Trump Brokers Gaza Peace Deal, National Guard in Chicago, OpenAI/AMD, AI Roundtripping, Gold Rally

1. 0:00 – 2:48

   Bestie intros: Welcome back Brad Gerstner!

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      All right, everybody. Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world. That's right, it's your favorite podcast. It's your podcaster's favorite podcast, the All-In Podcast. We're back, baby. Chamath Palihapitiya is here, our chairman, our dictator. How are you doing, brother?

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:19

      Great. You?

   3. JCJason Calacanis0:21

      (beep) fantastic. You know, you put the Uber stock price and the Robinhood stock price together-

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:26

      (laughs)

   5. JCJason Calacanis0:26

      ... 150, I'm annoying, 200, I'm insufferable, and 250, we just hit, I am off the reservation officially, hopping the fence. So, yeah, life's good. All right, with us again, David Sacks, the czar.

   6. DSDavid Sacks0:45

      By the way-

   7. JCJason Calacanis0:46

      (laughs)

   8. DSDavid Sacks0:46

      ... what's the reason why your Robinhood stock is through the roof? 'Cause of the crypto policies of the Trump administration?

   9. JCJason Calacanis0:51

      Uh, yeah, that's fair, fair. It's half of it.

   10. DSDavid Sacks0:53

       That's why it's gone from, what is it, like, $3 to $130 billion?

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:57

       (laughs) Two, $2. (laughs)

   12. DSDavid Sacks0:59

       (laughs)

   13. JCJason Calacanis0:59

       I paid less than a penny for my shares, but yes, it went from 13 to-

   14. DSDavid Sacks1:03

       Well, this is... It took a liberal-

   15. JCJason Calacanis1:05

       ... 150.

   16. DSDavid Sacks1:05

       You benefit from our policies, and then you trash them.

   17. JCJason Calacanis1:07

       I'm a moderate, independent moderate. Here we go. Now it's, it's starting already.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:11

       (laughs)

   19. DSDavid Sacks1:11

       (laughs)

   20. JCJason Calacanis1:11

       It's going to be a great week, everybody. Buckle up. And he puts the namaste in your payday, our fifth bestie is back. Brad, welcome home.

   21. BGBrad Gerstner1:21

       It's great to be here. Great to be... I went out and got a hair-

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:23

       Welcome back into the fold.

   23. BGBrad Gerstner1:25

       (laughs)

   24. JCJason Calacanis1:26

       Welcome back.

   25. BGBrad Gerstner1:26

       I got a haircut on the occasion.

   26. JCJason Calacanis1:28

       Oh, very nice.

   27. BGBrad Gerstner1:28

       I mean, Jason, Jason, do you know how long it's been since I was last on this pod?

   28. JCJason Calacanis1:33

       I don't know. I've invited you, like, 12 times, but I think the emails... There's something going on with email.

   29. BGBrad Gerstner1:37

       (laughs)

   30. JCJason Calacanis1:37

       I didn't get any of my White House invitations. You didn't get any All-In invitations.
2. 2:48 – 13:27

   Israel-Hamas ceasefire, how Trump and his team got the deal done

   1. JCJason Calacanis2:48

      We gotta start off with the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal, thanks to President Trump who announced it just yesterday. We tape on Thursdays, he announced it on Wednesday. You'll listen to this on Friday, hopefully. And he announced the first phase of a multi-stage peace deal. Notably, it was on the day after the two-year anniversary of the horrific October 7th attacks, which led obviously to the invasion of Gaza. And this war has been particularly devastating for Gaza. Most of the region's been destroyed. 2.3 million residents have been displaced. And according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which I know some people will debate, uh, over 67,000 Palestinians have been killed. The deal is based off of Trump's 20-point peace plan, which the White House published last week, and the Israeli government will vote on the deal today, maybe even before the show comes out. Even with all this tragedy, something has gone tremendously right when it comes to these peace negotiations and the peace talks. So, Sacks, tell us what went so right here in those negotiations.

   2. DSDavid Sacks3:49

      I mean, right now it looks like both sides have agreed to this deal. And the first phase of the deal is for there to be a ceasefire to end active fighting, it's gonna allow unrestricted aid into Gaza, it's gonna allow the release of all remaining Israeli hostages, and Israel is gonna release 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and start withdrawing Israeli troops. So, that, that is what apparently has been agreed to. And the Middle East has a way of disappointing you. (laughs) Sometimes these deals don't stick, but based on everything we understand to be the case right now, this appears to be a big breakthrough in terms of the fighting will stop and the... all the hostages will be released. And I do think it is a big accomplishment by the President in terms of how this happened is because the President was willing to both cajole and coerce and use pressure with respect to both sides of the conflict. Longtime diplomat Aaron David Miller, who advised both Republican and Democrat administrations on Middle East peace negotiations for the last three decades, he said that, I'll quote here, "Donald Trump has demonstrated a degree of will unlike any other president, Republican or Democrat. He has pressed an Israeli prime minister in a way that none of his predecessors have ever done on an issue that that prime minister considers vital to his political survival and the way he would define Israeli security requirements." So, that was Aaron David Miller, who, again, was the US negotiator in Middle East peace negotiations for a quarter century. And in fact, he wrote a very interesting article in 2005 called Israel's Lawyer, in which he was a little bit self-critical of the US's previous efforts and his own efforts, saying that in the past, the US saw its role as being to represent Israel as opposed to being an objective negotiator. And he, he critiqued the US's efforts saying that we might be able to get more done if the US was perceived as more of an honest broker and perceived as willing to be a little bit more neutral in the negotiations. And I think what he's... seems to be saying here is that Trump was willing to do that, he was willing to pressure Netanyahu, as well as Hamas. I mean, obviously you saw in the last few days that he said that if Hamas did not agree to this all, all hell would break loose. So, he was willing to basically...... pressure both sides into accepting this deal, and you have to give him credit for it, for where things stand right now. And you are seeing, it seems like virtually everyone's giving him credit, even the New York Times. Even Jon Meacham was on the MSNBC this morning, giving President Trump credit for doing the seemingly impossible. The reason I say even Jon Meacham is because Meacham is frequently criticizing President Trump as being a fascist or having authoritarian tendencies, and even he had to acknowledge that Trump had pulled off the seemingly impossible here today.

   3. JCJason Calacanis6:32

      All right, Chamath, obviously this is gonna have a pretty positive impact on the region, so as we look at, you know, if this does, uh, and again, you know, we got to be cautious here because as Sax pointed out correctly, in the Middle East, you know, sometimes these things fall apart and they're delicate. But let's assume that this, uh, peace deal does make its way to fruition, and we- what is it gonna look like in the region post-peace between these two nations?

