E5: WHO's incompetence, kicking off Cold War II, China's grand plan, 100X'ing America's efficiency

Follow the crew: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://bio.fm/theallinpod

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

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  Hey everybody, welcome to the All In Podcast. This is our fifth episode. As you know, we regularly publish this podcast, well, every two to four weeks, something like that. And just to give you a little idea of how well this is going, the podcast peaked at number 10 in Tech Podcasts, even though we never publish it. And we're only four episodes in. So tell your friends about the podcast so we can be number one and just dunk on traditional media, which is full of people who have us as the guests.

• 0:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Jason, number 10 on what, Apple?

• 0:33Jason Calacanis?

  Apple Technology Podcast. We literally raced. I mean, it went from like, we debuted in the twenties, then the teens, and then boom, we hit number 10. And I was talking to somebody in media who has us on as guests and I was like, listen, I formed a super team and we're now getting more traffic.

• 0:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm sorry, who are you talking to? Just like a mirror where you were just looking at yourself?

• 0:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, you are so fucking arrogant after that shitty video.

• 0:58Jason Calacanis?

  What video are you referring to? What video?

• 1:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh my god. Oh, look, you want me to say it to all the listeners? You want me to say it?

• 1:04Jason Calacanis?

  Hold on a second. Let me just.

• 1:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Somebody made, somebody made a cut of the billion times Jason mentioned he was an early investor in Uber.

• 1:11Jason Calacanis?

  All right, take it easy, Virgin Galactic slash Slack investor.

• 1:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I don't, I don't say anything. I mean, I have a lot of companies I can mention.

• 1:18Jason Calacanis?

  They just put it on the Chyron, the lower third, every time you're on. See, I'd be see everybody.

• 1:23David Sacks?

  My problem is I have too many unicorns to mention just one.

• 1:26Jason Calacanis?

  Right. So they just go with.

• 1:28David Sacks?

  I wouldn't know which one to mention.

• 1:28Jason Calacanis?

  They just go with PayPal and knows Peter Thiel.

• 1:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  David, David, I have a question. Why is there a picture of two pregnant men behind you on Zoom?

• 1:38Jason Calacanis?

  We now have the technology for men to be impregnated.

• 1:42David Sacks?

  This is a recent picture of Jason and I on the golf course. And I'm not sure who's more out of shape.

• 1:49David Friedberg?

  Guys, are you on the first hole? You look like you're about to collapse.

• 1:54Jason Calacanis?

  In fairness, in fairness, it's 106 degrees.

• 1:58David Friedberg?

  Two minutes later with a caddy right behind him and puts his hands under his shoulders and holds him up.

• 2:01Jason Calacanis?

  It's 106 degrees and 80% humidity. And I kid you not, this is the, this was the second and third time I played golf. This was the third time. And I'm going to just ask D Free, David Friedberg is here, of course, he's our science friend buddy. Uh, and Shamaa Poliha Patey is here. How many holes, I want one of you to set the over under on how many holes we completed each day? The maximum number of holes we completed. Four, okay. Shamaa set the line at four and you're taking the over. It was sacks?

• 2:32David Sacks?

  Five.

• 2:33Jason Calacanis?

  Five.

• 2:36David Sacks?

  And actually, and there was a, there's a, there's a red door every five holes. So that may have had something to do with it.

• 2:44David Friedberg?

  I took nine because I figured Jason was on his rush to the hot dog stand.

• 2:47David Sacks?

  Well, that's where, the red door is where the hot dogs are.

• 2:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, you know what? I said, I said these two, these two dorks with ADHD can barely make it an hour doing anything. And so if you think an average round takes four hours, then basically, you know, you get through four holes in about an hour and then you want to give up.

• 3:04Jason Calacanis?

  We got to the fifth hole. I am addicted to golf now. I, I don't know if you guys know this. You can gamble on golf.

• 3:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Jason, I, I, the biggest match I ever played was a, was a 500,000 million dollar NASA.

• 3:19Jason Calacanis?

  I don't know what a NASA is.

• 3:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I lost, I lost one and a half bets. I lost 750K.

• 3:25Jason Calacanis?

  What, what is a NASA type bet?

• 3:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  NASA, NASA is just basically a gambling bet on a per hole basis.

• 3:30Jason Calacanis?

  Got it. We, we had, we had just a ton of fun. Um, and it was great because this was the first time I've ever, uh,

• 3:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's the single best aspect of golf, in my opinion. If you gamble, it makes that game one of the most incredible games because people with mental fortitude who cannot play at all can show up and literally make. Hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.

• 3:50Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, we were playing for hundreds of dollars per hole. So let's just leave it at that. In fact, we're playing a hundred dollars a hole. So it was, it was just for fun, but man, I, I, I don't know about you guys. Do we have some, we knew, if we know somebody who's got a a membership in one of these places, I'd love to go back out again, but it was great fun and

• 4:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Come to Shadow Creek. Come to Shadow Creek in Vegas. We can play. It's probably the best gambling golf course in the world.

• 4:14Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, I'm in. So let's get to business. For those of you who are tuning in for the first time. Chamath Palihapitiya is my co-host here on the podcast. We've been friends since we both did a very brief tour at AOL. He then went to work for Mayfield, which is a venture firm you might not have heard of. He stayed there for about 27 weeks before going to work for Mark Zuckerberg. He secured the bag, then started his own venture firm. It grew way too big and he kind of got bored having to manage a hundred people. So now he's running his home office venture firm and doing two deals a year.

• 4:55Jason Calacanis?

  The one you've certainly heard of is Virgin Galactic, where he's taking people to space and he did a SPAC for that. IPO B and IPO C are lined up from what I understand, he'll correct me if I am wrong. And he'll be SPACing two more companies once a year, I guess will be the pace. Is that correct Chamath?

• 5:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Among other things, but yeah.

• 5:16Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. And then David Sacks has now become, and David Friedberg have become regulars. We've decided we're going to stick with this foursome. As it goes, because we're getting a really nice passing of the ball around topics and David Sacks went to Stanford with folks you know, like Keith Raboy, Peter Thiel during an era where they were a bunch of huge nerds who created a way to transfer money on Palm Pilots called PayPal. It didn't work until they decided to move it to email. I'm not sure whose idea, who gets credit for moving it to email Sachs?

• 5:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Um, Sachs.

• 5:59Jason Calacanis?

  Who decided like, hey, I don't know.

• 6:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sax's silence is his way of saying me.

• 6:05Jason Calacanis?

  Cause it was, it was an abject failure when you tried to send money between pompolites. Peter Thiel's original idea, but then somebody woke up and said, well, why don't we just do this over email?

• 6:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What he hasn't said, let me tell you the names at PayPal he has not said yet. Musk, Thiel, Hoffman, Levchin, silence, radio silence so far, David Sacks.

• 6:23Jason Calacanis?

  Uh, Jeremy Stopelman, Chad Hurley from YouTube, Jerry Stopman from Yelp. Anyway, he was part of that cohort. Uh, then he made a movie called Thank You For Smoking, uh, which was Jason Reitman's first film. Jason Reitman then went on to great success. That film actually made money. Sax was so absolutely depressed by how long it took to make one film and how painful it was. He then decided to go create a billion dollar company in under three years called Yammer, uh, which Chamath made a ton of money on and he cackles about regularly. Um, and then David Friedberg is with us. He is just the smartest kid at the table, uh, but somehow figures out how to lose tons of money to us in poker.

• 7:03Jason Calacanis?

  He created climate.com and, uh, sold it to, uh, Monsanto. Uh, he created Metro Mile and he created Itza, which, uh, failed horribly. But that just goes to show you, nobody remembers what Itza is, but they do remember his giant multi-billion dollar companies and he now is running his own startup studio, which is making incredibly interesting companies. Can I talk about the one that's related to beverages or not?

• 7:32David Friedberg?

  Not yet.

• 7:33Jason Calacanis?

  Okay. Anyway, there's a company related to beverages that is so game changing.

• 7:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I just said, no, you can't say it. He showed it to us under friend DA.

• 7:42Jason Calacanis?

  I just said, can I talk about the beverage company? Yes or no? I'm trying to give the guy a goddamn plug here.

• 7:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But he said, he said, no, so you can't do a plug.

• 7:50Jason Calacanis?

  I'm not doing a plug, but I'm teasing it, and I think he's literally sitting on what could wind up being the greatest, most successful company of the entire group, period.

• 8:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay, let's jump in. I want to talk about, um, David, you sold climate to Monsanto for a billion dollars back in the day when it was shocking to people, that amount of money. Um, still is, but you know, you were one of the first sort of quote unquote unicorns and then you, you know, were right in the front seat in Monsanto, probably could have been CEO if you wanted. I want you to talk to me about what is going on with Bayer, Monsanto, Roundup, and I want to use that as a jumping off point to talk about the World Health Organization.

• 8:32David Friedberg?

  Uh, so Roundup is a molecule known as glyphosate, and uh, it's been used as a herbicide for decades. And for decades, it was very well studied. The US EPA and the FDA and uh, USDA and global health organizations have studied it carefully because of its incredible uh, use. It is uh, it biodegrades, uh, the, the core molecule glyphosate biodegrades um, in a, in a couple of days. Um, and it is a, a very effective herbicide. So when farmers grow stuff, they don't want weeds growing in the field. And Roundup was a pretty effective way at getting rid of weeds. So you could get more crop per acre, more yield per acre.

• 9:12David Friedberg?

  Um, a long time, people thought that Roundup, like many of the traditional uh, persistent chemical herbicides was carcinogenic. And people were concerned about that. And as a result, there was a lot of studying done. In fact, before I sold my company to Monsanto, I spent a lot of time researching Roundup and glyphosate to make sure that it was safe, that I wasn't selling my company to what everyone was saying was the devil at the time. And from a scientific basis, I felt pretty comfortable about the uh, the data, the studies, the research that had been done. When I was at Monsanto, there was a bit of a political event that took place at the World Health Organization. The World Health Organization Runs a group called IARC, it's a cancer research institute that's part of the WHO. And there was a gentleman who was politically trying to get himself on that council to make

• 9:57David Friedberg?

  the case that glyphosate was carcinogenic. And years later, a Reuters reporter identified how he was able to get this council to disregard a number of scientific findings and studies, including the US EPA and other very wide, broad-ranging studies by international organizations showing that Roundup or glyphosate was noncarcinogenic. But the political process by which he was able to get on the council, get that data excluded from a study, and then get IARC to declare Roundup or glyphosate a possible carcinogen or probable carcinogen, then triggered a bunch of tort lawyers in the United States to start suing Monsanto and now Bayer, because Bayer bought Monsanto a number of years ago, for causing cancer.

