司法部试图拆分谷歌、疫苗质疑与乌克兰升级

Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:00): Sachsipoo, how much heat and momentum has Nikki Haley got in this week? David Sacks (00:00:03): Oh my god. Stop trying to make Nikki Haley happen. Fetch is happening. Stop trying to make fetch happen. Jason Calacanis (00:00:09): Stop trying to make fetch happen. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:10): It's happening. Jason Calacanis (00:00:11): Is it happening? Because it's off. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:14): This is like my long Google short Facebook spreadsheet of last year. Jason Calacanis (00:00:17): It's so great. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:18): It's happening. David Sacks (00:00:19): That's just not happening. Okay? Stop trying to make fetching. Jason Calacanis (00:00:24): The weather waters ride. Rainman, David Sanders. And I said, we open source it to fans, and they've just got a reasonable Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:34): -- Jason Calacanis (00:00:35): Love you. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:35): -- ice ice. Jason Calacanis (00:00:36): We know. Keep going all in. Just as a programming note, we did a Twitter survey, and you selected Saks as the person you wanted to moderate the pod most next. So welcome to Fox, new to Sunday, and here's your host. David Sucks. David Sacks (00:00:54): You're really chaffed about this. Aren't you, Jake Howell? Jason Calacanis (00:00:56): No. I am excited for it. I am so excited. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:59): Just to save a keyboard warrior at the time, I will never ever ever moderate this thing. So I'm here to David Sacks (00:01:08): talk Alright. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:09): 3, 2. David Sacks (00:01:10): Welcome to the All in Pod. I am your host, the Raymond David Sachs. The famous doomsday clock that atomic scientists used to measure threat of nuclear annihilation has never been closer to midnight, not even during the Cold War. But since the best, you think it's more important to discuss their stock portfolios, We're gonna save Ukraine for later in the show. Priorities. Right, gentlemen? And why not? Who says you can't take it with you? The dictator, Pallihapatias claim to be entombed with his money like an Egyptian pharaoh and with his sweaters too, even though it certainly won't be cold where he's going. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:43): And, of David Sacks (00:01:43): course, he'll throw in the world's greatest moderator, Jason Calcandas, and the tune to be a servant in the afterlife. It's the world Jake has been preparing for all his life. by sucking up to every tech founder of VC you can get in a room with. I give Benavats the soul and the science team at Friedberg. He's just paranoid enough. to survive with me and the bunker even though he still won't be questioning the Davos elites that got us here. Jason Calacanis (00:02:06): How much did that intro cost? Does he call it the money back refunds? David Sacks (00:02:14): You guys are laughing. David Friedberg (00:02:16): I'm laughing. I don't know. I'm laughing. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:02:17): Yeah. Without it with you or at you? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:20): It's good. The funniest part was when you almost read aloud Like, it's like you were like and then David Friedberg insert pause here. David Friedberg (00:02:30): Just reading the notes in David Sacks (00:02:31): intro. It's an intro. David Friedberg (00:02:32): I'm so glad we do an unscripted show. Okay. Go ahead. Oof. David Sacks (00:02:36): Freeboro, I remember when you did the intro. David Friedberg (00:02:38): Come on. David Sacks (00:02:39): Did I read? Actually, didn't we cut it? Yeah. You read, and then you cut it. You hated it, and then we made you put it back in or something like that. Jason Calacanis (00:02:45): All I have to say to him about is job security is here. Alright. David Sacks (00:02:49): Okay. Issue Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:50): 1. David Sacks (00:02:50): Issue 1. Google breakup. Issue -- The just department in 8 states are now seeking to break up Google's business brokering digital advertising across the Internet. This is one of the most important legal challenges the companies ever faced, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday, the just department did alleging that Google abuses its role as one of the largest broker suppliers in online auctioneers of ads placed on websites and mobile applications. The filing promises at a protracted court battle with huge implications for the digital advertising industry. Of course, Google responded to the lawsuit and a blog post. saying that the DOJ's request for it to unwind 2 previous acquisitions from a decade ago is an attempt to rewrite history. They said the DOJ mischaracterizes how its advertising products work. They say that people choose to use Google because they're effective. And the company highlights other companies making moves in the advertising industry as well, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and TikTok, So I guess I'll kick it to you, Chamath. Do you think the DOJ has a case here? Do you believe that Google has a monopoly in online advertising? and is unfairly using it to gain market share. And is this the right remedy breaking up the company? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:02): Yeah. I think that this is a totally ill founded lawsuit. And I think it just shows more of the personal enmity and anger that some people in the US government as towards entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship than anything else. Now why is that? Let's just think about what a monopoly is. I'm an A monopoly or a monopolist effectively creates a completely stagnant non vibrant market in which they have pricing power and complete control. Now the argument that I think that refutes that just on its face is if you actually look number 1 at their share and number 2 how the rest of the share has changed over time. So, Nick, can you just please throw that up from Bloomberg? This is just in a Bloomberg article that I just shared with you guys. But Google controls 26.5 percent of a market. 43.4 percent of that market is with a diverse group of others. meta has 18.4% and Amazon has 11.7. This is not the type of pie chart you would see if you had a monopolist. So for example, if you went back to the big, big, big monopolist case in the 19 eighties which is when we broke up Mobil, Well, what that circle would have shown is that they basically had effectively a 100% share. And what this shows is that there's a huge diversity of people in this market. The second thing is that if you had done this chart many years ago, Amazon would not have really even been there. Over the last 5 years, they represent almost 12% of the entire market. And it means that if you forecast it forward, they could be at 15 to 20 percent in a few years as well. So while the pie is growing and definitely Google takes a lot of the profit dollars, the distribution is so much more than what anything looks like in a monopoly. And so I just think it means that the DOJ is more focused on trying to punish these great American companies than it is in to be logical and reasoned. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:03): And so I don't think this is gonna work. The last thing I'll say about this is that If you think about what you should have done if I were the US government, I would have actually focused on search because search is a monopoly for Google. And while Google would try to argue that there are other ways of acquiring information, that is really not true. And if you could prove that that monopoly then led to pricing power in ads, I think that's a much more nuanced but logical argument that could work. But by focusing on this, I think it's going to get deconstructed. It's going to fail. The Texas version of this exact lawsuit already was thrown out of federal court. So I think that Judge and the legal system don't have a lot of patience for this thing. It just meant more to kind of scare American companies and try to play boogeyman and decision maker, and I don't think it's gonna work. David Sacks (00:06:56): Freeway, let me go to you. I think, you know, Tremoth raises a really great point that if you define the market as digital advertising, the you know, Google's market share is only about a quarter. That doesn't seem like a monopoly. However, what the government says is that you shouldn't look at digital advertising as a whole, but rather this sort of brokered advertising that, you know, Google does for third party websites and applications. make sure a chart from their lawsuit. You can see here that the way they define it, again, they see it as this brokering of sell side inventory, which are website publishers, and then buy side demand, which are advertisers. To find this way, it looks like Google has 90% or more market share on the sell side because of the double click acquisition. They've got somewhere between 40 80 percent market share on the demand side with the advertisers. And then in the middle, they have over 50% market share of the ad exchange. Is this the right way to look at Google's business, or should we be just thinking about in terms of the overall digital advertising market? David Friedberg (00:08:03): I've been involved in ad networks since about Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:07): 2002. David Friedberg (00:08:07): So it's been obviously, I'm not directly involved in the business anymore. but I was pretty close to this, and I was pretty close to double click in the acquisition, and I was a business product manager for a period of time on AdWords. So the way that that that chart kind of shows the connection between advertisers and publishers is correct that An ad network, generally speaking, brings buyers of ad inventory to the sellers of ad inventory. And the sellers of ad inventory have the option to sell their inventory on an ad network. And if the money that they're making on those ad slots that they have, whether it's a slot on the side of a page or the top of a page or an interstitial video ad, whatever it is, they're gonna keep selling their inventory through that network if they're getting paid the most. And the real reason Google has 1 is 2 part. 1 is because they ran their ad network as an auction. meaning advertisers were competing with each other to pay the most for an ad spot. That was the highest there's also an ad quality index calculation, a click through index, a bounce back index. So there's all this data that feeds into Google's ad network. auction so that the ad that's shown on the publisher's site is not just the best ad for the publisher, but the best ad for the consumer. And then when the consumer clicks on the ad, the publisher gets paid. And the second thing that Google did and so the the auction dynamic is a really powerful dynamic. It creates the best price for the publisher, and it creates the highest quality ad for the user, which translates typically into higher click throughs and and better revenue. What they also did that was really powerful is they did the highest revenue share in the market. So historically, ad networks have, like, a, I think, initially, like, a 6040 red share where they only paid publishers Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:54): 40% David Friedberg (00:09:55): of the revenue the advertiser paid. Then the network started to move to a 5545 model, then a 5050 model, then a 4555 model. I believe on average Google currently is paying somewhere between 70 80% to their publishers. I gotta check my math on that or or whatever the latest hierarchy report is. David Sacks (00:10:13): Yeah. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:10:13): Yeah. So but call it 70. And so it is a very competitive share. Now the the point being, because it's an auction system and because it's opt in by the publisher, If they're not paying the highest price, the publisher can go and get ads from somewhere else. And historically, publishers built their own Salesforce to sell ads and to to source advertisers and to make money off of their ad inventory. And it turns out it was a lot more effective to use an ad network to do that. The other ad networks simply haven't been as good at building an auction model and building competitiveness, but I will tell you that when you get to a certain volume, and it's not a big volume. You don't need a 1,000,000 advertisers bidding against each other. You only need a few dozen advertisers. And once you have a few dozen advertisers bidding against each other, you start to get very competitive in inventory. So Google's real lock in with publishers and the real reason they win in this marketplace is because they've they pay the publishers the most. And if you try and break this up, and if you actually do try and, you know, get into the the weeds of this whole system and change it, the publishers ultimately will make less money, and this will be a real problem on the publisher side that they're making the most money. They're getting the highest share of advertiser spend, and consumers are getting the best quality experience. That's what makes Google's model so hard to tackle from an antitrust perspective. because it's giving So David Sacks (00:11:30): basically, our it is what you're saying that because, fundamentally, this is an auction model, it prevents Google from extracting monopoly rents. David Friedberg (00:11:39): Correct. And and they already pay the highest share on their ad network back to the publishers. And so you could go in and say, hey. High sixties or 70%. They should be paying Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:48): 90%, David Friedberg (00:11:48): what's the real right number if they're already paying more than anyone else to the publishers? They're already making a lower margin than anyone. And I'll say, let let me just let me just add 2 more which I think are just Well, David Sacks (00:11:58): can I go to Jake out first? I just wanna get Jake out in here even though he wouldn't do the same for me. David Friedberg (00:12:02): Yeah. David Sacks (00:12:02): Jake out, do you agree with Friedberg that that the reason for Google's success is that they're hyper efficient and this auction mechanism prevents monopoly behavior? Jason Calacanis (00:12:12): No. there is monopoly behavior going on at Google, obviously, with search and putting their own content and services up top. And to Shimon's point, like, that's probably the easier target. Here, this just feels like they are maybe 10 years behind. They should have just blocked the double click, you know, acquisition in 2008, and this consolidation of power the the what publishers would say to Friedberg's point is when you're selling your own advertising, you get a much higher CPM when you go direct to Samsung or IBM or Disney. And so you wanna create those direct relationships. How much do those direct relationships cost? It's probably 20 or 30%. which is exactly to the percentage that Google is taking off the top. So Google's pretty aware of that But it's just paradoxical that they're doing this at this time, David, because Amazon has developed a huge ad business. Netflix and Disney have now have ad tiers for their services to go up against YouTube. So and then for the first time, we've been talking about Google search supremacy being challenged by chat GPT. So Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:15): -- David Sacks (00:13:16): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:16): -- Jason Calacanis (00:13:16): much like what happened with Microsoft, you know, they're they're they're just late. 10 years too late, maybe. David Sacks (00:13:21): Right. Right. So to use one of your favorite words is the DOJ acting as a rug puller here for Google in the sense that they're trying to unwind ten year old acquisitions. Does that does that make sense? Jason Calacanis (00:13:32): Yeah. It doesn't make much sense to David Friedberg (00:13:34): me. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:34): -- David Sacks (00:13:34): to unwind acquisitions that happened a decade ago. Does that make any sense? Jason Calacanis (00:13:38): No. Of course not. They have that they should they should learn from it and not Do it again. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:13:43): Zach, what do you think? David Sacks (00:13:45): I think it's a pretty bad way to approach things because it creates so much uncertainty in the marketplace. And has a chilling effect future acquisitions. Yeah. Like, when you get approval from the government, you wanna know you're good. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:56): Yeah. David Sacks (00:13:56): And we have an approval process. So it seems to me, I agree with Jake Howell. Like, if the government is gonna have a problem with an acquisition, state it upfront. But then once they approve it, you're approved. You're done. Otherwise, companies will be much less likely to engage in acquisitions. And that's gonna have a chilling effect on m and a behavior in the ecosystem. which is bad for the ecosystem as a whole. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:18): Well, we really does -- We need Jason Calacanis (00:14:19): these exits. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:20): It puts US competitiveness against every other country and any other regulatory regime that'll be permissive to this stuff. Jason Calacanis (00:14:26): And that Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:27): doesn't that doesn't make any sense. And I think this is what's lost on this. I just feel these lawsuits right now are bordering on the mean spirited because these things have been tried. They've generally failed. And so the real solution, it always goes back to this and it's Ugly and messy is you need to rewrite the actual laws to reflect how business conditions exist today. And so it's not the responsibility of the DOJ to try to fit around peg into a square hole. It does not work like that. And that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to manipulate and contort the law to try to go after somebody that shouldn't frankly be gone after because these deals to your point were done a decade ago and they were done legally and they were done rightly. So if you have an issue with how the market has evolved, change the law. Right. David Friedberg (00:15:17): I'll also add I I totally agree with Chamath. I think that this action, you know, as one of our friends put it on our on our tech stream. It's like killing the golden goose. I mean, this is one of the the the big job creators, innovators, and taxpayers, and employers, and drivers of economic growth. And why would we allow that to go and kind of burden offshore as a as a government? This is absolutely gonna become kind of an opening for some, you know, international competitor to come in and try and provide alternative services with similar economics. I'll also say I just sent you guys a link I'll send you one more. The market itself is becoming so much more challenging to operate in as an ad network. you know, ecommerce. So Amazon's ad business is booming, right, as Jamat pointed out earlier, but so much more of consumer behavior shifting where people are going direct to ecommerce sites. And then the ads that are getting the highest click through and where advertisers are spending more and more money, is on ecommerce sites. I know this from experience on a couple boards I'm at where companies stopped spending on Facebook and Google and just started spending exclusively on Amazon. And that's where you get consumers that are much more likely to purchase. The purchasing for Clivity is higher. The click through rate is higher, so the return on ad spend is much higher. And then I think that there's a big shift happening right now as you guys know. With 3rd party cookies, Google has declared that they're removing 3rd party cookies in 2024. This means that in 2024, it is gonna be very hard to track a user from one website to the next. If you go to a website and look at furniture and then you go to another website, third party cookies, allow an advertiser to find you on that other website knowing that you were just looking at furniture and send you a furniture ad. and say, hey. David Friedberg (00:16:59): Come on over, and you're more likely to click on that ad. It's been very effective for advertising and particularly in the segment of advertising called retargeting. but it is becoming much harder to do this with 3rd party cookies and with the Apple identifier being yanked. And Google just made an attempt to try and get this changed with the w three c that was rejected, and that change is now gonna make this hit very, very hard beginning in 2024. So the ad networks themselves are already being massively hurt by Apple's ID changes, the 3rd party cookies being removed. It's becoming harder to target consumers, harder to make money as a for publishers. So meanwhile, the market's being challenged. Amazon's coming in. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:36): Yeah. The inverse definition of a monopoly. When you have a market where there is dynamism where companies are changing the rules and that is reallocating share gains to different players that's the definition of a dynamic market that's self regulating. Jason Calacanis (00:17:51): Totally. 5 years ago, this would have made more sense. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:54): Yeah. Much more sense. So I think just this goes back down to one basic thing which is, do our elected and appointed officials really understand what's going on in the economy. And I think this is an example that highlights not as much as they should. And before a lawsuit like this gets filed, they should call us up. If they called 30 of us, into a room 1 by 1 and said can you please explain how this works? You would have come to a different conclusion because we could have articulated these things and it would have been clearer And so, why do they not do that? Or if they do do it, who's actually in there? Either way, whatever is getting to the conclusion of let's go file this lawsuit in 2023 is late at a minimum and misguided at best? You know? Jason Calacanis (00:18:43): You have to ask the question, like, how is this different than Xi Jinping saying, you know what? Jack Ma is too powerful. Therefore, he's gonna learn to paint. I think this is, like, are government saying Google it is totally different. Totally different. Other than that, it's a bot. Well, no. But, of course, I think that this lawsuit makes no sense Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:01): You always have to bring it back to China. Does everything in your brain have to virtue signal? Like, it's like no. I'm trying to virtue. Jason Calacanis (00:19:08): I'm going to intellectually interesting conversation. Jason, Jason, where are we David Sacks (00:19:11): not He's still manning intellectually honest position. Jason Calacanis (00:19:14): Exactly. Let me do this, Sean. Let me finish Tamat. Let me finish. before you jump the fence. Very simply, you asked, like, why are they filing something that makes no sense. My I think they want to have an outcome, and their outcome is they wanna stick it to Big Tech because it's too powerful. And then you just said yourself, square peg round hole. they're trying to find something to get Google on. This is not it. How does it how does Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:38): it relate to China? David Sacks (00:19:39): Well, I I kind of agree with Jay Cal here, actually. I'll decide at first. second. Right. Jason Calacanis (00:19:43): Just world 2nd world 2nd greatest moderator. David Sacks (00:19:46): Yeah. David Friedberg (00:19:46): 3rd greatest. David Sacks (00:19:46): Take China out of it for a second because that that can mean that can mean a lot of different things. And so don't wanna get hung up on that. But -- Yeah. -- it does feel to me like the government is lashing out against -- Yes. -- companies like Google. because they're perceived as being too powerful. That's my bad news. That's what's going on. And in fact, I mean, that's Lina Khan's theory is that we have to stop Big Tech Companies from getting bigger because power. But in this case, it doesn't make any sense because the auction market for advertising is very competitive and the remedy of unwinding ten year old deals doesn't make any sense. So -- Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:19): -- David Sacks (00:20:19): they're they're just kinda barking up the wrong tree is sort of Jason Calacanis (00:20:22): the idea here. David, there's there's 2 other things that they they really should be looking at as these ad networks are losing their market share in the overall digital ad spend, there are 2 other players Disney, you know, and Netflix doing these digital ads on their platforms and having ad tiers. And then you may have noticed Uber's doing an ad business now. They did $350,000,000 in the 1st year of that business, a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:45): 1,000,000 Jason Calacanis (00:20:45): a day, and they're projected to do a 1,000,000,000 next year. And those have location information in it because you have your destination. Yeah. And so those -- Have locations. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:54): -- Jason Calacanis (00:20:54): and new opportunities are emerging. David Friedberg (00:20:56): it's a dynamic space. I just wanna say, like, you guys are making, like, I think, a really important macro point, which is, like, in a marketplace, it's always easy to hate the winners and claim that their success is unfair if you're not part of it. And I I think that in just because something successful in a marketplace doesn't mean it's a monopoly. You know, this whole thing of envy, you know, we we've We've heard from, like, the Berkshire Shareholders meeting. I think there was a good conversation around this, but envy really is ultimately the doom of innovation and democracy. It's like you see the success. You wanna take down the successful. Nothing can be too successful or else it has to be destroyed. And then, you know, as we talked about, it's it's gonna go somewhere else. David Sacks (00:21:40): Well, I mean, just play devil's advocate with it on that free bird. It sounds like we all agree that the government has kind of the wrong theory and is barking up the wrong tree here. However, isn't it the case that Apple and Google are too powerful? Maybe not in this auction advertising auction marketplace. But when it comes to the App Store, I mean, they have an operating system in Opaly with iOS and Android or duopoly. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:02): But I think you're you're bringing up the key point which is these nuances are the ones that matter. There is a body of law today, David, that you can apply pretty intelligently and thoughtfully to that exact problem and also to Google search. And so it's a bit of a head scratcher, why the DOJ hasn't spent the time to figure out to even understand that that's actually where they should be focused. Because that is where there is truly In the actual case, we have a it's a duopoly. So it's very clear. The share shift has already been set. There is no share shift happening to a 3rd player. there is no side loading that's really happening, and so domestically in the United States and Western Europe, there's a de facto duopoly, complete control, completely inflexible inelastic pricing. That is a monopoly. And then separately for search in the United States, it is also an effective monopoly. And those are the things where if you really wanted to go after them because you think there's some damage being done to people, I would have focused there. But the ad business has nothing to do with any of this. It just means that -- Jason Calacanis (00:23:06): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:06): -- they don't understand how the market works. David Sacks (00:23:09): Right. Okay. So shifting gears, Microsoft has just been sued on antitrust court rounds or rather there's a probe by the EU. And this was based on a complaint actually from Slack Slack filed a complaint back in Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:22): 2020 David Sacks (00:23:24): that Microsoft was basically engaging in in bundling or tying of products. The allegation is that Microsoft unfairly ties Microsoft Teams and other software to its widely used Office Suite. Do you guys think that's a better claim? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:39): Okay. So I David Sacks (00:23:40): mean, I'll just say, like, you know, there was an episode that we did, I think, back in September where I basically railed against Microsoft for exactly this kind of bundling. It seems like the EU has picked up that theory and wants to go after bundling. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:54): We did Slack series a. I was on the board, took it public, blah blah blah. I'll tell you the thing that we talked about a lot. That was the thing that I was always like the most afraid of, which is how can we compete with a better product in the face of superior distribution? I think what Microsoft did was anticompetitive but I don't think it was monopolistic. And I think that the EU in that time has a much better framework of laws that they had demonstrated up until now. They were willing to enforce around anti competitive pricing. And so part of what Slack was trying to do was create some airspace for that to get into the ether, to the discussion that it's like, we could build the best product in the world, but if Microsoft gives it away with this other product that is quasi essential, they'll always beat us and there's nothing we can do about it. What do you think And I think that was basically the question that was posed to the European authorities because we thought that they would pay attention to it. What's interesting about it is that then, you know, when the acquisition happened, To Salesforce, it sort of waters down that claim because now Salesforce also has a set of really essential products that are useful and needed in the market that Slack can go and attach themselves to. And in many ways, David, it forced the hand of Slack to be acquired by Salesforce. And if not Salesforce, it would have to have been somebody else. But could it have been an independent company? Had we had to compete against teams in that way. Meaning, if we had to compete against another well funded startup, would it still be public? I suspect so. I don't think we would have sold to Salesforce. David Sacks (00:25:37): Well, that that's exactly was my point when we talked about this last time is that if Microsoft can basically clone the sort of the the breakthrough innovative product, you know, just to say they do one every year, and then they put a crappy version of that in their bundle. Jason Calacanis (00:25:55): Yeah. David Sacks (00:25:55): Yeah. 10% or 50% worse, but they give it away effectively for free as part of the bundle. And then they basically pull the legs out from under that other company. can't be a a vibrant competitor. And then the next year, they'll just raise the price of the bundle. Right? And they've done that with Slack. They've done that with Okta. They've done that with Zoom. you know, can Jake, how can we have a vibrant tech ecosystem, at least in btob software, if Microsoft can just keep doing that indefinitely? Jason Calacanis (00:26:22): Yeah. It's it's a difficult question. I don't I don't know though if what the consumer harm is here if you keep adding great features to a bundle. So to take the other side of the argument, you know, Zoom has now added channels like Slack. Slack has added Huddls, which are essentially Zoom calls. And now they're both gonna try to add the CODA and Notion wiki wiki style, you know, document to both Zoom and Slack. So everybody's copying everybody's features. Everybody's incorporating everybody's features. It takes a little bit of time this is actually a lot better behavior from Microsoft than the old days when they would do something called vaporware. They used to announce product to chill people from buying them. So they would announce the Slack 2 years before Slack came out just to get people to not install Slack. They did that lotus notes. They said they had a lotus notes competitor coming for 2 years, and it never materialized. So I think the marketplace will compete. And if you look at Slack itself, it's still growing the same percentage growth it did inside of Salesforce that it did as an independent company. So growing at a similar pace. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:26): -- David Sacks (00:27:26): about that. Great. Nick, can you pull up this chart? Jason Calacanis (00:27:28): Yeah. It was, like, high teens or something. Was there was there Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:31): -- Jason Calacanis (00:27:31): I mean, it looks David Sacks (00:27:32): it looks like from this chart, the Slack is kinda level cost. Jason Calacanis (00:27:34): That's the number of users. I was talking about revenue. Okay. If you look at Slack's revenue quarter over quarter, it's basically doing the same Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:41): -- -- David Sacks (00:27:41): report that it's been a little bit of a disappointment to Salesforce or no? Jason Calacanis (00:27:45): Well, I mean, you know, this number here that we're looking at where it says 75,000,000 Microsoft Teams members, 12,000,000 Slack members. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:53): By the way, if you wanted to if you wanted to play conspiracy theories, maybe that's why there's a falling out between Benioff and Brett. I mean, Brett was the champion of this deal, you know, $28,000,000,000 acquisition. And $28,000,000,000, it's threading a needle. The the only one of that scale that's really worked out definitively has been linked in. So if Slack hiccuped in a moment when We also had a regime change in rates and valuations. Now look at Benioff as looking down the barrel of a activist investor programmed from Elliott men. I mean, yeah, maybe it's not doing as well as they needed it to. David Sacks (00:28:28): I got the sense that Benioff was genuinely sorry that Brett decide to leave in that it was voluntary voluntary on Brett's part. And regretted basically as opposed to, you know, a non regretted termination. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:40): I have no idea. Like I said, I was I was prequalifying with saying, let's play conspiracy theories for a second. Jason Calacanis (00:28:45): Fair enough. David Sacks (00:28:45): Fair enough. Okay. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:46): So take out a suggestion, Blake. Have a suggestion. Here's a suggestion for the regulators that are listening or watching our podcast. A really valuable thing for the industry that you could do would be to introduce transparency on ELAs. What are those enterprise licensing agreements? These are these things that these big companies use to throw everything in the kitchen sink into a deal when they sell to a company. But if there is transparency, And there was a sense of how those things were priced. So think of it like the FDA saying, here's you have to publish your ingredients. Right? And what percentage of it is this and that? it would be really beneficial because it would slow down the tendency of these big companies to try to kill the small companies with these poor products. And something around ELAs and more transparency around pricing to the market could be a good governor without having to go down the path of all this antitrust legislation after the fact. David Sacks (00:29:41): think there is some good advice for regulators there. I think they should focus on anti competitive tactics and like clarifying what those are, as opposed to some of these crazy lawsuits to break up companies that don't seem to have well grounded theories. It'd be, I think, better to focus on the specific tactics that create the harm and identifying what those are. Jake, out of your point about how what Microsoft is doing doesn't seem to be harming anybody. It seems to be benefiting consumers. I think that's a a valid point, but I would bring up a a a different example, which is if you look at the anti competitive behavior of dumping, where a company will basically dump its product on the market for free destroy all the other competitors. And once they're out, they can raise prices because the barriers to entry are high. There's a huge cost of, like, basically entering the industry. I think that this bundling behavior is a form of dumping. Where in the short run, it looks like consumers are benefiting because they're getting Zoom a Zoom clone for free or, you know, a Slack clone for free. But then what happens is once they've, you know, hobbled those companies, they raise the price of the bundle. I think if we wanna have a healthy long term ecosystem, I think this type of, like, bundling behavior is is bad. I think it's anti competitive Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:55): It's a great point. David Sacks (00:30:55): But I think there's a very specific solution for it. You don't need to break up Microsoft. What you need to do is require that when they create a bundle, every product in that bundle needs to basically have an individual price. Exactly. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:07): And the David Sacks (00:31:07): price of every product in that bundle should add up to the cost of the bundle. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:11): Exactly. David Sacks (00:31:11): So they can't do, like you said, jump out these, like, transfer payments or subsidies to basically, you know, take over systematically take over every SaaS vertical. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:20): I think that would be amazing. By the way, there are many other markets David where that exactly exists where if you have the ability to preferentially put your product into your distribution channel You have to transfer price it transparently at the market. And it's what everybody else would be able to get it at. And that then allows the best product to win in the market. And it gives the government the ability to say, I understand that these rails are roughly monopolistic, but I'm gonna leave them alone as long as you treat everything that sits on top of those rails equally. And that nuance is missing in software. So I think the combination of transparency in these enterprise licensing agreements and more transparency and accounting treatment for what you just said would solve a lot of this problem, and you would have a more vibrant ecosystem where the big guys can't just snuff out the small guys whenever they want. David Friedberg (00:32:14): Yeah. I just agree with you guys. I'll I'll let me just let me just play let me just play my devil's advocate, which is kinda how I feel as well. I think these these concepts of monopolistic bundling made a lot of sense. I make a lot of sense in the sense they in it's what you're bundling in the service or the product or whatever is a commodity product. And these statements that you're making assume that one messaging service is the same as a another messaging service, that one video app is the same as another video app. And that by giving a discount, they're gonna win the market. The real, that may have made sense back in the day when there were things like trains and trains had a monopoly on where things could go or electricity or oil production. And all of the kind of origins of kind of monopolistic antitrust laws and and actions started to kind of emerge here in in our free market in the US. But when it comes to software, if your product is the same as the other guy's product, Maybe they deserve to win by bundling. And maybe it's okay for them to offer a discount and beat you on pricing. Because if your product is actually better, and it provides better ROI for the customer. It has a better feature set. It's faster. It has a bunch of stuff that the other product doesn't have. The market will pick it. it's not that the market's gonna say, hey. We're just a bunch of idiots. These products are so differentiated, but because these guys are giving me a discount, I'm gonna go over to the discount. That's not how it works. And you guys know this. David Sacks (00:33:38): I'm not saying that Microsoft can't copy Slack and then under -- Charge David Friedberg (00:33:42): a different price. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:42): -- David Sacks (00:33:42): and charge a different price and a lower price and discounted. What I'm saying is they can't cross subsidize their Slack competitor. David Friedberg (00:33:49): It's the fact that they can copy Slack that makes Slack that means that Slack should lose. The fact that that that Slack can actually creates almost all the software David Sacks (00:33:59): is look. Software new software is really hard to create, but really easy to copy. I mean, the first version of a new product is hard to create. But you can reverse engineer almost any software product. David Friedberg (00:34:11): Show me where someone's made a better competitor to Google search. Show me where, like, consumers don't choose to go to another search engine because Google's built a better search engine. No. David Sacks (00:34:19): It's because there's a data network effect there that the more searches they provide, the more data they get, It's the reinforcement learning. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:25): I'll say I'll say it differently. It's easier to copy. There's an asymptote to David Friedberg (00:34:28): that quality point, though. I don't think that that's necessarily true. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:30): No. I think I think there's a nuance here that David Friedberg (00:34:32): the way, all the social networks that people thought were had massive lock in effect turns out Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:36): they don't. Right? David, no. That's not true. Look. There's more lock in deeper in the stack that you exist There's very little lock in at the application layer. So workflow apps, which effectively is what most of these enterprise software things are. are very copyable because there's nothing that really locks it in. But if you're a social network or if you're some deep machine learned thing that basically generates great search results, that's much harder to copy because more and more of the product, and that generates the product qualities underneath the waterline. David Friedberg (00:35:07): Yep. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:07): But I think in enterprise software, it's all thin UI layers on top of very simple reverse. David Friedberg (00:35:13): Then don't compete because the bigger guy that offers a is always gonna be here. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:17): What he's saying, which I agree with this, you just if you could add transparency so that you understand what is happening, I don't think anybody's against transparency. Nobody should be against it. And if Microsoft wants to charge a penny a seat for teams, then they should be allowed to do that. I don't think we're saying that they shouldn't. David Friedberg (00:35:35): A lot of start ups have used the opposite tactic where they've entered with free offerings or free services, and then they try and upsell later. and we don't complain about that. There's a lot of ways to compete David Sacks (00:35:44): in the marketplace. There's no bundling. There's no bundling. There's no dumping. David Friedberg (00:35:47): But that's my point. There's a lot of ways to compete in the marketplace. If the product you're offering is of parenting. David Sacks (00:35:52): The problem is -- -- commodity. The no. It's palm based. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:54): -- David Friedberg (00:35:54): build something that's different enough that people are willing to pay for it. David Sacks (00:35:57): Well, then you know? And that Jason Calacanis (00:35:58): they're and that they're willing to pay more David Friedberg (00:36:00): then they'll they'll pay the big guy that's giving him a bundling discount. Just build a better product. David Sacks (00:36:03): Then the whole b to b SaaS space should basically pack up shop and go home. We should just stop funding. VCs just to stop funding new SaaS companies because Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:11): -- And all those productivity gains will just go up the window. David Sacks (00:36:14): Yeah. Why would you fund any innovative products? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:17): -- Jason Calacanis (00:36:17): of anti competitive ones. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:36:18): How's that bad for the customer? They're paying less, and they're getting a better point. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:22): -- David Sacks (00:36:22): fewer new products created. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:23): Yeah. Friedberg the limit. What you're basically saying is because Comcast is a monopolistic provider of my Internet connection, I should have to take their video offering and will never use Netflix. No. David Friedberg (00:36:34): It's a they have they offer a commodity. That's my point. If you're offering a commodity, these things should apply. Jason Calacanis (00:36:39): It makes a ton of sense. But what you're saying but David Friedberg (00:36:41): what you're saying effectively and what you said is that btob software is effectively commodity. Anyone can copy it, anyone can replicate it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:47): Comcast said to you, I'm turning this off. You only have one choice and it's mine because this is my and I built it, you would turn to the government to help you because you would say, but Netflix is a better product. And what David is saying is the exact same argument. So my point is unless you also believe logically that you're allowed to turn off Netflix if you're Comcast and take their crappy VOD service then you're you're at least intellectually consistent. David Sacks (00:37:13): Well, steel is a commodity too. Steel is a commodity too, and you can't engage in dumping. I mean, this is the argument is that, for example, you know, with respect to China, the argument was that they were dumping cheap steel in the US market to drive all the US producers out of business. And then once they were out of business, they'd raise the price. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:30): The point is there's all these examples where we have had the intelligence and the ability to be nuanced about this to see that these things are possible, and they shouldn't exist. We don't let Comcast turn off Netflix. Okay? David Friedberg (00:37:42): We we have a law around that. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:44): I understand. So my so I think what we're saying is embrace and extend this law for these new markets that didn't exist 50 and a 100 years ago when these laws were written so that the same benefits that we have in the steel market And in the cable market, we have in the software market, it'll just create a healthier ecosystem. David Sacks (00:38:01): Jake, how do Jason Calacanis (00:38:02): you want to get it on this? Yeah. Well, I David Friedberg (00:38:03): just take all that away. Jason Calacanis (00:38:04): I wonder when you install Teams, Does it automatically when you install the Microsoft Office Suite, does it automatically install Teams? Because it does seem to default their matters. Do people have to actively turn it on, or is it actively built in. And so the bundling of it, I think, matters and that interoperability matters. So there are other vectors here to force some import interoperability. So if you open your Windows machine, do you have a choice of Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:29): -- It depends for Jason Calacanis (00:38:30): a controller. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:31): Let's just let's just say that you use exchange for certain things. But in other things, for example, to manage your namespace, you may use Okta But then they say, actually, no. We need you to use our version of Okta. It all becomes complicated. I think it's too complicated for a government to under end. So I think -- Yeah. -- the general thing is can we extend the definition of these basic rules that we've agreed to in other markets? to include technology and would we be better served? And I think for the most part, I do think it would be. It would better serve startups It would better serve the folks that wanna build -- Jason Calacanis (00:39:07): How would that work in practicality, though? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:09): You would you would -- I I think that David says they'd say, Harrison, Jason Calacanis (00:39:12): when turned it on for a dollar a person or something. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:15): Here's the introductory price. I think the combination of what David said and I said would do the trick, which is if you force these highly complicated licensing agreements to be transparent. It would not allow them to dump. And then the second thing is that All of that transfer pricing that goes into that license cost needs to sum up to the cost itself. Now why is that important? You can learn about how they prevent this in healthcare. So let's take Pfizer. Good example. Here's a company with $30,000,000,000 on the balance sheet. Right? And Pfizer has a need still to subsidize all of the r and d of their drugs and you would say, well, yeah, they have $30,000,000,000, so they should take the money off the balance sheet and do it. Why don't they do it? It's because the accounting laws and all of the complicated anti competitive laws say, well, if you want to take this cash pile and use it over here, it goes from an asset liability item, $30,000,000,000 of cash, and all of a sudden I'm gonna net it against your EPS. David Sacks (00:40:12): Alright. Shamal, that's I think okay. Look. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:14): I think -- There's a there's an actual cost for these companies to do this stuff to bundle the cross to all of this stuff. And so what do they do? They go into the market. They ask startups to build stuff and then they buy it. That's the kind of market, I think, is better for us. Yeah. David Sacks (00:40:27): Let's have that be the last word on this topic because we've been going for a while. But I'm glad you brought Pfizer because this brings us to issue Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:33): 2, David Sacks (00:40:35): which is and I think we can show this clip. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:37): Red meat for David. David Sacks (00:40:38): Yeah. So Albert Burlow is the c o Pfizer went to Davos last week and he probably expect to Davos, you know, the the the the conference, the surplus elites. And he expected probably nothing but softballs and fawning treatment from the establishment media. And instead, he probably had the most comfortable walk of his life when two reporters from Rebel News approached him outside the perimeter and at started asking him some tough questions. Let's roll tape. Jason Calacanis (00:41:04): What's revolution's? Speaker 5 (00:41:06): Borla, can I ask you, when did you know that the vaccine didn't stop transmission? How long did you know that without saying it publicly? Thank you very much. I'm sorry. Question. I mean, we we now know that the vaccines didn't stop transmission, but why did you keep it secret? Jason Calacanis (00:41:24): Good question. Speaker 5 (00:41:25): You said it was a 100% effective than 90%, than 80%, than 70%. But we now know that the vaccines do not trans stop transmission. Why did you keep that secret? Have a nice day. I won't have a nice day until I know the answer. Why did you keep it a secret that your vaccine did not stop transmission. David Friedberg (00:41:45): We should we should cut this. David Sacks (00:41:47): I feel we can stop from there. But that Wow. Jason Calacanis (00:41:49): Welcome to inflow wars. All in inflow wars are David Sacks (00:41:51): That's what sales rep looks like. David Friedberg (00:41:52): First of all, David Sacks (00:41:53): you know real journalism looks like Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:55): -- David Sacks (00:41:55): Not a bunch of your times are borders covering for powerful people but asking them tough questions. David Friedberg (00:42:00): Okay. So that's another legitimate question for you, Amber. David Sacks (00:42:03): questions you a question. Freeman. Jason Calacanis (00:42:04): What do you think of the questions? Is it legit or not? David Friedberg (00:42:06): You got you guys are about to get us down ranked on YouTube and Spotify with the we're about to get warning label Jason Calacanis (00:42:12): are they just covering David Sacks (00:42:13): for this sort of thing? David Friedberg (00:42:14): Yeah. I'd love to hear that. David Sacks (00:42:15): By the way, you're right. That YouTube banned that video. We have to watch it on Twitter because Elon Musk Twitter is still free. David Friedberg (00:42:22): Okay. Listen, Seth, David Sacks (00:42:23): you're actually protecting why hold on. Why is YouTube abridging freedom of the press in order to protect the powerful CEO, Pfizer from registering -- More question. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:33): -- Jason Calacanis (00:42:33): that arm the question. David Friedberg (00:42:34): Yeah. Just basic questions. Jason Calacanis (00:42:36): it was is is it a legitimate question of did they cover up the fact that the vaccine city transmit? I think it's, like, a legitimate question that actually wanna know the answer to. I don't know why you didn't just answer that. No. We didn't cover it up. David Sacks (00:42:52): Friedberg? David Friedberg (00:42:53): What are you you're asking me if I know what whether Pfizer did a cover up? Is that what you're asking? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:57): Like -- Well, no. It's a legitimate question Jason Calacanis (00:42:59): is what I'm getting at. David Sacks (00:43:00): Why are you unwilling to question the Pfizer CEO Jason Calacanis (00:43:03): or no? David Friedberg (00:43:04): I'm not I'm not I'm not unwilling to question at all. But I'm not I I don't think that this is a look. First of all, Pfizer is commercial enterprise. So they have the incentive to make money. 100%. Right? So their objective is to sell a vaccine. I think they're making $10,000,000,000 to Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:18): $15,000,000,000 David Friedberg (00:43:19): on this vaccine this year. You're absolutely right that the economic incentive is there for Pfizer to continue to push and rationalize the sales of this vaccine. The efficacy of the vaccine wane very quickly. As this virus evolved and mutated, it became pretty evident pretty fast that the the rate of Transmission, invaccinated people, continue to go up, and, you know, this may be a function of quality of the vaccine or the efficacy of the vaccine, more likely a function of the fact that the virus as predicted evolved And therefore, the antibodies that that are produced and the T cell response that that's induced by the original vaccine becomes less efficacious over time. So the real question is a policy question, a behavioral question. But look, Pfizer didn't have another product to sell, so it certainly makes sense for them to continue to sell their product. And there is still good data that represents that there is some immune response and some benefit in certain populations to continuing to get a booster and all this stuff with the original Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:44:23): Let me ask you about David Sacks (00:44:24): the data. The fact that that Pfizer only has this product to sell is not exactly a ringing endorsement of their behavior. But let me let let's stay on the data for a second. there was a study in nature, which is, you know, one of the most preeminent scientific journals about the risk of myocarditis. and pericarditis, which is basically inflammation of the heart tissue, which can basically lead to heart attacks, saying that the risk among young people, especially young men in 18 to 24 years was elevated if they got the vaccine. This is a study out of France So it's pretty clear that the that the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:00): -- Jason Calacanis (00:45:00): There are Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:00): -- -- David Sacks (00:45:00): are seeing -- Yes. Let me just -- -- efficacious we thought, but is it less safe than we thought as well. I I generally don't know the answer to this. I'm I would like to know. David Friedberg (00:45:09): It's an important question, and there's a lot of work being done to uncover it. And here's a link to a paper that was published in the journal Circulation is the name of the journal not too long ago by a team led by a researcher at Mass General. And what this and so just to address the myocarditis question, And and just so everyone that's listening knows, I take a very objective view on all this stuff. I don't have a strong bias one way or the other. So the mass general team identified 16 people that had myocarditis that that were vaccinated and 45 people that did it were part of their control group. and they Friedberg to understand what the difference was between these two groups. There have historically been 3 kind of theories about why there is incidence of myocarditis in certain populations that get the the COVID vaccine. And by the way, the incidence rate is still typically less than 2 out of every hundred thousand people that get the vaccine. But as you saw in the paper you just shared and others have validated it, it can be as high as thirty times more likely to happen to young people. that take the the Moderna vaccine, which is still a low incidence, but but thirty times higher is is significant at worth worth understanding. So the 3 kind of reasons or the 3 ideas David Sacks (00:46:21): are not -- -- times higher. That sounds like a lot. David Friedberg (00:46:24): Yeah. So the the reason and also small base, but yes. And so the three ideas or or the 3 theories around why this is happening. Number 1 is what's called protein mimicry, where certain people, the protein on their their heart tissue, for example, or certain proteins found in the cells in their heart tissue, maybe look like the some element of the spike protein that's created by the vaccine. Therefore, when you make antibodies to bind to and clear your body of spike protein, it's also binding to your own cells and causing an autoimmune response, and those are called kind of auto antibodies. The second is just general immune system activation that maybe genetically some people have predisposed having a very active immune system in response to the vaccine, and therefore, with a very active immune system, they get inflammation and damage. And then the third is this idea that there's just massive proliferation of your b cells, some of which have autoantibodies, and some of which therefore destroy your heart tissue and cause this inflammation. So what this team did is they looked at the blood difference between people that had myocarditis and people that didn't. They found no auto antibodies. They found no big changes in the t or d cell populations, meaning that there isn't a big immune system activation difference. The big difference that they found was that the people that had myocarditis actually had a lot of the spike protein floating around in their blood, whereas the people that didn't did not have the spike protein floating around in their blood. So this answers one question, but but opens up many more doors, which is what's really going on. So if you have spike protein in your blood, and your body's not clearing it. David Sacks (00:47:53): Right. Well, how how how long after getting vaccinated were were the spike proteins still floating around? because I remember when the mRNA vaccine first came out, they said it would the spike 14ths would go away after a couple of David Friedberg (00:48:03): days. 3 weeks. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:04): 3 David Friedberg (00:48:05): weeks after Brexit. Yep. David Sacks (00:48:06): Have they done a study, like, you know, 6 months after or a year after? David Friedberg (00:48:09): Not yet, but that's that's being done right now. So what they're identifying is what's going on with the immune system of these this population where their body is not able to clear the spike protein. And when their body doesn't clear the spike protein, a bunch of cytokines and other inflammatory things start to get released, and it causes inflammation on the heart tissue. because, you know, there's a a particular set of reasons. David Sacks (00:48:30): Jake, let me ask you. I remember I remember when, you know, the vaccine first came out. I remember Rogan almost got canceled for saying that if he was a young person, a young man, he's like 50, so he got vaccinated. He said, that if I was a young person in my twenties, I would not get vaccinated because I don't think the risk return makes sense. And he almost got canceled for that. Was Roe right about that? Jason Calacanis (00:48:55): So, you know, I have been thinking a lot about this decision to get vaccinated or not and how we came to that decision. And then I think what Friedberg said earlier is super interesting. The because the virus mutated, the efficacy of these vaccines obviously changed and wasn't necessary. And so I think it was a moving target to understand if you should take it or not. It was a very personal decision. Clearly, for people who were over sixty five years old, The chances of dying were were pretty significant. For people under that a certain age, it was lower. So everybody had to make a very personal decision here. David Sacks (00:49:36): Wait. Hold on a second. Jason Calacanis (00:49:37): Hold on David Sacks (00:49:37): a second. Was it was it a personal decision when you had vaccine mandates? And then on top of that, on top of that, you had the media. We're dunking on anti vaxxers throughout 2021. Remember that? I mean, they were saying about anti vaxxers that that if you didn't get the vaccine and you got sick, there wouldn't be up the hospital bed for you. There was, you know, a lot of like dancing on the graves of these people. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:00): Yeah. David Sacks (00:50:01): Where, you know, there were, like, all these articles that, you know, there'd be, like, some preacher who, you know, said don't get vaccinated, and then they would die of COVID. And there's a lot of, like, morbid sort of ghoulish like articles dancing on their graves. I mean, it was not this objective personal decision. There was tremendous social and legal pressure to get vaccinated. David Friedberg (00:50:19): You're right. Was there not? You're right. Jason Calacanis (00:50:21): There there was. And I think part of the reason I, myself, got vaccinators wanted to be able to travel again. I wanted to be able to go to Madison Square Garden and watch the Knicks. And I also thought, well, I I don't wanna be if I'm overweight. Like, one of the people who dies from this So, you know, we all sat here. We all got vaccinated. Do we regret our decision to get vaccinated now that we see this, you know, studies, like maybe it wasn't necessary. And also, it was apparently oversold. So when the Pfizer CEO won't say when they knew it wasn't gonna stop transmission, I think it's a valid question to investigate what Pfizer knew and when. And just keep everybody accountable for this for future things that happened because right now, we're in a position where if Pfizer's not being honest with us, if the origin story of COVID isn't being honest with us, these conspiracy theories are now starting to start to look like reality. David Sacks (00:51:11): Let me go to Chamath. I mean, so we were all felt this tremendous pressure in Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:15): 2021. David Sacks (00:51:18): to get the vaccine. Right? We all care about our health. You care a lot about your health. We all thought we could trust the experts that the vaccine was both efficacious and safe. We know it was not efficacious in the sense that they're telling us that we have to get revaccident every 2 months for it to to work. On safety, I don't wanna get over my skis because we only have some data. But clearly, like, this myocarditis data is not good. So where we basically stampeded into making a decision Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:49): -- Jason Calacanis (00:51:49): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:50): -- David Sacks (00:51:50): that was not actually good for us. And would you make that same decision today? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:55): Let's just lay the foundation for understanding how we got here. So there are these pathways inside the FDA, to get drugs approved. And if you take a normal pathway for a normal drug, you're gonna spend 9 or 10 years maybe more 12, 13 in some cases and more than a $1,000,000,000 to get a drug approved. And the way that it works is in phase 1, You do a study on toxicology. Effectively like, is this safe or not safe? And you have to have enough people take it and you need to observe them for enough time where that phase 1 outcome essentially says this won't hurt people. It's benign. We don't know the mechanism of action. We don't know whether it's going to solve the problem, but we know that it's safe. And then in phase 2, You then try to really understand the mechanism of action. And if that works, you go into phase 3 where you actually scale it out. You create A double arm study, you may do a control group, you may do an open label companion, you may overpower it with thousands of people, and the FDA is incredibly rigorous Okay? Even down to like it's incredible, by the way, like how you're allowed to open the results and they have all of these services that make sure that you can't influence the results or manipulate them. It's incredible. The FDA has an incredible process. The thing is that they also have a way to jump around that fence. And that is what we use for the COVID 19 vaccines. So in a molecule, 13 years If it's for a really important drug, you can shorten it to 6 or 7 with this thing called breakthrough designation. For a biologic, 12 or 13 years. But if you get this thing called rmat, 6 or 7 years. So you're still talking years and thousands of people, David. But then there's this one special asterisk that exists inside the FDA called emergency use authorization. And in moments of deemed emergency, you can shorten even 6 years down to in some cases 6, 7, 9 months a year, 2 years. David Sacks (00:54:01): Right. Are you you're describing operation warp speed? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:05): So that emergency use authorization fast tracked these vaccines to market. Now the thing to keep in mind is there are still 2 classes of vaccines. They are the messenger RNA vaccines. That's the BioNTech and Pfizer ones. And then there are the more regular ones that in many cases the West was dumping on. AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson, as a example, we used we used to ship those to developing countries and say, we'll just keep the mRNA 1. So you guys think Dave Chapelle had this funny joke. He's like, I took the J and J vaccine. Right? But it turns out that now when we're looking back, the long tail of issues may actually apply to these things that were fast track these mRNA vaccines that were fast tracked under emergency use. Why? Because of what Friedberg said. This protein mimicry thing is something we don't understand. Now why don't we understand it? It's because our tools are not precise enough to exactly know when we engineer these solutions that it only binds to this specific protein. And what we're learning is that these proteins are some they're so similar that there can be a little collateral damage. That this other thing that looks 99% will also all of a sudden attract this this antigen. So this is a very complicated body of problem. And because we didn't give it enough time to bake in the wild, We're learning about this thing in real time. If you if we had gone to what you had suggested, which is a massive masking mandate while this stuff played out, Could the outcome be different? Well, we don't know because we didn't make those decisions. But I think that's what people will be debating. The last thing I'll say on this is specifically to myocarditis, I have an interventional cardiologist in LA. I've seen him every 3 years ever since Goldie passed away. out of respect for Goldie and Cheryl who initially asked me to go, but it's been a great thing that I've done. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:02): I've learned a lot from him. He introduced me to PCSK9 inhibitors and a bunch of things. He called me 2 years ago and said, I want to do a study that or a year ago. I want to do a study that looks at Actually myocarditis and the effects of this vaccine. And, Nick, I don't know if you can just throw it up, but we published something. And basically, what we see David is that for folks with myocarditis, you're releasing troponin. And this is a this is a protein that you would otherwise use to figure out whether you're having a heart attack or severe, you know, some sort of heart abnormality. And so it just goes to show you that there is some collateral damage in some cases. In this example, this is one case that we published which is a sixty three year old white woman. I'm saying that implicitly so that people understand that these things really matter on age, gender, and race. All of the data that comes out of France really was focused on I think it was eighteen to thirty four year old males of all racial persuasions. And we've thought that this issue is prevalent only in males, but we've had a few cases that we've talked about now that that touch women as well. So it's a complicated set of things because our tools are not fine grain enough to engineer the drug for incredible specificity. And I think that's the thing that we're dealing with now. And by the way, last thing. Because of all this, it probably is reasonable to take a step back and have a commission that just uncovers all of this stuff. Look. We've had commissions for things in Jason Calacanis (00:57:37): the 9th grade. David Sacks (00:57:37): We need an investigation. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:38): -- usage in baseball. Like, if steroid David Sacks (00:57:40): usage in baseball -- What's the This goes back. This goes back to to Rebel News asking Bourla a very simple question, which is what did you know and what did you know with respect to the efficacy and safety of these vaccines If they did not tell the public that these vaccines did not work the way they were supposed to because they want to keep minting money, that is a legitimate scandal. We have a right to know. But, Friedberg, let me ask you a question here. I think, you know, Jamal talked about this sort of sped up process to cut through red tape and get a vaccine to market more quickly. I personally actually think that that kind of process is fine for patients who want to assume the risk. you know, as as sort of a libertarian, I support that. But I go back to the fact that people in many places were not given a choice they had to get vaccinated or they could lose their job or their freedom to participate in society And now we're finding out that they may have been forced to do something that in their particular case may not really have been a a great cost benefit decision for them. What do you think that the sort of impact's gonna be of this just sort just like socially? I mean, you've talked about, I think, that there's a a decline in trust of institutional authority in the US. And that's a huge problem. I mean, isn't this gonna contribute to that? David Friedberg (00:59:02): Yeah. Look, I mean, I think that there's been institutional authority overreach that's been building for quite some time. And, you know, look, I mean, you guys can go back to our first episode and our earliest episodes, and I wasn't and haven't been. And I I think the first time I tweeted I tweeted about the adverse impact that lockdowns could have, and we should be weighing the cost of the lockdowns against the benefit And, ultimately, the benefit was 0 because we ended up accumulating, call it, $10,000,000,000,000 of of, you know, or $4,000,000,000,000 of net costs we have to pay off at some point to not to mention the economic consequences of the lockdowns. And you know, the the benefit was negligible because the the virus continued to spread and evolve, and there was no way to really stop the virus in its tracks. Hindsight is 2020, fog of war, lawmakers made decisions. Was it the right decision? When you have made the same decision, it's really hard to say you feel like you're saving the world, when the world is ending, it's easy to kind of act with some degree of what is now viewed as overreach. I do think that the mass vaccination requirement may have also been deemed overreach given the limited data that was available and the rapid evolution that was pretty apparent in the virus at the time. as well. Vaccines are required for a number of other illnesses in a number of school systems around the country. you know, you start to question I I think we will start to see people question whether those are appropriate. But, again, those are longer studied, better understood, the the the cost benefit analysis is is is much there. David Sacks (01:00:39): Yeah. Actually, I think I think you're right that one of the costs of this policy is gonna be that people will stop trusting vaccination in general. Even though I think that these COVID vaccines not even sure you can really call them vaccines. I mean, every other vaccine that I've ever heard of completely prevents that disease. The polio vaccine ended polio. the MMR vaccine and the measles mumps and rubella. The COVID vaccine just didn't work. I don't think it was a vaccine, but I think now what's gonna happen is people are gonna have a more distrust in -- There's David Friedberg (01:01:13): a tremendous there's a there's a tremendous amount of post activity rationalization going on where once you kind of made a statement that the vaccine will stop transmission of the virus or stop hospitalizations, and suddenly, it doesn't. And you've made that statement with such surety and brevity and funded it with so much money and caused such cost in doing so. At that point, you're too far removed to go back and say, you know what? It doesn't. And as we're seeing now, the consequences of not being willing to say that you were wrong may be far greater than the consequences of kinda continuing or or kind of, you know, making this change. So it's -- Well, David Sacks (01:01:52): actually, it's a single point. Alright. Final question to Jake Al then on that point. David Friedberg (01:01:55): Yeah. David Sacks (01:01:56): So I mean, Jake, howl, look, you were dunking or at least concerned trolling on anti vaxxers during this time period. Do you reconsider that at all? I mean, in other words, Everybody was saying that the anti vaxxers were these stupid, unsophisticated people Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:10): -- Jason Calacanis (01:02:10): Wow. -- who -- Yeah. I I've been Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:13): -- David Sacks (01:02:13): But but maybe but maybe it was the elites who were the ones suffering from group think. I mean, look. And I put myself in this bucket. We were all herded into this idea -- Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:02:22): We all took the vaccine. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:23): -- David Sacks (01:02:23): an early adopter of a product, and now we're finding out that it's really interesting to you what it said. Jason Calacanis (01:02:28): Yeah. We in fairness, we said we knew this was experimental. knew this was the first time mRNA. But we also knew, like, a billion people had gotten them or we when we got ours, we knew 100 of 1,000,000 for the government. And the mRNA hold on. me just you asked the questions, so let me finish. And so I think people made a risk assessment knowing this was an experimental vaccine knowing that the COVID was mutating at the time. And, yeah, it could have been oversold, of course, that that seems to be the case. David Sacks (01:02:57): Alright. Nick Pull up this tweet. Jason Calacanis (01:02:59): But, you know, we need to I I I think we have to look at because we had conversation, you and I, you were very much in favor of everybody getting the mandate and everybody being forced to get the the vaccine. David Sacks (01:03:14): No. No. I never supported the mandate. Jason Calacanis (01:03:16): You did. We had a conversation about that. Like, should people be able to do it at work? Should people be going on on trains? And your your position was people shouldn't be able to be on trains. David Sacks (01:03:23): No. I I did not support a mandate. I thought it should always be people's choice. I did believe that. Hold on. I made the mistake. Jason Calacanis (01:03:29): Hold on a second. David Sacks (01:03:30): I made the mistake of believing the experts in the mainstream media. I think if the last couple of years have taught us anything, it's that they can't be trusted. The level of distrust we should have is even greater than we thought. I never supported a mandates. I thought it treated people's choice. Yeah. And I certainly wasn't I don't think I was dunking on the anti vaxxers. Let's pull up this tweet, Nick. Yeah. My Lord, Trump, his cronies, and Fox News are killing their own constituents with this anti vaxx nonsense. Yeah. Do you retract that? Jason Calacanis (01:04:04): Do I retract it? I'm trying to look at the date. David Friedberg (01:04:07): By the way, this is a this is a tweet that Jason put out. What was the date? Feb Jan 4th. 2022 that sex pulled up just so people Yeah. David Sacks (01:04:16): Yeah. That was only a year ago. Jason Calacanis (01:04:17): Yeah. Yeah. No. At this point, people were saying that David Sacks (01:04:21): No. I get it. I get it. Look. This is not this is not this is not a rare this is not a rare sentiment, but I'm saying Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:27): -- Jason Calacanis (01:04:27): Hold on just to give this David Sacks (01:04:28): context. -- standby this. Jason Calacanis (01:04:29): Well, hold on a second. I'm just reading This was showing the deaths of from COVID were happening at a magnitude more by people who didn't take the vaccine. And we know the vaccine was had reduced deaths. So we still know that. Correct? The the vaccine reduce reduces the cases of deaths. Correct? David Friedberg (01:04:51): Yeah. The the this new by violent booster, Eric Tothold put out a tweet. I I gave you guys the link here where he covered a paper. that was done recently. And the paper shows a reduction in hospitalization rate and death rate for folks that are getting this new bivalent booster. So but, again, that is a benefit Jason Calacanis (01:05:09): That is the benefit. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:05:10): In one's own kind of personal safety, and there's a risk profile associated with that, as Saks is pointing out, But this notion that the vaccines stop the virus and are a true vaccine in the sense of how we talk about polio and chicken pot or smallpox and this other stuff not equivalent. David Sacks (01:05:27): Very different. -- Friedberg wait. That data how long after vaccination was that data? Because I thought that with respect to the vaccine, One of the big problems is that the the benefits only last for 2 months unless you're willing to get revaccinated every 2 months. David Friedberg (01:05:40): No. That's yeah. Look. David Sacks (01:05:41): it's not really realistic. David Friedberg (01:05:43): Generally speaking, this is not, like, a vaccine in the sense of a smallpox or -- Right. David Sacks (01:05:51): It's just a shot. David Friedberg (01:05:52): It's a treat fight. It's a it's a it's a modest muting of the effects, and it's one that people need to take kind of a based decision on for one personal thing. But having mandates on whether or not you can go to school and whether or not you can, you know, be in places and whether or not it's appropriate for for workplace setting, there's still high degrees of infectiousness with this ever evolving virus. The virus that we have today is not the virus that we had in February of 2020. It's a very different virus. And it has evolved to such an extent now, and it's continuing to evolve that it's very difficult to say there's a vaccine for this virus. It's David Sacks (01:06:29): it's a -- But, well, Jacob, why won't you just say this that that this the so called vaccine has been a failure. We don't know. Hold on. I'm I'm gonna Hold Jason Calacanis (01:06:35): on. Is it failure or gas? David Sacks (01:06:36): We we don't we don't know the full safety implication. like I said, I don't wanna get too far out of my skis on that. However -- Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:43): -- David Sacks (01:06:43): we know the efficaciousness of it has been a failure. For for what? It doesn't last long enough for we're using that. Unless you're willing to get jab 6 times a year, which I don't think anybody here would do that. Jason Calacanis (01:06:55): And probably doesn't work. -- necessary because it's we well, hold on. There was a time period where it was effective Correct? And it did reduce deaths massively. So I think that's the the issue that we're talking about here is that now the COVID strains are so weak that maybe it's not as necessary, but there was a time period where people were not taking the vaccine and Republicans specifically weren't taking the vaccine, and they were dying at a much higher percentage. So it didn't if you're defining the vaccine as not getting not transferring the disease, sure it was a failure, it didn't block like we thought it would. David Sacks (01:07:28): But in terms of reducing Jason Calacanis (01:07:30): death reducing death, it did work for a period of time. David Sacks (01:07:33): If it only lasted for 2 months, And COVID is still around and it's basically endemic. It's everywhere. How did the vaccine make any difference whatsoever? Jason Calacanis (01:07:41): I think now it's 2 months. But back then, it wasn't But, you know, Freeburg is Wait. David Sacks (01:07:45): Freeburg, is that true? David Friedberg (01:07:47): What's the question? I'm I'm losing track at this point. Jason Calacanis (01:07:50): How long does he the lowering the percentage of deaths. David Sacks (01:07:53): The benefits of it only Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:55): -- Jason Calacanis (01:07:55): Yes. Of low reducing the chance of death. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:57): -- David Sacks (01:07:57): is they only last 2 months. Is that true? David Friedberg (01:07:59): yet. It depends on the population, and, yes, there is a decline in the benefit over time as well as the fact that the virus is evolving, those are both Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:08): 2 -- David Friedberg (01:08:08): Yeah. -- kind of independent things. And as a result, over time, you know, like, yeah, we gotta keep getting boosted or shots, and Pfizer's making a great business out of it. You're right. There's a massive economic incentive here for them in Moderna to keep this gray gravy train rolling, and there's a massive incentive for government officials, politicians to continue to stand by what they said before because, otherwise, they're gonna be called wrong, and they're gonna get beat up to work David Sacks (01:08:31): and not take that really. I feel like I feel like you're you're making an effort you're making an effort to stand by what you previously said. David Friedberg (01:08:37): The marketing system. Yeah. David Sacks (01:08:38): think we should just come out and say that, look, regardless of where the safety data ultimately comes out, just based on efficaciousness, we can say that this thing didn't work. and therefore mandating it was even worse thing. Because hold on. We put every we we put the drug through this rapid process. And we didn't let people make an individual cost benefit decision. We basically herded them into this. And at best, it didn't do very much. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:02): I don't think that that decision if you if you make that conclusion, I'm not sure that it gives us a toolkit to do better the next time. And I think we've all said this and Friedberg was the one that first really taught us about this. There will be a next time, unfortunately. So I think that we have to focus our energy here In acknowledging that the tools that we have to create these messenger RNA vaccines and other types of solutions, we are pushing the boundaries of science and the body is still very poorly understood. And so the sensitivity and specificity of these drugs may not be what we think upfront. And as a result of that, maybe we need to find a different way of using emergency use authorization in the future. And I don't know David to your point beyond my ski tips on scientific Knowledge to know how. David Sacks (01:09:58): Right. Well, I'd say it's a minimum. If we're I I would say it's a minimum that if we're gonna do emergency use, it shouldn't be mandated. Let patients and doctors decide on to grow. Okay. Let's move on. So we have a moment of agreement. Jason Calacanis (01:10:08): One question for free birth. Yeah. Would you advise or in your life, would you cons would you continue to get a booster, or are you going to consider getting a booster every year Chamath Palihapitiya (01:10:17): -- Jason Calacanis (01:10:18): No. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:10:18): -- Jason Calacanis (01:10:18): if they keep coming with them? And now would you advise parents or, you know, adults over 65 or 70 to get 1? because those seem to be the high risk group. Right? So if your parents said should I get it or not Chamath Palihapitiya (01:10:29): -- David Friedberg (01:10:30): I would advise advise them to talk to their doctor, and their doctor would advise them to to do it. Jason Calacanis (01:10:34): What do you think most doctors would tell somebody above 65 or 70 at this point. David Friedberg (01:10:38): It depends what state they're in at this point, but, like Chamath Palihapitiya (01:10:41): -- Jason Calacanis (01:10:41): Which it basically would be split on political lines? David Sacks (01:10:44): Unless this virus turns into Ebola, I'm never getting boosted again. I'll tell you that right now. I do agree with that. What about you guys? Jason Calacanis (01:10:52): I'm not getting boosted again. No. David Sacks (01:10:53): I'm not getting I think that speaks volumes. That speaks volumes right there. Jason Calacanis (01:10:56): That's why I asked it. That's it. That's it. David Sacks (01:10:59): Like, we could have just done this in Jason Calacanis (01:11:00): ten seconds. What about -- Guys, we are literally not the sure we'll David Sacks (01:11:03): be bidding on every platform or the -- Let's move on. Jason Calacanis (01:11:05): No. Hold David Sacks (01:11:06): on. Friedberg. But the fact that all of us can Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:08): -- David Friedberg (01:11:08): You're right. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:09): -- David Sacks (01:11:09): arrive at that, and then we're worried about getting banned to you. How screwed up? David Friedberg (01:11:13): You're right. Alright. David Sacks (01:11:14): Mercedes is. Like -- You're right. What? we can't, like, have an honest conversation about this. Jason Calacanis (01:11:19): By the way, the other thing this David Friedberg (01:11:20): is gonna do, it's gonna inflame a large number of people just hearing us say this, and it because people have these deep what's happened is this has now become a sense of identity, a sense of tribalism, and a sense of it's a belief system. It's no longer about an objective decision. Jason Calacanis (01:11:32): Now when David Sacks (01:11:33): we saw this with the mask, The mask became the blue became Jason Calacanis (01:11:36): the -- Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:36): -- David Sacks (01:11:36): the blue equivalent of the red back hat. David Friedberg (01:11:37): So so so now The David Sacks (01:11:38): vaccine is basically, you know, it's become tribal. But that's like a but But people need to move beyond that because this is a scientific question of of cost and benefits related to this medical treatment. Okay. Let's just move on. There's too much Jason Calacanis (01:11:52): other stuff to talk about about. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:53): -- Jason Calacanis (01:11:53): not for venture capitalists about your vaccine David Sacks (01:11:56): plan language. Speak your David Friedberg (01:11:58): speak your doctor. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:59): Yeah. And speak to your doctor. David Sacks (01:12:00): Please don't listen to us. Alright. Let's let's move on. Jason Calacanis (01:12:03): I -- -- you are. David Friedberg (01:12:04): By the way, by the way, speak to your doctor and just remember, vaccine manufacturers have a business to run, and politicians have to get reelected. David Sacks (01:12:11): Alright. Let's move on because we've gotten stuck on this. Jason Calacanis (01:12:14): Woof. David Sacks (01:12:14): Okay. Look. There's been some important developments in Ukraine. I think we should just cover quickly this week. There were a bunch of things. The Biden administration said they're gonna send Abrams tanks as well as Bradley's and leopard two's. The Abrams tank, in particular, is our best most expensive tank. At the beginning of the war, they said they would not send them, so they reversed their decision on that. Now the Ukrainians are saying they want jets as well. That's sort of the next issue that's gonna come up. The Biden administration also in a New York Times article that came out earlier this week said that they were warming to the idea of of supporting an invasion of Crimea Some Europeans like Peter Hitchens are getting very nervous about this level of escalation. He had a pretty amazing piece talking about the risk of this creating nuclear war. And even if the Ukrainians prevail in this war, there was a really interesting statement by Larry Fink Davos last week saying that he estimated the cost of reconstruction at Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:11): $750,000,000,000. David Sacks (01:13:13): And Fitch Ratings Agency says that Ukraine is headed towards default. So major major developments, I think, in the war this week. I wanna get your guy's opinion on this we know from history that wars tend to escalate and to be far more costly than the participants ever thought. Is that the track we're on now And in hindsight, knowing what we know now, should we regret that we didn't use every diplomatic tool we had to prevent the war, most notably taking NATO expansion off the table. Friedberg, I'll go to you. David Friedberg (01:13:45): It's such a tough Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:48): situation. What David Sacks (01:13:49): you saw is a situation escalating. to a point where we should be concerned? David Friedberg (01:13:54): You know, there's a lot of information we don't have, and there's a lot of intelligence gathering and conversations, and chatter that we're not privy to. So to sit here and kind of be an an armchair mechanic on Jason Calacanis (01:14:08): this up. David Friedberg (01:14:10): I I don't know what diplomatic conversations have gone on or are going on. All I know is what we're reading on the Internet. Right? So I I I'm not I don't Jason Calacanis (01:14:19): know why David Sacks (01:14:19): the the this this war is extreme this this war is extremely well covered, and there are no diplomatic conversations going on. David Friedberg (01:14:26): Yeah. So I think that Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:27): -- David Sacks (01:14:28): We are escalating the war. I yeah. -- Jay Keller Chamath here. Do you guys have any concerns about the direction this is headed? at all? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:35): Yes. I'm concerned. I also agree with Friedberg that I don't think we have all of the information. but I'm not exactly sure what we can do right now. It's it seems like they have decided that there is a play to exert a lot of pressure come the spring, and that's something that you've mentioned as a very likely thing. And so I guess the calculus on the ground is that there's a way to really push Russia into a corner. And the only way to do that is with more military support. And then on the heels of that, David, the link that you sent is then it's not just the war machine that is now spinning up, but it's the aftermarket financial services infrastructure that's also spinning or Larry Larry Fink Jason Calacanis (01:15:22): was like Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:22): -- -- David Sacks (01:15:22): the grift aspect of this war? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:24): Well, yeah, where Larry Fink was like, hey. They're gonna need three quarters of a $1,000,000,000,000 of reconstruction support. We saw that play out in Iraq as well where at first it was the war machine, and then it was the reconstruction machine. And together, it was 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000. By the Jason Calacanis (01:15:39): way, you know, was David Friedberg (01:15:39): that called? Those are called infrastructure funds. And those infrastructure funds raise 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars to make investments to build new infrastructure in markets that need it and that are willing to pay for it. And it will likely end up being kind of long term debt assumed by that region. to pay to do this work, and the beneficiaries will be the investors and owners of those infrastructure funds. I think there's two sides to this, Saxx, that are worth kinda noting. One is The telegraphing of this decision, because it's not being done secretly, it's being done out in the open, there's certainly a calculus to that. Why are they telegraphing this? And what do they intend to do with that messaging being put out there like this? And it may be that it's to assert or assume a stronger negotiating position, certainly to go into some sort of, you know, mild, modest exit or settlement coming out of this thing. But you're right. The flip side is, and the cost here is one of extreme outcome, which is there may be a France Ferdinand moment here, where one thing goes too far and triggers a cataclysmic outcome. And in this case, the cataclysmic outcome is tactical nuclear weapons. And tactical nuclear weapons, as we talked about and I think I've I I had some conversations and some dinners. I I shared with you guys with some folks in the intelligence community, and this has been talked about by ex intelligence community folks publicly are a key part of the Russian war playbook that this is there there is a tactical nuclear weapon response system that is in place And, you know, these are very possible paths that we could find ourselves kind of walking down. Obviously, where that to happen, it would be a massive escalation. And you're right. There could be a France Ferdinand kinda moment that emerges by shaking the cage and and lighting a fire. And there may be a stronger negotiating position to get to a a a settlement faster by doing this. I I don't have a strong point of view on the probability of either of those and and why, but I think you know, maybe both are are certainly in play here. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:40): Yeah. It was interesting to me that the Wall Street Journal on the heels of all of this stuff also published an article about Roman Abramovich and the interesting thing about it was a quote in the article that effectively said something tantamount to, well now that he's Proven not as useful, we need to target him with sanctions. So I I just think that what all of this is is now sort of they're entering the endgame, David, to use a chess analogy. And it looks like they're setting the wheels in motion to kinda put all the pieces together for a negotiated settlement. David Sacks (01:18:19): Do we know I mean, well but is it the NBA or is it continual escalation? I mean, Jacob Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:24): -- Jason Calacanis (01:18:24): I I changed David Sacks (01:18:25): my -- -- the war, we didn't wanna give the Ukrainians Abrams tanks because they were that was considered too provocative. Now we're giving them to them. Jason Calacanis (01:18:33): I I think what's going on here is and I suspect that this you know, from the beginnings that we are trying to engage them in a war of attrition, and it's working. And so I think the west collectively is trying to further that goal of just making Russia economically, politically, militarily, culturally, irrelevant or angled in some way. And if you think about what's now happening with energy, you know, his primary export, He is going to lose those customers, and his customers will be, you know, bottom feeding, India, China, low cost, you know, oil. And he is going to be a pariah. So what I'm looking at is if there's gonna be a negotiated settlement this year, what is the next 5 or 10 year is gonna look like for Russia? What is their place in the world gonna be? The west is never going to trust them again. The Germans are never gonna buy their oil again. Everybody is going to be looking for ways to distance themselves from. So does he have an exit ramp? And we talked about this from the the get go here on this podcast is what's the golden bridge for him to retreat across. And and we really need to find that Golden Bridge quickly because I do think this is starting to look desperate for him, but West keeps giving better and better munitions. He keeps losing economically. He's gonna keep losing. And and politically, who would ever want to engage Putin in anything with you know, any kind of cultural or or international trade, it's going to be a disaster for him. So this more of attrition has to resolve itself with some sort of settlement, but the kids can't go on for 2 or 3 years, can it? I mean, it has to settle at some point. David Sacks (01:20:09): I think that it it can certainly can go on. And I think that history proves that wars tend to escalate. And the costs incurred are much greater in many cases than the participants ever dreamed of. And if they had to go and do it all over again, they wouldn't have gone into it in the first place. So Yeah. I think this is concerning. I think, you know, the the the craziness Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:30): -- -- Jason Calacanis (01:20:30): war of attrition strategy to the -- Yeah. I think I think that's why it David Sacks (01:20:33): has developed into a war of attrition, and I you're right that well, I think Do Jason Calacanis (01:20:37): you think that was 5 design? David Sacks (01:20:39): I think there's 2 possibilities, Jay Kal. I think that the maybe the more cynical or realistic members of the administration think there's benefit in wearing Russia down and grinding them down. However, I also think there's kind of a true believer camp that sees pushing Russia out of Ukraine, nothing less than that will do. and we have to punish their aggression. Maybe they want regime change. I think there's dueling factions in the administration. Remember, General Milley several months ago said that everything that the Ukrainians could achieve militarily just about had been done, and they should negotiate. And even Jake Sullivan had said that they should take Crimea off the table That was just the leaks a few months ago. Now the administration is leaking that they're gonna support a crimean invasion. So I think there's these both schools within the administration, the true believers and the more cynical folks. And it feels to me like the true believers are on top right now because we just keep escalating this war more and more. And I think that's dangerous. That polarizes the outcomes. Right? So I think, Jay Kal, if you had your way, it sounds like you would grind the Russians down. But at a certain point, you would say enough is enough and like a poker player, like you do it at the poker table, you'd say have one my I want my freest for the night. I don't need to risk that to win at Tesla. So I'm gonna cash in my chips. and and get away. Walk up. Walk away. Right? Jason Calacanis (01:22:02): Yeah. I wish I could do that. I wish I could do that consistently. Yeah. Exactly. No problem. Getting up from the table is a rare skill. David Sacks (01:22:09): That's right. But I'm not sure the administration's getting up from the table. I mean, I think we've achieved the American position on this, I think it's largely been achieved. We've prevented Russia from taking over Ukraine. We've prevented we've basically shifted Europe onto American natural gas. We've destroyed Nord Stream. I think we're close to achieving our major objectives. Jason Calacanis (01:22:32): But I'm David Sacks (01:22:32): not sure we're gonna stop there. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:35): Yeah. David Sacks (01:22:36): Alright. Anyway, alright. Let's move on. Friedberg, give a science corner. David Friedberg (01:22:39): I was gonna share the this was last week. I I think we talked about talked about it this week. So there was a paper that is a pretty compelling paper published by a team led out of Harvard on identifying what may be the the core driver of aging. and demonstration on an ability to kind of reverse aging. So I'll just start really quickly that, you know, in the human body, We have many different types of cells. Right? We have 200 roughly different kinds of cells, an eye cell, a skin cell, a brain cell, a heart cell, They all have the same DNA, the same genetic code, the same genome at the nucleus of that cell. What makes those cells different and the reason they act and behave differently is they have different gene expression. Meaning different genes in that cell are turned on and off. And when a gene is turned on, the protein that that gene codes for is expressed and made in the cell, and the genes that are off, those proteins are not made. And remember, proteins are the biochemical machines in biology. So when certain proteins are produced, they do stuff and other proteins don't do stuff, and the cell acts and behaves very differently. So some cells, when you turn genes on and off, you get a neuron. Some cells, you turn them on and off, you get a muscle cell on your bicep, some of them you get a heart cell. And so all of these cells are differentiated by the genes that are expressed. The general term for the expression of genes is the epigenome, And an epigenome basically refers to these these systems whereby there's certain parts of the DNA, certain segments of genes, are uncoiled a little bit. So if you zoom in on DNA, you know, there's 23 chromosomes. They're tightly wrapped in these coils. And when you go even closer, you see that there's these segments called nucleosomes. And a nucleosomes means it's like a bead, and a bunch of DNA is wrapped around the bead. David Friedberg (01:24:33): and how closely those beads are together, how much the DNA is wrapped, allows a segment of the DNA to be opened up and then expressed, meaning copies of the DNA are turned into RNA, which floats into this thing called the ribosome, and the ribosome is the protein printer. So the more these little segments of genome are exposed, the more they're pressed. And there are certain chemicals, these methyls and acetals that kind of attach to the genome and certain elements that allow parts of the the chromosome to wrap up and get really tightly bound or to unwrap and to express the gene. For the epigenome, it's almost you can think about it like the software. And the genome or the DNA is the hardware. And so the hardware basically defines what you can make. The epigenome finds what is being made, what stuff is turned on, and what stuff is turned off. So this paper and this work that was done, historically, we've always thought that aging meant that over time, the DNA in our cells was mutating, and errors were accumulating in the DNA. And as a result of those errors, the cells start to dysfunction. And what these guys really did a good job of proving with this paper is that it may not be mutations in the DNA that's causing aging. but actually changes in the epigenome and that the DNA remains pretty stable and pretty consistent over time. And the way they did this is they broke the DNA just so you guys know every second of your life about a million breaks in DNA in cells throughout your body are happening. Your DNA is being broken up, and then there's all this machinery in your cell that fixes the DNA when it breaks. Now what happens when it fixes it, it turns out it's actually really good at it, and the DNA doesn't change. And we historically thought that the DNA changed a lot and mutations accumulate over time. David Friedberg (01:26:12): But in reality, what may be happening is as your DNA gets fixed, the epigenome, the acetyl and methyl groups on the gene on on the the chromosome, don't get put in the right place. And over time, what happens is the epigenome degrades. And this is considered a lot of people