   4. DFDavid Friedberg6:59

      I mean, I don't know, so let's start with that. Nobody knows.

   5. JCJason Calacanis7:02

      Nobody knows, yeah.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg7:03

      I think it's been a very unpredictable place for a very long time. That being said, what is the rational thing that has to happen? I think that most of these countries are facing a very obvious problem, which is they have a resource that is becoming increasingly less valuable. That resource is oil. And so the practical reality is you want peace so that you can focus on the forward monetization of your reserves. So when that oil sits in the ground, the longer it sits in the ground, the less valuable it is to you because it doesn't actually add to your balance sheet. The faster you can monetize the oil, then the faster you can deploy it into other things, including services for your own citizens. Now the longer you wait to do that, the problem that we are seeing is that other solutions come around the corner. Eventually in the 10 or 15 or 20-year timeframe, you'll have an abundance of electrons from nuclear. In the meantime, you have an abundance of electrons from nat gas. You have an abundance of electrons, frankly, from solar. And all of these things will ultimately diminish the net long bid to oil. So if there's instability, you can't focus 100% on monetization. If there's stability, then the entire focus needs to be on the monetization of, of the oil asset. And I think that that's a very healthy thing because it starts to create market-driven incentives that will only accelerate all the positive things that are happening.

   7. JCJason Calacanis8:43

      Mm.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg8:43

      By the way, and the other thing I just wanna say, which is personal, is shout out to a friend of the pod, Jared Kushner. Ackman tweeted this, which I think is just so superb, but in one week, Jared did the largest LBO ever and then also helped negotiate Middle East peace. It's unbelievable. It's really incredible what these guys pulled off, and it allows that region to be a real pillar of what happens in the next 50 to 100 years.

   9. JCJason Calacanis9:09

      All right. And I, I think it's well said, Brad, that some stability in the region will help them with the transition from an oil-based economy to what you and I learned in our trips there, some of them together, that they're looking to transition to private equity, solar, renewables, AI, owning sports teams, venture capital, and so many, uh, and tourism, building new cities. All of that is hard to do, and then also getting investments. If people feel the region's unstable and/or dangerous, you know, it's not a good place to, uh, invest capital, so let's, um, let's keep pulling the string as to what the best case scenario is here if we have true stability in that region.

   10. BGBrad Gerstner9:58

       Well, I mean, you- you- you nailed it. The conditions for all of those things, economic, right, are safety and security. You don't have any economic growth in the region unless you have that. You know, and I think you guys covered it pretty well, but maybe just highlight a broader feature, I think, of this presidency. Right, I think we might call Trump, like, the moonshot presidency. If you think about everything he's trying to accomplish, even Hillary Clinton said if he pulls off peace between Ukraine and Russia, which is also going on simultaneous to these efforts, that she herself will nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize. Right? I look at the presidency, there are moonshots going on everywhere. China, AI, re-industrialization, India, Pakistan, Ukraine, you know, and Russia, what he's doing in the Middle East. And if you think about moonshots, we all do these in Silicon Valley, these are high-risk, high-reward efforts. We wanna back people who go for moonshots, but the reality is most people don't have the courage to go for moonshots because there's a high probability that it won't work. But if you think about this for a second, after the horror of the October 7th attacks, the chaos in Syria, the attacks by Yemen, the escalations fueled by Iran, the idea that the president, Wittkop, and you're right, Chamath, our friend Jared Kushner, could have overcome all of that, right? And that could have been all-out war across the Middle East. It could have plunged the entire Middle East into u- utter chaos, but instead he decapitated Iran, we brought Syria into the fold, we're on the verge of expanding the Abraham Accords, and now you have this historic signing. You know, we saw it with our own eyes when Sax and I were over there on the president's visit. You know, he is respected as a strong leader and liked in every one of these capitals that you go to. You know? And it's paying off. If this happens, Wittkop, Kushner, and the president all deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. If even 80% of it works out, I think it's worthy of a Peace Prize.

   11. JCJason Calacanis11:55

       Well, and, uh, not to mention, we're probably gonna have, at least the rumors are that there could be a China deal coming up at the end of this month or into next month, and if we could resolve the issues with Taiwan, even something like strategic ambiguity-And if there's a chance of, uh, Ukraine and Russia being settled, now you've got the trifecta. You know, you got the three biggest hotspots taken off the table. If you can get two of those, it'd be great for humanity. Polymarket's showing a 90% chance, 90% chance, that all Israeli hostages will be returned by the end of the month, which would be just tremendous. Um, and then also getting aid to these poor people suffering in Gaza would also be nice to see. Anybody else have any thoughts as we, as we move on to our next story?

   12. DSDavid Sacks12:42

       I'll just say that the funny part here is, to the extent there's anything funny about this story, is watching the entire global left that's been demanding a ceasefire in Gaza for almost two years, they've suddenly gone strangely silent now that President Trump has seemingly engineered that ceasefire. And, uh, I guess the, the Nobel committee is, they are announcing this Friday. I do think that a record like this would absolutely win any other president the Nobel Prize, or at least get him a nomination. President Trump has ended seven wars in seven months before this one. This would be the eighth if he pulls it off. So, yeah, I mean-

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya13:16

       Seven? Obama, Obama won s- with nothing.

   14. DSDavid Sacks13:19

       (laughs) Obama won just for being elected.

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya13:21

       He just got elected and he got the, the Nobel Prize.

   16. DSDavid Sacks13:23

       (laughs) .

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya13:23

       It was just kind of like a gold star.

   18. JCJason Calacanis13:25

       Yeah. Okay.

3. 13:27 – 44:02

   National Guard sent to Chicago to protect ICE Agents

   1. JCJason Calacanis13:27

      Well, let's move on to our next topic. The National Guard has deployed troops into Chicago to protect ICE agents, and Portland might be next. Obviously, a bunch of protests have broken out in Chicago after a number of these ICE raids have occurred. And over the last month, DHS has been executing something called Operation Midway Blitz in the city. 800 illegal aliens have been arrested, and there was a notable raid on September 30th by border patrol and FBI agents in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood where 37 illegal aliens were arrested in an apartment complex. Wow. And, uh, this included flash bangs and a Black Hawk helicopter. Similar to what we saw in LA back in June, Trump has 500 National Guard troops standing by from Illinois and Texas and, uh, in case any protests get out of hand. Trump says they are needed to protect ICE agents who are being targeted. Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson are obviously opposed to ICE actions, and they are calling Trump an authoritarian and, uh, fighting for state rights in this regard. They filed a lawsuit to try to stop it, and the hearing is scheduled for Thursday. Obviously, the president had some losses in, um, a, a number of these National Guard activities, and we can get into the details of those. Mayor Johnson also signed a couple of executive orders aimed at slowing down ICE agents. Uh, they've established some ICE-free zones across the city that prohibit ICE agents from using any city-owned property, and another one bans city employees from aiding ICE unless required by a criminal warrant. The White House called this a, quote-unquote, "disgusting betrayal" and said Johnson was prioritizing illegals over US citizens. Your thoughts, Sax?

