Trump's market impact: Bitcoin, M&A, IPOs + transition picks; Polymarket CEO raided by FBI

(0:00) Bestie intros! (7:57) Election impact on Bitcoin, crypto, and fintech stocks (21:56) M&A and IPOs: What to expect in 2025 (39:52) Pharma advertising on cable tv: Should it be allowed? Is big pharma buying influence? (58:17) FBI raids Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan's home (1:05:51) Trump's transition picks: Strategy, highest upside/downside, and more Get tickets for The All-In Holiday Spectacular!: https://allin.ticketsauce.com/e/all-in-holiday-spectacular Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BTC-USD https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/gensler-remarks-pli-s-56th-annual-institute-securities-regulation-111424 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS10 https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-reserve-cuts-interest-rates-quarter-point-powell-inflation-election-2024-11 https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/13/cpi-inflation-october-2024.html https://x.com/elerianm/status/1857297087010107728 https://x.com/chamath/status/1359248379377762310 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4763/text https://stockanalysis.com/ipos/statistics https://pitchbook.com/news/reports/q2-2024-pitchbook-nvca-venture-monitor https://www.google.com/finance/quote/TSLA:NASDAQ https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1848055198494728496 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/13/business/media/msnbc-fox-news-ratings-election.html https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1856208378541769076 https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/PDFFiles/Mark-Zuckerberg-Letter-on-Govt-Censorship.pdf https://www.cjr.org/the_trump_reader/trump-threatens-new-york-times-penguin-random-house-critical-coverage.php https://nypost.com/2024/11/13/business/fbi-seizes-polymarket-ceos-phone-electronics-after-betting-platform-predicts-trump-win-source https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-13/polymarket-investigated-by-doj-for-letting-us-users-bet-on-platform https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-federal-court-upholds-ruling-letting-kalshiex-list-election-betting-contracts-2024-10-02 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/fbi-raids-polymarket-ceo-shayne-coplans-apartment-seizes-phone-source-rcna180180 https://x.com/shayne_coplan/status/1856838409861386722 https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8478-22 https://x.com/shayne_coplan/status/1856808022481539192 https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/10/30/polymarket-trump-election-crypto-wash-trading-researchers https://x.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1852863585375977877 https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1857237886736715971 https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1856725762130260383

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

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  Hey everybody, welcome back to the All In Podcast. With us again today, yawning from Milan, your favorite, the chairman dictator, Chamath Palihapitiya. You look a little tired, my friend. How you doing over there, buddy?

• 0:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I left Monday. I flew to Singapore. I was on the ground for two days. And I flew here. I'm here for two days and then I go to London. Five days. I'm exhausted.

• 0:31Jason Calacanis?

  You are on a whirlwind tour.

• 0:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, I'm flying around the world, literally flying around the world, moving west. Man, I'm tired.

• 0:42Jason Calacanis?

  And this is all in service. I mean, at our age, you feel it. It hits differently when you when you pass 40. And I'm assuming this is 80, 90 business. You're out there selling, you're selling, you're selling Grok, you're selling 80, 90, you're out there doing BD?

• 0:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Little selling, little closing. And then I'm speaking at the Oxford Union on Wednesday.

• 1:04Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, okay. Well, that sounds fancy.

• 1:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Checking the bucket list.

• 1:09Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, there you have it. And in his camo hat, and in his election afterglow. Look at the glow. He is in that afterglow. He is post-coitus here, post-election.

• 1:24David Sacks?

  Anybody got a cigarette? I need to light up a cigarette.

• 1:30Jason Calacanis?

  That was a close one. I didn't think I was gonna make it, but you did.

• 1:33David Sacks?

  Do you like my camo hat, J. Kell? This is this is a hat. Well, it says Trump Vance.

• 1:38Jason Calacanis?

  You look like Elmer Fudd. What does it say? You're hunting libs.

• 1:41David Sacks?

  No, remember, remember when Tim Walz rolled out the camo hat?

• 1:45Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 1:45David Sacks?

  And you said it was gonna win the election for Harris Walz?

• 1:48Jason Calacanis?

  It might. I thought that he might have a shot. Yes. No, I was wrong about that one. Be belly, belly quiet.

• 1:53David Sacks?

  We got all the camo guys. They voted for us.

• 1:55Jason Calacanis?

  We're hunting wibbles. Nobody's gonna get this impersonation, but it's very good. It looks good on you.

• 2:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Is that Elmer Fudd?

• 2:03Jason Calacanis?

  That's Elmer Fudd. Be belly, belly quiet. We're hunting wibbles.

• 2:07David Friedberg?

  That sounds like Mike Tyson.

• 2:09Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I'm gonna mess up that. Jake Paul.

• 2:13David Sacks?

  How about I wear a different Trump hat every week for the next four years?

• 2:16Jason Calacanis?

  Absolutely fantastic. I mean, the ratings on this show. I mean, all I care about at this point, I'm getting savage in any way possible. All I care about is ratings now. Let's go.

• 2:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You're fine.

• 2:29Jason Calacanis?

  MAGA, get in the comments. Let's get these ratings up. And with us, of course, the CEO of Oh, Hello, Oh, Hello, David Friedberg. How you doing there, little buddy?

• 2:42David Friedberg?

  Thanks for having me again, Jake Paul. Thank you.

• 2:44Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Well, it's good to have you. It's good to be here. Yeah. How are you doing?

• 2:48David Friedberg?

  I'm chilling, man. You know.

• 2:50David Sacks?

  Just nice to the executive producer to have you on the show.

• 2:53Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, I've been executive producing you here. Well, it's always, I'm always thinking about your best interests. I was hearing a little, I heard you on a phone call before you said you had a perfect body. What was that in reference to?

• 3:04David Friedberg?

  My wife makes me go, yeah, she makes me go to the dermatologist where they, she examines your whole nude body to look for moles. So this morning I went in early to the dermatologist. She examined it. She said, perfect. I said.

• 3:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Does she have to wear sunglasses? Cause you're just so white. Like it just like it's blindingly white.

• 3:23Jason Calacanis?

  Woman. Does she get hazard pay?

• 3:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The poor, that poor dermatologist, my God.

• 3:28David Friedberg?

  Actually, no way out. She's like, she's like, thank you for the experience.

• 3:31Jason Calacanis?

  Well, this is why we need to, in all seriousness, this is why, Sax, we have to legalize psychedelics. This poor woman has PTSD after that. We need to get her some.

• 3:41David Friedberg?

  Get out of here. It was a wonderful examination. She was thrilled.

• 3:44Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, okay. And of course, I'm Jason Canis. And, you know, there's been a lot of scuttlebutt, Sax. I don't know if you know this, but comedy might still be legal here on the All In Podcast, but there's been a lot of scuttlebutt, a lot of debate, a lot of energy, dare I say, around.

• 4:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Are we gonna break the rules today, finally?

• 4:04Jason Calacanis?

  I don't know. We'll see. Anything's possible. People get a little sensitive sometimes with the comedy.

• 4:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Do I have to put my pronouns back in my Zoom chat?

• 4:11Jason Calacanis?

  You put your pronouns back in. Shavat, Pauli, yappatia, douchebag. Here we go.

• 4:18Jason Calacanis?

  You might not know this, but a lot of appointments are being made, Sax. Did you know this? Are you aware that the appointments are being made?

• 4:24David Sacks?

  I'm aware, yeah, it's happening.

• 4:26Jason Calacanis?

  You have seen, you've seen the flow of them. Well, I got a dump. I'm not going to say who sent these to me. But I actually got the next five or six announcement that Trump's going to make. I'm not going to say who gave it to me.

• 4:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is gonna, this bit has the potential to be so good. I'm so tired, but you've got me awake.

• 4:46Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, I'm awake too. I'm ready. Here's our first one. Here's our first one. This is a very interesting one. Yeah, here it is. This is a statement from Donald J. Trump. It is my great honor to announce that Hunter Biden of Delaware will head a new department, the Bureau of Founder Mode Procurement, Founder Mode Procurement. You notice Sax dropped off. He doesn't want to have a reaction shot here. Uh, next one up, this is interesting. Tony Hinchcliffe. I don't know if you know him. He has been appointed to a new role. He's the ambassador to Puerto Rico.

• 5:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He's, he's. That's a good one.

• 5:19Jason Calacanis?

  Chamath, actually, uh, your wish has come true. You are now, your sole duty is to ensure all executive branch knitwear is on point. The sweater inspector general, everybody's going to have perfect knitwear. Knitwear, absolutely knitwear. And I am.

• 5:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  By the way, just so you know, that's a, that's a Laura Piana cashmere sweater in that picture.

• 5:38Jason Calacanis?

  Apparently, apparently. I'm actually decided I would flip. I've gone full MAGA. Here I am. I have been appointed as chief virtue signaler.

• 5:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That I like, that I like.

• 5:48Jason Calacanis?

  Every time we do the all in podcast.

• 5:51David Sacks?

  You're gonna be, uh, you're gonna have stiff competition from Mark Cuban for that, for that post.

• 5:54Jason Calacanis?

  I know, I beat him out, I beat him out. Well, I've been, yeah, yeah, I went down to.

• 5:59David Sacks?

  He deleted all of his pro Kamala tweets. Have you done the same?

• 6:03Jason Calacanis?

  Uh, no, no, I haven't yet.

• 6:05David Sacks?

  You're gonna have to work on that if you wanna, if you wanna get this job.

• 6:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Look at the lusty eyes in this picture.

• 6:10Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I know. It's pretty great. That's me after losing.

• 6:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Really, you, you have, you have knocked down the virtue. You didn't want to just burrow yourself deep into it.

• 6:18Jason Calacanis?

  Absolutely not, absolutely not. Hey, Friedberg, you've been appointed. Here we go. Uh, as Bobby Kennedy's whipping boy. You will be officially his little bitch. Uh, anything, any innovation you come up with is officially blocked. And here he is. My great honor to announce David Sax is now the chief retribution officer. Congratulations. Well done.

