All-In PodcastTrump’s Super Intelligence Summit, AI Safety Accord, GDP Beats, Midterm Predictions
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
80 min read · 16,327 words- 0:00 – 2:01
Bestie intros!
- JCJason Calacanis
Another huge shout-out to Starlink. How good do I sound right now?
- DSDavid Sacks
It's actually great.
- JCJason Calacanis
And I mean, like, it's flawless. It's flawless.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah, it's shocking.
- DFDavid Friedberg
It's amazing.
- JCJason Calacanis
Nick, show the s- behind-the-scenes shot of what it took to get us going. [laughs] Starlink is bananas. [laughs]
- DFDavid Friedberg
That's amazing.
- JCJason Calacanis
Look at this.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Do you guys wanna know something about the Starlink network that I think is just kinda coming out now? Basically, the Starlink network, because it's putting out radio waves and it can pick up radio waves, and you've got so many of them, you've basically got a phased array telescope looking down on the Earth.
- JCJason Calacanis
Huh.
- DFDavid Friedberg
And you can pick up what would otherwise be stealth aircraft from above.
- JCJason Calacanis
So this is a UFO detector, you're saying?
- DFDavid Friedberg
It's a stealth airplane detector. Like, basically with Starlink-
- JCJason Calacanis
It's a UFO detector
- DFDavid Friedberg
... it could be a UFO detector, but the Starlink network basically becomes this incredible radar system that sits above the Earth to look down on things that would normally be stealth from the surface of the Earth.
- DSDavid Sacks
So does this mean we don't have to do a science corner today, 'cause you just did it?
- JCJason Calacanis
[laughs]
- DFDavid Friedberg
[laughs]
- JCJason Calacanis
Jack, Jack. [laughs] Great to see you, Sir. As one of the architects of Bretton Woods 2.0, Sacks is on a high. He's coming in hot.
- DSDavid Sacks
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
We'll let your winners ride.
- JCJason Calacanis
Rainman David Sacks.
- SPSpeaker
And instead, we open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Love you, bestie.
- JCJason Calacanis
Ice Queen of QAnon. All right, everybody, welcome back to This Week in AI, sorry, uh, All-In Podcast, and we've got a ton of news-
- DFDavid Friedberg
[laughs] You're such an-
- JCJason Calacanis
... to get to on the docket.
- DFDavid Friedberg
You're such an idiot. You're an idiot.
- JCJason Calacanis
[laughs] Well, I mean, it's just the, every week is AI on top of AI on top of AI.
- DSDavid Sacks
You have a show called This Week in AI, and you cover nothing about AI.
- 2:01 – 17:57
Trump’s Super Intelligence Summit: Behind the scenes and how the accord was created and signed
- JCJason Calacanis
Uh, we were sitting here just a couple of weeks ago, or sitting in Los Angeles, I should say, and there was a bit of a chaotic moment. Hey, should we be, should we be [laughs] auditing or de-selling with all this AI? And three weeks later, President Trump held a Super Intelligent Summit in DC. Many of, uh, the besties were there, and, uh, or three of four, I should say. On Tuesday, President Trump convened the biggest names in AI, Elon, Jensen, Zuck, Dario, Sundar, Satya, yada, yada, yada, all the way down the line, and everybody from the government as well. I could ramble on about this, but Sacks, I have s- I have a feeling you were instrumental in setting this up, so maybe I'll just hand it off to you. Tell us how this went down so quickly, and then what the outcome is of this Super Intelligence Summit.
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, the reason it happened so quickly is because President Trump convened all of these people to the White House, and I think he's the only person who could get all the CEOs of all these companies in one room. I mean, these are the leading companies in the world across data centers, across chips, hyperscalers, and then obviously frontier models. And many of them, frankly, don't like each other. They have disputes with one another.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
We all know this. They may have lawsuits with one another. All of that didn't matter because President Trump called them to the White House for this conversation, and I've called it the Bretton Woods of Super Intelligence. This was the first gathering of really all the critical players across the entire stack of the industry, and I think we had a really good, open, and honest conversation about both the opportunities and the risks of super intelligence. And as a result of that meeting, and I'd say during the meeting, we worked out this agreement that has come to be known as the White House Accord on Super Intelligence that was then signed by the six major frontier model companies, and I think will now apply a new rigor, a new set of controls on the development of super intelligence so that the public can be more confident that this will be done safely. And if I could just highlight a few of the, the key features. So first of all, the companies who are developing these products acknowledge that they are responsible. They have to be the responsible actors. Let's not deflect it onto, to someone else or anthropomorphize the models or talk about the United Nations. These companies accept responsibility, number one. Number two, they agree to have internal controls and to have those internal controls verified by an internal team that does that. But we don't just leave it to, quote-unquote, "self-policing." It starts there, but then you have external auditors who will then validate and verify that the internal controls are working. And these companies will set up, uh, an independent committee of the board to then receive those reports. And as Gavin Baker pointed out this morning, you know, when the board receives a report from an external auditor, you can't disregard that. It's not optional. The board has a massive fiduciary duty to then act on that. Otherwise, their DNO policy can get canceled, right? So now the board is gonna receive the report of the external auditor, and they have to make sure, as a board, that they're overseeing, they're providing oversight to make sure that the frontier development is happening safely. And then finally, sitting behind all of that, you still have the FTC and the SEC, which have the ability and the responsibility to enforce the public commitments of these companies. So although this agreement was entered into voluntarily, the governance that follows from it is not voluntary. It is now de facto required.
