E149: Hamas terror attacks in Israel: fallout, reaction, next steps

Jason Calacanis 0:00 All right, everybody. Welcome to episode 149 of the All-In Podcast. With me again, David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya. David Freiberg couldn't make it this week. We're gonna carry on without him and it's a difficult week, so just a quick opening statement from me about this episode. Like all of you, we're devastated by the terrorist attacks that occurred in Israel on Saturday, and I just wanna start the discussion here with two important housekeeping notes first. Uh, this is obviously a very dynamic situation and we're dealing with the fog of war, quite literally, so we're gonna do our best to make sense of what's happening, but things will change between when we tape this episode on Thursday and you choose to listen to it, in all likelihood, at some point over the weekend. Uh, second, there are gonna be some folks out there who claim, quite correctly, that we are not the experts on this topic, and thus we shouldn't chime in with our opinions. On the other side, the All-In community has told me explicitly they wanna hear us discuss, uh, what happened and they want a sense of normalcy. As one loyal listener explained to me last night at a dinner, "The fact that the four of you can debate hard topics, listen to each other, and in the end have a deeper understanding of the world gives me hope every week. That's why I listen." So, uh, we'll do what we do here every week. We'll have the hard discussion, we'll, uh, listen to each other deeply hopefully, and we'll try to understand the world and each other just a little bit more. And that's worth it, at least to me and apparently many of you. So with those two quick disclaimers, gentlemen, anything you wanna say up front before I recap where we are five days into this senseless brutality?

David Sacks 1:34 I think that was a pretty good intro, Jason. I mean, you're right. We're taping on Thursday, late morning Pacific Time. By the time this drops, it'll be Friday.

Jason Calacanis 1:45 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:45 And so a lot could have happened. Also, it's true that the Middle East in general and this topic in particular is hugely complicated. We will be accused of not being experts, but at the same time, the audience seems to appreciate our opinions as consumers of information who are trying to make sense of the world.

Jason Calacanis 2:01 Yeah.

David Sacks 2:02 So that's all we can really do.

Jason Calacanis 2:04 Right. And conversations, I think, are, are how we make progress. Any, any thoughts before we get started here? And I'll recap what's occurred. Chamath, any, any, um, opening thoughts before we get into the details here?

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:16 On behalf of somebody who worked in Israel, I have a lot of friends there, spent a lot of time there, it's really just a terrible, devastating situation. I've really tried to stay off of social media just 'cause it's allowed me to kind of think a little bit more logically. It's fast and furious right now, I think, on X. And it's just a lot of people trying to make sure that their version of the truth is amplified over every other version of the truth, which I think is like, uh, is a point in the cycle where you, you just have to almost unplug from the matrix a little bit and find the few places that seem to be just telling things in an evenhanded way, which I also find on X, and then just kind of reconstruct what happened, why it happened, what do we do from here. I don't know. I don't know. I don't... I- I have a lot of thoughts on a lot of the peripheral issues, but the core issue is just, I'm just stunned that this happened. I don't, I- I don't even-

Jason Calacanis 3:22 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:22 ... know how this is possible that this happened.

David Sacks 3:24 Like Chamath, I'm not trying to get too weighed in too deeply into the tweets, but-

Jason Calacanis 3:30 I did notice you, by the way, have stopped tweeting. You've done a couple of retweets, but you- you've paused this week, uh, a lot of your tweeting.

David Sacks 3:39 Yeah, I mean, uh, I think that-

Jason Calacanis 3:40 You're processing things right now?

David Sacks 3:41 ... this is an important time to listen and learn and process what's going on.

Jason Calacanis 3:45 Right.

David Sacks 3:45 This is not a great time to be having hot takes. I have posted a few things.

David Sacks 3:49 First of all, Jason, you've made the analogy to, to 9/11 being in, in New York right now.

Jason Calacanis 3:53 Yeah.

David Sacks 3:53 I think that, that is the comparison that's been made is that this is Israel's 9/11.

Jason Calacanis 3:58 Yeah.

David Sacks 3:58 I think that's a justifiable comparison in, in two respects. One is, this was a terrorist attack, it was an atrocity, this was a, a massacre of, of civilians. Even if you're somebody who believes in the Palestinian cause, you should be able to recognize that these were war crimes.

Jason Calacanis 4:15 Yeah.

David Sacks 4:15 The videos are coming out, the stories are coming out, in particular, the rounding up and, and slaughter of 260 attendees at a music festival was really beyond the pale. They're clearing some of these, uh, farming villages and so forth and finding the bodies, you know, families basically killed. Anyway, we don't need to repeat all, all the det- details here but, um, but this was, I think, an attack on civilians that is reminiscent of, of 9/11 and, and, um, has affected-

Jason Calacanis 4:47 Yeah.

David Sacks 4:48 ... the Israeli people in a similar way. I think the other analogy to 9/11 that's worth discussing is the reaction to this, or what, what Israel's gonna do and what the reaction is by US political figures. You heard people like Nikki Haley basically saying to, to Netanyahu, "Finish them." It wasn't exactly clear whether she was just talking about Hamas or the whole Gaza Strip or maybe Iran.

Jason Calacanis 5:15 Yeah.

David Sacks 5:15 And then if there was any ambiguity about that, you just had Lindsey Graham come out and say, "Level the place," meaning referring to all of Gaza.

Jason Calacanis 5:22 Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah.

David Sacks 5:23 I'm very concerned that one of the purposes here of, of the terrorists was to provoke an overreaction like the US, uh, engaged in after 9/11. Remember, we were viciously attacked, we were wounded, we then lashed out and plunged into two decades of wars in the Middle East. What was the result of that? We lost thousands of lives of our own soldiers, we spent trillions o- of our treasure.

Jason Calacanis 5:49 Yeah.

David Sacks 5:50 Millions of people on the other side died.

Jason Calacanis 5:52 Yeah.

David Sacks 5:53 And d- we... At the end of the day, we only changed the geopolitical map of the Middle East in ways that were ultimately unfavorable for us. Iran became a more powerful country.... the region became destabilized and we squandered, uh, the sympathy that the United States had and its moral position that we had after 9/11 in the eyes of much of the world.

Jason Calacanis 6:13 Yeah.

David Sacks 6:13 So, the US, I think, fell for the trap that I think bin Laden laid, which was to provoke us into an overreaction. I think that is one of the goals of terrorists, is to create such an outrage, such a provocation that they will bait the other side into an overreaction. I'm quite concerned that could happen here. I think that our US leaders should be, as friends of Israel, should be counseling a cool-headed response. I think braying for war with Iran or suggesting that the entire Gaza Strip should be leveled would be doing exactly the wrong thing. It would ignite the Arab street, uh, throughout the Middle East.

Jason Calacanis 6:51 And to your point, perhaps that was the goal here and, uh, y- we're trying to figure out what is the goal of this attack that was planned for years. A- and perhaps that was the goal, is to try to take all the hard-fought peace and progress that has been made in that, uh, process over the, uh, over the last couple years, Abraham Accords, and, and, you know, stability, a- and then just, you know, really create a full-scale e- escalation.

David Sacks 7:16 I think that's right. I mean, look, I think Israel is within its rights to dismantle and destroy Hamas.

Jason Calacanis 7:21 Yeah.

David Sacks 7:21 Hamas is an organization that, in its charter, has said they're committed to the destruction of Israel. They've now committed this atrocity. Again, it was ... If they had just limited their attack on uniformed Israeli officers and military, I think that would be one thing.

Jason Calacanis 7:37 Yeah.

David Sacks 7:37 But they went much further than that. The vast majority of the casualties here are civilians who were murdered in atrocious ways. So, I think they're a terrorist organization and Israel is well within its rights to destroy them. However, the question is how you do that.

Jason Calacanis 7:52 Yeah.