refer to this now as the information theory of aging. You can kinda think about making a lot of copies of software, a lot of copies of a photo and a photo printer over time. every time you make a copy, there's a little error, a little error, and those errors accumulate. And the errors that accumulate cause the epigenome to change. And as a result, certain genes are turned on that are supposed to be off, and certain genes are turned off that are supposed to be turned on. And then those cells start to get dysfunctional. because the wrong proteins are being made and the cell can no longer do what it's supposed to do. So what these guys Could Jason Calacanis (01:27:01): it be the could it Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:02): be the ribosome as well that gets screwed up over time? The printer? David Friedberg (01:27:05): the ribosome is a pretty, you know, static protein. It just does its thing, and there's hundreds of ribosomes in a cell. So, you know, if one of them this functional. It just doesn't do anything, and then the other ones kinda step in and do it. So ribosomes are constantly running. What these guys did is they basically took 2 mice, 2 populations of mice, And they gave the 1 population of NICE a a certain thing that caused its DNA to break at three times the rate of the other population. And then as the DNA broke, they could they could see that this mouse population got older and older faster and by a bunch of measures on how do you measure age. But what they did is they then measured they they then sequenced the DNA of the 2 populations of mice. And what they showed is that the older mice, the ones that had their DNA, changing a lot. By the way, these were genetically identical mice. The ones that had their DNA broken a lot more, they had the correct genome. Their genome was the exact same as the other mice that that stayed young. And so what that tells us is that it's the epigenome and not the the DNA itself that's changing. So then here's what they did. Remember last year, we talked about yamanaka factors, which are these 4 proteins, these 4 molecules that can be applied to to DNA, to to a cell, and they cause all of the gene expression to reset back to looking like a stem cell. Remember, all of those differentiated cells come from a stem cell. And when they did that, the older population of mice suddenly started to act younger, and all of the measures of age reversed. And they did this across different tissue types. They measured this in a lot of different ways, cognitive function, health, cellular health, etcetera. And so it is not just a fantastic new proof point of how Yamanaka factors can actually reverse age, but it demonstrates that the epigenome itself is what is the core driver of aging. David Friedberg (01:28:55): And you guys remember Altos Labs raised $3,000,000,000 in a sea ground last year, and you remember at the end day 1, I said, like, Yaminaka factors and aging research is gonna be kind of the next thought thing. I think this paper is gonna be one of the seminal papers that really kind of illustrates and proves the point that this epigenome is the driver of aging. And as we now are investing a lot of money in figuring out how Yamanaka factors and other transcription factors like the yamanaka factors can be applied in specific ways to actually reverse aging and cause the cells to start functioning correctly again. And then people will start to act and resolve in a healthy way once again. There's a lot of work to go between here and there. But now we have a much more kind of definitive proof point that this information theory of aging may be real, that it's tied to be at the genome, and that there are solutions that can work And we have to figure out how to put them together and how to engineer a fantastic outcome. So really great paper by a team led out of Harvard. I think really validates a lot of the work and the money that's going into the space both in the public and the private sector. And, obviously, a lot of new startups kinda chasing this opportunity to figure out how we can use these transcription factors to reverse aging and that this may end up leading us to, you know, a much kind of healthy life. And by the way, When they applied those Yamin aqua factors to the mice, the mice lived a 107% longer than they were supposed to. but more importantly, the health span as it's defined improved. So the mice not only lived longer, but they actually lived healthier. They're all the measures of healthiness in the body improved. So it's a really kind of -- How frequent David Sacks (01:30:26): is this gonna help us in the next 10 years? David Friedberg (01:30:28): It may. Yeah. It very well may. There there are now some therapeutic efforts on how long they gave you facts that David Sacks (01:30:35): gave you facts. I I feel like science corner should only discuss things that can happen in the next few years. Let's put it that way. Or is that the long way to look at it? David Friedberg (01:30:44): I'll tell I'll tell you one way. One thing for sure, you can make you can make money as an investor over the next 10 years. in finding the right teams that are gonna have the highest likelihood of progressing clinical trials in the space. I will say that there may be clinical trials that can come to market really fast, particularly with kind of these ex vivo therapeutics where you take cells out of your body, apply the yamanaka factors, and then put them back in your body for certain tissue types like eye cells, for example, or t cells in your blood, there's a lot of ways that this may come to market faster. And it's not just about reversing your age overall, but reversing the age of certain cell types in your body that can then have profound health impacts in the near term. Jason Calacanis (01:31:17): So that's the kind of David Friedberg (01:31:18): stuff that's gonna start to come through clinical stage sooner than later. And then maybe, you know, some number of yours down the road, we figure out a way to reverse the age in all the cells in our body, and the whole body becomes more youthful. But for now, it's gonna be targeted cells in a very specific way to reverse aging and improve health. Very powerful. Very interesting. Lots of investment opportunity and you know, certainly some some some very smart folks that Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:42): -- So what David Sacks (01:31:42): do you think the realistic time frame is for, like, you know, reversing aging? because we we need that Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:48): -- Jason Calacanis (01:31:48): But what what what do you like? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:50): 30 David Sacks (01:31:50): years -- Shit. Jason Calacanis (01:31:51): Yeah. But I think I think you're gonna miss Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:53): -- -- 80. Yeah. That's Jason Calacanis (01:31:55): what you should get the most. But that thing don't need it the most. David Friedberg (01:31:58): But so so I'm here to catch up. David Sacks (01:32:00): If we live to 80, does that mean we're gonna be able to, like, live to a 100 because we'll be able to, like, reverse age. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:06): Well, the sensitivity is, can you live well to a 100? I think that's the question. We don't know. David Sacks (01:32:12): But if you could reverse aging. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:14): Yeah. But we don't know what that means because there's all kinds of things that you inherit over time. but this may not, for example, like if you have long term heart disease, I could see how the cells could get healthier, but it can't eliminate the plaque in your arteries. Jason Calacanis (01:32:30): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:30): You know, that's part of calcium. Jason Calacanis (01:32:32): That's right. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:32): That that shit that shit's there. So -- Right. -- you you have to live well. David Friedberg (01:32:36): Same with same with Alzheimer's. Like, Alzheimer's has plat there's a platte element, but the the the the cause of that and the cellular dysfunction may be reversible. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:44): It could definitely be that, like, injury rates of older people, hips, knees, shoulders, arms, all the sort of, like, soft musculoskeletal stuff, you can you can really do a good job of because at the same time as you get older, like, People to intake less protein, they process it less well, you lose a lot of muscle mass as you get older. Those are things that I think are like short term solutions But no. To be honest with you, Saxx, the stuff that really can screw you, which is heart disease and brain function, this probably won't do much for a long time. David Sacks (01:33:16): So Jay Cal is screwed. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:17): Yeah. Yeah. I'm in Jason Calacanis (01:33:18): the best shape I've been in over 20 years. I feel great. I'm Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:21): -- David Sacks (01:33:21): Can you reverse whatever is wrong with Jay Cal or is that in the plot category? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:24): Can I do a quality of life, shout out? Jason Calacanis (01:33:26): Can I do a quality Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:27): of life, shout out? Jason Calacanis (01:33:28): Please. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:28): I got an email. We all got it from a guy who I won't say just to not to violate his privacy. Privacy. But he's in Saskatchewan. He listens to the pod where his father is. and made him get a pre nouveau scan -- Oh. -- flew flew the father to Vancouver. They found a five centimeter cancerous tumor on his kidney. And 3 days ago, had it removed and looks like guys totally healthy and -- Jason Calacanis (01:33:55): Wow. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:55): -- eliminated. Here's things. So another live saved Jason Calacanis (01:33:58): That's on the pod. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:59): But I but I wanted to show you guys a picture. So yesterday, I went to Los Angeles to see my interventional cardiologist. And what they do is they do what's called a contrast CT scan. So they put you into an IV and they put this contrast inside of you, Nick, do you want to put through the picture, please? And then they use all the software, Dajj create an extremely accurate three d model of your heart. And what they can do is go inside of your arteries and actually measure the calcium build up. I've mentioned this before. This is a service called heart flow, h e a r t f l o w. In any event, my calcium score is still 0. Thank god, touch wood. keep grinding. But I just wanted to put this out there for anybody who has a his of heart disease in their family for them or for their parents or what have you. If you go and ask your doctor, this is a party service that they can do it, you go get a contrast CT and you can get a very accurate sense of your heart health Jason Calacanis (01:35:02): This is amazing. They they found -- It's incredible. They found that you have a heart. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:35:07): They did find that I have a heart. Jason Calacanis (01:35:09): This is this is incredible technology. because the couple of us meeting would try to find if you had a heart for all these 112 episodes. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:35:16): Doctor Carlsberg was shot. Jason Calacanis (01:35:18): Grady Shoes. They found a heart. David Sacks (01:35:20): It looked huge. It looked like secretariat. David Friedberg (01:35:22): Let's say he's got a big heart. Yeah. Yeah. I I do have Chamath Palihapitiya (01:35:26): a big heart, boys, as you David Sacks (01:35:27): guys know. Jason Calacanis (01:35:28): No. mean, this is shocking for the audience. It's an David Sacks (01:35:31): actual size? They can't be actual size. Jason Calacanis (01:35:33): It's hard to figure in this brain. It's got a big heart. Well, glad you're healthy, bestie. That's fantastic. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:35:39): So go get go get a heart flow if anybody has heart disease. Go talk to your doctor. Jason Calacanis (01:35:43): Alright. Well, for David Saxx. David Sacks (01:35:45): Was was the moderation okay? Jason Calacanis (01:35:48): Yeah. I mean, listen. Yeah. David Sacks (01:35:49): So what's your funny is if you were doing a Jake Hallum Jason Calacanis (01:35:51): mill? Alright. Fair enough. I'll come back to moderate next week. David Friedberg (01:35:54): I'll moderate Chamath Palihapitiya (01:35:55): I'll be honest with you. I would give both the David's a robotic b minus c plus. I think they're better off opining than moderating. Okay. And I think that Jason really doesn't have anything interesting to say, so he's better off moderating. I don't think Johnny liked my comments last week. And then we can minimize the number of times he finds any random way to take it back to virtue signaling and genuflecting about China. Jason Calacanis (01:36:22): I was Chamath Palihapitiya (01:36:22): gonna ask Jason What you thought about the Cowboys 40 niners game where Kiddle was an ineligible Downfield receiver and they didn't call a penalty very important catch for that game that, again, the Cowboys now losing every single time they get to the playoffs. But I didn't wanna ask you because I was I thought that you would veer it toward Xi Jinping and some China comment. No. What? No. Any genuflecting would you like to do before you go back to your -- David Sacks (01:36:49): I will admit that the the moderation thing is harder than it looks. Well, it's it's harder than it looks to be entertaining. I think that's that's that's the thing. I think Chamath Palihapitiya (01:36:59): Jason, that's the left David Sacks (01:37:00): side. -- to a plus on is being entertaining. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:37:03): Thank you. Plus. Hey. Plus moderator. Get back to your job, Jake. David Sacks (01:37:07): Yeah. I Jason Calacanis (01:37:07): will I will come back next week and moderate. I I I have been under the weather. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:37:11): pass the ball and let and let us put the ball in the basket. Jason Calacanis (01:37:14): I will put the ball exactly where you each like it perfectly. Look for some great SIS coming next week with Jake. I was back at a 100% strength. Thanks to the Davids for filling in for me for the last 2 weeks, and we'll see you all next time. on the all we talk about. -- boys. Bye, guys. We'll let your winners ride. Rainman, David Sacker. We open source it to the fans, and they've David Sacks (01:37:41): just gone crazy with it. Jason Calacanis (01:37:46): besties are gone. That is why they are dogs that a notice in your driveway? We should all just get a room and just have a big you, George, because they're all just useless. It's like this, like, sexual tension, but they just need to release that amount. What? You're the b p What? Clear feet. What? What? Where did you get Murkey's arm back?