E134: Ukraine counteroffensive, China tensions, COVID Patient Zero, RFK Jr reaction & more

(0:00) Bestie intros!: Bad conference lunches, hair fluffers, and focus groups (12:36) Zuck vs. Elon cage match (15:50) Ukraine / Russia updates: underwhelming counteroffensive, reported peace deal rejection (33:25) Blinken's China visit, Biden's "dictator" gaffe, Taiwan's future (51:49) RFK Jr's Rogan appearance, big pharma's impact on media via ad spend, COVID origins (1:09:59) Secondary market for depressed startup shares heats up (1:16:36) Ford to receive $9.2B federal loan to build out three battery factories, industrial policy to on-shore US supply chain Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg https://twitter.com/altcap Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/biden-regime-quietly-drop-5-charges-against-sbf https://twitter.com/Dexerto/status/1671971832809791509 https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/20/heres-the-truth-about-ukraines-failing-counteroffensive-and-the-peace-that-could-have-been https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/22/politics/ukraine-counteroffensive-western-assessment/index.html https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1670514363634176000 https://apnews.com/article/us-army-ukraine-russia-ammunition-war-75a9ca2e3be09578c65f1198ba5b72e5 https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-war-us-munitions-stockpiles-0d38850603f4264b7568d63d6e7e3d93 https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/politics/us-weapons-factories-ukraine-ammunition/index.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/08/ukraine-ammunition-shortage-shells-ration https://twitter.com/davidsacks/status/1671628570714845184 https://www.npr.org/2023/06/19/1183053024/profound-differences-remain-us-and-china-beijing-blinken https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/us-senior-officials-caught-guard-biden-calling-xi-dictator-rcna90398 https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1671806525029986304 https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-plans-a-new-training-facility-in-cuba-raising-prospect-of-chinese-troops-on-americas-doorstep-e17fd5d1 https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/06/05/asia-pacific/politics-diplomacy-asia-pacific/taiwan-2024-presidential-election-candidates https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12210999/We-not-support-independence-Taiwan-Blinken-stresses-U-S-commitment-One-China-policy.html https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1671162870422454272 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-funded-scientist-among-three-chinese-researchers-who-fell-ill-amid-early-covid-19-outbreak-3f919567 https://mediaengagement.org/research/ad-spending-on-primetime-news-coronavirus https://news.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-22/startup-shares-selling-for-61-off-attract-venture-capital-hedge-funds https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/tiger-global-secondaries-direct-stakes-sales https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-ford-ev-battery-plant-funding-biden-green-technology

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  So wait a second, you guys, I saw that you were at a COTU conference or a TPG conference, you're at some banking conference, Saks?

• 0:09David Sacks?

  Brad and I were both at the COTU summit.

• 0:11Jason Calacanis?

  COTU, COTU is a, a large investor, is it a hedge fund, private equity?

• 0:16David Sacks?

  They're a late stage fund, it's a big late stage fund.

• 0:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Summit's a really big word. Was it a summit or was it more like a meeting?

• 0:22David Sacks?

  Well, it's like a two day conference in Santa Barbara.

• 0:26Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, nice.

• 0:27David Sacks?

  They've done a number of years in a row now. Last year, Brad and I went and we met with SBF.

• 0:35David Sacks?

  Did I ever tell you that SBF story?

• 0:37Jason Calacanis?

  No, let's go. Who's got crazier hair right now, you or SBF? Give us a quick, take that hat off for a second. Take that Moncler off for a second. Let's get a side by side. Oh my God, Saks is using no product.

• 0:52David Sacks?

  It's not bad.

• 0:53Jason Calacanis?

  It's not that bad. You're starting to look like the emperor, like Senator Palpatine from Star Wars. I mean, people are having a field day with this crazy hair. But what was the vibe? If you said there was a vibe, two years ago, the vibe was crypto mania. SBF was the belle of the ball. I suppose he'll be the belle of the ball when he goes in the huskow as well.

• 1:12David Sacks?

  No, it looks like he's getting off.

• 1:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He's getting up. I thought he was getting off.

• 1:15Jason Calacanis?

  I guess the fix in, is the Ivy League fixes in? Oh God, I mean, if he gets off.

• 1:20David Sacks?

  I agree.

• 1:20Jason Calacanis?

  Can you imagine if he gets off?

• 1:22David Sacks?

  He's almost as protected as Hunter Biden.

• 1:25Jason Calacanis?

  Here we go. Okay, everybody, Friedberg's not here this week. Insert jokes and conspiracy theories for the mids. There's going to be about 8,000 messages on a subreddit about Friedberg missing this week and Saks missing last week. I'll let you guys all read into it. But what would you say Brad, Brad Gerson, back of course, fifth bestie? Brad, what would you say the vibe was at this one? If it was SBF lunacy two years ago, what was the vibe this year?

• 1:50Speaker 03

  Well, you know, first, they put on an incredible event. It's called East Meets West. And it was really about bringing, you know, CEOs and founders from China to the States and connecting them with founders and CEOs in the United States. Um, listen, I think it's somber, right? There's a recognition that we've seen a bounce in the public markets. You know, off of this devastation in 2022, but I think, listen, they gave a great tough love speech, discussion with the 1,400 unicorns that are out there. And they said, do not expect your unprofitable tech company to bounce like one of the magnificent seven, right?

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Those are highly profitable companies traded 19, 20 times earnings. And if you are burning cash today, there you can't come back to the well. So you need to either figure out how to get profitable, figure out how to get fit, or you need to sell your business. Because, you know, the there's not an endless stream of money. So I thought it was a sober view. You know, Larry Summers was there. And I think a lot of the people called 22 right were looking for a hard landing in Q1 of this year, probably including, you know, Larry was probably more in that camp. And I think everybody still views this distribution of probabilities over the course of the next four quarters. And, you know, whether it's Druckenmiller Sternlicht

• 3:15Speaker 03

  this morning on CNBC, or whether it's Larry Summers, they're all saying, well, we could 30% chance of a hard landing Q4, Q1. So I would say it was so.

• 3:23Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I could tell it was sober, Sacks. Go ahead. You wanted to say something?

• 3:26David Sacks?

  Well, I would say last year, it was somber in a different way, because you got to remember in the first half of 2022, you had this huge decline in the markets around growth stocks because interest rates had started going up. We had the whole regime change. But I don't think founders had internalized the way that it applied to them. And then the thing that has happened over the past year is that the sales have been hit. You know, every software company I know is reforecasting down. It's so much hard to grow. Customers are consolidating vendors, sharpening their pencils. Seat expansion has been replaced with seat contraction.

• 4:01Jason Calacanis?

  Negotiations are hard, right? Yeah.

• 4:03David Sacks?

  It's much harder now to sell software than it was, let's say, a year ago. You know, 2X is now the new 3X. If you can grow 2X in this environment, it's basically as good as growing 3X before. It's funny to me that how much the Fed's actions impact.

• 4:21David Sacks?

  Buying behavior. That's the thing that I

• 4:23Jason Calacanis?

  The psychology is distinctly different.

• 4:25David Sacks?

  Yeah, the psychology really is different. I mean, we knew that the Fed's behavior influenced valuations and sort of capital markets. But the way that it influences the business outlook and how willing companies are to spend money.

• 4:38Jason Calacanis?

  And COTU is no different. I see they hired Billy McFarland from Fire Festival to do the food. What is this? I mean, COTU should be ashamed of themselves. Look at this focaccia. Some vegetable soup with the broth drained out, super standard measures.

• 4:55David Sacks?

  So wrong. That is so wrong.

• 4:56Jason Calacanis?

  Look at this. I mean, it looks like a dog went to the bathroom.

• 5:00David Sacks?

  Brad and I opened our lunchbox and we're like, uh, let's, let's go somewhere else.

• 5:04Jason Calacanis?

  Oh my God, COTU on a budget. Wow.

• 5:06David Sacks?

  They look like a surprise. Someone to put a surprise in our

• 5:10Jason Calacanis?

  It looks like Friedberg's dog put a surprise in the COTU lunchbox. Wow. Well, listen, it's good. COTU LP should be very happy looking at that $7 lunch that they put out there. I mean,

• 5:22David Sacks?

  Brad, should we tell the SBF story from last year's summit? I mean, last year, we talked about the, maybe founders hadn't internalized it yet, but the markets had corrected. But the one founder who was super bullish and optimistic and talking about how he was spraying money all over the place and he was acquiring companies and who was followed around by minions and had everyone like a beehive surrounding him and trying to talk to him was SBF.

• 5:49David Sacks?

  And so I remember, yeah, so I remember thinking like, who's going to be this year's SBF? You know, somebody here is way too optimistic.

• 5:58Jason Calacanis?

  With Sam Altman there. So basically the COTU conference went from bullshit to dog shit.

• 6:05Jason Calacanis?

  The great part about this is you two guys, Brad is like, look at Brad is so uncomfortable. Brad's like, I like this invite. I got a good invite. Chamath and I are invited to nothing. We give no shits about COTU or their budget.

• 6:20David Sacks?

  They do put on a really good event. Credible firm. And I think that the message they gave to founders

• 6:25Jason Calacanis?

  Thanks for the invite.

• 6:26David Sacks?

  This year and last year was great. It was actually really appropriate. Whether founders choose to listen is a different story. But the message they've been conveying is similar to the message we've been conveying for the last year and a half.

• 6:36Jason Calacanis?

  Hey Chamath, any more jokes we can make about COTU since you and I get invited to nothing?

• 6:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, I mean, I'm not making fun of Koto. I was just making fun of the fact that we went for literally bullshit with SPF to what looks like dog shit.

• 6:51David Sacks?

  By the way, I bet they would invite you if you wanted to go.

• 6:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm pretty sure they would send 10 invitations if I if I even feigned a desire to go.

• 7:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But I'm in Milan right now.

• 7:02David Sacks?

  The pod's very popular there, by the way.

• 7:04Jason Calacanis?

  I know you did a focus group. Tell everybody. Can we play the focus group or is that? I think we can play it.

• 7:09David Sacks?

  Well, just a fan, a fan came up to me. I mean, when I say fan, this is like a very high profile person.

• 7:15Jason Calacanis?

  This woman works at Netflix. She's a VD.

• 7:17David Sacks?

  She works at Netflix and her husband is the founder of a startup. She said she was a fan of the pod, so I started asking her questions about it.

• 7:23Jason Calacanis?

  A focus group.

• 7:24David Sacks?

  Because, you know, we've been having this debate over the last couple of weeks about what issues we should be talking about and certain people on the pod never want to discuss politics. It's not like I only want to discuss politics. I just don't want to exclude it. I think we should just be talking about whatever the biggest issues are in the world in any given week, current events.

• 7:44Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I mean, listen.

• 7:45David Sacks?

  Whether it's business, markets, or politics. And she confirmed that was basically right. Don't change it. So I don't know why we would want to change the formula for the pod at this point.

• 7:54Jason Calacanis?

  Every week, Sacks. There's a group of people who are like, stop talking about politics. And then there's another group of people and their feedback is, why didn't you talk about Hunter Biden, Ukraine, Ukraine, Putin, China, whatever? And so the docket is the docket. Just to let the audience know, not that it's like all that big of a deal. It should be fairly obvious. Everybody has equal input on the docket. So it's not like anybody owns the docket. If you want to talk about something, you can talk about something. But some people want to not talk about politics. Some people want to talk about a lot of politics. The magnificent seven, for those people who didn't catch the reference, is I think something Kramer's been talking about on CNBC. Seven stocks make up the most of the gains this year. Meta, Tesla, Nvidia, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Apple.

• 8:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Can I tell you guys my welcome back to Milan story?

• 8:42Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 8:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So I'm back in Milan for the summer.

