E18: Inauguration talk, breaking down the $1.9T stimulus, the case for recalling Gavin Newsom & more

Jason Calacanis 0:00 Hey, everybody. It's me, Jason Calacanis. Welcome, welcome.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:04 Hi, everybody. It's me, Jason.

Jason Calacanis 0:05 Thank God Trump's out. (upbeat music) This is the-

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:07 I hate Trump and I love myself. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis (pre-recorded intro/outro) 0:13 I'm going all in. Let your winner slide. Rain Man, David Sachs. I'm going all in. And I said we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

Jason Calacanis 0:24 Love you, bestie.

Jason Calacanis (pre-recorded intro/outro) 0:25 Queen of quinoa. I'm going all in.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:30 Hey, everybody. Happy days are here again.

Jason Calacanis 0:34 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:34 Champagne car- bottles popping, Veuve Clicquot again.

Jason Calacanis 0:38 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:38 Happy days are here again.

Jason Calacanis 0:41 (claps)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:41 Yay. Sachs is so happy. Trump's out of office.

Jason Calacanis 0:45 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:45 He gave an amazing speech about how great-

Jason Calacanis 0:50 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:50 ... Biden's inauguration was. Welcome to the All In podcast.

Jason Calacanis 0:57 (inhales deeply) Oh my gosh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:58 With me today in our post-inauguration afterglow-

Jason Calacanis 1:03 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03 ... is the dictator, Trumpy Pypatia.

Jason Calacanis 1:05 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05 The queen of quinoa, David Friedberg. And riding the blue wave, diving in, no more red pills, the blue wave is David Rain Man Sachs is with us. David, how did it feel to watch-

Jason Calacanis 1:25 (sighs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:25 ... Biden's inauguration speech, which you said hit all the notes? And I see you're wearing blue today.

Jason Calacanis 1:31 (claps)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:31 Let me have a sip of my Veuve Clicquot and tell us, you've got the blue jacket, the blue shirt, and the blue headset on. You've ridden the blue wave. Tell us how you feel with Biden in office. I'm going to drink my Veuve.

David Sacks 1:43 J- Jason, I'm, I'm just happy to see that, uh-

Jason Calacanis 1:46 (exhales)

David Sacks 1:46 ... that you're happy.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:47 (exhales)

David Sacks 1:47 And, uh-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:48 (exhales)

David Sacks 1:48 ... it's, it's-

Jason Calacanis 1:49 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:49 Does, does this mean, does this mean that I, that, uh, your Trump derangement is over? You're, uh, you've gone, uh, cold turkey? You're on the wagon and, uh-

Jason Calacanis 2:01 (laughs)

David Sacks 2:01 ... yeah, I'm just happy, I'm just happy to have my friend back and, uh-

Jason Calacanis 2:04 (laughs)

David Sacks 2:04 ... not have you part of this, uh, this Trump derangement zombie horde that, uh, that you've been in for the last few years.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:11 I, uh-

Jason Calacanis 2:12 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:12 ... I'll tell you two quick stories.

David Sacks 2:13 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:15 Um, the first one turned out not to be true, but there was a New York Times alert that, that came out this weekend saying that, um, they were going to lift the travel ban. And, um, for, uh, for a moment, I was like, I, I wa- I was a li- I was a little in shock. And, you know, my, my... I'm Canadian. My family's in Canada, I haven't seen them in a year. My mom is 80 years old. I haven't seen her in a year. Um, and then the second, uh, was on the day of the inauguration, Biden signed an EO, um, I guess, that, that, you know, starts to co- basically, um, create a path to citizenship. And there are, um, you know, two women in my life who I fi- who I think are just lovely, lovely people, who I've never been able to hire. And, uh, and now this gives us a path to hire them and compensate them and the way that we wanted to. And so in, in these moments, I started crying. And, uh, I- I've probably had three or four moments and I realized like, "Holy shit, I have had so much pent-up emotion waiting for, honestly, just like a normal (laughs) average day, um, and like simple humane good things." Uh, and I'm not, I'm not trying to sort of jump on the Biden bandwagon. I think that he's got a lot of work to do, but I, but I, I do think that just at a level, simple basic level of humanity, it was a different... it was a big sea change. How did you take it, Friedberg? I'm curious. Did you cry as well?

Jason Calacanis 3:48 I observed-

David Sacks 3:49 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:49 ... the inauguration. It was-

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:51 Oh, we didn't upgrade your firmware, sorry.

Jason Calacanis 3:52 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:53 We were supposed to push the two David firmwares for the ability to cry. But did you feel any emotion of the three emotions we've given you (laughs) in your programming? Did any of them m- move at all?

Jason Calacanis 4:05 I don't remember... I mean, I don't remember the origin of my non-emotional, um, uh, characterization, uh, Jason, but, um, yeah, I think it, it was-

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:14 Which is based on every interaction we've ever had with you, but continue. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 4:17 Right. (laughs) Like, I guess that makes sense. So, um, I feel like the Biden, um, the Biden moment, uh, on, uh, on inauguration day, um, it really did feel like a sigh of relief, uh, because so much of Trump, love him or hate him, has been driven by a degree of tension, right? I mean, he came in, uh, uh, to office on the premise that he was going to drain the swamp. I mean, that's kind of a very kind of active, um, you know, position. Uh, he's gonna go in, he's gonna change things. And, and I think, you know, the Biden tone is like, "Let's take it down a notch. Let's all take a deep breath." And I, I feel like that, that, that generated a collective sigh of relief. I'll also say that I watched that with the eyes of someone who voted for Trump. Um, I didn't vote for Trump, uh, but, um, I don't think I voted this year. Uh, I can't remember. It was in the middle of the pandemic. But, um, I basically feel like there's a lot of folks... it's easy to say "Let's unite the country," um, when you're on the winning side. And (laughs) when you're not and you're sitting there and, um, your guy got kicked out of office and your guy claimed that he got kicked out because of fraudulent activity and you're one of the 46% of Americans, um, that are already disapproving of Biden's (laughs) performance in his first two days of office, uh, you, you don't look at that as a moment of relief. You don't look at that as a moment of, um, uh, of respite. And I feel like there's, um, a little bit of a missed, uh, point of view in terms of how we're all covering it and talking about it. It certainly feels good to take the tension down and take, take a deep breath and have leadership not be putting the tension out there. But there's a lot of anger and disappointment still festering out there. And I, I think we need to be very cognizant of why and what we can do. And it would have been nice to see Biden not just say, "Let's unite," but actually step over the line-... and declare some of the policies and points of view of the other side as being valid and, and, and engaging more directly on those points, versus saying, "We'll all work together in the future."

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:19 Can I-

Jason Calacanis 6:19 And we're already seeing y- A- And we're already seeing this rift with McConnell and others in terms of how to deal with the filibuster in a, in a unified Senate. Um, and I, I just don't think that we're there. So, um, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:28 Yeah. Sachs, what are you, what are your thoughts? And then we'll go to you, Chamath.

David Sacks 6:31 Yeah. I mean, look, I'm, I'm not gonna swoon over an octogenarian reading cliches off a teleprompter. I'm sorry, I just can't do it. Now, tha- that being said, uh, you know, the, the, the inauguration speech struck all the right notes of, you know, reconciliation, lowering the temperature, coming together. These are the things you're supposed to say at an inauguration. These are the presidential layups, if you will. It's kind of a weird thing that Trump could never quite get these layups in. Uh, Biden did what he was supposed to do, and, um, and I agree that there is a sense of relief in the temperature being lowered and, uh, and, and this... and the, the situation in Washington feeling a bit depressurized. And so I think he deserves credit for that. That's all for the good. I think the problem Biden's gonna have is not just sort of, um, the Trump right opposing him, but the uncivil warriors in his own party. You know, uncivil warriors, I think, was the, the most memorable line in his speech. There are people, I think, you know, on the left who aren't really on board with the reconciliation agenda. I mean, shortly after the election, you had a- AOC proposing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission-

Jason Calacanis 7:37 Right.

