新任 FTC 主席、拆分大科技、政府无证监听、乔恩·斯图尔特与山火

Speaker 1 (00:00:00): What's going on Saks LP meeting? Is it an LP meeting, or are Jason Calacanis (00:00:04): you going are you going to lunch, Peter Tiano? A little bit later. What's going on? It's AM. You must be there must be a call going Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:11): on here. David Friedberg (00:00:15): Every week, but Chamath is in Italy, another button gets undone. This is definitely David Sacks (00:00:22): We'll let your winner slide. Jason Calacanis (00:00:25): Rainman, David Saffens. David Sacks (00:00:30): We open source it to the fans and make discoveries. Jason Calacanis (00:00:38): Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the all in podcast episode 36. Back with us today on the program, the Queen of Kinwa, Science Spectacular, Friedberg, is with us again with leading off last episode, Friedberg, with a great Friedberg science, monologue. The the crowd went crazy for it. How does it feel coming off that epic performance in episode 35? Tell us what were you thinking going into the game? And yeah. Well, I David Friedberg (00:01:08): was thinking I would talk about the Alzheimer's drug approval at Biogen, and then I felt like I did it when we were done. Jason Calacanis (00:01:14): Great. Yeah. It's just it's, like, literally interviewing Kawhi Leonard after, like, a 50 point game. Okay. And with us, rain man, David Saxx, with layers for players. He's been styled and groomed, and he's in some random hotel room. How are you doing, rain, man? Good. Good. Well, I'm not I'm not in a hotel room. I'm Speaker 1 (00:01:33): -- Jason Calacanis (00:01:33): Oh, your your home just happens to look like a 5 star resort. Got it. Forgot that. And give us an idea coming into today's game with the layers. You obviously are here to dominate and and get your monologues up Gotta be hard for you to look at the stat line and see yourself trailing in monologues behind the dictator. Of course, preferring to all in statistics. Yeah. Where some maniac is breaking down how many minutes we each talk per episode. David Sacks (00:02:00): Jason, I'm really happy with my performance. For me, it's about quality and not quantity. I like to stick in stick in jab. Jason Calacanis (00:02:07): Okay. Got it. Got it. David Friedberg (00:02:08): What you're talking about right now? Jason Calacanis (00:02:09): What what what what is the course that is catering to a monologue? What is it for? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:14): the hell are you talking about Jason Calacanis (00:02:16): right now? There is a Twitter account done. You know how this the all in stands have a ton of skills. Like, there is an audience for this podcast that has more skills than you know, it's like the the 5% of the most skilled people in the world listen to this So in addition to doing the merge, in addition to doing who's the guy Henry who does all those incredible videos with the animations? In addition to those under a bell caster. David Sacks (00:02:43): Yeah. Anter. Heavy Jason Calacanis (00:02:44): bell caster crushing it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:45): Those things are great. Jason Calacanis (00:02:46): Those are amazing. And then, of course, you have young Spielberg who led the charge dropping incredible tracks. And now we have this new crew that is analyzing Somebody put you know, we'll put in the show notes a link to it. But they do some type of AI analysis of the audio files, and they tell us who had the most monologues and then the running time and then historic running time, So they're actually looking at it trying to figure out, you know, who who is speaking the most. And they thought Friedberg was gonna run away with the episode, but it kinda disappeared in the second half of the game. and Chamath obviously came around the corner and took us 27%. But they live in a pie chart of how much we each talk. I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:27): have a I always have a very strong First And Third Quarter. Jason Calacanis (00:03:30): Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. And then he gets frustrated when he passes the ball and somebody misses a shot. It's kinda like LeBron in the early days. So kicking off today, Lina Khan has been confirmed to the FTC with bipartisan support. Interesting. And this is obviously gonna be a challenge for Big Tech. On Tuesday, the senate voted 69 to 28 to confirm Meena Con, who is a very well established critic of Big Tech And this is obviously really unique because she's thirty two years old, and she's leaving the FTC, which is unbelievable. I did a little research on her and watched some videos. She's basically written 2 amazing papers And the first paper came out in 2017, Amazon's antitrust paper. The second one came out in June and was about the separation of platforms and commerce And when you hear her speak, she is incredibly credible and knowledgeable. It is as if one of the four of us were discussing this. She could come into podcasts and speak credibly about Amazon's businesses as opposed to the charades we saw at different hearings where the senators and and congress people just absolutely had no idea what they're talking about. Some of the items I picked up from a talk she gave in Aspen is that she she formed a lot of these opinions by talking to venture capitalists who were concerned about Amazon's dominance and other companies and the competitive space. And she is looking at Consumer Welfare, one of the lenses of antitrust, which will I'm sure David Saxx will have some thoughts on. as our resident attorney here. And the framing of those in terms of harm of the consumer, she believes there's other harm that happens And she thinks one remedy is to kill Amazon Basics because the marketplace shouldn't own the goods as well. She's concerned about cloud computing a consolidation because that creates fragility. And that is another type of consumer harm while she freely admits that prices have gone down. Jason Calacanis (00:05:29): Services are free. And this is a consumer benefit. So she wants to rethink the entire concept. And she is savvy. She brought up Facebook buying, Anovo, the reportedly Spyware VPN to give them a little advantage as to what was being used on phones and maybe give them a little product road map information. She also I'm brought up Amazon studying the sales of other products to inform Amazon Basics a claim that Amazon says they don't do. but everybody knows they do do because all that information is publicly available. She talked about Amazon's VC arm using data to invest in buying companies. Why wouldn't they? That makes total sense. That's a great signal for them. She seems to want Amazon Web Services spun out, which I think would just double the value of it or maybe add 50 percent to the value of it. And she gave very pragmatic examples like maybe separating Google Maps from Android. And when you turn on your Android phone, you you would have to install maps or maybe you would pick from the different maps that are out there, different programs and that there would be integration in them and people could swap out, you know, MapQuest or Apple Maps in their Google searches. So a lot of actually very interesting, pragmatic approaches, and she doesn't think these need to be decade long lawsuits. She thinks this is gonna be a negotiation. and that people will kind of work together on it. But this is all with the backdrop of partisan politics and, you know, one group of people looking at this through the lens of wealth. an inequality and another group looking at it through censorship, Sachs, since you are a council here, what are your thoughts on this appointment? David Sacks (00:07:02): Yeah. I mean, the interesting thing is that, you know, Lina Khan is the the Bernie approved candidate She is liked by the progressive left, but at the same time, she got 21 Republicans to support her And so this nomination, you know, sailed through confirmation. I think what she's saying what she's saying, I think there's there's a very good good argument to it that and I've said similar things in the past, which is, you know, what what what she's basically saying, especially in Amazon is, look. You've got this company Amazon that controls essential infrastructure, AWS, the whole distribution supply chain going all the way from the port to warehouses, to to logistics, and distribution. That is gonna be owned by a scaled monopoly player. You have a con massive economies of scale. It's pretty clear they're gonna dominate that. And what they're doing is systematically going category by category and using the monopoly monopoly profits they make by owning the sort of core infrastructure and subsidizing their entry into each of these new categories that Amazon Basics and others. And she calls that, you know, it's predatory pricing. And she's afraid that Amazon's just gonna end up dominating every category every category that you could build on top of this core infrastructure. I think it's actually a pretty valid concern. I think you see something analogous happening with Apple and Google and the app stores. We had a congressional hearing. pretty recently, which you had Spotify on other apps complaining about what Apple was doing to them saying they are making our service non viable with the 30% rate that they're charging. You remember Bill Gurley had a great post about this saying just because you can charge a 30% rate doesn't mean you should. Right now, we're seeing this blowback from this massive 30% rate. And you had Spotify saying, look, Apple is doing this to basically make us infeasible relative to Apple Music. So I think there is a legit point here, which is that if you own the monopoly platform, the sort of essential infrastructure You cannot use it to basically take over every application on that can be built on top of that platform. That I think is a very appropriate use of of antitrust law. And I think so I think that's the good here. David Sacks (00:09:19): Now I think that there there are some some concerns or or some potential downsides. And, you know and and the downside that I see is that we used to think we used to judge antitrust law in terms of consumer welfare. And so we so there was a limiting principle to the actions of government, which is you would just look at prices and the effect on prices. Here, you know, the the the sort of movement that Lina Komm represents is so so called hipster antitrust movement. They're concerned about power and they wanna restructure markets to avoid sort of concentrations of power. I don't see the limiting principle there. And so I think what the the the -- Would Jason Calacanis (00:09:59): market share be a limiting principle? David Sacks (00:10:00): Well, it it would be a limiting principle in terms of who you could take action on, but it wouldn't be a limiting principle in terms of how you would restructure the market. And I think what we're in for over the next few years is potentially a hyper politicization of Big Tech Market I think these 20 100 Republicans might soon feel like the dog who caught the bumper in the sense that, yes, they're finally gonna have the regulation of Big Tech they've been calling for. but they might not like all of the results because we because what could happen is a very intrusive meddling by government in the markets of technology, and it could go well beyond sort of this this gatekeeper principle that we've been talking about that I think would would be a valid reason to regulate. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:46): Chamath? I think she has to be careful in focusing on Amazon. So If you break down antitrust law, there are really 3 big buckets where the attack vectors are. And I'm I'm not gonna claim to be an expert, but I think they're relatively easy to understand. So you have the first principal body, which is called the Sherman Act. That's the thing that everybody's looked at, and that's you know, sort of where most current antitrust enforcement action has failed on tech Companies because it largely looks at the predatory nature of pricing power that certain companies have. You have to remember this thing was written in the 1800. And so, you know, what did people do when they control things? They just they drove prices up. Speaker 1 (00:11:30): 10 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:30): does the exact opposite. Right? They constantly drive prices down, and what's counterintuitive is it turns out that in the olden days, Driving prices up drove out competition. Today, driving prices down drives out competition. Jason Calacanis (00:11:45): Yes. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:46): Right? So, you know, you make Gmail, infinite storage, nobody else can compete with Jason Calacanis (00:11:50): Wi Fi switch. