In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Jason Calacanis 0:00 Welcome back to the All-In Podcast, the number one business technology and political podcast in the world.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:07 Political. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:07 I am your host, J-Cal, Jason Calacanis, and with us today, three of my besties. You got, uh, David Freiberg cackling over there. He is your sultan of science, previously known as the queen of quinoa, but he sold the quinoa business, made a killing in quinoa. Also with us, back from Italy, back from Italy, Chamath Palihapitiya. He's at 67% buttoned-

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:30 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:31 ... and, uh, he's not happy about it, but the hair looks great. You still got a little sea salt from the, the yachting you went on over there.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:37 I think I'm gonna try to keep my hair long. Let's see what happens.

Jason Calacanis 0:41 Did you bring any of the sea salt back with you from the Mediterranean, put it in a little bottle to spray or no?

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:46 No, but I do have-

Jason Calacanis 0:47 That's it, that's it?

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:47 ... some mineral oil.

Jason Calacanis 0:48 Oh, okay, great. And have you-

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:49 So-

Jason Calacanis 0:49 ... showered in the last week, or is it still, you got the Mediterranean glow from-

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:52 Every day I've showered-

Jason Calacanis 0:53 ... when you were there?

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:53 ... since I've gotten back.

Jason Calacanis 0:54 See, that's the problem. You were showering-

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:55 'Cause you don't have-

Jason Calacanis 0:56 ... in the Mediterranean.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:56 ... you don't have the sea to use as a natural, you know, disinfectant and deodorant. Exfoliant also, yeah. Look how many buttons he's got going. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:05 I know. It's just tragic.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07 The fall is beginning. I feel uncomfortable for your neck. I mean, it's like-

Jason Calacanis 1:10 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10 ... creeping all the way up.

Jason Calacanis 1:11 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:12 What's going on?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12 Your neck looks like a prisoner.

David Sacks 1:13 What's going on? Let your winners ride. Rain Man, David Sachs. What's going on? And I said we open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you guys. Queen of quinoa. What's going on?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:30 I walked here, but I had it totally unbuttoned, and I thought, "This is completely inappropriate for Menlo Park-

Jason Calacanis 1:35 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:35 ... in August," so I buttoned two buttons.

Jason Calacanis 1:37 Back in business mode. He's in business casual mode. He went from casual to business. Okay, and with us, of course, the Dark Knight himself, yeah, the Rain Man, David Sachs, and

Jason Calacanis 1:48 we have a bestie guestie for you folks, friend of my other pod, This Week in Startups, Reid Hoffman is here, and, uh, you know him as a venture capitalist board member at Microsoft, and you were the co-founder or the founder of LinkedIn. I don't know if you had a co-founder.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:03 Co-founder.

Jason Calacanis 2:03 Co-founder of LinkedIn, uh, now owned by Microsoft. He's got his own podcast, Masters of Scale, and, uh, h- he and David Sachs worked together at PayPal. Reid, give a... Welcome to the program, and, and give us a little story. What is your fondest memory-

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:21 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:22 ... or the most quirky memory-

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:23 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:24 ... David Sachs-

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:25 Mm-hmm.

Jason Calacanis 2:26 ... and that, all those weirdos... I'm sorry. I'm not supposed to use the word weird anymore. I'll get banned on X. All of those unique personalities at PayPal. Tell us about that moment in time, and do you remember the first time you met David Sachs?

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:38 Yeah, I met, um, David, uh, 'cause Peter had known him from Stanford and hired him in, um, and, you know, David, uh, very quickly, 'cause he, you know, uh, has a, has a strong learning curve as he plays these things, kind of got the instinct of what the game we were playing with PayPal was. And it's part of the reason why I think, you know, each of the execs have had, you know, kinda key contributions to making, um, you know, kind of PayPal successful. And, and David's was this kind of, like, um, maniacal focus on the, kind of the, the cycle of how the product worked on eBay. Um, and, like, like, there was just a whole bunch of stuff I learned from him. It's part of how I track, you know, kind of, you know, people I respect, is, what do I learn from them?

Jason Calacanis 3:30 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:30 And that was one of the things that I would say I learned from, uh, David at PayPal. That's nice.

Jason Calacanis 3:35 David, tell us your first memory of meeting Reid Hoffman. Would you remember where you were? Do you remember the conversation? And, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:43 Yeah, I think, well, we met through Peter, you know, and Reid-

Jason Calacanis 3:46 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:46 I think Reid was on the board of this Confinity back then, and then joined full-time.

Jason Calacanis 3:51 What were you, like 28, 27, 29?

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:55 No, I mean, let's see. Um, this would've been- It's 2000. I, I guess I would've been 27 when I first joined PayPal, 27-

Jason Calacanis 4:03 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:03 ... 28, I guess something-

Jason Calacanis 4:04 Oh. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:04 ... like that. Yeah. '9- '99, so whenever that was.

Jason Calacanis 4:07 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:08 In any event, I mean, I'll just, to return the compliment, uh, you know, PayPal had all these existential issues where you had these larger entities trying to kill us, Visa, Mastercard, eBay. Who else?

Jason Calacanis 4:21 (laughs) Oh, the, the list goes on. Citibank.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:23 Ye- yeah.

Jason Calacanis 4:24 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:24 And, uh, R- Reid, uh, was, was kind of our emissary who kept all these dogs at bay and managed to, I guess, be friends with them, I guess, to some degree, even though they wanted to kill us. And Reid was kind of in charge of making sure that these existential issues didn't blow up on us. And they didn't, so we got pretty lucky there. It's, it's the Will Rogers line. It's, "Politics is the art of saying, 'Nice doggy,' while you hunt for a stick."

Jason Calacanis 4:47 Tell us, like, uh, a moment, Reid, that is incredibly memorable to you from that PayPal era, f- you know, some existential moment or one of the more difficult or funny moments, late-night moments, uh, that would be indicative of that era and whatever was in the water that drew all that talent to one place.

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:08 Well, part of it is that, I mean, this is, you know, among the things I was learning from, from Peter, was that Peter and Max, uh, recruited just a tremendous focus on, on, uh, like, intense learning curves. So, you know, it was one of the things that Peter later was like, "Okay, I guess you have to interview for being on sports teams and so forth 'cause this teamwork thing does matter," but, like, high performers, and it was kind of like a, a, like... and that was part of the reason why there was such intense, um, you know, kind of, uh, innovation and capability. Um, you know, (laughs) probably the most stunning memory I had at, at, at PayPal is we... you know, we were all young. We're all, first time we're, we're kind of doing a startup that matters, you know, kind of, uh, making this stuff happen, and we do this merger with X.com.... and, and, you know, like pre the merger closing, you know, Elon is, is saying, "Oh, I got this CEO Bill Harris. He's the best ever. That's part of the reason why you should give so much percentage of the company to x.com in the merger." You know, da da da da da. And then after, um, the merger, literally the first meeting I had with Elon is, "Bill Harris is a complete disaster. We need to fire him right away."

Jason Calacanis 6:23 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:23 Right? Like, like, "Before we get to the first board meeting, we need him fired." And I'm like, "Uh, Elon, you need to talk to Peter about this."

Jason Calacanis 6:32 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:32 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 6:32 Well, I mean-

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:33 Like, this is above my pay grade.

Jason Calacanis 6:34 ... he is deci- he is decisive, that's for sure.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:36 Yeah, yes.

Jason Calacanis 6:37 All right, well let's get into it. We want, you know, we're gonna go a little bit mullet here, Friedberg. We're gonna start with business and, uh, then maybe we'll have a-

Reid Hoffman 6:44 Oh, we had a, we had a fun meeting about that topic at a place in Palo Alto that no longer exists called Antonio's Nut House.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:51 Yes, exactly. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 6:52 Oh, yes, the legendary Antonio's Nut House. Yeah.

Reid Hoffman 6:54 And when Bill eventually did meet his demise, um, at PayPal, it was called the Nut House coup. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:02 Yes, exactly.

Jason Calacanis 7:02 He got whacked at the Nut House?

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:04 Yes.

Reid Hoffman 7:04 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 7:04 Where at the pool tables in the back-

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:06 (laughs)

Reid Hoffman 7:06 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 7:06 ... he whacked him or in the booths in the front?

Reid Hoffman 7:08 Well, it wa- he wasn't whacked, he was whacked-

Jason Calacanis 7:10 Oh.

Reid Hoffman 7:10 ... at a board meeting, not at the Nut House.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:11 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 7:11 (laughs) Got it. But the, okay, the planning went down.

Reid Hoffman 7:13 But the, um, the certain, certain plans were formulated at the-

Jason Calacanis 7:15 Got it.

Reid Hoffman 7:16 ... the back of Antonio's Nut House.

Jason Calacanis 7:18 It's, Antonio's Nut House is, um, yeah, the most unhygienic bar in the Bay Area. And then that's, that's a pretty low benchmark. Let's just leave it at that.

Reid Hoffman 7:29 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 7:29 We, we'll start with some business here, talk a little AI, and then since two of our panelists have a passion, we'll do the party, political parties, at the end. Everybody knows, uh, Reid was a co-founder of Inflection.ai and is a general partner at Greylock and, uh, one of the founding investors also in OpenAI. There's a good story there, I'm sure. And

Jason Calacanis 7:52 we just got results, Reid, uh, from NVIDIA. Results were good, they beat across the board. Stock was down after hours. Analysts said probably profit-taking. Putting that aside, we've never seen a chart like this in the history of, uh, business, I would say. Data center revenue, 26.3 billion, 87% of their revenue now. You remember NVIDIA started obviously with, you know, video games and, and, uh, didn't have a major data center business. That has exploded. Uh, net income of 16.6 billion, gross margin (laughs) 75%. And, uh, here's your chart. On a total basis, NVIDIA's revenue scale-up is basically unlike anything we've seen. But if you look, their q- quarter over quarter revenue over the past couple of years, things are starting to cool off significantly after that giant boom. Reid, what's your take on NVIDIA's just incredible run here? Is it sustainable? Will they have competitors and do you think this buildout, this massive buildout we're seeing from startups to sovereigns, you know, to Microsoft, which you're on the board of, Google, Apple, et cetera, is this sustainable and is this gonna keep going?

