All-In PodcastWorld's First Trillionaire, Anthropic Fable Banned, The New Oligarchs, Iran Peace Deal
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
80 min read · 16,297 words- 0:00 – 2:41
Bestie intros!
- JCJason Calacanis
All right, everybody. Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world. It's The All-In Podcast. The original quartet is here. Bizarre David Sacks, how you doing, brother?
- DSDavid Sacks
I'm good.
- JCJason Calacanis
You had a busy week. Got a long post from you on X. We'll get into it. [laughs]
- DSDavid Sacks
Wait, a long what?
- JCJason Calacanis
Long posting.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- JCJason Calacanis
A lot of long posts.
- DSDavid Sacks
A long post. I had, like, one long post.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah. Yeah, how's the carpal tunnel-
- DSDavid Sacks
No, I had two
- JCJason Calacanis
... going over there?
- DSDavid Sacks
I had two.
- JCJason Calacanis
You had two.
- DSDavid Sacks
Two long posts.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah, that carpal tunnel flaring up.
- DSDavid Sacks
I got a third one teed up. I, I might use it on the pod.
- JCJason Calacanis
Oh, you got one in the chamber?
- SPSpeaker
You got one in the chamber?
- DSDavid Sacks
I got one in the chamber.
- JCJason Calacanis
One in the chamber.
- DSDavid Sacks
But I was gonna save it for the pod. It's a good one.
- JCJason Calacanis
All right.
- SPSpeaker
Ooh.
- DSDavid Sacks
[laughs]
- JCJason Calacanis
Coming in hot. [laughs] I wonder who's gonna get this bullet. [upbeat music]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- DSDavid Sacks
You gotta let your winners ride.
- JCJason Calacanis
Rainman David Sacks.
- SPSpeaker
And it said-
- DSDavid Sacks
We open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.
- 2:41 – 14:18
The New Oligarchs, America's incoming politburo, and learned helplessness
- JCJason Calacanis
Go, go. Go ahead.
- DFDavid Friedberg
The great, the great American politburo is being formed. The new oligarchs are taking their seats.
- JCJason Calacanis
Ooh.
- DFDavid Friedberg
They're arranging the chairs. They're determining who will be chairman of the politburo, who will assign what workforce to do what efforts for them, which $600 million stock trades their families will make to benefit and enrich themselves as they fly around in their private jets-
- JCJason Calacanis
Mm
- DFDavid Friedberg
... on the taxpayers' money, and we are watching it all before our very eyes as individual liberties are eroded. I am fired up about it. I see it happening.
- JCJason Calacanis
You know Sacks is on the show this week. You can't just take strays like that.
- SPSpeaker
Friedberg, expand on who the politburo is.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah, so-
- SPSpeaker
Who's in it?
- DFDavid Friedberg
... so basically the po- the politburo is the leaders who elect themselves to dictate the flow of the economy, the allocation of capital, what work individual they're allowed to do, and what, what activities they're allowed to do in an unfree society, which is what they're creating. They are the true oligarchs, and this is Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna. This is the, uh, the group that is trying to coalesce power and create for themselves a system whereby they have greater influence, greater control over aspects of the economy. They wanna seize the means of production. They wanna control education. They wanna control media, and any time there's an effort by an individual enterprise or an individual themselves to go out and build a business and succeed and do something that's outside of their scope and their span of control, they lose their [beep] minds over it, and that's what we're seeing. So I react to their tweeting and their [beep] where they're basically trying to contort things about inequality and fairness and justice, when the truth is they are the rising empire, the evil empire in Star Wars. They are-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- DFDavid Friedberg
... the folks who wanna take from all of us what we were endowed with when this nation was started and what many people came to this country for, which is individual freedom and liberty, the ability to build a business in peace, the ability to make decisions, to do what you want with your own assets, and to have functionally private property, and they're taking it all away, and they're trying to take it all away, and we're watching piece by piece, step by step. So they are forming a politburo where they can effectively control the economy, control education-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- DFDavid Friedberg
... control the media, and tell us all what we can and can't do and say, and it's frustrating to me to watch it because it's masqueraded as [beep] virtue, as justice, as equity. It's a bunch of [beep] nonsense words that they use to try and make themselves seem virtuous, when at the end of the day they are fundamentally evil, and I hate watching it, so that's why I react so-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- DFDavid Friedberg
... uh, aggressively to it.
