理解奥密克戎、科技股暴跌、VC 大离职与多尔西卸任

Speaker 1 (00:00:00): Yeah. Chemouf goes to those sorts of events, and they all pick some endangered animal, and then they skin it, and they make a David Friedberg (00:00:04): sweater out of it for them. Jason Calacanis (00:00:05): That's out of Illuminati -- Illuminati. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:08): So this is Kashmir. It's Laura Piano. The lining is Chinchilla. David Friedberg (00:00:12): Oh, Chinchilla. I knew it. Geez. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:14): I knew it. It's some poor animal. Speaker 5 (00:00:15): It is so -- Some poor animal. Phenar. -- nicer than a than a dog. It's so warm. Speaker 1 (00:00:20): -- David Friedberg (00:00:20): sweet sweeter than any dog you've ever met if you actually play the Chinchilla. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:24): It's so warm. So I'm just rubbing it. Peter is Jason Calacanis (00:00:28): Peter is -- Boy cutting the show right now. Who? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:33): Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Speaker 6 (00:00:39): I'll let your winner Jason Calacanis (00:00:39): slide. Rainman David Sachs. Speaker 7 (00:00:46): We open source it to the fans and they've just got the reason Speaker 6 (00:00:49): for it. Love you Jason Calacanis (00:00:54): Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the All In Illuminati Podcast. We took Thanksgiving off, but the Illuminati is back to tell you what's going on in the star chamber, David Friedberg, the Sultan of Science, Queen of Kinwap, David Friedberg (00:01:10): Aquithas -- -- Sultan of Science. Speaker 1 (00:01:11): -- Jason Calacanis (00:01:11): super thin, looking schfeld, David Sachs, at his fighting weight, £168 to £172 in the red corner, and with a cashmere Chinchilla sweater. Chinchilla. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:23): The ergo from Sri Lanka Speaker 6 (00:01:29): at a Speaker 1 (00:01:29): £142, Jason Calacanis (00:01:36): And I'm, of course, Jake. Speaker 6 (00:01:37): I'm Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:37): at my I'm at my not peak weight, but in my twenties and thirties, I was, like, a Speaker 1 (00:01:43): £172. Jason Calacanis (00:01:46): Well, wait. You're six foot. Right? So that's Speaker 1 (00:01:48): 6 2. Jason Calacanis (00:01:48): So I'm -- So, I mean, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:49): wow. Currently, Speaker 1 (00:01:52): 166 Speaker 6 (00:01:54): What? Jason Calacanis (00:01:55): Wow. And you and you and you are wearing a shirt. Wow. That's incredible. If I was 166, I would Speaker 1 (00:02:00): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:00): I I did my did my body I did my body scan. I was Speaker 1 (00:02:04): -- Jason Calacanis (00:02:05): Percentage body fat is what? Speaker 1 (00:02:06): 14%? 11.1%. Jason Calacanis (00:02:08): What? You're going into elite athlete slash castaway territory. I've been there. I've been there for now. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:16): and Saks lean body mass was a Speaker 1 (00:02:18): £152.8. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:20): My basal metabolic rate was Speaker 1 (00:02:22): 1868 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:24): calories. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. This was with my jeans on. Sorry. And and this was midday, so I had breakfast. So it's 171.9. So 172. So mine is the close in the morning. I think I'm 1:67 less eating. Jason Calacanis (00:02:39): Amazing. Wow. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:40): Yeah, buddy. Yeah. Speaker 1 (00:02:42): 11.1% Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:43): body fat. My BMI was 22.7. That's incredible. Jason Calacanis (00:02:46): Wow. Congratulations. Alright. So we took Thanksgiving off, but we're back. And, of course, it's been a bit of a a crazy run. Sachs and I are in Miami for web 3.0. You would be delighted to know that there is no COVID in Florida. They've solved the COVID problem. But Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:12): I miss you guys. I miss you guys. Jason Calacanis (00:03:13): It's been time to take a week was a mistake. We should have done a Thanksgiving episode. Yeah. It's it's lame to take a week off because I miss everybody. Yeah. I agree. David Friedberg (00:03:19): Did everyone have a good Thanksgiving? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:21): I took my kids to Vegas. David Friedberg (00:03:23): You did, really? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:24): The older 3, me me and Nasdaq, we took the we took the older 3 to Vegas. We took them to, like, Blueman Group, to -- It's Speaker 6 (00:03:31): all a David Friedberg (00:03:31): good show. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:32): Ryan Safari. Although Blue Man is a little loud, actually, to be honest, I don't think it's really appropriate for kids too. Hey. We're I almost had a seizure, so I don't like it. Yeah. I think, like, chicken chills. Speaker 1 (00:03:41): -- Jason Calacanis (00:03:42): how to play craps? David Friedberg (00:03:42): I like I like that beetle Cirque du Soleil show. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:45): Yeah. That would have been a better choice in the end. What else did we do? We took them to the Adventure Dome, which is like an indoor amusement park. Speaker 6 (00:03:52): What'd David Friedberg (00:03:53): you eat? Any good food? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:54): We ate at Cipriani, one night, and car bone the next night. Jason Calacanis (00:03:58): to say, man. Those are those two places. Oh Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:00): my god. Jason Calacanis (00:04:01): Carbone with that vodka sauce. My I I was talking to Jade about the a carbon rigatoni with vodka sauce, and she started making it for me. No. They're the recipe online. It's unbelievable. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:11): It's so funny you you mentioned it, but both me both me and Bobsy. Got it. And we were both like, this is freaking awesome. Spicy rigatoni. It's so delicious. Jason Calacanis (00:04:20): I mean, you can make it at home, and it it's it's pretty amazing. Sachs, what was your that you came to Miami for Thanksgiving. I get I take it. Oh, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:28): wait. Wait. So the best part is and I won a hundred times, you know, plate props for a little bit. Up up. It'd be binked. Okay. Jason Calacanis (00:04:34): So that plays for half the trips. David Friedberg (00:04:35): Where'd you where'd you play? You play at Encore? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:38): I stayed at the Encore. I spiked the win for a hundred dimes in 2 hours Speaker 6 (00:04:42): since then. David Friedberg (00:04:43): Right right at the bottom of the towers at that little VIP area down there? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:46): And but what here's the best thing. I mean, you know, look. When you go to a casino, The best thing is you put the dice in the hands of the person that's never rolled. I I said to Sergio, I said, Bobsy, just go there. You're gonna start rolling. I'm not gonna talk to you. I'm not ignoring you, so please don't misinterpret this, but I'm just gonna let you be in your little zone He hit everything. Wow. Everything -- Wow. Speaker 1 (00:05:10): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:11): for 30 minutes. Jason Calacanis (00:05:14): and you got up. You got you left a winner. It's always about -- -- lots David Friedberg (00:05:17): inside -- It's all about when Jason Calacanis (00:05:19): you get up. Speaking about when you get up, I have been with Saxx. You wanna talk about rain, man? Literally, when Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:25): Oh my god. Saks Sax went off one night. Do you remember that night he went off Speaker 6 (00:05:28): the line? Jason Calacanis (00:05:28): I was about to bring it up, but here's something with Saks. Speaker 6 (00:05:30): He won't that that that that stuff. David Sacks (00:05:32): No. No. No. Speaker 6 (00:05:32): Not a problem. I saw your ballpark. David Sacks (00:05:35): That's not correct. Beep it up. David Friedberg (00:05:36): I will Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:37): say -- How much was that? David Sacks (00:05:38): No. Beep it up. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:39): No. Beep it out. What is what what was the number? Jason Calacanis (00:05:42): Alright. Well, anyway, let me just tell you. When Saks and I go to Vegas and he plays Blackjack, it's literally, the 2 of us coming down the escalator, and Tom Cruise and Rainman, we're ready David Friedberg (00:05:51): to see you -- -- suit. Wait a minute. Go to Tom Cruise. Jason Calacanis (00:05:54): I'm Tom Cruise, and he's the rainman. David Friedberg (00:05:55): I don't know. He's got Jason Calacanis (00:05:57): his head tilted. He's like, blackjack. Yeah. We're gonna put we'll put 3 hands of concurrent blackjack with Jay Kal. Of course, of course, we're counting cards at the at the Arya at the high roller And so we start high rolling. And I swear to god, this guy goes down, you know, a a model x, goes up, a plat, but he never gives up. He never gives up and we're supposed to go to LA. And I have a benefit dinner I bought a table for. And he's like, I I'm sorry, Jake Howell. I I I can't leave. So I show up for the benefit dinner, 3 hours late, They're closing the place down. They're like, oh, thanks for showing up, Jacob. And it was all because he had to come back up. But I've seen him come back from some gnarly defeats. What is the secret sauce? David Sacks (00:06:38): I I saw Phil your friend Phil Chamath and Brandon Cantu the other night here in Miami. and they reminded me of that, like, legendary run where basically I think I bought in for, like, a 100, you know, and I was down to, like, And I was playing two hands and I was down to my last, like, 5. And, you know, I've been, like, on a horrible losing streak. And the hand came along where the dealer had, like, a 5 showing. And I basically I I doubled down for my last, you know, last bets. And then the dealer, like, missed deal. She, like, did the cards out of order, and Phil made her rewind the cards and have them go back to where they were supposed to go instead of declaring the anti missed deal. because I had, like, double down with the 5 showing. So anyway, the the the pit boss came over. They ended up listening to Phil, and I won those 2 hands. And then from there, I went on, like Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:28): I love it. I love it. David Sacks (00:07:29): And and so and so Kantu Kantu actually remembers the stats. He's like, He's like, you won 30 you won 85% of the hands in, like, the next two, you know, shoes. Shoes. Yeah. You won, like, 35 hands in a row. He's like, it was unbelievable. And, yeah, it was crazy. Speaker 1 (00:07:46): -- David Friedberg (00:07:46): Phil at the end of the night? David Sacks (00:07:48): He was there playing with me. It was him, me, and then Kantu was there as, like, the real Speaker 9 (00:07:52): bird, and David Sacks (00:07:52): it was bonkers. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:53): These pro poker players, they are kind of Savant for these kinds Speaker 6 (00:07:56): of things. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:56): They remember every hand. They can David Friedberg (00:07:58): go back years You know, it's got some random hands. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:01): Yeah. Every flop turn river, it's really incredible. Jason Calacanis (00:08:05): They're gambling Tivo. They just it's a DVR David Sacks (00:08:08): in memory. -- wasn't even playing. It was basically Phil was there, and then I was playing two hands, and then Brandon was just hanging with us. And he remembers Like, Speaker 9 (00:08:16): all the stats David Sacks (00:08:17): of, like, what happened for that, whatever, half hour, it's bonkers. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:08:22): Okay. Well, since we took a week off. We apologize for taking the week off. We regret it. Couple of things have happened. I don't know if you guys look at the stats, but we I I couldn't believe it, but we were the 41st most popular episode 2 episodes ago in the world. So the pod has some sort of tipping point. I don't know if you're having this experience in Miami, David, but is everybody stopping you to say they love all in? And did you see all the Spotify love of people who watched, like, 3000 minutes of all in. David Sacks (00:08:49): That was another viral feature that Spotify came up with was a way to Basically, it generates a list of what your top shows were for the year based on listening minutes. So they it's like actually mathematical. And then you can basically retweet that. So, yeah, I've seen a lot of tweets people saying that we were number 1 or top Speaker 1 (00:09:06): 5. David Sacks (00:09:07): I had one guy stop me at our Basel. I don't get to stop that much, but there is a little bit more of that. Jason Calacanis (00:09:12): Yeah. I'm getting stopped constantly, and it was just a flood. So thank you to everybody who shared that and for tuning in. And we're we apologize for taking weeks off. We're gonna have it no weeks off rule going forward. That's that's happening. absolutely necessary. But last week, we had a new variant come out. We've been talking about it a whole bunch. David Friedberg (00:09:29): Well, you're talking about Miami. How how is Miami? You've been having a good time? Well, I David Sacks (00:09:33): oh, I got I got to tell a story about Miami. So -- Oh, okay. Alright. So, I mean, I think this place is paradise. You know? First of all, the the weather is just perfect this time of year. San Francisco is miserable. It was, like, rainy and cold. Do we come here, and it's, like, mid seventies all week? And, of course, you're not stepping over hypodermic needles or feces or, you know, you're not worried about being randomly assaulted by almost drug addict having a psychotic break just for starters. Right? So, you know, we've been, like, talking all week. We've been talking Speaker 6 (00:10:01): all week. Speaker 1 (00:10:01): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:01): just in your house. Right. That's just in the mausoleum before you get -- It's going to Starbucks. David Sacks (00:10:09): Yeah. That's just going to Starbucks exactly. Yeah. Today, man, we're having this conversation about should we just move your full time? And, you know, it's like it's, you know, it's a heart wrenching or gut wrenching decision because kids have schools and friends, and we've been in California a long time. And so here we are wringing our hands about whether to make this move. And all of a sudden, I read online that Nancy Pelosi just spent Speaker 1 (00:10:32): 25,000,000 David Sacks (00:10:32): buying her retirement house for when she loses the house in 2022, presumably she'll retire a speaker you know, in January 23 when she stopped speaker anymore. Jason Calacanis (00:10:41): She's gonna move was she gonna move to Santa Barbara? David Sacks (00:10:44): No. She's moving to Florida. She bought a place in in Jupiter Speaker 1 (00:10:46): -- David Friedberg (00:10:46): It wasn't true. It was it was yeah. David Sacks (00:10:49): I know I know it turned out to be fake news. Well, I questioned that. I think it was true, and then the she didn't like the bad press, so they bailed out of that deal. Speaker 6 (00:10:55): Uh-huh. David Sacks (00:10:56): Well, we won't really know what's true until January of 2023 where we see where she retires to. But, anyway, so I'm reading this article, and it says she's buying a house It's where Tiger Woods lives. And actually, it's like half an hour it's half an hour from where Donald Trump is. So here she is. buying this house probably with ill gotten insider trading profits. And she's gonna live Jason Calacanis (00:11:19): She's the best trader in the senate. David Sacks (00:11:20): Unbelievable trader in the world. Unbelievable. David Friedberg (00:11:23): All of our government officials, she's got the best inside information. David Sacks (00:11:26): And she's planning to retire to a community of people she's demonized. I mean, starting with, like, Trump and then Tiger Woods. And so she's gonna be living in this community of people who she's been moralizing demonizing against as the speaker of the house. And meanwhile, the rest of us are wringing our hands whether we should stay in San Francisco that the city the dystopian city that she's the political boss of that her political machine is running to the ground. And I'm looking at this going like, oh, no. You don't. you're not leaving me holding the bag for this. You're the bag holder. Speaker 9 (00:11:56): If you're if you're going -- She's like, you can you can turn David Friedberg (00:11:58): the lights out, Sax Jason Calacanis (00:12:00): Thank you so much. Speaker 9 (00:12:00): Just leave me holding the bag. David Sacks (00:12:02): I'm, like, the last one in San Francisco me turning out the lights. David Friedberg (00:12:05): So did that tip the scale for you? David Sacks (00:12:07): I'm like, I'm I'm definitely out of here. I'm like, if the boss of San Francisco is out of here, I'm definitely out of here. But I have some people -- Let's say, Jason Calacanis (00:12:15): in fairness, to Nancy Pelosi. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:17): She's sitting on a ton Jason Calacanis (00:12:18): of equities, and she doesn't wanna pay cap Speaker 6 (00:12:20): kings in California. So you gotta be fair to her. David Friedberg (00:12:23): It's not like she wants to pay for the Jason Calacanis (00:12:25): a ridiculous spending in California when she does, you know, cash out all those chips. I guess, Reeburg, let's go to you to talk about the new variant. Maybe you could tell us how to pronounce it because there seems to be some debate about the pronunciation of this and what's your take on it. David Friedberg (00:12:40): Were you in a frat in college? You have to memorize the great alphabet. Speaker 1 (00:12:43): -- Jason Calacanis (00:12:44): went to school at night, so I didn't get the college experience. Yeah. David Sacks (00:12:47): What's next? David Friedberg (00:12:48): I think it's I think it's omicron, but that's the Speaker 1 (00:12:51): -- Speaker 6 (00:12:51): Got it. Okay. David Friedberg (00:12:52): I'm the omicron. Jason Calacanis (00:12:54): omicron? And they tried Speaker 1 (00:12:56): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:56): Try it again, Jake. Last time. One last time. Speaker 6 (00:12:58): I'm Ody O'Kron. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:01): No. No. There's no n. Omicron. David Friedberg (00:13:04): Let's monetize the Greek alphabet. David Sacks (00:13:07): megatrend? Gall it's not a transformer, Jay Cal. David Friedberg (00:13:09): Omicron. wrong. Speaker 6 (00:13:11): I missed you, Saxx. Wait. How many miles away from me? Go get a let's get a 2 minute sandwich after this. Yeah. David Sacks (00:13:17): Come over here. David Friedberg (00:13:17): Why aren't you guys together right now? I don't get it. thought you guys would be in the same room. David Sacks (00:13:20): Let's go to the Cuban deli and play I don't know. Cuban sandwich chicken. David Friedberg (00:13:25): Yes. Who who could eat less bites and we'd lose our way Jason Calacanis (00:13:29): I have the place. I got the sandwich place over in Little Havana. That's unbelievable. But, anyway, continue. Tell us if it's the end of the world or no worry. David Friedberg (00:13:36): No. That I mean, it's at this point, there's 3 things that scientists are looking out for data on. 1 is kind of the innate transmissibility of this variant. The second is which is like, you know, the r naught in an unvaccinated population. The second is immunivasion, meaning it can get around antibody. They're getting around people that are vaccinated or have had the the virus. And then third is kind of the severity. right, which is, like, how many people translate into hospitalized cases. Okay. So every day, there's, you know, varying data and information coming out. There's an incredible spike in South African surveillance data and testing data right now. As of today, I think 25% of people getting tested in South Africa are testing positives. Jason Calacanis (00:14:20): Okay. Wow. That's stunning. David Friedberg (00:14:22): Yeah. And and and only about a quarter of the population is vaccinated there. So this will be pretty telling, pretty quickly on if hospitalizations start to climb and if the the disease severity then unvaccinated population kind of matches or mimics what we've seen with other variants This variant is quite different. So there's, like, 30 mutations on the the the spike protein here. Normally, you'll see an evolution where one mutation leads to another variant, leads to another variant, they they call it a new variant when there's enough kind of differential behavior of the virus. So there's always mutations happening. But once a mutation causes a change in behavior, know it. So normally, you see kind of an evolutionary track where there's, like, one mutation, another, then another, and so on. In this case, this mutation set is so far away from anything else that exists. There's, like, 30 new mutations that popped up on this protein, on this this the sequence that the that that sequence has been this protein that it's, like, such a different virus. Jason Calacanis (00:15:16): This is a major upgrade. Yeah. When when did it Speaker 1 (00:15:19): -- David Sacks (00:15:19): It's so different. It's almost like David Friedberg (00:15:21): It's like a new virus altogether. Yeah. David Sacks (00:15:22): It's almost like it's not a naturally occurring virus that behaves like other viruses do. David Friedberg (00:15:27): Okay. So cutting the conspiracy, when Speaker 6 (00:15:29): did you try to upgrade the virus Let David Friedberg (00:15:32): me cut the conspiracy theory for a second and just say what what what the the the the kind of current consensus thinking is of what that what may have caused this incredible change. One is that someone or or some people that have a severe immune compromised systems had a virus in them that did not kill them but just kept circulating in their bodies for months and months and months. And mutated so much that it got to the point, and this is what's really interesting. It got to the point that it mutated such that it can now trans meant a month's vaccinated population. So think about the virus finally found a way out of the floodgates, and the floodgates are blocked in by vaccinated people. And so that's kind of one reasonable explanation. The other one is that South Africa is just a monitoring station. Right? There's a whole big chunk of Africa where we have no surveillance going on. There's no genetic sequencing going on. And there could have been anywhere in Southern Africa or even in Central Africa that these viruses could have been circulating among populations for the last year and a half with no surveillance or testing or sequencing. And all of a sudden, one person travels to South Africa and boom. This thing pops up on the radar, and everyone's like, oh, wow. look at what we just stumbled into. So look. One thing that seems pretty certain, this variant is gonna be everywhere fast. Like, it is so transmissible by some estimates, and you can read Trevor Bedford or there's a bunch of great folks on Twitter. You can kind of follow their writings on this. But Trevor's done a great job. The r naught on this could be as high as 40, which is, you know, measles by comparison is 12 to 13. Now it's more likely that the r naught is somewhere between 720, but regardless, it seems to be that high in the presence of an immune immunized population, meaning it's got incredibly good evasiveness around people that have the the vaccine or have had the virus. So it's gonna spread like crazy. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:19): I think this whole thing is a complete fucking nothing burger. David Friedberg (00:17:22): Yeah. And so that's the other side. It's like maybe it's just not a big deal, and it ends up being like Delta, and it sort of spreads around. A lot of people don't know they have it. And then all of a sudden, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:30): we'll wake up. It's even more impotent than delta. David Friedberg (00:17:33): So that is that is definitely something that people are saying because there's not a lot of new hospitalizations spiking in South Africa. We're not seeing severe cases of all these people. You know, 25% of people are testing positive. they're showing mild to no symptoms and and that's anecdotal right now. So we'll know in the next few weeks of whether this actually changed to hospitalization. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:50): To me, This is more of an example of yet again how unreliable our institutions are than anything else. We knew nothing about this. We had a couple of cases, and the mainstream media literally in a moment where there was frankly, not a lot of news. Jason Calacanis (00:18:09): Slowest New Year is the day after Thanksgiving for people. But this is when it broke Friedberg after Thanksgiving. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:14): Exactly. Essentially manufactured this histrionic reaction to something where we didn't know anything about it. We didn't know how important it was. We didn't know how bad it was. We didn't know anything. And then what happened was then the financial media took that and then ran with it basically trying to whip even more histrionics, but within the financial markets, which then feed the mainstream news cycle. And we had this whole loop going down the toilet bowl and low and behold, I think what we're actually learning is what we should have just waited a few days to realize beforehand, which is It's not that severe, but to the extent that it is, we've sequenced it, we have vaccines, and we can deploy these quickly. Oh, by the way, At the same time, the New England Journal of Medicine put out the study, which basically showed how important and efficacious these vaccines are so The fact that we're even talking about this to me is just absolutely emotional and not practical or useful. David Friedberg (00:19:13): it it the big question, Chamath, is it's not about whether it is functionally a nothing burger or not, but what's really important now is how policy maker, they're gonna respond to this. Right? Because there is a a press cycle. There is a bit of a hysteria. Everyone's asking me about it. Everyone's freaked out about it. Everyone's worrying about it. And so the policymakers are gonna respond to that sentiment. And the question is, are we about to face more lockdowns and things that are gonna be adverse to the economy and, you know, how are markets gonna react, not necessarily to the true severity or the risk of this this variant. but more importantly, to the policy decisions that are gonna come out of the perceived risk of this variant. And that seems pretty scary right now. David Sacks (00:19:53): Well, you saw Biden. I I mean, one thing I'll give him is this. I mean, he's I think he's done a bad job in a lot of other things. But on this, his political instincts were sound, which is he said very clearly, we're not gonna go back to lockdowns. And I think he was really speaking to Democratic governors when he said that. People like Avon Newsom and our our poker friend, JB Pritzker and Whitmer in Michigan. Listen guys, we're not going back to lockdowns no matter what happens with this omicron thing. We're do school closures. We've seen how unpopular the school closures were. In this off your election, it was one of the big issues that helped Glenn Youngkin win Virginia, which I previously voted for Biden by 10. So I think you saw the message come down from on high. We're not gonna go back to lockdowns. Now I think though that what that does is admit, and I think what Omicron will show is that lockdowns didn't work at all. At most, lockdowns and all these measures, whether it's mask mandates or whatever, all it did was delay the timing of the virus. What you're gonna see is Omicron will be everywhere very soon There's nothing that policymakers can do to stop it. The only thing that seems to work is vaccines and and booster shots. There's some good data around the 3rd data the 3rd booster preventing serious cases other than vaccines. And I guess the one thing policymakers could do would be to get red tape out of the way. so that they can more quickly come out with a booster to this new variant. That would be the one thing they could really help with. But otherwise, nothing policymakers have done is help. Speaker 9 (00:21:21): Well, And David Sacks (00:21:22): and I think this is gonna be an admission that ultimately lockdowns were a disaster for the economy. Jason Calacanis (00:21:27): They nobody could argue lockdowns are not just after the economy. But in the early days, if we go back to, you know, when the the the the the this pandemic started, We really didn't know how to handle this. We did not have any treatments, and we were ventilating people and essentially killing them by blowing oxygen into their lungs to, you know, aggressively from what I understand. So in a way, wasn't it? David Friedberg (00:21:48): That's a yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:21:49): Okay. Well, I mean, I think it's a debate because we're not ventilating people now as much as we are. Right? We're flipping them over, etcetera. But the the lockdowns did. Correct me if I'm wrong, Friedberg, at least allow us to not have the hospitals overrun like they were in New York and Italy. And that was David Friedberg (00:22:03): I I I don't know if that's true. I honestly don't know if the hot glue what I don't know if I don't know if the lockdowns actually changed the we don't know Look. I'm gonna sound like some and now we're gonna, you know, kind of enter into this controversial territory. But -- Sure. Jason Calacanis (00:22:16): Let's do it. David Friedberg (00:22:18): It seems like a lot of people still got together in private settings, Speaker 6 (00:22:21): and the David Friedberg (00:22:22): virus continued to spread. And so there's a question around how effective lockdowns were and how much they really did change the trajectory of the spread of the virus. And, yes, they probably did have a muting effect. But, you know, it it's unclear what the trade off was and whether it was really worthwhile. And at the end of the day, a few days and a few weeks after they started, people were over them, and they started meeting on that time. Jason Calacanis (00:22:44): We didn't know how Delia was. though. At that time, we didn't Speaker 1 (00:22:46): -- David Sacks (00:22:46): Admittedly, we didn't know a lot at the beginning of the pandemic, and so you have to you have to, I think, give people a break for the mistakes that were made, say, in in March or April. I think by May, it was pretty clear the lockdowns weren't gonna work. If they had worked, states like California wouldn't have had ten pages of exceptions based on how politically connected you are. So for example, the local bartender had her bar run out of business by lockdowns, but Hollywood studios would get a break on their productions. But so so we know that lockdowns didn't work. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been these exceptions, and we have data from Sweden. Remember all the hysteria about Sweden basically Speaker 1 (00:23:20): -- David Sacks (00:23:20): Yeah. -- was doing nothing. They weren't doing lockdowns. They weren't doing Speaker 6 (00:23:22): any dates. Jason Calacanis (00:23:23): They were going for herd immunity. David Sacks (00:23:24): They were going Jason Calacanis (00:23:24): for herd immunity David Sacks (00:23:25): and ever and and they're they're killing. They were killing their people. Well, guess what? Sweden's data was nowhere to anybody else's. They the hospitals weren't overrun. And I think I think what Omicron will finally show is that, you know, our whole policy since the beginning of COVID, whether it was 2 weeks to stop the spread or these, like, vaccine mandates or even this idea of herd immunity, It's all been to try and put the genie back in the bottle. In other words, it's been to try and defeat COVID. It's to put this virus back in the lab, I guess you could say. And the reality is we're never gonna defeat it. I mean, it really is something that we're gonna have to to learn to live with and to manage. And so you know, vaccines David Friedberg (00:24:01): through -- -- variant every it'll it'll be it'll be a it'll be a seasonal disease, and it'll it'll it'll be something like the flu in terms of how it cycles each year. And it seems unlikely that it's gonna be eradicated through vaccination. Jason Calacanis (00:24:13): Let me pull Shamoff back in. There may be Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:15): a variant that matters. but this is not it. And instead, what we really need to do is have a process of not overreacting because there's going to be n number of these into the future. And the only thing that really decays the vaccine's potency or sorry, the the COVID's potency is having it go through vaccinated people. And thank god we had so many people vaccinated because This is what we're so, again, this whole thing is a nothing burger. Let's just move on. It's stupid. David Friedberg (00:24:49): Well, so so the the mark the markets are obviously Maybe we should talk about Speaker 1 (00:24:52): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:53): They're not reacting to that. I think that they are pitching -- -- an excuse? Jason Calacanis (00:24:56): Like, people wanted to trim positions, and this is a great excuse. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:00): Look at look. Look. The week before when I started to trim, it was like, oh, how dare you? Blah blah blah. You know? And I'm like, well, I don't know if the smartest people are selling. Maybe it makes makes sense to sell. So I started to trim, and I'm so glad that I did because it was, you know, 10 days ahead or a week ahead of all of this craziness. Now look at what's happening in the markets today. people are going massively risk off. You know, there are almost 500 stocks that are off 30 or 40% in the last 30 days. Yeah. But the stock market is still basically at all time highs. So think of that for a second. So everybody that thinks that the stock market is doing poorly is wrong. It is doing exceptionally well. It's just that the 400 stocks that people in Silicon Valley really care about have been getting kicked in the teeth. Yeah. And the paper company and the, you know, the specialty chemicals company have actually done reasonably well. We should not think Jason Calacanis (00:25:50): far which Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:51): is nothing that any of us have exposure to or, you know, some of us don't have exposure to. So go ahead, Jason. Jason Calacanis (00:25:56): Chamath, can we can we can we then look at this as hey. The era of we're gonna give a lot of credit to companies for, you know, what's gonna happen in the next 10 year. Speaker 1 (00:26:07): 10 David Friedberg (00:26:07): year outcome. Yeah. The Speaker 1 (00:26:08): 10 Jason Calacanis (00:26:08): year outcome that we saw Caribbean came up, you know, and then many other stocks and, obviously, crypto falls into this this idea of give giving people a decade of forward looking credit maybe is gonna come back to -- I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:19): think it's too early. Speaker 1 (00:26:20): -- Jason Calacanis (00:26:20): way these and look at earnings Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:21): or maybe 2 years of credit. No. I'm not gonna say that because I think it's too early for us to sort of go and jump to these conclusions. Right now, we are in a moment There have been 71 or 2 of these moments since Speaker 1 (00:26:35): 2009 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:37): where you have either a sector drawdown or a market drawdown. In this case, we're in the middle of a massive growth sector drawdown. Okay? The the multiples on these companies are shrinking. Companies like Snowflake and Speaker 1 (00:26:52): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:54): Hell, Tom. -- is your cloudflare. Zoom. We're trading at 70 to a times revenue and people are reevaluating whether those multiples are worth it. Irrespective of the quality of the company because those are very high quality companies. So we're just re rating the risk right now. Okay? And it's not broad based. The problem is all these companies that I think raised a lot of money in private markets -- Mhmm. Speaker 1 (00:27:18): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:19): are now gonna get stuck because if the public markets have compressed multiples by 30 to Speaker 1 (00:27:24): 50%, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:26): they are the ultimate buyer The idea that you can wait and then go public later may not stand to reason especially if inflation really keeps these multiples in you know, in check. And so all these private businesses and then all of the ones that sort of were planning IPOs in the next 12 to 18 months are probably in a little bit more of a challenging spot than they were between. David Friedberg (00:27:49): We're seeing a lot of I mean, Chamath, is it not true that we're seeing a bunch of these spack deals and new issuances come out to market with converts attached to them. So rather than getting a straight valuation and common equity rolled, these deals are coming out where investors are saying, look. I'll value this thing, but I wanna get paid a preferred return, and I wanna have some seniority over the common. And so I can protect my investment to some degree. At least that's what I'm hearing from bankers is kind of the the rumbling in the spec and pipe market right now. is these kind of protective new types of equities that are coming out in order that the the investors can kinda keep their mark on their private valuation rounds. but get the company out to public, but the public market is getting a better deal than just straight common equity. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:33): Look. It's like bringing pepto bizmaltomex If you're worried about an upset stomach, don't go to Mexico. Jason Calacanis (00:28:39): Okay. We just lost 7% of the audience. David Friedberg (00:28:42): You bet you but you're saying you wouldn't invest in these in these converts for these kind of companies that need that. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:47): Hey. You're you're you're we're focusing too much on the symptomology and not the root cause. The minute that you're trying to wrap all these features around something, you know, the the nature of those kinds of features is that it's trying to subsidize what is otherwise not a clear, simple, viable story at that price. So either change the price or change the company. Jason Calacanis (00:29:11): Yeah. I will David Friedberg (00:29:12): say one important point about what's going on. A lot of people have said this is a crash, and that term's been used a lot. But, you know, because people that have only traded in markets and and have a brief history, call it back to the Speaker 1 (00:29:23): 2 1000. David Friedberg (00:29:25): The last three major drawdowns have been the dot com crash then the financial crisis and then the COVID crash. And all of them had true systemic risk that caused kind of there's all these ripple effects and secondary effects And, Chamath, I mean, you know, it and and for all you guys, it seems to me that this time, what's going on is a devaluation that doesn't have systemic risk attached do it. If these -- Well, we Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:50): had this happen in 2018 because in 2018, it looked like there was going to be inflation. Powell, you know, basically killed the market. He raised rates. And then it turned out he was completely wrong and China was okay and everything was fine. and then the market just completely violently snap back. Again, this is what I'm saying, which is it's too early to tell whether this is just a short term opportunity for people who have made a lot of money to derisk. And, again, Satya Nadella just sold 300,000,000 of stock. Jason Calacanis (00:30:20): If you wanted half his position, it was half of Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:22): his position. Jason Calacanis (00:30:23): Yeah. mean, that's got to me was it significant. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:25): Elon Musk sold, you know, 10,000,000,000. I've sold almost, I think, 6 or $700,000,000 worth of stuff this year. Like, this is what I think smart market participants do. You don't just wait and just try to mark to market the last tick. David Friedberg (00:30:39): Sach, you you think there is systemic risk in here? David Sacks (00:30:41): Yeah. I mean so well, look. First of all, what's going on here? I mean, Chamath is right that over the last 4 weeks, we've seen a 30 to 50% decline in these tech growth stocks. What is the reason for that? Interest rate expectations driven by inflation. For the 1st 6 months of the year, all you heard out of Washington, the administration was this inflation was transitory. That story is Speaker 6 (00:30:59): basically that collapsed because now people can see that as persistent. David Sacks (00:30:59): They're now pricing in the risk of interest rate increases Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:08): Oh, Saks, you're breaking up. He's done. He's toast. Jason Calacanis (00:31:10): He's done. He's toast. I did I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:12): think the Jason Calacanis (00:31:13): the FED just David Friedberg (00:31:13): kinda -- He got cut off. Jason Calacanis (00:31:14): He got cut Speaker 6 (00:31:14): them off. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:14): He's probably still talking. He's probably still talking. Speaker 6 (00:31:17): He's probably still talking. Jason Calacanis (00:31:17): He's on a model right now. Yeah. Henry Bellcaster is cutting it right now. David Friedberg (00:31:20): Yeah. Henry Bellcaster can tiktok him. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:22): Well, whoever wrote this this part of the speech that he has prepared for Speaker 6 (00:31:26): his son. super crest for holding. Like, oh, that was my best speech writing. I think Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:30): even that guy's name is I'm sure it's I'm sure it's annotated, so he can go back to that point in his diet. Absolutely. Jason Calacanis (00:31:35): Yes. I mean, I think actually, this is an AI version. This is like a deep fake of Saks that we just played at this point for this moment. Speaker 1 (00:31:41): -- David Friedberg (00:31:41): reboot the Saks. Jason Calacanis (00:31:42): We reboot the Saks simulation, the Saks simulation. Well, I mean, if you if you look at private markets, it's obvious that, you know, they were getting ahead of themselves. And I think to your point, Chamath, when we were talking before about what what a private market companies do in this situation? Well, you know, I was advising them if you can get at a high valuation and you can get clean terms should take the money sure if it's from quality investors. But just make sure that you have enough runway to fill in this valuation, if there is valuation compression, which is what there is now. So the idea that a private company with 20,000,000 or 30,000,000 in SaaS revenue was worth 50, 60, 70 times that. That's not the case right now in the public markets. And maybe it goes back down to 20 or 30, but you just have to have that runway to land the plane. Correct? David Friedberg (00:32:26): Yeah. What One way to think about that is it's less about people often use that high multiple to refer to this year's numbers. Speaker 6 (00:32:33): Mhmm. David Friedberg (00:32:33): But what the market is doing typically in those situations is they're saying the multiple in the future will be x. And so they're saying we project 5, 10 years out this revenue, and I'm paying 1 to 5 times revenue you know, for 7 to 10 years out or whatever the right kind of way that they're framing that up. But then the commentators on the market pricing come in and they say, You guys are crazy. You're paying a hundred times revenue. And the market isn't thinking about this year's revenue. They're thinking about revenue in years 7 through Speaker 1 (00:33:00): 10. Jason Calacanis (00:33:01): Yes. That giving credit. Right? They're giving credit. Right? David Friedberg (00:33:03): Yeah. And and they can't do that now because interest rates let's say interest rates climbed to 3 and a half percent. I can go make 3 and a half percent by putting my money in for a Speaker 1 (00:33:11): 10 David Friedberg (00:33:11): year bond. And now I can't kind of the and so I have to discount that future back from 10 years out, and now I'm only gonna be able to value it in 5 years out. So now my revenue for 5 years out is, like, a little bit lower, and the multiplier, I'm gonna give them a little lower so the valuation today gets a little bit lower. And that's how these things kind of translate as a function of interest rates. It's a little bit harder to to to make a bet on a 10 year, you know, horizon because Interest rates are no longer 0%. And so you have to kinda make a bet on a Speaker 1 (00:33:38): 5 David Friedberg (00:33:39): year horizon or a 3 year horizon. And if interest rates are really high, You're betting on this year's numbers. Jason Calacanis (00:33:44): Alright. Shamath, I I think we should talk a little bit about this inflation concept. I did a little tweaks to remember the you know, about this sort of transitory versus, you know, perpetual. And I do think and we've talked about it here. We've crossed that Rubicon of Everybody is raising prices because everybody else is raising prices, not necessarily even because they are experiencing, you know, higher costs in their business, but they're just like, you know, my haircut's costing more, my stakes costing more. I've gotta charge more for whatever my services is. is there any way to unwind this inflation? It seems to me, like, the reason we've had no inflation for so many decades of our entire lives. Like, I mean, genes in the 19 eighties cost the same as genes now was because of globalization and efficiency. Well, that took, what, 3 decades or 4 decades of just constant innovation and constant globalization. Well, we've already got globalization maxed out perhaps too much globalization, right, that we learned that we actually have risk associated with this, you know, supply chain, And how much more efficiency is there in making a pair of jeans? I don't know if we're gonna be making them in a slurry. So is there a path to unwind it you know, rich people not having their equities be worth this much, then maybe it trickles down. I I don't it's unprecedented. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:01): I think what happens in the stock market is absolutely irrelevant. It doesn't matter. I mean, you know, we focus on it a lot, but, you know, when we talk about the core structure roll economy, the stock market is a lagging indicator of a whole bunch of things. Sometimes it's cash flow. A lot of the times it's a motion. David Friedberg (00:35:22): Money supply. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:23): Money supply. I think that there's a much more important thing which we've talked about, which is that, you know, we have said and I have said that coming out of the pandemic, we are moving the world back into a more, you know, decentralized place. Right? The centralization was this just in time, you know, single supply chain, single point of failure existence. And if you look inside of China, the thing that they want more than anything else is to become even more centralized. Right? I don't know if you saw it today, but there was an article in The Wall Street Journal about how China is going to create basically an overall holding company to own all the rare earths that are made inside of China and then to apportion them out as they see fit. So the government will now control a critical element in supply chain into climate change. Okay? Jason Calacanis (00:36:16): Basically, they're creating their own hacking away, like, their own version of Speaker 1 (00:36:19): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:19): It's a it's a very good way of saying it. Exactly. So -- Yeah. Speaker 1 (00:36:22): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:22): so China is pushing more and more for centralization. We so for example, you know, myself and Fortress, we did this deal a few a year ago to bring this company public called MP Materials, and the whole idea was to start to build diversity in the supply chain to build a decentralized supply of all kinds of things. In that case, it was around these rare earths because we saw this thing happening in China. Okay? The problem is those kinds of investments are very much few and far between. So the the the solution to fixing the core structural inflation we have is gonna take a decade. It's gonna take 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars of investment and more than that, I think it's gonna take an enormous amount of coordination between private and public participants. And I think that that's where this whole thing fails, which is why you know, I'm a little bit more concerned about it. Like and I think I've explained this to you, but look. We have massively underinvested in the level of infrastructure we need to support ourselves. Jason Calacanis (00:37:25): Yeah. We outsource Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:27): Like as in a simple example, like, starting in 2016, we absolutely decapitated the