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:05 Well, I got asked that question, unsurprisingly, by l- many public market investors over the year.

Jason Calacanis 9:10 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:10 And I said, I basically told them, I say, "Hey, look, it's sustainable for two years. Which for you guys means forever." (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 9:15 (laughs) Yeah. Eight full quarters.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:18 (laughs) Yes, exactly. So that, that's infinity, right? In terms of time. Uh, you know, uh, NVIDIA has a very sharp, you know, kind of lead on the importance of the, you know, the chips for the training clusters, um, you know, they're, they're effective on inference. Um, but I do think that as you kind of scale the demand, there'll be a lot of inference chips, uh, coming in. Um, you know, I think Chamath, you're invested in one of those?

Jason Calacanis 9:45 Oh, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:45 Um, and, um, I think there's gonna be a bunch of those kind of coming in and, and, and the bulk of the demand will be on the inference side, and then NVIDIA will have this challenge of, "Do I try to keep my prices and my margin-"

Jason Calacanis 9:59 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:59 "... or do I do what, why we like competition, do I have to respond to the competitive market?" And then that, I think will, will play out, you know, start playing out probably in a year, two at the latest, and then kind of go. So I think it's not sustaina- the, the, the pure heat is not sustainable, um, but I think it's, you know, NVIDIA's got a very strong position and, and, um, you know, I definitely, I would recommend people not be short on NVIDIA-

Jason Calacanis 10:26 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:27 ... today.

Jason Calacanis 10:27 So, yeah. There's growth left, competition is coming, and this is probably not the type of stock you would want to short at this moment in time.

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:35 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 10:35 Uh, Friedberg, what are your thoughts on this buildout, uh, as well as the software buildout that's occurring, and when do you think we're gonna see some competition come into the space? I don't know if it's competition in the buildout. I think we talked about this in the past. I don't know if you guys saw these quotes this week or recently on, "We don't think about this buildout in terms of ROI." Gavin Baker in conversation on, uh, Invest Like The Best, is that the name of the podcast? Yeah. I think referenced some conversations he's been having with the leaders of these companies regarding the buildout is so important because ultimately if you create this "digital god," the, you know, return is how many trillions? So it doesn't matter how many tens of billions you're spending each quarter right now, you have to get there, you have to make sure you don't miss the boat. I guess, Reid, a question for you. You're on the board of Microsoft still, right? Like-

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:27 Yes, indeed.

Jason Calacanis 11:28 ... has Microsoft or Satya publicly talked about how they rationalize the investing principles associated with building out AI infrastructure in the cloud? Is it ROI-based, like, "Hey, in the next two years we're gonna make this much additional incremental-"

Reid Hoffman 11:43 Right, or, or, or-

Jason Calacanis 11:43 "... operating profit?" Or, or is it like-

Reid Hoffman 11:45 ... two more preci-

Jason Calacanis 11:45 ... "Hey, we gotta get this thing working." Yeah.

Reid Hoffman 11:46 Right, right. To be more precise, is the investment driven by ROI or does everyone just say, "This is so strategic, we just have to win it and we'll throw all the resources we have to at this"?

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:56 Well, so, um, what, well, one, board members speaking for Microsoft is-... you know, is for- forbidden. So I'm not speaking for Microsoft-

David Friedberg 12:03 Right, right, right, right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:03 ... just speaking for me. Um, two-

David Friedberg 12:05 I guess, yeah, all, all cloud computing platform companies-

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:08 Yeah.

David Friedberg 12:08 ... how are... Yeah, what's your sense on how they're thinking about it?

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:10 It's just one of the principles in the Microsoft thing-

David Friedberg 12:11 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:11 ... is the company speaks for itself, board members don't-

David Friedberg 12:14 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:14 ... don't, don't speak for them. Um, but you know, uh, I think Satya is, like, the best public market CEO of our, uh, generation. Um, I think he is stunning, um, in kinda blending com- a combination of strategic insight with also kind of being, you know, kind of return on capital, you know, sensible risk-taking, et cetera. And so the actual thing between your guys' questions in terms of... 'Cause I can comment on how Satya thinks about this stuff, is he's both thinking about, like, it's a platform change and you have to be there for the platform change, for productivity, for cloud, et cetera. And, okay, let's rationalize the capital to when are we expecting revenue. How do we get revenue sooner to, to have that as a good s- productive cycle? How do we, um, you know, be not trying to, you know, just, uh, spend like drunken sailors, which is easy to do (laughs) , right? But, but to, to be targeting, you know, kind of business outcomes. And it's part of the reason why, you know, they're, like, like, you know, he's very focused on, "What are we doing with Office? What are we doing with Cloud? What are we doing with..." You know, as opposed to, like, you, you, you rarely hear him talking about AGI or (laughs) never digital gods (laughs) . Right? 'Cause it's kinda the question of, "I am, I am focused on this in a business sense." And I think that's, that's kinda the way he's doing it, but there is obviously a, you know, kind of a, it's hard to predict the future when it's novel and unknown in platforms, and it's part of the reason why you have all the hyperscalers now, you know, kind of fully engaged and intelligently engaged. 'Cause if you say, well, if even it's just the new platform by which, you know, kinda software, everything with, with, with a computer unit in it, whether it's a, a phone or a speaker or a computer or anything else, anything with a, with a, with a, with a, with a kind of a CPU or a GPU gets more intelligent, like, you can't miss out on that platform. Um, and so that's, that's, I think, the, the thing that's motivating everybody, but there's obviously, you know, how to do that smart is one of the things that, uh, (laughs) you know, everybody is, uh, I'd say obsessing about every week.

Jason Calacanis 14:18 W- what do you think about the open source movement versus closed source? You were one of the original donators to OpenAI. You were originally on the board. I mean, there's a couple of ways to go with this question, but I just wanna start with forget about the corporate structure over there. We'll get to that in a second. But I wanna talk specifically about open source. Meta's ta- Meta's obviously far behind OpenAI, far behind Google, Microsoft. So they went open source. When you're behind, you go open source, I guess is the idea here. Um, but they're making some big progress. Who do you think is gonna win this ultimately, an open source, uh, provider of LLMs or proprietary closed source like OpenAI is? And it's confounding to say OpenAI is closed, but (laughs) closed AI. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:05 Yeah, um, look, it... From the very founding, OpenAI was never claiming it was gonna be open source. It was claiming it was gonna be, once safety, open access, um, and not differential or controlling access, uh, for that. And I think that's... they stayed true to that principle, which is, I think what the genesis of the word open is there. And, um, look, I think the key thing is there are gonna be winners all over the place. I think there's gonna be winners in the open source side, um, and, you know, I don't, I don't know if LLaMA's gonna win from its open source thing as much as it's just trying to say, "Hey, we're training these models so we're gonna, you know, uh, put them out there 'cause our closed system, closed loop, you know, doesn't require selling for tokens and so forth." But there's also, you know, Mistral and other folks who are doing competent models. Um, and then I think that the, um, the... but, you know, there'll be wins in different ways. So it's not... Like, I think, like, for example, you know, I think there's gonna be a bunch of different startups that are gonna win, whether it's coding agents or, you know, kind of very specific applications within medical or other kinds of things. And I think they will, you know, generate big companies. And I think large companies, like, you know, the hyperscalers, are gonna g- are gonna succeed as well. Now, in the pure model competition, the question is when do we start seeing A, A, uh, a asymptote to scale? And, um, and my guess is... And, you know, kinda the GPT landmarks is each order of magnitude. My guess is the soonest will be GPT-6, um, and it might not even... it may even be after that. And that's part of what the, the bet that OpenAI and Anthropic and the hyperscalers are all making is that that, that return to scale. And then that has a lot of downstream effects because even if you say we can train smaller models, uh, to do effective things, part of what's gonna be really instrumental for training those smaller models is the larger models. So, like, even if there's a bunch of smaller models that are specifically capturing other kinds of market opportunities, which is part of what I've been doing and investing in AI since, you know, 2014, 2015, um, you know, there's a, there's a, there's gonna be a, uh, a set of those things that are all a whole bunch of startup opportunities. So I think that's... The, the A versus B is, is, is, is a good dramatic framing, um, but it's really on which specific opportunities 'cause there's gonna be wins and opportunities across them.

Jason Calacanis 17:23 Uh, Chamath, you're-

David Friedberg 17:24 Do you think... Sorry, just real quick. Do you think there's one, um, LLM or one foundational model, Reid, that effectively does everything, like a meta model that starts to take most of the market? Or does different versions of smaller models or small agents that kind of network together end up being the best solution for specific applications and verticals? Like, how does this evolve over time? Like, everyone's got this concept that there's a god model that does everything and wins, and whoever gets the god model wins everything. But the reality of software and principles of biology would indicate that you'll see, like, smaller network things that are better at doing things than any one big thing.... and I'm-

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:06 So I think the mis-

David Friedberg 18:06 ... curious to hear your point of view on the philosophy of that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:08 Yeah.

