#1274 Aaron Ginn | This Founder Raised $10 Million To Protect Artificial Intelligence From Governments

Aaron Ginn is the CEO & co-founder of Hydra Host, revolutionizing the way data centers operate by bringing GPUs everywhere to you easily and quickly. He also is the founder of the Lincoln Network, which connects the tech industry with policy makers. In this conversation, we talk about the state of venture capital, advanced computing, geopolitical conflict, politics, contrarian ideas, and more. ======================= Auradine, a leader in web infrastructure solutions including blockchain, AI, and privacy, has unveiled the world's first 4nm Bitcoin mining systems, featuring breakthrough EnergyTune™ technology, setting new standards in performance and energy efficiency. The Teraflux™ product line from Auradine offers best-in-class performance, efficiency, and total cost of ownership (TCO), positioning it as the optimal choice for Bitcoin mining needs. With EnergyTune™, a patent-pending technology, Auradine's Teraflux™ systems enable rapid demand response and optimal energy usage, fostering a symbiotic relationship with electrical grids, and contributing to sustainable energy practices. Designed and manufactured in the US, Auradine's Teraflux™ product line not only ensures cutting-edge technology but also mitigates supply chain risks and provides increased supply chain resiliency. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.auradine.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more information the Teraflux bitcoin mining systems. ======================= Cal.com is leading the charge of scheduling platforms in the open-source sphere, offering you the chance to harness the efficiency previously reserved for elite corporations and tech gurus. That's right, Cal.com is transforming sophisticated calendar management into an accessible tool for all via a user-friendly interface. Discover how countless users are optimizing their time in unprecedented ways. Use code “POMP” for $500 off when you set your team up with Cal.com. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 250,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Today's episode is with Aaron Gin. Aaron is the CEO and co-founder of Hydra Host. Hydra provides a simple API-driven platform to monetize available GPUs or high-grade CPUs that includes everything a company may need. He also is the founder of the Lincoln Network,

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

  now known as the Foundation for American Innovation, which connects the tech industry with policymakers to make decisions for a prosperous future. In this conversation, Aaron and I talk about everything from the state of venture capital to advanced computing, geopolitical conflict, politics, and many of the contrarian ideas that he has had over the last decade or so in Silicon Valley that had many people questioning, was he right? Or was he crazy? This conversation is full of ideas that will make you think much more deeply and also question, where's America going? What can we do to improve that direction? And what is your individual role in America's continued rise and dominance on the global stage? Here is my conversation with Aaron Gin.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:51Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by Auradine. They're a brand new startup led by a number of Silicon Valley legends who just raised $81 million to build the future of internet infrastructure. You're probably wondering what that means. Let me explain. There are numerous new disruptive technologies that are being adopted simultaneously from blockchain to artificial intelligence to zero knowledge technologies. In order to ensure that these technologies thrive in this new world, we need new infrastructure, and that is where Auradine comes in. They just launched their first product line called Terraflux, which is a Bitcoin miner powered by the world's first four nanometer silicon chip technology. These air-cooled, single-phase and dual-phase immersion cooling miners have unrivaled speed and efficiency.

• 2:35Anthony Pompliano?

  They have superior uptime and they leverage a brand new innovation called Energy Tune that allows miners to dynamically adjust the energy consumption and Bitcoin hash rate based on demand response needs of the electrical grids. Auradine is an ambitious company working on hard problems. I'm really impressed with them. And if you want to check out more, you can go to Auradine.com. That's A-U-R-A-D-I-N-E.com. Go check them out at Auradine.com today. This episode is brought to you by Cal.com. What do I have in common with Chad Hurley from YouTube, Toby from Shopify, and Alexis from 776 and the co-founder of Reddit? We all use Cal.com instead of Calendly, and we are all early investors as well.

• 3:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Cal.com is leading the charge of scheduling platforms in the open source sphere, offering you the chance to harness the efficiency previously reserved for elite corporations and tech gurus. If you like to have your calendar organized and be able to have an efficient exchange when scheduling, but you love all of the benefits of open source technology, then Cal.com's for you. They are transforming sophisticated calendar management into an accessible tool for all via a user-friendly interface. You can customize it and you can make your calendar work for you. Use code POMP for $500 off when you set up your team with Cal.com today. Again, go to Cal.com, C-A-L.com, and use code POMP to get $500 off when you sign up.

• 4:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Cal.com, an open source tool that allows you to take back control of your calendar, be efficient when scheduling, and make sure that no one can steal your time.

• 4:14Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got a great treat for you today. Aaron is here. Aaron, let's just jump right into it. You've been in Silicon Valley for quite a while and you've held a number of views that maybe weren't so popular and now have become much more popular. I think maybe the first place to just start is like, how do you continue to think critically and independently when everybody around you was yelling and screaming the exact opposite of the views that you held?

• 4:39Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, I've been canceled three times in my life so far. So first time was because I hosted a Liberty Hackathon and Senator Rand Paul also came, I think like day or two before, and San Francisco Chronicle called me a racist. By the way, my family fled communism from China and my co-founder is black, so they didn't really like to look us up then. And then I got canceled again for voting for Trump. So I was the only conservative executive in my tech company. I also went to the, I went to three Republican debates, so I became a soft target there. And then I got canceled again for my views on COVID,

• 5:18Speaker 02

  like big time canceled, like major. So it's just, you know, my dad, who is, you know, the most kind of Chinese-American person you could ever think of, once told me that, you know, people aren't going to like you for, for how you look or, or what you think and basically said F them, right? So he told me that when I was like eight. And that has been like, kind of instilled in me for, since then. But yeah, I mean, I think I was one of the first quote unquote unclothed Republicans in Silicon Valley back in 2013. And, and so yeah, I've been, since then, it's just been kind of second nature to me. Like the fact that like, in my mind, as probably as your mind too, it's kind of bizarre to me that you would like disassociate with somebody because they like generally think of something

• 6:03Speaker 02

  within quite the mainstream. And let's say mainstream is above like 10% of the population. And that's just really foreign to me. And I don't do that to those people, but they do it to me. And that's just never been completely clear to me, but they just sort of do it. And Silicon Valley, especially when I went there, you know, it was like hard on ideas, easy on people, right? Things like that. And then it kind of has molded, definitely underneath Obama, it molded into like a calcined trade out of galaxy of like puritanical wokeism, right? And then it just sort of accelerated as like Trump broke people's brains, right? But I kind of stayed where I was, which was kind of like the same.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Uh, kind of like libertarian-esque, uh, kind of anti neoliberalism, uh, orientation. Uh, but yeah, yeah, I think Silicon Valley has gone through this like breaking point though, because, uh, it was easy to punch at Trump, but then post-COVID, post like the Trump administration, uh, I think it has created a massive fissure in Silicon Valley, which I think is good because you see ideologues and the Hamas thing with the renewed war is also another one. Like you, you see a break in Silicon Valley, right? Where you see very, uh, I would say rational, a group of rational people who don't agree on like, if you ask them all about abortion, it kind of varies, right? But they kind of are on the zone of like, we believe in like freedom, freedom of expression, rational argument.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  And you got the other side that basically takes the puritanical wokeism side, that it doesn't matter what you say to them, they're right, they're narcissists, they're gonna win, right? Uh, and, and that's kind of like where, uh, the actual war has actually been, but it's kind of been mismatched between red and blue. When in reality, like, that's always been the divide, uh, in, in, in tech.

• 7:48Anthony Pompliano?

  So you now are taking what I'll consider a mental framework or a worldview that, uh, was unpopular, now becoming more popular. Uh, and you are quote-unquote productizing it in terms of a company today. Before we get to what you guys are building with Hydra, I wanted to just talk about the computing wars, advanced computer chips, et cetera. What is kind of that industry look like today? And where do you see problems that potentially could be coming up? That you want to go ahead and get ahead of and start addressing now?

