E100: Reflecting on the first 100 shows, fan questions, nuclear threat, markets, Amazon & more

1. 0:00 – 6:35

   Bestie intros are back!

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:00

      Jake L., do you have intros today?

   2. JCJason Calacanis0:01

      No, I don't have time for intros.

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:03

      Oh, come on.

   4. JCJason Calacanis0:04

      All right, fine. He started as a nerd with no followers on Twitter. Now he's a nerd that gets recognized when leaving the shitter. He turned water into wine. He just wants to please us. Now he's a mixture of Kermit the Frog and a science nerd Jesus. He's the man with the stans, the queen of quinoa, the sultan of science, the prince of Prozac, the lord of Lexapro. He gets stops for selfies all over town. My producer fee gave a memento breakdown. The Zultan of Zoloft, Mr. David Freiberg.

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:30

      (laughs) It's true, it did give me a breakdown. It's true.

   6. JCJason Calacanis0:33

      It did, but you're over it now.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:33

      You just name dropped three SSRIs in that intro. It's incredible.

   8. JCJason Calacanis0:37

      Well, I talked to his, I talked to his psychiatrist and he said he's working on the cocktail.

   9. DSDavid Sacks0:41

      Yeah, save some for me.

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:42

       (laughs)

   11. JCJason Calacanis0:43

       (laughs) Oh, oh, you? Speaking of you.

   12. DSDavid Sacks0:46

       (laughs)

   13. JCJason Calacanis0:46

       He's got very quick wit and impeccable grammar. Known for building beautiful products that don't work-

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:51

       Oh my God.

   15. JCJason Calacanis0:52

       ... like Callin' and Yammer. He used to invest in SaaS quite a lot.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg0:56

       (singing)

   17. JCJason Calacanis0:56

       Now he's fighting a brigade of Ukraine bots. He's spending so much time in his bunker, it's starting to get smelly. We see him only three times a week, all in Tucker and Megyn Kelly. He'd invest in your startup if you had the knack, but right now he needs that cash for his GOP Super PAC. The world's biggest ass hole, the rain man himself, Mr. David Sacks.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:15

       S asshole.

   19. JCJason Calacanis1:16

       (laughs)

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:17

       (laughs)

   21. DSDavid Sacks1:18

       That's, that's a repeat joke. That's not-

   22. JCJason Calacanis1:20

       I know, but it, it kills every time, so I'm gonna keep repeating it until you stop laughing.

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:24

       (laughs)

   24. JCJason Calacanis1:24

       His wardrobe costs so much, he can't get into a scuffle. He bought all his friends with his white truffles. He scaled Facebook to a billy. That wine collection, it's just fucking silly. He's on the world tour meeting with princes and kings. Is he talking luxury sweaters or maybe bigger things? The dictator himself, Chamath Palihapitiya.

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:43

       Wow, that was really nice actually.

   26. JCJason Calacanis1:45

       Well, I mean, I appreciate you.

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:46

       That was kind of, you, you were obviously trying to get invited to dinner tonight.

   28. JCJason Calacanis1:49

       Exa- I'm trying to get off the alternate side.

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:50

       Alternate list. He's trying to get off the alternate. In fact, the email was harsh. Nine was alternate.

   30. JCJason Calacanis1:55

       Uh, that w- you were trolling me.
2. 6:35 – 29:12

   Reflecting on the first 100 episodes and what makes the show special

   1. DFDavid Friedberg6:35

      in.

   2. JCJason Calacanis6:35

      Friedberg, he loves to produce every 17th episode. He does a great job. (laughs)

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya6:40

      Oh, no, I like to prepare, or at least know what the heck we're gonna talk about when we get together, instead of-

   4. JCJason Calacanis6:44

      And here are some prompts. He- he got these prompts because-

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya6:46

      ... our paid producer not doing his job. Yeah. Go ahead.

   6. JCJason Calacanis6:48

      Paid producer.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya6:49

      Sorry.

   8. JCJason Calacanis6:49

      Oh, God. All right, so first up on, uh, Friedberg's curiousness, this is, uh, Friedberg, uh-

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya6:55

      All right, if this is how you're gonna do it, let's skip ahead to the next section.

