00:00:00
well you're talking about three very different actors there wait David David behind you is your security cameras are
00:00:05
on do you want to turn those off yeah I don't know how that all right hold on a second you sit there and watch those all
00:00:12
day security apparatus Christ what is this guy the Batman he sits in that couch all day and
00:00:19
watches his security Wayne hey did you see that behind him it was so dystopian oh my gosh you must have caught some
00:00:27
crazy [ __ ] on those security cameras sucks what do you do with that [Music] let your winners
00:00:34
[Music] ride and instead we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy
00:00:44
with it Queen okay everybody Welcome to episode 150 of the Allin podcast yes we've made
00:00:55
it to 150 episodes somehow talking about technology business and of course politics and this week we will continue
00:01:05
our discussion tragically about the situation in Israel and the war with Hamas and a lot of the
00:01:13
downstream effects of what's going on here and try to make sense of the world as we do we gave a disclaimer last week
00:01:19
we're not experts and I suspect many of you are not experts on this but we're going to try to talk about the hard
00:01:28
topic here and do it good faith and then we will move on to topics that don't have to do with the war in Gaza uh That
00:01:37
Could by the time you read this again another disclaimer by the time you listen to this podcast a ground Invasion
00:01:44
may or may not have started we tape these on Thursdays and you listen to them generally speaking on Saturdays and
00:01:50
Sundays with me again this week chth poaa David saaks and of course David Friedberg and uh gentlemen I'm just just
00:02:00
going around the horn here quick before I tee up the first topic how's everybody
00:02:04
feeling about the events uh and in the 10 days since 107 in the terrorist attack that occurred in Israel I skipped
00:02:13
last week I was too emotional to do the show just so folks know it was uh difficult to see what I saw on the
00:02:26
internet and the reporting I think I was really moved because I thought a lot about the
00:02:38
like how lucky we are and like my I thought about my children and seeing what I saw and being a parent
00:02:47
um it's really different I remember 911 it was really shocking I was really upset from 911 as
00:02:55
well but when I saw the events last week it it immediately projected onto my kids and the uh care I try and take for
00:03:04
my kids and thinking about the experience of other people in this situation I I was also I'll be
00:03:12
honest really moved and saddened because of the bombing of children in Gaza and I was really
00:03:21
saddened that there were innocent children suffering there as well and the whole thing just felt so
00:03:29
horrific to me I I don't think about the justification or the morality of one side over another I I was just more
00:03:37
moved because I I felt really sad about the experience of a lot of families and a lot of children caught in the middle
00:03:44
caught in this in this environment so I was I was pretty hurt last week I was in
00:03:48
a really bad State and I couldn't do the show I think you know time has allowed me to
00:03:55
kind of become a bit rational about things and try to understand where things are headed and it's a really
00:03:59
complicated confusing situation and it's really sad I I worry a lot about where things are headed not just in the Middle
00:04:07
East but also domestically coming out of this conflict so that's where I'm at yeah
00:04:14
thank you for sharing I wasn't sure if you would share um your absence last week and I think it's fair I too have
00:04:21
been thinking about my own children and it's uh and 911 and and it's it's very dark yeah and so it's hard to talk about
00:04:30
but we're we're making progress here I think and uh today we we'll talk about a lot of the issues chth or saxs any uh
00:04:38
opening thoughts before we get started uh delving into what's actually happening and then more importantly I
00:04:45
think where this is heading and what the possible outcome or resolution could be
00:04:52
if there is a resolution here I think things are getting better actually I think from where if if you
00:04:59
had to graph your expectations of how bad things could get I think what most people would probably say is somewhere
00:05:07
last week there was a scepter of some potential World War III like contagion and I think in
00:05:18
general it hasn't stopped some of the Bloodshed but the extent to which we expected this thing to escalate it
00:05:26
actually hasn't happened and so if you take a step back and you kind of calmly and coldly look at the
00:05:33
facts I think that there are a lot of people on all sides trying to maintain their composure in a moment
00:05:42
where there's a lot of brush fires so I actually think that this has been much much better than it could have
00:05:56
been and so I'm generally optimistic that we're going to find our way out of this so uh saaks any thoughts as we well
00:06:04
to be honest I can't be as optimistic as tth it's true that World War III hasn't
00:06:08
started yet but I think the situation is incredibly volatile still just the last
00:06:13
couple of days the headline story was an explosion or bombing of this Hospital in
00:06:21
Gaza blame immediately fell on Israel the claim in the New York Times was that they had Dropped a Bomb on it from a
00:06:28
plane so media was a flame with that I think in the last day or so the perspective seems to be changing there's
00:06:38
video now showing that it wasn't the hospital but rather the parking lot next to the hospital that took the brunt to
00:06:45
the damage I think that it's far from clear that Israel did it a lot of people are
00:06:51
blaming Islamic Jihad in any event it's very unclear so I'm going to continue to
00:06:57
do what I've done which is suspend judgment until there can be some sort of proper investigation of of what happened
00:07:02
and we find out exactly who's really responsible but it does seem that over the last day or so there's been now a
00:07:10
backing off of the idea that Israel was definitely responsible for this nonetheless you saw immediately in the
00:07:16
wake of that Story coming out that there were protests and riots all over the Middle East the Arab Street was
00:07:27
absolutely ignited and I think that the Arab Street's not going to be convinced that Israel wasn't responsible for this
00:07:35
I just think that they're convinced and I think partisans on both sides are convinced about who did it and they're
00:07:42
going to be immune to whatever evidence comes out so I think that's kind of the situation we're at right now I would
00:07:48
consider the the riots that we just saw in regards to the hospital and the eruption on social media to be a a
00:07:55
Prelude or dress rehearsal of what we can expect to happen almost every day if Israel proceeds with the ground invasion
00:08:04
of Gaza now they haven't done that yet and that's why the situation seems tenuous but stable but we're still
00:08:12
waiting to find out if Israel is going to go into Gaza and if they do I think all bets are off in terms of where this
00:08:18
is going this was my biggest concern last week I um I think the thing I was most anxious about
00:08:25
was that the imagery that would come out of Gaza with the action from Israel would be the
00:08:36
F for escalation worldwide that there's this perception already with half a billion people maybe two billion people
00:08:48
maybe more that there's an oppressor and there's an oppressed and the oppressed is suffering under the
00:08:55
oppressor and that there would be the creation of fodder to support that narrative
00:08:59
and I think that the hospital bombing the kind of point I made to someone who reached out to me two days ago or
00:09:06
yesterday about it was I don't know if it matters that we get the corrections from all these people that may have said
00:09:12
something that turns out to not be true because it was almost like that media became confirmation bias for people that
00:09:19
already felt that this is what was going on and this is simply evidence of what is going on and it
00:09:26
justifies the next step it it jus the beliefs it justifies the morality and I don't think that if it if
00:09:36
it wasn't this it's some it's going to be something else there is a Tinder Box ready to be lit and that Tinder Box is
00:09:43
just looking for a match and whether it's this match or the next match there's going to be a match and the
00:09:48
Tinder Box will be lit I think that a large number of people feel like they're on the right side everyone thinks
00:09:54
they're on the right side of something everyone feels like they have the right moral stand that there is a regime on
00:10:00
the other side that has the wrong moral stance I am good you are evil and therefore anything I see is my
00:10:08
confirmation bias for my belief and it'll it gives me permission to take the next step and in that framework it will
00:10:17
only escalate and we are only going to a dark place and I think the the real question for me to chim's optimism is
00:10:25
what are the muting factors what are the factors where one side feels like they're getting something that forces
00:10:32
them to say I'm not going to take the next step I'm not going to justify the next step and it's a it's a really hard
00:10:38
question to answer at this stage look let's let's take that other side and just explore it for a second
00:10:44
so the question that I've been asking myself is and because I agree with you it doesn't matter who was responsible
00:10:52
for this bombing because it's already been defined yeah but in a moral sense it does just no no in a moral sense it
00:10:58
does but saying practically in the theater of war and the theaters near the war it doesn't matter because it's about
00:11:05
how is it framed and to your point people have already made up their minds the pro-israel side have made up
00:11:14
their mind and the pro Palestinian side has made up their mind but the question that I ask myself is okay is that how
00:11:23
much of an incremental escalation is it from what their status quo is you know one of the interesting things I learned
00:11:32
from the Jared Kushner interview with Lex fredman it's like a lot of this tension you can trace back to the alaxa
00:11:43
mosque and all of the misinformation around that right he spends a a section of that podcast talking about how that's
00:11:50
been framed and reframed the Miss and disinformation to basically get people fervently up in arms and it turns out
00:11:58
that it is isn't under the supervision of the Israelis and in fact you know you can go get a visa to visit alaxa mosque
00:12:05
and it's under the custodian ship of the King of Jordan as an example so that is
00:12:10
the fact but those facts aren't necessarily shared on the ground and that is where a lot of this original
00:12:18
