Trump's First Week: Inauguration Recap, Executive Actions, TikTok, Stargate + Sacks is Back!

(0:00) The Besties intro Thomas Laffont! (6:22) Behind the scenes: Inauguration Weekend recap! (15:58) Biggest takeaways from DC during the Inauguration (31:38) Trump Executive Action breakdown (33:39) TikTok's grace period extended, valuing the business, US new equity strategy? (57:01) Jan 6th pardons, birthright citizenship (1:09:49) Stargate: $500B AI investment, is Masa the GOAT?, bull case for OpenAI (1:23:41) How electricity production capacity plays into the global AI race (1:36:20) Netflix's stock rise correlates with some alarming societal trends (1:47:40) BREAKING: AI/Crypto Czar David Sacks joins to discuss the President's three new EOs Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow Thomas Laffont: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-laffont-02430914 Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://x.com/dontcallmeraylo/status/1882444994264629402 https://x.com/craigkellyXXX/status/1882170281722339700 https://www.wdsu.com/article/donald-trump-executive-orders-inauguration-parade/63486993 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/us/trump-birthright-citizenship.html https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed74.asp https://x.com/OpenAI/status/1881830103858172059 https://x.com/sama/status/1882106524090482701 https://x.com/GavinSBaker/status/1882081746877063677 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1881923570458304780 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1882303826214162580 https://x.com/satyanadella/status/1882340818289307954 https://x.com/GregKamradt/status/1881762305152872654 https://x.com/chamath/status/1881773205498876255 https://x.com/documentingbtc/status/1882530869010989287 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/strengthening-american-leadership-in-digital-financial-technology https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/removing-barriers-to-american-leadership-in-artificial-intelligence https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/presidents-council-of-advisors-on-science-and-technology https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/489251-in-this-age-in-this-country-public-sentiment-is-everything https://x.com/SpeakerJohnson/status/1882083118032846868

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

• 0:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So we had a dinner where me and Friedberg and J. Cal were invited to have dinner with the folks from and their and their other top podcasts.

• 0:07Jason Calacanis?

  It was an off the record dinner. Let's talk all about it. There was an interesting moment, which even Friedberg had to recognize, which was, we went around and said, hey, what podcast are you listening to? Which ones are your favorites? We went out in the room and I got to tell you, you know what your podcasters favorite podcast is?

• 0:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Bingo.

• 0:23Jason Calacanis?

  All in podcasts.

• 0:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, the funniest thing is my wife thinks I'm bullshitting all the time. I say this is

• 0:27Jason Calacanis?

  mine, too.

• 0:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Pretty reasonably successful and well, she doesn't believe it. She thinks we're all bullshitting.

• 0:32Thomas Laffont?

  Why do you think I waited to make my world podcast premiere for All In? All the ankle biters called and I said, no, I'm just gonna wait. I'm gonna wait till the besties call.

• 0:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Can we just say it? Nick, you gotta beat it up. When the podcast called, you're like, nope, can't do it. Sorry.

• 0:49Jason Calacanis?

  I'm waiting for the real deal.

• 0:51Thomas Laffont?

  I don't need JV.

• 1:10Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody. Welcome back to the number one business finance technology science podcast in the world. This is the place where we call balls and strikes, where we tell the truth, where there is zero censorship. Every week, we tell you about the truth behind the most important stories. We point out who the heroes are and who the villains are, who are the delightful ones and who are the disgracia. With me again on this week's program, the cackling chairman dictator, my guy, Tia. How you doing? How was your victory lap?

• 1:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  How was your victory lap? Really, really, really fun.

• 1:50Jason Calacanis?

  You look like you were in your afterglow. And I have to say, Nat was looking pretty good. Uh, whoo.

• 1:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We have some pictures. Don't worry, we're gonna go through behind the scenes.

• 2:00Jason Calacanis?

  Armani came through for Amore, the Amore collection from Armani coming this fall.

• 2:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  By the way, I mean, Armani couture is like firing on all cylinders. The other, the other one, which you'll see is a great picture of this incredible jacket, Luisa Baccaria. Two shout outs, Armani and Luisa Baccaria.

• 2:18Jason Calacanis?

  You know, I was just thinking that. Armani really has been making it happen.

• 2:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Now that we've talked about Nat, we'll talk about my wardrobe when the time comes. Could they just get through the rest of the interest?

• 2:26Jason Calacanis?

  All right, all right. And. Of course, here he is, your Sultan of Science, David Friedberg.

• 2:34Thomas Laffont?

  Move along, J Cal, let's go.

• 2:36Jason Calacanis?

  Who had a wonderful, he's very bitter today. He's got a lot of anger. He is the barista of bitterness today. He's serving up bitterness all day long and he had a great time at the, maybe he's a little upset about the Lex Friedman triangle we're in right now. I think that could be part of it. And we have a special guest here. Thomas Laffont is the co-founder of Co2 Management. They got a 50-billy under management, public, private, yada, yada. Before that, he worked at Creative Artist Agency for seven years after he, he went to college. So he does have the college degree. He signed Captain America, which is Friedberg's favorite Avenger.

• 3:19Thomas Laffont?

  Chris Evans.

• 3:19Jason Calacanis?

  Chris Evans.

• 3:20Thomas Laffont?

  Chris Evans.

• 3:21Jason Calacanis?

  And has Friedberg-

• 3:22Thomas Laffont?

  Still a CIA client, by the way.

• 3:24Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, and you're still in touch with him?

• 3:27Thomas Laffont?

  I am not.

• 3:28Jason Calacanis?

  You're not?

• 3:28Thomas Laffont?

  But I, I've watched with wonder at what he's achieved after I left being his agent. It's been incredible, great career.

• 3:36Jason Calacanis?

  Now, now behind you, we see this incredible, this incredible view.

• 3:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You're missing the one, you're missing the one part, which is that Thomas was one of the highest rated speakers that we had at the Allen Summit.

• 3:46Thomas Laffont?

  Yeah.

• 3:47Jason Calacanis?

  That's true, actually. He did really great last year.

• 3:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Really crushed it, crushed it.

• 3:50Jason Calacanis?

  Crushed it, of course.

• 3:51Thomas Laffont?

  And I think I'm, I'm in the seventh bestie position and, and hoping potentially after the podcast to at least move up by one.

• 3:57Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, there you go. Let's see what happens here. Now, what, what's this view behind you?

• 4:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is Los Angeles-

• 4:03Thomas Laffont?

  I definitely put you ahead of J Cal, Thomas, so you're, wow, you're up a spot.

• 4:07Jason Calacanis?

  Oh my God, he really is serving up the bitterness today.

• 4:10Thomas Laffont?

  Yeah.

• 4:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So mad, he's so mad. You know why, you know why he's mad? Because I'll tell you why. Because, okay.

• 4:18Jason Calacanis?

  What did I do this time?

• 4:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is for the audience. Jason is complaining all week in the group chat that he has influenza A. He's sending pictures of him getting IVs. And so Friedberg, the conscientious guy and co-founder of the pod that he is, says, I will moderate. And then he invests his time, okay? He's got, he's got a lot of things going on. He's got three kids, plus one on the way. He's running a company.

• 4:45Jason Calacanis?

  Strawberries.

• 4:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He prepares and then you wake up after a dose of Tamiflu and decide, no, I'm ready to moderate.

• 4:53Jason Calacanis?

  Of course.

• 4:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You can't just do that because it's not nice.

• 4:56Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Put, hey, madam producer, can you come on the horn for a second here?

• 5:02Speaker 03

  Are we really going to do this?

• 5:03Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, we are.

• 5:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We're gonna do it.

• 5:05Jason Calacanis?

  We're doing it, madam.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  So stupid.

• 5:07Jason Calacanis?

  So stupid, Baba Booey. Did I tell you to get Friedberg involved?

• 5:13Speaker 03

  No.

• 5:14Jason Calacanis?

  No.

• 5:14Speaker 03

  I did it myself.

• 5:15Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, you went rogue.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  Can I say why?

• 5:18Jason Calacanis?

  You can go rogue. I'm fine.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  I said, hey, Jason, how are you feeling? You said horrible. I have the flu. I'm getting an IV tomorrow morning. To me, that was like, oh, okay, there's like a 50% chance he misses the show. So I reached out to Friedberg. I said, hey, Jason's really sick with the flu. Maybe you should just prepare yourself to moderate tomorrow.

• 5:35Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, now, when did I find out about this?

• 5:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think that was a smart decision, but you, sir, are a small bitter man. And so what you did was you wanted to, yeah, you wanted to blow up Friedberg's preparation.

• 5:47Jason Calacanis?

  I found out about this this morning. I found out about this like an hour ago.

• 5:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  How are you feeling?

• 5:52Jason Calacanis?

  I feel 80% of a normal J Cal, which is 110% of any other moderator. I'm get yourself Andrew Varsorkan. Oh, I'm sorry. He's genuflecting at Davos to a bunch of mids.

• 6:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, we're gonna get Lex soon, so we're gonna get Lex soon.

• 6:08Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, that'd be great. Hello, I am Lex Friedman. Welcome to the number one podcast in the world. Today on the program, we have Thomas LaFon, investor in such great companies as. All right, listen, enough shenanigans. We had so much fun. We tore DC apart.

• 6:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Let's start with actually just, Thomas, did you watch any of it on TV? Did you think about going? It was really like, there were so many tech people in Washington this weekend.

• 6:36Thomas Laffont?

  I saw the live stream. I talked to Sacks last night to get, get the download and, you know, my takeaway just from watching especially the executive orders was, you know, democracy in action. Democracy self-correct and dictatorships double down. And to watch in real time, a country of our scale and a democracy, you know, decide to make a change.

• 6:59Jason Calacanis?

  I think that's why we've been great for, you know, 250 plus years and will remain great. So it was fun to watch. I'm really curious to see what your takeaway was.

• 7:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay, well, let's just, we'll just go behind the scenes. First of all, it's hard to see that this was me dressed up for Sacks's ball. I really brought the heat. This is, by the way, Luca Rubenachi is the tailor here. It's hard to see.

• 7:22Jason Calacanis?

  Is that a blue, blue coat?

• 7:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So this is what I'm saying. I think the picture is very hard to see, but it's a very refined green paisley.

• 7:30Jason Calacanis?

  Hmm, subtle.

• 7:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Hard to bring it out. Now, I will say this was the most popular shirt over the entire weekend. This is just a simple Brioni tuxedo shirt. There was 200 versions of it. I felt bad when I saw, because normally I don't like to wear things that other people are wearing.

• 7:48Jason Calacanis?

  Correct. Yeah. What did Michael Saylor think of this? When you saw Michael Saylor at the, um, at the.

• 7:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know, I met, I met Michael CFO, wonderfully nice guy. So this is us at the, this is us at the crypto ball.

• 7:59David Friedberg?

  I went for white tuxedo on the first night. I've never had three tuxedos before.

• 8:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  David looked, David looked really great. I really loved this. And, and Sacks had this incredible tux, which was more crypto themed. It sort of looked like the opening scene from The Matrix. So there was like this cool print that you can see my green in there a little bit, Thomas, in this one.

• 8:18David Friedberg?

  Yeah, yeah, got it.

• 8:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There's Sky and New Money Sunny, the president of Grok.

• 8:24Jason Calacanis?

  Sandeep Madra, X.com slash Sandeep.

• 8:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Here are the besties, here are the besties.

• 8:28Jason Calacanis?

  I was, I was, let's be honest, guys, even in all your bitterness, Reberg, you felt the love at this moment when we were all back together, did you not?

• 8:36David Friedberg?

  Well, it was about five minutes before this, when the three of us took a video, a photo, it was great. Yeah.

• 8:41Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, okay.

• 8:45Jason Calacanis?

  Do you want me to let you moderate? You can moderate if you want, if you're that.

• 8:48David Friedberg?

  No, no, you're doing a great job, J. K.

• 8:51David Friedberg?

  We're 18 minutes into this and we're doing fashion still.

• 8:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Vinnie, Sky, Diego Bertikin, the co-founder of Cloud Kitchens.

• 8:58Jason Calacanis?

  So handsome that Diego. Can we go back to the Diego for a second?

• 9:00David Friedberg?

  This is the crypto ball. Yeah.

• 9:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This was the crypto ball. This is like, this was Sacks's event. It was incredible.

• 9:06Jason Calacanis?

  It was a large number of people there. I was shocked at the number of people at the crypto.

• 9:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, it was. It was huge. It was huge. Here's a little poker afterwards.

• 9:16Jason Calacanis?

  Behind the scenes.

• 9:17David Friedberg?

  With Pinka TK.

• 9:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  TK, Travis Kline, the co-founder, the founder of Uber.

• 9:22Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, look, that's the founder of Uber.

• 9:23David Friedberg?

  Hold on, we gotta see who's got the biggest stack.

• 9:26Jason Calacanis?

  Look, it's the founder of Uber next to the third investor in Uber.

• 9:31Jason Calacanis?

  And the founder of Cloud Kitchens next to the investor in Cloud Kitchens. Incredible.

• 9:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Peter Thiel's house. This is Katie Hahn and Kyle Samani. My wife and Kyle's wife. Amore. This is at Peter's house. Peter had this, Peter Thiel had this person going around taking pictures.

• 9:47Jason Calacanis?

  Bad lighting. Not good lighting for you.

• 9:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 9:50Jason Calacanis?

  A little powder there. Okay. Ah, this was great.

• 9:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Also Peter Thiel's house.

• 9:54Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. That was great. I have to say, Chamath, putting aside.

• 9:59David Friedberg?

  Jason likes being a Republican.

• 10:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Here's a, here's a, here's a dinner that we had. There's Lex Friedman, Julius Janikowski, who's the former chairman of the FCC.

• 10:08Jason Calacanis?

  Little known, the former roommate of Obama. That's probably known.

• 10:12David Friedberg?

  By the way, following this dinner, all those streets were blocked off and there was no way to get around.

• 10:17Jason Calacanis?

  You can see it there. Look, you see the barricades in the right there?

• 10:20David Friedberg?

  It was like 10 degrees Fahrenheit. So we walk out.

• 10:22Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, it's terrible.

• 10:22David Friedberg?

  It was like you were gonna die after two seconds out there.

• 10:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It was so cold.

• 10:27David Friedberg?

  Vinny and I started walking to try and like get our car and after walking for like half a mile, we're like, dude, there's no way out of this downtown area. And Vinny was shaking. He's like, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die. He turns around, he goes running back to the restaurant, jumps in. And basically like huddles down in the restaurant. And then after about 10 minutes, there's no way out. He's like, you know, it's sort of like you're in a military zone. He's like, I'm gonna go for it. He runs out, jumps on a scooter and he disappeared into the distance and I swore I would never see Vinny again. I'm like, that's it.

• 10:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think it's very smart that Lex wears the same outfit, the black suit with the white shirt with the black tie. I really like the consistency of it, actually. It looks really good.

• 11:05Jason Calacanis?

  This is, it was incredible. He was getting stopped every two minutes. It was unbelievable.