- SPSpeaker
Friedberg, y- I think you said something that's really important, which is they, they present it as virtue.
- DFDavid Friedberg
That's right.
- SPSpeaker
Put yourself in the body of a person that's probably middle-of-the-road-ish but is falling for it. Why do you think they're falling for it? Like-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Because they have needs and wants and desires individually that this person is saying, "This system, this evil empire, will give to you. If you take the knee, we will give you the education for free. We will give you the childcare for free. We will give you the food for free. We will give you the, the paycheck every week. We will give you, we will give you, we will give you." Those promises in a democratic system like this, or in a fake democratic system like this, are what make people feel like the, the virtuous Uh, offerings will align with their individual needs and wants. And I think that that's why people say like, "Okay, that's good. Free childcare for all." There is inequality in the world. There is disparity in wealth. There is disparity in asset ownership. And your solution, despite, you know, the, the loss of liberty along the way and the loss of economic mobility that arises from what you're offering, and this is really key. People don't realize the value of the United States, the power of this nation was to give people individual liberty, which, which unlocks agency to progress yourself, to educate yourself, to make money, to give yourself more assets and more freedom and more flexibility than you had. Economic mobility is the key to the United States. You do not get economic mobility if the government is giving you a job or giving you money. You lose economic mobility. You become indentured to the government. Everyone wants more. Everyone wants something that they don't have. But the truth is that the more the government is giving it to you, the less you have mobility, the more you are indentured, the more you are enslaved, and the more we are limiting people's ability to progress. And I think that that's what's really so frustrating for me, is that people sign up to this, to your point, Chamath, and they're like, "Okay, that's great. I, I get to have this and I get to have that and I get to have that." But at the end of the day, you're giving all of your liberties up. You're giving all of your progress up.
- JCJason Calacanis
You become a ward of the state-
- DFDavid Friedberg
You're giving all of your mobility
- JCJason Calacanis
... is what you're saying.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah. You're-
- JCJason Calacanis
And you're looking for them, and you don't have agency to pursue your own personal freedom. Yeah.
- DFDavid Friedberg
One thing I believe to be 100% true is that no human being that's ever been alive has ever lived up to their true capacity as a human.
- JCJason Calacanis
I agree with that.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Like, human agency is limitless.
- JCJason Calacanis
Limitless.
- 14:18 – 33:34
SpaceX's record breaking IPO, $60B Cursor acquisition, and trillionaire reactions
- JCJason Calacanis
to get through today. SpaceX had a record breaking IPO and $60 billion Cursor deal was quickly consummated as predicted. Friend of the pod, Elon Musk, took SpaceX public last Thursday, $135 a share. A lot of people got to participate, Robinhood, Charles Schwab, everybody talking about they got an allocation, one share, 10 shares, and they filled the green shoe, 85 billion raised. That's three times what Saudi Aramco raised back in 2019. Stock closed up 19% to 161, market cap above two trilly, and, uh, at the taping of this pod, $177, not too shabby. On Tuesday, SpaceX exercised its option to acquire Cursor. That's the coding agent that got shivved by, speaking of Anthropic and Claude, they originally used Claude to be the back end of Cursor, and then Claude and Anthropic had an internal skunkworks project. They told Cursor allegedly they were never gonna release it to the public. They would never have a coding agent, and they did, and that led to this incredible opportunity for Cursor to make their own model and use Elon's hardware at Colossus. They're doing 4 billion in revenue. So they got bought for 15 times revenue. SpaceX trading, I don't know, 60, 70 times revenue, so a great deal for everybody. SpaceX briefly passed Amazon and Microsoft, which is mind-blowing, to be the fourth most valuable company. Amazon's revenue in '25, 717 billion, Microsoft's '20, '25, 282 billion. SpaceX's '25 only 19 billion. So, um, they- that's corrected a bit, and now SpaceX is sitting at seventh largest company right behind TSMC. That's the Taiwan Semiconductor Corporation. So let's just go around the horn here. Congratulations to Elon and the team over there. Elon exercised his Tesla shares that he had coming from his employment, uh, there. I think he's done a pretty good job as CEO. He got a little bonus. So that sets up potentially chamath the merger of the two big companies. Just broad strokes, what's your take from- takeaway from the SpaceX IPO? Seems to b- have been executed flawlessly.
