E149: Hamas terror attacks in Israel: fallout, reaction, next steps

(0:00) Opening statements on the Hamas terror attacks in Israel (3:49) Contextualizing the attacks and the fallout so far (19:52) Trump administration's wins, Kushner's competence, path to a two-state solution (28:51) Letter from Harvard student organizations: understanding the reaction and fallout (46:53) The Biden Admin's next steps, electing excellence in leadership Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg 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://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1711544829828862144 https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1711501410712654162 https://twitter.com/GenFlynn/status/1711156580828295246 https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1712170815637061914 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_MeKSnyAo https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1711421307227607255 https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2023/war-in-the-middle-east https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1711761982469107955 https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1711788747086233661 https://www.amazon.com/Inconvenient-Minority-Admissions-American-Excellence/dp/1635767563 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/13/us/politics/russia-sanctions-missile-production.html https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-israel-hamas-strike-planning-bbe07b25 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/11/us/politics/iran-israel-gaza-hamas-us-intelligence.html

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

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody. Welcome to episode 149 of the All In Podcast. With me again, David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya. David Friedberg couldn't make it this week. We're going to carry on without him. And it's a difficult week. So just a quick opening statement from me about this episode. Like all of you, we're devastated by the terrorist attacks that occurred in Israel on Saturday. And I just want to start the discussion here with two important housekeeping notes. First, this is obviously a very dynamic situation. And we're dealing with the fog of war, quite literally. So we're going to do our best to make sense of what's happening. But things will change between when we tape this episode on Thursday, and you choose to listen to it in our likelihood at some point over the

• 0:42Jason Calacanis?

  weekend. And second, there are going to be some folks out there who claim, quite correctly, that we are not the experts on this topic, and thus, we shouldn't chime in with our opinions. On the other side, the All In community has told me explicitly, they want to hear us discuss what happened. And they want a sense of normalcy. As one loyal listener explained to me last night at a dinner, the fact that the four of you can debate hard topics, listen to each other, and in the end, have a deeper understanding of the world, gives me hope every week. That's why I listen. So we'll do what we do here every week. We'll have the hard discussion. We'll listen to each other deeply, hopefully, and we'll try to understand the world and each other just a little bit more. And that's worth it, at least to me and apparently many of you. So with those two quick disclaimers, gentlemen,

• 1:27Jason Calacanis?

  anything you want to say upfront before I recap where we are five days into this senseless brutality?

• 1:34David Sacks?

  I think that was a pretty good intro, Jason. I mean, you're right, we're taping on Thursday, late morning, Pacific time. By the time this drops, it'll be Friday. And so a lot could have happened. Also, it's true that the Middle East in general, and this topic in particular, is hugely complicated. We will be accused of not being experts, but at the same time, the audience seems to appreciate our opinions as consumers of information, who are trying to make sense of the world. So that's all we can really do.

• 2:03Jason Calacanis?

  Right. And conversations, I think, are how we make progress. Any thoughts before we get started here? And I'll recap what's occurred. Chamath, any opening thoughts before we get into the details here?

• 2:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  On behalf of somebody who...

• 2:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Worked in Israel, have a lot of friends there, spent a lot of time there. It's really just a terrible devastating situation. I've really tried to stay off of social media just because it's allowed me to kind of think a little bit more logically. It's Fast and Furious right now, I think, on X. And it's just a lot of people trying to make sure that their version of the truth is amplified over every other version of the truth, which I think is like a, is a point in the cycle where you just have to almost unplug from the matrix a little bit. And find a few places that seem to be just telling things in an even-handed way, which

• 3:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I also find on X. And then just kind of reconstruct what happened, why it happened, what do we do from here? I don't know. I don't know. I have a lot of thoughts on a lot of the peripheral issues, but the core issue is just, I'm just stunned that this happened. I don't, I don't even know how this is possible that this happened.

• 3:24David Sacks?

  Like Jamath, I'm not trying to get too, wade in too deeply into the tweets, but...

• 3:30Jason Calacanis?

  I did notice you, by the way, have stopped tweeting. You've done a couple of retweets, but you paused this week, a lot of your tweeting.

• 3:37David Sacks?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that it's an important time to listen and learn and process what's going on.

• 3:45Jason Calacanis?

  Right.

• 3:46David Sacks?

  This is not a great time to be having hot takes. I have posted a few things. First of all, Jason, you've made the analogy to nine eleven being in New York right now. I think that that is the comparison that's been made is that this is Israel's nine eleven.

• 3:58Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 3:59David Sacks?

  I think that's a justifiable comparison in two respects. One is this was a terrorist attack. It was an atrocity. This was a massacre of civilians. Even if you're somebody who believes in the Palestinian cause, you should be able to recognize that these were war crimes.

• 4:14Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 4:15David Sacks?

  The videos are coming out, the stories are coming out. In particular, the rounding up and slaughter of 260 attendees at a music festival was really beyond the pale. They're clearing some of these farming villages and so forth and finding the bodies, you know, families basically killed. Anyway, we don't need to repeat all of the details here, but, but this was, I think...

• 4:42David Sacks?

  An attack on civilians that is reminiscent of nine eleven and and has affected the Israeli people in a similar way. I think the other analogy to nine eleven that's worth discussing is the reaction to this, or what Israel's gonna do and what the reaction is by US political figures. You heard people like Nikki Haley basically saying to Netanyahu, finish them. It wasn't exactly clear whether she was just talking about Hamas or the whole Gaza Strip or maybe Iran. And then if there was any ambiguity about that, you just had Lindsey Graham come out and say level the place, meaning referring to all of Gaza.

• 5:22Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 5:23David Sacks?

  I'm very concerned that one of the purposes here of of the terrorists was to provoke an overreaction like the US engaged in after nine eleven. Remember, we were viciously attacked, we were wounded, we then lashed out and plunged into two decades of wars in the Middle East. What was the result of that? We lost thousands of lives, our own soldiers, we spent trillions of our treasure, millions of people on the other side died.

• 5:52Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 5:53David Sacks?

  And at the end of the day, we only changed the geopolitical map of the Middle East in ways that were ultimately unfavorable for us. Iran became a more powerful country, the region became destabilized, and we squandered the sympathy that the United States had and its moral position that we had after nine eleven in the eyes of much of the world. So the US, I think, fell for the trap that I think Bin Laden laid, which was to provoke us into an overreaction. I think that is one of the goals of terrorists, is to create such an outrage, such a provocation that they will bait the other side into an overreaction. I'm quite concerned that could happen here. I think that our US leaders should be, as friends of Israel, should be counseling a

• 6:37David Sacks?

  cool-headed response. I think braying for war with Iran or suggesting that the entire Gaza Strip should be leveled would be doing exactly the wrong thing. It would ignite the Arab street throughout the Middle East.

• 6:52Jason Calacanis?

  And to your point, perhaps that was the goal here. And we're trying to figure out what is the goal of this attack that was planned for years? And perhaps that was the goal, is to try to take all the hard-fought peace and progress that has been made in that process over the over the last couple of years, Abraham Accords. And, and, you know, stability and then just, you know, really create a full scale escalation.

• 7:16David Sacks?

