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E46: False Ivermectin narratives, regulatory grift, wartime mentality in solving issues & more

September 14, 2021 / 01:12:59

This episode of the All-In Podcast covers the ivermectin controversy, media bias, vaccine mandates, and the role of government in innovation. Guests include David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and Friedberg.

The discussion begins with the ivermectin story, where Rolling Stone published a misleading article about overdoses in Oklahoma. David Sacks critiques the media's failure to verify sources, highlighting the dangers of misinformation and the double standards in how it is treated across political lines.

The conversation shifts to vaccine mandates, with the guests debating the implications of requiring vaccinations for employees in various sectors. They discuss the balance between public health and individual rights, as well as the potential economic consequences of such mandates.

Later, the group reflects on the role of entrepreneurship in addressing societal issues, emphasizing the need for innovative solutions rather than relying solely on government intervention. They argue that a strong entrepreneurial spirit can drive progress, even in the face of bureaucratic challenges.

Finally, the episode concludes with a discussion on the future of decentralized finance and the potential impact of government regulations on innovation, stressing the importance of maintaining a balance between oversight and freedom in the tech industry.

TL;DR

The episode discusses ivermectin misinformation, vaccine mandates, and the need for innovation over government intervention.

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j cal looks like he's going to a night

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at the roxbury absolutely

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he looks like joey

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i'm a joke

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i mean you look horrible thank you thank

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you really [ __ ]

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here we go

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[Music]

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thanks for coming this is the production

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board symposium

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2021 tell us just a little bit about

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why we're here david and what this is

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and what it represents for the

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production board the production board

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symposium second ever thank you all for

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being here we're excited we have uh

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[Applause]

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an amazing group of um science uh

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scientists engineers folks from

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academia from business from the

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investing community some of our

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investors so we're excited to share

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thoughts and ideas over the next couple

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days um

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and thought we would uh chase half of

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you away by hosting the all-in pod

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tonight so um here we go

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great uh okay so first up in the news

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rolling stone uh amplifies false

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ivormectin story you were following this

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chabot what do you think

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this uh ivormectin controversy and you

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want a little give a little summary of

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what the issue is before we

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talk about the hypocrisy of it well on

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september 1st oklahoma news station k4

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ran a story and published an article on

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ivermectin overdoses

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backing up rural hospitals the article

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was titled patients

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overdosing on ivermectin backing up

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rural oklahoma hospital

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hospitals and ambulances uh first line

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of the article quote a rural oklahoma

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doctor said patients who are taking the

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home dewormer medication ivermectin to

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fight covenant 19. causing emergency

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rooms and ambulances to

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back up on september 3rd rolling stone

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amplified the story in its own article

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the only problem was they treated they

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tweeted it with a picture

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that featured people

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lined up in the cold it turns out the

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picture was people waiting for vaccine

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shots back in january not

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gunshot victims waiting to get into the

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hospital

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yeah the story is totally false you

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understand that right well i didn't want

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to say fake news but i know beyonce it

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was it was beyond fake news this was

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basically a doctored up conjured article

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by some person trying to incite a moral

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mania

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at rolling stone look there you tell me

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if the the science of this is wrong the

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whole the whole premise is ridiculous

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so ivermectin basically as far as we

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know because we don't know that much

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acts on a handful of

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uh specific characteristics one we know

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to be glutamate which we don't really

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express in the same way as like [ __ ]

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worms

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and so yes technically it can be used as

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a dewormer but there are four or five

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other ways in which it acts which we

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don't know anything about because we

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haven't taken the time to do a

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broad-based double-blind study so i

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think the fairest thing to say about

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iverbecten is we don't know what it is

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and so neither the people that propose

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to use it as a solution for for covid

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nor the people that rail against it

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aren't really starting from the basis of

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fact but then what happens is you have

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these folks who basically are so turned

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off by the idea

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that you know people aren't getting

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vaccines they're going to use this other

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thing they basically doctored up an

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article that wouldn't be so bad because

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nobody reads rolling stone

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right it's kind of a it's like it's kind

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of it's an ancient brand nobody's going

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there for medical people

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but then the problem is you get a

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handful of these folks who think they're

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really really smart who amplify it

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rachel maddow amplifies it jimmy kimmel

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does it on a comedy skit and then all of

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a sudden there's this enormous outrage

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but the problem is you can't put the

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genie back in the bottle when it turns

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out to be a completely fabricated lie

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and then

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all the people that are purporting to

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basically push this lie who now have

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been outed

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have no consequences because they're on

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the left screaming at the right and what

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happened when it was the other way

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around we basically started to put

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people in boxes we basically kicked them

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off these platforms and again so you

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have this

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compounding building double standard

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that to me is the whole the worst part

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about it

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david when we look at uh

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the ivermectin story we also saw joe

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rogan got coveted that was a big haha

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moment for a lot of people um and he

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took ivermectin as part of his treatment

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and then people started amplifying that

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he was taking a worm

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uh drug

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around this pandemic yeah i mean look

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this is really a media story you had

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rolling stone publish this article based

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on a single source you have this one

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crank basically saying that emergency

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rooms are turning away gunshot victims

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and people having heart attacks okay and

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all they had to do all rolling stone had

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to do was call up any one of these

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several hospitals they immediately would

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have refuted the source but they didn't

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do that they also could have simply

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googled the number of toxic ivermectin

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cases to find out if it was even

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plausible statistically

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that you could have ivermectin overdoses

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flooding oklahoma hospitals but they

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didn't do that either why

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didn't they confirm the sources because

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the article was too perfect it confirmed

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all of their priors their first prior

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was about ivermectin they've been waging

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this war on ivermectin claiming it's a

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horse dewormer when it's actually that

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is one of its purposes but it's not the

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only one it was a it was a drug designed

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for humans is used against parasites now

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as jamasa we don't know

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whether it's effective against covid

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they got to do the double blind studies

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then we'll find out but that was sort of

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their first prior and let's face it the

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second prior was that this is in

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oklahoma right and so rolling stone

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wants to believe you have all these maga

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idiots out in oklahoma eating horse

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paste okay

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and that's why they love this story so

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much and that's why rachel maddow loved

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the story so much and she then starts

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spreading it okay and after she gets

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called out including by say glenn

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greenwald as of last night she had not

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taken it down now why because she knows

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there are no consequences for

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misinformation and lying why because

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twitter and facebook do not punish

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people on the left for misinformation

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that is some penalty they only meter out

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for people who disagree with their

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cultural and political biases

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that gets the get out of jail free card

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i don't i don't even think it's secret i

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just think these people all are part of

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the same cultural sort of mule you they

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all have the same political and cultural

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biases and there is never look where is

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the twitter warning the twitter label on

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the rachel maddow post even now saying

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that this tweet this article is

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misinformation

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uh it doesn't exist because it's

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inconvenient

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let's talk about the science of i think

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i would pay for 40 dollars for all in

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podcast live

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it's dynamic it's like it works yeah by

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the way you're on the show so okay i'm

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here too

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um

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tell me the last time we heard

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a news story that didn't have bias to it

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what was the last general thing that was

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reported

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that we didn't feel had the angle that

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then elicited emotion either love or

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hate or alignment or not um

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have that reaction to the facts the only

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reason you are in the wall street

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journal just now about like the the

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democrats proposal on taxes i have an

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emotional reaction to it but it's

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fact-based i've got a hundred is it

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really was it

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my reaction or no the story

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yeah they just said that they the the

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house proposal now is to move the

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cap gains rate to from 20 to 25 the

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corporate tax rate from whatever it was

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to 26 and a half but it's my point is

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there are articles written by folks who

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just want to get the facts across and

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let you judge whether it's good or bad

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who knows time will tell then there are

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folks that basically manufacture [ __ ]

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because again i think and i think is

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matt taibbi that said this because it

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creates moral mania

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drives the narrative drives the emotion

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but it's the last grasp of the power of

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journalism that's all they have left at

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this point is just to basically make it

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a complete [ __ ] free-for-all and in

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it they still have some kind of

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relevancy i have these old new york

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times uh newspapers like the whole year

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printed from like 1936 through 1944 it's

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cool thinking this huge book

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and i'll you know we'll but you must

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have been out all the time but you

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didn't have time to read those yeah i

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mean but you flip through these things

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they're like

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they are they are just like old like

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ticker stories you know it had

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absolutely no like narrative attached to

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it there was no like these are the

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people almost the implicit right and

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wrong right the implicit morality of

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every decision that's being made of

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everything that's being reported on i

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have a feeling the only thing that's

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going to be left in like 10 years is the

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economist and then like the mob rule in

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the metaverse and that's kind of

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incredible i mean you also have podcasts

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where people can discuss these things

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and maybe a more

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um honest traits

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there's a few great podcasts like that

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mr and mr anti-facebook what do you

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think about this wall street journal

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article that says that there's a secret

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cabal that basically gets to get out of

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jail free card on facebook and nobody

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else does

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millions of people though it said right

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yeah that's a lot

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you work there it's exactly the point

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i've been making right which is that

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there's two sets of rules if you are

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part of the in crowd if you share the

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cultural biases if you're part of the

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same class whether it's you know

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socio-economic or political or whatever

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that of the people who are doing the

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content moderation doing the censorship

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you get

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get out jail free card the rules are

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different for you you can be rachel

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maddow and post an article that's

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complete [ __ ] and even after the

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entire twitter sphere calls you out you

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don't post a correction but you don't

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get labeled you don't get censored but

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if you're on a different part of the

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political spectrum you do

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i mean there's two sets of rules

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yeah i mean i think i think it's insane

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i mean this is exactly what i think

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people have been saying for

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a long time when people say oh you know

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it's algorithmic it's not really human

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controlled there's there's no real

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intervention and then you find out

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there's actually literally something

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called cross check which its definition

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is check the hue you know check the

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algorithm and override it with my own

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bias that's the that's the definition of

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what the feature is well i mean in

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whenever we start down this censorship

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route like who gets to decide and then

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what is their motivation and even if

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they have pure motivation there's no way

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to

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you know not but assume the platforms

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die assume everything de-platforms and

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decentralizes and then like all media is

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through substance or through

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the colon app or through other kind of

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media well decentralized uh crypto based

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exactly so

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there's no longer a platform there's no

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longer a sensor model what's gonna end