- SPSpeaker
It's an incredible company. It's, uh, one of one. It's just a unique, unique animal. I think that the highest price to sales was essentially these last few days, and now it's just going to grow into its valuation and generally just grow valuation. Nick, play the clip. The acquisition was essentially negotiated, and the way that it's structured is so that the S one doesn't go stale. So I think the way that it was announced has more to do with the fact that they don't want to slow down and have to rewrite parts of the S one, have to redo the disclosures, have to redo the risks. The deal is effectively done.
- JCJason Calacanis
Hmm.
- SPSpeaker
But what's so smart is that where is SpaceX today? Let's call it a trillion. Where could it be? Just for the purpose of this argument, let's say 2 trillion. So when the deal-
- JCJason Calacanis
Hmm
- SPSpeaker
... gets done on a stock for stock basis-
- JCJason Calacanis
Hmm
- SPSpeaker
... it's going to be, again, if it's 60 billion in tomorrow dollars, effectively Elon's gotten a 50% discount.
- JCJason Calacanis
Hmm. All right.
- SPSpeaker
Nailed it.
- JCJason Calacanis
We'll give that an mm-hmm. Okay. Sure enough.
- SPSpeaker
Well, what I didn't factor as well is that the revenue run rate would essentially double on top of that. So he essentially got Cursor for 15 billion.
- JCJason Calacanis
He got a good deal. Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Which is unbelievable. His business intellect is off the charts. That is an incredible deal, and now the consolidation phase will begin, and we're gonna see Tesla and SpaceX merge, and it's gonna be glorious.
- JCJason Calacanis
Sacks, you can also take, uh, a, a little bit of a victory lap here. You've been friends with Elon since PayPal days obviously, and, um, you obviously were an investor in SpaceX for a long time. Your thoughts on what this means for the company. Obviously, it's an incredible milestone, but what does it mean for the company going forward? Obviously, champagne bottles, yada, yada, but w- what does it practically mean for SpaceX and Elon going forward?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, in a certain sense, as we all know, this was the biggest IPO of all time. And so in that sense, it was a huge milestone for this company that Elon and many other people have been working on for a very long time. I mean, this has been 25 years in the making. When people turn on the TV and they see this, they think that this is just some sort of overnight success. It's not. A lot of people had to work very hard to get to this point. But at the same time that it was this historic IPO, it's also the case that in a certain sense, this didn't change anything for Elon. You know, I think when people read that he's the world's first trillionaire, they start to think that he must have gobs of money, $1 trillion sitting in a bank account, and that's not true. That's not how it works. That's not how wealth is created. He doesn't have one more dollar in the bank than he did the day before the IPO. He doesn't have more stuff, doesn't have more houses or anything that you could buy with money. Literally, his balance sheet is exactly the same. It consists of the same thing, it's just that the public is putting a higher value on the shares of stock in SpaceX that he already owned. And he's not selling. He's under a one-year lockup, and I predict that he'll hold on for much longer than that because creating SpaceX is his life's work. So, you know, you see all these people reacting with tremendous animosity and basically saying that, you know, we can't allow the world's first trillionaire, you know, stuff like that. Look, he doesn't have more cash than he did the day before the IPO.
- DFDavid Friedberg
It's paper wealth, clearly.
- DSDavid Sacks
It's that other people are placing a greater value on what he's built.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
And I think this is, uh, very important for people to understand, is that there's a big difference between stuff and then the machines that make the stuff. And I think, again, this is where wealth comes from, is the machines that make the stuff. So, you know, you go all the way back to hunter-gatherer days, right? The only wealth was in what you could collect, hunt, gather, whatever. It's basically the collection of stuff. Then humans developed the ability to create tools, and then very sophisticated tools. And then some of those tools are corporations, which are almost like cybernetic organisms or combinations of tools, workflows, humans work in them, and it's those corporations that make the stuff. And the way that people get wealthy is that if you create a machine that makes more stuff, then there's a discounted present value for all the stuff in the future that that machine might create, and that's where the wealth comes from. It's in the discounted present.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Really well said.
