E70: EMERGENCY POD! Russia invades Ukraine: Reactions, Putin's ambition, Biden's response and more

0:00 Ukraine invasion: how should the US respond? 17:03 Importance of energy independence when dealing with Russia; solutions: Solar, Natural Gas, Nuclear, etc 32:51 Reflecting on the media coverage so far, Putin's ambitions 42:20 Biden's new sanctions, Chamath's Russia story, doing the math on how the US can leverage energy independence 53:19 Markets signaling a potential turnaround, great businesses are available to buy at compressed prices, is Putin mad Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/#3 https://nypost.com/2022/01/27/us-nato-must-never-give-in-to-russias-absurd-demands https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/1496837835743133699 https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/1496716168920547331 https://www.wsj.com/articles/jony-ive-steve-jobs-memories-10th-anniversary-11633354769?mod=e2tw https://www.wsj.com/articles/putin-green-energy-price-independence-gas-lng-fracking-russia-ukraine-invasion-europe-germany-nord-stream-11645650131 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/21/highlights-of-russian-president-putins-speech https://peterbeinart.substack.com/p/bidens-cia-director-doesnt-believe?utm_source=url https://www.nationalreview.com/2003/03/unpatriotic-conservatives-david-frum/

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

• 0:19Jason Calacanis?

  Alright, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the All In Podcast, episode number 70. We made it to 70 episodes, which is just shocking to me. And we're recording a little bit earlier, because one of our besties had to change their schedule, Chamath. And it's a crazy day to be doing this. Last night, Putin decided to invade the Ukraine, late Wednesday night, early into Thursday morning. Putin started a "special military operation", in quotes, "to demilitarize the Ukraine". And we've been watching this build-up for weeks.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  You're missing it. He said to "demilitarize" and "denazify".

• 1:03Jason Calacanis?

  And "denazify", yes, of course. Because the Ukraine was filled with so many Nazis. His trolling continues. I guess, just starting it off, Sax, you're a big Putin fan, along with Tronch, and you're the right wing. So tell us, how glorious is this invasion for the Republican Party?

• 1:23David Sacks?

  Well, it's interesting. Well, that's funny, but it's also, it's also kind of sad, because what you're doing right there is exactly what the whole Twittersphere is doing, which is anybody who wants to actually de-escalate and defuse this war before it escalates and metastasizes into something much worse, gets denounced as a Putin apologist. I have no dealings in either, you know, Russia, or Ukraine for that matter. Ukrainian cash is not lining my pockets, like many of our politicians, their families in Washington. I have no interest, except... Preserving the safety of the United States of America.

• 2:03David Sacks?

  And the point is that I think Biden, the one clear elusive point that he made in his last speech, I know he's giving one today, is that the United States of America would not intervene militarily in Ukraine. We should all understand that. He made it very clear. The troops that were being sent over there were to defend our NATO allies. Ukraine is not one. We do not have a treaty obligation to defend them. What is happening right now is tragic. Putin is the aggressor. It's a humanitarian disaster. I do feel bad for the people of Ukraine. Our thoughts and prayers are with them. However, we are not going to intervene militarily in that conflict, nor should we, because we cannot risk starting World War III. It is not a vital American interest.

• 2:46David Sacks?

  Who rules the Donbass in a way that it is a vital American interest to avoid a war with Russia? And the tragedy here, the second tragedy, is that we did not do everything we could to diplomatically try and solve this problem. And what do I mean by that? On this pod three weeks ago, I said that Ukraine was never going to be part of NATO. Why? Because Biden just said it. We can't defend them militarily against Russia. We were never going to admit them. Why didn't we give up that card? That, we don't know for sure what would have happened, but if we had been willing to basically affirm that we believe in Ukraine's sovereignty, but they are not going to be part of NATO, that might have diffused this conflict.

• 3:23Jason Calacanis?

  I think we had consensus on that. We said like, hey, what if, I think actually I suggested, what if we said a five-year, you know, moratorium on them joining or something like that?

• 3:30David Sacks?

  Absolutely.

• 3:30Jason Calacanis?

  We put that out there.

• 3:31David Friedberg?

  Can I just ask Sax one question on this?

• 3:33Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, yeah.

• 3:34David Friedberg?

  Sax, do you not think that the US, you know, regardless of the obligations under NATO, faces a little bit of an issue on a global stage where, you know, we, we told this leader, back down, don't do this, and then we don't respond militarily? That that action effectively reduces America's influence and credibility when it comes to these sorts of defensive statements in this kind of global theater? And our primacy is being challenged because we laid down the law. We said, this is not allowed. You cannot do this. There's going to be repercussions. And then it happens and there are economic sanctions and you know, maybe we'll talk in a

• 4:16David Friedberg?

  second about some other potential repercussions, but by not doing something militarily, we weaken ourselves and we weaken our position and it gives permission to others to take action that may be counter ultimately to kind of the US interests abroad.

• 4:30David Sacks?

  Okay, so in response, I have to, we'll quote what Barack Obama said, and we've mentioned this on a previous pod, he said, "The fact is that Ukraine," which is, this is back in the Atlantic interview he gave, "The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia, no matter what we do." This is an example where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for. The fact of the matter is, none of us on this pod want to send our sons and daughters to go fight and risk their lives and die to determine who rules the Donbass or even Ukraine. We sympathize with them, we may impose sanctions on their behalf, we may arm them militarily, but we are not willing to fight. And so therefore, us trying to lay down this law to Putin was a bluff and he called our

• 5:15David Sacks?

  bluff. And the smart thing we can do right now is not to escalate. Look, we've already gone to the river. He's, you know, we basically tried to barrel and bluff him at every street, we got to the river, he has now invaded, we're now in a showdown. What do you want to do now? You want to escalate this even more? The only way that we could make this worse is to precipitate a world war.

• 5:37David Friedberg?

  Now, if-

• 5:38David Sacks?

  Our absolute priority, our absolute priority right now should be to make sure that this war doesn't spread.

• 5:42David Friedberg?

  My prediction is, as of right now, it would be very unpopular to go to war, or for the US to enter the war in a, on the battlefield. I do think, and I don't know if we're going to hear more about this today, but I do think that the cyber war is beginning today. The United States has talked at length about having, you know, tremendous cyber capabilities. And my understanding is, as of this morning, a number of state websites were down in Russia and a number of, you know, Russian cyber interests were under attack. And so we may see the US kind of confront Russia on another battle stage, not on the, you know, on the field, on the physical field.

• 6:24David Friedberg?

  But if over the next couple of weeks, this continues, or days, and I was just looking at CNN this morning and BBC, and there were these images that started to come out of like, you know, Ukrainian-

• 6:35David Friedberg?

  airplanes that had been downed. And if you start to see images of children, you know, helpless children, buildings being bombed, bodies strewn on the street. Does that not change kind of the American opinion on whether or not we should do something here? And will that not kind of lead us potentially into a war that, you know, today, I think we all, you know, or many people would say strategically doesn't make sense, economically doesn't make sense. You know, we're only going to lead to kind of escalation. But don't you think that American opinion typically changes? When imagery arises, when, you know, the sort of brutality of war.

• 7:09Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I mean, that's why I block images out of some wars and we have in the past. Yeah.

• 7:13David Friedberg?

  But even today, it's like the first day and there's like these really gruesome, awful photos coming out and I could see people getting sympathetic to that and starting to kind of, you know, bang the war drum, saying this is ridiculous. We can't let this tyrant do this. It's awful.

• 7:26David Sacks?

  Well, it's already, it's already happening, you know, but this is why we should not conduct foreign policy by Twitter. We should not Twitterize the situation. Yeah, this is when, this is when cooler heads need to prevail. The fact of the matter is when Soviet tanks, they rolled into Hungary in 1956, or Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush the Prague Spring, or Poland in 1981 to crush Solidarity. We did nothing because avoiding war with the Soviet Union was more important, even though we sympathize for those people. And in 2008, we've been in this situation before. 2008, Georgia, the Republic of Georgia, Putin invaded on behalf of these breakaway Russian

• 8:08David Sacks?

  sort of dissident provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Why did that happen? Well, if you remember back in 2008, there was a lot of talk about Georgia joining NATO. And you had, you know, the Warhawk Senator John McCain go over there and declare we're all Georgians now. And so what happened? All of a sudden, these breakaway provinces, the Russified provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, started rebelling. That gave Putin the excuse to roll in there and the tanks. A year later, he left, but there was no more talk of Georgia joining NATO. So, and again, we, George W. Bush was president at the time. We did nothing militarily. We just sent humanitarian assistance. That was it. So we've been in this situation before. We should not. I keep hearing in the media,

• 8:50David Sacks?

  on cable news and on Twitter, this is historically unprecedented. We must act. No, we've been in this situation before in 2008 and all those previous times. We were in this situation in 2014 when Putin invaded Crimea.

