老友互怼、Robinhood 7000 万美元罚单与 S-1、德尔塔变种与新生代候选人

David Sacks (00:00:00): Is is Jay Kal here? I can't see him. Maybe I've been blocked. I don't know. Jason Calacanis (00:00:07): I'm getting static on the line. David Sacks (00:00:08): I can't hear anything. I can't hear anything. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:10): Why do the 2 fat guys have to ruin everything? I mean, get your shit together, YouTube. David Friedberg (00:00:14): I'm not David Sacks (00:00:14): -- David Friedberg (00:00:14): We have something good show. Don't save it for the show. David Sacks (00:00:17): Let's start it, Friedberg. You've lost your full array. Jason Calacanis (00:00:19): Here we go. David Friedberg (00:00:19): Here we go. You guys ready? Jason Calacanis (00:00:21): I'm not mad anymore. David Friedberg (00:00:22): In 3Q. David Sacks (00:00:26): to let your winter ride. Jason Calacanis (00:00:29): Rainman, David Sanders. And I said, we David Sacks (00:00:34): open source it to the fans and make discoveries. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:42): If you'd like to skip the bestie Twitter drama and get right into the episode, jump to 20 minutes 48 seconds. David Friedberg (00:00:49): Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. We've got a great show for you today. What a treat this is gonna be here at the all in podcast. We cover everything technology, business market politics science. And, of course, the bestest emotions in their feelings. I'm Dave Freeman, the king of canola's. Joining me today are the guy guys that used to be besties. 1st, joining us from Burlusconi's Boomba Boomba Palace, the pied piper, specs himself, Tumac, Polly Habiboyou. Tumac, welcome. You look great today. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:21): Thank you. David Friedberg (00:01:22): And from one of his many houses, the SaaS bully himself, David Sachs, and, of course, our former moderator and host, the 1 and only, the Internet famous, the Bronx bully, Jason Calacanis, it's everybody. Jay Cal, welcome. You're looking great. You look like you're ready to do a little jab and a hook. for those of you joining us today that haven't been following on Twitter David Sacks (00:01:52): -- Jason Calacanis (00:01:52): I'm sorry. Chamath, did did you get Kermit the frog to host the show? I mean, Jesus, Christ. That opening was the worst most painful they've ever heard. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:59): It it it really was not very good. David Friedberg (00:02:01): Okay. Well, welcome. Saks and Sacs and JakeAL not really feeling great about Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:07): their -- So you can't Jason Calacanis (00:02:08): it's a failed experiment already. David Sacks (00:02:09): I thought the opening was good. Good job Friedberg bird. I think you're doing well. Jason Calacanis (00:02:13): It's a David Sacks (00:02:13): fucking 4 of 10. stop prejudging his performance. It just began. Jason Calacanis (00:02:18): And by the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:18): way -- -- interrupting already. Stop interrupting. David Sacks (00:02:20): Stop interrupting Calcutta David Friedberg (00:02:22): So the moderator is moderating, and Jay Cal has to take the mind locker. Jake, I'm Jason Calacanis (00:02:25): gonna mute him. -- the dreamers and the -- -- blocking. David Friedberg (00:02:29): I'm gonna mute him. David Sacks (00:02:30): Thank you. David Friedberg (00:02:30): So, gentlemen, welcome. As we know, over the past week, there has been a Twitter feud between Jason and David Sachs. And I'm gonna give you guys a little bit of this background for those of you who haven't followed online, which I'm assuming is the vast majority of you. But there's a Twitter account called All In Stats, and they published an analysis showing that Jay Cal has been talking a lot on our podcast. And Sachs, you know, kind of, quote tweeted and said, you know, here is statistical proof of Jason's piss poor moderation of the all in pod. Jay Cal, if you were moderating correctly, you would be 4th place in airtime into airtime instead of tied for first, your job is to facilitate discussion and not dominate it. Stop interrupting and let the grown ups talk. Jay Cal immediately jumps up with a response. Maybe you could start your own pod with Peter Teal and Keith or Boyse and have Tucker Carlson Moderate. Sachs says, I know it's rough doing 10 years of this week in startups and never getting to number 1, then Shamoff, Friedberg and I do it effectively on the 1st day. on the first take, but this is why you need to stick to your lane and stop talking over us. Oh my god. So brutal sex. Jay Cal then responds with, though, niche podcast about just startups is never gonna be number David Sacks (00:03:44): 1. David Friedberg (00:03:44): It's not for general audience like all in by design. Number 2, sure. Trash the guy who has relentlessly supported you for decades because you're obsessed with your stats and forget about the quality of the conversation. then Jay Cal blocks David Sachs on Twitter publicly. Sachs tells everyone Jay Cal Block him, and this whole thing escalates and snowball. So the besties have they broken up? Are they gonna get back together? Is this podcast gonna continue? My mom sent me a text this morning, has the pod disintegrated. Jason pulled out question mark, question mark, question mark, the drama ensues. So, gentlemen, I leave it to you, Saks, with your opening remarks, and then Jay Cal, you may respond. I am here to moderate this opening of today's all in pods so we can kinda get this and hopefully get the besties back together and continue our conversations that I think many people find valuable and are super helpful and useful for us and for our listeners. Sachs, please. David Sacks (00:04:39): Well, I mean, I I can see on Jason's face that he's he's hurt that by my my tweets, you know, I maybe he should go first and explain what's so hurtful. I mean, look, the reality is about this show that, you know, breaking balls is part of it. We've been doing it for, you know, a year and a half, and nobody does it more than Jason. And then all of a sudden, you know, he's on the receiving end of a couple of mean tweets, and he's like the school yard bully who finally gets popped in the nose and goes running to the teacher and he can't stop balling. So, you know, where is it that somehow the word piss poor crossed a red line for you after all of the you know, ball busting you've been doing for the last year that somehow that's out of bounds. And now you're gonna block me and potentially end the show in our friendship. So explain that to me. Big baby. Jason Calacanis (00:05:38): Alright. Number David Sacks (00:05:39): 1, Jason Calacanis (00:05:41): I wanna talk about the statistics and my role. On my perception of you David, is that you got a taste of fame and celebrity and it's gone to your fucking head. and your out of your ego is out of control. You now have stopped doing your job every day. and you are obsessed with your statistics and how you're perceived on the pod. As seen by your obsession, and your bromance with Henry or Harvey, Belkast, or whatever. You're sitting there obsessing over what percentage Each of us talk. None of the other besties are reading all in stats or getting obsessed with Henry Belcaster and how they're perceived on the pod. You have taken a championship show, which I pulled together with my decades of experience and team As the point god, I am the Chris Paul of moderating. The reason this show is number 1. is because I created a super team. There are four people on this podcast who bring a lot to the table. And you have asked for decades for Aircow. I will not pull out a list. But the time that you were gonna get canceled because a beep and the other time that your company was in the beep, because the beep was investigating it, you called Aircal. You called an Aircal. You can't deny it. and nobody has benefited more from my skills in media than you. David Friedberg (00:07:26): Are you are you Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:27): are you are you speaking in an accent? Jason Calacanis (00:07:29): I'm not speaking accent. I'm getting a this is when I get upset. David Sacks (00:07:33): What happens is -- -- a class He's getting fucked. He's controlling it. Okay. Jason Calacanis (00:07:36): I'll let you know. -- the ball up court, and I fucking passed the ball to everybody. I am white chocolate on this team. I am the professor. I am Chris Paul. Okay? And I passed the ball. Now If you wanna be a point guard like me and throw crisp passes that make the audience laugh and make them cheer, and bring down the whole goddamn stadium. Well, sometimes, I'm gonna do a no look pass. It's gonna hitch in the back of the head, or it's gonna bounce off. You can't fucking cry about it constantly, David. And if you're looking at the minutes, I have to read the story and prep the story so I can put it in your lap which I love to do. I love my role here. And you're taking my min account which is at least 2 thirds moderation, and you're saying that's indicative of me being piss poor. Now if it's all a goddamn joke, that's fine. But you're messing with my business. My business is podcasting and performing. If you got a problem with me as the moderator, you have my fucking phone number you can call me. But don't go out and start some fight with me and then go start hanging out with Henry Balcaster when I'm your boy. Okay? And then everything we do is about your call in clubhouse killer, and we've gotta move the pod to that. You're getting out of control, David. You need to realize we started a podcast that went to number 1 instantly and be grateful about that and stayed the course. the end. I'm done. David Sacks (00:09:07): Well, alright. Good. Alright. So can I respond? So first of all, Jay Kal, I agree you put the the super team together for this pod you're an indispensable part of it. I'm not questioning that. You know? I don't think we should I don't think well, let me come to that. -- Jason Calacanis (00:09:23): the adults talk. David Sacks (00:09:24): Let me first I mean, I'm actually saying some positive things about you before I get into my critique. Okay? So look. You deserve credit for putting this thing together along with with Shamal, it wouldn't be the same without you. You do bring an element of entertainment to it. Lord knows if it was just Friedberg rating all the time, it'd probably be extremely boring. So look. I although we're gonna give him a chance today, so who knows? But it's Jason Calacanis (00:09:51): a rough start. David Sacks (00:09:52): And it's not that I was angry or upset or concerned about my airtime or any of that stuff. I was frustrated Okay? Because your moderation I have a couple of concerns about or or, I guess, complaints. Okay? One is that you do tend to interrupt, and I'd say you interrupt me more than the others. False. Okay? And specifically -- Not Jason Calacanis (00:10:13): true. David Sacks (00:10:14): Let's talk about the the issue. The the issue where this came up was Eric Adams issue last pod. Okay? So you didn't even go to me. This this issue, the Eric Adams issue is all about the current issue. What the audience doesn't know is that You went to your mouth, like, three times. Then you moved on, and we had to come back and said, no. Listen. I raised my hand to get back into the conversation. We edited that part out. You skipped over me completely. I don't know how that was good passing. Where was the dish -- Okay. -- to me on that issue? Okay. Jason Calacanis (00:10:43): Let me explain to you. Can I respond to that? Sure. You've got three people on the team who can score. I come down the court, I pass it. Sometimes there's 2 open guys. You're the guy who was open who didn't get the pass, and now you're walking down the court complaining. David Sacks (00:11:01): No. Instead keeping your head in the game. This would be, like, not going to Friedberg on a science issue. Jason Calacanis (00:11:07): Alright. Sorry. I understand. Does she be, David Sacks (00:11:08): like, this would be, David Friedberg (00:11:09): like, proper? Jason Calacanis (00:11:10): to defend the cops beating up criminals. I understand that your wheelhouse next time. When it comes to that, I'll make sure I David Sacks (00:11:16): get it. It would it would be it would be a understand. Jason Calacanis (00:11:19): I agree with you. I agree with you. It's an oversight. I can't hit every perfect pass. You're respecting perfection. David Sacks (00:11:25): So then Jason Calacanis (00:11:25): It's a miss pass, and yet now you're upset about it. Okay. David Sacks (00:11:28): Okay. So so then so then I basically say, listen. I wanna talk to this issue. I have three points to make. I'm not through point number 2 before you're interrupting me and taking the ball away. The specific reason why I said I have three points is to telegraph to you Don't interrupt me, bitch. I got 3 points to