E61: 2022 Predictions! Business, politics, science, tech, crypto, & more

(0:00) Recapping the "Superspreader" (6:12) Predicting 2022's biggest political winner (11:57) Predicting 2022's biggest political loser (19:07) Predicting 2022's biggest business winner (25:47) Predicting 2022's biggest business loser (34:30) Most contrarian belief for 2022 (1:02:07) Best performing asset for 2022 (1:04:19) Most anticipated trend for 2022 (1:09:19) Most anticipated media for 2022 Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFMMeCMbNt8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrgYEbIQkac https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/15/chinas-xi-and-russias-putin-talk-geopolitics-in-video-call.html https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/countries-by-gdp https://twitter.com/datarade/status/1474432996845436933 https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1475209018058723334 https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/23/22245325/samsungbuilding-chipmaking-fab-texas-taylor https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/23/22245325/samsung-building-chipmaking-fab-texas-taylor https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-to-stop-accepting-u-k-issued-visa-credit-cards-11637153600 https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1475438356473409542 https://balajis.com/mirrortable https://www.wsj.com/articles/hispanic-voters-now-evenly-split-between-parties-wsj-poll-finds-11638972769 https://twitter.com/peterdaou/status/1470906537682026499 https://twitter.com/TheOfficialRom/status/1472206678586179588 https://twitter.com/joebiden/status/1322254443644026880 https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s1227-isolation-quarantine-guidance.html https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/12/27/world/cdc-quarantine-isolation-guidelines#quarantine-5-days https://twitter.com/FaceTheNation/status/1475209878415323140

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

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  So I was not going to bring this up. Sax said, bring it up.

• 0:03David Sacks?

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're already creating mischaracterizations. You said you want to bring it up. I'm like, sure. I don't, I'm not going to veto it. Go for it.

• 0:11Jason Calacanis?

  I said, well, we have to bring up my COVID. Obviously, I'm the second bestie to get COVID. And I told you offline, without the other two besties, I will just say I got it at a social function. Period. End of story. You said it's okay to talk about.

• 0:25David Sacks?

  Yeah, it's not like I wanted to bring it up, but you want to bring it up and I'm allowing it because I, I'm fine with it. So go for it.

• 0:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We all got something at Sax's event. You got COVID. I got chlamydia.

• 0:37Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, you guys went to the downstairs rooms?

• 0:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Downstairs.

• 0:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  God damn it.

• 0:45Jason Calacanis?

  Chamath again. You promised. It was a great party.

• 0:49David Sacks?

  All right, let's, let's hear Jason's accusations. I've been hearing about it all week in the chat.

• 0:53Jason Calacanis?

  It was a great party.

• 0:54David Sacks?

  Nah, you've been saying he was a GOP super spreader.

• 0:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Jason, you were angry. You were angry and you were, yeah, you were really mad at Sax because you thought he actually gave you COVID, even though Sax had people test. Every single person tested on the way in.

• 1:09Jason Calacanis?

  Except you, J Cal.

• 1:10David Friedberg?

  J Cal, you walked around the velvet rope and you said, guess what? I'm a bestie. I don't have to test. And you walk right in that party. And guess what? At the end of the day, at the end of the day, there's nothing.

• 1:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Person that flouted the rules got it. Karma's a bitch, J Cal.

• 1:24David Friedberg?

  Nothing better personifies poetic justice as what took place.

• 1:27Jason Calacanis?

  I do not place blame on anybody for hosting.

• 1:29David Friedberg?

  All around, you rant, you rant at Sax, you make fun of him, you poke him, you poke the bear.

• 1:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Republican this, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:36Jason Calacanis?

  It was a Republican super spreader. It was a GOP super spreader.

• 1:40David Friedberg?

  You go to his party and you run around the velvet rope and you don't get your test and you go in and you walk out with COVID.

• 1:46Jason Calacanis?

  Why should I have to test?

• 1:47David Friedberg?

  That was amazing.

• 1:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It was really amazing.

• 1:49Jason Calacanis?

  I don't wait on lines. I'm a bestie.

• 1:51David Sacks?

  I think he walked out with COVID because I think he walked in with COVID.

• 1:54Jason Calacanis?

  There you go.

• 1:54David Sacks?

  He's the only one not to test. So who brought it in?

• 1:56Jason Calacanis?

  I did test. My daughter and I came to your wonderful party. It was amazing. It was delightful. We tested.

• 2:02David Sacks?

  And no, you didn't. When, when you got to the party.

• 2:04Jason Calacanis?

  I 100% tested. Do not lie.

• 2:05David Friedberg?

  You told us you didn't. You told us you didn't.

• 2:06David Sacks?

  Exactly. You were either lying then or you're lying now.

• 2:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You're lying then or you're lying now. Which one is it?

• 2:11Jason Calacanis?

  I was joking then. I 100% tested with my daughter.

• 2:14David Sacks?

  No, you're telling the truth.

• 2:16Jason Calacanis?

  Both was on the line testing with me. I had the bracelet. I tested 100%.

• 2:20David Sacks?

  When I asked you, when you got into the party and I said, how'd your COVID tests go? You said, oh, I pulled my bestie card. I walked around. I pulled my bestie card.

• 2:28Jason Calacanis?

  That's not true.

• 2:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's true.

• 2:29David Sacks?

  That's what you said.

• 2:31Jason Calacanis?

  You guys are ganging up on me and making up bullshit now.

• 2:34David Sacks?

  No, you said that.

• 2:35Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, I may, I may have made a joke, but I hundred percent tested.

• 2:39David Sacks?

  Hold on guys, and then I find out the reason why Jade wasn't at the party. She was home taking care of two sick kids.

• 2:45Jason Calacanis?

  No, she wasn't. We had one kid.

• 2:47David Sacks?

  So how do we know that it wasn't you?

• 2:50Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, we know because.

• 2:52David Sacks?

  Fredo.

• 2:53Jason Calacanis?

  Told us.

• 2:54David Sacks?

  It was you Fredo.

• 2:54Jason Calacanis?

  That she brought it to the party.

• 2:55David Sacks?

  You broke my heart.

• 2:57Jason Calacanis?

  Alright, here's what happened. I went to the party.

• 3:01Jason Calacanis?

  Uh, I did test. There was a group of people that got there early, had tested at another event. They told me this. They tested before they got there and they told me that they had accidentally brought it with them because they were the first to

• 3:17Jason Calacanis?

  have a positive test result. So in all likelihood, it was that group. There's no, it doesn't matter who brought it because Omnicron, Omnicron is going everywhere.

• 3:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What is it?

• 3:25Jason Calacanis?

  Omnicron. It's a, it's a character from Transformers.

• 3:28David Sacks?

  I don't understand that. What do you mean they brought it with them? If they tested negative?

• 3:31Jason Calacanis?

  They came from another location. They tested, they claimed they tested.

• 3:38Jason Calacanis?

  Then they were the first to come up that next day with a positive result.

• 3:42David Sacks?

  It takes longer than 24 hours to incubate.

• 3:45Jason Calacanis?

  You're right. So that means they must have brought it with them. They, they tested on Sunday and had it. They were at the party Saturday.

• 3:51David Sacks?

  Negative at the door.

• 3:52Jason Calacanis?

  They did not test at the door. They told me. They told me they tested the day before.

• 3:56David Sacks?

  No, everybody was tested at the door, including staff, including vendors. There were people who were turned around because they tested positive.

• 4:03Jason Calacanis?

  So didn't test.

• 4:04David Sacks?

  Oh, you're trying to blame it on?

• 4:06Jason Calacanis?

  No, I specifically have tried to not say the person's name and you're trying to include them in this. It's gonna get leaked out. It doesn't matter.

• 4:12David Sacks?

  They were all negative at the time of the party.

• 4:14Jason Calacanis?

  You hosted a super spreader.

• 4:15David Sacks?

  They didn't get it till like five days later. So they were not the earliest to test. You tested positive. You had symptoms before they did. Remember the tickle in the throat? Guys, remember when he said last week he had the tickle in the throat?

• 4:27Jason Calacanis?

  Anyway, thank you for giving me Om, Omicron. I am now fucking super, according to all results, I am now Superman.

• 4:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Have you tested negative now?

• 4:36Jason Calacanis?

  Not yet. I did a test yesterday. Nine days later, I'm still coming up positive. I had two days of symptoms. Not that any of you give a shit, you rat bastards. That you just laugh about my COVID. Nobody, at no point in this conversation did any of you say, how are you feeling?

• 4:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Was there any chance of death? Was there any chance?

• 4:54Jason Calacanis?

  I was triple vaxxed. I had done Moderna.

• 4:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  At any point, though, did you feel like, oh shit, I may have to go to the hospital? I may need to go to a ventilator?

• 5:00Jason Calacanis?

  No, no.

• 5:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's too bad.

• 5:01Jason Calacanis?

  I felt the tickle in my throat on Tuesday.

• 5:03David Sacks?

  Any other symptoms? He coughed three times, he sneezed twice, and prematurely ejaculated once. Those were his symptoms.

• 5:28Jason Calacanis?

  This is gonna be our prediction show. Last week, we did, of course, our 2021 Bestie Awards. How did everybody feel about last week's awards? I think it was great.

• 5:36David Friedberg?

  It's done quite well.

• 5:38Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I was happy with it.

• 5:39David Friedberg?

  It was a fun show. I think we all got to kind of talk about stuff we wanted to talk about. And it was pretty dynamic. I thought it was a good show. I liked it.

• 5:48David Sacks?

  It was like a greatest hits.

• 5:49Jason Calacanis?

  So we're gonna do some predictions for next year.

• 5:52David Friedberg?

  Are you gonna do a drum roll and a little scene as well?

• 5:55Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, okay, here we go. Here's an opening.

• 5:57David Friedberg?

  But it's gotta be like flying into the future, like going through space.

• 6:01Jason Calacanis?

  Space, warp speed.

• 6:03David Friedberg?

  Warp speed.

• 6:04Jason Calacanis?

  Flying through the air, wormhole, other side of the universe. Here we are in 2022.

• 6:12Jason Calacanis?

  Biggest political winner 2022. What did Tucker Carlson's former writers tell you to say? Saxon.

• 6:19David Sacks?

  I?

• 6:23Jason Calacanis?

  It never ends, Saxon. It never ends. It's never gonna end. People were intrigued about what was the second battle about? That was the big debate. Oh, who knows? I can't remember the battles.

• 6:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  About the beep beep. Which led to me writing the Google Doc about beep beep.

• 6:42David Sacks?

  Oh, I know what it was.

• 6:43David Friedberg?

  Tomah and I deserve a Bestie Award for that.

• 6:46Jason Calacanis?

  Who's your biggest political winner?

• 6:47David Sacks?

  Okay.

• 6:48Jason Calacanis?

  Let's stop at the inside baseball.

• 6:49David Sacks?

  My biggest political winner for 2022? I predict my man Ron DeSantis will be the big winner. He's up for reelection in Florida. He won in 2018 with less than 1% of the vote. It was a real nail biter. This time, I think he's gonna cruise to reelection quite handily and become the national frontrunner on the GOP side. And the reason is because...