- JCJason Calacanis
It's fiduciary. This is a critical point.
- DSDavid Sacks
It becomes fiduciary.
- JCJason Calacanis
Because it's an audit-
- DSDavid Sacks
Right
- JCJason Calacanis
... because, and DNO, for people who may be not familiar with the directors and officers, that's the liability ensuren- insurance that that board of directors has in case something goes wrong. So this is-
- DSDavid Sacks
Right
- JCJason Calacanis
... got teeth to it.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yes, and it-
- JCJason Calacanis
Even though it was voluntary-
- DSDavid Sacks
Yes, so-
- JCJason Calacanis
... it has deep, deep hooks into the board of directors.
- DSDavid Sacks
That's right. And, and just one final point on this is that, again, th- this White House Accord on Super Intelligence, it was convened by the president. It was as a result of that discussion and that conversation. We got the major companies to sign it, and I think everyone in the room- There's basically a consensus around it, and these controls can now be implemented basically immediately or very, very quickly. And it doesn't require new legislation, and it certainly doesn't require some new international agreement that's never gonna happen.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
So this is something that can be done right away. I think it's a credit to the president, and I think this should, in large part, I think, address many of the concerns that the public has about the safe development of superintelligence.
- JCJason Calacanis
Absolutely. And-
- DSDavid Sacks
And I think there's a lot of Democrats right now who don't want to give the president credit around this because they want to keep using it as a campaign issue. But the reality is that I think the president dealt with it swiftly and sensibly and practically. This is way more practical than trying to declare a pause on frontier development that China would never go along with or creating some DMV for models-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yes
- DSDavid Sacks
... that, again, would slow us down to the point where China just wins. So this is very practical, and it's immediate, and the president deserves credit, even though the Democrats won't give it to him. But I'll notice that even Jacob Coxon, where it, you know, in a way you could say that this whole-
- JCJason Calacanis
The whistleblower, quote unquote-
- DSDavid Sacks
The so-called, yeah, I'll call-
- JCJason Calacanis
... who rage quit after six weeks, who is working-
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah
- JCJason Calacanis
... with the PR firm for these.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yes. Yes. I would say fake whistleblower because he was working with the PR firm the whole time, even though he said he wasn't.
- JCJason Calacanis
Artificial whistleblower.
- DSDavid Sacks
But, or the artificial whistleblower. But look, even he said that he was happy to read this. He was giving credit to the president, so maybe everybody else should as well.
- 17:57 – 45:22
Cybersecurity arms race, data center national security, America.gov, coordinated doomer messaging
- JCJason Calacanis
And Friedberg, when you look at this in terms of the speed and velocity it happened, and you're, I guess, on the, uh, President's Science and Technology Council now, maybe you could speak to, you know, how quickly this is all occurring and what the impact might be in terms of America's competitiveness, because you've had concerns, "Hey, maybe slowing down here means China catches up." So maybe you could talk a little bit to your prediction, if any, of the alignment here of all of the companies. Also of note, just for the audience, people are like, "Sam Altman's not there." His partner Greg was there, so- Sam was doing, I guess, the launch of some new products they had. But OpenAI was obviously represented. So maybe you could talk a little bit about what you think impact, the impact this will have on maybe the American public and their view of AI.
