对话贾里德·库什纳：以哈战争、前行路径、宏观与 AI

David Friedberg (00:00:00): Sacks, what essay were you writing last night? 12 3 in the morning. David Sacks (00:00:02): Oh, I was blasting people on Twitter yesterday. I was collecting scalps. I keep these receipts of people who attack me on Ukraine. And then, like, 6 months later, you know, they all write a tweet, admitting they were wrong. Oh, I'll rub it in their face. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:19): You have a little Google doc, and you just go No. David Sacks (00:00:21): It's like bookmarks. That's bookmarks. David Friedberg (00:00:24): You have, like, your kill bill list. David Sacks (00:00:26): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:26): You are so petty. Oh, like, I David Sacks (00:00:29): love it. I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:30): love that about you. Jared Kushner (00:00:31): Some would say that's a good defense mechanism. Right? David Sacks (00:00:35): Yeah. They gotta know. They're not gonna take any free shots because if they do and then Coming back. You know, invariably, I I'm proven correct, then Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:43): You're gonna clap back David Sacks (00:00:45): I'm gonna smack him. Very trumpian, isn't it? Jared Kushner (00:00:48): Yeah. It's a very hard burden for you to carry. It's just being right all the time. I I respect the way you do it with such grace and, magnitudes and such. Oh, well, winter's ride. Rainman, David Sacker. David Sacks (00:01:06): And I said We open sits of fans, and they've just gone racing Jared Kushner (00:01:09): with her. Love you. Nice. Queen of Kim. I'm going all over again. David Friedberg (00:01:14): Alright. Well, come back to the all in pod. Really excited to have a guest with us today, Jared Kushner. Sure everyone knows who he is. We obviously talked about Jared's interview with Lex Friedberg on the pod a couple of weeks ago. And what happened to Matthew, DM Jared, and started chatting and said, hey. Would you be interested in coming to talk with us Yeah. About these matters. Jared very, you know, kindly agreed to do it. So we're really excited to, have Jared join us today. Jared Welcome. Jared Kushner (00:01:41): Thank you for having me. David Friedberg (00:01:42): So I don't think you need much of an introduction. Obviously, you're a senior advisor to, president from from 2017 to 2021. And, you worked on the US Mexico relationship as well as led the Middle East peace efforts, which I think is gonna make up the bulk of what we're excited to talk about today, just really briefly since leaving, office You've been investing running a firm called affinity partners. Is that right? Maybe you can share with us just a little bit about what you've been up to, and then we'll you know, kinda get into it here. Perfect. Jared Kushner (00:02:15): Affinity partners is a private equity firm that I started when we left doing growth investing, private equity investing, Globally, we raised just over 3,100,000,000, doing a lot of investments, trying to, bring Gulf money into Israel into the US, trying to figure out how through, investments you could bring countries closer together, people closer together, looking at a lot of areas where there's, structural transitions happening at large in the global economy, whether it's near shoring from offline to online, you know, software, a lot of, different interesting areas, a lot in the the fintech space and financial services right now, but, you know, enjoying it. And, the goal is really to bring the experience that we had from the previously being an investor and, then the time of government and then thinking through how you could use those macro learnings and connections and relationships. And navigational skills to the investing side. David Friedberg (00:03:07): Right. So we're gonna try and talk later in the show, about macro markets a bit. Talk a little bit about some of the activity in AI this week. We think it's all pretty prescient, and, hopefully, we can all dialogue about that. I think it'd be helpful when you and I talk just to get ready for the show today, you mentioned that you had a very liberal upbringing in the upper east side in New York, and your perspective began to shift as you started to travel the country and you were in the Trump White House and have become very active since. Would love to hear a little bit about how your perspective shifted in the time could you mention you started traveling the country and seeing things that you otherwise haven't seen living in the upper east side? Would love to hear that part of your story before we kinda get into things. If you wouldn't mind sharing. Jared Kushner (00:03:49): Yeah. Sure. So, one thing about my life is that, nothing has gone according to the plan. I grew up in, New Jersey, Really nice place in Livingston. My father was an entrepreneur in the real estate business, banking, insurance, did a lot of different things, really brought up, me and my siblings to be focused on business. And, it really for us was a, good experience growing up. I actually went to, Harvard. And then after that, chose to go to a lost loan business school, where I was at NYU. During that time, my my father had a legal issue, and I was forced to take over the business. And so I got into the real estate business. And then after that, bought a media company in New York, and that's really where I got exposure to a lot of what I'd call New York society. My wife and I, we met, got married, and, through that experience, thought we had a very expanded worldview at our house and every side. We have dinner parties. We have heads of banks and hedge funds and technology companies and fashion. And, And then it was just, you know, really nice life. And then her father, now she's running for office, and that was a an interesting experience for us as Republican. We didn't know too many Republicans. David Friedberg (00:04:57): Were you registered Democrat prior? Jared Kushner (00:04:59): I was registered democrat going up. My father was a big democrat donor. We were we'd have in our house whether it be, you know, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, I think my father gave, Corey Booker his first campaign donation. So I know Corey since I'm fifteen years old. So really grew up around Democrat politics, all of our life. But, over time, I I think during the Obama years, I I changed my registration to an independent. I didn't feel like the Democrat party was fully representing my my viewpoints. I felt more independent minded. And then, during the time with My father-in-law, when he was running, for office, he invited me to go with him to a rally in Springfield, Illinois. We flew out there. I got off the plane. And, you know, we we pull up to an arena and the guy comes up to Trump and says, congratulations, sir. You just broke the record for the arena for attendance. Then he says, well, well, who had the who had the record before, and he says, well, it's Elton John 36 years earlier. And he says, Jared, look, I don't even have a guitar or piano. This is impressive. You know? So you know, he gets up on stage and and, without really notes, you know, riffs for over an hour. And it was interesting for me because I was watching you know, CNN and the New York Times and all my friends in the media, basically, were describing his rallies as almost like KK conventions. But I walked around the crowd. Nobody knew who I was then. And what I saw was that these were just, you know, they were people were old, young, male, female, white minority, And, and, and it was just people who were hardworking Americans who who, you know, really felt like Trump was giving them a voice And what was interesting to me was a couple weeks earlier, we'd been at, the Robin Hood Foundation, which is the big, philanthropy in New York where a lot of the hedge fund managers support. I remember the chairman of Robinhood getting up and saying, you know, if we wanna save, you know, the next generation, we wanna save, the kids in the inner cities. We have to, we have to support common core. That's the way that we can save people. Jared Kushner (00:06:47): And I remember Trump gets up there and he says, you know, we wanna save education, we have to end common core and send it to the states. I'm saying, wait. I thought I thought common core was this great thing. And but why are all these people against it? And so It it really just kind of piqued my interest and made me realize that maybe my aperture was was way smaller, way more closed than than I thought it was. And It really led me to to to seek out a lot of people who had differing points of view than the people I've been around before. I really opened my aperture, explored a lot And over the years, I really got the chance to meet with people from both sides. So, you know, I have a lot of friends who are independent, friends who are liberal, friends who are very, Republican, and, You know, my personal view was I thought of myself more as a pragmatist, fact based and data driven. And based on that, I tried to pursue the different policies that I thought made the most sense, in as unemotional a way as possible. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:40): How did you figure out that that in Springfield could translate all throughout the country? Like, was there a process that you guys went through to validate? Like, hold on, is this just a moment in time, or is this just a specific area? Or what is how did you guys get to the ground truth of what the scalable marketable candidate looked like? Cause I'm sure that was part of the calculus and what you did, because it I think, to your point, maybe the media's perspective was, hold on a second. This this guy is is riffing, but it clearly went very quickly from riffing to a methodical plan. And I don't think that that's ever really been talked about. Do you wanna just tell us a little bit about that? Sure. Jared Kushner (00:08:19): Well, I I would say it was less planned and way more entrepreneurial. And and I see entrepreneurial in in 2 different senses. You know, one is The campaign was 1 was run incredibly entrepreneurially. It it people were told that if you work for Trump, you'll never get a job in Washington again, which is why he really wasn't able hire a lot of people initially and why a lot of the responsibility for the campaign fell to people like myself who, really just cared about him personally and wanted to make sure that he was able to do a competent job with the operations of a campaign that led to us doing a lot of things in an untraditional way, but we actually were able to make the dollars go a lot further, whether it was building a data operation or how we targeted advertisers or how we, you know, did our events. We were able to just do it in a much different way. But from a a viability candidate perspective, I really give all the credit to him because what I saw with politicians is a lot of politicians will take polls and then moderate their perspectives. This is somebody who without pollsters and without any political experience, really put forward a lot of points of view and and keep in mind in a Republican primary A lot of his viewpoints on trade were very, heterodoxical. They were they were not what was conventionally thought of. And what I saw with Trump was that he was able to move the polls to him. And that was a that was a talent and and just a skill of persuasion, and his willingness to kind of stick to the issues. I mean, at that point in time, I remember seeing polls that illegal immigration was not like a top 5 issue when he started the campaign. And by, you know, the middle at the end of the campaign, people were really seeing the craziness that was happening at the southern border and why that was, critical to our national security. And so, I think that for him, he found a lot this message. And with him, he was not a perfectly, always on message candidate, but what he did do was he was constantly evolving and learning. And you know, and and would learn from the different things that happened and and constantly evolving to, find ways to to persist. David Friedberg (00:10:07): Amazing. Like a startup finding a product market fit. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:10): Yeah. And what's he like as a father-in-law? I'm curious. Jared Kushner (00:10:13): As a father-in-law, he's been great. You know, that obviously brought us a lot closer together, you know, until that time, our time was mostly they're playing golf together or we'd be together at family events. Working together was was was a different element of our relationship. But I think one of the benefits I had with him was that he knew I was always gonna tell him the truth whether I agreed with him or not. I also, I think one of the things he liked about me was that I I was not obviously, worked hard. I gave him straight answers, and I didn't opine on things where I didn't feel like I had an expertise. So if you had asked me a question, And I didn't feel like I knew the answer. I would say, well, this is not my expertise. These are the people I would recommend. I speak to you to get perspective. And let me bring you there. Their opinions. And so I think he saw me as somebody who was who was competent, obviously had his best interest at heart. Again, I wasn't accepting money for any job. So it wasn't doing it for for financial gain. And I just started to really believe in a lot of the policies that he was pushing and wanted to help him maybe translate it from a a campaign speech to kind of technical policy and then see, once he got the opportunity, to help him implement it as well. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:16): That's really cool. David Sacks (00:11:17): Why do David Friedberg (00:11:17): you agree to do Lex? And why are you doing the show today? We were kinda surprised to see you on Lex. And obviously, like Lex said, it was a very different conversation, then I think any of us would have expected having the only exposure to you being through, you know, some sort of media channels what's motivating you to kinda do this today Jared Kushner (00:11:37): before we get into it. So so Lex, again, him and my wife are friends, and I I I really follow and and listen to what he does. I I think in society today, the the the news, it's kind of just one person's, you know, point of view and and their their they're picking and choosing and and editing what they put into it one way or the other, but the medium of the podcast is something that, I my first consumption, was growing with. And and I felt like it was a place where you could have real conversations. I think the people who are listening to podcasts are people who are looking to have a more nuanced, perspective on something and and really wanna, you know, try to understand something deeper. And, and I respect Lex. I all my private conversations with him. I I really enjoyed. And I love that he was really trying to, find perspectives from people that maybe, others didn't understand to try to bring greater understanding, across. And so I agreed to do it after a while. I was really, really glad I did. And, based on the the great feedback I got, there, my sense is is that the podcast format is is something that's or you could have a real conversation. You can go back and forth. You could argue. You could disagree. I think that that's where people really wanna get their information from. So I I turned out a lot know, cable news or different, interview requests, because I find that you can't have as nuanced a a discussion. And, you know, I wish things were as simple as, you know, the black and white or the political slogans that people use, but the reality is things are a lot more nuanced. So when Chamath reached out, I followed you guys, and I've listened to you for a first time. I was, I was really happy to come do it. David Friedberg (00:13:11): Awesome. Well, thanks for doing it. Sax, you wanna kick us off on the Gaza conflict and framing up the present day. David Sacks (00:13:19): Sure. Based on what I've read, it seems like Israel has now formed a perimeter around Gaza City. They've sort of bisected Gaza