现代冷战、疫情政治化与远程办公的未来

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): everybody. Welcome to the all in podcast with Jason Calacanis and Chamath Palihapitiya. We regrowed this podcast well. On a on a really unique schedule, Shamath, what's our schedule right now when we feel like it? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:11): Basically, it is whenever our significant others get so sick of us that they kick us off and say don't come back. Jason Calacanis (00:00:17): Yeah. We get thrown to the pool house. We We decide to pop up the podcast. You're in Atherton. I am in the city in San Francisco. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:25): Thank you, Duke of discretion. Is there anything else you'd like to detail Jason Calacanis (00:00:29): Okay. By address, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:30): by gate code. Jason Calacanis (00:00:31): A gate code out off the fence. You know, we had 2 gas on that people just went absolutely crazy for. The 2 -- But Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:40): they weren't available. So -- So we're just gonna Jason Calacanis (00:00:42): talk shit about them. No. We have 2 amazing Davids in our lives. David Friedberg and David Sachs. And they are super smart, super effective at their work. Everything we're not, Jamath. so we thought we'd bring him back on the podcast, and we'll do a little round table here and talk about life in the age of Corona. So welcome back to the podcast, David Sachs. David Sacks (00:01:04): Yeah. Good to good feedback with you. Jason Calacanis (00:01:06): And also, David Friedberg. David Friedberg (00:01:08): Thank you, guys. Happy to be here. Jason Calacanis (00:01:11): Alright. Fantastic. So just wanna start off with our quar check. How is everybody doing in this quarantine? How's everybody's mental health? Let's start with you, Saks. David Sacks (00:01:22): Well, as you might be able to see, we've moved our our bunker to undisclosed Mexican location. you know, and it's been great. You know, we you know, I think it's really kinda sad because where we're at is is a tourist city that would normally be at peak season and it's just deserted right now. All the construction stopped. Normally, you see lots of you know, hotels and houses being built and that's all stopped and there's no tourists. So it's all just kinda cleared out, but I think it's quite safe. You know, every worker that I've seen here since we landed at the airport to you know, got transported to to this community we're at. I mean, has been wearing a mask, much more consistent than I think in the US. And, you know, I think it's been it's been fine. Jason Calacanis (00:02:18): Now, of course, you founded the Craft Venture Capital Firm, and people know before that, you obviously did Yammer and sold that to Microsoft for a $1,000,000,000 plus. And before that, you are the COO at PayPal. What's going on with your business? Are you actively investing? And how is your firm running remote? David Sacks (00:02:40): It's it's it's worked very well. I mean, we've always been super collaborative as a firm, we were always on we were already on Zoom, and we were you know, we share everything on Yammer. And so for us, just moving to Zoom wasn't that difficult. We've done 4 or 5 deals, I think, since the whole kinda quarantine started, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:01): I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Did you did you say that you actually use Yammer now in 2020? We're David Sacks (00:03:06): still using it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:07): Oh my god. Jason Calacanis (00:03:08): Is Yammer still available? That's insane. David Sacks (00:03:11): That's insane. I mean, it's kinda gotten a little bit buried inside of Microsoft, but you can certainly still get it. And, no, we love it. I mean, the the whole firm kinda works works in the armor, and it worked very well for us. Jason Calacanis (00:03:23): And now what's gonna happen with this incredible office that you have, this beautiful office you have in San Francisco and commercial real estate now that are you gonna come back to work? We saw Twitter and Square the Jack collection of companies. They're not gonna come back to their offices. They're work from home primarily going forward. What are you gonna do? David Sacks (00:03:41): Well, it'll be a great asset for us in the year 2025 or something like that. No. I mean, we we will eventually go back to work there. I think that the team still likes having an office. I think, you know, the idea that everyone wants to work out of, like, a small room and, you know, extra room in their house, I think, is probably Getting is probably a little overrated. I think people would like to get back to the office. But do we have to have one? No. I mean, I think we've proven that we can do our jobs via Zoom. And, you know, we've done a lot of we we've done like I said, we've done Jason Calacanis (00:04:15): 4 David Sacks (00:04:15): or 5 deals since it started where We haven't met with the entrepreneur in person. You know, it's all been done via Zoom. And it's worked it's worked great. Jason Calacanis (00:04:23): Alright, Chamath. How are you doing? What how's what's your mental health like? I, you know, I get to see you once in a while on CNBC throwing bombs. But how are you doing? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:35): I was really excited for phase 2 of the shelter in place to start here in San Mateo County. So that's been really good. A new poker table that I had built arrived today which I'll be installing after this. And what I mean by I'll be installing Jason Calacanis (00:04:56): -- You'll be supervising? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:58): I'll be supervising. Jason Calacanis (00:04:59): You can be watching as people do rumble David Friedberg (00:05:01): watching. And Jason Calacanis (00:05:02): -- David Friedberg (00:05:03): It's a beautiful table. Jason Calacanis (00:05:03): I saw the pictures of it. Does it have an infinity edge? Is it an infinity edge Over the table? David Friedberg (00:05:08): No. No. No. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:08): But I'll I'll send you a picture when it's all done, but it it just looks stunning. And I really wanna try to organize a game soon so that I can get you guys back into the into my little cave here. Jason Calacanis (00:05:20): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:21): I am ready for this shelter in place to end. I'll just be honest. And I think that my sentiments are the sentiments of a lot of people. It's it's really tough. Really, really tough. I I'm I'm losing all my motivation to be, but else? Jason Calacanis (00:05:35): It is weird to not see people even and you're an extrovert, David. You're an introvert. And then David Friedberg, also on the line. David, how are you handling all of this? David Friedberg (00:05:47): I'm fine. I think one of the things that made a huge difference for me is the creating a rhythm in the day because there isn't one when you kind of normally get up and you go to work, and then you come home at the end of the day from work. that's a rhythm, and you're you kinda get kind of adjusted to it. So not having that, a lot of people I've been hearing are struggling with that. I was certainly struggling with it having sleep issues and I sit on about a dozen boards, some of which are small companies, some of which have a couple 100 employees, and I've been hearing pretty consistently mental health issues across all the companies. And I think it's just been really grating on people. I think it number 1 kind of says we probably do need to be together and have social space, as David said, like being in the same office, people really miss that, and you get a lot of value from that. And I've been getting up every day in the last couple of weeks and going off-site, going out of my house to go work. We're actually working on another place that I have, like, little office there, and I go kinda work there. And so that's made a huge impact, honestly, on my mental health being able to do that every day. So Just doing that has been been helpful. I I not everyone has that privilege, but I think it speaks a lot to why we're gonna need to go back to offices when this is all done. Jason Calacanis (00:06:57): And what do you think about what what's happening with your businesses? Obviously, you're running a a startup studio, I guess, would be one way to describe it where you create companies and then spin them out. what's been the business interruption, if any? David Friedberg (00:07:09): We have a couple of hardware and lab companies. That's most of what we've done, and so those operations are paused. that's been really frustrating. The teams have all found ways to adjust and work from home. So our companies are not predominantly software based. There's a lot of software, but it's not predominantly software, so it's been difficult on those scientists and engineers that work in a lab or in a physical environment that they have to go to to do their work. The larger companies, we have a number of food businesses that happen to be in the food supply chain one way or another. Frankly, those businesses are doing fantastically well, and there's been just this incredible success in the era of COVID on kind of a focus on fundamentals like food, supply chain efficiency, availability of things that people need And we were doing a lot in human health, and we've kind of benefited from that. So, yeah, I think there's kind of a mix for us that I think every business is bifurcated one way or another during this kind of moment of punctuated equilibrium. Jason Calacanis (00:08:04): Yeah. I think one thing I'd like to sort of talk about is we've had you both on the podcast early on at the start of the pandemic. And I'm curious, Chamath, now that we're here over 2 months in quarantine, sheltering in place, a lot of information, a lot of cards have turned over here. Right? We've seen the flop, I think. We haven't seen the the turn in the river, so to speak. What is your assessment of what we were talking about, you know, a month or 2 ago and what we thought about this and what's become reality and what hasn't? What are you more optimistic about? What are you more pessimistic about? Chamath, we'll start with you. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:39): I think that we will have this pandemic or this disease well in hand within 2 years. And so whether it's a combination of a therapeutic and a vaccine or just a therapeutic, I just think that we're gonna kick its ass. And so that's made me more optimistic. I think that the thing that's made me more pessimistic though is the return to normalcy has been sort of cut on political lines. And it's been so massively politicized. I mean, when David talks about the fact that, you know, you can go to a developing country. like Mexico. And all of a sudden, you know, everybody can get around the idea of masks. It's because that there's a level of common sense there that Trump's politics and in the United States that just isn't the case. And so what you're seeing in in this crazy way, I think, is sort of the center left and the left, probably sticking very firmly to the ideology of sheltering in place and a lockdown probably on the sort of hope that it gets Trump out of office. And on the other side, sort of the red states I think I basically said, hey. I would rather get sick from coronavirus and take my chances than the 100% chance of failure have in my professional life if you leave me at home for another week or month or what have you. So that's been a a huge disappointment of of how political this whole thing has got Jason Calacanis (00:10:13): And and Saks, you've been talking about, like, common sense procedures. Sort of same question to you. What you first thought you had been talking about you thought an l shaped recovery, so we'll get into also the economy here. But in terms of the disease, what did you think 2 months ago that you don't think now? And what do you think? Yeah. David Sacks (00:10:34): Well, in preparation for this, kinda went through my Twitter feed to see what what I was saying the last time I was on the pod and how well it was holding up. And 2 months ago today, I tweeted that the pandemic that underreaction caused the pandemic and overreaction will cause the depression. And I think that's kind of where we are right now. We still have this pandemic with us, but now we're also potentially facing I think, a potential depression because of the way we're we're overreacting. We're still in lockdowns in you know, huge swaths of the of the country, and no no one can quite understand why. I mean, the original reason for the lockdowns was to bias time so that the hospitals wouldn't become overwhelmed like Italy. Well, nowhere in the country do the hospitals get overwhelmed, and we're still in these lockdowns. And And so, you know, I I I think that it's it's long overdue for for it to end. Now at the same time, where I agree with Tremont that this whole thing has become politicized where, you know, the the people who generally wanna get us out of lockdowns don't believe in doing anything. You know? They're not even you know, a lot of them aren't even willing to wear masks, which I think is just kind of insane. So, you know, where where I come out on this thing is that I think we should end lockdowns but wear masks, and it's very hard to find anybody you know, in the in the political spectrum who who agrees with that because, you know, one side wants to keep lockdowns going indefinitely and the other doesn't wanna store mass. Jason Calacanis (00:12:09): And it makes no logical sense, obviously. And if you think about our political system, the left is so far left that the moderates on the left side don't have a place to live anymore. And then on the right, the conservatives, which I would put you in, the group of who were, you know, looking for fiscal conservant conservatives, they don't have a home anymore either. And so the most reasonable approach is clearly to start going back to work for people who are not at risk and who wear a mask. David Sacks (00:12:41): Yeah. I think I think there's been since the last pod that we did together, I think there's been 3 kind of major discoveries or sets of facts that have come out about the virus. Number Jason Calacanis (00:12:52): 1, David Sacks (00:12:54): the official fatality rate has been over which is about 6 set. You know, it's a very high fatality rate. It's very scary. But we now know that that's overstated by probably at least 10 x because it doesn't take into account all the asymptomatic cases or mild cases. that just never got tested. Jason Calacanis (00:13:15): And this is the fatality rate of people who contracted the virus. David Sacks (00:13:18): Right. As a yes. Exactly. As opposed to people whose case the the the problem with the it it's kind of a debate between the the IFR versus the CFR, the infection fatality rate versus the case fatality rate. The the problem with kind of the official CFR numbers is that only the people who got really sick or even ever got tested. And, you know, Friedberg was the earliest person I know to start talking about the need for wide scale population testing in these blood serology tests and other kinds of tests to establish what the real baseline is. But regardless of, like and there's been a whole bunch of different tests with different results. You know, we don't know exactly what the true iFR is to this day, but we do know it's probably closer to half a percent than to 5%. So that's sort of discovery number 1. I think discovery number 2 is and we knew a little bit we saw a little bit of this from the Wuhan data, but now it's really clear. that which populations are at risk, and it's you know, the the data seems to suggest that people under 60 who are healthy don't have sort of preexisting conditions are fifty times less likely to develop or or there's a 50 x greater chance for those over Jason Calacanis (00:14:36): 60 David Sacks (00:14:37): in terms of of the of, you know, having a really bad outcome. And so for people who are under 60 who don't have these preexisting conditions, it's, you know, it's just not yes. There's always, you know, examples to the contrary, but it's not this this sort of gigantic risk. And so for 2 thirds of the population, they don't have a huge risk and we're still locking them down. I think the third thing the third study not not just there's there's been studies and there's been models, and then we've also seen practice is that wide scale use of masks or ubiquitous mask wearing is sufficient to control the virus, meaning to to stop the exponentiality of the virus. We've seen, you know, in the Asian Countries or Czechoslovakia, other places, they've been able to get the, you know, the the so called r naught, the the you know, the viral coefficient to go below 1 with, you know, wide scale use of mass. And so we have a way to prevent the virus from going exponential that doesn't require lockdowns. And so the thing, you know, I I blogged about with the last time I was on your show was why would you do this most severe thing lockdowns and not do this easy thing that's just merely inconvenient, which is a mess. Jason Calacanis (00:15:53): Freeburg, when you look at it and you're the I think have the deepest science, clearly have the deepest science, background of all of us. What what how do you look at this pandemic now that we're 75 days into it here in the Bay Area. And, obviously, you know, that started in December, it looks like, in China. What's your take on it now? What did you get right? early and what have you changed your mind about recently? David Friedberg (00:16:19): I think I'm I'm actually funny. When you say that, I just pulled up the original WHO joint mission on COVID final report, and the date of this report, by the way, is February 20th. So there was this big thing they published forty pages long from the WHO. And in it, they highlighted, you know, the this fatality rate estimate inside of Hubei you know, Wuhan and outside of Hubei. And they they you know, we knew from this data very early on that we were at about a half percent fatality rate. And then, you know, we saw all of this other stuff happen with Korea and the Princess cruise ship and the n d NBA players. Very early on, we saw all these people that were roughly asymptomatic And we're starting to get 2 kind of explanations for why that is. But from the beginning, I felt really like, you know, this is gonna be a largely asymptomatic kind of spreading infectious vector. What the what I got wrong was when we went into lockdown I don't know, Chemak, if you remember this when we talked first time on Jason's podcast. I asked you guys or or you guys asked me when I thought we'd be back. And I was like, oh, April 7th. We'll