E144: Biden targets Elon, BRICS challenges the West, Tiger hit piece & more

(0:00) Chamath's big poker trip (4:32) Addressing the "in the arena" comments (7:16) Biden administration targets Elon's businesses (21:58) Tiger Global claims disgruntled ex-employee circulated fake hit piece (27:51) BRICS adds six new members, Sacks breaks down some potential advantages of the new BRICS (40:46) BRICS ultimate goals, India's key position (51:54) How energy independence plays into the future geopolitical order (1:00:22) All-In Summit party talk! Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1693992134796603477 https://twitter.com/tomosman/status/1696929638935634240 https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1697072553775501661 https://www.newsweek.com/joe-bidens-robert-peters-pseudonym-under-scrutiny-gop-probes-emails-1820709 https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-spacex-discriminating-against-asylees-and-refugees-hiring https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1695073336483832007 https://www.justice.gov/crt/page/file/1579981/download https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/09/tech/elon-musk-biden-foreign-business-relations/index.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/08/26/oliver-anthony-republican-debate-rich-men https://www.thefp.com/p/oliver-anthony-interview-rich-men-north-richmond https://www.foxnews.com/video/6335645970112 https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/08/25/tiger-global-blames-disgruntled-formeremployee-for-mystery-memo-sent-to-journalists https://www.reuters.com/world/brics-poised-invite-new-members-join-bloc-sources-2023-08-24 https://www.ft.com/content/4ff06aa6-b1bf-4e08-9b8d-aa42ee240c95 https://www.ft.com/content/669260a5-82a5-4e7a-9bbf-4f41c54a6143 https://www.voanews.com/a/india-remains-steadfast-in-partnership-with-russia/6883794.html https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-will-buy-oil-all-sources-who-offer-lowest-possible-prices-oil-minister-2023-08-30 https://www.budd.senate.gov/press-releases/budd-coons-lead-bipartisan-coalition-supporting-nuclear-energy https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1696295679344459807 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/02/united-states-ukraine-trust-developing-nations

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

• 0:00David Friedberg?

  Do you want to see something? Look at my eyes.

• 0:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Look, look at his eyes. It's fucking contagion over here. Brozki, what happened? You have conjunctivitis?

• 0:08David Friedberg?

  Yeah, double eye. I got it from my daughter.

• 0:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He got something in his eye.

• 0:11David Friedberg?

  And then I got this like fucking allergic reaction to it. It is a, I'm just messed up, dude. For two days now, I haven't been able to see.

• 0:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay, well, let me tell you about this weekend, which was the most motherfucking exhausting weekend of my life. I mean, where do I even start? Okay, here's, here's where I start. So I fucking fly home. From Italy. From Italy. Get back in the arena. At 35,000 feet, I, I decide to troll the mids.

• 0:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We'll talk about that later. But anyways, sipping a beautifully chilled white burgundy.

• 0:39David Sacks?

  By trolling the mids, you mean that you were occupying their airspace? You were flying at the level of commercial jets.

• 0:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He did a flyby.

• 0:47David Sacks?

  Instead of 45,000 feet.

• 0:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Instead of 45,000 feet, I went down where the public airlines fly. And I was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, mid, mid, mid. And I came back.

• 1:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I land in LA and I go straight to [BLEEP] house. I land at like, you know, I get there like 1:30 or 2:30 or something, 3 o'clock, something around there. In the morning. I take a, no, in the afternoon, take an ice bath and boom, we start playing at 4 o'clock. Okay, we start playing for the start of the start of the big deal. It's like one day of poker. We play poker, we finish at like 3 or 4 in the morning. We're exhausted. Kevin shows up in a wheelchair because he had pulled his fucking abdomen.

• 1:39David Friedberg?

  Kevin Hart.

• 1:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Kevin Hart in a race with Stephen Ridley. He had a 40 yard dash with Stephen Ridley. Pulled, he pulled all his muscles like door. I think you made a 40 inch dash if it was Kevin Hart. That's a 40 inch dash. Anyways, Kev, Kev pulls all these muscles. Small legs. The door in the car opens and wheelchair comes and he wheels himself to the table. And I, so that was the beginning. I was like, this is like a, this is an odd way to start poker. We played till 4:00 in the morning, go to bed, wake up, do our thing, start the game again Thursday at 4:00. Okay. We play again till fucking three or four in the morning. Wake up, we go to Burbank at ten and we fight a Port of Ayar to for bachelor party. It's unbelievable. Okay.

• 2:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Ten bedrooms, huge compound on the beach, the whole nine yards. We start gambling on the plane. I just want you guys to know that we slept nine hours in four days. And we just kept playing and playing and playing. At one point, said, and this is exactly how the interaction went. Said, hey, guys, maybe we should go to the St. Regis for and then as soon as he's about to say dinner, I was like, shut up, keep playing. The point is that we played from the plane. In the car, we played on an app. Then we played in the house. The food was served buffet style. It all decorum just went away. We didn't do anything. We didn't leave that house. We didn't walk on the beach. We didn't fucking nothing.

• 3:07Jason Calacanis?

  You didn't put your feet in the ocean.

• 3:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I played until I landed in Moffitt on Monday afternoon. Can you fucking believe it? It's so it's like almost like, you know, six days straight of poker. I will say this. It's an incredible house. The food was incredible. I really wish I could have seen more than my bedroom and the poker table.

• 3:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I wish I could tell you that the Pacific Ocean was nice, but I have no fucking idea.

• 3:33Jason Calacanis?

  You pee in a bucket. You didn't even see the bathrooms in this house?

• 3:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, I had the doors open so that I could run to my room and pee and come back. I mean,

• 3:41Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, you don't want to waste time.

• 3:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It was the most D gen weekend I've ever been a part of. And, and then all of us, by the way, we're so exhausted. We slept for fucking 10 hours a day for the like the last three days. Oh, I know. And by the way, so smart, you know, you think it's a bachelor party. It's like there'll be girls, there'll be nothing. Not even the housekeepers were women. Everybody was men.

• 4:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's just all dudes, dudes cleaning house, dudes cooking, dudes, dudes doing this, dudes. Our one attempt to go off site to go to a dinner was like, nope. Sit down. The best. He's the best.

• 4:15Jason Calacanis?

  That should pay for some tequila research.

• 4:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He's the best.

• 4:18Jason Calacanis?

  My lord, I, I just wanna, I don't want to make this into tequila part two, but my email is filled with 8,000 word tequila. Missives and overviews from Friedberg and every tequila producer in the world. And my Twitter, my X, is filled with posts about Chamath's "Man in the Arena" comments. They have set off in absolute fury, as Chamath was alluding to. So the "Man in the Arena" tweet, I don't know the timestamp here, it looks like 10:22 a.m. I don't know what that is, Italian time, but Chamath decided to say, "I'm in the arena trying stuff. Some will work, some won't, but always learning. You're anonymous and afraid of your own shadow. Enjoy the sidelines." And this, of course, was to somebody who is criticizing a SPAC or something, and I think

• 5:03Jason Calacanis?

  this person had eight followers. And let's just go through the memes here. Here, somebody with the AI revolution has made a Chamath version of Gladiator, where is Russell Crowe and Chamath's DNA being mixed. Friedberg, I didn't know this was possible in DNA today, but I guess there is a new actor storming Hollywood, and it's Chamath Crowe. It's Russell Poli-Hopatia. Beautiful. I mean, what a great job that is. Great job. It literally looks like you. So great job to whatever mids did that in whatever mid software.

• 5:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Do you want to actually talk about the "Man in the Arena" comment and what the context of it is? Can we talk about that, actually?

• 5:40Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 5:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think people got upset because what I said was the truth. And this is no different than when I've said stuff before that's become a huge meme and a huge moment, cultural moment. Telling the truth, especially when it's so clear and so obvious, sometimes can really touch a nerve. And what I said is basically the following, which is that there are all these people, the four of us are examples, who are constantly doing things. And then we come into X, and we don't confuse X with the arena. You know, we don't do stuff in X, we talk on X. But then you go back and you actually do things. You start companies, you invest in businesses, you incubate ideas, you help founders get their businesses off the ground.