tension comes from so then I ask myself okay well if that's been lingering for decades how much more incrementally bad
00:12:26
does it get for this specific thing and I think you see it in people's actions which is they try to use it to escalate
00:12:35
and my honest measurement of that escalation is that outside of the actual theater of
00:12:41
war most of these escalations died down pretty quickly now if all of these embassies were overrun and all of a
00:12:49
sudden you saw a Beirut like situation right the US Embassy in Beirut in the early ' 80s I would agree with you that
00:12:56
this is getting really bad really quickly but that's not what we saw and I think
00:13:01
what that speaks to more is how much hatred is actually in the heart of people versus
00:13:06
not and so I think that this was a moment for people to channel their anxiety and some
00:13:14
of their aggression and some of their hatred towards America or Israel but what it didn't was escalate you didn't
00:13:22
see these embassies get burned to the ground you didn't see people getting dragged out and so I'm not trying to
00:13:27
justify that behavior I'm just is trying to look at it in an absolute sense and answer the question is it escalating or
00:13:34
is it not escalating and my assessment right now is that it is not escalating I saw on
00:13:43
Sunday something that I thought I would never see which is Iran put out a press release through the United Nations to
00:13:50
Israel you haven't seen that that's de-escalatory that's not an escalatory action from a country whose mission
00:13:56
statement includes the destruction and Dem eyes of a country so I think when push comes to
00:14:03
shove there are a lot of people in positions of power who understand the stakes here and are trying their best on both
00:14:12
sides and I I hate this word so I can't even believe I'm about to use it to find
00:14:16
some proportionality and try to deescalate that's how I measure and judge what I
00:14:21
see over the last week a lot of people use labels to characterize the actions the tonality the behavior of
00:14:32
the other side because every everyone believes that they're on the right side and the point of view that there is hate
00:14:41
and anger on the other side comes from a place not out of the blue hate and anger
00:14:46
doesn't just emerge from nothing it it typically comes from a place of deep hurt I think the biggest question for me
00:14:54
is how do you resolve the Deep hurt that is being felt and has been felt by either side over a very long
00:15:02
period of time it's the hardest thing to answer because what do you give millions
00:15:08
of people that have lived feeling hurt for so long feeling challenged for so long that makes them feel resolved in
00:15:16
that sense and I get that speaking about the Palestinian people I'm speaking about the Israeli people too okay and
00:15:23
I'm I'm speaking about the fact that like these actions don't they don't come out the blue they don't come out of a
00:15:30
place of like GRE let's go to an example in our own lives let's just say that we have a
00:15:36
friend or you know we had a girlfriend at some point where there is a deep betrayal okay and then there's
00:15:44
just an unrelenting anger to your point before you can talk about the hurt you have to deescalate
00:15:53
the anger so there has to be an active process of deescalation before you can actually resolve this stuff I thought
00:16:00
Israel was quite clear last week we are going into Gaza on Sunday but then they didn't that seemed de-escalatory again
00:16:09
I'll just say it again Iran puts out a press release to Israel through the UN that seemed
00:16:16
de-escalatory there was a moment where Jordan the Palestinian Authority and Biden were supposed to meet they ended
00:16:25
up not meeting in Aman but that seemed escalatory Biden Tony blink Tony refused to leave the IDF until he got some
00:16:34
insurances about humanitarian Aid into Gaza that seems de-escalatory Biden spending time and
00:16:40
then reiterating those assurances from Netanyahu again all of this stuff seems like both sides are in the middle of all
00:16:48
of this chaos not trying to light the Tinder Box and it doesn't mean that they're on a path to resolution but I I
00:16:55
I just think that they they understand the stakes facts when we look at the hospital situation
00:17:01
specifically and the fog of War you had the New York Times getting attacked for maybe taking
00:17:10
hamas's word for it then flipping and then now there is conspiracy theory the United States is you know carrying water
00:17:19
for Israel and then the fog of War oh my goodness we maybe the the hospital wasn't even hit it was in the it was in
00:17:27
the parking lot and so it it didn't even get hit so when we look at all of that and then shamad says hey wait things
00:17:33
haven't escalated I I actually I happen to be here in Dubai right now on a business trip and I'll explain some of
00:17:40
uh the feedback I've gotten from people who are Palestinian uh ethnically or Jordanian and of Palestinian descent
00:17:50
I should say and and we'll get into that in the second the ground war hasn't happened and this seems to be one of the
00:17:57
as jamaat is pointing out it's fascinating that it hasn't because it was supposed to have happened already do
00:18:02
you have any thoughts on why it hasn't happened one of the conspiracy theories and and I hate to go down these roads
00:18:08
because in the fog of War I think people try to fill a vacuum and then of course
00:18:13
as you were pointing out your mouth in freeberg people then use it as evidence for their side the people here in Dubai
00:18:19
a number of people have pointed out this uh ground war is not going to happen that it's saber rattling but uh Israel
00:18:27
is going to back back down and get the hostages back and this has been told to me by many people and I don't know if
00:18:33
that's wishful thinking or some kind of conspiracy theory but but what do you take from the ground war not happening
00:18:39
and then if you want to go back and touch on the fog of War issue here with things flipping back and forth and and
00:18:45
what is actual reality and just broadly speaking escalating or de-escalating facts look I think that there's a few
00:18:52
possible reasons why Israel hasn't gone in yet number one is they may perceive it to be a very difficult military opper
00:18:58
operation they're almost certainly walking into a trap there's going to be ambushes everywhere snipers
00:19:04
IEDs Hamas has an elaborate tunnel Network they can disappear down that tunnel Network when the fighting gets
00:19:10
too hot they can booby trap the access points they've got anti-tank weapons they can take out armored vehicles it's
00:19:18
going to be a very difficult fight for the Israelis and so they may be taking a pause here just to assess that situation
00:19:26
and maybe get organized for it or or maybe think better of it so they may be either stopping to organize or getting
00:19:33
cold feet I think second they have to think through the consequences of going in there Hezbollah has basically
00:19:40
threatened to open up a northern front and invade Israel if Israel goes into Gaza you also saw as we saw at the
00:19:48
reaction to the hospital uh bombing that they have be concerned about the Arab Street erupting and again if they go
00:19:56
into Gaza this could ignite the whole Arab world it seems to me that if you're Israel you don't want to become the
00:20:02
focal point for all of this anger in the Arab or larger Muslim World there are important differences in that world
00:20:11
there's differences between sunnis and Shiite there's differences between Arabs and Persians and Turks and the last
00:20:19
thing you want is to paper over all those differences by having everybody's anger targeted at you so I think there's
00:20:26
very big consequences that could follow geopolitically I think again the war would almost certainly not just be a
00:20:33
single front war against Gaza it could turn into multi-front war so that's I think the second reason I think the
00:20:38
third reason is you have to believe that there's Furious diplomacy going on behind the scenes and I think this is
00:20:44
what chamath is referring to what we don't know obviously or the the content of those conversations we don't know
00:20:51
what the B Administration has told the Netanyahu government we don't know if they've said to to them listen we are
00:20:59
not going to get involved in this publicly they've said that we stand with Israel but you just have to wonder what
00:21:04
they're privately telling the Israelis all of that being said I think that Israel has declared that it's at war
00:21:12
with Hamas there are these stories that are coming out daily of these atrocities
00:21:17
that were perpetrated by Hamas I saw one by paramedics who discovered the bodies
00:21:21
and described the way they were tortured the population of Israel demands retribution and so Netanyahu is under
00:21:29
intense domestic political pressure to deliver on that so I I think that jamaath is right
00:21:37
that things haven't escalated yet but I wouldn't say they've de-escalated blinkin did demand and Biden did
00:21:42
announce those uh relieving of some of the humanitarian issues in Gaza but to my knowledge they have not been
00:21:48
implemented yet they turned the water back on I believe yeah okay so I think this thing is still a powder keg and it
00:21:54
could erupt and again it all comes back to this key question of does Israel go into to Gaza or not if they don't then I
00:22:02
think that creates room for some sort of international diplomatic effort to get the hostages back and maybe deescalate
00:22:10
the situation and I guess we'll find out over the next week or so and that you didn't even mention that there could be
00:22:16
some deep diplomacy here going on in terms of releasing the hostages and maybe somehow they believe if they go in
00:22:22
too early the chances of getting those hostages out alive could be seriously diminished yeah you know it's strange to
00:22:29
me that I just don't hear that much about the hostages it it seems like the Israeli population just in terms of what
00:22:36
they're publicly saying seems to have almost written off the hostages there was some video of the families of the
00:22:42
hostages being upset that they don't feel like the government response is adequately taking the interests of their
00:22:48
families into account that they just seem hellbent on this invasion of Gaza but you know we don't know what's
00:22:56
happening behind the scenes and again that that would be the way to deescalate this is you get an
00:23:01
international effort to release the hostages in exchange for maybe it can't be stated but quit Pro quot where Israel
00:23:09
does not go into to Gaza on the ground and and maybe the bombing stops yeah okay so maybe we can pivot discussion
00:23:17
here to I I will say let me make one other point here delving into the internal politics of another country is