• 10:40David Friedberg?

  And the data is absent, but the way the US court system works is if you have some probable definition and you can get a jury to say yes, and the probable cause was there's a probable carcinogen label applied to it by IARC. And this Reuters reporter years ago did a great job highlighting how this whole thing was kind of politically motivated, and the data and the science from a broad range of scientists, including the AAAS, a lot of scientific membership organizations, very definitively and clearly show that glyphosate is noncarcinogenic. But, you know, it was super troubling and frustrating. Now, look, this doesn't bother me personally anymore, I have no interest whatsoever, but it turns out that these lawsuits are now going to cost Monsanto and now Bayer, which

• 11:24David Friedberg?

  bought Monsanto, somewhere between $10 and $15 billion to settle this. And this is all a function of some political hacking that took place at the WHO. So for a long time, I've had a bit of a concern about how the WHO operates and the process by which they do scientific assessment and validation. And a lot of this has obviously become much more apparent with the coronavirus crisis and the response with respect to masks and treatment and so on. So that's a little bit of the background I think you're referring to here, Chamath.

• 11:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And so, go ahead Chamath if you want to. No, I mean, like, to me, I think that this is such an interesting thing, I wanted to use it as this on-ramp to the WHO largely because...

• 12:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's like the ineptitude keeps compounding in that organization. Um, I just read that we still don't have a definitive posture on masks from the WHO. And that they are finally ceding ground to the idea that the coronavirus could partially be spread in air.

• 12:24Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, this is so bizarre because

• 12:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's the middle of July, there are three million cases and half a million people who have died. And we are still there. And so, you know, when I saw that Trump pulled out of the WHO, you know, in this weird way, the way he did it was kind of cartoonish and stupid and, you know, kind of an insolent child. But the reason he did it was actually pretty reasonable because this organization um, is not a scientific or health body. It's an academic body and, you know, you can see this in universities where all of a sudden things tilt away from facts and it tilts towards, you know, um, all kinds of very, very, very small points of sort of like political capital that people fight over. And so these politicized organizations

• 13:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  uh, are incredible.

• 13:12Jason Calacanis?

  And to the point at which we saw, you know, this past week, the report that well over 250 of their own scientists who they rely on said, hey, it's very clear that this is an airborne phenomenon. Aerosol, tiny micro particles of aerosol. When people talk, when they sing, when they cough, when they sneeze, all this obvious stuff floats in the air. And if you have a closed air conditioned, you know, location like say a church in the south or a hotel or a casino. It's not a good idea to be in there and it's especially not a bad, it's especially a bad idea to take your mask off. So now the WHO is over two and Trump,

• 13:55Jason Calacanis?

  as you said, in his just horrifically comical way, can't explain, as we're very clearly explaining, that this is a political organization that is funded by a duopoly of superpowers that have many issues which we're going to get into today. Um, and we, it's, they don't have to say who the duopoly is. When you look at this, being our token conservative here and you see the Trump win, how frustrating is it for you that Trump's delivery and his persona, when he is right, and a person can't be wrong all the time, I'm proof positive of that, you have to deal with the fact that he does it in such a stupid, inane way that you don't actually get credit for the win?

• 14:37David Sacks?

  Well, you know, Trump is often the bull in the china shop and, you know, kind of disrupts the status quo by throwing a grenade into it. But frequently, there are good reasons why the status quo needs to be disrupted. And the New York Times laid out the case in a news story on who, the one that reported the scientist complaining that you were talking about. It was just a straight news story, but it almost came across as an expose because whose incompetence was laid out so starkly. The fact that they were slow on mass and opposed them and I think kind of lied about them. And then to

• 15:22David Sacks?

  be downplaying the airborne nature of the virus in favor of maintaining this narrative that it's spread through touching surfaces or fomites, which I think people are realizing now is much, much less likely. And so, yeah, you do kind of have to wonder whose side is who on. And the New York Times article kind of suggests why they do this, which is when they issue a declaration, they have to think about the ramifications in all of their member countries. And so what ends up happening is they sort of start with the policy implication or political result that they are thinking about and they kind of reverse engineer the science. And, you know, the article talks about how

• 16:07David Sacks?

  You know, if WHO were to come out and and sort of be very clear about airborne transmission, that could affect spending or, you know, political budgets in all these different countries. And so they've been reluctant to do that. So, yeah, it's a it's a it's a organization that's sort of political first and then reverse engineers the science to fit that. And

• 16:26Jason Calacanis?

  You know what this reminds me of? It's like when you have giant investors on the board of a company, the management team comes out and now they've got to present like a pivot or an acquisition or whatever it is. And they're thinking, well, okay, we've got this funding source. These people own 26% of WHO. This person owns 22%. We've now got to present it to them. And what are the downstream ramifications? Luckily, there's an alignment in a single company. The alignment is we all want the company's share price to go up. But here in the world, it is not equally aligned. What is in China's best interest, what's in the EU's best interest and what's in America's best interest might be radically different. And they are literally funding them, correct, Sharmar?

• 17:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, there's a they are there. There's a there's this thing called Sayers' Law, right? Which many of us kind of have seen play out, which is that academic, the saying is something like academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small. And in this interesting way, the WHO has lost the script because they fight over politics. Who gets to say what? Who's being positioned? And they lose sight of the real downstream, in my opinion, the downstream implications of the things that they have. Because if they actually just thought from first principles and tried to be a truly independent body that said, we are going to take the capital we're given from the countries that

• 17:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  are supporting us and actually do the best and actually publish like what is the best thing to do? For example, in the case of coronavirus and be definitive and iterate, we'd be in a much better place. But a lot of what has allowed the posture around coronavirus to transition from a health issue to a political issue in many ways has been because organizations like the WHO and the CDC are political bodies and they're academic bodies. And so the incentives of the players within these organizations are not to necessarily, you know, project the right public health positioning. They are at some level to think about their own

• 18:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  career trajectory and the political machinations that happen within the organization that are blind to normal citizens like us that just consume the output. And so when you see something like an inability to give a definitive ruling on things like masks or, you know, other things, you just kind of scratch your head and wonder, is it that they're dumb? And the answer is no, it's not that they're dumb. They're just motivated by very different things than public health all the time.

• 18:58Jason Calacanis?

  Which might be including keeping their jobs. And the fact that we had David Friedberg on this podcast, and then Sacks, you know, chiming in after it, surely after just definitively saying first principles, why wouldn't you wear a mask? What is the possible downside? And Friedberg saying, hey, I'm getting some testing equipment. We should just be doing mass testing. Friedberg, when you look at this, and how when we started the podcast, I think in March or April, we were very clear as people not in the, with the exception of yourself, not in the healthcare space in any way, why can't they, what would be a better structure for the WHO? And or is there a better structure than just a bunch

• 19:39Jason Calacanis?

  of, you know, randos like us on a podcast, very easily seeing through first principles that a 79 cent mask is a no brainer, that getting testing, mass testing and recording it every day and doing sampling? What is the better solution here for governance or for dealing with these type of, you know, really large problems and ones that kind of have a clock? That's the other thing about this problem is this problem came with a countdown clock. You had to make a really fast decision in order to protect yourself and we made a really drawn out decision and now we're paying the price.

• 20:17David Friedberg?

  I mean, I think under the circumstances you outlined, you know, you need leadership, right? So you need probably a country or some entity to step forward and lead with respect to being proactive and aggressive with action because any multinational oversight body or political body is going to be kind of, you know, molassesed out. It's going to be stalled out with the processes and the competing interests as you guys have highlighted. So the libertarian argument would be let the free market drive outcomes and, you know, some folks will succeed and some folks will fail. If we want all of humanity to succeed, then, you know, the likely scenario is what we've seen with world wars and such, which is you need leadership.

• 20:59David Friedberg?

  You need one organization or one entity or one national body to step forward and say this is what we're doing and we're going to lead. And the world was absent leadership over the last six months. Historically, the US has filled that void, but that certainly wasn't the case this year. And so, you know, it seems to me like you're not going to find a political governing system, multinational governing system that's going to be successful in solving these kind of existential global problems overnight. You really need someone to step forward and the US is kind of leaving a bit of a gap. This might be a good segue because the question next is who's going to fill that gap going forward?

• 21:35Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, so let's make that segue. When you look at the duopoly that currently is, I would say on par now, I don't think we can say we're the superpower anymore and that China's an up and coming superpower. It's pretty clear they are an equal superpower. I don't know if anybody here disagrees with that right now, but if we have an edge, it's a very minor one at this point. How do we look at health problems with an authoritarian country where individuals do not vote and there is a god king who has recently said, I will be the god king for the rest of my life for sure? How do we manage this relationship with China? Friedberg.

• 22:16Jason Calacanis?

  And then we can pass it over to Sacks.

• 22:17David Friedberg?

  From a healthcare perspective?

• 22:19Jason Calacanis?

  Let's start there for sure, and then whatever other major issue you would like to then segue into, climate change comes to mind, trade comes to mind, human rights comes to mind.

• 22:31David Friedberg?

  I would imagine the biggest, the argument that your geopolitical commentators would make, who are probably more experienced and experts in this than any of us, would probably relate to, you know, the degree of influence. You know, the question of who has the most influence globally may be kind of the way that you define who has the most power globally. And so, you know, in the current circumstance, you can look at trade balance between China and other nations, you can look at trade balance between the US and other nations, and you can look at the balance sheet, the assets and the debt owed. And you're right, I mean, a lot of people are making the case that we're kind of reaching a point of parity through some metric or some set of equations here. And at this point, there's going to be a

• 23:15David Friedberg?

  jockeying for leadership globally in terms of influence. And so that will have ramifications with respect to things that are global in nature, like global pandemics. And I think this is a really kind of key flash moment, a flashpoint moment for us, because we are facing that, you know, we did face that circumstance this year, and obviously, we took the raw end of the deal.

• 23:38Jason Calacanis?

  We failed most. I mean, we all concur on that. We did worse.