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Well, I think that like for, what, what Americans don't realize is that it, there's a, there's great biographies written by, about Mao that I think if most Americans read, they would be very shocked at like how, uh, certific- or should I say suspicious and, and the way in which working with China is not like working with any other good faith hacker in the West. That like what they say, what they do is very, very different and they're very crafty and they're shrewd. Uh, as an example, like, uh, most of the advanced weaponry that like China has stolen, uh, they didn't invent it, they stole it, uh, were basically different ways of wedging the US and Russia against each other.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  And they create these like fake, uh, media things, right? The, the, one of the greatest examples is when Eisenhower, uh, basically threatened to use the nuke over Taiwan. That was a whole setup by Mao to convince the United States to issue that threat. And what Mao did after that was go to the Soviet Union and Stalin thought Mao was crazy. Like he was like, oh, this guy's a for great and absolutely coming from a mass murderer. Right. So that tells you all crazy. Like, no, Stalin literally had a list of people he would just go through every night in terms of who would get executed. Right. So, and, and he went to Stalin and he goes, hey, man, like you don't want to send Russian blood to defend China. Give me news. And he goes, no, you're crazy. And they came back again and he goes, okay, I'll send you Russian scientists. Right. That's all they got news. That's all they got subs. That's all they got jets.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Right. That's how they got any sort of aircraft designs, right? Is in the same thing that applied to the economy. Like you look at most of the, uh, the, the high speed trains there, they look a lot like German designs, right? Because they had German engineers there, right? So, so this, this is a, a, it's a very different type of warfare. I think Americans are sort of used to like a Russian style of like, let's just send tanks in, right? They imagine that like, that's what conflict looks like versus like conflict that comes to China is, is asymmetric and, and very shrewd. Uh, and so when the COVID stuff came out, that was the lens of what I was looking at this stuff. Cause I mean, I, I knew loosely about coronaviruses because I started researching in fact, like when the first reports are coming out. And I was okay, like this is not SARS two point O, like this is a bit exaggerated. And they started sending those videos of like people falling in streets.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  And I was like, no coronavirus does that like, like that. That's like, not a thing, right? And even SARS didn't do that, right? And, and, and then the, the, the storm just kept brewing and brewing, right? And, and it was like this, this, uh, this echo chamber effect that created so much social pressure on the West. To respond that like, you know, basically they did the safety bias, right? That like, well, we could be wrong, though, but it doesn't matter. We're going to bias first for safety. Versus what I saw was like a propaganda campaign, right? That, that, that, and I think that they did not know it was going to be that successful. Cause I think at first China, it was real, like, you know, like SARS two is real. Um, but it manifested itself into something they couldn't even control anymore.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Because it just took off so successfully that you notice actually once it started taking off successfully in response to the Italy, the Italian outbreak. An outbreak is like a, is a loose word because it was already been there for like four or five months. Uh, all of a sudden the news from China stops, like their data stops or reporting stops, right? And this is after, after the, the post Wuhan, uh, you know, the, the building of hospitals and all this like hysteria that China was pushing out to the world. Uh, because at that moment, they knew, oh, wait, we were actually killing people like China was killing people with its hysterical response with how was building and providing hospitals, how it was like treating patients that it was creating hysteria, right? Was actually causing people to panic and then seeking treatment they didn't need, which had all these sort of secondary effects, right? And then so the day stops and they just sort of let it ride, right?

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Okay, because that's actually how China works. So when it comes to like computing, right, which is obviously relates to GPUs and Nvidia. We don't understand that like they're not just seeking do AI because it's cool and it like helps me write a like an academic paper, right? They're seeking AI for alternative ends, mostly to control their own population. But but secondarily to build sort of adversarial like AI to like try to take down the stock exchange or electricity or state governments or things like that. Uh, and trying to mostly create like phishing schemes, like kind of like make that better. Um, uh, but mostly they're trying to do it to control eternally internally their population, uh, which they don't have great control over. Um, and, uh, and so, but they are going to externalize it.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Uh, so our country, I don't think actually, uh, you know, one of the great things that of the Trump administration. Um, that is an objective, like both parties would agree is that he changed our view on China. Like if you go back, look at 2015 debates, nobody in the on that side, maybe, maybe Rubio would be the only other one. We're saying China's a risk. It's the biggest risk to us. Who cares about Russia? They're basically just want to be a drunk mobster in the world. They have no interest in replacing us as the king. They just want to annoy us. They're like the second cousin lives down the street that's in kind of a like a kind of crappy house, right? And but he has a really nice car and really, really nice watches, right? That's Russia. He has no interest in running the neighborhood or running HOA, no interest, right? He just kind of wants to bother people and get paid off with like nice things.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  So China, though, is like, you know, is wants to run the HOA, right? They want to run the neighborhood, right? And Trump saw that and like whether he did or advisor, I don't really care. But he changed the orientation of our country to see that as the highest risk. And that's actually a bipartisan issue now. So the Biden administration issuing these regs, which are very, very restrictive right now on G P U's. They see that and they're basically getting ahead of the game, which I think is commendable.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  But there's another side. If you look at the other regs they released where they basically treat A I as if it's like Skynet. And that it's like actual intelligence versus just basically a different way of doing statistical modeling for machine learning. And they're treating it as if it is like a risk to its own people versus a risk of like an adversary using our chips. Like we say, planting stuff in the chip making to spy on us, which is kind of the biggest risk. And then secondarily down the risk would be like them actually creating additional like artificial L M's that can do phishing better. It's like way, way down the list. Even farther down the list is actually creating an adversarial agent to like, let's say, attack the stock exchange.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Right? Like that's possible, but like almost like they require computing power to do that. Would be like a red, red hot, you know, dot on the map. You just launch a missile at that data center and blow it up or something. So like, like the, the amount of computing power you'd need to do that would be insane. So the, so like, I think that, that, that some of the recent regs though, that the, the E O's and stuff like that is coming out of the Biden administration. Views A I as if it was written by someone who saw Terminator too many times or Matrix. And it's kind of embarrassing and like, they also started adding, if you read the regs, like it needs to include diversity inclusion. It needs to like, who makes the models and then it has like weights against like biasing against like white angleism, things like that.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Which I don't even understand how you would even measure that. Like, how do you measure like, like angleism in a model? Like, like, like it doesn't even make any sense, right? So, so even Chamap, he was like, obviously the resident Democrat on, on, on, I guess you can ask Jason too, but. He's like, this is crazy. This is just stupid. It's literally like a Yale grad who's 27, who read a book about AI, just threw every other prior, you know, into the EO and then, and then just spit it out there, right? So I don't think it really goes anywhere, but because it's so crazy and, and even Amazon and Microsoft are like, who cares? So like, if they're not going to report who's using the models, then, then, then, then nobody else, right? So.

