E144: Biden targets Elon, BRICS challenges the West, Tiger hit piece & more

1. 0:00 – 4:32

   Chamath's big poker trip

   1. DFDavid Friedberg0:00

      You want to see something? Look in my eyes. In my- look at, look in my eyes.

   2. JCJason Calacanis0:03

      Look at his- look at his eyes. It's a fucking contagion over here.

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:05

      Broski, what happened? You have conjunctivitis?

   4. DFDavid Friedberg0:08

      Yeah, a double eye. F- I got it from my daughter.

   5. JCJason Calacanis0:09

      I think he got something in his eye.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg0:11

      And then I got this, like, fucking allergic reaction to it. It is a, it is- I am just messed up, dude. For two days now, I haven't been able to see.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:16

      Okay, well, let me tell you about this weekend, which was the most motherfucking exhausting weekend of my life. I mean-

   8. DFDavid Friedberg0:23

      (laughs)

   9. JCJason Calacanis0:23

      Yeah (laughs) .

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:23

       I- I- where do I even start? Okay, here's, here's where I start. So, I fucking fly home.

   11. JCJason Calacanis0:27

       From Italy.

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:28

       From Italy.

   13. JCJason Calacanis0:29

       Get back in the arena.

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:30

       At 35,000 feet, I, I decide to troll the mids.

   15. JCJason Calacanis0:34

       Oh, no.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg0:35

       (laughs)

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:35

       We'll talk about that later. But, anyways-

   18. JCJason Calacanis0:37

       (laughs)

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:37

       ... sipping a beautifully chilled white burgundy.

   20. DSDavid Sacks0:39

       By trolling the mids, you mean that you were occupying their airspace?

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:43

       (laughs)

   22. DSDavid Sacks0:44

       You were flying at the level of commercial jets-

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:46

       He did a flyby.

   24. DSDavid Sacks0:47

       ... instead of 45,000 feet.

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:48

       I did a 45,000 feet. I went down-

   26. DSDavid Sacks0:50

       (laughs)

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:50

       ... where the public airlines fly, and I was like, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, mid, mid, mid."

   28. DSDavid Sacks0:54

       (laughs)

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:54

       Then I came back. (laughs)

   30. DSDavid Sacks0:56

       (laughs)
2. 4:32 – 7:16

   Addressing the "in the arena" comments

   1. JCJason Calacanis4:32

      my Twitter, my X, is filled with posts about Chamath's "man in the arena" comments. They have set off an absolute fury, a- as, uh, Chamath was alluding to. So, the "man in the arena" tweet, I, I don't, I don't know the timestamp here. It looks like 10:22 AM. I don't know, uh, what that is Italian time, but Chamath decided to say, "I'm in the arena trying stuff. Some will work, some won't, but always learning. You're anonymous and afraid of your own shadow. Enjoy the sidelines." And this, of course, was to somebody who was criticizing a, uh, SPAC or something, and I think this person had eight followers. And, uh, let's just go through the memes here. Here are somebody with the AI revolution has made a Chamath version of Gladiator. (laughs)

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:12

      Here is Russell Crowe and, uh, Chamath's DNA being mixed.

   3. DFDavid Friedberg5:16

      Next.

   4. JCJason Calacanis5:16

      Friedberg, "I didn't know this was possible in DNA today, but I guess there is a new actor storming Hollywood. It's ChamathCrowe." It's Russell Polytapaitia, beautiful. I mean, what a great job that is.

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:29

      Great job.

   6. JCJason Calacanis5:29

      It literally looks like you. So, great job to, uh, whatever mids did that in whatever mid software.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:35

      Do you wanna actually talk about the "man in the arena" comment and what-

   8. JCJason Calacanis5:38

      Yes.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:38

      ... the context of it is?

   10. JCJason Calacanis5:39

       Yes.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:39

       Can we talk about that, actually?

   12. JCJason Calacanis5:40

       Yeah, okay.

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:41

       I think people got upset because what I said was the truth. And this is no different than when I've said stuff before that's become a huge meme and a huge moment, cultural moment. Telling the truth, especially when it's so clear and so obvious, sometimes can really touch a nerve. And what I said is basically the following, which is that there are all these people, the four of us are examples, who are constantly doing things.... and then we come into X, and we don't confuse X with the arena. You know, we don't do stuff in the ar- in X. We talk on X. But then you go back and you actually do things. You start companies, you invest in businesses, you incubate ideas, you help founders get their businesses off the ground. Those are meaningful things. And success is never guaranteed, but there is a small strain of people who just violently either hate themselves or hate the fact that you're doing things, and then that you talk about them. And I think what this touched was just that in a simple nutshell. It forced people to confront the fact that, "Hey, hold on a second, am I this anonymous rube on the sideline that just throws shade, or am I actually doing stuff?" Here, I just wanted to take an actual direct line of attack on people who c- are constantly blaming others for everything, and if you aren't-

   14. JCJason Calacanis7:01

       Hmm.