David Sacks 7:52 Like a lot of terrorist organizations, Hamas can kind of melt away into the population of Gaza. They've, apparently have these elaborate tunnel networks. They've got bunkers. So it's not clear that you can destroy them from the sky through, uh, bombing. Those kinds of bombs would lead to a lot of civilian casualties which will inflame the situation and turn opini- uh, world opinion against Israel. At the same time, if they go in with ground forces, that seems like a really tough situation as well because Hamas is waiting for them and they, they'll have to fight a guerrilla war in a very tightly packed, dense urban area where Hamas likely has anti-tank weapons, weapons that we've seen that have been so effective against armored vehicles in Ukraine. Again, if the, uh, fighting gets too hot, they can disappear into these tunnel networks. There's gonna be IEDs everywhere. It's gonna be a very, very tough fight for the Israelis. So, I think they're in an incredibly tough spot. I'm not quite sure what the right reaction is for them, but I do think that if the reaction is this, uh, let's call it the Lindsey Graham level the place reaction, I think that could set off a much wider regional war or even a world war. And that is not something that's ultimately gonna help Israel, and I hope that our leaders are wise enough to be counseling against that.

Jason Calacanis 9:17 I get the sense that they're not going to, uh, go that hard. And if you look at the American response to 9/11, you know, going into Afghanistan and dismantling Al-Qaeda, a noble mission, and we didn't have any more terrorist attacks on Ameri- or very, we thwarted most terrorist attacks. There were attempts actually, and our intelligence was very strong over the last couple of decades and we haven't had another one of those. But you're right, going into Iraq and then, you know, what, what was the last decade about being in Afghanistan?

David Sacks 9:46 We went into Iraq, we went into Syria, we went into Libya, we stayed in Afghanistan for 20 years.

Jason Calacanis 9:50 Yeah.

David Sacks 9:50 It should've been a quick surgical strike to-

Jason Calacanis 9:52 Right.

David Sacks 9:53 ... take out Al-Qaeda and their Taliban hosts and then we should've gotten out.

Jason Calacanis 9:56 And even that is incredibly difficult as a mission. As you're pointing out here, g- you know, Hamas can just fade away i- into the Gaza Strip, uh, and into, into Palestine, and, you know, who knows? Um, Shamath, I guess where we're at right now is trying to make sense of why this happened e- and what the next couple of weeks might look like, right? And, and so your thoughts.

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:19 I think Israel has every right to defend itself and they should eradicate Hamas. This is not like we woke up and found out that they were a terrorist organization yesterday or on Sunday. We've known this for years. They've been labeled as such. People have been monitoring their money flows for years. We know where they were funded. But the thing to keep in mind is that those 30,000 Hamas terrorists have also been keeping 2.2 Palestinians hostage for the last 20 years. And of the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza, half are kids. And so David's right. The thing to keep in mind is as barbaric as what happened to the Israelis were Israel in its actions could cause tremendous civilian casualties which will just further inflame the ability to find a long-term peace in the Middle East. That's really tragic and that's probably part of Hamas' kind of sadistic calculus which is they, they probably expected this kind of a reaction and they probably don't care at the end of the day. So it's important to separate Palestinians from Hamas, but I understand and I know where Israel's coming from because we faced the same reaction after 9/11. The question that I have is Israel is the most sophisticated military and intelligence organization in the world and the reason is because when everybody talks about priorities, Israel only really has one priority which is to safeguard the Israeli people.

Jason Calacanis 12:04 ... yeah, survive.

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:05 And they've been essentially in a conflict zone with this sort of damocles since the founding of Israel. So, there are three organizations that really have to figure out what happened here, right? There's Mossad, which is the foreign intelligence service of Israel. There's Shin Bet, which is the domestic security apparatus, and t- there's Aman, which is the military intelligence group. And it's like, how did this happen because this should have been priority one, two, three and four, right? It- and- and it has always been for them. Other countries, the safeguarding of their people is not necessarily always number one, right? And then things happen and then you reprioritize it. In- in many ways that's what happened in 9/11, I guess, at some level in America.

Jason Calacanis 12:53 Yeah. I mean, we had all the signal before that and when we did the 9/11 commission and we found out they were going to flight school here, you know, and- and it was pretty clear that it was an intelligence failure for America, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:06 Those are the two big thoughts that I have which is there's just gonna be so many civilian casualties, what will that do to actually... I think that that has a huge negative impact on the long-term chance of peace because then radicals will use that information to further or to attempt to radicalize the next generation of Palestinians or other Arabs or whatever. And so, I worry that the progress that was made in the Abraham Accords, all the normalization goes off the rails, and that's tragic because most of these people, the overwhelming majority of all people everywhere, they just want peace, they just wanna live a-

Jason Calacanis 13:44 Peace, prosperity, safety, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:45 ... decent life, take- take care of their family, raise their kids. So that's really tragic but then the other- the other part of my mind is like, how could this have fallen through the cracks and- and why were the most sophisticated intelligence organizations caught flat-footed here?

Jason Calacanis 14:02 Yeah. It is gonna be a- a lot of, uh, information that will come out over time, and lessons.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:07 And by the way, the reason why that second piece is important is not to point the finger at anybody, but it's to de-escalate because of what Zach said earlier which is that when people who can articulately gird for war are given the bully pulpit, and you see American politicians now braying and girding for war. I don't think they fully recognize the consequences of that. They are not doing a full accounting of what America has lived through in the last quarter century. And now to induce other countries to try to do the same-

Jason Calacanis 14:41 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:41 ... I think is so dangerous. And so-

Jason Calacanis 14:43 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:44 ... if we can understand where these cracks are, at least we can de-escalate those specific individuals' attempts to escalate. And if we don't do that, we're gonna find ourselves in a really complicated war and I don't think anybody wants that. Nobody wins.

Jason Calacanis 15:01 Nobody wins, yeah. I mean at- at this point really the returning of the hostages seems to be the most important, you know, higher order mission that has to occur. After that, clearly dismantling Hamas and- and this terror apparatus. But, you know, having started to spend some time, you know, in the region and talking to people over there, and again, I'm no expert but I have been talking to people who've been working on this. You know, we got people who've been working on trying to create peace in the region for their entire lives and it's, this is definitely a setback but I'm an optimist and I actually think that in some ways this is going to create a climate where people are gonna really fight to try to, uh, resolve the situation or at least contain the situation. Two-state solution, the Abraham Accords, I- I think they're, this is gonna renew people's commitment to peace in the region and I- I know many, many of the countries over there are really aghast at what happened and they've been working really hard to try to normalize relations there and create peace and prosperity and commerce and, you know, uh, between, uh, the different countries in the region. So, this is just heartbreaking, uh, for the loss of human life, uh, and- and how that occurred, and then it's also heartbreaking for the peace process and all this progress that's been made recently. And so, I think it's, you know, the- the, there's no silver lining here but I- I do think this will, uh, maybe the good people of the world will recommit to trying to resolve this issue and create peace in the region. That's my hope. I know it's simplistic and, uh, again, I'm no expert but that's my hope and I've been spending time over there and- and learning a lot more about the region. These- these are multi-generational issues that are gonna take generations to figure out, um, and it's- it's two steps forward, one step back obviously. Uh, but man, for the politicians and the- the people negotiating this peace and they work so tirelessly on this for their whole lives, you know, keep at it. I mean, that's- that's all we can do, right?

David Sacks 17:06 I mean, Jason, I think disrupting the process that was happening towards normalization of relations between Israel and Arab States, specifically the Gulf monarchies, I think was one of the objectives here.

Jason Calacanis 17:17 Yeah.