- DSDavid Sacks
It's not-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Really well said
- DSDavid Sacks
... it's not in the stuff. It's in creating a machine that will create stuff for humanity for a long time, and people will put a value on it today-
- DFDavid Friedberg
That's really well said
- DSDavid Sacks
... because of all the stuff that it'll create in the future. And so just out of nowhere, it will appear that all of a sudden you have all this wealth created. But again, that wealth is a reflection of all the stuff that this machine will now create in the future. And people need to understand that that process is a good thing because when you think about all the progress that humanity has made, it's not in having more stuff because, again, that stuff all... It all goes away, right? Whether it's food or shelter or clothes, whatever.
- DFDavid Friedberg
It's ephemeral, yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
It, it depreciates. It's a wasting asset. The reason why humans are more prosperous is because of all the machinery we've created to make stuff well into the future. And, you know, again, some of that stuff can be things like shelter or clothes. It can also be medicines and cures and entertainment-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Electricity
- DSDavid Sacks
... and all the things. Electricity.
- 33:34 – 1:01:18
Behind the scenes of Anthropic's Fable ban
- JCJason Calacanis
All right. This broke shortly after we taped our episode last week. We tape on Thursdays, we drop on Fridays, as fans of the show know. Well, the US government has pulled the plug on Anthropic's latest model. You've heard us talk about that as Mythos. They released it as a controlled version called Fable 5. So there was Mythos. That was the one they held for 30 days while they were doing security, cybersecurity testing. Then they released it as Fable in a, a bit of a, um, guardrailed version of it. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Anthropic to restrict that model to US citizens last week, last Friday, in fact. Anthropic couldn't implement those restrictions, or wouldn't in that granular of a way, so they just decided to do something more conservative and shut it down for everybody. This, of course, created a lot of hand-wringing in the industry, rug pulling, "Oh my God, we lost this great model," and, "What does that mean if I build my models on top of Anthropic? Can I trust them?" Yada, yada. And this was just days after the model was launched on June 9th. How this all started seems to be that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who owns a large-- Amazon is a, uh, an early investor in Anthropic and they own a large portion of it. He had told the administration, uh, that there was a security vulnerability in Fable 5 that they were able to bypass to jailbreak the guardrails that Anthropic put on it. Dario said the jailbreak wasn't serious. There seems to be some finger-pointing and back and forth, and Dario said it was narrow. Separately, Semafor, a publication, um, uh, like an email publication, reported that the White House acted partially over suspicion that a China-linked group had access to Mythos, and they weren't supposed to. Wired reported that this group was South Korea's SK Telecom. Now you're saying, "Hey, how does South Korea have anything to do with China?" Well, they have a longstanding, or there are longstanding allegations that SK has a relationship with China. The White House previously ordered Anthropic to revoke SK Telecom's access to Mythos. They're kind of like the Verizon, 70% market share for telecom in South Korea. According to The Washington Post, Anthropic did not initially disclose it had given Mythos to SK Telecom, and this happened before all the export controls. Quote, "Badly damaged officials' confidence in the company's ability to safeguard sensitive technology." Anthropic says the White House never raised the Chinese access in the Fable jailbreak conversations. There's a lot of finger-pointing and perhaps nobody is closer to this except the principals and you, David Sacks. So tell us what is going on here. Is this politics and political between Anthropic and the administration? Is this a misunderstanding, or is this, you know, the future of what's to come as these models become more powerful?
- DFDavid Friedberg
Well, let me give you an update based on what I learnt. This would've been last Friday and Saturday. So b- by that point, I got a readout from various folks at the White House about what happened.
- DSDavid Sacks
Around the time that that letter was sent to Anthropic, and I then summarized what I learned in that long post on X.
- JCJason Calacanis
Hmm.