   2. DSDavid Sacks15:19

      Well, I think the place, it starts with the Democrat attitude towards crime. We've seen many examples of this recently. You had the murder of that young Ukrainian woman, Irina, at, uh, the subway by DeCarlos Brown. He was arrested 14 times, and still leftist judges and prosecutors refused to punish him or keep him off the streets. There was testimony of Steven Federico before a Congressional subcommittee who recounted how his daughter, Logan, was murdered by Alexander Dickey, a man with over 25 felony arrests. In San Francisco here, you got leftists are still trying to get diversion for Troy McAllister, who killed Hana Abe and Elizabeth Platt on New Year's Eve 2020. That was the case that activated all of us to get Chesa Boudin recalled successfully. So look, you have here so many examples of leftist prosecutors and judges and activists always trying to get repeat felons off, trying to get them diversion, never prosecuting them. They're in favor of zero bail. They've turned the jails into a revolving door. And that's why you see, in places like Chicago or Washington DC, enormous amounts of, of violent crime. Now, in DC, the president had the ability to clean up the streets, to clean up the homeless encampments, make the streets safer. No one denied the feds had a right to go in, and they did, and there have been immediate positive results. Homicides and carjackings and so forth have fallen dramatically. Everyone who actually lives in DC is very happy about the situation. The restaurants are full again. People feel safe to go out. So, the question is where else can the president basically help these cities and go in? In Memphis, they have been invited by the Republican governor to go in and help, and so they will. Now with Portland and Chicago, the problem here is that frankly you've got mayors and governors who are opposed to doing anything about the crime problem, and moreover, they refuse to support ICE and DHS in their mission to enforce the immigration laws. And then finally, you've got violent leftist protestors like ANTIFA who have taken to the streets, and they are trying to thwart deportations of violent aliens by ICE and DHS. In response to that, the president has sent somewhere between, I think, 300 and 500 National Guardsmen to support ICE in Chicago. It's not a broad-based mission to clean up the streets because, you know, we still have to figure out what the legal authority to do that is. They're just there to support ICE, and yet you see all this hysterical bluster and rhetoric by J. B. Pritzker and other Democrats basically claiming this is authoritarian. It's not. It's a very limited operation to support ICE and DHS in their lawful mission to enforce the immigration laws, and there's no question that the president has this authority. Both Eisenhower and JFK sent-... federal troops into the South to enforce federal desegregation laws. For example, when James Meredith was barred from attending Ole Miss, University of Mississippi, JFK sent in 30,000 federal troops to bust open the doors of Ole Miss. And by the way, they were not National Guardsmen. These were the Army. So presidents have sent in troops. They have sent in National Guardsmen to enforce the law in American cities. He absolutely has the right and power to do this. But like I said, this is somewhere between 300 and 500 guardsmen sent to back up ICE, who is being assaulted by violent protests and riots, by Antifa. And what you're seeing by the mainstream media and by liberals is an attempt to mischaracterize the situation.

   3. JCJason Calacanis18:57

      All right. Just to put some numbers on that. For the DC National Guard being called out, obviously Trump, uh, the president, whatever president it is, clearly has the rights to do that for a certain period of time. And, um, if you look at this Washington Post story, I'll send it to you for Post, 61% of people said in DC, uh, according to the Washington Post's survey that the people in Washington DC said the military police present has made them feel less safe. 79% of people polled in DC in the same survey said they don't want the National Guard in the city. So there is a lot of conflicting data here, but overwhelmingly in DC, they don't want that.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg19:36

      That's- that's not data. That's an opinion.

   5. JCJason Calacanis19:37

      No, it's a survey.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg19:38

      It's an emotional-

   7. JCJason Calacanis19:38

      It was a survey.

   8. DSDavid Sacks19:39

      I can give you a different survey.

   9. DFDavid Friedberg19:40

      But that's not- that's not data.

   10. DSDavid Sacks19:41

       Hold on.

   11. DFDavid Friedberg19:41

       What is the crime data?

   12. DSDavid Sacks19:42

       If we're gonna do surveys-

   13. JCJason Calacanis19:43

       Yeah, sure.

   14. DSDavid Sacks19:44

       There was a poll last week from TIP Insights which showed that Trump-

   15. JCJason Calacanis19:48

       What's TIP Insights? I've never heard of it.

   16. DSDavid Sacks19:50

       T-I-P-P. It's ... This was cited by Newsweek. I can put the link on the screen.

   17. JCJason Calacanis19:55

       Okay. I never heard of it.

   18. DSDavid Sacks19:56

       Well, they're a pollster.

   19. JCJason Calacanis19:57

       Well, Washington Post was the one I cited. Yeah.

   20. DSDavid Sacks19:59

       Well, okay. And I'm sure they're perfectly objective, right? (laughs) Next you're gonna be quoting the New York Times to tell me how objective they are. Here's TIPP. They're a pollster. These TIPP insights show that Trump had a net positive rating among voters in cities 47 to 44, and that his numbers have improved recently. So look, I think this is tremendously popular with the citizens of these crime-infested cities. We saw this with DC, that the locals, the residents, including among the Black population, were very happy with the fact that Trump sent in the National Guard and crime has been massively reduced.

   21. DFDavid Friedberg20:33

       Sorry. Can I say something? You know why it's popular and it's working? Because of what Wes Moore did. Wes Moore is the perfect example of what I think a Democrat governor should be doing, which is obviously he has to lather on with his anti-Trump rhetoric. But what does he do behind the scenes? He sends in state troops and he makes sure that there's a surge of policing in all of these crime-ridden areas because he knows that the policy works. He just wants to get the credit for it, and he doesn't necessarily want somebody else to get the credit. This is where I think what's happening in Illinois is a bit of a head-scratcher, because if you see how badly run and how crime infested Chicago is and the state of Illinois is, why wouldn't J.B. Pritzker do what Wes Moore does? I think the honest thing that they should be doing is to recognize that the citizens on the ground in these places want to live in a safe and peaceful place. And with more policing and with more troops, it's just statistically true that crime comes down. And I think at the end of the day, probably the citizens of these places care less whether they're National Guards troops or whether they're state troops, but they just care that they're there. This is why I think asking emotional reactions, to me, doesn't make as much sense because I feel it's a very partisan way of opining on the person who gives you the resource. Because I suspect if you ask the exact same question inside of Baltimore to the state troops that were sent in by Wes Moore, a Democrat, you'd probably get a different response. But the outcome is the same. Crime goes down. That's what everybody wants.