make. Okay? What do you do? You cut me off in the middle of point too. How is that good moderation? I don't think you do that to trim off. or even Freightberg. Jason Calacanis (00:11:52): This really is about this really is about Chamath versus you and my relationship with each other. I love you both. David Friedberg (00:11:58): Now I didn't have both. David Sacks (00:11:59): The reason why I I brought up the all in stats, okay, is not because I'm concerned about my airtime. But but to show She Jason Calacanis (00:12:04): seemed a little concerned. David Sacks (00:12:06): No. Because I I that they broke down that I was, like, 4th in air time. And so the only point about that is why are you giving me the hook when I'm not talking too much? If I were talking too much, if I were monologuing, It'd be a whole different story. But you're yanking the microwave for me in the mid sentence before I even had a chance to finish. And there's and there's one more thing. Okay? which is as soon as I bring up any concern with the moderation, where do you go? You start calling me Tucker. You know? You start labeling me in this way. Okay. Jason Calacanis (00:12:34): Are you at dinner with Tucker in the last David Sacks (00:12:35): year? Just like just like a year How do Jason Calacanis (00:12:37): you at dinner with Tucker in David Sacks (00:12:38): the last year? You're proving my point. Where do you go with where do you joke? Yes. But why why -- I'm trying to keep Jason Calacanis (00:12:43): the show entertaining and keep it moving. No. Part of keeping the show entertained and moving is keeping you guys from monologuing. I have to cut you off and make jokes David Sacks (00:12:52): A year and a half ago, at the beginning of the pod, we had to have the last time we had a a sort of session like this, it was because you kept trying to paint me as the Trump supporter, which is not my agenda. Okay? Now you're -- Jason Calacanis (00:13:03): Did you vote for Trump? David Sacks (00:13:05): Now you're trying to hang -- Jason Calacanis (00:13:06): Did you vote for Trump? David Sacks (00:13:06): -- label on me Why aren't you saying, hey. Let's hear from George Will. Let's hear from William Buckley. The reason why you're choosing those labels is because you know they are anathema to most people in Silicon Valley, and you're trying to stigmatize me with them. No. That is you're trying to Jason Calacanis (00:13:22): hang -- Are you reading from your notes? Are you reading from David Sacks (00:13:24): your notes? -- trying to hang that out across -- -- points. -- over my neck. Okay? And that is you're trying to anathematize me. In in the in the view of most people at Silicon Valley, your cause -- That's Jason Calacanis (00:13:34): not what I'm trying to David Sacks (00:13:34): do. I'm trying to make a joke. But you are causing the audience to prejudge my message my points before I even had the chance to say that. Jason Calacanis (00:13:42): trying to do. David Sacks (00:13:43): By by attacking the boogeyman of the left to me. Okay? The result of that is the audience is gonna pre judge what I have to say. And probably a third of the audience will never want to hear what I have to say because you've prelabeled and prejudge me. That is a serious problem. And that is fucking with my business. That is fucking with my business. Jason Calacanis (00:13:59): Is it really? David Sacks (00:14:00): A lot more a lot more than me calling out your shitty moderation on one show. Jason Calacanis (00:14:05): Oh, so now it is shitty moderation. Oh, okay. I thought it was great moderation. Now we're back to it being shitty moderation. me ask you a question. You know what David Sacks (00:14:12): you're doing. Did you know what you're doing? Jason Calacanis (00:14:13): Did you have Dan with Tucker? David Sacks (00:14:15): You know what you're doing. Jason Calacanis (00:14:16): How have you had dinner with Tucker? Answer the question. David Friedberg (00:14:18): Alright. I'm gonna mute I'm gonna mute both of you now. Okay. I'm in the moderator, Timoth. Do you wanna weigh in on these 2 idiots and talk a little bit about Jason Calacanis (00:14:24): how we can move this go forward? David Friedberg (00:14:25): And at this point, I'm thinking about v v vetoing the publication of the show so we could just have this conversation offline. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:31): This is David Friedberg (00:14:32): this is -- -- fucking podcast. This is -- This is This is Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:35): this is so stupid. Nick, edit Jason Calacanis (00:14:36): all this nonsense out and make Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:38): it 30 seconds and move on. Hey, guys. This is a really important powerful thing that we accidentally stumbled into. I'll make 2 points. David does get labeled and I don't think it's fair and Jason does an excellent job of moderating and sometimes I think that Jason does get excited. And in getting excited, you know, he's also not just there to moderate, he's there to contribute as well. And so I think that if you look at the the number of minutes as a guide, it's not gonna be accurate because he does have 2 jobs to do whereas the rest of us only have one. And David does bring an enormous amount of clarity to what he says in a very fair way, and it is unfair to him that he gets basically slathered with, yeah, here's the crazy guy on the right. So I think what I would just say is just let's just tone it the fuck down and calm down Okay. We're at a million fucking people a week. We could be at 10 million people a fucking week, and we could fucking own the distribution of our ideas to millions and millions of people let's just stay the course and calm the fuck down. David Sacks (00:15:44): Well, I I agree with all that, actually. I I agree with all that. 100% Jason Calacanis (00:15:48): in agreement. I wanna address the labeling issue. I wanna address the David Sacks (00:15:51): labeling issue. Jason Calacanis (00:15:52): I am joking 9 out of David Sacks (00:15:54): 10 Jason Calacanis (00:15:54): times when I talk about Trump because it's hilarious and your relationship with Tucker. I think it's hilarious that you're part of the Keith Reboy in in Tealming. And and I don't think it's damaging for your business at all. And I they people are telling me on purple viewed. We're moving to the center here. So I believe that we're doing something noble by bringing all these voices together. It's all a big joke. And you know what? I don't care what you say about me on Twitter. I know I'm good at what I do. There's nothing you could say that can change that. David Friedberg (00:16:21): Why is your accent changed? Why did I what was I David Sacks (00:16:24): I think in general, you are good at what you do. And I and I and the reason why -- Jason Calacanis (00:16:29): I do the top 10 tech podcasts. Go open up your fucking podcast player. Don't tell me to get my fucking David Sacks (00:16:34): shoe checked. Jason Calacanis (00:16:35): I don't try and shoes anymore. 4 and number 4 and number David Sacks (00:16:37): 8. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:16:38): No. Nobody's saying that. So I think I think what what Dave -- Literally what he said. Jason Calacanis (00:16:42): That's literally what he said. David Sacks (00:16:43): What he what he's doing right now is showing why I had to tweet, which is you won't take a note. I can't tell the guy, hey. Listen. Jason Calacanis (00:16:50): You gotta bill for me. It's not gonna happen on Twitter. You got my fucking phone number. David Sacks (00:16:54): Well, it doesn't happen in private either. We know that. Jason Calacanis (00:16:56): You could fucking call me. David Sacks (00:16:58): Oh, really? You're gonna take a note in private. Jason Calacanis (00:17:00): But play chess with your fucking week. David Sacks (00:17:01): I've tried. We've had this conversation before. We had this specific conversation about the Trump thing a year ago. Jason Calacanis (00:17:07): We haven't talked about Trump in 6 months. David Sacks (00:17:09): You're back to all your bad habits. David Friedberg (00:17:12): Can we just hear an apology from one to the other and tell the other person what Jason Calacanis (00:17:15): you're absolutely willing to hear. -- ask this apology. David Friedberg (00:17:18): Tell him what you appreciate about him and what you like about him. Go ahead. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:17:21): Go fucking Christ. Is this therapy? Alright. I unblocked fucking sacks, and I'm following him. Enough. Thank you, Juan. We move forward. David Friedberg (00:17:27): Wait. Apologize to each other. Jason Calacanis (00:17:29): Alright. I'm so sorry. -- you tweeted that shit, sack. sorry. You've come on, Susan. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:33): David apologized to him. Let's just move on. David Friedberg (00:17:35): Jason, tell Saks you're sorry for labeling him, and, you know, you'll be more conscientious in the future, please. Jason Calacanis (00:17:41): I'm sorry that I brought up your relationship with Tucker and that I labeled you a Trump disciple. David Sacks (00:17:51): I don't even need an apology. I just want him to recognize. me Jason Calacanis (00:17:54): too. So I'm trying to be the bigger man. Fuck it. I take it back. Okay. I unblocked you and you're followed. I unblocked you and you're followed. That's enough. David Friedberg (00:18:02): Zach, Jason was his feelings were hurt by you telling him that his podcast sucks and and yeah. piss poor. Jason Calacanis (00:18:07): piss poor. David Sacks (00:18:08): Okay. Look. Jason Calacanis (00:18:09): You asked 10 you asked me to have 10 of your founders on the podcast in the last 2 years. I counted. Your team is in the fucking mix. trying to get people booked on the show. David Friedberg (00:18:17): We're not gonna we're not gonna keep it going. David Sacks (00:18:19): You've benefited from this relationship as well. So thank you for this -- Jason Calacanis (00:18:22): I never I didn't. David Sacks (00:18:24): Thank you so much. David Friedberg (00:18:25): said is Jason Calacanis (00:18:25): thank you to you. David Friedberg (00:18:26): Alright. We good? David Sacks (00:18:28): Look. My frustration over your moderation boiled off into a couple of tweets last week. I did not mean to hurt your feelings. I was just trying to give you a note. Okay? If you would take the notes in private, I would give you them to you in private. I do think that overall, you're a great moderator. Your contribution to the show is absolutely necessary and essential. Never disputed that. I think we should keep doing the show. I didn't expect you to block me. Honestly, I didn't expect your feelings to be so hurt by what I said. And so yeah. Look. I apologize for that. All I wanted to do is give you a note, and I would appreciate if you could try and respect my note not mischaracterize it. I think you know what I'm saying. Right? I just want the chance to be able to present my views without the audience prejudging them because you know that certain labels will not go over well with our audience. Okay? It'd be like introducing Chamath as the Michael Milkin of Spax. Okay? There is David Friedberg (00:19:27): a -- Well, I headed that out. David Sacks (00:19:29): No. I mean, I'm not I'm not saying he is. Jason Calacanis (00:19:31): Collaborals down. David Sacks (00:19:32): I'm I'm no. I'm saying it would be as if you did that. Right? You understand what you'd be doing if you labeled him that way. I don't think the that is a fair label. Jason Calacanis (00:19:42): In fairness, I thought the labeling and the joking about you being the token Republican was a meta joke about the fact that Silicon Valley doesn't have too many of you n t o's, and re boys, etcetera. This is small color. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:53): I think the whole point of what we were trying to say is Silicon Valley's heads up their ass. I agree. maybe so maybe the problem maybe the problem we've we've identified is all these left leaning people are just sniffing their own balls basically running to a cliff. Schwedding. So David Sacks (00:20:07): -- Yeah. A lot of my views, like, on free speech, are at the old center left. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:12): Exactly. Jason Calacanis (00:20:12): And now you're for universal health care. Look at you. David Sacks (00:20:15): I haven't moved. The whole world's gone crazy. I mean, everyone supported free speech until 5 minutes ago. Okay? That's what I went on Tucker to discuss. Jason Calacanis (00:20:23): You were free market about. education, and you were free market about about health care. Now you're like, I mean, we should have health care to safety. David Sacks (00:20:29): That's -- I I am I am a believer in in markets. Alright, Jason. Jason Calacanis (00:20:32): Let's start go. Let's fucking start the show. David Sacks (00:20:34): 3. 