明尼阿波利斯 ICE 混乱、Clawdbot 接管与美元为何走弱

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): Alright, everybody. Welcome back to the All In podcast, your favorite podcast, podcaster's favorite podcast. With me again, the original quartet is here, Shmoth Palihotepatia in just an absolute fabulous winter sweater, January. Looking great. Look at the size of those buttons. Huge buttons. How many rhinos died to provide those buttons? Zero. Zero rhinos. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:26): I'm a simple man that lives by simple means. Okay. Jason Calacanis (00:00:29): Beautiful. Beautiful. And your sultan of science, David Friedberg, what's the background here? Is that in is that a melancholy and infinite sadness background? I'm trying to figure it out. Jay Kal, we don't talk about my background. David Sacks (00:00:41): Thank Jason Calacanis (00:00:42): you. It looks like melancholy and the infinite sadness by the double album by the amazing band Smashing Pumpkins. Am I close, or is it the original artwork Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:51): of that? David Friedberg (00:00:53): Don't talk about my backgrounds. Jason Calacanis (00:00:54): You don't talk about your backgrounds. David Friedberg (00:00:56): Don't talk about your background. Jason Calacanis (00:00:56): Much giving me so much to work with here. Luckily, I have my straight man, my brother in arms, my Davos party crashing partner, David Sacks. David Sacks (00:01:09): I got you your first invite to something elite and exclusive. Jason Calacanis (00:01:13): I mean, I got invited to go twenty five years ago. They just wanted 50 dimes, but we had a fun time. David Sacks (00:01:22): Yeah. We had a good time. Jason Calacanis (00:01:23): We had a good time. Any post Davos WEF impressions? We had a lot of interesting meetings, so most of which I don't think we can talk about on air. But, yeah, it was it was an interesting interesting event. David Sacks (00:01:38): We were staying in a log cabin that was, like, 300 years old. The ceilings were, like, six feet high, and the door frames were, like, five feet high. So bumped our heads a couple of times. Yeah. It was pretty crazy. Jason Calacanis (00:01:49): It was brutal. I mean, it it looks good on the web. The photos of the place looked amazing. David Sacks (00:01:56): Look great. Jason Calacanis (00:01:57): Yeah. But I think you need to be inside the circle. You need to be inside the thick of it, not driving in every day. But it was a distinctly different Davos. We've mocked Davos here for many years. But this one was a business takeover and a Trump takeover. Correct. Chamath, you would have loved it. It was one point five days of everybody hand wringing of what Donald Trump would say when daddy got there. Then for the seventy five minutes daddy gave his talk, the entire city shut down. Everybody ran to a television set. Then for the next one point five days, everybody talked about what Trump said. David Sacks (00:02:37): Basically. I think there were two really big differences with this Stavos based on what I heard because this is the first time I've attended. One is it was much more business centric. And then second, there were a lot more Americans there, a much bigger American presence. And I think that that owes to the fact that President Trump gave a major speech there. And I think it was Larry Fink, who's chairman of the whole thing now, who sort of orchestrated that. And he wanted to get President Trump there, and I think he's pushed for them to be a little bit more business centric. And it feels like they're catering a little bit less to kinda boutique European political issues. Although that's clearly a big part of it. I would say in terms of memorable moments, a big one was I'm only gonna talk about this because I think it was publicly reported. Otherwise, I wouldn't bring it up. But there was this opening night dinner. And so Larry Fink calls on, like, five people to give little speeches. And the last one he called on was Howard Ludnick, our secretary of commerce. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:41): And David Sacks (00:03:42): Howard just goes up there and he just starts dropping truth bombs on them. And again, he said all of this on the record in his remarks at Davos, I think either that day or the next day. So again, I'm not talking out of school. It was all stuff that he said. But basically, he said to like all the Europeans, he said, look, I've been coming here for thirty years and you guys have completely failed. You've wrecked your economies with all this net zero stuff and climate change and energy. And he just started blasting on that, and then all the open border stuff. He really let them have it. I mean, was really the truth. And then there was this uncomfortable like rustling in the audience, you know, as he was like gathering steam. And then it's been reported Al Gore started booing at the end. David Friedberg (00:04:28): Drunk on Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:29): Chardonnay? Is that true? David Sacks (00:04:32): I can't verify that it was Al Gore, but I definitely heard somebody, and I think it was Al Gore who Jason Calacanis (00:04:36): was Just like the two guys from the Muppets and the balcony, Statler and whoever. And it's just like Waldorf. Waldorf and Statler. David Sacks (00:04:43): Well, look. I mean Jason Calacanis (00:04:44): Yeah. Waldorf and Statler. David Sacks (00:04:45): This whole climate change thing was Al Gore's big hoax going back to the nineties. And Yeah. Well, didn't he win Jason Calacanis (00:04:52): an Oscar? He won an Oscar. David Sacks (00:04:53): Mean Absolutely. Bill Gates has acknowledged that this is not an existential threat. It can be dealt with. You know? So I think the bloom is off the rose in terms of that whole agenda, I'd say at Davos. Although to be sure, I'd say most people there still probably agree with Al Gore. I mean, they haven't changed their policies. I'm talking about the European countries, even though tracking their economies. They are beholden to this net zero idea. Jason Calacanis (00:05:19): It feels like they're in transition and scrambling to try to figure out where they what direction they should go in. They don't feel they can trust America or that we're not their, like, reliable partner. We're not gonna bail them out. We're not gonna protect protect them, etcetera. And they're gonna have to sort of get together as the mids, mid tier economies, economies five through 20. And they're gonna just have to build their own voting block, their own trading block, and, go it alone and spend their own money for their defense. David Sacks (00:05:48): It's called the EU. It's just Yeah. Has not been very successful because I think of their own policies, their energy policies and the open border policies. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:56): I'm not sure what going it alone means if you don't have best in class AI or best in class weapons. Jason Calacanis (00:06:02): Absolutely. I I think it means they're gonna have to start investing in those things, buying weapons, making weapons. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:07): Don't have to much of anything. Jason Calacanis (00:06:10): Yeah. I I think it means Canada and the EU and all these other countries that feel, hey. We're we're we're gonna have our rug pulled by the Trump administration. We're just gonna have to band together and create commerce. And we saw China and Canada do a big deal. And I think that's them just trying to say, hey. We have some sovereignty here. We're gonna do a partnership with Canada and bring BYD cars in here and, hey. They'll be our big trading partner. So, you know, that's the reaction, I think, on the other side. David Sacks (00:06:43): But they don't. Jason Calacanis (00:06:45): They don't what? David Sacks (00:06:46): They don't have as many degrees of freedom as they think they do because great powers define the international system, not mid tier powers. And a bunch of second or third tier powers cannot redefine the international system even if they band together. And I think at the end of the day, the Europeans, they understand the importance of The United States, and specifically, they wanna keep The US in Europe. I mean, they're desperate to keep NATO together and to keep The US interested and present in Europe. Because just remember, European history, before the Americans were there, it's like hundreds of years of wars and constantly fighting each other. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:22): Exactly. David Sacks (00:07:23): Culmating in World War I, World War II, basically the total self destruction of Europe. And the most peaceful period they've ever experienced has been post 1945 when the Americans are there as the great pacifier. So they do not want us leaving, and I think they're willing to make large concessions to The US to ensure that we stay there even though they'll probably grumble about it. But I think that to that end, I think that what president Trump was saying is, look, you guys gotta share in the burden here. We've been paying for this whole thing. Jason Calacanis (00:07:54): Yeah. No. It makes total sense. And they got their spending up to 3% for NATO, and they're gonna go to five. So mission accomplished on that. David Sacks (00:08:01): Yes. And on Greenland, he's like, look, you know, we we we Jason Calacanis (00:08:06): That was the best part Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:06): of the speech. He's like, David Sacks (00:08:08): do you want me talk about Greenland? You. You gotta do something for us. This has gotta be Jason Calacanis (00:08:12): two way forty five minutes in. It's like, do you want me to talk about Greenland? I could talk about it. I you ready? I'm gonna talk about it right now. And then he starts talking about it. But then he starts calling it Iceland. And everybody in the room is like, wait. He wants Iceland too? And the whole buzz was Trump's gonna take Iceland and Greenland. And then, you know, he he sort of backed down, but we're not gonna invade. And then there was, like, a sort of sigh of relief. But do you think they actually thought, Sachs, that he was going to invade Greenland to take it? David Sacks (00:08:45): Well, I mean, I don't know. I think that, obviously, they thought it was a possibility, but the president took the use of force off the table. And, I think you did feel a sigh of relief there. I think you're right. But I think that also, I mean, we don't know the details. They haven't been publicly reported, but there was some sort of meeting at Davos that was convened, I think, by the NATO Secretary General Mark Ruta where they negotiated an acceptable compromise on the issue. So I'm sure we'll find out the details in due course, but it's safe to say that president Trump got enough of what he wanted that he was satisfied with what they worked out. Jason Calacanis (00:09:22): I don't know how they just like it's like Lucy with the football and Charlie. It's like, he's gonna pull the football. Like, he's just anchoring the negotiations at a military invasion and takeover. He obviously is just gonna go for a lease. It's like, they they don't know it in year, you know, whatever we're in now, year year five or six, year six of Trump being president. Like, they should get it by now. He just anchors things at an impossible, insane level, and then he falls back to whatever he really wanted. It's a classic negotiating technique. Alright. We got a lot on the docket. Let's get to work. Everyone wants to hear four venture capitalists and investors talked about the horrific situation in Minneapolis. So here we go. For background, I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:03): mean, Jason. Jason Calacanis (00:10:05): For background last month, the DHS started an operation called Metro Surge, sending 3,000 federal agents into Minnesota to crack down on illegal aliens. Over the last three weeks, two Minnesotans were tragically killed in altercations with federal agents. January 7, 37 year old Renee Goode was shot to death by an ICE agent. This incident involved Goode accelerating her car, which was surrounded by agents at the time. We're still waiting for the final investigation on this one, but apparently three shots, one through the front windshield, perhaps two through the side. All these details are still being investigated then. Tragically, on January 24, Alex Preti, also 37, was shot and killed by two border patrol agents, not ICE. Preti was an ICU nurse at the local VA hospital. There's a ton of frame by frame breakdowns available. New York Times and Wall Street Journal did a good job on these. So I think maybe it's best for us to focus here on maybe the aftermath of all this and the resolution, but you guys can feel free to chime in on the frame by frame breakdowns if you like. In five parts, Steven Miller tweeted that Freddie was an assassin trying to murder federal agents. A source told Axios that Gnome said