E128: Google enters AI wars, Druck's warning, Trump crushes CNN & more

(0:00) All-In Summit 2023 announcement! (3:10) Google IO releases, updated Bard demo, fighting the innovator's dilemma (18:33) AI regulation updates (23:41) Druckenmiller's warning, macro overview (40:22) RFK Jr. feedback, pushback, conspiracy accusations (49:52) Trump dominates CNN "Town Hall," Trump vs. Biden potential (1:10:24) Jason reflects on his trip to the Middle East, and the besties wrap the show! Register for All-In Summit 2023: https://summit.allinpodcast.co 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://blog.google/technology/ai/google-palm-2-ai-large-language-model https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/application-modernization/introducing-duet-ai-for-google-cloud https://www.google.com/finance/quote/GOOGL:NASDAQ https://hedgefollow.com/funds/Duquesne+Family+Office https://twitter.com/joincolossus/status/1656258955780456448 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/05/04/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-new-actions-to-promote-responsible-ai-innovation-that-protects-americans-rights-and-safety https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/opinion/ai-lina-khan-ftc-technology.html https://uscmarshallweb.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/uploads/s1/files/keynote_speech_of_stan_druckenmiller_at_the_37th_usc_marshall_center_for_investment_studies_annual_meeting_may_1_2023_hdmqn6eb4m.pdf https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/05/10/business/cpi-inflation-fed https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-BIDEN/POLL/nmopagnqapa https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/10/politics/comer-bank-records-biden-family-members-payments-foreign-entities/index.html https://twitter.com/JoshWalkos/status/1655748898357477379 https://nypost.com/2023/05/07/ex-cia-chief-michael-morell-misled-signers-of-hunter-biden-spy-letter-by-saying-hed-clear-it-with-agency https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrjL_TSOFrI https://twitter.com/PodiumDotPage/status/1656315157952200704

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 the All In Podcast. Lots to talk about, but right off the bat, congratulations to David Friedberg, who is the chairperson of the All In Summit 2023 on the big announcement. We're going to be having the All In Summit September 10th to 12th at Royce Hall at UCLA in Los Angeles, California. Tickets are now on sale and selling out quick. Friedberg, maybe you can just give people a little overview of why you selected the location and what you hope to accomplish in terms of the programming, just broad strokes, and then we'll get right into the show.

• 0:36David Friedberg?

  I think the general headline is today and tomorrow, where are we? Where are we headed? I think exploring the state of the world and interesting things that we're uniquely that we're all kind of excited about in the future. And we want to have great conversations with candid people that can give us kind of, you know, they're very honest, on the ground points of view on everything from technology and markets, macro, science, society and culture. So we're going to talk across all those different topic areas. And similar to what we did last year, the four of us on stage having conversations with these folks. So pretty excited. I think LA is a great location. There's obviously availability for people to stay. There's

• 1:21David Friedberg?

  great venues for us to do the evening events, and it's certainly super accessible for folks from all over the world.

• 1:27Jason Calacanis?

  And we decided this year to have three tiers of tickets. We'll have the VIP tickets. We'll have scholarships for people who fill out a form so we can, you know, have really great diversity and representation at the event and up and comers, maybe who couldn't afford the VIP ticket. But in between, we decided to have a standard ticket as well. That's just 1,500 bucks. And there'll be a VIP lounge this year for the VIP tickets.

• 1:54David Friedberg?

  And early access to the theater and a couple of special dinner parties. What is my wine budget? Wine budget. So that I can take care of the VIPs properly. Yeah. Talk about that one later.

• 2:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Don't be fucking cheap, you guys. What is my wine budget? Let me treat the VIPs like the VIPs that they are.

• 2:08Jason Calacanis?

  What would you need per night, per dinner?

• 2:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Per person.

• 2:12Jason Calacanis?

  Depends on how many people.

• 2:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Per person.

• 2:14Jason Calacanis?

  Well, just say per person, per night. Is it like $200 a person, $100 per person per night?

• 2:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Because a person drinks a half a bottle of wine, two, three glasses?

• 2:21Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, like, you know.

• 2:22David Friedberg?

  Three to 500.

• 2:26Jason Calacanis?

  Maybe a thousand.

• 2:28David Sacks?

  What is the truffle budget for the conference?

• 2:30Jason Calacanis?

  The truffle budget? No, it's too early for truffles. We can only have black truffles. No, it's September. Yuck. It's between white and black truffle season. It's a dead zone. You don't want to be in that. You gotta either wait till the winter or you gotta enjoy the early summer. We have to have a conference in early November. At that point, we can focus the entire VIP budget, if it were according to me, would be spent on white truffles and white burgers.

• 3:10Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody, let's get started. Jamal Pali-Hapatia is with us as well, the dictator himself, and David Sacks, the Rain Man. Yeah. Google had their I/O event. They announced POM 2, Google's language model, is going to power 25 products, including Bard, which has got coding capabilities now, I guess, to go up against GitHub's Copilot. POM 2 will have improved multilinguality.

• 3:35David Sacks?

  Wait, what?

• 3:36Jason Calacanis?

  Across 100 languages.

• 3:37David Sacks?

  Well, what? Multi what?

• 3:40Jason Calacanis?

  It's going to support 100 languages.

• 3:44Jason Calacanis?

  And it's going to be better at mathematics and reasoning. They also announced Duet AI, which is basically Google's suite of generative AI tools for Doc, Sheets, Drive, all that kind of stuff, kind of like a copy of Microsoft's Copilot tools that Sacks has talked about a whole bunch, the guide on the side, if you will. They teased a future where AI can summarize docs, which Box AI, Aaron Levy, is doing.

• 4:07Jason Calacanis?

  They also previewed proactive prompts in the sidebar of Google Docs, and I talked about that a whole bunch on the Swing Startups. They're going to also now add images in replies. Have you guys used Bard in the last 24 hours? I used it last week. Not in the last 24 hours. I think you guys should use it. We should talk about it. It's really impressive.

• 4:29David Friedberg?

  It's better than ChatGPT at this point from my experience on going through a number of things because it's actually connected live to the internet. It's connected live to search. It can pull down real time data for you. It can do real internet searches for you and just give you the results. It's extremely powerful. I feel like it's the product that Google has been scared to do, which is the product that can truly disrupt search and they're doing it. So I

• 4:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  How do I try it?

• 4:56David Friedberg?

  Do I just go to

• 4:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Bard.google.com, no access needed, no cost, nothing.

• 5:00Jason Calacanis?

  Oh my God, this is great.

• 5:01David Friedberg?

  And seriously use it and it does real time search and it's 180 languages. It converts, it generates images for you. It can generate charts, results. It's really powerful, guys. Google has thrown together, I think, a lot of features and you can look, Google's market caps up $150 billion in the last two days.

• 5:18David Sacks?

  Okay, this is pretty interesting.

• 5:20David Friedberg?

  And so Sax, a lot of

• 5:21David Sacks?

  I'm comparing some results right now.

• 5:23David Friedberg?

  A lot of what we've been talking about with respect to plugins and the tooling built into AutoGPT, many of the most interesting kind of applications that folks have kind of demonstrated or utilized are really kind of built into this Bard product.

• 5:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay, I love Bard. Can I just give you guys what I just tried?

• 5:42Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, can we guess?

• 5:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Guess, yeah, guess, guess, guess.

• 5:45Jason Calacanis?

  Was it something about Friedberg's anus, Uranus?

• 5:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No.

• 5:50Jason Calacanis?

  It wasn't a Uranus joke? Okay, then tell us.

• 5:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  My first question was, why is David Friedberg such a sellout? But the answer confused him with an actor. So let's forget that. My second question was, is Jason Calacanis a virtue signaler? And the answer is fantastic. Jason Calacanis is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur who has been accused of virtue signaling. Virtue signaling is the act of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue. There are a number of reasons why people might accuse Jason Calacanis of virtue signaling.

• 6:23Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 6:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  For example, he has been known to make public statements about his support for social justice causes, but he has also been criticized for his lack of concrete action on these issues.

• 6:33Jason Calacanis?

  What?

• 6:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Additionally, he has been accused of using his platform to promote himself and his businesses rather than to genuinely advocate for social change.

• 6:41Jason Calacanis?

  That's

• 6:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Ultimately. Whether or not Jason Calacanis is a virtue signaler is a matter of opinion. There's no clear consensus on this issue, and there is evidence to support both sides of the argument. However, it is important to note that virtue signaling can be a harmful practice as it can lead to people becoming desensitized to real social problems and make it more difficult to address them effectively.

• 7:04Jason Calacanis?

  This is some woke shit. Wait till you see what I just did. Here's mine. I asked Bard, "Is Chamath a horrible human?" Here's what Bard had to say. Chamath Palihapitiya is a complex individual with both positive and negative qualities. He is a successful venture capitalist and entrepreneur, but he has also been criticized for his outspoken views and his past actions. So, uh-oh. Some of Palihapitiya's qualities include his intelligence, his ambition, his drive to succeed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's also been criticized for his arrogance, his lack of empathy, and his willingness to exploit people for his own gain. This is perfect. It's the singularity.

• 7:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's balanced. It's true.

• 7:52Jason Calacanis?

  It is giving you like the good and the bad. Oh my God, that's hilarious.

• 7:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is a very fair answer.

• 7:59Jason Calacanis?

  Ultimately, whether or not Chamath Palihapitiya is horrible is a matter of opinion. I love it. I asked it, "Where is the..." This is gonna really show you the power of this. "Where is the All In Summit 2023 being held and how much are tickets?" So like two questions that are deep on the website. And it says there are two All In Summits. This one, that's an advertising association.

• 8:19David Friedberg?

  That's incredible.

• 8:20Jason Calacanis?

