DOGE 公布路线图、解锁 GDP 增长、三战风险升级、脂肪细胞的记忆

David Sacks (00:00:00): Chamath, do you hear that Friedberg got busted looking at porn on his computer? David Friedberg (00:00:04): No. I did not. You got busted Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:06): looking at porn? David Sacks (00:00:07): You wanna know what it was? David Friedberg (00:00:08): Yeah. It David Sacks (00:00:09): was Elon of the vague Wall Street Journal op-ed. David Friedberg (00:00:11): It was. I lost it. David Sacks (00:00:14): Oh my god. David Friedberg (00:00:15): It was too good. David Sacks (00:00:16): I think he was pleasuring himself to that op-ed. David Friedberg (00:00:19): He was actually yogurt everywhere. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:21): Skin flute. Jason Calacanis (00:00:22): What happened, that is? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:24): You had to go for a quick game of pocket pool. How's your David Friedberg (00:00:26): Oh my god. It was it was too exciting. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:29): You were beating the Bishop. David Sacks (00:00:30): Allison came in and just, like, wondering what was going on. David Friedberg (00:00:33): She grabbed my computer as she looked at it, Speaker 5 (00:00:34): and it David Friedberg (00:00:35): was an essay. Speaker 5 (00:00:38): The weather winner's ride. Rain man David Sacks. Jason Calacanis (00:00:53): Alright. Before we get to Doge, we got a little housekeeping, a little housey housekeeping. You know, we're getting into the holiday spirit here. It's episode 205. We're in year 4, and we're having a Christmas party. It's gonna be great. The all in holiday spectacular is happening in San Francisco on Saturday, December 7th. I think the VIP sold out. There's still some tickets left. Go to all in dot com slash events. And, if you can't make it to San Francisco, I think you can buy a ticket for $50 on, on the, Zoom. I think we're gonna have it on Zoom. Is that right? Am I do I have my facts straight there, Friedberg? David Friedberg (00:01:33): Yep. There's gonna be a livestream. Thanks to Zoom for setting this up for us. It's kind of interesting they're doing this thing where you could you kind of, you know, get access to live events. So they're helping us, get this set up. You wanna watch the stream live Jason Calacanis (00:01:49): on Zoom? Anything's possible. It could be Skype. Speaker 6 (00:01:52): Through that. Jason Calacanis (00:01:53): Through that. Alright. Listen. Bestie Yuan and Bestie Vivek wrote an op-ed, a barn burner, in The Wall Street Journal about DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, and they laid it out. They wanna cut overbearing and unnecessary regulation, obviously. They wanna cut unnecessary administrative roles, save taxpayers money. They wanna run it by founders, not politicians, helping the Trump transition team find a way to hire, quote, a lean team of small government crusaders. Team's gonna work closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget. Here's the plan. First, take aim at $500 billion in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress, then fix the government's procurement process by conducting massive audits during temporary payment suspensions. This is an interesting playbook that Elon has done before. So, basically, suspend all the payments and, hey, let everybody audit those payments. Drive change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than passing new laws. And two SCOTUS rulings are gonna play a major role here, West Virginia v. EPA. That's when SCOTUS ruled that federal agencies can't impose regulations dealing with major economic or policy questions unless Congress authorizes them to do so. And Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, that's from 2024, and that overturned the Chevron doctrine. We talked about that in a previous episode. So according to Doge, when combined, quote, these cases suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law. Doge will use software and legal experts to create a list of regulations that Trump can immediately pause. They're gonna make some sort of a leaderboard, Elon said, and Vivek said he would do he suspended his existing podcast. Jason Calacanis (00:03:48): I didn't know he had a podcast, but he's doing a Doge cast, a Doge podcast. And so, Friedberg, this has been, you know, a major issue for you. You've been talking about on this podcast that the unsustainable existential issue for our country is all of the debt we have. What are the chances that this is going to occur? Because, obviously, we all know the machine is going to fight to preserve the machine. Chances that we are sitting here in four years and we've seen meaningful cuts in spending and a meaningful reduction in size of the government. David Friedberg (00:04:25): Look, it's Doge has probably 18 months to do what they can do before the midterms, and there's gonna be an inevitable amount of recoil and backlash that's gonna arise from the actions that they're gonna try and take and President Trump's gonna try and take, under the recommendations provided by Doge. So they need to move fast and aggressively, and that's only gonna cause the recoil to be harder and faster. There's gonna be a ton of litigation. Obviously, everything's gonna go to court. It's gonna be incredibly politicized. What is frustrating and challenging to me is that there is nothing that they said that doesn't seem obvious and right. I don't know how you can politicize the points that they're making. Put aside their party. Put aside who they are individually. Put aside how we got here. At the end of the day, the federal government needs to be run more efficiently, more effectively. It is unfair, and it is a tax on every one of us to have money thrown away, to have wasted capital, to have bureaucracy that gets in the way of people being able to do their jobs. It is a tax on all of us and our kids and our future. It needs to be fixed. If it doesn't get fixed, as I've said countless times before, we are in an arithmetic debt spiral. There is no way out of it. So by resolving both the inefficiency, reducing the bureaucracy, stopping the wasteful spending, having accountability in the government, we can actually get the United States another 50 years, 100 years, whatever long we want. But we were literally in a death spiral leading up to this moment. And I have no idea how we ended up on this timeline. I was over the moon and shocked when I read all of the progress over the last couple of weeks in putting this thing together. I did not know that this is where we would end up. I couldn't be happier with what I think is gonna happen with DOGE and its effect on, if not actually making the changes, shining a light on the issues that need to be addressed. And I will say it is unfair to Americans for this to be politicized. The Democrats shouldn't make this a Republican issue. David Friedberg (00:06:26): This is not about Republicans doing damage. This is about doing the right thing for the government and for the country. And the Democrats had an opportunity to own this issue. And instead, they've chosen to oppose it, which makes no sense. It is frustrating and challenging to me as an American to think that this is even a political point. This should be a what's right for America point. It's almost like we're going to war. War with ourselves, with our bureaucracy, with the morass that's been built up over the last couple of decades. And I'm thrilled that this is happening. And frankly, put the people aside. Maybe it's the fact that you need people that are as outspoken, as challenging, as difficult as these two particular individuals. They're gonna run this group. But that might be what it takes for it to happen in the small 18-month window that they have. So I don't know. That's my rant on it. Jason Calacanis (00:07:09): Yeah. Great rant. And, we had a Milton Friedman clip go viral, and he spoke exactly about his positions on what he would eliminate departments like Agriculture, Commerce, Education. Let's just play that clip. And then there was obviously the Milley interview by Lex Fridman earlier this week. Speaker 6 (00:07:26): Keep them or abolish them? Department of Agriculture. Abolish. Gone. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:31): I mean Speaker 6 (00:07:31): Department of Commerce. Abolish. Gone. Department of Defense. Keep. Keep it. Department of Education. Abolish. Gone. Energy. Abolish. Health and Human Services. Speaker 7 (00:07:43): There is room for some public health activities to prevent contagion. Speaker 6 (00:07:49): We'll eliminate half of the Department of David Friedberg (00:07:50): Health and Speaker 6 (00:07:50): Human Services. Okay. One half. There we go. Housing and Urban Development? Found. Done. That's gone. Department of the Interior. Speaker 7 (00:07:57): The problem there is you first have to sell off all the land that the government owns, but that's what you should do. Speaker 6 (00:08:03): But it could be done pretty quick. It could be done. You should you should do that. Department of Justice. David Friedberg (00:08:07): Oh, yes. Speaker 6 (00:08:08): Keep that one. Speaker 7 (00:08:08): Keep that one. Speaker 6 (00:08:09): Labor. No. Gone. State. Keep? Keep it. Transportation. Gone. Gone. The Treasury? You have to keep it to collect taxes. Alright. Collect taxes through the Treasury. Jason Calacanis (00:08:21): Sacks, you see that clip? You see the activity going on with Doge. Would you think that the machine will allow what Milton Friedman is describing there, what Javier Milei is doing in Argentina, and what Elon is proposing with Doge? Do you think the machine's gonna allow, you know, the wholesale deleting of Department of Agriculture, Department of Education at a federal level and move all that stuff to the states? What do you think is gonna happen here? And how hard will the machine fight back against this in your mind? Because, hey, you might have