David Sacks 7:38 ... uh, to go after everyone from the, the Trump, uh, era. I don't think that's exactly the kind of reconciliation Biden's talking about. You have, I think, the, the repressive hand of Big Tech playing into this revenge agenda by acting as a speech cartel, and now we have the rest of the tech stack jumping on board with the, the speech cartel. You had an announcement from a whole bunch of finance companies, PayPal, Stripe, Square, that said they would, uh, cancel the accounts, and by implication livelihoods, of anyone connected to January 6th. Well, what exactly does that mean? I mean, there were many thousands of people at this rally on the Mall. Only a few percent of them breached the Capitol, an even smaller percentage engaged in violence. But everybody who was at the Mall, and really everyone in the MAGA movement is, quote-unquote, "connected" to, to that protest. So how many degrees of Kevin Bacon are we gonna, uh, play in acting out these reprisals? Um, and I think the worst part of all is that now we have, in Congress, a, a bill put forward by Adam Schiff, uh, that basically would create a domestic Patriot Act to, uh, to create giant new surveillance powers for the state to go after people they, they deem to be traitors and seditionists and domestic terrorists. Um, and, you know, I actually tweeted a letter by Rashida Tlaib of The Squad opposing this. It's the first time I've stood with The Squad. I was proud to, because the last thing the state needs right now is, uh, is more surveillance powers. And this idea that we're fighting a war against fellow Americans based on basically political dissent, that's not gonna create reconciliation. That's gonna lead to the next step in this, um, horrible tit-for-tat game.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:22 Just to build on this for a second, um, there was a Rasmussen poll that came out today, today is Friday, January 22nd, so two days after the inauguration, and Biden's disapproval rating is 45%. And, you know, all of a sudden, you can think, again, as you said, three days ago, you know, a lot of people were on the losing side and are now on the winning side. And today, um, a lot of people that were on the winning side c- are, quote-unquote, "on the losing side," and you see how reflexive the reaction is. It's like an auto-hate, right? It's like auto-disapproval. And so if that's the case, it just c- it just begs the question, how much room and how much tolerance will we have as a society if we start to go after folks that is, you know, that effectively have an enormous amount of political dissent? Are there fringes of both parties that need to get basically found out, exposed, and put in jail, whether they're Antifa on the left or, you know, the far right extremists on the right? Absolutely. Um, but hopefully the FBI already has enough power to do that, and that's already their remit, and what we're not gonna have to do is pass an enormous number of laws. I mean, I've said this before, like, the Patriot Act was so crazy because it was a foreign actor and a foreign event on domestic soil that created it, but, you know, between the pandemic and now what happened in the Capitol, a biological Patriot Act, a domestic Patriot Act, these are all in the offing. And I think what we're gonna have to do is, a- uh, again, it sounds cheesy, but find the common ground so that we can expose who are at the fringes of both parties who are the real crazy people, round those folks up and deal with them with the laws that we have today, because otherwise the unintended consequences for the overwhelming majority of the c- Americans, who are just normal folks, is gonna be, um, a little scary. I, I thought a really interesting reconciliation moment happened with the woman who stole Nancy Pelosi's laptop. I don't know if you guys were, uh, have read that story, but, uh, this woman, who stole the laptop and was considering selling it to the Russians or something, she's 22 years old, uh, she's obviously was misguided in doing this. And the judge basically explained to her that she was releasing her to her mother's, you know, uh, care and that her mother would go to jail if, (laughs) you know, she did anything further. Um, (clears throat) but she said, "Listen, you know, you're a beneficiary of the Constitution. You are getting a speedy trial. You are getting representation." And she used it almost as a civics lesson. And I think we had a discussion, maybe two episodes when the, when the pot got a little hot, um, (clears throat) which was great for ratings, by the way, um... (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 12:07 (laughs)

David Sacks 12:08 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:08 (laughs) And for our relationships. And it r- resulted-

David Sacks 12:10 (laughs) .

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:10 ... in a reconciliation dinner that we had.

David Friedberg 12:12 ... a little- (laughs) a little, uh, wives dinner. Our wives brought us together for dinner to just make sure everything was on the-

David Sacks 12:17 Well, Chamath- Chamath brought us together for dinner, uh, which-

David Friedberg 12:20 And brought wives. We- we- we were-

David Sacks 12:21 And brought wives, yeah.

David Friedberg 12:22 Yeah.

David Sacks 12:22 And, uh, no, I mean, it was- it was a good thing because frankly, Jason, I was starting to hate you just- just a little bit.

David Friedberg 12:28 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 12:28 (laughs)

David Sacks 12:28 Just a little bit. But, uh, but- but I could feel the hate, you know?

David Friedberg 12:33 Yeah.

David Sacks 12:33 And, uh, Chamath, uh, being, uh, empathetic as he is recognized the situation. And, uh, so we've decided to do, you know, at least a quarterly besties dinner-

David Friedberg 12:42 Yeah.

David Sacks 12:42 ... to make sure that, uh, yeah, that the contentiousness does not get out of hand and- and interfere with our friendships, which are more important than our politics.

David Friedberg 12:51 Ultimately, that's what we all hope is- comes out of this podcast, which is a deeper understanding and reconciliation of- of issues that we disagree on. And breaking bread, having a meal, or having a civil conversation, even if it gets a little heated, keeping it civil is important. I thought that this is the way to handle it. A lot of these, we're- we're gonna be able to use some amount of judgment on the people who stormed the Capitol and say, "Okay, this person's misguided. They took a selfie. This person broke windows, and then this person, you know, threw a fire extinguisher at a cop." And we have to make sure that the justice system is deployed in- in a fair way and more surveillance and- and more investigations-

Jason Calacanis 13:34 I don't think that's the solution.

David Friedberg 13:35 Is-

Jason Calacanis 13:35 I think more surveillance, no-

David Friedberg 13:36 Not the solution?

Jason Calacanis 13:37 ... more investigations, absolutely, because I think the FBI has the power today to do that, and I think they should. They, like I said, they should find every single person involved, find the appropriate crime, make sure that they're punished. But the idea of passing broad, sweeping surveillance powers over every-

David Friedberg 13:53 Crazy.

Jason Calacanis 13:54 ... American citizen is fucking nuts.

David Friedberg 13:56 It's bonkers.

David Sacks 13:57 Right.

Jason Calacanis 13:57 And by the way, all that's- all that's gonna do is create these honeypots for foreign governments to want to attack anyways, because if that capability exists, it exists in code on servers somewhere, and folks in China and other places will want to find out where that is, and they will be attacking it all day long. And so the last thing we need is we're already leaking enough information, uh, about ourselves online willingly and unwittingly. Um, I don't want there to be a- a honeypot. That- that's the first thing. The second thing I- I just want to say is I thought it was incredible, um, what Mitch McConnell did, just back to your comment, Jason, about making sure folks get the right adjudication. I think Mitch McConnell set the stage to have Donald Trump impeached. And the reason I think that is this was the first time he was completely unequivocal, which is that Donald Trump provoked all these folks. And I think what it allows the Republican Party to do is to get together under closed doors, you know, in- behind closed doors, circle the wagons and say, "It's either him or us. We choose right now." And I think what's gonna happen, if I had to guess, is that that allows a lot of people to break ranks and support the impeachment in the Senate that's gonna start on Monday. Um, and I think there's a real chance now that- that this impeachment goes through and he gets convicted. I think it's worth just thinking about the implications of that. Um, if you did that, there are- there are Trump loyalists. There aren't really GOP loyalists. Um, and, uh, I guess there are GOP loyalists, but there are a lot of Trump loyalists that are not loyal to the GOP at this point. And Sacks, uh, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but if Trump does actually create a fringe party, does create a- a- a Patriot Party as he suggested he might, um, you could see up to 20 million Americans joining that party. And, you know, that would reduce the ranks of the Republican Party significantly. And then kind of my understanding is in political theory what would result is you always have a balance in the parties, and so the parties kind of adjust left or right to create that balance ultimately. It's just kind of the organic way this- this works. In order for the Republican Party to gain, um, it- it- you would probably see a lot of membership move over to the Republican Party, which means that the Democratic Party is gonna move further left. And, um, you know, think about the implications of that. If Trump does act- if they do actually kick Trump out of the party and he does set up a fringe party, you will likely see the Democrats move further left, creating a much more, um, kind of conflicting story for some of the centrists than what they're telling today of what's gonna happen in the future. And that's a very different America in the next two to three years that could be created if they took that risk. And I think they- they have to, uh, associate that calculus, um, when they're making this decision. It, you know, you can talk about justice and wanting to kick him out of the party, but the implications of him leaving the party are rather- rather profound.

David Sacks 16:45 Oh, it would fracture the Republican Party. Uh, it would be, um, I guess the- the best historical analog would be when, uh, Teddy Roosevelt left the- the party, uh, to for- form the Bull Moose Party. He actually fractured the Republican Party and that allowed, um, I think Woodrow Wilson to win the presidency, uh, beating Taft. Um, yeah, I mean, the Republicans would basically lose every election, um, from now until Trump is no longer, you know, a force in American politics. If he created, I guess the- he's- he's the threat-

Jason Calacanis 17:12 Or- or they'd have to move- they'd have to move left, right? I mean, in order for them to gain, you know, more people, they'd have to get the centrist Democrats, they'd have to move left, and that'll give the Democrats the ability to move left.

David Sacks 17:22 Yeah, I mean, it- it- it's- it's a, it would be a dream scenario for- for the Democrat Party. Um, I'm surprised, I- I'd be surprised at the end of the day if- if- if enough Republicans went along with- with this to- to fracture the party. But, um, look, I- I understand that on some basis, you know, Trump- Trum- Trump caused what ha- what happened at the Capitol. He convened everybody, he rabble roused. But I think that, um, frankly, if you have a trial, I think the question we have to ask is, like, what agenda does this serve? Does this serve a reconciliation agenda or does this serve a revenge agenda? I mean, the guy's already out of office. I thought we canceled the Trump reality show, and this is like bringing it back for another season, because this trial is gonna be a shit show. Just like all things Trump, you have a trial in the Senate, and it's gonna turn into a total farce, okay? And, you know, look, I think cosmically...... Trump was reckless, he was responsible, but when you actually look at the legal definition of incitement, it's actually very hard to prove incitement. So now Trump's gonna get his lawyers up there, and they're gonna be pushing back on this, and it's gonna consume the country for months. And I just think we should be moving forward right now. The guy's already out of office.

David Friedberg 18:35 I thought it was gonna be three days and done. Why, why would it take months? I'm curious. You're just saying you underhang from it? Well, the backfield is-

Jason Calacanis 18:41 Well, they're gonna start at mid-February, right? It, it's not gonna be three days. This goes on until the trial's over. I mean, it's, it'll be at least a week of, of, uh, discussion, right, Sacks?

David Friedberg 18:51 So, uh, Sacks, is it... Do you think preve- the GOP preventing Trump from being able to run again is worth the year, the week of animosity, let's call it?

David Sacks 19:03 I, I, I don't... I think we should just move on as a country.

David Friedberg 19:07 Yeah.

David Sacks 19:07 Um, and I, you know, at the end of the day, I think that's what's good for Biden's agenda. I mean, this will become very consuming.

David Friedberg 19:13 What's good for the GOP, though? If you're, if... As a person who would align themselves with Republicans mainly, I would say-

David Sacks 19:20 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 19:20 ... what do you think is best for your party, the party you're part of?

David Sacks 19:24 Ju- just moving on. Just moving forward.

