总统候选人迪恩·菲利普斯对话主持团，习拜会与更多

David Friedberg (00:00:00): Congressman, how should we refer to you today? Dean Phillips (00:00:04): Well, I prefer Dean, but, you know Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:06): Let's go with that, Mister Phillips. Dean Phillips (00:00:09): And just I'm I'm asking people to be keen on Dean, so it might as well run with it. David Friedberg (00:00:12): Oh, there you go. Oh, Speaker 4 (00:00:13): well, you Jason Calacanis (00:00:13): know, I mean, the big support of the Dean machine already. Dean Phillips (00:00:16): Oh, you know about the Dean machine? Jason Calacanis (00:00:17): With this gelato, Speaker 4 (00:00:18): I'm I'm all Jason Calacanis (00:00:19): up on the Dean machine. Dean Phillips (00:00:20): By the way, I bought an old international harvester metro van for Tolentes when we did activations like South by Southwest. And I David Friedberg (00:00:26): used to own one of those, by the way. Dean Phillips (00:00:28): Nope. You did? David Friedberg (00:00:29): I yeah. I bought it from my ranch. Come on. Dean Phillips (00:00:31): I love that, baby. So I bought one for Talenti, And I saw how people just immediately were attracted to it and fell in love with it. And I thought, hey. When I ran for Congress, I'm gonna do the same thing. So I created the government repair truck. David Friedberg (00:00:43): Are you driving around in this international harvester? Of course. You're kidding. David Sacks (00:00:46): Yeah. I'll I'll show you. Dean Phillips (00:00:48): I'll send you a picture of it. It's cool. David Friedberg (00:00:49): It's Awesome. Dean Phillips (00:00:50): It's got a 1980 Chevy chassis under it, but it's still the sell the basic, nuts and bolts. David Friedberg (00:00:55): Zach, we're referring to a type of, automobile. Jason Calacanis (00:00:57): You can ask one of your 3 drivers about it, David. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:00): Sorry, David. Your driver can take care Jason Calacanis (00:01:01): of them. Your Miami driver, he probably owns some muscle cars. I don't think your LA driver owns muscle cars. Here we go. Let's start with 3, 2, Speaker 4 (00:01:10): for what your winners ride. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:12): Rainman, David Sachs. Speaker 4 (00:01:14): And I said We open set to the fans, and they've just got a reason for Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:21): it. Love you. Jason Calacanis (00:01:25): Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the all in podcast with us again today, the dictator himself, Chamath Palihapitiya, the rainman, David Sachs, and the Sultan of Science, David Friedberg. We are going to continue our conversation series with presidential candidates today, Our 4th presidential candidate is on the program Dean Phillips represents Minnesota's 3rd district. And He's about twenty five years younger than Trump and Biden at fifty four years old. Dean, before into politics. I understand you were the CEO of your family's, spirits business and you ran Talenti gelato. The pistachio flavor. Amazing. So Welcome to the all in podcast meet the other besties. And maybe you could just start out by telling us why you are running for president. Dean Phillips (00:02:15): Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, after being in the vodka business and the ice cream business and actually the coffee business, I think I understand at least what Americans want. So that's a good start. Well, I'll tell you a little bit about my background. Why I'm here? I lost my dad in the Vietnam War, when I was just six months old, He had grew up with no money in St. Paul Minnesota, earned in our OTC scholarship, on behalf of the federal government, of course, to pursue his education, went to Vietnam in 1968 just before I was born, got to see the US land on the moon. And I think regularly about how he looked up 2 days before his helicopter crashed and he died. Looked up and saw Americans on the moon and looked down and saw America at its worst. And literally that experience in no small way is, what brings me to this day. And, I was six months old, my mom was 24 and widowed, and we moved in with my great grandparents for the 1st 3 years of my life. And I got lucky when I was three. My mom married a wonderful extraordinary man who had helped me, Eddie Phillips, brought me into a family of great blessings. My grandmother became dear Abby and my aunt and Landers. So I grew up in a family of a lot of advice. And, I've lived on both sides of advantage, and I recognize it. I remember the day I turned 26, and I counted the days that my father had lived, my birth father. And I remember the day after I had lived as many days as him. My life changed forever. And I I became inspired, joined our family business after college, ended up running our our beverage business. We created Belvedere vodka, which we sold LVMH, and then got into the ice cream business. And did the same thing. When you guys David Friedberg (00:03:52): created Belvedere? Dean Phillips (00:03:53): Yeah. We my father and I and our partner, Steve Gil, went on a trip to Poland in 1993, hoping to sell them Philip Shops, which we made in Minnesota. We thought Eastern Europe was ready for peppermint and peach shops. And and we we were touring distilleries, and we see both in in duty free in the airport and in the distilleries, the most beautiful packaging we'd ever seen in the spirits business. Now mind you, this is when absolute and stolen We're like the pinnacle of luxury Right. $15, you know, average now. And my father immediately, yeah, sat at a restaurant that night literally, this is a literal napkin story. He, on a napkin, created a little matrix and said if stolen absolute are $15 And then the most premium in a fast growing category, why shouldn't there be a $25 vodka? And why should this not be it? So we negotiated with the Polish government our partner Tad Doora from Poland helped us. And we first obtained the distribution rights. And then when Poland privatized their, spirits industry, we acquired the distillery and the IP, and the rest was history. And, you know, cork finished, beautiful bottle. We sold it we talked about the lowest common denominator, the pens we used to write the orders, the way we carried it, made all the difference in the world. And then we used that same template in ice cream because what we found is in every category, every, consumer product category in which there are 2 main competitors, Coke and Pepsi, Stolee Absolute, Ben and Jerry's and Hagen Dazs, They tend to fight to the bottom, lower pricing, you know, frankly, demeaning consumers. And there's always an opportunity to introduce something a little bit more premium, a little bit more special that's still an affordable luxury. And Belvedere, by the way, was built by Jay Z can tell you that story if you wanna hear it. It's an extraordinary one. Yeah. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:38): Tell that story too. Yeah. Speaker 7 (00:05:40): So so so far, you're our David Friedberg (00:05:41): you're our kind of candidate. We're like, exactly. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:43): You just gotta go to both. Speaker 7 (00:05:46): All looking at you, like, who is this guy? David Friedberg (00:05:47): This is awesome. Dean Phillips (00:05:48): Yeah. So when people ask me about my platform, I'll say, oh, Tim, I'll be a storyteller red vodka. I'm David Sacks (00:05:52): ready to start popping bottles over here. By the way, Dean Phillips (00:05:55): that's exactly what Jay Z did. Jason Calacanis (00:05:56): Saks and I popped many of Belvidere bottle in when we had our run-in LA. True or not you, Saks. David Sacks (00:06:02): It was a tough choice between Belvedere and Gray Goose. Jason Calacanis (00:06:05): Oh, I'll tell Speaker 7 (00:06:06): you that story too, by the way. Anyway, that's. Dean Phillips (00:06:08): So we introduced Belvedere and it and By the way, what what we learned in hindsight is that our aperture was way too small. And we were way too we we sold it by the bottle, not by case. We only went to restaurants and bars at first, not to the big stores. We want it to be special. And we completely underestimated the size of what this category could be. Sydney Frank who introduced Gregos took a much bigger approach. Anyway, so I'm sitting at home getting ready for work one day. I have MTV on, and it's probably a year after we introduce Belvidere. It's doing well, but not not big. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:38): So I'm sorry. This is, like, mid nineties? Dean Phillips (00:06:40): Yeah. Because I can't remember the year, Chamath. It's probably, you know, 95. Yeah. 90s. They're about Watch an MTV, I see a Jay Z video, and it is all belvedere. It's in the fridge. He's holding it. He's dancing. He's pouring it on him. And I froze, called my dad immediately who, of course, didn't have MTV on. And I said, you gotta turn it on. He couldn't find the channel. I'm like, hey, dad, you know, MTV repeats the same videos, you know, five, ten times a day. So we got to the office. And sure enough, we had the TV on. It came back on. The whole company gathered at that time. We were probably ten people, and we gathered around the TV and watch this video. And I'm telling you guys within 2 weeks, the brand completely popped. And my dad, Jay Z ended up calling my father. They had a a dinner in New York City, a memorable one for both. Actually, he ended up introducing a some years later called Armadell. And it failed miserably. But it was one of the first times that I think in this new culture of influencers and celebrity endorsers that that magic happened. He almost literally made Belvedere. So that's the story. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:47): Did you guys sign him to a deal and pay him money? Or No. Dean Phillips (00:07:50): In fact, We talked about that. And the core so this is the brand foundation of the brand house was authenticity. We didn't do a damn thing that had anything to do with anything that wasn't true. The makers of it, the, the product itself, we didn't we didn't pay people to talk about it unlike Sydney Frank with Greg Goose. So we chose not to. It was all natural. And then here's the other cool thing. And this is how my campaign's gonna work. We sent 200 bottles in very special beautiful boxes to 200 influencers. We we believe that if we could simply seed the brand with two hundred people all around the US, that they could be the content makers and the advocates, the ambassadors. In fact, one of them went to this guy right behind me, Bill Clinton And Robert De Niro, another example Robert Redford, you know, you know, leaders of industry and actors and and, and the like. Robert De Niro gets one of these things. And there was a note inside with a picture of the distiller Bogdan Zelensky. It said watch page 3, the Tiffany section. I'm sorry. The Tiffany location of the Wall Street Journal on, call it, it was like Monday, February 6th. To only two hundred people knew what was coming. The ad in the paper didn't show a bottle of butt anything. It just said Belvedere Bogdon wants to know how you like it. So we literally did an ad that Koskosh knows back then, probably a $100,000 tiny little top corner ad. That spoke to 200 people in the United States of America that had no idea. Nobody else knew what it was. Robert De Niro goes to the, Beverly Hills hotel or the peninsula. I can't remember. Orders of Belvieu Martini soon thereafter. The bar man says, Mr. De Niro, we have Absolut, we have Stole, I don't have that brand. And he says, I don't think you heard me. I want a Belvider Martini. So the bar man sends, like, the bar back to whatever the the wine and spirit shop is on rodeo driver in Beverly, Beverly Hills. Dean Phillips (00:09:35): And the guy, he comes back with a bottle. And the entire bar watched this little episode. And I'm telling you once again, within a week, that store was selling through Belvedere like it was water. So these little moments where you identify the right people. And now mind you, this isn't the analog error. There was no internet. There was no social media. This was people simply talking to people. So we sold Belvitude LVMH and then we looked at the ice cream category. South Ben and Jerry's doing the same thing. If Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:01): you can, tell us about that. What is it like to negotiate against LVMH and Bernard Arnaud, and why do you sell it when it's working? I guess maybe it's a question. Dean Phillips (00:10:10): You know, I'll tell you, well, this is not a story I've shared with many. They were very disingenuous. And, it it deeply troubles me to this day, the way that my father was treated the promises that were made simply to get a deal done and then not kept, I think is a reflection on principle, and I'll leave it at that. A lesson learned, in fact, rather than going through a competitive process, which I think any enterprise would do to maximize value of a brand, Our family ethos was a little different. And, and I think we bit. And in hindsight, it was a mistake. But I'll leave it at that. You learn less a. You know what? You learn lessons every experience to this very day. I'm learning them every day on the campaign trail too. That was one I would never make again. Jason Calacanis (00:10:59): Alright. Well, you got the 2 David's votes with the vodka. You got mine with the gelato. And if you launch a luxury fabric brand or sweaters, I think you're gonna get you Dean Phillips (00:11:07): a month. First, I got some other work to do great year. So we'll we'll do that afterwards. I'll just wrap this long story up. So we introduced, you know, Talendy obviously does well. We sold it to Unilever. Then I opened a couple coffee shops, with my family in Minneapolis thinking this would be kind of a fun folly. And then we're watching the 2016 election, at home. I thought wake up the next morning. We'd have Hillary Clinton as president. Not that that was thrilling to the world, but it would have been safe. And lo and behold, you know what happened. And I remember telling my family that night, like, look, Give the guy a chance. He's not gonna act like that in the White House. The presidency changes you. It humbles you. It moderates you. And my family thought I was a, you know, I was a joke. And I woke up the next morning. My sixteen year old, was in her room crying. My eighteen year old was a freshman at college. We FaceTim her, and she's crying. And I sat at the breakfast table guys, and I promised my daughters, I would do something. I I raised them to be participants, not not observers, And I looked around at my district. I thought maybe I'll run for congress. I looked around and, I had the district had not been won by a Democrat. Since the 1958 election. This is the now we're looking at the 20s 18 election 60 years. And the man who had won, won his 4th term by 14 points. And people told me that's crazy. You know, you're out of your mind. You're giving up a a good life to run for misery, and you'll never make it, and you'll embarrass yourself. Which is why I did it. And not only did we win, we won by 12 points. We had fun. We used invitation, not confrontation. And I drove that little van all around the district to the most unhospitable parts. I opened the service window. I served coffee. And I sat, I put two chairs out, and people would just come up and talk. Dean Phillips (00:12:45): And I found magic in just letting people share what's on their mind. They're so unheard. Anyhow, I get to well, I can tell you now, I wanna tell you why I'm doing it, the story of where I came from and why I'm doing this and look at the end of the day. I'm the one of those that got lucky. You know, there's a lot of kids who lost their dads in Vietnam who did not have the magical moment that I had to be adopted by an amazing father. And that was the difference for me. It's my job to make sure others get that same chance. Simple as that. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:11): Before we jump into the future about why you're running and what you what you see for the country. Talk about the years that you spent in Congress. What did you observe there? What, what is it like day to day and, and what do you think is working and what isn't working? Dean Phillips (00:13:28): I I wish we had 3 hours. I get there, Chamath, I get there the 1st week of 2019. And look, all of you that come from organizational enterprise experience, I assume that Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy would have a have a strategy to introduce the new members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, you know, get to know each other, do a ropes course, you know, and build some trust or something. And my goodness, it was just the opposite guys. We were put on separate buses going to different events, and I realized right away that they had a systemic segregation strategy on day 1. And we want you more to consider the 2 parties. This is the I tell you what I've learned now, we can talk more about this. The only people that want to protect the status quo of the duopoly and the political industrial complex that just surrounds it all are the 2 parties. And it is destructive, and I will get into that. I recognized right away all of my colleagues that the leadership in both, Democratic and Republican side, they wanted to keep a separate They did not want to give us education and information, and they wanted to keep us so busy that we could not become threats to their power structure. You can you can imagine members of Congress tend to be pretty ambitious people. And ultimately, they were smart to do that because they made members of congress. They do this day. Race raised money all week long. 10000 hours per week is what senators and house members spend. Raising money. I got a bill actually that would preclude it from 8 AM to 5 PM because it's such an unmitigated joke and disaster. The fact that in the United States, that a pack representing a special interest or corporation can hand a $5000 check to a member of Congress at a steakhouse on Wednesday evening. And then that member serves on a committee in which that business or special interest has business in front of the next day is the most unbelievable form of legal corruption you could possibly imagine. So that's one. Dean Phillips (00:15:24): Needless to say, I resolved right after that 1st week of that I would do it differently. I befriended my Republican colleagues. My wife, on Elise and I, started having bipartisan dinners at our house, I joined the problem solvers caucus. I hope you guys know about it. It's the most important small caucus in Congress. We're now 32 Democrats. And 32 Republicans committed to doing what we're supposed to do, get to know each other, talk policy, and try to make a difference. Now we're the workhorses, not the show horses, So you don't know most of our names, including me. But we were the ones invited to the White House, in in, like, week 3 of our service, I would 1 of 4 Democrats, there were 4 Republicans that, president Trump invited to the situation room to make a proposition to get us through the shutdown, which I can talk about that. Bizarre hour of my life as well. And that's how I resolved to do it. Now I'm ranked depending on the the survey, number 1, number 2, number 10, most bipartisan members of the entire, US Congress and including governors. And and I vote relatively progressive. It's not about just the votes. It's the ethos. It's about, Republican sponsored bills, that have come from me. It's about me sponsoring Republican led bills. And that's what makes me a little bit different than I think just every member of congress, not to mention, I think I'm the only one that's willing to torpedo a career so that the country isn't torpedoed by this nonsense and dysfunction. There's a lot more to talk about, but the it all starts Speaker 4 (00:16:49): Yeah. Dean Phillips (00:16:49): With a systematic segregation and a focus on fighting each other instead of fighting for each other. Can talk about it all day long. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:16:56): Let's start there, Dean. What give us the assessment of what's happening in the White House right now. Before we talk about your candidacy, just like, what what's going Jason Calacanis (00:17:04): on? Well, for let Dean Phillips (00:17:05): let me just say I respect president Biden. I he's a man I've had in my house, for an event. He's a man with whom I've flown on Air Force 1 twice. He did a beautiful video for my daughter. He called my mother. I think he did a fine job. I think he was the only man that could have defeated Donald Trump in 2020. And I have to say, I think it's fair to say too. He's probably the only Democrat who could and will lose to Donald Trump in 2024. He's a human being. He's now in his eighties. He is clearly, on the decline. He's not incompetent. I believe he surrounded himself by competent able principal people. And I believe the White House is running, as a team, as most do. But do I think that he will be in a position to continue leading this country in the future? I do not. I think I'm joined by about 75% in the country of the country in saying that, I also believe the policies that we pass for the most part are investments for the future in infrastructure, the chips act, I think, is a very important bill which by the way has national security implications, as you guys know, the inflation reduction act, a a bizarre name for a bill that's really a, energy and climate bill, I think, is is pretty good legislation. And I think he reconstituted our allies around the world that had been afraid to a point of great danger, during the Trump administration. So I salute the past, but this is really an election about the future. It's about a generational change. It's about creating, you know, really a new American century, that will be powered by systems, structures, people, technologies, that I'm just afraid that president Biden and former president Trump can't even comprehend let alone create thoughtful policy to both nurture and also manage. And I think that's where we're at. And I wanna I think we have wars overseas. That I think in no small part are caused by a generation that is so focused on techniques and tools of the past. Dean Phillips (00:18:58): That they can't even dare look to building peace for the future. That's why I think why we have the Middle East still going. That's why Ukraine, you know, the the vice president has some ownership in some of these issues that I'm afraid, have to be exposed and they're the truth. And I'm happy to talk about them. But most of all, I'll wrap it with this. Affordability in the United States of America is absolutely, the most challenging issue facing Americans. They don't believe that their government is listening don't believe the president understands. They don't believe Congress is able to do anything about it because we're so dysfunctional. And that's another mission that I'm on right now to end this nonsense. I am gonna build a team of rivals. I will have a white house, and a cabinet comprised, of both and Republicans, the most able leaders imaginable who have run multibillion dollar organizations in some cases understand customer service We'll employ 0 based budgeting to the extent we can. We will employ a world class consulting firm to look at every single government program, system structure, and, and personnel to identify ways to save money. These are things that this president and frankly no president who doesn't have business experience, nonprofit leadership experience, and government experience could possibly imagine because they're so stuck in their siloed ways of thinking. He's been there for 50 years, and it's time for change. I was two three years old when he became a senator. Jason Calacanis (00:20:20): So let's get specific on the issues and and go into foreign policy, which is David Sacks's. I think number 1 issue this election. Of course. But first, just to be clear on Biden, Do you believe he's in cognitive decline? Do the Democrats privately believe he's in cognitive decline? And to what extent do you think he'd make it through the next presidency? Or do you think this is sort of a Ronald Reagan situation where he might look back on it and he's got some early onset of some cognitive decline? What what do you personally think and what are Democrats think? Dean Phillips (00:20:49): I don't want to impress upon anybody or give you the sense that I think he has a form of dementia or Alzheimer's or significant cognitive decline. But anybody who pays attention can see the change. And I'm I'm not I'm not, you know, people are saying that I'm causing his problems that I could risk his, you know, reelection. You know, I'm not the guy that has him losing to Trump nationally down in 5 of 6 Battle Ground States, the lowest approval ratings in presidential history, almost, and I'm certainly not the guy, that has shown his, you know, his decline. That's on video that's on audio, you see it. It's natural. He's a human being for goodness sakes. All I'm doing you guys is saying the quiet part out loud. The only one You asked the question, do others talk about this? The question is is anybody not talking about this? Of course, they are you guys. David Sacks (00:21:41): They've really created an opportunity for you because like you said, everyone's talking about this. Speaker 4 (00:21:45): Of course. David Sacks (00:21:45): But no one's willing to say it. David Friedberg (00:21:47): Of course. David Sacks (00:21:47): What what has been the blowback in the democratic party from you're declaring. Dean Phillips (00:21:52): What do you think? I'm not being thrown flowers and parties. Let me tell you that. Guys, I'll tell you. I I I I think most would consider me an affable, friendly, well liked member of Congress. I know that. That's my that's my ethos my friends are still my friends. I think they're disappointed because this is not what you do when you're a member of a party. You fall in line. You shush up. You sit down. You get in line. And you do nothing to upset the apple cart of others who've been waiting in line perhaps a little longer than you. So you can imagine the pushback has been strong. The arrow's sharp, and the pain quite significant, but nothing compared to the pain that Americans are feeling right now in why I'm doing this. And I should also let you know, I had no intention of doing this. A year ago, I was on a radio show and a host asked me if I thought the president should run again. And I said, of course not. He implicitly, if not explicitly said he would be a transitional president, kind of the bridge. Most members of Congress thought he was going to stand down. That's why That's why Newsom and Pritzker and, whitmer and so many others were kind of making their plans. And I said, and if he doesn't pass the torch, then we should ensure that at least that the stage has newer generation candidates to give voters a choice. Anyway, months went by. I started seeing the polls change dramatically. The tenor and tone of constituent discussions with me and every single one of my colleagues changing graphically. All the independence, moderate Republicans that voted for the president, I think, for the right reasons, were increasingly telling us that they're not gonna do it again. May not vote for Trump, but they're not gonna vote rather than to vote for Biden. And over time, it kept to a point. Actually, guys were, I resigned from the house leadership table because my position was so incongruent with those who were in positions to do something about it. That I didn't feel it was appropriate for me to sit with them anymore. Dean Phillips (00:23:44): And I was really frustrated. I called Gretchen Whitmer. I called JB Pritzker. I made public calls to the candidates whose names are better known than me to jump in. You know, the water's warm you guys. It's a democratic primary. That's what we do. Not only Did those 2 not take my calls, which they would have any other day? They had their political operatives take those calls, and they told me, please don't use their names. That's the culture. That's the culture you guys that we're dealing with. You will be black balled. You will be disenfranchised. You will be let out the door. If you so much, as even issue a word that you might challenge as sitting president of the United States. This is the United States of America. It's appalling. Anyhow, I'm frustrated. David Sacks (00:24:26): We saw that. Dean Phillips (00:24:27): We we David Sacks (00:24:27): saw that happen with RfK Junior. Sure. Because he declared initially as a Democrat. And wouldn't give him secret service protection despite the, you know, enormous personal safety Mhmm. Risks and threats. He's actually asking for me, Dean Phillips (00:24:40): by the way, guys. You can imagine. David Sacks (00:24:43): Yeah. And Dean Phillips (00:24:44): biggest line item in my budget right now, by the way, is security. The biggest line item, the 2nd biggest line item, it's gonna surpass that. Is getting onto the ballot. David Sacks (00:24:54): Right. Well, that was the thing is they wouldn't let they wouldn't let Rf k on the ballot. They wouldn't debate him. They just want to pretend like he didn't exist, and they basically drove him out of the party. Now he's running as an independent. Do you think you're gonna be able to get on the ballot as a democrat on in these primaries? Dean Phillips (00:25:07): Absolutely. And we're making those choices right now, David, because first of all, it's obscene. I wanna let you all know that in a country that prides itself on being a democracy, a democratic republic, I can't even tell you how many states literally create high barriers to entry to satisfy the 2 parties to ensure that their coronated candidate has an advantage over anybody else. I'm talking about What Jason Calacanis (00:25:32): are the most egregious ones? Give us an example of what you have to do. Dean Phillips (00:25:34): Oh, the mo the the most egregious are oftentimes the deepest blue. New Yorkism is close to impossible. I when I say impossible Jason Calacanis (00:25:42): So explain it to us, like, what you have to do. Yeah. Dean Phillips (00:25:44): So the reason I started in New Hampshire is it has a hundred and three year old tradition of being the 1st in the nation primary. They take this really seriously. They're the most engaged Americans in the country. They have a process. They, you know, we walk through the snow. We answer their questions. And you also all all you need is a $1000 check You gotta be thirty five years old, you gotta be born in the United States of America, and you too can become a candidate for president of the United States. That's what I did. They have the most beautiful rich in the state house in Concord, New Hampshire that is worth going to one time just to see the majesty of filing for president of the United States. So there are 21 of us on the democratic side of the ballot because that's how it should be. Take take a state like Virginia. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:26): Take Hold on. There's twenty one people running for the democratic But that's incredible. I have no idea. Dean Phillips (00:26:32): Yeah. Tremont 21, marion Williamson and I are the best known of those 21 because the president of the United States chose not to. So that's how you have it. You asked about other states, though, New York, Virginia, 450 to $500,000 to pay consulting firms to pay people $25, $26 per signature to just sit outside and to say, hey, can we get your signature to get this guy in a ballot? No. It's not grassroots. It's not old school caucusing democracy. It is pay to play. David Friedberg (00:27:08): And we Dean Phillips (00:27:08): would we would need it. We would need a we're going after race. Probably 6. Yeah. Maybe I'm sorry. Maybe maybe maybe less than that. Maybe $5,000,000. We have a staff of three people right now and legal counsel just to get my name on a primary ballot. It's absurd. Marion Williamson, you know, she she's not gonna be able to. Rf K as a as an independent, by the way, I think he should be. I, I'm not someone who I'm concerned about some of his positions, but I think he should be able to get on the ballot It's, you guys, it's absurd. It's obnoxious. And what I've discovered in the last 3 weeks is going to be my mission after being president to fix because it is going to destroy the country from the inside. And that is why we have the kind of candidates we have year after year after year, and Americans say they're. And that's why we have trumpism David Friedberg (00:27:55): like the fact that, you know, most people become politicians as a career of harping against this for a while. And so they have everything to lose if they stand up against the party and they stand up against the political establishment within which they're meant operate. And therefore, just a few people get to make all the decisions and control all the levers, and everyone else is just a marionette. But you Dean Phillips (00:28:18): have forever, Dave. David Sacks (00:28:19): They stay there forever. Dean Phillips (00:28:20): And there's no term limits, which is what we need. That's why we need them. David Friedberg (00:28:23): The fact that yourself made, and you don't have anything to lose. You can leave congress and you'll be fine. You you you're a citizen that can go back to work and do what you do, and you're doing this as a serve you're doing this because of your interest in the country. It sounds like other not to say that other folks don't, but they're largely gonna be driven and unfortunately, adversely affected by the fact that they have to fall within the way that the game is played in order to operate and will not stand up and say the things that need to be said in order for us to make progress and get out of these situations. But Dean Phillips (00:28:55): Those are the perverse incentives. I commend David Friedberg (00:28:57): you for doing it. I'm glad it's possible. I think Jason, we should probably talk about the the topic. Jason Calacanis (00:29:01): We have 2 topics that I think are all passionate here. The first is foreign policy. The second is the budget and Speaker 4 (00:29:08): are Jason Calacanis (00:29:08): out of control spending. Let's start with Saks said you wanted hard questions. Welcome to the pot. Sacks. Dean Phillips (00:29:13): I ain't got nothing more. Let's bring it. Jason Calacanis (00:29:15): Before we came on, you emailed us and said hard questions. Let's go. Please meet David Sachs. Dean Phillips (00:29:19): Hey, David. David Sacks (00:29:20): Dean, you said a minute ago that one of the reasons why the world's on fire is because of the Biden administration's handling of foreign policies kinda led us to this point. I think that was a really good example of this a week ago. There was a new report out by a former UN Assistant secretary general named Michael Vonder Schulenburg who worked at the UN for 34 years. He did a detailed study and reconstruction of what happened in, March of 2022. So the month after the war And what he concluded is there was a bona fide deal on the table between Russia and Ukraine where Putin was willing to pull back and leave and leave the territorial integrity of Ukraine intact if Ukraine would agree not become part of NATO. And this is something that's been discussed. There's been many reports of this over the last several months. Ukrainian proffda had a story about that, but now there's yet another confirmation that such a deal was available. And yet, Boris Johnson and Joe Biden said, no, we wanna pressure Putin not, work out a piece deal with him. And so thanks to Western Intervention, that deal never happened. Now we're 20 months later, and the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed. It's been a fiasco. The casualties have been absolutely massive. Horrifying. You saw there was this article on Time magazine new profile of Zelensky where his own aids and advisors say that he's delusional. He can't accept that that they're losing the war, They furthermore say that even if the US provides more weapons, more aid, they don't have enough men, they have enough soldiers to use them. Things are going that badly. I think there's now a fear that Ukraine could collapse in the next year, even if we provide more aid. So I guess, you know, I know that early on in the war, you supported Biden's policy. I'm wondering have events on the ground now change your view at all. David Sacks (00:31:12): How do you feel about it today? Do you think it was a mistake not to try and work out a piece deal? In those early months of the war. And if you were president, what would you try and do differently now to try and end this thing? Dean Phillips (00:31:24): Well, first of all, I think we have to back up to 2014 to talk about this, David. You know, first of all, I I I've seen that reporting. I I do not have confirmation of the validity of that. And and and if I did, I could talk about it more directly. But if that's the truth, I would first ask, did that include Crimea? And secondly, it is not the this it's not a United States decision about whether or not Ukraine should agree to a peace deal. It is, Ukraine's decision, plain and simple. But I I do wanna turn back the clock a little bit because I think this all kind of plays together. David Sacks (00:31:56): But, by the way, it didn't it didn't include Crimea, but Zelensky was willing to go for that deal. And it was the west who intervened and said, no. We want you to pressure Putin and fight. Dean Phillips (00:32:04): David, like I said, you know, I I never speak to him unless I can verify that myself. And I've not seen that intelligence in the skiff. I've not seen that presented to me. If and by the way, there are some times where I don't know it. Most times, none of us knew it and everything. If that is the case, I would absolutely answer this question differently. But based on what I do know, I wanna turn back the clock to 2014. You know, this is where foreign policy matters. You know, president Obama was a great orator. I think a a inspirational leader you know, he came to the US presidency with only organizing state legislative and a couple or a few years of senate experience. As a very young man. And Joe Biden was his vice president. And when Vladimir Putin took Crimea, easily, You know, that set the tone for what's going on right now. And we have not done a very good job of prevention. That's true in health care. That is true in poverty. That is true in our foreign policy, which is, by the way, maybe what happens when you spend 83,000,000,000 a year on on diplomacy and 850,000,000,000 a year on bombs and missiles. Not to mention, go back to Eisenhower and the military industrial complex, David, that you well know this. It does. It controls a lot of our policy because those who are making great profit find ways to influence those who opened the piggy banks. I think the Crimea moment in 2014, the writing was on the wall. That was Putin's test. If I take an inch, maybe they'll give me a mile. And what happened during the Biden presidency, of course, he took the mile. I think it has implications now though David and all of you You know, if we do not do our best to support Ukraine and defending, I think it doesn't just send a message to Putin a post Putin Russia, which is gonna be a failed nation with a brain drain and something we should talk about, but also sends a message to Iran, North Korea, and even China when I wanna about that too because I think we have a much brighter future with them than most people portray, as it relates to Taiwan. Dean Phillips (00:34:04): And that's the sad truth is we get ourselves into these situations that then layer up the consequences by withdrawing. And Afghanistan was another example of that. So to answer your question, had there been a peace deal at that point? That simply would have and the deal would have been will give you your territory back in return for not, entering NATO. Who in their right mind would say that was a bad deal? Who in their right mind? Especially Boris David Sacks (00:34:29): Johnson. Well, Dean Phillips (00:34:31): well, and by the way It's David Sacks (00:34:32): a lot. That's Dean Phillips (00:34:32): really good. When you get people like, well, I'm gonna make this case, as you guys know, for comprehensive new generation of leaders all around the world in our country and in others that are sick of this nonsense, sick of the bloodshed, sick of enriching enterprise at the expense of human beings It happens here. It happens in Ukraine and Russia, and it's happening in the Middle East. Plain and simple. Jason Calacanis (00:34:53): Saks, anything else on foreign policy you wanna go to? Dean Phillips (00:34:56): Hacking off now would be, I think, a shameful, horrible mistake. The one thing I would argue right now, David, is those who are most likely going to be subject to Putin's terror. The countries in Europe should be carrying a much bigger, bigger part of this load. You know, we have 750 bases and installations around the world in 80 countries where the most dominant presence in world history of any government And we spend more on our military than the next, I think, 11 nations combined for god's sakes, you know, and and if anyone thinks that a kinetic risk to the United States is the most likely harm that will be done us, not cyber or not social or not biological, I think you're out of your mind. Those are the risks that I think are most threatening that I think this president does not quite understand And we have to recomprise and recommit to diplomacy and defending ourselves against the most important literal risks, including nuclear weapons that can be carried in a backpack and detonated in New York or Tel Aviv or anywhere in the world. And if we don't start changing how we do things, We're not going to be ready, and we are just sitting still in dysfunction. I'm gonna change it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:09): Let's talk about China for one second. I'll I'll give it to you in 2 arcs. ARC number 1, the comments that President G made yesterday, which were very if you just heard them or read them. We're very specific. We have zero desire to seek Chinese hegemony. We have zero desire to find a cold or hot war. Which was, but then there was what wasn't said, which is part of what you said, which is, well, okay, maybe there's no kinetic war, but the cyber risk is still there, and actually the psychological war risk is there. So two questions. One is how do you react to what President G said last night? And then the second is how do you react to what's happening with this TikTok, Osama Bin Laden, thing that just seems to be frankly just getting out of control here. Dean Phillips (00:37:04): I agree. Well, let me say I was so pleased to see president Xi's remarks I think president Biden responded by saying we should trust, but verify. I think that's appropriate. I was troubled though when a question was shouted out to president Biden on his way out about whether he considered president Xi a dictator. And he said, yes, he's a dictator. And I think that may have undermined this entire, Rapprochement, which I think is is terribly important, you know, words matter, the playbook matters, and the negligence or ignorance of another culture as it digests our words, our actions, our intentions, is very consequential. And unfortunately, we see this pattern with the president of doing what he did today, in using that term. Whether or not it's really true or not, there are ways as we all know to simply not comment because that is going to undermine, I think, a very important otherwise very promising outcome. And, you know, to your to your to your question, I'm concerned that we have made China, perhaps into the very enemy that ostensibly now our military industrial complex wants to defend us from. Which happens time and time and time again through our history. And it concerns me deeply. We should be partnering with China our, our disagreements are real. I think they should be litigated, and bridged with diplomacy, not destruction, and imagine what can be accomplished in this 21st century world if 2 nations like ours recognize the potential of spending less on destruction, and more, on human beings. You know, it it astounds me Jason Calacanis (00:38:46): Do you think TikTok itself is a threat to the United States and would you, if you're a president, ban it, or force them to divest and remove the servers in China and the algorithm from China, etcetera. Dean Phillips (00:38:56): I'll make this really simple. You know, if we want to change our constitution and change what we consider speech, change how the federal government or any, domestic government affects people's rights to what they watch, what they read, what they eat, how they pray, how they think, where they go, with whom they congregate, You know what? That's up to Americans. But I think to target one app is a huge mistake. And my I have a very simple solution. Hold every single platform to the same standard, transparency, via their algorithm have an independent commission perhaps that is recharged and responsible with assessing, and and holding those platforms to account. And if any of them violate, the terms that we pass into law, then they should be banned. But to target 1, Speaker 4 (00:39:47): I think it's not sensible. Jason Calacanis (00:39:48): Foreign ownership rules for media outlets. Yeah. So this has many more users and is much more powerful with the algorithm. So then how would you respond to that sort of counterargument. Dean Phillips (00:39:59): I'm just gonna say this. If we want to change our constitution, this is what the Supreme Court, I'm afraid, is gonna say if we start doing this. Then change the constitution. That's what they said by the way about, women's reproductive rights. You know, in the absence of Congress doing anything, in the absence of that, we're gonna assess it, the way it it reads. Right now, I don't think that's necessarily really possible without a significant Supreme Court challenge My belief is yes. Is it a threat? Yes. It's a threat. By the way, every social media platform is a threat when used by malign actors. David Sacks (00:40:30): You know, maybe they should Jason Calacanis (00:40:31): force reciprocity. If they if we allow TikTok, they allow Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, China, or I Dean Phillips (00:40:36): think that's that's the kind of thinking, Jason, I like. In fact, reciprocity as it relates to IP enforcement of IP, of of theft, of trade. This is to that's you just hit the nail on the head. Resiprocity. You know, let let's let's be reciprocal in the nature of a relationship. If you're gonna ban our apps and our platforms or our products or our brands, well, why this is to me an opportunity for the next generation to say this is nonsensical. You know, if you're gonna 6 by the way, China, you all know. Has sign they have a they have a bubble they're facing that will make ours in 2008, look like a a gumball. By comparison. And that is coming down the pipe. I think that has a lot to do with this kind of a step towards reproachmont. But, yes, reciprocity. And to know that Facebook is not allowed. Yeah, perfect example. But in the United States, that doesn't change my, contention that we should set the same standard for every platform, every every media entity, whatever it might be, hold them accountable. And if they don't qualify or perform, then they're banned. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:38): Give us your just maybe societal than commentary on the number of people on TikTok right now Not sitting. Advocating for I don't even know what you wanna call it. I guess reading and sympathizing Dean Phillips (00:41:53): for some good ones. It's just well, first of all, I I'm sure you guys do too. I I I look at TikTok. I consume as much media as many platforms as possible. So I understand why some of the nonsensical perspectives are being shared with me by so many people right now. So I get it. Your fund but back to the fundamental question, what do we do? This has been, by the way, an age old issue since our very founding. It used to be anonymous pamphlets that would spread misinformation or condemnation and and fire people up. Now it's just instantly available. It doesn't matter if you have a printer, you can push a button. And, yes, am I concerned? Of course, I am. I'm the fact that when I'm spending time on college campuses right now and listening, to otherwise really well educated, privileged kids, saying things that are so nonsensical, so ignorant, and so shocking. I know where it's coming from. So I understand the problem just like all of you. I think this question is what do you do about it? And all I'm saying is we should have the same standard for every platform because the same issue is on every platform. That is my Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:53): only suggestion. You're about to say this, but what do you think about what Nikki Haley suggested? Dean Phillips (00:42:58): I, you know, I I was shocked that people, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:02): maybe just frame for the for the listeners who don't know what she says. Dean Phillips (00:43:04): So Nicki Haley, and I tell I asked Mark Zuckerberg this one. So too, I'll tell Nicki Haley proposed that every platform, every social media platform have verified accounts. No more anonymous accounts. And she got ripped got ripped. You know, I I understand. This is this is it's a reasonable argument to have, but I gotta tell you, I'm a surprise that that something that seems somewhat reasonable to people who are paying attention would have such a, such a response that she actually retracted it. I'm not proposing it. I'm just saying that I think we should be throwing ideas on the table, and I know from experiences like you guys, When you hide behind a fake name, you can be not just a jerk to someone. You can be downright dangerous. When your name's attached to it, you behave in a very different manner, not to mention face to face. So, I don't think that was as absurd as, people considered it. I asked Mark Zuckerberg after a financial services hearing a couple years ago You know, why why doesn't Facebook just verify accounts make this so much easier to hold people accountable and, have higher standards of, accountability And he said it would be a competitive disadvantage. David Sacks (00:44:08): Well, of course, it actually he only Dean Phillips (00:44:10): had to do it. Mhmm. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:44:11): And this has been tested. Korea had their version of this in order to sign up in Korea for their social networks or ISPs, you have to use your social security numbers. Sure. Dean Phillips (00:44:20): And that makes sense. And another thing, guys, is you know that, you know, if you write a a letter to the editor of most major newspapers, you have to, you have to attach your name to it. It has to be verified. It's this, I, I just think it's a sation that we should be having. And by the way, you know, it might be time to read future shock again by Alvin Toffler who predicted so much of this mess in which we find ourselves the incapac of human beings to adapt to such rapid technological change, which by the way, you know, you on this you, just a handful of you on this, on this podcast, have more expertise than the entire United States Senate and congress combined as it relates to the issues we're talking about. On tech, there is no capacity, no competency. So on whom do we rely? The very lobbyists being paid by the very enterprises that so easily can set the standards. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:13): Right. Dean Phillips (00:45:13): There aren't people of better Palihapitiya. David Friedberg (00:45:15): And only 11 members of Congress have an engineering degree. Dean Phillips (00:45:18): Only 11. By the way, I was I was on, Kevin McCarthy invited me to join his AI cabinet which is just that it was a few 4 Democrats, about 4 Republicans. We had our first meeting and started making plans right before he was deposed. And now I don't know anything, if anything's going on in that respect. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:36): Where do you stand on the spectrum of decorum online on one end? And free speech on the other, where the absolutist would say absolutely not verified accounts as a non starter because it just fundamentally undermines the 1st amendment and This other thing, which is more organized to quorum. Dean Phillips (00:45:54): Chamath, it's it I think that's the issue of our day. Maybe the most important when it's true, both online. It's also true in our Congress right now. Where's that intersection between debate, discord, and, and comprehensive division? You know, I I don't have the good answer for it right now. Is the truth? And I'm I'm afraid that if you interpret our constitution, you know, free speech has to be met with more free speech. But I'll tell you that that, but that also will conflict and increasingly is, with the right to pursue happiness. I mean, that's just true. I mean, I, it, it's a, it's a it's the most complicated issue in our era. Would I like to see our kids safer and our mental health and emotional health improve and the division reduced and misinformation and disinformation, rectified, of course, because I do think. Would you Jason Calacanis (00:46:41): put a minimum age on use of social networks? Do you have kids? Would you make it fifteen, sixteen years old, isn't it? I think Dean Phillips (00:46:46): it would be healthier. Look, we we have minimum age for alcohol. That's, you know, that's older than you have to be to fight in the war for god's sakes. It's ridiculous. You know, we we have cannabis is cannabis is still banned at the federal the hypocrisy of the federal government is also what I'm running against right now. So, Jason, I think that is a good You know this. And I've had daughters that grew up in the social media era. It is one of the most destructive. It is far, it is as destructive as I think drug consumption to adolescent health as anything else. So to answer your question, I think that's a perfectly legal, b perfectly reasonable, and you can't just entrust parents to do it because Johnny's parents will allow him to have the phone and the apps, you know, and Jill's won't. And he can't there has to be. I think there has to be. We do that for a lot of other things, and I we should talk about at what age any of this is reasonable, but absolutely. I think that's not unreasonable. I want kids to be safe just like you guys. And so do sounds like driving a car is a Jason Calacanis (00:47:40): good benefit. 15, 16, 17 years old. Yeah. Dean Phillips (00:47:42): We should also allow kids to learn how to drink before they learn how to drive. We're the only country that does it like this. You know, drive for 5 years until you legally can drink. So when you have your first drink, you don't even know what it's gonna do to you. You know, it's it's absurd. David Friedberg (00:47:53): Friedberg. I know we're gonna talk about spending in a second. But just before we get away from foreign policy, I think it's important that we ask, what would be your goals with respect to conflict in the Middle East? What's the strategy you'd enjoy to achieve those goals and who are the people that you surround yourself with? Dean Phillips (00:48:11): Well, I'll tell you, my strategy is quite simple. It's peace around the world and it's prosperity at home, plain and simple. And and I can build, I can put the legs of that stool together for you as quickly as I possibly can, but let let's talk about the Middle East. You know, I'm fifty four years old. President Biden has been in the US Senate or in the White House for 50 years. None of us on this podcast have lived through anything but bloodshed, reciprocal misery between Palestinians and Israelis. This cycle has continued for decades. I've had enough. I cannot stand the sight, of, of the babies being pulled from the the wounds of mothers by Hamas and Israel any more than I can watch babies being destroyed by bombs and missiles in Gaza, and it's gotta stop. I am about to issue a statement to that end, that says, essentially, Hamas must release all of its 9 Americans guys. 9 Americans are being held in Gaza by a terrorist organization And as president, I would be making that my not my daily, desire or request might daily demand all hands on deck these hot must be released immediately. Jason Calacanis (00:49:21): Would you send in special forces to collect them? Dean Phillips (00:49:23): I would. Absolutely. It is the, it is incumbent on the president of the United States. States to extract Americans being held against their wives by any foreign entity? I don't know. Gotta ask him, but good luck asking him because he doesn't do any press conferences. David Friedberg (00:49:36): The goal for peace is is reasonable, but but these, like, maybe some specifics around your your strategy. Dean Phillips (00:49:41): So let me, yeah, let me so okay. So first, At the at the moment, the hostages are safely released. There should be a ceasefire, period. And at that very moment, there should be a multinational peacekeeping force sent into Gaza to maintain security immediately. When I say Multinational, the very nations that are connected to Gaza Arab nations have to be of it, not the United States, not Israel, of course, but a significant force there to keep the peace immediately. Concurrently, a multinational coalition designed to eliminate Hamas by every nation in the world that wants them eliminated, which frankly is most. And then We have got to invest, again, nations of the world, investing in a democratic civil society, infrastructure, education, facilities, and security so that a new generation of Palestinian leaders can create a circumstance whereby another nation can be created, period, And it's not gonna happen with Israel and Palestinians trying to do this. It has got to be imposed. It has got to be a coalition of the willing. And then only then and only then will we see the conditions for, hopefully, elections for Palestinians for the first time since 2006, 17 years, And concurrently, it is time for Israelis to call an election to replace Benjamin Netanyahu because he is absolutely part of Israel security problem. I've looked him in the eye. I told him before this happened earlier this year. I've been with him twice. Looked him in the eye. I said, what you are doing is affecting the relationship with the United States and Israel and will absolutely affect security moving forward. I had no idea what would be coming on October 7th. But the settlement policy, the right wing government, the distraction, that the judicial reform initiative has created in that country is made the conditions ripe. And by the way, having been in Riyadh recently too, you know, it was really getting close. The Saudis and the Brady's normalizing. And that was exactly why I believe, whether it's implicit or explicit Iran inspired Hamas to do this then, and by the way, in the United States, mark my words. Dean Phillips (00:51:45): There are our our adversaries are watching the dysfunction and distraction right now with the same open eyes And we have borders that are awfully easily to get in. And that's the truth. And I'm a Democrat saying that I would do this entirely differently. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:00): Can you actually talk about the border? Tell us what should we do there? Dean Phillips (00:52:04): Once again, I've got a lot of colleagues who make their decisions by reading an article, seeing a tweet, or seeing a TikTok, I go, you know, I've been to Israel and the Middle East twice just in the last number of months. I've been to the southern border twice. I've seen with my own eyes, It is the most despicable, embarrassing, failure of American policy I have ever seen. I have seen women walking across the Rio Grande with babies in their arms who have spent 6 or $7000, their whole life savings, paid to, gangs and and coyotes to bring them across the border. I've I've seen the extraordinary beauty and grace with which border patrol agents have looked after these people I've seen babies who were abandoned that were on 24 hour care of border patrol agents who, took as good a care of these little kids as as they would their own. I saw people in cages. I saw the most archaic out of date inefficient, ineffective ports of entry. I saw Lines of of of trailer trucks, probably two, three miles long idling in the hot hot weather waiting to get across. I saw a mile long of human beings waiting to come into the country to do their shopping or their job or their education And it was horrifying. And if we think, by the way, we need much better border security, barriers, technologies, and facilities. And by the way, we also need it at the northern border. I'm a border state in Minnesota. People walk across farm fields in Manitoba and the Minnesota. We don't know who they are. Some of them get caught. That's true. But I'll tell you guys, if we think that we can solve the problem at the border, that's the issue right there. This administration and past ones, just don't get it. We should be adjudicating asylum cases in countries of origin. Why make these poor people take their life savings that they have no then they have no money. Dean Phillips (00:53:50): They're set off in the streets here. They're supposed to come back to a court, 2 years from now. Let them keep their money. Let's build dormitories next to consulates or our embassies in the Northern Triangle countries wherever migrants are coming, create some safety security there, invest in local economies so that there can be some opportunity and adjudicate their cases there. If they qualify, let's bring them to America with Should we have? $7000 in their pocket so they can start a nice new life and pursue the American dream. And if they don't, they will be kept in their countries of origin and, of course, we have to work with Mexico as well. But This is not rocket science. It's simple problem solving. And the fact that we continue to do this stupid policy to this day, you guys, is unfair. Jason Calacanis (00:54:31): On the other side of this, talk about recruiting many countries, Canada, New Zealand, a lot of the Nordics have a point based system, and they actively recruit talent. You're an entrepreneur. You've been CEO of multiple companies. It is an absolute arduous pain to get talented people here right now. Recruitment of talent in the United States is bundled with the southern border would you decouple that? Would you be in favor of a point based system and recruitment of talent to get more talented immigrants in our country, which by the way, 3 of the 4 besties here, We're not born in the United States. Dean Phillips (00:55:02): And which is an and and by the way, my 4 mothers and 4 fathers came here for the same reasons. Same reasons that every one of those moms and dads is coming across the Rio Grande. So I To answer your question directly, Jason, I think, I think we can do both. I think we should have a merit based system to attract the best and brightest most talented. I'm sure all of you had came from enterprises that would afford benefits, perhaps education to people. You would expect them to actually stay at your enterprise for a number of years to kinda as payback. We are right now the United States is training some of the best and brightest in the world, not creating opportunities to stay. And of course, Canada is the beneficiary, the Nordic Countries, European Countries. You guys know this. This notion that we can't do two things at once, that we can't welcome, the most disadvantaged who simply want to pursue an American dream and start at the very bottom and match that with some of the best and brightest who can actually start at the very top. My goodness, Why why does everything have to be binary, you guys? Black and white, good, or bad? Yes or no? It's nonsense. Before we run out of time Oh, darn. It's way too short. David Friedberg (00:56:00): What did I know? Jason Calacanis (00:56:01): No. For you? I mean, if we got a little Dean Phillips (00:56:03): over time. I got time, guys. Jason Calacanis (00:56:04): Oh, okay. Great. Dean Phillips (00:56:05): We really wanna talk. Yeah. Friedberg and I Jason Calacanis (00:56:09): are, I I I think Friedberg, you know, moved me to his position on this. Number one issue for this election, Freeburg. Correct. If I'm wrong for you, is still our out of control spending, Greg. Maybe you could tee this up. Yeah. I mean, David Friedberg (00:56:22): I I've said this in the past. I think the US is facing a fiscal emergency in the sense that arithmetic starts to play out that the cost of debt spirals, we can't accomplish any of the other stuff we're talking about unless we can figure this out. We have $33,000,000,000,000 of debt today. The treasury estimates it's gonna grow to 47,000,000,000,000 by 2033, just 10 years away. Dean Phillips (00:56:42): Yep. Speaker 4 (00:56:42): 1 and David Friedberg (00:56:43): a half trillion in deficit this year, trillion in a debt interest expense alone this year, and a third of our debt is coming up to be refinanced soon. It's gonna get refinanced at 4 a half percent interest rate instead of 2, 2 a half percent of sitting at today. So the interest, it will swell, the deficit will swell, the debt will swell, and we're already taxing 18% of GDP as federal revenue. Which a lot of economists have shown, you can only get to 20% at which point economy starts to shrink. There's, yeah, I think pretty good research on this somewhat argue differently, but I think that's kind of a actual limit. So the only kind of response is what's wrong with spending. Like, why why do why do we have the spending problem? I guess the question for you is, what is causing structurally the spending problem? A lot of people have said that this is late stage empire the failure of democracy because everyone votes themselves all the money eventually, or is it a politically oriented problem where folks don't want to address the biggest line items They don't wanna hold programs to account. And what is the answer here? Dean