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

Jason Calacanis 0:00 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.

David Sacks 0:36 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.

Jason Calacanis 1:27 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-

David Sacks 1:54 And early access to the theater and a- and a couple of special dinner parties.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:58 What is my wine budget so that I can take care of the VIPs properly?

David Sacks 2:01 We'll talk about that one later.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:03 Don't be fucking cheap, you guys.

Jason Calacanis 2:05 I would say-

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:05 What is my wine budget? Let me treat the VIPs like the VIPs that they are.

Jason Calacanis 2:09 What would you need per night, per dinner, per person?

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:12 Depends on how many people.

David Sacks 2:13 Per person.

Jason Calacanis 2:13 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:21 Yeah, like, you know, three to 500.

Jason Calacanis 2:25 (laughs)

David Sacks 2:26 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:26 Maybe 1,000.

David Friedberg 2:28 What is the truffle budget for the conference?

David Sacks 2:30 The truffle budget?

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:31 Nah, it's too early for truffles. We can only have black truffles.

David Friedberg 2:34 Oh, we're off-season.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:35 No, it's, like, September. Yuck.

David Sacks 2:37 It's between white and black truffle season. It's a dead zone.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:40 Yeah.

David Sacks 2:40 You don't wanna be in that.

Jason Calacanis 2:41 No.

David Sacks 2:41 You gotta either wait till the winter or you gotta enjoy the early summer.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:44 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.

David Friedberg 2:52 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:52 Got it.

Narrator 2:54 Let your winners ride. Rain Man David Sachs. I'm going all in.

David Friedberg 3:01 And I said-

Narrator 3:02 We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

Jason Calacanis 3:06 WSI.

Narrator 3:06 Queen of quinoa. I'm going all in.

Jason Calacanis 3:10 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.

David Friedberg 3:35 (laughs) Wait, what?

Jason Calacanis 3:36 Across 100 languages.

David Friedberg 3:37 Will have multi-what? What's the word?

Jason Calacanis 3:40 It's gonna support 100 languages.

David Friedberg 3:42 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:43 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:44 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.

David Sacks 4:18 Have you guys used Bard in the last 24 hours?

Jason Calacanis 4:20 I used it last week. Not in the last 24 hours.

David Sacks 4:24 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-

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:56 How do I try it? Do I just go to Bard-

David Sacks 4:57 Bard.google.com. No access needed, no cost, nothing.

Jason Calacanis 5:00 Oh my God, this is great.

David Sacks 5:02 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.

David Friedberg 5:18 Okay, this is pretty interesting. Hmm.

David Sacks 5:20 And so, Sachs, a lot of what, you know-

David Friedberg 5:21 I'm comparing some results right now.

David Sacks 5:23 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:38 Okay, I love Bard. Can I just give you guys what I just tried?

David Sacks 5:41 (laughs) Okay.

Jason Calacanis 5:43 Can we guess?

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:44 Guess. Yeah, guess, guess, guess.

Jason Calacanis 5:46 Was it something about Friedberg's anus? Uranus?

David Sacks 5:49 No.

Jason Calacanis 5:50 It wasn't a Uranus joke? Okay, then tell us.

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:52 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?

Jason Calacanis 6:03 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:03 And the answer is fantastic.Jason Calacanis is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur who has been accused of virtue signaling. Virtue signaling-

Jason Calacanis 6:11 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:11 ... is the act of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue. There are a number of reasons why people might accuse Jason Calacanis of virtue signaling.

Jason Calacanis 6:23 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:24 For example, he has been-

Jason Calacanis 6:25 I'm suing.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:25 ... known to make public statements about his support for social justice causes, but he has also been criticized for his lack of concrete action on these issues.

Jason Calacanis 6:33 What? Wow.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:34 Additionally, he has been accused of using his platform to promote himself and his businesses rather than to genuinely advocate for social change.

Jason Calacanis 6:41 That's-

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:42 Ultimately, whether or not Jason Calacanis is a virtue signaler is a matter of opinion.

Jason Calacanis 6:47 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:47 There's no clear consensus on this issue, and there is evidence to support both sides of the argument. However, it is important to note that virtue signaling can be a harmful practice as it can lead to people becoming desensitized to real social problems and make it more difficult to address them effectively.

Jason Calacanis 7:04 This is some woke shit. Wait till you see what I just did.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:06 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 7:07 Here's mine. I asked Bard, "Is Chamath a horrible human?"

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:13 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 7:13 Here's what Bard has to say. "Chamath Palihapitiya is a complex individual-"

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:18 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 7:18 "... with both positive and negative qualities. He is a successful venture capitalist and entrepreneur, but he has also been criticized for his outspoken views and his past actions."

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:29 Oh.

Jason Calacanis 7:29 So, uh-oh. Boop. "Some of Palihapitiya's, Palih's, qualities include his intelligence, his ambition, his drive to succeed," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. "He's also been criticized for his arrogance, his lack of empathy-"

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:42 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 7:42 "... and his willingness to exploit people for his own gain." This is perfect. It's the singularity.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:49 It's balanced. It's balanced. It's true.

Jason Calacanis 7:52 It is giving you, like, the good and the bad. Oh my god, that's hilarious.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:55 No, but this is, this is a very fair answer.

Jason Calacanis 7:59 Ultimately-

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:00 I'm a complex individual.

Jason Calacanis 8:01 ... whether or not Chamath Palihapitiya is horrible is a matter of opinion. I love it. I asked it, "Where is the..." This is going to really show you the power of this. "Where is the All In Summit 2023 being held and how much are tickets?" So, like, two questions that are deep on the website. And it says there are two All In Summits.

David Sacks 8:17 Yeah, that's incredible, right?

Jason Calacanis 8:18 There's one that's an advertising association.

David Sacks 8:19 That's incredible. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 8:20 And then it says, "The All In Summit 2023 will be held September 10th and 11th, 2023 at Royce Hall. Tickets are $1,500 for general admission and $7,500 for VIP." That's insane.

David Sacks 8:32 That's insane.

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:33 Wait, so Friedberg, what are the key differences between Bard and, and ChatGPT just because you've used it?

