Big Beautiful Bill, Elon/Trump, Dollar Down Big, Harvard's Money Problems, Figma IPO

(0:00) Bestie intros (2:58) Big Beautiful Bill: Senate revision, AI regulation moratorium killed (14:10) Clean energy subsidies phased out: What this means for energy production in the US (25:12) Elon/Trump; US fiscal picture post-BBB (43:26) US dollar down over 10% in 2025 (53:51) Harvard's money problems: bleeding $1B/year in fight against Trump, potential investigation over bond offerings (1:09:13) Figma IPO, Grammarly acquires Superhuman, future of SaaS in the age of AI Get All-In Tequila: https://tequila.allin.com Join us at All-In Summit: https://allin.com/summit Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg 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/chamath/status/1939049133362319363 https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/jeff-bezos-needed-a-tequila-fix-venture-capitalist-chamath-palihapitiya-sent-a-plane-full-of-it-to-venice/ar-AA1HH5qH https://x.com/Jason/status/1940546432190369871 https://polymarket.com/event/reconciliation-bill-passed-by?tid=1751556469981 https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-senate-strikes-ai-regulation-ban-trump-megabill-2025-07-01 https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2025/ai-regulation-ban-one-big-beautiful-bill-trump-congress/ https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/nx-s1-5119792/newsom-ai-bill-california-sb1047-tech https://x.com/chamath/status/1927373268828266795 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1939762942851027127 https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/trump-says-he-has-struck-trade-deal-with-vietnam-2025-07-02 https://x.com/RayDalio/status/1940507002037240242 https://x.com/balajis/status/1940094433699234181 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/business/dollar-decline-trump.html https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/8/april-2025-bond-sale https://apnews.com/article/harvard-funding-trump-investigation-students-bca55ab4ec2d344dc6e01caa2af492d8 https://stefanik.house.gov/2025/6/stefanik-asks-sec-to-investigate-harvard-for-potentially-withholding-material-information-from-bondholders https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1937644999790985324 https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/harvard-trump-funding-budget-cuts-1dc5bf2f https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/01/grammarly-acquires-ai-email-client-superhuman https://www.reuters.com/business/grammarly-acquires-email-startup-superhuman-ai-platform-push-2025-07-01 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579878/000162828025033742/figma-sx1.htm https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-meta-offer-top-ai-talent-300-million https://www.nba.com/news/shai-gilgeous-alexander-contract-extension-2025 https://polymarket.com/event/fed-decision-in-september?tid=1751571922163

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

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Welcome to the show, everybody. Number one podcast in the world. And man, gonna be really exciting. Come September, September 7th, April 9th, the All In Summit in its fourth year. This week, I'm doing Friedberg's job for him because he's been a little bit busy.

• 0:15David Friedberg?

  No, you're not.

• 0:16Jason Calacanis?

  Lockdown is in. Looks like

• 0:20David Friedberg?

  Jason, what do you do?

• 0:21Jason Calacanis?

  From

• 0:21David Friedberg?

  Why is in? Why are you doing this?

• 0:22Jason Calacanis?

  You can believe it.

• 0:23David Friedberg?

  Nick Cut. Nick Bean. And Every year, you pre-announce a bunch of people who don't show up. It's literally, you literally pick people who won't show up.

• 0:32Jason Calacanis?

  What are you talking about? I got Elon to go three out of three years. I have gotten a couple of trillion dollars in market cap for your Freeburg. And more to come.

• 0:39David Friedberg?

  Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. This year is going to be better than ever.

• 0:42Jason Calacanis?

  Better than ever. Allin.com/summit. And lots of exciting news around the Tequila Boys. Freeburg, did you see MSN covered me sending a case of the tequila to Bezos?

• 0:53David Friedberg?

  I didn't see that.

• 0:57Jason Calacanis?

  Freeburg, what do we do now?

• 1:17Jason Calacanis?

  We've been crushed with orders. Apologies if we're taking a little bit of time with customer support. But you can go to tequila all in.com. Deliveries begin in late summer, right around the time, I think, of the summit.

• 1:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Friedberg and I were in Las Vegas this past weekend. It was a blast, as always. We had a really good time. We had 20 of our besties or so with us. No?

• 1:41David Friedberg?

  Great, great time.

• 1:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It was great time.

• 1:44Jason Calacanis?

  I wish I could have been there, but I was on the Snake River doing a little

• 1:50Jason Calacanis?

  I was invited. What are you talking about? I was getting lobbied, like, cancel your family trip, whitewater rafting, to come to Vegas. I was like, yeah.

• 1:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Don't remember inviting you, Friedberg. Do you remember?

• 2:01Jason Calacanis?

  Trust me, people, when you go to Vegas, you want J Cal. J Cal is a good time in Vegas.

• 2:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That is true.

• 2:06Jason Calacanis?

  That is true. I got a lot of invites, but Nick, pull up the picture. I was on the Snake River there. I was doing my whitewater rafting trip. And so if you're ever interested in doing a fun trip with your family, you can do these two, three night occasions.

• 2:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I am not.

• 2:20Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 2:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, I'm not.

• 2:21Jason Calacanis?

  You camp on the side, you eat mid-food, you don't shower for three days and you have four days. But yeah, there's the view from the Snake River. It was absolutely stunning. And yeah, we.

• 2:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Is that where, is Snake River, is that also where like Snake River Farms comes from? You know, the.

• 2:38Jason Calacanis?

  I'm guessing, yes.

• 2:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  High-quality meat?

• 2:40Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, I'm sure it is. Idaho, Oregon border, yeah.

• 2:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Idaho, Oregon border. So that is, yeah, that's where Snake River Farms is. Not as good as Long Hill Wagyu, but you know.

• 2:50Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I mean, listen, these are, that's like two elite steak producers. Get the coulette, AKA the pecan. All right, listen, the BBB has passed the Senate. Let's get into this docket. But there was a bit of drama in the House after an all-night session and over 24 hours of deliberation. Senate passed the big, beautiful bill on Tuesday.

• 3:12Jason Calacanis?

  Friend of the pod, J D Vance cast the tie-breaking vote after a 50-50 deadlock. Three Republicans voted no, and Trump won over Senator Ron Johnson. On this very podcast, he said he would be a no unless more spending was cut. There were significant changes to the bill. We'll get into that in a minute. And so it's got to pass the House again before Trump gets on into law. Lots of drama. Trump set the deadline for July 4th, which is Friday, when you're listening to this. And it will, in all likelihood, get there. According to Polymarket, there is a 96% chance the bill will pass by Thursday, and a 97% chance it'll pass by Friday, July 4th, Independence Day, the day we publish. So it looks like it's pretty much a lock. Some big changes in the Senate.

• 3:56Jason Calacanis?

  Biggest change, the 10-year AI regulation moratorium, which we're going to talk about for states, was removed. Ted Cruz tried to negotiate cutting it to five years. Suggestion I made, maybe 10 years was a little bit too long for folks, but that didn't work. According to an NGO called National Conference of State Legislatures, over 1,000 bills related to AI have been filed by state lawmakers in 2025. So expect a lot of state-by-state AI regulation. I think this is a good place to stop. We don't have Saks here. To talk about AI regulation, what he talked about the last time. Friedberg, your thoughts on states? You know, we talked about state rights here in relation to abortion, guns, gun regulations, cannabis, many different,

• 4:41Jason Calacanis?

  you know, debates over who should get to decide for the country. Where do you stand on this one? Should states have a voice in how AI is deployed in their, you know, borders, within their borders? Or should the federal government take this? And if so, for how many years? Because that seemed to be a sticking point.

• 5:01David Friedberg?

  Look, I'm a big believer in the construct of our federated republic in the United States, where states can operate with as much kind of discretion as they choose to with the laws that they pass and how they intend to govern.

• 5:16David Friedberg?

  There are, however, things that affect more than the state. We have interstate commerce. We have international commerce. We have the open internet. And we have a lot of other systems at play here that extend beyond the boundaries of a state. And the way that AI tools and AI systems and AI services and AI-related jobs are being deployed and activated. I do think it's critical that we treat AI regulation at a national level, at a federal level. To date, there have been, I believe, 70 state laws or statutes passed thus far in the United States, with I think over 1,000 having been proposed to date, if the numbers are right. And having a patchwork of regulations on, for example,

• 6:01David Friedberg?

  model development or telling software companies what software they can deploy, would make it practically impossible for internet service providers like a Google or an OpenAI to service customers across state boundaries in a way that is actually going to meet the needs of the customer. This is a huge detriment to consumers and a huge detriment to the job market if we end up creating a patchwork of regulations on AI this early. One of the things that I would point out is that much of the early legislation, like, for example, what we saw in California, if you read that legislation that did not get signed by Gavin Newsom. In California, there was a definition on model parameters being a boundary condition for whether or not something would go through a regulatory review process.

• 6:46David Friedberg?

  That was such a naive assertion that early in the phase of AI technology development. And think about the implication was, okay, well, everything is L L Ms. But there's other models like vision action models are going to be used in robotics, models that might be used in predicting and driving physical systems like in self-driving cars, for example. So the way that the regulation gets written will often be done in a naive context in a limited fashion by regulators that don't fully understand the breadth of the technology that's coming our way. And I do think that it needs to be kind of leveled up and allowed to operate at a federal level. So I think it is absolutely critical, not just for technology companies, not just for

• 7:29David Friedberg?

  the industry, but for the opportunity for job creation, for improving the economy, for driving GDP and productivity growth, that we get something passed that forces AI regulation to be done at a federal level, even though I generally agree that states should be able to self-govern. This just has too much of an interstate and global interaction. So that was the biggest disappointment for me in the negotiation that's gone on with this bill is that of all the things that I thought were going to be passed that I thought were maybe not ideal, getting this AI federal preemption in that bill was probably the best thing, the top of the list for me in terms of critically important for the US economy.