• 11:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Here's the jacket. This is Luisa Beccheria. And then here's the box from Armani. Thank you, Joe.

• 11:16Jason Calacanis?

  The unboxing. Whoa, wah wah, we wah.

• 11:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, look, there's a little side boob there with Nat. I didn't notice that.

• 11:22Jason Calacanis?

  Hey.

• 11:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's a, this is, I'm wearing Tom Ford.

• 11:27Jason Calacanis?

  Shout out Tom Ford.

• 11:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Shout out to you.

• 11:29Jason Calacanis?

  Perfect male.

• 11:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, here's a huge shout out to two guys that I had really wanted to meet in person. I finally got the chance to meet. This is at Zuck's party. This is Brendan Carr, who's the incoming chairman of the FCC. Actually, this picture was taken right after he had gotten confirmed. So this was his first day as the chairman. And then this is a guy who I've been following for a couple of years, Jared Isaacman, who is now going to run NASA. He's the founder and CEO of Shift for Payments. But both of these guys are pretty epic. You should follow them on Twitter.

• 12:00David Friedberg?

  He did a spacewalk, the first civilian spacewalk.

• 12:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He did. He's, he's really, really.

• 12:04David Friedberg?

  Brendan was really nice. I met him at Peter's event and he told me he's a big fan of the pod. He listens to the show.

• 12:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Brendan's amazing. I mean, by the way, if you want to see like some really amazing tweets, he had some real bangers. He's a very smart guy.

• 12:17Jason Calacanis?

  He's, um, this is, I've had Brendan on this week in service a couple of times. He's the guy who fought for Starlink.

• 12:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's right.

• 12:26Jason Calacanis?

  Over wasting five, 10, $20,000 per home to install broadband. I mean, this guy's a hero. And he did that when he was in office under Biden and all that crazy corruption and grift.

• 12:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is a picture of Mike Johnson and his wife. This is a crazy story. So there was a G7 summit in Italy and Mike and his wife was seated beside my father-in-law, Nat's dad, at a dinner. They got to know each other. He, as a proud grandpa, showed Mike and his wife pictures of Nat and myself and our kids. And how we actually met in this moment was, his wife was like, oh, my God, I recognize you. You're Sergio's son-in-law. You're Sergio's daughter. It's amazing. And then we had a cool conversations. That was cool. And then this is Bill Pulte, who is nominated to run FHFA, which for folks that know, will be in

• 13:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  control of the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And really great guy. Also a co-investor with me and Mr. Beast. Nat.

• 13:33Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, you're an investor in Mr. Beast. There you go.

• 13:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is Mr. I did the series A.

• 13:37Jason Calacanis?

  This is the first time I think you've said on the pod.

• 13:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Here's this thing. So this is where J Cal is at his peak. Go ahead, Nick.

• 13:43Jason Calacanis?

  I don't even know what this is. What is that? What did you order? All right. I've given it some thought and I'm going to order the $95 Doberstol. I'm ordering the $95 Doberstol.

• 14:00Jason Calacanis?

  With tips included. I mean.

• 14:06Jason Calacanis?

  Having such a great time tearing it up. I did order the $95 Doberstol.

• 14:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is a, oh, sorry. Oh, that's, that's me and Bobby Kennedy, but this is a, this is walking into the Capitol for the inauguration.

• 14:17Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, wow.

• 14:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So you basically, you have to get off, all these buses were taking us in because of the security and then you walk underneath and underground to get into them. And this is Bobby and the guy right there, Callie Means, another great American, make America healthy again.

• 14:33Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Here's a couple of my picks. This is me with somebody who's going to be in the administration. I'm not big on politics, but.

• 14:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Tulsi Gabbard is so.

• 14:42Jason Calacanis?

  Tulsi Gabbard.

• 14:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  She's so strong. She went, she came to our party.

• 14:45Jason Calacanis?

  I like her.

• 14:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is the picture of our party. She is incredible.

• 14:49Jason Calacanis?

  Well, she came up to me and she, you know, you can always tell who a real fan is. And she came up and she said.

• 14:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Tulsi Gabbard.

• 14:54Jason Calacanis?

  I just want to tell you, J Cal, I am a huge fan of the pod. I love what you do. I love the, you know, balance you bring to the program. She really liked new details about the podcast. And so I wanted to get a picture with her. So as a joke, I said to her, do you want to take a selfie? I said, I'm okay with this. I was going to ask. I was like, no, I'm preemptively asking. We took it together.

• 15:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  She's such a star.

• 15:14Jason Calacanis?

  She is. I think she's going to be great. I like her a lot.

• 15:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  She's such a star.

• 15:19Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, well, yeah, this is. Hello, I am Lex Friedman. Today, with love and peace in my heart, I am interviewing dictator Idi Amin, who has eaten half his enemies. We will share love, kindness, and a fatty liver. Enjoy.

• 15:37Jason Calacanis?

  So yeah, that was us just tearing it up after the YouTube party where we hung out with Sundar and Neil from YouTube. They've been very good to us. And then here's one more, I guess.

• 15:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And golfer Bryson DeChambeau.

• 15:50Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, there's me and the Presidente Twitter. And yeah, this is the podcast crew at the Free Press Party.

• 15:58David Friedberg?

  Okay, let's talk about key takeaways. Tomasz, what is your big takeaway from the weekend?

• 16:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think my biggest takeaway is that

• 16:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  if you look in the past, there was a very tight coordination, I guess I would say, between private industry and the private sector and the public sector, meaning the president and then people who were in charge of managing huge, vast swaths of resources in America. And somewhere along the way, that became either unfashionable and uncool, particularly under Democrats. And what I saw was a very broad-based embrace

• 16:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  of business people, because I think that the president understands how important it is to make sure that economically, America is just firing on all cylinders. The one thing to remember, like, for example, in the inauguration, I know that you saw the picture and it was basically like Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, Tesla, kind of CEOs, etc., founders. Arno was there. Mukesh Ambani was there. So it's just business people from the entire world were there. And so I think what it says is, America's gonna basically turn a totally new page. We're not gonna ostracize people. We're not gonna play favorites. That's the other thing. You know, Elon was there right at the beginning. But if you saw, all the CEOs of the, you know, major companies were there. It's

• 17:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  not like he excluded Zuck because of his past issues or anything.

• 17:32David Friedberg?

  Or Sam Altman.

• 17:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Or Sam Altman. That was the big takeaway.

• 17:36Jason Calacanis?

  That would be the more notable one, yeah, to exclude, yeah.

• 17:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That, that the president doesn't play favorites, that this is like Team America kind of thing, and it was a projection of tremendous power to the rest of the world. This is what America's about. I loved every minute of it. And I think that this is exactly how the American government should be working, which is hand in hand with private industry to basically set the pace for the rest of the world.

• 18:00Jason Calacanis?

  Tomasz, did you have a takeaway after the weekend?

• 18:03Thomas Laffont?

  I did, I'm curious what you guys thought, but to me, what was notable from Scott Besant, the new Treasury Secretary, he was asking one of the exchanges about the green energy race with China. And he reframed the debate, I thought incredibly well, where he said, "We're not in a green energy race with China, we're in an energy race with China."

• 18:25David Friedberg?

  That's right.

• 18:26Thomas Laffont?

  Right? And he made the point that China is adding 100 coal plants, it's adding nuclear. And to me, it was kind of just-

• 18:33David Friedberg?

  137 gigawatt hydro facility, which is-

• 18:36Thomas Laffont?

  Exactly.

• 18:37David Friedberg?

  -unbelievable.

• 18:38Thomas Laffont?

  And it was such a good framing of the debate, because I think, Chamath, to your point, it's about reframing the right issues, right? And I think that just that little piece of dialogue, to me, is exemplified, you know, and was a really important takeaway, and I think more of what we'll see over the next coming year.

• 18:54David Friedberg?

  Free break, did you have a takeaway coming out of this? There was just so much, it was so impressive to be there. I definitely echo the sentiment about seeing the strength of America represented between the entrepreneurial engine that has driven this country for 250 years and the government that's meant to serve the people, working together to try and take America forward. It was just really inspiring. The one thing that was the biggest kind of observation for me, which was a bit of a disappointment unfortunately, is I feel like Doge and cost cutting is going to be a lot harder to realize than folks assume.

• 19:34David Friedberg?

  Nearly everyone I met with who works in government or is entering government had this, if not disdain for Doge, a concern that it doesn't really align interests with the political objectives of politicians, that they need to get more stuff for their constituents in order to get reelected, and that they're not going to vote programs away, they're not going to vote themselves out of a job, which is effectively what they would do if they cut programs. In fact, I was watching Brooke Rollins- Secretary ag confirmation hearing this morning and Mitch O'Connell was given the opportunity to ask her questions. You know what his question was? He said, in the last farm bill, I was able to get $60 million to build an ag research

• 20:18David Friedberg?

  lab at the University of Kentucky, and it hasn't started being built yet. It's been four years. What are you going to do about that? This is literally the intention of so many of these conversations. If you sit and watch, and then I watched a similar conversation with a senator from Minnesota, who, you know, I won't get into all the statements, but every single conversation you hear, and we even talked with Ted Cruz about this, is all about-

• 20:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He was great, by the way. I love Ted Cruz.

• 20:43David Friedberg?

  It's all about what can I get for my constituents? How do I get more jobs? And how do I get more money? And ultimately, that incentive is what gets people elected. And I don't think it's going to change. And so that was the biggest kind of shock for me. I thought that there was a moment of the importance of cost cutting, the importance of deficit reduction, the importance of debt reduction. And I was just a little saddened to kind of see that that there's no stop in the train. So that was my takeaway. It's a little bit bitter. I hope I'm wrong. I really do hope Doge is effective, and I really do hope that policymakers start to recognize the importance. By the way, Ray Dalio has a new book coming out. We'll talk more about his book once it's released publicly. But it speaks very clearly to the challenge the United States is now facing with respect

• 21:28David Friedberg?

  to spending. So I know I've talked about this. I know we all felt like there was a big reprieve with this election. But for me, it was a little bit bittersweet.

• 21:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Can I say a little bit on that first topic?

• 21:36David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 21:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I just want to double down on that because one of the things that some folks said, and I guess it makes sense now that you think about it, but when you look at the confirmation hearings, there are certain folks for whom the resource allocation is relatively modest inside of America. They tend to just do much better in general. And if you saw Marco Rubio's confirmation process, there was, you know, it was like 99 to zero, right? And to your point, what they say is that folks that actually allocate the internal spending in the United States gets a lot more scrutiny because there's all of this horse trading because they want some of this money to get allocated into their specific area. It is going to be a very complicated thing. The one thing, though, that changed,

• 22:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I don't know if you saw, but- Doge was meant to be outside the auspices of the government and it wasn't actually a government department and it'll be interesting to understand when it's explained, but in the 11th hour, the EO that established Doge established it actually as a governmental agency.

• 22:40Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, we're going to get into that in just a moment and to build on your point there, Dave, Senator Sanders had a tweet today, Nick, I just sent it to you, already the discussion of like who should take the brunt of these cuts is starting to happen and he's pointing out, you know, as he should and, you know, hey, what's going to happen with the VA and you're putting a freeze on hiring people, we have to make sure our vets are taken care of, we have a shortage of doctors, a shortage of nurses, but we do have people, you know, responding to him saying, hey, how are we going to pay for all this? So even if it's going to be hard to do, it's going to take courage because you're going to be faced with situations like this where, does anybody want to see VA's budget cut and these veterans

• 23:23Jason Calacanis?

  who are coming back, they should get all the services in the world? And these hard discussions are now happening and it's not taboo. So the Overton window is wide open now to discuss even the budget of the VA and where is the money going to come from? So I think we're actually going to make progress on it. The, this was like a sacred cow and now we're talking about it. To Bernie Sanders' point, I don't know if you saw, there was a note on there, Nick, community notes pointed out that Trump put that none of the cuts should impact vets. And so I thought that was a good use of community notes there.

• 23:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The one comment I'll say about Bernie Sanders is when Russ Vogt, who is the nominee to run OMB, went through his confirmation yesterday, Sanders asked a similar question around Medicare and Medicaid. And what was interesting is Russ tried to actually answer the question and give the details around where there can be waste, fraud and abuse. Sanders really didn't want to hear it. He just wanted the soundbite. So I think these confirmation processes are

• 24:28Jason Calacanis?

  Performative?

• 24:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They're hugely performative.

• 24:31Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 24:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I do think that, and this applies, I think, to both sides, Democrats as well, when, when they are eventually in power. I think that when you're given a very clear mandate as a president, I think you should be able to get to pick your team.

• 24:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Because it's clear that the American people have voted an agenda. It's not like he hid that agenda. And so the people that then want to implement that agenda should be put on the field.

• 24:55Jason Calacanis?

  It seems like the point of these should be if somebody could get compromised or there was something really gnarly in their background, like, but otherwise, yeah, let people build their team and then they have to own their results.

• 25:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Tell us about your feelings and takeaways about the weekend.

• 25:09Jason Calacanis?

  Well, you know, it's obviously mixed. I was a never Trumper and now I am rooting for him wholeheartedly to do great work.

• 25:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Be honest, you kind of like him. Come on. You do kind of like him.

• 25:20Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I mean, anybody who's met, anybody who's interacted with Trump likes him.

• 25:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Before you go, you're diatribe, just say it. Just say you like him.

• 25:28Jason Calacanis?

  There are aspects I like about the platform. I like probably 80% of the platform.

• 25:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You want to say it?

• 25:32Jason Calacanis?

  And I will tell you today, the 20% I don't like. I'm always going to call balls and strike.

• 25:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, no, no. I'm just saying, you kind of like him. Just say you kind of like him. You do like him.

• 25:40Jason Calacanis?

  I like 80% of his platform this time around.

• 25:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, him, him as a person.

• 25:44Jason Calacanis?

  You know, there's things I really don't like and I'll talk about them today. But anyway, let's put it aside. The, the personal thing doesn't matter. What matters is what he does for the American people and for the country.

• 25:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Because you like him. I know you can't say it, but they're deep down inside you like him.

• 25:57Jason Calacanis?

  Jake Alston is.

• 25:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You were happy to be there?

• 25:59Jason Calacanis?

  Until, I have to say, I had a lot of fun.

• 26:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The Republicans are fun, no? Republicans are fun.

• 26:05Jason Calacanis?

  I, I will say, Republicans are fun. Fashion was off the hook.

• 26:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Off the hook.

• 26:10Jason Calacanis?

  Lot of great fashion and it was a great party.

• 26:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Make America beautiful again. My gosh.

• 26:14Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, listen, I.

• 26:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No more jogging pants and, and White Fox. Get rid of it. Burn it to the ground. Buh.

• 26:21Jason Calacanis?

  What I'll say my takeaway was, you know, as somebody who had concerns and, you know, I'm just, I'm not going to make the show about me, but the important thing for me is who is Trump going to lead with this time around? Is it going to be the people from the sort of 1.0 movement or the 2.0 movement? There was not a 1.0 person.