• 6:42David Sacks?

  Retribution must be had, J. Cal.

• 6:45Jason Calacanis?

  Payback is a bitch.

• 6:47David Sacks?

  There were a lot of people who were out of line, just a little bit, a little bit. They deserved to get smacked on a little bit, just on.

• 6:52Jason Calacanis?

  Grandma's gonna get his shoe shine box.

• 6:54David Sacks?

  Just on X, a little bit, just a little bit.

• 7:14Jason Calacanis?

  There's been a lot of talk about a holiday party, Freeberry. You want to give us an update on the holiday party?

• 7:19David Friedberg?

  Quick plug on the party. So the party is coming up in three weeks. The All In Holiday Spectacular. Steve Aoki, Andrea Botes, Gary Richards, AKA Destructo are gonna be DJing several of the sections.

• 7:32Jason Calacanis?

  I'm doing a secret DJ set.

• 7:36David Friedberg?

  I may. It's actually a good idea.

• 7:37Jason Calacanis?

  I may drop the beat.

• 7:39David Friedberg?

  We will have chess challenges with Alex Botes. Several sections are sold out. VIP is sold out. Draymond's joining us. Draymond Green from the Warriors. He's gonna come and do a little bit with us on stage. It'd be great.

• 7:52Jason Calacanis?

  He's great.

• 7:53David Friedberg?

  So it should be great. Get your tickets at allin.com/events.

• 7:57Jason Calacanis?

  All right, let's get into it, everybody. I just want to start with a little bit of finance here. Bitcoin and finance stocks way up since the Trump win, which was now 10 days ago. Bitcoin peaked at 92,000. Unbelievable. It's dropped down to 89, but obviously that's an all time high. And as we all know, we talked about it on the show, Trump heavily, heavily courted the crypto industry during his campaign. In addition to the Bitcoin news, since early August, Affirm, Robinhood, PayPal, Coinbase, all up double or 50%. It's an extraordinary run. In July, Trump headlined the Bitcoin conference. He laid out his plans.

• 8:42Jason Calacanis?

  Number one, he was gonna fire SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. Here's the clip. On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC Chairman.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  There it is. Oh.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  I didn't know he was that unpopular.

• 9:08Speaker 04

  Fire him. Gonna fire him.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  Too bad for Gary. I didn't know he was that unpopular. Let me say it again.

• 9:20Speaker 04

  On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler.

• 9:26Jason Calacanis?

  There it is. Okay. Enough with that. Technically, President can't fire the SEC Chair, but he can appoint a new one when Gary's term ends in 2026. Or Gary could resign when Trump takes office. That happens sometimes. And folks are speculating Gensler has already made that decision to step down. He put out a press release with a quote in it that a number of people took note of, where he said, "It's been a great honor to serve with them, the people who work at the SEC, doing the people's work and ensuring our capital markets remain the best in the world." Trump also said the federal government will never sell, never ever sell its Bitcoin holdings, which they own through criminal assets, as you know. And number three,

• 10:11Jason Calacanis?

  he said he would create a Bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council, where Trump said, quote, "The rules will be written by people who love your industry, not your industry."

• 10:24Jason Calacanis?

  And he also advocated that all future Bitcoins would be minted in America. I don't know that he gets to make that choice, but they have it free. Berg, any thoughts here on

• 10:33Jason Calacanis?

  the crypto market and this incredible bull run here we've seen in the last, you know, 10 days? And then before that, couple of months?

• 10:41David Friedberg?

  Yeah, I mean, I think, like you said, it's not limited to crypto. Crypto is one market of several that have been significantly affected by the outlook based on Trump's election. I think that Trump's election has a couple of key features that are changing market dynamics. One is folks kind of view some of his policies to be obviously stimulatory with lower tax rates and more deregulation. This is, you know, theoretically. Going to drive up investment and economic growth. The deregulatory nature on its own benefits markets that have been encumbered by regulatory oversight and regulatory challenges like crypto, finance and fintech. So those types of businesses are clearly going to benefit or expected to benefit significantly

• 11:26David Friedberg?

  by being able to launch products more quickly and have features and ways that they can generate revenue that they might be challenged to do under the current regulatory schemas. And then there's also this element of kind of things being inflationary, the feature of tariffs. If we don't get spending cut fast enough, there's an effect on markets. So, you know, we're still seeing 10-year Treasury sit at about 4.5%, up from 3.5%, which is where we were right around the rate cut beginning in September. And remember, since those rate cuts began in September, we've cut 75 basis points.

• 11:57David Friedberg?

  And we're still seeing the kind of 10-year Treasury hold high, which kind of implies that there's expected to be persistent inflation. In fact, the October inflation number accelerated again. So it's back up, not going down. It's, I think it went up to 2.6%, up from 2.3% the month prior. These general kind of effects that are predicted from the Trump policy plans is having an effect in different markets. Obviously, in equities, we're seeing more kind of risk-seeking, risk-taking. And then in the bond markets, because of the 4.5% Treasury yield, there's a really interesting dynamic and I kind of sent this this link out yesterday. But if you look at the spread on yields between US Treasuries,

• 12:38David Friedberg?

  which have historically been kind of considered and talked about and are deemed the risk-free rate and the yield that corporates have to pay to borrow money. We haven't seen a spread this low in 26 years. So it's a 17-year low for the spread between the yield that companies that issue junk bonds have to pay from Treasuries. And it's a 26-year low for credit-grade bonds. So this means the market is either more risk-seeking, meaning they're looking for more yield and they're going into corporates because they feel like there is a higher probability that these companies are going to be successful in the future. They're not going to have higher default rates, et cetera. So the market is becoming much more risk-seeking.

• 13:24David Friedberg?

  The alternative is that parts of the market are reassessing the risk-free nature of treasuries themselves. If spending doesn't get under control, the treasury market appetite is decreasing. So there's this kind of spread that's shrunk in the last couple of months. So we're seeing capital flooding into the markets for risk-seeking assets, and this is obviously affecting crypto equities and bond markets all across the board. And we'll talk a little bit about IPO and M&A later.

• 13:48Jason Calacanis?

  Great. Chamath, your thoughts? Aside from yum yum?

• 13:53Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, yum yum? You could say it. It's yummy. It's gonna be a... Just saying.

• 13:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, I mean, look, what did I say at the beginning of the year was gonna be the biggest risk asset winning trade? Yeah, it's great. Bitcoin's great.

• 14:11Jason Calacanis?

  Lord, I haven't seen you this happy in a while.

• 14:18Jason Calacanis?

  What made you more happy? Getting to Milan and spending time with your white truffle dealer, or watching Bitcoin break 90K? Which one was more exciting for you personally?

• 14:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know, honestly, you know what I think about? I actually think about all the Bitcoin I sold.

• 14:34Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, you...

• 14:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know, I had Bitcoin, I had a bunch of Bitcoin in my funds when I managed outside capital. You know, that's a, I don't know, a three or four billion dollar mistake in growing now, because my partners at the time capitulated and I wanted to be a good team member and redistributed and it was profitable, but obviously I shouldn't have sold it. Would have made them a lot more money. And then I think about like, I bought some land in Lake Tahoe. It was in the Wall Street Journal. I'm sure you can find it, but how much is that worth now? Probably a couple hundred million dollars, maybe more.

• 15:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But you do have Bitcoin holdings.

• 15:17David Friedberg?

  Can I ask you a question? Why do you say sold Bitcoin as opposed to converted Bitcoin into dollars? Like, when you think about Bitcoin, just as a participant, do you think about Bitcoin as a dollar-denominated asset? That you go and buy Bitcoin and then you're eventually going to sell it, turn it back into dollars and use the dollars? Or are you like, what do you think about the purest kind of idea? That Bitcoin should be the de facto currency and store of value in the future? And the dollar doesn't matter? And we shouldn't necessarily be talking about the value of Bitcoin in dollar-denominated terms as something I'm going to eventually turn it back into?

• 15:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It hasn't happened yet. And so until it happens, I think you have to view it as like a very good gold proxy. But it's a largely

• 16:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  dollar-denominated asset.

• 16:08David Friedberg?

  Now, why do you see it going the other way? Like, so a lot of folks thought that as a safe haven, it should do well when there's a negative economic outlook. But it has traded the last couple of years kind of the opposite.

• 16:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Totally correlated. No, it's a totally correlated asset. I mean,

• 16:23David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 16:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There will be a point. And it's probably in our lifetime where it is an independent asset and a non-speculative store of value. There will be that day, but that day is not now. And I think it's very important to see the conditions on the field as they are versus what you wish it to be. And the reason is that it allows you to risk manage more appropriately. Because if you don't see it, then when something happens to the dollar complex, good or bad, or when something happens to rates, good or bad, or when something stimulative happens, good or bad, you're not going to react properly if you're in the business of managing it as a risk asset.

• 17:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So if you're in the set it and forget it bucket, and there are some people.

• 17:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think it's great. None of these conversations matter. But like most people, you're probably going to be motivated to do something. And I think if you're motivated to do something, or you have FOMO that stimulates you to do something, whatever the psychology is that leads you to action, it's probably important to just view things as they really are versus how you wish them to be. And so I think the purists may eventually be right. I think they will be right at some point in my lifetime, but they're not right now. And that's why these things are correlated.

• 17:49David Friedberg?

  If the market goes up.

• 17:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The other thing I'll say just broadly about the market is I think that there is a tremendous amount of optimism about the economy. I think that's why you see risk spreads get crushed.

• 17:59David Friedberg?

  Definitely.

• 18:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah. And I think that as long as we see the kind of prognostications that the Trump administration is putting out, I think people are going to be mostly bullish. I think the way that this trade turns around is when something actually breaks in terms of the inflation picture, or in terms of the deficit picture. And if those things look like going into 2025, that President Trump's actions are not going to be able to course correct it, then I think you're going to see people go massively risk off, which I think will not be great for markets, obviously. But right now, we're not in that point.