• 7:13David Sacks?

  He had the right approach on COVID. He made the vaccine available. He made the antibodies available, but ultimately he treated the population like adults. He let them make their own decisions. He kept businesses open, schools open, and I think the rest of the country is going to come around to his point of view because of the unstoppable of Omicron next year. And so I think that DeSantis, who is much maligned and disparaged, will come out as the big winner a year from now.

• 7:41Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Who do you got, Friedberg?

• 7:42David Friedberg?

  Vladimir Putin. I think Putin's going to benefit from the rising conflict between the US and China. The other day, there was a call between Putin and Xi, and they said, and Putin called Xi his dear friend and said that relations between the two countries had reached an unprecedentedly high level. And I think that his position economically as a trade partner with China and as a beneficiary of Chinese economic prosperity will only grow as tensions between the US and China rise. I think we're seeing that with some of his cavalier behavior with the Ukraine right now. And I think Putin will become

• 8:26David Friedberg?

  a stronger player on the global stage, particularly as it relates to his relationship with NATO over the next year. And he's been a little bit quiet the last few years. He was kind of, I'd say, suppressed with sanctions and all the other nonsense that's gone on to keep him at bay, but he could kind of rise up again in 2022 and he could become a real player on the geopolitical globally in a more meaningful way than he has in the last couple of years.

• 8:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, you, you white guys love Putin. It's crazy. The whites love Putin.

• 8:55David Friedberg?

  I don't love him.

• 8:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  God, I hate Putin. I mean, if you ranked, if you ranked Russia GDP, do you know even, do you have any idea where it even ranks?

• 9:01David Friedberg?

  Russia GDP is probably...

• 9:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, you guys, for the amount of time you guys give Putin... It's in the 30s. Probably eight. Probably eight. I mean, what about Nigeria? No, no, I think it's in the 20s or 30s. Nigeria is like crushes Russia. Nobody ever talks about Nigeria has all the same inputs, except they're black.

• 9:14Jason Calacanis?

  They just don't have 2,000 nuclear weapons.

• 9:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, as it goes.

• 9:18Jason Calacanis?

  That is the big reason. I mean, it's a fallen empire for sure, but they still have 2,000 nukes.

• 9:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 9:22David Friedberg?

  The position, the energy that it provides.

• 9:25Jason Calacanis?

  You only need one to work.

• 9:26David Friedberg?

  Eastern Europe. I mean, Russia's geopolitically pretty significant.

• 9:30Jason Calacanis?

  Insignificant economically, significant because they have a madman running the country.

• 9:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I don't think he's a madman, but I'm just saying that, you know, there's a, there's a lot of ink that spilled about Russia and I don't think anybody even takes a step back and actually looks at

• 9:42Jason Calacanis?

  Alright, who you got for yours?

• 9:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Actually ranking the world, guys. Uh, my, my worldwide, uh, biggest political winner for 2022 is Xi Jinping.

• 9:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think this guy is, uh, he's firing on all cylinders and he, uh, is basically ascendant. So 2022 marks the first year where he's essentially really ruler for life. And so I don't think we really know what he's capable of and what he's going to do. And so that's just going to play out.

• 10:14Jason Calacanis?

  You think he's the biggest political winner, really?

• 10:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh my God, I think, I think it's going to be a, he's going to run roughshod, not just domestically, but also internationally, because you have to remember, he controls so much of the critical supply chain that the Western world needs to be.

• 10:29Jason Calacanis?

  I, I think you're completely wrong. I think you're completely wrong. I think he's losing his power. He's scared. That's why he took out all these CEOs. He's consolidating power because he fears that they're gonna win too big and then displace him. And he has massive real estate problems over there that could blow up at any moment in time. He could face a civil war there. I think he's totally isolated himself.

• 10:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Civil war? They don't even have guns.

• 10:52Jason Calacanis?

  Every major country is removing their factories and removing this dependency.

• 10:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They don't even have any guns there. What are you talking about? What are they, what are they gonna riot with?

• 11:00Jason Calacanis?

  Uh, did you not see Tiananmen Square? Did you not see the riots in Hong Kong? Are you not paying attention, Schmoth? There's been many riots in China. They just happened to kill all the people.

• 11:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Zhen's were crushed.

• 11:09Jason Calacanis?

  I'm not saying they won't be crushed, but he still will have massive amounts of, uh, I believe protests and yeah, he'll have to kill people.

• 11:17David Sacks?

  I think, I think the, the bigger risk is, is that China gets better for Xi Jinping, but worse for everybody else in China. It's already worse for all the billionaires, uh, over there. It's worse for the tech industry. You've now got Evergrande, that whole, uh, you know, gigantic debt implosion. I think there could be contagion from China next year. I don't think Xi's gonna lose his grip in any way, but I'm not sure China's gonna have a good year next year.

• 11:42Jason Calacanis?

  It's gonna be terrible. Um, I went with Ron DeSantis with you, Sax. I think he's obviously, um, a much more, um, he's a much more palatable.

• 11:54Jason Calacanis?

  candidate than Trump and I think Trump is not going to want to run and that brings me to my biggest political loser for 2022 as we segue I believe this is going to be split between Biden and Trump the two most important people of the last four years and I think Biden is going to lose the midterms and I think Trump is going to get destroyed with this January 6 thing and bow out and not run again who do you got for your biggest loser

• 12:18David Sacks?

  let me add an octogenarian to that which is my my pick for biggest political loser next year is Nancy Pelosi I there's a red wave coming the Democrats for sure go lose the House that is baked into the cake and I predict she will announce her retirement shortly after that she has served you know a couple of pretty consequential terms as Speaker she's never lost a vote but with this whole build back better she forced all of her moderates to take a vote on 5 trillion in new spending which they then lost in the Senate and that's going to cost them some seats so she contributed to I think her own downfall that's going to happen next year

• 12:53Jason Calacanis?

  is Nancy to come work at social capital and you're going to give her a bucket of capital Chamath to work with to try to play the market

• 13:00David Sacks?

  by the way Jason who's the excellent writer you got from Tucker because I want to hire them

• 13:05Jason Calacanis?

  all right listen I I got somebody from the YouTube comments who said they would they would punch me up all right I got Biden and Trump Nancy Pelosi and then who do you got Friedberg who's your biggest political loser of 2022 prediction

• 13:18David Friedberg?

  mine's a little depressing but I'm honestly a little bit worried about the United States influence on kind of a global stage socially politically economically and I think that there's a number of events that could catalyze kind of a precipitous series of events that could really harm the continuing influence the US has geopolitically so

• 13:46David Friedberg?

  You know, I don't really have an individual, but I kind of have the US and its role on the global geopolitical stage.

• 13:51Jason Calacanis?

  US influence.

• 13:52David Friedberg?

  US influence, yeah.

• 13:53Jason Calacanis?

  And you said you thought there was going to be this potential tipping point, perhaps? Did you see that being Taiwan or what?

• 13:59David Friedberg?

  I've got a couple of them. I think when we get into our contrarian points of view, I'll share some of them.

• 14:04Jason Calacanis?

  Okay. Chamath, who do you got for your biggest political loser for 2022 prediction?

• 14:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, look, I like your pick of Trump, which is not mine, but just to double down on this Trump thing, it's incredible to see that he's just a bamboozler, you know, that's the same guy who's like, you know, telling people to not take the vaccine, gets boosted, then, you know, when he finally gets outed with this other scumbag, what's that guy's name? What's another right knob?

• 14:38Jason Calacanis?

  Sax, take out your phone and go to speed dial. Just read it.

• 14:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Bill O'Reilly.

• 14:44Jason Calacanis?

  Bill O'Reilly, yeah, that's the number four to speed dial.

• 14:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Those two dopes on stage are like, yeah, I got boosted. What about you? Yeah, I got triple vaccinated. And then everybody's booing them. I mean, they're just such...

• 14:54Jason Calacanis?

  Watch what they do, not what they say.

• 14:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  These guys are entertainers.

• 14:57Jason Calacanis?

  If you're a dipshit on the alt-right.

• 14:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The great thing is they are phenomenal entertainers, but you can't trust a single word that they say. So, Jason, I think that that's a pretty good pick. My pick is the progressive left as a class, because I think these guys are being exposed basically for just being laughingstocks. They're be quickly becoming policy jokes inside of Washington and in every city-state that they run. They just can't seem to put one foot in front of the other. And they've been run amok with folks like these teachers' unions who have really, really, really done a number on our children, which is now finally getting exposed in the mainstream media.

• 15:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And so all of these policies are just, they're not rooted in any sort of science or legitimacy. So they are, I think, going to pay a pretty heavy political price for mainstream voters in 22.

• 15:50Jason Calacanis?

  You know what they remind me of, those two guys, like, uh, the old guys from the Muppets, Statler and Waldorf? That's what like, those, uh, Trump and, uh, O'Reilly are. Okay.

• 15:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think Biden can still, I think Biden can still save, save a lot of his long-term reputation. I think Trump's is.

• 16:05Jason Calacanis?

  What would Biden need to do in 2022? No one.

• 16:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  To the center. He needs to disavow the progressives and basically shore up his party's ability to win back some seats and hold the line. And so you're not going to be able to enter some of these places with some of this rhetoric that, you know, he basically was convinced would be necessary for him to not lose the progressive left. There just needs to be a conversation inside the White House where they actually go through the cold political calculus of, you know, my enemy's enemy is actually my friend kind of thing and actually go back to the center.

• 16:35David Sacks?

  Yeah, he needs to pull a Bill Clinton and then triangulate.

• 16:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He needs to pull Bill Clinton. Okay. And quickly, too.

• 16:41David Sacks?

  I think it's way too early to conclude that the Biden presidency is over. I mean, I think, I think they're going to lose Congress next year. That's baked into the cake, but he's still got two years after that to pull his chestnuts out of the fire. And if the Republicans overplay their hand and he tacks towards the center, you know, he can change his fortunes.

• 16:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He can change his fortunes quickly.

• 17:00Jason Calacanis?

  He's down a pawn, but he could develop the board. I got him. All right.

• 17:04David Friedberg?

  I think the voice of populism is only going to swell over the next year and, um, that, that's going to be the predominant force that's going to drive both the alt-right and the progressive left. And it, you know, you could make the case that, you know, politicians that are in seats should be kind of disavowing these, what we today are calling kind of extreme voices, but they're only getting louder. And the importance of kind of populist movements, not just in the U.S., but you look around the world. I mean, look at what's happening in Brazil. Various European countries. I mean, it is

• 17:34Jason Calacanis?

  Wait, so you think populism is gonna have a rebound in 2022? We're all saying that we think it's fizzling.

• 17:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, I can I just say, Friedberg?

• 17:42David Friedberg?

  I think populism is swelling, and I think it's gonna get louder.

• 17:44Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, okay.

• 17:45David Friedberg?

  Low interest rates are simply keeping things at bay for now. And I think that's gonna shift very quickly.

• 17:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But populism just means what's popular. And so I think there's a huge silent majority that's always stayed on the sidelines because they're not the ones that are tend to have a tendency to complain. But when things get important enough, they typically show up. And so, you know, we may find that actually centrism is what's most popular.