• 26:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Couldn't be found.

• 26:43Jason Calacanis?

  Couldn't be found. And so to like on the margin, one or two and they were not the focus and who you put in the front row speaks volumes. Who do you put in the front row? Sundar, Elon, Zuck, Lauren Sanchez? He's got his priorities straight.

• 27:04Jason Calacanis?

  The priorities were very clear as to what's important for this administration and I'm fully behind all of his priorities, both of those priorities, all of those priorities seem incredibly important to me.

• 27:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You're such a troll.

• 27:20Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, I don't want to troll too much, but that's the big takeaway for me. And if that is, you know, indicative of where he wants to go with this, which is business first, we're proud of our leaders, we're proud of innovation. I think he's sticking to it. Did you see him on at Davos today? He did a, I mean, this guy's got, you know, just crazy energy.

• 27:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Who, Malay?

• 27:41Jason Calacanis?

  Trump zoomed into Davos and just dunked on them for 45 minutes.

• 27:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He did?

• 27:48Jason Calacanis?

  Yes. And he just destroyed everybody at their dying conference in their irrelevance as they genuflected begging him to come.

• 28:00Thomas Laffont?

  Did you see the photo of the half empty conference room to?

• 28:04Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 28:04Thomas Laffont?

  You know, most of the events were, were just empty chairs.

• 28:08Jason Calacanis?

  It's irrelevant. I mean, these people are irrelevant now.

• 28:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Thomas, you guys remember when Davos used to be a really big deal? Is it dead?

• 28:16Thomas Laffont?

  I think it's worse, Chamath. I think it's a counter indicator now.

• 28:19David Friedberg?

  It is. And there was a good conversation yesterday. Graham Allison, who spoke at our summit, was on this panel and they basically said, we lost, they won. Like our group here at Davos lost, it's over.

• 28:31Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 28:32David Friedberg?

  And they're no longer, to your point, on the right side of history. They said, we had a point of view on the future. We believe we were going in the right direction and everyone told us in this last couple of months that we were wrong.

• 28:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The gentleman, by the way, that spoke after Graham Allison was also very good.

• 28:48Jason Calacanis?

  This is incredible.

• 28:49Speaker 05

  This is the greatest comeback in political history. Of a politician and then therefore he thinks he can do anything.

• 28:56Speaker 06

  We need to also factor in not only who's won, which is Trump, but who's lost, which is to say us.

• 29:02David Friedberg?

  And then he has a whole, the guy has a whole long monologue on why they lost and what they lost, which I think is pretty relevant that that, you know, kind of elite, if you will, has been replaced with a populist vote and a populist leader.

• 29:16Jason Calacanis?

  All right, let's get to our docket today and just want to give a special shout out. We did our inauguration livestream and it was awesome and fun. Special thanks to Air Call, Abra and Hims. Thomas, if you've ever got an issue with weight or, you know, other issues that men have, you can go to Hims and use the code all in to get something. Hims.com slash all in. I want you to write that down, Thomas. Okay. In case you ever have any, any issues, that's.

• 29:46Thomas Laffont?

  What makes you think I haven't already?

• 29:47Jason Calacanis?

  Well, it's anything's possible. Like, I mean, maybe we could talk, I mean, are you on the chews or the pills? Which one? Anyway, we'll talk about it offline. But that's a full head of hair.

• 29:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It is a really incredible head of hair.

• 29:59Thomas Laffont?

  Thank you. All natural, baby.

• 30:01Jason Calacanis?

  It's great. It's great.

• 30:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What product do you put in?

• 30:03Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 30:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Do you put products?

• 30:04Jason Calacanis?

  Sea salt or you got pumice? What are you doing?

• 30:07Thomas Laffont?

  All in one, all in one pro shampoo plus conditioner, one bottle, easy.

• 30:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, but you don't, you don't use any product afterwards?

• 30:15Thomas Laffont?

  None.

• 30:16Jason Calacanis?

  Jesus Christ. Do you blow yourself or do you have it blown?

• 30:19Thomas Laffont?

  I do both, but in this case it's, you know, like Cuba Gooding in Jerry Maguire, I air dry, baby.

• 30:26Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, air dry. Gotcha. So when you're driving to that Santa Monica office, you just put the top down on whatever convertible, living that full lifestyle. Okay.

• 30:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, this is where I do have to admit, unfortunately, after the, after you appeared on the summit, I had all these women, they were like, oh my God, Thomas Laffont is so good looking. And I was like, no, he's not because I'm very competitive in zero sum when other men around me get. But you were the smash hit and then I figured out it must be the hair and also the glasses. I think the glasses were a huge hit. It looked very Clark Kentish.

• 30:56Jason Calacanis?

  Are they, are they real glasses or you just wear the clear ones to get the extra intelligence points?

• 31:00Thomas Laffont?

  Only time I've ever been stopped in the street in my life, in the Presidio, a, a very nice lady tapped me in the shoulder and said, I loved your all in talk. It's never happened before. So that says more about all in than me, but the reach is increasing.

• 31:16Jason Calacanis?

  It's a little

• 31:16David Friedberg?

  By the way, shout out to Akash Singh, who joined us on the live

• 31:19Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, yes. Akash was hilarious. Thank you, Akash. Filling in our DEI department. We lost Chamath and they sent Akash. So he did great. Get him back to guests. Absolutely.

• 31:32David Friedberg?

  Yeah, there's a moderator slot open, so he's gonna be

• 31:34Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, absolutely. If you know anybody who knows science, all right, in our first topic, President Trump smashed the record for day one executive orders. Twenty six in all, beating the prior record of nine by Uncle Joe Biden. No other president signed more than one EO on day one since the Federal Register started tracking this in 1937. Let's go through them. If you want to comment on one, we'll stop and pause, or we can just run through them, gentlemen. Doge officially was established and people are making note of the Doge SWAT team. Doge will assign an agency head to each federal agency. The agency head will build a four-person team.

• 32:17Jason Calacanis?

  This will include an engineer, an HR specialist, and an attorney. It was separately announced that Vivek was leaving Doge to run for governor of Ohio. Fascinating, interesting. I don't know if anybody's got a take there. They suspended the TikTok ban for 75 days. There's a lot more to get into this, so we're gonna break that down a little later in the show. Yeah, okay, we'll go right to that in a minute. The January 6 pardons, they pardon 1,500 January 6 participants, including some that savagely beat cops. Very controversial. We'll get back to that in a moment. Ending birthright citizenship. This is a controversial one that is being fought legally. Those born in the US to illegal immigrants would no longer be considered citizens if this holds up.

• 33:02Jason Calacanis?

  The birthright citizenship is codified in the 14th Amendment and 22 state attorney generals have already sued over this executive order. So it might be a performative one. Energy, unleashing American energy. We're gonna dump into that one, jump into that one for sure. And then federal employees, a hiring freeze and a full return to office. And the hiring freeze doesn't apply to military, immigration enforcement, or public safety. And then a regulatory freeze on regulations. Gentlemen, where do we want to start? Jan 6, TikTok, Doge. Tom, as you're our guest, where do you want to start?

• 33:37Thomas Laffont?

  I'm happy to chat about TikTok.

• 33:39Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, as we mentioned earlier, Trump extended TikTok's grace period by 75 days. Trump said he wants to get a deal done. He also said at a press conference that he'd like the US to own 50% of TikTok and that it could be a trillion dollar asset. That's unique and interesting. He was also positive about the idea of Elon possibly buying it, or maybe Larry Ellison, or anybody. So he wants to make a deal. What are your thoughts, Thomas, on what should happen with TikTok? And what will happen?

• 34:13Thomas Laffont?

  I don't know what will happen, but I do think it'd be interesting to share with you guys. We are investors in TikTok.

• 34:22Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 34:22Thomas Laffont?

  We invested back. It was obviously just a Chinese company and investing in China was very different back then. But what resonated to me when I met the founder, and he just had a very simple idea, which is his view was, if I have a piece of content and it's a great piece of content, how can I have it be shared? And his view was that if you share it on Instagram, the only way people see it is if you had, you know, a lot of followers. And so he just had a really simple idea and he said, what if I take every piece of content that's uploaded into the system? And I show it to at least one other user? So no matter what that content is, at least one person will see it, even if you have no followers. And then based on whether that person views it or how long, I might show it to another user.

• 35:06Thomas Laffont?

  And then a third and a fourth. And it was such a revolutionary idea and it really resonated with me at the time. And it just goes to show how we're in an idea business. And when you have a truly revolutionary idea, it can get really big. And so the whole genesis of TikTok came from that really simple concept of your content will be shown. And if people like it, it will be shown to a lot of people. So obviously, I mean, if you look at TikTok in the US, we can just kind of very back of the envelope, look at the math, right? So if we look at DAUs, Mother Blue, or Meta, as we love to know, the Facebook hat roughly, right, has about 200 million DAUs.

• 35:48Thomas Laffont?

  In the US.

• 35:49Jason Calacanis?

  Daily active users for folks who don't know the terminology.

• 35:52Thomas Laffont?

  Yeah, correct. Right. So if you look at Facebook for its Instagram, you'll see it's about 200 million DAUs. And you can look at the time spent. What's interesting about TikTok's time spent is the DAUs are about half of combined Meta and Insta. So we get about 100 million DAUs in the US. But the time spent on the platform is the equivalent of Facebook plus Instagram. So obviously incredible, not just scale in terms of DAUs, but also on time spent. So if we think about, okay, well, what would that mean the business is worth? So if we look at Meta today, the market cap is roughly one and a half trillion. I think internet investors generally assume about roughly half the market cap is US.

• 36:38Thomas Laffont?

  So if we take the one and a half trillion, maybe that's 750 billion, right? Now, we know that the time spent is equivalent, but the DAUs are half. So maybe we cut the 750 in half, right? That would tell you that the max value would, you know, if you monetize the way Meta does and ran it the way Zuck does, might be 375 billion for the US asset alone. I think from that point, you know, you kind of start to apply a couple discounts, right? One is, if that's my kind of long-term value, what kind of return would an investor want potentially to get to that 375? You know, is it 50%? So maybe you cut that by 50%. And then I think the devil would be in the details. What are exactly are you getting?

• 37:22Thomas Laffont?

  Are you just getting users? Are you getting the algorithm? Are you getting data? Right? So maybe you also want to apply kind of a more kind of severe discount to that. But I think you put it all together, you know, is 100 billion a reasonable scenario? You know, I think the math proves it. And then could it be a trillion dollar asset? The way Trump has mentioned, I mean, in a world where Facebook's one and a half, right? And the penetration of TikTok in the US is 50% of what Meta is?

• 37:54Thomas Laffont?

  I don't think it's unrealistic, so let's see what happens. I don't have any particular insight on what will happen, but what I do know is that it's an incredibly valuable franchise.

• 38:03Jason Calacanis?

  So let me ask you the obvious question. People are looking at this and saying, you're going to take 50% of your shares. And in this case, we actually have somebody who has shares. So are you comfortable with the government seizing 50% of your shares, I guess is one way to frame it?

• 38:20Thomas Laffont?

  Well, I don't know. I mean, first of all, there's kind of no deal, so it's a little bit hard. I can tell you that-

• 38:27Jason Calacanis?

  Well, that's the deal he proposed. So if, in that scenario, would you, yeah?

• 38:31Thomas Laffont?

  We never attributed much value to the TikTok US asset in the sense of our analysis was always based on the value of the Chinese business, specifically because it's just hard to know what the TikTok asset ex China would be worth, right? Is it worth zero because it's so compromised regulatorily? Is it worth a lot more? It's just very, very difficult to know. So we always took a very kind of conservative view of really looking at kind of the Chinese and some of the other assets as the core value of ByteDance, the holding company. Ultimately, what TikTok happens, I mean, it's the classic, when you try and sell a company, what's the value, where it depends. Is there one bidder or five bidders?

• 39:15Thomas Laffont?

  Right? Is the government the only bidder for that asset? In that case, it kind of will indicate a value of X. Or are there other companies that potentially could be an acceptable bidder to both sides?

• 39:26Jason Calacanis?

  Well, the Trump deal, though, is he's saying the government, the United States government, the citizens of America, would get half of the company. So that would be the equivalent of you giving half your shares.

• 39:37Thomas Laffont?

  The US company.

• 39:38Jason Calacanis?

  The US company, yeah. So what do you think of this proposal? Because this seems like unique in all the world. So if, in order to have it spin out and maintain half your shares, would you be willing to give all of us, the government, the citizens of the United States, half your shares?

• 39:54Thomas Laffont?

  Well, I mean, if you think about it, what did we learn a couple days ago?

• 39:58Jason Calacanis?

  For a license, yeah.

• 39:59Thomas Laffont?

  We learned that it might just get shut down and be worth zero.

• 40:02Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, right, so-

• 40:04Thomas Laffont?

  In one sense, anything that's greater than zero by definition is kind of better. Right? I think ultimately it will kind of come down to, does the government want to be the only bidder for the asset? Or would the government be comfortable with either Elon owning it and merging it to X? Or Microsoft owning it? Or, you know? What do you think, Free Bird?

• 40:27David Friedberg?

  Well, Thomas, let me ask you a question. Can you just tell the audience a little bit about, because you guys have been involved as investors in China for a long time. I would love for you to share behind the scenes, what has gone on with respect to being an investor in China in technology over the last couple of years? What has changed and why? And what goes on today? You guys made a fantastic investment in ByteDance, which is the parent company of TikTok. You've made other incredible investments in China. Are you still investing in China? If not, walk us through what happened and why?

• 41:01Thomas Laffont?

  I think if you look, David, virtually all of our investments in China were Chinese companies catering to the Chinese market.

• 41:10David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 41:10Thomas Laffont?

  Right? And there was a massive trend of a very significant economy that was adopting technology. Right? And so we can think about whether that be smartphones, companies like Huawei, whether it was companies like Meituan that were doing food delivery, or Tencent that were doing gaming. And so, you know, all our approach was basically based on these companies. And by the way, a lot of them were public, which is what people don't remember. Chamath, you may remember, but Tencent at one point was a public company listed in Hong Kong. The market cap was 200 million.

• 41:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, I do remember.

• 41:46Thomas Laffont?

  Right?

• 41:46David Friedberg?

  Wow.

• 41:47Thomas Laffont?

  What was interesting about it, Dave, is a lot of that played out. Baidu was an early IPO. Right? So a lot of that trend of Chinese companies catering to the Chinese market really kind of played out across public and private markets for over 20 years.

• 42:02David Friedberg?

  Yep.

• 42:03Thomas Laffont?

  I think to me, what significantly changed over the past five years is technology really became a matter of national security. And I don't think that when we were early investors in Meituan, right, that we necessarily viewed that as a national security threat as an example, right? And I think as You know, companies got bigger as AI kind of came to be. It became pretty obvious that there were national security implications. And, you know, our view as investors is we don't set the rules of the road. We rely on government and regulators to do so. It was pretty clear, I think, to obvious that the regulatory regimes were changing in both countries.