• 8:06Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, Chamath, your thoughts here? Obviously abortion is like an interesting one to look at because that went to the states in furtherance of Free Bird's, you know, position here. You have just many different rules and regulations between Texas, Oklahoma, whatever it is. Everybody's got a different view. It's chaotic and we don't have a singular point of view on it. Therefore, women in one state have very different rules than in another state. So where did you fall on this one? Federal legislation or is it just going to take more time to figure this out? I mean, that's another, I guess, angle here.

• 8:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is nothing like abortion.

• 8:46Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 8:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Abortion is an individual issue between a woman.

• 8:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Her doctor, her partner, her god.

• 8:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And so, a state being able to have rules,

• 9:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  and then allowing that woman to choose which state she can go to, is quite reasonable, because I think that it acknowledges that there's no one size fits all. So that is clearly a state issue.

• 9:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But the reality is that AI is of national security importance. It is the tip of the spear of our ability to have technological supremacy. That is how we have economic supremacy. And so not governing it at the federal level, I think, is a mistake. And it makes as much sense for states to legislate AI as it would make sense for states to have competitive armies. It doesn't make sense. There are certain things that are just so fundamentally primary to American supremacy and safety and security that it needs to be regulated at the federal level. And I think AI needs to be at the top of that list.

• 10:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So I was disappointed that we weren't able to see the forest from the trees here. Now, I'm sensitive to part of the reasons why. Many of the states have very specific issues around child safety that they mentioned. In Tennessee, there was a lot about copyright ownership related to musicians and their content. I get all of that. Those are legitimate things that need to get ironed out. But I think that it could have been done in a federal framework. Not having it, I think the risk is that if you have 50 different sets of regulation, and it won't even just be 50, as Preberg said, it's going to be, you know, all kinds of pet organizations that pop up in all of these states. What happens?

• 10:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think what it does is it slows down startups and smaller companies who won't have the economic heft to fight these regulations or to work with them or to figure it out. And it'll advantage a handful of incumbents. And the problem with that is that our incumbents aren't yet mature, and this industry is still developing. So I think this is, um, this is one of the unfortunate parts of what is otherwise a pretty reasonable bill.

• 11:17Jason Calacanis?

  Well, you can look at gambling, I guess, and cannabis legislation. These are things that Americans largely want to do, and they are fighting their way, state by state. And at some point, we may have a federal regulation about online gambling, right? Right now, it's a patchwork. Same thing with cannabis, psychedelics, all a patchwork of different states.

• 11:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Why do you lump together things that are about individual rights with AI, which I don't think is about that?

• 11:45Jason Calacanis?

  People might look at the rights holders, cars. These AI things are going to hit people on an individual level. So I think when you bring this up, this topic, there are people who feel this is an individual sovereignty issue.

• 11:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right, but you know, there are other issues of individual sovereignty, like the ability to take drugs, and there's still federal mandates that come through the FDA. You know, you're not allowed to short-circuit or circumvent that framework at a state-by-state level.

• 12:15Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, that actually is at the core of the cannabis debate, is would they enforce the federal laws on cannabis, and they haven't, right? So that was part of it.

• 12:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm talking about more as it relates to AI.

• 12:25Jason Calacanis?

  Sure. You know, because AI means everything, I think that's what makes this issue very difficult. AI is going to affect everything, right? So probably the people who want to slow this down and have the states do it are saying, let the states have their say on these granular issues. I'm not saying this is my position, but I think that's what I'm reading into their position. Hey, this is going to affect different states in different ways. Let them figure it out, take some time, and then we'll build towards a framework nationally, which I think is what happened with the Internet in Section 230 as well, although I don't know the entire history of it. We did come up with an idea that, hey, the federal government makes it common carrier to, you know, anybody can post anything on a website, and then, you know, you can request

• 13:10Jason Calacanis?

  to take it down. That was federal legislation. Those things could have been held also on an individual basis, and then what would have happened for the Internet? You would have had AOL or GeoCities have a different patchwork, like you're saying, in regulation. So I'm guessing the states probably do want to have a say on self-driving, that one specifically. And I don't know if they're wrong. What do you think on self-driving? Should it be federal? I mean, that's like an interesting lens to look at it through.

• 13:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I don't know the details well enough. It seems to me that self-driving touches both the states and the federal.

• 13:42Jason Calacanis?

  Sure, federal highways and local roads, yeah. So, but just from first principles, you know, there's self-driving cars now in Palo Alto, going up to the city from Waymo, you got Austin, you got three different providers. Should the city, the state have a stay in that? Kind of feels like they should.

• 13:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 14:01Jason Calacanis?

  True. Yeah, so I mean, I think that's.

• 14:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But I don't, I don't think a city has any idea how to regulate a model.

• 14:06Jason Calacanis?

  No, that's where it's obvious. The other side, you know, like, how would they ever even know? And another piece that's in flux and has been changing is energy policy. Solar, EV credits, and maybe even disincentives. The $7,500 credit for buying cars. And then also carbon credits and a fee of $250 for everybody who owns an EV every year. Friedberg, maybe you could talk a little bit about this part of the debate? Because we've been spending and hitting incredible goals as a country in getting more renewables, more energy online, but that comes at a cost, right? And so that is a big part of the debate here.

• 14:48Jason Calacanis?

  And that obviously is something that impacts Elon, and we'll get to him in a moment, but that impacts Elon and Trump's relationship in a major way.

• 14:56David Friedberg?

  The old school motivation and incentive for what people would call green energy or green tech was to decarbonize electricity production and develop and deploy at scale these new technologies at the time, like wind and solar, as an alternative to carbon-based technologies that put carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, like oil and coal and gas. So the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, created tremendous government incentives for building solar and wind farms to create electricity in the United States.

• 15:33David Friedberg?

  This proposal that's been going back and forth in this bill and some of the debate that's triggered many folks online to denounce the bill takes away those incentives, takes away those credits, takes away the EV tax credits, starting in September, as an example.

• 15:49Jason Calacanis?

  Why can't they do these in digestible chunks? It should be no more than 300 pages per bill, no more than X number of issues and break it into three.

• 15:58David Friedberg?

  Good conversation to have another time, but we should talk to people on Congress, but there's a very specific reason why, because of the logjam that happens with the filibuster. So it makes it impossible to get things done in that traditional context. So what's happened in the last couple of years is you end up with these massive, massive mega bills, where they jam everything into one bill that they can pass with 50 votes.

• 16:18Jason Calacanis?

  And then in the middle of the night, they make these last minute changes and we have no say. It's so dark.

• 16:24David Friedberg?

  There's no rigorous debate, there's no transparency into what's going on and why. And so the second argument away from the green stuff is the more modern stuff, which I've made. And I know Chamath agrees with me on this, which is we have to increase electricity production. In this country, the current plan has been to move from one to two terawatts by 2040. Meanwhile, China's moving from three to eight and China's adding an entire United States in electricity production capacity every 18 months right now. They are so far ahead of us and ultimately electricity production is what drops the price for things and increases jobs, increases GDP, increases your ability to make stuff. And so the more electricity production comes online, the more we will be able to be sufficient in an AI point. Now, the Secretary of Energy, Secretary Wright, gave an interview.

• 17:10David Friedberg?

  And he said, "We have more than enough capacity with gas, oil and coal and nuclear." And so his argument at this point is that we don't need to subsidize solar and wind, where the government pays for these programs and private equity investors can make money on them. This is a big part of the argument he's making, I'm not making it. But he's saying this will drive traditional energy investments in traditional systems that we can scale up quickly to meet our energy production goals. Now, I will say from my point of view, I'm not a huge fan of being dependent on government subsidized energy at all. So if the government is having to play a role in funding stuff, there's something really

• 17:52David Friedberg?

  questionable in terms of our sustainability on that energy production source. Over time, will it actually be able to make more of it? Because what you want is not just to make a bunch of energy in the next six years or 12 years, you want to make sure that you've got an engine for creating new energy production on a continuous basis so we climb non-linearly the energy production curve. That's what we need to do. And I hope that one of the key outputs of this, which a lot of people are really unhappy about the loss of the demand for solar and wind because of the loss of the government programs here, but what I'm hopeful for is it creates a natural market force for nuclear and that we actually see a better proliferation in nuclear, which Secretary Wright has said,

• 18:37David Friedberg?

  and President Trump signed these EOs a couple of weeks ago, to reduce the regulatory burden on nuclear and increase the ability for nuclear to proliferate much more quickly than has been the case historically. So while a lot of people are saying, hey, this is going to take away all this energy production capacity that's coming online in the next few years, it was supposed to. The counterargument is we're going to create a natural market force because the energy demand will still be there. So someone's going to show up and say, hey, I want to make electricity because there's so much demand for it. And maybe they say, hey, let's try this new nuclear dereg system and see if we can get it to work. And so I don't know, the jury is absolutely out. We have not seen this energy proliferation begin in this country. But I do think one of the potential benefits of removing those clean energy tax credits

• 19:22David Friedberg?

  is that we actually see natural market forces drive demand for a more naturally sustainable, scalable energy production source.