David Friedberg 18:08 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:08 I think the mistake that people make is they think, precisely, it's like the one model to rule them all. It's like-

David Friedberg 18:14 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:14 ... Sauron's ring. And actually, in fact, um, y- already today, like for example, one of the things that happens with all the model providers at Microsoft and OpenAI, which I've seen, is they'll sometimes sub in, like GPT-3.5 as opposed to 4, to see what the answers are because there's a cost of compute. Even as you learn to bring the cost of compute of the larger models down, the co- larger models are always gonna be a lot more expensive. And by the way, they're gonna be, uh, more expensive, kinda probably loosely on the order of magnitude, right? So it's like, well, it's 10X larger, it's 10X more expensive.

David Friedberg 18:46 Totally.

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:46 And, and so when you're trying to say, "Hey, I'm trying to make business models work," but-

David Friedberg 18:51 For language translation, right? If I just wanna-

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:52 Yes.

David Friedberg 18:52 ... do language translation, I don't need a massive model. I just need a model that's really good at language translation, ultimately.

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:57 Exactly. And so what I think-

David Friedberg 18:58 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:59 ... you're gonna see is, is, is networks of models and, like, kind of traffic control and escalation and all the rest. And a- agents are not gonna be one model. They're gonna be blends of models. And that's one of the reasons why you say, "Well, there's actually, in fact, a lot of, a lot of room for startups," 'cause it's not like we say, "Well, we, we take GPT-7, and we just serve it for everything." It's like, well, that's gonna be super expensive, and there's a whole bunch of things about, like, serving it more cheaply. And like, for example, one of the, the, the really great technical papers that I love from Microsoft is, you know, all you need is textbooks. It's like you can, you can train very specific models on kinda like high-quality data, um, along with, by the way, the larger model helping train it, then all of a sudden you have a functional smaller model. And, you know, the, the question will be a blends of these things. So I think the, the, the, the multi-model, uh, model approach is, I think, gonna be, you know, quickly universal.

David Friedberg 19:51 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 19:51 What is your take on IP in this new era? We, uh, see OpenAI... You're not on the OpenAI board-

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:57 No.

Jason Calacanis 19:57 ... anymore, right? You're-

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:57 Nope.

Jason Calacanis 19:58 So you're independent of that even though you made a, a big donation at some point.

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:02 Donation-

Jason Calacanis 20:02 How did you know?

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:03 ... and investment. I led the, the first commercial series, first commercial round.

Jason Calacanis 20:06 Got it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:06 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 20:06 So you were an investor in it, and you donated to it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:09 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 20:09 Well, actually, let's start there. What's up with that corporate structure? How do we make sense of that? Something's a nonprofit. You donated to it, and then you invested in it, and everybody's making money and selling and secondary at 100 billion. How does that work in the world?

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:27 So, um, so it's, it's a 501 (c) (3) is the governor thing. That's what started. And, you know, when, you know, kind of Elon and Sam were starting this and said, "Look, we need, you know, philanthropic support, and we're, we're trying to make sure that there's, like, open access to AI which is gonna be an instrumental technology, and we've got some great technologists who wanna come do this," we started as a, as a, you know, kind of as a 501 (c) (3) for doing it. That, that, that persists, as far as I know, till today. Then, you know, one of, of Sam Altman's, you know, pieces of genius was that he kinda said, "Look, we're gonna need scale capital, and I'm trying to go out to raise..." and the commercial round was 600 million, "I'm trying to raise 600 million in philanthropy, and it's not working," (laughs) right? So, so I have this idea which is the 501 (c) (3) which is doing this kinda research mission of, you know, AGI for humanity. It's also producing commercial benefits, and we can create initially an LP which has a, a kind of a, a, a, a revenue right on the commercial things that investors can invest in. And, you know, um, you know, Reid, it'd be really helpful if you led this, um, because, you know..." And I was like, "Well, but you don't have a go-to-market plan. You don't have a product plan. You don't have a business plan." (laughs) He's like-

Jason Calacanis 21:44 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:44 ... "Yeah, but, you know, like, we, we need to show that we're actually serious about the business." And I said, "All right, fine. I will, I will lead it from my foundation," um, you know, 'cause even though none of these things we like to see as investors were there. But I was like, "Look, okay, I'll lead it as an investment, I'll manage it as an investment, but I'll do it as an investment from my foundation, um, in order to do this." And, um, and what, you know, you know, kinda that was kind of as we were beginning to get into, you know, like kind of... We, we hadn't seen anything. They were still doing DOTA and, and robot hands and a bunch of those. So it was like we're betting on the scale thesis of generating something magical, and so we hadn't seen GPT-3 yet. Um, and of course, once that started coming, then it was like, "Well, we need a bunch more capital. Let's do a strategic, you know, um, you know, connection, and let's talk to all the hyperscalers, and let's work out a deal by which one of them invests in us." And, and, and then, you know, the, the Microsoft-OpenAI deal came together with, you know, converting the LP into a subsidiary of the nonprofit, you know, kinda saying, "Look, um, there's all kinds of benefits that both OpenAI and Microsoft can get from a business deal." Um, and so that's, that's, that, that's what's led to, you know, the structure, um, you know, that I was familiar with-

Jason Calacanis 22:58 Reid-

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:58 ... before I left the board.

Jason Calacanis 22:59 Do you... What did you think of Elon's first lawsuit, and then he dropped it, and then he refiled? Where, where do you think he's coming from?

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:09 Well, um, (laughs) what i- what is the, uh... You know, I, I'm not very charitable about those lawsuits. Um, you know, I would like to be 'cause, you know, Elon's one of the entrepreneurial heroes of our time and generation. But I think it's the, I think it's, y- you know, frankly, I think probably the most charitable thing to say is sour grapes, um, because, you know... For example, I know Sam offered him as much of the investment round as he wanted, right? Like, he could've done the whole thing. He could've let it... (laughs) You know, it was kinda like, "Hey, look, we still love you. We still..." And he was like, and he was like, "No. It's not a company that I control. It's gonna fail, so I'm not interested in investing." And I was like, "Okay," right? (laughs) And so now you're getting these lawsuits that are like, you know, um, like, "I was misled," and it was like you were offered everything at every opportunity other than converting OpenAI into a company that you, you completely owned. And so, um, you know, I think it's without, without basis, without merit.

Jason Calacanis 24:07 But why do you think he would have dropped it and then refiled? Where do you think that comes from? Is, was there... is there new information, do you think or-

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:14 I think it was a jurisdiction issue, Jamal. Oh, that makes sense. I, I didn't check that.

Reid Hoffman 24:19 Yeah. But Reid, I mean, Elon put in the first, what, $44 million, and he doesn't have any shares.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:24 Yeah.

Reid Hoffman 24:24 I assume you're-

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:25 And I, by the way, I put in $10 million at the same time, and I don't have any shares from those $10 million.

Reid Hoffman 24:30 But do you think that he kinda got screwed because he doesn't have any shares? I mean, at the time he put in the $44 million, it was never gonna be a for-profit. Now it's a for-profit. A lot of people are profiting, you know, assuming the Papermark ends up being realized. So he doesn't own anything. I mean, if you were-

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:47 Yeah.

Reid Hoffman 24:47 ... this seed investor and put up $44 million in something and then everyone's making money and you don't have any shares, forget about the legal technicalities, wouldn't you have a feeling of being screwed?

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:57 Well, I, look, I can understand the emotion of that. But like, it's not like Elon's short of money, right? And so if you go, "Look, I'd like to have shares," like I did, invest in the other thing. I didn't get any shares for the $10 million that I put in. And by the way, it's not just legal technicalities. It's actually really important that you're not doing private enrichment off philanthropic donations. And so, you know, it's- it's-

Reid Hoffman 25:19 But isn't that what's happened?

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:21 Um, no, from a viewpoint of they're held separate, right? Um, and so, you know, and the 501 (c) (3) continues to, to control the, um, you know, kind of control the kind of the, the, the mission and destiny and so forth. And so the question about its mission is still, is still guiding things, and you're essentially investing in that mission. And you recorded, you recruited people, you know, on that mission. And so, um, you know, I think that the, you know, um, you know, I think, like I said, sour grapes. Uh, okay, so let's get into some political stuff. First, I wanna, uh, get the IP question, then I wanna talk about Lina Khan. So how do you think about IP in this, you know, briefly in this new world? OpenAI and New York Times can't come to terms. New York Times caught them red-handed, cookie jar, according to their lawsuit, having indexed a ton of their content. It's pretty crystal clear that their content's behind a paywall, and that's how they make money. I also subscribe to ChatGPT. I give them 20 bucks a month, maybe 30 bucks a month for every employee in my firm. And I get New York Times content from there all the time. I will ask it, "What is the Wirecutter think is the best choice in ChatGPT?" I get that, and then I get the answer, and I don't need my New York Times subscription. I don't visit the New York Times anymore. Um, fee- feels pretty clear-cut to me, but how do you think about IP? Should, uh, an LLM be able to ingest whatever they please, or should they be required to get permission in advance and pay a royalty to content creators? Reid Hoffman? Huh, well, as a content creator too. Look, I think, I, I think that it tends to be a little bit of a... Look, we, we do want content creators to benefit economically from the work. It's part of the reason why we have copyright. It's part of the reason why we have paywalls, you know, other kinds of things that I think are, are very important. And I think it's, it's a complicated thing that needs to be sorted out. Now, that being said, I think we also want to say that we can train these models like, you know, like training is like reading, and like reading things is, you know, like when something's available to be read and you've engaged in the right economic thing for reading it, I think that's a, kind of a reasonable fair use thing. Then maybe we update the terms of service, maybe we update, you know, copyright law and other things to say, "Well, okay, that now changes." You know, I think we don't wanna forbid changes in the future. You know, um, this is, like one of the problems we get with... It blocks innovation when we do that. It blocks innovation in, you know, kind of Hollywood, it blocks innovation in music, it blocks innovation... So you wanna allow some new ch- changing, you know, changing landscape, and I think this is a changing landscape that arguably is reading. So I think that th- both of those things are true in terms of what do we, what do we wanna sort through. I think that one of the reasons why this is kind of like, you know, over... Like when I give advice to, you know, various news organizations and so on, I say, "Look, don't try to hold out for money on the training side of things, because, you know, we're gonna create synthetic data, we're gonna do all kinds of other things that are gonna mean that no one's particular data is really going to matter." What you should be is on freshness, on brand, on other things, and we should work out ongoing sustaining economic arrangements like that. That would be my two cents, you know, suggestion for it. And I do think we wanna design an ecosystem that includes that. And you know, when I was involved in those con- conversations at OpenAI, they, they agreed with that. Uh, Microsoft certainly agrees with that in terms of, you know, how do we make sure that economics are fairly apportioned and so forth for, you know, what we're doing for, you know, this phase of, you know, and ongoing. But like, you know, there's a current tech, new technological wave that's coming, and how do you do that? So it, you know, that's a messy answer, but unfortunately it's a messy subject. It, it's pretty messy subject, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 29:09 Before we move to politics, I just wanted to actually ask you about Inflection. S- so is it still running?