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya7:01

       ... trying and iterating, you're a fucking loser. Go out and try something, and whether it works or not, X is a great place to then go and talk about it. That's the cycle.

   16. JCJason Calacanis7:13

       Sacks, your thoughts on the man in the arena?

3. 7:16 – 21:58

   Biden administration targets Elon's businesses, quick GOP polling hit

   1. JCJason Calacanis7:16

   2. DSDavid Sacks7:16

      Well, look, I think speaking of crazy, politically motivated witch hunts, did you see this latest story today that now there's a new government investigation of Elon? They're investigating him for supposedly, Tesla was gonna build him a glass house. (laughs)

   3. JCJason Calacanis7:33

      (laughs)

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya7:33

      (laughs)

   5. JCJason Calacanis7:34

      He loves irony. (laughs)

   6. DSDavid Sacks7:34

      Which he has basically said is ridiculous, it's not true. So the administration, you know, I- I guess to turn a phrase, people who live in glass houses shouldn't be investigating glass houses. You have the Biden administration now, the latest revelations is that Biden was using a pseudonym in emails-

   7. JCJason Calacanis7:51

      For 5,000 emails, and then, yeah.

   8. DSDavid Sacks7:53

      He was emailing Hunter Biden under the name Robert Peters.

   9. JCJason Calacanis7:57

      (laughs)

   10. DSDavid Sacks7:58

       Why would you do that about Burisma? So this is how they were communicating. First, Biden said, he said he knew nothing about-

   11. JCJason Calacanis8:04

       That's some serious CIA level, uh-

   12. DSDavid Sacks8:06

       Yeah.

   13. JCJason Calacanis8:06

       ... tactics there-

   14. DSDavid Sacks8:07

       Well, first Biden said, remember-

   15. JCJason Calacanis8:08

       ... @yahoo.com. (laughs)

   16. DSDavid Sacks8:10

       First, Biden said, "I don't know anything about my son's business." Then it turns out-

   17. JCJason Calacanis8:14

       Not looking good.

   18. DSDavid Sacks8:14

       ... based on the sworn testimony of Devon Archer, who is Hunter Biden's partner, that Biden participated in over 20 phone calls where he would call in when they were in the room with clients to, quote, "bead the brand." And now we find out that Biden was communicating with Hunter about Burisma using a pseudonym account, basically a burner account, under the name Robert Peters.

   19. JCJason Calacanis8:34

       Alleged- all allegedly, allegedly, allegedly

   20. NANarrator8:35

       murmurs ]

   21. DSDavid Sacks8:36

       Okay, but this is what the Comer investigations turned up.

   22. JCJason Calacanis8:38

       It's certainly not looking good. And as you said, this is all partisan investigations.

   23. DSDavid Sacks8:40

       Yeah, so my point is people who live in glass houses shouldn't be investigating glass houses.

   24. JCJason Calacanis8:43

       Well, here's the thing, like, i- if you're going to evaluate... an- and listen, obviously I'm biased, um, but if you're gonna investigate Tesla over this, like, it... people can buy and trade the stock however they want. Like, I... there seems to be some Biden administration, you know, like, jihad against Elon. They're going after him for this and-

