E128: Google enters AI wars, Druck’s warning, Trump crushes CNN & more

1. 0:00 – 3:10

   All-In Summit 2023 announcement!

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      All right, everybody. Welcome to the All-In podcast. Lots to talk about, but right off the bat, congratulations to David Friedberg, who is the chairperson of the All-In Summit 2023 on the big announcement. We're gonna be having the All-In Summit September 10th to 12th at Royce Hall at UCLA in Los Angeles, California. Tickets are now on sale and selling out quick. Friedberg, maybe you can just give people a little overview of why you selected the location and, uh, what you hope to accomplish in terms of the programming. Uh, just broad strokes and then we'll get right into the show.

   2. DSDavid Sacks0:36

      I think the general headline is today and tomorrow, where are we? Where are we headed? I think exploring the state of the world and interesting things that we're uniquely... or that we're all kind of excited about in the future, and we wanna have great conversations with candid people that can give us kind of, you know, their very honest on the ground points of view on everything from technology and markets, macro, science, society, and culture. So we're gonna talk across all those different topic areas. And similar to what we did last year, the four of us on stage having conversations with these folks. So pretty excited. I think LA is a great location. There's obviously availability for people to stay. There's great venues for us to do the evening events, and it's certainly super accessible for folks from all over the world.

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:27

      And we decided this year to have three tiers of tickets. We'll have the VIP tickets. We'll have scholarships for people who fill out a form, so we can, you know, have really great diversity and representation at the event and up-and-comers maybe who couldn't afford the VIP ticket. But in between, you decided to have a standard ticket as well that's just 1,500 bucks, and there'll be a VIP lounge this year for the VIP tickets and-

   4. DSDavid Sacks1:54

      And early access to the theater and a- and a couple of special dinner parties.

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:58

      What is my wine budget so that I can take care of the VIPs properly?

   6. DSDavid Sacks2:01

      We'll talk about that one later.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:03

      Don't be fucking cheap, you guys.

   8. JCJason Calacanis2:05

      I would say-

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:05

      What is my wine budget? Let me treat the VIPs like the VIPs that they are.

   10. JCJason Calacanis2:09

       What would you need per night, per dinner, per person?

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:12

       Depends on how many people.

   12. DSDavid Sacks2:13

       Per person.

   13. JCJason Calacanis2:13

       Well, just say per person per night. Is it like $200 a person? $100 per person per night? 'Cause a person drinks a half a bottle of wine, two or three glasses.

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:21

       Yeah, like, you know, three to 500.

   15. JCJason Calacanis2:25

       (laughs)

   16. DSDavid Sacks2:26

       (laughs)

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:26

       Maybe 1,000.

   18. DFDavid Friedberg2:28

       What is the truffle budget for the conference?

   19. DSDavid Sacks2:30

       The truffle budget?

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:31

       Nah, it's too early for truffles. We can only have black truffles.

   21. DFDavid Friedberg2:34

       Oh, we're off-season.

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:35

       No, it's, like, September. Yuck.

   23. DSDavid Sacks2:37

       It's between white and black truffle season. It's a dead zone.

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:40

       Yeah.

   25. DSDavid Sacks2:40

       You don't wanna be in that.

   26. JCJason Calacanis2:41

       No.

   27. DSDavid Sacks2:41

       You gotta either wait till the winter or you gotta enjoy the early summer.

   28. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:44

       We have to have a conference in early November. At that point, we can focus the entire VIP budget, if we're recording, to me, would be spent on white truffles and white bourbon.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg2:52

       (laughs)

   30. JCJason Calacanis2:52

       Got it.
2. 3:10 – 18:33

   Google IO releases, updated Bard demo, fighting the innovator's dilemma

   1. NANarrator3:10

   2. JCJason Calacanis3:10

      All right, everybody. Let's get started. Chamath Palihapitiya is with us as well, the dictator himself, and David Sachs, the Rain Man. Yeah, Google had their I-O event. They announced PaLM 2, Google's language model is gonna power 25 products, including Bard, which is, got coding capabilities now, I guess to go up against GitHub's Copilot. PaLM 2 will have improved multilinguality.

   3. DFDavid Friedberg3:35

      (laughs) Wait, what?

   4. JCJason Calacanis3:36

      Across 100 languages.

   5. DFDavid Friedberg3:37

      Will have multi-what? What's the word?

   6. JCJason Calacanis3:40

      It's gonna support 100 languages.

