E37: NYC rejects far-left candidates, new developments in lab leak theory, App Store breakup & more

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:00 As you guys know, I get panic attacks at the dentist, but she was able to navigate me through where I didn't-

Jason Calacanis 0:05 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:05 ... and I only sweat through half my shirt.

Jason Calacanis 0:08 You have panic attacks at the dentist?

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:09 No, but I sweat profusely and I get very nervous.

Jason Calacanis 0:13 Why? What is that about?

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:14 We all have weaknesses, Jason. We all-

Jason Calacanis 0:17 Wow.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:17 ... have weaknesses.

Jason Calacanis 0:17 I never knew that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:18 This is my Achilles heel. My Achilles heel is the dentist.

Jason Calacanis 0:20 Really?

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:21 Yeah.

David Sacks 0:22 I don't, I don't like going to the dentist either.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:23 No, the dentist really freaks... I don't know why it freaks me out, Sacks.

Jason Calacanis 0:26 That's weird.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:26 Why does it f- Have you thought about this?

David Sacks 0:28 I had a really bad experience when I was a kid, you know?

Jason Calacanis 0:30 Tell us more about your (laughs) childhood trauma.

David Sacks 0:32 Have you ever seen the movie Marathon Man? It was kinda like that.

Jason Calacanis 0:35 (laughs) Is it safe? Is it safe?

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:38 I'm going all in. All right, here we go. Let your winners ride.

Jason Calacanis 0:43 Rainman, David Sacks.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:45 I'm going all in.

David Sacks 0:47 And I said- We open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

Jason Calacanis 0:51 Love you guys.

David Friedberg 0:52 Queen of Quinoa.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:54 I'm going all in.

Jason Calacanis 0:55 Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome again to another episode of the All In Podcast, Episode 37. With us today, on his noble crusade conquering Europe, Chamath Palihapitiya, calls us from, uh, a castle somewhere. I don't know. I can tell by the light switches you're in Europe. And joining us again, the two AIs, AI number one-

David Friedberg 1:18 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:18 ... David Sacks, and AI number two, David Friedberg, (laughs) are here. Uh, and of course, um, Jay Kal. Do we wanna get right into the show or... I don't know, Chamath, if you wanna talk about the, the dueling AIs in the group chat debating the nature of the pod.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:33 I mean, one guy told the other guy, or one robot told the other robot to fuck off.

Jason Calacanis 1:40 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:40 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:40 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:40 This is when we know it's the singularity.

David Sacks 1:41 But who- but who said who?

Jason Calacanis 1:42 Is when the robots start arguing with each other.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:44 See, you don't even know because you don't have an, any emotions. You told Friedberg to fuck off.

David Sacks 1:49 Uh, that's kinda true.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:51 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:51 In fairness to Chamath Attia-

David Friedberg 1:53 Tal talks.

Jason Calacanis 1:53 ... he was drinking a beverage with 14% alcohol content.

David Sacks 1:58 No, no, no, I just think that, um, we... I think the format of the pod is working, and I don't think we need to turn it on its head. That's all.

David Friedberg 2:06 I think my, uh, b- so just for the list-

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:08 Oh, we're gonna do this overdue thing.

Jason Calacanis 2:09 Oh boy, here we go.

David Friedberg 2:11 (laughs) I'm so tired and out of it right now but, but let's do it.

David Sacks 2:14 (laughs)

David Friedberg 2:15 Um, all right, just for the listeners, um, benefit, on our little group text where we do our incredibly well-prepped rehearsal for this show-

David Sacks 2:24 (laughs)

David Friedberg 2:24 ... by texting each other maybe for four minutes a week, with the date, the night before the show-

Jason Calacanis 2:28 And insult each other for three hours. (laughs)

David Friedberg 2:30 Yeah, we talk... (laughs) Yeah, it's fun. Mostly other stuff is covered over the group chat. But we were, um, kinda debating maybe throwing in a spin and, you know, doing a little group Q&A ki- kind of format. Sacks doesn't like it. And we were kinda joking with Sacks that he loves getting his sound bites in and then turning them into little short sound bite video clips with his BFF, Henry Belcaster, and putting them on Twitter-

Jason Calacanis 2:53 (laughs)

David Friedberg 2:53 ... and promoting him around the internet. And my point of view was, I don't think that this show should be about getting to the sound bite. That this show should be about something very different-

Jason Calacanis 3:04 Yes.

David Friedberg 3:04 ... which is elevating a conversation and creating the context for people to make decisions on their own. And that is to give people multiple points of view and all of the data and consideration when there's a big topic or a big debate underway. And it's too easy for us to take a sound bite and then use that as the narrative to try and influence people to do things or to have a point of view. And I think that is largely the problem we've broadly had in the Twitter, social media era, is we are very reductionist. We bring things down to kind of a one sentence or 140 character statement, and then we use that as an emotional pivot point for people to get them to go on one side or the other side. As opposed to-

Jason Calacanis 3:44 Yes.

David Friedberg 3:44 ... recognizing that many of the co- topics we, we address are ca- that is the way things are done. I get it, but, like-

Jason Calacanis 3:49 And here, and here is Sacks' response.

David Friedberg 3:51 Okay.

Jason Calacanis 3:51 "That is a valid point, Friedberg."

David Friedberg 3:53 No, no, no.

Jason Calacanis 3:53 "However, humans all need to be led. They are sheeple. We need to tell the sheeple what to think and to get Tucker-

David Sacks 4:00 Now, hold on.

Jason Calacanis 4:00 ... Carlson into office."

David Sacks 4:01 Jason, Jason, I would like to cut to-

Jason Calacanis 4:04 (laughs)

David Sacks 4:04 ... uh, a segment, a new segment that I call Chamath Does a Dramatic Reading.

David Friedberg 4:08 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 4:09 Well, no, it's not-

David Sacks 4:09 Texted about this.

Jason Calacanis 4:10 I don't know if we're allowed to read from that group text.

David Sacks 4:11 So, so-

Jason Calacanis 4:12 Here we go.

David Sacks 4:13 ... Friedberg, so Friedberg did say this-

Jason Calacanis 4:14 And now a dramatic reading from the group chat.

David Sacks 4:17 I will be playing all characters, starting with myself.

David Friedberg 4:20 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 4:20 (laughs)

David Sacks 4:21 Friedberg, Friedberg rants, uh, to which I say, "I'm down with that."

Jason Calacanis 4:26 (laughs)

David Sacks 4:26 David Sacks, (clears throat) "You keep trying to fuck with the format of this show."

David Friedberg 4:32 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 4:32 (laughs)

David Sacks 4:32 "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Fuck off."

Jason Calacanis 4:35 (laughs)

David Friedberg 4:35 (laughs)

David Sacks 4:35 "Fuck you, fucker."

David Friedberg 4:38 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 4:38 (laughs)

David Sacks 4:38 You added the F-bombs.

Jason Calacanis 4:39 My, my response-

David Friedberg 4:40 He didn't, he didn't say that, Lee. He didn't say that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:41 Wait, my, my response, "I'm down with that." (laughs)

David Friedberg 4:47 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 4:47 Oh, no.

David Sacks 4:48 Am I gonna be able to respond here?

Jason Calacanis 4:50 Yes, go ahead.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:50 Okay, Sacks.

David Sacks 4:51 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:51 In your defense-

David Sacks 4:52 Okay, so in my defense-

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:53 ... you're trying, you're running for office. We know. You-

David Sacks 4:54 No, no, no, look, I think that, um, the, the Friedberg position on many issues often comes down to, to the idea that this, this issue is so complicated, it's so nuanced, we can't have a definitive take. And I just re- reject that. I think it's true for some issues. I think it's great to have the conversation. But I think there, uh, are many issues where it is possible to have a definitive take, to come down strongly on one side of it. And I think the audience wants us to do that. I think it's a little bit of a cop-out to say, "Oh, we're just gonna table all the issues so the audience can deci-" No, the audience wants to hear us give our point of view. And I didn't, like, seek Harry, uh, Henry Belcaster out. He found us.

Jason Calacanis 5:37 No.

David Sacks 5:37 He's our-

Jason Calacanis 5:38 Yeah, but you just talk to him seven times a day and direct every frame of the animation.

David Sacks 5:42 No, no, no, no, no. He, he-

Jason Calacanis 5:43 Jay Kal, let him go.

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:44 No.

Jason Calacanis 5:44 Let him go.

David Sacks 5:44 No.

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:45 (laughs)

David Sacks 5:45 Henry, Henry, you know, is one of our super fans, started making these videos, okay? I ignored, like, the first 10, and then finally I was like, "Okay, I gotta, like, see what this guy's into," right?

Jason Calacanis 5:55 (laughs) Yes.

David Friedberg 5:55 (laughs)

David Sacks 5:55 You did, too.

Jason Calacanis 5:56 He slid into his DMs.

David Sacks 5:57 Like, what, yeah, what is this about? Is it, like, I hope it's to promote his business or something, 'cause he's just spending way too much time on this. Anyway, so now Henry does run...... the, his, like, videos by us as a courtesy, but he comes up with them. He chooses what takes he wants to run with and he puts it all together. Sometimes I'll have a note for him. I'll say, you know-

Jason Calacanis 6:18 Oh, my God. W- he's never-

David Sacks 6:20 ... whatever, but that's it.

Jason Calacanis 6:20 ... sent me anything. Yeah. (laughs)

David Sacks 6:22 He's trying to get a hold of you. He keeps coming to m- me and Jason are on a thr- uh, Jason, don't pretend-

Jason Calacanis 6:26 You're in a group chat-

David Sacks 6:26 ... you're not on the GM. Yes.

Jason Calacanis 6:27 ... with Henry Belcaster?

David Sacks 6:29 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 6:29 Yes. The thr- yes.

David Sacks 6:30 Because he can't-

Jason Calacanis 6:31 He, he DMs and says-

David Sacks 6:32 ... get through to you.

Jason Calacanis 6:32 ... "Is it okay for me to do this?"

David Sacks 6:33 Unbelievable.

Jason Calacanis 6:33 And we're, I'm just, like, "Go ahead." But then David's like, "Well, actually, if we could change this and cut this word..." And David's like, "Oh, you don't need any editing. Just let the chips fall where they may." And then he's, like, Machiavellian back there like he's Scorsese, changing every fucking frame of Henry Belcaster animated GIF made in Sao Paolo.