2. Jason Calacanis (00:20:35): Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. The all in podcast is back. Besty's unblocked with us again. The rain man himself, David, Saxx, and David Friedberg, the queen of Kin Wah. And from his Italian hideaway, Gallavanting in Italy, Jamath, Polyhappatia, the dictator. Big news for besties this week, Robin Hood, has filed their s David Sacks (00:21:03): 1 Jason Calacanis (00:21:04): and paid a fin refined $70,000,000 for outages and misleading cup customers multiple days of outages. Back in March 2020, we talked about here, and poor communications around options trading risks. Robinhood's s 1 highlighted some extraordinary growth during that period as we discussed on the pod. 18,000,000 funded accounts and they're on a $2,000,000,000 run rate, $522,000,000 in revenue in the first quarter up 4 x and monthly active users have more than doubled. 8,600,000 accounts to David Sacks (00:21:41): 17,700,000. Jason Calacanis (00:21:43): Just in the last year, revenue was up 300%. Any thoughts on Robin Hood's s 1? Obviously, I'm an interested party. David Sacks (00:21:52): It's the largest fine ever, I think, of this type. But on the Jason Calacanis (00:21:56): other side -- -- is fine. David Sacks (00:21:57): Yeah. So it should be a black eye for the company. But the reality is that they're happy to pay the fine and just move on so they don't have this issue hanging over their heads anymore, and now they're gonna be able IPO at, like, a 50, 60, $70,000,000,000 valuation. And so for them, this is sort of cost of doing business. I think there's something a little bit off about that, but that's kinda how it works. David Friedberg (00:22:17): Freeburg, anything? I mean, congrats to you, Jake. How it looks like you're gonna do really well with this deal. Jason Calacanis (00:22:22): it will return roughly, this one deal will do 3 or 4 times the value of the first fund, the launch fund 1, which was David Sacks (00:22:31): $11,000,000. David Friedberg (00:22:32): Do you invest in the seed round or the a, or what round did you invest in? Jason Calacanis (00:22:36): I think it was the seed round. David Friedberg (00:22:38): And so what's your multiple gonna be on a David Sacks (00:22:40): $50,000,000,000 David Friedberg (00:22:41): market cap do you know? Jason Calacanis (00:22:43): It would be 500x Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:47): Amazing. Amazing. Congrats, big boy. Jason Calacanis (00:22:50): Yeah. It's it. David Sacks (00:22:51): Congrats Jake Allen. I'm I'm happy to see that you're -- I'm Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:53): really happy for you. David Sacks (00:22:54): your success is finally catching up to your ego. And so I think There we go. I think that's too soon. Jason Calacanis (00:22:59): want to get to this. I'm gonna get the shoe David Sacks (00:23:01): shot box. too soon. Your net Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:04): worth is catching up to your weight size congrats. Jason Calacanis (00:23:08): Oh god. Well, actually, between this and the composition, you know, listen. It's it's a long way to go before we distribute it, obviously. But that first fund I did, which came after the scouts fund, my Sequoia scouts portfolio. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:21): My only advice to you, Jason, is talk talk to a few seasoned GPs like Gurley, Fred Wilson and figure out the right distribution strategy. One of the biggest things that I see these folks do is early stage venture investors thinking that they're public market investors. trying to time the market, trying to figure out how to do distributions, and it never works. Jason Calacanis (00:23:39): Which means do you hold the shares for another year David Friedberg (00:23:42): or 2? I would distribute Jason Calacanis (00:23:43): them in medium. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:44): I would distribute them immediately book the win, move on. Jason Calacanis (00:23:47): Yeah. You know, it's interesting. A lot of the top firms that I'm in are holding their shares, and I I had a firm that had Square, and they held some number of them until it's 7x and then distributed. So I guess technically, they get to book that win. What are your thoughts on that sack? So when to distribute? And how are you doing into your fund? David Sacks (00:24:07): Yeah. I mean, it's a good question. The the reality is that, you know, let's say that you're in year 4 or 5 or 10 year fund, you could hold the shares for another 5 years. And if the shares go up over that 5 year period, you'll you'll do better. So I think the question here Jason Calacanis (00:24:23): is on IRR. Your your numbers will look better. David Sacks (00:24:26): Well, I mean, you're you're compensated on the absolute amount of return that you generate. And so it might be your life. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:32): If you distribute shares. And then if you're in carry and you just hold the shares, you'll realize the same gains. You know? You're not saying David Sacks (00:24:37): -- Jason Calacanis (00:24:37): Well, it David Sacks (00:24:37): it depends what happens to the stock price. I guess I guess what I Jason Calacanis (00:24:40): would say is -- But hold on a second. If the stock were to go 10x, and you get 20 percent of those shares, if there were a 100 shares, you had 20. If a 10 x, you're still getting 20%, right, Shamal? So it nets out to the same if you hold the shares yourself. personally. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:51): This is why I I think that if you're in the business of running a a multifund business, I think you're better off generally. And I think, again, if you talk to the best firms out there, they typically will not try to guess what's gonna happen in the public markets. They just and they move on to their next fund. And then because you have to remember the IRRs, you know, you go through these rough patches. It decays quickly. And all of a sudden, something that looks great can start to look not so great. Jason Calacanis (00:25:18): And the the example of that might be Snowflake or something going down after it went public. if you had distributed it, you would have booked the win at that high multiple. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:26): Yeah. And then then you're thinking to yourself, wow. I hope it goes back up, and then you're like, well, when do I distribute this all? These are all not things that venture capitalists should be engaged in. They should be there to help build the next the next David versus Goliath. David Sacks (00:25:37): I think the the argument to that is if you really believe in the company and think you understand it better than the public markets do or or because you've been on the board and you have information, you know, if you hold it for another yes. There's gonna be ups and downs, but let's say that you plan to hold it for another 4 or 5 years, yeah, you'll still get the same 20, 25% carry, but The point at which that carry will crystallize would be at, like, a much higher level. And so, essentially, you're preventing your l p's from selling is what you're doing. And so you may get an extra turn of your fun by doing that. Jason Calacanis (00:26:09): How do we feel as LPs David Friedberg? David Friedberg (00:26:12): But there's sorry. There's also isn't there like a I'm I'm just trying to pull up the Goldman Sachs report they did in 2019 where they analyzed David Sacks (00:26:20): 45100 David Friedberg (00:26:21): IPOs over a 25 year period And I think that and and I could be wrong on this. But if I remember some summary of this, I'm trying to find it, so I can't find it right now. But that they basically highlighted that IPOs as an index generally outperform the market over some period of time, whether it's 1 year or 3 years, And so if you have access to those IPO shares assumed you're a venture investor, you can beat the S and P by 10, 15 points just generally without having any thought about the business itself or the company itself and, you know, participate in 20% carry on the upside from 25% carrying the upside from there. And so, generally, the rule of thumb becomes, well, you shouldn't distribute right away. You should hold. Is that not kind of a a common dogma amongst GPs nowadays. David Sacks (00:27:08): Well, look at Square. Look at Square. I mean, Square had all like, most of the appreciation happened in the public markets. I think Sequoia held onto their Square shares did way way way better because nobody sold effectively for several years. And I mean -- The David Friedberg (00:27:23): best firms do this. Right? I mean, like, you you we hear from Gurley and others that, you know, they hold onto these shares for years. And, you know, a good business going public has a much better chance of performing well as a public company than, you know, just tracking the S and P. after an IPO regardless of the valuation and exits that. Jason Calacanis (00:27:42): Well, how how do we feel as LPs come off? Your LPs in a lot of -- Terrible. -- in 15 times. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:46): You you want your shares. I I don't know if no offense to any GP out there, but I don't think they're as good of a public market investor as I am. So give me the shares. I'll manage it myself and get out of the way. I I give money to a lot of, to your point, a lot of GPs, because I want private market exposure. I don't want them speculating in the public markets for me. I do that for myself. And so I would rather just get the shares and make my own decision you know, a lot of foundations, for example, are in this situation where they're there to fund programs. So if they have a, you know, a multi $100,000,000 position Jason Calacanis (00:28:21): in a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:21): great company, and they can't fund a program or the you know, a hospital system can't do what they need to do because some GP is speculating in the public markets. I think it's insane. So give you give give give give the piece of money and move on. It's not your job. Otherwise, you should run a generalized hunt. And most people don't because they can't. David Friedberg (00:28:42): Generally, how do you guys when you are a large owner in a company that goes public, or just say the pool of venture investors or owners in a company that goes public, and the lockup is expiring, you know, typically months after the IPO and you can now distribute your shares to your LPs, do those, you know, investors take note of or have concern about the impact it might have on the stock price when they're making those distribution decisions typically? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:08): I think they think about that, but a lot of these LPs, particularly the nonprofits, their forced day one sellers the minute that they get the stock, they just put it in. David Friedberg (00:29:16): Like, as soon as the stock gets distributed, everyone's selling and the stock takes a hit. Right? And I think the market David Sacks (00:29:21): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:21): You know what? Jason Calacanis (00:29:22): There's something happening I'm I'm in. This is speculation that I don't have. So just, you know, take it as that. But my understanding was some investment banks went to the and Chamath might know the background on this, went to some of the major LPs in the world. I'll leave it at that. and said, hey. You have a position in, I don't know, this cab company. It's going public. It's fully valued or it's very well valued. would you like to collar your shares before that? And we will take them off your hands and and and lock you into a certain price for some percentage of it. basically end running the GP's decision making process. Of David Friedberg (00:30:01): course Well, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:02): there's there's a lot about that up. And this is why I'm I think the GP is better off. If you're in the venture fund business, be in the venture fund business, do a great job at that. Raise funds, distribute cash, do what you're supposed to do, but please don't try to do some. It's kind of like asking, you know, the fireman to also operate on you. No. I don't want that. Take me to the hospital and let the doctor do the joke. David Sacks (00:30:21): think it's a very valid perspective. I think it's probably the baseline that VCs should operate from, but I do think there are exceptions where if the VCs been on a company board for a while, it feels like they have understand the company better than the public markets, especially during the 1st 2 years as a public company when the markets can be really choppy and the company's trying to find its level and people don't really understand it, I think there is an argument for you the VC having expertise in in that initial public run, then they might be doing their LPs a favor by holding. But but look. I I think Tremas Point is well