be back to work. And I also had a bet going with you guys, and I said we're gonna have less than 20,000 deaths in the US. I so overestimated the effectiveness of the lockdown And I think that was kind of, you know, one of the the more kind of, like, striking things to me is the quote, unquote lockdown, and I just sent the video to Nick. Nick, do you have it? Can you queue it up? So, basically, I this is what I think has happened in the United States. Like, pull this thing up. I was in Berkeley on Saturday, And I went to play to meet some buddies, and we played Frisbee Golf on campus and had a beer, some college buddies of mine. And so I'm walking around in Berkeley, and there is frat party after frat party going on. David Friedberg (00:18:01): No mast. Everyone's on top of each other. You can see the the video right here. I took a video more Jason Calacanis (00:18:05): on the frat party. -- beer pong. David Friedberg (00:18:07): They're all playing beer pong. There's, like, girls and drinking and people are passing around bottles of vodka, and there's no mask. And this was the entire campus of Berkeley. like and I think this is what's gone on, like, around the country. So the belief that you could just kind of, like, lock away the virus, I believe, like, oh my god. There's it's so extreme. It's so draconian. We're gonna shut down the the world, and this thing is gonna get stopped in 30 days, like happened in China. That is not what happened in the United States. America. Like, people wanna be free. People wanna party. People wanna live their life. They wanna go to work. They wanna see their friends and family, and they they're not used to being told no by the government. And so I think that's been, to me, the biggest surprise is just, like, how ineffective the, quote, unquote, lockdown has been. And I think it really speaks to the need that David mentioned, which is this lockdown isn't binary. You can't just say lock everyone down or let them all out. You've got a nuance your way to a solution, which means, like, masks, which means watching out for nursing homes, which temperature checking before letting people in the buildings of over a hundred people, like, all the stuff that I think needs to be done for this to be kind of effective at, you know, tracking and tracing. And we can't just assume that, you know, a quote unquote lockdown is gonna keep people inside and keep this thing from spreading because the frat party as you'll see is the perfect representation of what what's really going on out there. Jason Calacanis (00:19:20): Alright. Circling back around to you, Shamoff. What what do you think of what the 2 David sort of outlined there in terms of the path forward and and how we all handicapped what was going on? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:33): Well, I think the reality is that by Hook or crook, we're gonna basically exit this lockdown sooner than we think because I think people just can't take it anymore. So there's no point in having a shelter in place order if everybody's running around playing beer pong. And so it's not doing anything. And so you might as well get the productive value of the economy going again by letting people go back to work. you know, we we and just finding some simple ways that people can look past the politics and just do the right thing. wear a goddamn mask and shut the fuck up and go back to work. It's it's really like I mean, when you think about it, it's like, why is this such a big deal? Get everything you want and just put a little bit of cloth over your face. I mean, a lot of the folks that push back on this You know, they're they're better off wearing the mask. Jason Calacanis (00:20:32): Yeah. The I mean, it is pretty striking when you watch the protest and you see a bunch of people who are you know, obviously older and obviously obese. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:41): said those are not the best looking knives in the drawer. Let's just put it that way. Jason Calacanis (00:20:44): Not definitely not. And -- Little Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:46): dull and rusty is what I would Jason Calacanis (00:20:47): Well and, you know, they're carrying guns, and they've never served a day in the army. I mean, it's they're they're literally cosplaying -- David Friedberg (00:20:53): Well, that Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:54): that is that is that I have nothing to say about that. All I'm saying is The the this whole mask thing is not such a big deal. Just if you can wear a mask and get back to being productive and get back to a job, I think you should be allowed Alright. Jason Calacanis (00:21:05): So we had a big debate, v shaped w shaped, u shaped, l shaped recovery. I was in the I'm aspirationally v shaped, but I'm expecting a u, Saxu or the l. And I think Chamathi or the the w the u or the l. We've had a v. How do you explain Shamoff? What is going on in the stock market? because you said it was the end of days. You said this is gonna be a disaster. Is it going to be a disaster? Is this the end of the days? And we've got some false rebound, and this v shaped recovery is not sustainable. What how do you explain This inexplicable v shaped responsibility reach reach response. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:42): There's 2 things to keep in mind. First of all, the economy is completely fucked. So don't don't quite you know, don't look at Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and a handful of, you know, Internet SaaS Companies and and kit yourself. we have 30,000,000 American men and women out of work. That is every 5th person you see walking down the street does not have a Jason Calacanis (00:22:05): what happens when lockdown ends? If we if with the lockdown ends in June as expected for most people, how many people are how many per pound? Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:13): Yeah. No. So look, here here here's the thing that we've had. We've had 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars of money printed into the system. And when you print that money into the system, which the Federal Reserve has done. It hits the asset markets, and it has basically stabilized the bond market. And the incremental dollar sits in the hands of an individual who must put the money to work. Because when you look back at this, this is not you know, a a random person managing their 401 k. The overwhelming majority of the money sits in sits in the hands of hedge funds or pension funds or Sovereign Wealth Funds or mutual funds, they have a job to do. And so you have to think about what is their increment decision. So even if the stock market made no sense on any valuation metric, the incremental dollar that they have, which they're paid to put to work, will get put to work, And so what you've actually seen is a a dispersion. And what I mean by that is if you graph the S and P 500 index, versus the unweighted S and P 500 index, which basically means the first one ranks companies by market cap in gives the biggest companies more weight. The other one ranks every company equally. There's been a massive split, a dispersion. And what it really shows is that companies that traffic in bits, so software businesses have a bid, and companies that traffic in Adams have gotten completely decimated, and they are literally worthless. And so when you put all these things together, the real economy is in the toilet. There are tens of millions of, you know, men and women out of work. The earnings power of real companies that do physical things in the world are cheaper and lower than they've ever been. Meanwhile, the companies that have high velocity, high margin software driven businesses have gone to the moon. So it's unfair to look at 30 or 40 businesses and paint that as a as a v shape recovery. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:13): It is a equity market that is buoyed by fed dollars that is not mapping to the reality of what's happening on the ground. Jason Calacanis (00:24:20): Okay. So Saks you're you're pretty plugged into the economy. You think about this a lot. What do you think the recovery looks like? Is this going to be 2, 3, 4, 5 quarter recession? Is it going to be depression error like some people are apt to say? What keeps you up at night thinking about the economy and what gives you hope? David Sacks (00:24:42): Well, I I it kinda depends if there are other choose to drop. So so I agree with Shamalff that, you know, the state of the economy right now is terrible, and it's divorced from the financial markets because of, you know, all the money printing and interventions that the Fed and Treasury are, you know, have have been doing. One one way to think about it is, well, the the stock market's denominated in in US dollars. And if, you know, they just printed a whole bunch more of them, those dollars are worth less. And so you know, the the the price of of the stocks are gonna rise. But but, yeah, I think looking forward, you know, I it it's probably gonna be a 2 to 3 year process to get out of this unless some of their shoe drops, which could make it much worse. Jason Calacanis (00:25:28): So you're you're betting on 2 to 3 years to get back to, let's call it, single digit unemployment. David Sacks (00:25:36): Well, let's see. We're at, like, what, 15% right now or something like that. So You know? Jason Calacanis (00:25:43): 35,000,000 people, you get down to, you know, 10,000,000 again, 20,000,000. It's David Sacks (00:25:49): it's it's hard to say. It's gonna take a long time to create all those jobs. You know, a lot of these businesses are not just gonna come, you know, racing right back. So, yeah, I think it's probably like a 2, 3 year process to get back to some sort of You know? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:01): And by the way, the thing you have to remember is, like, look, the unemployment numbers that we have had in the last probably Jason Calacanis (00:26:08): 7 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:08): or 8 years. So during Obama and Trump, have been completely manipulated because the number of people that are entirely leaving the workforce is quite high. And so, you know, it's not just a numerator problem. We have a denominator problem too. There are fewer and fewer workers that, you know, are willing to work because some of them just give up. Jason Calacanis (00:26:27): Right. Or it's just not worth it for the pay that's available is another stated reason. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:32): So the thing that we're gonna have to figure out is, like, how many of the people that are leaving the workforce may never come back, and that has a a a societal toll and weight that we all have to bear. Jason Calacanis (00:26:42): Yeah. There's gonna be a lot of people who maybe are in their sixties or maybe even late fifties. They got 10, 20 years left that they could be working in management, sales, whatever it is. And they just say, you know what? It's not worth it. I'm gonna go try to find a place to stay and maybe not rejoin the workforce. early retirement or just capitulation? David Sacks (00:27:04): Yeah. Well and and but, you know, remember I said about other shoes dropping. I mean, we we're still in the early, I think we're still in the early stages of seeing the repercussions of what, you know, but 2 or 3 months shut down the economy, you know, what that's gonna look like. And so the wave of defaults is just beginning and, you know, who knows what happens with cities and states and so on down the line. I mean, who knows, you know, do the debt markets have kind of an inexhaustible desire for to buy US debt or could we reach some sort of saturation point and then that triggers the next, you know, set of of crises. So we just don't you know, I would say, like, the the 2 to 3 year outlook is is the one that's kind of like what it looks like today. But if there are these other big choose to drop, it could turn something much worse. Jason Calacanis (00:28:01): I think, Friedberg, we're all in agreement that there will be a second wave of some type just depends on how big the spike is. Do you think there'll be another New York City level outbreak where we'll see, you know, two thousand people, fifteen hundred people dying in a and region every day for some sustained period of time? What are the chance of that happening, Freeburn? David Friedberg (00:28:21): I don't know. I mean, I think going forward, the you know, the New York situation, people's behaviors have been shocked. So, you know, to the points earlier, the most effective thing you can do is stop coughing on your hand touching a railing. Someone else touches the railing and touches their mouth. I mean, that's kinda how this goes. you know, there's been early on some weird, like, aerosolized aerosolized studies that they've kinda said, hey. This thing spreads in the air and so on. It's really you know, you gotta be in a closed kind of confined space. So people are wearing masks now, so the likelihood of the the transmission happening at the rate that we saw in New York, great paper out of MIT, by the way, that shows how this happened on the subway. Oh, really? -- identified yeah. Identified the subway as kind of the primary vector that drove transmission in New York City. Jason Calacanis (00:29:07): That was always my thesis. And I remember talking about it and saying, how is this not obvious to everybody that eight million people ride that thing every day or something. Like, it's so obvious. David Friedberg (00:29:16): They did an incredible job proving it. So it's not like people running in central park are spreading coronavirus to each other. It's everyone in these confined spaces coughing in the air, and then you kinda get this stuff. Jason Calacanis (00:29:25): And twenty people get on and off at every stop. That's the other thing people don't realize is that it's not just a bunch of people. It's not an airplane where you have x number of people going in one direction for 3, 4, 5 hours. This is twenty people getting on and off every 5 minutes. It's almost like you couldn't design a better incubator for it. David Friedberg (00:29:42): And I don't think a city in in the United States approaches the density that you have in New York. So, remember, these are not deterministic factors. These there's like a a spectrum of a probabilistic spectrum here. So you have a lot of people. They have a certain type of behavior. They're not wearing masks. You kinda add these up, and you end up with this really high kind of vector that drives this this rapid spread. as we saw in New York City. You're not you're not gonna see that in Dallas. You're not gonna see that in Houston. You're not gonna see that in San Diego. You're gonna have more of the slow steady burn as some risk is taken in the environment. Some risk is taken by frack parties and people not wearing masks and people touching their mouth, but it's not gonna have the same sort of massive effect you saw in New York. So I wouldn't expect us to have a New York style second wave. I do expect there to continue to be this, like, slow burn going forward of new cases, and it's certainly gonna be more obvious now that we're testing a lot more. Jason Calacanis (00:30:31): And so Tremat, at this point, we're basically putting a price on life and saying, hey. Some amount of deaths is worth taking the risk. And as Americans, a unique group of people in the world in how we look at personal freedom. Americans are just making the choice. Hey. Listen. If you don't wanna take the risk, stay home, but the rest of us, if we wanna take the risk, we're gonna go take the risk. That's what this has come down to in your month? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:55): Yeah. I think that it's very difficult for Americans to Envision a world where, like, you know, their personal freedoms are infringed upon. I mean, it's sort of like one of one of the founding principles of the entire country. This is why I think that the the tragedy of this thing is that the the way to get everybody what they want is so simple. As David said, it's like, you know, above 65, you stay home. You work remotely under 65. You temperature check and wear a mask, and you know, you're 95% of the way there, but it's become a left versus right decision to do it. You know, the mask wearers are still in a lockdown, and the non mask squares, wanna get back to work, and basically, like, there's there's it's just it's just another kind of culture war between the left and the right. It's it's really just shocking to me. I mean, I might for for for for what it's worth, you know, if I was I am a betting man, so I'll just tell you. You know, my line now is that I think that Donald Trump is overwhelmingly likely to win as a function of people's frustration in the about the lockdowns. And I think that the Democrats' best hope of winning in November is ending these things sooner rather than later. Jason Calacanis (00:32:09): It it's amazing we're talking about a pandemic, a once in a 100 year pandemic, it looks like. And we're literally looking at our reaction to it through the lens of this president being reelected or not. Like, literally, that's the determining factor on the advice we're giving to people. We're telling people they can't go to the beach, but they can be on an airplane. They can't go to the Tesla factory, but they can ride the subway. I mean, on a communication basis, is there any worse way we could have communicated this to the populace? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:39): Well, the communication was bad, but the the I think the bigger problem quite honestly is that the Republican Democratic governors in the United States can't get on the same page. And at the same time, There's just a a tendency to support Donald Trump or not support him in a very reflexive, instinctive way that isn't helpful right now. and and there just doesn't seem to be enough political wherewithal and courage to just stand up and do the right thing independent of what you're what your political persuasion is. So but but I think at on the margin now, I think you have different but very similar boundary conditions to 2016, where there are all these people that kind of, like, told you one thing and did another. There are all these people right now that probably are, you know, preference falsifying as we speak, and you know, they'll show up into the voting booth, and they'll be angry if they're not backing their jobs, especially if they've been laid off by as as a result of not being able to get back. Jason Calacanis (00:33:36): And they would blame that on the Democrats, not the Republicans, and therefore, Trump gets his next term. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:42): Well, because the the it's it's the democratic states that are pushing the hardest to basically like, you know, you you saw the craziness in Los Angeles, but, like, you know, Eric Garcetti was basic like, we'll we'll enter the shelter in place in, you know, December of 2022. And it's like, this is it's Los Angeles. Jason Calacanis (00:33:58): Yeah. It's not gonna happen. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:00): You know, players gotta play. I mean, like, this is this is unbelievable. David Sacks (00:34:04): Yeah. Well, the the I I I do I I agree. The the lockdowns, the or the unwillingness to end the lockdowns gives Trump an issue for November assuming this continues that supersedes the incompetence of the COVID response, which is that you know, our lives and livelihoods are not owned by politicians to, you know, meter out and give back to us and and drip some drabs. and as they see fit. That is the issue that the lockdown crowd is is giving to Trump, and I do think it will if if it's still the issue in November, it will super lead the the, you know, the initial incompetence of the COVID response. Jason Calacanis (00:34:48): And what what did you think of this whole what's the drug that Trump said he was taking David, Sacks. David Friedberg (00:34:54): I drive I drive to chloroquine? Jason Calacanis (00:34:56): Yeah. So or Friedberg, maybe you take it. we talked about that early on and that and I think you properly said, like, if you took it early, this could be, you know, a a could has potential taking it later. It's probably too late. I think you nailed that on the pod last time. Why has this become such a political issue? And and what are your thoughts on that drug specifically? and its potential efficacy? David Friedberg (00:35:19): Look. I I'm not a doctor, but it from what I understand, is there is a so just so you know, there's, like, side effects to this drug for a small percentage of the population, and this drug can actually inhibit energy production in certain cells, which can cause organs to dysfunction, and it particularly shows up in the heart, So people end up with what's called a long QT interval and potentially some part issues that can be pretty dangerous and deadly. depending on on on your body. So it's really an an a little bit of an unknown. There's also issues longer term with with vision impairment can damage your retinal cells and cause vision loss. So there's risk to this drug. It's not like taking, you know, an an Advil. It is a it is a measured risk. It's a low probability, but the severity can be high. And so, typically, with a scenario like that, doctors and scientists like to see, you know, phased clinical trials and you kinda do you know, randomized, and you have Placebo and testing. And so that hasn't necessarily been done for this particular virus, this particular condition. and often the the design of those studies matters a lot. So you could give it to a bunch of quote unquote COVID patients, but if it's not being given to COVID patients, either before or right as they're getting sick, maybe it doesn't show the results that you would expect from a prophylactic treatment, meaning you're getting before you're really sick, and that's where it may be the most efficacious. And so some people are saying, wait. We don't know enough. Don't do it. It's not worth the risk because of that small percentage high severity problem. While others are saying, oh my gosh. It's totally worth the risk because the downside if you get coronavirus can be really bad. And, you know, and so so there's a lot of room for debate here. David Friedberg (00:36:59): And when there's a lot of room for debate, you usually kind of revert to some sort of base belief some base kind of political point of view or something, and I think that's what's gone on here. This isn't a clear cut. The sun is is yellow on the sky. It's blue kind of conversation. This is, like, I can interpret this a lot of different ways. It does seem that, like, look, this drug, you know, like a lot of has an effect in in the same way that a lot of other that this drug might have on a lot of other viruses. And this, especially, plus zinc, you know, and this z Pak, this zithromycin, which is an antibiotic together, it may be really effective. And so, yeah, if you weigh the downside and the probability of that downside for a patient against what potential upside would be depending on the risk factors now that we know those better for COVID, you can make an educated decision, and maybe it should just be left in the hands of doctors. versus, like, have some national statement about it. I don't know. But, yeah, certainly, a lot of room for debate and and thus a lot of kind of, you know, political engagement on this. Jason Calacanis (00:37:58): Saks, is it there's been a lot of talk about what the bay area looks like after this. whether it's commercial real estate with Twitter and Square, going full work from home, and people not wanting to work in cities. What are your general thoughts on? What the world looks like a year from now and maybe 5 years from now? If there is gonna be some permanent change, what do you think it would be? David Sacks (00:38:20): Well, I there could be a big resorting. I mean, it it it kinda depends if the virus becomes endemic. It's just something we we kinda end up living with. But, you know so so let's if if it does I mean, if you're, like, over 70, are you really gonna wanna stay in a place like New York City? or you're gonna wanna go somewhere else. And so I could imagine if this does become this long term thing that's just an endemic if we don't have a vaccine, I could see cities resorting where, you know, New York is people who are comfortable with COVID risk and you know, it's I think San Francisco the the big issue with San Francisco is that There are always a bunch of reasons not to wanna live there. I mean, the city just seems like chronically mismanaged, It's David Friedberg (00:39:09): a huge home. Jason Calacanis (00:39:09): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:09): sees lots of poop. David Sacks (00:39:11): The huge homeless problem. It's just, you know, public health issues with that. There's there's a lot of crime that isn't responded to properly. So there's all these, like, reasons not to live there, but the reason why people chose to live there is because the tech industry had a very strong network effect, and you needed to be in Silicon Valley or San Francisco in order to have access to these these jobs and opportunities. And if those jobs opportunities are now available via Zoom, and you can be doing them from anywhere, are people still gonna choose to live in San Francisco, you know, with And and, you know, it's with the the the cost of living and housing and apartments and all the rest of it that that goes that goes along with it. So Yeah. I mean, I think there is some chance that this whole remote work thing could break Silicon Valley's network effect and that would be really bad for places like San Francisco, which, you know, otherwise might not be the greatest places to live. Jason Calacanis (00:40:06): Yeah. My thesis on this in terms of getting out of the recession I think remote work could lead to a level of efficiency and profitability in the companies that we have never seen before. If you think just about every manager now knows how to manage remote workers. Right? You learn that in, like, 3, 4 weeks. You figure out how to manage people remote. even people who hated managing people remote. All these gen xers and boomers who are managing, you know, millennials and and earlier gen xers, They now know how to do it. And what they quickly learn is, these three or four people in my team are crushing it. These two or three people don't need to be here. They're not actually adding any value. So I think what's gonna happen is they're gonna cut the bottom people, then they're gonna cut their office space. Now you've removed I don't know. Call it. 30% of the cost basis of the business, 40%, and it's operating better and people are happier. And then when you do hire somebody, There's gonna be more talent available, and you've just opened it up that you can hire somebody anywhere in the world without an office and you don't have to relocate them. And you don't have to pay I don't know what you guys think the average additional cost is to be in San Francisco, but I'm gonna say $1000. So a $40,000 a year job or a $50,000 a year job becomes a 70 or 80, something like that. And if all that happens, these companies are gonna be so profitable that they're gonna start growing, and that leads us out of the economic downturn. Any thoughts on my my thesis? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:39): That's not a thesis. That's a hope. Yeah. Hope's not a fucking strategy, Jason. Jason Calacanis (00:41:45): Well, I just think it's a potential way out. I think it I mean, what do you think in general about this trend of remote then, Chamath? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:52): I think it's great. And I think that we're realizing that you know, there's no monopoly on innovation, and companies can be really productive remotely that most of the work in an office is busy work and politics, and you can cut it all out. And you can do the same amount of work in much less time, which gives you more time to frankly be with your family or take up a hobby or learn a second language or a third language. I mean, I just think it's so much better for people to realize, like, we gotta you know, it's it's not like you you you know, it's not it's not 18 20 or 19 20. It's 2020. we're gonna live to a hundred years old. Like, we have a long time to be in the grind. And so, you know, working and accomplishing what you used to in half the time and not having to commute and being able to live where you want and your people you like, Man, that has a huge positive impact to your kids, you, your community. It's just way better. I just think Offices are just complete, kind of like it's all Shakespearean theater at the end. and cutting it all out is great. And, specifically, San Francisco is just a complete cesspool dump of shit. And so, you know, being able to just get out of that city. Jason Calacanis (00:43:09): Alright. Everybody welcome to the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:11): oh, you're listening to the all in podcast. I I read some stats yesterday that were just so unbelievably shocking. Like, the number of break ins, the number David Friedberg (00:43:20): of -- Number 1 in the country. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:23): You're number 1 in the country. The the the amount of disease that, like, communicable disease like typhoid. And I'm like, typhoid, I I I was born in a tree and scratched and clogged to emigrate as a refugee to leave a country that had typhoid as a disease. Well, welcome home. Mister Bob, Just to end up back in that in San Francisco? Jason Calacanis (00:43:43): Did you Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:43): break in it? That's Jason Calacanis (00:43:45): You brought it with you? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:46): That's an absolute joke. So Yeah. I mean, the idea that I'd never have to go to San Francisco ever again is oh my god. It brings joy to me. Jason Calacanis (00:43:56): It is a it's an unmitigated disaster this and I think this will be part of the boom bust cycle that you know, David, you were part of when you were here at Stanford, you know, getting an office in San Francisco or having an apartment. It was cheaper, I think, in the city than it was down in Palo Alto. Was it not? David Sacks (00:44:11): Well, back in yeah. When we moved Yammer to San Francisco, which was Jason Calacanis (00:44:15): 2009, David Sacks (00:44:15): I think we were able to get space for $20 a foot per year. Jason Calacanis (00:44:19): Crazy. David Sacks (00:44:20): It was really -- That's David Friedberg (00:44:21): what that's what I paid 2007, 2008. point. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:23): I read a I read a I read a crazy article. It was about the Kushner's and this building that they own that Brookfield Asset Management was gonna buy. And and it said that they bought this building, and so the Kushner's moved to, like, park at you, the General Motors building, overlooking Central Park or something. Right? It's a beautiful building. And it actually quoted in there the price that they were paying. It was incredible because it was, like, a hundred bucks a square foot per year. And I realized, oh my god. They're paying less for Central Park views in New York then I'm paying for a warehouse in Palo Alto. The not just a fuck is going on. This makes no sense whatsoever. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:45:04): That'd be supply and demand right there. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:07): And I thought to myself, like, this is this is crazy. Like, California is so expensive. The taxes are so high. It's I think people will are gonna leave in droves, honestly. Jason Calacanis (00:45:18): What do we think of Elon selling all his homes and then actually saying he's gonna leaving, you know, move Tesla out? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:27): I mean, I don't think it's a practical reality to move Tesla out of out of California. I think that the incremental facilities can be built wherever he wants them to be built based on where he gets tax incentives. David Sacks (00:45:38): Well, but I think the Tesla Fremont was a really good example of this sort of like culture war that's going on, this this political battle over lockdowns and you had kind of a mid level health department bureaucrat in Fremont had locking their factory and saying they couldn't go back to work. Whereas if he was in Texas, he could. And then, you know, around the same time, you had this whole, like, chilly Luther thing in Texas where She was a small business owner, you know, owns a a, like, a haircut place, and she was basically gonna be put in jail for a week for giving somebody a haircut. and there was, like, a, you know, dust up over that. So, you know, I I think that, like, you know, the the country is certainly ready to get back to work and And if this is the political debate, you know, in November, I'm not sure it will be because 6 months is a really long time for now, but or was it 4 or 5 months? But if this is a political debate, I, you know, this will be the way that Trump gets reelected. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:40): Yep. David Friedberg (00:46:41): I think there's gonna be some pretty significant benefits because of the reaction you guys are speaking to. It's not just about people moving, but it's a reaction to regulation. And that could have some pretty profound effects that could benefit certain sectors and businesses and accelerate new outcomes. One of the things that, you know, I have a strong belief in is, like, I think in 20 years, we could kind of eradicate all infectious disease. The only thing holding that up is regulation. because the science is known, the engineering is basically there, and it's simply a function of getting these things approved and getting the finish line. Doing gene editing in humans for genetic mutations that cause harm to humans is a is a technique that we've known for 20 years. And there was a guy a patient that died in 1999 from one of the first AAV treatments, the viral vector gene editing treatments. After that, there was this clamped out, and suddenly everything stopped. And there was, like, no longer any progress in the space, and they're just now starting to come back. And there's a lot of, you know, really interesting technology that has been kind of hindered. I mean, you know, not being able to put Teslas out, I think, is the tip of the for the what people are seeing regulation can do to businesses. And look, I'm by no stretch, you know, a libertarian party card carrier. But I do think and I see it in businesses that I'm involved in all the time that this, you know, incredibly onerous, like, overreaching regulatory burden and bureaucrats really hinder great new things from happening in the world. And it's just become so frigging on how inept the people are that are making the decisions that are doing this to us are during this crisis, and I think it could have profound benefit on kind of deregulation and accelerating the adoption of new tools and new technologies that could really help us all. David Friedberg (00:48:37): So I I view the positive side of this. It's not just like everyone's gonna leave California, like, there's inept bureaucrats and over regulation everywhere. Jason Calacanis (00:48:43): Let's talk geopolitics for a moment. Chamath, you know, you heard the president call it the Wuhan virus. Obviously, there's no doubt that it came from there. There is a debate. Was this something that was not created in the lab, but that was being studied in the lab and accidentally got out, and that's how the jump happened. and there's some tension there between China and the US. What what do you think the global reaction is gonna be and the fallout will be for China? if any, Japan is paying factories I read and helping subsidize them to move factories out of China so they can move that dependency. We always saw the dependency on PPE and drugs being made actually in Wuhan in that area and how we don't have a supply chain that we can rely on for really mission critical stuff. How do how will we look at this Chinese relationship in the United States and Global post pandemic? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:33): This is the beginning of the modern Cold War. And so it's America versus China, except that China is a much more worthy adversary for us than the USSR SSR was at their peak. And the reason is because China has been making strategic investments for the last 30 years. You know, the biggest thing that prevents China from really going guns blazing broadside attack on the US is that the US dollar is still the reserve currency of the world. But even there, China, you know, is trying to do a digital currency and a stable coin, and these are all these state sponsored initiatives that come from, frankly, just strategic decision making to try to usurp the United States as the most powerful country in the world. And so, again, it goes back to Is this a political issue, or is this an ideological issue, or is this an exceptionalism issue, or is this just the practical reality that we do not want another country being number 1? And can we all agree? And if we can all agree, then I Jason Calacanis (00:50:41): don't think they'll win. Where do you where do you sit on it? For you, is it practical? Is it ideological? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:46): Completely practical. I have 0 like, you know, I I've been thinking about this a lot because I have not done any investments and I just did by first. Oh. So it's been 3 months, and I did and it was a credit deal. So it's not even equity. And, you know, I I was and I was reflecting on what what am I trying to do because I felt myself frenetically you know, spending and working too much and, you know, looking at all these different opportunities. And I realized, wait a minute. Like, my job here is not to win some finite game. Like, this is not ending like a basketball game or a soccer match. This is like, I'm trying to be in this thing for 50 years, so my goal is to survive. And the reason why I say that is my ideology is very fluid. I have to be able to adapt to market conditions as they change because if I wanna be a relevant you know, person in the world in 50 years from now, 1st rule of business is don't go out of business. 2nd rule of business is don't forget rule number 1. Right. You know? So in that context, I think it's a very practical thing that we just have to deal with China and make sure that they do not usurp America's standing in the world as the most important country of David Friedberg (00:52:00): the world. Jason Calacanis (00:52:00): Just say, for me, it's ideological. I just don't want a communist country I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:04): don't care about that. Jason Calacanis (00:52:05): That is torturing their citizens as the number one country in the world. I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:09): think it's fairly dangerous. I have a real issue with this. Like, I don't think you have the right to judge. just like Californians can't judge Texans, and Texans can't judge Floridians. Jason Calacanis (00:52:18): Oh, no. It's that. You're wrong. You absolutely should judge people who are torturing people and not allowing people that freedom of speech. Yeah. You should judge them, actually. Actually -- But to human rights violations, I think you should judge people. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:29): I I think that we there's there's a lot of stuff in America that you stay silent on DJ? Jason Calacanis (00:52:33): No. That's not true. I am absolutely for cannabis anybody who's arrested for cannabis violations and low level drug means. I think we they should be let out of free out of jail just like JB Pritzker did in in Chicago. I mean and I think the death penalty should be repealed too because we don't apply it properly. Those are the number 1 and 2 things, probably in the United States that go against the human rights, deck the declaration of human rights. And I'm actually very pro fixing those things. That was totally against waterboarding, and I think that was the worst moment in my American history. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:02): I I honestly I honestly think that, like, China's gonna be do China. you know, India is gonna be India. And instead of getting caught up in our own ideology, you should change it in your own country and then make sure that the other country does it with. Jason Calacanis (00:53:17): Well and that's my point is do do you believe engagement with China leads them towards democracy and better human rights conditions for their citizens or not. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:26): And I think -- -- the fool's errand. That is an absolute -- Well, Jason Calacanis (00:53:28): it worked for East Berlin. And it and it did work in saving Europe from the Nazis. So -- But Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:33): the boundary conditions are entirely different, and China has proven that it works. Europeans were genetically bred to be lazy oligarchs. They just need it with speech. Okay, everybody. I think we just got kicked out of Jason Calacanis (00:53:45): the iTunes store. Saxy poo -- Yeah. -- China. Hawk, dove, engagement, isolation, where do you stand? You heard Chamath say, his position. Where do you stand? David Sacks (00:53:57): Yeah. decoupling from China is gonna be a bipartisan issue now. I think both candidates now will be well, Trump is gonna is gonna run blaming China for for what happened, and I don't think Biden's gonna be defending China. In fact, they're gonna try and peg him with the whole Beijing Biden label, and he's probably gonna need to try and out Trump Trump on on China. So decoupling is gonna happen. It doesn't really make sense for us to be dependent on China for our antibiotics, for our medicines. for our PPE for, you know, any of these, you know, any any of these products that are important for national survival I think all that stuff is gonna come back home. I think, you know, trading with them for other things might be toys, apparel, things had to start fundamentally strategic the same way. I think that can continue. But, you know, the the thing about trade is it creates interdependence. And I don't think that this country is gonna wanna be dependent on China for anything strategic anymore. Jason Calacanis (00:55:01): Two questions for you, David. What is China's liability, if any, at this point, with this pandemic, obviously, if they you know, didn't they withheld information or silence whistle blowers. That's a a a whole different level. And then TikTok, should we allow TikTok in this country? should we if we're not allowed to have Facebook or Twitter in China, take those questions either or do you want? David Sacks (00:55:28): Well, the on liability, I mean, I think, yeah, their liability is is huge. I mean, there's still a bunch of questions we gotta answer around. where exactly the virus came from. But the the the really faithful decision that I think China made is when they shut down travel to Wuhan to and from Wuhan, you know, with respect to other parts of China, but they let people from Wuhan just kinda you know, leave to go all over the world. And so, you know, they weren't letting people from Wuhan go to other parts of China, but they were able to come to the US. And so I I think they do have huge liability, but are we gonna hold them to it? No. I mean, as a practical matter, you know, we're not gonna you know, it'd be it'd be a mistake to to try and change principal Sovereign immunity in the courts, but I think in terms of popular opinion, they do have There Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:28): are other ways to there are other ways to, quote, unquote, punish them. Like, I mean and the US is already doing it. So, you know, for example, the US is limiting and constraining Huawei's ability get access to 5 g. And so, you know, it really forces China to either buy European and American equipment, which is essentially to say that, you know, the the five i's will be able to basically spy into China, or they have to basically, you know, storm into Taiwan and take over TSMC. I mean so there are there are all these other gambit and strategies that one can take without getting ideology ideologically caught up in you know, Chinese human rights because they're not gonna change. David Sacks (00:57:07): Yeah. I mean, look, all wealth comes from trade. you know, whether it's at the level of individuals or nations, wealth comes from trade. And so it'd be silly for us to say that we're just never gonna have trade with China. But I think that, you know, trade also creates interdependence. And so we're not gonna, I don't think, continue to engage in or to depend on them for things that might alter our national survival. And so, you know, that that's gonna be the change. And the other thing is, you know, we're gonna demand that the trade be more reciprocal. Jason Calacanis (00:57:37): Take the TikTok example. David Sacks (00:57:39): Well, you know, what what's probably gonna happen is that the the TikTok will probably be caught up in some larger negotiation. And you know, is a quid pro quo? We'll test, I guess, to sell cars in China and TikTok has to operate in the US. Maybe. But, you know, I I I don't think TikTok sort of falls into the, you know, necessary for national survival category. So it really falls into the reciprocity principle. And the question I guess will be, are we getting enough in return to allow them to operate here? And I think that's the way that all this commerce is gonna is gonna start working. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:16): And and that's the thing. At least we can, like, confront our hypocrisy. So, Jason, I don't disagree with you about how you know, gross the human rights record is. I just think it's a joke that we all sort of, like, cry afoul like it's, like, the biggest thing in the world when we can't even clean up our own backyard, and then meanwhile, we continue to trade with them. That's just utterly, utterly. Jason Calacanis (00:58:34): Yeah. So that's why I think we have to continue to work on cleaning our backyard while continuing to enable the -- First, we couldn't find Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:41): our own backyard. Meanwhile, win the game against China, and winning the game is not basically pushing for human rights forms. It's making sure, as David said, we have a better trade balance and make and making sure that, like, you know, that the critical parts of the supply chain and infrastructure that America for national security isn't dependent on a third party who have completely different incentives than we do. Jason Calacanis (00:59:01): Well and then there's also, like, soft things. Like, why is the you know, why are we taking American movies and changing the ends in order to have them sold in China? Like, they're literally corrupting our art and that incremental dollar that Hollywood's getting or whichever, you know, person trading with China's getting, I think it's not worth giving up what America, unique, and a leader in the world. Friedberg, do you have any thoughts on China? David Friedberg (00:59:25): There's about a 112,000,000 people in China that work in factories. Factories in China are purpose built. So they're built to make a thing, and then they gotta get retooled if you wanna make another thing. You take those 2 facts. It's very hard to kinda replace China. It's a source of production for a lot of what we consume in this country. That's the reality. So there's 2 ways you could go and then there's 2 kind of necessities and you end up with the matrix of like 2 by 2. You could decouple from China and basically recreate that same production system here in the United States and that's wouldn't fucking be possible. Like, we don't have enough people to work. We don't have the ability to do that. The cost of everything would go up by 5 x. we could invent new systems of production, which we have the ability to, 3 d printing, biomanufacturing, all these other kind of really interesting ways of stuff that could replace the old factories that are run-in China, similar to kind of what maybe Elon has tried to do with his automated, you know, factory with Tesla, And so through automation, through 3 d printing, through biomanufacturing, you can kinda change the methods of doing this stuff. If we could do that, then we could decouple from China. So the reality is, like, I I don't know, like, how we continue to consume things at the you know, as a percentage of of wallet share for that come from China without rebuilding how you make stuff. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:49): No. But that's the whole point. By the way, I think the reason why that's valuable is that that's the best way for us to actually get back to an inflationary cycle as well. So I completely agree with you. It is incredibly inefficient. It'll be incredibly costly, but that's where I think you shift the balance of power so that Instead of all the power sitting on the side of capital, you shift it to the side of labor. Labor demands for wages and then all of a sudden, costs go up, input costs go up, prices go up, inflation exists, and that fixes a lot of our debt problems. It fixes our deflationary super cycle. It fixes a lot of things. And so Jason Calacanis (01:01:25): -- So if things got more expensive, it would be good for the account. -- very good. David Friedberg (01:01:29): Yeah. Even but even look. even with maximal like, look, that replace a 112,000,000 workers in China with some number of Americans, you know, I'm not sure you can make all the stuff you need to make here. Jason Calacanis (01:01:42): Yeah. I mean, there's other countries too. I mean, I think people are moving back Japanese are moving factories to Taiwan and Vietnam. Yep. David Friedberg (01:01:49): Yeah. But if we create new methods of production, which we're uniquely positioned to do, we can completely reinvent the wheel in a lot of industries and actually produce for the world. But right now, you know, China exports physical goods, the US exports of virtual goods. And if we wanna get into the business of making physical goods, we have to just do it 10 x better. We have the ability to do that. We just gotta get the will. So if I were to take $3,000,000,000,000 of federal money and treasury bonds and hope that they don't turn into junk bonds, I would basically turn that money into reinventing the systems of, like, how do we make stuff using these new technologies that the US is uniquely positioned to capitalize on. And, you know I love this, Greg, arguably, lead project. to make a could make the same thing that a 100 Chinese workers might. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:32): There you go. Jason Calacanis (01:02:32): I love it. That's and I think that's where we got to. And now we're into this Friedberg, you win. You got the best And then you have the the hottest take in the whole group is if we are gonna bring it back manufacturing, let's leapfrog it. Let's just go let's just you we don't have to keep letting them make you know, socks or iPhones, but, you know, let's make the next automated factories and the 3 d printing factories here. David Friedberg (01:02:54): And biomanufacturing. Jason Calacanis (01:02:56): Anybody have anybody have anything they need to promote or plug at the end of the podcast? Anything they're working on that people should know about? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:01): No. But I love you guys. I fucking miss you. I want to kiss all of you on the mouth. Jason Calacanis (01:03:06): Wow. Just exactly what I was thinking, Chamath. I was about to so back at you. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:10): I've been I've been locked down for 3 months. Jason Calacanis (01:03:13): I've lost my mind. I mean, this is May 12 for me, and I -- I think we David Friedberg (01:03:17): all gotta go to Mexico and see Saks for a for Maria. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:20): Let's do it. I have some David Sacks (01:03:21): friends I have some friends come down, and we play golf and no one wore masks within our little circle, and nobody got sick. And, you know Jason Calacanis (01:03:30): And you're all been tested? David Sacks (01:03:32): We haven't been tested, but we don't we don't have any symptoms. Jason Calacanis (01:03:35): I got tested twice. negative both times. And it was a very weird thing because I think I'm freebird. Correct me if I'm wrong. I would I should be rooting that I had it, and it didn't do anything to me. Right? David Friedberg (01:03:46): Totally. By the way, let me just say one more thing. That's a really interesting finding. This paper came out a few days ago. that shows that 40 to 60 percent of the population that has never been exposed to SARS coronavirus 2, the current coronavirus, already have activated T cells to the virus. And the reason is that they've had other coronaviruses through a common cold, and they've developed this immune response. So this may explain why a large percentage of people are just so asymptomatic and totally fine. It's a pretty astounding finding. And so you could get checked for those other antibodies or, you know, these these activated T cells and know if you're in a good position to kinda ward off the the coronavirus. And that that's another thing we should probably do. That's 60% of people that already have this. By the way, that won't stop the spreading. That that person will still get infected and spread, but their, you know, immune response is such that they'll shut the thing down pretty quick Jason Calacanis (01:04:39): So would you call this like some parallel or shadow, herd immunity, or individual immunity? David Friedberg (01:04:47): It's individual immunity, and it's related to just cross reactivity with other coronaviruses. And so we've already developed an immune response to other coronaviruses. that that gives us seemingly seemingly a pretty good response to this coronavirus for, you know, more than half -- David. -- population. Jason Calacanis (01:05:00): On a percentage basis, how how much do we know about this virus just as we wrap up here? If you had to state a percentage of, like in in 2 years, we're gonna know a 100% or 90% about the virus, whatever it is. What do we know now? David Friedberg (01:05:17): We know everything about the virus itself. We are very like like with any virus, we know very little about how it affects a specific human based on their genotype, meaning based on your health and your your genes, here's what this virus is gonna do to your body, and we're not gonna know that in 2 years, and we're not gonna know that. We don't know that for most viruses for humans the maxing of genotype to genotype of viral to Jason Calacanis (01:05:40): -- But if if we understand x amount about the HIV virus or Ebola, do we know now? If you I mean, maybe Ebola would be the best one. Like, we we have pretty good knowledge of that after x number of years. What do we know now on a percentage basis you had to guess. David Friedberg (01:05:55): Again, we we know everything about the virus itself, like, a Jason Calacanis (01:05:58): 100%. Or okay. About this pandemic. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:06:00): The human response to the virus and why it's causing all these weird symptoms with different people and so on. Yeah. I'd say we're probably, I don't know, 40%, 30%. We've kind of mapped the outcome, but we haven't mapped the progress to the outcome in the human body. Jason Calacanis (01:06:12): Excellent. Alright. Alright. Listen. Great job, Chamath. Great job, David Sacks. Great job, David Friedberg. if you wanna subscribe to the podcast, type it all in with Chamath. And -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:24): Love you best. Jason Calacanis (01:06:24): -- love you guys, besties. Yeah. Alright. Shuffle up and deal. Can't wait to see that new table and David Friedberg (01:06:29): skip back to work. -- to go. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:30): Let's get back to work. Jason Calacanis (01:06:31): Let's get back to where you goddamn masks people. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:33): Wear a mask. Jason Calacanis (01:06:34): Wear a mask. Okay. Be safe.