Inflated GDP?, Google earnings, How the media lost trust, Rogan/Trump search controversy, Election!

1. 0:00 – 4:50

   Bestie intros!

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      We had dinner last week, and Sacks and I got bombed last week.

   2. DSDavid Sacks0:04

      (laughs) Oh my God.

   3. JCJason Calacanis0:04

      We had dinner and we drank a quadruple Casa... What? Azul.

   4. DSDavid Sacks0:10

      I've not seen JCal drink like that before.

   5. JCJason Calacanis0:12

      Ooh, I was so drunk.

   6. DSDavid Sacks0:13

      I stalked him for a few minutes while he was drinking.

   7. JCJason Calacanis0:14

      I mean, Casa Azul-

   8. DSDavid Sacks0:16

      He tore my house apart getting back in.

   9. JCJason Calacanis0:19

      Oh my God, that's so true.

   10. DSDavid Sacks0:20

       Like a, like a bear. Like a bear.

   11. JCJason Calacanis0:21

       I went Brooklyn style.

   12. DSDavid Sacks0:22

       He was like a bear. He was like a drunk bear.

   13. JCJason Calacanis0:24

       But, uh, I spoke to the lady of the manor and I will be staying at Sacks' house next time, so I will be able to-

   14. DSDavid Sacks0:31

       Nice.

   15. JCJason Calacanis0:31

       ... refresh the ranch's soap and-

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:33

       Wait, really?

   17. JCJason Calacanis0:33

       ... towels. Yeah, I'm staying at your place.

   18. DSDavid Sacks0:35

       (laughs)

   19. DFDavid Friedberg0:35

       (laughs)

   20. JCJason Calacanis0:35

       I need... You know what? I forgot to get towels when I was at Chamath's. He's got these amazing embroidered towels, so I'll just hit those up when I hit your place. Um, but I-

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:43

       It's gonna be really funny to go to JCal ranch and there's gonna be a big S on his towels.

   22. JCJason Calacanis0:47

       (laughs) There'll be an S.

   23. DSDavid Sacks0:48

       (laughs)

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:48

       We'll just be like, "Wait, why, why is there an S on-"

   25. JCJason Calacanis0:50

       I got the robe that says DS on it.

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:52

       "... All our towels at JCal Ranch?"

   27. DSDavid Sacks0:52

       (laughs)

   28. DFDavid Friedberg0:52

       (laughs)

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:52

       (laughs)

   30. JCJason Calacanis0:53

       I've got a robe on the back, it says MAGA. (laughs)
2. 4:50 – 28:26

   US Real GDP growth comes in at 2.8%, but there are underlying issues

   1. DSDavid Sacks4:50

   2. JCJason Calacanis4:50

      All right, let's get to work. You know what's winning as well, is the US GDP. Here we go. It grew a slightly slower than expected, but the top line numbers are healthy. Looks like the soft landing might be baked in. We'll see. On Wednesday, the Department of Commerce reported that real GDP grew 2.8% in Q3. Uh, that means it's adjusted for inflation. And, um, you know, you ha- you can't look at these things in a vacuum. You have to look at the other Western countries and, uh, their GDP. Japan, 0.7. Australia, 0.2. Germany, 0.2. Canada, 0.5. The world is not growing. US is growing briskly and, um, in terms of how to think about it, 2 to 3% is, uh, sort of the sweet spot for mature economies. Above 3%, positive, but can also signal overheating like we experienced during ZIRP in 2021. Under 2%, yeah, stagnation. Uh, US GDP was 30 basis points below the Dow Jones consensus forecast of 3.1%. There's your chart, uh, if you missed it. And, um, obviously inflation, we talked about this last week, is at 2.4%, very close to the 2% target. Unemployment, 4.1%, close to historic lows. 10-year Treasury, 4.3%, and obviously stock market at-... its all-time high again. There's your S&P, Dow, and Nasdaq. As we've talked about over and over again, Chamath, the federal debt is the issue, 35 trillion in debt. We have a trillion in annual interest payments on that debt. And Freberg, your pet peeve, 23.5 million directly and millions more indirectly. As we know, federal government employees now at three million. That's about one percent of the country. And, uh, state government employees, 5.5 million, local governments, 15 million. Put it all together and we got almost 25 million people working for our government. What do you think the prescription here is, Freberg, as we, uh, uh, come up on Election Day and we look towards next year? Do you believe we can cut this crazy spending? What do you think is gonna happen to the economy? Will it overheat? Soft landing? You're running a company now, so you have to think about this, obviously.

   3. DFDavid Friedberg7:05

      Uh, well, I'll separate running a company, because I think that's got to be treated independently from macro. You can't build your business around macro. But 10-year Treasurys are sitting at just around 4.3%. I think what the market is telling us... And remember, that's off of a low. Right when the, the rate cuts were happening, if you remember, in mid-September, we got down to just around 3.5%. The market is telling us that with the sort of economic growth we're seeing, low unemployment, and, you know, call it modest inflation, this is not the time to be cutting rates. And the market is saying, "We are expecting higher rates for longer." So, I do think that that's one big kind of turnaround that's happened in the last 90 days, which is really a, I think a big surprise to a lot of folks, is just how robust things are relative to where folks thought that they were about 90 days ago, urging, pleading, and, uh, supposedly needing a big rate cut to get the economy moving again. But I think at the end of the day, everyone is looking to the election as kind of the next big moment-

   4. JCJason Calacanis8:04

      Yeah.

