Trump's First 100 Days, Tariffs Impact Trade, AI Agents, Amazon Backs Down

1. 0:00 – 4:05

   The Besties welcome Box's Aaron Levie and Flexport's Ryan Petersen!

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      I got to wrap, guys. I got to catch a flight to Miami. Let me do a closing here. If you want to keep going, you're welcome. Two, three, two.

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:05

      Well, if the plane just waits, just text the pilot and just tell him you're a ʻall in.'

   3. RPRyan Petersen0:08

      (laughs)

   4. JCJason Calacanis0:08

      All right, listen. I'm not burning all the, uh, All In-

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:11

      I'm just kidding.

   6. JCJason Calacanis0:11

      ... credits, so to speak, and all of our tokens.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:14

      I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

   8. JCJason Calacanis0:16

      I'm not like Freyberg who's flying private to everything-

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:18

      Wait, you're worried about missing a flight?

   10. RPRyan Petersen0:19

       (laughs)

   11. JCJason Calacanis0:19

       ... and then putting it on the All In budget, and the rest of us are flying Southwest-

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:23

       (laughs)

   13. JCJason Calacanis0:23

       ... for your chairman dictator, Chamath Palihapitiya.

   14. DSDavid Sacks0:27

       Yeah, miss a flight? That's a strange concept.

   15. JCJason Calacanis0:29

       Yeah. David Sacks, uh, h- what does that mean? Dave, when's the last time you flew commercial? Clinton.

   16. DSDavid Sacks0:33

       I haven't missed a flight in about 15 years.

   17. JCJason Calacanis0:37

       (laughs)

   18. RPRyan Petersen0:39

       (laughs)

   19. DSDavid Sacks0:39

       We're going all in. Don't let your winners ride.

   20. JCJason Calacanis0:41

       Rainman, David Sacks.

   21. DSDavid Sacks0:45

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

   22. JCJason Calacanis0:50

       WSI.

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:50

       Queen of quinoa.

   24. DSDavid Sacks0:52

       I'm going all in.

   25. JCJason Calacanis0:54

       All right, everybody. Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world. We're back. We're back, and what an amazing panel we have today. With us, Ryan Petersen, friend of the pod, is back on the show. He's the CEO of Flexport. How are you doing, Ryan? Did you get any skiing in this year? I know you like to ski in the deep powder like we do.

   26. RPRyan Petersen1:13

       I tried, man, but it was a, uh, busy year for work, and I got two little kids. I w- I did a few days.

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:19

       Okay. So, you're... Oh, yes. We all forgot. You gave control of your company to somebody. It got a little, uh, shaky, got a little contentious, and then you took the reins back. How has it been being back in the pilot seat?

   28. RPRyan Petersen1:33

       Uh, that was a year and a half ago, so it's a distant-

   29. JCJason Calacanis1:35

       Yeah.

   30. RPRyan Petersen1:35

       ... memory for... In, in Flexport time, that's like a decade. We've, uh, yeah, really had an amazing run, although these tariffs... I mean, I guess that's why you guys invited me on. These tariffs have kind of, uh, made a lot of, created a lot of new uncertainty in the Flexports world.
2. 4:05 – 8:16

   Is Sacks back?

   1. JCJason Calacanis4:05

      All right, let's get started here. We have so many topics to get through. With us again, David Sacks. Hey, David, you're doing, uh, more episodes now. The audience wants to know. I don't know if we're allowed to make any initial announcements, but people are asking me on the streets, in the airports, in the comment threads, "Is Sacks back?"

   2. DSDavid Sacks4:27

      Well, the ratings are back ever since he came back-

   3. RPRyan Petersen4:29

      (laughs)

   4. DSDavid Sacks4:29

      ... to the show.

   5. JCJason Calacanis4:29

      Oh.

   6. DSDavid Sacks4:29

      That's for sure.

   7. RPRyan Petersen4:31

      (laughs)

   8. JCJason Calacanis4:31

      The Ratings Are Back Show?

   9. DSDavid Sacks4:33

      (laughs)

   10. JCJason Calacanis4:33

       But is Sacks-

   11. DSDavid Sacks4:34

       It's measurable.

