All-In PodcastE126: Big Tech blow-out, Powell’s recession warning, lab-grown meat, RFK Jr shakes up race & more
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Big Tech’s plateau, AI shockwave, and lab-grown meat’s hard reality
- The hosts dissect major Big Tech earnings, arguing that companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon are becoming slow‑growth cash cows reliant on cost-cutting and financial engineering rather than breakthrough innovation. They contrast Big Tech’s resilience with Jerome Powell’s recession warnings, criticizing the Fed’s blunt, demand-killing approach and lack of supply-side creativity. A large part of the conversation focuses on AI’s rapid impact on knowledge work, with concrete examples of automation already replacing or augmenting white-collar tasks at dramatic cost savings. They also dive deep into alternative and lab-grown meats, explaining the underlying biotech, why the economics remain challenging, and how environmental, ethical and taste considerations collide.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasBig Tech is moving from hyper-growth innovators to ex-growth cash machines.
The hosts argue that Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon now grow revenue in low single digits and increasingly rely on layoffs, cost-cutting, buybacks and financial engineering to boost EPS, rather than shipping transformative new products.
Google has deep AI capabilities but lacks clear strategic communication and cost discipline.
Despite a strong technical lead in AI and internal confidence, Google’s earnings call was marked by silence on AI strategy and only symbolic cost measures, worrying investors who want decisive leadership, structural cost cuts, and a public plan to compete with OpenAI/Microsoft.
The Fed is using a blunt tool—killing demand and wages—rather than fixing supply-side issues.
Powell’s leaked remarks emphasize slowing the economy and cooling wages to tame inflation; the hosts argue policy should also target deficits, energy costs, and supply chain bottlenecks, and better mobilize idle labor instead of relying on recession as the primary tool.
AI could automate roughly 30% of current knowledge work in the near term.
By wiring ChatGPT-4 to tools like Zapier and travel/APIs, they demonstrate that tasks like lead research, outreach, content drafting, and some analytics can already be scripted away, implying that white-collar workers who don’t adopt AI may become uncompetitive within a few years.
AI is both deflationary for knowledge work and inflationary pressure for physical labor.
They foresee physical/service labor demanding higher wages due to scarcity and reshoring, while AI makes knowledge work far cheaper and more productive, creating a structural tension between expensive in-person work and increasingly commoditized cognitive tasks.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotes“We are now well past peak Big Tech… These companies are ex-growth, large cash flow businesses.”
— Chamath Palihapitiya
“Google has such an incredible AI advantage over Microsoft… they just have to have the will and the leadership to do it.”
— David Friedberg
“The only thing we know how to do in this situation with inflation is to kill the economy… specifically to kill jobs and wages.”
— David Sacks, paraphrasing Jerome Powell’s stance
If you’re a white-collar worker and you’re not using this [AI] this year, I think you’ll be out of a job within the next two.”
— Jason Calacanis
Scientifically, on first principles, it is absolutely feasible… It’s a function of engineering our way there to giving everyone that eats burgers and chicken nuggets everything that they want, hopefully at a lower price.
— David Friedberg (on lab-grown and recombinant proteins)
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