David Friedberg 19:26 What if Trump comes back and gets the nomination in 2024?

David Sacks 19:30 I mean, I think that is definitely a risk you, you take, um, but I think that-

David Friedberg 19:33 You wanna take that risk?

David Sacks 19:35 Um, I, you know, I'll leave it to the voters to decide what, what makes sense.

David Friedberg 19:40 Got it. Okay.

David Sacks 19:40 Um...

Jason Calacanis 19:40 Interesting.

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:41 I, I, I think that the only salvation for the Republicans is to repudiate Trump. And, and I, and I actually agree with, um, with, uh, Friedberg. I think that this creates the opportunity for this, I think Trump wants to call it the Patriot Party, to be sort of center-right. I think Democrats probably ebb over time, you know, center-left. And then the Republicans, actually, are this interesting power broker because they can actually tack to the middle and be centrist, you know, about a social safety net combined with, you know, small government. If you could somehow tiptoe and, and, and, and balance on that line, I think that is the winning strategy that people want.

Jason Calacanis 20:19 But I think that's, that's my point is the Republican Party

Jason Calacanis 20:22 is gonna have to move left in order to create balance between the two parties again, because they're gonna lose 20 million voters to the Patriot Party. And that's the profound shift that's gonna happen. And when the Republican Party moves left, the Democrats are gonna move further left. And so, it's-

David Friedberg 20:39 Maybe. I don't think that moving that far left is a really winning strategy for them at this point.

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:42 No, but I think, I think Friedberg is right. So as an example, I, I think I can say this, but, like, I, I had a call this week with, um, the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez. What an unbelievably impressive guy. Holy fucking shit, this guy is amazing.

Jason Calacanis 20:59 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:59 Um, what he's done in Miami is incredible. Um, I mean, the GDP growth is like Chinese GDP growth, 10%, 8%, (laughs) 6.5%. He's running fiscal surpluses. You know, crime is down, down, down. He's done an incredible job. This guy's a fundamental centrist. You know, and when you talk about what his beliefs are, I was like, "What is this guy? Is he a Democrat? Is he a Republican?" I was like... He's like, "Honestly, I'm a centrist."

David Friedberg 21:25 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:25 You know? And, and so my point is if, whoever tacks to the middle will find the ability to attract incredible leaders that I think are n- are, are our next generation set of leadership.

David Friedberg 21:39 So in that way, Trump, as a change agent, uh, Sacks, was a success in that he broke the system. And this was Peter Thiel's kind of concept when he put him in, and I know you don't speak for Peter, but Peter's idea was, "Hey, this person's a change agent. He's gonna be this, you know, drain of the swamp person."

David Sacks 21:56 Yeah.

David Friedberg 21:56 Maybe that didn't happen, but he has basically made everybody reconsider what party they wanna be part of and what they actually want on the political agenda. And now we're so... Uh, we've never been more focused on politics and how our country runs in our lifetime, have we?

David Sacks 22:12 Well, T- Trump, you're right that Trump was a classic disruptor. You know, Keith Rabois has this line about founders that, uh, uh, disruption is created by disruptive people.

David Friedberg 22:23 Hmm.

David Sacks 22:23 And Trump was, you know, one of those very disruptive people. I mean, uh, just to take two examples, I mean, he created a total realignment on our views around China. I think it's now a bipartisan consensus that-

David Friedberg 22:34 Yup.

David Sacks 22:35 ... you know, we should not keep feeding China, uh, and making, you know, keep feeding that, the, the Chinese tiger and turning into a dr- a dragon. Um, everyone seems to think now that, that some reappraisal is warranted. And the other, the other big issue was the forever wars of the Middle East, you know? I think Trump first created a realignment within the Republican Party when he said, "No more Bushes." He meant no more of these stupid foreign wars. Um, and I think that was an important realignment. Um, so yeah, I mean, he's been a very disruptive figure. I think that, um, everyone's breathing a sigh of relief because we've moved on. I think that he unnecessarily was incendiary and sort of pressurized the situation. Um, but I think the best thing at this point is just to move forward and not keep rehashing the Trump era.

David Friedberg 23:20 Speaking of rehashing, um, I don't know if you guys know about what is happening with Facebook, but they have an oversight board they created last year in the spring. Uh, and the oversight board is not to do the day-to-day policing of Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp activity, but it is to be a place where people who have been, have had content removed or have had their accounts suspended to appeal. They have taken the Trump case, as it were, and given it to their Supreme Court, which is the Oversight Board. And the Oversight Board is, uh, gonna make a judgment basically on should Trump get his social media accounts back. They have complete autonomy from Facebook. They are funded by Facebook with $120 or $130 million over the next six years. So they're getting like $20 million a year to run this. They've got a really amazing bench of intellectuals, public intellectuals, and, and, and they're sort of above Facebook in this regard. What do we think?... uh, should happen to Trump's social media accounts? Should he have a path to reclaiming them? And would this, uh, board that exists as this ombudsman, as I talked about in the last episode, what do we think of this process? And, and do we think maybe Twitter and YouTube-

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:40 Let's, let's-

David Friedberg 24:40 ... should join this oversight board?

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:42 ... let's separate-

David Friedberg 24:42 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:42 ... these two things. And actually, Jason-

David Friedberg 24:44 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:44 ... you just framed it perfectly. Let's separate the two issues. One is, is any of us comfortable with a random set of people that some people will like and other people not like making these decisions on our behalf, that are not necessarily trained to make these decisions? I mean, these aren't elected trained judges or lawyers that sit for a bar exam. These are just, you know, private citizens ultimately, at the end of the day. Um, I think that if you allow this to happen at scale, there's gonna be a bunch of decisions that you'll be okay with and support. I think a lot of people probably are cheering when Trump got blocked. But if you can abstract it away and think about all the people that you actually care about, what if the administration was on the other side and now, all of a sudden, you know, these people took curry favor with the administration, went in a different direction, and people that you cared about got blocked? It is an untenable situation, and I think this is the slippery slope that the framers never intended. I don't think it should be people like this making any decision like this. And in many ways, it's a, it's a fig leaf for these companies to pretend they're doing the right thing while they're really shirking the real responsibility.

David Friedberg 25:48 Friedberg, do you agree?

Jason Calacanis 25:50 It's hard to say on the specifics. So I think we should just take a broader point of view on this, which is, how do tech companies, um, create independence in the platforms that they're building so that they don't get scrutinized as monopolists? And so there are several examples of this being done, both successfully and not successfully, across, um, the tech ecosystem. Google made Android open source, and by making the Android operating system open source, they were able to have their own forked versions that they were able to install on phones in, with partners like HTC and Samsung and others, um, that they could then have their search engine be the primary search engine. So the entire Android operating system is available for anyone to work on, for anyone to fork, for anyone to use, and then Google's iteration of that open source platform and Google's contributions, which they were making, uh, regularly, um, allowed them to kind of have a great commercial outcome without being the owner of the operating system, having learned from the mistakes of Microsoft in the past. Um, Facebook tried to take a similar approach with Libra, and it was a total shit show and a disaster. Uh, I don't know where it is today. But they tried to create this also independent board, um, to provide oversight, uh, and to, you know, to kind of do the, the, you know, all the open source work on the Libra currency. And Facebook was gonna then use that on their platform, um, as their kind of, you know, uh, token, uh, cryptocurrency, uh, solution. Um, and obviously there was so much scrutiny because no one believed the independents. And I think we're hearing the same thing now about the Facebook Oversight Board. Jack Dorsey is now taking the same approach with Bluesky, which is meant to be this, um, open source, um, uh, you know, uh, independently managed, um, uh, social media protocol system. And so Twitter would effectively become an application layer on top of this open sourced approach to how do you decide what goes on social media, how do you decide what's inappropriate and appropriate, and what technology protocols are available for everyone to use, and what business and, and, um, arbitration protocols are available for everyone to use in an open sourced way. And we'll see where Jack goes with Bluesky. He seems to be doing a better job messaging and organizing teams of people to work on this, and I don't see the pushback that Facebook is getting with their oversight board. So it, it... Un- unfortunately, a lot of these... The, the, the big tech platforms, in order to avoid the monopolistic allegations and the allegations of control and influence, uh, they're creating independence, uh, independent systems and it's hit or miss. And I don't think we yet know. I think in the next year or two we'll see how Bluesky, Libra, the Facebook Oversight Board, and some of these other platform-

David Friedberg 28:25 What would you do, David? Let me just put-

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:26 ... de-platforming approaches.

David Friedberg 28:28 What would you do? Let me just put it to you. If you were in charge, you were the CEO of Facebook or Twitter, would you have a path to reinstating Trump, yes or no? And I don't mean to say that-

David Sacks 28:36 Can, can I jump in on that?

David Friedberg 28:37 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:37 Okay.

David Friedberg 28:37 Let me just get Friedberg's... Would you, yes or no, reinstate Trump?

Jason Calacanis 28:41 Oh yeah, 100% we should have a path to it. I, I think the... Like I've said in the past, having some objective... I think that, number one, I don't think it was inappropriate for them to kick him off the platform from a legal perspective. I don't... Sacks and I might disagree, but we can probably argue for an hour. But I think from a freedom of speech point of view, they're private companies with private accounts and they did what they wanted to do. Was it the right thing to do? Um, I don't think that was the right thing to do.

David Friedberg 29:02 So you wouldn't give him a path to getting his account back, for instance

Narrator 29:04 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 29:04 So I think you need to create an objective system and you need to give everyone, whether it's Trump or whomever else, everyone has to have a s- the, the same set of standards that they're held to and then-

David Friedberg 29:13 Right.

Jason Calacanis 29:13 ... a, a universal approach that anyone can appeal and, and, and, and challenge.