taken. Jason Calacanis (00:30:54): Also, companies are going public earlier. So this is gonna become a bigger issue because it's an easy decision in year 11 if you were an Uber an Airbnb investor say, okay. It's been 11 years. We're gonna give you your shares. But if you're in year 5 and the company goes out so early, you know, you could make an argument, hey. Maybe we hold it for 2 or 3 years. David Friedberg (00:31:15): Just going back on the previous topic, Jay Kal, the the the FINRA news on Robinhood. Right? So FINRA just So everyone understands. It's not a government regulator. It's -- Private entity. Yeah. It's called a self regulatory organization. And these SROs are basically they have a board and a, you know, a bunch of people that run them, but they're pooled and managed by all the participants, the private participants in the market. So Goldman Sachs And Mortgage Santling, JPMorgan, and all the banks, they are all part of the FINRA SRO. And so the way that these SROs are set up is to avoid government regulation and to avoid government intervention in markets and allows the markets to effectively self regulate themselves in a way that everyone in the market is kind of keeping an eye on each other and making sure that this is being taken care of. And I think one thing to take note of from this fine is that it telegraphs that FINRA and the markets in general, the market participants in general, may be rather concerned and rather worried about government intervention in some of these new markets and emerging fintech practices. because they wanted to say, look, we put the gauntlet down on Robinhood. We made them pay the biggest fine ever. We made them pay $70,000,000. Stay away. We're taking care of it. Because the concern everyone's had is that AOC and Elizabeth Warren and a bunch of people on Capitol Hill are waving flags saying we need to step in. We need to regulate these companies. We need to regulate these is we need to protect consumers. And so this fine really signals that the market is a bit concerned that the government is gonna come in and start trying to tell fintech companies how to practice and how to operate and generally tell all market company, you know, the participants how to operate, which is a very scary prospect for them. David Friedberg (00:32:54): So to me, this was really this this was really big news about what a telegraph the backdoor conversations are you know, that that are going on with market participants right now. David Sacks (00:33:02): What you're almost saying is that this is a benefit to Robinhood to pay the largest fine because it it says to the, you know, to the politicians, look, we've already been punished in this, you know, maximal way. You don't need to layer it on top So in a way, it's better for Robinhood that they paid 70,000,000 instead of 10,000,000. David Friedberg (00:33:20): Yeah. And it's not it's not by the way, it's not even for Robinhood. I think all the the market participants, JPMorgan Goldman they all have huge, you know, tech teams, and they all have acquired FinTech Companies, and they are all trying to go digital. And everyone is worried about the government intervening and changing how this business is transforming. Because as soon as the government gets involved, it's gonna slow down the transformation. It's gonna, you know, make things much more challenging. I think that everyone's trying to keep the government at bay while the great digital transformation of markets is underway. And and I think that's like, the biggest signal from this this FINRA find. Jason Calacanis (00:33:53): And there's there's some interesting nuances there that they brought up something like the confetti. So when you buy something on Robinhood, it used to explode confetti gamification. They're like, oh, we're gonna take that out. And, you know, if you go to Vegas, they've got bells and whistles going off everywhere when you place a bet. And so it is a little bit of window dressing. I think it's also interesting that you bring up the self regulatory organizations 2 other equivalents for people who are thinking about this. The MPA, the Motion Picture Association, which was formed back in 1922 because people a same fear about movies. And Valentini, I think, was the the guy who really changed how movies were perceived in the PG 13 era allowing a lot more violence, Terminator, those kind of movies. And then you had a similar thing happen in the video game industry in nineties Just while people Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:45): Does Robinhood still have, like, the lawsuits with, like, Massachusetts? Jason Calacanis (00:34:51): There's, like, 10 other law suits, class actions, etcetera, about David Sacks (00:34:55): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:55): No. No. No. But these are more, like, with with government entities. Right? Like, like, didn't Massachusetts try to David Sacks (00:35:00): -- David Friedberg (00:35:00): State of Turkey data attorney general. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:02): Yeah. Something like that, I think. Right? David Friedberg (00:35:03): Yeah. I Jason Calacanis (00:35:04): I don't know. But the the other one that was very interesting was the ES RB, which is the entertainment software ratings board because video games like the World Combat and those and Doom were you know, had to self regulate. Right? So either you regulate yourself David Friedberg (00:35:20): or -- Jamath was asking a question about Loxie's at Robinhood. Jason Calacanis (00:35:23): I know. I was trying to deflect him and remember. I shared a it. Come on, man. Can we move on to the delta variant? Because I'm supposed to be hysterically afraid of getting COVID now because I've been vaccinated. People keep talking about there's this delta variant. It's spreading, and then I'm hearing one set of information, which is if you're vaccinated, it's not an issue. And then other folks are going on TV saying, this is gonna be like we're gonna have to put back on in California. I can't find any data about how many actual cases there are. But according to the US CDC, 46 percent of the total US population has been vaccinated now, and New York, New Jersey, California all well above 50%. Some people are in the 60% of adults, 70% of adults. Florida is still trailing, but I can't and people are saying this is gonna become the dominant variant. Friedberg, how should we look at the delta variant if you're vaccinated? And then how should we look at it in terms of are we gonna go through mandatory masks again, which people are starting to signal already in certain Coastal cities. David Friedberg (00:36:29): Yeah. So Trevor Bedford's a great guy to follow on this. He's a epidemiologist, virologist who -- On Twitter. on Twitter. Yeah. TRVRB is his Twitter handle. And so he's aggregated a bunch of good data. So there was a a published 2 days ago out of the UK where they are trying to estimate the, you know, the reproduction rate of the delta variant. And it looks like it's about 1.3. That means for every person that gets infected with the delta variant of the SARS CoV 2 virus David Sacks (00:37:01): 1. Jason Calacanis (00:37:01): That's the r naught you're talking about? David Friedberg (00:37:02): That's that's yeah. Some people call r naught. Yeah. And so it turns out that, you know, that number is higher than what we saw with the original SARS CoV David Sacks (00:37:10): 2, David Friedberg (00:37:10): which I think is probably closer to one 0.1 or so. And so, you know, what that means is this variant is much more infectious. Right? It could spread through the air. The the proteins could last in oxygen much longer and not degrade. all these different reasons why it might be kind of more infectious. And there are some cases of people that have been vaccinated, but this is not the predominance of what we're seeing. that have tested positive for having this delta variant but are having mild to moderate symptoms. There aren't, at this point, a lot of people There's not a lot of data to indicate that this is actually kind of like a lethal risk or fatal risk to people that have been vaccinated in case. In fact, that seems to be not true. And one way that that data is kind of demonstrated right now is there was another analysis that was done where they showed what is the reproduction rate of this variant based on what percentage of the population has been vaccinated by state. And they show that, you know, for a state that's had maybe 30% of its population vaccinated, the r naught is closer to 1.35. When 60% of the state is vaccinated, the r naught is just at 1. And so there's this, you know, you know, negatively correlated kind of relationship between how many people have been vaccinated and how much this variant is transmitting. And that makes intuitive sense. Right? Like, if people are vaccinated, they're not gonna get infected. The virus isn't gonna hop from person to person to person. Now when you do the analysis of what percentage of the US population is unvaccinated and how reproductive this virus is, a lot of epidemiologists are saying that the models indicate that we could see up to 10% of the US population now get hit with this variant. And what we don't know is what percentage of people actually had, you know, SARS CoV 2 in the first runaround last year. David Friedberg (00:38:51): But we are seeing this this variant pop up. Now the the fatality rate doesn't appear to be much higher than what we saw with SARS CoV 2 the first time around. And and so there's no indication to say, like, hey. This is gonna be much more lethal. when you combine those factors, it seems like at this point, you know, the the the death rates in the US are remaining flat and stable while we are gonna see and may expect to see a continuing up surge surge up in terms of number of cases. Are we gonna require masks? This goes back to kind of my previous point about I think we've kind of normalized ourselves to masks and shutdowns and lockdowns and all the stuff that we did last year, thinking that it had an effect. The recent paper showed that lockdowns had no effect on the reproduction rate in the United States because at the end of the day, what if a government says lockdown or government says put masks on, people still have a tendency to do whatever the hell they wanna do. at least in the United States, that is the case. That is not the case likely in Asian countries where we did see an effect of of lockdowns and masks. But in the United States, these these restrictions obviously, had adverse economic effects, but didn't seem to have a strong epidemiological effect based on a recent paper that I will share in this thing. So so what are we gonna do? I don't know. I feel like we've normalized mass, we've normalized lockdowns, we've normalized these responses, but SARS CoV 2 is gonna be here forever. and it is gonna cycle through variants, and that's the concern on your own. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:08): Let me let me make a prediction. I think that what at the end of this thing, what I think I have come to the conclusion of is there was a lot of unknowns that got perverted into hysteria and mania by a handful of organizations to basically sequester power. And what we realized is that these people were incompetent and they didn't know what they were doing because you ended up in the same place with all of these different distributions of actions. And so now I think when you have this other variant, I think there's a growing sensation by a lot of people, not just Americans. that the CDC, the WHO, whoever it is, is probably at best guessing and at worst making it up. And the ultimate result is their this it's almost as if they like being drunk with power. And so I think the last part of what you said, Friedberg is what I really agree with, which is that this is not going to be tolerated anymore. And the reason is because They are also politicizing science. And what they're doing is when they don't know, they're making poor guesses in the name of science, which is just as bad. So, you know, I don't know what's gonna happen with the delta variant. Maybe a lot. Maybe a little, but as far as I can tell, I think people are tired of uninformed impacts to their lives, and they're not gonna put up with it anymore. Jason Calacanis (00:41:42): Saks, Kansas, California goes back to lockdowns or some sort of mask mandates? David Sacks (00:41:47): Well well, they are. They're they're imposing mass mandates indoors in places like LA. And you have the teachers' unions, the the National Education Union, is now putting down all these conditions of going back to school in the fall. So I think you could be in a situation where we do not have they will call it school reopening, but we will not have 5 day a week in person learning. And the schools the public schools that have it are gonna have all sorts of insane restrictions and conditions like making kids who really aren't at risk for COVID, even even