瓦格纳兵变，最高法院废除平权法案，AI 并购潮，初创公司翻车，时空涟漪

David Friedberg (00:00:00): This is gonna be a feisty episode. Is it? 2 of us are on Greenwich Mean Time 2 of us are in Pacific. Jake Hall still asleep in his head. Jason Calacanis (00:00:10): I'm good, actually. David Friedberg (00:00:11): You good? Speaker 3 (00:00:12): I'm good. David Friedberg (00:00:12): Alright. Well, great to be back. Welcome to the All conspiracy podcast. Where we repeat false statements and help spin them into tales of struggling against the establishment, the elite and the mainstream media, We will deliver to you, the people, the revolution against the powers that peak. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:28): Unless it offends. Jason Calacanis (00:00:34): She'll try to get my invite for next week. David Friedberg (00:00:35): Alright. We'll also enjoy it. Friedberg Jason Calacanis (00:00:37): Mums the word. David Friedberg (00:00:39): Um's the word. We'll also enjoy sharing with Fantastic stories of opulence. Let's be neutral. Opulence, leisure, and benevolent greed. Here we go. Joining me today are my co host, General David Sachs, commander of the 4th battalion of the internet tweet for Dade. General welcome. Joining us from a remote location. In Moscow. David Sacks (00:00:58): Has there been like an establishment take over the pod? Jason Calacanis (00:01:01): I mean, what's the latest intro? Yeah. David Sacks (00:01:04): Every argument they make against us, you're basically conceding is true. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:01:07): I know. Exactly. David Friedberg (00:01:08): From his 12th century Mediterranean Castle, Ilducey, Timoth Palihapitiya. Welcome to Math. How is the Mediterranean diet treating you? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:17): Blue. David Friedberg (00:01:18): Blue. And Emperor Neuro Calacanis, ruler over podcasts, paid events, entrepreneurial universities, And Dental SPVs Emperor. Thank you for letting me sit in your throne today. Jason Calacanis (00:01:31): It's good to be here. Thank you. Dental SPVs. Shout out to my dentist. David Sacks (00:01:35): Wait. Did you say King of STDs? Jason Calacanis (00:01:38): What'd you say? SPVs? David Sacks (00:01:40): Oh, SPVs. David Friedberg (00:01:41): Kendall SPVs. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:42): That's the thing with certain STDs where once you work you're gonna be king for life. Speaker 6 (00:01:54): David Sanders. Jason Calacanis (00:02:06): The syndicate.com. Yeah. Thank you. David Friedberg (00:02:07): You've been doing, you said 5 shows a week lately. Your voice is shot. I I want this Jason Calacanis (00:02:14): is starting to go. So I I asked you if you'd moderate, and you you thankfully, you said yes. David Friedberg (00:02:18): I've got the energy I missed last week. I enjoyed listening to you guys with, BG. Great episode. Sorry. I couldn't join, but let's kick it off. David Sacks (00:02:26): That's funny. I still wanna watch the episode that I missed. Jason Calacanis (00:02:29): Not interested. He's like, I'm not on the show. I'm not interested. David Sacks (00:02:32): Enough time to participate. I don't really have time to watch it. David Friedberg (00:02:36): The truth is, Saks, why don't you admit to everyone that where you're in a show, you probably watch it 4 or 5 times. Alright. So let's kick this off. Obviously, you guys recorded right before the Wagner Group attempted coup or potential coup or theorized coup began last week. So, Saks, you kind of sent out a text saying, the show's already stale because, you know, kind of missed that, that news cycle by publishing right after it started, but you recorded right before. So let's do just a quick recap of what happened with Russia, Ukraine, and particularly as Wagner Wagner Group Rebellion, Last Friday, the Wagner Group, which is a Russian paramilitary organization led by Yevgeniy Pregosian, launched what seemed like an armed insurrection against Russia. Wagner had occupied portions of Rostov on Don, a city of over a million people, a regional capital, and headquarters of Russia's southern military district, before setting off towards Moscow and then abruptly stopping, I think about 200 kilometers before reaching Moscow City. At that point, there was supposedly, a negotiation, the president of Belarus got involved, and, Progression decided to step down Putin said I'm not gonna persecute or I'm not gonna prosecute you for these crimes. He was given immunity, and it was, announced that all the members of the Wagner Group were given the option of returning home or joining the Russian military and the Wagner group was gonna be dissed. Sachs, maybe you can kind of give us your summary of the events that took place, and then we'll talk a little bit about the interpretation of what we think this means for the conflict in Ukraine. David Sacks (00:04:20): Well, you're right. That this, rebellion took place just after we dropped our last episode. And so everybody, both on Twitter and then the common was dunking on me for my take on last week's episode that the much hyped Ukrainian counter offensive was was not succeeding that it was in fact failing I think there's abundant evidence for that, which hasn't changed. Even CNN had written an article, basically supporting the idea that the counteroffensive was not living up to what had been promised. And so everyone was in the comments saying that my take had basically aged like milk and this, armed rebellion or mutiny by pregoion was evidence that the Russian regime was about to collapse that Russia was, in fact, on the verge of civil war And you saw the exact same people who had oversold the counter offensive now overselling this mutiny as something that would bring down the Russian regime and and the war. And, of course, that that did not happen. It was certainly a highly unusual event, and I've read takes now from every different corner of the internet about what it was and what took place. You have people speculating that this was at all staged. I do not believe that. I do believe that it was in insurrection or mutiny by Progosian. I think the trigger for it was the fact that his Wagner organization was being merged in with the Ministry of Defense and the regular Russian army and his men were all being made to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense that would have resulted in a giant loss of income and status for Progression simultaneously for months now. He's been criticizing the ministry of defense, specifically the the minister of defense, Shoju, and the chief general of the general staff. Jerasimov. So he's been vocally critical of them. And I think that this basically erupted into a a mutiny by him, where he basically tried to leverage his position. David Sacks (00:06:15): Like you said, he marched what they now think are about 8000 men, which is about a quarter of Wagner into Rostov on Don. He then took the ministry headquarters and sent about 3000 of his men on a convoy to Moscow. I think that although this is probably best described as a mutiny, I think that it did have coup optionality to it. I think that Progosian was seeking to find out how much support Putin had and who might join him. And he had put out a number of statements that I think from the Russian regime's point of view could be described as seditious. That morning. And he there's a lot of evidence that he staged this attack on his base. He claimed that there was a missile attack by the Ministry of Defense, and that's what launched this Marsh for justice. And in his comments, he was careful not to criticize Putin directly, but he had a lot to say about the Ministry of Defense and the overall conduct of the war. And it was, I think, harshly critical indirectly of of Putin. And I think he was looking to see who might support him. And what happened is that on the way to Moscow during this convoy, nobody supported him. In fact, all the statements came out from the other generals, including sir Vegan, including all the regional governors, of members of the Duma, another important figures in Russian society, and there wasn't a single person willing to publicly support Tragozi. And that's when Putin went on TV called this basically an active treason and a stab in the back. And at that point, I think Progosions options were pretty limited, and he basically took a deal that was broker by Lukashenko in which he would go into exile in Belarus, in exchange for basically being allowed to live. That was basically the deal that was ultimately cut. And so I think where things stand today is that although I think this was an embarrassment and a black eye for the Russian regime, it never looks good for regime to have any kind of mutiny or insurrection. And I think that it does raise questions that Putin's now gonna have to answer to his various allies and supporters about how stable his regime is. I think ultimately Putin has ended up in a place of consolidating Russian society behind him. Like I said, there were no power centers that supported this mutiny they all rallied to Putin's defense and the people of Russia, even though Pregosian is a popular figure of being kind of a war hero, from the battle of Bakkhut, the the Russian society supported Putin. David Sacks (00:08:47): I think he's at something like 80% poll numbers. So I think where things stand. Well, like LaVada Center, which is an independent polling agency. For example, these are not the Russian regimes own numbers. Jason Calacanis (00:09:01): Would you say in a poll that you don't support Putin? David Sacks (00:09:04): Well, I don't know how Levata Center, what their methodology is but these numbers, when the numbers are bad, are cited by Western sources. But there are other forms of evidence too. You may have seen this video that went viral over the past few days, of this song that's now the number one chart buster in in Russia where it's this very patriotic Russian song where they're basically singing. I am Russian. That's sort of the main chorus. David Friedberg (00:09:29): Nick, can you pull up the song? I'd like to see this, please. Jason Calacanis (00:09:32): Coming at at 95.5. I love Russia. Oh my god. This is some serious propaganda. Wow. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:09:45): I mean, that looks like a pretty good party. David Sacks (00:09:50): If you look up the the lyrics to the song, the English translation of the lyrics that just submitted as I I'm basically proud to be rushing, and I don't care Who doesn't like it? That's basically the the lyrics of it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:03): How do you get invited to that party? Jason Calacanis (00:10:06): I got so many jokes. I'm not gonna make a high note. You gotta be careful. You gotta be careful here, folks. David Friedberg (00:10:11): You gotta be careful here. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:12): Why? It looks like a fun party. It's a catchy song. I mean, I love to dress up and show up. Tell me where to show up Putin. David Sacks (00:10:19): I think the point here is that Russian society is united behind the state and wanting to fight this war. And I think that part of the reason why Fregosions, mutiny, was so oversold as an imminent coup that would bring about the collapse of the Putin regime and of the Russian war effort and of their frontline, is because that we since the beginning of this war, we've had this narrative that if we applied enough pressure to Russia, that there would be a palace intrigue and a palace coup and that liberal forces inside of Russia would rise up and topple the dictator Putin and basically get them out of this war. And I think what's happened is fairly predictable, but it's the opposite of that, which is the Russian people are rallying around the flag and rallying around Putin, the war leader. And they are a patriotic people, just like the Ukrainians, And I think both these countries that both the Russians and Ukrainians are a proud people, and I think they're in a fight to the death. And I think that both countries Speaker 3 (00:11:17): Okay. David Sacks (00:11:17): Regard this as suspential, and we have basically stuck ourselves in the middle of this fight to the death between these two countries, and I don't see this working out very well. David Friedberg (00:11:26): Okay. So look, I I will make an admission. I consider myself a modestly well read person, modestly well informed I had never heard of the Wagner Group or Pregosian prior to this coup attempt last week. Chamath Jay Cal had you guys heard of this person before and the Wagner group? Speaker 3 (00:11:46): Yeah. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:11:48): Oh, well, maybe I'm an idiot or I'm just not interested. I think what was so surprising was, like, how out of the blue the story seemed to be last week that there was this disagreement between this person that commanded this paramilitary organization who then turned around against Putin and stood up against him and marched back towards Moscow. And it felt to me like it came a little bit out of the blue and was such like a a weird kind of shocking event. Did it feel kind of like that to you guys that there was surprising instability and the surprising potential revolution happening locally? Jason Calacanis (00:12:21): I think stepping back here and just looking at the new cycle, obviously, it's I don't think many people expected this. This is a wild card. And so people could be humble in, you know, their belief of, like, how much they actually understand about what's going on there. The Russian soldiers are not in favor of this war. This is a war that's very unpopular in Russia, actually. And for the Ukraine, having been invaded by Russia. They're fighting for their land, and they're gonna they they are much more motivated. I wouldn't believe any of this propaganda, but this is a bit of a rush contest. Everybody on the left got on Twitter and said, this is the end of Putin. Everybody's gonna rise up in the streets, and they overplayed that, you know, angle of the story. And then, of course, the right or people who are pro Russian or anti the west backing this war are gonna take the other side Friedberg. They're gonna take the side of you know, oh, everybody loves Russia. 