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up happening people are gonna click on

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the stuff that they want to hear

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confirmation bias it's going to become

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more extreme it's going to become you

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know even more heated there's going to

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be splintering of media creation as

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there is right now that we see today

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right every every element of the

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spectrum will be kind of produced and

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you're going to end up clicking on the

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stuff that creates the greatest

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emotional response because that's what

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people like to consume how does a

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citizen who wants to inoculate

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themselves from fake news bias

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how do you recommend they go after

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science and how do they they have to

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learn the stuff for themselves they have

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to try to become an expert themselves

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it's hard like anything that's hard

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right i mean there's there's got to be a

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will i don't think that that's really um

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it's it's not to be discouraging i just

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think that it's a lot easier to not do

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that right it's like it's a lot easier

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to consume ice cream all the time it's a

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lot more fun to consume ice cream all

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the time and to kind of plan your diet

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eat healthy and work out and all this

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sort of stuff and i think that's really

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where

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you know media like a lot of things is

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headed as we create these kind of

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feedback loops that are all because

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everything's digital everything ends up

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becoming feedback i bet i bet you i bet

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you if you look inside

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because like now

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some rabid politician will get a hold of

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this facebook crosstrek thing i bet you

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um if you look and graph

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the number of people that were

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essentially whitelisted from being able

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to say whatever the hell they want

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versus what was popular on facebook

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you'd see a left versus right

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distribution very clearly you'd

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basically see because if you look at it

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now i think there's a i can't remember

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his name but he's a he's a former new

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york times reporter that tweets out

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every day um the top 10 links that are

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shared on facebook and it's

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like a [ __ ] train wreck it's like

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one normal article and then it's like

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nine like right-wing infowars

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it's a train wreck every day

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and so if you're you know a hipster

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sitting in east menlo park

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you know at some point like the cuffs

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and your jeans are rolled up too tight

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the [ __ ] shirt cuffs are rolled up

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too tight you know

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um and you're just freaking out and then

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you're like we need to create something

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what do we call it and we're like cross

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check you know and then all of a sudden

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what happens is you just start

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introducing people hoping that then the

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list that gets published every day on

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twitter changes but then what happens

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actually is you find the exact opposite

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thing happens that people are so like

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they sniff out the [ __ ] they're like

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what is going on here but then they

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double down and then next thing you know

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ben shapiro's nine you know eight of the

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ten top stories every day

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on facebook and that's how you have

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donald trump and everything else

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next topic well

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go ahead well it's gonna i mean i don't

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wanna do it themselves yeah look i i

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think both sides are capable of

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both sides of the political spectrum are

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capable of spreading misinformation and

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[ __ ] and you have to vary your

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information diet right i mean if all you

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do is participate in

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you know the right wing or left-wing

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echo chamber you're going to buy into

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the ivermectin hoax you're going to be

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story here from rolling stone or

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whatever it is so you have to

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make an effort to again to vary your

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information

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or

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the uh lab leak theory

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theory exactly but we now have five of

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these during the pandemic alone right

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right but see what what i

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object to is the fact that the

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censorship rules only seem to apply to

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one side of the spectrum is look both

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sides are capable of spreading

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misinformation but only one side is

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being censored why because the people

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running these powerful tech companies

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agree they're like you know 90 plus

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percent of that political persuasion

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that is not healthy

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raise your hand if you agree with how

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many people uh agree with sacks that

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trump should be reinstated on all

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platforms

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all right there you go

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people agree that the tech platforms

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have a political bias

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how many disagree with that statement

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nobody's interesting

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wife is the chief business officer

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facebook thanks for that

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who couldn't see that because i don't

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know do we have the audience on yeah no

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no no no

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no everyone yeah everyone except for

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phil dwight and these are silicon best

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described as silicon valley to barney so

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that's why you have to raise his hand no

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but to be clear for people listening

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phil's wife works 100 percent he's got

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to say no it's okay it's okay 99 but

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everybody else here agreed with that and

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these are all people who are silicon

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valley

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they know

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so how many of us are democrats i mean

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we're all mostly democrats i would guess

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how many people voted democrat in the

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last 11 years how many are not democrats

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how many people voted for trump raise

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your hand nice and high no nobody said

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that nobody no literally there's only

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that's very interesting seriously

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here's a question i have okay so we are

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we are firmly going down because i think

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it's pretty it's pretty clear to me i'd

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be willing to make the bet that

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the media is on the side of vaccine

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mandates okay they want the

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top down control and the sense of

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theoretical safety that a vaccine

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mandate gives them in their own little

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bubble and so that's why i think they

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support this and i think you know

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blowing up ivermectin was kind of

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a method of many that they've undertaken

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to do that whether we believe in vaccine

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mandates or not but now it's coming it's

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coming in the la school district it's

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you know biden is trying to push this

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thing through the bls this is going to

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be a very very big deal

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what do you guys think is the right

