E44: USA's Afghanistan embarrassment, China's new algo laws, future of robots + Italy recap!

1. 0:00 – 12:06

   Intro & Italy recap

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      By the way, boys-

   2. DSDavid Sacks0:01

      I am in black.

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:01

      Look at this, I'm down, I'm, I'm up a button.

   4. JCJason Calacanis0:04

      Oh. Up a button, yes please.

   5. DSDavid Sacks0:05

      This is why the All-In pod is falling apart, is we got one bestie who thinks he's fucking Hemingway, we got another one who thinks he's Italian nobility, we got another one who all he wants to do is geek out about science and discuss nothing topical. I mean, you guys are a total mess. Total mess.

   6. JCJason Calacanis0:20

      And you're off fucking boat.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:21

      And you, off fucking boat. And you.

   8. JCJason Calacanis0:22

      The fuck are you doing?

   9. Here's our cold open (laughs) .

   10. DSDavid Sacks0:23

       I'm present.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:24

       God.

   12. DSDavid Sacks0:25

       I've been present.

   13. JCJason Calacanis0:26

       Present.

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:26

       You've been present.

   15. DSDavid Sacks0:26

       I've been waiting for two weeks.

   16. JCJason Calacanis0:28

       Keep your mind on social.

   17. And we got the guy who wants to be the next Tucker Carlson.

   18. DSDavid Sacks0:31

       I've been waiting for two weeks to come off.

   19. JCJason Calacanis0:31

       Oh, really? Did, did Henry Belcaster write that opening for you?

   20. DSDavid Sacks0:35

       No, what's wrong with that?

   21. JCJason Calacanis0:35

       Yeah.

   22. Did your writing team write that soliloquy?

   23. DSDavid Sacks0:37

       I'm coming in hot. I've been waiting two weeks to go off.

   24. NANarrator0:39

       I'm going all in.

   25. JCJason Calacanis0:39

       Three, two...

   26. NANarrator0:42

       Don't let your winners ride.

   27. JCJason Calacanis0:45

       Rain Man David Sacks.

   28. NANarrator0:49

       I'm going all in. And I said- We open sourced it to the fans and they have just gone crazy with it.

   29. JCJason Calacanis0:53

       Love you, bestie. Okay, everybody. Welcome back to the All-In podcast. We took two weeks off for vacation. Uh, with us today- Vacation? (laughs) ... from-cation, uh, Sacks is off his boat and ready to go, uh, after the tremendous boat episode. Friedberg, who didn't come to Italy-

   30. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:14

       David, why are you working from an IRS office?
2. 12:06 – 34:49

   An embarrassment in Afghanistan: breaking down how it happened

   1. JCJason Calacanis12:07

      the United States started the process of leaving Afghanistan after a 20-year war, uh, in which, I think it's pretty safe to say, that was an unwinnable war and, uh, we, uh, have failed like the Russians did. Sachs had a, uh, tweet, uh, that was, uh, well, getting a little bit of play on the old Twitter. "What we're seeing before our eyes is the collapse of the American empire because the people in charge are completely corrupt and incompetent but we can't talk about that because insiders can never criticize other insiders. The Larry Summers rule."

   2. DSDavid Sacks12:43

      Did I tweet that?

   3. JCJason Calacanis12:44

      You did.

   4. DSDavid Sacks12:45

      Oh, man.

   5. JCJason Calacanis12:45

      Um-

   6. DSDavid Sacks12:46

      (laughs)

   7. JCJason Calacanis12:46

      Yeah, I mean, so y- you might have had a couple of drinks.

   8. DSDavid Sacks12:49

      (laughs)

   9. JCJason Calacanis12:49

      Um, and then-

   10. NANarrator12:49

       Sorry, you, he actually didn't. He just texted that in the group.

   11. JCJason Calacanis12:52

       Okay, so that was a confidential text to our thought-

   12. DSDavid Sacks12:54

       (laughs)

   13. NANarrator12:54

       (laughs)

   14. JCJason Calacanis12:54

       ... to our group that we're not supposed to even say exists.