- DFDavid Friedberg
I mean, look, I think we are, we always assumed in the sci-fi novels that we would be in an era of having robot wars, and I think we failed to recognize [chuckles] that the software came first, and we are actually having the AI wars. And there's a war that I think we're in the middle of right now where there's kind of one side that wants to centralize, control, manage, regulate, whatever the term of the day might be, the technology. And there's another side that I think is cognizant of the reality of the technology, which is that it is effectively ubiquitous, we talked about this in the past, due to open source, open weight models proliferating. The fact that you can run models on small local machines, that you don't need large clusters to do things, and that we're seeing model after model come out now that are not under the jurisdiction of some centralized system or agency. Therefore, it becomes very hard and practically impossible to actually regulate the development of the software. That's the truth. It is what it is. You may not like it, but it is what it is. And those two sides are gonna continue to fight. I think that the risks will rise, and as that happens, I'm gonna make two predictions to your question. The first one is that I think we will see a massive rise in defense systems. There is no turning off the open source, open weight models or shutting down all the data centers or centralizing command and control. There are 197 countries on Earth. They each have sovereignty. There's energy everywhere. They're all connected to the internet. Data centers will exist all over the world. So the attempt to try and centralize and manage the control of the software, I think is a fool's errand. But I do think that it's gonna mandate, because the risks will rise, an increased amount of defense. And so I think, you know, companies like Palo Alto Networks, I think the investment in this space, um, what I heard in DC this week was some Fortune 50 CEOs are very worried about cyber defense. That means they're gonna start to make this their pr- number one priority to address at the board level. That means the budgets for cyber defense are gonna go through the roof. Now let me ask you a question. When you have to do cyber defense in an era of AI, are you gonna use old school software, or are you gonna use AI?
- JCJason Calacanis
Obviously AI. [laughs]
- DFDavid Friedberg
You're gonna use AI. And because of that, because cyber defense is going to need to grow, the US is going to need to provide competitive AI for cyber defense. It is a classic arms race scenario. And so the US cannot simply step back and pause and turn off AI. It is already everywhere in the world, therefore the risks are rising. Therefore, we need to increase our investment in AI to maintain our cyber defense capabilities, both at the enterprise level and at the government level, and potentially even at the civilian consumer level. So I think that the cyber defense necessity actually mandates that we continue to build out data centers to support it. The second prediction I'll make is I think 12 to 18 months from now we're gonna shift away from this conversation about managing models, regulating models, controlling models, estimating models, scoring models, all this sort of stuff that's going on. Because like we mentioned last week, every 11 days we're seeing new models get published now. It is unbelievable. And this week Google released their new model that also seems to be more performant than any other model, and every couple days we're seeing a new one come out. So the model control systems are not gonna solve any problems. What I think is gonna end up happening, and this is a prediction no one may like, but I do think we're gonna end up in a world where governments are gonna regulate data center access and usage. They're gonna say, "The data centers are here, but in order to maintain defense capabilities, we are going to decide who gets allocated a certain number of GPUs, certain amount of inference, a certain number of chips, a certain number of servers." Because at the end of the day, one of the key metrics of cyber defense is going to be how many machines do you have allocated to defend your systems against how many machines are coming after your systems. And it is, again, a classic arms race scenario. Assuming model convergence and even, you know, if models have slight advantages over others, it seems to be the case that we will maintain pacing. And if we're maintaining pacing, then the number of machines allocated to a specific task is gonna be a key measure of how well it performs in that task relative to another set of machines doing the same task. You're just gonna need to allocate more machines to it. So if you're gonna allocate more machines to it, you're gonna end up having the government say, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We need the US financial services system to get X percent of the GPUs in America. We need to make sure that Y percent go to defense. We need to make sure that Z percent-
- JCJason Calacanis
You're saying it's all gonna get nationalized and allocated top-down?
- DFDavid Friedberg
I think that's where the regulators are gonna end up having to play a role. You can kind of think about data centers becoming the utility, which is the clouds, the neo clouds. Effectively the government will end up saying, "Wait a second. We're not allocating enough to JPMorgan. We're not allocating enough to the financial services system." And ultimately the number of machines that are being allocated-
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, I mean, the private market take care of that.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah. It's an opportunity to sell into the government. Now Google and Amazon Web Services, Crusoe, whoever can just sell more servers. And the government then can say, "Hey, it is now, Sacks, national, uh, security that we build more data centers, and we're going to clear the road for it based on-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Right
- JCJason Calacanis
... that alone."
- DFDavid Friedberg
That is correct.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah. Here, here-
- DFDavid Friedberg
That is inevitable
- DSDavid Sacks
... yeah, here, here's the part that I agree with-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Good luck blocking a data center if we need it. That'd be like blocking tanks being built during World War II, right? I mean...