00:16:28

thing to do on vaccine mandates

00:16:30

irrespective of all we're going to hear

00:16:32

over the next

00:16:34

government government or private

00:16:36

employer mandates or both well we should

00:16:38

let's walk through it i'm seeing both uh

00:16:40

for

00:16:41

the gov government employees let's start

00:16:43

with that yeah or the government mandate

00:16:45

look it goes through the bls it says any

00:16:46

company public or private that is a

00:16:49

hundred employees or more well i mean i

00:16:50

think we all agree

00:16:52

that people in the military or people in

00:16:54

health care

00:16:55

they should all be vaccinated or they

00:16:56

shouldn't come to work correct

00:16:59

do you agree with that but that's also

00:17:00

not not even enforceable like sorkin

00:17:03

andrew ross sorkin tweeted out like he

00:17:05

had to take his kid to the urgent care

00:17:07

and he walked in and the doctors weren't

00:17:09

wearing masks or something yeah i read

00:17:11

that and said something about like not

00:17:13

being vaccinated it doesn't matter or

00:17:14

blah blah and he like well that goes to

00:17:16

enforcement but i mean

00:17:18

the military has said you have to carry

00:17:20

i thought wait you brought your kid to

00:17:21

the [ __ ] urgent care don't you first

00:17:23

need to know what's wrong with the kid

00:17:24

you can't prosecute this person's

00:17:26

opinion on masks and vaccines before you

00:17:28

figure out what's wrong with your kid

00:17:30

well what do you think sex military

00:17:33

military health care teachers the i

00:17:35

think the crux of the issue is whether

00:17:37

employers should be able to require that

00:17:40

well there's two issues one is whether

00:17:42

um employers should be allowed to

00:17:44

require it which i think everybody agree

00:17:46

not everyone but but most people i think

00:17:48

agree that private employers and you

00:17:50

could lump the government with this

00:17:52

should be allowed to

00:17:54

test or their employees or require their

00:17:56

employees to be vaccinated if they want

00:17:57

to and or at least i would support that

00:18:00

part of it is let private enterprises

00:18:03

require vaccination if they want if they

00:18:04

decide hey in order to come back to the

00:18:06

office you got to be vaccinated for

00:18:08

everyone's safety they can impose those

00:18:10

rules now the question is do we need to

00:18:12

go beyond that to have a federal

00:18:15

mandate

00:18:16

and it's not that i'm anti-vaccine i

00:18:19

just think that's like an awfully

00:18:20

authoritarian thing to do and

00:18:23

it raises a bunch of questions so for

00:18:25

example

00:18:27

i have a friend who owns a chain of dry

00:18:29

cleaners okay he's got over 100

00:18:30

employees mostly minimum wage in a bunch

00:18:32

of different locations about 20 of his

00:18:35

what is his ethnicity

00:18:38

what does that have to do with anything

00:18:39

just curious sri lankan

00:18:44

anyway so he's the third most famous sri

00:18:47

lankan american yes anyway so

00:18:50

he's got 100 employees about 20 of them

00:18:51

are anti-vax and they will not get

00:18:53

vaccinated okay so they will walk out if

00:18:57

you know if this is required

00:19:00

hold on but he can't run his business if

00:19:02

there's a 20 walkout he just can't do it

00:19:04

okay so now we get to the soft part of

00:19:06

the mandate which is well instead of

00:19:09

requiring the vax he can do a weekly

00:19:11

test well we did that outside here who's

00:19:14

going to pay for those tests who's going

00:19:15

to administer them is it like you know

00:19:17

they had a nurse out here with the full

00:19:20

you know

00:19:21

uh you know hazmat yeah the hazmat thing

00:19:24

so you know that's not cheap so how

00:19:26

who's going to pay for that who's going

00:19:27

to do that what's the documentation

00:19:28

around that going to be is that get

00:19:30

logged into the computer system what

00:19:32

kind of proof is it does it require a

00:19:35

trip to the lab or is this something we

00:19:36

can do in five minutes i mean look if we

00:19:38

had done what freeburg said a year ago

00:19:40

on this pod we should do which is have

00:19:42

these one dollar five-minute tests be

00:19:45

available everywhere then maybe that

00:19:47

sort of rapid test out would make these

00:19:50

mandates more palatable but we don't

00:19:52

have that yet um you know there aren't

00:19:54

enough of these it turns out we still

00:19:55

need it even with the vaccines because

00:19:57

no vaccine is going to be 100 effective

00:19:58

and with right but my point is since we

00:20:00

don't really have that solution

00:20:03

operationalized you know having a hard

00:20:06

vax mandate on a 100 million employees

00:20:08

of private enterprises

00:20:10

you know that's going to cause i think

00:20:12

chaos in the economy what if we get a

00:20:14

variant david or trump

00:20:16

if we get a variant god forbid that is

00:20:19

more dangerous

00:20:20

than delta let's say it spreads just as

00:20:22

fast but it's five times as deadly does

00:20:24

that change your thinking about this

00:20:26

mandate and where do you stand on the

00:20:27

mandate no i i think the mandate in this

00:20:29

very specific narrow instance makes

00:20:31

sense and i think what we should be

00:20:32

fighting about is how

00:20:34

we actually write it so that it's not

00:20:36

wholly expensive and the reason is

00:20:38

because we know

00:20:40

that there is a probabilistic

00:20:43

distribution of outcomes where a

00:20:45

non-trivial percentage of them results

00:20:47

in a variant that is deadly

00:20:49

and so we can understand the math and we

00:20:51

can understand a sense of time to figure

00:20:53

out that if we don't do something and if

00:20:56

we don't get to some amount of control

00:20:59

around what this is

00:21:01

we're all in really big trouble so

00:21:04

because of that specific thing i just

00:21:06

think this is where you know look

00:21:08

the president has the ability to invoke

00:21:10

the war measures act to do all kinds of

00:21:12

things that are super normal

00:21:14

and you know we would never say that

00:21:16

those abide in normal times and we've

00:21:18

created a framework for him to be able

00:21:20

to do those things in non-normal times

00:21:21

and then revert to normal

00:21:24

i think this is one of those cases just

00:21:25

because i don't think the economic

00:21:27

consequences and the social consequences

00:21:29

if we let this thing uh continue to

00:21:32

compound and continue to mutate it

00:21:34

doesn't make any [ __ ] sense we're not

00:21:36

learning anything

00:21:37

we uh could have used the warm mandate

00:21:40

act across two presidencies to demand

00:21:44

some companies make a dollar test

00:21:46

we have 75 80 tests approved in germany

00:21:48

they're down to two or three dollars why

00:21:51

has the fda not

00:21:54

gotten us to that level that germany's

00:21:55

at

00:21:56

and why haven't we done the war mandate

00:21:58

act i mean we have like a constructed

00:22:00

capitalist model of like

00:22:02

let the free market tell the government

00:22:04

what is the right thing to do and so

00:22:06

then they invite abbott and they invite

00:22:08

the the guys in and they're like you

00:22:10

know the white house they have a

00:22:11

consortium meeting and everyone's kind

00:22:13

of a little bit chuckling about this

00:22:14

like oh this is awesome it's another two

00:22:16

billion dollar payday which is what they

00:22:17

just got i don't know if you saw

00:22:19

uh the the write-up today

00:22:21

but the federal government is paying

00:22:24

walmart for the difference between the

00:22:26

wholesale cost and the retail cost so

00:22:28

that consumers cannot now go buy abba

00:22:30

tests at the wholesale price at the

00:22:31

store two billion dollars taxpayer money

00:22:33

gone

00:22:34

when we could have had a bunch of smart

00:22:37

scientists get together at the white

00:22:39

house

00:22:40

with a bunch of engineers take over a

00:22:42

freaking factory and on a piece of paper

00:22:45

print 8 billion [ __ ] tests

00:22:47

and then chop them up and distribute

00:22:49

them for 50 cents and instead we have

00:22:51

this problem where we're like depending

00:22:52

on the korean supply i kid you not of

00:22:56

the test kits that are like plastic

00:22:58

that's where they make all the like

00:22:59

pregnancy test kits and all this stuff

00:23:00

and these um

00:23:02

this like the commercial model is like

00:23:04

tell us how you want to make these tests

00:23:06

tell us what the right model is and of

00:23:07

course you end up with a thirty dollar

00:23:09

test when in germany you can go buy a 50

00:23:11

cent test at any liquor store

00:23:13

um and so it's it's constructive it's

00:23:15

straight up corruption and if you go

00:23:17

back like you know i don't know if you

00:23:19

know the the production board's named

00:23:20

after the straight into the microphone

00:23:22

named after the war production

00:23:24

which was um set up during world war ii

00:23:27

what's that it's pretty humble

00:23:29

yeah um

00:23:30

took the war out

00:23:32

you know

00:23:33

um but it was uh but the idea was like

00:23:35

how do you take a system level uh design

00:23:37

approach uh to solving kind of big

00:23:40

problems and um one of the issues

00:23:43

that we had during world war ii was a

00:23:45

supply chain problem on making tanks and

00:23:47

planes and so

00:23:48

they put together a bunch of smart

00:23:50

people deutsche knows this better than

00:23:51

anyone because he was a lie back he was

00:23:53

alive and he was you can look at the old

00:23:55

photos they're sitting in the front guys

00:23:56

you have the hammer before he does he

00:23:58

made it in the factory floor old as [ __ ]

00:24:01

and um and there was basically a con

00:24:03

coordinated effort it's fine today by

00:24:05

the way sorry the kim happy birthday

00:24:07

happy birthday

00:24:09

um

00:24:10

but there was a coordinated effort by

00:24:11

engineers at the top down to design a

00:24:14

system for making these things cheap and

00:24:16

fast and that's an approach that i think

00:24:18

we lost right like we kind of gave way

00:24:20

to this model of yeah laissez faire like

00:24:23

you come in you tell me what you think

00:24:24

we should do okay that's a good idea

00:24:26

let's take photos and we're out and

00:24:27

that's it like we don't have a wartime

00:24:29

mentality right now we haven't had a

00:24:30

wartime mentality since covet hit

00:24:32

everyone's continued to try and parade

00:24:34

around and get reelected and you know

00:24:36

earn votes

00:24:37

we're not taking this we're not acting

00:24:39

we're you know like every

00:24:41

every time kind of a business or a

00:24:42

government or any organization goes

00:24:44

through a phase it goes through a

00:24:45

wartime phase or a peacetime phase we

00:24:47

should be acting like we're in a wartime

00:24:48

phase and we're not can answer your

00:24:49

question if you may three or four of us

00:24:52

basically pronated up some money could

00:24:54

you go and print eight billion of these

00:24:55

[ __ ] tests

00:24:56

in the u.s you cannot get them approved

00:24:58

without the fda i'm not asking for

00:24:59

approval i'm saying could you do it 100

00:25:02

and how long you could buy some old

00:25:03

freaking paper mill and in three months

00:25:05

i mean you know this this actually

00:25:06

people in this room who could do this

00:25:08

in um now isn't there a framework with

00:25:11

an fda that basically allows you to

00:25:14

effectively experiment on yourself

00:25:17

there's a compassion there's a

00:25:20

it's for drugs it's for therapeutics not

00:25:21

for diagnostics so you're saying that if

00:25:23

i want to you can't build my own test

00:25:25

and use it if you want to build a if you

00:25:26

want to build a diagnostic test that

00:25:27

tells someone whether or not they have

00:25:29

an illness you have to get fda approval

00:25:31

in the united states so

00:25:33

that's also just published before

00:25:35

some pretty statement is regulatory

00:25:37

capture like is one of the biggest

00:25:38

issues and in related

00:25:40

news by the way another insane statistic

00:25:42

just sorry they're up i saw this today i

00:25:44

forgot someone we know tweeted this

00:25:47

the

00:25:48

who wants to guess the ratio of

00:25:50

administrators to doctors in the us

00:25:52

healthcare system 300 to one yeah i saw

00:25:55

at 301 yeah 900 to one today oh my god

00:25:58

and that is up from five to one in 1970

00:26:01

by the way think about it can i just

00:26:02

build on what you said 900 to 1. your

00:26:04

initial tweet said 300 to 1 and it ended

00:26:07

in 2010 right before obamacare passed so

00:26:10

from 300 to 900 was all obamacare yeah

00:26:13

regulatory sacs is shaking his head

00:26:15

which by the way uh nothing against

00:26:17

obamacare because i think like coming as

00:26:18

a canadian i actually believe in

00:26:20

subsidized health care and i think the

00:26:21

the principle of obamacare was great but

00:26:23

there was one fatal flaw which is it

00:26:25

basically said okay you know what you're

00:26:27

capped at the following margin

00:26:29

and the minute that people said wait a

00:26:31

minute i can only have a 20 gross margin

00:26:33

what do you do you just jack up prices

00:26:35

to basically jack up revenue because if

00:26:37

you can only take 20 percent you're

00:26:38

going to take 20 of a bigger number than

00:26:40

a smaller number and so it completely

00:26:42

burned the incentives for any healthcare

00:26:44

company in the united states to do

00:26:46

anything other than just basically walk

00:26:47

prices up

00:26:49

and it's funny because if you look at

00:26:50

the stock prices of these

00:26:52

companies

00:26:53

you you would have made more money being

00:26:55

along united healthcare than you would

00:26:56

have been uh owning facebook google any

00:26:58

of these other tech companies in the

00:27:00

last decade crazy stat

00:27:02

uh speaking of regulatory capture tesla

00:27:05

uh got left out of this new tax credit

00:27:07

or proposed tax credit insane four

00:27:10

electric cars i don't know if you saw

00:27:11

that but tesla wasn't invited a couple

00:27:13

of months ago to biden's ev summit

00:27:16

elon responded like i wonder why i

00:27:18

wasn't invited it turns out it's because

00:27:20

they're not a union shop their employees

00:27:22

make much more money than union

00:27:24

employees make uh and but now as a

00:27:28

punishment but hold on as a punishment

00:27:30

the twelve thousand dollar credit that

00:27:32

they're giving to or they're proposing

00:27:33

to give to all ev manufacturers is only

00:27:36

if you have union employees it's 4 500

00:27:39

less to tesla

00:27:41

so literally two massive regulatory

00:27:44

captures and corruption go or maybe

00:27:47

no i mean i don't have much more to add

00:27:49

to that i mean you hit the nail on the

00:27:51

head i mean this is to serve the unions

00:27:52

it's not to serve uh clean energy

00:27:56

or the ev industry i mean a little bit

00:27:57

for uv but it's mostly for the unions

00:28:01

the um

00:28:02

[Music]