00:23:23
not something that we typically like to do or that Americans are particularly good at but when a situation like this
00:23:29
happens that could drag us into a war we do have to kind of understand the internal dynamics of these countries
00:23:36
Israel is a country that for the last several years has been very internally divided there's been something like five
00:23:43
elections in the last four years Netanyahu got reelected in December of 2022 by creating a new Coalition with
00:23:54
farri elements of the Israeli political system and jamath you mentioned the alaxa
00:24:00
mosque and I and I know Jared's take on on this was he thought that this was blown out of proportion but I'll give
00:24:08
you a different perspective on this I've just been researching this if you read Al jazer what they point to is a the
00:24:16
emergence of a far-right figure named immar Ben gavier who has become a member of netanyahu's government as a result of
00:24:26
this Coalition that was forged in December and benir has been he previously he was a a fringe sort of
00:24:35
anti- Palestinian far-right provocator when he was 19 years old he basically had somehow stolen or taken the hood
00:24:42
ornament from Yak rine the then prime minister's car and was waving it around saying that if we can get to your car we
00:24:49
can get to you three weeks later Yak bbin was assassinated by a far-right religious extremist in is Israel because
00:24:58
they felt that he had committed treason by signing the oso Accords now benav wasn't implicated himself but it gives
00:25:04
you a sense of kind of where he's coming from and benav has led over the past year several incursions into the AL oxa
00:25:13
mosque area and the reason he said he's done this is to show that the AL oxa mosque and the do
00:25:21
of the rock near the Haram al- Sharif which is the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca Medina he says that that is
00:25:29
under the sovereignty of Israel that that belongs to Israel there is also a faction of the Israeli far right that
00:25:35
wants to build the Third Temple on the Temple Mount you have to understand that that cannot happen while the alox of
00:25:42
mosque is still there so you have these I don't mind saying phrases I mean to to
00:25:48
to destroy or even to imply that you would ever destroy the aloa mosque is such an explosive issue it would turn
00:25:57
the entire Muslim World against Israel and basically I think it would be the end of Israel but you have these figures
00:26:03
who've now been incorporated into netanyahu's cabinet and I they are I think far to the right of Netanyahu but
00:26:10
they are pressuring Netanyahu they are seem to be banging for some sort of religious War so you know the domestic
00:26:17
politics of another country is not something that we're totally familiar with but you have to understand that
00:26:20
Israel does have these elements and man I hope that the Biden Administration is telling Netanyahu that
00:26:30
yeah we stand with Israel but not if you're going to follow the advice of these far-right religious extremists
00:26:37
this is um I think a very important point to to pause on here and maybe unpack which is uh as I said I'm I'm
00:26:45
here in Dubai and had this trip planned and um actually tell us what you're what
00:26:50
you're hearing what are you hearing what do they what do people say yeah it's fascinating um and it's this is going to
00:26:57
get a little touch and so I just want to be clear I'm going to tell people what the conversations
00:27:02
are here it's not necessarily me endorsing any of these positions and again I'm no expert of course and on
00:27:09
Saturday night I went to abot Mitzvah my friends um daughters had their bot Mitzvah and uh and Tuesday night I had
00:27:16
dinner sorry Where in Israel or no in the Bay Area and then flew here and the struck a position where I had dinner
00:27:23
last night with five Jordans who are of pal Ian descent uh and they universally are appalled by
00:27:33
Hamas and they're what happened right so just say that right out front and then they are perplexed why
00:27:42
there is no discussion in the West in America of the conditions that could have led to this and the treatment of
00:27:50
the Palestinian people who they believe are living in apartheid and that word is
00:27:55
used over and over again and that they have you know now a generation of people who have no hope and a generation of
00:28:02
people who have nothing to lose and that they they have nothing to live for and this is uh the piece of the discussion
00:28:08
that has gotten a lot of people in the west I think in trouble talking about it we had a conference producer who uh was
00:28:15
tweeting Hey listen you know very early on like on the on 107 Israel has to abide by you know
00:28:24
international law Etc and and this came up over and over again from Muslims here in Dubai that the West
00:28:33
is not and in the Free World is not holding Israel accountable to Human Rights standards basic standard tenants
00:28:39
of war and I was coming into the trip a little bit more positive and now there's
00:28:45
such a deep hurt on both sides of this that I I got to see you know from from both of these events and people
00:28:51
suffering that I um my normally positive outlook has been a little bit shaken if
00:28:58
I'm being honest this feels very intractable to me and uh yeah to even going near the
00:29:06
topic of what has Israel contributed to this situation and in the treatment of the Palestinian people that's what the
00:29:14
people in the region want to hear us talk about or just hear the world talk about any reaction to some of the
00:29:22
protests that happened in Europe and the people that took to the streets what what was their perspective on that I
00:29:27
think perspective is a very small percentage of Americans care about the Palestinian people and you know if you
00:29:33
look at the surveys that have gone on and I have some of the the survey data that's been done and I'm not sure
00:29:41
Americans views on this are the most important views for us to be focused on but a very small percentage of people
00:29:48
are aligned um with the Palestinian people as opposed to with the state of Israel so well I mean the biggest
00:29:55
challenge in finding a towards I don't want to just be so generic and say the word peace no I
00:30:04
think that's the word yeah but towards some form of understanding and settlement with with each other is that
00:30:09
there's a framing right now that you have to pick a side you're not allowed to be pro-israel
00:30:17
and also be sympathetic and empathetic to the plight of the children in Gaza you're not
00:30:23
allowed to say I'm looking out for the Palestinians but I believe Israel should have a state you're not allowed to point
00:30:30
out the fact that there are multiple Muslim majority countries and there's only one Jewish State while also saying
00:30:40
that what the Israelis have done may also not be right you're not allowed to take a nuanced point of view and you're
00:30:48
not allowed to address the variance in Behavior over time with each of these different sides and how there is a
00:30:56
massive complicated mess here that it has to be pick your side you're pro-israeli we need to wipe out X Y or Z
00:31:05
or you're anti-israeli and as a result you're anti-semite and the fact that we conflate all of these things together
00:31:13
and force people to jump on a side is what is also escalating that we can't actually have conversations around these
00:31:18
topics that it all ends up being pick aide and then let's figure out how many people and what resources are on one
00:31:25
side and what people and what resources are on the other and I think that this notion that we
00:31:29
have almost a cancel culture Behavior that's now leeched into this discourse that if you try and talk about
00:31:38
the plight of Palestinians you cannot also be pro-israel is what's keeping us from
00:31:44
making progress in finding a path to resolution and I I think that's the the biggest issue right now and we Leverage
00:31:51
The you're not a loyalist you're not moral you're not a good person you're evil if you don't
00:32:01
stand on our side and both sides are act that way and it's that's the hardest thing to
00:32:08
change it's I think the only way to find a path is to change that first and I think starting with empathy is the only
00:32:16
way but man that's impossible right now [ __ ] impossible yeah it's hard sorry now I'm sorry I'm just I'm just super
00:32:22
like w I'm super emotional about this because I just don't like the like you know so there are broadly speaking two
00:32:30
factions that we're seeing out in the streets either denouncing Israel or supporting the Palestinians I think
00:32:36
there is a group of people who genuinely hate Jews or hate Israel and do not believe in Israel's right to exist and
00:32:44
are preaching things like decolonization which is a recipe for for genocide then
00:32:49
there are people and probably a larger group who I think are concerned with the plight of the Palestinian people who
00:32:56
recognize the conditions they have is deplorable and that the tactics that Israel uses to enforce its security
00:33:04
whether it's the occupation of the West Bank or the blockade of Gaza are unsustainable and create unfair
00:33:12
conditions for the Palestinians so in other words they're not saying that Israel doesn't have a right to exist
00:33:17
they are principally concerned with helping the Palestinians in achieving a Palestinian state it seems to me of
00:33:24
Paramount importance that Israel separate these two groups by understanding the concern and
00:33:33
I would apply this to American leadership as well by understanding the concerns of the latter and hopefully
00:33:40
getting us on a path to resolving them totally so as to isolate the haters totally because otherwise this whole
00:33:48
thing is headed towards a gigantic disaster where and I I think it's a disaster for for Israel most of all is
00:33:54
that Israel could be destroyed but I think think the whole world is being asked to pick a side too and that's
00:33:59
where this escalates into a much bigger broader conflict it's it's that yeah and
00:34:04
the country and even within the us we're being asked to pick a side and now we're
00:34:07
seeing civil unrest in the US the frustration as well amongst people who are of who who are Muslim or who are
00:34:15
Palestinian descent or Jordanian or just in the region generally is that Hamas set this process back decades and
00:34:22
there's like a great frustration that maybe some progress was being made and that we could come to some normaly in a
00:34:28
two-state solution and that Hamas did this exactly because so much progress has been made
00:34:36
uh recently I think that is the best theory about why this happened now is that there was a process of
00:34:41
normalization happening between Israel and a number of these Arab states and and we talked about it last week that