• 23:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  China is just like an extremely good example of focusing on strategy while the rest of us focused on tactics. You know, the last 20 years have been punctuated by the United States spending literally trillions of dollars on endless wars and unnecessary military infrastructure and all kinds of wasted pork barrel spending and programs that just have resulted in zero ROI for the United States and its taxpayers and citizens.

• 24:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And instead, what did China do? They basically went around the world and they used the equivalent amount of dollars. And they said, every war that the United States fights is a war that we can essentially be silent on. Let them do that dirty work. And what we will do instead is we will go and basically buy and own large swaths of Southeast Asia, large swaths of Africa, which is, you know, the emerging labor pools that will drive GDP forward for us. And what they've essentially created is not necessarily a voting bloc, but a productivity bloc. And that's what's so, you know, interesting and also really important to understand, which is that China is fighting not an ideological war. They're fighting an economic war.

• 24:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And it is one where they are buying, you know, member states to join them with their capital. And so we've kind of like not seen it, and it's unfortunately happened right under our nose. So now what we need to do is, we need to sort of wake up to this reality and have a very aggressive point of view around what, you know, matters. So, and so by the way, this is also why, and I'll hand the mic to David after this, but this is also why I think like, we have completely wasted so much time focusing on, you know, all these other countries that just don't matter anymore. And, you know, I don't say that emotionally, I just say it practically, like every single minute we spend on Russia is just a wasted time.

• 25:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is a, you know, country that just won't fundamentally matter in the world over the next 15 to 20 years. Large swaths of Europe, you know, they're ideologically aligned, but they just don't matter. The United States has to develop a really specific strategic viewpoint on the fact that it is us versus China, whether we like it or not. And it starts... In things like public policy, but it stretches to everything, including capitalism, technology, intellectual property, healthcare, and this war will not be fought on the ground with guns. It'll be fought with computers and it'll be fought with money.

• 26:21Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, loans.

• 26:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And I think we need to realize that.

• 26:23Jason Calacanis?

  Loans and joint ventures. Sax, what are your thoughts here on this coming Cold War? You know, we, we, we, we beat the Russians in the Cold, the last Cold War. And to Chamath's point, the only thing they have really going for them is their incredibly sinister KGB-style information warfare and the decreasing value of their oil and irrelevance, which is why they have to do things like mess with us on social media. I mean, literally, I feel like it's like the last couple of dying techniques they've got in their playbook from, you know, the eighties as the KGB. And they got a KGB agent running the country.

• 27:02Jason Calacanis?

  When we look at China, how do you frame our relationship with them and what would be the best practice for the next 10 years, midterm?

• 27:13David Sacks?

  Well, I think, I think what you've seen just really in the last couple of weeks is a critical mass of scholarship and punditry declaring that we are in a new Cold War with China. And I think, you know, of all the momentous news events that have happened this year, from COVID to, you know, the riots and protests, I, I think that the most newsworthy and historically important event will be the beginning of this and the recognition that we are now in Cold War II.

• 27:47Jason Calacanis?

  So TikTok.

• 27:48David Sacks?

  TikTok is part of it. I mean, COVID.

• 27:51Jason Calacanis?

  It's paradoxical about a dance app is literally the tip of the spear.

• 27:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, I mean, I think, I think TikTok is sort of at the fringes. I think the, the Cold War II, to David's point, started when the United States basically embargoed Huawei from getting access to 5G technology. And I know that sounds like a very sort of like thin thread that most people don't understand and we can unpack it in a second, but in my opinion, that. Sort of, you know, at the beginning of this year was when I started to pay attention and try to understand this issue more because it seemed like, wow, that's a, that's a shot across the bow and declaring China as the clear, uh, you know, sort of the clear and present danger for American sovereignty.

• 28:29Jason Calacanis?

  And the NBA and TikTok being cultural ramifications of that, which are different.

• 28:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Honestly, Jason, TikTok's irrelevant. Who cares?

• 28:35David Sacks?

  Well, it's, it's.

• 28:36Jason Calacanis?

  Is it irrelevant, Sax?

• 28:38David Sacks?

  Well, what TikTok and Huawei have in common is that the, the sort of proxy battles of Cold War II will be fought, uh, between these sort of client corporations. Whereas, you know, Cold War I, you have these, you had sort of these proxy, these sort of client states fighting these proxy wars. Uh, Cold War II, you have more of these like client corporations fighting these, um, proxy wars. Um, so, you know, it's, um, that, that's the sense in which I think they're, they're related. Um, the, what, what TikTok shows is a, a company that's desperately trying to maneuver so they don't become one of the first economic casualties of Cold, Cold War II. They appointed a American as CEO. They've,

• 29:23David Sacks?

  um, pulled out of Hong Kong, so they're not subject to, um, to, to those regulations. And they're desperately maneuvering so they don't get banned in the United States. They want to preserve their market access. Uh, but I think there's a very good chance that they will get shut down in the US.

• 29:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They've been, they've been shut down in India and today is July the 10th and right before we went on, uh, the breaking news was that Amazon basically asked all their employees to delete, to delete TikTok because of a security threat. So it's happening. I think that TikTok, unless they basically have ByteDance sell under 20 or 30% of the company and get it into the hands of Americans, um, it will get banned. And I think that there will be a massive destruction in enterprise value. But can I tell you why TikTok doesn't matter? Or doesn't matter as much? I think, David, you're right, that it's sort of like collateral damage. It, it almost is like, you know, it, it'll exist, but whatever. Uh, the Huawei thing, in my opinion, is so important because it shines a light on two things.

• 30:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The first is that, you know, what happened essentially is the United States told TSMC, you know, you cannot basically give Huawei access to the 5G chipsets and the 5G technology that they would use to essentially kind of like, you know, implement their spyware and then sell it into Western nations, effectively. And so then what it does is it puts China in the posture of having to figure out, how do they get access to this stuff? And, you know, the most obvious answer is to invade Taiwan and take over TSMC. And, you know, why would they do that? Well, obviously, that has huge geopolitical ramifications, but they could only do that, again, going back to the first comment, is because they've already bought so many nation-states into their productivity block that it's still, on a balance, a worthwhile trade.

• 31:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And it allows them to solve their version of Taiwanese sovereignty completely and definitively and basically say, "Look, we've now solved Hong Kong. You know, Macau was already solved, and now we're going to solve Taiwan and put the whole thing to bed, and now we have access to this critical technology that we need." So that's why I think sort of like what happens with Huawei, sort of what happens with TSMC, what happens on 5G is so important. Because if you're going to force China, you know, to basically have to buy Western technology in order to get access to a critical piece of, you know, internet infrastructure, they're going to be put to a very, very difficult test about what they have to do.

• 31:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then they will have to be much more transparent on the global stage about what their ambitions really are and how far they're willing to go. And I think that's, you know, that's a lot more important than, you know, a bunch of kids dancing to short videos.

• 32:04David Sacks?

  Well, and just to add to that point, you know, so I think Jarmath is right that these sort of chips, the 5G chips, these other chips, they're the new oil, you know, in terms of their geopolitical significance. You know, obviously, all of our technology, our iPhones, our advanced weaponry, it's all based on these chips, and 70% of them are fabricated in Taiwan.

• 32:34David Sacks?

  And I think, you know, one of the huge blind spots of American trade policy over the last thirty years is is kind of not to notice that that this key technology that's really the substrate for all of our technology, for our economy, has now been many, it's now been moved and manufactured, you know, in Taiwan, whose sovereignty China does not recognize, and is constantly, you know, threatening with the risk of being of being annexed. So, you know, we have a tremendous vulnerability there. And, you know, at the same, you know, we finally, after about forty or fifty years of declaring that we'd be energy independent,

• 33:19David Sacks?

  we've achieved that. But now we have this new dependency on these chips that

• 33:23Jason Calacanis?

  And pharma and manufacturing. I mean, and we and we it seems like now manufacturing, we're starting to realize, hey, Elon was right. We need to be able to build our own factories. And guess what? American spirit, American ingenuity, American focus, American capitalism. We can do it. We have the wherewithal to do it. There's no reason we cannot make these chips here. Sorry, I don't buy it that we're we're going to be this dependent forever. We just need to have the will and the leadership to say, we're going to do this, whether it costs us an extra fifty cents per chip. And

• 33:58David Sacks?

  Well, the fabrication of these chips is incredibly complicated. I mean, they're they're basically

• 34:05Jason Calacanis?

  So let's buy the companies.

• 34:06David Sacks?

  They're microscopic. And it takes years, like several years to set up the, you know, the facility to do this kind of fabrication.

• 34:14Jason Calacanis?

  Why don't we buy those companies now? Why don't we just take it to Chamath's point, which was very clear, which is, hey, this is an economic, this is a ledger, this is, you know, a check writing exercise to win this war. Why don't we take out our checkbook and buy fifty percent of these companies now and put them on the NASDAQ if they're not already there?

• 34:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It requires real leadership. At the end of the day, it needs to be led by the United States government. The reality is that, you know, lithography has gotten so advanced. I mean, like, look, I have, you know, companies that are, you know, taping out chips at like seven nanometer, and I don't, I don't have supplier diversity. I don't know. I don't, I can't basically choose, you know, nine folks to bid it out against, of which, you know, five are domestically in the United States. There are two. Right, and so you know, you kind of just deal with the complexity or the lack of diversity that we have. And Jason, your point is exactly right, which is the first and most important

• 35:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  decision here is one that's philosophical, which is again saying that era of efficiency at the sake of all else is over. And we are now moving to an era of resilience, which inherently is more inefficient. But in that inefficiency, we will rebuild American prosperity because it rebuilds American industry and it rebuilds American jobs. There's another example that I want to build on David's point, which is, let's all believe and attest that we all care about climate change for a second. And we all want the world to be electrified. Okay. Well, electricity and electrification requires two very, very basic inputs. Okay?

• 35:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  One is a battery. And the second is an electric motor, right? Makes sense so far? Yep. Well, inside an electric motor, there is one critical thing that you need to make it work, which is a permanent magnet. The permanent magnet spins around and that's how an electric motor works. Okay. Why is that important? As it turns out, that permanent magnets need special characteristics that are only provided by a handful of very, very specific rare earth materials that we need to mine out of the ground and refine. Those materials actually exist in many places, including the United States. Yeah, we stopped mining for them.