00:28:04

on the one hand what we do is we say

00:28:05

that climate change is this existential

00:28:08

issue

00:28:09

but then when the rubber meets the road

00:28:11

if you look inside the infrastructure

00:28:12

plan today we unveiled basically how

00:28:15

we're going to do all the tax credits

00:28:17

and again it's just an enormous amount

00:28:19

of just sloppy

00:28:20

um regulatory capture

00:28:23

we're doubling and tripling credits in

00:28:24

certain places we're disallowing credits

00:28:27

in other places when you follow the

00:28:29

dollars what happens is you can map it

00:28:30

to companies those companies tend to be

00:28:33

mostly public large balance sheets large

00:28:35

lobbying efforts and it's not

00:28:37

necessarily the most important companies

00:28:39

that matter so if you know if i said to

00:28:41

you what are the most important

00:28:42

companies in climate change you'd

00:28:44

probably say well maybe it's direct air

00:28:45

capture maybe it's nuclear maybe it's

00:28:47

some other thing that basically helps

00:28:48

you go to a different place and where

00:28:50

does all the tax credits and tax dollars

00:28:52

go sun run sun power these are companies

00:28:55

that basically you know have this

00:28:57

oligopolistic hole stranglehold on

00:29:00

essentially installing solar panels and

00:29:02

battery walls in homes across the united

00:29:05

states and it's not to say that that job

00:29:07

isn't important but to basically

00:29:10

explicitly block other people out

00:29:12

because all the chatter today on um you

00:29:15

know or some of the chatter today was

00:29:17

around just if this bill passes as

00:29:20

written you're gonna see these stocks

00:29:22

rip and so obviously the positive

00:29:24

reinforcement loop of wall street and

00:29:25

hedge funds getting behind these

00:29:27

companies their market cap goes up the

00:29:29

amount they allocate to lobbyists go up

00:29:30

and then all this [ __ ] just

00:29:32

continues to cycle through the system

00:29:34

free break how far are we away from

00:29:36

small nuclear reactors and fusion just

00:29:38

from a science perspective and then on a

00:29:41

regulatory basis

00:29:43

i don't know enough i mean yeah

00:29:45

i i look i mean from what i've seen

00:29:48

there there are great technologies that

00:29:50

you know we should be able to kind of

00:29:51

realize my understanding and speaking to

00:29:53

investors some in this room

00:29:55

and i know champs looked at this area a

00:29:56

lot

00:29:57

is um you know there's the the

00:30:00

regulatory burden that's made it so

00:30:01

difficult to launch nuclear

00:30:04

um technically it seems like there's

00:30:05

great breakthroughs there was an

00:30:06

announcement from a group this past week

00:30:09

cfs yeah on a new um

00:30:12

super conducting magnet system that they

00:30:14

spent years designing this is a bill

00:30:16

gates backed company anyone here an

00:30:18

investor

00:30:19

no

00:30:20

john

00:30:23

and uh basically it enables like the

00:30:25

tokamak plasma fusion based systems uh

00:30:28

to be kind of reliably produced now and

00:30:30

so they've they've had a proof of

00:30:32

demonstration of this uh

00:30:34

of the superconducting magnet system

00:30:36

that effectively allows you to control a

00:30:38

plasma which is like 10 million degrees

00:30:40

celsius in a little donut that spins

00:30:42

around and that plasma allows you to

00:30:44

kind of pull energy out that can be used

00:30:46

for you know effectively you put a bunch

00:30:47

of material in this thing runs and more

00:30:50

energy comes out than you put in it's

00:30:52

magic

00:30:53

and so you know this has been a

00:30:54

theoretical kind of concept for decades

00:30:57

uh getting the superconducting magnet

00:30:59

system to control the plasma in a very

00:31:00

small space

00:31:02

using a very small kind of system was

00:31:04

proven and now they think that they're

00:31:06

you know call it four or five years away

00:31:07

you know by the way everything in

00:31:08

nuclear is always four or five years

00:31:10

away so four or five years away with a

00:31:12

grain of salt uh from kind of having a

00:31:14

demonstrable kind of uh system so

00:31:16

there's technologies that are clearly

00:31:17

like on the brink or proceeding nicely

00:31:20

but

00:31:20

as we know um a lot of a lot of these

00:31:22

sorts of technologies similarly are kind

00:31:24

of regulatory burdened we're about a

00:31:25

hundred degrees away i think from a from

00:31:27

a operational functional room

00:31:29

temperature semiconductor

00:31:30

and superconductor sorry and you know

00:31:33

i've told

00:31:34

a team that i'm working with on this

00:31:36

project i don't want to go into energy

00:31:38

generation or unless we can do it in a

00:31:40

small form manufacturing thing that can

00:31:42

be adopted broadly but if you try to go

00:31:44

and you know basically build some

00:31:46

distributed energy resource out over

00:31:48

here that powers cavallo point it's

00:31:50

impossible because you run into these

00:31:52

people who don't really understand the

00:31:54

science won't take the time and you know

00:31:56

we've taken so many steps backwards from

00:31:58

nuclear that it's probably just going to

00:32:01

take decades

00:32:03

and it's going to take some cataclysmic

00:32:05

climate change event where the only way

00:32:07

out is this super abundant energy source

00:32:10

where you're willing to basically say ah

00:32:12

[ __ ] it we're [ __ ] otherwise by the

00:32:13

way if you if you were to go to mars

00:32:15

today you wouldn't be pulling a bunch of

00:32:17

[ __ ] you know oil out of the ground

00:32:19

and burning it and you know rotating uh

00:32:21

you shouldn't i mean and you wouldn't

00:32:23

necessarily i mean you'd be using you

00:32:25

know solar at the beginning but you

00:32:27

wouldn't necessarily rely on solar the

00:32:28

you know the cost of material to

00:32:30

transport from here to mars

00:32:32

to yield the best energy potential would

00:32:34

likely be some sort of nuclear power

00:32:35

source right um as it is in a lot of

00:32:37

military so that's your question sax

00:32:40

elon was saved by obama

00:32:43

i mean

00:32:44

just kind of like having we were there

00:32:46

even meaning like you know it was in

00:32:47

that moment he was able to get that deal

00:32:49

with daimler he was able to get these

00:32:51

you know tax credits the the auto

00:32:53

bailout you know all of that stuff but

00:32:55

then it seems like we're in the middle

00:32:57

of a democrat administration and they

00:32:59

may go out of their way to basically try

00:33:01

to [ __ ] this guy i just think it's like

00:33:02

become a special interest free-for-all

00:33:04

there was an article today that the

00:33:06

national deficit year to date is 2.7

00:33:10

trillion

00:33:12

and i think that we're on october 1st

00:33:13

fiscal year so there's one more month so

00:33:15

it'll be about 3 trillion last year was

00:33:17

over 3 trillion because of covid

00:33:19

there haven't gotten to the

00:33:20

infrastructure bill yet that's going to

00:33:21

be another 1.2 trillion on top of that

00:33:24

the democrats are saying they want

00:33:25

another three and a half well not all

00:33:27

democrats but thank god for joe manchin

00:33:29

but another three and a half trillion

00:33:32

and you know most people can't even

00:33:33

really say what's in that three and a

00:33:34

half trillion dollar bill i mean it's

00:33:36

we're at 28 trillion something like that

00:33:38

of national debt

00:33:39

i mean and it's all just like special

00:33:41

interest plunder

00:33:42

well i mean if you look at the results

00:33:44

the results aren't there correct yeah

00:33:46

and then on top of that

00:33:47

um

00:33:48

well you know i i understand i mean

00:33:51

with respect to obamacare okay that's a

00:33:52

major item

00:33:54

on let's call the democrat wish list was

00:33:56

to give everyone health care and we

00:33:57

didn't even get there okay but you can

00:33:59

sort of understand that but

00:34:01

most people i think even

00:34:03

on the left

00:34:04

can't really say what the big ticket

00:34:07

item is

00:34:08

that's going to be delivered for this

00:34:09

three and a half trillion that is

00:34:11

proposing to be spent

00:34:13

so um i mean it's just it it's just

00:34:16

become this like you know special

00:34:17

interest freeberg we talked about not

00:34:19

having a wartime stance with the

00:34:21

pandemic

00:34:22

we don't have a wartime stance with

00:34:24

global warming or extreme weather

00:34:26

whichever

00:34:27

term you want should we

00:34:29

yeah

00:34:32

yeah

00:34:34

i mean yeah we're burning money i don't

00:34:35

know like a drunken salary what's going

00:34:37

on right now and actually a lot of what

00:34:38

we're going to talk about this symposium

00:34:41

over the next day or so

00:34:43

is that there is effectively now a

00:34:45

raging

00:34:46

free market appetite for these solutions

00:34:49

um the capital is pouring in the

00:34:51

entrepreneurship is blossoming

00:34:53

ballooning the technology is advancing

00:34:56

so you know to some degree folks might

00:34:58

say

00:34:59

you know this is going to get solved but

00:35:00

there are major infrastructure solutions

00:35:03

that are needed for us to accelerate the

00:35:05

outcome and win the the war

00:35:07

and those infrastructure solutions

00:35:09

aren't going to get funded by softbank

00:35:11

and they're not going to get funded by

00:35:12

chamath they're going to need to get

00:35:14

funded by the type of dollars i mean

00:35:17

keep keep you keep building your book

00:35:18

like you are you will fund them in the

00:35:20

next decade but saks you know kind of

00:35:22

speaks to the kind of numbers that i

00:35:24

think you know are necessary here i mean

00:35:25