the delta variant. They're gonna force them to wear masks. They're gonna enforce this ridiculous social distancing. They're talking about making it the kids who aren't vaccinated, sit at a separate table like the outcasts, I mean, it's insane what they're talking about doing. Jason Calacanis (00:42:35): So -- Why is that insane, David? Not to interrupt you, but I'm just curious for how much and unpack that. David Sacks (00:42:40): Because so so look. I I I'm I'm pro vaccine, you know. I think adult should get vaccinated. I don't think my kids need to get vaccinated. I don't think that is a wise policy to to force kids to get vaccinated. They're at very low risk for getting the virus. They're very low risk for transmitting the virus if they get it. And even if they get it, they're at almost no risk for it being harmful or, you know, to cause serious illness or death. And so to impose all these restrictions on kids, it's like we're living in a time warp. You know? Back to last summer, we didn't know as much about the virus. I mean, to Tomas point, they're imposing all these restrictions, which are just on unscientific. And it really seems like the real point is to create excuses for the teachers not to have to go back to work. And you know you know a school system is borked when the truancy is on the part of the teachers, not the students. The students wanna go back. The teachers wanna be truant. It's like they wanna be on permanent vacation forever it is a really broken system. David Friedberg (00:43:42): By the way, I let let me just highlight, you know, to support the concern that I think people like set like, the people that Saks is kinda speaking to might be having, a research letter was published in the journal of the American Medical Association 2 days ago, lead researcher with a guy named Harold Walsh. And this paper is going viral among kind of the, you know, the the the scientific and medical community right now. And what these guys did is they measured the carbon dioxide content of children's lungs from wearing masks. And so they were trying to identify, like, is this a risk to children to actually be wearing masks health wise? And the results are pretty scary. It turns out that, you know, in in in air, in in ambient air, point 07per set by volume is carbon dioxide. When a normal and then they measured kids, you know, randomized control, double blind. You know, here's you were an up double blind, but randomized control is kids that have and kids that don't. The kids that don't have masks, their carbon dioxide when they exhale is about point David Sacks (00:44:48): 28%. David Friedberg (00:44:50): When you have to wear a surgical mask, your carbon dioxide increases to 1.3% and you know, when they looked at this in a more detailed way, it turns out that it could be as high as 3.8%. And so this starts to reach a medical level that is concerning for doctors that having these kids wear masks for hours a day could actually be having an adverse health effect because it is increasing the carbon dioxide content of their blood because know, their their lungs aren't strong enough to breathe all this carbon dioxide out. It builds up in their body. And so there is a now a counterpoint that is being made by scientists and doctors that maybe the benefit of the safety we might get from kids wearing masks and spreading the virus is outweighed by the the the cost of their health a result of wearing these masks. And to ask kids to wear masks for 8 hours a day or 5 hours a day for 9 months a year, we're just now waking up to the fact that there may actually be consequences to this. And I'm not making a strong David Sacks (00:45:47): It's like it's like it's like child abuse. So we sent our five year old to a summer camp in LA. Okay? And the camp is outside, and all the the adults are vaccinated. Okay? But they're making the kids wear masks, and it's no fun. You know? And they can't play sports the way they need to. And we just set the hell with this, and we took them out. Now what I don't understand is why people aren't laying this at the feet of Gavin Newsom. This is a 100% his order. You know, all he has to do is say, listen. We don't need these rules anymore. It's kids. It's outside. And all the adults are vaccinated. What is the point of this? And, you know and I think we have this recall election now that's been scheduled for mid September. You know, right now, it looks like Newsom's gonna cruise to to to to winning. But if we had a candidate in California who could say, listen, We need 5 day a week in, you know, in person, schooling in the fall, no exceptions. All the teachers need to go back to work, or they're gonna need to be looking for new jobs. We're not gonna cow tau and give in to all these unnecessary, unscientific restrictions. Okay? because Newsom will not make that guarantee. I think they could they could basically steal this thing. We don't have anyone standing up saying that. And I think the closer we get to the start of school, If we don't have that kind of 5 day reconstruction, I think parents are gonna be up in arms about this. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:08): I think they will be. And I think what we're gonna prove is none of these folks really know what they're talking about, and so they will make it up. And someone will have some shred of evidence about something on either side of any topic. And all it'll do is obfuscating, confuse. And the end of it will be somebody imposing something onto you that will have a negative impact on your life. Jason Calacanis (00:47:33): Well, for their benefit in the teacher's case, for their benefit. Like, I still want to go back I mean, listen. I wanna say all teachers don't wanna go back to school. I know a lot of teachers want to go back to school and teach kids and take the mask off because it's from no. You I think you can say I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:46): think you can say the union and separated from teachers. Jason Calacanis (00:47:49): Exactly. Yeah. I I don't think it's all teachers. It's some percentage of teachers, but I think we're going to move David, Friedberg. Correct me if I'm wrong here. We're gonna move to a 2 class system here. If you're vaccinated, you get one set of rules. And if you're not vaccinated, you get another, and this is where David, I think, kids who are over the age of eleven or twelve who do get vaccinated, they shouldn't have to wear a mask at school But then -- Well, sorry. Can I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:11): just say something? This is what the insanity of this thing is. It's like, okay. We're gonna throw around again. We're probably gonna use the word equity when we make these new rules, but then fine. Why don't you just create a school that has everybody in it who is vaccinated? Jason Calacanis (00:48:27): Well, vaccinated. I I David Sacks (00:48:28): don't I don't I don't even understand I don't understand this because all of us are vaccinated. So our we don't need to worry about it. So In other words, we're gonna impose restrictions on people and force kids or whoever to get vaccinated to to protect whom If all the adults are vaccinated, we're not protecting anybody, all we're doing is protecting, I guess, unvaccinated adults. That makes no sense to me. Jason Calacanis (00:48:48): Well, they're taking the risk. Right? I mean, if you're choosing to not get the vaccine at this point, Friedberg, you're taking some significant level of risk or some moderate Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:58): level of risk? -- government have a responsibility to protect that person? David Friedberg (00:49:02): I don't think it matters. What I think matters is remember, like, the societal responsibility is not and cannot be to protect every individual. The societal responsibility is to make sure that society functions. And and if we take a Zoom back and I just want everyone to reset your brands, go back to March of last year. And we were talking about the surge of deaths in hospitals, and hospitals were gonna be overwhelmed. And that was the reason we needed to go into lockdowns and the reason we needed to stop the surge. even if this delta variant is highly infectious, there are enough people people vaccinated in the United States at this point. that this delta variant is not gonna crush our hospital system. It's not gonna cause massive amount of fatalities, which is the reason we wanted to lockdowns in the first place. all of the concerns that we had last year that rationalized a lot of the extreme behavior that we undertook no longer exist and we are now talking about continuing those those behaviors under a different set of standards. And the set of standards is now can't put a teacher at risk. I can't put an individual at risk. And even if that individual got infected, if the fatality rate is so low, I can still say, well, they could die. Therefore, can't have them exposed. Right? And and that has become the new standards with I think Saxon, that that article kind of talked about a 0ism. You know, you get to a point. If you're if you're fighting a war on a battlefield, and you're like, well, I can't let any of my soldiers die. We can't move down the field. You're not gonna move down the field. You're not gonna win the war. And I'm not saying that this is a war. The point is society has to progress. The economy has to progress. People's lives have to progress. People have to be educated. Life is about progress. And if we halt progress because of the concern that any individual might get harmed because of the progress of the group as a whole, we will not go anywhere. And we've created a new set of standards that I think creates that very reality, and it is frightening. David Sacks (00:50:52): Let me let me let me let me put a a a finer point on this, which is just this coat, this delta variant is just more COVID fear porn. Okay? This is the 3rd variant of concern where they've been, you know, running around alarms saying that, you know, we have to worry. The truth is, is it more transmissible? Yes. It is going to, I think, sweep through areas of the country in the fall that aren't vaccinated. But the question is, how does it perform against the vaccines? And so far, the vaccines are holding up. The the variants none of the variants have really punched through the vaccines in a meaningful way. I think the stats on Pfizer were it's you know, was it maybe reduced the effectiveness from 95% to 88% or something like that, but it wasn't a material difference. If you were double vaxx with Pfizer, you are protected against the delta variant. And so this is just more fear porn that they keep pumping. Jason Calacanis (00:51:44): I'm agree I'm in agreement with you. And I think this reminds me of when we were growing up in the eighties, they tried to scare us about sex and HIV. And were you not going to have sex if you were in your twenties in the nineties and into the eighties? No. You learned about HIV. You learned to use condoms. You learned that you you probably couldn't do you know, what people did in the sixties and seventies, which have many, many partners. You maybe had to have fewer partners, maybe longer term partners, but you you could you could take your own risk by putting on a condom. You could make that decision for yourself. Here, I think there's a group of people who don't want anybody to make any decisions themselves. And in this case, the vaccine is wearing a condom. If you're wearing a condom, like, your chance of getting HIV go down dramatically. It's just a known fact. And we're we're at David Sacks (00:52:32): 260 Jason Calacanis (00:52:32): three people on average dying a day. How many of those Friedberg do you think are with COVID versus from COVID. David Friedberg (00:52:41): Yeah. I I I have I have always I I I hate doing this because then people think it's like an inhuman analysis. But the way that or economists would kind of take a look at this sort of decision tree and this sort of data is the number of life years lost. Okay? So imagine someone is gonna die tomorrow. If someone's gonna die tomorrow and they catch COVID today and they die a day early, you have lost a life day. And everyone yes. That is absolutely devastating, and it is awful emotionally. But, like, when we're making big decisions, we have to think with the data. And so if someone catches COVID and they and they lose 5 year, then they die 5 years early than they statistically would have died, that's 5 life years lost. When a child dies, you are losing 68 life years. Right? That is an incredible loss of life. It's one it's one way to kinda think about this statistically. And so you know, part of, I think, what's been missing in the equation and it's easy to tell the narrative by speaking about people that have dead that have died that tested positive for COVID when they died, is it now speaks to the fact that this is a binary experience, and there's a binary number of lives lost. But the