   15. DSDavid Sacks12:57

       Well, no, it's okay. Don't beep it. It's okay. I mean, it's, it's, it's true. It's, it's not exactly what I tweeted, but it's similar to things I've been tweeting.

   16. JCJason Calacanis13:05

       Mm-hmm. And tragically, uh, yesterday, um, ISIS-K, which is an Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State, claimed responsibility for, uh, two suicide bombings outside of the airport and that tragically killed, uh, over 100 people, uh, 90 Afghan citizens and 13 American service members. Uh, I guess, you know, we're not here to talk about, um, wars. It's not exactly in the mandate, but everybody wants our opinion on this, so let's get started. Sachs, you have strong opinions. We'll start with you.

   17. DSDavid Sacks13:37

       Well it's, yeah, I mean, how can you not talk about this? This feels to me, this is one of those events where, you know, I was glued to my TV for days. I think I was in France at the time the Taliban overrun, overran Kabul. And yeah, it was, you know, the, the Afghanistan war's been going on for 20 years. No one's been talking about it. It's just this thing that's been happening in the background. But all along we've been assured by the Pentagon that we're winning. "Hey, you know, don't worry about this. We got this." And then you wake up one day and all of a sudden we've lost the war and the Taliban's overrunning the country, and you're like, "What is going on here?" You know, not only is the, the botched withdrawal incompetent, the fact that we were lied to for two decades about what was really happening. Um, the, the idea that we had created, you know, we were... How many times were we told that we had created this Afghan army, it was 300, uh, strong, we spent, you know, $2 trillion in the country, uh, you know, being ... and we were told the whole time that we were building institutions there, uh, that, you know, that we were creating a democracy in the Middle East, that, uh, we were even, you know, um, promoting gender equality and, uh, lecturing the Taliban on toxic masculinity or something like that. And then we find out one day that, poof, the whole thing was just kind of a lie. It was this giant debacle and now we can't even get our, uh, we can't even get our civilians out of the country.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya14:55

       Not only that, but we, we've seen 12 people, 12 American servicemen and women killed yesterday-

   19. JCJason Calacanis15:02

       13 American.

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya15:02

       Yes, today try- um, 13 trying to protect the airport. Uh, almost 100, um, Afghans. Uh, now we'd only have to not only contend with the Taliban, whose positions I don't think any of us know about, but we also have to deal with ISIS-K, which is like some, you know, offshoot affiliate of ISIS run by a guy who was actually summarily killed by the Taliban, but that didn't clearly stop anybody. The, the level of honestly just to say the, the, the lying that we've been doing on this topic is just utterly, um, it's really, really scary. You know, how could we have gone 20 years, $2 trillion, 2,400 American lives and counting, and found a way to just basically waste all this money and tell ourselves these lies for so long, and it turns out none of it was true? Um, and then the back half of it is that we look like a little bit of a country that's sort of in decline because we can't even figure out an orderly withdrawal. It's not as if, you know, this thing came out of the blue out of nowhere. This was a negotiated withdrawal, so we had months to plan for this, you know? And we had months to do the right honorable moral thing for all of these, for, for all of these people that helped us in that country. Just to give you a, a, a small anecdote. You know, the day that Kabul was overrun, you know, the Democrats were actually tweeting out about, uh, celebrating Librarian Day. That's what they were focused on. Jason and I, on the way back, you know, I, we flew back with my, with my mom and my sister. We, we stopped in Toronto to drop them off and the planes beside us... Jason, do you remember this?

   21. JCJason Calacanis16:52

       He had two big planes-

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya16:52

       Um, I think Brett-

   23. JCJason Calacanis16:53

       ... cargo planes.

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya16:53

       I think Brett or Paul were telling us, our pi- my pilots were telling us. These planes, uh, had been going back and forth saving refugees in Afghanistan and it's like, wow, what an honor to just be beside these, these amazingly heroic men and women. And, you know, I don't know, Jason, if you saw, but as we were refueling, they came and boarded and they were getting ready to leave again.

   25. JCJason Calacanis17:14

       Wow.