00:34:47
jerro Kushner set this in motion there were three or four deals that were signed between Israel and the gulf Arab
00:34:53
states uh bringing about normal relations and Saudi Arabia was on the table as being the next one there was a
00:35:01
effort underway to negotiate a normalization of of relations between Israel and and Saudi Arabia that is now
00:35:09
completely on ice and at risk of the other agreements maybe being ripped up because if Israel goes in and has a
00:35:17
massive ground Invasion and there's more suffering and death that that will maybe
00:35:22
blow all those Accords up I think that what Hamas may have been concerned about extent you want to impute strategic
00:35:28
logic to their decisions even you know those decisions are atrocities but if they have a strategic purpose in mind
00:35:35
it's to derail yeah that that process of normalization because if the entire Arab
00:35:40
world basically normalizes relations with Israel before the Palestinian question is resolved it takes a major
00:35:47
carrot off the table in their negotiations or whatever they want to achieve so I think that to thwart that
00:35:54
process was a big part of the goal here but I do think that what this has shown is that getting to a larger Middle East
00:36:04
piece without resolving the Palestinian question is likely to be a failed strategy I just don't it's impossible
00:36:11
it's impossible and so impossible again this does not justify anything Hamas did but I think that what
00:36:17
these events have now created is a dynamic where the Palestinian question is now front and center and and
00:36:26
everything else is basically paused until this gets resolved now I just want to say something about the two-state
00:36:33
process you know again I was doing some some research there really hasn't been any work on the two-state solution for
00:36:40
roughly a decade Obama was the last president who tried he explicitly said that Israel should try to make peace
00:36:47
based on the 1967 lines but with land swaps to accommodate for the changes that have happened on the map since then
00:36:54
Netanyahu was very high rate at that formulation by by the way he never had a good relationship with with Obama
00:36:59
because of that and then John KY who secretary under State under Obama made a major effort to try and bring about a
00:37:06
two-state solution and frankly it went nowhere and a big part of the reason why is that Netanyahu said that listen the
00:37:15
only situation that's acceptable to Israel from a security standpoint is that we must control all security west
00:37:23
of the Jordan River so in other words we must control security in the West Bank and his argument was that look adjacent
00:37:30
land is very important if you create a Palestinian State there where they have total sovereignty over their own
00:37:36
security they could be digging tunnels under the wall he basically said it could turn into 20 gazes and he's got
00:37:42
his point of view and and when people challenged him on this he said listen you don't live here you know we live
00:37:47
here we understand the security situation that's what he said to John Cary so the whole process fell apart and
00:37:53
since then the idea has been for Israel to move forward again on this larger normalization project with the rest of
00:38:00
the Middle East putting the Palestinian question to one side the idea has basically been listen if you won't make
00:38:06
peace with us and this goes back to Arafat at Camp David turning down the deal that was on the table that Clinton
00:38:13
brokered with Ood Barack if you won't make a deal with us we'll just go around you you're too rejectionist you're too
00:38:20
difficult you're too hard to make a deal with so we're just going to put that to
00:38:23
one side and that really has been the process for the last decade I would say since
00:38:30
John K's initiative fell apart the process has been starting with kushan under Trump and then I think Biden tried
00:38:38
to extend it by brokering the Saudi Arabia deal the idea was let's put the Palestinian question to one side we'll
00:38:45
work on these other deals I think now that that process has fallen apart so the two-state solution that process died
00:38:52
back in 2014 this idea of going around has basically falling apart now and so I think this is why people are pretty
00:38:59
pessimistic about where things go from here is what is the process and meanwhile you have this hard shift
00:39:05
inside Israeli domestic politics to the right you've got these religious factions who believe that the entirety
00:39:13
of the West Bank what they call Judea and Samaria is their god-given right and if you go back to the netanyahu's
00:39:19
government forming in December of 2022 the first plank was to say that Judea and Samaria belong to us we have
00:39:28
sovereignty over them we're not giving them up so what room is there for compromise and since then they've been
00:39:33
expanding the settlements in the West Bank let me ask you a question just to shift the question for a second the
00:39:39
thing that surprised me the most over this past week were the extent of the protests some
00:39:51
violent in the United States and in Western Europe and I'm curious to hear from you guys was that overwhelmingly
00:39:58
about Pro Palestine and making sure that there wasn't a human rights atrocity in
00:40:04
Gaza or was that a emergence of like a simmering anti-Semitism that we hadn't seen well both that that's kind of my
00:40:14
point is there's type one and type two type one is the true hatred it's the denial of the Israeli right to exist
00:40:21
however there's a type two which is legitimate concern over the condition of the Palestinians and the desire to
00:40:27
resolve that by creating a Palestinian State and until you separate those two things you're never going to make
00:40:32
progress your type two can breed a type one is the real scary reality the simmering
00:40:39
anti-Semitism that you can have a legitimate concern about the people of Palestine because you always are going
00:40:46
to be concerned about the oppressed being oppressed by the oppressor and that then translates into an
00:40:54
anti-Semitism because you say that it's the Jewish people that are perpetrating this upon those people therefore the
00:41:01
Jewish people need to go and I've heard friends of mine in the last week who have said awful things like all Muslims
00:41:08
need to go well-known well-respected public people have said this to me in private I can see where the hatred can
00:41:16
come from a place of hurt I can see that when people feel sympathetic towards the
00:41:21
Palestinian plight they can then turn into anti-Semitism and so I I I do think that
00:41:27
there are two distinct groups today but my concern is that just like what happened in the past that that can then
00:41:33
breed into a more generalized more fiery and more scary situation where it really
00:41:40
is anti something genocidal on both sides by the way I think what we're describing here is a classic vicious
00:41:49
cycle where you start with there's conditions of occupation that breeds resistance that breeds
00:41:57
extremism extremism breeds fear on the part of Israelis because they get attacked and then that breeds harsher
00:42:04
security conditions the next level of occupation or blockade and then that the C yeah and so the the question is how
00:42:12
you break that cycle because the Israelis right now and I'm I'm sure netan would make this point if we open
00:42:18
things up if we gave you a Palestinian State what's to stop 30,000 Hamas Fighters if we opened up the walls
00:42:25
around Gaza what's to stop 30,000 Hamas fighters from Ming us in our homes and if you do a ground
00:42:34
Invasion are you inspiring more radicalization and so for every person you kill they've got Brothers they've
00:42:42
got sisters they've got parents they've got kids they've got aunts and uncles and they become the next generation of
00:42:49
extremists how does the cycle break I think is the frustrating part here and just
00:42:56
looking at the reaction in the US um we saw a lot of discussion over young students writing arguments
00:43:07
that Israel had brought this on themselves and were solely responsible for the Hamas attack um and this has led
00:43:13
to a massive outrage amongst donors to uh Ivy League schools like Penn and Harvard and obviously those have very
00:43:24
large endowments and and this is now I leading to many of them pulling out of commitments they've made um the Wexner
00:43:35
Foundation founded by Victoria Secrets billionaire said it's breaking off ties with
00:43:41
Harvard Edon ofur quit the Executive Board of Harvard's Kennedy School citadels Ken Griffin uh who's donated
00:43:48
more than half a billion dollars to Harvard plac a call week last week to the head of Harvard and asked the
00:43:53
university to come out in support of Israel and then more than a dozen Anonymous donors told the New York Times
00:43:59
they felt they had a right and an obligation to to weigh in here and before this all happened at Penn donors
00:44:05
had started pulling out because of a Palestinian rights Festival that happened two weeks before the events of
00:44:13
107 from September 22nd to 24th upan hosted the Palestine rights literature Festival the festival was buil as a
00:44:20
gathering to explore the richness and diversity of Palestinian culture but according to multiple sources in mostly
00:44:26
focused on Jews Israel and Zionism one speaker called for ethnic cleansing of Jews another said violence was a
00:44:33
necessity any thoughts chath we were talking last week about these woke madrasas and then I guess this is the
00:44:38
second order and third order effects coming into play if you said it more generically this would be a perfect
00:44:45
opportunity for these leading universities to actually provide nuance and teach people the history of both sides and to
00:44:54
show the perspective of both sides that would take leadership yeah it would take
00:45:01
courageous leadership on the part of the people who run the university let's just
00:45:05
be honest I think these Elite universities are essentially asset management businesses that have an education the
00:45:13
Fig Leaf of Education wrapped around them so they're more like Black Rock than they are like a school and so they
00:45:20
behave like any for-profit asset manager would which is that I think that as they
00:45:25
didn't try to intervene in one way or the other over the last 15 or 20 years in actually making sure that they
00:45:34
were graduating the best kids so instead what happened is they get hijacked by professors and people who wanted one
00:45:43
very specific strain of thinking and I don't think it matters which strain it is but it betrays what the point of a
00:45:49
leading University is supposed to be and then as a result the people that graduate from these places are
00:45:54
close-minded and what that does is that that screws America because you have all
