再说罗根、加拿大卡车司机抗议、核聚变突破与微软的精明一招

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): We had a nice dinner, Chamath hosted a little and we played a little bit of the cards, and there's this new kid there. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:05): Oh, big shout out to co founder Jason Calacanis (00:00:08): of is there. Breakout. Mike's how do you wind up here at the game? Sitting here, you know, having a beautiful dinner with us. And he's like, well and then Shamakula goes, and he points to hell mute. Hellmuth found a billionaire. When hellmuth finds a billionaire, what happens. He's tied to the hip. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:28): He has, like, a billionaire He's a billionaire regular. Hamuth is, like, one of those truffle dogs in, like, you know, Alba and Italy. You know, you send him out into the woods. He forges around. He finds he finds a truffle just digs it out. it. Jason Calacanis (00:00:44): They it's like he's and then he follows like a dog. He follows -- Well, then he sees it around. Tail wagging. David Friedberg (00:00:49): Tail wagging. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:50): Waiting for his owner to show up and pick this little billionaire off the ground. Hey. Here's another 1. Look, Daddy. See? Jason Calacanis (00:00:56): I'm believe I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:56): found another billionaire. Hellmuth Hellmuth is the most insecure person, but he's such a beautiful human being. I mean, he's just -- -- human. It's like it's like the tale of two people. He's he really is a walking case of schizophrenia and narcissism. Just Jason Calacanis (00:01:10): -- I mean, that's Jaemont saying that. Speaker 4 (00:01:15): Let your winner Jason Calacanis (00:01:15): slide. Rainman, David Sachs. Speaker 5 (00:01:21): And I said We open source it to the fans and make discoveries. Jason Calacanis (00:01:30): Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the all in podcast with us again, the new Chairman and majority shareholder of Laura Pianna. Chamath Polyharpetia, and the viceroy of veganism. Do you Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:44): like my thin cashmere Gillette that I'm wearing? Chile? Jason Calacanis (00:01:49): Chile. Do you mean Polo? No. Chile. Oh, Chile. Okay. Many feet. Also, with us, the viceroy of veganism, the Sultan of Science, David Friedberg, And the regent of the right wing? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:08): David Sacks. The Viceroy of vegans. Wow. Jason Calacanis (00:02:12): The Viceroy of vegans. It came to me in the shower today. I was like, you know, like, he needs a new Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:15): switched my background, guys. Do you like it? I just flipped the camera to look the other way just to mix it up David Friedberg (00:02:20): a little bit. Jason Calacanis (00:02:20): -- David Friedberg (00:02:20): see your chef picking the vegetables in your garden? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:23): Oh, yeah. Bull, before you used to see him pick the herbs Yeah. The herbs are on this side, but now he's yeah. You can Jason Calacanis (00:02:28): see in picture Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:28): that she's homeless. Jason Calacanis (00:02:29): Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, there's a sous chef. Okay. There's the prep chef. And there's that chef. Okay. Yes. Everybody showed up today. Okay. Great. Speaker 5 (00:02:38): You know, you seem to enjoy the food, Jason, every time you go, Jason Calacanis (00:02:40): you talk all the shit. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:42): But you are always eating when you're at my house. Jason Calacanis (00:02:44): You're always eating. Who's the first RSVP after Fellows? David Sacks (00:02:47): He's eating. He's sending us no to the kitchen. Could you just do this a little differently? Jason Calacanis (00:02:52): I do do notes. I do. I do. Usually positive ones. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:55): It's like Jason Calacanis (00:02:56): 3 out of 4 are positive notes. David Friedberg (00:02:57): know when I flew with Chamath a few weeks ago, the chef made gluten free Nautala Crapes with homemade Nautala? mean, it was, like, the most extraordinary breakfast experience. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:07): That Nutella has no sugar. It's incredible. It's basically all protein, fat, and it's sweetened with month flour sugar. So delicious that -- They Jason Calacanis (00:03:18): they also kill some albino seals. David Sacks (00:03:20): I've not brought a chef on on the plane with me. but I think in fairness Well, your Jason Calacanis (00:03:24): plane's not that big. Yeah. I mean, you've got a small plane. David Friedberg (00:03:27): Kitchen. Yeah. But it's, like, you gotta do Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:29): something. I mean, Jason Calacanis (00:03:30): I don't know if a Sesna 142 can fit a chef. bags. David Sacks (00:03:33): I'm feeling plain shamed. Jason Calacanis (00:03:35): Sesame. You are plain shamed. I just got to business select on Southwest. So I'm feeling feeling pretty good about myself right now. Alright, everybody. Let's get started. Lot of topics people wanna talk about. Do you wanna start with Rogan? or the Canadian truckers? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:52): I think Rogen probably leads into the truckers. No. Jason Calacanis (00:03:55): It might, in fact, lead into the truckers. Okay. So we covered Rogen in Spotify in episode 6 a whole bunch since that time a video surfaced on Saturday with Joe Rogan repeatedly saying Well, the n word. Speaker 7 (00:04:11): And it's pretty rough to watch, Jason Calacanis (00:04:11): and he did a Mia Copa, an apology. And overall now, Spotify has taken down 70 episodes of his podcast. You know, that's out of over a 1000. Speaker 7 (00:04:27): I thought Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:28): it was, like, a Jason Calacanis (00:04:28): 113. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:30): That's the that's the that's what I saw on Twitter. There's a 113 maybe 70 had the n word, but a Jason Calacanis (00:04:35): 113 Speaker 4 (00:04:36): total. Correct. Jason Calacanis (00:04:37): I I stand corrected. A 110 have been taken down. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:39): I was texting with socks. It's like It's like almost 6% of all of his episodes they took down. Jason Calacanis (00:04:44): Yeah. So -- Something like that. David Sacks (00:04:45): Yeah. But not not all of them were because of that lane. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:47): That's what I'm saying. Jason Calacanis (00:04:48): But 6% were taken down. 6% taken down. In his apology, he said, obviously, he was wrong to use that word for the decade or so, but he pointed out that he did not use it towards a person as a slur, but was talking about it more in studying or discussing the artwork. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:06): Versus mentioned. Is that right? Is that the distinction? David Sacks (00:05:08): Yeah. Are used versus quoting? Jason Calacanis (00:05:10): Yeah. So he said it was taken out of context, apologized. He also made a joke that he immediately said, oh my god. That's pretty racist. I shouldn't have told that joke. Where he compared going to see Planet of the apes in an all black theater in Philly, saying he was in Africa. On Sunday, Daniel Ek sent a memo to Spotify employees. claiming he is not the publisher of the Joe Rogan Show. Something I completely dispute. We'll talk about that in a moment. Thoughts, on the latest, and do we think that Spotify will be able to handle This what's seeming seems to have died down over the last couple of days, and Rogan is now joking about it in his comedy. you know, engagements at small comedy clubs. What do you think, Sax? Is Joe Rogan gonna weather the storm? Is Spotify gonna stick with him? David Sacks (00:06:05): Well okay. So as of the last episode, of the All And Pod, they were trying to cancel Rogan for misinformation. And for the reasons we discussed, that basically failed because you know, so many of the times, something starts with misinformation eventually becomes the truth. Rogan seemed like a guy who actually just wants to present both sides present a balanced viewpoint. In any event, that whole attempt to cancel and base them misinformation was fizzling out. And then lo and behold, this 22 second clip comes out. and they escalate the charges to racism. If you kinda look at, you know, who's behind this clip, It's pretty clear that it was a democratic super pact, put this together, and sort of astroturfed it as a viral video. This is part of an organized attempt to cancel Rogan. Now as to the merits of the the sort of racism accusation against him, I mean, look. Let me say that I don't think anybody especially a public figure should be using this kind of language, you know, in this day and age. Even if you're just sort of quoting something or or mentioning it. You know, he he should've he shouldn't he shouldn't known better. However, there are also similar clips that are now circulating of Joe Biden doing the same thing using this type of, like, incredibly incindiary language in, like, a brazen, almost offhanded way, you've got clips of Howard Stern. Jason Calacanis (00:07:34): Wait. Wait. You're saying brazen and He he he said it exactly the same way as Joe David Sacks (00:07:37): would say. Jason Calacanis (00:07:38): -- Speaker 7 (00:07:38): in a David Sacks (00:07:38): cavalier way. He's he's but let me come back. So you have you have Biden doing it. You've got Howard Stern doing it. So what is the difference? I mean, the the the reality here is that we used to in our culture have a distinction between the use of this type of language as an epithet, which was never okay. Or using it you were referencing it. You might have been quoting it. You might have been quoting a a rap song. You might have been quoting a Dave Chappell routine. You might be reading from a book that you might have been telling a story in which somebody else has said it and you're merely trying to relay what happened. The rules today are that's not an excuse. You can't say it. But the truth is that 10 years ago, 20 years ago, the rules were a little different. That's why Biden said it. That's why Howard Stern has these episodes, and I think it's why Rogan Speaker 7 (00:08:32): had said it. And I think it's a little bit disingenuous for people to David Sacks (00:08:32): now try and apply the new rules to this old language. And they're doing it very selectively because they're not trying to cancel these other people who said these things under the old rules. They're trying to cancel Rogan. So I think what you're seeing here is selective cancellation outrage, selective application of these new language rules for the purpose of getting Rogan canceled. Why? For the same reasons we were talking about 2 weeks ago or last week, which is he's an outsider. He's an independent voice. He bucks the establishment. Speaker 7 (00:09:06): He doesn't present the David Sacks (00:09:06): orthodox view on COVID. And that's frankly why they wanna cancel him. Jason Calacanis (00:09:14): Friedberg. I'm David Friedberg (00:09:15): just looking at the Howard Stern quote. So in 1993, Howard Stern dressed in black face and used the n word in a skit he did mimicking Ted Danson, talking about Whoopi Goldberg something. And he said I'll be the first to admit. I won't go back and watch those old shows. It's like, who is that guy? But that was my schtick. It's what I did, and I own it. I don't think I got embraced by Nazi groups and hate groups. They seem to think I was, again, them too. So I think, you know, Saks is probably right. I mean, Howard Stern is a very different character today. You know, I think the question of if Howard Stern acted that way today, would cancel culture kind of mob him? The answer is probably yes. But I think it's because you know, Rogan is out here probably picking a bone with everyone. You know, he's kind of There's no alignment. There's no there's no tribal behavior with Rogan. Right? He doesn't he he's been pretty public about being very liberal. He's been very public about being conservative in some ways, and I don't think he kind of aligns himself strongly with anyone. And so he is a threat to everyone. He's got a huge following. And, you know, he speaks openly and honestly in a way that that is threatening. Certainly, his behavior was inexcusable and has been inexcusable, but there are others. Right? And so it's it's an important question, which is why, ham, why now. Jason Calacanis (00:10:36): It's also interesting with that Ted Danson. He was dating Whoopi Goldberg at the time -- Speaker 7 (00:10:40): Mhmm. Jason Calacanis (00:10:40): -- I believe. Mhmm. And Ted Danson had I was there was a roast of Whoopi Friedberg at the Friars Club, Ted Danson, dressed in blackface. I think which will be a Goldberg was in on? David Friedberg (00:10:52): Ted Danson, Dresden. Didn't Howard address Jason Calacanis (00:10:54): -- And then Howard did a send up of that. Speaker 7 (00:10:56): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:10:57): Anyway, the the point is the more the the the standard has changed significantly less than Chamath chime in. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:03): My book of the year last year was this book wanting by this author Luke Burgess. He wrote something on substack. I'll I'll send you guys a link. You can put it in here. But he said he said the following. He said as we regress to a superstitious quasi Pagan world of witch burning. Civil discourse will be replaced with superstition and scapegoating, and he was talking about Rogan. I think that the the thing that I was the most proud of, and this whole thing was Daniel Ek. I mean, disclosure, he's a friend of mine, so maybe this is biased. However, I think that Spotify had business principles, and this was similar to what Brian Armstrong did at Coinbase. I think they stuck to those principles. They made a a well reasoned decision that they explained to their employees and shareholders. And then they did the most important thing that Saks has always been saying around free speech, which was which is more speech. And so what Spotify said when they explained the decision to not deplatform Joe Rogan was that they would take the exact equivalent economic value of what they were paying them him a Jason Calacanis (00:12:22): $100,000,000 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:23): and invested in underrepresented historically underrepresented groups to tell their stories, to tell you know, to make their music, etcetera. And so effectively doubling, you know, the universe of that kind of content. And so I think if the if people are really willing to listen, I think what we should take away from this is here's a really clear eyed example of the solution to free speech. which is just to get more of it on your platform to have the right disclosures and disclaimers. And then for, you know, people to go along with their lives so that they can then choose. And I think that that's That was the that was the one positive outcome that that I saw from this entire episode. The rest of it was Another attempt at, you know, being morally absolutist and you know, scapegoating. And then the that was before, obviously, the the n word thing. And then the n word thing just brought to light that we live in a very different age where the rules have changed, and I think the open question is, You know, if you're going to judge people for past behaviors on current rules, are we allowed to do it selectively or does it apply to everybody? And I and I think that, you know, this is why I think, you know, we saw people like David Simon, you know, came out, and David Simon was very You know, it basically excoriated Joe Rogan, but then David Simon wrote the wire. You know? And if you if you watch the wire, which is, you know, an incredible piece of television that people point to all the time is one of probably the greatest shows on television. You know, every probably, you know, 13th for 14th word was the end word. Jason Calacanis (00:14:09): Yeah. I have, like, 2 observations here. Though and then I'll get to you, Saxon. You have something you wanna chime in on. I I always like to think about intent. And then I like to look at the apology and think is this, like, sincere or not. And when you look at the intent, Does anybody actually think Joe Rogan is a racist? And I I think it's pretty clear he's not from all of the behavior collectively in his life. And then you look at the apology, I thought I felt it was incredibly sincere, and there were many learning moments in it. And he's a comedian, which is kind of this other space where we we ask comedians to make us laugh and make us feel uncomfortable. And now we're also asking them to live by a standard that changes every year and and words come on and off the allowable list Would anybody here does anybody here actually think or anybody listen to me think Joe Roeg is actually racist? I I think the answer is I don't think anybody thinks that. And then number 2, I I felt the apology was incredibly thoughtful. And well done, Saks, what are your thoughts? David Sacks (00:15:13): Yeah. I mean, I agree I agree with those things. Nobody was accusing Joe Rogan of racism until the cancellation mob started throwing stones. And the misinformation stones didn't work, so then they escalated to racism. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:15:26): I think the generalized thing just take take the context out of Rogan for a second. I think that the the formula, if I can point to this, of cancel culture is now, I think, pretty well understood, which is if you don't like somebody, You need to throw some ism label on them until that ism label sticks. And eventually, you will find it ism label, but the the thing that this cancel culture doesn't appreciate is everybody has someism that that can be attached to them. Yeah. Now some Isms are worse than others, obviously. But, you know, we're all infallible. Right? I I go back to, like, if you wanna quote the bible. Right? There's a There's a beautiful passage into the bible, the book of John. And the whole thing and you guys have heard this quote many times before, but let me just give you the setup. So in the law of the land back then, adultery was illegal but only for the woman. Right? And so there's a very famous example of a woman who is accused of adultery. And, you know, she was about to be stoned to death, which was essentially the punishment. And Jesus basically draws a line and says, you know, he who is without sin should cast that first stone. and nobody does. It deescalates that conflict and everybody leaves. Right? And there's a very famous essay that Renee Girard wrote that basically compared that to a to a different example in a more paganist context where people did stone people. The idea of all of this is that there's some amount of, you know, sin that everybody carries. And I think that at some point, Cancel culture will realize that you have to de escalate and you have to see through some of this noise. You have to have some point of moral resolution to really move on because this sort of like fatalistic judgment doesn't work anymore. So whoever people wanted to cancel Rogan, they must be very frustrated today because for all intents and purposes he got off the hook. They may try again in the future with some other ism. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:37): He may just as well get off the hook in the future. Speaker 4 (00:17:39): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:39): So what the what is the real solution? The real solution is to figure out how to escalate and actually have a conversation about the things that he's doing that really upset you. And that is still not what's happening. Jason Calacanis (00:17:50): And a path perhaps to resolution. Let's get Friedberg in, and then you Friedberg? David Friedberg (00:17:54): I'll say 2 things. 1, I I think I went sat next to Tony Blair for dinner. You know, he was the prime minister of the UK. And he told me it was a really funny conversation because he was talking about his youth, and he's like, if there were iPhones when I was young, I would not have ever been elected to public office. like, you know, he was in a rock band. He I don't know if you guys know his history, but, you know, he was pretty freewheeling kinda guy. And his point was really broader than that. It was that, you know, all of us have something that people can look to us for and use against us in some way. But I think what's really important with this Joe Rogan thing, and I think the bigger picture for me, dissenting voices and critical voices and outspoken voices are a extremely important in the discourse that make society progress. It is not a good society when people that have dissenting of voices or offensive voices are shut down, society has a better opportunity to chart a new course and to identify new pads. Sometimes when the dissenting voice is wrong, and sometimes when it is right. But in both cases, it is important to have that dissenting voice because it allows us to have the dialogue that allows us collectively to figure out what is wrong and what it's right. And so this notion of cancel culture in the way that people like Joe Rogan are and have been attacked for things that they have said in the past or do say today, I think it is really contrary to the opportunity that the United States presents with this, you know, a founding principle of freedom of speech. Sacks. David Sacks (00:19:21): Yeah. So I I agree with that. But I I wanna build on what Shamas said with there are nature art analysis of this. I mean, what we're seeing here is the modern day equivalent of a primitive you know, archaic stoning ritual. This is a modern day virtual stoning in which we're not killing somebody, but we're trying to kill their digital avatar. I mean, we're basically trying to remove and destroy their online presence. I mean, that was really the goal here. And and and and the mechanics of this thing, it it only works to the extent that people are unaware of the the the mechanism of the scapegoating. As soon as they become aware that this person's being targeted selectively as a scapegoat, it stops working. And that was the situation we were in last week where you had, you know, Neil Young through the fur e cast the first stone. Despite being guilty of misinformation many times himself, he's got, like, a weird history of saying weird things about GMOs and gay people and some of the stuff got dredge back up, and and I think that was fair because let he who is without misinformation casts his first stone. And then he got some of his friends, you know, the these aging, you know, rockers like Johnny Mitchell and Crosby stills in Ash to to to throw the next stones. And then the media got in on this and through CNN and MSNBC, they were throwing stones. And it was all motivated by the fact that Rogan It simply does not refuse he refuses to pair at their orthodoxy because, you know, we can see. People like Howard Stern, who I like Stern. Okay? But Today, Howard Stern has become a full fledged COVID hysteric. I mean, he is fully on board with the COVID restrictions and mandates in this area. That's why he gets diplomatic immunity to this. So this whole the the whole scapegoating ritual around Rogan was about to fail last week. David Sacks (00:21:13): And That's why they escalated it is because they saw, first of all, Rogan was getting away. And then second, our ability to to run these sorts of, like, witch hunts. If people start to reject that, we lose all of our power. And so that's why this thing escalated into the most sensitive area that we have in our society, this language around race, this very hurtful these hurtful epithets. And these people are playing games with that with with that type of language, and it's very destructive. And but I think people are seeing through it. You know? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:49): I really agree with this. I think, like, the the scapecoating as a way to resolve things is losing its effectiveness increasingly. It did work online for some amount Speaker 7 (00:22:03): of time early on. And, David, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:03): you're exactly right. It's when The mechanism of action was poorly understood. But now that everybody sees it and people try to do it all the time, it just stops working. and it's not nearly as effective anymore. Jason Calacanis (00:22:18): It's a burnt out tactic. You know, we see this. It's a burned out tactic. And it's like this marketing channel has been over and everybody knows. Like, okay. I'm being marketed too. And give it some context for those people who are wondering you heard Renee Girrod, like, three or 4 times here. It's a philosopher, and he taught at Stanford. He had a big impact on Peter Till. I don't know if Sachs actually took any courses with him. And there's a book. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:39): Me, Peter, David. I mean, like, if you're Jason Calacanis (00:22:41): did you take courses with him? David Sacks (00:22:42): I remember if I remember doing any courses, but Peter told me about his ideas in college, and I read some of his books. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:47): Yeah. His books are incredible. I mean, he is he is one of the most powerful thinkers of of this I mean, he's he passed away. Jason Calacanis (00:22:55): Reminds me of Joseph Campbell, a power of meth. Like, they were really thinking about the the the sort of basic basic tenets of, like, human the human condition and how people behave. It's really worth double clicking on. I think also interesting, in terms of forgiveness and blackface, Justin Trudeau has appeared no less than three times. in his youth in blackface. And it's it's not a joke. It's literally true. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:22): Justin Trudeau, like, the reason why the The racism label was planted on Rogan is because he's hetero docs. The reason why that racism label has not yet really been planted on Justin Trudeau is because he's orthodox. He's quite he's quite part of the ingrained establishment. He comes from royalty. In Canada growing up, Pierre Trudeau You know, we were we were liberals growing up. We were members of the liberal party. We'd made donations to the liberal party. You know, in our lore, there is no greater symbol than Pierre Trudeau, his father. And so when you're the son of somebody like that, you get an enormous amount of credit in your bank account that you're born with. And he was able to burn through so much of it by doing things that anybody else in any other situation may have been judged much more harshly for it, and he wasn't. And he becomes prime minister. And then he's able to get reelected. but, you know, his day of reckoning is coming because he is revealing himself to be a part of this establishment with these views that are actually really uncomfortable and, you know, quite grotesque because of how judgmental they are of everybody else. Jason Calacanis (00:24:33): And that's a a great segue. And then just finally, Saks, it correct me if I'm wrong here. Joe Rogan has voted democrat his whole life He holds largely Democratic beliefs. He's for universal health care. He's pro trans. He's pro gay. David Sacks (00:24:48): He supported Bernie Sanders. Jason Calacanis (00:24:50): And he was of voting for Bernie Sanders. David Sacks (00:24:53): He's a really stupid person for the Democrats, for democratic politicians like Biden to alienate because he's a hero to young people, he's a hero to the working class, and his views are fundamentally, I'd say, more progressive. Jason Calacanis (00:25:06): Yeah. They're a 100% progressive. Yes. David Sacks (00:25:09): So it's stupid for them to do this, but it's also stupid for them to be alienating these truckers because Democrats were supposed to be the party of the working class. So let's pivot. to that issue. Speaker 7 (00:25:17): Can Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:17): I just say one last thing? I just wanna reiterate this, Saxx, because I just I just wanna really give you a chance to say it again. You've always said, and it's so true. the solution to free speech and to protect it is more speech. And I just wanna say to Daniel Ek and the team at Spotify, you guys must have been in a really difficult spot but the decision to take that $100,000,000 to increase the funnel for other voices and historically underrepresented voices is so good, and I hope you guys get to the other side of it, but I thought it was a really, really, really good decision. David Sacks (00:25:50): Yeah. I mean so on eck and the Spotify decision, I mean, I wanna think to that. So I applaud them for not canceling Rogan. They must under enormous pressure to do so, including from their own, you know, employees. The only thing I didn't like an x statement was when he talked about the user safety and how they need to do a better job of of user safety. That's a concept that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I mean, Rogan is not sneaking into people's living rooms and turning his show on and pressing play. If people don't like it, I'm talking about users If users don't like the content, they don't have to listen. Jason Calacanis (00:26:24): You don't have to click play. Speaker 7 (00:26:26): He's not David Sacks (00:26:26): he can literally turn the chat. Jason Calacanis (00:26:28): Yeah. That's That we've David Sacks (00:26:29): all bought into this idea of psychological safety that being confronted with any of you you don't like is a threat to your safety. That is actually a threat to free speech because it's giving the most hysterical people in our culture, the ones who are most prone to being offended, a veto over any idea that and speech they don't like. Jason Calacanis (00:26:46): Yeah. If you're uncomfortable, you're unsafe. you could remove yourself from that situation if it's a piece of media. You don't need to read every book. You don't need to see every Quentin Tarantino film. You don't need to listen to Gerald or whatever else that you find. offensive to you personally. Speaker 7 (00:26:59): I just David Sacks (00:26:59): don't think we should be feeding that idea that that psychological safety is a legitimate idea. Jason Calacanis (00:27:03): We talked about this before with, like, you know, people at work if they say they feel unsafe. That's instantly like an HR like, oh my god. You feel unsafe. David Sacks (00:27:12): Get rid alert. HR's controlling your camera because -- -- everybody a legal requirement. If someone's creating a safety issue in the workplace, they have a legal requirement to remove that problem. That's why this language got started is it triggers the machinery of HR -- Of course. Jason Calacanis (00:27:25): -- David Sacks (00:27:25): to remove people who are do doing nothing wrong. Jason Calacanis (00:27:28): If I told you as an employee, like, Sachs. Hey. Listen. Your work product is not good enough. You're like, I feel unsafe. David Sacks (00:27:34): Right. Okay. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:35): Anyway, David Sacks (00:27:35): let's go to the truckers because I think we're beating this stuff. Jason Calacanis (00:27:37): I just wanna have one final comment on Spotify. I think and I appreciate what Daniel did with a $100,000,000. That's great. And I think it's great that he's supporting free speech, and he's and he's holding his ground there. I know that's not easy. However, I think he's intellectually dishonest saying they're not the publisher of Joe Rogan. I have a 3 part test to see if you're a publisher. Do you pay for the content? Do you promote it? Do you produce it? If you do 2 or more of those, you're de facto a publisher in my mind. They pay a lot of money for Joe Rog, and they promote the heck out of him. And while they don't produce it in advance by picking the guests, they do have a production like Vito on what content they put out there. And so if Netflix has to own the people they pay even if they don't produce it and they promote, then Spotify does need to have the same standard. And Disney and Netflix, all are producers of content. Nobody would argue and I believe Spotify is the producer Daniels not being on his profile. -- on this. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:35): Let me just defend Spotify for a second. Speaker 7 (00:28:37): Okay. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:37): You guys had been through this. I've I've been through this many times. It several of my companies, but when you are in the middle of a firestorm, it's very rare that you can put out these, you know, press releases where the pride of authorship is one person. And in many ways, you have to write these p r releases with all of these guardrails that that think about all of these future issues that may pop up over time. And so I understand that you guys had some issues with some of the words. I would just say again, look at the action, and the action is He didn't deplatform someone, and then he doubled down on free speech, and he actually pointed a $100,000,000 fire hose at people who can now tell their own stories on a platform that is the most important audio platform in the world. So I would say You know, you know, that's kind of like same thing when I said, you know, I didn't particularly like sometimes, you know, Brian's essay. I could have written it better. but at the end of the day what I saw through it and I admitted this later, the substance of what Brian Armstrong did was incredibly profound, one of the most important things that actually happened in the last few years in Silicon Valley culture. And I would just say that I think that Daniel did something really powerful here, and I think that both Spotify and Coinbase deserve and the employees and the leaders there deserve a round of applause. I think it was a very, very hard decision, and I think they stuck to their guns. Irrespective of what you believe they stuck to their guns. Jason Calacanis (00:30:03): Canadian truckers are protesting. As many of you know, vaccine mandates Just breaking today, Ontario's premier has declared a state of emergency for the entire province. And Ottawa police have braced for thousands of protesters to descend for the 3rd consecutive weekend USA today. Also report The convoy could disrupt the Super Bowl by in the state of the union, etcetera. The protest has been self titled The Freedom Convoy and has been underway since January 29th 29th, it appears it has banned several 1000 vehicles across the country. and the truckers are blocking key roadways and bridges, including the ambassador bridge. They're seeking an end 2 Canada's vaccine mandates. And it feels like this is now morphing into something a little bit tighter than just vaccine mandates, maybe it's becoming a occupy Wall Street type of protest open to many people with many different things that they have grievances about a reporter from Barry Weiss's Common Sense, newsletter slash media operation, wrote what the truckers want. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:17): Jason, you're you you just nailed it. I do think that this is actually occupied Wall Street. 2.0. Yeah. Look. Now it it it turned out just to get roots and facts, So it's not just truckers. This is a broad based coalition of people across every single race and gender and age group in Canada that's participating in this thing. In fact, the Bali Weiss article, you know, she profiled men, women of all ages, seeks, you know, whites I mean, everybody blacks. There was so there's a there's a coalition of people. 2nd is this really isn't about vaccination rates because it turns truckers are 90% vaccinated. They're vaccinated at a higher percentage than the actual broad based population of Canada, which is about Jason Calacanis (00:31:58): 78%. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:01): I think the the point of this and, again, I care about this so much as a Canadian, but I I just want to read a quote from Justin Trudeau because I think it encapsulates what this is really about. The quote is the small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa. who are holding unacceptable views that they are expressing do not represent the views of Canadians. And I think it's that phrase unacceptable views that really points to what the real issue here is. which is that there are a lot of people who now say it's been 2 years enough with mask mandates Enough with all of this, you know, almost police state that's developed, all of the emergency use power that politicians have taken Let's reclaim our democracy and let's have, you know, freedom again. And under the political viewpoint of the ruling liberal party which by the way is now going into revolt as well. A bunch of liberal MPs have just completely flipped because of this statement It summarizes what Trudeau is saying, which is what you believe is unacceptable to me, and so now I will quash you. Jason Calacanis (00:33:12): I would be kinda to ask you. -- one viewpoint Friedberg. David Friedberg (00:33:15): Did any of you guys listen to the New York Times Daily podcast that our friend sent out the link to this morning? Yes. You know, to me, these are the same story. It was actually an interview with a reporter who highlighted some work that she had done and identified that Phil Murphy, the the Democratic governor of New Jersey, had done some some some polling and some some focus group discussions. with some of his constituents. And the overriding tone was one of emotion, one of feeling left out of the life that they believed they should have been living over the past 2 years. And, ultimately, I think the tone speaks very clearly to what the truckers are saying, which is everyone feels more than ever incredible overreach into their personal lives by the government and by different governments, whether it's local or federal here in the US or by this Canadian government or, you know, go to Australia or the UK and the sentiment seems to be similar everywhere. I don't think that any time since World War 2, have we seen the government create such restrictions and such mandates in in Democratic Republic, like the United States, that we just saw over the past 2 years. And I think the fact that it's continuing when folks are now seeing, you know, on the ground every day you know, the the mildness of Omicron or, like, you know, the big the challenges that their kids are facing in school and you kinda put these things together and you say to yourself, why is my government restricting my life and causing the challenge that I'm being forced to face for what? And I think that's a tone that everyone feels everywhere in the west today. I I think in the east, it's a little bit different, right, because of the the mindset there. But I think here it's Jason Calacanis (00:34:56): great. -- David Friedberg (00:34:57): collectivism. And I think here we're we pride individual liberty and freedom as kind of the foundation of these democracies to have the government tell us what we have to wear, shots we have to put in our arms, where we can go and when, how we can behave, in ways that were never legislated, in ways that were never kind of debated and discussed publicly, just feels overreaching at this point. I think everyone's hit their breaking point. And this is Another one of these examples, this trucking thing is another one of these examples of people manifesting their breaking point. Jason Calacanis (00:35:27): And Saxx, to the point we've been discussing over and over again, Things have changed radically since the beginning of the pandemic. You believed in mask mandates early because, hey. No downside. We talked about that, and we didn't want hospitals to be overrun. which is reasonable. You wanted to have oxygen. We were all, you know, trying to make plans for, hey. How bad is this gonna be? But we're sitting here 2 years later, and it's pretty clear Omicron. which I had. Thank you, Saxx, is is a nothing burger as we sit here. Thanks, Saxx Alwan. -- Alcon. David Sacks (00:35:55): I help to you. Jason Calacanis (00:35:56): Saksacon, comedian superhero. Thank you. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:58): All I've ever gotten is sick when I've been around you. Jason Calacanis (00:36:01): Yeah. I went to Saksis Park. And all I got was an $8000 gift bag in Omicron. The gift bag's pretty great at Sakses parties. David Sacks (00:36:07): No. I think I think getting Omicron helped you because it enabled you to see that this for you was largely a nothing burger, and so you could come out of your house acting normal. I think there's a lot of people all over the country or Speaker 7 (00:36:17): like that. David Sacks (00:36:17): You were Jason Calacanis (00:36:18): saying that. You haven't left your house for 2 years. David Friedberg (00:36:20): Do you remember the photos of Saks at the beginning of COVID when he was wearing a triple mask and the Jason Calacanis (00:36:25): how you were scared to death. You were gonna forget the Mexican government built before. Yeah. Yeah. The Colonel curtain. David Sacks (00:36:30): Yeah. Well, look, I supported mass man mandates at the beginning of the pandemic when Faltu was telling us didn't work. Let's let's not forget that. You know, I was supporting when the health officials told us they didn't work. Why? because it was the only thing we had. We didn't have vaccine. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:43): David David David Cohen. He was He was doing us a favor by lying to us by his own admission. He said, I lied to you so that we could preserve these masks for frontline workers. Well, thank you thank you, Anthony Fauci. David Sacks (00:36:54): One of many one of many noble lies that he's been telling. Jason Calacanis (00:36:58): Here we go. He's an he's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:59): a noble liar. He's a noble liar. Right. David Sacks (00:37:01): By May 2020, I would probably say -- My David Friedberg (00:37:03): biggest political loser. Pick from 2020. Go on. Jason Calacanis (00:37:06): Take it easy on your picks. I know you wanna do your victory It's only February. Give us till, like, June for the check-in. Okay. Colonel Kirtz. Continue. -- David Sacks (00:37:14): were the main alternative to lockdowns. That's the way I saw in the summer of 2020. And I was saying, end these crazy lockdowns, just do masks. And then once we had the vaccine and all COVID restrictions, that was a year ago. And now we still have these restrictions a year later, and that is what the truckers are rebelling against. Just like you said, these are ordinary people who are sick and tired of having to show their papers and have to deal with these mandates. And and for that, they've been, like, absolutely demonized. I mean Trudeau comes out and says that they're basically white supremacists and racist and homophobic. every epithet he can throw at them. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:50): Sorry. To your point, he used every he did use every ism. He really did try to cancel them at first, and this is what's really painted him in a corner. He went on national TV, and he said these people are racist and misogynist. That's that's specifically what he said, and it actually turned out that the overwhelming majority of them were not. They were just normal ordinary law abiding Canadians who were just fed up with the overage. And then then what happened was the polling said You should bring these convoy leaders in, sit them down and talk to them. And then the the political calculus though was impossible for him because he had already called them racists and misogynists, so then how could he bring them in? David Sacks (00:38:27): Right. Exactly. He yeah. How do you negotiate with Nazis, basically? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:30): So then what he did was he ran out of Ottawa. So instead of staying in Ottawa, now he's under in a secure location for his city. Jason Calacanis (00:38:37): Oh my god. Oh, he feels unsafe. So trigger warning. In fairness, When you bring 8000 people together and you get a wide enough group of people, there was SWAT stickers and white confederate flags that were flown So it might have been 2 of 8000, but that did happen -- David Sacks (00:38:53): Within any protest movements. Jason Calacanis (00:38:55): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:55): which I just said. David Sacks (00:38:56): Yes. Within any protests movement, there's always gonna be a handful of people who go too far and are too extreme, but they did represent the vast, vast majority of the people that turned out, which are ordinary citizens. And -- Yeah. -- Trudeau seized on a handful of isolated examples try and demonize these guys, and I think it's blowing up in his face. The fact of the matter is, the truckers did not start this fight. It's the Xelle Tree of our elites, of our professional class that started this fight. They will not give up on these mandates. That's the fundamental problem. Jason Calacanis (00:39:28): Well and while they go to the Super Bowl with no I David Sacks (00:39:30): think what you're seeing here with this trucker thing, I think it's gonna have huge ripple effects because it's showing the schism in the Democratic party between the professional elites and the working class Here you have the working class. Remember, these were the essential workers. These are the people bringing us our food. Most of them have already had COVID over the last couple of years. They couldn't sit behind a computer and do their job in their pajamas on Zoom all day. Okay? So these guys know the reality of COVID just like you learned the reality, Jason, when you actually got it. And yet, we've got this neurotic class of professionals within the Democratic Party who don't want who are these COVID deadenders don't wanna give this stuff up? And that's the fundamental divide. And I think Biden's gonna have to choose which side do you want. Are you on the side of the working class or the professional class? Trudeau has chosen his side. He is the a feat elite face of these COVID dead enders and and Biden's gonna have to choose who he supports. Jason Calacanis (00:40:25): And then those are dwindling. You have governors now who are Democratic governors in many states who are saying, listen. Omicron is obviously different and look at the charts, look at the data. We -- We have to talk David Sacks (00:40:37): about this New York Times story on how New Jersey and several other of these blue states popped the mask mandates. It was absolutely extraordinary. Jason Calacanis (00:40:45): I mean, it's not extraordinary. The the risk assessment is different, David. David Sacks (00:40:47): Well, extraordinary about it is that Jason Calacanis (00:40:50): -- I mean, I think it's kinda obvious more than extraordinary. If Omicron is less deadly, it's an upper respiratory. doesn't kill people who are vaccinated, and most people are vaccinated. Pretty obvious, it's time to pivot and open everything up. It's time's like an obvious decision. David Sacks (00:41:03): Biden really misses moment here. So I think, you know, like Friedberg said, it was Phil Murphy. He's a democratic governor in New Jersey. He was supposed to have an easy reelect win by 20 to 30 points. He narrowly squeaks by. by two or three points. Okay? So then he conducts the focus groups to find out what do we miss, why were we so off on this thing, and they find out that people in sick and tired of these mandates He goes to the White House, okay, and shows these findings and says, guys, we have to get off this losing position. On COVID, And the White House is on his hands and does absolutely nothing. So Murphy is like, we can't wait anymore. So he unilaterally goes without White House support. This is all in the New York Times article. This is not like some bright wing publications saying this. Okay? So he unilaterally says, okay, we're getting rid of the mask mandate. Okay? And then 5 other states do the same thing because they realize we can't wait anymore. And Biden is just nowhere to be found, and Passaki is saying, well, we are referring to the CDC. they're deferring to, you know, Rachel Walensky at the CDC and Randy Weidgarten at the teachers' unions and these health officials like Barbara Furr in LA County all of whom are saying we cannot lift these mandates yet. They don't want so they are completely on the wrong side of this. And then Biden really steps in it by saying to Trudeau in Canada, listen. You guys gotta clear this bridge. Do whatever you need to do to clear this bridge. basically implying that this civil disobedience needs to be met by force. And then you've got Harvard professors and CNN analysts saying slash their tires. take away their trucking licenses, starve them out. You know? So this has been the response. And the re response to that is, now there's a trucker convoy getting started in the US. And they're gonna march on Washington. David Sacks (00:42:40): They're gonna drive to Washington. Jason Calacanis (00:42:42): Great. David Sacks (00:42:42): And between now and then, Biden better forget what site he's gonna be on. Because if he doesn't handle this right, I think it's gonna be the end of his presidency. Jason Calacanis (00:42:50): Peaceful civil disobedience is fine as long as they're not blocking ambulances, getting people to and from hospitals. that's fine, especially if he Speaker 7 (00:42:56): comes back Jason Calacanis (00:42:56): to me at your operation. David Sacks (00:42:58): Is this Scranton Joe, the the the the guy who said he would take us back to normalcy, the The representative of the working class, is that who the president of the United States is or is he in the trudeau camp, the, you know, the the Fauci and the Walinsky and the Barbara Freres. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:14): And he's always inquiring for us. -- asking a you're asking a rhetorical question. I think that the the polling data makes the answer pretty clear, which is that the Democratic Party is lurching towards establishment insiders. and working normal ordinary people have in larger and larger numbers started gravitating towards to the Republican Party. M minorities in far larger numbers than we ever expected have started lurching towards the Republican Party. And so the answer is sort of in the polling data and what what the actual facts on the ground have been. You know, I mean, we we forget. because we were also ready to to to cast away our Trump derangement syndrome. But he did get, I think, what was it, 9,000,000 more people to vote for him? in this past election. David Sacks (00:44:06): The working class, whether there this is the white working class or the non white working class are moving in huge numbers. I think Jason Calacanis (00:44:13): -- David Sacks (00:44:13): Huge numbers. Jason Calacanis (00:44:13): -- David Sacks (00:44:13): I think I think the margin of nonwhite working class who moved to the Republicans last election was 18 points. They got 18 points more share than 8 years ago. So The working class, regardless of their race, is moving towards the Republicans, while the Democrats are becoming this more elite professional class party, this woke elite party. And, you know, I think Biden sort of is caught in the middle of this. And I think he's running out of time to try and reestablish that he's gonna have a centrist presidency that does not completely cow tell and defer to the left of his party to the sort of woke elite thinking. You know, you you see Democratic political scientists like Roy Tishera writing about this, like, every week saying, this is your last chance. This is your moment to save your presidency. I don't know if he's listening. Jason Calacanis (00:45:00): Okay. Friedberg. We made some great progress in science this week in nuclear fusion. Do you wanna tee this up for us? David Friedberg (00:45:08): I'm happy to. So let me just give a little background for maybe a minute on on fusion. So, you know, the The way energy is made in the sun and in all stars is through this process of nuclear fusion where hydrogen nuclei, the the protons inside of hydrogen atoms shoot around at such a high energy, and they're so dense because of the amount of hydrogen it all causes gravity to pull them all together and they get really dense. they start slamming into each other. When they slam into each other, they fuse into helium and, ultimately, the heavier elements and release energy in the process. And that is what fusion is. So, you know, we talk about nuclear energy on earth. All nuclear energy that we've generated on earth as a species to date has been through fission where we take much heavier elements like plutonium and uranium and break they break apart by squeezing them together and they release energy. But this creates radioactive material. It's dangerous. it's very, very expensive and so on. So the the there's always been a question since roughly the 19 fifties on whether or not we could recreate the conditions of the sun or stars on planet Earth by creating a plasma, by creating the same sort of plasma that exists inside the stars, very hot, very fast, very dense hydrogen, that can slam into itself and slam into atoms and fuse into helium and release energy. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:22): Does that same plasma exist on Uranus? Jason Calacanis (00:46:25): Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. God. You you're gonna give him a wedgie. Let science boy finish. Come on. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:32): Oh, sorry. Back to you. David Sacks (00:46:34): Never gets old. Jason Calacanis (00:46:35): Was it 69 megajoules or 420 megajoules? Guys. David Friedberg (00:46:38): So plasma fusions always been this kind of holy grail of energy because if you can actually generate plasma fission, The amount of energy it takes to create the plasma is less than the energy that comes out of the plasma. So it's it's effectively -- That's positive. Jason Calacanis (00:46:50): -- David Friedberg (00:46:50): infinite free cheap plasma. And so the the system that people have been building for the last Jason Calacanis (00:46:55): 25, 30 David Friedberg (00:46:56): years is these these doughnut shaped systems called Tokamax. They're they They're like a circle or like a doughnut, and they spin the plasma around inside. And so it takes a lot of energy and magnets and so on to try and make this work. it's a company we talked about a few months ago called Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which uses a new superconducting material to control that plasma and use instead of using expensive magnets, may just raise Jason Calacanis (00:47:18): $1,800,000,000. David Friedberg (00:47:21): And, you know, more recently, the joint European Torres, which is managed by the the Atomic Energy Authority in the United Kingdom, just this week, demonstrated energy output from their Tokamak plasma fusion system where they generated, you know, 59 megawatts of of energy in 5 seconds which is a record. The prior record was set in 1997 by that same agency. They generated 16 megawatts of power output. So it it was a great breakthrough. And, you know, to make this all possible has required technical breakthroughs in electronic technical breakthroughs in sensors and computing and hardware in material science and superconductors. And so all of this is starting to coalesce that plasma fusion might actually become a reality. And the eye care system, which is the biggest construction project in Europe, 35 nations have contributed a total of roughly 50 to $60,000,000,000 to make this system. Is it it's gonna go online around 2027. They've been building it for 20 years. it's gonna be a 500 Megawatt demonstration system. And if it works, then it opens up the door that in the future, we may actually be able to turn plasma fusion into an energy source for all of humanity. It basically would use water, plasma fusion is made from taking hydrogen, which you would get from water, spinning it around, heating it up, getting it to be really, really dense, and ultimately driving power out of it. The implications are extraordinary. Right? So over the next few decades, it is appearing more like that we will have plasma fusion systems working on earth. And as that happens, energy becomes free and it becomes unlimited. And with unlimited free energy, we can terraform Earth. Right? We can take ocean water, desalate, turn it into freshwater. We can pump that into deserts, turn them into rainforests, you know, the total annual production of energy on earth today is about a 170 terawatt hours. David Friedberg (00:49:12): That amount of energy could be generated from just a ten foot by ten foot by ten foot cube of water. That's the amount of energy the amount of material that would be turned into photons that would drive all of the electricity we need on So it's an incredible technology and an incredible breakthrough. We're starting to see this stuff happen. One area that I wanted to kinda just highlight which no one talks about but which I think is extraordinarily important about a 100 years from now, let's say. As these plasma fusion systems work, it's certainly gonna be true that we'll have abundant free energy during the back half of this century. And that'll change everything. We'll decarbonize the atmosphere. We'll terraform the planet. We can make whatever we want, we can build things, etcetera. But the same system of plasma fusion theoretically could be used to fuse heavier elements. than just helium. So fast forward a Jason Calacanis (00:50:00): 100 David Friedberg (00:50:00): or 200 years, if we can actually make plasma fusion systems work, we could also and to make helium to make energy We could also use them to make heavier elements like the rare earth metals that we talk about being so important here on earth to make batteries. or phosphorus, which, you know, we're gonna run out of on planet Earth in about a 100 years, which is a critical component of agriculture and feeding ourselves. So, you know, over the next, call it, 100 years, plasma fusion systems, I think, back half of this century, come online, provide us with abundant free energy, then in the 22nd century, I think this idea of nucleosynthesis, the idea that we can actually make the rare earth or the heavier elements that are limited natural resources here on Earth where we could turn water into gold or water into lithium or water into molybdenum or, you know, into virillium or whatever starts to become a reality. And so this, to me, like, I I feel like we're on the eve of plasma effusion being a reality, you know, based on some of the results we're seeing. And it's it's one after the other, iTer. It's gonna come online. you know, Commonwealth Fusion had their their materials breakthrough and and on and on and on. So this seems to be building up. And so the 2030 -- -- hit Jason Calacanis (00:51:05): a tipping point. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:51:06): That's right. I think the 2030s in 20 forties are where this becomes real. And all these problems and concerns we have about climate change and carbon in the atmosphere, all of this stuff can be reversed with infinite energy. Jason Calacanis (00:51:18): And so -- David Friedberg (00:51:18): So I'm optimistic, and I'm I'm I'm excited about a lot of what we're seeing. Jason Calacanis (00:51:22): Let me ask you one question. Obviously, when people start hearing about nuclear reactors and fission, and then they start learning about fusion. They immediately have the Chernobyl's of the world and Fukushima's come to mind and nuclear bombs. In this case, when this reaction occurs, my understanding, I've interviewed a couple of people working on these reactors, is that the reaction just fizzles out. It just stops. And then the -- David Friedberg (00:51:45): It's not radioactive. So these these Speaker 7 (00:51:46): these are not radioactive materials that David Friedberg (00:51:46): naturally decay into radioactive ions or or particles that can damage the body or damage. These are literally just hydrogen atoms that are spun around so hot and smashed into each other. So if the machine breaks, everything just turns off. That's it. Jason Calacanis (00:52:03): And the output, even when it's working, my understanding is some natural, like, just air and water. So there's no output. There's no -- David Friedberg (00:52:12): There's nothing radioactive. There's no environment -- -- to deal with. So let let me fast forward 200 years. So now assume these systems work. As you guys know, all technology over time gets better, faster, cheaper, smaller. So in 200 years, we could find that we have plasma fusion reactions in every pocket, in every computer, in every phone. Imagine a world where we no longer need battery, where we no longer need transmission lines, and where a system can literally pull hydrogen out of the air generate electricity on the fly. And it sounds crazy, but people thought people would have never thought that the batteries that we put inside of phones would have existed when the first flow cell battery cell was made, you know, whatever, you know, during the early days of of chemistry, electrical chemistry. So, you know, the idea that we've been able to shrink batteries as we have the the idea that we've been able to make generators like we have today, these were concepts that would have been so foreign. I do think that in 200 years, if plasma fusion systems work, there's nothing about the laws of physics that says they're limited in scale to only being large. They theoretically could be reduced down So there's no limit to the size they could drop down to. And so there could be a world 200 years from now where plasma fusion reactors exist in every component that needs electricity. And so, ultimately, you could see putting these these systems on spaceships and using them to convert elements from one form to another, and we could live for you know, a 100000 years on a spaceship and just recycle the elements on that spaceship to produce all our food and our air and everything. And yeah. For sure, we could Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:40): get