you think about how much money we spent

00:35:27

on covid without any results over the

00:35:29

last year it really begs the question if

00:35:32

we were kind of to take an roi based

00:35:34

approach to where we spending these

00:35:35

dollars this would probably be the first

00:35:37

on the list and by the way the private

00:35:39

market and jobs will benefit and what

00:35:41

happened in this this bill this

00:35:43

infrastructure bill has passed um

00:35:45

this past year that's now been you know

00:35:47

uh more kind of definitively drafted

00:35:50

is a bunch of infrastructure jobs that

00:35:52

are basically giveaways they're not

00:35:53

actually solving problems with climate

00:35:55

change they're not pushing technology

00:35:56

forward they're not creating uh these

00:35:59

alternatives that we're talking about

00:36:00

they create 10x and 100x outcomes they

00:36:03

are yesteryears solutions and they're

00:36:06

not going to move the needle enough and

00:36:07

so i you know look i do think like

00:36:10

it's unfortunate but the climate change

00:36:12

war production board is needed to kind

00:36:14

of get the kind of dollars motivated

00:36:16

that are needed to create the kind of

00:36:17

infrastructure to solve these problems

00:36:19

um despite the free market appetite the

00:36:21

free market appetite by the way fuels

00:36:22

the outcomes but it still needs uh it

00:36:25

needs something behind

00:36:26

is it possible just as we're having this

00:36:29

discussion here we're looking at an

00:36:30

incompetent corrupt government

00:36:33

that is filled with grifters who are

00:36:35

bought and sold and then on the other

00:36:38

side and causing

00:36:39

problems that's a that's a mouthful i

00:36:41

wouldn't say that people but i i

00:36:42

disagree that people are corrupt and

00:36:44

grifters i i do think that really yeah i

00:36:47

i do think that there's a lot of good

00:36:48

motivations i just think that this is

00:36:49

the government yeah look there may be

00:36:51

corruption but i don't think that that's

00:36:53

the the universal truth right people are

00:36:55

generally you you know you we've all met

00:36:58

politicians right

00:37:00

which one is it it's it's it's a it's a

00:37:02

point of perspective right and there's a

00:37:04

what's your perspective my perspective

00:37:05

is that they're all being told by their

00:37:06

constituents what they want and then

00:37:08

they're doing it or by lobbyists or by

00:37:10

lobbyists but

00:37:11

are they supposed to listen to a lot at

00:37:13

the end of the day the way that the the

00:37:14

system is set up is people get reelected

00:37:16

by doing what they're the people that

00:37:18

are going to vote and put the dollars

00:37:19

and put the votes out for them are

00:37:21

asking them to do and that's the way

00:37:23

that this has kind of resolved itself

00:37:25

so and by the way when the war when when

00:37:27

wars happen you know when i guess when a

00:37:30

war happened

00:37:32

in the 20th century that wasn't the

00:37:34

driving force the driving force was

00:37:36

existential and it was we have to win

00:37:37

the war and that's that that really

00:37:39

needs to be the mindset we all need to

00:37:41

adopt today which is an existential

00:37:43

mindset we need to win the war and it

00:37:44

can't be about what my constituents are

00:37:46

telling me what the lobbyists are

00:37:47

telling me so despite

00:37:49

this either incompetence graft or if

00:37:52

you're more charitable you know it's a

00:37:54

complex problem to solve despite all of

00:37:56

that

00:37:57

we have massive entrepreneurship in the

00:37:58

country we have massive capital

00:38:00

allocation uh at a extreme violent rate

00:38:03

in fact a lot of that money is coming

00:38:05

from all this money being pumped into

00:38:07

the system so in a way do you think the

00:38:09

only solution we have chamoth is

00:38:11

entrepreneurs in startups who are

00:38:13

getting large amounts of money to solve

00:38:15

these problems because it's not going to

00:38:16

happen by government obviously we have a

00:38:18

ton of great entrepreneurs and i think

00:38:20

that we're doing things

00:38:23

we're doing we're okay so

00:38:25

this is this is

00:38:27

if you look at the internet in the 20

00:38:29

years that we've been grinding in the

00:38:30

internet we've had an incredible

00:38:32

tailwind that helped us

00:38:34

which is all these people much like the

00:38:36

folks in this room but in different

00:38:37

companies 10 or 20 years earlier than

00:38:39

you are now

00:38:41

abstracting parts of the stack so that

00:38:43

the rest of us could use it right

00:38:46

um and so you know i remember 2006 we

00:38:49

were racking and stacking servers at

00:38:51

facebook in santa clara me adam deangelo

00:38:53

like and i was like what the [ __ ] are we

00:38:55

doing and i remember in 2008 when adam

00:38:57

deangelo he was our cto at the time left

00:38:59

he started a company called quora

00:39:01

d'andre's like i'm building on aws and i

00:39:03

thought he was a [ __ ] idiot

00:39:05

i thought who builds on aws you build

00:39:07

your own data centers now if you said

00:39:09

that to somebody you would be the idiot

00:39:12

right so if it's that or if it's the

00:39:14

tooling and the tool chains that we've

00:39:15

been able to build on top of

00:39:17

all of that abstraction and

00:39:19

simplification has allowed an order or

00:39:22

frankly probably even maybe two orders

00:39:23

of magnitude of entrepreneurship to come

00:39:26

that's also now happening in biotech

00:39:28

so all of that is an incredible progress

00:39:31

the problem now is we used to be

00:39:34

a part of the economy that was an

00:39:36

afterthought

00:39:37

we were over here

00:39:40

politicians didn't need to understand

00:39:41

they didn't need to take the time

00:39:43

their first reaction is denial because

00:39:46

it basically pushes up against power and

00:39:48

that really freaks them out

00:39:50

but now we're at a point where we are so

00:39:53

integral they need to understand it

00:39:55

better here's a perfect example

00:39:57

last week

00:39:59

illuminous patents expired

00:40:02

so if you're in the business of

00:40:04

healthcare and if you're in the business

00:40:05

of like you know crispr gene therapy any

00:40:08

of the stuff that actually a lot of you

00:40:10

guys are involved in

00:40:12

you would love for the fact that you

00:40:14

know next-gen sequencing could have a

00:40:16

thousand flowers boom bloom 90 different

00:40:19

methods the cost of a sequence goes down

00:40:22

to a penny

00:40:23

it's not possible today because you have

00:40:24

to go through one methodology you have

00:40:26

one company to work through you have one

00:40:28

set of reagents or a set of reagents

00:40:30

that one company sells and it's

00:40:32

basically cordoned off

00:40:34

that can't change because of technology

00:40:36

because they can then sue you go to

00:40:38

courts and they win

00:40:40

and so this is where you have to

00:40:42

interface with the government and they

00:40:43

just need to get smarter

00:40:45

because otherwise there's only so much

00:40:47

innovation we can do before

00:40:49

their historical legacy things like

00:40:51

patents and ip come and bite you in the

00:40:53

ass sex what do you think is

00:40:55

entrepreneurship alone and capital

00:40:58

allocation by aggressive

00:41:00

you know thoughtful and bold uh capital

00:41:03

allocators enough to solve the

00:41:05

incompetence in washington or the graft

00:41:07

well it's going to have to be and i mean

00:41:09

here's the good news bad news okay i had

00:41:11

a tweet that kind of went viral so when

00:41:13

afghanistan happened you know we spent

00:41:16

two trillion dollars

00:41:18

2500 american casualties 40 000 wounded

00:41:21

and

00:41:22

what have we gotten out of it the

00:41:25

chinese are about to take up residence

00:41:26

in bagram

00:41:28

in our splendid air force base

00:41:30

and uh the taliban are one of the best

00:41:32

equipped armies in the world that's

00:41:34

basically what our two trillion dollars

00:41:35

got us and china's going to build a

00:41:37

super highway right by the way they're

00:41:38

going to extract did you see the thing

00:41:40

where like the taliban were flying

00:41:41

around in our helicopter

00:41:43

helicopters no it was fake apparently

00:41:45

yeah

00:41:49

apparently apparently the helicopters

00:41:51

that were left behind are non-functional

00:41:52

so let's just clear that up that's not

00:41:54

true yeah there's more blackhawks than

00:41:56

any other army in the world except for

00:41:57

us

00:41:58

um i mean haven't you seen all the

00:41:59

photos of them they're all decked out in

00:42:01

our uniforms it's incredible yeah oh

00:42:03

yeah

00:42:04

they got our night vision goggles photos

00:42:06

on the internet

00:42:07

no no no there was reporting itemizing

00:42:09

the inventory the cache of weapons we

00:42:11

left behind it was gigantic all right

00:42:13

let's get to the question now the good

00:42:15

news bad news okay so that that's that's

00:42:17

the bad news that's what two trillion

00:42:18

dollars of government spending got us

00:42:21

um the the good news is i went back and

00:42:23

i looked at

00:42:24

how much money has been invested in the

00:42:26

venture capital space over that same

00:42:27

20-year period that we were in

00:42:28

afghanistan and it roughly tallied up to

00:42:31

about two trillion dollars i didn't know

00:42:33

that actually i just i added up the

00:42:34

charts

00:42:35

and about and most of it was in the last

00:42:38

five years because it's actually been a

00:42:39

huge acceleration in the amount of money

00:42:41

coming into vc over the last several

00:42:43

years the softbanks the tigers and so

00:42:46

that you've had these late stage funds

00:42:47

the mega lane stage funds so the truth

