NFT 交易量暴跌、加州政府越权、FBI 干预、气候变化与国家安全

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): Alright, everybody. Welcome to episode 94 of all in. This is a summer unprepared episode. There's not much news. We're gonna wing it. with me again in his golfing cap, the rain man himself, David Sacks. You doing okay, buddy? David Sacks (00:00:17): Yeah. That's good. Jason Calacanis (00:00:18): Yeah. Alright. Alright. David Sacks (00:00:19): I'm kind of annoyed that we're taping on a Wednesday. Jason Calacanis (00:00:22): Yeah. This is a slow Newsweek. It's a slow Newsweek Week. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:24): Well, that's not why we're taping out of Wednesdays because you have to wanna go to Burning Man. Jason Calacanis (00:00:28): Well, whatever. I mean, listen. David Friedberg (00:00:29): Everybody has to get their burn on. Zach, have you ever been to Burning Man? David Sacks (00:00:32): Yeah. I've been before. Jason Calacanis (00:00:33): Stacks is a burning man, really? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:35): He was there on threeson David Sacks (00:00:37): Thursday. I've been a couple of times. I think it's it's a cool experience doing worth doing, you know, once or twice in your life. It's not something I wanna do every year. but I know a lot of people do like doing it every year. They're, like, really into it. I'm not really into it that way, but I think it was a worthwhile experience to go at least once. David Friedberg (00:00:56): Jamath, have you been? Jason Calacanis (00:00:58): No. Friedberg, have you been? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:01): I've not been. No. I have no desire. No. David Friedberg (00:01:03): I don't like driving in the car for a long period of time, and Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:06): Well, by the way, I'll tell you I'll tell you why I don't really have a huge desire to go. I I don't really have a huge desire at this point in my life. to wanna do a ton of drugs. Jason Calacanis (00:01:17): That's not that's not just about that. Really? No. Really? Certainly. What it's really Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:22): about is art -- Are we joking right now? Jason Calacanis (00:01:25): it's if you like art and you'll like music, it's amazing. It's amazing. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:30): I really I really like art. I think I actually collect phenomenal art. In fact, I like to go to, like, freeze, the biennale. It would blow your mind. No. No. No. Jason Calacanis (00:01:39): You have no idea. The scale of the art there is tremendous. It is extraordinary. And if you're into music, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:43): can we just can we just call out what it is? It started out as a festival that did celebrate art and creativity -- Yeah. And over time became mass market, and in order to become mass market, there is still an element of that, but it's a huge party. And I think people should just be more honest it's super fun. You can really rage for a weekend or for an entire week, and people should enjoy themselves. But let's not like have to put all these labels about how, like, intellectually superior it is and how you feel like bullshit. Jason Calacanis (00:02:12): I don't think it's -- -- people doing drugs. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:14): It's okay. It's okay to go and do drugs. Jason Calacanis (00:02:16): The thing interesting about it is it's really about community. A large number of people get together, they build camps. To do drugs? No. In a community. No. You've never been. You would Literally, that's not the vibe there. The vibe is really dancing and creativity and art and community. But, anyway -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:31): So it's like a rave. It's where everybody's on drugs. I mean -- Sure. Jason Calacanis (00:02:37): I mean -- With neon. David Sacks (00:02:38): With a lot of -- With Jason Calacanis (00:02:38): a lot of neon. No. it kinda Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:40): it's might be -- Those experiences are the best when you're sober. Best. Best. You have to understand the great -- -- going to EDC sober. Jason Calacanis (00:02:47): Best. I've never been to EDC, but This there's a great filter here, which is you've gotta drive 6, 7 hours into the desert, and you have to survive. You have to bring everything with you and bring everything out, you know, Whatever it is, the bathroom, water, food, and it is harsh. I mean, it's a 100 plus degrees in a day, and it's 40 degrees at night. It's not easy to survive. It's hard. David Sacks (00:03:07): It used to be that way. When when I went when I went, I went with a bunch of guys who had the whole thing to, like, wired in And they had, like, these yurts, and it was, like, a whole community, and they had, like, running water in a kitchen. And it was basically glamping. It was glamping. David Friedberg (00:03:22): There are people isn't that hard to survive? No. No. Jason Calacanis (00:03:24): There I mean, it's hard to do the there are people who clamp. It is hard to do that because you have to You're a single owner. You have David Sacks (00:03:30): to go with people and hear Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:31): the right people and you David Sacks (00:03:32): know what they're doing and are highly organized. So -- Yes. Jason Calacanis (00:03:34): They take months to set that up. -- trip. David Sacks (00:03:36): So yes, they spent the whole year whatever setting it up, and it was really elaborate. And then there was an article, like, in New York Times, basically, saying that, you know, that they were ruining burning man Jason Calacanis (00:03:46): -- David Sacks (00:03:46): Yeah. -- because they're making it too nice. That was part of the problem. It -- You remember this? That's when I went. I went to the too nice experience. Jason Calacanis (00:03:53): Oh, so he wrote that about you. Yeah. Basically. You ruined birding, man. Great. Thanks, Saxx. Thanks for ruining BartingMed. your winter's ride. Rainman, David Sacks. And I said, we David Sacks (00:04:09): open source it to fans Jason Calacanis (00:04:16): I don't know if you've been following the NFT story. We'll queue that up as our next story. Open C, the marketplace, the eBay of NFTs, if you will. The volume has dropped 99% since May 1st peak of $406,000,000 in a single day. On August 28th volume dropped to around $5,000,000 down 99% according to decentralized app tracker DAP radar. On a monthly basis, open season volume has dropped 90% according to Dune Analytics. The floor price of a board 8 has now dropped by 53% If you remember, OpenSea raised 300,000,000 at a $13,300,000,000 valuation December 2021 in around led by coteau in paradigm. To put that in perspective, that was 9 whole months ago. Myhow the world has changed. Freepra, what's your take on NFTs and this whole boondoggle? David Friedberg (00:05:16): I I don't know how to Jason Calacanis (00:05:16): -- How will we look back on it? David Friedberg (00:05:18): Yeah. I don't I don't know. I mean, we've had a lot of bubbles as a species. This is just another one. David Sacks (00:05:24): I thought we're gonna stop doing stock market crashing stories. Jason Calacanis (00:05:27): Well, this is a different this is a different market. What do you think? Did you invest in any of Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:31): these entities? Jason Calacanis (00:05:32): -- David Sacks (00:05:32): month of this story, which is fill in the blank asset class crashed. Jason Calacanis (00:05:37): Yeah. This one, see I the the question I have here, Saks, is do you think that this is the end of the category, though? Do you think there's, like, category ending? Do you think there was ever anything interesting here? because you took a you you heard a lot of pitches like I did for how NFTs were gonna change everything. Not funny. You know what? David Friedberg (00:05:52): I'll I'll I'll I'll say something, because I I liken this to the point just to tie it back to what we just talked about. At the end of the day, you know, I think I've said this in the past, but, like, what differentiates humans from all other species on earth is our ability to tell to communicate and tell stories. a story is like a narrative about something that doesn't exist. And by telling that narrative, you can create collective belief in something, and then that collective belief drives behavioral change. and action in the world. Right? I mean, everything from religion to government to money to art is all kind of driven all market are driven by this notion of narrative and collective belief that arises from that narrative. So when you go to an art dealer and you have a sit down with an art dealer, you might appreciate the art. But then the narrative begins. And the narrative is this artist did this, and they came from this, and the artist that looks like this created at Jason Calacanis (00:06:45): 6,800,000, David Friedberg (00:06:46): And this artist is only trading for Jason Calacanis (00:06:47): 3,200,000, David Friedberg (00:06:49): and the whole narrative takes you away into, okay, I should pay 3,200,000 for this piece of art. and ultimately, it'll be worth more. And that's the fundamental premise of markets. As you're buying into something, not necessarily always, and this is such a minority now. It's scary. used to be that you don't want a piece of a business or a productive asset. You pull cash out of it. Hopefully, you get more cash out than you put in when you buy it. nowadays, markets allow you to trade. Therefore, the majority of market based decisions are driven by if I buy something for x, I'm gonna be able to sell it to someone else for y. And so the narrative is driven around, I'm paying this. Someone else will pay y down the road. I'll make money from that. And this has been repeated a thousand times over. It's been repeated in the ICO tokens. It's been repeated in the tulip bubble. It's been repeated in every art market and subsidiary of every art market since the dawn of time. since the dawn of of of markets. And I think the NFTs are really just one more kind of example where this beautiful narrative is formed the the digitization of art, but it is no different than any other form of assets that we tell ourselves a story around, and we convince ourselves that I'm paying something today someone else will pay something more for me tomorrow. And I will also say that in the last year, with the liquidity that we saw the last 2 years, it leached into the stock market. where there's supposed to be more rational behavior that ultimately, the cash flows of an asset you're buying should generate more for you than the money you're spending to buy that that that asset. And, ultimately, you can maybe trade out of it early, but still, so much of it became about well. The stock is going up. Therefore, if I spend x, someone else will spend y, and I'll make money on the stock. with no underlying assertion of what's the productivity of that business, what's the return on cash gonna be based on the cash flows coming out of that business over time, or any of the fundamentals around it. David Friedberg (00:08:34): And so so much of our discussion and distortion has really been driven by this narrative fueling. And I think the NFTs are an example but there are many others. And we're gonna see many more as long as humans have the ability to communicate with each other. Jason Calacanis (00:08:46): Any do you have any take on it, Chamath? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:48): I think Friedberg mostly right. Like, I do think that there is this thing. The the Burning man Coachella example is the best way to describe this. A lot of these things are the same. But when a few people approach something early, they're too insecure to admit that it's the same as something else. And so they spend a lot of time trying to tell you a narrative about why it's totally different. The buffet example, you know, would be the quote, know, when somebody tells you that this time is different, it's probably not that different. Or the other quote that's well worn in history is like, you know, Things don't necessarily repeat in history but they rhyme. All of this is trying to say that other than like fundamental leaps of science. There's not a lot of stuff that's new in the world. You know, we are repeating things over and over. And one of the things we repeat is the social capital that you get from having certain choices and then getting other people to validate those choices because you wanna feel like you're you know, worthwhile. And this happened in NFTs and I'm sure in the 1st phase of different movements in art That also happened. It's probably happened in a bunch of other markets as well. So these things are more similar than they are different. Cachella and Burning Man the same. NFTs in part of the art market the same. Everybody that runs to you with why it's so different I would just have a grain of salt and say, you don't need to be different. Just enjoy it because you think it's cool. Alright. Jason Calacanis (00:10:20): We can go either to this California fast food wages story. Or we can go to Goldman Sachs Workers are quitting en masse because Goldman Sachs is saying you gotta come back to the office 5 days a week. Where do you wanna go, boss? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:32): I think the California thing is really interesting. Just the the 3 things that California did in the last week. I don't know if you guys saw, but number 1 is they basically said that, you know, you have they're gonna ban ice combustion engines, I think, by 2035. So you have to be battery EV. And the new Jason Calacanis (00:10:50): -- New sales. You could still have all -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:52): New sales. Sorry. Yeah. New sales -- Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:10:54): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:54): which is the 1st in the country to do it. And just to go back to a second. California is the largest auto market in the United States. And effectively, you know, Trump in California got into a huge spat because California had certain emission standards that were tougher than the rest of the United States and, you know, the federal government tried to sue California and back and forth all of this rigmarole. So California's always sort of led on climate. That was one thing. Then the second thing is they said we're gonna create, you know, a state sponsored organization to set the minimum wage rates for fast food workers. Pause what we think about that And then the third thing is that this congresswoman, I think, or this assembly person, Buffie Wicks, passed the law through the senate and through the the house that essentially holds social media companies liable for the mental well-being and the mental health of kids And depending on where you're lying on all these issues, it's like an interesting kind of lens in which where, like, California has really become extremely, extremely legislatively active in basically imposing their will on free markets in the economy. there. Jason Calacanis (00:12:06): Yeah. And for people who don't know the fat the fast food issue was they wanna move to a more European style where instead of unions, debating with individual corporations, McDonald's Burger King, whoever, what they're gonna pay their employees or employees having that discussion 1 on 1, They want the state some state authority to pick the amount per hour, fast food companies pay, And then I guess, disintermediate the unions. It it's kind of confusing, but interestingly, our friend Lorena Gonzalez, if you remember, she's the one who told Elon to, you know, f off and was a former Democratic legislator She introduced the bill when she was in the assembly. And so it's kind of a weird approach. I'm not sure why the government David Sacks (00:12:58): is thinking about it. It's not it's not discriminating the unions. She Lorena Gonzales Fletcher, I guess, now. She's the former Democratic legislature who drove Elon out of the state. Remember when she said -- Sure. -- you know, f, Elon. Jason Calacanis (00:13:11): I knew a lot of fun works. Message received. David Sacks (00:13:13): Yes. And he left great great move for for the state. So she is now running Jason Calacanis (00:13:18): 1 David Sacks (00:13:18): of the biggest unions. And what she said is that this bill will move California closer to the labor model used in Europe where unions negotiate the unions are still negotiating for wages and work conditions. But in an entire sector, with some sort of government board rather than company by company. So in other words, it's too slow to unionize, you know, company by company. They would just wanna unionize entire sectors of the economy. Now the thing that's really crazy about this minimum wage proposal is that Like you said, Jason, it isn't just that they set a minimum wage. They created a ten person panel So there's a new government agency that's gonna regulate fast food the fast food industry. You know they're not gonna stop at minimum wage. It's gonna be work conditions. So now you're turning fast food restaurants into a highly regulated part of the economy. And the weird thing is it's not even just all fast food. It's basically chains that have more than a 100 fast food restaurants nationally. So in other words, if you're a local operator of 2 McDonald's, you'd be subject to this ten person board. But if you own 20 restaurants that aren't part of a national chain, in California, then you're not. And so the weird thing is that some workers in the fast food industry could get this new minimum wage of $22 where other or as other workers who work for you know, they're not part of a major chain, would get the statewide minimum wage at 15. So it's it's it's kind of unfair in that some parts of the restaurant industry are being regulated and others aren't. Jason Calacanis (00:14:56): What is there any justification here that you can think of to not let the free market do its thing, Friedberg? David Friedberg (00:15:04): Well, if you represent the workers, you're saying, hey. Pay them Jason Calacanis (00:15:07): $22, David Friedberg (00:15:09): and you can't. And here's what that points out. It actually points out that there's probably a pretty big business flaw in a business that's so reliant on commodity labor. And that business in and of itself is not as valuable as you might have thought it was before. Think about it this way. There's a company called McDonald's, and then there's another company called McDonald's labor. And what happened before is McDonald's employed people to do work at McDonald's, and maybe what happens in the future is all those people are looking left and looking right, and they're like, you know what? McDonald's has nothing without us. We are the business. We deserve the value. So in terms of how much of the value of the business flows to the shareholders of McDonald's versus the employees at work at McDonald's, The employees that work at McDonald's are saying, let's go do a start up. And our start up is called Union, and our business that's called Union is now gonna provide a bunch of services to McDonald's. And those services, we're gonna start to value capture what they're doing. And it indicates that maybe there's something inherently disadvantaged in that model. And it could be that the argument could be made to that business in the early 20th century in the late 19th century yeah. The 19th century, early 20th century and beyond, that you could build a good advantage this because there was such an eager, hungry workforce. People looking for work. You people would come and work for Nickel an hour or whatever. And so you as a business owner could make a lot of money doing that. You could sell a product for a dollar, pay people 5¢ to make it for you. But nowadays, those people are looking left. They're looking right. They're like, wait a second. We are the business. or were 90% of the value of this business. David Friedberg (00:16:46): And so couple things will happen. Number 1 is the inherent business model of a company that's so dependent on commodity service is gonna be flawed and challenged in the 21st century, and fast food reference aren't gonna be as valuable. Businesses that rely on commodity service are not gonna be as valuable. Number 2, businesses are gonna automate. So new businesses will emerge that actually do the fast food work or do the car building work or do the dock loading and unloading work. that are automated, and they'll have an inherent advantage in the economy, and they'll win. And I think number 3 is that in the near term, consumers will suffer because prices will go up. because someone has to pay for the incremental cost of running this unionized business, and that will ultimately be the customer of that business. I'll say the 4th point is, I am concerned about this sort of behavior in regulated spaces where the government has actually control over the market itself this is a good example of this is the you know, we had our friend Ryan from Flexport on a few times. But you can't just start up a shipping company and have a dock. The docks are run by the cities, and they're run by the state. And so those docks, access to those docks, access to that market, is regulated by the government. So then what happens is the union, right, the the the labor company, can actually have regulatory capture through the government, of a segment of the economy, and that's where things start to get dangerous. So look. I'm all 4 unions if they wanna show that a business is reliant on a commodity labor force and commodity service. and they all band together and start a startup. I mean, that's what we do. We all start a company -- Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:18:15): -- David Friedberg (00:18:15): and go and compete. But the issue is then when the government creates regulatory capture over a segment of the economy, and make it difficult for the free market to ultimately do its job of either automating or creating a newly advantaged business model or all those things that allow us to progress. Jason Calacanis (00:18:29): Automating's coming. Couple of us made a bet on a crazy idea of, like, automated robotic coffee called Cafe X. not to track our own book here, and the company really struggled during the pandemic, but they have 2 units at SFO, Jamath, they're doing 70 they did $73,000 in two units. last month. And I'm like, wow. The the the company figured it out, and there's another company doing French rise. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:52): This is the this is the sad thing that California doesn't realize. It's like, I think that the folks writing these laws have just an extremely poor understanding of economics and capitalism because the first thing that it does Effectively, and everybody can understand this, is it caps the profitability of a company. Right? Because it effectively says, If you look at an industry that is over earning, then this council will essentially see money that should be re appropriated to employees. Now that idea is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, you see that all the time in technology. Right? If you look at the EBITDA margins of, like, big tech and how they've changed, they've actually eroded over time as the companies have had to generate more revenue because employees demand more and more of those gains. That's an implicit part of how the free market economy works in technology. So, you know, if you don't feel like you're getting paid well at Google, you go to Meta and you get paid more and vice versa. So there's a natural effect of people being able to do that in certain markets. But when you impose a margin and essentially say, you can only make 10% because the rest of these profits I'm giving to these folks because I've imputed their new wage to be something that's much greater than what they were paying before. The unfortunate thing is what Friedberg said, which is that you will rebuild that business without those people. because it is the rational thing to do. And so, unfortunately, what you'll do is you'll take a bunch of people that should be in the economy. Right? Think about, like, new immigrants or young people that are first getting on their feet. They'll take these jobs. You know? I mean, I worked at Burger Jason Calacanis (00:20:32): King. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:33): I worked at Burger King when I was fourteen. That's how Jason Calacanis (00:20:35): I got my first. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:37): You you you those jobs won't be there to be had, and that has ripple effects as these folks get older or try to get more ingrained in the economy. And this is what I wish California would understand is that these things aren't free. And even though they seem like you're coming to someone's rescue, There's all kinds of unintended consequences and very obvious consequences that you're ignoring by not really understanding how the economy works. David Friedberg (00:21:04): I'll just say, like, look. These people can I I'll say it a sec, but, I mean, you know, the the people that are elected are elected by the people to represent the people. They're not elected to govern over the long term plan necessarily for the state. and while you think that those 2 may be the same, the near term incentive and the near term motivation of someone who's voting is I wanna get a benefit for myself sooner rather than later. Not necessarily, I wanna make an investment for 30 or 40 years down the road. And if you're an individual that's struggling in some way, you're gonna prioritize the former over the latter, and you're gonna elect someone who's gonna go put in place public policy that's gonna benefit you. So I don't necessarily raise my hand and say, I blame the people that have been elected. I raise my hand and I say, look. This is the natural evolution of what happens in a democracy where there is a struggling class, and there were where there is some sort of view disparity or consider disparity that this is what's gonna happen in a democracy under this condition, is that you're going to elect individuals are gonna go and govern, and they're gonna make decisions that are gonna benefit those individuals that got them elected over the short term, and there may be some real long term damage that results. Jason Calacanis (00:22:14): Sachs is a part of this problem is that people are now looking to the government to solve their problems in life versus maybe looking internally to solve their problems and, you know, negotiate better salaries and more skills. I think you have Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:28): to give people a little bit more credit. Nobody was asking for them to step in like this. David Sacks (00:22:32): Look. This is as much for the politicians as it is for any of the workers. What's happening right now? The National Restaurant Association and all these restaurant lobbying groups are flooding the state, the legislators, the governor with lobbying money because they wanna get this bill modified, tempered, or thrown out. And so this is basically a racket. Like, look, as a public policy matter, it makes zero sense For the same worker, if they go work at, say, Jiffy Lube or something outside the restaurant industry, they get the California minimum wage of $15. is they go to a mom and pop restaurant. They get the minimum wage of $15. But if they go to McDonald's, they now get a new minimum wage specifically for chain restaurants of $22. that simply makes no sense. There's no policy rationale. But the real question you have to ask and Toronto's kind of getting at this is Why shouldn't it be $50? Why shouldn't it be a $100? Well, the reason is because if you raise the minimum wage too much, then these employers have a huge incentive to replace that labor with automation. And so the unintended consequence that Tremont is talking about is that these big chain restaurants are gonna rely even more heavily on automation now, and they're gonna basically employ less of this labor where the price has been artificially erased for that subsector of the economy from 15 to Jason Calacanis (00:23:50): $22 David Sacks (00:23:51): for reasons that no one can really explain. So again, this is not for the benefit of workers. It's for the for the politicians. Look what's happening right now. There's all these articles talking about the lobbyists coming in. They're going to have Gavin Newsom begging him to be their savior right now. And this is the game that the California Democratic Party plays. It's a 1 party state where they where basically business loves Gavin Newsom because he's their protector. He's the protection end of the extortion racket. Lorena Gonzalez gets this bill passed, which is basically incredibly damaging to these chain restaurants, and they have to go running to Gavin Newsom and beg him to either veto it or modify it, temper the bill it's not as destructive to their business. He's a protection in the extortion racket, but it's the same racket. This is a one party state. And what they're doing with chain restaurants, they would do with every sector of the economy if they could. It's just a matter of time. Jason Calacanis (00:24:42): And what is the purpose of the California government? Like, are there things they could be focusing on other than this? Like, maybe the free market settles this issue, and they could focus on the tools. -- David Sacks (00:24:51): benefits from the private sector, from basically the wealth producing part of the economy and to line their pockets in the pockets of their supporters. You know that the typical government worker in California makes 53% more than their private sector counterpart. And if you factor in all the pensions that have been promised, it's a 100% more. Okay? So basically, there's a huge wealth transfer that's taking place where the where basically the legislators, the party, they are transferring wealth from the private sector to their supporters, their backers. And, Friedberg, you talk about democracy. Listen. I mean, California is a one party state. And ballot harvesting is legal here. I'm not saying the votes are fake or anything like that. But there's a giant party machinery and apparatus that literally just goes door to door and collects the ballots from their supporters. They literally know who their supporters are on a door by door household by household level. It has gotten to the point now where the party machine is so powerful, they can pretty much run anybody for any post and get them elected. It's very hard for outside of candidate. Jason Calacanis (00:25:57): That's the example. -- elastic. It does feel like you're getting tired of Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:00): it here. No. But, guys, that's exactly how it works. I mean, like, if you look at Gavin Newsom's run to the governorship, He paid his dues. He did the right jobs. He waited in line. He didn't, you know, rock the boat. Independent of of the things he did right or wrong, and he had some pretty big moral transgressions. It didn't matter because it is about paying your dues and waiting in line because there aren't any meaningful challenges here. None. Yeah. I'll touch David Sacks (00:26:26): on that, guys. In LA. In LA right now, there's a mayoral race going on. And the 2 there's a runoff between Rick Caruso and and Karen Bass. Karen Bass is basically a product of the political machine. She's basically worked her way up in the democratic party forever. sort of uninspired candidate. She's just basically a puppet of the machine. Caruso is actually he's a real estate developer who's built some of the most landmark you know, spots in LA like the Grove, like the Pacific Palisades Development. He's made incredible He's created incredible amenities for the LA area. He's also been on a bunch of civic boards. You know, I had lunch with him at the Grove, and people are coming him. He's like a celebrity there taking photos with him. He's the best possible candidate that you can have in a place like LA. he actually understands business. I think he would restore law and order. I mean, all this kind of stuff. Right? He's spoken out about the homeless problem being out of control. And on election night, he had the most votes. But 5 days later, when they counted all the the basically, the collected ballots through ballot harvesting, Karen Bass is up by, like, 5 points. That is the power of the ballot harvesting. And I still hope that he wins, but the party machine is so powerful. They can basically get almost anyone elected in the state. Jason Calacanis (00:27:45): Can't can't the bad person. I don't really know why it's so upset. -- David Sacks (00:27:47): change it. What's that? Jason Calacanis (00:27:49): Just devil's advocate here. The the ballot harvesting can work both ways. Like, you could go collect Republican votes. David Sacks (00:27:54): No. But you have to have the party structure to literally Jason Calacanis (00:27:57): go door -- So the republican hasn't the republicans haven't built David Sacks (00:28:00): that listing. Think about it this way. Okay? So you know, like your phone, there's a platform and there's an app. Think about the party as the platform and the candidate as the app. Okay? The platform can drive a ton of traffic to whatever app they want. A guy like Caruso doesn't have the party behind him. So he has to build his own operating system as opposed to a platform. Exactly. So he has to build his own platform, then he has to build his own candidacy. So when you think about the amount of money that's required to do something like that about how hard it is to do it, it's it's very, very hard. So he spent something like a $100,000,000 of his own money. Hopefully, he wins. But if he doesn't, All the infrastructure, all the platform that he created just goes away. And then the next candidate has to start from scratch. This is why outsiders Jason Calacanis (00:28:45): is always impossible. isn't the GOP invested in California? They just don't think they have any shot? because it seems like the the Democrats are investing heavily in trying to flip, you know -- Look. David Sacks (00:28:54): There's a 2 to one for affiliation. There's a 2 to 1 party affiliation in California towards Democrats. So look, I mean, the Republican party here is a mess and that's part of the problem. is the Republican Party in California needs to move to the center. It's a plus 30 blue state. Unless they're willing to do that, they're not going to make progress But that could take, you know, generations to fix. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:29:15): And with Roe v a and that kind of stuff, it's gonna be really hard to yeah. David Sacks (00:29:18): Look. There are pro choice Republicans. in California. But all Newsom has to do is point to what's happening in Texas. And, you know, all of a sudden people kind of revert to their tribal political affiliations. David Friedberg (00:29:31): I'll make I'll make one more simple point. The average voter in California probably knows more people that work at McDonald's than our shareholders of McDonald's. And I think in any time that there's policy that gets voted or gets suggested or ultimately gets passed, There's a side that benefits and there's a side that doesn't. And if you know more people that benefit on one side than are hurt, you're probably gonna be supportive of that policy. I think that's probably a pretty simple rubric for thinking about how these things over time evolve -- Is David Sacks (00:30:02): there anything that's true nationally? Why why why is it only true for California? I mean, like in Florida, like, the 1st person in Florida knows more people who work at McDonald's than shareholders at McDonald's. And they're not engaged in a systematic takeover over the private sector? Jason Calacanis (00:30:17): Philosophically, they're they believe in independence and businesses not being interfered by the government. Right? That's a core tenet of the Republican Party. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:25): Also, the sad reality is that within a few years, unfortunately, you'll know a lot fewer people that work in McDonald's because the number of jobs for humans will be dramatically lower. Jason Calacanis (00:30:37): They got rid of the catchers. That's gone already. David Friedberg (00:30:39): Or what people will be more acutely aware of in a number of years is how expensive McDonald's has gotten. Because if the price don't Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:45): know, that that won't be. because, like, again, McDonald's has a very simple no. Not not even the market. McDonald's is not stupid. They understand how to use Excel. And so they'll think, well, I can amortize a robot versus actually jacking up prices because what McDonald's understands is the sensitivity of pricing to demand for their product. David Friedberg (00:31:04): Yeah. That's right. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:05): I mean, they are the most intelligent about how they price. Every anything at the sort of the lower end where you're capturing you know, nickels and dimes. They are the most sophisticated in understanding supply demand and and and the curves. And so to think that they're not going to just invest heavily now at the corporate level, the next franchisee of McDonald's, will still pay a $1,000,000 for franchise fee give will be given a bevy of robots that they rent from McDonald's, and they'll have to hire half or a third less. That's that's the real shame of this, which is the number of people that should actually be gainfully employed in the economy will then shrink again. But in this case, it was because legislators just completely don't understand how incentives work and how the economy works. Jason Calacanis (00:31:49): And and people are not clued into exactly how well narrow AI machine learning is doing right now. David Friedberg (00:31:55): By the way, I'll say, generally Jason Calacanis (00:31:57): moving quickly. David Friedberg (00:31:58): One general way to think about this is is technology is introduced, and the technology creator captures roughly a third to a half of the value increment because of the delivery of that technology, the productivity increment. So let's say that it costs 12, got $15 an hour to employ a McDonald's labor today. And let's say that you can build technology that the amortized robotic cost is $10 an hour. There will be a technology company that will make 2:50 an hour off of that. So net net, what ends up happening is productivity has to be gained and prices will reduce. And so, you know, there are moments like this where there could be an acceleration of technology and also an opportunity for new industries to emerge. And when that happens, new jobs emerge too. So it's you know, maybe look. I mean, at the end of the day, it seems, But, you know, there's gonna be a mark a market opportunity that will arise. David Sacks (00:32:48): I think we need to, like, just step back and and ask, what is the type of economy that California is creating here? with this fast food law, with these other laws we're talking about. This is a state in which you have a disappearing middle class The middle class has been moving out of the state by the hundreds of thousands. In fact, last year, we had, for the first time, net migration out of the state. This has basically become a state where the only middle class are basically the government workers who, like we talked about, are making twice as much as their private sector counterparts. It's a state where you have the very rich and very poor and the only middle class or government workers. That is what we're creating. The rich and the state have done really well over the last few decades, why? because of globalization. So you take the 2 big industries in the state, tech, and Hollywood, entertainment. They have benefited enormously through globalization because now you can sell software or you can sell movies or music. Exactly. So now these these industries have become you know, massive global exports. And so if you're in those industries in California, you've done really well. Because now Your market is the whole world. So the super rich have done really well. That's funded the state. That's allowed the state. It's almost like a resource curse to have all these bad policies that really hurt small business owners. They've been moving out of the state. And so again, you've got the very rich and very poor. This is not an economic model for the entire nation. This is what, you know, Gavin Newsom says he wants to take to all of America. This is not a model for all of America. In order for democracy to function, we need a thriving middle class. And this is not a recipe for delivering a thriving middle class to America. Jason Calacanis (00:34:28): And the I just wanna show you guys a quick video. We'll just play it for 5 seconds here. We had invested in this company and it got sold. I'm I'm not gonna even say the name of it, but if you watch this quick robot, this is a computer vision company out of Boston. And, like, they are doing high speed picking of tomatoes and berries. Like, this is a two year old video when we invested and wound up getting bought by another company, and and they're doing vertical farming. But And there's companies doing this now for franchise. It's over. Like, we are within, you know, I think, 5, 10 years of a lot of these jobs. We're talking tens of millions of manual labor jobs being gone, and and we're gonna look at this moment in time where we try to squeeze an extra 10 or 20 percent out of these, you know, employers, and then you're gonna see these employers say, you know what? 24 hour a day robot. It's a little bit upfront cost. I'll put it on a lease, and they're just gonna move to these robots. It's it's really very close to being game over for manual labor. And and you can see it also with Cyber Truck and, you know, what Elon's doing with AI. And and these things are getting so close And it's been I don't know. When did you invest in your first robotics or AI company, Saks or Tremont? Do you remember the first robotic or AI company you invested in and how long ago it was? 2014 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:53): It's a company called relativity space, which is 3dprinting rockets and engines. And, basically, they're able to use machines to learn how to actually fix the morphology of all the materials that they use to print better and cheaper and more useful rocketry. That's an example. But then that led me down the garden path. I was just gonna say something more generic instead of talking our book, which is I think people misunderstand that Moore's law has actually not ended, and this is something that A friend of mine, Adam DeAngelo characterized to me, beautiful human being -- From where? -- together. he was a CTO Facebook when I worked there. So we this is you know? We we've known each other for 15, 16 years, and now he's a CEO and founder of Quora. But, you know, the the way that he described it to me, which is so true the minute he said it, I was like, my gosh. It's like Moore's law never ended. It just shifted to GPUs. because the inherent lack of parallelization that CPUs have, you solve the GPUs. And so that's why the the surface area of compute of innovation has actually shifted Jason to what you're saying, which is, you know, all of these new kinds of machine learned models because you can just now brute force and create such a tonnage of compute capabilities and resources to solve these problems that weren't possible before. So you know, you see this thing, you know, fun things like Wally or, you know, DALL, sorry, and more sophisticated things like GPT 3, But he's right, which is that, you know, we are at a point now where all kinds of expert systems, which is sort of like v 1 simple forms of AI, are going to be completely next level. Jason Calacanis (00:37:39): Well Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:40): and you think about the datasets adding to that. And so when cover exactly. And so when governments don't understand this and they try to it you know, stepped in, they're going to be shocked at how much faster they're pulling forward the actual future they actually are trying to prevent. Jason Calacanis (00:37:53): Yeah. The the data sets is the other issue, Friedberg. You look at, you know, the the data sets that are available to train So you have the GPUs still escalating massively the amount of compute power can do. You have cloud computing at the same, but Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:07): then you have these data sets One Jason Calacanis (00:38:09): of the most interesting things about, you know, Dolly and and a lot of these is the corpus of data they're able to absorb. And a second factor issue that is starting to come up is who owns the derivative work in copyright? So if you train your dataset on a bunch of images, and those images are owned by Disney or whoever, you know, a photographer, getty. And then the AI makes you a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:30): new photo, So here's another here's another example of this. Here's another here's another example of this in a law that just passed. So in the IRA, the inflation reduction act, you know, we granted CMS and Medicare the ability to negotiate drug prices. And we actually also capped the total prescription cost that any American can pay at Jason Calacanis (00:38:52): $2000. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:54): Now it turns out that overwhelmingly most Americans we'll never spend $2000 a year on prescription medications. But there will be a few, and they bump up against drugs that cost 1,000,000 of dollars. So there was a you know, there's a drug for, you know, SMA that's, like, you know, 2,400,000. And, like, you know, beta thalassemia of, like, Jason Calacanis (00:39:15): 2,800,000, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:17): and you're and and we will all bear the cost of that. Now if CMS and Medicare go and really crunch those costs. What is pharma gonna do? Well, pharma is going to do what is the obvious thing, which is like, if you're gonna cap what I can make, I have to completely change my R and D model, and they're just gonna use alpha fold You know, and what it's really gonna do is potentially put a bunch of research scientists out of work, and those are folks that should probably in the you know, for our general future, be gainfully employed, but the nature of their job is gonna change completely because the economic Calacanis incentive, a big pharma is gonna move towards technology, which is, you know, an alpha full and their protein library is the equivalent of AI and automation for McDonald's. So this is where, again, governments have to be super careful that they understand what's actually happening because they're creating incentives, I think, that they don't completely understand. Jason Calacanis (00:40:15): Alright. We can go to raw meat for Saxx Zuckerberg's admission of FBI meddling. Truth social. David Sacks (00:40:23): Well, after you guys disputed me and, like, how dare you imply that Jay Gerhoover and Jim Comey's FBI is politicized. Remember you guys who are debating it? Jason Calacanis (00:40:32): No. I said you guys. That was about the investigators. David Sacks (00:40:35): I think you didn't, but some of you were saying, can't believe Saxx that you're part of the Jason Calacanis (00:40:38): 35 David Sacks (00:40:39): percent of Americans who don't believe fully in the rectitude and integrity of the FBI Jason Calacanis (00:40:45): What do you mean? I I don't know if this is FBI's magic. -- David Sacks (00:40:48): comes this bombshell. I mean, you gotta admit this was a bombshell. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:52): What was a bombshell? David Friedberg (00:40:52): Okay. So I'll Jason Calacanis (00:40:54): I'll okay. Okay. So Joe Joe Rogan had Zuck on, and he asked him about this very specific thing. Remember the New York Post story on Hunter Biden's laptop? in, like, the week or 2 before the election was censored. Right? And it was a very controversial thing because the FBI was dealing with known Russian interference and hacks and all this stuff, part of which Trump was, like, asking people to hack other candidates David Sacks (00:41:18): You're not even setting this up correctly. Jason Calacanis (00:41:19): Well okay. I'm gonna keep going. And then so this is what Zuckerberg said. Hey. Look. David Friedberg (00:41:23): Let's let's Zach moderate this segment. Jason Calacanis (00:41:25): Well, I mean, I'm just gonna read the -- right wing. But he says, I'll just read you what Zuck said because that's says it all. He says, hey. Look. If the FBI, which I still view as a legitimate institution in this country, I'm quoting from the federalist, which is quoting him from Joe Rogan. It's a very professional law enforcement. They come to us and tell us we need to be on guard about something, I wanna take it seriously. So when the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story on October 14 2020, Facebook treated the story as potentially misinformation important misinformation for 5 to 7 days while the tech giants team could determine whether it was false or not during that time, this is federal speaking, decreased its Facebook decreased distribution of the story by making the story rank lower in the news feed. And this is his quote Zuckerberg's, you could still share it, you could still consume it Zuckerberg explained but, quote, fewer people saw it than would have otherwise. And while he would not quantify the impact, the Facebook founder said the decreased distribution was quote unquote meaningful. And a follow-up Rogan asked, if the FBI had specifically said, quote, to be on guard about that story, meaning the laptop story, after originally responding. No. Zuckerberg correctly says, I don't remember if it was that specifically, but it was