• 8:46David Sacks?

  Honest, Ron.

• 8:47Jason Calacanis?

  Say hello to Chef Stefano and if you could say hi to

• 8:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Stefania.

• 8:51Jason Calacanis?

  All my friends, butlers, everybody.

• 8:53David Sacks?

  I can tell you're back in Italy because the buttons are gone.

• 8:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm working from my office here, but this morning I went to Coppola, which is my stylist, my hairdresser. And the thing is, there's like a hierarchy in the hairdressers. And so Roberto, this guy Roberto, he's like the sort of top of the ticket. And Nat has first dibs with Roberto. And I have this other guy who's excellent. His name is Giacchino.

• 9:15Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 9:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You guys will see Giacchino in a few weeks. Anyways, the best thing about the haircuts at this place, Coppola, is you get a hair fluffer, which means that as Giacchino Roberto cuts your hair, a guy comes and he's just like, he like, does this and then he like,

• 9:31Jason Calacanis?

  You're patting your hair in a very,

• 9:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He fluffs your hair.

• 9:36Jason Calacanis?

  This is a very uncomfortable fluffing.

• 9:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That doesn't exist anywhere that will never get disrupted by AI. And it's incredible.

• 9:47Jason Calacanis?

  A hairstyling fluffer.

• 9:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The hair fluffer, the hair fluffer gets like a 50 euro tip. Doesn't matter what he does.

• 9:53Jason Calacanis?

  Wow, when Sax rolls in, you're gonna need two fluffers with that hair. You're gonna need one on each side. I mean, the tuffs are getting crazy.

• 10:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sax, tell me if you want Giacchino to cut your hair, because when you come, because he will do it. He'll do an incredible job. And I'll ask him to bring the hair fluffer.

• 10:07Jason Calacanis?

  All right, listen, I think we just going back to the Co2 thing. I know we're in a high interest rate lunch environment. The Herp environment is hard right now for everybody, but we did get the feedback. Let's play the feedback.

• 10:19David Sacks?

  Hey, guys, I'm at the Co2 Summit and just met a fan here who wants to explain the magic of the pod, because you guys keep wanting to change things and mess things up. So.

• 10:31Speaker 04

  Hi, everyone. My husband and I really listen to your podcast pretty much religiously. And there is this incredible magic that the four of you have, have the repartee, the back and forth. It's super informative, but you're all sort of rooting for characters almost. So it's almost like a scripted show in some way. So I have my favorite character. My husband has his favorite character. I won't say who's who, because I want you all to stay together and keep doing the show. But it's fantastic. And we love it.

• 10:56David Sacks?

  And you work at Netflix, right?

• 10:57Speaker 04

  I work at Netflix. Back in the day, I produced shows. So I was just telling David, trying to get that magic, you can put any number of scripts together, but once you get the cast on the floor and actually start getting, you know, that chemistry going, that's when the magic happens. And you guys kind of just nailed it. So, yeah.

• 11:13David Sacks?

  All right. So that's a professional right there. So stop screwing with the formula. Stop protesting.

• 11:19Jason Calacanis?

  Protested.

• 11:22Jason Calacanis?

  I mean.

• 11:23David Sacks?

  The camera really does add 10 pounds, doesn't it?

• 11:26Jason Calacanis?

  I take two things away from Miss Chamath. Number one, she's much more charismatic on camera than Sax. She stole the show. She's delightful. And then two, that sweater. Oh my lord.

• 11:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What's the brand? Fantastic. No, the sweater's fantastic. The shirt's fantastic. I just think they may not have been. I don't think the intention was to mesh the two together, but.

• 11:45Jason Calacanis?

  They're up more with each other?

• 11:46David Sacks?

  Too many buttons for you, Chamath?

• 11:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, bro.

• 11:48David Sacks?

  Too many buttons?

• 11:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  When you have a cream colored sweater, you can't wear a red checkered shirt. It's just not.

• 11:53Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 11:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 11:54Jason Calacanis?

  I agree.

• 11:54David Sacks?

  Red striped.

• 11:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Anyways, it's a.

• 11:58Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, it looks like you're wearing an Italian tablecloth under there from a pizza wheel. Combined with like an $8,000 sweater. I agree. But the hair, I mean, the hair's out of control.

• 12:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think the hair is fantastic.

• 12:09Jason Calacanis?

  I do.

• 12:09David Sacks?

  You can't cut the hair.

• 12:11Jason Calacanis?

  Do not cut the hair.

• 12:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Don't let Jacino touch your hair, bro.

• 12:14David Sacks?

  I'll just get it fluffed. I'll tell him, just fluff it. Don't cut it.

• 12:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Let's talk about the Zuck Elon cage match.

• 12:38David Sacks?

  Oh yeah. Oh my God.

• 12:40Jason Calacanis?

  This is.

• 12:41David Sacks?

  I'm a little worried for my friend here.

• 12:43Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 12:44David Sacks?

  I don't know if Elon is completely up to date on what kind of shape Zuck is in. Zuck is in tremendous shape. He's got like a dojo at his house. He's been getting. Training in, you know, mixed martial arts from.

• 12:56Jason Calacanis?

  Jiu Jitsu.

• 12:57David Sacks?

  The Gracies or whoever, you know, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He's been competing in events. Zuck is in tremendous shape and.

• 13:05Jason Calacanis?

  No joke here.

• 13:06David Sacks?

  Now Elon's a big guy. Elon's a monster, but I don't think Elon's not, Elon's not in this kind of shape. You don't have time to work out like this. I hope you get some sort of Gracie on your team to train you up for this thing. Also Elon has a neck injury that he got from that sumo thing years ago.

• 13:25Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 13:26David Sacks?

  And he's had to have surgeries on it. So it would really suck if that would get re-triggered.

• 13:30Jason Calacanis?

  Here's the thing though, he did take on a sumo wrestler. We were there for that at his birthday party and.

• 13:37Jason Calacanis?

  He held his own against the giant sumo wrestler. Elon does get on top of and do the waris on top of Zuck. Zuck has no chance. He will get worse.

• 13:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You're telling me what he should do is abandon the mission to Mars?

• 13:54Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 13:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Stop electrifying the world.

• 13:58Jason Calacanis?

  Totally.

• 13:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And stop free internet around the world.

• 14:01Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 14:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So he can beat up Zuck?

• 14:04Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, if you were to put that to a vote, I think most people would put beating up Zuck as number one.

• 14:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is the dumbest fucking idea I've ever heard in my life.

• 14:14Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, my God.

• 14:14Speaker 03

  I love the banter between the two of them. And let's just say, we can all agree out of all the companies, right? There's only one contender to Zuck getting fit, right? Getting that company fit, getting himself fit is Elon.

• 14:29Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  Seventy-five, eighty percent of the people gone and product velocity is on fire at Twitter. So this is, this would be a cage match between the two who have defined this era of getting fit.

• 14:41Jason Calacanis?

  All right, let's get to the docket here.

• 14:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What the fuck are you talking about?

• 14:46Jason Calacanis?

  He's using the fitness.

• 14:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The guy burned a quarter trillion dollars and then found a way to stop it.

• 14:52Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 14:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's very different than firing on all cylinders in three companies.

• 14:57Speaker 03

  I didn't say he was firing on all cylinders.

• 14:59Jason Calacanis?

  And by the way, I am the only one of anybody, I think, that knows them both well. Or maybe Saks.

• 15:04David Sacks?

  Well, it's kind of like, you know, if you've got like a faucet running, you know, spilling over the sink and then you turn it off. That doesn't make you a firefighter.

• 15:14Jason Calacanis?

  It doesn't make you a plumber. You know, there's a feature of a bathtub. And stop spending money on.

• 15:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There's this feature of a bathtub where when you get into it and the water gushes so violently over the, over the outside of it.

• 15:27Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 15:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then there's a drain at the top as well as the bottom. And so then eventually it just stops.

• 15:32Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, you could unfog the drain.

• 15:34David Sacks?

  Yeah, but Chamath raised a good point, which is, look, Elon's a big guy. If he got training in MMA, I'm sure he'd do fine, but we don't want Elon spending two hours a day for the next six months or whatever. Cause Zuck's been doing MMA, I guess, for a while now.

• 15:48Jason Calacanis?

  Couple of years.

• 15:48David Sacks?

  Maybe years.

• 15:49Jason Calacanis?

  He's into it.

• 15:49David Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 15:50Jason Calacanis?

  All right, well, listen, there's been some updates.

• 15:53Jason Calacanis?

  This war between Russia and the Ukraine, or the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, you wrote a piece about it in, what was it, The Federalist, I think, this week? Titled "The Truth About Ukraine's Failing Counteroffensive and the Peace That Could Have Been." Why don't you give us an overview of what you wrote and what your take is on the state of affairs right now?

• 16:16David Sacks?

  Well, the thing that's been going on since around June 4th or June 5th is this long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive. This has been touted for a long time as is gonna reverse Russian territorial gains. Ukraine's gonna use all of this modern Western equipment, these Leopard tanks that have come from Germany, and Bradleys from the United States, and a lot of other NATO or American equipment, and they're gonna push Russia out of their country. This has been told to us since the fall of last year, since that sort of Kharkiv counteroffensive produced some Ukrainian territorial gains. You've had former generals like Ben Hodges and Petraeus say that this counteroffensive

• 17:00David Sacks?

  is gonna be highly successful. Where it stands right now is that around 18 or 19 days into it, it has produced minimal gains. In fact, it's been somewhat of a disaster. It's hard to get conclusive estimates of personnel and material losses, but I think as many as a quarter of the tanks and armored vehicles have already been destroyed, and the casualties may be as high as around 10,000 out of an army that was trained up for this purpose of around 50,000. So, so far, it has not gone well. The Ukrainian army hasn't even made it to the first line of defense.

• 17:41David Sacks?

  So, what the Russians did is, they created three fortified lines or belts of defense, and then in front of that is what they call a gray zone, or a security zone, or a crumple zone, which is an area they can test, but it's not technically a fortified line. The Ukrainians are still in that sort of gray zone. They are not punching through, they are not even at the first Russian fortified line. To give you some idea of what's involved here...

• 18:08David Sacks?

  The Russians have these obstacles. There's basically trenches that have been dug. There's ditches that would stop tanks or sort of force them to go in a certain direction, steer the traffic. There's extensive minefields. They've got these things called dragon teeth, which are concrete bollards that stop tanks or move them in a certain direction. Then the Russians have massive amounts of artillery. They've got infantry on the ground that helps spot the artillery. And if all of that doesn't take out these Ukrainian tanks, they've got these attack helicopters that come in almost uncontested because at this point, it doesn't look like the Ukrainians have any air defense. And they've also got fixed wing aircraft that are capable of dropping precision munitions.

• 18:53David Sacks?

  So it really seems like the Russians have fixed a lot of the problems that they had last fall in their army. And so far, it seems like this counteroffensive is not going anywhere.

• 19:03Jason Calacanis?

  We're 16 months into this, Chamath, and clearly fatigue is setting in. It's not commanding the new cycle here in America. And on a percentage basis, even the neocons and Republicans are dropping their support for this at a pretty precipitous rate, which is predictable. Americans don't want to be in forever wars. We all know that. So what's your take on how this winds up, especially in relation to, A, our budget and B, this upcoming election, which this seems to be, will be a major issue if this isn't resolved by the time we get into the 24 election cycle?

• 19:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  As part of answering this, I have a question for Sacks. But is it true that there was a ceasefire? Like Putin had a press conference where he showed a document that he said was a ceasefire that then the United States apparently sent Boris Johnson over to Russia, Ukraine to basically blow up the agreement?

• 20:01David Sacks?

  Yes, this is fundamentally correct.

• 20:04Jason Calacanis?