ability for the United States to invest in our own. true energy independence. Okay? You know, the level of fracking, the level of nat gas oil, all of this stuff basically fell off of a cliff. And you would say, well, that was the right capital allocation decision because of climate change. Well, it turns out today not really because we have absolutely no investments on the climate change side. Speaker 6 (00:37:53): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:53): We don't have rare earth. We don't have Lithium. We don't have nickel. We don't have cobalt. We don't have graphite. so we actually can't make the batteries, which means that now oil is at a $100 a barrel and gas costs ten bucks at the pump. So that was a coordination problem. Really, the right thing to have done would have been to continue to invest in our domestic supply chain for energy, while we also created incentives to decarbonize. So this is what I mean by these issues have been building up for years, Jason. Yeah. Decades. Yeah. Inflation is now here I think it's here to last. I've been pretty consistent about this, and this is the real reason why we're gonna have a few years of pain. And so money losing unprofitable businesses selling future cash flows in 10 to 12 years I mean, some people will buy them but I won't be. David Friedberg (00:38:42): I just sent you a a link to freight rates for cargo ships coming from China to LA. And you'll see in the last you know, call it month and a half or so. You know? Starting with the peak. Yeah. Yeah. So starting in April, it was, like, whatever $2000 and it climbed up to nearly 20. Nearly went 10 x over that period of time. And then in September, it started to decline. It's dropped by 50%, and it's continuing to drop week after week right now. And we're seeing the same in lumber prices right now. I'll send you another link to to how lumber prices have kind of declined precipitously. Also, from a early part of the year peak. And we're seeing this across a lot of these kind of supply markets where we were talking about inflation being the driver and some of the other you know, a lot of the economists to the Fed and other policymakers were talking about these being kind of transitory pricing effects And so there's a bit of a mixed bag emerging. Right? We are seeing in some of these markets that prices have declined by Speaker 1 (00:39:44): 50, 70 5% David Friedberg (00:39:45): in just the last few weeks. By by the way, though. The supply chain distortions have sort of rightsized, and the demand and the supply started to balance out a bit more. And that's creating, I think, you know, a better kind of certainty around pricing, better reliability on these supply chains, And a lot of folks estimate that this will take all the way through 2022 for that supply chain kind of glut and mismatch to work its way all the way through to the consumer. Yeah. To the consumer, And and so there there are a number of points of view that say, look. These pricing issues that we've been seeing in the in the recent term may in fact still be transitory, and we may see them work their way out at the end of Speaker 1 (00:40:20): 2022. David Friedberg (00:40:20): And we're starting to see the early signs of that actually playing out. And so the I I would say the jury's still out. Generally, we'd obviously double the amount of US dollars that are in supply or increased it by 50% a year we've got, you know, interest rates at 0. We've got you know, people aren't gonna reduce their wages. Right? Wages are only gonna go up. And there's a lot of things that you make the point of. Like, spending's only gonna go up. The government's never gonna spend less. I mean -- By the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:44): way, just on that point. The -- Yeah. -- the the the government changed their formula for what is considered a conforming mortgage. I think it kicks in in January. And, essentially, it basically allows US homeowners to have a 1,000,000 mortgage and have it essentially be conforming. Now that's like a, you know, pretty large increase. I think it's almost 20% from what it used to Why is that important? Think of the amount of money that's stuck in US real estate by US homeowners who now all of a sudden can have conforming loans that are, you know, which used to be jumbos or super jumbos. So worse terms become better terms. You have more equity. You can pull out more money I think that people will spend that money. And so Speaker 1 (00:41:24): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:25): For sure. Yeah. Even on the consumer side, I think that you have an impetus to spend. I was the one thing I wanted to say, I wanted to clarify something I said earlier, You know, it's very difficult to buy these long dated businesses promising huge cash flows in the future. There is one kind of version of that company, though, that you can buy in my opinion, and and that what I am still buying, which is deep physical science and r and d. Because those businesses in some ways are still on a risk adjusted basis, in my opinion, great bets to make. But otherwise, you know, you wanna be allocated to Speaker 1 (00:41:58): -- -- Jason Calacanis (00:41:58): spending a lot of money on research and are gonna have future products. David Friedberg (00:42:00): It Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:01): doesn't necessarily have to be a lot of money, but that the outcome in success is so asymmetric. Those are really interesting. To me, businesses in moments like this where you know, if I'm if I'm delevering my portfolio, that's how I'm thinking about it, which is I wanna make those kind Jason Calacanis (00:42:16): of bets Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:16): in the future. Jason Calacanis (00:42:17): The one thing I think that could help unwind this. And I think it's, to your point, Friedberg, about some of the indigestion is starting to work its way through the system. And there could be 2 things occurring at the same time, we could be have more money supply. Prices could be going up. Homes could be going up. Lumber could be coming down, but that doesn't mean that the person constructing the home is just gonna magically say, oh, wow. I spent less on lumber. I can take a $1,000,000 off the price of this new home or a 100,000 even, whatever it is. But competition does seem to drive prices lower. And so if we do see more people participating as employees or employment, Well, then there would be some competition for less competition for labor. And we might see more other places in the economy. If there were more cars available, obviously, people will try to win customers. Right now, you don't have to customer if you're selling a car, even a used one, they're going for 10.20 k. Used cars are going people have who bought used cars 2 years ago, are selling them for the same price. So they got 2 years for free in their car even though they put ten thousand miles on it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:19): By the way, speaking about employment for a second, you know, the the I I heard I saw the stat. It was pretty insane, but about 2,100,000 people Underimmigrated to the United States at the beginning of Trump's tenure as president. What does it mean? Is that What that what that means is that we lost about Speaker 1 (00:43:40): 2,100,000 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:41): immigrants than we would have normally based on the run rate of how immigration should have worked. So whether that was people being rejected at the border or whether that was just people deciding not to come to the United States because of their feelings for Trump. We lost 2,100,000 eligible workers over those 4 years of his presidency. We also had a bunch of people who had degrees in certain jobs who basically gave up on their profession. And we talked about this before, which is, you know, the teacher who decides it's better off to just go work at Amazon. right then to actually be a teacher because you got to get paid more now. And then the third thing is that there's a ton of people that are making an enormous amount of money through inheritance and through their parents who are boomers who are now in their sixties seventies eighties. And all of that is exacerbating this employment problem, which you can only solve by raising wages. Right? Jason Calacanis (00:44:31): There's a ton more people in the country. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:33): Well, all of it just means that there are just fewer people to do the work, which means you're going to have to pay more to get the work done. Yeah. And we're gonna or Jason Calacanis (00:44:40): we could let more people in the country based on their specific skills. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:43): You put these 2 things together. Structural inflation is here. We've underinvestigate underinvested at the macro level. and we've completely distorted people's incentives to work at the micro level. Prices go up. Jason Calacanis (00:44:56): One thing I'm seeing in the market, and I think David's back with us, David is that Keith for Boy had this tweet. And I think we talked about it 4 or 5 episodes ago. A bunch of capital allocators are saying, you know what? was a great run, but I think I'm gonna opt out. I'm going to move on to my next adventure. I don't wanna deal with what we're dealing with here on this podcast, which is what do you even make of this confluence of the pandemic, crypto, printing more money supply and interest and unknowable valuations in the face of massive technological change from AI, biology, etcetera. So I thought it'd be interesting to talk about all of our decisions to stay in the capital allocation game and what we think about the retiring group of capital allocators who are let's face it retiring at 50 or David Sacks (00:45:47): Well, I was I I had coffee with Keith this morning, and then he tweeted that on the hill our conversation, so I think I can provide a little more insight into what he was thinking there. I think part of the backdrop here is the concern that we're going into a very different environment than the one we've had over the last 10 years. I mean, over the last 10 years, we've basically had record good times because of this low interest rate environment. Right? And low interest rate environments are fantastic for growth stocks. Now it looks like we're moving into an environment in which inflation is certainly not transitory. We don't know how long it's gonna last for, and that creates an expectation of its rates are gonna rise. And so the next decade may not be as good for growth stocks. And you've also had over the last year or 2 price levels have been much higher. So you gotta figure there's a whole cohort of VCs who've had a great decade who've made a lot of money. And now they're asking, does it really make sense for me to sign up for another decade that may not look as good? And, you know, the truth is if that if you're not the principle of your firm. If you're one of 20 partners, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't make as much sense for you to stay in the game when you've just had a fantastic decade. You've probably made more money than you're gonna make. And now you're not so sure about the next one. Jason Calacanis (00:46:57): Very brave thoughts. I mean, you're you still wanna build companies. David Friedberg (00:47:01): Yeah. I'm like, I'm I I don't know. I like building stuff and building new stuff that's kind of gonna have a you know, an impact and it's technically difficult. So that that's kind of where I get drawn to spend my time. But I can understand people whose job it is to kind of manage other people's money and invest it for them, you know, and they participate in the profits they generate. realizing after some period of time, like, hey, I've bought a bunch of lottery tickets. I mean, if you buy lottery tickets at at the local 711 every day, and one day you hit the Speaker 1 (00:47:31): $12,000,000 David Friedberg (00:47:32): jackpot, you're not going back to Speaker 1 (00:47:34): 7:11 David Friedberg (00:47:35): the next day to keep buying lottery tickets. And so, you know, in in the context of being a money manager to generate returns and that being kind of your principal interest and you kind of hit a return outcome that statistically, you know, will not happen again. I don't see the point of the hassle of going back to work. I I could see the psychology of saying that that's enough for me. I do think, however, most VCs are truly you