David Friedberg 29:15 Okay. But that's the approach but knowing what Trump did on January 6th, would you let him back on your platform if you were CEO, is the question I'm trying to get out of you, Friedberg. But okay, David, you go.

David Sacks 29:25 Yeah. I mean, so, so here's the fundamental problem, is that the town square is now owned by Facebook and Twitter. The town square got privatized and our speech rights are now in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, as a practical matter. I mean, you do not have speech rights in the modern world if you get de-platformed by big tech. And until now, there's been no way to appeal their decisions. We have had no transparency in to their decisions. So I think Facebook creating this appeals board is a step in the right direction. But, you know, they're calling it their Supreme Court, but I'll tell you, my Supreme Court is the Supreme Court, you know? At the end of the day, we all know that the most important part of a trial is jury selection and Zuckerberg is still picking these 20 people. And, you know, they're people in any-

David Friedberg 30:09 Well, actually, just in case in point, he picked the top f-

David Sacks 30:10 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 30:11 He picked the four and the four pick the next 16 and then they don't have an ongoing, um, ability to pick the next ones and they have some-

David Sacks 30:19 Right.

David Friedberg 30:19 ... amount of term. So just to, to give you the-

David Sacks 30:21 Okay. Well, f- f- fair enough.

David Friedberg 30:22 ... general viewpoint. Yeah.

David Sacks 30:23 And like I said, look, I don't wanna criticize this move on its own because it is a step in the right direction. We need an appeals process when people get canceled, okay?

David Friedberg 30:32 Right. Sure.

David Sacks 30:32 Um, that part is good. But, but what I would like to see, like I said, my Supreme Court is the Supreme Court and they've spoken to this issue, and I would like to see these social networking monopolies apply a First Amendment standard, a, a speech policy broadly consistent with the First Amendment. And sometimes that will mean-... uh, allowing speech we don't like. But it will result in a greater level of speech protection for all of us.

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:54 Well, can I just remind-

David Friedberg 30:55 It would allow free speech back on the platform...

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:57 No, but hold on a sec.

David Friedberg 30:58 ... if you were going to go by that standard.

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:59 The problem is with this oversight board concept is that it completely violates exactly what the Supreme Court is meant to be, which is a country-by-country set of governance and standards and laws. Like, I'm just looking at the oversight board people right now. These people look incredibly well-credentialed. Emi Palmore of Israel, Catalina Botero Marino of Colombia, Nighat Dad from Pakistan, Helle Thorning-Schmidt from Denmark, Catherine Chen from Taiwan, Jamal Greene from the United States, Alan Rusbridger from UK, Andreas Szasz from Hungary. And it goes on and on. How are we supposed to adjudicate a set of standards at a national level? Like, when, when we have the... uh, are, are all these people from all these different countries supposed to opine on US constitutional right of free speech and have an idea?

David Friedberg 31:44 The idea would be they would use some global standard but then also take into consideration local standards. That, that's what they, their stated purpose is and why they're so diverse.

Chamath Palihapitiya 31:53 The setup for that, though, Jason, is that then w- you know, when, when there's a, you know... The Hindu nationalist BJP party has a specific point of view. And so when Modi wants to get elected, there's going to be specific kinds of free speech laws there. You know, Poland is going to have a different point of view, and they're not going to respect what's happening in the oversight board. Case in point, Australia passed a potential law, or is considering passing a law, which is basically around if... you know, treating Facebook and Google, uh, as quasi-publishers and that... You know, they're... I think that they have to pay some kind of royalty now for articles that are shared or published or whatever. And Google said, "I'm out." And then Facebook said, "I'm out too." Um, and so (laughs) wh- what does that mean for, you know, 200 million people? Uh, you're out. What, what does that mean you're out? You can make money when the getting is good and all of a sudden you build this public infrastructure when the country's rules change. I, I actually respect that more than trying to create some of this broad, holistic governance committee, because I think it's a shitshow. You can't cherry-pick which laws you want to observe and respect and, and then which laws you don't.

David Sacks 32:59 Yeah. I, I, I think Chamath makes an excellent point about how difficult this is going to be to implement. Uh, let me propose an alternative that actually comes from a former law professor of mine at the University of Chicago, Richard Epstein. He made the point that, um, he, he wants to apply common carrier regulation, uh, at least in the US, to these monopolies. And the example he gives is that the railroad monopolies could not deny you service based on your political views. And, you know, this is, this is a, um... This is a real issue. Imagine, you know, going back in time. You know, we had the Lincoln-Douglas debates, for example. The way that Lincoln and Douglas went around the country was by train. Imagine if some railroad magnate, some oligarch said, "Mr. Lincoln, I don't like your views. I'm not gonna give you passage on my railroad monopoly." The common carrier rules would have prevented them from doing that. And what Epstein suggests we do is app- if you're a... essentially a, um, a monopoly, a speech monopoly in the, in the US, one of these platforms that has, uh, you know, the gigantic network effects, you have to apply the common carrier, uh, rules.

David Friedberg 34:05 It's an interesting concept, I

David Friedberg 34:07 think. Let's move on to, um, the economy. Uh, and it'll be real interesting. We'll, we'll monitor obviously what the... this oversight board does. We're going to monitor, uh, what's going to happen with this, uh, January 6th, uh, insurrection.

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:19 By the way, the... Sorry, Jason, the last thing on this is...

David Friedberg 34:21 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:22 Y- you can, you can tell. If you've... If you graphed, and I'm sure somebody, uh, listening to All-In can graph and tweet this. But if you graphed the price-to-earnings ratio, um, of big tech as all of these issues have come out. Like, you know, if you looked at a time series of their PE.

David Friedberg 34:42 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:43 Um, and you put on there, you know, things like George Floyd, things like the Capitol riots, you know, th- all of these things that have created these, um...

David Friedberg 34:52 Flashpoints.

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:52 ... issues around free speech, flashpoints, the, the massacre in New Zealand, in Christchurch, that was live-streamed on Facebook, all of this stuff. What you'll see is at least capitalism is voting that these companies will not be allowed to be companies much longer.

David Friedberg 35:07 Hm. So the smart money-

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:09 And, and-

David Friedberg 35:09 ... is betting that they're going to be regulated and something is going to change.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:12 It's going to be a quasi-governmental organization, exactly. That the level of regulation at a government-by-government level, um, is going to be so onerous as to make these companies quasi-nonprofits that work on behalf of countries.

David Friedberg 35:23 Well... Yeah, they're gonna, they're gonna become utilities, right? They're getting... They're gonna get regulated like utilities at some point. Or they're going to have to adopt some governance, like we've talked about, or other options will emerge. And I think what Jack is doing with the... Is it Blue Sky, is what they're calling it?

David Sacks 35:39 Blue Sky, yeah.

David Friedberg 35:40 Yeah. What, what they're really doing with Blue Sky is saying your profile and your data is going to be stored on some blockchain or, or-

David Sacks 35:48 Decentralized system, yeah.

David Friedberg 35:48 ... or some decentralized system like Bitcoin or like any other peer-to-peer service, which means it's not on their server. Twitter just pulls all that data together. So we would all have our own domain names, and calacanis.com or saks.com/profile. whatever the HTML equivalent is. Let's just call it .social. You know, your saks.social URL would be your profile on Facebook, Twitter and everywhere else. And when you posted to it, it would post to Facebook and Twitter. Therefore, they could say, "We don't actually host this stuff. We're just pulling it together," which then destroys their business model, per Chamath's point. What do we think, um, as a little aside, is gonna happen with the TikTok case, uh, now that Trump is out of office and Biden is in office? We, we sort of alluded to China Saks being, um, a super important thing that we all have consensus on now. What should happen with TikTok? And do you think Biden will go after TikTok and say, "Hey, we got to get this out of here because it's, you know, uh, essentially spyware," and Jack Ma was just resurfaced? And let- let's just talk about China for a second.

David Sacks 36:54 Yeah, I think the sad reality is that the whole TikTok thing is gonna get swept under the rug.

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:59 Hmm.

David Sacks 36:59 Um, I think there'll be no restrictions on TikTok. I think what we need, uh... The, the, the issue with like, with, uh, banning TikTok though is that it's just one place where China can collect data on all of us. I mean there, the reality is there's thousands of places. And so, you know, I do think that taking some action on TikTok is warranted, but it would... It, it is a little bit of selective enforcement. Um, but what I would like to see is some guarantee, some assurance that, um, that TikTok is n- I- is collecting data in the way they're saying they're collecting it, and, and that there's not, um, s- sort of spyware, uh, within the app. And I don't think we know for sure whether there's spyware or not.

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:39 I'll say it, I'll say it slightly differently.

David Sacks 37:41 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:41 I've maintained this for a while, but it is inconceivable that inside of big tech at every single company that you define big tech is not at least one spy from Russia, China, India, Israel, Pakistan.

David Friedberg 38:00 Saudi Arabia.

Jason Calacanis 38:02 Did I tell you guys I had a spy working for me at Climate?

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:05 No.

Jason Calacanis 38:06 He got arrested.

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:06 No. No.

Jason Calacanis 38:06 Did I tell you guys about this?

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:07 No, tell us the story.

Jason Calacanis 38:08 It's public, so I'll share it. We had a data scientist, um, named Hightower, great guy. Uh, worked on our remote sensing team and worked on our nitrogen model, which predicted nitrogen content in soil and was very deep in the, in the, in the code base and everything. And shortly after I had left, I found out... Just so... Climate, uh, just for the audience, what my, my, a company I started in Iran was acquired by Monsanto in 2013, which is a big seed company. A lot of people know it for other things. And, um... And so I left and I found out that the guy quit, went to the airport, and the FBI intercepted him at the airport, and they found tucked into his bag a thumb drive and he had downloaded all of our code base for our nitrogen models, and he was taking them to give them to the Chinese government. And so he's in jail right now. He's in prison in the US right now. But this was like the most nondescript, super nice scientist, data scientist guy, uh, you've ever met. Like you would have had zero suspicion. And, um, and it turns out he was a spy.