   25. DSDavid Sacks9:04

       Totally. Well, no, remember, uh-

   26. JCJason Calacanis9:05

       ... and, and they don't-

   27. DSDavid Sacks9:05

       ... a week or two ago, the first investigation-

   28. JCJason Calacanis9:07

       They wouldn't invite him to the EV Summit. I mean, it's all just-

   29. DSDavid Sacks9:09

       Well, I think that's where the whole thing started is that-

   30. JCJason Calacanis9:11

       Okay.
4. 21:58 – 27:51

   Tiger Global claims disgruntled ex-employee circulated fake hit piece

   1. JCJason Calacanis21:59

      There was a leaked document, and we had this come up last week. The leaked document, uh, was sent to Chamath, and it was about Tiger Global's struggles. It had a line at the top that said this was a spike or a draft of a New Yorker story. I think a draft is the way they said it. And we had a little conversation about here. We decided not to publish it. We had a, a little discussion because we did not think, in our private discussion, that this was a real story. I saw grammatical errors in it. Sax said, "We really can't publish something like this because it, it's slanderous and we don't know the provenance of it." And on Friday, Tiger sent a letter to its LPs in response to the document. They wrote that they are being targeted, quote, "Targeted with a series of misinformation attacks anonymously using encrypted messaging platforms like Signal. We strongly believe these were written by a disgruntled former employee with whom we've parted ways. Unlike the anonymous cowards spreading this false narrative on the internet, you know who we are, and we are here and ready to answer your questions. Rest assured, our team remains highly focused on our core business, which has been performing this year." So Chamath, just your broad thoughts on the Tiger Global non-story, fake, faux story by a former employee.

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya23:17

      Chase is a incredible person. I've said this before. He helped me get into the business of investing. He seeded my first angel fund. I was pretty helpful, I think, in getting them on the cap table at Facebook many, many years ago, which helped them get going as well. So I think that he's a wonderful human being, and I've had nothing but positive things to say about him. Scott Shleifer, I don't know as well, but he seems like clearly a hard-charging person that's achieved quite a lot. And so I'm glad that we didn't publish it or talk about it. And if there is something to be said, this story will be validated and people will get to the bottom of it. What is crazy is, I don't understand what this document actually serves, except, exactly as you said, to a disgruntled person who has absolutely no economics. Meaning, if you're an LP, you don't want this-

   3. JCJason Calacanis24:15

      No.

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya24:15

      ... document to be out. If you're a partner that has carry, you don't want this out into-

   5. JCJason Calacanis24:21

      No.

   6. CPChamath Palihapitiya24:21

      ... the, out in the wild either. If you're a portfolio company, you don't want this document out in the wild.

   7. JCJason Calacanis24:27

      Hurt you.

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya24:28

      So, I tend to believe that this is just a, a disgruntled person. Again, look...I've had this experience as well, so... Which is that there are all kinds of employees who work with you. We try our best as leaders of organizations to compensate them well, but invariably what I find are people overestimate their contributions, and people try to take way more credit. They try to take credit for deals that they've done that they didn't actually do, they try to take credit for all of the internal workings, and then invariably when the leadership decides that those folks aren't a good fit anymore, mostly for cultural reasons, and are exited, they have a bone to pick and an ax to grind. And they try to sort of distribute misinformation to other LPs, to other GPs, to portfolio company CEOs. It's happened to me, it's happened to Chase, it's happened to Sequoia, it's h- it's happened to any of us that have been successful. So-

   9. JCJason Calacanis25:30

      Ax to grind people, yeah. It's, it's just like-

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya25:32

       ... again, it's just another example of, like, there are the people that are in the arena doing, and then there are the people that kind of get kicked out and get really upset and lose track of what's important. These people, instead of writing these missives, should be working.

   11. JCJason Calacanis25:49

       Yeah. I mean, how-

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya25:50

       Get back to work.

   13. JCJason Calacanis25:51

       How disgruntled, Sachs, does a former employee need to be to put in this kind of effort to write a (laughs) 10-page faux New Yorker-style expose? And, um, you were the voice of reason, I think, in our group chat in just saying like, "I, I don't even think we should talk about it," in a meta kind of way. W- we weren't gonna cover the details of it, but even a meta discussion of it, you put the kibosh on, which we would have been first, like, kinda highlighting this craziness, but you took a pretty hard stance then. Your thoughts on it?

   14. DSDavid Sacks26:19

       Well, it was written like it was some sort of journalistic article, but a journalistic article has a byline. You know who wrote it, you know who publishes it.

   15. JCJason Calacanis26:27

       Yeah.

   16. DSDavid Sacks26:28

       It has provenance. You know, therefore, who is liable if it's slanderous.

   17. JCJason Calacanis26:33

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

   18. DSDavid Sacks26:34

       This piece that was going around had none of those things, and therefore, my v- view was that we shouldn't discuss it. And my view is we shouldn't even mention it, because all you're then doing is drawing attention to something that, again, you don't know the provenance of and you don't know whether it's true or not-

   19. JCJason Calacanis26:48

       Yeah.