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:15 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 29:17 And so what basically happened? There was like some transfer payment from Microsoft and couple other people like... And then it seems like whatever that deal was, a little bit seems to have been copied by Google when they did this character.ai thing. So just trying to get a sense from you, are these deals to structurally avoid FTC scrutiny in terms of the building blocks of it? Or how, how did you think about it, and what is the, what is the pattern and the trend on these things?

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:43 Well, the thing I think that's happened was, you know, very early days, you had things like, you know, we're doing an agent, and if Pi had launched before ChatGPT, it'd probably be in a different circumstance. But like ChatGPT got the, "Oh my God."

Jason Calacanis 29:56 I'm sorry, Pi? Pi is the Inflection AI product. Yeah, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:58 Pi is the Inflection agent, yeah. And so, so by the time that Pi w- w- we got the, the, the trend right and the, and the interest of the market right, but we got the timing, you know-... too late. Happens with startups. So it was like, okay, we need to pivot. We need to pivot from a B2C model to a B2B. And we have a unique model, but let's sell that to other people who already have audiences because we're not gonna be able to easily grow our audience. And then, you know, once we had that as a conversation, there were employees who were like, "Well, we wanna do the direct agent thing, and that's what we wanna do, and maybe we'll go somewhere in order to do that." And we're like, "Okay, how do we fund this, and how do we make that work, and how do we make it work for investors?" And we said, "Hey, there's a deal structure that could work," which is, you know, with a, you know, kind of outside party, you can get paid enough in a non-exclusive IP license and an ability to selectively hire folks, and then you can dividend some of that out to investors so investors, you know, get back a, you know, kind of a one X, um, and then kind of a, a, a ongoing position. So, you know, as investors, it's great to have a kind of optionality on this B2B business, um, in order to play that out. And this is a structure that works for everybody in this pivot to B2B. And that's essentially the, the, the structure that we did.

Jason Calacanis 31:07 I see. Great pivot, Chamath, into Lina Khan. I think (laughs) one of the things that is quite paradoxal- paradoxical about your relationship with David Sacks is you both agree on something in politics, which is Lina Khan. And her concepts around future competition and maybe how she's running, uh, this issue for the United States is leading to basically a freeze on the market. We're seeing weird deal structures, like some of the ones we're talking about here that could have just been acquisitions. And I'm curious your thoughts on what she... you know, this sort of breakup of Google. Now, we're seeing that emerge at the same time that they're facing the biggest existential crisis (laughs) of their career, which is language models competing with them. And man, I would say half of my Google searches have already moved to, you know, uh, you know, ChatGPT-like services. So what's your take on Lina Khan's approach to M&A, and what impact, if it's continued and sustained, will that have on capital allocation? Because I, I, I don't know what happened to the single and double M&A (laughs) market, but it seems to be completely gone. Everything from Adobe and Figma to other, uh, mergers that could be happening are essentially frozen. So what's your take?

Chamath Palihapitiya 32:28 So it was funny, 'cause I kinda made an off-the-cuff, you know, kind of remark about Lina Khan which turned into a whole news cycle. Um-

Jason Calacanis 32:34 I, I saw you on CNN where they were like, "Are you telling Kamala and Biden-"

Chamath Palihapitiya 32:39 Yes, yes. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 32:39 "... what they have to do?" And it's like-

Chamath Palihapitiya 32:40 And I'm like, "No, because I don't believe in that kind of corruption of, of, of politics." The only way she's gonna learn about it is either she asked me or she watches this television show. Um, and, um, and so, so she's done good job on the price cartels. She's done a good job on the anti-competes, both of which I think are very good for, you know, competitive markets. The problem is, I think she has a misunderstanding of these, uh, large tech companies. And, um, for example, on the M&A thing, you know, her theory is you gotta prevent the aggregation of power, so you gotta pre- you gotta fight every acquisition of... No. And the problem, of course, is that actually quells venture capital investment, 'cause it's like, okay, um, part of the re- the returns is if I'm gonna invest in something that might be competing with, you know, w- one or more of the large tech companies, I need to have acquisition exits as part of being able to, to fund enough capital to really make that acquisition, you know, that, that, that, that investment possibly work. 'Cause if it doesn't work, I wanna be able to at least return, r- recover my capital by an investment. So the right way to look at it is, is there competition amongst the top tech companies? Because, you know, if one of them is, like, squashing all the other ones, that's a problem. If we're, if we're five large tech companies heading to three, then I'm much more sympathetic to her point of view. But we're actually five heading to 10, right, or five to seven heading to 12, because, like, NVIDIA is now in the mix and, and others, I think, are coming in the mix.

Jason Calacanis 34:05 Tesla is, you know-

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:05 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 34:05 ... now over 500 billion. Yeah, so.

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:07 Yes. And so you, you have this ability. So the thing is, is they're competing on the acquisitions, just like they're competing in the micro- uh, in the marketplace. And if you're trying to quell the whole thing 'cause your theory is, like, like, they should just, you know, the startup should just be able to grow up to compete, that actually means that they'll never get the capital that they need in order to do that, which means you're actually having the opposite of your intent, right? What you're doing is you're actually making there to be less competition because, you know, capitalists can't say, "If I'm gonna put 100 million, 500 million, a billion dollars into this company, I at least have a chance of getting my capital back, or I can possibly create a competitor." And that's, that's the reason I was speaking out against it as an expert. Um-

Jason Calacanis 34:51 It was, like, interesting-

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:52 ... that's, that's-

Jason Calacanis 34:52 ... you... I, I saw you... I think it was Jake Taper, Tapper who, uh, you-

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:56 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 34:56 ... you, you kind of grilled you on it. I thought you did an exceptional job of just saying, "Listen, I made a donation. This is how I feel about it." But obviously she's gonna do what she wants to do, and, and that's just how politics work. So, uh, I thought that was actually pretty well done, and I actually appreciate you fighting for more M&A because it would be great for the industry. Sacks, you wanna-

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:15 Well, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 35:15 ... you wanna throw up a, a political topic here, or you want me to

Reid Hoffman 35:18 Oh, no. Just to, just to stick on Lina Khan for a second.

Jason Calacanis 35:20 Sure.

Reid Hoffman 35:20 So I, I agree that her approach has been, uh, overly broad and has had a chilling effect on M&A. And so, J-Cal, like you said, we've lost those base hit acquisitions that I think are important to the venture capital market that help new startups get funded. I mean, if the returns on risk capital go down, there's gonna be less of it. That means-

Jason Calacanis 35:41 And founders, right?

Reid Hoffman 35:42 ... there'll be less-

Jason Calacanis 35:42 Founders get those single indents.

Reid Hoffman 35:43 ... startup innovation. So, yeah. So I agree with Reid on that. The area where I'm not sure we agree is, a- a- and where I do agree with Lina Khan is I do think the big tech companies have too much power. I do think that they are monopolies or have monopolies. And I do think they need to be controlled. I just think that, you know, I wouldn't prevent them from doing any M&A whatsoever. I'm curious if Reid, like, agrees with that, that the big tech companies have too much power, or agrees with Lina Khan on that. And I guess, specifically, do you think any big tech companies should be broken up? If so, which ones? I mean, I, I would actually entertain that idea of, of...... of de-conglomerating or breaking up some of these big tech companies. Do you, do you think, do you agree that big tech has too much power or not?

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:25 Um, I think it's TBD. Um, but the reason I'd say, look, take the opposite po- point of view and say no, uh, the thesis for no is that they are very strong American comp- companies that get, you know, in th- most cases, over half their revenue from overseas. They create, uh, technology platforms that beneficially differentiate the US, um, versus, you know, many other, uh, countries in kinda global circumstances like the internet and other kinds of things. Um, I think that they are competing ferociously with each other. I mean, uh, you know, Jason just mentioned that, you know, it's kinda like, look, we've already got, like, ChatGPT competing with Google Search and other kinds of things, and I think it's competitive pressure, right? This is, I think, what capitalism is about, is competitive pressure that essentially creates the thing. And that's the reason why, like, if it's, if, if we were shrinking, like it was Google ............................ So I actually frankly think that the, you know, everyone likes to talk about, you know, Google, you know, like, I think the, the prime candidate is likely to be, and I'm speaking as an individual and as a venture capitalist here, is Apple, with the App Store (laughs) right?