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah. Here, here's the part I agree with, is it's not just about the capability of the model, it's about how much compute you have to run it, and we wanna have more compute Than our adversaries, and if we continue with this anti-data center crusade, we're gonna be at a severe disadvantage. We already know that the precursor for data centers is power generation, and China's doubling their grid every decade, and we've been flat for about 25 years. That's a huge problem. Now, I went back and looked. Throughout the course of the 20th century, the United States was on a pace to double its electrical grid every decade. That's what we did. We actually grew power generation enormously, and those were in the days when America was a great industrial empire and basically dominated the world in manufacturing and industry. We did not have a problem doing this. We found ways to do it. Obviously, the power generation plants, the power plants were being built somewhere, and they found places to put them where they didn't encounter too much NIMBY opposition. They figured out a way to do it. Think about that. Every decade of the 20th century until starting around the 1970s, when it slowed a bit, they were doubling the grid every decade. '70s, it started slowing, but the growth continued, and it wasn't until the early 2000s that basically we flat-lined. Why is that? Because of de-industrialization, globalization. We shipped all those manufacturing jobs overseas, and then people went to work in offices, so we didn't need as much power. Efficiency played a little bit of a part in it as well, but we kinda lost that muscle of how do we basically keep doubling our power grid every decade. We have to get that back. And, um, again, this, you know, anti-data center witch hunt that I'm seeing going on, it's so misguided. Look, data centers have been around for a long time. Data centers serve the internet. They serve all the mobile applications on your phone. They serve now AI, but they serve all the, the com- uses of computers that we use. And to blame them for any specific application just seems totally misguided. If you have concerns about things like surveillance or privacy, by all means, like, strengthen the privacy laws, right?
- JCJason Calacanis
Sure.
- DSDavid Sacks
I'm all in favor of that, but just trying to ban-
- JCJason Calacanis
Sacks
- DSDavid Sacks
... the data center seems insane.
- JCJason Calacanis
Sacks, what everybody wants to know, you have been, uh, pretty critical of the Anthropic computer corporation, and specifically Dario and the leadership there. He was at the event. You guys met, I think, perhaps for the first time. Tell us about Dario's participation there, and did you guys talk a little bit about your criticism of him specifically, of the organization specifically, and all of this doomerism and effective altruism and all this, or did it not come up?
- DSDavid Sacks
No, I mean, look, I think that Dario was a good sport. It's true, that's the first time I met him in person. I had talked to him on the phone before. But, um, look, he was a good sport throughout the event. Um, it was not adversarial or hostile. Obviously, he has his own views, and he represented them. But fundamentally, everybody got on the same page and signed this accord.
- JCJason Calacanis
Did you shake hands with Dario?
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
Did you, uh-
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah, he joked. He said, "Oh, my nemesis," you know. He sort of joked.
- JCJason Calacanis
Oh, really? [laughs]
- DSDavid Sacks
Uh, yeah.
- 45:22 – 1:00:24
Recent economic data: GDP, jobs, diesel, inflation, rates, manufacturing, poverty, and more
- DFDavid Friedberg
Khan Academy. Sax, you got any, uh, final thoughts here as we move on?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, I mean, I've, kinda, I kinda wanted to broaden out this conversation-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Sure
- DSDavid Sacks
... to the economy as a whole because I do think that the doomerism is affecting people's perception of the economy. And-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah, that's why I'm bringing it up. Yeah
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah. And I think that actually there's been a tremendous amount of economic data in just the last week or two showing that the economy is much stronger than people are giving it credit for. I mean, yes, I know that diesel prices are too high and rates are high, but those are the only two variables that you ever hear about. Let's look at some of the other numbers that have just come out because I think it's pretty extraordinary. So first of all, Q2 GDP was revised up to 2.2%, up from 1.5%, so that's basically a 50% increase. Economists had expected no revision. Q1 was also revised up to 2.5% from 2.1%. And if you look at the Q3 growth, it's tracking well above that. The Atlanta Fed GDPNow is showing around 3.7% as of late last week. August payrolls just came out, plus 162000. The consensus was only 55000, so it was a beat of about 107000 jobs. June and July were also revised up by a combined 55000. So unemployment is still near record lows at 4.1%, even though labor participation rose 0.2% to 61.6%. So good news on the jobs front, good news on the GDP front. The economy is running hot. And then there was also some good news on inflation. We saw that core PCE just came in at 3.0% versus 3.3% expected. So inflation is still a bit too high, but actually it is cooling and beating expectations. And then finally, you look at manufacturing. We're seeing a huge wave of re-industrialization in this country. A couple of the measures are the Chicago PMI and then ISM Manufacturing. They both are well into expansion territory and beating forecasts. Just one last point. Let's talk about poverty for a second because I want to address the idea that this is just a K-shaped recovery. So if you look at US household income, it's now at record high. The median household income in 2025 dollars is almost $90000. And after-tax household income is growing again in the second Trump term. It's averaged 3.1% a year in Trump 47. It was 3.9% in Trump 45, and it was -1.2% in Biden's term as a four-year average. So we're seeing that after-tax household incomes have risen by 3.1% just in 2025, and the poverty rate in the US has fallen to its lowest level in history, 10.2%. So, you know, the poverty rate, the child poverty rate, these are all at historic lows. The average household's, um, real income after inflation, after taxes is increasing for the first time in years. So there is a lot of strong economic data out there, and I, I think that this is why if, you know, if I was to guess, I actually think that the Republicans are going to do better in the midterms than some of these polls are predicting because I think the press around the economy has been very negative. But I think people are starting to feel that the economy is accelerating, and that was actually a headline in The Wall Street Journal just the last couple of days that the economy is accelerating right now. So again, you've got this AI boom or SI boom. You've got the, the infrastructure build-out that, again, The Wall Street Journal said is bigger than the railroads, the canals And, uh, the electric grid combined. And all these things are basically fueling strong growth in the economy. And again, I would just dispute the K-shape narrative because the poor are benefiting, and the average household are, are benefiting as well.