   7. DFDavid Friedberg3:42

      (laughs)

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya3:43

      (laughs)

   9. JCJason Calacanis3:44

      And it's gonna be better at mathematics and reasoning. They also announced Duet AI, which is basically Google's suite of generative AI tools for Docs, Sheets, Drive, all that kinda stuff. Kinda like a copy of Microsoft's Copilot tools that Sachs has talked about a whole bunch. The guide on the side, if you will. They teased the future where AI can, uh, summarize docs, which Box AI Aaron Levie is doing. They also previewed proactive prompts in the sidebar of Google Docs. And I talked about that a whole bunch on the Swinging Startups. They're gonna also now add images in replies.

   10. DSDavid Sacks4:18

       Have you guys used Bard in the last 24 hours?

   11. JCJason Calacanis4:20

       I used it last week. Not in the last 24 hours.

   12. DSDavid Sacks4:24

       I think you guys should use it. We should talk about it. It's really impressive. I think it's better than ChatGPT at this point from my experience on talk, going through a number of things 'cause it's actually connected live to the internet. It's connected live to search. It can pull down real-time data for you. It can do real internet searches for you and just give you the results. It's, it's extremely powerful. I feel like it's the product that Google has been scared to do, which is the product th- that can truly disrupt search, and they're doing it. So I-

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya4:56

       How do I try it? Do I just go to Bard-

   14. DSDavid Sacks4:57

       Bard.google.com. No access needed, no cost, nothing.

   15. JCJason Calacanis5:00

       Oh my God, this is great.

   16. DSDavid Sacks5:02

       And seriously use it and it does real-time search and it's 180 languages. It converts, it generates images for you. It can generate charts, results. It's really powerful, guys. Google has strung together, I think, a lot of features and you can look, Google's market cap's up $150 billion (laughs) in the last two days.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg5:18

       Okay, this is pretty interesting. Hmm.

   18. DSDavid Sacks5:20

       And so, Sachs, a lot of what, you know-

   19. DFDavid Friedberg5:21

       I'm comparing some results right now.

   20. DSDavid Sacks5:23

       Yeah, a lot of what we've been talking about with respect to plug-ins and the tooling built into AutoGPT, many of the most interesting kind of applications that folks have kind of demonstrated or utilized are, are really kind of built into this Bard product.

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:38

       Okay, I love Bard. Can I just give you guys what I just tried?

   22. DSDavid Sacks5:41

       (laughs) Okay.

   23. JCJason Calacanis5:43

       Can we guess?

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:44

       Guess. Yeah, guess, guess, guess.

   25. JCJason Calacanis5:46

       Was it something about Friedberg's anus? Uranus?

   26. DSDavid Sacks5:49

       No.

   27. JCJason Calacanis5:50

       It wasn't a Uranus joke? Okay, then tell us.

   28. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:52

       Well, I, my first question was, why is David Friedberg such a sellout? But the answer confused him with an actor, so let's forget that. My second question was, is Jason Calacanis a virtue signaler?

   29. JCJason Calacanis6:03

       (laughs)

   30. CPChamath Palihapitiya6:03

       And the answer is fantastic.Jason Calacanis is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur who has been accused of virtue signaling. Virtue signaling-
3. 18:33 – 23:41

   AI regulation updates

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya18:33

   2. JCJason Calacanis18:33

      AI regulation, we talked about it five weeks ago on the show, I think. Well, there's been some movement there. Vice President Harris met with CEOs of Alphabet, Microsoft, OpenAI, so that's Sundar, Satya, and Sam, to discuss implementing AI safeguards. And then on Tuesday, Sam Altman was interviewed by Patrick Collison, uh, the CEO of Stripe, and he endorsed the idea of IAEA for AI. That's the International Atomic Energy Agency. So is that, um, hyperbolic, delusions of grandeur, or right on target, Shamook?

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya19:11

      Well, the interesting thing about the IAEA is that what I learned recently from the CEO of Planet Labs, Will Marshall, is that the predecessor organization to the IAEA is really this organization called Pugwash. And what that was Einstein and Bertrand Russell in the '50s, post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing together academics to basically create a way to think about nuclear disarmament going forward, just because they all saw the damage. And there was a, a large framework that set up the current denuclearization treaties, and then the IAEA was set up after that. And so I think that there's a thread here which is basically what he's saying is there's something around nuclear disarmament that is very similar to AI, both in terms of its potential, but obviously in terms of its risks. And so there's like a whole monitoring framework. There's a know your customer kind of framework. These are not unfettered things that can just live openly in the wild. So I think it's im- interesting to acknowledge that Sam, who's deep in the bowels of one of the most important companies, sees both its potential but its danger enough to say that this is how we should think about it, like nuclear weapons, I think is a very important thing to acknowledge.