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya17:15

       And meanwhile, that, America cannot get even to a point of view on the topic. And I think that's what's so shameful. It's like, not only did we spend the money, not only did we lose all these lives, not only didn't we have an orderly withdrawal, we couldn't even at the end guarantee the safety of Americans or do the right thing for all these people who risked their lives to help us fight clearly a useless war.

   27. JCJason Calacanis17:38

       Freeberg, you have thoughts watching all this? I know you don't like when we delve into politics too much, but what are your, you have, you have any thoughts you want to add? Yeah.

   28. DFDavid Friedberg17:46

       I don't know if it's about politics as much as, um, I kind of use a little bit of a startup analogy. Like America never really found product market fit (laughs) with what we were trying to do in Afghanistan. There, there's some fantastic, um, Gallup polling that's been done in Afghanistan, uh, over the past, uh, 15, 20 years already. And they've actually had people on the ground polling there.And most recently, w- which has been consistent for over 10 years, polling's shown that 87 to 90% of Afghans, um, said that the government is corrupt. This is the government, you know, put in power, put in place by the United States. 90% say businesses are corrupt. And if you go back to a poll they ran in 2010, the question was, "In general, which of these statements comes closest to your point of view? Sharia law must be the only source of legislation." 56% of the Afghan population in 2010 believed that to be true and another 38% said, "Sharia law must be a source of legislation, but not the only source." That leaves just 7% of people that think that Sharia law should not be, um-

   29. JCJason Calacanis18:55

       Is it Sharia or Shari'a?

   30. DFDavid Friedberg18:56

       Sharia, sorry. Sharia law-
3. 34:49 – 1:00:27

   China's potential checkmate in Afghanistan, CCP cracking down on IPOs & algos

   1. JCJason Calacanis34:49

      China is watching this, uh, like a hawk and they have-

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:53

      China and Russia are just sitting there laughing.

   3. JCJason Calacanis34:55

      Well, China is even worse. They have aspirations of partnership in this region with Pakistan already and Afghanistan and building superhighways and expanding their train network and having their own Silk Road essentially to, to get to the Middle East from China and this is going to be the, uh, axis of, uh-

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:15

      They look to the United States and-

   5. JCJason Calacanis35:17

      ... of authoritarianism.

   6. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:18

      B-Biden asked Putin if, if it was okay for us to stage military resources from, you know, from, from, from close quarters in Asia and then Putin was like, "No, go." Jason, I think what you, what you just pointed out is the motivating factor for, um, having a presence in this and other similar, similarly situated territories around the world.

   7. JCJason Calacanis35:40

      Yeah.

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:41

      Th- a lot of people assume it's about imperialism and imposing kind of American democratic principles and ideals. I think that's the way the narrative is sold internally here at this country, but the truth, from the intelligence community and I think the folks that maybe are a little bit more thoughtful and long-term thinking about this sort of stuff, is that the absence of an American presence in certain parts of the world will enable, um, the, uh, the success of what we would consider competing states globally. Um, and you know, there is still that unanswered question ultimately of how do we compete on a global stage, um, given what is currently, um, a very negative view on our having a presence overseas, a military presence overseas, a physical presence overseas, um, in these sorts of territories and it begs the question of does that really set us up for challenges and failures in the 21st century as a nation state?... um, as the other global players, in particular China, you know, take advantage of these openings.

   9. DSDavid Sacks36:37

      Yeah. Well, I- I- I agree with that, and let me just, let me just say why China is so smart and we are so dumb. China is going to Afghanistan right now and cutting deals with the Taliban to build a highway so they can get to the rare earth minerals th- which, uh, Afghanistan is rich in, and they're gonna use the, the super highway they're gonna build to get that out and feed their economy. That is how they're gonna spend their capital in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, we spent over two trillion and we have nothing to show for it. You know, they go abroad in search of rare earth minerals, we go there to lecture people on toxic masculinity. It is absurd.

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya37:11

       (laughs)

   11. DSDavid Sacks37:11

       Okay? Now, the, the president-

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya37:13

       (laughs)

   13. JCJason Calacanis37:15

       Well, I ... you know what, Sax? It's a little too cynical. We were also protecting-

   14. DSDavid Sacks37:18

       No, it's not. No, it's not.