David Sacks 6:51 (laughs) Well, look, I, I, I just think it's a courtesy that Henry is running it by us. And, you know-

Jason Calacanis 6:54 All right, s- David-

David Sacks 6:55 ... that's it.

Jason Calacanis 6:56 Are you paying him?

David Sacks 6:57 No.

Jason Calacanis 6:58 Have you given him any compensation at all?

David Sacks 7:00 Okay. Well, no, separately.

Jason Calacanis 7:01 No.

David Sacks 7:01 Separately.

Jason Calacanis 7:02 Let Sax-

David Sacks 7:02 Hold on.

Jason Calacanis 7:02 Let Sax get to his point. (laughs) Here it comes.

David Sacks 7:04 No, no, no, no. Separately, I, after finding out that Henry and then his partner, Dylan, they've got, like, a... It is a business for them, okay? So I said, "Listen, you guys are doing great work. I think you should-"

Jason Calacanis 7:14 No, he does sh- he does great work, by the way.

David Sacks 7:15 Yeah. I said, "Listen, um, why don't you guys start doing, like, product videos or videos for startups? You can do the first one for, uh, call in." So they're working on a video for that. I think we're gonna pay him, like, five grand. And if it, and if it's good, it'll be great for their business. I want them to be successful.

David Friedberg 7:30 No, but let's get to the point, let's get to the point about re- y- you know, reducing the, the conversation to sound bites. And I wanna respond to your point about not taking a position on things. But s- okay. So, uh, I feel like, um, first of all, within this group, there are hard takes within this group of four people. So there are hard takes already on this show. And, um, I, I think that it's important in many debates and many of the topics we cover, there is more than one side to the story and we can have our formed opinion, but I think understanding what the other counterpoints, uh, uh, and, and counterarguments might be is critical to get people to actually get to that opinion themselves as opposed to just telling them, "This is the single point that you should believe. Nothing else matters." And so I, I, I really think also many of these conversations are generally two, there's two sides of the same coin. And many o-... More often than not, if you zoom out, there are shared values in many of the things that we all argue about broadly as society. And I'm not trying to get too kind of philosophical here. Um, but if you kind of distill things down to different points of view with the same set of values or recognize that there are actually different values, you can come to a point that allows people to think more progressively and, um, you know, achieve a point of view on their own. And I think that's critically missing today broadly in society, that so much is all about, like, the good and the evil, good and bad, them and us, and we don't recognize that in moments where there are shared values, we're just sitting on, you know, uh, both sides of the same coin, or recognizing that sometimes having different values doesn't necessarily make someone evil, it makes them different. Um, and, and that's why I try and kind of elevate the conversation a little bit and why I care so much about this point, because I really think it's worth everyone getting a broader perspective on everything that they're addressing so that they can kind of go into things eyes wide open. Now, Sax, I will say, on nearly everything, I actually fundamentally agree with you on many of the points on this show. And so it's a little bit kind of, you know, gets a little echo chambery for me to kind of say I agree with Sax, like, that's it. I think it's also worth highlighting why there are other points of view and why there are other arguments to be made out there. And for me, I certainly have strongly held opinions. Um, and, uh, you know, I, uh, I just don't think that it's worth getting to my opinion without taking the broader context of the conversation into, into account.

Jason Calacanis 9:47 Chemot, did you, did you notice that Friedberg got a little emotional there?

David Sacks 9:51 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 9:52 I think that was a little extra emotion.

David Friedberg 9:54 Chemot got-

Jason Calacanis 9:54 He got his iPhone. He, he, he-

David Friedberg 9:55 In that entire- Chemot is tuned out right now.

Jason Calacanis 9:57 I was confused. I am on my iPhone. I was confused. (laughs) Uh-

David Sacks 10:00 Okay. Let me, let me try and find some common ground here.

Jason Calacanis 10:02 Well, hold on, Friedberg. Let me just ask you one question about this-

David Sacks 10:03 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 10:03 ... 'cause this is getting... I don't even... We're, we're kinda in the dugout right now, and, uh, I don't know if this is fabulously boring to people or not. Um, but do you frequently hold back your opinions on the show because you don't wanna influence people or you're afraid of being canceled or having an adverse effect to your business as it has to David's business?

David Friedberg 10:22 I don't give a shit about that.

Jason Calacanis 10:23 (laughs)

David Sacks 10:25 (laughs)

David Friedberg 10:25 No, I care more about, um, uh, the, uh, the path to an opinion. Uh-

Jason Calacanis 10:31 Oh, okay.

David Friedberg 10:31 And, and I, and I ca-

Jason Calacanis 10:32 Which is about the process.

David Friedberg 10:33 No, and I care more about, like, uh, achieving the objective. So what I mean by that is if you just say, "This is my opinion. Take it or leave it," the other half that has a different opinion doesn't change their opinion. If you t- if you zoom out for people and you say, "Here's the broad set of facts and circumstances and why different groups have different opinions," it ends up being a lot easier to actually get people to see what may be the better path forward.

Jason Calacanis 10:57 Listen, if you wanna get mad-

David Friedberg 10:59 I have, I have-

Jason Calacanis 10:59 ... you wanna zoom out, I got it.

David Friedberg 11:00 I have, I have formed my opinion on many of these matters. I don't think stating my opinion changes anyone's mind. I think zooming out and giving people the broader perspective so they can get there themselves is the way to kind of achieve change.

Jason Calacanis 11:10 Okay, guys, enough. We're done, we're done with this topic. This is... We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Here's the point. I think that David, David Sax has opinions. They are strong opinions. But as I've known him for 20 years, they're also weakly held and he changes his mind, and I think that's powerful. David Friedberg, and I've known you for a very long time as well, is great at explaining things. All of it is additive. So let's all just keep doing what we're doing.

David Sacks 11:35 Yeah. And of course, of course, um, you know, I support having a nuanced conversation that gets all points of views out on the table. The, the point of the pod is not to, you know, engage in sort of sound bites. It's just that what Henry creates is a result of a conversation. He boils it down from 30 minutes into one minute. I think that performs a service for the audience, maybe gets, uh, our takes out there in a way that, you know, s- um, that, that more people can hear them. So I think that's useful.

Jason Calacanis 12:03 Yeah, but no, but do you understand Friedberg's-

David Friedberg 12:05 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 12:05 I mean, I feel like I'm a, I feel like I'm a couples therapist here. But do you understand-

David Friedberg 12:08 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 12:08 ... Friedberg's position, David? That-

David Sacks 12:11 Yeah. I-

Jason Calacanis 12:11 ... he doesn't want people to look at the podcast as reduct- a reduction down to a 60-second clip or a 30-second clip?... of sacrifice.

David Sacks 12:19 Well-

Jason Calacanis 12:19 He wants them to hear the full discourse.

David Sacks 12:21 Yeah, well that's great. Well then they can listen and do that but, I mean, realistically, a lot of people don't have time to listen to the full 60 minutes, they may listen to the clip. But look, I think if there's a meta purpose to me being on the pod, I think it's to expand the parameters of what people think they can say. 'cause I actually, I agree with Friedberg that the debate is shut down in a lot of contexts and we wanna open it back up and, you know, you just take-

Jason Calacanis 12:45 The Overton window needs to be reopened.

David Sacks 12:47 Yeah, like look at what happened-

Jason Calacanis 12:48 I- it's like-

David Sacks 12:48 ... the whole Frank Slootman thing last week where he puts out a pretty mild statement about supporting diversity but not to the point where it's- it jeopardizes merit. You know, there was a giant uproar over that. He has to walk it back and issue an apology. There was no discussion-

Jason Calacanis 13:02 You're talking about the CEO of Snowflake?

David Sacks 13:03 Yeah, there's no, there's no discussion or debate there. That was a shutting down of the conversation because one side of the debate is basically engaging in moral indictments against the other side. They're not really interested in having a serious debate about the issues. I th- like, my meta purpose in speaking out on the pod about all these issues that I think are just common sense, you know, i- is- is just to kind of reopen the debate.

Jason Calacanis 13:27 Yeah. I mean, it is that merit versus diversity and what is the point of a business and should the business be compromised or throttled? I think that's a very hard thing for people to say. Should we throttle this business so that we have diversity? Should we slow down in order to have more diversity? We can't find the right candidate, but we have a candidate here who's a white male, but gosh-

David Sacks 13:50 Yeah, we've, and we've, and we've talked about that.

Jason Calacanis 13:50 ... you know, we already have seven of eight people on this-

David Sacks 13:52 Right, we've talked about that. My- my- my point in giving that example is just to show how shut down the debate is because the day after Slootman said "CEOs are having this conversation in private. They're telling me this and they're afraid to say it publicly," the very next day, he walks it back and issues an apology, kind of buttressing his original point that people can't say what they really think. So, I, in my view, like part of the reason why the All-In Pod is successful is we're getting issues on the table that people want to talk about but feel they can't. And I think Friedberg brings a very valuable perspective to that conversation. Um, but my goal is kind of... If I have a meta goal besides just expressing my point of view, it is to expand, like you said, the Overton

David Sacks 14:31 window.

Jason Calacanis 14:32 All right, so speaking of the Overton window, New York City, um, has voted, uh, for a basically universally, both on the- on the Democratic side and on the, uh, Republican side for a tough on crime mayor. Seventy percent of San Francisco feels worse about crime in a separate poll. Um, and Eric Adams is the current borough president and a former NYPD, uh, officer and he is looking like he, because of this, uh, stacked voting, uh, which can take a little time to figure out who, uh, will become the mayor of New York. But he has 32% of first place votes among 800,000 Democratic voters.

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:10 This guy is a really decent, centrist, moderate human being. Um, grew up, um, where he was affected and touched by crime, decided to fight through that, wasn't, you know, complaining, became a police officer, did that. You know, eventually, borough president, has done that, runs for mayor. He goes on television, he gives an interview where they say, "What is your perspectives on stop and frisk?" And the answer he gives w- was pretty specific, which is that, you know, "I believe in stopping, um, and investigating potential crimes," or some such, right? Uh, Jason-

Jason Calacanis 15:50 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:50 ... you can probably find the exact quote.