• 18:09David Friedberg?

  I think populism is anti-elitism. And I think that there is a growing concern globally because of globalization that power and capital has been concentrated in the hands of a few. That the voice of the majority is, we want to be shared. We want that to all be shared equally. And that's what's driving populism around the world. And it's in the US, you know, manifesting in different ways on the left and the right. And you'll see this in other countries around the world. But I don't see the fundamental driving forces changing there until and unless we have massive taxation and redistribute wealth in a meaningful way or some massive shift in government. That that voice is gonna get any quieter. I think it's only gonna get louder.

• 18:52David Friedberg?

  And there may be perturbations between here and there of like what it looks like. But it doesn't seem to be going away. That's just, to me, kind of the underlying driving force. And it's manifesting with different political stuff right now.

• 19:04Jason Calacanis?

  Interesting.

• 19:05David Friedberg?

  It's not, it doesn't seem to be silencing.

• 19:07Jason Calacanis?

  Biggest business winner for 2022. Trumath, let's start with you.

• 19:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Small businesses. I think what we are starting to see is that these monolithic monopolistic mega corps aren't everything that they're cracked up to be. And so there's going to be a certain amount of lock-in that we will tolerate. There's going to be a lot of taxation and policy that prevents its further growth.

• 19:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And all of that opportunity accrues to smaller companies. And so in general, I think that if you're on the side of the David versus these Goliaths over the next year, you're going to have, or frankly, over the next several decades, but starting really next year, you're going to do really well. And the middle companies, so the folks that are neither huge nor are small, let's take a, you know, an example like a Shopify, hundred billion dollar market cap, but by no means is it a trillion dollar market cap. Their success comes from enabling, you know, arming the rebels. And so I'm a huge fan of these enabling, this enabling layer for small businesses, both offline and online.

• 20:16David Friedberg?

  Who do you got, Friedberg? Um, I am actually going to go with Stripe. Stripe is a payment technology company based in San Francisco. Uh, Stripe raised money earlier this year at a $95 billion valuation. Um, the highest valued IPO, tech IPO in history was Alibaba. They were valued at $230 billion when they went public.

• 20:36David Friedberg?

  We are hearing rumors that Stripe might, you know, kind of, or think that they, bankers think that they might be able to break that. And so Stripe's IPO could be the biggest tech IPO ever. Um, I think they've been talking about doing a direct listing. By the way, I don't know the guys, I don't know the investors, I don't know the company, I'm not an investor, so I don't have any information whatsoever. I'm simply an observer and, and talk to people in the market. But it sounds like they're going for direct listing and we could see that become the highest valuation tech IPO ever, and then they will become kind of the golden child next year. Uh, and you know, kind of be, be part of the, you know, the, the top of the top. What do you got, Sacks?

• 21:14David Sacks?

  I got rise of the rest, meaning the parts of the United States that are not the traditional California and New York centers of industry and wealth. I think it's a trend that's been going on, but it's going to keep getting bigger next year. If you guys saw the net migration numbers by state, they're absolutely stunning.

• 21:32David Friedberg?

  Stunning.

• 21:33David Sacks?

  So, and it's the, it's the zero tax states that are just booming right now. It's states like Florida and Texas and Tennessee and on and on it goes at the huge expense of California and New York. I think that trend's only going to pick Up steam now that salt is dead. I think there was a hope on the part of many people that Trump got rid of salt, but and then the Democrats were supposed to bring it back and then AOC rejected it. It's not coming back. And what that means is that if you're in, say, California, for example, you know, with the salt deduction, your effective tax rate was around eight percent, not thirteen point three percent. And that really is thirteen point three percent. That's a huge increase. And the politicians in California don't even realize that the tax rate has effectively gone up to the end taxpayer.

• 22:17David Sacks?

  And and and the quality of life isn't any better. We're not getting anything more for that. And so I think this X is gonna continue.

• 22:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sorry, that's the that's the subtle math that they actually really need to understand. That five hundred basis points, you can overcome that if your life is five percent better in enough ways where you're like, it's fine. And the reason why people are leaving is they feel that their life is actually much less than five percent worse.

• 22:40David Sacks?

  Right.

• 22:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  If the trash isn't picked up.

• 22:41David Sacks?

  Quality of life doesn't justify it.

• 22:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know, your your windows are getting smashed in all the time.

• 22:45David Sacks?

  Safety.

• 22:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Your kids are, you know, depressed and need counseling because of the way that the teachers unions lock them out of school. You're just like, forget this. I can't do this anymore.

• 22:53David Sacks?

  Right.

• 22:53Jason Calacanis?

  I gotta add those two numbers, yeah.

• 22:55David Sacks?

  Here, here.

• 22:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's what that's what people really need to appreciate. I don't think it's the actual effective tax rate, but it's the delta of how poor your quality of life has gotten over these last few years relative to the tax you pay.

• 23:07David Sacks?

  Yeah, I totally totally agree with that. And then one other effect that I think plays into this is the reshoring of American industry, which is not happening in places like California, New York. It's happening in places like Texas.

• 23:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sure.

• 23:17David Sacks?

  Samsung just announced a seventeen billion dollar investment in a new chip foundry in Texas. Here, I'll post this. And there's a lot of things like this happening. So as we decouple from China and bring our supply chain home. Let's go. That is going to be a big factor in the rise of the rest. Love it. Love it. And it's great. It's great for America because the wealth does need to be more evenly distributed. It can't just go to tech and finance elites in California and New York.

• 23:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 23:44Jason Calacanis?

  All right, I had two. Disney was my biggest corporate winner for 2022. Disney Plus crushing it. Parks raised prices. People want to go to the parks. Spider-Man just had, I think, the number two or number three all-time opening in a pandemic, which is crazy. That IP is going to continue to work for them. Jon Favreau and David Filoni, I think is how you pronounce his last name, both crushing it with Mandalorian. Boba Fett, one of the great characters from our childhood, now is going to have his own Book of Boba Fett starting on December 29th. Is that today or tomorrow? Tomorrow. And so I think Disney is going to have a huge surge. I think they're undervalued. But my number one for this category, biggest business winner

• 24:24Jason Calacanis?

  for 2022 was millennials and Gen Z. I think that they became completely empowered and independent. They shook off the participation trophies and their entitlement during COVID. They realized that they have skills that are valuable. They're sought after. They learned how to make money. They traded crypto. They did stock trading. They're doing shorts, puts, whatever, on Robinhood. And they're just not impressed with people in power. And they increasingly want to build shit and make money. I think that those two generations have woken up, and I think they're going to be the biggest winners in 2022. Because dovetailing with your SMBs, Chamath, I do think, and I'm seeing it across my entire portfolio of companies, you try to hire somebody and they're like, yeah, but maybe I can just start my own company.

• 25:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You and Sacks are actually saying a flavor of the same thing, actually.

• 25:10Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 25:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Because all these SMBs aren't going to happen in New York and San Francisco. They're happening all over America. And there are people that are taking empowerment into their own hands. There's tooling for them. And there's opportunity, economic opportunity for them to build businesses on their own. And basically just say, you know, F you to corporate America.

• 25:26Jason Calacanis?

  And nothing will build your confidence to dovetail with you, Sacks. Nothing builds your confidence, like moving from one city to another and having, that's a very empowering thing to do. When you're just like, you know what, I'm going to just leave and go somewhere else. I'll make it myself. So I feel like they are super impressive to me.

• 25:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I really believe in, I really believe in this because the three of us got there in totally different ways. But I think it's roughly all the same.

• 25:45Jason Calacanis?

  We might be triangulating around a trend here. Biggest business loser for 2022, I'll just give it real quick. I think crypto projects that actually don't deliver a product in 2022 are just going to be lost. I think this idea that people are going to bet on things that don't exist in the real world or don't actually have applications is going to end. It's time for crypto to put up or shut up. And I think the crypto projects that do that. Which a number of them are starting to are going to store, but it's going to be a big shake out there. What do you got for biggest business loser in 2022, Friedberg?

• 26:17David Friedberg?

  I agree with you, actually. That was mine.

• 26:19Jason Calacanis?

  What?

• 26:20David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 26:20Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, wow.

• 26:21David Friedberg?

  I said crypto bubble will burst. There's a lot of scammy nonsense going on. 90% of these projects, you know, are not going to yield value and fundamentals. And I also think that rising interest rates are going to affect the crypto market. There's a lot of leveraged trades into the crypto assets. Those will start to delever as these interest rates shift up. And as a whole, you'll see a large percentage of them go away or decline in value, but a small number will continue to grow in value, just like we saw when the dot com bubble blew up. There was a number of companies that survived. Most of them did not. And the few that did survive ended up being coming worth 10 times what the current market value is. And I think that that's still possible with these crypto projects.

• 27:03David Friedberg?

  But I'd say 90% of them are probably going to start to blow up next year.

• 27:07Jason Calacanis?

  What do you got, Jabal?

• 27:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, I guess I'm fading you guys, and I'm also fading implicitly Friedberg's pick of Stripe. But my biggest business loser for 2022 is Visa and Mastercard and traditional payment rails and the entire ecosystem around it. So I think that this is the year you can put on what probably will be the most profitable spread trade of my lifetime, which is to be short these companies and that anybody that basically lives off of this 2% or 3% tax and be long well-thought-out Web3 crypto projects that are rebuilding payments infrastructure in a completely decentralized way. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that what you say won't also happen, both that Stripe will

• 27:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  have an incredible IPO and that a lot of these scammy crypto projects will go to zero. However, if you read the white papers of these crypto projects and you systematically put together a framework, I think you can be long those and you can be short Visa, Mastercard, because I think this is their peak market cap.

• 28:11Jason Calacanis?

  And for those of you don't know, fading and sports betting, taking the opposite side of a bet, taking the opposite team, I guess.

• 28:16David Friedberg?

  Man, Visa's market cap is half a trillion dollars, huh? It's incredible.

• 28:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's a completely contrived duopoly that doesn't need to exist.

• 28:24David Friedberg?

  And what does Visa mean to a young person? And Mastercard's almost 400 billion, so they're a trillion dollar combined market cap.

• 28:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  By the way, you have to understand that the canary in the coal mine here is pretty significant. The most important thing is Amazon, earlier this year, Nick, maybe you can post this, decided to just shut Visa off in the UK.

• 28:41David Friedberg?

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Now, Amazon is not going to do something like that, in my opinion, unless it's a test of what they can do all around the world. And again, going back to this idea of arming the rebels, there really is no need today for all of these small businesses to sit on top of Visa, Mastercard and Amex Rails. It's unnecessary. And so it'll probably get developed in the developing world first. This is why I think, you know, focusing in markets like Nigeria, to me, are way more exciting than talking about, you know, these fading Western European countries. Who cares?

• 29:14David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 29:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is where this stuff will happen. It's not to say that those other companies can't, you know, trundle along for a while. But when I say, you know, we'll look back in 10 years and their market caps will be materially lower, anybody in those traditional infrastructure and rails versus anybody in this new infrastructure and rails will be, it will look like a no-brainer 10 years from now.