• 9:03Jason Calacanis?

  Let me ask you a question, sir. We had this concept of, hey, maybe if we said, hey, we won't admit them into NATO. And do you think that if we had actually made that concession or said we're not going to let them into NATO for a decade and whatever, do you think that would have changed Putin's behavior, yes or no?

• 9:20David Sacks?

  Well, it's honestly, it's hard to know. I mean, I can't, I can't prove a counterfactual. However, I think it was tragic not to try. I do think, I think, I think it should be the goal of diplomats.

• 9:30Jason Calacanis?

  Sure.

• 9:31David Sacks?

  To try. And again, as I said on a previous pod, it was the sleeves off our vest. Ukraine is not going to be a member of NATO. So to give that up would have, was basically giving them nothing. It was almost meaningless to us. And instead of making that concession, what happened? Blinken came out with this statement, NATO's door is open and will remain open. It was perhaps the most provocative thing he could have said in that situation.

• 9:55Jason Calacanis?

  And they, they would have had to been voted in. That would have happened, wouldn't have happened anyway. Let me ask you this question. You've been complaining about the media and Democrats banging the drum of war and you're saying they're more hawkish. On the other side of the table, you have, Trump came out and said that Putin's move on the Ukraine is genius and the guy's very savvy. And then you had Pompeo saying, I have enormous respect for him and that he's a very talented statesman, has lots of gifts and he knows how to use power. We should respect that. So your party, your crew is praising Putin. Do you think the praising of Putin is wise in this kind of situation?

• 10:32David Sacks?

  No, look, here's what's going on. First of all, the warhawks and the people beating the drums of war is happening on both sides of the aisle and on both, both, both sets of cable news. I was watching Fox last night and they were all but, you know, cheerleading for war, basically saying, we have to go on offense.

• 10:48Jason Calacanis?

  They were excited. I watched it too. Yeah, it was crazy.

• 10:50David Sacks?

  They were saying, we have to go on offense. What is Biden doing saying that we're not going to intervene militarily? I'm like watching these people who are acting, you know, it reminded me of Dr. Strangelove, where you have Slim Pickens, the cowboy riding the atomic bomb on the way down.

• 11:05Jason Calacanis?

  They were excited.

• 11:06David Sacks?

  And I'm watching the cable news and all these people are acting this way. And I'm like, what in the world is going on? You know, it's

• 11:12David Friedberg?

  Ratings?

• 11:13David Sacks?

  It's all

• 11:14David Friedberg?

  This is a big part of what I tried to point out at our prediction show at the end of last year. You know, the, if a country is happy, if the economy is growing, if there isn't significant risk of inflation, no one wants to go to war. When those are not the case, there's a tendency to say, we gotta do something. And if you don't, you're anxious. And if you don't have anything to do and some conflict arises, that's a good place to kind of apply your energy and your pressure.

• 11:40Jason Calacanis?

  Let me bring the dictator himself into this, Chama. You've been silent thus far. Any thoughts on what we're seeing here?

• 11:47Speaker 01

  I was letting the proletariat speak.

• 11:50Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 11:53David Sacks?

  Are you the bourgeoisie or what?

• 11:57David Sacks?

  That sweater is very bourgeois, I have to say.

• 11:59Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, I mean Sweater Karen right now is drafting

• 12:03Speaker 01

  She's melting.

• 12:04Jason Calacanis?

  Multiple emails.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  She's melting.

• 12:07Jason Calacanis?

  I think there could be a GoFundMe to revoke that sweater from you. What is the story with that sweater?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  That's what, that's what Trudeau, Trudeau, Trudeau will revoke in a state of emergency to stop that.

• 12:17Jason Calacanis?

  Yes. He sees the GoFundMe. I mean, this feels like we're processing this, Chama, so quickly that the Ukraine just asked on Twitter today for everybody to tell at Russia how they feel about what they're doing. And the Ukraine, I, I, this is happening in real time, is tweeting memes now about Putin. Uh, this seems almost surreal and is getting very strange in terms of how we're interpreting it. I mean, is there an off-ramp here? Or are we just going to have to deal with Putin doing this every number of years? And this is just going to be, you know, a year or two of You know, conflict.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  I don't know, but here's what's important to, um, two points. One is the economic sanctions have begun and the economic damage to Russia has been starting to be inflicted, right? I think Germany basically suspended the certification of more extreme cheese. That has a huge economic impact to Russia, right? I think the ruble against the dollar was off nine or 10% this morning.

• 13:17Jason Calacanis?

  Fifteen.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Um, when I woke up here in Europe, so it's, so it's down even more. So, um, now the interesting thing about that was that I read an article in the Wall Street Journal, maybe Nick, you can dig this up, but this was a few years ago. Uh, preceding this, Russia had built massive amounts of US dollar reserves. In fact, they had been depleted over like the last little crisis that they went through and then they had rebuilt all these dollar reserves. So in some ways it may have been the case that these guys had this plan all along and they put some, you know, they built up their bank accounts just in case because they knew that this would happen. The other thing is there's a quote from H R McMaster. He said that deterrence is a, is a, is a simple equation. It's, it's the product of will and capability, right? Will times capability. And so, you know, if you're going to be a deterrent on the world stage militarily, not only do you have to

• 14:01Speaker 01

  have an incredible military capability, you also have to have the will to go to war is what he said. And I think in America, you know, what Friedberg said is I think if you polled a lot of people, um, you know, people are pretty exhausted after all of these different conflicts. And so I'm not sure that the will is there to go to war. And so the best off ramp is to try to find some amount of, uh, economic pressure points and then to negotiate some sort of, you know, um, release valve from all of that economic pressure in return for some normalization, babe. I think that's really the best chance. You know, I have to be honest with you, when I was thinking about the odds of this, just from a financial perspective and, you know, whether I should be doing something different or putting something on, I thought that there was zero chance that this would happen. Luckily, I, I put

• 14:46Speaker 01

  it as close to zero as possible because I thought in 2022, it just didn't seem like this could be possible. And here we are and it seems like it is. Um, I hope everybody in Ukraine is safe. Um, but I think that Biden's going to announce some pretty crippling sanctions and I think the West is going to be very punitive financially. Um, and that's probably the off ramp, but it depends on, it depends how long that stuff will last because again, like I said, I think Russia's foreign currency reserves are pretty strong going into this conflict.

• 15:15Jason Calacanis?

  Let me, let me then, uh, pass the ball to you, Sax.

• 15:20Jason Calacanis?

  There's, there's gonna be a lot of people who are gonna die, both Russians and Ukrainians, sadly, if this thing keeps escalating. Uh, there's 190,000 Russian troops on the border, or making their way into the Ukraine. Is there an off-ramp here, in your mind, in any way? Do you think the sanctions will work? And, and, God, the, the poor citizens of Russia, I mean, are they gonna crack at some point? And is this gonna blow back onto Putin? Because what did they seem to get out of this, I guess, is a question. Do the Russian people support this? And will they support it on an extended basis?

• 15:57David Sacks?

  Well, okay, so there's a few questions there. Okay, so the, the fact of the matter is, so, so I think you're right that Putin has bought himself a headache here, right? I mean, the, the eastern parts of Ukraine that are, you know, ethnically Russian, the areas of the Donbass, they will, those people will support him. But the western part of Ukraine that wants to be free, that's not ethnically Russian, that is gonna be a headache for him to manage. I don't think he wants this problem long-term. It's probably gonna be more like the situation we had in Georgia in 2008. He goes in for a year, he institutes perhaps some sort of puppet government, or some government that's more favorable to him,

• 16:38David Sacks?

  and then he gets out, probably. This is if there's no escalation. I think it's very important. I keep making this point. The most important thing Biden can do is to make sure that this does not escalate militarily, and that we do not get militarily involved. I think sanctions will happen. I mean, that's pretty clear, probably. We have to move forward with that. But, but at the same time, it will sanctions work in terms of being a strong deterrent? No, I don't think so. There was a very good article by Neil Ferguson and Ken Griffin, actually in the Wall Street Journal, talking about what we should do. They made the point that sanctions don't usually work. However, what we should really be striving for is energy independence. So, so yes, but the crazy thing is, America, despite having these huge

• 17:22David Sacks?

  natural gas reserves, 7% of our natural gas is coming from Russia right now. So, why? Because we stopped fracking, we stopped the, you know, Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline. And then, in Europe, the situation is even worse, which is, they're completely dependent on, on Russian natural gas.