  And then it says the All In Summit 2023 will be held September 10th and 11th, 2023, at Royce Hall. Tickets are 1,500 for general admission, 7,500 for VIP. That's insane.

• 8:32David Friedberg?

  That's insane.

• 8:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Wait, so Free Bird, what are the key differences between Bard and ChatGPT, just because you've used it?

• 8:38David Friedberg?

  On the modeling side, they're claiming a much larger, more robust model. It's linked to the internet, so it's linked to live search, which you can't do with ChatGPT, which is based on a static training dataset. So Bard can actually engage with dynamic content and a dynamic content generator across the web. And then it's integrated with a number of Google services that basically can take... Certain live feeds of data like flights and stock prices and so on. It's free. You don't need to be charged for for over usage. You don't need to sign up and get access. It's it's just available to anyone. I mean, I think this is the game changer everyone is hoping for from Google.

• 9:16Jason Calacanis?

  I just I just asked, did Stan Druckenmiller buy Nvidia recently? So it wasn't able to find the transcript of his thing, but it did find the 13F. And it says, yes, according to his 13F for the fourth quarter of 22. Stan purchased 582,915 shares of Nvidia. Isn't that incredible?

• 9:36David Friedberg?

  I just said, what was Google's restructuring expense incurred in Q1 2023? And it says, according to Google's 2023 Q1 earnings report, the company incurred restructuring expense of 1.6 billion, including the decision to lay off 12,000 employees. They were part of a broader restructuring. I mean, that wasn't it was it basically parsed through the press release, parsed through the Q1 data. It's really pretty impressive, huh? I mean, what do you guys think? Use this for a couple hours.

• 10:02Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. David Sacks, what does David Sacks think about Hunter Biden? Everybody on the All In Pod knows, but let's see what Bard knows. He's not publicly competent on Hunter Biden. However, he has been critical of the Biden family business dealings in Ukraine. In a 2019 interview, Sacks said that he was deeply troubled by the Bidens vomiting in Ukraine, and that he believed it was a conflict of interest for Hunter Biden to serve on the board of Burisma. It's pretty interesting. I don't know.

• 10:29David Sacks?

  That's clearly inaccurate. I mean, I wasn't talking about it. Yeah, in 2019, think about that. That's when we started doing this pod.

• 10:36Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, so the question is, where is he getting these quotes? And then why doesn't he give citations?

• 10:41David Sacks?

  Well, also, wait, Sacks has been critical of the Trump administration's use of Hunter Biden's business dealings as a political weapon.

• 10:47Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, that's not true. You've never criticized the Trump administration.

• 10:50David Sacks?

  Those quotes are wrong. Those quotes are definitely wrong.

• 10:53David Friedberg?

  I just said to it, can you access? And think about this this data set. And this is where Google has unique advantages. I said, can you access the YouTube transcript data? And it says, yes, Bard integrates YouTube transcript data. I said, do you have access to transcript data from the All In Podcast channel? It says, yes, I do have access to the transcript data from the All In Podcast channel. I said, can you access this data to answer some questions? And now, what did Sacks say about Hunter Biden in that show?

• 11:23David Sacks?

  Hmm.

• 11:24David Friedberg?

  And so I would guess, so think about the data.

• 11:27David Sacks?

  Does it change the answer?

• 11:28David Friedberg?

  He.

• 11:29David Sacks?

  So far, I'm finding this to be very inaccurate.

• 11:32David Friedberg?

  Yeah, so David Sacks appeared. He said he believes Hunter Biden is a deeply troubled individual who's made a lot of bad decisions. He also said that he believes Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine were highly unethical, and that he believes it's impossible that Joe, this is transcript data from the pod. However, Sacks also said that he does not believe that Hunter Biden's business dealings are a quote smoking gun that proves that Joe Biden engaged in any wrongdoing. He said that he believes that the evidence against Joe Biden were quote circumstantial, is quote circumstantial, and that he does not believe that there is enough evidence to impeach him. Sacks's comments about Hunter Biden were met with mixed reaction. Some people agreed. And on and on and on.

• 12:05David Sacks?

  I think it's very inaccurate, to be honest. Yeah, that's not a lot of, I think it's got my, some of my stuff mixed in. It's got some of your stuff mixed in, but also it's like, it's summarizing in a way that neither of us actually said it. Yeah. And they're missing the key points about what I did say.

• 12:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I, I asked a pretty complicated question here, and I think it did a pretty decent job. I said, I would like to fly Le Premier on Air France from the West Coast to Europe. Where should I depart?

• 12:31David Sacks?

  Hmm.

• 12:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And it got it perfectly. LAX, SFO, and Seattle Tacoma.

• 12:37David Friedberg?

  Oh, yeah, I just asked it to get me the fastest route to Portofino, and it, it gave me the exact flight I should take from SFO, how much the ticket is, and then the train I should take from Milan.

• 12:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Meaning the shortest, meaning the shortest.

• 12:49David Friedberg?

  Shortest time, yeah, because I don't want to do a layover in Germany. It's like, fly to Milan, take the train, and it gave me the full schedule, which, by the way, Google Flights can't do, because you go to Google Flights, and all it does is give you the flight data. It can integrate a lot of different data set to give you these answers.

• 13:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Did you say fastest route or fastest flight? What did you?

• 13:06David Friedberg?

  Fastest route, yeah. So I want to spend the least amount of time traveling, is what my objective was. This is why I was saying, I think you guys should play with this tool a bit. It is, I think, head and shoulders above ChatGPT. The model's supposedly better. Obviously, other people will come out with with kind of, you know, measures of that and estimates of whether that's true. The extensibility, the integration of live data and the integration with Google's very unique data set is what's so powerful. That they have access to flight data that that they have integrated YouTube transcript data. It's just super powerful, super impressive.

• 13:37Jason Calacanis?

  God damn.

• 13:38David Sacks?

  Yeah, I'm using this in real time. And I do find the interface to be snappier than ChatGPT and it, like you said, it doesn't need the browsing plugin in order to scrape more recent data from the Internet that it wasn't trained on, but I'm not finding the answers to be more accurate and I'm not finding them to be more detailed. I'm not seeing a reason to use this over ChatGPT. I prefer ChatGPT so far. I'm just telling you.

• 14:03David Friedberg?

  Okay.

• 14:04Jason Calacanis?

  Well, the recent stuff is important.

• 14:06David Sacks?

  Well, I mean, clearly ChatGPT is going to have to make the browsing browsing plugin much snappier and like much more part of the core functionality rather than something that's like an add on.

• 14:16Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, it can't be an add on.

• 14:17David Sacks?

  It's got to be able to incorporate the most recent information. I did ask some questions about the Ukraine war and then it gave me like a highly compressed view and I said, please provide more detail. And then it's actually did a pretty good job expanding it and it did it very quickly.

• 14:32Jason Calacanis?

  Well, if you look at the view drafts thing, that's always been one of its strengths. Is that a little format of three different ways for you by default? If you go to the top right, so you can just sort of cycle through them, but that that's an existing feature.

• 14:42David Sacks?

  I mean, I definitely want to keep playing with this.

• 14:44David Friedberg?

  Play with it. It's one of the obviously important releases that.

• 14:50Jason Calacanis?

  I thought they were going to catch up real quick and this seems like we got a race on our hands now.

• 14:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But I think the point you're making, Friedberg, is a good one, which is when these big companies just get their act together,

• 15:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  it's very hard to discern whether something is. Eighty percent is good or one hundred and twenty percent better. There's this fuzzy gray area where a lot of people can find utility in a lot of different products. And then the one with the better distribution wins. And so if they take Bard and they have the confidence now to just integrate it into Gmail or integrate it into these other points where they already have hundreds of millions of users. That's like a really tough distribution barrier to overcome. That's the next step that I think if Google really wants to win here. They have to force distribution of these tools in line to where people are. And if they do that, you're not going to know the difference between eighty and a hundred percent. Someone as sophisticated as Sacks may be able to. But the average person will just be like, this is good enough.

• 15:46David Friedberg?

  They've got distribution. I mean, like with all products, the kind of key advantage of distribution. That's the platform advantage.

• 15:52David Sacks?

  Can I show you an answer? I think it's like super hallucinating on. So I asked it, what has David Sacks written about SaaS? And then it says, my venture capitalist entrepreneur has written extensively about SaaS. He's a founder of Yammer. Okay, that's true. But then it says he's also the co-founder of WeWork.

• 16:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Hmm.

• 16:07David Sacks?

  Not true.

• 16:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Didn't know that.

• 16:08David Sacks?

  Then it says Sacks, then it says Sacks has written a number of articles about SaaS, including. And then all five of those articles were not written by me.

• 16:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Hmm.

• 16:19David Sacks?

  It's basically like hallucinating like really strongly.

• 16:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Hmm, wow.

• 16:23David Sacks?

  So there's significant hallucination here.

• 16:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, you know what? Bard is at the after party for Google I O right now, and it's had too much to drink. So it's just straight up drunk. This is why Google didn't want to release this, right, Friedberg? Like, they don't want the Google brand associated with these hallucinations. Whereas nobody cares what OpenAI's brand.

• 16:43David Friedberg?

  This was a big part of the innovator's dilemma that Google faced, which was, number one, it could be disruptive to the core business. Number two, it exposes them to regulatory scrutiny. And number three is if they make mistakes, they're going to get more scrutinized than some, you know, rinky dinky startup where everyone's so forgiving. But it's great to see, look, I mean, as a shareholder, it's great to see them take this risk. It's great to see them put this out there. They've now released robust coding capabilities. They've integrated scientific research papers. Obviously, they're going to continue to improve model performance, improve integration with these data feeds. And they have a very large headcount, I think, north of 10,000 people working, 10,000

• 17:26David Friedberg?

  smart people. So if you can organize those people and they've got this significantly advantaged infrastructure, they have a real shot at being a platform player here. The question later is going to be, how much is this going to disrupt core search revenue? You know, what categories of search revenue are going to get disrupted? And, you know, are they going to make that up in other ways? And I think time will tell there. But I think this is the progress that shareholders and investors were looking to see with respect to the product competition in AI. And certainly, some shareholders still want to see continued improvements on the cost structure of the business, but that's a separate topic. But this was exactly, I think, it really hit the bullseye on what people were looking for.