   12. JCJason Calacanis4:34

       ... back? Is Sacks back?

   13. DSDavid Sacks4:37

       Well, I'm back as much as I can.

   14. JCJason Calacanis4:39

       Mm-hmm. And you are a partial employee of the government. You can do 130 days a year or something. Is that still the status?

   15. DSDavid Sacks4:46

       Yeah, it's roughly half, half work days.

   16. JCJason Calacanis4:48

       Got it. And so what do you do? You have a, you have a punch clock there when you get to the White House? You punch in, you punch out like Fred Flintstone or what? Are you keeping track of these days?

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya4:55

       Oh.

   18. JCJason Calacanis4:55

       How do you do it?

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya4:56

       I know why you don't know this, because you have yet to be invited to the White House.

   20. JCJason Calacanis4:59

       No, you know what's interesting?

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:00

       But that's actually-

   22. JCJason Calacanis5:00

       I got invited.

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:01

       ... that's actually not how it works.

   24. JCJason Calacanis5:02

       Okay. (laughs)

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:02

       Normal... People just... People just badge in and badge out like normal.

   26. JCJason Calacanis5:05

       They badge in and badge out.

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:06

       It's just-

   28. JCJason Calacanis5:06

       They count your days.

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:06

       ... it's a normal place, Jason.

   30. JCJason Calacanis5:08

       I, I mean, literally, it's interesting. There's a new private club.
3. 8:16 – 28:13

   Reflecting on Trump's first 100 days

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya8:16

   2. JCJason Calacanis8:16

      All right, listen, we're 100 days in to Trump 2.0. It's just a random 100-day thing, but everybody's talking about it, everybody's hand-wringing. What has it been like for this first 100 days? How does it compare to Biden? How does it compare to Trump 1.0? 143 executive orders, the most ever in the first 100 days. And they're moving obviously at a, at a different pace, to be generous. Major indices are down 7 to 10%. Obviously, this trade war and tariffs, the year old on the... The yield on the 10-year, eh, it's down about 40 basis points. There's a lot going on. Let's go around the horn. Ryan, uh, Aaron, you're our guests. What's your take on the first 100 days? Is it what you expected? Good, bad, and otherwise. Wins and fails, everything.

   3. DFDavid Friedberg9:03

      I'll go first. I think it's a whirlwind. I mean, if you look at the, uh, the John Boyd, the fighter pilot has this concept of the OODA loop, which is observe, orient, decide, and act. And the concept is that if you're in dogfighting, if you're able to maneuver through those OODA loops at a faster pace than your, than your competition, they get disoriented and don't know what to do. And I, I think that that's got to be how Democrats in Washington and maybe mainstream Republicans in Washington, certainly journalists are all feeling this. Like, there's... The, the Trump a- Trump administration takes action, and before anybody can respond to that, they've already done like four more things and you're like, "Wait, I forgot to actually follow up on the other thing that they did that I didn't like." Uh, and so it's, yeah, it's pretty disorienting if you're, if you're trying to... They k- they can't find a line to fall back to and go, "Hey, we're going to push back against this policy," because they're already moving on to the next one, the next one. Um, so that, that's like my high-level interpretation. Obviously, I come at it from a trade angle. I think everybody knew that Trump was going to be... He, he, he told us during the campaign that the, the most beautiful word in the English language is tariff. Don't tell him it's an Arabic word, but uh, the most beautiful word in the English language. And so we knew that was coming. I think the, the, the suddenness of it all caught people by surprise. I mean, they told us April 1st, April 2nd would be Liberation Day. They didn't tell us that it would go live the next week, you know, and, and affect shit. You've already ordered these goods. So that's one aspect that people are kind of-

   4. JCJason Calacanis10:31

      Got it.

   5. DFDavid Friedberg10:31

      ... disoriented about and then it'll all stop.

   6. JCJason Calacanis10:33

      And we're gonna unpack... Yeah, we're gonna unpack that.

   7. DFDavid Friedberg10:35

      Yeah.

   8. JCJason Calacanis10:35

      Aaron, your thoughts on the first 100 days? Obviously, you are a Democrat, and, uh, you were pretty vocal, really not in support of Trump. So what, what's your take on the first 100 days? Uh, any, any, any bright spots or things you, you know, support?