   22. JCJason Calacanis22:09

       Brad, any concerns about the militarization in the country that is occurring from you?

   23. BGBrad Gerstner22:15

       Well, I think it ... Listen. Nobody wants abusive tactics, but let me just give you some numbers that cause me to believe this feels more like, you know, a bipartisan issue, and- and we have kind of the pendulum swinging back more than, you know, something that should cause us concern. Court ordered removals and deportations averaged 200,000 per year, 1997 to 2000. That's under Clinton, 200,000 a year. They averaged 300,000 a year, peaking at 400,000 under Obama, right? Deportations plummeted under Biden. At the same time, we know that illegal crossings into this country kind of exploded higher. And now they estimate that Trump is back to the trend line of 300 to 400,000 illegal, you know, deportations and removals. These are court ordered removals. So I might have expected the Trump number to be way higher given that we just went through this massive step up in illegal crossings. But I think it's really important to point out that this has been a bipartisan consistent thing that has happened in this country for 30 years. I'm not talking about tactics, exactly how it's going on, but the deportations have been going on by both parties and we never ... It hasn't been an issue before. And so it is curious that it is more of an issue now. And then the other thing I would just underscore is, if you look at what Daniel Lurie is doing in the city of San Francisco, he is live blogging on Twitter and Instagram the arrests of 100 fugitives per night. I think he's had three or four of these nights now in San Francisco to take these people off the street, following a mayor that wouldn't even arrest people and no prosecutions because he understands as a Democrat what citizens expect first is safety. They want the ability to walk their kids to school, to walk to dinner, to play in a park, and not have to worry about being safe. So I think, uh, you know, I- I build on what Chamas said.... I, I think the smart Democrats are realizing this is a bipartisan issue. This is what people want. It, it, it's not inconsistent with what, you know, Presidents Obama and Clinton did on, in their administrations in terms of deportations. And so, I don't think this is the hill that they wanna die on. J-Cal, I'd love to hear your thoughts on, on, on what's going on with these deportations.

   24. JCJason Calacanis24:34

       Well, I've been very vocal that I don't agree with the violent nature of the deportations and what ICE is doing. Uh, but obviously, I am very much, since Sachs and I worked together on the ouster of Chesa Boudin, obviously I care, coming from a law enforcement family, about law and order. I think it's super important and I obviously agree. But I wanna level the conversation up a little bit and maybe talk a little bit about the president's approval ratings and how this all connects. So, got a couple of charts that I'll share with you guys here and I'll get your reactions. It's not pretty for Trump right now. His polling is at an all-time low. It's worse than the last couple of seasons of The Apprentice, in fact. And when you look at this chart here of Donald Trump's approval rating, you'll see there are four dips here, and this is the net approval rating. And what you'll see is Liberation Day when he did the tariffs, obviously he went a little too far on the tariffs and, uh, that was pretty shocking. Went down to a negative 10. That's taking his approval, minusing the disapproval, and that's how you get the net approval. Then, the LA protests, remember the violent protests and the ICE agents chasing people down in fields, and Americans didn't like that either. Not releasing the Epstein files in July, another dip down to his lowest of his presidency, about 10%. And then now, we're, uh, with these Chicago ICE raids and the violent nature of them, I believe, is the cause of this. And going on a little bit even from here, if you look at his wheelhouse, this is where Trump won the election, I think we all agree in the Trump 2.0 platform, which won a lot of moderates like myself. I know I- on this show, people like to say I'm a Democrat. I've voted actually now Republican almost exactly as much as I've dot- uh, voted Democrat, and I am a strong moderate. If you look at immigration, eh, his net approval rating has plummeted from plus 10% down to minus about 5%. The economy, he's down 15%. He was up 5% at the sta- start. Trade, he's rebounded a little bit, and inflation, he's down 27%. And so, this is his wheelhouse, and if you look at from Bari Weiss's, you know, uh, organization, CBS News, congratulations to Bari on her taking it over, and her sale to, uh, The Free Press to CBS. Only 17% of Americans believe Trump is making them better. This came out this week. And 58% don't want the National Guard in our cities. People oppose what Trump is doing right now and he is at an all-time low. So, you have to ask yourself why. And, uh, I think this is because he's drifted from the 2.0 policies. Closing the border, very popular. Lower taxes, no taxes on tips, extremely popular. Pro-business, pro-innovation. Thank you, Sachs. You are correct. This all is the best of Trump. Doge, reducing spending, the best of Trump. And relentlessly trying to stop wars and, uh, apparently on the cusp of succeeding with the one in Gaza right now. This is what Americans, including myself, moderates really like about Trump. What don't we like about the Trump 1.0 platform? The violence of January 6th, ICE agents in masks beating powerless, hardworking immigrants, sending in the National Guards, if you remember from the first administration, the kids in cages, the Muslim immigration ban, pardoning all the January 6th rioters who beat police savagely, trying to overturn election results. This is what people don't like. They don't like the chaos. And what Americans do love is they love the Constitution. And, uh, you know, they, they love the rule of law. This is where he can do really well. 85% of Americans have a favorable (laughs) opinion of the Constitution, and 94% say it's really important to protect their liberty and freedom. And what these actions, and when you see Pam Bondi and you see Stephen Miller, Trump's ratings go down. When you see Lutnick, you see Besson, you see Sachs, you see Elon and Doge, his approval ratings go up. And so, I would like to lobby my friends who are in the administration or around it, and the people I know in the administration, to think through this, because what's at stake is the midterms. The Democrats are gonna shellack the Republicans in the midterms if this continues. Nobody wants this type of violence. Nobody wants to see people beaten. Nobody wants to see mothers thrown on the ground as their children are crying just because they came here 20 years ago, 10 years ago when Republicans, Republicans who were the biggest proponents of letting people in from Mexico to work here because we needed cheap labor. We, as Americans, have an obligation to these people who we brought into this country to treat them with compassion, and we're not doing that. And that's my little monologue here.

   25. DFDavid Friedberg29:32

       You heard from Brad that the deportations have basically mean reverted. So, do you think that there were the same category of people being deported before as in now, and that there's just less press coverage and it was okay then and it's not okay now? Or just explain-

   26. JCJason Calacanis29:50

       Sure.

   27. DFDavid Friedberg29:50

       ... this idea of mean reversion and whether we're getting the same and right people out of the country that we've been doing for the last 20 years.