   20. DSDavid Sacks26:48

       ... and you don't know who's standing by it. Now, what's happened in the last week is that Tiger has issued a statement about it, and that statement was covered by the press, so I guess we can talk about the fact that they've had to respond to this. I'm still not comfortable talking about any of the contents of it, because again-

   21. JCJason Calacanis27:04

       Yeah, we don't have to.

   22. DSDavid Sacks27:04

       ... nobody's put their name by it.

   23. JCJason Calacanis27:05

       Yeah.

   24. DSDavid Sacks27:05

       So why even put them in the position of needing to respond to it-

   25. JCJason Calacanis27:10

       Yeah.

   26. DSDavid Sacks27:10

       ... until somebody's willing to basically raise their hand and say, "I, this is what I think." The piece that was circulated was a mix of both business criticism or business issues-

   27. JCJason Calacanis27:20

       And slander.

   28. DSDavid Sacks27:20

       ... and personal slander.

   29. JCJason Calacanis27:22

       Yeah.

   30. DSDavid Sacks27:22

       So, I mean, are there business issues in there that we could discuss? Uh, yeah, I mean, then they would be interesting. But i- until we know that there's some authenticity to it, I don't feel-
5. 27:51 – 40:46

   BRICS adds six new members, Sacks breaks down some potential advantages of the new group

   1. JCJason Calacanis27:51

      de-dollarization corner. BRICS added six new members, climbing to 11 total. And, uh, BRICS, of course, everybody knows, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. These four countries make up 40% of the world's population, 25% of global GDP. Joining the BRICS bloc are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina, and the UAE. New BRICS, and this is kind of being set up as, like, an alternative to G7, G8, I guess, uh, new BRICS makes up almost 50% of the global population, with a third of GDP. This is the first expansion in 13 years, since South Africa joined. Sachs, you've, uh, got some thoughts on the BRICS and a little presentation here. Uh, inform the audience.

   2. DSDavid Sacks28:35

      All right, so, J Cal, like you said, they added six new members, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and UAE. That's on top of the original five members. Now, you've described this group of countries as mid. I don't know what metric you're using to make that determination. If you look at share of global GDP in purchasing power parity terms, and we can debate whether that's the right method or not, but a lot of economists believe that PPP is the right way to look at it. The original BRICS were 32% of global GDP. The new BRICS bring it to 37%, and there's a couple dozen more countries that have expressed an interest in joining BRICS, which would bring it to 45. The G7 is only 30%, and that number has been declining over time. Back in 1995, it was all the way at 45%, whereas the BRICS were only about 17%. You can see that decline or shift here in this chart, going all the way back to the 1980s. This is why I think a lot of Americans have this casually dismissive attitude towards the BRICS, is they're thinking that these countries are still living in the era of the 1990s, of unipolarity, when the G7 was, you know, more than half of global GDP. But now the BRICS are bigger than the G7, again, in terms of PPP. The rest have risen and has become a very substantial part of the world economy. If you look at global oil production, the new BRICS now have 54% of global oil production. It's almost double what the G7 produces, despite the US still being the number one producer of oil. We're not the biggest exporter-

   3. JCJason Calacanis30:16

      Yeah but oil...

   4. DSDavid Sacks30:16

      ... because we use it all.

   5. JCJason Calacanis30:18

      Just, uh, to add to that point, oil is, of course, uh, a declining commodity, w- with renewables and nuclear, and people are gonna rely on it less, so sure, I mean, yeah, I would-

   6. DSDavid Sacks30:27

      I don't think renewables are anywhere close to being able to replace fossil fuels. If BRICS adds-

   7. JCJason Calacanis30:32

      Oh, it's cheaper... It's actually cheaper-

   8. DSDavid Sacks30:32

      If, if BRICS adds... Let me finish.

   9. JCJason Calacanis30:34

      Hold on. Just no-

   10. DSDavid Sacks30:35

       If BRICS-

   11. JCJason Calacanis30:35

       No, hold on. Let me just... J- j- to answer to that.It's cheaper now, uh, and Chamath can speak to this, to install solar, wind than it is to do a lot of the, um, carbon-based, uh, fuels. So it actually has tipped economically, uh, where it's getting cheaper in 80% of cases, 85% of cases, to install renewable. So is that correct, Chamath, broadly speaking?

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya30:55

       The cost of solar is effectively now the- the cheapest form of energy. Yeah, on a kilowatt per hour basis.

   13. JCJason Calacanis31:01

       Great. Okay, continue, Sachs.

   14. DSDavid Sacks31:03

       Well, this is preventing Germany from sliding into a massive recession because they're not able to get cheap energy anymore.

