E135: Wagner rebels, SCOTUS ends AA, AI M&A, startups gone bad, spacetime warps & more
David Friedberg (host), Jason Calacanis (host), Chamath Palihapitiya (host), David Sacks (host), Narrator, Jason Calacanis (host), Narrator, David Friedberg (host), Guest (guest), Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of All-In Podcast, featuring David Friedberg and Jason Calacanis, E135: Wagner rebels, SCOTUS ends AA, AI M&A, startups gone bad, spacetime warps & more explores geopolitics, Supreme Court shifts, AI gold rush, and cosmic ripples The hosts open with analysis of the Wagner Group’s brief mutiny in Russia, debating its implications for Putin’s regime, the Ukraine war, and Western narratives about Russian instability. They then dissect the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down race-based affirmative action, exploring ethics, legacy admissions, unions, and school choice as deeper levers of equality of opportunity. The conversation shifts to the AI boom, covering Databricks’ acquisition of MosaicML, Inflection AI’s massive raise, and how infrastructure players are racing to assemble full-stack AI capabilities, while warning of ZIRP-era excess and weak venture discipline. They close with examples of startup fraud and overvaluation, and a “science corner” on new evidence of universe-scale gravitational waves subtly warping spacetime.
Geopolitics, Supreme Court shifts, AI gold rush, and cosmic ripples
The hosts open with analysis of the Wagner Group’s brief mutiny in Russia, debating its implications for Putin’s regime, the Ukraine war, and Western narratives about Russian instability. They then dissect the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down race-based affirmative action, exploring ethics, legacy admissions, unions, and school choice as deeper levers of equality of opportunity. The conversation shifts to the AI boom, covering Databricks’ acquisition of MosaicML, Inflection AI’s massive raise, and how infrastructure players are racing to assemble full-stack AI capabilities, while warning of ZIRP-era excess and weak venture discipline. They close with examples of startup fraud and overvaluation, and a “science corner” on new evidence of universe-scale gravitational waves subtly warping spacetime.
Key Takeaways
The Wagner mutiny exposed cracks but did not destabilize Putin’s regime.
Prigozhin’s march toward Moscow lacked elite or popular support, ended in a negotiated exile, and ultimately seemed to consolidate Russian power centers around Putin, even as it embarrassed the regime.
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Western hopes for a ‘liberal coup’ in Russia are likely misguided.
The hosts argue pressure on Russia is more likely to strengthen nationalist hardliners than produce a Gorbachev- or Navalny-style successor; a figure like Prigozhin could easily be worse for the West.
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The end of affirmative action will likely accelerate scrutiny of legacy and athletic admissions.
With race-based preferences struck down, unequal but unprotected advantages for legacies, donors’ children, and recruited athletes become more glaring, setting up future legal and reputational challenges.
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Fixing inequality at college admissions is too late; early education is the real leverage point.
Several hosts argue real opportunity gaps open in pre-K and K–12, advocating school choice, competition with teachers’ unions, and intensive early support (e. ...
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AI infrastructure is in a land-grab phase, driving aggressive M&A and mega-fundraises.
Deals like Databricks–MosaicML and Snowflake–Neeva, plus Inflection AI’s GPU-heavy raise, reflect a race by data and cloud players to own the end-to-end AI toolchain, from data to model training to deployment.
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Venture excesses from the zero-interest era are still unwinding and will repeat in AI.
Cases like IRL’s fake users and Byju’s down-round spiral illustrate how oversized funds, weak diligence, and inexperienced board members drove mispricing and fraud—patterns the hosts expect to reappear in AI hype.
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New pulsar measurements suggest the universe is filled with slow, massive gravitational waves.
NanoGrav’s 15-year dataset indicates spacetime itself is gently rippling due to supermassive black hole activity, reinforcing general relativity and opening paths to map the large-scale gravitational structure of the cosmos.
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Notable Quotes
“Be careful what you wish for. Why in the world would Americans want Prigozhin in charge of Russia’s nuclear arsenal?”