   4. JCJason Calacanis20:34

      And the White House pledged to release draft guidelines for AI safeguards that the National Science Foundation plans to spend $140 million on at AI-focused research centers. FTC chair Lina Khan wrote a guest essay in The New York Times calling for AI regulation due to large-scale risks including monopoly consolidation, fraud, extortion, and bias. Any thoughts there, Sax, about adding regulation to the mix right now? Are we jumping the gun here and gonna smother this thing before it even gets correct answers?

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya21:07

      Serious risk. And the White House also announced that Kamala Harris would be the AI czar for this issue, which I don't think inspires anyone with confidence that they're gonna, you know, get this right. Look, my concern here is I think we should have conversations about the risks of AI. We should be thinking about that. I think people in the industry need to be thinking about what guardrails can be put on it. I think Elon's raised, I think, long-term concerns about whether this could lead to AGI, you basically create a superintelligence that you can't control. I think people in the industry haven't really figured out how to address that. That problem is called alignment and everyone's trying to figure out how do you even make alignment work? Is that theoretically possible? So there are real and valid concerns. Jake, how you've raised the issue of deepfakes, I think provenance of data is gonna be a real issue. People committing fraud or, you know, other kinds of criminal acts using it. So there are real concerns, but the problem is that we have no idea how to regulate this yet.

   6. JCJason Calacanis22:00

      Yeah.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya22:01

      And, and the fact that Kamala Harris is the AI czar now again just points to the fact that nobody has a good idea of what this is supposed to be or who the expert's supposed to be. And this idea of creating an Atomic Energy Commission, look, I, I can see why Sam and other industry leaders might want that, because they're gonna quickly develop relationships. The, the biggest AI companies, which now includes OpenAI, which has the backing of Microsoft and Google, and the biggest of the big tech companies, they have all the lobbyists in Washington, they have all the political connections, they're the ones who are huge donors, and they have political relationships and they're gonna help construct the regulations and it's gonna turn into another example of industry capture, just like RFK Jr. told us about on the show last week when he talked about how the big weapons companies influence our foreign policy, the way that the big pharma companies influence the FDA and so on. We're gonna end up in a situation in which the big tech companies have inordinate influence over this new regulatory agency. And since it's not clear what the regulatory agency is even supposed to be doing yet, they're gonna end up promulgating a bunch of regulations that create a barrier to entry for the little guy and-

   8. JCJason Calacanis23:16

      Yeah, they create a moat with regulation, yeah.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya23:18

      ... for the big guys. And they'll slow down the whole process of innovation in the space, which some people might like, but I think is really the best hope that America has to get out of its horrible fiscal situation, all this debt. We need a massive productivity boost to get out of the massive debt bubble that we're in. So what I'd hate to see is that, yeah, we, we basically kill this, this thing

4. 23:41 – 40:22

   Druckenmiller's warning, macro overview

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya23:41

      in the cradle.

   2. JCJason Calacanis23:41

      Interesting. Yes, we are in a deep pit here. And Stanley Druckenmiller gave a speech at USC at the 37th Annual Meeting of the USC Marshall Center for Investment Studies, and he expressed concern about the financial crisis that occur, could occur in the 2025 to 2035 period due to the baby boomers turning 65 and the impact on entitlements. He predicted that in 25 years, spending on seniors will grow to 60% of all taxes. Here's a look at the chart. You can see today there, uh, as the, the vertical line, and about 5% of our GDP goes to Social Security, uh, today, and about another 5.5 goes to, uh, Medicare, Medicaid. And it's predicting here that those combined will go from, hmm, what looks like 12% today up to 24% of GDP. Your reaction?Freeburg?

   3. DSDavid Sacks24:38

      I mean, my reaction is it, it's another very important voice stating the obvious, like the arithmetic just doesn't work. When we had RFK on last week, I prodded him on his stance and point of view on the federal deficit, the fiscal deficit this government runs and the entitlement programs that are only gonna swell and the debt burden, which has an interest payment obligation on it, that the interest payments are swelling. And when you do the arithmetic on all this, it's gonna balloon the cost to service the debt and without some degree of cutting across the board spending and entitlement programs, discretionary spending and entitlement programs, you can't make the interest payments, which all, you know, inevitably leads to some form of default. So that's just the math and the way this all works out, and I think what he's done is put, uh, pen to paper and shown that, you know, call it roughly 2025 to 2035, you start to run into that fiscal scenario where, you know, you can no longer generate enough income from the US economy to fund both the interest payment obligations on the federal debt as well as these entitlement programs, and something's gotta give. Either you're gonna have to default on the debt or you're gonna have to cut the entitlement programs. And the point he's making is that the longer you wait to cut the entitlement programs, the worse it's going to get because you're accruing so much debt in the interim. And as we know, that becomes very politically unpopular. And what's so scary to me, and I've kinda shared this and, you know, obviously Chamath has a different point of view, but it feels to me like this is that Don't Look Up movie moment where we have this, like, you know, looming disaster. We, we don't have any fuel in the car and all that everyone's talking about is where are we gonna drive the car. And every political conversation, every candidate gets on stage, gets on a podcast, gets on a TV show and they talk about stuff that is simply not feasible and the direction setting with respect to social policy, wars, geopolitics, you know, how are we gonna take care of our middle class, none of that stuff is possible to actually execute against without recognizing and acknowledging that we don't have gas in the car and we have to figure out how to gas up the car. And so it's great to see Druckenmiller being vocal, putting very simple, clear slides together. It's like what I've mentioned in the past, I would love to see a Clinton-esque, Bill Clinton-esque slide deck where he would come up with a poster and show everyone, "Here's the economy, folks." And I think Druckenmiller did a great job and I encourage everyone to go watch that. Um, there, there's an audio transcript of the talk as well as the slides are publicly available on the internet. We'll put the links in the, the show notes here today. I just think it's, it's, uh, whether or not you agree with the outlook, I think it's worth everyone watching and realizing how serious of an issue this is and why this has to become the number one topic of conversation going into this next presidential election cycle.