• 18:42David Friedberg?

  And you don't think the 10-year reflects that already at 4.5%? I mean, that's showing some degree of inflation and concern about the deficit. Right? It's like...

• 18:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think the 10-year could be at 7%.

• 18:57David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 18:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What does 4.5% mean? I mean, if you're going to run 8% of GDP level deficits for the next four, five, or six years.

• 19:09David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You're going to have the 10-year at 7 to 8%. That's just mathematical.

• 19:15David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 19:17Jason Calacanis?

  Sacks, your thoughts on crypto before we get into IPOs and M&A?

• 19:21David Sacks?

  Yeah, just on crypto, the House Republicans already passed a framework for crypto regulation earlier this year. It actually got 71 Democrats to join it. It was called the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, or FIT21. And it would classify digital assets like crypto as commodities regulated by the CFTC if the blockchain they run on is, quote, "functional and decentralized." That's the key requirement. If their blockchain is functional but not decentralized, then they would be considered securities and fall under the purview of the SEC. I think the crypto industry basically wants a really clear line for knowing when they're a commodity, and they want commodities

• 20:05David Sacks?

  to be governed, governed like all other commodities by the CFTC. So that's what the Republican bill would do. I think with the Republicans now winning the Senate, the prospects for that bill to get enacted are now greatly improved, especially because Sherrod Brown, who used to run the Banking Committee, just lost to Bernie Moreno. This was a seat in Ohio. Elizabeth Warren is still going to object to this legislation, but she's just going to have way less influence. And like you said, it's not clear that Gary Gensler's going to be sticking around very long at the SEC. So, look, the bottom line here is that I think that we are close to having clear rules of the road codified by Congress, which is what the crypto industry's been asking for. And the days of Gensler terrorizing

• 20:50David Sacks?

  crypto companies by issuing Wells notices without clarifying what the rules are that he's prosecuting, those days are about to be over. So I think this is why the crypto markets are rallying.

• 21:03Jason Calacanis?

  And so, to your point, if it's centralized or partially centralized, you're going to be a security. If you're decentralized, anybody can join the network. No one person controls the network. And I guess most people would consider that Bitcoin versus, say, Ripple, which is partially decentralized but largely centralized. And that's going to be, I guess, the new rules of the road. In addition to that, there are new rules that are being enforced that hopefully Trump supports.

• 21:31David Sacks?

  Assuming FIT21 passes, right? This bill's called FIT21. But I think much, much higher likelihood that it or something like it now can get through the Congress.

• 21:39Jason Calacanis?

  Makes sense, yeah. And then there's also legislation that's already been enacted that's

• 21:45Jason Calacanis?

  There's multiple ways and multiple paths, but accredited investors, there's going to be a path to becoming an accredited investor with a test. So that is something that is also on the docket. We'll see if it happens. Let's talk about IPOs and M and A, yum yum, boys.

• 22:00Jason Calacanis?

  Just a level set here with the audience. Here's the number of IPOs per year. And as you can see, the last three years have been some of the lowest since 2008 and 2009, the Great Recession, for those of you who are old enough to remember it. And if you look at VC, the number of distributions have been absolutely on the floor for the past three years. In fact, if you look at the distributions from 2022 through 2024, those three years combined, it's been around 200 billion, which is less than 2019 in total. And with this year projected to be about 100 billion in distributions,

• 22:43Jason Calacanis?

  that's about 14% of the peak ZIRP era, when in 2021, we had $710 billion in distributions here. So the backroom buzz is that Donnie from Queens is going to make M and A great again. Couple of reasons there. Saks, the wrath of Lina Khan's coming to an end. Mag7, sitting on massive amounts of cash and that cash is growing as people have laid people off and they're focused on getting fit. Obviously, we all know the Fed did another quarter point cut last week, although some people maybe don't know that because it seems to have gotten lost in the election news. And psychologically, I think everybody's feeling very optimistic.

• 23:27Jason Calacanis?

  So maybe these IPOs are back on the menu. Chamath, I don't know if you saw it, but Klarna just filed for their IPO. That's a Swedish fintech company. They were kind of the pioneers in buy now, pay later. What are the other IPOs we could see file in 2025? Databricks, Stripe, Wiz, Canva, Plaid, Rippling and Airtable. There's a long shot that people have been buzzing about. I don't have any inside information, but people have been speculating SpaceX could IPO Starlink, their Starlink unit. And if you want to get really crazy, Chamath, maybe this is a long shot that Sam Altman jumps the fence and decides he's going to take OpenAI public during this window that people expect to be opening. What do you think, Chamath? What's going to happen here in terms of M and A and IPOs in 2025?

• 24:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think it's gonna still be pretty subdued.

• 24:17Jason Calacanis?

  Subdued, okay.

• 24:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I don't, I don't think that you're gonna see these

• 24:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  crazy M and A deals that I think everybody is expecting.

• 24:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I also don't anticipate a lot of these big companies going public, at least in the first half of the year. And the only reason I say that is I just think that

• 24:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  like this year and the first half of next year, what's the difference? The IPO market is what the IPO market is. And if the 10 year is back to, you know, four and a half, 5%, that's not a compelling strategy for some SaaS company or some internet business that

• 25:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  didn't take an opportunity to go public when rates were at zero. So if you just look mathematically at what the actual fair value of these companies should be, I don't know, it's not like such a great IPO market. Then on the M and A side, if all you're doing is waiting for Lina Khan to not be there, to me, I think that that betrays what M and A is supposed to be, which is you're supposed to underwrite some industrial logic from first principles where things are very accretive and very accretive things

• 25:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  should not hang by a thread on the emotional regulation or dysregulation of the FTC commissioner. So I kind of think that you would have seen some of this stuff already as well if, if the industrial logic was so high. And again, when rates are non-trivially high, I just think that it's not the easiest thing in the world to pull off like a really big M and A event. Nor is it a really easy thing to pull off, to pull off a huge IPO when again, there's a reason why Warren Buffett has $325 billion sitting in T bills, making four and a half percent a year. He owns more T bills than the United States government. He's making about $15 billion a year in interest, when you can do that with absolutely no risk.

• 26:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Again, relative to stocks at least.

• 26:21David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 26:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What is this IPO going to give you?

• 26:23David Friedberg?

  Chamath is right, like the 10 years at 4.5%, you're basically paying 20 times cash flow to own a risk-free bond, the US Treasury bond.

• 26:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Or you could pay 23 times to own a totally risky asset.

• 26:35David Friedberg?

  Yeah, it's 30 times to own the S and P 500 right now.

• 26:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's nuts.

• 26:40David Friedberg?

  Yeah, it's but but there is a lot of risk-seeking shifting happening, Chamath, right? So I mean, we talked about like some of the crypto stuff, some of the fintech stuff, deregulation, that the PE might seem high today, but if you forecast out 10 years for some of these businesses in a deregulated, de-taxed environment, or reduced tax, reduced regulation environment, that the earnings should accelerate in a way that outpaces the multiple you're getting today, right? So I mean, this is part of why some of the fintech companies are ripping right now, why some of the finance companies are ripping right now. If under Trump and the Republican control of the House and Senate, laws don't pass and regulations get reduced, theoretically, earnings are going to rip, and you should

• 27:23David Friedberg?

  pay a higher multiple today because you're actually buying these things at 8 to 10 times earnings 5 years from now. So there seems to be some risk appetite there, but I do agree with Chamath on the M and A point. If you think about what's gone on over the last couple of years.

• 27:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Hold on a second, can I ask you a question? Do you think that regulation is the reason why these SaaS companies have never made a dollar of profit?

• 27:43David Friedberg?

  No, no, I'm not talking about SaaS. I'm not talking about SaaS. I'm talking, I guess we should split.

• 27:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Then you're talking about industrial companies?

• 27:49David Friedberg?

  No, the fintech market, right? So we were talking about fintech and some of these assets earlier. Some of these equities that have been ripping.

• 27:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's a very narrow part of the economy, right? Like, if you look at broad, like on a broad-based basis, the tens and tens of trillions of dollars of market cap that exist, I do agree with you that deregulation benefits a bunch of those companies, but it benefits sort of the non-tech businesses more than the tech businesses. The tech businesses right now are relatively lightly regulated.

• 28:20David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 28:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I would think that it benefits pharma businesses, it benefits ag businesses, it benefits real estate companies, it benefits a whole swath of the economy, but we've started to see that rerating. And maybe we'll see a lot more. So maybe Jason, the more nuanced answer to your question is the kind of M and A that I think you want to see, that I mean, let's face it, that we all want to see here because we all have

• 28:42Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 28:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  the vested interest, which is really specifically tech M and A. I don't think that any of this deregulation particularly accelerates that, but maybe a more nuanced take on this would be that these other more regulated parts of the economy could do well and catch up to some of the earnings potential or the forward pricing of the tech businesses. But again, now you get into this weird trade where you can buy steady cash flowing businesses that can grow in valuation as fast as a as a fast growing but money losing tech business. But then you trade both of those two things off and it has effectively the same yield as a 10 year. What do you do?

• 29:25Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I, I think there's a lot of backed up inventory where venture capitalists boards and founders, people who control and make these decisions on M and A, if they would sell the company to a larger company, I think there's a lot of exhaustion in the market. And that will drive the capitulation on valuation.

• 29:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What do you, what do you think the valuations will be? Yeah, exactly.

• 29:48Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I mean, there'll be, there'll be haircuts, but I'm watching it right now.

• 29:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, do you think Warren Buffett is going to take 325 billion of cash?

• 29:54Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, but I do, but I do.

• 29:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He won't even buy his own stock. So what do you think he's going to pay in terms of a multiple?

• 29:59Jason Calacanis?