• 17:39Jason Calacanis?

  Germans are and the UK, yeah, not France.

• 17:42David Sacks?

  The op-ed made the point that we could be investing in liquefying natural gas and exporting it to Europe to create more energy independence and that would remove their dependence on Putin. That's energy independence here.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Problem with energy independence is it takes too long and we went through a massive capital underinvestment cycle over the last six or seven years. And so, you know, in order to start this up, you need to have started actually putting money in the ground six or seven years. And the problem today is if we put money into the ground now, that's not going to yield any sort of return on invested capital for another six or seven years. And so when you look at these nat gas companies, every single one to a name has basically said we are not going to put any incremental capital into US domestic nat gas or shale or even offshore. The real solution is to actually go fully alternative and to go to renewable energy because you can today, right, deploy solar vastly more aggressively in the United States.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Look, at the end of the day, the thing that is completely abundant and has the best implications all around is solar.

• 18:40Jason Calacanis?

  And it's gotten cheaper than coal and fossil fuels.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  And you have to ask yourself, like, why are we only 3% penetrated in the United States, right? We can manufacture these panels, we can deploy them broadly. Right now, you know, we're in this situation where California is actually revisiting the ITC credit or the net metering laws, sorry, rather, which would have huge implications for the California solar market. It could actually destroy that whole market. And so, you know, we have to get really organized, David, to your point, but there is a path to energy independence. I think it's alternative energy, it's wind and solar, because we can do it today and you can do it really quickly and you can basically leapfrog the entire capital investment cycle that you need to do for nat gas, we've already missed the training.

• 19:19Jason Calacanis?

  Well, and also you could have, Germany could start turning back on nuclear power plants if they could get their citizens to pick nuclear over war. And that seems like a pretty easy choice.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  It takes too long.

• 19:31Jason Calacanis?

  Well, no, no, but they recently turned theirs off, though.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  No, they've been doing it for 20 years. They've been turning them off for 20 years.

• 19:39Jason Calacanis?

  I know, they could, that means they don't have to rebuild them, Chamath, they could just turn them back on.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  You, you, it's not a light switch, Jason. That's not, no, but that's not how it works. It's not a light switch.

• 19:48Jason Calacanis?

  I know, but it's not the same as building a new one in the US. That's the point. They could put them back on.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  It's still year, it's still years to turn these things back. It's not days.

• 19:57Jason Calacanis?

  But you gotta think, Chamath, the threat of doing it would terrorize the Saudis and the Russians if all of a sudden the EU said, we are gonna go massive solar, massive nuclear, and we're gonna be energy independent. Just the threat of that, I think that would have a dramatic effect.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  I'm not sure any country is gonna, is gonna really, uh, all have a massive reaction to any other country talking about a multi-year investment cycle. I do think, Jason, to your point, solar is not a multi-year investment cycle. It can literally happen in months.

• 20:27Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, and it's cheaper now.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  That is much more disruptive. So, for example, you could, if you took $3 trillion to build back better and instead said, you know what, we're just gonna actually put solar everywhere.

• 20:35Jason Calacanis?

  Everywhere.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  That would be, you take $3 trillion of solar and you put it literally everywhere in the United States, I think everybody would support it. You would have domestic job creation like nobody's business. You would take so much carbon out of it there, and you would, you would have this enormous energy dependence. Well, it would give you a degree of freedom so that the next time you're pushed to war, you can actually evaluate it under a very different, um, you know, risk calculus than if you actually need the energy from the country that's in the world.

• 21:02Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, that's the point. And just for, um, a fact check here, nuclear power in Germany accounted for 13.3% of German electrical supply in 2021. Uh, France, by the way, 70, 80%, um, and that was generated by six power plant, of which three were switched off. At the end of 2021, they literally just turned these off, Chamath, and the other three.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  I know, but the decision was not made yesterday, Jason. My point is, this is, these are 20-year decisions.

• 21:27Jason Calacanis?

  Nah, it was Fukushima that pushed them, actually, in the sentiment of, and they also had 70% of their electricity on a couple of weeks come from renewables. So the Germans suddenly thought that they didn't live in a shady area and they could get by with just solar, which was a big mistake. Uh, this turning these off, Germany, if they didn't turn these off, they would have a different approach here, too. You can be sure of that.

• 21:49David Sacks?

  So, look, I'm, I'm a fan of solar, but I'll just make the point that natural gas burns, from a climate standpoint, it burns much cleaner than oil and oil burns much cleaner than coal. So, natural gas is way better than a lot of the alternatives. And the main problem with it is that when you frac, you can get. The release of, well, that, but that's in the ground, but in terms of the release of methane, which is a greenhouse gas, that's actually worse than CO2. And so you can actually get methane released, but in the US, we have techniques for recapture of it, whereas I don't think Russia cares about that. So we'd be a lot better off, I think solar is part of the answer, but I don't think we should be turning our backs on the enormous reserves of natural gas that we have here in this country.

• 22:32Jason Calacanis?

  Friedberg, what are your thoughts? You're hearing three of us talk about energy. Give us your science, boy, superpowers here. But what do you think is the clearest shot on goal here for energy independence as an option to war?

• 22:46David Friedberg?

  I'll just point out that the notion that there are countries that are jockeying or positioning to stop the train towards renewable alternatives for energy production this century, the number of countries in that bucket are close to zero. You know, Saudi Arabia took Saudi Aramco public specifically so that they, under kind of MBS's strategic direction, diversify away from, you know, the fossil fuel dependency of their economy and diversifying to other assets. So they are going to sell down their equity interest in Saudi Aramco over time and invest in things, you know, they probably made their first bet and regret it with SoftBank, but they'll probably make other bets to try and invest in kind of next gen industries.

• 23:32David Friedberg?

  And so, you know, if you look at the money that's going from even Exxon, and you know, there's a guy locally here in San Francisco who ran a very significant board proxy fight to get on the board of Exxon, and he won. And he's jockeying for continued and increased investment from an R and D perspective in renewables and alternatives. And we're seeing this across the board. There's going to be in the next couple of years, if not already, many of these fossil fuel dependent businesses and countries have or are making a massive shift towards alternative renewable sources of energy. So I don't think that there's any enemy here. There's no evil, like all the folks that have been dependent on it in the past are aware of the fact that this is not where the future is.

• 24:15David Friedberg?

  To transition. So the reason I bought energy stocks in December and the reason I made this point was threefold. One is because we have, as a result of this general consensus view, under invested in energy infrastructure. And the demands that are going to come out of the ex COVID economic growth cycle cannot be met with the current energy infrastructure and you are going to see energy prices continue to climb, coupled with the fact that when war or conflict arises, typically you see stockpiling and you see trade routes being shut down and you see energy prices climb. And so, you know, I think generally we're in a little bit of a transitionary state. Everyone knows where the puck needs to be. Everyone's headed there.

• 24:56David Friedberg?

  But for now, I think everyone's trying to navigate how do we get through the next couple of years? And in this particular year, you know, get through the season of uncertainty. You know, how, how fast is the economy growing? How much have we actually under invested in infrastructure? And how much renewables do we have coming online? Now, I think the right answer, if I were to be president of the world, I would immediately deregulate nuclear and make nuclear fission reactors a mainstay of energy production here in the U.S. And I think that there are a number of techniques we could undertake for safer

• 25:35David Friedberg?

  building without all the regulatory cycles and process needed to get these things stood up. You know, China, as I've mentioned in the past, is over the next 30 years committed to building. Check this number out. I think we talked about this, 140 nuclear power stations. Their estimated cost, I believe, is on the $3 billion per station range. They are going to increase their total energy production capacity with these nuclear power stations on the order of 15 to 20 percent. So they will take coal offline as they bring those online. Or they will kind of start to have a cleaner mix of energy rather than building a next gen infrastructure.

• 26:15David Friedberg?