- DFDavid Friedberg
They don't feel that way, but, uh, I guess, you know, yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
I get the, the, the sentiment. I, I agree with you. The sentiment has not caught up with the economic reality, but I think it will.
- DFDavid Friedberg
We've got a, a, a rate problem. In the last 30 days or so, right, we've seen short-term rates on treasuries climb by 60 basis points. That's a pretty consequential climb. I think we haven't seen a short-term yield this high since going back to 2002. And so this massive increase in rates is obviously gonna impact people's ability to refinance their home, buy a new car, purchase things on credit, and that's the majority of Americans fall under that umbrella. And I think there's also kind of an economic challenge ahead with the rate problem, and I, I would argue, as I always do, that the rate problem is fundamentally rooted in the federal government and the insane spending. And if you look at the impact that this rate is gonna have on banks, I worked with ChatGPT, my, my trusted analyst, my financial analyst in my office here, to help kind of figure out what's the impact of these rates actually gonna be on banks and what the impairment would be. There's 4,295 banks that have positive equity that report FDIC their balance sheets every month. Based on the actual reported balance sheet of these banks, about 95 banks are gonna see an impairment of more than 20% of their equity in the last, uh, 30 days or so. And those reports start to come out on October 30th. So the thing I worry a lot about is on October 30th, we're gonna s- kinda see all these financial reports coming out from all the banks, all the lending institutions, and there's about 95 of them that are gonna say, "Hey, we've got more than 20% impairment charge on our equity." That's gonna be a massive kind of shock, and then what are the implications of that? And that's where we're gonna start to wake up to the fact that the rate problem isn't just a purchasing problem for consumers, but it may actually have a bit of a rippling effect here in the economy, starting with the financial institutions. So they publish their next monthly reports on the September 30th ending period on October 30th. And unfortunately, it coincides right with the election cycle. So there's gonna be all this noise about, "Hey, how bad are things looking?" while we're trying to go through this election. So, Sacks, I don't know, like, you know, if there's any view on how we fix this-
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah
- DFDavid Friedberg
... rate problem, but it's pretty nasty, and it's gonna have some kind of-
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, look, I mean, I, I conceded up front that we have two issues in the economy that are negative. We have diesel prices and rates. But then I went on to lay out the case for why there's so much other positive economic news that's not really being covered. Look, if you compare rates to the nominal growth rate of the economy, and those two things are highly correlated over time, you can see the economy is running really hot right now, and that is part of the reason why rates are going up, is because you have to compensate people for a, a real return. And, you know, if you've got inflation in the threes, and then you've got GDP growth at 3.7%, then rates are gonna be high as well. Look, I think this all comes back to price of diesel because that obviously has a lot to do with not just people's price at the pump, but also diesel's an industrial input, and the transportation costs get baked into all these goods. I think if we can just solve that problem, then gas prices come down, inflation comes down, we can get rate cuts on that basis. So I think that's the last piece here. I think the economy's already doing, again, very well. 2.5% in Q2, 3.7 in Q3. But if we just get that last piece, I'm not saying there's not a little bit of work to do there, I think the economy will take off like a rocket.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah. I think the conditions are right. You're right. I think the federal spending problem is still persisting, though. It's almost like pouring acid on everything. Like, you've got all this great stuff growing, and then you just have all this federal spending, which as you and I both know, is, like, negative productivity spending, and it's, uh, creating fake employment, and it's doing all sorts of bad things. But man, if we don't get spending, you know, as Scott Bessent has talked about, to 3% deficit as a percent of GDP, these rates are only gonna get worse, and that could basically just shoot us in the foot. It's, it's al- it's almost like a-
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, look, I mean, you know, we, we all agree about the spending as a, as a long-term problem, and, and it's a bipartisan problem. We have to fix it. I would just say that, look, I'd say about six months ago, people said that if we get a spike in gas prices, we're gonna have 1970s style stagflation. That has not happened. Instead, we're seeing a super hot economy, and yeah, gas prices are a little high. But by the way, during the Obama presidency, we had over 300 days of Brent crude over $100 a barrel. So people forget that we've had, like, the economy do well over large stretches of time with gas prices at these levels. It's just the diesel prices are a little bit high, and that's to do with refineries. Frankly, it'd be good if Zelensky stopped hitting Russian refineries. That hasn't helped the, the problem. But look, so we just have that one, that one issue, and I think we can resolve it. There was a report this week, I think it was in The Guardian, which is not a pro-Trump publication, saying that more oil got out of Hormuz this week than since the beginning of the war. So I think we need to kind of wrap up that issue. Gas prices come down, and then I think that means inflation will come down. It's already coming down more than expected. But then we can get a rate cut. I think actually right now, no one's pricing in the potential for rate cuts here. It's all rate increases. So, you know, if we could get some relief there, get rate cuts, I mean, again, the economy's gonna rocket even more.