— David Sacks
“Trying to fix it when they’re 18 is a little too late. Fixing it when these kids are three, four, and five years old—that’s when they deserve and need all the help in the world.”
— Chamath Palihapitiya
“Fund size is destiny. For SoftBank, a $10–20 million check doesn’t even make sense, so they had to write $200 million checks into essentially seed-stage companies.”
— David Sacks
“This time it is not different. Replace AI with crypto, coworking, or SaaS—it’s the exact same thing.”
— Chamath Palihapitiya
“We’re starting to see that spacetime itself is slowly vibrating, being stretched and compressed because of very large gravitational events happening around the universe.”
— David Friedberg
Questions Answered in This Episode
How should Western policy toward Russia change if internal coups are more likely to produce hardliners than liberal reformers?
The hosts open with analysis of the Wagner Group’s brief mutiny in Russia, debating its implications for Putin’s regime, the Ukraine war, and Western narratives about Russian instability. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
If affirmative action is off the table, what concrete policies could most effectively expand opportunity for disadvantaged students before college age?
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Where should universities draw the line between building a diverse class and maintaining strict academic meritocracy, especially around legacies and athletes?
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In the AI boom, how can investors and founders distinguish truly durable infrastructure businesses from hype-driven, capital-intensive bets that mainly enrich chip and cloud vendors?
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What practical breakthroughs might eventually flow from mapping the universe’s gravitational-wave background—could it ever inform propulsion, navigation, or even concepts like time dilation in real systems?
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Transcript Preview
This is going to be a feisty episode.
Is it?
Two of us are on Greenwich Mean Time, two of us are on Pacific. J Cal's still asleep in his head.
I'm good actually.
You good?
I'm good.
All right. Well, great to be back. Welcome to the All Conspiracy podcast, where we repeat false statements and help spin them into tales of struggling against the establishment, the elite, and the mainstream media. We will deliver to you, the people, the revolution against the powers that be.
Unless it offends (censored) .
(laughs)
(laughs)
In this case, ...
Mums the word.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Still trying to get my invite for next week.
All right, we also enjoy-
Mums the word, Friedberg. Mums the word.
Woo-hoo.
Mums the word. We'll also enjoy sharing with you fantastic stories of opulence-
Let's be neutral.
... opulence, leisure, and benevolent greed. Here we go. Joining me today are my co-hosts, General David Sacks, commander of the-
(coughs)
... Fourth Battalion of the Internet Tweet Brigade. General, welcome. Joining us from a remote location.
In Moscow.
Has there been, like, an establishment takeover of the pod? I mean-
Yes. (laughs)
... what, what's up with this intro?
Yeah.
Every argument they make against us, you're basically just conceding is true.
Yeah, I know. Exactly.
From his 12th century Mediterranean castle, Il Duce, Chamath Palihapitiya. Welcome, Chamath. How is the Mediterranean diet treating you?
Uh, blue.
Blue?
Blue.
And Emperor Nero Calacanis, ruler over podcasts, paid events, entrepreneurial universities-
Mm.
... and dental SPVs. Emperor, thank you for letting me sit in your throne today.
It's good to be here. Thank you.
Dental SPVs (laughs) .
Shout out to my dentists.
Wait, did you say king of STDs?
(laughs)
(laughs)
What, what'd you say? (laughs)
SPVs.
Oh, SPVs.
Dental SPVs, yeah.
That's the thing with certain STDs, where once you are king-
(laughs)
... you're gonna be king for life.
Absolutely.
(laughs)
(instrumental music plays) Let your winners ride. Rain Man, David Sachs. I'm going all in. And I said, we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, best nightie. Queen of quinoa. I'm going all in.
TheSyndicate.com. Yeah, thank you.
You've been doing, you said, five shows a week lately. Your voice is shot.
(sighs) I, my voice-
You're worn out.
... is starting to go, so I, I asked you if you'd moderate and you, you thankfully said yes.
I've got the energy I missed last week. I enjoyed listening to you guys with, uh, BG. Great episode. Sorry I couldn't join. But let's kick it off.
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