everything I've done, I've done at the direction of the president and Steven, Steven being Steven Miller, Greg Bovino has been removed from duty and had his social media accounts turned off. President Trump has pivoted, evolved, and put Tom Homan in charge. Quote, Tom is tough but fair and will report directly to me, Trump wrote. And, at the time of this taping, which is on Thursdays, there was a press conference this morning, and here is what Tom Homan said. And after thirty seconds, we'll go to you, Sacks, for your reaction to all this. Speaker 5 (00:11:55): No agency organization is perfect. President Trump and I, along with others in administration, have recognized that certain improvements could and should be made. That's exactly what I'm doing here. So if we get these agreements in place, that means less agents on the street, more agents in the jail. Matter of fact, I have staff from CVP and from ICE working on a drawdown plan. What does that look like based on the cooperation? Jason Calacanis (00:12:20): Sacks, your thoughts? David Sacks (00:12:22): Well, first, let me say the deaths of Renee Goode and Alex Preti are regrettable and tragic. So are the deaths of Lincoln Riley, Jocelyn Nungare, Rachel Moran, Victoria Harwell, Ivory Smith, and too many others to mention who are murdered by criminal illegal aliens, and the media won't ever tell you their names. But President Trump was hired by the American people to do a job, which is to seal the border and deport criminal aliens so that more of these tragedies do not occur in the future. And this is a popular policy. Over 55% of the American people say they want all illegal aliens deported, and over 90% want criminal aliens removed. And by criminal aliens, I'm referring to the ones who commit additional crimes after they enter the country illegally. Now this policy is working. Murders were down 21% last year. It's one of the best years in record. And in most states, the process is smooth and doesn't make national news. And the reason for that is because local authorities are cooperating with ICE. But Minneapolis has taken a different approach. They've engaged in a campaign of, quote, massive resistance to federal authorities. So let's talk about what's actually happening there on the ground. I think the first thing to understand is that what's happening is much more than just protests. And obviously, I have no problem with people peacefully protesting and making their opinions known, but that's not what's going on here. These are Antifa style operations designed to thwart the enforcement of federal immigration law. They're highly organized. They're communicating in encrypted chat groups. They stalk and dox ICE agents. They follow them around town. They surround them at their hotels. They use their cars to block roads, and they use bullhorns and whistles to alert criminals who are about to be arrested. And remember, ICE is a law enforcement agency. They have warrants to arrest known criminal aliens despite this rhetoric of them being like the Gestapo. David Sacks (00:14:19): They are going after specific named individuals for whom they have warrants to arrest. These are dangerous missions, and these agitators are interfering and making these missions even more dangerous. Now the media has tried to portray good and pretty as simply innocent bystanders or people who were peacefully protesting ICE policies. They weren't. They were foot soldiers in these Antifa style operations, and most importantly, they brought deadly weapons to the fight. So Renee Good hit an officer with her SUV, which under a Minnesota law signed by Tim Walz himself in 2020, justifies the use of deadly force by an officer to defend himself. And Alex Preti was even more reckless. I think we've probably all seen the video by now where he sought confrontation with ICE officials. He was kicking the car. He was in a rage. This wasn't his first time doing this. And any experienced gun owner will tell you that if you're armed and you're dealing with law enforcement, you have to be the world's biggest pacifist because you're putting your life in danger by making them fear that their lives are in danger. And I think the mainstream media didn't tell people these facts. They just presented highly selective camera angles. They even airbrushed and facetuned Preti to make him appear to be a more, I guess, handsome victim, which is truly sick. Now in a way, I feel sorry for Good and Pridey because they were the victims of a tinderbox that was created in Minnesota by the extreme rhetoric and decisions of Tim Walz, Jacob Fry, and the political establishment. The local police in Minneapolis should have been allowed to keep conditions safe on the street by creating a perimeter and keeping protesters away from ICE officers who were executing lawful warrants of arrest, but the police were told not to. And then the agitators stepped in, and they took advantage of this sort of vacuum of authority to physically intervene. So I think it was almost inevitable that some sort of tragedy was gonna result from this abdication of public safety. Now why would Waltz and Freight want to risk such tragedies with their massive resistance? David Sacks (00:16:31): I think there's two reasons for this. This is the last point I wanna make. First, they are desperate to change the subject from the billions of dollars of fraud that they allow to occur on their watch. Remember, we had Nick Shirley on the show just a few weeks ago talking about the 8,000,000,000 or so that was stolen by Somali fraudsters. And this campaign of resistance in Minneapolis has done a really good job making everyone forget about that. But I think there's a second and bigger reason that applies, and I think it applies to to national Democrats, which is they want to thwart mass deportations because illegal immigrants are a vital part of their power base. And you can see this in the 2030 apportionment forecast, which just came out. Illegal aliens count towards the census, which occurs every decade. And the census determines the apportionment of congressional seats and electoral votes. Jason Calacanis (00:17:22): Votes. And what you see in these maps is that citizens of blue states have been migrating to red states because those blue states are failing. And as a result of that, blue states are expected to lose nine house seats David Sacks (00:17:39): and and electoral votes because of the changing population numbers. Illegal aliens in blue states have been propping up those numbers. And so for example, in the last election, president Trump would have won an additional nine electoral votes if we had an accurate accounting. So look, this is not about principle. This is bare knuckle politics. The Democrats are playing for keeps. They don't really care how many innocent Americans get hurt or killed in the process. This is about thwarting a popular policy of deportations and sealing the border, which the American people voted for. So don't let the media fool you. Jason Calacanis (00:18:17): Friedberg Chamathi, you want to give your opinion on these two tragic deaths? Or not? Mean, I don't feel you're obligated to comment on this if you don't want to. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:27): I'm happy to. Nick, I sent a clip into the chat. Speaker 6 (00:18:31): Deported all immigrants who are here illegally, 55% of the New York Times. Marquette, 64%. CBS News, 57%. ABC News with a slightly different question, 56%. So what you're seeing essentially here is very clear indication that a majority of Americans, in fact, when they're asked this blunt question, which I believe gets at the underlying feelings, do in fact wanna deport all immigrants who are here illegally. There's no arguing with these different numbers because they're all essentially the same across four different pollsters. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:59): I think Saxe is right that there's a very, very vocal minority. But if we just put that aside, it's important right now to just stick to the facts. Democracy is supposed to be the will of the majority, but also defense and protection for the minority. In this example, the will of the majority is pretty clear as the CNN clip just showed. Everybody wanted the southern border shut and the northern border shut and a structured path to deal with illegal immigration. David's right that that creates a cascade of second and third order effects that have huge implications with respect to the democrats and their ability to have and curate power. I don't know whether this is what's motivating them or not. I don't wanna speculate on that. But the conceptual problem and the conceptual desire of Americans is undisputable. I think that's why Donald Trump won. Now I think, though, we have to explore the tactics. I think the reality is that both of these two deaths were complete and total tragedies. And it has created such an upswell that it has the potential to spin out of control. And if it does that, it risks his ability to continue doing his job and delivering on the conceptual promise that everybody wants. The other thing is that I think that he has otherwise, the president, done an incredible job up until now. The fact that Tom Homan is going there is a really good thing. He was the same person that was awarded a medal by Obama for how he managed Obama's deportation process. It's time to just get control of the process and dial down the temperature because the structural things that they are doing are correct. There are people here that broke the law. There are criminals that are here illegally. We need to remove them because that is the will of the majority. Now we just need to find a way of doing it that creates some freedom to operate for all of law enforcement so that these tragedies stop. That's my 2¢. Jason Calacanis (00:21:03): Okay. Friedenberg, would you like to comment on this or pass? David Friedberg (00:21:07): I'll comment. Can I just ask you to react to what Sack said? Do you agree or disagree with his point about the Democrats needing to remove people because they do count in the census and they increase the seats in the house? Jason Calacanis (00:21:20): Elon's talked about this a whole bunch as well that the immigration is being done to boost the voter rolls. I don't know enough about the census specifically because that occurs x number of years and, if it's accurate at all. So I'll leave that aside and do some research on it. In terms of importing people for votes, this strategy does not make a lot of logical sense, and so many working class people voted Trump into office and so many, specifically, Hispanic people, Mexican people are all voting for Trump now because he's a populist, and he he appeals to to that group. So whatever if Biden and the Democrats were doing that for that reason, that makes no sense. And, also, those people would have to become citizens in order to vote, and that's a twenty, thirty year process. So, you know, they'd be playing an incredibly long game on that front. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:15): Unless there is cheating in the voting. Jason Calacanis (00:22:17): Yeah. Yeah. We've talked about that as well here David Sacks (00:22:20): in the heritage example, if there's no voter ID, You know? Jason Calacanis (00:22:23): You know, the Heritage Foundation, I think, David, you worked there at some point. Right? Did an internship. That organization, that think tank, has done tremendous research into this. They have a database. I think they've collected now 3,000 cases of voter fraud over a forty year period. So, really, the whole concept of voter fraud being able to tilt a presidential election is just ridiculous and has not been proven. I think Trump filed about 50 or 60 lawsuits, almost all 50 of them. So there's there's no credence to that. But, you know, I I have a couple of thoughts broader on what we've seen. And I do actually agree with you, David. There should be voter ID everywhere. I don't think anybody should be able to vote without a driver's license. We can't or ID. If you can't take the time to get ID, why should you vote? It doesn't make a lot of sense. Right? David Friedberg (00:23:04): Why do you think that's such a push on the other side though, J. Cal? Like, what's the motivation for not having IDs? Jason Calacanis (00:23:10): The stated David Friedberg (00:23:12): If it's not about getting people to vote that aren't allowed to vote. Jason Calacanis (00:23:15): The stated reason, which I don't believe, is that it's more democratic and you wanna get as many people to vote as possible. So but I don't agree with that. I think everybody should have ID. David Friedberg (00:23:25): Yeah. Like, you gotta have ID to buy a beer. Right? Jason Calacanis (00:23:27): So Yeah. I mean, to get on a plane to I mean, even to ride a train, like, you you need an ID. I don't I don't David Sacks (00:23:32): understand I think why the answer speaks for itself. I mean, to me, it's obvious. The reason why you prohibit. By the way, it's