Tucker Carlson: Nick Fuentes, Warner Bros, and AI fears

Jason Calacanis 0:00 All right, back with us in place of David Freberg, who's busy this week, is the one, the only, on his fourth appearance here on the All-In Podcast, Mr. Tucker Carlson. How are you, Tucker?

Tucker Carlson 0:12 Thanks for having me.

David Sacks 0:13 Hey, Tucker. Good to see you.

Tucker Carlson 0:15 David?

David Sacks 0:16 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 0:16 David, how do you have time for... Every time I, every time I turn on my phone, there's, like, David Sacks on something incredibly complex. Like, are you sleeping?

David Sacks 0:26 Usually people attacking me for something.

Tucker Carlson 0:29 But it's not just like, "Oh, your views are this or that-"

David Sacks 0:32 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 0:32 "... geopolitical conflict." It's like the details of something very complicated, and I'm just like, wow, man, that's a lot. That's a lot to digest.

David Sacks 0:43 Yeah, there's not a very high bar in Washington, as you know.

Tucker Carlson 0:46 (laughs) Oh. You're a giant among pygmies, but still, it's a lot of work.

David Sacks 0:50 In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:52 King, exactly, exactly.

Tucker Carlson 0:54 Are you still enjoying it?

David Sacks 0:56 Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. But you know President Trump's a lot of fun to work for.

Tucker Carlson 0:59 He's the most fun.

David Sacks 1:00 I mean, the best, right?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01 He got a big shout-out yesterday. It was really awesome, actually.

Tucker Carlson 1:04 David did?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05 Yeah, huge shout-out.

David Sacks 1:06 Oh, that's right, we were at the White House Christmas party. I think they do, like, 25 of these.

Tucker Carlson 1:10 Yeah, literally.

David Sacks 1:11 Literally, 'cause they got so many thousands of people, but they can only fit a couple hundred people in the White House, and they're doing, like, two a day. And the president comes down and gives a speech, and every speech is different. You know, it's like a Dave Chappelle comedy routine where he never does-

Tucker Carlson 1:23 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:25 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:25 ... the same set. And he does it with so much enthusiasm and gusto, you would think that you were the only, you know-

Tucker Carlson 1:31 Yes.

David Sacks 1:32 ... holiday party crowd-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:34 He was the only party. Yeah.

David Sacks 1:34 ... that he ever addressed.

Tucker Carlson 1:35 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:36 He never expresses any irritation at, at doing that. He loves it. It's, like, amazing.

Tucker Carlson 1:41 It's unbelievable.

David Sacks 1:42 But in any event, he gave me a shout-out during the speech, and then he called me up there, like, "Hey, can you say a couple words about AI?"

Tucker Carlson 1:49 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:49 And I'm like, "Well, this isn't exactly a Christmas party conversation."

Tucker Carlson 1:53 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:53 So I just kinda talked about how great he was and, um, how much fun it was to work for him, and then he gave Chamath a shout-out as well.

Tucker Carlson 2:00 No way.

David Sacks 2:01 And he just starts talking about the All-In Pod, like we're in the audience, and he just starts having a conversation with us-

Tucker Carlson 2:06 (laughs)

David Sacks 2:06 ... about the All-In Pod and how's it doing and-

Tucker Carlson 2:08 (laughs)

David Sacks 2:09 ... you know.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:10 The funniest part was-

Tucker Carlson 2:11 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:11 ... he says to me... Oh, and then Nat was behind him, so he goes, "Hey, Nat," and he says, "I hope everything's going well. How's your relationship?" He looks at me, and I'm like this, and then Nat's behind him-

David Sacks 2:21 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:21 ... and he goes like this. (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 2:24 (laughs) Oh, it's so awesome.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:27 Oh, man.

Tucker Carlson 2:27 I'm going this weekend 'cause I miss him.

Jason Calacanis 2:29 You going to see him this weekend? You guys are on good terms, Tuck?

Tucker Carlson 2:31 With Trump? Oh, yeah, the best. I mean-

Jason Calacanis 2:34 Oh, yeah.

Tucker Carlson 2:34 ... the best. I mean, of course people have told him, many people, that he's not allowed to talk to me, so that just makes him like me much more.

Jason Calacanis 2:40 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 2:40 'Cause, like, all he hears is, "Oh, he's..."

Jason Calacanis 2:42 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 2:42 People be like, "He's the worst human being who's ever lived!" And all Trump hears is, "Who's ever lived?" You know, and he's just that, he's just, he's... You can't control him that way, period. So, no, I get along with him literally in 25 years better than I ever have.

Jason Calacanis 2:59 That's good to hear.

Tucker Carlson 3:00 It's hilarious, yeah.

David Sacks 3:01 The last part of that story is... So after he calls up me and Chamath... Actually, he calls me up to speak and then-

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:08 Calls David up to speak.

David Sacks 3:09 ... he, he went on a little bit of a riff saying, you know, "I don't like the term artificial intelligence because why would you want to call it artificial? It sounds bad."

Jason Calacanis 3:17 Hmm.

David Sacks 3:17 "Why don't they call it-

Tucker Carlson 3:18 (laughs)

David Sacks 3:18 ... something else?" Superior intelligence.

Jason Calacanis 3:20 Organic intelligence.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:20 Intelligence. Organic.

David Sacks 3:21 And then, and then he calls up Chamath. He's like, "Chamath, what do you think?" And Chamath says-

Tucker Carlson 3:25 (laughs)

David Sacks 3:25 ... "Well, I think, I think AI is too late to change, but maybe it could be American intelligence." And then he says-

Jason Calacanis 3:31 Oh.

David Sacks 3:31 ... "Yeah, but, you know, we want this to be used by the whole world, sell it to the whole world." Anyway, we start workshopping-

Tucker Carlson 3:36 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:36 (laughs)

David Sacks 3:36 ... uh, this branding exercise-

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:38 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 3:39 (laughs)

David Sacks 3:39 ... in front of the entire Christmas party.

Jason Calacanis 3:41 How about we call it Trump Super Intelligence?

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:44 Okay. (laughs)

David Sacks 3:45 It's Trumptelligence.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:46 No, but you know what? Calling AI American intelligence is actually the smartest and best one could do around AI.

Jason Calacanis 3:52 (laughs) We got a lot to talk about, Tucker. I mean, you've been on a run, huh? You've been on a run.

Tucker Carlson 3:57 Not really. I mean, not in my wor... I mean, I'm off social media mostly, so it's like nothing's actually really happening in my world.

Jason Calacanis 4:03 You don't open X at all?

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:05 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 4:05 It's all about me, man. I'm not gonna... I don't like to read-

Jason Calacanis 4:07 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 4:08 ... about myself, so I don't look at it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:09 (laughs)

David Sacks 4:10 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 4:11 No.

Jason Calacanis 4:11 All right, topic number one, Paramount versus Netflix. They're in a bidding war over the future of Warner Brothers and all that amazing IP. The assets, obviously, many of us know Warner Brothers is led by Zaslav, David Zaslav, but he owns currently HBO, DC, and the Warner Brothers collections of films. Also, they have that great studio lot. On the cable side, they own CNN, TNT, Discovery, and, uh, they just saddled that company up with $30 billion of debt, and they had a little bit of a competition for who would buy it, Netflix and Paramount Skydance, run by the Ellison family. Netflix offered $83 billion to purchase just the streaming assets, which would put the number one and the number three player together, and WBD publicly accepted Netflix offer last Friday. This has created a bit of a kerfluffle. Paramount now is coming in with a hostile offer, $108 billion in cash for the entire company. That includes the cable assets. That would be interesting because then David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison, would own not just CBS, which is being run, CBS News, by your favorite Tucker Carlson, uh, Bari Weiss. She would also, I guess, own, uh, and run CNN in this instance, potentially. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:35 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 5:36 We'll get to that. Uh, the $108 billion offer includes two vehicles, $41 billion in equity financing by the Ellison family, and then a bunch of other folks coming in, including, and we'll get to this, uh, some Middle East, uh, sovereign wealth funds. Polymarket, interestingly, has Paramount as the favorite at 51%, and Netflix has dropped to 36%, even though they say, uh, they have a done deal and-... 14% chance of no deal. I think that might be the free money, the 14% chance of no deal. What's your take on this, Tucker? And just broadly speaking, consolidation in media having pulled the rip cord and left traditional media, and now, yeah, the understanding is you're doing better than ever. You control your destiny, and I think you're making probably as much or more money now than you did when you were working for the man.

Tucker Carlson 6:30 Yeah. I, uh, I actually haven't checked, but I'm not much of a money guy. But I'm fi- I'm fine. I can pay my non-existent mortgage. I'm against monopoly power in general 'cause I think it stifles creativity. I'm not that worried about this because these, uh, you know, these things never move in exactly the direction you imagine. I've been in media my entire life, and none of the big changes I anticipated, in fact, almost all of them I made fun of. I just don't think that we're really threatened by y- y- you know, a conglomerate of CNN and Netflix. And also it's like, okay, you can assemble huge companies. Can you make people consume and believe the product? You know, buying CBS News is like buying RCA Records or something. It, like, just doesn't have any effect, and only people who are not paying attention or pretty cut off think that you're gonna win hearts and minds by being, buying CBS News or CNN. These are, these brands are husks. In fact, all they are is brands at this point, and I just am not at all convinced that this will have a material effect on anyone's attitudes at all. You know, if you started to mess with what YouTube is allowed to air or the ownership of X, you know, then I think you could, could really change the country and the conversations that we're allowed to have. But I don't see any of this as especially meaningful on the society. I mean, is the, is the product gonna get, I don't, I don't know, more subversive (laughs) than it, than it already is? (laughs) I mean, it's just, like Netflix gonna be worse for American society? Probably not. You know, I think this is a business story, not a cultural story.