• 6:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Those are meaningful things, and success is never guaranteed. But there is a small strain of people who just violently either hate themselves or hate the fact that you're doing things, and then that you talk about them. And I think what this touched was just that in a simple nutshell. It forced people to confront the fact that, hey, hold on a second. Am I this anonymous rube on the sideline that just throws shade? Or am I actually doing stuff? Here, I just wanted to take an actual direct line of attack on people who are constantly blaming others for everything. And if you aren't trying and iterating, you're a fucking loser. Go out and try something.

• 7:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And whether it works or not, X is a great place to then go and talk about it. That's the cycle.

• 7:13Jason Calacanis?

  Sacks, your thoughts on the man in the arena?

• 7:15David Sacks?

  Well, look, I think, speaking of crazy politically motivated witch hunts, did you see this latest story today? That now there's a new government investigation of Elon. They're investigating him for supposedly Tesla was going to build him a glass house. Which he has basically said is ridiculous. It's not true. So the administration, you know, I guess to turn a phrase, people who live in glass houses shouldn't be investigating glass houses. You have the Biden administration now, the latest revelations is that Biden was using a pseudonym in emails.

• 7:51Jason Calacanis?

  For 5,000 emails?

• 7:52David Sacks?

  He was emailing Hunter Biden under the name Robert Peters. Why would you do that about Burisma? So this is how they were communicating. First Biden said he said he knew nothing about.

• 8:05Jason Calacanis?

  That's some serious CIA level tactics there.

• 8:07David Sacks?

  Yeah, well, first Biden said, remember.

• 8:08Jason Calacanis?

  At yahoo.com.

• 8:09David Sacks?

  First Biden said, I don't know anything about my son's business. Then it turns out, based on the sworn testimony of Devin Archer, who was Hunter Biden's partner, that Biden participated in over 20 phone calls where he would call in when they were in the room with clients to quote, be the brand. And now we find out that Biden was communicating with Hunter about Burisma using a pseudonym account, basically a burner account, under the name Robert Peters.

• 8:34Jason Calacanis?

  Allegedly, allegedly.

• 8:35David Sacks?

  Okay, but this is what the Comer investigations turned up.

• 8:38Jason Calacanis?

  It's certainly not looking good. And as you said, this is all partisan investigations.

• 8:41David Sacks?

  People who live in glass houses shouldn't be investigating glass houses.

• 8:44Jason Calacanis?

  Well, here's the thing, like. If you're going to evaluate, and listen, obviously I'm biased, but if you're going to investigate Tesla over this, like, people can buy and trade the stock however they want. Like, there seems to be some Biden administration, you know, like jihad against Elon. They're going after him for this and

• 9:04David Sacks?

  Totally. Well, no, remember, a week or two ago,

• 9:06Jason Calacanis?

  They wouldn't invite him to the EV summit. I mean, it's all just-

• 9:09David Sacks?

  Well, I think that's where the whole thing started, is that they wouldn't invite him to the EV summit because they're not a union shop. And then Elon spoke out about that. Remember, Biden introduced the CEO of GM, giving her credit for launching the whole EV revolution. So Elon criticized the administration for that. But I think the main reason why they don't like him is because what he's done with free speech on Twitter.

• 9:30Jason Calacanis?

  Twitter, yeah.

• 9:30David Sacks?

  This Glass House investigation is the second one. The one that happened last week is they're investigating SpaceX for supposedly screening out foreign nationals in the hiring process. They, they are saying-

• 9:42Jason Calacanis?

  Wait a second.

• 9:43David Sacks?

  The DOJ is alleging that SpaceX was hiring too many Americans and they needed to hire more refugees.

• 9:50Jason Calacanis?

  My head's spinning.

• 9:51David Sacks?

  Even though, even though there's a law-

• 9:53Jason Calacanis?

  Non-nationals, not refugees.

• 9:55David Sacks?

  No, refugees.

• 9:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No refugees.

• 9:57David Sacks?

  Refugees.

• 9:57Jason Calacanis?

  Wait, wait. A refugee is somebody fleeing a country because of political persecution. What, where did the term refugees come from?

• 10:06David Sacks?

  No, it is a term.

• 10:07Jason Calacanis?

  A refugee is somebody fleeing a country because of political persecution. Why would they use that term?

• 10:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The DOJ sued SpaceX basically for DEI footfalls. They said that there was not enough refugees and asylum seekers that were being adequately considered and being hired by SpaceX. The problem with that, as it turns out, is that the DOJ is not even allowed to hire asylum seekers and refugees.

• 10:34David Sacks?

  No, no. SpaceX is governed under the same laws, because it's a rocket company, as advanced weapons contractors.

• 10:40Jason Calacanis?

  Of course.

• 10:41David Sacks?

  And they, and the whole industry has been under the belief for many years that they could only hire American citizens and green card holders for these very sensitive jobs.

• 10:52Jason Calacanis?

  Of course.

• 10:52David Sacks?

  What happened is earlier- In the year, the Biden administration released what they called a clarification. Here, I'll post this, Nick. Can you pull this up? So the US DOJ Civil Rights Division released this, again, what they called a clarification, how to avoid immigration-related discrimination when complying with US export control laws. The export control laws is what governs rocket companies and weapons contractors. It's basically the companies that are involved in these sensitive national security areas. Until now, the government was pretty clear that you were only supposed to hire US citizens and green card holders, what they call US persons.

• 11:30Jason Calacanis?

  What's the motivation here, Sax? Explain to me the motivation.

• 11:32David Sacks?

  It's crazy, because they have this crazy idea that these companies, these national security companies, should be hiring more refugees and asylum seekers.

• 11:41Jason Calacanis?

  Wait, wait.

• 11:42David Sacks?

  Even though this is the definition of a national security risk. But the really crazy thing, so first of all, I think this update that they issued, this is lawmaking, okay? They called it a clarification, but this is a Biden administration making new law through an administrative agency. I think this is a crazy law. It's really the opposite of what we should want, which is more Americans getting jobs.

• 12:03Jason Calacanis?

  Sax, can I ask you a question?

• 12:05David Sacks?

  But what they've done with this lawsuit is they're going back, and remember, the key here is that that was only issued in April of this year. They've gone back and said that from 2008 to 2022, SpaceX is governed by this new understanding. So they're basically making it retroactive.

• 12:19Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, putting aside this legal lease here for a second, I just want to talk first principles. If you were a foreign government and you wanted to infiltrate some company like SpaceX or Andro or whatever, would it not be easier to send a quote-unquote refugee to America to get in versus flipping an American who already works there? It should be a much easier process. So this makes no sense.

• 12:45David Sacks?

  Right, because especially since all you have to do is go to the hole in the wall in Yuma, Arizona, as RFK Jr. showed, and you just mentioned the word asylum, like the cartel has taught you to, and all of a sudden you're a refugee, you're in, they give you a piece of paper that tells you you're going to be in court in three years, but you're in. Thousands of people, tens of thousands, millions of people have done this.

• 13:05Jason Calacanis?

  Also, another pragmatic question for you, Berg. How many people who are coming in as asylum seekers have the advanced degrees or background to work at Anduril, SpaceX, I don't know, pick a, pick an aerospace weapons-based company? Like, what percentage of refugees do you think coming across the southern border, or whatever border they're coming in, would actually have those qualifications? So, anyway, this seems insane.

• 13:27David Sacks?

  Yeah, well, and so Jake, you raise an interesting point, because I think one of the really unusual things about this DOJ lawsuit against SpaceX is that the remedies they're seeking are unprecedented. What they've said is, anybody who was screened out as part of this process was entitled to back pay, lost wages, since they were screened out. So, in other words, it assumes that every single one of those people would have been hired.

• 13:51Jason Calacanis?

  Would have gotten the job, when in fact, they probably hire one out of a thousand, or one out of 100 applicants gets hired, so it's absurd.

• 13:57David Sacks?

  Right, and if they could have gotten a job at SpaceX, as we all know, their bar for hiring is incredibly high, they probably didn't have damages, because they could probably get jobs at 10 other companies as well.

• 14:05Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, my God. The Biden administration is just like self-inflicted wounds here. This is so dumb. What a stupid approach.

• 14:12David Friedberg?

  Is the Glass House thing a misallocation of funds claim? Like, it's a securities issue?

• 14:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, it's a securities issue, that it was improperly disclosed, and that they may not have filed the proper taxes, because it would have been a paid benefit to Elon.

• 14:26David Friedberg?

  Right, right.

• 14:27David Sacks?