- DFDavid Friedberg
We have two tricky auctions that are coming up, and I think Treasury will be able to navigate those well, just because I think Scott has such a good handle on how to do this and frankly, how to do the job. But once we get past those two auctions, I'm leaning more in the Sacks camp. I kind of tend to agree with you. There's gonna be some growing evidence about what to do based on what happens from Europe as well.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I don't know if you guys have been tracking this, but France is going through a really complicated budget negotiation right now, and they're about to shrink the budget by probably $50, $75 billion, which you can imagine in France, that's like ground zero for it's a one-way ratchet to debt to GDP going through the roof.
- JCJason Calacanis
Totally.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
And so when the French start to make cuts, and it's what Friedberg has been saying, it's h- why were they forced to capitulate? Because of long rates. So that's happened. Andy Burnham, who, you know, bumbled his way into the prime ministership of the UK, presented his policy platform yesterday for an hour. It's truly insane what he's saying. This is an extremely muscular form of socialism that he intends to impose on the United Kingdom and then to remerge back into Europe. And so he's gonna try to undo Brexit. He's gonna try to double and triple the size of the government. Not a mention of growth, like how do you grow the private economy. Insane. So what you're gonna see from both of those two places over the next year is, I think, gonna tell us what we're gonna have to do in the United States. But I tend to think that we're gonna see a little bit more growth than that is expected. I tend to think we're gonna probably see a little bit more revision. And I think that people are sleeping on the fact that we are not nearly as dependent on oil the way that we used to be. And so even though we used to breathlessly look at Brent Crude and WTI and all this stuff, I don't think it matters nearly as much as it used to. And I think that's crazy because, like, the paradigm of rates and the paradigm of currencies and the petrodollar, all these intermingled things that used to drive the global economy are now getting rewired in ways that I don't think anybody fully understands, and that's very good for the United States. So I think we have to factor that in as well.
- JCJason Calacanis
Well, Chamath, I mean, like, like the, the one problem is we, we do have gas prices at the pump are up 50% since the Iran war started, and that hurts the everyday consumer significantly. It may not drive the, the GDP numbers down super aggressively because of the industrial, but the, the actual cost of living for the average person-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Uh, but, but, but can I, can I say something?
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I, I've looked at those numbers, the prices, and they're terrible, and I feel bad for people that have to bear that cost, but I think it's also important to say that is not an input issue. That is a refining issue. For decades and decades, we turned off the refining infrastructure that the United States could have used, okay? And so we now need, as Sack said, the Russians, the Chinese, we need as much refining capacity as possible to take all of this oil and to get it into usable forms. So I hear you.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
But I think it's also important to acknowledge where the constraint is. The constraint is not the oil.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah, I-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
The constraint is in, over decades-
- JCJason Calacanis
Let, let, let me-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... and decades of all this-
- JCJason Calacanis
Uh, let me jump in for a second
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... electricity
- 1:00:24 – 1:09:28
Midterm predictions, 2028 look ahead
- JCJason Calacanis
right now.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Jason.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
What is your prediction? What do you think is going to happen?
- JCJason Calacanis
I would just look at the p... I, I just look at Polymarket honestly and pull up the Polymarket here. I think it's about 70, 80% that the, the Democrats sweep both. By the way, over the next week, the four of us are gonna have a squad on Polymarket where we're gonna make-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Oh
- JCJason Calacanis
... all of our predictions, and then the audience can kind of follow along and see how we all do on our predictions, which will be kind of interesting.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Yeah, I mean, it's-
- JCJason Calacanis
But go ahead
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... I don't, Ch- Chamath, I, I am not an expert on polling, but I do think starting with the, the people actually betting money and 63% chance the Democrats take the Senate, 93% they take the House, and if you put those together, there's a chance they sweep both. You know, who knows with these polls? I do think I would look at Polymarket first, and if you could zoom in there, the chances they take both is at what now?