Phillips (00:57:45): So to answer your question directly, the you ask what the cause is. It's incompetency. And perverse incentives. Period. There's no political there used to be a political reward for conservatives who were focused on fiscal responsibility because they would win elections over tax and spenders. But that party is long gone. Long gone. There's no reward. That's why Trump added $7,000,000,000,000 to the deficit. And that's why Biden will probably end, you know, add about that much as well. So, by the way, I, I think I'm one of the only Democrats who has boat has been named by the committee for a responsible federal budget, one of their fiscal heroes. As a Democrat. And also, I'm a hamilt hamilton, I'm sorry, Hamilton Jefferson Award winner by the US Chamber of Commerce. And I'm also pro worker. I I this notion that you can't be, by the way, pro business and pro worker that they're somehow mutually exclusive, that's BS. They're they're mutually mandatory. But back to your question, 30 through trillion in debt, by the way, our economy can accommodate more. That's the sad truth. The issue is our debt service. And nobody's talking about the fact that it is gonna go from the mid 400,000,000,000 a year to to your point date with the higher interest rates probably approaching a 1,000,000,000,000, maybe 840. David Friedberg (00:58:54): That's already over a it's a 1,000,000,000,000 today. It's gonna be a 1,000,000,000,000 today. It's gonna be a 1,000,000,000,000. Dean Phillips (00:58:57): Well, it's, yeah, I I don't know. I I yeah. I would argue that maybe I I we could have a little argument about if it's there quite yet, but nonetheless either way, let's call it let's call it a trillion. Call it a trillion. Speaker 4 (00:59:06): Call it a trillion. Dean Phillips (00:59:07): That means that means literally that means literally we are spending way more for the past than we are investing in the future. That means we have for any discretionary spending. Every bit of it is now consumed by Social Security, Medicare, and our military. And and we're and on top of that, We've got people sleeping in on the streets in every single town in city in America. We have kids going to school hungry. We have one of the most, to me, failing public school systems in the entire developed world. We have a health care system that is not health care. It's sick care. A fee for service model that should be capitated. And and our outcomes are mid pack. Speaker 4 (00:59:46): Yeah. Dean Phillips (00:59:47): And we have a $2,000,000,000,000 deficit. And by the way, no childcare, no pre k edge my I can go on down the list. It's nonsensical. And we're spending 2,000,000,000,000 more. So to answer your question, you you guys know the answer here. You know, we're a country with, I think, a 150 some 1,000,000,000,000 dollars, 150 some $1,000,000,000,000 in total United States household wealth. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:09): Where do you cut? Let's start let's start by getting into those specifics. Do you cut entitlements? Do you cut military Where do you cut and how do you cut? Dean Phillips (01:00:19): So here's what I would do. Starting with Social Security. Social Security, you guys, is the most successful anti poverty program in world history. And I believe it would be not just a dereliction of duty. It would be counter to every American principle if senior citizens struggled, by the way, we don't have a culture in America that takes care of the elders, like in most Asian cultures and other wonderful cultures in the world. So absent that, we have to afford resources. So two things. As you all know, Social Security, the trust fund will face probably reductions in 25 about 25% cut levels by 2033 based on the current, path. 28 2 easy things we can do. A $160,000 a year is the cap right now, I think, roughly. We should make that 250. That means it's a very regressive tax. If you're making a 160 you're paying a whole lot more of your income than someone making 250,000 dollars, $300,000 a year, not to mention 3,000,000 or 30 So we should raise the cap to 250, make sure that fund at least is, solvent through probably 2046, 2047. And then I would do something different for the first time in American history. For all the millions of Americans who've done well, don't need their social security, that wish to become philanthropists. I would create a pool, not that goes back to the, treasury, a pool that would be automatically redistributed to the lowest 5 or 10 percent of all social security recipients in the entire country. And let's say it might be a $500 boost. It might be a $1000 boost a year for the for the most challenged, elderly Americans. But when 40% of Americans can't afford a $400 car repair or emergency expense, David Friedberg (01:02:00): You know, that's definitely Dean Phillips (01:02:02): not for this group, but my goodness. To your Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:04): point, I think it was the fed or it was treasury that published a study. I was shocked by the actual number of American millionaires that exist, and it it's counter to the narrative because you would if you if you just read the headlines, you think America's an economic despair, and it's not true. And the wealth creation is actually quite, quite pervasive, which is a great feature of American Capitalism. So to your point, Totally agree. There are a lot of people who would be willing to pay it forward to folks that didn't have it if you gave them the choice. It's just not possible today. Dean Phillips (01:02:35): Why shouldn't we be a government that creates so just, Samantha, if I could just say, you know, one of my one of my perspectives and intentions is to not by the way, We don't have to spend money to expose young people who never get out of their neighborhoods in many cities in this country, expose them to possibility. You know, get them into factories, into ad agencies, into high-tech centers, show them rockets, and and music makers, and artists, We don't we don't need to spend a whole lot more money to simply completely change the path of young Americans lives, not to mention old Americans lives. And that's just a perfect example of a simple solution that costs 0 and lets Americans actually be Americans. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:18): Okay. So now now go to Medicare, but I think I know what you're gonna say because you mentioned it capitation, but maybe talk very quickly on that and then military. What what do Dean Phillips (01:03:26): you cut? Quickly on health care, look, guys, I I represent UnitedHealth group in my district. Tens of 1000 of Minnesota. Many of them who live in my district earn very handsome salaries from United. They've done some great work, in many ways, but I have to tell you, since I've joined Congress in my 3rd term now, you would be in tears. If you had to sit with the people that I've sat with over so many occasions who thought they had coverage whose son got sick or whose, you know, whose mother broke a leg or something, and they literally have gone bankrupt or take on tens of 1000 of dollars in medical debt and they get surprise bills. And then they read in the paper that their health insurer reported annual net income of over $20,000,000,000. And I don't know how you guys feel, but I gotta tell you, you know, I'm a capitalist. I'm also compassionate, and I can no longer reconcile that. I really can't There's a reason we're the only nation in the world that does it this way. I think it's time to wait, by the way, from Roosevelt to Truman to Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon proposed universal health coverage and it was Ted Kennedy that undermined it, if you can imagine that. If we don't, if conservatives and progressives don't come to the table, and talk about how we can deliver a national health insurance program that is portable. Let's gig economy participants do their thing. People don't have to make choices about where to work just because of the health care. I don't know why we wouldn't talk about that. And by the way, I'm not talking about the provision of It's really important because Fox News and some Republicans have tried to say this is a socialized solution, just the coverage because the money is in the system already between 3, 4, 5, 6 x, pharmacost, between 2 x health per capita health cost, 10,000 per person compared to any country in the world at 5. The answer is I think right there in front of us. The monies in the system would not require a tax increase. I think we could actually save substantial money. I'm working on a proposition right now. Dean Phillips (01:05:23): I would argue that the model is part of the problem. Fee for service is antithetical to what we need. We need a capitated model that gives an incentive to the to the providers to keep people out of the hospital. At least try. At least try. So that's the answer on that. And by the way, You know, right now, Medicare, as you probably know, it cover, I think, 23% of the of the country or no, between Medicare and the VA, which are single payer systems. 25% of Americans right now are covered by a single payer system. And by the way, it works better than the other system. Medicare recipients are pretty pleased. Jason Calacanis (01:05:59): This would also be a huge benefit, as a capitalist running companies. I mean, how much of your time was spent running your companies dealing with health care and the dysfunction of employees staying at companies because they couldn't. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:10): Awful. Get health care in another company. What about military team? What would you do there? Okay. Dean Phillips (01:06:14): Now military and this is where to answer your question very directly once again, nobody can tell you that they can even begin to address our fiscal challenges without looking at that ridiculous number, approaching a $1,000,000,000,000 a year. And by the way, the Pentagon has not passed an audit they would, in my administration, it would there would be a top down assessment of every single program, every single base and facility, every ex an explanation of why we are in those 80 nations and whether or not we should be employing 21st century strategies to keep our country safe. And I think one of the simplest solutions to you guys is we should be entrusting countries more proximate to the problems to manage them. Doesn't mean we're not a good ally anymore. It just doesn't mean that we are in a position any longer to be the policeman for the entire world when we can barely take damn care of our country itself. It's just so damn simple, and I'm frustrated by it because as someone who lost his father, in a completely obnoxious and unnecessary war, a guy that I have on my phone right now, digital audio tapes that he used to send back tapes to my mom, where he says I've come to the conclusion and he loved America. He did not like that war, but he loved America. He said, I believe the only reason we're still here is because so many people are making so much money. He saw it, and the same thing is happening to this day. You guys, that $1,000,000,000,000, That's going somewhere. It's going in people's pockets. And I believe we can cut that in. I I'm not gonna make a proposition, but I believe after a comprehensive assessment that we can save 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars that can either be saved on the bottom line or better yet, actually invested in human beings instead of the destruction of them, period. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:01): Would you zero based budget that Absolutely. Dean Phillips (01:08:04): Why did Shamaz? I've had to go back to Washington twice to vote on CRs continuing resolutions. Yeah. It is the dysfunction is absurd. There's not a there may be five people that can read a P and L or a balance sheet in the whole damn congress. Our budgeting system is completely broken. And, yes, as president, I would demand a 0 based budgeting and and, in, procedure. And, like I said, a comprehensive independent assessment of every program. And if it is not generating return, or if it can be outsourced to the private sector that can deliver it for a better value, that's how we should proceed. And by the way, it may not be easy. It may take time to get done, but why we don't try is absurd and to answer your final question, if we don't, And once foreign investors no longer consider the United States of America, the safest place to deploy capital, it's too late. And I will not certainly under my watch will not let us get there, but we've got a recraft. And and lastly, can I say one more thing quick on that, Chamath? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:06): Please. Dean Phillips (01:09:06): If the only way that I think we can address the biggest issue in the country, which is the growing disparity between those who have wealth and income and those do, that do not. We can we're not a nation that will redistribute. I think we've been not just unsuccessful. We're actually created some of the problems we now find ourselves in, the way to do it is to raise the foundation. The same way it was raised for me by a good, a stroke of good luck. You know, I was adopted by a dad who gave me everything and who knows where I would have been if that didn't happen. I wanna do the same thing for everybody. Have health care, have great education, have child care, make sure you have a house, a place to live. If we give everybody the same thing, then we can be a country that believes in self determination and Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:53): Talk about education then briefly. So if the spectrum is the teacher's union on one end of the spectrum, and Vivek Ramaswami who would dismantle the Department of Education at the Federal level and just push all the responsibility to the dates with the voucher program. He talked about it here once. Where are you and what what's your what's your philosophy on the state of the education? Dean Phillips (01:10:13): I'm I I I would say I'm in the middle. Because I think there's some true, I think there's some worthiness to both of those perspectives. What would I do? I would fundamentally reinvent American public education. With the best and the brightest with students with teachers, with families, with the nonprofit sector, and the business sector, because right now, business needs to participate in 21st century education to advise the teachers and the administrators and the curricula, designers what skills they need. They're not even part of the conversation, you guys. I don't know about Chamath Palihapitiya (01:10:45): you all. Well, why do you think that there are certain places progressive liberal bastions, if you will. That had been the first to dismantle things like stem and AP classes. Why why is that happening? Dean Phillips (01:10:57): I wish I had a good I wish I had a good answer for that. It's appalling, but but I'll I do have a good solution. Yeah. I'm sure like you guys, you all know this. The single most important determinant of a child success educationally is the quality of their educator. Every single study says the same thing. The United States of America right now, we pay about 81% of the per per capita GDP, to teachers for for compensation. The best performing systems in the world, and there is a correlation, pay 120, 130, sometimes 140, 140% of their per capita GDP. They make teaching one of the most admired, elevated professions in their nation. They identify great teachers when they're still young. And I think we should be a nation that does the same thing. We're not attracting best and brightest any longer. When teach for America teachers outperform teachers who have tenure or been added for 10, 20, 30 years, does that not say the quality matters? It's not the school, how it looks. But anyway, I would reinvent. And the other thing is this, you and I'm sure like you guys, I remember a couple teachers that made a huge difference in my life, and they're about 50, I could barely remember it all. They should all be those 2. And then furthermore, if you think sitting in front of a blackboard, is the way to teach kids in this day and age? No. You gotta get out of the school. You gotta look at Scandinavian countries and Asian countries and how experiential learning, learning learning from the best, most extraordinary educators in the world through screens on occasion, but to experience, you know, AI is gonna fundamentally change employment as we know it. We have nobody in Washington that gets it. We need an administration in 2024 