  But, I mean, don't you feel like this is a stretch? I mean, they are stretching every law they can to go after this guy. It's getting to be a little bit Trump-like.

• 14:35Jason Calacanis?

  I hate to bring it up.

• 14:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Let's be clear. Here's what's happening. I think that when Elon bought Twitter,

• 14:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  what effectively happened is the biggest psy-ops organization for the Democratic Party was taken away from them. And I think that they are increasingly feeling like, if it really does, if Twitter or X becomes a town square, that's really bad for them. And so, they can't shape people, they can't amplify the victimization, they can't amplify the... Government's gonna save you narratives. And so this is the sort of death by a thousand cuts approach that the blob has of trying to bring him down. And so you see a DOJ lawsuit over here. It's, you know, nominal, but whatever.

• 15:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Then you're gonna see, you know, the SEC investigation over $50,000 of glass. I mean, the guy is worth a quarter of a trillion dollars and we're sweating the $50,000 glass purchase. But the point is, the goal is to tie him up and to distract him and to basically take resources away, his mind share from working. Now, we all know him, so he's gonna do the exact opposite. Not gonna work. Alex Spiro is gonna have a job for the rest of his life. That's his lawyer from Quinn Emanuel. And Alex is gonna beat these things back. And generally Alex will win most lawsuits. I say most. But not all. But not all.

• 16:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But anyways, the point is that, the point is that, uh...

• 16:08David Sacks?

  Well, Tom, I think you're exactly, I think you're exactly right about what's motivating this and what's going on. But I'll tell you when it all began is that Biden had a press conference where he said that Elon needed to be looked at. Do you remember this?

• 16:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:23David Sacks?

  And specifically Biden said, well, I don't know that Elon's doing anything wrong, but I think we need to look at his relationships with other countries. So this was the signal to all of the ambitious apparatchiks in our law enforcement agencies who are looking for advancement, that he's the target. Go after him. Find something. Now, in fact, they couldn't find anything. So they look at his relationship with other countries and what you would expect is that maybe he hired some foreign nationals he shouldn't have. But it was the exact opposite. They didn't hire foreign nationals. So then they make that the crime.

• 17:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We'll get you on that.

• 17:01David Sacks?

  It reminds me of the whole Alvin Bragg thing where Alvin Bragg made that case that Trump was required by campaign finance laws to pay Stormy Daniels using donor money.

• 17:14David Sacks?

  But you know, you know that if they had found that Trump paid Stormy Daniels with donations, they would have charged him with that. It's like investigating the guy, finding he did nothing wrong, and then charging him with the opposite of what you expect.

• 17:27Jason Calacanis?

  No equivalency between these and Trump's behavior, but sure.

• 17:30David Sacks?

  It's the weaponization of the justice system. It's show me the man and I'll show you the crime.

• 17:34Jason Calacanis?

  Now, incorrect with the last two. I mean, he committed a lot of crimes, but we'll leave that off the docket for now. We're going to agree to disagree on that one. Okay. Just very interesting media-related story and finding.

• 17:46David Sacks?

  You're giving Robert Peters too much credit. I mean, Joe Biden.

• 17:50Jason Calacanis?

  Um, listen, Biden's gotta go. Trump's gotta go. We need a new platform. I have announced that I am supporting Nikki Haley and Chris Christie slash Vivek. Vivek. That would be my ideal ticket right now. I want the only person, Friedberg, who brought up spending in either party, Nikki Haley.

• 18:11David Sacks?

  All right, let's disagree on that, Jake. I'll move on. Let's not get distracted.

• 18:14Jason Calacanis?

  But I just want to also say, we were wondering who won the debate last week. Biggest increase, Nikki Haley. So apparently.

• 18:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I didn't see the polling data. What's it look like?

• 18:24Jason Calacanis?

  I think she went from two to nine, seven to nine in different, in different polls. So it's somewhere between she tripled.

• 18:31David Sacks?

  It was not a huge bounce. I think you went, I think you're right. She went from two to seven.

• 18:36Jason Calacanis?

  There was one, two to seven, one, two to nine. But anyway, putting it aside, biggest game.

• 18:39David Sacks?

  The Trump people are actually promoting it because they want Trump to be up against a bunch. They want to be up against a field, not against one. Yeah.

• 18:47Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. Yeah. Three people at 10 to 15% is better than one at 30. I'm probably correct.

• 18:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Could I just ask, because I haven't followed it this week, what was the set, like after it's settled, after the bounces and the spikes, Saxipu, what, where are we at now in the Republican race after this past week and having people having a chance to really figure out what happened in the debate?

• 19:09Jason Calacanis?

  Digest. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 19:10David Sacks?

  I think the consensus view just about is that the biggest beneficiary of the debate was Vivek Ramaswamy.

• 19:16Jason Calacanis?

  By far.

• 19:16David Sacks?

  Yes. Nikki Haley did get a little bit of a bounce, but Vivek got a much bigger one. He's much better known to the base now. And I think that it's Vivek and DeSantis are now more or less neck and neck for number two. Haley might be number three at this point, but I think it helped Vivek the most. Now. It's also true that he got a lot of criticism, but I think that's kinda where he wants to be. I mean, you wanna be the center of attention. And the people who are attacking him now are all these neocons. It's basically the whole military industrial complex. It's all the bought and paid for politicians and think tanks who, you know, want America to be in these forever wars. So I think he's being attacked by the right people and that's gonna help him.

• 20:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah. So Sax, you you see him like basically it's gonna be Trump versus Vivek if this continues.

• 20:10David Sacks?

  Well, it's hard to say. I mean, I think DeSantis is still in the mix. I think it's noteworthy that the top three candidates all have expressed significant either misgivings or opposition to our involvement in Ukraine. Uh, Trump, Vivek and DeSantis with varying degrees of strength have basically all opposed Biden's policy. And they are the leading candidates in the Republican primary. I think that's telling you something very important. Haley, Christie, Pence.

• 20:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Tim Scott.

• 20:42David Sacks?

  They all would like to do even more in Ukraine and that is not where the party is, so.

• 20:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's not where the country is. Nobody's there.

• 20:49David Sacks?

  One other piece of debate fallout that I thought was really interesting was that they interviewed Oliver Anthony. You remember the the guy who sings that song? The Richmond, North of Richmond? Because Fox News made the first question about his song. And he clarified what the song was about. What he said is the Richmond he's talking about, North Richmond, are the people in DC. It's the blob.

• 21:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It was the people on the debate stage, yeah.

• 21:14David Sacks?

  Well, but what he said specifically was it was the it was the people who got us into all these endless wars when I was growing up. It was the Republicans who did specifically. He was talking about Bush-Cheney Republicans, neocons. He made that explicit and clear. I'm singing more about like a lot of the older, super conservative politicians that brought us into endless war through my entire childhood.

• 21:40David Sacks?

  Those are Bush-era neocons.

• 21:42Jason Calacanis?

  He said, "The people on that stage is who I'm talking about. Don't use my song. This song is not a left or a right song. It's about the people. It was a song about his contemporaries," is what he said. And he's talking about both parties. And he said specifically, "It's the people on that stage I'm talking about. Don't use my song again." Okay, let's go on to the next story. There was a leaked document, and we had this come up last week. The leaked document was sent to Chamath, and it was about Tiger Global's struggles. It had a line at the top that said this was a spiked or a draft of a New Yorker story. I think a draft is the way they said it. And we had a little conversation about here. We decided not to publish it. We had a little discussion because we did not think,

• 22:24Jason Calacanis?

  in our private discussion, that this was a real story. High-stud grammatical errors in it. Sacks said, "We really can't publish something like this because it's slanderous, and we don't know the provenance of it." And on Friday, Tiger sent a letter to its LPs in response to the document. They wrote that they are being targeted, "targeted with a series of misinformation attacks, anonymously using encrypted messaging platforms like Signal, we strongly believe. These were written by a disgruntled former employee with whom we parted ways. Unlike the anonymous coward spreading this false narrative on the internet, you know who we are, and we are here and ready to answer your questions. Rest assured, our team remains highly focused on our core business, which has been performing this year."

• 23:07Jason Calacanis?

  So Chamath, just your broad thoughts on the Tiger Global non-story, a fake faux-story by a former employee.

• 23:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Chase is an incredible person. I've said this before. He helped me get into the business of investing. He seeded my first angel fund.