   10. JCJason Calacanis6:58

       No, no-

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya6:58

       Come on.

   12. JCJason Calacanis6:58

       No, no, no. Okay, so, um-

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya7:00

       Go, go, go.

   14. JCJason Calacanis7:01

       Why do you think, Chamath, people love the podcast? Why do you think they listen? Why do you think they love it? What- what is the- the phenomenon? What- what- what lightning has been captured in this bottle?

   15. DFDavid Friedberg7:11

       First is I think that they appreciate our friendship. It's kind of, like, odd and quirky, and I think a lot of, you know... It maps to, like, relationships that they have amongst their own friends. So that's what makes it relatable. But the second is that all of us uniquely have a point of view about stuff that matters more and more in the world. I think that's just the basics of it. Like, it's not like technology is going away, and it's not like its impact in the world is going away. And the more it becomes mainstream, the more it's important for a lot of folks to understand what's happening. And I think we provide a pretty unfiltered view of it, and we do it where, and this is a lot of credit to Sacks more than anyone else on this show, has to take a counterpoint and steel man what would otherwise be controversial views. And if he didn't have his three friends around him, that would make the pod meaningfully worse, I think. But the fact that-

   16. JCJason Calacanis8:08

       Can you explain for people who don't know what steel manning is, what that means?

   17. DFDavid Friedberg8:12

       Well, just, it just means, like, to in- have intellectual honesty around a point of view and actually put your best foot forward in trying to explain it, even when it's not orthodox, even when it's not what the mainstream would say is right. And so what it actually does is it creates a contrast against every other alternative that you have to learn about things, which you find incrementally is biased.

   18. JCJason Calacanis8:35

       Hm.

   19. DFDavid Friedberg8:36

       And I think that's what we've gotten right. We are four friends that have a reasonable point of view rooted in some amount of success, and I think that that's important because it gives us credibility. And we take all sides of issues.

   20. JCJason Calacanis8:48

       Yeah.

   21. DFDavid Friedberg8:48

       And oftentimes, it is not the obvious, simple, reductive answer. And I think that that's where, um, it really shines.

   22. JCJason Calacanis8:58

       Just so people know about the steel man argument, just wanna make sure people are clear on it, I think most people refer to it as the act of presenting the other argument in the strongest way possible to be intellectually honest, like the opposite of the strong man.

   23. DSDavid Sacks9:09

       Yeah, the opposite. Exactly, opposite of the strong man.

   24. JCJason Calacanis9:11

       Opposite of the strong man.

   25. DSDavid Sacks9:11

       'Cause the w- the way, the way the debate happens on Twitter and so forth is it's almost like the intellectual debate is, uh, being attacked, uh, using opposition research tactics, like it were a political campaign. So in other words, they go back through anything you might have said or written, take the- the- the thing that was most wrong or least justifiable or the thing they can even just take out of context, and then they'll try to make it about that as opposed to the argument you're actually making. And we just see this tactic over and over again, and it's not, uh, an intellectually rigorous way of having a debate about something.

   26. DFDavid Friedberg9:47

       You don't learn anything.

   27. DSDavid Sacks9:48

       Right.

