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David Friedberg (00:00:00): So, Mark, did you go down to the breakthrough thing this weekend? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:03): The breakthrough prize was amazing. It's like observing exotic animals in their natural habitat. David Friedberg (00:00:08): A friend of mine who you hung out with down there called me last night to give me the breakdown on all the individuals he saw and what was going on with him. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:16): I mean, he's like, I don't even know how Nat and I keep getting invited to this, but, like, to say we were outclassed as an understatement. Speaker 3 (00:00:22): The people out that big were. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:24): What is the break the rewards? The breakthrough prize up. Jason Calacanis (00:00:26): Yeah. I make it. I got invited too. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:28): It's so incredible. Okay. First of all, shout out to Yuri and Julia. It is incredible. There were two moments where I cried. This woman goes up on stage to give an award to the people that had made this investment in cystic fibrosis. Yeah. And she Sacks, my child was born with cystic fibrosis, and then my second child was born with cystic fibrosis, and then my second child died. She said that I just burst into tears. And then you present an award to the person that actually is helping them stamp out the disease. We celebrated the people that found the gene that caused Parkinson's. And then, yeah, I mean, the the people at that is pretty incredible. Jason Calacanis (00:01:09): It's in LA. Right? They did it in Los Angeles? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:12): Yeah. I mean, like, look, you're a Milner and Julia Milner. Zuck and Priscilla Chan, and and Wajigy. And Sergei, Brent, those Sacks people are the ones that organizers breakthrough prize. And I think it's just a modern version of the Nobel, which tries to really shine a spotlight on people doing really groundbreaking work. And physics, and math, and life sciences. And so you get people that have just done things that are just very practical and are very real. And I think what they do is they make frankly these kinds of achievements much more high level in the sense that you're bringing together people from Hollywood and people from Silicon Valley and the awareness is up and just incredibly well produced, then yeah. It's really a cool thing to be a part of, but, I mean, seeing some of these people are very intimidating. I Sacks beside Vindiesel. Jason Calacanis (00:02:10): Oh, really? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:11): That was super cool. He is a super nice guy. And on the other side of me was someone that actually Sacks was Toby Emerick, who's, was the chairman of Warner Brothers. So just talking to these guys was super cool. Moving it to Los Angeles was a great move. Crazy. Jason Calacanis (00:02:27): Yeah. It's just I was invited. I couldn't make it. Sorry. And thank you to Julia and Yuri for inviting us again, but it it's really great that they're giving it the celebration it deserves and making it, you know, like dare I say sexy and cool and hip to be a scientist and solve the world's biggest problems. I I think it's just so awesome And you're right, Sergei Brand, and Will Sacks, Sacks Priscilla, and Julia, and Yuri are the founders. Of the breakthrough prize. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:58): Thing is they give a they give a youth breakthrough award. So the breakthrough prize is this beautiful globe, and then the junior winner gets like a smaller version. Very appropriate. And it was a video of this kid in India who had won it a few years ago and then went off to MIT and then graduated. And then the video is of him coming back to Bangalore because his sister had one bit this year. And he presented to the sister. And all I could think of was this is an incredible achievement by, like, a sixteen year old. And literally at the same time, my sixteen year old was like, dad, the chicken tenders from DoorDash. Speaker 3 (00:03:37): Is that a rat? Fuck. It's like, you get my kid fried my chicken fingers. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:47): Rainman, David Sides. Speaker 5 (00:03:51): And I said We open source it to fans and they discover reason. Jason Calacanis (00:03:55): Love you. Nice. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:56): Queen of Kim. I'm doing all. Speaker 3 (00:03:59): Dad, I said get me the spicy fries, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:02): not the regular. Cajun Friedberg, the girl that won it, that wouldn't Friedberg did something with yamanaka factors. So it's like it's really incredible and inspiring. But fortunately, don't worry. My my sixteen year old was able to get the chicken tenders and everything was fine. Jason Calacanis (00:04:18): Oh, okay. Good. Yeah. Sure. David Friedberg (00:04:19): You called Speaker 3 (00:04:20): rerouted it. I thought it's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:23): can't get it's too dangerous. What do we do? Jason Calacanis (00:04:26): It's hilarious. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:27): By the way, the other the other thing I'll say is The person that performed is really amazing, Charlie Puth, and and the reason I say it is if you Google Charlie Puth. This guy, he's a young guy in his early twenties, I'm guessing. He is so talented. There's all these videos of Charlie Puth where He'll make a random noise, like he'll clink a coke bottle with a fork, and then he'll record it, and then he'll put it into these digital editing tools, and then he'll make, like, a entire 5 minute song using that as the base, like, as the basic building block. The guy is so talented. Anyways, it was a very it was a very cool event. Fantastic. David Sacks (00:05:12): How are Jason Calacanis (00:05:12): you doing, Sacks? Are you okay, buddy? David Sacks (00:05:14): I'm good. Let's get started. Jason Calacanis (00:05:17): There it is, folks. We're back. It's gonna be a hell of a show. David Sacks (00:05:20): Let's go. I got good to do. No waste time. Let's hear quits of Willis banter. Speaker 3 (00:05:25): It's it's more people tuning in. It's the banter. David Sacks (00:05:28): They do. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:28): Banter, bro. How are you Jason Calacanis (00:05:29): doing free? Right? We got a little, scene from the movie, her? Wow. We're off to a strong start here. Look at all these contributions. Speaker 3 (00:05:39): I got a shrug from Friedberg. I got a Okay. Let's get started from Sacks. David Friedberg (00:05:44): I don't talk about my backgrounds. Jason Calacanis (00:05:45): Let's go. Anything good on the menu tonight, Shamap? I just want I'm coming over for poker. I wanted to know if there's any Octopus. Oh, so the Greek comes back and you get the octopus on there. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:55): The octopus. I I think that Sean missed you. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:05:57): He did by the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:58): way, Sean experimented with some Greek cheese that you grill, that was pretty delicious. Oh, David Friedberg (00:06:03): blue cheese. Alluring. Jason Calacanis (00:06:05): What is a David Sacks (00:06:06): well, what's the plural of octopus? Is it octopus? Jason Calacanis (00:06:08): Yeah. David Sacks (00:06:10): Aren't they like sentient creatures or something? Jason Calacanis (00:06:12): Halumi. Yeah. You know what? It's interesting you bring that up. I have a grilled octopus stand at one of our events and somebody who is, you know, a conscientious consumer of calories, lobbying me to take the grilled octopus off of the menu. I wouldn't say whom. David Sacks (00:06:33): For what? Jason Calacanis (00:06:34): What? Wait. What? I got lobbying very strongly. David Friedberg (00:06:37): Not only is it deeply wrong to eat all the animals that you people eat, and you will one day realize it or your children or your children's children will realize it. But Octopus in particular have the IQ of four to eight year olds they can actually sign. They can communicate. They can solve problems. You can watch YouTube videos on this. It's pretty incredible. They're amazing creatures. It's also why in the movie, the arrival, the future alien race is made out to be cephalopods because they're the most advanced creature that's likely to become a civilized form if humans didn't exist. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:12): I have a one word reaction to that. Speaker 3 (00:07:14): Yum. Oh, like, delicious. Yummy. It's the IQ that makes it taste Jason Calacanis (00:07:19): so good. David Sacks (00:07:19): Oh my Speaker 3 (00:07:20): god. That's dark. That's dark. David Sacks (00:07:26): You're saying the IQ is like the spice? Jason Calacanis (00:07:28): Yeah. It's kind of like the Sacks content. You know? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:30): It's kinda like the marbling. It's the marbling. David Sacks (00:07:34): The best start. I don't know. Jason Calacanis (00:07:35): Oh, oh, yeah. By the way, Sacks, guys. Yeah. I'm fine. Yeah. I'm great. I'm feeling great. Yeah. The tooth is healed. I got the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:40): implant. You've been eating well. Jason Calacanis (00:07:43): Just only things with above a 120. Are you David Friedberg (00:07:46): off the Wagovee or the Speaker 3 (00:07:47): what do you call it? Jason Calacanis (00:07:48): Well, no. No. You know, what I did was I got off the Wagovee, so I eat more animals. Mhmm. And now I'm getting back on because I feel I feel so Speaker 3 (00:07:56): terrible about how many I was in Austin. I ate everything. Jake, I'll answer your question. Jason Calacanis (00:08:01): Yeah. Go ahead. David Sacks (00:08:02): If you eat high IQ foods, does that make you smarter? Jason Calacanis (00:08:06): Absolute Absolutely. This is why the Greeks invented so many things. We invented math, plumbing, cities, democracy. All the great things the Greeks Cranded comes from the fact that we ate so many high IQ creatures. Correct. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:19): Are you able to be vegetarian? Were you able to find good vegetarian or veggie options in Jason Calacanis (00:08:24): Austin? Who talking to me? Speaker 3 (00:08:27): Yeah. I mean, I I see a vegetable when I push it away. Jason Calacanis (00:08:32): I'm like, wait a second. David Sacks (00:08:34): Jason was on a seafood diet in Austin. If he Jason Calacanis (00:08:36): Sacks the Speaker 3 (00:08:36): food, he ate it. You're right. It's not. David Sacks (00:08:39): But Jason Calacanis (00:08:40): It's not inaccurate. The barbecue in Austin is so spectacular. Terry Sacks, beef ribs, I had with a friend of ours, man. They're just dynamite. And then the Salt Lake brisket, Franklin's brisket. I mean, it just extraordinary. Shout out to all my barbecue folks there, and sorry for triggering. David Sacks (00:08:59): Every mammal that wasn't buttoned down. Jake Bell battered and barbecue sauce and stuff like grill. The thing Jason Calacanis (00:09:06): that took out the rip was the bison. I'm sorry I was away. Apologies to the audience. It took out a tooth. I you know, as as far as I feel worth it. What does a Jason rib Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:15): taste like? Does it taste like man, Jason Calacanis (00:09:16): I it is it's the beef ribs are very tender. The bison's got a little more chew to it. It's got a little more texture. Yeah. And and they let this thing go at the salt lick for, like, 12 hours, and they're just barbecue sauce in it forever. It's a little chewy. And so that's what took out the tooth. But great job, Friedberg, on moderating. Episode was fantastic. Yes. I I was chomping on the bit quite literally Sacks to talk about some stuff. Chopping on the bits of the point. I thought I shattered a tooth, but I am packed, and I have so much energy. I missed you guys. I actually missed y'all. Friedberg, so much good stuff happening with the summit And, I'm delighted that John is doing all this work. You are doing all this work, and I can just sit back and enjoy it. So tell us, is there an update on the summit? David Friedberg (00:10:02): Yeah. You're just collecting your coupon. But, yeah, we had within 72 hours. I think we had more applications than we have seats, but we are still leaving applications open. And in the next week, we'll start to respond to people. So, basically, if you're interested in going to summit, sign up now. Get your applications in this week. Jason Calacanis (00:10:24): Apply early. Yeah. Is the key? David Friedberg (00:10:26): Yeah. Because it's gonna be done in order of when it's received. Speaker 3 (00:10:30): Mhmm. David Friedberg (00:10:30): And they're gonna start processing applications this week. We'd love to Get everyone that wants to show up, show up. And if you went in the past, your registration window is wrapped up this week. So That's a real Jason Calacanis (00:10:43): start processing. Automatically get in? Alumni automatically are in. Speaker 3 (00:10:47): Okay. And Jason Calacanis (00:10:47): then tell Speaker 3 (00:10:48): us about Jason Calacanis (00:10:48): the scholarship because I'm getting bombarded and everybody who's and up and coming all in fan. David Friedberg (00:10:53): We're gonna announce in a couple of weeks. So no plan yet, but it will Jason Calacanis (00:10:56): be yeah. David Friedberg (00:10:57): We'll still do scholarships because I think they were super Sacks and helpful to people that otherwise couldn't afford the ticket. I know it's expensive this year, but the reason was we actually spent a lot more per person last year than people actually pay for their biggest. Jason Calacanis (00:11:10): So It's less than 10. So Yeah. We're we're we're trying David Friedberg (00:11:13): to get the price so that we can Sacks, make the same breakeven. And we're gonna have scholarship tickets with the balance. Great. So it should be Speaker 3 (00:11:21): I saw Jason Calacanis (00:11:21): a couple speakers come in. I there's 2 David Friedberg (00:11:24): not talking about it. Jason Calacanis (00:11:24): Come on. Just can we just tell the 2 speakers who said yes? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:27): Come on. Speaker 3 (00:11:27): Get get the audio in 7. David Friedberg (00:11:29): Not yet. Well, do you Speaker 3 (00:11:29): wanna be gonna Jason Calacanis (00:11:30): Sacks me? A big speaker, and I think it's gonna be awesome. In a week. In a week, David Friedberg (00:11:35): we'll announce a bunch together. Jason. Well, one thing Jason Calacanis (00:11:36): I don't wanna wait on is today's docket because it is unbelievable. Welcome, everybody. 2 episode 175. That's right. It's episode 175 of your favorite podcast and the largest and most listened to podcast in the world officially, episode 175 of the all podcast starts right now. And, I've got so many feelings about Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:57): this one. Is that the largest, most listened to podcasts in the world? Jason Calacanis (00:12:00): I'm manifesting. Oh, you got it. It's kinda manifested. Speaker 3 (00:12:03): Shame off. Just like just like me, this world's greatest poker player, and that we watch robo roll over him. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:10): Is that a new word that narcissists use for lying? Jason Calacanis (00:12:13): No. It's just like you know, the world's greatest poker player, and then we see Helham youth get dominated by by coup Jason Coon. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:21): Just so you know, tonight is a murderer's rogue and helmet is flying back. You saw the lineup. I'm very excited to see what happens tonight. Jason Calacanis (00:12:28): Is Jason Koon coming or no? Yeah. I mean, Coon and robo, and then the world's greatest album you've playing is so great to watch. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:36): It's like a meta ego battle. No. Jason Calacanis (00:12:39): It is. And those, you know, it's interesting. 2 of those 3 guys are, like, the most humble guys you would ever meet in your life. Am I correct? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:46): In your life. Just you could you could not be more low key and self effacing than robo include for how good they are. Jason Calacanis (00:12:53): And if you were honestly gonna rank the 3 of them in a in a high stakes cash game, Could you just handicap it for the audience? Because we are in a we're in the lucky position, you and I, to play with these 3 epic players in the world. Break down how they play in a home game, you know, like ours. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:12): So I would say the most dynamic range would probably be robo because robo has the most experience playing super, super high stakes cash. I think Coon is the most precise, and, like, true to GTO Hard to exploit. I mean, CUNA's impossible to exploit. Impossible. Doesn't tell. No mistakes. No mistakes. Jason Calacanis (00:13:43): No mistake. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:43): Roble knows how to gamble in certain spots, who knows how to be unexploitable, and the 3rd players from home. Speaker 3 (00:13:53): And help Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:53): me just loses his mind, and it's so No. The thing with Helmyf is he's he's capable unlike anyone I've ever seen a folding in spots that are and, and he's correct, by the way. I've seen Halmi fold Ace king in spots that none of us would ever do it. I've seen him fold kings in spots that are basically impossible. So how means is able to get these soul reads on people that I think are amazing? Speaker 3 (00:14:17): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:17): But, look, the the the higher and higher the stakes get the more and more I think robo will be comfortable and and Koon will just go to a playbook that he knows and trust Jason Calacanis (00:14:30): Alright. I'm I'm so excited to be back at the game tonight. Alright. Listen. The docket is so great this week. We got a great classic all in I wanna start with Google firing 28 employees who were involved in this protest at their offices. We didn't think that this would happen. We're having a a discussion on the group chat. On Tuesday, about a dozen employees engaged in sit ins at the company's offices in Sunnyvale and New York City, protesting the conflict in the middle east between Israel and Palestine. And so they took over literally took over the offices of the, CEO of Google Cloud, and 9 employees were arrested after refusing to leave. The protest was organized by a group called no tech for apartheid, and they posted a bunch of clips, this sit in on x. Those 28 employees were fired on Wednesday after a quick investigation. The VP of Global Security was pretty direct and candid. I mean, this is based They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers. Behavior like this has no place in our workplace Jason we will not tolerate it. If you're one of the few who are tempted to think, we're going to overlook conduct that violates our policies. Think again. So what were the protests about? Google is, involved in a project Nimbus, a $1,200,000,000 cloud contract with Israel's government, Both Google and Amazon are involved in the project, which was announced in 2021. Google has denied it was doing work for the military. Saying it was working with departments like finance, health care, transportation. There's a lot of details to this, but let let's start with you, Friedberg, since you were a Googler, and we've been talking about the culture of Google putting aside what the protests were about. How do you feel about protests in the workplace. We've talked about it before here with Coinbase and others. And then Is this a distinct change in tone that I'm hearing from Google that they've had enough of social activism at the office? David Friedberg (00:16:37): I mean, yeah, there's obviously a line crossed in in the the view of security, but I think You could look at this two ways. You could look at this as being a culture of entitlement that folks feel that our employees that they have permission to stage sit ins and behaviors like this because Google is so infinitely tolerant, and giving employees the space and the room to do whatever they wanna do and all of their wishes and demands can be met and will be met if they demand it strongly enough. That's one way to look at this and that that culture manifested this behavior. Another way to look at it is that these people feel so deeply strongly and passionately about the issue at hand that they were willing to risk their jobs and arrest and they cared so deeply about an issue that they think no one's paying enough attention to, that they're willing to put themselves and sacrifice themselves for it. So I I wanna be empathetic to that point of view as well, but I do think that there's a belief that there may have been this kind of entitlement culture where anytime Google employees ask for stuff, they get it. Someone told me the other day how at TGIF's at Google now would they do these all hands and people get to ask questions. This person is kind of executive level. They're so sick and tired of how every question is all about employees asking for more things that they want. So it's like, when are we gonna get this bonus? Speaker 3 (00:18:08): When are David Friedberg (00:18:08): we gonna get this gym? When are we gonna get this? That's so much of the orientation of being an employee at Google. Is all about what Google can do for me and how I can get more. And that becomes what you ask for. It's like you give a kid something, you give them candy, they're always asked for candy. And I think that there is certainly an element of that culture kind of being frothed up over the years at Google. But I do think that this is an issue that people care very passionately about right now, and you're seeing it all over the place. So certainly not. Jason Calacanis (00:18:37): In the same way We had, the Golden Gate Bridge get shut down. The Bay Bridge get shut down as well. Chamath, your thoughts on these protests and then obviously the entitlement issues that Friedberg alludes to specifically at alphabet/google. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:52): There are 2 separate things, and I think it's important to deal with them individually. Groups of people in society in a democracy should have a right to protest. That's absolutely fundamental, and I think They can raise a lot of issues that could otherwise get swept into the carpet. When that stuff impedes the public functioning of society for other people, then I think there's a responsibility for law enforcement and other people to act and make sure that that is better manage. So shutting down an entire bridge is not only disruptive. It can be really dangerous. Of course. David Friedberg (00:19:33): And it can hurt your cause. Because in people, people dislike the cause, because it hurt them. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:37): Right. Typically, what happens is you're supposed to file for a permit to protest And when you get that, there are areas that are cordoned off, and then people are allowed to express their views. That's a really healthy form of democracy. Going rogue like this will only blow up in people's faces because the folks that are somewhat sympathetic will eventually get burned by this experience and turn against them. So that's one set of issues. I think that's just people going rogue, and I think that you can't be tolerant of that kind of chaos. There should be organized protests, but not disorganized chaos. And law enforcement needs to get a control of that. Inside of a company, I think this is different. It's this weird thing that I see which is like what I would call like left on left violence. It's like left leaning people, creating all of these distractions and demonstrations inside of left leaning organizations for not being left leaning enough. And so it's kind of like a little bit nutty because I think it actually shows how totally naive these employees are and what basic business understanding they have. The 1st and foremost being that they are at will employees. These are not people that are the Sacks that you don't even understand that you are at will means that you are there because you want to be there and Google allows you to be there because they choose for you to be there. And at any point, if either of you break a covenant, you can be gone. That kind of stuff, I think, is very distracting, and it just belies a poor understanding of what you're there to do. Google is a for profit business. And they are in the business of generating maximum profit on behalf of their shareholders. They are also incentivized to do that in a way achieves a mission and a set of values that the majority of their employees agree with. And the fact that a small cohort of people can try to hijack and sabotage that overall direction, I think, is very misguided. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:38): Sacks. I I don't know if you have Jason Calacanis (00:21:40): any opinions on this. I didn't see anything in the docket. I'm not sure if you have any shrimp feelings here. But your thoughts on Google employees and the protests putting aside, you know, the the nature of the protests this could be for BLM. This could be for Trump's indictments. You could you could be protesting any number of things, but the protesting at work issue and then Google specifically, which we talked about, with the Gemini issues and you know, this stuff bleeding over into product. I think Friedberg said it really nicely. Hey. Are are people actually focused on products and Google anymore? Or is the whole place just focused on social issues that have nothing to do with their waning, apparently, product sent? David Sacks (00:22:21): Well, I Google had no choice, but, fire these employees. They were being disruptive, and they were trespassing. And Google has a business to run. So this is what any business would do, and I don't think they deserve either credit or blame for taking the action they took. In terms of the protesters themselves, I think that in the fullness of time, we may come to think of them in a slightly different light. And some of this reminds me a little bit of of another war. The protesters in another war, the Vietnam war, where they were very disruptive. In some cases, they trespassed. In some cases, they got arrested. They were easy to make fun of in terms of what they look like. They were sort of kempt on shaving all the rest of that stuff. They were hippies. And at the time, people were, I'd say, very dismissive of them or actually antagonistic. They were seen as giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and they were sort of demonized. But now in the fullness of time, we look back on that war and realized that they had a point. In fact, maybe they were right. In fact, maybe their actions were justified. And I think that how we view these protesters at Google can't just be judged now. I think it's gonna have to be judged in the full time based on how we perceive for this war in Gaza. And I wanna make two points about why I think this war will eventually be viewed as Israel's Vietnam. The first is that in Gaza, Israel faces a a guerrilla style force, and they're in a quackmire. And if you read the latest news that's coming out of Gaza, what you'll hear is that after Israel has supposedly cleared an area, like Gaza City or Khan Unis, they then move south. Hamas has popped back up again. This whole idea that they can clear an area has been proven false. It's like playing whack a mole. They basically hit Hamas in one area. Hamas disappears down the tunnels. They come back in a different area. And this is why you're seeing a lot of articles now in Horowitz, which is is really newspaper saying the Warren Goss is already lost. You had the Wall Street Journal last week, run an article saying that Israel is winning every battle, but losing the war. David Sacks (00:24:36): Which is the, again, shades of Vietnam here. And you gotta understand, the Wall Street Journal is the most pro Israel of all the major mainstream publications. I don't think the policy journal's ever written a truly critical article