00:45:59
of these other places graduating kids with a different mindset who then go and build the things that matter and America
00:46:06
just keeps falling back and we are just slower and we are not intellectually capable of thinking in a way that allows
00:46:14
us to see more than just what's right in front of us so I don't know what you want me to say it's it's just like these
00:46:20
no I'm just it's a followup to what we talked about last week and so I I thought was pertinent Sachs uh looking
00:46:28
at the Free Speech issue there was some push back online again not my position I'm just putting it out here for you to
00:46:35
comment on saxs which is blacklisting young college students who had an opinion about Palestine is wrong
00:46:44
and you're trying to cancel people what's your response to holding people accountable or cancelling these students
00:46:51
uh for their positions on the Israeli Palestinian conflict well what's happening now is that these campuses
00:46:59
that took outrageous positions on this whole issue are now trying to wrap themselves in the cloak of academic
00:47:06
freedom as if that's a value they've been respecting free speech is not a value they've been respecting free
00:47:11
speech is a value they've been imposing and this was uh revealed by a survey that was just done the fire survey that
00:47:20
surveyed students on 248 campuses on a range of free speech issues so it ask them about how comfortable do you feel
00:47:29
expressing your views on controversial topics what is the Tolerance on campus for Liberal speakers or conservative
00:47:37
speakers how acceptable is it to engage in disruptive conduct against a speaker on campus such as shouting them down to
00:47:44
prevent them from speaking what sort of administrative support do different views get on campus and how open is the
00:47:51
campus to hearing about different issues and what they found was that the most elite schools ranked the worst the only
00:48:00
elite private school to score above average on Free Speech was University of Chicago which got a score of about 65
00:48:07
out of 100 which made them rank number 13 overall the rest of the top schools the
00:48:14
IVs were abysmal Brown ranked number 69 Duke ranked 124 Princeton ranked 187 Stanford ranked 207 this is again out of
00:48:25
a total number of uh 248 and Penn which is where the donors are up and armed ranked second to last
00:48:35
number two uh 247 they scored uh 11 points on the survey and then Harvard finished 248 out of 248 schools ranked
00:48:44
also known as also known as dead last and get this the rating in the survey was 0.0 they scored a blue tarski
00:48:54
0.0 bluei in Animal House he scored 0.0 Harvard SC 0.0 Z yes so so look I think it would be it
00:49:08
would be one thing if these schools said to the alumni we agree with you that some of these speakers were over the
00:49:15
toop but this is what academic freedom is all about but they have no standing to say anything like that because they
00:49:22
have been suppressing views on campus speakers to be sh down they have been stifling the presentation of alternative
00:49:30
views so this is clearly these types of speakers these types of views that I think absolutely
00:49:36
cross the line from again what we talked about which is type two support for legitimate support for a Palestinian
00:49:42
State into hatred of Israel and Jews and denying the right to exist it absolutely
00:49:48
crossed over and many of these cases was a outrageous talk given by I think a Cornell professor who was was outright
00:49:56
praising this Massacre Oh God that was disturbing so look it ised Cas yes he was excited yeah so look I I think that
00:50:07
these alumni have a point in saying that you these Elite campuses have been clearly putting your thumb on the scale
00:50:15
in favor of certain views you've been suppressing certain views so this must be of you that you either share or
00:50:23
endorse or permit give that the rest of your speech regime is so restrictive and
00:50:28
oppressive so even though I would in a different circumstance support academic freedom I don't think these colleges
00:50:35
have a leg to stand on all right we're going to talk about some other topics today because that's what we do on the
00:50:41
all-in podcast and so tangentially related to the speech issues in the EU officials held a meeting to discuss
00:50:49
enforcement of the DSA or Digital Services act uh for some background here the eu's digital Serv Service Act
00:50:56
updated the eu's electronic Commerce directive of 2000 which was inspired by section 230 here in the US common
00:51:04
carrier laws uh where the common carriers be those AOL Yahoo Google Facebook are not responsible for what
00:51:12
individuals post on their platforms and so that protection's been critically important not making social media sites
00:51:19
or WordPress into editors or having them have to censor content on their platform so the
00:51:26
DSA officially went into effect in August of this year the main goal was to quote unquote Foster safer online
00:51:33
environments the DSA aims to do that via tighter rules around disinformation illegal content and
00:51:41
transparent advertising those last two not controversial that first one disinformation is obviously the one
00:51:47
that's going to be pretty uh challenging the DSA has been called a new constitution of the internet and an
00:51:53
effort to shape the future of the online online World some things the DSA covers it forces
00:52:01
vops a new term very large online platforms disclose how their algorithms work they must give users the right to
00:52:08
opt out of recommendation systems and profiling they must share key data with researchers and authorities they must
00:52:14
cooperate with crisis response requirements and they must perform external and internal audits they want
00:52:19
to force transparency on how content moderation decisions are made that seems logical they want to force transparency
00:52:27
uh on the ways advertising is targeted that also seems reasonable and then they want ways to
00:52:32
flag illegal content obviously obligations uh around uh protecting minors I don't think anybody will debate
00:52:40
those but it forces them to cooperate with specialized trusted flaggers to identify and remove this illegal content
00:52:46
I don't know who those people would be freeberg you had some thoughts my thoughts are that the era of the open
00:52:54
internet as a decentralized technology platform for the benefit of individuals and not to be overseen and
00:53:03
run by governments is over the Digital Services act I think is one of the most overreaching threats to any sort of open
00:53:15
transparent Democratic opportunity on the internet the idea of the open internet the idea
00:53:23
of creating a network of Compu that could share information and make services available to individuals around
00:53:30
the world freely uncensored and in an easy to access way was the reason that the internet has
00:53:39
transformed Society improved productivity and provided extraordinary benefits the Digital Services Act is an
00:53:48
example of a government seeing that a decentralized technology the internet itself is is meant to be a decentralized
00:53:56
technology there's no Central servers they are all part of a network of computers that anyone on the network can
00:54:02
access anything else on the network blockchain obviously is the more modern kind of exciting you know decentralized
00:54:09
technology concept that is meant to avoid the scrutiny the oversight and the control by Central governments or or
00:54:17
Central authorities of any sort and the language in the Digital Services act I think got squeezed
00:54:24
through in a way that most of the people that I'm guessing passed this Digital Services act don't fully comprehend the
00:54:30
implications of some of the decisions that they're making it can be easily framed as this is good for people you
00:54:36
cannot sell illegal content online you cannot sell illegal goods and services we're trying to safeguard young people
00:54:43
but the protection of minors means that you can no longer do personalized web experiences for anyone under 18 which
00:54:51
means you need to know the age of everyone and now your web experience if you're a kid is not going to be
00:54:55
personalized the overreach gets even worse when they say we can now go in and run
00:55:02
evaluations of the algorithms and allow open access to your data to thirdparty researchers to get into your systems and
00:55:11
look at how you guys are running the services that you're offering on the internet so not only are you no longer
00:55:15
allowed to have an open internet where people can provide whatever Services they want to provide but if you're on
00:55:20
the internet you now have to make your service and the inside part of your service available
00:55:25
foru by governments and so you have and researchers who are these researchers sounds like a stazzy type the way it's
00:55:32
written it gives this commission as the primary regulator effectively a lot of leeway in deciding who what where and
00:55:40
how they can go into companies go into individual servers individual computers I could run an individual company on my
00:55:48
computer at home and it gives this government the legal right in the EU to go into my computer and pull information
00:55:54
out of of my computer and scrutinize it and make decisions about what I'm doing and whether or not I'm compliant with
00:56:00
whatever the commission's enforcement standards are of that day I mean this is about as 1984 as you can get and it's a
00:56:07
real serious threat I don't think people are recognizing the second and third order effects of what this is going to
00:56:12
do over time to internet services to the quality of experience we get on the internet and to the role that government
00:56:19
is now going to play in policing scrutinizing and providing restricted access to content and service for each
00:56:25
individual that wants to use the internet but it's important to say if you're a European it'll just make Europe
00:56:30
even more of a place you go to vacation and never to live yeah right I mean it's
00:56:34
not this we're not talking about America right we're talking about Europe this is
00:56:37
all the changes that are going to happen inside of Google which is going to affect more than just the EU users
00:56:43
because of the requests and the demands of the EU and so you know the the services that you are going to get
00:56:49
around the world are going to be affected by this EU compliance regime and it's going to be dynamic it's a
00:56:53
commission basically a bunch of individuals that get to decide who what where and how that's right and that's
00:56:59
going to that's going to create a really scary scary situation where a bunch of people who are going to have their own
00:57:07
motivations their own political leanings their own objectives they're going to be