   5. DFDavid Friedberg8:04

      ... in the economy. Both Trump and Kamala have made fiscal proposals that would be deeply expensive if you assume the, you know, these, these budgeting groups that go out and take their policy proposals and try and build a model against them, that they're both gonna add trillions of dollars to the debt, they're gonna increase deficit spending, et cetera. But the reality is that neither of them are actually gonna end up theoretically being able to execute all those policies, and there will likely be some degree of-

   6. JCJason Calacanis8:33

      So-

   7. DFDavid Friedberg8:33

      ... of difference-

   8. JCJason Calacanis8:35

      ... that's a great point.

   9. DFDavid Friedberg8:35

      ... to where we end up on spending.

   10. JCJason Calacanis8:36

       Chamath, a lot of talk about DOGE, the Department of Government, uh, what is the last word?

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya8:44

       Efficiency.

   12. DFDavid Friedberg8:45

       Efficiency.

   13. JCJason Calacanis8:45

       Efficiency, that Elon might be collaborating on. What do you think the chances are... He said there could be two trillion in, in savings that could occur. What are the chances that any meaningful cuts happen and we reverse the trend in, if Trump, say, he wins and he, and he, and he creates that position?

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya9:03

       I think the first question that'll inform how dramatic the cuts are is whether we organize ourselves around an accurate sense of where the actual economy is. If you look at the print today, it would actually tell you that things are pretty okay and that we are not sort of near an unsustainable turning point. However, and Nick, if you wanna just throw up this chart, if you back out the percentage of government consumption that is included in GDP, you start to see a very different picture, which is that over the last two and a half years, all of the economic gains under the Biden administration have largely been through government consumption. What that means is that private industry has been standing on the sidelines somewhat, and that actually maps to a lot of this intuition that I've had over the last few months when I've said I think we're in a low-key recession. Because what I could never figure out is why I would look at the earnings transcripts of a bunch of companies who would constantly talk about softening demand... And by the way, this is across the board. It wasn't just CPG companies but Dropbox as an example, same sort of thing. They just laid off 20% of their staff and the, and the memo was about weakening demand. So, this is a broad-based softening as far as companies experience the economy, but the high-level number is positive, which would make you think that everything is fine. But when you look at that chart and you back out the percentage of the positive news that the government is responsible for, what it means is the economy is flat and the economy isn't growing, which means that roughly there are a bunch of folks that are seeing contraction. So, I think that if you normalize on that view of the world, I think the cuts that Elon will effect will be meaningful and necessary.

   15. JCJason Calacanis11:18

       If you, uh, pull up this chart, Nick, of the, uh, federal net outlays as percentage of GDP-

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya11:24

       I mean, you're, you're-

   17. JCJason Calacanis11:24

       ... you get a good idea of the spending.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya11:25

       ... basically at a, you're, you're at a flat, stalling economy.

   19. JCJason Calacanis11:29

       Well, if you look at this, you know, we, we basically have had high teens during our lifetime, Clinton era, '70s and '80s, and then, uh, it's gone up into the 20s now. So, that is definitely something, the amount of spending we're doing.

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya11:44

       No, but, uh, sorry. Just, uh, again, this is where you can get a little confused by data. Jason-

   21. JCJason Calacanis11:48

       Yeah, sure.

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya11:48

       ... this is net outlays.

   23. JCJason Calacanis11:50

       Yeah.

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya11:50

       And that's different from total gross government spending, which also includes QE. So, if you go back to the other chart, why is this one going down and the other one represents 85% of GDP? It's because that one is a more accurate sense of what the government is doing across all of its tentacles in the United States economy. It includes the money printer going brr, which the net outlays chart doesn't include.So just to be clear about what's happening, 85% of this quarter's GDP was induced by the government. If you sub- if you sub it out, so take 2.8% and multiply it by .15, that is the true growth ex the United States government that exists in the United States economy today.

   25. JCJason Calacanis12:33

       Sax, your thoughts here on the GDP. Obviously looks pretty good for Biden-Harris to have all these stats going in their favor, but there is the caveat, obviously, about the government spending in there.

   26. DSDavid Sacks12:48

       Yeah. No, I think that's right. I mean, I- I think that for Harris in this election, it's probably a little too late for this GDP report to be helpful.

   27. JCJason Calacanis12:58

       Hmm.

   28. DSDavid Sacks12:58

       If you go back all the way to 1992 where the whole election hinged on the economy, remember that was Bill Clinton running against George H.W. Bush and Clinton's message was it's the economy, stupid.

   29. JCJason Calacanis13:10

       Yep.

   30. DSDavid Sacks13:11

       And, um-
3. 28:26 – 35:34

   Google earnings: YouTube and Cloud post huge quarters, would they have survived outside of Google?