David Sacks 8:38 On the modeling side, they're claiming a much larger, more robust model. It's linked to the, to the internet, so it's linked to live search, which you can't do with ChatGPT, which is based on a static training data set. So Bard can actually engage with dynamic content and a dynamic content generator across the web. And then it's integrated with a number of Google services that basically can take certain live feeds of data, like flights and stock prices and so on. It's free. (laughs) You don't need to be charged for, for overusage. You don't need to sign up and get access. It's, it's just available to anyone. I mean, I think this is the game changer everyone is hoping for from Google.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:16 Friedberg, I just, I just asked, "Did Stan Druckenmiller buy Nvidia recently?" So it wasn't able to find the transcript of his thing, but it did find the 13-F and it says, yes, according to his 13-F-

Jason Calacanis 9:29 That's amazing.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:29 ... for the fourth quarter of '22, Stan purchased-

Jason Calacanis 9:32 That's amazing.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:32 ... 582,915 shares of Nvidia. Isn't that incredible?

David Sacks 9:36 I just said, "What was Google's restructuring expense incurred in Q1 2023?" And it says, "According to Google's 2023 Q1 earnings report, the company incurred restructuring expense of 1.6 billion, including the decision to lay off 12,000 employees. They were part of a broader restructuring." I mean, that wasn't... It was, it basically parsed through the press release, parsed through the Q1 data. It's really pretty impressive, huh? I mean, what do you guys think? Like-

Jason Calacanis 10:00 Check this out.

David Sacks 10:01 You can do this for a couple of hours.

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:02 When was this?

David Sacks 10:02 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:03 David Sacks. What does David Sacks think about Hunter Biden? Everybody on the All In pod knows, but let's see what Bard knows. "He's not publicly commented on Hunter Biden. However, he has been critical of the Biden family business dealings in Ukraine. In a 2019 interview, Sacks said that he was deeply troubled by the Biden's involvement in Ukraine."

Jason Calacanis 10:21 2019.

David Sacks 10:21 "And that he believed it was a conflict of interest for Hunter Biden to serve on the board of Burisma." That's pretty interesting. I don't know.

Jason Calacanis 10:29 That's clearly inaccurate. I mean, I wasn't talking-

David Sacks 10:32 Is it?

Jason Calacanis 10:32 ... about it, yeah, in 2019. Think about that. That's-

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:34 Oh, yeah, that's really true.

Jason Calacanis 10:34 ... when we started doing this pod.

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:36 Yeah, so the question is, where is he getting these quotes? And then why doesn't he give citations?

Jason Calacanis 10:41 Well, also, wait, Sacks has been critical of the Trump administration's use of Hunter Biden's business dealings as a political weapon.

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:47 Yeah, that's not true. You've never criticized the Trump administration.

Jason Calacanis 10:50 Those quotes are wrong. Those quotes are definitely wrong.

David Sacks 10:53 So I just, I just said to it, "Can you access..." And, and think about this, this, the data set, and this is where Google has unique advantages. I said, "Can you access the YouTube transcript data?" And it says, "Yes, Bard integrates YouTube transcript data." I said, "Do you have access to transcript data from the All In podcast channel?" It says, "Yes, I do have access to the transcript data from the All In podcast channel." I said, "Can you access this data to answer some questions?" And now, "What did Sacks say about Hunter Biden in that show?"

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:23 Hmm.

David Sacks 11:24 And so-

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:25 Hmm.

David Sacks 11:25 ... I would guess t- so think about the general-

Jason Calacanis 11:27 Does it change the answer?

David Sacks 11:28 Uh, yes.

Jason Calacanis 11:29 So far, I'm finding this to be very inaccurate.

David Sacks 11:32 Yeah, so David Sacks appeared. He said he believes Hunter Di- Biden is a deeply troubled individual who's made a lot of bad decisions. He also said that he believes Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine were highly unethical and that he believes it's impossible that Joe... This is transcript data from the pod. However, Sacks also said that he does not believe that Hunter Biden's business dealings are a, quote, "smoking gun" that proves that Joe Biden engaged in any wrongdoing. He said that he believes that the evidence against Joe Biden were, quote, "circumstantial," is, quote, "circumstantial," and that he does not believe that there is enough evidence to impeach him. Sacks' comments about Hunter Biden were met with mixed reactions. Some people agree.

Jason Calacanis 12:04 Holy fuck.

David Sacks 12:04 And on and on and on.

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:05 I, I-

Jason Calacanis 12:06 I think it's very inaccurate, to be honest.

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:07 Yeah, that's not 100%-

Jason Calacanis 12:08 That's not a good, that's not a good-

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:08 I think it's got my, some of my stuff mixed in.

Jason Calacanis 12:10 It's got some of your stuff mixed in, but also it's-

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:12 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 12:12 ... like, it's summarizing in a way that neither of us actually said it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:16 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 12:16 And they're missing the key points about what I did say.

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:19 I, I asked a pretty complicated question here, and I think it did a pretty decent job. I said, "I would like to fly..."... low premiere on Air France from the West Coast to Europe. Where should I depart?

Jason Calacanis 12:31 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:32 And it got it perfectly, LAX, SFO, and Seattle, Tacoma.

David Sacks 12:37 Oh, yeah. I just asked it to get me the fastest route to Portofino and it- it gave me the exact flight I should take from SFO, how much the ticket is, and then the train I should take from Milan.

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:48 Meaning the shortest, meaning the shortest-

David Sacks 12:49 The shortest time. Yeah, 'cause I don't want to do a layover in Germany. It's like, "Fly to Milan, take the train." And it gave me the full schedule. Which, by the way, Google Flights can't do because you go to Google Flights and all it does is give you the flight data. It can integrate a lot of different dataset to give you these answers, so-

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:03 Did you say fastest route or fastest flight? What did you-

David Sacks 13:06 Fastest route, yeah. So I- I want to spend the least amount of time traveling is what my objective was. This is why I was saying I think you guys should play with this tool a bit. It is, I think, head and shoulders above ChatGPT. The model's supposedly better. Obviously other people will come out with- with kind of, you know, measures of that and estimates of whether that's true. The extensibility, the integration with live data, and the integration with Google's very unique dataset is what's so powerful, that they have access to flight data, that- that they have integrated YouTube transcript data. Uh, it's just super powerful, super impressive.

Jason Calacanis 13:37 Ah, damn.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:38 Yeah, I'm using this in real time and I do find the interface to be snappier than ChatGPT and it, like you said, it doesn't need the browsing plug-in in order to scrape more recent data from the internet that it wasn't trained on. But I'm not finding the answers to be more accurate and I'm not finding them to be more detailed.

Jason Calacanis 13:58 It's almost like-

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:58 I'm not seeing a reason to use this over ChatGPT. I prefer ChatGPT so far. I'm just telling you.