• 36:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But, right now, China controls 80% of the supply of rare earths. They can choose how they price it. They can differentially price to their own companies, which means that the battery and engine manufacturers inside of China can now lead on electrification, which means China can actually lead on climate change before the United States can, unless we have leadership that says... At a governmental level on down, we are going to make this a priority. We're going to fund it. We're going to make sure that there are onshore mines. We're going to make sure that those mines are clean. We're going to build a supply chain domestically. And we're going to subsidize. This is what governments do best. It's not act, it's just incentivize on things like climate. So, I don't know, Friedberg has spent a lot of time on climate change. So he has, he has probably a lot of ideas on this.

• 37:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But whenever you look at any of these things, health, climate, food, it all comes down to the United States versus China, strategy versus tactics. Friedberg?

• 37:34David Friedberg?

  I'm not, I'm not sure, um, I'm not sure. I, I think that the Chinese action is as deterministic as we think it is, or as we kind of frame it, where it's China's got this grand plan. They're going to beat the US and they're going to control things and make decisions that, that hurt us. I think a lot of this is, um, China, if you think about it less about black and white, there's a continuum. And the continuum is one of influence and one of creating, uh, an environment whereby these things can happen. So China, for example, made capital readily available for, um, the agriculture industry, uh, to be able to buy, uh, buy assets. And so the companies inside of China, which aren't controlled,

• 38:18David Friedberg?

  the Chinese government isn't telling them what to do. Uh, the Chinese government has set a policy that enables them to increase their prosperity and as a result, increase the prosperity of the Chinese people. Um, you know, when I was at Monsanto, we were, we bid for the largest ag chemicals company in the world, based out of Switzerland, it's called Syngenta. And we bid like $44 billion to buy this company. And the, the largest chemical company in China called ChemChina, uh, bid $47 billion and, and acquired the business. And they now own the largest ag chemicals company in the world. China also bought Smithfield and they bought, they put a bunch of people in Canada.

• 38:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Hey Friedberg, how much of that money do you think came from the CCP?

• 38:58Jason Calacanis?

  And what involvement do you think the CCP had in putting their thumb on the scale of making sure that transaction went that direction?

• 39:03David Friedberg?

  Look, I mean, ultimately, wherever the the capital comes from, it's no less equivalent than what you would see in the United States, where treasuries fund the central bank, which funds banks, which fund lending to corporations, which ultimately make

• 39:18Jason Calacanis?

  But do you think the leadership said, hey, we're winning this at all costs?

• 39:23David Friedberg?

  So here's what happened. In 2007, there was a CCP internal doctrine that was published, and it's now reasonably well-known, and there was a speech that was given that started this aggressive action in agriculture. And as a result, Chinese citizens started moving to Canada and buying farmland in Canada. They started moving to Australia, buying farmland in China. They started building these facilities in Argentina, and Brazil, and Africa. And the Chinese government set out, you know, a strategic objective, and provided the capital, and enabled industry and people to go after pursuing these interests. But the CCP didn't say, here's the roadmap. It's not like, here's the specific plan for what we need to do. They had a general, high-level kind of point of view that that I think drove all that action and all of that behavior. And so, you know, it's, I would say, it's not as

• 40:07David Friedberg?

  perhaps coercive as we might think it is in terms of the CCP wanting to target and attack US. They're trying to increase their influence around the world. They're trying to increase their own security and increase their own prosperity. And at some point, there's only so many resources globally. There's only so much land, so much magnets, that, you know, they, and they're winning in the markets. And, you know, we're kind of crossing that threshold now, where they're actually like a competitor.

• 40:31Jason Calacanis?

  You know, the only difference between this is, and I couldn't disagree with

• 40:34David Friedberg?

  But my, sorry, my point is, I just don't want to frame it as like, I just think it's a misstatement to frame it as China has this grand plan to come after the US, and they're evil, and that's what they're doing. I mean, you know, they

• 40:44Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, see, this is where I think you're completely wrong, David, respectfully.

• 40:48David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 40:49Jason Calacanis?

  In that I believe this is an ideological war. And if you, you can't diminish what's happening in Hollywood, TikTok, and the NBA, and other sports, where China is explicitly saying, if you put a villain in our, in a movie, if you talk about Tibet in a movie, We are going to not play that movie and we're going to start funding your movies. And so they are absolutely using the vector of culture and Chamath, I think you're also wrong here. Where you're saying, oh, TikTok's not important. TikTok is something that a generation of kids absolutely are in love with and those kids are like, hey boomers. Stay out of our platform. And so, and the ideological issue here, Free Bird, which I think that you're underplaying is.

• 41:35Jason Calacanis?

  They want to win and they want to spread their ideology, which is the ideology of authoritarianism. They are not going to win Africa and then suddenly say, you know what would be great for Africa? If we made the entire continent democracies. That's not in their best interest.

• 41:54David Friedberg?

  How's it different than Trump tweeting?

• 41:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, Free Bird, I just think that it's inconceivable to me. That the Chinese, when they do this grandiose planning and they do the, you know, the political theater of having the thousands of people in the Chinese. You know, Assembly Hall, once a year, you know, and Xi Jinping talks. That they haven't developed a multifaceted, multi-layered plan that they're executing. In part, I think this is why Xi Jinping essentially wants to be this ruler for life inside of China. Because he, I think they have a 20 or 30 year plan and I do think it is to disrupt the United States. And I don't think that they believe though, which is the smart thing. That there's one silver bullet. I just think that they're going to take a thousand shots on goal, whether it's.

• 42:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know, monopolizing the rare earths or, you know, figuring out how to basically put spying software in the hands of millions of Americans. That's where I think TikTok is actually really important. It's essentially a vehicle to spy and backdoor into Americans. Or whether it's, you know, introducing a digital yuan so that we can try to disrupt the, you know, the, the, the use of the US dollar as a reserve currency of the world. They probably have a list of a thousand tactics and they're going to go and execute them and I don't begrudge them that. I just think it's, it's, it's well organized machine. I just think we now need to counter punch.

• 43:14Jason Calacanis?

  Sacks?

• 43:15David Sacks?

  Yeah, I mean, so China is on a mission of of national greatness. I think the immediate goal is to is to assert its hegemony over Asia and to kick the US out of that region. But I think ultimately now they see in their sights potentially being the number one country in the entire world because of the because of the chaos that Covid has wrought over here.

• 43:40Jason Calacanis?

  And in fairness, David, the incompetence of Trump thus far. I mean, like, you know, it's it's not fair to think that the Chinese Politburo versus Trump and his cabinet are an equal match. Forget your political persuasion.

• 43:52David Sacks?

  Yeah, I mean, they clearly seem emboldened. And, you know, just in the last few weeks and months, we've seen the ending of the two systems in Hong Kong, which was a 50 year commitment they made in, I think, 1984. So they abrogated on that.

• 44:07Jason Calacanis?

  Well, and Sacks, that they happened to do that three or four months before Trump is looking like he's not going to be in office. So talking about the shots on goal, this may be their only shot to do this. And does that mean they go after Taiwan? Yeah. And does it? Do they go after Taiwan in the next 100 days? Do they have a window?

• 44:25David Sacks?

  I think we have to be extremely clear that Taiwan is a red line for us and that we're committed to the security of Taiwan. Because if we show any hesitation or weakness there, they will they will seize on that. And.

• 44:38Jason Calacanis?

  Would Trump do that? Would Trump put his foot down? Because he did nothing when it came to supporting.

• 44:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think we need to distract away from any given president of the United States because they they change every four or eight years. And I think we need to have a bigger discussion, which is, like I said, over the next 40 to 50 years, are we comfortable with the Duopoly power structure in the world, which is the United States and China, because that's effectively what we are today? Or are we the shining city on a hill once again? And if so, what are we willing to do to make sure that that's the case? And I think that's independent of your political persuasion and your party.

• 45:10David Sacks?

  Right, well, the good news here is that both Trump and Biden are basically racing to sort of position themselves as the more hawkish candidate on China, which is to say that this recognition of Cold War II is now, I think, bipartisan, which if you want to sustain a policy in this country over, say, forty years, like we did in containing the Soviet Union, you have to have bipartisan support for that. And so it does seem like, finally, as a country, I think we are kind of getting our act together on China. I mean, obviously, there will be disagreements within that larger context, but it seems like now

• 45:49David Sacks?

  people are waking up to the threat that China represents to, you know, to America being the number one country in the world.

• 45:59David Friedberg?

  Yeah. By the way, I agree with, I agree with Sacks. I mean, I think that's exactly what's happening and what will happen here. And it'll certainly, it'll be a big hill to climb. I'll just highlight and I'll ask the question of Chamath, you know, per his point earlier. Let me ask you guys, how many factories do you think exist in China?

• 46:23David Friedberg?

  Take a guess.

• 46:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Eleven million.

• 46:25David Friedberg?

  Two, two point eight million. Now, how many do you think exist in the United States?

• 46:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  One hundred and fifty thousand.

• 46:30David Friedberg?

  Close, about two hundred and fifty thousand. And China has about eighty-three million factory workers and we have about twelve. So, you know, Chamath, if we do end up in Cold War II, where, you know, we escalate the tension and escalate the divide, how do we end up, you know, having, avoiding two thousand dollar, three thousand dollar iPhones? How do we get all the televisions we want for five hundred bucks? How do we do that? Given that, you know, to catch up with this production capacity will end up costing many tens of trillions of dollars of invested capital that China's invested over decades?

• 47:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, this is such a brilliant, this is a fabulous question. And I think, I don't have the answer, but here's the way that I think about the solution. You know, the thing that we had before was, in my way, in many ways, like this kind of like perverted sense of globalism. And I think that we, you know, we thought that globalism equals utopia. And that's not true. It's actually more like a chessboard, which means you have, you know, two different sets of colored pieces. Competing against each other and each piece on the board in many ways is a country. So, you know, we can look at that as a geographic skew and say like, we need to really consolidate, um, you know, North, Central and South America as a block, as a productivity block.

• 47:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And so David, that's where we need to have more trade within those areas so that we can actually build up production capacity in places that can absorb and produce low cost labor or low cost items to compete with the China block. That may be a solution.

• 48:02Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, that is an incredible point, Chamath, which is why with the rhetoric with Mexico, which would love to have a deep relationship with us, is so dumb.

• 48:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So dumb.

• 48:13Jason Calacanis?

