谷歌要收购 HubSpot？FTX 储户未获全额赔付、AI 抢工作的担忧、乌克兰加入北约

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): Alright, everybody. Welcome back to the all in podcast, the number one podcast in the world episode 173. It's objectively Friedberg, the number one podcast I checked. I looked online. And, things are cooking over here, so much so that you may have heard we hired a new CEO. Welcome to the team. Our new 5th bestie, John Hell. Yeah. Off clap, everyone. Let's get in there with that golf clap. Yes. Alright, John. Welcome to the program. Your 1st day was April 1st. It wasn't a joke. Literally was your 1st day. How has week 1 as CEO for all in been? Speaker 2 (00:00:40): It has been wonderful. Super dynamic. Really happy to be a part of the team. Jason Calacanis (00:00:45): Alright. There you have it. Sachs, you were a huge driver of this. You spent so much time interviewing everybody, going through the resumes, checking the references, You know, and you you really spearheaded this. Oh, wait. You did nothing. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:59): Sacks. Sacks. It's spelled j o n, John. David Friedberg (00:01:03): Yeah. Wait. David Sacks (00:01:03): Who is this? Jason Calacanis (00:01:04): Sacks of John. Okay. David Friedberg (00:01:06): You guys have a mess. Jason Calacanis (00:01:07): You guys have a mess. David Sacks (00:01:09): Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Likewise. Speaker 6 (00:01:14): To let your winter Friedberg. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:17): Rainman, David Sachs. Speaker 7 (00:01:21): And I said We open to sent to the fans and made discoveries. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:25): Love you. I'm following up on the end. Jason Calacanis (00:01:30): So John work at the Russian embassy. This a coincidence that people were Russia references, but he worked as an intern, for Putin, somehow he wound up getting the dig. Friedberg you actually led the the the the incredible search here. We we had hundreds of people apply. Why do you think, we want to with Mister Hal here. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:50): Yeah. We had a David Friedberg (00:01:50): lot of Sacks, and we met with a lot of folks, but John really stood out with I think his experience and his thoughtfulness about what we can do. So so much of our work off the show obviously has gone into putting on the all in summit, and we wanna do more live events. And John has a very strong background in building incredible live experiences and events, which we think is gonna be a really important extension. I think we've we realized over the last two summits how much community matters for all in and how much getting people together matters and how much the live content mattered. And so we wanna do more of that. And, hopefully, John can take us to the promised plan. Fantastic. John, thanks for thanks for saying yes. It's awesome to have you. Jason Calacanis (00:02:33): Alright. And, as John's first first duty, he is going to Next week, announce the details of the all in summit 2024, our 3rd edition, Chairman dictator Tremacola Palihapitiya You've been running all in with an iron fist in the group chat. Your thoughts on John and working with him and why we selected him. The iron fist. Please go. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:00): I think that there's A really important trend that we have stumbled into which is that content creators are the modern form of demand generation. For whatever else it is that you're gonna consume. And I think it replaces advertising, and I think it displaces traditional content. And so I was really interested in finding somebody that understood how to connect those dots in all of the different ways in which we can explore what our brand is capable of. And I thought he was the best example of having done one thing extremely well at scale, and curious enough to figure out the other parts. So, you know, I'm really excited to work with John. Jason Calacanis (00:03:46): Yeah. I'm and I'll just add to that. You know, been doing events my whole life. And when I saw John's actual, event history in the event you've thrown John, really spectacular in the detail. And, I think you're gonna the same way. Friedberg level up year 2 of the conference. I'm I'm really excited to see how you put your stamp on it and level up year 3. Couple of housekeeping things here. You know, we are Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:08): By the way, sorry. Can I say one thing just a little bit? Yeah. There is so much room to build real communities. David Friedberg (00:04:16): And I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:16): think people are just so tired and bored with everything online. So David Friedberg (00:04:25): I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:25): think offline experiences will be a huge value add in people's lives. Jason Calacanis (00:04:30): Yeah. There's definitely a bridge from online to offline and that they're all in meetups that Ray's been hosting. The best the best example. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:39): The best example of at scale of online to offline are dating Sacks. And all I can see is that's a pretty dissatisfying experience for a lot of people. And so outside of dating apps, there aren't many really great examples where like minded people can hang out and have fun and, you know, Talk, learn, party. Jason Calacanis (00:05:00): It's really interesting. You bring this up. I just finished John, Hate's new book. The anxious generation. I don't know if you've listened to it, but there's a pair of books out right now. Bad therapy. And, this one about kids. And the premise of his book Shamoff is Screen time, as you referred to, you know, people being online, not only is it bad for kids and adults, it's also blocking to your point, real world connection. And so we all want a little more real world connection. And so John, welcome to the team. Additionally, I'll just, 2 more housekeeping items here and then we'll get to the show. We're gonna have a 1,000,000 subscriber party. If you want to be part of that 1,000,000 driver party, you can increase your chances. We're not announcing how we're going to give the tickets away, but you can increase your chances by going to YouTube right now, pause the show subscribe to the all in podcast Chamath. Hit the bell. So you get the alert for the best chance to get one of the golden tickets to the 1,000,000 subscriber party. And we are at 486,000. When we add 14,000 more, we're gonna do a live q and a with all the besties. So get in on that as well, John, any any parting thoughts here or comments, which bestie has been the most difficult to work with in the 1st month? Which one has been the most delightful go? Speaker 2 (00:06:16): It's been a pleasure across the board. I think know, part of the beauty of the show is that there are so many different personalities and viewpoints and really happy to be part of the team. Excited for what we're gonna continue building. Jason Calacanis (00:06:27): How diplomatic? Who's been the worst to deal with? Who's been the terror? Be honest. Tom, you don't have to deal with. We'll talk about it in your 1 year review. Alright, John. Great job. Good David Sacks (00:06:37): luck with you. Jason Calacanis (00:06:38): Like for you. Who's been Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:39): the most erotic, likely free work? Jason Calacanis (00:06:41): Who's been the most Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:42): abundant value add? Likely me. Jason Calacanis (00:06:44): And who's telling you about MIA? David Friedberg (00:06:46): The most the most unresponsive. David Sacks (00:06:47): I've been the easiest to deal with, Jason Calacanis (00:06:49): and then you just deal with. That's why I get 2 votes. David Sacks (00:06:52): Shamasa's by proxy. Jason Calacanis (00:06:54): Yeah. Exactly. I mean, it's it's just wild. What's going on here? It really is Game of Thrones. And you have been put in the center of it, John. Congratulations. Welcome to the iron throne. Watch your back. Alright. Dismiss, John. He will let us know. Thanks, John. We could be helpful. Salute to you, John. Good luck. We gotta get going here. We got a big show for you, everybody. Welcome to the show officially, David Sacks, your rain man. Shamalffy, hub, Tia, Chamath dictator. Salted of Science, David Friedberg, I'm the world's greatest moderator. Welcome to the program. A quick correction up top that many of you in the crypto Sacks, let us know about immediately after the episode dropped. We talked about SPF getting 25 years. And that broke right as we started the show, and we discussed that the customers of FTX were gonna get made whole. There's been a lot of speculation about them being made whole. However, There was an important note. FTX deposits are getting paid back in US dollars, not the crypto. That dollar amount, we've learned is based on the price of their tokens at the bankruptcy date. The bankruptcy date was November 11th in 2022. Super important. Because the report that started the run on FTX was published in November, sec, there's a couple of days in between those two dates and a bunch of crypto flummited. Solana dropped, 50% between November 5th November 11th. That's just one example. But since then, Solana has been up 11x and Bitcoin's up 4x, Ethereum doubled. So if you wanted these depositors, you miss that run up. And so FDX customers were rightfully furious. I'll pause there before I get into more details. Any any thoughts on this Sacks? David Sacks (00:08:41): Yeah. I mean, just to hit the nail on the head here. If you had left your Solana at FTX, you're gonna get $16 per token back. And that apparently was the price at the time that they went under. So according to the the judicial proceedings, you've been, quote, unquote, made whole, but the truth is that Lana at this moment is trading at a $188. So you have not been made whole, and this is why the crypto community is furious. And so that that basically is the correction. Now I thought it was interesting that the judge played into this notion, and we talked about that quote from the judge last week where he said that if you go to Vegas of scone with your customer's money, gamble it, and then pay them off with the winnings, then you still committed a crime. He seemed to be conceding this idea that the investors or or the depositors at FTX have been made whole. Clearly they have not been, but his quote kinda lent credence to that. And the reason the judge was talking about is because SBF's lawyers were clearly making this argument that his sentence should be commuted or reduced because depositors have been made whole. And I think what you saw in the media coverage is that there are porters were buying into this idea of depositors being made whole. I mean, you guys got this from somewhere. Right? I mean, this is what the media coverage So the media the media was doing what has been doing throughout the FTX case, which is carrying water for SBF. And I believe that this narrative that they're trying to concoct, which we now know is completely false, is designed to serve a purpose. And I think that purpose is to get SPF either pardoned or have his sentence commuted because mister Bankman and misfreed are huge democratic party bundlers and Speaker 6 (00:10:31): I David Sacks (00:10:31): think the goal here is to create the idea in the public's mind that people weren't really hurt by this. This was just sort of youthful and discretion or or hijinx. And, you know, there's a bunch of hijinx. Right? And no one's shenanigans, but shenanigans where no one's really hurt. And if they can create that impression in the public's mind, we can now set up getting one of their democratic party connections Yeah. To help push for a computation of the sentence. I think there's a narrative going on. I think there's an agenda behind the narrative, and it's it's what I'm saying here. Jason Calacanis (00:11:06): Yeah. The this pardon power is really powerful. Tremoth, any any thoughts here on the bankruptcy judge making that call to sell the chairs? Because, obviously, If crypto had tanked since that time, it would look like he saved the money by selling them clearing the positions and giving them cash. But what is the right thing for the bankruptcy judge? To do here, keep the equities, I need the tokens or to sell it and freeze it in time. It seems like a very difficult call. David Sacks (00:11:31): Hold on. Jake, Jacob, we gotta correct that for in a certain way. So the trustee has been selling the tokens post run up. David Friedberg (00:11:39): The David Sacks (00:11:39): point is that he's selling tokens at current prices call it 188, and then using that to pay off depositors at $16. So the only reason the depositors have been quote, unquote made whole is because they're getting the benefit of this run up, but they're not paying them back at the price of their salana today. They're paying them at this price that got fixed at the time of the bankruptcy. So the truth is this is why no one's getting made whole. Jason Calacanis (00:12:06): Yeah. This is the, you know, the really hard thing to track here because we couldn't find when they were selling it or how much they've been selling. This seems to be being done in the shadows or in the background. And so if anybody out there us, we crowdsource what's going on here wants to keep us up to date, let us know. But, yeah, these tokens, some number of them got sold at a low price, some of them getting sold, I guess, as time goes on. Shamaffi are just thoughts on how to Do this properly? What's the proper hygiene here? I mean, it's We're not so crazy experts. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:37): No. That's a great question. I don't know the differences between chapter 7 and chapter 11 bankruptcy law, but I don't know what was filed here. Was it chapter 7 or chapter 11? I don't I don't know. But it seems that this was the only thing that they could do, which was to liquidate into a common, you know, unit of measure because at the end of the day, their auditors had to measure in a standard unit, and that was probably the US dollar. And so then they were trying to work backwards from that shareholder equity number to get them back to that number. So Yeah. It was kind of blood that that this is the only thing they could do. And I guess they benefited from the fact that there was a run up, but it's really unfortunate for folks. So I don't know. Maybe in other countries, had this been a a differently constituted company organized in a different place? Bankruptcy Law could have allowed the liquidator to actually just distribute the assets on a pro rata basis. Jason Calacanis (00:13:36): This was a chapter. I David Sacks (00:13:37): don't think Jason Calacanis (00:13:37): that would help that much. I got the update here. This is a chapter 11. And in September, the judge allowed to start liquidating up to a 100,000,000 a week in Delaware. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:47): This is a chapter 11, Delaware filing. Jason Calacanis (00:13:49): Yeah. Chapter 11 in Delaware. Correct. And this could increase 200,000,000 a week. So it seems like they David, they did start the liquidation later. So they might have caught some of the run up. So if they did catch the run up, then you could be doubly upset Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:01): No. My point my point is in different in different situations, one could imagine where the shareholders could have been allowed to vote Do you want money or do you want in kind? And if in kind, maybe you get a pro rata distribution of all the assets which have included a whole bunch of these coins, but then it probably would have included a bunch of other assets, not just Solana and Bitcoin, then ETH that ripped So David Sacks (00:14:26): I think the point is that if they had distributed in kind, meaning tokens, that people would have seen, oh, wait. I only got back one tenth, the number of tokens that I put in. That's the point. Right? Jason Calacanis (00:14:37): Yeah. David Sacks (00:14:37): You put in a 100 Solana tokens. You only get back, call it roughly 10 because the the price of those tokens was fixed at Sacks, and they can now sell at somewhere between 102100, they're able to quote, make you whole at the $16 price, but that's not being made whole. That was what are they doing Jason Calacanis (00:14:54): with the extra money Sacks? Cause are they using that to make other people in this whole crater whole as well. So maybe they're thinking holistically, they're taking the of those salana holders, let's say, we're Bitcoin holders. You went 4x. And is that gonna trickle down to the equity holders? Who knows? Friedberg, you have thoughts? David Friedberg (00:15:11): Yeah. I think the plan is that that excess capital beyond what is quote owed to the account holders goes to the equity holders. Because it's considered excess of the liabilities. Therefore, it goes to the shareholders. I'll I'll also say in a traditional, like, brokerage you create an account. And when you set up an account, your account has a currency denomination. It's a dollar based account or a euro based account. And then you your account holds a bunch of assets. And so at any given time, the value of your account is represented to you in that local currency. The challenge with crypto exchanges is that there's often this representation of a wallet, which is meant to hold assets that don't necessarily have the intention of being translated into a locally denominated currency. And so I think that's what makes the system different. In the case of a US exchange bankruptcy and this happens in commodity, creating accounts or commodity exchanges often, there's a freezing of the assets and then a liquidation of the assets where the freezing of the assets sets the the price or the value at the moment of what you're supposed to hold in that account in your currency of your account. Right. And so the the bankruptcy judge and the trustee are treating this like a liquidation process using a local currency that was set at the time, whereas many folks don't consider that the intention of the account, but the account was meant to hold assets that it's really a portfolio of assets that shouldn't be liquidated to try and generate local currency because that's kind of the whole point of many of these crypto currencies themselves. David Sacks (00:16:43): Goes a custodial account, basically. David Friedberg (00:16:46): Right. A custodial account of assets versus a trading account of which is meant to ultimately be converted back into a local currency, which is typical. And I think that's what makes this such a challenging process. Jason Calacanis (00:16:59): Yeah. Just liquidate everything. Pool of money arrives. Distribut the money. David Sacks (00:17:06): The way bankruptcy works is that there's a pecking order that essentially you you have all the assets of the company. The job of the trustee is to liquidate them. They have a fiduciary duty to get the price they can for those assets. We have no reason to believe that they're they haven't because they seem to have waited a decent enough amount of time to get to benefit from this crypto recovery. And then what happens is, again, there's like a pecking order for the distribution of the proceeds, and you're gonna have debt holders. They're gonna be senior to the equity holders. The depositors are gonna be high up there as well. Government agencies that are owed fines are gonna be high up there. There's gonna be a very specific pecking order which the equity holders are last. Jason Calacanis (00:17:44): If we wanna go into the conspiracy corner and put our Chinfall hats on, you mentioned the IRS, the CFTC. Right? These government agencies are owned, like, over $20,000,000,000. If all this crypto profits hit their higher in the stack, they would be going directly to the government and the government's hand in process here. So it it doesn't David Sacks (00:18:02): look right. But I don't I don't think I don't think it's that's driving it. I think that I think bankruptcy rules are very specific, and they're completely designed around, again, assessing what the value of each claimant is at the time of bankruptcy and then creating a pecking order for distribution. So I I don't think there's any foul play here. I think that this is just the way that the cookie crumbles, but I think that it's simply wrong or misleading to say that the depositors were made whole. And I think the reason we thought that is because of these statements that were promulgated through the media, including the judge, to give people that impression. And I think it really just underscores that the media always has an agenda. And you gotta be so careful about imbibing their narratives because without knowing exactly what their agenda is, you can imbibe their bias. Jason Calacanis (00:19:00): Yeah. My understanding Sacks you. It's like the the they can get a little bit creative and the bankruptcy judges can be a little creative in trying to holistically think about what's the best thing for the business and all the stakeholder shareholders. But, anyway, we'll keep monitoring it. And like, you David before, anytime we make a mistake, we're gonna talk about it right up front. Anytime there's an omission or breaking news happens. We're gonna fill you in, and, that leads us to our second topic. Some more news broke about truth social. We had a nice spicy discussion about it last week. Since that time, shares of TMTG or dollar sign d DJT have dropped 30% And, the numbers for their revenue also confirmed it came out. It's pretty ugly. 4,000,000 in revenue for day 1,000,000 in losses. Flow it's only 30,000,000 shares. But there are some follow-up stories here. We'll get into. Trump is suing the 2 co founders to reduce their combined 8.6 Sacks to 0. His arguments co founder company up and properly mishandled the launch of true social, so they should forfeit their stock. These are both co founders previously on the apprentice. Trump owns Sacks, and he stands to receive an amount of 36,000,000 additional shares in the coming week, worth almost 2,000,000,000. So huge windfall for president Trump coming. In addition to that, Sacks are gonna love this, Russia, Russia, Russia. The Guardian is reporting TMTG raised $8,000,000 in emergency funding that might have possibly come from a Russian linked entity The Sacks, while it was on hold was running out of cash. David Sacks (00:20:29): Russia linked NNE. Jason Calacanis (00:20:31): You read this all about this in the Guardian. They tried to raise some money. They wound up raising 8,000,000 across 2 convertible notes from a bank called Sacks located in the Caribbean owned by a Russian who's reportedly The nephew of Alexander Schmernoff who used to work in Putin's executive office until 2017, is this a joke No. I I mean, I I wish it was a joke because I know I'm gonna get barbecue food for, like, by the, by the Trump supporters in the comments, but It is crazy that the Russians are Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:01): What is the Russian's name? Alexander Schmidtoff. Isn't that the name of a vodka? Jason Calacanis (00:21:05): Kind of is. S m I r n o v. Schmidtov. Maybe Smyrnaud. David Sacks (00:21:10): Trump doesn't even drink. Jason Calacanis (00:21:11): I mean, maybe. Yeah. I don't know if Putin drinks or not. Anyway That's a trump doesn't drink. David Friedberg (00:21:16): Putin doesn't choke either. Oh, yeah. Trump doesn't drink. That's true. Yeah. If support does. Push. Oh, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:23): really? Is that true? Jason Calacanis (00:21:24): Yeah. So, anyway, important caveats to all this stuff, interesting story, though. There's no indication that Trump media had any idea about the nature of these loans because, they were opaque. And, Trump media says it's propaganda and false narrative. Your thoughts on the Trump's back Sacks and and Russia? I know it's your favorite topic. David Sacks (00:21:44): Well, we're it's gonna be a really long 7 months if we're gonna bring up every one of these evidentiary stories of some sort of Russia connection to Trump. I mean Yeah. This article doesn't even make sense. Like you said, here's the giveaway in the middle of the article, they say the Guardian does quote, there is no indication that Trump or Trump media had any idea about the the loans beyond that they were opaque nor has the company or its executive has been accused of wrongdoing. So then what are we talking about here? Just there's some guy with a Russian sounding last name. I mean, literally, that's the story. It doesn't even make sense. I don't understand how you can get a loan and not know who your counterparty is. So This whole thing just seems like it's part of the milieu of let's create any connections we can between trump and Russia. And the giveaway on this was actually a New York Times story that just came out in the past week. It was called Russia amps up online campaign again Ukraine before US elections. Now the interesting thing about this story is that it was reporting allegations by Clint Watts who has apparently been hired by Microsoft to run something called the threat analysis center. And his job basically is to find Russian interference in the election. Now here's what I found interesting about this. Is that Clint Watts, that that name rang a bell for me. And it's because Clint Watts was involved in the Twitter files. So back in January of last year, Matt Taibi broke the story in the Twitter files. That Clint Watts was running the Hamilton 68 dashboard. He was basically behind that project. He's a former FBI agent. What was Hamilton 68? Hamilton 68 claimed that it was tracking 500 Russian accounts on social media who were engaged in manipulation of online discourse. Well, as it turns out, executives inside of Twitter knew who these accounts were. And they were just American accounts, some Canadian accounts. David Sacks (00:23:51): And in the words of Twitter executives, the whole Hamilton 68 dashboard was bull that was their word. And nevertheless, this Hamilton 68 project that Clint Watts ran put out story after story for years about how the Russians were meddling in American political debates. Jason these stories, the Hamilton Sixty eight claims became the basis for thousands, literally thousands of mainstream media stories claiming that Russia was interfering in American politics. It all turned out to be a total hoax, a total fraud, Now the amazing thing to me is you would think after an expose like this that it would at least be mentioned in the New York Times that the person they're quoting as saying that the Russians are meddling in our elections has a previous history of setting up Russia hoaxes and they don't even mention that despite the Tyubee story. Moreover, it's amazing to me that this was guy not only landed on his feet. He got a cushy job at Microsoft running their threats analysis center so he could put out more of this threat analysis on how the Russians were meddling. I can't imagine a less qualified person to be describing Russia threats than somebody who was caught red handed manufacturing bogus threats for years. Framework. Jason Calacanis (00:25:13): Yes. David Sacks (00:25:13): On any event, Jason, I would just say that, you know, going back to the SPF, story, the takeaway there is be careful what you're imbibing from the mainstream media because there's always an agenda. And until this story about true social from the Guardian has a little bit more detail to it. That makes sense to me. I'm just gonna put it in the category of more of the same. Speaker 2 (00:25:34): Yeah. And, you know, the Jason Calacanis (00:25:35): as I've said on this program before, Russia's explicit strategies, just put their fingerprints on everything and cost chaos like they did with the Internet research agency and all the trolling they were doing the last couple of elections. Friedberg thoughts on this. You concerned about the interference in the election? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:50): I'm not gonna Jason Calacanis (00:25:51): Nope. Get my David Friedberg (00:25:52): thoughts on this. Yep. This is this is nothing I feel like I should be thoughtful about. Jason Calacanis (00:25:56): Okay. Sounds good. Alright. And then wrapping up I had mentioned last episode about the insider trading charges in the company that was the stack before they purchased True social, and the 3 2 of the three men have been charged with insider trading just pleaded guilty. So Michael and Gerald Schwachman made 23,000,000 in illicit profit trading shares of DWAC before the merger was announced that each pled guilty to one account for securities fraud, faced 3 to 5 years. Neither was involved with truth. This is the stack that came before truth and There it is, folks. So there's your update. David Sacks (00:26:36): What's the relevance of this to being a top issue on the all in pot? I just think this can be a really long 7 I think it's gonna be a really long 7 months for till the election. If we're gonna bring up every mainstream media story that seeks to create a connection between Jason Calacanis (00:26:49): the Trump and Russia. This is an SEC filing. Yeah. This one has been due to a Russia. This is the insider trading 1. David Sacks (00:26:55): But you just said it has no connection to true social. So why are we even talking? Speaker 6 (00:26:58): No. No. Jason Calacanis (00:26:58): It's the these are the people who traded the stock before truth social merged with it. This is the Sacks that truth social and they traded when they found out that Trump was gonna be the spec that was merged with. So I'm just following and closing the loop on that. Breaking news, Google is reportedly considering making an offer to hire, acquire HubSpot. Training a $34,000,000,000 market cap that just came out, reported by Reuters who cited anonymous sources, shows up 7% on the news. If you don't know HubSpot, it's an awesome tool. We use it, CRM that blends marketing sales, customer service, all that kind of good stuff. And so here's our quarterly revenue since IPO. They've been public for 10 years since you pointed out in the group chat, Friedberg, and this has been slow and steady. Revenue, power of SAS, I guess, and a great product. I'm not a shareholder. Here's the quarterly revenue growth on a year over year basis. A stock chart, yadayada. Chamath, I guess, this is something we've been talking about here, which is M and a and M and a being pushed into the coal plunge and being frozen. And now we see something like this. What is what do you take from this if it's in fact a true report Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:03): mean, I think it's a bit of an odd acquisition. And the reason is that it's become pretty clear for all of big tech that any acquisition that they do is gonna be highly scrutinized. And so just from an EV, expected value perspective. If you're gonna try to acquire something and spend the next year beating your head against regulators, why not do it for something that's really valuable? And I would not characterize HubSpot as strategically valuable for Google. I think it's an important ecosystem player and it's probably better off as an independent company. So if I were Google, I'd be trying to buy something much more useful, like, perplexity or something. Jason Calacanis (00:28:44): Friedberg your thoughts on this? First of all, David Friedberg (00:28:46): it's super impressive hub spots been public. They went public at about a $1,000,000,000 market cap 10 years ago, and today, they're trading at 34,000,000,000. So organically develop this business, and they provide marketing automation software. So, basically, things like CRM tools, email marketing tools, So when you use advertising tools and you generate leads, those leads come in, what do you do with them? So let's say you're running a website that sells bicycles, people want information on bicycles. What do you do with those people after they get information on your website? And how do you track them down? And how do you sell them a bicycle? If you're a big enterprise software company and you start to get companies reaching out to you through your website, how do you then convert them So you use CRM tools, customer relationship management tools, Salesforce is a, obviously, a a behemoth in this space, but HubSpot has this integrated marketing automation and CRM platform for taking leads and then converting those leads and selling products to them. So the sales team and the marketing team uses HubSpot software to operate and and do their work and do it better. When I worked at Google in 2005, the main thing I worked on is how do we do a better job taking our advertisers and giving them more tools that they can then convert the leads that they're getting into customers. And so one of the first things I worked on in 2004, and then we closed the deal in 2005 was acquiring Urchin, which became Google Analytics, so that companies can better track how folks were converting on their website after they spend marketing dollars on Google. How do you see where those people go on your website and what they're actually doing on site and ultimately make your website better so you can sell on more products and more software. And one of the the things I worked on was CRM. So I this conversation with the executive team, with Larry and Sergei and others at that time, and we talked about what should we buy a CRM company? David Friedberg (00:30:39): And we actually had a conversation they did with Mark Benioff at the time, and we talked about is there a way to buy Salesforce? And Salesforce went public shortly before Google and it was more richly valued than I think the appetite was at the time to make this leap to buying a CRM company We actually spent quite a bit of time meeting with, and I personally spent time meeting with NetSuite, which ultimately got rolled in. I think it was, Larry Ellison was the primary owner of NetSuite. We looked at a few other CRM companies, and this was always meant to be the next solution that you plug into the advertising platform at Google. You get all these leads from advertising and how do you convert those leads and make them customers. And many of the other things we looked at were things like checkout software and software that would let you run a website to sell your products to customers on the website. And so which became Shopify in a way. Which became Shopify and and we had looked very deeply at doing this at Google is actually building a product called Google checkout. It wasn't very successful, but it was to do exactly this, which is to build a basically a Shopify type competitor. And so this has always been the natural fit for Google's business. Google made a quarter $1,000,000,000,000 last year in advertising revenue. And then they didn't make much revenue after the advertising generated leads because Google doesn't have a great commerce business, and they don't have any of these other enterprise tools. So this is a very natural fit into Google's advertising business and taking all of the leads from advertising and better converting them and giving your sales team the tools they need to convert those leads into customers. So it makes great strategic sense. It's been a concept that's been around for 20 years at Google, Certainly, they're gonna face regulatory scrutiny, but it doesn't have the same sort of overlap with the ad network businesses because they're not very heavily in the ad network business at HubSpot, but it's a really good kind of enterprise software plug plugin. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:31): Some would say acquisitions are 1 of 3 types. They are defensive. They are offensive or they are about reinforcing the status quo. If you had to bucket HubSpot into one of those three things, is this an offensive m and a? Is it a defensive m and a, or is this status quo? David Friedberg (00:32:49): I think it gives advertisers more tools that can integrate with AdWords, which is how advertisers spend ad dollars is through AdWords platform. And so as a result, it locks the advertisers onto Google's ad platform. And so I think that the benefit to Timoff's point is that they're gonna both protect ad revenue at Google by locking in people on the on the CRM side. And the marginal impact they'll get from selling CRM services, not that impactful to the business. I mean, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:22): If you could spend, let's say, with the premium, $50,000,000,000 on HubSpot or $5,000,000,000 on perplexity today, Which one would you buy? David Friedberg (00:33:33): I think you gotta buy HubSpot. You're protecting to your point. You're protecting a quarter $1,000,000,000,000 ad business. HubSpot makes 2,000,000,000 in revenue, so it's 1% of the size of Google's ad business. And it helps you lock in some percentage of that 250,000,000,000 So that's an important strategic acquisition, I think, for Google. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:51): So you'd rather buy something in marketing automation versus AI. David Friedberg (00:33:55): I think they should spend the money in AI, but I think you have to buy something to Jason Calacanis (00:34:00): It's a good question David Friedberg (00:34:01): to further the revenue. David Sacks (00:34:02): Yeah. What does Google accomplish that they couldn't do with an integration. David Friedberg (00:34:07): A partnership, you mean? David Sacks (00:34:09): Well, I mean, uh-uh, they could just build on HubSpot platform, just create a connector between Google Ads and HubSpot. I think David Friedberg (00:34:15): that exists, but it's already, actually. David Sacks (00:34:16): Exactly. So what's the point? What do you generally understand? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:19): I think what Friedberg is saying in nicer length is they're gonna make it a Roche motel. Jason Calacanis (00:34:24): Lock in. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:25): You get in and you can't get out. I mean, it gives Jason Calacanis (00:34:27): you the full life cycle of the advertiser Sacks. So, I mean, you understand the funnel. Right? You get the actual profile of the customer. Yeah. The problem with the Roche motel M Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:36): and A strategy is that people sniff that out pretty quickly. Then then they start to carve out these very discrete parts of the product that they want you to divest in order to get the whole thing done. That's the thing that's surprisingly I think the regulators have gotten smart about, and I suspect it's not that the regulators themselves know these discrete ideas, but that the answers are fed to them by competitors. Who wanna just slow these processes down and make these things convoluted and complicated. Jason Calacanis (00:35:02): Oh, they snitch? They send this niche in? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:05): I I think it's very smart for David Friedberg (00:35:06): a competitor to actually Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:07): call a regulator and give them a roadmap of how to make the deal happen, but in a very convoluted, complicated way. You remember, I suspect that's what David Friedberg (00:35:17): happened in Microsoft Activision. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:17): Microsoft brilliantly fought it off Right? And so they were able to get the whole thing done completely on their terms. But in many other cases, you get these discrete things where it's like, okay, divest this sell that, keep this. And it's like, why why are we doing this? But I just think the Roche Motel strategy is harder to get done these days because folks will know how to make it super convoluted. Speaker 2 (00:35:40): I will tell you when when when a David Friedberg (00:35:41): big company like this makes a big acquisition offer like this, as much as I know Google's business, I think it's a generalization that can be grown here. It's usually a negative signal about organic growth. Meaning, if I'm a Google shareholder, I should look at this and I should say, why do you need to make this acquisition? Why is there an indication in this bid that there is some advertising revenue leakage going on. And then I should go spend time trying to understand that. I think there's a really important question there. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:14): But this is why I'm asking you, like, obviously, they're not gonna do this because things are going perfectly in that space. And so If you're losing share, you're not gonna be losing it to Bing. You're losing it to some form of AI, which is why, again, it's a bit of a head scratcher. Spend a lot less money and just buy everything in the space or spend 50,000,000,000 and buy everything possible in the space. Jason Calacanis (00:36:33): To give you a just a little context here, This is gonna be by far their largest acquisition. If it's true, if it gets closed, this is all speculation right now. Looking Sacks, Motorola Mobility, was bought for 12,500,000,000. There were patents. There was the hardware business, which they spun out. You can go look up the deal details there. But there's a long tail of, companies they've bought, nestlabs, Fitbit, and YouTube, 3,000,002,000,000,1.6000000000, if you remember, they bought a Mandyant. I've never even heard of the cybersecurity company, 5,400,000,000. They bought an s for 3,000,000,000 double click, 3,000,000,000. That was a long time ago. It was probably triple that value in today's dollars. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:08): By the way, remember Fitbit Fitbit took, 18 or 24 months to close? Jason Calacanis (00:37:13): It took a while. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:37:15): Deep deep police scrutinized. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:16): If you think a wearable on your wrist is gonna get scrutinized when bought by Google, imagine what happens when a $50,000,000,000 marketing automation company gets bought by Google. Jason Calacanis (00:37:24): Yeah. It's really interesting. David Sacks (00:37:26): Look, I, I don't think this acquisition makes any sense. I'm kind of in Jamoskamp. This is this would be a very odd acquisition. I'm not even sure the story true. There's been no confirmation of an actual bid made. This was basically an anonymous source saying that Google had hired investment bankers to you know, maybe kick the tires. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:42): Well, typically these bankers float these problems like this because they wanna pump the deal. David Sacks (00:37:48): But, yeah, imagine what the fees would be on $50,000,000,000 acquisition, but I would like to not say Jason Calacanis (00:37:54): buyers lose. Yeah. I wouldn't have these auctions. David Sacks (00:37:57): Well, look, it's gonna be very hard for any big tech company to do a $50,000,000,000 acquisition of anything just that given that Lina Conley FTC are opposed to bigness in and of itself. But I think from a strategic point of view, I I agree this this deal would be odd. I don't really see the connection to the Google Ads business. HubSpot is used by companies to manage their pipelines. It's a competitor to Salesforce. I see it all the time. I see startups using it all the time as the alternative to Salesforce because it's sort of easier to use, more user friendly. And the main thing it does is you have your pipeline in there. You bring in the leads at the top of the funnel, and then you work them down to close deals. David Friedberg (00:38:36): Where do those leads come from, Sacks? David Sacks (00:38:38): I understand that they can come from Google AdWords, but David Friedberg (00:38:41): most of them come from from ad spend. That's the connection. And it's always been this idea that those 2 should be integrated. David Sacks (00:38:48): Okay. But but the the point is that if you think about your top of funnel, if you're one of the customers of HubSpot using this, Google AdWords is just one of a number of channels. David Friedberg (00:38:59): Yeah. That's right. David Sacks (00:38:59): So you could be getting your leads through inbound. You could be getting your leads through events you could be getting your leads through. I mean, there's so many different sources. So so it doesn't make it doesn't make sense to me that somehow Google would need to acquire a company to manage, not their advertisers, but the people their advertisers are trying to reach as one of a dozen different potential marketing channels. It just doesn't really make sense. I mean, the the acquisitions where Google's been really successful have been broad horizontal platform plays like Android. This is as vertical as it gets. This is CRM software. This is basically Google getting into a vertical app for sales and marketing teams. David Friedberg (00:39:44): Yeah. I have a CRM. Yeah. David Sacks (00:39:46): If you think if you think about the business that this is most like, it would be G suite and because it it's an enterprise play, and that's the most neglected part of Google's business. Jason Calacanis (00:39:56): I think you're both missing the key piece to this. I think this is about the data. You look at these. These are the leads and the great contacts in the database of the customer, which Google doesn't have access to, and they can close the loop, and they can make targeting of ads and get people deeper, and they can fight for a larger percentage or to your point, Sacks, yes, you've got 20 different inbound feeds coming in for leads. If Google knows the leads that are already in there, they can then retarget them across their entire ad network, which is the largest in the world. That's the value. If I know your 10,000 best customers, and then I know when they're on Google searching, and I know that when they're in a Chrome browser, I know when they're on an Android phone, if they happen to use man, I can just start getting more of your ad dollars into it. That's what's actually happening here. It's they don't want a Sacks business. They want the data. They wanna retarget Sacks, and then they wanna make close more sales and be more efficient than TikTok and Facebook and Meta. It's about David Sacks (00:40:51): Do you think they'd be allowed to use their customer's data to somehow target their ad product? Jason Calacanis (00:40:56): Absolutely. 100%. If you if I'm opting into it and I say, hey. You have 10,000 people in your database. You wanna go find them? We have you have 1000 of them connected that came in through Google search. What about the other 12,000? Do you wanna try to find them in the Google ad network? We can put that together for you. That actually. If somebody's gonna snitch on David Friedberg (00:41:11): this deal, it's about the data. I'll tell you back in just improving conversion rates drives more ad Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:18): revenue. David Friedberg (00:41:19): Bingo. And the key measurement we had the year after we bought Urchin and launched Google Analytics was we looked how much an advertiser spent on Google's AdWords network before and after they installed Google Analytics. Jason that year, it was a ton of money. At the time, we saw an incremental roughly $500,000,000 in revenue in ad spend with folks who installed Google Analytics from before versus after because they then started to change their websites and tweak their sales flow or their marketing flow on their website to better convert customers so they could spend more on the network because higher conversion rates means you can spend a higher CPM on advertising. So the the deeper you go from an integration perspective in closing sales, the better you actually can get and the more money you can spend on marketing on the front end. And so that benefits the growth in the network. Jason Calacanis (00:42:11): And to build on your point, Friedberg, this is why Amazon and Uber and Instacart have become such major major players in advertising. They have the data on sales information. They sell off and they sell conversions at the point sacks of the shopping cart about to be clicked on. And Amazon's been taking some of that in in Instacart, but intercepting some of those ads Yeah. David Friedberg (00:42:35): I'll speculate on this for a second. I think that if I'm sitting inside of Google, I see the capability of our AI tools, our generative AI tools, in being able to improve marketing and sales, processes. And I'm saying, how do we leverage that? Well, guess what? We don't actually have access to our Sacks and marketing automation workflow because we don't have a CRM tool. So then the natural strategic thing is how do we get a CRM tool? Okay. Well, we can't buy Salesforce. Well, we could buy HubSpot. That makes sense. Jason Calacanis (00:43:05): Number 2. David Friedberg (00:43:05): So then we could up we could apply our generative AI capabilities to improve conversion efficiency and HubSpot and probably grow revenue there as well. So it could be a fairly quickly accretive deal, and there's the benefit to the ad Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:16): I think the Roach Motel idea is probably the best strategy here. Yeah. You're right. I just think I would if I were them with $50,000,000,000, they're what, like, what's 30,000,000,000, David Friedberg (00:43:26): by the way? 35. They gotta Jason Calacanis (00:43:28): pay 50 percent more, 25% more. David Friedberg (00:43:30): It's already floated up. So you gotta imagine it's probably a $40,000,000,000 deal. Yeah. Okay. 40. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:35): Okay. So they David 10,000,000,000. David Sacks (00:43:36): I think the synergies here are negligible. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:39): If it took Google almost 2 years to get a An accelerometer on a wrist approved from antitrust. This is gonna take 3 years. Jason Calacanis (00:43:46): Sacks. Yep. So why bother? So, like, do something much more disruptive. I haven't answered that, but I wanna hear Saks good? David Sacks (00:43:52): Well, I just looked up how many customers HubSpot has. HubSpot has 205,000 customers as of the end of 2023. Now you look up Google AdWords. It has 1,200,000 businesses. Okay? And I'm sure that's not 100% overlapping. David Friedberg (00:44:06): Every one of them should be using HubSpot. That's hugely creative. I agree. Yeah. David Sacks (00:44:11): I don't think that Google has the leverage to drive all of its AdWords customers into using a David Friedberg (00:44:16): CRM product. If if it gets 5% of them, it makes this deal make sense. Jason Calacanis (00:44:21): Interesting. David Sacks (00:44:22): That part is kinda interesting if they can actually drive their ad customers. What David Friedberg (00:44:26): they did with with double click? David Sacks (00:44:27): Double click was actually advertised David Friedberg (00:44:29): No. But they had other other places that they could take their AdWords advertisers to spend that the double click network had access to. Anyway, I, I hear you. Yeah. And there was another set of advertising on a management tool that double click had that that that's an enterprise software tool that they were able to sell into their advertisers that they didn't have themselves. Jason Calacanis (00:44:45): Jamoff, let me ask you a market's question here. If we wind up with a Republican conservative GOP, presidency and administration for the next 4 years, which seems like a a possibility here, a strong possibility. What does that do for M And A markets? Do you think they might be opening here, and the reason Google's even considering this is because they anticipate this deal might fall into a new administration that is gonna fire Alina Khan, possibly, probably. I actually think the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:15): I think the Democrats and the Republicans are really well aligned here. They don't like deals. And I don't think you're going to see a big sea change. They hate big tech for different reasons, but they equally want to slow them down. If you look at the non big tech m and a deals, they're gonna get slowed down for different reasons. So, for example, like the big US deal merger with Nippon's deal that was announced. Biden has one set of issues, but I suspect, you know, if Donald Trump were to get elected, his issues will be more about further hollowing out middle America. And so that deal will probably get stopped for different reasons. But so I think that they're both actually roughly aligned in not allowing a lot of this big M and A to happen. Jason Calacanis (00:45:59): But for different reasons. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:00): For different reasons, but the outcome is the same. So this is why I just kinda think like if you're gonna do a deal, you gotta do something that's like small enough where it'll pass muster. You know it to be really valuable. And the regulators will be like, ah, whatever. Just let it happen. Jason Calacanis (00:46:17): Sacks, what do you think? Do you think a Trump administration would become more risky allow more M and A. They seem to be actually cozying up to Sacks in a major way. David Sacks (00:46:25): Well, I agree with Chamath that there's a lot of anger on the public side towards Big Tech because of censorship and bias. And Google is as guilty of that as any of these big tech companies. So I don't expect Republican administration to have Google on its good graces. That being said, I do think Republicans have a more traditional definition of antitrust than Lina Khan does. And I think that a Republican antitrust enforcer would probably be guided by market share considerations 1st and foremost. And so in this case, since Google does not have a CRM play, then based on a traditional definition of antitrust, they would be able to make this acquisition. Whereas, I think, again, Lena Khan is just opposed to bigness and doesn't want big tech companies getting any bigger. So there's no guarantee that Republicans would allow it. I would say that if you got the right FTC commissioner or right DOJ, I'd say there's a possibility of it being more likely to go through. Jason Calacanis (00:47:24): To remind everybody, Unicon's interpretation of antitrust is future competition, trying to protect future competition. The traditional one is consumer based. Hey, are consumers benefiting or not? And so that's actually the that's one of the top 3 guests I wanna prefer. David Sacks (00:47:41): Market share is really the traditional test. Jason Calacanis (00:47:43): Yeah. Market share and then the impact that has on consumer choice and price. David Sacks (00:47:47): Kinda just go back on to the synergy point. I just wanna Please. I just wanna brainstorm about this for a second. Let's say you're one of Google's 1,200,000 businesses that are using AdWords. There's a high chance you're also using Facebook. There's a high chance you're also doing other kinds of advertising. You might be doing physical world advertising. You might be doing events. There might be a dozen different channels through which you get leads. Now all of a sudden, Google sends you an email saying, hey. We acquired HubSpot. You know, once you click here to use us for CRM, is that really gonna drive a change in behavior from that small business? Beyond what they would already do today. It doesn't seem that sooner. Just stick to me. David Friedberg (00:48:27): Some percent of them. Not all. Maybe 5%. Again, that's 5% is 50,000. That's an email campaign. David Sacks (00:48:35): I mean, I just don't see the leverage, basically. Jason Calacanis (00:48:37): Yeah. I don't know if I agree. David Friedberg (00:48:39): But, I mean, that's why we're here. David Sacks (00:48:42): If Google did a deep product integration where the leads that you acquired through Google AdWords magically appeared in HubSpot, and that's where you went to go work them, then, yes, maybe Maybe there'd be synergy. Jason Calacanis (00:48:57): Just looking at this on the numbers, since we like to do back of the envelope here, $250,000,000,000 add revenue, 1,200,000,000 in advertisers, almost exactly like 200,000 per advertiser. Obviously, there's some big ones. Obviously, it's a long tail. Man, if you can get some number of those to spend 10, 20, 30% more, could be quite accretive, to the bottom line. It would pay for the acquisition over a short period of time, and we'll see. It's interesting discussion for sure. Alright. If you missed it, John Stewart did a segment on AI on the daily show. He came back. He's doing, I think, Mondays every week, and it went viral. And it was about how AI is gonna change our jobs faster than any previous labor revolution. So it seems like the public is starting to get an idea, about AI wiping out large lots of jobs, and it's starting to hit the mainstream. CEOs like Brian Chesky from Airbnb and Aaron Levy from Box. I had them on this weekend start ups in the last year. They said they anticipate 30 to 50% productivity gains for a lot of the jobs in their companies, developers, customer support, all that stuff. And we cover with Kloaner's AI customer support agent doing the job of 700 full time employees and driving $40,000,000 increase in profits this year. Gotta yada, we've we've talked about this over and over again, but it seems to be tipping over into public consciousness. We, Chamath, have talked about whether humans will find more work to do or if this is gonna truly displace people. I think we all kind of feel like at least to the best of my memory, we all feel like new jobs will be created, but it is entering the public's consciousness. What impact is that gonna have if the public starts thinking, AI is gonna take their job Jason. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:32): I mean, I think that social media will make this perception more widespread than it's been at other moments of revolution and innovation, but we've gone through this before. I'd like to summarize my thoughts in three charts. Okay. And I call this This time, it's not different. So chart number 1 for those watching on YouTube is a look at the components US GDP. This is from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Now this goes from 1929 up to 2011. Doesn't go all the way back to the 1800s, and we're missing the last decade. But the point is the following, if you can see the chart, I'll if you can't see it, I'll describe it to you, which is that GDP, the components of GDP are surprisingly resilient and roughly the same over long stretches of time, which is that even though GDP goes up, Consumer consumption is always around 70%. Net exports are a few percent plus or minus gross domestic investment is around the 20% level, and then government consumption is around the 20% level. And that's what adds up to GDP. So that's an important thing to note. Why? Because in the absence of something very acute like World War 2, these things don't change over long periods of time. Okay. So if that is true, what happens when you have any kind of a revolution. So let's look at the industrial revolution. So the shift from farms to factories. And what you saw was exactly what people should be worried about with respect to AI, which is in specific job classes, things just fall to 0. So unemployment basically went to 0. And the income associated with those jobs also went to 0. So this is what people are worried about. But if you remember the last chart, the point is somehow we found a way to find growth, and this is what's demonstrated on this final chart, which is when you look at US Productivity And Worker Compensation, is going from World War 2 to today. You find that every time we find a new way of innovating, compensation tends to track it. So if you take these 3 things together, number 1, which is the components of GDP rarely change, Number 2 is that, yes, there are certain categories of jobs that always get disrupted away, but the third is the most important, which is that as productivity goes up, which is what AI should give us, just as we've seen in the past, compensation also goes up, which means new job classes will be created. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:02): So I think the macro picture, if you've looked back 100 years, is that this is like many other moments in time. It feels more personal right now because we're all living it. Right? None few of us lived the agrarian to industrial revolution. Jason Calacanis (00:53:16): Yeah. No. We missed it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:17): And few of us lived the technological revolution. Right? We kinda came in at the heels of it. But I suspect that this time is not different. Jason Calacanis (00:53:24): Friedberg, thoughts on this. I think you've said something similar on past episodes. But it is kinda tipping and into public consciousness, and it's also affecting white collar jobs this time, not just people in fields picking berries. And so those people may be a little more vocal, and we've seen massive layoffs in tech, massive layoffs in media, And those jobs don't seem to be coming back. People seem to be get taking the gains and just having people on the team be 30% more efficient as Brian told me on my other pod. So what do you think? Friedberg, is this time different, or is it the same? David Friedberg (00:54:02): So here's this article from June 2 1983 in the New York Times all about how computers are eliminating jobs. In industries that were effectively offline knowledge work industries at the time, creating engineering designs, creating architectural drawings, I think this article spoke to the fact that these jobs were going to be eliminated. And as we all know, those jobs actually got enhanced by computers productivity went up and new sub industries emerged. And in fact, the overall industry is actually grew in some cases when we were fearful of them being replaced due to the automation enabled by software. So I think that in this particular sense, We can talk about the industrial revolution enabling through manufacturing systems and centralized production. A a replacement of manual labor with machines. What we're talking about now is a replacement of knowledge work that has been aided by computers with machines. So the machines no longer even need the human, but the reality is that these systems are actually gonna give humans 10 to a 100x leverage. So when you think about that, one person could spend 3 weeks making an architectural drawing today, What if that one person could make an architectural drawing every 6 hours? So the question then is, do do we stop making architectural drawings and we fire a bunch of architects? Or does the cost of making an architectural drawing drop by 90% and it enables us to do more detailed, higher resolution, architectural drawings across more places, more frequently, and the industry actually booms. And what we've seen historically is that when productivity goes up, costs go down, the actual volume balloons and the economy grows. So it it's a it's an example where I think in this particular case, We will see these tools creating more leverage for knowledge work instead of just simply replacing knowledge work, and that humans will start to shift to a higher order of work. And we'll see the economy grow and productivity go up, as a result. So so I think that's my kind of key read on on on the story but it's very hard to connect the dots for people without having all of these historical cases. David Friedberg (00:56:13): And I think one of the ways to think about doing this usefully is you go back to the software revolution and all the stuff that we were doing with pencils and papers before computers, we actually didn't lose all those jobs. The people could now do a hundred times or a 1000 or a million times as much work and new industries emerged Jason productivity went up and the economy grew. And so we just have to have this this realization as the starts to take hold, that the industries will change Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:39): and that the systems will actually provide leverage, not replacement. Jason Calacanis (00:56:45): Yeah. It's such a good point. And I think what you teach your kids is, like, really important at this moment in time, like, having a job that is replaced by AI or that could be greatly replaced by AI might be a mistake. And if you think about being a conductor Friedberg or a Maestro, conductor of an orchestra. I think that's the job of the future is can you work with these agents? Forget about co pilots because that's phase 1 of all this, but agents are phase 2 where you have an agent who's writing copy, who's should the HubSpot example you get before, you know, a designer who's in the cloud, who's an agent, an AI agent, making you work and they use stitch all these things together. I've been loading chat JPT with my kids constantly asking history questions and whatever questions they want. I've been teaching them how to use chat GPT. David Friedberg (00:57:31): That's great. Yeah. I mean, I think it's like a like, there's this whole transition of humans doing manual labor to doing knowledge work. Where you're using software to create digital output to now having more folks spend more of their time being conceptualists or creator, where you can kind of be an art architect or a creator of something, and the system just generates it. You know, you you state your intended objective and the system solves for it. Jason Calacanis (00:57:56): Yes. David Friedberg (00:57:56): As opposed to, hey. I gotta go build the Excel spreadsheet and check the formula in every cell and do all the manual. What if I just say, hey. Here's what I want the model to do. Please generate it for me. And you get the result, it enables you to do a hundred times Jason Calacanis (00:58:09): more work. So the analogy conductor or, you know, August for leader. Sacks, what do you think? This is, your your you're on the populist side. You really have your finger on what Americans think. And that's a compliment. It's a literal compliment. But I do think you're I think you've