  This wasn't a ceasefire. This was a peace deal before the war started, correct?

• 20:08David Sacks?

  No, it was after.

• 20:09Jason Calacanis?

  Or this is what they claim?

• 20:10David Sacks?

  There were rounds of negotiation before the war. Notably, there was a round of diplomacy between Blinken and Lavrov in January, the month before the war, where Blinken said that we cannot compromise on NATO's open door policy, that that sort of diplomacy fell apart. But then after the war, there was a meeting of the Russian delegation and Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul.

• 20:33David Sacks?

  Under the supervision of Erdogan in Turkey. Naftali Bennett also had a similar process. In both cases, the West rejected a peace deal.

• 20:43Jason Calacanis?

  Allegedly, we don't, this is Putin we're talking about, right?

• 20:45David Sacks?

  Let me come back, well, hold on a second, let me come back to the evidence for in a second. But what the deal would have provided is that the Russians would move back to pre-war lines if the Ukrainians would agree not to become a member of NATO. However, the Ukrainians could still receive specified security guarantees from the West. That was the deal.

• 21:06Jason Calacanis?

  Allegedly.

• 21:07David Sacks?

  Well, we have now multiple data points. You've got Naftali Bennett saying that he thought a deal was along these lines, but it was rejected by the West. You also have now Putin showing the very document, which was signed by the Ukrainian delegation. So this was the document.

• 21:22Jason Calacanis?

  He flashed the document, right? Nobody has this document.

• 21:24David Sacks?

  It hasn't been released yet. I hope the Russian government releases it for the purposes of history so we can inspect it. But nobody contests this document is real. Remember, if he's just making this up, you would think that Erdogan would basically come forward and say, no, this is fake. There's too many people who are in that room who'd be able to say this document is fake. No one has done that. So I think there's every reason to believe this document is real. Now, it is not a final agreement. It appears to be a preliminary agreement or an outline. But the outline is that Russia is saying, we will move back to pre-war lines if you agree not to become part of NATO. And that deal was rejected when Boris Johnson flew into Kyiv and basically told the Ukrainians, we do not want to make a deal with Putin, we want to pressure Putin. And the source for that is not the Russians.

• 22:09David Sacks?

  The source for that is a Ukrainian publication called Ukrainian Pravda, U.P. And they ran an article in May of 2022 that I can put on the screen. And it is the source for saying that Boris Johnson came in and told Zelensky, we do not want to make a peace deal. We, the West, are not ready to make a deal with Putin. We want you to fight Putin or pressure Putin. And if you do, we will give you advanced weapon systems. And that is when the deal fell apart. If you look at the timing of it.

• 22:39Jason Calacanis?

  Allegedly.

• 22:40David Sacks?

  This is, this happened on.

• 22:41Jason Calacanis?

  None of this has been so, this has been lightly.

• 22:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Source here, so let's just be clear.

• 22:44David Sacks?

  But you have to consider the source here. This is a pro Ukrainian publication writing in May of 2022. Now, the tone of the article and what they basically say in this article is that Zelensky accepted Boris Johnson's offer. In other words, he took the gamble. And at this point in time, you've got to remember, this is two months after the war started. It looked like the Ukrainians were doing well. So UP was essentially praising Zelensky in this article for taking the West up on this deal to pressure Putin rather than make peace. Now, a year later, it looks like this gamble was a disaster.

• 23:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 23:19David Sacks?

  And so that is the real conclusion here. A deal was available, but the West chose not to take it. By the way, Fiona Hill, who is a Russia hawk, and you could almost put her, I'd say neocon adjacent, has basically said that this type of deal was available. The West did not want this deal.

• 23:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think Jason, maybe to give you an answer, my thought is that this week was a very bad week for establishment politics and institutions. Because on the one hand, if you take the Russia incident and the Ukraine war, what you saw was that there were ample numbers of off-ramps that we chose frankly to not take so that we could engage our enemy in some long-drawn-out war on the hopes that it just depletes their resources.

• 24:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's kind of rolling the dice, I think, in a very dangerous way. I think this week we also saw some published stuff on COVID and the COVID vaccine, which also debunked

• 24:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  a lot of widely-held truths, and it turned out that folks that may have been conspiracy theorists, quote-unquote, were right there as well.

• 24:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So I think it's just an uncomfortable set of facts that, again, just reinforce that if you're not really thinking for yourself, you're not going to see the totality of what's actually going on. I think with respect to Russia, Ukraine, everybody has moved on. And so sadly, the only people that are left over are the people that have to fight the war, were still separated from their families. There's the people that are dying. There was an article, I think, today, they recruit prisoners, right? So obviously, some of the prisoners that Russia uses are still pretty crazy. That person went on some rampage inside of a train,

• 25:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  killed a couple of people, stabbed some other people. There was just pictures of blood everywhere. I mean, this is just a horrible situation.

• 25:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And it's still not clear to me why we didn't take the offer.

• 25:16Jason Calacanis?

  If in fact, it's real. So I just want to keep putting that disclaimer out there because Putin flashing a document doesn't make all this true. It doesn't mean it's not true.

• 25:24David Sacks?

  What about Ukraine and Pravda?

• 25:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, Jason, I would say.

• 25:26David Sacks?

  What about Naftali Bennett?

• 25:27Jason Calacanis?

  I am just being clear here that none of this is confirmed.

• 25:31David Sacks?

  Data points do you need?

• 25:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I would say.

• 25:33David Sacks?

  What are you talking about? Naftali Bennett confirmed it. What incentive does the Israeli, former Israeli leader have to lie about this?

• 25:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Here's what I would say, Jason. I think that something like that is so profoundly important that if it were not true, I think it would have been very important for the powers that be to discredit it almost immediately. So that they didn't have to look like they were war mongering unnecessarily.

• 26:01Speaker 03

  Can I also up level and connect to this point about the establishment? Because I think there's been a lot of pushback to even challenging the status quo, even having a conversation about Ukraine or having a conversation about COVID. And I think if there's one thing this pod represents, the fight going on at Twitter represents is the need to have this conversation. If we look at the wars the US has engaged in since September 11th, it's estimated three to four million people have died in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan.

• 26:40Speaker 03

  We spent eight trillion dollars, inflation adjusted, we spent four trillion in World War II.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  Eight trillion represents 25% of our entire national debt. And I've yet to meet a single parent who said to me, I care so much about this Ukraine situation. I would be willing to put my children in harm's way to fight for the defense of Europe. Okay, so those data points tell me at a very minimum, we need more of this discussion, more of this debate, not less.

• 27:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The idea that that we could be tiptoeing closer and closer to some land war in Europe unnecessarily and. I think the bigger issue is, and you can't trust what you're being told. And I think that that's what's very problematic.

• 27:29Jason Calacanis?

  That is a bigger picture. And just so we're clear here, I'm not saying I'm on either side of this. I'm just pointing out that this is all still very thinly sourced.

• 27:37David Sacks?

  No, it's not.

• 27:39Jason Calacanis?

  Until the West confirms any of this, I think.

• 27:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What do you expect the West to do? You expect the State Department to issue a press release saying, yep, we fucked up, it's on me?

• 27:46Jason Calacanis?

  My theory, what do you think they're gonna do?

• 27:48David Sacks?

  Yeah, we're liars.

• 27:49Jason Calacanis?

  My, my theory from the beginning has been, and I've been very clear on this podcast, my theory has been, since the beginning, they want to deplete Russia, and they want to deplete their army and capabilities, and have regime change in Putin. I'm not saying I'm for that, just for the people who are listening.

• 28:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm not debating that.

• 28:05Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 28:06David Sacks?

  You said it with ankle Putin, that was the crude language you used.

• 28:08Jason Calacanis?

  That is what they, that is what they plan on doing. Yes, I think that's what they're doing, and I think they-

• 28:12David Sacks?

  Lloyd Austin, our Secretary of Defense, said that our purpose was to weaken Russia, so to knock it out of the ranks of the great powers.

• 28:18Jason Calacanis?

  I agree, that's what their purpose is. Yes, I think they want regime change, yes.

• 28:21David Sacks?

  That's what Boris Johnson went to Kiev and said, we want to pressure Putin, not make a deal with him. So they courted this war, they prefer to fight-

• 28:27Jason Calacanis?

  That's been my theory since the beginning.

• 28:28David Sacks?

  They prefer to fight a proxy war of choice that was easily avoidable-

• 28:32Jason Calacanis?

  And I'm not endorsing that. I'm not endorsing that. I'm saying that's my theory.

• 28:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is not about you, Jason. I'm asking the simple question, which is why?

• 28:39Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, but Sax just said it was. But Sax just said it was, so I'm just clearing for the record. He just did. He said that was your position, and I'm correcting you.

• 28:44David Sacks?

  Okay, fair enough, Jason.

• 28:45Jason Calacanis?

  I have the right to correct you. That was not my position. I said that's my theory.

• 28:48David Sacks?

  Okay, fine, fine. I actually agree with you. If you're saying that that was our government's objective, which was to weaken Putin, I agree with you. They chose to fight an optional proxy war of choice that was easily avoidable if they'd just taken NATO expansion off the table, because they thought it would weaken Putin. But here's the rub on this. It has not weakened Putin. It has weakened the United States and our allies. Any way you want to look at this thing, look at just the weapons and munitions. So, we are out of 155 millimeter artillery shells. We cannot produce enough. This is the crazy thing. We spent 800 billion a year, plus, on the Pentagon and our national defense. We're out of ammo. I mean, we must

• 29:29David Sacks?

  be getting so royally ripped off by the military-industrial complex. Okay, we cannot produce ammo fast enough. That's why Ukraine's losing this war. The balance of artillery favors Russia. Russia is basically using about 20,000 shells a day. The Ukrainians are using somewhere between 3 and 6,000. We are out of ammo. We cannot produce enough.

• 29:49Jason Calacanis?

  And this actually dovetails nicely with another story this week. There is a journalist named Matt Yglesias, is that how you pronounce his name?

• 29:58David Sacks?

  Yglesias, yeah.

• 30:00Jason Calacanis?

  Yglesias, and he said, I mean, he literally said the quiet part out loud, and I'll just quote, because he was criticizing you and Chamath for hosting RFK, we'll get to that in a second. But he basically said, "This is actually a really good idea for us. Basically NATO equipment plus Ukrainian lives are being traded for Russian equipment and Russian lives, which leaves NATO coming out ahead." That's doubly true, because NATO is much richer than Russia. So we win a long-term game of everyone explode their weapons as fast as they can, make them. Again, though, what makes that really true is NATO material is killing Russian soldiers while Russian material is killing Ukrainian soldiers. That's a deal in our favor. I mean, that is a cynical of a summary of that.

• 30:45David Sacks?

  To be clear, he wrote that, yeah, he wrote that last year in defense of the war. Basically, like all the neocons, he's sort of an establishment-approved intellectual. They think he's smart. I think he's really foolish. He basically wants to fight the last Ukrainian here for the sole purpose of blowing up Russia's stockpiles. The reason this is so dumb is Russia can always make more. Those lives aren't coming back, but they can always produce more artillery, more weapons. And in fact, the Russian war machine is now ramping up to full production, okay? They are ramping up the number of people in their army. I think it's estimated that by the end of the year, they're going to have 750,000 men under arms. They've ramped up artillery shells production. They were at something like one and a half million at the beginning of the war. We were only producing 14,000 artillery shells a month,

• 31:28David Sacks?

  mostly for training purposes in the United States. We've since ramped that up to 20,000, but that still massively trails what the Russians can do. And they're trying to, oh, and they're trying to ramp it up to 90,000 a month, but that's going to take till 2028, because, you know, it takes time to build, you've got to build up new factories, new production lines, you've got to issue contracts to suppliers or vendors. It takes time to do this. But the Russians basically have ramped up their war machine. And then, the other thing that's happened is that Russia and China have entered a de facto alliance, and including Iran. So you now have the cementing of the This giant alliance in Asia between China, Russia and Iran.