• 42:43Thomas Laffont?

  And so for us as investors, you know, we were just, well, we're just going to follow what the rules are and what the governments are. So my only kind of regret through this whole thing is, and I don't know any, you know, if you guys had kind of some exposure to this, but the quality of the entrepreneurs that came out of that era was unbelievable.

• 43:04Jason Calacanis?

  It has some strong cohort, yeah.

• 43:06Thomas Laffont?

  Absolutely. When you think about the founder of Meituan, Wang Shu, and just how brilliant he was and what he's done with that franchise and not just doing food delivery, but also the software operating system for restaurants, right? It's truly incredible. Pony Ma from Tencent, right? It was such an incredible group of entrepreneurs. They were a lot of fun to be around. They were excited and passionate about bringing technology to their country. And, you know,

• 43:33David Friedberg?

  Is it over?

• 43:35Thomas Laffont?

  Yeah. Hard to know. I mean, if you look at the capital markets, I mean, you can see we've not seen a tremendous amount of innovation, right? Or new companies kind of coming out. So I think the key question is, you know, is it a pendulum? And, you know, does the Chinese regulatory regime kind of move one way? And then it kind of moves another way? Or is it kind of fixed in this state?

• 43:55David Friedberg?

  Is it your read? Is it correct to say that the CCP wanted to stop this extraordinary wealth creation by a subset of individuals in the country? That this was kind of becoming too much of a capitalist enterprising system and challenged some of the foundations of the CCP? Is that what was going on and why this all got throttled back? I mean, is there, or is there something, something else? Some other kind of, you know, security reason?

• 44:24Thomas Laffont?

  I don't really know, Dave, because as an investor, it's, you know, it's not a regulatory regime that you have any interaction with, right? You're really talking to the entrepreneurs and you're kind of reflecting off of their energy and their business ideas, right? So we would meet businesses and we would meet founders. And if, if the idea was kind of interesting to us, we would kind of fund it, right?

• 44:44Jason Calacanis?

  So it's a black box in some ways, you know, in terms of a market to invest in. You only have a limited amount of information. And after Jack, I mean, you gotta think after Jack Ma kinda disappeared for a couple of years, if you're an entrepreneur and you wanna like

• 44:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The message was sent.

• 45:01Jason Calacanis?

  The message was sent, message received, and then you start thinking about Chamath, you know, what Trump just did. And what Xi Jinping just did. You put those two things together. Trump put all of our top guys, top dogs onstage. Here they are.

• 45:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Exact opposite of China. The message is very clear. And it's what Thomas said, like, technologies and national security imperative. And so we're going to embrace these guys. We're not going to play favorites. We're not going to pick one and not the other. We're not going to have summits and have, you know, the founder of an entire category not be invited. That's just, it's honestly, it's patently stupid and immature. And that's what the Biden administration did.

• 45:40Jason Calacanis?

  Picked favorites.

• 45:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah. And that is dumb, based on the implication and importance of technology. I just want to go back to the TikTok thing. I want to make three points. One is from the past. I'll give you my sense of the TikTok thing, and I'm going to make a prediction for the future. In 1984, the way that LVMH began was through a deal that Bernard Arnault architected. There was a business owned by the French Cotton King, Marcel Bussac, and inside of that empire was Christian Dior. Long story short, his empire was crumbling, and Arnault did a deal where he bought that dying business essentially from the French

• 46:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  government for one franc. Fast forward now, 40 years of very hard work and tremendous execution, that's a $350 billion public company. Now, imagine back then, in 1984, if the French government actually had done a deal where they said, we'll sell it to you for 50% of whatever you build. Take it for a dollar, but we're going to own 50% of the upside. And, you know, they would have an extra $175 billion today.

• 46:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think that that's very important in terms of what is possible today. I like Thomas's math, I believe it, I do think it's about a hundred billion dollar asset. But at the end of the day, the president was very clear that it is completely and entirely worthless without his permit. And he wants to own fifty percent of this asset. Now, if you're a buyer of something, you're not going to pay a hundred billion dollars if you control whether it can exist or not. You're basically going to pay today's equivalent of one franc, which would be one dollar. Now, I'm not saying that it is going to be a dollar. But if the United States Treasury wants to hold fifty percent of an asset

• 47:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  that could be worth a hundred billion, or five hundred billion, or, you know, maybe a trillion. It would make sense for the United States Treasury and the United States people to own that at effectively zero. So I think that the incentive is there, and I think he has essentially said that he is going to do the best deal in his interests, which is the United States interests. Which I suspect means a price that is as low as possible approaching one dollar.

• 48:05Jason Calacanis?

  And ultimately, won't this be Chinese government's decision? Because they could always say, you know what? Let it die.

• 48:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Maybe, but my point is, it may not be a dollar, maybe it could be twenty five billion, maybe it could be ten billion. But my point is, I find it very hard to see how it gets to the actual value that it is today. So then, I think, let me just make a prediction for the future. There's a question that this raises, which is, does it make sense for the American government

• 48:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  to be a little bit smarter going forward about how it allocates incentives and resources? The American government is still the largest single landowner in America. We give concessions to private companies, to drill, to build things.

• 48:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And it just turns out that if you apply this example more broadly, wouldn't it make sense where when you create incredible economic incentives and upside for private investors and investment, for some portion of that gain to go back to the American people? Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. For example, if you said, we're going to accelerate permitting for all these data centers, we're going to make any form of energy, which was the opposite of what the Biden EO said on his way out the door. He had all these conditions. But if the President, President Trump's EO on data centers says any kind of energy, but we want to own a 5% royalty and we'll allow you to put it on federal lands or 10% or 15%.

• 49:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Would it really change the underwriting that Blackstone and all these other companies will do? I don't think so. Would it enrich America? I think so. Would it make it easier for people to feel like they're participating in all of these incredible gains? I also think so. So my prediction is that this becomes more of a template for the future. It'll be less about permitting. It'll be more about creating incentives and allocating those incentives for a share of the upside. And I think that there is a really strong economic argument for America to do that.

• 50:07Jason Calacanis?

  You know, Tram, to build on that, people don't remember, but Tesla got $465 million from the Department of Energy. That was called the ATVM program, which was the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing. That was a very visionary program at the time.

• 50:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Visionary. But it, but it took no equity.

• 50:24Jason Calacanis?

  But it didn't take equity.

• 50:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And that was dumb.

• 50:27Jason Calacanis?

  So dumb. They should have gotten some portion of equity, some portion of a loan. Tesla did so well, thanks to Elon and the team's hard work.

• 50:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think the president.

• 50:37Jason Calacanis?

  Paid it back early. They paid it back early. That's how well they did. If they had owned 10% of Tesla, but 10%.

• 50:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, I think the president has, has sniffed this out, by the way. This, and you may not think that these are related, but when he said that he's considering eliminating federal income tax and funding this thing from tariffs. And he just had a press conference today where he's inviting every single company to come and make things in the United States because he will create economic incentives to make it here cheaper. But if you make it abroad and bring it in here, he's going to charge money and a tariff. All of this are part and parcel of, I think, this broader economic realization. And unlike. 2008, 9 and 10, when we were allocating money, or 2020 and 21 and 22, where we were just sending money out the door with frankly, no consequence and no accounting.

• 51:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This time around, I think he's got some incredibly sharp business people. This is, by the way, the upside of having folks that have actually been successful in the real world, working inside of government, is they're going to help them get to this realization, and I think it's a really good one.

• 51:43Jason Calacanis?

  I don't think Tim, Tim Walz would have done this.

• 51:45Thomas Laffont?

  My only pushback to Chamath on that would be, I just think it's a dangerous game for the government to start picking winners. You know, I wouldn't, for example, if it owns 50% of a TikTok, does, does it disadvantage a Meta, as an example, right? And I do wonder, is the value capturing mechanism for the government taxes essentially? Right? So the, the, the way you capture the, the, right, the portion of the value creation of these companies is through a tax system. And I do think we just have to be careful of the government all of a sudden picking different companies to win. You know, I do think having a good set of incentives, a level playing field, let the competitive dynamics of different companies fight each other, and then capture the value through taxes.

• 52:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think you're right, and I think that that part is absolutely fundamental. But I think there is a way to architect this. For example, you have these RFPs that by design have to be published in the open source and available for anybody to bid on. My only point is just to say that when there is an ultimate winner, why not have a small stake in the upside? Look at the amount of money that the DOE gives in grants. I'll give you an example. You know, one of these companies that I helped start a few years ago to make advanced battery materials, we got $150 million grant. I'm very appreciative of that grant. But if they also asked for 5 or 10% of the equity, I would have still said yes.

• 53:07Jason Calacanis?

  Of course you would have, yeah, it's a great deal. And why not give a little upside to the taxpayers? I agree with that.

• 53:12Thomas Laffont?

  By the way, a parallel to that would be Spectrum, right? If you think about wireless, right, kind of got built, the government auctioned off Spectrum and then allowed public, you know, private companies to kind of come and bid on it. And, you know, so there, there's a lot of different interesting mechanisms you can bring to that.

• 53:28Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 53:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Friedberg, which EO would you like to go to next?

• 53:30David Friedberg?

  Well, I'll just wrap on the TikTok.

• 53:33Jason Calacanis?

  Sure.

• 53:35David Friedberg?

  I do worry a lot about the precedent being set here with respect to foreign government actions on US companies in their, in their local countries. Imagine the CCP tells Tesla they have to sell their Chinese operations and give 50% of the Chinese operations to the Chinese government because of their concerns about security where Tesla is now able to track Chinese citizens driving around and where they are. And you can see very quickly how this whole kind of overall, I think, presentation of the security risk that we face with TikTok and therefore we will shut it down or own

• 54:16David Friedberg?

  it creates, I think, a counter that could really hurt American companies. You could see this going to Google, to Apple, to Tesla, even food manufacturing companies that have operations overseas where local governments say, hey, we need to, for local security purposes, we need to take ownership of your business. I think one of the things that's really benefited Americans in global trade is our ability to sell and export our technology, our goods and our services around the world through open trade. And I do think that we've used this kind of TikTok security thing to say this is a rationale for us doing this as a one-off, but it also opens up a lot of other people to say this is a one-off. And so I'm just generally very wary about this whole TikTok situation.

• 54:59Jason Calacanis?

  You're right. You're 100% right. And by the way, the CCP's done it already. They did it to Apple. And if you follow what happened when they introduced iCloud, I don't know if you remember GCBD, GCBD is the Chinese state-owned data company, the cloud provider there. And they just told Apple, we get all the data. And they just had to roll over and all citizens in China who use an iPhone, in order to use an iPhone in China, your data is owned by the government, period, full stop. And Apple had no choice but to do that. So if you want to play in a certain market, you got to play by the rules.

• 55:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Guys, the thing, the thing to keep in mind here is I hear all of these kind of like theoretical qualms about how it's unfair, but this stuff happens all the time. And it's just that we don't benefit from it. So Jason brought up an excellent example with Tesla. The other example, just to remind you guys, is during the pandemic, the Federal Reserve stepped in and started buying. Commercial corporate bonds. They own a ton of like Ford bonds so that these things wouldn't default. There's all kinds of action all the time where the federal government is involved in private companies. My point is, if you're going to be involved, have some legacy ownership on the back end of it so that in case this stuff really works, that it's broadly value creating for more Americans.

• 56:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think it would create a way to de-escalate this sensation that a few people are winning and everybody else is just kind of staying still.

• 56:29David Friedberg?

  We should talk about Stargate and the AI project because I do think it tees off on one of the most.

• 56:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I want to talk about big Jan 6 though.

• 56:36David Friedberg?

  Okay, but it does tee off of one of the other kind of key things that I heard a lot about in DC and I know Thomas is passionate about like I am, which is energy, electricity, capacity build out in the United States because it's critical and like building AI infrastructure means that we need to build energy infrastructure.

• 56:54Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Yeah, we'll go right to that after we wrap up these, we wrap up these executive orders. And I too wanted to talk about January 6th, just to give people the update here. J D Vance had said that the people who committed violence on January 6th, quote, "Obviously shouldn't be pardoned." And this is a parade of people who are on the Republican side, who are coming out against how President Trump handled this. I think you all know where I would fall on this side of it. What are your thoughts on this?

• 57:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Where do you fall on it?

• 57:26Jason Calacanis?

  You know, I come from a family of cops and I feel like he's betrayed the blue on this one. And, you know, if there are people who, I think he should have taken his time with this. It is possible that some people had sentences that were too long. The justice system, you know, is imperfect in our country and the pardon power is theirs, I think specifically to do a very granular job of looking at each case, right? And so I think we have to look at pardon power generally after what we saw the Biden family do and now we see Trump doing this. So I think that the pardon power is not being used as it's intended. It's being used politically now by both parties. So I'm trying to call balls and strikes here. But you know, as somebody who's in law enforcement, a family that's in law enforcement and my

• 58:11Jason Calacanis?

  chosen career was to be a cop and an FBI agent and. You know, just looking at it, it's just heartbreaking to see people beat cops and then be treated as heroes, treated as heroes. And some of these people are very dark people, you know, the oath keepers and some of these people are extremely violent. And they're coming out now after this has all been said and saying that they're going to double down, they're going to buy more guns and that they're going to get their retribution. And so I think you have to be really careful with violent people that you give them, you know, this coronation and that they were justified because they'll go do more violent things. And so I understand he made this promise to people. I think he should have been very granular in doing this. I totally understand. There could be people who got sentences that were too long.

• 58:56Jason Calacanis?

  And I would have liked to seen him do this thoughtfully. This was not done thoughtfully. I have a certain amount of goodwill towards the new president and this has lowered it.

• 59:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I knew that this would be really important to you. So I took a few minutes to try to collect my thoughts. I've been kind of walking myself through it since yesterday.

• 59:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is not an explanation other than to you, Jason, my friend, about how I think we got here. Okay. So I just wanted to take a few minutes to explain that to you. I think that before you can look at January 6, I think you got to go back to what happened during

• 59:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  the COVID lockdowns and what we started to see in a bunch of these liberal cities.

• 59:43Jason Calacanis?

  Talking about BLM riots?

• 59:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The BLM riots, the Antifa riots, what happened in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, the lawlessness that you see in places like New York, the decarceration movement. And I think that what started to happen was a sensation that for

• 1:00:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The same weight, there were different measures. So, for example, if you start to look at some of the deportations that are happening now, it's really quite shocking. I sent Nick a clip of them. Nick, you can just maybe show the first few seconds. But you are talking about some incredibly, incredibly violent offenders that were just walking randomly down the street.

• 1:00:30Speaker 07

  I'm not going back to Haiti.

• 1:00:32Speaker 08

  One of those threats is this illegal alien from Haiti. ICE says he's a gang member with 17 criminal convictions in recent years.

• 1:00:41Speaker 07

  You feel me? Yo, Biden forever, bro. Thank Obama for everything that he did for me, bro.