• 16:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, when you start to look at the AI, maybe the regulatory scrutiny that it's receiving, it seems like that is very US focused. Is this happening in other areas as well? Like are other geographies or other governments being this onerous or kind of abrasive to this technology? Or are they actually doing the opposite? My expectation, without knowing too much about kinds of other geographies and specifically around AI, is that they're probably actually like leaning into it and trying to promote it and say like, hey, there's a fucking global race going on. Let's be the winner.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, definitely China's promoting it, but obviously they have, they have malicious malintact. So like other countries are viewing this as like, oh, this is interesting. Like to say, European countries are our strongest allies. This is interesting, but we don't really understand it. And we have other issues to deal with, which is like, you know, our society could implode at any moment. So, you know, it's not like Europe is a big harmonious like country right now or continent right now, right? So I think that's more of where it's just interesting. There, the, the regulations around like hardware is where a lot of these countries are focusing, which actually is legitimate, that like China has a track record of putting crap into things we buy despite us and to take IP. Like they have a history of that. That's fine. The EU is really leaning on the US to lead that

• 17:14Speaker 02

  way because obviously we control SWIFT, so in treasuries. And so that is like the biggest force. And by the way, like those rules are also applying to allies like Saudi Arabia. So like, you know, they're, they're, it's a, I think there's like 20ish countries it's actually applying to, not just China, but obviously China is like the main target. And, you know, because other countries like Iran, right? And which is, you know, that's good. So the, the downside, I think though, is that China, I think is taking it much more seriously about like how it's actually could be applicable and, and much more functional in terms of its society.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  That I think the US, it's like you could take, it's like one step forward, two steps back. Like their posture towards hardware is correct. Their, their, their actual understanding of AI and how it has implications to broader society is wrong. Like they, they, you know, the belief around like, we need unions now and like, and you know, like, you know, uh, going back to All In, right? You know, the Calcanaxism saying, we need like a writers' union for like content, like, and it's just, I don't even know what to do with that. Like it is, it's, it's so five years away that they, and also like an over extrapolation of actually what these LLMs can do. They're great and they're going to be quite useful. Um, but we're, we're getting way ahead of ourselves to the, I, I prefer like trying to correct, correct something on the backend side than trying to predict it.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  And the US is being a much more predictive mode, uh, on like how it's going to be bad and how it's going to be good. And Europe is sort of kind of like neutral. Uh, and then China is like, no, this is going to be good for our society. Um, and, and so I think Americans need to understand that like LLMs are, are great and they're, they're, they're going to be uh, revolutionary in many categories, typically categories that require search and discovery. Um, but we don't need to, uh, most of the innovation around LLMs are basically the UX experience. So, uh, and, and how actually data and content gets like created and how you actually do that. Then there's like, that's kind of the main innovation. The secondary innovation are things related to creative power. So graphics, photos, images,

• 19:17Speaker 02

  things that would previously require a designer, all that stuff is also quite, uh, impressive. Um, but it doesn't mean that like, that's going to replace artists, like, you know, a Picasso is still a Picasso, right? So like it, it's a, people are getting way ahead of themselves in terms of thinking that this is actually going to accurately replicate the creative power of humanity. It can accurately, uh, I'd say replicate you hiring someone from Fiverr to rent you a Black Ghost. It can do that, right? But telling me that's going to be Hemingway, right? Is, is, come on, like be serious right now, right? They, they, there, there is a great thing and like, it's basically, I always view innovation, you know, I'm not part of the

• 20:00Speaker 02

  Was it the E-ACC, whatever? I'm not really there, but I'm kind of somewhere between. Uh, cause I think, I think technologies has morality needs to be associated, but we don't need to stop. So I always view like innovation steps as replacing something that was already low valued in the system. And allows humans to be more human. So it's like, we live in a Star Wars world, not a Star Trek world. So AI is enabling other sentient creatures and creatures that have morality and free will. To do more human things, to be greater artists, to be greater, you know, things that are uniquely human, right? Uh, creativity power, right? So, so. So AI is going to be more useful to people to be more creative and to do greater things.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Versus the Star Trek orientation, which I think is where the Biden administration is and where like a lot of people who are AI researchers. But then you talk to them actually about how they understand intelligence. And they really literally think that humans are just a computer. And like, okay, this is just a reflection of your priors, not actually. True, based on the autological framework that we exist in the world. So. Star Trek, I do not believe has actually ever been proven. I, I, like, if you look at the history of innovation. Malthusian, uh, like Malthus was wrong, like it's, it's never happened. So the idea that, that AI could come along. And replace things and become its own sentience to where it creates value, right? Um, there's so many things locked up into that, like presuppositions around like what that means.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Uh, to, to give people kind of a step back and maybe calm their nerves. Remember self-driving? That all, oh, self-driving, replace truck drivers, which is one of the highest paid careers right now. We're playing taxi cabs, oh, this, right? None of that happened, right? They, because, because I know, and I was actually on record saying in back in 2014 or something like that, saying that that's not going to happen. Right? Because there are so many assumptions people had about like. How roads work and why we designed it around humans. That like humans innately through intuition, which you don't understand exactly about like how intuition works.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  That like you can't map into a zeros and ones. Like you, you, you, like you can look at down, you know, down market street. You can look at that and understand what to do, right? Just, just by intuition. But how you tell via intuition to a computer? Humans designed into something like that, like there's all these assumptions built into that road that aren't even articulated, like you can't articulate, it's just through years and years of research and iteration that's designed around humans. And to say like a robot is just going to come in and scan stuff and like come to intuition is just absurd. Like it's like, that's not how it's worked. It's not zeros and ones that create intelligence and knowledge. Humans create design intelligence, it requires agency, right?

• 22:40Speaker 02

  And this is all basics, like, you know, philosophical points that you would know if you studied theology or Socrates or classics. But a lot of people in tech don't know anything about those things. They don't know anything about it. Like they never read John Locke's theory about free will, right? And so they come with like really cool things like computing power, L L M's, right? Machine learning and really great innovations. And then they say it's going to replace all this stuff. And I'm always like, no, it's never happened. Like it's always created more things, more opportunities, more wealth for people. And any of the stories of replacement, if you go back and look historically, you're like, it's exaggerated, that's not really what happened. Like if anything, it's like a local, it's like a within one generationally capped, let's say like automobile to horses, right?

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Or sorry, other way around, horses, automobiles. Like if you actually look at the job created, right? It was more of a plateau and then decline, but the adoption of the automobile took decades, right? To actually get to that point. And the same thing will be with L L M's, same thing with self-driving. Is that it at first will enable humans to be more human. So, you know, work on highways, it'll work like on like low sort of durability environments. And then it'll go downstream, right? But it has to solve the simplest use case first. And so L L M's the same thing. Like if it can't, you know, hallucinate and if it constantly hallucinates, which we can't really control either yet, we can try, but it takes time. Like if it can't repeat back a book accurately, you can't tell me that people are going to

• 24:07Speaker 02

  like, it's going to replace doctorators, right? Because if an L L M goes south, who are you going to blame? Like the morality, the agency on the other side of like, if something goes wrong, right? Is a key part of our society. And it's a basis of our justice system. So to say that, you know, self-driving cars are driving on the street and hit somebody and like, we don't know who's responsible. Society's not going to tolerate that. Like it. So that's like a whole other level of like anthropology that like people in technology don't understand is like, society has to have a functional justice framework um to to work through these innovations, which is why like, yes, it's bleeding edge, cutting edge, it's super cool. We can see the future. But as Andreessen says, like, you know, constantly,

• 24:49Speaker 02

  people uh overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term. Hundred percent agree that like that in the long term, LLMs, GPUs, AI are going to transform lots of parts of our society. But it's not going to happen within like, you know, five years. We're talking about two decades, decades, something like that.

• 25:08Anthony Pompliano?

  When we think about AI, I look at it, idea, software, hardware, right? It's kind of like there's this overarching uh idea. It feels like today that is where politicians and regulators are focusing all their time and effort. They're like, oh, these are scary ideas to your point, kind of Star Trek versus Star Wars, you know, type thing. Um, the software, it seems like there is a battle between open source versus closed source and different companies and different, you know, kind of uh thought processes. You are more so going after the hardware component and you're saying, hey, these GPUs are going to be pretty damn important. And there are different strategies here. Can you outline your strategy versus like the other strategies when it comes to the the hardware itself?

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So so we we think that, you know, it that this will follow a very similar trend to to cell phones and what happened with the chipmakers there, uh, which is like you have an initial burst of like for a couple of years, or very, very, or uh lots of value creation on chipmaker's side, uh, because people want the chips, they find a use case, and there's a shortage. And then it goes into the next phase, which is every structure development. So like cloud hosting, uh, platform companies. And then the last phase actually is consumers, right? So consumer goods. And so so that is, if you look at that, that's took, of course, of 12 years. Different things were created during that timeframe, right? And so we think same is gonna happen with GPUs. Like, I think GPUs is basically what quantum, oh, quantum, quantum, right?

