Joe Lonsdale: The Future of TikTok; Is it a Danger to US National Security? | E1125

I think you're taught to shut up and virtue signal and be very careful what you say, and that's the exact opposite of what a liberal education is supposed to be. You think these kids at these top universities are pursuing truth? They are not pursuing truth. They are pursuing how to advance themselves by shutting up and going along. It takes courage. It takes one person saying, "No, this is ridiculous," and being willing to stand up and be that leader, and others can say, "Yeah, I agree with him. That's ridiculous." So I mean, the question is, do we have enough courageous people to lead us out of this?

Joe, I've been so looking forward to this. First off, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thanks for having me, Harry.

Listen, Shayan gave me many suggestions of some tricky questions, so we're gonna have a lot of fun.

Uh-oh. (laughs)

I wanna start though with- with- with- (laughs) with... Yeah, be nervous. Uh, but with one which is like... (laughs) I don't really know how to say this, but you are one of the most fascinating people in tech. Now, I wanted to start with children and what you were like as a child. How would your parents or your teachers have described you?

Listen, I was always probably an overconfident child. Like, I- I- I was lucky to be born gifted. I got, you know, 99s on everything and skipped some grades in math with my friends. And, you know, my friends and I were chess champions and math champions, and I- I always had a lot of opinions. Um, you know, I generally... You know, my- I generally felt like I was probably smarter than my teachers, so very obnoxious kid, right? Lots of- lots of confidence there. My- you know, unfortunately, my grandma finally passed last year at 103, and she would always tell... But I called her my bubbe because that's a word in Yiddish for grandma, and she would always tell stories of me- me wowing her and impressing people at age two, three, four, five. So I guess I kinda grew up with, like, a lot of confidence. I was the oldest in my generation, the oldest of 20 cousins on one side and nine cousins on the other side. And, uh,

(laughs)

and so I- so I guess I've always been lucky to be a leader, been talented, and- and have lots of opinions, which we got to hear today.

Did it ever catch up with you? You... Everything came easy to you 'cause you were very talented. Did you ever-

Well-

... land in a new industry and...

We were very- very competitive, so I think- I think when you're pushing yourself and you're competitive, you're always hyper-aware of your failings, right? So I- I guess, yes, I was always talented, but I was always very aware if something wasn't right or that I couldn't do something yet, or there was people who were better than me at something, 'cause you know what, there's always someone who's better than you at whatever you're good at. Maybe in- in some ways I was just very, very aware of what I needed to be better at if I was gonna- if I was gonna get to be the best, you know. I mean, even when I t- by the time I got to Stanford I was feeling very good about myself in math, and I took the hardest math class. There's 30 kids that... You know, back then they would get together in one class, and I was- I was probably somewhere right in the middle, which was very annoying, and I did not like being in the middle of any class, you know. There were people who were clearly just always going to be much better than me at that. I realized I was not gonna be a mathematician. So, you know, I- I think part of being very competitive and talented is you're constantly aware of the fact that there are people, much like Elon Musk here and Austin is far ahead of me as an entrepreneur, even though I've also started multiple billion dollar companies. Uh, there's still a long way to- to go to get better, you know?