• 1:00:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There's more after this, but there was like a rapist that they picked up in Boston. There's a person that was charged with assault.

• 1:00:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So there was this sensation, Jason, that was building up for a long time that all of a sudden the law was being applied in very odd ways. Where depending on what you did, you would get adjudicated in totally different ways based on your political affiliation, or your leaning, or based on the desire of a district prosecutor to go after one thing or another. Let me just pause. So that's, that's sort of like the thing that was sort of building and cascading. I do agree with you that I think January 6th is kind of like a stain. I, I think there's nothing to be proud of there. But I think what we found out since January 6th is somewhat important. I think the first thing we found out was that there was a bunch of these folks whose convictions were very speculative.

• 1:01:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think the Supreme Court already ruled that in June of last year. It was like a 63 vote that said at least 350 of these convictions should probably just be thrown out. So there was one body that was that. Then there was a whole bunch of them where, to your point, you took a misdemeanor, you trumped it up to a felony. You had all kinds of, you know, things where procedural motions were denied for the defense, approved for prosecution, and you had sentences that didn't match the crime. And then you have a president who frankly was the subject of lawfare himself. So I think that what would have been better was a more methodical approach to this. I agree with you. But I do think that what's happening here is essentially a moment.

• 1:02:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Where we can close this entire chapter and we can get back to a focus on observing the law and adjudicating it equally for everybody. And I think that that's probably the best way that we can all deal with this because I think that there was a bunch of pardons that were 100% obvious. And then there was a bunch that were just, you know, had to be done because the court was perverted in how they dealt with some of these folks. Then there was a small number, and I don't know the exact number to be fair, Jason, where these folks did some really bad stuff. Now, it's also mixed in with this thing where there was a bunch of informants, then there was a bunch of folks that were paid.

• 1:03:00Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, the informant stuff, we'll have to wait for that to come out because that's in conspiracy corner for now.

• 1:03:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Anyways, my point is, I just went and I collected that as a way to try to explain to you.

• 1:03:10Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I appreciate you understanding my passion on it and wanting to bring it up.

• 1:03:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  How we got here, I think it's sort of like.

• 1:03:15Jason Calacanis?

  I'm well aware of it, yeah.

• 1:03:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think we gotta put a pin in this and say, both sides should now have enough experience to say, we're gonna apply the law equally to everybody going forward from this moment out, let's just go forward and not look back. I think that's the best thing that we can all do.

• 1:03:30Jason Calacanis?

  Let's hope. I'll just leave you with this, the Proud Boy leader, Enrique Tarrio, this is his quote on getting out. "I'm happy the president's focusing not on retribution and focusing on success, but I will tell you that I'm not going to play by those rules. They need to pay for what they did." These are some seriously bad hombres, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, and so don't be surprised if they do something worse.

• 1:03:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I also want to talk about the citizenship thing, and I just want to just provide a little color for people. I'm sure that there's a lot of folks that are listening who have people that work for them that, you know, maybe sort of.

• 1:04:08Jason Calacanis?

  The birthright thing, if you came here illegally and had a child, you get to be a citizen, just to be clear.

• 1:04:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is going to the Supreme Court, and just to put a little bit of color on it, in the 14th Amendment, there's this very important part that says, "Birthright citizenship is applied to people who are subject to the jurisdiction of America." And for a long time, that phrase was not really considered in how the Supreme Court administered the 14th Amendment. I think what this EO did and the lawsuits that happened almost instantaneously as a result will now send this back to the Supreme Court very quickly.

• 1:04:45Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And people will opine on what that means. So if it means nothing, it means that if you are here, however you're here, and if you have a child, they're going to be a citizen of America. If that qualifier is now part of the administration and the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, I think what President Trump has written is what will happen, which is if you are here illegally, it doesn't apply. If you are here under a visa, that necessarily means you're still subject to the jurisdiction of somebody else, it may not apply. But I think the Supreme Court is going to get to decide this in pretty short order.

• 1:05:21Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, couple more issues I want to get to on the docket.

• 1:05:24David Friedberg?

  Sorry, let me just make a quick comment on the.

• 1:05:26Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, sure, Dave.

• 1:05:28David Friedberg?

  The January 6th. I'm, I just generally don't like this power of pardon.

• 1:05:34Jason Calacanis?

  Agreed.

• 1:05:35David Friedberg?

  We saw what Biden did. He gave, I mean, how many thousands, Nick? You can pull the number up, but.

• 1:05:41Jason Calacanis?

  Eight thousand.

• 1:05:42David Friedberg?

  Eight thousand pardons. And I feel like the original intention of the power of pardon, which is in the Constitution, was meant to kind of protect the union, the civility in the union at times of, you know, we need to kind of come back together and realign ourselves. And it has been so far abused beyond that original intention. It's almost like, feels like an extraordinary injustice. It almost gives the president the ability to rewrite the law that many of the kind of actions from the executive branch can simply supersede the actions of the judicial branch, which is really meant to protect and execute the

• 1:06:25David Friedberg?

  laws of the nation. And I think it's gone too far. It feels like there's a necessary amendment to address this, that these presidents can come out and preemptively pardon people for things that might be found in the future because they're close with them. It has nothing to do with the original intention. If you go back to the arguments for the pardon being in the Constitution, you can see that Alexander Hamilton wrote deeply about it in Federalist Paper Number 74.

• 1:06:54David Friedberg?

  And in that paper, he talked a lot about and emphasized that the justice system, which is designed to be fair, may occasionally result in overly harsh or unjust outcomes. And the pardon allows for acts of mercy to correct these situations. There are a lot of these sorts of actions that we saw happen with Biden do not fit the bill for that definition. I will tell you, there's a quote from Federalist Paper 74 from Hamilton, it goes as follows. "In seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments when a well-timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquility of the Commonwealth." So to counter my point, Hamilton's argument is that when the nation is divided, the act

• 1:07:38David Friedberg?

  of the pardon may actually help bring the nation back together, as may have been the case with respect to the January 6th. But it may not necessarily be about-

• 1:07:46Jason Calacanis?

  Or Nixon-

• 1:07:47David Friedberg?

  -justice. Or Nixon. And it may not necessarily be about justice, but it's much more about restoring tranquility of the union and allowing the nation to move forward, even though it may not seem just, it may be the right thing for the nation. So I'm not trying to defend the action or defend the pardon. I really don't like the act of pardoning as a kind of tool that's being used in 100 different ways. And it certainly seems like it requires change, so.

• 1:08:09Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, and just programming note here, research note, 6,500 people of those 8,000 seem to be convicted of marijuana possession or distribution.

• 1:08:21David Friedberg?

  And you know what's needed there? Then the law should have been changed and the courts should have overturned all of those convictions. It does not necessarily need to fall, and it shouldn't fall on the executive branch to take that action. The courts need to do their job and the legislators need to do their job.

• 1:08:36Jason Calacanis?

  I don't disagree, but I think there is some compassion in the pardon concept for how long do they have to wait for that? Yeah, I mean, how long do you have to wait for that? You know, and then like the people who were- You know, convicted of selling dime bags or having an ounce of weed on them or black and brown. And then all my white friends who started weed companies are now taking them public in Canada. So shout out Trudeau. All right, let's keep moving here. I think we we we did some good job here on the reconciliation on the pod. Where do we want to go next? Stargate Project? Stargate.

• 1:09:08Thomas Laffont?

  Stargate.

• 1:09:08Jason Calacanis?

  Stargate.

• 1:09:09Thomas Laffont?

  Stargate and energy. Yeah.

• 1:09:10Jason Calacanis?

  Stargate and energy. Stargate. Okay, so here we go. And I'm gonna go to to our guest here, Thomas. Thomas, anything on January 6th or controversial topics like smoking weed? But you want to jump in on there? No? Okay, great. Sure. Your LPs just breathe. Hey, you're coming on the All In Podcast.

• 1:09:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What is LPs? They're gonna be so happy. But then when they hear the J6, they're just gonna be clenched waiting for the segment to end.

• 1:09:38Thomas Laffont?

  Oh, wait, hold on. My mic went out. Oh, never mind. I missed it.

• 1:09:41Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, all right.

• 1:09:42Thomas Laffont?

  Yeah, it was well said. Honestly, I don't have anything to add. You guys summed it up nicely.

• 1:09:46Jason Calacanis?

  Anything on Lauren Sanchez's outfit? Okay, let's continue. Another big story from week one. We are literally not even three or four days into this. It's gonna be a crazy four years. According to OpenAI's press release, the Stargate Project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years, building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. Free Bird, we gotta find out what's going on here with the Stargate movie and TV series if they got IP permission to do this. SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead.

• 1:10:22Thomas Laffont?

  Good question, Jacob.

• 1:10:23Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, I'm just thinking out loud, and we have to talk about where this ranks on your list of great sci-fi and most accurate.

• 1:10:30Thomas Laffont?

  Top 40 sci-fi.

• 1:10:32Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, right up there with the Star Trek original series and The Next Generation. SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners with Oracle and MJX. Also participating, Oracle, Nvidia, and OpenAI will build and operate the infrastructure. Microsoft is sort of involved, although we'll see about that. Mash's Yoshi-san was at the announcement. He's gonna be the chairman. However, Gavin Baker and Elon both called cap on X, saying they don't actually have the money. Gavin did some back of the envelope math. And of course, as always, Sam and Elon have been spicy in the replies. Sam is hurt. Elon is dunking. It's it's just their relationship is so fluid.

• 1:11:13Jason Calacanis?

  Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella jumped into my thread with Elon, saying he was good for the 80 bill, and that he was ready to build other products and services, and that was what was important. What do you think here, Thomas? Is this, are you an investor in OpenAI? I guess, let's get that out there. Or in XAI, just so we know where you're coming from here, if you're talking to your book. But

• 1:11:36Thomas Laffont?

  I am an investor in OpenAI. And, okay, so there's three points I want to make here.

• 1:11:41Jason Calacanis?

  Go.

• 1:11:42Thomas Laffont?

  Point number one, going back to the origins of this podcast, and, you know, sitting, watching both public market investors and venture investors, you know, one notable difference is, you know, I think venture investors tend to be very tribal. So if you're in one tribe, you are by definition not in another. And, you know, I think there's a lot of kind of domain-specific reasons for that. You know, for me, as my legacy as a public market investor, I'm very comfortable being both, you know, pro OpenAI and pro Tesla and pro X. And so I just kind of caveat that kind of, you know, as a first point. My second point is, can we do a slight detour on Masa for one minute? And I'm curious to get your guys' opinion.

• 1:12:25Thomas Laffont?

  But is Masa the GOAT? Because when I started in the growth business, I met with Yuri Milner, and he said, Thomas, you get in the Hall of Fame if you can have one deal that gives you a billion-dollar return, i.e., you know, whatever you invest plus what you take out is a billion dollars or more. And he actually kept a tracker in his mind of who had made those deals and what share he had and etc. So let's go to Masa for one minute. Masa is the $100 billion club.

• 1:12:50Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:51Thomas Laffont?

  Okay. And not only that, he's actually done it twice. He did it the first time with SoftBank and Alibaba, which at its peak was a $200 billion win, and I think he ultimately netted like 80-plus billion out of it. So that's one. He did it again with ARM, that he bought for 30, and now is sitting on a gain of 100, I think, 35 billion. And he could have done it a third time with Nvidia if he hadn't sold. I mean, guys-

• 1:13:19Jason Calacanis?

  There's nobody like him.

• 1:13:20Thomas Laffont?

  Incredible.

• 1:13:21Jason Calacanis?

  Incredible. You're 100% right. You got to give the man his flowers. He is-

• 1:13:25Thomas Laffont?

  So I'll tell you what, Chamath, I am never betting against Masa, ever. Because you got to give the man credit for what he's done. And- So now let's go to kind of OpenAI. You guys mentioned we do own some OpenAI. I am bullish on OpenAI, which I guess is now a counter against the grain kind of view. But guys, my point of view on OpenAI and the reason I'm so bullish is really kind of ChatGPT. And I do think when OpenAI gets, you know, we do, it does have different businesses, right? It's got the model business, it has the API business, and then it has the ChatGPT business, right? And if you look at the downloads, maybe Nick bring up the charts, but it is really interesting

• 1:14:06Thomas Laffont?

  to watch the market share of ChatGPT versus Google Gemini and Grok. This is both in the US and international. It really is a dominant kind of franchise, right? It is maintaining 80% plus market share. You know, J Cal, if this was ride sharing, right? We would say, wow, this, this company is the winner, right? So to me, I think that the quality of the ChatGPT franchise, right? I think they disclosed 300 million weekly actives, over a million enterprise users. It has become a core part of my own workflow.

• 1:14:44Thomas Laffont?

  You know, I have it on my phone, I have it on my desktop, I use it all the time. I can't even quantify the value that it brings. It's so important for what it does for me. So, and I do think that it just keeps getting smarter. Every query that I ask, it learns more about me, it learns more about our system. So I do think the ChatGPT franchise inside of OpenAI is one of the great, most successful, fastest growing kind of stories. So that's kind of the underpinning of my kind of OpenAI thesis. You know, on Stargate specifically, look, I think the real question to me isn't whether they have the 500 billion, right? Because we know that the 500 billion could come from equity, it could come from Masa.

• 1:15:28Thomas Laffont?

  If you look at Gavin's tweet, by the way, he does caveat it, right? Saying that assumes that Masa doesn't want to sell ARM and SoftBank, right? So I'm not sure.

• 1:15:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Or just lever it up and use debt.

• 1:15:39Thomas Laffont?

  Correct. So you have debt. I think to me, the real question, guys, is do we ultimately believe that you can get an ROI on that 500 billion? Because if you can, there will be people that will want to fund it, right? You can do a data center by data center. You can do it actually at the GPU level, right? So the financing is there. To me, the 500 billion doesn't scare me from an absolute number. I think the question we really have to ask ourselves is, do we believe that the market is big enough, that the opportunity is big enough, that investors can get a return on the 500 billion?

• 1:16:16Jason Calacanis?

  I think, I think

• 1:16:17Thomas Laffont?

  So to me, that's the real question.

• 1:16:18Jason Calacanis?

  I think you framed it perfectly. And since you bring up ride sharing and the 80% there, I really think that's an important thing to take a moment to settle on, because in that case, you didn't have Uber being challenged by Google, Microsoft, and Elon Musk at the same time in a digital product as opposed to a real world product. And so when I use Gemini or XAI and ChatGPT, and I use them all daily and Claude, the difference between the products right now is really narrow. And I think if the equivalent would

• 1:16:58Jason Calacanis?

  be somebody who had 100 million cars on the road already competing against Uber, which doesn't exist, or didn't exist at the time. So that, I think, is the way I look at this as a slightly different type of race. I do believe the ChatGPT franchise is worth something, but I think enterprise folks, when I talk to them, want the open source product most of all. So anyway, I think it's still anybody's, I think it's anybody's game right now. And I don't know how you get a return on 500 billion invested in this. That's the other thing. And I don't know if that's the real number. Freebro, what do you think?