• 29:39David Friedberg?

  Do you consider the buy now, pay later companies, like Affirm and Upstart or whatever? I don't know if Upstart fits in that category, but some of these buy now, pay later businesses as being the alternative to the traditional payment networks? Or do you think it's a different business?

• 29:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, right now, I think what buy now, pay later is, is a rate arbitrage.

• 29:56David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 29:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  When, as you said earlier, rates are very, very low, so the cost of capital is low. But it again starts to habituate the consumer experience to, I don't need to pay these userless rates to these three credit card companies to facilitate a transaction of money that I already have or money that I'm good for. That's the big idea, right? And so when you translate that into Web 3 in a good project or a good series of projects, you're not going to need these companies. And so it's going to, I think, eviscerate trillions of dollars of market cap of traditional companies.

• 30:26David Friedberg?

  Well, not to mention, you also have in between these two, Venmo and Cash App, which are not crypto, but they certainly as brands mean more to young people than Visa and Mastercard. Yeah, do you think Block, used to be called Square, is a good pair trade against Visa, Mastercard in this context? Yeah, I like it.

• 30:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know, I think that that that starts to get closer to to the truth. My my perspective is you can kind of short anybody who's public, because anybody who's public can really only be public or will go public because they feast off of this artificial 2% or 3% transaction fee. Everybody does. The companies you want to belong are those private companies in crypto that you can read the white papers of, whose protocols have utility and who's building some element of infrastructure that replaces a traditional business. So as long as you can kind of build those things up. Balaji, for example, had a bunch of tweets this weekend where he was like, you know, he has this idea for a mirror table. What is that?

• 31:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That replaces, you know, cap table management. Right now, why is that important? Well, it's because it touches all of these really important KYC, AML, investing laws across all these countries in all of these places. It's just a very simple example of where the new company that actually builds that capability of these mirror tables will do so at virtually no cost. And so it'll have a 50-person team. And so they're not going to have offices all over the world. Their cost basis will be, you know, an order or two orders of magnitude cheaper.

• 31:57Jason Calacanis?

  That's basically Visa, Mastercard became a tax. It took them decades and decades to have that power over folks. And but I think a firm does break that. A firm breaks it because the people who are selling then decide, you know what? We'll give a little bit of a discount here to get more people to buy. Go ahead.

• 32:13David Friedberg?

  They were the classic network monopoly, network effect monopoly business, right? Like they got the small businesses, they got the credit cards and by extension, the consumers on the network. And ultimately, they created these these absolutely locked in networks. But as with all networks, complacency kind of, you know, drives innovation. And this field innovation that we're seeing is now starting to figure out ways to not just crack their way into the network, but to replace them with an entirely different model.

• 32:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Last point on this, this is not one where I think this disruption happens slow. I think it happens swiftly.

• 32:45Jason Calacanis?

  Swiftly being five to 10 years?

• 32:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, like in a year.

• 32:48David Friedberg?

  Yeah, Tom's point is really interesting because there's, you know, there are several billion people globally who do not have credit and who are unbanked. And so if you think about where this is more likely to come from, it's more likely to come from an innovative model in those markets that then ultimately finds its way into the developed world. Versus, you know, trying to break apart Visa, Mastercard and go get these small businesses to switch out of them and so on. Uh, today. So it's, it's a really interesting.

• 33:15Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, Sax, what do you got?

• 33:16David Sacks?

  I don't know if it's biggest loser, but the thing I'm most worried about is in 2022, the Fed is going to stop quantitative easing, or so they have said. They are, I guess March will be the last month in which they do this QE. So starting in April, there won't be any of this liquidity pumped into the system. And so I think the, the losers are going to be any of these asset classes that are heavily dependent on or have benefited from all this excess liquidity sloshing through the system. Uh, it's true that the stock market, I think, has already priced in rate increases and an increase in the discount rate. But I don't know if markets can fully price in a reduction in liquidity. We don't know exactly what that's going to look like. And so if liquidity is reduced next year, I think that could

• 34:01David Sacks?

  reverberate through a bunch of markets, including, you know, everything from sports cards, you know, and collectibles, which have gone through the roof to art, to crypto, to, you know, maybe, um, some growth stocks and on and on it goes. So that's my biggest worry is what happens when the Fed stops QE.

• 34:23Jason Calacanis?

  The biggest loser is markets because of quantitative easing.

• 34:27David Sacks?

  Markets that have to get off drugs, basically.

• 34:30Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, most contrarian belief. Sax, why don't you tell us your most contrarian belief since I'm sure that you workshop this with the contrarian Peter Thiel himself? It never ends.

• 34:40David Sacks?

  Yeah, I mean, so I, well, I have a couple of them here, actually.

• 34:43Jason Calacanis?

  You want to wait and go after everybody else?

• 34:45David Sacks?

  Sure. Yeah, go ahead.

• 34:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Uh, I don't even know if this is contrarian or just unconventional, but I think that all of this pressure in on the progressive left will manifest in the chosen one. AOC deciding to step up and run against Schumer in the primary in June of 2022.

• 35:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And she will lose.

• 35:10Jason Calacanis?

  Wow.

• 35:11David Sacks?

  That's a good prediction.

• 35:12Jason Calacanis?

  I like Chamath's prediction.

• 35:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's a bold one, yeah. That she would lose is bold. Well, sorry, just to give a little bit of color in this, like, let's just assume that she doesn't, right? And, and, you know, she shouldn't, but let's think about where she's sitting. Build Back Better is over. There's an enormous amount of stuff happening right now where, you know, it looks like the progressive left is really going to be put under pressure. And it's almost as if, if she's really going to be the standard bearer and she needs to do something quickly, otherwise she's going to have to wait until she's 38. You know, she's, you know, another six years from now because it's not unlikely that she's going to run against Kristen, you know, Kirsten Gillibrand. So this is kind of like, it may be a moment where out of her sheer frustration, she steps up.

• 35:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then we will see whether Friedberg is right or I'm right, whether the populism is really around the left or the populism is really around the silent majority.

• 36:04Jason Calacanis?

  What do you got, Sax?

• 36:06David Sacks?

  I think it's, I think that's a very good prediction. Um, in a similar way, I predict that there will be a strange new respect for Bill Clinton in the Democratic Party by the end of next year. Why? Because after the red wave, there'll be a recognition that they need to move towards the center, they need to triangulate. And, and Clinton was the one who provided the formula for doing this. He dragged the Democratic Party back to the center after they were losing elections. And the other piece of this is going to be that it's already the case in polling that Hispanics and Asian Americans now are swing voters. And I think you're going to see in November 2022 that they go for Republicans a big numbers. And so the idea that the Democratic Party can just coast to election based on demographics,

• 36:50David Sacks?

  I think that theory is going to be imperiled.

• 36:54Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I like it.

• 36:55David Sacks?

  And so they're going to be looking to Clinton and maybe not so much Obama as the, as sort of the predicate they should be, you know, aspiring to in the future.

• 37:03Jason Calacanis?

  I think what's important about that is those groups of people, I think, are offended by the free money, get something for nothing. They're hardworking immigrant people who have pride. They don't want handouts. And then you have this left, white, liberal maniac saying, no, no, you're poor. You need handouts. You don't, you shouldn't work. You need handouts. You're, you know, and I just think they don't buy it. And that's why I think they're going to go to the Republicans because Republicans are hardworking and freedom-loving.

• 37:27David Sacks?

  And what was Clinton's big tagline in his campaign? He said that he supports people who work hard and play by the rules. That was that so

• 37:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Great.

• 37:35David Sacks?

  That's the message the Democrats got to refine. Right now, they seem to be on the side of basically drug addicts. I mean, you know, people who

• 37:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Junkies.

• 37:43David Sacks?

  Are contributing nothing and pitching tents in the middle of public spaces and you know, participating in open air drug markets.

• 37:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Jason Calacanis?

  What do you got?

• 37:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And sore losers, don't forget sore losers.

• 37:52Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 37:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And hysterical.

• 37:54Jason Calacanis?

  Free bird.

• 37:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And hysterical people.

• 37:56Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, being hysterical, just never go look.

• 37:58David Friedberg?

  If you'll bear with me, I have I have three, but um I couldn't really pick. So the first one is, I think, and I shared this on the pod the other day. I think we'll see the start of um great global conflict. We often rationalize the series of events that catalyzed conflict after the fact, rather than recognizing that there was emotional conditioning that allowed it to arise in the first place. I think we're in a state today where the conditioning is such that we're more inclined to engage in conflict globally than we have been in a very long time. I don't know if it's kind of the conflict meter or what have you. But you know, you could see proxy wars

• 38:41David Friedberg?

  and proxy conflicts that arise sort of like what we're seeing, you know, maybe something in the Ukraine, maybe something related to Taiwan. But this is primarily predicated by the fact that we've got kind of this inflationary environment and the rise of populism will force the kind of domestic policymakers and legislators to say, we should do something that's active and something that will allow us to unite our nations to go and get into a conflict somewhere or more likely to do that than not. And so I would say that the conditioning is there to see something like that happen. And so we're not kind of thinking, hey, next year is going to be a year of war. And that's why it's contrarian. I think that there may be war

• 39:22David Friedberg?

  that we're not kind of paying attention to today or that will surprise us after the fact. The second thing is I'd say China may solidify its position next year. And this is going to sound a little crazy as a leader in climate change mitigation. Whereas it's historically been considered kind of the primary foe against climate change. And there's a couple of behaviors we've seen come out of China recently that I think, number one, remember China's a very rational actor. They do analysis, they make decisions based on long-term investments and thinking. They recently announced that they're going to build 115 new nuclear reactors over the next 15 years at a cost of roughly $450 billion. That's about $3 billion per nuclear power plant.

• 40:03David Friedberg?

  The US is currently spending $30 billion building two power plants in Georgia. So the Chinese have figured it out. They've also publicly declared that they're going to be completely carbon neutral with their economy by the year 2060. And they're making the investments through these nuclear power plants to demonstrate that they're actually on the road to do that. And there are a number of other infrastructure initiatives that are meant to help them achieve significant reductions in carbon by 2040. So let me just point out why this is important, because right now, everyone thinks China's the foe, they're causing climate change, they're the biggest problem. Imagine if over the next year, some of what they're doing pays off, and everyone says, my gosh, China is leading the world in climate change mitigation. Their influence socially and politically will rise.

• 40:47David Friedberg?

  And this gives China a very strong kind of position, you know, on a global stage and with kind of people around the world thinking, instead of China being a foe, maybe they're the leader and the US is the laggard. And that creates a... And my third is very random, which is some sort of natural catastrophe. We never account, you know, all natural catastrophes are very low probability, but very high severity. If you multiply the probability by the severity, you have what's called the expected loss. We always undervalue the expected loss of massive catastrophes, natural catastrophes. We haven't had one in a while. It's a very low probability bet for me to say, hey, maybe we will. But if we do, it's certainly underappreciated in markets today.

• 41:30David Friedberg?

  And so when these kind of, you know, black swan-type events occur...