   4. JCJason Calacanis27:32

      He's also disclose he's short the dollar, long gold, euro, oil, and AUD, which I guess is the Australian dollar. And he's also long NVIDIA and Microsoft, believes NVIDIA's got a monopoly on the chip market. I got a question for Chamath and then to Sax. So Chamath, w- what's your just reaction to this? Do you think he's Dr. Dooming it and we can have all this debt? And then the question then becomes, is there any way out of this? Uh, we had a Trump town hall. I hate to bring it up and go back into, you know, the sort of Trump commentary on all this, but he's, he's the lead candidate, Sax. And he said he thinks we can get out of debt, we just gotta drill a bunch of oil, drill belt baby drill, and w- we'll get out of this, uh, problem, we'll be able to rebalance the budget. So Chamath and then Sax.

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya28:18

      I wanna be clear. I don't think it's great that we have these enormous debts and entitlement obligations, but I also don't think that there's some magical number where the economy breaks. And the reason is because we're central to not just our economy, but everybody else's economy. W- we are the reserve currency of the world. It's not changing anytime soon. It's not even close. And we are, for better or worse, and I think Sax and I don't like it, but we are the world's policemen. We are a bunch of things. We are the world's center of innovation. We are the world's center of these great leaps forward in humanity. When we talk about all of these different things, these aren't coming from random countries. They're coming from the United States. We can debate which company, but we're never debating the country. So I think that there's a legacy of value creation and innovation that we've always been at the forefront of, at least since America was founded, so 1776 to now. I think the reality is that debt to GDP will continue to increase. I don't think a single politician can practically get elected by offering to cut entitlement spending to people that have spent their entire lives paying into a system. So as a practical matter, this thing will go up and I don't think the economy will stop. I think that economics are a relative problem where you have to weigh countries against each other and what that means is the economic vibrancy, the productivity, the intellect, all of those things where we have to compete with El Salvador, we have to compete with Nigeria, we have to compete with India, we have to compete with Australia-

   6. JCJason Calacanis30:04

      So it's contextual.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya30:06

      And in that context, there is very little historical artifact that says that there is a breaking point. So I just think that if you observe the moment, it's not that what Freeburg is saying is bad. I'm not exactly sure that it's particularly actionable and I think the disproportionate amount of action is actually the opposite, which is to reinflate the money supply, to reinflate assets, to create artificial prosperity and smear it to many, many, many people. And I think that the... You have to think about how do you wanna activate your view?... I can believe whatever I want, but at the end of the day, I don't want to act in a way that's against my economic best interests, quite honestly. So I believe that winning is measured in dollars and cents on these things and from a- from that perspective, I don't particularly like it. I think I'm emotionally more aligned to Friedberg, but the practical reality is I'm on the opposite side, which says that governments will keep spending, inflation will be here, assets will keep inflating, the M2 money supply will keep going up, and on general, um, long the United States and short every other country.

