美国阿富汗撤军的难堪、中国新算法法规、机器人的未来及意大利之行回顾

Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:00): By the Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): way, boys. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:01): Look at this. I'm down. I'm I'm up a button. Jason Calacanis (00:00:03): Oh, up a button yesterday. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:05): -- David Sacks (00:00:05): the all in pod is falling apart is we got one best to use thinks he's fucking having a way. We got another one who thinks he's Italian nobility. We got another one who all he wants to do is geek out about science and discuss nothing topical. I mean, you guys are a total mess. And you are a total mess. Jason Calacanis (00:00:19): And you? Fucking boat. And you? Fuck are David Friedberg (00:00:22): you guys are cold open. Speaker 5 (00:00:23): I bet. David Sacks (00:00:24): I've been present. Jason Calacanis (00:00:26): Present. David Sacks (00:00:26): I've been waiting for 2 weeks. -- social. Speaker 5 (00:00:28): And David Friedberg (00:00:28): we got -- I've been waiting for 2 weeks. -- the necker Carlson. Speaker 6 (00:00:31): Oh, really? Yeah. David Friedberg (00:00:32): We're sitting here with El Jason Calacanis (00:00:33): Castor right opening for you. David Sacks (00:00:34): No. What's behind that? Jason Calacanis (00:00:35): writing team write that soliloquy? David Sacks (00:00:37): I'm coming in hot. I've been waiting 2 weeks to go off. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:39): 3, 2, Jason Calacanis (00:00:42): to let your winter ride. Rainman David Sanders. And I said, we Speaker 6 (00:00:50): open source it to the fans and make discoveries. Jason Calacanis (00:00:53): Love you, ma'am. Ice ice cream. I'm going all in. Okay, everybody. Welcome back. to the all in podcast. We took 2 weeks off for vacation with us today from Cation. Sachs is off his boat and ready to go after the tremendous boat episode, Friedberg, who -- David, why are Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:14): you working from an IRS office? Dave Sacks has joined the call center. Which call center are you Jason Calacanis (00:01:24): working through? David Sacks (00:01:25): It's a certain Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:26): nice white wall. -- Jason Calacanis (00:01:26): from the call in app. Can I set up your package Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:28): for you, please? -- better fucking get here by tonight. David Sacks (00:01:31): Okay. David Friedberg (00:01:31): Yes, Zach. You better Jason Calacanis (00:01:32): play fucking cards, bestie. This is bestie. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:34): You fucking show up. This line up Jason Calacanis (00:01:36): is a shit show. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:37): Mister beast is showing up. Jason Calacanis (00:01:38): Mister beast is gonna play cards, and he plays 8 Queen Aid off suit to crack fill. It's gonna be very entertaining. David Sacks (00:01:45): Alright. I'm I'm flying back this afternoon. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:46): It's Mister Beast Speaker 5 (00:01:48): Alan Schipholmuth Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:51): This is gonna be fucking fireworks tonight. Okay. My fire works. Jason Calacanis (00:01:54): I I am calling to make lock Speaker 5 (00:01:56): it on the 8 seat. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:57): Your 8 seat's locked up. David Sacks (00:01:58): Wait. What time does it start? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:00): Apple -- 7 to 7 AM. No. It's gonna be all night. David Friedberg (00:02:02): Is your is your guest house taken? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:05): No. You can stay in the guest house if you want. Great. Jason Calacanis (00:02:08): Here we go. No. We start we started -- David, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:10): we started. Speaker 5 (00:02:11): Is this the show? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:12): Yes. David, we started 6, but I I we're gonna break for dinner as normal at 7. So get here by fucking 6. David Sacks (00:02:17): I'll come gotta have dinner with my kids. I haven't seen them in a month. So Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:22): -- Jason Calacanis (00:02:23): Alright. Just so you do you remember their names? It's And and there's 3 of them. Okay? Yeah. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:02:30): There's 3 of them. David Sacks (00:02:31): I'll come I'll come after dinner. Okay? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:32): Alright. Alright. Okay. Good. because you lost -- Jason Calacanis (00:02:34): Here we go. First topic of the day is -- No. You didn't Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:37): do the intros, asshole. Go ahead and bring it into. No. No. No. You already did that part. Just introduce you had started with Saxon. You didn't say myself intrigued to him. -- Jason Calacanis (00:02:45): director. He'd sit down, Scorsese. Alright. With us, again, the dictator himself, Chemov Palihapitiya. David Friedberg (00:02:52): Back for Jason Calacanis (00:02:52): an Italian castle. Fresh of his Italian castle retreat, one button up David Sacks (00:02:58): maybe we should call you the duke instead of the dictator. Yeah. Because you're really taking this this Italian nobility thing to heart. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:05): You know, Jason -- Jason Jason invaded my my castle. He ravaged my toilets several of them. He literally had He co opted the butler. He co opted the chef. And when he would bicycle back to -- -- best life, I'll be totally honest for a week. -- would bicycle he would bicycle back to the to the house, the gate would close, and they would scurry out with 2 little cokes, a huge glass filled with ice. I was so confused when I got back to the house. What going on? He's like, Mister Jason. Mister Jason. Mister Jason, he always -- David Sacks (00:03:39): What percent what percent of your book did you write, Jay Kal? Jason Calacanis (00:03:42): Well, a nonfiction book, typically 60,000 is the target. So I'm gonna write 60 and then try to edit it down to 50, and I got the first ten done. Sorry. Can I just say it right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:51): On the on the plane, as well as at my house, Jason read us the intro. I'm not gonna say what they're about or the title of the book, the first couple chapters. It's fucking amazing. Both the idea -- What's no doubt about? I've legit the idea is amazing. The title is fantastic, and what he's written so far is exceptional. I was genuinely like, it's great. It's really, really great. Speaker 5 (00:04:15): Well, a Speaker 7 (00:04:15): lot of it Jason Calacanis (00:04:16): was informed by discussions we've been having here. Of course, back in the mix is Friedberg, the queen of Kinois, in front of some Kmart artwork that he purchased for his new house. How are you doing, Dean? How how are you feeling about your decision to not come to Italy with us? David Friedberg (00:04:34): Jack Queen. I don't wanna talk about it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:36): Hey. Can we can we tell our best Italy story? Jason Calacanis (00:04:39): Oh my god. I don't know what the best is. A lot of best Italy stories. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:43): I wanna tell two stories, and one of them is the joke I didn't make at the speech, which I thought was the best fucking joke, and I wanna just get your reaction. So I'm just gonna tell her. Okay. Jason Calacanis (00:04:52): So just to give little background here. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:54): Our friend's fiftieth birthday. 2 of our friends had fiftieth birthday. Jason Calacanis (00:04:58): It's me and our other friend. And so we were in Italy for a week as a group, playing cards, and celebrating those 2 birthdays. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:06): The joke I didn't make was the following joke. which is alright, guys. I just wanna call out. -- Jason Calacanis (00:05:11): for Fred number 1. Redacted. Yeah. Redacted. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:14): I just wanna call it the elephant in the room. You know, there's really someone very, very famous amongst us. Speaker 5 (00:05:20): Go. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:21): You know, he's known to be one of the richest men in the world. He's known you know, to really love rockets. He throws, you know, rockets all the time. The despotic leader of North Korea is here Kim Jong Un, everybody, and I point to DC. Oh, wow. Jason Calacanis (00:05:38): That's a joke. That is so important. Yeah. That was Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:42): a joke. Jason Calacanis (00:05:42): I didn't Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:42): get to make. Wow. You can't tell Jason Calacanis (00:05:44): that to. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:44): Because because it would it would in context of you know, obviously, it would have been a miracle. Jason Calacanis (00:05:48): Yeah. Alright. And Yeah. It was just a great trip. I have to say I took it to me. David Sacks (00:05:55): Yeah. My Italy story is that so the second birth day is Jay Cal. The first -- Mhmm. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:00): -- David Sacks (00:06:00): birthday is a friend term and nameless. The second birthday redacted. The second birthday was Jay Cal's fiftieth. Then we find out that Jay Cal's birthday was actually, like, 6 months ago. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:09): 6 months ago, November 28th. David Sacks (00:06:10): Yeah. Nobody nobody cared. And, frankly, none of us went to Italy for Jake House birthday. David Friedberg (00:06:15): We went to the other guys. We went Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:18): to the other guys party. David Sacks (00:06:20): Yeah. Jake House's birthday is COVID. He keeps trying to bring it back in different variants, and no one wants any part of it. So on the last night, the last night of the trip, we had the Jacob birthday party. And what do they serve pizza. I mean, like, because it's on Jake House dime. I mean, the rest of the week, we had this, like, magnificent 5 star Speaker 5 (00:06:43): out of this. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:44): -- Jason Calacanis (00:06:44): my birthday party for me, Snacks. David Sacks (00:06:46): You didn't even throw in any breadsticks. I mean, he was like he's just DoorDash Domino's. Jason Calacanis (00:06:50): We had truffle pizza. I'm gonna say truffles. It was delicious. I think it was the best meal. I think you're just a little jealous because the dinner you hosted maybe didn't hit the notes you wanted to hit, Saxx. David Sacks (00:07:01): Oh my god. Are you serious? We brought David Friedberg (00:07:03): in circles all the way. -- fucking truth from blood people to sources about food. Jason Calacanis (00:07:08): I was talking about the pizza versus Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:09): -- You know, by the way, I just wanna say that that whole circus thing in the in the water, I got so mad at one of my kids because it was so dark and the kids were in the pool. Yeah. He kept diving. Yeah. Yeah. And I kept saying, stop. I can't see you. David Sacks (00:07:24): Yeah. I know. Speaker 5 (00:07:25): And so Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:26): it was just like, he never none of the kids should have been in the pool. David Sacks (00:07:29): I agree with that. And and the truth of the matter is, you know, my five year old was in the pool too, and all I could do is keep an eye Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:35): on him. Keep an eye on him. David Sacks (00:07:35): I was so worried about it. Speaker 6 (00:07:36): I grew up with my career David Sacks (00:07:38): as well. I didn't enjoy the show for that reason. Jason Calacanis (00:07:40): Yeah. Me too. they had the time with their lives. David Sacks (00:07:43): Yes. They loved it. And, actually, that was that was definitely worth it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:46): And the day before, I wanna give credit to Saks because Saks and I went down to that restaurant. We made them open up the wine closet. We raided it. We found the best three bottles of wine, and we brought them back for everybody. David Sacks (00:07:58): Oh, I see. And then and then I'm not sure if you remember this. We taped an episode of call in in which Jason Calacanis (00:08:03): I was a little drunk. Speaker 6 (00:08:04): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:04): I was drunk. I was confused. David Sacks (00:08:06): Yeah. anyway, the whole world can listen to us drunk on call in in we're launching on September 2nd. So Oh, wow. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:13): Nice. Congrats. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:08:14): It's gonna be a big deal. And congratulations to the all in syndicate members who wet their beaks and to my syndicate members. People don't know this, but it was the absolute record we've ever had for any syndicate. I believe at the end of the day, we had a hundred fifty slots, and we had 950 people apply Saxx. Amazing. We had a 1,000,000 or so in allocation, and I think we had 7,000,000 in demand. I am really excited David Friedberg (00:08:41): I'm really excited about this product. David Sacks (00:08:43): Yes. I'm really excited about this product. It's the best product I've been involved in creating. It's better than Yammer. It's better than PayPal. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:53): spicy take. Wow. David Sacks (00:08:55): Wow. I'm really glad, daddy. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:56): Daddy got a really tasty food. Jason Calacanis (00:08:59): So Don't hurt your don't hurt your elbow patting yourself on the backside. Go ahead, continue. David Sacks (00:09:05): That's all. Jason Calacanis (00:09:06): You got a little product manager elbow there. David Friedberg (00:09:08): patents to dislocate your triceps. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:10): -- David Sacks (00:09:10): feedback we've gotten from users has been incredible. I mean, it's just the reactions Jason Calacanis (00:09:14): really strong. -- good about it. Here's here's what I think you nailed. as a person who's been in podcasting for over a decade. The critical aspect of this is. When you pop up your club or room on call in, it creates a podcast out of it with an RSS feed And you can go listen to the previous show. So if you are listening to this and you wanted to create your own version of all in, You could do it on call in. Just get 3 of your knucklehead friends and talk about your adventures on boats and private jets and drinking fine wine wherever you are, and you can start your own podcast. Yeah. It's not really about -- -- not included. David Sacks (00:09:54): Right. It's not the key insight. It's not about the room. It's about the show. Mhmm. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:58): You David Sacks (00:09:58): know? Like, everything we think of as social audio is really just a feature of creating a show creating a new podcast. And anyway, people really like it. I'm very excited. September 2nd Jason Calacanis (00:10:09): is the day. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:09): -- Jason Calacanis (00:10:09): have been created in Debeta? This is David Sacks (00:10:11): the thing that's blown me away is, like, well over a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:13): 100. David Sacks (00:10:13): I think maybe a couple of 100. If you go to the show directory, you and and the cover art that people have created is really elaborate. You know? People are really getting into it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:22): I don't know why somebody's never made it. Yeah. You're a phenomenal product builder. So I think this is really exciting. Jason Calacanis (00:10:29): Yeah. Under underrated product builder, I would say. No. It's just interesting that this doesn't exist. Somebody should have made this already. Like, there's Zenkasser And Riverside for recording podcasts, there's lips in for hosting them. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:40): What what's happened as a as a protected minority? I'd like to ask this question. What happens what's happening to Clubhouse? Jason Calacanis (00:10:48): I think it's irrelevant. I'll be I don't I don't wanna dunk on founders, but I think that They Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:55): -- No. But why can't they just do these features? It sounds like -- I mean, I'm not I'm not I'm not trying to guarantee you if they will copy these searches. -- Jason Calacanis (00:11:01): features for sure. think they will copy it at some point. David Sacks (00:11:04): Yeah. But but I think that so it's a good it's a good question and I really think there's different visions here. So, I mean, I've listened to their founder talk about his vision and it's very much about creating this live serendipitous type experience, like, kinda like a cocktail party. And that's fine. We're not doing that. We're creating long tail podcasting is what we're doing. And my experience is informed by what we've all been doing on the show for last year and a half. which is podcasting. Right? And the thing that I've seen that I didn't know until we did the all in pod is how much work goes into what Jake House does behind the scenes. Jason Calacanis (00:11:34): Synchro. You David Sacks (00:11:35): know, we got Nick doing 6 hours of post production on the show, I wanna automate all that work away so anybody can do what we do. And that's like a very different vision. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:44): No offense, Nick. Speaker 5 (00:11:46): No. I mean, Jason Calacanis (00:11:47): they're not everybody is gonna want to put the type of post production into this. They don't have know, I've got six people on our podcast team. Like, it's not everybody's got that infrastructure. So over time, you'll build that, I believe it. And I think it will turn out great. Alright. Let's get to our first topic here. While we were away, the United States started of leaving Afghanistan after a 20 year war in which I think it's pretty safe to say that was an unwinnable war. And we have felt like the Russians did. Saks had a tweet that was getting a little bit of play on the old Twitter. What we're seeing before our eyes is the collapse of the American Empire because the people in charge are completely corrupt and incompetent. But We can't talk about that because insiders can never criticize other insiders, the Larry Summers rule. David Sacks (00:12:43): Did I tweet that? You did. Jason Calacanis (00:12:45): Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, you might have had a couple of drinks. And then -- Sorry. You he actually didn't. He just texted that in the group. Okay. So that was a confidential text to our that to our group that we're not supposed to even say exist. David Sacks (00:12:57): Well, no. It's okay. Don't beep it. It's okay. I mean, it's it's it's true. It's it's not exactly what I tweeted, but it's similar to things I've been tweeting. Jason Calacanis (00:13:05): And tragically yesterday, ISIS K, which is an Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State claimed responsibility for 2 suicide bombings. outside of the airport. And that tragically killed over a hundred people, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:21): 90 Jason Calacanis (00:13:21): Afghan citizens, and 13 American service members. I guess, you know, we're not here to talk about wars. It's not exactly in the mandate, but everybody wants our opinion on this. So let's get started, Zach. have strong opinions? We'll start with Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:37): -- David Sacks (00:13:37): Well, it's yeah. I mean, how can you not talk about this? This feels to me this is one of those events where, you know, I was glued to my TV for days. I think I was in France at the time the Taliban overrun overran couple. And, yeah, it was you know, the the Afghanistan war's been going on for 20 years. No one's been about it. It's just this thing that's been happening in the background. But all along, we've been assured by the Pentagon that we're winning. Hey. You know, don't worry about this. We got this. And then you wake up one day and all of a sudden we've lost the war and the Taliban's overrunning the country. And you're like, what is going on here? You know, not only is the the botched withdrawal incompetent, the fact that we were lied to for 2 decades about what was really happening the the idea that we had created you know, we were how many times were we told that we had created this Afghan army? It was 300th strong. We spent you know, $2,000,000,000,000 in the country, you know, being and we were told the whole time that we were building institutions there that, you know, that we are creating a democracy in the Middle East that we were even, you know, promoting gender equality and lecturing the Taliban on toxic masculinity or something And then we find out one day that poof, the whole thing was just kind of a lie. It was this giant debacle. And now we came and get our we came and get our civilians out of the country. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:55): Not only that, but we've we've seen twelve people, 12 American servicemen, and women killed. yesterday trying to 13, trying to protect the airport. Almost a 100 Afghans. Now we'd only have to not only contend with the Taliban whose positions I don't think any of us know about, but we also have to deal with ISIS k which is like some, you know, offshoot affiliate of Isis run by a guy who was actually summarily killed by the Taliban, but that didn't clearly stop anybody. The the level of Honestly, just to say that the the the lying that we've been doing on this topic is just utterly it's really, really scary. You know how could we have gone 20 years, 2,000,000,000,000 dollars, 24100 American lives and counting and found a way to just basically waste all this money and tell ourselves these lies for so long. And it turns out none of it was true. And then the back half of it is that we look like a little bit of a country that's sort of in decline because we can't even figure out an orderly withdrawal. It's not as if, you know, this thing came out of the blue out of nowhere. This was a negotiated withdrawal. So we had months to plan for this. You know? And we had months to do the right honorable moral thing for all of these people that helped us in that Just to give you a a small anecdote. You know, the day that Kabul was overrun, you know, the Democrats were actually tweeting out about celebrating librarian day. That's what they were focused on. Jason and I on the way back, you know, we flew back with my mom and my sister, we we stopped in Toronto to drop them off. And the planes beside us, Jason, do you remember this? Jason Calacanis (00:16:51): You had 2 big plans. Chicago plans. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:16:53): I think Brett or Paul were telling my pilots are telling us, these planes have been going back and forth saving refugees in Afghanistan. And it's like, wow. What an honor to just be beside these these amazingly heroic men and women. And, you know, I don't know, Jason, if you saw, but as we were refueling, they came and boarded and they were getting ready to leave again. Wow. Meanwhile, that America cannot get even to a point of view on the topic. And I think that's what's so shameful. It's like not only did we spend the money. Not only did we lose all these lives. Not only didn't we have an orderly withdrawal. We couldn't even at the end guarantee the safety of Americans or do the right thing for all these people who risk their lives to help us fight clearly a useless war? Jason Calacanis (00:17:38): Friedberg, you have lots. watching all this. I know you don't like when we delve into politics too much, but what are you yeah. You have any thoughts you wanna add? Yeah. David Friedberg (00:17:46): A little bit about politics as much as I kinda use a little bit of a startup analogy. Like, America never really found product markets set with what we were trying to do. in Afghanistan. There's some fantastic Gallup pulling that's been done in Afghanistan over the past 15, 20 years already, and they've actually had people on the ground pulling there. And most recently, which has been consistent for over 10 years, polling shown that 87 to 90 percent of Afghans said that the government is corrupt. This is the government, you know, put in power put in place by the United States, 90% say businesses are corrupt. And if you go back to a poll they ran in Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:31): 2010, David Friedberg (00:18:33): the question was, in general, which of these statements comes closest to your point of view, sharia law must be the only source of legislation. 50 6% of the Afghan population in 2010 believe that to be true. And another 38% said Shiraya law must be a source of legislation, but not the only source that leaves just 7% of people that think that Sharaya law should not be Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:55): -- Jason Calacanis (00:18:55): Is it Sharia or Sharaya? David Friedberg (00:18:56): Sharia. Sorry. Sharia law should not be part of the legislative process. in defining the Afghan laws in Constitution. And so, you know, it's really telling that, you know, it's almost like when you when you start a company and you try and create a and you sell it to a customer base. You gotta figure out what the product is. You gotta make sure the customers want it. And then the the the idea for the startup works. The problem here is our views as as a nation and maybe Western Democracy doesn't necessarily fit with what that it wants. And we can certainly make the case that we believe that our ethics and our values are superior and provide more of an opportunity for individual freedom and liberty things that we believe should be available around the world. But if the market's not buying it, the customers don't want it, you're really just raising a ton of venture money to create a product that no one really wants. And at the end of the day, your your $1,000,000,000,000 down, and you have to shut the thing down and it goes bankrupt. And that's effectively what went went down here. And if you look at the history of Afghanistan, remember, they were in the Soviet Afghan War in the eighties, nearly the entire decade of the eighties. Then the taliban came along and provided a degree of stability in the nineties. And then all of a sudden, this Al Qaeda 911 war began, you know, Taliban had been in power for a year, and it's been 20 plus years of strife and or 20 years of strife and challenge where the population have increasingly viewed the government to be corrupt, businesses to be corrupt, and here's a really interesting statistic. which also came out of this polling that Gallup does. Over the last 10 years, the percentage of Afghans that are happy with their present household income has gone or or not happy, sorry, with their present household income, has gone from 60% to 90%. 9 out of 10 Afghans as of last year we're not making enough money to make ends meet. So you put all of these facts together. David Friedberg (00:20:45): You've got this long history of strife with this, you know, company actively coming in trying to tell you how to run your government, how to run your your country that doesn't match with your beliefs on on on your your the way you think a government should be built you've got all of this turmoil that's happened historically. You know, it really was, I would say, to some degree, this inevitable failure of a startup that got overfunded that never found product market fit that never really got off the ground. Certainly, the exit strategy on how do you wind something down in this case, and it certainly relates to human lives and the tragedy of the partners that we had on the ground was was totally mishandled. But the broader picture here is, like, we I think it's more corrupt than that. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:21): I think that we basically engaged in a $2,000,000,000,000 wealth transfer from the people of the United States, the citizens of the United States, to the military industrial complex. that's what we did. Jason Calacanis (00:21:31): Well, I mean, I have two points I wanna I wanna build on from from yours Friedberg. Now yours, Chamath, which is the original mandate here was to go in, get rid of Al Qaeda, and to also, you know, kill Osama Bin Laden and to not have the Taliban giving safe harbor to Al Qaeda, that quick that mission got accomplished in large part in the 1st year or 2. And then when we finally got to Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, I think it it probably would have been a better idea to understand this is an unwinnable war, get in there, destroy the talent ban, leave and then say, if you come back, we'll do it again, but we're not gonna stay here for 20 years. To your point, Friedberg and try to create a revolution if the people are not ready for it, I think that we have to start looking at our foreign policy and saying, we do need we do have a better view of human rights clearly than the Middle East and certainly Afghanistan. And we do wanna promote human rights around the world and freedom. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:27): We're not doing that. We're not we're not freedom fighters of democracy or justice. We are led we should be. We are led by motives of revenue and profit. Jason Calacanis (00:22:36): I know that, but we should be. And when we went and we kicked the Nazi's asses, and we beat Japan when, you know, they were trying to dominate the world. We were doing it to stop communism. And I think when you look at nation building and these these kind of revolutions, to Friedberg's point, they they have to want it as well. So we should be working with the countries that are teetering on going from authoritarianism to democracy And we should take the high ground, and we should be the more authority of the world. because if we're not who's going to be. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:06): I I I agree with that part. I think the right thing to do is just to open our doors and say, you know what? We're here. There's a draft. Right? And the smart and the capable in the willing we're willing to basically bring inside of our borders so that they can work on our behalf. And that's what other countries, I think, get right about all of this stuff. Like again, as a Canadian, you know, the Canadian perspective of this is not that you deploy troops and you get embroiled in these, you know, debacles over 20 years 1000 of lives and trillions of dollars, it's the exact opposite. They're there to support humanitarian efforts. Right? They're there to send peacekeeping forces as they need to. But otherwise, their real response is to actually then open the borders for folks that wanna be there who are then wanting to trade up Jason to those values because that's the simple way to self select. Instead of saying, I'm going to impose my version of democracy over there. I'm actually gonna show you what our version looks like over here. And if you wanna come, the doors are open, Jason Calacanis (00:24:05): Certainly, being an example is step 1, and we, I think, could do that largely well. But we do need to sometimes intervene. And I think that's the question here is When is it just to intervene when there are human rights on the line? And the country is teetering on authoritarianism or democracy. Like, where is that line? David Sacks (00:24:23): The just cause here was to go get Osama Bin Laden because he attacked us, and we should have gotten out of that country as soon as we were that Bin Laden was no longer there. I mean, that was basically after the battle of Toribora. And if we didn't leave then, we certainly should have left after we got Bin Laden in around 2010. So what were you still doing there? We were engaged in this exercise of nation building, which, by the way, we spent $6,000,000,000,000 on nation building exercises in the Middle East between Afghanistan and Iraq. For what? For not, this is why the electorate is in such a foul mood. How many of our domestic disputes are caused by the fact that we squandered that Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:00): $6,000,000,000,000. David Sacks (00:25:01): That's more than Biden's entire domestic agenda. you know, so we wasted all this money. To Frederic's point, we never understood the culture there. And to Chamath point, it was a giant money funneling operation to defense contract. doctors. There's a a great piece of reporting by an independent journalist named Michael Tracy, and he talked to frontline grunts about the the wasteful spending. You know, they had sent 12 humvees to some local Afghan partner. Only two of them would ever get there. The other tenants would would break down and disappear and no one would even know where all the money went. It was like an unbelievable orgy of of wastefulness. And You know, one other important detail on this, there there's a a a a a guy who I think should be much more famous to all of us. His name is John F Sopko. He's a special inspector general for Afghanistan and reconstruction that short for cigar. He was appointed by Congress about 13 years ago to look into what was really happening in Afghanistan and to report on quote, quote, unquote lessons learned from the Afghan war. And so for 13 years, Sopco has been very quietly, diligently interviewing people from everyone from frontline troops to commanders about what's really been happening in Afghanistan. And he's been releasing these reports that everyone in DC knows about but nobody in the country knows about. Let me just read you. These are just the chapter titles, from his latest report. Okay? Speaker 5 (00:26:23): Oh, Jesus. David Sacks (00:26:24): Just the chapter titles, harmful spending patterns, resistance to honesty, personnel struggles, Willful disregard for critical information, incorrect theories of change, poor understanding of local context, and by the way, that includes ignoring things like the sexual abuse of young boys by Afghan warlords who are our allies, okay, which the New York Times reported on. We completely have swept that under the rug. Okay? That's just a table of contents. Okay? From one of his latest reports, which is about a hundred page. Jason Calacanis (00:26:55): Complete incompetence on our in our government, complete waste. David Sacks (00:26:58): The Pentagon was telling us the whole time. I mean, while the sky Sopco, the cigar you know, the the special inspector general, was telling us the truth of what was happening. You've got the Pentagon telling us and the elected leaders the whole time that we're winning this war, that things are improving, that all these bogus metrics to prove it, And, you know, and so it's a it's a systemic failure. David Friedberg (00:27:21): But, sex, what would be their motivation to say it's not working? David Sacks (00:27:25): Look. I I think I think that well, right. We'll be the motivation right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:28): You can't you can't fix what you don't measure. And so, basically, like, if you wanna lie, there there you have it. We have that now for 20 years of lying. David Sacks (00:27:36): Let's talk about the metrics because this is actually an important point. David Friedberg (00:27:39): But this is my point. It's like, what what's what what's the objective for them to be measured, what's the objective in that case? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:45): No. The the objective is to demonstrate leadership. The objective is to basically say, you know what? This is really not working. And this is about putting yourself in the position of a person whose child is over there. Okay? If any of our children were there who signed up because they thought they wanted to do the right thing and and and, you know, be in the army or the navy or the marines, found themselves in Afghanistan, got killed. God heaven forbid. And then that body comes back and this report comes with it. which is effectively what it is. Okay? This is the coda to the death of 2.24100 Americans and $2,000,000,000,000. I would be so heartbroken. I am heartbroken. Just thinking about this. Like this is not that's not what we're about. So we can't keep doing this, and we can't keep lying. We can't rationalize lying anymore. David Sacks (00:28:41): Right. Well, I I agree with that, and I need to speak to the point about the metrics because the problem was not that we didn't have any metrics. The problem is that the metrics are bogus Now why is that? Well, first of all, the mission was very unclear. It's not clear how you measure the success of transforming a country to like Afghanistan to our values. I mean, what what really are the metrics for that? So what the military started doing is not measuring outputs but measuring inputs. So you have, you know, the commanders on the ground saying, well, today, we trained a 1000 new Afghan troops. Okay? But what they don't say is that over 90% of those troops are illiterate, and 85% of them are on drugs. I mean and this is what the journalists who are on the ground when they would do the interviews with these, you know, with these, you know, frontline commanders or trainers, they would find this out. Now why wasn't this in the report? Well, because the military is a culture that's based on advancement. It's basically the Pentagon is a big country club. It's a big insiders club. There's a dogma the dogma was we're winning the war. And if you wanna advance in that organization, you're not gonna be the 1. You're not gonna be the skunk at the garden party who tells the generals that they're full of shit. basically gonna be the guy who gives them the metrics they wanna hear. And then their boss, the the the the person who's the boss, the frontline guy, is gonna improve things 20%. He's gonna shade things another 20%. And then the next guy in the chain of command shapes things 20%. By the time you get all the way to the top, The chairman of the joint chiefs is telling Biden, we have a an army that's 300,000 strong. These guys are gonna take over the country. We're not gonna have a problem. David Sacks (00:30:14): We're gonna have plenty of time to get our people out. And that is why we had a lack of days school withdrawal strategy. These guys thought they had all the time in the world because systemically, they've been bullshitting themselves about having a 300,000 man Afghan army. And then, you know, when you actually look under the hood of this thing, there is no army. This is basically a bunch of kleptocracy. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:33): I think what happened at the end of this thing is even more dangerous for the future. On top of everything you said David which I agree with is that What we basically said is that we will engage in whatever cover up is necessary because we're not willing to lead and talk about the mistakes we've made and to do the things that are necessary to really fix it. And that's what's really fucking sad because as he said as you said, Saks, the minute that you knew that Bin Laden wasn't there, we had a choice. Then the minute you knew that he was already dead, we had a choice. And the choice was to do the fucking right thing And instead what happened was we got caught up in virtue signaling. We got caught up in personal advancement. We got caught up in the Grift. We got caught up in graft. We got caught up in corruption. We got caught up in the, you know, military industrial complex. And here's here's where we are. And the crazy thing is Biden had a moment where he could have stepped in and said, you know what, guys? I'm looking at all of this data. Here's the new plan. and he didn't do it either. Jason Calacanis (00:31:35): Let me ask you a question. If Biden had run an orderly exit and then it spiraled into Taliban and and revert it back to what it was, how would you feel about all this, Zachary? David Sacks (00:31:46): I think I think that Jason Calacanis (00:31:47): would've been -- That's the goal. Right? Trump wanted to get out. Yes. And Biden both wanted yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:51): So if we just executed Jason Calacanis (00:31:52): twice as good or 50% better, there'd be no problem here. We all wanna be out. Correct? David Sacks (00:31:56): Yes. That that decision the decision to get out was a 70% a popular decision when Biden made the decision in April, and then they lost the withdrawal. Jason Calacanis (00:32:05): Last time, because he did the c for an abortion. David Sacks (00:32:07): This is a bipartisan decision. Yeah. to get out. Let's not pretend otherwise. It was clearly the correct decision to get out, but here's where Biden screwed it up. Okay? And there's some blame that needs to be a portion to Biden. It's into the to the generals, and we don't really know who screwed it up. But collectively, they did. The big mistake, the original sin of this withdrawal, is that they pulled out of Baghrom airfield at the beginning of July. Okay. They didn't just pull out. They literally ghosted the Afghan I mean, they pulled out in the middle of the night without telling anybody. The Afghan's army who are our allies woke up the next morning and the Americans were just gone, and the electricity had been turned off. I mean, this was unbelievable. And so the problem is we then lost our air superiority over the country. We lost our ability to conduct close combat air support. We lost our ability to do a mass evacuation Okay? We basically gave up our central military asset in the country before we got the civilians out, before we got our allies out. And there were Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:03): 18,000 David Sacks (00:33:05): of these so called civs, the special immigration visas. These are the Afghani translators and helpers who are embedded in our combat unit units We the the the state department, meanwhile, was totally caught up in bureaucracy, slow walking their applications. Those 18,000 translators are now stuck there okay, they have 50,000 dependents. We're talking about spouses and children, and that so they have no way of getting out. And then the final thing that just takes the cake. is that we gave a list to the Taliban of here's our biggest helpers. When if they go to the checkpoints, we want you to let them through. Jason Calacanis (00:33:37): Oh my lord. So there's basically an assassination list. This is your step list. David Sacks (00:33:40): Kill list. Given a kill list Speaker 5 (00:33:41): to the David Sacks (00:33:41): app -- Yeah. Because it's -- -- telephone. Yeah. I mean, this is really unforgivable, and it's and it's And this was it's not like this was unknown. Okay? There was a bipartisan working group of both Democrats and Republicans who wrote a letter to Blinken at the state department back in May. saying we are afraid of the about the safety of our Afghan allies. You need to get them out. Now the state department is taking too long processing the special immigration visas. You're totally caught up in red tape bureaucracies. Solve this problem. Blinken did nothing. He was another deer caught in the headlights. Jason Calacanis (00:34:12): They could have also just instead of making people fill out all these forms and all this red tape, I heard one comment are saying, like, the right thing to do in situations like this is to just everybody out, put them in a holding location, and then process them there. In other words, if this person says they were translating their family and they have, you know, relatively good paperwork, get them out, put them into that holding pattern, and then figure out how to process them later. We gotta wrap on this discussion and get to some other topics. But the interesting thing to watch here is what's gonna be the future of Afghanistan. And I don't know if you guys saw the financial time story, but China is watching this like a hawk, and they have -- -- Russia are just sitting there laughing. Well, China is even worse. They have Aspiry of partnership in this region with Pakistan already and Afghanistan and building super highways and expanding their train network and having their own silk road essentially to to get to the Middle East from China. And this is going to be the axis of -- They Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:15): look at the United States Authority. -- authoritarianism by Biden asked Putin if if it was okay for us to stage military resources from you know, from from from close quarters in Asia, then Putin was like, no. Go. David Friedberg (00:35:28): Jason, I think what you what you just pointed out is the motivating factor for having a presence in this and other similar similarly situated territories around the world. Jason Calacanis (00:35:40): Yeah. David Friedberg (00:35:40): That a lot of people assume it's about imperialism and imposing kind of American principles and ideals. I think that's the way the narrative is sold internally here at this country. But the truth from the intelligence community, and I think the folks that maybe are a little bit more thoughtful and long term thinking about this sort of stuff is that the absence of an American presence in certain parts of the world will enable the the success of what we would consider competing states globally. And, you know, there is still that unanswered question ultimately of how do we compete on a global stage given what is currently a very negative view on are having a presence overseas, a military presence overseas, a physical presence overseas in these sorts of territories. And it begs the question of does that really set us up for challenges in failures in the 21st century as a nation state. As the other global players, in particular, China, you know, take advantage of these openings. David Sacks (00:36:37): Yeah. Well, I I I agree with that. And let me just let me just say why China is so smart, and we are so dumb. China is going to Afghanistan right now in cutting deals with the Taliban to build a highway so they can get to the rare earth minerals which Afghanistan is rich in, and they're gonna use the the superhighway they're gonna build to that out and feed their economy. That is how they're gonna spend their capital in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, we spend over 2,000,000,000,000, and we have nothing to show for it. You know, they go abroad in search of rare earth minerals. We go there to lecture people on toxic masculinity. It is absurd. Okay? Now the the president Speaker 8 (00:37:14): Well, you know what, Saxx? It's a little too cynical. We were also protecting. not. Jason Calacanis (00:37:18): We were edging cating David and pronouns. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:20): Don't forget the pronouns. Yes. We go for the pronouns. David Sacks (00:37:23): That's fine. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:24): They them. It's very important. David Sacks (00:37:26): That's right. We go there to lecture people on their pronouns that Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:28): -- Speaker 5 (00:37:28): No. Speaker 8 (00:37:28): That that is just far too cynical, sir. Jason Calacanis (00:37:31): We went there to protect some people who wanted democracy and to allow women to read and to be Oh, we we just assign we just I'm sorry. We just Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:40): flush that we just flush that right down the toilet. Sorry. Jason Calacanis (00:37:42): I know that, but we we just not conflate that we just wanna but Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:45): David David is right. We knew that the minute we pulled out, we were casting 50% of that population to a complete state of stasis that was completely not known. Jason Calacanis (00:37:57): So, like, are you saying, Zach, that we should have stayed there with some presence? David Sacks (00:38:00): Well, this is this is, like, the argument in Vietnam. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:03): tell the truth. We should have just told the truth. We're leaving. We don't have a plan, and this is gonna risk all women. It's gonna risk people that helped us. and we are not sure what's gonna happen. But you know what? We decided we're leaving. That was the truth. David Sacks (00:38:15): Remember remember the Vietnam War? We killed 2,000,000 Vietnamese to make the country safe for democracy. You know what the Vietnamese at the end of that? We'd rather have our 2 million people back. We see these wars in terms of ideology. We think we're going there spread democracy. They see it in terms of nationalism. All they see is a foreign invader trying to impose their values. That's why they don't buy into what we're doing. And by the way, the whole idea that we're gonna plant Madisonian democracy in the soil of the Middle East, that was a 20 year folly. that cost us trillions. And one of the reasons why there are no medicines over there. There are no medicines. There are no Jefferson. There are no Jefferson. There are no Washington. who is gonna take up that cause? What we had in Afghanistan is this president Gotti, who's a crook, who is off on the 1st helicopter with 1,000,000 of our dollars. That is how stupid we are. Jason Calacanis (00:39:03): It's the last place we should be trying to do democracy. There's other places where it's teetering, and we can probably be more helpful. David Sacks (00:39:09): The American president, John Quincy Adams. This is back when America had a rational foreign policy, he said. America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy that used to be our foreign policy. Now we involve ourselves all over the world to impose our values for no reasons. It is costing us a fortune and it has led to the crumbling of the of of of American wealth and power. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:34): And it completely erodes our trust in institutions, particularly the institution of the federal government. And we're left just scratching our head saying, if not these guys, then who is gonna Jason Calacanis (00:39:45): figure this out? Who's gonna leave Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:46): us out? Jason Calacanis (00:39:47): If if Chamath and Sacks, if you're don't wanna Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:51): be if you don't want Jason Calacanis (00:39:52): to support democracy in the world, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:54): what happens to Taiwan in your world? This sign Taiwan's death warrant. I'm sorry. But you should just assume that Jason Calacanis (00:40:00): title. -- that Taiwan go? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:01): No. My point is the following. Taiwan will when the when PRC has the right window, be under complete Chinese control, and we, because of how we have executed this and how we've executed the rest of our Middle Asia strategy, means that we will not really engage. And the reason is because it will be an enormous food fight inside the United States where all of these past experiences of us fucking this up will come up. Jason Calacanis (00:40:28): Should we defend, Taiwan? Except, by Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:30): the way, the difference is we're not going to we would not be going to war with a bunch of, like, fucking tribal people in the mountains carrying sticks and AK 47s from the eighties, this is China. So if we can't Jason Calacanis (00:40:44): if we Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:44): if we can't beat and win enough gas -- Well, Jason Calacanis (00:40:46): I mean, we also Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:48): -- What are our chat? I mean, I'm sorry, guys. But the Jason Calacanis (00:40:50): chat is alone. It's not worth it with a group of Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the EU, we should be defending Taiwan in my mind. What do you think, Friedberg? Should we try and defend Taiwan when this inevitably leads to the Chinese government finding their window as Jaemath is predicting? David Friedberg (00:41:07): Again, I don't think that the motivating factor could necessarily be imposing democratic principles as the priority if you were to to to actually weigh that decision, you would realize that you should probably have a presence in some Latin American countries, you should probably have a presence in Central Africa where there are authoritarian regimes that are doing terrible things. but we don't have a competing global interest there to defend against. Jason Calacanis (00:41:39): Well, to be clear, Taiwan is right now Democratic. So we would be defending a democracy. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:45): FreeBird, is asking a specific question. If China invades Taiwan, do you think the United States should get involved? David Friedberg (00:41:53): On a principal basis, or do I think the United States will get involved? Either one. Yeah. I mean, I think the challenge is the escalation with China. Right? So that's gonna be the big calculus. It's really about what's the what's the long term cost. Certainly, on a on a principal basis, you'd say let's go defend the week and go protect them because they they share principles and ideals with us. But the the the backlash, the challenge would be if we were to do this, global trade would stall. There would be massive issues at home with people saying that we're getting involved in overseas war. all of the reasons that from a political perspective, it would stall our economy. It would cause all these you know, I I'm kind of speculating a bit here. But the actual cost isn't just about sending a few thousand troops over and surrounding the island and protecting people. It's actually much more severe than that. And if you were to weigh it, it could be that we end up with 25, 30,000,000 people losing their jobs over the next decade because of the economic fallout that occurs. in our doing that. And so on and so forth, and a lot of American prosperity that we get to enjoy, you know, kind of kind of declines. And so that's the real calculus, and I don't know how to do that calculus. But I think that is the calculus that that is being done by the intelligence community to figure out the answer to that question. Jason Calacanis (00:43:00): Let's swing it to to do a David Sacks (00:43:02): little bit more of this Jason Calacanis (00:43:02): calculus because what we're talking about here is not giving up an authoritarian state Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:06): -- Jason Calacanis (00:43:06): Right. -- that wants to be authoritarian. We're talking about a democracy on the risk board David Friedberg (00:43:10): that Jason Calacanis (00:43:10): would be taken and flipped from a democracy like Hong Kong has been flipped. David Sacks (00:43:15): I think it's a I think it's a very important distinction that Taiwan is already a democracy. They got there on their own. They've done a lot of hard work building that country since that basically, the the country became separate from Mainland China, I think, in 1945. It's never been under the control of the CCP. It's they it's a a free enterprise system, it's democratic capitalism, There are just basically 24,000,000 free souls who live on that island. And if we show any weakness and we frankly already have by what we've done in the Middle if we show any weakness, they will fall under the boot of the communist regime. So I think it's there's a big difference between trying to plant, democracy, or nation build versus in a country that's never had it before in thousands of years and basically being friends and allies with the country that already is a democracy and just wants to be free. And I think our message to China should just be we like things the way they are. We don't want them to change. That's it. We have a policy of what's called strategic ambiguity to Taiwan. It basically says that We may come to the defense of Taiwan or we may not. And I think we should just continue with that policy. I think our message should just be We like the status quo. We don't think it should change. Let's leave things alone. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:30): I think that that's fine, but I think we need to be investing 100 of 1,000,000,000 the 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars we wasted in Afghanistan could have been better served building an infrastructure in America for chips and semiconductors and to these critical components because then it would give us a lot more bargaining room to actually be able to play out strategic ambiguity more fully. I think the reality is that despite the policy framework, the practical economic reality is that we would be engulfed in a war if if Taiwan were taken over by China because as Friedberg said, our economy would ground to a halt because those critical assets are linchpins for how massive swaths of the American economy work. David Sacks (00:45:12): Yeah. I'll I'll tell you one thing we should be making plans for, I don't know if our military is competent enough. But We've talked on this pod before about how, what, 70% of the advanced chips come out of Taiwan, companies like TSMC. If China takes over that island, I mean, those chips are the new oil. Right? We're gonna be dependent on them in a way we never should be for our supply chain. You're right, Jamantha. We never should have gotten this dependent. But frankly, our military needs to have a plan to sabotage those chip factories because we can't let them fall under the control of the CCP. I don't know if they're confident enough to do that, but but if Taiwan falls, it needs to be a poison chalice for the CCP. Jason Calacanis (00:45:49): We're gonna need to make some decisions here because with Crimea and the Ukraine and their ambitions. And then China taking over Hong Kong and looking at Taiwan I mean, I think the lesson here is if you're a dictator and you are allowed to take over other regions and other you know, countries, you're not going to stop it. It's the nature of dictators, and we have to at least put our foot down. You know, Afghanistan is a shit show, but these other places Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:14): -- We're flat footed right now, JKEL. We're stumbling forward. We're Jason Calacanis (00:46:17): not -- -- serious problem. Speaker 5 (00:46:19): And so Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:19): and so we need to we need to sort of, like, re center ourselves and get momentum. You know? You to use a poker analogy, we basically just bluffed off half our stack with the jacket off suit And then what and then when you get the ACE King suited, you have no chips to play with. David Friedberg (00:46:34): Yeah. Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:34): You know, and you just say establish or something. -- credibility? David Sacks (00:46:37): Basically, 911-911 put us on tilt. Okay? And we've been and we've been losing pots for the last 20 years. Speaker 5 (00:46:43): Yeah. David Sacks (00:46:44): Now we just lost the big one. And the question is, to Tamaz's point, are we gonna lose the rest of our stack? Are we gonna go take a walk around the block like Muth does? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:51): Recenter ourselves. David Sacks (00:46:51): Recenter. David Friedberg (00:46:53): Talk to Jason Calacanis (00:46:53): recenter. Time to take Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:54): choice here. On the resettering thing, China is going in the opposite direction in a way that could actually help us. Meaning, like, you know, it's a it's a pretty scary set of things that's happening over there, but it's also a kind of instructive about how we could we center ourselves because there's they're actually enacting the laws that we all talk about. We've been talking about for 7 months, but they're actually willing to do it. And they and so if American policymakers Jason Calacanis (00:47:18): would actually to what's going on over there with the China, or should Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:21): we go to robotics? Let's let's finish China, and then we can and then and then we can talk about Jason Calacanis (00:47:25): China is continuing their crackDown of tech Companies and has proposed a ban on foreign IPOs. The Wall Street Journal had some exclusive reporting today. I'll just read quote and then hand it over to Chamath. China plans to propose new rules that would ban companies with large amounts of sensitive consumer data from going public in the US people familiar with the matter. Said, and in addition to that, under these new rules, they are looking at the algorithms that are being run-in different services and making them transparent end. The Chinese government will basically control the algorithms. that have caused so much chaos here in the United States with Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. And then finally, they're gonna close the loophole on VIE's Chamath want to explain what this means from a market perspective. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:14): Today is a really big day because of these things, Jason, as you just said. So let me just this down because I think it's interesting for us to all learn about this together. So one thing is around the technology, which I'll talk about in a second, which you just talked about, and then preview. And then the the second is around the capital markets and the money flow. And that and this is a really big deal. So What is a VIE? Because you're gonna hear this a lot. A VIE is what's called a variable interest entity. And what it is is just a massive workaround. So essentially what happened was a VIE was a legal business where, you know, an entity had control of a company, okay, through a contract, but not through equity. So it's kind of like, you know, Saks, like, I had a contract with Colin. That's it. I can dictate, you know, who does what, etcetera, but I don't own any equity. Now the the company that completely ran afoul of all of these things was Enron. And back in 2001, Enron went fucking ham, as we all know. They had a bunch of these VIEs, and they used it to basically shield a bunch of losses and do a bunch of shady things. So then there was a bunch of accounting laws that were introduced. China On a completely separate track around that same time, we'll say, hey. Listen. We wanna control our economy, so we're gonna prohibit foreign ownership. So just for all you guys to know, China to this day does not allow a foreigner to own a piece, large sections of the Chinese economy. Okay? So as of 2018, which is the last updated list as far as I could find it. There are 33 sectors of the economy where China says you cannot be a foreigner and own any equity. Jason Calacanis (00:49:54): Yeah. To have a local partner. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:57): You cannot own any equity. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:49:58): Except you wanna start a business there, you have to have, like, a partner like Yahoo did. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:02): So all technology companies fall under this, all data companies, any education company, any media company. So you can imagine it's basically every part of the economy that matters. And so with because of all these restrictions, you know, the Chinese Internet companies were like, hey. Hold on a second. I need to get access to the capital markets. What do I do? they dusted off the VIE structure, and they basically created all of these, you know, Cayman's holding companies And that's where all the American investors would go and buy equity from or contribute equity to. And so, you know, 10¢ Alibaba, Baidu, dd.com, JD, all of these folks have these VIEs. And what's interesting about these VIEs is It's written clear as day, but not a single investor seemed to care. But in the prospectuses of these Chinese companies, they were clear. It doesn't mean you actually have a claim on the assets. It doesn't mean you can actually make a demand of management. I mean, if you saw this in an American prospectus, you would not put a single dollar into these companies, but in fact, the exact opposite happened because people were greedy and chasing the money. And And these risks, by the way, came back to bear because Jason, I think you were the one that gave the example of the Chinese tutoring guys where you know, overnight, this guy lost 99 percent of his net worth. I think this is a 1 or 2 pods ago. The way they did that was that they canceled the VIEs. They said online tutoring. Nope. Sorry. These things can't exist anymore. And so essentially, we have this situation now where VIEs are part of 58 companies, massive Chinese mega cap companies that are in the huge indexes in in the United States. These 58 companies account for $2,000,000,000,000 of market cap. We are we are now in a situation now where the Chinese government basically says, For online tutoring, we're gonna cancel the VIEs. In a bunch of other areas, we're gonna start with regulation. We could cancel the VIEs later. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:01): And so we've essentially put the capital markets in my opinion on pause. And so now let's transition to Jason Calacanis (00:52:07): this -- Capital markets in China. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:09): Capital Markets in China, I think now, are the most volatile they've ever been. Essentially, the People's Republic of China, the government, the CCP chooses, how and who will make money, and they are basically putting their foot down in a big way in the cap -- Jason Calacanis (00:52:25): What happens to the 1,620,000,000,000,000 in existing shares that have been bought by people around the world, would there be some way to unravel that or Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:33): a tender offer? You're gonna have to delist these ADRs I don't exactly know what would happen. I think what's Jason Calacanis (00:52:38): unprecedented. Am I correct? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:39): No. You you have capital laws, Jason. Because when they canceled the online tutoring VIEs, the stock prices basically went to 0. So you could eviscerate $2,000,000,000,000 of market cap tomorrow if they decide, you know what? That VIE for Alibaba, by the way. Nick, I'll send it to you. But it's a it's a thing of art. If you look at the VIE structure for Baba, I mean, it is a fucking babushka doll of nesting entities and this or that. I know how any investor who bought shares in Alibaba actually took the time to understand what they were actually buying. They said suspended disbelief because they were greedy. So so the point is that's happening. Okay? So the the capital markets are now, I think, getting really constrained The complement to this is that they're starting to now introduce legislation as a prelude, in my opinion, to canceling some of these VIEs in the most important area that we care about, which is tech. So, Jason, to your point, the Chinese cyberspace watchdog today or yesterday, I think it was, They just published a list of draft regulations that will now become law. I'm just gonna read this to you. So let me just just FYI for you guys. So let me just give you a sense of them. Users must be provided with a convenient way to see and delete all the keywords that an algorithm uses to profile them. Number 2, Providers shall not record illegal and undesirable keywords in the user points of interest or as user tags and push information content to them, and they may not become discriminatory or biased based on that information. Users must be informed that algorithms are being used on them to recommend content or products to them, and they must be allowed to opt out. and see completely generic non personalized results? The algorithm recommendation shall adhere to mate this is incredible. to mainstream values. I don't know what that means. They must Jason Calacanis (00:54:32): act in China. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:34): They must actively spread positive energy and promote the application of algorithms for the better Provider shall regularly review and evaluate and verify these algorithms, models, and datas, with these watchdogs, these watchdogs will now start to increasingly take board seats on the comp on on Chinese companies. So You put these two things together. It is a takeover moment in China Tech. It's a takeover. David Sacks (00:54:59): Yes. Yes. I mean, so so some of those provisions sound like you know, privacy regulations we might wanna adopt over here. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:06): Completely. David Sacks (00:55:07): But I think we should focus on the one towards the end that you mentioned. The algorithm recommendation source provider, Charlotte, here at Thomason Values, actively spread positive energy and promote application options for the better. Now how do you actively spread positive energy? I mean, as a business person under that regulation, like, what does that even mean? I mean, it basically means Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:28): -- Jason Calacanis (00:55:28): It means what you're not spreading, David. It means you're not spreading a protest in Hong Kong. It means you're not talking about the Uighurs. It means you're not talking about Tiananmen Square. You're not creating social unrest. this is a way for them to say, you know, positive energy means don't criticize Xi Jinping or the CCP or bring up topics that are in the no fly zone like the Uighurs. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:49): Well, they're they're they're gonna have content moderation guidelines. David Sacks (00:55:51): Yeah. They're bringing it all under their control. That's what it's about. I mean, do these this is the type of thing that despite all of our problems makes me very happy to be an American. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:00): Yeah. Can you Well, I would I would say though that the first part of what I said about their regulations to me seem really intelligent. And I think Americans would want that. And if American policymakers would actually just suspend disbelief for a second, go to the Chinese website meet Nick, we can put a link into the into the show notes of where the regulations were published and actually try to implement those laws. I think we as Americans, we'd all want most of them except that one. Jason Calacanis (00:56:22): Yeah. Well, that's what the devil does. They mix the lies with the truth in order to get you to to be convinced to give up your freedoms. Friedberg, what are your thoughts? David Friedberg (00:56:29): I'm getting increasingly convinced that this idea of, like, deep centralized blockchain based government governing might work in the 21st century. I just feel like they're the you know, we keep hearing more about the overreach and the ineptitude of centralized institutions like CCP and the US government and you know, I'm not hearing anyone that says, man, you know, this is a great Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:54): -- Well, I David Friedberg (00:56:55): I I guess. -- progress. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:57): But, Freeport, I think I think the CCP is actually pretty good. I I what they do, we may not agree with them, but I think they're pretty confident. -- David Friedberg (00:57:03): with you. I agree with you. Generally, yeah. But I do think it it creates an incentive and a motivation also because if you don't agree with their their their principles, you know, you're gonna find yourself looking for an alternative. So, you know, I I don't know which this is probably not the right time or forum for this conversation, we should probably do it on another show. But we should talk about some of the innovations, blockchain innovations that that that are taking And, Jake, I know you spend a lot of time on this as well. But, you know, it'd be worth kinda talking about the notion that, you know, can you see governing move to the blockchain? And what does society look like in maybe the 22nd century if this becomes a reality? And how do we How how does the world kind of evolve there? Jason Calacanis (00:57:48): Well, in the crypto world, you would put in some effort. You would have some skin in the game, and you would because of your processing power your nodes on the network would get some votes. It would be like in a democracy how much money you had or how much work you produced you had some sort of say, which kinda sounds like ours. David Friedberg (00:58:05): I mean, imagine if the US government instead of, you know, having some folks go to congress and say I want a $1,000,000,000,000 and spend 25 years in Afghanistan, you know, it was more of a distributed decision making process where gay available in real time metrics were used to make the decision. And the folks that actually contributed dollars to the network ended up being the ones that made the decisions based on how many dollars it contributed or based on some other principle of of decision making that doesn't kind of aggregate institutional ineptitude. which is kind of part of the issue we've seen here. David Sacks (00:58:39): Well so I think that brings up an interesting point, which is, you know, when we talk about all the ways that we could have spent these 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars better than nation building. Here's here's the fundamental problem. And I agree with that. I mean, I wish we had spent the 6,000,000,000,000 that we spent on nation building in Middle East. I wish we had spent that at home domestically on our own priorities. But here's the problem is I think what Afghanistan is specifically the military industrial complex shows is how good these special interests get at extracting money from the system while providing so little value. You know? We spent so the mill we these contractors spent Or we we they they charge so much to basically deliver so little Afghanistan. Do you really think it's gonna be much different for the $1,000,000,000,000, the $1,200,000,000,000 infrastructure that's coming. You know? And if we create a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:25): -- David Friedberg (00:59:25): They're licking Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:25): their lips. They're licking David Sacks (00:59:26): Yeah. Exactly. The the the the people the the groups who are gonna get that money who are gonna feast On that $1,000,000,000,000 are people who their skill set is lobbying. Okay? That is what they spend their time doing. David Friedberg (00:59:39): Sorry. I took it backwards. David Sacks (00:59:40): No. Listen. And if you are really good at lobbying, why would you even waste your time trying to get good at delivering value? You're not. That's your business's lobbying. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:48): Well, that is your value. Jason Calacanis (00:59:49): Yeah. That is your skill set. David Sacks (00:59:50): Exactly. So this idea that we can basically spend a $1,000,000,000,000 on some domestic innovation program The problem is it'll never go to the right people. It'll never go to the innovators. Speaker 5 (01:00:01): The best David Sacks (01:00:02): thing we could do is just not spend the money, quite frankly. Jason Calacanis (01:00:05): So smaller government. David Sacks (01:00:08): How about how about this not a government that's $20,000,000,000,000 in debt? I don't know how it's like smaller or small government. to if we were to save Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:16): 6,000,000,000,000,000, David Sacks (01:00:17): would still be 14,000,000,000,000 in debt. It's not a small government. Jason Calacanis (01:00:20): I think the good jumping off point here might be the Supreme Court eviction moratorium in the Supreme Court not upholding it? And what are your thoughts on that sex? because it does relate to this never ending free money train, no repercussions of personal behavior and, you know, spending insanely forever, it seems. Like, we're never going to stop with the STEMI's Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:45): -- Jason Calacanis (01:00:46): Yeah. David Sacks (01:00:46): The I think the Supreme Court threw out Biden's eviction moratorium is unconstitutional. Look. I think it's great. You know, the the government should not be preventing eviction, you know, especially not the federal government. I don't understand how this is supposed to work. I mean, all you do look look, I don't wanna see anybody get evicted. But the reality is you have to pay your rent And if and if there are groups of people who can't pay the rent and the government decides that that those people should be helped, the right way to help them is to give them the money to pay their rent not to sitel landlords. Sorry. Like, you can't collect rent anymore. Speaker 5 (01:01:21): I have Jason Calacanis (01:01:21): a few more stimulus to those people. David Sacks (01:01:23): Yeah. So it's it's a taking it's it's a clear taking from landlords to say that, oh, your tenants don't have to pay you anymore. How does that make sense? Jason Calacanis (01:01:31): Well, how do we unwind find the free money trained because there's 10,000,000 job openings right now that are not getting filled. And then we have unemployment starting to unwind or the bonus unemployment is unwind. And then we have all this free rent concept or just you don't have to pay your rent. At at some point, it it feels like we have to let the free market come back and maybe people can't pay their rent so they go take 1 of the 10,000,000 jobs? I know that sounds cold hearted. David Sacks (01:02:01): No. At some point, there has to be some landing. You've talked about this before in California. We have a labor shortage in California. We we've basically run a controlled experiment in the UBI, universal basic income We're based on them paying people not to work or or paying them in regards to whether they work. Guess what? They don't take jobs. And so we actually have a labor shortage in California despite having high unemployment. At some point, the government's gonna have to say to people, like, look, COVID is not an excuse for shirking your adult responsibilities. You know? We all have responsibility to go to work, to pay our rent, you know, to pay our parking tickets, And COVID has been this excuse for suspending, you know, this this sort of normal life. And the problem is COVID's gonna be around forever. It's like the cold or the flu. It can't continue to be this excuse for people not working, not paying rent, not doing what they're supposed to be doing. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:52): I think on top of that, though, I think, Jason, maybe you wanna talk about this. I think on top of that, we are amplifying that by taking people's agency away. And we are Prop 22. And Prop 22 is a perfect example of that which you should talk about. But when you put these 2 things together, on the one hand, you have a government that basically wants to subsidize opting out of the system. And then you have a set of laws that if they're not unwound reinforce that dynamic, and you put these two things together, and folks just wanna sit on the sidelines. Jason Calacanis (01:03:27): Yeah. Let's get Friedberg about Freeberg. You wanna talk about the prop Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:29): 22 Jason Calacanis (01:03:31): Supreme court decision, etcetera? David Friedberg (01:03:34): Yeah. There was an appeals court yeah. An appeals court overturned some elements of the California Prop 22, which was a heavily lobby California Proposition lobby by Uber And Lyft and other businesses that have built effectively marketplaces for independent contractors like drivers and delivery people and so on. The SEIU, which is a big employee's union, had, you know, fought very hard to pass legislation in California that made it effectively very difficult for people to operate as independent contractors and seeing companies like Uber And Lyft to treat them like full time employees or to treat them like employees. That's what prop Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:15): 22 David Friedberg (01:04:15): was to counter the union funded legislation, which basically provided more freedom and flexibility to workers where there weren't all these very arbitrary random rules. And if you're a right you can be an independent contractor, but if you're a driver, you cannot. And, you know, all all this nonsense that that took place because the unions were trying to increase the scale and scope of of their union base. And so prop 22 was passed in California after much spending and lobbying, and it passed by a pretty decent margin. And then this court ruling, basically, in in the appeals court, overruled the constitutionality of some elements of Prop 22, which brings into question whether that Prop 22 is gonna hold in California. Therefore, are all these people who are drivers for Uber, delivery people for DoorDash, and all these companies that are creating, like, thumbtack and, you know, all these companies that are creating marketplaces for individuals to have flexible work to go and work where they want, when they want, to find gigs, to find, you know, short term jobs, to find, you know, tasks and projects that they can run Are they now gonna be seeing that those marketplaces stop working? Because when you have to start treating those people like employees, the flexibility and freedom that those marketplaces enable stalls out and and kind of, you know, as we're already seeing. So it's it's super nasty and the implications are that we're now seeing you know, we're we're now facing once again this crisis of, you know, our our basically lower income people people that wanna have flexible labor gonna be restricted from having access to to gig jobs because the unions wanna force everyone into a full time job, which, you know, our friend, Bill Girley pointed out, is kind of like an archaic element of, yeah, the 19th 20th century. I mean, this is like a -- Let's play -- -- cool way forward. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:59): -- Jason Calacanis (01:05:59): from Bill Gurley and and Here it is. Speaker 9 (01:06:01): There's one big issue that I don't think is talked about enough, which is, you know, the if you pull the drivers, they're not looking for it any changes. They're really happy with the flexible work product. If you look at the voters of California, they stepped up and voted and made it very clear in a in a state that voted 2 to Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:20): 1, Speaker 9 (01:06:21): you know, in favor of Biden, they came down very strong 6040 that they didn't want this to happen. And there's one entity that's really been pushing this the whole time going all the way back to E5, and that's the SEIU. It is a single union But to calm a single union understates it because they are the granddaddy of special interest groups. I I sent along some data maybe you can put on the screen. They spend more money lobbying than any other organization in our country and have for many, many years. They only represent 2,000,000 members, but oddly, those members are in hospitality, healthcare, and government services. They're not even in this industry. So they're taking the dues from their members and using it to fight these battles because they want to expand their footprint. What they're really after is putting Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:11): $400, $420, Speaker 9 (01:07:13): which is the minimum member union fee for the 2,000,000 they have, They wanna expand that to these drivers. So they don't actually want to help them. They wanna add to their costs. But they're the they're the they're the one that's been pushing this the whole time. David Friedberg (01:07:26): And I I think it's worth just saying one thing on this, which is, you know, this is really kind of a question not California and Prop 22, but it's a question about what is work and all the tech companies that are enabling a new form of work globally. People don't wanna have 40 hour week jobs. People don't wanna have to go sit at a desk all the time. People wanna have flexibility in their lives. They wanna have gigs. technology enables us to quickly find short term jobs, short term opportunity to work on things and make some money and figure out how we wanna build our lives in a more flexible figure out how workers wanna build lives in a more flexible way across all industries. And it's really, frankly, you know, a nonprogressive policy to say that everyone has to be pigeonholed into working you know, full time, 40 hour week labor jobs, be employees, and not have the flexibility of running their own business in their own way with the with their own time and choosing what they wanna go do and work on. And so this sort of legislation and this sort of battle is a really important one for defining the feature of work in the United States, which will ultimately represent the future work globally. Jason Calacanis (01:08:34): And the craziness of all this, David, is that Uber drivers, Lyft drivers, DoorDash drivers, etcetera, are getting paid a fortune now because there's a labor shortage, and these ride sharing companies have given a minimum Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:49): $21 Jason Calacanis (01:08:50): an hour fee. So I I don't know exactly what's going on here, but it seems to me like it's a union grab because Everybody else who's affluent or rich, real estate, folks, you know, doctors, whoever, can be freelance But if you're a rideshare driver or a freelance writer, you don't get to be. And it seems just incredibly unfair. David Sacks (01:09:15): It is. And, you know, one of the best things about COVID, I think, for all of us, is that we learned that we could do our jobs from anywhere. We didn't to go into an office. We didn't have to work the standard, whatever, 9 to 6 hours. We could be anywhere. We had flexibility. And, I mean, I think it's one of the lasting consequences of COVID but actually been very positive for a lot of people. And here you have the government basically trying to take away a prohibit freelance work, flexible hours, gig type jobs These are the sort of modern flexible working relationships that people want. Why are they getting rid of it? Because a lobbying pressure from the SEIU, which only has 2,000,000 members as a big union, but they got Lorena Gonzales in their back pocket. She passed a b 5 in California. The people at California didn't want it. Remember, 58% of Californians said, we don't want this, so they overturned it in this ballot initiative. And now you got this activist judge. basically, you know, inventing these species grounds for overturning prop 22, which is what the people want. So It's ridiculous. And, you know, the common threat to me on this show that I've come to realize about American politics is just the degree of special interest corruption. And, you know, people are used to thinking in terms of left versus right. It's not. There's a special interest corruption that pervades everything. You've got this union that is destroying freelance work and flexible working relationships because of corruption because it benefits them. You got defense contractors in Afghanistan who are just looting looting the Pentagon and the federal budget because it's in their interest. You've got the special interests of both the right and the left. This is a central problem in American politics and You know, what they do to cover up that naked self interest is they disguise it in a kind of whoop virtue signaling. So they'll start, you know, talking about, you know, how what they're doing is for the benefit of these drivers when the drivers don't even want it. Jason Calacanis (01:11:05): And to build on that, I'd say, you know, migrate realization from having this conversation with y'all every week is that we are starting to oppose a nanny state in which people have no agency. Even if they want to have agency over their life and career, you are taking it away, and then If there's no repercussions to people's behavior and they have no agency, they become, you know, disenfranchised from society And why are they going to participate? And then what kind of society do we have if people can't make their own choices? And you see it also in you know, accreditation laws and you see it where only rich people can invest and now you're seeing it with this freelancing where, you know, my dad would have loved to have an extra shift or 2 to make extra money. And he he's not allowed to? 80% of drivers want flexibility. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:56): They're willing to participate on things that ultimately on things that they think matter, but don't necessarily solve the core root cause problems. They're peoples right now in America. I think are focused too much on symptoms, meaning you know, they wanna fight for the right hashtags. They wanna fight for the right pronouns. They wanna make sure that, you know, this person gets canceled for things that happened 8 or 10 years ago. And I think what they don't understand is these are all symptoms, and this is this is not what solves the problem. Right? We have a water crisis in America. We have a food impending food crisis as we shut off the water. We have a climate crisis that's engulfing the entire nation. We're still in the middle of a pandemic that we can't control We have an economic system that's fragile, that's dependent on a country who's somewhat times our friend and sometimes our foe in China. These are huge transformational issues that we can't get organized around and so instead we spend our time at the edges on the symptoms, and we think the symptoms are. If we get the pronouns right, everything's gonna come together and everything's gonna get fixed. The looting will stop. The graft will stop. The corruption will stop. and it turns out actually it emboldens those people to say, hey, wait a minute. I'm tricking these people. If anything that I want it to happen can happen, Let them focus on the pronouns while I continue to loot the American treasury for another $1,000,000,000,000,000. That's where we are. David Sacks (01:13:31): Yeah. And the perfect the perfect rep presentation of that is Gavin Newsom. He represents both of these trends. He is one of the most corrupt governors we ever had. There were as soon as COVID happened, they suspended all sorts of, you know, the the the process for contracting so that his campaign contributors could get all these special contracts He cut a sweetheart deal to PG And E to absolve them a liability for all the fires they've been causing. And on and on it goes, the the the $12,000,000,000 to the homeless industrial complex And then he disguises it with all this woke virtually. And so, you know, I would just give a shout out to the recall campaign. The election is on September 14th, but the ballots have gone out. If you want to send a message to the political class at this special interest corruption has got to stop, let's cut the head off the snake here. Just vote to recall Gavin Newsom on question Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:19): 1. Jason Calacanis (01:14:19): Period. Alright. You guys wanna end on Jeff Bezos. Let's let's let's talk about the AI bot first and then and then Bezos. Alright. So if you haven't been watching, Boston Dynamics tweeted a video which will play right now as I talk over it. And it's basically their robots which have been picking up heavy objects and walking around doing parkour If you don't know what parkour is, it's basically people jumping off the side of objects and flipping and doing balance beams and vaulting themselves all around. It is Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:53): Basically, robots. -- in France. Yeah. But from heights and jumping over things as well and -- Oh, breaking French. The French are like parkour x Jason Calacanis (01:15:03): Yeah. I mean, it's I think parkour is French for jumping. I made that up. But it this is Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:09): -- -- Jason Calacanis (01:15:09): look at these Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:09): -- David Friedberg (01:15:10): If you look at these -- -- to parkour? Jason Calacanis (01:15:12): No. Absolutely. I have never seen him do. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:16): We'll we'll show that before. Jason Calacanis (01:15:17): I have seen him so drunk that he's on the floor, but never seen him do bar cool. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:22): But -- Don't get in the way. -- robot sacks and a bottle of DRC. This Jason Calacanis (01:15:27): robot -- Look. more dextrous than any of the terminators we saw in the films. And then adding to that oh, if you didn't know, Boston Dynamics got bought by Google. sure Friedberg has some inside information on that. And then they got sold again. SoftBank had bought them, and now they are owned by Hyundai, the South Korean. Hyundai, the South Korean automaker, because apparently, the softies that Google didn't wanna be involved in government contracting with robots, i. e. making soldiers of the future, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:59): which obviously -- I don't know. The Chinese have. David Friedberg (01:16:02): I wouldn't characterize the whole story like that. I mean, remember, like, They're they're 1 less well, Google bought Boston Dynamics in Chamath Palihapitiya (01:16:08): 2013. David Friedberg (01:16:10): And remember, Boston have been around for over a decade prior to that. They spun out of MIT, like, in the nineties, I think. And they were had always been working on, you know, advanced neural net being applied to kind of, you know, automation systems so you could get things to mimic real life. And the idea at Google this was when they had set up Google X, and we're starting to kind of do a lot of this, you know, moonshot type tech tech investing as a separate entity outside of the core Google, and it was, like, leveraging their cash flow to start new projects. The idea was let's, you know, build this into kind of a next gen robotics platform. They have Andy Rubin, who previously started and ran Android. company was called Danger, Google bought it, turned into Android, run the or run the unit, and they made several other acquisitions. They rolled them all up into this kind of robotics platform. It spent, I think, 400,000,000 on Boston Dynamics and 100 of Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:04): 1,000,000 David Friedberg (01:17:05): more in these other companies. And, ultimately, I think the challenge was less about, like, you know, who does doesn't wanna do contract with us. But it was more about the fundamental question that is still the question mark today, which is do we really need general purpose automation, or do we need special purpose automation for industries, for customers? Right? Where do you find product markets fit? Do people really need a robot that does parkour, or do they need an automation system that can lift boxes and pack and place things? or an automation system that can move things from point a to point b. And so if you're solving for a customer's problem, you typically find that the special purpose automation solution is a more elegant cheaper solution that you can get to market right away, like building an automated little truck that moves things around or building a machine that lifts input boxes in the right place. Jason Calacanis (01:17:52): Parallel discussion between narrow AI and general. Correct. David Friedberg (01:17:56): And this is exactly the same question, Jake, how is, like, you know, is, you know, is general purpose AI, really what the market needs, or are there specific applications of neural network or machine learning technologies that allow us to solve for the problems customers have without needing to replicate the human being. So when you're lifting boxes, you don't necessarily need all the other things that humans have. Right? You don't need to to mimic a human. When you're moving a package, you don't necessarily need to have 4 legs to do it. You can have it on four wheels and just have a a simple system that moves it around. And so, you know, I think SoftBank, you know, Masa Sun had this whole belief with Vision Fund 1 when he raised the 100 somewhat $1,000,000,000 that, you know, the Singularity where machines were gonna be smarter and better than humans in every way, intelligence and dexterity and all these things. We're about was about to kind of we're about to pass that moment. And this was part of that core thesis he had, which is this is gonna be the robotics company. And I think as we've seen, they can mimic it parkour they can't do all the other things humans can do. And if you're, you know, trying to get a machine to do something that a customer needs, it's really not parkour. Let's be honest. can't even walk Jason Calacanis (01:19:01): a dog because they would know how to deal with the edge cases if the dog had diarrhea. David Sacks (01:19:06): And so David Friedberg (01:19:06): I think there's core IP at Boston Dynamic. certainly critically valuable. For businesses that are in special purpose automation, which Hyundai is, there's gonna be a great set of applications for leveraging that IP into some of the existing product lines and and customers that they serve Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:20): -- Jason Calacanis (01:19:21): So in a related in a related story, Elon, then revealed the test Lebot plans at his AI Day. He's in a couple of his AI days, and I think they're primarily designed to get AI talent, which is some of the hardest developers to find in the world. And they said that their TeslaBot will weigh a £125.58. So I'll be a half inch taller than it. but it will weigh significantly less than me. It will move up up to five miles per hour and can carry £45. Elon said the reason he was doing that so a human can easily overtake it in case it becomes sent in, which was quite entertaining. Chamath, you think this is What are the chances Elon has a robot like this? And it's operating the real world. I saw a bunch of journalists dunking on him that this would never ever happen. which is kinda hard to believe when there's a million testers on the road. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:10): Yeah. No comment, and I think it's awesome. Jason Calacanis (01:20:13): Oh, okay. Can't comment. Alright. Leave it at that. Sach, do you have any comments on this? David Sacks (01:20:19): I it was just You worked Jason Calacanis (01:20:20): with Elon at PayPal? Yeah. Speaker 5 (01:20:21): I thought David Sacks (01:20:21): it was a little bit of a surprise that he was working on a robot. But, you know, obviously, this has been an interest of his. He's talked a lot about it and so it it kinda makes sense. It's just another innovative thing he's doing. Should we talk about Elon versus Bezos on the space Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:36): -- Jason Calacanis (01:20:36): Well, yeah, we'll we'll we'll jump in a minute. I just want to let people know. By the way, the robot going at five miles an hour it's not as Outlandish as I think some of the journalists and idiots out there who don't build anything in the world who are kinda dunking on him. Like, we're saying, if you think about those cars going Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:51): 65, 75, 85 Jason Calacanis (01:20:53): miles an hour on the road, processing the world, doing a neural network, machine learning on the fly to figure out where the car should go A robot going five miles an hour is an easier task. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:04): I think all those people donkey on him should have just taken a step back and actually asked the question. Am I just being really insecure right now? And if so, why am I making fun of this guy who just seems to be you know, firing on all cylinders. And maybe it's maybe it's me. Maybe, you know, maybe maybe maybe I'm writing this article out of my own and security. Maybe I'm feeling a little impotent. You know? David Sacks (01:21:28): Then also to to dunk on a guy for the version 1 or even the version Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:33): 0.1 David Sacks (01:21:33): of a product is so ridiculous. I mean, I remember the the version 0 of Tesla now look at the company. I mean, you know, it's about iterating. That's how you get to products. So it's just so stupid and short term. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:45): And by the way, his -- -- David Sacks (01:21:46): on the current product capabilities. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:48): And his his His style of doing these things, I think, makes a ton of sense. When when, you know, he started with Starlink, it was the same reaction. People were dunking, dunking, dunking too slow, too expensive, not gonna work. And what you find through these events are really technical people, building companies that could help him wanna be a part of the mission. Right? And so you know, for whatever it's worth it's like I think Starlink's gonna be a real thing. I think this is probably gonna be a real thing. I think great companies will get absorbed into this these efforts. I think I think it's great. And I really think the people that are just so low like, there's, like, this loathing going on. I just don't understand. Shamak, what do you think will differentiate the David Friedberg (01:22:33): opportunity for success with Larry Page Owning and running Boston Dynamics, then mock owning and running Boston Dynamics. And then Elon trying to take on the same project from scratch. You know, why were these other 2 kind of well capitalized influential businesses that have a track rate partner has not been able to turn Boston Dynamics into kind of a successful business, but but you guys believe Elon will. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:58): if I had to just categorize them, I would say Larry is absent and is sitting on a $100,000,000,000 fortune with no idea what to do. I think Jason Calacanis (01:23:08): Monster is Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:09): an island. Yeah. I mean, he's just absent. So he's irrelevant. I don't think anybody knows what the fuck he looks like. I mean, we do. But, you know, he's frittered away enormous potential, I think. I think Masa is a master capital allocator but not an engineer. And I think Elon is the most important technical product and business mind of our lifetime. Jason Calacanis (01:23:33): I think the answer is even simpler. he's the customer of the robot. So he understands what the spec should be because he has so many robots working in the factories. So He's gonna buy the first 1000 to go colonize Mars or work at a space station to build shit in space, and he's gonna have them working in the Tesla factory. And for the boring company carrying raw out of tons. He's the customer. Of course, he knows. And Maso wasn't the customer. Maso was looking to increase whatever money. But you don't have Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:59): to do it. But it's also it's also skill set like Masa -- Speaker 5 (01:24:02): Of course. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:02): -- is an incredible visionary and investor, but he's not going to be the guy -- Correct. -- in the engine room making the robot. Larry now, in fairness to Larry Page, he could be that good. And there was a moment in time where Larry was that good, and frankly, better than Elon, but that window has closed and it's well past. And now, you know, it's kinda like the player that just keeps getting better and better. I think that's Elon Musk. Jason Calacanis (01:24:24): Go ahead, Zach. Hear that. David Sacks (01:24:25): I mean, nothing to add to that. I think you both made great points. I mean, the amazing thing is that Elon is still working so hard, doubling down, coming with new ideas, new initiatives. I mean, it's David Friedberg (01:24:34): hard than ever. David Sacks (01:24:35): When most people are, you know, doing most people would do what Larry did, you know, go buy an island Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:40): -- Speaker 6 (01:24:40): Or Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:40): 7. -- David Sacks (01:24:41): and yours and hang out. You know? Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:24:44): Alright. Bezos is lost his way, and he left his position as CEO of Amazon to focus on Blue Origin. And then he sued NASA over the moon program, accusing NASA wrongly evaluate its lunar lander proposal. giving all the funds to SpaceX. He then did a series of, like, infographics talking about how terrible SpaceX's plans were. This lawsuit has delayed SpaceX's work on the project according to the verge. I don't know if that's true or not. Amazon urged the FCC to dismissed the newly submitted plans for SpaceX to launch another cluster of satellites to power Starlink, and Elon tweeted. Turns out Bezos retired in order to pursue a full time job, filing lawsuits against SpaceX. which is hilarious. What what how sad is this that Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:38): It's a huge miscalculation in the following way, which is that In order for Jeff to achieve his ambitions, he needs deeply technical people. And this is the simplest way to basically turn them off because This is not what technical people do. What do technical people do? We don't we don't take our toys and run from the sandbox crying like a bitch. we stay there and we keep iterating trying to make things work. David Sacks (01:26:01): Yeah. We don't act like patent trolls. I have a new I have a new slogan for you, Jay Kal. Jason Calacanis (01:26:06): Go ahead. David Sacks (01:26:07): Winners do and losers sue. Jason Calacanis (01:26:10): Winners do and losers sue. Okay, folks. There you have it. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:13): It's the all in podcast. David Sacks (01:26:14): We're back from Jason Calacanis (01:26:15): a big vacation. Young Spielberg. We're making it happen. David Sacks (01:26:18): Yeah. Make the banger. Jason Calacanis (01:26:20): Make banger. Alright, everybody. What's your free brew? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:22): Do you have any thoughts on these on the lawsuit. David Friedberg (01:26:25): I feel bad for Bezos. I feel like he's just getting so beat up on the ship. It's it's honestly, it's it's a little disappointing because I think he's got all the right intention is an incredible engineer, obviously, an incredible operator. I'd love to see him and Elon succeed in the work they're trying to do as well as all the other startups that are pursuing this. I am concerned about, frankly, the lack of commercial readiness for this industry. I feel like in terms of the hype cycle, we're at that early point where the the the investment dollars in the number of companies exceeds the market demand. And therefore, there's this fight over the 1 or 2 customers, which is basically NASA and the federal government. And it's creating this really nasty set of circumstances because that's where the money comes from. That's where the customers are right now. And so they're they're all fighting over 1 or 2 customers. And, you know, Elon filed suits against the, you know, federal agencies when he lost contracts and -- No. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:16): No. No. He did that when they no bid them. David Friedberg (01:27:19): I get it. get it. And slightly different. I get it. But still, like, I think at the end of the day, you know, Bezos is willing to put his money where it's now that he's offered to put up a $1,000,000,000 or more to fund this. I'd love to see multiple companies simultaneously going to the moon, multiple companies simultaneously going Jason Calacanis (01:27:35): to Mars. But rather Speaker 5 (01:27:35): than have, David Friedberg (01:27:35): you know, a single contract effect with with one customer or have, you know, private industry figure out ways to make money from this and and fund it. It's a challenge. It's just it's another product market sit question. Right? The market is one customer today. And Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:51): -- Jason Calacanis (01:27:52): Yeah. But bankzos is almost sixty years old. He's got a Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:55): $152,000,000,000. Jason Calacanis (01:27:57): it's gonna cost him 2 or Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:58): $3,000,000,000, 1, 2, 3 Jason Calacanis (01:27:59): percent of his net worth to do all this. Just fucking do it, Bay. So it's gonna stop crying and Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:04): -- You're right. -- Jason Calacanis (01:28:04): clawing me. Speaker 6 (01:28:05): He he David Friedberg (01:28:05): may end up doing Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:06): But the problem is he's talking about it, Speaker 5 (01:28:08): and just be Jason Calacanis (01:28:08): a competitor. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:09): But he's losing the human capital that's required. So there was a huge there was a huge -- press cycle about this one person who was like the the leader of the of the lander project who just quit and went to SpaceX. My point is, Other engineers don't want to see that this is the way to win. David Friedberg (01:28:28): Yeah. He's gotta he's gotta Speaker 5 (01:28:30): roll out David Friedberg (01:28:30): of that hole now. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:31): Build iterate and solve. build iterate self. David Friedberg (01:28:35): It certainly seems the case that his PR stunt with shooting himself into space didn't do him any favors either. you know, it's almost like everyone sees the great work Elon does when he does these PR events, and he gets all this attention and publicity and gets positive press and accolades. And then Bezos does them, and he's like, oh, Jason Calacanis (01:28:51): you know. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:51): -- Jason Calacanis (01:28:51): has no besties. There's no bestie taking Bezos aside. He's bestie listening. He's bet yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:56): No. I I By the way, Faesos, he may no. He may have besties, but they're not they're not doing the job that other besties do for other people. Speaker 5 (01:29:02): If they're Jason Calacanis (01:29:03): not, they're yes men and women, and they're not being true besties. They need to tell him when he's got something that needs a blind spot. He needs a blind spot. Here is he was dunking on Richard Branson and being like, oh, you didn't go to the right height. Here's an infographic. Stop with the fucking intro graphics, Bezos. What are you twelve years old? And you're, like, going to the teacher with, like, a drawing. Like, I I should technically get an a plus, and I should be singing the solo for the choir practice. And, like, some other person is, got the solo. You get the market solo next year, Bezos. David Friedberg (01:29:33): Bezos offered you a huge consulting fee, Jake. How would you be his bestie consigliere I'm a bestie. Jason Calacanis (01:29:40): For sure. Speaker 5 (01:29:41): For sure. Yeah. That's Speaker 6 (01:29:42): the answer, sir. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:44): By the way, sir. I hire I hire this fuck nut. He flies back with me I mean, he literally ate everything on the plane. And then -- When you talk about and then -- Speaker 5 (01:29:54): Hold on. Jason Calacanis (01:29:54): Let me finish -- -- who we're eating. Let's hear him assume. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:57): Let me finish what Let me finish talking about the termite single. -- said to me, Chamath, you have some great toiletries in the back. I said, yeah. Sure. You know, there's marvelous. There's great toothbrushes. And then out of his pocket, he pulls some scope bottles that he had over. Jason Calacanis (01:30:12): The more in my bag. I didn't have to buy scope until Chamath Palihapitiya (01:30:15): 20 22. I I wish Jason Calacanis (01:30:16): Sean -- -- generic. David Friedberg (01:30:17): It's the real scope. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:30:18): This motherfucker was looting. I looted -- Looting. Times about 100 David Friedberg (01:30:23): I looted all your lactate. We we all take advantage of seat Oh my god. This this Chamath Palihapitiya (01:30:27): other guy, this motherfucker, FreeBird, once was so buried, he got so fucking mad he grabbed all the lactate in my, you know, little medicine cabinet. And, like, ran out send me back. He was angry, and he was like, I'm so fucking angry. because he had lost a big pot right during poker. Then he took all the pistachios and shoved them into his pocket. That's not David Sacks (01:30:49): it's like an Afghan warlord. Yeah. It's old exactly. Jason Calacanis (01:31:00): at I lost ten times. I'm gonna bet get back $37 in lending. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:03): Oh my god. Jason Calacanis (01:31:04): So sad. So sad Speaker 5 (01:31:06): right now. David Friedberg (01:31:06): See you. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:06): Wait, Frebert. Do you want me to the house? You want me to prepare the the the roof? David Friedberg (01:31:10): I think so. I think I yeah. I think so. I think so. That'd be awesome if you could do that. Jason Calacanis (01:31:14): Oh my god. I'll bring some David Friedberg (01:31:15): I'll bring some tests, some by next tests too. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:18): Yeah. Yes. I mean, Jason Calacanis (01:31:18): just as an aside, Bill Gurley was talking about this. We talked about this early in the pandemic. Why don't we have fucking $1 test, Friedberg? David Friedberg (01:31:24): Oh my god. -- not have a 100 tests everywhere. Bynax now tests are literally lateral Speaker 5 (01:31:29): flow strips. They cost pennies to make. It's insane. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:29): -- David Friedberg (01:31:29): cost to Jason Calacanis (01:31:33): buy? 20 bucks? Why is it not a dollar? What could be a dollar? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:38): -- Jason Calacanis (01:31:38): or Trump get that done? Is it some grift? Graft? David Friedberg (01:31:42): Greed? Yeah. You should get Mike Mino on to talk about this. He's the the guy to talk about it. But Jason Calacanis (01:31:49): I mean, if people were taking those every day, we could -- I I David Friedberg (01:31:51): think you guys may remember this, like, tweeted about this over a year ago, it's, like, last April where we could actually print these antigen tests for pennies in the US. I mean, when we had that, like, whole emergency authority thing, we were making masks in liquid oxygen tanks and all this shit. We should have been printing antigen tests on strip of paper. We have the facilities in the US to do it, and we could have made, you know, a Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:11): 100,000,000,000 50¢ David Friedberg (01:32:13): tests It made them just free and available to schools, to workplaces, to everything. It's it's absolutely insane that we Jason Calacanis (01:32:21): people can't be freelance writers or drive an Uber for 2 hours a day in California. Exactly. We can we can mandate that, but we can't mandate a Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:28): 25¢, 50¢ Jason Calacanis (01:32:29): test and put them in everybody's fucking mailboxes. I'm on fire now. It's fucking stupid. Everything is so dumb. Everybody's a grifter in this government, incompetent assholes. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:38): I would like I would like to I would like to vote. Newsome. I would like to go to war with Fiji because it's beautiful. Occup punching I I'd like an island, and I think that Fiji Belleby has a lot of them. Jason Calacanis (01:32:53): Well, Fiji is not respected than French. we should go there. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:55): -- Speaker 6 (01:32:56): because I Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:56): think it's a little claw closer. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:32:58): Yeah. So -- We could go there and spread pronouns. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:01): Yeah. Also, I'd like to go to war with Iceland, but only in the summertime because I hear it's beautiful now. I'm going to war with Jason Calacanis (01:33:07): Disney over the gelato. I'm going to war with Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:10): Florence over gelato. Fuck. Speaker 5 (01:33:12): I'm gonna Jason Calacanis (01:33:12): fuck you Tuscany -- -- country for pizza and the pasta. No. I'm occupying Tuscany. David Sacks (01:33:18): You'll need to build a bagram in all these places to accommodate all the private jets they're gonna come in. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:24): I mean, how but just Jason Calacanis (01:33:25): in closing, let's just say thank you to the amazing people of Italy for having Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:31): -- Jason Calacanis (01:33:32): What an incredible country. -- country for adult to go on vacation in. What an incredible country. Florence is amazing. Tuscany is outrageous. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:40): Rome is beautiful. Venice is incredible for beaches. -- Jason Calacanis (01:33:42): used to light Well, I love you. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:44): Sergeantia. I Jason Calacanis (01:33:44): love you, Italy. I love so much, and I love you so much next year. Alright. We'll see you all Speaker 5 (01:33:48): next time. Jason Calacanis (01:33:51): just love to Speaker 5 (01:33:51): do it. Speaker 7 (01:33:51): I'll see you next time on the all in podcast. Bye. Bye. Jason Calacanis (01:33:55): We'll let your winner slide. Rainman David Sachs. Speaker 6 (01:34:02): And it said -- We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy like that. Jason Calacanis (01:34:15): besties are gone. David Friedberg (01:34:20): Oh, man. Speaker 6 (01:34:26): We should all just get a room and just have one big huge door because they're all just useless. It's like this, like, sexual tension that they just need to release that mountain. Speaker 7 (01:34:34): You're the -- BP. What? You're David Sacks (01:34:37): a thief. David Friedberg (01:34:38): What? What? Good deal. Jason Calacanis (01:34:39): Where did you get Murphy's Speaker 10 (01:34:53): David Sacks, you come to me from your boat in Sicily. Speaker 7 (01:35:02): Hond my daughter's wedding day. Sacks, you Speaker 10 (01:35:05): come to me, and you ask me not Speaker 7 (01:35:07): to interrupt you. so that Henry Belocaster can make a clean-cut of your speech. Well, you could stop by acting like a man, David Sachs. Jason Calacanis (01:35:17): Mahahoo! I got who directed on the podcast. Speaker 5 (01:35:21): Oh, you didn't let me finish my daughter. Speaker 7 (01:35:25): You wanted this part? You wanted this part on this podcast? Who's the director? Who's the producer? I'll get you this pod. But someday, Sax. I'm gonna ask you for a favor, Sax. I'm gonna ask you for an allocation and all in in your call in app. I'm gonna ask you to lead the series b and on that day. I expect the valuation because measure it. with what I've done for you today. Okay, David, Sax. Jason Calacanis (01:35:59): Pretty pretty good bit. David Sacks (01:36:00): Look at Don Canoli over here.