Jason Calacanis 8:11 Chamath, your thoughts?

David Friedberg 8:13 I'll give you two. The first is that whenever you see deals, it's important to look at the amount of money that, that is at risk, and that is the best tell about whether this is important for the future or not. Hundred billion dollar deals are typically about things in the past. What is the future? Billion dollar deals. So for example, when you look at when Facebook bought Instagram for a billion dollars, that turned out to be a huge bet about the future. It was right. When Google bought YouTube for a billion six, that was a huge bet on the future. They were right. When Microsoft invested a billion dollars in OpenAI, that was a huge bet on the future. It was right. But when you look at assets that trade at hundred billion dollar plus valuations, they're so undergirded by debt. All of that debt is only ever bought by looking at the past, meaning how much money have they made, and then it's a best guess about how much money could they make in the future. So these multi-hundred billion dollar assets, to Tucker's point, they don't really matter that much. I don't think it's super anti-competitive. These are financial transactions. The reality in media, so specifically about this deal, so that's a general statement about deal quantum, and you can just judge the importance based on that. People should be spending much more time looking at billion dollar transactions than hundred billion dollar done transactions. That's my takeaway there. But at the very specific thing about this deal, the reality is that the future is unscripted, uncontrolled, user-generated content. You see it on YouTube. It is already the 800-pound gorilla in this space. And then separately, it's now becoming about shorter form video, and you see that with things like Instagram Reels and TikTok. None of that landscape will change based on this deal. If anything, if those trends accelerate, the value of historic IP is going to erode even faster, meaning this generation of kids will have no idea or care about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, about Star Wars, and that may upset those of us who are nostalgically tied to it. So I don't know. I would let the deal happen. I don't think it's particularly that important.

Jason Calacanis 10:19 Sachs, obviously you don't speak for the administration on these issues, but I'm curious to your thoughts on this.

David Sacks 10:25 Yeah, just my personal view on this is that we're gonna get meaningful consolidation in the industry either way because either Netflix and Warners are gonna merge or Paramount and Warners are gonna merge. So either way, you're gonna get consolidation. But that being said, if Netflix is allowed to buy Warners, the antitrust concerns are a lot more serious because Netflix really is the 800-pound gorilla in Hollywood right now. It's the number one streamer by far. It's got the biggest market cap, and they're the party who the rest of Hollywood is freaked out about right now. And so you saw that the Hollywood unions, like the WGA, SAG, they opposed the deal 'cause they're fearing job cuts, lower wages, worsened conditions due to reduced demand for talent, and then the, the content creators and distributors are worried about this too because Netflix is known for making tougher deals, I think, than the traditional studios. I've got a friend who's a showrunner in Hollywood, and he's done projects with both Netflix and with the studios, traditional studios, and he says the big difference is Netflix will pay you pretty well, but you don't get any equity in your show. Like, whatever you get is sort of agreed to at the beginning, and that's it. So you're not really an entrepreneur when you do a show for them. But when you then work for a studio, you actually get a backend. Now, there's all sorts of, you know, Hollywood accounting associated with that, but he kind of misses the days that are going away where he got to be a little bit of an entrepreneur and have real upside in his shows. And if Netflix now is allowed to acquire Warner Brothers, then that's just another nail in, in that whole coffin. And so I think it is a big change, and if the antitrust regulators look at this, I do think that Paramount has a better chance. The other big factor is just that...Paramount's offering more. They upped the-

David Friedberg 12:14 Hm.

David Sacks 12:14 ... bid. It's 108 billion versus around 80, uh, or it was like $30 a share versus 27. And they're also buying the whole company, whereas Netflix just wants Warner's-

David Friedberg 12:26 Yeah.

David Sacks 12:26 ... studio assets and streaming assets like HBO, as opposed to the cable assets, which are considered a little bit of a (beep) hole. So, I think if you're a shareholder in Warners, you probably wanna sell the whole thing. You don't wanna just be stuck with the bad assets. So-

David Friedberg 12:41 Yeah.

David Sacks 12:42 ... I'm a little surprised actually that the Warners board went with Netflix when they had Paramount as an option, assuming this Paramount offer was on the table, because it seems like a better deal, and it's probably a little bit more likely to get through the regulators. So, I guess I'm a little bit surprised they chose Netflix. But I guess Netflix is, the more bonafide party, right? It's $400 billion market cap, and maybe they thought that they're more able to execute this transaction.

David Friedberg 13:10 Yeah. I have only three points on this. Number one, it really depends on how you frame competitors in this space. Here's your paid streaming platforms, Netflix, Disney, and HBO. Disney's done an amazing job after starting a decade after Netflix with streaming of really getting a lot of subscribers. And consolidating one and three here, obviously, puts Disney way behind. But if you start looking at TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, these properties have the majority of the audience. They dwarf the audience of these paid services. And young people are not interested in movies anymore. They want, obviously, TikToks and YouTube. If you look at the revenue, it's a slightly different-

David Sacks 13:56 D- Can I just ask you a question about that chart before you move on?

David Friedberg 13:59 Yeah.

David Sacks 13:59 Just how do you compare or do you adjust for time watched or minutes? Because how do you-

David Friedberg 14:03 I, I didn't in this, um, but-

David Sacks 14:04 Yeah.

David Friedberg 14:05 ... yeah, that would, that would be-

David Sacks 14:05 'Cause the big difference between watching a TikTok and watching, you know, a movie-

David Friedberg 14:09 Yeah.

David Sacks 14:09 ... on Netflix in terms of attention span.

David Friedberg 14:11 Nobody watches movies.

David Sacks 14:12 I mean, I'm not disagreeing with you about the... Look, there's no question-

David Friedberg 14:14 Nobody watches movies.

David Sacks 14:14 ... the cultural significance has moved away from Hollywood towards user-generated content on these online platforms. But I'm just curious if you adjusted for that.

David Friedberg 14:23 Yeah, no, I didn't adjust for that. You could, you could slice it a bunch of different ways, but at the end of the day, you know, I put the competitive set as a little bit broader here, um, which is including the free, you know, UGC services, since that's what young people are doing. And then if you look at revenue, you, you know, it's a, it's a slightly different picture here. These paid services are doing extremely well, and they are juggernauts in terms of making money and profitability now. And UGC, obviously, is much larger, especially on a global basis. The more important thing here is how we do antitrust in the country. Trump wants to be involved in this. He said he's gonna be very involved in it, (laughs) you know, which as an 80-year-old, he's involved in everything. Why not be involved in this? He shouldn't be. Put that aside. I think we need to have a way to pre-vet these and then just let the highest bidder win. I don't know how this concept is getting convoluted, but the Ellisons are compromising Trump a bit here. I think that's why Trump gave a lot of shine to Ted Sarandos. I don't know if you saw his quotes about that, Sacks, but he was praising what a genius Ted Sarandos is and how amazing Netflix is. The Ellisons coming out and, you know, basically saying that they've got this in and, you know, they're gonna basically have the inside track here, I think is one of the issues. I propose we have a pre-vetting of these large deals because we want M&A to be vibrant in this country. We want more M&A after the wrath of Lina Khan. So, I think you should be able to pre-vet, Chamath. You should be able to go to the government and say, "Hey, we're considering selling this asset," whatever it happens to be, you know, YouTube back in the day. Is there anybody who's not able to participate in this auction? And then just have the FTC pre-vet some of these. And then highest bidder seems like what's best interest, in the best interest of shareholders. So we can kinda- It's untenable. That's untenable. And the reason it's- Why, why? Yeah, explain. You have multiple facets of antitrust that can come up from any number of organizations in the United States. And that's just but one part of the complexities you have to navigate. Because if you do business in any other country, all of these other countries are in a position to opine. Oh, sure. If you think about doing a deal where you're in China and that other asset is in China, it can slow down for a very, very, very long time and never happen for reasons that have nothing to do with the industrial logic of the merger. So, I don't think you can pre-vet these things because it's not scalable, and I think the government would get frustrated because you'd have 1,000 people outside the door. They'd have no time to do anything else. They have to govern. The different thing that we have to figure out whether it is allowed is how these deals are getting done. The only thing that I would observe is the two biggest transactions that have happened thus far this year that I've taken note of happened as total raw asset sales to work around antitrust. The best example was Meta and Scale AI. Okay, I'll say this thing is worth 30 billion. I'll give you 15 billion in cash, but what am I really doing? I'm carving out these assets so that I don't have to file even an HSR filing. So, I think the future is that if the government has to have an opinion, not just America, but the Europeans, the Chinese, what's going to happen instead is that very smart lawyers who get paid, you know, 10, 20, $30 million a year, the NBA salaries now, they're gonna find workarounds. They've already done so for big tech, and I think it'll spill over to other industries. You're kind of like creating these boundary conditions where I think the concept of antitrust is gonna be a very difficult thing, because if businesses wanna be in business, you're not gonna do these traditional deals. As David said, an enormous sign of confidence about how there isn't going to be a competitive threat for Paramount to just say, "We'll take the whole thing," because they're subjecting themselves to a level of scrutiny that they wouldn't if they felt there was any shred of a good argument for competitive antitrust. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 18:17 I just want to, um, address the gratuitous potshot at President Trump.

David Friedberg 18:22 Which one?