  So, you know, if we as the United States intend to be an economic challenge to China this century, if we intend to compete effectively with them, we are going to have a really hard time with energy prices being what they are here in this country. China is already thirty to forty percent cheaper than us on an industrial scale basis with their current energy infrastructure. And when their nuclear comes online over the next decade, their prices are going to drop even further. Nuclear should be in the four to five cent per kilowatt hour range. Today China is in the kind of, you know, seven to eight cent per kilowatt hour range. The US for industrial, I think, is in kind of a nine cent, ten cent range, eight to ten cent, depending on where you look. So, you know, they're already cheaper. They're

• 26:58David Friedberg?

  going to get even cheaper. And so not just from like, what's the right transition from a security point of view, but energy is going to be so critical in this next century for us to maintain our footing as a competitor to China, particularly as, think about this for a second. If automation is the future of manufacturing, then electricity and energy ends up being the biggest cost driver for those systems. And if our, if everything is on parity and everyone's got the same automation systems, whoever's got the cheaper energy wins.

• 27:26Jason Calacanis?

  And to dovetail you and Chamath's both positions, a friend of ours said, hey, you know, nobody wants to live near nuclear power plants. And they've already got the grid going there because it has to be there. Surround the nuclear power plant with a solar farm because it's the most efficient way. So actually pairing these two things, perhaps even with some batteries, solves the entire problem. And what do we think, Sacks, is the eventuality here in terms of the relationship between Russia and China now that we've wrapped up the energy and then, you know, are all of us, I think, don't want to go to war here? So I guess there's two questions here of escalation, and I'll let you pick which one

• 28:10Jason Calacanis?

  you want to go for. Escalation with Taiwan, or does, if Putin is not held, if we don't hold the line here, you know, Putin picks another country to, or another region to go after in 2023, 2024, at what point do you say we got to hold the line?

• 28:26David Sacks?

  Well, I mean, I think the line is that we have existing NATO treaty obligations to protect the members of NATO under Article 5, we have to come to their defense. Ukraine is not one, Georgia is not one. So to me, that's the line, or is our existing treaty obligations. And this is why we should not want to add some of these countries to NATO is because it involves us in their disputes and drags us into war. You know, on Twitter, all I hear is that this is 1938 all over again, and we cannot appease a dictator. And that is one lesson of history. It's an important lesson. However, there are other lessons of history, and it seems to me that the situation we're in could be more like 1914, which is World War I. What happened in World War I?

• 29:09David Sacks?

  Basically, conflicts between minor powers dragged major powers into wars. And basically, Germany gave Austria the so-called blank check war guarantee, and then that led to a war with Russia, and then that dragged the, you know, Britain and France in, and eventually the United States. So, you know, it was a case where nobody, none of these powers wanted to be in a war with each other, and yet somehow inertia, and threats, and escalations, and miscalculations, and folly, all sort of tumbled their way into it. And that, I think, may be the historical precedent here that we want to avoid. I think we need to be very careful not to let, you know, every conflict all over the world drag us

• 29:52David Sacks?

  into these, these types of wars and disputes. Sax, do you think American primacy is coming to an end? I hope not. But if, if our goal is to preserve American primacy, which I think it should be, then we need to be smart about how we use our strength. And we don't want to fritter it away. And what have been doing for the last 20 years, frittering away our strength in wars we didn't need to be in. In the Middle East, we spent how many trillions on nation building there? That turned out to be a total folly and waste of money. Look at this, and we have a $30 trillion national debt. If we want this century to be an American century like the last one, we need to preserve our strength and use it wisely and not involve

• 30:35David Sacks?

  ourselves in every conflict. And, you know, so look, we need to protect our NATO allies. I agree with that. But we don't need to be creating disputes and involving ourselves in wars that we have no obligation to get involved in. We need energy independence, and we need to delever our balance sheet for American primacy.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  And it's possible, but it's going to require a lot of focus and sacrifice. I really think the thing that I just made up that is actually really quite genius, which is redirect that three trillion dollar bill, that better bill to just pure solar everywhere in the United States. It would be so disruptive. I mean, it would just be so disruptive.

• 31:11Jason Calacanis?

  Free electricity for everybody. It becomes a dividend. It's like it's UBI in a way. Everybody gets no electrical bill.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  I, I, I don't think it would allow people to have free electricity forever, but I do think it would subsidize basically the deployment of energy infrastructure to every single household in America in a way that would just completely shake up, uh, frankly, the political world order. Because, uh, you know, what you guys said is so true. A lot of this stuff rests on, you know, the politics around natural resources, right? So, you know, today it's oil, um, tomorrow it's going to be some rare earth, you know, in 10 years it could be copper and lithium. And we want to find ourselves with the ability to be clear eyed and focused in our response to these issues. But if we need critical resources that can only come from one other place or two other

• 32:01Speaker 01

  places, and we don't have the engineering ingenuity to have figured out how to, you know, de-lever our reliance, then we're going to get dragged into not just this conflict, but a whole bunch of other conflicts going forward.

• 32:11David Sacks?

  I'd say yes, and we could be energy independent for free right now if we were just to repeal some of these executive orders. I mean, we were energy independent like a year or two ago until we banned fracking.

• 32:24Jason Calacanis?

  Why, why do the fracking when solar is available? It seems to me like we want to actually preserve the environment, stop global warming. So if solar is available and nuclear is available, why would you advocate for fracking and ripping up the earth and, you know, polluting it?

• 32:39David Sacks?

  I'm a fan of solar. It's really just about costs and time to deployment.

• 32:43Jason Calacanis?

  Got it. Okay. So you see it as a bridge. Hey, maybe we do it for five years, 10 years.

• 32:46David Sacks?

  Long-term, I think solar is the answer, but I think that's a long-term strategy.

• 32:50Jason Calacanis?

  The other thing that is confounding is like Americans, and this is another thing, I was just watching the media and I did exactly what you did, David, is I put on Fox, I was like, let me get their interpretation of this because the Trump folks are praising Putin and then these guys are wanting to go to war. So it feels like there's some. Inner conflict or some war going on in the Republican side of things, but even on the

• 33:09David Sacks?

  There is.

• 33:10Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, and then on the left, you have this craziness. Uh, they were, I mean Wolf Blitzer and everybody was so excited about this war. They were like, stay tuned and oh my God, we're gonna be 24 hour coverage. They were like orgasmic in their coverage of this.

• 33:25David Friedberg?

  Remember CNN got their, got their big, um,

• 33:27Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 33:27David Friedberg?

  start with the Gulf War. That was it.

• 33:29Jason Calacanis?

  Absolutely. That was their chance to shine.

• 33:30David Friedberg?

  I remember being a kid watching that.

• 33:32Jason Calacanis?

  That is the language, Free Break, that was the language they were using. So Don Lem was saying, and we have the full resources to give you blow by blow coverage of everything happening. Stick with CNN. This is where we do our best work. And it was literally like war porn and it was really uncomfortable to watch, combined with, Sax, and this is what I wanted, well, maybe Free Break, I'll throw this one to you. They kept talking about how Americans were gonna suffer at the pump. And I just thought, this is so crazy and disturbing. There's 190,000 young Russian men who are gonna die, countless Ukrainian civilians who are gonna die potentially, and this thing could escalate, as Sax said, you know, you can't play games with war. It

• 34:14Jason Calacanis?

  could, the dominoes can fall in all directions. You have no idea when you light off these grenades. And, and we're talking about our pain at the pump? Very weird. Very weird times. Free Break, any thoughts?

• 34:27David Friedberg?

  America's weird.

• 34:29Jason Calacanis?

  It's weird.

• 34:29David Sacks?

  Well, I wanna, if, if Free Bird doesn't wanna respond to that, I wanna, I wanna talk about the media coverage. I'll add to that. I mean,

• 34:35Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 34:35David Sacks?

  You flip over to MSNBC, John Bolton is on MSNBC, and one of the weirdest things happening in our politics now is that all the neo cons who used to be members of the Republican Party, who worked for George W. Bush and got us into the Iraq war, have now all become Democrats and they're all over, they're supposedly the, the conscience of the country over on CNN and MSNBC and beating the drums of war. It's absolutely unbelievable. And one of the, the, um, one of the tactics they use that I think we should talk about. Is, and this goes all the way back to the Vietnam War, is that anybody who merely tries to, let's say, understand the other side, or wants to de-escalate, or get out of a conflict, they try to portray as unpatriotic. I mean, this, again, this goes all the way

• 35:19David Sacks?

  back to the Vietnam War, where the Vietnam protesters were portrayed as un-American and unpatriotic. Well, it turns out they were right. That was a mistake for us to get embroiled in Vietnam. And similarly, the Iraq War, it turns out that was a gigantic mistake. But in 2003, David Frum, who's like one of the leaders of this group, wrote an article called "Unpatriotic Conservatives," in which he attacked and sort of Mao-Mao, the, there were, you know, conservatives like Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak, who were against the Iraq War. And he called them unpatriotic and implied that they were un-American because, and somehow in the pocket of Saddam Hussein, because they were against us, our involvement in the Iraq War. Well, they turned out, they turned out to be right. And yet they were demonized and called unpatriotic. And where are we today, those same people?

