Skip to content
All-In PodcastAll-In Podcast

E36: New FTC Chair, breaking up big tech, government silent spying, Jon Stewart, wildfires & more

Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Show Notes: 00:00 Besties intro 03:37 Lina Khan appointed to the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission 07:02 Will Lina break up big tech? Which one will be first? 18:02 Potential repercussions to consumers 27:48 Sacks’ antitrust experience at PayPal vs. eBay, Visa & MasterCard 29:50 Google’s multi-trillion dollar data trove 35:40 The U.S. government's capability to silently take data while “gagging” Big Tech 53:32 COVID’s psychic shadow, Friedberg’s office landlord is still requiring masks 1:00:17 Jon Stewart’s lab leak bit on Stephen Colbert’s show 1:10:04 California’s wildfire risk increasing with climate change 1:20:57 Bestie summer plans Referenced in the show: Chamath's 2019 Annual Letter re: Big Tech breakup https://www.socialcapital.com/annual-letters/2019 Big Tech Gag Order (mentioned by Sacks) https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/13/microsoft-brad-smith-trump-justice-department-gag-orders/ Obama Administration Record Seizure (mentioned by Sacks) https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/us/phone-records-of-journalists-of-the-associated-press-seized-by-us.html?referringSource=articleShare California Forest fire maps (mentioned by Friedberg) https://twitter.com/NWSBayArea/status/1398474379214802951/photo/1 Jon Stewart On Vaccine Science And The Wuhan Lab Theory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfejgwbDQ8 #allin #tech #news

Jason CalacanishostDavid FriedberghostChamath Palihapitiyahost
Jun 18, 20211h 27mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 3:37

    Besties intro

    1. JC

      What's going on, Sacks? LP meeting?

    2. DF

      (laughs)

    3. DS

      (laughs)

    4. JC

      Is it an LP meeting or are you goin' to- are you going to lunch with Peter Thiel?

    5. DS

      A little layer poo? What a layer poo?

    6. DF

      God, what is the layer poo about?

    7. JC

      What's going on? It's 9:00 AM. You must be- there must be a call going on here.

    8. DS

      Tutto bene, Sacks-y-poo? Tutto bene?

    9. JC

      Que c'est que dice, Sacks?

    10. DF

      Every week that Chamath is in Italy, another button gets undone.

    11. JC

      This is definitely- (laughs)

    12. DS

      (laughs)

    13. CP

      Let your winners ride.

    14. JC

      Rain Man, David Sacks.

    15. CP

      What's going on? And I said- We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

    16. JC

      Love you, besties.

    17. CP

      What's happening?

    18. JC

      Queen of Quinoa.

    19. CP

      I'm going all in.

    20. JC

      Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the All-In Podcast, Episode 36. Back with us today on the program, the Queen of Quinoa, science, uh, spectacular, Friedberg is with us again. With- leading off last episode, Friedberg, with a great, uh, Friedberg science monologue. The- the crowd went crazy for it. How does it feel coming off that epic performance in Episode 35? Tell us, what were you thinking going into the game? And, uh, yeah.

    21. DF

      Well, I was thinking I would talk about the Alzheimer's drug approval at Biogen.

    22. JC

      Got it. Yeah.

    23. DF

      And then I felt like I did it when we were done.

    24. JC

      Great. Good.

    25. DF

      Yeah.

    26. JC

      It's just- it's like literally interviewing Kawhi Leonard after like a 50-point game.

    27. DF

      Yeah.

    28. JC

      Okay. (laughs) And with us, Rain Man, David Sacks, with layers, four players. He's been styled and groomed, uh, and he's in some random hotel room. How are you doing, Rain Man?

    29. DS

      Good, good. But I'm not- I'm not in a hotel room, I'm...

    30. JC

      Oh, your home just happens to look like a five-star resort. Got it, forgot that.

  2. 3:37 – 7:02

    Lina Khan appointed to the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission

    1. JC

      So, kicking off today-

    2. DF

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JC

      ... Lina Khan has been confirmed to the FTC with bipartisan support. Interesting. Uh, and this is obviously gonna be a challenge for Big Tech. On Tuesday, the Senate voted 69 to 28 to confirm Lina Khan, who is a very well-established critic of Big Tech. Um, and this is obviously really unique because she's 32 years old and she's leading the FTC-

    4. DF

      Incredible.