   1. JCJason Calacanis28:26

      docket. Tech earnings this week, Google had a great quarter. Let's go over that a bit here. You're all momada, Friedberg. They beat top line and bottom line, stock popped 5%. Looks like Cloud and YouTube are the story here. Total revenue, let this sink in, (laughs) 88.3 billion, up 15% year over year. Search was, uh, 49 billion of that. And, uh, their operating income is now up 34% year over year. I think the CFO is getting some work done there, 28.5 billion, and net income was 26.3 billion. Interestingly, people are expecting even larger profits. They got a new CFO over there who said they could push a little further on cost cutting, and she said the company will use AI to cut costs by streamlining workflows and managing headcount physical footprint. I think that means more layoffs are coming to big tech. YouTube had a tremendous quarter, ad revenue 8.9 billion, Chamath. That's up 12%. But Sundar said something interesting. He said YouTube surpassed 50 billion in total revenue over the past year. And so, if you do a little, uh, BOATE math, that's the back of the envelope math for those of you at home who haven't heard that acronym, Google doesn't report YouTube's non-ad revenue, but we know YouTube had 35 billion in ad revenue over the last year. That means they're doing about 15 billion in premium paid products. YouTube TV, NFL Sunday Ticket, YouTube Premium, which is the greatest (laughs) product ever. It takes ads out of YouTube and makes it usable. So, a 70/30 split. Cloud had a blowout quarter. Google Cloud, I see that all the time now, 11.4 billion in revenue on 35% annual growth with 1.9 billion in operating profit. I mean, it's printing money. There are seven quasi-monopolies in the world. They're all American, and if we allow them to flourish, we'll be good. If we hamper them a little bit-

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya30:33

      ... and allow other companies to pick up the white space, will be great. Over to you.

   3. JCJason Calacanis30:39

      Okay, there's your an- That's called analysis, Chamath, and it's great analysis.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg30:42

      And what if we break them up, Chamath?

   5. JCJason Calacanis30:44

      And if we break them up?

   6. CPChamath Palihapitiya30:46

      I think that you'll have a lot more... The, the sum is greater than the parts.

   7. JCJason Calacanis30:51

      I mean, clearly YouTube would be-

   8. DFDavid Friedberg30:53

      The, so, so if you, if you take the, if you take the...

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya30:53

      ... one of the great companies right now and spun them. ... perspective of if you own stock in any of these companies, the sum of the parts analysis would tell you that the breakup value is greater than the way that these companies get discounted. You can look at the multiples that they trade at, and you can see that. So if you're a shareholder of the company, you actually silently probably want them broken up because you'll get individual shares that are each will be worth more. Separately, if you are a shareholder of the United States economy, you also probably want them broken up because then you'll just have many more companies creating economic value, which then drives the tax rolls, which benefit the United States' balance sheet. It's hard to see unless you're an employee of the company or you derive a lot of ego from the existence of a company the way it is, that you would need it to stay where- how it is.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg31:51

       Well, let me challenge your point on two fronts. In, in Google's case, both YouTube and GCP required many, many, many, many billions of dollars of investment over many years, same with Waymo by the way, at this point, that took a long time and a lot of capital to get the payback on. If those were standalone businesses and they didn't have the profits being derived from search and ads over many years, they would not have been able to build those incredible businesses. So if you do break these businesses up, what you do lose is the ability for an American juggernaut to be able, just like Amazon did with AWS and Apple did, and we can go through the list, to build these new businesses that require the cash flows from the old businesses. As separate companies, it becomes much harder to make that degree of an investment.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya32:38

       That-

   12. JCJason Calacanis32:38

       You're s-

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya32:38

       That angle, that angle of bellyaching is not gonna pass muster because it's all about litigating the past, and you gotta play the ball where it lies. Where it lies is, this business is in a position where you can probably demarcate four or five logical business units. Again, I'm not saying-

   14. DFDavid Friedberg32:55

       Today.

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya32:55

       ... that it should happen.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg32:56

       Today, for sure. Yeah.

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya32:56

       But it will happen and, and the, the argument of, "But the past," is not gonna work.

   18. DFDavid Friedberg33:00

       No, no, no. I'm not, yeah, I'm not disagreeing with your point about like, "Hey, if these things broke up, people would make money." I'm just ar- I'm just trying to understand this point about American dynamism, or whatever you want to call it, that these companies are all in America, they've all been su- successful because they've been led by amazing founders. They've reinvested so much of the profit they've generated back into building insane new businesses that took a lot of capital and a lot of time, and eventually they paid off and they became the next generation of ginormous new businesses that would have not have possibly existed if not for the will and the cash flows coming from those old businesses, the w- the-

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya33:33

       But you also have a companion economy in the capital markets where there's hundreds of billions of dollars that go and fill in the gaps, and I think the reality is, the people in the capital markets are not stupid, and if these big companies hadn't spent hundreds of billions of dollars, the capital markets would have. So I don't think that that-

   20. DFDavid Friedberg33:49

       If Google didn't, if Google, you know, l- let's just play a scenario, and I'm, I'm not trying to relitigate the past, but if Google did not own YouTube, what do you think would have happened with YouTube?

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya33:56

       It would have been fine. It would have gotten funded and it would have been fine.

   22. DFDavid Friedberg34:00

       It would have raised the billions-

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:01

       It could-

   24. DFDavid Friedberg34:01

       And the reason- And built the infra- 'Cause do you, do you remember, YouTube had a real infrastructure problem?

   25. JCJason Calacanis34:04

       They were under a serious lawsuit. I think they would have shut down.

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:07

       The reason is because people are smart enough to understand when then there's the potential to make money, okay, and the free markets do a really good job of highlighting where that's possible. Again, there is no point relitigating this, but I think it would have gotten funded-

   27. DFDavid Friedberg34:26

       Could GCP or-

   28. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:26

       Yeah, it would have been fine.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg34:27

       Could GCP or AWS get funded with $10 billion?