• 26:36Speaker 02

  GPUs is actually the thing that's gonna, gonna work, right? And it has downsides, which is like GPUs are terrible at any sort of complex workload, right? They're very, very good at parallelization, though, which are very simple jobs. So if, if there's a transition point, which we'll see with these great toppers that are coming out, which could be absolutely incredible, um, that the combination of both high-performance CPU and high-performance GPU, to be able to combine those could be actually the thing that actually transforms a lot of workloads. Uh, because there are still CPU, like, most of the workloads in, you know, cloud can actually be done by GPUs. Um, and like, you know, video rendering and, and, uh, which are heavy, heavy on, on CPU side.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  Uh, like, those are all things that occupy a lot of horsepower there, right? So I only see that GPUs are basically, uh, because they're, they are so dense, uh, they are immensely powerful for what, uh, in terms of teraflops, uh, for their, for their size. Uh, and that Apple, obviously, released a GPU into their phone. That's where, uh, we're gonna see sort of this next phase of movement, which is a combination. I don't really believe in replacement. I, I think over the course of time, things kind of like co-mingle, go into hybrid mode. And then it then splits where you have people who continue on hybrid mode, continue old mall, uh, old mode and continue on, on new mode. So I always like to use cars or watches as examples for these things. So as an example, as great, uh, for everyone knows hybrids, like, obviously Prius was the thing

• 28:04Speaker 02

  that, like, transformed the market, right? And, and so we still have the continuation of normal cars. And we have hybrid and obviously have absolute electric, right? And so that's gonna be, for a long time, gonna be the orientation of hardware. CPU is still gonna be the dominant form of computing infrastructure. But we're gonna have, like, hybrid and an absolute, you know, sort of GPU. And both of those, those, um, new markets are gonna be most of the growth in infrastructure over the coming 10 years. But it doesn't mean that the 300 or 400 billion dollar CPU market is not huge and it's growing slowly, right? But the GPU market is just gonna, like, you know, ramp up and continue to do that. Because it generally always creates, as you have new inventions, it creates more wealth and more, and, and greater growth. Uh, so our, our belief is that

• 28:49Speaker 02

  From our company is that more GPUs out in the market, the better it's going to be, especially as you go into refor cleaning pool refurbishing side, which you've only started seeing the beginning of, that GPUs become cheaper and cheaper and their lifespan can be five to seven years and that that's going to be pushed more CPU usage into GPUs. And we're going to be more in a hybrid mode for the coming four or five years as people continue to experiment GPUs, find it's very useful or certain things very, very useful for certain things and then not for others and continue to invest in CPU and GPU. So we are building a platform to where you make it, it doesn't matter if you want to get a card in Texas or a card in Sweden, the same interface, same API, same security keys,

• 29:32Speaker 02

  all the frameworks are the same, you can access any data center in the world. So that's our goal is to be the kayak or the Airbnb for GPUs where you can get any GPU at any data center in the world. So we currently manage about $100 million worth of GPU infrastructure right now. You go to a website, you can buy everything from an A10 up to an H100 and we're completely agnostic to any form of hardware. We actually even have alternatives to Nvidia, they do exist and they're putting that on our platform from Intel, from AMD.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  But more GPUs, the better because people are going to be in experimentation phase for the next five years as they go hybrid, right? As they try these different ways of incorporating GPUs into their stack. But what we are seeing very clear adoption, very fast and very clear adoption among enterprises. But we're not going to go bait and switch and cancel all of our CPUs. Like the CPUs are still very, very useful, but I think it's going to be more and more like what the racehopper is leaning into or the new H100 is going to come out into next year where boosting CPU usage within the GPU framework in this hybrid approach is going to be what people ask for as they try to figure out what to do with this new technology.

• 30:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, what's interesting to me is, let's say, geography as a kind of one, you know, lens of this, or one aspect. So I have seen some people say, hey, we're going to build centralized data centers, and we've got this amazing stuff. I know of a company, Northern Data, in Europe, that seems to have one of the bigger clusters there, and that seems to be a competitive advantage for them. There are companies here in the United States that say, hey, we have certain capabilities or geographic advantages as well. I then even saw, I think it's called Dell Complex, they want to build like, the compute, you know, center in a sovereign nation floating in the sea. And they've got kind of a whole plan, and whether that's possible or not, like, they're going to go attempt it. What you all are basically saying is like, well, what if we just actually create a

• 31:30Anthony Pompliano?

  layer on top of all of these people, and then you can just pick and choose depending on the day, the job, the specific, you know, regulatory thing that you're trying to solve for. And so, as you have gotten, you know, started with this, two questions immediately popped to mind. How many people know where they want to be? They're like, specifically, I want, you know, GPU from Texas, or from this European country, versus, they just want diversification in general? And they just, you know, they want to try to avoid centralization?

• 31:59Speaker 02

  So, yeah, so I think that what's going to be very interesting with what GPUs will change as a secondary effect, that hasn't been, I guess, really appreciated in the market, is that because they are so energy-dense, okay, expensive to run, and they're also small,

• 32:18Speaker 02

  that it's going to reimagine how you think of data centers in terms of the world market. So, the, I do think you're going to see smaller data centers in more interesting places, with attached to renewable energy, or attached to some form of like, cheap energy source, that that's going to be the break in the market, because the cost of running a GPU, compared to CPU, you're looking at, you know, maybe 10 times magnitude. And that matter is more for real estate purposes, right? Like, the actual physical components of a data center matter much more than ever before, versus CPU, you know, you're talking about single-digit points and stuff like that, running a bunch of CPUs. You can't just run it in Virginia as well as like GPUs are not as sensitive based on how people

• 33:02Speaker 02

  use it on networking between different countries, right? So for CPUs, that's much more important. So this is why like I think it's becomes more hybrid is that like their GPUs are just really good right now at very specific things that they can only be very good at. And so we're gonna have this fracturing now of like mega data centers that are still gonna exist because CPUs need to be in a mega data center and the cost of running it is just, you know, kind of unbeatable. But for these like next wave of computing is gonna be much more modular, it's gonna be a smaller or be like beyond ships or something like that to where they find an advantageous place on the real estate side and also on the energy side. So that's like that forcing function. And that's actually not changing because the, if you look at the arc as Charaflops increased

• 33:45Speaker 02

  her new GPU card, the energy cost to run those is actually linear. So, so they have not been able to break that curve. So as, you know, for, for example, Grace Hoppers, you know, like for most data centers, it was literally running one, Grace Hopper would explode the data center, right? Like, so, so like that even like the energy is increasing, right? So, you know, like there was one estimate, I think from Ireland or Iceland, like 25, 30% of their energy costs like are actually just data centers, right? So that's only gonna get worse as people go shift towards advanced computing. And, and so when customers are coming to us, most of them are looking at just, I need to find a card to do something specific. So that's why it's also the forcing function around the distributed compute is that because