• 1:17:36Thomas Laffont?

  I don't know.

• 1:17:37Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, this is out here in some crazy

• 1:17:41Thomas Laffont?

  Well, I think, guys, the way these things happen, right, is you don't fund it all equity upfront, right? I think these things get funded facility by facility, data center by data center across four years, right? And to Chamath' point, it's not just equity, it's site level debt and et cetera, right? It's a complex capital structure to these things. But look, we live also in a world, right, where I was just kind of looking at this chart, the kind of cloud capex chart, right? And we know that in total, 2025 capex for the top five players in the US is going to be 312 billion, right? So that's this year, that's in one year. So we can also kind of frame this in saying, hey, does that number make any sense versus what others are spending?

• 1:18:25Thomas Laffont?

  It's at least kind of in the order of magnitude, right? When you think about it's over four years. By the way, another really interesting kind of corollary on this point is the US internet companies spend 20x what the Chinese companies spend on capex. Really interesting as we think about our competitiveness, right? Dave, to your point, it's not just power, it's also kind of compute. I mean, pretty powerful that you're spending 20x what your competitor is on these kind of advanced technologies.

• 1:18:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Chamath, how do you, how do you, how do you look at this? I think that value and money are correlated in some industries, like real estate or heavy industry, but I don't think that it's very correlated in tech. And I tried to say this in my tweet, I don't know, Nick, can you find this tweet where I was just talking about the DeepSeek model? So what did we see last week? We saw a model that got released by the Chinese under, by the way, a totally, you know, open source MIT license that you can run on a laptop. And it turned out to be as good as OpenAI's O1 model, so a couple of versions old. But the point is that this model cost millions of dollars and was able to compete with a

• 1:19:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  model that took billions of dollars to train. So my takeaway from that was that these costs are falling really precipitously. So that's sort of my one observation is spending more money doesn't necessarily get you further along if the goal is progress. And I think that that's very true in what we're learning about AI because we're learning as we go along. So then I think it just brings up this question of what is the point of saying all these grandiose numbers? And this is where, if you look at a different industry, like if you, if an oil company came into the Oval and said they were about to spend 500 billion.

• 1:20:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You kind of know that it's real because you know what these things cost and you know what the entire infrastructure will be and you know it's all directly correlated.

• 1:20:26Jason Calacanis?

  And we've seen landmen, so we know, we know what goes on.

• 1:20:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, so the deeper the oil is in the ground and the harder the rock is that you got a breakthrough to get there, the more you have to spend. So those numbers become very grounded in reality. If you were a rocket company and you wanted to build a rocket and send it to Mars, you can also be very detailed in what the costs are and you can assume some amount of reductions of scale. If somebody said you'd have to spend 500 billion. The thing is that when, in this world, it seems that there are these advances that are happening that allow you to do things cheaper and cheaper almost overnight by spending one one thousandth of what you spent even six months ago. I think the spending money part, to be honest, is more of a gimmick than it is a technical commitment. So I guess if they want to spend the money, go ahead,

• 1:21:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  but it doesn't actually tie to whether they're going to be able to make custom vaccines, whether they're going to cure cancer. So I kind of thought that these things were disjointed. And so my takeaway was entirely different. It was not a commentary on Masa or Larry or Sam. I think all of those three companies are frankly very good. It was more a comment that you have to be very careful to protect the president's legacy, if I were them, to make sure that the things that get announced are actually further down the technical spectrum and are actually going to be real. Because if they achieve these things, but it costs you a billion dollars and you only hire 50 people, there's going to be a little bit

• 1:21:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  of egg on the face. And so that was sort of my own takeaway. I think that the things were decoupled. It just seemed more marketing and sizzle and kind of hastily put together.

• 1:22:04Jason Calacanis?

  It was definitely, yeah, put together with haste. Yeah, you got that sense, but.

• 1:22:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think it would be great if OpenAI builds in another incredible model, whatever comes after 03, 04, 05, but it's not clear that you have to spend 500 billion to do it.

• 1:22:18Jason Calacanis?

  You know, I think people are playing to what Trump likes, which is a big number, and which is his influence on growing the number. So there was specific details where Masas said, you know, you, I told you 100 billion, you challenged me to get two, I came back with five, right? And so this is the sort of Trump ethos is, hey, we're going to swing for the fences. In a way, you know, you could be critical of it and be like, well, Trump's a BS artist or whatever. Or if you're from Silicon Valley, you could say, hey, listen, he's moonshotting it. He's going to just shoot for the stars and get the moon. So if these guys wind up spending 50 billion or 100 billion, it makes us more competitive, more power to them.

• 1:22:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The question I had was, you know, was, did Elon have any insight that this was happening? Probably not from, from the reaction on X.

• 1:23:06Jason Calacanis?

  I bet he did. You know, I think you're, I have no insight either. But I do think if you were going to be critical of Trump, that he was putting his thumb on the scale for any one company or individual, this shows that he's not. It's an open platform. The Trump administration's an open platform. Highest bidder gets to come to the White House. Whoever spends the most, whoever buys the most military, you know, buys the most ammunition from us, you're going to get your time in the White House. It's a, this is a capitalist country, and this is the greatest one in the world. Equal opportunity, anybody can make a bid.

• 1:23:40David Friedberg?

  Well, I mean, one of the, one of the obvious, the obvious consequence of this data center and chip infrastructure effort, which is obviously going to happen with or without government involvement, is an increase in electricity demand. Thomas, I know you've got some slides. Do you want to pull those up and, and show them? Because I think they're something I've talked a lot about on the show, which is the difference in electricity production capacity in the US versus China historically, and then prospectively going forward. Ultimately, as I've talked about in the past, right, the US today is paying roughly, you know, call it one and a half to 3X the price per kilowatt hour for electricity in the United States over what China's paying. We have

• 1:24:26David Friedberg?

  I believe half of the electricity production capacity of China, they're adding more. The cost to add is one tenth of what our cost to add is. Call it one tenth to one half our cost to add per new gigawatt of production capacity. Everything is in the wrong direction. Ultimately, if AI and automation are the critical factors for economic growth going forward and electricity is the critical input to that, we are hugely disadvantaged and aren't going to catch up. It seems like you've pulled this analysis together, which kind of indicates the same. If you think it makes sense to walk through this now.

• 1:25:00Thomas Laffont?

  Yeah, yeah, I'd be happy to. I mean, Dave, you're 100% right. If you think of the GPU as the atomic unit of the future, right? And the key competitive advantage and the key kind of ingredient, you can't power a GPU without a data center and you can't use a data center without power. So I do think at the end of the day, it really comes down to the grid and it comes down to power. So I think that's kind of constraint number one. The other thing, Dave, that I think is really important is in an inflationary era, you do not want to increase or have this industry be perceived to be increasing electricity prices for the consumer, right?

• 1:25:44Thomas Laffont?

  So somehow we need to add capacity. We need to make it so the consumer kind of doesn't go bonkers by having their bills go higher. And we can, Nick, run through a couple of the slides, but the data shows exactly kind of your point, Dave, right? Which is, we basically did not invest for a very long period of time, right? In our grid and China did. And if you keep going, we can kind of run through these a couple of times, but that wasn't always the case, you know? During kind of like the post-World War II boom era, during the information age, you know, we did invest and we did a lot of it. And then suddenly in 2000, we just kind of stopped.

• 1:26:26David Friedberg?

  And this is globalization, you're saying, is why we stopped.

• 1:26:29Thomas Laffont?

  Exactly.

• 1:26:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It is my interpretation of that, that we didn't have factories. We didn't have factories, so we didn't need as much power. What's the reason we didn't invest or we didn't need to?

• 1:26:39Thomas Laffont?

  I think we just outsourced a lot of our hardcore manufacturing.

• 1:26:43David Friedberg?

  The USD industrialized.

• 1:26:45Thomas Laffont?

  Correct.

• 1:26:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So no factories equals no need for additional electricity. Now, the new factories are H100 factories.

• 1:26:53Thomas Laffont?

  Exactly. Our AI factories, right? And, and by the way, the way to think about it is almost like a subscription business on a net ad basis. Right?

• 1:27:02David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:03Thomas Laffont?

  So this, this makes it even more stark, right? Because this is kind of net additions and it just kind of speaks for itself, right?

• 1:27:11David Friedberg?

  And just, just read the numbers out so the audience that's listening can, can get a sense here.

• 1:27:15Thomas Laffont?

  Yeah, I mean, you can see, I mean, since 1985, right? The delta roughly between China and the US is almost, what's the quick math? Like, it's almost 7X, right?

• 1:27:27David Friedberg?

  In 2000, the US and China were both roughly 1,000 terawatt hours. Today, the US is 1,600 terawatt hours and China is 9,000 terawatt hours.

• 1:27:36Thomas Laffont?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:36David Friedberg?

  And this is just an extraordinary ramp up relative to.

• 1:27:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  On the AI side, the, there was a Biden EO last week. I spoke about this on Tucker because it happened the day I went on Tucker. But the EO basically said, we will allow the permitting of power plants on federal lands to power these AI data centers, which started off like a very intelligent EO, but right in the second paragraph started to talk about DEI and all this other stuff and how you had to have a certain percentage of it from certain sources. But just today, it looked like President Trump overturned it and now it's full steam ahead. If you have it permitted, then it's all about just get the power, however you need the power, which I think is the smart decision. Back to your earlier point, like we are, we are in a race here.

• 1:28:25Jason Calacanis?

  In your analysis, Tom, is can we do this without nuclear?

• 1:28:27Thomas Laffont?

  No.

• 1:28:28Jason Calacanis?

  Can we catch up without nuclear?

• 1:28:29Thomas Laffont?

  Okay. In, in fact, we can't and.

• 1:28:31David Friedberg?

  Why we buy uranium?

• 1:28:33Thomas Laffont?

  I think you can speak to that better. One of the really interesting parts, I mean, you can see, by the way, just. The percentage of nuclear, it kind of needs to go higher.

• 1:28:48Thomas Laffont?

  I don't know if you guys have been following this stock in the public market, guys called Constellation Energy. Oh, yeah. It's a really interesting idea. What's interesting of what Amazon and Microsoft is they're actually signing deals directly with these companies, right, to do what's called back behind the meter, right, types of deals. So they have direct energy access. To your point, Shama, on the Biden administration. At the end of last year, a deal got announced publicly announced that federal agencies were also contracting directly now with CEG to power some of their facilities. And even though the, in total, the number was small,

• 1:29:32Thomas Laffont?

  we took it, and I think the market took it as a clear indication, right, that the government, even under Biden, was acknowledging that nuclear is the best path forward. So, you know, we expect and we think just the trend generally towards nuclear energy is going to continue. It's been proven in China. It's been proven in Europe. I think it will show to be a key part of the AI kind of arms race, you know, over the next 10, 20 years. Yeah. This is to me kind of the story in one slide, right, which is if you look at basically the nuclear capacity in the US, it's basically been flat for 25 plus years, right? Ridiculous.

• 1:30:14Thomas Laffont?

  And so, right, and so when Scott Besson was asked, are we in a, in a, you know, green energy arms race with China, he was thinking about chart number on the right, right, which basically shows how much nuclear China has added, right, over that time period. And so I think it's it's pretty clear what the answer is. I think China is leading the way in that measure, and I think we need to follow.

• 1:30:41David Friedberg?

  Yeah, and I think what's really important to note is over that same period of time, Thomas, we're in a different era on nuclear than we were when we had Three Mile Island and, you know, prior to that Chernobyl. We have new Gen four technologies that are meltdown proof, that have a totally different architecture, where there isn't a setup where you have runaway heat, and ultimately a collapse of the reactor and a release of radioactive material, which is what happened at Chernobyl. These new systems, which we highlighted on the show a couple of months ago, like the Pebble Bed reactor that's been in production making electricity in China, are incredible new technology architectures, and they're here,

• 1:31:26David Friedberg?

  and they're running. And China's rolling out dozens or hundreds of these, and the United States is rolling out zero. And that needs to change. And I think we only have a couple of months to get the engine stood up that will allow us to make the material, that will allow us to make the production technology needed to actually deploy these stations to try and have a shot at catching up. And if we don't, we're going to be hugely disadvantaged on an energy cost basis. We're going to be hugely disadvantaged on an ability to actually deploy AI technology competitively. That's key.

• 1:31:57Thomas Laffont?

  And by the way, you also can look at France, right? My my home country, not known as a technology leader, but seventy percent of its energy of its electricity comes from nuclear.

• 1:32:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But France held the line, right? When Europe tried to really deprecate its use of nuclear, Germany did, but France held the line.

• 1:32:14Thomas Laffont?

  Yeah, it's too important, Chema. You know, it's seventy percent plus. So I think it's there's examples, it's doable. And I think now with AI, it's a matter of national security.

• 1:32:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  National security.

• 1:32:25David Friedberg?

  And

• 1:32:25Thomas Laffont?

  We gotta get it done. By the way, that'll dovetail into fabs, right? Which is obviously another key component, which is a short term for semiconductor manufacturing facilities, right?

• 1:32:37Thomas Laffont?

  Which is another, in my opinion, key strategic area that we need to to ramp up in the US.

• 1:32:42Jason Calacanis?

  The thing that I noticed about that chart is the trend line. I mean, look at how fast they're building these. And this is where, you know, I don't know what government incentive we need to create or what red tape has to be moved here. But if we can't build, you know, multifamily housing in some states like this nuclear is going to really need to, we're going to have to figure out a way to change that trend line, Friedberg, yeah? I mean, what what would it take to to build these nuclear power plants at an accelerated rate?

• 1:33:14David Friedberg?

  I will tell you that there is a lot of capital, and I we mentioned this last time, a lot of intellectual capital in the United States that's eager, hungry and ready to get moving on build out. The only thing that's challenged and the only thing that's holding it back is regulatory challenges, regulatory roadblocks. And if those get removed through emergency action, I view this to be more of a national security threat, frankly, than the border. I think we need to get energy increased in this country in an accelerated way for the United States to even be in a position to be able to challenge China with respect to manufacturing and AI in the decades ahead. And the United States needs to consider this an emergency. Emergency declarations may be needed to drop the regulatory roadblocks that are keeping

• 1:33:59David Friedberg?

  the proliferation of electricity production in the United States at bay. I think it's time for that sort of action. So I think that's the only thing that's getting in the way.

• 1:34:08Jason Calacanis?

  So we have the tech, we have the physics, we have the will, we have the talent, we have a blocker, and the blocker is regulation. And that regulatory blocker needs to have leadership in government to remove it. Am I summarizing correctly here?

• 1:34:24David Friedberg?

  That's right. And look, you have an energy czar that I think is very aligned with that intention in in Doug Burgum. Obviously, we have this big AI arms race that's underway. We have an automation and manufacturing demand, which will massively increase energy demand in this country. And we have, I think, a deregulatory administration. The stars are aligned, and I think that this is a moment where this could happen.

• 1:34:47Jason Calacanis?