- DSDavid Sacks
And no one told me what to say. I just listened to these various officials explain themselves. I also heard from, let's say, some of the private companies who were involved in this, and all I asked was, "Listen, I think this context would be helpful to provide." They said, "Sure, you can publish it." So I posted my summary of what was happening, and whether you agree with the decisions of those officials or not, I do think that my post provides a window into exactly what they were thinking at that time. And what this comes down to is a couple of things. So first of all, like you said, Dario came to Washington a few months ago, this was back in April, and basically said that he had created a cyber weapon called Mythos, and he spiked the cortisol level, got everyone really worried, and there was some truth to it in terms of the sense that this model had advanced cyber capabilities. But he got everybody very focused on this problem, so mission accomplished. They then had this pilot program for Mythos, this Trusted Partners program, and as the Washington Post reported, Anthropic expanded the program to something like 50 companies or more without consulting the White House. And according to the Washington Post, I can't confir- I don't have any firsthand knowledge of this, but I don't have any reason to, to question the, the Washington Post's reporting on this. They did share Mythos with a company that the White House believes it should not have been shared with. So think about that. They're sharing these capabilities that Dario himself has said is a cyber weapon with parties that the White House, and really we're talking about the national security officials believe might have connections to China.
- JCJason Calacanis
That's SK Telecom, according to these reports.
- DSDavid Sacks
I'm not gonna say who it was.
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay.
- DSDavid Sacks
I know that's been reported. I don't have any firsthand knowledge of that.
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay.
- DSDavid Sacks
I'm just reporting what was in the Washington Post. But you have to understand that that's the context. So first of all, you got Anthropic effectively conducting its own foreign policy here, expanding the Mythos Preview to groups that the White House didn't have any knowledge of, and then once they found out, the White House ... You know, this is really the role of what the White House wanted is, "Look, we have classified information that you don't have. We know that there are certain groups that shouldn't be getting this." And Anthropic expanded the pilot without consulting, which is, again, sort of bewildering because the whole point of what they were supposedly doing by trying to get this preapproval regime was to consult with the government. So really that was the predicate for this, and apparently, again, this is according to the Washington Post, that's when a conversation started about whether a model like Mythos needed to be export controlled, okay? Then you have the launch of Fable, which is basically Mythos with guardrails. Again, if those guardrails fail, then you have a cyber weapon being released to the public, and it wasn't the White House who came to the conclusion that the guardrails failed. It was private companies who were testing Fable, testing those guardrails, and as has been publicly reported, one of them was Anthropic's largest shareholder and cloud partner. And so-
- JCJason Calacanis
Amazon
- DSDavid Sacks
... well, again, I'm not gonna confirm, but I think we all can read the publications, okay?
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
So again, normally I wouldn't mention names at all.
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay.
- DSDavid Sacks
But this is all widely reported, okay? In any event, they, I think, tried to convey their findings to Anthropic. I think there was some sort of breakdown in communication. I don't really understand, but they felt the need to escalate it to the White House, and it's almost like a whistleblower, okay? Uh, because they have no reason to lie about this. I mean, again, they are Anthropic's biggest partner.
- JCJason Calacanis
Well, they have reason to ... Yeah, I mean, they're partners, so that's even reason to support-
- DSDavid Sacks
Right
- JCJason Calacanis
... Anthropic. Obviously-
- DSDavid Sacks
Right
- JCJason Calacanis
... Sacks, they would have told Anthropic first, but the fact that Andy Jassy got involved in this at all means somebody on the team must have said, "Hey," o- on the security team at Amazon who has to host these models said, "Hey, this is something that could be a liability for us, Amazon, and could be a national security threat." That's why Andy Jassy made that call, because somebody put that into a Slack room somewhere or documented it.
- DSDavid Sacks
Oh, no, it wasn't a S-
- JCJason Calacanis
That could be-
- DSDavid Sacks
They don't do things like that based on a Slack room, okay? They had teams-
- JCJason Calacanis
Well, somebody in the security team-
- DSDavid Sacks
No, hold on a second
- JCJason Calacanis
... reported it, right?