• 23:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I was pretty helpful, I think, in getting them on the cap table at Facebook many, many years ago, which helped them get going as well. So I think that he's a wonderful human being, and I've had nothing but positive things to say about him. Scott Lefter, I don't know as well.

• 23:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But he seems like clearly a hard-charging person that's achieved quite a lot. And so I'm glad that we didn't publish it or talk about it. And if there is something to be said, this story will be validated and people will get to the bottom of it. What is crazy is I don't understand what this document actually serves. Except, exactly as you said, to a disgruntled person who has absolutely no economics. Meaning, if you're an LP, you don't want this document to be out. If you're a partner that has carry, you don't want this out in the wild either. If you're a portfolio company, you don't want this document out in the wild.

• 24:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So I tend to believe that this is just a disgruntled person. Again, look, I've had this experience as well. So, which is that there are all kinds of employees who work with you. We try our best as leaders of organizations to compensate them well. But invariably, what I find are people overestimate their contributions. And people try to take way more credit. They try to take credit for deals that they've done, that they didn't actually do. They try to take credit for all of the internal workings. And then invariably, when the leadership decides that those folks aren't a good fit anymore, mostly for cultural reasons, and are exited,

• 25:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  they have a bone to pick and an axe to grind. And they try to sort of distribute misinformation to other LPs, to other GPs, to portfolio company CEOs. It's happened to me. It's happened to Chase. It's happened to Sequoia. It's happened to any of us that have been successful.

• 25:30Jason Calacanis?

  Axe to grind people, yeah.

• 25:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's just like, again, it's just another example of like, there are the people that are in the arena doing, and then there are the people that kind of get kicked out and get really upset and... Lose track of what's important. These people, instead of writing these missives, should be working.

• 25:49Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. I mean, how, how disgruntled sacks does a former employee need to be to put in this kind of effort to write a 10-page faux New Yorker-style exposé? And you were the voice of reason, I think, in our group chat and just saying like, "I don't even think we should talk about it in a meta kind of way." We weren't going to cover the details of it, but even a meta discussion of it, you put the kibosh on, which we would have been first, like, kind of highlighting this craziness, but you took a pretty hard stance. Your thoughts on it?

• 26:18David Sacks?

  Well, it was written like it was some sort of journalistic article, but a journalistic article has a byline. You know who wrote it, you know who publishes it, it has provenance, you know, therefore, who is liable if it's slanderous.

• 26:33Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 26:34David Sacks?

  This piece that was going around had none of those things, and therefore, my view was that we shouldn't discuss it. And my view is we shouldn't even mention it, because all you're then doing is drawing attention to something that, again, you don't know the provenance of, and you don't know whether it's true or not, and you don't know who's standing by it. Now, what's happened in the last week is that Tiger has issued a statement about it, and that statement was covered by the press, so I guess we can talk about the fact that they've had to respond to this. I'm still not comfortable talking about any of the contents of it, because, again, nobody's put their name by it. So why even put them in the position of needing to respond to it?

• 27:10Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 27:10David Sacks?

  Until somebody's willing to basically raise their hand and say, "This is what I think." The piece that was circulated was a mix of both business criticism or business issues-

• 27:20Jason Calacanis?

  And slander.

• 27:20David Sacks?

  And personal slander.

• 27:22Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 27:22David Sacks?

  So, I mean, are there business issues in there that we could discuss? Yeah, I mean, then they would be interesting, but until we know that there's some authenticity to it, I don't feel comfortable giving any attention whatsoever to this thing. Personally, I think even talking about it now is still kind of a waste of time.

• 27:38Jason Calacanis?

  Freiburg, any thoughts on it, just as we wrap here?

• 27:41David Friedberg?

  No, it's clearly a disgruntled person trying to-

• 27:48David Friedberg?

  Cast a negative light on the firm.

• 27:49Jason Calacanis?

  Just get a job, bro. All right. De-dollarization corner. BRICS added six new members, climbing to 11 total. And BRICS, of course, everybody knows. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. These four countries make up 40% of the world's population, 25% of global GDP. Joining the BRICS bloc are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina, and the UAE. New BRICS, and it's kind of being set up as like an alternative to G7, G8, I guess. New BRICS makes up almost 50% of the global population, a third of GDP. This is the first expansion in 13 years since South Africa joined. Sacks, you've got some thoughts on the BRICS and a little presentation here.

• 28:34Jason Calacanis?

  Inform the audience.

• 28:35David Sacks?

  All right. So, Jake, like you said, they added six new members. Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and UAE. This is on top of the original five members. Now, you've described this group of countries as mid. I don't know what metric you're using to make that determination. If you look at share of global GDP in purchasing power parity terms, and we can debate whether that's the right method or not, but a lot of economists believe that PPP is the right way to look at it. The original BRICS were 32% of global GDP. The new BRICS bring it to 37%. And there's a couple dozen more countries that have expressed an interest in joining BRICS, which would bring it to 45. The G7 is only 30%.

• 29:21David Sacks?

  And that number's been declining over time. Back in 1995, it was all the way at 45%, whereas the BRICS were only about 17%. You can see that decline or shift here in this chart, going all the way back to the 1980s. This is why I think a lot of Americans have this casually dismissive attitude towards the BRICS, is they're thinking that these countries are still living in the era of the 1990s of unipolarity, when the G7 was, you know, more than half of global GDP. But now, the BRICS are bigger than the G7. Again, in terms of PPP. The rest have risen and it's become a very substantial part of the world economy.

• 30:03David Sacks?

  If you look at global oil production, the new bricks now have 54% of global oil production. It's almost double what the G7 produces despite the US still being the number one producer of oil. We're not the biggest exporter because we use it all.

• 30:18Jason Calacanis?

  Just to add to that point, oil is of course a declining commodity with renewables and nuclear and people are going to rely on it less, so sure.

• 30:27David Sacks?

  I don't think renewables are anywhere close to be able to replace fossil fuels. If bricks adds, if bricks adds, we finish.

• 30:34Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, hold on, let me just answer to that. It's cheaper now, and Chamath can speak to this, to install solar, wind than it is to do a lot of the carbon-based fuels. So it actually has tipped economically where it's, I think, cheaper in 80% of cases, 85% of cases, to install renewables. Is that correct, Chamath, for all we're speaking?

• 30:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The cost of solar is effectively now the cheapest form of energy, you know, on a kilowatt per hour basis.

• 31:01Jason Calacanis?

  Great, okay, continue a second.

• 31:03David Sacks?

  Well, this isn't preventing Germany from sliding into a massive recession because they're not able to get cheap energy anymore.

• 31:09Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, they turned off their nuclear.

• 31:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That also supposes that you have the actual supply and to David's point, why Germany has such a difficult issue is because they turned off nat gas, they turned off the reactors and there's just not enough solar installed right now, so, you know.

• 31:23Jason Calacanis?

  It's also a cloudy country.

• 31:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What I just meant was more the levelized cost of energy, which is if you had an installation here and an installation there of two different modes of energy generation, solar is cheaper. But David is right, like, you know, it's still going to take some time for the proliferation of solar.

• 31:39Jason Calacanis?

  Agreed, yeah, we all agree.

• 31:41David Sacks?

  The US is already roughly energy independent. We produce about 20 million barrels of oil a day and we consume about 20 million. So we are roughly neutral with respect to the world. We're neither a net importer or a net exporter as of now. So oil is still going to be a huge, it's the number one global commodity. If BRICS adds Venezuela, Algeria and Kazakhstan, as they may do as soon as next year, they'll control 90% of all oil and gas traded globally. You're going to have an OPEC plus BRICS symbiosis because Russia and Saudi Arabia basically run OPEC plus. New BRICS is also really strong in food production. Five of the world's six biggest food producers are now part of BRICS, China, Brazil, India,

• 32:26David Sacks?