not just saying you can vote without an ID, they actually prohibit the people administering the polls from checking. There's only one reason to do that. You want to allow cheating, obviously. And one of the things that Doge found was that there were lots of illegal aliens being added to the social security roles. Now they weren't necessarily collecting social security, but in a David Friedberg (00:23:56): lot They were actually states Jason Calacanis (00:23:57): paying into it, so it was quite the opposite. But my were paying point is into the David Sacks (00:24:00): that when you get an SSN number, in a lot of states, all you have to do is check a box when you get a driver's license, which they also give to illegal aliens, in order to be added to the voter rolls. So they are finding illegal aliens on voter rolls. But look, regardless of where you are on cheating in elections, the census just counts total population. And then they apportion house seats and electoral votes based on total population, including illegal aliens. And there is data on this. Trump would have won the last election by an additional nine electoral votes if these changes had been made before the last election of seventeen So hold on just to put a pin on that point. It's really important because what it means is that a future Republican would not need to somehow crack the Democrats' blue wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Right? So nine electoral votes is a lot, and it does put the presidency that much further out of reach for future Democratic candidates. It provides a powerful incentive. And it's, again, it's not just the electoral votes, it's also these house seats. California would have lost house seats, I think it was like four, if this had been recognized. Because again, there's been a huge migration. J. Cal, you know this better than anybody since you're one of the people who've left. The state is so badly mismanaged that people have been fleeing blue states in droves. And the fact that you've got illegal aliens then replacing that population masks that effect and allows these blue states to maintain their level of representation in the house. That is a huge incentive. Jason Calacanis (00:25:33): Freeburg, do you support the use of ICE agents, DHS, to go into these cities? And do you think they were too violent? And do you agree with that strategy that Trump's now it seems like pulling back? I mean, I know the answer because we talked about it on private chat. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:25:54): Like, I'll be very matter of fact. Yeah. Neither of these people should be dead. It's sad that it happened. Jason Calacanis (00:25:59): Who's to blame? David Friedberg (00:26:00): Neither of these people should have been doing what they were doing. Federal law enforcement agents should not wear masks. They should identify themselves when asked. Ideally, they wear body cams like local law enforcement does. I like body cams. I actually like watching videos of police wearing body cams on YouTube and TikTok. I think it's a very important way to hold law enforcement accountable to their work. There may be reasons why federal law enforcement can't do that. If they're undercover and whatnot, they shouldn't have to identify themselves. But I think those are important ground rules. I think that federal law enforcement should have warrant or probable cause. They should not be allowed to randomly ask people for papers. I don't agree with that. If that's what they're doing I'm and not saying that that's what I say since then. Jason Calacanis (00:26:49): That's what they were doing. That's all been proven. I don't David Friedberg (00:26:51): know that. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:51): I don't David Friedberg (00:26:51): know if that's been proven. Jason Calacanis (00:26:52): Wearing masks, not identifying themselves. David Friedberg (00:26:54): That's not what I'm talking about. Hold on a second. Hold on a second. There have been a lot of claims made that they're going around, quote, rounding people up, asking for ID and papers. I don't know if that's true. I have personally not been convinced of that. You may have seen something else, but I've not been convinced of that. But if that is what they're doing, there is no probable cause and there's no warrant attached to that, that should not be allowed. I think the mechanism for fixing that, the mechanism for addressing that is number one, to go to federal courts and file injunctions, which is actively happening through the legal process. And there's a due process that then would take place that would determine whether these agents are following the law and doing things by the rule of law or are not. And if they're not, injunctions will be imposed, and they can't do what they're doing. Short of that, no one should take it into their own hands to obstruct law enforcement, federal or local law enforcement. I think that that is wrong. I don't think that individuals that disagree with a law or disagree with the actions of law enforcement officers should obstruct their actions. The correct path is number one, to protest peacefully. Number two, to go to the courts and file injunctions, and number three, to change the law, to go to your local Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:02): Voting percent. David Friedberg (00:28:03): Vote for someone and change the law. I think it's totally okay for protesters to not like the law. There's a million laws and regulations and other bull that I fundamentally disagree with, but those don't give me the right to impose myself physically in the driveway with a car blocking law enforcement from doing their job. If law enforcement was arresting a non illegal immigrant murderer and someone did that, would people be up in arms? It's because people disagree with the law. And if you disagree with the law, you've got to change the law. And that's okay. Now, right now, it is the case that it is the law that if someone came here without going through the immigration process as defined by the law, then they are technically here illegally. That is the law. That's what it is. And so there is a course or a path or a point of view on how do you enforce that law. And that is what people are having disagreements over. And again, file injunctions if you don't like the methods, change the law if you don't like the law. My personal view on immigration, just so I can wrap this all up. I don't see how we're gonna do this in a humane and just way of removing people from this country who have been here for a period of time and have paid taxes and have been good contributors to this country. Don't I know how you're gonna do it. I don't know Jason Calacanis (00:29:20): how you're gonna do it David Friedberg (00:29:21): without inciting a civil war. So I think the compromise has to be that there has to be a path to permanent residency and eventually citizenship for individuals who have been in The United States for some period of time, who have followed other laws, who have paid taxes and who have not taken advantage of public services that they are not supposed to use. With those conditions met, there should be some path, otherwise we're going to have civil war. I think that separate to this, there's a bigger point to be made. And Ray Dalio has made this and I will restate it and you guys can roll your eyes at this. But I think that there's a deep emotional driver to all of this. People look at this and they get incited. They get activated emotionally. Everyone I speak to is activated emotionally over this issue. And we have to ask ourselves the important question of why are people activated so emotionally right now. What is going on? What is the fundamental root cause of this? What is the fundamental root cause of this prediction model that Ray Dalio has talked about saying that there's a thirty five to forty percent chance of a civil war in The United States based on predictions that he made in 2020? And it is rooted fundamentally in the fact that everyone to some degree feels some amount of oppression right now. And this is a manifestation of that oppressed feeling. That oppression comes from the fact that the world is racing ahead and people are not a part of it, that people feel like they're being left behind and they see victims of that world and they want to act. And I think we need to pay attention to that and be very cognizant of it because I think fundamentally, it is an inevitability that there will be a civil war if we don't recognize it and address it and find some paths of compromise to solve these problems. Jason Calacanis (00:30:54): Okay. David Friedberg (00:30:54): I'm done. Superb. Jason Calacanis (00:30:57): So Ship Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:58): it ship it episode done. I mean, let's go home. Jason Calacanis (00:31:03): So, yeah, I'm strongly in agreement with you. The police should not be interfered with. I said that here, and I said it on Twitter. You should stay home if you can't peacefully protest. And also agree with you strongly, the police should be trained to de escalate, wear body cameras, not wear a mask, be trained properly, all that stuff. But I want to make three points here. And the first is, you know, President Trump has surrounded himself with a lot of really competent people, yourself included, David Rubio, Bessent, Lutnick, Kushner, we had a lot of them here, even, my pal, Chris Wright. But he's also surrounded himself with very inexperienced sycophants, that he picked based on their loyalty to him. And that group needs to go because that group is sinking his second term. I'll put on that list Stephen Miller, Christy Noem, Kash Patel, and Pam Bondi. These folks have been a disaster for Trump. They're not qualified to be in the positions they're in, and they have caused a lot of chaos. And back in August, I explained exactly how unpopular these, you know, ICE actions were. And I implored people, hey, stay home if you cannot be peaceful. If you wanna record people, that's fine. But I predicted as well that somebody's gonna get killed and that these agents were acting just without training. They were not deescalating, and they were in fact provoking a lot of this, which I think was part of the concept that Stephen Miller had was to provoke these kind of reactions. Nick, you can pull up my first chart. Remember back in October, I was talking about Trump's sinking approval rating back when these ICE issues were happening, the Epstein files weren't being released. Then in November, I brought this up again. Trump's, net approval rating hit 13%. And then same chart coming up now. He's negative 18%. What's and, you know, a lot of people like to use this term taco. Trump always chicken out chickens out. Jason Calacanis (00:33:03): I don't like when people use that because I think they're trying to goad him on. I think he needs to react to these plummeting ratings here. If you could play the Tillis quote, Nick. Speaker 7 (00:33:14): If I were in her position, I can't think of any point of pride over the last year. She's gotta make her own decision or the president does, but she has taken this administration into the ground on an issue that we should own. We should own the issue of border security and immigration, but they have destroyed that for Republicans. Something that got the president elected, they have destroyed it through their incompetence. David Miller is in the same boat. This guy, after doing the stupid comments he made about Greenland getting the president in a difficult circumstance, is one of the people that came out publicly and said that this guy was a terrorist before he had even talked with anybody on the ground. And that's clearly not the case now. So, I mean, it's just I mean, Stephen Miller never fails to live up to my expectations of incompetence. Jason Calacanis (00:33:56): And here's Murkowski with a similar opinion, another Republican senator. Do you have faith in Christine Noem as DHS secretary? I I've already made a statement on that. Oh, I I wasn't there for it? Yeah. I I said that I've lost confidence in her. Do you think that president Trump should remove her from the position? Do you think she should resign? Obviously, to the president. I think we would be we would be better served with more leadership at the time. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:24): At the Jason Calacanis (00:34:24): end of the day, Americans don't like to see this violence. They don't like cruelty. They don't like chaos. The reason Trump lost to Biden, who's not a very strong candidate, is because of the general chaos people felt with the immigrant ban the last time. And people do want to see the border closed. And that has had a great effect, I think, on the country. And I think that's fantastic, and he should take a victory lap for that. But leadership starts at the top. President Trump put Stephen Miller in charge of all this. I think he's a bad actor. I think these people who he hired were picked strictly to do lawfare and to do this kind of sadistic violent behavior to feed a MAGA base that's not going to keep Trump in office and, in fact, gonna cause him to lose the second to lose the midterms. So the easy solution, which I brought up here over and over again, is if you want to stop having people come into this country, you have to look at why they're coming to this country. They're coming to this country because they wanna have a better life. That's why they're coming here. And that's why they'll pay a coyote 10 or 20 or $30,000 and risk their own safety coming across that border, where many people die and abused and are abused. So if you want to stop this, all you have to do is go to the business owners and find them. And if they keep hiring illegal aliens, you keep finding them and then you put them in jail. But you don't see Stephen Miller doing that. Why? Well, because a lot of those businesses are the voters who put Trump in office. They're Republicans. Now, you know, sure there's Democrat owned business owners as well. But you could solve this whole problem without sending massed agents in to beat the shit out of people, to be violent, to provoke these kind of reactions, and that doesn't absolve people driving their cars into the police. That's horrible and it's a terrible tragedy. And these people, as I've said three or four times, should not go out and protest. Jason Calacanis (00:36:16): But you could solve this. If there are no job opportunities for illegal aliens, they will stop coming here. Finally, I agree with your point strongly, Friedberg, that we should be compassionate to the people who've been here ten, twenty years and paid their taxes. I've said this here many times, they should be given a path. America is a country built by immigrants for immigrants, including the three of you, my bestie immigrants. David Sacks (00:36:38): And we all came here illegally. Our our parents did, and we didn't seek into the country. Jason Calacanis (00:36:44): Yeah, absolutely. David Sacks (00:36:45): Now you kinda gave this diatribe. I don't know why you've picked Stephen Miller as the vessel of your hatred. It's like you've Jason Calacanis (00:36:52): No, it's not hatred. I based on David Sacks (00:36:53): transference. His actions There's been a transference of your Jason Calacanis (00:36:56): Just based on his actions. David Sacks (00:36:57): TDS to Steven Miller derangement syndrome or something Jason Calacanis (00:37:00): like that. His actions were if his actions were kind and compassionate MDS. No. David Friedberg (00:37:04): That's an MDS. If if his Jason Calacanis (00:37:06): if he was compassionate towards immigrants and recognized the importance of immigrants to this American story, I would be fine with it. It's just based on his behavior, David. I don't have TDS. You can name call all you want. I'm just basing David Sacks (00:37:20): it on your behavior and what see. You've decided to do this ad hominem against him. And look, the big picture is that Dratis pulling I'm Jason Calacanis (00:37:27): their I'm basing it on their quality David Sacks (00:37:28): You're and evidence. Not really You're showing what other people think. You're showing polling and then what a few senators think. So Speaker 6 (00:37:36): you're basically trying to build a case David Sacks (00:37:38): hold on. You're hold on. Let me finish my point. You're basically trying to build a case against him by using the opinions and declarations of other people rather than actually presenting evidence and building that case other than just a name call and say that he's not compassionate. The big picture is that I would say that Stephen Miller has been more correct about immigration than you have been over the last several years. For years, you were denying that we had an open border problem, did you not? Jason Calacanis (00:38:03): No. No. For one year when the spike went up, I said, let's get the data on this because it doesn't make sense that it would triple year over year. And then we found out that it was in fact. And with the new information, I changed my opinion and said, this is obviously happening. That was literally what happened. David Sacks (00:38:20): Well, I don't know. I mean, during the Vine years, I remember we had a bunch of debates about this. And you were Jason Calacanis (00:38:24): saying mean, my position was let's see the data because the data if you look I I I played this chart on the podcast many times. We showed, like, the last four years, and then there was a spike. And I said, this doesn't make any sense. How did this spike happen? It's just my opinion. You don't have to have a you you can have a difference of opinion. David Sacks (00:38:37): Let me go back to the origin of the chaos in Minnesota. You don't see this happening in other states, and I just wanna point out one of the major reasons why. So in other states, you know, take your pick. When you have an illegal alien and they get arrested, they get handed over to ICE or border patrol for deportation. That's what's happening. In Minnesota, the politicians have given an instruction not to do that. So literally you have criminals, people who've been arrested. There was a case that was just posted today of an illegal alien in Minneapolis who killed an innocent mother and severely injured two others back to back in drunk driving crashes. He did not have a valid driver's license, did not have insurance. He was arrested for vehicular homicide. ICE asked him to be turned over to them, and the authorities in Minneapolis refused to do that, and they eventually released him. So that puts ICE in the position of having to go out and find these guys and arrest them. That's how all of these operations started. And you make it sound like these guys are the Gestapo and they just randomly round people up. That's not what's happening. They have arrest warrants with the names of specific people that they're going after. Jason Calacanis (00:39:52): There are arrest warrants, but there were also, Stephen Miller told them, to just go round people up at specific locations. Speaker 6 (00:39:58): There is that, honestly, think they've been trying Jason Calacanis (00:40:00): to hit numbers that they just can't possibly hit. David Sacks (00:40:02): This is have Jason Calacanis (00:40:03): to ask yourself. You have to yourself, think, Saxx. Why didn't we have this kind of violence and unmarked people breaking people's rights under Obama who did far David Sacks (00:40:14): more I'll tell why. You wanna know why? Because Obama said that we should deport. Jason Calacanis (00:40:18): Ultimately, our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship. And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11,000,000 who broke these laws should be held accountable. I'm saying he was able to do it without sending mass agents in to beat the shot at citizenship. David Sacks (00:40:43): Party changed. That's what happened. Fifteen years ago, the position No. David Friedberg (00:40:46): But why David Sacks (00:40:46): that Obama I'm Jason Calacanis (00:40:47): just talking about the police. David Sacks (00:40:48): You asked the Why Jason Calacanis (00:40:49): wasn't the police David Sacks (00:40:49): Why didn't this happen under Obama? Let me tell you the reason why Jason Calacanis (00:40:52): policing happened. David Sacks (00:40:52): Fifteen years ago, the Democrat Party was still somewhat rational in this issue, and it was basically a bipartisan position to support deportations of illegal aliens and not to have an open border. The Democrat party changed their point of view on this issue. Now That's not what I'm talking You're Jason Calacanis (00:41:08): talking about policing. David Sacks (00:41:09): Let me finish my point. Tom Homan has said over and over again, we don't wanna go out on the street. It's dangerous. They don't wanna be put in this position. ICE has an incredibly dangerous job to do. Border patrol has an incredibly dangerous job to do. By the way, the reason why they wear masks is because they're getting doxxed by these groups who are organizing with each other on signal, and they're being followed around. They're being stalked. They're being chased to their hotels. And these guys follow them around. They block their cars by interposing vehicles. They're interfering in official operations. They're interfering with the rest, and they're getting in physical altercations with them. This is very dangerous for ICE. They don't wanna be in this position. But the reason why all of this is happening is because Tim Walz and Jacob Fry and the rest of these guys, the lieutenant governor, they are saying, do not cooperate with ICE. Do not cooperate with the border patrol, telling local authorities in Minnesota, when you arrest an illegal alien, do not turn them over to ICE. It's better to release them. These people are such anti ICE zealots that they would rather release a killer onto the street than keep them in jail where they can be turned over to ICE. And that's the whole reason why they don't wanna keep them in jail is because that would create a central repository, if you will, for ICE to go collect all these illegal aliens. Last year, there was something like four seventy convicts. Okay, illegal aliens, criminals. And I'm not talking about that their crime wasn't breaking into the country. I'm talking about subsequent crimes that were released in Minnesota so they they cannot be rounded up by ICE and deported. These people are zealots, and that is the source of the problem. David Sacks (00:42:44): And then on top of that, you've got rhetoric by people like Tim Walz and the lieutenant governor calling ICE and border patrol agents who are just trying to do their jobs, the Gestapo and Nazis, and riling people up. And I think that people like Alex Pretty or Renee Goode, they're victims of this type of rhetoric. These are left wing activists who are in this left wing echo chamber, and they're marinating in all this rhetoric that's portraying law enforcement officials as Nazis, and they're imbibing this constantly to the point where they're full of rage and anger. You see that video of Alex Pretty attacking border patrol. This is two weeks before he gets killed. He's kicking the car. He's like foaming at the mouth. He's in some sort of rage. This is someone who's emotionally disturbed. And he's got a gun on his waistband, which look, every gun owner knows that you have to be exceedingly careful if you are carrying a weapon and then you are dealing with law enforcement. The last thing you wanna do is go out looking for an altercation with them, which is what he did. And by the way, I think it's completely tragic that the two of them were killed. I don't wanna see that happen. But again, they are victims of this political environment, this chaos that's being whipped up by the elected officials in Minnesota. This would not be happening if they simply turned over the illegal aliens in their custody to ICE and border patrol, which is all that they're asking for. Jason Calacanis (00:44:09): I've said on this podcast, like, many times, but none of you will respond to it. Why are they doing this instead of just fighting the business owners? Wouldn't that be a better policy? And you're in the White House. You're around these people. Why don't you tell them why don't we do that? Why don't we just give fines to business owners who hire illegals and stop the incentive to come here? David Friedberg (00:44:27): How do you know that they hired illegals? How would you know that? And if you know that, then you then you know Jason Calacanis (00:44:31): the individuals. Super simple. You would just go do a little investigation. You go to the car wash. You videotape it like any other detective or any other federal agent or a local police officer would. And then you track those people down. You very quietly go pick one or two of them up on the way home. You ask them for their papers, or you go to the owner and say, hey, we have these six people. Here's their pictures. Here's the pictures of the six people. Show us their papers. Show us their social security number. That's all you have to do, Friedberg. David Sacks (00:44:59): Here's my here's my here's my proposal. Look at J. C. You may have a point there, J. C. You may have a point, but I'm not sure that it's good enough in the case of an illegal alien who's already been in this country committing crimes. Okay? Yeah. Mean, we'll be real honest. Hold on. If you have a drunk driver who has killed people through drunk driving and they're they're captured, I think it should be turned over and deported immediately. If you want to do Jason Calacanis (00:45:20): big numbers, like big numbers, you could just go to a farm, you could go to a car wash, you could go to a restaurant, you take pictures of everybody coming in and out for their shift, you go to the business owner and say, we have these people. They can you show us their paychecks and their pay stubs? Alright. So we'll agree to disagree on some of this. And we'll agree that this is a tragedy and that we need leadership to calm these things down. And we need to agree on a very reasonable immigration policy, which is not what we have right now, in my opinion. Alright. Claude Bot has gone viral overnight. I have been Claude shotted. I have been one Claude. I am all in on this. This is an open source project created by a gentleman named Peter Steinberger. He's an Austrian developer and entrepreneur. So what is it? It's basically an open source personal assistant. Think like Siri or maybe Jarvis. Have any of you guys used it yet? Has anybody installed it yet? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:20): I did. I spent fifteen minutes, and I saved 15% of my car insurance. Jason Calacanis (00:46:25): Are you joking? You're sure. You installed it and then asked it to go You Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:27): you know what's so funny, Nick? I posted this. The number of people that didn't understand that that was a joke. Jason Calacanis (00:46:33): No. I understand it's a joke. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:34): I know you Yeah. Yeah. But there was a bunch of people that were like, really? How did you do it? Can I do it? And then some people were like, wait. Only 15%? And other people were like, wait. You set it up yourself? You didn't have somebody help you? Jason Calacanis (00:46:45): Gosh. Totally the great. This is this is literally the greatest thing ever. Have you installed it yet, Friedberg? David Friedberg (00:46:51): No. I don't wanna give Okay. An open source tool access to all my emails and Jason Calacanis (00:46:56): messaging apps. You done it yet? David Sacks (00:46:57): No, because I'm concerned about the security issues, but I want to. Perfect. I wanted to do it, but I'm concerned about the security. Jason Calacanis (00:47:02): I've spent the last seventy two hours doing this. I'm gonna explain to you what we did at the company. It's mind blowing. Okay. So it is basically think like an open source Siri or Jarvis. Right? You get into an interface and you can talk to a virtual assistant and it does things for you just like ChatGPT or XAI might. But the way it works is you kind of load a virtual machine, if you know what that is, or you can put it on your Mac mini. You run this like a server, then you will start authenticating it with your services. So Gmail, Notion, Slack, WhatsApp, maybe even your password manager, super dangerous. Nobody like Claude or XAI or Microsoft would ever allow you to do this, because it's so dangerous, obviously. But we did this and we put it to work. Here's what we did. I created a virtual podcast producer. And we made this persona and we created a new Gmail account, Sachs, a new Notion account, a new WhatsApp account, everything. We created like basically a virtual employee. We put it together. And we made it the producer for my new This Week in AI podcast. There's a little plug in there for it. So we had it start doing research on guests. So we said, hey, research this guest. Right? Just like you can do it in LLM. Then we connected it to the existing feeds, the podcast feeds and the database of, like, people we've had on the show and, like, who's booked. Then we said, make a CRM, Sax, for all potential guests and suggest other guests, and it vibe coded a CRM for itself. David Sacks (00:48:38): Can you show this? Jason Calacanis (00:48:40): I said, hey. Do some research on this. Right? So then we start a thread with it with the actual producer, Oliver, who's working on this. So I said, do this guest research. It did all this guest research. Now this is as good as, like, Nick or Lisa would do at a first pass, but it did it instantly. And then I made a prompt for it to, like and I was using this prompt, by the way, David, when we were in Davos for our guests. And so this, like, gets the company's name, the founder information, you know, look for their competitors, all the stuff that a producer would do over a day or two, do a timeline, give suggested questions, etcetera. So I teach it this. So here's producer x, and it says, got it. That's what that's a great guest research. And I said, okay. Do the guest research on this person. It comes back with that. And it gave me its media appearances, all the stuff I would wanna do for research. Then I said Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:29): But you're with it like an agent. So how is it different than an agent? Jason Calacanis (00:49:33): Watch. Okay. We're getting to it. So then I said, producer x, email Alex and let him know that I wanna have him on This Week in AI, cc me, and cc Oliver. And it says, I couldn't verify the email, but I'm gonna try this one, and it wrote this email. It sent the email. Then after it sent it David Friedberg (00:49:52): Did he Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:53): did respond? So here's Jason Calacanis (00:49:55): the email to the guest. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:56): Oh my god. Jason Calacanis (00:49:57): Hey, Alex. Jason Kallikanis wanted me to reach out. I'd love to have you on this week and AI to discuss XO Labs. Your work on distributed inference on the recent like, this is, like, little thing. Let me know if you'd be interested. So then Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:09): It's fucking crazy. He says great. Sounds great. David Friedberg (00:50:11): Guy says, sounds great. I'll be in touch. Jason Calacanis (00:50:14): Then I said, here's what I want you to do. I want you and we created a group called replicants. So now we've made five replicants at the company, and today is like replicant day or replicant week. So I told it, every time you do work for me, in the replicant room, say what you did, and then also put it on your calendar. So now it's putting on its calendar what it did in time stamps. So he said, I did some guest research here. And then yesterday, did this booking report, and then I'm doing this AI branding, that I'm doing this. That's right. And then I set up and then producer Juan had it set up a ticker because we did this email ticker and did all that work. And the crazy thing is you can start talking to it directly. So I can have a direct conversation with producer x, and it learns, and now it knows everything. So we started one to be an SDR, and then we are giving it access to our CRM there. But it built its own CRM, David. It's building its own SaaS tools to solve its problems. Every time you add it to something, it gets smarter. So now we're making a LinkedIn for this persona. The LinkedIn is going to start adding people. People don't know that these aren't humans. David Sacks (00:51:27): Yeah. It's insane. Alright. Let me give you a few thoughts. So I was paying close attention to the whole Thoughtbot freak out, you know, over the weekend. And, you know, again, I wanted to set it up really badly, but I was too afraid of the security issues to do it. But I was watching everyone else do it. And look, I think the takeaways for me are number one, that this will be the year of the rise of the personal AI assistant. Until now, AI has mainly come in the form factor of a chatbot, and it's been used as a research tool. Some people have Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:58): Search. Yeah. David Sacks (00:52:00): It's better search. There's kind of this niche case of, you know, fantasy chatbots where people actually like somehow talking to a chatbot, but really it's about better web search and it's about research. Now we're moving to a completely different form factor, which is, again, this AI assistant that's an agent that can do things for you, and it's gonna get better and better at doing different tasks for you. Everyone's gonna have this amazing AI agent. Now, you know, who is the beneficiary of this market opportunity? I mean, there's obviously gonna be some startups, like the guy who's doing Claude Bot, which I guess he renamed it. Was it Moldbot? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:34): It's called MoldBot now because Claude got upset. David Sacks (00:52:37): Right. So in any event, it's MoldBot now. But I think it's a tremendous opportunity for Google because the question is, who has your data? Google has all my email, my calendar, my documents, which is exactly the stuff that I would wanna integrate with ClaudeBot if I believed it was safe. Obviously, I've already made the determination that Google is safe because they already have all my data. So I think Google is in a tremendous position to offer a personal AI assistant that's connected with your email and calendar for those of us who are using G Suite and so on. Obviously, there'll be opportunities for other companies as well. But I think this is gonna be such a big product that it may become the dominant form factor of AI, meaning more popular than the the sort of research oriented chatbot. Speaking from the policy point of view, I think it's gonna change the policy debate around AI because so much of the policy debate over AI is about fighting the last set of battles around social media. David Friedberg (00:53:31): A question and answer modality. David Sacks (00:53:33): It's sort of treating AI as like a form of social media. I mean, I hear policymakers say all the time, what are gonna do to protect kids against predators? And it's like, well, wait, what predators are you talking about? This is not social media, right? I mean, I understand if you wanna protect kids against, I don't know, a fantasy chatbot that's recommending they do bad things, but it's just, it's very different, right? This is just a completely different modality. And I think that the rise of agents will make that clear that we're dealing with something that's not social media. Maybe there's some analogies to the previous set of policy battles that were fought over social media, but I think it's quite different. So I think Claude Bot is a breakthrough. I think it's a really interesting proof of concept, and we'll also have to see exactly who the big winners are here. David Friedberg (00:54:18): I think what's interesting is that if I said to you, hey, there's gonna be an AI personal assistant, you would have some point of view in your mind on what that means. It's like, oh, it can, you know, change my calendar, tell me about my travel, read my email for me, summarize that that kind of stuff. But what I think people don't realize, it's almost like the first time you use FSD in your Tesla or the first time you use an iPhone. You realize that it's so much more that it widens the aperture of what's possible, that it's not just the assistant in the way that you might otherwise be thinking about it, but it's like this super worker. And the super worker, like, to Jay Kal's point, it it does both scheduling, calendaring, ideation, knowledge work, creates new code, creates CRM tools It sends me travel. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:03): It does everything. David Friedberg (00:55:04): And then if you start thinking about having an army of super workers, you're like, oh my god. What's possible? And now think about what Elon's doing. Yesterday, Elon shut down the Model S and Model X production lines in Fremont. And by the way, you know, a year ago, I'd never owned a Tesla. And I was so blown away with FSD that in the last week, we bought two more Model Xs. So now everyone in my family, we're all on Tesla because the experience is so good. But they're shutting down the Model S, Model X lines to make Optimus. So if you've got the same thing that JKal is talking about and experiencing, but you've actually got it in physical form in addition to digital form, that's the future where everyone has a super workforce and you put two optimists in your garage and they build and run a business for you. And then everyone becomes an entrepreneur. What was my prediction, Jason? One of my predictions. Jason Calacanis (00:55:52): They would merge all these companies, and then this week Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:54): is happening. Jason Calacanis (00:55:55): It's happening. Yeah. Apparently, or I shouldn't say it's happening. We don't know it's happening. Maybe. But beep beep boop. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:01): Bing. Between this and my copper prediction, I'm about to retire. You know copper is up 26% in a month? Jason Calacanis (00:56:08): Oof. Hoofa. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:10): What is that as an annualized IRR? Jason Calacanis (00:56:12): This out, Sam. I we invited somebody from Kraft Ventures on, and I forgot who's from Kraft Ventures is gonna be on this week in AI. So I said, can you tell me who's doing it? And he said, oh, I couldn't find it. I said, oh, it's in the Notion database. So it goes and it found it. Oh, Mike Robinson from Kraft Ventures is on February 24. And then there's also Brian from Kraft or whatever, but he was on a different liquidity roundtable. And I said, hey. Can you email Mike? And, I wanna do a preshow call with him. Guest his email, sent it. I said, cc Heidi. I haven't given an access to my stuff. And it said, oh, do you want to get his top three times all this stuff? It's crazy what's going on here, folks. I would say out of fifty hours a producer does a week, this does forty of them. And of what an SDR does, this does ninety five percent. This is going to be crazy because it keeps learning. Now your API bill is gonna be nuts. The first day we did this, we hit like a $100. I think it's gonna be like a thousand dollars a day in API calls. So my team's like, hey, this is a lot of API calls because people are going crazy inside Slack and making all of these agents. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:20): Good news. Kimmy, 2.5. Jason Calacanis (00:57:22): Yeah. Exactly. We are ordering Mac Studios, the really powerful studios with, like, Mac's memory on, and they're putting Kimmy. Is that the new open source one? Kimmy two Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:34): Yeah. Point Jason Calacanis (00:57:34): We're putting Kimmy on them. We're gonna have free. Free for and then it according to people online, like, 95% of all these queries can be done for free with Kimi. You'll save 90%. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:46): It's crazy. It's really crazy. Jason Calacanis (00:57:48): This is independent, by the way, of whatever LLM you wanna use. You can swap out LLMs. You could route it to different LLMs. You can do whatever you want with it. I tried to have it create Reddit accounts for me. Like, I want a Reddit account to go do research, and it's like, I can't do that. It's against the term of service. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:03): I don't think people understand how important this Kimi k 2.5 moment is. David Friedberg (00:58:07): Wait. What is Kimi k two? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:08): Just to set some context. Right? So I think the last few years, we've all kinda lived in a world of what I would call black box AI, meaning you go to your favorite chatbot, basically, you put in a prompt, and you press enter. Right? And all of those things go to proprietary models, and they're excellent. OpenAI has some. Anthropic has some. Google has some. And they all give you back an answer. Super powerful. But the important thing that we don't know to care about right now is that all of that stuff is gated. What does that mean? You don't own the keys. You don't own the blueprints. You have no idea what's actually going on. And what Cloudbot demonstrated this week is you're one terms of service update away from everything breaking. Right? Because at one point, Anthropic didn't like what was going on, and they'd said, no. This is not allowed. So we've talked about this battle between open source and closed source. So all of the models that that have been winning, the black box models, are closed source models. But open source is important because it's transparent. It gives everybody their own sovereignty, whether you're a company, and frankly, really more importantly, whether you're a country. It gives you control of your own speed. It gives you a lot of execution control. You can audit the weights of the models. It allows you to host it on your own hardware. And the most important thing is the data never leaves your control. So that's why open source was really important, but it was always kind of like an underdog, and it wasn't particularly good. So this week, you wake up, you go to the office, and Kimi k 2.5 is important. So this is why it's so important because it was incredibly profound. It's a trillion parameter mixture of expert model. When you farm out work, the proprietary models keep that agentic layer kinda secret. Kimi k 2.5 was like, okay. Look. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:08): Here's this thing called agent swarm. It's a technology that we built. That's also now public. And it allows you to create all you know, a 100 sub agents. And what that allows you to do is basically solve any complicated multistep problem in parallel. So I think this is the moment now, if I had to make a prediction, I think there is the clear shot across the bow of closed source, and I think open source can win. Why? Yes. Because when KIMI k 2.5 is accessible, it democratizes something, this trillion parameter reasoning, that right now you could not otherwise get. Now you can do vision to code. You can do massive context windows. It's really unbelievable, and it's available to everybody. Jason Calacanis (01:00:55): And to just build on it, you're exactly correct. And Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:00): I think it's a very big deal. Jason Calacanis (01:01:02): You can run it. This is the other thing. What what are the two limiting factors been here? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:06): I'm not a big fan of, like, these locally hostess models. I think it's all bull janky. It's all, like, kids mucking around. David Friedberg (01:01:12): In which one? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:14): I think running these things locally are stupid and janky. Whole point of open source is to go and take them into these huge data centers, is to use next gen silicon. And we talked about this last week or the week before, where, again, post Grok, what I think will happen is you're gonna see an explosion of decode silicon. If you take these next generation systems and you marry them to open source, you're gonna cut the cost of AI by 90%. And when you do that, you know, Jason, your bill is gonna be $10 a Jason Calacanis (01:01:46): day. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:47): And you're just not gonna stop. Jason Calacanis (01:01:49): Here's the interesting thing for me. Like, back to this, like, running it. Like, there are now people who figured out how to daisy chain the Mac studios. So people are you can see there's two stack there. People are starting to stack these. This is commodity hardware running open source. The there's two advantages to this. One, we have control of all the data. We have it on our own hardware. We can run it infinitely. And these things are only getting better. The m five chips coming to these Mac studios. And if you want more power, you stack it up. And then the open source models are getting easier. So what's gonna happen is 90 or 95% of our jobs are gonna go to this local hardware. We'll control it. We don't have to worry about our information going up to Sam Allman. I canceled Speaker 7 (01:02:32): Well, you Jason Calacanis (01:02:32): know canceled all of my OpenAI accounts. $25,000 gone. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:37): It's a matter of time until the big model makers create an incremental revenue stream for guys like you, Jason, to license back all your prompt and response data. And you'll probably make enough to pay for the all the costs of hosting and running these models anyways. Jason Calacanis (01:02:52): Yeah. Anyway, I this is, like, feels like Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:55): It's a very big moment. Jason Calacanis (01:02:56): It's a big it feels like a very big moment. And then, you know, let alone if when do you think, Freeberg, we get it on here? When do we get it on our phones? When will be running Kimi? David Friedberg (01:03:07): We're not even talking about a lot of the architectural changes that are happening that we've talked about in the past. There are papers that indicate we could probably go down by 70 to a 100 x in terms of compute need in how the our the model actually runs. So, yeah, ultimately, these things end up on the on the iPhone running locally, and you don't need to to the cloud. By the way, just having our nation's AIs are on the line here, I think this has a dramatic effect if you play all of these paths out on the way a lot of these states have written their idiotic legislation where those, those legislative approaches encompass strictly the view of AI being a chatbot interface run by a single company running a model in a data center. And if all of the models end up running locally on machines in open source, different context, different use cases, all of like we said from the beginning, all of the bull idiotic dumbass takes by legislators on what they think they need to regulate and how go out the window, or they create a lot of confusion on what's actually going on in the real world, and it puts us at risk. I strongly endorse the effort by those in the administration to pass a federal AI preemption law that avoids all of this nonsense in the states and the local governments. And I think that this evolution of AI from being centrally hosted in data centers by closed models through chatbot interfaces, all of those layers break. You start to recognize very quickly why you need to have federal preemption on this stuff because people get way too ahead of it and it's gonna limit innovation. David Sacks (01:04:35): Yeah. Did you see that? Well, obviously, I agree I agree with that. And again, just to build on that point, you can't underestimate how much the policy debate in Washington has indexed on a single use case. David Friedberg (01:04:49): That's what I'm saying. David Sacks (01:04:49): Which was a niche fantasy chatbot application. Jason Calacanis (01:04:54): Right. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:04:55): That's all that people know. Yeah. That's all they know. David Sacks (01:04:57): That turned into horror stories. I mean, legit horror stories. But, again, that is just not the predominant use of AI, and it's certainly not gonna be in a year. David Friedberg (01:05:05): One way to think about it is imagine if the Internet came out and the only thing that happened on the Internet for the first three years was like pornography websites and like, just like, and then people are like, okay, we gotta regulate the internet. And it's like, hold on a second. This is an idiotic use case. Perhaps we should take a zoom out and think about what the internet could enable and all of the other use cases. And legislation needs to be crafted with a bigger view. And perhaps it's a little too early to make those judgment calls. Jason Calacanis (01:05:32): Yeah. You gotta wonder what impact this is gonna have on the valuations of these companies. I mean, if you can run this stuff locally on your own hardware, you can rack it or put it in a virtual machine and open source wins, it's gonna change the economics of everything. And the people I'm talking to in startups, which is where you always see the most efficient use of technology, they're all using Kimi and what was the other one? David Sacks (01:05:56): You a question about that, actually, Chamath. So Kimi k two, powerful model, but it is a Chinese model, or at least it originates in China. Obviously, once it's open source, people can fork it and make their own. But does that concern you particularly around the use case of coding? Because what if there was a secret prompt in Jason Calacanis (01:06:17): the day attack or something. David Sacks (01:06:19): Well, it's like something built into the model that's secret that could inject corrupted code. And, you know, so much code's now being written by these models in such volume that, I mean, humans in the beginning were checking it all, but now even the founder of QuadBot said he doesn't even check all the code because he can't personally supervise all of it. So as AI coding becomes a bigger and bigger percentage, right now it's probably what, like 50%. As it goes to 99%, no one's even checking it. You have to really worry about your prompt injections Exactly. Or quote code injections. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:49): I think you're bringing up an important point. Right now, we overly rely on evals to tell us how good a model is. And I don't think we've developed a standard to I mean, the the big model companies do it internally, but the safety teams who are responsible for red teaming these models don't really work as a broad coalition. Everybody has their own version of what they do to make sure that their own models are good and performing. I think that there's an opportunity because somebody has to be able to take an open source model. Let's just say you're France, and you're like, wow. Where am I in this whole AI race? I'm nowhere. We have a bunch of applications that we want to develop, and we need our own sovereign AI stack. And so okay. We'll take Kimi k 2.5. What do they do, to your point, Sax, to get complete assurance that that model is reliable and safe under all weather conditions? Honestly, the answer is I don't know what they would do right now. But that's the opportunity because somebody has to be able to say, okay. Look. We're gonna sandbox it in the following way. We're gonna run it under all these race conditions. We're gonna get to all these corner cases so that we can tell you that it's actually good to go, and then you can use it. But how long will that take? And then by that time, are we on Kimi k three? And then what is France supposed to do? I don't know. So these are complicated questions. But, yeah, we do need an entire reimagining of how you red team some of these open source models, obviously. Jason Calacanis (01:08:19): And there's open source models being made here in The US too, by the way. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:23): Exactly. No. No. Meta's doing them so Wherever it comes from. David Sacks (01:08:26): You're gonna need AI models to look for corrupted code and to do the security evals that you're talking about, and there's gonna have to be continuous monitoring. The good thing about open source is that when one person discovers a bug or a flaw or whatever, they share it with the community, and then it gets patched globally. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:42): The other problem with open source, though, right now is you can't really fork it and make it your own. Why? Because there's so much investment by Moonshot. It's the company that makes Kimi k two in that example. That you'll have so much drift in one version, your fork will be worthless. So why would you do it? So, again, it goes back to Saks. We have to be able to say, okay. Moonshot will provide Kimi k two and every update thereafter, but now we need to stress test it, and we need to red team it, and we need to be able to say that this thing is bulletproof. And right now, there is no clean way of going to a third party vendor to do that in a quick reliable cycle, and that's a business opportunity for somebody. David Sacks (01:09:19): All right, so I wanna get to Just being a business opportunity, I think there are a number of American AI companies that are working on open source models. It is a gap that we have. David Friedberg (01:09:28): Yeah. David Sacks (01:09:28): So and that is an opportunity. I mean, look, if you're running critical infrastructure, I don't think you wanna be using a Chinese model, period, on that critical infrastructure. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:38): I think if you can get it validated by an American company that's trustworthy, then it's no longer really a Chinese model. Chinese contributed some really great ideas, and now there's a branch that you can use. I think it's just hard to ignore how good this stuff is now. Jason Calacanis (01:09:51): It feels like this was a turning point this week. Okay. I wanna get to one more important story. The dollar has dropped as gold and silver and copper have ripped. Dollar index is down 10% in the last year, hit its lowest level in four years on Tuesday. Trump was asked if the dollar declined too much, his quote. No. I think it's great. Wall Street thinks Trump wants a weaker dollar to boost US manufacturing and exports. Obviously, if we have a weaker dollar, that means the stuff from The US is cheaper. Foreign stuff becomes more expensive. And we have a situation here, Friedberg, that you've talked about. Money printing has increased to $2,500,000,000,000 a year. Trump wants to print an additional 500,000,000,000 more. That would bring us close to 3,000,000,000,000 for the military. And, money has poured into gold and silver, which have way outperformed the S and P. Shout out Vinny Lingam. Friedberg, your thoughts on dollar devaluation and what we're seeing. David Friedberg (01:10:51): Yeah. So people talk about the market going up, but I'll use an analogy. If you live on an island and there's two huts on the island and there's a bunch of shells that people are using for trade, each house is gonna be worth a certain number of shells. And then if people went and found a whole bunch of more shells, the price per house would go up in number of shells. But there's just more shells in in the supply, and effectively, you've inflated everything. And that's effectively what's gone on with The US fiscal condition. We've talked about this many times, but I think it's always worth a rehash. In a democracy like we have for the past two hundred and fifty years without adequate constitutional constraints, it has always been the case that over time spending goes up government spending goes up. And this is because in a democracy, people ask for their government to do more every year. And as they ask for their government to do more every year, the government agents who are elected say, okay. Here you go. And they spend more. And, eventually, when the borrowing capacity gets unlocked, which is what happened in The United States, when we went off the gold standard, you borrow like crazy. You print money to to fund those borrowing costs, and you use that fundamentally to drive the next voting cycle, which is to give people more and more of what they want. But eventually, the bill comes to you. And in The United States, the bill is coming to you. Let's start by looking at the money supply chart. This is the m two money supply chart showing the rapid rise in dollars in supply as a function of the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve, making loans to banks ultimately to fund federal spending. I mean, really an extraordinary number. And if you look at the m two money supply chart going back to 1960, 1955, And you can see post COVID, we were hoping that we would have resolved and sort of reduced the money supply by some amount. David Friedberg (01:12:34): But COVID really created this accelerating mechanism, and, you know, we're back on track in the last couple of years to increasing the money supply. And so over time, the the US dollar gets devalued as there are simply more dollars in the market and US treasuries gets challenged. So if we take a look here, around the world, central banks have decided that they no longer wanna hold US treasuries. And so this is the value of gold versus treasuries in central banks in their inventory. So we are now seeing that for the first time in history or Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:06): in Hold on. No. Hold on. That's not accurate. That's not accurate. It's not like they're selling. This line just shows it's stable per se. Right? It's more that the incremental buying is in real assets. David Friedberg (01:13:14): Yeah. But this dollar the dollar value is also adjusted. So, fundamentally, I mean, one way to think about this is the relative value of central bank holdings around the world. We now see gold eclipsing US treasury. So now gold is a larger share of the holdings. Yeah. So now gold is the largest share of the the holdings of central banks. If you look at the next chart, which is just over the past year, as Jay Kal pointed out, this is the dollar index. So it's the dollar against a basket of foreign currencies has declined, you know, from a index of about, call it, one zero nine down to 96 today. This chart actually looks at so what is The US stock market trading at? And instead of trading it in US dollars, what if you just look at The US stock market, the total value in ounces of gold? And so if we had the gold standard still and if we functionally converted stock market value from dollars back into gold, You can see that the stock markets in The United States over the past years, so this is about seven and a half years going back to the pre COVID era, is actually down, down pretty substantively from the pre COVID era. So stock markets are fundamentally down. Everyone's cheering, clapping, bouncing up and down. Stock markets are up. Stock markets are up. And I'm gonna tell you why this is important in a minute. And everyone's jumping up and down saying, great, the stock market's up. The stock market's up in dollar denominated terms. But if you look at the stock market relative to gold, it's actually down. And the sell off is not just in the stock market relative to gold, but you can actually look importantly at the metric that we all should care the most about, which is US treasury yield. So this is the thirty year. So the thirty year yield is now at 4.9%. The average US government's cost to borrow today is 3.3%. So if we end up needing to roll all of the US government debt, assuming we take on no new debt, which we know is not the case, $39,000,000,000,000 of debt outstanding, the federal government level today, and it had to get refinanced at this rate, we would have an incremental annual cost to service the debt, just the interest on the existing debt of roughly $700,000,000,000 a year. David Friedberg (01:15:19): Incremental cost to service existing debt as interest rates climb from 3.3 to 5%. And so fundamentally, this is about 70% of the current defense budget. It's about 10% of the overall federal budget. It's a significant percentage of US GDP, about 3% of US GDP. It's a substantial number, and it creates the spiraling problem that we're in. Now I just wanna make one final point. So this is de dollarization moment. It's always worth having a reflection on it, but I just wanna tie it back to Minnesota, Donald Trump, and socialism. And I think it's important for us to just highlight that if you own assets like we do, the four of us, we own stocks, we own real estate, we own other assets. As the dollar devalues and everything inflates in value, our asset prices go up and we get wealthier and wealthier and wealthier. The majority of Americans do not own assets. They are net asset negative. As a result, they live off of income and they do not benefit from the de dollarization like asset holders do. And this is what is ultimately fueling populism in The United States. And the populism in The United States is what is driving socialism, and the response to those behaviors is what Donald Donald Trump elected to some degree. And the response to the Donald Trump actions is what's driving the civil unrest in Minnesota and other places. And I fundamentally believe that much of the unrest, the civil unrest, and ultimately this divide in this country is driven by the fact that de dollarization because of excess government spending ultimately leads a majority of people in this country to feeling oppressed and left behind because they're seeing a few people in the country accelerate their net worth, like all of us here, and there's no way for them to catch up because they don't actually own assets. So I'll be I'll I'll be honest with you guys and make a confession. I was kind of at I was at the gym this morning on the treadmill. Jason Calacanis (01:17:23): You were at the gym? David Friedberg (01:17:25): Yeah. And while I was there, I was actually thinking about the wealth tax stuff that's going on in California. And I I wonder if it may be an inevitability in order to keep The United States from going into civil war. I mean that very wholeheartedly. Like, I just don't know if there's a way of solving this fiscal problem without a functional redistribution of wealth. And the question is, can you do it violently or non violently? And if there's a non violent path, I think that's probably the preferable path. Jason Calacanis (01:17:53): You ever violently think picking up some of those weights? David Friedberg (01:17:58): We can leave that in or take it out. David Sacks (01:17:59): The problem with that is, look, you know where this California wealth tax is going. Right? It's not going to the quote unquote people. It's going to these special interests who've been losing state for decades. Jason Calacanis (01:18:11): Audit everything before you raise taxes. It's very simple, folks. Audit everything. David Sacks (01:18:16): I mean, if the money's going to waste, fraud, and abuse and special interests, then how do you solve the divide problem? I mean, I guess the ones that the special interests are capable of organizing are able to extract, but doesn't actually solve the problem. In fact, everything gets worse because Yeah. Those government special interests generally rig the system in their favor in a way that actually raises the cost for everybody. Even in California, everything's performing worse. Jason Calacanis (01:18:42): Can we pour one out for David Freiberg's favorite government program? Yes. Free beer. David Friedberg (01:18:50): Free beer. Free beer. Homeless. Jason Calacanis (01:18:51): For 55 homeless people suffering from the shakes, and they spent $6,000,000 on it. But it's over David Friedberg (01:18:58): 6,000,000 a year. Jason Calacanis (01:19:00): 6,000,000 a year for 60 bo hobos to get beer because they had the shakes. The dream is over. The dream is over, Friedberg. No more free beer. David Friedberg (01:19:09): By the way, I think Sax's point is the right point, which is the resolution to this isn't a fair and reasonable redistribution of assets. It's fundamentally a moment of extraordinary theft when there's this massive movement of capital like this through a centralized system like the government. There's no free market transition of capital. And as a result, you end up most seeing a large percentage of it go into into theft. That can do in the hands of a few who are really good at capturing that money as it comes out of the government's coffers. That's a good