  I think that's right. I mean, look, I think Israel is within its rights to dismantle and destroy Hamas. Hamas is an organization that in its charter has said they're committed to the destruction of Israel. They've now committed this atrocity. Again, it was if they had just limited their attack on uniformed Israeli officers and military, I think that would be one thing, but they went much further than that. The vast majority of the casualties here are civilians who were murdered in atrocious ways. So I think they're a terrorist organization and Israel as well within its rights to destroy them. However, the question is how you do that.

• 7:52Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 7:52David Sacks?

  Like a lot of terrorist organizations, Hamas can kind of melt away into the population of Gaza. They've apparently have these elaborate tunnel networks. They've got bunkers. So it's not clear that you can destroy them from the sky through bombing. Those kinds of bombs would lead to a lot of civilian casualties, which will inflame the situation and turn a world opinion against Israel. At the same time, if they go in with ground forces, that seems like a really tough situation as well because Hamas is waiting for them and they they'll have to fight a guerrilla war in a very tightly packed, dense urban area where Hamas likely has anti-tank weapons,

• 8:34David Sacks?

  weapons that we've seen that have been so effective against armored vehicles in Ukraine. Again, if the fighting gets too hot, they can disappear into these tunnel networks. There's going to be IEDs everywhere. It's going to be a very, very tough fight for the Israelis. So I think they're in an incredibly tough spot. I'm not quite sure what the right reaction is for them, but I do think that if the reaction is this, uh, let's call it the Lindsey Graham level the place reaction, I think that could set off a much wider regional war or even a world war. And that is not something that's ultimately going to help Israel, and I hope that our leaders are wise enough to be counseling against that.

• 9:17Jason Calacanis?

  I get the sense that they're not going to go that hard. And if you look at the American response to nine 11. You know, going into Afghanistan and dismantling Al Qaeda, a noble mission, and we didn't have any more terrorist attacks on America. We're very, we thwarted most terrorist attacks. There were attempts, actually. And our intelligence was very strong over the last couple of decades, and we haven't had another one of those. But you're right, going into Iraq. And then, you know, what was the last decade about being in Afghanistan?

• 9:46David Sacks?

  We went into Iraq, we went into Syria, we went into Libya. We stayed in Afghanistan for 20 years. It should have been a quick surgical strike to take out Al Qaeda and their Taliban hosts, and then we should have gotten out.

• 9:56Jason Calacanis?

  And even that is incredibly difficult as a mission. As you're pointing out here, Hamas can just fade away into the Gaza Strip and into Palestine, and, you know, who knows? Shema, I guess where we're at right now is trying to make sense of why this happened and what the next couple of weeks might look like, right? And so, your thoughts?

• 10:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think Israel has every right to defend itself, and they should eradicate Hamas. This is not like we woke up and found out that they were a terrorist organization yesterday or on Sunday. We've known this for years. They've been labeled as such. People have been monitoring their money flows for years. We know where they were funded.

• 10:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But the thing to keep in mind is that those 30,000 Hamas terrorists have also been keeping 2.2 Palestinians hostage for the last 20 years. And of the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza, half are kids.

• 10:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And so, David's right. The thing to keep in mind is, as barbaric as what happened to the Israelis were, Israel, in its actions,

• 11:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  could cause tremendous civilian casualties, which will just further inflame the ability to find a long-term peace in the Middle East. That's really tragic, and that's probably part of Hamas's kind of sadistic calculus, which is they probably expected this kind of a reaction, and they probably don't care at the end of the day. So it's important to separate Palestinians from Hamas. But I understand and I know where Israel's coming from because we faced the same reaction after 9/11. The question that I have is Israel is the most sophisticated military and intelligence organization in the world.

• 11:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And the reason is because when everybody talks about priorities, Israel only really has one priority, which is to safeguard the Israeli people.

• 12:03Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, survive.

• 12:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And they've been essentially in a conflict zone with this sword of Damocles since the founding of Israel. So there are three organizations that really have to figure out what happened here, right? There's Mossad, which is the Foreign Intelligence Service of Israel. There's Shin Bet, which is the domestic security apparatus. And then there's Aman, which is the military intelligence group. And it's like, how did this happen? Because this should have been priority one, two, three, and four, right? And it has always been for them. Other countries, the safeguarding of their people is not necessarily always number one, right? And then things happen and then you re-prioritize.

• 12:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  In many ways, that's what happened in 9/11, I guess, at some level in America.

• 12:52Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. I mean, we had all the signal before that and when we did the 9/11 commission and we found out they were going to flight school here, you know, and it was pretty clear that it was an intelligence failure for America.

• 13:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Those are the two big thoughts that I have, which is there's just going to be so many civilian casualties. What will that do to actually? I think that that has a huge negative impact on the long-term chances of peace because then radicals will use that information to further or to attempt to radicalize the next generation of Palestinians or other Arabs or whatever. And so I worry that the progress that was made in the Abraham Accords, all the normalization...

• 13:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Goes off the rails and that's tragic because most of these people, the overwhelming majority of all people everywhere, they just want peace. They just want to live a decent life, take care of their family, raise their kids. So that's really tragic. But then the other, the other part of my mind is like, how could this have fallen through the cracks? And, and why were the most sophisticated intelligence organizations caught flat footed here?

• 14:02Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, it is going to be a lot of information that will come out over time and lessons.

• 14:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And by the way, the reason why that second piece is important is not to point the finger at anybody, but it's to deescalate because of what Sacks said earlier, which is that when people who can articulately gird for war are given the bully pulpit, and you see American politicians now braying and girding for war, I don't think they fully recognize the consequences of that. They're not doing a full accounting of what America has lived through in the last quarter century. And now to induce other countries to try to do the same, I think is so dangerous. And so if we can understand where these cracks are, at least we can deescalate those specific individuals' attempts to escalate. And if we don't do

• 14:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  that, we're going to find ourselves in a really complicated war. And I don't think anybody wants that. Nobody wins.

• 15:01Jason Calacanis?

  Nobody wins. Yeah. I mean, at this point, really, the returning of the hostages seems to be the most important, you know, high order mission that has to occur. After that, clearly dismantling Hamas and this terror apparatus. But, you know, having started to spend some time, you know, in the region and talking to people over there, and again, I'm no expert, but I have been talking to people who've been working on this. You've got people who've been working on trying to create peace in the region for their entire lives. And this is definitely a setback, but I'm an optimist and I actually think that in some ways, this is going to create a climate where people are going to really

• 15:41Jason Calacanis?

  fight to try to resolve this situation, or at least contain the situation. Two states illusion, the Abraham Accords, and I think they're, this is going to renew people's... Commitment to peace in the region. And I know many, many of the countries over there are really aghast at what happened. And they've been working really hard to try to normalize relations there and create peace and prosperity and commerce and, you know, between the different countries in the region. So this is just heartbreaking for the loss of human life and how that occurred. And then it's also heartbreaking for the peace process and all this progress that's been made recently.

• 16:20Jason Calacanis?

  And so I think it's, you know, there's no silver lining here, but I do think this will maybe the good people of the world will recommit to trying to resolve this issue and create peace in the region. That's my hope. I know it's simplistic and again, no expert, but that's my hope. And I've been spending time over there and learning a lot more about the region. These are multi-generational issues that are going to take generations to figure out. And it's, it's two steps forward, one step back, obviously. But man, for the politicians and the people negotiating this peace and they work so tirelessly on this for their whole lives, you know, keep at it. I mean, that's all we can do, right?