some Republicans, some Democrats. They fought really hard to get jobs, to get subsidies, to put in factories, whatever, from the federal government. Are they gonna just give that all back? The clip is from 1998, by the way. Sacks, your thoughts. David Sacks (00:09:11): Well, that Milton Friedman clip, as great as it is, I mean, it really is outstanding, is setting expectations a little bit too high here. I mean, we're not gonna be able to wipe out entire major departments of the government that are cabinet level positions. I don't think that's in the cards. You know, what Milton Friedman's basically describing is a night watchman state, and I don't think we're gonna get back to that. However, if you look right now at the opinions on the legacy media, MSNBC, CNN, all that kind of stuff, they are forecasting that Doge is gonna amount to nothing. They're basically saying that the powers that be in Washington are gonna reject it completely. There's somehow gonna be a falling out between Elon and DJT. They're just very cynical. Jason Calacanis (00:09:55): Oh, DJT. David Sacks (00:09:56): And then you have people who are not necessarily dismissive in that way in the media, but just kinda longtime Washington insiders who feel like they've seen it all before and nothing ever happens, and so they're just very jaded and cynical. So I would say that, you know, again, I wouldn't have the expectations of the Milton Friedman level, but I think that the expectations for those right now are being set incredibly low by the media and by the Washington insiders. And I think there are good reasons to believe that the results will surpass those low expectations. Number one is you've got Elon Musk running this thing with Vivek, and Elon understands better than anybody the impact of deleterious regulations on business. So he could really put a microscope on that. He's got the largest speech platform in the world with X, the largest account on X, and he's also built a get-out-the-vote operation that he funded in the last election that he's promised to keep around and potentially expand. So his influence hopefully is not going anywhere. He's gonna be able to keep using that to help keep politicians on the Jason Calacanis (00:11:08): side here. Right? David Sacks (00:11:09): Yeah. So that's number one is no one's ever made money betting against Elon Musk, and I don't expect that to start right now. Number two is you got Vivek who is co-head with Elon of this thing. And I think he's a perfect partner for Elon because Vivek, first of all, he's a brilliant guy with a lot of success in business, but he's also a Harvard-trained lawyer. He's a brilliant legal mind. And I think you could see in that op-ed, I suspect the parts that were citing all those from court decisions were his influence. And so they figured out a legal roadmap here. It's not just a matter of kind of going to Congress and hoping Congress acts. They've got a way here sequentially to do this through the executive branch, through executive orders, going through the court system. They've kind of got a game plan here that's not entirely reliant on legislation. So I think Vivek's influence and sort of legal strategic mind is a big asset here. And then I think the third reason to be optimistic is just the fact that this was printed on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page is suggestive in and of itself. What this shows is that this Doge effort is, I think, uniting both the kind of populist reformers and the establishment types within the party. If Elon and Vivek were trying to get a mandate for no more forever war, I don't think the Wall Street Journal is publishing that. Right? Just would not happen. So there are reasons to believe that this will not actually divide the party, that the party could Jason Calacanis (00:12:41): even find sense of building. Yeah. David Sacks (00:12:42): Could be. Yeah. Now look, every congressman and every senator is still gonna advocate for their pork barrel project in their district or their state, and it's gonna be very hard to push back on that. However, you could imagine a process like we have with the base closure commission when the United States needed to close a bunch of military bases and they created an outside commission to recommend the cuts, and everyone kinda shared the pain equally. Maybe DOGE could somehow play into that. Jason Calacanis (00:13:09): Portray a little bit. Yeah. David Sacks (00:13:10): So I'm not saying it's gonna be perfect, but I do think that if Republicans share a principle across, again, both the establishment and the populist side, it would be in reducing unnecessary regulation and the number of regulators needed, the number of government employees needed to enforce all those regulations. So I'm hopeful that they'll be able to get something done within the party. And since the Republicans have the trifecta, if they've got Trump's leadership and they've got the leadership of the Senate and House backing it, I think they'll be able to get something done. Again, it's not gonna be it's not gonna be Milton Friedman level, but I'm optimistic they'll get something good and important done. Jason Calacanis (00:13:49): I think the easiest thing for them to get done with DOGE is the naming, the shaming, the auditing, the transparency of what we're actually spending because so many of the audits, Chamath, are just not completed. People don't know what's being spent. And if you show Americans a $12,000 hammer or people with job titles not coming into the office or coming into the office one day a week, one day a month, that's gonna infuriate taxpayers. And I think there's a very easy way to navigate all this. You just create the leaderboard and you not only shame people who are wasting our tax dollars. You celebrate the people who are heroes, who start showing frugality and cost saving, and they're gonna do this with a leaderboard of the heroes and the GOATs. This could be the unifying, not just the Republican Party as Sacks is pointing out, Chamath. I think this could unify the whole country. Is there anybody paying taxes that wants to see money wasted, that wants to see us pay people high salaries to not come to work? Chamath, what's your take on the sequence of events here? What are easy layups that they could actually get done? And then where is the machine gonna fight and try to stop this thing? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:58): I think you are highlighting something that they can do right away, which I think is very powerful, which is just using these distribution channels that Elon has now to create a massive layer of accountability. I do think that sunshine is a really incredible disinfectant. I think the best way that they could start, if possible, is to stop paying their vendors until you actually have some amount of accounting to figure out, as you said, how many $600 soap dispensers are actually being bought and sold. Now that kind of whatever you wanna call that, corruption or grift, it's not going to account for 100 of billions or trillions of dollars. But I do think that it is a very moral and symbolic win that says we're going we're going to start to get much more rational. And it starts to allow the average American to actually feel like they have a little bit of control and they have a more vested interest in how the government spends money. But I wanna I actually wanna take a step back for a second. And before I talk about what DOGE can do, I just want to highlight something that's been going on in California because I think it it explains a lot. In California, and I'm just gonna read this stat because it's incredible. The regulatory burden in California as a state from 1997 to 2015, this is when the data is available that I found, has increased by almost 50%. As of May of 2022, there are almost 61,000 individual regulations in the state of California. So what does that mean and where does it come from? And Nick, if you can just put out the tweet, it has happened over a period of time in which the government has been the absolute singular source of employment in the state. And we talked about this before where this is also a problem at the federal level when you look at GDP and job growth because it looks like a lot of these jobs are actually fake manufactured government-type jobs. So why is this a problem? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:13): You've seen in California, the issue that we have is that if you have a growth in the number of employees, in this case in California, all the job growth in recent memory has been state employees. What is the byproduct? Regulations go up. What is the byproduct of that? There are actually no private sector jobs and more to the point, the private sector flees. So now let's bubble that up and look at the federal government. Nick, if you want to just show that chart that I sent you. What is incredible, JCal, is that the more people are hired by the government, lo and behold, what do you see? The number of regulations issued by federal agencies has just continued unabated year in, year out. You cannot run a country like this. David Friedberg (00:18:01): So because these accumulate. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:04): Congress is doing less and less of a job actually trying to frame how the country should work. That white space is filled in, as Friedberg said, by these federal agencies. It compounds and accumulates. This is not replacing laws. None of these regulations have expiry dates. And so as a result, I think what you probably have is an incredible restraint on the U.S. economy. I think that the U.S. economy could be growing at 4 or 5%. But the reason that it doesn't grow at 4 or 5% is in that one single chart. It is impossible to be able to live up to your economic potential when you have this burden on your neck. So I think the real opportunity for DOGE is to basically do whatever it needs to do using the law to wipe as many of these regulations off the books. We are better cutting them all to 0 and then finding the ones we really need and then repassing those than we are going at this piecemeal. And there's some incredible there's some incredible ideas by the way that this creates. Nick, I don't know if you can find this tweet, but DOGE asked what people think of the IRS. And there was an enormous amount of activity that essentially said, give us a flat tax and wipe out the tax code. And people were very flexible in the amount of tax that they were willing to pay. But could you imagine the simplification in the tax code and the implications of that? I was in Singapore, by the way, 10 days ago when I started my trip. Nick beeped out the name of the person I'm about to say, but I had a long meeting with who, you know, is there. And I was asking him the complexity of dealing with taxes. He's like, what do you mean? We don't. We pay a very simple tax system. There's no capital gains in Singapore. And so as a result, our filing requirements are de minimisly small. But as a result, people like him, meaning great entrepreneurs, can spend all their time thinking about what to build, not what tax optimization Jason Calacanis (00:20:09): Exactly. Or not or how Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:11): to account for it. So could you imagine if these guys basically use Doge as a mechanism to shrink the tax code, create a flat tax potentially? I know that that has to be passed by Congress. I understand that. But the idea of just cutting this all the way down and then finding through that process what you actually need, I think can find America 100, 200 basis points of GDP growth. It could be an economic renaissance. Jason Calacanis (00:20:39): I mean, just to build on that, cutting all the regulations to zero, you might have to throw out some babies in the bathwater. So why not put a clock on them and just say whenever this was enacted, plus five years and then it rolls off or plus two years, whatever number of months, and then you could have them, Chamath, rolling off every month David Friedberg (00:20:57): to be reassessed. Idea, but it has to be quarterly. I think Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:00): that's a good idea. But, Jay Cal, I think you first have to cancel all these regulations Speaker 5 (00:21:05): Mhmm. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:05): And then say whatever we need, we will reenact, to your point, on a five-year shot clock that then has to be renewed in a new congressional period. And I think that that's extremely healthy. Well, because you Jason Calacanis (00:21:16): know what? People die. Paradigms shift. And then nobody even remembers these regulations. You have to do archaeology to figure out who created this, what was the intent, and you would never do that. You would never live, Sacks, with all of these rules forever. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:30): Just one last comment. In fairness to these government employees, the one thing is that it's not their fault. Right? Meaning in the sense that they were hired into a regime where the incentive was to regulate so that you had things to oversee. And so they did their job. In fact, I would say they did their job incredibly well, but the point is that now we need to pivot for them to do a totally different job. Well, Chamath, I'll hand this over Jason Calacanis (00:21:55): to Friedberg. Friedberg, if you were to get rid of regulations as somebody working in the government, you might work your way out of a job. So the incentive is completely perverse and reverse to what we actually need in the country, which is less regulation, more thoughtful regulation, and some process by taking these things on and off the books and adapting them to reality. Yeah? David Friedberg (00:22:16): This is where I think we've talked about this many times in the past, but, like, all organizations have a natural tendency to grow. They wanna grow. They're not Yes. Like, find me one nonprofit or find me one university or find me one company or one government agency that's ever said my job is to shrink myself. It's never happened. So why does that happen? Well, if you look at the, like, day-to-day operating role of each individual, over time, like all individuals, they want to do more. They want to have a bigger impact. They want to have more scale. They want to have more leverage. So there is this natural set of incentives that drives a lot of choices and operating procedures on the ground that create more structure, more scale, more leverage, and drive more hiring. Everyone wants to become a manager of people. They don't want to just be doing the same IC job forever, individual contributor job forever. So if they want to be a manager, they gotta find more stuff to do and then they gotta hire people to do that stuff. So all of these organizations, whether again and we've all been on boards of nonprofits, I'm sure, and we've all been involved in this sort of thing. There's always this, like, incentive to raise more capital, to hire more people, to do more stuff that sort of—it's really unclear until you really dig into the psychology of each individual person working there why this is happening. I don't think that the federal government is any different. Each of these people feel they want to be more important. They want to have a bigger role. They want to have a bigger impact. Make more important. Yeah. So it's a virtual job. If your job directionally is to regulate, then what's the scalar on regulation? More regulation. So, therefore, to do more, you have to regulate more. There's no regulator that says I wanna regulate less over time because we've created a system that's one directional. So you have to have these resets. If you don't have them naturally, they're gonna happen unnaturally in the form of social unrest and breakdowns of the economy and collapse of social structures, all these other things that happen way, way down. Or as Chamath is pointing out in California, in the economic structure of California, which I think is happening on a kind of national scale because of the outsized role the federal government plays in our national economy here today. David Friedberg (00:24:19): So you have to have these unnatural forces come in and do this readjustment from time to time. Otherwise, it's just gonna break on its own. Jason Calacanis (00:24:28): And Milei in Argentina has, basically, I don't know, a year or an 18-month head start on us and has been doing this. He did a great podcast with Lex Fridman. They translated it, actually. They dubbed it, which is kind of interesting technology. And in this discussion, they talked about reducing the ministries' agencies from 20 to 8. They fired 50,000 government workers, 15% of the total workforce. There were 341,000 when he started. They implemented a daily deregulation process to remove inefficient policies. So they just do that day in and day out. They ended discretionary payments to provinces and cities. They restored market-driven utility prices, no more subsidies, yada, yada, yada right down the line. Sacks, your thoughts on how many months it will take to do this? And there's this discussion, and I don't know if that's from inside the Trump administration of, hey. We gotta get this done in 18 months. We gotta get this done in 18 months. What can you tell us about the sense of urgency about getting this done quickly and why that's occurring? David Sacks (00:25:36): Well, I think Elon and Vivek have announced that Doge will be sunsetting or disbanding at the 250th anniversary of America, which should be July 4, 2026. So they've only given themselves about, what's that, 18 months? Yep. Which kinda makes sense. David Friedberg (00:25:55): Right? That's leading into the midterms. Right? David Sacks (00:25:57): Right. Exactly. You tend to have the most momentum coming off an election like this one where you have the trifecta. So I think that makes a lot of sense that they're gonna be able to have the greatest impact, let's say, in the 1st year after the new president of Congress gets sworn in. Jason Calacanis (00:26:14): How do you get Democrats in on this, Sacks? How do you push them to join the party, to join the movement, to be more efficient, to be more transparent? Is there a possibility for us to get some coordination here with the other side or no? David Sacks (00:26:28): Maybe you might be able to get some support of particular Democrats on particular things. I don't wanna say that it's not possible. Difficult, but not impossible. But look, I think what Mille has done in Argentina is remarkable. I mean, that was a country that was a total basket case. Inflation was out of control. It's already because of the cuts he's made. They now have a more normal inflation rate, and they've gone from basically being uninvestable to investable as a country. Now the United States is not the basket case that Argentina is, but we are on an unsustainable fiscal trajectory. Doge is also not going to have the power that Milei has. It's not going to have the degrees of freedom to act, but we also don't have as big a problem. What we need to do is just bend our fiscal curve from being unsustainable to being sustainable, and if we can do that, it'll have a huge impact on the economy. Specifically, what we saw in the last election, the thing that probably hurt the Democrats the most was inflation. Voters clearly do not like inflation. They do not like the diminishment of their purchasing power, but how do you stop inflation? You have to raise interest rates, and that's not good either because that raises the cost of a mortgage, that raises the cost of a car payment, is bad for investment, right? Because if interest rates are higher, then that means the discount rate on stocks and real estate on every investment class basically is higher. And the hurdle rate for investment's higher. So high interest rates are also bad for the economy. So how do you