know, we we can kind of generalize all we want. But as we all know, we have lots of friends who are VCs. And I'd say, generally, the majority of them are very intellectually curious and driven. And what I am seeing is a shift of people who have had successful investing track records and have had massive outcomes, shifting their attention now. They take some time off. And I'd say almost a 100% of them come back, and they always ask for a meeting. And I'm like, sure. And then they're like, I wanna work on climate change solutions. And so what I'm seeing is this kind of second act happening now, and we've seen it with guides like Chris Saka and, you know, folks who had these massive, massive outcomes in their first run They know they're not gonna you know, the statistical likelihood of doing that again, it's very low. But then, you know, after spending a couple years on the ranch or, you know, surfing, you kinda wake up. You know, I do something meaningful with my life. Like, I got kids. I look them in the eye, and I'm like, what should we do to get? What what do I wanna do for the future for my children? And they all kinda come back around. So One of the things I'm seeing is this kind of second act phenomenon where VCs are moving away from being pure play technologists and making money to saying, I wanna do stuff that's a little bit more meaningful and altruistic coming into climate change. David Friedberg (00:49:09): And as a result, we're seeing insane funding happening in climate change tech companies or Climate Tech or whatever the heck the the label is this week, stuff that, in my opinion, doesn't make any sense, businesses that aren't real businesses, technologies that don't actually make sense. It'll never work out. But, hey, that's always been the case in venture. Right? One out of a 1000 works and, you know, changes the world. But we are seeing that. And and that that's kind of a personal observation as I'm seeing a lot of like, an act going after climate change. Jason Calacanis (00:49:35): Chamath, this last year's, like or 18 months, pretty exhausting as a capital to try to make sense of the world and get your bearings. It's like going through multiple storms. Does that make you more engaged? I I get the sense knowing you for a long time. that you and I might be similar. Yeah. The chessboards are getting mixed up, the pieces, and the values are getting changed, whatever. It's making me more excited to participate and try to figure it out. Speaker 6 (00:49:59): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:49:59): It's like a hand to poker to me. I'm more intellectually stimulated now. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:03): Me too. I'm I'm the most engaged I've ever been. Yeah. I I mean, look, I I I left the money management business 5 years ago, I guess. And Honestly, it was a very hard path, but it's been the most rewarding because I was able to focus on on the things that I wanted. Look. If you do this job well, this job is voting for change with your money and making change using money. And that's great because money is not that useful beyond a very small amount. And then you have to question like what are your real priorities. So yeah. Like grinding away at something that matters to me, I've always find fulfilling. And I feel like I am an athlete whose muscle doesn't decay by my mid thirties, but probably decays in my seventies or eighties, which is my brain. And so you know, I'm only, you know, I'm only I'm a rookie. So I'm excited. Jason Calacanis (00:51:06): Yeah. I I the fact that things are compressing or maybe there'll be less start ups or less capital allocators involved. What I've seen in my career at post.com errorweb2.0, amazing time to be alive, amazing time because there were less anybody who started a company after the dotcom bus or after the 2008 financial crisis was a legitimate warrior who wanted to change the world and was incredibly focused. And then the sense of entitlement I'm seeing on all sides of the table right now from founders, to board members to investors. It just seems like everybody's in some sort of mad dash to secure some bag by any means necessary, and there's no focus on the customers, on product and the team. Everybody's, you know, living in some just manic, you know, grab money grab. David Friedberg (00:51:50): You know, When you're in the middle of a paintball war, you know, you're trying to you're trying to shoot the paintball gun and you're trying to hit people and it's a little bit crazy on the field, But -- Yeah. Speaker 1 (00:51:58): -- David Friedberg (00:51:58): you know, as everyone kinda gets back to the locker room and they take their win, you know, all humans ultimately are gonna be driven by a desire to to leave something in the world to make an impact of some sort. And at some point, all all the folks who have made a ton of money in this cycle, there were a lot of folks who made a ton of money in the last cycle, are kinda asking themselves, you know, how do I leave an impact? How do I make an impact in the world? And I still have a skill set, and I still have a capability to do so. And so then there's this search for meaning. And and that's where you see kind of the climate change and the health care and all these other kind of paths start to form for people. I do think web 3 also offers another path of opportunity for folks where they can kind of rewrite the Internet and think about how to reinvent the social model for humanity, the economic model for humanity, the governance model for humanity, the communications model for humanity, And Web 3 kind Jason Calacanis (00:52:50): of yeah. David Friedberg (00:52:51): Yeah. And Web 3 creates that that kind of you know, that that that visionary kind of platform opportunity, and folks are all kind of excited about what's So, you know, once the the dust settles a little bit and you put some money in your pocket and you realize, you know, it's not gonna change your life more than, you know, it did last week and you know, you you wanna make an impact, and then folks kinda come back and they start pursuing, you know, what where impact will lie. Jason Calacanis (00:53:13): Saks, let's go to you. Well, what Sachs, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:16): what what was Reboy what was Reboy talking about? Jason Calacanis (00:53:19): What were you guys talking about in this breakfast? David Sacks (00:53:21): Keith and I just talked about how we're about to enter a very different kind of macro environment for growth stocks. And we don't know how long it's gonna take, but but there's no question that multiples and valuations are gonna come down. And there's a lot of younger founders and investors who never lived through a bear market or a a down cycle, and they're about to get a route awakening. So look, I think it's a little different for us because we're all principals at our firms. And so, therefore, If we're not happy about something, we could simply effectuate a change in strategy. But if you're one of 20 partners at a giant firm, even if you're the most successful one, it's hard for you to move that ship and, you know, your returns get divided by, you know, it's one over n where n is the number of, like, full partner shares. And, you know, if you just made a ton of money over the last 10 years and you're thinking about whether you wanna sign up for going through a bunch of choppy waters, there's a lot of good reasons right now for people to reevaluate. Now look, Keith and I were both discussing into the context of, hey. This would be great for us because we're not going anywhere. But but Keith did think that because the macro picture is changing, that is one more reason for people who are on defense and thinking about retiring to move forward with that. Jason Calacanis (00:54:38): Alright. So I think we we've we've we've talked about capital allocation and we got the variant and we got the markets. David Friedberg (00:54:45): Can I just point out how, like, sex? It seems like you and Jay Kal and everyone are kind of in Miami at Art Bazzle, and this thing's been going on for years, and it's a art fair Yeah. But it's like tech has taken it over. Like, the tech industry yeah. Like, the tech community seems has this kind of consistent trend of going to these, like, esoteric kind of call it or originally artistically created events and spaces. It was, like, Sundance, and then it was Burning Man. And now it's, like, Miami Art Basil and kind Jason Calacanis (00:55:14): of like -- -- it. David Friedberg (00:55:15): ruining it, taking it for themselves. It's like, you know, hey. Now it's tech week in Miami, but it was like, it's our battle's been going on forever. It's NFT Bossell. They're calling you. NFT Bossell. Yeah. Brutal. It's brutal. It's literally Speaker 1 (00:55:27): -- David Friedberg (00:55:27): Come back for all the real creatives. You know? David Sacks (00:55:29): Yeah. We're we're the ugly Americans who come in and ruin the artisanal, you know, feel of the place, and and and flood the place with cash. But look. No. Yeah. One difference between Florida or Miami in particular and California and San Francisco in particular is nobody Pates money or success over here. They are happy for, you know, all these rich people to come in and spend their money. They really believe in capitalism over here. You've got huge Cuban immigrant population who had direct experience with Socialism and Argentinian, some people from South America, And, I mean, they teach their kids in schools, the evils of Socialism. So, yeah, nobody here is looking to purge the rich David Friedberg (00:56:09): That's nice. It's it's funny, Saxx, because the Bay Area, right, the Bay Area has a huge South Asian population, right, and a huge immigrant population. why why is that not the case in California? Right? Why why is this huge immigrant population? Whether they come from South America, America, or they come from South Asia, India, China? Do we not have the same sort of response here for, you know, pushback against socialist tendencies and And the push for Speaker 1 (00:56:37): -- David Friedberg (00:56:37): The big the big difference -- -- entrepreneurism. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:39): The big difference in South Florida is that those immigrant communities were politically active and got really ingrained in the political process, and so they were a loud voice. You know, systemically, what happens in South Asian families is we just don't do that. It's just not a thing. And in fact, if you look inside of our countries, the the politicians are just just the absolute sketchiest, most brutal folks. And so, you know, when you have people that got, you know, double e degrees from IIT, the last thing that they're thinking is, like, I wanna run for mayor of Santa Clara. That doesn't happen. So it's just that big cultural distinction between the Chinese and South Asian populations versus the South American population. David Friedberg (00:57:20): I have Jason Calacanis (00:57:20): to say San Francisco has become truly dystopian. I went to San Francisco to see a comedy show, Hassan Manoj, who is fan of this podcast. He is an incredible show, by the way. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:29): He's fabulous. He's amazing. Jason Calacanis (00:57:31): And he did a show about MBS and him getting into it with the Kingdom and Patriot Act to show. It was one of the most powerful, like, one man shows I've seen. It's it it kinda transcends comedy. But I took Sunny, our friend Sunny, and we had a great time. But we walked through Union Square. because we wanted to get like a drink. We walked through Union Square, and it was cordoned off with cop cars at every intersection, and there's no cars in the street. And I was like, going on? Is there some police activity? Or and I was like, they're like, no. The Louis Vuitton store got knocked off. I kid you not. Every single store has had every single window boarded up like it's a hurricane season, but they all did them in pitch black. So it must have been like one vendor came and did this for every vendor. but like Zara, the Gap, Nike, every single storefront has been boarded up. And then there are security guards outside and you have to make an appointment to go Christmas shopping. And, literally, the there have road blockades of multiple cars at every intersection because these smash and grabs have become so brazen and dangerous. There were 30 or 40 people involved in that one at the Louis Vuitton store. Can you imagine you're shopping for Christmas and Speaker 1 (00:58:39): -- David Sacks (00:58:39): This is the logical -- -- people windows? This is the logical result or everything I've been warning about since the beginning of the year. You have prosecutors like Jason Boudin who have essentially decriminalized theft by refusing to prosecute it. After the Louis Vuitton looting, he comes out there and says, well, don't bring this noise from out of town. That's what he calls crime is noise, and he's trying to pretend like it's it didn't arise. in San Francisco. Like, somehow, it's come from out of town. No. You created it by refusing to prosecute these types of crimes. And then after talking tough, the first thing he did, he already released. The the police actually caught some of these looters at the of the LVMH, He has already released them on 0 bail. Exactly. The prison the jail is a revolving door. They have 0 bail And so the people who did this are already out on bail. Chase talks tough when he pro when he charges them, but the charges are never actually brought. They're paid down, thrown out. And it is dystopian. Jason Calacanis (00:59:37): And we we couldn't find a place to have a drink every single bar. We just wanted to have, like, a post, you know, comedy show drink and by the way, Hassan's a huge fan of the pod. We we talked for an hour if they show he brought us backstage. It's really, really class act. We should have on the pod at some point. Do we wanna talk about Jack leaving Twitter? David Sacks (00:59:51): Well, there's a segue here. I mean, Chamath mentioned that, you know, you have these immigrant minorities from South Asia I'd say, Indian Americans, Chinese Americans. They've been spectacularly successful in the United States. Maybe they haven't been as politically active as, say, the Cuban Americans or Argentinian Americans in Florida, but they've been incredibly successful. You had another example of that this week with Jack leaving Twitter, his replacement, is Parag Agarwal. He's an Indian American. So you now have, you know, Indian immigrants, I guess, 1st or second generation running Google with Sundar. Sasha Nadella at Microsoft, the CEO of Adobe, Shantanu Narayan. The CEOs of Mastercard, Nokia, now and IBM all Indian Americans. So there's no question that people of color can be spectacularly successful in the United States And I think those communities are Speaker 1 (01:00:45): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:45): Don't mess with the browns. Speaker 6 (01:00:48): Hold David Sacks (01:00:48): on. Those those communities those communities are so busy availing themselves. of the opportune of the abundant opportunities for success in this country that they haven't been basically involved in politics because they haven't been complaining about anything. They've just been succeeding. Jason Calacanis (01:01:02): Too busy winning. David Sacks (01:01:04): Too busy winning. Jason Calacanis (01:01:05): Yeah. I think there's a there's a viral joke. You live yeah. you're if you're a CEO in Silicon Valley, you live long enough to see yourself replaced by an Indian CEO that that trended. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:16): hallelujah. Absolutely. Jason Calacanis (01:01:18): Look. Satya and you have Satya, Sundar. There's, like, 4 or 5 other examples, but It's now just absolutely a great triumph. It's it's amazing for our society that a lot of people who are immigrants or sons of immigrants come here and run the largest, most dynamic, important companies in the world. This is an incredible win, and we have to reboot immigration in this country. I believe in this very strongly that we need to get more intelligent people here. And if you come here for your degree, we need to staple a green card your degree when you come up and pick it up on stage at Stanford or Harvard or whatever, community college, you should stay here and build companies here. We have to really open that up. That was one of the huge failings of the Trump Presidency and now going into Biden who doesn't seem to care about immigration either. Both of these people is huge fails. Both parties do not wanna bring intelligent people here. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:08): I wanna talk about Mike Bloomberg's $750,000,000 donations. Speaker 1 (01:02:12): -- Jason Calacanis (01:02:12): on. to people what happened. He's given 750 to charter schools. Am I correct? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:16): First of all, Mike's a boss. I've known him for 15 years. He has the best. He is an absolute stone cold boss. Jason Calacanis (01:02:24): Keller. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:24): Before I tell this story of what he did, you know, my was the largest donator donor to Johns Hopkins. And for years, he would donate without any fanfare, and this is something that I've actually copied from him. I've given money to my ammo matter, not anywhere near the same amount as he has. But, you know, after he passed a $1,000,000,000 of donations, he made it public and He was able to make Johns Hopkins permanently need blind. And so it's kind of like Johns Hopkins became this bastion to attract the smartest kids' period bar n1. Right? and everybody gets and everybody gets their their way paid, basically. till he announced the program $750,000,000 over the 4 or 5 years, I think to get a 150,000 kids, Jason, tell me if I got this wrong, into charter schools all around the country. And He basically just talked about how, you know, the pandemic has really let our kids down in every single way possible. and he had these quotes from the leader of the California teachers union, and it was so odious the things that she said. And the biggest quote was basically like, you can recall Gavin Newsom, and you can recall the mayor of a city, but you can't recall me. I'm just gonna do what I want. And it was it was unbelievable. It was disgusting, actually. Jason Calacanis (01:03:41): Man, I wish you had one for president. David Sacks (01:03:43): Number one issue, I Glenn Youngkin won in Virginia. was that was schools. It was the fact that you had these school lockdowns and closures. And then also -- Sure. Speaker 1 (01:03:51): -- Speaker 6 (01:03:51): it's very David Sacks (01:03:52): important happy with what's being taught in the schools. and the unions and the politicians who are beholden to them are completely arrogant about this and explicitly saying to the parents, you don't get to decide what you're -- I Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:03): do Eric and it's the right word, David. If you read these quotes in the Wall Street Journal article, it's disgusting it's disgusting the way this woman talks about our kids. It's really disgusting. And Speaker 1 (01:04:13): -- David Sacks (01:04:13): Well, it takes a rare Democrat like Bloomberg to basically stand up to them. I mean, Biden certainly doesn't because they are the number one specialist democratic party in terms of the manpower and boots in the ground and donations. You will never hear a politician like avenues some ever stand up to them because he wants to be president. He doesn't wanna basically he doesn't wanna cross any major interest in the Democratic Party. It takes an outsider like Bloomberg -- I can't Jason Calacanis (01:04:37): understand how they were able to sell effectively anti choice for parents and schools. Like, everybody in the world, Speaker 1 (01:04:44): 100% Jason Calacanis (01:04:44): of people in America know that choice and competition equals better outcomes better products. That's not up for debate. And somehow they were able to flip people's thinking that, no, no competition in schools was more equitable and that created more equity in the world. how did they do that, or how did they pull this up? Did they Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:00): just take everybody off? They didn't do that. They never gave parents a choice because parents didn't know a choice was possible. we took assistance, and we Speaker 1 (01:05:07): -- Jason Calacanis (01:05:07): That's my point. -- and we had to -- -- delude people into thinking. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:10): I'll tell you. Yeah. No. They didn't have to delude people. They just had to basically use their money to pay off a small cohort of individuals to basically back their own view. That's it. Here here's some of her quotes if you wanna read them. Number 1, there's no such thing as learning loss because Mike Mike was basically saying that, you know, these kids have stopped learning, and there's a huge learning She said there's no such thing as learning loss. She said in an interview with LA Magazine, our kids didn't lose anything. It's okay that hold on. It's okay that our babies may not have learned their times tables. They learned resilience. That's honestly, that's a crock that's a crock of horse. Jason Calacanis (01:05:49): Who is this person? And how do we get her out of office? And what what is she like? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:52): But but the money the money quote was this 1, you can recall the governor, you can recall the school board, but how are you going to recall me? That's really come on, really. Speaker 1 (01:06:02): -- Jason Calacanis (01:06:02): fate, let's go. Speaker 9 (01:06:03): Saks, do Jason Calacanis (01:06:04): you have purple pack? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:05): This is this is Cecile. Cecile my art cruise. the head of the Los Angeles teachers union. Jason Calacanis (01:06:11): Somebody start, recall sesli.org. We'll recall all of them. I think this recalling trend is brilliant. Like, if people are Absolutely not doing their job? Yes. We'll call them. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:19): She should be allowed, obviously, to be a great representative for LA school teachers and fight on their behalf. That's what unions and union leaders are supposed to do. But something tells me between that goal and how she expressed herself here something has happened and that's corrupted her go to market, if you will, that I think is really scary. Jason Calacanis (01:06:38): It's a tell. She she has an arrogance there in those quotes that's just obvious. David Sacks (01:06:43): Look. The the thing about these policies, these progressive policies is they hurt the communities that they that they pretend to be speaking for the most. And so who is hurt by learning lost the most? It's disadvantaged kids who can't afford the tutors and the private tutors The exact same thing is true of defund the police and this decarceration and de prosecution. The communities that get hit the hardest are the ones that are exposed to the most crime. They're basically the most impoverished areas. The rich people can hire private security, have high walls living gated communities. And so we're seeing over and over again. This is why Eric Adams, who basically is a pro police guy in New York City, got huge percentages of the votes, of minority communities in places like the Bronx. And Glenn Youngkin did extremely well in Virginia with minority communities. So You know, these and and they tend to be primarily white progressives, like Chase of Woodin, like Georgia at Gascuum, like Avenue White. Speaker 1 (01:07:39): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:39): jobs, man. David Sacks (01:07:39): They're they're the craziest ones. the craziest ones. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:43): They are they are so different. These are these are luxury beliefs that they that they've learned in their Speaker 1 (01:07:48): -- -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:48): virtue signaling is so just ugh. Luxury luxury beliefs. David Sacks (01:07:52): Speaking of of crazy world progressive, can we just go back to the the Twitter thing for a second? Because I think there's a little bit more to say there. about Jack Dorsey stepping down because I think there is a real fear on the part of a lot of people that Twitter now is gonna slide It's an even greater censorship like YouTube has because now you have a CEO who, you know, Parag who said last year in 2020, there's an article where he basically said that Twitter does not need to follow the principles of the first amendment content moderation policy. So here you have a company. I mean, you just look at the bookends of Jack Dorsey's reign as CEO, and it's really a sharp contrast, you had when Dick Hassel was CEO 10 years ago, he said we are the free speech wing of the free speech party And now to Parag as CEO, Dorsey's hand picked successor, Teden, 11 years later, basically saying that the first amendment does not matter They don't have to follow it when it comes to their cocktail moderation. So I think it's been a real sea change over there and how they view their mission. They used to be in favor of free speech. They used to think that what they're doing was democratizing. Now they basically are pushing this agenda of censorship. You've seen it censorship of the of really any opinion that violates the elite consensus, like on COVID, like on many of these issues. Jason Calacanis (01:09:10): It could be simpler, David. It could just be that it's just really hard to run these things at scale. And so they're all just saying, you know what? It's so hard. I don't wanna run it anymore. David Sacks (01:09:18): I don't think it's that hard. I mean so so here's the thing. So Mike Solana had a column where he's basically arguing that that Jack Dorsey was really a secret defender of the first amendment, and and the censorship would be even worse or will be once he's gone. I think there's some Speaker 1 (01:09:32): -- Jason Calacanis (01:09:32): Yeah. I agree with that. David Sacks (01:09:33): I I agree that it was Well, let me let me tell you the part I disagree with. I agree I agree things are only gonna get worse once he's gone. Jason Calacanis (01:09:40): Well, no. I know Joe. He is for Freedom of Speech. He just didn't like to have to deal with the government and all these issues. Like, I I think it just became untenable because of the scale, but he is a free speech guy. David Sacks (01:09:51): But the ones that Speaker 1 (01:09:51): -- David Friedberg (01:09:51): Same with Larry Page. Same with Larry Page. Yes. Jason Calacanis (01:09:53): this is on a personal basis. We know this. David Sacks (01:09:55): Edmond Burke had a great quote saying that all that is necessary for evil to crimes is for good men to do nothing. Jack Dorcey may be a good man, but he did nothing or very little to stop this agenda of censorship. When they came to him and said they're gonna deplatform a sitting president of the United States, all he had to say was no. No. He had the veto power, and he didn't use it. Jason Calacanis (01:10:14): Listen. He'd left I mean, I hate to get into politics here because people hate this part of the show, but he let he specifically believe that Trump should stay on the platform because he was president, and he stood up to people for 4 years who told them, get president off. Like, everybody was screaming. Trump shouldn't be on here, and he said no. He's the press. and he should be on it. That was his position, David. It was only because of January 6th that he took him off. David Friedberg (01:10:34): All these guys, Larry Larry and Sergey, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, they are all fundamentally free speech people. They they they believe in the power of the open Internet. I remember in the early days at Google, the intention and the motivation behind the mission of Google was the democratization of access to information. And by creating access to information and making all information, all points of view, all data available, they believed that democracy would flourish around the world. And that would enable these things that would allow these societies that were limited in information information to flourish and transform themselves. And I think the challenge arises when the political motivation where someone's voice that's being spoken is viewed and deemed to be harmful or viewed and deemed to be inflammatory or viewed and deemed to be too violent violence inducing. And that's where the push comes to shove and needs these kind of governance decisions that these folks end up having to make. It's not an easy position fundamentally philosophically. I think that everyone that's involved in the Internet, all technologists. They all have the same intention and motivation and point of view, but it is so freaking hard to navigate what ends up happening. Speaker 6 (01:11:46): Look at look David Friedberg (01:11:46): at look at and and the way, look at what happened to 4chan. 4chan was supposed to be this open. No one's gonna touch it. And then there were pictures of, like, people being murdered and raped and all this other sort of terrible stuff that emerged on 4chan. And then they had to and same at Reddit. Right? Remember the whole controversy around Reddit needing to clamp clamp down? And, you know, Ellen and others got a lot of heat for clamping down on the free speech, quote, unquote, of what was going on on writing. Yeah. There's, like, there's a line. Yeah. Because there's a line, and and and it's very hard your point of view on what the line should be and someone else's point of view on what the line should be is a difference of opinion. And at the end of the day, opinions are Jason Calacanis (01:12:20): gonna draw it. David, based on your guy getting banned. Let's be clear here. If your guy hasn't been banned, that's I'm sorry. That's the tip of your spear. David Sacks (01:12:27): No. I think, quite frankly, I think the fact The fact, these off Twitter, I think, is frankly great for for my team if you wanna call it that because I'll actually -- Here we go. Here comes here. No. I mean, look. David Friedberg (01:12:38): Download the call in app at App Store right now. Call in app is available on Android app. -- play it on the call Chamath Palihapitiya (01:12:43): in app. David Sacks (01:12:43): No. Let me let me respond Speaker 6 (01:12:44): to your speaker. Speaker 1 (01:12:45): -- David Friedberg (01:12:45): right it's Shamatni Rice right now. I had Chamath Palihapitiya (01:12:48): I had an incredible barley salad. Jason Calacanis (01:12:50): Okay. No no. Speaker 1 (01:12:51): -- David Friedberg (01:12:51): a little -- Let's let me know next. We'll give you your -- I David Sacks (01:12:53): wanna sponsor I wanna on to what Friedberg said. Okay? So Friedberg is exactly closing argument is this. Freeberg is exactly right about where the Internet stood 10 years ago You're right that Zuck and Paige and Dorsey all believed in the open Internet. They believed in the democratizing power of the Internet. when the green revolution happened in 2009, everybody was cheering. So what changed? I'll tell you what changed. In Speaker 1 (01:13:16): 2016, David Sacks (01:13:17): they got a candidate elected, who they didn't like, and their principles were so skin deep, basically, so superficial that they completely flipped because they got one election where there's a result they didn't like And so they turned against democracy. Look. Twitter and democracy worked in 2016. The establishment lost because it supported 2 decades a few tall wars in the Middle East, trade policy with China that hollowed out jobs, border policy, it didn't make sense. The American people sent the establishment a message in 2016. The establishment should have taken the note, okay, but they didn't. Instead, what they did is blame social media for disinformation, Russian collusion, hate speech, white supremacy, what have you. And since then, they've been on a mission to ban those things from their social networks. It is a total myth. Okay? The reason why Trump won the election 2016 is because of the issues he ran on. The establishment should have taken the note instead They've been on this wall goose chase attacking situation. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:16): Hey, Nick. Nick. Can you just edit out that last part of David's? I don't want anybody to hear it. Thank you. Speaker 6 (01:14:22): Yes. We we get to vote. Yeah. Let's vote Damon's Speaker 1 (01:14:25): -- David Sacks (01:14:26): Yeah. Speaker 1 (01:14:26): -- Jason Calacanis (01:14:26): Trumprant all Speaker 6 (01:14:27): the way up the Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:27): top of it. Take that out of it. Nick, take Jason Calacanis (01:14:29): it out. Nick, take it out. Speaker 6 (01:14:29): leave it out. No. You Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:30): didn't ever send any of that. No. David Friedberg (01:14:31): Sacks, don't you leave me the biggest winner the biggest winner here is gonna be TikTok. Because if Twitter does go forward with the standing, Yeah. If they say, look. You can't put user generated content on our platform if it has video and images of personal of of people without their content and approval. Yeah. gonna eliminate all of this democratization of access to video feeds of riots and crime and all sorts of things. This has been a real a real big boon. So, like, a TikTok's not gonna do that. TikTok's gonna end up soaking up this whole market, right, for user generated content? Jason Calacanis (01:15:01): Just so everybody knows what we're talking about, the the day after Jack left, they said there's gonna be a new safety and security again. If you feel unsafe, that's when you get that little your your antenna should go up. So if you feel unsafe, because somebody posted a picture of you, even if you were in a public space, which is completely valid, you can take a picture of anybody in a public space, that if you didn't consent and you feel unsafe, then you can have taken down. And this has led to people thinking, like, you can't take a picture at a warriors game of people in the background without getting the twenty people in the row to consent it's kinda like a backstop, I think. But it it is definitely a very bizarre position to take that people in public can't have their picture taken because that is a just canonical example of freedom of speech and you don't have a right to privacy if you're out in public. So it it kinda falls into your category, David. David Sacks (01:15:48): The policy doesn't make the doesn't even make any sense. Nobody even understands it for a poorly enrolled as the logic goes, what look. You could have set a policy of listen. If you have a non public person being harassed You can always take down basically unauthorized footage of that person. They could have been an harassment policy. Instead, they just banned all public video footage you know it's gonna be applied selectively. Here's my problem with this disinformation argument, okay, is where are the warning labels or the banning of tweets basically describing Kyle Rittenhouse as a white supremacist cross straight lines within AR Fifteen. That is not true. Okay? But that message went viral on Twitter. The Steel dossier went viral on Twitter, and yet there are no warning hold on a second. There are no warning labels to this day despite the fact that that's been completely deboned. I'm not trying to defend any specific politician in particular, Jason. I know you think this is all about Trump. It's not. It's about the double standard. Okay? These censorship principles only exist so the employees of the company can censor one side of the debate that they don't agree with. You've got to admit that there is a ton of bias and one sidedness in the way these principles are enforced. Jason Calacanis (01:16:55): I agree there's bias. I agree that these companies are 70, 80% democrat, and I agree they all have significant issues around Trump arrangement syndrome. We gotta go. Shamoff has had to leave the building. He had to go on to his next meeting for the dictator Queen of Kinois, Sultan of Science. And the Raymond David Sachs, where I'm gonna go get a Cuban sandwich with right now that we're both gonna look at and poke around and take two bites we can say Schpelt, my guy, the rainman David Sachs. We'll see you all next time. Bye bye. Speaker 6 (01:17:27): to let your winter Friedberg. Jason Calacanis (01:17:30): Rainman, David Saxon. Speaker 6 (01:17:32): And it said, Speaker 7 (01:17:35): open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. Speaker 6 (01:17:43): like, white hair when I'm trying. Besties are gone. That is funny on a David Friedberg (01:17:50): dog thinking, and I was driveway steps. Speaker 6 (01:17:55): Oh, man. I have Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:56): a casual meet the uplift. Jason Calacanis (01:17:57): We should all just get Speaker 6 (01:17:58): a room and just have one Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:59): think you, George, because their office is just it's Speaker 6 (01:18:02): like it's like sexual friendship and we just Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:03): need to release them out. What? David Friedberg (01:18:06): You're the big bee. What? David Sacks (01:18:08): Your feet. What? Speaker 6 (01:18:11): Where did you get Murphy's artifact? I'm doing all.