• 19:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Chamath, you're those? I announced this a few weeks ago, but I dipped my toe into real estate. I've never done real estate before, but just outside of Phoenix, we're building a 1 gigawatt data center. That's a $25 billion total investment cycle, of which we'll be into it for two or three billion of equity when it's probably all said and done. What I can tell you is the reason why you can underwrite that deal or why I was able to underwrite the deal was...

• 19:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's located downstream of a nuclear reactor. And so there's effectively infinite energy that we can tap. But we still need nat gas and a bunch of other things. The problem is that, you know, if we put it in order right now, we can't get a nat gas turbine viable and turned on until 2030. It's not a technology issue. It's purely a supply chain issue. So I think what our energy policy needs to make sure we contemplate is that many of the things that we are debating are no longer issues of production, but they're issues of supply, transmission and distribution. And as long as we can make sure that we allow energy to be made wherever and whenever possible,

• 20:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  and then stored however possible, we'll be on the forward foot. The big risk is that if we don't have that ability, and then all of a sudden we have these incredible achievements in technology, in robotics, and we don't have the electricity to power them. That's the big risk. As long as we can fix that. I still worry that with nuclear, the issue won't be the federal regulations. I think that it's good that the president cleaned it up. The real problem is going to be the local and state regulators and how quickly they're willing to turn these on. And the reality is that, you know, these are 10-year projects. And so even if you say go from today, the earliest these things can be turned on really in 2032, 2033. That's far too late.

• 21:25Jason Calacanis?

  And that's a lot of risk too, Chamath, because what if you get blocked at the last minute? This is where solar and other projects, you know, we're pouring solar panels.

• 21:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Look, I'm a big fan of coal as well. I'll tell you a story. In 2020, right before the pandemic, I don't even know if I should say the name of the company, but I almost went after a coal company to buy it. And I had been obsessed with this company for a year. And it was cheap. It fell on hard times. It was like a billion two, a billion three. And my team went up in arms. They were like, oh, my God, it's so dirty. You can't own a coal company. And it was such a huge miss on my part. I should have just bought the bloody thing. Then we went into COVID. Then, you know, everything went upside down. And lo and behold, that company has like quintupled since then. So I'm a fan of all forms of energy production. I think the marginal cost of energy has to go to zero, which means that any single way you can get your hands on electricity production.

• 22:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Is a winning trade over the next 20 years in the United States?

• 22:26Jason Calacanis?

  This is, I was trying to wrap my head around people saying, oh, we shouldn't buy all these solar panels out of China because China is making them so cheaply and our trade imbalance, etc. And I was like, well, wait a second. What's more important, the trade imbalance and giving China some money for solar panels, or getting more solar panels to Arizona, you know, to Utah?

• 22:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Look, let's take the subsidies off the table. Ultimately, you don't want any of these markets subsidized. The reality is, it is faster and more efficient to put solar panels up and start generating electricity. It's just that. It's like 17 months from start to finish. 17 months. So that's probably, in my opinion, the single most valuable underwriting feature of solar, which is you put a dollar in, you can start generating revenue in 17 months from that dollar going in. That's very different than when you're putting a dollar in and you're not going to see it back for a decade plus. That's scary. And so you need to generate a rate of return that justifies a 10 or 15-year investment cycle. And that's

• 23:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  hard to do because there's a lot of volatility in the world and things can go, you know, down as well as up. So, I don't know. My perspective is, get rid of all the subsidies at this point. Create a clean slate, but don't do anything to hinder the production of electricity because we need literally as much of it as we can get our hands on. And then we need to find a way of storing it in a safe way. And then we're off to the races.

• 23:53Jason Calacanis?

  And the battery technology, Friedberg, is just, keeps making great incremental process, progress in terms of cost, you know, just going down, what, 15% a year?

• 24:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Jason, I have a question for you.

• 24:04Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 24:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  How many days a year do you think California is in an energy deficit?

• 24:10Jason Calacanis?

  How many days a year is California in an energy deficit? Doesn't have enough energy. It would be during the summer months.

• 24:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know where electricity prices go crazy, where they have to find all kinds of ways of generating massive amounts of baseload. How many days a year?

• 24:25Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I'm gonna say like a third of the time, 100.

• 24:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Five.

• 24:28Jason Calacanis?

  That's it.

• 24:29David Friedberg?

  Wow.

• 24:30Jason Calacanis?

  So we've really made progress.

• 24:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know, in California, our grid is on average about between forty-five and fifty percent utilized. This is for PG&E. I don't know what it's like for SoCal Edison.

• 24:41Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 24:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But the point I'm trying to make is that in normal market conditions for residential, we have tremendous amounts of power and for most needs, we have tremendous supply. So things can be pretty good. The problem is all of the stuff downstream from the making of it. And if we don't clean that up, we're going to create these artificial constraints that will come back to bite us when we really need the power to do something very exciting.

• 25:06Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. All right, let's move on to Elon and Trump's relationship. Everybody wants to hear our take on what's going on between Elon and Trump in relation to this bill. We took a pass on it last time, but we'll take a swing at it now. Obviously, there's been a bit of back and forth between two of our friends, friends of the show, both Elon and Trump are.

• 25:31David Friedberg?

  Are you friends with Trump?

• 25:32Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I'm speaking on behalf of the show. I have never met Trump in person, but I did interview him here.

• 25:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  On behalf of me and sex.

• 25:40Jason Calacanis?

  On behalf of the show. You guys are all Team Trump.

• 25:43David Friedberg?

  Just say Trump is in sex.

• 25:45Jason Calacanis?

  You're Team Trump, too. Elon has.

• 25:48David Friedberg?

  I've never met the guy.

• 25:50Jason Calacanis?

  You've never met? Never been in the White House. You took pictures in the White House with everybody.

• 25:54David Friedberg?

  Never met the guy.

• 25:55Jason Calacanis?

  Really? Never met in person? Okay. Spent time in the White House, but didn't meet him? Okay, no problem. Yeah. Anyway, Elon has come out hard against this bill. He tweeted, "It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record five trillion dollars, that we live in a one-party country, the Porky Pig Party. Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people." This escalated a bit, but this isn't as bad as the first time around when asked if he would deport Elon, Trump said, "I don't know. We'll have to take a look." And said he might stick Doge on Elon since he gets a lot of subsidies. Friedberg, we skipped talking about it because it was, I think, a bit chaotic last time. But this time, I think maybe we'll chime in a bit.

• 26:38Jason Calacanis?

  Things aren't as hot right now and the bill's going to get through. So let's take a swing at it. What are your thoughts, Friedberg, on the kerfluffle, the donnybrook, the brouhaha between Elon and President Trump?

• 26:51David Friedberg?

  There's a lot of people that are making accurate declarations that federal spending needs to be reduced. The deficit needs to be shrunk. We are in a debt death spiral and they are absolutely correct. So I don't think that Elon is off the reservation when he makes those comments. And he's talked about this continuously and he dedicated months of his life to operating Doge and trying to bring to light some of the extraordinary operating inefficiencies in the federal government that should be addressed. And I think, you know, we'll see what happens. Jury's still out. For those actions to get permanent, they, I believe, need to mandate them in an appropriations bill.

• 27:33David Friedberg?

  And the White House has publicly declared that they are going to move forward with an appropriations bill to try and cement some of the Doge actions. So I'm hopeful, but I think Elon's right with respect to the spending. I will provide the voice I have heard publicly stated from the alternative view from the White House, which is this is not the bill to do that because it mostly focuses on these mandatory spending programs. And they are addressing cost savings to some degree in these mandatory spending programs, while keeping the tax rates where they are or reducing tax rates in some cases, which the expectation is will stimulate GDP growth.

• 28:14David Friedberg?

  So the White House view is also a view that you could look at and say economically, I could see a path here. That does make sense. You're reducing spending only on mandatory programs. You're going to come back with an appropriations bill to address discretionary spending. And then the final kind of action that the White House might take, which we've heard about separately, is impoundment, that at the end of the fiscal year, they may come back and say, all the money that we saved by not spending it, we can actually recover through impoundment. And the CBO

• 28:45David Friedberg?

  Has not accounted for tariff revenue. And just looking at the recent deal done with Vietnam, Vietnam's about $130 billion a year of imports to the United States. And they did a deal that they announced two days ago with a 20% tariff on Vietnam, which, you know, if Vietnam's import volume does not increase, is about 26 billion a year of incremental revenue for the federal government. So there's an argument that Besen and Lutnik and others are making that you guys have failed to recognize that we've got a few other things we have up our sleeve that we're going to do. We're going to do impoundment, we're going to do this appropriations bill, we've got more revenue coming in. Net-net, we will get the deficit down to where we need to be.

• 29:27David Friedberg?

  In fact, Scott Besen was on TV saying over and over, we're going to get the deficit below 3% of GDP, which is the key target here. But the immediate reaction to this bill, I think that Elon is having, is the same that I've had, and it is the same that Senator Johnson had, and is the same that many others have had, which is what the F are we doing? We are in a fiscal emergency in this country and we're not addressing it. So I think both points of view can be valid, and both sides can have a good kind of argument for why the bill should be passed and why the bill shouldn't be passed. The White House has declared that this is the only way they're going to get some of the programs done that they believe they need to get done for national security, like the ICE border stuff, and these are things that they believe they need to get done.

• 30:11David Friedberg?