  We're talking about factories. They would love for us to put more factories on there and whatever countries.

• 48:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Forget, forget Mexico.

• 48:19Jason Calacanis?

  Let's work our way down the peninsula.

• 48:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, go to, go down the peninsula. Go, go to Honduras, go to El Salvador, go to Guatemala, where the people are screaming.

• 48:28Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 48:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Are, are screaming for work, which is why they're trying to enter the United States. The best way is to not build a wall, take all that money and fuel it into production and manufacturing and warehouse capacity in those places in which they are leaving in the first place.

• 48:43Jason Calacanis?

  And if we thought like China, we would, go ahead, do it free, Brooke, sorry.

• 48:46David Friedberg?

  No, you, you can't successfully sustain a cold war with China without global partnership. And I think, um, you know, this notion of nationalism and isolationism in the United States, um, will not work in a world where we are also trying to compete globally with China and are, and are raising the stakes in a, in a global, uh, cold war. You can't have it both ways. So, you know, either the, the current administration policy needs to change. I'd love to hear Sacks' point of view on this. Uh, or, you know, or we need to have a change in administration and actually, you know, uh, reengage on a, on a global basis with partner states.

• 49:22David Sacks?

  Well, okay, so I, I think the, the, the point about, um, about, uh, well, I, I think what, what some people on the right would say is that, um, being able to buy cheap goods at Target is not worth the hollowing out of the American industrial base that happened over the past 30 years. And that was a catastrophic mistake. Um, and. And you know, this is what got Trump reelected was shattering that that blue wall in those Rust Belt states. So I think we can kind of look back on that and wonder whether that trade off was really worth it. But moving forward, I think the balance is going to be to realize that trade does create wealth. You know, all wealth in fact comes from trade, whether at the level of individuals or nations.

• 50:07David Sacks?

  If it weren't for trade, all of us would be subsistence farmers or something like that.

• 50:13David Sacks?

  But we also have to realize that trade creates interdependence because I stopped making certain things in order to buy them from you. And so in order to engage in trade, we have to trust each other. I have to trust that that you one day won't decide that your ability to manufacture antibiotics is strategic. And you might deprive me of them in order to facilitate some geopolitical interest. And so I think what we're waking up to with, you know, production of of, you know, pharmaceuticals or N95 masks, you know, PPE. And now chips is that we've had this real blind spot with respect to trade. We've basically offshored so many of the elements that are necessary for our national survival.

• 50:56David Sacks?

  And I think those elements have to be brought back so that America is safe and independent. But with respect to, you know, so many other things, I think it's fine for us to get them through trade. Whether, you know, it could be apparel or toys or so many other goods that, you know, we do want cheap goods.

• 51:14Jason Calacanis?

  I want to do a, I want to do a mental exercise. We all for our living try to come up with 100x, 1000x solutions, whether we're creating the companies or betting on the companies. I want everybody to just think for a second of the United States as a startup company and a 10x, 100x idea for how we can not only maintain our position, but maybe become the shining hill where we actually lead the world towards democracy, towards human rights. I'm going to start with one that I just happened to hit me while you all were talking, which is why I love doing this podcast because I get such inspiration listening to you guys, you know, pass the ball around.

• 51:56Jason Calacanis?

  We haven't added a state to the United States in a pretty damn long time. What if we said to Puerto Rico? What if we said to the Dominican Republic? What if we said to Honduras? I mean, and I don't want to make this into a exercise in colonialism. But if we said, you know what, Puerto Rico? How do you feel about being the 51st state? Because we're already 80% of the way there. And what if we said the United States is going to, and this is just a crazy 100x idea. We're going to start taking countries that maybe love democracy, that would love to be part of the United States and having a bridge towards becoming part of this block. Whether it's how Puerto Rico is.

• 52:35David Sacks?

  Jason, the United States can barely function as it is.

• 52:38Jason Calacanis?

  That's why I'm giving you the freedom to say this is a 100x exercise as a startup. Because if we put out crazy ideas like this, maybe we can pull people towards thinking like the chessboard of how to play 3D chess or how to win the chessboard, not just move the pawns back and forth.

• 52:54David Sacks?

  Well, I think the first thing America has to do is decide whether it wants to, whether it still thinks that national greatness is important and whether it wants to compete to be the leading power in the world. Because right now, it seems like we're hopelessly divided and our guns are literally drawn on each other. And you know, you've got this all out assault going on on capitalism. You have sort of cancel culture and America just seems hopelessly divided. And I don't know if Americans still think it's important to be the number one power in the world.

• 53:31Jason Calacanis?

  All right, so what's your thought experiment on how to make Americans realize this is important? Or if anybody else wants to jump in here with a 10x idea for America, go ahead.

• 53:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, I have an overlaying theory that I, this is sort of kind of me spitballing, so bear with me.

• 53:45Jason Calacanis?

  Let's do it.

• 53:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know, there's a, there's this concept called the Overton window, right? Which is sort of like the minimally viable, acceptable surface area of dialogue, at which case it starts to sort of, you know, get extreme. I might, I would theorize, I would tell you that the Overton window is the smallest it's ever been. And there's basically nothing that you can talk about that is relatively benign, without it being politicized, and, and there's no gradation anymore. It's a very binary thing. You're either in the Overton window, which for example would be like, you know, vegetables matter, or looking both ways across the street matters. Um, and outside the Overton window, honestly, is Black Lives Matter as an example, you know, and it gets politicized on both sides.

• 54:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Uh, masks, you know, if a balaclava when you're skiing, because your face is cold, is inside the Overton window. That same balaclava when you go to the drugstore so that you can actually, you know, either prevent disease one way or the other, is outside the Overton window. Um, you know, making sure that, uh, police, uh, you know, are, are there to protect you, uh, in a time of need is now outside the Overton window because it's framed in a, in the lens of, uh, police brutality. So, the Overton window has shrunk. So, we, we have very little surface area where we can actually all agree without getting into a fight.

• 55:06Jason Calacanis?

  Or trying to cancel each other.

• 55:08David Sacks?

  I totally agree with that. I mean, we have this, we have this sort of epidemic of cancel culture going on, and I guess, Jason, you recently experienced this.

• 55:15Jason Calacanis?

  Oh my lord. I mean, for the love of God. What happened, Jason? Tell us what happened. Listen, I, I look at Twitter as a place to have vibrant discussions, and, you know, 10 years ago, it was kind of where the Overton window was most open. You could have a discussion about anything. And, um, we had a discussion about, you know, my feeling that as a former journalist, and we're doing random acts of journalism here, that I just thought the New York Times was just way too biased, and that they picked a side in order for their business to survive. And I actually believe that. I believe they picked the side of Trump, I'm sorry, the side of anti-Trump, in order to get subscriptions, because their advertising

• 55:57Jason Calacanis?

  business has been demolished by the duopoly of Facebook and Google. This led to the circling of the wagons of the journalist, which I was part of. But listen, it's pretty easy to hate me. I understand that. I'm a loud mouth. Um, and so now I'm getting piled on by the journalist.

• 56:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And, and you were an early investor in Uber.

• 56:16Jason Calacanis?

  Absolutely.

• 56:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Don't forget that.

• 56:17Jason Calacanis?

  Let's forget. The third or fourth. I, I don't, they tell me the third or fourth. Anyway, so, um, there's a journalist at said publication. I'm not going to say her name because I don't want any harassment of anybody. Nobody does. Um, who said, people are stupid for going back to work. Um, and they're idiots. And I said, you know, this is a very convenient thing for a journalist who works behind a keyboard, who makes a hundred thousand dollars a year to say. Because those people are literally not going to be able to feed their kids if they don't go back to work. And this led to her saying, I was harassing and stalking her. Then I was in Clubhouse, the new social network where you talk.

• 57:01Jason Calacanis?

  And the same journalist was in the audience. And I said to the people who were talking, just be aware, there is a journalist in the audience. Because even though this is a private beta, this could wind up being in the New York Times. Which it did. Not that discussion, but another one that was covertly taped. And I don't know if it was covertly taped by a journalist or not, but it did wind up in the press. Anyway, um, this whole thing turns into a giant fight. Uh, and

• 57:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Clubhouse sounds like some dark S and M sex club in Berlin.

• 57:32Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, that's

• 57:33David Sacks?

  Here's what I think is most entertaining.

• 57:34Jason Calacanis?

  That's Clubhouse, H O A U S, house, Clubhouse.

• 57:38David Sacks?

  Yeah. Let me, what I think is most entertaining about this is that the, the New York Times journalist was in this vicious, uh, battle with, uh, Bology, who's a Silicon Valley founder and personality. And they were arguing, and then Jason somehow comes running over and starts involving himself in this feud. And it's like,

• 58:00David Sacks?

  And it's like Balaji gets fouled, but Jason takes the flop, you know? And all of a sudden, and all of a sudden, Jason's talking about, you know, how he's getting doxxed. Balaji is the guy who was like called out in the New York Times, but somehow Jason, uh, Jason takes the flop.

• 58:13Jason Calacanis?

  But anyway, so here's what's happened. I'm only telling the story. I'm not trying to get victim points. Give a fuck about that. Uh, it's July 4th. I, they, I put the kids down for the nap. We, you know, steaks are going on the grill. It's a fucking great day. And then I'm on the Peloton trying to be just a little less fat so I can be less fat than Saks. So that the photo that we're, Saks is using, I just come out 5% less fat than Saks. And I look and I had posted a picture of the tree line outside my house to, of the beautiful blue sky on July 4th. And I said, listen, everybody, take a break from Twitter, go spend time with your family, which is what I was about to do.

• 58:54Jason Calacanis?

  A 37 year old private equity douche from, uh, Boston, does a reverse image search on the tree line, finds a bigger picture of the trees, finds a picture of my pool based on that bigger picture in Google reverse image search and all these other tools, and then doxxes me, which basically means releasing your address. He releases my address in my thread where, okay, because, so I DM him and he's using his real name and he's got a LinkedIn profile. And I said, do you realize how dangerous this is? He goes, well, you're stalking said journalist. I said, I am not stalking the journalist. She said you're stalking her. So if you apologize to her and you take down the mean stuff you said about her, I'll take

• 59:38Jason Calacanis?

  down your home address. And I said, hey, dipshit, um, this is illegal, number one. And number two, you're going to lose your Twitter account. And then I said, number three, we're connected, your boss, because you have a, you're, you're using your public name, your boss is connected to 14 people of which like half are very close friends of mine. And I'm calling your boss and I have all these screenshots of you doxing me. What do you think's gonna happen on Monday? And I just gave him my phone number.