statistical, the data driven exercise, which may sound inhuman and may sound awful. But, again, we have to make these decisions using data if we're gonna make large decisions that are gonna impact everyone in a meaningful way. is to look at the number of life years lost. And I think if you were to do that, you would still find that the vast majority of deaths associated with COVID are very elderly people who are already very close to dying. And that's why we are seeing the fatality rates so low right now in the United States even though COVID is still spreading with the delta variant. It is because Almost 90% of people over 70 have been vaccinated. And as a result, the people that are most at risk of dying are well protected, and we are not seeing a significant loss of life associated with this terrible virus. The terrible virus is still spreading, but the life lost is still not there. And that someone might raise their hand and say, woah. We don't know the long term implications, long term rate applications David Sacks (00:54:36): -- Jason Calacanis (00:54:36): Long COVID. Yeah. David Sacks (00:54:37): -- David Friedberg (00:54:37): I would raise my other hand and say show me what the data is that says that there are those long term implication because I can say the what ifs about anything and then implement any policy decision I want by just saying what if, and we don't know. We have to say we do know, here's the data in order to make a decision versus saying we need to be, you know, protective and use the protective, you know, principle of of precaution or the precautionary principle and be really careful in these circumstances because at this point, the impact and the damage associated with some of our practices to quote unquote guard against COVID and and, you know, protect people, it's turning out their real consequences to those decisions. Jason Calacanis (00:55:16): Alright. Friedberg final question on COVID, should you wear 2 condoms? In other words, should you get Moderna and Pfizer or J and J and Pfizer? There are studies coming out now to say David Sacks (00:55:28): 1+1 Jason Calacanis (00:55:28): equals 3. There is some super effect of getting 2. I am looking into this. I'm thinking I'm gonna get a second vaccine. I might get to get a Moderna or a Pfizer or a J and J. David Friedberg (00:55:38): Just -- Don't waste don't waste don't waste the vaccine shots. Let them go to other countries, you know, not needed. Jason Calacanis (00:55:45): Not needed. Even though the studies are starting to show, it gives you increase. David Friedberg (00:55:49): I mean, do you need your test do you need your Tesla to go from a 180 to 185 miles an hour? I mean, like, you know, David Sacks (00:55:55): That's a good point. I mean, look, everything we learn about the vaccines makes them look better and better. The protection lasts longer than we thought. the they're more effective against variance than people were afraid of. And now we learn that there is even more protection by sort of this mix and match idea. So the vaccines have worked. There are still, I think, a couple of groups in America that are very vaccine hesitant. Evangelicals and African Americans are the 2 groups -- I Jason Calacanis (00:56:23): thought it was male Republicans. David Sacks (00:56:25): It's it's more like Evangel equals. And so in a place like Mississippi where you have large numbers of both, the vaccine rate's only, like, 29, 30%. It's actually pretty low. In a place like that, you could see the delta variant sweep through in the fall, and you could see a lot of cases. I you know, let me let me buck your labeling and categorization of me, Jakeoff. Jason Calacanis (00:56:46): I was ready to say it. David Sacks (00:56:47): But by saying that I don't think the leaders on the right are doing anyone any favors, any of their voters, any favors by not coming out and saying, look. The vaccines work. You know, I think Trump could do a lot of good by coming out and just saying, listen. I got the vaccine. I'm pretty sure he did. Right? Jason Calacanis (00:57:03): He did. David Sacks (00:57:04): He did. And so, you know, I think if you are in one of those groups, you know, and certainly you're over, like, 40. You should be getting the vaccine. I mean, they work. Jason Calacanis (00:57:14): Not to on this, but what did Trump say when you suggested he come out publicly about it? Nobody's listening to it. David Sacks (00:57:20): Nobody's no. It's fine. Nobody's listening to me, obviously. Jason Calacanis (00:57:25): I mean, it it is very weird of amounts of money on the vaccine and now doesn't wanna take credit for project light speed by telling everybody to get it? David Friedberg (00:57:38): I I think he's done Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:39): a lot of other issues I think he's got a lot of other issues on the plate to deal with, including an indictment that just landed yesterday. So maybe, you know, maybe he just doesn't know what to focus on because he he sees his his budding empire unraveling before him. David Friedberg (00:57:52): Did you see the report that said that Trump was extremely thrilled by the fact that his CFO was indicted for 2 reasons. 1 is it kind of indicates that they didn't have enough to go after him. And 2, is it's gonna make Joe Biden look bad and his administration look bad because it looks like they're being kind of prosecuted and persecuted now. but that he he views this as a positive, and it and it and he's thinking about it as a way to kind of stage a 2024 run. David Sacks (00:58:19): Well, I didn't I didn't see that particular story, but I do think that -- It David Friedberg (00:58:23): was for Maggie Mackey Haberman tweeted. Yeah. David Sacks (00:58:25): Okay. Well, what what the charges show, I think, is that they got nothing on Trump directly The the I mean, this turned out to be a big nothing burger after years of investigation just like the whole Russia thing. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:58:37): Hold on. 15 felony. 15 felony counts. This have not been Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:40): wrote down. Hold on David Sacks (00:58:41): a sec. Not -- David Friedberg (00:58:43): Well, that's the funniest point. David Sacks (00:58:44): Trump was not let me finish. Trump Trump was not named. They didn't get close to Trump. All they got was they're trying to charge Wessellheim, Booz, CFO with basically receiving certain perks as compensation. T and E. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:55): T and E violations. It was crazy. David Sacks (00:58:57): Yeah. This is Penny Annie's stuff. It does look like persecution rather than prosecution. And what they're trying to do is they're going after this guy, Wessellheim, to squeeze him, to try and roll over on Trump Well, good luck with that. That's about as likely to happen as Putin releasing the p tapes. Not gonna happen, sorry, Jay Cal. Trump is getting away. Jason Calacanis (00:59:17): The one thing I would say, I think, that I disagree with respectfully is this is a 15 year tax avoidance scheme that included more than T And E, included people getting their tuition paid for for free and free apartments. So the equivalent would be and then hold on. They then knowingly did this and changed the books knowingly, so they caught them going into their accounting and changing to hide it. And so the cover up worse than the crime this is an explicit way to not pay their taxes. This should be if all of us took our personal residences and our kids' private school tuition and didn't pay taxes on it. It's it's significant. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:54): Jason, so the the total amount, for example, that this guy got in tuition reimbursements over this 15 year period was about David Sacks (01:00:02): $375,000. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:05): The total amount of some other rent perks that he got was for about 1.6 or $7,000,000. The total amount of value that I think his son got you know, was spending a $1000 a month in a Trump owned department. When you add it all up, for a guy that was accused of, you know, being in Kahoots with Russia, this and that and everything, you pinch the CFO for a few $1,000,000 effectively. Again, T and E, let's just say that he did it. You know, some of these checks came directly from Trump. It I think I I agree with David. It's a bit of a nothing burger, and it really does like it's politically motivated, and the reason is because these kinds of chargers are typically not brought. these are things that typically result in a civil penalty or restatement, and you just kinda move on. You know, nobody nobody's trying to send somebody to jail for, you know, getting for miss miss categorizing or David Sacks (01:01:00): -- Jason Calacanis (01:01:00): I have it varied because we don't have full information. David Sacks (01:01:02): And they weren't investigating this stuff before Trump became a politician. why weren't why why this if this been going on for 15 years, why didn't this investigation happen 5, 6, 7 years ago? David Friedberg (01:01:12): I Jason Calacanis (01:01:12): I could tell you why. His the daughter-in-law of Weiselberg's was received a lot of these perks and then she dropped a dime and gave all the documents to them. My theory on this is because we don't have complete information yet. I think that they have other I think they have this bigger tax case around making the assets look smaller when paying taxes and inflating the value of the assets when getting loans. And I think they want to get that. And the way to get that is to flip Weiszberg because Trump does not use email and communications. I think that that's what's going on here. But Yes. David Sacks (01:01:51): You're right. They're trying to they're trying to flip him. Look. The the KGB had a saying, show us the man. We'll tell you the crime. Okay? They decided we're gonna go after Trump This is entirely political. They weren't interested in him 5, 6, 7 years ago. Once he got into politics, they became interested in him. He became the man, and now they are trying to roll up and flip all these people and try to get them to turn on Trump and give them something. These democratic pit bull prosecutors, they are gonna make Trump look like the victim here. this will rebound, I think, in a negative way. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:21): It is it is a really stupid thing that they're doing. I mean, this this could have happened in so many different ways. The guy was finished and washed up. Right? He was in his little hovel in Florida. You know? No Twitter accounts. You know, in the David Sacks (01:02:35): 1, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:35): no Twitter account, no act access to his base. The one time he actually showed up in New York 2 or 3 weeks ago, I don't know if you guys saw the photos. He looked so disheveled, so old, so broken. let the guy wither into obscurity. But instead, you pin these charges, you create an entire press cycle You're gonna rally so many people on the right and actually a lot of people in general who feel like, wait. What are we doing as a country? Why don't we just let it would just be done with this I don't ever want to hear about him ever again. And instead, we're kind of, like, bringing it all back front center. I just think it's a bad look David Sacks (01:03:11): What do David Friedberg (01:03:11): you think about the insurrection commission? Do you think that that should should be disbanded as well, Shamak? Because David Sacks (01:03:17): -- David Friedberg (01:03:18): No. -- you think that should that should be pursued. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:20): Yeah. Because that's not necessarily about Trump. That it is about a whole totality of things that really will lead into the fact that we have a lot of far right organizations that organization that needs to be understood all in the same light, which is that these folks are destabilizing force to democracy. And so, yeah, you gotta get to the bottom of what the hell happened. David Friedberg (01:03:47): Zach, do you do you think the instruction commission is gonna be equally kind of politically motivating for for Trump space and for folks like that? David Sacks (01:03:55): Well, I just think that you have to decide as a country whether you're gonna keep relitigating, you know, what happened in the previous administration. I mean, if we're gonna go back and keep this going, you know, we're gonna go back and look at why did the FBI use the Steel dossier to go to a Fisa court to spy on members of the Trump campaign had there 17 misrepresentations in their in their petition to the Fisa court. I mean, there was clear misconduct there. We're gonna go back and relitigate that and go after people and punish them. Look. Maybe we should. Okay? But I think that this is the thing about politics. Everyone just wants to move forward We're in a new administration now. Whatever misconduct occurred, I think the punishment was paid at the ballot box. I think it's just time to move on and I agree with that. And I look. I know there's gonna be a lot of partisans on both sides who just wanna go re litigate and punish their enemies forever. But, you know, I think the American people just wanna move forward. David Friedberg (01:04:55): Yeah. Jake, how what do you in the far what do you in the far left wanna do? Jason Calacanis (01:04:58): Well, I'm not on the far left. I mean, I I think that there is a I I do think that there is a bunch of gamesmanship here. I think this is a a chessboard. that on the left, they're saying, if we we if we have a chance to take Trump out of political life, we need to do that because the cost of him getting reelected in 2024 is too great. And so what we're talking about here is you know, what is the best path to doing that? And, you know, Tremont's right. Like, just letting him fade into obscurity, he may not want to run again because he's so old and it's so painful to be president for him. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:33): He's seventy 5. I mean, he's gonna be seventy eight or, no, seventy eight. Jason Calacanis (01:05:37): It'd be the same age as Biden going on. I I mean, this Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:39): this is ridiculous. Both of these two guys are one term presidents. I think that is abundantly clear. I think the question is, what is Biden's transition plan? you know, does he actually only stay 2 years and transitions to Tacoma? I don't know. But there's no way that he's running for a second term either. He does not look healthy. I think that much is at least and I'm and I'm saying this as, you know, a centrist Democrat. He doesn't look completely fit. and it's only gonna get worse. And this is the most incredibly stressful job in the world. Neither of these two guys or our long term solution, it's time to let it all go. Right? It's like we had David Sacks (01:06:21): 4 Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:21): years of just chaos We now get to have 4 years to catch our breath. It's time to find the late forties to mid fifties centric normal people again. And we have 3 years to do Jason Calacanis (01:06:35): it. Who do you David Friedberg (01:06:36): think that is on the Republican side and up. He didn't think it is on the Democrat side. He's gonna run for the next election cycle. because just this morning, by the way, an article came out that highlighted that several insiders in the White House are completely, like, up in arms about how chaotic Kamala Harris' offices, which is basically a way of starting to shoot her down. Right? So if you think about the the motivation here, someone in the White House is starting to shoot Kamala Harris down, which means they're starting to weaken her a little bit in terms of whether she could actually be a good replacement for the next term. I don't know if that's truly the motivation, but that's typically what these sorts of stories indicate. So it's not her it's not her who on the Democrat side and, you know, if not Trump who on the Republican side in the next election cycle because those folks are gonna start to pop their head up. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:24): the well, I mean, I think the I think the person who has enough credibility to take a shot It's not clear that she will. But if she did, she would be really serious, and she could actually get people to be relatively normal as Nikki Haley. on the right. Jason Calacanis (01:07:41): But Ron DeSantis is gonna be the rights candidate. Correct? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:44): And she's kind of normal. David Sacks (01:07:45): DeSantis is definitely the early front runner. there was a straw poll in which he was the 1st Republican to actually run ahead of Trump in a straw poll for, what, 4, 5 years. And so, yeah, it looks like he now he's running for reelection in Florida in 2022, So that's on his plate, but I think it looks like he's going to sweep to victory. He made the right decisions on lockdowns. This is the central feather in his cap that before any other governor really, he looked at the data, saw that to Friedberg point, lockdowns don't make a difference. He went back to normal. The state benefited. You look at per capita COVID deaths in Florida. It's middle of the pack, which is actually a really good result. given how many old people they have. So he did a phenomenal job, I think, setting COVID policy in Florida, and he did it in the face of a hostile media that was just tearing him limb from limb. And so he stowed that he can only confine the right policy, but that he's got the spine to stand up for it. And I think as a result of that, yeah, he has galvanized early the Republican base If he wins reelection in 2022 by a by a strong margin, I think he does become the putative front runner for 2024. Very similar in a way, I think, to the way that that George W Bush, you know, he he basically won reelection in Texas 2 years before he ran. For president and on the heels of that victory, he was able to make the case look. I just got reelected very popular in a huge state of the country. You know, I should be the front runner. I think DeSantis is in a similar position. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:25): What do you think about Nikki Haley Sex? David Sacks (01:09:28): I think Nikki Haley is sort of popular with the establishment wing of the Republican party, but she does not bring together both the the sort of the establishment wing with the populist wing. And what DeSantis has been able to do is get the business Republicans and the establishment Republicans to get behind him as well as the populist Trump based loves him. And that's that's the that's the combo you gotta have, I think, to to win the Republican nomination. And so, Nikki Haley, I think, you know, everybody who sort of reads elite media is gonna over index on her. But if you go to the the straw polls and the rallies, she's not just not gonna perform in those polls. There was a very interesting article in Politico though over the past week about how DeSantis is being very careful not to do anything to upset Trump. And I think he understands Jason Calacanis (01:10:19): You see the VP candidate with Trump, you think? David Sacks (01:10:23): Well, that that that preassumes a lot of things happening. I mean, look, we we don't know what's gonna happen. I think that, you know, the the the number one way to resurrect Trump is what Shamas said is to keep poking that bear to fill him with the the the rage to to sort of counter pat punch and come back, I think it would be better however, for a new generation of leaders to look. We we have we're being run by a gerontocracy right now. So, I mean, just Biden is 78. Pelosi is 80. Schumer is 77. McConnell is 80, and Trump is 75. And that's today. Okay? At 2024, all those people are gonna be in their eighties or just about -- Jason Calacanis (01:11:02): And who will even be alive. I mean David Sacks (01:11:04): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:05): Feinstein will be 91 or David Sacks (01:11:06): 92. It's time to have a new generation in both parties. Why are we being run by this gerontocracy? Jason Calacanis (01:11:12): What a joke. Do we wanna move on to the drought and impending death David Friedberg (01:11:17): and -- Or the Facebook FTC dismissal. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:20): Oh, that was incredible. And, also, the FTC got 2 gut punches in a row And then, you know, Amazon writes this petition to recuse Lena Kahn. Jason Calacanis (01:11:31): It's like, that's why she was hired. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:32): Incredible. She Jason Calacanis (01:11:33): was hired because she's an expert Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:34): on Amazon. The the Amazon the Amazon letter was actually extremely well written and basically said, I know that she's in charge of basically finding fairness and fairness seems be that we will get legislated, but we believe that it's unfair to us. So please take her out of the mix. I just think it was fantastic. I mean, it's incredible. It's like, isn't this the point of having her in the job? Jason Calacanis (01:11:56): It's like we've hired a new prosecutor who specializes in organized crime and the Gambino crime family has petitioned to have them exactly recuse. Yep. Recuse from doing any organized crime. David Sacks (01:12:07): Right. Their their argument is that she should be recused because she published articles on how yeah. That Amazon should be broken up, and they're saying she's already prejudged the situation. There's no way this is gonna fly. There's no way she's gonna get recused. But I think what they're trying to do is put an argument on appeal so that if Lena Kahn does break them up somehow, they can then go appeal to the Stream Court or whatever. And and this is basically reserving an argument they can make later. David Friedberg (01:12:35): So just to highlight, the FTC brought this case against Facebook saying that there are a monopoly and there are monopolistic practices that are damaging the market. the DC Federal Court threw out the case, and they basically said that the FTC failed to demonstrate in any way that Facebook has a monopoly over anything. they kept using the 60% market share term, and they're, like, 60% what? And the FTC was never able to give them data or facts to indicate what Facebook has a 60% share of. There are other social media services. There are other advertising platforms. There are other content sites that are all in aggregate much larger than Facebook. And so the case was dismissed because there was no demonstration at all. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:13:18): Which is why Lina Khan is David Friedberg (01:13:20): a of the traditional definition of a monopoly. And then Elizabeth Warren comes out 2 days ago and says, we need to rewrite the laws. The antitrust law is entirely redefine what to be a monopoly redefine what this this impact. And so I think the big question is, how much of a priority is it gonna be for this administration and for this Congress before they're out of session and and we end up with a split congress again to step up and rewrite antitrust laws at this point. Is this really a high priority is it gonna get -- That's why Jason Calacanis (01:13:48): being a con is being brought in is to take another approach like we talked about on the last episode, which is you know, the harm is competition and not the monopolistic power, but downstream competition as Chamath eloquently explained on the last pod. The irony of the Elizabeth Warren statements was that she released them on Twitter. Not her Facebook. Somebody dug that or like, She's talking about the monopolistic powers of Facebook on Twitter. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:15): Right. Right. David Friedberg (01:14:16): You have an alternative. That was the point. Can I I Exactly. I mean, how big of how big of a, like, legislative priority is this gonna be for Democrats? Because this could be re if if they rewrite the laws, it could be impactful to Amazon, Apple, Facebook, goof, you know, every college. David Sacks (01:14:32): It's a huge priority. There there's 6 mills that just got passed in the house that's going to the senate, and I do Jason Calacanis (01:14:37): think -- Moving fast. David Sacks (01:14:37): This is one of the areas where you could actually get some bipartisan agreement in the senate. You remember it's a 5050 senate. All it would take would be a few Democrats to defect, and they wouldn't be able to pass anything. But you got 21 Republicans who supported Lena Kahn. So, you know, that says to me that legislation is likely. I think it's gonna go through. I think we are gonna see some some big changes. And in fairness Selena Khan, this FTC lawsuit that got thrown out, was brought before she got there. She didn't have a chance to shape those arguments They have 30 days to refile. It'll be really interesting to see how she handles this hot potato now, whether she brings the lawsuit in a different way in the next 30 days or whether she lets it drop. But I do think that of all the big tech companies, the argument for breaking up Facebook is the weakest because it's true. Like, it's it's harder to say definitively. They have a monopoly in social networking when you've got Twitter. You've got Snapchat. You've got Reddit. You've got LinkedIn. You've got LinkedIn. You've got so many other companies in social media. But but that does not mean that the argument against Amazon, Google, and Apple isn't strong. Those companies are clearly monopolies or duopolies in their spaces. Nobody can effectively compete with them. Their network effects or monopoly scale effects Jason Calacanis (01:15:57): are -- I Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:57): think that Facebook's