• 36:02David Sacks?

  I'm seeing David Frum on Twitter now, impugn the patriotism of people who merely want us not to escalate this, not to get involved, and maybe to try and understand our enemy. Because, I mean, this is one of the problems with Twitterizing our foreign policy, is, look, we can see Putin as an aggressor, we can see him as a thug, or an authoritarian, or as a dictator, but nonetheless, we should still try and understand our enemy. And anybody who tries to promote a greater degree of understanding or diplomacy gets attacked by these people as being Putin apologists.

• 36:35Jason Calacanis?

  Chamath, you, you said you didn't see this coming, you thought this is a very small probability. I think we all felt it was a pretty small probability that Russia would actually go through this. You thought it was actually something, actually, I do, Friedberg, you did think it was gonna happen?

• 36:47David Friedberg?

  It's a certainty.

• 36:48Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, well, wait, you thought it was a certainty that America would get involved because of the wag the dog scenario, or that Putin would do it because?

• 36:55David Friedberg?

  Both.

• 36:55Jason Calacanis?

  Both, okay.

• 36:56David Friedberg?

  Yeah, this is not like a surprise that Putin did this. I mean, this has been a long time coming.

• 37:01Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I mean, it just felt like I, I, I thought that he would say a rattle and we come to some resolution here. But what does he want? It seems like nobody, and this is what everybody keeps saying.

• 37:11David Friedberg?

  And I think that's a really, by the way, I think that's a really complicated question. I feel like there's decades of and layers of like to the story. It's like, you know, war and peace. And then you read like one half of the final chapter and you're like, oh yeah, okay. Like there's a lot to the story that's going to be really hard for us to unpack. So, you know, I'm not sure there's a very simple, like, what does Putin want as much as there is a significant narrative that, that, that backs the history, you know, post Soviet history with Ukraine and the relationships. I mean, you, you guys may remember that there was a president, a presidential candidate or a president that was poisoned by Putin at some point. I mean, there's been like a long history to this that I don't think is something that we can.

• 37:52Jason Calacanis?

  Well, reunification is what most people would put that under is this concept of.

• 37:57David Friedberg?

  There's economic, there are social, you know, there are individuals, cultural motives. I mean, there's a lot driving this. There's a lot of influence within that country that I don't think we really fully grasp within the country of Russia. I mean, that we don't fully grasp related to some of the cultural relationships with some of the population in the, in the Ukraine. And so, you know, it's a very difficult question to simply answer.

• 38:21David Sacks?

  Can I take a shot at it?

• 38:22David Friedberg?

  Yeah, sure.

• 38:23David Sacks?

  Okay, what does Putin want? So I want to, there was an article by Peter Baynard, who was an editor of the New Republic. He's not, you know, some far right conservative or whatever. He published this quotes from a memo that was written by Bill Burns back in 2008. So Bill Burns is the current DCI, is the Director of Central Intelligence, the head of the CIA. He is also a Russian expert. He speaks Russian fluently. He is the, and he spent many years over there in our government and he works for Biden. He's Biden's head of the CIA. So he is the highest ranking Russian expert in our government. In 2008, he wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice, who was then the Secretary of State. And what he said is, this is about Ukrainian entry into NATO. He said,

• 39:05David Sacks?

  Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite, not just Putin. He says, "In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players from knuckle draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin's sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine and NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests." So Burns.

• 39:30David Sacks?

  Pointed out to the then Secretary of State that this was a huge red line. And since then, since 2008, Putin has been very consistent that Ukrainian entry into NATO has been a red line. And even in the speech that he gave last week, he talked about, uh, he talked about this. And he said that, I'm quoting Putin from his speech, he says, if Ukraine was to join NATO, it would serve as a direct threat to the security of Russia. So, you know, in response to Putin's speech and on Twitter, I keep hearing that Putin is this madman, we can't understand what he wants, that the only possible explanation for his behavior is either senility, he's gone crazy, he's gone mad. And, you know,

• 40:13David Sacks?

  I'm looking at this and I'm like, okay, maybe those things are true, but you can't say that he hasn't been clear about what his red lines are. He's been saying this for 20 years, that Ukraine joining the NATO alliance is an absolute red line. And, you know, I mentioned before on this pod, that imagine if the Cold War is still going on and the Warsaw Pact still existed. And, you know, Justin Trudeau was gonna lead Canada into the Warsaw Pact. We would absolutely be up in arms about that. We would not let that happen. It is that kind of issue for Putin. And we just act like this guy is insane, has no point of view. I'm not, we don't have to believe he's right, but to basically say

• 40:54David Sacks?

  that he's, he has no interests in Russian security that we need to give any weight to, that we just need to dismiss all of his concerns out of hand. It just, you know, this is not the history of the situation.

• 41:08Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. Did you read, anybody read Madeleine Albright's, um, New York Times piece? It was pretty interesting, because she was, uh, in the position when they first met him. And he's been talking about the Ukraine and reunification for 20 years. And, uh, it's probably a good lesson for the entire planet, uh, that dictators are gonna, you know, they have a certain, to your point, Chamath, of like, having will and capabilities. A lot of people have capabilities. A lot of people don't have will to start wars anymore on this planet and he clearly is in that group. I think as hard as it is.

• 41:41David Sacks?

  But Jason, we don't know. Here's the thing. By not taking NATO off the table as an issue, we don't know whether his true aim here is the restoration of the Russian empire or merely to avoid, you know, this border country being part of a military alliance that he views as a threat. So I don't know what the answer is.

• 42:01Jason Calacanis?

  Or door number three. He wants more attention. He wants to be more globally relevant.

• 42:05David Sacks?

  Right. But we made the mistake of not taking this issue off the table. And so if we had taken the issue off the table, then we could get to the real heart of the issue. Maybe it would have diffused the situation.

• 42:15Jason Calacanis?

  Or if the EU and NATO had done it, right? It's not just us in this. The people in Europe have a big say here. As we're discussing this on a Thursday, February 24th, Biden has announced a coalition of partners. EU, Australia, others are doing pretty significant sanctions, it seems, limiting Russia's ability to do business in dollars, euros and yen, imposing major sanctions on the Russian banks, trying to cripple the ruble, blocking for major Russian banks, freezing all of their assets in America, adding sanctions to Russian elites. I guess that's the oligarch class. And Russia's largest state-owned enterprises will no longer be able to raise money from a coalition of governments. Biden assumes this will degrade their military advancement and.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  I have a funny Russian story to tell. So when I was still running, when I was managing not just my money, but other people's money and I was raising funds, eventually, you know, you get LP commitments from all kinds of people interested in investing with you if you're generating great returns, right? Meaning, you know, rich family offices all around the world want to give you capital. And there's a very strict process in America where when you get capital in, you have to make sure that those folks basically pass, you know, an anti-money laundering check and a know your customer kind of check.

• 43:36Jason Calacanis?

  KYC.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  And one of these checks is actually a gray list and a blacklist that Treasury and the DOJ kind of manage. And every now and then they'll put people on and off the list. And there's a very famous person in Russia, who I will not say, when I was raising money for my last fund, this is probably in 2014 or 15, he was on the, he was not on the list, you know, very well-known person. And I thought, wow, this is a great opportunity to get somebody who seems to be doing a lot of really interesting, good work. And not less than two or three weeks after we had signed our LP agreement, I think it was DOJ or Treasury, put them on this list. And we get a, we get a, you know, an email basically saying, hey, tear up the LPA and you can't take

• 44:21Speaker 01

  the capital. And we had to undo the entire limited partner agreement. Crazy. Yeah.

• 44:28Jason Calacanis?

  What percentage of the fund would that person have been ballpark?

• 44:31Speaker 01

  I don't remember, but he was a, he's a significant person investing, significant.

• 44:36Jason Calacanis?

  Five, 10% or something. So I would guess, yeah.

• 44:38David Friedberg?

  Hey, Jason, I just want to, going back on a point I made about energy and energy independence, sure, earlier, because I actually pulled up the numbers. So, you know, the average cost per kilowatt hour in the, in China right now is about nine cents for, for energy production. It is estimated that nuclear power production should drop to about four cents, but could be as low as one cent per kilowatt hour if operated at scale with perfect efficiency. Just to give everyone a sense of where not just security risk and kind of, you know, the green opportunity lies, but also where economic advantage lies in investing in nuclear infrastructure. And so

• 45:21David Friedberg?

  as China builds out 140 nuclear plants here over the next two to three decades, they're going to see their energy costs decline from about nine cents for industrial use, potentially, you know, into the sub five cent per kilowatt hour range, which makes them tremendously competitive on a manufacturing point of view.