• 32:09David Sacks?

  They're sharing equipment now together. Iran is producing drones for Russia. Russia is now going to be giving advanced fighter jets to Iran. So this idea that this war has made the West stronger is depleting the West over an objective we didn't need to fight. The war was easily avoidable. And we have now created, I think, the most fearsome opponent that America has ever faced. We have never faced a adversary with a combined manufacturing capacity and raw materials of China, Russia and Iran. If we were to get in a war, a new world war against this sort of new axis, we could lose. They actually have more manufacturing capacity to produce weapons of war

• 32:52David Sacks?

  and munitions and ammo than the United States does.

• 32:55Jason Calacanis?

  China has been clear that they're not going to provide weapons to Russia. And so I'm not sure that that alliance is exactly accurate.

• 33:03David Sacks?

  They have given us no such assurance. All they've said is they haven't done it yet.

• 33:07Jason Calacanis?

  It's a theoretical thing that you're talking about here that could be very serious. I think your point, and this is to Brad's point, we should be having a very thoughtful discussion here because if China did pick Russia, which they haven't, and they went to war, it would be war.

• 33:22David Sacks?

  Well, we should talk about the China relationship, actually.

• 33:24Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, okay. Blinken just went to China. And this was the first trip for an American secretary of state since 2018. Obviously, things have been strained with the spy balloon and the visits to Taiwan. Blinken gave some basic goals for this engagement with China. The fentanyl problem, some detained Americans and protecting US citizens working in China. Those were kind of the easy checkboxes. But they wanted to create also an open line of communication between our militaries, which China wasn't super stoked on or wouldn't agree to.

• 34:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Tony did a great job.

• 34:08Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 34:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay. I think what's really disappointing is that while Tony's over there doing this hard work, which is must be tough to do because it must have been a little bit like. Dancing on eggshells a little bit, right? He had to be

• 34:20Jason Calacanis?

  It's intense, yeah.

• 34:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He had to be very thoughtful, very measured. But as far as I could tell, he did a fabulous job. Now, full disclosure, he's a friend of mine, so maybe I'm biased. But then over here, Biden at some mid-level fundraiser in California is calling Xi a dictator. How hard must it be for you to try to do your job when your boss is just like completely undisciplined? Like, and here's the problem with that is that if the United States actually thought that Xi was a dictator, do you think that a mid-level fundraiser that we were all invited to in Northern California that none of us said yes to is the place to announce a foreign policy shift like that? Absolutely not. So it just means that, again, there's just more evidence about Biden being very undisciplined.

• 35:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Now, again, that could be an age issue. It could be a mental acuity issue. We don't know because we're not given a chance to really prosecute that problem. Meanwhile, Tony's there trying to do the best job he can and the sand shift underneath him. Thank God he was able to get the trip done before this thing happened, is what I think. But that gaffe was a very big gaffe and a very big problem, I think. Because whatever goodwill he built up was practically flushed down the toilet if you saw the reaction from the Chinese, which was to be deeply offended.

• 35:36Jason Calacanis?

  It makes no sense to poke, yeah.

• 35:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  When he went to see MBS and they had to negotiate a fist bump versus a handshake. Like, what is all of this either unplanned or undisciplined theater? Why are we engaging in any of this stuff? It doesn't make any sense to

• 35:52Jason Calacanis?

  He's been known, Joe Biden's always been known for being a liability in terms of these statements. When he worked for Obama, he was the VP. He also said things, you know, he shot from the hip a lot. You should not be calling him a dictator when you're trying to do this critical work. It's a stupid move. I think everybody can agree. You were going to say something, Brad?

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was just gonna say, you know, kind of market reaction going in. So the KWEB, the Chinese index, was up about 20% heading into these series of meetings. Now, notably Blinken was not scheduled to have a meeting with Xi.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  And so what happened is on day one, there's a meeting with the foreign minister. Right. And it seems that there was some positive trend lines coming out of these first two meetings with the top diplomat with foreign minister, which led to the meeting. And notably in the meeting, he did say, the United States has not changed its policy on Taiwan. We don't support Taiwanese independence. Now, the market reaction post visit was down 10%. And I think this is owing to what Chama said, that people felt like maybe we took a step forward here, that we at least had a meeting. But then it was a another step back. And so I think where we sit at the moment is there probably going to be some follow on meetings coming out of this.

• 37:09Speaker 03

  This was not, you know, a, a, a, a path back to where we were, but I think it was a stabilizing moment. And, you know, again, we were just at the East meets West conference, where there are a lot of Chinese CEOs and founders who were there. And I think the idea there was like, things are stable, like not getting worse. And by the way, six months ago, there was a real concern that things were deteriorating quickly. So I think it's, you know, you can see something constructive coming out of this.

• 37:36Jason Calacanis?

  Not getting worse was how I felt coming out of it. And then Biden then makes it worse. It's really, it is a, I agree. It's just a stupid gaffe.

• 37:44David Sacks?

  Let me tell you about some of the reporting from the, the Chinese side. So after these diplomatic events, and, and you're right, Blinken met with Wang Yi for seven hours. Then he got an audience with Xi Jinping. They do these readouts where each side basically produces a public summary of the meeting. In the Chinese readout, they said that US Chinese relationships are at the lowest point they've ever been. I mean, since, I guess diplomatic relations were kind of reestablished under Nixon. So that from the Chinese standpoint, they believe that relationships are at the worst they've ever been. Moreover,

• 38:22David Sacks?

  The US sought to put Ukraine on the agenda. The Chinese response to that was, we are not interested in discussing our relationship with Russia. That is none of your business. So this idea, there's been this neocon fantasy that somehow China would help us in this war between Russia and Ukraine. And I've said all along that the last thing China wants is for neocons to achieve their objectives with respect to Russia. Because then China alone will be in the gun sights of US hawks. So China will do what it has to do to support and even prop up Russia if they have to.

• 38:59David Sacks?

  Remember China and Russia, and specifically Xi and Putin, they're the two leaders who've met with each other more often than any other leader. And they've called each other their best friends or most, I think the language they used was most bosom. Well, most bosom friends was what they called it.

• 39:17Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, that's a little weird.

• 39:18David Sacks?

  Bosom buddies, yeah.

• 39:19Jason Calacanis?

  Bosom buddy, great TV show, good point.

• 39:21David Sacks?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 39:21Jason Calacanis?

  Just to give people exactly what happened. Biden, when he was at this campaign fundraiser in NorCal, that again, yeah, we were probably invited to people on the show. He was talking about the military Chinese spy balloon and he said Xi got very upset, quote, that this was a great embarrassment for dictators when they don't know what happened. And he continued to say that Xi didn't know the balloon had been over the continental US and was off course near Alaska. And this is the kind of thing where he's basically saying Xi is stupid or, you know, whatever. Or there's some level of incompetence over there. It's exactly the wrong message you want to send, calling him a dictator and calling him stupid and saying he was embarrassed. Like, why would you provoke that to raise money or to be a tough guy? It makes no sense.

• 40:05Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, it sounds like Trump's version of foreign relations.

• 40:08David Sacks?

  From the Chinese standpoint, they thought the whole balloon thing was a travesty. I mean, I don't know what the truth of it is, but they feel like it was just this continuous drumming up of outrage on the American side against China. And they wanted to put that behind us in terms of the relationship. I heard Blinken interviewed about this. Chamath, I agree with you. I have no complaint with Blinken in terms of how he handled this meeting.

• 40:33Jason Calacanis?

  Tony did a great job.

• 40:33David Sacks?

  I have a complaint about how, I have a complaint about how he's handled Moscow, but, but not Beijing. But they wanted to put this balloon business behind them. My guess, I've always said that it never made sense to me that the Chinese would use such a ham-fisted way of conducting espionage to fly, deliberately fly a balloon over the US.

• 40:53Jason Calacanis?

  It was obviously not deliberate.

• 40:54David Sacks?

  It never made sense to me.

• 40:56Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 40:56David Sacks?

  And it became this cost-lev in the US. And I think the Chinese, at a minimum, wanted to put it behind us. And then Biden reopened the issue.

• 41:05Jason Calacanis?

  Like this submarine tragedy, the balloon is like made for network television because it's a live event where you can put live cameras up and you can cover it 24/7. It's just like Trump.

• 41:16David Sacks?

  We better be really careful.

• 41:17Jason Calacanis?

  It's just for the media. It's for the media. It's catnip for them.

• 41:20David Sacks?

  We have to be very careful now, I think, in our relationship with China because, again, you now have this Asiatic alliance between China, Russia, and Iran. It is the most capable, let's say, average state the United States has ever faced. Remember that when we faced the Soviet Union, their economy was never bigger than one-third of the US economy, the Soviet bloc versus the Western bloc. The Chinese economy, on a purchasing power parity basis, is roughly the same size as the US, and they've got more manufacturing capacities. If you think about the type of manufacturing capacity the United States had during World War II, that now belongs to China, not the US. We have hollowed out our manufacturing.

• 41:57Jason Calacanis?

  I just don't understand why our foreign policy, Brad, I'll bring you into this discussion, why our foreign policy isn't being driven by some of the things that we could do together to collaborate on? Like, we have global warming, we have, you know, issues on this planet that we could collaborate on, and it seems like we're spending no time on those issues and saber rattling. Cuba, another example. Why can't we set a goal for the United States to normalize relations with Cuba and get them on our side, since they are the equivalent of, let's say, Ukraine, David, to America? You've brought up that comparison. Why don't we make peace with Cuba? Why can't we have a peace-based foreign policy where we're trying to build bridges? God, Cuba and the United States could do amazing things together, and we should be

• 42:42Jason Calacanis?

  trying to win that relationship instead of living 50 years in the past over it. I'm not sure.

• 42:48David Sacks?

  There was legitimate outrage. Over the past week because we discovered that China was planning on they already have an intelligence outpost.

• 42:54Jason Calacanis?

  Listening, listening.

• 42:56David Sacks?

  Outpost, but also they're thinking about doing training of troops in Cuba. And that would be a violation Monroe Doctrine, and we should basically get our backs up over that. The Monroe Doctrine states that no distant great power can bring troops, weapons, or bases into the Western Hemisphere.

• 43:16David Sacks?

  The United States spent over a hundred years basically enforcing Monroe Doctrine. It would greatly diminish US security if we allowed any foreign great power to have troops in the Western Hemisphere. So we deserve to have our horns out over that. The problem is that we have our horns out over everything, and so we're not really taken seriously. We've pride wolf so many times. I don't think we're really taken seriously by the Chinese on this. And this should be a teaching moment to the foreign policy establishment because this is Russia's objection. Russia's objection is to having American troops, weapons, and bases directly on their border. This is our objection to what China is seeking to do in Cuba.

• 43:54Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, Brad, do you want to add something to that?

• 43:56Speaker 03

  Just real quickly, I would say, there's a real appetite in the business community to be engaged. This idea that we're going to decouple the world, never have to deal with these folks, right, is just a farce. ByteDance bought a billion dollars worth of Nvidia chips announced this week, right? Like, like, the world is entangled, and I think we would be better off having our political and business leaders in more sync over how to achieve this long-term safety and prosperity as opposed to what feels like a disjointed foreign policy relative to the global reality around AI and what's happening on the business.

• 44:37David Sacks?

  I agree.

• 44:38Jason Calacanis?

  Well said, yeah. And I mean, it's just so obvious. Why can't we be collaborating on stuff? And we see when you and I made our trip to the UAE, and then we see the Saudis, you know, bringing movies back. We have certain regions we're doing a pretty good job of engaging with. Engagement, you know, reasonable engagement is a good idea.