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya10:50

      Actually, uh, Sax's world, I'd say has, has been a bright spot. So especially, I mean, I think we have a very clear message on AI. And, uh, and that, that, that is... That's been, I, I think a huge net positive, is, um, you know, if you look at the, the past, you know, few months, uh, out of all the, the AI push from the administration, it's unmistakably, you know, pro-open source, you know, pro, you know, bring as much AI innovation, you know, to the US. Obviously, the, the tariffs, you know, add a little bit of a headwind to that. I have some very strong asks, you know, around high-skilled immigration because I think that, you know, AI talent is gonna be super critical to, to actually win the AI war. So, so I'd say that, that directionally has, has had some positive momentum. You know, from my perspective, this is kind of playing out w- uh, almost exactly how I thought it would six months ago. And then three months ago, I, I think there was some signs that maybe, maybe, you know, it wouldn't play out this way, um, just based on some of the, some of the, you know, kind of early groups that were coming to the White House, the, the, the, the sort of deep business, you know, kind of centricity of the White House. You know, I think it was day one or two that Stargate was announced, you know, at the White House. We're gonna go build massive infrastructure. I think the case I'd like to make, you know, once we talk about tariffs is, is I think there's an alternative universe where you just lean into acceleration as opposed to adding headwinds.... but, but, so that would be, that would be the case of what, what maybe could have been, you know, very different is we just keep double down on, dou- doubling down on what's working while fixing the parts that aren't working. Um, but, uh-

   10. JCJason Calacanis12:19

       Great.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya12:19

       ... but that would be, you know, my, my, uh, my judgment so far.

   12. JCJason Calacanis12:22

       Chamath, I mean, you've been talking about it here every week. You and I have, uh, been talking about it pretty consistently, so I don't think there'll be many surprises here, but take a second and maybe assess what you think, if you had to pick a singular thing that's gone really well and a singular thing you think could be improved, wha- what do you got?

   13. Let me give you my overall grade, and then I'll tell you how I get to that. I think the first 100 days have been a B+.

   14. Hmm.

   15. And here's how I get to that score. There have been two things where I think Trump has, frankly, hit a home run. The first is all of the direct investment and specifically, the foreign direct investment into the United States. I think it's approaching, if not, it has already exceeded a trillion dollars from corporations and organizations and individuals from around the world who have committed to bringing money into the United States. And I think strategically, that's a legacy that w- will live past him. So I think that's been an A+. The second is we had a very unsafe border situation, and he ran on shutting it down. I'm not talking about the execution of the deportations, I'm just saying getting the illegal crossings to zero, and he's done that. So that's been an A+.

   16. Hmm.

   17. I think what's going to be more controversial are these next three things though. M- in my interpretation, I think the tariffs have been an A, and I think that the market reaction, the stock market is only down 4% and the interest rate markets are, you know, four and a quarter percent, I think those have been an A. Now, the reason I think tariffs have been an A is because it is uncovered, in my opinion, how beholden we are to a brittle supply chain and specifically to China, who is a friend, but who's also an enemy. And I think that that's gonna really severely complicate our flexibility and optionality in the future as they do what is in their best interests. Okay, so where have they then not done so well? I think the documents have been, frankly, a D. We were supposed to get the Epstein files. We haven't yet. We were supposed to get the Martin Luther King files. We haven't. We did get the redacted JFK files. I don't think that there's been very good communication about why it's taking so long. So I think it's a very small, narrow thing, but I think it had a lot of attention on the way in. I think the communications of the tariffs and the back and forth had been a C. I think the markets were not l- led in enough of a way where they could absorb the volatility, but if you take it all in its totality, I would give it a B+. I think it's been a very productive 100 days, and when you look back, I think, in, you know, three years, four years, five years-

   18. Okay.

   19. ... we've made some important progress.

   20. Sax, uh, obviously you're a part of the administration, so I'm not sure exactly how to ask you this, but you s- you heard some nice compliments about AI from Aaron. I, I happen to agree with those. I actually agree with, uh, a good portion of the, uh, crypto stuff too. I think actually getting those, uh, tightened up, which are your two zones of excellence and your area that you're focused on, I think you've done a great job there. So just bestie to bestie, great job there.