00:57:12
able to leverage their particular role in applying their particular biases to internet services we saw Canada do
00:57:20
something similar and Facebook's reaction and Facebook's reaction was we're not going to Syndicate links so I
00:57:27
don't know I I would go back to another argument you make a lot which is which I
00:57:31
agree with which is the free market will act rationally here and if Google deprecates a bunch of features and or
00:57:38
completely pulls out of Europe that'll be the death Nowell for these kinds of decisions because then other governments
00:57:45
and other people will see the cost of trying to get this kind of control I think the bigger issue in A Moment Like
00:57:51
This is Europe has such a checkered passed on these things which is that they somehow try to find this moral High
00:58:01
ground and there is just this overreach and this quasi Central planning that just never works and so if
00:58:09
this is another example of it I would encourage all for-profit companies to make the practical decision oh can you
00:58:16
imagine Google's decision making here they've got thousands of employees in Europe they make billions of dollars in
00:58:22
Revenue in the market it's such a difficult situation to be in not if what you're saying is true not if what you're
00:58:27
saying is this is the threat of the internet I think it'll be very easy for Larry and Sergey to say cut it move on
00:58:33
no I I Europe is too big a market for Google or any other major tech company to exit there's just no way what they're
00:58:39
going to do is comply there won't be a market well hold on a second what this new DSA rule does is apply penalties to
00:58:45
social networks for not censoring what they call legal speech which is whatever speech they say it is so freeberg is
00:58:53
right there's going to be some sort of committee Brussels that basically sends out takedown requests now to all these
00:58:58
social networks yeah it's the DSA commission yeah the DSA commission so yeah Europe again is just too big an
00:59:04
area not to serve and then what could happen is that because it's easier for companies just to have one approach
00:59:10
where they can there is a risk that these same policies get applied in the US that is what happened with privacy
00:59:16
remember Europe went first with gdpr and then a lot of those regulations came to
00:59:21
America now the First Amendment May stand in the way here but there is some risk that tech companies
00:59:28
of their own accord decide that it's cheaper and easier to comply with the European regime everywhere than trying
00:59:34
to parse their service in different markets I'm just saying that's a risk but look let me frame it in a different
00:59:38
way in an economic argument okay so Europe is about 25 cents of every dollar of Revenue that Google generates
00:59:46
okay so if you think about that that's call it 60 odd billion dollar a year plus or minus okay so the the question
00:59:55
is at what point is the cost of trying to get 60 billion so great that you say it's not worth the 60 billion and my
01:00:05
point is that there there is an economic rational argument here for it if it costs for
01:00:12
example 10 or 20 billion dollars to implement this stuff that's probably the efficient Frontier where when you factor
01:00:19
in multiple compression and you factor in Behavior change in Europe which may actually degrade the 60 billion to 50 or
01:00:25
40 where you just throw your hands up and say it's just not economically worth it you've seen these actors make this
01:00:31
trade-off in Canada it's not totally unreasonable that they run a model to figure out the cost maybe they just take
01:00:37
the perspective that whenever this DSA commission sends us a takedown request we're just going to do it instantly why
01:00:43
wouldn't that just become the norm in fact I'm pretty sure that's what they'll do the management of most these
01:00:48
companies really at all of them except for Elon they don't really care they they have the same biases yeah they're
01:00:56
they don't care about free spe really they're not Founders they don't care about that Free Speech moreover they
01:01:00
have a lot of the same political biases that these I'm not supporting the DSA all I'm saying is I think that economic
01:01:06
rational actors will do the right thing here I think the most likely outcome is that tech companies will be craving and
01:01:12
they'll fold and they'll just do whatever these EU Commissioners want which then could be an opportunity for
01:01:17
you know distributed blockchain you know yeah I me it's hard to scale them but I the devil's in the details yeah or and
01:01:27
you guys feel this every day like Jason you know you're right now in the UAE you
01:01:32
can communicate in certain ways through WhatsApp you can't communicate in other ways through iMessage there are just
01:01:37
rules of usability on products and they exist all around the world if you go to India there's certain apps that are
01:01:43
blocked and certain apps that are not and so maybe that's just what happens where there is just a gradient of user
01:01:49
experiences around the world for people and we all deal with it yeah and we don't know exactly how heavy-handed
01:01:55
they're going to be here this is by definition heavy-handed I I don't agree with it but hold on we don't know what
01:02:03
this is the problem with how they've done this this is all being done in a Star Chamber we don't have any insight
01:02:08
into what kind of content they want to take down if it's obviously abusive content fine but if it's you know coid
01:02:15
information or misinformation obviously there's going to be a problem uh that we
01:02:19
saw here in the United States just so people know resp yeah okay look them way too much credit J Cal I'm not giving
01:02:27
them any credit I I do not want to see this happen I'm not giving them any credit I'm just saying we will see how
01:02:32
heavy-handed they'll be you're assuming they're going to be super heavy-handed we'll see and we'll see what their what
01:02:38
their own citizens respond I think the fact that a room full of Commissioners in the U can send takedown requests to
01:02:44
social media companies is by definition heavy-handed let me back up what the Twitter file showed okay is that we had
01:02:51
80 FBI agents being the conduit it for takeown requests to Twitter and presumably other social networks well no
01:02:58
no but that was all on the DL on the DL exactly that was notw and yes moreover when they did that in their takedown
01:03:06
requests they would always point to well this tweet violates your terms of service okay what the EU is doing is
01:03:13
different they're actually defining the terms of service they're saying that your terms of service need to do X Y and
01:03:19
Z they're doing it explicitly this is not on the DL they're exp they're to what we say it and when we you to
01:03:27
take something down you're going do it they Haven defined what that is that's I think the issue is where where is the
01:03:34
actual definition of what's going to happen here and that's why it's hard for us to have a discussion about this is
01:03:38
because we don't know what they're talking about with this content that's whatever they say in the future is
01:03:44
disinformation needs to be taken down that's the framework the fine is going to be up to 6% of global revenue for
01:03:51
companies that do not comply so the EU has also figured out that speeding tickets don't work and they're looking
01:03:59
to give pretty heavy penalties so we'll see uh this is uh um a moving Target here we don't have complete
01:04:07
information but yeah it's not a moving Target we do have complete information this is a censorship regime Jason we
01:04:14
just don't know what their term for illegal or problematic content this year and again I don't want I don't want to
01:04:21
be pitted as your adversary here I I am not in of this so we're clear but and I don't think there should be a Star
01:04:28
Chamber where people get to pick what goes up and what goes down there I think the private companies can do a good
01:04:33
enough job there and there should be freedom of speech and yeah you're going to see some things you don't like yeah
01:04:37
grow up turn change the T if you don't like it it basically as they say sets a horizontal rule covering all services
01:04:46
and all types of illegal content and disinformation illegal content could be fun right freeberg like illegal content
01:04:53
putting boxing somebody child pornography illegal content I think we would all be okay with it's the
01:04:58
disinformation part right I'm not trying to be okay or not okay I'm just saying that like you're basically saying that
01:05:03
whatever the rules are that they come up with that may be different than somewhere else on the internet they get
01:05:08
to then regulate other businesses on the internet I think the internet should be
01:05:12
open well and there are I don't want to have a commission approve what I write in my blog post I don't want the
01:05:18
commission telling me that what I put on Twitter or put on my website is up to them to decide whether or not it's okay
01:05:25
to put up because they think it's illegal because it has what they deem to be misinformation right ex already laws
01:05:32
that exist so disinformation illegal content two different things but those laws provide some authority to a
01:05:38
commissioner I mean that's the problem right it's it's right look the problem is in the vagueness of this the the law
01:05:44
says that social media companies have to take down illegal content but it doesn't
01:05:47
say what a legal content is it delegates the power to Define it to this group of
01:05:52
eurocrats led by Theory Bretton and they're meeting this week to hammer it out so yeah look in practice legal
01:06:00
content is going to be whatever they say it is that is explicit censorship okay let's move on to our final topic second
01:06:08
largest hype cycle of 2023 perhaps GOP 1es uh chamath you uh brought this up in our group chat so maybe you could Tee It
01:06:16
Up well I was just interested in understanding everything that's been happening around GP
01:06:25
mostly because it just seems like people think it's a Panacea we have a lot of our friends
01:06:31
Jason you were the one that said this in our poker group like four of the 12 or 13 regulars are on it is that right I
01:06:40
think it was four of like yeah four of 12 people were on it yeah it was a third yeah and then and then I got this really
01:06:47
interesting chart Nick you may want to put this up it basically showed how the glp
01:06:54
One Market was tracking very similar to the AI market in terms of the hype which is
01:07:02
if you separated companies as a basket of people who were positively affected by gp1s like Lily
01:07:10
and Novo Nordisk and you had a basket of companies that were disrupted by gp1s those would be like Dexcom or Dita or
01:07:21