- JCJason Calacanis
Sweep 64% that they sweep, so
- DSDavid Sacks
Okay, let me tell you what I think-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah
- DSDavid Sacks
... is wrong with this analysis.
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay, go ahead. Please.
- DSDavid Sacks
So, okay, look. So, so, I... Look, I made this mistake in 2022. Like, I was sure there was gonna be a red wave in 2022. This was when Biden was president, and this was his midterms, okay?
- JCJason Calacanis
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Sacks
Now, and it ended up being, like, a red trickle. I mean, it was-
- JCJason Calacanis
Mm
- DSDavid Sacks
... very disappointing to Republicans that, you know, they made gains, but it was not a shellacking. So what was the mistake that I made? It was that I was only looking at perception, and I wasn't looking enough at reality, and I wasn't balancing the reality. So for example, Biden's polling was in the 30s. He was very low back then, and inflation was 9%. But if you looked at GDP growth and unemployment, those numbers were actually pretty strong. So, you know, there was a lot of talking down the economy based on one variable, which was inflation, and it was too high, and it was a problem. But there were other variables that were actually quite good. So the reality that people were feeling wasn't as bad as, you know, this, like, super hyperbolic view that, again, all the pollsters have a incentive to kind of exaggerate this stuff, and all the political operatives always freak out.
- JCJason Calacanis
It's good for ratings. Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
But yes, it's good for ratings. But the reality is the American people, look, they went red. Don't get me wrong. But it wasn't the massive wave that everyone was expecting. It was more like a red trickle. I think here, I don't think we're gonna get a blue wave. I think we might get, like, a blue spritz. I mean, listen-
- JCJason Calacanis
[laughs]
- DSDavid Sacks
[laughs] I think that-
- JCJason Calacanis
Oh, a spritz? [laughs]
- DSDavid Sacks
Listen, Biden wishes that back in 2022-
- JCJason Calacanis
Oh, Biden
- DSDavid Sacks
I'm saying that back in 2022, Biden would've wished for the economy that Trump has now, okay?
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yes, we have-
- 1:09:28 – 1:22:28
Media coverage of attempted terrorist hijacking
- JCJason Calacanis
I don't know if you guys, uh, had time when you were busy here, but there was a hijacking that occurred/terrorist attack, I think is the only way to describe it. Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv. David, had 174 passengers on board. An Omani co-pilot apparently stabbed the captain and tried to ca- crash the plane in a 9/11 style attack. Passengers bravely, uh, subdued him, and there were off-duty pilots on the plane, miraculously. I mean, what are the chances? And, uh, they somehow, during this terrorist trying to down the plane, Friedberg, were able to not only remove him but get these off-duty pilots into the cockpit, level the plane, and land it safely. Uh, one of the most amazing acts of bravery with this co-pilot who fought off, um, the terrorist, and then three or four passengers were able to get into that cockpit, drag the, this, uh, terrorist out and, um, yeah, land the plane. Your thoughts, Friedberg.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Well, I mean, the eyewitness accounts came out pretty fast and furious because these guys had internet access as soon as they were able to land in Saudi Arabia, and they started to provide their reports. But what really I thought was the most striking aspect of all of this, despite the, the, what I thought was incredible heroism and bravery and just a true kind of showing of human spirit, was how the media covered it. And I was deeply saddened, uh, because I remember 9/11. I remember the shock and the anger and the stories coming out during that day. I remember the media, the, the, the, the, the news channels were my source of truth, and I watched it all day. And then yesterday, this happened. And, and so here, here's an example. This is The New York Times cover the day after 9/11. "Hijacked jets destroy Twin Towers," and notice this, "and hit Pentagon in day of terror." And it really was a day of terror. It was a truly tragic event in human history, regardless of your political or social beliefs then or now. The loss of life, in this case, the loss of life in conflicts that followed, the loss of life in conflicts around October 7th and that followed that, is all tragic, and it's all terror, and it's all awful. And the reporting yesterday on this event, which I found to be kind of emotionally distressing, was almost like a, a strange casting of the experience as being one of a fight between two buddies that weren't getting along in the cockpit of this airplane.
