以加局势是否升级？欧盟审查机制、宾大金主倒戈、GLP-1 热潮

David Sacks (00:00:00): Well, you're talking about 3 very different actors there. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:02): Wait, David. David, behind you is your security cameras are on. Do you wanna turn those off? Yeah. David Sacks (00:00:06): I don't know how that Alright. Hold on a second. Wait a minute. David Friedberg (00:00:10): You sit there and watch those all day? Security apparatus. He's just securice. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:15): What is this guy? The Batman? He sits David Friedberg (00:00:18): on that couch all day and watches his security. Hey. Jason Calacanis (00:00:22): Did you see that behind him? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:23): It was so dystopian. Oh my gosh. You must have caught some crazy shit on those security cameras. Sucks. What do you do with that footage? David Friedberg (00:00:37): David Savers. Speaker 5 (00:00:40): And I said, we open source it to the fans and they've discovered recently. Love you Jason Calacanis (00:00:49): Okay, everybody. Welcome to episode 150 of the all in podcast. Yes. We've made it to a 150 episodes somehow talking about technology, business, and, of course, politics. And this week, we will continue our discussion tragically about the situation in Israel, and the war with Hamas and a lot of the downstream effects of what's going on here and try to make sense of the world as we do. We gave a disclaimer last week. We're not experts. And I suspect many of you are not experts on this, but we're going to try to talk about the hard topic here and, do it in good faith And then we will move on to topics that don't have to do with the war in Gaza, that could, by the time you read this again, another disclaimer by the time you listen to this podcast, a ground invasion may or may not have started. We tape these on Thursdays and you listen to them generally speaking on Saturdays Sundays. With me, again, this week, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sachs, and of course, David Friedberg, And, gentlemen, I'm just going around the horn here quick before I tee up the first topic. How's everybody feeling about the events in in the 10 days since 107 in the terrorist attack that occurred in Israel. David Friedberg (00:02:12): I skipped last week. I was too emotional to do the show just so folks know. It was difficult to see what I saw on the internet and the reporting I think I was really moved because I thought a lot about the, like, How lucky we are in the my I thought about my children and seeing what I saw and being a parent, It's really different. I remember 911. It was really shocking. I was really upset from 911 as well, but when I saw the events last week, it immediately projected onto my kids and the care I try and take for my kids and thinking about the experience of other people in this situation. I I was also, I'll be honest, really moved and saddened because of the bombing of children in Gaza. And I was really saddened that there were innocent children suffering there as well. And the whole thing just felt so horrific to me. I I don't think about the justification or the morality of one side over another, I I was just more moved because I I felt really sad about the experience of a lot of families and a lot of children. Caught in the middle, caught in this in this environment. So I was I was pretty hurt last week. I was in a really bad state, and I couldn't do the show. I think you know, time has allowed me to kind of become a bit rational about things and trying to understand where things are headed, and it's a really complicated, confusing situation, and it's really sad. I I worry a lot about where things are headed, not just in the Middle East, but also domestically coming out of this conflict So that's where I'm at. Jason Calacanis (00:04:13): Yeah. Uh-uh. Thank you for sharing. I wasn't sure if you would share, your absence last week, and I I think it's fair. I too. Have been thinking about my own children, and it's, n 911. And and it's it's very dark. You know? And so it's hard to talk about, but we're we're making progress here, I think. And, today, we'll we'll talk about a lot of the issues Chumoff, or Sachs, any, opening thoughts before we get started, delving into what's actually happening And then more importantly, I think where this is heading and what the possible outcome or resolution could be if there is a resolution here. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:55): No. I think things are getting better, actually. I think, okay, from where if you had to graph your expectations of how bad things could get. I think what most people would probably say is somewhere last week, There was a scepter of some potential World War III like contagion. And I think in general, It hasn't stopped some of the bloodshed, but the extent to which we expected this thing to escalate, it actually hasn't happened. And so if you take a step back and you kind of calmly and coldly look at the facts, I think that there are a lot of people on all sides trying to maintain their composure in a moment where there's a lot of brush fires. So I actually think that this has been Much, much better than it could have been. And so I'm generally optimistic that we're gonna find our way out of this. Jason Calacanis (00:06:00): So, Sachs, any thoughts as well? Speaker 5 (00:06:04): To be David Sacks (00:06:04): honest, I can't be as optimistic as Shamalff. It's true that World War 3 hasn't started yet. But I think the situation is incredibly volatile still. Just in the last couple of days, the headline story was an explosion or bombing of this hospital in Gaza. Blame immediately fell on Israel. The claim in the New York Times, was that They had dropped a bomb on it from a plane. Social media was aflame with that. I think in the last day or so, the perspective seems to be changing. There's video now showing that it wasn't the hospital, but rather the parking lot next to the hospital that took the brunt of the damage. I think that it's far from clear that Israel did it. A lot of people are blaming Islamic sheet hard. In any event, it's very unclear. So I'm gonna continue to do what I've done, which is to suspend judgment until there can be some sort of proper investigation of of what happened, and we find out exactly who's really responsible. But it does seem that over the last day or so, there's been now a backing off of the idea that Israel was definitely responsible for this. Nonetheless, you saw immediately in the wake of that story coming out that there were protests and riots all over the Middle East the Arab Street was absolutely ignited. And I think that the Arab Street's not gonna be convinced that Israel wasn't responsible for this. I just think that they're convinced. And I think partisans on both sides are convinced about who did it, and they're gonna be immune to whatever evidence comes out. So I think that's kind of the situation we're at right now. I would consider the the riots that we just saw in regards to the hospital and the eruption on social media to be a a prelude or dress rehearsal of what we can expect to happen almost every day if Israel proceeds with the ground invasion of Gaza. David Sacks (00:08:06): Now they haven't done that yet, and that's why the situation seems 10uous but stable, but we're still waiting to find out if Israel's gonna go into Gaza. And if they do, I think all bets are offensive to where this is going. David Friedberg (00:08:19): This was my biggest concern last week. I, I I think the thing I was most anxious about was that the imagery that would come out of Gaza with the action from Israel would be the fodder for escalation worldwide that there's this perception already with half a billion people, maybe 2,000,000,000 people, maybe more. That there's an oppressor and there's an oppressed and the oppressed is suffering under the oppressor, and that there would be the creation of fodder to support that narrative. And I think that the hospital bombing, the kind of point I made to someone who reached out, to me 2 days ago or yesterday about it was I don't know if it matters that we get the corrections from all these people that may have said something that turns out to not be true. Because it was almost like that media became confirmation bias for people that already felt that this what was going on. And this is simply evidence of what is going on, and it justifies the next step. It justifies the beliefs. It justifies the morality. And I don't think that if it if it wasn't this, it's some it's gonna be something else. There is a tinderbox ready to be lit And that Tinder box is just looking for a match. And whether it's this match or the next match, there's gonna be a match, and the Tinder box will be lit. I think that a large number of people feel like they're on the right side. If everyone thinks they're on the right side of something, everyone feels like they have the right moral stance that there's a regime on the other side that has the wrong moral stance. I am good. You are evil. And therefore, anything I see is my confirmation bias for my belief, and it'll it gives me permission to take the next step. And in that framework, it will only escalate. And we are only going to a dark place. And I think, like, the the real question for me to Shamoff's optimism is what are the muting factors? What are the factors where one side feels like they're getting something that forces them to say I'm not gonna take the next step. David Friedberg (00:10:35): I'm not gonna justify the next step, and it's a it's a really hard question to answer at Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:40): this stage. Let's let's take that other side and just explore it for a second. So the question that I've been asking myself is because I agree with you. It doesn't matter who was responsible for this bombing because it's already been defined for David Friedberg (00:10:55): in a moral sense, it does. Just No. No. In a moral sense, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:58): it does, but I'm saying practically in the theater of war and the theaters near the war, it doesn't matter because it's about How is it framed? And to your point, people have already made up their minds. The Pro Israel side have made up their mind, and the Pro Palestinian side has made up their mind. But the question that I ask myself is, okay, is that how much of an incremental escalation is it from what their status quo is? Know, one of the interesting things I learned from the Jared Kushner interview with Flex Friedman, it's like a lot of this tension you can trace back to the Al Aqsa mosque and all of the misinformation around that, right? He spends a section of that podcast talking about how that's been framed and reframe the misinformation to basically get people fervently up in arms And it turns out that it isn't under the supervision of the Israelis. And in fact, you know, you can go get a visa visit Alaksha mosque, and it's under the custodian ship of the King of Jordan as an example. So that is the fact but those facts aren't necessarily shared on the ground, and that is where a lot of this original tension comes from. So then I ask myself, okay, well, if that's been lingering for decades, how much more incrementally bad does it get for this specific thing. And I think you see it in people's actions, which is they try to use it to escalate And my honest measurement of that escalation is that outside of the actual theater of war, Most of these escalations died down pretty quickly. Now if all of these embassies were overrun and all of a sudden, you saw, a Beirut like situation, right, the US Embassy in Beirut in the early eighties, I would agree with you that this is getting really bad really quickly. But that's not what we saw. And I think what that speaks to more is how much hatred is actually in the heart of people versus not. And so I think that this was a moment for people to channel their anxiety and some of their aggression and some of their hatred towards America or Israel, but what it didn't was escalate. You didn't see these embassies get burnt to the ground. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:24): You didn't see people getting dragged out. And so I'm not trying to justify that behavior. I'm just trying to Look at it in an absolute sense and answer the question. Is it escalating or is it not escalating? And my assessment right now is that it is not escalating. I saw on Sunday something that I thought I would never see, which is Iran put out a press release through the United Nations to Israel. You haven't seen that. That's deescalatory. That not an escalatory action from a country whose mission statement includes the destruction and demise of a country. So I think when push comes to shove, There are a lot of people in positions of power who understand the stakes here and are trying their best on both sides. And I I hate this word, so I can't even believe I'm about to use it to find some proportionality and try to deescalate. That's how I measure and judge what I see over the last week. A lot David Friedberg (00:14:24): of people use labels to characterize the actions, the the tonality, the behavior of the other side because every everyone believes that they're on the right side. And The point of view that there is hate and anger on the other side comes from a place, not out of the blue. Hate and anger doesn't just emerge from nothing. It it it typically comes from a place of deep hurt. I think the biggest question for me is how do you resolve the deep hurt that is being felt and has been felt by either side over a very long period of time. It's the hardest thing to answer because what do you give millions of people that have lived feeling hurt for so long, feeling challenged for so long, that makes them feel resolved in that sense. And I get their speaking about the Israeli people. But speaking about the Israeli people too. Jason Calacanis (00:15:22): Okay. David Friedberg (00:15:22): And I'm I'm speaking about the fact that, like, these actions don't they don't come out of the blue. They don't come out of a place of Chamath Palihapitiya (00:15:31): like, green. Let's let's go to let's go to an example in our own lives. Let's just say that we have a friend or, you know, we had a girlfriend at some point. Where there is a deep betrayal. Okay. And then there's just an unrelenting anger To your point, before you can talk about the hurt, you have to deescalate the anger. So there has to be an active process of deescalation before you can actually resolve this stuff. I thought Israel was quite clear last week. We are going into Gaza on Sunday. But then they didn't. That seemed deescalatory. Again, I'll just say it again. Iran puts out a press release to Israel through the UN. That seemed deescalatory. There was a moment where Jordan, the Palestinian authority, and Biden were supposed to meet. They ended up not meeting in Aman, But that seemed a deescalatory. Biden, Tony Blink, and Tony refused to leave the IDF until he got some assurances about humanitarian aid into Gaza. That seems deescalatory. Biden spending time and then reiterating those assurances from Netanyahu. Again, all of this stuff seems like both sides are in the middle of all of this chaos, not trying to light the tinterbox. And it doesn't mean that they're on a path to resolution, but I I I just think that they they understand mistakes. Facts, Jason Calacanis (00:16:58): when we look at the hospital situation specifically and the fog of war, you had the New York Times getting attacked for maybe taking Hamas's word for it, then flipping. And then now there is conspiracy theory the United States is, you know, carrying water for Israel and then the fog of war. Oh my goodness. We maybe the the hospital wasn't even hit. It was in the it was in the parking lot, and so it it didn't even get hit. So when we at all of that. And then Tremont says, Hey, wait, things haven't escalated. I I actually I happen to be here in Dubai right now on a business trip, and I'll explain some of, The feedback I've gotten from people who are Palestinian, ethnically or Jordanian and Palestinian descent, I should say, and and we'll get into that in a second. The groundwork hasn't happened, and this seems to be one of the, as Chamath was pointing out, it's fascinating that it hasn't because it was supposed to have happened already. Do you have any thoughts on why it hasn't happened one of the conspiracy theories and and I hate to go down these roads because in the fog of war, I think people try to fill a vacuum. And then, of course, as you were pointing out your mouth in Friedberg, people then use it as evidence for their side. The people here in Dubai, a number of people have pointed out this, groundwork is not gonna happen. That it's saber rattling, but, Israel is gonna black back down and get the hostages back. And this has been to me by many people. I know I don't know if that's wishful thinking or some kind of conspiracy theory, but but what do you take from the groundwork not happening And then if you want to go back and touch on the fog of war issue here with things flipping back and forth and and what is actual reality? Just probably speaking, escalating or deescalating anything. David Sacks (00:18:50): Look, I think that there's a few possible reasons why Israel hasn't gone in yet. Number one is they may perceive it to be a very difficult military operation. They're almost certainly walking into a trap. There's gonna be ambushes everywhere snipers, IEDs, Hamas's an elaborate tunnel network. They can disappear down that tunnel network when the fighting gets too hot. They can booby trap. The access points. They've got anti tank weapons. They can take out armored vehicles. It's gonna be a very difficult fight for the Israelis. And so they may be taking a policy or just to assess that situation and maybe get organized for it or or maybe think better of it. So they may be either stopping to organize or getting cold feet. I think second, they have to think through the consequences of going in there. Hezbollah has basically threatened to open up a northern front and invade Israel if Israel goes into Gaza. You also saw, as we saw with the reaction to the hospital, bombing that they have to be concerned about the Arab street erupting. And, again, if they go into Gaza, this could ignite the whole arab world. It seems to me that if you're Israel, you don't wanna become the focal point for all of this anger in the Arab or larger Muslim world. There are important differences in that world. There's differences between Sunis and Chiang. There's differences between Arabs and Persians and Turks. And the last thing you want is to paper over all those differences by having everybody's anger targeted at you. So I think there's very big consequences that could follow geopolitically, I think, again, the war would almost certainly not just be a single front war against Gaza could turn into a multi front war. So that's what I think the second reason. I think the third reason is you have to believe that there's furious diplomacy going on behind the scenes, and I think this is what Chamath is referring to. What we don't know, obviously, or the the content of those conversations, we don't know what the Biden administration has told the netanyahu government we don't know if they've said to them, listen, we are not gonna get involved in this. David Sacks (00:21:01): Publicly, they've said that we stand with Israel, but you just have to wonder what they're privately telling the Israelis. All of that being said, I think that Israel has declared that it's at war with Hamas There are these stories that are coming out daily of these atrocities that were perpetrated by Hamas. I saw one by paramedics who discovered the bodies and described the way they were tortured, the population of Israel demands retribution, And so Netanyahu is under intense domestic political pressure to deliver on that. So I I think that Jamath is right that things haven't escalated yet, but I wouldn't say they've deescalated. Lincoln did demand and biden did announce those, relieving of some of the humanitarian issues in Gaza, but to my knowledge, they have not been implemented yet. Jason Calacanis (00:21:49): They turned the water back on, I believe. Yeah. David Sacks (00:21:51): Okay. So I think this thing is still a powder keg, and it could erupt And again, it all comes back to this key question of does Israel go into to Gaza or not? If they don't, then I think that creates room for some sort of international diplomatic effort to get the hostages back and maybe deescalate the situation. And I guess we'll find out over the next week or so. Jason Calacanis (00:22:14): And that, you didn't even mention that there could be some deep diplomacy here going on in terms of releasing the hostages and maybe somehow they believe if they go in too early, the chances of getting those hostages out alive could be seriously diminished. Yeah? David Sacks (00:22:28): You know, it's strange to me that I just don't hear that much about the hostages. It it seems like the Israeli population, just in terms of what they're publicly saying, seems to have almost written off the hostages. There were some video of the families of hostages being upset that they don't feel like the government response is adequately taking the interests of their families into account that they just seem hell bent on this invasion of Gaza. But, you know, we don't know what's happening behind the scenes. And, again, that that would be the way to deescalate this is you get an international effort to release the hostages in exchange for maybe it can't be stated, but equipped for a quote where Israel does not go into to Gaza on the ground. And and maybe the bombing stops. Jason Calacanis (00:23:13): Yeah. Okay. So maybe we can pivot discussion here. David Sacks (00:23:18): I will say just maybe one other point here, delving into the internal politics of another country is not something that we typically like to do or that Americans are particularly good at. But when a situation like this happens, that could drag us into a war. We do have to kinda understand the internal dynamics of these countries. Israel is a country that the last several years has been very internally divided. There's been something like 5 elections in the last 4 years. Netanyahu got reelected in December of 2022 by creating a new coalition with far right elements of the Israeli political system. And Chamath, you mentioned the Al Aqsa mosque, and I and I know Jared's take on on this was that you thought that this was blown out of proportion, but I'll give you a different perspective on this. I've just been researching this. If you read al Jazira, what they point to is a the emergence of a far right figure named Itamar Ben Gavir. Who has become a member of Netanyahu's government as a result of this coalition that was forged in December. And Ben Gavir has been he