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:09 Which is the point.

Jason Calacanis 39:10 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:10 How many of those exist in Facebook and Google?

Jason Calacanis 39:11 And it was so... And by the way, it was so easy for him to get access-

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:14 Tens.

Jason Calacanis 39:14 ... to our code base and he pulled all this stuff down and he had the whole model. And, you know, there's a, there's a lot of, uh, articles about what happened, uh, in our case. Um, but you're right. It's happening all over the place. And, um, and I, I don't think that we fully appreciate like how much of, uh, America's IP is stored in software, uh, and data and how accessible that is to employees inside of these organizations, and that the security is not adequate, uh, to protect that data and, and that IP.

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:40 And then the crazy thing is like, you know, when... just to connect the two dots here on this Jack Ma thing, like when you saw that video where like, you know, basically he was forced to, you know, um, show fealty to-

David Friedberg 39:51 I'm okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:52 ... I'm okay and, you know, this is all about the Chinese party.

David Friedberg 39:55 Okay, I'm not being held captive. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:57 My gosh, like, I mean, these are all quasi-governmental companies.

David Friedberg 40:01 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:01 Alibaba exists, uh, because of the largess of the Communist Party and Xi Jinping. If that wasn't clear after last week, I mean... And so to your point, like, you know, if any company gets a hold of, of US user data or otherwise, it's effectively the Chinese government getting a hold of that data.

David Friedberg 40:18 Yeah, we don't need proof, David, when Jack Ma disappears and then comes back and looks... He looked nervous on that video. I'm no expert, but he did not look like he was the Jack Ma who was giving speeches and inspiring people. Uh, and I don't know what this does to entrepreneurship in China, but I mean, who in China is gonna start a company now and want to be the next Jack Ma or Jeff Bezos when-

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:42 No, I think, I think Jason, it's even simpler.

David Friedberg 40:44 What happens?

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:45 It's like... It makes, it makes entrepreneurship even simpler, meaning for those entrepreneurs that thought that there was a balance between financial imperative and moral imperative, there's no balance. You can flush the moral imperative down the fucking toilet. They, China, will allow you to get super rich and super successful as long as you super toe the line.

David Friedberg 41:04 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:04 And that's the message.

David Sacks 41:06 Right. It's like what, uh, Putin did with, uh, Khodorkovsky in Russia. It's like he basically told all the oligarchs, "You work for us now."

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:14 Yeah.

David Sacks 41:14 And, uh...

David Friedberg 41:15 And it worked.

David Sacks 41:15 And that's basically the... It worked. That's basically the message, uh, from the CCP to Jack Ma and to every other entrepreneur in China is, "You work for us now." And by the way-

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:24 Hmm.

David Sacks 41:24 ... civil military fusion was part... was, was a, a policy expressly announced by President Xi. Um, you know, one other data point on this, I think is really interesting, is that Biden just announced that he was keeping on Christopher Wray as the head of the FBI. Um, Christopher Wray gave a speech back in July at the Hudson Institute about, um, the counter-espionage efforts, uh, that the FBI is engaged in and he was saying that the FBI has more cases now related to, uh, to Chinese, uh, counterintelligence. He said that the FBI is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case every 10 hours.

David Friedberg 42:04 Wow.

David Sacks 42:05 And-

David Friedberg 42:05 Two a day.

David Sacks 42:05 And, two a day. And of the, of the nearly 5,000 active FBI counterintelligence cases currently underway across the country, almost half are related to China. So this is directly from a speech he gave in July. So I think it's really interesting. Now, at the time that he gave this speech, you know, a lot of people were saying, "Well, this is just Trump's, more of Trump's China baiting." But I think that by Biden keeping on Chris- Christopher Wray, there's a continuity of policy there. And I think, you know, focusing on TikTok is probably the, the wrong thing. We need a more comprehensive policy to deal with counterintelligence.

David Friedberg 42:39 Well, it's a good start though to say, "If you hit scale, we're not gonna let you operate here and we want reciprocity." Adding to this, uh, outgoing Secretary Pompeo in his... the day before the inauguration, uh, tweeted, "I have determined that the People's Republic of China is committing genocide..."... and crimes against humanity, uh, in China targeting, uh, the Uighurs, Muslims, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups. That's quite a bomb to leave the day before, and I think this signals we are gonna keep resetting this relationship. And what an incredible opportunity for us to bring factories back here, bring, as we've talked about here, manufacturing back. Correct, Freeberg?

Jason Calacanis 43:19 That's what I think.

David Friedberg 43:20 No, it's g-

Jason Calacanis 43:21 Let's kick, let's kick it off. We got, we got three mil- (laughs) ... three million factories in China. I think we've got less than 100,000 in America.

David Friedberg 43:28 Let's go.

Jason Calacanis 43:28 And, you know- It will be so glorious. It will be so-

David Friedberg 43:31 So-

Jason Calacanis 43:31 ... fucking glorious. I mean, think about this, right? Look, think about the amount of money. Like, at the end of the day, what is a government's purpose? Is it to run at a profit? No. You know, that's our job, right? Is it to run at breakeven? I would actually say no. I think it's to basically promote the prosperity of current and future generations of its citizens. And so if-

David Friedberg 43:52 We should be investing.

Jason Calacanis 43:53 ... 1, 2, 1, 2, 3- So if this is the- ... 3 shots- ... You should pick investments. ... 1, 2, 3- So if we're gonna be printing, you know, trillions of dollars, and, you know, we should talk about the stimulus bill, 'cause Biden's gonna rip in another 2 trillion, which I think is-

David Friedberg 44:02 Is a perfect-

Jason Calacanis 44:02 ... and then-

David Friedberg 44:03 ... perfect segue. Let's do it.

Jason Calacanis 44:03 And then by the way, and then after that, there's gonna be this. It's amazing infrastructure bill. Put the money to work. Let's reclaim a bunch of this capability on shore, and let's rebuild America.

David Friedberg 44:15 Okay, uh, Freeberg, you looked at the, um, uh, $1.2 trillion stimulus package that Biden is proposing. How much of that goes towards rebuilding factories (laughs) in America?

Jason Calacanis 44:26 Well, none. So, so remember, the- (laughs) ... there's a, Wall hi- (laughs) Yeah, but, uh- And it's 1.9 billion. Yeah. Right? It's 1.9 trillion. Um- 1.9 trillion, yeah, yeah. 100%. Yeah, and so... And so just to put that in context, you know, Wall Street has talked about there were gonna be four, um, four massive stimulus bills. You know, since last April, May, I think they've talked about this, and we're seeing this come to, to fruition now. And Chamath, correct me if you've heard differently, but there was always been the expectation we would have the big first stimulus, which we had last March, then a second stimulus. People have been waiting for the state stimulus or the local government stimulus, which this one now captures, and then the fourth program was always gonna be infrastructure. And we haven't seen details of the proposed Biden infrastructure plan yet, but I'm pretty sure it's gonna have a lot of green energy, uh, stuff tied up in it. But let, let's just, let's just hit the numbers, right? So, i- in 2009 post-financial crisis, to keep the global economy from collapsing, um, Congress passed an $800 billion, uh, um, uh, aid package. 800 billion was extraordinary at the time, and we'd never- TARP. ... seen anything like it. Uh, TARP. And, um, last March, if you'll recall, we passed this emergency $2 trillion package, you know, more than 2X what we had during the financial crisis. And now just in December, right before the year wrapped up, Congress passed another $900 billion package. And now we're talking about this $1.9 trillion package getting passed. So we've eclipsed anything you could have ever con- uh, considered possible, um, in terms of, uh, fiscal stimulus. At this point, the M1 money supply, which I sent the link out, uh, ahead of this, uh, for, uh, Nick and Shannon-

David Friedberg 46:02 Incredible.

Jason Calacanis 46:03 ... uh, has gone up by 75%, uh, in just the past year. And now if we break down the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, um, you know, a, a huge chunk of it, and this is what Wall Street's been waiting for, uh, is th- $350 billion is going to state and local government. So think about San Francisco or the state of California, um, uh, the s- the city of Chicago, the city of New York. Um, all of these folks have seen their revenue decline, and they've had to run massive emergency programs. Where's that money coming from? They haven't been able to raise taxes. They've had to put a hold on, on receipts. And so, um, this is meant to bridge the gap at the local level, and this is really important, because so much of, uh, capital markets, um, still very much fund local and state governments through municipal bonds. And those bonds, if they start to default, are gonna have a dangerous rippling effect in the economy. So, um, bridging the state and local government budgets with this $350 billion package turned out to be, um, you know, an absolute need. And the Republicans prior to the, the election were pushing hard against this and saying, "Let those states fail. They're mostly blue states. Let those cities fail. They're mostly blue cities. They're mismanaged. They're, they're, they're being stupid about how they're operating." So this is a big deal. There's 160 billion for COVID fighting, some of which, you know, I throw up on. $20 billion for vaccination, which equates to about $150 per person they expect to vaccinate, which is an extraordinarily high cost if you actually think about it on a first principles basis. It's ridiculous how inefficient they're gonna be at this. $50 billion for testing, $40 billion for protective gear and supplies. And what this indicates to me is so much of what goes on in government and government spending is skating to where the puck used to be, not skating to where the puck is going. And it's almost like by the time this money gets deployed, I'm not sure we're gonna need as much protective gear and supplies. I'm not sure we're gonna need as much testing. If we can actually get the vaccinations done in the next 90 to 100 days and much of the country starts to recover from this, you know, you've now got $150 billion program sitting out there that doesn't need to be out there and it's a waste of money. What we should be doing is taking that money and investing in biomanufacturing infrastructure so we can more quickly develop and deploy vaccines in the future.