  Argentina, Russia. The only other one is the US. They have 46% of global population, 36% of global landmass. So my point is BRICS isn't just strong in global GDP, they're strong in the production of what are currently the two most important commodities in the world, which is oil and food. They also have influence over strategic trade routes. So if you look at where these countries are located, and I'm sure this went into the thinking of who they just admitted to BRICS, because they had a lot of choices, that's something like 26 countries applied, and these are the first six they've added. So they now control the Arctic Sea route, which is basically as the polar ice cap starts

• 33:08David Sacks?

  to melt in the Arctic, you're seeing a new ability to create maritime routes north of Russia, basically, from Europe to Asia. It's a much faster route than going around the Horn of Africa or through the Suez Canal. You have this international north-south transportation corridor, which is basically a combination of overland routes and some maritime that connect Russia, Iran and India. You've got Belt and Road, these east-west corridors, you've got the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, they're all now part of BRICS. And the point of that, I think strategically, is to bypass choke points like the Strait of Singapore, the Strait of Malacca, the Bosphorus and the Strait of Hormuz.

• 33:49David Sacks?

  So the point here is that the US Navy has very strategically over decades been encircling China with military bases on, you know, island chains around China. This is going to basically neutralize that whole strategy because China will have ways of securing its trade routes overland or, again, oversea going through the Arctic. So this has huge Geostrategic implications. The other big thing that I think BRICS is doing is they have this five to 10 year goal of allowing BRICS members to settle trades in local currencies. I think that you guys may be seeing it the wrong way. The goal here is not to create a new reserve currency. It's simply to create a way to bypass the dollar complex. They're

• 34:33David Sacks?

  trying to break the petrodollar monopoly. This is not an offensive organization. They're not necessarily trying to create a single alternative to the US dollar. They are trying to create a way to not have to go through the dollar complex in order to do their trade when they're trading with each other.

• 34:51Jason Calacanis?

  They would like to

• 34:52David Sacks?

  What China and Brazil are doing is a test case for this, where they are setting up a yuan clearing arrangement with Brazil.

• 35:01Jason Calacanis?

  And the goal, to be clear, Sacks here, is to have a voice versus the G7, which they feel they've, a lot of these countries feel they've been left out of, and to maybe not have as much dependency on the West and form this bloc that has a bigger voice in the world, right?

• 35:18David Sacks?

  Yeah, I would go a little further. I'd go a little further and say this isn't just about them having a voice. It's about them having economic sovereignty. They do not want to be completely dependent on the United States to secure their economies. And the big driver of this has been the weaponization of the US dollar.

• 35:37Jason Calacanis?

  And SWIFT, yeah.

• 35:38David Sacks?

  And SWIFT.

• 35:39Jason Calacanis?

  What we did to Russia with SWIFT, yes.

• 35:40David Sacks?

  So in conjunction with this Ukraine war, the US seized Russia's foreign reserves, which were in dollars. They've widely imposed sanctions. We're now sanctioning dozens and dozens of countries, and we are tactically limiting who can use SWIFT as part of this. So if you are any of the BRICS countries, you're asking yourself, wait a second, when I am doing business with another member of BRICS, why should the US be any part of that transaction?

• 36:08Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, they, in a way.

• 36:09David Sacks?

  They do not want that transaction to be mediated by the US at all.

• 36:12Jason Calacanis?

  In a way, it's like people buying crypto so that they don't have to deal with the US government. They have, you know, they have Bitcoin over here and they're not. Subject to the rules of the US dollar, right? It's like a way of opting out and having some independence. Yeah, I totally get it.

• 36:26David Sacks?

  They're willing to play by the US's rules when they're trading with the US. But they do not want to have to play by the US's rules when they're not trading with the US or the G7. And this is about creating that independence.

• 36:36Jason Calacanis?

  I think it's great that they have, that there is a competitor to the US dollar, because it makes us be more thoughtful about our spending ultimately and our balance sheet. What are your thoughts on all this, Cham?

• 36:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I have a couple. So if you go back to when the BRICS was created, this is like 20-plus years ago. It was first just BRIC and with a small s.

• 36:55Jason Calacanis?

  That was 2001, yeah.

• 36:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then it became BRICS with a big S when they admitted South Africa. I think the fact pattern in that organization is pretty poor. You know, when they first got organized, they tried to create a competitor to the IMF. I think it's called the IDB, the International Development Bank. That bank has not dispersed a single dollar in 23 years. They tried to create a joint program to lay undersea fiber amongst these countries, hasn't even started. So I think it's good that this organization is growing. I think the problem is that the actual amount of legislative coordination that these countries has been able to exhibit has been literally zero.

• 37:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And the problem now is that their regional rivalries are only growing. So China and India, which are the two anchor partners of BRICS, are literally in a land war. There's a border that they fight over with guns. You have a growing anti-Chinese resentment inside of both India and Brazil. Nick, you can just throw up this little chart. In India, they've blocked a lot of apps. They're about to block a bunch of imports. But India sees China as an existential threat. The Brazilian population, this is just a poll that the Economist put in, there's just a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment. So it's very hard to see.

• 38:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Folks that are such polar enemies actually working together, even if they're part of an organization. So I think that the the odds of legislative coordination in the future are probably less than what they were even 10 years ago. So I expect even less, and it's hard to expect even less when nothing has been done. And then the second is, I just look at the data, and if you look at SWIFT in July, you know, the SWIFT volumes on US dollars was the largest ever. And so it's kind of one of these weird things where I think that it's good that that organization exists. Don't get me wrong, because I do think that if they could. Oh, the other thing that I'll say about the BRICS, which is kind of odd, is that unlike

• 39:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  the G7 and unlike NATO, where you have democratic ideals that underpin the organizational framework, here it doesn't, because you have China, Russia, Iran, which are total polar opposites to Brazil and India in terms of democratic governance. And I don't know enough about Ethiopia or Egypt to say anything. So if they can get-

• 39:27Jason Calacanis?

  They're challenged states at a minimum.

• 39:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, no, no, I'm just saying they're not democratic. The way like NATO and the G7 are all democratically elected countries.

• 39:36Jason Calacanis?

  It's a very good point. They don't share the same operating system. The authoritarians and democratic nations put together.

• 39:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So then the last thing is, could you see a currency framework to compete against the US dollar? And I think the practical complexity is, if you take all of these other issues, land wars and import controls and growing Chinese resentment, and now try to boil that into an exchange rate mechanism where the renminbi and the rupi and the rei can be interchangeable, I think it's very difficult to see. Because if you look at the last time that that happened, the franc, the lira, the pound, sterling, the Deutschmark, that was possible because all of those other factors were not on the table. They were not fighting with each other. There wasn't this anti-resentment in one country to another country. They roughly held the same democratic ideals.

• 40:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So I think my comment is, I think it's good that BRICS is growing. I think that if they can get some legislative or policy coordination wins, it'll be great. The track record is literally zero. And the setup doesn't, to me, mean much yet, but hopefully that something happens. Who knows? Freiburg, your thoughts?

• 40:46David Friedberg?

  I think the arguments about the pragmatism of non-dollar denominated trade and the progress that's been realized or can be projected to be realized from current policy can be debated. What I think is most important is the signal that's being given, which is that there is a desire by a larger percentage of global GDP than is represented by the G7 to de-dollarize. And so while these intentions may be difficult to translate into policy in the near term,

• 41:25David Friedberg?

  that signal says a lot about the influence and perhaps the policy of the US in addressing and dealing with a lot of these countries and global economic actors.

• 41:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But I don't think they want to de-dollarize. That's not part of their pillars.

• 41:41Jason Calacanis?

  They want to increase trade is the stated mission and they want to collaborate on trade. That is the stated mission.

• 41:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Do you think the stated mission is de-dollarization or do you think the implicit outcome is de-dollarization?

• 41:55David Friedberg?

  No, the local currency support initiatives are implicit de-dollarization. I don't hear anyone saying we got to destroy the dollar because they're all very important trade partners. Most of those countries are very important trade partners with the US and very dependent on trade with the US. It seems less that it's about, hey, we've got to hurt the US and it's more about we have to be independent from the US. We have to be independent. Implicit in that is independent from the US. So, and I think that that tone, that signal says a lot about US economic policy and US foreign policy, that there's something off with the unipolarity, as Sacks has pointed out, that it's not de facto anymore, that there is intention here for there to be something different.

• 42:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, that's very healthy. That's very, very healthy.

• 42:42David Friedberg?

  And I think that that opens up avenues and paths that we're not thinking about today. That all of a sudden we'll wake up and we'll be like, whoops, and we need to be thoughtful about that.