   21. ALAaron Levie16:03

       Yeah. Thank you.

   22. JCJason Calacanis16:04

       What's your, what's your take overall? You know, i- it's kind of hard, I guess, to ask somebody in the administration to criticize the administration.

   23. ALAaron Levie16:09

       Yeah. Oh-

   24. JCJason Calacanis16:10

       But hearing everybody else's take, what's your response maybe?

   25. ALAaron Levie16:13

       Well, I would, I would highlight three main areas that I think are, uh, big accomplishments for the Trump administration in the first 100 days. So, so number one has to be the border. Like Chamath said, I think you have to give the administration an A+ on this. They've completely stopped the border crisis. I think we all knew that Trump would take action on this, because it's one of the main issues he campaigned on. But I think if you had asked any of us, you know, four months ago, "Would this problem be completely solved?" Meaning border apprehensions completely stopped, border completely sealed within the first 100 days, I don't think we would have believed necessarily that it would get done so quickly, but it has. Uh, recall that for four years during the Biden years, we were told for the first three years that the problem didn't even exist. Whenever the videos were published of caravans coming or throngs of people running across the border, we were told that these were cherry-picked videos on Fox News, it wasn't real. Finally, in the last year of the Biden administration, they said, "Okay, we're finally gonna do something about it." They took some limited actions, and they said that doing more than that would require new legislation. Well, all of that was just gaslighting, it turns out. Trump came in, he restored Remain in Mexico and other policies, completely stopped it. He had this line at the State of the Union, which I think is exactly right, which is, "We didn't need a new law. We just needed a new president." So I think that's area number one. Area number two, I would say would be the vibe shift in the culture around wokeism and DEI.

   26. JCJason Calacanis17:40

       Hmm.

   27. ALAaron Levie17:40

       We've... You know, how quickly we forget about this, but wokeism has completely collapsed. Uh, I don't know that anyone is endorsing it in a full-throated way. Moreover, beyond just sort of the cultural aspect of it, I think we've had significant policy changes on DEI.

   28. JCJason Calacanis17:58

       Mm-hmm.

   29. ALAaron Levie17:58

       Trump has basically ended DEI at the government level. He also signed an executive order ending the use of disparate impact for affirmative action. This is the policy that said that even if you have...... a policy that's applied in a completely neutral and objective way, if it results in a disparate impact where different groups are represented in a different way in the outcomes, then somehow that must be racist.

   30. JCJason Calacanis18:22

       Yeah.
4. 28:13 – 49:11

   Global trade disruption, how businesses are dealing with tariffs

   1. JCJason Calacanis28:13

      and see. Okay, downstream tariff impacts. We gotta talk about this, and this is why we have you here. Ryan, since you're in the thick of it, you tweeted a thread last week about the lag time, uh, of shipments from China, and when you were on, I guess during COVID, you really educated us to how the supplying chain, how the supply chain works, and according to the thread that you shared, hmm, somewhere around early June, we're going to expect warehouses, trucking, the entire supply chain maybe to start to seize up or layoffs. I don't know how you would frame it, Ryan, but are we past the point of no return with regard to the supply chain? Is there an off-ramp for this tariff conflict war negotiation with China in your mind? What are you seeing on the streets-

   2. ALAaron Levie29:03

      Sure.

   3. JCJason Calacanis29:03

      ... and in the purchase orders and the invoices at Flexport? Definitely not past the point of no return. I think we're still right in the middle of the don't judge the cook while he's cooking w- is one, you know, like let's see what the, let's see what it tastes like at the end is I think a starting point here, and we're still, they're still in active negotiations. So I don't think today's... It's not static. Now the world does want a lot more certainty, and that's a big cause of what's happened here. And what has happened is a 60% decline in bookings of ocean freight from China to the US. I mean, so that's really, really pretty dramatic, like, probably exceeding what was expected. I don't think, you know, when they issued, when they rolled out the initial reciprocal tariff plans on, on April 2nd, it was meant to be a 54% tariff on China. Then, you know, there's multiple cycles of escalation. We ended up at what's now 154% tariff. So this is, this is a lot higher than anybody planned for, and so therefore I don't think anyone was planning for a 60% decline in ocean freight. Ryan, let me ask you a question about that. Y-

   4. ALAaron Levie30:05

      Yeah.