    5. JC

      ... which is unbelievable. I did a little research on her and watched some videos. Um, she's basically written two amazing papers. Um, and the first paper came out in 2017, Amazon's Antitrust Paper. The second one, uh, came out in June, um, and was about the separation of platforms and commerce. And when you hear her speak, she is incredibly, uh, credible and knowledgeable. It is as if one of the four of us were discussing this. She could come into this podcast and speak credibly about Amazon's businesses, as opposed to the charades we saw at different hearings where the senators and- and congresspeople just absolutely had no idea what they're talking about. Some of the items I picked up from a talk she gave in Aspen, um, is that she bel- she formed a lot of these opinions by talking to venture capitalists who were concerned about Amazon's dominance, and other companies, uh, and the competitive space. And she is looking at consumer welfare, one of the lenses of antitrust, which will- I'm sure David Sacks will have some thoughts on as our, uh, resident attorney here, um, and the framing of those in terms of harm of the consumer. She believes there's other harm that happens, um, and she thinks one remedy is to kill Amazon Basics because the marketplace shouldn't own the goods as well. She's concerned about cloud computing, uh, consolidation because that creates, uh, fragility and that is another type of consumer harm while she freely admits that prices have gone down, services are free, and this is a consumer benefit. So, she wants to rethink the entire concept. And she is savvy. She brought up Facebook buying, uh, Onavo, um, the reportedly spyware VPN to give them a little advantage as to what was being used on phones and maybe give them a little product roadmap information. She also, um, brought up Amazon studying the sales of other products to inform Amazon Basics, a claim that Amazon says they don't do, uh, but everybody knows they do do, because all that information is publicly available. She talked about Amazon's VC arm using data to invest in buying companies. Why wouldn't they? That makes total sense. Uh, that's great signal for them.Uh, she seems to want Amazon Web Services spun out, which I think would just double, (laughs) uh, the value of it or maybe add 50% to the value of it. And she gave very pragmatic examples, like maybe separating Google Maps from Android. And when you turn on your Android phone, you, you would have to install maps or maybe you would pick from the different maps that are out there, different programs and that there would be integration in them and people could swap out, you know, uh, MapQuest or Apple Maps in their Google searches. So, a lot of actually very interesting pragmatic approaches, and she doesn't think these need to be decade-long lawsuits. She thinks this is gonna be a negotiation, um, and that people will kind of work together on it. But this is all with the backdrop of partisan politics and, you know, one group of people looking at this through the lens of wealth and inequality, and another group looking at it through censorship. Sachs, uh, since you are our counsel here, what are your thoughts on this appointment?

  3. 7:02 – 18:02

    Will Lina break up big tech? Which one will be first?

    1. JC

    2. CP

      Yeah, I mean, th- the interesting thing is that, uh, you know, Lina Khan is the, the Bernie-approved candidate. She is liked by the progressive left, but at the same time, she got 21 Republicans to support her. And so this, um, nomination, you know, sailed through confirmation. I think what she's saying i- wh- what she's saying, I think there's, um, a- a- there's a very, uh, good, good argument to it, um, that... And I've said similar things in the past, which is, you know, w- w- what she's basically saying, especially in the case of Amazon, is, look, you've got this company, Amazon, that controls essential infrastructure, AWS, the whole distribution supply chain going all the way from the port to warehouses to, uh, to logistics and distribution. That is gonna be owned by a scaled monopoly player. You have econ- massive economies of scale. It's pretty clear they're gonna dominate that. And what they're doing is systematically going category by category and using the monoply- monopoly profits they make by owning the sort of core infrastructure and subsidizing their entry into each of these new categories, that Amazon Basics and others, and she calls that, you know, it's predatory pricing. And she's afraid that Amazon's just gonna end up dominating every categ- every category that you could build on top of this core infrastructure. I think it's actually a pretty valid concern. I think you see something analogous happening with Apple and Google and the app stores. We had a congressional hearing pretty recently in which you had Spotify and other apps complaining about what Apple was doing to them, saying, "They are making our service non-viable with the 30% rake that they're charging." You remember Bill Gurley had a great post about this saying, "Just because you can charge a 30% rake doesn't mean you should."

    3. JC

      Right.

    4. CP

      And now we're seeing this blowback from this, uh, massive 30% rake, and you had Spotify saying, "Look, Apple is doing this to basically make us, uh, infeasible relative to Apple Music." So, I think there is a legit point here, which is that if you own the monopoly platform, the sort of e- essential infrastructure, you cannot use it to basically take over every application on t- that can be built on top of that platform. That, I think, is a very appropriate use of, of antitrust law, and I think... So, I think that's the good here. Now, I think the, there, there i- are some, some concerns, um, or, or some potential downsides. And, you know, and, and the downside that I see is that we used to think, we used to judge antitrust law in terms of consumer welfare. And so w- so there was a limiting principle to the actions of government, which is you would just look at prices and the effect on prices. Here, you know, the, the, the sort of movement that Lina Khan represents, the s- so-called hipster antitrust movement, they're concerned about power, and they wanna restructure markets to avoid sort of concentrations of power. I don't see the limiting principle there. And so I think what the, the, the typical r-

    5. JC

      Would market share be a limiting principle?

    6. CP

      Well, it, it would be a limiting principle in terms of who you could take action on. But it wouldn't be a limiting principle in terms of how you would restructure the market. And I think what we're in for over the next few years is potentially a hyperpolitis- politicization of big tech markets. I think these 21 Republicans might soon feel like the dog who caught the bumper in the sense that, yes, they're finally gonna have the regulation of big tech they've been calling for, but they might not like all of the results because we, because what could happen is a very intrusive meddling by government in the markets of technology, and it could go well beyond sort of this, um, this, this gatekeeper principle, uh, that we've been talking about that I think, uh, w- would be a valid reason to regulate.

    7. JC

      Chamath?