  I think it'll be more like Salesforce or Microsoft or Google or Amazon getting off the sidelines because they've looked at and said, you know what? The juice ain't worth the squeeze. We might as well put our efforts and our capital into buying big hardware and building new products and services. But if they think, hey, I got a chance of pulling this through, I'm sitting on all this cash. What if I hit another YouTube and Instagram, you know, really great acquisitions that were transformative for those two companies? Meta would not be where it is right now. Facebook, you know that well, Chamath, if they hadn't gotten Instagram and certainly you know, Friedberg, I've seen alumni of Google, if they didn't get YouTube, it would be a completely different picture for that company right now. I think there's a lot of those type of acquisitions. Hold on. I think there's a lot of those acquisitions that have been sitting there waiting.

• 30:43Jason Calacanis?

  And I'm watching the secondary markets to your question, what's the discount going to be? The discount was last year, I kid you not. 70, 80, 90% off the last round for SaaS companies and this year it's 20 or 30. I'm seeing this when I'm getting offers to buy our shares in some private SaaS companies, some private fintech companies. And then I also think if you're a CEO and you watch Robinhood, Uber, Reddit, DoorDash and Instacart, those five have actually, after getting a little bit of a ass kicking when they first went out, they have all rebounded massively. And for the people who held on to their Reddit shares, Robinhood shares, Uber shares,

• 31:26Jason Calacanis?

  they have been rewarded massively, massively for having faith in, you know, through this storm. So I think those two things, the capitulation of all these boards and founders are going to say, you know what, let's take the haircut, let's go public and let's tell our story and see if we can make it work as a public company. And then the people who feel one step weaker than that, I think they want to cash their chips in. They've been in some of these investments, Jamal. It's year 11, 12, 13, 14 for some of these private companies. There is capitulation on those boards. People are exhausted. So that I just, I'm going to, I'm going to take the other side of the argument on this one.

• 31:59David Friedberg?

  I'll kind of play along. So I think, and I'll disagree a little bit for a couple of different reasons. These big tech companies, the ones that have had, you know, media businesses or, because remember there's tech that's tech, right? Nvidia does not have a media business, but there's been a conversation over the last couple of years where we need to break up big tech has been kind of part of the conversation with the Dems. And now the Republicans are coming in and they're saying the same thing. We got to break up big tech. So there, I think are a few of these companies, Google being one of them, that are very much handicapped right now with respect to what kind of M and A they can do without dealing with the regulatory sledgehammer coming down on them. So I don't think that those guys are buyers, J Cal. I don't think that Google's in a place right now where they can go out and make a bunch of acquisitions.

• 32:44David Friedberg?

  They're going to do everything they can to avoid the regulatory sledgehammer that's coming their way. First it was coming from the Dems, now it's coming from the new administration. There's a bunch of other companies, you know, that don't really fit that bill. Like Microsoft probably doesn't fit that bill, Nvidia, Adobe. Maybe they'll make some acquisitions, but I don't think it's as simple as, well, we'll sell at a low price, we'll buy at a low price. I'm just not sure they really need to do that right now.

• 33:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I completely agree with you. I completely agree. I, I think.

• 33:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That these big tech companies will need to pay a pound of flesh for the deplatforming and the censorship that they did.

• 33:20Jason Calacanis?

  Hmm. Okay, this is a perfect time if we're going to go to the political angle to bring you in, Sax. What are the vibes? My perception is Trump likes to win and Trump wants to see the economy soar. That is his platform. He's a business guy. I think he wants to see fluidity. I know JD has been not a fan of like the Googles, etc. So maybe you could help us navigate this. Who's right here? What's the possibility of M and A becoming more vibrant in a Trump administration?

• 33:50David Sacks?

  Well, there's no question that in general President Trump wants to have the most vibrant economy we can have. And I think to that end, you're going to see the end of this era of deceleration, of regulatory capture and lawfare. I think all those things are over. I think that equities that have been straining or tamped down under the weight of these abuses, you see them ripping now. For example, Tesla, it's gone from roughly 250 to 320 a share just since the election. And you could call that the lawfare discount. I mean, that basically is the discount on Tesla stock because the market was pricing in the risk of retaliation.

• 34:32David Sacks?

  If the Republicans lost, there's a widespread belief that the Democrats would go after Elon and his companies. So you can actually measure the lawfare discount based on Tesla stock.

• 34:43Jason Calacanis?

  And some part regulation, right? Because there's a lot of regulations around self-driving, rocket ship launches, all those things he's involved in. There's a lot of regulation there too.

• 34:50David Sacks?

  Yeah, there was this crazy thing where they, they made, some regulator made him put a headset on a seal. Did you see this? To test the effect on seals of loud noises, the sonic booms.

• 35:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sonic booms.

• 35:01David Sacks?

  This poor seal, do you see this poor seal had like a headset on?

• 35:04Jason Calacanis?

  No, don't do that to Friedberg. Don't, no, don't put it on the screen. Put it in post. I don't want Friedberg.

• 35:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Don't put it on the screen.

• 35:12Jason Calacanis?

  Friedberg is gonna...

• 35:13David Sacks?

  Anyway, so they subjected this poor seal to exactly the thing that they were worried would harm seals. In any event, the seal seemed totally fine. It didn't freak out at all.

• 35:22Jason Calacanis?

  They tortured seals to make a point. I got it, yeah.

• 35:25David Sacks?

  Anyway, it's really crazy. So yeah, look, this crazy...

• 35:28Jason Calacanis?

  But what about this JD? Help us navigate. I know JD's the VP and then you have Trump is the CEO. Chamath pointed out, maybe there's a little on the GOP anger, resentment residual.

• 35:42Jason Calacanis?

  Because of the banning of Trump from YouTube and some of these other platforms, do you think that makes its way into M and A or not?

• 35:49David Friedberg?

  I guess, Sax, like, let me be specific to J. Cal's question. Not all tech companies are the same in that point of view, right?

• 35:55Jason Calacanis?

  Correct. Thank you for punching it up.

• 35:56David Friedberg?

  And so, like, tech M and A generally is a thing, but specifically, the companies that have had social media platforms may be kind of in a different lens from a regulatory perspective. Is that fair?

• 36:11David Sacks?

  Yeah, I mean, look, I think that not everything Lena Kahn did was bad. In fact, she definitely has some fans among the populist Republicans. And, you know, some of them who have spoken out in her behalf in various areas have been J.D. Vance, Matt Gaetz as well. She did do some good things. Specifically, she was willing to take on the big tech companies. I mean, companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, frankly, they just had a free ride for the last couple of decades where they were allowed to do anything. And she came in and said, there's a new sheriff in town, and she was actually willing to apply pressure on them to not engage in anti-competitive tactics. So I think she deserves credit for that. I think she did change the conversation.

• 36:54David Sacks?

  I think that we've talked about on previous pods that perhaps there was not as targeted and surgical an approach was used. And as a result of that, it did have a chilling effect on M and A. And so it hurt the, you know, the small tech environment. And so I think that we need to fix that part of it. But I hope that whoever replaces Lena Kahn will continue to apply pressure to big tech because they are monopolies and they will abuse their power if they're allowed to, and they need to be controlled.

• 37:23Jason Calacanis?

  Sax, if you had to handicap the probability of

• 37:30Jason Calacanis?

  a lawsuit or some kind of

• 37:34Jason Calacanis?

  attempt to dismantle

• 37:38Jason Calacanis?

  Google and Facebook, would those be the two companies at the top of your list and how would you handicap that?

• 37:45David Sacks?

  So my view is that Google should be broken up. There's abundant reasons for that. There's at least three monopolies in that company. There's the search business, the advertising business and YouTube. I think they should be busted up. What are the odds that that happens? It's hard to say, but what are the odds that that is pursued in the next administration in some capacity or at least investigated? I'd say high. I'd say Facebook or Meta, less so. I don't see the compelling need to to bust them up. But quite frankly, I think the issue that Meta is going to face is just there were a lot of abuses in terms of censoring the free speech rights of Americans. Now, I don't think that was all the company's idea. I think a lot of pressure

• 38:31David Sacks?

  was put on the company by the Biden administration. I think they wanted to do the right thing and just didn't show enough backbone. I think Elon showed-

• 38:38Jason Calacanis?

  Zuckerberg's been clear that he regrets it.

• 38:41David Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Jason Calacanis?

  And he's bent the knee now. He's like, listen, I'm not going to do it again.

• 38:45David Sacks?

  Yeah, he published a letter and maybe it was done to some degree to inoculate himself against the result of this election, but I'd say to his credit, it wasn't clear at all who was going to win the election when he put out that letter and he basically said that he regretted the fact that Meta had gone along with the censorship requests by the Biden administration and he specifically referred to that whole Hunter Biden story that got censored in 2020. That was election interference. It was a completely true story by the New York Post. It got censored by Big Tech at the request of these 51 former intelligence officials who were lying through their teeth, claiming it was Russian disinformation. So he clearly regrets going along with that.

• 39:27David Sacks?

  In any event, I think there are better ways of handling the speech issue on social networks than busting up Facebook. But I do think though that Congress should investigate or continue investigating what went wrong there? And what exactly is the involvement of the intelligence community and the deep state in the censorship requests that we saw exposed by the Twitter files? Remember?

• 39:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Can I bring up something maybe tangential and you can react to this? Just speaking of kind of like censorship and then just the media complex that we have. I saw today that Trump filed like a $10 or $15 billion lawsuit against the broadcast networks. Maybe this is old news, but I may, and maybe I just saw the news now.

• 40:12Jason Calacanis?

  I saw a headline go by on X. I don't, I don't.

• 40:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, I saw it on X as well.

• 40:16Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, didn't make it out.

• 40:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then separately with Bobby Kennedy's nomination to HHS, one of the things that he has said that he wants to put an end to is the advertising that Pharma does on these broadcast stations. If you put these two things together where you deprive these folks of their largest revenue source and at the same time they have to sort of like answer for censorship or manipulating content. It does, do you think that that changes the landscape of how all these companies behave in the future? Or how do you think that that plays out?

• 40:51David Sacks?

  Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So, all right, let's take each one of those. So on the broadcasters, and we've talked about this before, the big broadcast networks and their affiliates receive free spectrum licenses from the FCC and they get some of the most valuable spectrum there is through those licenses in exchange for certain requirements that their broadcasters are in the public interest. Namely, they have to follow a fairness doctrine, which is supposed to mean that you give equal time to both candidates. Well, in the final weeks of this campaign, we saw some really egregious abuses. NBC brought on Kamala Harris, but not Donald Trump for a very favorable segment on Saturday Night Live the week before the election.

• 41:34David Sacks?

  Separately, you saw 60 Minutes deceptively edit an interview with Kamala Harris where they actually took one of her answers from one question and put it as the answer to another question. I mean, really deceptive. So you have a couple of examples with both. CBS and NBC, which were violating the equal time requirement, were clearly working on behalf of the Kamala Harris campaign. And when you look at the coverage itself, this election was the most unequal in terms of favorable coverage. It was something like a 60-point difference, something like Kamala Harris received 87% favorable coverage and Trump received something like 85% negative coverage. So there's no way-

• 42:19Jason Calacanis?

  Who's that according to, do you know?

• 42:20David Sacks?

  Yeah, it's a report by Brent Bazell's media watchdog group. It's been around forever and it's been recording this stuff in every election for the last 30 years. In any event, I think that there's a very strong argument that the broadcasters have not been fair. That's a violation of their licensed requirements and we should be reevaluating their spectrum, especially because it's not the highest best use of that spectrum anyway.

• 42:43Jason Calacanis?

  The great irony of this, though, Sax, is that they have already been demolished. I don't know if you saw, but a bunch of the anchors at CNN are not renewing because their advertising is so far off that, like Chris Wallace, I think was making 8 million a year and 9 million a year, and he just said, "I'm gonna go do podcasts" because I think they lowballed his offer. And if they lose-

• 43:03David Sacks?

  Well, there's a bunch of-

• 43:04Jason Calacanis?

  All that advertising from pharma, which I think in some of these networks is a third or half, and that's all networks, that's from Fox to CNN and every MSNBC, everybody combined. If they lose advertising from pharma, it's over. Like, those news networks are gonna lose half their revenue overnight. That would be a death blow, Chamath, to your question.

• 43:26David Sacks?

  Yeah, well, let me get back to that. So just on CNN and MSNBC, you're absolutely right that they're announcing a bunch of layoffs, their ratings are destroyed. I think they're down, MSNBC ratings are down like 50% since the election. What that tells me is that their own audience-

• 43:40Jason Calacanis?

  Wait, sorry, since the election?

• 43:41David Sacks?

  Since the election.

• 43:42Jason Calacanis?

  50%?

• 43:43David Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 43:44Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, my God.

• 43:45David Sacks?

  And what that tells me is that their captive viewer base, who's been tuning in for years to all of this TDS, has now realized that they were deceived by MSNBC and they've lost credibility even with their most fervent supporters. So there's no question that CNN, MSNBC, they're hurting. Now, Jake, I'll just estimate one small modification. They do not have spectrum licenses from the FCC, right? Because they're cable network. So- They're in kind of a different bucket. They don't have to abide by the fairness doctrine that CBS and NBC do, right? But they have different problems. And to your point about pharma, there's absolutely no reason to be allowing pharma advertisements on these TV networks. The fact of the matter is, the people who are viewing,

• 44:29David Sacks?

  those networks can't buy, you can't buy pharmaceuticals without a prescription, right? It's up to doctors to write you the prescription. And this is why most countries, most Western countries prohibit pharma advertising on the networks. And I think Bobby Kennedy has a very strong argument that it would serve the public interest not to allow this. We don't allow advertisements for tobacco, right?

• 44:55Jason Calacanis?

  So I guess the thing that doesn't make sense to me, Sacks, is you're so, such a First Amendment absolutist and free speech absolutist, isn't it? And I'm not saying this is my opinion, but you know, my, my challenge to you would be is, tell me about freedom of speech and expression in relation to being able to do advertising for these products.

• 45:18David Sacks?

  Well, I mean,

• 45:19Jason Calacanis?

  Aren't, aren't consumers smart enough to figure it out?

• 45:22David Sacks?

  The point of the advertising isn't, I think, is not, at the end of the day, to influence consumers because consumers can't buy pharmaceuticals. They have to go to a doctor.

• 45:29Jason Calacanis?

  Well, that's what they say in it. Ask your doctor about.

• 45:32David Sacks?

  The purpose of the advertising is to buy favorable coverage. That's the point. And there are many examples.

• 45:37Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, okay. Explain that.

• 45:39David Sacks?

  Well, there are many examples of people who've worked in these networks saying that they had a story that was negative about pharma companies. And that story got spiked because the pharma companies are the biggest advertisers. In fact, I think it was, there was a story about Fox News and who, who, um, who was the guy, Roger Ailes?

• 45:59Jason Calacanis?

  Well, there's been a number of stories. I know what you're talking about. There's been stories about Anderson Cooper.

• 46:06Jason Calacanis?

  Who's the guy who does international coverage on the weekends? GPS is the name of his show. I'm drawing, I can't remember right now. Fareed Zakaria. Thank you, Fareed Zakaria, yes. I think a bunch of those shows were like literally brought to you by Pfizer, brought to you by these things. And so those shows potentially would just go away. And then there was reporting on the number of times they would report on those companies. And it showed they didn't. So what do you think, Freeberg? Of should pharma companies be allowed to advertise to consumers to ask their doctors to ask them about Viagra?

• 46:42Jason Calacanis?

  What's your take?

• 46:46Jason Calacanis?

  He's thinking, for those of you at home listening, he's giving a deep thought.

• 46:51David Sacks?

  While he's thinking, Jake, let me just say that I think there is a free speech issue that has to be weighed, okay? So I don't want to be totally dismissive of that. However, I think that the Viagra example is on the like far end of the spectrum of a drug that by, you know, by advertising it, you could actually get consumers to request it from their doctor. I don't think most drugs are like that. And I think my contention would be that the real reason they're paying all this massive advertising is not to influence consumers, but to influence the coverage that they get. And there is something very corrupt about that. And I think that Bobby Kennedy has a really strong point that if you were to remove that incentive that many people inside the industry have admitted exists,

• 47:35David Sacks?

  then you would get much fairer coverage of these pharma companies. And we would actually get to be a healthier country because you wouldn't allow them to basically manipulate the public debate. So that's the argument.

• 47:50Jason Calacanis?

  Friedberg, you want to chime in on it or no?

• 47:52David Friedberg?

  I mean, I feel like there's some market correction that takes place here, which we're already seeing, which is the consumers are moving away. We just talked about moving away from cable news, moving away from legacy media. They don't trust it. The trust is at an all time low. I don't know if it's necessarily the government's job to determine who advertises what where. How and why I don't like the government having that sort of degree of authority, generally speaking, because it can then lead into the government having overreach and oversight to control entities that maybe are competitive with the government in different ways. I do believe that the beef with big tech is a result of big tech's influence over the population,

• 48:37David Friedberg?

  where big government wants to have that degree of influence over the population. So it's actually a battle between government and private entities over who can influence the population and who has the ability to control the narrative. And I think that the general concept that the government should be determining who advertises, where, what, how and why is not a great one. And I don't think that consumers are dumb. I think that consumers are showing their proclivity for independent media and independent news sources because they don't trust the influence that's been kind of imparted upon these other channels and these other sources, and they're moving away from it. So I don't know if it's as much kind of a regulatory question and big pharma needs to be affected. I think that the market to some degree does its job. I don't think the consumers are dumb.

• 49:22David Friedberg?

  I will also just kind of counter one of Sax's points. I think that there are drugs, like multiple sclerosis is a good example. There was a drug introduced a couple of years ago called Ocaris, and it was a new therapy for multiple sclerosis that is extremely effective. It's a really a big step change in biological therapies. And a lot of people that were on MS and have had MS for decades, take kind of old school, old school drugs that maybe aren't that effective. So to create awareness, and they're not regularly seeing their doctors. They may not go in and see their doctor every year like they're supposed to. So the pharma companies are creating awareness that there's this new modality and this new product that could help them to get them to go into the doctor's office.

• 50:04David Friedberg?

  You know, so I don't want to say that these are all like evil, you know, trying to control and influence. Like there are good drugs that come to market. They are beneficial to people and people don't know about them. How else are they supposed to get that word out if they're not able to advertise? So I don't think that it's all like negative and all malicious, you know, kind of behavior and manipulation of media. People, we all have the resources. All have the capacity and we are all likely very frequently going to doctors. Most people don't. And so most people that have chronic disease or have health issues, there, there has to be a mechanism for, you know, making them aware of new options, new alternatives, new products that are coming to market. So I'm not super like putting my foot down, saying pharma companies shouldn't be able to advertise, shouldn't be able to buy media out there and,

• 50:46David Friedberg?

  and put ads up and tell people about stuff that they've discovered or that they've invented. That's been regulated, that's been tested, that's been approved and that works and can help save lives. I think they should have the freedom and ability to do that. So I think there's a, there's a bit of a nuance here to how this gets handled is my point.

• 51:02David Sacks?

  Yeah, I mean, look, I, I, I'm not saying that there's no benefit at all to letting pharma companies advertise some products. I think the question you have to ask is why is so much money? Going from pharma to these news outlets because most of the products, you know, that you generally can't buy them.

• 51:23David Friedberg?

  I'll tell you the reason. The reason is that the pharma companies make so much money off of government funded insurance programs. Let me just state that again. If we only had private insurance, or if consumers had to pay for their drugs and their therapies themselves, the cost of drugs would go way down. The reason the cost of drugs has gone way up is because so much of the government insurance programs don't negotiate drug prices. And there are all these middlemen and all these people that sit in between that have been regulated through regulatory capture into the system that has allowed an incredible inflation in the cost of drug prices. Therefore, there is a lot of money to kind of continue the capture of the system. I don't think that it is right. And I think that the free market generally, or having a less regulatory captured market,

• 52:08David Friedberg?

  will allow an appropriate kind of pricing of therapies and appropriate kind of adjustment in the market, which doesn't exist today. So so much money to kind of keep the market the way it is, needs to kind of keep flowing. That's my sense of this. It's, it's, I don't think it's about bad drugs need to kind of stay in play. As much as it is, this market's been allowed to inflate and the cost of healthcare and the cost of drugs has inflated in a way that's simply untenable. And it doesn't make sense. And I think that it's because of regulatory capture and I think that that needs to change and I'm hopeful that, that it does.