Reid Hoffman 37:36 Okay, so wait, so, so that brings up an interesting point. One of the things we've talked about in this pod is that we shouldn't shut down M&A, but the g- the, uh, FTC should limit anti-competitive tactics-

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:47 Yeah.

Reid Hoffman 37:47 ... by these big tech companies.

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:49 Yeah.

Reid Hoffman 37:50 Apple, really good example because they drive everything through the App Store, you're not allowed to do sideloading. They wanna take, what is it, 30% piece of any sales, you're not even allowed to have a link inside an application to drive the-

Jason Calacanis 38:04 Except in Europe now.

Reid Hoffman 38:05 ... user to the website.

Jason Calacanis 38:06 Yeah, yeah, in Europe now you can. They, they're forcing ............................

Reid Hoffman 38:08 So would you, would you at least wanna crack down on those anti-competitive tactics?

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:12 Yeah. Yeah, no, for sure. And look, especially when is, you know, we all know it's nonsense. It's like, look, you could just give the consumers the option to, to, to allow sideloading. You could just say it's technically very simple to do, and you can say, "Look, uh, we, we don't want you to sideload 'cause we view it to be safety and security, but we're giving you the option" (laughs) Right? Fine, give people the option, (laughs) right?

Jason Calacanis 38:38 Reid, were you surprised that then the first target where there was, like, some successful antitrust pushback was against Google versus Apple? And then second, do you think that there's a chance, like, a meaningful chance that the government tries to break Google up? Or do you think it looks something maybe more similar to what happened to Microsoft?

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:59 So I think in mandating breakups, you know, like, I, I think is a, um... Look, I think we should operate through competitive networks and competitive ecosystems. I think it's part of what's smart about capitalism, and I think mandating breakups is only when essentially capitalism is failing, uh, on specific things. You wanna do the l- the least, the least you can to get back to competitive networks, uh, in terms of how you're operating. And so, you know, when you say, "Hey, look, i- iOS has this kinda monopoly" and you say, "There's no sideloading, you have to use the App Store, you have to use the payment mechanism," you know, et cetera, et cetera, it's like, well, that quells a ton of startup innovation. We all know this as investors, because we look (laughs) at anyone who's perspectively doing a business like this and say, "No chance." It's y- you know, you're, you're not gonna succeed. And so, so then you say, "Well, what's the least thing that we can do," right? And, you know, a, a classic anti-trust is like, "Well, let's break off the App Store from Apple," it's like well ... (laughs) right? Unclear that that would really fully work. You know, that's like socialism mandating how the thing should work. Let's try to get it so that we allow competition, uh, to determine these things. And like, for example, saying, "Hey, like, you have to allow consumers the option of sideloading. You have to allow consumers the option of installing an alternative app store," right? Like, that kinda stuff, I think, you know, what's the minimal stuff, I think that's the kind of intervention we wanna have, because I think there's all kinds of benefits that come from, you know-

Jason Calacanis 40:21 Why, but why do you think that, uh, the case against Apple has made less progress than the case against Google?

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:28 Uh, I think it's kind of it's less politically easy, right? Like, it's kinda like-

Jason Calacanis 40:33 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:33 ... everybody loves their iOS phone, and you know, there's, there's, there's less of a blue and red, you know, kinda combo tackle, um, where, you know, the, the blue p- people are like, th- "Hate big companies" on extreme-

Jason Calacanis 40:47 Apple is less offensive, basically, is what you're saying.

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:49 Yes, yes.

Jason Calacanis 40:50 Yeah.

40:50 More stylish.

40:51 Yeah.

40:51 They're, they're prettier. I, I kinda like your approach though with the App Store. If you were to think of least harm to the ecosystem, uh, Epic Games has their own app store for games, they charge 88%, they give, uh, they give eight, I'm sorry, they give developers 88%, they only take 12. And forcing Apple to allow, you know, a startup to do an app store would solve the entire problem, an- and-

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:14 Yeah. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 41:14 ... it seems like that's where it's gonna go, and all five of us would invest instantly in an app store that would say, "0% take rate and all advertising based." What a great idea that would be.

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:25 Yeah, exactly.

Jason Calacanis 41:26 Reid, I have a question.

Jason Calacanis 41:28 A few weeks ago, you said something to the effect very publicly that you had had a one-hour or multi-hour lunch with Biden.

41:34 Mm. Mm.

41:35 And he just seemed-

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:36 Multi-hour.

Jason Calacanis 41:36 ... like, super on his game, and then he was kind of dumped. Was that just a moment in time where he was really great with you, or how do you reconcile that with Pelosi and all of these other folks and what happened to Biden?

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:54 Well, like most of us, um, I was pretty dismayed by the debate performance, um, because when I talk to him, like, detailed thoughtful analysis with no notes on Gaza, questions about AI, you know, and what kinds of things, you know, what did I think about what the progress, you know, the thing they were doing with the voluntary commitments and the executive order and, you know, what kinds of things should happen in the future and all that kinda stuff, being on the game. A little slower, right, than, than, you know, a, a 50-year-old would be, but, but, you know, like, cogent and totally worth it.... and then you kind of, uh, looked at the debate thing and went, "Oh my gosh. This is, this is, this is a disaster." Um, and so, um, it was like, look, is the debate a one-off thing? Is it... Did you, were you ill? (laughs) You know, like trying to reconcile the two and, you know, spend a little bit of time trying to figure that out, uh, to, to what was going on because it was, it was the first time I'd seen something like that. And, you know, um, you know, I don't, you know, I'm not enough of a DC insider to know exactly what the set of conclusions were other than I, you know, I applauded, you know, Biden for having the kind of integrity to go, "Look, I'm, maybe I'm ill, maybe I'm old, maybe I'm slower, but, you know, the, the, it's about the country more than it's about me because I'm, you know, not..." Um, you know, it's, it's, it's important to be about the country, not about yourself. I'll, I'll step aside. And ultimately, it was his decision. There's nothing that anyone could force. Pelosi couldn't force it, anyone else. It's ultimately his decision. He came to that decision. So, um, you know, I applaud that.

Jason Calacanis 43:27 Do you, do you think that they should have run an open primary after that? And would Kamala have won an open primary?

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:35 Well, it's hard to know. I mean, I think they were definitely leaning towards an open primary, and then all the people who would be the most natural contenders all endorsed Kamala. So, um, and by the way, you say, well, kind of democratic process. It was like, well, there was a democratic process that picked the Biden-Harris ticket, which turned into the Harris-Walz ticket. And so that's not anti-democratic. But I think if you look at the sequence of events, it was kinda like, well, you know, we're, we're gonna sort out, you know, what, what we're gonna do, and then, you know, all of the key folks, you know, Shapiro and, and Whitmer and everyone else all endorsed Kamala. And it was like, okay, let's just, let's get back to, you know, kind of the, the choice of two candidates. And so I, you know-

David Friedberg 44:14 Do you feel the voters felt-

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:16 ... yeah, I th-

David Friedberg 44:16 Uh, Reid, do you think the voters felt left out?

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:19 Um-

David Friedberg 44:21 The Democratic, um, voters.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:24 Well, I mean from post-fact, seems not, right?

David Friedberg 44:27 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:27 With the level of kinda energy and all the rest, it seems that, that, that, um, um, that the, uh, that, you know, like the, the, with the pure polling and kinda level of energy and kinda what's going on, um-

David Friedberg 44:40 They're happy with what they got.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:41 Yeah, they're happy with what they got.

David Sacks 44:43 I would have liked to have that speed run.

David Friedberg 44:44 Do you think it sets a bad precedent that there were these backroom conversations? Obviously, the staff of Whitmer, Moore, Shapiro, their office speaks with Democratic Party leadership, speak with big donors, and there was effectively a coalescing that took place over a period of time that said, "We should all stand behind and endorse one person instead of infighting and creating a split in the party." And does that not set a bad precedent that there is a small group of people in either party that, in a primary process, effectively get to nominate their candidate, get their candidate to become the nominee, and therefore there's only two people for the country to choose from? And as we have seen recently with RFK Jr. and the lawsuits against him-

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:29 Hmm.

David Friedberg 45:29 ... in being on the ballot in different states, it makes it very difficult maybe for the people to have their choice. And is that a bad way for democracy to work? And I just love your philosophical view on this.

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:40 Hmm.

David Friedberg 45:40 On like, what's the best way for democracy in the United States to work?

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:44 So, I mean we do live in a rep-

David Friedberg 45:46 For the president, for the president, for the president.

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:47 Yes, we do live in a republic, right?

David Friedberg 45:49 Yes, right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:49 And there, there is various, like, you know, some people have much more influence than others, um, whether it's media platforms, whether it's, um, you know, m- economics and ability to spend, whether it's, you know, history and a brand and, and, and other things. And so, you know, this melee and, and, and kind of, you know, whole integration set of things. Now ultimately, you know, voters are gonna decide in November (laughs) , right? So, you know, people do have a, you know... And I think that, that, that staying to our democratic process is what's really key. Like, you know, people going to the polls. You know, I think we should wanna live in a country where everyone does, you know, everyone who is, uh, who is legally allowed to vote does vote. Um, and I think that that's, you know, ultimately a good thing. Now, you know, are there things that I would like to change? Sure. I'd like to change... I'd like to have ranked-choice voting.

David Friedberg 46:40 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:40 You know, I'd like to have open primaries.

