All-In PodcastMag 7 sell-off, Wiz rejects Google, UBI, Kamala in, China's nuclear buildout, Sacks responds to PG
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Markets, UBI, Kamala, China’s Nukes: All-In’s Volatile Week Recapped
- The besties open with tech news around Wiz’s rejected $23B Google offer, Google Cloud’s surge, and CrowdStrike’s disastrous outage, then zoom out to broader market jitters and rotation out of the ‘Magnificent 7.’
- They dissect Sam Altman’s universal basic income (UBI) experiment, arguing cash transfers don’t sustainably improve lives and may even demotivate work compared with targeted, opportunity-creating support.
- On politics, they unpack Biden’s exit, Kamala Harris’s near-instant elevation as Democratic nominee, VP calculus (Shapiro, Kelly, Cooper), and rising antisemitism, especially around the idea that a Jewish VP might be a ‘liability.’
- The episode closes with Sacks’s detailed response to Paul Graham’s public attacks over Zenefits, and a substantial ‘Science Corner’ on China’s aggressive, low-cost nuclear buildout and the strategic threat it poses to U.S. industrial and AI competitiveness.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasWiz’s IPO Path Signals Confidence in Hypergrowth Cybersecurity, Not Just Deal Risk
Wiz turned down Google’s ~$23B acquisition (roughly 50x current ARR and ~23x forward) despite being valued at $12B last round and doing ~$500M ARR. The besties think: (a) the founders expect continued hypergrowth — potentially to a Palo Alto Networks–scale $100B+ market cap — especially after high-profile security incidents like the AT&T/Snowflake leak; and (b) regulatory risk for a hyperscaler deal was real, but not the primary driver. The logic: downside is limited (go public at $15–20B anyway), upside is enormous if they execute.
Cloud and Security: Google Must Buy to Compete, While CrowdStrike Shows Systemic Fragility
GCP is now a $40B run-rate business with $1.2B in quarterly operating profit and the potential to spin off $20–30B free cash flow annually at maturity — making cloud and AI ‘where it’s at’ for Alphabet. To accelerate past AWS without tripping antitrust, Google will keep hunting large, fast-growing, enterprise security assets. In contrast, CrowdStrike’s update bricking ~8.5M Windows machines (Delta, airlines, DOT probe) highlights how brittle core infrastructure remains. Sacks says he doesn’t trust CrowdStrike, notes its ‘murky’ deep-state ties, and advises companies to explicitly check whether they’re running it and make a conscious risk decision.
Market Jitters Reflect Rotation and Political Volatility, Not Just Fundamentals
A sharp one-day selloff (NASDAQ -3.6%, S&P -2.3%) and big drops in Tesla, Google, NVIDIA, META are seen as a rebalancing rather than a structural breakdown. Chamath links it to markets ‘priced for perfection’ colliding with surging uncertainty: a Trump assassination attempt, Biden’s resignation, and a chaotic, opaque replacement process spiking the VIX. Friedberg frames it as a mini-AI bubble deflating, with PMs rotating from high-multiple AI winners into financials, energy, and materials. The real stress test will be fall 2024: consumer credit, potential Fed cuts, and Q3–Q4 earnings.
Altman’s UBI Trial Suggests Cash Alone Doesn’t Fix Poverty or Purpose
In Altman’s UBI study (1,000 low-income adults given $1,000/month for 3 years vs. 2,000 controls at $50/month), large gains in stress and food security faded after year one; by year two, mental and physical health benefits ‘mean reverted’ to baseline. Employment, education, and healthcare utilization barely moved; control-group incomes actually rose more than the UBI group’s. The panel argues: (a) humans adapt quickly to income changes; desire and relative status reassert themselves; (b) large-scale UBI (~$4T/year in the U.S.) is fiscally untenable and inflationary; and (c) unconditional cash can demotivate early-career work and skill-building, turning welfare from a safety net into a trap.
They Favor Opportunity Infrastructure Over UBI: Work, Skills, and Retirement Security
All four argue humans need work, purpose, and pressure — citing their own immigrant/up-from-poverty stories and ‘entry-level’ jobs (dishwasher, bartender, Burger King) as formative. They prefer: (a) robust but targeted welfare/safety nets that still require work; (b) investing in vocational and entrepreneurship education (‘here’s how you get a job or start a business’); (c) ideas like Brad Gerstner’s ‘Invest America’ — giving every newborn a retirement account compounding over decades; and (d) subsidizing training for socially critical roles (e.g., pay stipends + tuition for nurses) instead of unconditional stipends.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesEither the buyer pays way too much, or the seller sells way too early.
— David Friedberg (quoting Peter Thiel and applying to Wiz)
In the absence of purpose and community... it just doesn’t meaningfully shift any of these curves that really matter.
— Chamath Palihapitiya (on why UBI doesn’t change long-term wellbeing)
If you just hand people money without having to work, it doesn’t motivate them to work harder. It actually motivates them to do less.
— David Sacks (on behavioral effects of UBI and cash transfers)
The closest thing to leisure in modern society is the nepo baby. And if you look at the nepo baby, they’re the most miserable group of people I’ve ever met.
— Chamath Palihapitiya
China has more electricity production, it’s cheaper to make electricity, and it’s cheaper to build new capacity. This is a massive long-term competitive point.
— David Friedberg (on China’s nuclear and power edge)
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