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:52): You you make, you know, photos completely subsidized. You make certain music products effectively free. and you subsidize that, you know, you create enormous amounts of content blah blah blah. So give the Sherman Act. Then somewhere along the way we realize, okay. We need to add something we created this thing called the Clayton Mack. That was around m and a. Right? We added to that. A lot of folks that are listening probably have heard of Scott Rodino, HSR. We've all gone through it. Right? On M and A events, we have to file these HSR clearances when you make big investments, for example, know, I just made a a climate change thing. We had to file HSR. And then there's this FDCA, which is the Federal Trade Commission That is where she can get, you know, if to to use a poker term, you know, a little frisky. Why? Because the FTCA has these 2 specific things which says you can have an unfair method of competition or an unfair or deceptive act or practice. Now it falls on her and her team to basically build the strongest case around those two dimensions. And my only advice to her, I wrote this in 2 2019 in my investor letter as well just thinking about the breakdown of Big Tech If you're gonna go after these guys, that's the body of law that probably is the most defensible But you probably have to start, you know, whether you like it or not with Facebook or Google. And the reason is there are more examples how you can use that language under the FTCA to give those folks a hard time. I think Jason Calacanis (00:13:24): it's much harder. The example would beach them off that We are giving away this product, losing money on it to keep you in our store and mote you into our advertising network, etcetera. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:37): That's an example. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:13:38): That's yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:39): Or or, you know, we then we then and that because then when you have control, Then you can show that then the first part, the Sherman Act part kicks in. Why? So you've seen 15 or 20 years of Google Facebook, less Apple, by the way, using their edge to decrease price. And for the first time in the last quarter, both of these 2 companies, and they were the only 2 of Big Tech, that announced an increase in pricing. Right? They saw a diminishing of CPM inventory. And so they had to figure out ways to grow inventory as users started to stagnate. And what they really said is we're ramping up CPMs. And CPMs, I think, were up 28, 30% in a quarter. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:14:22): And there's a lot of competition right now for Ed Stacey. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:24): put these two ideas together, which is step 1 as you syrupptitiously basically take all the costs out of the system and then step 2, raise price over time. There's probably something there. Jason Calacanis (00:14:35): Friedberg, when we look her age and her obvious deep deep knowledge, do you see that as an overall plus? I mean, obviously, it you know, David framed her as the Bernie approved candidate, but then conceded that 20 Republicans are are are backing her. What do you what do you think about the massive credibility she has, Friedberg, in terms of she's actually understands this deeply? clearly. David Friedberg (00:15:01): I mean, I'm sure she's not dumb. Is that is that what you're asking? I I'm not sure Speaker 1 (00:15:06): -- Jason Calacanis (00:15:07): Well, I mean, it should thirty two year old. I mean, do have we seen an appointment like that before? I mean, I don't think so. David Friedberg (00:15:12): Yeah. That's that's good for her. Jason Calacanis (00:15:14): Yeah. David Friedberg (00:15:15): So I just feel like there's a a bit of a a cycle underway where we have this kind of antiwealth, antiwealth accumulation sentiment as an undercurrent right now. you know, obviously, Bernie and Elizabeth Warren and others are are key vocal proponents of change that's needed to keep this kind of wealth disparity from continuing to grow. And one of the solutions is to reduce the monopolistic capacity of certain business models, specifically in technology, the the downside that I don't think it's realized and and that inevitably comes with this action under this new kind of business model of the the the technology age or the digital age, is the damage to consumers. Mhmm. And so, you know, as as Shamoff and David pointed out, like, historically, antitrust has been about protecting the consumer. And the irony is, the more monopoly or the more more monopolistic or the more market share Amazon gains, the cheaper things get for consumers. And and it's unfair to small businesses and to business owners and to competitors but consumers do fundamentally benefit. And so the the logical argument she made in her paper that was widely distributed a few years ago what was around this notion that in this new world, it's not about consumer harm, and we to look past the impact to consumers and look more kind of the, you know, the the fact that this company maybe prevents innovation and prevents competition. But ultimately, if the consumer is harmed in the resolution of that concern, we're not gonna wake up to it for a while. And then consumers one day are gonna wake up, and they're gonna be like, wait a second. Why am I paying five bucks for Gmail? And, you know, why am I paying an extra $10 for shipping to get my Amazon products brought to me every day. And, you know, all the things that I think we've taken for granted in the digital age with the advent of these, you know, call it monopolistic kind of business models where they accumulate market share and they can squeeze pricing and keep people out, and the bigger they get, the cheaper they get, therefore it's harder to compete. Consumers have benefited tremendously. I I I I think all of us would be hard pressed to say. David Friedberg (00:17:35): I would love to pay 10 bucks a month for Gmail. I'd love to pay for Facebook. And at the end of the day, these models and I'd love to pay more for shipping with Amazon. And so, you know, it becomes a value question. Right? What do you value more? Do you value the opportunity for competition and innovation in the business world, or do you value as a consumer better pricing? And I don't think that we're really having that debate And I think that that debate will inevitably kind of arise over the next couple of years. It's an act Speaker 1 (00:18:00): -- Jason Calacanis (00:18:00): How much is this? Speaker 1 (00:18:01): -- David Friedberg (00:18:01): kind of played out. Jason Calacanis (00:18:02): And I think to be clear, Friedberg, what you're saying is this is driven by the extraordinary wealth of Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, etcetera. David Friedberg (00:18:09): It's easy to pinpoint that problem. and then not involve the repercussions to consumers. If you try and change how business operates in a free market system, And these businesses are successful because they have customers that like what they're offering. Jason Calacanis (00:18:25): Yeah. David Friedberg (00:18:25): And they're and they drive in a competitive way of price sing down and they prevent people from coming in and competing, not by entering into contract and antitrust enforcement, all this sort of stuff, They're doing it because they're scaling and offering lower prices. I mean, this go like, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen have separately argued for this in in really intelligent ways, probably in a more articulated way than I can. But and they did this early on, which is, you know, we wanna find businesses that can become monopolies. Because if you can reduce your pricing and improve your pricing power with scale, it's gonna be harder and harder for someone to compete. And, therefore, the capital theory is rush a bunch of capital into these businesses, help them scale very quickly. I mean, this is obviously the basis of Uber and others, and then get really big, really fast. Jason Calacanis (00:19:06): Create the mode. David Friedberg (00:19:07): Create the mode. Drop the pricing, and then no one can compete with you think consumers benefit, and you've created the big business, and you've locked everyone. Jason Calacanis (00:19:13): Okay. So let me go around the horn here and frame this for everybody. Let's assume that Big Tech does get breaking up. This broken up. This is an exercise. We assume it gets broken up, and YouTube and Android are spun out. Instagram, WhatsApp are spun out. AWS is spun out. And, you know, app stores are allowed on Apple's platform iOS for the first time. I wanna know if this is good, bad, or neutral for the following two people. So these breakups occur. Is it good, bad, or neutral for consumers? And then 2, is it good, bad, or neutral for startups, sex? David Sacks (00:19:50): I generally would lean towards saying yes. I mean, it a lot depends on Jason Calacanis (00:19:54): how -- -- are neutral for each party. Startups and for consumers. David Sacks (00:19:59): I I think it could ultimately be good for for both, but it really depends on how it's done. And I think there is a big risk here that this generates into sort of hyper politicization. You get intensive amounts of lobbying by Big Tech in Washington. that what happens is, you know, you have a good cop bad cop where Lena Con just becomes the bad cop. She's there to kinda keep big tech in line, threatens to break them up. And then the good cop is, you know, Biden and the administration. And then they they become the protection under the extortion racket. They raise on you know, ungodly amounts of money. And, really, it'll be a bonanza for for all elected officials because now Big Tex have to increase its donations even more Jason Calacanis (00:20:44): Super cynical. Wow. That's the that's the cynical take. So we David Sacks (00:20:47): could end up with something much worse than what we have now. But but I think the legit I think the words you're gonna hear a lot. Okay? are common carrier. Because what she seems to be saying is, look, if you're a tech monopoly that controls core infrastructure, We need to regulate you like a common carrier. You cannot summarily deny service to your competitors who are downstream applications built on top of your platform. Service can get behind that because that is the argument they've been making about Facebook cutting off free speech is you are a speech utility You should be regulated as a common carrier. You cannot cut off people summarily. You cannot discriminate against people who should be allowed to have free speech on your platform. And so I think there is I think the left and the right here can cut a deal where they regulate these guys, these big tech companies as common carriers. I think that is what we're headed towards. Jason Calacanis (00:21:38): So a bakery can deny service as we talked about previous issue to a gay couple who wants a cake because it's a tiny little company, and there's other choices. when we're talking about Facebook and Twitter, there are not other choices. And once you remove, like, Trump has been from the public square, there is no recourse you are essentially 0 out. Shamoff, is it good for startups, bad for startups neutral? Same thing for consumers if, you know, one chunk of every company got clevered off. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:02): It's unanimously good for startups in any scenario in which they get involved. And I think in most cases in which the government gets involved, it's it's good for consumers as well. And -- Why? Jason Calacanis (00:22:16): In both cases? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:18): So for startups, it's just because I think right now we have a massive human capital sucking sound. that Big Tech creates in the ecosystem, which is that there is an entire generation of people that are basically, unfortunately, frittering away their most productive years, getting paid what seems to them like a lot of money but is what is effectively just, you know, payola to not Jason Calacanis (00:22:49): go to a competitor or go to a startup at Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:49): at by Big Tech. Jason Calacanis (00:22:52): So to explain that clearly, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:54): for example, like, if you're a machine learning person, David Friedberg (00:22:57): right, those machine Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:57): learning people, you know, can get paid Speaker 1 (00:23:03): $750,000,000 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:04): a year to stay at Google. And instead, they won't go to a start up because they take sort of the burden they had. Right? You multiply that by a 100 or a 150,000 very talented, you know, technical people, and that's actually what you're seeing every day. Now those numbers are actually much higher. You know, if you're if you're a specific AI person, you can get paid $5,000,000, $10,000,000 a year. My point is -- They Jason Calacanis (00:23:28): could have started a startup. And may -- It could have and and, frankly, they just Speaker 1 (00:23:31): -- -- 100,000,000. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:32): They they look. Let's be honest. They go to Google, Facebook, and whatever. And I I don't think anybody sees the real value of what they're doing in those places. getting paid. Now they're making a rational economic decision for themselves, and so nobody should blame them for that. But if startups had more access to those people or if, you know, those engineers finally said, you know what? Enough's enough. I'm actually gonna go and try something new. That's net additive to the ecosystem. It's net additive to startups. Right? That's that's that's for them. And then for consumers, I think the reason why it's positive is that it'll start to show you, in which cases you had been giving away something that you didn't realize was either valuable or you didn't realize you were giving away in return for all of these product subsidies that you were getting. And I think that's the next big thing that's happening. You can see it in the the enormous amount of investment Apple, for example, is making in both advertising the push to privacy as well as implementing the push to privacy. You know, this last WWDC, You know, they really threw the gauntlet down. You know, they they they were really trying to blow up the advertising business models of Google and Facebook. And as consumers become more aware of that, they're probably willing to pay more. So a simple example is, you know, there are a lot of people now who will pay higher prices for food if they know it to be organic. Right? There are people who will pay higher prices for electricity or for an electric car because of its impact or the lack of in the climate. So it's not to say that people always want cheaper, faster, better. Jason Calacanis (00:25:05): Right. I mean, sometimes people will buy an iPhone because it's a obviously protecting their privacy, and they know it's not an ad based model. And in fact, Apple is now making that part of their process. So Friedberg, I I asked the other gentleman if they thought some large unit being chopped off of every company, YouTube, AWS, Instagram, you pick it, would be a net positive for startups or negative or neutral and the same thing for consumers. What do you think? David Friedberg (00:25:32): Which gentleman did you ask? You mean, Zach? Jason Calacanis (00:25:35): I I was specifically referring to the ones who are wearing layers. Hello, sir. Yes. I'm using the term lightly. David Friedberg (00:25:43): So if you guys go back a few years ago, you'll remember there were these I think there were congressional hearings, and Jeremy Stoppelman from Yelp was pretty vocal. about how Google was redirecting search engine traffic to their own kind of reviews, and they were pulling Yelp content off the site, but then they said to Yelp, if you don't want us to pull your content, you can turn the web crawler toggle off, and we won't crawl your site. but your site is publicly available. We can crawl it, and we show snippets on our home page. But then their argument was, well, you're using our content to drive your own reviews. And they made this whole kind of case that Google's kind of monopoly in search was harming their ability to do business. You know, the the counterargument was, well, if you guys have a great service, consumers will go to your app directly or your website directly to get reviews. They won't go to Google. And so it created a little bit of this kind of noise for a while. I think there was some follow-up, and this is all very much related because ultimately, if he was able to get Google to stop providing a review service, his business would do better. because Google would effectively redirect search traffic to his site as opposed to their own internal site. So it is inevitably the case that in house apps or in house services that compete with 3rd party services when you're a platform business, are you know, if they're removed, it's certainly gonna benefit the competitive landscape, which is typically startups. You know, imagine if Apple didn't have Apple pre installed on the iPhone. Everyone would download and use Google Maps. Right? I mean, there Speaker 1 (00:27:16): -- Jason Calacanis (00:27:16): Oh, yeah. MapQuest, whatever. David Friedberg (00:27:18): Or MapQuest or whatever. And so you know, or or whatever startup came along in, like, ways and said, hey. We've got a better map. But because they have this ability to kinda put that Apple Maps in front of you, the consumer it's a default on your phone, you're more likely to just click on it and start using it and you're done. It certainly opens up this window, but I think the question is, what's ultimately best for the consumer, if you believe that consumers will choose what's best for themselves, you're starting to kind of manipulate with the market a bit And, Zach, I don't know. I think you've got a different point of view on this. David Sacks (00:27:47): But -- Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm a I'm a free markets type of guy, but my experience at PayPal really changed my thinking on this because PayPal, you know, was a startup that launched effectively as an involuntary app on top of the eBay market. At that time, eBay had a monopoly on the auction market, and that was the key sort of beachhead market for online payments. So we launched on top of eBay. Right? We were constantly trying to dislodge us and remove us from their platform. And, really, the only thing keeping that from just switching us off was was an antitrust thread. We actually spun up you could call it a lobbying operation where we would send information to the FTC and the DOJ and say, listen, you've got this auction monopoly here that's taking anticompetitive actions against us, this little startup. And, you know, it it it and so we were able to rattle the saber and and sort of brush them back from the plate from taking a, you know, a a much more dramatic action against us. And frankly, we did something kinda similar with Visa Mastercard because PayPal was essentially an application on top of Visa Mastercard as well. We offered merchants the ability to accept Visa Mastercard, but also PayPal payments, which were gradually eating into and supplanting the the credit card payments. And so, you know, Visa Mastercard had a very dim view of PayPal, and they were constantly you know, they were constantly making noise about switching us off. And I I do think that without the threat of antitrust hanging over these big monopolies or duopolies, it would have been very hard for us as a start up to get the access to these networks that we needed. And so it really kinda changed my thinking about it because, you know, if you let these giant monopolies run Why run run amuck. They will absolutely stifle innovation. Speaker 1 (00:29:40): 100%. Jason Calacanis (00:29:41): Yes. David Sacks (00:29:41): They will become gatekeepers. And so you have to have the threat of antitrust action hanging over their heads, or you will stifle innovation. Jason Calacanis (00:29:50): Absolutely. I mean, if you just look at the interest in Google flights over time, I'm looking at a chart right now. We'll into the notes. Google Flights you know, I know some of us don't fly commercial anymore. But, you know, for somebody who's looking for flights on a regular basis, watching Google INTERCEPT flight information, put up Google Flights, and it's an awesome product. and just expediaandbookings.com would have Speaker 1 (00:30:15): -- David Friedberg (00:30:15): So, Jason, that's that that was a company called ITA Software based out of Boston. And ITA was a by Google, IPA was the search engine behind flight search for most companies. It was, like, 70 PhDs. They were all statistics, guys. And they basically built this logistical model that identified, you know, flights and pricing and all this sort of stuff to Jason Calacanis (00:30:34): do that. So they should never been allowed. David Friedberg (00:30:36): Well, they created a white label search capability that they then provided, and they were making plenty of money providing this as a white label search capability to Expedia and kayak and all the online travel agencies. And Google wanted to be in that business because travel search was obviously such a a big vertical. Jason Calacanis (00:30:54): Mhmm. David Friedberg (00:30:54): And rather than just buy a travel search site, they bought the engine that powers travel search for most of the other Jason Calacanis (00:31:00): sites. Gangster. David Friedberg (00:31:01): And then they also revealed the results in their own search result homepage, which effectively cut off the OTAs. And the OTAs are big spenders on Google Ads. So Speaker 1 (00:31:10): -- Jason Calacanis (00:31:10): So, basically, Google this is how nefarious it is if I'm hearing what you're saying, Friedberg correctly. They watched all this money being made by those OTAs. They watched where they got their data from, then they bought their data source and then they decided, you know what? We won't take your cost per click money. We'll just take your entire business. David Friedberg (00:31:29): I don't know. So so let me just put let me just say it another way. What's best for consumers? So does a consumer because what happens a lot in online relationships, I Jason Calacanis (00:31:36): guess, that don't wanna make money. David Friedberg (00:31:38): Yeah. In online advertising, there are a lot of these ad arbitrage business. This is one way to think about it, where, you know, a service provider will pay for ads on Google to get traffic. The ads will come to their site, and then they will either make money on ads or, you know, kinda sell that consumer in another way. Right? And so that's effectively what the OTAs were is they were they became Intermediaries. On online search engine e intermediaries that were arbitraging Google's ad costs versus what they could get paid for the consumer. And so Google -- Right. Speaker 1 (00:32:06): -- David Sacks (00:32:06): look at David Friedberg (00:32:06): this, and they're like, wait a second. we're only capturing half the pie. And consumers don't wanna have to click through 3 websites to buy a a flight or buy a hotel. And by the way, if they did, they would keep doing it. So why don't we just give them the end result right up front, and then consumers will be happier. The less time they have to spend clicking through sites and looking at other shitty ads, the happier they'll be, And the product just works incredibly well, consumers Jason Calacanis (00:32:28): love it. -- consumers lives less arduous Speaker 1 (00:32:30): -- David Sacks (00:32:30): Yeah. But I Jason Calacanis (00:32:30): think -- -- building a power base that then could make their lives miserable holidays. What what David Sacks (00:32:35): what what what I think Lina Kahn is saying though is you can't just look at the short term interests of consumers. You gotta look at their term interest. What's in the long term interest consumers is to have competition. In the short term, these giant monopolies can engage in predatory pricing to lower the cost for consumers. And so just looking at the price on a short term basis isn't enough. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:55): And they can trick people to giving them something else that they don't know to be valuable. So in the case of these you know, a lot of these companies, what are they doing? They're tricking them to get enormous amounts of user information. Jason Calacanis (00:33:07): Yep. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:08): personal information, user generated content, and they get nothing for it. Right. And then on the back of that, if you're able to build a trillion look at look at the value that YouTube has generated. Economic value and then try to figure out how much of that value is really shared with the creator community inside of YouTube. I'm guessing it's less than 50 basis points. Jason Calacanis (00:33:29): Well, 50 say, I get 55 percent of revenue. Yeah. But you're saying, downstream with all that data, Google is making a massive amount David Friedberg (00:33:37): of money. I just want If you if Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:38): you impute the value of all of the PII that Google basically gets -- Expense PII? personally identifiable information, all the cookies that they drop, all that information, and you equate it to an economic enterprise value, not necessarily in yearly revenue. Like a discounted cash flow over 20 years, you would be in the 1,000,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars. And then if you discounted same 20 years of revenue share that they give to their content producers, it will be in the hundreds of 1,000,000,000 of dollars at best And so you're talking about an enormous trade off where Google basically has built you know, a multi $1,000,000,000,000 asset and has leaked away less than 10 or 15 percent of the value. But that's an example where they're giving people something that they think is valuable. Jason Calacanis (00:34:25): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:25): But in return, they're able to build something much, much more valuable right on hold on those. David Friedberg (00:34:29): I just wanna address, like, Saks's point which is the regulators are now gonna start to think about the long term interest consumer over the short term interest of the consumer. as effectively giving the regulatory throttle to elected officials. And this means that you're now giving another throttle, right, another controlled joystick to to folks that may not necessarily come from business, that may not necessarily have the the appropriate background, and that may have their own kind of political incentives and motivations to decisions about what is right and what is wrong for consumers over the long term, and, ultimately, those are gonna be value judgments. Right? There's no determinism here. There's no right or wrong They're gonna be decisions based on the kind of opinion and nuance of of some elected people. And so it is a very dangerous and kind of slippery slope to end up in this world where the judgment of some regulator about what's best for consumers long term versus the cold hard facts, oh, prices went up, prices didn't, you know, but really saying, well, this could affect you in the future in this way starts to become kind of a really, you know, scary and slippery slope if we kind of embrace this this this new regulatory order. Jason Calacanis (00:35:40): Alright. Moving on. Big news this week. Apple had a gag order. It has been revealed Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:47): This is unbelievable. Jason Calacanis (00:35:48): It's pretty crazy. And we we only have partial information here. But the Justice Department subpoenaed Apple in February of Speaker 1 (00:35:55): 2018 Jason Calacanis (00:35:56): about an account that belonged to Donald McGahn, who obviously was the Trump's White House Council at the time and obviously was part of the campaign. He is very famously known for being interviewed by Mueller. And at that this is the time period, by the way. We're talking about here in February of 2018 when Mueller was investigating Manafort who, of course, was super corrupt and went to jail and then was something like pardoned because they he was also involved in the campaign in 2016. It's possible that this related to Mueller. It's unknown at this time. Many other folks were also caught up in this dragnet. Rod Rosenstein was a second, and it's unclear if the FBI agents were investigating. whether McGahn was the leaker or not, Trump had previously ordered McGahn the previous June to have the justice department remove Mueller, which McGahn refused and threatened to resign. And McGahn later revealed that he had in fact leaked his resignation threat to the Washington Post. According to The Times disclosure that agents had collected data of the sitting White House Council which they kept secret for years is extraordinary. Go ahead, Zach. David Sacks (00:37:05): Well, I I I just think you let's let's get all the facts out here. I think you're missing some of the key facts. So The the justice department under Trump starts this investigation into leaks of classified information. They're on a mole hunt effectively. and they start making the they subpoena, the DOJ subpoenas records from Apple, and it goes very broad And they end up subpoenaing the records, not just of McGahn, who's the White House counsel, which is very bizarre and curious that they'd be investigating their own White House counsel. But They also Jason Calacanis (00:37:35): Well, it was elite of ships, actually. David Sacks (00:37:38): Yes. But there are they also subpoena records of Adam Schiff and Swalwell and Member Z house intelligence committee. And so you have now an accusation, which is being breathlessly reported. on CNN and MSNBC that here you had the Trump administration investigating its political enemies and using the subpoena power of the DOJ. with Apple's compliance to now spy on their political enemies. That Jason Calacanis (00:38:04): that that Speaker 1 (00:38:05): -- Jason Calacanis (00:38:05): Those are some big jumps. Those are some big jumps. Speaker 1 (00:38:07): -- Jason Calacanis (00:38:07): to set up. Yeah. And and that those are some big jumps because according to Preet Bahara and some other folks who are in the industry who who have done these actual subpoenas, they could have been subpoenaing, you know, one of Manafort's, you know, corrupt, you know, partners in crime. And then those peep he could have been talking to many people in the Trump and then subsequently, family members and others. So he might have not been the target. He could have been caught up in the metadata of other people Yes. So this might not be Trump saying, get me his Speaker 1 (00:38:37): -- Jason Calacanis (00:38:37): Yes. Speaker 1 (00:38:38): -- Jason Calacanis (00:38:38): iPhone records. It could be there's some dirty person. They know they're dirty, and that person had reached out to other people, and they might have even done one more hop from it, Chipotle thought? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:48): I mean, to okay. That's one version. Yep. And then, you know, the other the other version, which is important, is you subpoena your own lawyer by going to Apple Getting basically god knows what data associated with this man's account. And then, you know, in institute the gag order on that company so that they can neither tell the person until now when the gag order expired nor tell anybody else nor have any recourse to the that they think that this is illegitimate. That to me smells really fishy. And so, you know, like, there are other mechanisms that that we know of, like, physiques and other things that these big companies have to deal with all the time, this at least the way that it's written and how it's been reported is something outside of the pale And so I think you have to deal with it with this question of, like, what the hell was going on over there? David Sacks (00:39:38): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:39): It does seem like they were going I mean, you know, kindly maybe mole Hunting, more notoriously witch hunting, but they were trying to pin it on people and They may have used this blanket sort of denial possibility of the Russia, you know, imbroglio But really what these guys were doing was they were investigating anybody that they thought was a threat. And that is a really scary thing to have in a democracy And then the fact that these big tech companies basically just turned it over and didn't have any recourse to protect the user or to inform the public Forget Trump for a second. I think we don't necessarily want that to be the president that holds going forward. Jason Calacanis (00:40:23): Yeah. And the the interesting thing here is that Saks Jeff Sessions, Rosensign, and Barr all say they're unaware of this. So what would be the charitable reason they were unaware of it? or what would be the nefarious reason? Or or is that important at all? Because that's really strange that they would go after the White House counsel and Adam Schiff And those top 3 people would have no idea. Are they lying? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:49): What's next is the s c and, you know, are we gonna basically go to a point where, like, you know, Every single every no. But I mean, like, every single post that one makes on Facebook is basically surveilled. If you make an anonymous post on Twitter, will you be tracked down? I I remember, like, as much as everybody thinks there's anonymity on the Internet, there really isn't. And you should just completely assume that you are trackable, are being tracked, have been tracked, everything is in the wide open. It's just a matter of whether it's disclosed to you or not or whether it's brought back to you or not. David Sacks (00:41:19): So yeah. So, look, I mean, I I agree with Jermoth that this stinks, and it's an it's an invasion of people civil liberties. But I would not make it too partisan because the Obama administration was engaging in similar activity back in 2013. And I don't think people realize this. The there's an old saying, in Washington that the real scandal is what's legal. And the fact of the matter is that what the Trump administration did was certainly suspicion and it might have been politically motivated. We don't know. But it was legal. The DOJ convened a federal grand jury got these got these subpoenas present them to Apple and got this information. And in in a similar way back in 2013, the Obama administration did something similar. It's quite extraordinary. They subpoenaed the records of the AP. They for they for 2 months, they got the records of reporters and 5 branches of the AP and all their mobile records, and they were on a mole hunt to try and find leakers of classified information. So the Trump administration basically did exactly what the Obama administration did. The only new wrinkle is that they'd only went after reporters. They actually Speaker 1 (00:42:28): -- David Sacks (00:42:28): Well -- participated in records of members Jason Calacanis (00:42:30): of that house. one huge you're missing you're missing one huge difference. Trump was under investigation for espionage and treason at the time. So it is slightly different. Obama -- I David Sacks (00:42:43): I I I don't think it's that different in the sense that Trump used powers that were pioneer by the Obama administration. They just took them they just took them. Well Jason Calacanis (00:42:51): Why why little In addition to that, Saks, in addition to that, when Obama did it, all the top arrests at the Department of Justice were aware of this. And in this case, you have three people who are running the Department of Justice Speaker 1 (00:43:02): -- -- Jason Calacanis (00:43:02): administration -- -- all claiming they don't know. David Sacks (00:43:04): No. In 2013, there's a New York Times article on this. I'm gonna post on the in the show notes. But it said, that when when first of all, the AP was not informed about the subpoenas until a number of months later. So it was a secret seizure of records. Same thing here with the gag order. And so you have people being investigated or even know they're being investigated investigated. They came in, get a lawyer spun up to oppose the invasion of their rights. Jason Calacanis (00:43:32): I I agree with you, but the attorney general knew about that. David Sacks (00:43:36): Maybe the attorney general did, but the White House claims that it didn't know. So in any event, I mean, look. Yeah. What we I I in my view on this is that we shouldn't try to make this 2 partisan. What we have here is an opportunity to hopefully get some bipartisan legislation to fix the issue. And I think the fix should be this that When you investigate somebody, when you subpoena records from a Big Tech company, you have to notify them. You should not be able to do that secretly. Because the fact of the matter is that Apple and these other big tech companies don't have an incentive to oppose the subpoena. They're not your lawyer. And, actually, Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, had a great op ed in the Washington Post that we should post that we should put in the show notes where he said these secret gag orders must stop. He said that in the old way of the government subpoena records, is that you would have essentially offline records. You have a file cabinet, and the government would come with a search warrant that present the search warrant to you, and then you could get a lawyer to oppose it. Well, They don't do that anymore because your records aren't in a file cabinet somewhere. They're in the cloud. And so now they don't even go to the person who's being investigated. Jason Calacanis (00:44:43): Right. David Sacks (00:44:43): They just go to a big tech company sees the records and then put a gag order on top of it so you don't even know you're being investigated. That's the part of it that states. Jason Calacanis (00:44:50): By the way, it's even more perinitiating. That's Saks because to combine this with the previous story, what incentive does Apple have to say to an administration that could break them up We're not gonna cooperate. David Sacks (00:45:04): Of course. It it -- 0 incentive. Speaker 1 (00:45:07): 0. David Sacks (00:45:07): They they are not your agent in this. And here's the thing. those are your records. They're in the cloud, but they're your records and every other privacy context. We say those records belong to you, not to Big Tech, So why is Jason Calacanis (00:45:18): it not government? This is why people's moving everything to your phone. David Friedberg (00:45:21): Right? But just this Jason Calacanis (00:45:22): is true. David Sacks (00:45:22): At this point, why should the government be able to do an end run around you that targeted the investigation. Go to Big Tech. Get your records from David Friedberg (00:45:30): Because they they're Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:31): not your records. Well, first of all, they're not your records. These companies tricked all of us by giving it to us for free so that we gave them all of our