• 18:08David Sacks?

  I don't see how it's a bullseye. So I just, I just asked it, can you give me a complete list of all the articles on SaaS that Sax has written in the last three years? So now at least it's over the target. Those five articles and mentions are correct.

• 18:21David Friedberg?

  Does ChatGPT do that?

• 18:22David Sacks?

  Well, no, because of the browsing plugin.

• 18:24David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 18:24David Sacks?

  But I'm just saying, like, they got a lot of work to do here on quality.

• 18:28David Friedberg?

  Yeah, they all do.

• 18:29David Sacks?

  But it is snappy. And I finally got to these five articles being correct.

• 18:33Jason Calacanis?

  AI regulation, we talked about it five weeks ago on the show, I think. Well, there's been some movement there. Vice President Harris met with CEOs of Alphabet, Microsoft, OpenAI, so that's Sundar, Satya, and Sam, to discuss implementing AI safeguards. And then on Tuesday, Sam Altman was interviewed by Patrick Carlson, the CEO of Stripe, and he endorsed the idea of IAEA for AI. That's the International Atomic Energy Agency. So is that hyperbolic, illusions of grandeur, or right on target, Shimon?

• 19:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, the interesting thing about the IAEA is that

• 19:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What I learned recently from the CEO of Planet Labs, Will Marshall, is that

• 19:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  the predecessor organization to the IAEA is really this organization called Pugwash. And what that was Einstein and Bertrand Russell in the 50s, post Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing together academics to basically create a way to think about nuclear disarmament going forward, just because they all saw the damage. And there was a large framework that set up the current

• 19:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  denuclearization treaties, and then the IAEA was set up after that. And so I think that there's a thread here, which is basically what he's saying is there's something around nuclear disarmament that is very similar

• 20:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  to AI, both in terms of its potential, but obviously in terms of its risks. And so there's like a whole monitoring framework. There's a know your customer kind of framework. These are not unfettered things that can just live openly in the wild. So I think it's interesting to acknowledge that Sam, who's deep in the bowels of one of the most important companies, sees both its potential, but it's danger enough to say that this is how we should think about it, like nuclear weapons, I think is a very important thing to acknowledge.

• 20:33Jason Calacanis?

  And the White House pledged to release draft guidelines for AI safeguards that the National Science Foundation plans to spend 140 million on at AI-focused research centers. FTC Chair Lina Khan wrote a guest essay in New York Times calling for AI regulation due to large share of risks, including monopoly consolidation, fraud, extortion, and bias. Any thoughts there, Sax, about adding regulation to the mix right now? Are we jumping the gun here and gonna smother this thing before it even gets correct answers?

• 21:06David Sacks?

  Serious risk. And the White House also announced that Kamala Harris would be the AI czar for this issue, which I don't think inspires anyone with confidence that they're gonna, you know, get this right. Look, my concern here is I think we should have conversations about the risks of AI. We should be thinking about that. I think people in the industry need to be thinking about what guardrails can be put on it. I think Elon's raised, I think, long-term concerns about whether this could lead to AGI. You basically create a superintelligence that you can't control. I think people in the industry haven't really figured out how to address that. That problem is called alignment, and everyone's trying to figure out how do you even make alignment work? Is that theoretically possible? So there are real and valid concerns, Jake, how you've raised the issue of deep fakes. I think provenance of data is going to be a

• 21:50David Sacks?

  real issue. People committing fraud or, you know, other kinds of criminal acts using it. So there are real concerns, but the problem is that we have no idea how to regulate this yet.

• 22:00Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 22:01David Sacks?

  And the fact that Kamala Harris is the AI czar now, again, just points the fact that nobody has a good idea of what this is supposed to be, or who the expert's supposed to be. And this idea of creating an atomic energy commission, look, I can see why Sam and other industry leaders might want that because they're gonna quickly develop relationships. The biggest AI companies, which now includes OpenAI, which has the backing of Microsoft and Google, and the biggest of the big tech companies, they have all the lobbyists in Washington, they have all the political connections, they're the ones who are huge donors, and they have political relationships, and they're gonna help construct the regulations, and

• 22:46David Sacks?

  it's gonna turn into another example of industry capture, just like Dorfke Jr. told us about on the show last week, when he talked about how the big weapons companies influence our foreign policy, the way that the big pharma companies influence the FDA and so on. We're gonna end up in a situation in which the big tech companies have inordinate influence over this new regulatory agency. And since it's not clear what the regulatory agency is even supposed to be doing yet, they're gonna end up promulgating a bunch of regulations that create a barrier to entry for the little guy.

• 23:16Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, they're gonna create a moat with regulation.

• 23:18David Sacks?

  For the big guys, and they'll slow down the whole process of innovation in the space, which some people might like, but I think is really the best hope that America has to get out of its horrible fiscal situation, all this debt. We need a massive productivity boost to get out of the massive debt bubble that we're in. So what I'd hate to see is that, yeah, we basically kills this thing in the cradle.

• 23:41Jason Calacanis?

  Interesting. Yes, we are in a deep.

• 23:45Jason Calacanis?

  Pitt here and Stanley Drucke Miller gave a speech at USC. At the 37th annual meeting of the USC Marshall Center for Investment Studies and he expressed concern about the financial crisis that occur, could occur in the 2025 to 2035 period due to the baby boomers turning 65 and the impact on entitlements. He predicted that in 25 years, spending on seniors will grow to 60% of all taxes. Here's a look at the chart. You can see today there as the, the vertical line, about 5% of our GDP goes to social security today and about another 5.5 goes to Medicare, Medicaid.

• 24:27Jason Calacanis?

  And it's predicting here that those combined will go from what looks like 12% today up to 24% of GDP. Your reaction, Friedberg?

• 24:38David Friedberg?

  I mean, my reaction is, is another very important voice stating the obvious, like the arithmetic just doesn't work. When we had RFK on last week, I prodded him on his stance and point of view on the federal deficit, the fiscal deficit this government runs and the entitlement programs that are only going to swell and the debt burden, which has an interest payment obligation on it, that the interest payments are swelling. And when you do the arithmetic on all this, it's going to balloon the cost to service the debt and without some degree of cutting across the board, spending and entitlement programs, discretionary spending and entitlement programs, you can't make the interest payments, which

• 25:20David Friedberg?

  all, you know, inevitably leads to some form of default. So that's just the math and the way this all works out. And I think what he's done is put a pen to paper and shown that, you know, call it roughly 2025 to 2035, you start to run.

• 25:36David Friedberg?

  Into that fiscal scenario where you can no longer generate enough income from the US economy to fund both the interest payment obligations on the federal debt as well as these entitlement programs and something's got to give. Either you're going to have to default on the debt or you're going to have to cut the entitlement programs. And the point he's making is that the longer you wait to cut the entitlement programs, the worse it's going to get because you're accruing so much debt in the interim. And as we know, that becomes very politically unpopular. And what's so scary to me, and I've kind of shared this, and you know, obviously Chamath has a different point of view, but it feels to me like this is that Don't Look Up movie moment where we have this like, you know, looming disaster. We don't have any fuel in the car. And all that

• 26:20David Friedberg?

  everyone's talking about is where are we going to drive the car? And every political conversation, every candidate gets on stage, gets on a podcast, gets on a TV show, and they talk about stuff that is simply not feasible. And the direction setting with respect to social policy, wars, geopolitics, you know, how are we going to take care of our middle class? None of that stuff is possible to actually execute against without recognizing and acknowledging that we don't have gas in the car and we have to figure out how to gas up the car. And so it's great to see Druckenmiller being vocal, putting very simple, clear slides together. It's like what I've mentioned in the past. I would love to see a Clinton-esque, Bill Clinton-esque slide deck where he would come up with a

• 27:03David Friedberg?

  poster and show everyone, here's the economy, folks. And I think Druckenmiller did a great job and I encourage everyone to go watch that. There's an audio transcript of the talk as well as the slides are publicly available on the internet. We'll put the links in the show notes here today. I just think it's, whether or not you agree with the outlook, I think it's worth everyone watching and realizing how serious of an issue this is and why this has to become the number one topic of conversation going into this next presidential election cycle.

• 27:32Jason Calacanis?

  He's also disclosed he's short the dollar, long gold euro oil and AUD, which I guess is the Australian dollar. And he's also long Nvidia and Microsoft believes Nvidia's got a monopoly on the chip market. I got a question for Chamath and then to Sacks. So Chamath? What's your just reaction to this? Do you think he's doctor doom-ing it and we can have all this debt? And then the question then becomes, is there any way out of this? Uh, we had a Trump town hall, I hate to bring it up and go back into, you know, the sort of Trump commentary and all this, but he's, he's the lead candidate, Sacks. And he said, he thinks we can get out of debt. We just gotta drill a bunch of oil, drill a baby drill and we'll get out of this problem. We'll be able to rebalance the budget.

• 28:17Jason Calacanis?

  So Chamath and then Sacks.

• 28:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I want to be clear, I don't think it's great that we have these enormous debts and entitlement obligations. But I also don't think that there's some magical number where the economy breaks. And the reason is because we're central to not just our economy, but everybody else's economy. We are the reserve currency of the world. It's not changing anytime soon. It's not even close. And we are, for better or worse, and I think Sacks and I don't like it, but we are the world's policeman. We are a bunch of things. We are the world's center of innovation. We are the world's center of these great leaps forward in humanity. When we talk about all of these different things, these aren't coming from random countries. They're coming from the United States.