00:42:49

is

00:42:50

for

00:42:51

really way less than i'd say a trillion

00:42:54

dollars of you know early stage like

00:42:56

true venture money we've been able to

00:42:58

create the entire technology ecosystem

00:43:00

as we see it today i mean not entire i

00:43:02

guess go back 20 years there's five

00:43:04

years in the late 90s so

00:43:07

the the the private enterprise system

00:43:09

has accomplished so much with relatively

00:43:13

so little money you compare

00:43:15

the efficiency of it you almost wonder

00:43:17

how did we squander so much money in

00:43:19

afghanistan

00:43:20

it took active looting

00:43:22

by many different forces to basically

00:43:25

squander

00:43:26

i mean think about like literally have

00:43:28

to burn money

00:43:29

every venture back company

00:43:31

every stage

00:43:33

in the last 20 years

00:43:35

that's how much money we spent in

00:43:36

afghanistan i mean how much of that

00:43:37

money went to line the pockets of

00:43:40

private contractors

00:43:42

and you know warlords we were paying off

00:43:44

i mean it was a giant kleptocracy okay

00:43:48

so but the good news is look what we got

00:43:49

for the same amount of money here you

00:43:51

know and not just here every every

00:43:53

private venture back company

00:43:55

so i do think we are capable of

00:43:57

accomplishing great things but

00:43:58

with relatively small amounts of

00:44:00

investment and thank goodness for that

00:44:02

because that's the only thing that's

00:44:03

producing anything in our society

00:44:05

but um

00:44:07

but i mean it's true right but but look

00:44:09

at what washington's about to do they

00:44:10

want to stomp on all this innovation i

00:44:12

mean they want to jack up the cap gains

00:44:14

rate to the same to higher than ordinary

00:44:17

income i mean that is the return on

00:44:19

investment for the for the for venture

00:44:21

capital for the kind of investment i'm

00:44:23

talking about i mean they want to make

00:44:24

it punitive now that's not going to pass

00:44:27

thankfully because we got joe manchin

00:44:29

but that's about it by the way i will i

00:44:31

will contradict myself and agree with

00:44:32

sax i do think there will be a hundred x

00:44:34

thousand ten 1000x 10000x

00:44:36

breakthrough

00:44:37

that will resolve a lot of the

00:44:39

challenges we face as a species on

00:44:41

planet earth over this century so we're

00:44:43

optimistic i'm 100 optimistic i'm

00:44:45

actually this might that's my the the

00:44:47

title you gave it away the title of my

00:44:48

talk in the morning uh tomorrow morning

00:44:51

um yeah but yeah yeah i do

00:44:53

and by the way my talk says absolutely

00:44:55

nothing about the government and we went

00:44:56

railing against the government now

00:44:57

everyone's kind of feeling sad and we

00:44:59

sound like a bunch of old guys sitting

00:45:01

at the starbucks talking yeah talking

00:45:03

about the government how they suck um

00:45:05

but at the end of the day i do think

00:45:07

that um the ingenuity of uh the human

00:45:11

spirit and science will resolve the

00:45:13

problems that we face today jesus christ

00:45:15

and we are not gonna end up we're not

00:45:17

going to end up developing on the

00:45:19

government

00:45:20

to solve the problem

00:45:21

all right i want to talk about one other

00:45:22

by the way we should kind of be able to

00:45:23

take questions uh from the audience so

00:45:25

if you have a question i'm going to jump

00:45:26

out there um should we do that now

00:45:28

because yeah just end with the ccp uh is

00:45:32

now

00:45:33

moving to break up alipay's business

00:45:35

this is after jack ma uh went on

00:45:38

a holiday to learn how to oil paint

00:45:40

thoughts chamaf

00:45:42

well i think this is sort of like one

00:45:44

other step in what we've been talking

00:45:46

about for a while which is that china is

00:45:48

basically becoming

00:45:50

a completely vertically integrated

00:45:52

government

00:45:53

where

00:45:54

the public and private sector has no

00:45:56

real clear delineation and i think that

00:45:58

that actually has a lot of implications

00:46:00

to us because they export

00:46:02

an enormous amount of technology and

00:46:04

building blocks to us and we have no

00:46:06

recourse if those guys either change

00:46:09

their mind and this is sort of what

00:46:11

pulls us into

00:46:12

this next very complicated phase of uh

00:46:15

geopolitics because for example if they

00:46:17

decide to cut us off you know in our

00:46:20

they will invade taiwan i've said this

00:46:22

before but i think that they will

00:46:24

and we will have no choice except to

00:46:26

deploy troops into taiwan

00:46:28

because in the absence of the silicon

00:46:30

that we need from tsmc and a couple of

00:46:32

other manufacturers there we have zero

00:46:34

capability here this is why you see

00:46:36

intel i mean for any like any second

00:46:38

when you guys hear an intel press

00:46:40

release that says they're investing 90

00:46:41

[ __ ] billion dollars do you not think

00:46:44

where does intel come up with 90 billion

00:46:46

dollars

00:46:48

right this is a pull through from us

00:46:49

government because it allows us to start

00:46:52

to rebuild

00:46:53

an enormous amount of critical

00:46:54

infrastructure that we've left to other

00:46:56

people

00:46:57

so you know china is systematically

00:47:01

decomposing and basically destabilizing

00:47:04

all the china internet companies they're

00:47:05

going to control and inbound all of the

00:47:07

critical resources and we're gonna have

00:47:10

to have these really hard conversations

00:47:12

unless this is again why i go back to i

00:47:13

don't believe what you said

00:47:15

entrepreneurs are not enough of the

00:47:16

solution we need the government to step

00:47:18

in with intelligence not with anything

00:47:21

other than that

00:47:22

they don't need laws necessarily they

00:47:24

just need to understand the problem and

00:47:26

then or get out of the way in some cases

00:47:29

or step in and for example like you know

00:47:32

allow the regulatory regulatory capture

00:47:34

to be disrupted but they won't do it

00:47:37

because special interests and by the way

00:47:39

special interests what do they spend you

00:47:41

know if you try to donate to a [ __ ]

00:47:42

congressman

00:47:44

four thousand dollars two thousand five

00:47:46

hundred dollars like these people aren't

00:47:48

spending 80 million dollars to defend an

00:47:50

80 billion dollar business they're

00:47:52

spending 80 000

00:47:54

and that's why we can't have progress

00:47:56

that's crazy to me

00:47:58

sacks your thoughts on china's recent

00:48:00

actions to

00:48:02

basically deprecate entrepreneurship

00:48:05

it's it's a continuation of the trends

00:48:06

we've been talking about on the show

00:48:08

like math was saying i mean they're

00:48:09

bringing these um entrepreneurs these

00:48:12

their moguls uh their their oligarchs

00:48:15

under their thumb under the thumb of the

00:48:16

ccp

00:48:18

and xi jinping they're consolidating

00:48:20

control and power

00:48:22

and money and it's also about the data

00:48:24

that was another part of the this new

00:48:26

law is they want to get their hands on

00:48:28

the data that um

00:48:31

all the credit data of every single

00:48:33

person that uses alipay all throughout

00:48:35

southeast asia

00:48:36

that's [ __ ] crazy

00:48:38

and they also control and everybody's

00:48:40

tick-tock you're talking about yeah we

00:48:42

get there at the same time yeah it's

00:48:43

crazy it's crazy

00:48:45

if you were running the chinese

00:48:46

government wouldn't you do the same

00:48:49

i would do everything that they're doing

00:48:50

which is why it's crazy to us that we

00:48:52

are sitting here allowing it to be done

00:48:54

to us

00:48:56

that's what the crazy the crazy right

00:48:57

there's nothing there's nothing about

00:48:59

what they're doing doing is not

00:49:00

illogical right what we are doing is

00:49:03

illogical

00:49:04

because we should have a reaction to

00:49:06

these things we should have a point of

00:49:07

view it can't be tacitly sticking our

00:49:09

head in the sand

00:49:11

all right who's got a question for one

00:49:12

of the besties okay let's try and make

00:49:14

it a tight question talk up the book

00:49:16

john of course these bills are

00:49:17

incredibly wasteful but

00:49:20

you're you guys are engaged so how come

00:49:21

you're not looking through them and

00:49:22

saying this piece i like this piece is

00:49:24

messed up because it doesn't sound like

00:49:26

you've read them either

00:49:28

to be honest with you i haven't read

00:49:29

them i rely on these summaries that i

00:49:31

get from my team and to be honest with

00:49:33

you the legibility of these things are

00:49:35

incredibly low

00:49:36

and the problem is every bill that gets

00:49:38

written now

00:49:40

it's almost like it goes through a

00:49:41

process if you take a two-page bullet

00:49:43

point bill which is really what

00:49:46

senators or

00:49:47

congress people understand and approve

00:49:50

and then out comes the other end two

00:49:52

thousand pages that are

00:49:53

undigestable

00:49:55

so you're absolutely right i don't i

00:49:57

rely

00:49:58

on these summaries i have zero idea

00:50:01

what's really in there let's take

00:50:02

another question

00:50:03

yeah um i'm alex philippenko

00:50:06

you did this poll of whether the media

00:50:08

are

00:50:09

right winning

00:50:10

leaning or left-leaning and the

00:50:11

overwhelming majority said left-leaning

00:50:13

but do you think that that's in part

00:50:15

because for four years we had been fed

00:50:17

so many lies and so much misinformation

00:50:20

from

00:50:21

the extreme right

00:50:23

[Music]

00:50:25

david that question was directed to you

00:50:26

[Music]