  Chamarie Bore, Thomas, what's the downside?

• 1:34:51Jason Calacanis?

  To removing the regulation and going for it and building this extra capacity. Can we define any possible downside?

• 1:34:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, the downside is the the amount of time it takes to adequately build these things properly. The thing that China has had, as it says Thomas's chart shows, is decades of practice in building things safely and quickly. We can build things, but we haven't had the practice to build them either safely or quickly because we haven't built any. So that's a complicated thing to just acknowledge.

• 1:35:22Jason Calacanis?

  That's a valid concern. If there is any resistance resistance to this, Thomas, what would be on the top of that list just theoretically? How could anybody want to block this? What would be the resistance?

• 1:35:35Thomas Laffont?

  One other element, guys, I think you know that we are blocking the ability of China to get access to the latest GPUs, right? And the whole point is we don't want them to use to develop systems that could be used against us. But if China, if one day China has 10 XR power capacity, it won't even matter, right? Because they'll just have so many more, whether they're not quite the same advanced GPUs or not, they'll just have so many more of them. Their industrial AI capacity will be so much larger that even if we have the best H100s and the latest technology that Jensen and others can provide, it won't matter. So in order to make our strategy effective, we need to be able to to build this power base.

• 1:36:17Jason Calacanis?

  I think it's a very astute point. Hey, Chamath, I don't know if you've been watching Netflix, but I am a shareholder and I am delighted. I don't know what's going on over there, but they seem to be getting their subs right. And that disgrazia of a fight seems to have somehow driven the stock price up and there's some strategy that's working over there. Maybe you could just riff on it for a moment. I have the opposite take. Okay.

• 1:36:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, I mean, it's obviously a very good company. I think it's been incredibly performant. But I think it has like a little bit of a dark commentary on American society and productivity. So I asked Nick to just put up these three charts. I'll show you the first one. So this is the Netflix stock price from 2010 to 2020, and it's only gotten up since 2024.

• 1:37:10Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 1:37:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The only reason I did it at 2020 was because the other data. I went to the CDC and I said, well, show me the percentage of people, Americans, taking SSRIs over that same period.

• 1:37:23Jason Calacanis?

  For depression.

• 1:37:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  For depression, anxiety, et cetera, and what you see that it's also gone up. And then the last chart, I went to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and I said, what has happened to the labor participation rate over the same period? So I'm not blaming Netflix, but I think that this is a bit of a commentary on sort of what's happening in society. It's a little bit of a leading indicator where as the company does better and better, the reality is that that company wins by being a sink for people's time. It's where you go to Netflix and chill. It's a phrase that that we all understand. But the the dark underbelly of it is that there's just a lot of people that are a little bit more dejected.

• 1:38:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There's a lot of people that just opt out and and just don't decide to work. I think you could graph the fertility rate and it's gone down ratably as well. So it's it's all of this soup that is about people living in a life that that unfortunately just doesn't exist.

• 1:38:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So, I mean, it's a well-run business and I wish them all the best at some level, but at some other level, I think it's a commentary that as this company does better and better, there are more and more people that are that are living a shell of what their life could be.

• 1:38:43Jason Calacanis?

  So causing correlation aside.

• 1:38:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Obviously correlated. This is not causal, you know.

• 1:38:48Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, Netflix is not causing depression, but.

• 1:38:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's just the it's just the thing. And there's other things that obviously you can put on this plate.

• 1:38:55Jason Calacanis?

  Sure.

• 1:38:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But that was my reaction is I just think that the more time people are sort of detaching and and plugging out.

• 1:39:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The more that you're going to see these companies that provide ways of distracting yourself do well, I'm not sure that society benefits.

• 1:39:16Jason Calacanis?

  What do you think, Thomas? Opiates for the masses? Or just the golden era of television?

• 1:39:20Thomas Laffont?

  What I'm curious, Chamath, is, you know, how much of it is a substitutive effect, right, away from kind of traditional media? Right? I mean, I've kind of looked at it as different ways that, at least the way it's measured, you know, time spent watching television has not really increased over 20 years. To me, it's more a reflection of, I could overlay the stock chart of, you know, Fox and Comcast and, you know, CBS and just have, all of those have imploded. I think people have been kind of substituting, right, away. I think the question then that you have to ask is, is there a reason that maybe the

• 1:40:01Thomas Laffont?

  Netflix product is fundamentally more unsafe or detrimental to someone's health than the prior broadcast?

• 1:40:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, the one thing that I would say is, and this is not a Netflix commentary, but a general commentary, which is, online products versus linear products have the power and the benefit of this algorithmic targeting and personalization. And I think that what Netflix has successfully figured out, and a bunch of other products have successfully figured out, is that you can hypertune to what people think they want. But what people think they want is not necessarily what they need. I think when you had linear television, you kind of had to take what was given. You didn't love Cheers, but you watched Cheers. You didn't love St. Elsewhere, but you watched it.

• 1:40:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Now, it's that you can go into a place where the thing really feeds you, and it gives you a very visceral feedback loop, and you can stay there binge-watching something for an entire weekend. And what didn't, I think the question is, what didn't you do?

• 1:41:05Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 1:41:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Necessarily didn't work out, necessarily didn't eat well.

• 1:41:09Jason Calacanis?

  Didn't spend time with friends.

• 1:41:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And by the way, we've all, I'm not saying that I don't do it, I've done it as well. Like, our group chat, one of the interesting things, when Jason, like, he's very good about television and stuff, he says, "This series is amazing." Our other friend, Rob Goldberg, does the same thing. It's hard for me to not start, to start it and then not end it.

• 1:41:28Jason Calacanis?

  Mm-hmm. It's addicting, yeah.

• 1:41:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But I have to really check myself, because then, for those two days... I'll be tempted to not leave my bedroom. But my kids are like, where's my father? And so I, I, I think it's, it happens to all of us.

• 1:41:43Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's just a thing that, again, I'm not trying to pick on Netflix. I'm just trying to say societally. I think we want people that are vigorous and engaged in the real world. And, you know, there needs to be a balance.

• 1:41:57Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I, uh, wholeheartedly agree. And I think you have to schedule these things. You have to make it a permanent part of your life. Playing poker on a certain night of the week, doing certain things on the weekend with your kids, having certain rituals. You know, the, the, the real damage to our kids is not that the screens are damaging them. It's that it's replacing time, I think, which you, we were alluding to there, Thomas. This, this anxious generation, that's Jonathan Haidt, and we, we had a great interview with him, uh, myself and Freiburg in the All In Interview series. That is what's happening. Kids are substituting, whether it's TikTok or Netflix or YouTube time, for time with their friends, time doing physical activities. So you really just have to limit the screen time so that those other things and the boredom can emerge.

• 1:42:39Jason Calacanis?

  And we will be having a talk in the coming years about dopamine. It is something that these algorithms have gotten really good at doing, which is firing your dopamine. Every time you swipe that TikTok, every time you get to the cliffhanger in a series, or, uh, you know, a Mr. Beast video, not singling anybody out, he's just a master of it as well. They're just all really good at giving you that hook, that amazing moment. Uh, and musicians, musicians are doing this now too, with the hooks. And then the hooks go on TikTok. The dopamine addiction, when you get burnt out late at night, getting those dopamine hits, the next day you feel depressed. Then you go to a doctor and the doctor said, oh, well, you have, uh, you know, depression.

• 1:43:20Jason Calacanis?

  So here's your Wellbutrin, or here's your, whatever the, I don't know what the, the, the, the things are of the moment. I'll just tell you what I focus on and what I focus on with my family. Sleep hygiene, diet, exercise, meditation. Do these four things and you will reverse these trends. You don't need to, and listen, I don't want to tell you what to do.

• 1:43:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Meditation's hard for kids, but I get the first three.

• 1:43:44Jason Calacanis?

  You know what? Try it. Get the, and listen, I'm not talking my own book here.

• 1:43:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  By the way, you know what's crazy?

• 1:43:48Jason Calacanis?

  Get the com app. It has a bunch of stuff for kids.

• 1:43:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  When I was growing up, I grew up Buddhist. My father would make us sit there at nine o'clock every night. And my sisters and I would have to say this Buddhist prayer and then he would make us close our eyes for 15 minutes. And he said, meditate. And I was like, I don't know what meditation is, but I was forced to just keep my eyes shut. And I would just daydream. But I suspect that there was like some reasonably grounding value in that. So I get what you're saying. I just have such a negative connotation from it. I've never been able to come back to it because of that experience. But I would just daydream. And by the way, what I daydreamed was getting out of that house. I was like, gotta be successful.

• 1:44:26Jason Calacanis?

  So you got a vision. A vision came to you.

• 1:44:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I gotta manifest some success here because this sucks.

• 1:44:31Jason Calacanis?

  Hey, Thomas, thanks for coming on the show. Great first appearance here as the bestie. We'd love to have you back unless the king returns at some point.

• 1:44:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You're the best. You should come back. And you should also come back to the Holland Summit.

• 1:44:45Jason Calacanis?

  Come back.

• 1:44:45Thomas Laffont?

  I'm there for both. And I know we saw some, some great topics like Hock Tan and others that I want to get to someday. So.

• 1:44:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, that's actually when you come back, which we will do at some point in the next few months, I would love for us to double click into Hock Tan. So what, for folks that are listening.

• 1:45:00Jason Calacanis?

  Wait, what?

• 1:45:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We were going back and forth. Hock Tan is the CEO of Broadcom. And the reason when he, when Thomas brought this up, hey, guys, let's double click into Broadcom and the CEO, the reason why I was excited is that it is the only trillion dollar company that nobody talks about. Everybody knows Nvidia, everybody knows Amazon, Meta, but Broadcom is a 1.12 trillion dollar business. And it started basically through a whole series of rollups. Anyways, we'll double click into this with you because I think it's so.

• 1:45:32Jason Calacanis?

  No, this is not the Broadcom we're all thinking of from the telecom era, is it?

• 1:45:36Thomas Laffont?

  It is.

• 1:45:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, Henry Samuieli. Yeah.

• 1:45:38Thomas Laffont?

  Correct.

• 1:45:38Jason Calacanis?

  The same one is still around.

• 1:45:40Thomas Laffont?

  I will leave you guys with a, with a teaser to tease the next episode when we talk about it. And I'll tell you the story that when Hawk bought Broadcom, Jake out to your point, Broadcom is the pride of Orange County, founded by Henry Nicholas and Henry Samuieli, kind of legends in semiconductors, legendary name. So it meant a lot to them that the combined company of Vago was buying Broadcom, keep the name Broadcom. And so Hawk, being who he is, you know, got a little bit of a price discount to name the company Broadcom to him. That was a great deal. That's who Hawk is. He's a great businessman. But what is the ticker of this particular company?

• 1:46:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  AVGO.

• 1:46:19Thomas Laffont?

  And so I said, Hawk, why is the ticker still AVGO? And you know what he said to me? Turn to me, he said, Thomas, they forgot to negotiate for the ticker.

• 1:46:27Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, never forget the ticker. Interesting.

• 1:46:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, when, when he started, it was, what was the market cap?

• 1:46:35Thomas Laffont?

  3.5 billion Chamath. It was an, not only was it an orphan because it was a, it was a spin out of HP. It was a spin out of a spin out of HP. It was a double orphan.

• 1:46:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  300x.

• 1:46:49Jason Calacanis?

  Look at this.

• 1:46:50Thomas Laffont?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:51David Friedberg?

  Well, what's really interesting is in the last five years, the market cap's grown by eight x. Nvidia's grown by 20x, but you know, Intel over the last five years is what down 70%? So, you know, I think there's a big divergence. Thomas, do you think this is a function of? Well, I don't know if it's directionally investing in the right things, or is it about like making long-term investments and thinking down the road? I mean, obviously the compounding advantages.

• 1:47:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He's an M and A master. So this is, this is less about. There was a product that won and more of a portfolio approach and a portfolio construction.

• 1:47:26David Friedberg?

  But did he buy, did he buy well ahead of the, the curve? Did he buy over the horizon, Thomas? Like, you know, is that where Intel really missed?

• 1:47:34Thomas Laffont?

  I think Intel really missed. It's a complete abdication of corporate governance at the board level and the CEO level.

• 1:47:40Jason Calacanis?

  Hey guys, breaking news story coming across my feed. I don't know if you can pull this up, Nick, but there's a video trending on the internet. Apparently an executive order has just gone across the president's desk and it was delivered by none other than. A gentleman named David Sacks. Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

• 1:47:59David Sacks?

  We're going to be forming an internal working group to make crypto, to make America the world capital and crypto under your leadership.

• 1:48:05Speaker 10

  Which is really going up, right?

• 1:48:07David Sacks?

  Absolutely.

• 1:48:10Jason Calacanis?

  Here we go. Whoa.

• 1:48:13Jason Calacanis?

  Look at this.

• 1:48:16Jason Calacanis?

  What? He's using a Sharpie there to sign these executive orders? Oh, Sacks gets to keep the pen. There it is. An executive order. I love how he holds them up. It's so great. I wonder if Sacks gets to keep that.

• 1:48:29Speaker 10

  They might not be excited, but we're going to make a lot of money for the country.

• 1:48:33David Sacks?

  Like, yeah.

• 1:48:34Speaker 10

  And so is David.

• 1:48:38Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, your reaction, Chama.

• 1:48:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think this is great.

• 1:48:43Jason Calacanis?

  So we're going to make crypto great again.

• 1:48:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'll be a little bit more specific. So I think that there are a handful of ideas that if we can implement them correctly are really revolutionary.

• 1:48:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think that it's good to have a stockpile of crypto. I have less of an opinion on that. I think a set of stablecoin rails that makes payments instantaneous and costless is an enormous acceleration to GDP. It would cut fraud.

• 1:49:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And I think that David's going to go and figure that out.

• 1:49:21Jason Calacanis?

  And he's talking about stablecoins specifically?

• 1:49:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Stablecoins. I mean, I talked about this at the beginning of the year as my sort of one of my predictions. But I do think that the United States stablecoin rails will be hugely disruptive and value added. He's going to have help from the head of the SEC and head of Treasury to do it. I just think it's great. And I think Sacks is already off to a hugely fast start.

• 1:49:44Jason Calacanis?

  The entire country knows that we need to win the AI race. The numbers are the numbers. You put up a chart like that, Thomas, and there's only one way for us to win. And that's to build more nuclear power plants. And so I think he's just got to hammer this through and let's see who tries to stop it. I don't know if AOC or Elizabeth Warren, Pocahantas, Bernie Sanders, who wants to jump in front of this Trump train right now, but I think you'll get slaughtered. If only there was somebody who could comment on this executive order. That's what I need, you know, Chama. If I had the bat phone, if I could call somebody.

• 1:50:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Who would you call, Jason? Who would you call?

• 1:50:21Jason Calacanis?

  I don't know, you know, I had my Saksipoo was always on speed dial. We used to hang in between, have these great battles here on the pod, then we go play chess together. We go have some drinks at the battery, but you know, that was a different era and you know,

• 1:50:36Jason Calacanis?