• 1:00:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  In this sick twisted way.

• 1:00:10Jason Calacanis?

  Hold on, hold on.

• 1:00:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  In this sick twisted way, did you?

• 1:00:12Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, sorry, go ahead. Let me just finish the story. I tell the guy, here's my phone number, he calls me. I said, hey, I know that you're a kid. I know that you did something rash, but this is actually, you know, a kind of a dangerous thing because, you know, there's serious mental illness in whatever, 0.1% of the population. There's millions of people in now involved in this discussion. It could be a security concern for me. I'm not gonna post your address, please don't post mine, delete the tweet. He goes, I refuse to delete the tweet until you whatever. And I said, okay, well, I'm gonna call your boss on Monday.

• 1:00:41Jason Calacanis?

  We know these people in common. She's going to fire you and you're gonna lose your job. Now, I know you're only 23 or 24 and this doesn't matter to you. And he goes, uh, I said, how old are you? He said, 37. I said, you're 37 years old, is you married? He said, yeah, I'm married, I got a six year old. He's like, now you want me to make you lose your job? Because you're so mad at me over nothing? I said, I don't wanna call your boss on Monday and, and, and tell them what you did? Cause it will certainly result in you being fired. And he goes, oh, I said, you might wanna go talk to your spouse about what you did and maybe get her perspective. He writes me an apology letter, we deleted it's all water under the bridge. But I, I've been trying to tell people, you have to be very careful when this gets too personal.

• 1:01:23Jason Calacanis?

  Because there are, you are dog whistling to crazy people who then might do something crazy. Anyway, end of story. I backed off the whole discussion because I, I just don't wanna, I, I wanna finish my second book and I wanna do podcasts with guys like you and, and have a great time with my life and not be involved with a bunch of idiots. End of story.

• 1:01:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So I wanna go back to this Overton window concept for a second. So again, just my, my, my idea, so you take the word matters. The word matters is in the Overton window. Nobody can argue that the word matters is offensive. If you, uh, if you pre-pen that word with vegetables, it stays in the Overton window. If you put, uh, looking both ways before you cross the street. Okay, we're still there. We're in the window. If you say "black lives" as a term, just without the word "matters", that's probably in the Overton window. Sure. You put "black lives matters", it's out the Overton window. And both sides politicize. I think the left politicizes with this cancel culture and, um, uh, basically like an extreme form of political correctness.

• 1:02:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then the right politicizes by, uh, you know, in their way, a vein of hypersensitivity and then a doubling down on this notion of an attacking of individual freedoms and free speech. And in all of that, both of these two groups miss the fact that they're both sort of the same and they've, they're, they're wronged in the same way, but they're both not listening in the same way. Right. Um, so if, if I had to put something in the Overton window that, uh, would address the US-China Cold War thing, here's what I would say. We all need energy, we all need food, and we all need technology, right? We need to sort of warm our houses, we need to feed our bellies, and we need to be able to be productive in some way so that we can make money.

• 1:03:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And I think that everybody in the United States can agree that on these three dimensions, there are some really simple things that we could do that basically double down on US sovereignty, uh, and allow us to basically be more on the offensive. So I'll give you a couple of ideas. On the energy side is we need to continue to support energy independence, and that will require subsidies. And the reason why that's important, in my opinion, is that then what happens is it hastens and accelerates Russia and the Middle East, uh, not becoming relevant anymore because they are forced to monetize their oil sooner.

• 1:03:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The Middle East probably disintegrates into 30 countries. You know, the Middle East was just a kind of a random exercise of, you know, basically Americans and Europeans after the war divvying up a bunch of things. It has no sensitivity to culture or language or anything. So that probably, you know, goes to a very different direction. South and south. And Russia becomes less important because they just have to monetize, otherwise they will lose their only source of revenue. So that's one thing on energy that I think we could do that I think is relatively politically acceptable and inside the Overton window.

• 1:04:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Second is on food, which is that we have to double down on creating a completely independent food supply inside the United States. And there are ways, again, where if we don't need to be building tanks and having 90 trillion dollar programs for aircraft carriers anymore, we could pour that money into US farms, you know, and give people like Friedberg a lot more money to go and actually make sure the United States has food security. That in any situation and scenario, we can feed the 330-odd million people inside of our borders. And then the fourth, the third thing is on technology, which is there are a critical bunch of inputs, whether it's 5G chips, rare earth materials or minerals, things like cobalt

• 1:05:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  and lithium, which we need for batteries, for climate change, that we can go and basically co-opt, because those things are concentrated in countries like Chile, in places like, in places like Africa, where we can actually do a better job of instilling government, governance and security. So that's my Jason, back to your thing, these aren't sexy ideas, but they would work. And I think they would work by both Republicans and Democrats, and it's non-controversial.

• 1:05:43Jason Calacanis?

  I'll even punch up the food part. There's no reason why, you know, the same way we made water and public schools, you know, kind of a given in the United States, nobody really has to worry about going, getting water, nobody has to worry about getting a basic education, learning to read, let's say it's not perfect, obviously. Why not make healthy produce and some amount of healthy food so affordable in the United States that it's essentially free, right? And then you think about food security, like, how are we still discussing food security with the amount of money and prosperity we have in this country? Make it free, we've, we've almost made energy free, we have energy independence.

• 1:06:23Jason Calacanis?

  I'll say, a Manhattan project to make energy and food as free or de minimis as water would be just an amazing thing for us to rally around, because then people can work on the next thing in their life, their careers, their family, their pursuits. Friedberg, what do you think of the Overton window, and would you add something to it that we can all agree on, that we could work on together and maybe unify the country, as opposed to pulling guns on each other in the parking lots because of the color of our skin?

• 1:06:51David Friedberg?

  I'm reminded of a great moment in history when Will Smith and his friends blew up the UFO that came to attack Earth. Nothing brings us together like a common enemy. So it could be that the unification is gonna be, you know, in part driven by this Cold War II and creating a common enemy in China is gonna work for both the right and the left and create a lot of opportunity of Chamath highlights in manufacturing and food production. There's a lot of tools available to us. I think we could all sit here and speculate and I could pitch and plug all the companies I'm involved in that I think are gonna play a role. But I do think it's that moment where, you know, we are gonna coalesce around a common enemy and...

• 1:07:35Jason Calacanis?

  Well, it'd be good if you actually shared one or two of those projects you're working on if you can. I actually would think that I'd be very much likely to hear what you're working on.

• 1:07:42David Friedberg?

  I've shared this before, but I do think biomanufacturing, which is the technology whereby we engineer the DNA of microbes and those microbes then make molecules for us in a big fermentation tank in the same way that we make beer or wine. Biomanufacturing can be used to make flavors and fragrances and now we're making materials like silks and plastics, plastic equivalents, and more interestingly, proteins for human consumption to replace animal proteins. And the cost of production and the cost of energy associated with making these materials, these molecules, these proteins through biomanufacturing is literally several orders of magnitude less than the traditional technique, which is just insane if you think about it

• 1:08:26David Friedberg?

  on a first principles basis, of growing fucking corn, feeding it to a cow, letting the cow grow up, feeding it hundreds of gallons of water, killing it, chopping it up, transporting it to a restaurant. I mean, the amount of energy that goes into making a pound of ground beef is insane and the greenhouse gas emissions and so on. So I do believe that there is a big wave of biomanufacturing as an industry that is coming on the US this century and it will, hopefully by the end of the century, be the primary way that we're kind of producing a lot of the molecules that we consume and that we use for clothing and materials.

• 1:08:57Jason Calacanis?

  So then that does what to factories? Because, you know, you did explain earlier... The number of factories, if we can bioproduce

• 1:09:04David Friedberg?

  That's right.

• 1:09:04Jason Calacanis?

  Not only our steaks, not only our corn.

• 1:09:06David Friedberg?

  So imagine-

• 1:09:07Jason Calacanis?

  Does that also mean we could biomanufacture steel, plastics, cars?

• 1:09:12David Friedberg?

  Not so much steel, but alternatives to leather, alternatives to cloth, alternatives to, um-

• 1:09:17Jason Calacanis?

  So clothes?

• 1:09:17David Friedberg?

  To clothes, food. So imagine, instead of a traditional factory, think about a factory historically being purpose-built. So you build all these components to make one thing. You spent all this money making a giant machine that you put stuff in on one end and the same thing comes out over and over the other end. And that's classic industrial revolution 1.0 and, you know, uh, 20th century industrial revolution output. In, in this century, we are going to build these giant printers. They're not going to be single form machines that make one thing over and over. They're going to be systems that are giant fermentation tanks. And in those fermentation tanks, it's like you program them with software. And the software in this case is genetic software. You edit the genome of these organisms. They take stuff on the input and they make on the output a bunch of different stuff.

• 1:10:01Jason Calacanis?

  A replicator like in Star Trek and if there was seasonality and people needed something over the summer for July 4th versus what they need in Christmas or in the winter and ski season. The same factory makes that thing. We're 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from this having an impact on the economy?

• 1:10:19David Friedberg?

  Yes, and we're seeing it now. I mean, look, the number of, uh, artificial animal protein companies and the funding that they're getting. Um, it's, I think, highlighting investor interest and appetite and backing the capex needed to get this to become a reality right now. Uh, Perfect Day just raised $300 million this week. Um, Impossible Foods raised $400 million from the Qatari Investment Authority. Um, you know, obviously Beyond Meat is where they're at. I mean, these, these companies are using, um, these techniques of genetic engineering to make microbes that make the proteins and the flavorings-

• 1:10:50Jason Calacanis?

  We put 50-

• 1:10:51David Friedberg?

  Replace this stuff.

• 1:10:52Jason Calacanis?

  We, we put 500 million into the PPP program. If we put 500, I'm sorry, 500 billion, put 500 billion into this, how much would it accelerate it?

• 1:11:01David Friedberg?

  Pretty substantially, and I think it goes from food to pharma to materials. And that's probably, you know, where you would see the impact. But again, one system can make different materials, can make different proteins.

• 1:11:13Jason Calacanis?

  So we could be independent of other countries for food, to Chamath's point, and also pharma, which we are way too dependent, correct, on China?