point. David Sacks (01:19:39): You've diagnosed this many times. I mean, look, Texas and Florida do a better job for their population, collecting half as much in taxes per capita as California does and having no income tax or capital gains tax. Jason Calacanis (01:19:55): That's because if you commit fraud here, we put you in a firing squad. That's how it works. Right to the firing squad. We're gonna go to the range. Let's go to the come by, Sachs. Come by the range. I have a shooting range here. See that David Friedberg (01:20:06): Matt Mahan entered the California gubernatorial race? He's running for governor? He's running Jason Calacanis (01:20:11): for Yeah. Yeah. What does it mean? Who is he? Explain to the audience why this is important. Well, he's the mayor Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:17): of San Jose. Jason Calacanis (01:20:18): Are on fire. David Friedberg (01:20:19): Yeah. He's much more of a moderate, and he's not a union captured candidate. Jason Calacanis (01:20:24): Oh, here's your polymarket. David Friedberg (01:20:25): Yeah. Here's polymarket. So Matt Mahan announced this morning, very late entry to the gubernatorial race. Katie Porter is kind of the, you know, the output of the democratic machine. Tom Steyer is the billionaire climate change advocate. But Swalwell, you know, the congressman from the East Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:42): Hasn't met a virtue he doesn't wanna signal. Jason Calacanis (01:20:46): He's literally like Christmas Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:48): lights blinking. Tom Steyer. David Sacks (01:20:50): Well, look. If if if Mahan that is the right way to pronounce his name? David Friedberg (01:20:53): Yeah. Matt Mahan. David Sacks (01:20:54): Yeah. Matt Mahan. California has a jungle primary. Right? So everyone's running at the same time. David Friedberg (01:20:58): That's right. David Sacks (01:20:59): There's no separate lanes for Democrats or Republicans. If he ends up top two, let's say it's him and Swalwell, I think he'll win because all the Republicans will vote for him. They'll go for the more centrist candidate. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:11): We had a political strategist over for dinner. There's a version where the top two people could be both Republicans actually right now. Kurt Corse and Speed, the top two vote getters are trending to be both Republican candidates. David Sacks (01:21:21): Don't think that all last long. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:22): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:21:22): I like the Karen. The Karen's the most entertained. She's the one who said, get out of my shot. That's the one. David Friedberg (01:21:27): Katie Porter. Jason Calacanis (01:21:28): The get out of my shot one? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:29): Yeah. She's tumbling. She's tumbling. David Friedberg (01:21:30): Yeah. She's not doing well. She's coming down in the she's not likable, and she seems and I think everyone sees right through her as being, you know, effectively captured by California institutions. But Mahan and Swalwell, much more independent, but I think it's gonna be a battle between the two of them. David Sacks (01:21:47): Just to go back to your point, Jamal. So what's interesting is there are two Republicans running for governor of California, Chad Bianco, who's a sheriff, and then Steve Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:56): Steve Hilton. David Sacks (01:21:57): Who's a political commentator, used to be on Fox News. They're both at about 15%, which actually puts them in the lead or close to the lead because the field's so fragmented right now. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:06): Exactly. David Sacks (01:22:07): The problem that they have so I Speaker 6 (01:22:08): guess if the field David Sacks (01:22:09): stayed permanently fragmented, yes, they could be in the But Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:13): could you imagine the melting mines? David Sacks (01:22:15): Yeah. But that's not gonna happen as much as I would like it to because the democratic field's gonna coalesce. And if it doesn't coalesce, the the party machine will get together and they'll tell a bunch of people to drop out and get real. Jason Calacanis (01:22:27): They'll shift it. David Sacks (01:22:28): And they'll they'll basically shift it. So the problem with the Republicans is and it actually would be better if there was one Republican instead of two because then they'd be at, 30%. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:37): Right. David Sacks (01:22:37): But, you know, they're each gonna get 15%. They they have more of a ceiling is what I'm trying to say. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:42): Yeah. That's true. That is true. David Friedberg (01:22:43): It's only the final two that make it into the general. So if the rest of the Dems literally stay equal and there's five Dems that are at, like, five to 10% each, you could end up seeing the two Republicans in the top two spots. David Sacks (01:22:54): I don't think it's gonna happen. I don't think you're gonna end up with five Dems at Yeah. At 10%. I think what could happen, though, actually, is it's probably better that you have two Republicans rather than one because the disaster would be let's say you end up with Swalwell and one of the Republicans in the runoff, then Swalwell definitely wins. That's what always happens, right? David Friedberg (01:23:14): The David Sacks (01:23:16): best chance for Matt Mahan is that it's him versus either a Democrat or a Republican actually. And then if he's up against a Democrat, a more liberal Democrat like Swalwell, the Republicans will support Mahan and he'll win. If he's up against a Republican, then he'll also win because all the Democrats will support him. And remember, this is like a plus 20 or 30 blue state. David Friedberg (01:23:36): So And by the way, he is such a good guy. He's been such an effective mayor of San Jose. You know, he cleared up homelessness. I mean, his policy his actual work running something stands out amongst the rest of these folks. So I think he's got a real shot, Saxe, at moving up real fast, even though he's coming up. David Sacks (01:23:52): Well, yeah, look, if he plays his cards right, he could win. I mean, look, I think there is a path here for a California restoration. You get someone like Matt Mahan as governor. Maybe Rick Russo takes another shot running for a mayor in LA. Think everyone recognizes Rick's David Friedberg (01:24:07): in the game. David Sacks (01:24:08): I think everyone recognizes that Karen Bass has been a disaster. She, you know, aided and abetted the burning down of the Palisades. And then if you defeat the wealth tax so that power the- the Jason Calacanis (01:24:19): lease take over David Sacks (01:24:20): the rebuild? Have a path. Jason Calacanis (01:24:21): Did Trump still go over the rebuild in Pacific Palisades with an executive order? Did I see that in my feet? David Sacks (01:24:27): Yeah. Well, you know, there's been a very small number of permits granted. I mean, how long has it been? Like, eighteen months now? Jason Calacanis (01:24:33): Some retarded. David Friedberg (01:24:34): Wait. So, Saxe, would you move back if there was a great restoration in California? David Sacks (01:24:41): I feel like somehow it's just not gonna happen. You know? Yeah. It's like Jason Calacanis (01:24:44): It's it's over. Not in our lifetime. David Sacks (01:24:46): I feel like the fact that you're telling me that Matt Mahan is this great candidate and, you know, the whole tech world's gonna get behind him, I'm sure that's true. And then somehow I think it's the reason he's gonna lose. And I think, you know, we'll end up with Swallow. Well, I David Friedberg (01:24:59): think You're so jaded, Saxon. David Sacks (01:25:01): I think that somehow Swallow is considered to be kind of a lightweight and a pretty dim bulb. Friend of Jason Calacanis (01:25:11): hot Eric Swallow. Come back anytime. David Friedberg (01:25:13): Who interviewed him with me? Jamal, was that you? Did you interview him with me? Jason Calacanis (01:25:17): Yeah. I did. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:25:19): Yeah. You did. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. David Sacks (01:25:20): Yeah. I mean, just manifestly not up to the challenges that are Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:24): gonna Manifestly. David Sacks (01:25:25): Set California in the coming years. You need someone really stellar to clean things up after the fiscal insanity of the newsome years. David Friedberg (01:25:33): Well, look, I'll restate this on the show very clearly. California has a trillion dollar fiscal cliff coming up because of the pension obligations. I don't know if you guys know this. I'll make this one point, very important to know. They once tried to change the benefits, the pension benefits, and they lost a court case. And so there's precedent in California state court that you cannot change pension benefits on the date that someone was hired. You can never change their future benefits. Really important to know. So all of the benefits that have been given to every California public employee up to this day or that they've been promised, they are promised for life, and you're not allowed to take them out, and they cannot be disposed of except for some form of bankruptcy. And there is no mechanism by which the state can declare bankruptcy. So fundamentally and functionally, there are two ways that California can be saved. Number one, you pass an amendment to the constitution to fix this pension liability problem. And number two is the state has the ability to declare bankruptcy. Everything else is all about how long are you keeping the state alive for. David Sacks (01:26:34): Well, I I I support that that change to bankruptcy law. I just think it'll be hard to get, but, you know, we could try. And look, if you had a governor of California come to the federal government and say, we would like this, then there's a much higher chance of it happening. Actually, I think one question I think one question for you to ask in evaluating this is what does Gavin Newsom want? Because obviously he's running for president in 2028. You know, who would he like to replace him as governor? You know, and obviously he doesn't want a Republican because that'd be a rebuke. You know, does he want Swalwell? Does he want someone who will appear even weaker and stupider than him? Or does he want someone like Mahan who will be appearing to clean up the state? I think he might want the idiot. Although it's a it's a Speaker 6 (01:27:21): tough it's a tough Jason Calacanis (01:27:22): Go with choice irony. For She'll just scream. I Speaker 6 (01:27:24): like here's the thing is he also doesn't want the David Sacks (01:27:26): state to fall apart while he's running president because he might be blamed for that too. Jason Calacanis (01:27:29): Fair enough. David Sacks (01:27:30): So does he want someone like Compton, like Mahon who's criticized him? Because Mahon has criticized Newsom on things like homelessness. Right? Gavin has super thin skin. David Friedberg (01:27:40): They can get past that. David Sacks (01:27:41): I don't know. Gavin has super thin skin, so I'm sure he resents that. So probably the machine gets behind Swalwell, even though it probably means a train wreck for the state. But we'll see. Jason Calacanis (01:27:51): Yeah. That doesn't seem like a good idea. Yeah. I think he would want Karen David Sacks (01:27:56): This is a big opportunity for tech to flex his political muscles to see. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:27:59): Let's see. David Friedberg (01:28:00): Let's see David Sacks (01:28:00): if it can do it. Let's see if David Friedberg (01:28:02): they Good can do It's not just tech. It's anyone that doesn't want an establishment governor, and I think that includes Hollywood. It includes agriculture. It includes large swaths of the state's economy. So let's see what happens. Jason Calacanis (01:28:12): Alright, everybody. The All event series continues. All In Summit Los Angeles, September. Tickets are now taking applications, so join us in September. And if you are a venture capitalist, LP in funds, sovereign wealth fund, endowment, we're gonna be having our first all in liquidity event, May 31 to June 3. Go to allin.com/events to apply for a ticket to liquidity as well. And we'll see you all next time on the world's greatest podcast, the all in podcast. Go ahead and subscribe to our 1,000,000 subscriber channel on YouTube. That's right. YouTube just broke 1,000,000. Alright. Love you, besties. Bye bye. Bye Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:01): bye. Love you, boys. Jason Calacanis (01:29:34): We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just useless. It's like it's like sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.