David Sacks 17:17 So, I mean, Israel's contention for a long time is they wanna negotiate peace, they- they wanna negotiate but they don't have a partner to negotiate with. Whether you believe that or not, that was- that was their position and with the Abraham Accords, we saw that they started to be able to negotiate, again, normalization with three Gulf Arab States without involving the Palestinians. And it looked like that issue was being put to one side and that they were kind of going around it, and the idea being, "Look, if- if you won't negotiate with us then we'll figure out a way to move forward without you." The big news that, you know, has been going on in the last few months is that supposedly Israel and, uh, Saudi Arabia were close to working out some sort of normalization, and I think that process has been put-... on hold until, I think, this has been dealt with. And so, I think one of the takeaways here is the idea that you're gonna be able to get to Middle East peace without resolving this Palestinian question. I think this is basically a, a return to, to the reality that that issue is simply gonna have to be dealt with. I don't think we're gonna get to a larger deal in the Middle East. We're not gonna be able to resolve all these problems until this long-festering problem of, of the treatment of the Palestinians is, is dealt with. I think you're right that the two-state solution is the only possible solution that makes sense. I mean, what's the alternative? A, a one-state solution means that either it's run by the Israelis, but presiding over hostile Palestinian minority that may eventually one day be the majority. And you're forced into some sort of apartheid state, or the Palestinians are running that one-party state and it means that the Jews have been pushed into the sea. So, neither one of those solutions looks very good, so that leaves you with a two-state solution however hard, however impossible it seems to negotiate that. It's the only option.

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:24 Yeah. It's the only option and it's-

David Sacks 19:25 It's the only option.

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:25 ... a real opportunity. I think the ... My hope is that instead of pushing Saudi away, this actually pulls Saudi closer and says, "Okay, this is a chance to really normalize the global perception of the Middle East." Because if there can be a way for Israel and Saudi to build a bridge here, I have a lot of hope that there can be a lot of stability. And a lot of the good work ... I mean, again, like, man,

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:53 as a Democrat who has been left homeless, who is now definitely in the center but probably leaning increasingly right, I'm left yet again with an appreciation, despite the messenger of the message of the Trump administration, because what those guys did was pretty incredible in hindsight. These Abraham Accords, the accords with Israel and the GCC, the almost accord between Israel and Saudi, to really be able to, like, find long-lasting peace is just a real example for the world. And, you know, those guys did a lot of really good work and-

Jason Calacanis 20:36 I- it's, it's a miracle actually when you, when you look at it. What they did-

David Sacks 20:38 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 20:38 ... you know, despite the fact ... Listen, I'm no fan of Trump and I am too homeless But this is where ... But can I say this? ... in his political party, but if you want to- But this is- ... objectively look at what they did, that was good work. You have to- It was great work.

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:49 You have to.

David Sacks 20:49 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:49 You have to. And in fact, this is a moment where you have to start to re-underwrite. Like, is your ... Not your Jason, but I'm just saying-

Jason Calacanis 20:57 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:57 ... collectively, is one's Trump derangement syndrome causing more damage than anything that Trump could have actually done? And I think the answer is yes, because like it's now causing us to not see that good work and then embrace and extend it. So much of the work that happened in that administration turns out to have been right, and that's what's so frustrating for me. The work on the border wall, we didn't like the messenger, so we killed the message. Turned out it was right. Issuing long-term debt to refinance when rates were at zero, we didn't like the messenger, so we killed the message. A structural peace in the Middle East, we didn't like the messenger, so we killed the message. When are we going to stop shooting ourselves in the foot? And when are we going-

Jason Calacanis 21:44 Yeah, I mean-

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:44 ... to actually see and take the time to look past who is saying things and actually listen to them word for word? I'll give you an example. I started to tweet three links a day over the past-

Jason Calacanis 21:58 I saw that, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:59 ... three days. And the only reason I did that was I thought things were so hyper-contentious and hyper-partisan that I just wanted to show a few sides, right? And one day, I found a couple links, two of which, one was from Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL, who I thought had a very powerful message, and one was from Mike Flynn, and his message was also actually pretty powerful if you just read it. And if you took the names off, all the content was so valuable, both points of view. But the minute it goes into the world, people immediately judge and they kill the message because of the messenger. And this is exactly a moment where you have an opportunity to just stop doing that because the stakes are so high. It's infuriating actually, quite honestly. It's infuriating to see it.

Jason Calacanis 22:46 We had this last week on the show when we were talking about reducing spending. That Matt Gaetz is not the perfect messenger, but his message was the message we've been talking about, which is, "Hey, we have to control spending." So, you ... I can understand people not liking Matt Getz from this (laughs) Gaetz. There's a lot of things to not like about him. I can understand people not liking Trump and-

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:02 Get over it.

Jason Calacanis 23:03 Well, and then, you know, i- it's, it's bizarre that his son-in-law went to do all this work, but yet he did it and it had success.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:12 That's another example.

Jason Calacanis 23:13 And so, it's weird-

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:15 If you-

Jason Calacanis 23:15 ... to send your son-in-law-

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:16 If you listen to this-

Jason Calacanis 23:16 ... to do it, but I listened to the Lex Fridman podcast.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:18 No, it's not. Okay. You know what? N- it's not weird, because at the end, if you listen to this podcast, the most important thing that is resoundingly obvious about Jared Kushner is that he is incredibly thoughtful and incredibly competent. And-

David Sacks 23:33 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:34 Why did we have to spend years being fed all of these stupid lies? Because one can judge for oneself, but Jared Kushner is thoughtful, he's smart. And I thought to myself, "I was fed all these lies for years about how this guy was, like, moping around in the shadows and this and that, and it was all not true."

Jason Calacanis 23:56 Well, no. When I say it's nontraditional, if you sent, you know, any president's son-in-law, daughter-in-law, whatever, child, to go to the Middle East, on its surface, this seems insane.... but in fact he- they did good work, and so it's not traditional. It's, it's not what you would expect.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:16 He's thoughtful and competent. That's what I thought after-

Jason Calacanis 24:19 I- that's what I got out of it as well, is that he's thoughtful and competent. Yeah.

David Sacks 24:22 Yeah, yeah, he brought some fresh ideas. Just so the audience is clear, what we're talking about is he just did an interview with Lex Fridman, and the first hour was on what's happening with Israel and Hamas.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:31 Must, must watch, I think.

David Sacks 24:33 I thought it was excellent too.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:34 Excellent, excellent. It was excellent.

David Sacks 24:36 He did, uh, just in terms of having fresh eyes, he did things like focus groups. He's like-

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:40 Focus groups. Right.

David Sacks 24:40 ... "Okay, what does, what, what does, what does the Arab Street think about various topics?" And he actually-

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:46 Yeah.

David Sacks 24:46 ... did focus groups in various countries to find out. So, I mean, I think Kushner made a number of really interesting points showing how difficult it's gonna be to get to a two-state solution. But first, you have to set up, what does the, the Palestinian side say? And what they say is, "Look, Gaza is effectively an open-air prison. You've got over two million people packed into this very tight area. There's something like 50% unemployment. It's impoverished. The conditions are deplorable, and they don't have their own state. They don't have rights, and it's been like this for a long time." So, that's sort of the, the basic pro-Palestinian argument. Kushner's response to that was, "Well, yeah, but you know, Israel left in 2006. It left Hamas in control, gave them the keys, effectively. The reason why there's such high unemployment is because Har- Hamas is corrupt and doesn't enforce property rights, and they scare away all the investment. Nobody wants to invest there."

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:38 Yeah.

David Sacks 25:39 "And Israel did give work permits so people could leave Gaza to go to work, and look what happened. I mean, when they try to open up the walls, you have a massacre." So, these are the points that he made. Look, I think both sides of this have legitimate arguments and points to make. I think that the conditions of the Palestinians in Gaza is deplorable, and you have to feel for the civilians who live there.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:04 Of course.

David Sacks 26:05 But then, you know, the, the Israelis have a right to live without fear, the fear that their security's in jeopardy, and that this territory can be the launching pad for terrorist attacks on their soil.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:17 Yeah.

David Sacks 26:17 So, it's gonna be an extremely difficult thing, I think, to, to reconcile this. But you know, Kush- Kushner made a couple other interesting points. He said, "Listen, the Gaza part of this is not that hard because the boundaries, the territory l-lines are not in dispute. There's no religious areas that are in dispute. For example, you don't have the status of the Temple Mount or, you know, East Jerusalem. And there's an economic plan to revitalize the Gaza Strip. So, you really just need a negotiating partner for the Israelis to, to figure that out." And of course, now the problem is, who do you negotiate with? I mean, Hamas is, is a terrorist organization that is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, so it's, uh, really a, a tragic situation. You, you look at it and you're like, "This should be easy to work out," but it's not.