00:50:30

i mean look i think there were plenty of

00:50:33

polls if you go back like 10 20 30 years

00:50:36

there's a media organization there's a

00:50:38

guy named brent bizzell who is doing

00:50:39

studies of media bias and if you were to

00:50:42

actually look at

00:50:44

how people in the media voted it was 90

00:50:47

plus percent democrat i mean

00:50:49

it's it's been it's been a thing for a

00:50:51

long time and now it came to a head

00:50:55

i would say

00:50:56

during the trump administration because

00:50:59

the

00:51:00

the press i think in going after trump

00:51:03

gave up something important which is

00:51:06

they gave up their objectivity i mean

00:51:09

they flatly would i mean it was you know

00:51:12

whether you want to call it trump ranger

00:51:13

syndrome or whatever i mean they now saw

00:51:15

it as their duty not to report

00:51:18

objectively both sides but they would

00:51:20

just flatly declare

00:51:23

uh things that trump were saying were

00:51:25

false you know you still see this today

00:51:28

i'm not saying that all the things he

00:51:30

said were true maybe he did say false

00:51:31

things but normally if you wanted to say

00:51:33

that one person's saying something false

00:51:35

you would get a source

00:51:37

on the other side and then you would

00:51:38

quote them

00:51:40

and then that's how you would basically

00:51:41

construct the article

00:51:43

and you had the press basically almost

00:51:46

really become unhinged

00:51:48

and i think they they kind of rip the

00:51:49

empire jersey off their backs um to in

00:51:52

order to chase after trump and i think

00:51:54

you know ultimately they got him um

00:51:56

trump was a one-term president but i

00:51:59

think that it's really contributed to

00:52:01

the polarized media environment we have

00:52:03

now any way to get that referee jersey

00:52:05

back on the press no no

00:52:09

sex

00:52:10

well how i mean they you know

00:52:13

the problem is the journalism and media

00:52:15

have changed so much the nature of press

00:52:17

has changed yeah right it's fragmenting

00:52:19

and splintering much like everything

00:52:21

else

00:52:22

there's um yeah we talk about this at

00:52:24

some of our companies i keep referring

00:52:25

to our companies because i know a lot of

00:52:26

people are here today but you know we

00:52:28

talk about the fragmentation of food

00:52:30

brands for example or the fragmentation

00:52:32

of people's kind of individual media

00:52:34

selection the same is happening in the

00:52:36

press

00:52:37

where you know you're now kind of going

00:52:39

to pick and choose the five articles you

00:52:41

want to read as opposed to buying one of

00:52:43

three newspapers and reading everything

00:52:44

in that newspaper each day

00:52:46

and i think that's fueling this which is

00:52:48

not necessarily in my opinion i've said

00:52:49

this before not necessarily a

00:52:51

constructed or designed decision of the

00:52:54

quote-unquote press but it's more a

00:52:56

phenomenon that arises from the

00:52:58

individuals that consume the media and

00:52:59

they make selections and that selection

00:53:01

bias ends up driving the clicks and the

00:53:03

votes and the counts and the prints of

00:53:05

that particular form of media and guess

00:53:07

what we end up choosing the stuff that

00:53:08

triggers us more and makes us feel some

00:53:10

stronger emotion and then it creates a

00:53:12

feedback loop and that's where this is

00:53:13

coming from and i think it's enabled by

00:53:16

the internet not necessarily bad actors

00:53:18

at platform companies but it's it's

00:53:20

inevitable in a decentralized world or a

00:53:23

platformed world that's why and also

00:53:25

part of the story is advertising went

00:53:27

away as an option as google and facebook

00:53:28

took over those markets so they went

00:53:30

subscription and how do you get

00:53:31

subscribers you pick a side

00:53:33

you can't really go down the middle i

00:53:35

want to feel something emotional when i

00:53:36

click and buy and spend 99 cents or

00:53:38

whatever like it's not i just i don't

00:53:39

want to like be bored to death

00:53:41

everything is so stimulating in this

00:53:42

digital world like i want to be

00:53:43

stimulated right so there's a really

00:53:44

interesting poll that came out today

00:53:46

that speaks to this which is um they

00:53:48

they ask you know people on the left to

00:53:50

the right what do you think the

00:53:51

country's biggest problem is um

00:53:53

on the left the number one answer was

00:53:55

trump supporters

00:53:57

you know so

00:53:59

you know now on on the right it was a

00:54:01

little bit more varied it was the

00:54:02

taliban it was china you know um

00:54:05

it was

00:54:06

what should we be most concerned about

00:54:08

objectively from each of you what do you

00:54:09

think the top three things we should be

00:54:11

concerned about i think as americans i i

00:54:13

don't think the right answer for either

00:54:15

side is like the other half of america

00:54:18

i think i think that happens because you

00:54:20

haven't varied your information diet

00:54:22

you're sitting there watching one

00:54:24

station on cable news and you're being

00:54:27

fed you're being basically being fed

00:54:29

this stuff that the others demonizing

00:54:31

the other side right and

00:54:33

you know the other side is you know is

00:54:35

being otherwise

00:54:37

all right let's take two more questions

00:54:38

nico

00:54:40

uh chamoth this goes back to a point

00:54:42

that you made about entrepreneurs not

00:54:43

being enough and bringing the government

00:54:45

i think a lot of the topics covered are

00:54:47

bringing a lot of government uh support

00:54:49

um or involvement so um from y'all's

00:54:52

perspective how do we bring in uh maybe

00:54:55

new incentives on the government side to

00:54:56

bring in

00:54:57

younger people smarter people people who

00:54:59

are going to make better change than

00:55:01

what we may be seeing today

00:55:03

i mean if you look at country countries

00:55:06

like singapore their solution was

00:55:09

to elevate the role of government to be

00:55:11

so high

00:55:12

from a societal value perspective it was

00:55:14

an incredibly respected role it was well

00:55:17

compensated and it was a thing that was

00:55:20

a real jumping off point to

00:55:22

other positions of true influence

00:55:25

here

00:55:26

we started with that idea so like you

00:55:28

know when you think about what's what

00:55:30

played out in the 1940s 50s and 60s i

00:55:33

think we had a lot of that but then the

00:55:35

problem was we had a handful of things

00:55:38

that completely perverted the cycle the

00:55:40

cherry on the cake i think was citizens

00:55:42

united that basically just tore the

00:55:44

band-aid off

00:55:46

and we are where we are where

00:55:48

it's not clear today that the most

00:55:51

intellectually curious people are in

00:55:52

government nor does it even get its fair

00:55:54

share okay so what do you do about it

00:55:58

i think that there's an element of it

00:56:00

which is you have to play the game on

00:56:01

the field which is folks like us what i

00:56:04

would encourage all of you to do is if

00:56:05

you're in a position

00:56:07

to actually accumulate political power

00:56:09

you have a responsibility to do so and

00:56:12

it is directly correlated with money

00:56:15

and so as you find com found companies

00:56:17

and you get liquidity

00:56:19

you have a responsibility to be engaged

00:56:22

because you will have a louder voice i'm

00:56:24

not saying that it's right i'm not

00:56:26

saying that it's fair but it's a game on

00:56:28

the field the more you spend the more

00:56:30

time you get with all these folks and

00:56:31

you should use that

00:56:33

beyond that

00:56:35

we have to find a way of orienting them

00:56:37

so once you get a seat at the table i

00:56:39

think it's about showing them that

00:56:41

there's these nuanced laws that are a

00:56:43

lot less sexy than they want to talk

00:56:44

about but that actually have real impact

00:56:47

sex what do you think of senators

00:56:48

getting paid like ceos would that help

00:56:50

solve the problem if people could look

00:56:51

at it and say well you paid a half

00:56:53

million dollars in that job or a million

00:56:54

dollars in that job would we draw a

00:56:56

different caliber of person

00:56:58

um i wouldn't be opposed to that i

00:57:00

wouldn't be opposed to people in

00:57:01

government that the top people making

00:57:03

more money i don't know that though that

00:57:05

that really would be the thing that

00:57:07

attracts a higher i mean i think most of

00:57:09

those people go into it for for power

00:57:12

and um

00:57:13

you know the problem isn't that

00:57:15

they're not smart i mean some of them i

00:57:17

guess aren't very smart but you also

00:57:19

have the lack of um

00:57:21

you know they since they can't make

00:57:22

money when they're in they have to

00:57:24

figure out how to make it on the way out

00:57:25

you know yeah before yeah probably

00:57:27

absolutely

00:57:28

giving them a pay increase is not

00:57:29

something i would be opposed to um i

00:57:31

mean it's something that's hard for them

00:57:32

to do because it's easy to campaign

00:57:35

against politicians who want to pay

00:57:36

themselves more but yeah i'd rather pay

00:57:38

them more salary so they're less

00:57:41

beholden to the special interests when

00:57:43

they get out of office

00:57:44

um but i don't think that by itself is

00:57:47

gonna solve the problem

00:57:49

let's take another question

00:57:51

so my question is how do we get both

00:57:53

sides to agree right we want to get back

00:57:55

to the truth and in science and

00:57:56

economics we have a way to measure the

00:57:58

truth in science design scientific

00:58:00

experiment and you measure it against

00:58:01

reality so you both sides can agree

00:58:03

what's reality in economics you either

00:58:06

make money you don't make money right

00:58:07

you can measure it against something so

00:58:09

what can we do to get back to both sides

00:58:12

agreeing on what is true i mean i think

00:58:14

the challenge is it takes more than 15

00:58:17

seconds to walk someone through the

00:58:18

experimental design and the outcome and

00:58:20

the and the action to be taken as a

00:58:23

result same with any i mean

00:58:25

i i don't know what the viewership is of

00:58:27

the economist but i'm pretty sure it's

00:58:28

been going down zero right but this is

00:58:31

why markets work better thank you for my

00:58:34

subscription

00:58:35

then politics

00:58:36

right this is why markets work better

00:58:38

than politics because freeburg in order

00:58:40

for you to pursue what you want to

00:58:41

pursue you don't have to convince a

00:58:43

majority of the country to support it

00:58:46

you just need to find one person who's

00:58:47

willing to fund it

00:58:49

you know you raise the money so

00:58:51

and and the same is true for every

00:58:52

startup and that's why progress is made

00:58:54

by startups and not a lot of progress is

00:58:56

made by this is actually why by the way

00:58:58

that's why i don't think any of us spend

00:58:59

time in politics even though we talk

00:59:01

about it all the time no but because it

00:59:02

influences our decision making i think

00:59:04

politics has done more to rekindle my

00:59:07

interest

00:59:08

in

00:59:09

all things technology and specifically

00:59:11

web 3.0 and d5 than anything else

00:59:13

because these last four years have

00:59:16

completely

00:59:17

convinced me that we need to find a very

00:59:20

decentralized way of building the future

00:59:23

it's going to be ugly though i am i i am

00:59:25

confused i mean i am convinced that the

00:59:26

next 80 years is exactly that like you

00:59:28

know in the physical world there's a

00:59:29

bunch of stuff that's going to happen in

00:59:31

the social world it's going to be

00:59:32

related to this defy decentralization

00:59:34

movement that's underway and it's

00:59:36

underweight because of what we're

00:59:36

hearing about happening in china what

00:59:38

we're talking about happening in the u.s

00:59:39

and you know i mean i don't know i

00:59:43

won't give the context i was hanging out

00:59:45

with some people the other day

00:59:47

they were they were uh working on my

00:59:49

house and they um they were telling me

00:59:50

every single one of them

00:59:52

were trading criticisms uh every single

00:59:55

one of them were trading crypto and the

00:59:56

whole conversation you're really

00:59:57

expensive on the whole the whole

01:00:00