   8. DSDavid Sacks31:20

      Chamath, doesn't that ultimately lead to just inflation ... It initially starts at the inflation of assets and asset prices, but it ultimately leads to the inflation of goods and services, which can cripple the economy because then, you know, the middle class can't afford things and you have economic slowdown. I mean, that's the historical record of having these kind of inflationary moments.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:44

      Yeah, I mean, inflation comes and goes, but the position of the American US dollar hasn't changed. Again, you have to remember, like, a lot of these foreign governments, 187 or whatever the number is, countries outside the United States, rely on the US dollar. They don't want to own their own currency, right? And so, yeah, you're right. Dollars do get inflated, but that increased purchasing power also actually drives the balance of power back to the United States because all of these other folks all of a sudden find the ability to import a little bit cheaper, their economies get slightly better, but the US dollar actually still does well. So there's a complex set of interactions that are all relative, so I think it's very hard to point to the US middle class and say, "Oh, this is why the US breaks." I just don't see very many good examples in a modern globalist era and there are examples, and I think Ray Dalio has pointed these out, when you look all the way in the back, but to use the UK, right, in the 1500 and 1600s of the East India Trading Company when we did not have a global economy or a global reserve currency, I don't think it's very useful. There's things you can learn, you know, taxation, I think we can learn about why taxation does kill innovation. You've said that before, I agree with that, but I- I don't think there's much value in saying because it happened in these moments, it's gonna happen exactly the same way here and I think what people don't understand is we are in a unitary, singular, mono economy that is anchored by the US dollar.

   10. NANarrator33:16

       Sachs, any thoughts?

   11. DSDavid Sacks33:17

       Sachs, do you agree?

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya33:18

       I tend to be on the Friedberg, Druckenmiller side of this thing. Druckenmiller had a great quote in this interview he just gave, I don't know, Friedberg, did you mention this last week that he said that, that he compared the- the debt ceiling and fiscal spending to worrying about whether a 30-foot wave will damage the pier when you know there's a-

   13. DSDavid Sacks33:36

       Exactly.

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya33:36

       ... 200-foot tsunami just 10 miles out?

   15. DSDavid Sacks33:38

       Yeah, I saw that quote, yeah.

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya33:39

       So what he's saying is, like, our short-term situation is bad, the long-term situation, which isn't even that long term, like 10 years out is even worse and I think there's a growing feeling that our political system is just not up to the challenge of dealing with these problems. It just seems fundamentally unserious. We never discuss it. The media doesn't really present us with accurate information and it has an agenda.

   17. You guys want to make a bet? Sachs, you want to make a friendly wager with me?

   18. Sure, what's that?

   19. Okay, I will bet you that debt to GDP gets to 200 before it gets to 50 and I'll bet you however amount of money you want and we can- we can do it for our own personal gain or for charity.

   20. That may well be true but- but the question is how- how bad is 200% debt to GDP? I tend to think that's a really bad scenario.

   21. I mean, I really don't think it matters. I think the point is if you think it's coming-

   22. NANarrator34:33

       Will you guys have any money left if that happens?

   23. DSDavid Sacks34:34

       Yeah.

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:35

       Yeah, you will have a lot of money. You'll just have to profit from it. If you think it's happening, your job is to profit from it.

   25. DSDavid Sacks34:40

       Hmm.

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:41

       I'll make the same bet with you, Friedberg. I think it gets to 200 before it gets to 50 or 250 or 300, you can pick your number.

   27. DSDavid Sacks34:47

       I think it will too, I'm- I'm just like-

   28. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:49

       Let's do the math on that real quick. So the- the size of- of GDP is what, about 25 trillion and- and we're at about 32 trillion of debt. If we were to have 200% debt to GDP right now, it'd be at 50 trillion of debt. Now let's assume, let's impute an interest rate at which you would need to- to finance that.

   29. Right, 4%.

   30. So I think 4%.
5. 40:22 – 49:52

   RFK Jr. feedback, pushback, conspiracy accusations

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya40:22

   2. Let's move on to the presidential election real quick. Wh- I'm curious, gentlemen, last week we had RFK on. Did you get any feedback? Uh, the, the show obviously did really well. A lot of people watched it. I got a tremendous amount of feedback. People thought he was a fascinating, interesting character. Some people thought he was a conspiracy theorist. They pointed out a bunch of different moments, uh, during the interview, but what was the general feedback you got?

   3. My biggest thing was, I think he surprised a lot of people to the upside. A lot of people emailed me saying they thought one specific thing with him and we tried to address it, which is, he's painted as this kind of like conspiracy theorist or anti-vax person by the mainstream media, and overwhelmingly, so much of the feedback was, "Wow, this guy is so totally different because you gave him a long, long format in order for him to really talk." I thought he was really engaging and very interesting and very smart.

   4. JCJason Calacanis41:19

      Sacks, did you get feedback on it?

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya41:22

      Yeah, I mean, I think he is very authentic. I think he's very principled. I think that he's a rebel in a way. I mean, to grow up in the Kennedy family and to be part of all of those elite circles, whether it's in Hollywood or Harvard or ... Where do they go for the summer?

   6. JCJason Calacanis41:40

      Martha's Vineyard.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya41:41

      Martha's Vineyard or ...