• 52:39David Sacks?

  That's the second reason then to get the, this pharma money out of advertising because you're basically explaining it as like a self looking ice cream cone. But again, there's another reason as well, I think that explains the sheer magnitude, which is it's influence buying, it's influence.

• 52:55Jason Calacanis?

  To your point, Sax, that was what I was about to bring up. You know, there, it's very subtle. You're not going to have somebody at NBC or CNN or Fox come down and tell Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow or Anderson Cooper, hey, you can't cover this story. But there is a bunch of self censorship that occurs, I believe, where people just don't select certain stories to be on the docket. And they just shape the coverage. So they might not say something positive or negative about Pfizer or Johnson and Johnson, whoever it is, they'll just avoid that story. Because these anchors are getting paid or have been previously paid 10 million, 25 million a year.

• 53:38Jason Calacanis?

  Do you think they're going to like really go hard at Pfizer or somebody like that? No, they're just not going to. I've been inside the machine. They just avoid those stories. Okay, let's keep going through the docket here. I think it was a pretty good conversation. And by the way, I just wanted to say to the Trump administration, if you want the economy to rip, let M and A rip. But my one caveat is, is a really simple way to do this. If you're under a trillion dollar valuation, let those companies buy and sell each other because then we could go from a mag seven to a mag 70. That's where I think actually it makes the most sense. If you actually are concerned about the consolidation of power in the top seven, let them sit out acquiring more great companies and let the people under that who are the mid-market

• 54:23Jason Calacanis?

  cap companies, let them do the buying and selling because then you might have a mag eight, nine, 10 show up. That's not talking my book. It would be better for me, Friedberg, to let the mag seven participate because they can pay higher prices. They're not price sensitive. But I do think the mid-market companies buying and selling would make a healthier environment for competition.

• 54:41David Friedberg?

  So you think it, sorry, you think it creates more competition, which will, that'll benefit consumers and grow the economy?

• 54:47Jason Calacanis?

  Well, look at it this way. If somebody wants to buy, let's say Waymo gets spun out, somebody wants to buy it. If Amazon can't buy it. And Tesla can't buy it and Amazon can't buy it, but they could merge with Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, you know, all those mid Airbnb. If those companies could consolidate, can you imagine what would happen if Amazon couldn't buy those companies, but you could see Waymo spin out and then partner with DoorDash and partner with Airbnb and you had that as one company? Now you got a $400 billion company that is nipping on the heels, that is aggressively competing with Amazon. That's what you want in the market is more competition for the Mac 7. You don't want the magnificent seven to run away with it. And we could create the

• 55:32Jason Calacanis?

  eighth, ninth, and 10th. So just imagine that Friedberg. There was a another trillion dollar company. Like, actually, I think Tesla just became a trillion dollar company again. So now that they're up in those ranks, great. Don't let Tesla, don't let Amazon, et cetera, Nvidia buy more companies. Let those that mergers and acquisitions and that strength happen under the trillion dollar mark. What do you think of that general concept, Friedberg?

• 55:55David Friedberg?

  Yeah, I generally think competition is good. I generally think free markets should be allowed to operate. And I've shared my point of view. I think bigger is going to drive more innovation than lots of little. So, okay. Again, Waymo wouldn't exist if not for Google plowing billions and billions. And I don't know about you guys. I took Waymo around the city yesterday. Pretty sick. Like, it is legit.

• 56:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I don't go to the city.

• 56:17David Friedberg?

  Yeah. It's pretty legit. And I

• 56:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Because it's a toxic cesspool.

• 56:24David Friedberg?

  By the way, I will say my other comment is I think San Francisco has gotten 10x better now that I've been working downtown the last week or two.

• 56:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  10x is better from a toxic cesspool just means it's a cesspool.

• 56:36David Friedberg?

  I think part of the fat, part of the reason is all of Walgreens is gone. There's no Walgreens left.

• 56:41Jason Calacanis?

  You can't buy deodorant. Problem solved.

• 56:43David Friedberg?

  There's nowhere to do crime anymore.

• 56:46Jason Calacanis?

  A drugstore that doesn't exist.

• 56:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  San Francisco, how do you do that?

• 56:49David Friedberg?

  You gotta ask Jason. Jason, how do you?

• 56:51David Sacks?

  Amazon, get an Amazon package delivered.

• 56:54Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I don't, I'm in Texas. You can do whatever you want here.

• 56:59David Friedberg?

  Jason gets his supplies airdropped in once a month.

• 57:02Jason Calacanis?

  What are you talking about?

• 57:03David Sacks?

  I'm bullish on the services go turnaround because I think Daniel Lurie getting elected mayor was huge. And this doesn't get really as much attention, but it's very important.

• 57:12David Friedberg?

  The board shifted.

• 57:13David Sacks?

  The radicals got voted off the board of supervisors, so.

• 57:17David Friedberg?

  The board of supervisors are less progressive. Daniel's in the mayoral office. It is, and I think, I think the city's already like turning around. I've been super blown away. The last couple of weeks I've been downtown. I'm like, why am I not working downtown every day? It's actually really nice. It feels like San Francisco 20 years ago.

• 57:33Jason Calacanis?

  Let's see if it's safe. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, safety is the number one thing. If they can.

• 57:37David Friedberg?

  And this budget needs to get put under control. San Francisco spends one and a half X per capita of what New York City spends. And that's something that Daniel and his team have kind of said they're going to address sort of like their own Doge. And there's a team going in there to address this. So I'm really bullish on what's going to happen with the city. It's just such a great place.

• 57:55Jason Calacanis?

  It seems like the power resides in the supervisors and they seem to have flipped two or three of the really lunatic ones, right, Sax? They got rid of dopey Dean Preston. Who was the other guy?

• 58:05David Sacks?

  Peskin.

• 58:06Jason Calacanis?

  Peskin, he was an idiot. And they, those guys are done. So that's progress.

• 58:11David Friedberg?

  Do you want to talk about the Trump candidates, Jake?

• 58:14Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, let's get to that in a second. But before we get to that, FBI raided the home of Polly Market CEO Shane Copeland. He was on the election night stream. He was raided on Wednesday, November 13th, eight days after the election. They say Polly Market is, Bloomberg says Polly Market is being investigated for allegedly accepting trades from US-based users. Here's the backstory. In 2022, Polly Market paid 1.4 million to settle a case with the CFTC for offering option contracts without proper designation.

• 58:47Jason Calacanis?

  The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also ordered the company to prevent US traders from making bets. They recently said polymarket, that is, that they had taken additional measures to block Americans from trading. At the same time, Kalshi and Robinhood were able to offer presidential prediction markets because Kalshi, it seems like they won their lawsuit against the CFTC last month. So that allowed some betting markets to happen. But polymarket is still banned from the US because of that settlement in 2022. Here's the polymarket claim. They claim the raid was obviously political retribution by the outgoing administration against polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election. And Shane posted on X, discouraging that the current

• 59:30Jason Calacanis?

  administration would seek a last ditch effort to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents. Bunch of conspiracy theories flying around. Peter Thiel and Founder Fund have made an investment into the company and Nate Silver's an advisor. I guess I'll just point out two things.

• 59:48David Sacks?

  They were much more accurate. They're much more accurate than Nate Silver.

• 59:51Jason Calacanis?

  Totally accurate. Yeah.

• 59:51David Sacks?

  So how manipulated can it be if they got everything right?

• 59:55Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I mean, that's literally the point I was about to make. And I'll just end with this and then give it to you, Sax for Red Meat. Americans are not allowed to participate in a lot of different markets. And these kind of actions have been taken many, many, many times. As we all know, poker, crypto, real estate, and prediction markets have all had actions like this taken against them. And they typically are a speeding ticket.

• 1:00:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Did they raid the offices too, or just his house?

• 1:00:22Jason Calacanis?

  Just his house, according to the information we have right now.

• 1:00:26David Sacks?

  They busted into his house at 6:00 AM and they took his phone. By the way, shout out to-

• 1:00:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, but like, if you're breaking the law, why wouldn't they?

• 1:00:35Jason Calacanis?

  All that TBD.

• 1:00:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Go to the offices.

• 1:00:37Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, it's a great speculation. And important to note, this action came after the election is resolved. So- It's obviously FBI knew that doing this beforehand would be seen as political and doing it after I guess they need the decision. No, I know what you're saying. I'm adding something else, which is they obviously knew this would be political, Sax, and so they did it after. They knew if they did it before, that would be looked like, you know, really bad, that the prediction mark, that's prediction Trump, a Trump win was raided. So they did it after. What do you think Sax? What's going on?

• 1:01:11David Sacks?

  Okay, I think there's three.

• 1:01:12Jason Calacanis?

  Do you think it's political or not? I guess is the question.

• 1:01:13David Sacks?

  We don't, we don't know what was driving this. It's certainly an extreme action to bust into someone's home at 6 a.m. with the FBI and take, take your phone. So it's very curious. I think there's three theories that I've heard that I think could explain this. And I want to just be very clear that there's no proof on any of this. It's just speculation. Yeah, it's a speculation about what could be going on.

• 1:01:35Jason Calacanis?

  Everything's a legend and speculation.

• 1:01:35David Sacks?

  Yeah. But by the way, just before I get into it, I think Shane Copeland had one of the funniest tweets I've ever seen.

• 1:01:40Jason Calacanis?

  New phone who dis?

• 1:01:41David Sacks?