- DSDavid Sacks
Amazon, Amazon is part of Mythos Preview, and they are also testing Fable. Remember, they've got the biggest cloud to protect. We're talking about AWS. They've got teams banging on this and making sure the guardrails are safe. And as has been publicly reported, they came to the conclusion that there was a jailbreak and that this was a serious security problem. So they then escalate to the White House, and again, and this is where my summary takes over based on me hearing firsthand from these officials. They tried to call Anthropic, they tried to call Dario, and there were a number of conversations, and the TLDR of it is Dario refused, meaning refused their request to take down Fable until this jailbreak could be fixed. And again, the White House was really just, I think, bewildered and confused by that because, again, it's so off-brand for Anthropic. They claim to be the AI safety company, and yet here the White House is reacting to credible information about a major security threat from Anthropic's own partner, and instead of basically saying, "Yes, we'll react on this right away," they get the Heisman. I mean, just imagine this call. Apparently, again, reportedly, the Treasury Secretary of the United States called Dario personally. I mean, why wouldn't this be a five-minute call? Why wouldn't Dario just say, "Yes, sir, we take security more seriously than anybody else. We'll fix this problem."
- JCJason Calacanis
It's secure. Yeah.
- 1:01:18 – 1:14:31
Claude psychoanalyzes its creator, Dario Amodei
- SPSpeaker
I had Claude read Machines of Loving Grace and AI Policy on the Exponential, and then I asked it to do-
- JCJason Calacanis
What is that?
- SPSpeaker
Uh, those are his two long form essays
- JCJason Calacanis
Dario's.
- SPSpeaker
Dario's.
- JCJason Calacanis
Just to, just to be clear for the audience.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. And, and I asked it to do a psychological analysis and-
- JCJason Calacanis
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Well, no, I mean, I'm, I'm not joking. I mean, I think it's important, you know? And use these as insights into his personality and give me a psychological analysis of him based on these, as well as based on the current facts on the ground-
- JCJason Calacanis
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
... with Mythos. Be truthful.
- JCJason Calacanis
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Don't protect simply because you are an anthropic model. And then I asked it to refine through the lens of e/acc movement and tell me if there's any psychological leanings. Do you want me to read to you what it-
- JCJason Calacanis
E/acc movement, just so people know, is the accelerator movement to accelerate society and technology as opposed to decelerate. Uh, okay. I think people understand. Yeah, let's hear what it said.
- SPSpeaker
Can I read? This is two... Okay, two paragraphs.
- JCJason Calacanis
Delusions of grandeur. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
No, well, let me-
- JCJason Calacanis
Psychosis
- SPSpeaker
... let me... No, I don't, I don't... I'm, I'm not saying it to make fun of him. Look-
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay
- SPSpeaker
... he's built an incredible business. The shareholders-
- JCJason Calacanis
It's incredible
- SPSpeaker
... I think are, are, are doing phenomenally well. I think the revenue run rate of this business continues to accelerate. All of it's incredible, but I wanna understand this person. I am paying millions of dollars, and so, you know, I just wanna understand.
- JCJason Calacanis
[laughs] Here we go.
- SPSpeaker
Okay. He distrusts other labs, positioning them as racing recklessly. He distrusts authoritarian states because he says they will weaponize AI. He distrusts markets to distribute the gains. He distrusts institutions to move fast enough. And post-Mythos, distrusts the government to wield power, quote, "transparently and fairly." That's a very long list of untrustworthy actors. The list of trustworthy ones is conspicuously short, and it has a suspicious tendency to resolve towards people who reason the way I do operating under the rules I help design. When your safety framework requires that someone hold the keys and your analysis keeps concluding the other key holders can't be trusted, you've built a machine that outputs me no matter what you feed it. E/acc would call that a God complex. The more precise term is epistemic exceptionalism. Not that I am superior, but more my reasoning is the load-bearing one, and the failure of others to reach my conclusions is evidence of their corruption or slowness, not of my error. That's the genuinely concerning pattern, and it's worth naming plainly because it's the engine of the dangerous version. Once you believe your judgment is the uncorruptible reference point, every conflict gets recoded. Government overreach isn't powerful actors have competing interests and I lost. It becomes they failed to be transparent and fair. Losing the Pentagon fight isn't a negotiation he misplayed. It's evidence the system runs on leverage instead of reason. The Mythos collision is we shipped a dangerous capability and a hostile state reacted predictably. It's a misunderstanding, the word his company actually used. Notice that misunderstanding presumes that if everyone simply understood correctly, they'd agree with him. That word choice under stress is the closest thing in the public record to the tell. It's not megalomania. It's the quieter, more defensible feeling conviction that disagreement is downstream of error. I thought that was really interesting.