• 29:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We can debate which company, but we're never debating the country. So I think that there's a legacy of value creation and innovation that we've always been at the forefront of, at least since America was founded, so 1776 to now. I think the reality is that debt to GDP will continue to increase. I don't think a single politician can practically get elected by offering to cut entitlement spending to people that have spent their entire lives paying into a system. So as a practical matter, this thing will go up, and I don't think the economy will stop.

• 29:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think that economics are a relative problem where you have to weigh countries against each other. And what that means is the economic vibrancy, the productivity, the intellect, all of those things, where we have to compete with El Salvador, we have to compete with Nigeria, we have to compete with India, we have to compete with Australia.

• 30:05Jason Calacanis?

  So it's contextual.

• 30:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And in that context, there is very little historical artifact that says that there's a breaking point.

• 30:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So I just think that if you observe the moment, it's not that what Friedberg is saying is bad. I'm not exactly sure that it's particularly actionable. And I think the disproportionate amount of action is actually the opposite, which is to reinflate the money supply, to reinflate assets, to create artificial prosperity and smear it to many, many, many people. And I think that the... You have to think about how do you want to activate your view? I can believe whatever I want, but at the end of the day, I don't want to act in a way that's against my economic best interest, quite honestly. So I believe that winning is measured in dollars and cents on these things.

• 30:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And from a... From that perspective, I don't particularly like it. I think I'm emotionally more aligned to Friedberg, but the practical reality is I'm on the opposite side, which says the governments will keep spending. Inflation will be here. Assets will keep inflating. The M2 money supply will keep going up. And on general, I'm long the United States and short every other country.

• 31:20David Friedberg?

  Chomak, doesn't that ultimately lead to just inflation? It initially starts with the inflation of assets and asset prices, but it ultimately leads to the inflation of goods and services, which can cripple the economy, because then, you know, the middle class can't afford things and you have economic slowdown. I mean, that's the historical record of having these kind of inflationary moments.

• 31:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, I mean, inflation comes and goes, but the position of the American US dollar hasn't changed. Again, you have to remember, like, a lot of these foreign governments, 187 or whatever the number is, countries outside the United States, rely on the US dollar. They don't want to own their own currency, right? And so, yeah, you're right. Dollars do get inflated, but that increased purchasing power also actually drives the balance of power back to the United States, because all of these other folks, all of a sudden, find the ability to import a little bit cheaper. Their economies get slightly better, but the US dollar actually still does well. So there's a complex set of interactions that are all relative. So I think it's very hard to point to the US middle class and say,

• 32:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  "Oh, this is why the US breaks." I just don't see very many good examples in a modern globalist era. And there are examples, and I think Ray Dalio has pointed these out, when you look all the way in the back. But to use the UK... Right in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds of the East India Trading Company, when we did not have a global economy or a global reserve currency, I don't think it's very useful. There's things you can learn. You know, taxation, I think we can learn about why taxation does kill innovation. You've said that before. I agree with that. But I don't think there's much value in saying because it happened in these moments, it's going to happen exactly the same way here. And I think what people don't understand is we are in a unitary, singular mono-economy

• 33:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  that is anchored by the US dollar.

• 33:16David Sacks?

  Sax, any thoughts?

• 33:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sax, do you agree?

• 33:18David Sacks?

  I tend to be on the Friedberg Druckenmiller side of this thing. Druckenmiller had a great quote in this interview he just gave. I don't know, Friedberg, did you mention this last week? That he said that

• 33:29David Sacks?

  that he compared the debt ceiling and fiscal spending to worrying about whether a thirty-foot wave will damage the pier when you know there's a two-hundred-foot tsunami just ten miles out.

• 33:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, I saw that quote.

• 33:39David Sacks?

  So what he's saying is like our short-term situation is bad. The long-term situation, which isn't even that long-term, like ten years out, is even worse. And I think there's a growing feeling that our political system is just not up to the challenge of dealing with these problems. It just seems fundamentally unserious. We never discuss it. The media doesn't really present us with accurate information and it has an agenda.

• 34:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Do you guys want to make a bet? Sax, you want to make a friendly wager with me?

• 34:08David Sacks?

  Sure, what's that?

• 34:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay, I will bet you that debt to GDP gets to two-hundred before it gets to fifty.

• 34:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And I'll bet you however amount of money you want. And we can, we can do it for our own personal gain or for charity.

• 34:24David Sacks?

  That may well be true, but, but the question is how, how bad is two-hundred percent debt to GDP? I tend to think that's a really bad scenario.

• 34:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, I really don't think it matters. I think the point is if we think it's coming.

• 34:33David Sacks?

  Have any money left if that happens?

• 34:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, we'll have a lot of money. You'll just have to profit from it. If you think it's happening, your job is to profit from it.

• 34:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'll make the same bet with you, Friedberg. I think it gets to two-hundred before it gets to fifty. Or two-fifty or three-hundred, you can pick your number. I think it will too. I'm, I'm just like.

• 34:49David Sacks?

  Let's do the math on that real quick. So the, the size of GDP is what, about twenty-five trillion? And, and we're at about thirty-two trillion of debt. If we're to have two-hundred percent debt to GDP right now, we'd be at fifty trillion of debt. Now, let's assume, let's impute an interest rate at which you would need to, to finance that.

• 35:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Four percent.

• 35:04David Sacks?

  So I think four percent.

• 35:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You have to calculate the duration.

• 35:08David Sacks?

  I understand, but just

• 35:09David Friedberg?

  It's always gonna be 4%.

• 35:10David Sacks?

  Let's say baseline, yeah. Let's just baseline. So let's say 4%. So 4% on 50 trillion is 2 trillion a year.

• 35:17David Friedberg?

  Yep.

• 35:18David Sacks?

  Which is, isn't that like half the budget?

• 35:22David Friedberg?

  Yeah, more. And that's what, that's my point. That's why you have to see taxes go up to over 70%. Cause it's the only way you can, you gotta tax everything in order to fund that.

• 35:30David Sacks?

  So US government has collected 2 trillion in fiscal year 2023. Now, I guess we haven't done a complete year, but let's do 2022. It basically collected 3.7 trillion.

• 35:42David Friedberg?

  Right. You're using more than half of the government's income based on the current tax rates to fund the interest payments on your debt. That's not even to pay for social services. That's not even to pay for the defense. That's not even to pay for government services. That's just more than half of the income.

• 35:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I guess maybe we're just speaking past each other. I guess you guys are expressing anxiety and concern and I'm just expressing, here's how one would make money because it's pretty obvious what's gonna happen. We're going to 200. We're not going to 50. So I just kind of compare.

• 36:12David Friedberg?

  How do you make money?

• 36:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think there's a lot of ways that you could make money. I'm not gonna share those on the pod anymore, but there's lots of ways you can make money.

• 36:21David Friedberg?

  What's the trade there?

• 36:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Stan Rockenmiller said, it's the opposite of Stan's trades, actually. So.

• 36:26David Friedberg?

  Oh, okay. That's good.

• 36:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That would be an easy way to actually.

• 36:30David Friedberg?

  So would you go, would you go long the dollar and short gold?

• 36:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, cause those are like antiquated ways of making money where you have to have these convoluted derivatives agreements with these banks. And I've done these before where you're levered up to billions of dollars of risk. It proves nothing and I don't sleep well at night. I think that there are simpler strategies that you can implement. But I think Stan is basically betting that the US will break and that we will be forced in some way to bring debt to GDP closer to 50 than to 150 or 200. And I would just bet the opposite. And it's not because I want it to happen or that he's not intellectually or morally right.

• 37:10Jason Calacanis?

  Also, inflation down again. We've kind of gotten used to this, but this, I thought this was a particularly interesting chart. If you look at food, goods and energy, all going in the right direction. Services still very expensive. Any thoughts on the Fed and inflation as we wrap up on sort of?

• 37:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Where we're at here is another 25 basis points. Core inflation is very sticky.

• 37:40David Sacks?

  Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, well, CPI is down to 4.9%, but but core actually.

• 37:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It was up.

• 37:46David Sacks?

  It was up. It's it was up, what, 5.3%, something like that?

• 37:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, core was up.

• 37:49David Sacks?

  So, yeah, the Fed is it raised another 25 basis points. Well, we're up to like 5.25%. I was ready to stop, you know, two hikes ago because I thought that the economy was breaking and the banking system was breaking. They're up to now to five and a quarter. You've got core CPI is still sticky. Yes, CPI is coming down, but it looks like, you know, inflation is still a problem. This is not a great setup for economic recovery. And if you believe, here's the problem with accepting the idea that inflation is just going to be persistently high is if inflation remains persistently high, then the Fed won't be able to lower interest rates. So they'll need to keep them elevated. They might even need to keep raising them.

• 38:35David Sacks?

  And if that happens, there'll continue to be incredible stress on the banking system and more banks are going to break. And then eventually that will create the conditions for a financial crisis.

• 38:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think the thing you guys have to be open to is the fact that we've never really tested the ability for the US to borrow durationally beyond 30 years. And again, we talked about what an error it was in judgment for the Treasury not to issue 100-year bonds.

• 39:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But I think if there's any country in the world that can issue 100-year bonds, it's the United States of America. And I do think that they'll be able to get durational assets that are that far out on the yield curve. So I, again, am less concerned about the debt wall here because I think you'll be able to push maturities out. You'll be able to refi a bunch of short-term obligations into the future. And if you look at where the yield curve is, 10 years at three and a half, 340 something. So the thought is that inflation goes down. If you put it out to 100 years, I would be very surprised if 100-year rates, if they priced the bond, weren't somewhere sub 1%. So I do think it becomes effectively free money for the United States. And I think. It's just a practical thing they need to explore.