• 34:29Speaker 02

  there's less in it like actual like ISP needs, so like getting data to the data center as it relates to GPUs, they're much more interested in being distributed because there's not enough cards. And so they're much, much more concerned around pricing of the limited cards that's pushing it to be distributed. The second is that the, a lot of these companies are going into sovereign LLM hosting because the price of the GPU is so expensive that you're like, well, I can just buy my own hardware and it can pay back itself in a year, right? So, so the, and then you have the other side, which is like the shortage, which is like, you know, if you're running, for example, a training session and someone kicks you off, like the training session is done, it's like, there's no like pausing it and then restarting it, right? It's like all that work that was done is just lost, right? So.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  So there is a strong desire to shift towards their own infrastructure because of the shortages and the fact that the hardware itself is immensely valuable. And they just want to run their own hardware because they just want to run a model anytime they want. So that it is having a renewed impact on the colo space and sort of REITs that are part of data centers because there's this huge movement now back to bare metal. And you have like, obviously, the king of the hill is Nvidia, which is running this prison yard game of like trying to get cards and stuff like that, trying to control the supply. But they don't really want to sell to public cloud.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  They don't want to be in the same position, going back to that same metaphor about the phone market. You know, Intel and et cetera, like IBM, were amazing growth, right? And then crash and crater, right? As the next wave of infrastructure companies took over and owned that customer segment, right? So Nvidia knows that, and Jensen is very smart. And so obviously, he went from gaming to AI and machine learning, and that was an amazing play by him. So he knows that like the next wave is actually disintermediating the value of the chip. And I think every major cloud company, maybe it's at Microsoft, is working on their own GPU card, right? Because they want to be held to Nvidia, and Nvidia knows that.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  So Nvidia is trying to push as close to the customers as possible. So they're trying to get footprint, they're trying to get to data centers so that they can have an actual place in a physical location so they cannot be disintermediated like you can with public cloud. And so, yeah, sure, public cloud is still one of the largest buyers. But if you talk to anyone that works in Nvidia, like, you know, they're like, we don't, they do they do not want that to be continued relationship because anyone in Nvidia wants to have Nvidia customers, right? They don't want to have Amazon, through Amazon type of customers. Which is smart, like, it is quite smart. And their whole own DGXs is also trying to do that, their software packages, CUDA, like, these are all trying to create that footprint and permanence.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  And to be fair to them, it is still the best. Like, there is nothing that really comes close to anything that they produce versus what's on the AMD or IBM side. If you have a very specific, like, say, PyTorch, you know, package or workload, yeah, you could probably get an IBM GBU that can do something very similar. But the the power of the generalized framework that which Nvidia has created is right now unbeatable. And and so, you know, they'll, I think they're going to be kings for at least another two, three years.

• 37:56Anthony Pompliano?

  What is your greatest fear when it comes to these kind of like advanced computing wars? There's nation states, there's company competition, there is regulation. Like, what's the doomsday scenario in your mind that we have to work diligently to avoid?

• 38:10Speaker 02

  Uh, I would probably only say the the negative case where we become so obsessed about the possible negative downsides that we lose the ability to actually continue to lead here. And that would be, I think, the the thing that would be the biggest fear is that we we become obsessed with what, you know, we saw in Black Mirror. And that becomes like our orientation of what this technology is versus the reality, the historical truth, the just nature of humanity. Is that it ends up being like a net gain. And, yeah, there's downsides, but those downsides generally are like already human pathologies, right? Like, it's like if you cut off, you know, if you go back and do prohibition again, right?

• 38:53Speaker 02

  Humans will still find other pathologies, right? Because our nature is to find pathologies, is to find addictions, to find medications to our own internalized drama, our own internalized story. So I I think that that is the the the the biggest concern is that politicians specifically who are immensely uninformed. I mean, you just look at them physically, they they look uninformed, even though they say things that are uninformed, like. That we've become more obsessed with the geriatric narrative of something they read when they were in high school back in the 1950s versus like what the future actually is and where we can go as humanity and America could still be the leader. So my biggest fear is if America continues to not want to be a winner, to not want to

• 39:33Speaker 02

  win and be number one, because Americans don't appreciate that we are a benevolent imperial power and we are probably the first. Like tell me any other country in the history of the world of humankind too, just like, you know, wherever 9,000 years of recorded history, that where we invade a country, we destroy it, utterly eviscerate it, and then we make a democracy and then we let them go. And we've done that like six times, right? Philippines, Japan, Korea, Germany, Taiwan, right? Like we do this as a lifestyle, right? And I think we just kind of like, almost are embarrassed by it or we don't appreciate it, but it's beautiful.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  It's an amazing thing that America can be the absolute power and can still give people freedom and that we set the terms, right? On what it means to be free within context, like, and with, you know, we still have, obviously Germany, still Germany, we're still America, but like we did that, right? And we should be very proud of that. But instead, we sort of have this, well, we don't want to be number one and like we gotta let, you know, multiculturalism to like, you know, we're a colonizer. Like, I don't, I don't understand. It's like, do you believe that you live in this country and, you know, most likely your parents immigrated or their parents and their parents? Like, how do you not see that this is the best way to live life?

• 40:57Speaker 02

  If you don't want, as a country, you don't want to have that, that is your decision, right? But to say that our, our style and our lifestyle is bad or not, should not be promoted is crazy, because if China's promoting theirs and every other country is promoting theirs, but we sort of like, no, we shouldn't, right? The more people that follow, you know, Western Civ, right? And we generally are that we have, you know, a very strong contingent of Americans that do not believe in Western Civ, but you know, the bottom dollar, Western Civ, it objectively works. Like, it's a, like, look at Israel, okay? So, so it's the biggest thing of the day, right? So before Israel existed, right? Before the whatever 1919 agreement, before 1948, 47.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  That whole area was like a shanty town, right? It was crap, right? Nobody wanted to live there. It was poor, right? Didn't have running water, electricity, like, you know, it was like better in life, right? And then they come along and start off actually as a socialist, you know, with the, what's it called? The Kaboos, you know, the socialist frameworks there. Then they actually became more free. It's one of the few countries in America, in world history that goes from socialist communist orientation to become more free. And it's a paradise now, right? It is, it is, it is a first world country that has Arabs, Jews, Christians, you know,

• 42:21Speaker 02

  alternative lifestyle, live freely, have rights and can vote and, and can make, you know, significant amount of money compared to anywhere else in the, in the Arab region. And that's because they believed in those ideas and they followed through with them, right? And so that's my orientation in terms of why I'm in technology, why I'm involved in politics, is I want every human being to have access to that. If they don't choose, if they don't want it, whatever. If you, if the Gaza and West Bank want to reject those ideas and live the way they do, that is their decision. But you can't launch rockets. You can't launch terrorist attacks. You can't like destroy life itself and creativity itself. If you want to be a toxic country, you can just go do that on your own time, right?

• 43:01Speaker 02

  And I think that's the posture that Americans need to have is, is that it's, it's a, let me think of it this way, it's like, we're almost shy way of saying America's policeman, or sorry, world's policeman. And I, I, I just kind of like that word because a police are not there all the time, right? But we should clearly run all of the, you know, the trading routes. We should run treasury, we should run swift, we should, we, we should run these things because we actually are a good benevolent dictator, right? Because who else is going to run it? You can't just exist in this void of UN world government nonsense. The only reason why the UN exists is because America says it exists. And we say it's important. That's it. No other reason, no other explanation.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  We say it's important, therefore it's important. We say Israel's important, therefore Israel's important. That is good. That is a good action and a good act of our country and a good act of our values. And so when it comes to these future technologies, we need to have the same approach. Which is like, these are good things. And we believe in the future prosperity this can create. If you don't want to do that, if you want to be China, if you want to use AI against your citizens, whatever, that's your decision. But you're not going to spread this to Korea, you're not going to spread that to Japan, you're not going to put this in Singapore, Philippines, wherever, or in Africa. Like, they don't want your crap. They don't like your bribes. They don't like your failed infrastructure projects or your airports that don't work. Like, they don't want that. Don't pressure them to do that, right? That's how we can be world's placement. It doesn't mean we launch missiles into fricking Shanghai, right?

• 44:30Speaker 02

  But it clearly means that this is how the world works. You can participate, or you don't. If you don't, you can hurt your own people, but don't hurt the rest of the world.