Jason Calacanis 15:51 Well, I mean, having been in the, uh, uh, you know, New York City Police Department family, um, the, and living in New York during stop and frisk, it, they left out a key word. It was stop, question, and frisk. So in high crime areas where there were a lot of shootings or guns, um, they would do a stop, question, and then possibly frisk. Obviously, uh, all policing techniques can be abused, but his feeling on it was when deployed correctly, stop and question is a great technique. And I can tell you when I lived in New York previously, 70%, 80% of people, including people of color, including people from the toughest neighborhoods, were in favor of this. This was universally seen as a huge success at the time because they were taking guns off the street, illegal guns constantly, because somebody would hop a turnstile, um, or there'd be people hanging out on a street corner and cops would come up and say, "Hey, you're hanging out here at 3:00 in the morning. What's going on?"

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:46 But the problem, the problem is that he gave a pretty reasonable answer.

Jason Calacanis 16:50 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:51 And then they tried to cancel him.

Jason Calacanis 16:53 Yep.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:54 And he wouldn't allow them-

David Sacks 16:55 Which helped him.

Jason Calacanis 16:55 ... himself to be canceled.

David Sacks 16:56 Which helped him.

Jason Calacanis 16:56 He went on The Breakfast Club and all kinds of other media outlets and explained his position and they couldn't cancel him, which is, I think, really telling.

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:06 I thought it was, I thought it was an incredible testament to what we're going through right now, which is right now nobody knows what to do to solve the things we feel. We've tried the radical right version of a candidate. It didn't work. We're now wondering to ourselves while we have a custodian in the White House whether we go to the radical left. That's probably not gonna work either because unfortunately-

Jason Calacanis 17:29 It's not working in San Francisco, man.

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:30 I- I mean, un- unfortunately, it looks like the- the- the progressive left or the radical left is really, really judgmental. Um, and none of these folks have really done anything and so they- they are easy to complain... It's almost as if they know that they, what they want won't work so they don't want anything else to work and so they just want everything to devolve into chaos. That's a shame. And so, you know, people try to literally lie about what this guy said on television that was taped (laughs) .

Jason Calacanis 18:00 No, he had to come out like five times-

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:02 And now, and did it-

Jason Calacanis 18:02 ... and clarify, "I am not for"-

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:03 And by the way, they, they were, there were people, Jason, I don't know if you saw that, the ar- the- the video link that... There were people holding a press conference in front of his office literally screaming about stop and frisk when he never said "stop and frisk." He said stop and question is a reasonable strategy if somebody f- if we think that there is the potential of a crime. And the fact that people could not have that conversation and had to go to basically this guy needs to either quit or be completely removed from his ability to run for mayor. Yeah, it's, it's insanity.

Jason Calacanis 18:39 Yeah. A- and, uh, you can- people seem to have lost this ability to hold two conflicting ideas in their mind, uh, which is, you could be for criminal justice reform, you could be against police violence, um, and you could be for... strong policing of violent (laughs) crimes and law and order. And what seems to be happening in both cities, New York, San Francisco, and other places where crime is getting acute is, um, that they, uh, people are voting-

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:10 Here's, here's, here's two other conflicting thoughts.

Jason Calacanis 19:11 ... to be safer.

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:12 Here's, here's another conflicting thoughts. Uh, you can believe, um, that, you know, uh, Asians are awesome, but you can also believe that the, uh, coronavirus may have come from the Wuhan lab. And believing the latter doesn't mean that you're supporting Asian hate. I'm just gonna put that out there. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 19:35 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:35 (laughs)

David Sacks 19:35 Well, ca- can I, can I chime in on this, um, on this, uh, o- on the, um, o- on the Adams win? Because I think this is, this is huge news.

Jason Calacanis 19:44 Do you have your notes from Harry to make the clip?

David Sacks 19:46 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 19:46 Okay, go. (laughs)

David Sacks 19:48 Look, I mean, Er- Eric Adams is gonna be the next mayor of New York City, um, and it- I think there's, like, three big takeaways from, from, from this. Um, number one, crime is the issue that I've been saying on this pod that it is for at least six months. It is the number one issue when people do not feel safe in their homes and in their neighborhoods, uh, you know, nothing else matters. And here comes, uh, this really underdog candidate. He is despised by the, uh, sort of the progressive left and sort of the elites of the Democratic Party, and he wins. I mean, he- this is a huge underdog victory. He's, he's only a former cop. He still carries a gun. I mean, he is packing. And that sent a message to the electorate, "I am gonna be tough on crime. I'm not standing for defunding the police and deprosecution and decarceration, which are the hobby horses right now of the progressive left. I'm gonna protect you and this city." And the voters were eating it up, even in the Democratic Party. So number one, crime is the huge issue, and I think this is gonna reverberate throughout America for the next few years. Number two, it showed how out of touch these sort of progressives, these, and I'd say predominantly white progressives are, how out of touch they are with the constituencies they claim to represent. Um, you know, the, the mostly, uh, Black and Latino neighborhoods who voted in large numbers for Eric Adams were having none of this sort of elite, woke, progressive thinking around decarceration, deprosecution. Um, they are interested in real solutions for the problems that they see, not engaging in this sort of, like-

Jason Calacanis 21:28 This actually, uh-

David Sacks 21:29 ... woke identity socialism.

Jason Calacanis 21:30 There, there's a, there's actually an interesting nugget in what you're saying, which I think you can broaden out, which is, the, the radical left, I- I don't even call them the progressive left because that would mean they were making progress in their thinking. I think it's just this radical left. They seem to be white, rich, affluent people.

David Sacks 21:45 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 21:45 And they-

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:46 Guilty.

Jason Calacanis 21:46 ... seem to be super-

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:47 Guilty.

David Sacks 21:47 Totally.

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:47 And, and, and totally. They're super guilty about something.

David Sacks 21:49 Totally.

Jason Calacanis 21:49 But they're totally disconnected from what actual people of color want.

David Sacks 21:53 They're totally disconnected.

Jason Calacanis 21:54 So it's almost like they're speaking for a group of people who maybe are like, "That's not actually my position. I want-"

David Sacks 21:59 Right.

Jason Calacanis 21:59 ... "my kids to be safe on the way to school. I want guns off the street." If somebody, you know, if... A- and I think the, I, I wanna read the quote that he had because this is really important, is to go to the source material, not the headlines from, let's face it, the radical left is running these news, uh, publications and they're determining how they frame him. And here's the question, uh, from Vanity Fair: "So you think there is a way to use stop and frisk that isn't abusive?" It's a reasonable question. And his answer, "Well, there's a word that's missing in there. It's called stop, question, and frisk. So 2:00 in the morning, you look out your door. You see a person standing in front of your house. He places a gun in his waistband. You go to call the police, I hope. That police officer responds. He needs to be able to question that person. 'What are you doing with that gun?' If we're telling police officers, 'You can't question people,' we are jeopardizing the safety of the city." I mean, this is the most common sense, logical-

David Sacks 22:59 Right.

Jason Calacanis 23:00 ... framing of the discussion. It, it's not like they're saying, "Just pick a random person on the subway and say, 'Empty your pockets and get up against the wall,'" like the Gestapo, you know? Somebody called something in. You question people in the area.

David Sacks 23:12 We- we've seen this in San Francisco, that you've got these, you know, social justice crusaders who claim that they're helping minority communities, and you see an increase in the number of victims from those communities. And what Eric Adams said is, "Listen, we can't just care about the cops abusing their power. We also have to care about violence against these communities when it's perpetrated by criminals." And people responded to that, to that message. And I think just the, the final point that I think the, the Eric Adams win represents is that Twitter is not-

Jason Calacanis 23:40 Or likely win, likely win.

David Sacks 23:41 Likely win, okay, fair enough, is that Twitter is not real life, okay? Eric Adams has 14,000 Twitter followers. Yang has two million, okay? Yang came in fourth, okay? And y- you know, Yang was sort of the darling of the, you know, sort of the Twitter elites, you know? He sort of... I mean, look, uh, when he first got into the Democratic primary for president, he was a little bit of a bre- breath of fresh air, but ultimately, he kind of adopted the generic progressive positions on things. That did not resonate with the people of New York. They wanted someone tough on crime. And so, I think, you know, Eric Adams, he had another great quote, I think on election night, he said, "Social media does not pick a candidate. People on Social Security pick a candidate." Okay? Great line. And, and, I mean, and so here's the thing, is I think we all are distorted in our thinking based on what this, like, very loud, but ultimately small number of voices on social media says. And I think it's not just politicians. And by the way, I mean, it's, it's not just Eric Adams who won because he ignored Twitter. I mean, Biden won because he ignored Twitter, right? I mean, Biden was not...... on Twitter and he was able to win the Democratic primary for president. So, you know, I think there's a lesson here for politicians-

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:54 Mo-

David Sacks 24:54 ... which is ignore Twitter.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:55 ... moderates win.

David Sacks 24:55 And-

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:56 Moderate, moderates can win anything and everything as long as they show up and they do the work. But if you, to your point, spend all your time trying to curate your Twitter image, all you're gonna do is validate a bunch of people that really, at the end of the day, are trying to punch up, right? If you think about all the people that are spouting off, trying to cancel, trying to judge, there's a-

David Sacks 25:17 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:17 ... there's a great, there's a great quote in, in many Drake songs which is like, "These people have more followers than dollars." And what he's trying to say is like, you make them important when they don't need to be important. Uh-

David Sacks 25:30 Totally. Now, now, now do CEOs, right? You've got CEOs of some of the biggest companies in the world, like Tim Cook, like Frank Slootman, who are making their company policy based on what this small number of loud voices on Twitter are saying. It's ridiculous. I mean, I think the Eric Adams win is a watershed because it shows the emperor wears no clothes. These, these very loud, progressive, woke voices ultimately do not have that many supporters. And all people have to do-

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:58 Not, not-

David Sacks 25:58 ... is stop listening to them.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:00 ... when it goes... Not when it goes into the privacy of the ballot box. You have a lot of people, again, similar to the, to the, to the, to, to what we saw in the, in the Trump election in 2016, where all these people quietly said, "Oh, I cannot support Trump." And then one in two people went into that ballot box and said, "Fuck you," to everybody.