   5. JCJason Calacanis30:05

      Are people actually paying that 154%? There's been this discussion online and it's, it's sort of unclear from the administration and from retailers. Stuff that's landing that people ordered before April 2nd, are they actually paying the 154% on top-

   6. ALAaron Levie30:22

      So it's-

   7. JCJason Calacanis30:22

      ... of what's landing?

   8. ALAaron Levie30:23

      It's, it's live now. Um, it, it was based on departure date, so goods that departed China after...

   9. DFDavid Friedberg30:29

      ... midnight Eastern Time on April 9th-

   10. JCJason Calacanis30:32

       Got it.

   11. DFDavid Friedberg30:32

       ... are subject to the tariffs upon arrival. And so now, enough time has passed that pretty much all the ships that are arriving now left China after April 9th when that started. Um, so yes.

   12. JCJason Calacanis30:40

       So what happens? People are paying it? Or are people saying-

   13. DFDavid Friedberg30:43

       They're paying it.

   14. JCJason Calacanis30:43

       ... "I won't take delivery because it's too much"?

   15. Jason, you have, you have to pay it. Ryan, correct me if I'm wrong, but you have to pay it at the dock in order to get the goods released.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg30:51

       More or less.

   17. JCJason Calacanis30:52

       Is that right?

   18. DFDavid Friedberg30:52

       More or less that's true. Y- they all- they allow you to... If you have a bond in place, so you can pull the goods out before you pay, but it, the money's owed at that time and then you get, you get like, a two-week timeframe to actually make the payment. But there are strategies here a lot of people are doing that, you can use what's called a bonded warehouse and move cargo into this warehouse, uh, and then you only owe the duties when the cargo leaves. And -

   19. JCJason Calacanis31:12

       That's what I was asking, like, is there a hack here to...

   20. DFDavid Friedberg31:14

       It's that, that, that allows you defer things and it's very, very common right now. People are searching everywhere for bonded warehouse capacity because in a bonded warehouse, not only you defer payment to when the cargo leaves the warehouse, but you only owe the duty amount based on at that date. So if the duties come back down, which a lot of people are betting they will on the China-specific duties, you'll actually lower your t- tariff burden. And then there's another hack for this, which is effect- use a Mexican or Canadian bonded warehouse. So you move the goods into Mexico, and then you actually only technically import them into the US at a future date when tariffs are lower. So I understand a lot of, a lot of companies are doing that right now too. Um, we're helping some people with that type of strategy. But yeah-

   21. JCJason Calacanis31:56

       Is that... Sorry, Ryan. Do you think that the government, will they view that okay, that kind of hack? And-

   22. DFDavid Friedberg32:02

       Yeah.

   23. JCJason Calacanis32:02

       Or like, you know, like if you look at the GDP numbers, one of the craziest things was the inventory pull forward that people did, to your point, like trying to get as much stuff into the United States before April 9th, as an example.

   24. DFDavid Friedberg32:15

       Yeah. I mean, it's not a hack. It's a... Bonded warehouses have been around for decades and they're n- they're very commonly used. I don't know that it'll be that material in the scheme of things that it would, you know, cause a change in the law around bonded warehouse.

   25. JCJason Calacanis32:28

       So you don't think, for example, the Department of Commerce will have an issue with the strategy of sending inventory into Mexico? That essentially, you're essentially, like isn't it an arc though?

   26. It's a workaround. Yeah.

   27. It's a workaround? Like, instead of paying the China tariff, now you pay a Mexico tariff, which should be less. Is that the idea?

   28. DFDavid Friedberg32:46

       Well, you can move it into a bonded warehouse in Mexico even and not pay Mexican tariffs either and you just wait until it imports. But I mean, what's the Department of Commerce or the Customs to do? It's sort of like, you just de- delayed importing the goods. You imported them in the future and-

   29. JCJason Calacanis33:00

       Hmm.