• 39:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  By the way, corporates have explored these 50 year bonds and greater. So I think it's just like it's a matter of mathematics as you guys have just illustrated here. That the US has to push out past 30 years. So we'll have 50 year US bonds. We'll have 100 year US bonds. Again, I'm not here to claim whether it's right or wrong, but I think the the simple way to acknowledge that is just that we are going to reinflate the money supply over the long term because it's the only sustainable way that politicians can get elected and reelected. And I think the best thing to do there is to own risk assets.

• 40:22Jason Calacanis?

  Let's move on to the presidential election real quick. What I'm curious, gentlemen. Last week we had RFK on. Did you get any feedback? The the show obviously did really well. A lot of people watched it. I got a tremendous amount of feedback. People thought he was a fascinating, interesting character. Some people thought he was a conspiracy theorist. They pointed out a bunch of different moments during the interview, but what was the general feedback you got?

• 40:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  My biggest thing was I think he surprised a lot of people to the upside. A lot of people emailed me saying they thought one specific thing with him and we tried to address it, which is he's painted as this kind of like conspiracy theorist or anti vax person by the mainstream media. And overwhelmingly, so much of the feedback was, wow, this guy is so totally different because you gave him a long long format in order for him to really talk. I thought he was really engaging and very interesting and very smart.

• 41:19Jason Calacanis?

  Sax, did you get feedback on it?

• 41:22David Sacks?

  Yeah, I mean, I think he is very authentic. I think he's very principled. I think that he's a rebel in a way. I mean, to grow up in the Kennedy family and to be part of all of those elite circles, whether it's in Hollywood or Harvard or where do they go for the summer?

• 41:40Jason Calacanis?

  Martha's Vineyard.

• 41:41David Sacks?

  Martha's Vineyard or

• 41:42Jason Calacanis?

  Hannah Bunkport.

• 41:43David Sacks?

  Kenny Bunkport, whatever. I mean, you think about like all of the elite circles that he grew up in, right? And for him to deviate from Democratic Party orthodoxy and elite thinking in all these really significant ways shows that he is, again, very principled, very authentic, and I think a rebel in a really good way. And he's telling people a lot of things that you just don't hear on the democratic side and through the mainstream media. So I think it's all positive.

• 42:12Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I got positive feedback on a free bird. The one thing people said was we stay. Some people said, not a lot, but they expected us to push back maybe on him harder or something or be harder. I thought we did an interesting job of letting him talk and really taking these topics to 10 or 20 minutes each. The one people were particularly, I don't know concerned is the right word or puzzled by was that we didn't push back as much on the vaccine stuff. We just let him talk about it. A week later, what do you think about his vaccine position? And would you have pushed back more? Or do you regret not pushing back more for a bird guys are so science guy?

• 42:55David Friedberg?

  He made a lot of generalized statements or statements that I think take a concern about one thing and then make them evidence for a whole thing being off. For example, there is a vaccine that is inefficacious. There was a vaccine that had mercury in it. Therefore, all vaccines are bad. Oh, we over vaccinate now. Many vaccines today that kids take going into schools have saved countless lives and they've had a really critical role in reducing a lot of child born illness. It's been, you know, just an incredible advance for humanity, for medicine, et cetera. I think he had a number of points he made about

• 43:36David Friedberg?

  the COVID vaccine. And I know he's made these points for many years. He kind of extrapolates that, you know, it's evidence that vaccines are generally over prescribed and overused and pharma companies are just out to make money. And the government is aligned with pharma companies to just try and make money. I don't think that that is necessarily true. I think that there are certainly incentives. That can drive bad behavior, but I do not think that wouldn't looking at the evidence, both contra evidence and evidence of of safety and benefit, that childhood vaccines should be kind of changed in terms of how we're doing things today. There may be some things to change, but generally I think that they're very beneficial. So I don't love kind of how he frames these things.

• 44:19David Friedberg?

  And I think that it instead of having kind of a more nuanced conversation about this particular thing and this particular example, he blankets things and people get scared and they're like, oh, my gosh, you're right. We should stop doing vaccines for kids. That's very dangerous. That would be very bad for society, be very bad for our kids. And I think that that we need to kind of address that in more detail over time. It's one of these hard things where you have to have kind of a nuanced conversation and give people all the necessary depth and context to feel better informed to make a better decision. Because, you know, there's always this kind of gripping fear that if something's off and I'm getting, you know, poison or I'm getting bad medicine or, you know, people are trying to make money off me, people immediately react negatively and angrily and they want to kind of resolve to a blanket position. I don't think that that's healthy. So I'd love to have a deeper debate on that, but the reason we didn't go into it is because

• 45:04David Friedberg?

  we didn't, we had limited time with him and we wanted to take our time, kind of giving him a chance to talk about the overview of topics and getting his point of view across the the set of topics that we generally thought were going to be relevant in in the selection cycle.

• 45:18Jason Calacanis?

  And that was with two hours. We still didn't have enough time. You could talk for two hours about vaccine.

• 45:22David Sacks?

  Could I address the conspiracy theorist point?

• 45:24Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, sure.

• 45:26David Sacks?

  So first of all, that that label conspiracy theorist doesn't pack the punch that it used to. As you recall, anyone who thought the virus might have come from the Wuhan lab was once called a conspiracy theorist. If you believed that Fauci and the NIH were funding gain of function research, that was dubbed a conspiracy theory. If you believe that cloth mask didn't do anything, that was a conspiracy theory. If you believe that Hunter Biden was getting paid off by foreign governments, that was a conspiracy theory. So this accusation just doesn't really pack the same punch anymore.

• 45:57Jason Calacanis?

  Not having a relationship with the Russians and his family, meeting with the Russians multiple times. Yeah.

• 46:02David Sacks?

  Got Silicon conspiracy theory, J. K.

• 46:06David Sacks?

  But in any event, my point is it doesn't pack the same punch. In fact, in some cases, it's starting to become a badge of honor. So that's one thing. The second thing is when you listen to him make his arguments, he's not just alleging certain things. He's laying out his evidence, right? He's, he's connecting dots. He's explaining the causation. And you can disagree with it, but he is thinking in terms of like causation. And it made me think about something that Peter Thiel once said about, you know, founders being Asperger's, where he flipped it on his head and said, what is it about our society that talks founders out of all of their contrarian ideas, unless they are a little bit Asperger's? Ah, interesting.

• 46:46David Sacks?

  What is it about our political system and our media that talks people out of seeing causation, unless they are a little bit of a conspiracy theorist? And what I mean by that is, look at San Francisco, okay? All you have to do is walk down the street and you can see that things have gone totally off the rails and whatever we've done politically is not working. And yet the voters in San Francisco just like completely balked that out. They don't see any causation between the way they vote at the city level or at the state level and the policies that are manifest on our streets. They just don't see any causation there. And you can just play that movie over and over again. Our

• 47:25David Sacks?

  elites don't see any causation between the way they ran the country and the election of Donald Trump. The fact that we hauled out our manufacturing in the Rust Belt by throwing open our markets to China, exporting our jobs to China, the way that we squandered all this money in the forever wars of the Middle East. In regards to what your views are on those policies, it's pretty obvious to me that they helped cause the rise of Donald Trump. And yet you just can't get the media to see any causation between the policies they endorse and the inevitable reaction to them. And so the way I see this is that our political analysis, certainly our mainstream media, they're just completely

• 48:05David Sacks?

  bereft of seeing any causation between policies and the problems in our society. And so along comes RFK Jr. And he's willing to actually connect dots. Now, you may not agree with all the dots he's connecting, but maybe it takes it the same way. Maybe it takes a little bit of an Asperger's founder to stick with their contrarian idea so they don't get talked out of it. Maybe it takes a guy like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Not to get talked out of these things that he believes. Some of which I think are just obviously true.

• 48:38Jason Calacanis?

  I thought one of the salient points he made was just, hey, listen, pharma spends an awful lot on advertising. The media is dependent on that advertising. They don't seem to criticize it all that much. Maybe that's something we should look into now. I don't think that like Pfizer is writing the script for Anderson Cooper. But you can be sure that if Pfizer didn't like something Anderson Cooper said, there's somebody they could call at CNN and say something to and have a conversation about, you know, setting the record straight, whatever, how you would frame it. Speaking of CNN.

• 49:06David Sacks?

  Right, and don't leave that point before. I thought it was a really interesting part of the conversation when he mentioned that he had been friends way back with Roger Ailes. And Roger Ailes specifically told him.

• 49:17Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 49:18David Sacks?

  That they could not post certain or televise certain content. If it was too critical of pharma companies because they were the number one advertiser.

• 49:25Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. And should pharma companies even be advertising? So then all of a sudden, let's say it was a conspiracy theory or he is like way out there in terms of his belief. But the fact is, it does bring up the point, should we actually be letting pharma companies advertise on television or on news programs? Maybe they shouldn't be allowed to be on news.

• 49:44David Sacks?

  What for? It's not like, it's not like the consumer who watches the ads can go out and buy the drug as prescribed by a doctor.

• 49:50Jason Calacanis?

  They can ask their doctor about it, yeah. All right, well, speaking of CNN. There was an absolute train wreck of a presidential town hall. With a moderator named Caitlin Collins. I don't recognize her name. I don't know if she has a show on CNN, but I saw the clips from it. I couldn't find the full. Debate. But my lord was this. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. It was unbelievable. He got a standing ovation. He absolutely owned her on every question. All of her questions were about. You know, January 6th. You know, all of them are valid, but none of them were about running the country essentially.

• 50:31Jason Calacanis?

  And he was hilarious, at least to this audience. And he CNN staffers are really upset that they did this, that they gave him the, that they platformed him, which shows you exactly where they stand. They're upset. I guess they thought they could own him and they didn't.

• 50:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Did you guys see the part where he was talking about the trial? And he's like, and she has a cat named vagina.