80% of people are voting for this. It's ridiculous to think that anybody in Russia is gonna answer Do you like Putin? Do you support Putin on a survey? Can you imagine a Putin's a murderous dictator who kills all of his enemies and he controls through violence nobody's answering a survey correctly. This, you know, top song is complete propaganda. Putin has control of the entire media apparatus there. What this showed actually, if you step back and you look at Did Speaker 3 (00:13:36): you go Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:37): to the party though Jason Calacanis (00:13:37): if you were invited? Well, I mean, are there gonna be potential LPs there? Last week, but I it's just a joke, folks. But stepping back, if you look at modern day dictators, They tend to stay in power for about 3 decades. Putin's in his third. And, I think we're gonna see in, the next 10 years. Putin lose power, and he's going to be out of power. And when we look back on it, it's gonna be one of 2 causes. It's gonna be either cancer, which you know, the speculation is his head his head cancer, and that's why he disappears from view because he might be getting treatment. And we'll look back on us that the end of his power will be, his control of Russia, which he controlling these Controlling through violence and fear of violence and bladder violence is exhausting. You have to be paranoid, and that's why it generally doesn't last that long. Especially compared to the west where we have a democracy and people last about a half decade. He will will look back on his end, which will be in the next 10 years, either through cancer or through his invasion of Ukraine. This is the biggest blunder he's ever made, and and this is a really crazy sign that somebody would actually attempt or even float a coup is insane. He's murdered every single person who has ever even you know, challenged his authority in a minor way. The fact that his one of his right hand men, this is one of his tight inner circle. The fact that one of the people in this tight inner circle would actually start heading towards Moscow is insane. So to say this wasn't a big deal and Putin's, you know, now consolidated power and everybody's in the street dancing, that's just not true. David Sacks (00:15:23): 6. Jason Calacanis (00:15:24): This is just simply not true. David Sacks (00:15:26): Never said it wasn't a big deal. Jason Calacanis (00:15:27): I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about the mids on Twitter. I never mentioned your name. David Friedberg (00:15:31): I think that, your point, Jay Kal, at the beginning, that this doesn't really seem to change anyone's point of view on the outlook. Your point of view sounds like it's the same as it was a week ago. Saks, your point of view is probably the same as it was a week ago. David Sacks (00:15:45): I think there are a couple of takeaways here. First of all, They've had polling of opinion in Russia for a long time. And like I said, when the polls go the way that the western sources want, no one questions their accuracy. Again, I don't know exactly the methodology, but Levata Center is an independent poster that western publications do trust. I hear them repeat it over and over again. And, you know, by their methodology, which I assume hasn't changed, I think Putin's popularity before the war is around 65%. Now they're showing it at about 83%. Jason, you may not like the war. And, you know, I certainly don't like Jason Calacanis (00:16:21): the war, but Yeah. David Sacks (00:16:22): Nobody likes the war, but I I think it is simply a fact that the Russian people have rallied around the flag, and they do support this war and and Putin as the leader. Now I do think he has egg on his face here from this Progression uprising. In terms of did did I see this coming? No. I didn't have this on my bingo card. I don't think anybody else did either. However, did I know who Progogion is certainly? I mean, I've been tracking Progogion statements since around February. He's been vocally criticizing the Ministry of Defense specifically Shoigu and Jirasimov and increasingly insubordinate, and you could argue even seditious ways. I'm really kind of surprised in a way that he wasn't dealt with before this. And I'm sure that the Kremlin is kicking itself for probably not dealing with it sooner. But in terms of why he's still alive, I think that Putin had a really tough decision to make about you quashed this rebellion completely, which would have led to horrific images of, you know, violence potentially in Moscow or David Friedberg (00:17:22): Russians hurting Russians and David Sacks (00:17:23): Russians killing Russians. That might have actually led the the Russian front to question itself or collapse. So I think he did the expedient thing, which is he cut a deal. He got Lukashenko to help broker, and he cut a deal. And I think at the end of the day, I think that he made the cool headed decision that was in his and in Russian interest, which was to avoid this to getting to the point of a bloody violent insurrection. David Friedberg (00:17:48): Okay. Chamath, any, any point of view shift for you coming out of the pre goshen event of the last week on Russia, Ukraine? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:57): I mean, I don't wanna know how much he got paid to stop marching towards Moscow. Yeah. I Jason Calacanis (00:18:03): mean, it is like, I mean, it must have been Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:05): it must have been a lot. David Friedberg (00:18:08): Not bad for a guy that was what Putin's caterer a few years ago. Right? He started a catering business. Jason Calacanis (00:18:14): It's been 9 years in jail. David Friedberg (00:18:16): This guy's life. He's been 9 years in jail. Jason Calacanis (00:18:17): It's it's like the Sopranos. He went to jail for Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:19): 9 years for selling illegal hot dogs or something. 30. I mean, you can't make this. I just paid 1,000,000,000 of dollars to basically stop his paramilitary group from taking over 1 of the largest countries in the world. It's the largest. I mean, David Friedberg (00:18:31): nuclear arsenal in the world. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:33): It's a good fight. David Sacks (00:18:34): Just so just so you know who this guy is. I mean, he he really is the street thug that Putin is always accused of being He was a street thug. He did go to jail. He was one of these guys who came up in Russia as a businessman when to be a businessman, you you'd have to be so tough. Business man were getting murdered left and right. By gangsters, you almost have to be a gangster yourself. Apparently, he made some money in the supermarket chain business. And that led him to create a catering business, which brought him to Putin's attention, and he started catering for the Kremlin. He's sometimes called Putin chef. I don't think he was a chef himself. He was a guy who owned he owned the business, then from there, he was given the license to crate this PMC, this private, military corporation, Wagner Group. He wasn't the only founder of it. He had a co founder who was actually the military man behind it. But Wagner became this this group of mercenaries who do all sorts of business in Africa mainly where they are working on behalf of governments there to protect mineral resources oil wells, all David Friedberg (00:19:39): sorts of things. Jason Calacanis (00:19:39): Was a a Sopranos captain. Who would he be? Like, Philiatardo? Does, like, 20 years in jail comes out? David Sacks (00:19:44): I think it's sort of like John Gotti going against Michael Corleone. I think that Putin is sort of the very cold David Friedberg (00:19:51): Right. David Sacks (00:19:52): Rational guy with everything in his head who's very calculated and doesn't reveal much David Friedberg (00:19:57): Right. David Sacks (00:19:57): More like a Michael Corleo. And whereas I think that His emotional motion is emotional erratic. He's been saying these statements for months here, which I don't see how they Jason Calacanis (00:20:05): lose costly. David Sacks (00:20:06): Loose cannon. And the crazy thing though is is that what you saw on Twitter and social media was unrestrained glee really delirium. Over the idea that Progosian might topple Putin and become the custodian of Russia's thousands of nuclear weapons. And, you know, so my comment on this whole thing is be careful what you wish for. Why in the world would Americans want that, we'd be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. You know, I've been saying since the beginning of the war that this fantasy that Putin's gonna be toppled by a palace coup, you're gonna replace them with Navalny or something like that. We're gonna get Gorbachev 2.0. I said that was always unrealistic. And what you're much more likely to end up with is an even worse dictator or Jason Calacanis (00:20:49): Possible. Yeah. David Sacks (00:20:50): Or a hardliner. And I think that is what would happen if Ferguson had taken over. I think would have been much worse for the west the final point is what's the takeaway from here is I think this is gonna put more pressure on Putin to conduct the war in a more violent way I I know that people already think that the war is horrible and violent, but Putin has been criticized by hardliners on his right for basically making the war a special military operation instead of an all out war. And Provention, I think, expected to find more support among the sort of ultra nationalists in Russia and among the military who have been critical of Putin for waging the war in what they consider to be too half hearted or an incomplete way. They would like to see this declarer to be a war. They would like to see the full mobilization of Russian society And this is the problem that I see now is that I think Putin already knew, but this has to underscore for him that this war is existential for him personally. If he loses, it's the end of not only his regime, but probably his life in Russia. And I think he's gonna do whatever it takes to win this war. And I think you could see now over the next few months, a full mobilization in Russia, and I think that this could lead us to the next point of escalation in this war. That is if this Ukrainian counteroffensive actually is successful on some level. Right now, it is it is not succeeding. So there's no reason there's no reason for Putin to do that, but Speaker 3 (00:22:10): I guess. David Sacks (00:22:10): If if this counteroffensive succeeds, you will see the next level of escalation. David Friedberg (00:22:13): So, Saks, you did a great job stringing 6 points together. I think my key takeaway is which is now eighteen points you've made. So you can retire for the rest of the show. My key takeaway from your series of statements, however, is an important one, which is to watch the potential escalation, driven by Putin here. Any wrap up? Otherwise, I'm gonna move forward with this affirmative action. Jason Calacanis (00:22:34): You know, go ahead. Thinking about this, like, as a frame, his son, Zu, quote, the Supreme R of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. This is a a big mistake, and we need to make sure that we don't get into an a war with Taiwan and China. And China over Taiwan. So Okay. We have to avoid these things. And then that's Speaker 3 (00:22:53): what Saks and David Friedberg (00:22:54): I are in alignment. 72 Calacanis. We heard it here first. Let's move forward with peace. I can only hope that the conflict ends soon as I've always said. I realized over the last week how little I know about the Russian military conflict with Ukraine, and I appreciate Saks's contributions. Super helpful. I went to CAL UC Berkeley, 1997, fall of 97, and it was the last year that Cal had affirmative action admissions. And I remember at that time, there was a big case. A guy named Bockey was rejected by the University of California Davis Medical School. And he alleged reverse discrimination in 1974 and sued the University of California. And eventually, it became a landmark US Supreme Court case regions of the University of Calacanis, verse Pockey. And in 1995, the UC regents voted to eliminate affirmative action. So the year that I was at Cal, I think was the last year of affirmative action, admissions, and it's obviously been a pretty hot topic here in California for the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:00): past, you know, 25, 30 David Sacks (00:24:03): years, David Friedberg (00:24:06): This morning, the Supreme Court ruled on 2 separate cases regarding using race as an admissions criteria in college admissions. And the votes were 6 to 3 against affirmative action in the University of North Carolina case and 6 to 2 against affirmative action in the Harvard case. Katanji Brown Jackson recused herself because she previously served on Harvard's board of overseers, all the conservative as they're, you know, kind of characterized judges voted to strike down affirmative action and Aldi as their characterized liberal judges voted to keep it. Both of these cases were filed in 2014 by a group called Student fair admissions. And effectively, the court said that at Harvard, at UNC, the schools were systematically discriminating against Asian Americans and violation of civil rights laws by using, their race as a as a system for for profiling excluding and trying to be more inclusive of a more, diverse and racially diverse set of applicants. So, Timoff, I'd love your read, I guess, on the surprise or this was an accept expected case. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:13): I think Saxon, I mentioned this before, but I think we both expected this to happen. I think it's probably important to maybe set up a more practical explainer. Friedberg. So, Nick, if you wanna just throw up that image that I just sent you, we can sort of explain the genesis of the lawsuit. So what you can see here is admit rates into Harvard by race, ethnicity, but also by academic decile. Yeah. And so what it basically shows in a nutshell is an African American student in the 40th percentile of the academic index is actually more likely to get in than an Asian student at the 100th percentile. And so that at the core sort of David Friedberg (00:26:04): always be What do you that means that means that the Asian American student had better scores than 99% of other applicants and still didn't get in. Speaker 3 (00:26:15): Right. David Friedberg (00:26:16): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:18): So you have to go back. I think to 2003 when essentially what the Supreme Court said is like, look, we're gonna allow this affirmative action stuff to last roughly for another 25 years. But by that point, we expect that the work that needed to be done will have been done. Again, this is them saying this, not me. And so I think what today does is actually quite important, not just for what it means for universities, but also what it means for private enterprises. So just to take a second on this, I think what happens today is the pretty obvious stuff, which is that you have to change university applications. You have to change all of the admissions profiling, all of the stuff that you would normally do. You probably I'm not even sure if you can even have a box where you can declare brace, maybe you can or cannot. I don't even know. But all of that changes today. So then the question is, well, what's the 1st order derivative? What changes next? And I called someone who's a pretty well known, constitutional Supreme Court lawyer on this, and The next step is probably going to be around athletics based and legacy based admissions. So athletics based admissions are pretty obvious, which is you don't really have great grades, but you're really stupendous at a sport that's important to that school so then they let you in because they wanna compete in said sport for whatever reason. The legacy one is even more prickly, which is You're kind of a dummy, but your parents are rich and or went to the school before. And so then they let you in as well. And his thought on this is that those things will go away. Because if you can't use race based admissions to kind of balance the scales, then it'll become pretty quick where somebody launches a legacy based lawsuit or an athletic based biased lawsuit and wins that as well. So that's the 1st order derivative. So, you know, the thought David Friedberg (00:28:27): are those because those aren't constitutionally protected, whereas the quality based on race, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:35): but it becomes a huge headache for these schools. Right? And so you're gonna be fighting these admission standards constantly changing. And so if you're not gonna let, you know, a bunch of poor minority black and brown kids in, but you're letting in the sons and daughters of rich important people. I think that that's going to paint that school in a very bad light. Speaker 3 (00:28:58): So I think that's so Jason Calacanis (00:28:59): important to show off white. Typically white. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:01): Typically white. The one would say the great thing over the last couple of decades is there have been a lot of minorities that have gotten into these very elite schools, which means this their key would be the 1st generation that's eligible for legacy, but you're gonna wipe that away. So I think from a just a social stigma perspective, And I have a solution for this, which I'll get to at the end for those people. But so I think that's the 1st order derivative. The 2nd order derivative is now what lawsuits get launched and what are the implications for private companies, right? So right now, this affects any institution that receives federal funding. And that includes all the universities. So there's no private or public university really for a handful that don't take this money. So they'll all have to do this. But the really important question after that will be what happens if the companies like Apple or Facebook or Exxon who have race based programs to try to attract African American engineers or Hispanic, chemists, whatever whatever the program is that you wanna come up with, Will those get challenged and will those companies have to change? And my friend's thoughts on that were that, yes, that those would also change. And that's gonna have a really important impact on private enterprise and how they approach this stuff and how DEI stuff works. And frankly, downstream how ESG works because all these ESG checkboxes now, some of them will actually become illegal. Right? So I think the importance of decision can't be really understated. It's going to the changes will be slow, and then they'll be fast. They'll first touch higher ed, but then I think they'll touch private enterprise. And so I think it was a it was a very important decision in America that just happened. David Friedberg (00:30:46): Timoff, what is what is the right ethics and and values? I I mean, what do you guys I guess we could just do this around the table. Jacob, maybe you kick it off. Should we I mean, from your point of view, do you think that values should include racial diversity in admissions and universities. Jason Calacanis (00:31:06): Yeah. This is like the ultimate. David Friedberg (00:31:08): Or is the values about equality of opportunity for everyone regardless of race? Right? Jason Calacanis (00:31:13): You're asking the exact right question, I think. David Friedberg (00:31:16): That's what the world's greatest moderator, but, yeah, go ahead. Jason Calacanis (00:31:19): Doing a solid job so far. And this creates a lot of cognitive dissonance for people, right, because you you really want to believe that the world is a meritocracy. And, you know, if you were to take other pursuits in the world, you'd never say like we should let race, gender, age affect people's performance in the hundred yard dash or their their compensation at a company. Right? All of that should be based on achievement. And so there is a question on what achievements should be taken into account when you apply to a school. And it's pretty obvious. The legacy thing, you know, is, you know, a backdoor into these schools. But we want to feel like we're also making progress because, listen, the world has been unfair. The world was built on slavery, and our country has, you know, is only a 150 years past that. And civil rights act was, what, 19 64 or 65? Like, we've we've we really wanna see everybody achieve here. So I think you have to pause for a second and say, well, if the goal is you wanna see You know, black Americans perform better, and I think that's the the underlying concern here, and it is based on the legacy of America. Well, how do you do that? And I think we're looking way too far down in the educational pipeline. The solution here is really childcare. The solution here is nursery schools, pre k, elementary school education, and those things need competition, and that's where people fall behind. To be looking at this at the end of the academic journey is, I think, crazy. So You know, when I'm president, I'm gonna have 365 day a year, you know, childcare and pre k, and that's where we should if we really wanna try to make up for some wrongs, in the history of this country and try to have better outcomes we need competition in schools, which means probably breaking some of these unions and giving people vouchers and choice. And then we have to invest more in the earliest stages of education And I think everybody wants to see a better system here. Jason Calacanis (00:33:27): DEI to Chima's point is It is illegal to hire people based on race, gender, any of those criteria, obviously. And the DAI programs are trying to fill more applicants. So their goal typically in the way they don't break the law is to just try to, in their best cases find more applicants. But even that does feel like there's many times in life when, people will say things in corporate America. Like, we have too many white guys in these these positions. We need we cannot hire another white guy. So the reality of DEI that I've seen up close and personal when I was at AOL, I've told the story before. Somebody said to me, there's no way for us to make you an EVP you have to stay at SVP. And I said, why is that? Like, I'm doing all this EVP level work, and they said, because you're a white guy. And the entire company is white guys at EVP, and we cannot add another white guy there, but we'll just give you the same bonus compensation. So don't worry about it. And so there's all kinds of games being played here, but I think it's great that we're having this Right? It's a hard conversation for America David Friedberg (00:34:33): to happen. For me, the I I've talked about this in the past. I've always had concern when we make the shift away from equality of opportunity to equality of outcome. Because we all have this objective that we wanna see everyone have equal rights to success in some way in the United States. The question is at what point do you move beyond opportunity where everyone is given an equal opportunity in this country? To Speaker 3 (00:35:05): invest themselves in transforming David Friedberg (00:35:05): their own lives versus a equality of outcome where regardless of how much you do how much effort or your trials, you are given the same as everyone else. And that ends up looking a lot like socialism, and it's very concerning because I think it limits progress and opportunity for everyone. The real challenge with this particular topic is college admissions about outcome, or is it about opportunity? It's outcome in the sense that you spend 12 years going to elementary school and high school and working hard to get yourself into knowledge. So it's the outcome of all of that effort, and some people aren't given the opportunity to have success during those 12 years. And, you know, And it is an outcome. What do you think we should do? And it's an opportunity because it's about going to college because without having a great college cycle, you may have a more tougher time getting into a into the workforce. So it that is why it's a hard value question for me. I I I don't have a great answer on this, but I'm just pointing out it's it's a lot like the abortion argument. Where both sides have some value Speaker 3 (00:36:12): oriented point of view that feels like it's negating the other person's point of David Friedberg (00:36:18): view But at the end of the day, they're they're both coming from either this as an opportunity or it's an outcome decision, and that's what makes it so challenging. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:25): The National Bureau of Economic Research did a study in 2019 that they published. And what they found was that 43%. So 43 43% of white students admitted to Harvard were athletes or legacy students or children of faculty and staff or had a relative that were donors to David Friedberg (00:36:49): the school. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:51): 43%. Wait. It's regged. And then they found on top of that that 75% of those white students admitted from those 4 categories would have been rejected if they had been treated as a normal applicant. So I think for all the people that are looking at all the black and brown kids that may not get into a place harvard. If you don't look at these other categories, it is a loo it's a bit of a gross injustice, quite honestly. Speaker 3 (00:37:16): So I think that Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:17): these institutions have to evolve. And if you're gonna be forced to be meritocratic, then actually be meritocratic. And by the way, I actually am fine with legacies and donors, but I think what should happen is you should just publish a rate card and you should make it hyper transparent. And so I love it. For the rich guy who's got an idiot son or daughter, let's just be upfront and honest with everybody. It costs $50,000,000 to get into Stanford. It costs $80,000,000 to get into Harvard. We all know these numbers, so we should just publish them. You should pay the price and be done with and for Harvard and Stanford and Yale and all these schools, having an extra 10 or 20 dummies, but an extra 2 or 3000000000 may be a reasonable trade but at least it would be transparent and fair. David Friedberg (00:38:00): Right. This is an important free market question as well because these are private institutions. They're privately funded. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:06): Not if they take federal dollars or not. David Friedberg (00:38:08): Agreed. Yes. But if they take federal dollars, they're not. And then it becomes a government process. It's government influence. It's a state school. All those is there a separate category here just like country clubs or any private membership club where the members of the club get to decide who they want to admit to the club? And is that un American? And should the Supreme Court and should our Constitution have a role in defining how private institutions make decisions about who gets No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:34): Harvard could absolutely return all the federal funding, the 1,000,000,000 of dollars a year they get. That's totally reasonable, then they decide to just focus on legacy admits. That's totally reasonable. It's within their rights. Jason Calacanis (00:38:45): Saks. Right? We gotta get Exactly. David Friedberg (00:38:47): I know that I know that you used up your quote your speaking quota already. David Sacks (00:38:50): Well, yeah, I didn't wanna I didn't wanna butt him. Speaker 3 (00:38:52): I didn't give him 4 Jason Calacanis (00:38:53): of my give him 4 of my points. I went here. I talked one David Sacks (00:38:55): last second. David Friedberg (00:38:55): You get 4 of Jake Health minutes. Go ahead. Jason Calacanis (00:38:57): I give you 4 minutes. David Sacks (00:38:58): So, yeah, 22 points, I guess. So on the legacy thing, I agree with Chamath that we should get rid of it. It's not meritocratic. I think that if they did publish a rate card that would be more honest, but there'd be too embarrassed and ashamed to do that. But I think making that argument exposes the hypocrisy of it I've already told my kids I'm not helping them get into college, so they're gonna have to do it on their own. And so, look, I think the legacy thing. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:21): By the way, that's the best gift you can give kids. Yeah. That that perspective. Jason Calacanis (00:39:25): Sorry. Go ahead, Sykes. I didn't mean to interrupt. David Sacks (00:39:26): So that's that's point number 1. Fully agreed on on the legacy thing. With respect to the decision itself, that Sorry. Can can David Friedberg (00:39:32): I just clarify that? Do you believe that the legacy thing should be, like, in federal law? I mean, is that a government thing? Or do you think that that's how those institutions should behave? Cause those are different. I mean, I'm asking, are you suggesting that the law should be involved, that the government should be David Sacks (00:39:47): don't know if it's a legal thing because I don't know how to implement that law, but, I think it's something they should stop doing one way or another. Maybe it should be a law, but I think it should stop So I think that's point 1. David Friedberg (00:39:55): The legacy thing for private for private membership. So just let me just double click on that. Do you think that should extend private membership clubs, like country clubs as well that they shouldn't be allowed to decide who they let in and don't let in. What makes it different that it's Harvard? Is it because it's education? Versus any other private membership book? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:12): Because it takes federal funding. It takes taxpayer money. You and I should not pay Yep. For some person to be able to get into a school they don't deserve to get into just because their Speaker 3 (00:40:23): parent went there or just because their parent wrote a Jason Calacanis (00:40:23): check, that's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:26): unreasonable. David Friedberg (00:40:27): And if they don't take federal funding? David Sacks (00:40:29): These schools take so much federal funding of their quasi public institutions, even the private ones. David Friedberg (00:40:34): So that the distinction. That's the distinction for you just to be clear. David Sacks (00:40:37): Yeah. And, also, there is a strong meritocracy opportunity argument on this. And I think it's why that whole parents college admissions scandal was was such a big deal is that for a lot of people in this country, the ability to have your kids advance themselves by being the first to get into college or go into college or going to a better college. That is a big part of creating opportunity in this country. So for people to try and defraud Speaker 3 (00:41:04): that, I think, created a huge backlash. David Sacks (00:41:04): So, look, I think that the legacy thing just needs to end one way or another. I don't know exactly what the right legal implementation is. Jason Calacanis (00:41:16): I have two questions for the panel. Number 1, should you be able to say by geography, hey, listen, we're Harvard, or we're Stanford, we we wanna have a representation of people from around the world we're gonna, you know, have the top 3 students from each country or, you know, or by population. However, you do you know, mathematically come in. So a little bit of geography, because I did hear from one of these coaches that cost, like, 6 figures to get your kids into the college, They said the best thing you can do is, like, move to Kentucky. You know? And then Harvard and Stafford are looking to get a certain number of students from each state. I don't know how true that is, but they said that's like one of the the the top ways to do it. And then Well, do Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:55): you remember, Jason, just to build on your point? I don't know if you guys remember, but a few years ago, the the in fashion thing to do was to learn to play squash. And I remember all these parents telling me that And they had kids that were older than my kids, and they were, they were hiring full time squash coaches because apparently squash was like some angles. Yes. There's all angle shots. Speaker 3 (00:42:16): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:17): I think, like, stop with the angle shooting, guys. Yes. The gun should go off. You should run the race, and your time is your time you should go to whatever the best school is that you deserve to get into based on your academic ability. Now going back, the big Speaker 3 (00:42:30): problem, and I think, Jason, you really nailed it on the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:34): head Trying to fix it with affirmative action Speaker 3 (00:42:37): at the university is still quite unfair in the sense that there are so Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:37): many black and brown kids I think with tons of potential that don't even get there. And so the real question is what are you doing at the grade school and at the high school and at the preschool? So that you actually get more of these kids to the starting line because fixing it when they're 18, I think, is a little too late. Jason Calacanis (00:43:00): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:01): Right? Fixing at Michigan, 3, 4, and 5 years old, that's when they deserve and need all the help in the world. Jason Calacanis (00:43:07): 2 years old. David Sacks (00:43:08): That's why we need school choice. We need charter schools. We need to break the monopoly that the unions have over Speaker 3 (00:43:13): the schools David Friedberg (00:43:13): running it, running it Speaker 3 (00:43:13): for their own David Sacks (00:43:14): benefit, enough ideas. Enemy. If you define institutional racism as conditions that trap people and conditions of poverty across generations, I'd say the abysmal quality of our public schools Or it's number 1. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:43:29): Number 1, 2, and 3. Speaker 3 (00:43:29): And David Sacks (00:43:29): the reason is because there's no competition and the unions run it for their own benefit. Then how much do they shut down these schools for? In California because they didn't wanna work because they're afraid of Jason Calacanis (00:43:38): Don't know. Don't see the c wire. We just gotta label. David Friedberg (00:43:41): God. Beep it out. Jason Calacanis (00:43:41): We're gonna beep it out. We're gonna beep it out. David Sacks (00:43:44): That was not for the benefit of kids, and it wasn't medically necessary. That was a benefit they saw for themselves. David Friedberg (00:43:49): Yeah. Take out, you come you come from a family, yep, that were members of unions because they worked for fire for police. Is Speaker 3 (00:43:58): that right? David Friedberg (00:43:59): Yeah. We speak negatively about the effect of the teachers' unions on our public education system. And it Speaker 3 (00:44:04): I I I think it's absolutely correct. But how do you share David Friedberg (00:44:04): the point of view from the other side? If you're a teacher and you're a member of the union and the union takes care of you, what's the argument? Jason Calacanis (00:44:17): Yeah. Sure. David Friedberg (00:44:18): To say, This union is damaging public education and the teacher that's working in the union and a member of the union says, this is necessary for my livelihood to protect me for my benefit. Jason Calacanis (00:44:29): Help us David Friedberg (00:44:30): share the point of view because we all have the strongly held point of view that the unions are destroying and eroding public education. People Jason Calacanis (00:44:36): have the right people have the right to form unions. But what we all do is we are forced to be consumers of one educational product because of how we pay taxes. We pay taxes in. I think in my in California, we each pay $16,000 into the educational system. And so if you're a parent, you should get that 16 k back and be able to choose what you do with it. So there's competition. So the unions can have protection, but they're still should be competition for these services. And I I I think there there are 2 separate issues. Yeah. There's one other thing, which is I just wanna give a shout out to a nonprofit that I support called Smash Academy Smash.org. It's done by, Mitch and Friedberg Kapoor. The from, Mich Kapoor founded Lotus 123. If you're, under the age of forty, you might not know him. And what they do is they realize that a lot of the students who do get into good colleges, it turns out Speaker 3 (00:45:33): a lot of Jason Calacanis (00:45:33): the black and brown students, they get accepted, and they're behind in math. And so what Smash has done is they have a 3 year program, and I go speak at it sometimes, and and I donate money to it. And I encourage you to do the same. They have this intensive summer program. So before you go to college, Chamath, if you were one of those students, you know, you might get into college and then they drop out or even worse, they switch from a STEM degree to a non stem degree Speaker 3 (00:45:59): Mhmm. Jason Calacanis (00:45:59): Because they're 2 years behind on STEM or a year behind on STEM. And so the the Kapoor has found this like little opportunity to kinda catch people up. And I think that's what we have to do. We have to address as much earlier and not put a Band Aid on it. Yeah. And in the system, the the Ivy League system, you know, needs to Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:18): Well, it's not just copies. David Friedberg (00:46:19): Right? I want I'm Jason Calacanis (00:46:20): not sure. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:20): It's not just pick on Harvard, but it's like it's Jason Calacanis (00:46:22): like all the state schools. Lead institutions, which we talk about. Institutions. Okay. All institutions. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:26): That receive federal funding. Jason Calacanis (00:46:28): They need to take a deep look in the mirror and say, are we doing the best thing first assigned? The second question I had for the panel was David Friedberg (00:46:33): Well, I'm not giving you a point here, by the way. But, yeah, Jason Calacanis (00:46:36): But our pure academics, the best way to accept people into a college, or should there be some blend of it, like, putting sports aside, because that's an obvious one. But, you know, is there's academics, but then there's also creativity. You know, if you you might be terrible on your SATs or standardized tests, and you might be an incredible virtualist or pianist. So I think what is the criteria and making that criteria fair is what we all want, and it feels tremendously unfair. David Friedberg (00:47:01): My point of view is if the government is funding these schools, then the government certainly has to have a point of view on what's the reasonable model for admissions. The government's not funding the schools. I love a diversity in a marketplace. I love having different schools, having different admissions criteria, that allow different people to find their path through different institutions. To your point, Juilliard does not care perhaps as much what you did on, you know, your SAT and chemistry. And art schools do not care as much how Speaker 3 (00:47:35): well you did David Friedberg (00:47:40): in math. And STEM schools don't care whether or not you want an art competition. And I think that that's the important thing that we need to preserve We need to preserve optionality for institutions to define what sorts of individuals they wanna try and recruit and progress and frame and get ready for the workforce and the path in life that they then choose versus trying to create a cookie cutter model for what the government says, it's fair for everyone. And as much as we can take government funding out of these institutions and out of these systems and give them the freedom, To set their own admissions criteria and create differential educational systems, I think that's gonna create the best diversity of a workforce And I'm I would kind of be more excited about that sort of an institutional system than one that is standardized by the government. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:30): You know why that'll never happen? Because the profit motive of these universities is really to be shadow organizations for their endowments. And the thing with endowments is that the people that work there very much want to get paid and behave like profit generating organizations. And I think the Speaker 3 (00:48:50): issue is that if their sole job was to really fund Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:00): the operational expenses of the university, then the endowments would be run very differently, right? Like take again, I just looked up on the internet, but Harvard has about the operating expenses are roughly $5,500,000,000 a year, but the revenues are about and a half $1,000,000,000 a year. Right? So if instead you had to basically fund, you know, there was essentially no revenue per se, right? There's there was very little tuition and you didn't take any federal funding, you'd have to come up with $5,000,000,000 a year. So you just basically take that as a draw from your endowment. The endowment would be run very differently. It would be a don't lose money endowment that would generate Very low vol returns. I think the problem with that is that that's not how the endowment at Harvard works. They wouldn't necessarily make risk seeking investments in things like private equity and hedge funds and venture capital. And to the extent they did, they would just make much fewer or much, much smaller or both. So I think what you're saying could be possible, but the problem probably the endowments at these universities. David Friedberg (00:50:04): Okay. Well, if I $53,000,000,000 Jason Calacanis (00:50:06): for your Harvard's endowment now. So Yeah. It would be 10%. Can anyone tell me David Friedberg (00:50:11): who the largest real estate owner is in San Francisco? You snuck looking in on the Internet. Jason Calacanis (00:50:16): Oh, no. I know. I know. It's that art institute. David Friedberg (00:50:19): The Academy of Art University. Jason Calacanis (00:50:20): I knew this because they, kept buying things and using them, I think, usually. David Friedberg (00:50:25): She she used all the profit over the years to buy more real estate, and she accumulated the largest real estate portfolio. Yeah. Speaker 3 (00:50:31): Yeah. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:50:31): In San Francisco. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:32): Anyway, sorry. Who is she? David Friedberg (00:50:33): The the founder, I forgot her name. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:35): This is a for profit university or a private? Or, I mean, a a nonprofit university? David Friedberg (00:50:40): Yeah. There's a lot of artists that come out of Academy Art, and they work in a lot of different industries, including industrial design, including animation. Like, this is actually what Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:48): I'm saying. Is it like risdi, or is it like actually an art school? David Friedberg (00:50:51): Oh, no. It's a great art school. Yeah. Academy of art. Anyway, let's keep going. So look, speaking of stem, making a big pivot away from art, to AI. Couple big news items, you know, the AI frenzy continues here in Silicon Valley. All the way from early to growth stage funding through to M and A events. We saw this week data bricks which is a privately held data infrastructure company announced that they were acquiring Mosaic ML for $1,300,000,000, that headline number is based on a cash and stock purchase price where the value of the stock that was being used to acquire MosaicML was based off of the last round's valuation for Databricks, which was $38,000,000,000 from a fundraising that they did in 2021, arguably, the valuation should be lower and the overall purchase price could be considered lower, but that's besides the point. Mosaic ML, as you guys may remember, as a company I mentioned, a number of episodes ago led by, the founder of Nirvana, which was an early AI business that was acquired by Intel and then he started MosaicML, and he offers open source models. And I shared the performance data of their most recent announcement on the show a few weeks ago, you know, there's rumors. I don't have any confirmed reports, but there's rumors that MosaicML saw their ARR grow from 1,000,000 to $20,000,000 since January. There was other rumors that said they were only at 6,000,000 of revenue. Regardless, Databricks is paying a pretty hefty premium. And I think it begs the question, what do data infrastructure, database, companies, end up looking like in the future if AI has to become part of the core infrastructure of every enterprise, and this is creating a big shift. So Saks, as our enterprise, software, investor, expert. Speaker 3 (00:52:44): Maybe you can share with us what this means for the sector that does this David Friedberg (00:52:51): buoy excitement for AI infrastructure start ups. Does this change the investing landscape? Is it just reinforcing what folks are already doing? David Sacks (00:53:01): I think it's a a reinforcement. I mean, the space is probably the hottest where you're talking about, like, AI infrastructure for enterprises. I think it's probably the hottest space right now in in venture land. We actually looked at this deal. We had a small allocation. They're next round. They had a term sheet for a series b. Emergence was actually gonna lead it. And David Friedberg (00:53:21): This is Mosaic ML. David Sacks (00:53:23): Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if it's supposed to be telling you all this, but Jason Calacanis (00:53:27): Yeah. So it's now the bridge. Yeah. Go ahead for it. Yeah. So I'm totally fine. David Friedberg (00:53:30): Great. This is why people see it David Sacks (00:53:31): in. Breaking Jason Calacanis (00:53:32): news? Right? David Sacks (00:53:33): Then a term sheet from emergence to raise 50,000,000 at 400 posts. Speaker 3 (00:53:38): Wow. David Sacks (00:53:39): And we yeah. And we were gonna have a small allocation in that And as I recall, the valuation was somewhere around 30 to 35 times ARR actually is not that insane for a very fast growing company in a hot space. So that implies about 10,000,000 of ARR. I don't remember the exact figure, but I think it's that's sort of the ballpark but growing very, very quickly. I mean, up from, like, 1 or 2 at the beginning of the year. Right. Speaker 3 (00:54:04): So David Sacks (00:54:04): I actually understand why someone would wanna acquire or invest in this company. Like I said, I think we wanted to invest. And while we were sort of, you know, trying our best David Friedberg (00:54:16): to get say anything when I talked about him on the show a few weeks ago. You were just sitting there mom's a word? David Sacks (00:54:20): Or Actually, I knew that this deal was was basically in the works because the founder called us up, and he had already promised us a small allocation around, Naveen did. And he called up and said, actually, I've got this deal. So we're putting the round on hold. And so I didn't think I should say anything because Right. Obviously, it was still ongoing. But, yeah, we we knew about this deal that was kinda coming down the pipe. I didn't know for sure that it would happen, but but, yeah, we we heard it was in the ballpark of this, like, $1,200,000,000 $1,300,000,000 number. Which, like you said, because data bricks is a private stock. Maybe it's only Speaker 3 (00:54:55): half that David Sacks (00:54:55): or 750 or something like that. Who knows? Still a great deal. But, you know, a lot of people are saying it's a crazy deal. I don't think it's a crazy deal because before this happened, after Naveen signed the term sheet, for the series b, an investor came over the top to invest in a $700,000,000 valuation. Wow. So people were kinda going crazy. Now I don't think that's necessarily a rational behavior. I think that's more of evidence of a mania going on, but I think that Woody got is obviously a fantastic deal. And I think what it's evidence of is that these big enterprise infra companies are gonna try and build an end to end tool chain here. And I think Mosaic ML had a very, very important part of the toolset, which is training up these models basically maximizing GPU efficiency because GPUs are basically the scarce item right now. We have a GPU shortage. And it's probably you're not gonna get better for a year or 2 if that. So this is a very important part of the of the stack and think it's probably a smart acquisition for both Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:55:58): It seems to me, David Friedberg (00:55:59): I mean, remember Snowflake, which competes with Databricks also acquired Neva, which was founded by one of my colleagues, a guy I work with, and and new really great guy, Sreedhar, for a $150,000,000 last month, that deal was announced. And the pattern recognition that seems to emerge here is that if you're in the data infrastructure business, it seems like it's becoming critical to level up that it's not just about storing and moving and manipulating data, but the interpretation of data through models and the tooling to build those models becomes critical component of all of these toolkits that these software companies have to provide to their enterprise software companies. And it's a big leveling up that's necessary which seems to me there's other companies out there like them that are also going to need to strap on tools like this to make themselves competitive in this market scape, which means that there are more acquisitions still to come. Yeah. Jam up, Jay Cal, if you guys agree or have a different point of view. Jason Calacanis (00:56:58): Looking at it, it's a it's a big number, the headline number, but I agree with Saks. The the actual numbers have the number. So if it was, you know, if you look at the number of engineers they had, based on LinkedIn data and pitch book data, probably 60, 70 employees, 80 employees, and then 40, 50 of them are engineers. So that puts it at $30,000,000 per engineer. And that's one way to look at these acquisitions. And I think, you know, probably 3 to $10,000,000 per engineer for, like, really high end engineers is more of the going price. But if this is half that amount, because they bought it with monopoly money. In other words, their 2021 price for their company. It's great. And I think you nailed it, Friedberg. What's happening is This layer of, natural language on top of any service, whether it something as simple as Yelp or something as complicated as a giant financial company with tons of transaction data being able to talk to it and understand it and then have your machine learning team build tools so business owners don't have to hire data scientists. The actual business leaders can talk to the data and get back answers, or just say, Hey. Tell me about our customers. How have they changed over the year? And then, hey. That's pretty interesting. Tell me more about our customers. And, you know, how are they reacting to these 3 new products? And you will get back in intelligence that previously was unable to be accessed. And so I was, I was just at Sequoia yesterday with a or 2 days ago, with the latest 7 graduates from our accelerator, we bring them to meet with Saks and his team. We bring them to meet with Sequoia. And when we were at Sequoia, I realized that of the 7 companies, 4 of them, would not have been possible before these machine learning API eyes were available and open ais, but one, there are now, in the companies I'm talking to, they're they're trialing Friedberg on average 678 language models before they pick 1, and they're not picking OpenAI every time. Putting that aside, these businesses were not possible before this technology was introduced and available via API in the last 6 to 12 months. And I think there's a bunch of businesses that economically would not work that now work. I can give one example. Jason Calacanis (00:59:22): There are countless meetings that are recorded over, Zoom. Right? Think like a local school board well, nobody could ever make a database of all the discussions going on at local school boards. And then analyze on them. But now because all of those are saved, on Zoom and they occur on Zoom and they're available for public record, you can ingest every single one of those. And then build a Bloomberg terminal of every discussion happening at every school board, everywhere in the United States, and do that with Chamath GPT or any of the language models and then get really great insights from it. That would be too costly to transcribe at, you know, a $100 every hour or 2 and normalize, let alone to analyze. And so I'm looking at businesses as an investor, what I'm looking at right now is businesses that were previously not economically viable before this technology, and then that are now economically viable. If that makes sense and, I'm I'm just looking at each company under that lens right now, and I'm finding a lot of interesting startups. They seem to have that in common. David Friedberg (01:00:28): Shamoff, similar news supporting this very quick evolution further up the value stack. So we were just talking about these companies that are, providing effectively tooling as infrastructure a little bit more up the value stack is, inflection AI, which was started by Mustafa Saliman and Reid Hoffman, who was a co founder while Mustafa was working with him as a venture partner at Greylock, but Mustafa, as you guys know was the co founder of DeepMind, which Google bought for $400,000,000, really created the core of Google's AI capability and is considered one of the kind of preeminent thought leaders and entrepreneurs built that has built in this space. He started inflection And the business just announced today that they've just closed a $1,300,000,000 funding rounds led by Microsoft, Reed Hoffman, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, Nvidia, with an intention of building the largest AI cluster in the world, 22,000 Nvidia H100, as part of, the build out, but I think you've shared Chamath historically that these big funding rounds for these AI businesses that haven't necessarily even launched the product yet Don't make sense. Is this still, you know, kind of reinforce your point and, you know, what's your read on on the inflection funding? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:48): Well, The list price of an H100 is about 30 odd 1000, but the street price, so it's very hard to get it. So if you go to the if you go to, like, eBay and try to buy an H100, it's 40 or 45,000. So if you have a 22,000 cluster of H100, that's about 900 $1,000,000 of CapEx. Just that. And then, you know, the all the sundry stuff around it, call it roughly plus or minus a $1,000,000,000. And so of the 1 and a half 1,000,000,000 they've raised, let's say a 1,000,000,000 goes into building this 22,000 node cluster, you have 500,000,000 for SG and A. And so what that leaves behind is basically 2 and a half 1,000,000,000 of enterprise value for their chatbot. So I don't know. I mean, I've never used pie. Has any any of you guys used it? Do you guys know if it's good? Jason, I'm sure you've experimented with it. Have you experimented with it or not Jason Calacanis (01:02:42): Which one? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:44): Pie? That's what they're Yeah. That's what their chatbot is called pie. Yeah. I think it's like a pie.com or something. Jason Calacanis (01:02:51): I think I did try it once, and it was not memorable. David Sacks (01:02:57): Oh, Poe? You mean Poe? Jason Calacanis (01:02:58): No. Not Poe. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:59): No. No. No. That's forum. David Sacks (01:03:00): That's cool. Jason Calacanis (01:03:01): This is my personal one where you talk to it and they say, Hey, how are you doing? Their concept is like you have this one relationship So it's like one chat thread. It's not kind of how I like to work with the I use threads and I share threads with my team. So I I'm not a fan of this, like, you have one with one assistant. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:18): I think the thing is it's interesting to note that very rarely when you invest money in the 1,000,000,000 of dollars, does the CapEx or purchase of one specific form of equipment take up literally 25% of the enterprise value. That's atypical, at least for a startup. If you're buying a fixed plant of a slow cash for generating business, then maybe, you know, a bunch of that has some value. So that that's what stood out to me. And all of these things, Friedberg is, again, increasingly, this is all just a pass through to Nvidia. It's probably in some ways a pass through to the big cloud providers. So whenever I see a chipmaker and a provider come together to put in a lot of money. It's essentially round tripping cash. They're giving them money, which then they use to buy their services and then, you know, you just, you're just pumped in revenue. So I hope it works. Keep on giving the best, but, you know, that's the David Friedberg (01:04:14): difference we just talked about where the infrastructure companies that are increasingly looking like more commodity service providers if they don't uplevel with AI tooling, acquiring Mosaic, ML, and acquiring Neva, do you think that that's an indication of more M and A to come And if so, doesn't that justify the increased funding, the increased valuation, and the activity that we're seeing in the early stage with some of these business David Sacks (01:04:45): I think for sure there's gonna be more M and A. And I think the valuations will be high, not because these companies have a lot of revenue yet, but because it's very strategic for these big infra companies to assemble. The end to end tool chain. David Friedberg (01:04:57): I think we should explain to folks what that means. Enterprise software companies provide software to businesses that are not traditionally technology companies. They also provide software to other businesses to help them build new tools, to help them build out their business. An enterprise software company can sell to United Airlines or consult a Visa or consult a Ford, and that software can then be used by that company to build tools that are powered by the database or powered by the data analytics or increasingly powered by AI tools. And so they can build AI applications and AI capabilities into their business, whether it's United Airlines or Expedia or Visa or whomever. And that's why this these these companies are so critical in terms of enabling the transformation of industries with AI tooling and and why you know, getting AI tooling into their capability set is so critical right now. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:47): It's important to note though, guys, that whenever you have the emergence of a new sector, Sachs, I think you are right that M and A goes up, but it tends to be that the valuations go down. Peak M and A froth happens at the beginning of cycle when hype is at maximum and facts are at the minimum. And that's okay. You know, that's good for the startup. It's marginally negative for the existing shareholder of a large company. And then over time, it gets itself sorted out when the facts are more obvious. So, you know, it's kind of like you guys remember when the optical networking craze, oh my god, had these multi $1,000,000,000 acquisition. And where did they go? They went, they went nowhere. They just disappeared. David Sacks (01:06:29): We actually have, like, a market map that we did that I think can explain this concept of a end to end tool train. So this is a slide that our growth team shout out to Mike Robinson and Kimickaburra. They put this together in preparation, and part of the investment memo for Mosaic. And I think to explain the point you are kinda making Threberg, like, why do enterprises need the services one really simple way of thinking about it right now is that every enterprise would like to roll out its own chat GPT. They would all like to have their own internal version of chat GPT where they employees, for example, could ask questions and get answers. That's where all the action is right now. Every enterprise would buy that tomorrow if it existed in the way Speaker 3 (01:07:14): that we Jason Calacanis (01:07:14): want to write. Saks. Yeah. Give an example. David Sacks (01:07:17): The idea would be that, you know, any employee in the company could ask questions to the AI model the way you can ask chat, TPD questions, and it would have all the enterprises data. And it would also understand their permissions and have all the security settings so that only the right field could get the right information. That's the kind of intelligence they want to unlock. I mean, there are lots of other use cases Jason Calacanis (01:07:35): as well, but David Sacks (01:07:36): that's a really simple one. Jason Calacanis (01:07:37): A corporate oracle. So I can if I'm in HR, I can ask, hey, tell me about our, you know, compensation. Yeah. David Sacks (01:07:43): Totally co pilot for the CEO. I think there's gonna be lots of these. I think the sales team's gonna have their own co pilot. I think the marketing team's gonna their own Copilot and Customer Jason Calacanis (01:07:51): support has it already. Yeah. David Sacks (01:07:53): Customer support will have it. And she just love their own Copilot. So there's gonna be a lot of these. But I think enterprises does want one at the level of the, call it, the company intranet where employees could just ask it questions. And but they do not wanna share their data with OpenAI. That's very clear. They wanna roll out their own models. So the question is, well, how do you roll out your own model? And what the shows here is the different piece of the stack that you have to have. So first, You capture all of your data. You gotta label it to be classified right for the model. You gotta store it somewhere. Then you need to get one of these open source AI models off the shelf. And there's a probably the most prominent site for this called a hugging face, which already has something like, I think a $2,000,000,000 valuation. That's another, like, really crazy valuation to ARR multiple, but hugging face has kinda all the open source models very active. And so people grab the latest open source model that's the best fit for them, and then they need to train that model, and that's really where Mosaic played. And there's a ton of activity right now in this last mile problem of how do you customize a model to make it suitable for your use, whether you're an enterprise, whether you're a customer service team, whether you're a SAS app, that wants to incorporate AI capabilities into your app. That's where the all the action is right now is customizing these open source models that then leads to basically be able to get the right inferences. And there's a sort of a separate category around hardware that is, you know, we don't play there. But this is kind of the end to end tool chain. I think these big tech companies are gonna be racing to put this whole David Friedberg (01:09:25): thing together. To fill it out. Yeah. Yeah. And that's so there'll be more m and a as your prediction, which means more startup valuation Boome, more capital deploying. There was a, couple of articles this week. And, Chamath, this is your red meat. As much as Ukraine is, Sachs's, because you've talked about this at length. Social messaging startup investigation found 95% of its claimed 20,000,000 users were actually fake. This is a company that in June of 2021, raised a $170,000,000 Series C at evaluation of over a $1,000,000,000, making it one of the many proclaimed unicorns of Silicon Valley led by SoftBank Vision Fund. The investor who was sitting on the board said, that they didn't know if, we've ever given an investment term sheet to a start up faster than SoftBank gave to IRL at the time. At the same time, different story, but in the same week, a company called, Baiju, which you have talked about in the past, was once valued at $22,000,000,000. And claim to be India's most valuable startup is in turmoil as shareholders and creditors are seeking to dilute the founder, and he's rushing to find capital and raise a $1,000,000,000 to try and buoy the company, process 1 of the investors, mark the company's valuation down to 5.1000000000, so down 75%. I guess the question is overall, are we still seeing this kind of turmoil in Silicon Valley from dessert era funding of startups, in stark juxtaposition to the excitement and the frenzy around AI. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:10:53): It's a characteristic of the exact same thing, meaning If you replaced AI with crypto, it's the exact same thing. If you replaced AI with co working. If you replaced ai with, I don't know, synthetic biology, if you replaced ai, with SAS. This has all happened before. I think it's important to identify what this is. What this is is that there aren't enough checks and Calacanis, and there are fundamentally people who are deeply inexperienced who are in the wrong job And in the few key moments where the venture capitalist is supposed to add value, That person is ill equipped and unprepared. Why? Because they were the VP of X, Y, and Z at some startup, and they got hired through no fault of their own into a dynamic because these venture funds wanted to raise larger and larger amounts of money. So what happens? You don't even know how to ask the basic questions, or even more insidiously, you don't have the courage to say the hard thing. And so these things happen that are frankly inexcusable. Right? So in the case of one of these companies, and I've mentioned this before, they approached us for financing. And when we asked for a data room, we got a Google Doc link to a spreadsheet. Now there's no reasonable world in which a company is that unsophisticated when it comes to understanding their business. Right? A data room should include an enormous amount of operational and financial metrics that you can use to come to your own conclusion. So that you can present it transparently to the investor. The idea that boards wouldn't even hold these companies accountable is just a sign that the board members themselves are pretty fundamentally inexperienced people. And I think the thing that we do is a mistake is we say, oh, well, x, y, and z firm led this deal. Yeah. That may be true. But really what it means is that firm In a grab to get the money, hired some person that checked some boxes, put them in the job, that person led around, and there just wasn't any infrastructure to either teach that person or then that person to have the courage to hold the founder responsible. That will play out in AI as well. It's just that we're at the beginning of the hype cycle, right, because we replace AI. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:29): Again, as I said, with any of these other things, we sat here a little bit hand ringing when we saw these crazy valuations for these NFT projects. Where are those now? Right? So you name it. This is about fundamentally inexperienced people doing a job that seems pretty easy from the outside, but in practical reality, there are only a few legends in our business Most people, and I think it was Shay Goldman that did the math on this. Most people do not know how to run these businesses well. Nick will find that fleet you can show. I think it's like 2 a half percent of all of the funds that are in pitch books. So over 800 of them have ever generated more than 3 and 2 funds. So this is a hard business. It turns out. You can't just wake up and be an investor. It turns out, and That's what we're finding. So I don't know. It's not very surprising in the end. None of this is surprising. Getting Jason Calacanis (01:14:21): Shamoff had a really good point in the middle there is that there is a generation of venture capitalists who were added during the boom, who were operators, but they've never been taught to have the discipline of capital allocators. And one of those key pieces of discipline is asking uncomfortable questions and doing uncomfortable diligence. And you can trust people, but you need to verify. That is a key part of the job You can trust the founders, but you have to verify that the data you have is correct. The fact that SoftBank did this at an incredible valuation and the person who did this deal never checked that the cons customers were real is, makes you unfit to serve in the job. And I will do diligence. And during that time period, Friedberg, I had many founders say to me, you're asking for more diligence than the lead. And this deal is closing, and we are oversubscribed. And I said, okay. And they said, okay. So you're not gonna not gonna require a decision. I said, oh, no. We require this diligence. We wanna see your, you know, very basic stuff, your bank statement, your P and L, We wanna talk to once you give us a list of your first thousand, give us a list of 500 customers from last month. We'll give you five numbers. We're gonna talk to 5 random customers. Like, people did not wanna do this stuff. We do that this work at our firm when we start to own 5, 10% of us, and we train our founders to do to be ready for proper diligence. All that diligence is happening now. Now in the early stages, there's not much to go on, but you can check stuff. During this period, people founders used the hot market to not participate in the due diligence process. And when you look at companies, A lot of times people will susan suspend disbelief. You know, this company, buys you. I don't know a ton about it, but it seems to have you know, like an educational app, like a company brilliant.org that Chamath and I are, in vet early investors in and Shamath incubated. Great. Jason Calacanis (01:16:16): Great business. And but then their business and their revenue seems to be based on a series of, like, Kuman, like, in person instruction. Oh, that's not a high gross margin business. Sorry. If you have to have a storefront, you're not a software business anymore. And so people started giving valuations and this is the 2nd part. I'll just wrap on this. People started giving valuations to these companies that were real world businesses that were low margin businesses direct to consumer, whatever it was, they suspended disbelief and they gave them valuations for high growth high gross margin businesses. And that was another mistake. And you put those 2 things together, not doing diligence, and then just misvaluing of actual assets, that's the cleanup work that's been that's going on right now, and it takes years. I mean, it took decades for them to pinch Bernie made off. It can take 10 years for these frauds to come out. There there was a guy who kept telling the SEC about Bernie Madoff. I think he was like 9 years since the first time he he let them know that the, you know, perfect returns were just not possible statistically. So it it takes time, but they're they're picking these, folks up everywhere. Doklang got picked up in Montenegro, you know, the guy from Luna. And it's gonna take a decade to clean up all of the fraud in our space. David Sacks (01:17:32): I think this was sort of mentioned by Jamoff, but I think it needs to be a bigger point, which is the influence of fund size on these decisions. I mean, crash funds are in the 6 to 700,000,000 range. So when we write a check, it's usually 10, 15,000,000 dollars, $20,000,000 check-in a series a company. That's like a big check for us. We're really gonna sweat that decision. For SoftBank, a 10 to $20,000,000 check in a $100,000,000,000 fund, which is what they had. It doesn't even make sense. It's a waste of their time. It's not even a rounding error. For them to basically make decisions. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:06): $2000 check for you. David Sacks (01:18:08): Yeah. Exactly. So for them, they had to write $200,000,000 checks to justify their time managing a $100,000,000,000. And so the mistake when they make a mistake is twenty times bigger than it should be. That should have been maybe a $10,000,000 mistake, not a $200,000,000 mistake, but their fund size forced them to basically write these gigantic checks, and they were writing them into companies that were effectively seed stage or series a companies. If it was into a growth stage company, I think that's fine. There's a lot more data, and there's a lot more customer references that you can check at a later stage company. By the way, the number one part of diligence, I'd say, for us, other than looking at metrics, which is anyone can do, is the off sheet references. Talking to customers from a list that you figured out yourself not from the company itself is probably the single most important qualitative part of of diligence. So I don't know what happened here, but Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:02): It's not stated explicitly, but I think it's important. David, you have credibility. So when you say something sacks, people listen because you have bonafides that are undeniable. Same thing with Jake House, same thing with Friedberg. I think, you know, and this may sound mean, but it's like most of these people are just X Y Z mid level VPs from a startup. And that's a great thing, but it's not necessarily gonna give you the gravitas, especially if that's not what you are forced to do to help build that company. And when push comes to shove inside of a boardroom or in the middle of diligence, There has to be conflict. I think it's a necessary feature of good decisions, and that conflict arises internally within your investment team, but it also has to come externally with the executives of the startup and with the CEO themselves because when you're prosecuting a good decision, it's unbelievable agree on a 100% of things. And there has to be certain things that are controversial. Otherwise, by definition, that company isn't really even pushing the boundary. So I just think that these are all skills that are poorly taught while you are building a business. It is not the reason why you should have been in charge of allocating $50,000,000 checks into companies. That is just crazy town. Jason Calacanis (01:20:17): I love your point, Sachs, though, about fund size dynamics, fun size dynamics are destiny. Right? It really is. And and the optimal fun size for venture is somewhere between 250,600,000,000 according to everybody who's been doing this for you know, more than a decade or 2 and who's successful, whether it's when Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:36): the costs are coming down. So as the input costs come down, whether it's for engineers and co pilots and and hardware and extraction layers, then theoretically greater outcomes should be generated with fewer dollars in which would again tell you that fund sizes should actually go down, not up, that the reason they go up is because you get paid an annual management fee. And so, obviously, the way to wait the way to make more money is to get 2% on a larger fixed number every year versus 2% on a smaller number. Or you know, for example, what we did was we were like, we're gonna go and hit grand slams. And so I traded off management fee in return for 30% carry, And that turned out to be literally a multibillion dollar smart decision because I gave up tens of 1,000,000 of dollars upfront for back end. Now the back end could have gone to 0, and maybe it still can't. So who knows? But, you know, most folks wouldn't do most folks take the sort of risk adjusted bet and say, you know what? I'll just take the 2% and I'll raise a 200,000,000 then a 500,000,000 then a 1,000,000,000 then a 2,000,000,000 overlap. Yeah. And they stack them all and they get the 2% and all of a sudden, the profits don't matter, which means the outcomes don't matter, which means the diligence is perfunctory. And it becomes a theatrical expose that you can use, you know, this sort of thin fig leaf you can point to LPs and say, we did our work here. Give us more money for this next fund. That's the rat race that the venture community is in, and it's gonna get played out in companies like IRL and BYJU'S and a lot of these AI companies, quite honestly. Jason Calacanis (01:22:07): Right. And the chickens have come home to risk for all the. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:09): This time is not different. Is is I think what I'm trying to say. This time is not David Sacks (01:22:13): Did you guys see there was some article that reported that fundraising for late stage funds is just like greater. Jason Calacanis (01:22:19): Dead. David Sacks (01:22:20): So Insight was trying to raise a $10,000,000,000 fund, and they've only been able to raise 2 according to this article. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:26): No. No. No. It was it was 22 down to 10, and of which they've raised 2. David Sacks (01:22:29): Okay. So 10%. And then Tiger was trying to raise 12. They cut it to 6, and then they can only raise 2. Jason Calacanis (01:22:36): Makes sense. Yeah. David Sacks (01:22:38): So the basically, that's like I whatever. 80 to 9% reduction. And size of these funds. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:22:44): I mean, we're out of the solver the sovereigns where they were going for this money are buying sports teams. They're like, you know what? Instead of tech, let's just buy sports teams. Jason Calacanis (01:22:51): And they're buying series a David Friedberg (01:22:53): And they're buying Manchester United and they're buying distressed portfolios. Yeah. And the But David Sacks (01:22:57): there's a huge crunch. There's a huge we've talked about it before, but there's a huge crunch in late stage financing. It's only get worse over the next 18 months. I asked Brad last week, like, how many of these army corps do you think there are out of the 1400 He said 30 to 40%. Yeah. I think he might be, you know, could be, look, out of 1400, I think it could be 700 or zombie quarters. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:17): I think it's at least 700. I think it's I think it's probably 60%. David Sacks (01:23:21): Yeah. And so then the other 40%, let's say, how many of them have a down round coming? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:26): I think 60% go to 0. Of the remaining 40%, half of them probably returned money. And then of the remaining half, Half of those maybe get 1a half x. And then you get a geometric distribution from there, which means the blended return of that entire stream of unicorns will be about 1.1x, but it'll be very massively distributed. David Friedberg (01:23:49): I think that is exactly right, Tamara. I, I would. Yeah. I mean, Jason Calacanis (01:23:52): when everybody's getting their money Except if you don't have diversification. Yeah. It's it's the I think the market is sending a very clear message, which is These Speaker 3 (01:24:01): So you said everybody's Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:02): getting no. No. No. Most people won't get their money. Jason Calacanis (01:24:04): Most people won't get their money back, but on average, it's gonna be one extra turn. Yeah. So it's not gonna be evenly distributed. Correct? David Friedberg (01:24:10): Well, I'm glad that the term zombie corn has held. Guys, we are coming up on our time. Do you guys wanna do science corner, or do you wanna, Jason Calacanis (01:24:19): Yeah. The 3 of us need to use the bathroom breaks. So go ahead and just I just if you could just go do it, we're gonna go take a leak, and we'll come back David Friedberg (01:24:27): and make a your latest joke. You know, I'm okay. I'm gonna wrap. So look, it's been great. Speaker 3 (01:24:32): It's been great being David Friedberg (01:24:33): your host. Jason Calacanis (01:24:34): He crushed it. So give us the science, Clinton. Give us the You don't just hug David Friedberg (01:24:37): me don't embrace me. You don't, you don't love my contributions. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:40): Frebert Friedberg, I actually I posted a clip of RFK talking about vaccines. I'd love for you to listen to it and actually give us the critique Jason Calacanis (01:24:48): Yes. I David Friedberg (01:24:49): will. Can we do an expedite? David Sacks (01:24:50): That's going viral right now. He did such a good job explaining his position on that. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:54): He did such a good job. David Friedberg (01:24:55): Yeah. Look, do you guys read the off it piece? I forward it to you. And I said, please read this. If you guys read that piece, I'll watch his clip, and let's talk about it next week. Is that cool? So office is at yeah. He is a vaccine scientist who RfK junior references often as someone that he met with and spoke with and says I caught him in a lie. And often basically said, here's exactly what happened. Here's the conversation. Here's the data. Here's the fact. Here's the science. And I would really, really, really encourage you guys to read that. Please. And then I'll watch his clip and, like, let's have a real kind of analytical conversation about statements that are good questions to and good things to interrogate and things that are being said that maybe aren't factually correct. And I think that we need to kind of really, as a service to ourselves and to people that listen to us, really do that work. So let's do that and come back and talk about it next week if that's cool. But I encourage everyone to read off it. He put it on substack Nick, we'll put the the link in the the the notes here. Let's definitely create it. Jason Calacanis (01:25:55): Continue. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:25:56): The dialogue continue. Exactly. Jason Calacanis (01:25:58): I think that's the most important. Speaker 3 (01:25:59): You Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:59): wanna talk about that certain senator that all of a sudden just basically gave us the Heisman? David Friedberg (01:26:03): No. We've had a lot of those, by the way. So let me just be clear. That's not the only Heisman we've received on the all in summit. I will say that the speaker list for the all in summit is looking fantastic. Jason Calacanis (01:26:16): We're gonna have we're David Friedberg (01:26:17): gonna have a great time and I'm really excited for the conversation. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:20): But you're saying some folks, Heisman does because of our support of RFK. David Friedberg (01:26:26): That did happen. And specifically the fact that usually Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:30): open minded. Jason Calacanis (01:26:31): Yeah. And then there were other folks who Speaker 3 (01:26:31): were insulted by things that were said about David Friedberg (01:26:35): them by Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:36): people on Speaker 3 (01:26:36): the show. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:37): So soft. Jason Calacanis (01:26:37): Do you David Friedberg (01:26:38): guys wanna hear about the the nanograft release that came out yesterday? Okay. I'll cover this one real quick. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:43): Wait. What are what about this, like, slow humber that we're all getting. What is that David Friedberg (01:26:46): all about? That's it. It's a slow humber. Exactly. Okay. Go go tell us. Speaker 3 (01:26:49): Well, are Jason Calacanis (01:26:50): you are you talking about, like, the new H3 EV, but it only goes up to fifty miles per hour? David Friedberg (01:26:55): What is that? Jason Calacanis (01:26:56): The new Humber, the new HV, you know, the David Friedberg (01:26:58): They have an EV. Jason Calacanis (01:26:59): They're coming out with an EV of that. Oh, you're kidding. Absolutely. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:27:02): It's like a great troll. I remember when Short Teneger got the hammer back in the nineties, and everyone was Speaker 3 (01:27:07): like, oh Jason Calacanis (01:27:07): my god. He's amazing. I could try and buy him a car. David Friedberg (01:27:09): And then the hammer was the cool car to drive. Yeah. I'm in a pretty complex. Jason Calacanis (01:27:14): It's in that of Malika. David Friedberg (01:27:17): Okay. So yesterday, a paper was published by an international, scientific consortium. This group is called Nanograft, and they've been using a series of instruments to measure pulsars, including a five hundred meter radio telescope array, which, allows them to see what's so funny? Jason Calacanis (01:27:38): No. I just had, like, 3 year 80s chunks in one sentence, and I had to stop myself. Alright. David Friedberg (01:27:42): Get them out now. Speaker 3 (01:27:43): Go ahead. Jason Calacanis (01:27:43): Unmuting unmuting. David Friedberg (01:27:44): The nanograph data that was released is 15 years of data from pulsars. And pulsars are neutron stars, which are stars that have collapsed on themselves and are basically super dense and star spinning. And then these pulsars, you know, you basically like a lighthouse, you can see the light. So it looks like a, almost like a strobe light. And we can see 1000 of these across the universe, and we can observe them. And the rate at which the pulsing is coming out of these pulsars tells us a lot about what is data over a long enough period of time, which is what these folks have just released as 15 years' worth of this data. You can start to see really interesting patterns in the data that support the the theory that space time itself is slowly vibrating, being stretched, being compressed, being pulled apart, being pushed back together because a very large gravitational events happening around the universe. And what that means is you guys have all seen, you know, that kind of two dimensional image of a black hole Nick, if you could find one online and pull it up, where it looks like, Hey, at the middle of a black hole, space itself collapses in and it collapses down. And what happens is space and time get significantly elongated when they're really close to gravity. Gravity actually pulls space, sucks it in, sucks in time, and it becomes distorted. And so when you have large black holes around the universe spinning and running past each other, they're actually pulling and stretching space time itself And that sends out ripples throughout the universe. Ripples that are slowly undulating space and time itself. So by observing all of these pulsars around the universe and the rate at which these pulsars are pulsing and seeing slight variations, We can start to measure and actually see those waves, those very slow waves of spacetime itself undulating and being pushed and compressed. And so it supports Einstein's general theory of relativity, which indicated that space time itself can be warped by gravity, and it provides a really interesting picture on the universe itself that all around us, we have large masses that are many, many millions or billions of light years away that are creating waves in space and time itself that we, as humans, will never kind of observe realize or feel ourselves, but as part of the fabric and the underlying nature of our universe, with space and time being slowly worked and slowly elongated slowly compressed. And it's a really fascinating picture of the universe. David Friedberg (01:30:23): Over time, scientists gather more and more of this data. It will provide insights into where in the universe these massive black hole events may be occurring and also Chamath Palihapitiya (01:30:27): provide insights into the early picture in David Friedberg (01:30:35): the scale structure of the universe, which helps us better understand how everything started and where we're all coming from. So it was a really fascinating data release. I think it's a really kind of profound thing. If you take a little time and think about it, it's super exciting. It's getting a lot of press coverage today and encourage us all to pull our heads out of the Ukraine war and Silicon Valley and money and all this stuff and realize that there there are things of extraordinary scale and structure that are that are happening around Jason Calacanis (01:31:01): Let me ask you two questions. Number 1, why does it matter? And number 2, any theories here of what we might discover, you know, if this, you know, goes 10 x or a 100 x in terms of the the information we're getting. David Friedberg (01:31:16): Many years ago, it was theorized that there's what's called cosmic microwave background radiation, the CMV. And what that is, it's the leftover heat from the formation of the universe. When the universe when the big bang happened. Yep. And these scientists figured out how to create really sensitive radio telescopes and, put them in the the the, in orbit and they started to observe the background radiation. And what that showed us was the fingerprint of the universe, the original structure of the universe that created ultimately all the galaxies, super galaxies, and ultimately all the stars and then the planets and everything that that came from that. This could be the beginning of seeing a gravitational background of the universe. Where we could actually start to see perhaps the fingerprint of the space time of the whole universe, of what the actual structure of space itself and time itself looks like throughout the universe with the perturbations being driven by some very large massive, super massive black holes. There was a black hole discovered this week that's 30,000,000,000 times the mass of our sun. There are these massive objects out there that are actively distorting space time we're gonna start to get a fingerprint of that with this sort of data. And over time, that just gives us a better sense of what the overall structure of the universe looks like not just from the heat energy that we're collecting, but also the gravitational waves that we're now able to observe through the this Jason Calacanis (01:32:41): just make it deepens our understanding of the universe, but there's not like yeah. Which is amazing and interesting, but David Friedberg (01:32:47): And and and it validates and proves the general theory of relativity, which if you think about the application of that down the road, that may lead to things like close to or as fast as light travel or things related to time travel or, you know, there's a lot of things that people have theorized for decades about you know, black holes and the warping of spacetime itself. I'm not saying that any of this stuff is Did you see Jason Calacanis (01:33:10): the 3 body problem trailer? David Friedberg (01:33:13): Yeah. Looks amazing. Jason Calacanis (01:33:14): It looks amazing. David Friedberg (01:33:15): It looks amazing. Jason Calacanis (01:33:16): What a great Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:17): what a great David Friedberg (01:33:17): can't believe we have to wait so long. I hate it when they put out trailers So How long it Jason Calacanis (01:33:21): when is it coming out? Like, next year. Oh, wow. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:25): Yeah. Oh, I still haven't seen your movie. The guy's your movie that you wanted me to see. Jason Calacanis (01:33:30): Which movie is it? David Friedberg (01:33:31): Oh, everything everywhere all at once. Jason Calacanis (01:33:32): I got a better movie for you. I got a great poll for you. It's on pay per view right now. The a movie called about Blackberry. It tells the story of Blackbird. It's like independent film. It is awesome. I just reviewed it on this week in startups. It's called It's David Friedberg (01:33:48): actually just on his Blackbird. Jason Calacanis (01:33:50): Called Blackberry. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:33:51): I think well, guys, this has been episode Amazing. A 135 of the all in pot. I really appreciate Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:58): are My god. I time together. Just enough time to get you back to your Nirvana concert. Jason Calacanis (01:34:06): What's the background on this one? Is that arrival? What is that? What's the background? What movie? David Friedberg (01:34:11): That's a black hole. Jason Calacanis (01:34:13): Oh, it's a black hole. Just a black hole. Okay. David Friedberg (01:34:15): Now I think that that's from might be of that might be of it. Jason Calacanis (01:34:20): Saks's hair, because he looks like did you get it cut sacks? David Friedberg (01:34:22): He gotta cut. Did Jason Calacanis (01:34:24): did you cut it? No. You broke our heart Speaker 3 (01:34:26): of sex. David Sacks (01:34:27): I got a mild flushing. Jason Calacanis (01:34:29): Shoa. Show us the fluff. Let's go. Let's see. Oh, boo. I mean, it's still That's David Sacks (01:34:35): too short or what? David Friedberg (01:34:36): What's good? Jason Calacanis (01:34:36): You gotta just keep grounded out, man. David Friedberg (01:34:38): Jake, how you wanna take us out? You do a better outro. Jason Calacanis (01:34:40): Alright. Everybody, for David Sachs, the architect coming at you. Z 100 boarding zoo Shamoff Polyhappatia, 2 for Tuesdays, tears for fears coming up, and Freeberg, the science project. Alright. Traveling back in time with David Friedberg. 2 for Tuesday, Jackson Brown, load out. Here we go. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:35:04): Gotcha. That's what I see. The world's greatest moderator. Jason Calacanis (01:35:09): I could do my NPR voice if you like. Alright. Closing us out here. Episode 135, PCRW 9223 at the sound of Santa Monica this Sunday at the Venice, farmers market 2 for 1 on the organic milk. Go check it out, and, we'll see you all later on the politics of culture David Sachs, chiming in on the Republican GOP position, which we did consider, Friedberg, deeply going into science, and Chamath Palihapitiya on wealth disparity. For everybody, I am your host here at KCRW. Chasing Calacanis the world's most moderate, moderating. You'll see you next time, KCRW. Speaker 3 (01:35:52): Bye bye. I can do any Chamath Palihapitiya (01:35:53): of these weirdo events David Friedberg (01:35:54): Bye bye. Bye. Love you guys. Jason Calacanis (01:36:02): David Sachs. David Sacks (01:36:06): And it said We open source it Speaker 6 (01:36:07): to the fans and they've just gone crazy with the Speaker 3 (01:36:18): besties are gone. Speaker 6 (01:36:29): We should all just get a room and just have one big huge order because they're all just useless. It's like it's like sexual tension, but they just need to release their Jason Calacanis (01:36:36): family. What? You're that.