   30. DFDavid Friedberg33:00

       ... you know, it doesn't... I, I, I wouldn't even call it a hack. It's just sort of like peop- people are gonna get creative here. You know what I mean? Like, that's the job actually. The government should set the rules and the rest of us got to figure out, "All right, how are we going to compete and make money-"
5. 49:11 – 1:04:10

   Amazon flip-flops on tariff pricing feature; national security issues

   1. JCJason Calacanis49:11

      uh, wrap up on this, just really lightning round here. Amazon flip-flopped on a new tariff notification on their websites. Trump said he had a great discussion with Bezos, he solved the problem very quickly, he did the right thing, good guy, et cetera. If you haven't seen this, it's something that Temu is doing. Here's what Temu does, uh, currently today. Nick, you have that image, if you could pull it up, of just when there is a tariff, they explain the tariff coming into the country. They put it as like a line item. I thought this was actually kind of cool, I don't know why people take offense to it. Ryan, this is pretty standard stuff. So Amazon's competitor, Temu, is putting in the import charges. They don't say tariffs, they don't say taxes, import charges. This is like a standard thing-

   2. What is, what is-

   3. ... and this happens in other countries too, right?

   4. ... what is this? What is Temu? Is this like a dollar store?

   5. (laughs) It's basically like a dollar... is it, is this the last place you would ever buy anything-

   6. DFDavid Friedberg50:02

      Right, you never buy some $5 jeans? (laughs)

   7. JCJason Calacanis50:02

      ... but it's a place where the, yeah. You can buy $12 jeans. Basically your left sock from Loro Piana cost less than Temu's entire inventory of jeans.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg50:13

      (laughs)

   9. JCJason Calacanis50:13

      The point being, um, I thought this was actually a plus for...

   10. DFDavid Friedberg50:19

       I think they, Amazon totally misplayed this. They, they, they did-

   11. JCJason Calacanis50:22

       Yeah.

   12. DFDavid Friedberg50:22

       They rolled it out and they got criticized. I think they were called a treasonous company from the White House press, uh, you know, by the Press Secretary. Uh, they totally misplayed this because th- they should have gone and leaned into it and said, "Yeah, we're showing you all these tariffs when you buy from China. If you buy from America, you don't have to pay any tariff."

   13. JCJason Calacanis50:38

       Yes. Now we've got these other guys-

   14. DFDavid Friedberg50:38

       "And look at all these other products."

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya50:39

       Uh, come on, come on, that would have lasted three and a half seconds. This is exactly consistent with the other issue, which is they're playing whack-a-mole. Okay, we're gonna do something with the automakers, we're gonna, we're gonna try and solve some problem with Amazon. Like, like this is a sign that, that it d- like, it's not a good strategy if you have to do this much whack-a-mole. Like, like they, they're n- like they can't cover up what Amazon is gonna end up dealing with 'cause there's gonna be 500 other retailers that, that don't get to call with Trump. So, so this is like, that, that like, to me, that's evidence of, of clearly this, they didn't think through the entire downstream set of, of, of conditions that are gonna change as a result of this.

   16. JCJason Calacanis51:16

       Sure. Yeah. I, I thought this was a big win, uh, Chamath, because they could then have Amazon... Here's, um, a mockup somebody made, I'll pull it up here, it was interesting. They could, to Aaron's point, just show, "Hey, here's a bunch of American companies, buy American when you do a search."

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:33

       It was Ryan's point.

   18. JCJason Calacanis51:35

       Oh, I'm sorry, Ryan's point. "Hey, here's what it might look like." Pull, pull that, um, the Oral-B toothbrush one up, uh, Nick, if you got it right there. So somebody mocked this up. I think this could be the hugest win. You could have the retailers do buy American, buy it once, buy a high-quality product from America. If you look here...

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:52

       We don't have the products. We, we, it, it wouldn't work, we don't have the products.

   20. JCJason Calacanis51:58

       Well, I mean, we do have for some products, you know, American made products. Uh, you know, I buy my boots from Danner and those are all American made, so...

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:04

       So we're, we're... Yeah, so we should just go back to communism and we're all gonna make our, our shoes. Like, it's like... that's like we're, we're in a global market.

   22. JCJason Calacanis52:12

       Yeah.