  Yeah, new phone who dis. Nick, you should show them. I mean, that was like ballsy. The FBI busts in your house, takes your phone, and that's the person you tweet.

• 1:01:50Jason Calacanis?

  This is a, that means that this is probably not a serious situation. But anyway, go ahead.

• 1:01:53David Sacks?

  Well, who knows? But.

• 1:01:55Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. Or he's confident is what I would say. Yeah.

• 1:01:57David Sacks?

  Yeah. Okay. So theory number one is that what the feds are looking for is whether any domestic whales were illegally wagering on the election outcome because theoretically the money is all supposed to be offshore because domestic wagering on the election was illegal. However, a court ruled just days before the election that domestic wagering was legal. So that's a theory. Number one doesn't really make a lot of sense because the FBI would be enforcing a rule or a law that the courts had just overruled just days before the elections. So but that's theory number one. Theory number two, and this theory

• 1:02:37David Sacks?

  was raised by Fortune magazine, is that this, that poly market was rife with what's called wash trading, which is a form of market manipulation where shares are bought and sold often simultaneously and repeatedly by the same people to create a false impression of volume and activity.

• 1:02:54Jason Calacanis?

  Of liquidity.

• 1:02:55David Sacks?

  This is illegal in the U.S. and it does occur in crypto markets. So they could have been going after that. But again, it does seem like a very extreme thing to bust into his house. Why don't you just ask? Shame for the record during business hours.

• 1:03:08David Friedberg?

  What authority would the US government have if it's all offshore in that context?

• 1:03:12David Sacks?

  I don't know. I'm just laying out, I'm laying out possible theories, but Fortune Magazine did, did raise that theory. But again, if that's what your claim is, just subpoena Polly Market during business hours. I don't know why you need to raid the, the guy's home.

• 1:03:25Jason Calacanis?

  Or raid the office. That's where the files are.

• 1:03:27David Sacks?

  Right. And now let me, let me lay out theory number three. Okay. Which is going to be a little bit more controversial.

• 1:03:34David Friedberg?

  Here we go.

• 1:03:35David Sacks?

  But, uh.

• 1:03:36David Friedberg?

  Get the chip well.

• 1:03:37David Sacks?

  If, if somebody was manipulating these sites, okay, then on whose behalf were they doing it? And what you'd have to say is that they were doing it on behalf of the Kamala campaign. Because in the last few days of the election, there was a weird blip where Polly Market and, and Kalshi especially, Kalshi even more than Polly Market, all of a sudden flipped to Kamala. And you could see this particularly in Pennsylvania where all of a sudden there was a big flip at the end away from Trump towards Kamala that turned out to be totally fake. And Trump won Pennsylvania pretty, pretty handily. And so you gotta wonder, well, wait a second, was a Kamala supporter maybe trying to push the narrative

• 1:04:20David Sacks?

  that there was a last minute surge to Kamala? Because that's what the action seemed to imply. And remember that the same time this was happening, there was a big, there was like a media push to create a narrative by her supporters in the media that there was a late break for Harris.

• 1:04:38David Friedberg?

  Yes.

• 1:04:39David Sacks?

  By independents. And so you have to kind of wonder, was somebody trying to push the prediction markets at the last minute to feed a media narrative that they were trying to create? Look, I have no evidence of this whatsoever, but the, the action in the betting markets and the narrative they were trying to create in the media do line up. So if somebody was going to investigate election manipulation, this is what they should look into.

• 1:05:02David Friedberg?

  Chamath, you have any thoughts here?

• 1:05:05Jason Calacanis?

  No.

• 1:05:06David Friedberg?

  Zero thoughts.

• 1:05:07Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, yeah, you know, my thoughts on it are, I, I don't see him ever doing anything risky or illegal. So it makes no sense to me. I'm guessing that somebody made him aware, pure speculation of something in the system. And that probably was on his phone and they probably wanted to get that. And it's probably like a speeding ticket, ticky tacky thing. And you just have the law still working its way through the system because they, Saks, were under, in order to not take US, Bakalshi had gotten the mark, the law changed with their successful lawsuit, or they had defended their case. So I would say it's all allegedly,

• 1:05:46Jason Calacanis?

  folks. And so, wait for more information. It's always a good idea. All right. Trump is building his team. And it's a long list. We've got, I guess, dozens of names right now. So let's start with the four. Who's your favorite, J Cal? Well, my opinion probably doesn't matter all that much, but let me go with the four that are creating the most buzz. Tomah? Let's, let's create the, let's go with the four that are having the most buzz. And then I'll let you each tell me what you think of those candidates. You love? The one I, yeah, there is one actually I love. But let's, I'll save that for now. Who's that? I'm curious, actually. I'm genuinely curious. Vivek and Elon doing Doge is my absolute favorite. Yes. Anything else that?

• 1:06:31Jason Calacanis?

  I am fascinated by Bobby Kennedy going in and trying to make the country healthier. And the country is the most sick country, I think, of all of the Western countries. And I think our food system has massive problems. So I'm very excited to see what he does inside of the Health and Human Services Department. I think it's a little bit controversial, obviously, but I don't see how it could be any worse than what we currently have. How do you feel about that? Who's your favorite? I guess we can just go with people's favorites if you want to go that way.

• 1:07:07David Sacks?

  The way I interpret his cabinet picks is that he's creating a coalition. So I view it more as like a package deal, J Cal. I'm not going to pick out one or two, although I do have my favorites. The person who I think very astutely understands what Trump is trying to do is Charlie Kirk, who's a major influencer on the Republican side. And he says that, that what-

• 1:07:31David Sacks?

  Maha, which is Make America Healthy Again, they get RFK, Bobby Kennedy, HHS, obviously. The libertarians get Tulsi at DNI. I would add to that that they also get Elon Vivek at Doge. The base, the populist base gets Matt Gaetz, they get Hegseth at DOD, they get Homan. And then the piece through projecting strength crowd, which is kind of a nice name for neocon, gets Rubio as Secretary of State and Stefanik at the UN. So I think that Trump is basically trying to have his cabinet reflect the diversity of views within the Republican Party. He's not decisively choosing one side over another. What this means is that during his presidency, he's going to get all the views and all the options.

• 1:08:15Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so that's the collective view. That's an interesting way of about it. Let's go point by point through the most controversial ones. Matt Gaetz is obviously the most controversial at attorney.

• 1:08:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They're all young, though. That's what's incredible, huh?

• 1:08:26Jason Calacanis?

  They are all young, that's another trend, yeah. And he has been put up as Attorney General. He has to be confirmed by the Senate, obviously. He's the House Rep from Florida. Sax, how qualified is he for this job on a scale of one to 10?

• 1:08:38David Sacks?

  I think that Matt Gaetz would be a breath of fresh air at DOJ. I mean, look, here's the...

• 1:08:44Jason Calacanis?

  Why is that?

• 1:08:45David Sacks?

  The DOJ has been involved for the last eight or nine years in a completely fabricated effort to portray Donald Trump as an agent of the Russians. It started with the Steele dossier. They then opened an investigation based on that phony piece of opposition research funded by the Hillary campaign. They lied to the FISA court to spy on Donald Trump's campaign. They then worked with the various intelligence services and with the media to create this like hoax that went on for years and years. There's been no accountability for that. Furthermore, in the 2020 election, you also had that effort to essentially cover up

• 1:09:26David Sacks?

  the Hunter Biden hard drive, that the FBI and DOJ were sitting on that for roughly a year. They created a phony story that it was Russian disinformation when it turned out to be completely authentic.

• 1:09:38Jason Calacanis?

  So you think there's a lot to clean up there? How qualified is he on a scale of one to 10?

• 1:09:42David Sacks?

  What the president, what the president ran on was that the DOJ needed to be de-weaponized, that it had been turned into a partisan political apparatus for the Democrats. I don't think anyone can argue with that at this point. I think the American people clearly bought into that argument. Now, in order to clean it up, you're gonna have to bring in a total outsider who's willing to break some eggs and shake things up. Is Matt Gaetz the only person who could do that? No, there are other people who could do it, but Matt Gaetz is definitely qualified for that role. He was one of the most outspoken critics in Congress of this weaponization of the FBI. He was never fooled by the Russiagate hoax. Most of the establishment was.

• 1:10:22Jason Calacanis?

  Any concerns?

• 1:10:23David Sacks?

  Anybody who bought into the Russiagate hoax is not qualified to run the DOJ at this point.

• 1:10:27Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, any concerns?

• 1:10:29David Sacks?

  Well, there's a bunch of unproven smears and accusations that have been made against him.

• 1:10:34Jason Calacanis?

  We'll put it aside. Any other concerns?

• 1:10:36David Sacks?

  Excuse me?

• 1:10:38Jason Calacanis?

  Aside from the investigations and whatever and the smears?

• 1:10:42David Sacks?

  There's a bunch of unproven smears and accusations that have been made against him. And my own view on that is that if there was really something there, I think Merrick Garland's DOJ would have acted on it two or three years ago. So I personally discount all these smears without there being any evidence whatsoever. And I think it's very predictable that what we're seeing with both Matt Gaetz and with Tulsi is that the worst accusations get made without any evidence in the media when the blob or the establishment wants to stop a true populist reformer from cleaning up their backyard.

• 1:11:17Jason Calacanis?

  Friedberg, your thoughts on Matt Gaetz? And that seems to be the most controversial one. Any concerns? Do you think he's the most suited guy for the job?

• 1:11:23David Friedberg?

  I don't want to comment on Matt Gaetz, but I'd like to talk about...

• 1:11:27Jason Calacanis?

  Why not?

• 1:11:29David Friedberg?

  Because I'd like to talk about a broader point of view on it.

• 1:11:32Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 1:11:33David Friedberg?

  So I think...

• 1:11:38David Friedberg?