    8. DF

      I think she has to be careful, uh, in focusing on Amazon. So, if you break down antitrust law, there are really three big buckets where the attack vectors are. And I'm, I'm not gonna claim to be an expert, but I think, um, they're relatively easy to understand. So, you have the first principal body, which is called the Sherman Act. That's the thing that everybody's looked at and that's, you know, sort of where, um, most current, um, antitrust enforcement action has failed on tech companies because it largely looks at the predatory nature of pricing power that certain companies have. And you have to remember, this thing was written in the 1800s. And so, you know, what did people do when they controlled things? They just, they drove prices up. Tech does the exact opposite, right? They constantly drive prices down. And what's counterintuitive is it turns out that in the olden days, driving prices up drove out competition. Today, driving prices down drives out competition.

    9. JC

      Yes.

    10. DF

      Right? So, you know, you make Gmail infinite storage, nobody else can compete with Gmail.

    11. JC

      Why switch? Why switch?

    12. DF

      You make, you know, uh, photos completely subsidized, you make certain music products effectively free, and you subsidize that, you know, you create enormous amounts of content, blah, blah, blah. So, you have the Sherman Act. Then somewhere along the way, we realized, "Okay, we need to add something." We created this thing called the Clayton Act. That was around M&A.Right. We added to that, um... A lot of folks that are listening probably have heard of Hart-Scott-Rodino, HSR. We've all gone through it, right? On M&A events, we have to file these HSR clearances. When you make big investments, for example, you know, I just made a, um, a climate change thing, we had to file HSR. Um... And then there's this FTCA, which is the Federal Trade Commission Act. That is where she can get, you know, if... T- t- to use a poker term, um, you know, a little frisky. Why? Because the FTCA has these two specific things which says you can have an unfair method of competition or an unfair or deceptive act or practice.

    13. JC

      Mm.

    14. DF

      Now, it falls on her and her team to basically build the strongest case around those two dimensions. And my only advice to her, I wrote this in two... 2019 in my investor letter as well, just thinking about the breakdown of big tech. If you're gonna go after these guys, that's the body of law that probably is the most, um, defensible. Um, but you probably have to start, you know, whether you like it or not, with Facebook or Google. Um, and the reason is there are more examples how, how you can use that language under the FTCA to give those folks a hard time. I think it's much harder-

    15. JC

      So the... The example would be, Chamath, that, uh, we are giving away this product, losing money on it, to keep you in our store and moat you into our, uh, advertising network, et cetera.

    16. DF

      That's an example, yeah.

    17. JC

      That's... Yeah.

    18. DF

      Or, or, you know, we then, we then... And n- Because then when you have control, then you can show that then the first part, the Sherman Act part, kicks in. Why? So you've seen 15 or 20 years of Google, Facebook... less Apple by the way-

    19. JC

      Yeah.

    20. DF

      ... um, using their edge to decrease price. And for the first time in the last quarter, both of these two companies, m- and they were the only two of big tech, that announced an increase in pricing, right? They saw a diminishing of CPM inventory, and so they had to figure out ways to grow inventory as users started to stagnate. And what they really said is, "We're ramping up CPMs." And CPMs, I think, were up 28, 30% in a quarter.

    21. JC

      Yeah. And there's a lot of-

    22. DF

      So competition-

    23. JC

      ... competition right now for ad space.

    24. DF

      If you put these two ideas together, which is step one, is you surreptitiously basically take all the costs out of the system, and then step two, raise price over time, there's probably something there.

    25. JC

      Uh, Friedberg, when we look at her age and her obvious, uh, deep, deep knowledge, do you see that as, uh, an overall plus? I mean, obviously, if, you know, David framed her as the Bernie-approved candidate, but then conceded that 20 Republicans are, are, are backing her, what do you, what do you think about the massive credibility she has, Friedberg, in terms of she's actually understands this deeply? Clearly?

    26. CP

      I mean, I'm su- I'm sure she's not dumb, uh, if that... if that's what you're asking. I- I'm not sure-

    27. JC

      Well, I mean, a t- 32-year-old. I mean, do... ha- have we seen an appointment like that before? I mean, I- I don't think so.

    28. CP

      I don't think so. Yeah, that's... That's good for her. Um...

    29. JC

      Yeah.