   28. JCJason Calacanis29:56

       Yeah, so what you're seeing is many lawsuits now of people who are Americans or who are properly documented now suing ICE. 'Cause the way they're pursuing this, with their masks and just randomly going after people and racially profiling people, is resulting in the wrong people being picked up. And that's really what I find the, uh, the most offensive about it. I don't mind, obviously, the border being closed. I, I said that many times here. I don't mind criminals being deported. I think that's a great idea.... but I think we should look at the economics this is- of this as well. We're spending $30 billion on ICE now. We've tripled the budget. We're spending $100,000 a month per person deported. Okay? That's a large number. If we simply fined that 79-year-old car wash owner $10,000 every time he hires, you know, an illegal alien, this would stop. There are much better ways to execute this. And so, I have to ask myself, what is the intent of this violence? What is the intent of sending the National Guard in? Is it actually a pure intent of wanting safety and security? I don't believe-

   29. DFDavid Friedberg31:01

       What-

   30. JCJason Calacanis31:02

       ... that's all that's at work here.
4. 44:02 – 1:05:45

   OpenAI's deal with AMD, state of the "AI Bubble"

   1. JCJason Calacanis44:02

      All right, next up on the agenda. Oh, bestie Brad, you're gonna love this one. AMD and OpenAI just closed a massive GPU deal, could be worth 60 billion or more over the next five years. Obviously, uh, two companies are, are run by friends of the pod, Lisa from AMD and Sam from OpenAI, both been on the pod. AMD stock rocketed up 35% since the announcement. OpenAI committed to purchasing six gigawatts worth of AMD's next gen GPUs. A little bit of an interesting wrinkle here, AMD granted OpenAI warrants. Okay, that's interesting. For up to 160 million shares, or 10% of the companies, and with that massive increase in their stock price, Brad, I think this means that OpenAI is gonna get a lot of GPUs essentially for free. Big dialogue has started, Brad, around these round tripping, conflicted party transactions. Is that how some people would describe them? Uh, specifically the SEC. Do you have concerns about the AI trade and the amount of circulation of shares, GPUs, and cash that's going on right now? And I know you're in the thick of this.

   2. BGBrad Gerstner45:14

      Yeah. A- a- and, and maybe before we get into round tripping and circular revenues, which I do want to hit, I think it's super important that we talk about that, let's just break down the deal a little bit because there's a lot-

   3. JCJason Calacanis45:24

      Please.

   4. BGBrad Gerstner45:24

      ... going on and I think it, I think it's important we put context around it. So first, this is a bet, the farm bet by Lisa Su, right? She's giving away 10% of the company if the compute gets deployed. She said a couple weeks ago, "We're in year two of ten of a compute build out across the country." So, I- I- I have a couple charts here. Why would she make a bet, the farm bet, Jason, right? That's an important question. Remember-

   5. JCJason Calacanis45:48

      Certainly. Yeah.

   6. BGBrad Gerstner45:48

      ... NVIDIA just did a huge deal with OpenAI. They didn't give away any of their company. In fact, they got the right to buy part of OpenAI. So, look at this chart. This is pretty wild. Just in '22... In 2022, two and a half years ago, NVIDIA and AMD had basically the same revenue, $25 billion, right? This year, NVIDIA will do 10X that at roughly d- you know, 210, $230 billion and AMD will do 33 billion, right? Not much more than they were doing when the companies were tied in 2022. So, NVIDIA's captured nearly 100% of the incremental AI data center revenues over the course of the last two and a half years. And I think there's this notion that somehow NVIDIA just popped out this special AI chip, but I think if you listen to Jensen understand, study the company, it's because they have this ecosystem of software, networking, extreme co-design. The unit of compute is no longer the chip, right? It's the entire data center, which is composed of, you know, five to ten different chips. Performance per watt, right? Power being the constrained resource here is everything, and NVIDIA's just crushed the competition. So, now put yourself in the shoes of Lisa, right? And she's clearly not on the wave. There's... Tsunami has come, Jensen's riding it, he's capturing 100% of the wave and she's not even yet on the wave. Her MI350 was just not competitive, and so they have one shot. Either the MI450 gets adopted and they get back into the game, right? Or, or, or, or they're out. She's a total warrior. I think she believes in the 450. She went to her board and she said, "Listen, this is... We gotta take the shot here. We gotta bet the farm." If it works, she's gonna get 150 billion of incremental revenue just from OpenAI, right? For building out five gigawatts. And on top of that, of course, it could unlock a lot of the other market because now it will have validated that they have a, a, a chip that works. But it's far from a done deal, far from a conclusion whether the 450's gonna work. Can it compete against Vera Rubin? Can it compete against, uh, Rubin Ultra? All super important questions. So, that's one... Y- y- you know, that, that's the AMD deal.

   7. DFDavid Friedberg48:07

      Why have we switched from saying, "Oh, Colossus bought, you know, xAI's data center, 100,000 H100s, 200,000 H100s," to now framing these in gigawatts? I think it's important for people to understand why that's now how deals are being framed, just in the last three months has changed.

   8. BGBrad Gerstner48:24

      Yeah, I think, I think there are a couple constraining features. Number one, chips change-... right? So 100,000 H100s is not, you know, is not apples for apples with the number of GB200s, you know, Grace Blackwell 200s or GB300s. And so it's hard to talk about them. You're comparing apples and oranges when you're comparing these data centers. So a unifying metric of compare, right, is the, the, the power that goes in. Everything starts with the power. It's the constrained resource. So we can compare a gigawatt of power because it's... Remember, it's power in and it's tokens out. And we can compare that over time and normalize across all these different chips. And it's not just these two companies. You got Tranium by Amazon, TPU by Google, cere- Cerebras, Groq, et cetera. There are a lot of folks in this game. And so again, I think what you saw this week in this flurry of announcements, right, is that you have the market leader that's basically captured 90 to 100% of the incremental demand for the biggest thing the, the data center and the chip market has ever seen, and every other player is looking at what they have to do to have a shot to capture part of this wave. They're high-risk, high-reward bets. The other thing I would say is, and again, shut me up and anybody can jump in i- if they want to, but I wanna decompose. We're hearing these estimates of 100 gigawatts, four to five trillion of buildout over the course of the next four years. If you look at that same chart I just showed you, that's not what Wall Street estimates are, right? There is a lot of disbelief on Wall Street as to what's gonna get built out. So if you look at that estimate, you know, starting in 2027, it basically flatlines, 27 through 29 for NVIDIA, right? Less than 10% CAGR in terms of the growth for NVIDIA. They have by 2029 them doing 360 billion in revenue compared to 210 billion of revenue this year. To put it in gigawatt perspectives, that means going from four to five gigs per year in '25 to nine gigs in '29. That's a big step up, but a long way from the 100 gigawatts you were hearing, you know, bantered about on CNBC this week.