   8. Nantabup, Maine.

   9. Kennebunkport or whatever.

   10. JCJason Calacanis41:44

       Yeah.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya41:44

       Yeah.

   12. I mean, you think about like all of the elite circles that he grew up in, right, and for him to deviate from Democratic Party orthodoxy and elite thinking in all of these really significant ways shows that he is, again, very principled, very authentic, and I think a, a rebel in a really good way. And he's telling people a lot of things that you just don't hear on the Democratic side and through the mainstream media. So I think it's all positive.

   13. JCJason Calacanis42:12

       Yeah, I got positive feedback on it. Friedberg, the one thing people said was, we ex- they, th- some people said, not a lot, but they expected us to push back maybe on him harder or something, or be harder. I thought we did an interesting job of letting him talk and really taking these topics to 10 or 20 minutes each. The one people were particularly, I don't know if concerned is the right word or puzzled by, was that we didn't push back as much on the vaccine stuff and we just let him talk about it. A week later, what do you think about his vaccine position and would you have pushed back more or do you, do you regret not pushing back more, Friedberg, as our science guy?

   14. DSDavid Sacks42:55

       Yeah. Uh, so one of the... He made a lot of generalized statements or statements that I think take a concern about one thing and then make them-... evidence for a whole thing being off. For example, there is a vaccine that isn't efficacious, there was a vaccine that had mercury in it, therefore all vaccines are bad. Oh, we over vaccinate now. Many vaccines today that kids take going into schools have saved countless lives and they've had a really critical role in reducing a lot of child borne illness. It's been, you know, just an incredible advance for humanity, for medicine, et cetera. I think he had a number of points he made about the COVID vaccine, and I know he's made these points for many years, he kind of extrapolates that, you know, it's evidence that vaccines are generally over-prescribed and overused and pharma companies are just out to make money and the government is aligned with pharma companies to just try and make money. I don't think that that is necessarily true. I think that there are certainly incentives that can drive bad behavior, but I do not think that what I'm looking at the evidence, both contra-evidence and, and evidence of, of safety and benefit, that childhood vaccines should be kind of changed in terms of how we're doing things today. There may be some things to change, but generally I think that they're very beneficial. So, I, I don't love kind of how he frames these things, and I think that it, uh, instead of having kind of a more nuanced conversation about this particular thing and this particular example, he blankets things and people get scared and they're like, "Oh my gosh, you're right. We should stop doing vaccines for kids." That's very dangerous. That would be very bad for society, be very bad for our kids, and I think that, that we need to kind of address that in more detail over time. It's one of these hard things where you have to have kind of a nuanced conversation to give people all the necessary depth and context to feel better informed to make a better decision, 'cause, you know, there's always this kind of gripping fear that if something's off and I'm getting, you know, poison or I'm getting bad medicine or, you know, people are trying to make money off me, people immediately react negatively and angrily and they want to kind of resolve to a, a blanket position. I don't think that that's healthy. So I'd love to have a, a deeper debate on that, but the reason we didn't go into it is 'cause we didn't, we had limited time with him and we wanted to take our time kind of giving him a chance to talk about the overview of topics and getting his point of view across the, the set of topics that we generally thought were gonna be relevant in, in th- this election cycle. So that's it.

   15. JCJason Calacanis45:18

       And that was with two hours.

   16. DSDavid Sacks45:19

       That was two hours.

   17. JCJason Calacanis45:19

       We still didn't have enough time. You could talk for two hours-

   18. DSDavid Sacks45:21

       Yeah.

   19. JCJason Calacanis45:21

       ... about vaccine.

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya45:22

       Could I address the conspiracy theorist point?

   21. JCJason Calacanis45:24

       Yeah, sure.

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya45:26

       So first of all, that, that label, "conspiracy theorist," doesn't pack the punch that it used to. As you'll recall, anyone who thought the virus might have come from the Wuhan lab was once called a conspiracy theorist. If you believed that Fauci and the NIH were funding gain-of-function research, that was dubbed a conspiracy theory. If you believe that cloth masks didn't do anything, that was a conspiracy theory. If you believe that Hunter Biden was getting paid off by foreign governments, that was a conspiracy theory. So this accusation just doesn't really pack the same punch anymore.

   23. JCJason Calacanis45:57

       Trump not having a relationship with the Russians and his family, meeting with the Russians multiple times, yeah. Kinda-

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya46:03

       That's still a conspiracy theory, J Cal, but um-

   25. JCJason Calacanis46:05

       (laughs) To you, it is.