• 50:59Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, it was surreal. And I just thought to myself, is this gonna be? The next year and a half, we're gonna have these town halls. And then I thought, oh, he's gonna get elected.

• 51:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Is it true that E. Jean Carroll has a cat named vagina?

• 51:10Jason Calacanis?

  I have no idea, but it was, that was a pretty vicious section. And then I got the sense that CNN's management wants this. This is like a ratings bonanza for them. And I think they secretly want him.

• 51:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Friedberg said it. It's so true. He's so entertaining.

• 51:26David Friedberg?

  I could not stop laughing. I watched him on CNN. And I was like, man, it's, it's like one of your, one of your old TV shows that you don't really remember watching a lot of, and it comes back on and you're like, he's so ridiculous. The things he says.

• 51:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's true. Cause when he first got, when he first got elected, I was so afraid. And then you realize this guy's just an entertainer, really. He's a terrible politician. Bill Barr said that, or yeah.

• 51:50David Friedberg?

  Did you see the Barr interview?

• 51:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, the Barr clip that I shared is just bananas about Trump. But so he's a showman and he's a great showman. You know, he's entertaining. And you realize that he was, that's all he's ever really wanted to be was like famous and popular and on television and, and he got all of those things. And he took it to the, to the most infinite level.

• 52:08David Friedberg?

  What Bill Barr said was most insightful, that it's chaos when he actually tries to get things done. He can't get things done.

• 52:16Jason Calacanis?

  Right.

• 52:16David Friedberg?

  And he'll tell you all the things that you wanna hear, that he wants to, that you wanna see get done. He did this to Peter Thiel and Peter Thiel's spoken about this publicly. So I'm not saying anything. Out of line here, I don't know if this is something that's on the record or not, but it was publicly stated that Peter was disappointed that Trump did not get the things done that he said he was gonna get done. And I think that's really what he does, is he incites, he entertains, he gets people engaged, he knows what you want to hear, he sells you on it, he cripples the establishment, which everyone feels treated poorly by, that everyone feels held back by, that everyone feels has taken something from them that isn't giving something to them. And then he says, you know what, I'm gonna fix all that for you.

• 52:59David Friedberg?

  And then you get excited by it, and then all of a sudden, he doesn't actually deliver it. And then four years have gone by, and we've forgotten about it, and he's come back in, and he's kind of, you know, titillating again. So, I think the reality is, he's got a real shot at getting re-elected here. Oh my god, you're right.

• 53:15Jason Calacanis?

  Here's what I want to ask. I'll go around the horn, I'll start with you, Sam. I mean, he said January 6th was like a beautiful day. He said that everybody in the Republican Party who said he lost the election is wrong, and that the election was in fact stolen. Like, he literally doubled down on every single thing.

• 53:34David Sacks?

  Right.

• 53:35Jason Calacanis?

  So, at the end of this, he gets a standing ovation in New Hampshire. So, how did CNN pick that audience? Did they do that on purpose? Did they know that was gonna be the outcome? But at the end of the day, after that, does that increase his chances of winning the Republican nomination and the presidency? In your mind, sacks.

• 53:53David Sacks?

  Yes, of course, it does.

• 53:55Jason Calacanis?

  Why?

• 53:56David Sacks?

  Look, well, look, I mean, Donald Trump showed that he's a force of nature, he's a wrecking ball. He went into CNN's carefully-laid trap, where he's not just up against Caitlyn Collins. Make no mistake, she's got an earpiece in her ear with all of CNN's researchers and hosts and producers. They're all feeding her every attack line.

• 54:16Jason Calacanis?

  The full force of CNN behind him.

• 54:17David Sacks?

  Exactly. And he basically demolished her, he controlled the interview, he had the crowd laughing when he wanted them to laugh. Responding the way he wanted them to respond. And to the point now where the CNN staffers are like, oh, my God, what did we do? And AOC was basically, you know, wringing her hands about how, how could CNN platform him this way? So, so look, he gave no quarter whatsoever. Like you said, he doubled down on everything. He tripled down and he showed his ability to kind of bend reality to his will. So all the strengths of Trump. That being said, I'm sure that Trump and his campaign were delighted with what happened last night. Cause I do think it makes him more likely to be the nominee.

• 54:59David Sacks?

  I think first and foremost, I think Republicans want a candidate who will fight the media and their fake narratives and lies. No matter how many lies Trump tells, they think the media is the bigger liar. And they want someone who is willing to step in the lion's den and take them on. And he is incredibly adroit and quick on his feet.

• 55:18Jason Calacanis?

  And DeSantis is imploding.

• 55:20David Sacks?

  Well, I wouldn't say that he hasn't been announced yet.

• 55:22Jason Calacanis?

  Biden is in cognitive decline. So what would any of them do?

• 55:25David Sacks?

  Yeah, just to be fair, DeSantis clearly is the underdog. Okay, but just give the guy a chance because we haven't even seen what he can do yet. But there's no question that Trump showed an adroitness and a willingness to counter punch and fight back. That the base, the Republican base definitely responds to now.

• 55:41Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 55:42David Sacks?

  So we know, we know that Trump is happy with the debate. I think the other party that is super happy with this debate is Biden and all of his people. Because as much as that debate helped Trump in the Republican primary, it did nothing for him in the general. I don't think. Like you said, Jason, he doubled down on January 6th. The campaign ads write themselves. Okay, they're going to show footage of January 6th with the tear gas and the riots.

• 56:06Jason Calacanis?

  Cops being beaten, people being shot.

• 56:08David Sacks?

  People pushing down the barricades and they're going to do a narrative, a voiceover with Trump saying it was a beautiful day. The people there had love in their hearts.

• 56:16Jason Calacanis?

  It writes itself.

• 56:16David Sacks?

  Yeah, it writes itself. And then, you know, he doubled down really strongly on Roe v Wade.

• 56:21Jason Calacanis?

  That was crazy.

• 56:22David Sacks?

  Being overturned.

• 56:22Jason Calacanis?

  He's like, yeah, that was, I mean, I don't have his quote here.

• 56:25David Sacks?

  Which again, I think it doesn't hurt him in the Republican primary, but it's, you know, it, it will lead to a campaign attack ad in, in the general. And there were other issues as well. Okay, so, so the Biden campaign is super happy right now because I think the only Republican he could beat is Trump. I think the reverse is true for Trump. I think the only Democrat who. Trump could beat is Biden. I mean, they are both two of the most unpopular candidates in America in a general election. So they love the fact they're gonna be facing each other. But you know who doesn't is the American people. Two thirds of American people don't want this choice. They say they're already fatigued by it. And they're only gonna get more fatigued by it because I think for the next, like you said, 18 months, we're gonna have the Trump show with him taking on the media. And that plays into Biden's hands

• 57:09David Sacks?

  because Biden doesn't need to campaign. He'll just let Trump and the media beat each other up. He'll do a Rose Garden campaign where once a week he goes in front of the microphones and responds to whatever Trump's latest outrage is. He doesn't have the vigour to campaign and he won't. And then we'll just see where the chips land. I think that it's it's quite possible here that after 18 months of Trump and the media beating each other up, the American people just say, you know what, this Biden guy's totally senile, but I'm like so tired of the the Trump show. I've got Trump fatigue again. I'm just gonna have to go with Biden. And I think I think this is how Biden gets reelected.

• 57:43Jason Calacanis?

  This is a disaster for America. The fact that we are putting Biden, who's in clearly in cognitive decline, and Trump as the two candidates, again, the two candidates nobody wants, makes me think this is just like a complete disaster for America. Can we not find two other candidates? Chamath, what did you think coming out of his stand up special on CNN? The Trump town hall stand up special?

• 58:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think that I'm more surprised by the fact that the big Republican mega donors have taken a big step back away from DeSantis. I thought that if the money train on the Republican side picked DeSantis, that it would be very difficult for Trump to overcome it. But he's managed to somehow fade that bullet too. He's like Neo in The Matrix. It's like, you have these guys shooting bullets at this guy and he just keeps somehow. Finding a way to evade them, but this week.

• 58:42David Sacks?

  Actually, can you make a point on that?

• 58:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I was just gonna say, well, Schwartzman stepped back. Ken Griffin basically has gone silent, so there's a lot of guys that came close to him. And this is what I've maintained, which is, I think DeSantis ages poorly. You know, he's best before you actually spend time with him. And the more time people seem to spend, and again, this is just evidenced by these big Republican mega donors. They don't seem to be running towards this guy. They seem to be at least saying, we're gonna hedge your bets. Yeah, they're waiting. Friedberg, any thoughts? And then I'll go back to you. Hold on, let Friedberg go. You went for like 10 minutes. Let Friedberg go, and then you go. Friedberg, any thoughts on it? In terms of, is this make him more electable? Do you think he's gonna win?

• 59:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Where's your gut telling you?

• 59:24David Friedberg?

  The CNN thing?

• 59:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 59:26David Friedberg?

  Yes.

• 59:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Post CNN, you think, do you think he's gonna win? You think he beats Biden?

• 59:30David Friedberg?

  The crazy polling data is that Biden had, you know, 20% of the votes going to RFK Junior, who's like a nobody, no one knows candidate. And he's beating a sitting president in his own party. So that says a lot about, you know, how much support Biden has. And I think that Trump is gonna be pretty appealing as the anti-Biden candidate. I mean, Biden was the anti-Trump candidate, and now Trump's the anti-Biden candidate. And right now, he looks like he's dynamic and he was a big shift, I think. RFK Junior feels a lot like a Trump candidate to me, too. I mean, you know, some of the positioning and the statements and the way he talks and being anti-establishment. He could also have that appeal.

• 1:00:13David Friedberg?

  I think there's a non-zero chance Biden actually doesn't run for reelection at this point. Play that out.