   15. JCJason Calacanis31:09

       Yeah, they turned off their nuclear.

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:11

       That also, that also supposes that you have the actual supply. And to David's point, why Germany has such a difficult issue is because they turned off nat gas, they turned off the reactors-

   17. JCJason Calacanis31:20

       Nuclear.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:20

       ... and they, there's just not enough solar installed right now. So, you know, you have to think about-

   19. JCJason Calacanis31:24

       It's also a cloudy country.

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:25

       Uh, what I just meant was more the levelized cost of energy, which is if you had an installation here and an installation there of two different modes of energy generation, solar is cheaper. But Dave, David is right, like, you know, it's still gonna take some time for the proliferation of solar-

   21. JCJason Calacanis31:39

       It will, yeah. Agreed.

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:39

       ... so that the-

   23. JCJason Calacanis31:40

       Yeah, we all agree.

   24. DSDavid Sacks31:41

       The US is already roughly energy independent. We produce about 20 million barrels of oil a day. We consume about 20 million. So we are roughly neutral with respect to the world. We're neither a net importer or a net exporter as of now. So I, oil is still gonna be a huge... It's the number one global commodity. If BRICS adds Venezuela, Algeria, and Kazakhstan, as they may do as soon as next year, they'll control 90% of all oil and gas traded globally. You- you're gonna have an OPEC plus BRICS sort of symbiosis because Russia and Saudi Arabia basically run OPEC plus. New BRICS is also really strong in food production. Five of the world's six biggest food producers are now part of BRICS: China, Brazil, India, Argentina, Russia. The only other one is the US. They have 46% of global population, 36% of global land mass. So my point is BRICS isn't just strong in global GDP, they're strong in the production of what are currently the two most important commodities in the world, which is oil and food. Uh, they also have influence over strategic trade routes. So if you look at where these countries are located, and I'm sure this went into the thinking of who they just admitted to BRICS, because they had a lot of choices. They had something like 26 countries applied, and these are the first six they've added. So they now control the Arctic Sea route, which is basically as the polar ice cap starts to melt in the Arctic, you're seeing a new ability to create maritime routes north of Russia basically, from Europe to Asia. It's a much faster route than going around the Horn of Africa or through the Suez Canal. You have this international north-south transportation corridor, which is basically a combination of overland routes and some maritime that connect Russia, Iran and India. You've got Belt and Road, these east-west corridors. You've got the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal. They're all now part of BRICS. And the point of that, I think, strategically is to bypass choke points like the Strait of Singapore, the Strait of Malacca, the Bosphorus, and the Strait of Hormuz. So the point here is that the US Navy has very strategically over decades been encircling China with military bases on, you know, island chains around China. This is gonna basically neutralize that whole strategy because China will have ways of- of securing its trade routes over land or, again, over sea going through the Arctic. So this has huge geostrategic implications. The other big thing that I think BRICS is doing is they have this five to ten year goal of allowing BRICS members to settle trades in local currencies. I think that you guys may be seeing it the wrong way. The goal here is not to create a new reserve currency. It's simply to create a way to bypass the dollar complex. They're trying to break the petrodollar monopoly. This is not an offensive organization and they're not necessarily trying to create a single alternative to the US dollar. They are trying to create a way to not have to go through the dollar complex in order to do their trade when they're trading with each other. And you know what-

   25. JCJason Calacanis34:52

       They would like to actually use the-

   26. DSDavid Sacks34:53

       ... what China and Brazil are doing is a test case for this where they are setting up a yuan clearing arrangement with Brazil.

   27. JCJason Calacanis35:01

       And the goal, to be clear, Sachs, here, is to have a voice versus the G7, uh, which they feel they've, a lot of these countries feel they've been left out of, and to maybe not have as much dependency on the West and, um, form this bloc that has a bigger voice i- in the world. Right? That is the stated goal.

   28. DSDavid Sacks35:18

       Yeah, I would, I would go a little further. I'd go a little further and say this isn't just about them having a voice. It's about them having economic sovereignty. They do not want to be completely dependent on the United States to secure their economies. And the big driver of this has been the weaponization of the US dollar.

   29. JCJason Calacanis35:37

       And SWIFT. Yeah.

   30. DSDavid Sacks35:39

       And SWIFT. So-
6. 40:46 – 51:54

   BRICS ultimate goals, India's key position

   1. JCJason Calacanis40:46

      your thoughts?