   9. DFDavid Friedberg50:39

      That's for a different reason. Nick, put this, put this quote up there, which is this famous quote from Nathan Rothschild where he said, "I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply." Why is that quote so interesting as applied to AI? I think that what you're going to see, and you're seeing it in those revenue graphs, is that there is a traffic jam that's happening in growth where it won't be the ability to actually build next-gen silicon, but it'll be the energy inputs that will constrain it, and it will be the ingredient inputs that constrain growth. And so the companies that then control those elements of the supply chain will actually come into power and rise to power. So what is one example of this? One example of this is when you look at the architecture of NVIDIA's chips, one of the things that they have made a huge bet on is HBM. And this is a memory structure. And what's so interesting about that is when you look at the HBM market, it is effectively NVIDIA who takes up the majority, the majority-majority, and then Google, and now AMD's next architecture actually needs to sit on top of HBM. Now they're gonna have to go and step into that supply chain and try to ask for share. Where will that share come from? And this is where the people that then control that supply, SK hynix and Samsung, will have leverage. Now, this is what's interesting about a deal that OpenAI announced two or three weeks ago. Sam was in Korea, and you saw him shaking hands with SK hynix and Samsung. And my initial thought then was, "Why is OpenAI doing a deal with the memory maker?" And then it occurred to me, "Wow, he's buying forward capacity on HBM because now he can allocate that share." So when I saw that deal and I saw that equity, it reminded me of this Rothschild quote. Sam has allocation, and now Sam can allocate allocation, and then as a result get a tax. And I believe that the warrants and the equity are effectively that. What's a different example? Brad mentioned this before, but energy will be the gating item beyond a shadow of a doubt. And so if you control electrons, any form of electrons, hydrocarbon to electron, electron to electron, photon to electron, doesn't matter, you will then be in a position to start asking for equity upside participation in these companies in a way that you could never do before. You would just have been a linear member of the supply chain, a low-margin participant. So when I look at where we are, I think that the really interesting question now is to ask, what is the second- and third-order degree inputs that are critical to allowing the big foundational model makers, to allowing NVIDIA, to allowing AMD, Broadcom to thrive? And that is where I would start to look because those that control those resources are going to dictate the pace and the scale of this AI expansion.

   10. JCJason Calacanis53:56

       Okay, coming around the horn here to you, our czar of AI, David Sacks, when you see this massive amount of deal-making occurring, it's gotta warm your heart a bit, American exceptionalism at work here, people swinging for the fences. What's your take on Brad and Chamath's overview of where we're at here in the fall of 2025 in the AI race?

   11. DSDavid Sacks54:18

       Yeah, I, I don't really like to take sides on these deals for the obvious reason that we-

   12. JCJason Calacanis54:23

       Sure.

   13. DSDavid Sacks54:23

       ... wanna be supportive of everybody and just have a healthy environment for competition. So as long as there's...... investment going on and as long as there's a lot of competition, those are good things. That's what we wanna see. So I tend to think this OpenAI/AMD deal is evidence of that. There was the OpenAI/NVIDIA deal. There was the NVIDIA/xAI deal. There's just a ton of investment going on, and that's what we wanna see. So that's-

   14. DFDavid Friedberg54:47

       Right. Yeah.

   15. DSDavid Sacks54:47

       ... all really good news. I was struck by Brad's chart about NVIDIA's revenue in the out years. The amount of CapEx or investments gonna go into data centers and compute more than a few years from now, I think that's really hard to predict. Because-

   16. JCJason Calacanis55:01

       Impossible, right? Yeah.

   17. DSDavid Sacks55:03

       Very hard. Because on the demand side of the compute, it's gonna depend on new applications that get created. So for example, the demand for tokens depends not just on AI chatbots, but on the new agents that are coming along. You have these new video generation models, Sora, now xAI has just released something. So we don't really know what the demand for tokens is gonna be. I think it's gonna be huge. I think there's a lot of applications that haven't even been invented yet, that are in the very early stages, that are gonna drive demand. It's a little bit like in the early days of the internet. We had this dot-com bubble where everyone thought there had been too much fiber built out, and then all the fiber ended up being used because, you know, social networking came along, Facebook came along, YouTube came along. When all that original fiber in the '90s was built out, they didn't even know that photos and videos were gonna be a thing. So the bandwidth eventually all got used up. I think in a similar way, all of the compute will eventually get used up by new applications. I guess the thing we don't know is how much more efficient will the infrastructure get at producing these tokens? So that would be the offsetting factor, is-

   18. JCJason Calacanis56:12

       Yes.

   19. DSDavid Sacks56:12

       ... that chips are getting so much better. I mean, we're moving faster than Moore's Law here. Every year, NVIDIA is releasing a new generation of chips and it's doing inference at multiple times the efficiency of the previous year on, I guess, a token per watt basis or whatever you wanna measure it. So that's an offsetting factor. And then there could be, um, more efficiencies created in the model architectures with, um, sparser architecture. So those will be offsetting factors, is all the efficiencies we get. But then you have to, you know, if I'm kinda arguing with myself, then you've got the Jevons paradox, which is as the cost per token comes down more and more, that's gonna enable AI to be used in more and more contexts where previously it wasn't economically efficient. Now it will be. So that's gonna fuel the demand.

   20. JCJason Calacanis56:59

       I mean, David-

   21. DSDavid Sacks57:00

       I think this-

   22. JCJason Calacanis57:01

       D- D- David, I think your point-

   23. DSDavid Sacks57:01

       Yeah. This is just a huge boom. Yeah, go ahead.

   24. JCJason Calacanis57:03

       Your point is a gr- Your point is a great one, right? Everybody's looking for the bubble, right? We've got this pattern recognition. Everybody's like, "What? It's dark fiber. It's gotta be dark fiber." There's no way that you can 10X your revenues at NVIDIA without it being, you know, a bubble. But the reality today is NVIDIA trades at a lower price to earnings multiple than it did when it was $200 a share. Th- uh, think about what the term dark fiber means. We were laying fiber in the ground that remained dark. We did not have the demand for the fiber. There is not a dark GPU in the world-

   25. DFDavid Friedberg57:34

       Well, the question, the question that may be-

   26. JCJason Calacanis57:35

       ... today. (laughs)

   27. DSDavid Sacks57:35

       (laughs)

   28. JCJason Calacanis57:35

       There's not gonna be a dark GPU in the world next year.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg57:38

       It's a good point. There's no dark GPUs.

   30. DSDavid Sacks57:39

       That's really a good point.
5. 1:05:45 – 1:15:00

   Circular AI deals: cause for concern or no big deal?