    30. CP

      So I just feel like there's, um, a, a bit of a, a cycle underway where we have this kind of anti-wealth, anti-wealth accumulation sentiment, uh, as an undercurrent right now. You know, obviously, Bernie and Elizabeth Warren and others are, are key vocal, um, uh, uh, proponents of, of change that's needed to keep this kind of wealth disparity from continuing to grow. And one of the solutions is to reduce the monopolistic capacity of certain business models, specifically in technology. Um, the, the, the downside that I don't think is realized and, and that inevitably comes with this action under this new kind of business model o- of the, the, the technology age or the digital age is the, uh, damage to consumers. Um, and so, you know, as, as Chamath and David pointed out, like, historically, antitrust has been about protecting the consumer. And the irony is, the more monopoly or the mo- more monopolistic or the more market share Amazon gains, the cheaper things get for consumers. And, um... And it's unfair to small businesses and to business owners and to competitors, but consumers do fundamentally benefit. And so the, the logical argument she made in her paper that was widely distributed a few years ago, um, wa- was around this notion that in this new world, it's not about consumer harm, um, and we need to look past the impact to consumers and look more at kind of the... you know, the, the fact that this company maybe prevents innovation and prevents competition. But ultimately, if the consumer is harmed, uh, in the resolution of that concern, we're not gonna wake up to it for a while. And then consumers one day are gonna wake up and they're gonna be like, "Wait a second, why am I paying five bucks for Gmail? And, you know, why am I paying an extra $10 for shipping to get my Amazon products brought to me every day?" And, you know, all the things that I think we've taken, um, for granted, uh, in the digital age, uh, with the advent of these, you know, call it monopolistic kind of business models where they accumulate market share and they can squeeze pricing and keep people out, and the bigger they get, the cheaper they get, and therefore it's harder to compete, consumers have benefited tremendously. I, I, I think all of us would be hard-pressed to say, "I would love to pay 10 bucks a month for Gmail. I'd love to pay for Facebook. Uh, and at the end of the day, these models... I'd love to pay more for shipping with Amazon." Um, and so, you know, it becomes a value question, right? What do you value more? Do you value the opportunity for competition and innovation in the business world, or do you value, as a consumer, better pricing? And I don't think that we're really having that debate. And I think that that debate will inevitably kind of arise over the next couple of years if and as-

  4. 18:02 – 27:48

    Potential repercussions to consumers

    1. CP

    2. JC

      And, I think, to be clear, Friedberg, what you're saying is this is driven by the extraordinary wealth of Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, et cetera.

    3. CP

      It's easy to pinpoint that problem.... and then not involve the repercussions to consumers-

    4. JC

      Right.

    5. CP

      ... if you try and change how business operates in a free market system. And these businesses are successful because they have customers that like what they're offering-

    6. JC

      And competition, yeah.

    7. CP

      ... and they're, and they drive in a competitive way with pricing down and they prevent people from coming in and competing, not by entering into contracts and antitrust enforcement, all this sort of stuff. They're doing it because they're scaling and offering lower prices. I mean, this go, like, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen have separately argued for this in, in really intelligent ways, probably in a far more articulated way than I can. But, uh, and they did this early on, which is-

    8. JC

      Right.

    9. CP

      ... you know, we wanna find businesses that can become monopolies. Because if you can reduce your pricing and improve your pricing power with scale, it's gonna be harder and harder for someone to compete and therefore, the capital theory is rush a bunch of capital into these businesses, help them scale very quickly. I mean, this is obviously the basis of Uber and others, and they get really big really fast.

    10. JC

      Create the moat.

    11. CP

      Create the moat, drop the pricing, and then no one can compete with you on pricing, consumers benefit, and you've created the big business and you've locked everyone-

    12. JC

      Okay.

    13. CP

      ... and, yeah.

    14. JC

      So let me go around the horn here and frame this for everybody. Let's assume that, uh, big tech does get breaking up, this, broken up. This is, uh, an exercise. Um, we assume it gets broken up and YouTube and Android are spun out, Instagram, WhatsApp are spun out, AWS is spun out and, you know, app stores are allowed on, um, Apple's platform, uh, iOS for the first time. I wanna know if this is good, bad, or neutral for the following two people. So these breakups occur. Is it good, bad, or neutral for consumers? And then two, is it good, bad, or neutral for startups? Sacks?

    15. CP

      I generally would lean towards saying yes. I mean, it a lot depends on how-

    16. JC

      Good, bad, or neutral for each party, startups and for consumers.

    17. CP

      ... I, I think it could ultimately be good for, for both, uh, but it-

    18. JC

      Okay.

    19. CP

      ... really depends on how it's done and I think there is a big risk here that this just degenerates into sort of hyper politicization, you get intensive amounts of lobbying by big tech-

    20. JC

      Mm-hmm.

    21. CP

      ... in Washington, that what happens is, you know, you have a good cop, bad cop where Lina Khan just becomes the bad cop, she's there to kind of keep big tech in line, threatens to break them up, and then the good cop is, you know, Biden and the administration and then they, they become the protection under the extortion racket, they raise un, you know, ungodly amounts of money and really, it'll be a bonanza for, for all elected officials because now big tech's gonna have to increase its donations even more.

    22. JC

      Wow. Super cynical. Wow.

    23. CP

      So that's the, that's the cynical take, so we-

    24. JC

      Yeah.

    25. CP

      ... could end up with something much worse than what we have now. But, but I think the legit, I think the words you're going to hear a lot, okay, are common carrier, because what she seems-

    26. JC

      Hm.

    27. CP

      ... to be saying is, "Look, if you're a tech monopoly that controls core infrastructure, we need to regulate you like a common carrier. You cannot summarily deny service to your competitors who are downstream applications built on top of your platform."

    28. JC

      Yes.

    29. CP

      Conservatives can get behind that because that is the argument they've been making about Facebook cutting off free speech is, you are a speech utility, you should be regulated as a common carrier, you cannot cut off people s- summarily, you cannot discriminate against people who should be allowed to have free speech on your platform.

    30. JC

      Right.

  5. 27:48 – 29:50

    Sacks’ antitrust experience at PayPal vs. eBay, Visa & MasterCard

    1. CP

    2. Yeah. Well, I'm a, I'm a free markets type of guy, but, um, my experience at PayPal really changed my thinking on this because PayPal s-... it was a startup that launched effectively as an involuntary app on top of the eBay market. At that time, eBay had a monopoly on the auction market, and that was the key sort of beachhead market for online payments. So we launched on top of eBay.