that does and begins to simply rectify all of these problems anticipating the change that's coming. This administration is not gonna do it. And education should be redesigned. Dean Phillips (01:12:42): Can based on the change we know is coming. And I don't have all the answers, but I know a lot of people out in Calacanis and around the country and around the world who could help us. Jason Calacanis (01:12:52): Too early to regulate k I? Or is it Dean Phillips (01:12:55): No. Jason Calacanis (01:12:55): No. You mean, I think I think it should Dean Phillips (01:12:57): be, I think it should be very, you know, Jason, I would say right now it should be very limited. And and and this is where back to the conversation about anonymous accounts. We do have to set, I think, some standards and penalties for nefarious use of AI. If we don't do that early and set the tone, I think it will get out of control. So to me, that's all we should do right now, and let it grow, let it expand, let large enterprises and small come up with extraordinary ways to save money, by the way. AI is going to save extraordinary sums of money for the federal government and health care, for businesses, we can anticipate how employment will change and what jobs will be jobs of the future. But if we don't think about that now, we're gonna do what Congress always does. Get caught off guard, have to come in on a midnight, ill prepared with a 1000 page bill that nobody understands because it was written by a lobbyist that had skin in the game and does not serve America. And that maybe wraps up this whole conversation. David Friedberg (01:13:53): Yeah. I'm just not sure folks really understand in congress what they're doing. No. It's front. Like, the difference between foundational models and the utilization of those models in an endpoint are very different regimes to think about regulation, and they're not even that that that framework isn't even understood. Dean Phillips (01:14:16): Not at all. David Friedberg (01:14:17): We're not even talking about regulating outcomes. Speaker 4 (01:14:20): No. David Friedberg (01:14:20): Or actions, we're talking about regulating the infrastructure that could cause various outcomes. Jason Calacanis (01:14:27): Regulate regulate the David Friedberg (01:14:28): I'm very I'm very much against where this is all of to. David Sacks (01:14:31): And I David Friedberg (01:14:31): think, like, some folks kinda wanna say, hey. This is a regulatory capture moment, but I wanna see someone in Congress stand up and demonstrate an understanding. First, before they can even have the right to articulate Yeah. You know, a framework for regulation. Dean Phillips (01:14:46): Well, Dave, I can tell you what there's one main one dot I wanna shout out this guy. Don Beyer is a former US ambassador, Democrat from Virginia. He must be seventy. He went back to college. I think Johns Hopkins and just received or is pursuing his degree in artificial intelligence. That's the kind of representative. Isn't that cool? You would never know his name because he's not on know, Fox Remus and BC screen, you know, screaming at night, but those are the kinds of people that should be celebrated. A lot of my Republican colleagues that got thrown out of Congress because They had the audacity to support the constitution, when Trump was, impeached the second time. You know, those people I celebrate. Can I, yeah, I gotta run, but can I tell one quick story to my whole story up and about what I wanna try to do? You know, at the at the end of the day, none of this occurs. None of the successes none of the policy ideas, none of the ideation occurs if we don't repair, and that means, restoring friendships or families our communities and our country. So I do a series back home in Minnesota called common ground. I, I get 6 Democrats and 6 Republicans invited to a table. We break bread. We introduce ourselves. Tell a little bit of our life stories. We talk about health care policy, and we talk about immigration policy. Which is where everything I shared tonight comes from both Democrats and Republicans. And it's a 2 hour session facilitated by a next extraordinary group called BRAver Angels, I encourage you to look them up. They are remarkable, doing this work all around the country. And at the end of these sessions, we go around the table and each person at the table shares a little bit about what they got out of this experience. And I had an episode not long ago that sums up my whole mission. A young woman, Emily, looks across table at Dave and says, Dave, when you drove up in your F One Fifty with the trump sticker on it, I almost got back in my car, left the parking lot, drove away. Dean Phillips (01:16:32): I could not bear to go in the building, let alone sit at the table with you. And she said, but I gotta say, I so loved sitting here. And you're a good guy, and I I'm I learned something. Goes around the table, comes to Dave, and he looks at Emily and says, Emily, when you drove up in your Prius, I wanted to run it over. And he says and he says, but, hey, I gotta tell you, Emily. I've never met a progressive as as you, and I really am glad I came to this today. And at that moment, Emily and Dave stood up in front of our table and they embraced and to see a bleeding heart liberal and a dyed in the wool trumper do that probably was the most important moment in my entire career in service. If that is the only moment of its kind in my career in service, it would have made it worthwhile And that is exactly what I'm going to inspire as president of the United States. Get Emily and Dave to hug it out. All they have to do is be invited for a little dinner, given some space in place to recognize their common cause and their common ground, And that's how we're gonna do this. I don't see a candidate right now in the ballot that has that intention, has that capacity, or has that capability. So I just wanna thank you guys and Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:47): Last thing, and just just yes or no, can everybody expect that you will be on the ballot in every state? Dean Phillips (01:17:53): I can't say I'm gonna be in the ball in every state, Chamath, because I don't think it's possible between time and money. I'm gonna have to make some choices. And that's just the sickening truth. I will, I wanna salute Bernie Sanders. He actually made it possible for a candidate like me and probably future candidates. Who are subject to this nauseating system to actually still compete and get to the convention and maybe win because He depowered people like me, members of Congress that used to have outsized, votes, disproportionately so versus voters And I celebrate him because, he was right. I used to think he was a sore loser. Bernie Sanders was absolutely right about a rigged system that is keeping people out of the process, keeping candidates out of the process, and keeping debate out of the process. So I'm gonna be in the most, I'm gonna be on most ballots, I've gotta raise money. And frankly, I hate to be shameless, but the truth is if we want to get on ballots, I need support. And it's easy. Being24.com, you know, I I, by the way, I'm at 15% in New Hampshire after just 2 weeks. We thought it would take 6 if we were lucky. Wow. So people can throw 15 our way to get on ballots at dean24.com. And by the way, Joe Biden, 27%. 73% of New Hampshire democratic voters do not want the sitting president of the United States as their nominee. And mark my words, we're gonna bring change. Thank you, guys. Alright. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:18): Thank you so much. Thanks. David Friedberg (01:19:19): Thanks for the time. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:20): Peace. Thank you very much. Dean Phillips (01:19:21): Keep the faith guys on mute. Love to see you again. David Friedberg (01:19:23): See you later. Jason Calacanis (01:19:24): Yeah. With Dean Phillips. Everybody go to Dean24.com if you wanna learn more. Alright, besties. I think that was another epic discussion with the presidential candidate. What's your thoughts, Jamop, you set up this interview? Where does he stand in your likely votes for president in 2024. Where would you rank him now? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:48): Andrew Yang, Tex had been like, last week and said, would you guys do this? And I was really interested because mostly I I didn't know where he was coming from, to be totally honest. But I think his national visibility is probably gonna increase a lot. My reaction is that he is who he says he is, which is like kind of down the middle. He doesn't take either extreme, and he kind of takes a moderate point of view and says there's a balance of this and that that can work. And that's actually good that he owns that as opposed to it being sort of a consequence or a byproduct of not getting what he wants. He kind of like that is where he starts. So I like that about him a lot. I thought he was really candid about what doesn't work. I really appreciate that honesty. He's saying some of the right things around capping Medicare, 0 based budgeting, the military, I think all of those things are right. I didn't like, to be honest, the free speech part. I thought that that was I don't think you can have some kind of registry of verified accounts or something. I just think that's a non starter for America. It's a super slippery slope. But in general, I was really impressed, and his, war stories as a businessman were pretty cool. Jason Calacanis (01:21:07): Pretty awesome. Sachs. What what's your candid thoughts? I mean, obviously, he's not part of your political party, but what do you think his chances are versus Biden and And how would you assess his performance here today? David Sacks (01:21:19): I was pleasantly surprised that he made the case for himself, not just based on Biden's age and the fact that he's fifty 4, but he also, I think, took a number of interesting policy stances that were a little different than where Biden is. He did it on foreign policy, did it on domestic policy. So I think he took a number of positions that were refreshing And a big one, I think, relates to his personal story where he talks about how he lost his father in Vietnam and that that war was kept going much longer than it should have been because basically the greed of the military industrial complex, and he didn't fully connect the dots all the way to our present situation in Ukraine, but at least I think he would be skeptical of the influence of the MIT and our politics. What he said with respect to Ukraine is, well, he said that it would be shameful to abandon them now, but he also said that if it's true, he wasn't willing to concede it because he just didn't know factually But if it's true that we could have avoided the war by taking NATO expansion off the table, then it would only be common sense to do that. I think that when the histories of this are written, it's gonna be abundantly clear that we could have done precisely that. So his difference of opinion with me isn't in the logic. It's just in what in in what facts he knows to be true. So I actually thought that his position there was reasonable. You know, if it came down to a choice between Dean Phillips as the Democratic nominee, someone like Nikki Haley is a Republican nominee, I'd vote for Dean Phillips all day long. You know, one other thing I like about him is he is a business owner, and he presents as a Bill Clinton Democrat. I mean, I think that it's not an accident. He's got a picture of Bill Clinton on the wall behind him. You know, he presents as a Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:08): That was exactly my takeaway too. David Sacks (01:23:10): I thought, wow. David Friedberg (01:23:11): This is David Sacks (01:23:11): this is a moderate democrat who's a little bit of a throwback to the Democrat party of the of the 19 nineties. If Rf K junior is trying to bring back the democratic party of, say, the 19 sixties, the party of John F Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy, his father. I think that Dean Phillips is more trying to bring back the democratic party in the 19 nineties. Yeah. Both of them, I think, are ultimately very out step with where the democratic party is today, but they're out of step with it in ways that I like. So he is a candidate who I could support against a Republican who if we ended up getting a sort of stale neocon type Republican candidate, I would take a Dean Phillips all day long. Jason Calacanis (01:23:47): Really? Wow. Great. Friedberg, your thoughts. David Friedberg (01:23:51): I mean, I I think if Joe Biden runs, he obviously doesn't stand a chance just based on the structural issues that he described. If Joe Biden doesn't run and drops out, I think there are probably a lot of other democratic candidates who are gonna have deeper pockets and more support from the party and more celebrity or what have you to get themselves elected. With respect to his candidacy and whether it's a realistic kind of campaign, I I would probably argue no. But what I really like is the fact that he is making the case I think in a stronger way than even RfK junior was on how these incumbents and how the incumbency in the party system prevents, new candidates from actually participating in a true democratic process. And it feels to me a lot like what goes on in that sense is the equivalent of, like, regulatory capture, but in politics. It allows these party leaders and influencers, which is a very small group of people to decide who gets to go on a ballot in a state, to decide who gets to be the nominee, who decides who gets to run for president, the best thing that he's doing is exposing a a system that Bernie Sanders calls rigged and that clearly, I think is very inequitable and doesn't create a true kind of democratic process. So it's really great to see him doing this work and telling the story, and I'm glad we gave him the forum to do that for just that reason. Jason Calacanis (01:25:17): And if you were to have a choice of him or Biden, you'd pick him? David Friedberg (01:25:22): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:25:22): If you had a choice of him or Vivek on the other side, who'd you pick? David Friedberg (01:25:26): No comment. Jason Calacanis (01:25:27): No comment. Okay. Taking off my moderator hat for a minute. Loved his business story, so I agree with you, Chima. Really excited to see somebody under the age of eighty. Run for president. And I thought there were really 2 powerful moments there when he said he would send special forces in and then He was pretty aggressive in his assessment of Netanyahu's leadership. And overall, he did engage with every single issue and had interesting policy issues. Nochivan. It seemed pretty, pretty engaging there. So overall, great job, everybody. I think 4 for 4 on the presidential candidates. And just as a programming note, We have sent the first podcasting kick kits. The first microphones to 4 presidential candidates for those of you counting at home. What do you think will happen post this, Chamath? Vivek got a big bump. RfK got a big bump. What do you think's gonna happen post this? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:14): I think I think that Dean Phillips is gonna pull really well. The more that people get to see him. And I think New Hampshire is set up well for grassroots politics like this. It will it will go over very well. The question, I think, Friedberg points is the is the key one, which is the party infrastructure has tremendous antibodies. And if they Speaker 4 (01:26:36): decide to shut you out, which they Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:36): did very strongly and Focally for RfK, you don't have much of a choice except to one as an independent. So his candidacy is precarious, not because of the viability of him as a candidate, actually, because I think it's quite high or his likability, which is quite high or his electability, as Saks said, which against the right person is very high. This has all to do with the antibodies of the infrastructure. David Friedberg (01:27:05): Sorry. Just just a quick programming note. Jake, how are you drinking a chocolate milk? Jason Calacanis (01:27:10): I am drinking a core power 26. David Friedberg (01:27:13): It's Jason Calacanis (01:27:13): 26 grams of protein. I'm I'm still on my trying a little more protein. I did have a a super gut bar earlier today. David Friedberg (01:27:19): Oh, nice. Jason Calacanis (01:27:20): Which was quite nice. David Friedberg (01:27:21): Thought there was a chocolate milk. Jason Calacanis (01:27:22): This one's got 26 grams. It's a forty two gram protein. Yeah. I don't wanna give a free add to core power, but Sacs, in addition to the antibodies that, you know, kicked RFK out of the Democratic party, the press also blocked him CNN, etcetera, wouldn't let him on. The right would let them on all day long. Does the same antibody kind of system exist on the right at all or the right more open to multiple candidates? Just generally speaking. David Sacks (01:27:46): No. I mean, you look at Republican debates, and they are vigorous debates. There is real agreement on the right. There were real debates on the right, and there was a real working out of contested issues. The Democrat Party by and large is a machine. It works in lockstep. That's why what Dean Phillips is doing is so sacrilegious. I mean, he is pretty much ending his career as someone who can just move up through the ranks than our the democratic party. Maybe this will turn out in a way where it gives him, like, a leap frog, but I don't think so. I mean, I think he's basically signaling to the higher ups in the Democrat Party that he's no longer a candidate for advancement through the regular course. Jason Calacanis (01:28:29): Got it. David Sacks (01:28:30): And one analogy is that the democratic party is like the empire, and the Republicans are like the rebel alliance. You know, the the Republican party is a bunch of misfits. It's a bunch of discontent. He walks and consolas. Handful or whatever, but the the democratic party mark marches Speaker 4 (01:28:50): locks that. Jason Calacanis (01:28:50): Why the democratic wins more is because they're in lockstep? David Sacks (01:28:54): Yeah. They're much better fundraisers. They're more disciplined. They have their act together right now. I don't think this is always the case, but I think it's true right now. Jason Calacanis (01:29:03): Yeah. Okay. Well, we we had a couple of other issues we wanted to get to. So I think we can wrap there. Great job, everybody. That was spectacular, great job getting the candidate, Shamal. Thank you for that. Alright. We have to touch on what happened this week with the US and China relations. Everybody knows Xi Jinping was here in the Bay Area to meet with Biden, yell in. Welcome. She, at the plane. Maybe she's selling some treasuries. I don't know. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:25): And That's David Sacks (01:29:26): what the press said. Yeah. I mean, like, we're we're like some sort of, piss poor company that's selling as junk bonds. I mean, the second that she Speaker 4 (01:29:34): gets off the plane, David Sacks (01:29:36): just walking our shitty bonds. Jason Calacanis (01:29:38): Wow. Listen. Everybody's raising Speaker 7 (01:29:40): his time. Right now. You know, fundraising's hard. David Friedberg (01:29:41): Did you get to hear the commentary that the Treasury auction had a really tough Tough moment last week. They had a big auction on, what was it, 10 30 year bonds? The 30 year bond bid was not really there. And so they're they're they gotta get buyers in They gotta Jason Calacanis (01:29:55): go get And she's coming to raise money currently too. She she's here. Everybody's having a hard time raising right now. Pretty pretty crazy. But, Shamoff, you and I tweeted about this, clip where Xi Jinping said that, you know, he's basically for peace and that we have to work together. Let me just start there with you, Shamoff, we can get through this quickly. Do you take him at his word? There were cynical people saying like, hey. You know, he's just desperate needs more trade, needs more business. How do you interpret? She's piece pipe here, you know, and his dinner with a bunch of executives last night. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:30:29): I think he's pragmatic. He's somebody that wants to not just rule over China, but he wants to do it for the rest of his life, and he wants to do a good job. And I've said this many times, China's issues are endemic and pervasive and they're demographic. And so he has huge structural issues that he has to fix in the Chinese economy. And so I think all of this is just about him focusing on his priority which makes sense, which is really about domestic policy. There's an enormous real estate issue that has to get sorted out. There is a GDP issue that has to get sorted out. There's a youth on deployment issue that has to get sorted out. And then there's an aging and a birth rate and replacement issue that has to get sorted out. All of these things are in enormous efforts. And so I think he's pragmatic enough to not Also then add foreign misadventures to that plate. And I think what you heard was him being very clear Jason Calacanis (01:31:29): about just exactly that? Sachs, what was your interpretation? There's so many jumping off points here. You got foreign policy. You got TikTok, fentanyl. I mean, there there's a long list of issues, but does it feel like we're turning a corner on relations? Hey. They need us. We need them. What was your interpretation on all this? David Sacks (01:31:46): Well, I I think what's going on here is that the administration has its hands full with 2 wars. If we Scott still got this war in Europe, over Ukraine, which is going very badly. And now Speaker 4 (01:31:55): we have a new war in David Sacks (01:31:56): the Middle East that caught them completely by surprise. Recall that literally a week or 2 before October 7th, you had Jake Sullivan saying that Middle East had never been more peaceful. So they absolutely did not anticipate what was coming, and now we have half of our carrier groups in the Middle East position there in cases, you know, blows up into a wider regional war. So I think the simple fact of the matter is is that the Biden administration, this is more than they can handle. Or let's put it this way. They're trying to put the China compete on hold. They're trying to put it on ice while they figure out a way to rescue this losing effort in Ukraine and to prevent the situation in the Middle East from spiraling out of control is just too much for them. They don't have the bandwidth to deal with a war or conflict breaking out in the Asia Pacific. So I think that's the the Biden administration's motivation here as they're seeking to ease tensions because they're too bandwidth constrained to deal with it. By the same token, I think Chamath is right that, she realizes that he's got his hands full with domestic economic problems. He doesn't need, a ratcheting up of tensions with the United States right now. And I would also add that on foreign policy, I think what you're seeing in his remarks is a return to the far away from this kind of wolf warrior diplomacy that they had going on a few years ago where they were kind of saying these very bellicose things, and they're kind of flexing their muscles in the Asia Pacific re region. That really backfired on them because it raised the hackles of all those other Asian countries, and it was making it too easy for the United States to form a containment alliance against China. So he's moving away from that type of wolf warrior, rhetoric that got them nowhere, and he's moved back to the rhetoric of a Deng Xiaoping who said that China's policy should be to bite its time and hide its light under a bushel. In other words, just get stronger and stronger. David Sacks (01:33:53): Don't let people get wise to how strong you are. And then when the time is right, you will flex your muscles, but just keep, you know, keep getting stronger. And I think he's returned to that that policy. And you saw this with a belt and road conference that in Beijing just a few weeks ago, where you saw countries like Vietnam participating. And I think that China, their strategy is now to try to use some money to catch some flies as opposed to using this kind of bellicose rhetoric Jason Calacanis (01:34:23): and saber rattling. And if we look at this chart, I think this chart speaks volumes, Friedberg, in foreign investment into China has absolutely fallen off a cliff. In the decoupling, the saber rattling, you know, and other countries looking to have and not be dependent on China has obviously blown up in his lap. What what are your thoughts on foreign trade and and and our business relationship with China and their relationship with the West and the rest of the world. David Friedberg (01:34:52): This used to be a a thing to do to make money. And then it became a question mark of whether you can make money a couple years ago. And now as of this year, I would argue You are a pariah. If you are trying to invest in China or do any business in China, it's almost like you can't do business with the enemy. That's the tone shift that I think accelerated in the last 24 months. And as that tone shift happened in the business community and the investment community, It obviously escalated the tenor of what is the the broader relationship look like that I think catalyzed, hey. We gotta simmer things down because we can't really afford to deal with that escalation escalation right now. But I I don't know. I mentioned this to you guys. I was at a conference this past summer. The summer at 22, it was like, hey. Maybe, you know, when when are things gonna get bad China. To this summer, it's like if you were doing business in China, you're trying to pick up pennies in front of a a freight train. Like, you're gonna get run over. And it happened in 1 year. That was my observation. It was like Speaker 4 (01:36:00): this The Jason Calacanis (01:36:01): chart shows that. Right? David Friedberg (01:36:02): Yeah. And and I could tell from the tone of what everyone is saying on stage, it was, like, universal. There wasn't anyone that disagreed. And similarly, as you guys know, we've heard this from both political parties in the US. It suddenly became the new new thing for Democrats and Republicans to denounce China, denounce investing in China, denounced doing business with China. But too much too fast I would argue has led to an observation of the consequences to deeply coupled economic partner to the United States. China is the largest buyer of US Agricultural Exports, $200,000,000,000 a year of farm products that we make get shipped out to China. China is a major supplier to our electronics industry. I mean, we don't need to recount all the relationships, but trying to decouple too quickly, trying to called China, the enemy too fast, I think, has led to a realization that that's not really a tenable. So I would argue that maybe this week has been a moment I don't know if it really changes the long term trajectory, but it seems like it's certainly a very important and and critical pause in the escalation. One thing I wanted to comment, I think one of the biggest winners this week, I'd love your point of view on this guy. It's like Gavin Newsom. I mean, he was all over this week. Like, he was at the playing greetings. He cleaned up San Francisco. I mean, he got a shout out from the president. He was, yeah, he was at the dinner. I mean, do you guys think like Gavin is, you know, gonna be there when Joe says I'll see you later. I'm not gonna run again and The New Year. When I spoke? Yeah. What's happening here? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:37:32): It's all just a big coincidence. David Friedberg (01:37:36): He actually went on stage in San Francisco, made all those common about the city should be cleaned up, and we haven't been doing it. We could have the whole time. He's very honest about it. David Sacks (01:37:44): Quite what he said. David Friedberg (01:37:45): Yeah. But I look. I mean, I don't know. What are you guys quasi owning it? Right. Was he? No. David Sacks (01:37:49): I don't think he did own it. He gave these really weird remarks about how there are some people that are saying that we're only cleaning up San Francisco because there's these fancy people here. That was just such a weird term as well. Speaker 4 (01:38:00): And it's Jason Calacanis (01:38:01): true because it's true. David Sacks (01:38:02): And it's true, but true. Yeah. It was like he was headed in one direction realized he was making a mistake, but couldn't quite Chamath Palihapitiya (01:38:07): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:38:07): For sure. David Friedberg (01:38:08): Let's let's pull it up. Jason Calacanis (01:38:09): Let's pull it up. It's good. Yeah. Here. Play it. Speaker 8 (01:38:11): They're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town. That's true because it's Speaker 4 (01:38:17): true. What he's Speaker 8 (01:38:17): basically doing there is admitting David Sacks (01:38:24): that he, as the governor, has the power to snap his fingers and wave his magic wand and clean up the streets of San Francisco. And that is completely different than what he's been telling us for years. For years, he's been maintaining that the problem of homelessness in California is owned by local officials or by judges or by, somehow, by the system itself and is too complex and is beyond his power. To simply do something about it, but he just admitted that in fact, he does have the power to do something about it. In fact, he is the boss of a one party state. And all he had to do was snap his fingers and make this homeless bomb go away. And he's willing to do that for Xi Jinping. He's willing to do that for Dreamforce. He's willing to do that for the Super Bowl, but he is not willing to do that for the ordinary citizens of San Francisco. And I think that ultimately is gonna be a huge vulnerability. What he should have said here is it's true that we cleaned up the city to, represent ourselves well for these foreign leaders who are coming in. But the truth of it is that we should be doing this every day. And here's my agenda for fixing it. 123. And if we could get everyone on board with this agenda, we could fix this problem. But that's not what he said. What he basically communicated was that I could solve this problem anytime, but I don't give a shit about you, ordinary citizens. We only do this for the fancy people. Jason Calacanis (01:39:45): Chamath, when, any any reaction to that, you Chamath Palihapitiya (01:39:48): know, he's auditioning. I mean, I think that much is clear. Again, I would just say it's you can't just go to China and meet with Xi Jinping. So that has to be endorsed. It's negotiated. It's enabled. You go there with talking points. You go there in discussion with state and treasury and and the rest of the federal bureaucracy behind you. So that was a clear addition of some kind. And I think it was obvious that they wanted the Apex summit to be the backdrop of a Biden G meeting. And so you're doubling down on California. So I think it's I think it's kind of like a a dry run here. Is what I would say. I mean, I'm not sure that it's I don't know what for. David Sacks (01:40:35): It definitely made him look presidential, and I think you're right that when he went to China a few weeks ago, to invite G to the summit. That was clearly sanctioned by it gotta be by Lincoln, by Sullivan, by David Friedberg (01:40:46): the You can't you can't do that on your own. David Sacks (01:40:48): Of course. Of course. But again, the the reason why they sanctioned that is because they really wanna ease tensions with China right now given how full their hands are with the Middle East right now and with you. Speaker 4 (01:40:59): No. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:40:59): I'm not I'm not debating that. I think that that makes all the sense in the world. I think that you could have sent any number of well, not any number, but one of 3 cabinet secretaries, and it would have been just as appropriate. I think sending the governor, I think, was a little bit of it. It was a test. Can he perform. And I think he did a good job there. David Sacks (01:41:17): He helped himself. I mean, he he earned himself with, it's true because it's true, but he helped himself in terms of the optics. But can I Chamath Palihapitiya (01:41:24): say it, though? I I think he did look presidential in China. And I actually, that was the first time where I thought Kevin was really being a normal person because he actually told the truth. He's like, yeah. This state is a at at its best. No, but this state at its best is a center of innovation in the future. And at its worst, it's where every bad progressive idea goes to die. Dean Phillips (01:41:47): The way he Speaker 4 (01:41:48): said that? Dean Phillips (01:41:49): No. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:41:49): No. I'm saying that. I'm saying San Francisco embodies both of those two things. On one day, it's full of people on crystal meth and fentanyl. On the second day, it's the OpenAI dev day. David Friedberg (01:42:00): Yeah. We'll take a photo of each other. So Chamath Palihapitiya (01:42:04): I think and I think he just admitted. David Sacks (01:42:06): But but imagine if he said something like that, that would make him so much more real. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:42:10): Well, maybe he's trying to find his voice. David Friedberg (01:42:12): I think I think if Tom shifted a bit. I don't know. That's what I'm saying. It felt like in seeing some of the talks he gave this week and his positioning and where he was sitting, it was He looks like very legit. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:42:22): I definitely I definitely will say that the Gavin Newsom of 3 years ago was a little bit smarmy. And more of like a political insider. The Gavin Newsom of like the last week and particularly even just that comment to me, David, was actually being honest. And I think that that's a more viable path if they decide to give him the candidacy. Which I think Jason Calacanis (01:42:49): is a really good observation because he could just come out and say, listen, we tried a bunch of things. We had good intent. It didn't work, and now we're reversing them. But, you know, Biden did say that he would possibly be running for his job. I want to thank Governor Newsom, want to thank him. He's been one hell of a governor man. Matter of fact, he could be anything he wants. He could have the job I'm looking for. Dean Phillips (01:43:13): That that Jason Calacanis (01:43:14): was I don't know if you guys heard that quote from Biden. Biden said that last night. Wow. So I guess conspiracy, let's put our tin foil tin foil hack corner time. Sacks your favorite percentage chance Biden runs or drops out whichever way you wanna do it. Anybody have, some teeling too. David Sacks (01:43:31): I still think there's about a 70% chance that Biden runs. Jason Calacanis (01:43:36): Okay. So 30% chance Speaker 4 (01:43:37): he doesn't. David Sacks (01:43:37): He's not gonna voluntarily retiree. The the party apparatus whoever's, you know, behind the scenes pulling the strings, the wizard of Oz is gonna have to go the party elder there to go to him at a certain point and say, sorry. This is just not gonna work, and and we're not there yet. Jason Calacanis (01:43:54): Okay. Shamap, what do you think? I'm curious. I think Chamath Palihapitiya (01:43:56): David's are up. The leaders and the powers that be will not make that call right now. I don't think it's I don't think it's time yet. Jason Calacanis (01:44:01): Freiber, you gotta take? David Friedberg (01:44:04): I don't know. I I think it's speculation. I really don't know. Jason Calacanis (01:44:07): Okay. Hey, Jamath. One question here just on markets. 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars not being invested in China on that chart for investments. Where does that money go? And he thought somewhere that's going. He's just sitting in accounts. I think it's being invested in another geographies? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:44:22): We talked about it last week with Jared Kushner, but if you look at just the the ton of cash and cash equivalents, I think it just speaks to how everybody's just a little bit on the sidelines waiting to go, waiting for the green light, which, you know, you saw CPI this week, by the way. I mean, we talked about it last week, which is that it looked like CPI is turning over. And now the consensus forecast is you're gonna see CPI with a low 2% handle. By February or March of this year. So you're gonna see 2.2% CPI or something. Watch out. Jason Calacanis (01:44:53): Watch out as in, hey, markets are coming roaring back. Maybe not zerp environment, but could get interesting. Alright. Listen. We don't wanna leave without doing a science corner. Everybody loves science corner. I know DeepMind has been working on, you know, many projects, Friedberg. And DeepMind, of course, is Google's AI arm They did go. They did protein folding. And, of course, they're doing bard, but they announced something this week about predicting whether tell us about this paper that was released free brew. David Friedberg (01:45:25): Yeah. So I think this was pretty exciting. You guys know I used to work in weather when I ran climate corp, we did a lot of work with weather forecasting and and weather modeling. So DeepMind published a paper in the journal science, this week, introducing GraphCast which is actually a publicly available model, that does weather forecasting using machine learn models. It's a 37,000,000 parameter model just to give you a sense how small that is, that model compared to, chat GPT, which is like a 1,500,000,000 parameters in the Chamath GPT model. This is only 37,000,000 parameters in this model. And the performance that they got out of Graph Taft, which they published in the journals, they've made the model available You can check it out. You can read the paper on how they built the model. They're very open about that. When the model actually forecasts weather over a 10 day period, better than traditional weather forecasting. So let me just talk about how weather forecasting is normally done and what they did differently and why this is such a big breakthrough. So weather forecasting is usually done by kind of chopping up the atmosphere into little cubes, little blocks. And, you know, the, the weather is a fluid. It's like a liquid. It, you know, it's it's air and moisture being moved around with energy. And so normal weather forecasting systems are what are called numerical models. You run physics. You run the formulas for physics on each of those little cells of the atmosphere and figure out how they affect the cell next to them and the cell next to them. And you run that cycle forward and you run all these calculations and then you figure out how those cells are gonna be different in hours and then in days going forward. That needs numerical models, basically, because they're compute intensive, they're running actual calculations from physics, to model all this stuff, they require a lot of compute power. David Friedberg (01:47:13): There are hundreds of variables that are measured and that are output from forecasting models And they're generally run on these very expensive, compute clusters. There are 2 major weather forecasting Systems. 1 is run by ECMWF, which is the European Weather Center, and the other one is run by NOAA called GFS here in the US. And ECM WF runs on a 1,000,000 cores across 77100 compute cluster nodes. They spend about $200,000,000 on the this, this compute cluster. And the GFS model runs on a 29 petaflop system. So 29 quadrillion floating operations per second. It costs $270,000,000. And when they run the the forecast model using this traditional way of doing things, they're running all these calculations on these little small blocks of the atmosphere and perturbing it fast forward, try to capture as much data out of the model runs as they can. And every 6 hours, they run the model, and there's a new output every 6 hours. And it costs a $1,000,000,000 for NOAA to run forecast every year and disseminate that information, And then all the weather companies, you know, from weather channel and AccuWeather, they're all buying or getting free access to these forecasts that come from these big compute clusters. And that's how all weather forecasting is done. They're actually done primarily by these big centralized government super compute clusters. And then they're made available for everyone to consume. And the more data and the more compute you get, the better the forecasts the higher the resolution, meaning the more local space you can forecast on, the smaller the timescales, meaning you can go from 1 day forecast to 1 hour forecast break it down. And the further out, you can be accurate, whether it's 5 days 10 days and so on. So more compute has been the name of the game for many, many years in whether forecasting the more compute you get the better the forecasts. So the this breakthrough that DeepMind has had is they basically took all the past weather forecast and they built a model that figured out how to take the current weather and the weather from 6 hours ago, just the data. So the data feeds from today's current weather, whether 6 hours ago, and train the model that predicted weather for the next 10 days. The same output as you would get from these big, expensive numerical models, And they did this using what's called a graph neural network. David Friedberg (01:49:26): That's the architecture for the model. A graph neural network is far more complicated than say, predicting an image, which is two dimensional, pixels next to each other, or pre predicting a text string, which is one dimensional. So what's the next word in a sentence? So, these are a graph neural network. It's a fairly complicated model. And so they describe all the techniques they use and everything they built in the paper. They were really open about an And then they were able to train this model using past, you know, forecasting data going back to the seventies. And then they ran the model. If you pull up these charts, so the first chart that we're gonna pull up here basically shows the model's performance graph cast against the big ECM ECMWS model. And what you'll see is that the model across all timescales going out to 10 days is better. And there's a bunch of ways to measure this, primarily what's called root mean square error. Which measures the skill of the forecast. So here you can see the black line is the numerical model run by ECM WF, which is the big weather cast model that most people in the world rely on every day. And the bottom is the the the machine learning model. And by the way, the entire GraphCast model runs in one minute. So you basically input current weather data and you input weather data from 6 hours ago and in a minute, you get all the forecasts. Whereas currently It Jason Calacanis (01:50:48): could run on what? Like, a smartphone or a laptop. It's just kind of David Friedberg (01:50:53): not that small, but, yeah, I mean, you could run it on a small compute, and, you could get the results in a minute. And so basically, everyone can now be a weather forecaster. What used to Chamath Palihapitiya (01:51:02): be is this is the gap between the black and the blue line significant? Is that an important? David Friedberg (01:51:07): It it is significant in two ways. 1 is, first of all, it's better, which is amazing because Researchers have spent 1,000,000,000 of dollars in decades trying to make their numerical models better. So the fact that a machine learning model is is just simply better is really profound. And the second point is that this machine learning model is only 37,000,000 parameters and can be output in a minute. So you can be running this thing continuously. And you can be this Chamath Palihapitiya (01:51:30): does this work for weather all around the world or just in the world? David Friedberg (01:51:34): Exactly. All around the world. And the second thing that they measured, if you pull up the second graph, was well, okay. Great. You can measure. You can do basic weather forecasting, but are you good at picking up extreme events? The things that are really outside of the normal distribution curve, the things that we should worry about, like cyclones or extreme heat or atmospheric rivers. And the answer again is absolutely yes, that this model trained on this data is better at forecasting extreme weather events. Jason Calacanis (01:52:02): On that bottom left one, is it saying that HRS doesn't actually predict cyclone tracking and that Graphcast gives you, like, 2, 3, 4 days lead time? David Friedberg (01:52:11): That's just an error difference. Yeah. It's just a measure. It's a measure of delta. Jason Calacanis (01:52:15): So what's the down stream effectiveness? People will be able to get out of an area that could have extreme weather or insurance you you did climate.com. Right? So you you've been in this business for a long time. David Friedberg (01:52:25): Yeah. So I think one of the most interesting things is this is gonna change how weather forecasting is done. Again, 1,000,000,000 of dollars, there's a a a big system in Japan, a big system in Europe, and a big system in the that forecast the weather. There's some of the biggest compute clusters in the world. And now you can run it in your home. You can run this model in your home because all the weather data that is the input to the model is available all the time on the internet for free. So we can just take that data and anyone could run it. You could get faster results, more frequent updates, certainly a much lower cost, And I think this is just the beginning of, obviously, a long road of optimization and iteration that we'll go from here. What'll be really amazing to see what else can be done With this model, it totally upends a lot of different business models as well. What's really important also to note, this is an incredible proof point of these graph neural nets. Graft Neural nets can be applied in other areas like chemistry, biology, material science, anywhere where you're simulating physics or or physical properties or three-dimensional space over time, showing that you can train off data and be better than physical models that just needs physics to make a prediction, and you can just have the machine figure out how to do it on its own and it comes up with prediction that's better than running physics in the, in a compute cluster is really incredible. And I think it'll also it's a great way to highlight the opportunity for machine learning models being applied to things like chemistry and biology for discovery purposes, and other is over time. I thought it was a a great taper, another Really incredible, proof point by deep mind. Jason Calacanis (01:53:56): I mean, are they gonna just throw away those clusters running through some of their weather I'm David Friedberg (01:54:00): telling you, like, that's redundant. And by the way, talk about accountability. So what if I'm running the Department of Commerce, which oversees NOAA in the US, I'm like, what are we doing spending a $1,000,000,000 on this now, we can just run this thing on a MacBook. Jason Calacanis (01:54:12): So a perfect example of how AI is gonna say 1,000,000,000 of dollars. This is like an incredible footprint for the government getting more efficient to circle back around to Dean's point earlier in the episode. Okay. This has been an amazing episode for the dictator himself from Molly Hoppertino. I want Chamath Palihapitiya (01:54:26): a more accurate forecast of the temperature on Uranus. Speaker 7 (01:54:30): Oh, it was coming in at any moment. Jason Calacanis (01:54:32): Oh, man. It's it depends. Did you have Chamath Palihapitiya (01:54:35): a it's cold David Friedberg (01:54:35): and dark cold and dark. Speaker 4 (01:54:36): Cold and Jason Calacanis (01:54:37): dark, or maybe you had the hot sauce. Anybody knows. Alright. Listen. And for the sultan of science, the day after tomorrow, beautiful, it was a great fun movie. David Friedberg and the rainman, David Sachs. I'm amongst amongst the world's greatest moderator. It was a great job for the last 2 weeks, Freightberg. And this is your favorite podcast. The all in podcast. We'll see you Speaker 4 (01:54:58): all next Jason Calacanis (01:54:59): time. Bye bye. David Friedberg (01:55:00): Bye bye. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:55:00): Oh, also, Also, also happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Jason Calacanis (01:55:04): Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:55:05): Happy Thanksgiving. Jason Calacanis (01:55:07): No episode next week. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:55:08): No episode when happy. Jason Calacanis (01:55:09): She never know if somebody goes rogue. Happy. Good. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:55:12): Happy Thanksgiving to everybody. David Sacks (01:55:14): Gobble. Cabble. Speaker 4 (01:55:15): Glad to be Jason Calacanis (01:55:16): thankful for your best. It's. Speaker 4 (01:55:20): We'll let your winter's ride. Open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy lately. On air when they're trying. I'm Chamath Palihapitiya (01:55:53): think you, George, because they're always useless. Jason Calacanis (01:55:55): It's like this, like, sexual tension, and they Chamath Palihapitiya (01:55:56): just need to release them out. Jason Calacanis (01:56:04): We need to get mercy's artifacts.