• 17:06David Sacks?

  I mean, Jason, I think disrupting the process that was happening towards normalization of relations between Israel and Arab states, specifically the Gulf monarchies, I think was one of the objectives here.

• 17:17Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 17:17David Sacks?

  So, I mean, Israel's contention for a long time is they want to negotiate peace. They want to negotiate, but they don't have a partner to negotiate with. Whether you believe that or not, that was, that was their position. And with the Abraham Accords, we saw that they started to be able to negotiate, again, normalization with three Gulf Arab states without involving the Palestinians. And it looked like that issue was being put to one side and that they were kind of going around it. And the idea being, look, if you won't negotiate with us, then we'll figure out a way to move forward without you. The big news that, you know, has been going on in the last few months is that supposedly Israel and Saudi Arabia were close to

• 18:03David Sacks?

  Working out some sort of normalization. And I think that process has been put on hold until I think this has been dealt with. And so I think one of the takeaways here is the idea that you're going to be able to get to Middle East peace without resolving this Palestinian question. I think this is basically a return to the reality that that issue is simply going to have to be dealt with. I don't think we're going to get to a larger deal in the Middle East. We're not going to be able to resolve all these problems until this long festering problem of the treatment of the Palestinians is dealt with. I think you're right that the two-state solution is the only possible solution that makes sense.

• 18:47David Sacks?

  I mean, what's the alternative? A one-state solution means that either it's run by the Israelis but presiding over hostile Palestinian minority that may eventually one day be the majority and you're forced into some sort of apartheid state, or the Palestinians are running that one-party state and it means that the Jews have been pushed into the sea. So neither one of those solutions looks very good. So that leaves you with a two-state solution, however hard, however impossible it seems to negotiate that, it's the only option.

• 19:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, it's the only option. And it's a real opportunity. I think the, my hope is that instead of pushing Saudi away, this actually pulls Saudi closer and says, okay, this is a chance to really normalize the global perception of the Middle East. Because if there can be a way for Israel and Saudi to build a bridge here, I have a lot of hope that there can be a lot of stability. And a lot of the good work, I mean, again, like, man, as a Democrat who has been left homeless, who is now definitely in the center, but probably leaning increasingly right, I'm left yet again with an appreciation, despite

• 20:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  the messenger of the message of the Trump administration, because what those guys did was pretty incredible in hindsight. These Abraham Accords, the Accords with Israel and the GCC, the almost accord between Israel and Saudi.

• 20:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  To really be able to like find a long lasting peace is just a real example for the world. And those guys did a lot of really good work. And it's a miracle, actually, when you, when you look at it, what they did, you know, despite the fact, listen, I'm no fan of Trump and I am too homeless. But this is where. But if you want to objectively look at what they did, there was good work. It was great work. You have to, and in fact, this is a moment where you have to start to re underwrite, like, is your, not you, Jason, but I'm just saying collectively, is one's Trump derangement syndrome causing more damage than anything that Trump could have actually done?

• 21:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And I think the answer is yes, because like it's now causing us to not see that good work and then embrace and extend it. So much of the work that happened in that administration turns out to have been right. And that's what's so frustrating for me. The work on the border wall, we didn't like the messenger, so we killed the message. Turned out it was right. Issuing long term debt to refinance when rates were at zero, we didn't like the messenger, so we killed the message.

• 21:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  A structural piece in the Middle East, we didn't like the messenger, so we killed the message. When are we going to stop shooting ourselves in the foot? And when are we going to actually see and take the time to look past who is saying things and actually listen to them word for word? I'll give you an example. I started to tweet three links a day over the past three days. And the only reason I did that was I thought things were so hyper contentious and hyper partisan that I just wanted to show a few sides, right? And one day I found a couple of links, two of which, one was from Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL, who I thought had a very powerful message. And one was from Mike Flynn.

• 22:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And his message was also actually pretty powerful if you just read it. And if you took the names off, all the content was so valuable, both points of view. But the minute it goes into the world, people immediately judge and they killed the message because of the messenger. And this is exactly a moment where you have an opportunity to just stop doing that because the stakes are so high. It's infuriating, actually, quite honestly. It's infuriating to see it.

• 22:45Jason Calacanis?

  We had this last week on the show when we were talking about reducing spending. Matt Gaetz is not the perfect messenger, but his message was the message we've been talking about, which is, hey, we have to control spending. So I can understand people not liking Matt Gaetz. There's a lot of things to not like about him. I can understand people not liking Trump and

• 23:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Get over it.

• 23:03Jason Calacanis?

  Well, and then, you know, it's bizarre that his son-in-law went to do all this work, but yet he did it and it had success.

• 23:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's another example.

• 23:13Jason Calacanis?

  It's weird to send your son-in-law to do it, but I listened to the Lex Friedman podcast.

• 23:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know what? It's not weird because at the end, if you listen to this podcast, the most important thing that is resoundingly obvious about Jared Kushner is that he is incredibly thoughtful and incredibly competent. And

• 23:33David Sacks?

  Right.

• 23:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Why did we have to spend years being fed all of these stupid lies? Because one can judge for oneself, but Jared Kushner is thoughtful, he's smart. And I thought to myself, I was fed all these lies for years about how this guy was like moping around in the shadows and this and that, and it was all not true.

• 23:56Jason Calacanis?

  Well, no, when I say it's non-traditional, if you sent, you know, any president's son-in-law, daughter-in-law, whatever, child to go to the Middle East, on its surface, this seems insane, but in fact, they did good work. And so it's not traditional. It's not what you would expect.

• 24:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He's thoughtful and competent. That's what I thought after. That's what I got out of it as well. He said he's thoughtful and competent.

• 24:22David Sacks?

  Yeah, he brought some fresh ideas. Just so the audience is clear, what we're talking about is he just did an interview with Lex Friedman and the first hour was on what's happening with Israel and Hamas.

• 24:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Must must watch, I think.

• 24:33David Sacks?

  I thought it was excellent, too.

• 24:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Excellent, excellent. It was excellent.

• 24:36David Sacks?

  He did, just in terms of having fresh eyes, he did things like focus groups. He's like, okay, what does, what does the Arab street think about various topics? And he actually did focus groups in various countries to find out. So, I mean, I think Kushner made a number of really interesting points showing how difficult it's going to be to get to a two-state solution. But first, you have to set up, what does the Palestinian side say? And what they say is, look, Gaza is effectively an open air prison. You've got over 2 million people packed into this very tight area. There's something like 50% unemployment. It's impoverished. The conditions are deplorable. And they don't have their own state. They don't have rights. And it's been like this for a long time. So that's sort of the the basic pro-Palestinian argument.

• 25:20David Sacks?

  Kushner's response to that was, well, yeah, but, you know, Israel left in 2006. It left Hamas in control, gave them the keys effectively. The reason why there's such high unemployment is because Hamas is corrupt and doesn't enforce property rights. And they scare away all the investment. Nobody wants to invest there.

• 25:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 25:39David Sacks?

  And Israel did give work permits so people could leave Gaza to go to work. And look what happened. I mean, when they try to open up the walls, you have a massacre. So these are the points that he made. Look, I think both sides of this have legitimate arguments and points to make. I think that the conditions of the Palestinians in Gaza is deplorable, and you have to feel for the civilians who live there.