• 45:38Jason Calacanis?

  It's a lot of Bitcoin servers. It's a lot of hash.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  I think it's never going to happen. I'm not, I love nuclear.

• 45:45Jason Calacanis?

  You think what's not going to happen? Nuclear?

• 45:47Speaker 01

  I think America, America's, America's ability to scale nuclear, I think is a very difficult proposition. And I think our real solution is solar.

• 45:54Jason Calacanis?

  Is solar?

• 45:55Speaker 01

  It's practical. It can be done today and it can be done right now.

• 45:58Jason Calacanis?

  And just to look at the EU versus the US in terms of gas mileage, which is just stunning. The EU.

• 46:07Jason Calacanis?

  Has mandated average

• 46:08Speaker 01

  America doesn't have the resolve. It's like, it's like, we have to, we have to cross so many bridges. And, you know, we have to really confront a bunch of issues that we, um, that have been riddled with so much inaccuracy, you know, for example, the environmental impact, the understanding of how nuclear energy works. You know, the NIMBYism, Jason, that you referred to about not being able to build these things all around the country. And so reducing the form factor, in my opinion, is a technical challenge that I think we can overcome. But it still leaves the policy and the societal level challenges that I think are very difficult to overcome. Because you're talking about rewriting history in many ways and and convincing, you know, hundreds of millions of people that things that they had thought were true were no longer true. And I think that's much, much harder than we give it credit for.

• 46:53Jason Calacanis?

  And cars is a perfect example. Americans now, we're averaging 24 miles to the gallon. The EU has mandated uh, 57 miles per gallon in 2021. They're getting it done in the EU. They're twice as effective. I tweeted, hey, listen, Americans, we, we need to buy better gas mileage cars and move to EVs. And I was faced with quite a backlash. I mean, it was insane.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  That's not entirely true, because California did pass their own legislation. And then there was this issue because the car companies pushed back and said, you know, it's too expensive for us to build two different SKUs. One for California and one for the rest of America.

• 47:26Jason Calacanis?

  They're already building ones for the EU.

• 47:28David Friedberg?

  Just to give you one counterpoint to your statement about energy independence arising potentially from solar, to generate a gigawatt of capacity in industrial scale solar farm would take about 7,500 acres. You know, so that's about 30

• 47:42Speaker 01

  I don't think that's how it's, I don't think that's how it's done. I, I, I think a very simple solar installation in everybody's home with a simple battery is more than enough to basically give people the power they need. And then these big CNI installations of happening on top of all these big buildings will cover the rest. And I think that you'll still have some amount of nat gas peakers usage. Um, and maybe you can have some amount of solar or hydro or wind. Um, but people are experimenting and figuring out the battery storage capability to supplement this. I think what we don't have is that at 3% residue solar, we don't have a credible alternative, but at, you know, 80% resi solar, um, with battery systems in everybody's home, which is a tractable solution that costs thousands of dollars per home, which the government could subsidize,

• 48:27Speaker 01

  would be a great use of capital, I think would be transformational for energy. It would completely rewrite the energy calculus.

• 48:32David Friedberg?

  So, so again, to do that today would cost Because when you do something on a residential roof, it costs a lot more than doing it on an industrial scale. So when you build out a 7,500 acre solar facility, you get economies of scale, you get single tubes, everything can run off one wire. When you build it on a roof, you need contractors to come in. You got to wire the home, you got to put batteries in. So the actual amortized cost over the lifetime of that solar installation works out to something on the order of 15 cents a kilowatt hour. Whereas if you do it on an industrial scale, it works out to about three cents a kilowatt hour. So, you know, your point makes sense, but it makes things more expensive. So then the question is, who's going to fund the delta? And is someone actually going to pay for that delta to make this?

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna, I'm sure, I'm sure over the next few years, we're going to spend trillions and trillions of dollars on nothing. Those trillions and trillions of dollars could probably, whatever your gap is, I don't know whether your math is right or wrong, but whatever the gap is that gets us to China, as an example, in terms of the cost per kilowatt hour, the government could subsidize. And there is a quantifiable number. And if we had, if we decided whether it was worth it or not, we could decide. But all I'm saying is it's something that we need to put on the table because every time a new president comes into town and gets elected, they generally get this one big shot on goal. You know, the last few presidents have tried to either, you know, cut taxes so basically give these massive economic stimulus packages. And the net dollar effect of these things

• 49:55Speaker 01

  is now measured in trillions of dollars. And I suspect that the net, you know, cost of subsidizing enough solar energy that you get a broad be deployed is also in the trillions of dollars. And we should just decide whether that is in the better use of our money.

• 50:06Jason Calacanis?

  All right, just to do some quick math here, to booster Chavat's point, he almost nailed it exactly. There are 85 million standalone homes in the US, Chavat. I'm just going to assume none of them, for the sake of this argument, have solar on them. But 3% do, I think. Average cost of putting solar on homes? Twenty to thirty-five thousand, I pick the number thirty thousand.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, hold on a second, but, but in Australia, it costs five thousand.

• 50:34Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, they have a cheaper system or something?

• 50:36Speaker 01

  No, it's because of all the nonsense that exists in the United States.

• 50:38Jason Calacanis?

  Subsidized, yeah. So, but just to give the raw cost here, if it was thirty thousand dollars to put on eighty-five million

• 50:45Speaker 01

  You can do it for five, you can do it for five thousand dollars a home, because Australia, which is one-sixth the size of America, is able to do it with no subsidies, direct to the consumer, for five thousand dollars in installation. So that price is possible.

• 50:57Jason Calacanis?

  I'm gonna pick the thirty thousand dollar crazy price in America. Two point five trillion dollars to put solar on every home, the end.

• 51:06Jason Calacanis?

  Like, we're, we're thirty trillion dollars in debt. Ten percent of our debt would make us energy independent forever. The, the, the plan gets better when you do math.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Sorry, and think of, think of the amount of savings you do to the environment. Think of the lack, I don't know if you saw this, but there was a UN report about the criticality and importance of emerging wildfire threats to our ecosystem and our ecology. I don't, you know, for all of us that lived in California, do you guys remember how the sky was orange and red two years ago?

• 51:34Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Crazy pictures from Los Angeles? So if you, if you have, have less of a reliance on these aging utilities and these utilities infrastructure, there'll be less forest fires, the air will be cleaner, um, people will be more resilient. Think of the times that, for example, in Texas, where there was that massive freeze, right, where people were shut out of, they couldn't have power because the actual traditional utilities were shut down. If it's only two and a half trillion dollars, I think we should have done this yesterday. I can't believe the number is that low, actually. Considering the things that, when we put two and a half trillion dollar price tags on things and spend it.

• 52:07Jason Calacanis?

  The cost of upgrading, I'm just pulling some numbers here off of the internet, but, um, replacing, uh, our, uh, electrical grid would be five trillion. So if you think about the replacement cost of the actual grid, which we're gonna have to do at some point, and the upgrade cost of five hundred billion a year, uh, or the maintenance of five hundred billion a year, this actually starts to seem very reasonable and achievable if we had the will, which means we need to have some politicians who actually aren't in the pocket of big oil.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  The number of jobs that Biden would create if he actually ran with this, then, and because you do need a lot of local installation capability and other jobs. You would create hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of jobs in the United States. They would be really well paying. Um, and you would be pushing us towards a completely energy independent, clean energy, you know, uh, zero carbon future. That'd be transformational.

• 52:58Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I wonder how many hours of work it is to install. You could actually do that math as well and figure out how many jobs you create and then how much tax those people pay and then how much they spend of that money to put it back into the economy. You're probably getting a 30, 40% rebate on that $2.5 trillion. So it becomes even better because of the high paying jobs. All right, the markets are tanking, uh, obviously over the last couple of months. Dow is down 11% year to date. And of course, a lot of the growth stocks, we've talked about this over and over again from Zoom to Netflix, Facebook, Spotify, Coinbase, Twilio, all down over 50%. Uh, today, the market went down 5, 6% on the news and then rebounded.

• 53:43Jason Calacanis?