• 41:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Did you watch "Don't Look Up" on Netflix? Is that why you're...

• 41:37David Friedberg?

  No. What is that?

• 41:38Jason Calacanis?

  It's a new movie about a...

• 41:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's crap. Don't watch it.

• 41:41Jason Calacanis?

  It's polarizing. Let's leave it out for now. Okay. Adam McKay directed it? I'll watch it.

• 41:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's crap.

• 41:47Jason Calacanis?

  My most contrarian belief is, I think this is contrarian, is that American influence and exceptionalism is going to soar.

• 41:56David Friedberg?

  Oh, that is contrarian.

• 41:58Jason Calacanis?

  I think we've empowered this next generation. As I talked about earlier, millennials, Gen Z are ready to be independent, to build shit. And I think Gen X is going to start taking over from boomers, as is what's happening in this very podcast here, as we start to hit our prime years as executives. And then all these boomers are retiring, as Chamath has pointed out over and over again, and they're going to pass down their wealth, which then creates a perfect storm of a ton of capital, a ton of energy, lots of new ideas, a different perspective. And the economy is going to boom, and we will prove once again that we're the greatest country and economy in the world.

• 42:32David Friedberg?

  J K, you're not, you're not a contrarian. You're what we call an optimist.

• 42:35Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, okay. And then I'll add to that. J K, what are we? Are we Gen X? We're Gen X, yes. And the fighting over COVID, abortion, guns, social justice, and all this stuff is so exhausting, not that these are not important issues, that I think everybody is going to move to, let's just start respecting and building and solving problems. And I just think American exceptionalism will be the big winner. All that happens in 2022? I just think that that is my contrarian belief for 2022. Everybody believes it's all- I picked the primary race. I think everybody believes it's coming apart. I don't think anything's coming apart.

• 43:09David Friedberg?

  The whole arc of the next century in a year.

• 43:11Jason Calacanis?

  I think it's going to be a great year. I think it's going to be a great year.

• 43:14David Sacks?

  Can I give my second contrarian prediction?

• 43:16Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, God, here we go.

• 43:17David Sacks?

  Yes, okay.

• 43:18Jason Calacanis?

  Here comes the thing.

• 43:19David Sacks?

  Here it is. I think the media is going to, the media is going to pull a total 180 on COVID. Okay, so after pumping out COVID fear porn for two years, they're going to change their tune next year. Some of the things you're going to hear, we need to live with COVID, it can't be eradicated. They're even going to say it's, it's more like a cold or a flu. They're going to say that politicians can't be expected to stop it. They're going to memory hole their support for lockdowns. We never supported that. And why is all of this? Because we have an election next year, and more Americans have already died from COVID under Joe Biden than Donald Trump. That's a pretty amazing stat.

• 43:57Jason Calacanis?

  Memory hold? What was your term?

• 43:58David Sacks?

  Yeah, you've never heard of the term memory hole? It's what the press does.

• 44:01Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, memory hole. I thought you said hole. Memory hole. Got it. Okay.

• 44:03David Sacks?

  But did you guys know that? That more Americans have already died from COVID under Joe Biden than Donald Trump? That is stunning. Yeah, it is stunning.

• 44:10Jason Calacanis?

  Are you sure?

• 44:11David Sacks?

  Yeah, 100%. Now-

• 44:13David Friedberg?

  His writers triple fact-checked it.

• 44:15Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, they did. They did.

• 44:16David Sacks?

  No, look, look it up. And it's certainly, it's going to be even more true after this-

• 44:20Jason Calacanis?

  It's on the Infowars.com. You can look it up.

• 44:21David Sacks?

  Omicron wave. Now, look, I don't blame Joe Biden for that.

• 44:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sorry, wait, why is that? Because Trump had no vaccine and Biden has had vaccines and everything else?

• 44:31Jason Calacanis?

  Maybe it's the consistency of the number of people dying. We've had a consistent, you know, 1 to 2,000 people die a day. 1,400 a day, so maybe it's just that consistency. In the US, yeah. I think it's because of the Republican states that refuse to do any mitigation. Okay, let's keep going.

• 44:47David Sacks?

  Look, I don't blame Biden for that. I don't blame any president of the United States. Nonetheless, Biden campaigned on the idea of he's quote unquote shutting down the virus. He and the Democrats claimed that they would be able to eradicate it. That was the entire basis for all these COVID restrictions. Now, it's the case that it can't be done. Everyone's realizing that they're going to have to move the goalposts and memory hole ever saying that. And so the Democrats desperately need COVID to be over for the 2022 midterms. Therefore, the media will say it's over.

• 45:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, you started to see it already because the media is probably scratching their head. They were the ones trying to force these lockdowns, you know, basking in the glow of whatever press release the Centers for Disease Control would put out. And all of a sudden, the CDC just had to do a complete 180. And when they used to force 10-day quarantines for these positive tests and people with COVID, they just backtracked to five. And why? Well, it's because there's nobody to work.

• 45:46Jason Calacanis?

  And a Delta CEO asked for it last week. And now they're, I don't know if that's exactly true, but they're saying that.

• 45:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The CDC ultimately really is just in the hands of big business. And so when big business needs these workers to come back, you know, and it probably pissed off a lot of unions who would have loved to have just had a positive test and stay home forever, the teachers' unions particularly. Here we are. So this is a really tough situation.

• 46:06David Sacks?

  Well, and look, and to be clear, the message that the media is going to deliver about COVID next year, it'll be the first time I agree with it. But it's completely dishonest of them to pretend like they were never in favor of lockdowns and they completely inflated the threat and created this whole hysteria. And next year, they're going to have to back off it.

• 46:25Jason Calacanis?

  But also take into account, take into account, Sax, that this new variant is much less deadly. So it would be logical for people to take a less severe position on it.

• 46:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, hold on, Jason. We don't know whether there are more variants to come in the future that could be much worse.

• 46:40Jason Calacanis?

  We don't, but we also know this one is not as deadly and it's a blocker.

• 46:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The CDC makes a decision broadly speaking about everything. They're not making a decision about Omicron. They didn't say if you have Omicron, because it's not as if they really even test for it.

• 46:53Jason Calacanis?

  I'm just talking big picture to Sacks's point.

• 46:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The reason they shortened this is because they didn't know what they were doing before. They don't fundamentally know what they're doing now. They're making best guesses. And the problem with these best guesses is that they're inaccurate and it forces enormous amounts of waves of havoc every time they make a decision.

• 47:10Jason Calacanis?

  That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Sacks's prediction that the media will flip. A logical person, including everybody on this call, because of Omicron taking over for Delta and being a natural blocker, it would be the logical thing to do. So in defense of the media, which I'm not apt to do, it's logical for everybody to take a different approach right now because Omicron is 40 times more contagious, it blocks Delta, and it's become the dominant variant.

• 47:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think right now the media is confused. They're not sure which way to go. So, you know, there's a high probability that they tack towards what Sacks is saying. But if you read the New York Times article, it was through gritted teeth, they presented the fact that the CDC changed the guidelines. If you read that article, it was like pulling teeth.

• 47:47David Friedberg?

  What do you mean when you say the media? Can you just define that a little bit?

• 47:51David Sacks?

  It's everybody but Fox News. Come on. It's the elite prestige media. It's the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, on and on and on.

• 48:00David Friedberg?

  Do you think there's a bigger audience with the aggregate of those publications you just mentioned or the direct to the consumer publications that are happening on YouTube?

• 48:09David Sacks?

  Of course, they're being disaggregated because of their dishonesty.

• 48:12David Friedberg?

  So does it matter?

• 48:13David Sacks?

  Yeah, of course it still matters because they still have a lot of influence. They do.

• 48:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And no offense to everybody on YouTube, but we haven't gotten yet to the economic viability where enough people on YouTube can cover the broad spectrum of things that are important and then the mechanisms and incentives to amplify it. So for example.

• 48:30David Friedberg?

  That's a good point.

• 48:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We still need CNN. There was a woman on CNN, Nick, please post a clip that you could, we posted in the group chat, talking about the incidence of suicide rates and depression in our children and what happened when they were locked out of school for two years. Okay. And I am not going to stop talking about this because this is the issue of our times. These are our kids.

• 48:51Speaker 04

  Well, I want to get to underreported stories as well. Jan?

• 48:56Speaker 05

  Oh, for me, I mean, my kids hear me rant about this every day, so I may as well tell you guys. It's the crushing impact that our COVID policies have had on young kids and children. By far, you know, the least serious risk of serious illness. But, I mean, even teenagers, you know, a healthy teenager has a one in a million chance of getting and dying from COVID, which is way lower than, you know, dying in a car wreck on a road trip. But they have suffered and sacrificed the most, especially kids in underrepresented, at-risk communities. And now we have the Surgeon General saying there's a mental health crisis among our kids. The risk of suicide, suicide attempts among girls now up 51%

• 49:40Speaker 05

  this year. Black kids, nearly twice as likely as white kids to die by suicide. I mean, school closures, lockdowns, cancellation of sports. You couldn't even go on a playground in the DC area without cops scurrying, getting, chewing the kids off. Tremendous negative impact on kids. And it's been an afterthought. You know, it's hurt their dreams, their future, learning loss, risk of abuse, their mental health. And now with our knowledge, our vaccines, if our policies don't reflect a more measured and reasonable approach for our children, they will be paying for our generation's decisions the rest of their lives. And that, to me, is the greatest underreported story of the past year.

• 50:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And I don't see it being talked about anywhere. We talked about it first. You know, I posted that link about the decrease in IQ points.

• 50:33Jason Calacanis?

  Yep.

• 50:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then we started to talk about it there slowly. And now it's trickling into the mainstream media where they're forced to talk about it.

• 50:38Jason Calacanis?

  And who's impacted? It's not rich kids.

• 50:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's our kids. It's all of our kids.

• 50:42David Sacks?

  That was a fantastic clip. That CNN clip was fantastic.

• 50:45Jason Calacanis?

  The poor kids are the ones who are, are the ones who get hit the hardest. They can't do supplemental. They don't have that option.

• 50:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's not just that. Don't minimize what this is. This is every child.

• 50:53Jason Calacanis?

  I agree.

• 50:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yes, it disproportionately affects.

• 50:55Jason Calacanis?

  Who gets hit?

• 50:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It disproportionately, the data was that it's disproportionately affecting minority kids.

• 51:00Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 51:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And that could be because of the sociology of the parents. But Jason, you can also have rich colored parents, okay, Jay?

• 51:06Jason Calacanis?

  I'm not just saying color parents, I'm saying all poor kids, white, poor kids who are in public school.

• 51:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  All poor kids.

• 51:10Jason Calacanis?

  They're getting hit the hardest.

• 51:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Minority kids of all kinds, but frankly, the point is it's all kids of all kinds. Okay, so we don't need to subsegment this to make this issue go away and seem smaller than it is. We have literally put tens of millions of children.

• 51:24Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 51:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  At risk because of our behavior.

• 51:26Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, I'm agree with you and I'm not trying to minimize it or make it a smaller issue.

• 51:30David Friedberg?