   28. DFDavid Friedberg9:49

       And deep down inside, you know that it's contrived, and that is the, in a nutshell... So it has, it almost in many ways has less to do with how good we are, but frankly, how bad all the alternatives are. So even if you wanted to learn about tech, and you go up and you sign up for these, uh, newsletters, or if you look at some of these tech sites, they're really terrible, and they have done an increasingly terrible job over the last five years in telling the most important things, the truth, and everything in between. And so if you can find a source for an hour a week that is trying to tell you how basically the world is going to come together in a really integrated, multifaceted way, it's not like we're right, and it's not like we know better than other people. In fact, many times, a lot of the criticism I get is, "How dare you talk about X," or, "How dare you talk about Y." Because it makes people who are experts in that field, you know, feel like, "How dare you come into my realm and even have an opinion on, you know, uh, what Russian politics was like in the 1980s?" And those things really annoy these folks because they feel that those opinions and that knowledge should be cordoned off and held tightly as this secret that only they are allowed to talk about into the world. And this is the point where, with the internet, all this knowledge is accessible. So the value of that knowledge, in my opinion, is the least it's ever been. It's the interpretation that's valuable, and it's the ability to actually, like, think narratively around how all these things connect, and this is where I give a lot of credit. I think you guys do an incredible job. I think the way Friedberg thinks is super unique. I think the way that Sacks thinks is unique. I think, J-Cal, your courage to basically fight back is very special. All of it together is a really unique recipe. It works. And what I will tell you consistently is the number of people that listen to this of import and influence, I am constantly shocked. And if you are not sure of it, you need to get out of this stupid little echo chamber of Silicon Valley, go to New York, go around the world, and if you're in the right meetings, it's incredible how folks are getting educated using this pod, and I think that's- that's really amazing.

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya12:03

       Yeah, I do think-

   30. JCJason Calacanis12:04

       Friedberg?
3. 29:12 – 53:43

   Fan questions: Building in a downturn, how to be successful in tech, importance of uncapped upside, and more

   1. JCJason Calacanis29:12

      the producer fee, whatever it is.

   2. DFDavid Friedberg29:13

      All right, guys, I got a couple of questions here from the audience. Did you guys, uh, see this list?

   3. JCJason Calacanis29:18

      Yeah, we got them.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg29:19

      Anything stand out for you guys?"

   5. JCJason Calacanis29:20

      You, you, well, you pick, you pick.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg29:20

      So here's a question, um, we got it over email from Nathan. And Nathan said, "We know the reasons, uh, the reason you guys started the pod, what is the motivation of each bestie to continue doing it every week?"

   7. DSDavid Sacks29:36

      Uh, I ask myself that every week. (laughs)

   8. JCJason Calacanis29:38

      (laughs)

   9. DFDavid Friedberg29:38

      You and me both, Jamal. You and me both. (laughs)

   10. That's what I'm trying to say.

   11. JCJason Calacanis29:40

       That's Sax's therapy. (laughs) "Here's Sax's therapy yesterday. Why am I doing this?"

   12. DSDavid Sacks29:44

       No, I mean, seriously, I'm thinking about taking a break not 'cause I don't like doing it, but it is time-consuming and I do want time to get back to doing some business writing. I was r- on a pretty good track to publish a book about SaaS. Before we started doing the pod, I had written a lot of business blogs and-

   13. JCJason Calacanis29:59

       Whoa.

   14. DSDavid Sacks29:59

       ... this has kinda cut into that.

   15. JCJason Calacanis30:00

       Taking a break? What you, h- how many weeks?

   16. DSDavid Sacks30:02

       I don't know. I'm thinking about it because-

   17. JCJason Calacanis30:03

       What are you, 10 weeks? What are you thinking?

   18. DSDavid Sacks30:05

       Maybe, like, a month or something. Yeah.

   19. JCJason Calacanis30:07

       Oh, four weeks. Ah, you can take, that's no big deal.

   20. DSDavid Sacks30:09

       Maybe 10, 10 weeks maybe. I don't know.

   21. JCJason Calacanis30:10

       Four to 10... All right. Well-

   22. DSDavid Sacks30:11

       There's, there's a b- I've got, like, a hopper of, like-

   23. JCJason Calacanis30:12

       Right now, Brad Gershner is, like, doing jumping jacks in his backyard-

   24. DSDavid Sacks30:15

       Yeah.

   25. JCJason Calacanis30:15

       ... to put me in the game.

   26. DSDavid Sacks30:17

       Well, we could do that. I mean, I've got, like, five half-written business blogs in my hopper that I really wanna finish and, um...So I don't know.

   27. JCJason Calacanis30:25

       The show does take a lot of cognitive energy, is what you're saying. It takes a lot of those cycles, right?

   28. DFDavid Friedberg30:29

       Does it take a lot of your time each week, Sax?