   2. DFDavid Friedberg40:46

      I think the arguments about the pragmatism of non-dollar-denominated trade and the progress that's been realized or can be projected to be realized from current policy can be debated, but what I think is most important is the signal that's being given, which is that there is a desire by a larger percentage of global GDP than is represented by the G7 to de-dollarize. And so while these intentions may be difficult to translate into policy in the near term, that signal says a lot about the influence and perhaps the policy of the US in addressing and dealing with a lot of these countries and global economic actors.

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya41:38

      But I don't think they want to de-dollarize. That's not part of their pillars.

   4. JCJason Calacanis41:41

      They want to increase trade is the stated mission, and they want to collaborate on trade. That, that is-

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya41:47

      But Friedberg, do you-

   6. JCJason Calacanis41:47

      That, that is the stated mission.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya41:49

      Do you think the stated mission is de-dollarization, or do you think the implicit outcome is de-dollarization?

   8. DFDavid Friedberg41:55

      No, the local currency support initiatives are implicit de-dollarization. I don't hear anyone saying, "We gotta destroy the dollar," 'cause they're all very important trade partners. Most of those countries are very important trade partners with the US and very dependent on, on trade with the US. It seems less that it's about, "Hey, we've got to hurt the US," and it's more about, "We have to be independent from the US. We have to be independent." Implicit in that is independent from the US. So, and I think that that tone, that signal says a lot about US economic policy and US foreign policy that there's something off with the unipolarity, as, as Sachs has pointed out, that it's not de facto anymore, that there is intention here for there to be something different.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya42:40

      Yeah, that's very healthy. That's very, very healthy.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg42:42

       And I think that that opens up avenues and paths that we're not thinking about today-

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya42:45

       Yeah, I, I agree with that.

   12. DFDavid Friedberg42:46

       ... that all of a sudden we'll wake up and we'll be like, "Whoops," and we need to be thoughtful about that.

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya42:50

       I think that's the most powerful part of Sachs' commentary is that...It's a very firm establishment, even if- e- of- of the la- of the non-unipolarity of the world. But the- the thing that the BRICS have to do is... I- I would just encourage them, book a quick win. There has to be some policy coordination that they could do to prove that there's something there that's more than just a get together once a year, and that's been missing for 22 years so far, and that would have a really important, I think, effect. Yeah, I agree with you, David. I think that's the litmus test. That hasn't happened yet.

   14. DSDavid Sacks43:29

       Let me partially agree with that and then partially respond to what you were saying before, Chamath. So, it's true that BRICS does not have an impressive record of accomplishment to date. That's simply true. However, recent events, I think, have provided the motivation for this group of countries to now try and get something done. In the past, it was just so phenomenally convenient to be based on the- the US dollar complex, because everything's priced in dollars, easy to transact in dollars, and when you run a trade surplus, the US has an open capital account and you can just park the money in US Treasuries. So there was never a reason for any of these countries to want to leave the US dollar complex until more recently, when again, US foreign policy has militarized and weaponized the dollar and to try and make it a coercive instrument to get these countries to do what the US wants. And all those countries now are bristling at that and they want to maintain their sovereignty, and so now they have tremendous motivation to get this done. Now, the thing they've already agreed to and done as part of BRICS is that when you join BRICS, you agree not to sanction any other member of BRICS. That is a meaningful commitment and obviously it has a lot to do with this Ukraine war and the fact the US has been demanding that the whole world sanction Russia, and most of the world has not been sanctioning Russia and that's why the sanctions have not been effective is, the US has not been able to get that done. The US will not be able to get it done in the future with respect to at least the countries who are members of BRICS with regard to their trade with each other. And as we saw in the percentage of world GDP, BRICS very rapidly, once they add a few more members, are going to be at about 50% of world GDP. So the US is only going to be able to influence, call it roughly that half a global GDP where the US or the G7 is a major trading partner. Now, what BRICS will be lacking is the way, on a technical level, to bring about the sovereignty they want. So they need to have a way to settle and clear transactions, and they need to have a place to park the surplus that's created for net exporters and they haven't quite figured that out yet. So for example, there's a recent news item where Russia, which is selling a huge amount of oil to India right now, it was saying that they don't want to accumulate more rupees. So they've got to figure out, "Well, what do we do with all these extra rupees?" So there's a lot of pieces to figure out here and that is why they're saying this is a goal they have over the next five to 10 years. It's not one to two year timeframe, it's five to 10 years. But-

   15. JCJason Calacanis46:04

       Yeah, let them make... They should make their own euro. If they feel so strongly that they're a great voting bloc, make a euro, and then they could all put into it and you can see what happens when a bunch of dictators and a- a long tail of failed states now share a common cur- uh, a common currency. It's not gonna work. These countries are all at each other-

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya46:21

       What failed states?