• 42:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think that's the most powerful part of Sacks's Commentary is that it's a very firm establishment even of the non-unipolarity of the world, but the thing that the BRICS have to do is I would just encourage them, book a quick win. There has to be some policy coordination that they could do to prove that there's something there that's more than just a get together once a year. And that's been missing for 22 years so far. And that would have a really important, I think, effect. Yeah, I agree with you, David. I think that's the litmus test. That hasn't happened yet.

• 43:29David Sacks?

  I partially agree with that and then partially respond to what you were saying before, Chamath. So it's true that BRICS does not have an impressive record of accomplishment to date. That's simply true. However, recent events, I think, have provided the motivation for this group of countries to now try and get something done. In the past, it was just so phenomenally convenient to be based on the US dollar complex because everything's priced in dollars, easy to transact in dollars. And when you run a trade surplus, the US has an open capital account and you can just park the money in US treasuries. So there was never a reason for any of these countries to want to leave the US dollar complex until

• 44:10David Sacks?

  more recently, when again, US foreign policy has militarized and weaponized the dollar and to try and make it a coercive instrument to get these countries to do what the US wants. And all those countries now are bristling at that and they want to maintain their sovereignty. And so now they have tremendous motivation to get this done. Now, the thing they've already agreed to and done as part of BRICS is that when you join BRICS, you agree not to sanction any other member of BRICS. That is a meaningful commitment. And obviously, it has a lot to do with this Ukraine war and the fact that US has been demanding it for the whole world sanction Russia. And most of the world has not been sanctioning Russia. And that's why the sanctions have not been effective is the US has not been able to

• 44:55David Sacks?

  get that done. The US will not be able to get it done in the future with respect to at least the countries who are members of BRICS with regard to their trade with each other. And as we saw in the percentage of world GDP, BRICS very rapidly, once they add a few more members, are going to be at about 50% of world GDP. So the US is only going to be able to influence, call it roughly that half, a global GDP where the US or the G7 is a major trading partner. Now, what BRICS will be lacking is the way on a technical level to bring about the sovereignty they want. So they need to have a way to settle and clear transactions, and they need to have a place to park the surplus that's created for net exporters. And they haven't quite figured

• 45:40David Sacks?

  that out yet. So for example, there's a recent news item where Russia, which is selling a huge amount of oil to India right now, it was saying that they don't want to accumulate more rupees. So they've got to figure out, well, what do we do with all these extra rupees? So there's a lot of pieces to figure out here. And that is why they're saying this is a goal they have over the next five to 10 years. It's not one to two year timeframe, it's five to 10 years.

• 46:03Jason Calacanis?

  They should make their own euro. If they feel so strongly that they're a great voting bloc, make a euro. And then they could all put into it. And you can see what happens when a bunch of dictators and a long tail of failed states now share a common currency. It's not going to work. These countries are all each other.

• 46:20David Sacks?

  Yeah, failed states who share GDP has been going up like a rocket.

• 46:24Jason Calacanis?

  These ones are all very troubled states, by the way.

• 46:26David Sacks?

  Their GDP has been going up like a rocket, J. Cal. That's the whole point.

• 46:29Jason Calacanis?

  Inflation and democracy, human rights.

• 46:33David Sacks?

  Their goal is not to create a common currency like the euro.

• 46:38Jason Calacanis?

  I know. I'm just saying.

• 46:39David Sacks?

  China and India and Brazil are not going to replace yuan and rupees with some sort of new euro-like currency. Moreover, they're not trying to create a reserve currency that's going to be a currency for the man on the street. This is about settlement of global trade flows and getting out from under the US dollar complex.

• 46:57Jason Calacanis?

  My point, just to be clear, Friedberg, is if you were to think of it as a thought experiment, these, to Chamath's point, these are culturally and strategically very different countries. And I think what they have in common is that they haven't been included in the G7. And really, America's reaction to this should be to get India out of this and get them into the G7 and make that strategic decision that India is the most important country for us to have strong relationships with. It's kind of hard to put Saudi Arabia and to put UAE in this because they don't share the democratic principles of the rest of the G7. But we should be trying to, any democracy that's in the BRICS, we should be trying to include in the G7. That's the strategic chessboard that would make the most sense. And then you would just leave BRICS as all authoritarian dictators, and

• 47:41Jason Calacanis?

  they do not work well together. They always wind up doing what's in their self-interest.

• 47:45David Sacks?

  Brazil is still nominally a democracy.

• 47:48Jason Calacanis?

  No, that's what I'm saying. Like, getting Brazil, I just said, getting anybody who's a democracy and moving them towards democracy and getting them into the G7 should be our stated goal. That's what the West should do.

• 47:58David Sacks?

  Lula, who's Brazil's president, is one of the most ardent advocates for de-dollarization. Here's his quote: "Every night I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar."

• 48:10Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, they don't. They can...

• 48:11David Sacks?

  So maybe a regime change him, J. Cal, maybe the CIA will get rid of him.

• 48:14Jason Calacanis?

  No, that's stupid. That's a stupid statement. Nobody's saying that. I just said the exact opposite.

• 48:20David Sacks?

  There are people saying that, but...

• 48:21Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, not me. Just to be clear, you're putting words in my mouth out of the exact opposite of what I just said. I said include them.

• 48:26David Sacks?

  My point is, my point is, this is not a simplistic dichotomy between dictators and democracies.

• 48:32Jason Calacanis?

  Another way to think of it...

• 48:33David Sacks?

  BRICS now consists... By the way, South Africa is a democracy as well.

• 48:37Jason Calacanis?

  Just on a population basis, if you took India out and you got them into the G7, it would be majority, over one majority percentage of citizens in the BRICS living under authoritarian rule.

• 48:48David Sacks?

  But India...

• 48:49Jason Calacanis?

  Undoubtedly.

• 48:49David Sacks?

  Let me respond to that, and then also Chamath makes a point about...

• 48:52Jason Calacanis?

  And India is the largest country in the world now. I mean, that's the strategic important piece here, in my mind.

• 48:56David Sacks?

  I think India and the US will pull tighter together in terms of security because of a mutual desire to balance the power of China. So I think Chamath is right about that. However, India also has a very strong anti-colonial impetus to their politics, and especially their foreign policy. They do not like being told what to do by the West and the United States. And in particular, they do not believe, and many of their politicians have said this, "We don't see why we should have to sacrifice for you. We're going to do what's in the best interest of our own people." And that is why India has rejected enormous pressure from the US not to trade with Russia. India and Russia, as bad as the relationship is between India and China is,

• 49:41David Sacks?

  the relationship between India and Russia is very strong. It historically always has been. And Russia right now is supplying half of India's oil, and India has adamantly refused to play along with the US's sanctions.

• 49:55Jason Calacanis?

  And rightfully so.

• 49:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And rightfully so.

• 49:57David Sacks?

  Right.

• 49:58Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, they should make their own best decisions, yeah.

• 50:00David Sacks?

  Right, so I think a lot of people are thinking that.

• 50:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  India is not here to be a bootlicker to the United States. Fuck that.

• 50:06David Sacks?

  Exactly, exactly. So, look, I think India will pursue its interests. I think when it comes to security, they will align with the US to balance the power of China. But I think when it comes to economic policy, India will pursue its own interests, which I think has to do with maintaining their economic sovereignty.

• 50:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Hundred percent.

• 50:22Jason Calacanis?

  They need cheap oil. They need cheap oil. They're a developing country, right? They need, they need oil. And it's the lowest priced oil.

• 50:30David Friedberg?

  Another way to think about the framing is that the priorities for many of these countries for the last two decades have shifted, going from a state of economic insecurity, civil insecurity, government insecurity. And as you obviously establish systems and certainty in certain elements, the dollar complex that Sacks frames it was very useful in helping them with that transition. But as they start to move from emerging market to developing market to developed market, the priorities start to shift. And then the priorities become much more about sovereignty, independence,

• 51:12David Friedberg?

  institutional destiny, et cetera, that kind of start to make this more realistic. But maybe they don't have their, their ducks in a row at this point, but there's certainly a conversation or set of conversations that emerges when you're not worried about civil war, or you're not worried about economic strife. And you can now start to think on a global stage. And that's evidenced by the PPP data that Sacks shared, where, you know, you've seen them become a much larger percentage of global GDP share over the past 10 or 20 years. That's a good metric for that general opportunity to say, hey, I'm going to shift my priorities now. And that's why maybe now is the time to start to pay attention to what's happening and think about US policy to participate in, in some reconstruction that's necessary here.