David Sacks 26:20 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:20 And this is the exact same thing that's playing out, except the opposite, which is now, if you are not completely progressive, at least in your posture and your vocabulary, there's this threat of being canceled. And so you adopt this stuff almost to make your life easy. But when push comes to shove, and we see it here in New York City and we'll probably see it all over the country, you get into the ballot box, you're gonna go for somebody moderate and reasonable that does the simple things that you wanna get done.

Jason Calacanis 26:47 And by the way, they tried to cancel, uh, The New York Times, tried to cancel Andrew Yang because he, um, had made a very, I, I, he basically said, you know, that, uh, mentally ill men, uh, who are addicted to drugs basically are, um, punching people in the face and, you know, we need to address that. And The New York Times framed it really interestingly, and I, I'll read you the tweet. "Watch: Andrew Yang's response to a question about how he would handle mental health during Wenda- Wednesday's New York City mayoral debate, uh, drew fire on social media from people who said it lacked empathy or understanding."

David Sacks 27:26 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 27:27 And when you look at that framing, he said how he would handle mental health, he wasn't talking about mental health generally and broadly. He was talking about people suffering from mental health on the streets who were homeless, who were addicted to drugs, and who punched people on the face.

David Sacks 27:42 Right.

Jason Calacanis 27:42 A massive subset.

David Sacks 27:43 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 27:43 But they framed this to attack him. Then let me just finish the other way they framed it. It drew fire on social media. So instead of saying, "This person said this," they literally... The New York Times is trying to get Andrew Yang canceled and to get more people to subscribe, uh, by being part of the woke mob.

David Sacks 28:05 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 28:06 They're... Literally, their Twitter handle does that. He, I could find f- ten times as many people who said, "Yeah, we can't have people who are mentally ill and violent on the street punching people."

David Sacks 28:15 It was Andrew Yang's, it was Andrew Yang's single best moment of the campaign, is he talked honestly about the risk to the public of mentally ill people living on the streets and attacking people. It was his single best moment. The reason he did it is because he saw the traction that E- Eric Adams was getting on the safety issue. And if Yang had done that from the beginning of the campaign, he might be the next mayor.

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:37 Yeah. Let me, let me read this from Eric Adams.

David Sacks 28:39 He, he was, he was, he was... Uh, Yang cared too much. Ultimately, his Achilles' heel was caring too much about the very online voices on Twitter, like The New York Times. And we've just seen that Eric Adams has proved this all a house of cards. Nobody really cares what they think.

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:57 Here's the, here's the quote from Eric Adams. "If the Democratic Party fails to recognize what we did here in New York, they're going to have a problem in the midterm elections, and they're going to have a problem in the presidential election," the Brooklyn Borough President said. "America is saying, 'We want to have justice and safety and end inequality.' And we don't want fancy candidates. We want candidates, their nails are not polished, they have calluses on their hands, and they're blue-collar people."

Jason Calacanis 29:25 Common sense.

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:26 Common sense.

Jason Calacanis 29:26 People, we're gonna return to, to common sense.

Jason Calacanis 29:29 Freeburg, I had, uh, CC'd you on, um, this, uh, thread where somebody said they found missing sequencing of the COVID genes that were submitted to a database. Did you have a chance to review that at all?

David Friedberg 29:45 Um, I did. And since you sent that, it's become a little bit of a story. A lot of people have kind of picked it up and followed up on it because it did ignite quite a bit of interest. So the story is a guy named Jesse Bloom, who's a researcher at the Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle and has been studying, um, you know, COVID as a lot of scientists have kind of shifted their attention over the past year, but, but has a, a background in virology. He was, uh, trying to pull some early, um, genomic samples that, uh, um, that may have been taken from patients early in China. Uh, so what this means is, you know, when, when patients kind of, um, in, in the early days were emerging as potentially having SARS-CoV-2, they were swabbing them and then-

Jason Calacanis 30:32 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 30:32 ... doing a genomic read of the, the RNA they find from the virus in that swab. And, uh, around the world, a lot of scientists contribute to this openly available genomic database, um, and they contribute their whole genome samples, uh, when they, when they run studies and so on, so other scientists can use it in the future for research.And what this guy found was that there were a few dozen of these samples that had been on this genomics database that were now missing. And, um, they had been pulled down. And using a little technical sleuthing, he realized they had been pulled down from the directory, but the raw genomic sample read data was still available on the Google Cloud. So he used the Google Cloud API to pull that actual data down from the servers and then ran a study on it. And it turns out that the- the interesting kind of intrigue around this story is why did that data get- get deleted?

Jason Calacanis 31:21 Yeah.

David Friedberg 31:21 Who deleted it? And it turns out the only way it gets deleted is if the original kind of authors go in and make a request to have it removed. And these were some random scientists in- in China-

Jason Calacanis 31:30 Bum, bum, bum.

David Friedberg 31:30 ... who had submitted the data. And so, uh, in the days following this publication, uh, of this guy... So this- so this guy published this on a pre-print server called bioRxiv. So it's not a peer-reviewed journal. Uh, it- it basically is a place for s-... Uh, bioRxiv is a place where, uh, biology scientists can submit, uh, early versions of their research papers or to get a- a new finding out really quickly, and then the world can kind of study it. And it's- and you don't have to wait for the journalistic kind of cycle of getting things approved, uh, um, uh, which is- which is common now. Um, and so he put this thing out there and everyone's kind of questioning, "Well, okay, where did these samples go?" It turns out that these Chinese scientists had submitted them, and now it ch- it has shown, uh, or it has come out that apparently some, um, US officials made the request to have it taken down after being asked to do so by some Chinese officials, uh-

Jason Calacanis 32:19 What?

David Friedberg 32:19 ... to pull this data down.

Jason Calacanis 32:20 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 32:20 And so there's a really weird kind of intrigue going on right now around this whole story. Now... So- so- so that's kind of thread number one, which is wha- why was this request made to pull this data down, what was the motivation, et cetera. Thread number two is, what does the data show us? And what the data shows us, unfortunately, is a little bit inconclusive. So a guy named Trevor Bedford just put out a tweet, um, uh, earlier today, uh, analyzing this. He's a- he's a world-class virologist, also works at the Fred Hutchinson Center in Seattle. Um, and he basically highlights that in the early days of the SARS-CoV-2 explosion in China, you can really identify from a genomic variant perspective two lineages of the virus. That means, you know, we're- we're trying to get back to origin or patient zero. And it turns out there were kind of like these two families of the virus that were emerging. And even with that new data, you could kind of reconstruct the family tree in such a way that the Wuhan meat market could have been the origin, meaning the root virus could have come out of that Wuhan market, or the Wuhan meat- meat market could have been one of the two branches of the tree that emerged early on. So there may have been an even earlier origin and Wuhan market was just one place where it started to take off. So, you know, he said... Look, he still thinks that it's about a 50/50. You know, there- there's no clear evidence one way or the other based on these newly, uh, uncovered samples. Um, uh, but, uh, you know, the- the- there is still this question of does the Wuhan market kind of paint the patient zero story or is it one of the places where the explosion happened and patient zero was in fact much earlier than Wuhan market? I- I will say a couple episodes ago, I kind of made a comment, you know, with respect to the origin of this virus that I don't know, don't care. And- and, uh, I just wanna clarify 'cause I know that some people kind of reached out to me about that. I didn't really... Uh, w- my- my- my intention with that statement was that this was really meant to be, um, I think a little bit more of a canary in a coal mine for us broadly about, you know, hey, what we should be looking forward to, it's what's next, not just about focusing-

Jason Calacanis 34:17 Yeah, so we should-

David Friedberg 34:18 ... on what happened in the past. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 34:19 This has happened already, let's move on to the next thing, is what you're saying. Not being callous that it doesn't matter.

David Friedberg 34:24 Yeah. And I think- I think what's more important is that we need to get prepared-

Jason Calacanis 34:26 Yes.

David Friedberg 34:26 ... for ho- how do we prevent these things happening in the future and- and what are the, um, you know, the- the key kind of checkpoints we have, uh, around this in the future. 'Cause one thing I am most concerned about, this is a huge step back (laughs) , but I'm concerned about our normalization of cancel. Um, you know, we kind of have started to cancel people, but we've also, you know... these shutdowns have been normalized. And the normalization where shutdown is the response to an emerging variant or emerging virus is really scary because, you know, how is society gonna function properly when there's gonna be a proliferation of these viruses, a proliferation of- of risks, uh, with new technologies being made available to us, and then shutting down becomes our immediate response?

Jason Calacanis 35:04 Well, how do you feel about shutting down borders, Friedberg, as the first course of action? If everybody in unison had shut down the borders in February and said, "No inter-country travel," you know, I- it would've obviously been devastating for the airlines, but it might have stopped the pandemic in its tracks.

David Friedberg 35:21 There was no way to stop the- the- the pandemic. O- once the genie is out of the bottle, the genie is out of the bottle. And we saw this in states that had lockdowns and states that didn't have lockdowns where we saw equivalent-

Jason Calacanis 35:31 No, wait, but why wasn't Taiwan and Australia and those kind of places that are islands that locked down, why were they spared?

David Friedberg 35:37 I- I don't know (laughs) if you can really say that they were spared. Um, and I don't know if you can really say that people are happy with the- the life that they led for that year, right? I- I- I think what we need to solve for is how do we have these vaccines come to market much faster and be much more variable in their efficaciousness, because we are gonna have a lot more of these kind of emerging variants over the next couple of years with SARS-CoV-2 but also with potentially engineered bugs-

Jason Calacanis 36:01 So question for-

David Friedberg 36:01 ... that we need to be careful about.

Jason Calacanis 36:02 ... question for Chamath and Sax then. Um, in Friedberg's sort of analysis there, um, and what was explained, uh, on the web about the- these new, uh, sequences, the US was allegedly involved in taking this down with the Chinese. If the USA, and I'm just creating a hypothesis here just to do a little game theory, if the US was allowing China to take this down, what would the game theory be if the US was involved in, dare I say, a cover-up or being opaque like the Chinese have already been proven to be, why would the US do that, Chamath? What would be the possible theories? Uh, and- and Sax.

David Sacks 36:45 Why did- why did the NBA shut down Daryl More?

David Friedberg 36:50 But that may not be... um, that may not... Sorry. That may not be national policy, J Col, right? So like a scientist, an American scientist or an American official-

Jason Calacanis 36:58 Okay. Sure.