between this north and south, and they've been trying to bomb entry or exit points from the Hamas tunnel network. And it seems like their strategy is to kinda gradually close in on that tunnel network and basically try and eliminate Hamas from sort of this northern part of Gaza, and then one assumes they'll move to the south. And I guess one other element to add to it is that you know, while Israel is doing that, you're seeing protests both in the west and in the Arab or Muslim world, you're starting to see statements condemning Israel by leaders of these other countries in the region. I'd say the one by Turkey by Erdogan was notably harsh and threatening. But you're starting to see, again, as Israel proceeds with this operation, you're starting to see more and more condemnation from various parts of the international community. So let's start with that is, you know, how do you assess what's happening on the ground? What do you think the prospects for success are, and how do you assess the risk that this sort of escalates horizontally in ways that are kinda hard to predict and could spiral out of control. Jared Kushner (00:14:39): Yeah. So so there's a lot of different ways you can go with that, but I'll start with kind of the first question, which is In the immediate aftermath of the attack, my my biggest concern was that Israel's clearly caught off guard from intelligence and military perspective with the attack and the attacks were they shook a lot of people. They were they were very, very heinous beyond really comprehension. It's it's crazy. The more and more stuff that comes out. And we were seeing a lot of in a real time thanks to, you know, the fact that right now with X and what what Elon's done there to, to not try to censor things in the way that it was happening before. So we were all getting a lot of information real time, and it was really pulling at a lot of people's hard strings. My big fear initially was that Israel would react, emotionally as opposed to, to to pragmatically. And I think that the steps that they've taken since then have been, very wise. I think the fact that they took their time and have been very methodical about getting their supply lines ready about working how to garner as much international support. I mean, you have to remember these weren't just Israeli citizens that were killed. These were American citizens. They were German citizens. They were Thai citizens. They were UK citizens. And and the hostages as well are not just Israeli citizens. So, I think that Israel took its time to get the very operation set. I've seen them go slowly, methodically. I mean, Gaza is a very, very complicated place. I mean, we studied it for 4 years. We we we we were very closely watching all the different incursions that we manage to Moss and and their, their malicious activities very, very closely, to avoid situations like this. And, the place's booby trap, like, like crazy. And so, I do think the fact that the Israelis have taken their time had been very methodical I've come up with a strategy has given me, more hope than every morning I I wake up and I look to see, you know, praying there hasn't been more casualties in Israel and, and the hope is that they continue to do it in the best way possible. So I think that the goal for them is really the elimination of Hamas I think that, you know, the the big point that I really want to make in the Lex podcast, which is why I went back, to to really do the point was that The people who are protesting, in favor of the Palestinians, a lot of the Israelis and the Palestinians want the same thing, which is, they want security for Israel and a better life for the Palestinians. And I think what people have failed to really grasp, for a long time is that Hamas has been the root cause of a lot of the the the bad lives for the Palestinians. Jared Kushner (00:17:04): If you think about Gaza, before this recent 4 October 7th. I mean, over half the population lived under the poverty line. You know, people were were really trapped there and people would blame Israel for the blockade, but what's also happened over the last 30 days is a lot of the worst fears that we had during the administration or things that Israel would be saying have totally been proven true. I mean, you've seen now I'm going to some of these, school houses where there's, you know, there's 500 or or or 50 different, you know, rocket launchers. You know, in the school is the hospitals of the terrorists that they've captured that they're interrogating are saying, well, that's where the military headquarters are. You know, now we're learning about this. This tunnel network, which they're saying is 100 of miles of of tunnels underground. Well, that's why, you know, Israel wasn't allowing cement and a lot of these these materials in the cement that went in, which was supposed to build houses for for the people of Gaza was then stolen by Hamas to to build these tunnels. The the pipes that went in to to fix the water were then taken and turned into to rockets that the fuel was was was stolen. And and not used for for for the hospitals or or for people to have better lives. It was stolen for them to operate their tunnel network and then to feel the rocket. So It's a situation that that really does have to be dealt with. Again, Israel, you guys are, I know, poker players. So, so Israel definitely has stronger, you know, hand to play here. So I think time is on the one hand in their in their favor. But on the other hand, obviously, you know, the international community has historically been very, anti Israel and anti Semitic in the way that they've approached a lot of these, these skirmishes, to date But I will say I think there's been more international support for Israel this time than I've ever seen. And I do think that that's a very important thing. So that that's maybe general. If there were some of the specific questions that you wanted to get to in there, I can David Sacks (00:18:47): What about the risk of Horizontal escalation? Let's just talk about that for a second. Because you do hear, I think, a growing Corris of Countries who are denouncing Israel, they're saying that this is collective punishment, that the bombing of Gaza is indiscriminate. They want it to stop. There's David Friedberg (00:19:05): Genaside. David Sacks (00:19:06): Genaside. Yeah. I'm not saying I agree with that rhetoric, but you you do hear it. You know, there's a effort at the UN to, to pass the ceasefire resolution. So there's a lot of people who want the ceasefire, and there's a lot of inner growing international pressure for that. And then you've heard threats from, you know, again, Erdogan and Turkey that if there's not a ceasefire at some point, they're gonna have to get involved. They're gonna have to act. Iran has said similar kinds of things, although I think it's pretty clear they don't wanna get involved. They don't want this to escalate in a into a wider regional war, but They've sort of intimated that if the bombing continues that they might have to take action, they might feel pressure to do that. So I guess one question there is, is time on Israel's side? It does seem like the, again, there's more pressure to stop the military operation over time. As opposed to less. Jared Kushner (00:19:56): Yeah. So so the answer is is everyone's talking their book, and that's what they should be doing. They're talking to their populations. The question is what people will actually do. I I would say that, you know, the hardest thing for us all is, obviously, you see civilians in Gaza who are being used as human shields and the last thing that anyone wants is for more civilian deaths to occur. It's funny this morning. I was speaking to a friend, in Israel who was telling me that yesterday, there was a a major evacuation of of, civilians in Gaza. And, a lot of people were surprised that the Israeli defense forces were basically putting themselves in between the Hamas militants and the Gaza civilians to protect them and open up a corridor. And again, one thing that Israel's done, I think, a good job of is getting out a lot of the facts about how, they've been warning the Gaza civilians to flee, asked them to go. And, and what happened was, was, you know, shooting them down with snipers and trying to prevent them from going because they wanted them to stay in place, as human shields, in in the schools and the hospitals where they were conducting their terror activities. And so, what was interesting to me was, my friend was telling me is speaking to a friend of his who was a soldier, was that was that, is that a lot of the civilians are really thanking them for liberating them from from Hamas and for risking their lives to help them get out of Gaza. And a lot of these people, again, they've been prisoners to Hamas more than anything else for a long time, and they wanna see themselves, you know, out of there so that they can you know, perhaps have a better opportunity to live a better life. And so, so I think that the current region, I think the biggest immediate threat is is from Hesblad, the north. I think that's been, I think Israel going to full ready alert, was a really smart thing. I think the US moving the battle carriers there, I think, was also good. Jared Kushner (00:21:36): I think the, the statements from, from the US administration were strong upfront, again, whether people believe that they'll they'll they'll back up those statements is is another thing because they do have a little bit of credibility deficit in the region based on what they've done over the last couple of years. But I think that's all been very helpful in kind of pushing, pushing around back and and and and sending a strong message to Hezbollah, which is if you want to attack Israel, don't do it when they're at full military readiness, Israel's nuclear power. And I think everyone is starting to realize that this has been Iran trying to manipulate things. And as long as they think there's a threat that you're not gonna go after one of their proxies, but you may go after them. That's been the best way of keeping de escalation. I think with Turkey and others, I I've spent, you know, many hours with Erdogan, personally talking about Gaza, and I know that you know, he has a big heart for the Palestinian people. He hates, to see their suffering, and it's also good politics from him. You know, he's also from a Muslim brotherhood, you know, a leading party. But I think, you know, in his heart of heart, he does have to acknowledge that a lot of their plight is is is led to by bad governance. He may not want to admit it publicly, but the reality is is the best way to improve the lives of the people of Gaza is to, eliminate Chamath and put in place a structure where people finally have the opportunity to to live, more freely and and and make better lives for themselves. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:57): Jared, you said something that I think is really interesting. You said Erdogan has a spot for the Palestinians. Can I just take that concept and just can you explain the historical context of Arabs, the Arab world and their relationship with the Palestinians sort of because it's definitely had its ebbs and flows over the arc of history? And so how do people think about it as just broadly speaking just in terms of like the big historical arcs that have kind of shaped this relationship between Arabs and and Palestinian specifically. Jared Kushner (00:23:27): Okay. Well, that's a that's a question we can spend about 3 days talking about, but I'll try to give you kind of a very quick version of it. So I I think that, you know, a lot of this goes back really to, people say it goes back to a lot of times, but I I think that The the we have to probably go back to and I'll try to do this very quick. It's it's really in 1948, which was a complicated time. It's post Holocaust, post World War 2, you know, again, the Middle East, really in the early 1900 was a lot of our was created by a lot of arbitrary lines drawn by foreigners, And you had a situation where Israel, is is the UN press 4 at the partition plan, Israel, they're willing to recognize Israel as a state for the Jewish people. And also give a state to the Palestinians, the Arabs reject that and attack Israel. And there's a whole war. During that war, it was flared up really by, general or from Egypt to, at the time, was the leader of the Muslim world. During that war, Israel was able to defy the odds and win. And a lot of Palestinians were either force from their homes or displaced from their homes. You know, there's there's versions where they say the Arabs said leave your homes. And then, you know, when the war's over, you're gonna come back and take take everything. Some Arabs, stayed in their homes. And, actually, today, they're Israeli citizens with full, you know, equal rights as as other Israelis. And so so that happened. Then in 1967, that's when Egypt attacked again. And, during that war, again, Israel miraculously won, And, and that was really kind of the the time where, Israel's able to expand their territory. They took over the West Bank at the time, which wasn't didn't belong to the Palestinians as much as it belonged to Jordan. It was part of Trans Jordan at the time. And then they also gained control of the Gaza Strip, which also, was previously administered by Egypt. Jared Kushner (00:25:08): Although when Egypt was administering it, they didn't take it as their territory. They never granted citizenship to the people who were there. So between 1948 19 67 when the 6 day war occurred. Most of the leaders in the Arab world enjoyed leaving this issue out. It was a great way to stoke nationalism and to, it was a very easy political issue for them to have to say, well, we need to do this and You know, to to to fight for the Palestinian people. So in a lot of ways, there's a way to deflect in their shortcomings at home and to justify certain actions they were taking because they were fighting for this this group of people, then it gets really interesting after the 6 day war. So this was the second time that the, Arab Countries had failed to to destroy Israel what they had promised they would do. So there's a young, terrorist at the time named yasser Arafat, and he was part of a party called Fatah. And what he said is, you know what? All these Arab leaders, they're lying to you. They're failing you. I'm gonna be the one to start creating a liberation and opportunity for the Palestinian people So he took on this mantle, was able to use his Fatag group and and some pretty, fuckery ways to take over the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which is way that he got some international claim And at the time, he was doing that from Jordan. So this is about 1968, 1969, they cost so much trouble in Jordan. That King Hussein at the time, who's King Abdul's father, who really was a a very, very, special diplomat and leader in the Middle East got so fed up with, with our thought. I mean, at the time, he was causing trouble. They it was it was steering people and people wouldn't invest there. They wouldn't it was it was hurting terrorism. And then they took a little further and they tried to assassinate him, which was probably, the final straw. So the Jordanian leader said, get these people the hell out of my country. It was a big clash between the, PLO, and and FATA, terrorists and then the Jordanian police and military, and they were able to expel them. Jared Kushner (00:26:58): And then the Palestinians went to Lebanon. That's where yasser, our front was. So they were there for about 12 years. Again, they went back to their old ways of of of fermenting, radicalism and finding ways to to cause trouble. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, then Yahsat fled again, this time to Tunisia. In Tunisia, they were living pretty well as a beachfront place. They're in these Villas on the beach, and they kind of became a little bit disconnected, from the Palestinian people, but there was a lot of resentment, of the broader, Arab world because they felt like again, the Arab World didn't really they would say they were for the Palestinian people, but never really stood up for them in the way that they felt like they deserved. So It was it took until about 1988 that finally, this is 40 years after, 1948, the war of independence where the PLO was finally able to get the Arab League to say, and this is really because Jordan was just, like, done with this issue to say, okay. We're gonna acknowledge that this land here should become a power state. So the notion of a Palestinian state really didn't emerge till about, 1987, 1988, which is the same time that Hamas actually came about, and they came about really from they were an all shoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. And their whole thing was basically we're gonna default terrorism in order to, prevent, prevent any compromise or any deals with Israel. So then you go to 1991, which is a very, very important time for the Palestinians, mostly because, Saddam Hussein and Iraq invades Kuwait. And that was very scary for a lot of the Arab leaders. Right? They didn't want they did fear Saddam, he was a, he was seen as the radical, arafat, and the Palestinian leadership backed Saddam Hussein mostly because they knew that he was seen as the revolution and popular with the more common man, and this pissed off every single goal leader because they basically said, wait, this guy, if he's gonna take over Kuwait comfort Saudi Arabia. Jared Kushner (00:28:51): He'd come for UAE. So they were all very against that. And at the time, there was about over 200,000 Palestinians in Kuwait. What happened at that time though was that that made the Palestinian leadership so weak because a lot of the Arab countries cut off the funding. It was just done with them. And that's really what led to the oslo accords. So the oslo accords happen, not because our thought necessarily, you know, all of a sudden said after, you know, 37 or 27 years of trying, you know, terror and and pushing forward. He basically ran out of other options, and this was his only way to get some form of legitimacy. So they dropped from their charter the whole notion of destroying Israel and said, let's try to create this area. Or we can have governance and try this whole, effort for Palestinian state. So that's really kind of that there's a long short version of kind of how we got to then. And then in the last, let's say, 30 years, the the big change that I would say between then in today is that you have a lot, you have a new middle east for me. Again, a lot of the work we did in the trump administration was really to help what I'd call the new Middle East emerge where you have a lot of economic, opportunities now happening in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, there there's been a massive mind shift where if you go kind of post Arab Spring, a lot of these leaders are saying, you know, how do we create opportunity for our people. When I got into my job in 2017, all the experts were saying to me, the big divide in the Middle East between the SUI's, the the Suneys and the shias. And when I got there, I said, no. No. No. The divide is between leaders who wanna give opportunity and betterment of life to their people and people who wanna use religion or, or or whatever issue they want to hold on to from the past in order to deflecting their shortcomings and justify bad leadership. So, so I think what's happened today is you have a lot of the gulf countries really wanting to see this issue get resolved, which is different than you had in in Camp David in in in 2000 when Bill Clinton was, getting close to a deal with yasser Arafat. I think the Saudis and others at the time didn't want this issue to go away, but now the issue is really no longer useful for the Arabs. Jared Kushner (00:30:48): The only people it's useful to, quite frankly, is Iran. And that's they've been backing Hamas and Hezbollah and all these other functions in order to continue their project of instability. So, the way I kind of view this period right now is that the Middle East today is way stronger, than it's been in the past. And this is what I would say the last gasp of Iran and and those who have you know, pushed for a destabilization and kind of this whole, you know, Islamist Jihadist project at the expense of kind of a collaborative Middle East, which had which would then create a lot of opportunity, for the next generation to to really thrive. David Friedberg (00:31:23): Jared, isn't there, like, at this point then, like, is it hard or easy to create an objective target? We we call individuals that Israel wants to target Hamas, but there's no card carrying members of Hamas. You don't wear a jacket that says I'm a member of Hamas and walk around with an ID card, and there are some folks who are sympathetic who believe that har Chamath represents a resistance movement. There are some folks who obviously feel terrorized, and ruled over And there are some folks who support the cause, but don't pull the trigger. There are some folks who pull the trigger, but don't wanna support the cause that are being forced to by some reports, how easy and how hard is it to really direct a military operation at such a fluid population that the it's very hard to ID and target. And as we've seen in years past, There's always another group that seems to emerge. You cut off one group. You get rid of Al Qaeda. Isis emerges. And there's this almost like, you know, fluid transition of, of this intention. And particularly in this Gaza community, it's very difficult, perhaps, to distinguish between who's Hamas and who's not Hamas. So how do you actually achieve the objective there? And, you know, how does the military target Jared Kushner (00:32:51): Yeah. So so that's probably the most important question that I think people phase. Right? So, it it's both how do you do this in the short term and then the long term? And so you can't kill your way out of an ideology, but there obviously are bad leaders at the top were Cobable who, who who are military targets. And I imagine that it's really, you know, knowing the capabilities of Israel and sad. It's just a matter of, you know, when and how as opposed to anything else, but then you have a lot of mid level and and and younger members of this group. And, I do think that a lot of people are in this situation more circumstantially. I think this is what they've been taught to believe. I think this is, really the place they were, and this was the the system. In Gaza, where if you wanted to advance and live a better life, then you really had to succumb to this, tiered system. So how deep the ideology is people will debate that in different ways. If you go back to 2016 in the campaign when we were dealing with Isis, the talking point that everyone used was you have to defeat the territorial caliphate of Isis, and then you have to win the long term battle against extremism. One of the things that President Trump did when he went to Saudi Arabia in 2017 the reason we went there was that the Middle East was basically on fire. I mean, if you had Isis had to calculate the size of Ohio, they were, ruling over 8 million people. They were beheading journalists and and killing Christians. Syria was in a civil war where 500,000, people were killed. A lot of Muslims, and you didn't see St. Protests on college campuses when that was happening as, you know, Assad was gassing his own people. Libya was destabilized. Yemen was destabilized. And Iran was on glide path to a nuclear weapon having just been given a $150,000,000,000 in cash through the, disastrous JC BOA deal that, that carrying Obama negotiated. So, it was a mess. And so Trump went there and, and basically was was pretty tough with what he said, and he said, this isn't our problem. This isn't your problem. Jared Kushner (00:34:44): This solve our problem. And we need to to root this ideology, get it out of your your homes, get it out of your mosques, get it out of this earth. And, the king of Saudi Arabia stood up at the time and said, there's no glory in death, and that was really important. 2 of the big, deals that came out of that. People talk about the big investments did over $500,000,000,000 of investments, and armed sales, with Saudi Arabia that created a lot of US jobs. But the two agreements made that didn't get a lot of coverage during that time was that we did a counter terror finance center that we set up where we got all the gulf countries to really allow treasury to work closely with their banks to stop and allow the funding to the terrorist organizations and then these kind of borderline organizations. And then the second one was in Saudi Arabia, which is the custodian of the 2ist holy sites in in Islam, Mecca, they started a counter extremism center where basically they were combating online, radicalization that was occurring. And if you remember the US in 2016, we had the San Bernardino shooting. We had pulse nightclub shooting and do a lot of people being radicalized online. One of the things that I'm very proud of from the Trump Administration is the work that we did. To really help Saudi Arabia change their trajectory. And what I realized quickly was that in the US, we just did not have the capabilities to win the long term ideological battle ourselves. So we could be mad at, you know, Saudi for some of the things that they've done in the past, but they were the the most powerful partner we could have in order to try to combat the radicalization that was occurring both in terms of stopping the funding, but also, you know, replace the clerics who are doing the radicalization with the clerics who are, restoring Islam to a more peaceful and and more proper place. So, that was something that that's really current. It's made a big difference. Jared Kushner (00:36:23): I was just in Saudi Arabia a couple weeks ago at their big investment conference. And what was really exciting to me was I was meeting with a lot of the younger, Saudi entrepreneurs. And, I did a a conference in Bahrain to talk about the Palestinians, in 2019, And one of the big challenges we had when we were putting that together is we were thinking about who are the role models for these young Palestinian kids. And in the in the Muslim world. The, you know, they had some sports stars. They had some business leaders. But it wasn't really, people who were necessarily relatable to a lot of the younger generation. In Saudi, I was having an event with all these young tech entrepreneurs there who are building, amazing companies. There's a lot of unicorns there They're doing a lot of the, you know, the the companies that are dominant in the US and in Asia. And now they're building them for the Middle East there, and it's very, very exciting. And These really are the next generation of role models for a lot of these kids. So, that's a long way of saying that, you know, obviously, you have to do what you have to do from a military and and the hope obviously is that, it could be as quick as possible and that as few civilians as possible, are are hurt by this. But the notion is that once that's once that's completed, you need to then create a framework where people don't just have more despair because in an area where there's no hope and opportunity, then obviously the radicalists and the jihadists, that's really where they do their best recruiting and they flourish. So so so once this occurs, there needs to be a paradigm created where the next generation feels like it's better for them to get a job, be part of the economy and where they can live a better life through Calacanis, than by going to to these jihadist groups. David Friedberg (00:37:54): But it's leadership targeting right now. That's the objective, effectively. Mean, that's what I'm hearing. It's Jared Kushner (00:37:59): I think it's leadership and and then degrading of capabilities. Right? So because, again, what you've seen as well, you've seen this with cartels in in in, in South America, and you've seen this with organizations, you know, you you kill the top guy and and sometimes you cut the head off the snake and the snake dies and sometimes it just, you know, it scatters into a lot of little pieces. And then you end up it ends up becoming more located, not less. But I think here, obviously, leadership, but but significantly degrading, the capabilities for anything in Gaza to to to threaten Israel. David Friedberg (00:38:29): And then actively build a better way, actively build a better solution. Jared Kushner (00:38:33): That's the only way. And by the way, even today, it's much more easy to visualize that than it was in 2019 when I was talking about this because you're seeing the economic project in Saudi Arabia. You're seeing what they're doing in UAE. I mean, the the fact that Saudi shifted so much in 5 years should give you hope that it's really, really possible. And they've been pushing the rest of the countries to try to emulate and and compete with them, which is also an amazing thing. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:55): I'd love to get your reaction to the difference in tone and messaging from Western governments versus what you're seeing sometimes on the ground with some of these protests and just how almost diametrically opposed the language and the rhetoric and the point of view is how is it that and sort of this is why I kind of asked you just for a little bit of a a history. How is it that people aren't taking all of these views in? How is it that there is this radicalization that may not be happening in the same level in the Middle East, but is may be happening actually in the west. Whether it's in different universities or other ones. Jared Kushner (00:39:33): Yeah. So that's something like my friends in the Middle East a lot of them are laughing at the west because they're basically saying, you know, we we got all these Islamist, radical Muslim brother at people, the hell out of our countries. You don't see the same protests in those places that you see in the west. And, and I think that in in in the west, what's occurred is is people I I saw this a lot when I dealt with the Europeans where people's understanding of the issue, is more with their heart than it is with their head. And obviously, nobody wants to see any suffering. Of any human beings, but the reality is is that, you know, the the solutions that they've proposed for the last 75 years have all been just nonsensical. They they've more often than not perpetuated the problem than they've been solutions to the problem. And, you know, I faced tons of criticism when I was, you know, in my role working on this issue, And mostly because I I kinda looked at all the things that have been done in the past and keep my being asked to to work on, you know, the Middle East. It's like, It's almost like a joke. Right? It's it's the hardest problem set. You can get in the world. And, I think we almost made it look too easy getting the results that we did. And we left it very quiet. And, and I think now people are starting to appreciate that it wasn't that easy, and it's not, it's not a simple problem set to deal with. And but I think that a lot of people, were were were kind of looking at, what they thought was wrong, but looking at the wrong root causes for how it got there. Mhmm. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:56): I have a question for you and Saks. I'd love to get your guys' opinion of this. India dealt with a terrorist attack when Man Mohan Singh was prime minister and basically was an extremist Muslim group from Pakistan, Lakshshari Taiba, that came in and killed a lot of Indians, but a lot of foreigners as well, right, attacked some of the major hotels in Bombay, etcetera. And What happened was Man Mohan Singh didn't do anything. And in hindsight, what was written is, you know, they debated what to do. They debated, do we go after this group? Do we show some proactive demonstration of force do we invade Pakistan? Ultimately, they went on a more covert path to sort of dismantle that terror network and there was just a lot of international support that came around it. Can we steal men whether it would have been possible for Netanyahu to take that path or was it really not even reasonable? Just curious what you guys think about that. Jared Kushner (00:41:59): Do you wanna go first? David Sacks (00:42:02): No. You should go first, Jared. Jared Kushner (00:42:04): Okay. So, Look, anything's possible, Chipotle, and I think that there's different ways. Look, I think the big fears initially were that going into Gaza. Number 1, you'd be walking into a big trap. And number 2 is you would be inviting, major escalation in the region. The the 3rd fear was obviously the degradation the Israeli economy. When we did, the Abraham accords, one of the big, attractive, things to a lot of these countries to be partners with Israel was their, massively robust economy. And what could happen if they go to war, and it's a prolonged war is that economy can go off track. I think GDP will take a big hit there in q 4. But obviously, you know, in Israel, they do have a history coming back right away. But if this is a prolonged, war effort, there could be big hits. And then you also think about at the age of, you know, AI and software development losing you know, a day of productivity is the equivalent of losing, you know, a week or a month. And, and they don't wanna fall behind in what they're doing. So There there is an argument to be made for doing that, but I do think that from Israel's perspective, I I do think that they understand this threat. I think that they want to eliminate this threat. And I think their view is is, we we we can't live like this anymore. We we underestimated it before. And and we will not let that happen again. And I think also the psychology of of really the Jewish people is, you know, I was wondering once I was sitting with, with, Prime Minister Netanyahu and one of the generals and and BB was basically saying, like, you know, if if Iran gets too close, this is what I'm gonna do. We're gonna have to take matters to our hands. And the general basically said to me, you know, I get you guys aren't going back to the ovens. And I was just like, wow. You know, it was a it was a real acknowledgement of, like, the way that Israel operates with kind of no margin forever. And I would always say when I would negotiate the Israelis that, you know, sometimes you do a contract and there's, like, you know, there's there's 2 issues that are a 10 and, like, couple issues that are 5 and, like, a whole bunch, you know, whole bag of issues that are, like, twos threes. And when I would negotiate with the Israelis, like, they would treat every issue, like, it was like a 10. Jared Kushner (00:43:56): You know what I mean? In the sense that, like, they they they just operate, like, there's no margin for error And, and I do think that, obviously, there was some complacency and and and the internal division, you know, led to them being caught off guard here, but I think that they're gonna do what they're gonna do to make sure this this happens. And I think there's also a way where Israel feels mentally, like, we have to show that we're strong or else people will will go after us. And I think that that's what they've done. And I will say, you know, the fact that Israel's gone from being completely divided to now, fully united in in this effort. I mean, even the people on the far left in Israel who are all peace, who are, you know, funding, you know, jobs with the Palestinians and, you know, housing them in their homes. I mean, they're basically saying they wanna go to war. So the mentality there is very much We need to do what we need to do now to keep ourselves safe. People are very, very, heartbroken for those who are who are past. They're they're they're praying very closely for the hostages. And, but they've given a lot of latitude to their government to do what it needs to do to make sure this this is this is not, this does not occur again. And I I will say too, like, Israel also recognizes that I think now they have the world more on their side, than they have in in, in past conflicts. And and I think their view is to Their view is to to to do it while they have that situation. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:10): Saks, what do you think? Could Netanyahu have taken the the path of doing nothing? David Sacks (00:45:16): No. I don't think so. I mean, not given his domestic political situation. I think the Israeli people demand a response. And look, one of the arguments that Israel would make is that if this happened to you, the United States or you Russia or you China, what would you do? I mean, I think we know we would turn Gaza into falluja or Mosul. Russia would turn it into Grozny. So I think Israel is taking the response that I think most countries would take. Given their situation. The thing I worry about is that Israel is not the United States. I mean, the United States, because it's so powerful, can act largely with impunity. We don't have to worry as much about blowback. And Israel does because at the end of the day, they're a small country in a very hostile region. And so I do worry about the potential for unintended consequences here. One potential consequence is har horizontal escalation. Does this worsen house spin out control, and it could lead to a much wider regional war that would not be in Israel's interest. The other is diplomatic isolation I do think that Israel is taking a big hit right now on the information war, the war of a public opinion. And then finally, you do have a lot of civilian casualties and and those civilians have brothers and sisters and cousins and so forth, and that's gonna lead to the next generation of terrorists. And so even success in this operation against Hamas doesn't solve the long term problem. I mean, it just kinda keeps it going. So I think all of those things are potential problems But at the end of the day, if Israel can have a successful military operation here that significantly degrades or destroys Hamas without this thing spiraling out of control that buys them time to find a political solution then maybe it will be worthwhile. I mean, I think a lot depends here on what the outcome ultimately is. I think it's like a very tough thing to judge without knowing what the outcome's gonna David Friedberg (00:47:11): the king of Jordan a couple of weeks ago gave a speech and, in the speech, he said there is no peace possible in the Middle East without the emergence of a Palestinian state, with a 2 state solution being the only path forward A Palestinian independent and sovereign state should be on June 4th, 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital, And so that the cycles of killing whose ultimate victims are innocent civilians end. Is this the only path to stabilization, Jared? And is that where we're headed? Jared Kushner (00:47:49): So that statement is is the same throwaway statement. Right? That's the safest statement for anyone to say because that became the international consensus. So You know, one thing that was super interesting to me when I was working on this was, I kinda said to my team once I was like, where does the Palestinian claim for Easter islam as the capital come from? And I had a guy in my team who was a a military guy who actually worked for John Kerry, and I'd always have him in the group because he would represent the Palestinian perspective. Because we had a bunch of orthodox Jews and and, you know, we tried to be impartial, but, you know, we we did the best we could to have, you know, all perspectives represented and, and, he came to I I actually don't know. And then what's interesting is, you know, when, when the West bank was actually, governed by Jordan, the capital at the time was a man. And so it really wasn't till the, the the the 1988 launch of of this right for Palestinian state that they self declared that the capital should be east Jerusalem. And so, that was actually an interesting notion as well. And I think that know, everyone knows that that's not gonna be the case. And I asked one of the leaders once, why they say that? And they said, well, it's a cliche. And I said, well, maybe we need a new cliche. And he says, That's a good idea. Let's come up with a new cliche. So, I think whatever solution is going to occur has to be pragmatic. Right? You you the reality is is that if if we're gonna learn from Gaza, there's a couple of lessons to learn. Right? Number 1 is, you know, Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 or 2006. They forcibly removed 50,000 Israeli settlers, from Gosla. All those people, they they left their their homes, they left their businesses. Thinking that would be peace. They they transferred governance of Gaza to the Palestinians. The Palestinians then had an election. Jared Kushner (00:49:28): Again, it was, you know, the The PA at the time convinced the Bush administration to allow for Chamath, even though their charter called for the destruction of Israel to participate in the election, and they won in a democratic election. Since that time, there's been no improvement in the economy. It's become a a a real security risk for Israel. And so Israel with Drew and then let them govern themselves. And now you have what's happened today be the case. So I I think the reality is is that You know, if you look at the historical, maps and the historical lines, I mean, there there's really no, making a claim that there there's no other example in history where somebody's lost 3 offensive wars and then has been able to maintain their claim over a territory, that they had before. But I do think that there is an international consensus. And I do even think in Israel, there's consensus to give the Palestinian people the ability to kind of, have their own land and and then also to govern themselves. So The word state is is a very loaded term because it it comes with a lot of definitions to different people, but I think the constructs of what's achievable is is in the West Bank or Gaza, there can be no security threat to Israel. And this is something that, that they were insisting on before, and I was sympathetic this was even before October 7th. And if you go back and look at the work we did and what we put out, we had a security regime that we designed with, US Intelligence and military and and Israeli intelligence, and Israeli military, that we thought actually gave a lot of autonomy, from police force perspective to the palestinians allowed them to build their capabilities. And and they kind of like earned their way into more and more security control, which I thought was the right way to do that because you don't want to take a ton of risk there. The other part of it though in any state is you need a functioning, economy. Otherwise, obviously, you have a big, grievance party the biggest problem the Palestinians have faced over the last, call it, 25 years since since Oslo, I guess, almost 30 years now since Oslo. Is, is just bad governance. Jared Kushner (00:51:22): So the problem with the PA is is they were elected, I think, in 2005. And, they happened another election since. So I think president Abbas is in the 16th, 17th, 18th year of like a 4 year term, very not popular. He's more popular in Washington. And then, you know, the United Nations than he is, you know, in his own country. He's, they're it's a very corrupt system. Again, a lot of the money's gone for, for for the leadership, their Chamath, for the top people, but not to the it hasn't trickled down to the people. And so there there's not a lot of trust on it. You know, I held a conference in Bahrain where I brought all the top investors in the Middle East. I brought Steve Schwartzman from Blackstone came. We had, Randall Stephenson came from from AT and T, and everyone came and said, you know what? We actually would love to help the Palestinian people. We'd love to invest here. And then they looked at the magnitude of it. I mean, it's 3 million people, which is a small state in the West Bank and 2,000,000 in Gaza. Again, it's like a small state in the US. And, obviously, to build things, it's much cheaper. I mean, the GDP per capita there is about 3000 per person. So you know, it's it's it's cheaper labor. It's it's it's the ability to do it, and it's connected right to Israel, right, which is like, you know, California not being connected to Silicon Valley. So The prospects for prosperity spillover are are massive, being sandwiched between the rich gulf and and the the growing Israel. So but the thing that's missing in for the Palestinians is very basic things. Right? There's no fair judiciary. There's no rule of law. The governance is terrible. The institutions are incredibly opaque. And what all these people were saying is we'd love to invest here, but it's just not an investable place. And so The thing that's been holding back the Palestinian people has not been Israel. It's been their bad leadership. Jared Kushner (00:52:57): And, again, you're seeing in other places in the Middle East that with the proper leadership, investments can come, and those investments will actually lead to people living a much better life. David Sacks (00:53:05): How does that leadership change in your view? Jared Kushner (00:53:07): So The way that I would think about this is that if you're waiting for a solution to come to you, you're not gonna find it. Right? If you say, okay. Let's go back to the UN. Well, they have perfect track record of failure. Let's go back to the PA. Well, they have a perfect track record of failure. You're definitely not gonna go back to a Moss. So you need to find something different. So I think you either need create something new, or you need to, look at what's working and put it together. So some places that could do with me, the World Bank has a lot of good institutional knowledge. They helped us work on the plan, the World Bank and the IMF. You know, some of the other regional governments. I mean, Jordan, their government is is pretty pre pretty capable. I mean, they're they're better at than economy, but I think they're they're starting to focus more on economy, as they realize that that that's necessary. If you look at the benefits of that area, the Palestinian people are are are, like, a 99% literacy rate, again, through the taxpayer, US taxpayer dollars, and international donations. We've paid for them to become very educated. Unfortunately, I think we've poisoned, their minds with a lot of what's been taught, in their curriculums. They have a pretty good health care system there. Again, I think it could be improved because it's been done very kind of piecemeal versus holistic. And then in addition to that, they obviously have tremendous amount of tourism sites. I mean, you know, Jewish Christian Muslim sites. So, if they ever get their acts together, I mean, the the boom in that area can be unbelievable. And I think it could work very, very well. There was one time where the Palestinian economy was working. I think it was in about 2007. There was a guy named Salam Fayed, who was the first time somebody came in who was, he was not corrupt. Things were happening. You know, wages were rising. Projects were moving. Jared Kushner (00:54:44): The money was actually getting to the people. And he became so popular because he was such a doing such a good job administering that, that the president got rid of him, that Abbas got rid of him because he saw him as a threat to his power. So You know, what's happened is not different. Right? You always have kind of a tyranny of the minority in some way, with with with most forms of of government. And so what happened was is as he was starting to gain popularity, he became a threat to kind of the cronyism that occurred. And so, I think that the international community, if they're gonna put money into this Again, to either rebuild. Number 1, it has to be conditions based. Again, we've put tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars into this situation. Right? I mean, this this refugee group has gotten more money over time than any refugee group in history by a factor of maybe a 100. Right? And then, you know, you you you've none of it's been conditions based. And it has to be in in a set where people are trying to create outcomes. And I think one of the problems is a lot of the people working on this don't have business backgrounds. They understand human rights or they understand politics, but, they don't understand capitalism, and they don't understand what kind of framework you need in order to allow a society to thrive. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:48): Has Treasury ever tried to trace these dollars or some other organization to just show where the theft happened and where these pools of money have gone to? Jared Kushner (00:55:58): There's some intelligence on it, that I can't go into, but, but I think most people don't wanna know, to be honest, Jamath. I mean, you could just look at it in a couple of ways. Like, you know, You look at, you know, we would meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu in Washington, and he would take a commercial LL flight to come meet us. And he runs a military superpower and economic superpower, in the region. President Abbas would come visit us in Washington, and he obviously, represents a a refugee group and he would fly in a $60,000,000 Boeing business jet, a private jet to to Washington. I mean, I would meet with him and we'd be sitting around and, you know, he'd put a cigarette in his mouth and then somebody would come over and they'd like the cigarette for him. And I'd be like, am I meeting with the head of a refugee group? I meet with, like, a king. You know, it's It it was a different situation. And, but I think people just But David Sacks (00:56:43): he's a reasonable one, right? The alternative is Hamas. And those guys, I mean, those are a billionaire hypocrites who live in Qatar are at the 4 seasons. Right? Jared Kushner (00:56:53): Yeah. But but my sense is is you're you're gonna get what you demand. Right? And I think that from the US's perspective, right, we give about $4,000,000,000 a year in foreign aid to the PA, to Unra, to Jordan, to Egypt, and and we've we've tolerated, you know, a status quo that's not acceptable. And, you know, one of the difference, again, Trump had a lot of tension with the foreign policy, you know, establishment And it was over a lot of things. Right? Obviously, he wanted to end the forever wars. He felt like we should get some return on the investments we were making. He felt like USAID wasn't an entitlement. But I think the biggest difference was they wanted to all maintain the world. They wanted just to manage it, and he wanted to change it. And know, what we did by the by the time. Again, this was one of the disagreements I had with the incoming administration, is that when we turned over the Middle East to them, again, we I spoke earlier about what a mess, you know, we kind of inherited when we started, but we had, 5 piece deals between Israel and and majority Muslim countries. Iran was totally broke again under Obama. When he left, they were selling about 2,600,000 barrels of oil a day under Trump. When he left office, they were selling a 100,000 barrels of oil a day. They were out of foreign currency reserves. They were dead broke. Now they're back up to 3,000,000 barrels a day of of sales. They've done over a $100,000,000,000 of oil revenue, since we left office. The Palestinians, you know, one of the things we did after, I think, the 1st year is we cut the funding to entrepreneurs. Very controversial. We say, oh, this is for refugees. We said, it's not for refugees. It's to build terror tunnels and rockets at saying, no, it's for schools and hospitals. And we were saying, those are the military bases, and they were saying, you guys are crazy. You're cruel. And our whole thing and so when we laughed, the PA was was basically broke, the Arabs had kind of lost interest in in that cause, because they kinda saw that it was it was morally bankrupt in that, every time we gave a boss the opportunity to do something better for his people, he refused. And and and they kind of saw that, you know, we kind of we we smoked him out a little bit And so we kind of took the issue and we shrunk it tremendously. And the final deal we did was between Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain, and that was a critical deal to do because that was was what really made it possible for, Saudi and Israel to then do the deal. Jared Kushner (00:59:02): And that was really on the table, right, when we left, but It took too much time. They allowed Iran to get too strong. They started allowing Iran to get money. They started funding the Palestinians and and Unra again. And, and now you have a situation where it's just become, you know, a mess. It could be fixed. It definitely can be fixed if you're strong and if you're smart, but If you're gonna go back to kind of the old ideas, you're gonna get the old results. You need new ideas. You need to create the ideas and force them. You can't just wait for them to occur and then go back to the old institutions and the old people who have failed before. David Friedberg (00:59:32): Who do you think should be secretary of state in the next administration? David Sacks (00:59:36): I think Jira should. Jira. David Friedberg (00:59:39): You could do a pretty Jira. David Sacks (00:59:40): Let me ask you about the 22 state solution. Let's just double click on this. I mean, my my view on this, I think by the standards of Israeli politics, that'd be a liberal there is that the only solution the only way out of this is the 2 state solution. You you know, we can't have situation of indefinite permanent occupation of the Palestinian people. At some point, they developed a national consciousness And if you have conditions of permanent occupation, they're gonna resist and you're gonna have outbursts of terrorism. At the same time, if Israel does outright annexes these territories or continues on a program of, call it, creeping annexation where it keeps building settlements in the West Bank, and you have a greater Israel that eventually Jews in Israel will not be the majority of the population. I think if you look at kind of greater Israel, there's 7,300,000 Jews. There's about 7,300,000 Palestinian Arab. So if if the plan is a single greater Israel, it's either gonna stop being a Jewish state because you know, the Palestinians will vote for something different. Or it'll continue being the Jewish state, but there's going to be some sort of 2 tier system where a lot of Palestinians won't have the vote. And so eventually a greater is enough to choose between whether it wants to be democratic or whether it wants to be Jewish. And that seems like a very bad choice. It seems like we want both those things to be true. So again, that kind of brings you back to a 2 state solution as the only option here. And yet, it seems to me that the 2 state solution has never been further away. It seems like it's never been further away in terms of Israeli domestic politics, and it's never been further away in terms of having, a negotiating partner to negotiate something like this with. So That would be sort of my pessimistic outlook. I mean, I know you're pretty optimistic about the situation. Do you see it differently than that? Is that framing wrong somehow? David Sacks (01:01:35): How would you how would you see it? Jared Kushner (01:01:38): K. So number 1 is I'm naturally optimistic. And I I just find it's more fun to be optimistic than pessimistic, but I'll say everything I'm saying in the context of the fact that this is a really, really, really, really hard problem set. Right? So I'll I'll try to say this, in the right order. So number one is I I don't think there's any viability to a one state, and I don't think that that's something that will ever occur. Number 2 is, and I'll actually, you know, what what's interesting, one of the problems is a lot of the, the Arabs and and the Palestinians would actually firm to be part of Israel than a Palestinian state. So right before COVID, we released the Trump peace plan, which, which, again, you can you can still find online. And, I think the political part of it was about fifty four pages, the economic part, and the political part is about a 180 one pages in detail. We, at the time, got the right wing and the left Again, it was they were in the 3rd election, and we had, a prime minister Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, who's also an amazing, person came in and they they all endorsed it. And so what I would find what I'd tell you is that semantics, you know, state has to do a lot with semantics. So you can definitely give them a state. The question is is, you know, you have to give Israel certain overriding security controls so that, so that the state cannot be threat to them, and then you can let them kind of earn their way out of that with good behavior and and showing that it's a true partnership. But what I will just tell you is that Whatever you call it, you give them a flag, you can give them whatever you want unless there's, a system where people can live a better life, then the grievance will overtake will overtake whatever independence they have, and it will just become a problem again. And so, so I I do think a 2 state solution as possible. Jared Kushner (01:03:14): Again, what you do with Gaza is very much, you know, TBD. But I do think especially in the West Bank, there there's definitely possibility to do it. And I think that from Israel, they'd like to see that happen where, they'd like the Palestinian to be able to govern themselves, but it's it's a couple big ifs. If it's not a security threat, if they can have a viable economy that's going to happen. One of the big things that's happening now that I'm hearing about is that I think the number was like 250,000 Palestinian Sueette work visas. From the West Bank to, to go into Israel. And now with the threat, there's just such a great distrust that has that has occurred that those are now not being renewed. So I think Israel's gonna have to bring in workers from other parts the world. But that was an amazing thing. Right? You had Muslims and Jews, you know, working together. You had, you know, Palestinian whose lives were better off because they were working with Israel. So The vast majority of the Palestinians, maybe not the vast. I don't know. It's people have different perspectives on this, but I I I just believe that fundamentally human beings wanna live a better life, I don't think our natural state is is to hate each other or to be, or to not be together. Again, if you look at the Middle East for, you know, a 1000 years before the 2nd world war. I mean, Jews and Muslims and Christians, they lived very peacefully together. So, you know, what I was seeing with the Abraham accords and what I was hoping would occur would really be a reversion to the pre world war 2 era where people were starting to live peacefully together, but there's been a lot of hate that's been fermented and manipulated over over this time. But the best way to start it is just, you know, take it one day at a time. You know, we used to say in government, we get a hard problem. Jared Kushner (01:04:40): You know, I used to say, you know, how do you eat an elephant? You know, one bite at a time. And so just have to kind of outline where you wanna get to, put in place the right system, and then just start, you know, step after step after step, and then you get to a place and and maybe you're able to do something that becomes viable with time. David Friedberg (01:04:54): Jared, did you see the, debates last night? Did you watch them? Jared Kushner (01:04:59): No, I did not. David Friedberg (01:05:00): Saks, did you watch them? Jared Kushner (01:05:03): I David Sacks (01:05:03): didn't watch the whole thing. I've seen clips on social media. David Friedberg (01:05:06): Do you have any takeaways? I mean, was it even worth watching? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:10): Yeah. I thought I thought the the clips did a pretty good job of actually showing some of the punchier moments, but the crazy thing is that the the mainstream media has completely erased Vivek's candidacy. I don't even think it exists in the eyes of the mainstream media. But if you look on on x, all the posts were like, he clearly won, and he was basically throwing fireballs everywhere. But then if you go to, you know, CNN for Fox. You don't even hear his name. David Sacks (01:05:40): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:40): So it's it's a real real difference. David Sacks (01:05:43): The mainstream media coverage is what they want you to believe. And social media is what actually happened. It's what people actually believe. And I think that if you look at social media, What it shows is that Vivek dominated the debate, and he was throwing fireballs, and he was slamming the neo cons on the stage and showing that there's been, I think, an irreparable break between the neocon establishing the Republican Party and the more populist maggling. So I think that's that's kinda what social media is showing. And then, you know, if you listen to mainstream media, they're they they sent they brother make. It said he had some sort of meltdown and he insulted Nikki Haley's daughter or whatever, something like that. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:27): A butter tiktok use. It David Sacks (01:06:28): Yeah. By the way, all he said is that that they he was being berated for why he created a TikTok account. And he's like, I wanna reach young people, you know, like your daughter is on there. And, that's what that Nikki. Yeah. That's what he said, and Nikki Haley called him scum for that. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:43): Well, no, but she also she also put, like, the Will Smith line, like, get your my daughter's name out your mouth. Did she slap him? No. She didn't. I think David Sacks (01:06:52): it's a pretty good point. There's, like, 75,000,000 young Americans on TikTok. If you wanna reach them, that's where you post your messages. I have seen Vivek's stuff on there. I've seen RfK juniors. Videos on there. Yeah. Like, everyone uses TikTok now if you wanna reach people. That's just reality. David Friedberg (01:07:10): Nikki Haley doesn't? David Sacks (01:07:11): I'm not sure. I don't know that she has much of a social media following because I don't think her campaign inspires any real grassroots. I think her campaign is supported and propped up by the GOP establishment wing. I don't think there's any market for what she's selling among the grassroots. So social media is kinda pointless for her. But if you actually wanna reach people, especially young people, use social media. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:34): Close pretty intense when Vivek said that the the head of the RNC should just be fired for all the losing and kind of went through every single election in the midterms and whatnot that they've lost since she became the head of the RNC. And, apparently, on social media, she mowed something to the effect of this guy's an a hole. He's not gonna get a single cent for months. Yeah. David Sacks (01:07:57): No. It's it's a LeBron McDaniel. Who do I know? I mean, I like Rhonda, but, I mean Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:02): Has she done a good job, Saks? David Sacks (01:08:03): Look, I it's hard for me to speak to the job she's actually done because I don't know the activities are actually in involved in being r and c chair. So but, I mean, Vivek's point is look at the results. So we were on the board of a company, that kept missing quarter after quarter. And the CEO said, no, look at all the good things I'm doing, we would probably still fire that CEO just because you're like, how do things get worse? Right? You would just take the chance that you bring in a new CEO. They're gonna do better. So the reality is our results their Republican party have been shitty lately. Now is that all Rhonda's fault? No. It may not be much of her fault at all, but how do you do worse? I think a big reason for the crappy results have been the abortion issue. We've now had This issue on the ballot in at least 6 states, most of which were red states, a couple of them were purple states, it's lost every time. The anti abortion or pro life site has lost decisively every time. And I think there's a lot of reasons to vote Republican. I think Republicans have the advantage on the economy on border, on anything related to to woke, on, crime and homelessness. These are all issues that should be big winners for Republicans, but the public by, I think, probably a 2 thirds majority does not want to ban abortion. And as long as that issue is in the forefront, Republicans are gonna lose. And actually, it was Ann Culture who just said this. Ann Culture had a really good blog post about this saying that the Pro Life Yeah. I I retweeted it. By the way, she's very pro life. I mean, she's a social conservative, but she says that pro life is gonna wipe out the Republican party. They need to focus on non political activities, which is winning over hearts and minds. They have to make the case of the country. David Sacks (01:09:53): They have to persuade more people because they're not in a position. They are not popular enough to actually win elections. David Friedberg (01:10:00): You concur Jared giving the Republican party's gonna change their position or need to change their position to win elections, presidential election aside. Jared Kushner (01:10:08): Well, ultimately, if you don't win, then you can't govern and you can't impact the change that you wanna do. So I do think that people are definitely paying attention, you know, the results or the results. I will say that, you know, one thing with with Trump, he won, you know, with his operation, we're able to over perform our polling. I think here, in in these last times, there's been underperformance of of polling. And so that's something that obviously you have to look at, which is, very troubling. But I'll also say that with what I found again, you know, I'm not really, as somebody who was newer to the Republican party, what I found is that, you know, both parties are really I would say collections of of of tribes. Right? You have different tribes that kind of make up the party. But what I found in the Republican party was that there was ton of in fighting and finger pointing and purity tests. And, you know, instead of saying like, you know, you know, I'm happy you agree with me on on 70% or 80%. It was basically saying, well, if you don't agree with me at a 100%, then then then you're a bad Republican. And I think that, that's a that's a culture that's gonna lead to you, having very strong opinions, but having no ability to effectuate things. I think that people have to, you know, say, where do we agree on on different issues, that where do we agree on issues? How do we work together to do it? But if you don't win, then you're not gonna be able to effectuate the things you wanted even worse. The other side's gonna be effectuated the things they want. And you look at where the world today because of that. David Sacks (01:11:22): There's a lot of international fighting in the Republican party. I think Trump's instincts on abortion actually have been very good. I said this a couple of months ago. There was kind of a brew on the right when Trump gave an interview in which he said that that actually what DeSantis had done in Florida with the 6 week ban was a mistake and that he sort of up leveled the issue and just said I'm gonna find compromise that makes everybody happy. And this created a lot of upset people on the right because they thought that Trump was kinda selling them out on the abortion issue. And I made this case on Megan Kelly a couple months ago that I thought that what Trump was doing was pretty smart because he doesn't want to get pinned down on an issue that's gonna hurt him in the general. And I think part of the reason why he was being a little bit cagey on that issue is because He knows it would hurt him in the general, and he's starting to think about that. And I think the results that we just had the other day are strong vindication of that. Just let me say just more generally that whenever Trump has opposed Republican groups think on an issue, I think he's invariably been proven correct. If you go all the way back to 2016, you know, think about all the, he receives that he committed in the Republican party. He spoke out against the forever wars against bushes Forever Wars. I think he was right about that. At the time, the Republican Party either wasn't talking about immigration or didn't really seemed to care. He basically made, the border a huge issue. I think it's proven right about that. The issue of China and and China trade was not a issue in the Republican party. If anything, it was sorted this, this sort of unreconstructed free trade, total free trade issue going back. David Friedberg (01:13:04): Brian was pushing the TPP there. David Sacks (01:13:06): Right? Exactly. So trump defied the orthodoxy on that. I think it's proven correct. Paul Ryan also wanted to ratchet back entitlements like Social Security and Trump thought that was suicidal for the GOP. So he opposed that. I think on all these issues, whenever he has defied the orthodoxy, he's been proven correct. And, I don't know if it's a conscious thing or it's just that he's got tremendous gut instincts as a politician. Be curious to get Jared's take on that. Like, how much of this is sort of him working things out and how much do it. It is just his gut, but I think this is why he stole the candidate to beat for the public nomination. Is at the end of the day, for all of Trump's issues, he's actually the best politician of the Republican Party. Jared Kushner (01:13:47): You know, I would see the way that he would work on trade. And again, you know, trade deals usually take 5, 6 years. And and, you know, his attitude on on trade was that, whenever there's a multilateral, it's the the weaker countries all ganging up on the stronger party. And so he says, look, I wanna do them bilaterally. So he withdrew from TPP, which everyone went crazy and said disaster, what we ended up negotiating with Japan and Korea and everyone. And we got basically 95% of the market access that was in TPP without giving up any of the things that would have absolutely made at our auto industry. We renegotiate the the NAFTA, which, you know, everyone said Obama said they would, Bush said he wanted to fix it. Meanwhile Trump came in in a year and a half. We renegotiated NAFTA and it got over 80 votes in the Senate. It was a bipartisan, win, and it it's at the highest standards for labor protection. It it did a lot of things, that I think make America way more competitive, and hopefully, we'll reduce our trade deficit. So these were all things that he took on that people weren't willing to. And again, he said, you know, look, if I'm wrong, you know, putting tariffs on these different countries, I remember people coming in to him saying, if you put these tariffs on, the whole world's gonna explode. The US economy's gonna blow up. And I remember sitting with him privately, and he said to me, you know, Jared, really, we had a year debate, and we had some people who were more religious about this issue than anything else. And he says, you know, Jared, I have been saying this for 30 years. I believe it, I campaigned on it. I won on it. I I have to see it. Like, I have to see it through it. You know what? If it turns out it's a big disaster, I can always take them off. You know, and and so that was kind of like his way of thinking about it where he had his instinct. He followed his instinct, but he knew he could always back off. And I think his flexibility and unpredictability some of his greatest assets. Jared Kushner (01:15:20): And I think also on on the border immigration, again, it's an issue with somebody, you know, grew up, you know, in in New Jersey and then was living on the upper east side that I didn't have a lot of resonance for, but now you're seeing my friends in New York. Now they're getting a taste of what it can do, you know, to to the country. They're they're becoming, you know, big immigration Hawks like Trump. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:35): The thing that the Republicans need to realize right now is that if you pick these topics that go down a rabbit hole, you're gonna be in a really tough spot in the general because the economy is also gonna be in reasonable shape. Now if we were gonna go into a November election where there were we were gonna be in session. That's very bad for Biden. But sort of the tea leaves for whatever is worth, all the predictions, all the predictive markets, show that we're gonna be in a reasonable place. And so the Republicans get need to get very, very focused acts, as you say, on the real issues list here, right, because they're not gonna have the benefit of the tailwind of a bad economy to say president Biden has done a bad job necessarily. And so the message will need to be even more precise and focused And so I think that that's gonna be an important thing. David Friedberg (01:16:22): I I Chamath Palihapitiya (01:16:22): did a little tea leaf reading on macro if you guys want it. I have some charts. Jared Kushner (01:16:27): You Chamath Palihapitiya (01:16:27): know, just let me just give you a little rundown of because I I went and I, you know, look, we used to talk about these things when I was when we were doing a lot of forecasting going into this cycle, but so Here's, like, a couple of really interesting observations. So the first one is when you look at this m 2 money supply, look how much it's actually shrunk. Now why that's interesting to me is that you have these 2 forces that are opposing each other. One is we have these huge deficits. So we're technically still frankly issuing a lot of money, right? But then on the other side, we, we have QT. So when debt rolls off, we're not reissuing it. And the balance of that is still a really constructive thing where now you can see that, you know, M2 is materially started to shrink. And I think that that's a really positive thing because now what that does, it it combats inflation in a good way. Unfortunately, for all of us, it hurts financial assets, which is not so good. I think we've all felt that pain, but the reality is that that's been working. So then, Nick, if you go To the second chart, so what you see now is like, we are in a really decent place with inflation. And if you think about what's going to happen over the next 6 months, It's mostly in the bag. And meaning, we talked about this before, but there's a lag effect on a handful of components specifically rents, which when you roll them into this inflation rate, you're going to see it really, really turnover very quickly. Right? So we know that inflation is falling. It's going to fall even more. The second thing, Nick, the 3rd chart here is you can see that now validated in these 10 year break evens. Remember this was the chart we used to look at when we were like, holy macro, something's gonna break in November of 21. I think we probably should have just sold everything we had in 21, we didn't do it. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:22): But the point is now we know. And what you see here is the 10 year break evens are also telling us okay, guys. We're gonna be in a pretty decent place. And so I think the setup is basically the following. There's less money in the system. That's a positive. Nick, if you show the last chart, there's more money on the sidelines, and this is just a picture of, I mean, look at the amount of money and money market funds. 6000000000000 and growing. So that's a really positive sign, which is that money will need to find a home. David Friedberg (01:18:56): Once rates drop. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:57): Once no. Even just now because you're gonna you're gonna be in a situation where and I'll get to this in a second, but companies are now starting to perform because they've been able to rebaseline against very, very lowered expectations. Right. David Friedberg (01:19:10): And and money managers have to do their job and deploy capital. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:13): And that's something we mentioned, I think, last week, but this is now the beginning of the new fiscal year for the entire mutual fund complex. So that's 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars that have to get deployed because even though you pay them a very small fee per year, you're not paying them to hold cash. You're paying them to make decisions and own assets. And then as you said, Friedberg, the last part of this is now you introduce rate cuts and that's a real accelerant. Now more than likely, I think what that means is that markets are set up to to do pretty well, equity markets specifically. And so I went and I said, well, how can we see some data that proves that this is happening? And what's amazing is if you look at the performance of what I would call the most risk adjusted seeking companies. So those are tech businesses that have been absolutely hammered. What you see in the last month is they have gone just nuclear. Agen up 30% in a matter of a week. DoorDash is up, you know, 25, 30% in a matter of a week. Datadog, up 30% in the matter of week. These are the businesses that were just completely decimated. So what is all of this saying? I think what it what it's kind of saying is inflation is very much in the rear view mirror. Rates are gonna get cut by the middle part of the year. The economy looks like it's gonna be a soft landing. That is actually very beneficial for the sitting president. It's also good for equities. It's good for us. So it's really interesting, actually. I think we've had a fundamental kind of now change David Friedberg (01:20:46): Jared, do you think this will have an effect on the election cycle? I think Jared Kushner (01:20:49): it definitely could, but I do think a lot of people are still very concerned. I know the the the the the inflation, the the wages, wage inflation is still about 4%. I think that people are, are are still just nervous about what could come. I think there's been a lot of shocks and there's been a couple of times where it's felt that way. And I think that, you know, election year traditionally bring a lot more volatility to the market because there's unpredictability about what the policy will be going forward. A little whiplash from the the transition of over the last year to 18 months, see that they're going into another cycle of uncertainty I do think that, you know, now you're actually getting paid to not do anything, with your money in those money market accounts. So there's less of a, maybe less of a FOMO to kind of go out and do something there. So, so I think that a lot of people are still gonna be very much in kind of wait and see mode and obviously look for for special opportunities. Which I think will only further exacerbate, a potential decline as well. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:45): Jared, last week, we talked about real estate. You used to be in the real estate business. What do you have any thoughts on commercial real estate and how good bad average things are? Jared Kushner (01:21:55): So I still have a lot of exposure commercial real estate through my family's company. And, we're mostly in the multifamily space. I think the office space right now is in for a massive, change in the industry. I think you're gonna see a lot of the older buildings get, get transitioned. A lot of them are trading now for below land price, which is which is pretty remarkable. I think you have. You also have a transition kind of what are the cities of growth. Right? So you look at a place like San Francisco, and there's a big debate over whether, you know, AI is gonna save, you know, the office market there or whether it's kind of like the Detroit of this industrial revolution. And it's just never gonna come back. And then you're seeing a lot of these San Francisco companies move to New York, and the New York people are saying, oh, there's too much crime and homelessness. And they're saying, compared to San Francisco, this looks like, you know, you tell super it's it's a beautiful place. And so, you know, New York is still doing, I think, okay, but you're seeing a lot of places throughout the country that that are. But The the fundamental with real estate is it's correlated to interest rates. And so, you know, if interest rates, you know, right now, I think the 10 years of, like, four and a half, if it goes up to to 6, and you're just gonna see a repricing and real estate assets. If it settles at at 4a half 5, then you'll you'll probably see more stability in what that will be. But ultimately, real estate's become much more institutionalized over the last, call it, 2 decades, and it's really a function of, you know, what are your your rent and expense growth and then what kind of what what can you borrow at and can you create, you know, a positive yield that's hopefully, a good hedge against inflation. So, I I think net net, it will be a great asset class. It's probably one of the biggest asset classes in the world. I think right now though a lot of people are just holding back because they're not certain what the what the, what what the multiples or cap rates as they call them in real estate are gonna be on a forward basis, but they're really gonna be a function of of what's the growth in the economy gonna and then also, what the forward interest rates will be. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:45): That's fair. I think that David Sacks (01:23:46): Everything's challenged in real estate. I mean, the demand size challenge because you've had the whole work from home, COVID disruption, and a lot of cities haven't fully come back. I think New York's come back at this point, but like services could definitely has a I think New York is something like 95% of workers are back in the office. I think it's San Francisco. It's only like 45%. So you've got demand issues, then you've got financing issues, you know, refinancing is much more expensive because interest rates are higher and then you've got these cap rate issues where no one knows what the long term valuations are gonna be. So everything's a mess. Jared Kushner (01:24:20): And by the way, that that gets compounded by the fact that now banks that have office exposure are pulling back their lending. So you have a combination of, you know, cost of borrowing being higher and then the availability availability of liquidity going lower. And that's could further compound a lot of these refinances. But a lot of what the people I know in the industry are telling me is that they're able just to work with existing lenders and just do some kind of extension and and, you know, just kind of lift the fight for another day to get through the cycle. And and I will say in New York that the the rental rates for residential Oh, I think around historic highs and and actually what what my family seen in their portfolio is that their properties in Jersey City, which is basically like the 6th borough of New York are just absolutely on fire because it's basically, you know, you go in New York. Now you go to a CVS. Everything's locked up. You can't buy anything. It doesn't feel necessarily like the safest city. You go to Jersey City. They actually have, like, you know, law and order and rule of law. And so, so and you still take a train to New York, and that's actually been a place done incredibly well. So you always have micro markets and you have different trends that that work and don't work. But, but I wouldn't bet against New York. It's still, an amazing city. And and one thing about New York is every time I'm there, I I always talk with some of the cops. And I basically asked him, I say, if you had a mayor that said, go be cops Go be cops. Nobody's gonna, you know, hold you back, you know, get out of the car, do what you do. We got you back. How long would it take you to clean this place up? And the answer I get is usually anywhere from, like, 3 months to month. So, like, we could have this place fixed. So clearly, these have to let us be cops again. And, and so I I am hopeful that, you know, eventually, there'll be the political will to just you know, let New York be what is it has the potential to be. It's such an amazing dynamic place. David Sacks (01:25:54): That's such a good point. I mean, it really is is just a matter of political will. David Friedberg (01:25:59): Yeah. David Sacks (01:25:59): If you hire more cops and let them do their job, that will stop the crime or certainly the incentive for crime. Right now, people think they can get away with this stuff. And they don't get prosecuted when they get caught. The jails are like a revolving door. Jared Kushner (01:26:12): Yeah. They they have plenty of cops. They just have to let them do their jobs, and they need prosecutors who will who will do their jobs as well. And I I worked at Manhattan attorney's office when I was at NYU law for the summer. I mean, you have amazing people there. And if they are allowed to kind of follow the procedures and just just do the job in the way it's been done before, you can make that city very, very safe, very quickly. David Sacks (01:26:32): We we actually have a cop shortage in San Francisco. As well. It's not just a matter if not letting them do their job. We actually have a massive shortage. The city needs to hire a lot more. They allowed, pretty high rate of attrition in the role. I don't think there's a lot of people who wanna be cops in San Francisco. It's a pretty tough job, and then you'll get a lot of support. So, yeah, we actually have a shortage here. That's a big problem. Yeah. But it's very solvable, as you say. I mean, just hire more train them. Let them do their jobs. David Friedberg (01:27:00): Jared, how much do you think, federal deficits and the federal debt matters going to this election cycle, is it gonna be a top topic, or is it not really gonna matter? And then more importantly, how consequential is it in reality? Jared Kushner (01:27:13): I think in reality, it's it's massively consequential. I think in the election cycle, I think both parties are gonna probably try to avoid talking about because I think that, you know, everyone knows, you know, what I find in politics is when something's a really big issue, people try not to talk about it that much. And, the top is David Friedberg (01:27:29): are gonna have to get cut. Jared Kushner (01:27:31): Right? The hope is is that, you know, once you get through the election, things can be done to to to to have to deal with it, but it's definitely an issue that needs to be dealt with. David Friedberg (01:27:40): Uh-huh. What do you think that is? Raising ray raising revenue or cutting expenses or both? Jared Kushner (01:27:47): Growth. Growth is the answer everyone buys kids. That's that's the political cop out answer. David Friedberg (01:27:52): It's growth. 6% economic GDP growth. David Sacks (01:27:54): How about we free spending until till the denominator can grow big enough to reduce that. David Friedberg (01:27:59): I mean, balanced budget amendment, etcetera. But but speaking of GDP growth, I mean, do you guys wanna cover tech story today. I this week real Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:06): quick before we I mean, it's really incredible. David Sacks (01:28:08): Can I get can I just, I I got it? I can't resist getting Jared on the record about the Russia Ukraine war. Oh. So, I mean, this is a war that I thought was very easily avoidable. Jared Kushner (01:28:18): We have David Friedberg (01:28:19): a 1 minute budget One minute budget. One minute. That's David Sacks (01:28:21): all I need. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:22): I'm starting the shot clock. David Friedberg (01:28:23): Shamonda's gonna ring the gavel. I'm gonna take a break. Go. You got the 67. My Well, Jared Kushner (01:28:27): I I I think, I think David's happy to have somebody on, who agrees with him on on on most of what he's been saying. So Yeah. We we we worked with, with Ukraine, and we worked well with Russia, during our 4 years. I I like to point out of people that, when we were in kind of our worst moments in COVID, the in country that sent us plane load of supplies and ventilators when New York looked like it was, you know, on the verge of going under was Russia. And that was because we were offering them the possibility of of working together, we armed Ukraine, but we also told Ukraine, you know, don't even think about raising NATO, as a membership as as a way to I think what happened was is the Biden administration, you know, had conversations with Ukraine about joining NATO. Russia basically pushed their their military to the frontline to say we are never gonna let happen. If you go through, kind of the geography and the history you understand why, you know, Russia, you know, will never let that occur. And I think it was right after, you know, the embarrassment of what happened with our withdrawal in Afghanistan where they thought that we had a weak, America that was gonna come and do much to it. So, I think it was all very, very avoidable. I think that, you know, from what I read and kinda wasn't involved in these conversations, it did feel like there were some off ramps, initially, but, I do think that from our perspective. I think the number one interest has always been how do we avoid a nuclear war? I don't think that that's, that's something we we wanna see happen. And I do think that, I do think that hopefully they'll be able to find some kind of resolution to, to to not have that be a problem. And I will say too that that's impacting the Middle East. I mean, right now, what's happening with with Israel and and with, with the Palestinians and Iran is basically a proxy war, for Russia. Jared Kushner (01:29:59): I mean, if the America decided tomorrow, let's change and support the Palestinians, then Russia would come and be for Israel. I mean, there's not a lot of ideology for them in that, but I think Russia and China wanna see the US stretched and distracted so that we're we're less focused on kind of the areas where we're more correctly, in, in in conflict with them. And so, I think that that's a very major thing. And I will say too, like, I I think that You know, I I don't believe that the countries have permanent, allies or permanent enemies. You know, I I during my time in government, we deal with the Germans and the Japanese who we're vicious in World War 2, and we'd be against the Chinese and we'd be against the Russians who were basically our our allies in World War 2. And so, I don't think countries really have friends. I think countries have have interests, and I think that, with with most countries, you have areas of overlapping interest. And I think that you can find those even with countries where you're in opposition for. So, you know, one of the the the operating principles I I brought, to all the different foreign policy problems that I was given was don't condemn tomorrow to be, like, yesterday, because you think it has to be. And so I would always look at something I try to pull whatever optimism I could find and then say, you know, what's the best case scenario from a first principles perspective? I'd start there and then I'd work through all the problems that you had to try to get there. So, so so, David, I think you've been way more right on Ukraine than than others. And, And I do think there's been a tremendous amount that's been mismanaged by, by the US and and by the world in that in that scenario. And I think it's unfortunate too because I think a lot of people have been killed in that war. And I I do think that obviously the invasion of Ukraine was was was a terrible thing. Jared Kushner (01:31:33): It should never have happened. But I do think there's a lot of, acts by leaders that could have been done in order to either prevent it or or minimize it. And and I still think that that's the job of of leaders in the world is to try to do the hard things and try to do the things to to make the world a less volatile and dangerous place. David Friedberg (01:31:50): You think it's coming to an end? Jared Kushner (01:31:52): It's definitely lost its prominence. It does seem militarily, Again, I'm I'm sitting here in Miami, you know, reading, you know, X and and newspapers and talking to folks. So I mean, I'm not gonna pine like I'm a general on the front lines, but but it does seem like it it's kind of reached a point where it's not much is gonna change militarily. And, and and You know, again, like every day that goes on, there's just more life that's being lost. And again, I I said the same thing with Israel that I'd say here. I mean, Russian Ukraine both have you know, unbelievably brilliant people. If you take all these these young men and you you take them off the battle lines and put it back into, you know, their jobs of of creating things. I just think that net net, that's just a much better thing for the world. So my hope is that, you know, the leaders involved try to find a way to get to a resolution. Again, you know, I think that you know, both sides and and maybe overpromised their people what what victory looks like, but that's the job of negotiation. Right? You need to, you know, you need to find an off ramp for everyone and get them to a place where we can, you know, start focusing on how to make tomorrow better instead of litigating grievances from the past. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:53): Do you guys see that Sunny Sunny tweeted this thing. He had dinner last night with Farhan Fawar, who's the VP of Engineering at Shopify. She see his tweet. Yeah. Can you find it? He said that Shopify has written more than a million lines of code with Copilot already. Oh, wow. I was like, what? David Friedberg (01:33:13): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:14): I mean, I don't exactly know David Friedberg (01:33:17): how there's your there's your GDP growth, Jared. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:20): Well, that's definitely growth. I wonder what it it would whether it'll be it'll be GED. David Friedberg (01:33:27): Think it will. I think a lot of product productivity gains are gonna drive the economy forward. Historically, I was just talking with someone this past week about over the last couple of decades we've seen a massive shift on GDP growth being driven largely by labor, the labor force growing and labor participation, And increasingly, in the last couple of years, there's been this tremendous shift that all GDP growth is predominantly driven by productivity gains and productivity gains, you know, economically net their way through the, the system, and you see the the total GDP grow. This is the whole argument for AI, particularly in a moment like this. If you're having a declining population, you're having declining labor participation, people wanna work fewer hours. If you wanna keep growing economy in order to sustain the debt and the services that you provide through a government infrastructure, you have to grow the economy and you have to increase productivity. It's the only way forward. It's, I mean, like, you can have one it's not like you're gonna fire engineers. You're just gonna have one engineer do five times as much. Jared Kushner (01:34:28): Dave, you just solve the whole budget deficit and, debt issue. You you found the answers. It's an industry for pro productivity driven by by the AI advancements, which By the way, there is a lot of tremendous productivity gains that will occur because of this. David Friedberg (01:34:41): I always give people the example of the tractor. Like, when the tractor came around, it's not like people were like, Hey, we're gonna make less food now or, you know, what happened was we were able to farm ten times as much and, you know, total output increased. And when total output increased, there was a an abundance of surplus of food of calories that said people population grow, the overall economy grew. There's no point in history. That we've had a productivity gain through technology that didn't ultimately grow the economy. Like, it's never David Sacks (01:35:10): Well, it's David Friedberg (01:35:11): never gone the other way. David Sacks (01:35:12): In 1900, I think about 50 percent of workers in America were somehow involved in agriculture. Yeah. And by David Friedberg (01:35:20): more than 100. Yeah. David Sacks (01:35:21): Yeah. By 2000, it was down to, like, 2%. David Friedberg (01:35:23): 1%. So it's David Sacks (01:35:24): not like we had a 40% unemployment rate. David Friedberg (01:35:26): All these other things. Grew. David Sacks (01:35:27): Figure it out a way to do new and productive things. And that led to more wealth. That being said, it did cause a lot of social disruption. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:35:35): And I think certain job classes went away. It had to get replaced by others that had to be invented. If you think about a world where there's a 1,000,000 little companies or 50,000,000 companies or 500,000,000 companies that exist because they're 1 and 2 per teams that can build stuff. That seems pretty reasonable and logical as the outcome. There's a lot of sort of, like, Financial Engineering that kind of goes away in that world. Right? I think the job of the venture capitalist changes really profoundly. I think there's a reasonable case to make that it doesn't exist. It's more of an automated system of capital against objectives, right, and that you wanna be making many, many, many small 100,005,001,000 bets. And then get to this much larger scale where then you once you get some place, you can go and get the 100 and $200,000,000 checks. I don't I don't know how else all of this gets supported financially. David Friedberg (01:36:35): Well, so there were there were a couple of big news stories this week. One was Elon launched Grock which is a, chat GPT, call it, competitor. It took them about under his Xai business unit, took them 8 months to train GROC 1, which is the model. And by many measures is as performative as GPT 3a half, GPT 4. At the same no. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:36:59): No. Brock 0. It took 3 months to train rock 0. He's still training rock 1. David Friedberg (01:37:03): Sorry. 3 months to train rock 0. Yeah. You guys know Kai Fu. Yeah. He was at Google. He was at Microsoft. Yeah. And he it's, in China and built his business starting 8 months ago. And in those 8 months, he's now delivered a 34,000,000,000 parameter model that he's completely open source that he shows by, again, some performative metrics outperformed llama too. And, again, doing it from China speaks, I think, really clearly and importantly to the point we talked about last week about if the US tries to over regulate AI model development, there are alternatives out there, particularly open source alternatives that will continue to proliferate and improve And again, this was done in 8 months. And then the it's almost like the timing was perfect because in the same week, OpenAI responds with developer day. They didn't necessarily respond, but they had developer day on the books for a long time. And at developer day, OpenAI released a number of really powerful tools for developers that allow them to build really powerful applications and infrastructure on top of OpenAI's platform. So they, released APIs for DALL3. A 4¢ to generate an image, using, the DALL3 API. They launched a tool to create your own GPT which can actually leverage proprietary data. So from within your own database, you're in your your own data lake, you can build, a GPT that you can then integrate into applications, and GPT 4 Turbo with 2 versions that had, you know, pretty powerful pricing improvements. All of this, being said, it's a it's a big leap forward in what feels like a low cost, low friction, multimodal developer friendly, set of tools from OpenAI that allows them to move away from having the best model to now having what feels like much more of a platform business. That as more, applications and more developers start to utilize OpenAI's toolkit and services, a real, ecosystem starts to develop, and that creates a sustainable business mode rather than just the tech mode that OpenAI started with. David Friedberg (01:39:20): So I think the big point is that we're seeing the technical gap narrow between the best and the average or the worst in the median in model development. We're also now seeing that the evolution for a lot of these businesses is through OpenAI trying to build, you know, applications on top of a platform and build a business mode. And so there's a real shift underway, but net net what the market's forcing everyone to do is really compete and build these incredible capabilities that are really gonna launch a number of new business models, new innovations, I think the question is, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:39:53): are we building apps for the iOS app store? Are we building web pages for the open internet? And I think OpenAI's hope is that it's apps for the app store because it's proprietary and they own it. They could take a share. I think the reality is it's going to end up as the open web. And, again, I think it's mostly because everybody else just can't afford to let one company run away with it. And so you know, whether it's llama or misril or even grok when Elon open sources it, it's going to allow people to have access to these tools basically for free. The problem that I think it creates is, you know, we had a, you know, when when I first came to the United States, my the the company that I worked at, AOL, they were the ones that believed in a fundamentally closed internet. Right? And you had this service and you went into the walled garden of AOL. And then the pendulum swung over the last 20 years, and we opened it up. With Facebook and at other places, and now we have this fundamentally open architecture. The problem now is these models will not get better unless you have fine tuning that happens by yourself, or these reinforcement learning loops that come from data that you control. And you can see it with grad 0, part of what makes Grock really successful is that Elon and only Elon can give access to the X fire hose to grok. Now that's a ginormous repository of proprietary data that they're gonna be able to train on. So then the question is, well, obviously, then Facebook will wanna train their models on Instagram and their models on WhatsApp, Google will want to train Gemini on Gmail. None of those companies will want to make that available to any other model And so the unfortunate byproduct of a more, of, of foundational models that are more pervasive is going to be that the internet gets a little bit more closed in the short term. And we're gonna have to really figure out what the implications of that are. So I think what means economically is there's just gonna be a lot more small companies and a lot fewer of these ginormous outcomes. And that's on balance probably better for, you know, innovation in the economy, probably. David Friedberg (01:42:07): Yeah. Data is the advantage, not the model itself. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:42:10): You you have to you have to own some data asset that is unique so that you can train these models, and then you have to close it off so nobody else can have access to it. And that has to be an explicit business decision because it would be foolish for you to not do that. David Friedberg (01:42:27): Sachs, did you take any away from this week's announcements with Kifu, Elon, and OpenAI's developer day? David Sacks (01:42:32): Brock is interesting as an AI because it has a sense of humor. I mean, that's what's kind of interesting about the user experience. Is it tries to be funny and has a sense of irony? It's also willing to be more politically incorrect. And I think one of the concerns about Chamath GPT early on was that it was programmed to be woke and that it wasn't giving people you know, truthful answers about a lot of things that the censorship was being built in to the to the answers. And there was a lot of examples very early on where seem like there was some sort of trust and safety layer that had been built on top of the AI and sometimes it would intervene and not give you the true answer that came from the AI, it would give you kind of some made up boiler plate. And so having something like rock around will at a minimum keep Open AI honest and keep, you know, keep chat GPT honest because if it's willing to give you truthful answers about things that you compare to the chat GPT answer, we're gonna know when these, like, so called trust and safety interventions are are happening. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:43:31): So I David Sacks (01:43:31): think that's kinda interesting. Separately, the OpenAI developer day shows that that company, if you wanna call it I don't know if it's a company or a foundation or what, but David Friedberg (01:43:43): it's a pretty David Sacks (01:43:44): complicated legal entity. I mean, David Friedberg (01:43:47): they are. Those are details. Those are David Sacks (01:43:49): details. I mean, they are really, trucking along at full speed. I mean, it is pretty impressive what they're shipping. Yeah. The and even if the underlying language models get somewhat commoditized, it does seem like they're building a very robust developer ecosystem. So you could analogize it to something like Stripe where credit card payments are pretty much a commodity, but Everyone uses Stripe because their dev tools are so good. Mhmm. And then they're able to get to a bunch of skill network effects because, again, their developer platform is so good. So I do think that that's the advantage of open AI may not be the model itself, although I think I think their model is actually pretty good, but it's is it that much better than llama 2? Probably not. But that the developer platform is getting really good. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:44:37): Yeah. That's a really interesting analogy because if you play that out and you say, is AI like payments Well, what does the payments landscape look like in terms of companies that have real enterprise value? There are, I guess, 3 or 4 big ones. And then there's a bunch of long tail ones in specific geographies because there are these random rules in the country and you build something to be very specific to it and you have value in that market or in that use case. And maybe there's a maybe there's an analogy there in how this market develops in that sense. There's 4 or 5 big foundational models, and then there's a bunch of small vertical use applications that you use depending on what the task is. David Friedberg (01:45:15): Well, the time and the cost to build new foundational model seems to be shrinking. Had a pretty fast clip. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:45:20): So and by the way, all of this happened on h 100. David Friedberg (01:45:24): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:45:25): And a bunch of these happen on a 100. So the one generation of silicon behind. So to your point, this thing is gonna be like people will be training models in weeks. David Friedberg (01:45:34): Yeah. So let's go ahead and track all the world's models and have a federal regulatory body of receiving all of this. Well, I'm I Chamath Palihapitiya (01:45:43): have a guy from the UK on H1B, so I'm still filling out the TPS report because he I told him, don't touch the model, and he did. Jared Kushner (01:45:53): Yeah. Definitely following high level from my perspective. I I think it's it's great, especially with what you mentioned about Kai Fu Lee. It just confirms what we've that what we've which is that America is definitely leading in this. And I think that it's just important to to know that they're leading be really because of the private sector and the fact that the private sector has been allowed to do what they do and as we start to think about the regulatory frameworks, I mean, you could think of a open AI as a as a company or a foundation or even as a nation state with with kind of the amount of power that these things will have the ability to to harness once they're they're fully scaled. And I I just think it's it's it's gonna be very interesting to see. I think the more competitor competition you have here, I think the better, it will be very, very good, but I do think you want the most powerful, models and most powerful platforms to be in the hands of people who are gonna try to apply it for all the right, all all the right things for society. So I think that there's a lot of positive applications lot of negative applications that can come from this. And my hope is that the regulatory frameworks that are developed, won't stifle innovation at the expense of allowing others to get ahead of us who we'll probably use them in, in ways that we would not wanna see them used. Right. David Sacks (01:46:58): Can I fly a couple of features that OpenAI announced that I think are interesting? David Friedberg (01:47:02): Yeah. Yeah. As long as you don't repeat what I said, because you weren't paying attention, but, yeah, don't go for it. David Sacks (01:47:06): Well, did you mention the well, if I got this wrong, we deleted. But did you mention the 128 k context window? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:47:12): No. He Jared Kushner (01:47:13): did not. David Friedberg (01:47:13): I did not. No. He did not. I think David Sacks (01:47:15): it's kind of a big deal. What what that means is you can have a prompt that has 300 pages of text in it. David Friedberg (01:47:22): Yes. David Sacks (01:47:22): I'll tell you, like, several months ago, I was trying to figure out, like, is there a way where I could just put all of my blog posts in a prompt for chat GPT and have it turn into a book, for example. And I was I was kind of like a problem I just started working on. It was actually very complicated to try and solve Chamath Palihapitiya (01:47:39): Also, like, also vector debas were a totally useless intermediate. Like, that abstraction didn't need to exist. That's all gone now too. They're doing Those guys are firing on all cylinders. It's really it's really impressive to see. David Sacks (01:47:51): Yeah. The other thing is multimodal. I mean, so they're really stressing the idea of combining text with photos, I guess videos will eventually come later, text to speech. But again, having multiple kinds of inputs and outputs for the AI. I think it's kinda where David Friedberg (01:48:09): And proprietary where you can plug in your own proprietary data sources. I mean, it's just a game changer for a lot of enterprise customers. I think those developers are gonna go nuts. I heard a lot of positive feedback from developer folks. I know who attended and sounds like that it was very positively received. Okay. Well, this has been great, Jared. Thank you so much for joining us today. It was really great spend time together. This is the point in the show where you tell David Sachs that you love him. And, he says right back at you. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:48:36): Guys, I wanna say sicking 153 episodes. But finally, there's a person that I can say I'm now the 2nd best looking guy on this pod, so Thank you for coming on. David Sacks (01:48:48): Oh, well, Jared Kushner (01:48:49): you guys are the best. I'm gonna come back more often than if you'll have business. I get treated better here than I do at my home. So good. So So David Friedberg (01:48:56): do we? That's that's Chamath Palihapitiya (01:48:57): so much. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:48:58): Try to hang that together. Jared Kushner (01:49:00): Thank you guys for having me on and and really you for all the different, you know, important conversations you have. And, again, I've met a lot of people who listen to you guys over the time, and, they all find you guys give him a lot of good input into a lot of the issues that are impacting our our daily lives. So thank you for the opportunity to be with you today. David Friedberg (01:49:16): Thanks, man. Thanks, Britney. Sabrina. Thank you very much. Jared Kushner (01:49:20): We'll let your winners ride. Rainman, David Sachs. David Sacks (01:49:28): We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy. Jared Kushner (01:49:37): What airliners were. David Friedberg (01:49:45): Driveway steps. Jared Kushner (01:49:46): We should all just get a room and have one big huge, George, because they're always useless. It's like this, like, sexual tension, but we just need to release that mountain. David Sacks (01:50:00): Flirt your feet.