• 26:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Of course.

• 26:05David Sacks?

  But then, you know, the Israelis have a right to live without fear, the fear that their security is in jeopardy and that this territory can be the launching pad for terrorist attacks on their soil.

• 26:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 26:17David Sacks?

  So it's going to be an extremely difficult thing, I think, to reconcile this. But, you know, Kushner made a couple of other interesting points. He said, listen, the Gaza part of this is not that hard because the boundaries, the territory lines are not in dispute. There's no religious areas that are in dispute. For example, you don't have the status of the Temple Mount or, you know, East Jerusalem. And there's an economic plan to revitalize Gaza Strip. So you really just need a negotiating partner for the Israelis to figure that out. And of course, now the problem is, who do you negotiate with? I mean, Hamas is is a terrorist organization that Is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. So it's really a tragic situation. You look at it and you're like, this should be easy to work out, but it's not.

• 27:01Jason Calacanis?

  It's a relatively small area. It's a relatively small number of people. It's two million people. We should be able to figure out the rest of the free world, how to at least have a path towards this. And the first step is getting rid of Hamas, right? Like there's no choice, but they have to go.

• 27:16David Sacks?

  I don't really know if that's feasible, Jason. I mean, look, if there was a button, if there was a button that Israel could push to eliminate every member of Hamas, yeah, sure, they'd be within their rights to push that. The problem is that Hamas is now deeply embedded, embedded in a civilian population of over two million that's densely packed. How do you root them out?

• 27:40Jason Calacanis?

  It's going to take decades. It's going to take decades.

• 27:42David Sacks?

  And they're basically supported by that population as far as we can tell.

• 27:46Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 27:46David Sacks?

  And, you know, again, if you, if you take measures that are perceived as too drastic by the rest of the world, then you will inflame the opinion of other countries. You'll turn it against Israel. So again, it's a really tough situation, but I think that the US should not only affirm its support for Israel, it should only denounce the atrocity that happened on 10/7. But I think it needs to reiterate, the Biden administration does, its support for a two-state solution. I think that the US has to be on record that what's in everybody's long-term interest, including Israel, is ultimately a two-state solution. And the Palestinians are eventually going to have to have their own state. There's simply no way around that.

• 28:30Jason Calacanis?

  Right. Yeah. And the free world, I think, is in the process of getting engaged in making this happen because it's in everybody's interest. This can't keep going on. And so hopefully this, again, I don't want to say silver lining, but I hope that this, the good that comes out of this is that the world focuses on resolving this conflict.

• 28:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Were you surprised at all, Jason, by the amount of people that seem to be almost justifying?

• 28:59Jason Calacanis?

  That was shocking to me. I mean, the fact that people could make any kind of equivalence between terrorist activity and the level of brutality, I can't even describe it because it'll trigger my PTSD, which I had after 9/11 and it still affects me. I'm sitting here not far from. Ground zero and you know for people you know educated people oncologists campuses or just otherwise to blame the Israelis for the murder of children for people being and then justifying rape and torture kidnapping I mean there is no justification and there's no equivalency there's no equivalency here and this is one of the big problems and you

• 29:42Jason Calacanis?

  know these dopey kids on Harvard's campus or whatever they have never experienced evil or suffering we can we can literally just dismiss these idiots because these are kids who have never faced evil

• 29:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I don't I don't think you can I think one of the things that was shocking to me was the level of basically either subtle or latent antisemitism

• 30:07Jason Calacanis?

  unconscious yeah subtle whatever

• 30:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  that it unlocked and I was also shocked at just Saks has used this word before but it's true but our leading educational institutions have really become woke madrassas they are inculcating kids with just some virulent poison

• 30:26Jason Calacanis?

  I think the reaction is always to go after to support the underdog I think in this group of people whoever they perceive it

• 30:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  that is a that is an idiotic simplification that the smartest schools in the world educating the smartest kids in the world should be capable of seeing past

• 30:41Jason Calacanis?

  that's how they think that's how they think

• 30:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  it can't be that simple

• 30:43Jason Calacanis?

  that's not my feeling I think that there's it's half antisemitism it's half they just think who's the underdog I'm taking that side yeah I didn't get that simple it is in the woke mindset yeah

• 30:54David Sacks?

  well look I think it was disgusting and disturbing to see these organizations and these elite institutions being unable to denounce Hamas's terrorist attack and the atrocity that took place or turning out in the streets to celebrate what happened and we saw a lot of that too look even if you support the Palestinian cause even if you believe that they've been mistreated even if you think that their land has been occupied they deserve their own state even if you believe that

• 31:27David Sacks?

  War against the state of Israel is justified on that basis. These were still war crimes. These were beyond the pale of war. Again, Hamas did not just attack some military installations on the border and kill soldiers or capture soldiers. The vast majority of the people who were killed were civilians. And there was no conceivable military purpose in, for example, paragliding into a music festival, a festival for peace, by the way, and then rounding up and slaughtering the concert goers. There was no conceivable military justification for going into these kibbutzes or farming communities.

• 32:05Jason Calacanis?

  Burning kids.

• 32:06David Sacks?

  Mastering families.

• 32:07Jason Calacanis?

  No, it's deranged.

• 32:08David Sacks?

  It's deranged.

• 32:09Jason Calacanis?

  It's deranged. It's terrorism. And the fact that they can't frame it as terrorism is insane.

• 32:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But think about what happened, okay? I just want to frame the order of events, okay? 10/7 happens. And I think within 36 hours or less, let's take Harvard as an example, okay? The pinnacle of the woke madrassas. They had all these student organizations immediately come out trying to justify this thing without any information, right? Because in the first 36 hours, obviously not nearly as much information was available as to exactly what happened than it's been available now, as an example.

• 32:45Jason Calacanis?

  I should read this statement just so people have clarity here. Joint statement by Harvard, Palestine solidarity groups on the situation in Palestine. "We, the undersigned student organizations, hold Israeli, the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence. Today's events did not occur in a vacuum. For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promised to, quote, 'open the gates of hell,' and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced. Palestinians in Gaza have no shelters or for refuge and nowhere to escape. In the coming days, Palestinians will be forced to bear the full brunt of Israel's violence." This is deranged and sociopathic.

• 33:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  My point is, you have like 15 or 20 of these student organizations of all ilks, okay? So it's not just pro-Palestinian groups. It was like the Harvard Sikhs Association, okay? Like Sikhs in South Asia are the most peace-loving people in the world. They're not pro-war of any kind whatsoever or pro-terrorism. So all these people write this thing which blames Israel. Okay. Then the school is totally silent. The school doesn't say anything. They neither, they neither completely disavow that statement, nor do they come out with a more reasonable statement. All these ex-faculty and ex-individuals, Larry Summers, sort of leading, say, "This is outrageous,

• 34:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  have an opinion." They come out with something that's milquetoast and middle of the road. Then they get soundly rejected by everybody yet again. Then the administration comes out and gives a cleaned-up version that tries to allay everybody's anger, because that, the first statement, I think, basically, essentially pissed off everybody on both sides. Then, a bunch of alums, who've already graduated or who've given money, say, "These student organizations are outrageous. We will not hire anybody who's part of this, because their views are so immoral that we would never want these people part of our organization."