David Friedberg 48:12 What would it cost to build a factory, just back of the envelope, that was capable of making the next, you know, let's call it-

Jason Calacanis 48:19 One to two, one to two billion.

David Friedberg 48:20 ... one billion vaccine shots?

Jason Calacanis 48:21 One to two billion. Yeah, it's e- it's not a lot. So, so here's the- Not a lot. Let me... I'll, I'll give you guys the unit economic build and you can do the math, uh, at home. Four grams per liter is the expected yield of a, um, uh, of a biomanufacturing facility. And a liter is like, you know, how many liters of water do you have in a tank? You can build half million liter facilities for a couple 100 million dollars, and that's four grams per liter every seven days. And as vaccine or the, the, um, the antibody therapies that we've seen, the antibody therapies are about two grams, and that'll save someone's life-... uh, the, uh, the vaccines are a fraction of a gram. And so, you can start to kind of do the math on how just a few billion dollars, uh, invested in building some of these bio-manufacturing facilities that are modular and can be very quickly reprogrammed to make a new molecule, um, uh, can be used to support the future vaccine supply chain and the future anti, uh, antibody therapeutic supply chain, which is critically needed in this country. And if I were to take $160 billion for COVID fighting, give me 10% of that, and we'll be ready for any virus in the future, and we'll be able to print out vaccines for the whole country within 30 days. Um, and so a little bit, again, of this is not really forward-thinking. It's scientists and doctors saying what they need. What they're talking about is last year's need. They're not thinking in terms of what the industrial supply chain needs are gonna be in the future on an ongoing basis for this country. At this point, I'm not seeing it. And so, I feel a little bit let down by that, and I hope that the infrastructure programs that are gonna be proposed in the next stimu- in the next bill will start to encompass some of that work.

David Friedberg 49:53 Paradoxically, it's gonna cost a trillion dollars to upgrade our nuclear weapons. So, we're literally gonna spend a trillion dollars over the next decade ope- uh, upgrading our nuclear weapons-

Jason Calacanis 50:04 That's a nutty, nutty statistic.

David Friedberg 50:05 ... that we don't actually use.

Jason Calacanis 50:05 Is that, is that true? That's nutty. Wow.

David Friedberg 50:07 That's what I, I'm reading a headline right here. Um...

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:10 Wow. Here's my, here's my little wish list for this infrastructure bill. I think, um, when you look at some of the most compelling work that's happened in the developing world, so like if you're gonna go and, you know, build a massive water facility or, uh, an energy installation, um, a lot of people are worried, "Hey, listen, I have to deal with, um, you know, local currency risk. I have to deal with, you know, um, corruption. I could have the government, you know, take away this facility from me without notice. The rule of law may not be strong." And the World Bank has this mechanism where you can basically go and insure, you know, for wh- I think it's like 1 or 2% of your project costs, the whole project, and it really makes things work. I would love to see the US government effectively create a program that is similar but different in the following way. There are some enormous things America needs to do where the IP exists with our allies, and there is an enormous fear what would happen if that IP leaked specifically to China. One example is, if you b- believe and you care about climate change, um, and the making of batteries, um, there's an enormous amount of IP that sits with the Japanese, um, that, you know, if we could license and work with as a country, we could build factories all over the country, and we would be the leader in, in climate. But that'll take the US government to basically work bilaterally with the Japanese government to basically say, "Listen, if it takes the NSA to fucking protect this shit, we will do it." Um, but you could say-

David Friedberg 51:46 Or you run them. They, they, we could just give them their sovereignty in those factories or something.

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:49 Ah, you know, these are, these are, these are for-profit companies that are, you know, relatively risk-averse. They're not gonna rip in 10 million bucks, $10 billion to build, you know, a cathode plant in the US. I would, other people would. Um, but tha- that's my hope in the infrastructure bill, is that we take some of these things that have worked in the developing world, and we use it to grease the skids in how we rebuild America.

David Friedberg 52:10 I mean-

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:10 It would be fucking glorious.

David Friedberg 52:11 And also, just think about how much a nuclear power plant costs. It's like $6 to $9 billion to build a nuclear power plant, and we haven't built many new ones (laughs) , and w- we're on the way there, but if part of this trillion dollars we could build 10 more of those, energy independence would, uh, continue and global warming would go down. Uh, anything to add there, David? It looks like you wanna comment.

David Sacks 52:30 Well, I did- d- d- just one final word, you know, the, um, the, the, the great Senate leader, uh, Everett Dirksen famously said that, you know, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money." And now, we're talking about a trillion here and a trillion there, and these are really big numbers. Uh, and I think we should be very concerned about debt and deficits. No one's really talking about this yet, but all of this money has to be paid back at some point. Um, and-

David Friedberg 52:58 Well, what's the worst that can happen, David? Let's actually do that.

David Sacks 53:01 (laughs)

David Friedberg 53:01 I'm g- I mean, I'm asking the question in a non-joking way. What is the worst that can happen?

David Sacks 53:06 Oh, I mean, a debt crisis.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:08 Inflation. Inflation.

David Sacks 53:09 Infla- Well, not, not just... So, inflation because the government will eventually have to monetize the debt by printing more money. The dollar stops becoming the world's reserve currency. Maybe bit- Bitcoin becomes the world's reserve currency, maybe it's something else does. Um, it could be, lead to, you know, very s- severe, uh, to basically a debt crisis in the future.

David Friedberg 53:26 What would that look like for companies and citizens of America?

David Sacks 53:30 Well, if you're middle, if you're middle class, your savings get wiped out, you know? If you, so, so if you're super rich, the reality is there's already been tremendous asset inflation, so there's already been a lot of inflation, but frankly, if you are very rich and own assets in the stock market, you're, you're sort of, you're protected, you know? But if you're a middle-class person with most of your savings in your bank account-

Jason Calacanis 53:52 Or your home.

David Sacks 53:52 ... that money is now worth a lot less, and you're destroyed... Or your home, yeah, you get destroyed by that.

David Friedberg 53:58 Yes.

David Sacks 53:58 It's really very sad. It's very sad.

David Friedberg 53:59 So, if you own equities and the market is on a rip, you know, paying an extra couple of million dollars for your second home is not a big deal because your equities have gone up more than that or equal to that, and if you're-

David Sacks 54:10 Right.

David Friedberg 54:10 ... somebody who ge- makes income, we have a, a separate issue. Let's-

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:14 Well, look this is, this is a, this is a bigger issue, but I, but I, and I think we should talk about this at some point, 'cause this is what the grand fallacy of technology was supposed to be. Like, you know, if you, if you break down capitalism into its two most natural states, you have labor and you have capital, right? You have workers and you have owners. And the, the biggest problem that technology did was it drove a wedge and it created an extremely small owner class and an extremely massive labor class. And so the reality is that a very few, very, a handful of people can, can get extremely wealthy by being owners of these next-generation assets, um, and then everybody else is essentially, you know, rendered as labor. Um, and so this wealth inequality just grows and grows and compounds. Um, and so-

David Sacks 54:59 Well-

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:59 ... we have to figure out a way...

Jason Calacanis 55:00 Yeah, how's that different than the past?

Narrator 55:02 ... because like-

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:02 Oh, I think it's got-

Jason Calacanis 55:03 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:03 I think, I think technology accelerated that dynamic.

Jason Calacanis 55:06 Well, I think it's, uh, jumping in on this, I mean, I, I, I think that technology creates bigger winner take all outcomes and that's fed into inequality. But the good thing about tech or the tech ecosystem is that frankly we have option pools, right? We have broad-based ownership of these companies. If you go work for a Google or Facebook or whatever, um, you get, you get option-

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:25 No, come on.

Jason Calacanis 55:25 ... grants. Yeah, but it's just- No, no, no, no.

David Friedberg 55:27 10,000 people. That's 10,000 people.

Jason Calacanis 55:29 Yeah. That's, that's no one, right?

David Friedberg 55:30 Right?

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:30 And they're, and they're replacing two million jobs with 10,000 people.

Jason Calacanis 55:34 Well, I don't... I-

David Friedberg 55:34 I mean, this is why, uh, this is why we need to have 100% participation in the markets by everybody in the country. Joe Greenblatt, who I had on my podcast recently is a proponent of this. Chamath, I saw you tweeting about it. When you're born in the United States, we should put $5,000 in a 401 (k) that you can't touch until you're 65 years old. That is in whatever index funds and every person born gets that $5,000 and cannot touch it. And then we see where it winds up.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:59 I'm not sure it solves it, it doesn't-

David Friedberg 56:00 If everybody had a stake, we wouldn't-

Jason Calacanis 56:01 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:01 But it doesn't, it doesn't solve the problem that a lot of people have to climb up a hill first, right? They take on a lot of debt to get education, to put themselves in a position to ultimately be able to generate the income to do that. And I think, you know, sure, give them $5,000 in the beginning, but it's not going to get them where they need to be.

David Friedberg 56:16 But it is-

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:17 Um-

David Friedberg 56:17 It does solve one portion of the problem, which is they don't have participation. And we could take out the wondering what-

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:22 I think both of you are right.

David Friedberg 56:22 ... your retirement's going to be like.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:23 I think both of you are right. I think, like, there needs to be, um, something that allows people to have a line of sight to savings. Like a lot, a lot of about being invested in, uh, in anything where you own it, whether it's real estate or whether it's a piece of artwork or whether it's stocks and bonds, so many people don't even know how to begin and don't understand the concept of ownership. And so they are stuck in being in the ghetto of labor. And I think like one of the biggest things we can do is you can give them a taste of ownership so that they understand that difference, so that they want-

David Friedberg 56:54 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:54 ... to be an owner.