  But a lot of folks are looking at the numbers and saying, this just isn't enough, and you're now increasing the deficit by cutting taxes. One of the things the CBO does not do, though, is they don't have a strong model, and there's a ton of economic debate on this point, which is how do tax cuts stimulate GDP growth and job creation and income growth for people with jobs? The one argument is, when you cut taxes, more dollars flow into the economy, more jobs are created, more businesses are created, the GDP grows, income for other people grows. The alternative argument is it's a tax cut for the rich. What are you doing? They're going to put that money in their pocket, it's only going to benefit themselves. So that's, I think, a key crux in the argument that you'll never get to a resolution on.

• 30:55David Friedberg?

  The one side will use that one argument, and the other side will use the other argument. So, look, I mean, with respect to Elon and Trump, I will say one thing very importantly. I don't think MAGA can exist successfully without the tech alignment. I don't think tech can exist without MAGA because of the government alignment. And the importance of the government allowing these new technologies like AI to come to market and to proliferate, I don't think that these two can exist in isolation and in conflict with one another. Elon is the de facto king of tech. He is the person that is saying, look, if I'm in conflict with Trump, tech is in conflict with Trump, or at least that is the perception on the MAGA side.

• 31:36David Friedberg?

  And I think that that is very risky for both sides to allow a conflict to kind of endure. And I do think that both sides have heads that are going to be cooler, that will prevail here. And I do think that these two are going to recognize the importance of being codependent, if you will, in being able to progress their respective agendas.

• 31:56Jason Calacanis?

  Chamath, your thoughts on the kerfluffle? Seem to be winding down and maybe reaching some sort of end game. It feels like we're in some sort of an end game here, and if there is one, what is it?

• 32:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, I think it's just important to recognize that on the one side, you have the most powerful person in the world, and on the other side, you have the most important, powerful entrepreneur and richest man in the world. And when you have people that are that accomplished, it's not as if you're going to get along 100% of the time. So I think a lot of the breathlessness around all of this stuff is overblown. I think the reality is that when push comes to shove, I think that they agree on more things than they probably disagree. And I think when everybody realizes that the alternative is essentially some insane

• 32:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  form of socialism and redistribution.

• 33:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think the alliance will hold and that they'll find some common ground. Jason, what do you think?

• 33:09Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I think you're right. These two individuals are used to speaking their mind and they're both really good at social media. And then there's no better media cycle than covering the two of them battling it out and trading barbs. But I think what Elon did this cycle was really interesting. He started a preference stack for Trump and that cascade, preference cascade, preference stack, however you want to phrase it. You know, I think played a large role, if not the role, in getting Trump elected. People can debate that. I don't know that you can perfectly know what that $250 million and all that effort he put in, you know, what that did in terms of Trump's chances. Trump probably would have won anyway versus Kamala, but maybe not.

• 33:55Jason Calacanis?

  Putting that aside, the platform Elon has refined during this political cycle is one that resonates. And I think it's a really good idea for him to maybe, if he's going to be involved in politics, pull that string and just crisply define it. And I was thinking about it over the last couple of days. And I think it hits into four basic groups, balanced budget and government efficiency. That's kind of one. Fiscal responsibility, sustainable energy, which obviously he's been passionate about, and he's the leader in solar batteries, EVs. And then manufacturing in the United States, which he also is the leader in, and pro-natalism and just, you know, the, uh, the population crisis. He really cares about those four issues.

• 34:37Jason Calacanis?

  So what I think he should do is take that America PAC and instead of making it like just pro-MAGA, he should just clearly define what it is that he believes, small set of issues. And then he should go and back the people who are running to be in Congress and senators and just say, hey, here is what I would like you to be in favor of and do what Norquist did with his no new taxes pledge. Do some sort of pledge like that. I don't know if it needs to be a new party, but just really crisply define what matters to him if he's going to be involved in politics. Then get people to agree on it. And if he wants to give them donations, as it's his right, as it's his PAC's right to raise money, he could represent, I think, a very world positive view, sustainable energy,

• 35:21Jason Calacanis?

  just incredible execution and a really efficient government.

• 35:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Technical excellence.

• 35:26Jason Calacanis?

  Technical excellence, excellence writ large. And America, just go for it. And it doesn't have to be personal against Trump. One of the big problems with Trump is he has a bunch of sycophants around him. And the more you kind of appease him and just blindly follow him, I think the closer you, the perception is that's the closer you get to him. I don't know that that's true. I think he likes debating stuff. So I think he should embrace the people who debate it with him. And then those people should just crisply say, here's what I stand for, and I'm putting my money behind it. I hope we're in alignment, but I'm going to stay in my lane and I'm going to prioritize what matters to me. And Elon's priorities are exceptionally sharp and well-defined, and he should pursue them. Yeah.

• 36:08David Friedberg?

  Jury's out on where this ends up and the broader picture. You guys will get annoyed because I talked about Ray Dalio so much, but I think he's done an amazing job in the last five years, basically explaining everything we've seen from global conflict to the internal conflict, the rise of socialism in the US and the relationship to the debt and deficit cycle. He just posted on Twitter yesterday that he went to DC to discuss the budget deficit with senior people on both sides of the aisle. And he said, it's clear to me that we are unlikely to change the debt trajectory we're on and avoid the painful consequences. And he talked a lot about this concept of absolutist politics. And this is the same reaction I've had every time I've gone to DC and we've met with members of Congress.

• 36:52David Friedberg?

  And if you guys remember from the beginning, I said, Doge isn't going to be it. As much as Elon can identify and resolve to a better way of operating the federal government's agencies, you cannot change the spending without a change in statute from Congress. You have to get Congress to act. And every time I met with members of Congress, their incentive is to keep the money flowing to their districts. That's what they focus on. And every year, their districts want more in different contexts, in different forms, through different programs. And that's what their job is. Their job is to go to DC to represent their state's interests or their local district's interests and say, we need to make sure that we're taken care of as the money flows. And as a result, everything keeps getting bigger and bigger and spiraling away. At the end of the day, the way we economically save America, if we even have a shot without money printing,

• 37:37David Friedberg?

  which a lot of people like Balaji and Dalio and others are now indicating is what's going to happen is we're going to end up inflating away or printing away all of the debt that we've taken on is to get to a 333, which Besen has highlighted is also his goal, 3% federal deficit to GDP.

• 37:53David Friedberg?

  3% GDP growth and 3% inflation. And just to give you a sense of where those numbers sit today, the current estimate is 6% deficit to GDP, 2.4% inflation. So we've actually got a little bit of room to run on inflation and GDP growth this year of 1.4%. So will the tax cuts in this bill increase GDP growth? Will AI increase GDP growth? The jury is out. Will the tariff revenue reduce the deficit more than the CBO is estimating? And the increased GDP growth reduce the deficit? The jury is still out. And what will happen with inflation? And if the Fed cuts rates, you're going to see inflation climb a little bit more. Maybe the tariffs effect on inflation will still come through.

• 38:35David Friedberg?

  Some folks have said that hasn't hit yet, but it will come later this year. Will we exceed 3% inflation, TPD? So the jury is still very much out on whether these actions that are being taken, which Besant has declared, is going to get us to that 333 number. But then a lot of folks who are looking at this with a cold stare, with like no political influence, with no political intention, not representing a party, not representing an administration like Ray Dalio, are saying, what the [bleep]. There is no way we're going to get there. Bology, I think, you know, pointed out in his tweet, his point is actually a very good point, which is our debt is not just the federal debt, but there's other debt that we're not even accounting for.

• 39:18Jason Calacanis?

  Consumer debt.

• 39:19David Friedberg?

  And I've said, I've said this in the past, there's, there's actually corporate debt, the business debt, consumer debt. There's also state and local debt. And then the one key number that we never talk about is the unaccounted for liabilities in public pension funds, which is on the order of trillions of dollars more. So when you add all of this up, someone's going to pay the bills on all that debt, or we're going to have to inflate away that debt by printing money. And at some point, the trains left the station. A lot of people are saying, we're done. There's no way out of this. So, you know, the Elon Trump battle is like an interesting kind of side kerfuffle, but it's not really the big story here. The big story is the trains left the station.

• 39:57Jason Calacanis?

  You know, I think if we're, if we look at this as the first year that tech really got actively involved in politics, obviously Peter Thiel has been at this for a little bit longer in his support of JD Vance, the Vice President. I'm looking at this as like, maybe this is year one that Gen X is truly engaged in making a difference in Washington and setting an agenda. That agenda, you know, has 25 years ahead of it. If everybody remains disengaged, whether it's people like Sacks, or TL, or Elon, or countless other people, you know, what is J.D. Vance's position on this when he runs for president in four years? What will these other individuals, Dean Phillips, who we've had on the program, if he decides to run?

• 40:40Jason Calacanis?

  I think this is, you know, we're maybe 5% into the impact this could be having, and already, and in Friedberg, I always give you a lot of credit for this, two years ago, when you said, you started bringing this up incessantly on the program, and to the point at which you're freely admitting-

• 40:55David Friedberg?

  It was during COVID I started doing this.

• 40:56Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, it was three years ago, and, um, you know, like, yeah, I mean, you're, you're admitting you've been annoying for three or four years. I think, actually, it's, it's the, it's the sand that might make the pearl and the oyster. We need to address this. It's become a top issue of our time. That's actually success. The fact that this issue is now the issue of our time, our budget, our fiscal responsibility, austerity, that's actually a really good thing. And, yeah, maybe it doesn't get manifested in this bill, but maybe it will get manifested in J.D. Vance's, you know, presidential run, or Dean Phillips, or the both of them will be discussing it in three and a half years, or three years, when they're on the presidential trail. So that could be actually the early sign of success for this.

• 41:41Jason Calacanis?

  I'm an optimist.

• 41:44David Friedberg?