Jason Calacanis 27:02 It's a relatively small area. It's a relatively small number of people. It's, it's, it's two million people. We, we should be able to figure out, the rest of the free world, how to at- at least have a path towards this. And the first step is getting rid of Hamas, right? Like, you ha- there's no choice. But they have to go, and then-

David Sacks 27:16 I don't really know if that's feasible, Jason.

Jason Calacanis 27:18 ... you have to figure out who you-

David Sacks 27:18 I mean, uh, look, if, if there was a button-

Jason Calacanis 27:20 We have to try. Yeah.

David Sacks 27:21 If there was a button that Israel could push to (laughs) eliminate every member of Hamas, yeah, sure, they'd be within their rights to, to push that. The problem is that Hamas is now deeply embed-

Jason Calacanis 27:32 It's, uh, integrated, yeah, yeah.

David Sacks 27:33 ... embedded in a civilian population of over two million that's densely packed. How do you root them out?

Jason Calacanis 27:40 It's gonna take decades. It's gonna take decades, uh-

David Sacks 27:42 And, and they're basically supported by that population, as far as we can tell.

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:46 Yeah. It's gonna be, um-

David Sacks 27:47 Uh, and, you know, again, if you, if you take measures that are perceived as too drastic by the rest of the world, then you will inflame the opinion of other countries. You'll turn it against Israel. So again, it's a really tough situation, but I think that the US should not only affirm its support for Israel, it should not only denounce the atrocity that happened on 10/7, but I think it needs to reiterate, the Biden administration does, its support for a two-state solution. I think that the US-

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:17 100%, yeah.

David Sacks 28:18 ... has to be on record that what's in everybody's long-term interest, including Israel, is ultimately a two-state solution. And, uh, the Palestinians are eventually gonna have to have their own state. There's simply no way around that.

Jason Calacanis 28:30 Right. Yeah, uh, and, uh, the free world, I think, is in the process of getting engaged and making this happen 'cause it's in everybody's interest. This can't keep going on, um, and so hopefully this, again, I don't wanna say silver lining, but I, I, I hope that this, the good that comes out of this is that the world focuses on resolving this conflict

Jason Calacanis 28:51 or containing it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:51 Were you surprised at all, Jason, by the amount of people that seemed to be almost justifying what happened?

Jason Calacanis 28:59 That was shocking to me. I mean, I, I, it, the, the fact that people could make any kind of equivalence between terrorist activity and the, the level of brutality, I, I, I, I can't even describe it because it'll trigger my PTSD, which I, I had (laughs) after 9/11, and it still affects me. I'm sitting here not far from Ground Zero. A- and, you know, for people, you know, educated people on colleges' campuses or j- just otherwise to blame the Israelis for the murder of children, for people being r-... and then justifying rape and torture and kidnapping, I mean, there is no justification, and there is no equivalency. There's no equivalency here, and th- and this is one of the big problems, and, you know, these dopey kids on Harvard's campus or whatever, they have never experienced-

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:47 Harvard, Stanford-

Jason Calacanis 29:47 ... evil or suffering.

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:49 ... Cornell, U Penn.

Jason Calacanis 29:50 And, and we can, we can literally just dismiss these idiots because these are kids who have never faced evil-

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:57 But Jason, I don't- I don't think you can. I think one of the things that was shocking to me was the level of basically either subtle or blatant antisemitism-

Jason Calacanis 30:07 Unconscious, yeah, subtle, whatever, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:09 ... that it unlocked, and-I was also shocked at just ... Sachs has used this word before, but it's true, but our leading educational institutions have really become woke madrasas. They are inculcating kids with just some virulent poison.

Jason Calacanis 30:26 I think the reaction is always to go after ... t- to support the underdog, I think, in this group of people.

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:31 What does that even-

Jason Calacanis 30:31 Whoever they perceive as ... That is an idiotic simplification that the smartest schools in the world educating the smartest kids in the world- Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:39 ... should be capable of seeing, though.

Jason Calacanis 30:41 That's how they think, though.

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:42 It can't be that simple.

Jason Calacanis 30:43 This is not my feeling on it. I think that they-

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:45 It can't be that simple.

Jason Calacanis 30:45 It's half antisemitism, and it's half they just think, "Who's the underdog? I'm taking that side."

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:51 Yeah, I did think it's that simple.

David Sacks 30:52 Right, well-

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:52 I- it is in the woke mindset, yeah.

David Sacks 30:55 Well, look, I think it was disgusting and disturbing to see these organizations and these elite institutions being unable to denounce Hamas' terrorist attack and the atrocity that took place, or turning out in the streets to celebrate what happened. And we saw a lot of that too. Look, even if you support the Palestinian cause, even if you believe that they've been mistreated, even if you think that their land has been occupied, they deserve their own state, even if you believe that war against the State of Israel is justified on that basis, these were still war crimes. These were beyond the pale of war. Again, Hamas did not just attack some military installations on the border and kill soldiers or capture soldiers. The vast majority of the people who were killed were civilians. And there was no conceivable military purpose in, for example, paragliding into a music festival, a festival for peace by the way, and then rounding up and slaughtering the concertgoers. There was no conceivable military justification for going into these kibbutzes or farming communities, you know, massacring families-

Chamath Palihapitiya 32:07 Burning kids.

David Sacks 32:07 ... massacring families, exactly, killing.

Chamath Palihapitiya 32:07 No, no, it's deranged. It's deranged.

David Sacks 32:09 It's deranged, so ...

Chamath Palihapitiya 32:10 It's deranged. It's terrorism. And the fact that they can't frame it as terrorism is insane. But think about what happened, okay? I just wanna frame the order of events, okay? 10/7 happens, and I think within 36 hours or less, let's take Harvard as an example, okay, the pinnacle-

David Sacks 32:27 Yup.

Chamath Palihapitiya 32:27 ... of the woke madrasas. They had all these student organizations immediately come out trying to justify this thing without any information, right? Because in the first 36 hours, obviously not nearly as much information was available as to exactly what happened than has been available now, as an example.

Jason Calacanis 32:45 I should read the statement just so people have clarity here.

Chamath Palihapitiya 32:47 Please.

Jason Calacanis 32:47 "Joint s- joint statement by Harvard, Palastin- Palestine solidarity groups on the situation in Palestine. 'We, the undersigned student organizations hold Israeli, the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence. Today's events did not occur in a vacuum. For the last few decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promise to, quote, 'open the gates of hell,' and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced. Palestine- Palestinians in Gaza have no shelters or, for refuge, and nowhere to escape. In the coming days, Palestine Palestinians will be forced to bear the full brunt of Israel's violence.'" This is deranged and sociopathic-

Chamath Palihapitiya 33:29 Okay, so sociopathic ... My point is you ta- you have, like, f- 15 or 20 of these student organizations of all ilks, okay? So it's not just pro-Palestinian groups. It was like the Harvard Sikhs Association, okay? Like, Sikhs in South Asia are the most peace-loving people in the world. They're not pro-war of any kind whatsoever or pro-terrorism. So all these people write this thing which blames Israel. Okay. Then the school is totally silent. The school doesn't say anything.

Jason Calacanis 33:58 For a week, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 33:58 They neither, they neither completely disavow that statement, nor do they come out with a more reasonable statement. All these ex-faculty and ex-individuals, Larry Summers sort of leading, say, "This is outrageous. Have an opinion." They come out with something that's milquetoast and middle of the road. Then they get soundly rejected by everybody yet again. Then the administration comes out and gives a cleaned-up version that tries to allay everybody's anger, 'cause that, the first statement, I think, basically, essentially pissed off everybody on both sides. Then a bunch of alums who've already graduated or who've given money say, "These student organizations are outrageous. We will not hire anybody who's part of this, because their views are so immoral that we would never want these people part of our organization."