    3. JC

      Right.

    4. CP

      They were constantly trying to dislodge us and remove us from their platform. And really the only thing keeping them from just switching us off was a... was an antitrust threat. We actually spun up... like you could call it a lobbying operation where we would send information to the FTC and the DOJ and say, "Listen, you've got this auction monopoly here that's taking anti-competitive actions against us, this little startup." And, you know, i- i- i- i- e- and so we were able to rattle the saber and, and sort of brush them back from the plate from taking a, you know, a, a much more dramatic action against us. And frankly, we did something kind of similar with Visa, MasterCard because PayPal was essentially an application on top of Visa, MasterCard as well. We offered merchants the ability to accept Visa, MasterCard, but also PayPal payments, which were gradually eating into and supplanting the, the credit card payments. And so, you know, Visa, MasterCard had a very dim view of PayPal and they were constantly, you know, they were constantly making noise about switching us off. And I, I do think that without the threat of antitrust hanging over these big monopolies or duopolies, it would have been very hard for us as a startup to get the access to these networks that we needed. And so it really kind of changed my thinking about it because, you know, if you let these giant monopolies run wild-

    5. JC

      Amok. Yeah.

    6. CP

      ... run, run amok, they will absolutely stifle innovation.

    7. JC

      100%. Yes.

    8. CP

      They will become gatekeepers. And so you have to have the threat of antitrust action hanging over their heads or you will stifle innovation.

  6. 29:50 – 35:40

    Google’s multi-trillion dollar data trove

    1. CP

    2. JC

      Absolutely. I mean, if you just look at the interest in Google Flights over time, I'm looking at a chart right now, we'll put it into the notes. Google Flights, you know, I know some of us don't fly (laughs) commercial anymore, but you know, for somebody who's, uh, looking for flights on a regular basis, watching Google intercept flight information, put up Google Flights, and it's an awesome product. And just Expedia and Bookings.com have collapsed-

    3. CP

      No, that was... So Jason, that was a, that, that was a company called ITA Software based out of Boston and ITA was acquired by Google. ITA was the search engine behind Flight Search-... for most companies. It was like 70 PhDs, they were all statistics guys, and they basically built this logistical model that identified, you know, flights and pricing and all this sort of stuff to-

    4. JC

      Oh, wow. So... they should never been allowed.

    5. CP

      ... they created... Well, they created a white label, uh, search capability that they then provided, and they were making plenty of money providing this as white label search capability to Expedia and Kayak, and all the online, uh, travel agencies. And Google wanted to be in that business because travel search was obviously such a big vertical.

    6. JC

      Mm-hmm.

    7. CP

      Um, and rather than just buy a travel search site, they bought the engine that powers travel search-

    8. JC

      Wow.

    9. CP

      ... for most of the other sites.

    10. JC

      So gangster. So gangster.

    11. CP

      And then they... and then they also revealed the results in their own search result homepage, which effectively cut off the OTAs. And the OTAs are big spenders on Google Ads. So, um...

    12. JC

      So basically, Google, this is how nefarious it is, if I'm hearing what you're saying, Friedberg, correctly, they watched all this money being made by those OTAs, they watched where they got their data from, then they bought their data source, and then they decided, "You know what? We won't take your cost per click money. We'll just take your entire business."

    13. CP

      Well, I don't know. So... So let me just... Let me just say it another way. What's best for consumers? So does a consumer... Because what happens a lot in online-

    14. JC

      Innevitable dictatorships, I guess, that don't wanna make money. Yeah.

    15. CP

      In... In... In online advertising, there are a lot of these ad arbitrage businesses. It's one way to think about it, where, um, you know, a service provider will pay for ads on Google to get traffic. The ads will come to their site, and then they will either make money on ads or, you know, kinda sell that consumer ...

    16. JC

      Consumer services, yeah.

    17. CP

      ... right? And so that's effectively what the OTAs were, is they were... they became online-

    18. JC

      Intermediaries.

    19. CP

      Online search engine intermediaries-

    20. JC

      Right.

    21. CP

      ... that were arbitraging Google's ad cost versus what they could get paid for the consumer.

    22. JC

      Right.

    23. CP

      And so Google look at this-

    24. JC

      Right.

    25. CP

      ... and they're like, "Wait a second, we're only capturing half the pie. And consumers don't wanna have to click through three websites to buy a flight or buy a hotel. And by the way, if they did, they would keep doing it. So why don't we just give them the end result right up front? And then consumers will be happier. The less time they have to spend clicking through sites and looking at other shitty ads, the happier they'll be, and the product just works incredibly well, consumers love it."

    26. JC

      So make consumers lives less arduous-

    27. CP

      Yeah, but I think-

    28. JC

      ... building a power base that then could make their lives miserable in the future.

    29. CP

      Well, I'll say-

    30. What... What... What I think Lina Khan is saying, though, is you can't just look at the short-term interests of consumers.

  7. 35:40 – 53:32

    The U.S. government's capability to silently take data while “gagging” Big Tech

    1. CP

      order.