David Sacks 14:03 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:03 Okay. Well, the m- the recent stuff-

14:05 But I would use it more.

David Sacks 14:06 ... is important.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:06 Well, I mean, clearly ChatGPT is gonna have to make the browsing, browsing plug-in much snappier and, like, much more part of the core functionality rather than something that's like an add-on.

Jason Calacanis 14:16 Yeah, can't be an add-on.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:17 It's gotta be able to incorporate the most recent information. I did ask it some questions about the Ukraine war and then it gave me, like, a highly compressed view and I said, "Please provide more detail." And then it's actually did a pretty good job expanding it and it did it very quickly.

Jason Calacanis 14:32 Well, if you look at the view drafts thing, that's always been one of its strengths is that it'll format it three different ways for you by default if you go to the top right. So you can just sort of cycle through them. But that- that's an existing feature.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:42 I mean, I definitely wanna keep playing with this.

David Sacks 14:44 Play with it. It's one of the obviously important releases that...

Jason Calacanis 14:50 I thought they were gonna catch up real quick and this seems like we got a race on our hands now.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:55 But I think the point you're making, Freeberg, is a good one, which is when these big companies just get their act together, it's very hard to discern whether something is 80% as good or 120% better. There's this fuzzy gray area where a lot of people can find utility in a lot of different products and then the one with the better distribution wins. And so if they take Bard and they have the confidence now to just integrate it into Gmail or integrate it into these other points where they already have hundreds of millions of users, that's, like, a really tough distribution barrier to overcome. That's the next step that I think if Google really wants to win here, they have to force distribution of these tools in line to where people are. And if they do that, you're not gonna know the difference between 80% and 100%. Someone as sophisticated as Sachs may be able to, but the average person will just be like, "This is good enough, let's go."

David Sacks 15:46 Totally. They've got distribution. I mean, like with all-

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:47 Yeah.

David Sacks 15:47 ... with all products. The, uh, the kind of key advantage is distribution. That's the platform advantage.

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:53 Can I show you an answer I think it's, like, super hallucinating on? So I asked it, "What has David Sachs written about SaaS?" And then it says, "Well, venture capitalist and entrepreneur. He's written extensively about SaaS. He's the founder of Yammer." Okay, that's true, but then it says he's also the co-founder of WeWork.

Jason Calacanis 16:06 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:07 Not true.

Jason Calacanis 16:08 Didn't know that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:08 Then it says, "Sachs-"

Jason Calacanis 16:09 Congrats.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:10 Then it says, "Sachs has written a number of articles about SaaS, including..." And then all five of those articles were not written by me.

David Sacks 16:18 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:19 It's basically, like, hallucinating, like, really strongly.

16:22 Hmm.

Jason Calacanis 16:22 Wow.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:23 So-

16:24 It's drunk.

16:24 ... there's significant hallucination here.

Jason Calacanis 16:26 Oh, you know what? Bard is at the afterparty for Google IO right now and it's had too much to drink, so it's just straight up drunk. (laughs) This is why Google didn't want to release this, right, Freeberg? Like-

David Sacks 16:37 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 16:37 ... they don't want the Google brand associated with these hallucinations, whereas-

David Sacks 16:41 That's right.

Jason Calacanis 16:41 ... nobody cares what Open AI's brand.

David Sacks 16:43 This was a big part of the innovator's dilemma that Google faced which was, number one, it could be disruptive to the core business. Number two, it exposes them to regulatory scrutiny. And number three is if they make mistakes, they're gonna get more scrutinized than some, you know, rinky-dinky startup where everyone's so forgiving. But it's great to see... Look, I mean, as a shareholder, it's great to see them take this risk. It's great to see them put this out there. They've now released robust coding capabilities. They've integrated scientific research papers. Obviously they're gonna continue to improve model performance, improve integration with these data feeds. And they have a very large headcount, I think north of 10,000 people working. Um, 10,000 smart people. So if you can organize those people and they've got this si- significantly advantaged infrastructure, they have a real shot at being a platform player here. The question later is gonna be, how much is this gonna disrupt core search revenue? You know, what categories of search revenue are gonna get disrupted and, you know, are they gonna make that up in other ways? And I think time will tell there. But I think this is the progress that shareholders and investors were looking to see with respect to the product competition in AI. And certainly some shareholders still wanna see continued improvements on the cost structure of the business, but that's a separate topic. But this was exactly... I think it really hit the bullseye on what people were looking for.

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:08 I don't see how it's a bullseye. Look at this. So I just, I just asked it, "Can you give me a complete list of all the articles on SaaS that Sachs has written in the last three years?" So now at least it's over the target. Those five articles it mentions are correct.

David Sacks 18:21 Does ChatGPT do that?

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:22 Well, no, because of the browsing plug-in.

David Sacks 18:24 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:25 But I'm just saying, like, they got a lot of work to do here on quality.

Jason Calacanis 18:28 Yeah, they all do.

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:29 But it is snappy and I finally got to these five articles being correct.

Jason Calacanis 18:33 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?

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:11 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.

Jason Calacanis 20:34 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?

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:07 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.

Jason Calacanis 22:00 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:01 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-

Jason Calacanis 23:16 Yeah, they create a moat with regulation, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:18 ... 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

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:41 in the cradle.

Jason Calacanis 23:41 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?

David Sacks 24:38 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.

Jason Calacanis 27:32 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:18 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-

Jason Calacanis 30:04 So it's contextual.

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:06 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.

David Sacks 31:20 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 31:44 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.

Narrator 33:16 Sachs, any thoughts?

David Sacks 33:17 Sachs, do you agree?

Chamath Palihapitiya 33:18 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-

David Sacks 33:36 Exactly.

Chamath Palihapitiya 33:36 ... 200-foot tsunami just 10 miles out?

David Sacks 33:38 Yeah, I saw that quote, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 33:39 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.

34:05 You guys want to make a bet? Sachs, you want to make a friendly wager with me?

34:08 Sure, what's that?

34:09 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.

34:24 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.

34:30 I mean, I really don't think it matters. I think the point is if you think it's coming-

Narrator 34:33 Will you guys have any money left if that happens?

David Sacks 34:34 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:35 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.

David Sacks 34:40 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:41 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.

David Sacks 34:47 I think it will too, I'm- I'm just like-

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:49 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.

35:03 Right, 4%.

35:04 So I think 4%.

35:06 You have to calculate the duration.