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:05:45

      Here is the round tripping discussion that people are obsessed with. NVIDIA at the center of this, uh, a $4.5 trillion company, largest company in the world, and as you can see here, between xAI, OpenAI making language models, AMD, uh, Intel, CoreWeave, p- standing up data centers, you know, and so many other companies. Oracle's obviously in the mix with their cloud, Google with their cloud, Gemini, uh, they have their own chips as well. What do we take away from what we all saw (laughs) , Chamath and I up close and personal with AOL and, and their partnerships, and I guess I'll start with you here, Chamath. Is this analogous to the round tripping we saw on the dot-com era? Are these conflicted party transactions concerning to you at any level? Is CNBC and everybody hand-wringing about this over their skis, or is it a legitimate concern?

   2. DFDavid Friedberg1:06:38

      I'm not sure that they're framing the concern properly. There are a lot of industries where these things are standard practice and well-accepted.One example that was explained to me this week was how the auto OEMs dealt with car dealers, their car dealer networks, where you would give what's called a floor loan, where if you're trying to sell a Ford F-150, you give your dealership a loan. They then buy the car, it pulls forward the revenue for Ford, then the dealer goes and sells the car to you, and, you know, they take the ARB and they pay the financing cost. So, this kind of stuff has been well-established for a long time. So, I think what I would rather ask is, where is the PCAOB expert that says, "This is not good"? I just think that these are too complicated for me to understand. They get into the vagaries of accounting law. But I suspect that these companies are well-advised, and I think that there are other industries that have been doing it for many years. And I think that if there was a real issue, it would have ex- been exposed much sooner, quite honestly. So, I-

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:07:47

      And you said PCAOB, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, yeah? Is that what you're referring to?

   4. DFDavid Friedberg1:07:52

      Yeah, like, I mean, I just think there, there's just ... And by the way, there's all the quarterly regulatory filings that are required, all the SAR box c- uh, compliance that's required, the umpteen numbers of auditors that are looking at these things. I think it does come down to the fact that there are many industries that use this forward flow agreements, if you want to call it, factoring flowing agreements, if you want to call it that.

   5. JCJason Calacanis1:08:12

      Sure.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg1:08:12

      And I just think that it's newer in our industry, but it's important to acknowledge that it's very well-established in many other legacy industries.

   7. JCJason Calacanis1:08:20

      And there's a lot of it all of a sudden. So I guess, Brad, the uniqueness to our industry is one piece. Or I'll give it to you, Sacks. The, the uniqueness to our industry is one piece, and the number of these is just making people's heads spin a little bit and makes their mind wander. But conflicted party transactions have to be very well-documented, you know, in SEC filings, et cetera. A- and these are largely public companies, but go ahead, Sacks.

   8. DSDavid Sacks1:08:42

      Well, look, I, you know, these companies all have lots of very expensive lawyers and accountants. So, I'm sure that from a, you know, gap standpoint or security standpoint or compliance standpoint, what they're doing is fine. Now, when people talk about round tripping, if you want to talk about the, the spirit of it, the underlying concept behind it, I think what it comes down to is that NVIDIA is effectively extending credit to its buyers. Why do they need credit? Because this buildout is so capital-intensive. I mean, Sam, Elon-

   9. DFDavid Friedberg1:09:10

      It's quadratic. Every model is quadratic. It gets worse. (laughs)

   10. DSDavid Sacks1:09:11

       They're all running around the world looking for capital. There was a photo of Sam the other day, I forgot what country he was in, might have been UAE or Saudi or something. In any event, they're all looking for as much capital as they can get to fund this buildout. And in certain cases, obviously NVIDIA is extending, effectively, credit in exchange for equity or whatever it may be. And I think the question you have to ask is simply, are these companies that are on the receiving end of this credit effectively creditworthy? In other words, will this investment yield economically viable results, right? Because if, let's say, NVIDIA extends credit to OpenAI, and then OpenAI then buys chips from NVIDIA, NVIDIA recognizes that as revenue. The question is, is there economic substance to that, or is it basically a, a shell transaction? And my, my view on it is that there is substance to this transaction because there is downstream demand for AI in the applications that are eventually gonna get built and for the, uh, APIs that are being put out there, for basically the tokens that are being generated. I mean, Brad will have the exact numbers, but I think OpenAI's revenue ramp rate is, it's something like five billion to 25 billion to 100 billion. Br- Brad, what ... Can you tell us the years on that? I mean ...

   11. BGBrad Gerstner1:10:26

       Well, I don't want to get over my dis- skees about what's been disclosed, but I think rumors out there is that-

   12. DSDavid Sacks1:10:31

       No, no, I thought that's out there. Yeah.

   13. BGBrad Gerstner1:10:31

       Yeah, they'll, they'll, they'll exit this year at over 20 billion run rate. I think there are a lot of people who think they could hit, uh, 50 next year and 100 after that. So, this, again, gets back to your point, David. There's no dark GPUs in the world today. The tokens are being consumed. Every consumer in the world wants answers. They don't want to use 10 blue links. Every enterprise wants to deploy this to make their enterprise better. National sovereigns want to do this in order to advance their military and oth- other things. I want to come back to this very point. We should be on the lookout for sham transactions. When you have moments of excitement like this, they, of course, will lead to somebody on the edge doing stuff that is a sham. What's a sham? There's no economic substance. There's no end buyer for your product. So, I call up Sacks. I say, "Sacks, I c- I've got a bunch of inventory. Nobody wants to buy it. I'm gonna wire you a billion dollars. Buy a billion dollars of my product. I'll post it to revenue, and we're good to go." It doesn't cost him anything, and I get to book a billion in revenue. Clearly a sham, clearly illegal, not at all what's occurring in the case with NVIDIA. Just put it in perspective. '25 through '27, NVIDIA will generate $450 billion, half a trillion dollars of cash flow. What they're investing is mice nuts. They are making equity investments in companies that are mice nuts. It's not credit to these companies. The companies don't ... In the case of OpenAI, they don't even have to use NVIDIA chips. They just told the world they were gonna buy all this AMD, right? They're rumored to be building their own chips. So, the point of the matter here is, of course, it lubricates the system by making these investments, but they're tiny equity checks in these companies. I think about it this way. You know, Google Capital is one of the biggest investors in Duolingo. Duolingo is one of the biggest advertisers on Google. Nobody's crying foul that Google is somehow round tripping revenue back into, uh, you know, Google advertising, right? So long as there is end demand for the product and it's not a sham, I think these things are fine.

   14. JCJason Calacanis1:12:28

       All right. I think we'll leave it there. There's gonna be a lot more news on this in, uh-

   15. DFDavid Friedberg1:12:33

       But people love the picture of the plug plugging itself into its butt.