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya46:06

       (laughs)

   27. JCJason Calacanis46:06

       (laughs)

   28. CPChamath Palihapitiya46:06

       But in any event, my point is, it doesn't pack the same punch. In fact, in some cases, it's starting to become a badge of honor. So that's one thing. The second thing is, when you listen to him make his arguments, he's not just alleging certain things. He's laying out his evidence, right? He's, he's connecting dots. He's explaining the causation. And you can disagree with it-

   29. JCJason Calacanis46:26

       Mm-hmm.

   30. CPChamath Palihapitiya46:27

       ... but he is thinking in terms of like, causation. And it made me think about something that Peter Thiel once said about, you know, founders being Aspergers, where he flipped it on its head and said, "What is it about our society that talks founders out of all of their contrarian ideas?"
6. 49:52 – 1:10:24

   Trump dominates CNN "Town Hall," Trump vs. Biden potential

   1. JCJason Calacanis49:52

      All right. Well, speaking of CNN, there was an absolute train wreck of a (laughs) presidential town hall with a moderator named Kaitlan Collins. I don't recognize her name. I don't know if she has a show on CNN, but I saw the clips from it. I, I couldn't find the full debate, but my Lord, was this, uh-

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya50:12

      It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable.

   3. JCJason Calacanis50:14

      ... it was unbelievable. He got a standing ovation. He absolutely owned her on every question. All of her questions were about, you know, January 6th, you know. All of them are valid, but none of them were about running the country, essentially. And, uh, he was hilarious, at least to this audience, and he... CNN's staffers are really upset that they did this, that they gave him the... that they platformed him, which shows you exactly where they stand. They're upset. I guess they thought they could own him, and they didn't.

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya50:51

      (laughs) Did you, did you guys see the part where he was talking about the trial and he's like, "And she has a cat named Vagina"? (laughs) Did you guys see-

   5. JCJason Calacanis50:59

      I mean, it was surreal. I, and I just thought to myself, "Is this gonna be...?"

   6. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:03

      (laughs)

   7. JCJason Calacanis51:03

      For the next year and a half, we're gonna have these town halls. And then I thought, "Oh, he's gonna get elected."

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:08

      Is it true that E. Jean Carroll has a cat named Vagina?

   9. JCJason Calacanis51:10

      I have no idea, but I mean, it was... That was a pretty vicious section. And then I got the sense that CNN's management wants this. This is like a ratings bonanza for them and I think they-

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:22

       It is, oh-

   11. JCJason Calacanis51:22

       ... secretly want him.

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:24

       Friedberg said it. It's so true. He's so entertaining.

   13. DSDavid Sacks51:27

       I could not stop laughing.

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:28

       Oh, my God.

   15. DSDavid Sacks51:28

       I watched him on CNN-

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:29

       (laughs)

   17. DSDavid Sacks51:30

       ... and I was like, "Man-"

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:32

       (laughs)

   19. DSDavid Sacks51:32

       "... it's, it's like, uh, one of your, one of your old TV shows that you don't really remember watching-

   20. JCJason Calacanis51:36

       Right.

   21. DSDavid Sacks51:36

       "... a lot of and it comes back on." And you're like, "He's so ridiculous, the things he says."

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:40

       It's true-

   23. DSDavid Sacks51:41

       Yeah, it's absurd.

   24. JCJason Calacanis51:41

       ... because when he first got, when he first got elected, I was so afraid. And then you realize h- this guy is just an entertainer, really. He's a terrible politician. Bill Barr said that, or... Yeah.

   25. DSDavid Sacks51:50

       Did you see the Barr interview?

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:51

       Yeah. The Barr clip that I shared is just bananas about Trump. But so he's a showman, and he's a great showman. You know, he's entertaining. And you realize that he was... That's all he's ever really wanted to be, was, like, famous and popular and on television and, and he got all of those things and he took it to the, to the most infinite level.

   27. DSDavid Sacks52:09

       What Bill Barr said was most insightful that it's chaos when he actually tries to get things done. He can't get things done.

   28. JCJason Calacanis52:16

       Right.

   29. DSDavid Sacks52:16

       And he'll tell you all the things that you want to hear, that he wants to... that, that you wanna see get done. He did this to Peter Thiel, and Peter Thiel's spoken about this publicly, so I'm not saying anything out of line here. I don't know if this is something that's on the record or not, but it, it was publicly stated that Peter was disappointed that Trump did not get the things done that he said he was gonna get done. And I think that's really what, what he does is he incites, he entertains, he gets people engaged. He knows what you want to hear. He sells you on it. He cripples the establishment, which everyone feels treated poorly by, that everyone feels held back by, that everyone feels has taken something from them, that isn't giving something to them. And then he says, "You know what? I'm gonna fix all that for you." And then you get excited by it, and then all of a sudden, he doesn't actually deliver it. And then four years have gone by and we've forgotten about it, and he's come back in and he's kind of, you know, titillating again. So-

   30. JCJason Calacanis53:09

       Does this increase-
7. 1:10:24 – 1:15:15

   Jason reflects on his trip to the Middle Easy and the besties wrap the show!