- JCJason Calacanis
I mean, yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, I think, I think it's, like, super accurate. I mean, look, there's no question that Anthropic's whole mantra, and actually Ben Thompson pointed this out in one of his pieces, is that they believe that AI is super dangerous and only they are virtuous enough to basically control the negatives of it. I mean, that is basically their view on it. They-
- JCJason Calacanis
They're the Jedi. They're the Jedi. They believe that they will bring balance to the universe and that they are the ones who can adjudicate all of these rulings. Yes, they believe they're superior to everyone else, which is why they are a magnet for talent.
- DSDavid Sacks
Now, what I would say is I don't think that they have a particular problem with the Trump administration per se. What I would say is they got spoiled by the Biden administration because they had totally captured the Biden administration, and the proof of that is the fact that the leaders of the Biden administration's AI policy, not just one of them, but all of them, went to go work in Anthropic, like, the minute the Biden administration was over. I'm talking about officials who were in charge of AI for the NSC, the ones who were in charge of the new AI Safety Institute, which was something that Anthropic basically set up under the Biden administration. The person who was my predecessor effectively as AI tsar, they all went to go work-
- JCJason Calacanis
So it's-
- 1:14:31 – 1:24:26
Iran War MOU and the market impact
- SPSpeaker
All right, the Iran war might be ending. After 110 days, President Trump has announced for the 37th time that the war has ended, and that the initial agreement on June 15 will be codified. A lot of details here, a lot of unknowns. Conflict began obviously on February 28th. Formal signing happens Friday, June 19th in Geneva. Deal was mediated by Pakistan. Extends the ceasefire for 60 days, includes a Lebanon ceasefire. U.S. gets the Strait of Hormuz reopening, which it was open before the war, obviously. Iran commits to not developing nuclear weapons. Iran agrees to destroy its stockpile of enriched uranium under IAEA supervision, and that they will freeze its nuclear program at current levels for 60 days. Iran gets all sanctions lifted and $300 billion in reconstruction. So we spent 100, $200 billion blowing the place up, and we and our partners in the Gulf are gonna spend 300 billion, half a trillion.
- DSDavid Sacks
No, no, no, we're not, we're not on the hook for a dime, J Cal.
- SPSpeaker
Okay, I was just saying, so, so some people in the Gulf who are gonna be involved in this, uh, and we'll get into it. Access to... Iran's gonna get access to their frozen assets, and, uh, the U.S. is going to remove its forces from the region after the final deal. A lot of stuff not defined yet will be deferred, uh, like Israel's sign-on to this deal, and, uh, bunch of spicy comments happening there, and Iran's nuclear enrichment going forward, that's not resolved. Iran's ballistic missile program, that's kind of important. That's also not yet resolved, so I'll stop here. Obviously, there's a lot in play. Many people said the reason to vote for Trump was because he would never start wars. Started a couple. What's your take on where we're at today, Sacks?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, I think this deal is a tremendous achievement for the president. I think that it was very difficult to get. I think the Iranians are not easy to negotiate with.
- SPSpeaker
You'd think. [laughs]
- DSDavid Sacks
Let's review this deal. Number one, it reopens the Strait of Hormuz. That means all the oil will flow and all the other vital materials that are necessary for the global economy. So that's number one. Number two, we have a commitment from them not to pursue a nuclear program and to collect all the nuclear materials. Number three, there's a ceasefire of the war on all the different fronts. Four, this will not cost us a dime. There is a reconstruction fund, but we're not paying for it. I don't see why that's a problem for us.
- SPSpeaker
Who's paying for it?