previously he was a a a fringe sort of anti Palestinian far right provocateur. When he was nineteen years old, he basically had somehow stolen or taken the hood ornament from Yitzhak Rabin, the then prime minister's car, and was waving it around saying that if we can get to your car, we can get to you. 3 weeks later, yet Zuckerberg Bean was assassinated. By a far right religious ex extremist in Israel because they felt that he had committed treason by signing the Oslo accords. Now Vengevere wasn't implicated himself, but it gives you a sense of kind of where he's coming from. And Vengevere has led over the past year several incursions into the Al Oxa Moss area. And the reason he said he's done this is to show that the Allah of mosque and the dome of the rock via the Haram Al Sharif, which is the 3rd holiest site in Islam after Mecca Medina He says that that is under the sovereignty of Israel that that belongs to Israel. There is also a faction of the Israeli far right. That wants to build the 3rd temple on the temple mount, you have to understand that that cannot happen while the Aloxomosk is still there. So you have these, I don't mind saying, phrasies, I mean, to to to destroy or even to imply that you would ever destroy the Aloksha mosque is such an explosive issue. David Sacks (00:25:56): It would turn the entire Muslim world against Israel. And, basically, I think it would be the end of Israel. But you have these figures who've now been incorporated into Netanyahu's cabinet. And I they are, I think, far to the right of Netanyahu, but they are preferring Netanyahu. They are simply banged for some sort of religious war. So, you know, the domestic politics in other countries, not something that we're totally familiar with, but you have to understand that Israel does have these elements. And, man, I hope that the Biden administration is telling Netanyahu that, yeah, we stand with Israel, but not if you're gonna follow the advice of these far right religious extremists. Jason Calacanis (00:26:37): This is, I think a very important point to to pause on here and maybe unpack, which is as I said, I'm I'm here in Dubai and, had this trip planned. And I'm actually Tell Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:49): us what you're what you're hearing. What are you hearing? Like, what do they what do people say? Jason Calacanis (00:26:53): Yes. Fascinating. And, it's this is gonna get a little touchy. And so I just wanna be clear. I'm I'm gonna tell people what the conversations are here. It's not necessarily me endorsing, any of these positions. And, of course, I'm no expert, of course. And On Saturday night, I went to, Bob Nitzvah, my friends, daughters had their Bob Nitzvah. And, and Tuesday night, I had dinner sorry, where in Israel? Or No. In the Bay Area. And then I flew here. And this juxtaposition where I had dinner last night with 5 Tradidians who are of Palestinian descent. And they universally, are appalled by Hamas and they're what happened, right? So you say that right out front. And then they are perplexed why there is no discussion in the west in America of the conditions that could have led to this and the treatment of the Palestinian people who they believe are living in apartheid. And that word is used over and over again, and that they have, you know, now a generation of people who have no hope and a generation of people who have nothing to lose and that they they have nothing to live for. And this is, the piece of the discussion that has gotten a lot of people in the west, I think, in trouble talking about it. We had a conference producer who, was tweeting, hey. Listen. You know, very early on, like, on the on 107. Yeah. Israel has to abide by you know, international law, etcetera. And and this came up over and over again from Muslims here in Dubai that the west is not in in the free world is not holding Israel accountable to human rights standards, basic standard tenets of war. And I was coming into the trip a little bit more positive, and now there's such a deep hurt on both sides of this that I I got to see, you know, from from both of these events and and people suffering that, My normally positive outlook has been a little bit shaken if I'm being honest. Jason Calacanis (00:28:59): This feels very intractable to me. And, yeah, to even go near the topic of what has Israel contributed to this situation and in the treatment of the Palestinian people, that's what the people in the region want to hear us talk about or just hear the world talk about. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:19): Any reaction to some of the protests that happened in Europe and the people that took to the streets. What what was their perspective on that? Jason Calacanis (00:29:26): I think their perspective is a very small percentage of Americans care about the Palestinian people. And, you know, if you look at the surveys that have gone on and I have some of the the survey data That's been done. And I'm not sure Americans views on this are the most important views for us to be focused on, but A very small percentage of people are aligned, with the Palestinian people as opposed to with the state of Israel. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:54): So Well, David Friedberg (00:29:54): I mean, the biggest challenge in finding a path towards I I don't wanna just be so generic and say the word peace. Jason Calacanis (00:30:04): No. I think that's the word. David Friedberg (00:30:05): Yeah. But towards some form of understanding and settlement with with each other is that there's a framing right now that you have to pick a side You're not allowed to be pro Israel and also be sympathetic and empathetic to the plight of the children in Gaza. You're not allowed to say, I'm looking out for the Palestinians, but I believe Israel should have a state You're not allowed to point out the fact that there are multiple Muslim majority countries, and there's only one Jewish state, while also saying that what the Israelis have done may also not be right. You're not allowed to take a nuanced point of view and you're not allowed to address the variance in behavior over time with each of these different sides and how there is a massive complicated mess here that it has to be pick your side. Your pro, Israeli, we need to wipe out x, y, or z, or your anti Israeli, and as a result, your anti semite. And the fact that we conflate all of these things together and force people to jump on a side is what is also escalating that we can't actually have conversations around these topics that it all ends up being pick a side, and then let's figure out how many people and what resources are on one side and what people and what resources are on the other. And I think that this notion that we have almost cancel culture behavior that's now leached into this discourse, that if you try and talk about the plight of Palestinians, You cannot also be pro Israel is what's keeping us from making progress in finding a path to resolution. And I I think that's the the biggest issue right now. And and we leverage the you're not a loyalist. You're not moral You're not a good person. You're evil. If you don't stand on our side and both sides are act that way. And it's that's the hardest thing to change. It's I think the only way to find a path is to change that first. And I think starting with empathy is the only way, but, man, that's impossible right now. David Friedberg (00:32:18): Fucking impossible. Jason Calacanis (00:32:19): Yeah. It's hard. Sorry. David Friedberg (00:32:20): I'm sorry. I'm just I'm just super, like, wow. I'm super about this because I just don't like the, like, you know. David Sacks (00:32:26): So I there are broadly speaking two factions that we're seeing out in the streets either denouncing Israel or supporting the Palestinians. I think there is a group of people who genuinely hate Jews or hate Israel and do not believe in Israel's right to exist and are preaching things like decolonization, which is a recipe for for genocide. Then there are people and probably a larger group who I think are concerned with the plight of the Palestinian people who recognize the conditions they have as deplorable and that the tactics that Israel uses to enforce its security, whether it's the occupation of the West Bank or the blockade of Gaza are unsustainable and create unfair conditions for the Palestinian. So in other words, They're not saying that Israel doesn't have a right to exist. They are principally concerned with helping the Palestinians and achieving a Palestinian state. It seems to me of paramount importance that Israel separate these two groups. By understanding the concern. And I would apply this to American Leadership as well. By understanding the concerns of the latter, and hopefully getting us on a path to resolving them. David Friedberg (00:33:43): Totally. David Sacks (00:33:43): So as to isolate the haters, totally. Because otherwise, this whole thing is headed towards a gigantic disaster where and I I think it's a disaster for for Israel, most of all, is that Israel could be destroyed. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:56): But I David Friedberg (00:33:56): think the whole world is being asked to pick a side too, and that's where this escalates into a much bigger, broader conflict. It's it's that. Yeah. And and the And we're suffering. And even within the US, we're being asked to pick a side. And now we're seeing civil unrest in the US. Jason Calacanis (00:34:09): The frustration as well amongst people who are of who who are Muslim or who are Palestinian descent or Jordanian or just in the region generally is that Hamas set this process back decades, and there's, like, a great frustration that maybe some progress was being made and that we could come to some normalcy in a 2 state solution and that Hamas did this exactly because So much progress has been made, recently. David Sacks (00:34:37): I think that is the best theory about why this happened now is that there was a process of normalization happening between Israel and a number of these Arab states. And and we talked about it last week that Jared Kushner set this in motion. There were 3 or 4 deals that signed between Israel and the gulf Arab states, bringing about normal relations. And Saudi Arabia was on the table as being the next one. There was a effort underway to negotiate a normalization of of relations between Israel and and Saudi Arabia. That is now completely on ice. Jason Calacanis (00:35:10): And at risk of the other agreements may be being ripped up because if Israel goes in and has a massive ground invasion and there's more suffering and death that that will maybe blow all those accords up. David Sacks (00:35:23): I think that what Hamas may have been concerned about, to say, you wanna impute strategic logic to their decisions, even, you know, those decisions are atrocities. But if they have a strategic purpose in mind, It's to derail Yeah. That that process of normalization because if the entire air world basically normalize relations with Israel before the Palestinian question is resolved, it takes a major carrot off the table in their negotiations or whatever they want to achieve. So I think that to thwart that process was a big part of the goal here. But I do think that what this has shown is that getting to a larger or Middle East piece without resolving the Palestinian question is likely to be a failed strategy. Jason Calacanis (00:36:10): I just David Sacks (00:36:10): don't It's