to Uranus with that. Jason Calacanis (00:53:42): Absolutely. And back. David Friedberg (00:53:43): The summary. And back. You could Jason Calacanis (00:53:45): you could circle as anus. David Friedberg (00:53:46): So that was my diatribe on plasma fusion. I'm super excited about some of the progress Jason Calacanis (00:53:51): we're seeing. Right now, Saxx is wondering how we wet our beaks. Just tell us where to place the bet. David Friedberg (00:53:54): It's there's nowhere yet. This is Jason Calacanis (00:53:56): -- David Sacks (00:53:56): I'm being, obviously, I don't place bets on things that take a 100000 a year Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:00): It's only a 100 years, Zach. David Sacks (00:54:02): Oh, a 100 years. Sorry. Jason Calacanis (00:54:03): 100 1000 David Sacks (00:54:03): years. things that might materialize in 4 years. Sorry. Jason Calacanis (00:54:06): 100 weeks. He needs to Sachs Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:07): his bills are due next month. Jason Calacanis (00:54:09): Yeah. Not margin call Saks. Oh. Oh. David Sacks (00:54:12): I got bills to pay. Jason Calacanis (00:54:13): I got bill. Daddy's got oh, he's a big David Friedberg (00:54:16): part of that, you know, just speaking markets for a second, I mentioned to you guys at the end of last year that I made a bet on energy stocks. And the reason I made a bet on energy is because some of the breakthroughs that we're seeing in decarbonization and renewable energy has driven a reduction in capital improvements across energy infrastructure. because people are so optimistic about what's over the horizon and they're so pessimistic about carbon intensive energy systems that we actually have underinvested over the past few years in energy infrastructure that it's turning out today is critically needed. So while this is a great long term kind of optimistic world scenario and it's gonna decarbonize energy production and energy systems, in the near term, we're actually struggling a bit to meet our energy demands. And there's a lot of leverage that energy producers have over those that are the consumers as we're seeing currently with the Russia, Ukraine, Europe. crisis and so on. And so part of the reason for the climb in energy stocks over the last couple of weeks has been largely driven by fact that we're realizing that this under investment in CapEx has created a decline in productivity of these assets relative to the demand. And so suddenly, everyone's like, oh my gosh. These things are gonna be able to charge more. commodity prices are going up and so on. So, you know, it's very hard to think about playing an investment cycle around this stuff because in the near term, there's still significant demand, and we only have carbon intensive systems to produce energy. Jason Calacanis (00:55:34): Glasgow, yes, Guillermo. If does this mean on an investment thesis? you might see a massive spike in carbon based fuel systems and these other wealth funds and then a dramatic drop off. No. Okay. What do you predict will happen? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:47): The nobody will support anybody investing in pulling more oil out of the ground. They'll they'll support trying to get more from what we have. But, you know, I I don't know if I don't know if you guys saw, but, you know, There's no support for this. Whether you're an investor and you go activist on some of these oil companies, you know, whether you're I think there Biden had a big setback because, you know, he had cleared a whole, like, millions of acres of offshore Land for some some kind of energy extraction that was then just reversed by the courts. Nope. No. But nobody has support for David Friedberg (00:56:25): But that's like it's but what you're saying is exactly right, and it's exactly the reason oil prices are climbing. I just sent you guys a link to to what's going on today. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:33): They're but they're climbing for the wrong reason. So look. Let let let's just be realistic here. We, you know, we have a cartel. It's called OPEC you know, and what they do is they decide output. And we have some checks and balances to OPEC, namely Russia and a few other actors. who will try to then regulate supply and demand so that there's mutually assured destruction. The net result of all of that right now is that we do have some constraints apply for the amount that we need to get to get back to the level of production we had pre pandemic. So we are gonna have some sustained energy prices, but you saw something really important this past week. Everybody was waiting for this big CPI print. Right? The consumer price index print. Everybody thought it was gonna be a bad number. It was a pretty bad number, but the markets were pretty responsive to it. And And then it's been pretty responsive the rest of the week despite a whole bunch of stuff. I don't know if you guys saw it, but, like, yesterday, there was this crazy article where, you know, one of the Fed governors was like, we should raise by a 100 base points by July and, you know, we should do 88 raises and and the markets were like, what are you talking about? And why is that? because now people have started to look you know, I've I've mentioned this before. When you go into a rate cycle, we're kind of past worrying about how many. We kind of look to the end and decide what we wanna believe about the future. And one of the most interesting things is the rate of change of this inflation was actually lower month over month. And so if you think about it that way, we had a bad CPI print, but It's actually not going up as much. And in fact, it's starting to trail off, and a lot of economists now forecast basically this inflation peaking or already having peaked over the last few weeks. Consumer sentiment is not so good. A lot of us are now shifting our consumption away from goods to more services. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:27): We're we're stopping, you know, the hoarding of the toilet papers of the world, if you will. And so I'm not a big buyer of this trade, to be honest with you, Freeport. I think that it works in the short term. I don't think it's an investment. I think that's point, you're gonna have to make a decision about what your view on energy is. Jason Calacanis (00:58:43): I know. I I agree. David Friedberg (00:58:44): I don't think this is a long term Jason Calacanis (00:58:45): -- Speaker 7 (00:58:45): It's a trade, Jason Calacanis (00:58:46): not an investment. David Friedberg (00:58:46): That's right. But I do I do I do think that the macro sentiment sent the market in one direction. It creates this op it created a buying opportunity, which I was pretty clear about. And I do think that some of this global tension stuff we're seeing is only gonna drive it up for a while. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:58): I do I do think, however, that the the this big tech spread trade is moving from a trade to an investment actually, and that I didn't expect. And the reason is I talked to a bunch of folks on Wall Street over this past week And they told me 2 things. And one of them is a segue because I think we should talk about Microsoft, which is another brilliant move in the lexicon of business. But What they said was Facebook has become a funding short for other investments. Now what does that mean? Everybody was crowded into Big Tech. We talked about this before. Right? Those five stocks were broadly owned. They were effectively the index. But after that after that earnings report, a lot of investors, including retail investors, had to decide where to reallocate their capital and had to decide where to invest, where the money was gonna come from to invest in these other names that were really beaten up. And what folks on Wall Street have been telling me is that, you know, Facebook has become what's called a funding short, meaning there is no bid to buy that from institutional owners. They'd rather on the margin sell it to generate the cash to then take and invest in other things. And what you saw over this past week is the bottoming out of a lot of these growth stocks that were beaten up. Right? They rallied pretty significantly every day, 3, 4, 5, 6% rallies, and other names in Big Tech have rallied really well. including Microsoft. And and so I I'm I I think that there is the potential a small potential that that's going from a trade to an investment actually, a sustainable trend that you can bank on for, you know, several Jason Calacanis (01:00:38): years. Investment hold the stock for 5, 10 years. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:40): The trade. That spread trade. You can hold it for long periods then. Jason Calacanis (01:00:42): But for the winners to be the winners in that just so people get refreshed, Google's a winner in Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:46): that -- -- Google. Jason Calacanis (01:00:47): -- Microsoft Google. And then you feel Amazon, Facebook, obviously, and Netflix are the losers in that trade. Still feel that way? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:56): I think that Microsoft and Google are far and away the winners. far in a way the winners end. Look. You saw you saw you saw this Microsoft thing today or sorry. This past week. So smart. Jason Calacanis (01:01:05): You know? Yeah. So just to give catch people up on that, Microsoft has made another savvy move to get approval for their $75,000,000,000 Activision Blizzard acquisition, they promised their video game app store would operate with open market Principles, CEO of the year, Satya Nadell, and others traveling to Washington in Nadell. They traveled to. Nadella, right, the senate at the end. Travel's watching this week to meet with regulators regarding the acquisition. So they, I guess, are proactively going to Washington as opposed to other people who maybe or not. Quote for Microsoft president, Brad Smith, we are more focused on adopting adapting to regulation than fighting against it. That's some really interesting -- Look. Speaker 7 (01:01:48): There's a Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:48): there's a famous story about this explorer named Hernandez Cortez, where, you know, we've all heard this analogy or this this this little phrase before where, you know, when they were exploring coming from Europe and, you know, they hit the Caribbean Islands, and then, you know, looking for America, etcetera. The famous phrase is burn the boats. Yep. Right? Can't go back. We have to find our way. Make it work. The the way that that's been extended in business is sort of what we would call scorched the earth. And there's a competitive move that a lot of businesses if they're smart enough can execute, which is to effectively take a key market. and take an economic view of that market where you say that we're gonna take all the economic value away from it. And I think this is a first step towards a really interesting play that Microsoft could pull, which is essentially to scorch the earth of stores Jason Calacanis (01:02:41): -- Which is Google's and Apple's really big money printer -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:45): To make a completely open permissible platform with very little to no take rate. and in a market as big as video games, I think what it does is it creates pressure on all these other mega platforms to essentially copy them. And I think Friedberg mentioned this before. Google has actually been the best in doing this by finding these key markets where I think it was Saks. you know, Chrome and other things and giving them away for free. Google is in a position to make the App Store effectively free, and then that puts Apple and a little bit of a desert island. So Jason back to why I think you can keep Apple in that basket of shorts. The competitive pressures are mounting by by the moves of Microsoft that I think easier for Google to copy and very difficult for companies like Apple to copy because it creates an incredible disincentive. Jason Calacanis (01:03:30): Yeah. And also as part of this open App Store concept, they would let you use any payment system. So if you're on an iPhone and you wanted to use Apple Pay with a Google app purchase, you could do that. And if you're on you know, Microsoft, you could use PayPal as an example. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:44): Sachs, what do you what do you think about inflation? David Sacks (01:03:46): Okay. There was a really interesting chart on inflation that actually 0 hedge tweeted. And I threw it up in the notes here where they said real hourly earnings are negative Jason Calacanis (01:03:55): 1.7%. David Sacks (01:03:57): It's the 10th month in a row where US incomes aren't keeping up with inflation. So the problem here is that, you know, people's incomes have increased with inflation but not as much as the inflation rate. So the net effect of it is that people are feeling worse off. When they go to the grocery store to buy groceries or whatever they need, they don't feel as rich. That's the fundamental problem here. And I think there's a lot of people out there who think that there's a free lunch that if we printed 2,000,000,000,000 worth of steamy checks, this is the whole that $2,000,000,000,000 bill last year that they shoveled through. I think the idea was we're gonna print as much money as we can for the election, and it's gonna help us in the midterms. Actually, as it turns out, it boosted inflation so much that people are feeling worse off even though their wages went up slightly because on a net basis, their earnings are down. So I just think it's a good reminder that you can't just, like, print wealth. You can't print your way to prosperity. No free lunches? There's no free lunches. David Friedberg (01:04:59): Yeah. Or we're gonna create addiction to universal income or universal subsidy. That's the alternative is people are gonna basically try and vote to make some programs that were initially meant to be temporary, more permanent in order to keep up the lifestyle that they've been accustomed to. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:14): Just just to build on Saksis Point, the University of Michigan Consumer sentiment was released. I think it was today this morning. And it shows exactly what he's saying, which is that, you know, consumer's propensity and confidence in the economy has been falling off a cliff. You know, the month over month change was almost it was down 8.2%. The year over year change is down almost Jason Calacanis (01:05:35): 20%. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:37): Current economic conditions was down 20% and then index of consumer expectations down Jason Calacanis (01:05:44): 19%. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:44): So to To Saksis point, people are scared. David Sacks (01:05:47): Yeah. Well, we've been we've been talking on the show for the last, I'd say, a couple of months about balancing the risk of recession versus the risk of inflation. Inflation, I think, has gotten slightly worse. The print went from the last print was, like, 7.1% now. It's Jason Calacanis (01:06:00): 7.5% David Sacks (01:06:02): So to Shamal's point earlier, it's getting worse, but the rate of how fast it's getting worse is Jason Calacanis (01:06:07): slowing. -- peaking. David Sacks (01:06:08): But the risk of recession, I think, is increasing Because what's keeping this economy going is the consumer. And if the consumer sentiment now all of a sudden is tanking and people feel poorer because of inflation, I just you know, now the the the risks are starting to become more balanced. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:24): As sentiment goes down, this is where governors play a critical role because if they don't open up these economies, We can't actually have a consumer led consumption rebound of the economy because there aren't any services to buy because you can't actually be around anybody. So if the economy remains effectively closed and people are done buying, you know, tubs of margarine and toilet paper, because, you know, Armageddon isn't coming as we were worried it would. What are we supposed to be doing? So this is how these things interplay. So we have to get these again, going back to where we started. We have to get this economy open and we have to just get back to some sense of normalcy, and the consumer will lead us out. But I think Saks, you're right. On the margin, I think the risk is towards a recession because people don't see this Thomas Sowell, who's a well known Stanford. He's a I think he's a senior fellow at at Hoover. You know, he he he has this comment which is effectively taxes are bad for the rich and the poor, but inflation is bad just for the poor. And the reason he says that is because, you know, if you're wealthy, you can transition to assets that are sort of inflation adjusted or inflation protected. Right? You can consume assets or you can purchase assets to protect yourself. But inflation is an exceptionally regressive means of the government taking compensation away from you, current compensation, and it disproportionately affects working class ordinary people. And so if you have real wages that are negative, inflation that's high That's confiscatory. Right? You are you are meaningfully less well off than you were before. And, you know, the wealthy have a way to hedge, but normal ordinary working class people do not. And on the margin then if they then do not go out and spend, The problem will be some sort of recessionary effect. Jason Calacanis (01:08:03): I also think if we open up, more people might since they're so lonely and getting weird at home. I think they might actually wanna go do jobs to socialize and do things. I'm seeing people wanna get out and do you know, trips with their teams and their and their sick of staying home, Salesforce just bought a retreat center. And we saw this out of the city, the Bay Area. And because Benioff's got a concern, I guess, that all these employees he hired over 2 years who've never met another Salesforce employee are getting weird and lonely And, you know, could create Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:34): mental health issues. I think David, you're right. I think history is gonna be really judgmental of Biden. If he is the last person to basically give the green light and all of these democratic governors basically revolt, and open up under underneath, you know, either silence or the complete opposite point of view. This is a really bad setup. David Sacks (01:08:55): When National Journal, which again, is not some right wing publication, they're just sort of an an analyst of what's happening in Washington, said that by that an article Biden is blowing his COVID moment. He was to to lead us back to normalcy. All he had to do was say, guys, it's time for the restrictions to come off and take credit for the fact that we were that the whole country was ready to move on. and he's kinda missed it. And but this this trucker convoy has come into Washington and gives him one more chance, I think, to get on the right side of this because there's really 2 ways he can react. 1 is to treat them as, you know, domestic terrorist, you know, racist, white supremacists, insurrectionaries, or he can, you know, embrace them. Yep. Situent. All he has to do is say, listen. We love you. We respect you. We hear you. We agree with you. It's time for these mandates to end. And you know what? thank you, Rachel Walenskiy and Anthony Fauci, for your service. We understand you're just trying to keep the country safe, but thank you very much. We're ready to move on. We're getting rid of all these restrictions. His popularity would, like, bounce 5 points, 10 points if he did that. Jason Calacanis (01:10:02): Yeah. I'm betting he's going to. I mean, he's he's always represented the working man and woman of country. That's been his thing from the beginning. I bet you he does embrace them. And if you look at Omicron, remember the scariness of December? Hey. This thing is spreading 30, 40, fifty times faster. I wonder if it's gonna have the same death rate, and we didn't know. And now we know. And it's February, 2 months later, we know that the curve in South Africa, same as a curve in New York and California, and down, and then the only people who die seemingly are immunocompromised or unvaccinated both. So it feels like the perfect time. -- David Sacks (01:10:33): who really led us back to normalcy. I mean, we really need to give credit to all the people who fought to get the moms who went to these school board meetings where it announces domestic terrorists, they are the ones who put pressure to repeal these mask mandates on their kids which by the way aren't even fully off. In New York and California, adults don't have to wear a mask anymore, but the kids do. It's the scientist it's the scientist of the great Barrington Declaration who were demonized and called fringe and and COOX and conspiracy theorists. They were the ones who provided the real data against lockdowns, not the NIH. It's these truckers who are basically opposing mandates. These are the people who are dragging us back to normalcy. And as the politicians who are reacting to that, when the polls change, And I think what the people want now is some real leadership. It's a politician who gets up there and leads us back to normalcy. Why can't buy and do that? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:20): There's a great article in the times, and they profiled, you know, a couple of people. And one of them was a mom in New York who's running for congress against, you know, an entrenched an entrenched Democrat. And she's I mean, you know, she's just a good,hearted mom who was like, this is enough enough enough. I need to get back to normalcy. My kids need to get back in school. Jason Calacanis (01:11:40): We still have mass mandates here in California. Kids are still wearing a mask in Sweden. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:44): It's becoming tribal warfare amongst the Democrats in California because even when, you know, the the governor basically said, okay, mask mandates can go on x date. the the county supervisors have not decided so for example, in Santa Clara County, You know, they have not said yes. David Sacks (01:12:05): In LA County, there's a health an unelected bureaucrat, a health director named Barbara Ferreira. She calls the shots on COVID. After Newsom basically said that the mass can come off, she says, no, they can't not until April. Who is this person giving us orders? She told this to the board of supervisors down there, and we're all just supposed to listen. Now the reason why she has this authority is because Newsom is granted to her under Newsom State of Emergency. So what he should do is end that. What is the emergency? The Super Bowl's happening this weekend in the state, and everyone's gonna be their massless. Jason Calacanis (01:12:36): I mean, I was at the warriors game last night, and you had people wearing the most flimsy of masks that does nothing to protect, people taking them off while they're eating and drinking, and then people walking around with signs, the security guards had signs that said, please put your mask on. And they were walking up to people like, did you not? And putting this, like, little round sign in people's faces and not talking to them just you know and they would stand there until you put your mask back on. And, like, you you're literally eating a hot dog, and then you put the hot dog down, and then they come up and put the sign in your face, then you put your mask up, you take another bite of your hot I mean, it was getting unnecessarily confrontational and just weird. And and nowhere else are you seeing it? And then you go to a restaurant, and the employees are wearing masks, and nobody else is. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:18): I hope I hope you can find it. So weird. There was this clip on Twitter when the mask mandate was lifted in Nevada. Then it was a clip of kids in like grade 2 or 3 and they went crazy. Okay? And the reason they were so excited was like they got to be normal again. And the explanation, I had never heard this more beautifully said, these children can finally see their friends' emotions on their face. David Sacks (01:13:48): No. My god. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:49): Can you imagine if you're four, five, six, seven years old and you cannot understand the emotions of other kids? because you're covered up in a mask. And you've only had Jason Calacanis (01:14:00): an experience come on, guys. 2 years in school. My ten David Sacks (01:14:03): year old has never attended a day school without a mask. Jason Calacanis (01:14:05): Ain't nice about to say. Right? Like, that's there's kids out there who I never had. David Sacks (01:14:08): And, you know, I was at I was at, like, the I was at horses with one of my kids last weekend, there were a bunch of kids out there writing. It's sunny. It's outside. They're on a horse. They're all wearing masks in a voluntary optional situation. I'm just like, how brainwashed? This generation that we're raising, I mean, they're gonna be so neurotic, but they're also like brainwashed Too quiet. Yeah. It's crazy. Jason Calacanis (01:14:31): We see it in the Bay Area. Like, I'll have a party with the kids or a group of kids come over, and there's 2 or 3 parents. who show up at the we only do outdoor parties, obviously. 