• 34:47Jason Calacanis?

  And so here it is, Bill Ackman, just so people have this, Bill Ackman said, "I have been asked by a number of CEOs if Harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas's heinous acts to Israel, so as to ensure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members." In other words, you must own your words, which is a important lesson for young people.

• 35:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So then what happens is, individual students actually have to come out, who are part of these associations that were signatories to the first release, had to disavow the statement, and said, "Actually, I'm just an Indian student at Harvard Law School." There's a, Nick, maybe you can find this tweet of this, like, Indian woman from Colorado, or of Indian heritage, and she's like, "You just get auto-recruited into these organizations when you join Harvard." So I'm like, "Well, wait a minute. This is a place that's supposed to be for, like, modern free speech, progressive thinking, and instead what happens is, based on your skin color, you get auto-drafted into some association, then you auto-sign any press release written by some person that you don't even see or approve."

• 35:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What is going on at these places? And these are the places that parents and kids are tripping over themselves, trying to get into. Kids will kill themselves if they don't get into. And these are the worst institutions in America, because, back to Jason, what we talked about earlier, which is, we need people who can think from first principles. Those kids are not it, and those institutions are not making them. And so if we want to have a point in time where, when things like this happen, we can really figure out... What happened in the past that was right? And what can we do in the future? It's not this, and it's not this kind of thinking. And if you're going to a school Harvard, Cornell, UPenn, Stanford, that are spitting out these kids. I think it's a real shame.

• 36:38Jason Calacanis?

  You're spot on. I mean, how, Sax, could there be any question about the difference between military terrorists, you know, with machine guns, gunning down people, dancing peacefully at a music festival at sunrise? And then make some equivalency there. And you cannot actually ascertain for yourself that is a terrorist act. If you can't, from very basically opening your eyes and seeing what occurred, and you know, thank God in some ways for X not being censored, because you can actually see these things. And I know it's very difficult for people to watch. I don't have any judgment on people who don't want to watch it. But I think when the world sees these videos, and you're going to write this letter,

• 37:23Jason Calacanis?

  you should very quickly be able to discern military terrorist

• 37:30Jason Calacanis?

  fighters from hippie kids dancing at a music festival. It's plain as day. There's nothing, there's nothing to confuse you here. This is the most easy test. You have to be brainwashed to see something other than that.

• 37:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  These schools are woke madrassas.

• 37:47David Sacks?

  Yeah, so a couple of points on that. So if you look at their statement, I think it's appropriate and fine to express concern about the people, the civilians living in Gaza, and what the Israeli response might entail. I think it is fine and good to do that, both for humanitarian reasons and for self-interested reasons, if you're a supporter of Israel, because this could all spiral out of control. However, these people completely lit their credibility on fire from the first paragraph by saying that Israel is entirely responsible for what happened and not having one word of condemnation for the atrocities that had just been committed. They cannot even see the war crimes that have occurred.

• 38:33Jason Calacanis?

  They don't even mention Hamas. They don't even mention the actual people that perpetrated the crime.

• 38:38David Sacks?

  Right. So the question is, why? What is it about their ideology that blinds them to this atrocious massacre? And, and I think it is this, I do think it has to do with this, this woke mindset. The, the woke ideology is a form of cultural Marxism in which people are divided up into oppressor and oppressed groups. So in Marx's original teaching, you had the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, basically the oppressed and the oppressor. This kind of went through this cultural identity filter with woke, where again, people are divided up into identity groups. And so you've got men versus women, white versus black

• 39:19David Sacks?

  and brown, you've got straight versus gay, and so on down the line. And the, the idea is that there's a power structure. And if you are in one of these groups and you are by definition oppressed, and if you're in one of the oppressor groups, then by definition, you are guilty in a collective way. You're, you're suffering from.

• 39:42Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, by default, the people who are oppressed are the righteous ones.

• 39:47David Sacks?

  Right. But I think that what you see is that when you divide up the world this way, first of all, this is not a very accurate way of looking at the world. I mean, there are lots of minority groups in the United States that have done great. So for example, there's a book written recently about Asian Americans in the United States called The Inconvenient Minority. Why is it inconvenient? Because Asian Americans have done spectacularly well. They get into elite colleges and institutions at higher rates than, than whites do, which is why they're the primary group that's discriminated against by affirmative action before it was overturned by the Supreme Court. But the reason why the author called them the inconvenient minority is because their, their success in America refutes a lot of this

• 40:29David Sacks?

  sort of simplistic woke delineation between if you're a minority group, you're oppressed, and if you're, you know, in this white group, you're the oppressor. I think Jews have fallen into a similar type of categorization.

• 40:43David Sacks?

  Which is they're an inconvenient minority. They've been historically very successful in America despite there being existence of antisemitism. And I think that the woke ideology has reacted to this by saying, no, you know, Jews are not really an ethnic group. They're just whites. And so that's been the response, right, is well, let's just put them in the oppressor group. So we don't need to explain away their success. One of the problems with that is that you have to ignore the existence of antisemitism. And so they do, they just pretend like it doesn't exist. So here you have a situation where all of these things are in play. They've already predefined the Palestinians as being an oppressed people. And, and, and look, and I think in many ways they are, but they

• 41:26Jason Calacanis?

  They are not incorrect. Yeah.

• 41:28David Sacks?

  But they've defined it in racial terms, really.

• 41:30Jason Calacanis?

  Right. Right.

• 41:31David Sacks?

  And they've defined the Israelis and Jews really more generally as being part of an oppressor group. And so everything fits into that larger narrative. And so when members of one of these woke oppressed groups commits an injustice, they just can't see it. I mean, their version of social justice is always defined in terms of collective guilt. And if you're a member of an oppressed group, by definition, you're not capable of committing an injustice because you don't have the power.

• 42:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Do you guys think that Bill Ackman was out of line by saying, I don't want to hire kids from these organizations in these schools because it's just like these kids in these schools will bring, basically, I think what he's implicitly saying is distraction and it will lower the probability that I achieve my corporate goals. So these are not good workers.

• 42:22Jason Calacanis?

  Based on your comment about thinking from first principles and, and, you know, being able to assess the situation. I think that's probably what happens at a hedge fund. You have to place bets and you have to be able to think from first principles and be intellectually rigorous. This is the most intellectually lazy approach. I'm just going to sign a piece of paper without even thinking. So, no, I don't think he's out of line. I think it's an important lesson for people. This is not freedom of speech. This is owning your words. You must own your words and position. And it's important that young people learn this now. Have to own your words, whether it's on social media or signing some stupid petition that you didn't read. And, and there's a lot of backtracking going on right now, by the way.

• 43:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I can't believe that if I got into Harvard, I would get auto drafted into the Brown Men's Association just because of the color of my skin. That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

• 43:10Jason Calacanis?

  Fat gree group?

• 43:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean.

• 43:11David Sacks?

  Let's point out the double standard here that these elite Harvard students want to be exempt from their, their words, their statements. They don't want to be canceled for that. However, you know that when some hapless schmuck basically posts some tweet or posted a tweet 10 years ago that gets resurfaced, they're the first ones clamoring for their cancellation.

• 43:33Jason Calacanis?

  Right. Yeah. They would like to be.