- JCJason Calacanis
The pilots got into a, uh, yeah, got into a scuffle-
- DFDavid Friedberg
So the fir-
- JCJason Calacanis
... was the original reporting, yes
- DFDavid Friedberg
The first one was New York Times come, came out and said it was an altercation, and then the Journal called it a struggle. The BBC called it a fight between pilots. Sky News called it a brawl between pilots. AFP called it... You know, said they were fighting. Even CNN said it was a altercation. And there were direct eyewitness reports coming out at this time about this guy tried to take over the plane and crash it, and this was clearly a terror event. And we've stopped using this word terror for some reason because when we use terror, it doesn't allow us to politicize and create sides of a story and a long tr- form narrative that I believe so much of the media is trying to portray. And I'm not gonna try and say what their narrative is and who's trying to do it. But here's the next day on The New York Times website. So this is the day after when all the facts of the case have come out. What happened? This is the front page of The New York Times today. A day after, with all of the witnesses, with all of the journalism that would allow you to validate multiple eyewitnesses on what happened on this flight, that investigators seek to establish a motive. The story is that the guy tried to crash a plane full of passengers. He took over the plane and he tried to do it. Number one bullet point, 737 s- sustained the enormous stress. Number two, investigators seek to answer the motive. And in bullet point number three, Israeli politicians use the attack to try to score points in this month's election. And so I just kind of lost faith yesterday and today in how the media is kind of characterizing facts on the ground, that there is human tragedy, that there is terror, and that from their view, from their writing, this ends up becoming a place to kind of sell, I think unfortunately, a narrative that is all too popular and it's what's gonna sell them, and they don't wanna lose people by saying the wrong thing, and they wanna say what they think is right. And I don't know who the individuals are behind all of it, but I just found it to be pretty shocking for me that 25 years ago to today, how much has changed in the landscape of the people that we trust, that we call journalists to tell us the truth of what's going on, and to try and recharacterize such horrific events because it doesn't quite conform to a specific narrative that they've been trying to sell for some time.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DFDavid Friedberg
So I was deeply upset about the whole thing, and I wanted to bring it up.
- JCJason Calacanis
Um, yeah, I mean, reasonably upset. Two different, uh, responses.
- DFDavid Friedberg
And I, and I, and I do think a big sho- big shout-out to the pilot.
- JCJason Calacanis
Unbelievable pilot.
- DFDavid Friedberg
If you, if you read the reports, he wouldn't go to the bathroom because he had suspicions that his co-pilot was going to do something. He called for an emergency urinary bag, and he stayed in the cockpit to pee in his urinary bag. That's when the, the guy tried to kill him. He fought the guy off. He was, while he was stabbed and bleeding out to death, heroically opened up the cockpit door and screamed for passengers to come and help, and then several heroic souls stepped up and saved-
- JCJason Calacanis
Correct
- DFDavid Friedberg
... the day and saved 170 some odd lives. That's the story. It's a story of terror. It's a story of human heroism. I don't care where these people are from. I don't care what religion anyone is. I don't care what political interests anyone might have. This is the story that needs to be told, and it is being kind of [censored] recast by the media about Israeli politicians trying to score points is what the New York Times is trying to sell on their cover page today-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah
- DFDavid Friedberg
... as opposed to the story of what really took place here.
- JCJason Calacanis
And then your-
- DFDavid Friedberg
And then the New York Times, you know, got so much [censored] over it that they started, and JK, you can cover this, but-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah, yeah
- DFDavid Friedberg
... yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
And the New York Times communications, uh, account says for, based on the, the early tweet, which was, "Hey, there, there was an altercation," quote, "Our headlines and live coverage contain all the facts we're able to confirm, a- as we confirm them. Unlike activists and partisans, [chuckles] we don't publish speculation or unverified information. Here's a GIF link to follow along to our reporting," yada, yada. So I guess two topics there, Sacks. You have the real time issue, which is certainly very different than 9/11, and that was a, an attack where people took credit pretty quickly if I, if my, my memory serves me correctly. Uh, and in this case, we're left to wonder lone wolf, coordinated attack, et cetera. But certainly strange, the next day's coverage, I think at a minimum, that they can't call this a terrorist attack. A little bit odd. Your, your thoughts, Sacks?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, I think we can probably infer what the motive here was. I mean, it was terrorism. Uh, it, this was a, a Dubai airline, but I think all the passengers were Israeli.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
One other detail I thought was interesting was that when the pilot yelled for help, I guess, then a few of the passengers stormed the cockpit. The, the terrorist was yanked out of there by an Israeli plumber. [laughs]
- JCJason Calacanis
Love it.
- DSDavid Sacks
[laughs]
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah. He has, you know, yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
And I, I don't think that's like CIA plumber. I think that was, I think it's, like, a real plumber.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah. This guy has-
- DSDavid Sacks
Those, those Israelis are tough, I gotta say. They're, they're quite tough
Episode duration: 1:22:28
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Transcript of episode ZJKs08oU1zg