• 44:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Give me the ultra bull case. AI, EAC, you know, technologists take over the world, the utopia gets built. It's like, everything works. What does that world look like?

• 44:51Speaker 02

  I think there'd be a lot more people. I'm on the Elon train. More people, love people. I don't know how you fly over America and be like, there's too many people. Like, it's like, people are great. And more people, technology creates human flourishing. And to use a tripe phrase on the center right. I think it would be that there would probably actually be more onshoring. I do think the LLMs kind of reimagine the way we think about like low wage work. I think that it would enable other sort of more technical jobs that would be, you know, on the lower end side that could like move people off. So rather than working at fast food, they're working at a data center. That's like working on, you know, technical LLM machines to work with their hands.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  I actually think that the best case is more movement of manufacturing back to America. Because we're understanding the importance of infrastructure and the importance of doing things ourselves. And one of the downsides, it's so interesting, like, Sol's, you know, Sol's very famous for writing about secondary effects, right? That's like his big M.O., right? He does about race, he does about welfare, right? Voting rights, everything, right? His books are always great about that. The secondary effects, right, of China lying about COVID. Has been that like people are like, wow, it's actually not the cheapest place to produce stuff anymore in China. It's actually Mexico, right? Almost, almost all the goods. All right, it's better to do Mexico. Oh, they're actually like hostile. Oh, they're actually like spying

• 46:17Speaker 02

  on us. Oh, they're actually taking it actually opened up all of this stuff, right? We're like before we're like, you know, libertarian neoliberal, oh, just trade and everything will work out, right? Like, as if like you can bribe a bully on the playground with candy every month and like that'll make him like not beat you up, right? So, so we, we, we have a, the secondary effect of like what China did was that it reopened everybody to the fact of like, we actually should not rely on one country to do everything. And it's not the best country at, at many of those things. And so the China plus strategy on supply chain is like a permanent feature of like every major multinational now. So that's a down like China lost there. Um, another secondary effect, right, is that all of the blue cities that host all these tech companies are doing terribly, right? They

• 46:59Speaker 02

  supported the lockdowns and they continued it. They continued the mandates, vaccine, the mask, whatever. And it just destroyed their economy, right? It destroyed, no one wants to live there. They just like moved to Florida or Texas or Arizona or Colorado, right? And, and so like the, the secondary order effects is like where, where I think the, the, the, the maximum upside is where we can actually see is like, yeah, L L M's great, good transform products. I think most L L M's are gonna be features. So, uh, like as in when you go to Charles Schwab, they have their own L L M. But it's not gonna be like an L L M company, right? I think there's gonna be very limited number of those people, like maybe OpenAI, right? Uh, from a consumer perspective, but the number of winners are gonna be very, very small. Most of the winners are gonna be integrations into other products.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  Uh, and, and because the value of that L L M is like the UX and the data. And, and that's something that a company can do themselves and probably will do themselves. Do you think Schwab is just gonna give overall of its data to OpenAI to run it? No, of course not, right? Like they, they run their whole frickin' colosse, like they run all their own infrastructure. You think Goldman Sachs is gonna do that? Or American Airlines or United? No, they will run their all, they're all on cola, right? So they have their own infrastructure. So they're just gonna build their own, own L L M's. So the open source world is gonna win. Uh, it just, it's gonna move way too fast. All the proprietary model stuff is gonna go, I think, south. Like it, it, there'll be a couple big winners, just as brand names that you just use, but the, the-

• 48:27Speaker 02

  The ability to like not have ownership over your LLM, I think it creates too much uh secondary order risk uh as in responsibility. Like, you know, imagine there's an LLM for Donald Trump, right? Uh which would be friggin hilarious. But like, let's say it says something that it doesn't believe, right? Like, Trump doesn't actually believe, but that's run by a third party. So, but who's gonna be held accountable to the public eye? It'd be actually the whoever's running the Trump LLM at the, at the organization, not the third party. So that like, you know, for those scenarios where it would hallucinate or fail, if they don't own that infrastructure, that data, they don't, they, they can't just throw it to a third party. They're gonna wanna own it themselves, right? So they can one change the weighting, and they can change the areas that are like these sort of like fail, I would say edge cases, but like

• 49:11Speaker 02

  hallucinations. Um and they can have ownership over that, so they can like say, like, oh, you know, you did that wrong, go fix it, right? Versus throwing it to a third party. So I think that, that the most of the LLMs are gonna see that are gonna dominate the market are gonna exist in that zone where it has to have like 95% up accuracy. And I just can't see, if you look at other things that enterprises have done, where it is that for like uptime, right? Say for hosting, they generally build their own stuff, right? They, they, they, they, they don't want to outsource that to a third party that they can't control. Uh and so that's where I think LLMs mostly gonna be a feature. So then the secondary effects of that are gonna be jobs, like just, just different ways of working with LLMs, different types of people who manage LLMs, uh the infrastructure behind it, uh new ways

• 49:55Speaker 02

  of like doing uh customer service, uh is gonna open up another, like, so I, I see most positive impacts uh on jobs and wage growth, uh do not see much negative impacts. Uh and again, the more people that we can move up the chain to where they can, you know, we can create a good lifestyle for people who, you know, don't go to college and who have uh wanna work with their hands. Uh I, I think that that's where we have seen a lot of the failed American dream, is that we, as I know, like, you know, you've talked about, it's like telling people to go through a system of indoctrination to get a degree has obviously not worked. So we need to provide other means, and Silicon Valley can actually provide those means, uh if we allow it to flourish and go forward. I, it,

• 50:37Speaker 02

  I I have no idea why people think as the as the Biden EO about AI is going to replace manufacturing jobs. I have, it's literally bizarre. Like i- it's it's this, I don't even understand. I- it's if they're gonna make a machine to have LLM in it to do something, you need a person to push the thing, to make the thing, to get it and to move it, right? It's manufacturing, it's a physical good, right? So i- it's gonna have more capability for more people to go do that job, because it'll be easier for them to do, right? But it's it's just a, a total like politics is, and it's on both sides, not just this is Biden is current president. So I mean, I think if there was a Republican, especially mainstream establishment Republican, it would have been a very similar EO.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  They just don't understand like how wealth gets created, how value gets created in a company, and the innate importance of humans in that value creation process. Instead, and if you look at how they actually legislate, they don't really care about people. They don't really understand them. They live in this like aloof world where they think that everyone cares about Zelensky and the freedom movement in Ukraine. Nobody does, right? Nobody, right? And and I'll give you, I can't wait till, I can't wait till we see the grifts and the graph that like has been done on the Ukraine war. And and people will be like, oh my God, how'd that happen? Look, literally what we did. Like, he's a fricking corrupt person that has banned freedom in this country. It's like a Putin versus Putin, right?

• 51:58Speaker 02

  So wh- what do you, he didn't invade Poland or fricking Finland, he invaded another autocracy. So of course there's gonna be massive grifts. Like all of a sudden, these weapons end up in Iran. I wonder how that happened, right? Uh, it it's it politicians just, as it comes to AI, they're relative to other things. They just live in this alternative reality where where they they do not have attachment to people. Uh, and tha- that's a whole like, I was like, I can't change, but like, yeah, I think the whole legislative branch and all this stuff needs to be reformed to where it actually represents things that people want and they feel like they have actual voice in the system. Not this, because the current situation you have is like massively unstable. It's a, it's it's scary, but I mean, we'll work it out. America has worked it out several times before.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  But i- i- it the, the the level of insur- insurgency of anti-West ideas in our country is is immensely concerning. We just sort of continued to play games with we create war, oh, like send missiles over there like versus the stuff in front of us now. We just sort of push under the rug and be like, no, it's just, yeah, we just ignore it. They're just, you know, kids who are playing along with like a narrative like, no, this is like ideological self-destructive behavior that if you read, you know, any biography about Russia, it became massively uncontrolled and Russia became communist because 7,000, it was just 7,000 people that are part of the Bolshevik party took over an interim government that was chaotic and then they became communist. Like it doesn't take many people to destroy something.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  I and and we just sort of, you know, oh, who cares, right? It's just kids playing, right? No, it's like a very serious thing in our country.