   17. DSDavid Sacks46:22

       Yeah, failed states who share GDP-

   18. JCJason Calacanis46:23

       Egypt, Ethiopia-

   19. DSDavid Sacks46:23

       ... has been go- has been going up like a rocket.

   20. JCJason Calacanis46:24

       These ones are all very troubled states, by the way, yeah, I mean, look it up.

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya46:27

       Troubled how?

   22. DSDavid Sacks46:27

       Their shared GDP has been going up like a rocket, J-Cal, that's the whole point.

   23. JCJason Calacanis46:30

       Yeah. Inflation and-

   24. DSDavid Sacks46:30

       Now furthermore, their goal, we have to be really clear-

   25. JCJason Calacanis46:32

       Democracy, human rights, yeah.

   26. DSDavid Sacks46:34

       Their goal is not to create a common currency like the euro.

   27. JCJason Calacanis46:38

       Oh, I know, and I know-

   28. DSDavid Sacks46:38

       China and India-

   29. JCJason Calacanis46:40

       I'm just saying, if they could, um, using it as a thought experiment-

   30. DSDavid Sacks46:40

       ... and Brazil are not going to replace yuan and rupees with some sort of new euro-like currency. Moreover, they're not trying to create a reserve currency that's going to be a currency for the man on the street. This is about settlement of global trade flows and getting out from under the US dollar complex.
7. 51:54 – 1:00:22

   How energy independence plays into the future geopolitical order

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:54

   2. JCJason Calacanis51:54

      I tell you what the most important thing (laughs) here is, all this con- all these conversations seem to come back to energy, Chamath, cheap oil, Russian oil, Saudis, UAE, all participating in BRICS. And then if you look at nuclear, we just had a bunch of, I think it was senators signing a bill, I think you might have tweeted it, Chamath, of support of nuclear. 21 nuclear power plants are being constructed at this moment in China, eight in India. The United States only has one, which is kind of an extension. We gave up nuclear.

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:20

      In Gujarat actually, in Gujarat, India just- Indiad- India just turned on its first home-built one, so just-

   4. JCJason Calacanis52:26

      Yeah.

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:26

      ... literally today. So big, big news in India.

   6. JCJason Calacanis52:29

      If we really want to have a great relationship with India, an incredible path, and with some of these other countries, would be for us to really invest in these-

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:37

      Well, what I don't understand-

   8. JCJason Calacanis52:38

      ... new nuclear reactors and help people build them and help them get energy independence from Russia's oil. We should be building 50 reactors in India.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:44

      I don't know enough- I don't know enough to know whether that's true or not.

   10. JCJason Calacanis52:49

       Which ones?

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:49

       And part of it is that, like, whether we should be building those reactors, in quotes, because I don't know what those means. Gen2, gen3, gen4 reactors-

   12. JCJason Calacanis53:00

       Yeah, any- any reactor just generally.

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya53:00

       ... small modular reactors. My big comment in my thread is just more that I think that the regulatory support in the United States for nuclear is so constipated that it's impossible to get it done. So you could have the greatest technology in the world. I just don't see how the laws change fast enough and the zoning changes fast enough and the NIMBYism goes away to make these things viable. And so that's actually the- the real question. I don't know if you know Freeburg has any-

   14. JCJason Calacanis53:26

       Well, that's in the United States. What I- what I'm advocating for here, Sachs, is, hey, what if the United States policy was, we're gonna help India and some other countries-

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya53:34

       They don't need our help.

   16. JCJason Calacanis53:34

       ... really grow their independence.

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya53:37

       They don't need our help.

   18. JCJason Calacanis53:37

       Oh, everything-

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya53:37

       They don't need our- they don't need our help. They just turned on their own homegrown nuclear reactor. We haven't done one in 20 years.

   20. JCJason Calacanis53:42

       Yeah, but our new, I guess we call them gen2, Freeburg, these- these new reactors, would that not be a possible path, if we're spitballing here, to help them get more energy independence from Russia? Wouldn't that be a great long play?