• 51:54Jason Calacanis?

  I tell you what the most important thing here is. All this, all these conversations seem to come back to energy, Chamath. Cheap oil, Russian oil, Saudis, UAE, all participating in BRICS. And then if you look at nuclear, we just had a bunch of, I think it was senators, signing a bill, I think you might have tweeted it, Chamath, of support of nuclear. Twenty-one nuclear power plants are being erected at this moment in China, eight in India. The United States only has one, which is kind of an extension.

• 52:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  In Gujarat, actually.

• 52:21Jason Calacanis?

  Nuclear.

• 52:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  In Gujarat, India just turned on its first home-built one. So just literally today. So big, big news in India.

• 52:28Jason Calacanis?

  If we really want to have a great relationship with India, an incredible path, and with some of these other countries, would be for us to really invest in these new nuclear reactors and help people build them and help them get energy independence from Russia's oil. We should be building 50 reactors in India.

• 52:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I don't know enough, I don't know enough to know whether that's true or not. And part of it is that, like, whether we should be building "those reactors" in quotes, because I don't know what "those" means. Gen-two, gen-three, gen-four reactors.

• 52:59Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, any, any.

• 53:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Small modular reactors. My big comment in my thread is just more that I think that the regulatory support in the United States for nuclear is so constipated that it's impossible to get it done. So you could have the greatest technology in the world. I just don't see how the laws change fast enough and the zoning changes fast enough and the nimbyism goes away to make these things viable. And so that's actually the real question. I don't know if, you know, Friedberg has any...

• 53:26Jason Calacanis?

  Well, that's in the United States. What I'm advocating for here, Sax, is, hey, what if the United States' policy was, we're going to help India and some other countries.

• 53:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They don't need our help.

• 53:35Jason Calacanis?

  Really grow their independence.

• 53:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They don't need, they don't need our help. They just turned on their own homegrown nuclear reactor. We haven't done one in 20 years.

• 53:42Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, but our new, I guess we call them gen-two Friedberg. These, these new reactors, would that not be a possible path, if we're spitballing here, to help them get more energy independence from Russia? Wouldn't that be a great long play?

• 53:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They don't need our help. I don't think you're understanding. Like, it's like you're thinking like, we're like Michael Jordan and we're about to teach some kid how to throw free throws. This is not what's happening.

• 54:04Jason Calacanis?

  Any help would be helpful. I mean, if people are trying to build a large

• 54:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's not true. You don't, you don't, you don't need a num nuts to come and help you build a product, do you? You don't hire some two bit product manager to help you when something is scaling and working. India GDP is going to be 7% a year. They're off to the races. They're on a rocket ship. They're doing everything right. What, what, what can we do? We can help them rewrite their laws to make them Byzantine so nothing gets done?

• 54:27Jason Calacanis?

  So that zoning is impossible. Okay, as a strategy, if we had the ability to build nuclear reactors in other parts of the world, which is exactly China's policy. That's the Belt and Road strategy.

• 54:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think, I think you in a nutshell right now is summarizing why there's this dismissiveness, which is like, we can help them. But what makes you think you're better?

• 54:46Jason Calacanis?

  China has taken the same approach. I'm saying copy China's strategy, which has been to go to other countries. Listen, India might need less help. Other countries might need more, but we have this capacity. So what if we

• 54:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What capacity do we have? We don't have any demonstrated capacity in nuclear.

• 55:01Jason Calacanis?

  We have plenty of companies building these new nuclear reactors.

• 55:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  None of them work. None of them work.

• 55:05Jason Calacanis?

  What are you talking about?

• 55:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What do you mean, none of them work?

• 55:08Jason Calacanis?

  None of them work.

• 55:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay.

• 55:10Jason Calacanis?

  None of them work.

• 55:12David Sacks?

  When you talk to politicians in a lot of these countries, what you describe as Americans coming in and helping, they describe as exploitation.

• 55:22Jason Calacanis?

  Well, that's exactly China's strategy.

• 55:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Or neo-imperialism.

• 55:25David Sacks?

  Yes, they call it neo-imperialism or neo-colonialism.

• 55:28Jason Calacanis?

  I'm looking at it as collaborating on energy independence, broadly speaking. So you're being too dismissive of my concept. I'm asking you to think of what is a strategy.

• 55:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Do you want the Zimbabweans to fly in and mutually collaborate with you to build something in America? Would you be open to that?

• 55:41Jason Calacanis?

  Instead of trying to make jokes about me, I'm proposing a strategy here.

• 55:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm not making a joke. I'm just saying that

• 55:46Jason Calacanis?

  I have a very viable strategy here is, which is to look at what China is doing. And what China is doing in the Belt and Road strategy, which we've talked about here on this program, is trying to help other countries get more energy. How could we do that? We do have

• 55:58David Sacks?

  Listen to what Larry Summers said. Remember he said that when China goes abroad, they give money for infrastructure, bridges and hospitals.

• 56:08Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 56:08David Sacks?

  When the US goes abroad, we give a lecture.

• 56:11Jason Calacanis?

  Which is exactly, no, I'm saying to do what China is doing, yes.

• 56:14David Sacks?

  Stop this explosion of sanctions. We're now sanctioning dozens of countries. Stop weaponizing the dollar. Stop militarizing the dollar. Stop seizing other countries' reserves without any due process of law.

• 56:27Jason Calacanis?

  You're talking about Russia right now?

• 56:28David Sacks?

  They're entitled to due process of law, just like any other country.

• 56:31Jason Calacanis?

  The country that invade their neighbor?

• 56:33David Sacks?

  So you just get to steal their reserves?

• 56:36Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, I think it's a

• 56:37David Sacks?

  I thought we're a rules-based order.

• 56:40Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, I think economic sanctions are much better than, yeah, starting a war. Yeah, I think economic sanctions are a great strategy.

• 56:48David Sacks?

  We're talking about the seizing of another country's foreign reserves, which is what the US did.

• 56:54Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I would say that's an extreme thing to do, except in the case where people are invading other free countries. And then it's a probably a great choice.

• 57:02David Sacks?

  Yeah, this is the way that the administration reacted. What you're doing right now is making up the rules. That's what the rules-based order means to these countries, is that Americans will make up the rules. Two years ago, foreign reserves were something that was not part of American foreign policy. They were your reserves. Then this Ukraine war happens, Biden says, ah, nah, you know, those are ill-gotten gains, seize them. Those are the new rules. In other words, the rules-based international order is whatever Americans say it is. And then you run around saying

• 57:33Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, no, no. I think the entire, the entire West made this decision together to sanction Russia. It wasn't just the US. You're mischaracterizing that. And you know what? If Hitler was invading other countries, or Putin, or any dictator, I do think it's fair game to seize their resources.

• 57:47David Sacks?

  The rest of the world does not buy into this narrative. Seventy percent of the world does not buy into this narrative. They understand that the US courted this war.

• 57:54Jason Calacanis?

  And those are majority dictator countries.

• 57:57David Sacks?

  Seventy percent of the world's population does not believe this narrative about the Ukraine war. They understand that the US is at least equally responsible for this war.

• 58:05Jason Calacanis?

  Laughable to say the US is equally responsible for Putin invading another country. That is, you are a spokesperson for Putin if you believe that, that the US is fifty percent responsible. Okay, you know what? You can quote any polling you want. The US is not fifty

• 58:20David Sacks?

  The British countries believe this.

• 58:21Jason Calacanis?

  The US is not fifty percent responsible for Putin invading Ukraine. That is laughable and disgusting.

• 58:27David Sacks?

  Every country, every country that wants to

• 58:31Jason Calacanis?

  You actually believe the US is fifty percent responsible for Putin invading Ukraine? Unbelievable.

• 58:35David Sacks?

  It's not about what I believe, it's about what the world thinks.

• 58:37Jason Calacanis?

  I'm asking you what you believed. You said it. So do you believe fifty percent were responsible for Putin invading Ukraine? That's insane.

• 58:43David Sacks?

  I don't know what percentages I would describe, but I believe this war was easily

• 58:47Jason Calacanis?

  You had no problem saying fifty percent.

• 58:50David Sacks?

  Can I finish my point?

• 58:51Jason Calacanis?

  Go ahead.

• 58:54David Sacks?