• 53:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Has America gone too far? Can it be saved? Can we roll it back?

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:35Anthony Pompliano?

  And build a better, yeah, go build a better future.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Oh, I, I, I love it. I mean, if Trump can win, become president, dude, like, you know, yes, like the country still has lots of energy in it. And besides, like, what else do we have, right? It, it, in Silicon Valley, there was, you know, it used to be a joke, right? That like, oh, if America goes south, well, they go to New Zealand, right? Well, look what happened there. So like, New Zealand was, was a fricking hermit kingdom for three years, right? Do you really want to move there? Those fricking people are crazy, right? So there, there's no, there's nothing left. There, there's no parachute. There's no exit option. Like, the, the best would be Israel, right? But Israel was bad on COVID, but the best now, I'd say, be Israel. And because they're, they're

• 54:17Speaker 02

  going to fight to win. Like, they, they, they, they, they will, the, the desire to be alive and to have humans that live in a successful, safe society in Israel is a shared belief regardless of whatever party you vote for. And, and it's immensely beautiful and admirable. And, and you remember like that, that movie World War Z with like Brad Pitt and they, you know, they become a zombie in like 10 seconds, right? So in that movie, there's like two countries that survive. America's fricking toast, right? So of course it would be, right? Except like Texas, I think in the movie, it would make sense. So, and so the other one, the two ones that remain are North Korea and, and Israel, right?

• 54:59Speaker 02

  In North Korea, because they pulled out everyone's teeth and they shut down all the borders, right? And, and so they've survived, but no one has teeth. And in Israel, right, they survived because they built a massive wall to protect all their cities, right? And, and they, what are they doing in the movie? They're letting people in. That was so true about Israel, like that, like, and I've been there and I know many Israeli politicians. I know like former ambassadors in Israel. I love Israel. They're letting in all types of people like Palestinians, Muslims, right, in the movie. And, and Israel's protecting them, right? Because as they said in the movie, like, every additional one of us is less of them. That is, that was just such a great image

• 55:40Speaker 02

  of Israel, right? And I, I wish that Americans would see that, like, that is who we used to be. That, like, we used to love immigration, generally. We had moments where we didn't. And those, frankly, those were kind of justified. Like, we were letting in way too many people, like during, you know, the sort of Five Points, New York City gang riots and things like that. They weren't, we were not assimilating properly. Back then, it'd be funny if, if, if you take someone from, you know, a New York gang in like the 19, whatever, eight, late, 1880s or 1910s, and you bring them to racial politics today, they'll be like, what do you mean? Like, I'm Irish. Like, he's German. We're not the same thing. And then today, we're like, no, you're all white. And they're like, what do you mean? Like, that doesn't make sense to me, right? So it's just funny how historically,

• 56:23Speaker 02

  how things evolve in terms of narrative. Like, culturally speaking, does, doesn't, like, you go to Europe now, you say, like, oh, you know, Germans and Italians are, are all white. They'd be like, I don't, what do you mean? Like, we're completely different people, right? So, uh, blood and soil matters more than, than us here. I, but like, the orientation of like how Israel views life is what we used to believe. And, and that if you believed in our values, and you, and you wanted to come here to participate in the, the, the largest, most successful multicultural nation in the history of human civilization, then you should do it. Uh, nobody's complaining about Nigerians coming here, right? Like, it's because they're immensely successful. Like, and, and, and that's what we want. We want people like that who want to participate in the experiment. Um,

• 57:09Speaker 02

  It's a beautiful experiment. It's redemptive. Having a nation where race is secondary, right, to what you bring to the table, which has always been the goal of our society, even from the beginning. Like, the 1619 Project is a lie. It's not true. Historically, not true. No historian ever believes it. Even liberal historians who ate America say it's fictitious. None of it's true, right? It's a fanciful story about the past. The orientation of our country has always been that that's the goal, right? Is that what you bring, character, values, hard work, your faith, your innate values as a human, is how we build our society, not based on land, not based on race, not based on, you know, your religion or whatever sort of, you know,

• 57:53Speaker 02

  creed that has caused wars in other countries, that you can come here and you can be free. And that's what we should continue to press into. The election, I think, of Trump was less so a statement, I think, about him particularly, and more of a statement that Americans still believe that America can be great. That's actually what it was. It was not him, it was not his family, or his character, or his... He is funny, but like, he'd be funny. It was that he said over and over again that America should be great, should be powerful, and should win. And that's what Americans should continue to be. And that's still there. It is still there. And someone is going to leverage that in this upcoming election.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  And I think that's also what motivates our tech industry, is that Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, right? Like, there's still this orientation in Silicon Valley. I would say great. Like Elon, Elon's, I think, my favorite entrepreneur. Like, that America is the hope, is the hope for the world, that the world can be different and history can be different. It doesn't mean we're perfect. Obviously, we have lots of examples in our country of not being perfect. But we are the country that gets past that, reconciles, and moves forward, right? We are not the country that, like, basically gazes at our sins and self-implodes, like every other country in the history of the world, where we bring up things of the past constantly and not try to move forward

• 59:22Speaker 02

  in the posture of forgiveness and grace. And so that is... The forgiveness and grace part is probably where I'm most concerned about, is America lost? But I still think we're very much on the side of winning and being number one.

• 59:37Anthony Pompliano?

  When I think of the future, I think about technologists solving problems. I think of young people becoming ambitious and going for it, trying to accomplish as much as possible. I think about Americans being proud of building things here in America, solving problems here in America, creating a better life here in America. How do we accomplish that from the earliest stages of someone's life? Right? You know, it's it's some countries are very good at driving patriotism and nationalism and and these things. Other countries were good at it and getting worse. And some just have never been good at it. And so how do you think about what is the right degree of, you know?

• 1:00:21Anthony Pompliano?

  In America, when I went to school, we stood up and said the Pledge of Allegiance. I actually don't know if kids do that anymore or not, right? But like, like,

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I don't know if they do either.

• 1:00:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like, what what does that look like in terms of we want to build a stronger country? And so what should we be doing with young people?

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Probably civil service is a requirement. Um, I think that's a good solution. Uh, Western Civ is a requirement course. Uh, I think the whole, uh, grant system for higher ed needs to go away. Uh, I think higher ed needs to live under its own laurels and no longer operate on subsidies based on the federal government. Um, I think that we should return back to, um, uh, some form of, uh, like how we view immigration as a combination of like family and merit base. Uh, some combination of both, because I I see merits for, to be frank, I see for both. I see it. It's very reasonable to, if you get in to bring your family, I think that's very reasonable.