David Friedberg 46:42 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:42 There's, there's a set of things. Like, like actually my principal frustration in all of this stuff is, you know, what's, what's one of the fundamental things the two parties agree on that, that, that, that shouldn't be is that there should be only two parties (laughs) , right? And I think that's, uh, I think that's something you, you, you need to fix. And you can't fix it, unfortunately, I think, with independent candidates 'cause, 'cause the whole system is really set up, uh, for, you know, kind of two parties, and independent candidates are almost always spoilers one way or the other. I mean, like on the RFK stuff, I understand there was a bunch of Democrats who were trying to, you know, uh, prevent him from getting on the ballot. I actually prefer him on the ballot 'cause I actually think his, his, his anti-vax stance w- you know, really fit very well with, with Trump. And so I think he was gonna take more from Trump (laughs) .

Jason Calacanis 47:27 Well, do you wanna, do you wanna address that, Reid? 'Cause I think there was a rumor that you were funding some of these lawsuits to keep him off the ballot or whatever. Like, have you spent any money to try to impact RFK one way or the other?

Chamath Palihapitiya 47:38 I wouldn't be surprised, if we look at all the money that goes to all the different organizations, if organization X kinda had some kind of ballot thing. Mine's, my voice and instruction was always like, "No, no, no. Don't do that. That's anti-democratic." But, you know, you can't control everything, just like you invest in a company and the CEO sometimes does dumbass (beep) -

David Friedberg 48:00 Right, right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:00 ... that you can't do anything about. And-

David Friedberg 48:01 'Cause you give, you give money, you give money to, to folks that then execute their own strategies.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:06 Yeah. Yeah.

David Friedberg 48:06 So you can't control on-the-ground tactics, right?

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:09 Yeah.

David Friedberg 48:09 Yeah, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:09 So there's, there's (beep) that happens that you're like, "No, don't do that!" (laughs) Right?

David Friedberg 48:13 Right, right.

David Sacks 48:13 Well, okay, that's a good, um, that's a good segue 'cause-

David Friedberg 48:15 Right.

David Sacks 48:16 ... let's talk about the five cases against Trump. There are five lawsuits against Trump.

Reid Hoffman 48:20 No, hold on, hold on. J-Cal, I don't want, uh, can we just stay on this topic for a second? I think this is important.

David Sacks 48:24 Sure, of course you can. Yeah, go ahead.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:25 Yeah.

Reid Hoffman 48:25 Okay, so in, in Michigan and Wisconsin, you had Democratic groups, they fought...... RFK Junior's bid to get on the ballot. Okay, they failed. Now he wants to get off the ballot, but they won't take him off now that they think that his presence hurts Trump. And at the same time, Michigan's trying to remove Cornel West and Wisconsin's trying to remove Jill Stein. So I'm curious, do you think there's any principle on display here besides naked partisan hackery? I mean, basically the Democrats fought having third parties on the ballot when they thought it would hurt Biden, and now they wanna keep them on the ballot when they think it's gonna hurt Trump, except for those third-party candidates who they still think will hurt Harris. So what... Is there any principle here or is this just partisan hackery?

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:16 I, I think it's... You know, I, I frankly, you know, think that everyone who follows the legal process to get on the ballot should be on the ballot and, you know, we should follow the legal process. Uh, I'm very much of a legal process kind of person. What I'm opposed to is like, you know, calling Raffensperger and a- a- asking for 11,000 votes, right, which is not legal (laughs) . Right? So, so like yeah, sure. Th- is that, is that bad and, and do I advocate against it? The answer is absolutely yes. Um, but it's, you know, follow the legal process is gonna be -

Reid Hoffman 49:45 But if the, if the Secretary of State of Colorado throws Trump off the ballot, for example, is that legal process if it's then overruled by the Supreme Court, or can we just say-

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:53 Well-

Reid Hoffman 49:53 ... substantively that states shouldn't be removing candidates from the ballot, that's anti-democratic?

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:59 Uh, well, but you want them to remove RFK from the ballot.

Reid Hoffman 50:03 No, that's not what I said.

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:05 Oh.

Reid Hoffman 50:05 I, I, I-

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:05 Oh, okay. I'm just trying to figure out-

Reid Hoffman 50:07 No, no, no, no, no.

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:07 ... 'cause like-

Reid Hoffman 50:07 The, the rule is that... Well, first of all, I don't think that Democratic groups should be suing RFK to keep him off the ballot. And that's what he said is that Democratic groups were suing to keep him off the ballot and they were trying to exhaust his resources so he couldn't mount an effective campaign. And some of those groups you funded, right? So maybe you didn't know what they were doing. But in any event, I consider that to be anti-democratic. RFK is now trying to remove his name from the ballot. I think as a candidate you're allowed to do that. And those same groups that once fought to keep him off the ballot are trying to keep his name on the ballot, 'cause now they perceive-

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:42 Oh, really?

Reid Hoffman 50:42 Yeah, because now they perceive the political calculation to be a little different. So my-

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:46 (laughs)

Reid Hoffman 50:46 So I don't see any of this as being democratic. This to me is just partisan hackery, isn't it?

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:51 So, so that-

Reid Hoffman 50:52 Can't you agree with that?

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:53 Look, yes fundamentally from a viewpoint of like, like for example, my, my direct actions... And yes, there was... You fund a whole bunch of different groups and you have different groups doing different things, but you funded them to do this thing that you were thinking of and things happen. It's just like companies. You know, my thing was actually in fact making people aware of, of RFK's anti-vax, you know, statement, his anti-science stuff, because I thought that would be relevant in the polls in November. That, that was the, the actual strategy that, that I believe, and I think that would differentially, you know, hit Trump more, and so therefore would be a spoiler, (laughs) right, as these-

Reid Hoffman 51:32 Yeah, look, I've-

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:32 ... independents are.

Reid Hoffman 51:33 I have, I have no problem with drawing attention to issues, but I, I do think fundamentally it's anti-democratic to sue third-party candidates to the point where they can't be on the ballot. Okay, let me ask you d- directly. Cornel West-

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:45 Hmm.

Reid Hoffman 51:46 Um, there's an effort right now to remove Cornel West from the ballot in Michigan. Do you support that or would you oppose that? I mean, is that democracy?

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:54 By, by default, I would oppose it. I don't know any of the details.

Reid Hoffman 51:58 Okay, fair enough.

Jason Calacanis 51:59 Reid, I have a, I have a question for you.

Jason Calacanis 52:02 It's more of a statement actually. Maybe I'd just love to get your reaction.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:06 Hmm.

Jason Calacanis 52:06 One of the most divisive issues that we have right now is people's position on October 7th, Israel-Palestine. There is a sense that there's a growing kind of like virulent strain of antisemitism in America. A lot of people point to the extreme left as where that's really gestating. There was thoughts that Josh Shapiro would have been an exceptional candidate, but one of the large reasons why he was not really meaningfully considered was his religion. I just want you to comment on the broad issue and whether you see it in the Democratic Party, whether you see it in the Republican Party, whether you see it at all. Just give us a sense of where we stand culturally on this issue.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:52 Well, so like I know Josh Shapiro. I think he's great. Um, you know, I've had... I've broken bread with him, um, and, you know, he was meaningfully considered. Um, you know, I think that the, um... You know, I think we should be so lucky that he would, you know, run for presidency someday, uh, some year. Um, you know, I didn't... actually didn't know Walz at all, and, and, and, you know, was initially kind of surprised 'cause, you know, I was like, "Oh, I thought it was probably gonna be Shapiro." And then I was like, "Well, you know, I think it was, you know, probably a close call down to those two," and, and it looks like, you know, you know, in making decisions, I think, uh, you know, Harris, you know, made a good decision with Walz. So, you know, I think it's a... Um, you know, now on the, on the antisemitism topic, I do worry that, you know, broadly, um, we're seeing, you know, kind of more rise of antisemitism, and that's extremely important to fight, um, you know, 'cause I think... And I think there are people on... in the... You know, it's a- it's a weirdly like, like, uh, there's some lefties who are doing it and there's some righties who are doing it. It's both a blue and a red issue in different, different shape. And I think it's very important that we, you know, we stand against that, uh, as a country. And so, um, you know, I've been, uh, you know, kind of mostly just trying to say, "Hey, look, we gotta, we gotta be anti- an- anti-racism, antisemitism, and also anti-genocide, and we gotta figure that out."

Jason Calacanis 54:23 What did you think of Kamala's, uh, handling of that issue in her speech? She basically seemed to, I don't know, say both sides it, but she said, "Hey, you can..."... uh, believe that the people of Gaza should be treated more humanely and that, uh, you know, Israel has a right to defend herself.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:39 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 54:39 What'd you think of her handling of that?

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:40 I think that's rational, right? Like, you should be anti-genocide, both of Palestinians and of Jews (laughs) , right? And, and, like, like, it's obviously a very, very thorny topic.

Jason Calacanis 54:51 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:51 Right? So, um, so I think, you know, saying that I'm gonna try to protect civilians on both sides, anti-genocide, I think that's a human, caring qui- place to be, looking out for people.

David Friedberg 55:03 Reid, do you think that, generally speaking, Marxist, socialist principles are taking a firmer hold on the, the, the Democratic Party and kind of those principles are starting to showcase, not just in the cultural phenomena that, that Chamath is referencing, but also in some of the policymaking that's going on? And, um, concepts of equity rooted in concepts of social justice, ultimately rooted in Marxist principles emerging from the Industrial Revolution.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:33 What about price fixing?