  Good luck.

• 41:46Jason Calacanis?

  So I'm sure in the camp that it's over.

• 41:48David Friedberg?

  Yeah, I mean, we sit here, and we parked on this topic dozens of times. We keep talking about, oh, we need to do this, we need to do that. But at the end of the day, when the bills get passed, when Congress takes action, you get to see where their heads really at. And I do think that this bill has indicated that the administration has a set of incentives, which is they want to get the actions done that they promised they would on the campaign trail. And then Congress has a lot of incentives to keep the money flowing. And I think we've seen that in this negotiation to get this bill done. And I'm not faulting anyone for it. Congress is looking out for the interests of the people that they represent. And the White House is looking out for the people that voted for them. And they said, this is what we're going to do, and we have a mandate, and now they're getting it done. And that's just the way it is.

• 42:33David Friedberg?

  But this is the key part of the whole storyline, which is at some point, once the spending levels get too high, and the country, the individuals and the businesses become too dependent on that spending.

• 42:44Jason Calacanis?

  Yep.

• 42:44David Friedberg?

  Which is effectively what happens at the end of every empire. You can't back out. You can't stop spending. And everyone just votes themselves the dollars. So it's a, it's a scary moment. And I've said it before, I do think that the GDP growth is the one path that's left to resolve this. I don't think we're going to just cut spending. And so we need to kind of be really thoughtful about making sure we don't hamper GDP growth, particularly as it relates to AI, which is going to unlock a lot of new industry, a lot of new growth, a lot of new opportunity for jobs. And this is why I worry a lot about this patchwork of regulation in states, making it really difficult for AI.

• 43:17Jason Calacanis?

  You only need five more people like Rand Paul and Tillis, right? If you get a couple more of those, Chamath, this could be a completely different discussion.

• 43:26David Friedberg?

  If you want to pivot to the next topic, I mean, one way to look at this is how the dollar's trading.

• 43:30Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 43:31David Friedberg?

  So the US dollar is now down 11% this year, and that's against every single major currency.

• 43:36Jason Calacanis?

  Here it is. So the dollar was down over 10% through the first half of 2025. This is the worst start in over 50 years. Take a look at this chart and you can see it. It's kind of shocking. Keep in mind, the dollar jumped 7% after Trump was elected. It kind of peaked in mid-January. So if you take the pre-election dollar index number 103, it's down 6% since then. Not record breaking, but significant. And obviously economists are saying tariffs and global trade are a big piece of this. And as we just discussed, and we'll keep discussing, the US debt load at $37 trillion. It's more expensive for Americans to travel abroad, and it's less attractive maybe to invest in the US.

• 44:21David Friedberg?

  Let me just follow up on the point I just made, but this is where. Where the, you know, the, what do they say? The chicken comes to roost?

• 44:28Jason Calacanis?

  Chickens come home to roost? Yeah. The chickens have come home to roost.

• 44:31David Friedberg?

  This is it.

• 44:31Jason Calacanis?

  The rubber meets the road. Yeah.

• 44:32David Friedberg?

  This is where you start to see the inflationary effects of the spending and the spiraling debt. Is things get more expensive and your earning power doesn't increase commensurate with the higher expenses? So, so what will happen is you'll see here, the US today imports four to five trillion dollars a year. So that's four to five trillion dollars that US consumers and businesses are buying from abroad. And then we import into the US and use those products and services. So the cost of all that just went up by 11%. As the dollar declined in value against the average of all these currencies. And that's outside of increase in prices that may arise because of the tariff effect where folks may say, hey, let's charge more for tariffs. Whether it's the cost of tariffs or the cost of the debt, the dollars that you have to spend now just went up by 11% to buy the same thing.

• 45:17David Friedberg?

  And if that compounds and that continues. And your earnings are not growing and your assets are not growing commensurate with that, that's where dollar devaluation happens. And where asset devaluation, income devaluation, and that's where, again, we open up the door to a thing like socialism where people are like. It's now twice as expensive to buy my groceries. It's twice as expensive to pay my rent and I'm not making any more money. Man, I need a solution. We gotta get together and get the government to make everything free. And that's why I'm so convinced that there's a rise in socialism in this country. Because in this sort of an inflationary environment, like we're seeing so far this year, you don't see it in the dollar inflation numbers. You see it in the dollar currency numbers. You're gonna say, man, I need an alternative. That's why.

• 45:56Jason Calacanis?

  The paradox to that is free stuff is not free. It means increased spending, which means you're stalling the plane even more. So.

• 46:05David Friedberg?

  Exactly.

• 46:06Jason Calacanis?

  Chop any thoughts here on the dollar?

• 46:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think the dollar has devalued 50% in the last 35 or 40 years. So.

• 46:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think it's somewhat useful to look at any single couple of months in time, but this has been a one-way trade for a very long time.

• 46:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And it's probably important to understand why that is. And I think it generally has to do with the fact that the United States finances a lot of growth, and that has been the right decision. So unless you see a complete collapse in the currency, I suspect that this decay continues to happen. So the question is, is it a bad thing? And the answer is, it depends. Because if asset prices increase faster than the dollar devalues, you're still ahead. You may not be ahead as much, but you're still ahead. And if you look at asset prices in the United States relative to asset prices anyplace else in the world,

• 47:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  it is the flight to quality, which is to say that it is the thing that everybody wants to own. And you see that in the equity markets, you see it in real estate, you see it in hard assets. So, I don't know, I think that it's part of the fact that until we run surpluses and/or completely eliminate the debt, there will always be a reason to be somewhat short the dollar. But the reality is that a lot of people still want to own these assets more than they want to own any other asset, and those assets are dollar-denominated. And so as long as that continues to hold,

• 47:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  in the push and pull, it'll be a slow bleed, but it's probably manageable. And that's just sort of like the mathematical trend of it all. So, I don't know, unless there's some like cataclysmic collapse in asset prices, I think that this is just a thing that you have to deal with. It's sort of like the carry of it all. And it happens, there's all kinds of other trades where you sort of pay and carry, and that's okay.

• 48:14Jason Calacanis?

  Is there a relationship you can explain to the audience between the stock market ripping and the dollar devaluing?

• 48:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, I think the reality is that, you know, if you think about a country that all of a sudden has to pay A tariff. So let's take the Vietnamese example that Friedberg said. Let's just say that they had to prepay one year of it, just to make the math simple, so you can understand. They have to come up with 23-odd billion dollars, I think, is what Friedberg, the number that you said, or something like that. So

• 48:43David Friedberg?

  Yeah, like 26 billion on 130.

• 48:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  How do you do that? Well, the first thing that you're going to do is you're going to sell dollar-denominated assets that you already own. And you're going to generate those US dollars, and then you're going to send it to the United States Treasury. So you may be selling bonds. So you would think, okay, well, that's not really good for asset prices. Okay. But then what you quickly realize is that all of that is far outweighed by the fact that all the rest of the stuff that you own, whether it's gold-denominated, or whether it's in local currency-denominated, you want to actually go and buy these dollars because you want assets that are safe in turbulence and volatility. And so would you rather be long the Vietnamese dong, or the Vietnamese equity markets? To a degree, yes.

• 49:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But if you have obligations that the Vietnamese government needs to fund, their central bank is probably deciding that they need to be long US bonds in fixed income. And other people who hold assets in that country are probably going to be, you know, on a weighted basis, adding exposure to the United States while all of this stuff is happening. Why? Because you're seeing the balance sheet of of America burgeoning and growing. 23 billion from Vietnam, tens of billions over here, tens of billions over there. It all adds up. So, again, I think that this is like a very complicated, multivariate problem, but the net takeaway is that the dollar devaluation is not something that's new. It is a phenomenon

• 50:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  that has existed through market cycles for 50-plus years. It's a decay that has happened and will continue to happen. So I think, the way that I think about it is, there's a drag. But can the drag be overcome by the increase in asset values of the hard assets that are dollar-denominated? And the answer is yes, and meaningfully so. And so as long as that's the case, I think you're going to continue to have a bid for equities. If all of a sudden, the MAG7 decided to de-list and not be American companies, and all of a sudden showed up in the CAC 50 in France, yeah, we'd be in big trouble. But I don't think that's going to happen. And so as long as, you know, there's American ingenuity and American supremacy, again,

• 50:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  which goes back to the other thing, which is we can't kill these golden geese, nor should we kill the emerging and growing golden goose, which is AI. And as long as those things are the same, there will be a constant bid for American assets. And that will keep the enterprise of America going for far longer than most people would guess.

• 51:15David Friedberg?

  Up to a point, but pull up, pull up this chart that I sent. This is the, yeah.

• 51:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think that this is why Buffett sort of speaks about this and these extremely long arcs, that you're always ultimately going to be on the wrong side of the trade, betting against the United States. And it's probably important to then say, well, what would a boundary condition be? I don't think the boundary condition is the dollar. I actually don't think the boundary condition is the debt. I think the boundary condition is if something were to happen with the quality of the human capital inside of the United States and its inability to innovate, then we're probably in trouble. But even that story will take 50 to 100 years to play out. I just think for most of our lifetimes, this is a safe trade because it's a winning trade.

• 52:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Friedberg?

• 52:05David Friedberg?

  Well, I mean, it's winning if you can put up with the currency dropping 11% in six months. And if you pull up this chart, and I get it, Chamath, I agree, but I mean, look, businesses are booming in India, businesses are booming in China, businesses are booming in other countries now. And the way that businesses used to boom strictly in the US, there are other markets that seem to be having their day. And you can see this number, which I think is a really striking number, in the last 10 years, US Treasuries held by foreign holders has declined from 34%

• 52:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is a good thing, not a bad thing.