  Is this all priced in and is this the bottom of the market? Kathy Wood is supposedly, um, buying, and I don't know if it's net buying or she's just reallocating, but, uh, are we now in the bargain hunting? Period of the market and, and we've bottomed out?

• 54:02Speaker 01

  The, the smart folks that I talk to, who I really, you know, uh, look up to and respect, think that the bottom in the S and P is around 3,800. And that, um, what we still need to do is it's one last flush and that last flush will really touch the big cap, um, companies, but that, uh, growth is largely, um, done sort of getting taken to the woodshed. So, um, in general, I think that, so generally buyers of growth now, um, sellers of value and waiting for this one last, you know, 400 point move down the S and P. And I think people think it's roughly the bottom. Now, if there's a world war, obviously, who knows all bets are off, but, um, you know.

• 54:44Jason Calacanis?

  So Sax, what's more shocking that we're almost at the bottom or there's people in the markets that Chamath really respects?

• 54:51David Sacks?

  Well, speaking of people that we respect, so I think Brad Gerson has a really interesting take on this, which is that

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Oh, sorry. I should also be clear that I'm recruiting this one person who I really respect. He knows who he is.

• 55:03Jason Calacanis?

  So they're punchable. Got it.

• 55:05David Sacks?

  So Brad Gerson has published a couple of charts showing basically multiples in the Internet Index and among SaaS companies over the last whatever dozen years or so. And what you can see is that over the last two years during COVID, there was a huge spike in multiples for Internet companies and for SaaS companies. And that over the last, really since November, the last three, four months, has now come down. And as of, I would say, last week, it was right at about the historical trend. And now it's starting to go under the historical trend. So from a bargain hunting standpoint, you'd have to say that this is the first time that we've been below the, the average for a few years. Now, it's not

• 55:48David Sacks?

  to say it can't go down even more, because in the same way that you can be above trend, you can also be below trend. And if this war escalates and metastasizes, it will go down more. But if this conflict can stay localized, and the economy doesn't go into a recession because of everything that's happened, then yes, this might be bargain hunting.

• 56:08Jason Calacanis?

  Here's the chart for everybody to take a look at from January 20 to January 22, the two years of the pandemic. And I think this is times forward looking sales. If I'm, if I'm reading you correct, I don't have the full chart here. I just have a screenshot of it, a portion of it.

• 56:23David Sacks?

  Yeah, I think it's enterprise value. Yeah, it's enterprise value divided by like forward looking revenue, which is you kind of say is like ARR. Yeah, it's sort of like ARR. It's like recurring revenue.

• 56:35Jason Calacanis?

  And so, yeah, we, we had this 15x, we went up to 40, 50x, private market deals going at 100, 200x. Those days are over big time.

• 56:45Jason Calacanis?

  And it's, we've talked about that ad nauseam. One of the interesting things that I'm seeing is I think people are looking at businesses that have been corrected. And saying, hey, what is the true value of this? And I think the best example is Peloton, new CFO. The CFO of Netflix. I gotta go. All right. I gotta go J. K. Stay, I love you guys. I love you, Chamath. Stay safe and enjoy your vacation. Cheers now. So I just, without Chamath here, I just want to talk a little bit. Have you guys watched what happened with Peloton and the CFO coming in and just really revitalizing that business very quickly?

• 57:17David Friedberg?

  Right. Well, Jason, I'll say one thing. I think two weeks ago. If you pulled the market, there would probably have, or if you looked at the, the trading prices of bonds, you probably would have assumed a 95% chance of a half point rate hike in March. And as of today, my guess is that the probability of that is below 5%. And you're probably assuming, you know, a quarter point rate hike, or maybe even a deferral at this point. And I think that's one of the things that's keeping the market up instead of tanking so much.

• 57:55Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, people are predicting that it's been such bad news that they'll push it out.

• 57:59David Friedberg?

  Yeah, they're assuming that under the conditions of great uncertainty like this, the Fed cannot act as aggressively as they were planning to act.

• 58:06Jason Calacanis?

  Interesting.

• 58:06David Friedberg?

  And as a result, that, that rate hike would be pushed out. And it would continue to kind of keep prices somewhat inflated and continue to support the market with cheaper capital and liquidity. So, you know, a lot of capital around the world is going to get locked up as armed conflict kind of comes to bear. And when that happens, you know, markets will tighten up and prices will be affected. And so the Fed in, in traditional, in typical times would want to have an incentive or would have a motivation to, you know, inject liquidity into the markets. And so this is not a great time to do a half point rate hike. And so it's almost certain at this point that they're not going to do a half point rate hike.

• 58:44Jason Calacanis?

  Feels to me like huge setup right now. People have capitulated the markets. Gotten demolished.

• 58:50David Friedberg?

  I just think there's some

• 58:50Jason Calacanis?

  These companies are still great.

• 58:52David Friedberg?

  Like Zoom is still a great company. There's some great businesses out there and some great companies to invest in, some great stocks to buy. All the way from technology through to industrials, uh, through to, um, you know, even some of the energy companies that are going to benefit greatly from this commodity cycle we're, we're kind of in the middle of. Um, and so there, there's going to be, you know, um, I think an opportunity to move away from, uh, speculative, um, behavior into real kind of cherry picking, productive, cash generating, um, businesses in the next, um, uh, you know, or, or even growth businesses that are actual, um, you know, value creators. Uh, so versus being like 10 year speculative kind of bet. So this is a great time to kind of be looking for businesses you really like to own,

• 59:36David Friedberg?

  uh, to identify them, to make investments and to hold those investments for a very long period of time. Uh, you know, you're not going to find a lot of market conditions like this. I mean, if we all went back to March of 2020 and you remember the S and P was at

• 59:48Jason Calacanis?

  Back up the truck.

• 59:48David Friedberg?

  2300.

• 59:50Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I was going to buy Disney. I never got around to it.

• 59:52David Friedberg?

  Yeah. So like if, if at that point you pick businesses that you knew were going to be durable businesses and that you loved and you thought were going to have legs to them. You bought everything from Alphabet to Disney, uh, to Lockheed Martin, uh, you know, you could have done, um, tremendously well. So now's a great time to kind of be looking for businesses that you really like and to buy a stake in them.

• 1:00:10Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:11David Friedberg?

  Forget, forget about trying to time the bottom. That's a fool's errand.

• 1:00:14Jason Calacanis?

  Right. No, no. If you want to buy stuff, you want to hold for 10 years.

• 1:00:16David Friedberg?

  Things are relatively cheap relative to a time horizon that Sacks pointed out and, um, and Gertner pointed out. So things are relatively cheap. Find businesses you like to own and buy them cheap.

• 1:00:27Jason Calacanis?

  They could get cheaper, but they're kind of at the bottom end of normal.

• 1:00:30David Friedberg?

  I think the whole timeframe around like speculative stuff is kind of wiped out. Like, I think that, that, that, that era is gone now.

• 1:00:36Jason Calacanis?

  What are you seeing?

• 1:00:36David Sacks?

  Yeah. Well, it's, it's that plus. I think one of the things that happened is that people are realizing now that the burst of activity, especially like in e-commerce type companies that happened during the pandemic, that was not ongoing sustainable growth. It was one-time growth. In fact, in many cases, it was sort of worse than one-time growth, which is it was pull forward growth. Meaning that growth in the future will be lower because you pulled forward all of that revenue. Well, I think Peloton might be a good example. I mean, everyone bought them during the pandemic. But then after the pandemic, everyone who needs one has got one already. So.

• 1:01:11Jason Calacanis?

  Could also be cars, right? Like people were desperate to buy cars and now there's not available.

• 1:01:15David Sacks?

  Right. So what what happened is not only have multiples gone down, but these companies were being comped based on growth rates that were unsustainable. And so now they're all revising their forecasts down. So it's the double whammy and Brad's made this point. But what's interesting right now is the markets are actually rallying and I think it might be because of this latest Biden news at this press conference. So the important point here is that Biden did not sanction Putin directly. There was talk about sanctioning him personally. Or and he also did not remove Russia from the SWIFT system, which is like sort of the key banking system. And I don't know if this is because Biden doesn't want to do it or because Europe won't support the move. Pretty clear Europe doesn't want to do it.

• 1:01:58David Sacks?

  So no one is willing to suffer too much economic loss here to defend Ukraine, never mind sending troops. So it seems to me that the signal here is that both militarily and in terms of economic interest, Europe does not want further escalation. And that may be why the market is rallying. Also, the Fed may hold off on interest rate increases while this is all going on. So, you know, sometimes markets can act in funny ways.

• 1:02:29Jason Calacanis?