- DSDavid Sacks
And I guess it's something that the Iranians will do in combination with the Gulf States, but it's not, the U.S. is not on the hook for that money. We're not paying a dime. And then lastly, this could lead to a rapprochement with Iran, which I think could be a good thing, 'cause I don't think we need to be at war with that country forever. And look, what is the alternative to this deal? I'm seeing a lot of people, it's easy to take potshots and criticize the deal, but what is the alternative to this? I'm hearing neocons who basically want us to put ground troops in and try and effectuate a regime change in Iran. This is what I'm hearing. I heard John Podhoretz say this. I'm hearing other neocons say this. I mean, are you serious? Are we really gonna escalate this war by putting ground troops in? Who exactly do you want to go fight? What I heard John Podhoretz say is, "Well, we have a volunteer army, so they signed up for this." No, they didn't. They signed up to protect America, not to go charging into, uh, Iran, which is basically a mountain fortress. I've heard estimates it would take over a million troops, and even then-
- SPSpeaker
Oh
- DSDavid Sacks
... it might not be successful. We sent half a million to Iraq, and Iran is three times bigger as a country, and it's a mountain fortress. So that would be a suicide mission. That would be insane. Nobody wants that. I'm not sending my kids to fight that war. You don't want to send your kids to fight that war. If John Podhoretz and the neocons want to do it, let them send their kids and their family. If Reza Pahlavi wants to go to Beverly Hills and muster an army from his legion of supporters, let him try and do that. I don't think they will sign up for it.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- DSDavid Sacks
I think they're living too well in Beverly Hills. Okay, nobody wants to fight that war. That is the alternative here, okay? So if we're not gonna send in ground troops, and we're not gonna continue the bombing, 'cause what's the point? We already hit every... We already flattened every military target above ground in that country. So what is the point of continued bombing?
- SPSpeaker
Sacks, it's important to heal-
- DSDavid Sacks
Won't do anything. Then we might as well... Hold on. If-
- SPSpeaker
Okay
- DSDavid Sacks
... my point is, if we're not gonna send in ground troops, 'cause it makes no sense, we're not gonna continue the bombing, 'cause it makes no sense, then we might as well try what's behind door number three, which is a deal here that will try to create a peace. Remember, we're only at the MOU stage of this, but let's give peace a chance here. I don't understand these people who just want this war to go on forever. Haven't we tried that before? The forever wars of Iraq- And Afghanistan, we're really gonna sign up for another one of those? I don't think so. So look, it's easy for people to take potshots at the president here, but I think this is by far the best of all the alternatives.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Sacks, the long-term issue has been the enrichment of uranium to the point that it can be used as a nuclear weapon. Is, is it part of the deal that all that enriched uranium that we do know there's a stockpile of gets removed from the country? 'Cause if that goes, I personally feel very good about let the citizens deal with what they have to deal with. But yeah-
- DSDavid Sacks
That's what they've said. This, this is part of the MOU. They will not only agree not to pursue a nuclear weapon, they will give up their nuclear material, this enriched-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah, that's a big deal
- DSDavid Sacks
... uranium.
- DFDavid Friedberg
If all that enriched uranium comes out of the country, I think it's a very big deal because even if they restarted the program, even if they resourced the equipment, rebuilt the intelligence to do it, et cetera, et cetera, it's gonna take years to a decade to 15 years plus to build enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon. That would kind of be the natural setback, if you will, that provides some defense for the conditions that we really care about. I didn't realize that was in the deal. I thought the deal was just that they would make a, quote, "commitment to stopping a program," but if all that enriched uranium's coming out, that's a really big deal.
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, they still have to define it. You know, again, this is at the MOU stages, at the level of high-level principles. They have to define exactly how that program's gonna work, but what they get in exchange is relief from the sanctions, and they get a, a more normalized relationship with the U.S.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah. Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
There's an incentive there for them, you know, if they're willing to basically give that up.
- JCJason Calacanis
Chamath, you have a, you have any, uh, take here? You wanna check in or no?
- SPSpeaker
I think the market's going to the moon.
- JCJason Calacanis
[laughs] The market's going to the moon.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- JCJason Calacanis
Uh, I'll just add I'm glad if this, uh, gets consummated, and it was a huge blunder for Trump to do this. And obviously he's trying to get out of it, should have never done it, but here we are, and I hope it resolves, and I hope the people of Iran are free eventually.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Do you think, do you think it's worth it, JCal, to have gone through what we went through over the last couple of months if all of the Iranian enriched uranium is gone, their missiles are, are depleted, and they have no capacity to enrich uranium again?
Episode duration: 1:24:29
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Transcript of episode 3Amlu4y94Ho