   30. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:29

       Yes.
4. 35:34 – 41:27

   Sacks's idea to auction off public spectrum licenses of major broadcast networks

   1. DFDavid Friedberg35:34

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:34

      You know, Sax had this great tweet this past week and I almost quote tweeted it, but I thought, "I don't want to create a lot more noise where there doesn't need to be."

   3. DFDavid Friedberg35:44

      Sax is paying attention now.

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:45

      But he had this tweet about taking back the licenses for the main-

   5. DFDavid Friedberg35:50

      Yeah.

   6. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:50

      ... broadcast channels, and I thought that was an excellent thing and I quote tweeted something where I was like, "Yeah, we should buy that for all in." And I said it half-jokingly, but-

   7. DFDavid Friedberg36:01

      (laughs)

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya36:01

      ... I did, because I think that if those licenses were up for grabs, what would happen is-

   9. DFDavid Friedberg36:07

      Yeah.

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya36:07

       ... a bunch of private equity people would get behind Rogan, a bunch of private equity people would get behind us, and we would all bid and the outcome would be better. So, the point is that these small structural changes, and I know that it may seem large to break up Google, it's not. It's a small thing in the grand course of American business history. It's not gonna really matter that much. Would be good generally through the lens of the individual shareholder and through the lens of the shareholder of the United States. That's it.

   11. DFDavid Friedberg36:38

       Sax, can you tell us about the...

   12. JCJason Calacanis36:40

       ... broadcast licensing comment that you made. I thought it was actually pretty good too.

   13. DSDavid Sacks36:44

       Yeah, there's a history to this. I mean, originally in the US we had three major broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, and they were given licenses of public spectrum from the FCC, and those licenses were free, but in exchange for them, the major broadcast networks had these various requirements to serve the public interest, to be fair-

   14. DFDavid Friedberg37:05

       This was pre- pre-cable, and this was broadcast-

   15. DSDavid Sacks37:08

       Oh, this goes back, like-

   16. DFDavid Friedberg37:09

       ... over the air. Right.

   17. DSDavid Sacks37:09

       This goes back, like, 100 years, and it-

   18. DFDavid Friedberg37:11

       Just, just to be ... It's im- I think it's important to be clear because I, I, I don't think everyone understands that back in the day, all t- the TV networks only broadcast over the air, so they needed radio spectrum-

   19. DSDavid Sacks37:21

       Right.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg37:21

       ... allocated to them to th- to do that, which was a, you know, 100-year-old, kind of ... That's 100-year-old situation. Doesn't exist anymore. Sorry, go ahead.

   21. DSDavid Sacks37:28

       Yeah, it was the only way to get information broadcast on TV, was through this, this public spectrum. And so it kinda made sense in a world in which there are only three networks because that was the only way to get information, to have these fairness requirements and public interest requirements, and so it was heavily regulated. Well, now it's a century later and there's so many ways to get information. You've got cable, obviously, meant that we went from three or four networks to hundreds. And then, of course, you've got the internet and you've got streaming. So there's now an infinite number of ways to get information in real time, including video and, and that sort of thing. You've also got social networks, you've got X, you've been ... And all the rest. So there's no shelf space limit anymore. There's no scarcity. And so therefore, tying up this very valuable spectrum by giving it for free to the, to the broadcast networks just doesn't really make sense in the same way. And what we should do is just auction off this spectrum, use the money to pay down the national debt, and, and in that way, it'll go to its most highly valued use. The market will figure out what that use is. If the broadcast networks are the most highly valued way to use this spectrum, then they'll win the auction. But I suspect they won't-

   22. JCJason Calacanis38:57

       Wait, isn't that exactly ... 'Cause they did-

   23. DSDavid Sacks38:58

       ... because this doesn't make sense.

   24. JCJason Calacanis38:58

       ... they did this auction in 2016, right? For 15 years.

   25. DSDavid Sacks39:01

       They've been gradually auctioning off more-

   26. JCJason Calacanis39:03

       Yeah.

   27. DSDavid Sacks39:03

       ... spectrum, but we're talking about here, this is, like, the most choice, valuable part of, of public spectrum. So for example, one of the reasons why this spectrum is valuable is because it can easily go through walls, right? Like, you can watch your TV inside your house, and-

   28. JCJason Calacanis39:22

       Yeah.

   29. DSDavid Sacks39:22

       ... this broadcast spectrum is good at getting through those walls. Imagine the types of GPS apps you could enable with that kind of precision, right? So there's many other ways, in theory, that this spectrum could be used, and you would be able to unleash, I think, a lot of innovation in next generation wireless apps if this spectrum were available. I don't think the public would lose anything because ABC, CBS, NBC, first of all, I mean, these networks are basically a commodity now. There's so many other ways to get news, and they'll still be available through the internet and through cable. This is what-

   30. JCJason Calacanis39:57

       So you're saying to speed up these auctions, 'cause they do occur every 15 years or something to that ...
5. 41:27 – 53:35

   How the media became one of the least trusted institutions in the US

   1. DSDavid Sacks41:27

   2. JCJason Calacanis41:27

      Well, and then this parallels into, I think, some of the research that's going on right now around legacy media and trust in media. A bunch of reports have been coming out about this. It's not shocking to anybody who listens to this podcast, but confidence in institutions is tracked by a number of different organizations, Gallup being one of them. And if we look (laughs) at how Americans feel, uh, and trust has generally been going down in everything. The military, police-

   3. DFDavid Friedberg41:57

      It's also being tr- it's also being tracked in the WaPo op-ed section.