  Your point is that none of the smaller audiences or smaller new media folks on YouTube or their podcasting have enough breadth to really make an impact by talking about this topic. Is that what you're saying? That the mainstream media is needed to hit the broad base?

• 51:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, what I'm saying is very specific. The people on YouTube cover what the people on YouTube want. Okay, the people on podcasts cover what they want. They're all very narrow specialists.

• 51:55David Friedberg?

  They're narrow niche.

• 51:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay.

• 51:56David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 51:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There is no set of incentives that then threads that together and then amplifies.

• 52:02David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 52:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  In the absence of those two mechanics.

• 52:04David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 52:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Those are software mechanics and economic mechanics that need to get built in. What we lose is signal.

• 52:10David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 52:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That, in my opinion, right now, over the last two weeks, is the single most important signal. And it is nowhere except for this one clip on CNN and the discussion that we had two weeks ago.

• 52:21David Friedberg?

  Because the YouTube, I just want to be really clear on this, because the YouTube.

• 52:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  YouTube is full of react videos and video games, which is fine.

• 52:28David Friedberg?

  And the consumer.

• 52:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What is missing.

• 52:30David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 52:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Is talking about this issue and actually holding people accountable. And who should be held accountable? In every single county where it was basically a board of education that was trying to shut these kids out. Who stood up and who told that story? Nobody did. And if it was trying to be told, it wasn't amplified correctly enough. And so what happens is after two years of damage to all of our kids, tens of millions of kids. There's a couple of fissures. One fissure was on this podcast, which I'm very proud of. Another fissure was this one few minute clip on CNN.

• 53:04Jason Calacanis?

  CBS, it was a CBS.

• 53:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  CBS, whatever.

• 53:06Jason Calacanis?

  It was a Sunday show, yeah.

• 53:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But my point is, these are the things that really matter and we haven't figured it out yet.

• 53:10David Friedberg?

  What you're saying, and I think it's a really important point, is that as a YouTuber, as a podcaster, you pick your niche. That you can hit home on and you hit home over and over every week. But no one says, I'm going to broadly talk about the issues of our time and make sure.

• 53:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, no, that's not true. We do.

• 53:27Jason Calacanis?

  We do, but it's a small subset, but I think the bigger picture here is that I'm going to dovetail with what Sacks said.

• 53:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There's more than a million people a week that listen to this. We've, we far exceeded MSNBC's average viewership. We're probably going to pass, you know, most CNBC shows and some CNN shows by the end of next year. So we will do it. But there's not enough. There needs to be more of us.

• 53:47David Friedberg?

  We're an opinion show as much, you know, we're not a traditional reporting show, right? In the sense that like go out, gather data and facts and present them, or do you disagree with that?

• 53:55Jason Calacanis?

  Not that they do that anyway.

• 53:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I disagree with that. I disagree. I actually think we do a decent job of filtering for the truth. And the reason we're able to do that is because of our friendship, we can hold each other accountable and call out the bullshit when we see one of us.

• 54:07David Friedberg?

  We don't have incentives. We don't have anything to lose, right?

• 54:08Jason Calacanis?

  I don't think there's an incentive here for us, but I want to build on something that Sacks said. See, it is very hard for the media to hold this dissonance because they're saying everybody needs to shelter in place. Covid is, you know, this huge thing. They put the death count, they, they put the case counter up. They won't talk about deaths in ICU. They won't talk about who's getting Covid because they have an incentive to get more ratings through Covid or Trump. And they took that. And then it's a narrative violation or it's cognitive dissonance if they say at the same time, everybody needs to shelter in place. This thing is really deadly, but we should send our kids to school. So they couldn't take that position, Sacks and Chamath. They couldn't take the position that, oh, well, kids could go to school because that would go against, hey, everybody needs to shelter in place. And they picked, I think,

• 54:52Jason Calacanis?

  Covid is this super deadly thing. Everybody has to shelter in place over children.

• 54:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You're giving them way too much credit. I think what happened was they had a position to re-aggregate lost power. And they took it.

• 55:06Jason Calacanis?

  That's real sinister.

• 55:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And they did not think about the true consequences. And it may not have happened at any one individual reporter level. But when it ladders up to the editorial board and the decisions of the people who run the mastheads of these organizations, they made the decision that currying and organizing power was more important than shining a light to do the right thing. Specifically in this case, the thing that aggravates me the most is around our kids.

• 55:31Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I think they were going for ratings, but anyway, we can keep debating it.

• 55:34David Sacks?

  Well, the one thing we can say for sure is they created a hysteria. Whether their motivation was ratings or a power grab or political advantage. There's probably all the above, but the bottom line is they wanted to create a hysteria. And they've been pumping COVID fear porn into the population for the last two years. But my prediction, like I said, is that it all flips next year. Why? Because there's an election and the way the media figures out what it's going to, what its narrative is going to be, is they start with the election result they want. And then they reverse engineer the narrative that they think is going to help achieve that election result. And if it means contradicting what they said yesterday, they will memory hole what they said yesterday in order to get on board the new narrative. That is what's going to happen.

• 56:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I do think you're right, but I think I just, I want to, I don't want to lose this thread because this has nothing to do with COVID. Meaning COVID was a symptom of this, but if you really thought that the organized mainstream media had the right to be, you know, has a, has a purpose to be on the right side of justice. Where were they when, when school boards were stripping out, you know, advanced placement programs for kids? Or where were they when they were shutting kids out? Or where were they when they were engaged in eight hour debates?

• 56:46Jason Calacanis?

  They can't go against the unions.

• 56:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know, a, a male can be on a committee, you know, because he's gay, but he's not, you know, black. I mean, these were the issues that stopped our children from literally walking into the classroom every day.

• 57:01Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I mean, they just.

• 57:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And if those stories were not told and they didn't happen just in one place, they happened all across the country. And this is where those folks had a responsibility because they also probably had kids and they didn't do a thing about it. That one issue for me really drives me crazy.

• 57:17Jason Calacanis?

  Let, let me ask a probing question here. We assume we're going to get out of this, um, you know, pandemic in 2022, knock on wood, no more variants. What is the obligation and technique, the strategy to solve what we did to these kids? And I just want to put it out there. We don't have to answer it now, but I think we could spend an episode.

• 57:35David Friedberg?

  That's a very difficult question, Jake, how that I think you need sociologists and psychologists and educators.

• 57:41Jason Calacanis?

  We also need entrepreneurship and ideas and we need to have a dialogue so we can bring them on. But if we're going to spend all this money on build back better, how about we build back the 20 lost fucking IQ points that these kids have? And then we do something about the depression and anxiety they have.

• 57:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Hallelujah.

• 57:54David Sacks?

  Jason, we're never going to get there because the teachers unions won't even acknowledge that learning loss exists.

• 57:59Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I think we need to break the teachers' unions, period.

• 58:02David Sacks?

  Yes. Oh, let me make a prediction in that regard. Next year, there's going to be a ballot initiative in California to, before school choice. And the way it's going to work is that I think there's something like $13,000 spent per pupil in California.

• 58:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's right.

• 58:17David Sacks?

  There's going to be, there's going to be a ballot initiative that says that any parent who wants to send their kid to an accredited school can get a voucher for $13,000 from the state. That's just going to be on the ballot.

• 58:28Jason Calacanis?

  Competition, let's go.

• 58:30David Sacks?

  I predict it will be the big, big election in California and maybe the nation next year. And I think more than 100 million will be spent on both sides of that thing. And I can't predict it's going to win. I hope it does.

• 58:41Jason Calacanis?

  This is a topic worth fighting over. This is something important to fight over.

• 58:45David Sacks?

  Yes.

• 58:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Absolutely.

• 58:45Jason Calacanis?

  It's school choice, because you know what?

• 58:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Absolutely.

• 58:47Jason Calacanis?

  These guys pulled the wool over everybody's eyes. They slipped them the Mickey. They hoodwinked them. You need choice. We know this as entrepreneurs. If there is no competition, things do not get better. The school unions are complacent.

• 59:01David Sacks?

  Well, let's make a resolution. Let's make a New Year's resolution, because I think we all agree on this. I got approached about this ballot initiative.

• 59:08Jason Calacanis?

  Let's do it.

• 59:09David Sacks?

  It's, it's going to happen. There's going to be, like I said, a major ballot initiative next year for school choice in California.

• 59:14Jason Calacanis?

  Let's take some all-in summit money and put it towards that.

• 59:17David Sacks?

  Let's get behind it.

• 59:18Jason Calacanis?

  All-in summit profits will put towards this.

• 59:21David Sacks?

  Yes, let's do it.

• 59:22Jason Calacanis?

  Let's put, I'm in, I'm in. Let's put some money behind this.

• 59:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I want to tell you, just to more personalize this issue, because I really think a lot of people listening struggle with this. I entered the pandemic with rules. I had rules about devices. I had rules about, you know, how much time they could be online. I had rules around physical fitness, right? I had rules around diet. And it all went out the window. And it became this thing where it was like, feed them the best they can. Sometimes they eat lunch with us. Sometimes they have to eat lunch by themselves because I'm stuck on some stupid Zoom, you know, back to back in these dumb meetings because these kids aren't at school. Their only way to interact with their friends became video games like Fortnite, where they could at least talk to their friends.

• 1:00:09Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But then it became an addiction where they were doing it for hours and hours.

• 1:00:12Jason Calacanis?

  Yep.

• 1:00:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Uh, and now I'm trying to, and you know, they gained weight because they weren't physically active. And I am trying to unwind, as is Nat, as is my ex-wife, we're doing it together as a team. It is so hard.

• 1:00:26Jason Calacanis?

  Absolutely hard.

• 1:00:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So hard. And then I think, what about all these people who don't have the access to the resources that I have to try to unwind this? And then what happens is I send my kids to the school and oh, they may have a headache. Guess what? They get sent home and then their brother and sister have to get sent home too, until you can test and be COVID negative for a day in a row. And so there's yet another day of school loss.

• 1:00:47Jason Calacanis?

  Totally nuts.

• 1:00:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then it's like, this is supposed to be one of the best schools in the country. It's not.

• 1:00:52Jason Calacanis?

  Totally nuts.

• 1:00:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then I think, what is every other school like then? If this is what I, if this is what, you know, my, my children have to deal with.

• 1:00:57Jason Calacanis?

  I think we should make this, we should have this as a major theme for 2022 for the pod. I think it's a very important topic.

• 1:01:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We need to hold educators and teachers unions accountable.

• 1:01:06Jason Calacanis?

  Absolutely.

• 1:01:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  School boards accountable all around the country to fix this. This is your responsibility. You need to fix it.

• 1:01:12Jason Calacanis?

  Listen, we held police officers responsible in the last year or two. We've seen this, you know, policing being really like a spotlight put on it. Well, let's put that same spotlight on teachers and administrators and schools.

• 1:01:24David Sacks?

  They'll never do it, they'll never do it without competition. That's the only way to hold, that's the only way to hold their feet to the fire.

• 1:01:30Jason Calacanis?

  And you know what? What I learned, Chuma, to build on what you said was, I just decided to get a teacher and then I, and obviously I have the means to do it. It's, I know most people don't. I certainly didn't have it growing up. We could barely, you know, afford to exist.