• 52:40David Friedberg?

  I mean, it's good in one context, but my point is people, foreign countries and foreign businesses and foreign investors aren't holding US Treasuries as much as they used to.

• 52:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There's nothing bad about this chart. This is only a good thing.

• 52:51David Friedberg?

  This chart shows that people don't want to hold US Treasuries.

• 52:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, this chart shows that foreign governments and central banks have less and less influence on the direction of American fiscal and monetary policy. Better. That's better.

• 53:03David Friedberg?

  Who's going to buy our debt? How are we going to finance our debt?

• 53:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It turns out that when you're the largest economy and you're growing, there's a lot of internal people that that will do it.

• 53:12David Friedberg?

  Right. So, I mean, that's a key point here, which is means that the debt's going to get more expensive if there's a smaller market.

• 53:18Jason Calacanis?

  That's not necessarily true either. Okay. Well, one thing's true is that we're investing a lot of money and there's a lot of dry powder. The amount of money being invested into data centers and AI and the amount of cash that's moving into investment, specifically in our borders, that has to be accretive, right?

• 53:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, the amount of cash and money market funds probably exceeds a sum total of all of the equity markets around the world. That's insane.

• 53:41Jason Calacanis?

  Well, and it's like, now people are talking about building 10, 20, 30 billion dollars worth of data centers and, you know, nuclear power plants again. So there's something going on here with American exceptionalism. Speaking of American exceptionalism, Harvard is still battling it out with Trump and their 50 billion dollar endowment is being questioned.

• 54:04Jason Calacanis?

  And it actually relates in many ways to what we're seeing in private companies, tech and VC. It's going to take a little bit of a circuitous route to get there. Since Trump has been inaugurated, Harvard borrowed 1.2 billion due to uncertainty around their federal funding. Remember, Trump administration canceled over $2 billion worth of research grants to Harvard. Earlier this week, the administration formally accused Harvard of tolerating antisemitism on campus. The White House said it will file a civil rights lawsuit via the DOJ ASAP unless Harvard comes into compliance and does a deal with Trump. Here's what they're looking for, Trump, White House, canceling DEI initiatives, third-party oversight of admissions, mandatory actions to combat antisemitism. Harvard has declined to do a deal so far.

• 54:49Jason Calacanis?

  And you might remember House Representative Elise Stefanic, she asked the SEC two weeks ago to investigate Harvard's financial disclosures. So she got into the disclosures.

• 55:01Jason Calacanis?

  When they set up that one point, whatever billion dollar line of credit and loan.

• 55:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They did a bond deal, I think. They issued like 750 million dollars of bonds.

• 55:10Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, so those 750 million bond offering on April 9th was sent out and six days later, they sent out a supplemental disclosure with more information about the White House civil rights investigation, which she claims painted a more dire financial picture.

• 55:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Harvard's cooked and I think this is really good for America.

• 55:29Jason Calacanis?

  Explain.

• 55:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It turns out, and there's been a lot of people that's posted about this on X, but there continues to be rampant Title IX violations with respect to admissions. I think Cremieux, Nick, you can probably find it. I think he published one that Columbia was continuing to discriminate against Asian students. Harvard's original case was against Asian students. There was a bunch of woke stuff at other Ivy League schools like UPenn. There's all this rampant antisemitism. It all needs to get fixed. And so I think that if you get a deal done, Harvard will have to capitulate. I think President Trump holds all the leverage and all the cards. And there's nothing mathematically that Harvard

• 56:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  can do. They can stall for probably another year and a half, but at some point, they will not have the budget to sustain themselves and they're going to get into a huge world of hurt. What they will have to do in order to finance their budget in probably 18 months is start to actively sell their private equity portfolio, which by the way, from 2019 to this year, almost doubled from 20 to 40%. So an insane asset allocation, frankly, an asset misallocation at the top of the market to the most illiquid asset class. And when people sniff this out, what they're going to do is Harvard was able to sell a billion dollars recently of private equity stuff and managers that they didn't want

• 56:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  to support anymore at a 7% discount.

• 57:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There is no smart money on the street that's going to look at any private equity portfolio from Harvard without asking for a 20, 25, 30, 35, 40% discount because your back will be totally against the wall. And if you don't ask for that, you're just a bad businessman. So if you put all of these things together, they're going to need to reestablish federal funding. But in order to do it, I think the president's been very, very clear. And for whatever reason, they've refused to want to address these issues. But the Ivy League, there's just something fundamentally broken.

• 57:34Jason Calacanis?

  Well, and Friedberg, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Harvard would face a billion dollar budget shortfall every year if Trump followed through on his funding cuts and tax hikes. He was also sabre rattling that he would get rid of their nonprofit status, or maybe change how the endowments worked. Lot of tools, I think, that he could deploy here. And

• 58:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There's an excise tax, by the way, in the BBB, that taxes foundation assets. I don't know what the final language was, but there is a, there was a version that I saw where excise tax on foundations was upwards of 8% a year. I don't know if that was the final version, but that's an enormous amount. Let's just say it's half that. Let's just say it's 4%. But if you're paying 4% tax on your endowment every year, it all of a sudden starts to add up. That's like, you know, for Harvard, like two and a half extra billion dollars a year that they have to pay.

• 58:29Jason Calacanis?

  And Friedberg reportedly Harvard is at the table and in discussions with the White House after a couple of months of defiance. What's your take on this? Is this an important priority for America and for the Trump administration? Is it a sideshow? What are your thoughts on the larger ramifications of this?

• 58:49David Friedberg?

  Let me just suspend the brand and history and legacy of Harvard for a second.

• 58:54Jason Calacanis?

  Sure.

• 58:55David Friedberg?

  And just talk about these, call them prestigious higher education institutions. What are the two primary functions of these institutions? The first is to educate students, and the second is to conduct research or to create facilities for research. Remember, these institutions do not direct research. They recruit and enable researchers who apply for grants to get funding to do their research. And then they educate kids. I think the internet was the first leg on the stool to break higher education.

• 59:29David Friedberg?

  The Internet democratized access to information and knowledge. You can watch MIT graduate courses. All of the core educational content that is delivered in prestigious higher education institutions has been largely democratized and is broadly available for free on the Internet. That's an incredible transition that's happened for humanity, for society, for the world. AI is the next leg of the stool to break. And I think that AI may actually break education. It may break higher education and then eventually it may make its way all the way down to childhood. In terms of rethinking from first principles, how do we educate? How is an individual getting educated?

• 1:00:11David Friedberg?

  And what are the other benefits they get from an educational system besides just core domain knowledge? There's also socialization and experience with project-based work. But I think that AI fundamentally rewrites the ability for an individual to get a good quality education. And we could see kids in Africa and kids in South Asia getting the equivalent of a Harvard graduate school degree at a cost of zero through personalized tutoring enabled through AI and the ubiquitous access to knowledge and information. So that core function of the university, I think, is broken. And they're now starting to reconcile what that actually means for the long-term viability of all of these higher educational institutions in the United States. The research function, I think, is also being rewritten.

• 1:00:56David Friedberg?

  Around the world, in Europe and in China and in Asia, there are independent research institutions that get research funding that can show up and say, hey, this institution is just being used to run research. It doesn't necessarily need to be within an educational framework. It can be an independent research institution that focuses on either a topic or a domain. So I do think we're going to see more and more independent research funding happening with the grants that come out from the federal government, from nonprofits, from endowments and foundations that fund research. So I think that there's a real reckoning underway. It's almost like these guys have created a monopoly. They've accumulated this capital, which allows them to build these great buildings, attract these great researchers, and then get the research funding to fund those researchers,

• 1:01:40David Friedberg?

  and then use that to raise more capital in their endowment and build the next building and keep this thing growing. And I think that that's breaking.

• 1:01:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I have one question for you. I like where you're going with this, but there's one hole that I would like you to address, which is, I don't think... Any of that is nearly as valuable to most of the kids applying, or the parents forcing the kids to apply as it is brand and then the cycle that employers put back. So that, how do you fix that loop?

• 1:02:10David Friedberg?

  Yeah, well.

• 1:02:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I get it, like you can YouTube your way to something and you can AI your way to something. But at the end of the day, Goldman Sachs loves to recruit from Harvard. And that's a really big deal because that's a wonderful company.

• 1:02:24David Friedberg?

  I think the Thiel Fellows program has highlighted that you don't get exceptional performance by exclusively going to people that have higher education degrees from prestigious institutions. The Thiel Fellows program, which for those who don't know, offered significant funding to kids that are coming out of high school, 18 year olds. And I think the Thiel Fellows, Jason, you probably know better than I do what they've created, right? Like.

• 1:02:47Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, a lot of startups and.

• 1:02:49David Friedberg?

  No, but like amazing startups.

• 1:02:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, no. But how do you deal with 500 million kids graduating the year globally? With no, with no brand differentiation.

• 1:02:58David Friedberg?

  I think that's an important question. So how did Thiel Fellows do it? And how do you hire Timothée? You just did a program for 80, 90 to find people, right?

• 1:03:06Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, yeah, I mean, we, we did a coding challenge.

• 1:03:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I guess, I guess what I'm saying is though that.

• 1:03:14David Friedberg?

  Well, so what's the alternative to that coding challenge? I mean.