Jason Calacanis 34:48 And so here it is, Bill Ackman-

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:50 Then ...

David Sacks 34:50 L-

Jason Calacanis 34:50 Just so we beat people half-dead-

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:51 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 34:51 Bill Ackman said, "I have been asked by a number of CEOs if Harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas' heinous acts to Israel so as to ensure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members." In other words, "You must own your words," which is an important lesson-

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:10 Okay, so then-

Jason Calacanis 35:10 ... for young people.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:10 So then what happens is individual students actually have to come out, who are part of these associations that were signatories to the first release, had to disavow the statement and said, "Actually, I'm just an Indian student at Harvard Law School." There's a ... Nick, maybe you can find this tweet of this, like, Indian woman from Colorado of Indian heritage, and she's like, "You just get auto-recruited into these organizations when you join Harvard." So then I'm like, "Well, wait a minute. This is a place that's supposed to be for, like, modern free speech, progressive thinking, and instead what happens is based on your skin color, you get auto-drafted into some association, then you auto-sign any press release written by some person that you don't even see or approve. What is going on at these places?" And these are the places that parents and kids are tripping over themselves trying to get into, kids will kill themselves if they don't get into, and these are the worst institutions in America. Because back to, Jason, what we talked about earlier, which is we need people who can think from first principles. Those kids are not it, and those institutions are not making them. And so if we want to have a point in time where when things like this happen, we can really figure out ...... what happened in the past that was right and what can we do in the future. It's not this, and it's not this kind of thinking. And if you're going to a school, Harvard, Cornell, UPenn, Stanford, that are spitting out these kids, I think it's a real shame.

Jason Calacanis 36:38 You're spot on. I mean, how, Sax, could there any- be any question about the difference between military terrorists, you know, with machine guns gunning down people dancing peacefully at a music festival at sunrise and then make some equivalency there? It... And you cannot actually ascertain for yourself that is a terrorist act. If you can't, from very basically opening your eyes and seeing what occurred... And, you know, thank God in some ways for, for X not being censored because you can actually see these things. And I know it's very difficult for people to watch. I don't have any judgment on people who don't want to watch it. But I think when the world sees these videos a- and you're gonna write this letter, you should very quickly be able to discern military terrorist fighters from hippie kids dancing at a music festival. It, it's, it's plain as day. There's, there's nothing, there's nothing to confuse you here.

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:40 Right.

Jason Calacanis 37:40 This is the most easy test. You, you have to be brainwashed to see something other than that. These schools are woke madrasas.

David Sacks 37:47 Yeah. So a couple of points on that. So if you look at their statement, I think it's, it's, uh, appropriate and, and fine to express concern about the people, the civilians living in Gaza and what the Israeli response might entail. I think it is fine and, and good to do that both for humanitarian reasons and for self-interested reasons if you're a supporter of Israel, because this could all spiral out of control. However, these people completely lit their credibility on fire from the first paragraph by saying that Israel is entirely responsible for what happened and not having one word of condemnation for the atrocities that had just been committed. They cannot even see the war crimes that have occurred.

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:33 Yeah.

David Sacks 38:34 So I think that-

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:34 They don't even mention Hamas. They don't even mention-

David Sacks 38:36 They never mention it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:36 ... the actual people that perpetrated the crime.

David Sacks 38:38 Right. So the question is why, you know.

Jason Calacanis 38:40 It's so deranged. Yeah.

David Sacks 38:41 What is it about their ideology that blinds them to this atrocious massacre? And, and I think it is this. I do think it has to do with this, this woke mindset. The, the woke ideology is a form of cultural Marxism in which people are divided up into oppressor and oppressed groups. So in Marx's original teaching, you had the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, basically the oppressed and the oppressor. This kind of went through this cultural identity filter with woke, where, again, people are divided up into identity groups. And so you've got men versus women, white versus Black and brown. You've got straight versus gay, and so on down the line. And the, the idea is that there's a power structure, and if you are in one of these groups, then you are, by definition, oppressed, and if you are in one of the, uh, oppressor groups, then by definition, you are guilty in a collective way. You're, you're suffering from collective guilt.

Jason Calacanis 39:42 Yes, by default, the people who are oppressed are, are the righteous ones, yeah.

David Sacks 39:47 Right. But I think that what you see is that when you divide up the world this way... First of all, this is not a very accurate way of looking at the world. I mean, there are lots of minority groups in the United States that have done great. So for example, there's a book written recently about Asian-Americans in the United States called The Inconvenient Minority. Why is it inconvenient? Because Asian-Americans have done sp- spectacularly well. They get into elite colleges and institutions at higher rates than, than whites do, which is why they're the primary group that's discriminated against by affirmative action before it was overturned by the Supreme Court. But the reason why the author called them the inconvenient minority is because th- their success in America refutes a lot of this sort of simplistic woke delineation between, if you're a minority group, you're oppressed, and if you're, you know, in this white group, you're the oppressor. I think Jews have fallen into a, a, a similar type of categorization, which is they're an inconvenient minority. They've been historically very successful in America despite there being existence of, of antisemitism. And I think that the woke ideology has reacted to this by saying, "No, you know, J- Jews are not really an ethnic group. They're just whites." And so that's been the response, right, is, "Well, let's just put them in the oppressor group so we don't need to explain away their success." One of the problems with that is that you have to ignore the existence of antisemitism. And so they do. They just pretend like it doesn't exist. So here you have a situation where all of these things are in play. They've already predefined the Palestinians as being an oppressed people. And, and look, and I think in many ways, they are, but they've, they've-

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:26 They are.

Jason Calacanis 41:26 Not incorrect. Yeah, not incorrect.

David Sacks 41:28 But they've defined it in t- in racial terms really.

Jason Calacanis 41:31 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:31 Right.

David Sacks 41:31 And they've defined th- the Israelis and, and Jews really more generally as being part of an oppressor group. And so everything fits into that larger narrative. And so when members of one of these woke oppressed groups commits an injustice, they just can't see it. I mean, their version of social justice is always defined in terms of collective guilt. And if you're a member of an oppressed group, by definition, you're not capable of committing an injustice because you don't have the power.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:01 Do you guys think that Bill Ackman was out of line by saying, "I don't want to hire kids from these organizations and these schools because it's just like these kids and these schools will bring..." Basically, I think what he's implicitly saying is, "Distraction, and it will lower the probability that I achieve my corporate goals, so these are not good workers."

Jason Calacanis 42:22 Based on your comment about thinking from first principles and, and, you know, being able to assess the situation, I think that's probably what happens at a hedge fund. You have to place bets and you have to be able to think from first principles and be intellectually rigorous.This is the most intellectually lazy approach, I'm just going to sign a piece of paper without even thinking. So, no, I don't think he's out of line. I think it's an important lesson for people.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:44 Yeah. I, I-

Jason Calacanis 42:44 This is not freedom of speech.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:45 ... I would be very-

Jason Calacanis 42:45 This is owning your words.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:47 Right.

Jason Calacanis 42:47 You must own your words and position, and it's important that young people learn this now. You have to own your words, whether it's on social media or signing some stupid petition that you didn't read. And, and there's a lot of backtracking going on right now, by the way.

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:01 I can't believe that if I got into Harvard, I would get auto-drafted into the Brown Men's Association, just 'cause of the color of my skin.

Jason Calacanis 43:08 I'm gonna be in the facree-

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:09 That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Jason Calacanis 43:10 ... facree group. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:11 I mean...

David Sacks 43:11 Let's point out the double standard here, that these elite Harvard students want to be exempt from their, their words, their statements. They don't want to be canceled for that. However, you know that when some hapless schmuck basically posts some tweet, or posted a tweet 10 years ago that gets resurfaced, they're the first ones clamoring for their cancellation.

Jason Calacanis 43:34 Right. Yeah. They would like to be-

David Sacks 43:35 Or they're firing.