David Friedberg 56:56 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:56 Okay? Number one.

David Friedberg 56:57 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:57 And then to, to David's point, number two, is we still have a responsibility to educate people so that they can actually have skills that they can monetize and we have a responsibility to do that.

David Friedberg 57:08 Absolutely.

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:08 And right now, we make it so fucking hard and we trick people because, like we, we send them down the path of getting a $200,000 art history degree, and then they end up working at a Starbucks and then they're fucked.

David Friedberg 57:19 Which is impossible to monetize. I mean, it's ridiculous.

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:22 You can't monetize that. You can't monetize that.

Jason Calacanis 57:23 And by the way, by the way, what you're saying, Chamath, is the reason I think retirement accounts were set up in the US was to shift away from pension fund models where people were getting a fixed income at retirement and shifting them to a model of equity and ownership in the markets where they could participate actively on a tax-free basis. Um, but obviously it hasn't done enough. You know, the, the... I think the big difference between the Industrial Revolution, the first and second Industrial Revolution and where we are with software in, in the last, uh, two to three decades is the capital required, right? It's very little capital to build a highly valuable software business. It required a lot of capital to build oil infrastructure and railroad infrastructure and factories. And so to your point, you get extraordinarily different outsized returns today than you did 100 years ago as an owner versus labor. The... And the bridge to try and give people ownership through retirement accounts certainly hasn't been enough. And, uh, it's worth-

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:16 So, uh, so to your point, to your point, David, I saw this study, it was fucking crazy. I'm going to get the exact numbers wrong, but you, the, the trend is accurate. When, um, when, when people used to actively manage their 401 (k) , there was a very small participation rate, but the mean return was off the charts and the amount of dollars as a function of their paycheck was off the charts. Call it, you know, 50, 60 cents of every theoretical dollar you could put into it. The minute that we went to passive and that, you know, you could sort of trickle money in, the number of people that participated literally more than doubled, but then the amount of that max dollar went off of a cliff. And so the, the, the problem that we've had is we haven't taught people. You know, we've misdirected some of them to say, "Have a 401 (k) . It replaces your pension," as if it's the solution. That's still not the solution. Um, and we, and we need to have ways of teaching people how to actually manage it. It's not that hard. And the basics can be taught very simply. Um, but right now, we are massively exacerbating this wealth gap the way that we behave. And then all of this money that's going to go in, this 1.9 trillion, whatever, how many trillion comes afterwards, is frankly for the few that are smart enough to take advantage of it will be amazing, but it'll still push the overwhelming majority of Americans who are stuck in labor deeper and deeper into that ghetto and they'll never get out.

David Friedberg 59:39 It, it is definitely every-

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:41 So, so everybody-

David Friedberg 59:41 ... little bit helps, right? Like if you have the 401 (k) that helps and then, you know, educate people. And I think if we gave everybody an ISA at birth or an I- you know, an income sharing agreement for these 20 professions and the government provided those-

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:54 Well, why... Jason, why is it that, you know, for example, if... to invest in a startup, you either have to have more than $5 million or more than, you know, a million bucks-

David Friedberg 1:00:02 200K a year. It's, it's bonkers.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:03 Or more than-

David Friedberg 1:00:04 And they're gonna have to change it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:05 It's bonkers. And so if you're, if you're a product manager that's like really, really talented or if you're like, you know, somebody else who's just got a, you know, a PhD in nuclear biology and frankly is, you know, is decided to teach for 60,000-

David Friedberg 1:00:17 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:17 ... and you can't participate even though you have the intellect to judge, like we're just like kind of like compounding-

David Friedberg 1:00:22 Chamath, it's even worse than that. The person who's changing the accreditation laws at the SEC and working on this said, "I cannot... I'm writing the accreditation laws and because I make 150K a year, whatever it is under 200K, I can't participate and I'm the one responsible for the law." (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:39 That person must be one of the most sophisticated people in the world.

David Friedberg 1:00:42 It, it literally is the most sophisticated person in the world when it comes to accreditation.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:45 That's, that's what so fucked.

David Friedberg 1:00:46 And that's why we need to move to sophisticated investor, not accredited. And just some test. And if you did that, every single Uber driver, Lyft driver, Postmates driver, Airbnb host, uh, or person who used the Cash App or PayPal would have said, "I can... As one of the first users, I have access to buy shares?"

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:03 I- I'm just gonna say this-

David Friedberg 1:01:04 I'll buy them.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:05 This problem has to get fixed because I think in the next-

David Friedberg 1:01:08 Now, it has to fix now.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:08 I think in the- I think in the next 10 and 20 years, the United States is gonna fucking-... reemerge like a phoenix. And the reason-

David Friedberg 1:01:16 Absolutely.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:16 And the reason is gonna be because of innovation around climate change and agriculture and biotechnology and technology. These four areas are gonna recast GDP. But what that also means is that if we're going to create, you know, $20 or $30 trillion a year for the next 10 and 20 years, $300, $500 trillion, how the fuck do we make sure that more than 18 people participate?

David Friedberg 1:01:41 Absolutely. Go ahead, Sax, you had a point.

David Sacks 1:01:43 Well, look, I mean, I... Well, s- s- so I agree with a lot of what you guys are saying, but I can tell you every single one of the companies that I've invested in are looking to hire people right now. They cannot hire people soon enough. Um, it's their biggest challenge. And it's not just coders. It's salespeople, it's marketing people, it's HR people, it's every th- every role in their company, they have trouble trying to hire the right person. And, and, and they give options to all those people. So it's not just a small number of founders getting equity. Uh, this is basically a new category of, call it entrepreneurial labor. It's labor who gets ownership in the company. That's never existed before. And really, what this comes down to is we need more people participating in the new economy. If you participate in the new economy, then you get ownership. And if you're in the old economy, then you really are stuck in labor. And so what we need to do is spread the opportunity that that technology represents to more people across the country.

David Friedberg 1:02:36 As part of the minimum wage, maybe we should have a minimum equity participation. So we have the minimum wage over here, but if you're working for an entrepreneurial enterprise, why not get a minimum per- you know, participation in the equity?

David Sacks 1:02:46 Well, because the free- because the free market takes care of that. I mean, if you have the right skills-

David Friedberg 1:02:49 The free market hasn't taken care of it, David. That's the problem.

David Sacks 1:02:51 No, it has. It's, uh-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:51 No, no, no. The free market has. I, I agree with David. The free market has. The problem is, is that-

David Friedberg 1:02:55 Wait, how does, how does a person working at Walmart ever participated in the Walmart, uh, appreciation of the company, the companies?

Jason Calacanis 1:02:59 That's the point. They, they will, they will leave and go to a company that gives them equity. And that's why you'll see this, this, this migration.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:04 Oh, that's convenient to say-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:05 But they got, but they got-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:05 ... but if Walmart's the only job within an hour of their house, it's not.

David Sacks 1:03:09 They gotta have the right skills, Jason. And so this all comes back to education. You know, we gotta, we gotta give people right skills.

David Friedberg 1:03:14 Yeah, but why not let the people who are in rank-and-file jobs, the 30 million truck drivers, cashiers, et cetera, have equity participation as a right?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:22 I think, I think you're saying something different. Should they? Absolutely. Should the company that does that be created? Absolutely. Will they be rewarded with all the people that wanna work there? Absolutely. So now somebody should go and start that fucking company.

David Friedberg 1:03:37 Okay. I, I just think it's an interesting concept to f... I mean, we do have a minimum wage. Why not have a minimum equity participation?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:44 Jason, you just had... You know, the, the same woman that ran Elon out of California?

David Friedberg 1:03:48 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:48 Lorena Gonzalez?

David Friedberg 1:03:49 She's doing another thing now. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:51 Just proposed a, just proposed a new bill. Like, do you want her to basically pick the, the equity thresholds? 'Cause that's what you're saying.

David Friedberg 1:03:58 No. Uh, well, no, I-

David Sacks 1:04:00 Let's, let's pivot, let's pivot to California.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:01 Let's pi- Okay, let's pivot to another disaster.

David Friedberg 1:04:03 California. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:05 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:04:05 So w- the recall is, uh, well, uh, on its way. They need to get 1.5 million signatures. We're at 1.1 or 1.2, but we actually really need two because there's some verification process that goes on. So in all likelihood, we will see Gavin Newsom recalled? We agree on that?

Jason Calacanis 1:04:20 Uh, yeah. I'll tell you the s- the stats I heard. Uh, y- there's about a million, call it a million, million and one signatures. They've seen about an 85% verification rate to date. Uh, Sax, correct me if I'm wrong on this. They're getting a- they're getting about 200,000 signatures a week. Um, they're, you know, the cost for marketing and attracting people to get these signatures is coming in at like three to six bucks a signature. So it's really not a lot of money is needing to be spent to get this done. And, um, you know, even if the verification rate drops to 75 or 65%, you're still on track at this rate to hit the recall target by March 17th, which is the deadline. And so it appears highly likely they're gonna get there. Sax, am I, am I right on all that?

David Sacks 1:05:01 Uh, yeah, I think they're at 1.2 million s- uh, signatures. That's what I heard.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:04 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:05:04 And they're trying to get, they're trying to get to two million to have a, a buffer so that, you know, they, that, you know, they don't get pushed under the one... But 1.5 is the, is the-

Jason Calacanis 1:05:13 The target.

David Sacks 1:05:13 ... number they need. Yeah. They need 1.5 million certified signatures.