   4. JCJason Calacanis42:01

      (laughs) Yeah. Exactly. Uh, we'll get to that.

   5. DFDavid Friedberg42:04

      Are you gonna pull that up, JCal? Do you have that or no?

   6. JCJason Calacanis42:06

      Uh, yeah, we'll talk about all that.

   7. DFDavid Friedberg42:07

      Bezos's letter?

   8. JCJason Calacanis42:07

      Yeah.

   9. DFDavid Friedberg42:07

      Okay.

   10. JCJason Calacanis42:08

       But here, if you take a look at from 2021, 2022, and into 2023, television news went from 16 down to 11 and back up to 14, but is amongst the lowest in terms of trust in ... And 40% of Americans have no trust in media at all, according to this Gallup poll. Here's, uh, how it breaks down by party, Republican, Independent, and Democrats. Confidence by the Democrats, 58%. Independents, 29%. Republicans, 11%.... in mass media. Your thoughts, Friedberg? As we look at just trust in general in institutions, this transitionary period we're in, and specifically the media.

   11. DFDavid Friedberg42:59

       I do think, we've talked about this a number of times in the past, so without rehashing too much, I think that many of the institutions that have offered media have had to move away from providing data and information because data and information has commoditized. It's available broadly through the internet and other places. So the actual gathering of information is now democratized. You know, agencies put their data on their website. Stock mar- stock markets are published on the internet. So the internet has democratized access to information. So the media companies that have historically been arbiters of information have had to become, effectively, content businesses. They've had to provide more than just information. And what has happened is a iterative feedback system whereby the more, kind of, angry they can make someone, the more upset they can make someone, the, the more emotive they can make a, a reader or a viewer or a listener, the more clicks they get. The more the kind of limbic system triggers that consumer to come back and consume some more of their media. And so the iterative development cycle is that things look like they're one side versus another side in nearly every context. In every piece of media, everyone is opinionated and making a position point from a side, from a perceived side that they are representing because it is emotive to the readers, and the readers come back and they align with that side, and they wanna have more of that because it insights their limbic system.

   12. JCJason Calacanis44:24

       Tribalism.

   13. DFDavid Friedberg44:25

       So that's what happened. And as, as a result, when people look at it and assume that it's what it used to be, which is objective truth, fact-finding, information-gathering, and it is not that, they're like, "Well, this isn't even news anymore." And the truth is, it's not, because information is democratized. It's available to you anywhere and everywhere you want it. You can get it through citizen journalism, via blogs, via podcasts, via Twitter, via many other places. And so the o- the legacy media companies have effectively become emotive content companies in order to drive clicks, drive views, sell ads. That's really all this whole story is, and I don't think that that's gonna shift. I don't think that Jeff Bezos's attempt to try and return WaPo back to being a fact-finding organization is gonna be successful. I think all the consumers that read WaPo today, they love the one-sided nature. They love the bias that they read. It makes them feel good. I think that the people that work there love the bias. They love writing those opinion pieces. It makes them feel good. I don't think anyone actually wants boring news anymore, because you know what? They can go to a website from the government itself or from a company itself and just read the information, and frankly, if they wanna get unbiased, honest, factual information, there's 100 other sources.

   14. JCJason Calacanis45:34

       Well, and then here on this-

   15. DFDavid Friedberg45:35

       And the commentary, the com- Yeah, the commentary about off-the-cuff, et cetera, you know what that is? That's called authentic conversation. That is how people speak. When we all get together, we are not journalists. We are not necessarily well-versed (laughs) . Let's be honest, we mess things up a lot. We say off-the-cuff comments that are wrong very often. But that's just how people speak, and it feels authentic, and when we do have signal, I think that listeners and viewers are smart enough to separate that signal from noise, and they are going to make their own decisions about what they find to be truth and factual and what they're gonna use to make decisions in their life. And that's, I think, how people wanna consume information now. It's not being told what the truth is by some fake authority.

   16. JCJason Calacanis46:16

       And here is a clip from the podcast, uh, last year.

   17. DSDavid Sacks46:20

       Podcasts could play a huge role. Just like in 2016, social media broke through and played a huge role-

   18. JCJason Calacanis46:25

       Yeah.

   19. DSDavid Sacks46:25

       ... I think in 2024, I think that podcasts could break through-

   20. JCJason Calacanis46:28

       Podcasts will decide the election.

   21. DSDavid Sacks46:30

       ... and be the way that unorthodox candidates get their message out. It could be really interesting.

   22. JCJason Calacanis46:33

       It could be the way all candidates get their message out. We're moving from traditional media defining these candidates to direct to consumer, direct through Twitter/X, direct through podcasts, this podcast included. What we're witnessing right now is the transition from traditional media and the establishment defining who the great candidates are, to the public and the people on podcasts and social media who are the tip of the spear and the vanguard, they're gonna pick the winners.

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya47:01

       I love you both. You guys totally nailed it. Look at that.