   29. DSDavid Sacks30:30

       I mean, as you guys know, the taping is only a couple of hours, but then it's keeping track of all the issues and then, you know, if I'm preparing takes for this pod, I also turn some of those takes into articles-

   30. JCJason Calacanis30:41

       This is- this is the cost.
4. 53:43 – 1:14:57

   Ukraine/Russia update: Nuclear escalation, when to draw a line in the sand, how inflation could deescalate any WWIII scenario

   1. DFDavid Friedberg53:43

      right. J Cal, you wanna take us forward?

   2. DSDavid Sacks53:44

      Should we go forward? Okay, let's see what's on the docket. We've got Russia's invasion of Ukraine. You had Biden last week saying we're facing the risk of Armageddon. How is that not the top story?

   3. DFDavid Friedberg53:59

      Go, Saxypoo. Go take it.

   4. DSDavid Sacks54:01

      All right, here we go. Let me just cue it up for Sax. Biden last week said we're facing risk of Armageddon. That's your tee-up. Okay, here we go. All right. (laughs) And then Leon Panetta just... Let's tee it up, J Cal. We don't need... Everyone knows what's going on. Then you add Leon Panetta- But anyway. Leon Panetta just... Who was the former Secretary of Defense and Director of Central Intelligence, wrote an op-ed for Politico saying that intelligence analysts have now raised the probability of a use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine from one to 5% at the beginning of the war to 20 to 25% now is what he says. So... And I don't think he'd be saying that if this wasn't pretty much conventional wisdom in Washington now. I mean, Panetta is sort of an, uh, very-... respectable figure in, in the Beltway. So you have-

   5. JCJason Calacanis54:47

      And Biden said it, right? For the first time two weeks ago. Yeah, yeah.

   6. DSDavid Sacks54:49

      And Biden said, Biden said that we're facing the most dangerous situation and the highest risk of nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. He called it the risk of Armageddon. The problem is that nobody is willing to say what we should be doing differently to avoid this situation. So, you know, people are always attacking us for having a point of view on foreign policy. First of all, this affects us. I don't know why we're not allowed to have a point of view. But, you know, in, in our business thinking, where there's an existential issue, you have the attitude of "drop everything and figure this out." If somebody told you that there's a 25% chance of your company blowing up, maybe in the next few weeks, you would drop everything and focus on that problem. But it's like, you know, after the Armageddon comments, it's like the media just passed over it. It's like, "Oh, this is like crazy Biden," or whatever. It was minimized. It was contextualized. The White House walked it back. Nobody's really focusing on this and what we should be doing differently. And in fact, what Panetta recommends, and Petraeus said the same thing, is that if Russia uses a tac nuke in Ukraine, then we should respond by attacking Russia directly. Now, if we do that, we are literally in World War III. And remember, at the beginning of the war, Biden was really clear that we weren't gonna get directly involved. He vetoed the idea, correctly, of, of the no-fly zone, which would have required us to shoot down Russian planes. Biden w- remember he was asked in the press conference at the beginning of the war by Lester Holt. He said, Holt said, you know, "Mr. President, what if Americans are trapped behind enemy lines in Ukraine? Would you send in American troops to go get them?" Biden said no. I think very properly said no, because he said, "Listen, we do not want to risk World War III." But now, because of mission creep and a slippery slope, and we've all gotten more involved in this war, we've gotten more emotionally committed, you now have Panetta and Petraeus calling for us to directly attack Russia and get in World War III. Uh, the Russians almost certainly would respond with nuclear, because that's all they've got. They don't have the conventional forces to stand up to us. So, look at how close we have now gotten to the brink of a nuclear showdown. And has anybody reassessed? Is anyone calling for us to reevaluate? Because that's the conversation we should be having right now.

