Facebook 大跌、罗根与 Spotify 的风波、习普会面，以及瑞安·彼得森谈供应链

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): The fact that Saxx's greatest moment in life was beating Peter Thiel in a multi game chess, you ever see that picture of Yeah. -- of him with his arms raised. They sat can't believe he beat I mean, tell us about that moment. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:13): Nick, show that picture Sachs. I mean, listen. Here's what I say. When I saw when I saw that picture, I had a couple thoughts. Number 1, I've seen this picture somewhere else. And then number 2 is, oh my god. It was on NBC's to catch a predator. Jason Calacanis (00:00:29): I mean, I have never seen Saks happier. I like the birth of his children pales in comparison to this moment. David Sacks (00:00:36): I'll tell you, that was the day of PayPal's IPO. And so we did a party in the it was like a cake party in the parking lot. That was the extent of the celebration. And Peter did a 10 game yeah. He did a 10 game simultaneous, which means he's playing as tight people. at the same time, and he goes board to board and makes his move. And I was the only one out of the 10 that beat him. And somebody I guess I could make Jason Calacanis (00:00:56): him on the left. David Sacks (00:00:56): I had put money down. I put, like, 20 bucks down or something on the game, which is a foolish thing to do against Peter because he's like a chess master And and I somehow I won, and you can see I've got the money in my hands raised up. Jason Calacanis (00:01:10): Look at the look on Peter Thiel's face. David Sacks (00:01:12): He hates losing. Jason Calacanis (00:01:13): Look at the look on p I mean, he's so angry. He and he but he sees the joy in your face, and he can't process it. David Sacks (00:01:21): And look at Max Maxes to my right and roll up the square left and there are some right. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:01:26): because -- -- your joy. David Sacks (00:01:28): Yeah. But this was a few seconds before Peter smashed all the pieces off the board. And Jason Calacanis (00:01:33): What? Yeah. He he he he flipped the board? David Sacks (00:01:35): He always does. that when he loses. And his motto is when you call him a sore loser, he says, show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser. Jason Calacanis (00:01:43): Wow. Such a great lie. But I wanna also comment on the pleats on Saks' pants and how high that waist has Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:51): And then Jason, you mentioned the cell phone holster. Yeah. The cell phone. Right? Jason Calacanis (00:01:54): -- zoom in black shirt. David Friedberg (00:01:56): Is that a black shirt? It just keeps Yeah. David Friedberg (00:01:59): It's free on David Sacks (00:02:00): the phone, guys. This is like I mean, this is, like, real nineties Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:03): the gift that keeps on giving out Jason Calacanis (00:02:05): the guy. -- to say Rolov's hair game? I mean, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:08): strong hair. Rolov's always had incredible hair. His hair is incredibly hair. To this Incredible thick. Yeah. It's still thick. Like, thick. David Sacks (00:02:15): Never never noticed. I like your winter. hide. Jason Calacanis (00:02:21): Brain man, David Sacker. We David Sacks (00:02:26): opened sent to the fans and they just got the reason Jason Calacanis (00:02:28): for it. Alright, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the All in Podcast. With us again today, the dictator, Shamoff, Palihapitiya, Rainman, David Sachs, and the Sultan of Science, formerly known as the Queen of Kinois, He's out of that business. David Friedberg. We got a lot on the agenda. However, one thing that we've had a hard time figuring out is the state of the supply chain. And it's confounding. It seems like nobody knows what the hell they're doing. But there's one guy who's been on Twitter, and we happen to know him. He's he's been on MyPod and Friedberg knows him. And his name is Ryan Peterson. And he's a bit of an expert on this. And we thought we'd have a bestie guestie come on. We don't do this too often. Maybe this is a 3rd or 4th bestie guestie. And Welcome to the pod, Ryan Peterson from Flexport. David Friedberg (00:03:28): What's up, guys? Thanks for having me on. What's up, Ryan? Ryan, did David Friedberg (00:03:31): you tell Olivia you're doing the show today? David Friedberg (00:03:33): No. I didn't tell her. So she's gonna she she's a huge fan. Jason Calacanis (00:03:36): Don't tell her. David Friedberg (00:03:37): Is she right now? Is she, like, not there? David Friedberg (00:03:40): She was in the room next door, but I totally knew that I'm doing knows under the podcast. She doesn't know which one. Jason Calacanis (00:03:44): That's fantastic. She's a super fan. She's a David Friedberg (00:03:46): very big fan. She's literally wearing the Wet Your Beak's hoodie right now. It's awful. Fantastic. Like coincidence, she doesn't know him on the show. Jason Calacanis (00:03:52): Fantastic. So what David Friedberg (00:03:53): you're not gonna tell it, right, so you're just gonna watch my next show and you're gonna be on it? David Friedberg (00:03:56): You will listen to it. Yeah. We'll probably listen to it together tonight when it comes Jason Calacanis (00:04:00): Ryan, what is the state now? Should we be worried about the supply chain? Is it getting better? Is it getting worse? What's 2022 gonna look like? David Friedberg (00:04:07): Yeah. I mean, I think the supply chain means a lot things, and it'll depend what your industry is, what's really happening. But, you know, it it goes for everything from manufacturing products, which means sourcing all the subcomponents like semiconductors through logistics and final delivery all the way to, like, customer store. And we're we're flexible on it as sort of picking goods up from activities around the world and delivering them into fulfillment centers all over the world. So kind of that global mile is what we sometimes call it. there, you're seeing real disruption. And and it starts really with the pandemic shift in consumer behavior where people started buying more goods because they couldn't go to restaurants and travel and things. And so a lot of spend shifted onto goods, and imports are up almost 20% imported container volumes. So that's the start of it all. And then what we learned is our infrastructure is dilapidated and unable to handle a 20% increase. And by infrastructure, I mean, the number of ships in the world, the capacity of throughput of the ports, the number of trucks, and availability of trucks, and chassis, which is the trailers that hold containers around. We just didn't have enough of these things or the port capacity. You know, like, look at American ports operate. This I just learned the statistic pretty recently, and I keep saying it because it appalls me. Our ports operate with a lower throughput and productivity level than Mombasa, Kenya. And, you know, we just do not have modern port infrastructure. Rotterdam's been fully automated for 20 years. So if they wanna run 247, and keep containers flowing through the port. They can do that with self driving trucks and everything. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:40): Is that a technology issue, or do you think that's a regulatory capture and union issue? like a labor issue, like a labor Jason Calacanis (00:05:46): -- David Friedberg (00:05:46): The tech is there. You know? It's existed for a long, long time. It's it's really about labor getting together with management, negotiating these things, and allowing it to happen. And the the way that our our ports are run is it's pretty crazy when you look at it. They treat labor as a fungible commodity as in the the port terminal operators will say I need this many workers tomorrow, and the union provisions that many workers. But there's different people every day doing operating complex, you know, heavy machinery, that you can't like, the number one thing in business is, like, what did we learn today, and how are we gonna do better tomorrow every day with your team? But if it's a new team every day, like, that's not even possible. So know how you can drive a productivity improvement when it's different workers every single day of the week. Jason Calacanis (00:06:31): Right. David Sacks (00:06:31): So they're not full time employees. They're like staffed by the hour. David Friedberg (00:06:34): they're union workers. They're paid by they have annual contracts. David Sacks (00:06:38): The union decide who goes to work every day and who gets shifts. David Friedberg (00:06:41): Yeah. And where? so they'll show up different terminals, and there's, like, 15 different terminals. They just kinda move around to different stalls. Jason Calacanis (00:06:47): -- essentially what we saw it on the waterfront Yeah. Where, like, the union decides you get to work today. These other people didn't, whatever. David Friedberg (00:06:53): It's, like, literally like that movie. Yeah. It's literally like that. David Friedberg (00:06:56): Even going further back in supply chains to manufacture sharing centers, how much are you hearing about and seeing kind of labor shortages? Because people are out for COVID and, hey, someone's sick. They gotta take 10 days off. And when, you know, 10% of the employees get sick and they lose 10 days of work, the facility sees a decline in productivity to know, 70, 80 percent of normal, and then, you know, all of the output of that facility goes way down. I mean, are, you know, are you hearing about more of that stuff happening, particularly during this kind of omicron wave where the real effect of that hasn't really hit the supply chain system yet, and and we're still kinda seeing a buildup of you know, of demand, and we don't you know, we haven't really kind of hit the problems. David Friedberg (00:07:40): So for the last 18 months, China had this total zero tolerance policy and and was very successful in keeping COVID out of out of their country. And so Manufacturing just kept running as if not no problem in China, which is the majority of this manufacturing. With Omnicorn, you're starting to see that it is still taking hold in a 0 tolerance policy. We haven't yet seen, like, major shutdowns and waves of shutdowns, but a little bit, you're seeing that here and there. with the zero tolerance policy has shown up, for example, at least twice where one long one port worker in a Chinese port got COVID, and they shut the whole port down for, like, 3 weeks. David Friedberg (00:08:17): Yeah. That's crazy. David Friedberg (00:08:18): It's really extreme. I mean, US workers have been getting COVID nonstop and and the ports keep operating even at you know, we have lower level of productivity, but they'll shut the whole port down. That happened both at Yan Tian, which is the largest port in China or 2nd largest and Ningbo, which is the 3rd largest. So it's it's been very, very disruptive. It's also happened at the airports over there. So that's something I'll definitely keep an eye on here over the next couple of months. It's or even next couple of weeks. Jason Calacanis (00:08:42): Are we still having this? Like, we're ordering too many goods, and we're backed up. Or is it that we're backed up for 6 months just trying to fulfill all those pandemic orders? Like, what's the state of the backlog today if you could describe it? David Friedberg (00:08:55): So volumes are high, but they're sort of flat. They're over year over year, they're flat now. They're much higher than pre pandemic, but they're pretty much flat year over year. And that's what has to be so worried here is that you have increasing delays even though the inputs the same. And we have a complex system where the same amount of inputs coming in, but the delays getting longer and longer. That's a very worrisome sign. Like, if you're ever building a com technology system, you're building this system, and you're sending the same amount of bits in and the performing the job is taking longer and longer, that should be like that it would be a very alarming sign that you're gonna wanna send some of your best engineers in here to debug But I think we're seeing that David Friedberg (00:09:32): like, because a lot of companies people don't realize, like, when they buy capital equipment like machines that, you know, are either sold to end user or machines that are used in their own production systems. Capital equipment is typically assembled last minute. It's not like you know, there are companies that own huge pieces of equipment and then they ship them and they just get plugged in and turned on. There's usually components associated with them. And, you know, in businesses I've been involved in over the last couple years, we've got a lot of lab businesses and hardware businesses. And just getting capital equipment has been, like, delays like we've never seen. It's you know, a year to a year and a half or something that used to take 4 to 6 weeks to arrive because the company that makes that equipment is having delays with their each of their component suppliers. And then all of the stuff backs up into the system, and it plays out where the end user is now stuck waiting a year, year and a half, and the business doesn't make progress. And a lot of hardware companies in Silicon Valley right now are facing these significant shortages where they can't get the equipment they need to ship product to their customers and they're sitting around burning money every month. And so the when the the result will actually show up down the road when all of a sudden they miss revenue three, four quarters down the road. And that's why I've been saying for, you know, a couple of shows now that the biggest thing I'm concerned about is when the revenue shortfall start to hit the companies that are dependent on these supply chains, you don't actually see the revenue shortfall for a couple of quarters after the supply chain problems hit them. And just this quarter with quarterly earnings, we're now seeing that the company yesterday that reported called Ingredion, their big food ingredients company. And they just reported how supply chain problems have now backed up to effect, and the stock was down, like, 10%, 11% yesterday. And this is like a very stable, very mature 3rd largest producer of starch in the United States, and their business got totally hammered. But it took a while before that hit them. David Friedberg (00:11:16): And so so, you know, it feels to me, Ryan. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. But, like, a lot of the the the business level and market level risk isn't gonna show up for a while. after these supply chain problems really persist within their organization. David Friedberg (00:11:29): This is the thing that has to be most concerned is what what's happened is it's now taking a a 115 days on average across our customer base from when the factory says, hey. These goods are ready. Come pick them up. to when they finally get delivered Jason Calacanis (00:11:44): to the David Friedberg (00:11:44): warehouse in the United States. David Friedberg (00:11:46): Crazy in Jason Calacanis (00:11:46): 15 David Friedberg (00:11:46): days. Before the pandemic, that was Jason Calacanis (00:11:48): 50. David Friedberg (00:11:49): And 50 even still high. Like, the ship is only taking 15 days. Like, what the heck is going on? Lot of inefficiency, a lot of customs processing, hard to find a truck, etcetera, even in normal times. When you go to a 115, all of a sudden these companies are so much less agile. Like, because you've placed the orders and your expat forecasting demand is so hard. And now you're forecasting demand for twice as long of a time period, you've already placed all that inventory. If your demand goes down, guess what? You've already ordered the goods. So I'm I'm really worried that we're gonna find out in 6 months or in some time period in the future here that people have ordered way too many goods that these companies expected demand to stay high and keep booming. At some point, consumers start going to restaurants and start traveling a lot more you get pre COVID consumption patterns, and all these companies get stuck with way too much inventory that they paid way too much to ship and get delivered and they can't sell it. And So I'd be very worried for, like, middle market kind of retail, direct to consumer ecom, these types of businesses that aren't very sophisticated in demand planning and end up with way too much inventory. Jason Calacanis (00:12:52): Mhmm. I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:52): think that there's been this weird dispersion actually, and I think that, like, the supply chain issues are not broadly distributed. So if you bear with me for a second, if you watch the earnings reports. I don't know how closely you you watch them running this past couple weeks. But, like, Apple and Tesla basically said, ah, it's kind of reasonably well managed. particularly on the chip side, and we see the whole thing easing q 4q1 of next year. Amazon last night basically said, yeah. There's some, you know, toughness in the system, but we think it's sort of, like, you know, reasonably achievable, and they're past it. And so it seems like the bigger companies who have influence, we're able to manage through it. These smaller companies to your point who really do rely on many actors in the supply chain have been really thrown left and right that they probably don't know where demand really is. So is that sort of the more nuanced actual the way that it's running out? David Friedberg (00:13:45): Yeah. And and and it's sort of it's very interesting to see this flip. So pre pandemic, the biggest companies paid the least for freight because they buy the most freight so they negotiate good rates. Now they're paying the most, and they're the biggest companies for a reason. They have the best businesses. they either have the best margins, the best you know, they just built something that people want at scale to be huge. Well, when times are tough and you need to spend extra to prioritize your rate to get loaded, to sign a contract, to make sure that these ship owners and air airlines honor their commitments and serve step up. it's the big companies that can afford it. And so they're not paying extra for freight, but they're getting around these problems. And freight is a really interesting market because it's pretty inelastic. Like, you're either gonna ship the thing or you're not. The whatever the price is, you're probably still shipping it. And so, like, You you I haven't ever looked at an apple at this level, but I'm sure that if you did, you'd see that it's a the the percent they spend on freight is just negligible. So if they doubled it, it would matter. David Friedberg (00:14:44): But to Chemat's point, it seems like and I I think we're seeing this a lot. The bigger companies can actually afford to integrate their supply chains. Whereas before, it didn't make sense to vertically integrate. Like, I think Walmart announced that they've spent, like, 11 or Jason Calacanis (00:14:56): $12,000,000,000 David Friedberg (00:14:57): kind of rebuilding their supply chain themselves. Apple obviously has captive facilities all the way down to the fab where they're driving the whole supply chain from fab to components All these Foxconn facilities that are operated for them are captive facilities. But the and Tesla obviously, you know, has a very deeply integrated supply chain team whereas GM probably relied on subs, who relied on subs, who relied on subs. And that's why GM delivered, like, no electric cars, but Tesla was able to keep volume up the guys that are winning are the ones that are integrating supply chains. And do you think that that kind of becomes a persistent solution here where bigger companies, their competitive advantage becomes, hey. We're gonna own our whole supply chain all the way through. We're gonna own more of the infrastructure all the way through, like Amazon's done with delivery vans. and ultimately be able to kind of, you know, have a a true competitive advantage because of this disruption that's going on right now. David Friedberg (00:15:45): Yeah. Potentially. I mean, I think my vision for Flexport is that we become that layer, and we allow small businesses, medium sized businesses to get access to world class logistics services and get them sort of almost be a union that can represent them at the table as against these bigger guys. I think it's very interesting to see a company's like, the biggest companies have gone out charter their own chips. David Friedberg (00:16:06): Totally David Friedberg (00:16:07): wild experiment to watch for my Miami sitting here with popcorn. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:16:10): You're bringing up a really important effect of all of this, which is what happens now in 6 or 9 months to your point when the consumption of hard physical assets turns towards the consumption of services, which it typically does. Right? If you revert back to the mean here, you know, people aren't gonna be buying as many Pelotons and all of that stuff because they bought them all. Right? They bought all the physical goods they need. And to your point, these companies have over over ordered all this inventory. Actually, Peloton is a perfect example because they basically shut down their entire supply chain list. At the end of this past quarter, and essentially said, our inventory turns will be more than enough to meet, you know, existing demand for the foreseeable future. That's an enormous capital problem that these companies now all of a sudden will face. Right? So, like, The next step beyond all of the supply chain issues could be and I think Saks has been talking about this a lot like a a pretty bad recession if these companies have all this inventory, and they don't know how to get working capital. David Friedberg (00:17:05): Yeah. It can be real ugly. And and the other the other factor is the price has gone crazy. So the price of shipping in container long run like, I've been in this business and been a customer of this business for 20 years, and you're you can just rule of Dom. It costs you two thousand bucks to ship a container. from China to the West Coast. During Jason Calacanis (00:17:23): 2016, David Friedberg (00:17:24): that price collapsed. So you had these boom and bust cycles of an asset market 2016, it was 550 bucks. Last year is Jason Calacanis (00:17:31): $20,000. So you David Friedberg (00:17:33): it's it's up 10 x over normal. it's up 40 x over or or more right over just a few years ago. And what what that's done is create a real barrier to entry Like, for a Dixie ecom business, you used to be able to just go to China to find some product, put you slap your label on it, and go sell it on Amazon, and you're in business, and there's, like, a huge number of people doing this. Right now, you have to come up if you wanna ship 10 containers, it used to be you needed Jason Calacanis (00:17:59): $20. $92100. David Friedberg (00:18:01): That's like that's a real barrier to entry. So, actually, I've talked to some companies in this space. We're really happy. Like, if you have an established business, you're like, great. now it's much harder for Joe Schmo to show up in China and start competing with me. So it it I was really surprised to hear that. I thought that was, like, a pretty sophisticated take. Jason Calacanis (00:18:18): At what dollar point does air freight compete with containers? because when we start hearing about chips, I was always wondering. And, again, I'm no expert. But putting a bunch of chips on a plane versus putting them in a container, given how much those chips are valued by a Tesla, whoever's putting them into, you know, a car. Isn't what was the breaking point? David Friedberg (00:18:40): But air freight price has just gone in line, and it's gone up high down as well. And and one thing to remember is that 50% of all the world's air freight flies in the belly of passenger planes, which should kinda horrify you if you're ever flying on a passenger plane from from East Asia, but to the to find a whole bunch of stuff down in that belly. And those are grounded. So the the supply of Jason Calacanis (00:18:59): -- Why are they grounded? David Friedberg (00:19:01): nobody's flying to China right now. Jason Calacanis (00:19:03): Oh, I see. So -- because that's the difference. David Friedberg (00:19:05): Now we're seeing kind of the backlog play into commodity cycles. Right, Ryan? So we're seeing, like, a lot of these commodities because of these discontinuities in these supply chains. Suddenly, commodity prices are spiking all over the place. And, I mean, do we think that that settles down, or do you think it kinda continues for you know, the foreseeable future until this all works its way out. David Friedberg (00:19:25): Yeah. I mean, I'm not the right person to ask about commodity prices. Maybe Tremata has a view on that, but I I you know, on the logistics market, I don't see it sorting itself out for the next year for the next couple of years. David Sacks (00:19:35): In fact, you've you've warned that it might get worse. Right? You've I mean, I saw on Bloomberg, you said that there could be a union strike in maybe October. What are the prospects for that? And what happens if if that takes place? David Friedberg (00:19:46): So it's on July 1st just David Sacks (00:19:47): for the David Friedberg (00:19:48): the the West Coast Union. It's called the ILWU. There that union extends from the southern border, so from Mexico all the way to Alaska, and it includes Canada. So the whole West Coast of the United States is run by this 1 union at the ports, and they their contract expires on July 1st. And in years past so the last time this happened was in 2015. This is a contract that was signed then and extended at some point. But In in Jason Calacanis (00:20:13): 2015, David Friedberg (00:20:14): it had a 3 month period where nobody could import anything onto West Coast, and some major companies missed Christmas that year. So That's July 1st. Typically, these there's kinda slowdowns in the months leading up to that, and we've already had slowdowns for a couple of years with Hundreds of ships are now waiting offshore. So, yeah, I I can't make a prediction. David Sacks (00:20:35): This is a slowdown basically in negotiating tactic by the unions. David Friedberg (00:20:38): in the past, it has been. I'm not convinced that that's what we've seen over the last year versus Jason Calacanis (00:20:42): -- David Friedberg (00:20:42): Mhmm. -- you know, they are there are legitimate problem staffing. People get COVID, etcetera. David Sacks (00:20:47): So is there a role for presidential leadership in sorting out these union issues or just sorting out the issues with the port more generally or avoiding a strike in July? David Friedberg (00:20:58): I mean, it seems to me that if Biden wants to get reelected this inflation supply chain issues are pretty top of mind and in the news and are gonna be on people's you know, you wanna be seen doing things, and I do think there are things that can be done. yeah, there's a role. And as far as union negotiations, Biden's probably pretty as equipped as any president's ever been to negotiate with a union and get them to play nice and not screw up his reelection with a with a strike. He's known as a union friendly president go sit down and do a deal with them where Trump would probably never be able to do a deal with the union because they know that they're sort of natural adversary. So there's something there there's a lot more to be done. And and I you know, I got into some arguments with people that are like, you know, that's not in the president's power to do such and such. I'm like, yeah. But He's the president of the United States to pick up the phone. Like, you can do things that aren't legally in your power just by asking for favors and other people do them. And negotiating, when unions a good idea a good example convincing to change the zoning laws in LA, So you can stack containers higher. It would be another yeah. That's not the president of the United States jurisdiction. But if he calls the mayor of LA or the city council, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:06): Can you explain that? So what what does that mean? David Friedberg (00:22:08): So in Southern California, you can't stack a container more than too high in a truckyard. by law. We we got no place to put these containers. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:17): But is that a is that a danger issue, or is that like a site issue, site lines? Like, what what David Friedberg (00:22:22): a little bit of us is I think there's some safety issues although they're stacked 6 high all over the world, so that's not that legitimate to my in my view. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:30): And in California, it's, what, 4 or something? David Friedberg (00:22:32): Too too high. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:33): It's too hot. Oh, wow. David Friedberg (00:22:35): At the truck yards at the port, you see them stack 6 high. But in the truck yards, 2 is the limit. Jason Calacanis (00:22:39): Okay. David Friedberg (00:22:40): And so it's it's a they're also an eyesore, especially in California. Containers are a sign of free enterprise, and it just the people in California can't stand to see them. Right. They really just object to the idea of capitalism in their neighborhoods like that. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:57): But there could be, like, some kind of temporary waiver that we do just to get through all of this backlog, which is to say, okay. Let's just ease all of these small little things that slow the process down just to get all these chips, you know, unloaded. Right? Yeah. off into the world where they need to be, and then we could revert back to what we are after things, you know, kind of normalize. David Friedberg (00:23:17): Yeah. So we did that. So, like, I I wrote about this this zoning wall. And what's what's happening then is if you can't stack the container 3 high, there's nowhere to put that 3rd container so you leave it on the trailer. And now you have 1 less trailer in rotation serving the port to unload. And that's that's true across Southern California right now. There are thousands of trailers with containers on them because they're not allowed to stack them. They'll get fined if they do. So I tweeted about this, and the the city of Long Beach actually responded I tweeted about it at 6 AM by 3 PM, the city of Long Beach had changed the zoning law to allow stacking up to 5 high, I believe. I'm told the fastest response by any government to citizen action, like, ever. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:56): That's incredible. You must feel great about that. David Friedberg (00:23:58): It was great. But, unfortunately, Long Beach did that LA never followed through other and there's not that many truck yards in Long Beach. A lot of them are in Los Angeles, Compton, and Mendez, etcetera. Jason Calacanis (00:24:07): So I sort -- But this David Friedberg (00:24:08): is the kind of thing. Like, yeah, Joe Biden could call these mayors and say, hey. Let's work on this. Right? Jason Calacanis (00:24:12): Yeah. But let's face it. He's super union, Joe. Right? Like, I mean, he would say the word Tesla over the years. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:18): Jason, isn't that more pro union? Because won't these won't folks be working more and getting paid more? And it's I don't think there's a reluctance to pay Right? because clearly, like, you're gonna have to put some money into the system, and where the money comes from, we can figure that out later. But the point is that there's a there should be a desire to actually get the people on the ground to be working. Jason Calacanis (00:24:36): There wasn't even a third shift shift, Ryan. Right? Like, that was another thing you were working on on top of the stacking of these containers to get, you know, more of these you know, to alleviate the problem. You were also talking about they don't even have a third some nights, but they seem to have added a third shift. Did that become permanent or not? David Friedberg (00:24:52): No. They do have a third shift, but nobody's showing up is the problem. So truck drivers don't work in the middle of the night. We're aren't open in the middle of the night. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:59): But is that a compensation issue, Ryan? Like, if we paid more, would folks show up? Like, is that just a supply demand issue that needs to Jason Calacanis (00:25:04): get sorted out? David Friedberg (00:25:05): Never underestimate incentives. I there's there's just a lot of factors, and a lot of a lot of it is it's so easy to point fingers at somebody else and blame someone in the chain. Right? Supply chain. You've got all these different people It's everybody has their own opinion. You know, we at one point, I wanted to hear what the union's opinion was. What what are they saying? Because everyone else is calling them lazy. and not working hard. What's really happening? So we I set the taco truck down to the port a couple of months ago just to because we I figured if we give them free tacos, they'll talk to us, and that works. Jason Calacanis (00:25:36): That's a game changer right there. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:25:37): That really works. So we we well, we got they they loved it. They see we're the only business ever to send tacos to the port. And then they told us all about what their viewpoint was. They viewed that the truckers are screwing up, that 50% of all the appointments a truck is supposed to come and pick up a container, they're missing their appointments. Right. And because and then and then so that's what sent me investigating. Wait. Why are they missing the appointments? That's when I learned, oh, they don't have trailers, these chassis because they're stuck under containers and can't be unlocked. So a lot of it is going here. It's the supply chain's kind of like this that metaphorical elephant in the dark room. Right? And everybody sees their own aspect of it, but you gotta synthesize all those perspectives and kinda take a systems view and see if you can get some real understanding. I'm not convinced I have it yet, by the way. I think it is more complex, and I'm I'm really beware of simple narratives. If someone even including me says, oh, this is exactly what's happening. Like, there's really a lot of complexity in all of this. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:33): Ryan, how much how much of this is sort of the the the extreme end of the other spectrum, which is basically the US exceptionalism view that says, okay. We just need to really in house more of stuff that we need so that we don't actually have to rely on some of these arcane methods of just transporting goods from, you know, from point a to point b. David Friedberg (00:26:52): In my view, that would be a shame if we I mean, we have the best companies in the world who need to be able to source raw materials, components, finished goods, anywhere on planet Earth, and we should have a modern infrastructure that makes that possible instead of being like, oh, we can't trade with the rest of the world. So we're gonna become, like, self sufficient. You know, we might as well go back to everybody being a farmer on subsistence farmer on our own land. Like, I I think we should have global infrastructure that's really great and seamless and makes it really easy. But you you're right. That might be an end result as people can't rely on these supply chains and start saying, hey. Let's manufacture at home or let's manufacturing in Latin America. let's manufacture closer to home. That to my perspective, that would be a shame. David Friedberg (00:27:32): Well, I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:33): think the I think the prod the pendulum always starts from one extreme to the other, and I think the The middle ground is probably that you need to have some heterogeneity. Right? You have to have some amount of it that is not just singularly reliant on China. It may be maybe it's to Central or Latin America. Right? Some that's domestic, but that domestic production probably has to be subsidized by something because we're never gonna be able to run as efficiently and as cost effectively as, you know, cheaper international labor. You know? Unless we invent something really, you know, incredible. So the balance is probably in the middle, but it's gonna take us a long time to kinda get there, I think. Jason Calacanis (00:28:10): I saw governor Abbott was pitching people hey. Just send your containers to Texas. We're cheaper and more central in the country. Is that true? Is that a solution? David Friedberg (00:28:20): It takes much longer, costs much more. When if the union goes on strike on the West Coast, it'll be one of your only options bringing stuff through the canal. What you'll very quickly see is that the canal is gonna back up can't move that many more ships through the canal that are currently going to the West Coast. So a lot and you've seen that a lot where the bottleneck just moves for a while, last summer, the for example, the trains that were going into Chicago, they were really having a hard time staffing the railroads out there. and it was taking them a long time to unload containers at the at the port at the terminals inland in Chicago. And drivers a lot of the truck drivers our owner operator. So these are entrepreneurs who own their own truck, work for themselves, and they were able pre pandemic to do three loads per day at the Chicago railheads, go drop it off, come back at another one three times. With the delays and the traffic jams that resulted, they were only able to do one a day. And so you opt out because you can go drive for UPS or FedEx or take your truck and do something else. So we had this huge reduction in drivers And that's the kind of a feedback loop that we should all be really mindful of here where a problem begets more problems, and you get these positive feedback loops in the system. that really vicious cycles. And so, you know, bottlenecks move, and you'll see as soon as they if everybody started to ship to Houston, guess what? Houston port won't be able to handle the volumes either. it's not like it's magically better just because it's a Republican state or something. Jason Calacanis (00:29:48): Do we need more ports, or do we just need to run them more efficiently? And then who determines who runs the port? because I know that they I've seen some tweets of yours where they license the government, I guess, own supports, but they license it to people to have the franchise there? More ports, better run ports, and then what's the business model of ports? David Friedberg (00:30:08): I'd say better on ports as the answer. I don't think we need more ports. You can't really create ports out of thin air. Like, there there's only a handful of geographic locations that actually make sense for a port And we have we have great geography like the San Francisco Bay. Like, it's probably the best natural harbor in the world or one of them. and the Oakland port's perfectly fine. It it's who owns it is? The city of Oakland or the city of log Longbase is city of LA. So the local cities own the ports in the United States. That is a difference between United States and Europe, for example, where there's sort of national strategic assets. They're still government owned, but can be operated as a sort of public good for everybody instead of what what are the odds given what's going on in Oakland that that's the big priority of the mayor of Oakland to, like, run a better port. Like, she's got a lot of other things on her on her list. And so that's one problem with our system. And then 2nd, they do rent it. So the the government owns it and then rents it to a private company that operates it. And then but those as a condition of renting the port, you must agree to hire the ILWU. You see, you can't run a nonunion port in the United States. Jason Calacanis (00:31:12): Should the government by the federal government buy the port from Oakland, buy the port from Long Beach offer them some, you know, $1,000,000,000,000 of dollars and buy it out from them? David Friedberg (00:31:21): It's not a terrible idea. I mean, as long as you're forcing everyone to use Union Labor, it's not really like a private sector endeavor. it's like you can't especially with the way that the unions run, so you can't do that much. But, like, here here's an example where technology Flexboard already made this technology. We could 10 x the throughput at one of these ports overnight, which is today a truck driver shows up looking for a specific container. He's like, I got this container number, so they have to make an appointment at that hour. And as I said, they're missing 50% of their appointments. Well, on the back end inside the port, they gotta go find that container. in this in the needle in the haystack and make sure it's at the front during that 1 hour when the guy shows up for it. And you could we already have this tech to make it what we call a free flow stack where you just have this the truck pulls up and you give them the first the first container off the line, and then the mobile app tells them more to take it. and he doesn't have to come for a specific container. And if you did that, you'd just be every 30 seconds coming out of here instead of every 10, 15 minutes. You'd easily text the throughput. And this is we already have this tag. So it's a matter of implementation, deployment, and how do you get around A lot of people that don't really wanna see better running ports, and it's it's pretty sad to sit where I sit. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:33): They don't benefit from better running ports. Although that's the good point, John. The although at the back end, they they suffer from higher prices and inefficiency in not getting the things they want on time. David Sacks (00:32:42): Well, if if you listen to Elon talk about unions and why Tesla is not a union shop, it's got nothing to do with wages. You know, he said, we'll pay you the union rate or better And it's not about mistreatment because he said, listen. If someone mistreats you, we're gonna have a no asshole's rule and we'll get rid of them. The issue is in flexibility. Right? He wants to drive continuous process improvement at Tesla, and he can't do that with a union shop because every change has been negotiated. And then if there is a worker who's not living up to the performance bar, you can't get rid of them. And they can't repurpose workers and have them work a different line. So that's why Elon has always resisted being a union shop, not the wages, not mistreatment, purely in flexibility. And it seems like that's what you're seeing in in the ports as well is we can't drive changes and improvements because everything's so highly contractually negotiated. That's my editorial comment, Ryan. What do you think about that? David Friedberg (00:33:36): No. No. I mean, it's it's kind of it's more studying a little history here is that like, you know, we went through the container revolution in the sixties seventies, and the union agreed to it. And they that dramatically transformed the waterfront. And these guys, like, you see photographs from that era. They would put it on their back, like, burlap sacks full of stuff, like hauling it on and off these these ships, and it kinda load them by hand. It was a real art, and it was a massive employment driver. And we and by the way, we've still barely recovered from this. Like, the West Side Highway in New York finally, like, a nice park. But it sat there for 50 years, like, dilapidated piers and ugly ass buildings, and some of those are still there. San Francisco waterfront still mostly like that south of the Bay Bridge. It's still like these old dilapidated buildings. So it's kinda funny to see how long it takes. Like, that infrastructure to change. But there there was and and I don't know. I'm not like the world's expert on this history, but somehow they convinced the union to adopt containerization, which is about is far more radical than anything we would be proposing now in how you would change their workflow or change their work. Like, that was complete change where it's really these giant automated or these giant cranes that replace the the worker. David Sacks (00:34:45): Couldn't Biden deploy his commerce secretary or I mean, isn't there some cabinet official he could deputize, say, go solve this problem. Go bring the parties together. David Friedberg (00:34:53): Yeah. And I think and I suspect that'll happen over the coming months because July 1st is pretty bad timing for a midterm election if they were to go on strike. And Jason Calacanis (00:35:01): -- David Friedberg (00:35:02): Right. -- I think he's got a lot of incentive to to make sure that doesn't -- He David Sacks (00:35:04): does have the incentive. It just seems like I mean, you've been tweeting about this for months that nobody's paying attention in the administration. I mean, we've we've all been reading your tweet storm saying, like, someone in Washington really should be paying attention to these ideas. Jason Calacanis (00:35:16): -- over 2 administrations now. Right, Ryan? Both administrations have been out to lunch on this. They didn't -- -- focus on it. David Friedberg (00:35:23): union is a really big issue. That's gonna come up this summer. There's I it might be an even bigger issue that I've that's got even less attention, which is on January 1st next year, January 1 2023, which is tomorrow in shipping terms, that all the ships in the world will have to reduce their carbon emissions by Jason Calacanis (00:35:39): 13% David Friedberg (00:35:41): And these are internal combustion engine. Not right, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:45): Ryan. Ryan, hold on a second. Wait. Just a explain what that means by who's mandating that and how is that enforceable and why does that have to Jason Calacanis (00:35:53): -- David Friedberg (00:35:53): It's a it's a the international maritime we're gonna it's part of the United Nations, and it's the group that is overseeing global ocean freight. It's the regulatory body for ocean freight in the world. And it's a United Nations group. So any member state of the United Nations must follow the rules of the IMO, and they've all said they will. And so the IMO has said all existing in the world must reduce their carbon emissions by 13%. And, again, it's an internal combustion engine. We don't know how to make it 13% more carbon efficient or we done that already. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:20): Can you actually buy indirect offsets? Like, can you go and buy some Amazonian rainforest credits and offset the Jason Calacanis (00:36:26): -- No. David Friedberg (00:36:26): You can't offset it. And it's not about the fleet either. So some of these fleets have LNG, liquid, natural gas. So the fleet might be more efficient, but it's not it's down to the individual ship. It has to So there is one way to reduce the emissions of a ship, and that's to go slower. And if you go 30% slower, then you can achieve a 13% reduction in and carbon emissions. Well, if you look at it on a per container basis, by the way, it's the same amount of carbon emitted because the ship is still carrying the same number containers just going slower. But if we reduce the supply of shipping capacity and slow everything down another 30%, that that takes place January 1 2023. it's getting very little attention, but to my view, it's gonna be massively disruptive if we slow everything down, reduce the capacity of the network that much further prices are gonna go to the moon. And it's it's like really asinine law because it doesn't actually achieve any carbon reduction. Jason Calacanis (00:37:18): The fuel type correct me if I'm wrong. Is this, like, MGO, MDO? Like, it's dirtier fuel. Is that correct? So -- It's using containers? David Friedberg (00:37:25): same group IMO actually passed a new launch at January 1 2020, and it got totally it was supposed to be a huge deal in our industry and then COVID hit, and we all kinda ignored it, but that would eliminate the worst kinds of fuel, sulfur. Used to be you could have this bunker fuel that was up to 3% sulfur. she led to crazy amounts of sulfuric acid, which is, like, apparently, like, fifteen times worse than carbon as a greenhouse gas. So that was eliminated. And now it's still kinda ugly bunker fuel, but it's not like it used to be. The reputation is probably still carried over from from pre Jason Calacanis (00:37:58): 2020. Got it. If you could wave your magic as we wrap up here and change 2 or 3 things back to you seem like layouts. And I think you've kinda hinted at them. In order, what would be the changes just based on your intuition and your knowledge of the supply chain? What two or three things are the layups we gotta do right now? David Friedberg (00:38:15): I think, first off, it's it's gotta start with some with metrics like what what if if you care about something, measure it. The metric that the government's been using for ocean freight delays has been how many ships are waiting offshore at the port of Long Beach. And this is, like, one of the most mischievous I I don't know if it was just, like, outright fraud or incompetence, but one of the worst things I've seen from a government in terms of PR is they they passed this rule that ships have to wait a 150 miles offshore so that the carb so that the pollute shouldn't hit LA. Like, reasonable. Good. But then they kept using the same metric for how many ships are waiting right outside the port. And and and it went way down, and they started celebrating that success. So, like, let's actually use the right method, which is how long is it taking cargo to transport? You can't just hide the ships and celebrate that there's no ships there. So if we if we get the government Jason Calacanis (00:39:06): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:06): You're saying that the government pushed the ships beyond the measurement window and then said they don't exist? David Friedberg (00:39:11): Yes. Basically. And the transportation secretary and the Port of LA director got up there. This government Jason Calacanis (00:39:16): official is a little bit. When I went to an XL sweater to hide my gut, and I was like, I'm thin. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:39:22): But not that Jason Calacanis (00:39:22): -- Better to look at the scale. David Friedberg (00:39:24): So if if we at least get them focused on the right metric, which I think we have the best metric right now, we call it the Flexport Ocean timeliness indicator. It's how long is it taking the cargo to from when the factory says it's ready to when it can be delivered. Now any solution that we create, we have a metric. we know. Okay. There's a KPI here. Jason Calacanis (00:39:41): Dory door? David Friedberg (00:39:42): Yeah. Dory door. David Sacks (00:39:43): You mentioned the transportation secretary was part of that press conference where they're taking credit for changing the metrics. So I assume that's Buttigieg who's in charge of dispersing the $1,200,000,000,000 infrastructure bill. Is there any money in the infrastructure bill to solve this problem? David Friedberg (00:39:57): There's there's Jason Calacanis (00:39:58): $17,000,000,000 David Friedberg (00:39:59): allocated to ports. I went and read it, and I couldn't find any money that was gonna be spent on building ports. It was, like, studying Jason Calacanis (00:40:08): -- -- David Sacks (00:40:08): crazy thing. We just had this $1,000,000,000,000 infrastructure bill that's supposed to modernize and update the infrastructure of the country, and it's doing nothing to solve the most pressing supply chain issue in the country, which the bottleneck at the ports, which is driving inflation, which is causing interest rate increases and wrecking the economy. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:24): There's a term in in Washington, which is called a Christmas tree bill. And the infrastructure bill is an example of that, which is this is not a directed shot on goal. What this is is a random, you know, tree that you go and hang little things on top of. And eventually, the whole thing is covered, so it kind of looks beautiful from afar. But when you get really close to it, it's a little bit chaotic and you don't understand what's going on. And so to your point, the fact that Ryan can say there's $17,000,000,000 allocated to something ports, but it's unclear to him who's an expert in this space where that money goes and how it's spent gives us zero chance of figuring this out. David Friedberg (00:41:00): Yeah. I mean, it was like it's like things like, oh, each state must create our supply chain readiness report about it's like, What? What are you talking about? Like, Singapore put Jason Calacanis (00:41:10): $20,000,000,000 David Friedberg (00:41:12): to build a badass automated port. like, that's like a reasonable thing to do. Like, let's spend $20,000,000,000 make the most automated, amazing port in the world That'd be a good use of government money, but, like, to then create studies and consultants. I don't know that any of it's gonna hit the ground and shovel -- Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:28): So you're saying you're saying that $17,000,000,000 that goes to studies and consultants could actually get redirected and we could pick a port where there's an amenable city and actually completely modernize it to set the example of what modern shipping should look like in the United States that at a minimum matches what's happening in the rest of the world. David Friedberg (00:41:46): Yeah. I think that'd be pretty awesome and doesn't seem to me like science fiction. government wants to build a port, who's gonna stop the government Jason Calacanis (00:41:51): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:52): That seems too too logical and too obvious, Ryan. Well, I mean, it has something else. Jason Calacanis (00:41:55): -- courts compete for who gets to get 20,000,000,000 to be the modernized port. Like -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:59): Well, if you put to your point, Jason, put to put the mayors in competition and see which mayor wants us in their backyard. Jason Calacanis (00:42:05): Does Greg Abbott want it? Does Long Beach want it? Does Oakland want it? Who wants to fight to be the most modern sport? That should be -- David Sacks (00:42:11): DeSantis wants it. I'll tell you that. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:13): DeSan Miami. Yeah. Exactly. I'm sure DeSantis Jason Calacanis (00:42:15): and Greg Abbott wanted. I don't know if that California's too incredible ports wanted. And those are the 2 that are closest to China, by the way. Spoiler alert. David Friedberg (00:42:23): You guys remember when Google Fiber ran that competition, and they got, like, mayor of Pittsburgh to swim in, like, a frozen lake, and it was awesome. Yeah. Government. Yeah. Please. bring us stop. See, I think I I I don't have a lot of faith. Even if that came around, it would take 5, 6 years. Right? Even if it was done right, you don't get a port Right? There are some very simple solutions like this changing the zoning law, adopting technology to go with a free flow out of the port, put some metrics in here, like, have someone focus on this. A key part of problem solving is make sure the problem doesn't get worse. So let's assign someone to go work with the union and the and the and the company terminal operators make sure that they don't go on strike, make sure and then someone needs to go look at this IMO UN thing and figure out if the United States is really gonna go through with that because it's pretty crazy. Jason Calacanis (00:43:09): Well, listen, Ryan. You've been incredibly generous with your incredible knowledge. David Friedberg (00:43:12): And -- Incredible. Jason Calacanis (00:43:13): -- your leadership watching you as, you know, as a CEO and a leader, go out they're on a boat and go visit and buy the freaking tacos and actually boots on the ground figure this out. Like, the country owes you a debt, the world owes you a to to really keep this, you know, problem down to 1st principles and figure it out. And our government should be taking notes. And, really, the other leaders who are importing whether it's Apple or Tesla you know, it'd be great for all of them to be supporting you. I don't know if they've reached out, but maybe the you know, a half dozen of you can then sit with this administration and the next one and just tell them where to point the money cannon because it doesn't seem like they know where to point it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:50): We have a lot of people in Washington that listen to this pod. Please -- Yes. Just reach out to Ryan and Jason Calacanis (00:43:55): -- Just reach out to Ryan and have lunch. Please just sit there and -- Please just -- -- tacos for these -- David Friedberg (00:44:01): Port -- Ready? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:01): Ready? -- buy you let Ryan buy you a taco, guys. Jason Calacanis (00:44:04): Ryan, bring your taco truck to Washington. David Sacks (00:44:06): One of the big common denominators of of both business and politics is that leaders have to focus on the right problems. And when they're not focusing the right problems, like bad things happen. And, you know, we know that inflation is a huge problem. The Fed now is raising rates or projecting raising rates very quickly, which is creating it was created a huge market downturn. It's a very blunt instrument. It could cause a downturn or recession. So that's the big problem, and yet there are specific solutions and fixes to the inflation problem by updating or modernizing the ports. that Ryan suggested. But who's focusing on it? And now -- And they'd be more strategic. Jason Calacanis (00:44:40): Right, Saxx? There'd be a more strategic sniper shot as opposed to this blunt instrument like that. David Sacks (00:44:45): Exactly. So You know, and and so what what have they been focusing in Washington on? Definitely not this. You know? Absolutely. And then I see Ryan Post suggestions on Twitter, and then when all these people come in, they're all, like, fatalistic. Oh, well, the president can't do anything. You know? Jason Calacanis (00:45:00): First, the president can. Emergency war a time afterwards. -- David Sacks (00:45:03): a time presidential leadership, this would be it. What I worry about is that if you're the union leader and you know that you've got Biden in the White House who's always gonna take their side, Why wouldn't you make your demands more unreasonable? Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:45:14): They should be asking for triple time to keep it open overnight. David Sacks (00:45:16): Why wouldn't they? Do you really if you're the u leader of that union, do you really believe that Biden gonna break your strike? No way. Jason Calacanis (00:45:23): No way. Ask for quadruple time. Yeah. Just make it painful. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:27): You should make the most of the crisis. egregious ask possible. I mean, this is your max leverage right now. David Sacks (00:45:33): Max leverage. Jason Calacanis (00:45:33): Max leverage is right now. Yeah. This is your time. Alright, man. Listen, Ryan. Thanks a lot. Great. Thanks. He gets the appearance. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:40): Brian Thanks. David Friedberg (00:45:40): It's my pleasure. I'm a big fan of the show. So being at the best he gets the means Jason Calacanis (00:45:43): a lot David Friedberg (00:45:44): to me, so thanks, yes. Jason Calacanis (00:45:44): Yeah. And we'll continue the discussion, perhaps, at the all in summit in May. Exactly. CMIM. Facebook stock has dropped over 25% after reporting negative user growth for the first time and not only $10,000,000,000 or maybe even $12,000,000,000 lost a year on their AR, VR, headsets, and project but also a $10,000,000,000 decrease in projected 2022 revenue thanks to Apple's privacy features guess we gotta go to you first pretty much. David Sacks (00:46:15): PayPal dropped 25% too. Jason Calacanis (00:46:17): Yeah. We have to pay we'll we'll we'll and then Snapchat had a whipsaw back and forth. But, Chamath, when you see this, you call this with your spread trade. Maybe you could walk us through what you saw, you know, whatever it was 3, 4, 5 months ago. And then what you're seeing now. And at this level, with $250,000,000,000 wiped off the market cap, what do you what do you think about the future? of this as a trade and as a company. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:39): Well, I think the trade did what it was supposed to do, which is in a period of a lot of volatility, I saw an opportunity to You know, just reduce my risk exposure. Look. I'm generally long, very risky assets. Right? I mean, what all of us are in the business of building companies that have huge volatility because all of our companies generate earnings very far in the future. And so, you know, in November of last year, I was trying to figure out what I could do to shield myself. And the reason I wanted to shield myself was because I saw Elon and Jeff in part selling, but also I saw that clearly we were gonna go through a period where that high growth tech was gonna trade down. So I sold some of that high growth tech, but then I also wanted to figure out a way where I could be less exposed to some of that volatility by continuing to hold what I had. And the best way that I figured out how to do that was to do this spreadsheet. And so You know, what I saw at the time was that there is one business above all others that I think is immune amongst Big Tech from any sort of real long term issues, and that's Microsoft. And I think David expressed the reason well is that it's an enterprise business now. You know? politicians generally don't tend to care about enterprise businesses. They have enormous longitudinal growth in front of them, and they're able to do things on the margins specifically around m and a to keep building their business with very little oversight And we saw this because they had the courage to do this Activision deal, you know, just a few weeks ago. If you could imagine, again, no other company in big tech could even dare try to do a $70,000,000,000 acquisition because of the scrutiny. Jason Calacanis (00:48:23): In this time, it it was a bold move. Yes. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:25): Yeah. think it's not a bold move. I actually think it says the obvious, which is Microsoft is beyond the level of regulatory scrutiny that the rest of Big Tech actually has because they consumer businesses. The 2nd safest company is Google, and the reason is that Google has the best of both worlds. They're both a platform because of Android, But then where they are at risk of being an app, they have an incredible deal with Apple that blunts that effect. And so when Apple talks about all their push to privacy, you still have this very specific relationship and Facebook called it out in their earnings release, they said we believe that Google has preferential treatment relative to the rest of the Internet in that Apple deal because they pay Apple $15,000,000,000 or Jason Calacanis (00:49:11): $20,000,000,000 a year. And for people who don't know, that's for search. The default search on your iPhone goes to Google. Google pays $15,000,000,000 to Apple and the accusation explain the accusation there of why that would give them preferential in case people don't collect stocks. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:26): somebody 15 or $20,000,000,000 a year, they're likely to do bad things to you. They may do bad things to other people, but they're not gonna do as many bad things to you. Jason Calacanis (00:49:33): Did you believe that? Yeah. That allegation from Zachia Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:36): Well, no. I don't believe the allegation, but I think that general character that general thing is true. Like, you're not gonna screw over your partners. You're gonna over other people before you screw over your partners. Got it. Whether this applies here, it'll have to be borne out in some kind of lawsuit or state AGs or blah blah blah. But, anyways, the I think the point is that every other company has a lot more headwinds than Microsoft and Google and Big Tech And then the third thing is was a market observation from Gavin Baker, which I thought was incredibly brilliant. And what he said was when you see a drawdown, meaning when the markets go down, it'll affect high growth tech first. It ended up touching a bunch of other areas second. like biotech. But he said this key thing, which is big tech will be the last to crack, but when they do, they are gonna get shot. And so I spent a bunch of time just trying to figure out when Big Tech gets cracked, who's gonna get cracked the hardest? And I just kind of wanted to create a spread between those who were the most inoculated to those that were the most at risk. As it turned out, Netflix puked it up, Facebook puked it up, Amazon actually got really crushed even though this past day, they had a pretty decent rally because of their earnings, but they really got crushed So in in any event, the trade is what the trade is. The bigger thing is what is going on at Facebook? And I think what you see are 3 really important headwinds at Facebook called out explicitly. One is that when they talked about usage kind of flattening and starting to decay, What they're really talking about is TikTok. And I think what we learned is that TikTok is an enormous threat and a huge competitive force now in the consumer social app ecosystem. The second is that Facebook is fundamentally an app that sits inside of an ecosystem that is subject to the rules of the platform owner, and that's Apple and Google. And so this IDFA change, so the change in how you can track advertisers Facebook side is gonna have a $10,000,000,000 impact in 2022. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:43): And then the third thing which was more implicit Is in order for them to grow, if you can't grow organically, the only other way to grow is inorganically, and unfortunately, as we're seeing, the regulatory focus on this company is really enormous. And so it was a, you know, it was a pretty watershed moment in, I think, that company's discussion of their future. And and Mark actually kind of said that as much in the in the press in the Jason Calacanis (00:52:09): -- Sacks, you look at this business. You made a a interesting observation. Facebook rebranding itself as Meta before Meta exists, it may be looked at as another sort of sign that maybe they got a little tilted, maybe? What we should take on the sort of changing the name of the company before that business really is that scale or exists? David Sacks (00:52:31): Yeah. I mean, it's a bubble move. Because, look, when you're in an up mark and the market is super frothy. We had in hindsight, last year was a giant asset bubble funded by all this liquidity coming out of the fed and the federal government. So, yeah, in a bubble like that, all investors care about is the growth story. And so Facebook went all in on the story around metaverse. But in the cold light of day, you know, once the once the punch bowl's been taken yeah. Once the punch bowl's been taken away, you're in the hangover and you're in sort of a very volatile -- The Jason Calacanis (00:53:05): DJ packed it in. David Sacks (00:53:06): Yeah. Bear market. Investors go, wait a second. You know, this VR division is losing 10,000,000,000 a year. Jason Calacanis (00:53:12): It might even be 12, by the way, because they said it was a little higher. So -- David Sacks (00:53:16): They lost 6,000,000,000 last year. They lost 10,000,000,000 this year. So the losses are escalating. And so in that kind of market, investors are like, wait a second. Do I do I wanna invest in a company that whose future is that unclear? I mean, if you look at this at this market, we've seen that the growth stocks are down 60 today is an update. Yesterday was a horrible day. So they're bouncing around 60, 70% down off the highs in early November. Okay? But the fangs are only down like 14% or something like that. Jason Calacanis (00:53:48): Right. David Sacks (00:53:48): But Facebook basically took themselves out of the the sort of the the market leader bucket and put themselves in the growth bucket By the way you say -- They Jason Calacanis (00:53:56): treat us like Peloton. We're speculative. David Sacks (00:53:58): Why would why would they wanna do that? You know? David Friedberg (00:54:00): It's a Jason Calacanis (00:54:00): terrible strategic decision you're saying. David Sacks (00:54:02): Well, it was a it was a decision it was a kind of decision where you look back with 2020 hindsight and you say, look. That kind of decision could only be made in a bubbly Jason Calacanis (00:54:10): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:10): Got it. Jason Calacanis (00:54:10): -- David Sacks (00:54:11): frothy market. You would never make that decision. in the kind of down market you have today, and other decisions look stupid as well. So PayPal was just down 25%. Okay? Jason Calacanis (00:54:21): Why was it down? Yeah. David Sacks (00:54:22): Well, they just Jason Calacanis (00:54:23): Well, no growth in users? David Sacks (00:54:24): It was mostly on the forecast. And, yeah, they're they revised their forecast down considerably, and, of course, they tried to blame it. on the economy, but other companies, you know, Amazon just had a huge beat relative to expectations. Yeah. They're up 15% today. So not everybody is blaming the macroeconomic picture the way that PayPal did. Any event. My point is you go back 6 months ago, And, you know, what was PayPal doing? I wrote a story for Barry Weiss for her substack about how PayPal is taking the lead in financial d platforming. They were working with the ADL and the SPLC to kick to just to identify groups to kick off their platform. So that's what management was spending their cycles on, figuring out how not to grow, how to kick people off their platform and trying to figure out Jason Calacanis (00:55:10): how to David Sacks (00:55:10): get more people on it. Jason Calacanis (00:55:11): Sounds familiar. Who else is trying to get kids a good platform? David Sacks (00:55:14): It's the kind of thing you do when you're in a frothy market and your stock is up and you're seeing a triumphant You can waste your management cycles on stuff like that. Now their stock is down Jason Calacanis (00:55:23): 25%. David Sacks (00:55:25): You have to wonder, gee, do do we wish we had spent our time on other things? Jason Calacanis (00:55:28): Okay. So, Friedberg, I have a question for you about the future. Obviously, Facebook has bet the farm on Meta. They're betting on VR, and I guess, eventually, AR or what collectively is called XR. And then we have news that Apple has a seemingly brilliant goggles product coming out. Developers are getting into it, and they are the masters of hardware. So now Zuckerberg has decided he will be on a collision course with the company that just took $10,000,000,000 in revenue from them by doing the non tracking, and that is the masters of hardware. So we have this collision course coming and then just 2 weeks ago, Google said, hey. By the way, remember that Google Glass thing, we're not giving up on VR either. And, of course, Microsoft, we all know, has their hololens. when we look at that 4 horse race, if you were to bet and rank who's gonna win, Apple, goggles, Google Glass, whatever they're gonna call the new thing, hololens and Metas Oculus, who's gonna win? And what do how do you look at that competition between the big four? David Friedberg (00:56:33): I don't know if that's a race you wanna be in. So -- I like that answer. Race to nowhere. Have you guys used the Oculus Quest device? Jason Calacanis (00:56:42): Absolutely. I have 2 of them. Try Oman. David Friedberg (00:56:44): Have you played the games where you, like, move continuously through space? And, like, when you do that, David Friedberg (00:56:50): It's like you're gonna throw up. You're gonna throw up. David Friedberg (00:56:52): Like, I mean, I'm not sure that this notion that that becomes the new computing modality is like a fair and true notion. And so, you know, there may it it may end up becoming kind of a a niche entertainment device almost like an Nintendo switch where there's you know, a a mode when you're using it, but I'm not sure it replaces traditional static, 2 dimensional computing in front of you. The jury's still out. I don't see, like, a computer sentiment that says these things will ultimately kind of prevail over the current mode. So, you know, who's gonna -- -- does work, Jason Calacanis (00:57:25): who would win in your mind? Who's got the best chance for it? Let's assume We're all gonna use it every day for 2 hours at our desktop. We're gonna put it on. We're gonna find workout apps to use, whatever. It's gonna become Let's let's assume. You know? That is -- Well, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:39): I think you just answered your own question. In in in all of these things, when you build hardware, I think you take a lot of parallels from what happened in the PC space. If you have commoditized PC manufacturers, Compaq, Dell, IBM, right, their innumerable number, thousands of companies have made PCs, the value created to the application layer, to the operating system. And the people that can actually build ecosystems are typically the ones that win, and the people that already have an ecosystem, and all all they have to do is port somebody from you know, platform a to platform b has a meaningful advantage over somebody that has to convince you to come to a new platform altogether. And so, you know, if you're a Microsoft and you have 1000 or 100 of 1000 of developers or if you're Google and you have 100 of 1000 of developers or if you Apple and you have millions of developers, it's just a smaller bridged across in order to convince them to now go for one extra endpoint. David Friedberg (00:58:36): I owe US versus Android, Jason Calacanis (00:58:38): you know -- Versus Microsoft. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:40): And by the way -- It seems David Friedberg (00:58:41): like the obvious transition where it's like Facebook is like, You gotta go build all this stuff. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:46): And Apple made an incredibly important set of decisions a few years ago, which I didn't think a lot of people talked about, but They had an OS tree that was branching far too widely. Right? They had a different operating system for the phones. They had a different operating system for iPads -- Desktop. Jason Calacanis (00:59:05): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:06): desktop for watches, and they've started to try to converge and chewhorn these things into into a set of basic primitives so that it's more controllable. And I suspect the reason is because that gives them more optionality to go into a car, to go into a headset, without having to do an entire developer rebuild. Jason Calacanis (00:59:23): Even better than that, Chamath. It's a great point you bring up because they also started investing in their own chipset. And I think All of that chipset innovation gives them a dramatic advantage in having smaller batteries and more processing power in a headset if it does work, which what chips does, what chip asset does Facebook have. None. So -- I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:43): don't wanna I don't think we should say that Facebook is down or no, but let's just qualify what we think can win. So that's one thing. The other thing to remember is when you look at the PC industry, how did Intel become so dominant? Part of what Intel was able to do to outcompete AMD and everybody else was that program called Intel Inside, which is effectively these co marketing pass through dollars that they would use to actually give an incentive for Dell and for Compaq and for all these other folks to basically build the spec. And that was the Win Tell monopoly. Right? Microsoft and Intel. If you play that out in VR, what you really need is just a bag full of cash because if you give developers a subsidized incentive to build for your platform, they'll do it, so then Again, if you rank the companies, you just need to look at how much cash do they have because those with the most cash have so, again, I think the best way to think about this How many developers do you have today? How much cash do you have today? How much cash will you have in the future? And you can probably rank and just do a reasonable expected value think about who has the best chance of winning, assuming the platform is roughly equal. Now if the if the if the if the company on that list with the fewest developers and the least money has a superior device if that device is superior enough they can overcome those things. Jason Calacanis (01:01:00): Right. And Facebook has the least money and Facebook has the least Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:03): if you have rough parody, I think the person with the most money and the most developers. Jason Calacanis (01:01:08): I like that framework. Saks, Facebook has the least developers. They have no relationship with developers. In fact, they kinda screwed them over. with Facebook Connect a couple times. They have the least money, but they do have the largest user base of profiles. So does that give them some advantage here? And how would you rank? Who's gonna win? Who's gonna lose? David Sacks (01:01:27): Well, I think it gives them an advantage in to to Moss framework of porting over their app on to whatever the, you know, dominant platform is gonna be. But probably, it's the operating system players who are probably gonna be able to extend their operating system into this new, you know, VR AR world probably. Mhmm. What I wonder about is with Facebook have been better off, if they were gonna run a Jason Calacanis (01:01:48): $10,000,000,000 David Sacks (01:01:49): a year money losing division that's highly speculative, would they have been better off gambling