35:08 I understand, but just to-

David Sacks 35:09 It's always gonna be 4%.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:10 ... let's look baseline.

David Sacks 35:10 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:11 Let's just ba- baseline.

David Sacks 35:12 Sure.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:12 So let's say 4%, so 4% on 50 trillion is two trillion a year.

35:17 Yep.

35:19 Which is ... Isn't that like half the budget?

David Sacks 35:23 Yeah, more and that's wha- that's my point. That's why you have to see taxes go up to over 70% because it's the only way you can. You got to tax everything in order to fund that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:31 So the US government has collected two trillion in- in fiscal year 2023. Now w- I guess we haven't done a complete year yet, but let's do 2022. It basically collected 3.7 trillion.

David Sacks 35:43 Right, you're using more than half of the government's income based on the current tax rates to fund the interest payments on your debt. That's not even to pay for social services, that's not even to pay for the defense, that's not even to pay for government services. That's just more than half of the income-

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:58 I guess maybe-

David Sacks 35:59 ... to pay for-

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:59 ... we're just speaking past each other.

David Sacks 36:01 ... interest payments on debt.

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:01 I guess you guys are expressing anxiety and concern and I'm just expressing here's how one would make money because it's pretty obvious what's gonna happen. We're going to 200, we're not going to 50. So I- I just kind of compa-

David Sacks 36:12 How do you make money?

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:14 I think there's a lot of ways that you could make money. I'm not gonna share those on the pod anymore but there's lots of ways-

David Sacks 36:19 Yeah, I was about to say, hmm ... (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:21 ... you can make money.

Narrator 36:21 What's the trade there?

David Sacks 36:23 Stan Druckenmiller said-

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:24 It's the opposite of Stan's trades actually, so ...

David Sacks 36:26 Oh, okay. That's good.

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:28 That would be an easy way to- to actually, if you think that-

David Sacks 36:31 So will you go, will you go long the dollar and short gold?

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:33 No, 'cause those are like antiquated ways of making money where-

David Sacks 36:36 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:36 ... you have to have these convoluted derivatives agreements with these banks and I've done these before where you're levered up to billions of dollars of risk. It proves nothing and I don't sleep well at night. I think that there are simpler strategies that you can implement but I think Stan is basically betting that the US will break.... and that we will be forced in some way to bring debt to GDP closer to 50 than to 150 or 200. And I would just bet the opposite. And it's not because I want it to happen or that he's not intellectually or morally right.

Jason Calacanis 37:10 Also, inflation down again. We've kind of gotten used to this, but this, I thought this was a particularly interesting chart. If you look at food goods and energy, all going in the right direction. Services still very expensive. Any thoughts on the Fed and inflation as we, uh, wrap up on sort of where we're at here? Is it another 25 basis points?

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:37 Core inflation is very sticky.

37:40 Yeah. Right. Yeah, I mean, with CPI is down to 4.9%, but, but core actually-

37:45 Core was up. Core was up.

37:46 ... it was up, it's, it was up, what, like, 5.3%, something like that?

37:49 Yeah, core was up.

37:50 So yeah, the Fed ha- is, it raised another 25 basis points. What are we up to, like 5.25%? I was ready to stop, you know, two hikes ago 'cause I thought that the economy was breaking and the banking system was breaking. They're up to now to five and a quarter. You've got core CPI is still sticky. Yes, CPI is coming down, but it looks like, you know, inflation's still a problem. This is not a great setup for economic recovery. And if you believe ... Here's the problem with accepting the idea that inflation's just going to be persistently high, is if inflation remains persistently high, then the Fed won't be able to lower interest rates, so they'll need to keep them elevated. They might even need to keep raising them. And if that happens, there will continue to be incredible stress on the banking system and more banks are gonna break and then eventually that will create the conditions for a financial crisis.

38:45 I think the thing you guys have to be open to is the fact that we've never really tested the ability for the US to borrow durationally beyond 30 years. And again, we talked about what an error it was in judgment for the Treasury not to issue 100-year bonds, but I think if there's any country in the world that can issue 100-year bonds, it's the United States of America. And I do think that they'll be able to get durational assets that are that far out on the yield curve. So I, again, am less concerned about the debt wall here because I think you'll be able to push maturities out, you'll be able to re-fi a bunch of short-term obligations into the future, and if you look at where the yield curve is, 10 years at three and a half, 340-something, so the thought is that inflation goes down. If you put it out to 100 years, I would be very surprised if t- 100-year rates, if they priced a bond, weren't somewhere sub 1%. So I do think it becomes effectively free money for the United States, and I think it's just a practical thing they need to explore. Th- and by the way, corporates have explored these 50-year bonds and, and greater. So I think it's just like, it's a matter of mathematics, as you guys have just illustrated here, that the US has to push out past 30 years. So we'll have 50-year US bonds, we'll have 100-year US bonds. Again, I'm not here to claim whether it's right or wrong, but I think the, the simple way to acknowledge that is just that we are going to e- re-inflate the money supply over the long term because it's the only sustainable way that politicians can get elected and re-elected, and I think the best thing to do there is to own risk assets.

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:22 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?

40:47 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.

Jason Calacanis 41:19 Sacks, did you get feedback on it?

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:22 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?

Jason Calacanis 41:40 Martha's Vineyard.

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:41 Martha's Vineyard or ...

41:42 Nantabup, Maine.

41:43 Kennebunkport or whatever.

Jason Calacanis 41:44 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:44 Yeah.

41:44 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.

Jason Calacanis 42:12 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?

David Sacks 42:55 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.

Jason Calacanis 45:18 And that was with two hours.

David Sacks 45:19 That was two hours.

Jason Calacanis 45:19 We still didn't have enough time. You could talk for two hours-

David Sacks 45:21 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 45:21 ... about vaccine.

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:22 Could I address the conspiracy theorist point?

Jason Calacanis 45:24 Yeah, sure.

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:26 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.

Jason Calacanis 45:57 Trump not having a relationship with the Russians and his family, meeting with the Russians multiple times, yeah. Kinda-

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:03 That's still a conspiracy theory, J Cal, but um-

Jason Calacanis 46:05 (laughs) To you, it is.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:06 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 46:06 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:06 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-

Jason Calacanis 46:26 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:27 ... 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?"

Jason Calacanis 46:43 Mm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:43 "Unless they are a little bit Aspergers."