content. They are not just the they are not just the custodian. They are the trustee. of our content. And it's a huge distinction in what they're allowed to do. And Jason brings up an incredible point, which is which is that, of course, they're now incentivized to have a backdoor and live under a gag order because their their defense in a backroom is you guys you know, when when in the light, somebody says we should break you up. In the dark, they can say, guys, come on. We got it backdoor. You just come in. Gag order us. Give us wait. We'll give you what you want. You want a honeypot. Jason Calacanis (00:46:14): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:14): You don't want this thing all over the Internet. And can you imagine how credible David that is to your point? Because that is a body of concentrating power that I think is very scary. Jason Calacanis (00:46:25): In fairness to Apple, Friedberg, they have locked down the phone, and they've moved all of this information from the cloud or they're starting this process and saying, gonna keep some amounts of data encrypted on your phone. And, of course, with the San Bernardino shooting, they refused in a terrorist shooting, a known terrorist shooting to not give a backdoor Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:44): Well, that's a crazy standard. It's like, you know what? Okay. There was a San Bernardino shooter, and they were like, nope. Sorry. That's a bridge too far. But, you know, Don McGahn and basically, like, you know, political espionage, they're like, here you go. Jason Calacanis (00:46:58): I I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:58): don't know I don't know how you how do you make these decisions? Jason Calacanis (00:47:01): let me David Friedberg (00:47:01): ask you guys a question. Jason Calacanis (00:47:03): Go ahead, Frebert. David Friedberg (00:47:03): Would you be could you see yourself Thriving in a world where all of your information was completely publicly available, but also all of everyone else's information was completely publicly available? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:20): Yes. Jason Calacanis (00:47:21): Oh, everybody has all their nudes on the web is what you're saying? David Friedberg (00:47:24): Everyone there's a there's a there's a book by Stephen Baxter called The Light of Other Days. It's one of my favorite sci fi books. I texted all of my investors this last we do like a book thing every year. And I reread it recently, but the whole point of the book is that there's, like, a wormhole technology that they discover, and they can figure out how to, like, look in you you can boot up your computer and look in anywhere and see anything and hear anything you want. And so all of a sudden society has to transform under this kind of new regime of hyper we're all information about everything is completely available. But I think the the fear and the concern that we innately have with respect to loss of privacy is that there's a centralized or controlled power that has that information. But what if there was a world that that you evolved to where all of that information is generally available quite broadly. And I'm I'm not advocating for this, by the way. I'm just pointing out that, like, the sensitivity we have is about our information being concentrated in the hands of either a government or a business. And I think you have to kind of accept the fact that more information is being generated about each of every day than was being generated by us a few weeks ago or months ago or years ago Speaker 1 (00:48:35): -- Jason Calacanis (00:48:35): Basically, everybody -- In a June. -- everybody's the Truman and everybody's the Truman show is what you're saying. David Friedberg (00:48:40): Well, a geometrically growing way, information which we're calling PII or whatever is being generated about us. And I think the genie's out of the bottle. Meaning, like, the the the cost of sensors, the access to digital the digital age and what it brings to us from a benefit perspective, is creating information about us and a footprint about us that I don't think we ever kind of contemplated. But as that happens, the question is where does that information go? can't you put that genie back in the bottle? And I think there's a there's a big philosophical point, which is, like, if you try to put the genie back in the bottle, you're really just trying to fight Information wants to be free. Information wants to grow. Jason Calacanis (00:49:15): What's the name of the book you you were talking about there? David Friedberg (00:49:17): The Light of Other Days by Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clark help write it. But the the book is most interesting about the philosophical implications of a world where all information is completely freely available. And any anyone yeah. Completely transparent. And so, like, do we see ourselves because I think there's 2 paths. One is you fight this and you fight it and you fight it every which way, which is I want my PII locked up. I don't wanna anyone having access to it, yadayadayada, you'll either see a diminishment of services or Jason Calacanis (00:49:43): you'll The other one is you do us. Or you'll see the selfie on Twitter where you take a shirt off. David Friedberg (00:49:46): Or or you'll see this concentration of power where we all kinda freak out where the government or or some business has all of our information. The other path is a path that society starts to recognize that this information's out there. There is you know, whatever Speaker 1 (00:49:59): -- David Sacks (00:49:59): It's it's not just about PII here. This is about due process. This is about our 5th Amendment right to do process. You have the government secretly investigating people. They can never do this if they had to present you with a search warrant. They are doing an and run around that process by going to Big Tech Jason Calacanis (00:50:16): just to put David Sacks (00:50:16): some numbers on this. Big Tech is getting something like 400 subpoenas a week for people's records. They only oppose 4% of them. Why? They have no incentive to Jason Calacanis (00:50:27): oppose them. You should be able to send you Do you know how many of those a secret or not? David Sacks (00:50:31): We don't know how many of them have a gag order. They are required to tell the target what happened, but not if there's a gag order attached to it. We don't know many have a gag order. You should have the right to send your own lawyer to oppose the request not to Speaker 1 (00:50:45): -- Jason Calacanis (00:50:45): If you want a -- -- protect David Sacks (00:50:46): for it. Jason Calacanis (00:50:46): If you wanna see an amazing movie, The Lives of Others, which is about the state security service in East Berlin, Germany, also known as the Stasi and the impact of literally in your apartment building. There are three people spying on the other ten people. And they're the postman and, you know, the housewife and the teacher, and they're all tapped and secretly recording to each other. It leads to chaos and bad feelings and Obviously, when East Berlin, when when the walk came down, all of this came out, and it was really dark and crazy. David Sacks (00:51:19): Yeah. I mean, look, let me connect this to the censorship issue, actually, because in my view, they're both very similar civil liberties issues, which is In the case of the censorship issue, you have the government doing an end run around the first amendment by demanding that big tech companies engage in sensor ship that the government itself could not do. You have something very similar taking place here with these records. The government is demanding secrecy about its seizure of records. They're imposing that on Big Tech. They're making Big Tech do its dirty work for them. They could never do that directly if they had to go to the target of the investigation and ask for their and and and subpoena the records that way. So you what you have here is a case where we'd only need to be protected against the power of Big Tech. We need to be protected against the power of government usurping the powers of Big Tech to engage in, you know, behavior they couldn't otherwise engage in. And friends with the folks who deliver it. Speaker 1 (00:52:13): -- Jason Calacanis (00:52:13): and the government are overlapping and in Kahoots. Well, they're in some yeah. They're they're in some really crazy dance. The money is flowing freely. from lobbyists and Speaker 1 (00:52:27): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:27): It's a very, very complicated relationship. Jason Calacanis (00:52:29): It's a very complicated relationship. -- complicated relationship. Speaker 1 (00:52:32): 7 Jason Calacanis (00:52:32): day average for COVID deaths is now at Speaker 1 (00:52:36): 332. Jason Calacanis (00:52:39): Finding cases of people who have had COVID is now becoming, like, almost shocking. I don't know if you guys saw, but The point guard, Chris Paul, who is having an incredibly winning season in the NBA. He basically caught COVID They said he was vaccinated, so it could be a mild case, but he's been pulled out indefinitely, and he's about to play in the western conference final. So it's pretty crazy. and Friedberg, obviously, California's opened up after 15 months, and we were the first to shut down. The last open up, and we were hit the least, I think, of any state or amongst the least of any well, certainly the least of any large state. And you're being asked to still wear a mask at your office. David Friedberg (00:53:22): I'm also being asked to take off my shoes when I get on an airplane. Yeah. 20 years later. And -- Yeah. Speaker 1 (00:53:28): -- David Friedberg (00:53:28): I I don't think Al Qaeda exists anymore. Jason Calacanis (00:53:31): Yeah. Maybe some, yeah, parts of it. Explain what's happening to you in the Presidio, which is a a lovely state park here in California. My office my David Friedberg (00:53:41): office in the Presidio, California San Francisco County and the federal government have all removed mask mandates, but our our landlord has determined in their judgment that everyone could still wear a mask to go to work. And so to go into my rented office and work, I have to wear a mask. And I think it's it's an issue for a a lot of people who like, those are people that I I've been probably a couple restaurants this week, And, you know, you go to some restaurants and everyone's just chilling, the employees are not wearing masks, there's other restaurants where they're being told they have to keep wearing masks by their manager or their boss. And so this brings up this big question, which is, like, we've now got the kind of psychic shadow of COVID. That that's gonna it's gonna it's gonna cast a very long shadow. Jason Calacanis (00:54:27): You predicted it. You predicted it. David Friedberg (00:54:29): And and so people that that are in power wanna continue to kind of impress upon, you know, whatever, you know, employees or tenants or or what have you they might have, in whatever they deem their judgment to be, which is obviously, in in many cases, an uninformed, uninformed, nonscientific. And a non mandated judgment about effectively what people should have to wear. So if the threat or the risk have been removed, And all of the health officials and all of the government agencies are saying the threat has been removed. You no longer need to kinda wear masks, but your boss or your manager or your landlord tells you you have to wear a mask to conduct your business or to to go to work. You know, it's gonna bring up this whole series of challenges in questions I foresee for the next couple of months at least and maybe for several years about what's fair and what's right. And and there will always be the safety argument to be made on the other side, so it's very argue against that. And, oh, well, the inconvenience is just a mask. It's not a big deal. But for, you know, a number of people to to now kind of be told, you know, what to do and what to wear Speaker 1 (00:55:29): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:29): It'll take a year. to sort all these things out because they'll all get prosecute not prosecuted, but litigated, and they're David Friedberg (00:55:36): gonna go to court. They will get litigated. For sure. There will there will be lawsuits on this. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:40): And and what's gonna happen is that you're gonna basically have, again, Jason, back to that example of the the bakery in Colorado. private institutions will be allowed some level of independence in establishing, you know, certain Speaker 1 (00:55:54): -- David Friedberg (00:55:54): Employee guidelines and on. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:56): Exactly. And you you'll have to conform to those. And the it it is what it is. I mean, I I I just It was very Jason Calacanis (00:56:03): strange in Austin in terms of these COVID dead enders who just will not let it go, I'm in Austin where nobody is wearing a mask. And then there were like, I went into Lululemon, and they like, two people charged me with masks in hands And they were like, you have to wear a mask. And I was like, do I? And they're like, yes. It's our policy. I was like, fine. I'll put it on. I don't care. You know? No big deal. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:29): thing this thing has really fried a bunch of people's brains. I mean -- It's crazy. I mean -- It's it's basically like you've taken an entire group of folks Speaker 1 (00:56:37): -- -- David Friedberg (00:56:37): and kidnap them. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:38): and kidnap them essentially. Stockholm syndrome. It's Stockholm syndrome. It's incredible. No. David Friedberg (00:56:42): Everyone's been held everyone's been held hostage, you know, in a prison for the last year, And so you've kind of accepted that this is the new reality. I gotta wear a mask. I gotta wear gloves. And, you know, it's the similar sort of in reality that I think was needed going into this where people didn't believe what it was, and now it's hard for them to believe what it's become. David Sacks (00:57:03): Well, we we we flagged -- That's David Friedberg (00:57:04): just human nature. Yeah. David Sacks (00:57:06): Yeah. We we flagged on this pod a few months ago, the threat of zeroyism Speaker 1 (00:57:10): -- David Friedberg (00:57:10): Yeah. Speaker 1 (00:57:10): -- David Sacks (00:57:10): which is that we wouldn't let you know, all the special rules and restrictions left until there were zero cases of COVID. And we all know that's never gonna happen. COVID will always be around in the background. And just to add a layer to what's happening here in California is, yeah, on June 15th, we lifted the restrictions. But governor Newsom has not given up his emergency powers, and he's He says he will keep them until COVID's been extinguished. So he's now embraced Euroism on behalf of this sort of authoritarianism Speaker 1 (00:57:41): -- Jason Calacanis (00:57:41): Yeah. David Sacks (00:57:41): And, you know, so we've got this, like, Golden State Caesar. And now I I what's interesting is I don't think this is just because he's a tyrant, although he's certainly been heavy handed, I think it's because that the I think it's more about corruption than ideology because federal funds, emergency funds from the federal government keep flowing to the state as long as we have a state of emergency. And so the longer he keeps this thing going, the more money he gets from the federal government that he can then use in this recall year to pay people off, And so we've already seen he's been buying every vote he can. Right? He gave 600 bucks to everyone making under 75,000. He's forgiving all the traffic fines and parking tickets He's doing this this lottery ticket thing for getting the vaccine. And so he just wants to keep the the the gravy train from Washington. Jason Calacanis (00:58:32): fulstein to David Sacks (00:58:33): California even though we Jason Calacanis (00:58:34): have a surplus. It's what government David Friedberg (00:58:36): it's what governor Chipmuth would have done. Jason Calacanis (00:58:40): I mean, it reminds me of 911 where people were just like, hey. We can keep this gravy train. David Friedberg (00:58:45): No. I mean, like, 9:9:11 is the perfect kind of psychic you know, scenario of, you know, replaying itself with COVID, there are behavioral changes that have lasted forever. There are regulatory changes, this, you know, Department of Homeland Security. I mean, you go through the amount of money that gets spent by the TSA every year, and the qualified risk and the qualified benefit completely unqualified. Right? Like, the amount of money that flows into these programs because you can make the the subjective statement there is a threat. There is risk. Therefore, spend infinite amounts of money. Right? Like, it's because because you never kinda put pen to paper and say, What is the risk? What is the probability? What is the severity of loss? And therefore, let's make a value judgment about how much we should spend to protect against that downside. And we're now doing the same thing with COVID. not having a conversation about how many cases, how many what's the risk? Should we really still be spending bill billions of dollars of state funding to continue to protect a a state where 70% of people are vaccinated. Jason Calacanis (00:59:40): And we and we have a massive surplus, and we're still giving people money. who may or may not need it, and we're doing it indiscriminately speaking of discussions and hard topics and being able to have them YouTube, which kicked off a ton of people on the platform for talking about things that were not approved by the WHO has taken Professor Brett Weinstein's podcast down because he had a very reasonable discussion about ivermectin and its efficacy or lack of efficacy. This is a doctor, a PhD talking to an MD, and the video was removed. Apple did not remove. It's really scary. This episode -- These people David Sacks (01:00:18): should not be the gatekeepers of the truth. They have no idea what the truth is. about the the John Stewart appearance on Stephen Colbert. Speaker 1 (01:00:25): -- Jason Calacanis (01:00:25): about to dovetail this week, which is Speaker 1 (01:00:27): -- David Sacks (01:00:27): Yeah. He killed. He killed on Stephen Colbert. But the things he was saying about the lab leak would not have been allowed on YouTube Speaker 1 (01:00:34): 6 Jason Calacanis (01:00:34): months ago. -- 3 months ago that you would have been removed for it. Even as a comedian, the performance was amazing. He basically says, you know, the Wuhan COVID lab is where the Wuhan, you know Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:47): No. The disease is named out after the lab. So where do you think it David Friedberg (01:00:52): came from? Was like a Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:53): a panel in, you know, mated with a bat? I mean, this is since and he goes on this whole diatribe, it's incredibly funny. Yes. But then at the end of it well, I I had 2 takeaways. I don't know if you guys felt this. At first, I was like, John Stewart's a little unhinged here. Like, I mean, there was a part of it that was funny, and then there was a part of it which is like, wow. John Stewart's been trapped indoors a little too long. Jason Calacanis (01:01:14): months. Yeah. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:14): So I I thought that as well, to be honest. But then the second thing which I saw on Twitter was all these people reminding anybody who saw the tweet that this exact content would have not been allowed on Big Tech platforms were it said 3 or 6 months ago. And I was like, wow. This is this is really nuts. Meaning, it takes a left leaning smart funny comedian to say something Jason Calacanis (01:01:41): that -- Go Satish. Yep. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:42): If the if the right if the right would have said, it would have just been instantly banished. And that's, like, that's kind of crazy. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:01:49): His the great quote was, I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science. Science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, which was more than likely caused by science. David Sacks (01:01:59): Yeah. It was that that it was a funny line where he said something like, if there was an outbreak of chocolate goodness in Hershey, Pennsylvania. David Friedberg (01:02:05): Hershey, Pennsylvania. It Jason Calacanis (01:02:06): would be it would David Sacks (01:02:06): be because you know, whatever the Jason Calacanis (01:02:08): pangolin, kissed a bat. It's because there's a fucking chocolate factory there. David Sacks (01:02:12): Like, I Jason Calacanis (01:02:13): I don't know. Maybe a steam shovel made it with a cocoa bean. Exactly. It's a fucking chocolate Macery. David Sacks (01:02:18): Maybe that's it. Jason Calacanis (01:02:20): Oh, it's that. It was bro. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:21): He was so funny. He's so funny. David Sacks (01:02:23): So I I agree with Tomas's takeaways. I mean, this was great example of of censorship run amok at these big tech companies. But the other thing I saw that was really interesting was Stephen Colbert lose control of his audience. And, you know, Stewart killed on that show, but you could see Steven Colbert was, I think, visibly nervous. David Friedberg (01:02:42): Very uncomfortable. Very comfortable. David Sacks (01:02:44): He did not know what was coming. And he was trying to and when and and when when Johnster kept pushing this, he was like, well, he's actually trying to qualify. Well, So what you're saying is now that Fauci has said, this might be a possibility. You're saying it might be a possibility. And Joss Stewart was having none of it. He ran right over that said, no. The name is the same. It's obvious. Come on. Jason Calacanis (01:03:04): And Speaker 1 (01:03:04): -- Jason Calacanis (01:03:05): Yeah. Well, Colbert kept challenging him. I don't know if you saw this part where he said, hey. Listen. Is it possible that they have a lab in Wuhan to study the coronavirus disease because, Wuhan, there are a lot of novel coronavirus diseases because it's a big bat population. And then Stewart, is, like, no I'm not standing for that because I totally understand it's the local specialty, and it's the only place to find bats. You won't find bats anywhere else. Oh, wait. Austin, Texas has thousands of the flag of a cave every night at dusk, and he wouldn't let it go. So it was just great watching. David Sacks (01:03:31): It was it was our reminder frankly of how funny both John Stewart and Steven Colbert were about 15 years ago. And I frankly I don't think Steven Colbert is funny anymore because Jason Calacanis (01:03:42): No. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:42): Because he's gotta keep his job. Jason Calacanis (01:03:44): He's carrying numbers. He's also too woke and and yeah. David Sacks (01:03:47): Yes. He's become very polemical. And and what Stewart reminded us is that comedy is funny when it's making fun of the people who are pretentious and basically who aren't telling the truth. And Stephen Colbert has become so polemical that he's lost sight of the comedy. And -- Yes. -- Joshua brought it back. And I hope -- You know what they said? David Friedberg (01:04:08): By the way Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:09): Colbert Colbert had this element of satire, which even Stewart because Stewart was in your face funny. Whereas Colbert was like subtle and dry and you had to think about it, there was layered. Oh, for sure. He's totally lost it. Totally totally lost. Jason Calacanis (01:04:23): Well, if, you know -- And then Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:24): and then and then and then I thought Stewart came out swinging hard. I do think though it sucks. You have to agree. Did it seem to you though, like, Stewart had not like, he just needed more human to human interaction. Absolutely. Jason Calacanis (01:04:35): He was a cage Tigerman. But he was a duty actor. He was the kid tiger. They let him out. David Friedberg (01:04:39): He was like, Danielle going to Austin? Absolutely. Jason Calacanis (01:04:41): That's what I went on the world tour. David Sacks (01:04:43): It was the funniest thing John Sertz done in many years. And and the reason is because He connected with the fact that here is this obvious thing that we're not allowed to say. And that is what comics should be doing. Jason Calacanis (01:04:56): Yeah. put a light on it. I mean, if comedy is tragedy plus time, I think that this is a great moment for us to reflect on, like, I think we're gonna go back to normal pretty quick. If you remember after 911, there was this idea that comedy was over forever. You were not gonna be able to make fun of things and that this was the end of satire. People were this is, you know, a bridge too far, etcetera. And I think we're back. We're back, and that's it. You know, we can joke about the coronavirus. We can talk about it. We don't need to censor people for having an opinion. We're all adults here. You know, the idea that You know, we have to take down people's tweets because they have some crazy theory or put a label on them. Like, we went a little crazy during the pandemic and try to stifle discussions for what reason? Exactly. Like, when we look back on this, it's gonna look really strange that we demanded that we put labels on people questioning or having a debate including doctors. Doctors were not allowed to debate to the public on YouTube or Twitter about what was the drug that Trump kept promoting? Hydroxychloroquine. Chloroquine. Like, remember that whole chloroquine? I think this ivermectin or whatever it is. It's just triggering people because it feels like that last drug which is a drug that may or may not work to slow down the progression of COVID. But anyway, this is all over. If you haven't gotten your goddamn vaccine, please get it. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:27): stop denying science. Jason Calacanis (01:06:28): Stop denying science. And -- Climate Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:30): change climate change is not real. David Sacks (01:06:31): I remember this. Jason Calacanis (01:06:33): Oh my god. The YouTube just canceled our count, Jamada, what are you doing? Speaker 1 (01:06:38): You can't say that. David Sacks (01:06:39): Science. We we we talk about science as if science is a definitive answer to a question. Jason Calacanis (01:06:45): It's a process. David Sacks (01:06:46): It's a process by which you come to answers. You test them. And look, hydroxychloroquine may have been completely wrong, but let the debate happen. The answers came out anyway. Jason Calacanis (01:06:56): I'll David Friedberg (01:06:56): tell you a fundamental premise of science. It's a challenge assumptions. And so when you challenge an existing hypothesis or kind of an existing thing that we hold to be true, you are engaging in science and the rigorous debate around what works and what doesn't work was notably absent over the past year, because everything became about the political truth. You're either true or you're false based on your political orientation, and we reduce everything down to kind of this one dimensional. Jason Calacanis (01:07:24): politics David Friedberg (01:07:24): this one dimensional framework, which we have a tendency Jason Calacanis (01:07:26): to Politics. David Friedberg (01:07:26): Let me just point this out to you guys. I I was gonna mention this a few weeks ago, but, like, think about every conversation you have how common it is now to immediately think about what the person on the other side that you're talking to just said and then trying to put them on a blue or red spectrum. It's it's it's how we've all kind of been reprogrammed over the past decade or so where it used to be about the topic itself and the objective truth finding or the or the specifics of what we're talking about. And now it's become about you immediately try and resolve them to be in conservative or or not red or blue, Trump or not purple. And so every conversation, you kind of try and orient around that simple, ridiculous, one dimensional framework, and it's a complete loss of the discovery of objective truth in all matters in life and all matters in in that affect all of us. And it's it's really quite stark and and sad. Jason Calacanis (01:08:21): This is why we need a David Friedberg (01:08:22): new we need a new political party, a Jason Calacanis (01:08:24): leasing party. David Friedberg (01:08:25): I think it's less about that. I think it's more about everyone just reorienting themselves when you have a conversation. Just notice yourself doing it. and then recognize that maybe that's not the way to make a decision about the conversation or about having an opinion or a point of view, but have an opinion or a point of view about the topic itself not about the orientation of the topic on a on a single dimensional spectrum. Jason Calacanis (01:08:45): And then layer identity politics into that. So not only your politics, but your gender, your race, your sexual preference, the color of your skin. And now how is anybody supposed to have a reasonable argument when I have to process, like, oh, Chabat's from, you know, Sri Lanka, but he went through Canada, and he worked for I mean, it's Speaker 1 (01:09:04): -- David Friedberg (01:09:04): Well, it's so reductive that no one gets it. It's so it's so reductive that no one gets to have an identity anymore. Right? Because we we are all complex, and all issues are complex, and then they are all nuanced. And when you reduce everything down to kind of this one dimensional framework, you lose any ability to have depth, to have nuance, to have Speaker 1 (01:09:21): -- Jason Calacanis (01:09:21): Said another way, the issues are complex enough. We don't have to put identity politics or political you know, leanings on top of it. Alright. So we had the worst fire season in California ever last year. Obviously, as Tremont said, glow global warming is conspiracy by the Chinese as per your guy Trump, Saks. And what's that? There there is there David Friedberg (01:09:44): is a change in Switzerland, there is a center called the Center for Climate Change. There's a reason that there's climate change in Switzerland. It's coming from that last Jason Calacanis (01:09:53): that Sanger did it. David Friedberg (01:09:54): In the center did it. Look at Jason Calacanis (01:09:55): the sign. Look at David Friedberg (01:09:57): the sign. It says Jason Calacanis (01:09:57): climate change on the right there. Yeah. Speaker 1 (01:09:59): They're getting paid Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:10:01): To propagate this conspiracy theory. Yeah. Alright. So it's it's gonna be the worst at least in it. David Friedberg (01:10:06): We well, we are at risk more than ever. Right? So we're entering June, so as of June 1st, the California snowpack is down to 0% of normal. That's never happened before. it's the lowest it's ever been. There there is absolutely, like, no snowpack in the entire Sierra in the entire state. 40% of the state is in a state of extreme drought right now. We've had 16,000 acres burn as of a few weeks ago, up from 36100 during the same time period, the same day of the year, last year. And so the the the tinder is there now. Remember, last year was the highest California has ever seen. We we burned 4 1000000 Acres last year, California has about 33,000,000 acres of farmland or forest land, representing about a third of our total land size in in the state. you know, 60% of that land is federal, 40%. It's private. And so the the the big kind of variable drivers this year are gonna be, you know, a wind and and heat. And we're already seeing a few heat waves, but it's the wind that kinda kicks these things off. But the tinder is there, Right? So, like, the state is dry. The the the snowpack is gone. We're on severe water restrictions in a lot of counties throughout the state. it's worth, I think, talking about the carbon effect. You know, last year, based on the forest that burnt in California, we released about one and a half times as much carbon into the atmosphere from our forest fires as we did from cars burning fossil fuels in the state. Jeez. And so Wow. So so here's some statistics for you guys, which I think are just worth highlighting. There's about 2,000,000,000 men tons of carbon stored in California Forest Land, which is about 60 tons per acre. So there's about 9,000,000 new tons of carbon sequestered per Jason Calacanis (01:11:55): in California by our forest land per year. David Friedberg (01:11:58): When there's a fire, we release about 10 tons per acre, so about 16 of of the carbon in that in that forest land. The rest of the carbon doesn't burn up. So remember, when there's a forest fire, typically the outside of the tree burns, the whole thing doesn't burn to ash. And so a forest fire can actually if you look at the longitudinal kind of effect of it, burning forests can actually preserve the carbon sequestration activity versus, you know, just removing forests or removing trees. And so there is, to some extent, you know, an effort that has been shut down several times, which is to do these kind of controlled burns through the state. But it's met with such resistance given that it's so controversial. No one wants to have smoke in their their neighborhood. Well, they shouldn't Chamath Palihapitiya (01:12:41): it shouldn't be it shouldn't be controversial. The problem is you can't present simple data and have people have a logical conversation about it. David Friedberg (01:12:47): And the cost per acre to clear land and farm to forest land in California is it ranges depending on the complexity of the land, but somewhere between $50,000. So call it a couple $100 per acre. So you can very quickly kinda do the math on a carbon credit basis, Chamath. So it's about 40 bucks per ton Speaker 1 (01:13:02): -- David Friedberg (01:13:03): Yeah. -- for for carbon credit today. So you're actually you know, you can kind of preserve about $400 per per ton by not putting carbon into the atmosphere. And if you can actually manage farmland forest land clearance and forest land preservation from fire at a cost of $400 or less, and there was an active carbon credit market you should be able to cover the cost of managing that forest land back. But we're we're at an incredibly high risk this year. It doesn't mean that we're necessarily gonna have a fire because weather is the key driver The weather is highly variable. Wind. We need wind. We need wind. And we need a heat wave with wind, and then there will be fires. But the heat wave Speaker 1 (01:13:37): -- Jason Calacanis (01:13:37): What do they do when the when the wind kicks up right now? The electric company turns off power in California because they don't wanna be blamed when a power line goes down and starts a fire. So we have these regular moments. This is not where we just lose power. David Friedberg (01:13:52): Yeah. This is not just a California problem I know everyone wants to beat up on California, but, like, the whole Western US, go look at Jason Calacanis (01:13:57): Google Maps. David Friedberg (01:13:57): You'll see how much green stuff there is on Google Maps. It's green up and down the western half of the US. Jason Calacanis (01:14:02): Friedberg, it was Trump right that raking up the forests to put it in layman's terms or simple terms is an actual thing that helps. Speaker 1 (01:14:12): 60% David Friedberg (01:14:13): of forest land in California is federal land. And it was the federal government's responsibility to manage that that cost down, to manage that risk down, what is the incentive, what is the motivation, you know, what are the key drivers Those Jason Calacanis (01:14:26): are -- Obviously, it does work to clear it, though. David Friedberg (01:14:28): It it theoretically, when you reduce the amount of tender, you will reduce the risk of a burn. Right? And so The cost but the cost of doing so, as we mentioned, is probably a couple $100 per acre. And so who's gonna let's say you wanna do that on 5,000,000 acres. Jason Calacanis (01:14:41): It wouldn't just create a bunch of jobs? Oh, wait. We're paying people to stay home. Yeah. Like, it would create a ton of jobs. I mean, I hate to be like that guy, but Like, could we create a bunch of $35 an hour jobs for people? David Sacks (01:14:54): I've I've heard Scuttle, but that Newsom is so worried about fire season that they're gonna try and accelerate the recall election so it happens before. There is you know, the the conventional wisdom the conventional wisdom -- I'll Jason Calacanis (01:15:04): go do that He's so smart. Well, no, if Ahmad did it, it would be strategic. If Well, the conventional wisdom wizard David Sacks (01:15:11): is The conventional wisdom was that you'd wanna wait as long as pop do the recall because the longer you wait, the longer you get the rebound of the economy from COVID. Right? Jason Calacanis (01:15:19): Sure. David Sacks (01:15:19): But now they're talking about accelerating it to beat fire season because it's looking really bad. And free merchandise that we needed much more aggressive forest management. It's not just climate change. It's also forest management. We don't do it in California anymore. And so I think we're we are in for a really hellish fire season. Jason Calacanis (01:15:37): We're Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:37): going to have a terrible we're gonna have a terrible fire season. There's going to be brownouts probably throughout a lot of the western states. What played out in Texas that affected folks a few months ago, I think, well, some version of that will happen in many places in the US. This is and it's all roughly avoidable. And the critical principle act to share is the progressive left they need to marry their disdain for climate change and they're disdain for the things that need to happen to prevent it. Because right now, these two things for them are just like it's cataclysmically not possible. For us to agree on, for example, as Friedberg says, a controlled burn program as a mechanism of sort of like fighting climate change or, you know, investing more in the the greenification of the economy so that we can actually eliminate the use of a lot of these non sustainable energy sources. All these things basically just come down to miss climate change, but then are also willing to then go and act. Right now they won't. Until they do, it's just gonna spill over everywhere. It's gonna be a very bad fire season And the only reason I know that it is is that every year before it has been, every single year has gotten warmer. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:17:09): It's not Speaker 1 (01:17:10): -- Jason Calacanis (01:17:10): You don't need to be a genius Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:11): here. -- better. Jason Calacanis (01:17:12): Yes. By Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:12): the way, I I let let David Friedberg (01:17:13): me just correct a statistic I said because the statistic I gave was a few weeks ago. But as of today, we were actually the average the historical average in terms of number of acres that are burnt in California as we have seen historically. I will also say that, you know, close to one sixth, of California's forest land burnt last year. So there was a tremendous amount of Tinder that has been removed from the risk equation. And we typically burn about a 1,000,000 acres a year. I think we burn, like, 4,000,000 last year, a little over 4,000,000 last year. So, you know, as you look at the the the cumulative kind of reduction of burnable acres, we're we're actually the the good thing that's going on is we're actually at a lower risk scenario going into this year in terms of total amount of Tinder, the risk of the Tinder catching is higher because it's drier. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:00): NASA But but when you can David Friedberg (01:18:01): just add this all up, there there there's certainly a high probability of a bad fire season. But there could there could be a scenario here where we end up with less Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:08): than 1,000,000 It's zero scenario that's gonna happen. NASA publishes temperature studies. They do measured measurements of how much warming there is in the earth. Last year, we set yet another record. It was the 7th year in a row where it was warmer than all the previous successive years, it's just going in the same place. I mean and so if we're all of a sudden supposed to bet that a trend that has effectively been reliable for the last decade is gonna turn, I'm not sure that that's a bet you'd wanna make. or that the winds is not gonna blow? -- bet. Jason Calacanis (01:18:43): It would be Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:44): a stupid bet. Jason Calacanis (01:18:44): There's no reason to make that bet. I mean, this is, like, betting on a one outer. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:48): We we need we need we need the left to take control of this issue and solve it. David Sacks (01:18:53): Get ready for Martian skies over California. Jason Calacanis (01:18:58): Literally, I'm thinking an escape plan from California, and I am putting a generator in this month. I bought 6 new air filters you know, like, beautiful sunways. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:08): That's not that's not good enough. Jason Calacanis (01:19:09): Well, I have my house is totally sealed, and I have the air purifiers in I have a built in air purifier of the house, and I have 6 portable ones in each every -- To that room in which David Friedberg (01:19:18): I've come back. Are you coming back in August? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:21): In sept yeah. At the end of August. But, by the way, let me let me tell you where it really the rubber meets the road. Just again, I'm speaking to the progressive left. They care, apparently, so much about minorities. I just wanna make sure you guys understand that, you know, air quality disproportionately affects minorities. Why? Because we or not not me anymore, but, you know, minorities are the ones that typically live near industrial output near transportation through ways and and through occurs. Yep. It is con it is statistically proven that blacks brown, other minority people are the worst people to suffer from respiratory diseases and airborne illnesses, Jason Calacanis (01:20:02): and these are things Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:02): that are that are happening today. So, again, I wanna go back to the same group of individuals who apparently believe in climate change, but don't believe in nuclear. They don't believe in control burns. They believe in in quality, but they don't wanna do what's necessary to regulate emission. What are we doing, guys? Jason Calacanis (01:20:20): Just at some point, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:21): do the job. Do the job. David Sacks (01:20:22): I think it's that time. job. I I what what you're saying is correct your mouth, but I think it's a sad statement about the progressive left that the only way to reach them through an argument is to argue for it that the disparate impact on a minority. The reality is Speaker 1 (01:20:34): -- -- Jason Calacanis (01:20:34): affect all Americans. David Sacks (01:20:35): Yes. Exactly. Exactly. It's it's bad Red Jason Calacanis (01:20:38): pill me. Give me these red pills. Come God, Saks. You're holding out David Sacks (01:20:42): a thing. But but Shamaz Chop them off. But Shamaz understands that audience. He is making the argument they're gonna respond to. But the argument that -- Yeah. Speaker 1 (01:20:49): -- David Sacks (01:20:49): they and everyone should be responding to is should their quality is bad for everybody? Jason Calacanis (01:20:54): The planet. all humans. David Sacks (01:20:56): Exactly. What are David Friedberg (01:20:57): you guys gonna do for fire season? Do you actually I'm thinking about renting a house. Like, I I rented a house in Chicago and, like, Michigan last year, and I went there, and it was escape for a month to get away from fire season. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:06): I I don't I don't I'm very scared to be in California during all of this, to be completely honest with you. I don't just wanna be there. Jason Calacanis (01:21:12): I'm out. I'm gonna I'm gonna try to figure out something. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:14): I'm back in late August, and, hopefully, everything has calmed down by then. Although it won't because it gets very, very hot at the end of August. September September September David Friedberg (01:21:21): was the heart of it. It's typically the Jason Calacanis (01:21:23): heart of it. It's typically David Friedberg (01:21:23): the heart of it. It's the heart of it. Jay Kal, do you think you're gonna go to Miami or Austin or something? Jason Calacanis (01:21:27): You know, I I I went back to Austin for a wedding, and I met the governor. And David Friedberg (01:21:36): Don't care. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:36): You went sweating, and you met Greg Abbott. Oh, beep. Jason Calacanis (01:21:40): You gotta beep that up. You went to -- sweating, you met the governor. Yes. And going to Boston in Speaker 1 (01:21:48): 2021 Jason Calacanis (01:21:49): is, like, when I would come to San Francisco and go to the battery, in Speaker 1 (01:21:55): 2003 Jason Calacanis (01:21:55): and Saks 2013 and Saks would say, why don't you live here? There's so much going on in San Francisco. Come to San Francisco, and I did. And I I got the last 5 years of the peak. But Austin, very appealing to me. And then I've been looking at beach houses in Miami. And I'm I'm 50% of the way there, folks. David Sacks (01:22:16): Oh my god. I mean, the fact that you can now buy a beach house I mean, Jason Calacanis (01:22:21): God bless America. David Sacks (01:22:22): God bless America. Jason Calacanis (01:22:24): Oh my god. That's a seventy one three year average I had a seventy one for your average in high school, and Speaker 1 (01:22:30): 11:50 Jason Calacanis (01:22:31): up my SATs, and I'm gonna buy a few tabs. David Sacks (01:22:33): Jake out. And I forgot convince you to move up to San Francisco yet another way in which I have Speaker 1 (01:22:38): -- Jason Calacanis (01:22:38): Contributed to the Moscow. Speaker 1 (01:22:40): -- David Sacks (01:22:40): your career Jason Calacanis (01:22:41): towards success. Absolutely. App okay. I'm gonna use call in every day. Call in syndicates under way. Everything's good. You wouldn't even be a VC if David Sacks (01:22:49): it wasn't for me. You'd still be a mute figure. Jason Calacanis (01:22:51): That's right. We do conference producing. You're you're you and Naveau really push me towards it and then special thank you to you and Shamoff, Billy, for anchoring. And Dave Guldborg -- We love you, Jake. No. You know what? I mean, I I tweeted the other day. At the end of the day, you know, our lives are a collection when we look back on them of memories with our friends. And, you know, I include family and friends. And this podcast, not to get all Gucci and and whatever, is Ben a delight over the, you know, really hard pandemic that's now ending. And it's I just I'm really happy that we get to spend this time every week together. Every week, I get, you know, a little bit of excitement. Like I used to get when we go, your host, Poker, Sachs, or or Shamap, you know, those days when we have a poker game, Skye Dayton would tell me, and, you know, I I get a little tingly feeling. Like, oh my god. I'm gonna see my friends tonight and play poker and laugh. And, you know, the we got that amazing note from the woman who said she was really having a hard time during the pandemic and that the podcast All in podcast really helped her. And, you know Shout out to Sam. Thanks Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:53): for that note. Jason Calacanis (01:23:53): Yeah, Sam. That really made our week. So shout out to Sam. David Sacks (01:23:57): That was amazing. Jason Calacanis (01:23:58): Long way of saying, I love you Saxx. David Sacks (01:24:00): Well, Jake's Jake, how Jason Calacanis (01:24:02): you you David Sacks (01:24:03): Jake, how you are the Stephen Colbert to my job Stewart. Jason Calacanis (01:24:06): I think it's the opposite. David Sacks (01:24:08): I think it's the opposite. Jason Calacanis (01:24:09): I have to call I have to come on your David Sacks (01:24:11): show and red pill you. And Make sure that you're you're saying the truth and not getting too wrapped up in your Trump arrangement syndrome or whatever. Jason Calacanis (01:24:18): At the end of the day, you know, we we are, I think, all of us working through complex issues to Friedberg. I really loved your contribution today about how complex these issues are, and layering more complexity onto them, of our identities, our wealth, you know, our histories, immigrants, not whatever. Politics, These issues are so hard and in some ways also so easy with technology and and world class execution that the world needs to have more reasonable conversations. And I think that what we've demonstrated here is that four friends can have reasonable discussions and laugh about life and enjoy life. And and that should be for everybody listening. David Sacks (01:24:59): That's what Sam said in her note to us, which was very heartwarming thank you. Yeah. That was great. Jason Calacanis (01:25:03): Yeah. I mean -- Love you, guys. Love you, Saxx. Back you, Saxx. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:06): Back you, Jason Calacanis (01:25:08): guys. Back Jesus. It's brutal achievement. Must download new Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:13): directions to escape forest fires. Love love love love David Friedberg (01:25:17): program active. Jason Calacanis (01:25:18): Love L OVE, querying, dictionary, a feeling of affection for another entity. Like, I like ink video game still 2 AM, and my dog, can I say it 2 AM? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:32): Very similar to coding or problem solving using my computer -- Do I -- and my HP -- -- 17b. Speaker 1 (01:25:40): -- Jason Calacanis (01:25:40): however. subroutine overheating, must play jazz with Peter Teo, and stop saying, I love you. Do Jay Gaff. David Friedberg (01:25:47): Thank you for David Sacks (01:25:48): holding it again. stop saying it. I never said it. Jason Calacanis (01:25:54): My shirt Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:55): was so expensive, but she had so thin. I put on yet another shirt. Jason Calacanis (01:25:59): had to pump it out from the bottom. Speaker 1 (01:26:01): I'm looking because I've gained £15. Jason Calacanis (01:26:04): I just do make up for it with a Speaker 1 (01:26:05): $1200 Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:06): signature shirt. -- with 4 collars. Speaker 1 (01:26:09): 4, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:09): you say, no. It's more 2, but also 2 chintz. Do these 2 collars make Jason Calacanis (01:26:14): up for my double chin? David Sacks (01:26:15): Two shirts are better than 1. Two Jason Calacanis (01:26:18): shirts are better than 1. What oh, every twice as good. Sachs is adding shirts to Musk's leaving it. I'll check all. Next time. podcast. Bye bye. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:32): Love you, guys. David Sacks (01:26:35): I'll let your winner slide. Jason Calacanis (01:26:38): Rainman, David Sachs. I'm I'm going home. David Sacks (01:26:42): And it said -- We open source it to the fans in a gone crazy weather. Jason Calacanis (01:26:54): besties are gone. We should all just get a room and just have one big huge order because they're all like this, like, sexual tension that we just need to release her mouth now. What? You're a thief. What? You're a thief. What? What? That's a good feeling. Where did you get Merckies are back?