• 44:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's because, and I think RFK has said this, we have created a very dangerous revolving door between our most critical institutions.

• 45:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And the largest industrial companies in the United States. And that revolving door creates all kinds of conflicts of interest. And those things get sorted out via revenue and dollars and profits.

• 45:19Jason Calacanis?

  Incentives.

• 45:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And so those incentives will drive us, if it's the military industrial complex, to go to war. And you're seeing that. It'll complicate our foreign policy. So this is why I've always said, the most important thing that we're doing is something that the military industrial complex cannot stop, which is our energy independence. And when you have energy independence and abundant costless energy, I do think that the biggest thing you get is this peace dividend. You stop fighting these wars. You become much more rational abroad. And you're like, okay, I don't need to fight with all of these people because, you know, things are so great within our borders.

• 45:53Jason Calacanis?

  You're so right, Chomph, because we actually have stopped those wars. And now we've created two other ones: Russia, Ukraine, and Taiwan, China. What's that?

• 46:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We can't help ourselves and we'll use the scarcity of commodities as a boogeyman to basically incentivize us to go in these foreign misadventures. And it really has to stop.

• 46:13David Sacks?

  By the way, just two quick points on that. On Taiwan, there's an election next year. And it looks like, right now, that the pro-China party might actually take power. Right now, the party that's in power is more of a pro-Western party. And the reason, I think, is that the Taiwanese are looking at what's going on in Ukraine. And they're looking at the corpses of the Ukrainian youth pile up. And they're thinking, maybe it's not such a great idea to be an American proxy state. Or, in the words of Henry Kissinger, he once quipped that it's dangerous to be an American enemy, but it's absolutely fatal to be an American friend. I think that this war may be backfiring in terms of the incentives it's creating around Taiwan.

• 46:54David Sacks?

  Remember Biden said that this war would basically help protect Taiwan by deterring China. It might actually deter Taiwan from opposing China. So we'll have to see how that plays out.

• 47:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  All an able-bodied person in Taiwan of voting age needs to do is read the newspaper and understand that in the last two and a half years, we've essentially started a multi-trillion-dollar program to delever ourselves from all the critical resources that China and Taiwan gives us. And so if you're a Taiwanese citizen, the writing is unfortunately on the wall, which is that we are giving ourselves the optionality to not have to do anything. So to your point, David, if you're a rational-thinking Taiwanese person, unfortunately, you're forced to be in a position where you may have to hedge your bets. And if the United States can basically have a chip supply that comes from Europe and Mexico, now all of a sudden, the criticality of TSMC goes away.

• 47:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  To wit, I published this tweet yesterday about Buffett and his trades in Japan. Right? He bought these five trading companies. And so just a really novel carry trade that I've really fallen in love with just understanding it. But the coda to that is that when he did this and going long Japan, what he actually also did was he delevered himself from China. He had a long position in TSMC and he said, "I'm out." And when they asked him why he sold TSMC, he said, "This is a very complicated thing." And he basically said that it's not a bet that's worth making. And I think underneath that, if I had to guess what he's trying to say about Taiwan indirectly

• 48:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  through his sale of TSMC is, "The odds are that we are not going to get into a land war over there, which means that that asset and its equity value is in danger, and I don't want to own it." And I think that that's a very clinical summation of his rational action. So to your point...

• 48:44Jason Calacanis?

  Well, here's what Blinken said.

• 48:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  People speak with their dollars.

• 48:46Jason Calacanis?

  I think this is very important. You know, the One China Policy says Taiwan is part of China. It's not an independent country. But we've had a very ambiguous intolerance for this ambiguity of Taiwan acting as its own nation while saying we support the One China Policy. And that ambiguity has served us very well in the China relationship. Here's what Blinken said at the press conference, quote, "We do not support Taiwan independence. We remain opposed to any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side." The status quo he's referring to here, Brad, is that they get to be independent in Taiwan, but we don't say they're independent. They are obviously acting in an independent manner, but it is not our business to tell the Taiwanese people that they're independent or not.

• 49:28Jason Calacanis?

  It's their decision to determine if they're independent or not. Any thoughts on the trade by Buffett and Blinken's comment at the press conference and this ambiguity?

• 49:41Speaker 03

  I think we want to maintain the ambiguity. I think we're basically saying to China, don't change the status quo at least for now, right? While we rebuild these chip fabs in Arizona and other parts of the world, I think most of the wealthy families I've talked to from Taiwan believe that five or six years from now, the US will no longer be in the position where they will need Taiwan and Taipei as much as they do today.

• 50:10Jason Calacanis?

  How many years do you think it will take to be independent? Say it one more time and explain it.

• 50:14Speaker 03

  Well, it's not about being independent. It's how much longer will Taiwan have what they believe to be de facto protection from the United States? And I was told by one very influential Taiwanese family that they believe when the fifth chip fab comes online in Arizona, which I think is scheduled for 25 or 26, they intended to have most of their family members out of Taiwan at that period in time. Now, I think most Taiwanese don't envision this being, you know, a violent invasion of Taiwan. It's more of a take under in the same way that Hong Kong was. And so I don't see an American president frankly going to war,

• 50:58Speaker 03

  nor would I want them to go to war over Taiwan. But I think it's in all of our interests to maintain that status quo, which is why taunting the Chinese over the course of the past few years over Taiwan has seemed like a policy that's not fit with our goals.

• 51:15Jason Calacanis?

  Right. Well, if you look at skin in the game, the fact that the CHIPS Act went through so quickly, the fact that Warren Buffett, as you pointed out, Shama, made his bet and this family that has obviously, you know, uh, skin in the game, quite literally are making these decisions. I think we know where this is headed. You can just follow the bets. And if you look at the bets in five years.

• 51:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Follow the dollars.

• 51:34Jason Calacanis?

  Follow the dollars. I mean, and also where people put themselves geographically. Everybody left Hong Kong when the turnover happened or before it. They went to Singapore, they went to UAE. They voted with their feet and their dollars. And that's obviously what's going to happen here. This is a good pivot because this criticism.

• 51:54Jason Calacanis?

  Of the Ukraine policy by Matt that Sacks pointed out came because there is a belief on his part and others that the pod here, All In, is putting its unilateral support behind RFK. That is not true. There are two people on the pod who hosted a fundraiser last week.

• 52:15Jason Calacanis?

  And here is what Matt incorrectly said because I have not put my support behind RFK. I think he's very interesting and I'm glad he's in the race. And neither has Friedberg, but Schmapp and Sacks did host one and I'll hand it over to them. But here is what Matt said in his Substack. And even though it's not the subject of this post, I do want to say that I think it's really sleazy and gross for the hosts of the All In podcast to be engaging in this Kennedy boosterism as a bank shot way of harming Joe Biden's reelection prospects, notwithstanding the recent convergence around Russia policy. Kennedy represents precisely the strand of progressive thought that right of center business people have rightly spent the better part of the century bemoaning.

• 53:01Jason Calacanis?

  His is an anti-progress, anti-technology, ultimately anti-human worldview that stands against biological progress, against energy progress and against

• 53:09David Sacks?

  The guy who wants to blow up as many Ukrainians as possible

• 53:12Jason Calacanis?

  As a meat shield.

• 53:14David Sacks?

  Yeah, exactly. Thinks he's anti-human. Listen, I don't even think we should be giving him this much time.

• 53:19Jason Calacanis?

  Well, no, but I think it is important that because people now have connected this pod with the rise of RFK. This was the first major podcast he did.

• 53:26David Sacks?

  What Iglesias is accusing us somehow of supporting RFK, not because of issues, but somehow because it's a bank shot for Donald Trump, which is ridiculous. None of us support Donald Trump. He's not even my preferred candidate in the Republican lane.

• 53:41Jason Calacanis?

  Well, what he said was a bank shot against Biden, just to be clear.

• 53:44David Sacks?

  I prefer RFK to Biden.

• 53:50David Sacks?

  It's that simple. What's, what's wrong with that? He's not even making any arguments here. Look, we've explained in a lot of detail and I explained in my response, all the issues where I support RFK. He supports free speech over censorship. He supports civil liberties over the surveillance state. He supports peace instead of war. He supports sealing the southern border, virtually alone among Democrats in talking sense on that issue. And I believe that he's completely correctly diagnosed what we're doing in Ukraine. So on

• 54:18Jason Calacanis?

  the issues I support RFK. You disagree with him on some issues, right? You disagree with him on nuclear and you may disagree with him in his anti-vax stance, if he is in fact anti-vax.

• 54:26David Sacks?

  Can I just, hold on, let Sacks finish those two. I think he was right about COVID lockdowns and I think he was right about COVID, the so-called COVID shot that wasn't even a vaccine, that that should not have been required.

• 54:36Jason Calacanis?

  But what about those two issues? You obviously disagree with him on some things. Do you disagree with him on his anti-vax stuff and his nuclear stuff?

• 54:44David Sacks?

  I don't know enough about those issues to have like a firm stance. What I would say is that every candidate represents a bundle of issues and you support the ones who are aligned with you on the issues that are most important to you. On the issues that are most important to me, which are these questions, the great questions of warrant peace and the questions of free speech and censorship. And even I would say the question of the economy and who do we prioritize? Cause he wants to prioritize the middle class. On those big questions, I feel like I'm aligned with RFK. So that's why I support him.

• 55:22Jason Calacanis?

  Let me go to Chamath.

• 55:23David Sacks?

  And by the way, do you think Jack Dorsey is, is supporting RFK as a bank shot, something or other? No, he's supporting it because he agrees with RFK on these questions of war and peace and free speech.

• 55:34Jason Calacanis?

  Correct. I'm just letting everybody be very clear about their position since this is becoming, the support of RFK by this podcast or two of the four people in the podcast is now becoming kind of national news.

• 55:45David Sacks?

  Iglesias isn't even making any arguments here. He's just applying derogatory labels to us. And really what this is, this is a disciplinary tactic or a shaming tactic by the sort of enforcers for the establishment who want to prevent.

• 56:01David Sacks?

  Independent thinkers from stepping out of line.

• 56:03Jason Calacanis?

  I agree.

• 56:03David Sacks?

  That's what this is about.

• 56:04Jason Calacanis?

  It looks like this outsider went to the Dalton School in Harvard University. So there you have it.

• 56:09David Sacks?

  Yeah, you got a $2 million education, doesn't know what a basis point is.

• 56:13Jason Calacanis?

  He's the guy with the basis points, right?

• 56:15David Sacks?

  Oh, boy.

• 56:16Jason Calacanis?

  He failed math, he graduated Dalton and Harvard. Good luck with your sub stack, dude. Oh, my God. Chabat, you are pro-nuclear. You've been very clear about that, although you're pro-renewables mostly. You've been clear about that on this podcast and many conversations I've had with you. You are also pro-vaccine, but you're anti what happened with the lockdown. So maybe you could expand upon your support of RFK, why you held a fundraiser firm, and what things you agree with him on, and maybe what things you don't necessarily agree with him on.

• 56:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, first, I actually did what I think a lot of people haven't done, which is just listen to him, just stop talking, zip the old yapper. And there is an enormous amount of long-form content where you can really understand where he stands on some of these topics. He's right about the war on Ukraine. We shouldn't be in it.

• 57:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He's right about free speech, which is, we should have it.