• 1:11:22David Friedberg?

  Yeah, we're definitely a net exporter. By the way, you know, our largest export partner is China. So most of our soybeans in the United States that we produce, and soybeans are grown on 160 million acres in the U.S. And it rotates half and half each year with corn. But about two thirds of our soybeans historically get exported to China. So we are already food secure from a net resource perspective. It's just the rest of the infrastructure in terms of turning that stuff into meat and other stuff is where we're, you know, we probably have to build up a little bit of infrastructure.

• 1:11:51Jason Calacanis?

  Zach, let's swing the ball over to you. When you hear the Overton window ideas, when you hear about this biochemistry slurry tank revolution that Friedberg's working on, how does that change or evolve your view of our relationship with China and the political mess we're in right now in 2020?

• 1:12:10David Sacks?

  Yeah, well, I think Cold War II does provide a lens to rethink and reevaluate a lot of these domestic political fights. And so, for example, are the big technology companies, you know, Google, Facebook, and so on, are they these, you know, even monopolies that need to be broken up? Or are they the crown jewels of the American economy that need to be protected from Chinese espionage? You know, is the free enterprise system this, you know, horribly, you know, oppressive racist thing? Or is it actually the engine of prosperity that's built this country? You know, is freedom of speech an outdated principle?

• 1:12:53David Sacks?

  Or is it something we want to, you know, that should be canceled? Or is it something we want to fight for? And I think that, you know, when you start thinking about these issues, you know, in the, you know, through the lens of Cold War II, it provides an option to kind of reevaluate them and think about what's really important. And hopefully, it can provide a little bit of a unifying force in America, not because we want China to be an enemy, but just because we want to maintain a sense of national greatness. And I, you know, it's not something we just want to give up on.

• 1:13:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I have a question for Friedberg. Are schools gonna be back in the fall? Because I cannot deal with my kids being at home.

• 1:13:36David Friedberg?

  Yeah, I think it's gonna be a mixed bag. It seems like, I mean, if you follow this, this is a political decision, right? It's not a scientific decision. And so there are different politics around nationally that are affecting this. And there are some schools that seem like they've got processes and methods of being comfortable. Some of them who are just throwing everything out the window and say, I don't give a shit. The kid's got to go back to school. And some of them who are being very conservative and saying, you know, we're not ready for that. We can't take the risk. So you'll definitely see a mixed bag. I don't know where you're living, Chamath. I don't know what's gonna happen, per se, but it's definitely a local policy question.

• 1:14:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Is it safe, Friedberg? Is it safe to send our kids back to a 10-person pod in a school in California?

• 1:14:18David Friedberg?

  I mean, that's like asking if it's safe to cross a train track. You know, you can look left, you can look right. But yeah, you're, you know, a busy train intersection during rush hour. You know, it's hard to say what level of safe is safe. We know that kids are less susceptible to any sort of health risk themselves from the virus. And it looks like there's a lot of studies showing that they're likely less, the virus is less transmissible through kids, especially kids under the age of 14. And so it seems like there's some theories that say that, look, it's these ACE2 receptors whereby the virus enters the cells really start to present when you turn 10 years old at a greater rate. And, you know, it scales up to 14.

• 1:15:01David Friedberg?

  And above 14, you're kind of an adult from an ACE2 receptor point of view. And then there's the severity of the infection. As we all know, is really more of a significant issue for much elderly people. So when you take those factors into account, the virus is likely less transmissible amongst children. Therefore, a bunch of kids get together, they're not going to transmit it to each other. And it's likely going to be less severe, even if there is an infection for kids. The risk is just about, are the teachers comfortable and what happens when they go home? And there have been a number of letters that you guys have probably seen, op-eds and whatnot, written in papers by teachers saying, I'm nervous to go back to school. I don't want to teach this fall. I don't want to take the risk for my health. I take care of my mom or my dad or what have you. And so there's a lot of competing interests here besides just the science.

• 1:15:45Jason Calacanis?

  Let's go around the horn of who's sending their kids back to school. I'll start. I posted on calacanis.com yesterday that we've decided as a family that we're starting a micro school. We put out a call for a teacher and you know, just looking at teacher salaries, they don't get paid particularly well in our society. As we all know, they're underpaid. So we think we can come over the top and provide a, you know, a better financial arrangement for a teacher and then have one to five students and we're going to just create a micro school. That's our, that's our current plan. Our kids did go to camp this summer in a small 10 person or less pod. And we felt that was safe. Everybody was tested and it was outdoors.

• 1:16:27Jason Calacanis?

  But for me, being indoors at a school with 300 pods of 10, and I think the best teachers are not going to show up and our, my kids don't learn over Zoom. I don't know about your kids, but it's not working. So we're starting a, we're going to roll our own school and hopefully find one or two families who want to chop up the cost with us or we'll, we'll just pick up the tab and invite one or two families if they don't have the means to do it. But we're, we're going to, we're going to go solo for 2021. Friedberg Tremoth, what do you think? And I know, because we're only seven, eight weeks out from this, right? We're less than two months.

• 1:17:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I, I really think like, look, not everybody, Jason, is going to be in a position to hire teachers. In fact, most everybody won't be.

• 1:17:07Jason Calacanis?

  Agreed.

• 1:17:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think it's, I want to send my children back to school. I, I refuse to create some alternative reality for them. I think it's really important that they are with their friends. I think that we're not really thinking strongly enough about the social implications for, you know, children. Let's just say like, you know, you take an eight year old or a nine year old or a 10 year old and you deprive them of their friends for a year. I mean, that's an enormous part of their life where they've.

• 1:17:41Jason Calacanis?

  It's like a prison sentence. Yeah.

• 1:17:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They've, they've been socially isolated, you know. I just think it's, it's a really bad outcome. So I think that obviously from a public health perspective, we want to keep our teachers safe. I just think that it's so important that we realize that, you know, we are going to impact an entire generation of kids. I think that if you're 18 or 19 and have had, you know, 18 or 19 years of normal teenagedom, you know, and growing up, that it's okay if you miss a year, or you have to, you know, do your first year of college remotely. Like, it sucks, but you can deal. But I really worry about these kids in primary school and middle school. It's really unfair.

• 1:18:23Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I mean, our plan was to try to get to four or five students, a small bubble, and then, you know, have outdoor. The problem is then the Northeast.

• 1:18:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I just think it...

• 1:18:33Jason Calacanis?

  Having gone to school, it's you're inside with a heating system with a closed ventilation system that was built in 1920.

• 1:18:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And I think it avoids the real key thing, which is like, I don't think you go to school to learn as much as you go to school to...

• 1:18:48Jason Calacanis?

  Socialize, yeah.

• 1:18:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Socialize. I mean, you learn as a byproduct, because everybody socializes. Not everybody learns, right?

• 1:18:56Jason Calacanis?

  Agreed.

• 1:18:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And so, it's an enormously important formative experience for a child to be around 15 or 20 of their other kids, then to be in the playground, to deal with all the adversity that comes with the normal life of a kid. That's the biggest thing that I think we're depriving them of, and I understand that, you know, there's an important reason to hold these kids back, but I just want to appreciate that behaviorally and psychologically, this is not going to be for free.

• 1:19:23Jason Calacanis?

  Friedberg, Sacks, what's your latest thinking?

• 1:19:28David Sacks?

  I guess I agree with both Schmuth and Friedberg on this, that there are huge benefits to going back, and the risks to kids are low in terms of getting it, and also they're less viral if they do. But Israel's sort of a strong recent counter example, where they recently opened schools, and now all of a sudden, they've got a spike. So... Um, you know, we're gonna send our kids back, but I expect it to be a little bit of a shit show. I think that the schools will reopen and they'll, they'll do all this planning. There'll be all these like pods and half days and smaller groups and that kind of thing. And then somebody's gonna, there'll be like one case, either a kid or, you know, one family. And then all of a sudden

• 1:20:10David Sacks?

  they're gonna shut down again. And I guess I, you know, they're spending all this time planning, but I wonder if they're really gonna have contingency plans for what happens when there's a case.

• 1:20:19Jason Calacanis?

  That's exactly what I think is happening. Yeah, I, I think they'll just shut down. It's just, it, it's too scary for a child to die or a teacher to die. And people, the overreaction to it, um, will be to shut everything down, right? It's, and then we're gonna be back to our kids. Um, when, when we sent our kids to camp for the three weeks they went, man, it was just, they were different kids, right? And to Chamath's point, they, they're, they're little social animals. They need to roll around like little baby tigers and, and play. And, and if they don't have that, it, it dramatically affects behavior. And we saw it in only three months. I mean, 12 months, these kids are gonna go mental.

• 1:20:56David Sacks?

  Yeah, I think that basically where the country is at is that we're an undeclared Sweden. You know, we've basically, the, the, the virus has become endemic. It's everywhere. You know, we've basically given up on trying to contain or stop it. And, um, and so now we're just on this path to herd immunity. And, um, you know, it's basically what Sweden did, except we haven't declared that's what our plan is. Um, and so it's haphazard and, um, but it's, it seems like kind of we're by default just headed for herd immunity.

• 1:21:28Jason Calacanis?

  Friedberg, as we wrap up here, um, and I got one final question I want to do after this, and then we'll wrap. Friedberg, what's your thoughts? Kids in schools? I, I know you have kids. I'm not sure the ages, if they're like, would be going back to, uh, uh, I think they're a little bit on the younger side. So, um, if you did have eight, nine, 10, 12 year olds, sending them back to school, starting your own, what are your thoughts?

• 1:21:48David Friedberg?

  Yeah, I mean, I'd.

• 1:21:50David Friedberg?

  I would probably be a little ridiculous and send them and test them every other day. Uh, at home, uh, and, uh, you know, you can get this, uh, Vector Dickinson. Testing system now for 250 bucks. It's a handheld device. And these test strips cost 20 bucks.

• 1:22:02Jason Calacanis?

  Say the name of it again?

• 1:22:03David Friedberg?

  The Vector Dickinson.

• 1:22:04Jason Calacanis?

  Vector with a V? B, B, B. Wait, wait, how do I, are they available?

• 1:22:10David Friedberg?