• 1:03:16Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, no, no, the best way to determine, Friedberg, to answer your question, the best way to determine if a person can do a job, if you don't want to outsource it to a logo like Harvard or Stanford, which are, have worked in the past, is to watch them do the job. That is the number one day to do it. And the way to do that is to hire them for projects or do internships. And that means you have to invest in what's called professional development. And that slows companies down. So the hack is to just pick a logo. But I, for example, in our venture firm, created a training program for associates and we invested in that. And we hire three at a time and two of them make it on typically. Sometimes just one who hit our notes and the other ones move on.

• 1:03:56Jason Calacanis?

  And so I think you have to invest in your own professional development in your organization. And the organizations that do that then succeed and have a massive competitive advantage because they have their own training program and way to evaluate talent.

• 1:04:11David Friedberg?

  That's one way. Doing a codeathon and scoring people is another way.

• 1:04:15Jason Calacanis?

  Sure.

• 1:04:16David Friedberg?

  Having an AI interviewer is another way. So you can interview 10,000 kids instead of interview the 50 that you chose out of Harvard, because Harvard is your first filter. So the real question to Mop is like, what are the mechanisms by which employers are going to create new filtering systems? And I think that there's a lot that we just, we just kind of went through three examples, but I don't know if the brand holds over time.

• 1:04:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, here's the thing that what you're saying doesn't address. There are just a lot of kids that aren't ready to bloom when they're 18 or 19 or 20 or 21. And I'm not sure that, you know, I'll just take myself as an example. I was a marginal performer in university, but I had co-op. I did well in co-op jobs. Those co-op jobs were because these employers only wanted to recruit from the University of Waterloo. Now, if I had to compete with 50,000 kids, I'm pretty sure I would not have gotten it because I was a bit of a layabout. But then, you know, when I got into the professional working world, after a couple of years, everything just kind of clicked.

• 1:05:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So I think the, the problem that we'll have is in the absence of brand, it's just going to be very difficult to differentiate oneself and filter people. And I think that what Jason says becomes the huge problem, which is then the burden of professional development for all these young kids is extremely heavy. So I think that the idea of all of this tooling is good and it's necessary, but I think it's insufficient. There's something else that we need. Because I think that being able to differentiate yourself in a coding challenge is not the future either. It's for a very, very narrow class of person.

• 1:05:52David Friedberg?

  Look, project-based work, social adjustment, there are clearly other really important skills and development cycles that are needed for people. It's not just dumping knowledge into your brain. This isn't like the Matrix where you can just turn on the knowledge and gain it. And so I do agree, I think that there are other systems by which that will happen and those systems will output filters. I'm just not sure it's the same system that we've used for the last 250 years.

• 1:06:17Jason Calacanis?

  It's not. I think that's the really interesting part of the discussion we've got to, Friedberg, is that we had an incredible system of a series of layered iconography that indicated, hey, you get 10 people from this group, 100 from this group, and you slot them in and hey, your company's going to operate. And then parents don't have to worry, the students don't have to worry, nor do the companies. In this new world, the companies have an opportunity by creating professional development. And you know what? The people who couldn't get into Harvard because they didn't have the connections, they weren't legacy, or they didn't have the wherewithal to pay for SAT tutors or whatever bullshit that it took to hack your way in and have a legacy family member, or whatever racist policies they had

• 1:07:00Jason Calacanis?

  and didn't let Asian people in because they didn't have the right personalities. All that nonsense goes away and that actually benefits.

• 1:07:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Their grades were too good.

• 1:07:08Jason Calacanis?

  Right, exactly. Their performance was too high.

• 1:07:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's so dumb.

• 1:07:13Jason Calacanis?

  In all fairness, you did too well.

• 1:07:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's like the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

• 1:07:16Jason Calacanis?

  But here's the good news. Anybody can build a project in the world and refine their skills right now based on all the information that's on the internet. And you and I, Chamath, are part of that group of people. We made our own luck, we made our own projects. We had some level of grit and autonomy and self-reliance to do that. And you know, the feedback I got from our previous discussion about this is everybody talking about how poor people as a group can never ever strive and never build anything. The truth is, it's the easiest it's ever been to build a company, to build a project, and to be independent as a creator of a product or service in the world. It's the easiest it's ever been.

• 1:08:00Jason Calacanis?

  It requires the least capital and the least amount of time. So we're selling a narrative to people that they're helpless, when in fact, they are super, super empowered. The only thing you can't do is put yourself into $200,000 in debt, because you'll never get out of it.

• 1:08:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:16Jason Calacanis?

  I actually think this is a huge, beautiful opportunity to reset the system, but it's not going to be like going to, you know, a supermarket and picking the brands you want and then filling positions. You're going to have to be self-reliant for all the students out there. And that's what Peter Thiel got right. You've got to give a shout out to Peter Thiel here, I think, Free Bird. When he did the Thiel Fellowship, the way they picked people was they're, they had a mission to accomplish something in the world, and they were making progress towards it. That's actually the criteria they used. Did you have enough inner resolve to actually pick a mission? And did you actually do anything to steer yourself towards it? And when you make it a competitive, you know, sort of program like that, they just pick

• 1:08:59Jason Calacanis?

  the people who picked the most interesting missions and have made the most progress. But there's definitely going to be a hole left in society if these degrees do not correlate with performance and reality. All right, on Tuesday, Grammarly, I'm a huge fan of that product, acquired Superhuman. That's that amazing, super-fast AI email tool from Raul, of which I was the first investor in. Superhuman had raised $114 million, was valued at $825 million during peak Zerp. According to Reuters, Superhuman has annual revenue of $35 million. And Grammarly seems to be building a little bit of a suite of AI workplace tools.

• 1:09:41Jason Calacanis?

  They bought Coda, was not an investor in, but I am a huge fan of that product as well. It's similar to Notion, another product I'm a huge fan of. They bought Coda back in December. And then on top of that, Figma filed their S1, Q1 revenues 228 million. Remember, they were going to get bought by Adobe before it got stopped. And they have 13 million monthly active users, a billion and a half in cash, no debt. And turns out CEO Dylan Field has 75% voting power. So he's in founder mode. Very nice. And also a teal fellow, really interesting cat. I've had him on my other pod. Figma is going to try to raise 1.5 billion in their IPO. That would match CoreWeave. That was the biggest tech IPO of the year so far. And we are on a heater.

• 1:10:24Jason Calacanis?

  Circle went public. That was up 7X from its IPO peak. And Chime went public slightly higher than its IPO price. You had eToro, Hinge Health also went public, Wealthfront, which I was an angel investor in. They just filed to go public. Yum yum. And a bunch of M&A transactions. We talked about DoorDash made two purchases. Sam Altman bought two companies at OpenAI. And tons of M&A happening at the same time. According to Polymarket, 52% chance of a rate cut in September, 46% chance of no change. So we're definitely not getting an increase, according to the sharp money.

• 1:11:04Jason Calacanis?

  And I think Powell said he would have cut if there weren't the tariff, you know, curve ball thrown into the system, which is, I think, what most of us thought. And Chamath, you talked about all this sideline cash, sitting there in money market accounts. Markets had an all time high. Uber blew past 88, so I should be retired right now. What are your thoughts on M&A IPOs? Feels like, man, we've got a really frisky, hot market right now. Does it make you nervous? Or does it feel like this is where we should have been all along? And that Biden maybe was putting a headwind against all this, you know?

• 1:11:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So here's the crux of the issue. I think this is the intersection of a lot of really interesting things happening right now. You have Meta giving individual human beings 300 to $500 million packages, like their NBA first team All-Stars.

• 1:11:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  OpenAI, their revenue numbers just leaked. They're forecasting 13 billion in 25, 2025, spiking to 125 billion in 2029. You have Anthropic. Their revenue by 2027 is forecasted to be about 35 billion. So what does all of this tell you?

• 1:12:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  To be honest, it's telling me that the state of software is a little unclear. Meaning,

• 1:12:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I actually believe the OpenAI and Anthropic numbers. I understand why Facebook is now spending as if there's an existential risk. And I think the existential risk is that these models could be so foundational to how social experiences and work are done, that it starts to absorb a lot of other stuff. So the question is, how do other tools fit into a workflow? When these things become so central to how people both enjoy their free time as well as spend their productive time? And I think when you look at that, you look at Figma, what I would say is, on the surface, in the absence of these AI businesses, I would say, man, what a gangbusters business.

• 1:13:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Growing by 40 something percent a year at this scale. Their adjusted, I think, operating margins are 18%. I don't like adjusted because it's adjusted for stock-based comp. I don't know what it is when you add that back in. But the point is, it's a phenomenal business. The question that I think the institutional investor will have is, what am I buying? And does this revenue growth sit adjacent to core model revenue growth? Because the big question that we have yet to answer, and this is not a Figma-specific issue, it is an industry-wide issue, is how much do these foundational models absorb into what they do for what you pay them? And I don't think we know the answer to that yet.

• 1:14:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So if all of these things just become excellent coding tools, then all of this high-level software is free and clear, right? It's in the safe zone. But I think the problem is, we don't know that that's the case. You know? And so I think in the IPO, what you're probably going to see Is people approach this company the same way that they approach all non-core AI IPOs?

• 1:14:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Which is that it's a business that you love to own for a year or two. But if there's a depression in valuation, it's because people cannot underwrite years three, four and five.

• 1:14:41Jason Calacanis?

  Friedberg, do you believe that the Star Trek communicator just double click on your pendant? Ask the computer to do something means there's one piece of software in the world that does everything? And all this long tail of business software just goes away? And if so, on what timeline?

• 1:15:01David Friedberg?

  No.