   15. JCJason Calacanis37:18

       ... and educating women in that country and protecting them-

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya37:20

       And pronouns, don't forget the pronouns.

   17. JCJason Calacanis37:22

       ... from being gang raped.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya37:22

       Yes, we don't forget about pronouns.

   19. DSDavid Sacks37:23

       That's right.

   20. JCJason Calacanis37:24

       They, them. They, them. It's very important.

   21. DSDavid Sacks37:26

       We ... That's right. We go there to lecture people on their pronouns. The, the, the, the president-

   22. JCJason Calacanis37:28

       No, that, that is too, far too cynical, Sax.

   23. DSDavid Sacks37:30

       No, it's not.

   24. JCJason Calacanis37:31

       We went there to protect some people who wanted democracy and to allow women to read and to be members of society.

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya37:39

       Oh, we, we just, we just-

   26. DSDavid Sacks37:39

       Friburg, give me the numbers.

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya37:39

       I'm sorry, we just flushed that, we just flushed that right down the toilet. Sorry.

   28. JCJason Calacanis37:42

       I know that, but I mean-

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya37:43

       We do, we, we just-

   30. JCJason Calacanis37:43

       ... let's not conflate that we just want to lecture them.
4. 1:00:27 – 1:14:24

   Rent moratorium ends, Prop 22 ruled unconstitutional, the shrinking role of agency

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:00:27

      Court not upholding it. And what are your thoughts on that, Sax? Because it does relate to this never-ending free money train, no repercussions of personal behavior and, you know, spending insanely.... forever, it seems. Like, we're never going to stop-

   2. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:45

      Yeah, the-

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:00:45

      ... with the stimmies.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:46

      Yeah, the, I think the Supreme Court threw out, uh, Biden's eviction moratorium as unconstitutional. Look, I think it's great. You know, the, the government should not be, uh, preventing, uh, e- ev- eviction, you know, especially not the federal government. I don't understand how that's supposed to work. I mean, all you d- l- look, I don't wanna see anybody get evicted, but the reality is, you have to pay your rent. And if, and if there are groups of people who can't pay their rent and the government decides that, uh, that those people should be helped, the right way to help them is to give them the money to pay their rent, not just to tell landlords, "Sorry, like, you can't collect rent anymore, and evict you."

   5. JCJason Calacanis1:01:21

      Yes, Congress should give more stimulus to those people, but-

   6. DFDavid Friedberg1:01:23

      Yes, it's a, it's a, it's a taking, it's a clear taking from landlords to say that, "Oh, your tenants don't have to pay you anymore." How does that make sense?

   7. JCJason Calacanis1:01:31

      Well, how do we unwind the free money train? Because there's 10 million job openings right now that are not getting filled, and then we have unemployment starting to unwind, or the bonus unemployment's unwinding, and then we have all this, uh, free rent concept or just, you don't have to pay your rent. At, at some point, it, it feels like we have to let the free market come back, and maybe people can't pay their rent, so they go take one of the 10 million jobs? I know that sounds cold-hearted, uh-

   8. DFDavid Friedberg1:02:01

      No, J- Jason, you've talked, you've talked about this before.

   9. JCJason Calacanis1:02:01

      ... but at some point, there has to be some landing.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg1:02:04

       You've talked about this before in California. We have a labor shortage in California becau- we- we've basically run a controlled experiment in the, uh, UBI, universal basic income, where we've b- basically been paying people not to work or p- or paying them regardless of whether they work. Guess what? They don't take jobs. And so we actually have a labor shortage in California despite having high unemployment. At some point, the government's gonna have to say to people, like, "Look, COVID is not an excuse for shirking your adult responsibilities." You know, we all have a responsibility to go to work, to pay our rent, you know, to pay our parking tickets. And COVID has been this excuse for suspending, you know, this, this sort of normal life. And the problem is, COVID's gonna be around forever. It's like the cold or the flu. It can't continue to be this excuse for people not working, not paying rent, not doing what they're supposed to be doing.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:02:52

       I think on top of that, though, I think, Jason, maybe you wanna talk about this. I think on top of that, we, uh, are amplifying that by taking people's agency away. And we are-

   12. JCJason Calacanis1:03:03

       Prop 22.