  I don't got my boy anymore. He's busy. Oh. Do we got it? Everybody, thanks for tuning into the All In Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Calacanis. We will see you next time. Bye. Sorry. What?

• 1:50:49Jason Calacanis?

  There he is. He's back.

• 1:50:52Thomas Laffont?

  Back to reclaim his seat.

• 1:50:54Jason Calacanis?

  Welcome home. We miss you, buddy.

• 1:50:56Thomas Laffont?

  You look so handsome.

• 1:50:57Jason Calacanis?

  Gonna cry. Sixty one days without my bestie. We miss you, buddy. Were you just in the Oval Office?

• 1:51:04David Sacks?

  I was just in the Oval Office.

• 1:51:06Jason Calacanis?

  First time in the Oval Office? Let me ask you a question.

• 1:51:10Jason Calacanis?

  Was that your first time in the Oval?

• 1:51:12David Sacks?

  Well, technically it was my second, but.

• 1:51:16Jason Calacanis?

  How was it, Sacks? How's it been so far?

• 1:51:17David Sacks?

  It's pretty incredible. Yeah, it's really been pretty incredible.

• 1:51:21Jason Calacanis?

  Well, tell us, what are the vibes and what's it like to go in to the Oval Office? And to have that executive order signed? Take us, tell us what the moment was like and then tell us what's in the executive order.

• 1:51:35David Sacks?

  Well, we actually, we did three executive orders today. So we did one on crypto, one on AI, and then one on PCAS, which is the President's Council of Advisors for Science and Technology. The one on crypto, I guess we can start there. The main thing it does is it forms an internal working group with the goal of making the US the world leader in crypto. So it's not one specific action. It's basically authorizing and creating a working group with the goal of achieving that objective, right? And the members of this working group are going to be, there's me, there's the head of the SEC, the Secretary of the Treasury, and all the agencies and departments that have an interest in crypto. So we formed this working group. I'm actually chairing it, or I will be.

• 1:52:20David Sacks?

  And again, the goal here is to identify and make recommendations that the departments would then take back and they could execute. And just again, with the goal of making America the world capital of crypto, as the President said at Davos today.

• 1:52:36Jason Calacanis?

  And then the other two, Sacks?

• 1:52:37David Sacks?

  Yeah, so that's crypto. Next one's AI. So the number one thing that that EO does is rescind the Biden EO, which we talked about on this podcast, I don't know how many episodes ago. But remember, it was this hundred-page monstrosity of burdensome regulation.

• 1:52:54David Sacks?

  And the president had promised on the campaign trail to repeal that, and he did. So it got rescinded. Actually, there was a master EO on Monday that contained dozens of Biden-era EOs that got mass rescinded. This one provided a little more detail on it. Basically, it said that that EO wasn't necessarily burdensome. It said that we want to be the world leader in AI. In fact, it uses the word dominate. We want to basically have global dominance in AI. And similar to what we're doing on the crypto side, it directs the creation of an AI action plan. And that study will be led by three people, the national security advisor, who is Mike Walz, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy,

• 1:53:39David Sacks?

  who will be Michael Kratzios as soon as he's Senate confirmed, and then the third person is me. So the three of us are going to work together on this AI action plan. And the idea is to figure out what is it that the industry actually needs to make us, number one, globally in AI. So it's putting a little bit more substance behind like what this our role means.

• 1:53:57Jason Calacanis?

  And the last one is to build a science council. I don't know if everybody's familiar with that. So maybe you could just describe what that is generally for the audience.

• 1:54:05David Sacks?

  Well, PCAST has been around for a long time. I mean, I think it's been around for decades. And the goal of PCAST is to assemble a group of top science and technology minds to provide the president with advice. So this was already announced, but basically me and Michael Kratzios, who I mentioned before, is going to be the director of OSTP. We're going to be co-chairing that. And this is an EO that provides the authorizing language to set that up. And then it provides some direction around what PCAST is going to do. I think some of the language that Friedberg may like is just, it talks about the need to return to kind of truth telling in science and kind of getting away from woke science.

• 1:54:46David Sacks?

  The AI order discusses this as well. We don't want AI models to be ideologically biased, to have an agenda. I don't know if it uses the word woke AI, but that's basically what it's talking about. We want AI models to be as politically unbiased as possible.

• 1:54:59Jason Calacanis?

  Well, if you need a recommendation for somebody for the council, I know somebody who is extremely well versed on science. He's got a broad array of science knowledge. Here, here. Yeah, I have an idea. Then we could have two besties in and around the White House. Hey, well, you know, thanks for including us in so many aspects of the weekend. And the audience really wants to know. What are the chances we get Sacks back on the pod now and again in 2025? And we do appreciate

• 1:55:29David Sacks?

  We're doing it right now, right?

• 1:55:30Jason Calacanis?

  The sacrifice you're making. We're doing it right now, but the audience is, you know, not going to just accept this little drop in here. They want to know what's the long-term plan for David Sacks and the pod?

• 1:55:40David Friedberg?

  And what's happened like with media overall in the administration now that confirmation hearings are underway? Sacks and closing out, does that mean folks are going to be able to get back on social and things that they were kind of restricted by over the last couple of weeks?

• 1:55:54David Sacks?

  Sure, but I think that, you know, if you're working for the White House, there kind of needs to be a reason for you to be out there because you don't want to be making news that you're not supposed to. So in the case here today, the president signed these executive orders on crypto and AI. And they want me explaining them, so it makes sense for me to go out there. I've got a appearance on Fox Business in about an hour to talk about the EOs as well. So that might come out before this podcast comes out, but you guys are the first ones I'm actually talking to. But so there's a reason for me to come out and do it. And I think that there probably will need to be a good reason for me to come on the pod, but I'm going to try and come on the pod every chance I get.

• 1:56:36Jason Calacanis?

  All right, well, this is our appeal to DJT to let you come on and just chew the fat and maybe there's some upside to it for him.

• 1:56:43David Friedberg?

  Do you miss being on the pod, Sacks?

• 1:56:45Jason Calacanis?

  Oh.

• 1:56:46David Sacks?

  Yeah, sure. Of course.

• 1:56:48Jason Calacanis?

  We miss you so much.

• 1:56:50David Sacks?

  It's Look, I'll be back. Don't worry. At some point.

• 1:56:55Jason Calacanis?

  Are you a little emotional right now, Sacks? What are your favorite memories from the inauguration weekend?

• 1:57:02David Sacks?

  Well, the inauguration ceremony itself was really pretty spectacular. You were there in the Capitol, Chamath.

• 1:57:07Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:09David Sacks?

  It's funny, Jack and I kind of took our seats in the rotunda, like kind of in the back in the peanut gallery. And I thought that's where I was going to be sitting. And then somebody comes up to me and says, Mr. Sacks, we have a seat for you up, up front. And so they put me on the dais.

• 1:57:22Jason Calacanis?

  You were with the big boys. Yeah.

• 1:57:23David Sacks?

  It was like the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Treasury, and then me, you know? And then we were just, we were behind the, the Trump family. You may not have seen me because those Trump kids are pretty tall, but

• 1:57:36David Sacks?

  That whole family is very tall. So I kind of disappeared a little bit, but in any event, they put me on the dais, which was really pretty crazy. I was

• 1:57:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Wow, I didn't realize that. Yeah.

• 1:57:45David Sacks?

  It was a huge honor.

• 1:57:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There was a shot where David and Jacqueline were in the front. They looked amazing and they were kind of looking around for where to sit. And I was like, this can't be right because there he must have had like a name. So it's good that it all got sorted out. But what was the vantage point from your side? Basically, you're looking out.

• 1:58:04David Sacks?

  Yeah, I mean, I was looking out and, you know, I could see the faces of the Democrats as the president came out, President Biden and Kamala Harris. They didn't look too happy.

• 1:58:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, I would, I wish they had a fixed camera on them the whole time. I wanted to see their reaction shots.

• 1:58:21David Sacks?

  I've seen some of the reaction shots, you know.

• 1:58:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Hey, Sacks, just, just.

• 1:58:24David Sacks?

  I mean, that was really unique to have. I mean, I thought that that speech was really incredible. Because, well, first of all, it was completely consistent with everything the president had said during the campaign. And so you really felt like he, he has a mandate here because this is everything he said during the campaign. It reminded me a lot of, there's that famous quote by, by Abraham Lincoln, that public sentiment is everything. With it, you can accomplish anything. Without it, you can't do anything. And it really felt like that inauguration speech was full of substance, but it was substance that the president had delivered on the campaign trail. And so when he won this victory, where he only won the presidency, he won the popular vote, he won seven out of seven swing states,

• 1:59:10David Sacks?

  he won the House, he won the Senate, it really feels like he has a mandate. And I think he reiterated that mandate in his speech. And then, of course, just the, the cherry on top is just that, you know, the losers just have to sit there and, and listen to it.

• 1:59:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, kudos to them for coming out and keeping the tradition. Yeah.

• 1:59:28David Sacks?

  Well, yeah, and when he's talking about the corrupt establishment that tried to put him in prison through this lawfare, I mean, he's talking about some of those people who are sitting behind him. I just thought it was remarkable, a remarkable moment.

• 1:59:39David Friedberg?

  That was a crazy visual. Do you want to take us back, Sacks, on how you, because you haven't talked about this publicly, but how did you end up, I guess, getting the offer for the role, deciding to take the role? Anything you want to share anecdotally on the path to get here?

• 1:59:52David Sacks?

  I don't know that there's that much to report, you know. I was helping with the transition, I got offered the role and decided to do it. So, I mean, look, it's not something I was expecting or planning, as you guys know. I didn't even know there was going to be such a role, but when they decided to create it and they offered it to me, and so I decided to do it. You know, just one thing I should clarify, just to make clear, is there's still some things I can't do yet in the role, because there's a whole government ethics process that you have to go through, and I'm in the midst of that process. So, we've signed these EOs, it's given me certain responsibilities and authorized me to do certain things, and that process is going to begin as soon as I complete this, I guess you'd call it onboarding. So, just to be clear about that, there's things I can do,

• 2:00:36David Sacks?

  there's things I can't do. I can kind of be in listening mode, I can't be necessarily shaping policy yet. So, that's all going to be worked through over the next couple of weeks.

• 2:00:44David Friedberg?

  All right, Sacks, I got to ask. First time in the Oval. What's going through your mind?

• 2:00:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, great question.

• 2:00:51David Sacks?

  My head was on a swivel, you know, one of those moments, you're like, you can't really believe that you're there. It does feel a little bit like you're on a movie set. I mean, it's so famous, obviously, to be in that office.

• 2:01:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Is it bigger in person, or is it smaller in person? What is it?

• 2:01:05David Sacks?

  I thought it seemed about the right size. I know that's, that one of the things people say about it is that it's smaller than you expect. I didn't feel like it was smaller, but it also didn't feel bigger. It felt, felt like, you know, the Oval Office that you've always seen. The other people who are in there have been in there, the staffers who've been in there 100 or 1,000 times, it's, obviously, it wears off, and it's like just where they do their work. But yeah, I've got to admit, the first time you go in there, you're pretty, pretty awestruck. There was a post that J.D. Vance, now the Vice President, had where he, actually, do you guys see this? Mike Johnson?

• 2:01:35David Friedberg?

  I saw the video.

• 2:01:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, it's pretty crazy. He's walking in and he's in shock.

• 2:01:39David Sacks?

  Because he had never been in there. I guess, you know, I guess he became a senator a few years ago, and we've had a Democrat president, so he never had been to the Oval before.

• 2:01:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yep, here's the video, yeah.

• 2:01:47David Sacks?

  And he said that he was honored and humbled to be there. I mean, that's the way I felt as well. Those comments by the Vice President resonated with me. I think probably every American would feel this way the first time you're in the Oval Office. It is pretty incredible.

• 2:02:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You want me to repeat the words that the President said about you? There's nobody like this guy. They said, "How did you get David Sacks? How did you do that? He's doing it for the country more than anything else. We appreciate it, David. Thank you very much."

• 2:02:16David Sacks?

  He's been, he's been really nice to me. It's really incredible. He's been just incredible to me. And he, he gave me the, the pen from the, from the signing, uh, which is pretty cool.

• 2:02:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But can we see the pen? Can we see the pen? What's the brand of the pen?

• 2:02:28David Sacks?

  Well, it's not branded. Basically, it says the White House on one side and it's got his signature on another. And so, look, I wasn't expecting any of that.

• 2:02:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Is it like a Sharpie? What is that? Is it a Sharp?

• 2:02:40David Sacks?

  It is, it is a Sharpie. You've, you've seen him sign, right? So it's what, you know, I assume it's what, what he likes. But, so he gave me the pen, which is pretty incredible.

• 2:02:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Have you guys seen that there's all these ASMR videos of the President signing? Where you can just hear the pen, the sign, the marker? It makes, yeah, the Exactly. There's like all these ASMRs of that.

• 2:03:02Jason Calacanis?

  Well, Friedberg wants to know if you could assign hi- his new Tesla. He wants you to sign it with that pen. He wants you to autograph it. So when you get back to the Valley, you can, you can start doing autographs with that all around.

• 2:03:15David Sacks?

  Oh, no. I think, uh, I think only the President's allowed to use this pen.

• 2:03:19Jason Calacanis?

  Only the President's allowed to use. Okay. Well, put it, put it, put it somewhere safe. Okay? Don't lose the pen. You gotta put it in a glass box or something. And, uh, Sacks, there's thousands of commenters who are just begging for you to come back. Do you have a message to your legions of commenters?

• 2:03:35David Sacks?

  Well, I, I thank them and I'm back right now. I know maybe it's not enough, but

• 2:03:40Jason Calacanis?

  Soak it in.

• 2:03:40David Sacks?

  It would help if you guys could just do a better job on the pod so they weren't complaining all the time.

• 2:03:45Jason Calacanis?

  We'll do the best we can without you. All right. Get back to work. Get back to work. Come on. Just taxpayer, you're on the taxpayer clock here. Go back to work here and save America. Make America great again. Listen, we wish you great success. We miss you greatly and we thank you for the service to the country. We wish you all the best as you go handle two of the most important issues for our country, AI, and help advise our president on cryptocurrency as well.

• 2:04:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Love you, Saxon.

• 2:04:15David Friedberg?

  And Pcast.

• 2:04:16Jason Calacanis?

  Pcast, yes, of course, and Pcast as well.

• 2:04:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Boys, love you very, very much. David, love you. Hopefully, see you on Tuesday.

• 2:04:23Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, and Thomas, thanks for coming in.

• 2:04:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  See you, guys. Thanks for the opportunity.

• 2:04:27Jason Calacanis?

  Thomas, thank you very much. You're great.

• 2:04:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Thank you.

• 2:04:29Jason Calacanis?

  Thank you, Thomas.

• 2:04:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Bye-bye.

• 2:04:31Jason Calacanis?

  Love you, boys. See you, guys.

• 2:04:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Bye.