• 1:01:45Jason Calacanis?

  But I think homeschooling is a viable option. So with that 13K, I can tell you five parents who are in an underprivileged area can take that five times 13 and take that, what is that, 65K? And put it together and for 65K, they can hire a teacher and they can do a better job with those parents and a teacher for those five kids. I guarantee it. So let's go to best performing asset of 2022. What do you got, Chuma?

• 1:02:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is simple. This will be battery metals, lithium, nickel, cobalt,

• 1:02:18Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 1:02:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Graphite, put them in a basket.

• 1:02:21Jason Calacanis?

  Like it.

• 1:02:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You can be along these things and I think you can.

• 1:02:23Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, rapid fire sacks, what do you got? Best performing asset?

• 1:02:24David Sacks?

  I just said series A venture because it's pretty unoriginal. It's what I do. I think growth got a little bit overfunded and overheated. And I think the seed stage also, there's like so, there were so many new seed investors. Again, it might've been partially because of excess liquidity. So series A is still the choke point and I think it's still the best area to invest in. Innovation's not going to stop. There's going to be great series A investments next year.

• 1:02:49Jason Calacanis?

  I also picked early stage startups because that's where the magic happens. I picked early stage, like right before series A. I think spacking, direct listings, raising money, people coming down to do the series Bs, all of that is creating a pull for more startups and the founders are getting very sophisticated in terms of finding product market fit and scaling globally, you know, earlier. And that's what's creating these great big outcomes, whether it was Uber or Facebook, both figuring out and Airbnb how to go global quickly. So my choice for best performing asset of 2022 is still early stage startups. Friedberg, what do you got?

• 1:03:30David Friedberg?

  Obviously, best performing asset in terms of a multiples basis, you're never going to beat seed stage investing, certainly. But, you know, I tried to highlight and continue my kind of contrarian bet that we're going to see increased global conflict next year, again, driven by, you know, incumbents trying to hold on to political office and increased inflation and fueling economic growth and the American response to China. So in a world of increased global conflict, I think assets that do really well are energy commodities and energy stocks. I recently made a big bet on energy stocks, defense stocks, and it used to be gold. It could be the case that Bitcoin, you know, sees a role as being a defensive position in portfolios in a world of war and conflict.

• 1:04:15David Friedberg?

  So those are my kind of macro themes for asset.

• 1:04:19Jason Calacanis?

  Most anticipated trend of 2022, what do you got, Chuma? A trend you're anticipating in 2022?

• 1:04:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Peer-to-peer payments, the destruction of traditional rails, it will come out of Africa.

• 1:04:31Jason Calacanis?

  Great. Sax, what do you got?

• 1:04:33David Sacks?

  This is where I had the civil war between progressives and pragmatic liberals. So building on what Chuma said, you're already seeing this in the feud between London Breed and Chesa Boudin. That is really gonna, I think, blossom next year. We have not heard the last of that. You saw it in Philadelphia where the mayor, Michael Nutter, took on Larry Krasner. I think you're gonna see it in New York City between Eric Adams and these Manhattan elites. And you also saw it in Washington DC where the progressives were blaming Manchin for, you know, the losing the Build Back Better. So this is a civil war that's gonna continue. And what Chuma predicted with AOC versus Schumer would certainly play into that. So it's grab the popcorn. It is the trend I'm anticipating the most.

• 1:05:18Jason Calacanis?

  All right, there you go. Do you anticipate a similar trend with like the alt-right Trumpians and DeSantis and that kind of thing breaking up? How do you see that playing out?

• 1:05:27David Sacks?

  Not yet, because Trump isn't on the ballot in 2022. So I actually think the Republican Party is gonna be surprisingly united in 2022. I think where the trouble might come in is when we have a Republican primary in 2023. And especially if Trump runs, then, you know, all hell's gonna break loose. So.

• 1:05:45Jason Calacanis?

  Who is, who are the two people who would be most viable against Trump in that 2023? Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz? Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley? That's gonna be, that's gonna be fireworks. Friedberg, what do you got? Anticipated trend?

• 1:05:58David Friedberg?

  My biggest anticipated trend for 2022 is gonna be a gold rush in biotech into what I think will become the cover story on magazines throughout the year that humans have discovered the fountain of youth. And this will arise from these investments in what are called Yamanaka factor-based cell reprogramming methods. I've talked about this on the pod in the past a few years ago. Scientists identified that four chemicals could trigger gene expression in cells and get those cells to effectively revert to being stem cells. And more recently demonstrated that using lower amounts of those chemicals and other what are called kind of epigenetic factors can trigger partial cell reprogramming.

• 1:06:41David Friedberg?

  Which causes cells in the body to act youthful. As a result of those discoveries, an absolute gold rush is now underway. More recently, Yuri Milner, Jeff Bezos, Arch and others put a billion dollars to seed a new company called Altos Labs to pursue therapeutics in this area. Google has individually funded a company called Calico, led by Art Levinson, the former founder and CEO of Genentech.

• 1:07:06David Friedberg?

  And just recently, Blake Byers and Brian Armstrong announced their new company called New Limit with a hundred million dollars of their own personal capital. All of these companies are pursuing the same effort, which is basically causing cells to be youthful, to regenerate in a youthful way. And as a result, you see kind of organs and and systems in the body act more healthily. And there will be magazine covers and, you know, 60 Minutes articles, stories and all sorts of stuff will start to happen in 2022 saying, oh, my gosh. As because the amount of money that's gone in in this year is going to cause breakthroughs and discoveries to start to get published about next year. And when that starts to happen and the media and the PR cycles start to kick up, you'll see this become the year of Yamanaka factor based reprogramming.

• 1:07:50David Friedberg?

  And everyone's saying it's going to be the biggest gold rush in biotech since recombinant DNA was used by Genentech in the in the 80s and 90s.

• 1:07:59Jason Calacanis?

  All right, and I had most anticipated trend of 2022 being the accredited investor laws are going to change and evolve. And it might just be you take a test and you're now accredited. It doesn't matter if you won the lottery or you make 200,000 a year. And a legal crypto framework is going to happen, I think, at the same time. So those regulations combined are going to empower really interesting capital formation on a global basis, whether it's running a syndicate with everybody in the world, including non-accredited investors or DAOs or those two things merging. Or as Balaji is talking about, you know, a cap table over here that's mirrored on a blockchain at the same time and people being able to trade their interest

• 1:08:41Jason Calacanis?

  in Chamath's fund or Saks's fund or one of my syndicates with tokens on the internet. And that could become

• 1:08:47David Friedberg?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:08:48Jason Calacanis?

  A major unlock. Where, you know, if you were in

• 1:08:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I don't have a fund. I run a meager family office.

• 1:08:54Jason Calacanis?

  Well, if you were in your earlier funds and somebody and there was still stuff trickling to social capital three, the people who have that could sell it back to you or sell it to each other if they wanted to get liquidity. And that's going to be super interesting, especially if it can happen just globally where some person in China decides they want to have access to US funds, RLPs could just start selling if it was structured that way. Most anticipated film, TV series, media, yada, yada for 2020, 22. What do you got Yellowstone season nine, Sax? I watched the first two episodes. It's really great. I mean, you forget what a great actor. What's his name is?

• 1:09:36David Sacks?

  Kevin Costner.

• 1:09:37Jason Calacanis?

  Kevin Costner is a great actor.

• 1:09:39David Sacks?

  Yes, Yellowstone is great. I'll be watching next season. But what I had down here is Thor Ragnarok, the writer director, T D is back. If you saw the last Thor movie.

• 1:09:50Jason Calacanis?

  Ragnarok.

• 1:09:51David Sacks?

  Ragnarok was the last one. The new one is called Thor Love and Thunder.

• 1:09:56Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:56David Sacks?

  And, you know, Thor went from being, I think, one of the most boring Marvel characters in the first two movies to being one of the funniest and, you know, most, most fun in his last movie. So I think that sequel will be really good. And then the other one is they're doing a prequel show for Game of Thrones called House of the Dragon. I'm going to have to watch that. And then the probably the, the Star Wars show I'm looking forward to most would be the Obi-Wan Kenobi show with Ewan McGregor.

• 1:10:23Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, and Anakin. It's based on the Clone Wars. And I had as well, the Obi-Wan show, the Boba Fett show, and the Mandalorian shows all coming back are going to be absolutely bonkers. And then there's also this token series that's coming out, the prequel, I think, that Amazon spending a billion dollars on. And I think that's landing in 2022. What do you got, Chamath?

• 1:10:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It is the All In Summit in May in Miami and the, the birth of All In Media. So I think that we, by the end of 2022, will have Published content, written content, not necessarily by us.

• 1:11:05Jason Calacanis?

  Whoa.

• 1:11:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But other forms of media interaction that get the truth out to a

• 1:11:11Jason Calacanis?

  Wow.

• 1:11:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Large swath of humanity.

• 1:11:13Jason Calacanis?

  Here we go.

• 1:11:14David Friedberg?

  Is this moving beyond just a couple of besties doing a podcast during lockdown?

• 1:11:19Jason Calacanis?

  What? What?

• 1:11:21David Sacks?

  Wait, so all in media, is that a new acronym?

• 1:11:23Jason Calacanis?

  All in media. Wow, AIM. Well, what are we doing? Should we buy like a cable channel and just go 24 hours?

• 1:11:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  AIM is the truth.

• 1:11:30David Friedberg?

  AIM Media.

• 1:11:31Jason Calacanis?

  AIM Media. Okay, there you go. I didn't even know this is news to the rest of us, but Chamath is building on the media, bro. Okay, here we go.

• 1:11:37David Sacks?

  Who are we gonna hire?

• 1:11:39Jason Calacanis?

  Tucker.

• 1:11:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There'll be no shortage of folks who will want to come out of the woodwork to work with us on this. And I think the goal should just be to make sure we figure out what the real North Star is so that we never deviate. And part of the biggest things that we did, guys, was not trying to hustle for some few, you know, shekels here or there, which was stupid.

• 1:12:01David Sacks?

  Like J. Cal wanted to.

• 1:12:03Jason Calacanis?

  What are you talking about?

• 1:12:05David Friedberg?

  We're gonna talk in a minute about the plan for the summer.

• 1:12:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The purity of not wrapping this thing with crappy ads and all kinds of nonsense is we've never lost our way. We don't need some stupid deal for some crappy media company. We all have independent ways in which we can monetize our lives and our hard work. And so we should come to this to always tell the truth.

• 1:12:24Jason Calacanis?

  I think that that's a one of the, I will say, one of the great innovations that and decisions that you championed was not putting ads on it. I hear it all the time for people.

• 1:12:33David Sacks?

  We're saving you from yourself, J. Cal.

• 1:12:35David Friedberg?

  It's an interesting idea where you.

• 1:12:36Jason Calacanis?

  Whereas advertising basis.

• 1:12:38David Friedberg?

  If you have a media business that's not driven by advertising dollars and not driven by greater, by trying to maximize page views and clicks and visits. Then it completely changes the equation of what's possible. I think this was part of the idea of what publicly funded media was supposed to be, but it obviously got, you know, maybe a little bit too far to the left.