2 or 3 of the 10 kids will have masks on. Their parents will have masks on in, like, the most intense N95, like, sealed masks. And I'm like, you wanna take your mask off for a picture, and one of the kids refused to tape her mask off for a picture outside at a at a birthday party. And I was like, okay. David Sacks (01:14:57): Listen. I mean, when I supported the mass mandate at the very beginning of the pandemic Jason Calacanis (01:15:01): -- May Tulsa. -- David Sacks (01:15:01): it was always as an interim measure if and known that people would wanna continue this thing forever, there's no way I would have supported it. Speaker 7 (01:15:08): But it Jason Calacanis (01:15:08): also probably was effective in the early days Speaker 7 (01:15:10): with the Jason Calacanis (01:15:10): -- Speaker 7 (01:15:10): I don't know. Jason Calacanis (01:15:10): -- David Sacks (01:15:10): the first time you Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:11): know what the psychological impact children is when they don't understand other people's emotions, and you do it over a long period of time. Jason Calacanis (01:15:17): No. We don't. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:17): I think that's a fair statement. We don't know the impact. And it's probably not Jason Calacanis (01:15:22): 0. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:24): And so at some point, we need to look at the risks Calculate some expected value, and the people we need to prioritize are those that are the youngest. Okay? And I've said this before. And it's like, the teachers' unions need to understand that calculus. Parents already understand that calculus. I don't think the state legislators, governors, and the federal bureaucracy yet understands his calculus, but it's time to return to normal, David Friedberg (01:15:51): and it's time to return online. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:53): Sorry. And on this point, I would like to bring up something. The ACLU thing, just because I think I would love to get your take on you know, talking about civil liberties and freedoms, there are things that are happening here under our noses every day. under Democratic and Republican presidents that, to me, when I saw this on the ACLU Twitter feed yesterday was shocking, Jason, do you wanna tee that up. Jason Calacanis (01:16:20): Alright. In other news, the CIA has been secretly conducting surveillance programs to capture Americans' private information on Thursday. Democratic Centers Wyden and Heinrich sent a letter to director of the CIA and the director of National Intelligence, the letter call for greater transparency in the c i into the CIA's data collection of private US citizens. Basically, the CIA Used executive order 12333, which was signed by Reagan in 1981 to gather data on US citizens. The letter notes the program was, quote, entirely outside the statutory framework that congress and the public believe govern the collection. And without any judicial congressional or even executive branch oversight that comes from Faiza. That's the foreign intelligence surveillance act. Election, quote, What these documents demonstrate is that many of the same concerns that Americans have about their privacy in civil liberties also apply to how the collapse and handles information under executive order and outside of Fiesola. In particular, these documents reveal, serious problems associated with warrantless backdoor searches of Americans the same issue that had generated bipartisan concern in the visa. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:29): I mean, where where where is the mainstream media while they run around chasing cancellation stories. Where are they to report and to hold accountable this stuff? And where are politicians in actually doing their job? But, you know, I don't think there's ever been this kind of overreach that's just constantly been going on with zero accountability or transparency into it. You know, the FBI is responsible for domestic laws. Right? And the FBI has a very clear path in which they need to get warrants. in order to be able to surveil US citizens. And then the fact that we give an agency whose responsibility is actually foreign Yes. To basically spy on its Jason Calacanis (01:18:09): citizens with zero accountability Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:13): reporting, it seems to be a pretty important issue that should at least be discussed. Especially in a world now where executive power just keeps ramping up and ramping up. What's going on? And there's 0 transparency or accountability. If I didn't randomly see this on an ACLU tweet, would we even be talking about this? Jason Calacanis (01:18:30): Probably not. And the and the other thing that's -- No. -- crazy about it is I think the way they get away with this, Shamal, this has been something that the Patriot Act had a similar technique is they the CIA and some other organizations will track international people of interest, you know, money wonders, etcetera, and then say in order to track them, Well, anybody they contact in America is fair game or if they're, you know and so you can get the metadata from the phone calls and the emails, And I think that's how a lot of this gets rectified. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:00): What this letter seems to say is we just there's a broad scale surveillance program against US citizens that is indeterminate in scope and scale. Right. So we don't know. That seems very different than that. David Sacks (01:19:12): And then in in parallel to this, there's also that announcement that the Department of Homeland Security creating this major apparatus, this infrastructure to go after domestic terrorists. Well, look. If they mean people who actually, like, set off bombs or commit real crimes. Fine. But Jamal, you asked where the media is. The media is defining routine political dissent as domestic terrorism now. I mean, you hear this type of threat inflation. We've heard these truckers even described as insurrectionists. So, you know, how are these programs gonna be used is really the question. You create this massive infrastructure under the executive branch we've seen that in Washington, this trend towards criminalizing political disagreements where Democrats Republicans have been putting their partisans in jail for years. But are they now gonna apply this to political disagreements in the country? Can they use these powers to go after truckers who are engaging in civil disobedience can they use these surveillance powers to go after somebody who just tweets things on social media that they don't like. mean, these are the open questions. Yeah. It's very scary. Jason Calacanis (01:20:16): Well and it's also hard to determine because you might have some people on the right who are protesting something in a very valid way. And then you get some whack jobs like the oath keepers who are bringing in tons of weapons outside the DC area on January 6th. So there's a valid concern here with all those weapons the oath keepers brought and their plans to to a coordinated takeover after they first got in there. But then you have the other dipshits where they are probably just there to have fun and bang drums and and support Trump. Right? David Sacks (01:20:42): Do you think these truckers are engaged in an insurrection? Jason Calacanis (01:20:45): Well, I mean, we we don't know, and I don't think so. I mean, if they if they bring a bunch of guns, then, yes, we should have concerns, but I don't think they are. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:52): The slippery slope is when you have an executive order, that is not governed by the standard guardrails that we used to have checks and balances between these kinds of government agencies and the people and the elected officials that we elect. Here's how it basically gets in a really tricky place. You have let's I'm just gonna use Justin Trudeau's quote. Okay? But replace that person with any politician in power. hey. There's a small fringe minority of people who are on their way here. They hold unacceptable views. you know what that person is going to do. That person is gonna wanna do everything in their power to basically understand, break apart, and tear up that fringe minority group. Now isn't that scary? David Sacks (01:21:35): Right. When you have this overheated political rhetoric that describes your political opponents, your your dissenters. -- of the state? Yeah. As enemies, as white supremacists, as Nazis, they're they're does insurrectionaries as domestic terrorists, why wouldn't then the law enforcement arms of our government then treat them that way? I mean, does the Department of Homeland Security or the the CIA or the FBI? Do they understand politicians are just engaging in rhetoric, in in threat inflation, or will they take that those in vacations literally to what we have to investigate and stop these people. Jason Calacanis (01:22:10): I I think they've done a a department of justice done a pretty good job of I Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:13): just want I just brought this up because I think it's really important for somebody in the mainstream media of which many listen to this podcast. Sure. You have a responsibility to actually double click into this issue and figure out what's going on, please. Yeah. For on behalf of all of us. David Friedberg (01:22:27): By the way, like, if you guys I mean, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BBC, everyone covered it today, but the story today is that lawmakers made this claim. with no details and no evidence. So I'm sure the investigations are underway. I mean, the the journalists are clearly leaning in to identify you know, the the evidence behind the story, and I'm sure more will come out over the coming days and waits. Jason Calacanis (01:22:48): And in fairness, like you said, is the Justice Department doing this even handedly. They were very specific with the the January 6th Interaction Sacks where they went after oathkeepers because they had a coordinated they're a militia. They literally referred to themselves as militia. And those people are getting treated very different than the people who broke glass or sat on pants, Pelosi's desk. Those people are getting 3 months suspended sentences to 6 months sentences. And the oath keepers Who are a militia? They call themselves a militia. They're dangerous, and they're treating them very differently. And they're the only ones who are being charged with the more serious 10 to 20 year sentences. So I would say they are doing a great job. Alright, everybody. This has been an amazing journey from truckers to Joe Ruger and the way to Uranus and back for the rainman, David Sacks, the sultan of science to convert. David Sacks (01:23:40): your approach, Jason. Jason Calacanis (01:23:41): And with no one dictator. David Sacks (01:23:43): They know we are. Jason Calacanis (01:23:44): They live with Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:45): people love it. Oh my god. Love you, boys. Jason Calacanis (01:23:48): We'll see you all next time on the on the podcast. Bye bye. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:52): I love you, besties. Speaker 4 (01:23:54): We'll let your winners ride. Jason Calacanis (01:23:57): Rainman, David Sachs. Speaker 5 (01:24:01): and it said We open sources to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Speaker 4 (01:24:10): like, wet air winter's ride. Besty's RV. That is Jason Calacanis (01:24:16): my dog I'm missing your driveway. We should all just get a room Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:26): and have one big huge order because they're all just useless. It's, like, this, like, sexual tension that we just need to release somehow. Jason Calacanis (01:24:33): What? You're the bee bee. What? Speaker 7 (01:24:35): You're a fee. David Sacks (01:24:36): You're a fee. What? Jason Calacanis (01:24:38): We need to get mercies are back.