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:12

       Like, we buy shit from everywhere.

   24. JCJason Calacanis52:14

       Chamath, any thoughts on this? I mean, obviously there's the whack-a-mole angle, there's buy American and be proud of it.

   25. Here's the narrow-

   26. There's communication.

   27. Here's the narrow question. I, I got a bunch of emails from people and a bunch of them were Amazon sellers. And I don't know, Nick, if you can find it, but I posted their comments and I re-shared them just to kind of highlight the issues that they were going through. And at the core of it was a feeling by them-

   28. Hmm.

   29. ... that Amazon had abandoned them as American purveyors and sellers of goods. And that Amazon, on the margins, had a tendency to help competitors from abroad come stand themselves up and compete and essentially cannibalize on price and margin.

   30. DFDavid Friedberg53:05

       This is my view completely, and that this is the biggest opportunity that I think the Trump administra- administration's flying at 40,000 feet doing macro level negotiations and look, and failing to see some of these micro optimizations that are really, really real. So you, in the United States, you can import goods as a foreign company. Uh, you don't not, you do not have to create an LLC or any sort of registered entity in the United States to import goods. Sometimes they say, "Oh, Americans pay the tariff." Like, that is not true. I- in many, many cases the foreign company just imports the stuff and they sell on Amazon. And when they get caught cheating, they can, they can lie about the valuation and pay a lower tariff, they can change their classification and pay a lower tariff. They can import stuff that, you know, is harmful to children, it has lead paint, whatever else. There's no enforcement at all. You can't go after these people.
6. 1:04:10 – 1:10:36

   AI agents, 1,000,000X'ing AI, and more

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:04:10

      2025-

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:04:10

      (laughs)

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:04:10

      ... shaping up to be the year of AI agents. Tons to talk about here. OpenAI is planning to charge between two and 20K a month for different levels of AI agents. These would be basically cron jobs. They would run in the background and do things for your company that, uh, humans are doing right now. You may have heard of this, uh, agentic tool. Again, agentic is just a fancy word for agent, which is a fancy role, word for like a cron job that just runs-

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:04:34

      No. That's fine.

   5. JCJason Calacanis1:04:35

      ... uh, perpetually.

   6. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:04:36

      Yep.

   7. JCJason Calacanis1:04:37

      And, uh, Manus is, uh, the company in China that started this. Weirdly, Benchmark invested in it. That's created a whole kerfluffle on the side. And Manus's website has a really good visualization of what these agents would look like.

   8. ALAaron Levie1:04:49

      So first of all, I think you're giving a little too much credit to Manus. They didn't come up with the agents, but I do think that they have a very good demo.

   9. JCJason Calacanis1:04:56

      Yeah.

   10. ALAaron Levie1:04:57

       And it's hard to know exactly how real it is because not everyone's used it. But if you-

   11. JCJason Calacanis1:05:01

       And it's from China.

   12. ALAaron Levie1:05:02

       It's from China. I'll get to that in a second.

   13. JCJason Calacanis1:05:03

       Yeah.

   14. ALAaron Levie1:05:03

       If you go to their website, you can see a bunch of their, their demos. And I do think that what they deserve credit for is advancing the ball on the UI paradigm. And it's not that other people weren't doing this. I mean, I think notably Anthropic was doing this with its operator product. But the basic idea is that you've got this two-pane view, and in one window, you've got the standard chatbot interface, and then in the other view, you can see what the agent is doing. And that agent has the ability to toggle between i- currently four apps. There's search, browser, code terminal, and document editor. And so when you give Manus a task, the first thing it does is create a to-do list in the document editor. You can kind of see it there. And then it works sequentially to achieve each of those tasks and then puts an X on them there. And you can kind of see it working. And I think what's cool about the demo is just the way that it seamlessly toggles between those four apps, and you can see what the AI agent is doing. You know, and it's browsing the internet, it's searching for things, it's writing documents, it's crossing things off its to-do list. Now, I think it's pretty easy to imagine where this goes, which is you'll be able to connect an agent to all of your SaaS apps. So it won't just be four applications. It'll now be connected to dozens of applications, including ones that already have your data, and it's gonna know what actions it's possible to take in those apps, so when it creates its to-do list, there's a much wider range of things that it can accomplish. And in fact, there's a new standard called MCP, which is taking off like wildfire, which is built specifically to enable agents to connect with applications and understand the data and understand the actions that are possible in those SaaS applications. So look, Manus is just the t- tip of the iceberg here. I think this will become a very standard UI paradigm. That's the reason why I mention it, not because I am pre-declaring them to be the winner in the space, but just because I think there's a lot of talk about agents, and I think it's hard to...... conceptualize what that means without just seeing it visually.