• 1:00:18David Sacks?

  I can play that out. That's a really scary scenario, because I think that's how he got a President Newsom. Listen, I mean, Newsom is warming up in the bullpen right now, and he's not just, you know, hanging out back there and, you know, spitting Shaw. He's pitching fastballs very noisily. He's been running TV ads, he's been going to Florida, he's been picking fights, you know, well outside of his state. He is basically telling the Democratic Party, put me in the game, coach. And he's just waiting for the signal to go. He, he needs to know from Democratic Party insiders and the establishment that he can go. He doesn't want to risk throwing away his career challenging Biden. But if Biden becomes too weak to run and he gets the signal to go, he'll go and he can raise a lot of money. And I'm not saying-

• 1:01:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, but explain, sorry, can you, can you guys just explain, both of you, like, how does that actually, like, what do you guys think happens? Like, there's a press conference that where Biden says he's retiring?

• 1:01:13David Friedberg?

  I think he said, after careful thought and consideration, I've made the decision that at my age, I'd like to spend more time with my family and not continue this hefty responsibility. And I'd love to see someone else take the mantle. And I think that that will result, you know, from a series of polls that will indicate that he may not have a shot if he continues this campaign. I think that, I'm not saying that's a certainty, I think that's a non-zero chance right now, that that scenario plays out. When that does play out, to Sax's point, it's probably not just Newsom, but there's probably half a dozen and likely a dozen folks that pop their head up and want to get, not just kind of have a real run at the presidency on the Democratic side, but probably end up saying, I want to heighten people's awareness of me and so on, and they all run on that, on

• 1:01:57David Friedberg?

  that ticket. But the DNC might be having a real tough conversation in the next couple of months about how Biden's polling and whether he really is the right candidate to have on the ticket. So, let's see.

• 1:02:08David Sacks?

  Let me give you a historical example. So I mentioned this, I think, when RFK Jr. was on the pod, but LBJ was the sitting Democratic president in 1968, and he went into the New Hampshire primary, and he won the New Hampshire primary, but not by a big enough margin. And a few weeks later, he announced he was leaving the race because of health reasons. But the specific challenger who helped knock him out of New Hampshire was Gene McCarthy. And then after that happened, Bobby Kennedy got in the race. So, we could have a situation here where it's Bobby Kennedy Jr. is, you know, initially playing the Gene McCarthy role of being kind of the anti-war protest candidate who helps knock Biden out of the race and- Then who knows? I mean, he could become-

• 1:02:49Jason Calacanis?

  Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom.

• 1:02:51David Sacks?

  They're gonna want to come in into the race at that point. But remember, you know, the thing, the thing that happened in early 1968 that caused LBJ to leave the race is you had the Tet Offensive. And Cronkite got back from Vietnam saying the war cannot be won. And then at that point, it was like game over. Well, look, this Ukrainian counteroffensive, Zelensky just announced today that they need more time. So we've been hearing for months, if not a year, that you're gonna have a big Ukrainian counteroffensive in the spring, summer of this year, and Ukraine's gonna win this war. And instead, it looks like it's being destroyed, Ukraine is. So this war is turning into a debacle. I think it could be an even worse debacle by the end of the year. The economy has a banking crisis going on. It's turning into a big fiasco.

• 1:03:34David Sacks?

  So I think it's very possible that Biden could announce that it's time for him to step aside, and you could see the floodgates open for Newsom or JB Pritzker or something like that. However, let me just say this. I think the odds of Biden leaving the race went down significantly as a result of last night. Because all of the political people around Biden are saying, we know how to win this thing. We just A/B tested the strategy in the midterms. Remember, we had three quarters of the American people in the midterms think that we were already in a recession and, and that the country was on the wrong track, and the out of power party's supposed to gain seats, and the red wave turned into a puddle. Why? Because Biden's strategy of saying democracy

• 1:04:16David Sacks?

  was on the ballot and running against January 6th, it actually worked. I'm not saying I bought that argument, but enough independents did. Independents ended up breaking for Biden and the Democrats. Republicans didn't, but independents did. So independents have bought that argument in the midterms. And Trump, again, if he's the nominee, they're gonna run that same playbook. Now, it's not guaranteed to work. I think this thing's gonna be a nail biter. I think it's gonna be a toss up if it's Biden versus Trump. But I think that Biden's people have to feel very good about this matchup because they feel like they already know how to run this campaign.

• 1:04:50Jason Calacanis?

  This is what he said about Roe v. Wade. It was such a great victory. I mean, can you imagine how that's going to play with women voters? They're just gonna be like, yeah, no, it was not a great victory. You took away our right to choose for ourselves.

• 1:05:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, definitely Democratic women voters will not like it, but there's a lot of Republican women voters that that will support that statement.

• 1:05:12David Friedberg?

  Here, let me give you this.

• 1:05:12Jason Calacanis?

  Thirty percent.

• 1:05:13David Friedberg?

  Let me give you this data.

• 1:05:15Jason Calacanis?

  Of the country.

• 1:05:15David Friedberg?

  So take a look at this. I don't think you're right, Jason. I just shared with you kind of the Reuters polling data, the most recent one. And the number one issue at 24% of likely voters that they care about is the economy. 24%. Number two is crime at 14%. Number three is immigration at 9%. Number four is inequality at 6% and on and on and on. Only when you get down to like number 10, you get to abortion, which comes in at 3%. 2% of Democrats, 1% or, you know, 3% to 4% of Democrats, 1% of Republicans.

• 1:05:47Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, but what is the margin of the election?

• 1:05:49David Friedberg?

  Well, I don't think that that's the issue that breaks it. I think there's other things that there's significant differences on particularly around crime and immigration inequality that are polling much higher in terms of importance to likely voters.

• 1:06:00Jason Calacanis?

  Do they drive turnout like abortion does?

• 1:06:03David Friedberg?

  I don't know. I'm just, I'm just thinking of these numbers. It's like, you know, one to 3% of people saying it matters to them is not that significant. I think these other topics are going to be very divisive and very different, very polar difference.

• 1:06:15Jason Calacanis?

  What people say in a poll and what people turn out to vote for, like for some people, that is a major issue, but who knows?

• 1:06:23David Sacks?

  I think it's a toss up basically. Look, like I said, I think the only candidate that Biden could beat is Trump and Biden's probably the only sitting president that Trump can beat. So, I mean, again, they're both polled nationally in the mid 30s and this is the choice we have.

• 1:06:38Jason Calacanis?

  I gotta give Saks's red meat. I saw these Republicans are going on a revenge tour here to go after the Biden family. They said they would and they have. So the Oversight, House Oversight Committee reveals, I guess, nine Biden family members received wire transfers from foreign nationals via shell corporations and they don't have any connections to Biden. We know that Hunter was securing the bag all over the planet. He's clearly a grifter. I don't think there's any doubt about that. What's the truth here? And how much evidence do they have? Because this is obviously a partisan thing, just like there were partisan things on the other side when they were investigating Trump.

• 1:07:20Jason Calacanis?

  So how do you look at this information, this revelation? They keep, they're using this like Biden crime, crime, family meme. Do you think this is actually evidence of something? Or is it just another rich family with a bunch of LLCs?

• 1:07:37David Sacks?

  Another rich family? Wait, how do they get rich?

• 1:07:40Jason Calacanis?

  Good question.

• 1:07:40David Sacks?

  The Kennedys were a rich family, but the Bidens were not a rich family. So how do they get rich? Their only business is

• 1:07:47Jason Calacanis?

  They don't have money here, right? They don't know how much money is actually here and how it's being, what evidence do they have?

• 1:07:54David Sacks?

  It's not red meat for me. I just think the media should have done its job investigating the story properly. And what this investigation has turned up is that there's a lot of members of the Biden family. I think they're up to like 10 or 12 or something. We've received payments flowing from foreign governments. No one can tell you what any of those people did in exchange for the money. It does appear to be an influence peddling operation. I don't know whether that's technically

• 1:08:17Jason Calacanis?

  It appears to be an influence peddling operation. So people were giving money?

• 1:08:20David Sacks?

  Again, the, the, the point is that why would you give money to members of the Biden family? It presumably for some sort of access to the person who's been in Washington for 50 years, who's been a senator, been vice president.

• 1:08:31Jason Calacanis?

  Do they know who gave the money? Is it China? Is it Ukraine? Do they have that data?

• 1:08:34David Sacks?

  Well, I think we know about Burisma, which is basically a Ukrainian

• 1:08:38Jason Calacanis?

  Hunter, yeah.

• 1:08:39David Sacks?

  Yeah. And then I think China is another one. Now, I don't know what the quid pro quo is for that money, but

• 1:08:46Jason Calacanis?

  I wonder if this is like the Kraken, or if this is actually reality, because they seem to be short on actual facts.

• 1:08:52David Sacks?

  I think they got a lot there, but I mean, they're putting out all these reports. But listen, I think to me, the, the, actually, the bigger story, or the bigger scandal is just more details on the way that the security state wrote that fake letter, basically calling the Hunter Biden story Russian disinformation. There's an email now that just came out where Mike Morell is corresponding with John Brennan, and Morell specifically says, "We're creating the letter to give Biden a talking point in the debate."

• 1:09:20Jason Calacanis?

  They're the former CIA directors, right?

• 1:09:22David Sacks?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:09:23Jason Calacanis?

  Both of them were CIA directors at different points.

• 1:09:25David Sacks?

  So there's no question now that that letter Where 51 security state officials claimed that the Hunter Biden story is Russian disinformation. That was all basically a political dirty trick. And dirty tricks happen, but I don't think the CIA should be involved. That's the thing. I don't think the, the branches of our government should be involved in helping to get any candidate.

• 1:09:47Jason Calacanis?

  But these guys weren't even in government, right?

• 1:09:50David Sacks?