folks like that it eerily mimics the same hype cycle around AI which is there's those businesses that seem to be
01:07:27
feeding the hype train around Ai and then all of these companies that theoretically will be disrupted and it
01:07:33
just brought up to me that there's this incredible market movement here where I think people think that these gp1s
01:07:41
are a solution to everything and I thought it was just an important thing to discuss because
01:07:46
scientifically the mechanism of action is still a little questionable and murky on top of that I think we don't know
01:07:52
physiologically what the real long-term ramifications of taking these things are
01:07:56
there's still a lot of mixed evidence around the total amount of weight loss you can lose the percentage of muscle
01:08:02
versus fat that you lose and so yeah I just thought it was important for us to talk about it and see what this would be
01:08:08
a a a baset spread trade here are the companies that win here are the companies that loses and look at that
01:08:14
gap between the two and it's exactly mimics people who would benefit from Ai and people would lose from AI yeah the
01:08:21
gp1 hype the summary is the gp1 hype is as overextended as the AI hype cycle so we should probably separate the weed
01:08:32
from the chaff and start by understanding what gp1s are because I'm sure there's a lot of people in our
01:08:37
listening Community who are on this stuff they should really probably understand well if that's where you
01:08:42
think we should go next we should then throw it to the sultant of science himself David freeberg explained to us
01:08:51
uh while we prepare our Uranus jokes GP ones these drugs have been around for a while they're small peptides little
01:09:00
proteins that bind to this glp receptor in your gut that causes insulin to be released from your pancreas and triggers
01:09:11
a couple of other hormones that reduce your hunger and appetite so basically gets you to eat less and your brain and
01:09:19
your brain and it's effectively a way to make you feel not hungry and you you're
01:09:23
you can run a calorie deficit and when you run a calorie deficit your body starts starving
01:09:28
and starts burning other parts of your body besides the the glucose it can get out of the stomach where you would
01:09:35
otherwise have food and ends up in your blood and it starts uh generating energy
01:09:40
from your stored body fat and your stored and your muscle mass so these have been around for a while Novo
01:09:46
Nordisk is the a developer of two of the the main drugs and here's a a chart of Nova
01:09:54
Nordisk stock price you can see that in the Last 5 Years their stock has 5x they've
01:10:00
basically gone from you know call it a $60 billion company to a $350 billion company in five years uh largely on the
01:10:09
the back of the promise of this drug so these drugs have been around for a while
01:10:12
and there's actually one that's been on the market for a long time but it only causes 5% body mass loss so 5% weight
01:10:18
loss so people are like oh it's not that great it didn't really get widely adopted then this new class they added a
01:10:22
little side chain they added another little molecule to the peptide and as a result it didn't get degraded as fast
01:10:28
and it was far more bioactive in the body and caused a much greater benefit and so suddenly people on these drugs
01:10:33
started to see massive weight loss massive Improvement diabetes and metabolic Health all moves together so
01:10:38
as you burn body fat if you have less glucose in your blood your your your metabolic condition improves the problem
01:10:44
is when you're starving normally if you were to just stop eating you would typically see that your
01:10:50
body starts burning first of all the glucose and then it burns off the the glycogen in your muscles which is the
01:10:55
next energy store once that's gone your body starts burning fat and as it's burning more fat It also says hey I need
01:11:02
to get these other molecules which I'm not getting just from the fat I need muscle and your body actually starts
01:11:07
burning muscle and that's how your brain gets energy that it needs when you're starving is actually primarily from the
01:11:12
degradation of of muscle tissue H so normally if you're just starving yourself you'll see a ratio of
01:11:20
weight loss where it's about 20% coming from lean muscle mass in some of the studies that have
01:11:26
been done on these gp1 agonists we're seeing up to 40% of the weight loss coming from lean muscle mass uh being
01:11:34
burnt off so Jason I don't know if you've done a dexa scan because I think you you've said publicly that you've
01:11:39
tried it right I mean you should check you should check out what your lean muscle mass is versus um your fat
01:11:45
composition in your body I don't know if you have it from before but I have yeah
01:11:50
yeah and this has been one of the concerns obviously if you're not working out and you're not you know doing what
01:11:54
you need to to eat protein and build muscle you're going to be burning through a lot of that muscle mass and so
01:11:59
that's problem number one that's Arisen that that people are concerned about the
01:12:03
other one that's that's really I don't know if it's concerning or not but when people go off these drugs they gain the
01:12:10
weight back in a very quick way and there's two reasons for this one is if you haven't actually changed your
01:12:15
behavior you haven't changed your exercise patterns and and you suddenly have the
01:12:19
appetite suppressing drug taken out of your system you start eating more food again
01:12:24
and when you've been in a state of starvation your metab your your metabolism your Baseline metabolism goes
01:12:30
down so instead of burning on average 2,000 calories a day your body's only burning at 1,200 calories a day so
01:12:36
suddenly if you go back to eating 2,000 calories a day because you're not you're
01:12:40
you know you no longer have the appetite suppressor have you're going to reinl and so so your metabolism goes
01:12:46
down the appetite suppressant goes away and you gain all the weight back if you haven't changed your behavior otherwise
01:12:52
and so I don't know if guys saw this clip I sent out of Arnold Schwarz and AER talking with Howard Stern but he was
01:12:57
talking about how like I can't do a Howard accent Jal you could probably do it really well but you know yeah one
01:13:02
thing you what do you think of the OIC but you know how the OIC is you know Americans used to be very interested in
01:13:10
working hard and I don't know why that's so bad but you get up at 5:00 a.m. and you work hard and you do it and you make
01:13:16
yourself strong right that's what it's about you don't need to do a little baby girl or Z Peck in your side oh look I'm
01:13:22
going to eat less food thank you wait did you listen to the clip is that is that what he said that's
01:13:28
what he said exactly what he said that's exactly what he Saida man make this epic uh hard work that's why I say in in
01:13:42
my book you know work work your ass off and because it's there's no shortcut what built this country is it people
01:13:49
that SLE in is it people that were wh out I want to I want to be comfortable no this were ballsy women and men that
01:14:00
went out there at 5: in the morning and got up and they struggled and they fought and they worked their butts off
01:14:07
that's what made this country great yeah he he he actually he said that in response to I think Howard st's
01:14:13
questions about OIC the problem like like we're basically creating a new multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical drug
01:14:22
system that people are going to have to stay on in order to stay healthy do we know what the long-term effects of
01:14:27
taking semaglutide are and can be and will be I mean these drugs have been around for quite a long time so you know
01:14:36
the there are various side effects but in terms of like are we debilitating our health over the long
01:14:42
run you know it seems to be a reasonably safe drug and it seems to be a drug that
01:14:47
that folks are are kind of recognizing as being well worth the cost and whatever the risks may be well what are
01:14:53
the the implications you lose 40% well it's about 16% of your weight loss you typically lose right I mean yeah they'll
01:15:02
say up to 20% if you lose weight you'll usually see up to 20% of lean muscle mass of of the of the weight you lost
01:15:08
coming from lean muscle mass loss and you know 80% or 85% as you say coming from from body fat loss but with
01:15:16
the OIC drugs they're seeing as high as 40% coming from lean muscle mass which is obviously concerning I just made an
01:15:21
adjustment I everybody knows I lost like 40 lbs or so or if you've talked to me for more than 5 minutes you know I have
01:15:27
uh cuz I'll tell you and the first 20 was just fasting and doing keto and then when this drug came out I tried it I
01:15:33
tried OIC and then I did wovi and I lost next i'mna give you I didn't gain it back I I I gain back about four or five
01:15:40
pounds and I also increased protein in the morning and I do a lot of walking okay so so let me give you this math and
01:15:46
tell me if it maps to what you have felt or not so if 250 lb let's just say you lose 16% of your body body weight that's
01:15:53
40 lb okay so you get to 190 oh sorry to 210 and of that you lose 16 pounds of muscle is that what you saw or did you
01:16:03
see something less than that no much less muscle cuz I use weights and I do a lot of walking and I eat a ton of
01:16:10
protein you're doing the exercise you're doing the exercise I'm not doing hardcore exercise so but you have to do
01:16:15
exercise you have you have exercise and the challenge jcal is that the vast majority of people that go on the drugs
01:16:21
by the way I'm not saying the drugs shouldn't be adopted I think that there's extraordinary benefit health
01:16:25
benefit to the majority of people that are on these drugs but the downside is that if you're not exercising you are
01:16:31
going to lose muscle mass and then obviously there is the fact that you're now hooked on this thing if you're not
01:16:36
going to figure out ways to change Behavior I cycled off of it two or three times and had very minor weight gain
01:16:43
back three four five pounds but I deliberately changed my relationship with food portion size and I work out
01:16:49
now and what I found was as I lost weight my my interest and the joy I got out of working out dramatically
01:16:56
increased so running walking skiing everything got easier and I just got more into it so I like working out again
01:17:04
now that I'm 40 hot pounds 42 pounds off my Peak weight so I I I think it's an amazing wonder drve you sum points on
01:17:13
this like a take on this like you think that these things are overhyped right now and we're just in the middle of a
01:17:17
hype cycle or what's your key takeaway my key takeaway is that for many people from a health perspective I think that