basically the pattern. So basically, I guess you would agree. Sachs Zuck didn't know exactly what to do here with this information. And if it was real or not, which, you know, it turned out to be very real. And it probably could have swayed the election. I mean, I do think if people thought there was a connection between Hunter behind? Maybe it could have. I don't know if we want people being hacked to do that. So what's your take on it, Saks? You know, just hacking in general and and this specific thing. What should the FBI do? if these kind of hacks are getting released of people's families. David Sacks (00:43:14): Okay. So Jason Calacanis (00:43:14): -- David Sacks (00:43:15): Yeah. Here here's where -- It's a Jason Calacanis (00:43:16): complicated issue. Right? There's many vectors. Yeah. David Sacks (00:43:18): What Zach basically says the FBI came to to them and encourage them to suppress the story or to suppress a story that they described that would be just like this. Okay? So now look. A lot of conservatives are dragging Zuckerberg and Facebook for doing for doing the FBI's bidding, but I think a lot of people I think most people in Zuckerberg's position would have believed the FBI. When the FBI comes to you and says you're about to be targeted by Russian's information, you need to do something about it. you would have listened to the FBI. He believed the FBI. My point and so I don't blame Facebook too much for that. I think it's understandable that he would have believed them. The issue here is the politicization of the FBI. Look. Let's back up. What was happening? So the New York Post gets this story about the leaked contents of 100 Biden's hard drive. In response to that, you had 50 former security state officials many of whom were Democratic partisans like Clapper, like Brennan, they signed a letter saying that this story has all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. Now the truth is they had not inspected the hard drive. They simply said this is the hallmarks of it. And as a result of that, we thought that the social networks and so forth censored the story. Okay? Now it turns out that the FBI by the way, the FBI had the hard drive. They had the hard drive for over a year. It was And an image Jason Calacanis (00:44:40): of the hard drive or the actual hard drive? David Sacks (00:44:42): They had the actual hard drive. The leak of the story was was likely prompted because the FBI didn't appear to be doing anything with the hard drive. So somebody leaked the story to, you know, to Rudy Giuliani and then he leaked it so forth in New York Post. But the point is that the FBI had the hard drive. So they knew it was authentic. Okay? So they knew that this hallmarks of Russian discrimination was not the truth. Because, again, they had the authenticated hard drive in their possession. And yet, they still went to Zuckerberg and basically played into this narrative, this phony narrative that, you know, Democratic partisans like Clapper and Light Brennan had created. Jason Calacanis (00:45:22): Was there anything meaningful, by the way, about what was on the laptop in your mind? Like, do you think it's relevant? Or do you think we want people's laptops being hacked like this were in people's political families. David Sacks (00:45:32): Yeah. I don't think the laptop was hacked. I mean, there's a weird convoluted story about how the laptop ended up. But but look. The the point Jason Calacanis (00:45:40): is -- -- personal pictures, you know, and stuff like that be released. -- David Sacks (00:45:44): the part. where they were showing a 100 Biden's, you know, drug use and the other personal stuff. I thought that was scandalous. Yeah. And I didn't I didn't like it, and I didn't think that was particularly germane. So I think and I think it was an invasion of his privacy. However, there were materials on there related to his business dealings in Ukraine. And I don't say see how you can say those weren't relevant Jason Calacanis (00:46:07): think they're probably relevant. -- turnovers. Being investigated for them too now. I mean, a lot of this has to do with timing too. You know? It's like, how how do you deal with something like this? 7 days before an election when you know the Russians are hacking it if it has been or not. It's a really difficult situation for everybody, David Sacks (00:46:20): I think. So so so look. My point my point is this that I I can agree with you about the personal stuff about a Jason Calacanis (00:46:25): 100 David Sacks (00:46:26): buy and shouldn't have come out. But but with respect to the Ukraine stuff, that was legitimate. It was fair game. And the and most importantly, I don't know whether would have sworn the election or not. Probably not. Probably by itself, it's not. But the real point here is that the FBI went to Facebook to censor a story that they must have known was true because they had the laptop in their possession. they should not be intervening in elections that way. That is the bombshell here. That's unbelievable. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:53): I I Jason Calacanis (00:46:53): I think they didn't know the providence of this, but I guess we'll find out Where where are you landing? -- David Sacks (00:46:57): the providence of a hard drive that's in their possession. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:59): I didn't have an NFT. Fuck. Exactly. Jason Calacanis (00:47:03): Where do you how are you how are you -- You brought in David Sacks (00:47:04): a circle, Jamal. Jason Calacanis (00:47:05): Exactly. That's exactly Audience wants to know Zach's audience really wants to know where you were gonna reserve judgment on the Mar a Lago search. Where do you and or Republicans come out on all this now when you see fucking, he did in fact have a ton of really sensitive stuff. Like, it's it's not -- -- David Sacks (00:47:22): ton. and of define time of really sensitive stuff. Jason Calacanis (00:47:25): Yeah. I mean, listen, any any wouldn't give it back. Like, what's your what David Sacks (00:47:28): is your pages of documents smart classified. If you were to go to the 30,000 boxes of documents that Obama took, are you telling me you really couldn't find 300 pages? that have classified markings on them. Well, the Jason Calacanis (00:47:40): fact that he wouldn't give a back David Sacks (00:47:41): I never disputed. Hold on a second. I never disputed that they would find documents with classified markings in Trump's basement. I still think that the approach was heavy handed, and we don't know enough because we don't know what those documents are. Jason Calacanis (00:47:54): Well, I guess we'll find out. David Sacks (00:47:56): Every document they stick in front of the president or not every, but many of them are more classified. Jason Calacanis (00:48:00): Okay. So let me ask you this. as aside from these, like, kinda details, what what is what is Trump's deal that he just wouldn't give them back? Do you think what do you think his motivation was? I mean, I have my own theory, which he likes memorabilia. He's always liked to show off -- David Sacks (00:48:12): I think that's it. I think you got it. I mean, honestly, if I had to guess what this whole thing was about, it's probably that the archivist of the National Archives once the original copy of those letters with Little Rocket Man, and he doesn't wanna give them up. Right. And I literally think that's what this is about. I think it's about something as silly as Jason Calacanis (00:48:28): that. Memable. David Friedberg (00:48:29): memorabilia. I David Sacks (00:48:30): think it's about memorabilia. I do not think these documents pose a Jason Calacanis (00:48:33): threat to the truth. Give it all back. It's so dumb. David Sacks (00:48:36): But why would the FBI feel the need to do a race? Jason Calacanis (00:48:38): Well, because -- By the way, here's so much faster for a second. -- David Sacks (00:48:40): discussed this hold on a second. When we first discussed this issue, we were told it was nuclear. It was nuclear secrets. Jason Calacanis (00:48:46): Could be. Yeah. David Sacks (00:48:48): No. They've backed off that completely. It it was not in the affidavit. It's not about nuclear. That was something they leaked again through a tough press cycle. So but look. My point about all this stuff, just to wrap it up so people are clear, was never to defend Trump per se. My real concern is the politicization of the FBI. our law enforcement agency should not be weaponized by either party to pursue the Jason Calacanis (00:49:09): people in charge of death. David Sacks (00:49:10): It We just saw with the Zuckerberg thing, what business did the FBI have going to Zuckerberg to get them to censor a New York Post story that turned out to be completely true. hold on a second. That is election interference. They should not be doing that. Jason Calacanis (00:49:24): Yeah. I mean, it's it's a tough job if they don't know if it's been stolen or not. Yeah. It's a tough job. David Sacks (00:49:29): By the way, the government of the United States has no business censoring a free press. That is a violation of the 1st Amendment when the government instructs a private company to censor a press story that the government itself does not have the authority to censor, That is a violation of the first amendment. We thought remember when Jack Dorsey said that he regretted the censorship that Twitter did? and he came out with that apology. We thought it was just Twitter's decision. Now we find out from Zach that he was leaned on by the FBI. And I think that These big tech companies like Twitter, like Facebook, they're gonna have to have a new policy, which is when the government says we want you to censor something, their response needs to be show us a court order. They do not just censor now based on the say so of some operative Jason Calacanis (00:50:18): feel equipped. I would agree with you. I agree with you on that. I think it was a bad decision, obviously. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:23): The one big tech company that really nailed this, I think, was Apple, you know, very early on, they drew a really hard line in the sand with the sand Bernardino shooter because they said if we allow the FBI to get into this person's phone. Even though, you know, what he did was completely heinous, we are going to create a backdoor that will become an exploit for everybody and we are drawing the line on privacy and security. Now different set of issues, but it just goes to show you There have been a few examples where some of these companies have drawn a hard line. And then in that example, and I think, Jason, you mentioned this, they went to Israel and had that company hacked the phone. David Friedberg (00:51:00): Semberg, whatever. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:02): But it didn't come with they they were able to stand up to the pressure. So I think there are some example stats where you you can say no. Jason Calacanis (00:51:09): I mean, the the the idea that Twitter would block a New York Post URL. It's like such a jump ball. Like, If it was the sex material, I could understand them saying, like, you you can't hack it. That's against our terms of service for and we agree on that sex. But in this case, like, I don't know. Let's go Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:25): to something more interesting. David Friedberg (00:51:26): Could we Jason Calacanis (00:51:27): -- Heat wave, I think, and the drowning I know that's interesting to Saks, but I think it's interesting to everybody else in the audience. Heat waves and droughts are Just -- David Sacks (00:51:34): Use Flash is hot in summer. Jason Calacanis (00:51:36): Yeah. I think this might have to do a global warping and be a little unique. David Sacks (00:51:40): I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I know it's more Jason Calacanis (00:51:42): too. -- all the ESGP fun getting to Saks and say, you know, you're global you're you've already been global war between Fairfax. They're all -- David Sacks (00:51:49): I I this is a death of global war. It's a big story. Jason Calacanis (00:51:52): Okay. We'll get to that end. That's a great -- -- David Sacks (00:51:54): is a big story too. Jason Calacanis (00:51:55): Let let's give Friedberg a science corner, and then we'll come back around and give you your raw meat. David Friedberg (00:51:59): Zach, what's your what's your what's your point of view on climate change, the impact it will have on the planet and whether, like, urgent action is needed? David Sacks (00:52:12): Listen, I'm not an expert in that area. I'm not gonna pretend to be. I do think that that we can't save the planet by destroying the economy. And it seems to me that too many of these save the planet people like wanna take reckless extreme actions that would wreck our economy. You just saw actually Elon just gave a a talk this and made news this past week. from Norway where he said that we still need oil and gas. He's the leading innovator in basically moving -- I David Friedberg (00:52:41): don't disagree I don't disagree And David Sacks (00:52:43): he said, listen. Unfortunately, we gotta rely on oil and gas because it's too important for civilization. If we cut this stuff off too quickly, we end civilization. Jason Calacanis (00:52:53): Yeah. So look. I mean, David Sacks (00:52:54): I I think this is a long term problem, but I and I think we need to have long term solutions. Jason Calacanis (00:52:59): -- global warming. Just full stop. the the planet is warming. You agree with the science. David Friedberg (00:53:04): It's not just about warming. Just just just to use a different term that there are more frequent extreme events that can severely hurt people, hurt the economy, hurt the food supply, hurt the energy supply, all the things that you know, I think we're we're like, all the way on the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy, like, these are the things that are most critical that that they're starting to get disrupted in a pretty severe way. You know, I think that that's I mean, that's the big question. So, Saks, it's I think it's becoming, and and this is where the transition starts to happen, that a lot of people kinda say, hey. Over the long run, the temperature's gonna go up by 1 degree Celsius over a century, you know, who cares? But there are David Sacks (00:53:46): kind of The problem the problem is this is that, you know And David Friedberg (00:53:49): by the way, I Whatever whatever David Sacks (00:53:50): my like me points out how insane some of these policies are. I The topic is shifted to, are you a denier of some science or other? No. Listen. My point is not about the science. My point is look at the collapse of the Sri Lankan economy. because they implemented these ESG rules on fertilizer. Look at what's happening to the Dutch farmers who are being put out of work because of the ESG rules. David Friedberg (00:54:12): California today govern governor Newsom, today said, please don't use your electric power to charge your electric cars. A week after, they said, gas cars are now gonna be banned in the state. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:25): And so there's Jason Calacanis (00:54:25): a grid that's gonna go. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:54:27): There's a deep irony underway today in California because And Fox News is obviously latched on to this story that that has to do with the grid, Jason Calacanis (00:54:35): though. I mean -- Look. I've I've become suspicious. David Sacks (00:54:38): Whenever whenever politicians invoke some crisis as the as the reason. David Friedberg (00:54:42): I'm not talking about the political response. I'm not talking about the political response then. David Sacks (00:54:45): I've learned to distrust it. that's the point. And so -- I David Friedberg (00:54:48): guess I'm lucky if you don't have Jason Calacanis (00:54:50): -- -- David Sacks (00:54:50): in Europe right now is obviously gases through the roof because of the Ukraine war. the, you know, the price has basically gone through the roof. And so because of that, they're not able to produce fertilizer. And one of the byproducts of the production fertilizer is CO2. which gets added to the production of beer to make it fizzy. Well, guess what? The Germans are not only about to run out of gas, they're about to run out of beer. David Friedberg (00:55:14): This is a tough one. David Sacks (00:55:14): You think you think they're gonna keep supporting the Ukraine war when they find out that there's no beer for October? Fast Forget them, I'll not be able to eat their eat their homes. They can't drink beer in October. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:26): This this is Jason Calacanis (00:55:27): -- David Sacks (00:55:27): Wait a minute. We just Jason Calacanis (00:55:28): did it everybody sit down. We got we need to sit. Exactly. David Friedberg (00:55:32): Just just taking a just taking a just taking a beat for a minute. Like, taking taking off the table the political response Are you as an individual concerned about the the impact of a changing climate on people and on the economy? And and and are you interested as an investor in the private market solutions to resolve some of those things that are obviously gonna become market driven problems? Take take the government out of the equation. David Sacks (00:55:58): I I think there there may be a long term problem here. I'm not sure, like, how long it takes. I definitely think I'm skeptical of this claim that, you know, the world's gonna end in the next 10 years because, frankly, we've been hearing that since the 19 nineties. David Friedberg (00:56:12): I mean -- -- 1980 There's a great headline article, by the way, in New York Times, where it was like scientists in 1988 said that all the oceans all the ice caps will melt the oceans will flood the land by the year Jason Calacanis (00:56:23): 2000. David Friedberg (00:56:24): So there is a credibility challenge associated with predicting, you know, kind of long term outcomes like this that that that continues to kind of Fament, unfortunately. Right? Jason Calacanis (00:56:32): Yeah. David Sacks (00:56:32): All my beachfront property would be underwater right now if all that came true. No. I'm just kidding. But no. But but look. It it hasn't a gave my attention that many of the political leaders who are claiming that we're facing imminent threat of being underwater in 10 years own beachfront property and fly on private jets. So obviously, you know, I'm not saying this isn't a long term problem, but I do think they try to create an imminent crisis so they can shove through a bunch of bad policies that are very destructive to the environment. Jason Calacanis (00:57:03): Freeburg, there would you define what's happening with temperature and extreme weather as a crisis or not? David Friedberg (00:57:12): Yeah. I mean, there there's there's a I I would say there's a critical impact in and and will continue to be a critical impact in the food supply chain. In the quarters and years ahead, because of what we're seeing. So severe drought and heat wave in China right now. And by the way, food is not the only one. There's there's also the the manufacturing supply chain. So in the province of Shaixuan, in China, they actually lost power because so much of the power is driven by hydroelectric pet plants. So streams and water flow has slowed down and stopped. As a result, there's less power. As a result, the factories are being shut down. as a result, key components for manufacturing in the computing industry and and in in in the kind of mechanical goods are are not being produced at the rate that they were being produced before, that has a a ripple effect in the supply chain similar to what we saw in COVID. And then in the food supply chain, we're seeing a drought and a heat wave. Right now, we're coming out of it in the Midwest in the United States where we grow corn and soybeans. throughout Europe and also in China. And in China, they had 70 days in a row of record setting temperatures. Jason Calacanis (00:58:20): 70 days in a row. Every day was the worst. David Friedberg (00:58:25): No water, high temperatures. The the they're just starting to assess the crop Chamath. It looks pretty severe. There was massive crop damage in the Midwest in the corner the corn belt this year. And then, obviously, European farmers are having issues. and combine that with the geopolitical issues of the Ukraine crisis and the natural gas pricing being so high, 1 third of fertilizer of ammonia plants have been shut down in Europe, and they think that ammonia and fertilizer production may drop by as much as one half. in Europe because of the crisis. So energy prices are so high. You can't make fertilizer so that energy is being also redirected into other industry and support homes. Jason Calacanis (00:59:01): So you believe it is a crisis. I guess they should -- David Friedberg (00:59:04): They're yeah. People are turning on their ACs in California this week. You know, you see that governor Newsom just said, our grid in California cannot support excess electricity consumption. Therefore, one of the biggest variables is electric cars. He's saying don't plug in your electric cars this week. that's because of record high temperatures that are about to get California in 2 days. So, look, everyone says, hey. These are kind of anecdotal stories. But -- No. It's right. Statistically, the frequency of extreme things happening is continuing to climb. then the impact is in the food supply chain, the energy supply chain, and the manufacturing supply chain, and there are follow on effects. Now I'm optimistic that private market solutions will resolve these issues. Jason Calacanis (00:59:45): Yeah. That was my next question is, do we can we solve this or not? David Friedberg (00:59:48): Yeah. Of course. I mean, look. We've had crises since the dawn of humanity. I mean, we were a starving, you know, pretty -- We need Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:55): a crisis to solve some of these problems. These are pretty economically obvious. David Friedberg (00:59:58): Yeah. And that's that's my point. The the the private market will resolve because people want to have electricity. They want to have food. They want to have -- Not want -- -- part of Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:07): the need. David Friedberg (01:00:07): they need. And so so so the the market will pay for those things, and therefore, producers and technologists will resolve to solutions to make that Jason Calacanis (01:00:15): we just have to have the pain and suffering and see at First Antrima -- The the market to kick in? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:20): Our our friend in the group chat that shall not be named posted this meme. You guys saw it, right, which said, like, an autistic school girl takes what was it? I have it here. Jason Calacanis (01:00:33): Quit school. David Sacks (01:00:33): This is the Domino's. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:35): The the the dominoes. You you can show the dominoes, but, basically, it said an autistic Swedish girl decides to skip school is the little domino. And 7 dominoes later, this huge dominoes, it says the collapse of Europe's energy grid. And without commenting on the language used in the mean for a second, What is the point? The point is these conversations can so quickly go off the rails and are no about national security and economics and quickly become about moral virtue signaling that you missed the point. The point in the United States just to be very blunt is that the cost of electricity has gone up by 46% in the last decade. It will go up by another 40 odd percent through 2030. So between Jason Calacanis (01:01:22): 20102030, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:25): The cost of electricity for every single American will have effectively doubled even though the ability to generate particularly from wind and solar have been reduced by 90%. Now why is that? Well, it turns out that if you look inside the P and Ls of these utilities, it actually gives you the answer. So over the next 10 years we have to spend, has a nation just just on upgrading power lines, Jason Calacanis (01:01:53): $2,000,000,000,000. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:56): This is all cap this is all like crazy crazy OpEx. Right? CapEx improvements for sunk cost investments, our power line infrastructure in America is twenty plus years old. Thirty years old. Our generation infrastructure is pretty poor. We have all of these failures. We don't have enough peakers. We don't have ability to store energy when we need it. So if you add this all up, I do think that there's a huge economic incentive to solve it, and there are practical ways to solve it. And that's what we have to stay focused on. Because if we allow the moral virtue signaling to get in the way, We're gonna make some really stupid decisions. We're gonna keep trying to turn off nuclear. Another thing that Elon said, you know, we're we're not gonna green light shale in that gas. We don't have time for this. If you actually believe this is a cataclysmic issue, you need to basically be okay with hydrocarbons because it is the only credible bridge fuel we have to keep the world working properly because otherwise what David said is right, we are going to economically destroy parts of the world. by trying to race towards this net 0 goal. By the way, guys, I just wanna take the the you know, rip the Band Aid off. Net 0 by 2050, 26 It is not possible. There is zero credible plans that the world has to do it. So we have to take small incremental steps and many of them. Jason Calacanis (01:03:18): Yeah. This is and we should stay focused Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:20): on that. Jason Calacanis (01:03:21): Yeah. The interesting thing. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:22): And you cannot let people guilt trip you because this is when you make these stupid mistakes like the entire continent of Europe made Jason Calacanis (01:03:29): -- Yeah. I really don't. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:30): which is now going to cripple Here's -- Making economies of that of that entire continent unnecessarily. Jason Calacanis (01:03:37): Here's the good news. All this virtue signaling and and people wanting to be green and and for whatever reason. All of that now economics And Geopolitical is forcing people to rethink nuclear. The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, which is the last one in California that's operational. It's being voted on today as we're taping this, and it's expected that they're gonna keep it online. The governor with the great hair wants to keep it going. And the fascinating part about this is how -- What choice does Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:05): he have? Jason Calacanis (01:04:05): Exactly. And so now the awareness is so high about power and us losing it and asking people to turn off their air conditioner. Turn up. Don't plug in your cars. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:14): But people people don't understand how nuclear energy even works, and they, like, get rid of it. They a no Jason Calacanis (01:04:20): new concert in 1978, and they haven't changed their position since. But this is interesting. The Sky Gene Nelson, who's been a champion of this stuff, He said, I thought our chances were 0 of keeping this thing open. And he said, what's you know, and he and he said, he told this conference of attendees, this nuclear conference, that the effort to maintain it, he said, what's happened since, you know, the last 6 months has been like a snowball. that everybody has changed their position just in the last year on shutting these things down, and we saw, obviously, Germany is you know, thinking the the 3 remaining of their 6 that they were gonna turn off. They're putting back on. And I think we're gonna see new ground broken. And Japan, came out just in the last week and said they're gonna build more nuclear power and nuclear power plants. Now think about that. That's awesome. that's unbelievable. They had Fukushima. The Germans shut off their nuclear because of Fukushima. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:13): But, guys, Jason Calacanis (01:05:14): the Japanese are saying we're building more. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:15): Who could Guys, Fukushima didn't happen by accident. There was a, like, an incredible tsunami, which was triggered by -- Once Jason Calacanis (01:05:23): in a 100 Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:24): earthquake, Yeah. You're you're talking about these extremely long tail events. Yes. The retaining walls could have been built better. But these are things we find. We iterate, and we solve it was not the reason to shut down an entire mechanism of energy generation. Jason Calacanis (01:05:40): Stupid mistakes where they put it just too low in the wrong place if they just put it up the hill couple of miles Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:45): to what it'd be fine. But, also, if you look inside of what happened, there is enormous pressure inside of these companies to basically, you know, take take actual direct blame and responsibility. I get all of that, but these organizations were ashamed into turning these things off. That is not the way to make good smart decisions. Jason Calacanis (01:06:04): Okay. So, Gorbachev, the last ruler of the USSR, passed away this week. Saxx, your thoughts. David Sacks (01:06:12): Yeah. I mean, I think this was a real milestone. You go back to the 19 eighties and Ron Reagan, the who had spent his entire career being a cold warrior, saw the opportunity to basically do business with with Gorbachev. Margaret Thatcher had told him that this man we can do business with. Gorbachev had come to power in 1985. He had initiated reforms of the Soviet system. He was a communist to be sure, but he introduced political reforms called Glosnose and economic reforms called Peristroika. And Reagan sees the opportunity to go meet with him, and they signed arms control treaty after arms control treaty and ended the threat of mutually assured destruction that the world had been living with since the beginning of the Cold War. You gotta remember that, you know, the Cold War began shortly after World War 2. And we had this doctrine of mutually assured this destruction mad. And the whole world was living under the shadow of nuclear annihilation. This was showed repeatedly when I was a kid. There was a TV movie called the day after. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:17): The day Jason Calacanis (01:07:17): after, it was scary as Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:18): hell. It was real. Jason Calacanis (01:07:20): Lord, they terrorized us that America and we're all gonna die. We had did you ever have nuclear bombs drills we had to get onto your desk. David Sacks (01:07:27): Yeah. I mean, so yeah. So if you're, like, our age, you remember this. That that movie, by the way, that that was a TV event movie that was one of most widely watched movies. But there were others. You know, Jim Cameron used this concept in in the Terminator movies. You know, it was something that people were really afraid of. And Reagan seized the opportunity, he thought fundamentally that nuclear deterrence was immoral that yet better to have deterrence than a nuclear war, but that he if he could, he'd seize the opportunity to negotiate the end of the Cold War. And by the way, there were hardliners in his administration who did not want him to negotiate with Gorbachev. But they ended up doing a series of meetings, culminated in 1986 at the Reykjavik Summit. and they signed deals to remove these these INF system deals. Now and and that ended the cold war. And then, basically, what happened is in 1989 the Berlin walk came down. Gorberchoff allowed the west the Warsaw Pac Countries to leave. And then in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed So, you know, he gets a lot of credit for being willing to reform that system. Now the sad thing is, if we were fast forward 30 years later, where are we today? We're back in a new cold war with Russia. I mean, that we've been spending a good part of this year talking about the threat of a nuclear use. And, you know, this was a problem that we thought was solved 30 years ago. And now we're back with it today. And you've gotta ask, have the successors of, you know, Reagan and and and George Herbert Walker Bush, the people who inherited our foreign policy over the last 30 years, have they done as good a job as Reagan did? Reagan ended the Cold War. We are back in a new Cold War. Why? What is the reason for this? There's been a a a series of Stupid policies that now have put the risk of nuclear war back on the table. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:29): My interest in Gorbachev is slightly different. He is an credibly important character of the second half of the twentieth century. Undeniable. You know, won the Nobel Prize. As you said, David kind of ended the Cold War But the most important thing in my opinion was the precursor to and why he did it. And as you said, like, you know, this is a fairly art and communist, although he had really interesting views. Like, he ran a very kind of like open kind of politburo where folks could debate and heat you know, promoted a lot of young people from within, all of these interesting things. But The most important thing, and he's written about this a lot, is the reason that he embarked on Pero Stryker was because USSR at the time had an incredibly poor work ethic terrible productivity, and horrible quality goods. And I think that there's something to be learned by that because at the tail end of communism, essentially where you had central planning, central imposed economic principles What happened? People did not feel that they had any ownership in the outcome. Jason Calacanis (01:10:38): No agency. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:10:40): No agency whatsoever. think that there's a really important lesson to observe there, which is that if governments get too actively involved, This doesn't just happen in Russia. It happens everywhere. Jason Calacanis (01:10:51): It's happening in California. We just talked about it. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:10:54): It's happening where we live right now. And if you look at then what happened afterwards, it became the aristocracy that basically ruled the USSR before and then fighting against all these folks that wanted reforms. And that created the schism which then perverted capitalism for, you know, 7 or 8 years threw Yeltsen until Putin got there, and that's what created the oligarch class and, you know, really exacerbated a bunch of wealth capture by a handful of folks that may or may not have deserved it, and I'm not gonna judge that. But I just think it's really important to understand that he was forced to embark on this. because of all of these state central planning policies. And so it's just an important lesson for Americans in democracy. Jason Calacanis (01:11:40): Which is Be careful if you want more government, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:42): you might get these government, guys. David Friedberg (01:11:44): In any states, you know David Sacks (01:11:45): You're exactly right. The Soviet Union, their economy used to run on what they called 5 year plans. It was incredibly centralized. It was all run by the government. And, you know, this was communism. And in the 20th century, the second half of it, especially, was a giant battle of systems, not just of countries, not just the western blot, you know, led by the US, the free world versus the Soviet Union, the Warsaw pact, it was also a battle of philosophies and systems. It was the philosophy of state control versus freedom. and and a free economy. And Freedom won, you know, the free economy won in that battle. And the crazy thing is 30 years later, we're talking about socialism being a viable doctrine, you have politicians basically saying that they are socialists. But 30 years ago, you would have been Like, that was unelectable. David Friedberg (01:12:34): And the Chamath Palihapitiya (01:12:34): and the point is example after example, empirical evidence well documented of just how it doesn't work. And I guess the thing is, you know, we all say, like, you just have to learn it for yourself. You know, like, you'll tell your kids to do Jason Calacanis (01:12:48): -- I know. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:12:48): to not do something. Add in They gotta Jason Calacanis (01:12:50): touch the stove. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:12:51): Yeah. They gotta touch the stove themselves and get burned. We are about to go do that in California. Jason Calacanis (01:12:56): Can you imagine if, like, people who wanna be socialist here who find us if they had to be in a food line or have rations. Literally, Russia had food lines, and they were rationing food in the 19 eighties. Like -- Well, you have to -- -- all I got. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:10): Yeah. A large driver of Gorbachev basically negotiating these peace settlements with, you know, with Reagan and this nuclear, you know, demilitarization was in part because he knew he couldn't fight. Right? It it was this realization -- -- say Jason Calacanis (01:13:23): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:24): The -- That's that's that's centralized system with the cops David Sacks (01:13:26): saying He they cannot keep up. Reagan began an arms build up, and there was an arms race, and they were losing. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:33): They were losing. They were losing. This is And this is why, like, people should not misunderstand what Gorbachev was. He was not necessarily some democratic freedom fighter. He was a person who was observing the on the ground conditions of a socialist system decay their ability to compete. And so he had to capitulate before it was forced upon him. Right. Meanwhile, the David Sacks (01:13:53): right. This is why I don't think he deserves much credit as as Ronald Rae. And it's because at the end of the day, Gorbatov would have kept communism going if he could have. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:00): If he could have. If he Jason Calacanis (01:14:02): could have. He wanted the Soviet Union to stick stick together. I mean, he -- David Sacks (01:14:05): That's right. But his but but I think to his credit when the things start to collapse, he didn't use silence and repression to try and hold it together. So, you know, he was a he was a reformer. He was liberalizer Jason Calacanis (01:14:17): and -- -- maybe. -- David Sacks (01:14:17): and a pragmatist who didn't use violence. But and, ultimately, he was a partner for Round Reagan. Remember, Round Reagan began this gigantic arms build up. He was denounced as a cowboy who would get us some Jason Calacanis (01:14:27): 1 Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:27): or 3. But when he David Sacks (01:14:28): had the chance to negotiate a deal Jason Calacanis (01:14:30): -- David Sacks (01:14:30): Yeah. -- with Garber Choffee took it, and they basically got arms control. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:34): And it was because Reagan was able to sit on top of an extremely productive capital assistant that allowed him to make those investments that made that capitulation -- Yeah. -- basically. And I think that that's another thing for a lot of us to to understand, which is Free market capitalism, removing these degrees of decision making, give us degrees of freedom. And I've said this before on the last part. The great thing about the IRA and what Chuck Schumer did is actually will be written in 10 or 15 years from now because when we get to energy independence, when every home is resilient, the national security calculus in America changes wholeheartedly overnight. Yeah. I mean, think about it. David Sacks (01:15:16): It's not really -- -- years ago. Jason Calacanis (01:15:18): Right. But David Sacks (01:15:18): Biden canceled it. Jason Calacanis (01:15:20): Okay. Well, listen. David Sacks (01:15:22): No. It's true. If you're willing to use natural grass and fracking America David Friedberg (01:15:25): Fair enough. David Sacks (01:15:26): Is is one of the richest energy countries in the world. Jason Calacanis (01:15:28): Oh, we produce a lot of oil too. Yeah. I mean, listen, it it will change everything if we can really go all in on all of the categories. Nuclear -- It's just it's just Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:37): the raw materialize Jason Calacanis (01:15:38): and the and Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:39): the -- If you if you let the capital markets do and the free markets do what they're meant to do, they will empower the government to do great things for all of you, all citizens. David Sacks (01:15:48): Yes. I agree with that Jason Calacanis (01:15:49): 100%. And and the reason we wanna stop it is because we have a couple of examples of, you know, extreme wealth. And I think that's something we have to think about is, like, are the extreme is the extreme wealth created for a certain class? enough to stop the the prosperity train that we actually have in America. David Sacks (01:16:04): Listen, Jason. The the politicians in California think they can run fast food businesses better than that people who own those those restaurants -- Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:16:12): I mean, these people have never worked a day in their lives. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:16:14): I mean Jason Calacanis (01:16:14): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:16:15): We have they couldn't work. They Jason Calacanis (01:16:16): wouldn't yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:16:17): The great thing is we have a running a b test which will show whether this state central planning can work or not. And, again, if we refuse to wanna listen to the examples of Russia or all of these other countries that have tried this, then so be it. We will know in the next 3 to 5 years that these policies actually don't work and, actually, that it actually accelerates the exact hellscape that they think they're trying to avoid. David Sacks (01:16:44): But, you know, not only to to my point about foreign policy, not only are we forgetting the lessons of this Cold War, the economic lessons that a free enterprise system generates more wealth and prosperity and more national greatness, more ability to fund a defense budget, create a better economy. Not only does it do all those things, we forgot not only have we forgotten that, but also We have abrogated. We have ended every single defense control and arms control treaty with the Russians that Reagan and Gorbachev signed. Why? Why why do we do that? Now our nuclear missiles are pointing at each other again. And you know what? Russia's a much poorer country in the US. We're actually 15 times richer than them. During the Cold War at their peak, we were only 3 times richer than them. But were fifteen times richer, but they still got over 6000 nukes. Why do we get rid of all those arms control treaties? Why have we basically alienate them? Jason Calacanis (01:17:39): Yeah. You we talked we'd said it before. Like, you you're dealing with a pragmatist and Putin's a KGB agent. Maybe you maybe maybe you David Sacks (01:17:46): feel like Putin isn't someone we can deal with now, but he was someone we could have dealt with 10 years ago, Jason Calacanis (01:17:50): 20 David Sacks (01:17:50): years ago. We missed the opportunity to deal with him. Jason. Jason Calacanis (01:17:54): If he was a rational actor, if he was a rational actor, we would be able to deal with him. I think the only way he's actually gonna be we're the only way we'll be able to deal with him is if he doesn't have the oil market he has. Like, he just has too much power from that oil. And over time, that's the solution. We have to be energy independent. know? And I think Europe has learned that David Sacks (01:18:11): last part of them we had. He was a communist. He was an heir to Stalin. And yet, Reagan could still do business with him and sign an arms control treaty so that we could end the risk of mutually assured destruction. Jason Calacanis (01:18:24): We took we took advantage David Sacks (01:18:25): of it. to believe you do not to believe that Putin is a good guy in order for us to avoid getting back into a cold war, which is the situation we find ourselves in now. how does it benefit us to have Russian nukes once again pointed at our heads? Jason Calacanis (01:18:41): Yeah. I mean And David Sacks (01:18:42): the reason why the reason why we alienated Jason. It has nothing to do with him being a madman or whatever. It is because we brought NATO, which he views as a hostile military alliance right up to his border. And and by the way, listen to this video from Gorbatov. Gorbatov was asked about NATO expansion in front of the US Congress. He was giving a talk to them, and they asked him, gorbachev, what do you think about NATO? And what did he say? He said that you cannot humiliate a country this way and expect there to be no consequences. Gorberchoff was against NATO expansion. When when basically George River Walker Bush and the secretary say James Baker went to Gorchoff, to argue on behalf of German reunification. This is basically in 1990. Baker made the promise to Gorbachev, not 1 inch eastward, Gorbatov said yes, okay, they can reunify, but we do not want NATO moving up to our border. Baker made that promise. We have brought NATO up to their border That is why Putin regards us with hostility. Jason Calacanis (01:19:40): Yeah. And I think Europe regards him possibility and they're scared of him because he keeps invading country. So, yeah, there's a this takes 2 to Tango, but, hey, this has been episode 94. It David Sacks (01:19:49): does it does take Jason Calacanis (01:19:50): 2 David Sacks (01:19:50): to Tango, but you have to ask has the US foreign policy over the last 30 years that's gotten us in a new cold war with Russia, has that been a successful part foreign policy? they have undermined all the good work that Round Reagan and Gorbachev did together to end the Cold War. We are back in a new Cold War Jason Calacanis (01:20:07): You need to find Reagan also -- You just need to find a new Reagan. -- David Sacks (01:20:09): have some blame. Putin has some blame, but so does US State Department. So does US State Department? Jason Calacanis (01:20:14): And Europe. Europe has a a big part of the blame too here because he's their neighbor. You know? For the Sultan of Science, the rain man end, Reagan library chairman. Are you the chairman of the Reagan library? Let me ask you this. When you were a kid, did you have a Reagan poster in your room? Have you ever owned a Reagan poster? David Sacks (01:20:32): Have I Maybe a stanford. I'm sure I I've definitely owned a picture of of Reagan and look. I'm a fan. Raul Reagan listen, Jason. Jason Calacanis (01:20:39): Would you ever hang around Reagan Post or a picture in your dorm at Stanford? Yes or no? David Sacks (01:20:44): Listen, Raul Reagan. Jason Calacanis (01:20:45): That's a yes. David Sacks (01:20:46): Hold on a second. Ron Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot. He gave us the greatest economy the US has ever had. He ended the inflation and stagflation in the Jason Calacanis (01:20:55): 19 David Sacks (01:20:56): seventies And, again, he he avoided getting us into any of these major wars. Tell me the politician who you Jason Calacanis (01:21:03): -- If you can have lunch with anybody -- Who is the politician David Sacks (01:21:05): who you revere who has a record like that? Jason Calacanis (01:21:10): Yeah. I mean, I I guess one would say Bill Clinton, you know, would be the closest you know, great president of our our lifetimes. Right? You would agree with that? David Sacks (01:21:17): I think he's a good good president, not especially on -- He'd Jason Calacanis (01:21:19): beaten up too to Hunt Raegan in our lifetimes. -- David Sacks (01:21:21): remember, he benefited from the economy that Reagan created. Jason Calacanis (01:21:24): You would agree with me. Clinton is right behind Reagan. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:27): Reagan and Clinton in since, like, 1950 something easily top Jason Calacanis (01:21:32): 2. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:32): Yeah. I mean, easily. Easy. Jason Calacanis (01:21:34): It's hard for Saks to say this. -- David Sacks (01:21:36): is very good. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:37): Listen. I mean -- But head and shoulders, I think, like, for practically what they Jason Calacanis (01:21:40): did with Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:41): their at a time? Amazing. Alright. Jason Calacanis (01:21:44): Listen. Sacks, I know you love Reagan. And -- Reagan, I think that you should put you should put Brandon and Nick And Reagan and Bill Clinton won on each side of you for next week. Will you do that for us? I gotta go, guys. I gotta go too. Alright. Love you sexy food. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:57): I love you all next time, by Love you, Jacob. Love you too. Happy birthday to you, man. Thanks, bro. Jason Calacanis (01:22:03): We'll let your winners ride. Rainman, David. David Sacks (01:22:11): We open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. Jason Calacanis (01:22:17): besties are We David Sacks (01:22:30): should all just Jason Calacanis (01:22:32): get a room and just have a think you, George, because they're all just useless. It's, like, it's, like, sexual tension, but they just need to release them out. David Friedberg (01:22:42): When you're the VP, Jason Calacanis (01:22:47): We need to get mercies are back.