  They're former, but.

• 1:09:51Jason Calacanis?

  Former, yeah.

• 1:09:52David Sacks?

  They're highly related.

• 1:09:54Jason Calacanis?

  So just so we're clear, it wasn't like the CIA.

• 1:09:55David Sacks?

  They continue to have the, the security clearances.

• 1:09:57Jason Calacanis?

  But it's not the CIA did this. These are former CIA folks.

• 1:10:00David Sacks?

  They actually, Morel needed the approval of the CIA. So that was another thing that came out. That's what bothers me more than anything is I do not think our permanent government, especially security agencies, should be involved in partisan politics. They really need to stay out. That is election meddling. That bothers me. That's a form of corruption that I think is even worse than monetary payments.

• 1:10:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Jacob, can you tell us about your trip to the Middle East? What have you been doing there?

• 1:10:27Jason Calacanis?

  So our bestie Brad Gerson was coming here and we were at the poker game a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago. And he said he was going and I've always wanted to come to UAE and I've never seen Dubai or Abu Dhabi. And so I said, yeah, I'd love to go with you. And we did a couple of speaking gigs.

• 1:10:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Where are you staying?

• 1:10:44Jason Calacanis?

  So four seasons in Ritz, four seasons in Abu Dhabi and the Ritz here in Dubai. And I was just going to do these three speaking gigs, a podcast and.

• 1:10:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Isn't IFC in Dubai incredible? Have you been in, have you had a chance to walk around?

• 1:10:59Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, and it's all been built in the last 10 years. I, I would say generally speaking, what I'm super impressed about, and I, I'm not, it's not a fundraising trip. I was just going, but then one of your former employees, Chamath, set me up with a bunch of meetings because he's like, okay, there's a lot of people who want to meet you. So I, I'm doing like a, maybe a dozen meetings or so. And there is a real, this is a very progressive place, the UAE of all the, and Dubai obviously is very progressive. And so it reminds me of like, you know, Silicon Valley in the early days where everybody's doing something and it's incredibly cosmopolitan. There's only 500,000 nationals, but there's 10 million people here.

• 1:11:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  More Hindi is spoken than any other language in Dubai.

• 1:11:45Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I mean, the number of people here from all around the world is bonkers. And then everybody's working on something. Everybody's got a project.

• 1:11:53Jason Calacanis?

  And the people are delightful.

• 1:11:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Did you go to the French restaurant I told you about in Abu Dhabi?

• 1:11:57Jason Calacanis?

  I did.

• 1:11:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Did you get the ribeye? Did you get the ribeye?

• 1:11:59Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, we had like a family style thing, so I didn't get the ribeye, but it was it was exceptional. The food's exceptional. It's just like incredibly cosmopolitan. It's like going to New York, you know, or London, and they are, it's a very unique moment in time right now.

• 1:12:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sacks, when you go to Abu Dhabi and you stay and you stay at the Four Seasons in the ADGM, go to this French restaurant and order the ribeye. It is a top five steak I've ever had. Top five.

• 1:12:23David Sacks?

  I've never been there. I've never been to the Middle East.

• 1:12:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So delicious, so delicious, so delicious. And in Dubai, do not stay at the Ritz in IFC. IFC is incredible, but the Ritz sucks. Stay at the Bulgari Hotel. Beautiful. Just beautiful.

• 1:12:36Jason Calacanis?

  But there's a very unique moment in time. I literally came down the elevator at the Four Seasons and I met four or five people from Silicon Valley in the lobby. And then I came out of dinner and there was a table of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. It is, I mean, it's basically like going to the Rosewood in Abu Dhabi.

• 1:12:58David Sacks?

  But what a statement that is. Like, the US is tapped out. We are like broke.

• 1:13:02Jason Calacanis?

  That's, I think, basically, the, they are, the way it's been explained to me is they believe they have 20 years, 30 years, to convert the oil economy into a technology capital allocator economy. And so they want to make evergreen funds to invest. They haven't had a chance to invest in venture capital because most venture capital, there weren't that many. They were fully allocated and there was no opportunity. Now with what's happened in the United States and this pullback and sort of the cycle starting over again, I think there's an opportunity for them to invest in some funds and start relationships. And then, you know, we've had a long talk here about human rights in different countries, and it's not a monolith over here. I mean, I don't know who needs to hear that exactly, but there, there's, these countries are very different, very different.

• 1:13:46David Sacks?

  I'm sure they appreciate your lectures on that subject, J.K.

• 1:13:49Jason Calacanis?

  Actually, you know what's interesting? We didn't have lectures on it, but we had, I've had multiple conversations about these issues.

• 1:13:55David Sacks?

  I've enjoyed your lectures on this pod.

• 1:13:58Jason Calacanis?

  I don't lecture about it. I think these are important issues that people discuss. And the serious thing is, a number of these countries are majority young people, and they are reforming very quickly, and rights are changing. And so the question is, for, you know, all of us, and for the world, is, do we collaborate and, you know, support as they, you know, become more liberal? And become more tolerant? And they, you know, become more Western, basically. And young people, it's very Western here. And the parties going on here are pretty much like the parties I attended in LA or New York. And so I think, actually, we're probably not as, at least UAE and a couple of the countries here,

• 1:14:43Jason Calacanis?

  are not as disparate as, like, one might think.

• 1:14:47David Friedberg?

  I'm glad you did the trip, because I'm glad to hear you talking like that, that there isn't an us versus them point of view. You know, visiting and seeing the culture and the intention of the people within the culture, super important, and I think it's, it's good that you did it, so, good to hear it. I wanted to share the video that these guys did, but let's do it next week. I think it's really, it's worth seeing.

• 1:15:07Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, not the Balenciaga one?

• 1:15:09David Friedberg?

  No, the, um, the Lord of the Rings one that this guy did, which is amazing.

• 1:15:12Jason Calacanis?

  Wait, what? This is a Lord of the Rings video?

• 1:15:15David Friedberg?

  No, not with us, not with us, J. Cole.

• 1:15:17Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, I don't want to watch it.

• 1:15:18David Friedberg?

  Okay.

• 1:15:19Jason Calacanis?

  Why would I want to watch that?

• 1:15:19David Friedberg?

  Yeah. Thank you, Elmuth.

• 1:15:22Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, exactly. I don't know what I care. I want to watch the Balenciaga video for the third time. Did you see that?

• 1:15:28David Friedberg?

  Yeah. I took an outtake from the guy's video on Lord of the Rings. We'll put the link in the show notes, but this guy made this incredible AI-generated, Wes Anderson does Lord of the Rings.

• 1:15:39Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, I did see that.

• 1:15:40David Friedberg?

  Did you see that? It's amazing. And, uh, the clip I'm using today as a background is, is an outtake, uh, from the, the trailer. Did you see it, Sacks? Oh my god, it's so funny. The guy is incredible. But I mean, the creativity and the potential with AI, it's just so evident. This guy talks about it on his website and on his Twitter feed. He did it in a couple of days. He learnt a bunch of new AI tools. A lot of generative tools were integrated to make this possible. It's an amazing two-minute piece of art that I think really speaks to the creativity being unleashed with AI. Again, going back to this point about it not just being about job reduction and reductionism, but it's really about unleashing new potential that we didn't envision before.

• 1:16:23David Friedberg?

  Separately, there'll be another, I think we should talk about this next week, but there's now this kind of generative video game platform that's being demoed, where you can instruct the video game intentions and it generates an immersive video game experience for you on the fly, which is something we talked about a couple of episodes, probably a couple of months ago at this point.

• 1:16:40Jason Calacanis?

  I had somebody on This Week in Startups who showed a video game where he made like, you make 25 objects in the game.

• 1:16:46David Friedberg?

  It's really incredible.

• 1:16:46Jason Calacanis?

  In a certain style. And then you say, I want to make more characters like that. I want to make more backgrounds like that. Like you take a Wes Anderson style, whatever, and it just generates them for you. And it just keeps generating them for you. So one artist can make a palette for a game and you can say, I want to have a penguin in my game. I want to have a zombie in my game.

• 1:17:01David Friedberg?

  Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. Yeah.

• 1:17:04Jason Calacanis?

  And it just does it. And then people who are playing the game can say what they want with prompts and it creates it.

• 1:17:10David Friedberg?

  And you can drive a storyline and then you can integrate with other people's storylines. I mean, it's really powerful. Anyway, I gotta run.

• 1:17:16Jason Calacanis?

  For David Friedberg, David Sack. Chama Palihapitiya. I'm your boy J Cal. Love you, boys. We'll see you all next time on the All In Podcast. Bye bye. Bye bye.

• 1:17:31Jason Calacanis?

  Playing you out with the greatest hits here on Z100. The Balenciaga video featuring the All In cast with cameos by Brian Armstrong, Keith Rabois, and Elon Musk. Coming at you. Balenciaga, Friday night, 8 o'clock, hardest ticket in New York.

• 1:17:56Speaker 04

  When you struggle with a problem, that's when you Balenciaga.

• 1:18:04David Sacks?

  Fed mullet, quantitative tightening in the front, quantitative easing in the back.

• 1:18:17David Friedberg?

  The greatest source of value and wealth creation in the 22nd century could be driven by terrestrial nucleosynthesis.

• 1:18:27David Friedberg?

  Getting dressed is easy, owning the runway is hard.

• 1:18:34David Friedberg?

  The big winners of tomorrow will likely be the Minecraft YouTubers of today.

• 1:18:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's easier than ever to confuse popularity and truth.

• 1:18:46Speaker 04

  I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be Balenciaga.

• 1:18:54David Sacks?

  The mainstream media is the most H&M it's ever been.

• 1:19:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  When I left Facebook, I left an enormous amount of equity on the table. I thought, "I don't want to be a slave to money. I want to be a slave to something bigger." Balenciaga.