that on building their own phone or maybe their own, like, forked version of an Android phone? with the and and the the reason why I say that is -- The Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:02): project that I started. I was about to say some more about that. David Sacks (01:02:05): Yeah. We've now seen we've now seen Jason Calacanis (01:02:07): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:07): Let's I'd redig that. David Sacks (01:02:08): Well, they're losing they're losing 10,000,000,000 a year now because of this one permissions change that Apple has made. Right? Because they're completely dependent. on Apple's operating system for a big portion of their revenue. So what is their defense against that? I mean, they're really pretty helpless. If you look just to make a comparison, if you look at the strategic brilliance of Google. What was it? First of all, after they came up with this CashCall, the idea of search, and then they combined it with the sort of keyword auction they got from Overture, they said that, listen, the next strategic move is we can't let anybody disintermediate us. So what did they do? They started moving upstream. The first the first sort of upstream player was the portal. Right? So they start competing against Yahoo. They gave away Gmail. Then it was the browser. So it was Microsoft Explorer. So they gave away Chrome. Then it was the operating system. They gave away Android. They said we're not gonna let anybody else be upstream of us. And so they just started replacing all those layers of the stack, giving away free products, with free -- Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:04): Sorry. And a good free product. Yeah. David Sacks (01:03:07): Great. I mean, Jason Calacanis (01:03:08): all -- -- have billions of users. David Friedberg (01:03:09): I'll also say a big part of the monetization lock in was Google then extended into the publishers very quickly with the acquisition of AdSense. And the publishers then allowed Google to offer the greatest CPM that those publishers could have over any other advertising network And as a result, Google built their network and then built their advertiser base, and they effectively, you know, got this huge lock in. The only disruptive threat to Google was what Facebook did, which is to create demographic profiles where instead of targeting ads based on keyword or search intent, You could now target ads based on demographic, and then Facebook took it a step further and did retargeting. So, basically, following you across multiple sites. But Facebook always knew And as we just discovered, that was always gonna be a weak point for them because they were dependent upon hardware devices that were gonna let them do that tracking across apps and across sites. And that's why Google always had this kind of key, you know, lock in advantage that, you know, will persist. And the network is just so big on both sides. You can't compete. Jason Calacanis (01:04:08): to Saks's thought bomb if they had invested in a phone. Let's say they made a $1000 let's say they made a phone with a bomb of $800 David Friedberg (01:04:15): or something. the way. Just remember the Fire TV, the Fire Game. Okay. And he he gave a bunch of great speeches. You can watch these and what happened with that. And just, you know, despite his extraordinarily large user base, his committed loyal users, all these reasons, his magical, talented, technical team, he hired the best people. also tried to do the the same with search, by the way, with a 9. And remember Apple also tried to do the same with search. All these guys tried to kinda compete. Jason Calacanis (01:04:40): It's not easy to execute. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:04:41): It's not easy to execute, and you you get a lock in with the network value, but you also get a lock in with the talent. And, you know, this was a really hard thing to pull off, and you have to get it all right. Jason Calacanis (01:04:50): So let me ask Tremont the question based on what Saks say, could they should they have deployed 10,000,000,000 into phones? If we go back 2 years and they did, if deploy 10,000,000,000 into phones. They take an $800 bomb, which is probably what the best iPhone cost. I think it costs 700 for Apple to make, and they sell it for 1500. they could basically give the phone away for half price, maybe give it away for 4 or $500. That's David Friedberg (01:05:10): what Firephone was. Jason Calacanis (01:05:11): And if they gave away for $400, you had to be a Facebook user, you buy it, they get the credit card of the person. That would be they could put 25,000,000 phones into the market every year. David Friedberg (01:05:20): That's what that's what Amazon and Jason Calacanis (01:05:22): I don't think Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:22): that moves the needle. So you Jason Calacanis (01:05:23): don't think it would work. David Friedberg (01:05:24): It didn't create a better user experience for users. Users got a better experience with the iPhone. Okay. And then they got a better experience with Android. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:31): the window of time was in 2000 and 9, 1011 when there wasn't lock in. And, you know, I think that's look. That's been well discussed about what we were doing and what we tried to do so there's no point rehashing. David Sacks (01:05:44): But why why did Facebook give that up? because there wasn't an initiative. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:47): Right? It was it wasn't that. It was it came down to you know, an ask that I made that we didn't get and it didn't happen. So it didn't happen. Jason Calacanis (01:05:55): And we'll leave it at that. Yeah. But David Sacks (01:05:58): I'm not saying that would have been successful. David Friedberg (01:06:00): I'm just saying -- Neither neither not. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:01): We didn't get to the starting line, so we'll never know. David Sacks (01:06:03): In fact, I think it's unlikely that it would have I'm not sure exactly what Facebook's value prop would have been. My point is just if you're gonna lose $10,000,000,000 a year on a division, wouldn't it be better for it to be something strategically vital as opposed to something that feels a little bit optional. Jason Calacanis (01:06:17): Even if the majority chances you don't win, the question is if you had a 20, 30, 35% chance of being a player in smartphones, would you take that chance? And I think you have no choice but to take that chance that it would be worth it, the expected value. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:31): Yeah. One thing I'll say in defense of Facebook is I think that all of this, like, antitrust scrutiny is a little bit ridiculous today, and it looks pretty ridiculous, and let me just explain why like it seems that capitalism is pretty much working as intended because if you looked at Google's results, If you looked at Snap's results, at Pinterest results, at Amazon's results, there is a vibrant and growing advertising ecosystem, by no means, could you claim that Facebook has any real monopoly on that, number 1? And and when you fold in TikTok, it's absolutely true. And then if you think about the usage curve of TikTok, there's a check-in balance there on usage. And so and anybody that thinks that Facebook is a monopoly today, I think, is a little misguided. So, really, I think what politicians need to do to today, you know, February 4th, is be a little bit more honest about what they really care about, which is really around section 230 and the misinformation disinformation fears that they have related to Facebook's distribution power. Because now if you're gonna try to legislate this company, it's really unfair. Like, especially going back 10 years to litigate an acquisition, you'd never do that to any other company that, you know, is sort of maybe on the back half of their growth cycle. It just doesn't make any sense. Jason Calacanis (01:07:44): It would be like going after Google now for the YouTube acquisition. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:47): Like -- -- recorded $31,000,000,000 of advertising revenue. Crazy. There is a vibrant, diverse, advertising ecosystem, Facebook is not in control of that ecosystem. And so trying to legislate them as a monopoly in that ecosystem is insane today, Jason Calacanis (01:08:02): What do you think, Saks? Do you think this regulation is based on the fact that Facebook kicked off Trump and is scaring politicians over actual competitive reality. David Sacks (01:08:11): I think that politicians are using the threat of regulation to try and drive the the speech policies they want on these social networks. That's what's really going on. I mean, the merits Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:22): of the case. Jason Calacanis (01:08:23): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:23): with me. It's nothing to do with the business. David Sacks (01:08:25): Yeah. Look. Who should get regulated on h trust grounds? Apple. you know, Apple is that and maybe Google. I mean, the well, they're the big monopolists. I mean, they control the operating system. I mean, Jason Calacanis (01:08:34): those guys -- 90% of search David Sacks (01:08:36): And and and I would say Amazon with respect to the verticals where they're competing with their own -- Yeah. Basic. with the basic exactly. So in other words, when you control an operating system and then there's developers or other, you know, downstream players on that ecosystem, you have to treat them fairly. You can't privilege your own policy to to then dominate vertical after vertical. So Jason Calacanis (01:08:57): -- David Sacks (01:08:57): Yeah. -- there are real antitrust concerns with those 3 companies, the Facebook way less so, and yet they get the brunt of the attacks. Why? Because the people in Washington are trying to course Facebook into controlling what they call misinformation, which is really just speech they don't like. And then that is highly inappropriate. Jason Calacanis (01:09:14): Perfect segue. Last week, we we didn't jump into the Rogan Spotify debate. Maybe we should have. But we'll talk about it now with a lot more contact obviously, Neil Young and some other folks that were pulling our music off, Johnny Mitchell, whatever. Some actual high profile blogger said they don't wanna be on there. And then Joe Rogan and Daniel Ekboth decided to talk about this. Joe Rogan said, listen. I'm a comedian. I don't prepare for these hair reviews. And I just see where they go. But this show has gotten very influential. It's the number one podcast in the world. It's got a ridiculous listenership. So maybe I should -- David Friedberg (01:09:52): Right now. Jason Calacanis (01:09:53): -- have it right now. Maybe I should have it labeled. May and his and maybe I should have people on afterwards, and maybe I should do some extra back checking. I thought it was the best non apology, you know, explainology of an apology because he did say, I'm sorry if you don't like it. But he did kinda say that he would do better. And then Daniel X said and then I'll let you guys comment, Daniel X said, listen. We produce shows and we approve guests for the ringer and for Gimlet, which we own those studios. We license Joe Rogan. We don't do any editing on his show, and we will remove ones after the fact, but it's a licensing deal. Therefore, we're not a publisher. I'm curious what you thought Friedberg on the non apology and culpability for someone like Joe Rogan having guests on who are anti vaxx or you know, maybe are debatable in terms of science because, yeah, he is a comedian. But as he says, like, the show is kinda big now, so maybe I should do a little checking. What do you think he should do when he has scientists and people and people on? David Friedberg (01:10:59): I'll make 2 points. One is I don't think that journalism is regulated. in the sense that, you know, we have freedom of speech. So anyone can stand up and they can say, I have this belief or I have discovered this fact And you may not actually hold that belief, and that fact may not be true, but you're still allowed to stand up and say it, and you're still allowed to have someone come on and say it. And so I don't think that there's any disclosure obligation. He's putting on a show. It's the same as any new show or entertainment show. I don't think that there's a clear align or boundary. I mean, what the heck do we do here? We've all got opinions. We try and talk about the news. We talk about our our perspectives on the future. You know, what the heck is is it that we're doing here? know, there there's no kind of clear line there. So I don't think that he has any obligations to do anything he doesn't wanna do. Except if and when his audience tells him, or the listeners that he cares about Tell him, his customers tell him, this is what we expect and want from you, and then he responds to his customers. That's the way the market works, and that's the way the enterprise system should work. I think the separate bigger question here that's really important and worth noting. You know? And I just wanna speak about this for one second. All of the great Internet companies started with this notion that they were creating democratization, that they were creating access to information, that didn't exist, whether it's access to media or access to search results or access to to content or whatever that that may not have been available to you. And that was a driving force for the opinars and the founders that started all these businesses. And all of them had these very idealistic points of view that we're not gonna censor. We're not gonna take a point of view we're not gonna put our foot down and say what isn't isn't gonna be displayed or shown or made available to our users. We're gonna let users choose what they wanna get access to and what they wanna hear and listen to. David Friedberg (01:12:34): And in all these cases, from Google to YouTube to Twitter and now to Spotify, the idea of Jason Calacanis (01:12:40): being just an an David Friedberg (01:12:40): access, a platform for access is proving to be wrong. All of them are de facto publishers. They ultimately have to make decisions about what they do and don't let on the platform. And de facto, if you let something on the platform, you're giving it permission, you're giving it a voice, you're giving it amplification, and you're giving it access. And so all of them are now getting caught up in this problem that I don't think anyone from Larry or Sergey or Jack Dorsey or Daniel Ek ever wanted to be in. They all wanted to be these democratizations -- They did not. -- platforms. And now they're finding that there is no way to avoid being treated like a publisher or a publisher has someone that's called an editor. And an editor decides what is and isn't put on that publishing platform. has always been the case in old media. And now in new media, they're all kind of stumbling into this problem, and they're not set up for it. And it's creating issues where people on the right are saying you're censoring us. And people are on the left just saying you're not giving us access to information we want. And it's, you know, it's just kind of the the, I think, the transition that none of them expected, but we're all seeing happen. Jason Calacanis (01:13:41): Chamath, if Daniel Ek is giving a $100,000,000 to Joe Rogan, can he claim, listen. It's just we're a platform when you know, listen. The we're on Spotify as well, but they don't pay us. Doesn't it change the relationship when they give him the 100,000,000, or can Daniel say, you know, and it we intellectually honestly, like, hey. Listen. We're not responsible for this. I mean, they're backing up the brakes truck, and they're promoting it like heck. Are they a publisher or not in your mind? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:09): I read yesterday that Barack and Michelle Obama's deal with Spotify just expired, and they're going to shop it I suspect that somebody will pay them tens of 1,000,000 of dollars to produce content. That's not illegal. And it's a sign of a free market that's working. Jason Calacanis (01:14:27): Spotify has a business to Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:27): run, and that business is to get content in front of the users that are paying them a lot of money on a monthly basis to get access to that stuff. And so Who are we to say how Spotify should run their business? I think you have a choice. Neil Young expressed his choice. There was a person in the New York Times. She took her podcast off Spotify. Yep. There are subscribers that probably left, but then there are also subscribers that probably joined. Yep. And paid. Yeah. And paid. And so the reality is that's the free market, being allowed to choose, and being allowed to vote with their feet. And I think that all sides of that are in the right. So I think Spotify should be allowed to run their business. I think Joe Rogan should be allowed to say what he wants. If Spotify chooses to put a disclaimer in front of that podcast, that's their right, and that's good too. And if Joe Rogan decides that he wants to have, you know, point counterpoint across podcasts or within a podcast, That's laudable as well, and that should be his decision. But I don't think people should be forced to make these decisions by law because I think we get into a very slippery slope. because you don't totally understand the incentives of the lawmaker there. Jason Calacanis (01:15:42): And we have a free market as you're David Friedberg (01:15:44): pointing out, Shamat. The free market is working Jason Calacanis (01:15:45): perfectly and more -- -- feel David Sacks (01:15:49): like this free market. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:50): More important than the free market, we have a founding document of principles that we all agree to. Yes. Yeah. David Sacks (01:15:55): And, unfortunately, of people who don't agree Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:57): to it. Jason Calacanis (01:15:57): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:57): says we have a Jason Calacanis (01:15:58): red flag. Alright. So here we go. Let's go to our constitutional attorney, counselor. Take us there. David Sacks (01:16:03): If you're talking about the principle of free speech is a lot of people who don't believe in it. That's the problem. First of all, you have this geriatric hippie Jason Calacanis (01:16:10): -- David Friedberg (01:16:10): Woah. Woah. Woah. David Sacks (01:16:12): because Jerry can I finish we finish my rant, Jake. I'll then he can get it. Okay? I ran Jason Calacanis (01:16:15): it away, man. David Sacks (01:16:16): You got this geriatric hit. Jason Calacanis (01:16:17): I love Neil Young. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:16:18): You know what happened here. Wait. Sorry, Sax. Just there. That was Jake Cal. seeing, oh, shit. He's gonna get a bell clasher clippage. He talked to clippage. I gotta interrupt. He had to interrupt you there. That's really brutal, Jake Hall. Jason Calacanis (01:16:30): That's not that's not bad. Belcaster. I thought David Friedberg (01:16:32): you were telling I thought you were talking about Joe Biden. David Sacks (01:16:35): Ah, that's great. gosh, explain what happens. I think frankly, you guys are completely missing it. The wheel of censorship broke on Joe Rogan this week they try to Alex Jones in it, it failed. Okay? First, you have this geriatric hippie Neil Young who somehow has turned into a narc And he plants a flag, and he tries to get all these people behind him. And the very online crowd says, yes. We gotta cancel, Rogan, and then you got Jen Passaki from the White House. Weighing in, bringing in the coercive power of the administration on the side of censorship. Okay? And what happens? Rowan comes out with his non apology, like you said, and he seems so reasonable. He's a guy who's inquisitive. He's on the side of just asking questions. He's on the side of balance. He says, yeah. Look, I wanna present both sides of the issue. And everybody was like, there is no reason to be censoring this guy. Rogan is an every man. And if they would censor him, they would censor every man, And that is why there was enormous backlash to it, and everybody has opposed this. And so I think this is the week that this ridiculous idea of censorship has broke now. It would be nice if everybody to Shamas point did agree with this principle, but they don't. The fact of the matter is Jay Cal, that censorship is now the official position of the Democrat Party. And you see it in the poll numbers, It was a great tweet that Jason Calacanis (01:17:54): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:54): Glenn Greenwald. Jason Calacanis (01:17:56): -- David Sacks (01:17:56): posted where he showed the polling numbers on this. So okay. You go back to the days of the Obama administration, both Democrats and Republicans agreed that the US government and tech companies should not get involved in this type of censorship. But today, there's been a bifurcation. Democrats or lean Democrats versus Republicans or lean Republicans. It's Jason Calacanis (01:18:17): 6528 David Sacks (01:18:20): in favor of government taking steps to restrict info online, and it's Jason Calacanis (01:18:24): 7637 David Sacks (01:18:25): Democrats for Republicans on tech Companies. So -- Bunker's The first amendment is no long longer a consensus, and that is fundamentally the issue. Scary. But I gotta tell you, I think there is a backlash against this. And I think that most of the country now. And I I think this is where they went too far is that Rogan is not Alex Jones. He's not Trump. He's not myelodianopoulos. He seems like a reasonable guy. He is the biggest figure in independent journalism. He gets 11,000,000 viewers every week, and I think there's a lot of people, especially young people who are going, This has gone too far. And by the way, I do not think Obama ever would have made this political blunder of effectively denouncing Rogen because Obama tried to appeal to young voters. And I think Jen Pesaki by putting the administration on the side of the censorship, they've made a huge mistake And the same week, we saw that Tucker Carlson now gets more young Democrats listening to his show than CNN and MSNBC, and I'm telling you this is the reason why. Jason Calacanis (01:19:24): Okay, Henry. You can put in the roaring crowd of applause at this point. the best the best thing that I saw was. David Sacks (01:19:31): I'm telling you, Jake, how you got Jason Calacanis (01:19:33): big problems with them. Stop making me the -- -- problems with the Democratic party. David Sacks (01:19:36): There are now more Tucker Democrats Okay? I'm on I'm on the key young demographic. Jason Calacanis (01:19:42): And your writers were more on Tucker's writer room. Which writing room? David Sacks (01:19:45): I'm a Tucker Democrat. Jacob. Jason Calacanis (01:19:46): I you're a tucker. You are. You love you love Obama. You love Clinton. I think what's happening is that I mean and Chawmoth, you've said this over and over again. Chawmoth? Chad I'm sorry. Chamaft Palia Patia. You had on one side, you know, the the right went lost their mind in the alright. Now they have come a little bit more center. And then you may now have the the Democrats have lost their minds. The fact that anybody can't look at Joe Rogan and say, he's a comedian, He worked on a show where they fed people's shakes of blended insects feel factor, and he's taking mushrooms. And he's like, why are you taking me so seriously? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:22): Well, wait. I think you're being hold on. I think you're being super dismissive of Joe Rogan. I think he's actually as Saks said, a pretty reasonable, curious person. And then, yeah, he does the stuff that everybody else is. Jason Calacanis (01:20:33): -- prepare for the show. He literally said, I don't prepare for the show. I don't do any preparation. Maybe he doesn't. I don't I don't know. And he fact checks in real time. So you gotta keep your expectation at a certain level with Joe Rogan, I think. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:44): I I I think that that's gonna dig. I think that that's implausible to believe. I know that that's what he said, but 11,000,000 people a week, a $100,000,000 deal. I do suspect that he does some sort of preparation. I don't think he's a he's completely winging it. Okay? illiterate that he wins it. But but okay. I understand that. Yeah. But I think that's not the point. Okay. Okay? The point is whether he prepares or not, the skews isn't sorry. The dog ate my homework. It's hey. Listen. I have a right to have this guy on my show just like I have the right to have this other guy on my show. You can listen to both, and then you can decide for yourself. Jason Calacanis (01:21:18): You could change the channel. Okay? That's the important point, so, Jason, I Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:21): would not, like, try to make this so large about whether he was prepared or unprepared as the excuse, it's whether you believe there's a fundamental right to free speech or whether you believe that people who disagree can disavow people and get them canceled and get them canceled. Jason Calacanis (01:21:35): I obviously don't agree. Any but I don't agree anybody should be canceled. I think he should keep going. David Sacks (01:21:39): Whatever Rogan's level of preparation, which I think is actually pretty high. The people who are accusing him of putting out misinformation are far more guilty of it themselves. And I think one of the best points in Rogan's non apology, as you called it, is he said, listen. A lot of the things that we used to consider misinformation are now the truth Jason Calacanis (01:21:58): 4 -- And we talked about it on the show. Yeah. David Sacks (01:22:00): Well, we've been ahead of the curve in calling all this stuff out. You know, we could have been accused of misinformation. So examples, the lab leak theory, you speak in some misinformation. the cloth mask not doing anything. Listen. Dan Bongino was kicked off YouTube Jason Calacanis (01:22:12): 2 David Sacks (01:22:12): weeks before the CD's first saying that cloth Dan Bongino, he's a pretty big conservative commentator. Okay? He's got an audience of millions. You can be dismissive, but a lot of people like him -- Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:22:22): -- David Sacks (01:22:22): Jake out. But, look, my point is he was kicked off YouTube for saying cloth masks don't work. then the CDC comes out 2 weeks later and says the same thing. Jason Calacanis (01:22:30): Right. I think that's a valid point. Yeah. David Sacks (01:22:32): Well, it's the key point. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:33): I personally like, you know, for example, we've talked about this thing where, like, if you look at, like, the top distributed links on Facebook, who do you see? Ben Shapiro, Dan Bongino, you know, bright orange. Jason Calacanis (01:22:43): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:43): Rogan. Right? Yeah. My takeaway with all of these things is there are people of those things if I listen to I'd probably find abhorrent. But there are people there that are probably I would be you know, I would I would I would they would appeal to me. In all cases, they should all exist though because the whole point is let me Spider my way through this stuff and figure out for myself -- Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:23:02): -- what works Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:03): and what doesn't work. Jason Calacanis (01:23:04): Yeah. More speech is the best counter. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:06): The summary of this that makes the most sense is Elon tweeted this out. Nick, you can put this because I gave you the image, but it's a it's a meme of Neil Young where it says, if you won't censor the guy I don't like, I won't let you listen to keep on rocking in a free world. Jason Calacanis (01:23:21): Very flexible. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:22): And and it's and it's just so true, which is like on the one hand, you know, you are a standard bearer. Now maybe what we should really do is talk about what has happened to this boomer generation over the last 50 years where they were you know, sex, drugs, rock and roll, no war in Vietnam. Let's fight for our rights. Let's fight for Jason Calacanis (01:23:41): equality. Then punkar Hakke. Yep. You Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:43): know, No. I'm talking about just those those folks Jason Calacanis (01:23:46): -- Okay. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:47): back then who are now 50 years later, you know, sitting on $70,000,000,000,000 of wealth and who are basically like, you can't say this. You can't say that. Don't do this. Don't do that. David Friedberg (01:23:56): Wear wear masks. Don't leave your house. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:59): You know? Yeah. Fauci is like -- They're scared because they're old. David Friedberg (01:24:02): ware masks don't Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:02): or you're dickhead's holding. Jason Calacanis (01:24:04): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:04): You know, this is I mean, that generation, I think we all have some soul searching to do about what happened to that generation. Jason Calacanis (01:24:10): I think they're Chris enrolled, and they and they feel like they're gonna die from COVID. David Friedberg (01:24:13): Is it that generation or is it the fact that every generation rebels against the prior and ultimately becomes conservative? and, you know, that's the main that's just how life goes. Jason Calacanis (01:24:22): I don't I David Sacks (01:24:22): don't think they've become conservative. I think they've become authoritarian. I think that what happened is there are now -- -- power. the boomers are in power. They've been making the decisions for last 20 years. I think there is enormous, popular discontent with the way the country's been run over the last 2 decades, the futile pointless wars in the Middle East, the debt, the economy, the unfairness that it goes on and on. And what and especially with COVID. I mean, this COVID policy over the last 2 years has been a fiasco. And the point of this censorship of misinformation is to suppress the debate. Jason Calacanis (01:24:55): Mhmm. I David Sacks (01:24:55): mean, what ultimately is the point on take, for example, COVID of saying that people cannot take a point of view. It is to Stifle the debate that's to prevent an honest debate on these issues. And the the people who have an interest in doing that are the people who are in charge and are failing. And if you gave people the information, they would be voted out of office. Jason Calacanis (01:25:15): If you look, when I asked, what are the specific claims either Joe Rogan or his guest made that people are objecting to a lot of the people who were objecting and wanted him censored really didn't know. And one of them was, he said early on, I don't know for a young person who's in shape if I would advise them to take the vaccine. I know a lot of people who have that position, which is, like, if you're young And I think, actually, Friedberg, you might have said mRNA early on in this podcast is a very new technology, and I could see people wanting to wait and see. Did you not say that? I don't wanna get you canceled here, but I I think we did have that discussion. -- David Sacks (01:25:48): not have that conversation? Jason Calacanis (01:25:50): That's a valid conversation. mRNA is a new technology. Right, Friedberg? you should think about it, and we should be cautious. Don't draw David Friedberg (01:25:57): me into your cancel debate there. Jason Calacanis (01:25:59): That's why I said we. I just changed it to we were talking about that. Don't you remember that discussion we had? when I asked you, I think mRNA, what do you think of this versus the regular one, the j and j? David Friedberg (01:26:08): I think, generally, we've seen science being used as a way as a term to discredit what I think would arguably and typically be scientific principles, which is inquiry, challenging hypotheses, and having, you know, vigorous debate to resolve to some sort of objective truth. Otherwise, you're having some sort of subjective belief. And more often than not, we've seen politicians and others grab onto the term science and saying, this is science. It says this. When in fact, the process of science is inquiry, and it is to challenge you know, again, a hypothesis and and what might be kind of a a a thesis. So so, yeah, I think generally this has been a pretty scary time to watch because it's almost like gaslit lighting. You know, it's like, hey. You know, you're using the term science to discredit the notion of science. It's been pretty brutal. I sent you guys this this cartoon link, by the way, it's so funny. Jason Calacanis (01:27:07): Oh, I just got it. Old left versus the modern left. It's a Volkswagen bus. with a bunch of hippie, dippy, flowers. And it says free speech, free love 1971. No CIA. Screw the establishment, resist authority. And then it shows like a modern SUV with 2021. It says, masks up, by heart, the CDC, obey the establishment, no free speech. do what you're told obey basically. You have another poll you want to share sex? David Sacks (01:27:34): Well, yeah. This is a really interesting one. It says a majority of voters 35% say COVID should be treated as an endemic disease while a majority of Democrats say it should be continue continue to be treated as an emergency. And then there was a similar poll. The Chamath poll just came out where Jason Calacanis (01:27:48): 89% David Sacks (01:27:49): of Republicans, 71% of of independents say that is time we accept COVID is here to say, we need to get on with our lives. Only forty short sort of Democrats. So the reality is that the rest of the country, I think, has moved on. It's ready to move on. The split is not between Democrats or Republicans anymore. It's within the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is now divided on this question of whether we should move on as a country past COVID, half of the Democratic Party still believes that COVID should be treated as this emergency. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:21): Do you think that it's cut by age? Do you think there's a bias by age? David Sacks (01:28:24): For sure. For sure. I think yes. Absolutely. Jason Calacanis (01:28:26): People are more scared. Yeah. David Sacks (01:28:27): But I think I think the media and the party, they programmed their soldiers to be you know, to treat COVID as an emergency, and they can't deprogram them. And this is why I think we're seeing Tucker's Tucker is now the biggest demographic among young democrats. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:41): But that's insane to me. It's insane. The idea that idea is insane. David Sacks (01:28:44): This does not bode well for the on top of everything else is happening in the country, this does not bode well. for the Democrats in November. And then you had this crazy thing at the, you know, the Magic Johnson party and that Jason Calacanis (01:28:57): football game pass. -- hell my breath. I took a picture of magic Johnson. I held my breath, so I wouldn't get the virus. -- David Sacks (01:29:02): with Garcetti and and Newsom. Newsom claims Jason Calacanis (01:29:04): -- David Friedberg (01:29:04): It's the new I didn't inhale. David Sacks (01:29:06): Yeah. Exactly. And then Lisa says that he was only photographed at the exact moment where he took off his mask for 2 seconds. You know? Jason Calacanis (01:29:12): You know what? I if you go to the ski slopes, There is nobody with a mask on and nobody's enforcing it and no restaurants. And this is in Democratic country. Everybody has moved on at this point. Everybody's willing to David Sacks (01:29:23): it seems to me. Why haven't they? Why haven't why haven't they? Jason Calacanis (01:29:25): The media and that's the politician because they're virtua signaling. And they wanna keep power? David Sacks (01:29:29): For 2 -- I Jason Calacanis (01:29:29): don't know. You tell me. David Sacks (01:29:30): That's that's that's the point. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:31): Well, I Jason Calacanis (01:29:32): -- Think they're dumb. They should take the position not to reopen. David Sacks (01:29:35): Yeah. They should take the reopening. Jason Calacanis (01:29:36): But wouldn't taking the reopening position get you more voters at this point? People are of this, they wanna move on. Doesn't make any sense. They're making a bad political decision David Sacks (01:29:44): on that. Jason Calacanis (01:29:45): -- David Sacks (01:29:45): holding to their base. That's the point is I think I think the whole country has moved on. Even most Democrats have moved the democratic base has not moved on. And that is why, you know, Newsom and and Garcetti have to pay lip service to this. Jason Calacanis (01:29:57): Well, I mean and these have been telling everybody gotta wear a mask, gotta wear a mask, and they're not wearing mask. And let's face it. They weren't wearing masks at the French French laundry. They have never worn masks. They've been throwing their own parties with masks or a bunch of hypocrites? A whole lot of them. Alright. In other news, Xi Jinping and Putin got together, and they're apparently besties. Here's the quote, some actors representing, but the minority on the international scale. I think that's us. Continue to advocate unilateral approaches to addressing international shoes and resort to force. They interfere in the internal affairs of other states infringing their legitimate rights and interest and incite contradictions, differences, and confrontation. The statement said, I am willing to work with president Vladimir Putin to plan A blueprint and guide the direction of Sino Russian relations under new historical conditions Mister Xi said he added that China and Russia should act like big countries as a intensified coordination on fighting the coronavirus pandemic yadayada. Any feedback from our squad? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:07): I mean, you could have rewritten that press release as you know, we will we wanna try to destroy US hegemony and replace it with ourselves. Mhmm. David Friedberg (01:31:17): This is the beginning of the end of US cultural and economic influence globally or dominance rather influence it globally. And I think that it's something that we've talked about quite a lot. You know, I mentioned in a in the prediction episode that I thought that Putin was gonna play a major role this year. And And, you know, he's clearly not just, you know, out for his own interests, but he's gonna play a really important role in China's rise to economic and cultural dominance. Jason Calacanis (01:31:48): You agree, Chamath. Is this the sign that they're gonna be running the show, or does this like something else to you? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:54): No. No. No. I don't think that there's a show to run. I think the point is that there was a first among equals for the last many decades in the world order where, you know, America was was that first among equals. And I think what they're saying is that it's time for that to change. and and and they're gonna tie that to their ability to influence foreign policy in countries the way that we have historically. So, you know, this is sort of basically putting a marker on the table that says, this is gonna be about a different cohort of people that are also gonna have an equal say. And if you think about where this all plays out, it's always in economics. Right? and this is where again you have to think about what China has done which is they have while we were fighting wars, you know, putting 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars into the Middle East they took their $1,000,000,000,000 and bought resources all through Africa. Yep. Right? They built infrastructure. They bought infrastructure all through South America. They put infrastructure all through Southeast Asia. You know, that, say, call it, $15,000,000,000,000 that we spent in one direction, they spent another. That's a Jason Calacanis (01:33:02): $30,000,000,000,000,000 Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:03): gap that's gonna create a resource imbalance that they will use to create even more influence in the future and we have to figure out a way to counteract that. Jason Calacanis (01:33:13): Sachs, what do you think? Is this a a changing moment in the world order? Should we be worried that these two dictators are going to act in unison and that maybe one gets the Ukraine, one gets Taiwan. Is this, like, really earth shattering news, or do you think it's saber rattling and not that big of a deal? David Sacks (01:33:33): Well, I think it's a dramatic statement and photo that was was put out. It was a continuation of what we've seen where they have you know, Xi and Putin have been getting and Russia and China have been getting friendlier and friendlier. what saddens me and sort of sickens me as really an American patriot who would like to see the American world order continue is the way that we have blundered and created this this type of situation. So to Shamas point, first of all, we wasted 20 years trying to do nation building in the Middle East, Jason Calacanis (01:34:04): 6 David Sacks (01:34:05): wasted $6,000,000,000,000 on that. How did China you know, lose by not being part of that. They benefited. They were building Belt And Road while we were, you know, engaged in this Folish interventions in the Middle East. And now more recently with Putin, we've really driven Putin into Xi's arms because we keep threatening to add Ukraine to NATO, which is not something that's in America's interest. If we would just give up on that position or just reaffirm that Ukraine should not be imminent to NATO would enormously help diffuse tensions with Russia. And by the way, your your point that these are dictators of their natural allies. That's not that's not historically been true. So during the days of the Soviet Union, you know, you had Nixon and Kissinger make the great opening to Mal and China, and we were able to cultivate a relationship there because China and Russia were natural antagonists. And it was a major move in the Cold War that we were able cultivate now, and we did so even though he was a dictator with blood on his hands. So nat Russia and China are not natural allies we should be doing a better job of not so thoroughly alienating Putin that he is rushing into Xi's arms. That's the blunder I see here. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:35:22): By the way, after this summit, they're going to meet with Iran. There's a tri part, I think, excessive dictators. Jason Calacanis (01:35:30): The it's this is like the legion of doom. David Sacks (01:35:32): We need to be playing our cards a lot in a much smarter way. Yeah. We need to play our cards. Jason Calacanis (01:35:37): What is the strategy? I mean, is David Sacks (01:35:39): look, we want the American led world in order to continue, but we gotta be much more selective about picking and choosing our battles. Yeah. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya. They were huge mistakes. And now on top Jason Calacanis (01:35:51): of it -- What about looking for, Zach? -- David Sacks (01:35:52): Ukraine. Let's that. Jason Calacanis (01:35:53): Yeah. Looking forward, like, you keep bringing up the past. What's a look forward strategy in your mind? That look David Sacks (01:35:57): forward strategy, I think, is to diffuse and deescalate the situation in Ukraine exactly the way Obama did it, which to recognize that America does not have a vital national interest, the way that Russia does, Jason Calacanis (01:36:08): to reaffirm hold on. David Sacks (01:36:10): To to reaffirm that the the nations of the caucuses that have border disputes with Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia. They are not eligible candidates for NATO at the present time. Kick that can down the road by 10 years. David Friedberg (01:36:23): Okay. Jason Calacanis (01:36:23): We talked about that in last night. Taiwan David Sacks (01:36:25): is a much more complicated situation. I do think you have a vital national interest there. Jason Calacanis (01:36:29): Got it. Okay. So two very different situations. I agree with you. Yeah. Yeah. I think Taiwan, we have to hold the line. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:36:34): We have a responsibility in the United States, and I think we're starting to do it. So I think there is good news where You know, part of the strategic vital interest for Taiwan is because they have critical resources that we need and we depend on. And, specifically, those are semiconductors. You know, we have now, I think, allocated, you know, 50, a $100,000,000,000 of capital of CapEx across a bunch of companies that have committed to building domestic capability. And so we have to make sure we follow through on that and that's successful. And the reason is that it gives us optionality. It allows us to breathe. It allows us to actually make rational decisions and be patient in our decision making. And I think that's gonna be really important over the next 10 or 20 years, and so We have to invest in the United States. So the the solution to all of these things is we cannot be overly dependent on any one country any one shipping lane, any one product, any one natural resource. You just can't do that anymore. Jason Calacanis (01:37:27): We have to be strong at home. And we have to build strong relationships with other countries. And, yeah, I I think I think we've got a an operating philosophy here. Alright. Listen. Let's wrap there. We'll see everybody on the next episode. 4, the dictator, Jamath Palihapatiha, the Sultan of Science, David Friedberg, and the rain man himself triumphant versus Peter Thiel in that PayPal match. Great moment. David Sachs. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:37:53): Love you, boys. Love you, besties. Bye bye. Jason Calacanis (01:37:57): Bye bye. My David Sacks (01:37:58): wife your winter's ride. Jason Calacanis (01:38:02): Rainman, David Saffens. I'm doing it. And it David Sacks (01:38:07): said, we open sources to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. Jason Calacanis (01:38:15): like, white hair winter's ride. Besties are golf. Oh, thirteen. David Friedberg (01:38:22): That is plenty of dogs thinking about a driveway sex. Jason Calacanis (01:38:27): Oh, man. We should all just get a room and just have a big huge orphan because they're all just useless. It's like this, like, sexual tension, and they just need to release her now. David Friedberg (01:38:38): What? You're the b p What? David Sacks (01:38:40): Your feet. What? Jason Calacanis (01:38:43): Where did you get Murkeys are back?