    2. JC

      All right, moving on. Big news this week, uh, Apple had a gag order, it has been revealed. Um-

    3. CP

      This is unbelievable.

    4. JC

      It's pretty crazy. Um, and, uh, we... we only have partial information here, but the Justice Department subpoenaed Apple in February of 2018 about an account that belonged to Donald McGahn, who obviously was the... uh, Trump's White House Counsel at the time, and obviously was part of the campaign. He is very famously, uh, known for being interviewed by Mueller, and at that... This is the time period, by the way, we're talking about here in February of 2018, when Mueller was investigating Manafort, who, of course, uh, was super corrupt and went to jail and then was subsequently pardoned. Because they... he was also involved in the campaign in 2016, it's possible that this related to Mueller. It's unknown at this time. Uh, many other folks were also caught up in this dragnet. Rod Rosenstein was his second, and it's, um, unclear if the FBI agents were investigating.... uh, whether McGahn was the leaker, uh, or not. Trump, uh, ha- had previously ordered McGahn the previous June to have the Justice Department remove Mueller, which McGahn r- refused and threatened to resign. And McGahn later revealed that he had in fact leaked his resignation threat to The Washington Post. Uh, according to The Times disclosure that agents had collected data of a sitting White House counsel, uh, which they kept secret for years is extraordinary. Go ahead, Sax.

    5. CP

      Well, I- I just think let's get all the facts out here. I think you're missing some of the key facts. So, the- the Justice Department under Trump starts this investigation into leaks of classified information. They're on a mole hunt, effectively, and they start, uh, making... Th- they subpoena, the DOJ subpoenas records from Apple and it goes very broad. And they end up subpoenaing the records, not just of McGahn, who's the White House counsel, which is very bizarre and curious that they'd be investigating their own White House counsel, but they also, uh-

    6. JC

      Well it was a leaking ship, Sax. (laughs)

    7. CP

      ... s- they- they- yes, but there al- they also subpoenaed records of Adam Schiff, and-

    8. JC

      Yep.

    9. CP

      ... Swalwell and members of the House Intelligence Committee. And so, you have now, um, an accusation, which is being breathlessly reported on CNN and MSNBC that here you had the Trump administration investigating its political enemies and using the subpoena power of the DOJ, with Apple's compliance, to now spy on their political enemies. That- that- that- that's the setup.

    10. JC

      Yeah. Those are some big jumps. Those are some big jumps.

    11. CP

      That- that is the setup.

    12. JC

      Yeah. And- and that i- those are some big jumps because, um, according to Preet Bharara and some other folks who are in the industry, um, who- who have done these actual subpoenas, they could have been subpoenaing, you know, one of Manafort's, you know, corrupt, you know, uh, partners in crime, and then those peop- he could have been talking to many people in the Trump administration and then subsequently family members and others. So, he might have not been the target. He could have been caught up in the metadata of other people.

    13. CP

      Yeah.

    14. JC

      So, this might not be Trump saying, "Get me his-"

    15. CP

      Yes. Yes.

    16. JC

      "... iPhone records." It could be there's some dirty person, they know they're dirty, and that person had reached out to other people and they might have even done one more hop from it. Chamath, thoughts?

    17. DF

      I mean, j- okay, that's one version.

    18. JC

      Yeah.

    19. DF

      And then, you know, the other (laughs) the other version, which is important, is you subpoena your own lawyer by going to Apple, getting basically God knows what data associated with this man's account, and then, you know, institute the gag order on that company so that they can neither tell the person, until now when the gag order expired, nor tell anybody else, nor have any recourse to the extent that they think that this is illegitimate. That, to me, smells really fishy. And so, you know, like, there are other mechanisms that, that we know of, like FISA requests and other things that these big companies have to deal with all the time. This, at least the way that it's written and how it's been reported, is something outside of the pale. And so I think you have to deal with it with this question of like, what the hell was going on over there?

    20. CP

      Yeah.

    21. DF

      It does seem like they were going, uh, uh, y- I mean, you know, kindly maybe mole hunting, more nefariously witch hunting, um, but they were trying to pin it on people. And they may have used this blanket, sort of deniable plausibility of the Russia, you know, imbroglio, but really what these guys were doing was they were investigating anybody that they thought was a threat. And that is a really scary thing to have in a democracy. And then the fact that these big tech companies basically just turned it over and didn't have any recourse to protect the user or to inform the public. Forget Trump for a second, I think we don't necessarily want that to be the precedent that holds going forward.

    22. JC

      Yeah. And the- the interesting thing here is-

    23. CP

      The- I- yeah.

    24. JC

      ... that, Sax, Jeff Sessions, Rosenstein, and Barr all say they're unaware of this, so what would be the charitable reason they were unaware of it, or what would be the nefarious reason? (laughs) Or- or is that-

    25. CP

      Well-

    26. JC

      ... important at all? Because that's-

    27. CP

      I mean-

    28. JC

      ... really strange-

    29. CP

      Well-

    30. JC

      ... that they would go after the White House counsel and Adam Schiff and those top three people would have no idea? Are they lying?