about Israel, and they describe this whack a mole dynamic. You also have the general Gotti Eisenkop, who's a a member of the war cabinet, he's a member of of the sort of war government, in Israel came out and said that we can degrade Hamas in Gaza, but we cannot destroy it. And he said anyone who's telling you that we can destroy Hamas is telling you a tall tale, and that was, I think, an appointed reference to Netanyahu's claim that they would destroy Hamas and Gaza. So you've got shades of Vietnam in terms of it being this unwinnable war. I think the second aspect of of a similarity to Vietnam is just the huge number of civilian casualties. You'll recall that in Vietnam, the Viet Kong tried to grab us by the belt buckle. They knew that America had superior firepower, so they tried to get in close, use ambushes, b b trap snipers. And in response to that, the Americans used immense amounts of fire power and bombing to try and subdue the Vietnamese and 3,400,000 Vietnamese were killed in that war according to, Robert McNamara. Second thing that happened is the rules of engagement in Vietnam got extremely loose. You took a bunch of scared American kids. Many of whom were conscripts. You dropped them in a jungle. Pretty much because they feared ambushes. They shot anything that moved. And then finally, I think partly to justify this, you had a a dehumanization of the Vietnamese that they were seen as as com somehow kind of subhuman. In any event, if you watch movies about Vietnam, like Platoon, which was made by Oliver Stone, who was a GI in Vietnam, or if you watched, Saint Lee Kubrick's masterpiece full metal Sacks, which was based on books about Vietnam. You can see these dynamics in play very vividly. Now turn to to Gaza, all you gotta do is look at the miles and miles of video to see. David Sacks (00:26:42): It looks like a lunar surface. I mean, even in the words of Joe Biden, there's been indiscriminate bombing there. In terms of the rules of engagement, the rules of engagement have gotten very loose. A week or 2 ago, you had the desk of 7 David workers from the international kitchen organization, and there's an article in Harrette's recently about kill zones have been set up pretty much. If you come within a certain invisible perimeter of Israeli troops, you can be shot. I mean, those are the rules of engagement. And this is why there were 3 Israeli hostages who escaped, and they were running towards Israeli troops and yelling in Hebrew, and they still got shot. Again, this goes back to the rules of engagement being very loose. And then the final piece of it is you do have this dehumanization going on of the Palestinian. You can see this in a lot of the videos have been posted by IDF soldiers. So look, I think that these protesters, their actions are gonna be judged in the fullness of time, I think there are actually good reasons to believe that Israel's war in Gaza. It's shades of Vietnam. And I think that over the long term, people may regard these protesters in a different light. Right now, they're just seeing us being disruptive and annoying. And interfering. But if this war ends up being Israel's Vietnam, which I think it's on track to be, Again, I Jason Calacanis (00:28:07): question, you know, putting aside what they're protesting about, I I think they knew or some number of them knew they were gonna get fired. So I think they're kind of resigning by sit in. And I think, yeah, there could be nobility to that if you do not wanna participate, in supporting things in the world, you do not have to work at Google and you can protest and you can get fired. And we've seen, like, some pretty intense protests. I I don't know if you guys are aware of, like, what Greenpeace and other environmentalists did to stop wailing. I'm sure you are aware, Friedberg. For your passion on the subject. Those people went to jail in Japan for boarding Japanese well in ships. Like, those are really intense protesters. But then to your appoint them off, you know, you you can really hurt your cause. Climate act climate activists have been throwing paint on works of art. I don't know if you've seen and and that's just infuriating. Like, I I have no tolerance for people destroying works of art or attempting to get attention. Here, it is benign to sit in an office and get fired. So I I just consider it residing by sit in if they wanna do that fine. I do think there is something to Google enabling all this to your point, Friedberg, over time. And and, listen, they were parodied on Silicon Valley. The TV show because of how coddled and entitled people are. So there's a a bunch of things going on at the same time, and You know, if you want to do these intense protests, you have the right to do them, and history will judge you over time, but you need to be able to pay price. In this case, the price is getting fired. In the case of, like, shutting down the Golden Gate Bridge, like, you should get a fine for doing that, I believe. And the fine should be based on whatever that cost to shut that bridge down. And and that's gotta be a serious fine, and you're right, Shamoff. People there's an emergency situation, somebody's gotta get to a hospital or something. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:59): That's what I always think about when I see those things when you block streets and stuff where you block airports or you block these through ways, there's a lot of just normal everyday people trying to live their life who are probably very sympathetic to what what you stand for But when you disrupt their everyday lives and or threaten their physical security, they're not gonna think that that's worth it. Jason Calacanis (00:30:21): I'm also shocked that these people actually came to an office. I mean, these Googlers, I don't think they've actually been to an office before, or they probably had to check that their badges were. You know, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:29): to Sacks, to Saks's point, I actually would have had more respect for these people if they actually protested the war. But they didn't do that. They had a very discreet specific claim, which was that they wanted to dissolve a business deal that Google had to provide cloud services to the state of Israel called Project Nimbus. And I think that's such a discrete thing that it's hard to understand that those 28 people would have even enough knowledge of what that is, but it sounds like a cloud hosting deal. Well, what's hosted there? And it could be any number of things. And I suspect if it's a $1,000,000,000 a year deal, it's many things. It's probably like the Israeli DMV. Is that really what you want? And I think that it would have been much of a more powerful thing to do to protest the actual war if that's what they cared about. Jason Calacanis (00:31:19): You know, dovetails nicely with the discussion you all had last week about would you back a not a defensive, but an offensive weapons company, a technology company, And, it seemed like you all had reservations on if you would not back a defensive one. Anybody, I think, reasonably, would back a defensive, you know, dome or interception of bombs coming in. That's an easy one. But going around the horn here, how many of us would back a company making missiles or bombs that blow people up or minds, would you back a robot that had weapon systems on it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:57): I think if you wanna summarize what we said last week, it's like there are all kinds of businesses where you'll end up investing in it and over time as it morphs. Some of us will be faced with some of those decisions, and it'll it'll frankly depend on what is the alternative in that moment. So I don't think anybody of us are going into going build a nuclear bomb, but you should not be naive that if you're building nuclear reactors, you could end up being in a situation where that's gets licensed into a into a thing that you either agree or disagree with. So this is my point is I think that those kinds of answers or those kinds of questions are missing the nuances, and the nuances are very important. So it's impossible to answer this question in a thoughtful way, I think. Would be my my honest stance. Jason Calacanis (00:32:47): Okay. Sacks, any any closing thoughts here? David Sacks (00:32:50): Well, I I think, Jamath brings up an interesting point about Why didn't the purchase just just focus on the war itself rather than Google doing business with Israel? My interpretation of that is they're trying to create a nexus to themselves Meaning, their employees of Google, they're trying to create a reason for them to stage the sit in at Google. Otherwise, you know, if they just grab picket signs and we're on the street. It would just be much less newsworthy. So I think they were just trying to create something newsworthy here, and it's kinda worked in the sense that we're talking about it. Other people are talking about it. So that's my interpretation of that is they were just trying to elevate the the issue and in a slightly novel way. But, look, I think that they should be willing to pay the price of getting fired or getting arrested. I mean, if you're gonna engage in that kind of civil disobedience or protests, you should be willing to accept the price. And I did see some comments by the Googlers who got fired saying that thought they're being treated unfairly by Google. I think that's the wrong attitude. I think the attitude is, hey, this cause is so important to me that I'm willing to accept the price of being fired. Saying that you don't deserve to be fired for disrupting the workplace. That is kind of an entitled attitude. So I think they should have just said, yeah, we did this on purpose because Jason Calacanis (00:34:06): Yeah. David Sacks (00:34:06): That's a really important policy. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:34:08): To get and prosecute fired because that's how much I believe in it. My stock options that Right. Google are less important than this issue to me. Yeah. And I and I'm I'm Sacks acceptiment. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:18): I think they would have gotten just as much press if they actually protested the war. I think in a week from now, everybody will forget what project Nimbus is. The odds that it gets canceled are less than 0, and everybody will move on. And it will not add to the drum beat as Sacks said of people that may be eventually on the right side of this issue theoretically. May you know, I say theoretically because That's that that stone is still yet to be overturned on that topic. So I think that they missed the mark. And I think the the part of the press that people glommed on to was it was happening inside of a company in real time, and there was video of it. Jason Calacanis (00:34:55): Mission accomplished for them. We're talking about it here as the top story. And, you know, if that was there, if they wanted to raise awareness, they succeeded, and they should just hone their firing because they knew they would get fired, I think. Alright. There has been a ton of chaos and the culture wars continue over NPR. Couple of things happened simultaneously this week and are worth discussing Catherine Marr was named NPR's new CEO back in January. You're gonna have to give a little bit of a timeline here before I get comments from the boys because there's a little setup. And so she was named the the CEO back in January. She officially started in Okay. She formally worked at Week Media Foundation. Those are the people who run the Wikipedia, obviously. NPR's mission, if you don't know, is to create a more informed public, one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas, and culture. That's their state admission from their website on April 9th Erie Berliner, an editor who's been with NPR for 25 years wrote an op ed for Barry, Barry Weiss's, free press from the pod. Explaining how NPR lost America's trust by going hard left and becoming closed minded. He said, quote, an open minded spirit no longer exists within NPR. And now predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America. Last Friday, Mar put out a statement calling his actions profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning. The Sunday, conservative activist, Christopher Ruffo. Yeah. He's, the person who exposed former Harvard president's Claudine Gay's plagiarism is a vocal critic of lgbtq, stuff at schools started reposting old tweets from Marne, this new CEO, Her tweets are super far left from Suresis Yada Yada. There's an interesting clip of her talking at Ted talking about how truth is a bit of a distraction that prevents people from getting things done. People have gotten pretty inflamed about that clip. And then on April 16, Berliner was suspended for 5 days without pay. Wrapping this all up, Berliner then resigned after 25 years. Saying, quote, I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems that NPR a site in my free press essay, Sacks, or those? David Sacks (00:37:17): I mean, this just seems like a dog bites man story. I mean, what is the novel revelation here? The person running NPR is a liberal? I mean Jason Calacanis (00:37:27): I'm kinda with you, but David Sacks (00:37:28): What took 25 years to resign? I mean, all you have to do is listen to NPR. It's always been liberal. Okay? This is not some recent capture of an institution Jason Calacanis (00:37:37): by the law. So crazy viral right now. Why has this become the topic of the moment? David Sacks (00:37:43): Well, apparently, there are some quotes that this new CEO, Catherine Mark, tweeted or said that you can point to that seem kinda woke and kinda crazy woke, but they're just actually pretty standard. I just don't see the breaking news here. If they end up firing Catherine Mar, they're gonna hire someone just like her. I mean, they're gonna have the same views. NPR has always been left of center. And the only change that's happened is that the left has now become woke. Yeah. And so it's become obsessively focused with the ideas of white supremacy and and and white privilege. And she's simply she simply reflects that. Jason Calacanis (00:38:25): I I agree. I it's like a tempest in a teapot. Like, newsflash NPR is woke and left leaning. I mean, I guess maybe that somebody who was there for 25 years wrote the expose is interesting or I don't know. Shamab, any thoughts on this one and why it's taking up so much headspace for people? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:42): I don't think it is. I think it's taking up a lot of headspace amongst breathless journalists I don't think it matters to the public at large. I don't think anybody cares. David Sacks (00:38:51): Because I had one thing, which is I do think that the government should not be funding this anymore. I think NPR at this point is mostly funded by private donations, but it got started with government money, and the government still funds it. And given that it is, this left institution at this point, and and really always has been. There's simply no reason for the government to be funding one side of the political debate that way. So I think there is maybe an issue there in terms of reminding people that, hey, this is like government funded. Why? And there's no reason why NPR can't be funded with either private donations or private description. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:28): This is, Jason Calacanis (00:39:29): just to give people some back of the envelope math. NPR's budget is, like, 320,000,000. It's a dollar per American. And They get a bunch of programming fees and some corporate sponsorship. The corporate sponsorship is like a 100,000,000 bucks. The programming fees is what the local radio stations play them. Net net, this is costing, like, maybe, I don't know, 30¢ in American. And if you just swap out This is the way I like to look at these to be objective. If you were saying this was funding Fox News or, I don't know, Ben Shapiro and Deli Wire, how would you feel about it? You'd be like, well, why is the government thing that they should just cut NPR and all this public broadcasting stuff loose over the next year or 2, wind it down, and let them fend for themselves in the new media landscape. David Sacks (00:40:11): Jake, I agree with you. They could easily sub Sacks it. NPR's not gonna go away. Just create subscriptions, and you're fine. Jason Calacanis (00:40:17): Yeah. I mean, it's only like they're down to whatever. It's it's it's very hard to find the numbers. There's a little, like, hiding of the money here, but there's so little at stake here. I think that's why it's so contentious. No. David Sacks (00:40:27): Because not be funding 1-sided ideological institutions on either side of the political debate. And you're right. If this was funding going to daily wire or something like that, people would be up in arms. So in any event, what's good for the user for the gander? Jason Calacanis (00:40:42): The next tempest in a teapot This humane's AI pen getting barbecued by our modern day, Walt Mossburg, Marquez Brownley, who is an awesome YouTuber. I love his reviews. It's quite a bit of a social media raw shock test here getting a lot of feels from people in Silicon Valley. Let's just tee this up here. Human is a hardware startup, that you may have heard of. They make an AI powered wearable computer. It's basically a pin you put on your chest. About the size of a pack of cigarettes, maybe half the size of it. Founded by 2 Apple execs back in 2018 raised a quarter of, a $1,000,000,000 or so. And, the device is now in the hands of reviewers. It's pretty innovative. And Marquez talks about how innovative it is in his review. It will, let you talk to it. It's got a camera on it. We'll show it here on the screen. If you're not subscribed, to the YouTube channel, just go to YouTube right now and you'll see us. Playing the video of it, search for all in. And, really interesting interface, does obviously voice. It connection to an LLM on the back end. So if you wanna know, you know, some piece of information, you can answer those questions for you. But Marquez, showed it just absolutely failing at a bunch of tests, being overpriced, and he called it the worst product he's ever reviewed. It's very thoughtful and methodical, but the title is obviously a bit link baiting as a co founder of Engage. I can tell you if you want get a lot of clicks to say something is the best or the worst ever, and you can get ten times. The views The PIN, according to him, doesn't do anything better than a smartphone. It's slow. It doesn't work. It's often wrong. It's 700 bucks. The battery sucks. So many different ways to go with this. Everybody is talking about it on and, in the media, where where do you stand on this one, Friedberg, both on how people are responding to it in the tech industry as being like anti tech, anti innovation versus, hey. It's just a reviewer giving his candid feedback on a product that's we're not ready for prime time. David Friedberg (00:42:54): I think there's a lot of issues. One is just the challenge of deep tech. More specifically, in this case, hardware investing, you have to invest a lot of capital before you even have your first product. And then you don't really know how well it works until you've already burnt through a lot of capital. I mean, this is one of the stunning stories of a startup that has raised a quarter $1,000,000,000. And then they come out with their first product, and it turns out it needs a lot of work because it doesn't do anything that consumers really are compelled by. As evidenced by the review. So I think it it highlights that that challenge and why that market finds particularly in this environment, it to be so hard to get capitalized. Now, obviously, there are some entrepreneurs like Elon who can take that capital and drive to the outcome, spending 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars before you get your first rocket into Jason. And you have a lot of failings along the way. But the general tone out here is a deep tech investment is very likely to fail because you spend so much money before you even know, and at that point, you have less money and you can't really make the necessary iteration to get there. So it's a tough data point for other deep tech companies that need to raise a lot of capital. Then I think it brings up the point about ex Apple people, that there's a degree of confidence because people come from Apple and a degree of hubris in the employees that come from Apple that says, I have worked at the best hardware company in the world. Therefore, this person has likely succeeded. It turns out that when you don't have all that built in infrastructure for testing, and optimization, all of that built in distribution, all of the feedback systems that Apple has engineered into their business model for so long. David Friedberg (00:44:43): Maybe you missed some of the data. Around what makes a product great or not before you launch. Jason Calacanis (00:44:48): I think that's your key point, Friedberg. That is the best point. If these folks come from Apple, they're used to unlimited resources, And what you don't see is all the product Apple doesn't release. Right? They never released their car. Correct? Friedberg? And and they get Well, I David Friedberg (00:45:02): think I think then there's also this question about, like, Where is the value in the product? Because they thought, Hey, if we have AI on a pin, it'll work without the consumer feedback, about whether or not people are willing to sit around and wait for 12 seconds to get an answer to a question. And then it it brings up the risk this other really important point, which is Half the people in Silicon Valley are running breathlessly into the conversation saying, do not disparage a startup that's working really hard at getting their first product right. It'll destroy the motivation of other startups that need to kind of iterate to get there. And we can't just take the first V 1 and say that's it. Jason Calacanis (00:45:39): Chum up your thoughts. Well, that's a hysterical address. Then Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:43): the the the David Friedberg (00:45:43): other half of Silicon Valley are running in and saying, this thing's a piece of shit. What are you talking about? It doesn't work. So it is a really interesting kind of, you know, debate. Yeah. Warshock test on what's going on. Jason Calacanis (00:45:54): What do you what do you see in this, in plot? Of a product. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:58): Neither of those 2 cohorts, I think that incredibly motivated, dedicated entrepreneurs don't even know that this is happening and don't care. Got it. In other words, Jason Calacanis (00:46:10): the reviewers, are gonna review products and you just gotta plow ahead and make a better product. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:15): The idea that in 2009, 10 or 11, right, that when all the rockets weren't working, you know, and Elon was back against the wall that he was reading TechCrunch or Speaker 3 (00:46:28): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:29): Getting upset because a product failed, some other random product that had nothing to do with his I think is laughable. I think no great entrepreneur cares. I don't think Friedberg is gonna change what's happening at a hollow based on What is this thing called? Human. Right. Friedberg, have you changed have you made decisions? Are you sad or today in Ojala when you walked into the office to manage team. Okay. So there you go. There's your Jason Calacanis (00:46:53): answer. You're feeling on this? David Sacks (00:46:55): Yeah. I mean, I'm having a hard time understanding all the controversies this week. I mean, reviewers are gonna review. Protesters are gonna protest, and NPR presence are gonna NPR. Jason Calacanis (00:47:04): Here we go. I mean, yeah. Speaker 3 (00:47:06): What's going on? David Sacks (00:47:07): Everyone's just doing Captured audience. Doing their job. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:47:10): Here's an idea for the human team. Be thankful somebody took the time to review your product and give you candid feedback and incorporate it back into your product and make it work. David Friedberg (00:47:20): An irreverent allegiance will eat octopus. Here we are. Jason Calacanis (00:47:24): Oh, so delicious. So delicious. David Sacks (00:47:25): HighIQ Foods. We should create a new category. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:28): HighIQ Foods. Jason Calacanis (00:47:28): Yeah. What are the other high IQ Foods? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:31): Acorn fed beef. Yeah. For sure. High IQ. Pigs. Very high IQ. I saw that cow playing chess before David Sacks (00:47:39): He Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:40): has served for dinner, actually. Jason Calacanis (00:47:42): I was having a pork sandwich from Buckies, and, it helped me solve wordle for the day. And before I ate it. So I got word only 2 tries. Speaker 3 (00:47:53): Oh, I'm so sorry. Jason Calacanis (00:47:55): I'm a landed. I didn't want that went to land. Yeah. I mean, okay. Let me ask this question. Do we think the world? Let's say this thing did respond. Here's the theme. Here's the theme, Jason. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:08): Here's the theme, Jason. The problem is that I think people right now, the real Worshack test is if you are so easily distracted, you probably don't have enough to do. Jason Calacanis (00:48:18): Right. That's the entitlement is that you don't have enough work on it. I don't Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:22): wanna call it entitlement. I think the reality is that if you get caught up in all these silly little fake battles or decisions, I think what it really means is that you're not busy enough and or you're not working on something that matters enough to you because when either of those two things are true, people tend to be tend to have blinders on, and they are super focused. And they just don't have an opinion. They don't care. Like, honestly, many of these topics today I really don't care, and it's not because I'm better or worse or smarter or dumber. It's because I'm so overworked right now. I don't have time to have an opinion on this, Speaker 3 (00:48:56): Tramaz got a CEO job, and now he's gotta work. No. But and Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:59): I think that anybody else trying to do their job well is probably in the same category. David Sacks (00:49:04): I hadn't even heard of this review. What's his name? Mark Mark Marquez? Marquez. I never heard of him. Jason Calacanis (00:49:11): If you're on YouTube, he's kinda like the new Walt Mosper. Speaker 3 (00:49:14): He he Jason Calacanis (00:49:15): does 20, 30 minute videos. They get millions of views. Yeah. Shoot. I don't know that he makes or breaks a product, though. By the way, he does not make or break a product. The product makes or breaks itself. David Sacks (00:49:26): Yeah. Look. When when I was running companies. I wouldn't care about what one reviewer said. I would care about the totality of the reaction to the product, which would include customers as well as reviewers and so forth. So I don't think there's any point getting too bad on a shape out one review. I think what's kinda happening in terms of the reaction here is that people wanna give this company like mercy points for being innovative. So my guess is the product just isn't ready for prime time, but everyone wants to kinda like, they want the reviewers to take it easy on them or something because they are being innovative in the breaking new ground in this this area of wearables. But the reality is in the real world where you wanna charge people for your product, like, customers don't have mercy points. Jason Calacanis (00:50:12): Nope. So If if the car breaks down, the car breaks down. And David Sacks (00:50:16): by the Jason Calacanis (00:50:16): way, Marquez got a little bit of heat just a month ago because he reviewed the fisker. The fisker is just a piece of garbage car. He said it's the worst car he's ever reviewed. And you know what?Reviewers exist in the world to inform customers about what products and services they should buy, and then they should inform you to make a better product, period, full stop, there is an easy solution to this, by the way, which Apple did. They they released the VisionPro as a developer kit they put a bunch of caveats on it and said, hey. We understand. This is high priced. It's a developer kit. This is in beta. What humane should have done is they should have said this is the humane beta for developers. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:55): I still don't know what it is. What is this? Jason Calacanis (00:50:57): Okay. It's a wearable. It's a square. It has a projector on it. You put your hand out. It projects a little screen that shows you, like a computer screen, and you can talk to it and ask you questions. David Friedberg (00:51:08): The primary function is like a chat AI assistant that sits on you and has a camera. Yeah. And so you can say Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:15): it's taping everything that it sees. Jason Calacanis (00:51:18): It doesn't do that by default, but it could. David Friedberg (00:51:20): But, sorry, let me just let me just give the quick overview. And basically, you asked it questions, and it can go get the answers. The problem is that it has to go make a request to the internet, run an AI model, and come back so it takes like 12 seconds to get results. Most of the time, according to the reviewer, the results are actually wrong, because it's a telephony model. The voice to text translation is wrong. There's a lot of things that are wrong about it. So it takes a long time. It's clunky. And then the battery burns out every 2 hours, and it gets super hot because of the way they get it to magnetically stick your clothes. Took it's very hot. So there's all sorts of issue, and it's 700 bucks. David Sacks (00:51:55): Other than that, how is the player you've missed is Lincoln? Jason Calacanis (00:51:57): And by the way, most importantly, to you, Shamoff, it will screw up your fabrics. If you wear this with a loro pee on a sweater, I was gonna drag your sweater down. Hold on. I was just gonna attach Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:07): it to a $6000 sweater. Yeah. It's basically what you're telling me is it's an overpriced device that could give you 1st degree burns. Speaker 3 (00:52:16): And it will ruin your status. Jason Calacanis (00:52:17): And doesn't answer the questions that you ask me. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:21): But then do I think the questions, or do I have to say it out loud so it looks like I'm talking to myself? Jason Calacanis (00:52:25): You would look like a lunatic. Yes. You're walking around like a crazy person talking to yourself. David Friedberg (00:52:29): That was the other thing he said is, like, when you're in a crowd and there's a voice around, you can use your hand and hand gestures to control it and do things with the projector's thing that it does. It's some really it's some really cool interesting features. It's just like it's not quite there yet. Invested in? Let's not make fun Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:43): of it. Let's make fun of the investors. Who who invested? Jason Calacanis (00:52:47): Sam Altman. Shout out to Sam. Let's go about the program, I think. Yeah. I listen. I I the concept, I think, is good. Wearables are going to provide some distinct value when they work. Because you don't have to take your phone out. And so the idea behind wearables, like your watch, is, you know, like, there are some things I do on my watch now where I don't take my phone out. I have I'll take the other side Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:09): of this. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:53:10): I'll take the other side when you're done. Yeah. Yeah. Fit. Jason Calacanis (00:53:12): I use Fitbit company we invested in, and it puts all my workout on my watch. When I'm doing weights, I started doing weights now. That's why I look so dumb, folks. Subscribe to the YouTube channel to Jason. And I do my sets, and I log them all with my my watch, I don't have to take my phone out. That's, like, the first thing. And then when I'm skiing, I could see each run. I showed you slopes. I'm not an investor in. Trem off where I could see my speed and all that stuff. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:34): Saying something totally different. That's that's utility. Of course, you'll find a device will give you utility. I thought you were saying something else, which is everybody's gonna have wearables, and I wanna take the exact opposite. Okay. Jason Calacanis (00:53:46): Go ahead. Yeah. I don't know that everybody will have wearables, but I do find a couple of little things that work for me. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:51): I totally get that, you know, the use of an accelerometer or whatever in a watch or in a band that you wear on your wrist for a workout. And I think that that's valuable, or heart rate, a glycemic monitor so that you could all of that stuff makes super sense for you as an individual, but that's not an experience where you're engaging with it to sub like, to to replace some other social interaction. That's just you getting utility as you live your life. What I'm saying is the idea that you start to rely on a device has your interface into the world, I take the exact other side of the bet, which is I think that humans are getting so sick and tired of being of only communicating in these very rigid ways. Like I'm telling you, like, if you look at our children's generation, They don't know how to make eye contact. They don't know how to talk. And I think it's gonna come back and bite them in the ass. And so I think the pendulum is gonna swing in the other direction where it's like, okay. Enough of this stuff. Let's actually look each other in the eye and talk to each other the way that humans were meant to be. And I and I think that in that, devices like a glucose monitor or a band has value, but I don't think it's going to be this interface where you're sign languaging it while you're at think you're gonna rip the devices off and that should be at Coachella without any devices. Jason Calacanis (00:55:08): Did any of you guys read Jonathan Hates book, anxious generation? It is unbelievably awesome. It touches all. Not right. Yeah. Yeah. I I stop what you're doing and just listen to the audio book on your walks on Audible. This book is super important and awesome. The anxious generation by Jonathan Hate. I cannot tell you how important it is. Sacks, any closing feeling, sir? You have a take. Any hot takes? David Sacks (00:55:29): Well, I I would slightly disagree with you guys about the this device. So so first of all, I think that humans are becoming more and more cybernetics. We're getting more and more immersed with computing power. And I agree. It creates this anxiety and all these problems, but on the other hand, I think it's an irreversible trend. So I think that I would not bet against things that make us more cybernetic. I think the problem here is that this company is trying to do 2 difficult things. The first thing is it's trying to capture everything that's happening in the world around you to feed it into an AI model so it can make you smarter. The other thing it's trying to do is reduce your dependence on your phone by creating this new projection surface. And, you know, in my experience, when you try to do two hard things you actually square the complexity and you square the difficulty as opposed to adding it. Yes. So I think of these two things, the one that sounds interesting to me, is taking in all the information from the physical world and putting in an AI model that can be helpful to you. But I see no reason to replace the phone. I think it should just work with your phone. The problem they're gonna have is that that pendant will compete with the Apple Glasses and all the other wearables that are gonna be created to, you know, suck in all this information, this computer vision from the world. Nonetheless, I do think that is the opportunity. It's not replacing the phone. It's layering a new platform on top of the phone that can kinda, you know, again, give you that terminator mode in the real world. Jason Calacanis (00:56:56): And that was a complaint about this device specifically was that. It was detached from the phone. I understand why they wanna make it stand alone, but and then this opens up all the privacy. Let me ask the panel here What do you think about this concept of recording the entire world, all these conversations, and video with these devices? I think it's a quick way to get yourself punched in the face. I mean, we saw that with Google Glass. People showed up at bars in San Francisco and parties with these Google Glass things on, and literally got punched in the face. Well, this is why privacy things recorded in your entire life with a pendant, man. No. Thank you. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:28): This is why I said what I said. I do think Sacks is right that ultimately, you'll have some kind of brain interface because I do think a chip implant of some kind is very valuable But what I'm also saying is that I think that that will actually lessen the social acceptability of these visible devices that are constantly getting in between you and another person. And so the idea that we're kind of already in a quasi surveillance state, and now we're going to increase that by n factorial to the number of people, I think, is very depressing. Jason Calacanis (00:58:01): It is depressing. And, you know, in in Jonathan hates book, he, talks about phone lockers for schools and the transformative power they have had. When you go to a school, there are some schools now, high schools where the students put their phones in specific phone numbers. They David Friedberg (00:58:15): do it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:15): They do it in my kids. It's a it's actually, Jason, these special pouches pouches. Jason Calacanis (00:58:20): Yeah. So those are the pouches comedians use. Chappell and his shows. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:23): Chappell uses it. Kevin uses them. Yeah. Exactly. And they're great. And then what what the school now also teaches the kids at least our school, which I found really interesting is the graduated form of that is they actually now allow you to put it in a envelope because they're training the kid It's like the pouch you can't get access to. You have to go back to Jason Calacanis (00:58:43): the box in the box. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:45): And then I I saw that my son last week had it actually in a in a white envelope and he had to close the envelope and just keep it with him as as like a way of graduating from the prison form of keeping the phone away to, like, you know, having it in your pocket. The levels are trying to do a lot to try to teach these kids not to be so dependent on them. They should Jason Calacanis (00:59:03): ban these devices at schools a 100%. And then at the poker game tonight, we should meet people stack their phones and charge somebody a $1000 whoever takes the phone first. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:10): We'll stack. Jason Calacanis (00:59:11): Let's do it tonight. David Sacks (00:59:13): Let me let me give a a shout out to one of my favorite sci fi book series is called Nexus by Romez Nam, and it's kind of this like cyber futuristic series. But what he talks about is when we have this brain computer interface, you'll be able to upload your memories. And so, you know, you talk about this idea of recording your whole life through a pendant. Well, eventually, you'll be able to record your whole life based on just through your eyeballs. And, you know, you'd be able to upload in theory a first person view of whatever conversation you've been in. You know? And so there's a certain you look, this is pretty far off, but there is maybe a certain inevitability to that. And, we're gonna have to figure out how to deal with the David Friedberg (00:59:54): privacy certifications. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:55): There was a Black Mirror episode on this exact idea. Jason Calacanis (00:59:58): Yep. Yeah. You have the DVR of your entire life. Yeah. And it is gnarly to think these things will exist. And I think humanity's gonna have to make a decision, I think, to fight this or embrace it. I I think we should fight it. I think it's gonna ruin like social existence. And it's already ruined poker games, etcetera, when everybody's on their phone. It's ruined dinner parties when everybody's on their phones. The constant distraction is just horrific, and it's having a horrible impact on this generation. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:23): I'll double down on what you're saying. It is so lovely to be able to have a dinner everybody just talks to each other and looks each other in the eyes. Speaker 3 (01:00:29): Yes. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:29): And then when you have a handful of people always on their phone, it's depressing. It's actually it's actually not even neutral. It's a net negative and a drag on the entire night. Jason Calacanis (01:00:40): Absolutely. I I I am trying to come up with ways to remove these devices from the social settings. And then I've been to a couple of parties with high profile people where they have everybody check their phones after that laying the door. I gotta say those are the best nights of my life. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:54): Those are the best nights. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:00:55): They're incredible. And, you know, no offense to people who are addicted to their phones. I I am to a certain extent. I put my social media at 1 hour on my phone. My lord, it is hard to do less than an hour of social media in our job positions and, you know, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:09): I deleted TikTok about a month ago. It's been liberating. I was a slave to that app. I couldn't believe how much how much TikTok I was consuming after it was gone because I couldn't I couldn't find anything to replace it. And then I stumbled into the fact but YouTube has YouTube shorts, and there is a lot of that content, but it's terrible, and the algorithm is really bad. And so, fortunately, I just stopped using YouTube. It just shows you how Jason Calacanis (01:01:36): the algorithm is such a key component of that TikTok experience because I had the same experience, shorts, serves up garbage, carb. Instagram shows up garbage. And then TikTok is just like biting to your brain kicks ass. It kicks Probably, I won't give another shot. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:53): I missed TikTok. TikTok. I miss you. Yeah. Whatever. Jason Calacanis (01:01:56): It's it's that's going well. I miss you. Another incredible book. I think we should booked the speaker for all in summit, bad therapy. Why the kids aren't growing up? Abigail Shryer? This book is incredible. And if you read these 2 every parent read these two Sacks, and we need to have a conversation on it as parents here. Everybody read these two Sacks. These two these are my 2 top choices for the all in summit. I think it's like the gonna be the the topic of our time. Alright. Let's keep going down this incredible docket. Very important issue for us to talk about. Silicon Valley startups having a bit of a r and d tax problem. Thanks for putting it on the docket here, Friedberg. It's a bit inside baseball, but very important topic. Let's say, company like Sacks Corporation generated a million bucks in revenue, and they spent a million bucks on their software developers last year. Let's say they had, I don't know, 5 developers getting paid $200 each. Well, tradition is company would pay nothing in income tax. Right? They spent a 1,000,000. They deduct that 1,000,000 from the $1,000,000 in revenue that came in and Everything's good. But due to the Sacks Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, starting last year, a provision kicked in forcing companies to amortize their r and d expense over 5 years. So in this hypothetical situation, the Acme Corporation would amortize 200 k a year and pay income tax on the 800 k in profits. This is brutal, obviously, for Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:19): certain quotes, profits, air quotes, Jason Calacanis (01:03:21): profits, correct. Yeah. And this is absolutely brutal. And a lot of companies took a wait and see approach as hoping Congress would fix the issue in January of bipartisan tax bill that would reverse his changes pass in the house, but the bill has stalled in the senate. And we gotta get this thing fixed because it's gonna sync a lot of startups maybe people will start putting their companies in other countries. But, it's attached to this child tax credit, which Republicans don't wanna Sacks. So no reversal has happened. Friedberg, you highlighted this for us. Very important topic. Thank you for doing so as our great contributor here. What are your thoughts on it? David Friedberg (01:03:59): This became law in the 2017 Jobs Act as you highlighted And basically, it means that companies, not just like tech Companies, but life sciences companies, defense companies, are pushing congress to change this law because you can't actually deduct the expenses that you use to run your business You have to only deduct them over 5 years, 20 percent a year. So like you pointed out, if you're making a $1,000,000, but you're spending a $1,000,000, you made no profit. But you gotta pay taxes as if you made $800 in profit. And a lot of these small companies don't have that cash. So venture capital backed companies and public companies that are profitable. They can afford to do this because they have large balance sheets, so it doesn't affect them as much as it does. The literally hundreds of thousands of small businesses that work in the life sciences sector, the defense sector, the tech sector that are struggling this year to make the tax payments that are required under this this law that went into effect last year. And Congress promised that they were gonna repeal this law Yeah. Leading up to April 15th, which happened, obviously, a few days ago, and make it retroactive to 2023, but they didn't. But Friedberg, they Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:10): know basic math. Congress knows basic math. How do they how do they What was the intent here? David Friedberg (01:05:16): Yeah. So the the original intent was that this was one of the ways. You guys know whenever you pass a bill, it gets run through the OMB and the CDO that figures out what's the budgetary cost of the bill. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:27): Yeah. And one of David Friedberg (01:05:28): the ways that they made this work this bill, the 2017 trump Sacks and jobs act. You guys may remember in that bill, they also made it impossible to deduct entertainment and dining expenses when you get people out to dinner anymore. That's Sacks. And they did all those things to make up some of the money they were using for basic general tax breaks for companies. So they use this as a way to say, like, look, in a couple of years, we're gonna kick in this R and D expenditure thing, and it'll trigger a lot more revenue. The federal government. It'll create a lot more taxes and a lot more revenue. So that was the idea. And everyone was like, yeah. Okay. Sure. We'll do that. Great. It makes the accounting work. And then a couple years, you know, nudge, nudge joint wink, we're gonna come back and repeal it. Except Congress has stalled out, there's this ineptitude where anytime someone tries to pass a bill in congress, someone else says I want to get money. And so the Democrats showed up and said, we want this child tax credit thing to show up. Which basically was passed during COVID, and they want to extend it going forward. And the child tax credit says that you can get a check for 1800 a year in 2023, 1900 in $202,000 in 20.25, for having for each child you have. And the Republicans and the Senate are saying wait a second for people to get this thing. We wanna make sure they're working. We wanna make sure it's not as retroactive. Now there's this big debate about how big the child tax credit should be. And that's keeping this R and D thing from going through. And meanwhile, I've gotten tons of emails from CEOs of tech companies that are breaking even. These are not tech companies that are making a ton of profit. They're not public. They're not venture backed. They're just people running running their their business, and now they're gonna have this huge tax bill even though they didn't make any money this year. And it's crippling businesses around the country. Jason Calacanis (01:07:09): And what Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:10): do they do? David Friedberg (01:07:11): They're gonna write a check. They're gonna borrow money. They're gonna go to the bank, borrow money, they're gonna incur penalties with the IRS because they don't have the cash to pay the the tax bill because they don't have any profit. They didn't make any money. If they just ran the business breakeven, which a lot of these companies do, is just make a little bit of money or breakeven. And then they've got this huge tax bill and profits they didn't actually have. Gotta go figure out how to write a check. Jason Calacanis (01:07:31): And, also, how do you define R and D? I was talking to an accountant. He's like, yeah, I don't know if that's R and D. I'm like, you don't know who it's R and D? Like, okay. So if I need some piece of software, Yeah. David Friedberg (01:07:40): There's all this writing in the, if you get audited by the IRS, they can have the ability to basically capture everything. So, like, let's say you're a mobile app developer. And you make a $1,000,000 a year, but you spend a $1,000,000 a year on your developers. Jason Calacanis (01:07:54): Okay. David Friedberg (01:07:55): They're gonna count that. They have the the ability to count that as an R and D so that the accountants, the tax accountant tell you book it all as r and d because otherwise you could get audited and actually get in trouble. Because anything that involves the development of technology now is considered r and d. Again, a company working in life sciences is a research company doing lab work. Jason Calacanis (01:08:13): Can Yeah. But if I do bug fixes, is a bug fix R and D, if I make a new feature and an application this year, does it have to be amortized over 5 years? Am I put a new filter in the David Friedberg (01:08:22): I'm not a Sacks collector. Sure. My my understanding was most most of this stuff is getting captured, and that's why it's hurting everything from defense to to to life sciences, to the lab equipment, to startups that make software to everything. And Congress can't get out of its own way where this this bill passed, by the way, bipartisan in the house. Then it went to the senate, and now it's getting taken apart in the senate. Now it stalled out and everyone's freaking out, but it stalled out past April 15th. And it's actually gonna hurt a lot of small businesses in this country And here's the other problem is it actually limits our ability to invest in innovation in this country because now you're better off there's no other country in the world that does this. Every other country in the world tries to incentivize investment in innovation. And here in the US, we're basically saying no, we're gonna tax you for investing in technology development and innovation. And the other thing that's that's actually not being talked about is even in this bill where they're repealing this, they're leaving in the fact that if you invest in r and d outside the US, you have to amortize it over 15 years. So let's say that you're a US developer and you hire people offshore. Yeah. You gotta basically amortize the offshore stuff over 15 years, which means you'll never make a profit. You're always gonna have to pay taxes. Jason Calacanis (01:09:36): I mean, it's we're trying to kill innovation in this country. And the 2 things they gotta solve is this 1, and then M and a. We gotta have a better solution for allowing companies to be bought and sold in this or emerge in this com country. These two things are putting a lot of headwinds on the startup ecosystem and on the venture and the risk taking capital ecosystems. If you're in Washington, DC or involved in our government, please solve these 2 issues. You you gotta figure out a way to allow companies to be bought and sold. You gotta figure out a way. To to fix this tax issue, or else we're gonna kill a lot of startups. And these are the companies that pay a lot of Sacks, and these are the capital gains. That fund a lot of states treasuries. David Friedberg (01:10:23): It means that It it also an illustration of just how hungry we we are for tax revenue in this country. You know, it's only gonna grow. And I'm not sitting here complaining about Sacks. You know, the trump tax cut that he put in place in 2017 added 1 and a half $1,000,000,000,000 to the federal deficit So tax cuts in general are not great when you're spending a lot, but it does highlight just how much we are spending at the federal level and the demand for tax revenue and that demand causes this countercyclical problem, which is now we're gonna eat into innovation, which is supposed to drive, get us out of the problem, the spiral that that results from this debt. So it really highlights, like, just the challenges that are going to emerge, particularly in a decade ahead, because we have all of the spending that's coming in front of us over the next decade and how we're gonna start to demand more and more tax Sacks all these weird ways that can really hurt industry. Jason Calacanis (01:11:13): Unintended consequences are very real. Chamath, were you gonna say something? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:19): Well, doesn't it mean though that if you run it at breakeven, And without a lot of growth, by year 5, you'll be back to where you were. So you really have to cover the taxes in years 1 through 4. David Friedberg (01:11:30): That's right. If the business, but if the business is growing, you're always gonna be in a hole. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:35): Right. David Friedberg (01:11:36): Right. So if your revenue is growing and your OpEx is growing, you're always gonna be in a I Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:40): think Jason mentioned it earlier, and I think it's the key thing, which is what is r and d then. Yep. And maybe you just move things to cogs and just be done with it. I mean, that's what I Speaker 3 (01:11:50): would do. David Friedberg (01:11:50): Remember businesses and and you guys know this. Like, when you look at a public company's financials, what you're seeing is their financials, generally accepted accounting principles. And that's the way that you present the financials of a business. That's different than the way you present financials to the IRS. You don't have a lot of discretion in your tax financials. Your tax financials are actually quite different than your GAAP financials. Yes. So when you file your taxes, There's a lot of rules on what you are allowed to deduct and aren't allowed to deduct. That's quite different than how you present your corporate financials to investors. And that's really where people get screwed is you don't have that sort of discretion that you do in kind of sharing your financials with investors. So Jason Calacanis (01:12:30): This is not financial or accounting advice. Get great representation. David Friedberg (01:12:33): I just hope Congress resolves this because it's, you know, super important. Jason Calacanis (01:12:37): Alright. Sports betting has gone mainstream. If you don't know 2 out of 3 college students have placed a bet in the last year since the Supreme Court struck down the amateur sports protection Sacks, 38 States have legalized sports betting. I think that's a great thing, but we're starting to see some weird behavior because of it. Tons of sites like DraftKings, FanDuel, ESPM bet, bet MGM, all of these have broken out. But this week, we started to see some weird behavior. The NBA banned a twenty four year old player Jante Porter for life after a scandal. This one is bizarre and interesting porter. Was a bench player for the Toronto raptors, averaging about 14 minutes per game. It's important. On these gambling apps, you can do all kinds of prop bets. For those of you who don't know, prop bets, could be things like, Steph is gonna hit 5 threes in the game, or LeBron's gonna score under 30 points. You're just betting on unique things that could happen, and then you can parlay them together. You can put multiple bets together, and it automatically gives you a price and you can do really, you know, deep wagers doing this. The NBA found out that Porter was telling people to bet his unders for points and rebounds during certain games during those games, he'd play a few minutes, then check him out self out of the game with an illness, quote, unquote, technically, the bet would still count since he played the game, but everybody who bet his unders would win. Normally, nobody would notice this, of course, because he hasn't played that much. He's a bench player. But DraftKings because they have all the data tipped everyone off because Porter was the biggest moneymaker on March 20th. This led to an NBA investigation. DraftKings will give you a leaderboard of the biggest bets, and they saw that somebody place an $80,000 bet that Porter would the unders on a bunch of different categories. Jason Calacanis (01:14:27): Crazy outlier bet. DraftKings canceled the bet. The NBA found that Porter separately placed dozens of bet on NBA game choosing his friend's accounts, winning a whopping $22,000. And this idiot now is banned from life from the NBA. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, but, obviously, the NBA has the receipts with DraftKings Chamath, you, owned a NBA team for a little while, and you watched as David Stern. Yeah. For a decade, you watched as David Stern who was absolutely opposed. To gambling, and then Adam Silver embraced it. Tell us from your front row seat, your thoughts on wagering in the NBA. And then wagering writ large. Okay. Look. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:13): I remember when I joined the ownership group of the Warriors. I had to file this enormous document. And one of the things that they really dig into is whether you've bet before. And they make it really, really clear that it is completely not allowed to bet. And the only way that you can bet is if you're betting on non basketball and if you are in Vegas and you go to a casino and a troop sports book, that's the only time it's tolerated. The thing with all of these sites, FanDuel, and DraftKings is they did deals with the leagues where part of the feature is that when there is really crazy asymmetric betting on something that's obscure. They reported back to the leagues so the leagues know how to look at it because typically what happens is If you're talking like a very well contested basketball, Jason, you have a relatively balanced book Right? And what the the goal is is to figure out where are the sharps headed, meaning the really smart money guys, and everybody else is a square, and most of retail is a square. Okay? They're gonna lose their money. And so the goal is to always find out where the sharps are going, but there are some of these bets, and in this case, this is why they found out when you have something being bet that's very obscure in size, these apps immediately go back to the league and say this just happened. Jason Calacanis (01:16:37): So compare that to Tremoff, what would happen previously before sports betting was legal in the US. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:16:43): Before, what would happen is, like, All of these bookies would be able to have relationships with some of these players. Sometimes they would also have relationships with some of the reps and it has spilled over. So the NBA has had to deal with an example where one of the refs were I think he was betting on some names. Yeah. Tim Donahy and then he was point David. So this has been going on for a long time. It moved into the realm of it being automated with algorithms looking out The fact that this kid didn't have anybody on his team that explained that DraftKings and FanDuel are going to send this data to the NBA is inexcusable because maybe the kid would not have done it. Right? Do you Jason Calacanis (01:17:26): agree with the lifetime ban, or do you think this should be Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:29): Yeah. It has to be lifetime. Jason Calacanis (01:17:30): Has to be for the NBA to have in custody. Has to be. Yeah. Yeah. It's really, and and what what do we think about this becoming legal in the US and people. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:41): The embracing well, the other thing I'll say, and I and I mentioned this a few weeks ago, Everything is being gamified. You have an an entire population that seemingly in America, consumer spending still goes up folks are relatively still flush with cash. There's lots of free cash flow. There are new and more aggressive forms of stimulus constantly coming down the pike. Whether it's student loan forgiveness or something else, right, governments are inventing new and new ways of buying votes that's gonna put more and more money in people's hands. That means a larger and larger percentage of it will bleed into these kinds of things, and it's not just sports gambling. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal about this woman who's a well respected lawyer who became totally addicted playing like a bingo app right, and lost her entire life. So these forms of gambling and addiction are just gonna skyrocket, I think, because you have these apps that are really incredibly well engineered to get you super hooked and then the adrenaline rush and the dopamine rush of actually winning money is a thing that for some people, they can't turn off once they feel it for the first time. Jason Calacanis (01:18:51): We know some of those people and, you know, it's it's hard for them to control their sports betting, blackjack playing, other things. They just they get too into it. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:00): They get too into it. Jason Calacanis (01:19:01): They get just, you know, but other societies other geos, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, they've had this for a while, so they've figured out how to deal Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:10): with this. This is what I'm gonna tell you. The last thing I'll say on this is when I was in high school, so in the early nineties in Ontario and Canada, they introduced sports betting as a way of generating revenue for the government, What I will tell you is that my entire high school, all the boys, not the girls, we became instant gambling addicts. We were figuring out how to put bets on. Most of it was betting in hockey because that's the sport that we all knew the best growing up in in Ottawa. But it was all day every day. It consumed us. And I think when you look inside of these apps, you're seeing a lot of young men with a lot of free cash and a lot of time getting sucked into the gamification of this thing. I think it's gonna be a big problem. Jason Calacanis (01:19:52): And I I will tell you I'm interested in your position on this because there is a whole system and ecosystem emerging here. The states are getting massive amounts of revenue. $11,000,000,000 generated last year. Up 44.5 percent from 2022. The league is printing money from this all the leagues. MBA will generate a 167,000,000 from betting this season up 11% year over year. The sportsbooks, obviously, killing a DraftKings got a $20,000,000,000 market cap and betters obviously love it. It's more fun. It's making the games more engaging. And the media is loving this. All of the podcast Bill Simmons, ESPN, You can't watch a game. You can't hear sports commentary without this being integrated, and it's being integrated at a very fundamental editorial level they're asking the host of the Speaker 3 (01:20:39): shows Jason Calacanis (01:20:39): checkout. Their spend and what they're betting on. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:42): And they're doing something very smart, which is they're paying huge endorsement deals to the players as well. Yes. I think DraftKings did something with LeBron. This is genius because when you get that ingratiated, you'll never get ripped out. Because if they become a huge part of the off court revenue model for these players? Jason Calacanis (01:20:58): No. We're locked in. It's like it's like the new Lock. It's like the new Air Jordan. Sachs, what do you think about this just in terms of on a societal basis and the United States? You know, it's it's sort of like cannabis. You know, it's this is a new thing for Americans to have access to. There's a lot of weird behaviors going on edge Jason, but what do you think Net Net as a society? You take away from the emergence of sports betting and this next generation being so addicted to it. David Sacks (01:21:25): Well, I think cannabis is the right analogy. I think adults should be out allowed to bet on sporting events or just like they're allowed to drink or, you know, smoke pot or engage in other mild vices. Some people handle it responsibly, and some don't. It's probably on a societal Jason. It's probably not a great thing, but it's something you allow to happen because of personal Friedberg, and, hopefully, people use it responsibly. Jason Calacanis (01:21:52): Free break, do you have any thoughts you play? You place any free book. I'm not are you place any bets on sports? I'm curious. I do not. You do not. I I don't I don't place bets on sports, but I love playing cards because it's social. Chamath, do you do any sports betting now and again? Maybe this maybe on the Super Bowl, you get, once in a while, you you place a bet, a wager? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:09): When I got admitted to the ownership group and the MBA, I stopped And I probably made 3 bets since then. Both all three were, like, on the Super Bowl Speaker 3 (01:22:18): Mhmm. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:18): At a casino, which so it was legal when I was still an owner, and I've not done it since. And I've refused to download these apps because I love sports, and I think that if I added this to it. I just don't think it would be good for me, so I don't wanna do it. Jason Calacanis (01:22:35): That was my exact take too. So, Sacks, you ever placed any bets? You're not a wage one. It's not easier. Right? Yeah. You ever bet on chess? Is there any general that? David Sacks (01:22:44): No one bets on chess because it's so obvious he's gonna win. There's like a very precise rating system. And so in poker, the poker is very different because you can have players at the same table, and you know who are the great players and who are not the great players, but still in any given hand, the underdog can win because you can basically suck out or whatever. There's a significant luck component on every single hand. Over the long term, you believe that the luck kinda evens out and you reach your expected value. But on any given hand, you can believe that you're the winner. And so there's a lot of gambling in poker even though it is a skill game in chess. Like, that just doesn't work. I mean, if I play Magnus Carlson or any 2000 rated player, I'm just never gonna win. So Yeah. There's no point in betting. Jason Calacanis (01:23:31): Sacks, what's your rating? 1400. David Sacks (01:23:34): I'm a little better than that. I'm like, I'm probably more like 1600. Jason Calacanis (01:23:38): Last time, man. 1400, I stopped playing them because you were I would get to the middle game in Sacks. I'd get, like, 30 moves in, and then he would just smash me. I'm, like, 800 or something. I I Speaker 3 (01:23:47): how do you get better? Free Jason Calacanis (01:23:48): bird you have Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:48): a rating? David Friedberg (01:23:50): I don't wanna talk about it. Jason Calacanis (01:23:51): He doesn't wanna talk. But what's Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:53): your rate? Jason Calacanis (01:23:54): Are you still upset about the octopus, though? No? Oh, okay. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:58): What's your but what's your rating? David Friedberg (01:24:00): Stupid question. It's too personal a question. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:04): Do you do you never share information where people can actually, like, get through you? Jason Calacanis (01:24:08): Yeah. Be there. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:09): Oh, dude. Come on. David Friedberg (01:24:10): I'm what is it? Ask ask me other questions. Jason Calacanis (01:24:13): Just don't Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:13): ask me about my chest, Braden. David Friedberg (01:24:15): Don't ask me about my chest, Braden. Ask me anything else. What is the lowest rate? Jason Calacanis (01:24:18): To get better. Jake, should I get a coach or something, Sacks? What's a bit just.com David Friedberg (01:24:22): app has very good lessons on it too. It's actually quite good. David Sacks (01:24:25): Yeah. You could get a coach, and that would definitely help. There's also these exercise you can do called puzzle rushes that teach you how to spot tactics, David Friedberg (01:24:32): which is probably David Sacks (01:24:33): it's probably half the game. Jason Calacanis (01:24:35): Yeah. Like, you learn how to do a night fork or something like that, how to do pins. David Sacks (01:24:39): You you see it's a spot tactics quickly is really the key. David Friedberg (01:24:42): My puzzle rescores are pretty good. Speaker 3 (01:24:44): Are you Jason Calacanis (01:24:44): over a 1000? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:46): No. No. David Friedberg (01:24:46): You play it's like how many you can get in a certain period of time? How many and it gets it gets sequentially harder as you complete the puzzles and you have, like, Jason Calacanis (01:24:54): a limited period to do it. So yet you feel shame. You feel shame. David Sacks (01:24:59): If you wanna get better at chess, I've watched a lot of test videos on YouTube. And there's a very good series by John Bartholomew called Climbing the ratings ladder. And for each level of elo ratings. He has a series of videos. So, like, I don't know if you're like a 1200, there's a whole series for 1200, and he'll play a bunch of games against 1200. Showing what they typically do wrong, and you can learn from it. It's actually Jason Calacanis (01:25:25): Have have you spent Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:26): have you spent time Sacks, like, studying, like, openings and, like, studying, like, specific lines. I don't even know if I'm using the right language here. Like, Jason Calacanis (01:25:36): openings. Right? Yeah. David Sacks (01:25:37): I haven't spent a ton of time studying them, but I'm certainly familiar with a number of the most common openings. So I guess, yes, I guess on some level I've studied them. I would say that depending on where you are in your development, that may not be the most pressing thing for you to do. You know, I think you you probably do wanna just know a few basics of a few of the most common openings, but but there's probably other things for you to learn first. You don't need to, like, memorize a bunch of complicated lines. Jason Calacanis (01:26:09): I think it's like really cool that kids are learning this. I know this may be a counter or a contrarian view, but I I think kids having access you know, where young adults having access to sports betting poker is kind of a good thing because I you know, if controlled because they're learning about odds and gambling and and framing it. I, with my fourteen year old, are doing an allowance, and then I decided to do an investment club. And so I'm putting a 100 dollars every month into like a Robinhood account. And we're gonna do, like, 2 meetings every month. 1 to buy a new stock and 1 to examine our existing Sacks. I'm just starting an investment club. So if anybody's kids are in that age group and they wanna join it, let me know because I'm gonna do, like, with, the cousins, like, a Zoom call every month where we just talk about Sacks. And then I'm gonna have them actually buy it so that they can be prepared for the real world and how companies are going. But How do you think about your kids, Jamoff? Cause you you got to do this gambling when you were young. Didn't that help you, ultimately as an adult? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:10): I mean, I ran a casino in my high school. Jason Calacanis (01:27:15): Was that was that the Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:16): yeah. I mean, I I ran a I ran a little black checking where the rich kids could play and I was the house. And Okay. I would make a few extra hundred bucks a week. Nice. And that was great because, like, you know, between that and my job at Burger King, it really helped. And then I would go and take that. And I got you came pretty decent at blackjack, and I would go and they would they would be these what's called charity casinos. So casinos in Ottawa were illegal, but if they were to raise charity for various charities, they were allowed. And so My friend my friend and I would show up at these things and just run them over. Jason Calacanis (01:27:51): Anybody else run an illegal business as a as a kid? I'll tell you about mine after Sacks you run any illegal business as a kid? David Sacks (01:27:57): No comment. Jason Calacanis (01:27:58): Come on. It's Statural Limitations. What did you do? You must have been running some scams. Come on. Tell us. I'll tell you my 2 scams after you tell us yours. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:04): Oh, by the way, I'll tell you, I had a bad debt situation in my in my Jason Calacanis (01:28:07): Oh, really? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:08): Lunch game. You know, I used to I used to let people bet up to a buck. Okay. So 4 or 5 guys up, you know, $0.25, $0.50 or a dollar. And one guy, he, like, demanded an expanded credit line. I gave him up to 2 bucks. Jason Calacanis (01:28:22): And how many boxes is it? Did he Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:23): go down? And one lunch, he lost 80 Sacks, and it took me 3 months to get paid. It was the worst experience is it? I had to no. $80. I had to no. Speaker 3 (01:28:32): I'm just Jason Calacanis (01:28:32): doing a subtraction. I I Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:33): had to I had to swap this guy for 3 months to get my $80. He was rich too. His parents are rich. David Sacks (01:28:39): What do Jason Calacanis (01:28:40): you do? Did he have to do your term papers or something? Did he have to do your essays? Clean your clean your bike? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:44): Wouldn't have gotten this. Come on, Sacks. Jason Calacanis (01:28:46): Give it up. What was your what was your scam you were running? David Sacks (01:28:48): Let's move on. Jason Calacanis (01:28:51): I had 2 scams. Friedberg, you have a scam you were running? You were a kid? Any scams? David Friedberg (01:28:56): I used to go to the recycler newspaper. Do you guys remember that? Yeah. The recycler. And I would buy used like electronics equipment, computer equipment, and then I would, like, sell it. So I would then, like, post other ads. I basically did add arbitrage as a way to think about it. So I would go and find people selling stuff that I thought was, like, under priced. But did you know I would buy it? And there was nothing to fix. You would just it was under And then I knew, like, the better market to go sell it and make more money. So then I'd buy, like, all these, like, old, like, like, a broken receiver, this disc man, and a receiver, a good speak speakers that I knew were good, but they were, like, deeply discounted. I drive around in my white van. I'd pay people cash. I'd load it up, and then I go sell it to, like, other people by putting ads Jason. Jason Calacanis (01:29:38): No wonder you wound up Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:38): at no Jason Calacanis (01:29:39): wonder you wound up at Google? I had I had 2 really good scams when I was a kid. The first was this guy owed my dad some money for backgammon. My dad was a backgammon sharker who'd play in his bar when I would show up at 6 in the morning, my dad would be playing blackjack with guys. They would get you know, in deep with him. And so this guy who was in the mob, oh, my dad's some money. And, for the Vic, he gave him a copy of the Empire Strikes Sacks on VHS. And I was like, what? You know, this is before it was out. They had recorded in movie theaters in 19 4 or something with 3 whenever that came out. And it was a really bad copy. So I my dad comes home. He gets me the copy. We watch it. It was incredible. It's like, Sacks, dad. And I got my friend to bring over his VHS. I made 10 copies of it. I go to school in McKinley Junior High School in Brooklyn, and I sell them for 30 bucks a pop. Oh my god. Selling like hotcakes, and then I get pinched. Math teacher says, what's going on with these empire strikes back? And I said, what do you mean? I don't know what you're talking about. He's like, I heard you got Empire Strikes back. David Sacks (01:30:42): He kept me mouth shut. Jason Calacanis (01:30:44): I looked him dead in the eye. And I said, are you interested? And the teacher goes, yeah. How much Speaker 3 (01:30:51): are they? Jason Calacanis (01:30:51): I said 30 bucks, but I'll give you one for 10. And he said, okay. Pulled that ten bucks. I saw my math teacher. I kid you're not the Empire truck back for ten bucks. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:00): Can you do this whole thing again, but in the Christopher walk in voice, Jason Calacanis (01:31:04): I'm not gonna do but I'll give you the other one I did. David Sacks (01:31:06): No. It's a Joe Pesci voice. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:08): Do this one in the Christopher walking voice. Jason Calacanis (01:31:09): And so the name of it was Jason's hot tapes, And so I made a business card and laminated Jason hot tapes, and I would hand it to people, and I'd hand them to Jason's hot tape card. And they'd say, give me my card back. I would just show them that I had a card. Oh, right now. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:22): I was also in the fake ID business. Jason Calacanis (01:31:24): Oh, say more. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:25): Yeah. I don't know. I was trying it out for granted out fake IDs with the buddy in mind. David Sacks (01:31:28): Alright. That was mine. That was mine. Oh, Zach, this is a Speaker 3 (01:31:32): fake ID business too. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:33): What is Harvard graphics? Sacks, what were you using? I was using Harvard graphics. David Sacks (01:31:37): Well, this is in the days before holograms, and it wasn't it just wasn't that hard to Yeah. You know, cops. So we just made, like, boards or whatever and Polaroids. We did it for ourselves, and we did it for friends. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:48): Yes. Jason Calacanis (01:31:48): And here's the thing about the fake ID business. The bouncers were like if you've got money, show us any piece of paper. Speaker 3 (01:31:56): They do. Thank you. Jason Calacanis (01:31:58): Give me a plausible to my ability. David Sacks (01:32:00): Wanna well, deniability. Exactly. Jason Calacanis (01:32:01): That was the that's the key to the Sacks. Did you put Mick Levin in University of Hawaii? David Sacks (01:32:07): Yeah. Actually, well, it's kinda funny. Sometimes the bouncers would go, what's your name? And you'd be like, you'd be stunned because you didn't Jason Calacanis (01:32:16): remember y'all need for Speaker 3 (01:32:18): a member. Like, I'm my man. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:22): I was like, oh, and he was like, so you know, mine was like, Raj Patel. David Sacks (01:32:30): Or they'd ask you, what was your birthday? And you don't remember what's on your ID. You know what's on your ID? Because I Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:35): don't remember. I don't remember. How about the the key? Jason Calacanis (01:32:38): I had one drink. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:40): Now the key in the fake ID game is to use your your month and day. That's yours. And then you change the year. That's the key. Jason Calacanis (01:32:49): That's the key. David Friedberg (01:32:49): Alright. So I'll Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:50): give you the second one. Doing the Christopher walking voice. Jason Calacanis (01:32:53): So my friend, his brother had a delorean he I I can't do it. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:01): I can't sustain it. Anyway, this kid, Jason Calacanis (01:33:04): who I grew up with. I shouldn't say it. Anyways, his name is Beep that out. He lived up on 13th Avenue. I go to his house. His brother's got a delorean. It was incredible. And we're in junior high school. And I'm talking to his brother, and I go into the garage, and there's all delorean parts on the wall. And I said, why do you have all these parts? Jason he said, oh, you know, there was a door in that, you know, fell apart and we picked up the pieces. They had stolen another delorean because delorean stopped producing, and they just chopped it up, but he had it in his garage. So, anyway, we're playing chess master at the time, and I had hacked a copy of chess master. It was very easy to do. And the guy said, you got chess master. I I can you get me more copies of that? I said, sure. How many copies you want? He's like, how many can you make? I was like, well, floppy disc costs four bucks. He's like, I'll give you ten bucks a copy of chestmaster. I said, fine. I go, my friend, we go steal floppy Sacks from the store. So we we don't want to pay the 4 bucks for them. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:34:03): Not the not the 3 and a half, the 5 and a quarters. Jason Calacanis (01:34:05): These are 5 and a quarters. And we go into the store. And we take the flyer and I hold the flyer open and I hold it behind my back and my friend takes the discs out of the sleeve at Staples or whatever. Dumps them in there. We made copies of it, and then we were selling chess master for ten bucks a pop at scale and giving them to the guys on 13th Avenue who were reselling for 20 bucks. This is when chess master was like a $100 product. Shout out to chess master. Speaker 3 (01:34:31): That was my second. Yeah. I've been David Sacks (01:34:33): This is some degenerate. Speaker 3 (01:34:35): Yeah. It's and Jason Calacanis (01:34:36): that's not even the best one. The best I'll give you the best one. This is the best, and I'll give you the last scan we ran. There were parking permits in the late eighties in Manhattan. They were hard to get, but they were legit. If you had a parking permit in your window, for the fire department police, yeah, you you could park in Manhattan in a lot of different areas. And so, we went and we took a picture of these. Then we got on page maker or whatever. And I went down to Canal Street, and I bought at, Pearl paints like the the same color orange and that lamination kit. And we got on Photoshop. Kid you not, we held the picture up, and we tried to figure out the fonts they used. And we made a copy of the placards to park. And then we sold those for like 50 Sacks, and people used them, and they wouldn't get tickets. They worked. So we saw police placards that had to be super illegal in 1988. Alright, everybody. 4, your self in of science, the exception to Friedberg, chairman dictator from off the potty hopatia? The rain man. Yeah. David Sacks. I am. Your world's greatest moderator. Jake Howe? We'll see you on episode 1 76, and hopefully, in September at the all in summit. Fifties are Bye bye. Speaker 5 (01:35:53): Bye bye. Your winter's ride. Jason Calacanis (01:35:56): Rainman, David Sachs. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:36:00): And it said Speaker 5 (01:36:01): we open sources to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. What airliners ride. Driveway checks. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:36:23): We should all just get a room and have one big huge order because they're all exclusive. It's like this, like, sexual tension that we just need to release somehow. Jason Calacanis (01:36:37): We need to get Mercies