David Friedberg 55:34 So, so as an example, the price gouging, you know, price caps on food proposal, the concept of a wealth tax, not necessarily the unrealized capital gains tax, but separately, a tax on wealth, all of these concepts of the degradation of power structure through policy. Uh, and in part, some have argued that the antisemitism arises from these principles, in that the Jews are considered a privileged and powerful, uh, uh, cultural class. Is that n- is that not being observed? Do you not, do you not think that there's some tendencies that are emerging in the Democratic Party, and maybe influenced by a louder far left, and that far left is becoming more loud and, and better represented in the party?

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:15 Look, I think we should speak out against both the far left and the far right. Um, I think it's important to do both. And so, you know, since, you know, uh, I'm, I'm, I, I'm playing the Democrat here on this conversation, I'll ask you guys to play the, the, the... or especially Sax to play the Republican and, and speak out against the, the far right, too. Um, but the, the, the short answer is yes, there are, uh, amongst the extreme lefts, that's not everybody in the Democratic Party-

David Friedberg 56:43 Yeah. Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:44 ... but the extreme left, there is, um, some, like, you know, misunderstandings about, you know, why it's important to do, defend, you know, kind of anti-genocide. It's like, "From the river to the sea." It's like, yeah, that's a genocidal statement. Don't use that one (laughs) , right? Like, understand what language you're using. And, and to be, like, look, the, you know, we've had a great genocidal moment with, you know, World War II, and we're still trying to recover from it. Um, two, you know, questions around, like, like, what I think is a, uh, uh, a, a foolish wealth tax, even though it's, by the way, narrowed to, like, 80%. And then on, like, the, the price gouging stuff, um, you know, one of the things as I started scratching at it, you know, it was interesting, I think this week, Kroger said, "Yes, we did actually artificially raise prices to profit from the pandemic," you know? And yeah, you should stop price gouging. It's not quite the same thing as price capping, and apparently there's laws that affect, even in Florida, right, or in Texas, uh, where some of, you know, uh, you guys are living. So, like, it's kind of, um, you know, it's like, okay, I need to understand this issue in more depth, but I don't think it's as simplistic as the political headlines are having it. Well, but the reason why Kamala Harris proposed the price fixing proposal, price gouging, whatever you wanna call it, was in response to inflation. In other words, we've had 20% erosion in purchasing power over the last four years. Harris needs a response to that, so she came forward with this new eco- economic proposal. So it's in that context this came up. Uh, this wasn't some proposal by the far left of the party, unless you consider Kamala Harris to be far left. I actually do.

David Friedberg 58:17 No, nope.

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:17 But, okay, fair enough, but my point is just, this is her proposal, and it's in response to inflation. I mean, you don't... Y- y- y- you understand what causes inflation, right? It's like-

David Friedberg 58:26 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:26 ... the government printing too much money. It's not, it's not greedy corporations raising their prices too much. I mean-

David Friedberg 58:31 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:31 ... do you agree with that? Look, I agree that you have to have good monetary policy. And so I think we, we probably agree on that, and I think some printing of money is part of a normal functioning economy, but too much is, is bad. And I don't think... Look, I think price, uh... Look, part of the reason why we were just talking about antitrust stuff earlier, you do have to look at places where there's a, there's a possibility of kind of commanding stuff from your, you know, privileged position. And, like, you know, the, like, I wanna go look- Well, we, we all agree, we all agree that monopolies have to be controlled. No, no, no debate there. But that's not what's caused the inflation, right? Because we've had-

David Friedberg 59:06 No, no.

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:06 ... inflation of commodities, not just monopoly products, but commodities like dis- food staples, eggs, you know, chicken-

David Friedberg 59:13 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:13 ... stuff like that.

David Friedberg 59:14 Driven, driven by-

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:15 But it's-

David Friedberg 59:15 ... fuel and labor and all the other inflationary, you know, underpinnings of those markets. And I think we tried to highlight that. I don't know if you saw Elizabeth Warren's interview on CNBC where she got taken apart because she made some claims about profiteering by Kraft Heinz.

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:29 Oh, yeah.

David Friedberg 59:29 And the CNBC anchors pointed out, "You are actually incorrect. Kraft Heinz has seen a reduction in profit over this period of time." (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:36 Yeah.

David Friedberg 59:36 And so, like, there were factual inaccuracies in these-

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:39 Yeah.

David Friedberg 59:39 ... belief systems, but, you know, for me, it feels a lot like the government setting prices in free markets is one of those steps towards socialist principles that worry me the most.

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:49 Yeah, and look, I, generally speaking, as I was saying earlier, I'm like, like, make sure the network sets, sorts it out versus, you know, centralized control.

David Friedberg 59:59 Totally, totally.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:00 So, so it's kinda like you have to look at, is there a place where you're, like, going, "Okay, that's the reason why I, like, focus..." Her words were price gouging. And if you're focused on the kind of gouging side of it is like, oh, there might be a market inefficiency that you're essentially correcting, then that's, I think, the same kinda thing we were talking about with, like, the FTC and the Apple s- App Store and so forth. If it's like the, "I'm just gonna set a fixed price on eggs," (laughs) right? That's a bad idea. And by the way, there's, there's bad ideas, like the wealth tax thing, that I, that I disagree with. Her, her economic thing also had housing, which I think is a, you know, a good...... you know, kind of thing to kind of lower cost for Americans and, you know, kind of make that kind of, uh, stable work. Like I think she's, she's been good on immigration. Um, I think this... The, the Lankford Cinema Bill, which was from, you know, the, the, the Republican side, was something they were f- fully prepared to endorse and, you know, Trump killed it because he wanted to campaign on it. It's like, look, we care about the actual running in the country. And so, look, I, I think there's a bunch of good things. But if you said, "Do I defend price capping?" The answer is not as an independent principle by itself. And by the way, are there people lefties, like, you know, a lot of what Elizabeth Warren says about capitalism, I disagree with. (laughs) Right?

Reid Hoffman 1:01:13 I mean, I could disagree with you on the border. I think, you know, Kamala Harris used to be considered the border czar, that's gotten scrubbed. I don't think she's done a great job on that, but whatever. That... I wanna go back to issues that affect Silicon Valley. 25% unrealized gains tax, uh, it seems like most of Silicon Valley, almost all of it, is either disagrees with this or is up in arms about this. I think, J Cal, you would... You said that this is disqualifying.

David Sacks 1:01:34 Oh, it's a line in the sand. It's disqualifying for me, for sure. Yeah. Absolutely.

Reid Hoffman 1:01:38 So, I mean, do you agree that a large unrealized gains tax, 25%, would be a disaster for Silicon Valley and the whole startup ecosystem? Or, I mean, how do you come down on that?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:49 Well, as I understand it, uh, on that tax as it's proposed is you have to have, um, 80% of your net worth-

David Sacks 1:01:57 That's right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:57 ... liquid.

David Sacks 1:01:58 Yeah. If 80% or more is illiquid, then-

Reid Hoffman 1:02:02 No, you get to defer the tax, but there's a penalty.

David Sacks 1:02:05 Yeah, you get to defer the tax, but there's a penalty.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:07 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:02:07 That's right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:08 Look, I think it's definitely a quelling impact and it's definitely stupid and definitely shouldn't happen.

David Sacks 1:02:12 (laughs)

Reid Hoffman 1:02:12 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:13 You know?

David Sacks 1:02:13 So it's stupid.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:14 Is it? Yeah. (laughs)

David Sacks 1:02:15 We get your... I think we got your position on it. It's stupid. (laughs)

Reid Hoffman 1:02:19 Uh, yeah.

David Sacks 1:02:19 Let him finish. Let him finish. (laughs)

Reid Hoffman 1:02:20 We all agree on that. But then, but then why isn't it disqual- why isn't it disqualifying the way that J Cal says? Are we just supposed to hope that Kamala Harris-

David Sacks 1:02:28 I'll tell you why-

Reid Hoffman 1:02:28 ... doesn't do what she is saying she's gonna do?

David Sacks 1:02:30 ... it's unconstitutional.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:30 Yeah, I'll tell you why. I think that both the Republicans and the Democrats have realized that there's actually very little difference on a lot of the major things that they actually talk about. So what they're both being forced to do is realize that because the centrality of a bunch of the things they say are the same, they each have to go to their flanks to get the N plus one vote. And so Kamala goes to the left and spouts all this stuff that seems Marxist-

David Sacks 1:02:59 Socialist.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:59 ... or S- Socialist or Communist because she has to get those people to vote for her. Ultimately, I think what ends up happening is most of the stuff in the middle has a decent chance of happening. The stuff at the fringes, I think, they get put up, Sachs, almost as like a sacrificial lamb. A good example, I think, is like all of the stuff that's happening with the student loan reform, a half a trillion dollar plan, it gets shot down by the Supreme Court. This new plan, another $100 billion not even being heard yet by the Supreme Court. So I think they know this. I mean, it's not like the Biden administration is dumb. The Trump administration is not dumb either. So I think what they're doing is-

David Sacks 1:03:38 Yeah, I mean, deporting 10 million people would be an example on the right and taking away a woman's right to choose would be the other one.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:44 Yeah. And by the way, um, one of the things-

Reid Hoffman 1:03:45 But Trump has said... You keep bringing that up, but Trump has said that he, he would veto, he would not support a national ban-

David Sacks 1:03:50 Oh, no. But I'm talking about him already doing it.

Reid Hoffman 1:03:52 ... on abortion.

David Sacks 1:03:52 He already, he already overturned Roe v. Wade. I'm talking about that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:54 Yeah. And by the way, one thing I-

Reid Hoffman 1:03:55 That just returned the issue to the states. It's not outlawing abortion. And by the way, at the state level-

David Sacks 1:03:58 Ask the people in Austin. You can't get abortions there in Texas.

Reid Hoffman 1:04:02 At, at the state level, the... Well, but that's... They, they-

David Sacks 1:04:05 Women can't make a choice here.