  Uh, yeah, you can buy them through medical, uh, retailers and, uh, yeah, the handheld device that they use in hospitals and stuff today, it's, it's 250 bucks. And there's a little test kit that you buy. It'll probably cost 20 to 30 bucks. It'll be available next month. Per test. And, or 15 to 20 bucks, um, and it takes five minutes to get a result. And so.

• 1:22:30Jason Calacanis?

  You literally could do it in the schoolyard before they go into the building.

• 1:22:32David Friedberg?

  Yeah. So you could test, I would test my kids every day, uh, if I had a, you know, my kids are, are, my one kid's in preschool, the other one's.

• 1:22:39Jason Calacanis?

  But you gotta do a little pin prick on their finger, right?

• 1:22:42David Friedberg?

  No, no, you could just do a little swab of the nose. So.

• 1:22:44Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:22:44David Friedberg?

  Kind of, yeah.

• 1:22:45Jason Calacanis?

  Deep nose swab or, or, you know, halfway?

• 1:22:48David Friedberg?

  There's data that shows now that you can actually do a throat swab and, you know, get a pretty good reading out it. So. You know, whatever the protocol is, it'd probably be pretty non-invasive and you could get a result. Now. That's expensive, uh, for most people, you know, that's.

• 1:23:00Jason Calacanis?

  Not expensive for a school.

• 1:23:02David Friedberg?

  Not expensive for a school. That's right. And so I think that company will do well with that testing system they've launched because it actually tests not for the RNA, but for the protein.

• 1:23:10Jason Calacanis?

  Is this a public company?

• 1:23:11David Friedberg?

  Yeah. Um, and the stock's done well. Um, and, and, and this, this test does really well because it tests for the protein, not the RNA. So it's actually a, a much, uh, um, uh, you know, much easier test. Uh, scientifically to, to do. You're not trying to pick up specific nucleotides, nucleic acids. You're trying to pick up a, a protein. Um, and so it's, uh, yeah, it's, it's pretty effective. Um.

• 1:23:33Jason Calacanis?

  All right.

• 1:23:34David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:35Jason Calacanis?

  If the election was held today. We, we always like to talk about this a bit. They want us to love when we talk about it. We talked about Oprah. Last time that was our sleeper candidate. I'm changing, I'm changing. Tammy Duckworth, Tammy Duckworth is now my sleeper vice presidential.

• 1:23:48David Friedberg?

  I'm with, I'm with the Chamath on that.

• 1:23:50Jason Calacanis?

  Absolutely. 100. Um, now. Uh, who's gonna win? If the election was held today. Sacks, I'll let you go first since it's the most heartbreaking for you.

• 1:24:02David Sacks?

  Biden's strategy is working. His strategy is basically to say nothing to be tied in his basement. And but it's working because even though he's a cipher, I think people, he's basically a protest vote against Trump. And Trump, you know, is seen as very divisive and inflammatory. And I think the American people at this point just want to push a button and make it stop. And right now Biden seems like the make it stop button.

• 1:24:35Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, okay, and should Biden, I'll add to the question, we'll end on this double question. Who wins today? And should Biden debate Trump? Or is it better for him to just opt out of the debates and not risk it?

• 1:24:48David Sacks?

  Biden's strategy, well, I think Biden's strategy right now is working. I don't know why he would change it. I mean,

• 1:24:53Jason Calacanis?

  So he should not, there's three debates on the books he agreed to. Should he do the three debates, yes or no? If you were advising him?

• 1:25:00David Sacks?

  So I think he probably will not be able to duck these debates forever. I think, I mean, it seems unlikely that, you know,

• 1:25:11Jason Calacanis?

  If you were advising him, would you tell him to do it or not?

• 1:25:15David Sacks?

  I would, I would tell him his strategy is working, which is to say nothing and,

• 1:25:19Jason Calacanis?

  So don't go to the debates.

• 1:25:21David Sacks?

  If you can get away with it, I'm not sure he'll be able to get away with it. So I think eventually people, eventually the American public will turn its attention to the election. But part of, part of the reason why his strategy is working is because Trump is running such a bad campaign. In fact, it feels like Trump hasn't even really started to campaign.

• 1:25:40Jason Calacanis?

  There's no logic to it for sure.

• 1:25:42David Sacks?

  Well, it's, you know, normally what the incumbent does, especially when they've got a lot of money, is they use the summer to define the opponent. They start running a lot of ads seeking to define their opponent. And, and, you know, where are those ads? Where is that attempt to define Biden? I mean, I think, I think it's hard because,

• 1:26:05David Sacks?

  You know, it's hard to define Biden as a radical who represents these woke mobs. Biden doesn't even know how to say the word woke correctly. I think he's called him woke. So that's

• 1:26:19Jason Calacanis?

  by my four year old who needed her diaper change.

• 1:26:23David Sacks?

  All right, but but the fact that Biden is so clueless and seems like so out of touch actually helps him because I mean, the way the way for Trump to win the election. Okay, let's let's put it that way is to to make the alternative to Trump, the destruction of Mount Rushmore. Right? I mean, if if Trump can somehow convince the American public that the election of Joe Biden means the ripping down of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and and Mount Rushmore and the destruction of of capitalism. That is the way for him to win. That's, you know, but he has to actually.

• 1:27:01Jason Calacanis?

  Listen.

• 1:27:02David Sacks?

  Well, he has. He has to actually be able to to tag Biden with that.

• 1:27:07Jason Calacanis?

  Why did Peter Thiel? Why did Peter Thiel drop Trump? He's you've got a 30 year relationship with Peter Thiel. You talk to him on the regular. Why did Thiel drop him?

• 1:27:15David Sacks?

  I don't know that he has. I think you have to get him on the show to talk.

• 1:27:18Jason Calacanis?

  All right, there you go. Good deflection. Best DC. Who wins? And should he do those three debates, Biden?

• 1:27:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, yeah, I think you can't get away from them. I wouldn't make it a big issue because the debates are going to be kind of this random crappy kind of experience, you know, I don't even know whether they'll be in the same place. I think they should try to make sure that they're not in the same place so that it's done almost over zoom like you can. You can cripple the effort, the usefulness of these debates. In many ways, there really isn't much that can happen in the debates. The reality is that people aren't voting for Biden. They are voting against Donald Trump.

• 1:27:59Jason Calacanis?

  Any chance Trump wins?

• 1:28:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And they are voting against the sheer incompetence of him and his family. And, uh, you know, it's going to be very difficult for him to overturn it. There is one thin path for him to win, which is to absolutely shower America with money, uh, close to the election day. So if there is a multi-multi-trillion-dollar stimulus bill that passes, um, and it literally puts money into the hands of working Americans, especially in the swing states, it could work. Now, the one thing I'll tell you is if you looked at the exit polls in Georgia, it's scary because, uh, there were 230,000, I think, more Democrats

• 1:28:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  out of the exit polls in the Georgia primary than there were Republican. Now, just hold the phone here for a second. Because under no calculus on Electoral College, did we ever have to think that there was probabilistically any chance that a Democrat wins Georgia. And I think what this speaks to is a changing demographic longitudinally. And this is not a racial thing, meaning this is an age thing, where these young people are very different politically. And so if you think that there is an even remote chance that Donald Trump loses Georgia, don't even worry about Minnesota and Pennsylvania and Florida, because he would have already lost those in order to lose Georgia.

• 1:29:30Jason Calacanis?

  Also, this pandemic and work from home is gonna result in people, if it is a sustained work from home...

• 1:29:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We have scarred the American economy, guys. And we don't know the extent of the injury. Because, you know, you know the extent of the injury when you get, you know, step out of the chair, that first moment the cast gets taken off, and you put a little pressure on the leg to see how bad it is. And we don't know how bad it is, except we know that it's pretty bad. So, um, you know, I think that all roads kind of look like Biden. I think the very narrow path that Donald Trump has is, uh, you know, a multi, multi trillion dollar stimulus bill directly into the hands of Americans.

• 1:30:13Jason Calacanis?

  Friedberg, is he gonna win? Yes or no? Should he do the debates? Yes or no?

• 1:30:17David Friedberg?

  Yeah, if the vote were to happen today, he would win, uh, Joe Biden would win. I think he's actually more likely to win based on news that just hit the wire, which we haven't talked about today, which is it looks like Facebook is gonna ban all political ads this year.

• 1:30:30Jason Calacanis?

  What?

• 1:30:31David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:32Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, my God. Wow.

• 1:30:33David Friedberg?

  Uh, obviously that's.

• 1:30:34Jason Calacanis?

  Facebook in a fight for survival right now. That ad camp. Amazing how a bunch of advertisers taking a one month pause, all of a sudden brings Zuckerberg to the table.

• 1:30:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Amazing how my, uh, my well timed short thesis tweet, uh, playing out.

• 1:30:49Jason Calacanis?

  Yum, yum.

• 1:30:50David Friedberg?

  So I think that works, uh, that obviously works to Biden's favor.

• 1:30:53Jason Calacanis?

  All right.

• 1:30:53David Friedberg?

  If that's the case. And then my, my point on the, the debate, if I were Biden, what I would do right now is I would go on Twitter and I would say, release your tax returns and I'll debate you. And I would repeat that tweet twice a day.

• 1:31:03Jason Calacanis?

  Love it. Love it. Freeburg gets the dunk. 360 dunk. He comes in.

• 1:31:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's a dunk. Well done, Freeburgers.

• 1:31:10Jason Calacanis?

  It's over Freeburg. Wins the debate. Uh, this show is sponsored by nobody. However, I'm gonna ask my best DC, if somebody were to make a $25,000 donation to charity, would you allow me to read an ad for 30 seconds during the pod at some point?

• 1:31:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, but I'll match it to wherever you want to go. No fucking ads ever. Um, I love, I love you guys. I miss you.

• 1:31:35Jason Calacanis?

  Love you. Love you, best DC.

• 1:31:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Bye, boys.

• 1:31:37Jason Calacanis?

  I love you. Love you, Free. Love you, uh, Sax. It was great playing golf. Let's get it. Let's golf. Let's fucking golf, man. I'm losing my mind. We'll see you.

• 1:31:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Let's do a little, let's do a little small, little NASA, boys. A little 10,000, you know?

• 1:31:48Jason Calacanis?

  Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. Let's go. Let's gamble. See you next time.

• 1:31:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Bye. Love you. Bye.

• 1:31:53Jason Calacanis?

  On the All In Podcast. Tell your friends to tune in if they want to listen to something intelligent. Bye, bye.