• 1:12:59Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, it was, it was just too, you know, just too. Well, then they started adding ads. I don't know if you remember that. They lost some funding and they're like, okay, we're gonna go for sponsorships. They're not ads, they're sponsorships.

• 1:13:08David Sacks?

  So you're saying we're the new PBS?

• 1:13:10Jason Calacanis?

  No, it's something different. I mean, this is... We do this without any expectation of financial reward. We do it because we enjoy it. And so...

• 1:13:17David Friedberg?

  Well, except for you, J. Cal. You've been...

• 1:13:19Jason Calacanis?

  No, I mean, I have other things that make money. Thank you very much. J. Cal's doing pretty fucking good right now. Hey, pull the bear!

• 1:13:30Jason Calacanis?

  J. Cal doing okay right now. Loving the baby seal now. Your members at the Syndicate.com. Boop, plug, boop. Uh, Sass Syndicate, did you see our first deal? Boop.

• 1:13:41David Friedberg?

  I didn't know we were doing this category.

• 1:13:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I will doubt it, Abby. Season 16 of Doubt it, Abby.

• 1:13:46David Sacks?

  He doesn't watch TV. He doesn't have any.

• 1:13:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I would like to watch reruns of Doctor Who.

• 1:13:50Jason Calacanis?

  What BBC show that nobody watches are you gonna recommend?

• 1:13:53David Friedberg?

  Does it matter? I mean, come on.

• 1:13:55Jason Calacanis?

  What show from Finland with subtitles, uh...

• 1:13:57David Friedberg?

  I don't know. You know, I spent a lot of time watching, um, like esoteric videos and stuff I find on YouTube. I really think it's so interesting. It's such a different way of consuming media.

• 1:14:07Jason Calacanis?

  Just tell us what video game you're playing.

• 1:14:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Wes Anderson is putting out a porno. It is going to be cinematic, marvelous. It's so similar to Target. It's like looking at a painting. We'll be up a vernacular going up and down a mountain.

• 1:14:20Jason Calacanis?

  I felt like I was in the Louvre watching this movie. All right, what video game are you playing? I called, uh, I called Friedberg on the phone to talk him off a ledge when he was going crazy on the group chat. And he's like, I can't talk him on a video game. What video game is that?

• 1:14:30David Friedberg?

  I was actually playing a video game by Anna Perna Interactive, which is Larry Ellison's daughter's, um, media production company. And apparently, I didn't know this, they had a video game arm. And the video games are, and the game I was playing was called Maquette. And, um, you kind of, you kind of have this like interesting movie-like poetic experience as you play the game. So it's not really just designed to be action-packed. And I don't know, I thought it was a very interesting new way of, um, entertaining oneself. Okay, we can move on.

• 1:14:57David Sacks?

  It was highly stimulating.

• 1:14:59Jason Calacanis?

  She made a simulation of a biology lab and, uh, you actually get different beaker sizes. And you have different sub proteins that you start with.

• 1:15:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You get to buy all of the lab equipment you want, but it needs a virtual currency.

• 1:15:10Jason Calacanis?

  It's kind of like a simulation. It's like The Sims, but with...

• 1:15:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You must first mine it. And the way that you mine is by solving mathematical equations. I made a cruelty-free fish device dish, uh, in my laboratory because of the genocide of fish.

• 1:15:25Jason Calacanis?

  That was a little controversial take last week. I got DMs from people. That was a spicy take, Friedberg. Did you get any blowback from that spicy take last week? The spiciest of the...

• 1:15:35David Friedberg?

  I did. I'm actually gonna respond to everyone that sent me a note directly.

• 1:15:39Jason Calacanis?

  Was it really? Because people are like, you're equating...

• 1:15:42David Friedberg?

  Well, here's the thing. The comment I made that I think really triggered people was I said that animal agriculture is worse than human slavery. And maybe I'll just address it now, real quick.

• 1:15:53Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:54David Friedberg?

  You know, I think the point of view that people took away from that was that I diminished, you know, the pain and the resonance in today's kind of socioeconomic context of human slavery, particularly recently in America. And that wasn't my intention at all.

• 1:16:11Jason Calacanis?

  Clearly not your intention, yeah.

• 1:16:13David Friedberg?

  What I'm trying to highlight is, you know, first of all, human slavery has been around as long as humans have been around, right? For 10,000 years, back to ancient Egypt. The enslavement of humans, the removal of opportunity and freedom granted to every living being is certainly manifest in the form of human slavery, and we kind of take it as a very acute pain point. What I was highlighting is every year, over 100 billion land-based animals are killed, and they're born and put in chains and put in jails, and then murdered and eaten by humans as routine. And we don't like lift our head up and recognize just how serious and how scaled this, you know, this behavior is. The industrialization of this process is really abhorrent, and there's videos you

• 1:16:59David Friedberg?

  can watch, and I think when you watch them, you'll recognize this pain point.

• 1:17:01Jason Calacanis?

  Because it's delicious. Yeah. I knew it was coming, Chama. Don't do it, Chama.

• 1:17:05David Friedberg?

  And I know, but I do think that Chama's, you know, Chama's voice in this is really the voice that's kept this from ever becoming an issue. Because it's not human, we don't kind of pay attention to it.

• 1:17:13Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:14David Friedberg?

  And I'm just trying to highlight that there is something that is at such an extraordinary scale that we don't pay attention to, that one day we'll wake up and we'll be like, oh my God, how did we miss that?

• 1:17:21Jason Calacanis?

  I am in complete agreement with you, Friedberg. If you look at all life being precious, and you say, the life of a cow, the life of a dog, the life of a human, these are all lives, the scale of suffering is greater than what humans experience. I'll be honest with you guys.

• 1:17:39David Friedberg?

  These animals, these animals can problem solve, they can feel emotion, they can recognize, they can recognize things happening to them and to their loved ones and their family members, and I think... That in the context of that, to cause pain and suffering on those animals and on those creatures.

• 1:17:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:53David Friedberg?

  At the scale that we do is something that's just mind blowing to me.

• 1:17:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think that's fair enough.

• 1:17:57David Friedberg?

  And I expect that one day we will wake up and be like, I cannot believe we allowed our society to do that. But I do think that we need to solve Tummoth's problem, which is how do you make something that's frigging delicious?

• 1:18:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's not a problem.

• 1:18:07David Friedberg?

  And how do you make it cheaper?

• 1:18:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Hold on a second. It's not a problem. Like my, my perspective is I understand where you're coming from. I respect your point of view, but here's my point of view, which is we evolved to superior superiority in an evolutionary process that was not preordained. Okay. And we are now in a position where we are allowed to consume things that we choose. Now, there is also a claim that you could make that, you know what? A tiger or a lion should not be attacking and killing a gazelle because you know what? That's causing suffering to the gazelle or blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, how we choose to go and consume the things that we need for sustenance is a choice that we can make. And there are probably better choices we can make over time.

• 1:18:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But at the end of the day, I think that this was a reasonable evolution of humanity and human ingenuity and intellect. And I don't feel guilty about that.

• 1:18:56David Friedberg?

  When we, when, yeah.

• 1:18:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I don't weigh the suffering of animals the same way I weigh the suffering of human beings. I don't.

• 1:19:01David Friedberg?

  And I would argue that when we were apes in the jungle and we didn't have the choice, I would wholeheartedly agree with you. But today we are a people that do have the choice.

• 1:19:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What choice do you have?

• 1:19:12David Friedberg?

  And it's because we have the choice to not eat meat and still survive and still be happy that we can make a better choice.

• 1:19:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It doesn't taste good. Like there's a part of my soul. I'll just be very honest with you.

• 1:19:21David Friedberg?

  And I agree. And that's why I think we need to solve that problem. And that's why I believe.

• 1:19:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's not a problem.

• 1:19:26David Friedberg?

  If, if you made an alternative for you that tasted good and was as affordable as the alternative, which is actually killing an animal, you would choose it. And we haven't given you that solution yet. And when I say we, I mean, call it the techno food people, but there is a tremendous amount of money going into this area. And we will devise artificially produced meat that will not be made by killing an animal, but will be made in a lab that looks and tastes identical.

• 1:19:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Or a piece of sushi. Just give us a year over on your.

• 1:19:52David Friedberg?

  You'll have a piece of sushi in three years. You will have, uh, you will be able to go taste chicken next year. It'll be very, very expensive.

• 1:20:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay.

• 1:20:01David Friedberg?

  Uh, but cell based meat will be available.

• 1:20:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then let's get to the.

• 1:20:04David Friedberg?

  At a commercial scale within the next five to ten years.

• 1:20:07Jason Calacanis?

  Or, you know, steak. That's really what it's about.

• 1:20:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  David, my commitment to you is I will do a taste test whenever you say, you call the, you, you pick the place, the time.

• 1:20:15David Friedberg?

  Totally.

• 1:20:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I will show up and if it's better, I will never eat meat again.

• 1:20:19David Friedberg?

  Okay, we're not ready, we're not ready for that. And that's a, that's a great commitment.

• 1:20:22Jason Calacanis?

  All right.

• 1:20:23David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:23Jason Calacanis?

  And I, and I, I am similar in the commitment.

• 1:20:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But in the meantime.

• 1:20:27Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, that, that, that's not, it's just, it's just, but I will say, Friedberg, if you're gonna have a party and it's only vegan, you need to put that on the invite. Cause I came thinking you were gonna feed.

• 1:20:39David Friedberg?

  Jake Al came to my party, there was no meat. He was really upset. He was going around, he was going around to my party being like, what the hell is this? There's no meat at this party. What am I doing here?

• 1:20:46Jason Calacanis?

  Can you make me a hamburger? The woman from wherever, like Napa was like, I've never touched meat in thirty years, whatever.

• 1:20:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Incredible ribeye on New Year, on Christmas Eve. Oh my God.

• 1:20:57Jason Calacanis?

  Ribeye. All right, everybody, for the dictator himself, Chamath Palihapitiya with great hair, touch of gray, never looked better. And the Sultan of Science, David Friedberg, and Tucker Carlson's bestie, GOP frontrunner, David Sacks, super spreading COVID.

• 1:21:15David Sacks?

  Super spreading the truth.

• 1:21:17Jason Calacanis?

  Super spreading the truth. David Sacks, from an undisclosed bestie, uh, hideaway, uh, which we all know, but we won't say. Uh, I'm Jake Al and we'll see you in 2022. It's been a great year.

• 1:21:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Bye bye.

• 1:21:35Jason Calacanis?

  Rain Man David Sacks.

• 1:21:40David Sacks?

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

• 1:21:44Jason Calacanis?

  Love you, Sacks.

• 1:21:53Jason Calacanis?

  Besties are gone.

• 1:21:55David Friedberg?

  That is my dog taking a piss in your driveway.

• 1:22:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We should all just get a room and just have one big U. George because they're all just, it's like, it's like sexual tension, but we just need to release somehow.

• 1:22:11Jason Calacanis?

  What? You're the bee. What? You're a bee. We need to get merch. These are fast.