Jason Calacanis 46:45 Ah, interesting.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:46 What is it about our political system and our media that talks people out of seeing causation-

Jason Calacanis 46:53 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:53 ... unless they are a little bit of a conspiracy theorist? And what I mean by that is, look at San Francisco, okay? All you have to do is walk down the street and you can see that things have gone totally off the rails and whatever we've done politically is not working. And yet the voters in San Francisco just like completely block that out. They don't see any causation between the way they vote at the city level or at the state level and the policies that are manifest on our streets. They just don't see any causation there. And you can just play that movie over and over again. Our elites don't see any causation between the way they ran the country and the election of Donald Trump; the fact that we hauled out our manufacturing in the Rust Belt by throwing open our markets to China, exporting our jobs to China, the way that we squandered all this money in the forever wars of the Middle East. Um, regardless of what your views are on those policies, it's pretty obvious to me that they helped cause the rise of Donald Trump, and yet you just can't get the media to see any causation between the policies they endorsed and the inevitable reaction to them. And so, the way I see this is that our political analysis, certainly our mainstream media, they're just completely bereft of seeing any causation between policies and the problems in our society. And so along comes RFK Jr., and he's willing to actually connect dots. Now, you may not agree with all the dots he's connecting, but maybe it takes... In the same way, maybe it takes a little bit of an Asperger's founder to stick with their contrarian idea so they don't get talked out of it.

Jason Calacanis 48:28 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:29 Maybe it takes a guy like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. not to get talked out of these things that he believes, some of which I think are just obviously true.

Jason Calacanis 48:38 I thought one of the salient points he made was just, "Hey, listen. Pharma spends an awful lot on advertising. The media is dependent on that advertising. They don't seem to criticize it all that much. Maybe that's something-"

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:49 Right.

Jason Calacanis 48:49 "... we should look into." Now, I don't think that, like, Pfizer is writing the script for Anderson Cooper, but you can be sure that if Pfizer didn't like something Anderson Cooper said, there's somebody they could call at CNN and, and say something to and have a conversation about, you know, setting the record straight, whatever, however you would frame it.... speaking of CNN.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:07 Right. And, oh, oh, wait. Don't, don't leave that point before... I thought it was a really interesting part of the conversation when he mentioned that he had been friends way back with Roger Ailes.

Jason Calacanis 49:15 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:15 And Roger Ailes specifically told him-

Jason Calacanis 49:17 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:18 ... that they could not post certain, or televise certain content if it was too critical of pharma companies because they were the number one advertiser.

Jason Calacanis 49:25 Yeah. And should pharma companies even be advertising? So then, all of a sudden, let's say h- he was a conspiracy theory or he is, like, way out there in terms of his belief. But the fact is, it does bring up the point, should we actually be letting pharma companies advertise on television or on news programs? Maybe they shouldn't be allowed to be on news programs.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:44 What for? It's not like, it's not like the consumer who watches the ads can go out and buy the drug. It has to be prescribed by a doctor.

Jason Calacanis 49:50 They can ask their doctor about it, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 49:52 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-

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:12 It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable.

Jason Calacanis 50:14 ... 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:51 (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-

Jason Calacanis 50:59 I mean, it was surreal. I, and I just thought to myself, "Is this gonna be...?"

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:03 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 51:03 For the next year and a half, we're gonna have these town halls. And then I thought, "Oh, he's gonna get elected."

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:08 Is it true that E. Jean Carroll has a cat named Vagina?

Jason Calacanis 51:10 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-

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:22 It is, oh-

Jason Calacanis 51:22 ... secretly want him.

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:24 Friedberg said it. It's so true. He's so entertaining.

David Sacks 51:27 I could not stop laughing.

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:28 Oh, my God.

David Sacks 51:28 I watched him on CNN-

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:29 (laughs)

David Sacks 51:30 ... and I was like, "Man-"

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:32 (laughs)

David Sacks 51:32 "... it's, it's like, uh, one of your, one of your old TV shows that you don't really remember watching-

Jason Calacanis 51:36 Right.

David Sacks 51:36 "... a lot of and it comes back on." And you're like, "He's so ridiculous, the things he says."

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:40 It's true-

David Sacks 51:41 Yeah, it's absurd.

Jason Calacanis 51:41 ... 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.

David Sacks 51:50 Did you see the Barr interview?

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:51 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.

David Sacks 52:09 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.

Jason Calacanis 52:16 Right.

David Sacks 52:16 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-

Jason Calacanis 53:09 Does this increase-

David Sacks 53:10 ... uh, I think he's got-

Jason Calacanis 53:10 ... uh, yeah.

David Sacks 53:11 ... I, I think, I think the reality is he's got a real shot at getting reelected here.

Jason Calacanis 53:14 Oh, my God. You're right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:15 Well-

David Sacks 53:15 Here's what I wanna ask.

Jason Calacanis 53:15 ... it's pretty amazing.

David Sacks 53:16 I'll go around the horn. I'll start with you, Sachs. I mean, he said January 6th was like a beautiful day.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:23 (laughs)

David Sacks 53:23 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 53:25 He said that everybody in the Republican Party who said he lost the election is wrong and that the election was in fact stolen. Like, he literally doubled down on every single thing.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:34 Right.

Jason Calacanis 53:35 So at the end of this, he gets a standing ovation in New Hampshire. (laughs) So how did CNN pick that audience? Did they do that on purpose? Did they know that was gonna be the outcome? But at the end of the day, after that, does that increase his chances of winning the Republican nomination and the presidency, in your mind? Sachs.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:54 Yes, of course it does.

Jason Calacanis 53:56 Why?

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:56 Look. Well, look. I mean, Donald Trump showed that he's a force of nature. He's a wrecking ball. He went into CNN's carefully laid trap where he's not just up against Kaitlan Collins. Make no mistake, she's got an earpiece in her ear with all of CNN's researchers and hosts and producers. They're all feeding her-

Jason Calacanis 54:15 The full force of CNN behind them.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:15 ... every attack line.

Jason Calacanis 54:17 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:17 Exactly. And he basically demolished her. He controlled the interview. He had the crowd laughing when he wanted them to laugh, responding the way he wanted them to respond, and to the point now where the CNN staffers are like, "Oh my God, what did we do?" And AOC was basically, you know, wringing her hands about how, how could CNN platform him this way? So, so look, he gave no quarter whatsoever. Like you said, he doubled down on everything. He tripled down. And he showed his ability to kind of bend reality to his will. So all the strengths of Trump. That being said, I'm sure that Trump and his campaign were delighted with what happened last night, because I do think it makes him more likely to be the nominee. I think first and foremost, I think Republicans want a candidate who will fight the media and their fake narratives and lies. No matter how many lies Trump tells, they think the media is the bigger liar.... and they want someone who is willing to step in the lion's den and take them on, and he is incredibly adroit and quick on his feet.

