five cents in the generation.

David Friedberg 1:03:36 And you're saying in solar, right?

Guest 1:03:37 So, we can, we can fix that tomorrow. We already, we already rely on a nuclear reactor that works, and to Sax's point, it just happens to be millions of miles away, so it can... If it goes, we're all gonna go anyways.

David Friedberg 1:03:47 Yeah. The scalability of, of solar in terms of getting us to a terawatt of production capacity is the, the limiting block, Chamath, that in order to get to a terawatt of-

Guest 1:03:54 I think that's a material science problems.

David Friedberg 1:03:56 ... additional-

Guest 1:03:56 I don't think that's a you don't need to-

David Sacks 1:03:57 Maybe it's not such a bad thing that other countries are taking the early adopter risk with this technology.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:02 Well, I was about to say, that would be... That's gonna be the forcing-

David Friedberg 1:04:03 That's decades in the making sense.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:05 Yeah. That's gonna be... But, but if there... If China runs away with this, and they have so many of these running, and then they're able to power AI and solve problems we're not, we're gonna have to get our act together and start, uh, standing these up. And they just have to be 50-

Guest 1:04:18 I don't think power's the limiting-

David Friedberg 1:04:19 Every Navy submarine's got a nuclear reactor on board.

Guest 1:04:21 I, I don't-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:21 And we have so much space in this country. These things could be 100, 200 miles away from anybody.

Guest 1:04:26 But I don't think energy is a limiting factor in our ability to innovate. I don't think it is today.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:32 In these data centers? Certainly

Guest 1:04:34 It's not the limiting factor in our ability to innovate. It's not the limiting factor in, like, for example, you know, why-

David Friedberg 1:04:39 We're asking us to charge up every car every night with electricity with a battery rather than using gasoline.

Guest 1:04:44 Let me just make my point.

David Friedberg 1:04:45 Right.

Guest 1:04:45 So, we just saw OpenAI launch Strawberry. Is the reason why Microsoft or Google or Meta not responded with their own version an energy problem? No. We're still rate limited by innovation and just raw intellectual horsepower and capability. Meanwhile, we are trying to solve the energy problem, and people are taking different approaches. There's storage that's coming online very aggressively. The solar capability itself is ramping up aggressively. We're also forcing these utilities to actually be deconstructed so that there's more efficiency in the energy markets. All of this, if you unpack why it costs 20 cents a kilowatt hour, it's not because of a generation problem. It is not. It's graft, it's corruption, it's old legacy infrastructure. All of it can be replaced in a much simpler and safer way. So, I think by the time that you are rate limited by energy, you'll have a plethora of solutions. My issues with the SMRs is the ones that are promising these next-gen whiz-bang performance characteristics, they're all theoretical, Freeberg. So, even when you say there are SMRs working abroad, there's no, like, next-generation reactors working abroad. They don't work.

David Friedberg 1:05:59 What do you... They, they, where, they're-

Guest 1:06:00 Where is an example of these modern next-generation reactors actually working? Where?

David Friedberg 1:06:06 Well, we talked about the gen four one that went live in China. There's several SMRs in several countries that are active producing power.

Guest 1:06:13 You can call it a small modular reactor, but I'm talking about these next-gen materials, the things that Kairos and these other guys are trying to do. Where is a functioning, working version of them?

David Friedberg 1:06:20 Here, I'll show you. They have them. I mean, like, we have one in India. We have one in China. I'll show you the... I'll send you links to them here. There's about 50 of them that India is actively building right now. And they're, they're competitive with Kairos, right? They all have kind of common design concepts, but they're different companies. Anyway, I'm just saying, like, they're- they're getting rolled out.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:39 What would be the harm... A- and just Freeberg, maybe you can educate us in the distance it could be from a city reasonably in terms of building a grid to move the energy from... Could it be 200 miles from a major city, 300, 100? What's it, what's a distance-

David Friedberg 1:06:55 Yeah, you can put them wherever you want.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:56 But, but-

David Friedberg 1:06:56 You can put power production wherever you want.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:57 But it has to travel, right?

David Friedberg 1:06:58 Just move it through copper. As long as you got the copper to move it, right? You move the electrons.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:02 Yeah, I'm just trying to think reasonably move it is, uh, I guess what I was getting at. But, okay, there you have it, folks. A good debate here on the all-in podcast.

David Friedberg 1:07:09 A good debate.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:10 I think it's a good debate.

David Friedberg 1:07:10 A good debate. I still love you all.

Guest 1:07:12 We'll lay, we'll lay copper from some country that has an SMR (laughs) all the way to-

David Friedberg 1:07:17 That's right.

Guest 1:07:18 ... all the way to-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:18 You know, it's funny you said that.

David Friedberg 1:07:19 I was-

Guest 1:07:19 ... Washington State.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:20 I was just thinking, like, if Canada and Mexico have, you know, economic incentive to do this, or they're more bold, maybe they build them in their countries-

David Friedberg 1:07:29 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:30 (laughs) And then they'll be selling it-

David Friedberg 1:07:31 Let them take the risk.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:31 ... to the United States, right?

David Friedberg 1:07:32 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:32 They'll take their... I mean, if you're Kairos, and you can't put this in the United States, but you could put it in Mexico and then come up with a, you know, a way to get it past Trump's border wall.