• 57:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He's right that the COVID vaccine was not a vaccine. And really, what it's done is actually discredit the word vaccine, unfortunately, in a lot of people's minds. He actually is a person that is pro-vaccine for all these other vaccines. He himself is vaccinated, his children are vaccinated. You would all know this stuff if you just took two minutes to just listen to it. He is against the COVID vaccine. And what I would say is, I'm very sympathetic to that. I'm very sympathetic to the job the FDA had to do, and I think they generally did do a great job. But we ran something through and we allowed it to be labeled a word

• 58:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  that misappropriates what it is. It's not a vaccine. And the problem with that is that it now makes people mistrust the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. That's crazy. You shouldn't mistrust the MMR vaccine or DTAP. But because those things are lumped in with the same thing as a COVID vaccine that is at best 30 or 40% efficacious. We have these problems. He calls that out pretty honestly. So I like the fact that he actually speaks in nuance. I like the fact that when I listen to him, I find that the talking head think police are generally lying. It confirms what I believe about them.

• 58:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Because he just says things in a very plain spoken, intelligent way. And I think that there are a lot of folks who don't want to think who want to be given the simple answer. Who want to just reject what he stands for and just take the establishment view in the hopes that they'll get, I don't know, maybe accepted by the establishment. The establishment just wants to curate power. And I just think that people should be thinking for themselves. If you listen to the Rogan podcast, if you listen to the Jordan Peterson podcast, there are millions and millions and millions of links and page views and discussions and thoughts. And there's probably thousands of minutes of RFK

• 59:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  explaining what he thinks on basically any topic you can imagine, you can get to your own conclusion. And I think what I think you'll find, and this is true for me, is there's 10% of stuff you are just vehemently supportive of. 70% of stuff that's like quite reasonable and fair.

• 59:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then there's the rest, which is a spectrum of things I disagree with. But then you're left with a blended expected value where you're like, man, this guy is really better than all the other alternatives.

• 1:00:01Jason Calacanis?

  Brad, I'll let you go and then I'll give my position.

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  What I find most insidious about the opposition to this discussion is people are upset that you're not swearing an allegiance to a dogmatism. Right? The truth of the matter is this group has hosted dinners for Ro Khanna, for Senator Manchin. We've hosted dinners for DeSantis. Right? Had I been here, I would have put my name on the dinner for Kennedy because I want to gather information. I'm an analyst. I want to think for myself. How can we spend trillions and put ourselves into potentially harms way without having

• 1:00:44Speaker 03

  a real conversation in Congress and on these pods about the risk of war? Why can't we have an authentic postmortem about the efficacy of the COVID vaccine without being shamed? The revolution going on in this country, which is fantastic from my perspective, is that there is no longer a monopolistic control over the discussion. And that's why this podcast and this friendship and the conversation we all had here is resonating with people because they also want to hear all the different sides because most people are capable, are way smarter than the elites on the coast think. You know, I'm from Indiana.

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  Lots of smart folks who think for themselves in Indiana, but they're told by coastal elites what to think. And they reject this. And that's what you're seeing in this discussion and so many of these others. It's not about, it's not about vaccines. It's not about a war. It's about their control over how you think and them wanting to force you to swear to an orthodoxy.

• 1:01:48Jason Calacanis?

  I think that's really well said.

• 1:01:50David Sacks?

  Yeah, that is well said, but the way they try to control what you think is by labeling candidates so as to exclude them or make them sound crazy. So J. Cal, I mean, you kind of introduced RFK as an anti-vaxxer. I don't think that is the correct way to describe his position or the singular way that he should be labeled.

• 1:02:11Jason Calacanis?

  No, I don't. I don't believe that. I said, here are the things he believes that we agree with. And then I gave the things that the media is saying, you know, so I was trying to present the totality of it. And I said, he is obviously in favor of the middle class and all this stuff. So I want to be clear on my position here. So I am in support of vibrant, long-form debate like we have here. And I'm in support of anybody who takes on the establishment because there are crazy incentives. As we talk about here, incentives matter. And we are long overdue for a discussion on vaccines. But it's very important that everybody understand here that everybody on this podcast took the COVID vaccine and everybody here, our kids have been vaccinated.

• 1:02:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's not a vaccine. It's not a vaccine.

• 1:02:53Jason Calacanis?

  Exactly. So they took the COVID reduction.

• 1:02:56David Sacks?

  We were injected with an experimental mRNA treatment because we got hoodwinked by the media into thinking it would prevent us from ever getting COVID, which it did not do.

• 1:03:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think it's fair to say vaccines are good and the COVID thing was not very good.

• 1:03:12Jason Calacanis?

  And it reduced death in older people and probably was the only group of people. And we'll know when we do a postmortem.

• 1:03:20Jason Calacanis?

  But do not take.

• 1:03:21David Sacks?

  Now we got this mRNA like flowing through our bodies. Who knows? It might be a time bomb.

• 1:03:26Jason Calacanis?

  Well, and then for people who are wondering, like, if we should even be having these discussions, the hypocrisy of the media.

• 1:03:34Jason Calacanis?

  I think is very important to look at here because the media is going to be attacking this podcast over and over again, not that it matters, but when we moved into the top 100, top 50, top 10, that's when the knives came out. And I would like to remind the media of the long history of investigative journalism and debates. What was once a conspiracy theory often goes on to win a Pulitzer Prize. And, you know, the hypocrisy here is crazy because if you look at some of the greatest stories and investigative journalist pieces, they started with these debates, rumors, etc. Abu Ghraib, that was the New Yorker.

• 1:04:11David Sacks?

  That was Cy Hirsch's reporting. That was Cy Hirsch's reporting, and he can't get the time of day.

• 1:04:16Jason Calacanis?

  And now they're discrediting him, right.

• 1:04:17David Sacks?

  He can't get the time of day for his report on who really destroyed Nord Stream.

• 1:04:20Jason Calacanis?

  The Catholic Church sex scandal, the Boston Globe.

• 1:04:24David Sacks?

  The mainstream media does not perform the function that you're describing anymore. They act as the bodyguard for the elite, for the establishment.

• 1:04:31Jason Calacanis?

  They actually have, even of late done.

• 1:04:33David Sacks?

  They are stenographers for the people in power.

• 1:04:35Jason Calacanis?

  Not exactly true. They have actually done incredible reporting, but there is a group of them, which is toeing the party line because you have the New York Times and their expose on the taxi commission. That won a Pulitzer in 2020.

• 1:04:47David Sacks?

  What?

• 1:04:48Jason Calacanis?

  And then you look at...

• 1:04:49David Sacks?

  Taxi caps?

• 1:04:50Jason Calacanis?

  I know you don't follow Pulitzer's or investigative journalism. In 2020, Brian Rosenthal at the New York Times did a massive expose on the predatory New York City taxi industry. And at the same time, we had this anti-Uber and anti-Lift.

• 1:05:03David Sacks?

  There's a few other issues that might be more important to the nation.

• 1:05:06Jason Calacanis?

  It was an example of protectionism and rent seeking. The Enron scandal, Big Tobacco, 60 Minutes. What about the pretzel monopoly in the south part of the Bronx?

• 1:05:16David Sacks?

  What about that hot dog vendor on Fifth Avenue?

• 1:05:19Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, you guys are uninformed.

• 1:05:21David Sacks?

  Didn't have all of his licenses up to date.

• 1:05:23Jason Calacanis?

  I thought there was a halal ban.

• 1:05:24David Sacks?

  What about the big expose on that?

• 1:05:25Jason Calacanis?

  People botulism. You guys are super uninformed. The fact is, at the same time that the New York Times, CNN were attacking what Uber was doing...

• 1:05:35Jason Calacanis?

  The New York Times won a fucking Pulitzer for their coverage of predatory loans by rich, powerful people in New York City.

• 1:05:43David Sacks?

  I bet they also did a great story on the guy selling trinkets outside Penn Station without a license, right?

• 1:05:48Jason Calacanis?

  For somebody who's a man of the people like yourselves, Sax, you should actually be more informed.

• 1:05:52David Sacks?

  Well, what they should be reporting on, for example, if they really, if the Pulitzer's worked the way they should, is where Patient Zero came from on COVID. Because Michael Schellenberg just reported this over the last week, and it got picked up by the Wall Street Journal, that Patient Zero, it turns out, was a researcher at the Wuhan lab who was performing gain-of-function research.

• 1:06:15Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, shocker.

• 1:06:17David Sacks?

  Another conspiracy theory proven true.

• 1:06:19Jason Calacanis?

  And will wind up being a Pulitzer.

• 1:06:22David Sacks?

  He deserves a Pulitzer.

• 1:06:23Jason Calacanis?

  He does. And the crazy thing about this quote-unquote conspiracy theory, it turned out to be true, is like, it brought together the most odd bedfellows, Rand Paul and Jon Stewart. When Rand Paul and Jon Stewart can be in a room and agree on basically the totality of a topic, we should all just pay attention because it's not, it's not a normal world in which these two guys would otherwise get along.

• 1:06:46David Sacks?

  Right.

• 1:06:47Jason Calacanis?

  And both of them nailed it from day one.

• 1:06:50David Sacks?

  Right, they have the same name. But now, connect the dots further, okay? Why was the truth suppressed? Why did it not come out? Because Fauci had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab via Eco Health Alliance. So, he knew that if, at the beginning of this pandemic, it turned out that he had been partially responsible for the creation of this virus that had now turned into a pandemic around the world, his career would have been over.

• 1:07:19Jason Calacanis?

  And it's worse, Sax, it's even worse than that. Forty-six percent of the advertising on TV news comes from pharma. And we did not always allow pharma spending. And this is, may not be one-to-one, it may not be that a specific person doing a report at CNN or Fox or any of the networks is saying, "Oh, I'm gonna lose my job if I write something critical of pharma." But they're not doing the investigative pieces on, I can tell you this, on the people who have forty-six percent of their advertising revenue, unless it really...

• 1:07:52Jason Calacanis?

  You know, gets to the final inning on something and that is something that we need to question.

• 1:07:58David Sacks?

  Right.

• 1:07:59Jason Calacanis?

  The media is funded 46% by pharma companies and pharma companies were given a pass. And if you criticize any of the pharma companies, the media is going to come for you. And so, listen, I'm not a tinfoil, but you do have to look at it.

• 1:08:15David Sacks?

  That is not tinfoil. Listen, the media is funded by big pharma and its primary sources are these high level government employees who've been there forever, who leak them information. That is why the New York Times was carrying water for Fauci and big pharma. This is the marriage of state power and corporate greed that RFK junior denounces.

• 1:08:36Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. Well, there you have it, folks. So, and he believes he could be assassinated by the CIA.

• 1:08:42David Sacks?

  No, he didn't say it like that.

• 1:08:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He didn't say it like that. He was asked, what, what is his strategy on campaigning and all of that stuff? And he said, look, I'm going to do as much as possible. The one thing that I'm going to avoid are like these open air parades, just because there's just a lot of folks that we can't control, crowd control.

• 1:09:02Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay. Reasonable.

• 1:09:05David Sacks?

  Yeah. I mean, the, the conversation on Rogan went something like this. Rogan was asking questions about the Kennedy assassinations and RFK believes like something like 60% of the American public believes that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. Then Rogan asked him, well, do you ever feel afraid running for office? And his answer was basically, no, not really. It's not something that I'm preoccupied with, but yeah, I'll take precautions. Does that mean he thinks the CIA is going to assassinate him? No, that's not what he said. But that is how the media reported it, including Fox News. That became the soundbite.

• 1:09:40Jason Calacanis?

  Well, the soundbite from this podcast was that he believes his uncle was and his father were, that the CIA was involved in their assassination.

• 1:09:47David Sacks?

  A lot of people believe that, Jason. A lot of people.

• 1:09:49Jason Calacanis?