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  Uh, and I also think it should be based on merit, um, but it as well. So some blend of that, um, and but a lot of it is just is history. It's like appreciating. Where you are in this in the strand of American life. And the most, uh, you know, like to use a biblical phrase, like the, the people that, uh, you know, plants that die in the sun or get washed away in the river and aren't deeply rooted. Like so the first is from James and Matthew, the second one's from Proverbs. Are people who don't understand where they come from and don't understand what the past is. And if you read the past, if you read deeply into like my favorite founding father is TJ.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  I call him TJ because I love, I love Thomas Jefferson. Um, you, you read him and you see a man that is not only brilliant, just like, ah, so brilliant, but a man that struggles with the question of like, obviously slavery. Like he both called slavery and he owned slaves. He, he called slavery the original sin of America. He also had slaves. He also, the first bill he ever endorsed in the House of Representatives in Virginia, when he was a delegate, was the abolition or the base of the possibility of slave to be free, which was banned in Virginia. Right? He also included in the constitution, the banning of the slave trade in the last paragraph. So he's a complex person, right? And I think that's where history has gone from objective analysis of like, people just

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  are complex and they suck, right? Most of the time and they do great things still, right? And, and, and then we have to see and be empathetic. So like people were really different when the country was founded as they were different in the 1950s, the 1970s and even 20 years ago. And we have to understand the cultural context that they were in, but not that the relativistic, like how that's relative is the actual truth, right? It's only meant to design to create empathy. And I think that our educational system has become completely obsessed with the relativistic narratives within each, in each like epoch of, of our country and became that became the truth. No, like, like objective actions that happen and motivations are like important, uh, but

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  you have to like, it's more of a posture of understanding than it is to judge. And as C.S. Lewis has a phrase, Americans have become increasingly detached, which is also becoming Decreasing patriotic because of chronological snobbery. They are more obsessed with their narcissistic view about their own morality and ethics of the day. Uh, which why like Ryan Long, I encourage everyone to watch him. He has great videos about this, right? Making fun of Americans and our own sort of, you know, we like to smell on farts to use a South Park phrase. Uh, versus historically, like you would be very different, right? And, and, and, and that's where we need to appreciate where we are in that lineage and that timeline. Because then we can come back and say, oh yeah, this is why America is great.

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

  Because we have gotten past bad things, not just bad things happen, of course, every country has had bad things, right? Every country like, you know, slavery as example, when I met Thomas Jefferson thing. We're the only country that fought a civil war over it, right? And, and continue to push against the fact that that was in our country and that was embarrassing to us. Like if the founding fathers was considered embarrassing.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  That, and that we survived that, we moved on, right? And we forward in life, right? Obviously there's still lineage of debt from that, but we still move forward. That destroyed other countries, right? And that, that's where you, you focus on the things that are different, not the things are universal. Uh, and as, as, as like Dennis Brigger always says stuff like that too, that like. It's, it's not that we had slavery, it's that we fought to end it, right? Um, and, and, and so I seen to go back to Israel, cause when I was in, um. Uh, I was looking at the Mount of Olives and I was like around the Temple Mount. And above the market, you see Israel, the IDF is teaching. All the recruits about what happened to win Jerusalem back.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  And they have maps and stuff, they're pointing out, they're pointing in, there's people, they're teachers, right? And they're all military uniforms. And, and what they're, what, what Israel is amazing at is because it's actually a life or death question. You know, they have, I think it's seven million people where I live there. And surrounded by, you know, you know, hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims. And that every person has to be on the same page. Right? Like, every person has to be willing to take up their arms and fight because it's literally death for us. Right? If it doesn't, if we don't, our successfulness. So they're, I think, very good at creating alignment in the country about like, you know, we, they have their own mess, obviously with Netanyahu and all the like political crap that's going on. But when they get attacked, they're like, no, no, no, no. We have interfamily issues, but nobody messes with our country.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  Right? And, and, and that's where Americans would turn back to. And I think it's like, a lot of it's like, education and teaching people that the lineage and the beauty of the American experiment is that it worked. And it was, it's in, a lot of it was blessings from the Lord and luck and just bright people right time. Uh, but we've also have a system of government that has enabled us to work through things that have killed and destroyed an entire society. Uh, and that's what I focus on. I don't focus on that we had, you know, all the embarrassing things we've had in our country. We focus on the wins, uh, because those wins are so rare in our, in global human civilization that they're underappreciated because we focus on things that were mistakes.

• 1:06:45Anthony Pompliano?

  My last question, you raised from Founders Fund and a few other investors. Um, has this all now just come down to like, there's based investors and everyone else? How do you think about kind of the, the venture?

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, as I was saying in the first thing, it's like, it's split. Where like, it's not even really, uh, it's not even around policy ideas. It's like you said, it's like based, it's like people who respect other people for making a stand like, um, there's a guy Sequoia that's become really famous on Twitter. He's a Jew and he's been tweeting a lot about Israel for his name. Um, uh, but he's been there. Yeah. Yeah. So like, I mean, I'm sure he's a dem, but like, and I'm not a dem, but like, What he's doing is right, like he's being, he's staying what he thinks and he's being based. And I'm like, good for you, right? And, and that group of people like is only growing because the, the, the based VC community, the red pilled VC community, right?

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  Are people that like are not really oriented around taxes or even like candidates. It's just this belief that like, I should be able to say what I want and not be called all these names. Especially when you logically think about what I'm saying. And it does not even come to equate to what that, that the guy has been, the guy from Sequoia has been insulted by. And, um, but like you, you, you, what makes Silicon Valley amazing is the fact of like, that used to be what made it great was you challenged status quo, right? You would say going to Stanford was a useless waste of time. Like, like that used to be the things that we would say. And the, the regulatory capture, I think of like Web 2.0, which got way too intermingled with Obama. Kind of like sucked in all those people, right? Where they got, you know, interested in power, right?

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  But you see that like the natural tendency of what I call Web 1.0 PayPal mafia, Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel, right? Um, type of, a type of folks, like that's still there. That's sort of like rebellious, the, the challenging, the being heterodox, right? And even if someone who was sucked in to that, you know, regulatory capture, big government Obama, I'm talking about Zuck, is like moved back, right? Like you see Zuck and like, obviously Zuck is red pilled, right? He does CrossFit, like he's doing, you know, martial arts, his statements about free speech, right? Like he obviously saw like, okay, these people are like not my, my type, right? Originally they were kind of playing ball, like with the government.

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  And then they're like, holy crap, okay, no, no, this is actually not, this is not a good idea, right? And, and I think that community is going to continue the innovation curve, right? And the crypto people, Bitcoin, a lot of LLM people, uh, defense tech. Um, like we're kind of part of the defense tech world. Really hard problems, sort of entrepreneurs are going to be continued to be the base people who are challenging and stats quote like create innovation through great human flourishing and wealth. There's a large segment of the tech world that are, you know, what I would say, you know, fair weathers or tech people who are only interested in like flipping companies, not creating long-term value for society or for the world and are just in it because

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  it's a label. And I think that world is going to kind of like continue to be around but kind of disappear because they're not really creating anything of value. They're just, they're just playing different narratives. But that core contingent of like hardcore, I call web 1.0, like the heart of that, which is the, you know, the Western sort of cowboy, California, you know, we can build our own wealth and our own companies and our own, you know, our own world. That is still going to drive, I think, the majority of innovation. And those investors and those entrepreneurs are just going to continue to like isolate and get around each other. Because who wants a board member on your company that's like, you know, supporting what, you know, like, people who are terrorists, like, you know,

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  and not just like privately, but like openly and like promoting it, right? Like, and so entrepreneurs now are like, kind of returning back to like, okay, when you get, when you get focused, this stuff is crazy. It was fun for a little bit, but I see that these people are actually not on our side. And, you know, it's not even political. It's just like, you know, like you said, it's like, it's like base, non-base sort of frameworks.

• 1:11:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Where can we send people to find more about Hydra or find you on the internet, wherever you're hiding?

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, it's on Twitter, A G I N N T, and then hydrohost.com. And I write on Substack. I write mostly about masculinity and religion on Substack. And then Medium wrote about business stuff. But yeah, like on Twitter, you'll kind of see me randomly throwing up, you know, different things I find kind of funny on the internet. And, but yeah, hydrohost.com is our, is our GPU infrastructure company. And hopefully, you know, giving the world access to as many GPUs as possible. So.

• 1:11:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Aaron, I learned so much every single time that we've talked.

• 1:11:41Anthony Pompliano?

  I appreciate that you just say what you think, which I think is a core skill that we need more people to do in the world. So thank you so much for taking the time to do this and we'll definitely do it again in the future.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, thanks, man.