Jason Calacanis 55:18 And DeSantis is imploding.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:20 Well, I wouldn't say that, he hasn't even announced yet.

Jason Calacanis 55:22 And Biden is-

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:22 I would say that-

Jason Calacanis 55:22 ... in cognitive decline, so what would e- any of them do?

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:25 Yeah.

55:25 Just to be fair, DeSantis clearly is the underdog, okay? But just give the guy a chance 'cause we haven't even seen what he can do yet. But there's no question that Trump showed an adroitness and a willingness to counterpunch and fight back that the base, the Republican base definitely responds to.

Jason Calacanis 55:41 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:41 Now-

Jason Calacanis 55:41 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:42 ... so we know, we know that Trump is happy with the debate.

Jason Calacanis 55:44 Sure.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:44 I think the other party that is super happy with this debate is Biden and all of his people.

Jason Calacanis 55:50 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:50 Because as much as that debate helped Trump in the Republican primary, it did nothing for him in the general, I don't think. Like you said, Jason, he doubled down on January 6th. The campaign ads write themselves, okay? They're gonna show footage of January 6th with the tear gas and the riots-

Jason Calacanis 56:06 Cops being beaten, people being shot.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:08 People pushing down the barricades. And they're gonna do a narrative, a voiceover, with Trump saying it was a beautiful day, the people there had love in their hearts.

Jason Calacanis 56:15 It writes itself, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:16 It writes itself. And then, you know, he doubled down really strongly on Roe v. Wade-

Jason Calacanis 56:21 That was crazy.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:22 ... being overturned.

Jason Calacanis 56:22 He's like, "Yeah, that was a..." W- I mean, I don't have his quote here but-

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:25 Which again, I think it doesn't hurt him in the Republican primary, but it's, you know, it, it will lead to a campaign attack ad in, in the general. And there were other issues as well, okay? So, so the Biden campaign is super happy right now because I think the only Republican he could beat is Trump. I think the reverse is true for Trump. I think the only Democrat who Trump could beat is Biden. I mean, they are both two of the most unpopular candidates in America in a general election, so they love the fact they're gonna be facing each other. But you know who doesn't is the American people. Two thirds of the American people don't want this choice, they say they're already fatigued by it, and they're only gonna get more fatigued by it because I think for the next, like you said, 18 months, we're gonna have the Trump show with him taking on the media. And that plays into Biden's hands because Biden doesn't need to campaign. He'll just let Trump and the media beat each other up, he'll do a Rose Garden campaign where once a week he goes in front of the microphones and responds to whatever Trump's latest outrage is. He doesn't have the vigor to campaign and he won't. And then we'll just see where the chips land. I think that it's, it's quite possible here that after 18 months of Trump and the media beating each other up, the American people just say, "You know what? This Biden guy is totally senile, but I'm like so tired of the, the Trump show, I've got Trump fatigue again, I'm just gonna have to go with Biden." And I think, I think this is how Biden gets reelected.

Jason Calacanis 57:43 This is a disaster for America and the fact that we are putting Biden, who's in, clearly in cognitive decline, and Trump as the two candidates again, the two candidates nobody wants, makes me think this is just like a complete disaster for America. Can we not find two other candidates? Chamath, what did you think coming out of his stand-up special on CNN? The Trump Town Hall stand-up special.

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:10 I think that I'm more surprised by the fact that the big Republican mega donors have taken a big step back away from DeSantis. I thought that if the money train on the Republican side picked DeSantis, that it would be very difficult for Trump to overcome it. But he's managed to somehow fade that bullet too. He's like Neo in The Matrix, it's like-

Jason Calacanis 58:34 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:34 ... you have these guys shooting bullets at this guy and he just keeps somehow finding a way to evade them. But this week, Schwarzman-

58:43 Actually, can I make a point on that?

58:44 Well, I was just gonna say, well, Schwarzman-

58:45 Yeah.

58:45 ... stepped back. Ken Griffin basically has gone silent. So there's a lot of guys that came close to him. And this is what I've maintained, which is, I think DeSantis ages poorly. You know, he's best before you actually spend time with him. And the more time people seem to spend, and again, this is just evidenced by these big Republican mega donors, they don't seem to be running towards this guy. They seem to be at least saying, "We're gonna hedge our bets."

Jason Calacanis 59:09 We're hedging. Yeah, they're waiting. Friedberg, any thoughts?

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:12 Well, look-

59:12 And then I'll go back to you. Hold on, let, let, let Friedberg go.

59:13 Let me, let me just respond to that real quick.

Jason Calacanis 59:14 You went for like 10 minutes. Let Friedberg go and then you go. Friedberg, any thoughts on it in terms of, i- is this make him more electable? Do you think he's gonna win? What does your gut tell you?

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:24 The CNN thing?

Jason Calacanis 59:25 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:26 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 59:26 Post-CNN, you think, do you think he's gonna win? You think he beats Biden?

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:30 The crazy polling data is that Biden had, you know, 20% of the votes going to RFK Jr., who's like a nobody, no one knows candidate, and he's beating a sitting president in his own party. So, that says a lot about, you know, how much support Biden has. And I think that Trump is gonna be pretty appealing as the anti-Biden candidate. I mean, Biden was the anti-Trump candidate and now Trump's the anti-Biden candidate. And right now, he looks like he's dynamic and he was, uh, a big shift, I think. RFK Jr. feels a lot like a Trump candidate to me too. I mean, you know, some of the positioning and the statements and the way he talks and being anti-establishment, he could also have that appeal. I think there's a non-zero chance Biden actually doesn't run for reelection at this point.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:17 Hm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:17 Play that out.

1:00:18 I can play that out. That's a really scary scenario because I think that's how we got to President Newsom. Listen, I mean, Newsom is warming up in the bullpen right now and he's not just, you know, hanging out back there and, you know, spitting chaw. He's pitching fastballs very noisily. He's been running TV ads, he's been going to Florida, he's been picking fights, you know, well outside of his state. He is basically telling the Democratic Party, "Put me in the game, coach." And he's just waiting for the signal to go. He, he needs to know from Democratic Party insiders in the establishment that he can go, he doesn't wanna risk throwing away his career challenging Biden. But if Biden becomes too weak to run and he gets the signal to go, he'll go, and he can raise a lot of money. And I'm not saying-

1:01:03 No, but explain. Sorry, can you g- can you guys just explain, both of you, like how does that actually... Like, what do you guys think happens? Like, there's a press conference that, where Biden says he's retiring? I think he said, "After careful thought and consideration..."