  There's this kind of thing that happens in biology called evolution. And a lot of people think evolution is this continuous process, but it's not. Evolution is this process by which there is some significant growth for a period of time. And then there is an extinction event or an external force that causes what ultimately becomes what's called punctuated equilibrium. So the whole kind of system resets and then the healthier, stronger species survive and they grow and they persist. And if you look at the first chart, Nick, that I pulled up, this will just show you guys past extinction events, large amounts of biomass over the past half billion years get wiped out when these extinction events occur.

• 1:12:22David Friedberg?

  And then evolution occurs because the species that can survive the extinction event persists in the environment and they grow. And that's how evolution kind of actually takes place is there's an external force that changes what survives and what doesn't. It's kind of a testing force. If you look at federal spending, and this is a crazy link, but here's federal spending over the last couple of decades. And I would argue that many of the agencies, much of the bureaucracy, many of the jobs created, many of the spending programs, many of the operating models, many of the behaviors can kind of be viewed as a species or species within this ecosystem that have kind of grown a lot over the last few decades.

• 1:13:04David Friedberg?

  And I think what Trump's mandate was by the people, and people don't want to hear this and they don't like it, but his mandate was to be kind of the extinction event. And whatever agencies, whatever operating processes, whatever individuals, whatever bureaucratic systems exist within the federal government that can withstand the scrutiny of the individuals that Trump is going to put in charge of each of these agencies, that they can survive and they can come out the other end, there is certainly some degree of strength and resilience and hardiness. This is not about right or wrong.

• 1:13:37Jason Calacanis?

  You say they deserve to exist if they can survive.

• 1:13:40David Friedberg?

  I'm saying this is going to bring in, this is going to bring in the most disruptive force that federal agencies have ever seen. And the intention with Trump isn't to find some person to keep running things the way they have been run in the past. His mandate from the people who elected him, based on the message he put out there is to do the opposite, which is to go in and be as disruptive and damaging and destructive as possible. And whatever comes out the other side will be stronger, will be hardier. And theoretically, Will be, you know, more resilient. And I think that that's the event that's underway. Now, the people who are getting exactly what they want in Trump's candidacies are the Democrats. They were saying Trump is going to put a bunch of crazy lunatics in office and he's going to make them the cabinet and they're going to and that.

• 1:14:25David Friedberg?

  And now they're able to kind of clap their hands and say, we told you so, we told you so. And I'm not sure that if they're really getting the message, which is that the intention here isn't to keep things running the way they have been running, but to really fundamentally test the systems. And test the systems with the most challenging oppositional forces the systems have ever been tested by, which is the candidates or the individuals that he's putting in charge of each of these agencies. So I I'm not saying it's right or wrong, one way or the other. But I'm making an observation that this is going to be kind of an extinction level event that Trump's decisions on who he's putting in place, I think, are going to drive an outcome on the other end. That's going to make the government look very different. And I, you know, I'm not going to sit around and say, this person's good, this person's bad. Because I don't think the point is to find someone that's quote qualified to do the job.

• 1:15:10David Friedberg?

  The intention is actually quite different. And the outcome may actually be positive for America if you fast forward a couple of years. In some cases, and there's some cases where things could get really messed up and people could suffer and jobs will be lost and all sorts of bad things will happen. But we cannot continue the way we have been with respect to federal spending, with respect to federal spending, bureaucracy and inefficiency in the federal government. And so something has to happen. And if this is the path by which this gets resolved in the limited window that's in front of this, this particular administration, which is probably two years, maybe four. Maybe this is what has to happen.

• 1:15:43Jason Calacanis?

  Shabbat, where do you stand on Friedberg's interesting metaphor here that we're sending meteors into each of these departments to blow them up and see if they survive an extinction level event? I saw you nodding. Do you think this is an interesting framing?

• 1:16:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Great take. I have nothing to add to Friedberg's take.

• 1:16:03Jason Calacanis?

  Got it. Who's your favorite? You asked me the question. I answered. Who's your favorite?

• 1:16:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, I think, let's take Elon and Vivek off the table because

• 1:16:11Jason Calacanis?

  That's an obvious one that we all have been behind since the beginning. Yeah. And we know, and we all support the idea, who's not against more efficiency? I mean, you'd have to be an idiot to be against efficiency. It's like the easiest one to say you love.

• 1:16:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think the highest beta pick so far has been Bobby Kennedy. I think the second highest beta pick is Matt Gaetz.

• 1:16:30Jason Calacanis?

  Explain highest beta pick in this context, please.

• 1:16:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And I think the third is Tulsi Gabbard. That there is the potential for an enormously positive two or three sigma outcome, but there's also the chance that it can really not work.

• 1:16:49Jason Calacanis?

  That was exactly why I picked Bobby Kennedy, because he's going to shake it up.

• 1:16:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right. Peter Thiel just did this podcast with Bari Weiss.

• 1:16:55Jason Calacanis?

  It was fantastic, by the way. Highly recommend.

• 1:16:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Highly recommend.

• 1:16:58Jason Calacanis?

  He's awesome, yeah.

• 1:17:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  One of the great things he said is that he was talking about science, but I think the example works here as well, which is that we didn't have enough skepticism and we had too much dogma. He was talking about sort of like the death of science. And I think that that idea applies here as well, which is that the federal bureaucracy has not really been challenged. And Vivek put out a very compelling post on X where he basically said like, look, when you, on the one hand, there's going to be radical transparency, but on the other hand, there's a lot of case law that we can use to kind of try to really dismantle the government apparatus. And they're putting themselves on a shot clock to do it by 2026

• 1:17:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  for the 250th anniversary. So I think I'm really predisposed to this idea that it'll force the government to be very resilient at the end of this process. And I think that's a good thing. And it'll probably be very different than what it is on the way in. And I think that that can be very positive.

• 1:18:07Jason Calacanis?

  All right. So we got Chamath and myself actually giving some specific names that we thought were interesting. I'll go back to you, Sax. Maybe I'll phrase it as to Chamath's phrasing. Which one do you think has the greatest chance of creating a massive potential change that could be positive, but also has some possibility of a destructive downside? In other words, it could go either way, but man, if it goes the right way, it could be brilliant and amazing and great for all Americans. Who would be your number one, number two in that regard?

• 1:18:37David Sacks?

  Well, you have to identify what the potential downside is. I think the single biggest risk in a second Trump term is that somehow the United States gets into an unnecessary war, a war that we don't need, another forever war. It's certainly not what President Trump wants. He's been abundantly clear on the campaign trail that he wants to avoid wars, he wants to avoid World War III. It's clearly where all of his instincts are. But the fact of the matter is, we have a very fraught and difficult international situation right now. The Middle East is on fire. We have a proxy war going on with Russia. So there is the chance that things could always spiral out of control. And you need, I think, within the cabinet, not just hawkish voices, but also dovish voices, so that the president

• 1:19:20David Sacks?

  has the full range of options at his disposal. And so in that sense, I would say that, you know, Tulsi is being one of the more dovish voices is incredibly critical, just to balance out some of the other voices who are more hawkish. And so in that sense, I think, you know, just making sure that the president gets to hear from a wide spectrum of views, I think that that part's very important.

• 1:19:45Jason Calacanis?

  So that would be Tulsi. Tulsi would be your pick for like?

• 1:19:48David Sacks?

  Yeah, just because Tulsi could literally make the difference between whether we get in a unnecessary forever war or not. I would also just say that with respect to the other picks, there's obviously a lot of hysteria going on, a lot of hyperbole about the downsides. I don't think it's going to be like a meteor hitting the earth. I don't think it's that destructive. I think that it's more like, will some eggs be broken up to make an omelet, right? That's the analogy I would use rather than the meteor. And the thing I would just say is that we all agree the United States is currently on an unsustainable fiscal path. We know that we're spending too much money. We know that the bureaucracy is too big. What's the downside of shaking it up? There's just way more upside than downside in terms

• 1:20:33David Sacks?

  of shaking up this bureaucracy.

• 1:20:35Jason Calacanis?

  Because the current path is bankruptcy.

• 1:20:37David Sacks?

  Exactly. So why do we have to act like? That it's so risky to bring in outsiders and populists and reformers into these agencies. We know there's going to be huge resistance to them. The biggest risk, frankly, is inertia taking over and the reformers aren't able to do enough. And we all

• 1:20:56Jason Calacanis?

  Doing nothing is not an option.

• 1:20:58David Sacks?

  Yeah, then we go bankrupt. That's the big risk.

• 1:21:00Jason Calacanis?

  Why is Tulsi getting attacked? What's the Russian connection? People are saying like, I don't, I don't know any of the history here. So tell me.

• 1:21:08David Sacks?

  It's obvious. It's because Washington is a very hawkish place. It's basically run by the war machine. There's, there's no money going to Washington to lobby for peace. All the money in Washington is coming from the military industrial complex. So by definition, it's extremely hawkish and it's geared towards war. And Tulsi

• 1:21:27Jason Calacanis?

  Is there some history with Tulsi and Russia?

• 1:21:30David Sacks?

  Yeah. Just to finish my point.

• 1:21:31Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:33David Sacks?

  Tulsi has been one of the few consistent voices advocating for peace. So of course the establishment wants to basically get her nomination vetoed. But again, I think you have to see the cabinet as a package deal. I think it's very important to have Tulsi as one voice for peace within a larger cabinet that already has many hawkish voices.

• 1:21:52Jason Calacanis?

  Got it. Okay. All right, everybody for your Sultan of Science from Ojalo, David Friedberg, the Chairman Dictator, Chamapal Patitio from 8090, and David Sacks from Craft Ventures. I am Jason Calacanis, your host here at the All In Podcast. And this week in startups, we'll see you next time on the All In Podcast. Bye bye.

• 1:22:15David Sacks?

  Back at you, Chief Retribution Officer.

• 1:22:19Jason Calacanis?

  Chief Retribution Officer. It's so brutal.

• 1:22:44Speaker 05

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

• 1:22:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, man!

• 1:22:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

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

• 1:23:02Speaker 05

  What, your... B, B! What, your... What, your B? B! What? We need to get merch! Besties are back!