  I am not giving my opinion on it. I'm giving his opinion on it. He said it on this podcast and the CIA won't release all the information to this day, even though they've been commanded to do so. So make your own decision, folks. According to Bloomberg, there is a ton of action for startup shares in secondary markets. If you don't know what a secondary market is, that's when one investor buys shares in a company that's not yet public directly from another investors on the cap table. So if Stripe, which is not yet public or Reddit. There are shares floating around in those companies, either previous employees or previous investors. One firm might see an opportunity there and buy them. As this process of bottoming out has occurred, PitchBook reported Tiger Global told secondary investors, and that's a class of people who like to buy these, that they could bid on any individual

• 1:10:33Jason Calacanis?

  private company in its portfolio. They tried to sell a bundle of these shares, about 30 startups at a time, but they couldn't find buyers, according to the reports. So now they're allowing people to bid on per company, on a per company basis. Some of these are being marked down a third, 50%, etc. Here's the quote from Bloomberg. As of May, 31st shares of startups were trading at a median discount of 61% compared to valuations at their latest funding rounds, according to a report by Forge Global Holdings. A16, according to the report, is actively buying shares in secondary. Excel, Bain, Bessemer, Kleiner are also using secondary to grow stakes in their existing investments, doubling

• 1:11:12Jason Calacanis?

  down, as it were, crossover firms like Kotu, Tiger Global, and even Brad's altimeter are actively searching for deals. So Brad, your thoughts on this? Is this a sign of a bottom? And why are you doing this?

• 1:11:26Speaker 03

  It's a sign.

• 1:11:27Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, it is. It is true. I mean, our job is to look at all these companies, understand

• 1:11:31Speaker 03

  their value. You know, I'm sitting here looking at a list that I was given this morning, 125 companies, secondary. You know, the Goldman Sachs Unprofitable Tech Index in the public markets is down 64% as of this morning.

• 1:11:45Jason Calacanis?

  Unprofitable public companies.

• 1:11:48Speaker 03

  They put together a basket, they track unprofitable public companies, down 64% off of its peak as of this morning. So you just quoted the Bloomberg article saying, yeah, these unprofitable tech companies in the private markets are down about 60%, 61%. That smells right to me. The repricings have to occur. These have to occur, right? There are 1,400 unicorns at the end of 2022, and 100% of them will likely do a down round. And if you said, what is the average that they're going to be down? It's over 50%. You saw the repricings out of some of the best ones, like a Canva or a Stripe, where it was down, let's call it 30%, 40%, 50%. But, you know, there are going to be companies

• 1:12:32Speaker 03

  like in the public markets that are down 80% or 90% and disappear altogether. So we didn't see the reprices, okay? And by the way... When we say, you know, that article quotes Forge, that is what the sellers are offering to sell shares for. That is not where transactions are clearing, right? So why hasn't Altimeter purchased any of this? Because the prices aren't low enough to induce me to get off the sidelines to purchase the shares. But we're within kind of, you know, we're starting to get in the zone where we can underwrite to a margin of safety competitive or better than the public markets for companies that we think are great companies.

• 1:13:15Speaker 03

  Now, out of those 1400 unicorns at the end of 22, there are probably less than 5% of those companies I would even want to own at the right price, right? So it's a small subset of companies. The price has to get to this clearing point. But, you know, I think over the course of the next 18 months, we're going to see an acceleration of market clearing events as these companies need to raise capital, as their employees want to get liquid on shares. And it's a, probably see some great opportunities, but most of these things that get put on sale should not be purchased, right? Most of them, even, you know, the first sale price is never the last sale price. The markdown on the black T-shirts will continue.

• 1:14:00Jason Calacanis?

  Tramather Sax, any thoughts? Are you buying in secondary? Are you looking at this?

• 1:14:05David Sacks?

  We'll look at secondary deals. It's not primarily what we do, but we're open to it. But Brad, if you were to categorize the 1400 unicorns into one of three categories, what do you think the percentages would be? Those three categories being zombie coins, like unicorn companies that just don't deserve to exist, that don't have product market fit, and they're going to go away. Category two would be viable companies that are just overpriced and are headed for a down round. And then number three would be the ones that are actually headed for an up round.

• 1:14:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would say thirty to forty percent are these companies that were valued over a billion dollars that don't have product market fit, they'll disappear.

• 1:14:44Jason Calacanis?

  Zombie companies that will disappear.

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

  Right, and listen, just to be fair, let's explain, most of these companies, right, have less than two hundred million of preference, preferred shares that venture capitalists invest into the company. And many of those companies in that thirty, forty percent, there's a team, there's some asset of value, they may be able to, you know, sell the talent of the team and recoup, David, let's call it thirty, forty percent of the pref stack, right, in that transaction. We're starting to see some of those occur. Then I think the lion's share of the companies that are left, let's call it, you know, another forty percent, these are companies that should

• 1:15:27Speaker 03

  never have been marked at these prices, right, but they do have a business and they're going to be marked down, you know, fifty to eighty percent. But all of those, like, none of those have been able to grow through it. Then there's less than ten percent of the companies, right, whose growth has been so robust through this period that they've actually grown into or within ten, fifteen percent of those prior prices. And if you do all of that work, it puts us back on trend line, right? The only thing unusual here is how far off trend line, we had fourteen hundred unicorns, right? In twenty twenty, we had, I think, a hundred

• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  and forty-five IPOs. In the last two years, we've had four. Okay? So there's a huge backlog. These companies aren't getting public. Why? Because public market buyers like ourselves, we're not willing to pay the prices that were in the private market. So the first step is to just have these clearing events. And as David, you and I heard sober talk over the course of the last couple of days, I think they, you know, said to founders very clearly, you need to sell your businesses or you need to get profitable. There is no bill grab.

• 1:16:36Jason Calacanis?

  In other news, Ford has been issued a conditional nine point two billion dollar loan from the US Department of Energy to build out three, one, two, three EV battery factories. Specifically, the loan is coming through the Department of Energy's LPO. That's the loan program's office. They've got about four hundred billion to lend out. You might remember this from 2010 when they gave Solyndra A123 batteries, which eventually went bankrupt and got bought by a Chinese company, I believe, and Tesla, a $465 million loan. Tesla paid it back. The other two didn't. Tesla paid it back with interest. Jiger Shah, the director of the loan program office, described the lending moves as a way to onshore and reshore manufacturing. The goal of the program is not innovation,

• 1:17:22Jason Calacanis?

  but to get more of the supply chain to be manufactured in the US. Guess?

• 1:17:29Jason Calacanis?

  Some people are criticizing this just out of the gate with, why should we be giving these loans to companies? Shouldn't this be the private sector doing it? Jamar, what are your thoughts here? Is this a good idea, a great idea, a neutral idea?

• 1:17:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's a great idea.

• 1:17:45Jason Calacanis?

  Explain.

• 1:17:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's us using our balance sheet to make sure that we get to energy independence. So this is actually a perfect role for government. It's

• 1:17:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  shaping incentives so that capitalism can do its job. What this does for Ford is Ford has a partnership with SK. And so SK has a lot of capability in Korea, but they can bring that know-how now domestically onshore to the United States. You'll be hiring thousands of people. You'll be building battery factories. Ford needs batteries. Their forecast is they'll be selling 2.5 million electric vehicles by 2026, 2027. So whatever Ford does, you can expect GM will also do. You can expect all of the other big companies to do. So this is all just great. And at the end of the day,

• 1:18:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  for people to not over, this is 9.8 billion. I guess it sounds like a lot, but we're probably spending $9.8 billion a day fighting wars. So this is a day of just taking a pause on all these dumb wars and actually becoming energy reliant, carbon neutral, fixing the climate. It's great.

• 1:18:52Jason Calacanis?

  Jobs, energy independence, and less dependency on autocratic nations. It seems like a good idea.

• 1:18:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Everything should be, how about instead of thinking about it in terms of wars, let's think about it in terms of, so if the, the DOD budget is $800 billion, okay, per year, what is that, 2.6 billion a day, 2.7 billion a day?

• 1:19:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay, so we're talking about three days, four days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. You want to say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday?

• 1:19:24David Sacks?

  Yeah, I'll take the other side of it.

• 1:19:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Should private industry be doing that?

• 1:19:27David Sacks?

  I, I agree with Jamar about the wars, but this is all money we don't have. I mean, we shouldn't be spending the money on wars and we shouldn't be spending it, I think, on industrial policy. So first of all, one of our friends who's an energy investor, uh, we should beep his name, but was telling me that the energy subsidies that were in the, you know, misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, it is like the biggest bonanza of all time. He said that the energy sector is going crazy now trying to figure out how to exploit these incentives. And his view is that although I think it was supposed to cost about $350 billion, he thought that it would ultimately cost the government somewhere around a trillion.

• 1:20:09David Sacks?

  Because the way these subsidies work is that you just qualify for them and then you get the subsidy. It's not like the credits run out. So if you qualify, you get it. So this could end up costing the government way more than what was originally projected. And so the question is, well, what are you going to get for all of this money? And in this article on Ford, they were talking about these 7,000 jobs that are being created at a cost of $440,000 per job. So it's great that the jobs are being created, but if you look at the efficiency of that, that spend per job doesn't really make sense.

• 1:20:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I don't understand how you get that number. You take 9.8 billion?

• 1:20:45David Sacks?

  The article said it. The article said 440,000 per job.

• 1:20:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Do you take 9.8 billion and divide it by 7,000? What do you do?

• 1:20:53David Sacks?

  I'm just quoting that paragraph of the article. So, so the job creation is good, but you gotta look at the efficiency of the job creation. The other thing is, the question I would ask you guys actually is, who wants one of these Ford EVs? Do you want an EV by Ford?

• 1:21:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Um, I think there are a lot of people that drive a Ford pickup truck. We talked about this before Saks.

• 1:21:14Jason Calacanis?

  F150 is coming, yeah, very popular.

• 1:21:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There was a, an article in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago, which talked about the brand consideration cycle that has been going on. And there was a large, look, we're friends with Elon, but we should acknowledge there's a large number of people that are frankly, a little bit turned off by him. And they've been very clear that they want an alternative to Tesla because they don't want to buy Tesla because they don't necessarily prefer him as a brand ambassador for their car. And the reality of life is that even if you're like maximally incredible, unless you find some clever way of creating a monopoly, in which case you can be a douche or evil, you're only ever going to capture 30 plus 40% maybe of a market. Coke Pepsi is a good example. And so there's always going to be long tail alternatives.

• 1:22:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And, you know, I had a chance, for example, in Vegas to drive a Rivian. I was surprised at the quality or drive in a Rivian. I was surprised at the quality of Rivian, only because I've been so focused on Tesla my whole life. So yeah, I think there are a lot of people that'll buy Fords. Doesn't take anything away from what Elon's doing, but I do think there are a lot of people that'll buy it.

• 1:22:20David Sacks?

  My problem with industrial policy is this, you, you think about that EV summit that the White House did, they didn't even invite Elon. And that, that was for political reasons.

• 1:22:28Jason Calacanis?

  Union reasons, yeah.

• 1:22:29David Sacks?

  Partly because of his views on speech, but I think mostly because he's not a union shop.

• 1:22:34Jason Calacanis?

  Right.

• 1:22:35David Sacks?

  And so that's the real reason why Ford is being doled out this sort of nine point something billion dollar loan is because they're politically connected with the right people in this current administration. And that's the problem with industrial policy is that the money gets handed out by government to the politically connected.

• 1:22:53Jason Calacanis?

  But in this case Tesla did.

• 1:22:54David Sacks?

  As opposed to the companies that may be producing the best products.

• 1:22:57Jason Calacanis?

  The fact is Tesla did get one of these loans in 2010 when it was a very nascent company. So you gotta give them some credit. They took a big risk there.

• 1:23:04David Sacks?

  But let's think about that for a second, okay? Cause I know that example comes up a lot.

• 1:23:08Jason Calacanis?

  And A123 and Solyndra.