David Friedberg 36:58 ... could have made that request. It doesn't mean that it was a...... conspiratorial process to, to remove this stuff.

Jason Calacanis 37:03 Yeah. No, I wanna jump the gun. I wanna jump the fence and say if in fact the, some US people were involved, so to your point, it could be an individual covering it up, or it could be an organization in America, or it could be, you know, some set of organizations. But Sachs, you wanted to jump in.

David Sacks 37:18 Well, look. I, I, I don't believe the wet market theory, um, precisely because there is a cover-up. I mean, the wet market theory was the official CCP, WHO party line about where the virus came from. If that was the case, why wouldn't they just throw open the gates to investigators, let them go into Wuhan Institute of Virology? Um, you know, w- why, why all the cover-up? Why have-

Jason Calacanis 37:42 And wouldn't they shut down all wet markets?

David Sacks 37:46 Maybe. I mean, but, but-

Jason Calacanis 37:47 Yeah. I mean, it'd be the logical conclusion.

David Sacks 37:49 But, but, but why, why obstruct the investigation? Why, um, ask these American researchers to delete these sequences of, um, DNA or whatever? And in terms of why would the researchers do it, because they were asked to and they've got a relationship.

Jason Calacanis 38:03 Well, why would Americans be ... i- i- if in fact they were complicit in this-

David Sacks 38:08 Wh- why has the WHO, why has the WHO been carrying water for, um, the, the Chinese government?

Jason Calacanis 38:12 'Cause they get their paycheck from them. Money.

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:13 No, 'cause I think the W- the WHO is stupid. I mean, let's-

David Sacks 38:16 Well, they've, they've, they've all gone to all these, you know, institutional incentives. They all work together and, um, you know-

Jason Calacanis 38:21 Money.

David Sacks 38:22 There's money involved. There's sort of relationships involved. There's bureaucracy involved. Um...

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:27 And then there's a level of incompetence.

David Sacks 38:30 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 38:31 So, it could be incompetence. Could it also not be that, uh, we funded that laboratory in some way, right? We had given some money towards it. That's, I think, established.

David Sacks 38:42 Yeah. Data function research.

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:43 Guys, I think it's a-

Jason Calacanis 38:44 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:44 I- if I, if ... Look, I i- I am a better person, so let's just say-

Jason Calacanis 38:46 And then it's egg on our face if they were in fact doing this, so we don't wanna look bad? I think it's over-

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:51 Or we don't want to be in conflict with them because-

Jason Calacanis 38:53 No, I think it's w-

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:53 ... then Americans and the West might demand we be in conflict with China? No, no, no. I think it's, I think it's what Friedberg said, which is like, look, uh, what seemingly a low-level request is made to basically delete an entry in a table, you do it, you know, not thinking anything of it. Uh, it ... I think it's pretty clear that this was something that leaked out of that lab. The thing that we will never, ever know is how and why, and whether it was purely accidental or something more nefarious than that. And I think this is why, to Friedberg's point, we just have to put a pin in all of that and move on and try to figure out a way where we set ourselves up so that the, the next time, for example, the, like, you know, we, we hear about the Delta variant now. We're gonna hear about other variants in the fall. It's gonna be a tough winter. We cannot shut down.

David Sacks 39:49 Yeah, well, I, I, I agree with that, but-

Jason Calacanis 39:50 No, but I think we need to know what happened here in order to inform our plan for the future. So, I think to your point, walking and chewing gum at the same time. Why can't we do both?

David Sacks 39:59 Yeah. Well, I mean, think about it. If the ... So, so I've never, I've never heard anyone seriously argue that the lab leak was intentional. I mean, I think because that would have posed, I think, a risk to China itself. But, um, but i- l- let's say, let's say it was an accidental lab leak. Um, what, what that suggests is, look, the Chinese knew everything about this virus for months while we were all here pulling out our hair, trying to figure this thing out. What is it? Who does it affect? You know, what are the risks? We're all having these debates in the United States and trying to get to the bottom of this thing.

David Friedberg 40:34 Well, no, no, no, no, no.

David Sacks 40:34 And they knew everything about it and they were, they weren't telling us about it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:37 But hold on. Friedberg, I mean, the, I think, I think I, I read this somewhere, but Moderna had characterized the vaccine 48 hours after getting an email of the DNA sequence of the

Jason Calacanis 40:46 Anyone can do that. Yeah, within, within 48-

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:48 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 40:48 So, so this was done in January. As soon as we got-

David Sacks 40:51 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 40:52 ... our first readouts- Yeah, but if they did make it to David's point, why don't they-

David Friedberg 40:54 Sorry, use-

Jason Calacanis 40:54 ... tell us how they made it?

David Sacks 40:56 It, it, it took them months, it took them months-

Jason Calacanis 40:58 How did they evolve it?

David Sacks 40:58 ... to understand the pathology of the virus, right?

David Friedberg 41:00 Yeah. It's, it's, that's not what matters, J Cal. You can read the code. It's very readable.

Jason Calacanis 41:05 Mm.

David Friedberg 41:05 You can read the code within a day, and then you can pick the area of the, the spike protein, which we already knew about, and you can say, "Let's go build some, you know, targets."

Jason Calacanis 41:13 So, how they got there doesn't matter is what you're saying, Friedberg. How they, how they created it, how they got to this doesn't matter.

David Friedberg 41:18 You mean created it as if the Chinese ... You're saying, you're asking how the Chinese edited the virus in a lab? Is that what you're saying?

Jason Calacanis 41:24 Yeah. How they ... Was this, like, a three-year project? Is this the 17th version they worked on or the second? You know, like, there's so many things-

David Friedberg 41:32 Jason, you're speaking about, you're characterizing this as if it was a designed weapon. Is that what you're saying? (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 41:37 Well, I'm, I'm saying it was designed-

David Friedberg 41:39 It, it does-

Jason Calacanis 41:39 ... not as a weapon, but they were doing-

David Friedberg 41:41 I mean, study, study, w-

Jason Calacanis 41:42 ... what does, what does evolutionary word they used-

David Sacks 41:44 Data function research.

David Friedberg 41:44 But, but yes, research.

Jason Calacanis 41:46 Yeah. No, that's w-

David Friedberg 41:46 Gain of function means that it, there, w- what ... So try to say gain of function-

Jason Calacanis 41:51 So there is a gain-

David Friedberg 41:51 ... in plain English, Friedberg. So, so when they say gain of function-

Jason Calacanis 41:55 In virology, in virology, they're gonna study what changes in the genome-

David Friedberg 41:59 Right. ... might do to biology, to, to an animal, to a biological system. And that study gives them insights into how a virus may evolve or how certain parts of a virus may affect humans ultimately in different ways. And so understanding viruses, and, and really important when you're studying viruses is you wanna understand where they're headed, not just where they're coming from.

Jason Calacanis 42:19 Right.

David Friedberg 42:19 And so to understand where they're headed, you may make genomic changes and study how those genomic changes affect the biology-

Jason Calacanis 42:25 So, they enhanced ... C-, c- can I use the word enhance or evolve?

David Friedberg 42:29 You can say i- you can say evolve, you could say enhance-

Jason Calacanis 42:31 Okay.

David Friedberg 42:31 ... you could say engineered, but, um, but very much it's about understanding where the changes in the proteins and the virus can affect biology in different ways in the future so that we can better understand, you know, what these viruses are capable of and prepare ourselves against that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:46 Okay. Well, we, we found out-

Jason Calacanis 42:46 So, here's the stupid question.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:47 ... we found out the implications of COVID-19.

David Friedberg 42:50 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:50 And thank God we didn't have to find it out for 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8. You know what I mean? Like ...

Jason Calacanis 42:57 Yes. So that's my point, Friedberg. Would it not be helpful to open Kimono, look at every single enhancement they made and what the results of those were? Like, they did something in that lab for the last couple of years. Who's got that information?

David Sacks 43:12 They do.

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:12 They do.

David Sacks 43:13 They knew. The name is the same! (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:18 (laughs)

David Friedberg 43:18 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 43:18 (laughs) The name is the same.

David Sacks 43:18 The name is the same.

Jason Calacanis 43:20 The Wuhan Bioweapons Laboratory.

David Sacks 43:23 The name is the same. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 43:24 The Bioweapons Laboratory-

David Sacks 43:25 Come on.

Jason Calacanis 43:25 ... in Wuhan.

David Sacks 43:26 What, what, what this database thing, uh, represents is, look, there was a cover-up here and that cover-up has fingerprints and the information is leaking out and we are seeing more evidence-

Jason Calacanis 43:36 Cover-up's worse than the crime.

David Sacks 43:37 ... and, and more information is gonna come out. I actually disagree with you guys that we're not gonna learn more about what happened. I think more, we're gonna learn-

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:43 Oh, we're gonna learn a lot more.

David Sacks 43:43 ... we're gonna learn a lot more. And it's gonna get-

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:45 Th- this, if any day now-

David Sacks 43:46 ... worse and worse.

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:47 ... it's gonna be-

David Friedberg 43:48 But Sax, where does it head? So like, let's say we discover...

Jason Calacanis 43:51 That was my original qua- question.

David Friedberg 43:52 Let's say we discover that there's an accidental lab leak out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Jason Calacanis 43:56 Right.

David Friedberg 43:56 A scientist got infected, left the lab, gave it to her boyfriend, people spread it in the street, suddenly it became a wh- whole pandemic. What, what do we do? What do you think the response is? Do you think Americans basically now i- impose sanctions on China and we, and we lead to a cold war? Like, where is this all headed?

David Sacks 44:12 Well, our-

David Friedberg 44:13 And what are the motivating principles of politicians who are gonna respond as that-

Jason Calacanis 44:16 Yes.

David Friedberg 44:16 ... evidence comes out?

Jason Calacanis 44:17 Yes, that's what I want to know.

David Sacks 44:19 Okay. Number one, I've said it before, we gotta re-shore the whole, um, pharmaceutical industry. We cannot (laughs) be dependent on China for our pharmaceutical supply chain, our antibiotics, our PPE. That is insane. Um, second of all, I mean, we gotta be more realistic about the nature of the regime that we're dealing with. They knew everything (laughs) about this virus for months while we were trying to figure it out.