Guest 1:07:41 You may be able to put it into the United States, but we won't know until we know it works.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:46 Hmm.I just (laughs) I'm sorry, I keep going back to this tricky little issue of it doesn't work. (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:07:52 Well, I mean, I think, Friedberg, I'm with you in that the... even with the disasters that have happened, those are with gen one and gen two reactors. There hasn't been one in a long time, and the fallout from them haven't been-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:01 Yeah, and, and that I believe, I believe those things, if we could spin those up right now, these gen two, gen three reactors, do them all day long. I think that they're very safe. They're very reliable.

David Friedberg 1:08:07 No, the three and four. The threes are-

David Sacks 1:08:09 You want one in your backyard?

David Friedberg 1:08:09 ... the, the, the threes are what we should be rolling out everywhere.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:10 I would be fine with one being 100 miles from my backyard, no problem.

David Sacks 1:08:13 100? Okay.

David Friedberg 1:08:13 This four that's producing-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:15 100. Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:08:15 ... China is producing a gigawatt of power. It's like-

David Sacks 1:08:17 Would you want one 10 miles outside Austin?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:20 I don't think you should put it 10 miles outside of any city. I know that they're doing that in India. They're doing that in China. I would think... I, you know, if you look up the footprint of Fukushima, I mean that was a complete disaster. They put that below sea level. They told them not to put it there, and they put it near a bunch of people who, (laughs) you know, were living within miles of it, single digit miles of it. There's no reason for this to be any closer than 50 or 100 miles, and I would be totally fine with it being 50 to 100 miles from where I am on my ranch right now. Absolutely no problem with that.

David Sacks 1:08:50 I think this is a classic luxury belief, where it's easy for you to espouse this for everybody else, for the nation, because you know the downsides aren't gonna fall on you.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:00 No, but 50 miles or 100 miles could be anywhere.

David Friedberg 1:09:02 Okay, Sax, we can put all these things far away from where we use them and-

David Sacks 1:09:03 Maybe.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:03 ... everyone would be safe. Yeah, that's-

David Friedberg 1:09:04 Would you, would you be comfortable with putting them in the desert?

David Sacks 1:09:07 Yeah, but, but in that case, there won't be a-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:08 Okay. Then, then we're done.

David Friedberg 1:09:09 That's how we're running wind and geothermal today. We're putting these sites in random places, and solar, and then we're running cable and we're, you know, producing power and delivering it to-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:18 A- and they're doing that with solar just because they don't want it to be an eyesore, right? That's why we're doing that with solar is we don't want people to look at a giant solar thing, uh, solar array.

David Sacks 1:09:25 Like I said, I'm not against doing it, if you can find a community that's willing to do it. And if you put it where there's no humans, then yeah, that, that's gonna work.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:32 All right, so there we go.

David Sacks 1:09:33 But that's what you're gonna have to do.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:33 We've, we've resolved our issue. We got the compromise here.

David Friedberg 1:09:35 Here we are on the Lonely Pod solving world problems.

David Sacks 1:09:38 I just don't know how feasible that is.

David Friedberg 1:09:39 Yes, we, we got it. (laughs)

David Sacks 1:09:39 You still need humans to work at this place, so.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:39 I'm gonna get my guitar and we're gonna sing Kumbaya, SMR.

David Friedberg 1:09:43 (laughs) Humans to work at this place.

David Sacks 1:09:44 You better get some robot employees.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:47 I can't wait for you guys to lay millions of miles of copper cabling now as a solution to truck all this energy.

David Friedberg 1:09:52 I'm fine laying pipe, Chamath. I'll lay that pipe.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:53 Genius.

David Friedberg 1:09:54 You need me to lay pipe, I'll do it, Chamath.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:55 Genius.

David Friedberg 1:09:56 No digging. Sax, do you wanna go visit a nuclear power plant? Let's do it.

David Sacks 1:09:59 No. Zero interest.

David Friedberg 1:09:59 Let's go.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:00 Yeah, we'll go.

David Friedberg 1:10:01 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:10:01 How's that gonna improve our life?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:01 Any progress, Sax is not interested in any progress, okay? If we can go back to the '50s, that's what he wants. Let's get some coal-

David Sacks 1:10:07 You're like virtue signaling.

David Friedberg 1:10:09 I'm virtue signaling (laughs) because I'm pro-nuclear? (laughs)

David Sacks 1:10:12 Yeah. Yes. It's a luxury belief. You're promoting something where-

David Friedberg 1:10:14 Nuclear power's a luxury belief. (laughs)

David Sacks 1:10:17 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:10:17 You heard it here first. (laughs)

David Sacks 1:10:18 'Cause they're gonna put these things in poor communities.

David Friedberg 1:10:20 No, they're not.

David Sacks 1:10:20 And so it's never gonna affect your life.

David Friedberg 1:10:22 But they're put in 15... They're putting them next to data centers, Sax, in like the middle of rural-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:24 Everything is not identity politics.

David Friedberg 1:10:25 In like Oregon, like, you know.

David Sacks 1:10:27 It's easy for you to say, "Oh, I support nuclear. Look how progressive I am. Look how smart I am." You haven't internalized the downsides.

David Friedberg 1:10:34 I just want cheap, abundant electricity, Sax. That's what I want.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:36 Sax, is everything identity politics for you, Sax? Everything you see through the lens of poor-

David Sacks 1:10:41 No, this is not identity politics.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:41 ... and rich, everything... dear.

David Sacks 1:10:42 I'm defending the poor. You're gonna put these things in poor communities.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:45 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:10:46 There you go. You're genuflecting, Sax. Looking out for the poor. Look at you.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:49 Sax, Sax.

David Sacks 1:10:50 I'm being realistic.

David Friedberg 1:10:50 Mr., Mr., Mr. Robin