   24. JCJason Calacanis47:05

       Sachs, your thoughts on this sort of transition? Interestingly, as we know, Rogan had Trump on, over 40 million views now.

   25. DSDavid Sacks47:13

       I think they're up to 100 million views now for that Rogan-Trump interview.

   26. JCJason Calacanis47:17

       Oh, including X, I'm sure, yeah.

   27. DSDavid Sacks47:17

       Despite the fact that you literally could not find it if you searched for it in (laughs) Google or YouTube. It's quite amazing.

   28. JCJason Calacanis47:22

       Well, we'll get to that in a second. Yeah, that's a, an interesting one. I got a take on that. But what do you take from Rogan getting, let's say, many more views than the last two presidential debates? Trump-Harris, 67 million viewers-

   29. DSDavid Sacks47:37

       Yeah.

   30. JCJason Calacanis47:37

       Trump-Biden, 51 million viewers. I think maybe Rogan, combined with his two episodes, will get more (laughs) than the first two debates.
6. 53:35 – 1:08:04

   Why Joe Rogan's interview with Trump was not appearing in YouTube search results

   1. JCJason Calacanis53:35

      that wrong. The search issue, there was some complaints that YouTube might have been, like, I don't know, hiding the video, which didn't make much sense to people. So I did a, an investigation of that facts. You're laughing. Go ahead.

   2. DSDavid Sacks53:49

      Well, finish what you're saying.

   3. JCJason Calacanis53:51

      No, no, no. Go ahead.

   4. DSDavid Sacks53:51

      I have a different point of view than you on this, but-

   5. JCJason Calacanis53:53

      I didn't even get my point of view.

   6. DSDavid Sacks53:54

      I know. I've, I've seen it on Twitter, but keep, keep going.

   7. JCJason Calacanis53:57

      (laughs)

   8. DSDavid Sacks53:57

      Oh. Well, no, I did, um, a search on Bing. You're gonna defend Google, I know.

   9. JCJason Calacanis54:01

      No, no, I'm not defending Google. I'm just explaining to people how search works independent of it. I went to Bing, DuckDuckGo, search.Brave.com, Google, YouTube, Google Video. And what people don't understand about how the search algorithms work is they are designed to increase advertising dollars, and Freeburg will back me up this, he worked at Google, and session length. That's the goal. Am I correct, Freeburg, with algorithms, whether it's TikTok, YouTubes, et cetera?

   10. DSDavid Sacks54:32

       Yeah, I, I'm not gonna speak as an authority on this.

   11. JCJason Calacanis54:32

       Increase session time, increase revenue.

   12. DSDavid Sacks54:35

       I know more about search results. I don't know as much about the video stuff, so-

   13. JCJason Calacanis54:38

       So when you look at that, it's, it's a very nuanced thing. But Joe Rogan doesn't monetize his search. It is not... Make any money for them. And then clips do make money for YouTube, and the clips have flooded the zone. So if you do a search on any search engine, whether it's Bing or-... Brave or DuckDuckGo, Google or YouTube, any of them, what you'll find is the clips beat out the main episodes all the time. This happens to our podcast. When people clip our podcast, they will do keyword stuffing and they'll beat us, and it will beat the algorithm because the algorithm wants to get ads, and we don't have ads turned on either. So, people have this frequent frustration with This Week in Startups, my other podcast, All In Here, and Joe Rogan, that anything that's not monetized on YouTube doesn't rank high. And if you look, all of the clips, and this makes sense if you just think logically, the clips will s- will generate more engagement because you get to watch the highlights. So, it's kind of like sports highlights. Sacks, would you like to conspiracy theory this and tell us that Sergey is-

   14. DSDavid Sacks55:45

       Well, I don't, I don't see it's a conspir-

   15. JCJason Calacanis55:46

       ... sandbagging for the Democrats or something by hiding the YouTube video?

   16. DSDavid Sacks55:49

       Well, I don't see it's a conspiracy theory.

   17. JCJason Calacanis55:50

       Oh.

   18. DSDavid Sacks55:50

       You can just... I mean, if you go to Google every single day and just type in a Trump-related search term versus a Kamala- r- related search term, you'll see the difference in coverage. But back to the, the Rogan thing. Look, Google is a search engine. This is what they're supposed to be good at. You have an interview between the biggest podcaster in the world and a former president who's probably the most famous person in the world. It's massively trending. It's got something like 100 million views. At the time that people noticed that you couldn't find it on YouTube, it already had something like 34 million views. What I'm saying is, you have to work pretty hard as a search engine for your algorithm to be so bad that you can't find that interview. Okay? When I went to YouTube and tried to find it, at first I typed in Trump Rogan interview, couldn't find it. Then I typed Trump Rogan interview podcast, couldn't find, it was just clips. Then it was Trump Rogan full interview, full pul- podcast, still couldn't find it. There's no question that just as a factual matter, this episode was suppressed in YouTube's search. If you went to the main Google search engine and did a similar search, what you would have found as the number one search result was an article from the Arizona Republic, which is a publication I've never even heard of, that would have told you that the Rogan interview with Trump was a brain-rotted waste of three hours. That's the number one result. Somehow Google decides that its number one result for the Rogan interview was this Arizona Republic story. Okay? I, I mean, that is not a search engine doing its job. So, it's pretty obvious to me that they're using other factors in deciding what to surface here, and somehow the results end up being almost universally negative towards Trump, and almost universally positive towards Kamala. I think you've got to, at this point, have your head buried really deep in the sand not to think that Google is incredibly biased in this election-

   19. JCJason Calacanis57:49

       So-

   20. DSDavid Sacks57:49

       ... against Trump.