  Well, they're forward looking. People are putting money at stake so they have skin in the game. So it's, you know, they, people can talk all they want about what's going to happen with the markets, but unless they're placing bets, that's kind of cheap talk. And here people are actually placing bets on stocks they think will do well in the future.

• 1:02:49David Sacks?

  Skin of the game. People, look. Their economic interests are skin of the game, having people's sons and daughters go off to fight and die in some foreign war, that is real skin of the game. What is not skin of the game is people tweeting, you know, there are more outrage and condemnation and whipping things up. And, you know, we should not be listening to that and calling everyone who disagrees them traitors, because that's happening too. You know, this is a time for cooler heads prevail.

• 1:03:16Jason Calacanis?

  You and I are going to actually agree on this. And we're both going to agree that Trump and Pompeo should not be fawning over Putin.

• 1:03:25David Sacks?

  Yeah, but Jason.

• 1:03:26Jason Calacanis?

  You never commented on that. Let's get, people want to hear us get into it. Well, I mean, you can't support them fawning over Putin like that. Do you? I can't imagine you do.

• 1:03:36David Sacks?

  Look, I heard, I heard what, what Trump said when he was saying, I didn't hear the Pompeo quote, so I can't speak to that.

• 1:03:42Jason Calacanis?

  Basically saying he's a genius.

• 1:03:43David Sacks?

  Look, listen, you know, sometimes Trump is being sarcastic when he says things like, oh, what a beauty, you know? He means the opposite. And I think the point Trump was making wasn't really about Putin being so great. The point I heard Trump making was that if he were president, this wouldn't be happening. Now, you can disagree with that. It may be true or untrue, but that was the real point he was making. I think that you're letting, you know, the political partisans try to whip this thing up. And as part, again, as part of this meme of anybody who doesn't support what I want must be a traitor, it must be in the pocket of Putin.

• 1:04:20Jason Calacanis?

  We have to use this meme warfare to get people free, Berg, to shame these politicians into backing like the solar plan and doing something meaningful like this, like and backing nuclear. How do we get the politicians to reflect energy independence as a priority? It feels like it's not a priority for them.

• 1:04:42David Friedberg?

  Well, I mean, one of the good things about American democracy is that politicians are generally pretty responsive to what their constituents want and believe. So they use polling data and that polling data drives, you know, if they want to get reelected, they better do what the polls are telling them people want them to do. And so ultimately, if you can kind of influence people broadly in the United States, and that can go both ways, by the way.

• 1:05:10Jason Calacanis?

  We have special interests too, and you have people with weird ideas, right?

• 1:05:14David Friedberg?

  Yeah, but generally, like if something is deeply unpopular, a politician risks not getting reelected, they're not going to kind of run to do that. And if something is very popular, even though it may not be the right thing by some objective framework, you know, they would still run to do that. So, you know, I do think that there's, you know, some degree of work to be done around, you know, framing for people broadly, you know, via the work maybe that we do on our podcast, but I think more importantly, on a repeated way and in a way that's kind of inspiring and inclusive, will drive people to kind of want to see these changes happen. And ultimately, politicians should respond.

• 1:05:53David Sacks?

  Can I make one other point to your thing about, you know, who today would be considered, you know, in the words of Jen Psaki, parroting Russian talking points? Barack Obama. If Obama today were out there saying exactly what he told the Atlantic magazine back in, I think it was 2012 or 14, if he was saying that today, he'd be accused of being in Putin's pocket and being a Putin apologist and a traitor and all this kind of stuff because he said that in that interview, he said, listen, Putin was always very businesslike, he was punctual, he showed up, he wanted to negotiate a deal. Basically, he sounded like a guy who, look, we may disagree with him about everything, but he wasn't a madman, he was someone you could

• 1:06:37Jason Calacanis?

  A rational actor.

• 1:06:38David Sacks?

  He was a coldly ruthless but rational actor. And that's basically what Obama said. He's someone you could talk turkey with. And if you say that today, that, hey, maybe we could negotiate our way out of this with Putin. You're accused of being, you know, a puppet of his.

• 1:06:56Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, well, the concept of starting a war in this day and age is just, it's crazy. Like, it is crazy that he's starting this war and putting all these people at risk, and we don't even know what the goal is. He's not even asked for anything. Like, what is he exactly asking for? So, he may not be, he may have been rational then, or maybe Obama was trying to steer him towards rationality and praising him publicly to get that more rational Putin to show up. This feels like irrational, that we don't know what his goal is. Like, the fact that the world can't say, "If we gave him X, he would do Y," is, I think, his strategy. Putin's always liked to be this, like, unpredictable madman, right?

• 1:07:36David Sacks?

  No, I mean, we just said that he's a coldly ruthless rational actor. That's sort of the opposite of a madman. I mean, his red lines have been clear. He's been stating them for, for years. Um, the, the problem is that, again, we're conducting-

• 1:07:48Jason Calacanis?

  I'm referring him to murdering opponents of his and-

• 1:07:51David Sacks?

  Oh, there's no question that he's ruthless. He's an authoritarian. Call him a dictator if you want. I've tweeted in support of Alexei Navalny.

• 1:07:59Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59David Sacks?

  So, I get it, but that doesn't mean he's a madman. Um, he has desires and interests, and it's the job of diplomats to figure out how to conduct diplomacy and negotiation with people you disagree with. And one of the problems we have today is, again, we've Twitterized everything. So, you know, we basically figure out, the first step is, who are the people who should be canceled? You know, who's wearing the white hat? Who's wearing the black hat? Let's all rise up and virtue signal and moral denunciation and, you know, stick our fingers in our ears and not listen to the other side. And, um, and listen, that, that is a way to find yourself in greater conflicts, not avoid them.

• 1:08:39Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. All right, so just wrapping up here, let's, uh, let's wrap with Sacks's favorite part of the show. Sacks's favorite moment where he's super engaged in learning. He's got his thinking cap on. He's taking notes. And that is the science corner. No, not-

• 1:08:57David Sacks?

  What about Vendetta Corner? I thought you were gonna say Vendetta Corner.

• 1:09:00Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, what about, is there anything on your Vendetta Corner this week?

• 1:09:03David Friedberg?

  Vendetta Corner is actually my favorite part of the show.

• 1:09:05Jason Calacanis?

  It is now, but people love Vendetta Corner in the Twitter community spaces.

• 1:09:09David Sacks?

  Well, of course Twitter loves it because Twitter is all about Vendettas, but I have no Vendettas this week.

• 1:09:14Jason Calacanis?

  Vendetta free week?

• 1:09:15David Sacks?

  The Vendetta free week.

• 1:09:16David Friedberg?

  What are you doing with your time?

• 1:09:18Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:19David Sacks?

  I'm, I'm trying to advocate that this is time for cooler heads prevail and so, um.

• 1:09:23Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, for fuck's sake, start a fight with somebody. Aren't you fighting with Paul Graham? There's nobody you're, you're throwing elbows at?

• 1:09:30David Friedberg?

  Are you guys taking the week off for Ski Week?

• 1:09:32Jason Calacanis?

  I don't think we're fighting over anything. It's not, I can't, not that I can think of. All right, for the dictator, Chamath Palihapitiya, Sultan of Science, David Friedberg, and the Rain Man himself, David Sacks, I'm J Cal, and we'll see you all at the All In Summit in May 15, 16, 17. You can go to the website summit allinpodcast.co where you can just type all in summit, the All In Summit into Google and find it. May 15th to 17th in Miami, Florida. We're doing it at the New World Symphony and we have a page there where you can vote on speakers. It's gonna be three days of fun. We have a scholarship there if you can't afford the regular ticket and you can apply for a scholarship if you're a super fan and we'll look forward to seeing you there.

• 1:10:16Jason Calacanis?

  And go vote for some speakers. Bye bye. Love you besties.

• 1:10:20David Sacks?

  We'll let your winners ride.

• 1:10:23Jason Calacanis?

  Rain Man David Sacks.

• 1:10:27David Sacks?

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

• 1:10:32Jason Calacanis?

  Love you besties.

• 1:10:32David Sacks?

  I'm the queen of Kinoah.

• 1:10:40Jason Calacanis?

  Besties are gone.

• 1:10:43David Friedberg?

  That is my dog taking a piss in your driveway.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just, it's like this like sexual tension. They just need to release themselves.

• 1:10:59David Sacks?

  What? You're the bee. What? You're the bee. Bee? What?

• 1:11:04Jason Calacanis?

  We need to get merge.

• 1:11:05David Sacks?

  Besties are back.