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya53:55

       They don't need our help. I don't think you're understanding. Like, it's like you're thinking, like-

   22. JCJason Calacanis53:59

       No, I- I understand.

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya53:59

       ... we're- we're like Michael Jordan and we're about to teach some kid how to throw free throws. This is not what's happening.

   24. JCJason Calacanis54:04

       No, no, no.

   25. DSDavid Sacks54:04

       (laughs)

   26. JCJason Calacanis54:04

       Any help would be helpful. I mean, if people are trying to build a large number of reactors-

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya54:08

       That's not true. You don't- you don't- you don't need a numbnuts to come and help you build a product, do you? You don't hire some two-bit product manager to help you when something is- is scaling and working. India GDP is gonna be 7% a year. They're off to the races. They're on a rocket ship. They're doing everything right. What- what- what can we do? We can help them rewrite their laws to make them Byzantine so nothing gets done?

   28. JCJason Calacanis54:27

       No, I'm talking helping them-

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya54:27

       So the zoning is impossible?

   30. JCJason Calacanis54:29

       Okay. As a strategy, if we had the ability to build nuclear reactors in other parts of the world, which is exactly China's policy. That's the Belt and Road strategy.
8. 1:00:22 – 1:06:50

   All-In Summit party talk!

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:00:22

      other topics?

   2. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:22

      I wanna talk about the summit next week. I'm really excited.

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:00:25

      Sure. Great. We're coming in hot to the summit.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:27

      Kicks off next Sunday. Uh, really excited for everyone that's gonna join us. Obviously, we'll be putting out videos of the content as quickly as we can. Jcal has, uh, I don't know, Sax and Chamath, if you guys are aware, but he is in charge of the parties. And he has gone-

   5. JCJason Calacanis1:00:42

      (laughs) There'll be hell of a parties.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:42

      ... well, well beyond budget on these parties.

   7. JCJason Calacanis1:00:44

      That's not true.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:44

      They're gonna be outlandish. They're gonna be-

   9. JCJason Calacanis1:00:47

      They're gonna be great.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:47

       ... out of control.

   11. JCJason Calacanis1:00:48

       Show the three posters.

   12. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:49

       Uh-

   13. JCJason Calacanis1:00:49

       Let me show you the three posters.

   14. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:50

       Yeah. Pull the, pull the posters up real quick.

   15. JCJason Calacanis1:00:51

       The, the posters explain everything. Night one is our 007 party, our, our Besty Royale, if you will. And here is Besty Royale.

   16. DSDavid Sacks1:00:58

       Yeah.

   17. JCJason Calacanis1:00:58

       Presenting on Sunday night, Besty Royale. Wear, wear your best spy outfit. You could be Austin Powers. You could be Daniel Craig. You could be Sean Connery. You could be Charlie's Angels, any spy you can be. Uh, and here is Besty Royale coming at you.... on Sunday night. A little poker. Here is the closing night party. We're going out of order. Bestie Runner, cyberpunk rave with the besties. Announcing Grimes will be DJing. So we'll have Grimes, uh, doing a set at the Bestie Runner party.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:01:30

       That's awesome.

   19. JCJason Calacanis1:01:31

       It's gonna be fun. And so wear your best cyberpunk. It could be Fifth Element. You could go with any cyberpunk theme.

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:01:37

       Can we just say- can I just say I give up right now because Claire's gonna win?

   21. JCJason Calacanis1:01:41

       Yeah, of course she is. Yeah, she's gonna win. Okay.

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:01:42

       Whatever outfit she's g- it's like, it's not even worth trying. I'm just gonna come in jeans and a fucking T-shirt.

   23. JCJason Calacanis1:01:47

       She's basically a Blade Runner every day. Blade Runner every day. But we'll have some neon, uh, stuff for you to put on there, Sanz.

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:01:50

       Is it gonna be cold outside?

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:01:52

       No, this is inside and this is occurring at a film studio. So we have three warehouses at a film studio where we've created part of the set of Blade Runner. Some incredible Asian street food will be done.

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:02:02

       (laughs) That's awesome.

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:02:04

       It's gonna be great. And then Monday night is gonna be absolutely blow the doors out at Fast Times at Barbie High. And, uh, here we are. Wear your best Spicoli outfit, your best surfer outfit of any kind, or-

   28. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:02:18

       Sorry, will this be outside?

   29. JCJason Calacanis1:02:19

       This is gonna be outside. We have a tent for the VIP party.

   30. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:02:22

       So will it be cold?

Episode duration: 1:06:50