   21. JCJason Calacanis57:50

       ... let me pull up some facts to show how wrong you are. If you pull up YouTube here-

   22. DFDavid Friedberg57:57

       (laughs) That's so great.

   23. JCJason Calacanis57:57

       ... here's an image of the YouTube search results that I just did for the Trump-Rogan. And what you'll see is, as I explained previously, clips perform better and make money. They make money, so the algorithm favors those. And what you'll see here is Fox News, et cetera, and all these clips, and then eventually you get to the Joe Rogan interview. And if you look at Bing's search results for Rogan Trump interview, what you'll see is all the search engines put news up first, then they go to organic. So, it's just a fundamental misunderstanding of how search is designed for users. They start with news on every search engine today. And then here's Google's same thing, and then what you'll see here is on the Google and on the Bing images you have a collection, you know, typically five or six news stories, then they go to the first organic. So, people just don't understand how search works. It's always news first when you type in a politician's name. And then when you look at the news, or you e- it has New York Post, right-leaning, you have people who are dead center like AP in there, and you have Fox News there in the Google one. So, of the first five, two of them are right-leaning. Uh, and AP is obviously in the middle. Forbes, I don't know, maybe Forbes is right-leaning too? Freeburg, or what about you?

   24. DFDavid Friedberg59:09

       Well, I was gonna say, I read somewhere, so I have no direct knowledge about this, I actually pinged several people at Google to ask them what was going on, and I did not get a clear response. I didn't, I, so, like, I have no insight as to what actually happened. But what I read online somewhere was that someone reported that someone at Google said that there were, there was kind of a, a whole bunch of people that clicked inappropriate content flagging on the video. So, like anti-Trump people-

   25. JCJason Calacanis59:37

       Oh, yeah.

   26. DFDavid Friedberg59:37

       ... went to the video, clicked that it was inappropriate, and when g- uh, when YouTube gets that many people clicking that this is inappropriate, it automatically flags it.

   27. JCJason Calacanis59:46

       Mass flagging, yes. It's a-

   28. DFDavid Friedberg59:47

       It mass flags, yeah.

   29. JCJason Calacanis59:48

       ... it is a, it is a technique people will use. They've used it on our program here, where they flagged it, yeah.

   30. DFDavid Friedberg59:52

       Right. So if you get like a million people that say at once, like, "Hey, there's inappropriate content in here."
7. 1:08:04 – 1:16:37

   Final pre-election segment: how it's tracking, election integrity, voter fraud stats

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:08:04

   2. DFDavid Friedberg1:08:04

      All right, guys. I'll quickly, uh, introduce our final political election update before our livestream on Tuesday. Obviously, a lot of daily freakouts, daily efforts at having an October surprise that will take down the other side, all sorts of drama, all sorts of insult. Not a lot of love in America right now. Super depressing and sad. All sorts of stuff happened this week. J-Cal, why don't you kick us off? What do you think is gonna happen on Tuesday? What are the things that you think are gonna move people between now and then?

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:08:37

      It's a toss-up. I mean, that's what everybody's saying. It looks like Trump's got a slight lead, and so I think it's gonna be a toss-up.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg1:08:44

      Sax, agreed? Are we 65/35 as polymarket predicts, or are we 100% Trump, or are we 90% Kamala Harris? What are we, uh, looking at?

   5. DSDavid Sacks1:08:54

      Well, you definitely can't say it's gonna be 100% anyone. I mean, but if, again, if you look at all the data, the data is definitely pointing towards Trump having an advantage. It's, uh, obviously the prediction markets are almost two to one in favor of Trump. The polling shows that Trump is ahead narrowly in the s- in all the swing states, I think every single one of them, even the, uh, sort of blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, that Harris must win, I think, in order to have a path to victory. Whereas Michigan and Wisconsin are very, very close, like one percent or less in the swing state polls. Pennsylvania polling shows that Trump is ahead by, I think, two or three. That's what I've seen today. So it's, it is looking good for Trump, and if you look at the numbers that Elon's group, the, that America PAC put out, it looks like the early voting in Pennsylvania is trending 500,000 votes better for Republicans in the early voting than four years ago.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg1:09:55

      But Sax, is that just pulling votes forward?

   7. DSDavid Sacks1:09:57

      It could be.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg1:09:57

      'Cause some folks have said-

   9. DSDavid Sacks1:09:58

      It could be.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg1:09:58

       Yeah.

   11. DSDavid Sacks1:09:59

       It could be, however-

   12. DFDavid Friedberg1:09:59

       Like insec- instead of showing up at the ballot box on Tuesday, a lot of folks are doing mail-ins and making sure they get their vote in in mail instead of going in person to those...

   13. DSDavid Sacks1:10:07

       Right. So then you gotta look at polling of people who say they're gonna vote but haven't voted yet in Pennsylvania, who say they're gonna vote on Election Day. And I think those numbers are running about 18 points ahead for Trump, which is about double what he needs to win. So he, just to be clear, the early voting favors Harris, but not by the same percentages that it did four years ago. So right now, it looks like Trump is tracking to win that state. But look, I can't guarantee it. I'm not representing that, you know, that's exactly what's gonna happen. But right now, the numbers are looking good. Remember, Biden only won Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes. And again, the swing so far is, uh, the Republicans are doing 500,000 votes better than they were doing four years ago.