Jason Calacanis 18:22 Well, the, your claim that he shouldn't get involved and somehow antitrust is better if the presidents don't get involved. You may re- remember that Teddy Roosevelt was known as the Trustbuster because he directed the DOJ to sue 45 companies under the Sherman Act, including the whole Northern Securities company. His successors, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, they were just as aggressive using antitrust. Anyway, a lot of presidents have gotten involved in mergers and antitrust actions, so it's just not that unusual.

David Friedberg 18:52 Yeah, I just think it's-

Jason Calacanis 18:53 That fact check brought to you by Grok.

David Friedberg 18:54 Oh, yeah, that's great. Um, yeah.

Tucker Carlson 18:56 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 18:56 Maybe we need to have, like, a Grok fact check part of the show.

David Friedberg 18:58 We, we need a Grok fact check. No, the reason I would say it's problematic for Trump to get involved in it is because the Ellisons have also been major supporters of Trump and made commitments for buying TikTok. Now you have one family who is a major supporter of Trump, massive donators, basically getting the inside line on TikTok, and now after a deal has been closed with Netflix, being able to lobby to get Trump to let them buy CBS and CNN. So, if we start thinking about the influence that Ellison, the Ellison family is having on the Trump administration, whether it's quid pro quo or it's the appearance of quid pro quo, it's best for Trump to stay out of it. Because already we have the TikTok deal. Now CBS they own, and they're going to own CNN. This is a lot of consolidation for one family to have. That's a red herring. Between CBS and CNN- How is it a red herring? ... nine people watch those two channels, so those channels are irrelevant.

Jason Calacanis 19:58 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 19:58 Those guys have to rebuild these things from scratch, number one. And number two, it doesn't incentivize or disincentivize three billion humans from using and watching that content. Who owns that asset is not known to any of these people. CBS did not go up and down because, you know, one person owned it versus another. Nobody knows who the CEO of TikTok is. It's, uh, TikTok is either good or not good. And so I would just keep in mind that this is something... It's like the party circuit babble. Like, you go there and you talk about it like, "Oh my God, it's so bad, it's so good," and you miss the basic fact that nothing about the ownership changes the human incentive to use a good product and to disqualify a (beep) product.

Jason Calacanis 20:39 Maybe. I would take the other side of it. There's still millions of people watching this, and it's pretty clear that-

David Friedberg 20:45 Millions of people watch this show 'cause it's good.

Jason Calacanis 20:47 No, no. Ultimately, people, uh, people are gonna be drawn to great products. There's no doubt about that. But consolidation of the major news assets, CBS and the influence of TikTok, and the influence of CNN is undeniable. That is just undeniable. You can't, you can't-

David Friedberg 21:04 Undeniable to who? Undeniable for what?

Jason Calacanis 21:06 Just reality. Reality. Your amount of Americans-

David Friedberg 21:09 Your reality.

Jason Calacanis 21:09 No, not my reality. You can try and insult me, that's not the point here.

David Friedberg 21:11 It's not an insult. I'm saying-

Jason Calacanis 21:12 That one company... No, it's not my reality. That's not where I get my news from. I get my news by being on the ground.

David Friedberg 21:16 Millions of people don't watch, don't watch CBS and CNN. It's not true.

Jason Calacanis 21:20 Literally, it's four million people who watch it. So yes, it is technically millions. These are influential-

David Friedberg 21:23 If you're adding it all up over, what, a year? De-duplicated that-

Jason Calacanis 21:27 We-

David Friedberg 21:27 What is, what is CNN's most qualified, best run, most popular show?

Jason Calacanis 21:32 Okay.

David Friedberg 21:33 What is it?

Jason Calacanis 21:33 Uh, on the network or on the news

David Friedberg 21:36 I don't know, 'cause I don't have it. I don't even have cable.

Jason Calacanis 21:39 Okay. Yeah, I know, and you, and you don't even pay for-

David Friedberg 21:41 (laughs) And I don't even know.

Jason Calacanis 21:41 You ask your friends to steal New York Times articles for you. That is well-established. Yes, we understand.

David Friedberg 21:43 I am the leading edge of what everybody will... I am the leading edge-

Jason Calacanis 21:46 Tucker, you get the final word, having lived inside the beast.

Tucker Carlson 21:50 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 21:50 Should Trump be involved in these mergers and acquisitions? Yes or no? Tucker calls.

Tucker Carlson 21:56 (laughs) Well, you're not gonna stop him, so it doesn't matter.

Jason Calacanis 22:00 Fair enough. (laughs)

David Friedberg 22:00 Fair enough.

Tucker Carlson 22:00 What should we be concerned about is not media monopoly power, it's censorship of the tech platforms.

David Friedberg 22:07 Hm.

Tucker Carlson 22:08 A return to that. That is where you destroy creativity and diversity of thought, put the entire nation into the mental prison from which it escaped last November. That's, that is the threat. Censoring YouTube, X, Instagram. And I, I just think we should be focused on that.

Jason Calacanis 22:27 And what's your take on Bari Weiss taking over CBS News? I, I, we're not sure if you've commented on this.

Tucker Carlson 22:31 I mean, I'm kind of impressed. I mean, I, you know, it's easy to make fun of Bari Weiss for being dumb or whatever, which is fair. But it's-

David Friedberg 22:40 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 22:40 You have to sort of look at it in reverse image and it's negative. It's like, with those talents you got where, you're amazing. And I will say, I agree with that. I think that she's charming, she's tireless, energetic. I don't know, that still matters. Like, we, we overvalue IQ. Oh, a person so smart. You know, it actually doesn't matter. Like, being charming, meeting people, you know, pushing an agenda tirelessly, like that, that really works.

David Friedberg 23:09 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 23:09 And in the end, the prize she got is not worth having. Like I, how would you like to run CBS News-

David Friedberg 23:17 No, thanks.

Tucker Carlson 23:17 ... such as it is?

David Friedberg 23:18 Yeah.

Tucker Carlson 23:18 No, for real. That's torture. I, they couldn't pay you enough.

Jason Calacanis 23:21 What would you do if you had CNN? They put it in your lap, Tucker, and they say you're forced to be CEO of it for the next 10 years. What would you do?

Tucker Carlson 23:27 Well actually, I've had that conversation.

David Friedberg 23:29 Slightly more relevant, what would you do if you ran my son's school newspaper? Because about the same skill.

Tucker Carlson 23:33 Oh, I'd get radical, man.

Jason Calacanis 23:34 Actually, Tucker had an interesting answer.

David Friedberg 23:35 Any, any other good questions, Jason?

Jason Calacanis 23:36 Well, no, it was a great question. Tucker was about to answer it. Thanks for stepping on it, Chamath, with your incredible editorial insight.

Tucker Carlson 23:40 Oh, in the CNN, the CNN question? I mean, I-

David Friedberg 23:42 Yeah.

Tucker Carlson 23:42 ... spent almost 10 years there, so I, I feel like I'm familiar with it.

Jason Calacanis 23:45 Yeah.

Tucker Carlson 23:47 I have, you know, I actually had this conversation with someone who said, "We should buy CNN. You should run it." And I, so I had cause to spend, like, an evening thinking about it. And no way. I mean, what... First of all, I'm with Chamath. Like, I don't have a New York Times or Washington Post or New Yorker subscription anymore after a lifetime of having all three, because they're totally irrelevant. They mean nothing. They're speaking to no one. And there's a kind of musty, it's like going back to your childhood home and seeing that your bedroom was really small-

David Friedberg 24:14 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 24:14 ... and like, the paint was actually turquoise and all these kind of sad posters-

David Friedberg 24:17 Exactly.

Tucker Carlson 24:17 ... from the '80s are still there. Ugh, it's depressing. Like, I would just shut it down and, and build something new.

Jason Calacanis 24:23 Okay.Shut it down and-

David Friedberg 24:24 Jason, can I give you my one thought exercise about the New York Times? The one thing that I think is worth talking about the New York Times is, I think they will, in the next five years do something so egregious and over the line, akin to some sort of libel or some sort of statement that it turned out to be completely false. They will get sued, and I hope when that settlement happens, the person says, "I do not want to get paid the $4 billion. I want this to be turned in kind into a nonprofit and into a public trust," and then shuts it down.

Jason Calacanis 24:56 (laughs) Interesting. That's kind of what happened with Fox when they did their $700, $800 million settlement, the largest one in the history of media.

David Friedberg 25:05 Well, but the next one, Jason- the next one will go up. It won't be that scale because you've had now that, that precedent. That's a very important precedent about the scale of lying and misrepresenting things, and it only goes up from here. This is a one-way ratchet.

Jason Calacanis 25:18 Yeah, you couldn't be more wrong about that, uh, it's definitely not gonna happen.

David Friedberg 25:21 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 25:21 They have controls in place, but it's a nice fantasy. They're also crushing it, by the way, when they moved to subscriptions, they have 12 million paid subscribers now. They are objectively crushing it and figured it out better than any other news organization whether we agree or disagree with, you know, their content and the quality of it. They are the most successful objectively here in America.

Jason Calacanis 25:40 All right, speaking of successful (laughs) and taking over the dialogue, we gotta talk about Nick Fuentes, who you just had on your podcast, Tucker. You platformed him. I'm being facetious here-

Tucker Carlson 25:51 (laughs) I platformed him.

Jason Calacanis 25:53 ... you platformed him.

Tucker Carlson 25:54 I created him.