impossible. It's impossible. And so Jason Calacanis (00:36:12): It's impossible. David Sacks (00:36:14): Again, this does not justify anything Hamas did, but I think that what these events have now created is a dynamic where the Palestinian question is now front and center, and and everything else is basically paused. Until this gets resolved. Now I just wanna see something about the 2 state process. You know, again, I was doing some some research. There rarely hasn't been any work on the 2 state solution for roughly a decade. Obama was the last president who Friedberg explicitly said that Israel should try to make peace based on the 1967 lines, but with land swaps to accommodate for the changes that have happened on the map since then. Netanyahu was very irate at that formulation, by the way. He never had a good relationship with with Obama because of that And then John Kerry, who is secretary under state, under Obama, made a major effort to try and bring about a 2 state solution. And frankly, it went nowhere. And a big part of the reason why is that Netanyahu said that Listen, the only situation that's acceptable to Israel from a security standpoint is that we must control all security west of the Jordan River. So in other words, we must control security in the West Bank. And his argument was that, look, adjacent land is very important. If you create a Palestinian state there, where they have total sovereignty over their own security, they could be digging tunnels under the wall. He basically said it could turn into 20 gauzes. And he's got his point of view. And and when people challenge him on this, he said, listen. You don't live here. You know, we live here. We understand the security situation. That's what he said to John Kerry. So the whole process fell apart. And since then, the idea has been for Israel to move forward, again, on this larger normalization project with the rest of the Middle East, putting the Palestinian question to one side. The idea has basically been, listen, if you won't make peace with us, and this goes back to arafat at Camp David, turning down the deal that was on the table, that Clinton brokered with Ehud Ehud Barrack. If you won't make a deal with us, we'll go around you. Your 2 rejections. David Sacks (00:38:19): You're too difficult. You're too hard to make a deal with. So we're just gonna put that to one side. And that really has been the process for the last decade, I would say since John Carey's initial fell apart, the process has been starting with Christian under Trump, and then I think Biden tried to extend it by brokering the Saudi Arabia deal. The idea was let's put the Palestinian question to one side. Will work on these other deals, I think now that that process has fallen apart. So the 2 state solution, that process died back in 2014, this idea of going around has basically fallen apart now. And so I think this is why people are pretty pessimistic about where things go from here is what is the process? And meanwhile, you have this hardship inside Israeli domestic politics to the right. You've got these religious factions who believe that the entirety of the West Bank, what they call Judea and Samaria, is their god given right. And if you go back to the netanyahu's government forming in December, of 2022. The first plank was to say that Judea and Samaria belong to us. We have sovereignty over them. We're not giving them up. So what room is there for compromise? And since then they've been expanding the settlements in the West Bank. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:35): Let me ask you a question just to shift the question for a second. The thing that surprise me the most over this past week were the extent of the protests Some violent in the United States and in Western Europe. And I'm curious to hear from you guys Was that overwhelmingly about pro Palestine and making sure that there wasn't a human rights atrocity in Gaza or Was that a emergence of, like, a simmering antisemitism that we hadn't seen? David Sacks (00:40:13): Well, both. That that's kinda my point is there's type 1 and type 2. Type 1 is the true Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:40:18): It's definitely true. David Sacks (00:40:18): It's the denial of the Israeli right to exist. However, there's a type 2, which is legitimate concern over the condition of the Palestinians and the desire to resolve that by creating a Palestinian state. And until you separate those two things, know we're gonna make progress. David Friedberg (00:40:32): Your type 2 can breed a type 1 is the real scary reality. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:38): The summary of decemitism David Friedberg (00:40:40): that you can have a legitimate concern about the people of Palestine because you always are gonna be concerned about the oppressed being oppressed by the oppressor. And that then translates into an anti Semitism because you say that it's the Jewish people that are perpetrating this upon those people, therefore, the Jewish people need to go. And I've heard friends of mine in the last week, who have said awful things like all Muslims need to go. Well known, well respected public people have said this to me in private. I can see where the hatred can come from a place of hurt. I can see that when people feel sympathetic towards the Palestinian plight, that can then turn into anti semitism. And so I I I do think that there are 2 distinct groups today, but my concern is that just like what happened in the past, that that can then breed into a more generalized, more fiery, and more scary situation where it really is anti something genocidal on both sides, by the way. David Sacks (00:41:46): I think what we're describing here is a classic vicious cycle where you start with there's conditions of occupation that breeds resistance, that breeds extremism, extremism breeds fear on the part of Israelis because they get attacked. And then that breeds harsher security conditions the next level of occupation or blockade. And then Jason Calacanis (00:42:09): that just yields the cycles. David Sacks (00:42:10): Yeah. And so the the question is how you break that cycle because the Israelis right now, and I'm I'm sure Netanyahu would make this point. If we open things up, if we gave you a Palestinian state, what's to stop 30,000 Hamas fighters If we opened up the walls around Gaza, what's to stop 30,000 Hamas fighters from massacring us in our homes? Jason Calacanis (00:42:32): And if you do a ground invasion, Are you inspiring more radicalization to David Sacks (00:42:38): free burst point? Jason Calacanis (00:42:39): And so for every David Sacks (00:42:41): kill, they've got brothers. They've sisters. They've got parents. They've got kids. They've got aunts and uncles, and they become the next generation of extremists. Jason Calacanis (00:42:50): How does the cycle break? I think is the frustrating part here and just looking at the reaction in the US, we saw a lot of discussion over young students writing arguments that Israel had brought this on themselves and were solely responsible from the Hamas attack. And this has led to a massive outrage amongst donors to, Ivy League Schools like Penn And Harvard. And, obviously, those have very large endowments And this is now, like, leading to many of them pulling out of, commitments they've made, the Wexner Foundation founded by Victoria Secrets Billionaire said it's breaking off ties with Harvard. Didan Ofer quit the executive board of Harvard's Kennedy School. Sidid Else Ken Griffin, who's donated more than a half a $1,000,000,000 to Harvard placed a call away. Last week to the head of, Harvard and Astra University coming out in support of Israel and then more than a dozen Anonymous donors. So the New York Times, they felt they had a right and an obligation to to weigh in here. And before this all happened at Penn, donors had started pulling out because of a Palestinian rights festival that happened 2 weeks before the events of 107. From September 22nd to 24th, the UPAN hosted the Palestine Rights Literature Festival. The festival was billed as a gathering to explore the richness and diversity of Palestinian culture, but according to multiple sources, it mostly focused on Jews, Israel, and Zionism. 1 speaker called for ethnic cleansing of Jews. Another said violence was a necessity. Any thoughts, Shamoff, we were talking last week about these woke says, and then I guess this is the 2nd order and 3rd order effects coming into play. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:41): If you said it more generically, this would be perfect opportunity for these leading universities to actually provide nuance and teach people The history of both sides and to show the perspective of both sides. Jason Calacanis (00:44:59): That would take leadership. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:00): And it Jason Calacanis (00:45:00): would take courageous leadership on the part of the people who run the university. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:04): Let's just be honest. I think these elite universities are essentially asset management businesses that have an education, the fake leave of education wrapped around them. So they're more like BlackRock than they are like a school. And so they behave like any for profit asset manager would, which is that I think that as they didn't try to intervene in one way or the other over the last 15 or 20 years. In actually making sure that they were graduating the best kids. So instead what happened is they get hijacked by professors and people who wanted one very specific strain of thinking. And I don't think it matters which strain it is. But it betrays what the point of a leading university is supposed to be. And then as a result, the people that graduate from these places are closed minded. And what that does is that that screws America because you have all of these other places graduating kids with a different mindset who then go and build the things that matter, and America just keeps falling back. And we are just slower, and we are not intellectually capable of thinking in a way that allows us to see more than just what's right in front of us. So I don't know what you want Jason Calacanis (00:46:19): me to say. It's, it's just like these. It's a follow-up to what we talked about last week. And so I I thought it was pertinent. Sachs, looking at the free speech issue. There was some pushback online. Again, not my position. I'm just putting it out here for you to comment on Saks. Which is blacklisting young college students who had an opinion about Palestine is wrong and you're trying to can people, which are response to holding people accountable or canceling these students, for their positions on the Israeli Palestinian public. David Sacks (00:46:56): Well, what's happening now is that these campuses that took outrageous positions on this whole issue are now trying to wrap themselves in the cloak of academic freedom as if that's a value they've been respecting. Free speech is not a value they've been free speech is a value they've been imposing. And this was, revealed by a survey that was just done. The fire survey that surveyed students on 248 campuses on a range of free speech issues. So it asked them about how comfortable do you feel expressing your views on controversial topics? What is the tolerance on campus for liberal speakers or conservative speakers? How acceptable is it to engage in disruptive conduct against a speaker on campus, such as