monopolistic impact probably tends towards some form of information distribution, but it's a very technical argument that has to be framed accurately on the one side, or it's how they've aggregated long tail advertisers on the other. But to your point, David, on the idea of social networking, I don't think they're a monopoly in the least. Jason Calacanis (01:16:16): Well, also, they're they're relitigating the approved acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. I kinda feel like if you bought these things and you approved it, what is it, 9 years ago and 7 years ago, like -- -- reason. David Friedberg (01:16:27): Yeah. They said they said if you guys had an issue that, you know, the state's attorney general, file the the suit against the Instagram acquisition and WhatsApp. They're like, if you had an issue with it, you should have filed the suit years ago. You waited too long. And clearly, there's, you know, you know, other motivations. Like, just because Google was successful buying YouTube doesn't mean you can go back in and re and on YouTube because they did a great job building YouTube. David Sacks (01:16:47): 99.999 David Friedberg (01:16:49): percent of YouTube's success is because of Google, not because of YouTube. They they took a small team, and they rebuilt that whole thing, and they scaled the heck out of it. Jason Calacanis (01:16:57): Let let me ask you a question to Saks. If these companies paid more taxes, and got out of the censorship business. Do you think they could, you know, maybe take a little wind out of the sales of this? David Sacks (01:17:09): Yeah. Of course. Look. The only reason the only reason those 21 Republicans have now gotten on board with regulating the power of these big tech companies is they see those big tech companies using their gatekeeper power to restrict free speech, and it's all one-sided and as partisan against, you know, their side of the aisle because these companies are populated, generally speaking by people on the other side of the aisle. And so, you know, big tech, if they had just reigned in their own impulses, to want a sensor. The other side, they would not be in the hot water they're in right now. Jason Calacanis (01:17:39): They focus on themselves. David Sacks (01:17:40): -- Jason Calacanis (01:17:40): that now? because it seems like Facebook is starting to backtrack on the Trump ban. David Sacks (01:17:45): Well, they haven't. Jason Calacanis (01:17:46): Twitter David Sacks (01:17:46): issues. I think I think they got a big problem now. No. Look. I think they should have been doing this over the last couple of years. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:51): The cat's out of the bag. What they thought could never happen, all of a sudden, became arbitrary. And the thing that they did was they started to legislate a private company started to legislate power. And that's just a 3rd rail issue. The minute you do that, you have every government in the world saying to yourself, wait a minute. I am only focused on this one thing. Right? I don't take a huge salary. I've been grinding at the low levels politics for 40, 50 years to get to this exact place. And now I have a bunch of hipsters in Menlo Park telling me what I can and can't say. to the people that I worked a lifetime to basically be able to govern over? I mean, you you know -- Yeah. David Sacks (01:18:31): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:31): it can't it can't stand. David Sacks (01:18:33): Yeah. So I I think a big mistake that Zuckerberg made goes all the way back to 2016. Facebook basically bought into the disinformation argument. They apologized for it. When zuck that was the time for Zuckerberg to fight. He should have said no. Listen. Was the FSB were these bad actors on Facebook? Yes. But when you look at the total number of impressions and page views, it was like a drop of water in the ocean. We're not the ones who caused this election. to go the way it did. Obama used Facebook very effectively in 2008, and nobody had to come with us then. And that was the time to fight. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:07): that was a time to fight. And to your point, David, he actually should have been even more he said, the reason Trump got elected was not me, but it was Obama. You know, he could have really gone on the attack, and he would have put himself forward. David Sacks (01:19:20): -- Hillary Hillary just ran a bad campaign. If Hillary had just campaigned in Wisconsin, it would have gone a different way. in 2016. So what sucks should've -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:27): She had an idiot team. She had an idiot. David Sacks (01:19:29): She had a terrible team, and they were about everything, including Facebook. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:32): including everything. David Friedberg (01:19:33): They were bad Jason Calacanis (01:19:34): at it. David Sacks (01:19:34): -- social media. So Zach should have said, listen. Don't blame us for the fact the campaign was bad at social media. Jason Calacanis (01:19:40): They put victory into the jaws of defeat. Let's end on this US sprinter case. I think it's super interesting. US sprinter shock David Sacks (01:19:46): -- Jason Calacanis (01:19:46): It's it's unbelievable. -- tests positive from marijuana and it's suspended a month putting her Tokyo hundreds in doubt. She is the gold medal favorite in the women's one hundred meter. and she could miss the games after testing positive. She said she smoked pot when she found out in Oregon legally when she found out her mom had died. And it's on the United States anti doping agency announced this result on Friedberg Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:16): explanation is so fucking heartbreaking. Jason Calacanis (01:20:20): I mean, what are we doing here? Like, make no sense, Jim. change this decision? David Sacks (01:20:23): Well, there there was there was this is similar to the GOL for who was about to win the PGA and got kicked out on the final day because he tested positive for COVID without Jason Calacanis (01:20:31): his symptoms -- Tom. -- in David Sacks (01:20:32): an outdoor sport. Jason Calacanis (01:20:33): Guys, I'm asking Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:34): him to finish. I cannot imagine a worse drug for a sprinter than marijuana. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:20:41): I mean, for healing, great, but it's I mean, you're gonna, like, run the 100 stop for a cheeseburger. You're gonna pick it up. David Sacks (01:20:47): It's not a it's not a performance enhancing drug. What this is is this legalism, these bureaucratic legalistic seasonality's gone wild. In this case, with this runner, in the case of the golfer, I mean, it's like it's like the bureaucrats enforcing the rules have completely lost sight. of what the purpose of these rules are. Jason Calacanis (01:21:06): The spirit of the rule is super important and there was a professional snowboarder and his name was Ross Regalotti from Canada, and he wanted a metal. And they took his metal away because he had THC in his system and disqualified him. And then they went back and gave him his metal back, I believe. And so this is heartbreaking and ridiculous and I I I'm not gonna watch the love watching the Olympics. I watch a lot of the Olympics. I really enjoy it. I think it's awesome. And I'm just not gonna watch this this year. Fuck it. I I just I'm so offended by this. like, you want these people to take, like, opioids for their pain and suffering or you want them to take some antidepressant? I mean, Jesus Christ. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:55): Jason looked I'll also say, like, in in our friend group, we have a handful of NBA players. And I don't I don't think you remember this conversation. Maybe you do I think we were all together. When they talked about the up until marijuana was more widely used in the NBA Yes. The pills that these players were given Jason Calacanis (01:22:16): were literally borderline opioids. Crazy. Rip their stomach apart. Rip Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:23): everything apart, you know, created dependencies. And all of a sudden, you had a natural alternative, and people are gonna judge folks for taking I mean, These guys are brutalizing their bodies for enter for effectively our entertainment. And then we don't give them a reasonable way to manage their pain. It's outrageous. Jason Calacanis (01:22:41): And everybody else is smoking a doobie during halftime or taking a gummy on the way home to sleep. I mean, it's so hypocritical And recently David Sacks (01:22:49): -- It feels like I mean, this country just feels like it's being run by a bunch of bureaucratic, technocratic weedies. Weenies. And whether it Jason Calacanis (01:22:58): be -- Call monitors. David Sacks (01:22:59): Call monitors, whether it's David Friedberg (01:23:00): it's David Sacks (01:23:00): -- We should Jason Calacanis (01:23:00): give them a wedgie and throw them in the locker. That's what we should do with this eye, whoever put this person. They get a wedgie and get thrown in a locker. David Sacks (01:23:08): I knew you had I knew you were a school yard bully, Jakeel. Jason Calacanis (01:23:10): I'm not a school yard bully, but I do think the hall monitors you know those p you were a hall monitor weren't just sex. Did you volunteer to be a hall monitor, to be honest? David Sacks (01:23:19): No. No. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:20): No. You were in the chess club. Jason Calacanis (01:23:22): I liked our chess game, Saxx. David Sacks (01:23:24): Yeah. Okay. This is how I knew this is how I knew that Jakeout wasn't real I knew I knew I had hurt him. Okay? I knew he was genuinely hurt. but I knew he would get over it. When I got I saw my push notifications or request from chess.com. He started a chess game with me. So I'm like, oh, okay. -- Jason Calacanis (01:23:41): play? because I'm a neophyte. David Friedberg (01:23:43): He couldn't how easy he couldn't be away from you all. David Sacks (01:23:45): -- Jason Calacanis (01:23:45): was it to beat me? You as a 1200 player to my David Sacks (01:23:48): 600. Yeah. Well, the chest.com analysis said that I was never I was never in any danger. But I thought you played pretty well. And yeah. Give me a tip. Jason Calacanis (01:23:58): What's my tip? David Sacks (01:23:59): Well, you you didn't castle fast enough. You let me you let me -- I was trying Jason Calacanis (01:24:03): to get that Bishop out Yeah. David Sacks (01:24:04): You let me trap your king in the center, and then, you know, it was a but the the but you did good. You did good. David Friedberg (01:24:10): Alright. David Sacks (01:24:11): I knew I was okay with you when I got the chest.com. I Jason Calacanis (01:24:13): think we need a Vegas trip. Maybe we're all Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:15): just a little cooped out. Maybe we need David Friedberg (01:24:17): to go to Vegas. Jason Calacanis (01:24:18): Do a quick 48 hour run this weekend. Should we do a little 48 Vegas run. Alright, everybody. This has been an amazing episode. So I'm officially unblocking Saks. And I even followed him. Love you, Chamath. Love you, Saxx. Love you, Friedberg. David Sacks (01:24:36): Jake, I I have something to say to you as well. which is I appreciate you. I I I love -- Hi. -- I love love. Jason Calacanis (01:24:47): system break down. David Sacks (01:24:47): Fuck it. I'll catch you. Jason Calacanis (01:24:48): I like David Sacks (01:24:53): your winter. ride. Jason Calacanis (01:24:55): Rainman, David Saffes. We open store David Sacks (01:25:01): sits to the fans and they've just gone crazy like that. what airliners like. Besty's our car. I don't know if David Friedberg (01:25:14): they're doing stuff. That is my dog thinking, and I wish driveway checks. Oh, man. I might have the. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:23): We should all just get a room and have one big huge order because they're all just useless. It's, like, it's, like, sexual tension that they just need to release that mountain. David Friedberg (01:25:31): What? You're the bee bee. flirt. You know what I mean? David Sacks (01:25:34): -- your feet. David Friedberg (01:25:35): What? I couldn't feel it. Jason Calacanis (01:25:36): Where did you get Murphy's arms back? David Friedberg (01:25:48): you wearing your boxers? What are you wearing those? Yeah. Jamach it around. What is those pants, dude? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:55): These are my swim trunks. David Friedberg (01:25:56): Well, swim trunks. There they are. The Internet famous legs Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:02): I mean, these legs are actually but much, much bigger. Look. Look how big they are. David Friedberg (01:26:05): Oh, please tell me your recording, Meg. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:08): Look at how big these are.