  8. 53:32 – 1:00:17

    COVID’s psychic shadow, Friedberg’s office landlord is still requiring masks

    1. JC

      yeah, maybe some-

    2. CP

      Yeah.

    3. JC

      ... parts of it.

    4. CP

      Maybe, may- Yeah. I mean, maybe-

    5. JC

      Explain what's happening to you in the Presidio, which is, uh, a lovely state park, uh, here in California-

    6. CP

      Well, my, my, my office-

    7. JC

      ... under the Golden Gate Bridge.

    8. CP

      ... my, my office in the Presidio in California, San Francisco County, and the federal government have all removed mask mandates, but our, our landlord has determined in their judgment that everyone should still wear-

    9. JC

      (laughs)

    10. CP

      ... a mask to go to work. And so to go into my rented office and work, I have to wear a mask. Um, and I think it's-

    11. JC

      Crazy.

    12. CP

      ... it's an issue for, uh, a lot of people who... Like, those people that, um... Uh, I, I've been probably at a couple restaurants this week, and, you know, you go to some restaurants, and everyone's just chilling. The employees are not wearing masks. There's other restaurants where they're being told they have to keep wearing masks by their manager or their boss. Um, and so, uh, th- this brings up this big question, which is like, we- we've now got the kind of psychic shadow of COVID that, that's gonna-

    13. JC

      Yep.

    14. CP

      ... it's gonna, it's gonna cast a very long shadow, I think.

    15. JC

      You predicted it. You predicted it.

    16. CP

      And, um, and so people that, that are in power wanna continue to kind of impress upon, you know, whatever, you know, employees or tenants or, or what have you they might have, um, in whatever they deem their judgment to be, which is obviously in, in many cases, an under-informed, uninformed, non-scientific, and, um, uh, and non-mandated judgment about effectively what people should have to wear. So if the threat or the risk has been removed, and all of the health officials and all of the government agencies are saying the threat has been removed, you no longer need to kinda wear masks, but your boss or your manager or your landlord tells you you have to wear a mask to conduct your business or to, to go to work, um, you know, it's gonna bring up this whole series of challenges and questions I foresee-... for the next couple of months at least, and maybe for several years, about what's fair and what's right. And, and there will always be the safety argument to be made on the other side, so it's very hard to argue against that. And, "Oh, well, the inconvenience is just a mask, it's not a big deal." But for, you know, a number of people to, to now kind of be told, you know, what to do and what to wear because-

    17. DF

      It'll take a year to sort all these things out, 'cause they'll all get prosecu- or not prosecuted, but litigated, and they're gonna go to court and-

    18. CP

      They will get litigated, for sure. There will, there will be lawsuits on this.

    19. DF

      Um... And, and what's gonna happen is that you're gonna basically have, again, Jason, back to that example of the, the bakery in Colorado. Um, private institutions will be allowed some level of independence in establishing, um, you know, certain-

    20. CP

      Employee guidelines and so on.

    21. DF

      Exactly.

    22. CP

      Yeah.

    23. DF

      And you, you'll have to conform to those. And, um, it, it is what it is. I mean, I, I, I just think we should look to the ƒ50 case.

    24. JC

      It was very strange in Austin, uh, in terms of these COVID, uh, dead-enders who just will not let it go. I'm in Austin where nobody is wearing a mask. And then there were like, I went into Lululemon and they, like two people charged me with masks in hand, and they were like, "You have to wear a mask." And I was like, "Do I?" And they're like, "Yes, it's our policy." I was like, "Fine, I'll put it on. I don't care. (laughs) You know, no big deal."

    25. DF

      This thing, this thing has really fried a bunch of people's brains. I mean-

    26. JC

      It's crazy. I mean t-

    27. DF

      It's ba- it's basically like you've taken an entire f- group of folks-

    28. CP

      And kidnapped them. (laughs)

    29. DF

      ... and kidnapped them, essentially, is your-

    30. JC

      Stockholm Syndrome, it's Stockholm Syndrome.

  9. 1:00:17 – 1:10:04

    Jon Stewart’s lab leak bit on Stephen Colbert’s show

    1. JC

      episode.

    2. CP

      These people should not be the gatekeepers of the truth. They have no idea what the truth is.

    3. JC

      Wow. Right.

    4. CP

      Let's talk about the Jon Stewart appearance on Stephen Colbert.

    5. JC

      Well, that's what I was about to dovetail this with, which is-

    6. CP

      Yeah. Yeah, Jon Stewart, yeah, he killed, he killed on Stephen Colbert. But the things he was saying about the lab leak would not have been allowed on YouTube six months ago.

    7. JC

      If, if it was three months ago that you would have been removed for it, even as a comedian, the performance was amazing. He basically says, you know, "The Wuhan, uh, COVID lab (laughs) is where the Wuhan, you know, uh-"

    8. DF

      No, the disease is named after the lab.

    9. JC

      There it is. (laughs) The name... (laughs)

    10. DF

      So where do you...

    11. CP

      Named after the lab. (laughs)

    12. DF

      You know, where do you think it came from?

    13. JC

      (laughs) From, right.

    14. DF

      Was like a, a panelin mer- you know, mated with a bat. I mean, this is insan-

    15. JC

      (laughs)

    16. DF

      ... and he goes on this whole diatribe. It's incredibly funny.