David Friedberg 44:39 Where does it take us? Like, let's say we find out that to be true. Where does this... What, what happens next?

David Sacks 44:43 Decoupling. Decoupling.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:45 Here... And here's another thing that I think needs to happen, which is that-

Jason Calacanis 44:48 Decoupling.

David Friedberg 44:49 But I guess that's... Sorry, Chamath, one sec. But doesn't decoupling happen either way? Like, why do we need all this? Because there is such a motivating principle on p- on both sides of the aisle to decouple from China and there is a motivating principle to, to, to on-

Jason Calacanis 45:01 No. No, there is a ch-

David Friedberg 45:02 ... couple.

Jason Calacanis 45:02 There is a reason to not decouple, it's called money. There is a group of elites who do not want the decoupling to happen.

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:09 No, no, no. I-

Jason Calacanis 45:09 From the NBA to iPhones-

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:11 No.

Jason Calacanis 45:12 Apple, the NBA, and Disney do not want to decouple. They want to integrate these two societies so that we can make money.

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:18 I'm not sure that they think-

Jason Calacanis 45:19 And decoupling is my theory of what people are scared of.

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:21 No. Okay, wait, I just wanna say-

Jason Calacanis 45:22 People are scared of a decoupling.

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:24 I just wanna say two things. I don't think that there's like, a group of elites that want that to happen necessarily, because I think that their lives are complicated and what they would love to have, I think, is actually two end markets. You have to remember, if you go from one global market to a duopoly market and you're a seller of services, you actually have more pricing power in a duopoly than you do in a monopoly, into a monopoly. So, you know, if you're Disney, theoretically, and you have the ability to differentially price two different pieces of content, you're gonna do that.

Jason Calacanis 45:59 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:59 So, I, I t- I tend to think, uh, in general, it's better for economic systems to have this bifurcation. So, the... I just wanted to go back to the, the thing that I wanted to, to, uh-

Jason Calacanis 46:11 Wait, wait. Define bifurcation. You're saying two different markets, but what if there is, hey, we're going to sanction, we're not gonna send Disney movies in, or they're not gonna let Disney and NBA in like they don't let Google and Twitter in, where iPhones are not gonna be made there and Apple's gonna start making iPhones-

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:24 I, I actually-

Jason Calacanis 46:24 ... in Vietnam, in Pakistan-

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:25 I-

Jason Calacanis 46:25 ... and Sri Lanka.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:26 I actually think what happens is it accelerates democracy. Because the... again, you have an enormously difficult-

Jason Calacanis 46:32 I agree with that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:33 ... and thorny issue inside of China, which is, they have a cataclysmic demographic bombshell going on.

Jason Calacanis 46:39 Yep.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:40 They have... We have... The average age in China versus the average age in the United States is now the same.

Jason Calacanis 46:47 Yep.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:47 Which is an unbelievable thing because China was 15 or-

Jason Calacanis 46:50 One child policy. How'd that work out?

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:51 China was 15 or 20 years younger in the early '90s when all of this offshoring started to happen in full scale. By the end of 21s- by the end of this century, China's population, I think, is projected to shrink to about 700 million people. So, they are in a hugely difficult demographic situation where there's no young people, people are getting older and older and older. And so, there's just gonna be a lot of upheaval. You just saw, by the way, Chi-

Jason Calacanis 47:19 And old people cost a lot of money to maintain.

Chamath Palihapitiya 47:21 Much, much more money. China-

Jason Calacanis 47:21 As Japan has learned.

Chamath Palihapitiya 47:23 By the way, China, China just, you know, relaxed their one-child policy to two. Then within a month, they relaxed their two-child policy to three. And now they-

Jason Calacanis 47:30 Oh, they're gonna be paying people to have kids. I mean, we just, like we give tax incentives.

Chamath Palihapitiya 47:33 Well, and now they're, uh, they're floating a, a policy which says unlimited kids. Okay, so, so that's one thing.

Jason Calacanis 47:39 Oh, you can-

Chamath Palihapitiya 47:39 I just want... I just wanna go back to what, uh... One of the practical things we can do coming out of Wuhan as all this new data comes out is, instead of vilifying China or trying to enter some cold war, which is stupid, we should just go and re-shore everything as Sax suggested. One thing that you can say is, wherever there is this kind of research happening in the world, every single variant needs to go to some basically open-source repository that viroologists all around the world can basically watch what's happening in lockstep.

David Friedberg 48:09 They do, they do that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:09 So that... Well-

David Friedberg 48:11 Right? I mean-

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:11 What the fuck was going on here then?

David Friedberg 48:13 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 48:13 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:13 Well, they deleted it. (laughs)

David Friedberg 48:14 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:14 It was deleted, but, but, but, but-

Jason Calacanis 48:15 They, they deleted it, Chamath.

David Friedberg 48:17 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:17 But to be clear, Chamath, that, that is what it is-

Jason Calacanis 48:18 They covered it up. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:19 What are they doing?

David Friedberg 48:21 But no...

Jason Calacanis 48:21 (laughs)

David Friedberg 48:21 No, that is exa- that is exactly the principle, and that is exactly what goes on within the academic and research communities worldwide, there's very open and cooperative dialogue with academics around the world about these matters. And generally, that is absolutely true in the way things are done. 'Cause scientists don't care about politics. They care about, you know, human health and progress.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:39 Answer this question, please. Is every single variant of COVID that led up to COVID-19 well characterized and well understood by a broad class of scientists and viroologists all over the world or...

David Friedberg 48:52 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:52 Or a small subset of people, the, the plurality of which were working at the Wuhan lab for virology?

David Friedberg 48:58 We didn't know... Th- the argument goes, you don't know that you have SARS-CoV-2 in those early days. And so you see some people getting sick and then suddenly, you put your head up and you're like, "Wait a second, what's going on here?"

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:09 That's not what I'm asking. That's not what I'm asking.

David Friedberg 49:10 Well, my point is, you're not, you're not running a genomic sequencing on all those people, uh, in those early days.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:14 No, no, no. I'm asking something else.

David Friedberg 49:15 Right? And-

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:15 You have this original virus that you've been testing and mutating and, you know, reprogramming, you're testing... You're basically doing a massive Monte Carlo simulation on an original virus.

David Friedberg 49:26 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:27 ... are all the intermediate instantiations of that virus well characterized?

Jason Calacanis 49:32 Likely not.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:32 Okay, that's my point. That's fucking crazy.

Jason Calacanis 49:35 Publicly available? Likely not.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:35 That's crazy.

Jason Calacanis 49:35 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:36 Okay.

Jason Calacanis 49:37 If they were publicly available, wouldn't that be super dangerous?

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:39 Also, also, by the way, like, wouldn't it make sense then if, if you were doing these iterations of these viruses that, that the DNA sequences should go to places like Pfizer and Moderna where you are mandated to create vaccines just in case?

Jason Calacanis 49:52 Well, we are gonna enter a stage here in the next decade where we will have vaccine printers around the world. There are gonna be small bioreactors. You're going to be able to effectively ship code to them. They're gonna print vaccines. There's several companies pursuing this. Um- I'm just, I'm just gonna go out on a limb-

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:07 This, this is, this is gonna be-

Jason Calacanis 50:07 Oh, I, I, Chamath, I like your idea though. I'm just gonna go out on a limb-

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:10 You just had an interesting idea.

Jason Calacanis 50:10 ... and say this system is immature, naive, and inefficient. And I think-

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:14 Correct. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 50:15 ... what if... That's something that we can fix. That's why what matters most, in my opinion and based on the, the comments I made a few episodes ago, is that we need to focus on how to get there versus trying to trace back the origins. 'Cause I think, honestly, tracing back the origins is just gonna put kindling on a fire that's already burning. And so my, my, th- this, this, this has been my point about this whole, like, tr- you know, blame China. We, we wanna get to a point where we can, quote unquote, "blame China" for this, but the decoupling and the onshore, there is already enough motivation there and there's already, on both sides of the aisle, there's already kind of an, an obvious trajectory that we're headed this way. I'm not sure. Th- this is a catalyst maybe, or it's a little bit more kindling. We're already headed there, and it doesn't actually answer our forward-looking question, which is how do we secure our future? And how we secure our future is really where-

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:59 All right.

Jason Calacanis 50:59 ... technology and industry and, and some of these m- th- Freeberg, let me, let me build on Chamath's idea. What if the mRNA vaccine creation and the research laboratory were the same facility and you had a cross-disciplinary approach where- Terrible idea. ... where they're making stuff and then they're curing it next door in real time so that they can trade notes. Why would that be a terrible idea? It seems like a brilliant idea, Chamath. You could just, you could just transfer the data from the research and print the vaccines with the people that are really good at making vaccines. Right? Okay. Y- you don't, th- th... You don't need to have an intricate understanding of the biology to actually be effective at making vaccines, right? You make v- No, but isn't there something about scientists who are cross-disciplinary, sharing space and having collisions, building relationships? Isn't that part of the science process? That's worked over the last couple years. You talk about how, in synthetic biology and all this, you want the mathematicians, computer programmers, you know, and the biologists in the same area, and the chemists. Resolving to a world where we have very cheap, very fast, and distributed production of vaccines is an engineering problem. And the, the engineering work is what is kind of being undertaken now by several companies and, and will be fueled by this, uh, this new, um, uh, bill that Biden's trying to get passed, this infrastructure bill. There's a ton of money in there for it. And as that happens, that engineering process, it's effectively... Think about them like printers and they can take code and that code allows the, that printer to now print whatever you want to print. The question- Right. ... of what you want to print is gonna be determined by the research that's being done over here, which is, okay, here's what we're discovering, here's what we should print, here's what we should protect against and why. But I think that there's a separate engineering exercise which, you know, let, let, let, let's build this distributor production system.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:37 I'm gonna go out on a limb and say th- th- these labs are immature, naive, and unsophisticated in the checks and balances that exist. And I think we've seen that and we need to fix it, and you need to do something more than just have a bunch of folks that are focused on science going ham in whatever way they want.

Jason Calacanis 52:58 All right. So just to wrap, Sax, anything else on this as we put a cherry on it?

David Sacks 53:01 Well, I just... Y- you asked the question, what do we do about China? I think that is a question, that's a generational question. We're gonna be asking that for-

Jason Calacanis 53:08 Totally.