   15. JCJason Calacanis1:07:01

       Great, great summary there, Saks. And Aaron, I wanna get your thoughts on it because obviously, you're running Box and, and you have your, your finger on the pulse of this. We actually started building one of these in our venture firm. We have 20,000 applications a year and we have updates coming in from investments. We are now taking those, Saks, Aaron, and we are having an agent sort them and then look for competitors and compare them to the last update, and we're looking into our notion, our coda, and saying, "What else have... What other communications have we had? What questions should we ask about this startup and about their strategy?" And then we're presenting that in Slack to our team. So this is coming fast and furious, and we spend, I don't know, probably 15 minutes on each of those incoming applications. You start doing the math on that, talking about 5,000 hours of work. Aaron, what are you seeing on the street? What are you doing at Box in terms of agents landing right now in Q2 of 2025?

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:07:57

       Uh, yeah. I mean, I think, I think Saks represented it, uh, well, which is, which is, you know, you have to now think about AI as, as effectively being able to do anything on a, on a computer or another piece of software as, as a human can do. And the little distraction that, that I think happened two years ago after the ChatGPT moment was we sort of thought about that as, "Oh, we're just gonna, you know, do, like, typing information retrieval," and that it's a new paradigm for user interfaces, let's say. So you just, like, talk to your software and you, like, search Zillow via chat. That was sort of a little bit of a distraction that- that's super helpful, like, when you want basic information look up or, or whatnot. The big breakthrough is starting to think through these things as, as full, you know, effectively, uh, uh, you know, agentic systems that, that operate on any amount of data, any amount of tools for as long as you want to complete any task that you want. And this is sort of the big year where agents are starting to, you know, enter the vocabulary of enterprises, of IT people, of, you know, larger and, and certainly smaller organizations. Um, and, and it kind of requires you to have a little bit of a, of a reset moment on how you think about AI, which is, which is it's not just now a, kind of a co-pilot that you talk back and forth with. It's actually something running behind the scenes that's now actually starting to deliver, you know, real automated, you know, kind of work for you. And so lot- lots of implications. Like, you know, uh, massive implications to what the software business model is in the future. You know, I, I, I would argue, you know, strongly that it's a massive TAM increase, um, because now software starts to go after labor spend. It completely changes the dynamics of then, you know, how do you build a moat in a world of AI agents? Um, uh, but, but I think probably-

   17. JCJason Calacanis1:09:34

       Unpack that piece there, Aaron.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:09:35

       Yeah.

   19. JCJason Calacanis1:09:35

       You said something very interesting.

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:09:36

       Thank you.

   21. JCJason Calacanis1:09:37

       How software then is going to go over human spend.

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:09:40

       Yes.

   23. JCJason Calacanis1:09:41

       Explain that concept. Unpack it for a second.

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:09:44

       Yeah. So David and I, you know, we, we, we go back, way back in SaaS land, but like you used to basically just, you know, you built, you built a piece of, of software and you sell it for the number of, of people in the organization. And so, you know, company has 500 employees and, uh, and you sell that thing for let's say $10, you know, a user a month. You know, 120 bucks a year and you make 60,000 bucks. Um, and so, so that... And that's kind of the business model. Uh, now when your software actually brings the underlying workflow to the customer or the underlying outcome to the customer. So, you know, that, that company might have 10 lawyers and so previously if you were selling software for lawyers, you had a maximum amount of 10 seats that you could sell. Now all of a sudden, if your AI agents are doing the equivalent of let's say paralegal work or some form of professional services, all of a sudden you might be able to sell a, a multiple of the initial kind of 10 seats that you would have sold previously. And so-

Episode duration: 1:35:05