    17. JC

      Yes.

    18. DF

      But then at the end of it, well, I, I had two takeaways. I don't know if you guys felt this. At first I was like, "Ah, Jon Stewart's a little unhinged here." Like, I mean, there was a part of it that was funny, and then there was a part of it which is like, "Wow, Jon Stewart's been trapped indoors a little too long."

    19. JC

      For 15 months, yeah, yeah.

    20. DF

      So I, I thought that as well, to be honest. But then the second thing, which I saw on Twitter, was all these people reminding-

    21. JC

      ... uh, anybody who saw the tweet that this exact content would have not been allowed on big tech platforms were it said three or six months ago. And I was like, "Wow, this is r- this is really nuts." Meaning, it takes a left-leaning, smart, funny comedian to say something that if-

    22. Go with satire, yep.

    23. ... if the, if the right, if the right would have said, it would have just been instantly banished. And that's like, that's kind of crazy.

    24. Yeah, his- the- the great quote was-

    25. CP

      I 100% agree with that.

    26. JC

      ... "I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science. Science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, uh, which was more than likely caused by science." (laughs) Uh-

    27. CP

      Yeah, well, it- the- the- it was a funny line where he said something like, uh, "If there was an outbreak of chocolate goodness in Hershey, Pennsylvania-"

    28. JC

      Hershey, Pennsylvania. (laughs)

    29. CP

      "... it would be, it would be because, you know, whatever, the pangolin kissed a bat, it's because there's a fucking chocolate factory there." (laughs)

    30. JC

      (laughs) Like-

  10. 1:10:04 – 1:20:57

    California’s wildfire risk increasing with climate change

    1. JC

      Uh, all right, so it's gonna be the worst it ever is, isn't it?

    2. CP

      We, well, we are at risk more than ever, right? So we're entering June. So as of June 1st, the California snowpack is down to 0% of normal. That's never happened before.

    3. JC

      No way.

    4. CP

      So it's the lowest it's ever been. There, there is absolutely, like, no snowpack in the entire Sierra in the entire state. 40% of the state is in a state of extreme drought right now. We've had 16,000 acres burn as of a few weeks ago, up from 3,600 during the same time period, the same day of the year last year. Um, and so the- the- the tinder is there. Now, remember, uh, last year was the highest, um, uh, California's ever seen. We- we burnt four million acres, uh, last year. California has about 33 million acres of farmland, of forest land, representing about a third of our total land size in the state. Um, you know, 60% of that land is federal, 40% is private. Um, and so the- the- the big kind of variable drivers this year are gonna be, um, you know, uh, wind and- and heat. And we're already seeing a few heat waves. But it's the wind that kind of kicks these things off. But the tinder is there, right? So, like, the state is dry. Um, the, uh, uh, the- the- the snowpack is gone. We're on severe water restrictions in a lot of counties throughout the state. Um, it's worth, I think, talking about the carbon effect. You know, last year, um, based on the forests that burnt in California, uh, we released about one and a half times as much carbon into the atmosphere-

    5. JC

      Hmm.

    6. CP

      ... from our forest fires as we did from, uh, cars burning fossil fuels in the state.

    7. JC

      Jesus.

    8. CP

      Um, and so-

    9. JC

      Wow.

    10. CP

      So here's some statistics for you guys, which I think are just worth highlighting. Um, there's about two billion metric tons of carbon stored in California forest land, which is about 60 tons per acre. Um, so there's about nine million new tons of carbon sequestered per, uh, fru- in California by our forest land per year. When there's a fire, we release about ten tons per acre, so about one-sixth of- of the carbon in that, in that forest land. The rest of the carbon doesn't burn up. So remember, when there's a forest fire, typically the outside of the tree burns. The whole thing doesn't burn to ash. And so a forest fire can actually, if you look at the longitudinal kind of effect of it, burning forests can actually preserve the carbon sequestration activity versus, you know, just removing forests or removing trees. Um, and so there is, to some extent, um, you know, an effort that has been shut down several times, which is to do these kind of controlled burns through the state. But it's met with such resistance, uh, given that it's so controversial. No one wants to have smoke in their, in their neighborhood and so on.

    11. JC

      Well, it shouldn't, it shouldn't be, it shouldn't be controversial. The problem is you can't present simple data and have people have a logical conversation about it.

    12. CP

      And the cost per acre to clear land and, uh, farm- to forest land in California is, they- it ranges depending on the complexity of the land, but somewhere between 50 and $1,000, so call it a couple hundred dollars per acre. So you can very quickly kind of do the math on a carbon credit basis, Chamath. So it's about 40 bucks per ton...

    13. JC

      Yeah.

    14. CP

      ... uh, for- for carbon credit today. So you're actually, you know, you can kind of preserve about $400 per ton- per ton by not putting carbon into the atmosphere. And if you can actually manage farmland, uh, forest land clearance and forest land preservation...... uh, from fire at a cost of $400 or less and there was an active carbon credit market, you should be able to cover the cost of managing that forest land back. But we're- we're-

Episode duration: 1:27:33

Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript

Transcript of episode 6uUkIUgX1NY

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

Add to Chrome