David Sacks 53:09 ... for decades. It's a, this is an area where we need Friedbergian nuance, um, because it's something that we're gonna have to navigate as a country for, for decades. Um, you know, a really good book about this is The Thucydides Trap, um, by Graham Allison who's a Harvard professor, and he discusses different strategies we can take. He quotes, uh, Lee Kuan Yew, who is the, you know, president of Singapore, who has a great quote about this. He said, Lee, Lee Kuan Yew said, that "the size of China's displacement of the world balance... is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that (this) is just another 'big player.' This is the biggest player in the history of the world." That was, that was the Lee Kuan Yew quote. Um, so we were dealing with this issue even before COVID, but I do think that COVID has unmasked this regime a little bit and, um, caused, uh, people across both sides of the political spectrum to look at this regime, I think, more realistically.

Jason Calacanis 54:07 Uh, all right. So, uh, in somewhat related news, uh, Apple obviously, uh, building all their phones over there and now having servers and data over there, um, has led to a lot of scrutiny of big tech, um, but the more pressing issue is the antitrust bills that seem to be fast-tracked. On Wednesday, US House, uh, Judiciary Committee discussed six, six proposed antitrust bills. Uh, one bill, uh, sponsored by a Democrat from Rhode Island, uh, s- would call for Apple to allow third-party app stores, seems reasonable, uh, and provide iPhone technologies to third-party software makers. So I think that means maybe opening up iMessage, uh, which would be delightful.

David Sacks 54:52 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 54:52 I'm not sure exactly what they mean there. Um, and so Apple, uh, and Tim Cook is in a panic. He apparently called Nancy Pelosi-

David Sacks 55:00 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 55:01 ... and said, "Can you pump the brakes?"

David Sacks 55:03 (laughs) Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 55:03 Uh, (laughs) just to give you an idea of what's going on here, um, Apple's, uh, revenue, even though it's a small percentage of just 10%, uh, of their $274 billion in, uh, 2020 revenue, it's obviously pure profit. Profit margin's gotta be... Uh, uh, in the notes here, it says 75%, but I would think it's even more. Clearly, services in the App Store inside of Apple is, I think, analogous to the AWS for Amazon. It is a money printing machine that's growing really fast. Uh, what do we think about Apple being forced to put other app stores on their phones, just like you can on your Android phone?

David Sacks 55:45 I support it. I've been blue pilled on this issue. Actually, that's what the, that's what the commenters on, of our, the all-in fans have said is that, "Why is Sax taking blue pills on this issue?"

Jason Calacanis 55:54 (laughs)

David Sacks 55:54 Um, and, and look, the reality is because I'm not in the business of, um, of helping two trillion dollar, uh, market cap companies. I'm in the underdog business. I'm in the business-

Jason Calacanis 56:05 Ah. Got it.

David Sacks 56:05 ... of helping the entrepreneur get started with a new company. And the fact of the matter is, is that Apple has the market power, the same market power or greater than Microsoft did in its heyday with the Windows monopoly. They are total gatekeepers of what applications can be built on these iOS devices-

Jason Calacanis 56:23 It's worse than Windows. Windows you could-

David Sacks 56:25 Windows was open.

Jason Calacanis 56:25 ... install any... It was open. I mean, what-

David Sacks 56:27 Right. It was open. You're right.

Jason Calacanis 56:27 They didn't have an app store. Yeah.

David Sacks 56:29 Right. So this, this proposal by, uh, Representative Cicilline-

Jason Calacanis 56:32 Not so all the viruses. (laughs)

David Sacks 56:33 Right. So this proposal by Representative Cicilline, the Democrat from Rhode Island, would allow this sideloading. It would basically loosen the grip that Apple has over the apps that can be loaded onto Apple devices. It would at least, uh, you know, create some degree, some potential for competition.

Jason Calacanis 56:50 No, it would create tremendous competition. And it's very easy to execute. Go ahead, Chamath.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:55 Uh, um, I, I, I think you said it really well. I am also in the underdog business. So I think the, the faster they ram this thing through, the better off it'll be. Um, the thing that is important to recognize is that Apple will make this argument that, "Well, look, there's always Android. And also, look, there's the open web." And that's structurally not true for a couple of reasons. The overwhelming amount of development, at least in Silicon Valley and broadly speaking in tech, starts on the iPhone.

Jason Calacanis 57:25 Sure.

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:26 Um, and it's only then as an afterthought almost... I mean, you have to remember, it took Snapchat three or four years of being a public company before they actually had a reasonable Android app, right? And so Android is- has always been sort of the low ARPU afterthought, even though it has meaningfully more users. They're just not as valuable.

Jason Calacanis 57:46 Average revenue per user.

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:47 And so... Exactly. And so, you know, it- it's kind of a baseless argument. The overwhelming revenue, the North Star for developers where all of the venture capital money goes into is to funding and developing iOS apps. And in that world view, iOS is a complete monopoly. And, uh, breaking up the ability for them to basically dictate a 30% take rate, um, and also loosening the technical guardrails, I think is a huge step forward. There's only one thing that I would say. However, Apple has done an incredible job with privacy, locking down the phone, sandboxing instances, and we'll have to find some technical alternative to fortifying, um-

Jason Calacanis 58:34 Oh, uh, no. Actually, they don't, Chamath. Actually, I think what they do is when you go to your settings, you say, "Unlock iPhone. You now are not protected. Apple is not responsible. You've decided to sideload stuff." And it's basically like putting your mo- your phone into jailbreak or dev mode where they are not gonna support you. That's the way I think Apple should execute it, is that would be like their, "You know, if you wanna load anything you want, when you get viruses and your privacy gets hacked, it's not on us. You've just essentially, although we have one warranty for people who are not jailbroken and sideloaded and one warranty for people who decide to jailbreak their phones."

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:08 What's, what's incredible to me, the other, the other point on this is how quickly these guys passed this bill. And actually, uh, actually, all six, and then how reasonably well they were written. I mean, this is one topic where sometimes, you know, politicians can really kind of get it wrong or they can get lobbied in one way or the other, and these bills come out, they don't make sense. I mean, if you have to remember where- how far we've come, you know, wasn't the first antitrust thing where like some guy asked Zuck a question about like a model T Ford or something?

Jason Calacanis 59:35 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:35 I mean, it was just so stupid. They were so dumb. And they've gone from there to this. It's really incredible how fast they've caught up.

David Friedberg 59:42 I think this is just a terrible precedent, and I, I think if you guys, um, weren't gonna make money by weakening Apple and Alphabet-

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:50 (laughs)

David Friedberg 59:51 ... if you guys put your free market hats on, you- you'd kind of acknowledge that this is just a terrible precedent.

Jason Calacanis 59:55 We were not angel investors. We did not do the series A of either of those companies, Friedberg.

David Friedberg 1:00:00 Yeah, I, I, I recognize that and I think like-

Jason Calacanis 1:00:02 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:00:02 ... if you guys ha- if you guys had a bunch of shares in Alphabet or, or Amazon or Apple, your, your opinion would be a little bit different. But, um, I- I'm just observing exactly what you said.

David Sacks 1:00:10 I, I have shares... I have shares in Amazon and Facebook.

David Friedberg 1:00:12 Yeah. Well, look, I, I think in this particular case, you know, Sax-

Jason Calacanis 1:00:15 He's, he's in the process of selling them. (laughs)

David Sacks 1:00:17 (laughs) No, no.

David Friedberg 1:00:17 You know-

Jason Calacanis 1:00:18 In startups.

David Friedberg 1:00:18 ... at the end of the day, if ou- if Apple and Alphabet didn't make incredible products for consumers and focused on consumer happiness, they wouldn't be as successful as they are. And much of... if you remember kind of the early days of the Apple App Store, um, ideology, it was about curating apps and curating the quality of those apps so that the quality of the overall iPhone experience would be superior to anything else out there and consumers would love it. It wasn't about blocking out competitors and blocking out rivals and blocking out other platforms. It was about making something that consumers would absolutely love. And the same-

Jason Calacanis 1:00:49 Incorrect.

David Friedberg 1:00:50 ... and, and the same, I think is true-

Jason Calacanis 1:00:51 Incorrect-

David Sacks 1:00:52 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:00:52 ... Friedberg. They blocked third-party, uh, bookstores and, uh, book readers. They blocked browsers. They blocked- They wanted to own the experience. They wanted to own-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:01 ... VLC and open source players. They did that 'cause they wanted you to use their own products. That's called BS.

David Friedberg 1:01:07 They set standards, they set standards on the App Store, and as long as you met those standards, those apps got in there. So YouTube's in there. Uh, Google Chrome is in there. You know, I've got Chrome installed on my iPhone.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:15 It took them-

David Friedberg 1:01:15 I think it's a better browser.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:16 It took them-

David Sacks 1:01:17 It took them years, Friedberg.

David Friedberg 1:01:18 Years.

David Sacks 1:01:18 Years.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:18 And they realized they had to give that up.

David Sacks 1:01:20 Years.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:20 They had to give up the browser. They had-

David Friedberg 1:01:21 Because that's what consumers wanted.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:23 They could have said no.

David Friedberg 1:01:23 Because that's what consumers want.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:24 No.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:25 No. Because they knew it would put a target on their back.

David Friedberg 1:01:27 The only reason Chrome is there... No, the only reason that Chrome is there is because of the amount of money that Google pays Apple for search.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:33 Oh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:33 Yeah. Look- And that was a quid pro quo in that search deal. I will bet you dollars to donuts that that's the only reason Chrome is supported on iOS.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:41 Oh, I thought you said donuts. (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:01:41 Yeah, I don't-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:42 Donuts? (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:01:42 I don't think Apple... I don't think Apple is that dumb. I'm pretty sure that these guys recognize that if consumers want something, they better give it to them. And if consumers wanted a bunch of shitty apps on the phone that didn't work and broke down all the time, you know-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:52 You will then go through the process of jailbreaking your phone. Should you be able to jailbreak your phone and hack it, Friedberg?

David Friedberg 1:01:57 I don't, I, I don't think that I should be telling-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:59 And should we pay for it?

David Friedberg 1:01:59 ... Apple how to make their frigging hardware. They should make their hardware and I as a consumer, in the free market, should decide if I wanna buy it or not. And if I wanna, if I wanna, if-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:06 No, it's, it's not a free market. It's a monopoly.