01:17:22
it it could be a really great solution I think that these triple agonists that are coming out are going
01:17:31
to be probably even more effective than these double agonists that that we have right now
01:17:36
yeah I don't understand the triple monjaro is the triple Agonist yeah people who T monjaro told me it is
01:17:45
unbelievable how not hungry you are yeah it's super fast too super fast I I just
01:17:51
want to see you know like for example when you know when you get older in your 60s and 70s one of the biggest risks you
01:17:58
take on and in your 80s is actually like you know muscular skeletal and falls and
01:18:03
things like that and one of the best preventative measures for that is muscle mass and so you get into this weird
01:18:08
Catch 22 of you replace one issue with another so longitudinally if you use it for a long time I'm concerned about that
01:18:14
I do think that these gp1s if when we look back on it will probably be like Statin and in as much as when stattin
01:18:22
first came on the Market it was a wonder drug right and you know we were all teetering towards
01:18:29
you know heart disease and heart attacks and all of this stuff and then once people got on these statins I think
01:18:34
there was a very meaningful impact to the percentage of people that that suffered heart disease and cardiac
01:18:38
issues but heart disease still continues to grow and you would say to yourself well how is this possible because Statin
01:18:44
are effectively free they're generic they're widely available um and today right now because of the lack of Supply
01:18:52
the emergency have da order around these semaglutide allows you to make generics
01:18:57
right now right so the cost of those are not really a th000 bucks a month but can
01:19:01
be as cheap as a few hundred so you're getting this widespread adoption and usage I think the open question for me
01:19:09
is if human history is a guide we're going to replace this issue with a different kind of
01:19:15
issue because unfortunately you know maybe people take it and then they physiologically adapt and then they just
01:19:21
continue to eat the same or more because they think wow this is a get out of jail
01:19:24
free card for me and maybe they overpower that sa that that that gp1 is supposed to give you I don't know I find
01:19:33
it from a sort of public societal Health perspective really interesting from an economic Market perspective I think that
01:19:42
these things are priced to Perfection it's kind of like Nvidia which is like right
01:19:48
people everything people are assuming everything is going to work it's a tough point in the cycle to be a buyer I think
01:19:54
as as an economic actor but as if you're making a trade that seems like a hard trade to make and just to give even some
01:20:01
more color to it noo Nordisk announced that it was halting its OA kidney disease trial early well Nick show this
01:20:09
because it was so conclusive yeah I mean if that sparked a $3.6 billion selloff in shares of dialysis providers I mean
01:20:18
remember over 40% of Americans are clinically obese it's a sorry almost % now it's an extraordinary Health
01:20:24
epidemic in the United States and you know if this drug can have this sort of an effect it can reduce cost across the
01:20:29
healthare system so you know there is still a I mean chim's point I don't right number this affects cardiovascular
01:20:36
disease diabetes kidney disease liver disease do does an average 16% weight loss reduction actually get people from
01:20:47
obesity to un obesity or are they still are they still obese the obes trial seemed to I mean remember you have to
01:20:55
get FDA approval for a particular so this is this is what Jason was mentioning so this is this is a basket
01:21:00
that Morgan Stanley created which was essentially starting at the beginning of the year when the hype was really
01:21:07
starting to get out of control Morgan Stanley created a basket of the glp1 winners and a basket of the G gp1
01:21:14
potentially disrupted Healthcare stocks so you could trade them off against each
01:21:18
other and this just shows how it's performed which is just a blockbuster trade in the last 10 months so if you if
01:21:24
you went long the glp1 winners and short these potenti potentially disrupted it's
01:21:30
I mean I've never seen a spread trade payoff like this in such a short period of time 80 80% a year in less
01:21:35
unbelievable the nature of creating would you take the other side of this trade right now or like how do you I
01:21:40
would I would re and the reason is because of two two two practical factors one is that when when a when a market
01:21:50
gets this exaggerated what your price ing in is essentially like a Panacea solution that and those tend to not
01:21:56
really be realistic and again I would point to statens as a good example of that and so there's a part of it which
01:22:02
is just like these trades are so overextended that you can probably pretty be pretty safe on the other side
01:22:08
and then the second part is that I don't think we really understand yet the other half of the coin which is
01:22:15
you know for every one of us that's generally positively inclined around gp1s who isn't getting enough attention
01:22:23
right now are the doctors who spending a lot of time researching researching this
01:22:27
stuff who may actually have a perspective on the other side you know probably the most prominent one like Bob
01:22:33
lusting so you have to give that a little bit of time for it to play out because nobody wants to hear the bease
01:22:40
on gp1s as a drug that people take so I I would just say that it's it's probably again when you see an
01:22:49
economic trade like this it's it's it's probably okay to be on the other side of
01:22:53
it and then just from a public health perspective you know take a weight and see but for a lot of people who are
01:22:59
clinically obese it doesn't seem like the math is such that if you're at a BMI of 30 reducing your weight 16% I think
01:23:07
gets you to like a 26 it doesn't get you under the I think it's meaningful I think it's meaningful no no no I'm not
01:23:12
saying it's not meaningful I'm saying it does it it you're still obese yeah I think the the key thing and I don't want
01:23:18
to give medical advice but I think you need to do this holistically so you got to keep your diet and you got to keep
01:23:23
working out in mind when you do it that should be fairly obvious and those are always good things to do is you plan to
01:23:28
take it your whole life in spts jcal or how do you how do you view it no I'm five pounds from my lowest weight as an
01:23:34
adult and my the weight I used to be when I ran marathons and so my plan is to come off of it like by the end of
01:23:40
this year and then and I had taken like six months off twice doing this so I did
01:23:46
it like in Little intentional Sprints Sprints yeah just to to get where I wanted to be and this last five
01:23:54
uh this last five pound what is your do you have a sense of if your behavior changes when you're on and you're off
01:24:04
like do you do you I I do feel more hungry but then I remember how bad I felt when I was overweight and
01:24:13
then I just weigh myself every day and if I see myself get above a certain number I consider that like a red alert
01:24:19
and I just you know either start fasting working out or just eating super healthy
01:24:23
so it's just the discipline of weighing myself every day that I've gotten into and just understanding hey you know
01:24:30
if I make two or three bad decisions you're not going to make two or three bad decisions when you're on these drugs
01:24:35
in my experience because you feel so bloated and so painful when you overeat that you don't want to do it so it's
01:24:40
really it's really like it hurts you feel distended and you know there are reports and it did happen to me twice
01:24:46
over two or three years of doing this that if you take it and you eat too much you you could get sick and actually
01:24:51
vomit so it some people just don't have the stomach for it I think a lot of people
01:24:56
just tap out it it makes their stomachs feel too distended or uh gnarly and that
01:25:01
and that's why the dosage actually really matters they have dosages that are like a very wide range maybe 10x uh
01:25:08
and so the dosage getting that right working with your doctor is key but yeah I'm just I'm excited to get
01:25:13
off of because I want to really start sincerely weightlifting so I'm getting a a personal trainer to do like
01:25:18
weightlifting twice a week and get really into that next because you can't do hardcore intense working out with us
01:25:25
because you're you know just lower calor but I think it's a miracle drug um and I'm I'm excited about it the one
01:25:31
question I had for you on the spread trade uh before we end Jam does the nature of making those indexes and
01:25:37
giving people the ability to put the trade on exacerbate the trade because then I saw everybody was tweeting about
01:25:43
this you know over the last week does the nature of an index being made impact the the the the action stocks you know
01:25:51
Morgan is particularly good at these basket creations and they tend to make it for their biggest hedge fund clients
01:25:57
and their richest families so it tends to be pretty isolated they they they give an edge to a few folks that so
01:26:04
these things are not broadly published and so I I doubt it in the end but so they come up with this idea how
01:26:11
many in how many names are in each index it all just depends like and and they're
01:26:15
very smart about you know being able to create these on the Fly based on what themes they're seeing and then like I
01:26:21
said they share them with their best hedge fund clients and their and their and their biggest families they don't
01:26:26
they don't trade you know they don't share them with us I I I got it Jason one that I told you like at the end of
01:26:31
all of that at the end of that graph after everybody put the trade on and got the win they're like let's get
01:26:36
Shan but uh so they they didn't actually share it with me in January I wish they
01:26:41
did all right listen we got to wrap up great show boys uh and we're praying for peace and the return of the hostages for
01:26:48
the sulan of science the dictator and the Rainman yeah David a I am the world's greatest mon we'll see you at
01:26:55
episode 151 enjoy the 150 fan meetups this weekend anybody who's going to Love You by
01:27:02
love let your winners ride and instead we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy
01:27:13
with it love queen [Music] of besties are that's my dog taking driveways oh man myit meet me we should
01:27:34
all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy cuz they're all this useless it's like this like sexual
01:27:38
tension but they just need to release [Music] Som we need to get merch our I'm going all
01:27:58
[Music] in