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:03:04

       Yeah. And Prop 22 is a perfect example of that which you should talk about, but when you put these two things together, on the one hand, you have a government that basically wants to subsidize, uh, opting out of the system. And then you have a set of laws that, if they're not unwound, reinforce that dynamic. And you put these two things together, and folks just wanna sit on the sidelines.

   14. JCJason Calacanis1:03:27

       Yeah. Let's get Friedberg involved. Friedberg, you wanna talk about the Prop 22, um, Supreme Court decision, et cetera?

   15. DFDavid Friedberg1:03:34

       Yeah, there was an appeals court-

   16. JCJason Calacanis1:03:36

       Appals court, I'm sorry.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg1:03:37

       ... um, yeah, an appeals court that, uh, overturned some elements of the, uh, California Prop 22, which was a heavily lobbied California proposition lobbied by Uber and Lyft and other, um, businesses that have built, effectively, marketplaces for independent contractors like drivers and delivery people and so on. The SEIU, which is a big employees union, had, um, you know, fought very hard to pass legislation in California that made it, um, effectively very difficult for people to operate as independent contractors and forcing companies like Uber and Lyft to treat them like full-time employees, or to treat them like employees. And so Prop 22 was to counter the union-funded legislation, um, which basically provided more freedom and flexibility to workers where there weren't all these very arbitrary random rules that if you're a writer, you can be an independent contractor, but if you're a driver you cannot, and you know, all, all this nonsense that, that took place because the unions were trying to increase the scale and scope of, of their union base. Um, and so Prop 22 was passed in California after much spending and lobbying, and it passed by a pretty decent margin. And then this court ruling basically in, in the appeals court overruled the constitutionality of some elements of Prop 22, which brings into question whether that Prop 22 is actually gonna hold in California. Therefore, are all these people who are drivers for Uber, delivery people for DoorDash, um, and all these companies that are creating, like Thumbtack, and you know, all these companies that are creating marketplaces for individuals to have flexible work, to go and work where they want when they want, to find gigs, to find, you know, short-term jobs, to find, um, you know, tasks and projects that they can run, uh, are they now gonna be seeing that those marketplaces stop working? Because when you have to start treating those people like employees, the flexibility and freedom that those marketplaces enable stalls out and s- and kind of, you know, as we're already seeing. So, it's, it's super nasty, and the implications are that we're now seeing, um, uh, you know, we're, we're now facing once again this crisis of, you know, are, are basically lower income people, um, people that wanna have flexible labor are gonna be restricted from having access to, to gig jobs, um, because the unions wanna force everyone into a full-time job, which, you know, as our friend Bill Gurley pointed out, is kind of like an archaic element of, yeah, the 19th and 20th century. I mean, this is like a-

   18. JCJason Calacanis1:05:58

       L- let's play, uh, a clip-

   19. DFDavid Friedberg1:05:58

       ... old school way of work.

   20. JCJason Calacanis1:05:59

       ... from, uh, Bill Gurley and, and here it is.

   21. DSDavid Sacks1:06:01

       There's one big issue that I don't think is talked about enough which is, you know, the, if you poll the drivers, they're not looking for any changes. They're f- really happy with the flexible work product. If you look at the voters of California, they stepped up and voted and made it very clear in a, in a state that voted two to one, you know, in favor of Biden, they came down very strong, 60-40, that they didn't want this to happen. And there's one, uh, entity that's really been pushing this the whole time, going all the way back to '85, and that's the SEIU. It is a single union, but to call them a single union understates it 'cause they are the granddaddy of special interest groups. I, I sent along some data maybe you can put on the screen. Um, they spend more money lobbying than any other organization in our country and have for many, many years. Um, they only represent two million members, but th- oddly, those members are in hospitality, healthcare, and government services. They're not even in this industry. So, they're taking the dues from their members and using it to fight these battles because they wanna expand their footprint. What they're really after is putting $400, $420, which is the minimum member union fee for the two million they have, they wanna expand that to these drivers. So, they don't actually-

   22. JCJason Calacanis1:07:20

       Yeah.