Jason Calacanis 25:55 Basically. It was an interesting discussion. For those of you who don't know Nick Fuentes and have been living under a rock, he's a 27-year-old white nationalist with a very popular show on Rumble, about 500,000 subscribers, which isn't actually that big when you think about it. His followers call themselves Groypers, and he's gained hundreds of thousands over the past six months. He's on quite a heater, and, uh, he's got a bunch of controversial opinions. I'll just give you the quotes. This has nothing to do with my opinion on him. He was asked by Piers Morgan if he described himself as a racist, and he said, "Totally. I think everybody, if we're being honest, is racist. The only people that aren't racist, or pretend not to be, are white people to their detriment." On women, Piers asked Nick if he was gay. Nick said, "No, but I will say women are very difficult to be around." Piers, uh, then asked, "And do you think they should have the right to vote?" Nick said, "I do not. Absolutely not." On Israel, Fuentes is very critical and what he calls organized jewelry in America. So now you interviewed him. Couple of different ways to take this, but you did a good job of telling his origin story. He was part of PragerU, he's got this really activated base. Why is he resonating at this moment in time? And maybe you could explain to the audience MAGA versus America First, America Only, which I think you're part of America First, but you, you, you tell us 'cause I, I think these are just terms right now. They're not like political parties or anything.

Tucker Carlson 27:33 Well, there's a struggle over what those terms mean. It's very ugly and probably necessary 'cause you need to define terms. Like that's the first thing you do, I would say, when you think through what you should be doing with your life, for example. So, um, as for Fuentes, his origin story is a little more precise, and I'll keep it short, but he tweeted something as a freshman at BU critical of, pretty mildly critical of the Congress for doing the bidding of this foreign country, Israel. And somehow Ben Shapiro saw that and attacked him and tried to get him kicked out of his Republican club and made sure he didn't get an internship with some conservative organization. And I'm not attacking Ben Shapiro, but that kind of tells you what attempts to shut people down, to shut conversations down result in. They don't go away, they just fester in the darkness and they can sometimes become really ugly. So what Fuentes is among other... Well, first of all, Fuentes is saying a lot of true things, that's why he's popular. He's funny, uh, he's smart, but-

Jason Calacanis 28:35 He's a good broadcaster.

Tucker Carlson 28:35 ... really-

Jason Calacanis 28:36 Yeah.

Tucker Carlson 28:37 He's a great broadcaster, but-

Jason Calacanis 28:38 Yeah.

Tucker Carlson 28:38 ... Fuentes on some macro level is troubling because he... his platform is an expression of something that has kind of taken over all political discourse, which is identity politics, tribalism. And I'm just opposed to that, I... period, and always will be. And I, I just think that we're governed by universal principles or we're governed by the mafia. Those are our choices. And so you... you know, uh, the... our principles have to apply to every human being or certainly every American citizen, period, or they're not principles. Um, they're just a justification, uh, for tyranny. So Fuentes, you know, has a different kind of identity politics, but there are all kinds of different identity politics. We, we lived under it during the Biden years. We've lived under it most of my life, actually, in one form or another. And so if anything, Fuentes reminds us that we have to come up with some kind of principle that every American can ascribe to, something called national identity that is not a dirty phrase that's actually necessary to keep the country from disintegrating, which it is. So like what does every American, all 350 million have in common with every other? And that's the conversation we need to have. And in its absence, then we get a lot of people popping up and being like, "Well, all white people over here and all Black people or Jewish people or whatever." That's not gonna work. That will end in violence. Everyone knows that. And so now is probably a pretty good time to figure out what we all have in common. I didn't platform him. I int- first of all, platform is not a verb. And anyone who says it is a verb-

Jason Calacanis 30:08 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 30:09 ... is probably opposed to my core interests, I would say, and bad language.

Jason Calacanis 30:12 You had a conversation with him.

Tucker Carlson 30:14 Yeah, I interviewed him like I interview everybody-

Jason Calacanis 30:16 Yeah.

Tucker Carlson 30:16 ... you know, and my general belief is you should let people say what they think and others can decide whether they mean it or not, whether they're being false or sincere and, and what they think of what the person is saying. But that's, that's my job. I'm not ashamed of it, despite a lot of efforts to make me ashamed of it.... I do disagree with Fuentes on the question of universal principles. I think it's immor- well, first of all, it's against my religion to hate any group, and I told him that. But I didn't do a lot of other posturing designed to make me seem like, you know, the good person. Piers, unfortunately, fell into that trap as an older man. You know, sc- well, "Isn't it? You are bad!" And it's like, okay, I don't even disagree with some of that, but you don't elevate yourself. You look like an out of touch buffoon, and that's exactly the trap that was awaiting Piers Morgan. And if you watch that interview, and if you watch the reaction to it, that did not diminish Nick Fuentes in any way. It enhanced Nick Fuentes. What diminishes Nick Fuentes is asking him straightforward questions, particularly about women. Not, "Have you had sex with anybody?" But, like, "Why are you so mad at women?"

David Friedberg 31:17 Mm-hmm.

Tucker Carlson 31:17 And that... You know, letting people talk a lot reveals who they are. That's just true. Sorry.

David Friedberg 31:22 If you were to s- give the top two or three reasons why he's resonating with, it seems like, young men, and this Amer- this burgeoning American First movement, which I guess would be good for you to define right now as best you can, uh, y- recognizing you're not the leader of it. But you have said, I think, uh, you... This, uh, concept is, you know, uh, resonates with you. So maybe why is Tu- what, why is Fuentes resonating, and what is America First versus MAGA like, wh- explain that to the audience.

Tucker Carlson 31:54 Well, just in, in reverse order, I mean, I would argue that the, the premise of MAGA is America First, but I wouldn't say that America First is a movement. I would say it's the only legitimate reason to run a government, and it's very simple. The, the government of your democratic republic ought to act in broad terms on behalf of its own citizens. I mean, it's, it's not more complicated than that. There's nothing sinister about it. In fact, anything other than that is sinister, because it's illegitimate. For what other reason would you run a, a democratic republic?

David Friedberg 32:24 Ten treasonous.

Tucker Carlson 32:24 The- there isn't one, actually. So, of course, this has to be in America. You can think of a new name for it, if that name makes you uncomfortable, but the idea has to be the reason we have a government, or else we have to get rid of the government, because there's no other justification for having a government. Okay, so A. B, why is he popular? 'Cause he says that. But I would say more broadly, because he's defiant. There's a kind of, "Up yours, buddy. I can't say that? Okay, watch this, I will." He's hilarious. He seems steadfast and strong. I, I don't think he i-... He's not even married, so, like-

David Friedberg 33:01 Hm.

Tucker Carlson 33:01 ... if you're afraid of girls, I think you're a wuss. That's my personal view, but there is a... But in his defiance, people see something really appealing. Why wouldn't they?

David Friedberg 33:11 Hm.

Tucker Carlson 33:11 You know, in a... These are kids who've grown up in a world of hectoring and telling them they're bad, because of how they were born, and Nick Fuentes is just raising the middle finger to the people saying that and saying, "Up yours." And who wouldn't love that? Of course people love that.

David Friedberg 33:24 The s-

Tucker Carlson 33:24 Duh.

David Friedberg 33:24 ... second piece is, uh, of the America First is America Only. And I guess that means-

Tucker Carlson 33:29 I don't know what that means.

David Friedberg 33:31 Yeah.

Tucker Carlson 33:31 That's a... No, of, of course, it's... Look, we, we work in concert with others by definition. It's a globalized economy. You know, maybe it shouldn't be, but it is. But America Only, that argument makes sense. It's not really an argument. It's like a counter-slogan designed to undercut the main argument. Isn't... Doesn't really mean it. No one is arguing that. It's just saying, look, the US government ought to act on behalf of its own citizens, to which people who don't believe that, who are embarrassed to explain why they don't believe it, 'cause there's no justification for not believing that, are like, "Well, you're, you're America only." No. I- th- the government should do that. Every part of the government should have that foremost in mind, how does this help the people who pay for this in whose name it's done? Like, again, even calling it a movement drives me bonkers, because compared to what? Some sort of cre- creepy, secretive oligarchy, which we've had most of my life? Like, that's just bad. There's no way to defend that. And we can argue within the framework of America First how to put America first. That's a totally legitimate argument, and there are all kinds of different thoughts about that. But what the motive should be, the goal should be, there's no debate. It has to be for American citizens primarily. If there are, you know, ancillary beneficiaries, that's great. Uh, not against that at all. Let's help everyone if we can, but the point is to help the people who own the country, the shareholders of the United States, who are American citizens. There's no other point, is there?

David Friedberg 34:55 Shamit, let me bring you in on this from the angle-

Tucker Carlson 34:57 (laughs)

David Friedberg 34:57 ... of the America First movement, America Only movement, as a reaction to the first year of the Trump administration feeling to many people in the Republican Party as benefiting maybe tech oligarchs, billionaires, uh, international issues more than the working man. You have started to tweet a little bit and become vocal about, "Hey, maybe year two of the Trump administration, we gotta get refocused on some of these things." Unpack that for us and the audience. Well, can I, can I offer my feedback on Fuentes first? Oh, of course, yes, go with Fuentes if you like. There's a couple points I want to make. The first is that he is, as Tucker said, charismatic. I think he's funny, and I think that he can animate around a lot of touchy subjects and say things that have shock value. And I think in that what he is, is actually like a modern shock jock. He's like a younger Howard Stern. He's the Howard Stern of this era. The way that Howard Stern was, in that era, unlistenable to so many people, because he would be kind of okay for 80% of the time, and then go totally off the rails. And you'd think, "Man, this guy is some combination of mean, nuts, crazy," and then you'd throw out all these other adjectives. So, that's point number one. Point number two is, it is true that the longer you allow him to speak, actually, the more you understand what he thinks, and as a result, the quality of the product will dictate the scale of adoption. And now, this is where I think the media, yet again, has been very sloppy and doesn't do their work.... which is, and Nick, you can throw this up. There's been a lot of research on what has been happening in the last few months. And the bottom-line takeaway in the last few months is that there is a coordinated effort of individual, largely unverified accounts in social media. They typically emanate from India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and there is a coordinated amplification process that is happening around this content. And in this chart that you're seeing, it's just a comparison of Nick in the first 30 minutes to what people like Elon get in the first 30 minutes of him posting. Now, why that's so important is you start to see this huge disparity, where even though you have the most viral person and account in the world, i.e. at Elon Musk on X, what you see is him completely crushing and dominating the virality in the beginning of his content creation versus anybody else's. And then there's a bunch of other charts. Nick, you can retweet a link to this. It starts to show a pattern where there is a coordinated effort to amplify. I think that's why we're having the Nick Fuentes moment at this point in time. The New York Times all of a sudden sees this information, probably doesn't bother to do the diligence, has a bunch of positive mentions, starts to pump him up as a leader of some kind of nefarious, crazy, scary rebellion.