   14. DFDavid Friedberg1:10:55

       So there's a lot of stories coming out on Twitter, on independent media, and on mainstream media, or legacy media as we might call it now, talking about, "Hey, I live in a house. I got 15 ballots mailed to me, all with different random names." And these sort of anecdotal stories are being pushed and then amplified by folks that are involved in the election. Chamath, is this kind of dangerous? Do we think that there really is a lot of this kind of election meddling happening? And if not, or if there is, is this kind of a dangerous thing to happen, where a lot of people are talking about this, where no matter what happens on Tuesday, people start to question the results of the election? How much should we be kinda worried about this rhetoric?

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:11:36

       I think there are two things. There's the substance, and then there's the strategy. The substance is that, does it really make sense that the most advanced and important country in the world doesn't have a uniform system where one ballot is given to every single American citizen who is eligible to vote? That probably makes sense, so we should probably just figure out how to do that. Separately, the strategy of it is for both sides to lay the groundwork to say that this thing somehow wasn't totally right down the middle. I am hoping for a very clear, decisive victory. And frankly, whichever candidate wins, I hope that it's very clear and decisive so that everybody is forced to deescalate and move on. Now, that said, I think what the early voting data shows is something that you haven't seen in the past, which is that there are a lot of Republican people that are voting early. I don't know what that means for Election Day. But typically, it's the Democrats that dominate these early voting processes, and they build what's called the firewall, and in these swing states, these firewalls become very important going into Election Day. And as Sax said, a bunch of these states are different than they've historically been in the favor of the Republicans.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg1:13:15

       I saw an article today that just said that they basically considered Nevada now in the Republican camp because, like, there's been so much early voting that it's about 60% of the total votes they think have already been cast since they've- they have a very clear Republican lead going into Election Day. So, there's all kinds of stuff here that's new. I just hope that it's just an absolutely crushing victory in one direction or the other so that we de-escalate and get- get on to the business of running the country.

   17. DSDavid Sacks1:13:45

       So, I'm gonna break with my- most of my Republican brethren on this and say, I think early voting is actually a good thing. It's- it's very convenient, right? Like, why force people to only vote on just one day? Because what if you get sick or a kid gets sick and you have to pick them up from school? There's a lot of things that can go wrong. It is more convenient to have, say, two or three weeks to be able to cast your vote. I actually think that's not a bad thing. And in terms of who it helps, I'm not sure. But I think that as the Republicans become more of a populist party and the Democrats become more of an elitist party, I think higher turnout might actually- might benefit Republicans regardless. I think it's a huge convenience for voters, and I think early voting is something that we should keep. The thing we got to change is in the states where you don't have to present any voter ID to show who you are, that's just crazy. I mean, you just- you go up to the polling place and you give your name and I guess your address, and they look you up in a computer and they hand you a ballot, and there's no verification that you're- you are who you say you are. That to me is crazy. The other thing that's crazy is that you can even get registered and added to the voter rolls in a lot of states without any proof of citizenship. So, there are states where you can go get a driver's license without proof of citizenship, and there's just a checkbox to be added to the voter rolls, and no one ever checks you're a citizen. And now you're on the voter roll and you can go pick up your ballot without any voter ID. That's just crazy to me. So, I think that after this election, there should be some sort of bill that gets passed and signed by the president that sets a minimum standard for- for voter integrity and-

   18. DFDavid Friedberg1:15:25

       For federal election. For federal election.

   19. DSDavid Sacks1:15:26

       For federal elections, right.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg1:15:27

       'Cause states can do what they want, right? Like, each state can vote how they want.

   21. DSDavid Sacks1:15:29

       I guess states can do what they want, but I don't think states should be able to do whatever they want in federal elections 'cause that affects all of us.

   22. DFDavid Friedberg1:15:33

       Sachs, I just want- I just want to- I wanna point out that each state is effectively voting for the folks that they want to have go to the electoral college, and that's really where the vote for president is cast. So, should there be-

   23. DSDavid Sacks1:15:44

       Yeah, but that affects all of us. If there's- Hold on. If there's cheating in several states and- and a close election... By the way, I'm not- I'm not accusing that of happening, okay? I'm just saying that if we have several states that don't have basic voter integrity-

   24. DFDavid Friedberg1:16:00

       I understand, but the way the-

   25. DSDavid Sacks1:16:01

       And that- and that affects the outcome of a national election-

   26. DFDavid Friedberg1:16:03

       But the way the r-

   27. DSDavid Sacks1:16:03

       ...that has a huge impact on all of us.

   28. DFDavid Friedberg1:16:05

       Let's just talk about this really important point, which I think a lot of folks ignore. It's not a direct democracy. It's not like everyone in the United States votes for the president. What happens is the states send a bunch of electors to go vote for the president. The- each state casts a vote for the president. How each state ultimately decides who they're going to vote for for president is through this kind of process that we've kind of standardized across the states, but each state is making a vote. So, shouldn't the states be able to kind of decide how they want to make their kind of voting process run internally to determine who the-

Episode duration: 1:30:51