   23. DSDavid Sacks1:07:20

       ... wanna help them, they wanna add to their cost. Um, but they're the, they're the, they're the one that's been pushing this the whole time.

   24. DFDavid Friedberg1:07:27

       And I, I think it's worth just saying one thing on this which is, um...... you know, this is, uh, really kind of, um, a question not about California and Prop 22, but it's a question about what is work and all the tech companies that are enabling a new form of work globally. People don't wanna have 40-hour-a-week jobs. People don't wanna have to go sit at a desk all the time. People wanna have flexibility in their lives. They wanna have gigs. Technology enables us to quickly find short-term jobs, short-term opportunities to work on things and make some money and figure out how we wanna build our lives in a more flexible way, figure out how workers wanna build lives in a more flexible way across all industries. And, um, it's really, uh, frankly, um, you know, uh, uh, a, a non-progressive policy to say that everyone has to be pigeonholed into working, you know, full-time, 40-hour-a-week labor jobs, be employees, and not have the flexibility of running their own business in their own way with the, uh, with their own time and choosing what they wanna go do and work on. Um, and so this sort of legislation and this sort of battle is a really important one for defining the future of work in the United States, which will ultimately represent the future of work globally.

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:08:35

       And the craziness of all this, David, is that Uber drivers, Lyft drivers, DoorDash drivers, et cetera, are getting paid a fortune now because there's a labor shortage, and these ridesharing companies have given a minimum, uh, $21 an hour fee. So, (laughs) I, I don't know exactly what's going on here, but it seems to me like it's a union grab because everybody else who's affluent or rich, real estate folks, uh, you know, doctors, whoever, can be freelance, but if you're a rideshare driver or a freelance writer, you don't get to be. And, uh, it seems just incredibly unfair.

   26. DSDavid Sacks1:09:15

       It is. And, you know, one of the best things about COVID, I think for all of us, is that we learnt that we could do our jobs from anywhere. We didn't have to go into an office. We didn't have to work the standard, whatever, nine to six hours. We could be anywhere. We had flexibility. And, I mean, I think it's one of the lasting consequences of COVID that's b- actually been very positive for a lot of people. And here you have the government basically trying to take away and prohibit freelance work, flexible hours, uh, gig-type jobs. These are the sort of modern, flexible working relationships that people want. Why are they getting rid of it? Because of lobbying pressure from the SEIU, which only has two million members. It's not even a big union, but they got Lorena Gonzalez in their back pocket. She passed AB5 in California. The people of California didn't want it. Remember, 58% of Californians said, "We don't want this," so they overturned it in this ballot initiative, and now you got this activist judge basically f- you know, um, inventing these specious grounds for overturning Prop 22, which is what the people want. So, it's ridiculous. And, you know, the common thread to me on this show that I've come to realize about American politics is just the degree of special interest corruption. And, you know, people are used to thinking in terms of left versus right. It's not. There's a special interest corruption that pervades everything. You've got this union that is destroying freelance work and flexible working relationships because of corruption because it benefits them. You got defense contractors in Afghanistan who are just looting, looting the Pentagon and the federal budget because it's in their interest. You've got these special interests of both the right and the left. This is a central problem in American politics, and you know, what they do to cover up the naked self-interest is they disguise it in a kind of woke virtue signaling. So they'll start, you know, talking about, you know, how what they're doing is for the benefit of these drivers when the drivers don't even want it.

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:11:06

       And to build on that, I'd say, you know, my great realization from having this conversation with y'all every week is that we are starting to propose a nanny state in which people have no agency. Even if they want to have agency over their life and career, you are taking it away. And then, if there's no repercussions to people's behavior and they have no agency, they become, you know, uh, disenfranchised from society, and why are they going to participate, and then what kind of society do we have if people can't make their own choices? And you see it also in, you know, uh, accreditation laws, and you see it y- where only rich people can invest, and now you're seeing it with this freelancing where, you know, uh, my dad would have loved to have an extra shift or two to make extra money a- and he- he's not allowed to?

Episode duration: 1:36:05