• 43:35David Sacks?

  For their firing.

• 43:36Jason Calacanis?

  They would like amnesty for their idiotic opinions. Yeah.

• 43:39David Sacks?

  Well, it's good, good for the goose here. It's good for the gander. If they're, if they're gonna create a cancel culture where people get canceled for their decade old tweets and so forth, then they should be prepared to live by that standard. Now, look, personally, I would have some degree of forgiveness for a college student being part of an organization that puts out a statement, they're claiming they didn't know, okay, but then why didn't you resign? Look, I don't think there's a good excuse for this other than youthful stupidity. So I would, I wouldn't cancel them forever. But look, I do think that it's fine for inappropriate for someone like the lack and say, I don't want to hire you people.

• 44:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah. And I would just be careful for you to add the word youthful, because I think it's this get out of jail free card. It's definitely stupidity. The question is, is the cake baked? And if the cake is baked, then there's a big argument to never hiring these people. I mean, look, I would just say.

• 44:30Jason Calacanis?

  Your frontal lobes are still developing until you're 25 years old. So I, I would give college kids a bit of a pass if they do stupid stuff. You're there to learn. You're there to make mistakes.

• 44:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But that's not what I'm saying.

• 44:39Jason Calacanis?

  This is a huge mistake. You're saying the bakes fully baked, you mean like their, their opinions and who they are are fully baked?

• 44:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What I'm saying is you learn a lot from actions. Drink too much, don't drink. Don't exercise enough. You get a little sluggish, maybe a little overweight. I get all of that.

• 44:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm not convinced that when you have this fundamentally specific way of thinking, that you can unwind that so easily, Jason. So I'm not convinced-

• 45:04Jason Calacanis?

  Oh yeah, okay, sure.

• 45:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  -that this mind virus gets fixed because you all of a sudden need a job. I actually think like, maybe it's the struggle of realizing that there are deep consequences to this vein of thinking, that this oppressed versus oppressor. Or the other way that it was framed in our group chat, is that woke-ism and the embracement of socialism is basically running away from excellence. It's this idea that everybody has to be the same. What communism says, "We all are the same. Nobody is special. We're all gonna work together, do the same things. We're all gonna dress in the same ways. It's the collective we. There aren't going to be exceptional outliers." But the problem is, that's not how the world works. And so, the other part of why these woke

• 45:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  madrassas are so terrible is that it teaches, I think, to work away from excellence. And instead of striving for excellence, to strive to be part of a collective. And I think that that is fundamentally corrosive to America. It's corrosive to what got us here. It's corrosive to all the great countries in the world. And so then again, it's like, why would you hire kids who fundamentally don't want to be excellent? Who are afraid that if they were excellent, they would be guilty of something? That's ultimately the question. Why would any of these kids go to such an elite school to basically be taught that it's wrong to excel?

• 46:26Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Well, let's say, I think, perhaps a good segue-

• 46:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then as a result, not think for yourself. And then as a result, sign something like this, which is just stupid.

• 46:35Jason Calacanis?

  We'll continue to discuss this topic, I guess, in the weeks ahead. Again, hopefully, this conversation was productive for the community, the all-in community. I understand that, you know, people might have very strong feelings about, you know, us discussing it, but we're here to discuss difficult topics.

• 46:53David Sacks?

  There's one other aspect to this, I think we should talk about, which is the United States' larger geopolitical situation right now. I mean, things seem very tenuous. I did an event with Palmer Lucky, actually.

• 47:05Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, friend of the pod, friend of the pod. Tell him I said hi. My invite got lost.

• 47:09David Sacks?

  Yeah, we actually had a nice debate slash discussion on Ukraine. But the thing that I think we agree with is that the US better bring more innovation into the military industrial complex and figure out like procurement, because our whole cost plus system right now is so broken. There's an article recently in the New York Times where it said that the cost to the United States of producing an artillery shell is $6,000. For Russia, it's $600. So in other words, it costs the US 10 times what it costs Russia to produce an artillery shell, even though Russia is considered to be this super corrupt kleptocracy, where everyone steals everything. And yet our procurement system is 10 times more inefficient than theirs.

• 47:53Jason Calacanis?

  We don't have competition and all the politicians are captured, correct?

• 47:56David Sacks?

  We have this cost plus accounting system where every year, the price goes up.

• 48:00Jason Calacanis?

  Good opportunity to explain that, yeah.

• 48:01David Sacks?

  So in every other part of technology, price goes down over time, right? You can produce more of something for less. We've seen this with Tesla, we've seen it with PCs, we've seen it with television sets, whatever it is, the price goes down over time.

• 48:18Jason Calacanis?

  Laptops, servers.

• 48:19David Sacks?

  Yeah, or if the price goes up, it's because you've developed some fundamentally new capabilities, some new version, you know.

• 48:25Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, more powerful chips, more storage, faster speed.

• 48:28David Sacks?

  But, you know, we're still making the same artillery shells, the same Stinger missiles, the same Javelins and so forth. I don't think the capabilities have changed that much, but the price goes up every year because it's cost plus. And so.

• 48:42Jason Calacanis?

  Explain cost plus. People might be hearing that for the first time.

• 48:45David Sacks?

  Well, you know, most companies sell something and then they have a profit margin.

• 48:48Jason Calacanis?

  Right.

• 48:48David Sacks?

  But the way that government procurement works is the profit margin is controlled. They're only allowed to market. It up a certain amount above their cost. But the thing that's happened in the defense industry is there's been huge consolidation over the past couple of decades where now you've got a handful of defense companies. And it's an oligopoly. And many of these key armaments are single source. So there's only one producer and they just keep raising the price every year. Now, one of the kind of crazy things about this is, and Palmer made this point, is it's all like anyone's getting rich. Because of cost plus, it's not like the money is basically making these companies.

• 49:27Jason Calacanis?

  There's no incentive to lower the price. If you lower the price and you're at 10% and you got your $6,000 down to 4,000, 10% of 4,000 is a lot less than 10% of 6,000.

• 49:37David Sacks?

  What's happening is not creating.

• 49:38Jason Calacanis?

  Perverse incentive.

• 49:38David Sacks?

  Google like margins. What's happening is that these companies keep building their bureaucracies bigger and bigger. So they hire lots of staff. They make a lot of campaign contributions. They fund think tanks. And so their cost structure just keeps getting more and more bloated.

• 49:54Jason Calacanis?

  Right. They're incentivized to do that. The more they charge, the more they make.

• 49:58David Sacks?

  Right. Now, why am I bringing this up? Well, we're in a situation now where Israel might be on the precipice of, well, they've declared war against Gaza and this thing could spiral out of control and become a regional war.

• 50:11Jason Calacanis?

  They may be asking for weapons, yeah.

• 50:13David Sacks?

  They may be asking for weapons. We've already donated some. However, earlier this year, we used to have an ammunition stockpile in Israel. The United States did. It belonged to us, but it was there potentially in case of a problem in the region. And that artillery stockpile was basically taken and given to Ukraine. And remember, we ran out of the key type of ammunition in the Ukraine war, which is 155 millimeter artillery shells. That's why we gave them cluster bombs. So the US is already dangerously low on ammunition. And that's before we get. Potentially another war or another front in this larger

• 50:55Jason Calacanis?