   7. JCJason Calacanis56:58

      A- and Freeburg, this brings up two points that I think y- you, you can comment on. Naval, uh, actually the founder of AngelList, angel investor, and, uh, just public thinker, I would say public intellectual, he came on to call in with the two of you, and he, you know, outlined like, h- who does get to have an opinion on Ukraine and other issues, which has dovetailed with this, like, h- who gets to be an expert in the world today. And of course, at the same time, uh, not only Sachs has been commenting on, "Hey, what's the off-ramp here?" Elon has been talking about, "Hey, you know, how do we get out of this? Do we have some votes, uh, you know, by these, uh, regions that have been annexed or that are in dispute?" AOC now is getting criticized 100% of people shouting her down at a public event today or yesterday, that she's a warmonger and she won't speak out against war. Uh, how do you frame the public dialogue about this, Freeburg? And then, do you see a potential off-ramp here other than Putin leaves Russia? Which is, I think, the public stance, uh, by a lot of folks. You know, Putin can end this. He just has to leave Ukraine in order for this to end. So two questions there for you, Freeburg.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg58:06

      It's very hard to have good dialogue about any situation where an argument could be made on the grounds of morality in an absolute sense, making it really difficult to have a discourse around what the right thing to do is, because you don't agree fundamentally on the objective you're shooting for. One side says the objective is to preserve the integrity of democracy and the freedom of people, and the other side says the objective should be to secure the interests of the West and the United States and preserve the world from nuclear holocaust. I think that's what makes this a challenging conversation. The objective can be reframed, and then from that objective, each side can make their own case without being forced to take in the point of view of the other side. And it's why we're at a bit of a standstill, and it's also why it's so easy to get swept up in a, uh, mass point of view, uh, a coalesced point of view of the masses that makes one feel good about what may end up being a very bad situation. It feels good to say, "I'm doing this for freedom of the people. I'm doing this to save lives." And at the end of the day, it may cause a nuclear war. And it's okay, because I feel good going into this debate that this is the right thing. It's the morally superior thing to do. What's very hard is that we can't actually say, as a group, "Our objective should be to preserve the integrity of democracies around the world, to an extent." And that's a nuanced point of view. To an extent means, "I'm willing to preserve the democracies through certain actions, but I'm not willing to cross a certain line." And absolutism doesn't need to come into play. That's what I think is making this such a very difficult conversation, and it's why it's so hard to actually have a conversation around it. And it's really, I, I would argue, the most poignant and the most dramatic moment in what we talked about earlier, which is this deep-seated kind of, you know, bipolarity. And once you're sitting on your pole, you don't wanna come off, and you don't realize that so much of the dialogue is in this middle.

   9. DSDavid Sacks1:00:29

      Mm-hmm.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:29

       And we have to come to some point of view that maybe this isn't about an absolute outcome, it's not absolutely gonna be nuclear war, and it's not absolutely gonna be the end of democracy. There's some conversation in the middle that's very difficult to have. And people that work...Somewhere in the world, hopefully, ambassadors, foreign policy people, State Department people, hopefully are having the more nuanced critical conversation about how do we resolve to the maximal outcome that doesn't necessarily take us to an absolute end?

   11. JCJason Calacanis1:01:00

       Chamath, to- to- to that point, it's gonna be an imperfect outcome here.

   12. DFDavid Friedberg1:01:03

       I think this is much, much simpler than all of this. Leon Panetta is a senior counselor to, uh, this defense contracting agency called Beacon Global Strategies who works on behalf of Raytheon. I found that out while Friedberg was talking in a two-second Google search. I suspect that if you looked for Petraeus's conflicts of interest, you would find that through some byzantine set of, you know, uh, strategic consulting organizations and whatnot, he also works on behalf of the defense industry. So you have these people who will generate more revenue and more profit if there is a massive war, and those people have been trying to push us into a land war in Europe since this whole thing started. Um, and so this is just yet another attempt. It's just the most final way of doing it. So I would just encourage people whenever you see all these folks clamoring for war, um, is just to keep in mind that they are riddled with conflict and that you can find it out. Again, this information is sitting in plain sight on the internet, and you can figure out whether this person is- is really advocating a truth that makes sense or they're getting paid to- to shill, um, a revenue-generating mechanism for some part of the military industrial complex.

   13. JCJason Calacanis1:02:17

       Sachs, how much of this is people talking their book, their book being the military industrial complex, in your mind?