• 1:23:09David Sacks?

  Yeah, so Elon was basically a fluke. I mean, you get like a once in a generation entrepreneur who happened to be working on this EV problem and he got that loan. If you're to take Elon out of that government portfolio, it all looks like Solyndra.

• 1:23:24Jason Calacanis?

  Yep.

• 1:23:24David Sacks?

  So the question is like, what is this portfolio going to look like? Is there really going to be another Elon in there? Because if not, there's going to be a lot of Solyndras.

• 1:23:33Jason Calacanis?

  Well, even if they break even.

• 1:23:34David Sacks?

  There's going to be a lot of subsidies to companies like Ford, which are politically connected. And I think a point Friedberg would make if he were here. Is that at some point you're going to have to turn off the subsidies because we can't afford it. And then at that point, is that factory going to be self-sufficient?

• 1:23:50Jason Calacanis?

  Brad, you want to, you've heard the two sides of the story here.

• 1:23:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, no. And listen, while generally against industrial policy, I, I, I come down on Gemma's side. I think this is a once in a generation opportunity to reduce our national security risk profile and to achieve what is really a national security imperative, which is energy independence. It's not going to happen just according to the invisible hand of the market. We see our, you know, great power competitors who are using this against us frankly, and have robust industrial policies. So I'm willing to stipulate that there will be those inefficiencies in this system. But I was lucky, lucky enough last night, I was having dinner with the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Wally Adiyama,

• 1:24:36Speaker 03

  who was out here meeting with founders, including battery founders in Silicon Valley, on this very subject. And I know some of the companies who are getting checks from the US government to scale up, right, innovative battery technologies, innovative chip manufacturing. And I have to say, this is the best of America. I see some really great public-private partnerships that are onshoring vital national interests in chips and batteries. And so I'm happy to see it happening. But I also know there will be grift and there will be waste along the way. But compare that, David, to the eight trillion we've spent over the last 20 years

• 1:25:16Speaker 03

  on war policy and what we've gotten from that. So, you know, you know, I'd rather see us take chances here on innovative battery technologies than wasted.

• 1:25:26Jason Calacanis?

  Still potential waste, but not as wasteful as a war.

• 1:25:28David Sacks?

  Well, of course. I mean, the first thing we got to do is turn off all these crazy wars. But that can't be the bar, because that's a very low bar. I mean, anything's more productive than wasting the money, blowing up other countries that we don't need to be involved in.

• 1:25:42David Sacks?

  I mean, remember, we do have a $32 trillion debt.

• 1:25:44Jason Calacanis?

  I think a great thing to do here is what they should have done with Tesla, which is when they gave that $500 million loan to Tesla, they should have gotten 10% of that in warrants to buy Tesla shares at the IPO, 50 million at that IPO would have gone, what, 200x? And that would have been an incredible payday. So if they give this 9.2 billion to Ford, why not get 900 million in warrants?

• 1:26:05David Sacks?

  So you want the government to become a VC?

• 1:26:07Jason Calacanis?

  No, I want them to get a little participation in the upside of the company. I don't want them to own it. I want them to have potential participation. Well, I'm giving a modest number here. So

• 1:26:18David Sacks?

  Right now, they're VC without participation, but

• 1:26:21Jason Calacanis?

  Right now, they're a loan that gets paid back with interest, and I'm saying, give them some upside in the equity, even if it's a small piece. Would you object to that, Sax?

• 1:26:28David Sacks?

  You basically want to make them a venture debt provider, like SVB.

• 1:26:31Jason Calacanis?

  Basically, yeah, like venture debt. Like, give them a pot sweetener. Yes. Yes. Give them a pot sweetener. Why not?

• 1:26:36David Sacks?

  Yeah, it didn't work out so good for SVB. You may not remember that, but

• 1:26:39Jason Calacanis?

  It would have worked out incredibly well with their pressing

• 1:26:42David Sacks?

  Jason, it doesn't solve my problem. You might drive a better deal for the US government in that case, which is fine with me, but it doesn't solve my objection, which is, at the end of the day, these decisions are going to be made based on political criteria.

• 1:26:54Jason Calacanis?

  The cronyism. Got it. Okay.

• 1:26:55David Sacks?

  And we're going to end up with crony capitalism and state capitalism as opposed to entrepreneurial capitalism.

• 1:26:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, this is in support of that because this is a deal where that 9.8 billion does come over, but these are basically like loans and loan guarantees, and you still have to put up the equity yourself. That doesn't solve anybody's problem, meaning you need to still be entrepreneurial. And there needs to be risk capital. In this case, the risk capital is coming from Ford and SK. And I think that that's

• 1:27:18Jason Calacanis?

  My understanding of this chomop is that this was like 90% of the cost or 95% of the cost. So there's not much risk capital here from Ford or SK. I mean, it might be opportunity cost, but it's not

• 1:27:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The full cost of these three factories is almost $13 billion. So there's still a non trivial amount of risk, risk capital that has to get put to work here.

• 1:27:37Jason Calacanis?

  Man, I would love to only have to put up 20 cents on the dollar, 30 cents on the dollar at my investments.

• 1:27:43David Sacks?

  I think Brad does make a good point about the security of our supply chain. I'm more willing to use this sort of industrial policy when we're talking about something that is vital to the security of the United States.

• 1:27:53Jason Calacanis?

  Like chips.

• 1:27:54David Sacks?

  You could make that argument with chips. I don't think electric vehicles rise to that, quite that level.

• 1:27:59Jason Calacanis?

  Batteries might? Hmm, I don't know.

• 1:28:01David Sacks?

  I wouldn't say batteries do, but I think obtaining a secure supply of the rare earths that are needed to make batteries, there's maybe a role for government in that.

• 1:28:10Speaker 03

  David, the reason batteries must is because the only way to wean ourself off of the dependence we have on fossil fuels around the world, and even though we produce and we're now a net exporter of, of oil, the reality is we're still in entanglements around the world because the world is dependent upon those fossil fuels. And so I, I, I do think that that is a national security interest, having, you know, energy independence, not only for ourselves.

• 1:28:39Jason Calacanis?

  If Germany was energy independent and kept their nuclear running and didn't have Nord Stream, we'd have a different situation here right now. We'd have a much different situation.

• 1:28:46David Sacks?

  We've got plenty of oil and gas over here.

• 1:28:48Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody, there you have it from the architect, drill, baby, drill, trigger warning. I liked your Greta Thunberg tweet, Chamath, that was a really good tweet. Shout out to Chamath.

• 1:28:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh my God, the number of, number of people, I, I mean.

• 1:29:02Jason Calacanis?

  Did the mids like it or the mids hated it? What happened?

• 1:29:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Can I just address what this means? So when I think of somebody as a mid, it's somebody that is just a hapless, impotent cuck that can't think for themselves.

• 1:29:16David Sacks?

  Matt Iglesias.

• 1:29:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And so what I, what I don't mean is that, you know, you, you, you haven't become a billionaire.

• 1:29:23Jason Calacanis?

  He's gonna write about us every week. You know what this is? It's the All In Podcast for clicks. If you, 10 people have started.

• 1:29:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Can I finish?

• 1:29:29Jason Calacanis?

  Go ahead. Yes, go ahead.

• 1:29:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It has nothing to do with your financial status. It's just everything to do with your open mindedness. And there are these people that are just so reactive on Twitter. I feel a little bit sad because like in a few years, they'll still be very unaccomplished and yet still be wondering. Who they can blame now and it'll just be them.

• 1:29:50Jason Calacanis?

  Blame themselves.

• 1:29:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So I would just encourage these people to just fucking do some work. Put your head down.

• 1:29:56Jason Calacanis?

  Do the work.

• 1:29:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  My God.

• 1:29:58Jason Calacanis?

  Build something, make something.

• 1:29:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So anyways, most, most of the comments were really great and interesting. And then there's a couple of people who are like, oh my God, how dare you, you know, uh, and it's like, how dare I what? How dare I what exactly?

• 1:30:10Jason Calacanis?

  You can tell that this podcast has truly become successful when the mainstream media fights up and punches up to try to get us to respond to them to get more people to subscribe to their Substack. Well played, Matt.

• 1:30:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'll tell you the funniest thing. The funniest thing was I did this tweet about Buffett. And then people are like, oh, but I thought you compared yourself to Buffett. And I was like, no, no comparison, just benchmarks. And then they get tweaked about the word comparison versus benchmark. And then Carson Block jumps in and I texted Carson on the side. I was like, bro, I'm just trolling the mids. Just don't worry. This is all bullshit. It's all just for shit's sake. I do it. I do it when I'm either pooing or I have them jet lagged.

• 1:30:52Jason Calacanis?

  One of the, it's on Ambien or while taking a dump or both.

• 1:30:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No Ambien.

• 1:30:57Jason Calacanis?

  For the dictator, the architect and bestie Brad, the fifth bestie and our mass, our new mascot, Matt, the mascot, who'll be writing three more Substacks about us. I am the world's greatest moderator.

• 1:31:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Can we make that shit bread logo our logo?

• 1:31:16Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 1:31:18Jason Calacanis?

  To Co2's austerity measure lunch. We salute you. The all in lunch will not be austerity.

• 1:31:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  By the way, did you guys touch it? Do you know what it was? Was it bread?

• 1:31:28David Sacks?

  Did you touch it? I didn't touch it. No.

• 1:31:30Jason Calacanis?

  What was it?

• 1:31:31David Sacks?

  I abandoned it immediately. It's a vegan pretzel. I don't know.

• 1:31:36Jason Calacanis?

  Is that what they call poop? Dog poop now a vegan pretzel?

• 1:31:40David Sacks?

  Friedberg was gonna be there.

• 1:31:42Jason Calacanis?

  A vegan?

• 1:31:44David Sacks?

  Well, the

• 1:31:44Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, zoom in on that.

• 1:31:46David Sacks?

  The WEF wants us eating insects, so this is next.

• 1:31:49Jason Calacanis?

  I think that's probably what it is. It looks like a vegan donut slash a doo doo. It's, it looks like a French bulldog's doo doo.

• 1:31:58Speaker 03

  Face when he opened that box.

• 1:32:00Jason Calacanis?

  He just dropped it on the ground. Like literally let, took it out of his hands and let it fall.

• 1:32:05Speaker 03

  Sheer disgust.

• 1:32:06David Sacks?

  I thought my seven year old had played a trick on me because he's into those types of like guys, you know, the fake poop.

• 1:32:11Jason Calacanis?

  It looks like one of those fake doo doos, the rubber ones. I, I bought a fake doo doo on Amazon once. I've done that, Dan. Throw it on. Fake doo doo is great. I'm gonna buy some fake doo doo. Actually, you know what they should do? They should put that, Ko2 should make fake doo doo and put it in the gift bag for All In Summit. That would be a great little merch item. Alright, we'll see you all next time. Bye bye.

• 1:32:30David Sacks?

  Love you boys.

• 1:32:33Speaker 05

  We'll let your winners ride.

• 1:32:36Speaker 05

  Rain Man David Sack.

• 1:32:40Speaker 05

  And it said, we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

• 1:32:44David Sacks?

  Love you, Wes.

• 1:32:45Speaker 05

  I'm the queen of Kinoah.

• 1:32:53Speaker 05

  Besties are gone.

• 1:32:56Speaker 05

  That is my dog taking a, oh, this is your driveway sex.

• 1:33:00Speaker 05

  Oh, man. My other cashier will meet me at one.

• 1:33:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We should all just get a room and just have one big Hugh Georgie because they're all just fused. It's like this like sexual tension, but they just need to release somehow.

• 1:33:11Speaker 05

  What? You're a B B. What? You're a B B.

• 1:33:17Speaker 05

  We need to get merch. Besties are back.