  We get asked to support another country's war.

• 50:58David Sacks?

  Right.

• 50:58Jason Calacanis?

  To be clear, we're not at war, but we have been

• 51:01David Sacks?

  Right.

• 51:01Jason Calacanis?

  asked to donate weapons to Ukraine and we've been asked to donate.

• 51:04David Sacks?

  Yes.

• 51:04Jason Calacanis?

  I think Israel has asked for weapons. I don't know if they formally asked, but we are obviously going to provide them.

• 51:10David Sacks?

  I think there's a bill making its way through right now that's going to give some aid to military assistance to Israel. By the way, we

• 51:17Jason Calacanis?

  Israel also is a major builder of weapons too. I mean, their drone technology is incredibly refined and they sell weapons to Russia and the folks.

• 51:26David Sacks?

  Israel is nowhere near the Ukraine situation. Ukraine is 100% dependent on the United States for its military and for its economy. Israel has a vibrant military and economy without the United States. But the United States does make long-term security guarantees to Israel not to fight its wars. There's no mutual defense treaty. However, we do agree to provide them with weapons in the event of a war. So we do have obligations, like longstanding obligations to them. This is an ally we've had for 75 years. However, our stockpiles are dangerously depleted now because of the Ukraine war. And on top of that, our procurement system is hopelessly broken.

• 52:08David Sacks?

  So in a world of rising multipolarity, where there are other great powers now in the system, where there are going to be more and more global threats, I don't think we have a chance of maintaining our global position and supporting our allies unless we fix this. I mean, making artillery shells at 10 times more than what it costs Russia, that's ridiculous.

• 52:31Jason Calacanis?

  In Silicon Valley, we have now the funding of military startups and there's a whole new class of warfare, supersonics, drones.

• 52:41David Sacks?

  Innovation is the only advantage we have. It's the only advantage we have.

• 52:44Jason Calacanis?

  And it's happening, right? I mean, this is one of the great things. I mean, I understand Palmer is not a huge fan of mine, but I'm a huge fan of the work he's doing and other entrepreneurs are doing to make new weapons to keep us competitive because you can be sure China's making them. And so I think it's absolutely fantastic. I thought it was always very weird that Google, speaking of work madrassas, like Google employees were refusing to provide services, like even basic cloud hosting services to the military. That to benefit from democracy and living in America while then not supporting the military just seemed like the ultimate luxury belief to use Rob's term from the Paul and Sami Chamath. Your thoughts?

• 53:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What does it take, guys, to for this fever to break, for for all of these people to realize that that level of corruption is not sustainable, that these ways of thinking are not sustainable, that it's not a path to peace and prosperity, that we actually want excellence in society, we want people to be outliers, we want the whole of humanity to move forward, and that's not going to happen when we move necessarily as one blob, but a few people need to sort of clear the brush and lead the way, and the rest of us will come in and fill it in behind them.

• 54:00Jason Calacanis?

  I think Vivek is the manifestation of it. I'll be totally honest. Like, I think the reason he is going up in the polls and the reason people are drawn to him is because he's smart and he's exceptional. And he represents one of the great things about America is that there's people who want to win and they're smart and excellent. He represents excellence, right?

• 54:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He represents excellence.

• 54:19Jason Calacanis?

  And so I think that's why people are drawn to him. And I think people are tired of the military industrial complex, they're tired of corruption, they're tired of geriatric, you know, 80-year-old politicians. We need young, successful people to take leadership positions.

• 54:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And by the way, I really agree with what you're saying. I think that there's like excellence can show itself in different forms. I think why Obama was so profound, and Joe Rogan said this, was he was such a statesman, he was the best of us, but he demonstrated excellence in being composed and measured and thoughtful and strategic. He was just so excellent.

• 54:56Jason Calacanis?

  Clinton as well.

• 54:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Clinton as well. Clinton was incredibly steeped in policy. He was excellent. He was intellectually A massive outlier. Obama is an intellectual outlier. Vivek is an intellectual outlier. Let's get these people to change and run our system of government, please.

• 55:19Jason Calacanis?

  I think we're soaking in it.

• 55:20David Sacks?

  Yeah, we need smarter, more capable people. I mean, you look at Biden when he gave that speech in support of Israel. I mean, a lot of the words were right, but he was like slurring his way through it. Certainly does not inspire any confidence.

• 55:31Jason Calacanis?

  It was, it was his best speech and it was concerning the fact that he's clearly in cognitive decline. You can see it in his ability to orient and, you know, it was his best speech and it was also troubling for me as somebody who voted for him to watch him slur his words or just not, it was clear he wasn't all there. And you're like, geez, what are we showing to the world if this is the guy who's running the country? And if we reelect him, now we're saying, hey, we want to have an 84 year old running the country who's not all there and is in cognitive decline. Let the guy retire. Let him spend time with his grandkids.

• 56:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think it's more people who are willing to vote for, not for what they want, but to prevent something else. And I think that that's what's, that's what's so tragic about how we're thinking as a country right now.

• 56:14David Sacks?

  Yeah. And just, just to dish it out equally, I mean, I saw Trump give a recent speech where, look, he's nowhere near the cognitive decline of Biden. I think he's still compos mentis, but he's not as sharp as he used to be either. I mean, listen, I think America's basic situation, and this has really been reaffirmed over the past week, is that we're no longer in unipolarity anymore. We're no longer the sole superpower.

• 56:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, not for some time.

• 56:38David Sacks?

  China is now a superpower. They're probably the low cost manufacturer of the world. So when we talk about being able to make things like armaments and artillery shells and weapons, they have the ability to outproduce us. That is very scary. There are other great powers in the system now. Russia has proven over the last five months through his victory and this counteroffensive, that it is a power to be reckoned with. We cannot disregard their concerns anymore. And not only does America need, I think, top flight leaders, like intellectually, who are at the top of their game, but we also need new thinking. We need to be able to sidestep challenges and conflicts as opposed to walking into every single trap the way that Lindsey Graham wants us to. Again, I'll go back on the Ukraine war.

• 57:23David Sacks?

  I think it's really clear that we could have avoided that war if we had taken NATO expansion off the table. And whether you believe that or not, it was criminal not to try.

• 57:32Jason Calacanis?

  If it was a 5% chance, it was worth trying. So you and I would be in alignment.

• 57:36David Sacks?

  And now look at our situation. We're already mired in the Ukraine proxy war. Now Israel's on the brink. We need smarter people, smarter thinking in Washington. We are no longer the only superpower. We're gonna have a really tough time in a multipolar world if we do not look for ways to de-escalate conflict when we can.

• 57:54Jason Calacanis?

  Or, putting aside conflict, why are we not building deep ties with as many countries as possible? Deep cultural ties, deep economic ties, deep diplomatic ties. Every time we are in dialogue with a country and we're building a relationship with that country, that means free people of the world are winning, you know, and every time we isolate a country, that does not go well for us.

• 58:18David Sacks?

  You're right. We're sanctioning half the world. That's another big part of this problem.