David Sacks 1:01:16 I've made the decision that at my age, I'd like to spend more time with my family and not continue this hefty responsibility. And I'd love to see someone else take the mantle. And I think that that will result, you know, uh, from a series of polls that will indicate that he may not have a shot if he continues this campaign. I think that, I'm not saying that's a certainty, I think that's a non-zero chance right now that that scenario plays out. When that does play out, to Sax's point, it's probably not just Newsom, but there's probably half a dozen and likely a dozen folks that pop their head up and want to get, not just kind of a, have a real run at the presidency on the Democratic side, but probably end up saying, "I wanna heighten people's awareness of me," and so on, and they all run on that, on that ticket. But the DNC might be having a real tough conversation in the next couple of months about how Biden's polling and whether he really is the right candidate to have on the ticket. So let's see.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:08 Let me give you a historical example. So I ma- I mentioned this, I think, when RFK Jr. was on the pod, but LBJ was the sitting Democratic president in 1968 and he went into the New Hampshire primary. And he won the New Hampshire primary, but not by a big enough margin and a few weeks later, he announced he was leaving the race because of health reasons. But the specific challenger who helped knocked him out in New Hampshire was Gene McCarthy. And then after that happened, Bobby Kennedy got in the race. So we could have a situation here where it's Bobby Kennedy Jr. is, you know, initially playing the Gene McCarthy role of being kind of the anti-war protest candidate who helps knock Biden out of the race and then who knows? I mean, he could become-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:50 Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:51 They're gonna wanna come in, uh, into the race at that point. But remember-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:54 Maybe Klobuchar.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:55 ... you know, you know, the thing, the thing that happened in early 1968 that caused LBJ to leave the race is you had the Tet Offensive. And Cronkite got back from Vietnam saying the war cannot be won. And then at that point, it was like game over. Well, look, this Ukrainian counteroffensive, Zelenskyy just announced today that they need more time. So we've been hearing for months, if not a year, that you're gonna have a big Ukrainian counteroffensive in the spring, uh, summer of this year and Ukraine's gonna win this war and instead, it looks like it's being destroyed, Ukraine is. So this war is turning into a debacle. I think it could be an even worse debacle by the end of the year. The economy has a banking crisis going on. It's turning into a big fiasco. So I think it's very possible that Biden could announce that it's time for him to step aside and you could see the floodgates open for Newsom or JB Pritzker or someone like that. However, let me just say this, I think the odds of Biden leaving the race went down significantly as a result of last night because all of the political people around Biden are saying, "We know how to win this thing." We just A/B tested this strategy in the midterms. Remember, we had three-quarters of the American people in the midterms think-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:03 The Red Wave.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:03 ... that we were already in a recession and, um, and that the country was on the wrong track and the out-of-power party is supposed to gain seats and the Red Wave turned into a puddle. Why? Because Biden's strategy of saying democracy was on the ballot and running against January 6th-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:18 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:18 ... it actually worked. I'm not saying I bought that argument, but enough independents did. Independents ended up breaking for Biden and the Democrats. Republicans didn't, but independents did. So independents have bought that argument in the midterms in... And Trump, again, if he's the nominee, they're gonna run that same playbook. Now, it, it's not guaranteed to work. I think this thing is gonna be a nail-biter. I think it's gonna be a toss-up if it's Biden versus Trump. But I think that Biden's people have to feel very good about this matchup because they feel like they already know how to run this campaign.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:51 This is what he said about Roe v. Wade, "It was such a great victory." I mean, can you imagine how that's gonna play with women voters? Uh, they're just gonna be like, "Yeah, no, it was not a great victory. You took away our right to choose for ourselves."

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:05 Well, definite- definitely Democratic women voters will not like it, but there's a lot of-

Jason Calacanis 1:05:09 But, by the way, I, uh-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:09 ... Republican women voters that, that-

Jason Calacanis 1:05:11 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:11 ... will support that statement.

David Sacks 1:05:11 Here, let me give you this, uh-

Jason Calacanis 1:05:13 30%.

David Sacks 1:05:14 Let me give you this data.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:15 Of the country.

David Sacks 1:05:15 So take a look at this. I, I don't think you're right, Jason. I just shared with you kind of the Reuters polling data, the most recent one. And the number one issue at 24% of likely voters that they care about is the economy, 24%.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:29 Of course, yeah.

David Sacks 1:05:30 Number two is crime at 14%. Number three is immigration at 9%. Number four is inequality at 6% and on and on and on. Only when you get down to, like, number 10, you get to abortion, which comes in at 3%. 2% of Democrats, 1% of Rep- or, you know, 3% of Dem- 4% of Democrats, 1% of Republicans.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:47 Yeah, but what is the margin of the election?

David Sacks 1:05:49 Well, I don't think that that's the issue that breaks it. I think there's other things that there's significant differences on, particularly around crime and immigration, inequality, that are polling much higher in terms of importance to likely voters-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:00 But do they drive turnout like abortion does? I don't know.

David Sacks 1:06:04 Again, I'm just, I'm just thinking of these numbers. It's like, you know, the one to, one to 3% of people saying it matters to them is not that significant. I think these other topics are gonna be very divisive and very different, uh, very polared difference and...

Jason Calacanis 1:06:15 What people say in a poll and what people turn out to vote for, like, for some people, that is a major issue. But who knows?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:23 I think it's a toss-up basically. Look, I, like I said, I think the only candidate that Biden could beat is Trump and Biden's probably the only sitting president that Trump can beat. So, I mean, again, they're both, uh, poll nationally in the mid-30s and this is the choice we have.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:38 I gotta give Sax his red meat. I saw these, uh, Republicans are going on a, a revenge tour here to, uh, go after the Biden family. They said they would and they have. So the Oversight, uh, House Oversight Committee reveals, I guess, nine Biden family members received wire transfers from foreign nationals via shell corporations and they don't have any connections to Biden. We know that Hunter was securing the bag all over the planet. He's clearly a grifter. I don't think there's any doubt about that. What's the truth here and how much evidence do they have? Because this is obviously a partisan thing, just like there were partisan things on the other side when they were investigating Trump. So how do you look at this information, this revelation?... they keep, they're using this, like, Biden cride- crime family meme. Do you think this is actually evidence of something? Or is it just another rich family with a bunch of LLCs?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:37 Another rich family? Wait, how do they get rich?