get out of that box where you either have high inflation or high interest rates? The only way is to bend the fiscal curve to that more sustainable path. And if you can do that, the bond markets will actually give you credit for it in advance because they know that they're not gonna be flooded with the need to keep funding all of this U.S. government debt. So we either get to kind of, you know, startups have this saying about being either default alive or default dead. We either get to default sustainable or default unsustainable. David Sacks (00:28:32): Right now, we're unsustainable. The bond markets know it. Inflation remains persistently high around 3%. The Fed has not been able to cut interest rates the way that they expected. Remember, the markets were expecting seven cuts this year. We got basically three, we got a 50 of a 25. So it just now hasn't been the cuts people were expecting, and that's because inflation hasn't come down as much as they thought. So if Doge, working with the rest of the government, OMB, the Treasury, Congress, executive orders, can now convince the markets that the U.S. financial picture is more sustainable, we'll get credit for that. Interest rates will come down, and that'll lead to a boom in the economy. So it's all win-win if they can pull this off. Jason Calacanis (00:29:16): Friedberg, any final thoughts here before we move on from Doge wishing Elon and Vivek as much success as possible? We've really, I mean, everybody should be rooting for this. You wanna give us your final thoughts? David Friedberg (00:29:30): I feel like America is Neo from The Matrix, where there were, like, 1,000 bullets being shot at America, and we literally had to dodge every single one of them in order to get to this point. Jason Calacanis (00:29:45): Mhmm. David Friedberg (00:29:46): I, again, I am so shocked and surprised in a positive way that we ended up on this particular timeline. Look. Everything had to go the way it went for this to have happened. Biden decided to run for reelection. Biden stayed in too long. They didn't run a primary. They put Kamala in. Jason Calacanis (00:30:03): Elon got off the fences, switched parties. David Friedberg (00:30:05): Yeah. Decided to throw $100,000,000 at the problem. Elon bought Twitter. China had a real estate bubble. I mean, you can go down the list of things that had to go right for us to get to this very moment where a small group of people have recognized the fiscal death spiral that the United States federal government has been in and have the authority and the capacity and the skills to be able to go and execute against the solution. I have no idea how this could have been architected. Maybe Sacks knew all along, and I convinced him 2 years ago that this was how things had to go, and he's been designing it like he was a Palpatine. Jason Calacanis (00:30:44): Talking about Ray Dalio and the end of the empire for 3 David Friedberg (00:30:47): years on this podcast. Jason Calacanis (00:30:48): Maybe you did at Friedberg. David Friedberg (00:30:49): We give you credit. When we talked with Dalio about this, he's like, Dr. Hamzah. And also around the relationship with China, which I think this is all very tightly related, we may have dodged a lot of bullets. Mhmm. And if the United States can get its house in order, reduce federal spending while increasing economic activity, it can be a tremendous unlock for the U.S. and for world peace. So because, again, I think that conflict arises when we don't have our own fiscal house in order. And so I feel very positive, more surprised and positive than I was a year ago, six months ago. It's just amazing we're on this timeline. And I do think the United States as Neo dodged a lot of bullets here. David Sacks (00:31:31): Absolutely. I told you everything was proceeding as I had foreseen. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:36): The emperor. You know what happened to the 10-year when Elon and Vivek wrote that essay? I actually don't. What happened? Yields contracted by five basis points. David Sacks (00:31:44): You know Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:44): what the value of that is? Couple billion. $15,000,000,000 per year. Jason Calacanis (00:31:49): Yeah. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:50): So I think that it was probably a $100,000,000,000 essay just writing it. David Sacks (00:31:56): I think you will find that this Doge is quite operational. Jason Calacanis (00:32:03): I mean, it I think it's got a chance. I mean, if you can't David Friedberg (00:32:06): I just wish it weren't political. Right? I want all I want all Americans and Democrats to stand up and say, this is the right thing for the United States. Forget about the fact. And the problem is Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:17): essay saved us a $100,000,000,000. Just the essay. Jason Calacanis (00:32:20): Here's the thing. You're showing an essay. You're gonna have to be very strategic David Friedberg (00:32:26): True. About how they detailed what they're doing. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:28): Kick Jason Calacanis (00:32:29): Yeah. The Doge team's just gonna have to be very strategic to pick things that are consensus building that don't make people feel like this is gonna grind the poor more and make the rich richer. That's the expectation. That's gonna be the negative framing on this, I predict, which is just a bunch of rich guys making cuts, talking their books, making cuts for things that are their pet projects, their investments. They David Friedberg (00:32:52): have to Jason Calacanis (00:32:53): come out and not make it that. They have to make it, here's inefficiency. Here's inefficiency. Here's inefficiency. And a great way to do that would be to say the efficiency gains and the tax cuts are gonna go to people making, let's say, under $250,000. These are not and these cuts are not being made just to make the rich richer. That's gonna be the framing. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:11): That's my best advice. Don't you think that that's gonna happen no matter what? Jason Calacanis (00:33:15): What? Which part of it? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:16): That they're gonna say that no matter what. So I actually disagree with the first part of what you said. I agree with you that the media, the mainstream media will try to characterize this as hurting the poor. I agree. And I'm not sure yet David Friedberg (00:33:29): Yeah. Whether it's legal or not. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:30): Yeah. But I think the first part I disagree with is I don't think they should operate towards consensus. I think that they should do what's right. Jason Calacanis (00:33:38): Well, you could do what's right, and you could start with things that are the most wasteful. Like, if you start cutting kids' lunches or Pell Grants or you start cutting people's jobs in health care or education that people perceive are helping people, I think you're gonna just feed into this narrative that it's a way to cut taxes on rich people. And you know what? You do need to build consensus. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:03): How does that cut taxes on rich people? Jason Calacanis (00:34:06): If you cut regulations and a bunch of our companies benefit from it, just to be self-aware, the framing is already that this is an effort for companies that we invest in to have less regulation, to make the equity holders in those companies more rich. It's just to make sure that the hold on. David Friedberg (00:34:25): It's for all Americans. Jason Calacanis (00:34:26): Make sure the savings is for all Americans and that all Americans benefit from it. And the way they benefit, the best framing they could do is your taxes are gonna be lower because you're not wasting your tax dollars. If they can keep to that, not, hey. We're moving regulations so that our company is to David Friedberg (00:34:42): be honest with you here. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:43): Yeah. Being a hairdresser requires more regulation than being any one of most of my companies. So I actually think it benefits 100%. I think it benefits other people way, way more than it benefits me. Jason Calacanis (00:34:53): And you have to show it is my point. Show it that's the point is you have to show people that you're doing this for everybody, not just for the people on this podcast and our friends. That's gonna be the key. David Friedberg (00:35:04): What Chamath just said is so important. There's a great interview. I've mentioned this in the past between Tim Ferriss and Charles Koch from a couple years ago where he brings up this exact example. Yes. About how regulatory burdens make it difficult for women to become hairdressers. It's like $7,000. So they don't have the capital to do that because of the regulatory Yep. Burden to get there. Think about building building your home or, you know, like, let's say you wanna chain put a shower in your bathroom, change the shower in your bathroom. You don't wanna spend $15,000 on all the permitting regulatory stuff to make that happen. It's gonna unlock value for everyone. That's a small example of kind of a regulatory problem, but this benefits everyone. And the cost of transportation will Jason Calacanis (00:35:43): go down. Communicate that. You have to be able to communicate that. And that's where using the Elon platform David Friedberg (00:35:49): But, Jason, it shows up and you've done a perfect job Jason Calacanis (00:35:52): of communicating this to people. And that's the playbook, Friedberg. That's my point. People are gonna fight this. You have to convince them. You have to show them that this is helping everybody. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:02): That's my point. Agree that they're okay. But that's different than how you started. You said only work on consensus projects. I think no. Jason Calacanis (00:36:07): No. I did say that. I I David Friedberg (00:36:08): think you have to highlight those. Jason Calacanis (00:36:09): Do them first. I said do those first. Make sure that people understand this is to save them money. I'm not saying that you don't change regulations for spaceships and self-driving cars as well, but you have to make sure you show people that this can benefit them, or else they're gonna just fight it. And that's gonna be the whole all this effort will be for naught. If you get a bunch of Republicans, Sacks, who start fighting this and you have a splintering in your party because they feel like this isn't helping their local constituents, this whole thing could be for naught. That's my tip. David Sacks (00:36:40): story that you told is gonna be told by the legacy media and all the haters and the enemies regardless of what Elon thinks they can do. Jason Calacanis (00:36:49): I don't think so. I think you can win people over. If you show people a 22, when you show people a, you show people a $22,000 David Sacks (00:36:56): on haters, you're not gonna win the vote. Jason Calacanis (00:36:58): Show I'm talking about the public who votes. David Sacks (00:36:59): We already won the election. Now is the time to implement. Jason Calacanis (00:37:02): When you show people $22,000, you know, hammers and wasted money, you will get 100% of Americans backing this. David Sacks (00:37:10): Now 60 Minutes has been doing that for 30 years. Nothing's happened. We gotta just act now. Jason Calacanis (00:37:15): Yeah. Act and bring people along with communications. I mean, if you got if your credit is communicating poorly, great. David Sacks (00:37:20): Go for it. Yeah. I'm not saying that communication isn't part of the job. In fact, this whole conversation started by us talking about an op-ed that Elon and Vivek wrote. David Friedberg (00:37:29): Correct. David Sacks (00:37:30): And they're doing a podcast. Right? In which they're laying out their objectives and they're doing podcasts and Speaker 5 (00:37:34): Yep. David Sacks (00:37:34): Elon has the biggest platform in the world and biggest following. So I just don't think communication's gonna be the problem, but you're also not gonna be able to convince everyone. And, you know, we've already won the election, and now's the time to figure out very strategically how to implement as much as possible. Jason Calacanis (00:37:50): Be humble by 2 million votes. Keep it in mind, you have to bring everybody along. David Sacks (00:37:54): Okay. You know what? If the legacy media was fair, it would have been 20 million votes. For Trump to have won. Right. Under these circumstances, and he won the trifecta, it's impressive. Jason Calacanis (00:38:04): Nobody's saying it's not impressive. I'm not minimizing it. I'm just saying, be aware there's 74 million people who are rooting against Trump, and I think getting some portion of them on board is important. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:15): That's not true. Jason Calacanis (00:38:16): I think there's a decent number of people who are probably very upset that, you know, Trump won. Just like last time they were upset that Biden won. Including all Americans in this is the most virtuous thing you can do. I think it's deranged to not get on board. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:29): I think it's deranged, the idea that 74 million people are actually rooting against him. I don't think that's true. Jason Calacanis (00:38:35): People think they feel good that they lost. People don't feel good about losing. Bringing those people on board is virtuous. Dude, there's already been David Sacks (00:38:42): a good vibe shift in the country. Have you seen the Trump dance? I mean, there's been such a vibe shift. Jason Calacanis (00:38:48): Let's see it. Let's see it. David Sacks (00:38:49): I'm not gonna do it right now, but there's been such a huge vibe shift that the energy is so optimistic Jason Calacanis (00:38:55): right now. David Sacks (00:38:58): The energy right now is incredible, and I think people are feeling much more optimistic. Can you imagine what a downer it would be if, like, we were expecting President Kamala Harris to take the oath of office on January 20? David Friedberg (00:39:09): It would be a downer to me if they were still pushing a $7.2 trillion federal budget next year. That would be a downer. And by the way, I think that there's a deeply linked relationship between social issues, economic issues, political policies, and foreign conflict. They all seem like they're four different things, but they're so tightly interwoven. And it's interesting how everything kind of moves together with the shift in who ended up winning this election cycle. And I think it really speaks to the relationship between the four. David Sacks (00:39:42): Well, by the way, there's a great meme that was floating around where it showed a photo of Trump, Elon, Bobby Kennedy, and Tulsi Gabbard, and it said that all four of these folks used to be Democrats. Jason Calacanis (00:39:55): Yep. Yep. Oh, and put Joe Rogan in it. I tweeted that. I wrote Joe Rogan in it too. David Friedberg (00:39:59): It used to be that Democrats were progressive. Progressive means progress, looking forward. And the last decade, the last couple of years in particular, I think a lot of people that I know that are former Democrats, Chamath, you can speak for yourself, feel like the Democrats stopped looking forward. And it was all about trying to, like, relive the past. Jason Calacanis (00:40:19): And grievance and victim culture. David Friedberg (00:40:21): And all of a sudden, you've got guys like Elon promoting themselves as Republicans, highlighting that this is the party that looks forward. This is the party that drives progress. It's an amazing shift. I don't know if there's been anything like it that's happened this quickly. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:35): And I voted more to make America great again than I did vote for being a Republican. I think that the Republican Party David Friedberg (00:40:42): Right. Totally. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:44): is less important than it's ever been. And I think MAGA is more important than it's ever been. David Sacks (00:40:49): I agree. And I'd say the biggest risk to the whole agenda probably is not the Democrats. It's actually some of these old bulls in Congress who are anti-MAGA for some reason. Trump is the one who just won the trifecta. He just won this big election. If you stick with the old Republican message, you're just a surefire loser. So give Trump his due as the leader of the party, realize it's now a MAGA party, and let's get some things done. If the reform agenda fails, to be frank, it probably is not gonna be the Democrats. It's probably gonna be these holdouts in the Republican Party for it. Jason Calacanis (00:41:27): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was my question earlier. I think I asked it twice. I didn't get anybody to engage in it. How do you convince them? How are they being brought on board to this if they have all this pork barrel spending? Is there a strategy there? Would you have a strategy? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:40): I think Sacks laid it out, which is that if you use the combination of the carrot and the stick, I think the carrot is creating transparency. And I think the other part of the carrot is you'll have now an extremely well-funded PAC that can support people who are on board with this agenda. But the stick is if you don't, I think that if Elon makes this a really concerted long-term part of his strategy, then I think you should run candidates who actually are aligned with the agenda that the Make America Great Again movement wants. So I think that's the carrot and stick, Jason, which is, like, some of these old Republicans will have to decide. Do I basically help invest in a renewal of the American spirit, or do I keep pushing back because I like the way it was and I want to go to war and I want to cozy up to these lobbyists? I think those folks are gonna have a very tough 4-8 years because I think you'll see a bunch of MAGA candidates rising up to run against them everywhere in the United States. David Sacks (00:42:41): As you can see, my young apprentice, your friends have failed. Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station. Jason Calacanis (00:42:51): Man, I said be humble, like, three times. None of it's sinking in. David Sacks (00:42:56): No. I just explained the risk. I have been very clear. You're not gonna get Milton Friedman. Okay? You're not even gonna get Javier Milei. What we can hopefully get is a bending of the curve towards sustainable. Jason Calacanis (00:43:06): I'm not saying break David Sacks (00:43:07): I'm setting my expectations to be realistic. Okay? Jason Calacanis (00:43:11): I mean, breaking even would be great. If we just weren't adding to the debt, that would be amazing. No, I mean, it would be a huge win. Right? David Friedberg (00:43:16): Look, if the federal budget gets to $3 trillion and regulation gets cut, if you get 50% of the regulations in federal agencies cut, I think you unleash an economic sonic boom. Jason Calacanis (00:43:32): I'm all in on this. And David Friedberg (00:43:33): I think Jason Calacanis (00:43:34): I think it's the greatest thing that could ever happen. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:36): My gosh. Could you imagine America clocking in to get the scent Speaker 5 (00:43:39): you the David Friedberg (00:43:40): I mean, how much have you guys stuck with companies? Jason Calacanis (00:43:43): I'm dealing Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:44): with the actual regulatory. David Friedberg (00:43:46): The regulatory stuff is brutal, man. Speaker 5 (00:43:48): I mean David Friedberg (00:43:48): It's like legit brain, like, melting. Jason Calacanis (00:43:52): Tell me your number one regulatory frustration. We can go around the horn. This is a great topic, actually. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:58): I don't have any. I think I'm very blessed to work in an industry that's very light with regulation. I think it affects many, many other industries that if they were unleashed could contribute to American GDP and exception. David Friedberg (00:44:09): Construction and regulations are Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:12): very regressive because they touch poor and middle-income people way more than it touches folks like me. 100%. Rip these regulations out. Two regulations that do affect you, Jason Calacanis (00:44:24): crypto regulation and capital formation. Both of those things are a burden. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:29): Me. They haven't hurt me. They say permission. Jason Calacanis (00:44:31): But they definitely are throttling the economy. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:34): I can snap a finger and raise a couple billion dollars. That is not—so I'm in a unique position, and I recognize that. What is much harder is if you're trying to be an electrician, if you're trying to be a hairdresser, if you're trying to be a massage therapist, when you have to spend 15, 20, 30 percent of your salary on licensure. Why? Totally. Why do we need these stupid rules? Totally. If you're a person that's trying to, like, construct a home, why does it take six to eight weeks to get permits approved? Why? And there are no good answers for these things. So forget about me. Like, it doesn't matter about me, but the mainline part of the United States economy, as I said before, is a coiled spring. If you get rid of those regulations, it disproportionately impacts middle-income and lower-middle-income jobs. This is why David Friedberg (00:45:19): I if Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:20): If you see if you see GDP, if America clocks in GDP at 4 to 4.5 percent, watch out, folks. Sonic boom. Watch out. Jason Calacanis (00:45:30): I'll give you two really simple ones. Allowing everybody in the United States to participate in company formation would change everything. Ninety-five percent of the company cannot participate in investing in startups or any, you know, new company or similar to the magic pill. Credit union laws. David Friedberg (00:45:48): I think it's more than just massive. Freedom to operate. Just freedom to do stuff you want. Well, that's Jason Calacanis (00:45:53): what it is. I mean, you're free to go to Vegas and gamble. You're free to, you know, play, you know, on our stores. So you're not free to buy Bitcoin. You're not free to buy Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:02): You are free to use me. Bitcoin. You Jason Calacanis (00:46:04): can buy Bitcoin. You can. Yeah. But you're not free to create a token, right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:08): It should be some clear path Jason Calacanis (00:46:09): of regulation. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:09): You know? For that. Many more traditional forms of economic growth that we can have before we need to make ICOs legal and easier. I want to say something. I think that the person that runs for governor in California should commit to cutting those 65,000 regulations down to 10,000 as needed, to replacing the DMV with a digital app, and to cut taxes to near zero and to create school choice. David Friedberg (00:46:39): Whoever does that David Sacks (00:46:40): That's incredible. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:41): Will create a renaissance in California. It's the fifth largest economy in the world, folks, and it can be a bellwether for the rest of the world. David Sacks (00:46:49): Well, you know, there's a lot of scuttlebutt online that Nicole Shanahan's gonna run for governor of California. And I'd be all in favor of that. I would say that of all the political personalities involved in the election over the past year, she gets my most improved award. I remember when, like, Bobby named her to his ticket, I was a little bit skeptical of that choice because of some of the causes that she had identified with or donated to in the past. But she, I think, has ended up being a star. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:18): She's pretty based. David Sacks (00:47:19): She's a star. Yeah. Totally. I mean, she's she's red pill and ended up supporting MAHA and MAGA. And I don't think we're gonna get anyone better in California. So if she's wanting to do it and take it on, that'd be awesome. David Friedberg (00:47:32): Sacks, what about you? You don't want you don't want that that mansion? David Sacks (00:47:37): It'd be a significant downgrade for me. Jason Calacanis (00:47:39): I was about to say. You took a joke right out before I got to it. Speaker 5 (00:47:42): Damn it. That was such an easy one. Yeah. You could live in Jason Calacanis (00:47:46): the governor's mansion, also known as smaller than your guest house. That'll be your backup man cave. Well, actually, that's happened. People have in New York, I remember one of the governors was like, yeah. You know, I'm good. I don't need to live in the mansion. Where do you wanna go next, boys? We have other things on the docket. Would you like to go to our war correspondent? Would you like to go to Chrome, Google breakup? Would you like to go NVIDIA? Where would you like to go? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:09): World War III, I think, is important. Jason Calacanis (00:48:11): Sacks, you put World War III on the docket. Would you like to tee it up for us? Yeah. David Sacks (00:48:16): Sure. Well, there's several events that have happened in reasonably close succession. The first thing to understand is what's happening on the ground in Ukraine. Ukraine has been losing territory at an accelerating pace. There's an excellent graphic in the New York Times that I'll put on the screen that shows this. It's not a stalemate. Remember, I said on this podcast six months or a year ago that it was no longer a stalemate. It was a war of attrition in which the Ukrainians were now losing, and every single month now, the Russians are taking more and more territory. Again, the curve is accelerating. We'd all invest in a business that had a growth curve that looked like this, so not good news for the Ukrainians. In response to that, I think that's finally the condition on the ground that's created the next set of actions, which is the Biden administration finally approved the use of long-range missiles, ATACMS missiles, Storm Shadows to hit territory deep inside of Russia. The Russians believe, and I don't know whether this is true or not, but what they say is that those weapons cannot be operated without Americans or British operators being there to, you know, they're too complicated for the Ukrainians just to use on their own. So they, the Russians, view this as not just a direct attack on their homeland, on their motherland, but also a direct involvement by the NATO allies, United States, and Britain in the war, and that is a big escalation. You know, a lot of people say that the Russians have all these red lines, we keep crossing them, and they don't do anything. That's not true. If you actually listen to what the Russians have said, there's only been two red lines. The first red line was they said they would not accept NATO expanding to Ukraine, and they proved their seriousness on that issue by invading Ukraine in February of 2022. The second red line is they said that they would not accept American long-range missiles being used to target inside of Russia, and that line has now been crossed. So this leads us to the next set of events, which is Russia just used what some people are saying is an ICBM, but it probably is more likely to be not an intercontinental, but an intermediate-range ballistic missile that hit a Ukrainian city, and it's, obviously, it didn't carry a nuclear payload, but it's a type of ballistic missile that is used to carry nuclear weapons. There are a couple of features of this that I think are really important. David Sacks (00:50:44): Number one, it's a hypersonic missile. It hit the target at something like Mach 10. What that means is that it just can't be intercepted, it's too fast. The West, and the United States in particular, does not, as far as we know, have a technology to intercept a hypersonic missile like that. The second is that it had what's called a MIRV warhead or payload. MIRV is multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles. Basically, what it means is the warhead splits up. David Friedberg (00:51:13): Right. David Sacks (00:51:13): When it gets close to the ground, it splits into six separate warheads. And the reason for this, as I understand it, is diabolical. Again, it's just, if you're launching a nuclear weapon, it just makes it that much harder to now intercept it because now you've got six warheads hitting you instead of just one. So, I mean, as I understand, a missile like this has never been used before, and what the Russians are doing, obviously, is sending us a signal, and what that message is is that they're saying, we have the means to hit any European city or any European asset with a hypersonic missile that you can't stop that may or may not have a nuclear warhead attached to it. And it's just a way of them expressing their seriousness and displeasure and reacting to and escalating in response to the fact that we are now allowing Western missiles to be hitting targets deep inside of Russia. So the bottom line is this war is escalating. It's escalating nowhere good. And at some point soon Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:15): Yeah. It's really David Sacks (00:52:16): we're gonna have to get off of this escalatory ladder Speaker 5 (00:52:19): Totally. David Sacks (00:52:19): Or we're gonna end up in a really disastrous place. And just the last final point is it's absolutely remarkable that Biden decided to take us to this place with what? Just six weeks left in his term? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:32): Completely. Jason Calacanis (00:52:33): I mean, David Sacks (00:52:33): he's a lame duck president. What is his mandate for doing that, for taking this extraordinary risk on behalf of the country? The voters just voted for Trump, who made it really clear he wanted to end the war, and Biden and his team have unilaterally now escalated this war. They did it without consulting with Trump's team. At least that's what was publicly reported: there was no briefing set up for Trump's transition team. So you have here Biden and his team taking a unilateral action to expand and escalate this war even when he's a lame duck president, and the question you have to ask is why? What is the point of this? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:07): Well, I think it's just completely deranged because it's not just that. Forget Biden and Trump for a second. If you take a step back, what was voted in was to end this war and for the United States to get our hands out of it. So you couldn't have a clearer message to the sitting president in the White House, which is this is not what Americans want. And so to basically ignore the will of the voters and to essentially go and push another country into the brink, I think, is so incredibly irresponsible. And, you know, other times we've said in the past, take Donald Trump seriously, but not literally. Russia, you should take seriously and literally because they actually write it down for you and tell you. And so when they said every act of aggression from now on is going to be viewed by us on a look-through basis to the actual country that is enabling this to happen, you couldn't be more clear, but Americans couldn't have been more clear, which is we don't want this war anymore. And I just think it's really deranged what the Biden White House is doing. It's incredibly dangerous. And by the way, not to mention, it's incredibly costly as well. I mean, we've had, like, some last-minute efforts to sort of tamp down on these last-minute budget approvals and whatnot. But we're talking about tens and hundreds of billions of dollars that we're giving on top of the risk of nuclear escalation. I just think it's absolutely crazy. It's absolutely crazy. David Friedberg (00:54:35): Putin is not a dummy. He has heard and seen Trump's campaign rhetoric. And Sacks, I don't know if this has been publicly reported that he had a call with Trump after the election victory. Does Putin not see that in a couple of weeks, a couple of months, there will be new leadership in the White House and there's gonna be a path to a resolution here? Like, does that not give us all a little bit of reprieve that this is not gonna escalate because everyone's waiting for January 20? David Sacks (00:55:10): Oh, I mean, for sure. I mean, thank goodness. I would say that we have a new president coming in who does not own this war. I mean, the problem with Biden is that he completely owns this war, and he does not want to admit defeat. And so what you've seen is that over the last couple of years, every weapon system that Biden said he wouldn't give to Ukraine because it could literally cause World War III, these are Biden's words. He said it could be Armageddon if we gave Ukraine F-16s, it could be Armageddon if we gave them Abrams tanks, it would be Armageddon if we gave them HIMARS and ATACMS, and could lead to World War III if we let them hit targets inside of Russia. These are Biden's words, and he has basically given in on every single one of those points because he's so committed to this policy. Right? He's in the quagmire. He can only double down. He doesn't know how to extricate himself. And now we don't know exactly what Kamala Harris would have done, but I think probably she would have inherited Joe Biden's policy and likely continued it. And I think we have a wonderful opportunity here with Trump taking office. He doesn't own this policy. He can look at it with fresh eyes, and most importantly, he campaigned on ending the war. So he has the mandate of the American people to stop it. All I can say is thank goodness, and we just need to get through the next two months. We just need to get to January 20 without there being some new horrible escalation in this war. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:31): He's by Joe Biden is Martingaling. That's his strategy for the Ukraine-Russia war. Just keep doubling down and doubling down and doubling down. Oh, yeah. David Sacks (00:56:39): Do you want to explain what that is? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:41): Oh, yeah. Sorry. Martingaling is a strategy in gambling where let's just say, you know, you start betting a dollar and you lose, your next bet is $2. If you lose, your next bet is $4. If you lose, your next bet is $8. And, eventually, you'll win once is the theory. But there's many times where Martingaling David Friedberg (00:56:58): does not win. But you only won a dollar. So you could be betting, you know, 80, you know, 40 bucks, $80, $160, $320, and then you finally win and you win a dollar. David Sacks (00:57:10): Right. Or you go broke. That's a great analogy because you can also go broke. Right? Jason Calacanis (00:57:15): Go broke. This is why I have caps at the roulette table. One time, I would do this as a joke. David Friedberg (00:57:20): Casinos have a max. Yeah. Exactly. So I Jason Calacanis (00:57:22): would do this as a joke with my wife when I was at the World Series of Poker. I'd be like, I'll go to pay for dinner or lunch or whatever, and I put $100 on black, lose, put 200 on black, win, go pay for lunch. And I did it one time at the WSOP, and I went 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600. I ran out of cash. I got 3200 from my friend. I put it down. The floor man came over and said, that's your last bet. David Friedberg (00:57:46): Oh, no. My buddy and I my buddy and I would Jason Calacanis (00:57:49): go play if you do this. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:57:51): In our college years, early 20s, we would go to drink for free at the casino. You just sit at the blackjack table and just keep getting everything with you Jason Calacanis (00:57:57): at the dollar bar. David Friedberg (00:57:58): Table and watch you drink. This was this was a long time ago. Speaker 5 (00:58:01): Happened last year. David Friedberg (00:58:02): So wait. David Sacks (00:58:02): Well, I David Friedberg (00:58:03): mean, if you bet a dollar, then you bet $2, you can just keep drinking for free for like 2 or 3 hours, and then go out and enjoy your night. You've made $15, and you call it enough. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:11): Did I tell you about the losing $1 million playing roulette? David Friedberg (00:58:14): Oh. What? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:16): Me? Nick, you gotta beep out the names. Me? Jason Calacanis (00:58:20): It was me. And, and oh, you did David Friedberg (00:58:23): tell me this. You did tell me this. Yeah. This is so good. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:26): Says, guys, I've developed a system. It's David Friedberg (00:58:28): full system. Speaker 5 (00:58:30): That's always what happens before you lose a million. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:32): And he says, he says that. It's like, we need to risk a million. We can win, like, 2 or 3, and it's, like, 99.996%. So, so I say to him, so are you really telling me that we just have to fade 0.004% chance of, like, total loss? And he says, yep. Well, guess what hit? The 0.004% sharp. Me saying David Sacks (00:58:58): Totally. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:59): And, and it was devastating. I just kept looking at this thing like, what just happened? He's like, we lost. Yeah. And I was like, there it is, folks. Never again. I'm never gonna play roulette again. David Sacks (00:59:09): I think the gambling analogies are the right analogies because I look. I'm not saying World War 3 is gonna happen. I've never said World War 3 is gonna happen. I'm saying that there's a risk of World War 3, and I don't need the risk to be very high to be very worried about it because it would be such a disaster to come. Right? Totally. Exactly. So I wanna minimize- Risk Jason Calacanis (00:59:26): of ruin. David Sacks (00:59:27): I wanna, exactly. I want there to be hopefully a zero risk of that. But you know what's interesting is remember just like a week or 2 ago, President Trump made that trip to D.C. and he met with Biden in the Oval Office, and Biden had this, he was like all smiles, and I'm, everyone's like wondering why is he so happy? And the speculation was that he somehow wanted to come to a lose or something, but now you think back on this, he must have known he was about to authorize this decision. So what he's doing here, he's grin he's grin Trump. He knows he's about to give Trump this horrible hand. Right? He's about to make this situation in Ukraine so much worse so that Trump will have to inherit this mess. That is like the definition of Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:14): Yeah. He definitely knew more than that picture let on because a lot of the interpretation of that picture was they are getting along, he's being super gracious, what an incredible gesture, and it just looked like very David Sacks (01:00:26): Yeah. He promised a smooth transition of power, and then we find out that he didn't confer with his successor about this extraordinarily meaningful decision to escalate the war. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:38): Escalation. Yeah. David Sacks (01:00:40): It's like that's just crazy. That's crazy. David Friedberg (01:00:44): You guys wanna do science corner? I got one for you. Yeah. David Sacks (01:00:47): Yeah. Let's do it. Jason Calacanis (01:00:48): Alright. Your super fans are desperate for a science corner. Give them one, Friedberg. Give them something. Alright. I will give you guys something. David Friedberg (01:00:56): Here here's a depressing paper that was published in the journal Nature just this week. Research team out of Switzerland going over to the Swiss where they are conducting extraordinary research in the epigenetics of fat cells in Oh, Jason Calacanis (01:01:13): so we're gonna fat shame me on the, science corner. Go ahead. Great. No. David Friedberg (01:01:17): We're actually gonna understand perhaps why it is difficult for people that have been overweight to keep the weight off. I did read Jason Calacanis (01:01:26): this and I think it's fascinating. Yeah. Explain it. David Friedberg (01:01:28): It is really incredible. So remember, we've talked about this many times in the past, but every cell has all your DNA, all your genes. And certain genes are turned on or off in different cells, and those genes being on or off differentiates those cells and causes them to act differently. That's the difference between an eye cell and a skin cell and a heart cell is they have different genes that are upregulated, downregulated, turned on, and turned off. And even when you have different kinds of cells, you have certain genes that are overexpressed or underexpressed or overregulated or upregulated or downregulated. So that means that those genes are pumping out certain proteins that do certain things in that particular cell. So what these folks did is they wanted to understand what is the epigenome, meaning what are the genes that are turned on or off or upregulated or downregulated in fat tissue and fat cells. And does the epigenome change when an individual loses the weight? So once they're obese and they lose weight, do the fat cells actually change their epigenome, or do they have an epigenetic memory? Meaning that those cells, even though the person has lost weight, those cells still continue to act as if that person were obese. So I'll tell you in humans, they basically took five individuals that were obese and lost more than 25% BMI. And they looked at the epigenome. They looked at the markers of what genes are upregulated and downregulated before and after they lost the weight. After they lost the weight, there were a set of markers that were still upregulated that are associated with poor metabolism and increased fibrosis and increased cellular death. So these are inflammatory genes. These are genes that are associated with the cells being inefficient at utilizing glucose to create energy. And so these cells continue to act like slow-dying cells even after the person lost weight. And they did the same thing in mice and they found similar results. They caused these mice to gain weight, looked at the epigenome of the fat cells, and then looked at the epigenome after they lost the weight. And, again, the mouse epigenome continued to act as if the mouse was obese. And what this means is that the metabolism remained reduced, fibrosis remained elevated, and likelihood of cell death remained elevated. David Friedberg (01:03:48): So now they applied glucose in a petri dish to those cells and they saw that the glucose had a harder time being fully and appropriately utilized compared to a healthy fat cell that hadn't been obese. So it actually permanently alters and creates an epigenetic memory in the fat cells after obesity. And this could explain pretty significantly why when people that have been obese lose the weight, they are more likely to gain the weight back and have a hard time keeping the weight off. Jason Calacanis (01:04:18): You're referring to yes. And that makes total sense because anybody who's added weight, Chamath, if you add, but, you know, you eat one extra Oreo a week, that's 3,500 calories. You do that over 20 years. All of a sudden, you wake up one day, you're 200 pounds overweight, like, almost 3 or 4 years ago. And this is why I think Ozempic and Wegovy and Mounjaro and all these things are so great because it does seem like it breaks you through that. No? Well, the problem Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:44): what we do see David Friedberg (01:04:44): in all those results is that when you go off of the GLP-1 agonist drugs, you gain the weight back very quickly. This is some amount of weight. Jason Calacanis (01:04:52): Yeah. It's not the total amount. David Friedberg (01:04:54): It's a pretty significant bounce-back effect. And this is pretty well documented. And so I think that it speaks to the why. Now, it also introduces an opportunity. Mhmm. There are molecules that can turn certain genes on or off that can now be identified and utilized to change that epigenetic memory. So now you Jason Calacanis (01:05:13): could put that switch David Friedberg (01:05:14): in addition to taking Jason Calacanis (01:05:15): COVID. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:05:15): Exactly. This could arise from things like increased exercise. It turns out that when you do significant amounts of cardiovascular exercise, there are certain genes that are expressed that trigger other genes to switch on or off. And so we can start to identify those particular molecules and produce either supplements or additional drugs or combo therapies that can both knock the weight off and keep it off by changing the epigenetic memory in those cells. Wow. And so it introduces a whole new class of opportunity for folks to explore. How do we help folks that are obese lose the weight and then flip the switch so they can keep the weight off? Jason Calacanis (01:05:52): I've been doing rucking. This is like the old man activity that Peter Attia and these guys are all David Friedberg (01:05:58): talking about. And you, like, go walking. Jason Calacanis (01:06:00): I wear a I started with a 10-pound weight vest. Now I'm at 35 pounds. I do a mile-and-a-half hike every day with 35 pounds on. Man, I fall asleep immediately, and the amount of intensity that puts on your body. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:13): You do it right before you go to bed? Jason Calacanis (01:06:15): No. No. I do it anytime during the day, but I'm just saying I'm focused on four things right now for my health: diet, sleep, exercise, meditation. And I try to do all four each day, but the rucking specifically and the zone 2 stuff is what they say 40-, 50-year-olds should focus on. So that's what I'm focused on. But that rucking, man, does it make your whole body strong? How they recommend it? It's really transformative. David Friedberg (01:06:39): My meditation is reading Doge, please. Jason Calacanis (01:06:42): For Chamath Palihapitiya, chairman dictator, 80-90. He's running a software company services company. Great. Look at you in the driver's seat. David Friedberg, sultan of science working on Ohalo and the architect, the Rain Man. Yeah. Definitely David Sacks from Craft Ventures. And maybe he's gonna be involved in Doge. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a Sacks Doge hookup in the future. I don't know. I'm taking a guess here. I am your host here, Jason Calacanis. We'll see you all on December 7, live or in person. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:18): By the way, did you guys David Friedberg (01:07:20): see this spectacular? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:21): Did you see this tweet from Bryan Johnson? He tweeted out all of his blood levels. This is incredible. I love this guy. Look at these results. They're incredible. If he can break this down into, like, a turnkey thing that normal folks like us can follow. Jason Calacanis (01:07:38): For people who don't know, what this kid's doing is he is spending, like, $3 million a year or something to that effect on his own personal health, documenting it, sharing it, everything from sleep to his bone density. Everything is an open book, and he's made some products out of it as well. So you can eat his pudding too if you're interested in it. But I don't think it's as good as But Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:01): how do you follow his regimen? You know what I mean? Like, it just seems too hard. You can't have Jason Calacanis (01:08:05): a job. I mean, he's doing it's like he's got two jobs right now doing all this stuff. His biomarkers are showing he's 10 years younger than his actual biological age. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:13): Dude, look at some of these results. His speed of aging. He says his birthday now happens every 19 months. What the Friedberg, I mean, Friedberg, do you you Jason Calacanis (01:08:27): look at the think here? Science Yeah. From a science perspective, any thoughts on all this? David Friedberg (01:08:32): Well, I think his nighttime erection rate is pretty impressive, not 3 hours and 8 minutes for a nighttime erection. Hold on. See that. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:38): How does he know? David Sacks (01:08:39): Reading is he reading, Elon Uvavec's op-ed column? What's going on? Speaker 5 (01:08:44): Slowly. He's reading it very slowly. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:48): Wow. He's got a 240-pound bench press and an 800-pound leg press. Jesus. He looks like he's dead, though. Jason Calacanis (01:08:55): That's the only problem with this. Speaker 5 (01:08:57): That is Jason Calacanis (01:08:57): so pale. Sacks has gotta go. DJT online too. We'll see you all next time. Oh, and Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:04): Bye. Boys. Bye bye. David Friedberg (01:09:05): Love you, man. Bye. You. Speaker 5 (01:09:28): Besties are called. That Jason Calacanis (01:09:31): is my dog taking it out of sheer driveway sex. Oh, man. Speaker 5 (01:09:36): My habitat We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just useless. It's like it's like sexual tension that we just need to release somehow. Jason Calacanis (01:09:46): Let your feet. Let your feet. David Sacks (01:09:49): Your feet.