Reid Hoffman 1:04:05 They've not had a ballot initiative. They've not had a ballot initiative there.

David Sacks 1:04:08 Yes.

Reid Hoffman 1:04:08 Just about everywhere there's been a ballot initiative, the pro-choice forces have won. And besides, that's a state issue now, J Cal, not federal.

David Sacks 1:04:15 Yeah. No, it's a state issue and Trump succeeded in taking away a woman's right to choose in Texas.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:19 But one thing, by the way, look, in the spirit of The All-In Podcast, I wanted to be clear about like there's, there's, there's stuff on the, on the Dems and some of their economic policy for the far left people that, you know, kind of, you know, they're advocating for that I'm opposed to. You know, Sachs, I'd love to hear from you what parts of Trump's thing you're opposed to.

David Sacks 1:04:37 Here we go.

Reid Hoffman 1:04:38 Well, look, I mean, I have been consistent on this pod for years that I thought that the, let's call it the like extreme pro-life side, was not good for the Republican Party and I've been opposed to it. Um, I don't think it's what J Cal says. I think that overturning Roe v. Wade did not abolish abortion, it basically returned the issue to the states. And if you look at the referenda that have happened, they've pretty much all gone the pro-choice direction. So I think that the overturning of Roe v. Wade has actually allowed the country to sort of sort out that issue, although it's not completely sorted out. But look, I would not support a national abortion ban. I would not support re-federalizing the issue. I think there's a lot of issues, uh, about, you know, war and peace where I do not support the, you could say, the establishment neocon strand within the party. I do not support all these interventions, I do not support these forever wars, and there is a big debate in the party about that. Now, one of the reasons why, at the end of the day, I support Trump, is I know this will strike some people as counterintuitive, but I think he is the moderate within the Republican Party. He's a moderate on abortion. I know, J Cal, you're still bitter about that Supreme Court case. However, he's been very, very clear that he will not support a national abortion ban. Moreover, he took the abortion language out of the Republican platform. I think he's the moderate on, um, on issues of, of war. He's, he was the first Republican candidate to run opposing Bush's forever wars. So I give him credit on those things. On style, he may not come across as a moderate, but those are style points. I think on issues, he is the moderate. The, the issue I have with Kamala Harris is I don't think she's a moderate, you know? So like, just to take this 25% unrealized gains tax first, when this issue came up, we were assured, "Well, she doesn't really believe that," even though it was in the Democratic platform and it was in the Biden-Harris budget. Then people said, "Well, maybe it's part of her platform, but it's not a priority for her."... and we just had one of her, like, top economic advisors come out on, I think it was CNBC, defending it. And her campaign confirmed that she supports it. Okay? So now the argument has become, well, she supports it. It is really part of the platform. She would do it if she could, but she's not gonna be able to do it. I just don't think that's a ringing endorsement of a, of a candidate. I don't think you wanna support a candidate because they're not gonna be able to do what they really wanna do.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:09 Do you think she's a moderate or do you think she's a socialist, you know, uh, gonna take the country very far left by the way, socialist principles, Reid.

David Friedberg 1:07:17 By the way, what, what Sachs- What's- Yeah. But what Sachs didn't address is Trump's tariff policy, which is also inflationary-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:22 Yeah. Exactly.

David Friedberg 1:07:22 ... almost equivalent to the price gouging, uh, you know, food price caps. I think that they're both inflationary and they're both bad policy. That's my personal point of view.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:30 Yeah. Tariffs is where I thought it was gonna go.

David Friedberg 1:07:31 But, you know. Anyway.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:32 Yeah.

Reid Hoffman 1:07:33 Uh, honestly, I'm not, I'm not sure what I, what I think of that proposal. Um, you know, I guess it depends on the details.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:38 What do you think, Reid? Is Kamala-

Reid Hoffman 1:07:39 I'm not, I'm not endorsing it, I'm not opposing it. But, but just, just back to this point that should we support Kamala Harris even though we oppose all the policies that her campaign says she supports? 'Cause it seems like that's the argument now is that Silicon Valley's expected to support Harris even though she wants and her campaign has confirmed she wants a 44% capital gains tax. She wants a 25% unrealized gains tax. These are things that I think the vast majority of Silicon Valley considers to be disastrous for the startup ecosystem. Should we support her in spite of those things?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:14 Well- Okay. Look, The Information did a p- an actual data poll as opposed to us being talking heads saying, "We say that Silicon Valley does X or Y." And, you know, The Information's poll showed that there was, you know, much broader support for the Democratic ticket than the Republican ticket. Just use-

Reid Hoffman 1:08:31 Wait, wait. Is that, is that the thing that Ron Conway just tweeted?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:33 He might have. Uh, I don't know if he just tweeted a poll.

David Friedberg 1:08:35 No, no, no, no, no. That's, that's different.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:36 That, that's just ... No, no, no.

David Friedberg 1:08:36 That's DC for Kamala.

Reid Hoffman 1:08:38 That's different. That's different.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:38 That's a subset. Yeah.

Reid Hoffman 1:08:39 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:08:39 That's a, that's a, that's a different group. That's a group to counteract you and Chamath, uh, uh, throwing a fundraiser for Trump (laughs) I think, where that came from.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:48 Yeah. Exactly. Whatever, whatever.

David Friedberg 1:08:48 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:48 So, so but The, The Information, a news source, that, that, that ran a poll, you know, did it objectively, ran the whole thing to try to answer the question, came out with more folks in favor of, you know, uh, the Biden-Harris ticket than, uh, the Trump ticket.

David Friedberg 1:09:02 I believe that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:04 Well- Well, 'cause, 'cause look, taxes is an important issue. And I think if you ask any s- any Silicon Valley business person, they say, "Look, lower capital gains, promote long-term investment." Ask me, that's what I would say too. But, you know, you kinda go, well, what actually in fact you most need for business is stability, uh, rule of law, not grifter capitalism where it's like-

David Friedberg 1:09:23 Mm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:23 ... you know, give me a ability to launch my own NFT, uh, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

David Friedberg 1:09:28 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:28 You know, that's what they go, "We want that." And by the way, we can navigate a higher tax rate. It'll be less fast on growth and everything else, but we can still invest, create businesses, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But we can't do it with, you know, kind of a, uh-

David Friedberg 1:09:43 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:43 ... corroding the rule of law. Right? Like, you know, I think both, uh, David, both you and Chamath spoke out against the January 6th stuff. I'm curious where you are on that now. It's still top of mind for me. That's the reason why the kinda the rule of law thing is my red line, not a tax policy. Well, let me ask you about that formally here. There are five cases against Trump. You have, uh, the insurrection case, you have the New York taxes case, you have the hush money case, you have the E. Jean Carroll case, uh, and, um ... What am I missing there? Oh, and the, uh, documents case. You funded, uh, like Peter Thiel funded the Gawker case, uh, the E. Jean Carroll case, uh, which Trump lost. And, uh, just to ask you, why did you choose to fund that? And do you believe Trump sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll? Well, it's kinda not relevant whether or not I did or not. What I funded was an ability to have, you know, kind of a woman who doesn't have power who's being threatened by a rich man with a lot of money and power to try to silence her, to have her day in court where 12 everyday Americans (laughs) right? Can come to a judgment. And their judgment was, uh, that there was an assault and there was slander about the assault, um, and they did it twice. And so, that was the reason I funded it. And, you know, I think that that's important. We, you know, the laws apply more importantly to rich and powerful people than it does to poor people. Um, that's, that's the important about ... The one thing I love about America is a rule of law system. And I think that's what's most important and that's what's really fundamental. That's my red line relative to the kinda lines in the sand that we're talking about. Um, and, you know, that's, uh, you know, that's the reason why in the various kind of lawsuits where there'd seem to be that that's what's being emphasized, then, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm happy to support them.

Reid Hoffman 1:11:33 I, I just don't see-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:33 When you look at the other four lawsuits-

Reid Hoffman 1:11:34 I don't, I don't see how it's rule of law when you have a, uh, district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who's elected on a promise to get Trump. He then takes what are at most, uh, a, a bookkeeping misdemeanor that's past the statute of limitations, that's expired, and he turns into 34 felony charges on a legal theory that was never explained to the jury. And then basically, Trump is convicted in a sham trial by a hyper-partisan New York jury system so that Democrats can then run-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:07 What do you think of that trial?

Reid Hoffman 1:12:08 ... on the branding, on the branding that he's a "convicted felon."

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:11 So there are, there are four other trials. We got your take on the first one.

Reid Hoffman 1:12:14 I don't, I don't think it's r-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:15 What do you think of that one?

Reid Hoffman 1:12:15 I don't think it's rule of law. Hold on. Let me ... I don't think it's rule of law-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:17 Well, I was trying to get Reid's feedback.

Reid Hoffman 1:12:18 I wanna get Reid's feedback too, but let me just finish my point. I don't think it's rule of law when Trump is prosecuted on a documents charge that Biden himself is guilty of. He's got all these documents-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:28 Okay.

Reid Hoffman 1:12:28 ... in his garage for decades, which the, the judge has thrown out. And we've seen a bunch of these law affair cases where Trump has ultimately prevailed. The judge has-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:38 Okay.

Reid Hoffman 1:12:38 ... thrown it out or he's won on appeal.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:40 So, Reid-

Reid Hoffman 1:12:40 So I don't under- That seems to me like abuse of the legal system-... for a partisan political goal, not rule of law.

David Sacks 1:12:46 Okay. So, Reid, there's four other cases. Two of them, Trump's been convicted in, two of them are outstanding. What's your take on the four cases? You've