David Friedberg 1:02:08 And if I wanna have a free-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:09 It's a duopoly.

David Friedberg 1:02:10 ... I can go buy a frigging Samsung or I don't know if HTC still makes phones or, you know, Nokia or Blackberry. I guess these guys are all dead 'cause their products suck. But-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:16 Okay, fine.

David Friedberg 1:02:17 ... at the end of the day, if there's an alternative out there, I will buy it. And if you guys wanna go fund a hardware company that builds a software platform on top of the hardware and make it compete with Apple-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:25 Look at the monopolist over here.

David Friedberg 1:02:26 I'm not a monopolist, I'm just pointing out, like-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:27 Okay, robber baron. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:29 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:02:29 Now I know why you didn't wanna say your opinion, you're a goddamn robber baron.

David Friedberg 1:02:32 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:02:32 You're, no, it's really, it's really interesting that-

David Friedberg 1:02:34 Oh.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:34 ... Friedberg actually on this issue is actually the, the free market, um-

David Friedberg 1:02:38 Monster.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:39 ... uh, red pill. No. And every- and everybody else is sort of blue pilled. But, but, David, you're right.

David Friedberg 1:02:43 Again, like I'll, I'll point out, I don't get to that-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:44 On speaking my book.

David Friedberg 1:02:44 ... red pill, blue pill. Like, you know, going-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:46 It's our books. No, I'm speaking my book. I completely agree. I'm speaking my book. I, I really- Better for startups.

David Friedberg 1:02:51 ... like creative destruction. I think it's better for startups. I don't particularly have a lot of trust or faith that these big companies when they get this big are particularly well run or have the best interests of the broad, uh, market, um, in their minds. And so, yeah, I'll, I'll be honest with you. I hope these companies get broken up. I think it's great for what we do, I think it's great-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:13 Right.

David Friedberg 1:03:13 ... for entrepreneurship, I think it's super, uh, phenomenal for the innovation cycle we could be a part of. Um, and I would hope to participate in that and make a bunch of money along the way. I completely-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:23 I think the best, the best way to destroy a monopoly is to build better technology that disrupts them. And that has always been the case throughout history. And any time government gets involved and tries to break up a monopoly in a way that is not natural to the way the market forces might demand, you end up declining in innovation standard. We have to disrupt Apple, we have to disrupt Amazon, we have to disrupt Alphabet using technology if we wanna have an advantage to go win in the market. And by having government come in and intervene, I feel like it ends up being like, like, like, you know, this cronyism, which, um, which ultimately affects markets in an adverse way. He- here, here's the problem is that the developer network effects around an operating system monopoly are insuperable. They, you, you cannot overthrow them. There are now thousands and thousands, maybe even millions of apps have been developed on the iO- on iOS system. And, uh, l- no competitor can ever get that kind of traction. It is the Windows monopoly all over again. And by the way, W- Microsoft and Windows might have dominated the internet if it weren't for the government coming down with the whole Netscape liti- litigation. Netscape didn't survive, but it kind of, it kind of froze Microsoft in its tracks and prevented them from dominating the nascent internet. And so, you know, I think that turned out to be a good government intervention, uh, in terms of allowing innovation to move forward. And, and by the way, just on the Sicilian proposals, I think part of the reason why they make so much sense is because we can't break up Apple. How would you break up Apple, right? I mean, Apple sells one product, which is iOS, on ch- different sizes of sheets of glass. The only way to break up Apple is to force them to use their operat- let their operating system be licensed to other hardware. And that's been on the table. Um, there, there- It would, it would certainly create downward pressure on their margins if Dell could make a competing- Right, but- ... Apple desktop. Okay, fair enough. What I'm saying- And laptop. What I'm saying is there's no f- natural fault lines within Apple like there are at Amazon or Google, right? Yes. Amazon- There's nothing to chop off. Am- Amazon could spin out AWS very easily, Google could spin out YouTube or maybe enterprise. Instagram, yes. Apple's, Apple's not gonna s- to separate iPad and iOS. iPods, yeah. Yes, of course. So, so what that means is because you can't split up the company, if you want to address their power, the only way to do it is with proposals like side-loading.

David Friedberg 1:05:33 I, I feel like you're, you're either looking at a capitalist monopoly or you're looking at a government monopoly. So if you think about what's happened in financial services in the United States, the, the regulatory burden on being a service provider in the financial services industry is so high that it is very difficult for startups to come in and compete. And look at what emerged, Bitcoin. Right? I, I feel like there is always gonna be a consumer innovation model that will supplant the monopoly. And you can't just say, "Hey, the government's gonna come in and side-load or, or break up these big businesses." What ultimately happens when you do that is you create a regulatory burden that makes it equally difficult for competition to arise over time or to reduce innovation that's gonna benefit consumers.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:13 This is the Princess Leia, uh, you know, basically theory, the, the tighter you squeeze, the more galaxies slip through your fingers. And maybe TikTok, uh, and Snapchat are examples of that with Facebook, but there aren't many. And I don't know who's coming up to fight against Amazon at this point. Um, so it's, it's-

David Friedberg 1:06:32 Shopify. And Shopify's crushing it and they're incredible and they're gonna create-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:36 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:06:36 ... this long tail of stores that ultimately could end up competing really effectively with Amazon. And we've seen it.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:41 Okay.

David Friedberg 1:06:41 Right? And, and, and consumers choose it. And by the way-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:43 Just because Shop- just because Shopify is making a lot from SaaS revenue does not mean that the majority of goods are not gonna go through them.

David Friedberg 1:06:49 I will tell you, the consumer-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:50 Amazon.

David Friedberg 1:06:50 ... the, the consumer experience on Shopify stores is fantastic. I mean, we all don't realize it, but we're buying a ton of stuff-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:56 No, no, I i-

David Friedberg 1:06:56 ... from Shopify stores.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:57 It's, it's pretty good. It's pretty good.

David Friedberg 1:06:58 And it has forced innovation, you know? And, and, and I will also highlight that one of the benefits of these scaled businesses is that they end up having the resourcing to fund new and emerging businesses that otherwise wouldn't be fundable. I don't think that AWS would have emerged, and therefore Google Cloud and all these other s- uh, alternatives wouldn't have emerged if Amazon didn't have this-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:16 Or Waymo.

David Friedberg 1:07:16 ... yeah, didn't have this incredible re-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:17 Or the Chromium open source project.

David Friedberg 1:07:18 Or Waymo, and think about the industry that emerged around Waymo.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:21 Chromium, Android.

David Friedberg 1:07:21 Like, inc-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:21 But nobody... David, nobody's, nobody's suggesting to have broken this thing up in 2007. But it's 2021 and things have changed.

David Friedberg 1:07:30 I don't know. What's down the road that we're gonna miss out on, right? I mean, I, I, I guess my point is, like-... you know, let the consumer (laughs) make the decision, as opposed to create regulatory burden that, that over time has its own cost.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:40 W- what is the downside to allowing somebody who wants to put an app store on their iPhone? What's the downside, Friedberg? What's the downside to letting me have Amazon's app store or Android app store and me to pick that I wanna just have one subscrip- set of subscriptions and I prefer the Android store? Why is that a bad thing?

David Friedberg 1:07:58 The Apple argument, and I, I, I'm not making it personally. The Apple argument is that the quality-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:01 Seems pretty personal to me.

David Friedberg 1:08:02 ... of the a- the, the, the quality of the... The quality of, I think you, I, I just think it's a little bit short-sighted for us to all jump to say let's break up big tech. Like, the quality of what's coming out-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:09 No, no, no, no.

David Friedberg 1:08:09 ... over the last decade-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:10 I think it's-

David Friedberg 1:08:10 ... is incredible and, and the new products that have come out is just mind-blowing and, you know, we all kinda miss the fact that the, these are the beneficiaries of scale businesses. And, you know, you can't really see a startup go do

David Sacks 1:08:21 Right. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:21 Friedberg, we are not saying break up big tech. We're saying get rid of the 30% app store fee because that negatively impacts our portfolios.

David Sacks 1:08:29 No. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:08:29 Let's be clear here. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:31 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:08:31 This is screwing with the margins at a lot of the companies we invested. We want that take rate lowered. I mean, this is, if Apple just made the take rate 15%, this entire thing goes away. Epic Games feels great. Spotify feels great. That's what they should have done. When you overplay your hand and then all of a sudden you create a group of enemies from Netflix to Spotify to Epic Games, that was Apple's big mistake. They should have given those people a lower rate and just slowly lowered the rate, which is what everybody's doing now with creator, um, percentages. And I think that's what YouTube should do now. The 45% they're taking, just lower that to 30. Just give up a little bit of the take rate and, and people will be, feel more reasonable about what you're taking from them.

David Sacks 1:09:14 Can I, can I, can I bring in the, that Substack article by Antonio Garcia Martinez? It was called Bad-

Jason Calacanis 1:09:19 You wanna end on that?

David Sacks 1:09:20 Yeah, I wanna, I wanna-

Jason Calacanis 1:09:20 Or you wanna end on McAfee getting killed by the Mossad-

David Sacks 1:09:22 Well, just, I wanna, I don't wanna descend in-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:24 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:09:24 ... on the CCP.

David Sacks 1:09:25 I wanna, I wanna end the Apple segment on, on, um, on AGM's article, which was called Bad Apple, although-

David Friedberg 1:09:31 Great article. Great article, by the way.

David Sacks 1:09:32 Yeah. I mean, it was, it was unbelievable. But basically-

Jason Calacanis 1:09:34 David was so ex- I just wanna let people know how excited David was about this. David, I think, is like ready to be in a full-blown romance with Antonio.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:44 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:09:44 I mean, he is-

David Sacks 1:09:45 Which David are you talking about?

Jason Calacanis 1:09:47 I'm talking about you, Sacks.

David Sacks 1:09:49 Oh, okay.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:49 You are s- uh, are you in love with Antonio? It's a big pause.

David Friedberg 1:09:57 Oh. WiFi broke up. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:09:58 Oh, he got cut out. (laughs) We lost him on Zoom when I asked him if he's in love. (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:10:00 Apple came in and they pressed pause. (laughs) Apple pressed pause