• 1:15:02Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 1:15:03David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:04Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, this speaks to revenue quality, revenue stability. I think you used the term how brittle is it? Chamath, what are your thoughts on Chamath's angle here of that unknown? Where would you fall either way? Are we going to have a suite of products or does it?

• 1:15:19David Friedberg?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:15:20Jason Calacanis?

  Kind of be more narrow?

• 1:15:23David Friedberg?

  Well, it depends for what application. I think Figma has done a classic like land and expand in terms of who they initially go after and then what the suite of tools that they offer does. By expanding that, they now can offer a bunch of different people within an organization, a set of tools to help them all collaboratively develop products and services. And you can see that in some of the numbers. Revenue growth is on the order of forty some odd percent. They ran a forty-three percent operating cash flow margin in Q1. So in Q1 of this year, Figma generated ninety-five million dollars of free cash flow. They've got net revenue retention of like a hundred and thirty percent. So this land and expand has proven out and there's real durability, it looks like to this business for now.

• 1:16:08David Friedberg?

  But to Chamath's point, like what does three to four years from now look like? Does this get absorbed into ChatGPT? You could say that about any software at any point in time. I think the thing that makes this AI era different is that that transformative shift can happen overnight. Where suddenly someone else launches a service, it's completely obvious it's another service because of what AI can do. But I think Figma has done a great job staying ahead of the curve.

• 1:16:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The free money, I think, trade instead of having to bet. Up or down Jason on AI, I would, if I could get like 50 or a hundred million dollars of Figma, I would probably be long it and I would short an equivalent quantum of Adobe and I would just book the spread and I think you make a ton of money that way. That's a safer trade because, you know, even if the AI model thing comes around the corner, we don't see it, the person who's going to take a re-trade on valuation faster than Figma will be Adobe. And so you'll be hedged and you'll probably make money that way.

• 1:16:58Jason Calacanis?

  We look at something in terms of not just the quality of revenue in our investment firm. We look at the durability of it, like can this exist two, three, four years from now? And is the value accruing so much to the user that the amount they're paying, they just never think, I should swap this out, I should replace it, right? And, and the revenue durability of your iPhone is a good example of it. Despite people not renewing your, your phone every year, you still can't think, there's no better option than an iPhone right now. Even my Google Pixel nine fold, as great as it is, it just feels like that revenue is still durable. I wonder when it becomes less durable.

• 1:17:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Can I push back on this?

• 1:17:38Jason Calacanis?

  Please.

• 1:17:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think that the, I think the question that it brings up is not whether the individual person can whip out a card and pay for it in four years. It's whether that individual person actually exists. And so

• 1:17:51Jason Calacanis?

  That consumer with that amount of money to spend?

• 1:17:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, no, no, no, no, meaning like, we don't know what the layoff cycle and the pattern of layoffs inside of companies may be with AI. Meaning if we all become more generalized skilled workers, and there are maybe many, many, many more companies,

• 1:18:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  then the odds are more likely that you provision highly skilled vertically specific work to a set of agents.

• 1:18:21Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 1:18:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  If that's true, then the tools that created incredible durability, when the organizational chart of a company supported vertical specialization, won't exist when instead you have horizontal.

• 1:18:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Capabilities that you work across.

• 1:18:42Jason Calacanis?

  An example.

• 1:18:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think that that's the big question that AI will will bring to bear. And again, it's not going to be overnight. But that's where people will front run those trades and the market specifically if they sniff this out. Will want to price that 24 and 36 months forward and say, this is what the end state looks like.

• 1:19:03Jason Calacanis?

  A way to sort of for people to understand that is imagine you outsource HR and you don't have a six person HR company like you talked about two years ago. And then you don't need HR software.

• 1:19:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 1:19:14Jason Calacanis?

  So your point, each group has a set of SaaS software and tools it uses. If that group goes away because it's just abstracted into the AI machine outsourced. There's nobody to buy it in the organization. There's nobody going to the CFO saying, I need this HR software. I need this project management software. I think it's a really interesting point. And the way as you for a founder, Friedberg, to avoid this is to have, you know, a product that services many different needs for those customers or that organization. I think that's why I like these tools like Coda and Notion is they kind of infect many different departments in the organization. Right. This has been an amazing summer episode of the All In Podcast. We weren't going to do it this week, but we said, you know what? We wanted to talk about a couple of issues, Friedberg.

• 1:19:59Jason Calacanis?

  We wanted to see each other and it's the slowest news week of the year, but we wanted to get together and hash out some of these issues. Anybody got big plans for the weekend and any recommendations for people? I did some books to read. You guys got any shows or books you're reading right now? Any, any albums you're listening to? Anything you're obsessed with?

• 1:20:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm reading Modern Poker Theory by Michael Acevedo.

• 1:20:21Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, really? This goes into GTO and that kind of stuff?

• 1:20:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:26Jason Calacanis?

  And what's your big takeaway thus far? Do you have something that's you wrote a note about or you highlighted?

• 1:20:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm just tuning up my game, always tuning up my game.

• 1:20:36Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, you're doing a little toony tune?

• 1:20:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, I hope.

• 1:20:39Jason Calacanis?

  Is that because we have something going on in November?

• 1:20:43Jason Calacanis?

  You want to do well.

• 1:20:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We can't talk about that. Well, I don't know if this poker thing happens, maybe we can't play poker anymore in America.

• 1:20:50Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, yeah, we didn't mention this, but the big bill says, I don't know, maybe you can't be professional gambling. Yeah, we didn't talk about it, but man, that's the reason to get up in arms about this bill. If it gets rid of the poker ledger, what do we do with the ledge?

• 1:21:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, the ledger, the ledger will survive. Actually, actually, this reinforces the value of the ledger because you'll just run the ledger infinitely.

• 1:21:11Jason Calacanis?

  Forever.

• 1:21:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We may have to have an infinite ledge.

• 1:21:12David Friedberg?

  Never settle.

• 1:21:13Jason Calacanis?

  Never settle. I was thinking, my proposal for the ledge was if you're under 100 dimes, you roll. If you're over 100 dimes, you're clear. You know, like each year at the end of the year, because it's just not worth the, you know what I'm saying? It's not worth the tax implications.

• 1:21:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, we may have to create like an offshore blocker, fund it with stable coins. I mean, the whole thing is going to.

• 1:21:35Jason Calacanis?

  It's getting really complicated.

• 1:21:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Our lawyers and accountants are going to have a field day with this.

• 1:21:39Jason Calacanis?

  Just so we can flip coins and play bomb pots. Friedberg, you watching any shows or movies? Maybe you could, um, maybe you could give us one of your great deep pulls for a science fiction film that people should watch this weekend if they want to get some joy. Like maybe Silent Running, you like Silent Running, Logan's Run.

• 1:21:58David Friedberg?

  Logan's Run.

• 1:21:59Jason Calacanis?

  Silent Running.

• 1:22:00David Friedberg?

  Those are good shows. 1967?

• 1:22:02Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, and I think 74.

• 1:22:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, I watched the Bob Dylan flick on the flight to Italy.

• 1:22:06Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, shout out to Timothy Chalamet. What a great film. I mean, he.

• 1:22:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay, I have to be, I have to be honest with you. I was not a super fan of Bob Dylan's music before.

• 1:22:18Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But then I was like, wow, the body of work is really impressive.

• 1:22:24Jason Calacanis?

  Let me give you two.

• 1:22:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And, and sorry, and Joan Baez and their, their music together.

• 1:22:30Jason Calacanis?

  Incredible.

• 1:22:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, I was, I was a little short on Joan Baez too. And I was like, this was a mistake.

• 1:22:35Jason Calacanis?

  Let me give you three albums to listen to. Blood on the Tracks. I want you to listen to Blood on the Tracks. Then I want you to listen to Infidels. Another, which is like his best of the eighties. Infidels and Blood on the Tracks. Those are two, and Empire Burlesque, a third one. Empire Burlesque and Infidels from the eighties. This is Dylan at the like really interesting height of creativity. And then Blood on the Tracks, post his sixties, seventies folk rock stuff in that transition. People consider Blood on the Tracks the seminal album. I will also give you a deep pull of Street Legal with an incredible track, Changing of the Guard. This you'll love, Chumoff, because you also like the War on Drugs. War on Drugs, very influenced by that era.

• 1:23:18Jason Calacanis?

  So you got Blood on the Tracks, Street Legal, Infidels and Empire Burlesque. Those are J. Cal's Dylan choices.

• 1:23:24David Friedberg?

  I hate drugs.

• 1:23:25Jason Calacanis?

  War on Drugs. Did Bob Dylan do drugs? I mean, it was famous that he, I think, he was on speed for a little bit in the seventies reportedly. And that's where he had a lot of productive days.

• 1:23:37Jason Calacanis?

  But I think he introduced the Beatles to LSD was the rumor. Friedberg, your thoughts on my Dylan selections? And do you have one of your own?

• 1:23:46David Friedberg?

  I'll leave it to you, J. Cal.

• 1:23:47Jason Calacanis?

  You got any movies or something?

• 1:23:51David Friedberg?

  I did recently re-watch The Arrival by Denis Villeneuve. How do you pronounce his last name? Villeneuve.

• 1:23:57Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, he's doing the new Bond. That's gonna be great.

• 1:24:00David Friedberg?

  He's doing the new Bond.

• 1:24:00Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody, we will see you next time on the world's number one podcast, Saxi Pool. We'll be back. Love you, besties. Love you, boys.

• 1:24:55Jason Calacanis?

  We need to get merch.