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:10:24

      Jakub, can you tell us about your trip to the Middle East? What have you been doing there?

   2. JCJason Calacanis1:10:27

      So our bestie, Brad Gerstner, was coming here and we were at the poker game a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago, and he said he was going and I've always wanted to come to UAE a- and I've never seen Dubai or Abu Dhabi and so I said, "Yeah, I'd, I'd love to go with you," and we did a couple of speaking gigs.

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:10:43

      Where are you staying?

   4. JCJason Calacanis1:10:44

      So Four Seasons in Ritz, Four Seasons in Abu Dhabi, and the Ritz here in Dubai. And I was just gonna do these three speaking gigs, a podcast, uh, and a ...

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:10:54

      Isn't IFC in Dubai incredible? Have you been able to, Jakub, chance to walk around?

   6. JCJason Calacanis1:10:58

      It's pretty amazing, the financial district here.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:10:59

      Yeah.

   8. JCJason Calacanis1:11:00

      Yeah. I mean, it's, it's ... And it's all been built in the last 10 years.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:11:03

      Yeah.

   10. JCJason Calacanis1:11:03

       I, I would say generally speaking what I'm super impressed about, and I, I, I'm not ... it's not a fundraising trip, I was just going but then, uh, one of your former, uh, employees, Chamath, set me up with a bunch of meetings because he's like, "Hey, there's a lot of people who want to meet you." So I, I, I, I'm doing like a maybe a dozen meetings or so and there is, um, a real ... This is a very progressive place, the, the UAE of all the, uh ... and Dubai obviously, is very progressive. And so it reminds me of like, you know, Silicon Valley in the early days where everybody is doing something and it's incredibly cosmopolitan. There's only 500,000 nationals but there's 10 million people here. So there are people-

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:11:42

       More Hindi is spoken than any other language in Dubai.

   12. JCJason Calacanis1:11:45

       Yeah, I mean, the number of people here from all around the world is bonkers and that everybody's working on something, everybody's got a project, and the people are delightful.

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:11:54

       Did you go to the French restaurant I told you about in, uh, Abu Dhabi?

   14. JCJason Calacanis1:11:57

       I did. It's quite nice, yes.

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:11:58

       Did you get the rib eye? Did you get the rib eye?

   16. JCJason Calacanis1:12:00

       Y- yeah, we had like a family style thing so I didn't get the rib eye but it was, it was exceptional. The food's exceptional. It's just like incredibly cosmopolitan. It, it's like going to New York, you know, or London and they are ... There's a very unique moment in time right now.

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:12:12

       Sacks, when you go to Abu Dhabi-

   18. JCJason Calacanis1:12:13

       (laughs)

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:12:14

       ... and you st- and you stay at the Four Seasons in the ADGM, go to this French restaurant and order the rib eye.

   20. JCJason Calacanis1:12:19

       Yes. Really?

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:12:19

       It is a top five steak I've ever had. Top five.

   22. I've never been there. I've never been to the Middle East actually.

   23. So delicious, so delicious, so delicious. And in Dubai, do not stay at the Ritz in IFC. IFC is incredible but the Ritz sucks. Go- stay at the Bulgari Hotel. Beautiful. Just beautiful.

   24. JCJason Calacanis1:12:36

       But there's a very unique moment in time. I literally came down the elevator at the Four Seasons and I met four or five people from Silicon Valley in the lobby and then I came out-

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:12:46

       (laughs)

   26. JCJason Calacanis1:12:46

       ... to dinner, uh, and there was a table of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. It is ... I mean, it's basically like going to the Rosewood in-

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:12:57

       In Abu Dhabi.

   28. Yo, what a statement that is. Like, the US has tapped out. We are like broke.

   29. JCJason Calacanis1:13:02

       That's ... I think basically the, they are ... The way it's been explained to me is they believe they have 20 years, 30 years to convert the oil economy into a technology capital allocator economy. And so they want to make evergreen funds to invest. They haven't had a chance to invest in venture capital because most venture capital, there weren't that many, they were fully allocated and there was no opportunity. Now with what's happened in the United States and there's pullback a- and sort of the cycle starting over again, I think there's an opportunity for them to invest in some funds and start relationships. And then, you know, we've had a long talk here about human rights.... in different countries and it's not a monolith over here. Uh, I, I mean, I don't know who needs to hear that exactly, but they're, those, these countries are very different, very different.

   30. DFDavid Friedberg1:13:46

       I'm sure they appreciate your lectures on that subject, J-Cal.

Episode duration: 1:19:19