特朗普第一周：就职典礼回顾、行政令、TikTok、星际之门，萨克斯回归

Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:00): So we had a dinner where me and Freeberg and Jay Kal were invited to have dinner with the folks from and their and their other top podcast. Jason Calacanis (00:00:07): It was an off the record dinner. Let's talk all about it. There was an interesting moment, which even Freeberg had to recognize, which was we went around and said, hey. What podcasts are you listening to? Which ones are your favorites? We went out in the room, and I gotta tell you, you know what your podcaster's favorite podcast is? Bingo. All in podcast. Well, the funniest thing is my Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:25): wife thinks I'm bull all the time I say this is Mine too. Pretty reasonably successful and well, she doesn't believe it. She thinks we're all bull Thomas Laffont (00:00:32): Why do you think I waited to make my world podcast premiere for All In? All the ankle biters called and I said, no, I'm just gonna Jason Calacanis (00:00:39): wait I'm Thomas Laffont (00:00:39): holding out. To the besties call. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:43): Can we just say it, Nick, you gotta Jason Calacanis (00:00:44): be remote. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:44): No. When the podcast called you're like, nope. Can't do it. No. Wait. Sorry. Jason Calacanis (00:00:49): I'm waiting for the real deal. Thomas Laffont (00:00:51): I don't need JV. Jason Calacanis (00:00:54): You let your winners ride. Rain man David. Alright, everybody. Welcome back to the number one business, finance, technology, science podcast in the world. This is the place where we call balls and strikes, where we tell the truth, where there is zero censorship. Every week, we tell you about the truth behind the most important stories. We point out who the heroes are and who the villains are, who are the delightful ones, and who are the discretia. With me again on this week's program Discretia. The cackling chairman dictator, my guy, It's mouth polly hot. Tia, how are you doing? How was your victory Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:47): lap? How was your victory Jason Calacanis (00:01:48): lap? Really, really, really fun. You look like you were in your afterglow, and I have to say, Nat was looking pretty good. We have some pictures. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:57): Don't worry. We're gonna go through behind the scenes in a sec. Jason Calacanis (00:02:00): Let's start with Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:01): the came through Jason Calacanis (00:02:01): for Amore. The Amore collection from Armani coming this fall. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:06): By the way, I mean, Armani Couture is like firing on all cylinders. The the other the other one, which you'll see is a great picture of this incredible jacket, Luisa Beckeria. Two shout outs. Armani and Luisa Beckeria. Jason Calacanis (00:02:18): You know, I was just thinking that Armani really has been making it happen. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:21): Now that we've talked about that, we'll talk about my wardrobe when the time comes. Could they just get through the rest of the intro? Jason Calacanis (00:02:26): Alright. Alright. Alright. And, of course, here he is, your sultan of science, David Friedberg. David Friedberg (00:02:34): Move along, JK. Let's go. Jason Calacanis (00:02:36): Let's go. Had a wonderful he's very bitter today. He's got a lot of anger. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:41): He is Jason Calacanis (00:02:41): the barista of bitterness today. He's serving up bitterness all day long, and he had a great time at the, maybe he's a little upset about the, Lex Fridman triangle we're in right now. I think that could be part of it. And we have a special guest here. Thomas Lafont is the cofounder of Coto Management. They got a 50 Billy under management, public, private, yada yada. Before that, he worked at Creative Artist Agency for 7 years after he he went to college, so he does have the college degree. He signed Captain America, which is Freebird's favorite Avenger. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:19): Chris Evans. Jason Calacanis (00:03:19): Chris Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:20): Evans. Chris Evans. Thomas Laffont (00:03:21): And, has favorite CA client, by the way. Jason Calacanis (00:03:24): Yes. And then you're still in touch with him. Thomas Laffont (00:03:27): I am not. You're not. But I I've watched with wonder at, what he's achieved after I left being his agent. It's been incredible. Great career. Jason Calacanis (00:03:36): Now now behind you, we see this incredible, amazing incredible the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:41): one you're missing the one part, which is that Thomas was one of the highest rated speakers that we had at the All In Summit. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:03:47): That's true, actually. He did really great Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:48): last year. Really crushed it. Jason Calacanis (00:03:49): Crushed it. Crushed it. Of course. Thomas Laffont (00:03:51): And I think I'm I'm in the 7th bestie position and and hoping potentially after the podcast to at least move up by 1. Jason Calacanis (00:03:57): Okay. Excellent. Let's see what happens here. Now what what's this view behind you? Thomas Laffont (00:04:02): This is, Los Angeles. David Friedberg (00:04:03): I put you ahead of JCal, Thomas. So you're wow, you're up Jason Calacanis (00:04:07): the spot. Oh my god. He really is serving up the bitterness today. Yeah. So bad. He's so bad. You know why Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:14): you know why he's mad? Because bitter. I'll tell you why. Because he okay. What are you doing Jason Calacanis (00:04:19): for the time? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:20): This is for the audience. Jason is complaining all week in the group chat that he has influenza a. He's sending pictures of him getting IVs. Jason Calacanis (00:04:28): And so Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:29): Friberg, the conscientious guy and cofounder of the pod that he is, says, I will moderate, and then he invests his time. Okay? He's got he's got a lot of things going on. He's got He does. Potatoes. Plus strawberry. He's running a company. Jason Calacanis (00:04:45): Strawberries. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:46): He prepares, and then you wake up after a dose of Tamiflu and decide, no. I'm ready to moderate. Jason Calacanis (00:04:53): Of course. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:53): And you can't just do that because it's not nice. Jason Calacanis (00:04:56): Alright. Put hey. Madam producer, can you come on the horn for a second here? Are we really gonna do this? Yes. We are. We're gonna do it. We're doing it, my damn. This is so stupid. This is so stupid. So stupid. Ba ba booie. Did I tell you to get Friedberg involved? No. No. I did it myself. Okay. You went rogue. Can I say why? You can go rogue. I'm fine. I said, hey, Jason. How are you feeling? You said, horrible. I have the flu. I'm getting an IV tomorrow morning. To me, that was, like, oh, okay. There's, like, a 50% chance he misses the show. So I reached out to Friberg. I said, hey. Jason's really sick with the flu. Maybe you should just prepare yourself to moderate tomorrow. Okay. Now when did I find out about this? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:38): Wondering if I was a smart decision, but you, sir, are a small bitter man. And so what you did was you wanted to just blow yeah. You wanted to blow up Freeberg's preparation. Jason Calacanis (00:05:47): I found out about this this morning. I found out about this like an hour ago. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:50): How are you feeling? Jason Calacanis (00:05:52): I feel 80% of a normal J Cow, which is a 110% of any other moderator. Get yourself Andrew Voorhees Sorkin. Oh, I'm sorry. He's genuflecting at Davos to a bunch of mids. Well, we're gonna get Lex in, so we're gonna get Lex in. Oh, that'd be great. Hello. I am Lex Friedman. Welcome to the number one podcast in the world. Today on the program, we have Thomas Lafont, investor in such great companies as alright. Listen. Enough shenanigans. We had so much fun. We tore DC apart. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:25): Let's start with actually just Thomas, did you watch any of it on TV? Did you think about going? It was really like, there were so many tech people in Washington this weekend. Thomas Laffont (00:06:36): I saw the livestream. I talked to Sachs last night to get get the download. And, you know, my takeaway just from watching, especially the executive orders, was, you know, democracy in action. Democracy is self correct. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:50): Yeah. Thomas Laffont (00:06:50): And dictatorships double down. And to watch in real time a country of our scale and a democracy, you know, decide to make a change, I think that's why we've been great for, you know, 250 plus years and will remain great. So it was fun to watch. I I'm really curious to see what your takeaway was. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:09): Okay. Well, let's just we'll just go behind the scenes. First of all, it's hard to see that this was me dressed up for Saks's ball. I really brought the heat. This is, by the way, Luca Rubenacci is the tailor here. It's hard to see Is that a blue? Jason Calacanis (00:07:24): Blue coat? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:24): So this is what I'm saying. I think the picture is very hard to see, but it's a very refined green paisley. Jason Calacanis (00:07:30): Oh. Mhmm. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:32): Subtle. Hard to bring it out. Now I will say this was the most popular shirt over the entire weekend. This is just a simple Brioni tuxedo shirt. There's 200 versions of it. I felt bad when I saw because normally I don't like to wear things that other people are wearing. Jason Calacanis (00:07:48): Correct. Yeah. What did Michael Sailor think of this? When you saw Michael Sailor at the at the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:53): I met I met Michael's CFO, wonderfully nice guy. So this is us at the this is us at the crypto ball. David Friedberg (00:07:59): I went I went for white tuxedo on the first night. I've never had 3 tuxedos before, but there was Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:04): David looked David looked really great. Jason Calacanis (00:08:05): I really love the guy. Guy. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:07): And Sachs had this incredible tux, which was more crypto themed. It sort of looked like the opening scene from The Matrix. So there was, like, this cool print. You can see my green in there a little Jason Calacanis (00:08:17): bit, Thomas, in this one. Thomas Laffont (00:08:18): Yep. Yeah. Got it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:20): There's Sky and New Money Sunny, the president of Grok. Jason Calacanis (00:08:24): Sandeep Madra, x.com/sundeep. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:27): Oh, look. Besties. You're the besties. Jason Calacanis (00:08:28): I was I was let's be honest, guys. Even in all your bitterness, Friberg, you felt the love at this moment when we were all back together. Did you not? Thomas Laffont (00:08:36): Well, in 5 minutes before this, David Friedberg (00:08:38): when the 3 of us took a a video a photo, it was great. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:08:41): Yeah. Okay. Great. So that was so Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:44): entertaining. Here's Do Jason Calacanis (00:08:45): you want me to let you moderate? You can moderate if you want. If you're that part David Friedberg (00:08:48): of the job. Great job, Jay Cal. There's no you're getting a video crack. We're eating lemon and we're doing fashion still. Jason Calacanis (00:08:53): Video grid. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:54): Sky, Diego Burdekin, the cofounder of Cloud Kitchens. Jason Calacanis (00:08:57): Oh, so handsome that, Diego. Who exactly did the game have a ball? For a second? David Friedberg (00:09:00): This is the crypto ball. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:01): Yeah. This was the crypto ball. This is like this was Saks' event. It was incredible. Jason Calacanis (00:09:06): It was a large number of people there. I was shocked at the number of people at the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:11): crypto ball. It was it was huge. It was huge. Jason Calacanis (00:09:14): Love them. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:14): Here's a little poker afterwards. Jason Calacanis (00:09:16): Behind the scenes. Thomas Laffont (00:09:17): With Pink Diego. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:19): TK, Travis Kline, the cofounder of the founder of Uber. Thomas Laffont (00:09:22): Oh, look. That's the founder of Uber. Who who's got the biggest stack. Jason Calacanis (00:09:26): Look. It's the founder of Uber next to the 3rd investor in Uber, and the founder of CloudKitchens next to the investor in here. This is animal. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:35): Peter Thiel's house. This is Katie Hahn and Kyle Simani. My wife and then Kyle's wife, This is at Peter's house. Peter had this Peter Thiel had this person going around taking pictures Thomas Laffont (00:09:47): That's what I think. Jason Calacanis (00:09:48): Not not the wedding for you. Yeah. You got the lighting? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:50): There. K. Jason Calacanis (00:09:51): You've been on Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:52): oh, this was great. Also, Peter Thiel's house. Jason Calacanis (00:09:54): Yeah. That was great. I have to say, I chamath, putting aside, David Friedberg (00:09:59): Jason likes being a Republican. Here's a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:01): here's a here's a dinner that we had. There's Lex Friedman, Julius Genachowski, who's the former chairman of the FCC. Jason Calacanis (00:10:08): Little known. The Brad Gerstner. Former roommate of Obama. That's quite a few. David Friedberg (00:10:13): Following this dinner, all those streets were blocked off, and there was no way to get around. There. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:17): Look. You see the the barricade Jason Calacanis (00:10:19): in the tank? David Friedberg (00:10:20): 10 degrees Fahrenheit. So we walk out. Jason Calacanis (00:10:22): Yes. It's terrible. David Friedberg (00:10:23): It was like you were gonna die after 2 seconds out there. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:26): It was so cold. It was so cold. David Friedberg (00:10:28): To try and, like, get our car. And after walking for, like, half David Sacks (00:10:32): a mile, we're like, dude. David Friedberg (00:10:33): There's no way out of this downtown area. And Vinny was shaking. He's like, Jason Calacanis (00:10:36): I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. David Friedberg (00:10:37): He turns around. He goes running back to the restaurant, jumps in, and basically, like, huddles down in the restaurant. And then after about 10 minutes, there's no way out. He's like, you know, it's sort of like you're in a military zone. He's like, Jason Calacanis (00:10:49): I'm gonna go for it. David Friedberg (00:10:50): I He comes out, jumps on a scooter, and he disappeared into the distance, and I swore I would never see Vinny again. I'm like, that's it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:55): I think it's very smart that Lex wears the same outfit, the black suit with the white shirt with the black tie. I really like the the consistency of it, actually. It looks really Jason Calacanis (00:11:05): This is it was incredible. There's He was getting stopped. Here's here's Armani. 2 minutes. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:09): It was unbelievable. Here's the jacket. This is Luisa Beckeria, and then here's the box from Armani. Thank you for the other box. Jason Calacanis (00:11:16): Woah. Wawawee waw. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:19): Oh, look. There's a little side boob there with Matt. I didn't notice that. Hey, Armani. That's a this is I'm wearing Tom Ford. Jason Calacanis (00:11:27): Shout out Tom Ford. Shout out David Friedberg (00:11:29): to you. Jason Calacanis (00:11:29): Perfect mouthful. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:30): Oh, huge, huge shout out to 2 guys that I had really wanted to meet in person. I finally got the chance to meet. This is at Zuck's party. This is Brendan Carr, who's the incoming chairman of the FCC. Actually, this picture was taken right after he had gotten confirmed. So this was his 1st day as the chairman. And then this is a guy who I've been following for a couple of years, Jared Isaacman, who is now gonna run NASA. He's the founder and CEO of Shift 4 Payments. But both of these guys are pretty epic. You should follow them on Twitter. David Friedberg (00:12:00): He did a spacewalk. The first civilian spacewalk. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:02): He did. He's he's he's really, really nice. David Friedberg (00:12:05): Was really nice. I met him at Peter's, event, and he told me he's a big fan of the pod. Listen Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:09): to show everyone. Amazing. I mean, by the way, if you wanna see, like, some really amazing tweets, he had some real bangers. He's a very smart guy. Jason Calacanis (00:12:17): He's, and I've had Brendan on This Week in StarOps a couple times. He's the guy who fought for Starlink Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:26): That's right. Jason Calacanis (00:12:26): Over wasting 5, 10, $20,000 per home to install broadband. I mean, this guy is a hero, and and he did that when he was in office under Biden and all that crazy corruption and grift. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:41): This is a picture of Mike Johnson and his wife. This is a crazy story. So there was a g 7 summit in Italy, and Mike and his wife was seated beside my father-in-law, Nat's dad, at a dinner. They got to know each other. He, as a proud grandpa, showed Mike and his wife pictures of Nat and myself and our kids. And how we actually met in this moment was his wife was like, oh my god. I recognize you. You're Sergio's son-in-law. You're Sergio's daughter. It's amazing. And then we had a cool conversation, so that was cool. And then this is Bill Polte who is nominated to run FHFA, which for folks that know will be in control of the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and really great guy. Also a co investor with me and Mr. Beast. Nat Jason Calacanis (00:13:33): Oh, you're an investor in MrBeast. There you go. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:35): This is mister I did the series a. Jason Calacanis (00:13:37): I did the first time, I think, you've said it from Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:39): the Here's this thing. So this is where J. Cal is at his peak. Go ahead, Nick. Just play the game. Jason Calacanis (00:13:43): I don't even know what this is. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:44): Go ahead. What what is that? What what did you order? Jason Calacanis (00:13:46): Alright. I've given it some bot, and I'm gonna order the $95 Dover Sole. Thank you, Rose. Thank you. Your tips included Thomas Laffont (00:14:00): in that. Jason Calacanis (00:14:01): I mean Just having such a great time, tearing it up. I did order the $95 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:11): Dover Shell. This is, oh, sorry. Oh, that's that's me and Bobby Kennedy, but this is, this is walking into the capitol for the inauguration. Oh, wow. So you basically you have to get off. All these buses were taking us in because of the security, and then you walk underneath and underground to get into the and this is it. Bobby and the guy right there, Cali means another great American. Make America healthy again. Alright. Jason Calacanis (00:14:34): Here's a couple of my picks. This is, me with somebody who's gonna be in the administration. I'm not big on politics, but, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:41): Chelsea Gabbard is so Chelsea Gabbard. She was great. She went she came to our party. Jason Calacanis (00:14:45): I like her. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:46): This is the picture of our her party. She is incredible. Jason Calacanis (00:14:49): Well, she came up to me and she you know, you can always tell who a real fan is and she Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:53): came up. I just Jessica Abboud. Jason Calacanis (00:14:54): I just wanna tell Jake how I am a huge fan of the pod. I love what you do. I love the, you know, balance you bring to the prom. She really like new details about the podcast. And so I wanted to get a picture with her. So as a joke, I said to her, do you wanna take a selfie? I said, I'm okay with this. She goes, I was gonna ask. I was like, no. I'm preemptively asking. We took Chamath Palihapitiya (00:15:13): it to you. She's such a star. Jason Calacanis (00:15:14): She is. I think she's gonna be great. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:15:16): I like her a lot. She's such David Sacks (00:15:19): a star. Jason Calacanis (00:15:19): Oh, well, yeah. This is Hello. I am Lex Friedman. Today, with love and peace in my heart, I am interviewing dictator Idi Amin, who has eaten after his enemies. We will share love, kindness, and a fatty liver. Enjoy. So, yeah, that was us just tearing it up after the YouTube party where we hung out with Sundar and, Neil from YouTube. They've been very good to us. And then here's one more, I guess. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:15:47): I guess there's one more. Golfer, Bryson DeChambeau. Jason Calacanis (00:15:50): Oh, there's me and the, Presidente, Twitter, and, yeah, this is the podcast crew at the Free Press party. David Friedberg (00:15:58): Okay. Let's talk about key takeaways. Chamath, what is your big takeaway from the weekend? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:16:03): I think my biggest takeaway is that if you look in the past, there was a very tight coordination, I guess, I would say, between private industry and the private sector and the public sector, meaning the president and then people who were in charge of managing huge vast swaths of resources in America. And somewhere along the way, that became either unfashionable and uncool, particularly under democrats. And what I saw was a very broad based embrace of business people because I think that the president understands how important it is to make sure that economically, America is just firing on all cylinders. The one thing to remember, like, for example, in the inauguration, I know that you saw the picture and it was basically like Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, Tesla kind of CEOs, etcetera, founders. Arnott was there. Mukesh Ambani was there. So it's just business people from the entire world were there. And so I think what it says is America's gonna basically turn a totally new page. We're not gonna ostracize people. We're not gonna play favorites. That's the other thing. You know, Elon was there right at the beginning, but if you saw all the CEOs of the, you know, major companies were there, it's not like he excluded Zuck because of his past issues or anything. David Friedberg (00:17:32): Or Sam Altman. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:33): Or Sam Altman. That was the biggest thing for Jason Calacanis (00:17:37): notable one. Yeah. To exclude. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:38): That that the president doesn't play favorites, that this is like team America kinda thing, and it was a projection of tremendous power to the rest of the world. This is what America is about. I loved every minute of it. And I think that this is exactly how the American government should be working, which is hand in hand with private industry to basically set the pace for the rest of the world. Jason Calacanis (00:18:00): Thomas, did you have a takeaway after the weekend? Thomas Laffont (00:18:03): I did. I'm curious what you guys thought, but to me, what was notable from Scott Bessent, the new treasury secretary, he was asked in one of the exchanges about the green energy race with China, and he reframed the debate, I thought, incredibly well where he said, we're not in a green energy race with China. We're in an energy race with China. David Friedberg (00:18:25): That's right. Thomas Laffont (00:18:26): Right? And he made the point that China is adding a 100 coal plants. It's adding nuclear. And to me, it was kind of just David Friedberg (00:18:33): 137 gigawatt hydro facility, which is Exactly. Unbelievable. Thomas Laffont (00:18:39): And it was such a good framing of the debate because I think, Chamath, to your point, it's about reframing the right issues. Right? And I think that just that little piece of dialogue to me is exemplified, you know, and was a really important takeaway, and I think more of what we'll see over the next coming year. Jason Calacanis (00:18:54): Freyberg, did you have a takeaway coming out of this? David Friedberg (00:18:56): There was just so much. It was so impressive to be there. I definitely echo the sentiment about seeing the strength of America represented between the entrepreneurial engine that has driven this country for 250 years and the government that's meant to serve the people working together to try and take America forward. It was just really inspiring. The one thing that was the biggest kind of observation for me, which was a bit of a disappointment, unfortunately, is I feel like Doge and cost cutting is gonna be a lot harder to realize than folks assume. Nearly everyone I met with who works in government or is entering government had this, if not disdain for Doge, a concern that it doesn't really align interests with the political objectives of politicians, that they need to get more stuff for their constituents in order to get reelected and that they're not gonna vote programs away. They're not gonna vote themselves out of a job, which is effectively what they would do if they cut programs. In fact, I was watching Brooke Rollins' secretary ag confirmation hearing this morning, and Mitch O'Connell was given the opportunity to ask her questions. You know what his question was? He said in the last farm bill, I was able to get $60,000,000 to build an ag research lab at the University of Kentucky, and it hasn't started being built yet. It's been 4 years. What are you gonna do about that? This is literally the intention of so many of these conversations if you sit and watch. And then I watched a similar conversation with a senator from Minnesota who, you know, I I I won't get into all the the statements, but every single conversation you hear and we even talk with Ted Cruz about this. It's all about great, by the way. Jason Calacanis (00:20:42): I love Ted Cruz. David Friedberg (00:20:43): It's all about Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:44): Ted Cruz is excellent. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:20:45): What can I get for my constituents? How do I get more jobs, and how do I get more money? And, ultimately, that incentive is what gets people elected, and I don't think it's gonna change. And so that was the biggest kind of shock for me. I thought that there was a moment of the importance of cost cutting, the importance of deficit reduction, the importance of debt reduction. And I was just a little saddened to kinda see that that there's no stop in the train. So that was my takeaway. It's a little bit bitter. I hope I'm wrong. I really do hope those is effective, and I really do hope that policymakers start to recognize the importance. By the way, Ray Dalio has a new book coming out. We'll talk more about his book once it's released publicly, but it speaks very clearly to the challenge the United States is now facing with respect to spending. So I know I've talked about this. I know we all felt like there was a big reprieve with this election, but for me, it was a little bit bittersweet. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:34): Can I say a little bit on that first topic? That Yep. I I just wanna double down on that because one of the things that some folks said, and I guess it makes sense now that you think about it, but when you look at the confirmation hearings, there are certain folks for whom the resource allocation is relatively modest inside of America. They tend to just do much better in general. And if you saw Marco Rubio's confirmation process, there was, you know, it was like 99 to 0. Right? And to your point, what what they say is that folks that actually allocate the internal spending in the United States gets a lot more scrutiny because there's all of this horse trading because they want some of this money to get allocated into their specific area. It is gonna be a very complicated thing. The the one thing though that changed, I don't know if you saw, but Doge was meant to be outside the auspices of the government, and it wasn't actually a government department. And it it'll be interesting to understand when it's explained, but in the 11th hour, the EO that established those established it actually as a governmental agency. Jason Calacanis (00:22:40): Yeah. We're gonna get into that, in just a moment. And, you know, to build on your point there, Dave, senator Sanders, had a tweet today. Nick, I just sent it to you. Already the discussion of, like, who should take the brunt of these cuts is starting to happen, and he's pointing out, you know, as he should. And, you know, hey. What's gonna happen with the VA? And you're you're putting a freeze on hiring people. We have to make sure our vets are taken care of. We have a shortage of doctors, a shortage of of nurses. But we do have people, you know, responding to him saying, hey. How are we gonna pay for all this? So even if it's gonna be hard to do, it's gonna take courage because you're gonna be faced with situations like this where, does anybody wanna see VA's budget cut? And these veterans who are coming back, they should get all the services in the world. And these hard discussions are now happening, and it's not taboo. So the Overton window's wide open now to discuss even the budget of the VA. And where is the money gonna come from? So I think we're actually gonna make progress on it. The this was like a sacred cow, and now we're we're talking about it. To the to Bernie Sanders' point, I don't know if you saw there was a note on there, Nick. Community notes pointed out that Trump put that none of the cuts should impact vets. And so I thought that was, a a good use of community notes there. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:56): The one comment I'll say about Bernie Sanders is when Russ Vought, who is the nominee to run OMB, went through his confirmation yesterday. Sanders asked a similar question around Medicare and Medicaid. And what was interesting is Russ tried to actually answer the question and give the details around where they can be waste, fraud, and abuse. Sanders really didn't wanna hear it. He just wanted a sound bite. So I think these confirmation processes are Performative? They're hugely performative. Yes. I do think that and this applies, I think, to both sides Democrats as well when when they are eventually in power. I think that when you're given a very clear mandate as a president, I think you should be able to get to pick your team because it's clear that the American people have voted an agenda. It's not like he hid that agenda. And so the people that then wanna implement that agenda should be put on the field. Jason Calacanis (00:24:55): It seems like Yeah. The point of these should be if somebody could get compromised or there was something really gnarly in their background, like but otherwise, yeah, let people build their team and then they have to own their results. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:06): Tell us about your feelings and takeaways about the weekend. Jason Calacanis (00:25:09): Well, you know, it's obviously mixed. I was a never Trumper, and, now I am rooting for him wholeheartedly to do great work. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:17): Beyond for me kinda like him. Come on. You do kinda like him. Jason Calacanis (00:25:20): I mean, anybody Just been just met just interacted with Trump. Like him? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:25): Code your diatribe, just say it. Just say you like him. Jason Calacanis (00:25:28): There are aspects I like about the platform. I like probably 80% of the platform. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:31): Wanna say it. And I Jason Calacanis (00:25:32): won't tell you today the 20% I don't like. I'm always gonna call Boston Strength. No. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:36): No. I'm not gonna take away. You kind of like him. Jason Calacanis (00:25:39): Just say you kinda like him. You do like him. I like 80% of his Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:42): platform this time around? No. Him. Jason Calacanis (00:25:44): Him as a person. You know what? There's things I really don't like, and I'll talk about him today. But let's put it aside. The the personal thing doesn't matter. What matters is what he does for the American people. Because you Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:53): like them. I know you can't say it, but they're deep down inside Jason Calacanis (00:25:56): you like it. Jake Howe is Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:58): You're happy to be there? Jason Calacanis (00:25:59): Until Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:59): You have a lot of fun. Jason Calacanis (00:26:01): To say, I had a lot of fun. Jake Howe brings the heat to Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:04): a party. Republicans are fun. Jason Calacanis (00:26:06): I I will say Republicans are fun. Fashion was off the hook. Off the hook. Lot of great fashion and it was a great party. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:12): America beautiful again. My gosh. Hey, Jason Calacanis (00:26:14): man. Listen. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:15): No more jogging pants and and White Fox. Get rid of it. Burn it to the ground. Jason Calacanis (00:26:21): What I'll say my takeaway was, you know, as somebody who had concerns and, you know, I'm just I'm not gonna make the show about me, but the important thing for me is who is Trump going to lead with this time around? Is it gonna be the people from the sort of 1 point o movement or the 2 point o movement? There was not a 1 point o person Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:42): Couldn't be true. Jason Calacanis (00:26:43): Couldn't be found. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:43): Couldn't be found. Jason Calacanis (00:26:44): And so to like, on the margin 1 or 2. And they were not the focus. And who you put in the front row speaks volumes. Who do you put in the front row? Sundar, Elon, Zuck, Lawrence Sanchez. He's got his priorities straight here. Lawrence Sanchez's priorities. The priorities were very clear as to what's important for this administration, and I'm fully behind all of his priorities, both of those priorities. All those priorities seem incredibly important to me. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:18): You're such a troll. Jason Calacanis (00:27:20): I mean, I don't wanna troll too much. But that's the big takeaway for me. And if that is, you know, indicative of where he wants to go with this, which is business first, we're proud of our leaders, we're proud of innovation, I think he's sticking to it. Did you see him on at Davos today? He did a a I mean, this guy's got, you know, just crazy energy. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:40): Who Malay? Jason Calacanis (00:27:41): Trump zoomed into Davos and just dunked on them for 45 minutes. He did? Yes. And he just destroyed everybody at their dying conference in their irrelevance as they genuflected begging him to come next year. Thomas Laffont (00:28:00): Did you see the photo of the half empty conference room to Jason Calacanis (00:28:04): Yes. You Thomas Laffont (00:28:04): know? Most of the events were were just empty chairs. Jason Calacanis (00:28:08): It's irrelevant. I mean, these people are irrelevant now. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:12): Thomas, do you guys remember when Davos used to be a really big deal? Is it debt? Thomas Laffont (00:28:16): I think it's worse, Chamath. I think it's a counter indicator now. David Friedberg (00:28:19): It is. And there was a good conversation yesterday. Graham Allison, who spoke at our summit, was on this panel, and they basically said we lost. They won. Dot like, our group here at Davos lost. It's over. Yeah. And they're no longer, to your point, on the right side of history. They said, we had a point of view on the future. We believe we were going in the right direction, and everyone told us in this last couple of months that we were wrong. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:44): The gentleman, by the way, that spoke after Graham Harrison Watch this. Was is also very Jason Calacanis (00:28:48): this is incredible. This is the greatest comeback in political history of a politician. And then, therefore, he thinks he can do anything. We need to also factor in not only who's won, which is Trump, but who's lost, which is to say us. David Friedberg (00:29:02): And then he has a whole the guy has a whole long monologue on why they lost and what they lost, which I think is pretty relevant that that, you know, kind of elite, if you will, has been replaced with a populist vote and a populist leader. Jason Calacanis (00:29:16): Alright. Let's get to our, docket today, and, just wanna give a special shout out. We did our inauguration livestream, and it was awesome and fun. Special thanks to Air Call, Abra, and HIMSS. Thomas, if you've ever got an issue with weight or, you know, other issues that men have, you can go to HIMSS and use the code all in to get something. Hymns.com/allin. I want you to write that down, Thomas. Okay? In case you ever have any any issues, that's what we're talking about. Thomas Laffont (00:29:46): Think I haven't already? Jason Calacanis (00:29:47): I well, it's anything's possible. Like, I mean, I maybe we could talk I mean, are you on the chews or the pills? Which one? Anyway, talk about it offline. But that's a full Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:56): head of hair. It is a really incredible head of hair. Jason Calacanis (00:29:59): Thank you. Thomas Laffont (00:30:00): All natural, baby. Jason Calacanis (00:30:01): It's great. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:01): It's great. You put what product do you put in? Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:30:03): Do you put Prumice? Salt or you got Prumice? What do you do? Thomas Laffont (00:30:07): All in one. All in one. Prell. Yeah. Shampoo plus conditioner. One bottle. Easy. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:12): No. But really? You don't you don't use any product afterwards? Jason Calacanis (00:30:15): None. Jesus Christ. Do you blow yourself or do you have it blown? It's a question. I do both. Thomas Laffont (00:30:20): But in this case, it's, you know, like Cuba Gooding and Jerry Maguire. I air dry, baby. Jason Calacanis (00:30:25): Oh, air dry. Gotcha. So when you're driving to that Santa Monica office, you just put the top down on whatever convertible living that full lifestyle. Okay. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:34): Yeah. This is where I I do have to admit, unfortunately, after the after you appeared on the summit, I had all these women. They were like, oh my god. Thomas Lafont is so good looking. And I was like, no. He's not. Because I'm very competitive in 0 sum when other men around me get but you were the smash hit. And then I figured out it must be the hair and also the glasses. I think the glasses were a huge hit. It looked very Clark Kent ish. Are they Jason Calacanis (00:30:56): are they real glasses or you just wear the clear ones to get the extra real? That's why I'm sick. Thomas Laffont (00:31:01): Only time I've ever been stopped in the street in my life, in the Presidio, a a a very nice lace tapped me in the shoulder and said, I loved your all in talk. It's never happened before. So that says more about all in than me, but the reach is increasing. Jason Calacanis (00:31:16): It's a little bit David Friedberg (00:31:17): too to Akash Singh who joined us on the, live stream. Jason Calacanis (00:31:20): Oh, yes. Akash was hilarious. Thank you to Akash filling in our DEI department. We lost Chamath, and they sent Akash. So he did great. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:31): Get him back to Gessos. Absolutely. David Friedberg (00:31:32): Yeah. There's a moderator slot open, so he's gonna be Yeah. Absolutely. Jason Calacanis (00:31:36): If you know anybody who knows science alright. In our first topic, president Trump smashed the record for day 1 executive orders. 26 in all, beating the prior record of 9 by Uncle Joe Biden. And no other president signed more than one EO in day 1 since the federal register started tracking this in 1937. Let's go through them. If you wanna comment on when, we'll stop and pause or we can just run through them, gentlemen. Doge officially was established and, people are making note of the Doge SWAT team. Doge will assign an agency head to each federal agency. The agency head will build a 4 person team. This will include an engineer, an HR specialist, and an attorney. It was separately announced that Vivek, was leaving Doge to run for governor of Ohio. Fascinating. Interesting. I don't know if everybody's got a take there. They suspended the TikTok ban for 75 days. There's a lot more to get into this, so we're gonna break that down a little later in the show. TikTok. Yeah. Okay. We'll go right to that in a minute. The January 6 pardons, they pardoned 1500 January 6 participants, including some that savagely beat cops. Very controversial. We'll get back to that in a moment. Ending birthright citizenship. This is a controversial one that, is being fought legally. Those born in the US to illegal immigrants would no longer be considered citizens if this holds up. The birthright citizenship is codified in the 14th amendment, and 22 state attorney generals have already sued over this executive order, so it might be a performative one. Energy, unleashing American energy. We're gonna dump into that 1 jump into that one for sure. And then federal employees, a hiring freeze, and a full return to office. And the hiring freeze doesn't apply to military. Immigration enforcement, or public safety, and then a regulatory freeze on regulations. Gentlemen, where do we wanna start? Jan 6, TikTok, Doge? TikTok. Jason Calacanis (00:33:35): Thomas, you're our guest. Where do you wanna start? Thomas Laffont (00:33:37): I'm happy to chat about TikTok. Jason Calacanis (00:33:39): Okay. As we mentioned earlier, Trump extended TikTok's grace period by 75 days. Trump said he wants to get a deal done. He also said at a press conference that he'd like the US to own 50% of TikTok and that it could be a $1,000,000,000,000 asset. That's unique and interesting. He was also positive about the idea of Elon possibly buying it or maybe Larry Ellison or anybody. So he wants to make a deal. What are your thoughts, Thomas, on what should happen with TikTok and what will happen? Thomas Laffont (00:34:13): I don't know what will happen, but I do think it'd be interesting, to share you guys. We were in we are investors in TikTok. Jason Calacanis (00:34:21): Okay. Thomas Laffont (00:34:22): We invested back. It was obviously just a Chinese company and investing in China was very different back then. But what resonated to me when I met the founder, and he just had a very simple idea, which is his view was if I have a piece of content and it's a great piece of content, how can I have it be shared? And his view was that if you share it on Instagram, the only way people see it is if you had a, you know, a lot of followers. And so he just had a really simple idea, and he said, what if I take every piece of content that's uploaded into the system and I show it to at least one other user? So no matter what that content is, at least one person will see it even if you have no followers. And then based on whether that person views it or how long, I might show it to another user. And then a 3rd and a 4th. And it was such a revolutionary idea, and it really resonated with me at the time. And it just goes to show how we're in an idea business. And when you have a truly revolutionary idea, it can get really big. And so the the whole genesis of TikTok came from that really simple concept of your content will be shown. And if people like it, it will be shown to a lot of people. So, obviously I mean, if you look at TikTok in the US, we can just kind of very back of the envelope, look at the math. Right? So if we look at DAUs, mother blue or meta as we love to know that Facebook had roughly, right, has about 200,000,000 DAUs in the US. Jason Calacanis (00:35:49): Active users for folks who don't know the terminology? Thomas Laffont (00:35:52): Yeah. Correct. Right. So if you look at Facebook, Flitz, Instagram, you'll see it's about 200,000,000 DAUs, and you can look at the time spent. What's interesting about TikTok's time spent is the DAUs are about half of combined Meta and Insta, so we get about a 100,000,000 DAUs in the US, but the time spent on the platform is the equivalent of Facebook plus Instagram. So obviously, incredible, not just scale in terms of DAUs, but also on time spent. So if we think about, okay, well, what what would that mean the business is worth? So if we look at Meta today, the market cap is roughly 1 and a half trillion. I think Internet investors generally assume that roughly half the market cap is US. So if we take the 1 and a half trillion, maybe that's 750,000,000,000. Right? Now we know that the time spent is equivalent, but the DAUs are half, so maybe we cut the 750 in half. Right? That would tell you that the max value would put you know, if you monetize the way Meta does and ran it the way Zuck does, might be 375,000,000,000 for the US asset alone. I think from that point, you know, you kinda start to apply a couple discounts. Right? One is, if that's my kind of long term value, what kind of return would an investor want potentially to get to that 375? You know, is it 50%, so maybe you cut that by 50%. And then I think the devil would be in the details. What are exactly are you getting? Are you just getting users? Are you getting the algorithm? Are you getting data? Right? So maybe you also wanna apply kind of a more kind of severe discount to that, but I think you put it all together, you know, is a 100,000,000,000 a reasonable scenario? You know? I think the math proves it. And then could it be a $1,000,000,000,000 asset the way Trump has mentioned? I mean, in a world where Facebook's 1 and a half, right, and the penetration of TikTok in the US is 50% of what Meta is, I don't think it's unrealistic. So let's see what happens. Thomas Laffont (00:37:57): I don't, have any particular insight on what will happen, but what I do know is that it's an incredibly valuable franchise. Jason Calacanis (00:38:03): So let me ask you the the obvious question. People are looking at this and saying, Wait, you're gonna take 50% of your shares. And in this case, we actually have somebody who has shares. So are you comfortable with the government seizing 50% of your shares, I guess, is one way to frame it? Thomas Laffont (00:38:22): Well, I don't know. I mean, first of all, there's there's kinda no deal, so it's a little bit hard. I can tell you that Jason Calacanis (00:38:27): when the the deal he proposed. So if in that scenario, would you yeah. Thomas Laffont (00:38:31): We never attributed much value to the, you know, the TikTok US asset in the sense of our our analysis was always based on the value of the Chinese business, specifically because it's just hard to know what the, you know, the TikTok asset ex China would be worth. Right? Is it worth 0 because it's so compromised regulatorily? Is it worth a lot more? It's just very, very difficult to know. So we always took a very kind of conservative view of really looking at kind of the Chinese and, you know, some of the other assets as the core value of ByteDance, the holding company. Ultimately, what TikTok happens I mean, it's the classic when you try and sell a company, what's the value where it depends? Is there 1 bidder or 5 bidders? Right? Is the government the only bidder for that asset? In that case, it kind of will indicate a value of x. Or are there other companies that potentially could be an acceptable bidder to both sides? Jason Calacanis (00:39:27): Well, the Trump deal though is he's saying the government, the United States government, the citizens of America would get half of the company. So that would be the equivalent of you giving cash your shares. The US company. Yeah. So what do you think of this proposal? Because this seems, like, unique in all the world. So if in order to have it spin out and maintain half your shares, would you be willing to give all of us, the government, the citizens of the United States, half your shares? Thomas Laffont (00:39:55): Well, I mean, if you think about it, what what what did we learn a couple of days ago? Yeah. We learned that it might just get shut down and be worth 0. Right? So in one sense, anything that's greater than 0 by definition is kinda better. Right? I think ultimately, it will kinda come down to, does the government wanna be the only bidder for the asset or would the comfortable would the government be comfortable with either Elon owning it and merging it to x or Microsoft owning it or, Got it. You know? Jason Calacanis (00:40:25): What have you. So for you, Bert. Thomas Laffont (00:40:26): Well, Thomas, let David Friedberg (00:40:27): me ask you a question. Can you just tell the audience a little bit about because you guys have been involved as investors in China for a long time. I would love for you to share behind the scenes what has gone on with respect to being an investor in China in technology over the last couple of years. What has changed and why and what goes on today? You guys made a fantastic investment in ByteDance, which is the parent company of TikTok. You've made other incredible investments in China. Are you still investing in China? If not, walk us through what happened and why. Thomas Laffont (00:41:01): I think if you look, David, most of our virtually all of our investments in China were Chinese companies catering to the Chinese market. David Friedberg (00:41:10): Right. Thomas Laffont (00:41:10): Right? And there was a massive trend of a very significant economy that was adopting technology. Right? And so we can think about whether that be smartphones, companies like, you know, Huawei, whether it was companies like Meituan that were doing food delivery or Tencent that were doing gaming. And so, you know, all our approach was basically based on these companies. And by the way, a lot of them were public, which is what people don't remember. Chamath, you may remember, but Tencent at one point was a public company listed in Hong Kong. The market cap was 200,000,000. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:45): Yeah. I do remember. Thomas Laffont (00:41:46): So Wow. What was interesting about it, Dave, is a lot of that played out. Baidu was an early IPO. Right? So a lot of that trend of Chinese companies catering to the Chinese market really kinda played out across public and private markets for over 20 years. Yep. I think to me, what's significantly changed over the past 5 years is technology really became a matter of national security. And I don't think that when we were early investors in Meituan, right, that we necessarily viewed that as a national security threat as an example. Right? And I think as, you know, companies got bigger, as AI kinda came to be, it became pretty obvious that there were national security implications. And, you know, our view as investors is we don't set the rules of the road. We rely on government and regulators to do so. It was pretty clear, I think, to obvious that the regulatory regimes were changing in both countries. And so for us as investors, you know, we were just, well, we're just gonna follow what what the rules are and what the governments are. So my only kind of regret through this whole thing is and I don't know any, you know, if you guys had kind of some exposure to this, but the quality of the entrepreneurs that came out of that era was unbelievable. Jason Calacanis (00:43:04): That's a strong cohort. Yeah. Thomas Laffont (00:43:06): Absolutely. When you think about the the founder of Meituan Wang Shi and just how brilliant he was and what he's done with that franchise and not just doing food delivery, but also the software operating system for restaurants. Right? It's truly incredible. Tony Ma from Tencent. Right? It it was such an incredible group of entrepreneurs. They were a lot of fun to be around. They were excited and passionate about bringing technology to their country. And, you know, I David Friedberg (00:43:33): Is it over? Thomas Laffont (00:43:35): Yeah. Hard to know. I mean, if you look at the capital markets, I mean, you can see we've not seen a tremendous amount of innovation, right, or or new companies kinda coming out. So I think the key question is, you know, is it a pendulum and, you know, does the Chinese regulatory regime kinda move one way and then it kinda moves another way, or is it kinda fixed in this state? Jason Calacanis (00:43:55): Is it your read? Is it correct to say that the CCP David Friedberg (00:44:02): wanted to stop this extraordinary wealth creation by a subset of individuals in the country that this was kind of becoming too much of a capitalist enterprising system and challenged some of the foundations of the CCP. Is that what was going on and why this all got throttled back? I mean, is there or is there something something else? Some other kind of, you know, security regime? Thomas Laffont (00:44:25): Know, Dave, because as an investor, it's, you know, it's not a regulatory regime that you have any interaction with. Right? You're really talking to the entrepreneurs, and you're kind of reflecting off of their energy and their business ideas. Right? So we would meet businesses and we would meet founders. And if if the idea was kind of interesting to us, we would kind of fund it. Right? Jason Calacanis (00:44:44): So it's a black box in some ways, you know, in terms of a market to invest in, you only have a limited amount of information. And after Jack I mean, you gotta think. After Jack Ma kinda disappeared for a couple of years, if you're an entrepreneur and you wanna, like Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:59): The message was sent. Jason Calacanis (00:45:01): The message was sent. Message received. And then you start thinking about Chamath, you know, what Trump just did and what Xi Jinping just did. You put those two things together. Trump put all of our top guys, top dogs on stage. Here they are. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:15): Ex exact opposite of China. The message is very clear. And it's what Thomas said. Like, technology is a national security imperative, and so we're going to embrace these guys. We're not gonna play favorites. We're not going to pick 1 and not the other. We're not gonna have summits and have, you know, the founder of an entire category not be invited. That's just it's, honestly, it's patently stupid and immature. And that's what the Biden administration did. Jason Calacanis (00:45:40): Picked favorites. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:42): And that is dumb based on the implication and importance of technology. I just wanna go back to the TikTok thing. I wanna make 3 points. One is from the past. I'll give you my sense of the TikTok thing and I'm gonna make a prediction for the future. In 1984, the way that LVMH began was through a deal that Bernard Arnault architected. There was a business owned by the French cotton king, Marcel Bussac. And inside of that empire was Christian Dior. Long story short, his empire was crumbling and Arnaud did a deal where he bought that dying business essentially from the French government for 1 franc. Fast forward now, 40 years of very hard work and tremendous execution, that's a $350,000,000,000 public company. Now imagine back then in 1984, if the French government actually had done a deal where they said we'll sell it to you for 50% of whatever you build. Take it for a dollar, but we're gonna own 50% of the upside. And, you know, they would have an extra $175,000,000,000 today. I think that that's very important in terms of what is possible today. I like Thomas's math. I believe it. I do think it's about a $100,000,000,000 asset. But at the end of the day, the president was very clear that it is completely and entirely worthless without his permit, and he wants to own 50% of this asset. Now if you're a buyer of something, you're not gonna pay a $100,000,000,000 if you control whether it can exist or not. You're basically going to pay today's equivalent of 1 franc, which would be $1. Now I'm not saying that it is gonna be a dollar, but if the United States Treasury wants to hold 50% of an asset that could be worth a 100,000,000,000 or 500,000,000,000 or, you know, maybe a trillion, it would make sense for the United States Treasury and the United States people to own that at effectively 0. So I think that the incentive is there, and I think he has essentially said that he is going to do the best deal in his interests, which is the United States interests, which I suspect means a price that is as low as possible approaching $1. Jason Calacanis (00:48:06): And, ultimately, won't this be Chinese government's decision? Because they could always say, you know what? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:12): Let it die. Maybe. But my my point is it may not be a dollar, maybe it could be 25,000,000,000, maybe it could be 10,000,000,000. But my point is I find it very hard to see how it gets to the actual value that it is today. So then I think let me just make a prediction for the future. There's a question that this raises, which is, does it make sense for the American government to be a little bit smarter going forward about how it allocates incentives and resources? The American government is still the largest single land owner in America. We give concessions to private companies to drill, to build things. And it just turns out that if you apply this example more broadly, wouldn't it make sense where when you create incredible economic incentives and upside for private investors and investment, for some portion of that gain to go back to the American people, is that a bad thing? I don't think so. For example, if you said we're going to accelerate permitting for all these data centers, we're going to make any form of energy, which was the opposite of what the Biden EO said on his way out the door. He had all these conditions. But if the president, president Trump's CEO on data center says any kind of energy, but we wanna own a 5% royalty and we'll allow you to put it on federal lands or 10% or 15%, would it really change the underwriting that Blackstone and all these other companies will do? I don't think so. Would it enrich America? I think so. Would it make it easier for people to feel like they're participating in all of these incredible gains? I also think so. So my prediction is that this becomes more of a template for the future. It'll be less about permitting. It'll be more about creating incentives and allocating those incentives for a share of the upside. And I think that there is a really strong economic argument for America to do that. Jason Calacanis (00:50:06): You know, Chamath, to build on that, people don't remember, but Tesla got $465,000,000 from the Department of Energy. That was called the ATVM program, which was the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing. That was a very visionary program at Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:20): the time. Visionary. But it but it took no equity. Jason Calacanis (00:50:24): But it didn't take equity. And That was dumb. So dumb. They should have gotten some portion of equity, some portion of a loan. Tesla did so well, thanks to Elon, G and T, and T, and T, and T, and T, and T, and T. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:36): That they paid it back early. They paid Jason Calacanis (00:50:38): it back early. That's how well they did. If they had owned 10% of Tesla, but 10% Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:44): Yeah. I think the president has has has sniffed this out by the way. This and and you may not think that these are related, but when he said that he's considering eliminating federal income tax and funding this thing from tariffs, and he just had a press conference today where he's inviting every single company to come and make things in the United States because he will create economic incentives to make it here cheaper. But if you make it abroad and bring it in here, he's gonna charge money and a tariff. All of this are part and parcel of, I think, this broader economic realization. And unlike 2,008, 9, and 10 when we were allocating money or 2020 and 21 and 22 where we were just sending money out the door with frankly no consequence and no accounting. This time around, I think he's got some incredibly sharp business people. This is by the way, the upside of having folks that have actually been successful in the real world working inside of government is they're gonna help him get to this realization, and I think it's a really good one. Jason Calacanis (00:51:43): I don't think Tim Tim Waltz would be push back to Thomas Laffont (00:51:45): you, Chamath, on that would be, I just think it's a dangerous game for the government to start picking winners. You know, I wouldn't for example, if it owns 50% of a TikTok, does does it disadvantage a meta as an example? Right? And I do wonder, is the value capturing mechanism for the government taxes essentially? Right? So the the the way you capture the the, right, the portion of the value creation of these companies is through a tax system. And I do think we just have to be careful of the government all of a sudden picking different companies to win. You know, I do think having a good set of incentives, a level playing field, let the competitive dynamics of different companies fight each other and then capture the value through taxes. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:27): I think you're right. And I think that that part is absolutely fundamental, But I think there is a way to architect this. For example, you have these RFPs that by design have to be published in the open source and available for anybody to bid on. My only point is just to say that when there is an ultimate winner, why not have a small stake in the upside? Look at the amount of money that the DOE gives in grants. I'll give you an example. You know, one of these companies that I helped start a few years ago to make advanced battery materials, we got a $150,000,000 grant. I'm very appreciative of that grant. But if they also asked for 5 or 10% of the equity, I would have still said yes. Jason Calacanis (00:53:07): Of course, you would have. Yeah. It's a great deal. And why not give a little upside to the taxpayers? I agree with that. Thomas Laffont (00:53:12): By the way, a parallel to that would be Spectrum. Right? If you think about wireless, right, kinda got built. The government auctioned off Spectrum and then allowed public, you know, private companies to kinda come and bid on it and you know? So there there's a lot of different interesting mechanisms you can bring to that. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:28): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:53:28): Freeberg, which EO would you like to go to next? David Friedberg (00:53:31): Well, I'll just wrap on the TikTok. Sure. I do worry a lot about the precedent being set here with respect to foreign government actions on US companies in their in their local countries. Imagine the CCP tells Tesla they have to sell their Chinese operations and give 50% of the Chinese operations to the Chinese government because of their concerns about security where Tesla is now able to track Chinese citizens driving around and where they are. And you can see very quickly how this whole kind of overall, I think, presentation of the security risk that we face with TikTok, and therefore, we will shut it down or own it, creates, I think, a counter that could really hurt American companies. You could see this going to Google, to Apple, to Tesla, even food manufacturing companies that have operations overseas where local governments say, hey. We need to for local security purposes, we need to take ownership of your business. I think one of the things that's really benefited Americans in global trade is our ability to sell and export our technology, our goods, and our services around the world through open trade. And I do think that we've used this kind of TikTok security thing to say this is a rationale for us doing this as a one off, but it also opens up a lot of other people to say this is a one off. And so I'm just generally very wary about this whole TikTok situation opening up a can of worms. Jason Calacanis (00:55:00): You're a 100% right. And, by the way, the CCP has done it already. They did it to Apple. And if you follow what happened when they introduced I iCloud, I don't know if you remember GCBD GCBD is the Chinese state owned data company, the cloud provider there. And they just told Apple, we get all the data. And they just had to roll over, and all citizens in China who use an iPhone in order to use an iPhone in China, your data is owned by the government, period. Full stop. And Apple had no choice but to do that. So Well, look. When I'm playing talk about If you wanna play in a certain market, you gotta play by the rules. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:37): The thing the thing to keep in mind here is I hear all of these kind of, like, theoretical qualms about how it's unfair, but this stuff happens all the time. And it's just that we don't benefit from it. So Jason brought up an excellent example with Tesla. The other example, just to remind you guys, is during the pandemic, the Federal Reserve stepped in and started buying commercial corporate bonds. They own a ton of, like, Ford bonds so that these things wouldn't default. There's all kinds of action all the time where the federal government is involved in private companies. My point is if you're going to be involved, have some legacy ownership on the back end of it so that in case this stuff really works, that it's broadly value creating for more Americans. I think it would create a way to deescalate the sensation that a few people are winning and everybody else is just kinda staying still. David Friedberg (00:56:29): We should talk about Stargate and the AI project because I do think it tees off on one of the the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:35): other kind of big big Jan 6, though. David Friedberg (00:56:37): Okay. But it does tee off of one of the other kinda key things that I heard a lot about in DC. And I know Thomas is passionate about like I am, which is energy, electricity, capacity build out in the United States because it's critical. Like, building AI infrastructure means that we need to build energy infrastructure. Jason Calacanis (00:56:54): Alright. And David Friedberg (00:56:55): so anyway, Jason Calacanis (00:56:56): let's yeah. We'll go we'll go right to that after we wrap up these, we wrap up these executive orders. And I too want to talk about January 6th, just to give people the update here. JD Vance had said that the people who committed violence on January 6th, quote, obviously shouldn't be pardoned. And this is a parade of people who are on the Republican side who are coming out against how president Trump handled this. I think you you all know where I would fall on this side of it. What what are your thoughts on this? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:25): Where do you where do you fall on him? Jason Calacanis (00:57:27): You know, I come from a family of cops, and I feel like he's betrayed the blue on this one. And, you know, if there are people who I think he should have taken his time with this. It is possible that some people had sentences that were too long. The justice system, you know, is imperfect in our country, and the pardon power is theirs, I think, specifically, to do a very granular job of looking at each case. Right? And so I think we have to look at pardon power generally after what we saw the Biden family do, and now we see Trump doing this. So I think the the pardon power is not being used as it's intended. It's being used politically now by both parties. So I'm trying to call balls and strikes here. But, you know, as somebody who's in law enforcement, a family that's in law enforcement, and my chosen career was to be a cop and an FBI agent. And, you know, just looking at it, it's just heartbreaking to see people beat cops and then be treated as heroes, treated as heroes. And some of these people are very dark people. You know? The the the oath keepers and some of these people are extremely violent. And they're coming out now after this has all been said and saying that they're gonna double down. They're gonna buy more guns and that they're gonna get their retribution. And so I think you have to be really careful with violent people that you give them, you know, this coronation and that they were justified because they'll go do more violent things. And so I understand he made this promise to people. I think he should have been very granular in doing this. I totally understand there could be people who got sentences that were too long, and I would would have liked to see him do this thoughtfully. This was not done thoughtfully. I have a certain amount of goodwill towards the new president, and this has lowered it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:05): I knew that this would be really important to you, so I took a few minutes to try to collect my thoughts. I've been kind of walking myself through it since yesterday. This is not an explanation other than to you, Jason, my friend, about how I think we got here. Okay? So I just wanted to take a few minutes to explain that to you. I think that before you can look at January 6th, I think you gotta go back to what happened during the COVID lockdowns and what we started to see in a bunch of these liberal cities. Talking about BLM riots? The BLM riots, the Antifa riots, what happened in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, the lawlessness that you see in places like New York, the decarceration movement. And I think that what started to happen was a sensation that for the same weight, there were different measures. So for example, if you start to look at some of the deportations that are happening now, it's really quite shocking. I sent Nick a clip of them. Nick, you can just maybe show the first few seconds. But you are talking about some incredibly, incredibly violent offenders that were just walking randomly down the street as well. Jason Calacanis (01:00:31): I'm not going back to Haiti. Speaker 6 (01:00:32): One of those threats is this illegal alien from Haiti. ICE says he's a gang member with 17 criminal convictions in recent years. Jason Calacanis (01:00:41): Fuck. You feel me? You're Biden forever, bro. Thank Obama for everything that he did for me, bro. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:46): There's more after this. But there was, like, a rapist that they picked up in Boston. There's a person that was charged with assault. So there was this sensation, Jason, that was building up for a long time that all of a sudden the law was being applied in very odd ways where depending on what you did, you would get adjudicated in totally different ways based on your political affiliation or your leaning or based on the desire of a district prosecutor to go after one thing or another. Let me just pause. So that's that's sort of like the thing that was sort of building and cascading. I do agree with you that I think January 6th is kind of like a stain. I I think there's nothing to be proud of there. But I think what we found out since January 6th is somewhat important. I think the first thing we found out was that there was a bunch of these folks whose convictions were very speculative. I think the supreme court already ruled that in June of last year. It was like a 63 vote that said at least 350 of these convictions should probably just be thrown out. So there was one body that was that. Then there was a whole bunch of them where to your point, you took a misdemeanor, you trumped it up to a felony, you had all kinds of, you know, things where procedural motions were denied for the defense, approved for prosecution, and you had sentences that didn't match the crime. And then you have a president who frankly was the subject of lawfare himself. So I think that what would have been better was a more methodical approach to this. I agree with you. But I do think that what's happening here is essentially a moment where we can close this entire chapter and we can get back to a focus on observing the law and adjudicating it equally for everybody. And I think that that's probably the best way that we can all deal with this because I think that there was a bunch of pardons that were a 100% obvious. And then there was a bunch that were just, you know, had to be done because the court was perverted in how they dealt with some of these folks. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:48): Then there was a small number, and I don't know the exact number to be fair, Jason, where these folks did some really bad stuff. Now it's also mixed in with this thing where there was a bunch of informants, then there was a bunch of folks that David Friedberg (01:02:59): were paid. Jason Calacanis (01:03:00): The informant stuff that we're comping. Have to wait for that to come out because that's in conspiracy corner for now. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:06): Yeah. Is. I just went and I collected that as a way to try to explain to you Jason Calacanis (01:03:09): how appreciate you understanding my passion on it and and what I can bring you out Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:13): of that. Here. I think it's sort of like Jason Calacanis (01:03:14): I'm well aware of it, Dion. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:16): I think we gotta put a pin in this and say both sides should now have enough experience to say, we're gonna apply the law equally to everybody going forward from this moment out. Let's just go forward and not look back. I think that's the best thing that we can all do. Jason Calacanis (01:03:31): Let's hope. I'll just leave you with this. The the Proud Boy leader, Enrique Tario, this is his quote on getting out. I'm happy the president's focusing not on retribution and focusing on success, but I will tell you that I'm not going to play by those rules. They need to pay for what they did. These are some seriously bad hombres, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, and so don't be surprised if they do something worse. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:55): I also wanna talk about the citizenship thing, and I just want to just provide a little color for people. I'm sure that there's a lot of folks that are listening who have people that work for them that, you know, may be It's a Jason Calacanis (01:04:08): birthright thing. If you came here illegally and had a child, you get to be a citizen, just to be clear. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:14): This is going to the Supreme Court. And just to put a little bit of color on it, in the 14th Amendment, there's this very important part that says birthright citizenship is is applied to people who are subject to the jurisdiction of America. And for a long time, that phrase was not really considered in how the Supreme Court administered the 14th Amendment. I think what this EO did and the lawsuits that happened almost instantaneously as a result will now send this back to the Supreme Court very quickly. Yeah. And people will opine on what that means. So if it means nothing, it means that if you are here, however you're here, and you have a child, they're gonna be a citizen of America. If that qualifier is now part of the administration and the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, I think what President Trump has written is what will happen which is if you are here illegally, it doesn't apply. If you are here under a visa that necessarily means you're still subject to the jurisdiction of somebody else, it may not apply. But I think the Supreme Court is gonna get to decide this in pretty short order. Jason Calacanis (01:05:21): Okay. Couple more issues I wanna get to on the docket. Sorry. David Friedberg (01:05:24): Let me just make a quick comment on the, Jason Calacanis (01:05:26): Oh, sure, Dave. Go ahead. David Friedberg (01:05:28): The, January 6th. I'm I just generally don't like this power of pardon. Jason Calacanis (01:05:35): Agreed. David Friedberg (01:05:35): We saw what Biden did. He gave I mean, how many thousands, Nick? You could pull the number up, but 8,000. 8,000 pardons. And I feel like the original intention of the power of pardon, which is in the constitution, was meant to kind of protect the union, the civility in the union at times of, you know, we need to kind of come back together and realign ourselves. And it has been so far abused beyond that original intention. It's almost like feels like an extraordinary injustice. It almost gives the president the ability to rewrite the law that many of the kind of actions from the executive branch can simply supersede the actions of the judicial branch, which is really meant to protect and execute the laws of the nation. And, I think it's gone too far. It feels like there's a necessary amendment to address this, that these presidents can come out and preemptively pardon people for things that might be found in the future because they're close with them. It has nothing to do with the original intention. If you go back to the arguments for the pardon being in the constitution, you can see that Alexander Hamilton wrote deeply about it in federalist paper number 74. And in that paper, he talked a lot about and emphasized that the justice system, which is designed to be fair, may occasionally result in overly harsh or unjust outcomes. And the pardon allows for acts of mercy to correct these situations. There a lot of these sorts of actions that we saw happen with, with Biden do not fit the bill for that definition. I will tell you there's a quote from federalist paper 74 from Hamilton. It goes as follows. In seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments when a well timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquility of the Commonwealth. So to counter my point, Hamilton's argument is that when the nation is divided, the act of the pardon may actually help bring the nation back together as may have been the case with respect to the January 6th. But it may not necessarily be about Or Nixon justice or Nixon. David Friedberg (01:07:48): And it may not necessarily be about justice, but it's much more about restoring tranquility of the union and allowing the nation to move forward even though it may not seem just. It may be the right thing for the nation. So I'm not trying to defend the action or defend the pardon. I really don't like the act of pardoning as a kind of tool that's being used in a 100 different ways. And it certainly seems like it requires change. So Jason Calacanis (01:08:09): Yeah. And just, programming note here, research note, 65100 people of those 8,000 seem to be convicted of marijuana possession, possession, or disposition, and they were pardoned in David Friedberg (01:08:23): Then then then the law should have been changed, and the courts should have overturned all of those convictions. It does not necessarily need to fall, and it shouldn't fall on the executive branch to take that action. The ruling The courts need to do their job, and the legislators need to do their job. Jason Calacanis (01:08:36): I don't disagree, but I think there is some compassion in the pardon concept for how long do they have to wait for that. Yeah. I mean, how long do you have to wait for that? You know? And then, like, the people who were, you know, convicted of selling dime bags or having an ounce of weed on them were black and brown, and then all my white friends who started weed companies are now taking them public in Canada. So shout out Trudeau. Alright. Let's keep moving here. I think we we we've we did some good job here on the reconciliation on the pod. Where do we wanna go next? Stargate project? Stargate. Stargate. Stargate. David Friedberg (01:09:09): Stargate. Stargate and energy. Jason Calacanis (01:09:10): Yeah. Stargate Energy. Stargate. So here we go. And I'm gonna go to to, our guest here, Thomas. Thomas, anything on January 6th or controversial topics like smoking weed that you wanna jump in on there? No? Okay. Great. Sure. L your LPs just breathe. Hey. You're coming on the all in podcast. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:29): When his LPs, they're they're gonna be so happy. But then when when they hear the j six, they're just gonna be clenched waiting for They're gonna Jason Calacanis (01:09:36): clench cockpit to end. Thomas Laffont (01:09:38): Oh, wait. Hold on. My mic went out. Oh, never mind. I missed it. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:41): Okay. Alright. Thomas Laffont (01:09:42): It was well said. Honestly, I don't have anything to add. You guys Okay. You guys summed it up. Jason Calacanis (01:09:46): Anything on Lauren Sanchez's, outfit. Okay. Let's continue. Another big story from week 1. We we are literally not even 3 or 4 days into this. It's gonna be a crazy 4 years. According to OpenAI's press release, the Stargate project is a new company which intends to invest 500,000,000,000 over the next 4 years, building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. Freeburg, we gotta find out what's going on here with the Stargate movie and TV series if they got IP permission to do this. SoftBank and OpenAI are the David Friedberg (01:10:22): lead. Jacob. Jason Calacanis (01:10:23): I I mean, I'm just thinking out loud, and we have to talk about where this ranks on your list of great sci fi and most actors. David Friedberg (01:10:31): Top 40 top 40 sci fi. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:10:32): Okay. Jason Calacanis (01:10:32): Definitely. Right up there with Yeah. The Star Trek original series and the next generation. SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners with Oracle and MJX also participating. Oracle, NVIDIA, and OpenAI will build and operate the infrastructure Microsoft is sort of involved, although we'll see about that. Mosh Yoshi san was at the announcement. He's gonna be the chairman. However, Gavin Baker and Elon both called cap on x, saying they don't actually have the money. Gavin did some back of the envelope math. And, of course, as always, Sam and Elon have been spicy in the replies. Sam is hurt. Elon is dunking. It's it's just their relationship is so fluid. Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, jumped into my thread with Elon saying he was good for the 80 bill, and then he was ready to build other products and services. And that was what was important. What do you think here, Thomas? Is this, are you an investor in OpenAI, I guess? Let's get that out there. Or in xAI, just so we know where you're coming from here if you're talking your book. But, is I am an investor Thomas Laffont (01:11:38): in OpenAI. And Okay. Okay. So there's 3 points I wanna make here. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:42): Go. Thomas Laffont (01:11:42): Point number 1, going back to the origins of the of this podcast and, you know, sitting, watching both public market investors and and venture investors. Yeah. One notable difference is, you know, I think venture investors tend to be very tribal. So if you're in one tribe, you are by definition not in another. And, you know, I think there's a lot of kinda domain specific reasons for that. You know, for me as my legacy as a public market investor, I'm very comfortable being both, you know, pro OpenAI and Pro Tesla and Pro X. And so I just kinda caveat that kind of, you know, as a first point. My second point is, can we do a slight detour on MASA for 1 minute? And I'm curious to get you guys' opinion. But Yeah. Is MASA the GOAT? Because when I started in the growth business, I met with Yuri Milner, and he said, Thomas, you get in the hall of fame if you can have one deal that gives you a $1,000,000,000 return. I e, you know, whatever you invest plus what you take out is a $1,000,000,000 or more. And he actually kept a tracker in his mind of who had made those deals and what share he had and etcetera. So let's go to Masa for 1 minute. Masa is the $100,000,000,000 club. Yeah. Okay. And not only that, he's actually done it twice. He did it the first time with SoftBank and Alibaba, which at its peak was a $200,000,000,000 win, and I think he ultimately netted, like, 80 +1000000000 out of it. So that's one. He did it again with Arm, but he bought for 30, and now is sitting on a gain of a 100, I think, 35,000,000,000, and he could have done it a third time with NVIDIA Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:16): With NVIDIA. Thomas Laffont (01:13:17): If he hadn't sold. I mean, guys Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:19): There's nobody like him. There's nobody like Thomas Laffont (01:13:21): him. Incredible. Jason Calacanis (01:13:23): So You're a Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:23): 100% right. You gotta give the man his flowers. He is Thomas Laffont (01:13:26): So I'll tell you what, Chamath. I am never betting against Masa ever because you gotta give the man credit for what he's done. And so now let's go to kind of OpenAI. You guys mentioned we we do own some OpenAI. I am bullish on OpenAI, which I guess is now a, counter against the grain kind of view. But, guys, my point of view on OpenAI and the reason I'm so bullish is really kind of chat GPT. And I do think when OpenAI gets you know, we do con it does have different businesses. Right? It's got the model business. It has the API business, and then it has the chat GPT business. Right? And if you look at the downloads, maybe Nick bring up the charts, but it is really interesting to watch the market share of ChatGPT versus Google, Gemini, and Grok. This is both in the US and international. It really is a dominant kind of franchise. Right? It is maintaining 80% plus market share. You know, J. Cal, if this was ride sharing, right, we would say, wow. This this company is the winner. Right? So to me, I think the the quality of the Chat GPT franchise, right, I think they disclosed 300,000,000 weekly actives, over a 1000000 enterprise users. It has become a core part of my own workflow. You know, I have it on my phone. I have it on my desktop. I use it all the time. I can't even quantify the value that it brings. It's so important for what it does for me. So and I do think that it just keeps getting smarter. Every query that I ask, it learns more about me. It learns more about our system. So I do think the chat GPT franchise inside of OpenAI is one of the great, most successful, fastest growing kind of stories. So that's kind of the underpinning of my kind of OpenAI thesis. You know, on Stargate specifically, look, I think the real question to me isn't whether they have the 500,000,000,000. Right? Because we know that the 500,000,000,000 could come from equity. Thomas Laffont (01:15:27): It could come from MASA. If you look at Gavin's tweet, by the way, he does caveat it, right, saying that assumes that MASA doesn't wanna sell ARM and SoftBank. Right? So I'm not sure lever Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:37): it up and use debt? Correct. Thomas Laffont (01:15:39): So you have debt. I I think to me, the real question, guys, is do we ultimately believe that you can get an ROI on that 500,000,000,000? Because if you can, there will be people that will wanna fund it. Right? You can do a data center by data center. You can do it actually at the GPU level. Right? So the financing is there. To me, the the 500,000,000,000 doesn't scare me if I'm an absolute number. I think the question we, you know, really have to ask ourselves is, do we believe that the market is big enough, that the opportunity is big enough, that investors can get a return on the 500,000,000,000? Jason Calacanis (01:16:16): I think I think you So to me, that's Thomas Laffont (01:16:17): the real question. Jason Calacanis (01:16:18): I think you framed it perfectly. And since you bring up ride sharing and the 80% there, I, you know, I I really think that's an important thing to to take a moment to, to settle on because in that case, you didn't have Uber being challenged by Google, Microsoft, and Elon Musk, you know, at the same time in a digital product as opposed to a real world product. And so, you know, when I use Gemini or XAI and ChatChippity, and I use them all daily and Claude, the difference the difference between the products right now is really narrow. And I think, you know, if the equivalent would be somebody who had a 100,000,000 cars on the road already competing against Uber, which, you know, doesn't exist or didn't exist at the time. So that that, I think, is the the way I look at this as a slightly different type of race. I do believe the Chatt GPT franchise has some is worth something, but I think enterprise folks, when I talk to them, want the open source product most of all. So, anyway, I think it's still anybody's, I think it's anybody's game right now. And I don't know how you get a return on 500,000,000,000 invested in this. That that's the other thing. And I don't know if that's the real number, Freebird. What do you think? David Friedberg (01:17:36): I don't know. Jason Calacanis (01:17:37): Yeah. I'd say this is out here in some crazy Thomas Laffont (01:17:41): I think, guys, the way these things happen, right, is you don't you don't fund it all equity upfront. Right? I think these things get funded facility by facility, data center by data center across 4 years. Right? And to Chamath's point, it's not just equity. It's, you know, site level debt and etcetera. Right? It's a complex capital structure to these things. But, look, we live also in a world, right, where I was just kinda looking at this chart, the kinda cloud CapEx chart. Right? And we know that in total, 2025 CapEx for the top 5 players in the US is gonna be 312,000,000,000. Right? So that's this year. That's in 1 year. So we can also kind of frame this in saying, hey. Does that number make any sense versus what others are spending? It's at least kind of in the order of magnitude. Right? When you think about it's over 4 years. By the way, another really interesting kind of corollary on this point is the US Internet companies spend 20 x what the Chinese companies spend on CapEx. Really interesting as we think about our competitiveness. Right? Dave, to your point, it's not just power. It's also kinda compute. I mean, pretty powerful that you're spending 20 x what your competitor is on these kind of advanced technologies. Jason Calacanis (01:18:54): Chamath, how do you how do you how do you look at this? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:56): I think that value and money are correlated in some industries like real estate or heavy industry, but I don't think that it's very correlated in tech. And I tried to say this in my tweet. I don't know, Nick, can you find this tweet where I was just talking about the deep seek model? So what did we see last week? We saw a model that got released by the Chinese under, by the way, a totally, you know, open source MIT license that you can run on a laptop. And it turned out to be as good as OpenAI's 1 model. So a couple of versions old. But the point is that this model cost 1,000,000 of dollars and was able to compete with a model that took 1,000,000,000 of dollars to train. So my takeaway from that was that these costs are falling really precipitously. So that's sort of my one observation is spending more money doesn't necessarily get you further along if the goal is progress. And I think that that's very true in what we're learning about AI because we're learning as we go along. So then I think it just brings up this question of what is the point of saying all these grandiose numbers? And this is where if you look at a different industry, like if you, if an oil company came into the oval and said they were about to spend 500,000,000,000, you kind of know that it's real because you know what these things cost and you know what the entire infrastructure will be. And you know, it's Jason Calacanis (01:20:24): all truck related. Thomas Laffont (01:20:24): And we've seen land man. So we know, we know what goes on. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:28): Yeah. So the deeper the oil is in the ground and the harder the rock is that you gotta breakthrough to get there, the more you have to spend. So those numbers become very grounded in reality. If you were a rocket company and you wanted to build a rocket and send it to Mars, you can also be very detailed in what the costs are. And you can assume some amount of reductions of scale. If somebody said you'd have to spend 500,000,000,000. The thing is that when in this world, it seems that there are these advances that are happening that allow you to do things cheaper and cheaper almost overnight by spending 1 1 thousandth of what you spent even 6 months ago. I think the spending money part, to be honest, is more of a gimmick than it is a technical commitment. So I guess if they wanna spend the money, go ahead, but it doesn't actually tie to whether they're going to be able to make custom vaccines, whether they're gonna cure cancer. So I kinda thought that these things were just joint. And so my takeaway was entirely different. It was not a commentary on Masa or Larry or Sam. I think all of those 3 companies are frankly very good. It was more a comment that you have to be very careful to protect the president's legacy if I were them to make sure that the things that get announced are actually further down the technical spectrum and are actually going to be real because if they achieve these things, but it costs you a $1,000,000,000 and you only hire 50 people, there's gonna be a little bit of egg on the face. And so that was sort of my own takeaway. I think that the things were decoupled. It just seemed more marketing and sizzle and kind of hastily put together. Jason Calacanis (01:22:04): It was definitely, yeah, put together with this. You know what I mean? Like Yeah. You got that sense. But I Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:08): think it'll be great if if OpenAI builds in another incredible model, whatever comes after 03, 04, 5, but it's not clear that you have to spend 500,000,000,000 to do it. Jason Calacanis (01:22:18): You know, I think people are playing to what Trump likes, which is a big number and which is his influence on growing the number. So there was specific details where Masa said, you know, you I I told you a 100,000,000,000. You challenged me to get 2. I came back with 5. Right? And so this is the sort of Trump ethos is, hey. We're gonna swing for the fences. In a way, you know, you could be critical of it and be like, well, Trump's a BS artist or whatever. Or if you're from Silicon Valley, you could say, hey. Listen. He's moonshotting it. He's gonna just shoot for the stars and get the moon. So if these guys wind up spending 50,000,000,000 or a 100,000,000,000, it makes us more competitive, more power Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:55): to The question I had was, you know, was did Elon have any insight that this was happening? Probably not from from the reaction on on Max. Jason Calacanis (01:23:06): That he did. You know? I think you're I I have no insight either, but I do think if you were gonna be critical of Trump that he was putting his thumb on the scale for any one company or individual, this shows that he's not. It's an open platform. The the Trump administration's an open platform. Highest bidder gets to come to the White House. Whoever spends the most, whoever buys the most military, you know, buys the most ammunitions from us, you're gonna get your time in the White House. It's, this is a capitalist country. It's the greatest one in the world. Equal opportunity. Anybody can make a bid. David Friedberg (01:23:40): The obvious the obvious consequence of this data center and chip infrastructure effort, which is obviously gonna happen with or without government involvement, is an increase in electricity demand. Thomas, I know you've got some slides. Do you wanna pull those up and and show them? Because I think they're something I've talked a lot about on the show, which is the difference in, electricity production capacity in the US versus China historically and then prospectively going forward. Ultimately, as I've talked about in the past, right, the US today is paying roughly, you know, call it 1 and a half to 3 x, the price per kilowatt hour for electricity in the United States over what China's paying. We have, I believe, half of the electricity production capacity of China. They're adding more. The cost to add is is 1 tenth of what our cost to add is. Call it 1 tenth to 1 half our cost to add per new, gigawatt of production capacity. Everything is in the wrong direction. And, ultimately, if AI and automation are the critical factors for economic growth going forward and electricity is the critical input to that, we are hugely disadvantaged and aren't gonna catch up. It seems like you've pulled this analysis together, which kind of indicates the same if you think it makes sense to walk through this now. Thomas Laffont (01:25:00): Yeah. Yeah. I'd be happy to. I mean, Dave, you're a 100% right. If you think of the GPU as the atomic unit of the future, right, and and the key competitive advantage and and the key kind of ingredient, you can't power a GPU without a data center, and you can't use a data center without power. So I do think at the end of the day, it really comes down to the grid and it comes down to power. So I think that's kinda constraint number 1. I others you know, the other thing, Dave, that I think is really important is in an inflationary era, you do not wanna increase or have this industry be perceived to be increasing electricity prices for the consumer. Right? So somehow we need to add capacity. We need to make it so the consumer kinda doesn't go, bonkers by having their bills go higher. And, we can, Nick, run through a couple of the slides, but the data shows exactly kinda your point, Dave. Right? Which is we basically did not invest for a very long period of time, right, in our grid, and China did. And if you keep going, we can kind of run through these a couple of times, but that wasn't always the case. You know? During kind of like the post World War 2 boom era, during the information age, you know, we did invest, and we did a lot of it. And then suddenly in 2,000, we just kinda stopped. David Friedberg (01:26:26): And this is globalization, you're saying, is why we stopped. Thomas Laffont (01:26:29): Exactly. Right? We start to outsource interpretation Jason Calacanis (01:26:32): of that that we didn't have factories. We we didn't have factories, so we didn't need as much power. What's the reason we didn't invest or we didn't need to? Thomas Laffont (01:26:39): I think we just outsourced a lot of our hardcore manufacturing. You know, we we The USDA industrial Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:44): the USDA industrial west. Yeah. Correct. Thomas Laffont (01:26:46): That's the Jason Calacanis (01:26:46): So no factory equals no need for additional electricity. Now the new factories are h 100 factories, maybe. Exactly. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:54): Yeah. Thomas Laffont (01:26:54): Our AI factories. Right? AI factories. And, and by the way, the way to think about it is almost like a subscription business on a net ad basis. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:02): Yeah. Thomas Laffont (01:27:03): So this this makes it even more stark. Right? Because this is kinda net additions, and it just kinda speaks for itself. Right? David Friedberg (01:27:11): And just just read the numbers out so the audience that's listening can can get a sense here. Thomas Laffont (01:27:15): Yeah. I mean, you can see, I mean, since since 1985, right, the delta roughly between China and the US is almost what's the quick math? Like, it's almost 7 x. Right? David Friedberg (01:27:27): In 2000, the US and China were both roughly a 1000 terawatt hours. Today, the US is 1600 terawatt hours, and China is 9,000 terawatt hours. Yeah. And this is just an extraordinary, ramp up relative to Correct. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:42): On the on the AI side, the there was a Biden EO last week. I spoke about this on Tucker because it happened the day I went on Tucker. But the EO basically said we will allow the permitting of power plants on federal lands to power these AI data centers, which started off like a very intelligent EO. But right in the second paragraph started to talk about DEI and all this other stuff and how you had to have a certain percentage of it from certain sources. But just today, it looked like President Trump overturned it. And now it's full steam ahead. If you have it permitted, then it's all about just get the power however you need the power, which I think is the smart decision. Back to your earlier point, like, we are we are in a race here. Jason Calacanis (01:28:25): In your analysis, Thomas, can we do this without nuclear? No. Can we catch up without nuclear? Okay. Thomas Laffont (01:28:30): In fact, we can't. And Why we buy uranium? I think you can speak to that better. One of the really interesting parts I mean, you can see, by the way, just the the percentage of nuclear, it kinda needs to go higher. I don't know if you guys have been following this stock in the public market, guys, called Constellation Energy. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:52): Oh, yeah. Thomas Laffont (01:28:54): It's a really interesting idea. What's interesting of, what Amazon and Microsoft is they're actually signing deals directly with these companies, right, to do what's called back behind the meter, right, types of deals so they have direct energy access. To your point, Chamath, on the Biden administration, at the end of last year, a deal got announced publicly announced that federal agencies were also contracting directly now with CEG to power some of their, facilities. And even though the in total, the number was small, we took it, and I think the market took it as a clear indication, right, that the government, even under Biden, was acknowledging that nuclear is the best path forward. So, you know, we expect and we think just the trend generally towards nuclear energy is gonna continue. It's been proven in China. It's been proven in Europe. I think it will show to be a key part of the AI kinda arms race, you know, over the next 10, 20 years. David Friedberg (01:30:01): Yep. Thomas Laffont (01:30:01): This is to me kind of the story in one slide, right, which is if you look at basically the nuclear capacity in the US, it it's basically been flat for 25 plus years. Right? Jason Calacanis (01:30:13): Ridiculous. And so Thomas Laffont (01:30:15): right. And so when Scott Besson was asked, are we in a in a, you know, green energy arms race with China, he was thinking about chart number on the right, right, which basically shows how much nuclear China has added, right, over that time period. And so I think it's it's pretty clear what the answer is. I think China is leading the way in that measure, and I think we need to follow. David Friedberg (01:30:41): Yeah. And I think what's really important to note is over that same period of time, Thomas, we're in a different era on nuclear than we were when we had 3 Mile Island and, you know, prior to that, Chernobyl. We have new, gen 4 technologies that are meltdown proof, that have a totally different architecture where there isn't a setup where you have runaway heat and ultimately a collapse of the, the reactor and a release of radioactive material, which is what happened at Chernobyl. These new systems, which we highlighted on the show a couple of months ago, like the pebble bed reactor that's been in production making electricity in China, are incredible new technology architectures and they're here and they're running. And China's rolling out dozens or hundreds of these and the United States is rolling out 0. And that needs to change. And I think we only have a couple of months to get the engine stood up that will allow us to make the material, that will allow us to make the production technology needed to actually deploy these stations to try and have a shot at catching up. And if we don't, we're gonna be hugely disadvantaged on an energy cost basis. We're gonna be hugely disadvantaged on an ability to actually deploy AI technology competitively. That's key. Thomas Laffont (01:31:57): And by the way, we you also can look at France. Right? My my home country, not known as a technology leader, but 70% of its energy of its electricity comes from nuclear. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:07): But France held the line. Right? When Europe tried to really deprecate its use of nuclear, Germany did, but France held the line. Thomas Laffont (01:32:14): Yeah. It's too important, Chamath. You know, it's 70% plus. So I I think it's, there's examples. It's doable. And I think now with AI, it's a matter of national security. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:23): National security. Thomas Laffont (01:32:25): And We gotta get it done. Yeah. By the way, that dovetail into fabs, right, which is obviously another key component, which is a short term for semiconductor manufacturing facilities, right, which is another, in my opinion, key strategic area that we need to to ramp up in the US. Jason Calacanis (01:32:42): The thing that I noticed about that chart is the trend line. I mean, look at how fast they're building these. And this is where, you know, I don't know what government incentive we need to create or what red tape has to be moved here. But if we can't build, you know, multifamily housing in some states, like, this nuclear is gonna really need to we're gonna have to figure out a way to change that trend line, Friberg. Yeah? I mean, what what would it take to to build these nuclear power plants at an accelerated rate? David Friedberg (01:33:14): I will tell you that there is a lot of capital, and I've we mentioned this last time, a lot of intellectual capital in the United States that's eager, hungry, and ready to get moving on build out. The only thing that's challenged and the only thing that's holding it back is regulatory challenges, regulatory roadblocks. And if those get removed through emergency action, I I view this to be more of a national security threat frankly than the border. I think we need to get energy increased in this country in an accelerated way for the United States to even be in a position to be able to challenge China with respect to manufacturing and AI in the decades ahead. And the United States needs to consider this an emergency. Emergency declarations may be needed to drop the regulatory roadblocks that are keeping the proliferation of, electricity production in the United States at bay. I think it's time for that sort of action. I think that's the only thing that's getting in the way. Jason Calacanis (01:34:08): So we have the tech. We have the physics. We have the will. We have the talent. We have a blocker, and the blocker is regulation. And that regulatory blocker needs to have leadership in government to remove it. Am I summarizing correctly here? David Friedberg (01:34:25): That's right. And, look, you have an energy czar that I think is very aligned with that intention in in Doug Burgum. Obviously, we have this big AI arms race that's underway. We have an automation and manufacturing demand, which will massively increase energy demand in this country. And we have, I think, a deregulatory administration. The the stars are aligned, and I think that this is a moment where this could happen. Jason Calacanis (01:34:47): Chamath Bork, Thomas, what's the downside to removing the regulation and going for it and building this extra capacity? Can can we define only possible downside? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:34:58): Yeah. The downside is the the amount of time it takes to adequately build these things properly. The thing that China has had, as it says Thomas's chart shows, is decades of practice in building things safely and quickly. Jason Calacanis (01:35:12): We can Chamath Palihapitiya (01:35:13): build things, but we haven't had the practice to build them either safely or quickly because we haven't built any. So that's a complicated thing to just acknowledge. Jason Calacanis (01:35:22): That's a valid concern. If there is any resistance resistance to this, Thomas, what would be on the top of that list? Just theoretically, how could anybody want to block this? What would be the resistance? Thomas Laffont (01:35:35): One other element, guys, I think you know that we are blocking the ability of China to get access to the latest GPUs. Right? And the whole point is we don't want them to use to develop systems that could be used against us. But if China if one day China had 10 x our power capacity, it won't even matter. Right? Because they'll just have so many more, whether they're not quite the same advanced GPUs or not. They'll just have so many more of them. Their industrial AI capacity will be so much larger that even if we have the best h one hundreds and the latest technology that Jensen and others can provide, it won't matter. So in order to make our strategy effective, we need to be able to, to build this power base. Jason Calacanis (01:36:17): I think it's a very astute point. Hey, Chamath. I don't know if you've been watching Netflix, but I am a shareholder, and I am delighted. I don't know what's going on over there, but they seem to get a be getting their subs right. And that discratia of a fight seems to have somehow driven the stock price up, and there's some strategy that's working over there. Maybe you could just riff on it for a moment. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:36:40): I have the opposite take. Jason Calacanis (01:36:42): Okay. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:36:44): Yeah. I mean, it's obviously a very good company. I think it's been incredibly performant, but I think it has like a little bit of a dark commentary on American society and productivity. So I asked Nick to just put up these three charts. I'll show you the first one. So this is the Netflix stock price from 2010 to 2020 and it's only gotten up since 2024. Okay? Okay. The only reason I did it at 2020 was because the the other data. I went to the CDC and I said, well, show me the percentage of people, Americans, taking SSRIs over that same period. For depression, absolutely. Depression, anxiety, etcetera. And what you see that it's also gone up. And then the last chart, I went to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and I said, what has happened to the labor participation rate over the same period? So I'm not blaming Netflix, but I think that this is a bit of a commentary on sort of what's happening in society. It's a little bit of a leading indicator where as the company does better and better, the reality is that that company wins by being a sync for people's time. It's where you go to Netflix and chill. It's a phrase that that we all understand. But the the the dark underbelly of it is that there's just a lot of people that are a little bit more dejected. There's a lot of people that just opt out and and just don't decide to work. I think you could graph the fertility rate and it's gone down ratably as well. So it's it's all of this soup that is about people living in a life that that unfortunately just doesn't exist. So, I mean, it's a well run business and I wish them all the best at some level, but at some other level, I think it's a commentary that as this company does better and better, there are more and more people that are that are living a shell of what their life could be. Jason Calacanis (01:38:43): So cause and correlation aside Chamath Palihapitiya (01:38:46): So obviously correlated. This is not causal. You know? Jason Calacanis (01:38:49): Netflix is not causing depression. But Chamath Palihapitiya (01:38:51): It's just the it's just the thing. And then there's other things that obviously you can put on this plate. Sure. But that was my reaction is I just think that the more time people are sort of detaching and and plugging out, the more that you're gonna see these companies that provide ways of distracting yourself do well. I'm not sure that society benefits. Jason Calacanis (01:39:16): What do you think, Thomas? Opioids for the masses or just the golden era of television? Thomas Laffont (01:39:22): What I'm curious, Chamath, is, you know, how much of it is a substitutive effect, right, away from kind of traditional media? Right? I mean, I I've kinda looked at it different ways that at least the the way it's measured, you know, time spent watching television has not really increased over 20 years. To me, it's more a reflection of I could overlay the stock chart of, you know, Fox and Comcast and, you know, CBS and just have all of those have imploded. I think people have been kind of substituting right away. I I think the the question then that you have to ask is, is there a reason that maybe the Netflix product is fundamentally more unsafe or detrimental to someone's health than the prior broadcast? Well You know? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:40:09): The one thing that I would say is and this is not a Netflix commentary, but a general commentary, which is online products versus linear products have the power and the benefit of this algorithmic targeting and personalization. And I think that what Netflix has successfully figured out, and a bunch of other products have successfully figured out, is that you can hyper tune to what people think they want. But what people think they want is not necessarily what they need. I think when you had linear television, you kind of had to take what was given. You didn't love Cheers, but you watched Cheers. You didn't love St. Elsewhere, but you watched it. Now it's that you can go into a place where the thing really feeds you and it gives you a very visceral feedback loop and you can stay there binge watching something for an entire weekend. And what didn't I think the question is what didn't you do? Jason Calacanis (01:41:06): Yes. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:41:06): Necessarily didn't work out, necessarily didn't eat well, necessarily with friends. And by the way, I'm not saying that I don't do it. I've done it as well. Like our group chat, one of the interesting things when Jason, like, he he's very good about television and stuff. He says, this series is amazing. Our other friend Rob Goldberg does the same thing. It's hard for me to not start to start it and then not end it. Mhmm. It's addicting. Yeah. But I have to really check myself because then for those 2 days, I'll be tempted to not leave my bedroom. But my my kids are like, where is my father? And so I I I think it's it it happens to all of us. Yeah. It's just a thing that again, I'm not trying to pick on Netflix. I'm just trying to say societally. I think we want people that are vigorous and engaged in the real world. And, you know, there needs to be a balance. Jason Calacanis (01:41:57): Yeah. I, wholeheartedly agree. And I think you have to schedule these things. You have to make it a permanent part of your life, playing poker on a certain night of the week, doing certain things on the weekend with your kids, having certain rituals. You know, the the the real damage to our kids is not that the screens are damaging them. It's that it's replacing time, I think, which you we were alluding to there, Thomas. This this anxious generation, as Jonathan Haidt, and we we had a great interview with him, myself and Freyberg in the all in interview series. That is what's happening. Kids are substituting whether it's TikTok or Netflix or YouTube time for time with their friends, time doing physical activities. So you really just have to limit the screen time so that there's other things and the boredom can emerge. And we will be having a talk in the coming years about dopamine. It is something that these algorithms have gotten really good at doing, which is firing your dopamine. Every time you swipe that TikTok, every time you get to the cliffhanger in the series or, you know, a mister beast video, not singling anybody out. He's just a master of it as well. They're just all really good at giving you that hook, that amazing moment. And and musicians are doing this now too with the hooks, and then the hooks go on TikTok. The dopamine addiction, when you get burnt out late at night, getting those dopamine hits, the next day, you feel depressed. Then you go to a doctor, and the doctor said, oh, we have, you know, depression. So here's your Wellbutrin or here's your what whatever the I don't know what the the the the things are of the moment. I'll just tell you what I focus on and what I focus on with my family. Sleep hygiene, diet, exercise, meditation. Do these four things, and you will reverse these trends. You don't need it. I listen. I don't wanna tell you what to do. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:43:41): Is hard for kids, but I get the first three. Jason Calacanis (01:43:44): You know what? Try it. Get the and listen. I'm not talking on booking. By the way, you know what's crazy? Map. It has When I was growing up for kids. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:43:51): When I was growing up, I grew up Buddhist. My father would make us sit there at 9 o'clock every night. And my sisters and I would have to say this Buddhist prayer, and then he would make us close our eyes for 15 minutes. And he said meditate. And I was like, I don't know what meditation is, but I was forced to just keep my eyes shut. And I would just daydream, but I I suspect that there was, like, some reasonably grounding value in that. So I get what you're saying. I just have such a negative connotation from it. I've never been able to come back to it because of that experience. But I would just daydream. And by the way, what I daydreamed was getting out of that house. I was like, gotta be So Jason Calacanis (01:44:26): you got a vision. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:44:27): I was Jason Calacanis (01:44:27): like, yeah. Came to you. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:44:29): I I gotta manifest some success here because this sucks. Jason Calacanis (01:44:31): Hey, Thomas. Thanks for coming on the show. Great first appearance here as a bestie. We'd love to have you back unless Chamath Palihapitiya (01:44:37): the king returns at some point. You're the best. You should come back, and you should also come back to the all in summit. Thomas Laffont (01:44:45): Come back, Bill. For both. And I know we saw some some great topics like Hock 10 and others that I wanna get to someday. So Chamath Palihapitiya (01:44:51): Oh, well, that actually, when you come back, which we will do at some point in the next few months, I would love for us to double click into Hock 10. So what for folks that are listening, we were going back and forth. Hoktan is the CEO of Broadcom. And the reason when he when Thomas brought this up, hey, guys. Let's double click into Broadcom and the CEO. The reason why I was excited is that it is the only $1,000,000,000,000 company that nobody talks about. Everybody knows NVIDIA. Everybody knows Amazon, Meta, but Broadcom is a $1,120,000,000,000 business, and it started basically through a whole series of roll ups. Anyways, we'll double click into this with you because I think it's Jason Calacanis (01:45:32): so is not the Broadcom we're all thinking of from the telecom era, is it? Thomas Laffont (01:45:36): It is. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:45:36): Yeah. Henry Cavani. Yeah. Correct. Jason Calacanis (01:45:38): The same one still around. Thomas Laffont (01:45:40): I will leave you guys with a with a teaser to tease the next episode when we talk about it, and I'll tell you the story that when Hawk bought Broadcom, Jay Kaltz, to your point, Broadcom is the pride of Orange County founded by Henry Nicholas and Henry Samueli, kinda legends in semiconductors, a legendary name. So it meant a lot to them that the combined company of Vago was buying Broadcom, keep the name Broadcom. And so Hawk being who he is, you know, got a little bit of a price discount to name the company Broadcom. To him, that was a great deal. That's who Hawk is. He's a great businessman. But what is the ticker of this particular company? Jason Calacanis (01:46:18): AVGO. And so Thomas Laffont (01:46:19): I said, Hawk, why is the ticker still AVGO? And you know what he said to me? Turned to me, he said, Thomas, they forgot to negotiate for the ticker. Jason Calacanis (01:46:27): Oh, never forget the ticker. Interesting. I mean, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:46:32): when when he started, it was what was the market cap? Thomas Laffont (01:46:35): 3,500,000,000, Chamath. It was an not only was it an orphan because it was a oh my gosh. Look at this chart. It was a spinout of a spinout of HP. It was a double orphan, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:46:48): 300 x. Jason Calacanis (01:46:49): Look at this. Thomas Laffont (01:46:50): Yeah. My goodness. Thing is David Friedberg (01:46:52): in in the last 5 years, the market cap's grown by 8 x. NVIDIA has grown by 20 x, but, you know, Intel over the last 5 years is, what, down 70%. So, you know, I think there's a big divergence. Thomas, do you think this is a function of well, I don't know if it's directionally investing in the right things, or is it about, like, making long term investments and thinking down the road? I mean, obviously, the compounding advantage of that. He's an Chamath Palihapitiya (01:47:20): m and a master. This is a this is less about there was a product that won and more of a portfolio approach and a portfolio construction. David Friedberg (01:47:27): Did he buy did he buy well ahead of the the curve? Did he buy over the horizon, Thomas? Like, is that where Intel really missed? Thomas Laffont (01:47:34): I think Intel really missed. It's a complete abdication of corporate governance at the board level and the CEO level. Jason Calacanis (01:47:40): Hey, guys. Breaking news story coming across my feed. I don't know if you can pull this up, Nick, but there's video trending on the Internet. Apparently, an executive order has just gone across the president's desk, and it was delivered by none other than a gentleman that. David Sachs. I now there's a name. I haven't heard David Sacks (01:47:57): in a long time. Crypto, EO. We're gonna be forming a internal working group to make, crypto to make America the world capital in crypto under your leadership. Jason Calacanis (01:48:05): Which is really going up. David Sacks (01:48:07): Right? Absolutely. Jason Calacanis (01:48:10): Here we go. Woah. Look at this. What? He's using a Sharpie there to sign these executive orders? Oh, Sachs gets to keep the pen. There it is. An executive order. I love how he holds them up. It's so great. I wonder if Sachs gets to keep that. It might not be accepted, but we're gonna make a lot of money for the country. Okay. And so is David. Oh, your reaction, Jamat. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:48:40): I think this is great. Jason Calacanis (01:48:43): So we're gonna make crypto great again. I'll be a Chamath Palihapitiya (01:48:46): little bit more specific. So I think that there are a handful of ideas that if we can implement them correctly, are really revolutionary. I think that it's good to have a stockpile of crypto. I have less of an opinion on that. I think a set of stable coin rails that makes payments instantaneous and costless is an enormous acceleration to GDP. It would cut fraud, and I think that David's gonna go and figure that out. And he's gonna go about stablecoins specifically? Stablecoins. I mean, I I talked about this at the beginning of the year as my sort of one of my predictions, but I do think that the United States Stablecoin rails will be hugely disruptive and value added. He's gonna have help from the head of the SEC and head of treasury to do it. I just think it's great. And I think SACHS is already off to a a hugely fast start. Jason Calacanis (01:49:44): The entire country knows that we need to win the AI race. The the numbers are the numbers. You put up a chart like that, Thomas, and there's only one way for us to win, and that's to build new more nuclear power plants. And so I think he's just gotta hammer this through, and let's see who tries to stop it. I don't know if AOC or Elizabeth Warren, Pocahontas, Bernie Sanders. Who wants to jump in front of this Trump train right now? But I think you'll get slaughtered. If only there was somebody who could comment on this executive order. That's what I need. You know, Chamath, if I had the bat phone, if I could call somebody, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:50:19): you know, Jason Calacanis (01:50:19): phone a friend. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:50:20): Who would you call? Jason Calacanis (01:50:21): I don't know. You know? I hit my saxipoo was always on speed dial. We used to hang in between. We have these great battles here on the pod. Then we go play chess together. We go have some drinks at the battery. But, you know, that was a different era. And, you know, I don't got my boy anymore. He's busy. Oh, do we got it, everybody? Thanks for tuning into the All In podcast. I'm your host, Jason Calacanis. We will see you next time. Bye bye. Thomas Laffont (01:50:47): Sorry. What? Jason Calacanis (01:50:48): Uh-uh. What? There he is. There he is. He's back. Thomas Laffont (01:50:52): Back to reclaim his seat. It's yours. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:50:55): We miss you, buddy. You look so handsome. Gonna cry. David Sacks (01:50:58): Mom. Jason Calacanis (01:50:59): 60 what days you know, my bestie. We miss you, buddy. You just in the Oval Office? David Sacks (01:51:04): I was just in the Oval Office. Jason Calacanis (01:51:06): First time in the Oval Office? Let me ask you a question. Was that your first time in the Oval? David Sacks (01:51:12): Well, technically, it was my second. But Chamath Palihapitiya (01:51:16): How was it, Sucks? How's it been so far? David Sacks (01:51:18): It's pretty incredible. Yeah. It's really been pretty incredible. Jason Calacanis (01:51:21): Well, tell us what are the vibes, and what's it like to go in to the Oval Office and to have that executive order signed? Take us. Tell us what the moment was like, and then tell us what's in the executive order. David Sacks (01:51:35): Well, we actually we did 3 executive orders today. So we did 1 on crypto, 1 on AI, and then 1 on PCAST, which is the president's council of advisors for science and technology. The one on crypto, I guess, we can start there. The main thing it does is it forms an internal working group with the goal of making the US the world leader in crypto. So it's not one specific action. It's basically authorizing and creating a working group with the goal of achieving that objective. Right? And the members of this working group are gonna be, there's me, there's the head of the SEC, the secretary of the treasury, and all the agencies and departments that have an interest in crypto. So we formed this working group. I'm actually chairing it or I will be. And again, the goal here is to identify and make recommendations that the departments would then take back and they could execute. And just, again, with the goal of making America the world capital of crypto as the president said at Davos today. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:52:36): And then the other 2, Sacks? David Sacks (01:52:37): Yeah. So that's crypto. Next one's AI. So the the number one thing that that EO does is rescind the the Biden EO, which we talked about on this podcast, I don't know how many episodes ago. But remember, it was this 100 page monstrosity of burdensome regulation. And the president had promised on the campaign trail to repeal that, and he did. So it got rescinded. Actually, there was a master EO on Monday that contained dozens of Biden era EOs that got mass rescinded. This one provided a little bit more detail on it. Basically said that that EO wasn't necessarily burdensome. It said that we wanna be the world leader in AI. In fact, it uses the word dominate. We wanna we wanna basically have global dominance in AI. And similar to what we're doing on the crypto side, it directs the creation of a AI action plan. And that study will be led by 3 people, the national security advisor, who is Mike Waltz, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, who will be Michael Kratios as soon as he's senate confirmed, and then the 3rd person is me. So the 3 of us are gonna work together on this AI action plan. And the idea is to figure out what is it that the industry actually needs to make us number 1 globally in AI. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:53:52): So it's David Sacks (01:53:53): putting a little bit more substance behind, like, what this what this R role means. Jason Calacanis (01:53:57): And the last one is to build a a science council. I don't know if everybody's familiar with that. So maybe you could just describe what that is generally for the audience. David Sacks (01:54:05): Well, PCAST has been around for a long time. I mean, I think it's been around for decades. And the the goal of PCAST is to assemble a group of top science and technology buyers to provide the president with advice. So this was already announced, but basically, me and Michael Krasios, who I mentioned before, is going to be the director of OSTP. We're going to be co chairing that. And this is an EO that provides the authorizing language to set that up. And then it provides some direction around what PCAST is gonna do. I think some of the language that Freeberg may like is just it talks about the the need to return to kinda truth telling in science and kinda getting away from from woke science. The AI order discusses this as well. We don't want AI models to be ideologically biased, have an agenda. I don't know if it uses the word woke AI, but that's basically what it's talking about. We want AI models to be as politically unbiased as possible. Jason Calacanis (01:54:59): But if you need a recommendation for somebody for the council, I know somebody who is extremely well versed on science. He's got a broad array of science knowledge. Hear. Hear. Yeah. I have an idea. Then we could have 2 besties in the in in and around the White House. Hey. Well, you know, thanks for including us in in so many, aspects of the weekend, and the audience really wants to know, what are the chances we we get, Saxx back on the pod now and again in 2025? And we do appreciate We're doing it right now. Right? The sacrifice you're making. We're doing it right now, but audience, is, you know, not gonna just accept this little drop in here. They wanna know what's the long term plan for David Sacks and the pod. David Friedberg (01:55:40): And what's happened, like, with media overall in the administration now that confirmation hearings are underway, Sacks, and closing out? Does that mean folks are gonna be able to get back on social and things that they were kind of restricted by over the last couple of weeks? David Sacks (01:55:54): Sure. But I I think that, you know, if you're working for the White House, there kinda needs to be a reason for you to be out there because you don't wanna be making news that you're not supposed to. So in the case here today, the president signed these executive orders on crypto and AI, and they want me explaining them. So it makes sense for me to go out there. I've got a appearance on Fox Business in about an hour to talk about the EOs as well. So that might come out before this podcast comes out, but you guys are the first ones I'm actually talking to. But so there's a reason for me to come out and do it, and I think that there probably will need to be a good reason for me to come on the pod, but I'm gonna try and come on the pod every chance I get. Jason Calacanis (01:56:36): Alright. Well, this is our appeal to d j t to let you come on and just chew the fat, and and and maybe there's some upside to it for him. Thomas Laffont (01:56:43): Do you David Friedberg (01:56:43): miss being on the pod, Sacks? David Sacks (01:56:45): Oh. Yeah. Sure. Of course. Jason Calacanis (01:56:47): We miss you so much. It's Uh-huh. David Sacks (01:56:51): Look. I'll be back. Don't worry. At some point. Jason Calacanis (01:56:54): Are you a little emotional right now, Saxx? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:56:58): What are your favorite memories from the inauguration weekend? David Sacks (01:57:02): Well, the inauguration ceremony itself was really pretty spectacular. You you were there in the capital, Chamath. Yeah. It's funny. Jack and I kinda took our seats in the rotunda, like, kind of in the back in the peanut gallery, and I thought that's where I was gonna be sitting. And then somebody comes up to me and says, mister Sachs, we have a seat for you up up front. And so they put me on the dais You Chamath Palihapitiya (01:57:22): were with the big boys. Yeah. David Sacks (01:57:23): It was, like, the secretary of state, the secretary of treasury, Jason Calacanis (01:57:26): and then me. You know? And then we were David Sacks (01:57:28): just we were behind the the Trump family. You may not have seen me because those Trump kids are pretty tall, but, the whole family is very tall, so I kinda disappeared a little bit. But in in any event, they put me on the dais, which was really pretty crazy. I wasn't sure. Realize that. Yeah. It was a huge honor. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:57:46): There was a shot where David and Jacqueline were in the front. They looked amazing, and they were kind of looking around to for where to sit. And I was like, this can't be right because there he must have had, like, a name. So it's good that it all got sorted out, but it what was the vantage point from your side? Basically, you're looking out. David Sacks (01:58:04): Yeah. I I mean, I was looking out and, you know, I could see the faces of the democrats as the president came out, you know, president Biden and Kamala Harris. They didn't look too happy. Jason Calacanis (01:58:15): No. I would I wish they had a fixed camera on them the whole time. I wanted to see the reaction shot side by side. David Friedberg (01:58:21): I've seen Chamath Palihapitiya (01:58:21): some of the David Sacks (01:58:21): reaction shots. You know? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:58:23): Oh. Oh. Thomas Laffont (01:58:23): It sucks. Just just I David Sacks (01:58:25): mean, that was really unique to have, I mean, I thought that that speech was really incredible because well, first of all, it was completely consistent with everything the president had said during the campaign. And so you really felt like he he has a mandate here because this is everything he said during the campaign. It remind me a lot of there's that famous quote by by Abraham Lincoln that public sentiment is everything. With it, you can accomplish anything without it. You can't do anything. And it really felt like that inauguration speech was full of substance, but it was substance that the president had delivered on the campaign trail. And so when he won this victory where he'd only won the presidency, he won the popular vote, he won 7 out of 7 swing states, he won the house, he won the senate, it really feels like he has a mandate, and I think he reiterated that mandate in his speech. And then, of course, just the the cherry on top is just that, you know, the losers just have to Jason Calacanis (01:59:22): sit there and and listen to it. Well, kudos to them for coming out and keeping the tradition. Yeah. David Sacks (01:59:28): Well yeah. And and when he's talking about the corrupt establishment that tried to put him in prison through this lawfare, I mean, he's talking about some of those people who are sitting behind him. I just thought it was Yeah. Remarkable. A remarkable moment. David Friedberg (01:59:39): Crazy visual. Do you wanna take us back, Sachs, on how you because you haven't talked about this publicly, but how did you end up, I guess, getting the offer for the role, deciding to take the role? Anything you wanna share anecdotally on on the the path to get here? David Sacks (01:59:52): I don't know that there's that much to report. You know? I was helping with the transition, and I got offered the the role and decided to do it. So, I mean, look, it's not something I was expecting or planning as you guys know. I didn't even know there was gonna be such a role. But when they they decided to create it and they offered it to me, and so I decided to do it. You know, just one thing I should clarify just to make clear is there's still some things I can't do yet in the role because there's a whole government ethics process that you have to go through. And I'm in the midst of that process. So we've signed these EOs. It's given me certain responsibilities and authorized me to do certain things. And that process is gonna begin as soon as I complete this, I guess you'd call it onboarding. So just to be clear about that, there's things I can do. There's things I can't do. I can kinda be in listening mode. I can't be necessarily shaping policy yet. So that's all gonna be worked through over the next couple of weeks. Thomas Laffont (02:00:44): Alright. Sachs, I gotta ask. First time in the oval. What's going through your mind? Chamath Palihapitiya (02:00:50): Yeah. Great question. David Sacks (02:00:51): My head was on a swivel, you know, one of those moments. You're like, you can't really believe that you're you're there. It does feel a little bit like you're on a movie set. I mean, it's so famous obviously to be in an office. Jason Calacanis (02:01:02): Bigger in person Chamath Palihapitiya (02:01:02): or is it smaller in person? How what is it? David Sacks (02:01:05): I thought it seemed about the right size. I know that's that one of the things people say about it is that it's smaller than you expect. I didn't feel like it was smaller, but it also didn't feel bigger. It felt felt like, you know, the Oval Office that you've always seen. The other people are in there who've been in there the staffers who've been in there a 100 or a 1000 times, it's obviously, it wears off, and it's, like, just where they do their work. But, yeah, I've gotta admit, the first time you go in there, you're pretty pretty awestruck. There was a post that JD Vance of now the vice president had where he actually, do you guys see this? Mike Johnson? Chamath Palihapitiya (02:01:35): I saw the video. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (02:01:35): With Mike Johnson. Crazy. He's walking in, and he's in shock. David Sacks (02:01:39): Because he had never been in there. I guess, you know, I guess he became a senator a few years ago. And, we've had a democrat president, so he never had been to Jason Calacanis (02:01:46): the polls before. And David Sacks (02:01:48): he said that he was honored and humbled to be there. I mean, that's the way I felt as well. Those comments by the vice president resonated with me. I think probably every American would feel this way the first time you're in the oval office. It is pretty incredible. Chamath Palihapitiya (02:02:02): You want me to repeat the words that the president said about you? There's nobody like this guy. They said, how did you get David Sacks? How did you do that? He's doing it for the country more than anything else. We appreciate it, David. Thank you very much. David Sacks (02:02:16): He's been he's been really nice to me. That's really incredible. He's been just incredible to me. And he he gave me the the the pen from the from the signing, which is pretty cool. Chamath Palihapitiya (02:02:26): Wait. Can we see the pen? Can we see the pen? What is the brand of the pen? Jason Calacanis (02:02:28): Well, it's David Sacks (02:02:29): it's not branded. Basically, it says the White House on one side, and it's got his signature Yeah. On another. Nice. And so, look, I wasn't expecting Thomas Laffont (02:02:37): that to be true. Case. Jason Calacanis (02:02:38): Is it like a Sharpie? Chamath Palihapitiya (02:02:39): What is it? Is it a Sharp? David Sacks (02:02:40): It is it is a Sharpie. Permanent You've you've seen him sign. Jason Calacanis (02:02:43): Right? Yeah. David Sacks (02:02:44): Yeah. So it's what you know, I've seen it's what what he likes. But so he gave me the pen, which is pretty incredible. Chamath Palihapitiya (02:02:49): Have you guys seen that there's all these ASMR videos of the president signing where you can just hear Jason Calacanis (02:02:54): I've seen the pen. Chamath Palihapitiya (02:02:55): The pen. Jason Calacanis (02:02:56): No. The pen. The paper, Chamath Palihapitiya (02:02:58): it makes yeah. The exactly. There's, like, all these ASMRs of that. Jason Calacanis (02:03:02): Well, Friberg wants to know if you could assign his new Tesla. He wants you to sign it with that pen. He wants you to autograph it. So when you get back to the valley, you can you can start doing autographs with that all around. David Sacks (02:03:15): Oh, no. I think, I think only the presents allowed to use this pen. Jason Calacanis (02:03:19): Only the president's allowed to use. Okay. Well, put it in put it put it somewhere safe. Okay? Don't lose the pen. Gotta put it in a glass box or something. And, Sax, there's thousands of commenters who are just begging for you to come back. Do you have a message to your allegiance of commenters? David Sacks (02:03:35): Well, I I thank them, and I'm back right now. I know maybe it's not enough, but Soak Jason Calacanis (02:03:40): it in. David Sacks (02:03:40): It would help if you guys could just do a better job on the pods. They weren't complaining all the time. Jason Calacanis (02:03:45): We'll do the best we can without you. Alright. Get back to work. Let's get back to work. Goes come on. This taxpayer you're on the taxpayer clock here. Go go back to work here and save America. Make America great again. Listen. We wish you great success. We miss you greatly, and, we thank you for the service to the country. We wish you, all, all the best as you go, handle 2 of the most important issues for our country, AI, and help advise our president, on cryptocurrency as well. Chamath Palihapitiya (02:04:14): Love you, Saksen. David Friedberg (02:04:15): And pCast. And Jason Calacanis (02:04:16): pCast. Yes. Of course. And pCast as well. Chamath Palihapitiya (02:04:18): Boys, Jason Calacanis (02:04:34): your winners David Sacks (02:04:39): ride. And it said, we open sourced it Jason Calacanis (02:04:42): to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, Wes. I'm queen of quinoa. Besties are gone. Oh, no. That is my dog taking it out of your driveway sex. Oh, man. My happy We should all just get a room and just have one big, huge door key because they're all just useless. It's like this, like, sexual tension that they just need to release them out. Let your the feet. Let your feet. Where are David Sacks (02:05:15): your feet? I'm Jason Calacanis (02:05:19): doing all in. I'm doing all in. I'm doing all in. I'm doing all in. I'm doing all in. I'm doing all in. I'm doing all in.