Jason Calacanis 43:36 They would like amnesty for their idiotic opinions, yeah.

David Sacks 43:39 Well, what's good, good for the goose here is good for the gander. If they're, if, if-

Jason Calacanis 43:41 Absolutely.

David Sacks 43:42 ... they're gonna create a cancel culture where people get canceled for their decade-old tweets and so forth, then they should be prepared to live by that standard. Now look, personally, I would have some degree of forgiveness for a college student being part of an organization that puts out a statement. They're claiming they didn't know. Okay, but then why didn't you resign? Look, I don't think there's a good excuse for this, other than youthful stupidity. So I would, I wouldn't cancel them forever. But look, I do think that it's fine for, and appropriate for someone like Bill Ackman to say, "I don't wanna hire you people."

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:15 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 44:15 Absolutely.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:15 And, and I would just be careful for you to add the word youthful, because I think it's his g- get out of jail free card. It's definitely stupidity. The question is, is the cake baked? And if the cake is baked, then there's a big argument to never hiring these people. I mean, look, I, I would just say-

Jason Calacanis 44:31 No, no, I, I, your frontal lobes are still developing until you're 25 years old, so I, I would give college kids a bit of a pass if they do stupid stuff. You're there to learn. You're there to make mistakes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:39 No, that's not what I'm saying.

Jason Calacanis 44:40 This is a huge mistake. You're saying the cake's fully baked, you mean like their, their opinions and who they are, are fully baked?

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:45 What I'm saying is, you learn a lot from actions. You drink too much-

Jason Calacanis 44:48 Sure.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:48 ... don't drink. Don't exercise enough, you get a little sluggish, maybe a little overweight. I get all of that. I'm not convinced that when you have this fundamentally specific way of thinking, that you can unwind that so easily, Jason. So I'm not convinced that-

Jason Calacanis 45:05 Oh, yeah. Okay, sure.

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:06 ... that this mind virus gets fixed because you all of a sudden need a job. I actually think like, maybe it's the struggle of realizing that there are deep consequences to this vein of thinking, that this oppressed versus oppressor. Or the other way that it was framed in our group chat is that wokeism and the embracement of socialism is basically running away from excellence. It's this idea that everybody has to be the same, what communism says. We all are the same. Nobody is special. We're all gonna work together, do the same things. We're all gonna dress in the same ways. It's the collective we. There aren't going to be exceptional outliers. But the problem is, that's not how the world works. And so th- the other part of why these woke madrasas are so terrible is that it teaches, I think, to work away from excellence, and instead of striving for excellence, to strive to be part of a collective. And I think that that is fundamentally corrosive to America. It's corrosive to what got us here. It's corrosive to all the great countries in the world. And so then again, it's like, why would you hire kids who fundamentally don't want to be excellent, who are afraid that if they were excellent, they would be guilty of something? That's ultimately the question. Why, why would any of these kids go to such an elite school to basically be taught that it's wrong to excel?

Jason Calacanis 46:26 All right. Well, let's say, I think perhaps a good segue and-

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:29 And then as a result, not think for yourself, and then as a result, sign something like this, which is just stupid.

Jason Calacanis 46:36 We'll continue to discuss this topic, I guess, in the weeks ahead. Again, hopefully this conversation was productive for the community, the All-In community. I understand that, you know, people might have very strong feelings about, you know, us discussing it, but we're here to discuss difficult topics.

David Sacks 46:53 There's one other aspect to this I think we should talk about, which is just the-

Jason Calacanis 46:56 Okay.

David Sacks 46:56 ... the United States' larger geopolitical situation right now. I mean, things seem very tenuous. I did an event with, um, Palmer Luckey actually, friend of the pod recently.

Jason Calacanis 47:06 Oh, friend of the pod. Friend of the pod.

David Sacks 47:07 Yeah. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 47:07 Tell him I said hi. My invite got lost.

David Sacks 47:09 Yeah. We ha- we actually had a nice, uh, debate/discussion on, on Ukraine. But the thing that I think we agree with is that the US better bring more innovation at the milit- military industrial-

Jason Calacanis 47:22 100%. Yeah.

David Sacks 47:22 ... complex and, and figure out like, procurement. Because our whole cost plus system right now is so broken. There was an article recently in the New York Times where it said that the cost to the United States of producing an artillery shell is $6,000. For Russia, it's $600. So in other words, it costs the US ten times what it costs Russia to produce an artillery shell, even though Russia's considered to be this super corrupt kleptocracy where everyone steals everything. And yet, our procurement system is ten times more efficient than theirs.

Jason Calacanis 47:53 'Cause we don't have, we don't have competition and all the politicians are captured. Correct?

David Sacks 47:56 We have this cost plus accounting system where every year, the price goes up-

Jason Calacanis 48:00 It'd be a good opportunity to explain that, yeah.

David Sacks 48:01 So in every other part of technology, price goes down over time, right? You can produce more of something for less. We've seen this with Tesla, we've seen it with PCs, we've seen it with television sets. Whatever it is, the price goes down-

Jason Calacanis 48:18 Laptops, servers.

David Sacks 48:19 ... over time. Yeah. Or, if the price goes up, it's because you've developed some fundamentally new capability, some new version, you know, the-

Jason Calacanis 48:25 Yeah, more powerful chips.

David Sacks 48:27 Yes, exactly.

Jason Calacanis 48:28 More storage. Faster speed. Yeah.

David Sacks 48:28 But, you know, we're still making the same artillery shells, the same Stinger missiles, the same Javelins and so forth. I don't think the capabilities have changed that much, but the price goes up every year-... because it's cost plus. And so-

Jason Calacanis 48:42 Explain cost plus. People may be hearing that for the first time. Yeah.

David Sacks 48:44 Well, y- you know, most companies sell something and then they have a profit margin. But-

Jason Calacanis 48:48 Right.

David Sacks 48:48 ... the way that government procurement works is the profit margin is controlled. They're only allowed to mark it up a certain amount above their cost. But the thing that's happened in the defense industry is there's been huge consolidation over the past couple of decades, where now you've got a handful of defense companies and it's an oligopoly. And many of these key armaments are single source, so there's only one producer, and they just keep raising the price every year. Now, one of the kind of crazy things about this is, and Palmer made this point, is it's not like anyone's getting rich. Because of cost plus, it's not like the money is basically making these companies inordinately profitable.

Jason Calacanis 49:27 There's no incentive to lower the price. If you lower the price and you're at 10% and you got your $6,000 down to $4,000, 10% of $4,000 is a lot less than 10% of $6,000.

David Sacks 49:37 What's happening is not creating-

Jason Calacanis 49:38 Perverse incentive.

David Sacks 49:38 ... Google-like margins. What's happening-

Jason Calacanis 49:41 Hmm.

David Sacks 49:41 ... is that these companies keep building their bureaucracies bigger and bigger. So they hire lots of staff, they make a lot of campaign contributions, they fund think tanks. And so their cost structure just keeps getting more and more bloated.

Jason Calacanis 49:54 Right. They're incentivized to do that. The more they charge, the more they make.

David Sacks 49:58 Right. Now, why am I bringing this up? Well, we're in a situation now where Israel might be on the precipice of... Well, th- they've declared war against Gaza, and this thing could spiral out of control and become a regional war.

Jason Calacanis 50:12 They may be asking for weapons soon.

David Sacks 50:13 They may be asking for weapons. We've already donated some. However, earlier this year, we used to have an ammunition stockpile in Israel, the United States did. It, it belonged to us, but it was there potentially in case of a problem in the region. And that artillery stockpile was basically taken and given to Ukraine. And remember, we ran out of the key type of ammunition in the Ukraine war, which is a 155 millimeter artillery shells, that's why we gave them cluster bombs. So the US is already dangerously low on ammunition, and that's before we get potentially another war or another front in this larger global conflagration that's happening.

Jason Calacanis 50:57 We get asked to support another country's war.

David Sacks 50:58 Right.