David Sacks 38:05 Well, no, they want to mainstream him.

David Friedberg 38:07 And they wanna try to mainstream him. So what you see is The New York Times trying to mainstream this guy and make him credible so as to paint the right as a bunch of evil, racist ideologues. I think the producers at Piers Morgan didn't understand this was happening, and so when you put him on a 20-minute soundbite shot, it feeds into exactly what makes him popular, the ability to land these small soundbites. This is why I think Tucker's was much better, because again, in multi-hour programming, you can't hide. You see the full facet of what the person is, and you start to understand that this is a very savvy, young media personality. Now, when you strip away all of this amplification, the product has to work for it to scale and grow. There's no way that you're going to manifest average normal men and women spending their time to take these views credibly unless it's good and right. There will be a moment in time where curiosity will cause you to say, "Why is everybody talking about this?" We are firmly in that moment. But I think that there is a large portion of what he says, which I don't know whether he believes or not because I haven't spent that much time, but is meant to shock, it's meant to catalyze and animate people, but I don't think it's sustainable because the views themselves are repugnant. So I think that's-

David Sacks 39:25 And this is why The New York Times wants to elevate him. Can you put it up there? (laughs) So there I am.

Jason Calacanis 39:31 (laughs) That's amazing.

David Friedberg 39:33 He looks like a handsome guy in that picture.

David Sacks 39:35 I look like a slack-jawed yokel, and he looks like rebel with a cause.

Jason Calacanis 39:41 Yeah.

David Sacks 39:41 It's Jed Clampett versus, uh, James Dean.

David Friedberg 39:45 The- the other thing I'll say is that Sacks and I are in a couple of these group chats with some folks, and some of the chatter there is that, who is paying for and who is activating all of these bots and fake accounts in all of these developing world countries, and why did they pick him? Some of that conspiracy basically points to a handful of nations who would love to foment that kind of dissent, and that kind of-

Jason Calacanis 40:07 Yeah, we don't have to wonder about this.

David Friedberg 40:08 ... chaos and uprising.

Jason Calacanis 40:09 I mean, this has been clear for a long time, who's doing it.

David Friedberg 40:12 So I think it's very important from here on out that if people are to listen to him, I think the longer form content exposes what he really thinks so that you can judge it for yourself, but I would not discount the fact that this moment is happening is not entirely organic. There is a deep inorganic effort to put this on the front page of the news. And so it's up to traditional media to decide whether they're gonna basically lift this guy up as some kind of newfound hero or call it out for what it is, which is lead in the articles with this data, which is widely available and easy to get.

Jason Calacanis 40:49 Well, he literally explained this when he was on Tucker's podcast. He was originally, in college, part of this PragerU kind of movement, and he said he was in a Facebook group which was the Prager Army. And I've talked about this before, we've joked about it, but there are groups like the one you mentioned, uh, that you're in this group I heard about. It's a couple hundred right-wing folks of note.

David Friedberg 41:12 Take it easy, Jason.

Jason Calacanis 41:13 My invite didn't get-

David Friedberg 41:14 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 41:14 ... got lost apparently, to it, but, uh, yeah, add me to that group, please. But what happens in these groups, some of them are designed to make money, some of them designed to make impact. Andrew Tate had one where there was an affiliate scheme put up, uh, for it. When Twitter started sharing revenue with accounts and you start looking at these, like, accounts that are anonymous but get to massive scale, King Ko with the Grey, et cetera-

David Friedberg 41:36 Clip farming, you're talking about the clip farming. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 41:38 Yeah, and- and they're regurgitating stuff. They're doing it for the money, obviously. They're making 10, 20 grand a month. It becomes a full-time job to do that. But we've caught the Russians, we've caught the Chinese, everybody in between doing this kind of pumping. And then there is the actual army. So he, Nick Fuentes, has an army of young people who do this, and they're on VPNs, and they flood comments, and what they do is they share a clip, and you can experience this in your own social media if you're of note because you'll have 10 posts get X number of replies, and then all of a sudden the 11th gets 10 times that, all at the same time, directly to it, not from your followers, and that's when they get shared on these group chats.

David Friedberg 42:17 By the way, we should mention, just tangentially, because I want to get Tucker's take on this, but Australia just passed a law that under 16 you're now not allowed to use social media, Instagram-

Jason Calacanis 42:26 Right.

David Friedberg 42:26 ... Facebook, TikTok, all banned until you turn 16.

Jason Calacanis 42:28 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 42:29 And in part, Jason, I think it's because these coordinated mis and disinformation or amplification campaigns are on all kinds of characters, not just Nick. They're proliferating, because to your point-... the economics creates an incentive, if nothing else. Then there's obviously the state-level sponsored chaos that it tries to sow.

Jason Calacanis 42:44 Yes.

David Friedberg 42:44 And one of the only high-level bits that you can flip is to say, "Under a certain age, we're just gonna minimize how much of this content you get exposed to because we don't know what it is." Before we go there, can I just say the one thing on America First, America Only, whatever these-

Jason Calacanis 42:58 Please. Yeah.

David Friedberg 42:58 ... terms are? I, I don't know what they are.

Jason Calacanis 42:59 America First, America Only.

David Friedberg 43:00 Okay. I, I don't know what they are. These are slogans, anti-slogans. Here's what I will say. I think it's very important, and I speak as an immigrant, I want to be American. I don't consider myself Canadian American. I don't consider myself Sri Lankan Canadian American. I consider myself American. I want to absorb and I want to reflect the values of this country. I want to know and be able to talk to you about the constitution of this country. I want to be able to celebrate the cultural heritage of this country. That's part of the compact that I think I'm making, and I do think that's an important thing that we have all lost, where we have to run around in all of our traditional garb, and it just loses that what makes countries great is a shared set of principles and values. And we have to find a way of doing that. When I immigrated from Canada, what I will tell you is Canada took the opposite view. We used to call America a melting pot pejoratively, even in textbooks, and the textbooks would call Canada a tossed salad. And we would celebrate that that form of multiculturalism was better. But when you fast-forward the clock 20 years, all it did was create confusion. For example, if you go to school in Canada, there's like a bajillion holidays. Every culture gets their day off. And then all of a sudden, what happens? The kids don't get educated because you have to have every long-tail country get recognized in some way, shape, or form. All of a sudden, you lose this very standard form of basic organization. That's just but one example. You know, the forms are in 50 languages. All that does is create chaos. It should've been in English and French because those are the two official languages of the country. All of that indirection, trying to celebrate everybody's heritage confuses and slows that country down, and you can see it in the GDP, you can see it in the FDI, foreign direct investment. You can see it. So, the one thing that we have to agree is that there is an American culture and set of values, and we should not lose it. And we should ask the people that want to be here to embrace it. We all embraced it. Sachs embraced it. If you talk to Sachs's parents, they've embraced it. If you talk to Friedberg, Friedberg's parents, we all came from different countries, but we are fundamentally American.

Guest questioner (unidentified, likely remote/audience) 45:10 Jake L., I'm, I wasn't sure, but were you intimating that-

Jason Calacanis 45:16 (laughs)

Guest questioner (unidentified, likely remote/audience) 45:16 ... the party behind Nick Fuentes' meteoric success-

Jason Calacanis 45:20 (laughs)

Guest questioner (unidentified, likely remote/audience) 45:20 ... is the Russians?

Jason Calacanis 45:22 (laughs) No, no, I was just saying that there's brigading going on.

Guest questioner (unidentified, likely remote/audience) 45:25 Which foreign actor do you think it is?

Jason Calacanis 45:27 I, you know, some of them just want to create chaos.

Guest questioner (unidentified, likely remote/audience) 45:29 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 45:29 I put Russia in that, just creating division in America distracts Americans, I think they like that. But I, there are three levels of this. There's his army. Fuentes does have an army of super fans who are disaffected young men, and there's a reason why they're disaffected. It's hard to get jobs. It's impossible to get a home. Healthcare, they've seen people, you know, go bankrupt because of healthcare. If you look at healthcare, homes, and education, those are the three most important things we have to fix in America, and that's why young people are disaffected. And when you're disaffected as a youth, and somebody starts blaming the Jews, the Blacks, the Hispanics, the border, this issue, that issue, it's really appealing because then you don't have to take any personal responsibility for it, and it is, in fact, really hard to own a home in most cities in America, unless you move to Texas or, you know, Nashville, Florida, and then there's too many homes and prices are going down. And he's a kid, and he says stupid stuff, but he says... He does tap into that disaffected-ness. Where would you put it if you ranked it, Tucker, since you are pretty plugged into this? Is Fuentes' popularity based on the groypers and this, like, really inside group of people who are amplifying him? Is it what he's saying or is it, like, some foreign actors promoting him? W- w- how would you handicap his massive popularity? And then we'll move on.