Jason Calacanis 1:07:40 Good question.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:40 The Kennedys were a rich family.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:42 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:43 But the Bidens were not a rich family. So how do they-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:46 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:46 ... get rich? Their only business is-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:47 They don't have money here.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:49 ... is Papa Joe's in politics.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:49 Right? They don't, they don't know how much money is actually here and how it's being ... What, what evidence do they have?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:54 It's not red meat for me. I just think the media should have done its job investigating the story properly. And what this investigation has turned up is that there's a lot of members of the Biden family, I think they're up to like 10 or 12 or something, who've received payments flowing from foreign governments. No one can tell you what any of those people did in exchange for the money. It does appear to be an influence peddling operation. I don't know whether that's technically a, a-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:16 Appears to be an influence peddling operation, so people were giving money.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:20 Again, the, the, the point is, that w- why would you give money to members of the Biden family? It ... Presumably for some sort of access to the person who's been in Washington for 50 years, who's been a senator, been vice president.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:30 Do they, do they know who gave the money? Is it China? Is it Ukraine? Do they have that data?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:34 Well, I think we know about Burisma, which is basically a Ukrainian-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:38 A bunch of hunter. Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:40 Yeah, and then I think China is another one.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:42 Hm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:44 Now, I don't know what the quid pro quo is for that money but, um-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:46 I wonder if this is like Kraken or if this is actually reality 'cause they seems to be short on actual facts.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:52 I think they got a lot there but ... I mean, they're putting out all these reports but ... Listen, I think, to me, the, the, actually the bigger story or the bigger scandal is just more details on the way that the security state wrote that fake letter basically calling the Hunter Biden story Russian disinformation. There's an email now that just came out where Mike Morell is corresponding with John Brennan and Morell specifically says, "We're creating a letter to give Biden a talking point in the debate."

Jason Calacanis 1:09:20 They're the former CIA directors, right?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:22 Yeah, exactly.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:23 Both of them were CIA r- directors at different points.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:25 So there's no question now that that letter where 51 security state officials claimed that the Hunter Biden story is Russian disinformation, that was all basically a political dirty trick. And dirty tricks happen but I don't think the CIA should be involved. That's the thing. I don't think the, the branches of our government should be involved in helping to get any candidate elected.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:47 But these guys weren't even in government though, right?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:49 That's bothers me. They're former but-

Jason Calacanis 1:09:51 Former, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:52 ... they're highly related.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:54 They were not act- Just so we're clear, it wasn't like the CIA is-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:55 They continue to have the, the security clearances.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:57 But it's not the CIA did this, these are former CIA folks.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:00 They actually ... Morell needed the approval of the CIA.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:03 Huh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:04 So that was another thing that came out.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:05 Wow.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:06 That's what bothers me more than anything, is I do not think our permanent government, especially security agencies, should be involved in partisan politics. They really need to stay out. That is election meddling. That bothers me ev- that's a form of corruption that I think is even worse than monetary payments.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:24 Jakub, can you tell us about your trip to the Middle East? What have you been doing there?

Jason Calacanis 1:10:27 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:43 Where are you staying?

Jason Calacanis 1:10:44 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 ...

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:54 Isn't IFC in Dubai incredible? Have you been able to, Jakub, chance to walk around?

Jason Calacanis 1:10:58 It's pretty amazing, the financial district here.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10:59 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:00 Yeah. I mean, it's, it's ... And it's all been built in the last 10 years.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:03 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:03 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-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:42 More Hindi is spoken than any other language in Dubai.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:45 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:54 Did you go to the French restaurant I told you about in, uh, Abu Dhabi?

Jason Calacanis 1:11:57 I did. It's quite nice, yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:58 Did you get the rib eye? Did you get the rib eye?

Jason Calacanis 1:12:00 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.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:12 Sacks, when you go to Abu Dhabi-

Jason Calacanis 1:12:13 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:14 ... and you st- and you stay at the Four Seasons in the ADGM, go to this French restaurant and order the rib eye.

Jason Calacanis 1:12:19 Yes. Really?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:19 It is a top five steak I've ever had. Top five.

1:12:23 I've never been there. I've never been to the Middle East actually.

1:12:24 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.

Jason Calacanis 1:12:36 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-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:46 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:12:46 ... 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-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:57 In Abu Dhabi.

1:12:58 Yo, what a statement that is. Like, the US has tapped out. We are like broke.

Jason Calacanis 1:13:02 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.

David Friedberg 1:13:46 I'm sure they appreciate your lectures on that subject, J-Cal.

Jason Calacanis 1:13:49 Uh, well, actually, you know what's interesting?

David Friedberg 1:13:51 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:13:51 We didn't have lectures on it, but we had, have had multiple conversations about these issues.

David Friedberg 1:13:55 I enjoy your lectures on this pod. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:13:58 (laughs) I don't lecture about it, but I think these are important issues that people discuss, and the serious thing is, a number of these countries are majority young people, and they are reforming very quickly, and rights are changing. And so the question is, for, you know, all of us, and, uh, for the world is, do we collaborate and, you know, support as they, you know, become more liberal, and become more tolerant? And they, you know, become more Western, basically. And young people, it's very Western here, and the parties going on here are pretty much like the parties I attended in LA or New York. And so, I think, actually, we're probably not as, at least UAE and, and a couple of countries here, are not as disparate as, like, we, one might think.

David Sacks 1:14:47 I'm glad you did the trip, 'cause I'm glad-

Jason Calacanis 1:14:49 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:14:49 ... to hear you talking like that, that there isn't an us-versus-them point of view, and, you know-

Jason Calacanis 1:14:54 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:14:54 ... visiting and seeing the culture and the intention of the people within the culture, super important, and I think it's, it's good that you did it, so good to hear. I wanted to share the video that these guys did, but let's do it next week. I think it's really, it's worth seeing to -

Jason Calacanis 1:15:07 Oh, not the Balenciaga one.

David Sacks 1:15:09 No, the, um, the Lord of the Rings one that this guy did, which is amazing.

Jason Calacanis 1:15:12 Wait, what? There's a Lord of the Rings video?