Jason Calacanis 50:58 And to be clear, we're, we're not at war, but we've been-

David Sacks 51:01 Right.

Jason Calacanis 51:01 ... asked to donate weapons to Ukraine and we've been asked to donate-

David Sacks 51:04 Yes. Yes.

Jason Calacanis 51:04 ... weapon... I think Israel has asked for weapons. I don't know if they formally asked, but, uh, we are obviously gonna provide them.

David Sacks 51:09 I think there's a, uh, bill making its way through right now that's gonna give some aid to... military assistance to Israel. By the way, we ha-

Jason Calacanis 51:17 Israel also is a major-

David Sacks 51:18 Unlike, unlike Ukraine-

Jason Calacanis 51:18 ... builder of, of weapons, too. I mean, their, their drone technology is incredibly refined and, and they sell weapons to Russia and other folks.

David Sacks 51:26 Oh, yeah. Israel is nowhere near the Ukraine situation. Ukraine is 100% dependent on the United States for its military and for its economy. Israel has a vibrant military and economy without the United States. But the United States does make long-term security guarantees to Israel, not to fight its wars. There's no mutual defense treaty. However, we do agree to provide them with weapons in the event of a war. So we do have obligations, like longstanding obligations to them. This is an ally we've had for 75 years. However, our stockpiles are dangerously depleted now because of the Ukraine war. And on top of that, our procurement system is hopelessly broken. So in a world of rising multi-polarity, where there are other great powers now in the system, where there are gonna be more and more global threats, I don't think we have a, a chance of maintaining our global position and supporting our allies unless we fix this. I mean, making artillery shells at 10 times more than what it costs Russia, that's ridiculous.

Jason Calacanis 52:31 In Silicon Valley, we have now the funding of military startups. And there's a whole new class of warfare, supersonics, drones, quad-copter drones-

David Sacks 52:41 Innovation is the only advantage we have. It's the only advantage-

Jason Calacanis 52:43 Yeah.

David Sacks 52:43 ... we have.

Jason Calacanis 52:43 And it's happening, right? I mean, this is one of the great things. I mean, S- I understand Palmer, um, is, um, is not a huge fan of mine, but I'm a huge fan of the work he's doing and other entrepreneurs are doing to make new weapons to keep us competitive. Because you can be sure China's making them. And so I think it's absolutely fantastic. I, I thought it was always very weird that Google, speaking of work madrasas, like Google was re- Google employees were refusing to provide services, like even basic cloud hosting services to the military. That, that... To, to, to benefit from democracy and living in America while then not supporting the military just seemed like the ultimate luxury belief, to use, um, Rob Stern from the... Alan Samachemoff, your thoughts?

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:27 What does it take, guys, to, for this fever to break, for, for all of these people to realize that that level of corruption is not sustainable, that th- these ways of thinking are not sustainable, that it's not a path to peace and prosperity, that we actually want excellence in society, we want people to be outliers. We want the whole of humanity to move forward. And that's not gonna happen when we move necessarily as one blob, but a few people need to sort of clear the brush and lead the way and the rest of us will come in and fill it in behind them.

Jason Calacanis 54:00 I think Vivek is the manifestation of it, I'll be totally honest. Like I think the reason he is going up in the polls and the reason people are drawn to him is because he's smart and he's exceptional, and he represents... One of the great things about America is that there's people who want to win-

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:15 Excellence.

Jason Calacanis 54:15 ... and, and they're smart and excellence.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:16 Excellence.

Jason Calacanis 54:17 He represents excellence, right?

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:18 He represents excellence.

Jason Calacanis 54:19 And so I, I think that's why people are drawn to him. And I think people are tired of-

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:24 And, and by the way-

Jason Calacanis 54:24 ... the military-industrial complex.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:26 Right.

Jason Calacanis 54:26 They're tired of corruption. They're tired of geriatric, you know, 80-year-old politicians. We need young, successful people to take leadership positions. So-

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:33 And by the way, I, I really agree with what you're saying. I think that there's, like excellence can show itself in different forms. I think why Obama was so profound, and Joe Rogan said this, was he was such a statesman. He was the best of us-... but he demonstrated excellence in being composed, and measured, and thoughtful, and strategic. He was just so excellent.

Jason Calacanis 54:57 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:57 Um, Vivek-

Jason Calacanis 54:58 Clinton as well. Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:59 Shh. Clinton as well. Clinton was incredibly steeped in policy. He was excellent. He was intellectually a massive outlier. Obama is an intellectual outlier. Vivek is an intellectual outlier. Let's get these people to change and run our system of government, please.

Jason Calacanis 55:19 I think we're soaking in it.

David Sacks 55:20 Yeah, we need smarter, more capable people. I mean, you look at Biden when he gave that speech, uh, in support of Israel. I mean, a lot of the words were right, but he was, like, slurring his way through it. It certainly did not inspire confidence.

Jason Calacanis 55:31 It was not. It, it was, it was his best speech, and it was concerning, the fact that he's clearly in cognitive decline. You can see it in his ability to orate and, you know, i- it was his best speech, and it was also troubling for me as somebody who voted for him to watch him slur his words or just not... It was clear he wasn't all there and you're like, "Geez, what are we showing to the world if this is the guy who's running the country?" And if we reelect him, now we're saying, "Hey, we want to have an 84-year-old running the country who's not all there and is in cognitive decline?" Let the guy retire. Le- let him spend time with his grandkids.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:02 I, I think it's more people who are willing to vote for... not for what they want, but f- to prevent something else. And I think that that's what's-

Jason Calacanis 56:10 Of course.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:11 ... that's what's so tragic about how we're thinking as a country right now.

David Sacks 56:15 Yeah, and just, just to dish it out equally, I mean, I saw Trump give a, a recent speech where, look, he's nowhere near the cognitive decline of Biden. I think he's still compos mentis, but he's not as sharp as he used to be either. I mean-

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:28 Mm-hmm.

David Sacks 56:28 Listen, I think America's basic situation, and this has really been reaffirmed over the past week, is that we're no longer in unipolarity anymore. We're no longer the sole superpower.

Jason Calacanis 56:37 Yeah, not for some time.

David Sacks 56:38 China is now a superpower. Th- they're probably the low-cost manufacturer of the world, so when we talk about being able to make things like armaments and artillery shells and weapons, they have the ability to outproduce us. That is very scary. There are other great powers in the system now. Russia has proven over the last five months through its victory in this counteroffensive that it is a power to be reckoned with. We cannot disregard their concerns anymore. And not only does America need, I think, top flight leaders, like intellectually, who are at the top of their game, but we also need new thinking. We need to be able to sidestep challenges and, and conflicts as opposed to walking into every single trap the way that Lindsey Graham wants us to. Again, I'll go back on the Ukraine war. I think it's really clear that we could have avoided that war if we had taken NATO expansion off the table. It w- a- and whether you believe that or not, it was criminal not to try.

Jason Calacanis 57:32 If it was a 5% chance, it was worth trying. So I, you and I will be in line in the next day.

David Sacks 57:35 And now look at our situation. We're already mired in the Ukraine proxy war. Now Israel is on the brink. We need smarter people and smarter thinking in Washington. We are no longer the only superpower. We're gonna have a really tough time in a multipolar world if we do not look for ways to de-escalate conflict when we can.

Jason Calacanis 57:55 Or i- in, in putting aside conflict, why are we not building deep ties with as many countries as possible? Deep cultural ties, deep economic ties, deep diplomatic ties. Every time we are in dialogue with a country and we're building a relationship with that country, that means free people of the world are winning, you know? And every time we isolate a country, that does not go well for us.

David Sacks 58:18 You're right. We're sanctioning half the world. That's another big part of this problem.