   16. DSDavid Sacks1:12:37

       (laughs)

   17. JCJason Calacanis1:12:38

       Or the, uh ... Or there's another one of a power strip plugged into the power strip?

   18. DFDavid Friedberg1:12:43

       Nick, can you find the plug plugging itself in the butt?

   19. BGBrad Gerstner1:12:45

       The elephant. The elephant.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg1:12:46

       Yeah, that, that, that ... (laughs)

   21. JCJason Calacanis1:12:47

       There, there it is. That's what we're talking about, yes.

   22. DFDavid Friedberg1:12:49

       (laughs)

   23. BGBrad Gerstner1:12:49

       I, somehow, I don't think the on-off switch is gonna make a difference here.

   24. DFDavid Friedberg1:12:52

       By the way, when I, whenever I see this, I think, "Is it dangerous to do that?" And then I remember, no, there's actually no electricity or current. But-

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:12:59

       No. I think you're good.

   26. DFDavid Friedberg1:13:00

       But it, it, I always think that it is, anyways.

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:13:03

       I mean, we- I, I think the concern we'll have is if there's a down draft, and right now they're saying, hey, 10 to 30% of a correction in the next year is, uh, you know, what people are buzzing about, and I guess it's always some percentage of a correction. If there's a correction, some stocks go down, the tide goes out, then we figure out who has a sustainable business and who's wearing shorts and who's not. And that's what happened exactly in the dot-com bubble. The tide went out, Amazon had enough revenue to continue, other people did, and some people, maybe they were caught with no shorts in the ocean.

   28. DSDavid Sacks1:13:36

       Whenever you have a boom like this, there's obviously gonna be winners and losers, and-

   29. JCJason Calacanis1:13:39

       Mm.

   30. DSDavid Sacks1:13:40

       ... there's gonna be a lot of losers. But the, the question is whether the winners will pay off the, the losers. That's what venture capital requires. But I just think it's amazing how much of a boom is going on, and I think Brad's made the argument that it hasn't even peaked yet. 40% of US GDP growth this year is AI, and AI companies have accounted for 80% of the gain in US stocks this year. I know a lot of people are wringing their hands and pointing to this as, like, evidence that somehow we're, we're in a bubble, but to me, it's a wonderful thing that the US is on the forefront of building out this technological revolution and building out all of this infrastructure, and I think it's ultimately gonna pay huge dividends-
6. 1:15:00 – 1:20:38

   What's behind the Gold rally?

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:15:00

      everybody. Gold rally is off the charts. Shout out to our friend Vinny Lingham who told us about this for the last year or two. Jeez, it just broke 4,000 for the first time ever this week, up over 50% for the year, gold outpacing bitcoin, which is up 30% itself, and all the other major indices, NASDAQ's up 19% in the same time period, uh, S&P 14, down nine percent. Silver is surging even more than gold. There might be some utilization reasons for that. Silver gets used in, uh, a lot of different components, whereas gold very rarely does. At the same time, the US dollar down 8% year to date. Here's a chart from our friends over at Visual Capitalist about gold versus US Treasury, something we talked about here, uh, US Treasuries. Chamath, you wanna take this, and then we'll go to Brad? What are we seeing here with gold? Are... Is this like a safety trade? Is this an anti-USD trade? What i- what i- what's behind this? Too much money supply? What's happening?

   2. DFDavid Friedberg1:16:04

      No. This is just people confusing correlation and causation and making stuff up to look smart. Why is gold up? Gold is up because there are many more net new buyers. Who is the most important net new buyer? It's Tether. Tether's been issuing a stable coin called Tether Gold where they'll actually custody the gold on your behalf, and it's the amount and volumes of it are rising. At the same time, central banks are rebalancing. And then yet at the same time, you have a lot of macro funds that have essentially decided that central banks aren't to be trusted, and they don't know what to do, and so they're not necessarily long bonds, and they're not necessarily long currencies, and so they're long gold. So, I think it's a mixture of things. There's no panacea explanation, but if you had to put it into a couple buckets, it's net new speculation, net new stable coin-related issuance, and a loss of confidence in central bank policy around the world.

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:16:58

      And this is, uh, in some ways a good backstop, Brad, for governments maybe to stop spending and maybe a little austerity. You called austerity in the tech industry in 2021. Thanks for that. I bought a bunch of stocks. I went all in (laughs) on Facebook and a bunch of other ones, uh, when you were talking about this, so. Also China seems to be flipping into gold, too. I've been reading about that. So, what's your take, Brad?

   4. BGBrad Gerstner1:17:23

      Yeah, I mean, uh, listen. There's one, there's one camp that says this is all because the world's falling apart and we're all panicked about global governments' balance sheets. I think that's part of it, but I think Chamath nailed it, right? You got a total change in the new demand picture for gold, right, as evidenced by w- w- you know, we have a bitcoin of gold, BTC, you know, bitcoin, but we also have it in the form of Tether, right? You're now going to allow people to have exposure to the actual underlying gold by buying a crypto asset, so you have new demand for it. You do have people concerned about the state of the world, but it's always been a speculative asset plus a store of value, right? And I've got a couple charts here. You can throw 'em up if you want. One is simply looking at the correlation with the S&P 500 over the last 10 years, and the other one's looking at it with US debt. And I, I, I... It's probably chart crime. I'll go back to what Chamath said. I can make up any story I wanna make. It tracks the g- the growth in US debt. It tracks the growth in risk assets in the S&P 500. The fact of the matter is, it's a combination of all of these things, and hats off to the people who are up 50% this year on gold.

   5. JCJason Calacanis1:18:27

      All right. So, that's simple. Sax, anything you wanna add?

   6. DSDavid Sacks1:18:30

      There is one other big factor. I mean, maybe Chamath mentioned this, but China's central bank has been increasing its gold reserves for 11 consecutive months. They added 40,000 ounces in September alone. As of the end of September, China's gold reserves totaled 74 million ounces valued at 283 billion. So, they've been gradually substituting away from US dollars and US Treasuries towards gold, and, uh, you know, it's, some of this is geopolitical. China's our chief competitor in the world. They probably don't wanna be dependent on the dollar and US treasuries, so they're diversifying away. Also, you can't forget that this trend really started during the Biden administration.... with the Ukraine war because the Biden administration used the US dollar as basically a geopolitical weapon, they cut off access to Swift, they froze Russian assets in the banking system. And so, a lot of countries looked at that and go, "Oh, geez. You know, if I am totally reliant on the US dollar complex, then I can be on the receiving end of US foreign policy that I don't like."

Episode duration: 1:27:50