David Friedberg 1:05:17 70% of the way there, according to the website recallgavin2020.com, which I believe is the official-

David Sacks 1:05:21 I think, I think, I think they will get there. I think they'll get there, and then their, uh, and then the recall election would take place about four to five months after, uh, after that. There's a, a couple of months where it moves through the finance committee. The, uh, recall election has to be budgeted. And then, um, Newsom would have the opportunity to set a date within, I think, 60 to 80 days roughly. So I think we're looking at July for a, um, a, a recall election.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:49 And Sax, how d- how do you get, um, how does a candidate get on the ballot? 'Cause Chamath, um, is asking for a friend.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:55 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:05:56 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:05:56 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:05:58 It's, it's, it's-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:58 Wait a second. I wanna be on, too, then. Can... Should we have all four besties be on? As in all four?

Jason Calacanis 1:06:02 Yeah, we should all, we should all run.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:04 As in all four?

David Sacks 1:06:05 All four?

David Friedberg 1:06:05 Can we run as a team? Can we run as a team?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:07 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:06:07 We're gonna... Let the voters decide.

David Friedberg 1:06:09 A squad?

David Sacks 1:06:09 We're gonna, we're pro- we're probably gonna have four Kardashians on there.

David Friedberg 1:06:13 (laughs) Yeah.

David Sacks 1:06:13 So we might as well have four besties on there. Um-

David Friedberg 1:06:15 And what ex-Kardashian?

David Sacks 1:06:17 So... Yeah. So the, uh, it, it's, it's, it's stunningly easy to be a replacement candidate. We should expect there'll probably be about 150 replacement candidates on the ballot.

David Friedberg 1:06:25 Wow.

David Sacks 1:06:25 Every, every third tier C-list celebrity is gonna, you know, like, you know, back to... Gary Coleman did it, like, you know, 20 years ago. The, ev- all three C-list celebrities are gonna do it-

David Friedberg 1:06:36 What you talking about, Sax?

David Sacks 1:06:37 ... to try and, yeah, to try and boost their Q rating. Uh, I'm sure we'll see Kathy Griffin on there, I mean, what she'd been doing.

David Friedberg 1:06:44 (laughs)

Narrator 1:06:44 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:06:44 Um, and so it's gonna be a farce. It's gonna be a farce, but-

David Friedberg 1:06:46 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:47 What about Andy Dick? Andy Dick, Andy Dick is gonna run. (laughs)

David Sacks 1:06:50 (laughs) Andy Dick.

Narrator 1:06:50 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:06:51 Okay, can we- can we just-

David Friedberg 1:06:52 Can we deal with celebrities-

David Sacks 1:06:53 Can we just, can we, by the way, can we talk about why he's getting recalled? Because I do get this question a lot from people in tech and out of tech. And I just want to highlight some of the reasons I've heard, and I'd love to hear why you guys think he's g- you know, why there is this push against him. But from people within the tech community, I've heard that the ad hoc lockdown rules have really pissed a lot of people off in terms of when businesses are allowed and not allowed to be open and kind of the responsiveness and the guiding principles around this during COVID. Obviously, the, the, you know, the inability to fight against the tax rate but no one wants to be publicly saying that. Um, the failed vaccine rollout, the failed testing.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:29 Um, you know, Sax, uh, Chamath, Jason, what, what do, what do you guys think is the reason he's getting recalled? What are the top five reasons you're hearing?

David Friedberg 1:07:36 Hypocrisy is number one. I think it's the hypocrisy-

David Sacks 1:07:39 Yeah. Well-

David Friedberg 1:07:39 ... of going to those restaurants and then making people not go to the beach, which is crazy. And then I think number two is the virus. We've only deployed 37% of our doses in California, uh, and that makes us, you know, of the major states that are putting out a lot of these vaccines, uh, one of the worst performers. Uh, second-

David Sacks 1:07:59 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:08:00 ... w- but let's wait-

David Sacks 1:08:00 We're, we're, we're-

David Friedberg 1:08:00 Texas and Florida and New York are the other large states, and they're at 56%, 49%, and 50%. We're still stuck at 37%. California, the cradle of innovation and technology, and this bum. He's a bum. 37% deployed.

David Sacks 1:08:15 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:08:15 We should be leading. We should be 70%. He's a bum.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:18 Can I, can I-

David Friedberg 1:08:18 Get him out of here.

David Sacks 1:08:19 Ni- new- wait, wait, wait, it's, it's Newsom derangement syndrome.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:21 Oh, my God. No, I'm trying to get-

David Friedberg 1:08:24 And Jason.

David Sacks 1:08:24 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:08:24 ... a viral clip. I'm trying to get a viral clip-

David Sacks 1:08:25 You guys-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:26 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:08:26 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:08:26 ... so you guys can use your besties.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:27 Jason just has a problem with anyone in authority. You know, it's a-

David Friedberg 1:08:30 No, it's the hair.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:30 ... it's a, it's a problem with authority. Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:08:31 He's got great fucking hair. It's t- the hair's too good, French Laundry, the hypocrisy, and then get to work. 37%.

David Sacks 1:08:39 Jason.

David Friedberg 1:08:39 So, so per- personality, personality for you is the biggest driver. Is that right, Jason? No, it's, it's literally the performance of the- Washington, DC-

David Sacks 1:08:46 Jason, I-

David Friedberg 1:08:46 ... West Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, all 66% to 73% of their vaccines deployed. They're double us. Now, it's smaller states, but still, we're goddamn California.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:57 Um, here's, here's what I would say as a list. Um, number one, we're the most heavily taxed. Um, number two, we are, we have some of the worst infrastructure in the country. We have some of the lowest and poorest performing schools in the country. We have the highest homeless rates for veterans in the country. Um, we have the worst preparedness for climate in the country. Um, and so it's basically just a complete bungling at every level. And so... And then the f- the, the fourth or the, then the last, which is the biggest one, is we have now created an inhospitable culture for innovation and the biggest problem with that is if these climate jobs and these technology jobs and these biotechnology jobs pivot to more accepting and progressive, um, local and state, uh, managements, like Austin, Texas and Miami, Florida, we lose these things forever. This is a multi-generational decay that we're starting. And so if we care about this state, I love California. I love San Francisco. I love how eclectic and unique and different it is. I was always happy to pay 10%, 11%, 12%, 13%, 14% because it was worth it. Now, I don't know what we get for it. And so I think we... I think, I think he should get recalled. I just think he's, he's trash.

David Friedberg 1:10:19 Uh, is it true-

David Sacks 1:10:20 And, yeah, and, and just to, just to underscore the point on lockdowns, um, we now have certainly more cases, we have more deaths, and we have more deaths per capita than Florida, despite the fact that Florida has no lockdowns and a much older population. And so I was just in Florida a few weeks ago, like, um, you know, like Chamath was saying, um, you know, Suarez, the, the mayor there, has created really a, a land of the free. I mean, it's really unbelievable. You can go to bars, you can go to restaurants. There's no lockdown whatsoever. They don't have as big a problem as California does right now, and so-

David Friedberg 1:10:54 Why do you think that is?

David Sacks 1:10:55 ... because, bec- well, because I think that the lockdowns-

David Friedberg 1:10:58 On a scientific basis, yeah.

David Sacks 1:11:00 I think the lockdowns only forestall the problem. Um, eventually the virus finds a way around them. And I also think the thing that's happening in Florida is that, okay, so my aunt lives there, she's in her 70s, she's not going to bars and restaurants because she knows she's highly at risk. And so just because the government doesn't lock down doesn't mean that people don't take sensible precautions on their own. And so, and so I think that what's happened is that people are going out to bars and restaurants, are low risk, and they're keeping the economy going over there. And instead, in California, we have this very draconian lockdown policy and it's put all these small businesses out of, out of work.

David Friedberg 1:11:35 No, no, no, it's worse.

David Sacks 1:11:36 It-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:36 It's not a draconian lockdown policy, it's a whip saw. "Oh, it's open. Okay, great. Now go and invest in a bunch of cap X to make sure there's outdoor dining. Oh, hold on, you're closed." What is that?

David Sacks 1:11:45 It's brutal. It's just stupid.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:46 It's brutal.

David Friedberg 1:11:46 That's just, that's just stupid. It's incompetent.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:47 It's incompetent.

David Sacks 1:11:48 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:48 Tons and tons of restaurant and bar owners in San Francisco spent on average $30,000 building outdoor seating for their facility, only to have it all shut down three and a half weeks later.

David Friedberg 1:11:56 Incompetent.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:58 It was fucking incompetent.

David Sacks 1:11:58 Can you imagine being an owner of that business, what the experience must have been like?

David Friedberg 1:12:00 No, it's unfair.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:01 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:12:01 No, I mean, it, you would... Literally, they're going to kill themselves.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:03 Meanwhile, you, you-

David Friedberg 1:12:04 This is the tragedy of it. People will lose everything and there'll be suicides, depression, domestic violence, drug use-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:08 And then this guy's, and then this guy's having dinner at French Laundry during the whole... I mean, it's just such a bad look.

David Friedberg 1:12:13 You know what, Chamath? I just got a note that he will-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:16 What a bad look.

David Friedberg 1:12:16 ... he's, he's actually been banished from being at the French Laundry.

David Sacks 1:12:19 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:19 Apparently, it's been renamed the Sri Lankan Laundry, and some notable-

David Sacks 1:12:24 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:24 ... Sri Lankan billionaire has bought the French Laundry.

David Sacks 1:12:27 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:12:27 French Laundry, by the way, got-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:29 And it's been renamed the Sri Lankan Laundry.

David Friedberg 1:12:30 ... they made a, they got, they got a, they got a 2.6 million dollar PPP loan that got forgiven, so, you know, there's a l- there's a lot of heat on the French Laundry as a whole. What does it cost to go to French Laundry, $800 a person?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:40 Anybody who want- who's listening to this who wants to go to the French Laundry, stay at home, pour a bunch of salt on whatever you're gonna eat-

David Friedberg 1:12:47 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:47 ... okay? Melt a stick