Jason Calacanis 58:21 Yeah. And so, you know, it's w- the, the normalization of relationships and the deepening of relationships, that is the high order bit. And you need somebody in office who can do that. And, you know, if you look at how the, you know, the hawks and the GOP or the hawks in the Democratic Party think, they think that we have to be at war with everybody. They think we have to-

David Sacks 58:40 Well-

Jason Calacanis 58:40 ... isolate everybody. You know, the fact that Trump went, and that famous moment where he walked over the, in the DMZ in North Korea and was talking to Kim Jong-un, that moment you see on Kim Jong-un's face, we can, we can put it in here, he is so happy to be recognized. Now, listen, I understand he's a dictator-

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:58 Yeah, he has this, like, shocked-

Jason Calacanis 58:59 ... and there are people suffering.

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:00 He has a shocked look on his face, like, "I can't believe this is happening."

Jason Calacanis 59:03 Right? The same way he did when Dennis Rodman came over.

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:05 No, it was like a-

Jason Calacanis 59:06 And-

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:06 ... it was like a fan meeting Taylor Swift. If you look at those videos-

Jason Calacanis 59:09 Exactly.

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:09 ... and you compare it to this, it's the same.

Jason Calacanis 59:11 Well, and, and culture is our export. And, and I know this sounds-

David Sacks 59:13 But what you're talking about, Jason, is soft power.

Jason Calacanis 59:15 ... simplistic.

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:15 Soft power.

Jason Calacanis 59:15 Yes, and soft power-

David Sacks 59:16 But it can't all be, it can't all be hard power because other countries have it too now.

Jason Calacanis 59:20 Yes.

David Sacks 59:20 So we have to work on our soft power, but you're not going to enhance American soft power with all this belligerent rhetoric.

Jason Calacanis 59:26 No.

David Sacks 59:26 Really, this omni-directional belligerence that's coming out of Washington. And this is why I think the smart thing for Blinken to do, or the Biden administration, is, yes, you reaffirm that you stand with Israel in the face of this unspeakable atrocity. At the same time, and you don't have to do this right now because it is a little bit tough to do it right now, but at some point-

Jason Calacanis 59:46 Well, with 100 hostages, um, yeah.

David Sacks 59:48 ... soon, you have to re- reaffirm your support for the two-state solution.

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:52 Absolutely.

David Sacks 59:52 And I think the United States has always supported.

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:53 And by the way, I think, I think Tony's done a really good job, but again, at the end of the day, Tony works for President Biden. And it's like, Biden hasn't been nearly as definitive as he could have been, and Tony's had to clean it up. So one example of this is, like, in The Wall Street Journal, they immediately on Sunday-

Jason Calacanis 1:00:11 That was strange.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:11 ... Putin went to blaming Iran, right? And then both the Israeli military intelligence and American intelligence, they had to do an entire press circuit to try to disarm this in a way that was not seen in a long time. And you have to ask yourself, "Why, why is that ha- even happening?" And it's like, well, whatever special interests wanted to get that on the front page of The Wall Street Journal was able to do it, but it has dangerous implications. And then what you need is a really strong leader that can step up and say, "This is false. This is not happening. This is what we need." You needed an Obama in that situation, and I think that this is sort of-

Jason Calacanis 1:00:47 Or a Clinton, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:48 Or a Clinton.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:50 Yeah. Reagan.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:51 Reagan.... and, and I think that this is an opportunity for us to ask ourselves, okay, who is the most dynamic, excellent candidate that can give us this? And be open-minded and not make this line about Republican versus Democrat right now, because the world is getting super complicated. We need someone hyper, hyper excellent and in- intellectually competent.

David Sacks 1:01:16 Well, I, I will say this for, for Trump, is that, um, he's the only president in recent memory who didn't give us any new wars.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:23 Best quality, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:24 I have a, I have a lot of-

David Sacks 1:01:26 He... I think he has a unique... d- despite, despite all of his issues, I think he has a unique ability to project strength to the American public while not being one of these super hawks. He's actually, I say, relatively dovish.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:37 Well, he, he actually walked through his secret plan. He's, he said... I can't remember where in this clip, but he said whenever he met with these folks, he basically left a 10% chance that he would nuke them. (laughs) That's what he said.

David Sacks 1:01:49 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:49 And it turned out that that 10% was just enough for the, for everybody to leave the meeting-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:53 Just enough crazy for everybody to stay alive. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:55 It was just enough cr-

David Sacks 1:01:56 Well, but see, uh, see, I, I think the US already has enough deterrents. I think we've maxed out on deterrents.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:00 Right.

David Sacks 1:02:01 I think the thing that was smart about Trump was that he was willing to do business.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:05 Yes. Absolutely.

David Sacks 1:02:06 He was willing to negotiate and he didn't feel the need to make these moral condemnations all the time. He was willing to meet with Kim Jong-un. He was willing to meet with Putin and S- and S- Xi Jinping and he avoided, uh, criticizing them personally. He didn't call them dictators. He talked about how smart they are.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:26 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:02:26 It's the art of the deal, right? I mean, at the end of the day, he's looking to do business, and we need a little bit more of that. And I think this is why Jared Kushner was successful, is he went in there with the mindset of a businessman.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:37 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:02:37 How do we find something that's beneficial to both sides?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:41 Totally right. I think that when Trump was elected, I was told that it was the end of the world, and that's what I thought. And I'd already underwritten him as an F, okay? And then four years into the presidency, he was probably like a C in my mind. And then as I get a little bit of distance away, I realized, no, hold on a second. This guy was like a B, B+. Like, he was pretty good. And unfortunately, the few things that if he, if he could have just pushed through would have really saved America, the biggest one being these 100-year bonds. It, it would have kept America from getting to the precipice of fiscal ruin and we'd be in a highly different situation. And I'm not sure we could have ever given him credit for it, but the further and further I get away from him and the less emotional I am, he did a pretty good job. He was a pretty good president.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:31 Don't forget that he tried to overturn the election-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:33 Hold on. I...

Jason Calacanis 1:03:33 ... and steal the election itself.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:35 I voted for Hillary Clinton.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:36 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:36 I voted for Joe Biden, but this is the honest assessment. The guy had... did for the things that he was supposed to do a good job, and for where every other president found a way to, frankly, make our situation a little bit worse, specifically around wars, he did not do that. And that is a huge accomplishment that I think needs to be acknowledged.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:56 And he would have ripped up the Constitution and, and taken (laughs) the presidency and stolen it, so just keep that in mind as well. Lest we give him, like, huge tasks.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:04 That's, that's in my...

Jason Calacanis 1:04:05 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:05 That, that's why he's not-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:06 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:06 That's why he's not an A.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:08 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:08 He's a B, B+.

David Sacks 1:04:10 Okay.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:10 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:04:10 Jason, you have to admit, if it weren't for the black swan of COVID, he would have been reelected in a landslide.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:15 Landslide.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:16 It's quite possible he would have been reelected, yeah. I mean, I... and also, yeah. It's just, it is quite possible.

David Sacks 1:04:20 By the way, I mean, at this rate, the way things are going in this country right now, both economically and internationally, he's gonna waltz into the White House. He's gonna spend all of his time in the next year in, in the courthouses, battling all of these lawsuits, the lawfare against him.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:36 Hm.

David Sacks 1:04:36 He's not gonna be able to campaign and it won't even matter because people are gonna be so done with this.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:41 And nobody wants him as president again, so I think that's... nobody wants the... we... everybody wants new choices. All right, everybody. If you do not want to hear us talk about complex issues in the world, you can unsubscribe from the pod. We're gonna be here every week, having hard discussions, listening to each other and learning together. Uh, you don't have to agree with any one of us, uh, but we are, um... we're happy to have the difficult conversations and learn every week here. And, yeah. Our, our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and the friends of those impacted by this heinous terrorist attack. And I, I d- I don't know if anybody has any other closing remarks here, but obviously, we're heartbroken and we, we hope that peace prevails and that the hostages are released as quickly as possible.

David Sacks 1:05:31 Well said.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:33 All right, everybody. This is episode 149 of The All-In Podcast. Uh, next week, we'll, we'll talk about all the different topics, but for this week, we're gonna let it sit where it is right now. See you next time. Bye-bye.