• 58:21Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. And so, you know, the normalization of relationships and the deepening of relationships, that is the high order bit. And you need somebody in office who can do that. And, you know, if you look at how the, you know, the hawks in the GOP or the hawks in the Democratic Party think, they think that we have to be at war with everybody. They think we have to isolate everybody. You know, the fact that Trump went and that famous moment where he walked over the, in the DMZ in North Korea and was talking to Kim Jong-un, that moment, you see on Kim Jong-un's face, we can put it in here, he is so happy to be recognized. Now, listen, I understand.

• 58:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, he has this like shock.

• 59:00Jason Calacanis?

  People suffering.

• 59:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He has a shocked look on his face. Like, I can't believe this is happening.

• 59:02Jason Calacanis?

  Right. The same way he did when Dennis Rodman came over.

• 59:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, it's like, it's like a fan meeting Taylor Swift. If you look at those videos and you compare it to this, it's the same.

• 59:10Jason Calacanis?

  And, and culture is our export. And I know this sounds...

• 59:13David Sacks?

  What you're talking about, Jason, is soft power.

• 59:15Jason Calacanis?

  Simplistic. Yes.

• 59:16David Sacks?

  It can't all be, it can't all be hard power because other countries have it too now. So we have to work on our soft power, but you're not going to enhance American soft power with all this belligerent rhetoric, really this omnidirectional belligerence that's coming out of Washington. And this is why I think the smart thing for Blinken to do, or the Biden administration is, yes, you reaffirm that you stand with Israel in the face of this unspeakable atrocity at the same time, and you don't have to do this right now, because it is a little bit tough to do it right now.

• 59:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  With 100 hostages.

• 59:47David Sacks?

  But at some point, soon, you have to reaffirm your support for the two-state solution. And I think the United States has always supported it.

• 59:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And by the way, I think Tony's done a really good job, but again, at the end of the day, Tony works for President Biden, and it's like Biden hasn't been nearly as definitive as he could have been, and Tony's had to clean it up. So one example of this is like in the Wall Street Journal, they immediately on Sunday, that was ruined, went to blaming Iran, right? And then both the Israeli military intelligence and American intelligence, they had to do an entire press circuit to try to disarm this in a way that was not seen in a long time. And you have to ask yourself, why, why is that even happening? And it's like, well, whatever special interests wanted to get that on the front page of the Wall Street Journal was able to do it, but it has dangerous implications.

• 1:00:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then what you need is a really strong leader that can step up and say, this is false, this is not happening, this is what we need. You needed an Obama in that situation, and I think that this is sort of-

• 1:00:47Jason Calacanis?

  Or a Clinton, yeah.

• 1:00:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Or a Clinton.

• 1:00:49Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Reagan. And, and I think that this is an opportunity for us to ask ourselves, okay, who is the most dynamic, excellent candidate that can give us this and be open-minded and not make this line about Republican versus Democrat right now? Because the world is getting super complicated. We need someone hyper, hyper excellent and intellectually competent.

• 1:01:15David Sacks?

  Well, I will say this for, for Trump is that he's the only president in recent memory who didn't give us any new wars.

• 1:01:23Jason Calacanis?

  Best quality.

• 1:01:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25David Sacks?

  I think he has a-

• 1:01:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I have a lot of-

• 1:01:27David Sacks?

  Despite, despite all of his issues, I think he has a unique ability to project strength to the American public while not being one of these super hawks. He's actually, I'd say relatively dovish.

• 1:01:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, he, he actually walked through his secret plan. He's, he said, I can't remember where this clip, but he said whenever he met with these folks, he basically left a 10% chance that he would nuke them.

• 1:01:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's what he said. And it turned out that that 10% was just enough for the, where everybody

• 1:01:53Jason Calacanis?

  Just enough crazy for everybody to stay in line.

• 1:01:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It was just enough.

• 1:01:56David Sacks?

  Well, but see, I see, I, I think the US already has enough deterrence. I think we've maxed out on deterrence. I think the thing that was smart about Trump was that he was willing to do business.

• 1:02:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yes.

• 1:02:05David Sacks?

  He was willing to negotiate and he didn't feel the need to make these moral condemnations all the time. He was willing to meet with Kim Jong-un. He was willing to meet with Putin and, and Xi Jinping. And he avoided criticizing them personally. He didn't call them dictators. He talked about how smart they are.

• 1:02:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26David Sacks?

  It's the art of the deal, right? I mean, at the end of the day, he's looking to do business. And we need a little bit more of that. And I think this is why Jared Kushner was successful is he went in there with the mindset of a businessman.

• 1:02:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:37David Sacks?

  How do we find something that's beneficial to both sides?

• 1:02:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Totally right. I think that when Trump was elected, I was told that it was the end of the world. And that's what I thought. And I'd already underwritten him as an F. Okay. And then four years into the presidency, he was probably like a C in my mind. And then as I get a little bit of distance away, I realized, no, hold on a second. This guy was like a BB plus. Like he was pretty good. And unfortunately, the few things that if he, if he could have just pushed through, would have really saved America. The biggest one being these 100-year bonds. It, it would have kept America from getting to the precipice of fiscal ruin. And we'd be in a highly different situation. And I'm not sure we could have

• 1:03:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  ever given him credit for it. But the further and further I get away from him and the less emotional I am, he did a pretty good job. He was a pretty good president.

• 1:03:31Jason Calacanis?

  Don't forget that he tried to overturn the election and steal the election.

• 1:03:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I voted for Hillary Clinton. I voted for Joe Biden. But this is the honest assessment. The guy did, for the things that he was supposed to do, a good job. And for where every other president found a way to frankly, make our situation a little bit worse, specifically around wars, he did not do that. And that is a huge accomplishment that I think needs to be acknowledged.

• 1:03:56Jason Calacanis?

  And he would have ripped up the constitution and taken the presidency and stolen it. So just keep that in mind as well. Less we give him a huge pass.

• 1:04:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's why he's not, that's why he's not an A. He's a B, B plus.

• 1:04:10David Sacks?

  Jason, you have to admit, if it weren't for the black swan of COVID, he would have been reelected in a landslide.

• 1:04:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Landslide.

• 1:04:16Jason Calacanis?

  It's quite possible he would have been reelected. Yeah. I mean, I, and also, yeah.

• 1:04:20David Sacks?

  By the way, I mean, at this rate, the way things are going in this country right now, both economically and internationally, he's going to waltz into the White House. He's going to spend all of his time in the next year in, in the courthouses, battling all of these lawsuits, the lawfare against him. He's not going to be able to campaign and it won't even matter because people are going to be so done with this.

• 1:04:41Jason Calacanis?

  And nobody wants him as president again. So I think that's, that nobody wants to, everybody wants new choices. All right, everybody, if you do not want to hear us talk about complex issues in the world, you can unsubscribe from the pod. We're going to be here every week, having hard discussions, listening to each other and learning together. Uh, you don't have to agree with any one of us, uh, but we are, um, we're happy to have the difficult conversations and learn every week here.

• 1:05:08Jason Calacanis?

  And yeah, our, our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and the friends of those impacted by this heinous terrorist attack. And I did, I don't know if anybody has any other closing remarks here, but obviously we're heartbroken and we, we hope that peace prevails and that the hostages are released as quickly as possible.

• 1:05:31David Sacks?

  Well said.

• 1:05:33Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody, this is episode 149 of the All In Podcast. Uh, next week we'll, we'll talk about all the different topics, but for this week, we're going to let it sit where it is right now. See you next time. Bye bye.