Tucker Carlson 46:54 All, all three play a role, I would say. And if you want to know who is primarily responsible for amplifying him, consider who benefits. If you wanted to discredit America First, say, foreign policy, then you would put it in the mouth of someone who was pro-Hitler, of course.

Jason Calacanis 47:09 Mm.

Tucker Carlson 47:09 Anytime I hear someone endorsing Hitler, "I love Hitler," then I'm like, "Hmm."

Jason Calacanis 47:14 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 47:14 You know, the fed alarm goes off.

Guest questioner (unidentified, likely remote/audience) 47:15 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 47:15 Or the inorganic alarm goes off, right? Okay, so-

David Friedberg 47:17 Exactly.

Tucker Carlson 47:18 ... A. B, he is the product of a system that the rest of us tolerated and certain among us created, and we shouldn't be surprised. You know, if you have identity politics, at some point you're gonna get white identity politics. I think I wrote a book about this almost 10 years ago, which was totally ignored, but that's inevitable. It's inevitable. And so to fix it, it's not a matter of censoring Nick Fuentes or anyone who likes Nick Fuentes, it's a matter of de-racializing our society and making it a fair society, where rewards or condemnation are not given on the basis of your DNA. Like, you can't have that and hope to avoid a Rwanda 'cause it's just gonna happen. It's inevitable. Tribalism is the threat to every society, and w- w- I don't know how we lost sight of that, but we did.

Jason Calacanis 48:10 Is he a fed? You, y- people are sort of saying he's a fed, that he's accusing you of being a fed, a CIA operative-

Tucker Carlson 48:15 You know, I don't know, I... The, the whole fed conver- I, unfortunately, so he... It's such a long story, I won't even bore you with it, but he attacked my father at one point, so I got baited into it, and, and I called him a fed. Um, you know, I don't, I don't know. Uh, but I do know that there are... And I think that Fuentes is prim- let me just be clear, I think he's primarily successful because of his talents and because of the obvious truth behind some of what he is saying, which is true.... right? The government of this country, or any country, should act on behalf of its own citizens, and ours doesn't, and that's an outrage. So, okay, that's just true. But the White identity politics part of it, once again, is inevitable. Identity politics will give birth to White identity politics, why wouldn't it? And your att- eff- efforts to stamp it out will never work because they're too hypocritical. So, the only way to fix that, if you don't like it, is to eliminate all identity politics, which we should do tonight, because it's the road to disaster. That's

Tucker Carlson 49:13 it.

David Friedberg 49:13 I have an AI question for Tucker. I'm increasingly surprised by the number of people on the right who I would describe as ardent free market, low regulation to no regulation folks, who are very anti-AI. And I'm just curious, where do you think that comes from, and what do you think?

Tucker Carlson 49:38 It comes from, so far as I can tell, the perception that the risks outweigh the benefits. So, the risk would include, you know, massive job loss, chaos, where nobody sort of knows if anything is real and the fabric of reality itself begins to tear. You know, of- of course, (laughs) the massive energy draw and the huge and expensive infrastructure changes that will require the disruption that will inevitably cause... So, like, the downsides are super obvious, not even to mention the potential this gets g- completely away from us and eats us or something, okay? As weighed against the potential benefits, which are what? And I- I don't doubt that there are some, you know, coming to faster, you know, diagnostic conclusions and medicine, you know, or- organ- you know, getting rid of tedious tasks that no one wants to do, elimination of clerical work, et cetera. I guess those are upsides. But I- it's disproportionate. The- in the view of most people, I think, who aren't experts in this, not daily involved in it, the risks far outweigh not just the upsides, but the announced upsides. So typically, when we roll out a new product, we tell the people we hope to buy it, like, "This is gonna be amazing. It's gonna blow you away. Everything about your life will be better once you get the iPhone 27," or whatever. There's been none of that with AI. Like, none. The announcement has been, "Holy (beep) , this is gonna change everything." Stop. How exactly? "Well, it just is." Uh, I mean, I- I don't know, who's in charge of the marketing for this? (laughs)

Guest questioner (unidentified, likely remote/audience) 51:13 (laughs) I don't know, me?

Jason Calacanis 51:14 Seriously?

David Friedberg 51:15 Sam Altman.

Guest questioner (unidentified, likely remote/audience) 51:16 (laughs)

Tucker Carlson 51:16 Sam Altman and David Sacks, go.

Jason Calacanis 51:19 Uh, David, I think this, uh, is a good-

David Friedberg 51:20 Okay, hold on. Can I just, can I just follow up on this?

Tucker Carlson 51:22 Sure.

David Friedberg 51:23 Okay, so Tucker, here's just a thought exercise, and just tell me how this factors into that opinion, if it should at all. So, let's say in a world, in 10 years, where you have these super intelligent computers and systems and models, okay? In my thinking, what that does is it reorders the geopolitics of all countries in the world where you're in one of three buckets. In bucket number one, you're an exporter of that intelligence, and I think right now, steady state, it's gonna be China and America, right? China will have one version of exported intelligence, and we will have one version of exported intelligence. Then there'll be these strategic partner countries, of which I suspect there's less than 10, who are the enablers, the facilitators, they have specialized skills that wrap either the Chinese version or the American version, with energy, with money, with knowhow, et cetera. And then I think there's everybody else, and it almost creates this thing where if you are an importer of intelligence in the future, you theoretically are at risk of becoming essentially a vassal state. And so, if you think about it at that level, isn't AI something that is almost existential that we must win?

Tucker Carlson 52:37 I mean, for sure. I mean, at- at that level, for sure, and I would just point out that, like, almost every single state in the world is already a vassal state, so like, no change there. But, uh, yeah, I mean, you don't wanna be on the wrong side of it, that's clear. Is it containable to nation states? Uh, that's not clear, to be honest, to me at all. But whatever, I get the argument. I'm just saying, at the consumer level, no one has explained why we should be excited about this. And if I, you know, I'm a gold buyer, an ammo buyer, and freeze-dried food buyer, as I already told you, so it doesn't kind of affect me as an investment matter. But like just, I- I think it would be... So, I- I don't have a... kind of any reason to say this.

David Friedberg 53:13 Yeah, the div- you're saying the dividend of AI is not clear? Like, it's like, the positive-

Tucker Carlson 53:18 To the average person-

David Friedberg 53:19 To the average person.

Jason Calacanis 53:20 You are 100% correct, Tucker, on this. We have done a terrible job as an industry communicating this-

Tucker Carlson 53:25 But what's the answer?

Jason Calacanis 53:26 ... but the answer is-

Tucker Carlson 53:26 What's the answer, like how is this great for me?

Jason Calacanis 53:28 ... I can totally give you the answer. It- it'll-

Tucker Carlson 53:29 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 53:29 ... wind up being great for you because the prices of goods and services will get much lower, you'll live much longer, and I, listen, I'm not saying this is mine, but this is what the industry should be saying. The price of education is gonna go down 80 or 90%. You're gonna have customized, adaptable education versus, you know, paying for $50,000 a year degrees. You're gonna be able to learn anything in half the time at 90% less. All of these deliveries coming to your home are gonna be delivered at half the price twice as fast because it's gonna be in a drone or it's gonna be in a self-driving car. And we're gonna make breakthroughs in healthcare that will reduce suffering, and you will not die of cancer, you're gonna live to 120. We will have job displacement, but we believe the lower cost of living and the greater services that are gonna be available to you in healthcare and education will make up for that. And if it doesn't, we're gonna put in ways to pace out the job displacement. In China, they're doing this. In China, they're proposing, and Sachs and President Trump, the amazing President Trump, will be doing an AI national edict soon, I believe, or an executive order. But in China, in Wuhan paradoxically, they are talking about giving out licenses to self-driving cars-... in a paced rollout so that young men don't lose their jobs en masse, which is what we're about to see in America. And if we don't take this into account, and the great czar will speak in a moment, that's when this will become, I think, the worst nightmare that you're talking about, the dystopian version of this. We need to figure out healthcare, homes, and education, and make those free, close to free, and do a Manhattan Project on creating 10 new cities with 10 million new homes and free healthcare for everybody and free education for trade schools, et cetera. That's what solves the problem. That's what nobody's doing. Sax, your chance to jump in here.

David Sacks 55:30 Well, there's a lot of things going on here. But I think one of them is that humans are really attracted to either utopian or dystopian narratives. I think liberals are probably more attracted to utopian narratives, and conservatives are attracted to dystopian ones. And I think the future is gonna be more in the messy middle. I don't think it's gonna be to either one of those extremes. And I agree that the industry has not done a good job. They've created a lot of fear. The whole AGI narrative didn't help, because you had a lot of people in the industry saying, "We're gonna get to AGI in two or three years." Those timeframes have all been pushed back, by the way.

David Friedberg 56:07 Or eliminated. You don't even hear that term anymore.

David Sacks 56:09 Or eliminated. People were saying a few years ago that we'd have AGI by now. Now, no one is saying that. They're basically pushing it back 10 years plus.

David Friedberg 56:14 And by the way, that... just on that, that was exactly a function of the immaturity of our industry. So, to what Tucker said, it is true.

David Sacks 56:20 Well, it's the utopian mindset, right?

David Friedberg 56:22 Yeah.

David Sacks 56:22 What they saw as utopian, I think a lot of people reacted and said, "Wait a second, that sounds pretty dystopian to me."