   14. DSDavid Sacks1:02:23

       I think it's a big part of it. I think all of these Washington think tanks are funded by defense contractors. I think it's short-sighted obviously, because if it leads to a nuclear war-

   15. JCJason Calacanis1:02:31

       Then nobody wins.

   16. DSDavid Sacks1:02:32

       ... there's not gonna be a defense industry. There won't be anything left. So but look, I think that- I think that Washington is wired for war in part because there's a huge lobby for it, for all these defense contractors. And what's the lobby for peace? I mean, there's no one really arguing for peace.

   17. JCJason Calacanis1:02:48

       Speaking of this, Elon (laughs) tweeted-

   18. DFDavid Friedberg1:02:50

       No, I- I'll tell you, I'll tell you what's lobbying for peace, and I'm gonna connect what may seem two disparate ideas together. But the single biggest thing I think that will prevent nuclear war is the inflation that we're feeling. And the reason is because it allows the Fed, in my opinion, for the first time really in the last 15 years, to act properly. And if they hold the line and they take interest rates to 4 or 5%, I think one non-obvious outcome of all of that is that it becomes extremely expensive, next to impossible, to finance military adventurism abroad. And that's a practical economic outcrop of really, you know, meaningfully high rates greater than zero. And so I actually think the reality is that for a lot of these governments, the more that inflation sticks around, the stickier it is, the higher rates are in general, the bigger the problems at home are, and the less prone they're going to be likely. I actually think that explains-

   19. JCJason Calacanis1:03:51

       Wait are you s-

   20. DFDavid Friedberg1:03:52

       ... that explains the escalation of this rhetoric because people want to try to make this issue and put it on the table. But you understand that, you know, these folks don't say it's a 90% likelihood. They go from 1% to 25%, which if you understand probabilities is effectively a left tail risk that's effectively the same. And the reason they're trying to do it is they're trying to get it back, David, as you say, to timestamp it, to get it in front of people's perspectives, to make it important in a moment where everybody increasingly, not just in the United States, but in the UK, in Europe, are looking internally and trying to figure out how to keep their economies in a reasonably functioning way and how to make sure that their financial and other infrastructure keeps working. And that-

   21. JCJason Calacanis1:04:34

       So you're saying...

   22. DFDavid Friedberg1:04:35

       And that is not necessarily a priority when rates are zero. But when rates are 4%, I mean, just by the way, if you guys saw what happened today, it was the competing of two narratives this week. There was the financial narrative of the UK having to bail out their pension system, right, of all of a sudden the pensions being forced sellers, of those forced sellers now s- you know, uh, spilling into the United States debt markets around CLOs and collateralized loan obligations and junk debt, which then could theoretically spill as a contagion to other parts of the market. That was narrative one. And, and all of that, by the way, is a result of hiding inflation and the, you know, Fed moving up rates and, you know, other countries being forced to- to attack inflation with higher rates and creating all these dislocations, narrative one, versus narrative two, which is, hey, all of a sudden we have to put the nuclear risk on the table. And if you actually saw the print that was spilled, the disproportionate amount of the rhetoric actually focused on the former narrative and not the latter. And so I think that that's why the- these folks are escalating the rhetoric in order to kind of create an equality so that they get enough print-

   23. JCJason Calacanis1:05:47

       They want...

   24. DFDavid Friedberg1:05:47

       ... of that version of the outcome.

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:05:49

       What- what you're saying is you- you have the- the world saying, "We can't afford to have this conflict. We are broke. We've got too many chaotic issues."

   26. DFDavid Friedberg1:05:57

       Well, no, I think, I think, I think the world is saying, "We are increasingly under enormous domestic pressure, and as a result, we cannot spend on things abroad."

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:06:06

       Right. We can't afford this. And then the other side saying, "Well, we need you to afford this, so nuclear is gonna happen. There's gonna be a nuclear anhilation."

   28. DFDavid Friedberg1:06:13

       No, no, then there's- then there's a small strain-

   29. JCJason Calacanis1:06:14

       You gotta pay more attention to this.

   30. DFDavid Friedberg1:06:15

       There's a s- there's a small strain of folks who would economically benefit-

Episode duration: 1:29:52