become a pop especially as the longer I've known you, you know, insurance for over 20 years, you've become more populous. So What what's the word on the street here amongst, you know, Jen Pop? And and now you think they're taking this news when they see somebody like John. Sure what they respect. When you see somebody like Jonathan's John Stewart, you know, doing this, that's like gonna hit a large swath of these, you know, you know, elites that we've talked about before on the show who are losing their jobs or maybe their salaries are getting capped. David Sacks (00:58:53): Well, first of all, Jason to quote Senator Marcus from Gladiator. I may not be a man of the people, but I do try to be a man for the Jason Calacanis (00:59:00): people. Yes. Exactly. Speaker 6 (00:59:03): So, Jason Calacanis (00:59:03): my god. Did you see the AI? Did you see the AI from some Y Combinator company or where they, like, made a little video of us and, like, we're talking about somebody's nuts. And then they were like, you said, oh, I'm gonna ask my Butler to ask my assistant to ask my house manager to then ask my show for her to pick those up. It's like it's a pretty great clip. David Sacks (00:59:24): Yeah. It looked funny. Look, to me, Frank, no one cares what John Stewart thinks. He's never been less relevant and less funny. This is a story that the media has been hyping up for months now. COVID's over, so they need something else to scare us with. And what they really should be talking is that we've got 2 wars that risk spiraling out of control. David Friedberg (00:59:46): And that David Sacks (00:59:47): They don't wanna go there. They don't wanna go there. Or or the National Debt. Exactly. Right? They don't wanna go there either. Jason Calacanis (00:59:52): Because none David Sacks (00:59:53): of those issues reflect well. On the current administration and power. So they're gonna scare us with this. Now look, in the short to medium term, AI leads to productivity gains. In the long term, it may lead to job losses, but as you guys pointed out, hopefully by then, we'll have lots of other jobs created by the productivity boom that we're gonna get. And this has been the case throughout history with regards to technology improvements. And if we don't have these productivity improvements, what's gonna drive the growth in GDP? What's gonna allow us to pay off this enormous national debt that seems to be. Speaker 8 (01:00:25): Yep. David Sacks (01:00:25): You know, so large that we it's unrepayable. We need the productivity gains. That AI is gonna unlock without them were definitely toast. So, look, I I don't put place a lot of stock in this John Stewart story It's just one of many that the media is is creating to try and scare us about AI. Jason Calacanis (01:00:41): That's actually a great guest. John Stewart would be a great guest along with Nina Khan. Put those on the list. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:46): Have you seen this, clip where Young La Coon basically says our best LLM is fifty times smaller than what a four year old has processed since they've been Jason Calacanis (01:00:55): The four Speaker 8 (01:00:56): year old is awake. Has been awake, a total of 16000 hours. And you say, okay, 15000 hours multiply this by Sacks seconds per hour. And then figure out, like, what's the bandwidth of the optical nerve going to the cortex. It's about 20 megabytes. Right? You have 1,000,000 nerve fibers per, per per eye and about 10 bytes per second, right, give or take. So multiply. That's 10 to 15 bytes by the time you're 4. 50 times more than whatever LLM like the biggest scenario in the world have been trained off. Okay? So what that tells you is that in the space of a few months, the baby has seen more information than the biggest developments that we have. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:39): The point is that the David Friedberg (01:01:40): and this is one Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:41): of the foremost experts in AI and really one of the fathers of modern AI what he's basically saying is it's still more artificial than intelligent. And everybody needs to take a deep breath and understand that there's just gonna be a lot more work where you get to this omnipresent agent that just replaces and destroys everything and thinks on its own. Jason Calacanis (01:02:00): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:01): I'm willing to bet on all of us versus a bunch of four year olds. Jason Calacanis (01:02:04): And I just wanna say Kumbaya to Davos as well with a clip from David. Thanks for letting me choose that. Yeah. It's interesting, Sacks. Like, The number of jobs that will be replaced or augmented and then the creation of jobs, and then you start thinking about, well, how many jobs in the real world, I saw Waymo is doing Uber Eats deliveries. And you just think, well, more people are gonna be able to afford Uber Eats, which is kind of expensive to to use. So consumption's gonna go up. And then you think about the Optimus and then what's the other robot company that's making a general human robot? Figure. And, man, those are starting to get really interesting, and and I think that's gonna be the unlock. So maybe you could speak a little bit to Sacks. What do you think happens when we start getting humanoid robots in the mix? And do you have any investments in that space? David Sacks (01:02:52): I don't because I don't I don't do that kind of hardware r and d. I mean, look, I think you're right that AI does lead to robotics because one of the hard things about robotics is just having the the robot not just move, but understand what's happening in the world around it and then make the right decisions about how to react to that. And so LOMs do start creating a path for the robots to be able to make intelligent decisions without having to be programmed with a bunch of if then statements. Right? And, I mean, self driving kinda does this too. I mean, self driving is sort of the early it's kinda like the early prototype for these kinds of robots, and that that's why it's not a surprise that Tesla is developing optimists is because you think about what self driving is. It's It's a device, a car with a whole bunch of cameras on it. It takes in all that visual information, and then it makes decisions about how to move and how to react. And then it's it's trained based on mirroring human decisions, all those human decisions that Tesla's been able to gather through the combination of self driving with humans intervening allows it to train the the self driving, I guess, brain, you could say. Jason Calacanis (01:04:09): Well, and it's also Sacks moving at 2 or 3 miles per hour. So it can take its time. And if you haven't seen this figure, this combines the language model with what you're discussing Sacks. The language models when you show them a picture and you say, hey. And this is from figure, and there's a this is a their robot, and it says, hey. Give me something to you guys seen this before? David Sacks (01:04:29): I've heard some of the the founders these robotics companies talk about why they create robots in a humanoid shape, and it's not just because they're trying to create a replacement for humans or something like that. It's also because now they can point cameras at the way that humans move David Friedberg (01:04:44): Yes. David Sacks (01:04:44): And so they can actually train these robots on how humans move and react to things. So you're able to kinda create a large data set kinda like with self driving, so that the robots are able to learn how to how to move. And I I've seen a different video where, optimists, the Tesla robot is folding shirts. Jason Calacanis (01:05:03): Yeah. Pretty impressive. Yeah. What's what's really interesting about this, Friedberg, is when I spoke to the the people who are making these, evolution has made humans to operate in the world most efficiently over whatever number of years and creatures before us. So in fact, the world is optimized for the human body type. And so maybe you could talk a little bit about what you think is gonna happen with these robots, Friedberg, in the in the short and medium term. When will we have one of these robots in our houses? What will the price point be in 5 to 10 years and what will they be doing in 5 to 10 years? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:42): I don't know if you can explore David Friedberg (01:05:44): we should explore that question at the all in summit 2024. Jason Calacanis (01:05:47): Okay. Shout out to Elon. Elon, can you bring optimus to the event, please? David Sacks (01:05:52): Jason, I don't think it's a 5 year time frame. I think it's longer than that. That's just my guess. And one of the reasons is if you look at the use of robots in, call it, industrial production today, They don't want humans getting too close to them. They're actually kinda dangerous because you have these arms flying around. They move quickly. They're very heavy. You get banged on the head by one of them, it's gonna take you out. So Jason Calacanis (01:06:15): the idea David Sacks (01:06:16): of having a robot in your house that's capable of freely moving, you have to make that so safe to a point that they just haven't gotten to yet with robots. So there's just gonna be, like, a lot of fine tuning work that happens before this is a domestic product. I think in the near term, it's all about industrial applications or maybe even military applications. Jason Calacanis (01:06:36): But it's it and if you've ever been to the the gig of factories, I was doing a little tour of 1 of the months, and somebody grabbed because I almost wandered into one of those areas and they have tape on the floor, then they have a wall, etcetera. But if you even get within a certain Closeness with this tape on the floor, it shuts the whole thing down because they're afraid somebody's gonna get crushed behind one of these arms. Chumab, I'll I'll give it to you. When will we have one of these robots in our homes for the price of a Prius? Now up by the way, Prius is a car, That costs about $50,000 that common folk drive. So $50,000 robot in our houses. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:16): I think it'll be less than that. I think it's gonna be in the next 2 or 3 years. You'll have a domestic help robot that you can probably pay a thousand bucks a month for. Jason Calacanis (01:07:25): Okay. Which would be David Friedberg (01:07:26): 2 to 3. Jason Calacanis (01:07:27): Like a $100,000 car payment. That would be the equivalent of a car payment on a $100,000 car. So, okay, you say under 5, You shake 3. What do you think? Free Sacks ain't bet. $1000 a month robot, $100,000 sticker price. When will we have that in our homes? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:41): No. No. I I think it's a 1000 a month. 1000 a month, Jason Calacanis (01:07:44): which would be the equivalent over whatever number of months. David Friedberg (01:07:46): And what is it? It does its general purpose. Those different stuff. Jason Calacanis (01:07:50): General purchase robot, $1000 a month. 50 payments. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:53): I think it washes the dishes. I think it will do the laundry, Jason Calacanis (01:07:57): take out the trash. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:58): There'll be like a whole set of house household tasks that it will do. David Friedberg (01:08:02): Walk the dog? Jason Calacanis (01:08:04): No. No. Not responsible for a live creature. What do you say, free bird? $1000 a month at home robot does your dishes. There's a there's a great bet for us. Give us the over under. How many years Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:15): for you? Jason Calacanis (01:08:15): I'm not sure. I think there's something of science. Come on, man. Give us a new year. Speaker 2 (01:08:19): Well, I I don't think it David Friedberg (01:08:20): necessarily follows this general purpose model. I think that there are likely gonna be more narrow application ranges, and they're not gonna necessarily be humanoid in form factor. I don't know if you guys have seen, GECO Robotics. Have you guys seen this company? Are you guys investors in this? Jason Calacanis (01:08:43): Nope. David Friedberg (01:08:44): Pretty impressive, like, suite of, autonomous products that do specific things in industrial settings. So they have, like, robots that climb on the outside of buildings and look for cracks using special scanning equipment, but they're very autonomous in how they operate and what they can do. And they've got a whole class of robots that can then be each one of those robots could do many different tasks for many different applications. And so the form factors, they've got kind of a set of form factors, meaning a set of robots that look differently and have different capabilities of them, like little spider legs or arms or or whatever. And then they can be applied to go do something autonomously, and then they just run and they do it. Jason Calacanis (01:09:30): If you pull that up, you'll see it climbing walls, riding along pipes, Yeah. They're purpose built. David Friedberg (01:09:36): Well, they're not purpose. That's what's interesting. They're they're sort of a narrow range of applications, but they're not specific to do only one thing. Speaker 6 (01:09:45): And David Friedberg (01:09:45): so they can work in different environments and do different things. And so you'll kind of pick from their suite of robots which ones you wanna use to do different different tasks and then they go and do it. And it's really interesting. They're mostly using them for industrial monitoring applications right now, like looking on bridges for breaks, and Yeah. Check cleaning, cleaning windows Jason Calacanis (01:10:04): here. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:10:05): Cleaning windows, all that kind of stuff. Jason Calacanis (01:10:07): Oh, cleaning windows. That's a good one. David Friedberg (01:10:08): Yeah. They've got, like, a really cool suite, and I think that's what we're likely to see in domestic settings as well. Jason Calacanis (01:10:14): Alright. So you David Friedberg (01:10:14): might like that. I'm just I'm just not taking Jason Calacanis (01:10:16): you over 3. David Friedberg (01:10:17): By the way, I I will say the Sacks of GECO indicates that there's far more money to be made in industrial applications and there is in consumer applications. Today. I disagree. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:10:29): I think every human's gonna have one of these in I think every household in America Every middle class household in America will have one of these $1000 a month robots in 7 years. I'll give it 7. You you say Did Speaker 6 (01:10:41): you write? David Friedberg (01:10:41): Did you do everything? Jason Calacanis (01:10:42): I say to do domestic chores Jason off the trash, folding laundry, domestic Sacks, I just think it's hard David Friedberg (01:10:50): to justify that because you're only spending so many hours a week doing that sort of stuff. Is it really worth a thousand bucks a month? Whereas in the industrial setting, it makes a lot Jason Calacanis (01:10:59): more sense. And think about those dangerous Sacks, like climbing on a bridge looking at the seams and climbing on a a building, cleaning the windows. David Friedberg (01:11:06): Most tasks take years to do sometimes. Jason Calacanis (01:11:09): Mhmm. David Friedberg (01:11:09): Many, many years of high risk human labor, whereas taking out the trash and folding laundry might be a little bit more hard to justify the spend. Alright. Jason Calacanis (01:11:17): It's more breaking news here during the program. We'll get our war correspondent, our geopolitical expert, David Sacks. What are you seeing on the wires, David Sacks (01:11:28): Well, there's a NATO meeting going on right now, and Lincoln did a press conference where he says that Ukraine will be joining NATO. That's the big news going viral right now. Speaker 9 (01:11:38): Ukraine will become a member, of NATO. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership, and, to create a clear pathway for, for Ukraine Speaker 2 (01:11:52): moving forward. So, of course, we believe that Ukraine deserves to be a member of NATO and that this should happen sooner rather sooner sooner rather than later. Jason Calacanis (01:12:02): Chum off any thoughts on this flip that just broke during the program? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:12:08): Well, we just I think NATO just added Sweden, right? And it was done in pretty record time from application to admission. So I would like to know whether is this just rhetoric to just keep everybody at bay and placate the Ukrainians, or is this real? The problem that this creates is that if it is real and they're admitted, then NATO has to defend Ukraine. Which means that then America and all the other NATO allies would have to fight, which means that we're in a war. America should not be in a war. Just, give you the Jason Calacanis (01:12:47): exact Sacks. You are correct. Sweden, Finland applied to join in May 2022. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and, they had been neutral, as you know, for many decades. Finland has a massive land border with Russia. And they joined in April of 2023 after applying in May of 22 or just a year later. Ed Sweden became a member in March of 2020 for just 2 years later. Effris membership was held up by both Turkey and Hungary. Sacks, you're our resident expert on Ukraine and all things geopolitical. Your thoughts David Sacks (01:13:20): On the one hand, what Lincoln is saying is more of the same here, because it's been the administration's policy to seek to bring, Ukraine into NATO since they took office, they've reiterated that over and over again. And it's one of the major reasons for this war is that the Russians said over and over again, this was a red line for them. That's why there's a war in Ukraine. The idea that you're gonna be able to bring Ukraine into NATO, however, when the war is going so badly, is now entering the territory of being delusional. I mean, this is like a delusional comment. And if you just wanna understand how badly things are going, look at yesterday's Litico, which was called Ukraine is at great risk of its front lines collapsing. The source for this article was high ranking, Ukrainian officials close to Zalugenie, who's the former commander in chief. Some people have speculated that Zalugenie himself might be the source, but at a minimum, It's high ranking Ukrainian officers who report it to solutiony. And what they say in this article is that the prognosis in Ukraine is grim, they say that the sad truth is that even if the funding bills approved by the US Congress, a massive resupply may not be enough to prevent a major battlefield upset they say that there is a great risk of the front lines collapsing wherever Russian generals decide to focus their offensive, which people expect in the next few months. And there's nothing that can help Ukraine now because there are no serious technologies able to compensate Ukraine for the large massive troops. Russia is likely to hurl at us. This is a quote from 1 of the Ukrainian officials. We don't have those technologies and the west doesn't have them as well in sufficient numbers. So what they're saying is that even if the funding bill goes through the 61,000,000,000, it's not gonna be enough to save Ukraine. And at the very moment, that that is now being finally, honestly reported by Western media. David Sacks (01:15:16): It's something I've been saying now for months, Finally, the truth is coming out. You have Lincoln doubling and tripling down on these comments that, nevertheless, Ukraine will be joining NATO. And Chamath is right under Article 5 and attack on 1 is an attack on all. Therefore, if Ukraine becomes part of NATO, an attack on Ukraine by Russia, which is currently ongoing, will be considered an attack on the United States. Then you have to add to the mix, the fact that Macron and other European leaders have actually been advocating for NATO descending round troops. And he said this over and over again, he's doubled down on this multiple times. So you have a dynamic now where this isn't just hot rhetoric by blinking. This really has the risk of tipping over into policy, I would say in a Biden second term, where Biden agrees to do what our European allies are already calling for, which is sending NATO troops to Ukraine to save Ukraine from what political calls an imminent collapse. I think this is a very dangerous situation. I mean, we're really talking about here as World War 3. So if you wanna have a serious chance war 3 in the next 4 years, and I would say go ahead and vote for Biden in November. I mean, this is just very clear to me. I'm personally not willing to accept that risk. I'm not willing to accept a 10% or 1% risk of that chance. But I think Lincoln, putting it on the table here, I think people should be deeply concerned about this. And there should be a lot of follow-up questions for Lincoln and the administration about this. Jason Calacanis (01:16:44): Friedberg, should the free country of Ukraine be able to join NATO on some timeline, or should they be banned from ever joining NATO? David Friedberg (01:16:55): Well, I think the statements are correct that Ukraine joining NATO Escalates conflict, and we will find ourselves in a de facto global conflict world war. Now the question is, is that the the cycle, the natural cycle? I will, once again, Nick, pull it up, please. Reference Ray David is typical big cycle behind Empires rise and decline. As he spoke at life with us in person about at the all in summit last year, he points out that the era of prosperity that over the last 500 years, we've seen 6 major empires go through is followed by a debt bubble, which, drives a wealth gap. Which ultimately leads to economic challenges, which means printing more money, which is the cycle we are going through right now with a as you guys know, $2,000,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 annual deficit and explosion in, federal debt levels. And that ultimately leads inevitably to external conflict to war. Now, the particular motivations in every case in all six times this has happened in the last 500 years, look different when you read the history books about what were the circumstances that drove us to external conflict that drove that nation to war. But the truth is every single one of them was preceded by a debt bubble, income inequality, wealth gap, and the printing of money, and there's a relationship between those economic factors and a desire for conflict. And I think that is what we are seeing play out over the past couple of years, starting with our, motivated interest in supporting Ukraine against, the Russia conflict and now escalating it towards inviting Ukraine to join NATO to escalate the conflict itself. Now I think there's a notion that having a war is stimulated. Having a war is unifying. Having a Jason Calacanis (01:18:58): wags the door wags the dog theory. David Friedberg (01:19:00): I I don't think it's a wag the dog theory as much as it is. What do you do? When the economic condition of the Jason is such that the federal government has to print money to support the economy and or to bridge the wealth gap. And when under those circumstances, in order to unify the country, in order to motivate a system of unification amongst a fracturing society or fracturing economic strata, you feel like you have to have an external enemy and that the notion of war itself is economically stimulating. I think that those are the motivating factors that we've seen play out Sacks times in the last 500 years and we may be unfortunately seeing play out here again. As we talked to Graham Jason, Ray Dahlio, about last year, we said, what can we do to avoid that there have been times, historically, where these things have been avoided. But if we're not being cognizant of what's going on here and motivating a different tact and a different path, whether it's through our electoral cycle or through being loud and vocal in whatever media channels we each have access to to make folks more aware of this, I think, you know, we will find ourselves walking down this path of looking for global conflict and finding it. Jason Calacanis (01:20:17): Chamath, you look like you wanted to chime in there. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:20): Of the 3 presidential candidates to be very clear. One is supportive then of some kind of confrontation because by proxy, they're supportive of admitting Ukraine and to NATO, which would create a war, and 2 are pretty clearly anti war. Jason Calacanis (01:20:36): And just for people who know, the, boom bus cycle behind Empires Rising declines. You could see that if you're on the on the YouTube video, but the 6th 8 moments is revolutions and wars as, Friedberg pointing out. There are 2 more that come after that. Debt and political restructuring and then the new world order emerges. And so the question here, I guess, becomes, can diplomacy win the day and then is Lincoln's point that they eventually can become a member or that they're imminently gonna become a member. And it's breaking new, so we don't know if he's speaking David Friedberg (01:21:12): about this. Well, clearly let's just be really clear on this. The words he used were very carefully chosen. Jason Calacanis (01:21:17): Yeah. David Friedberg (01:21:17): And that means that there was a media and press strategy conversation that was had by him and his staff, which obviously found its way into the White House administration and that there was a a executive conversation about this Jason Calacanis (01:21:31): for sure. David Friedberg (01:21:31): This is the positioning we need to now be clearly stating which means that this is now policy. He did not slip up on those words. This was not some off the cuff comment. This was clearly a media brain statement. Which means that it is it is administration policy that's being delivered by him. Exactly. At the next White House press conference, you will hear the question asked by reporters. Is this the White House position? And they will say, yes, it is. Jason Calacanis (01:21:58): Yeah. And just to be clear, that that video had a couple of edits in it, and we don't have the full press conference here. The quote from the hill is Ukraine will become a member of NATO period. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership which then seems like this would this if you're building a bridge, that takes time. So maybe they mean over time the fullness of time, to be able to do this in the next year would be if it was on the timeline of Finland would be insane. I I cannot see. David Sacks (01:22:27): It would be insane, but they're not ruling it out. And I think you have to look at the context of what's happening. He's making these remarks as all the news from the battlefield is terrible. Ukraine is losing, and it's at risk of collapsing and European leaders like Macron, are therefore calling for direct NATO intervention in the war. So for Lincoln to be making this sort of statement is really adding fuel to the fire. And let's see if he walks it back. Let's see if he clarifies it. I predict that he won't because this is a I Jason Calacanis (01:22:57): predict clarification for sure because this does not feel like it'd be good for voting because the war is incredibly unpopular. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:03): It'll make the election pretty simple. Every other issue All the social issues that we fight about will fall away. The debt will fall away. The border will fall away if this is true. Jason Calacanis (01:23:14): If it's true. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:14): Does America want to go to war. David Sacks (01:23:17): Well, Chamath, I think I think we're already at that point even if there is some sort of clarification. And the reason I say that is because Biden clearly is very committed to the Supreme policy. It didn't just start when he became president. It started when he became vice president. And was managing the Ukraine portfolio for Obama. This is why Hunter Biden got that job in Ukraine because Biden was running the show there. And they have been very committed to this idea of bringing Ukraine into NATO for decades. I mean, he supported when he was a senator. So this is not like Friedberg said. This is not like to some randomly chosen words out of the blue. Lincoln measures his words carefully. He knows what he's saying, and this is something that Biden clearly is passionate about. And what you have to believe is that in a Biden second term, he's gonna manage this whole, situation so perfectly that this war is not gonna escalate any further. And I just I have no confidence in that. Remember, if you wanna use a historical analogy, go back to Woodrow Wilson in 1916. He was elected on literally the catchphrase. He kept us out of war. Less than 1 year later, we were in World War 1. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:24): World War 1. Yeah. David Sacks (01:24:25): So this idea of what Biden wouldn't possibly get us into a war. I mean, History shows otherwise. History shows that presidents once they win reelection are more likely to get us into war rather than less because they don't have to fear voters. So then the question is, well, what is in Joe Biden's part? What's he passionate about? He is clearly passionate about this cause, about bringing Ukraine and tomato, and certainly not having Ukraine collapse or lose this war. Whereas Trump and Bobby Kennedy have both said that they will end this war. They will seek a peace deal if elected. I think that's enough right there. Jason Calacanis (01:25:06): Yeah. I mean, and obviously, Lincoln and Biden are looking for peace as well. They just don't wanna lose the war. No. David Sacks (01:25:12): They're not looking for peace. I just figured that. Jason Calacanis (01:25:13): I think they are definitely for peace, you can disagree, Speaker 6 (01:25:16): but they're Jason Calacanis (01:25:16): they definitely want peace. Why did they turn David Sacks (01:25:18): the bullet Istanbul at the beginning of this war? Jason Calacanis (01:25:20): Yeah. Yeah. Because they, I think don't want Russia to determine who gets to be in NATO and they want free countries to decide. David Sacks (01:25:26): Does that work Jason Calacanis (01:25:27): in a war for? I mean, that that is, I guess, the existential question here is at what point do we wanna let free democracies determine their future and protect them from invading countries. That is, like, actually the core of this is, do you believe in democracy? Do you believe free countries should have the autonomy to pick their future, and is that worth fighting for? That is the question the world faces right now. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:50): I think that framing I think that framing is not totally accurate. I think, of course, those things are good and right things. I think the thing is on the balance of issues, there are seasons when certain priorities need to be shaped by a country. And right now, we're in a season where there's tremendous domestic instability Jason Calacanis (01:26:11): In our country. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:12): And and our balance sheet. Jason Calacanis (01:26:14): You're saying? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:14): In our country. Yeah. In our balance sheet is breaking. So I think the question isn't that is democracy important course, it's important. It's how relatively important is it abroad relative to these domestic issues here. Jason Calacanis (01:26:28): Yeah. That I I remember that. Is it hold on. Let me just finish. Is it worth fighting for is the issue? And is it worth fighting for when you don't have the resources to do it. Now if we were sitting here and a country next to Ukraine was invaded, say Finland or say France or another country in Europe was invaded, we would absolutely go to bat for them. But for Ukraine, we won't go to bat for them. They're not part of part of NATO. And, you know, the this is David Sacks (01:26:55): the issue of our time. Speaker 6 (01:26:56): Are you David Sacks (01:26:56): saying are you saying some American soldiers? Because that's what we're talking about. Jason Calacanis (01:27:00): If France or Finland was in Would you be opposed if France were if Russia invaded France, would you defend France? Would you be in favor of the David Sacks (01:27:06): Of course. That's our article that's our article 5 guarantee under NATO. This is why I don't wanna in an article 5 guarantee to Ukraine because it will put us directly in conflict with Russia, and I'm not interested in being in war 3. Jason Calacanis (01:27:18): Right. And then so Finland and Sweden come up, and I guess the argument would be, would you be in favor of sending troops to defend Finland and Sweden the latest members of NATO? And would you be in favor David Sacks (01:27:27): of that? Now we're committed. Jason Calacanis (01:27:29): And when you were in favor of them joining, you know, I guess is the next question should David Sacks (01:27:32): We discussed it on the pod. I explained that it was creating a liability on an asset, but what's done is done. Jason Calacanis (01:27:36): Should free countries be able to join NATO, I guess, is at the end of the question? David Sacks (01:27:40): Well, it's actually a question actually. It makes let me make two points on that. The first one is Countries don't have a right to join NATO anymore than I have a right to join Augusta Country Club. Just because I'm a golf player doesn't mean I get to join Augusta. Okay? It's up to the current membership of Augusta or NATO decide whether they're gonna emit a country based on what is in their interest. It has never been in our interests to make Ukraine security dependent of the United States. Sorry. This is the reality. The second thing I wanna point out is that what was Russia demanding? They were demanding Ukrainian neutrality. They were not basically looking to conquer Ukraine. They wanted them to be neutral. So Ukraine did not have to give up its freedom. Okay? They just had to agree to be neutral. That was the key issue. That's what makes it very different than some other historical analogies. And that was not acceptable to us. At the very beginning of the war, Blinken said that we would insist on an open door policy. We would Jason Calacanis (01:28:40): Yeah. Clearly, the right move here would have been to kick the candidate on the road and just tell Putin. We'll take it off. We'll take Nate off the table for 10 years or 20 years. And then could have outlasted Putin. David Sacks (01:28:50): You had much better read on that before the war started. David Friedberg (01:28:53): And then David Sacks (01:28:53): the minute the war started, everyone forgot that that was the key Kasu's bow eye of this war. Jason Calacanis (01:28:58): Just the more diplomacy. It's better. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:01): Can I just say one thing that Go Jason Calacanis (01:29:02): ahead? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:03): Sacks, you would be the perfect member of Augusta. We're a draft for one small issue. David Friedberg (01:29:13): Oh, Augusta. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:14): Oh my gosh. Jason Calacanis (01:29:15): Oh, gosh. David Friedberg (01:29:16): Oh, it's Jason Calacanis (01:29:17): my favorite from who is the lunatic deranged guy from New York who was in Congress, and they expelled him after 6 months. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:26): George Santos. Jason Calacanis (01:29:27): Santos. We're like, are you Jewish? He's like, I'm Jew ish? Ish? Ish? Like, a little pause in the middle. Alright. Listen. Another amazing episode. 173 Congratulations to our CEO, John Helm. He's with us now. Speaker 6 (01:29:42): Who? Jason Calacanis (01:29:42): I will make this is Christ. And, a nice callback. Please do us a favor. Do us a favor. 486,000 people following the YouTube channel. Get in there. And be part of the Q and A when we hit 500,000 and your best chance of being part of the 1,000,000 subscriber party, which I think Shamat's gonna Overstate. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:30:07): It'll be at the win in Las Vegas. Jason Calacanis (01:30:09): There. Oh, okay. There it is. We we have a location and then the all in sum make an announcement next week. Go to YouTube, type in all in, and subscribe for The Rainman. David Sacks. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya, the chairman dictator, and your sultan of science who loved Dune 2. He loved it. He saw it twice. Speaker 6 (01:30:29): Overrated. Jason Calacanis (01:30:31): I'm going to see it twice. I'm gonna go see it again. Go see it in Ironman. I think it's David Sacks (01:30:34): comment boards got so Jason Calacanis (01:30:36): angry. Furious? David Sacks (01:30:39): Furious. I overrated. I mean, this set them off. Like, nothing has ever set them off. Jason Calacanis (01:30:45): I don't know. Try making a comment about Trump during my world. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:30:49): When you can't attack Tim Chamath Shalamet. David Sacks (01:30:52): Shalamet. -God. -Oh, my god. Man, they were really Timothy. Rushing to his defense. Jason Calacanis (01:30:59): I mean, he does look like he drinks a lot of soy. I'll be honest. I think that guy's been with me. I don't think that guy's ever had whole milk. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:07): I think skinny. I think skinny people like that when you're super skinny like that. You travel in packs to protect each other as a group. David Friedberg (01:31:13): Oh, like, so, like, Jason Calacanis (01:31:14): you can get in a group like hyenas or something and then just protect each other. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:18): Yeah. It's like, oh, we gotta stick up for each other because if we don't, you know, Hey. Are you standing sideways, or are you, you know, like, you know, like, a pod? Jason Calacanis (01:31:25): There's like, they're like a pod. A pod of so the Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:28): old, like, the Roman turtle protection thing that they were sending Jason Calacanis (01:31:32): me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Shields up as 1. As 1. So what do you do now? David Friedberg (01:31:35): Is now up to 630,000,000 in the box office. Pretty pretty good run. You know, they're gonna do it to you in 3 now? Jason Calacanis (01:31:42): Oh, that's definitely happening. He's just gonna be negotiating a big price tag. David Friedberg (01:31:46): Big deal. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:31:47): Big deal. Alright, everybody. You know what to do? And we'll see you next time on. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:52): Love you. The world's Jason Calacanis (01:31:54): greatest podcast. The oral podcast. Tell you friends. Speaker 6 (01:31:58): To let your winners ride. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:01): Rainman, David Sachs. And it said Speaker 7 (01:32:06): we open store sit to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Speaker 6 (01:32:14): On airliners line. Besty's our car. Go thirteen. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:21): That is my dog's you. Have one big huge order because they're always useless. It's like it's like sexual tension, but we just need to release them out. David Sacks (01:32:39): Flirt your feet. Jason Calacanis (01:32:41): What? Where did you get Murphy's artifact?