David Friedberg 56:27 And I also think it's what needed to be said in that moment to get that next quantum of money. They were telling the investors some version of what the investors either didn't understand or wanted to hear in order to get that next scale up capital. But now that we're past that and we're seeing more practical implementations, right now, we're actually at the beginning, I think, of the positive productivity loop. And that isn't explained, because we've spent so much time offering up this grand utopian vision, it does seem like an overpromise, underdeliver kind of situation to show up and say, "Oh, now your DMV form," (laughs) y- y- you don't need to fill it out anymore. And people are like, "Wait a minute, that's what we spent all this money on?" And I think that we should have taken a much more conservative view in explaining what the upside was in the past.

Jason Calacanis 57:10 Perfectly said, Chamath. And I think, Tucker, one way to frame it is the abundance of Star Trek versus, you know, to Sax's point, the dystopian nature of Terminator 2. One of the great paradoxes here, we, we will have massive job displacement, destruction, whatever term you, you prefer, in entry level jobs already happening, in, you know, what I'll call chores, like dishes and driving cars, entry level jobs. Those are going away, and they're gonna go away in the millions, and they're gonna go away in the millions in the short to mid-term. Two, three, four, five years, you're gonna have people protesting in the streets over this issue-

David Sacks 57:47 I don't agree with that, actually.

Jason Calacanis 57:49 It'll be fir-... y- you know you don't agree with it-

David Friedberg 57:49 I don't agree with that either.

Jason Calacanis 57:49 ... you say it every time. You interrupt me every time I say it. But I will be right on this one. You will be wrong, because you'll see taxi drivers are gonna be the first group to do it. And it's already happening in different places in the world, as I mentioned, in China, and it's already starting to happen in places like San Francisco, where they're burning the Waymos and (beep) with them for a reason. The abundance argument is something we need to get on, and we need to get on it quick, or we need to get on some sort of promises about reeducation and retraining. And you don't hear rich people and these rich companies talking about that half as much as they did. But you know what could be the great paradox, Tucker? Is that the America First movement is acutely aware of this, and shutting the border and deporting people, which I'm fine with deporting criminals, that actually might be the solution to the problem. As we deport people, as we don't let people in, unemployment might stay at a low enough level that we could manage giving the dishwasher jobs, the nanny jobs, the ones that maybe were being done by illegals, construction jobs, and we're just gonna have to pay more for those. It's gonna be $30, $40 an hour jobs. So America First might actually be the solution to this displacement.

Tucker Carlson 58:58 May I just say one thing? I... first of all-

Jason Calacanis 58:59 Please.

Tucker Carlson 58:59 ... it makes me uncomfortable to hear you use the term "reeducation." (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 59:03 Yeah, sorry. Uh, retraining.

David Friedberg 59:04 (laughs)

David Sacks 59:04 Don't want that.

Tucker Carlson 59:05 Yes. But, um, you know, the, the, the awesome power that AI gives governments and other concentrations of power over the population is a concern, particularly in the United States where we have a Bill of Rights. And it seems to me it would be important, and I never hear it raised, to put in some guardrails to protect the average powerless person against surveillance or having his rights taken away, in effect-

Jason Calacanis 59:30 100%. 100%.

Tucker Carlson 59:30 ... or famously, you know, social credit score.

Jason Calacanis 59:33 100%.

Tucker Carlson 59:33 It's just too easy to extract compliance from people with technology this powerful. And of course, the very obvious next 10 years looks like this. There's a lot of disruption because of the elimination of jobs, particularly low-end jobs, but not only low-end jobs, like lawyers and stuff, the, the true revolutionaries in any society. And then, the technology itself is used to keep the population under control through repression. Like, I don't think that's a crazy scenario at all.

David Sacks 1:00:05 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:00:05 You're 100% right.

David Sacks 1:00:07 No, I agree with that.

David Friedberg 1:00:07 That is the big, big, big risk.

Tucker Carlson 1:00:07 Yeah, so what are we doing about that?

David Sacks 1:00:09 Let me speak to this. So first of all, I agree that that is the biggest risk of AI, is... let's call it the Orwellian concerns, as opposed to, like, the James Cameron Terminator concerns. Just as an aside, I, I agree, actually, with the Star Trek analogy, that I think the right way to think about AI, it's like the ship's computer in Star Trek, where you can tell it what to do, it understands language, and it can speak back to you, but it doesn't have a mind of its own. But that doesn't mean that it couldn't be used by humans or governments in a oppressive way. And that's, I think, the biggest risk of it. And I think the track that we were on at the end of the Biden administration is that they were starting to require that DEI be programmed into AI. And that should be seen as an attempt to kinda infiltrate...... AI with ideology that then programs or brainwashes our kids and everyone who uses AI. And we were seeing that when Google rolled out their first product, you had the whole black George Washington thing, and black Nazis, and all that kind of stuff. History was being rewritten in real time by AI in order to serve a political agenda. And that didn't happen by accident. It's because the values, the ideology was being programmed in. Now, I think that that was the track we were on before President Trump got elected. I think it was a pretty scary track. And let me say one other thing, is that that whole apparatus of so-called trust and safety from social networking, which is basically a big excuse for censorship and shadow banning, all of that was in the process of being ported over to these AI companies. And in fact, they even used some of this same terminology about, like, safety is really this, like, catchall term for a lot of things. In the social networking context, when they talked about safety, the idea was that users be confronted with ideas they didn't like, and therefore that was a threat to their wellbeing. So therefore, you need a safety team to censor those opinions.

David Friedberg 1:02:01 Safe space.

David Sacks 1:02:02 Yes.

David Friedberg 1:02:02 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:02:02 And I think, I think in a similar way, like, that whole safety apparatus was in the process of being applied to AI. Like, we can't have users be confronted with ideas-

David Friedberg 1:02:10 Well-

David Sacks 1:02:11 ... that they don't like, and-

David Friedberg 1:02:11 ... and the training data, right, Sax? I mean, if the training data is a set of woke ideologies, and those are pervasive on the open web, then, as Elon pointed out, like, I think an early version of Grok, it was like, "If I misgender somebody, that's not as... That's worse than-"

David Sacks 1:02:27 No, no. That's right. The earlier versions of-

David Friedberg 1:02:28 "... like, a nuclear bomb going off." (laughs)

David Sacks 1:02:29 No, no. The earlier versions of the model, you would ask it, "What is worse, global thermonuclear war or misgendering Caitlyn Jenner?"

David Friedberg 1:02:37 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:02:37 And the model would say misgendering. So, and look, that ideology was coming from somewhere, right?

David Friedberg 1:02:41 Woke war games. (laughs)

David Sacks 1:02:42 Yeah. So I think Tucker is right, that there is a real risk that AI is used by future governments or the deep state, basically, to surveil us, to censor us, and even potentially to brainwash us, 'cause it is really good for that. It's not that I think the AI is gonna develop a mind of its own. I don't think the technology is anywhere close to that. But I do think that it could be used by the government in a much more invasive and intrusive way, in the manner that, that the government was, the deep state was already trying to get in bed with the social networks on.

David Friedberg 1:03:14 That's right. This is, I think-

David Sacks 1:03:16 So, um... Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, Shamaan.

David Friedberg 1:03:17 This, this is the absolute biggest risk. Both of you guys nailed it on the head. In the future, when you have these really powerful models, the reality is, the incentive for governments to try to infiltrate the information cycle, they will not be able to hold themselves back. And then what comes with that is a lack of privacy, a total loss of privacy, and then a push towards censorship. So as these AIs become more powerful, we have to marry it with a set of technologies that can preserve privacy and preserve access to monetary resources. If you look at the examples today that we have, there's nothing you can do today, nothing online, that is not tracked. Now, we have sets of rules that say that tracking can't be shared. I'll give you an example. I decide to buy a very sugary cereal. That is not shared with my insurance company that underwrites my health insurance. And there's all kinds of laws that prevent that. But that's just a flimsy law. That's a moment in time that could change. If that decision were to change, now my buying pattern's become subject to scrutiny. That could also apply to how I consume information on these networks. So, we have to find a way to make sure that you can transact, right? The great thing about the US dollar is when you get a dollar and you put it in your pocket, the physical dollar bill, it is completely fungible. Nobody knows what it was used for in the past. Nobody can judge how you use it in the present or in the future. And we have to find a way to replicate a version of that so that you can preserve privacy and minimize censorship. Because if you have to transact all day, every day, online, for everything, and there's no way to shield some amount of privacy, it's a very scary outcome.

David Sacks 1:05:01 One other point on this is, I do think that if you look at kinda who's promoting a lot of these scary narratives about AI, it is people on the far left of the political spectrum. Because when you create enough fear in a population, the people will cry out for government to intervene and save them. And I don't think it's a coincidence that, again, that a lot of the, the voices who are spreading this, like, Doomer ideology, and saying that we need the AI models to be reporting a lot more things to the government, which is a stepping stone to surveillance. Or previously, they said, "We need to embed DEI in AI models," or, "We need AI models to prevent discrimination," which is kind of their backdoor for doing the same thing. They're on the left of the political spectrum. And I do kinda worry that people on the right are buying into this in a way that's actually gonna lead to a lot of government intervention in a way that actually could lead to the Orwellian outcomes that we're talking about.

David Friedberg 1:05:59 Mm-hmm.

David Sacks 1:06:00 I don't think that people on the right who are concerned about civil liberty should want the government to play this super intrusive role in AI, if that makes sense.

David Friedberg 1:06:11 Of course it does. Of course it does. I think you've got a lot of people suddenly in the United States who are very sensitive about power, and feel like their own power has eroded so dramatically, almost down to nothing. Their economic power, their political power, the power of their vote, the power of the dollar in their pocket, like, have all been really reduced. And all of a sudden, you have a technology that promises to concentrate power still further in the hands of people other than them. And so they're, they're touchy about it. I mean, they're-

David Sacks 1:06:40 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:06:41 ... definitely just freaked out in general.