shouting them down to prevent them from speaking, What sort of administrative support do different views get on campus and how open is the campus to hearing about different issues? And what they found was that the most elite schools ranked the worst. The only elite private school to score above average on free speech was University of Chicago, which got a score of about 65 out of a 100, which made them rank number 13 overall, the rest of the top schools, the IVs were abysmal. Brown ranked number 69, Duke ranked 124. Princeton ranked 187, Stanford ranked 207. This is, again, out of a total number of, 248 and pen, which is where the donors are up in arm, ranked second to last number 2, 247 they scored a 11 points on the survey. And then Harvard finished 248 out of 248 schools ranked. Also known as dead last and get this. The rating in the survey was 0.0. They scored a blue tarski. Jason Calacanis (00:48:53): 0.0.0. David Sacks (00:48:55): Blue Charsky and animal house, he sports 0.0. Jason Calacanis (00:49:00): Harvard 0.0. Point 0. David Sacks (00:49:04): Yes. So so look. I think it would be it would be one thing if these schools said to the alumni, we agree with you that some of these speakers were over the top, but this is what academic freedom is all about. But they have no standing to say anything like that because they have been suppressing views on campus. They've been allowing speakers to be shot it down. They have been stifling the presentation of alternative views. So this is clearly these types of speakers, these types of views that I think absolutely crossed the line from again, what we've talked about, which is type 2 support for legitimate support for a Palestinian state into hatred of Israel and Jews and denying the right to exist. It it absolutely crossed over in many of these cases as a outrageous talk given by, I think, a Cornell professor who was outright praising this massacre. Jason Calacanis (00:49:58): God. That was disturbing. David Sacks (00:50:00): So look. The it is David Friedberg (00:50:01): He was excited about Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:02): it. Yeah. David Sacks (00:50:03): He was excited Speaker 5 (00:50:04): about it. Jason Calacanis (00:50:04): So yeah. David Sacks (00:50:06): So look. I I think that these alumni have a point in saying that you, these elite campuses, have been clearly putting your thumb on the scale in favor of certain views. You've been suppressing certain views So this must be a view that you either share or endorse or permit given that the rest of your speech regime is so restrictive and oppressive. So even though I would, in a different circumstance, support academic freedom, I don't think these colleges have a leg to stand on. Jason Calacanis (00:50:37): Alright. We're going to talk about some other topics today because that's what we do on the all in podcast. And so tangentially related to the speech issues, in the EU officials held a meeting to discuss enforcement of the DSA or Digital Services Act, for some background here, the EU's Digital Services Act updated the EU's electronic commerce directive of 2000, which was inspired by, Section 230 here in the US. Common carrier laws, where the common carriers be those AOL, Yahoo, Google, Facebook are not responsible for what individuals post on their platforms. And so that protection's been critically important, not making social media sites or WordPress, into editors or having them have to censor content on their platform. So the DSA officially went into effect in August of this year. The main goal was to quote unquote foster safer online environments. The DSA aims to do that via tighter rules around disinformation, illegal content, and transparent advertising. Those last 2 not controversial. That first one, disinformation is obviously the one that's gonna be pretty, challenging. The DSA has been called a new constitution of the internet in an effort to shape the future of the online world. Some things the, DSA covers and forces Velops. A new term, very large online platforms to disclose how their algorithms work. They must give users the right to opt out of recommendation systems and profiling. They must share key data with researchers and authorities They must cooperate with crisis, response requirements, and they must perform external and internal audits. They want to force transparency on how content moderation decisions were made. That seems logical. The workforce transparency, on the ways advertising is targeted, then it also seems reasonable. And then they want ways to flag illegal content. Obviously, obligations, around, protecting minors. Jason Calacanis (00:52:38): I don't think anybody will debate those But it forces them to cooperate with specialized trusted flaggers to identify and remove this illegal content. I don't know who those people would be. Friedberg, you had some David Friedberg (00:52:50): My thoughts are that the era of the open internet has a decentralized technology platform for the benefit of individuals and not to be overseen and run by governments is over. The Digital Services Act, I think, is one of the most overreaching threats to any sort of open, transparent, democratic opportunity on the internet. The idea of the open internet, the idea of creating a network of computers that could share information and make services available to individuals around the world. Freely uncensored, and in an easy to access way was the reason that the internet has transformed society, improved productivity, and provided extraordinary benefits. The Digital Services Act is an example of a government seeing that a decentralized technology, the internet itself is meant to be a decentralized technology. There's no central servers. They are all part of a network of computers that anyone on the network can access anything else on the network. Blockchain, obviously, is the more modern kind of exciting, you know, decentralized technology concept that is meant to avoid discrutiny, the oversight, and the control by central governments or or central authorities of any sort. And the language in the Digital Services Act, I think, got squeezed through in a way that most of the people that I'm guessing past this Digital Services Act don't fully comprehend the implications of some of the decisions that they're making. It can be easily framed as this is good for people you cannot sell illegal content online. You cannot sell illegal goods and services. We're trying to safeguard young people. But The protection of minors means that you can no longer do personalized web experiences for anyone under 18, which means you need to know the age of everyone, And now your web experience, if you're a kid, is not gonna be personalized. The overreach gets even worse when they say we can now go in and run evaluations of the algorithms and allow open access to your data to 3rd party researchers to get into your systems and look at how you guys are running the services that you're offering on the internet. So not only are you no longer allowed to have an open internet where people can provide whatever services they wanna provide. David Friedberg (00:55:19): But if you're on the internet, you now have to make your service and the inside part of your service available for scrutiny by governments. And so you have Jason Calacanis (00:55:28): And researchers. Who are these researchers? It sounds like a stasi type thing. And the way who Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:32): the way David Friedberg (00:55:32): it's written, it gives this commission as the primary regulator, effectively a lot of leeway in deciding who, what, where, and how they can go into companies, go into individual servers, individual computers. I could run an individual company on my computer at home, and it gives this government the legal right in the EU to go into my computer and pull information out of my computer and scrutinize it and make decisions about what I'm doing and whether or not I'm compliant with whatever the commission's enforcement standards are of that day. I mean, this is about as 1984 as you can get, and it's a real serious threat. I don't think people are recognizing the second and third order effects of what this is gonna do over time to internet services, to the quality of experience we get on the internet, and to the role that government is now gonna play in policing, scrutinizing, and providing restricted access to content and services for each individual that wants to use the internet. It's important to say Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:28): if you're a European, it'll just make Europe even more of a place you go to vacation and never to live. Yeah. Right? Mean, it's not this is we're not talking about America. Right? We're talking about Europe. David Friedberg (00:56:37): This is all the changes that are gonna happen inside of Google, which is gonna affect more than just the EU users. Because of the requests and the demands of the EU. And so, you know, the the the services that you are gonna get around the world are gonna be affected by this EU compliance regime and gonna be dynamic. It's a commission, basically a bunch of individuals that get to decide who, what, where, and how. David Sacks (00:56:59): And David Friedberg (00:56:59): that's gonna that's gonna create a really scary, scary situation where a bunch of people who are gonna have their own motivations, their own political leanings, their own objectives. They're gonna be able to leverage their particular role in applying their particular biases to internet services. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:19): We saw Canada do something similar and Facebook's David Friedberg (00:57:22): reaction was. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:24): Yeah. And Facebook's reaction was we're not gonna syndicate links. So I don't know. I I would go back to another argument you make a lot, which is which I agree with, which is the free market will act rationally here. And if Google deprecates a bunch of features and or completely pulls out of Europe. That'll be the death knell for these kinds of decisions because then Other governments and other people will see the cost of trying to get this kind of control. I think the bigger issue in a moment like this is Europe has such a checkered past on these things, which is that they somehow try to find this moral high ground, and there is just this overreach and this quasi central planning that just never works. And so if this is another example of it, I would encourage all for profit companies to make the practical decision. David Friedberg (00:58:16): Can you imagine Google's decision making here? They've got thousands of employees in Europe. They make 1,000,000,000 of dollars in revenue in the market. It's such a difficult situation to be Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:25): not if what you're saying is true. Not if what you're saying is this is the threat of the internet. I think it'll be very easy for Larry and Sergei to say cut it, move on. David Sacks (00:58:33): No. I I think Europe is too big a market for Google or any other major tech company to exit. There's just no way. What they're gonna do is comply. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:40): There won't be a market. David Sacks (00:58:41): Well, hold on a second. Well, what this new DSA rule does is apply penalties to social networks for not censoring what they call legal speech, which is whatever speech they say it is. So Freeway is right. There's gonna be some sort of committee in Brussels that basically sends out take down requests now to all these social networks. David Friedberg (00:58:58): Yes. The TSA commission. Yeah. David Sacks (00:59:00): The TSA commission. David Friedberg (00:59:01): So Yeah. David Sacks (00:59:02): Europe, again, is just too big an area not to serve. And then what could happen is that because it's easier for companies just to have one approach where they can, there is a risk that these same policies get applied in the US. That that is what happened with privacy. Remember, Europe went first with GDPR, And then all of our regulations came to America. Now the first amendment may stand on the way here, but there is some risk that Tech companies of their own accord decide that it's cheaper and easier to comply with the European regime everywhere than trying to parse their service in different markets. I'm just saying that's a risk. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:37): But look. Let me frame it in a different way in an economic argument. Okay. So Europe is about 25¢ of every dollar revenue that Google generates. Okay? So if you think about that, that's call it $60 odd $1,000,000,000 a year. Plus or minus. Okay. So the question is, at what point is the cost of trying to get 60,000,000,000 so great that you say it's not worth the 60,000,000,000. And my point is that there there is an economic rational argument here for it if it costs, for example, $10,000,000,000 or $20,000,000,000 to implement this stuff, that's probably the efficient frontier where when you factor in multiple compression and you factor in behavior change in Europe, which may actually degrade the 60,000,000,000 to 50 or 40, where you just throw your hands up and say it's just not economically worth it. You've seen these actors make this trade off in Canada. It's not totally unreasonable that they run a model to figure out the cost. David Sacks (01:00:36): Maybe they just take the perspective that whenever this DSA commission sends us a takedown request, we're just gonna do it instantly. Why wouldn't that just become the norm? In fact, I'm pretty sure that's what they'll do. The management and most of these companies really had all of them except for Elon, They don't really care. They they have the same They don't. ICs. David Friedberg (01:00:54): Yeah. They're David Sacks (01:00:56): they don't care about free speech really. They're not founders. They don't care about that free speech moreover. Have a lot of the same political biases that these Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:04): all I'm saying is I think that economic rational actors will do the right thing David Sacks (01:01:08): I think the most likely outcome is that tech companies will be craven and they'll fold those, do whatever these EU commissioners want. Jason Calacanis (01:01:14): Which then could be an opportunity for you know, distributed blockchain, you know, service. Yeah. No. David Sacks (01:01:22): I Jason Calacanis (01:01:22): mean, it's hard to scale them, but I the devil's in the details. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:26): Yeah. Or and you guys feel this every day. Like, Jason, you know, you're right now in the UAE, You can communicate in certain ways through WhatsApp. You can't communicate in other ways through iMessage. There are just rules of usability on products. And they exist all around the world. If you go to India, there are certain apps that are blocked and certain apps that are not. And so maybe that's just what happens where there is just a gradient of user experiences around the world for people, and we all deal with it. Jason Calacanis (01:01:51): Yeah. And we don't know exactly how heavy handed they're gonna be here. David Sacks (01:01:56): This is by definition heavy handed. Jason Calacanis (01:01:58): I don't agree with it, but hold on. We don't know what the this is the problem with how they've done This is all being done in a star chamber. We don't have any insight into what kind of content they want to take down. If it's obviously abusive content, fine, but if it's, you know, COVID information or misinformation, obviously there's gonna be a problem, that we saw here in the United States, just so people know. I don't David Friedberg (01:02:22): think you can David Sacks (01:02:22): respond to that. Yeah. In one second. Okay. Jason Calacanis (01:02:24): Look, you're you're gonna wait too much David Sacks (01:02:26): credit, Jay Cal. Jason Calacanis (01:02:27): I'm not giving them any credit. I am do not wanna see this happen. I'm not giving them any credit. I'm just saying we'll see how heavy handed they'll be. You're assuming they're gonna be super heavy handed. We'll see. And then we'll see what their what their own citizens respond. David Sacks (01:02:39): I think the fact that a room full of commissioners in the EU can send take down requests to social media companies is by definition have to be handed. Let me back up. What the Twitter file showed, okay, is that we had 80 FBI agents being the conduit for take down requests to Twitter and presumably other social networks. Jason Calacanis (01:02:58): Well, no. No. But that was all on the deal. David Sacks (01:03:00): On the deal. Exactly. Jason Calacanis (01:03:00): Yes. That was not long. David Sacks (01:03:02): Yes, moreover, when they did that in their takedown request, they would always point to, well, this tweet violates your terms of service. K? What the EU is doing is different. They're actually defining the terms of service. They're saying that your terms of service need to do x, y, and z. They're doing it explicitly. This is not on the deal. They're They're Jason Calacanis (01:03:22): not doing it explicitly. They're not saying David Sacks (01:03:24): policy needs to be what we say it is. And when we tell you to take something down, you're gonna do it. Jason Calacanis (01:03:30): They haven't defined what that is. That's, I think, the issue is where where is the actual definition of what's gonna happen here? And that's why for us to have a discussion about this is because we don't know what they're talking about with this content. David Sacks (01:03:41): That's so problematic. Whatever they say in the future is disinformation needs to be taken down. That's the framework. Jason Calacanis (01:03:47): The fine is gonna be up to 6% of global revenue for companies that do not comply. So the EU has also figured out that speeding tickets don't work, and they're looking to give pretty heavy panel, please. So We'll see. This is, a moving target here. We don't have complete information, but yeah. It's not good. It's not David Sacks (01:04:09): a moving target. We do have complete information. This is a censorship regime, Jason. Jason Calacanis (01:04:14): We just don't know what their term for illegal or problematic content this year. Don't want I don't wanna be pitted as your adversary here. I I am not in favor of this, so we're clear. But I and I don't think there should be a star chamber where people get to pick what goes up and what goes down there. I think the private companies can do a good enough job there, and and there should be freedom of speech. And, yeah, you're gonna see some things you don't like, yeah, grow up. Turn change the time. I think they David Friedberg (01:04:39): it basically, as they say, sets a horizontal rule covering all services and all types of illegal content. Jason Calacanis (01:04:49): And disinformation. Illegal content could be fine. Right? Friedberg, like, illegal content, putting a doxing somebody. Child pornography, illegal content, I think you would all be okay with. It's the disinformation part. Right? David Friedberg (01:04:59): I'm not trying to be okay or not okay. I'm just saying that like, you're basically saying that whatever the rules are that they come up with, that may be different than somewhere else on the internet, they get to then regulate other businesses on the internet. I think the internet should be open. Jason Calacanis (01:05:13): But and there are lots. David Friedberg (01:05:14): I don't I don't wanna have a commission approved what I write in my blog post. I don't want the commission telling me that what I put on Twitter or put on my website is up to them to decide whether or not it's okay to put up because they think it's illegal because it has what they deem to be misinformation. Right. Jason Calacanis (01:05:31): So already laws that exist. So disinformation and legal content, 2 different things. David Friedberg (01:05:35): But those laws provide some authority to a commissioner. I mean, that's problem. Right? It's it's David Sacks (01:05:40): Right. The the the problem is in the vagueness of this. The the law says that social media comes have to take down a legal content, but it doesn't say what a legal content is. It delegates the power to define it to this group of bureaucrats led by theory Breton. And they're meeting this week to hammer it out. So Yeah. Look, in practice, at least the process is gonna be whatever they say it is. That is Yeah. Explicit censorship. Jason Calacanis (01:06:04): Okay. Let's move on to our final topic. 2nd largest hype cycle of 2023, perhaps GLP ones, Chamath, you, brought this up in our group Chamath, so maybe you could tee it up. Well, I was just interested in understanding Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:22): Everything that's been happening around GLPs, mostly because it just seems like people think it's a panacea. We have a lot of our friends. I said, Jason, you were the one that said this in our poker group, like 4 of the 12 or 13 regulars are on it. Is that right? I think it was 4 of, like, Jason Calacanis (01:06:41): yeah, 4 of twelve people were on it. Yeah. It was a a third. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:45): And then and then I got this really interesting chart, Nick, you you may wanna put this up. It basically showed how the GLP one market was tracking very similar to the AI market in terms of a hype, which is if you separated companies As a basket of people who were positively affected by GLP ones, like Lily and Novo Nordisk, and you had a basket of companies that were disrupted by GLP Ones. Those would be like Dexcom or DaVita or folks like that, it eerily mimics the same hype cycle around AI, which is there's those businesses that seem to be feeding the hype train around AI and then all of these companies that theoretically will be disrupted. And it just brought up to me that there's this incredible market movement here where I think people think that these GLP ones are a solution to everything. And I thought it was just an important thing to discuss because scientifically, The mechanism of action is still a little questionable and murky. On top of that, I think we don't know physiologically what the real long term ramifications of taking these things are. There's still a lot of mixed evidence around the total amount of weight loss you can lose, the percentage of muscle versus fat that you lose, And so, yeah, I just thought it was important for us to talk about it and see what this would be about. This would Jason Calacanis (01:08:07): be a a a basket spread trade. Here are the companies that win here are the companies that loses and look at that gap between the 2. And it's exactly mimics people who would benefit from AI and people who would lose from AI. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:20): Yeah. The GLP 1 hype the summary is the GLP 1 hype cycle is as overextended as the AI hype cycle. So we should probably separate the wheat from the chaff and start by understanding what GLP ones are because I'm sure there's a lot of people in our listening community who are on this stuff. Should really probably understand. Jason Calacanis (01:08:41): If that's where you think we should go next, we should then throw it to the sultan of science himself. David Friedberg explained to us, while we prepare our uraniumous jokes, GLP-1s. David Friedberg (01:08:56): These drugs have been around for a while. There are small peptides, little proteins that bind to this GLP receptor in your gut that causes insulin to be released from your pancreas and triggers a couple of other hormones that reduce your hunger and appetite. So it basically gets you to eat less and your brain and your brain. And it's effectively a way to make you feel not hungry you're not you're you can then run a calorie deficit. And when you run a calorie deficit, your body starts starving and starts burning Other parts of your body besides the the glucose it can get out of the stomach where you would otherwise have food and ends up in your blood, and it starts generating energy from your stored body fat and your stored and your muscle mass. So these have been around for a while. Novo Nordisk is the, developer of 2 of the the main drugs. And here's a a a chart of Novo Nordisk stock price. You can see that in the last 5 years, their stock has 5 x. They've basically gone from, you know, call it a $60,000,000,000 company to a $350,000,000,000 company. In 5 years, largely on the the back of the promise of this drug. So these drugs have been around for a while, and there's actually one that's been on the market for a long time, but it only causes 5% body mass loss. So 5% weight loss. So people are like, oh, it's not that great. It didn't really get widely adopted. Then this new class, they added a little side chain. They added another little molecule, to the peptide. And as a result, it didn't get degraded as fast, and it was far more bioactive in the body and caused a much greater benefit. And so suddenly people on these drugs started to see massive weight loss massive improvement diabetes. And and metabolic health all moves together. So as you burn body fat, as you have less glucose in your blood, your your your metabolic condition improves. The problem is when you're starving normally, if you were to just stop eating, you would typically see that your body starts burning, first of all, the glucose and then birds off the glycogen in your muscles, which is the next energy store. Once that's gone, your body starts burning fat. And as it's burning more fat, it also says, Hey, I need to get these other molecules, which I'm not getting just from the fat. I need muscle, and your body actually starts burning muscle. David Friedberg (01:11:08): And that's how your brain gets energy that it needs when you're starving is actually primarily from the degradation of of muscle tissue. So normally, if you're just starving yourself, you'll see a ratio of weight loss where it's about 20% coming from lean muscle mass. In some of the studies that have been done on these GLP 1 agonists, we're seeing up to 40% of the weight loss coming from lean muscle mass. Being burnt off. So, Jason, I don't know if you've done a DEXA scan because Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:38): I think you've you've said publicly David Friedberg (01:11:39): that you've tried it. Right? I mean, you should check me you should check out what your lean muscle mass is versus, your fat composition in your body. I don't know if you have it from before, but then I have him. Yeah. And this has been one of the concerns. Obviously, if you're not working out, and you're not, you know, doing what you need to to eat protein and build muscle, you're gonna be burning through a lot of that muscle mass. And so that's problem number 1 that's arisen that that people are concerned about. The other one that's that's really I don't know if it's concerning or not, but when people go off these drugs, they gain the weight back. In a very quick way. And there's 2 reasons for this. One is if you haven't actually changed your behavior, you haven't changed your exercise patterns, and and you suddenly have the appetite suppressing drug taken out of your system, you start eating more food again. And when you've been in a state of starvation, your metabolic your your metabolism, your baseline metabolism goes down. So instead of burning on average 2000 calories a day, your body's only burning at 1200 calories a day. Suddenly, if you go back to eating 2000 calories a day, because you're not you're, you know, you no longer have the appetite suppressor. You're gonna reinflate. Yep. And so so your metabolism goes down, the appetite suppressant goes away, and you gain all the weight back. If you haven't changed your behavior otherwise, And so I don't know if you guys saw this clip I sent out of Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about Howard Stern, but he was talking about how, like, I can't do a Howard Jay Cal, you could probably do it really well, but, you know Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:13:02): It's one thing. David Friedberg (01:13:03): What do Jason Calacanis (01:13:04): you think of the Ozempic? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:05): Well, you know how the Ozempic is you know, Americans used to Jason Calacanis (01:13:09): be very interested in working hard, and I don't know why that's so bad, but you get up at 5 AM and you work hard and you do it and you make yourself strong. David Friedberg (01:13:18): Right. Jason Calacanis (01:13:18): That's what it's about. You don't need to do a little baby girl or Sam Picking. You said, oh, look. I'm gonna eat less food. David Friedberg (01:13:25): Thank you. Wait. Jason Calacanis (01:13:26): Did you listen to the clip? David Friedberg (01:13:27): Is that Jason Calacanis (01:13:28): is that David Friedberg (01:13:28): what he said? That's exactly what he said. That's exactly what he said. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:32): He's exactly what he said. What do Speaker 6 (01:13:36): you need? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:36): This is what's happening? Speaker 6 (01:13:39): Hard work. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:40): And then that's Speaker 6 (01:13:41): why I say in in in my book, you know, work work your ass off. And Yeah. Because it's there's no shortcut. What built this country? Jason Calacanis (01:13:49): Is it people that stepped in? Speaker 6 (01:13:52): Is it people that were whipping out? It says that I want to speak to them to be come through. No. This were ballsy women and men that went out there 5 in the morning and got up, and they struggled, and they fought, and they worked their butts off. That's what made this country great. David Friedberg (01:14:09): Yeah. He he he said that in response to, I think Howard's questions about Ozempic. Jason Calacanis (01:14:15): Yeah. Like, we're David Friedberg (01:14:16): basically creating a new multibillion dollar pharmaceutical drug system that people are gonna have to stay on in order to stay healthy. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:25): Do we know what the long term effects of taking semaglutide are and can be and will be? Do you want me David Friedberg (01:14:32): to know? These drugs have been around for quite a long time. So, you know, the There there are various side effects, but in terms of, like, are we debilitating our health over the long run? You know, it seems to be a reasonably safe drug and it seems to be a drug that that folks are are kind of recognizing as being well worth the cost and whatever the risks may be. Well, what are the implications for the benefit you Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:55): lose 40%? Well, it's about 16% of your weight loss. You typically lose. Right? Mean, yeah, David Friedberg (01:15:01): they'll they'll say up to 20%. If you lose weight, you'll usually see up to 20% of lean muscle mass of of the of the weight you lost coming from lean muscle mass loss. And, you know, 80% or 85% as you say came off coming from from body fat loss. But with the Ozempic drugs, they're seeing as high as 40% coming from lean muscle mass, which is obviously concerning. Jason Calacanis (01:15:20): I just made an adjustment. I everybody knows I lost, like, £40 or so or talk to me for more than 5 minutes. You know, I have because I'll tell you. And the 1st 20 was just fasting and doing Keto. And then when this drug came out, I tried it. I tried Ozempic, and then I did Wagovee, and, you know, gonna Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:36): give you some help. Jason Calacanis (01:15:38): I, I gained back about 4 or £5 and I also increased protein in the morning and I do a lot of walking. Okay. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:44): So So let me give you this Chamath and tell me if it maps to what you have felt or not. So if £250, let's just say you lose 16% of your body weight, that's £40. Okay. So you get to 190. Oh, sorry, to 210. And of that, you lose £16 of muscle. Is that what you saw, or did you see something less than that? Jason Calacanis (01:16:05): No. Much less muscle because I use weights and I do a lot of walking and I eat a ton of protein. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:16:10): Right. So you're doing the exercise. You're doing the exercise. Jason Calacanis (01:16:13): I'm not doing a hardcore exercise. And so I do exercise. You have David Friedberg (01:16:16): to do exercise. And the challenge Jay Cal is that the vast majority of people that go on the drugs. By the way, I'm not saying the drugs shouldn't be adopted. I think that there's extraordinary benefit, health benefit, to the majority of people that are on these drugs, but the downside is that if you're not exercising, you are gonna lose muscle mass. And then obviously there is the fact that you're now hooked on this thing, if you're not gonna figure out ways to change behavior. Jason Calacanis (01:16:38): I cycled off of it 2 or 3 times, and had very minor weight gain back 3, £4, £5, but I deliberately changed my relationship with food, portion size, and I work out now. And what I found was as I lost weight, my interest and the joy I got out of working out dramatically increased. So running, walking, skiing, everything got easier, and I just got more into it. So I like working out again now that I'm forty hot pound, £42 off my peak weight. Yeah. I I'd I think it's an amazing wonder drive. But, Sean, do David Friedberg (01:17:12): you have some early points on like a take on this? Like, you think that these things are overhyped right now and we're just in the middle of a hype cycle, or what's your key takeaway? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:19): My key takeaway is that for many people from a health perspective, I think that it it could be a really great solution. I think that these triple agonists that are coming out are gonna be probably even more effective than these double agonists that that we have right now? Yeah. I don't understand the triple? Munjaro is the triple agonist. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:17:41): People who typeimanjaro told me it is unbelievable how not hungry you are. David Friedberg (01:17:48): Yeah. It's super fast too. Super fast. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:50): I I just wanna see, you know, like, for example, when You know, when you get older in your sixties seventies, one of the biggest risks you take on and in your eighties is actually like, you know, muscle scalital and falls and things like that. And one of the best preventative measures for that is muscle mass. And so you get into this weird catch 22 if you replace one issue with another longitudinally, if you use it for a long time, I'm concerned about that. I do think that these GLP ones, if when we look back on it, we'll probably be like statins. And in as much as when statins first came on the market, it was a wonder drug, right? And, you know, we were all teetering towards you know, heart disease and heart attacks and all of this stuff. And then once people got on these statins, I think there was a very meaningful impact to the percentage of people that that suffered heart disease and cardiac issues. But our disease still continues to grow. And you would say to yourself, well, how is this possible? Because statins are effectively free. They're generic. They're widely available. And today, right now, because of the lack of supply, the emergency FDA order around these semaglutide allows you to make generics right now. Right? So the the cost of those are not really a 1000 bucks a month, but can be as cheap as a few 100. So you're getting this widespread adoption and usage I think the open question for me is if human history is a guide, we're gonna replace this issue with a different kind of issue. Because, unfortunately, you know, maybe people take it and then they physiologically adapt and then they just continue to eat the same or more. Because they think, wow, this is, again, out of jail free card for me. And maybe they overpower that satiety, that that sem that GLP 1 is supposed to give you. I don't know. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:32): I find it from a sort of public societal health perspective really interesting. From an economic market perspective, I think that these things are priced to perfection. It's kind of like Nvidia, which is like. Everything people are assuming, everything is going to work. It's a tough point in the cycle to be a buyer, I think, as a, as an economic actor But as you know, if you're making a trade, Jason Calacanis (01:19:58): that seems like a hard trade to make. And and just to give even some more color to it, Novo Nordisk, announced that it was halting. And so is that the kidney disease trial early? Well, Nick showed that Because it was so conclusive. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:11): Yeah. I mean, if you look Jason Calacanis (01:20:12): at that, Mark, a $3,600,000,000 sell off in shares of dialysis providers. David Friedberg (01:20:17): I mean, remember, over 40% of Americans are clinically obese, It's, sorry, almost 60% now. It's an extraordinary health epidemic in the United States. And, you know, if this drug can have this sort of an effect, it can reduce costs across the health care system. So, you know, there is still, I mean, Shamal's point out of that is the key right because Jason Calacanis (01:20:35): this affects cardiovascular disease, diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:40): part of the 60,000. Does an average 16% weight loss reduction actually get people from obesity to un obesity, or are they still are they still obese? David Friedberg (01:20:52): The obesity trial seem to I mean, remember, you have to get FDA approval for a particular. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:56): So this is this is what Jason was mentioning. So this is this is a basket that Morgan Stanley created, which was essentially starting at the beginning of the year when the hype was really starting to get out of control. Morgan Stanley created a basket of the GLP-one winners and a basket of the GLP-one potentially disrupted healthcare stocks so you could trade them off against each other. And this just shows how it's performed, which is just a blockbuster trade in the last 10 months. So if you, if you went along the GLP 1 winners and short these potential, potentially disrupted, it's, I mean, I've never seen a spread trade payoff like this in such a short time. David Friedberg (01:21:33): 80, 80 percent a year, unless unbelievable. Jason Calacanis (01:21:36): And the nature of creating a David Friedberg (01:21:37): bond, would you take the other side of this trade right now or, like, how do you I would I would and and Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:42): the reason is because of 2 22 practical factors. 1 is that when when a when a market gets this exaggerated, what you're pricing in is essentially like a panacea solution, but And those tend to not really be realistic. And again, I would point to statins as a good example of that. And so there's a part of it, which is just like these trades are so overextended. That you can probably pretty be pretty safe on the other side. And then the second part is that I don't think we really understand yet the other half of the coin, which is, you know, for every one of us that's generally positively inclined around GLP-1s, who isn't getting enough attention right now are the doctors who've spending a lot of time researching researching this stuff who may actually have a perspective on the other side, you know, probably the most prominent one like Bob Blustig. So you have to give that a little bit of time for it to play out because nobody wants to hear the bear case on GLP ones as a drug that people take. So I I would just say that it's it's probably, again, when you see it, an economic trade like this, it's it's It's probably okay to be on the other side of it. And then just from a public health perspective, you know, take a wait and see. But for a lot of people who are clinically obese, it doesn't seem like the math is such that if you're at a BMI of 30, reducing your weight 16%, I think gets you to like a 26, it doesn't get under the I Jason Calacanis (01:23:10): think it's meaningful. I think it's meaningful. No. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:12): No. I'm not saying it's not meaningful. I'm saying it does it it you're still obese. Jason Calacanis (01:23:15): Yeah. I think the the key thing and I don't wanna give medical advice, but I think you need to do this holistically. So you gotta keep your diet and you gotta keep working out in mind when you do it. That should be fairly obvious. And those are always good things to do as we try and Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:28): take it your whole life in sports, Jacob, or how do you how David Friedberg (01:23:31): do you view it? Jason Calacanis (01:23:32): No. I'm £5 for my lowest weight as an adult, and my the weight I used to be when I ran marathons. And so my plan is to come off of it. Like, by the end of this year. And then and I had taken, like, 6 months off twice, doing this. So I did it, like, in little intentional spreads to In spurts, friends, yeah, just to to get where I want it to be. And this last five, this last five Pounds strength. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:57): Do you have a sense of if your behavior changes? When you're on and you're off, like, do you do David Friedberg (01:24:05): you find? Jason Calacanis (01:24:06): I I do feel more hungry, but then I remember how bad I felt when I was overweight. And then I just weigh myself every day. And if I see myself get above a certain number, I consider that like a red alert And I just, you know, either start fasting working out or just eating super healthy. So it's just the discipline of weighing myself every day that I've gotten into. And just understanding, hey. You know, if I make 2 or 3 bad decisions, you're not gonna make 2 or 3 bad decisions when you're on these drugs in my experience because you so bloated and so painful when you overeat that you don't wanna do. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:40): So it's it's really it's really like it hurts. You feel distended. Jason Calacanis (01:24:43): And, you know, there are reports, and, it did happen to me twice you know, over 2 or 3 years of doing this, that if you take it and you eat too much, you you could get sick and actually vomit. So some people just don't have the stomach for it. I think a lot of people just tap out it to make their stomachs feel too distended or, gnarly. And that and that's why the dosage actually really matters. They have dosages that are, like, a very wide range, maybe 10 x. And so the dosage getting that right, working with your doctor is Kate. But, yeah, I'm just I'm excited to get off of it because I wanna really start sincerely weight lifting. So I'm getting a a personal trainer to do, like, weight lifting twice a week. And get really into that next because you can't do hardcore intents working out with us because you're, you know, just lower calorie. But I think it's a miracle drug, and I'm I'm excited about it. The one question I have for you on the spread trade, before we end, Chamath does the nature of making those indexes and giving people the ability to put the trade on, exacerbate the trade because then I saw everybody was tweeting about this. You know, over the last week, does the nature of an index being made impact the the the the the David Friedberg (01:25:49): action in Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:50): the socks? You know, Morgan Stanley is particularly good at these basket creations and they tend to make it for their biggest hedge fund clients and their richest families. So it tends to be pretty isolated. They they they give an edge to a few folks that so these things are not broadly published. And so I I doubt it in the end, Jason Calacanis (01:26:09): but so they come up with this idea. How many in how many names are in each index? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:13): It all just depends. Like, and and they're very smart about you know, being able to create these on the fly based on what themes they're seeing. And then like I said, they share them with their best hedge fund clients and their, and their, and their biggest families. They don't, they don't trade, you know, they don't share them with us. I, I, I got it. Jason Linda, I told you, like, at the end of all of at the end of that crap. Jason Calacanis (01:26:32): Yeah. Everybody put the trade on and got the wind. So let's get you both. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:37): But, so they didn't they didn't actually area would be in January. I wish they did it. Jason Calacanis (01:26:41): Alright. Listen, we gotta wrap up. Great show boys, and we're praying for peace and, the return of the hostages. 4, the Sultan of Science, the dictator and the rain man. Yeah. David Sachs. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:52): I don't Jason Calacanis (01:26:52): really know his grandma. We're gonna see you at episode 151. Enjoy the 150 Fanned me nuts this weekend, anybody who's going through. Leggett Lewis, and I've never done 6. Rainman, David Sachs. Speaker 5 (01:27:10): And it said We open source it to the fans in a gone crazy lately. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:23): Besties Speaker 5 (01:27:29): are We should all just get a room and just have one big huge order because they're all It's it's like it's like sexual tension, but they just need to release it now. Jason Calacanis (01:27:46): Was. Good. Good. Good. Good. Where did you get Murkey's