  The way you're acting right now is exactly why all these countries want to create BRICS. They don't want to be subjected to this virtue signaling foreign policy by the United States. We've discussed the ways many times the US could have avoided this war. It didn't.

• 59:11Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, respectfully disagree. Putin's responsible for the war.

• 59:14David Sacks?

  This is why India does not want to be subject to the whims of people like you.

• 59:20Jason Calacanis?

  You don't say people like me. I think the West made the decision that we needed to take action against Russia invading.

• 59:27David Sacks?

  The US made the decision and listen, the West is...

• 59:29Jason Calacanis?

  We don't get to make decisions for the UK and France and Germany. We don't get to make their decisions. Respectfully, they make their own decisions.

• 59:35David Sacks?

  That's not really true. The US runs NATO... Hold on a second.

• 59:39Jason Calacanis?

  I think they would think they're sovereign countries.

• 59:40David Sacks?

  The US runs NATO because we pay for it. All these countries go along with the US because they like the defense and security that we provide. The US calls the shots and within the US, the Biden administration calls the shots. So basically, a handful of people in the Biden administration, Biden, Newland, Blinken, Sullivan, that's who makes the policy. And the rest of the world does not want to be subject to their whims.

• 1:00:05Jason Calacanis?

  Respectfully, I don't think Biden gets to choose what Germany and France and the UK do.

• 1:00:10David Sacks?

  Oh, I think Olaf Scholz is eventually going to be voted out and Macron is eventually going to be voted out because their people are waking up. But absolutely, they are the lapdogs of the United States.

• 1:00:20Jason Calacanis?

  We would like to go on to any of the other topics.

• 1:00:22David Friedberg?

  I want to talk about the summit next week. I'm really excited.

• 1:00:26Jason Calacanis?

  Right, we're coming in hot to the summit.

• 1:00:27David Friedberg?

  Kicks off next Sunday. Really excited for everyone that's going to join us. Obviously, we'll be putting out videos of the content as quickly as we can. J. Cal has, I don't know, Sacks and Chamath, if you guys are aware, but he is in charge of the parties. And he has gone well beyond budget on these parties. They're going to be outlandish. They're going to be out of control.

• 1:00:48Jason Calacanis?

  Show the three posters. Let me show you the three posters. The posters explain everything. Night one is our 007 party or our bestie royale, if you will. And here is bestie royale presenting on Sunday night, bestie royale. Wear your best spy outfit. You could be Austin Powers. You could be Daniel Craig. You could be Sean Connery. You could be Charlie's Angels, any spy you can be. And here is bestie royale coming at you on Sunday night. A little poker. Here is the closing night party. We're going out of order. Bestie runner, cyberpunk rave with the besties. Announcing Grimes will be DJing, so we will have Grimes doing a set at the Bestie Runner Party. Awesome.

• 1:01:31Jason Calacanis?

  It's gonna be fun. And so, wear your best cyberpunk. It could be Fifth Element, you could go with any cyberpunk theme. Can I just say, I give up right now because Claire's gonna win. Of course she is. Yeah, she's whatever. Okay, she's good. It's like, it's not even worth trying. Well, I'm just gonna come in jeans and a fucking t-shirt. Blade Runner every day. But we'll have some neon stuff for you to put on their sacks. Is it gonna be cold outside? No, this is inside and this is occurring at a film studio. So we have three warehouses at a film studio where we created part of the set of Blade Runner. Some incredible Asian street food will be done. That's awesome. It's gonna be great. And then, Monday night is gonna be absolutely blow the doors at it. Fast Times at Barbie High.

• 1:02:11Jason Calacanis?

  And here we are. Wear your best Spicoli outfit, your best surfer outfit of any kind, or... Sorry, will this be outside? This is gonna be outside. We have a tent for the VIP party. So the way it works is... You should, you should, well, we'll see what the weather is. No, it's gonna be warm. It's gonna be warm. So you can wear your bathing suit if you want. Just wear a trench coat over it. Chamath, if you're gonna do a thirst trap live and in person. And Mick will be DJing again, so the dance floor will be lit.

• 1:02:40David Friedberg?

  Just because we went well over the budget, we brought in some sponsors to help us cover the costs. I want to thank those sponsors, Eye Connections, which is actually running the app that we're using to coordinate the summit. Our law firm that does the legal work for us, Cooley, has agreed to sponsor. And there's a group of entrepreneurs from South Africa started a company called House of Macadamias. They make macadamia nut snacks.

• 1:03:03Jason Calacanis?

  Delicious.

• 1:03:04David Friedberg?

  They're sponsoring it. And you know why they reached out? Because Chamath and I eat salt and vinegar pistachio, so they made a salt and vinegar macadamia bag in our honor.

• 1:03:13Jason Calacanis?

  I love it. Oh, right. Just in vinegar, like this episode.

• 1:03:16David Friedberg?

  And then we've got a group called Pavees, which makes mineral-based sunscreen. And obviously, they heard us talking about sunscreen, so they reached out. And Brew Bird, which makes a coffee brewing device, came in and wanted to be a sponsor. So a lot of the sponsors came to us, having heard about us talking about something on the show. And it was very helpful in helping us cover the cost of the event, so I want to say thank you to all of them.

• 1:03:37Jason Calacanis?

  Thank you, guys. Thank you to all of your sponsors. Thank you very much. That's very kind of them, yeah. And then we're doing a high and low thing at [bleep]. We have incredible food trucks where we've elevated the food to like a higher level. And so we want to pair these food trucks with some nice wines. Um, and so they sent you a list of all the different foods and then Beau is doing the steak at the first night.

• 1:03:59Jason Calacanis?

  Roku sushi, really great sushi place in LA is doing the sushi the first night. So we got some really great vendors. And all the Asian street food in the Blade Runner party is going to be great. So Asian the last night steak and sushi the first night. And then these elevated food trucks.

• 1:04:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So what is, when is my year to do this?

• 1:04:14Jason Calacanis?

  Uh, you're 20, yeah, I'm your three, you're four. Yeah, I'm 24, you're 25.

• 1:04:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm just going to tell you in advance that I'm taking full, complete control. You, all you will have to do is show up. I don't want any intervention.

• 1:04:30Jason Calacanis?

  I don't need to be placed after this year and last year. I'd please leave me out of it. Great. I'm taking the Sacks approach. I'm showing up.

• 1:04:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Where are you going to do it, Jason?

• 1:04:38Jason Calacanis?

  I have three ideas.

• 1:04:39David Sacks?

  Where's the biggest grift? Brooklyn?

• 1:04:41Jason Calacanis?

  Exactly.

• 1:04:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Tokyo?

• 1:04:42Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I'll, I'll, I'll take you through it. Brooklyn, my hometown is one, so that's in my mind. Uh, my favorite city is Tokyo. You know, I love going to Japan, so that's in my short list. And then on the grift side, uh, UAE might be great. I have some partners there and so that could be amazing to do it in Dubai as a, uh,

• 1:04:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, Dubai would be nuts.

• 1:05:01Jason Calacanis?

  Dubai would be kind of crazy.

• 1:05:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  My friend Andrew Sassoon is in charge of opening, I think it's the Winds Casino there, or is he in charge of all the entertainment and nightlife?

• 1:05:09Jason Calacanis?

  That would be incredible.

• 1:05:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sassoon can light it up in Dubai.

• 1:05:13Jason Calacanis?

  Well, see, I, I also took Europe off the table because I had the sense that Chamath might pick a certain city.

• 1:05:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I may, I may, no, no, no, I may go to Oman. I may, but I'm going to go to do a destination thing, which is going to be,

• 1:05:24Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I had a feeling.

• 1:05:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Everybody will stay in the same place. It'll be a much smaller number of people and it'll be end to end curated and

• 1:05:31Jason Calacanis?

  Seven fifty? Five hundred? People?

• 1:05:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There'll be clothes, there'll be everything.

• 1:05:37Jason Calacanis?

  Okay. Four. The Sultan of Science with his sunglasses on. The dictator. And the architect. We'll see you all next time on All in Pockets. Bye bye.

• 1:06:12Speaker 04

  Besties are gone. That is my dog taking a piss in your driveway.

• 1:06:19Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 1:06:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We should all just get a room and just have one big Hugh Georgie because they're all just... It's like this sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.

• 1:06:30Speaker 04

  What? Your... Beep. What? What? Your... Beep. Beep? What? We need to get merch. Besties are back.