David Sacks 1:06:43 Yeah. I agree.

David Friedberg 1:06:44 Uh, right? So, that's-

David Sacks 1:06:45 Totally.

David Friedberg 1:06:45 ... that's the backdrop. So, people who feel panics like that, and I'm, I have power, but I still, I sympathize with it, and I feel it to some extent. Th- they're, you know, you're more open to, to Doomer scenarios when you feel-

David Sacks 1:06:58 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:06:58 ... that way. And so it would be helpful-

David Sacks 1:06:59 Yeah, I agree with that.

David Friedberg 1:07:00 ... just to reassure people, "You will be protected."... and yes, there is an upside for you.

David Sacks 1:07:05 Yeah. Look, I, I agree with that, and I, I think there's actually a couple other things that account for, like, the visceral nature of the criticism, 'cause I'm on the receiving end (laughs) of a lot of it right now, so I-

David Friedberg 1:07:12 Oh, yeah.

David Sacks 1:07:13 ... I see it. Um, so one of them is when people hear AI, they think, "That's not me." Like, "That doesn't include me," right? So, there's all these benefits-

David Friedberg 1:07:21 Right.

David Sacks 1:07:21 ... that are so- supposedly being created, but I'm not gonna participate in that. In fact, I might even-

David Friedberg 1:07:25 Right.

David Sacks 1:07:25 ... lose my job. This is why I think it's, like, pretty important to get out the message about how the whole country potentially benefits from this, not just a small clique in Silicon Valley.

David Friedberg 1:07:34 Have you come up with examples of it, Sachs, like how the country benefits from it?

David Sacks 1:07:37 Well, sure. I mean, there's an article that-

David Friedberg 1:07:39 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:07:39 ... didn't we cover it last week at the, in the Wall Street Journal talking about how construction-

David Friedberg 1:07:42 Data centers, yeah.

David Sacks 1:07:43 ... workers have seen their wages increase 30%-

David Friedberg 1:07:45 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:07:45 ... because of the data center buildout? I mean, we are seeing a huge infrastructure boom throughout the country on energy production and construction that's related to this. And so it's not just software where people are benefiting. But the other thing I think that's very visceral on the right is that, the hatred of big tech, quite frankly. I mean, a lot of conservative influencers were directly censored and shadow-banned during this COVID period especially, where the big tech companies, you know, includes the Biden administration, were really coming down on them and censoring them, and there's still a lot of hatred towards big tech, and I think some of that's even misplaced, but there's be- like, almost like a transference. Also with social media, a lot of people have concerns about what social media is doing to kids, body image concerns, or fear of online predators, all that kinda stuff. And I don't think it's an analogous situation with AI chatbots because you're not meeting people, you're kinda doing research. It's like a whole different activity. But I think there's almost, like, a transference of anger or anxiety or fear from what happened over the last decade or two with social media or with, again, like, these online platforms, and that's being transferred over to these new AI platforms, even though I don't think they're precisely analogous and the regulation should be looked at a little bit differently.

David Friedberg 1:09:03 Let me, Jason, give you some credit. I do think you've put your finger on the pulse of what the problem is. Whether we call it a perception or a misperception, the point is people are afraid for jobs, of their jobs. That I agree with you. I think the data about what has happened though is, is pretty flimsy that it actually has seen a bunch of job loss. For example, when we got home from the Christmas party, Sachs, last night, I turned on CNBC and it was Jim Cramer, and he was interviewing this wonderful guy who I'd never heard speak before but he's the founder and chairman of ServiceTitan. And he had this very elegant way of describing it, which is, "AI will put the jobs that are purely cognitive at risk, but when you marry cognitive ability with physical dexterity, those jobs are thriving." And he talked about construction workers, plumbers, electricians. In fact, this week when I was in Abu Dhabi, we were talking about the transformation of power, right? And that these electricians now get paid s- five, six, seven, $800,000 a year, which, by the way, just FYI, is more than most engineers in Silicon Valley, okay? These guys are the ones that are actually winning, but the stories are not told, and then the incentives aren't there. And so there's a bunch of things that I think need to happen to highlight where the success stories are. They're not the obvious places that one would think. It's not just some engineer tickling the keyboard making millions of dollars and putting people out of work. That's not what's happening. But I don't think the story is told, and so the palpable fear of job loss is there. To your point, I do agree with you, Jason. That is the overriding narrative that we have to, with data and facts, convince people of what is actually happening. There is definitely a narrative that's ahead of the job loss, and the question is what pace will it happen at. When people are seeing young people having a hard time getting jobs and, you know, for whatever reason, but I- I- I suspect it's AI. When they see firms like Amazon estimating, estimating in the future they're gonna eliminate these 600,000 jobs and that leaks and that they're gonna do a PR campaign about it. When you see drive-thrus moving to AI and when you see a third of rides in San Francisco and LA move to Waymo without the driver in it, it's really hard to say it's not happening. So, we're just on a different... it's a matter of what timeline it's happening on. You can't have it both ways where, you know, these companies are raising billions of dollars and they're replacing jobs and saying, "Hey, these jobs are gonna be 10 times more efficient," or, "We're gonna replace your driver and we're gonna replace your cashier." You know what would fix this? I see that as an early stage investor in Foundry University. I see it every day.

David Sacks 1:11:52 Yeah, but the- the-

David Friedberg 1:11:53 Company, hold on. Let me finish please, gentlemen. People are pitching me on startups and they're getting funded for these startups to specifically replace roles. And they're saying, "We want to make the perfect sales development rep. We want to make the perfect customer support agent." And enterprise customers are agreeing with them and buying these products and services specifically to stop hiring and increasing their headcount. I see it on the front lines. It is definitely happening. The only difference is timelines and can we create enough jobs? This is why I think we've done a bad job of explaining it. We need to explain for every one of those robo-taxis that gets out there and that job is gone, how do we get that person another job? Because they're not gonna get the job as a cashier (laughs) at the Starbucks anymore- Here you are. Here you go. ... 'cause that's going AI too. Here's a very practical idea. Yesterday, I was at the Senate to just talk about this. What is the idea? I think we have to start looking very honestly at stopping the federal underwriting of student loans. Why? Because it would allow the market to move very quickly to your reality, Jason, because we would...... go beyond just funding somebody to become a master electrician. I suspect that we would pay people.

Jason Calacanis 1:13:10 Yes. (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:13:11 I bet if you went to Google, they would not only subsidize you, they would probably pay you a salary to get educated to do that job. Because once you graduated and you could work up the ranks and become a master electrician, there is so much work that, for example, Google needs, Amazon needs, Microsoft needs. And so if you eliminated the federal underwriting, we don't have it for car insurance, we don't have it for home mortgages. We allow the free market to tell us, "This home is more risky than that home because it's near a fire area. This person is a poorer driver than that other person." We should allow the free market to say, "Go to this kind of a job and you'll get paid so much. But go to this other kind of a degree, it will cost you a lot of money," and let people decide with more clarity. But that one thing would allow us to reinforce what the economic upside of AI is in a very practical way for a lot of people, and it would solve the student debt crisis that we're in.

Jason Calacanis 1:14:06 Sax, should there be a license fee or a tax? This has been floated by people. I'm not saying this is my position.

David Sacks 1:14:12 Well, well-

Jason Calacanis 1:14:12 But should there be a tax on having a robo-taxi or a humanoid robot that is then used to retrain actual humans?

David Sacks 1:14:21 Look, I, I think, first, we just need to start with some accurate facts here. And-

Jason Calacanis 1:14:24 Okay, go ahead.

David Sacks 1:14:25 ... we need to explain what's, what's happening, and part of that is debunking some myths around this. Now, I remember about a month ago, there was a whole wave of very scary headlines, including in a publication I really like, the New York Post, Nick, maybe you can put this on the screen, claiming that AI was wreaking havoc on US jobs. So this was a headline from the New York Post last month based on the October report from Challenger Gray, which basically tabulates announced layoffs in the economy. And we had a spike in October, and about 20% of those were attributed to AI. It wasn't even the majority. It was actually a relatively small number. It wasn't even the number one reason. But based on this, you got a wave of scare headlines that AI was wreaking havoc on US jobs. Well, lo and behold, the November Challenger Gray report has come out and it makes clear that October was an anomalous spike. The number fell by 53%. And only about 6,000 of the layoffs that were announced in November in the entire country were attributable to AI. This is only layoffs, by the way. It doesn't include job creations. Okay? So only 6,000. And if you look at the year to date in the Challenger Gray report, AI has only accounted for 4.7% of total layoffs. And that number is self-reported by CEOs, so my guess is it's inflated because if you're a CEO, you'd rather blame AI for your company's non-performance rather than yourself. So 4.7% is probably the high number. So what we're actually seeing in the data is a very small number of actual layoffs related to AI, and that was corroborated by a new study by Yale Budget Lab, which looked at the first 33 months after the release of ChatGPT, and it said there is no discernible disruption in the labor market. Okay? So that's, I think, a really important fact, is regardless of what you want to claim will happen in the future, job loss has not happened yet, not in any meaningful numbers. And in fact, AI has been responsible for about half of GDP growth this year. So if GDP growth is about 4%, that number would be at 2% if it weren't for AI. So within that is a lot of job creation. You see that, again, with construction workers. So it's just not the case that AI is creating job loss in any meaningful way right now. And people do this Motton Bailey thing where they're like, "Well, AI is creating tons of disruption. It's