the whole conversation was about crypto

01:00:03

and i don't trust the us dollar and

01:00:04

everything's inflating away and i i

01:00:06

think

01:00:08

politically we're not really awake to

01:00:10

the fact that this is a broad

01:00:12

meaningful social movement it's playing

01:00:15

out with crypto bubbles and nfts and

01:00:17

other nonsense but those are short-lived

01:00:18

bubbles those are little feedback loops

01:00:20

frothing is happening as the tide rises

01:00:23

um and i do think that that is going to

01:00:25

be kind of the big pushing force

01:00:27

david is why china said no more crypto

01:00:29

what are your votes that's the big

01:00:31

battle and by the way everyone's going

01:00:32

to end up saying that let me come back

01:00:33

to crypto just one point on on movement

01:00:36

so there's political movements and then

01:00:37

there's kind of uh economic movements

01:00:40

like private

01:00:41

initiative i wrote a blog post called

01:00:43

your startup as a movement in which i

01:00:44

compared

01:00:46

being i said a good start founder is an

01:00:48

evangelist for their cause it is almost

01:00:49

like leading a political movement you

01:00:51

have to go out there kind of have a

01:00:52

stump speech and evangelize people to

01:00:54

your cause which you know is ideally a

01:00:58

larger mission than just whatever you

01:01:01

know benefits your company right this is

01:01:02

why elon has been able to

01:01:05

um you know frankly why he's been able

01:01:07

to sell

01:01:08

uh so many cars without spending a dime

01:01:10

on marketing is because he creates a

01:01:12

much larger movement than just what's

01:01:14

good for tesla right but the the

01:01:17

difference i think between

01:01:19

uh sort of a private movement and a

01:01:21

political movement is this is that when

01:01:23

you're successful as the leader of a

01:01:26

company everyone imitates you so now

01:01:28

because elon's successful everyone else

01:01:30

is trying to introduce their own

01:01:31

electric cars whereas in politics

01:01:34

whenever you start a political

01:01:35

organization you know an equal and

01:01:37

opposite organization will spring up to

01:01:39

oppose you and it's just very hard to

01:01:42

get anything done maybe that's the way

01:01:44

it should be because we don't want

01:01:45

people imposing their political will on

01:01:48

us but this is why i i am a big fan of

01:01:51

startups and smart young people pursuing

01:01:54

startups and not politics what do you

01:01:56

think about decentralized crypto

01:01:58

you know finance uh in america should we

01:02:02

should we allow it should we tax it

01:02:04

we should clearly allow it because um

01:02:06

this whole crypto stack this whole uh

01:02:09

decentralized finance stack that's being

01:02:11

built could very well be the future of

01:02:13

finance and we certainly want to be

01:02:15

ahead of that curve maybe there's some

01:02:17

bubbles in here in that but i think

01:02:19

what's really interesting there's

01:02:20

certainly a lot of really smart

01:02:22

engineers coders entrepreneurs who are

01:02:24

going to that area and so i think it'd

01:02:26

be a mistake just to discount it i think

01:02:28

we want america to be on the forefront

01:02:30

of that technology wave just like every

01:02:33

other technology wave i'll make a

01:02:34

prediction my prediction is in the next

01:02:37

20 years the d5 movement will catalyze

01:02:41

a movement against the open internet

01:02:43

and it is because state actors will

01:02:45

compete with private actors for this

01:02:47

battle between centralized institutional

01:02:50

state-based control systems like i want

01:02:52

to have a know your customer if you want

01:02:54

to buy crypto in the us versus all of

01:02:56

these offshore places where i can go and

01:02:57

sign up get a bunch of money and trade

01:02:59

forever and never pay the irs a cent and

01:03:01

live my life in the ether and the open

01:03:04

internet will start to get threatened

01:03:06

we've seen this in the past where proxy

01:03:08

servers and dns servers got you know

01:03:10

requests from the doj and take down

01:03:12

notices and if that starts to happen

01:03:14

where all the servers and all the fiber

01:03:16

lines that are running in and out of the

01:03:17

us and elsewhere

01:03:18

start to get kind of tackled like china

01:03:20

has a closed internet um you could start

01:03:22

to see this become a really ugly battle

01:03:24

that starts to play out and i think

01:03:26

we're not too far i mean i don't know if

01:03:28

you guys agree but i think the open

01:03:29

internet is kind of going to be the

01:03:30

great battleground to resolve this well

01:03:33

the original battle was over information

01:03:35

and now it's over money and the dollar

01:03:37

well i think there's a really

01:03:38

interesting point there which is you

01:03:39

know i remember the late 90s early 2000s

01:03:42

where the big technology investing wave

01:03:44

was all about connecting people and

01:03:47

goods into seamless global networks and

01:03:50

that's where all the investment went

01:03:52

today and and behind that was sort of

01:03:54

this utopian idea that the internet was

01:03:56

going to break down barriers and

01:03:58

tribalism and remove geographic borders

01:04:00

and create a single connected world well

01:04:03

what what exactly is the bet on crypto

01:04:06

today it's a bet

01:04:07

that

01:04:08

fiat currencies are going to collapse

01:04:10

and deteriorate be undermined by money

01:04:13

printing the u.s dollar will stop being

01:04:14

the world's reserve currency most likely

01:04:17

that individuals need to be protected

01:04:19

against the rise of the authoritarian

01:04:21

state these are the big themes of crypto

01:04:24

and if you think of major technology

01:04:26

investing waves as essentially a

01:04:27

prediction market on what smart people

01:04:30

think the future is going to look like

01:04:31

it's pretty scary that we're going from

01:04:33

a utopian

01:04:34

technology investing wave to a very

01:04:36

dystopian technology investor destroys

01:04:38

capitalism

01:04:40

you know if you think about what

01:04:41

capitalism is it's not just a return on

01:04:43

investment but it's the tonnage of

01:04:45

dollars

01:04:46

right so anyone who's a big investor

01:04:48

here

01:04:49

um i'll pick out jan because he's done

01:04:50

an incredible job

01:04:52

you know you're putting more and more

01:04:54

dollars in for more and more dollars out

01:04:56

that's the pressure brad you know these

01:04:58

guys are under enormous pressure to get

01:05:00

tonnage of dollars through the system in

01:05:02

a productive way and so you know these

01:05:04

guys are at the forefront um

01:05:07

but when you look at you know most of

01:05:09

the projects on solana they're seeded

01:05:11

with a few million dollars and these are

01:05:13

60 80 billion dollar market cap projects

01:05:17

um and so i don't know how

01:05:19

capitalism survives in that world number

01:05:22

one number two governance goes

01:05:24

completely out the window because you're

01:05:25

essentially replacing

01:05:27

um a set of

01:05:29

norms that we've all agreed to about

01:05:31

what a company is it's an llc or it's a

01:05:34

c corp that is incorporated with laws

01:05:37

there is recourse for you you can go to

01:05:39

these places and sue them

01:05:42

now it's a dow

01:05:43

it's a bunch of rules written in a

01:05:45

blockchain here's how it all works

01:05:47

here's how i make my hr decisions here's

01:05:49

this here's that here's the other thing

01:05:51

um and then you basically decompose

01:05:53

everything into a service where it's

01:05:55

recursive

01:05:56

you cannot build with me

01:05:58

unless you make yourself buildable to

01:06:00

others

01:06:02

okay so

01:06:05

when you add all these three things

01:06:06

together i think to me it's the most

01:06:10

incredibly positively disruptive force i

01:06:12

have seen

01:06:13

i think it will destroy wealth i frankly

01:06:16

couldn't give a [ __ ] um and i think it's

01:06:19

better for the world let's take a final

01:06:20

question

01:06:22

thanks jason um and maybe to connect

01:06:24

some of the dots

01:06:26

you know i think the

01:06:28

the power of the individual

01:06:30

perhaps

01:06:31

reflected in crypto has never been

01:06:32

greater relative to the power of

01:06:34

government

01:06:35

right thomas friedman talked about super

01:06:37

empowered individuals 20 years ago

01:06:39

um

01:06:41

whether you're a terrorist or whether

01:06:42

you're a capitalist the power of the

01:06:44

individual is is is

01:06:47

never been greater

01:06:49

the four of you started a movement

01:06:51

earlier this year

01:06:53

around

01:06:54

what was going on in california

01:06:56

right a lot of people got excited about

01:06:59

the recall about what might come next

01:07:02

i think where we fail as entrepreneurs

01:07:05

where we fail as allocators

01:07:08

is

01:07:08

we had no strategic plan for california

01:07:13

we have no strategic alternative plan

01:07:15

for america

01:07:17

the parties have platforms

01:07:20

why don't we put together a strategic

01:07:23

plan for this state a strategic plan for

01:07:26

the country that brings in these folks

01:07:29

the production board is a strategic plan

01:07:32

for winning world war ii

01:07:35

right and so to chamas point that it's

01:07:38

incumbent upon us to get involved i

01:07:40

think it's incumbent upon us to step up

01:07:42

what it means to be involved

01:07:45

it's not hire a lobbyist in dc it's not

01:07:48

you know

01:07:49

just show up and vote

01:07:51

but i actually think that the voice that

01:07:53

you have carries a lot of responsibility

01:07:56

and i think that i would have liked to

01:07:58

have seen the all-in step up and do

01:08:00

something to catalyze a strategic plan

01:08:03

for california right not necessarily

01:08:05

endorse a candidate but let a candidate

01:08:07

stand on top of that strategic plan if

01:08:09

we really think about

01:08:10

decentralized right

01:08:14

i'll let you wrong i'm really honest

01:08:15

with you why didn't you run for governor

01:08:17

you're supposed to run for governor yeah

01:08:19

you [ __ ] it up we don't we don't have

01:08:21

as four people our act together

01:08:24

we are

01:08:25

still learning

01:08:27

because we

01:08:28

are like anybody else in a startup you

01:08:30

stumbled into some success there's about

01:08:31

a million people that will listen watch

01:08:34

consume this a week

01:08:36

and

01:08:37

all the polling or all of the data that

01:08:39

you pull it's like new york san

01:08:40

francisco dc

01:08:42

we don't internalize that and use it for

01:08:44

any strategic intent they're still if i

01:08:47

could just to be honest with you they're

01:08:48

still infighting bitching complaining

01:08:51

you know all kinds of [ __ ] nonsense

01:08:53

where if you saw the inside of it you'd

01:08:54

be like hey [ __ ] wake the [ __ ] up

01:08:57

get a plan together and act we don't

01:08:59

have that brad

01:09:00

and we disagree on a lot

01:09:02

that's okay

01:09:03

but what we but we we can't get we can't

01:09:06

get away from ourselves we are learning

01:09:08

how to do that

01:09:09

um and we've had a bunch of instances

01:09:11

where we've had to come together and say

01:09:12

hey our friendship is the most important

01:09:15

so let's [ __ ] sort this out and we've

01:09:16

always been able to sort it out we're

01:09:20

going to get pushed to what every other

01:09:22

you know startup founder story gets

01:09:24

pushed to which is now what

01:09:26

are we just going to sit here babylon

01:09:29

for another [ __ ] 3-4 years through a

01:09:30

pandemic and you know maybe you get to 2

01:09:33

million views 3 million views maybe

01:09:34

spotify gives you a deal and you can

01:09:36

make 10 20 million bucks a year who the

01:09:38

[ __ ] cares

01:09:40

so you're right we have a responsibility

01:09:42

to figure out

01:09:44

if we are four reasonable voices

01:09:47

in the sea

01:09:48

and people are attracted to those voices

01:09:50

what do we use it for

01:09:52

and we've talked about it but we haven't

01:09:54

put

01:09:55

pen to paper and finalized

01:09:57

by the way we

01:09:58

spent about 90 minutes a week on this

01:10:00

podcast and then

01:10:04

i also think we've also tried to

01:10:06

experiment a little bit david and i

01:10:08

collaborated on getting chessa boudin

01:10:11

recalled but in different ways david

01:10:13

sacks david sacks literally helped them

01:10:16

start a recall chesabooting campaign

01:10:19

gary tan who listens to the pod started

01:10:21

his own with democrats and then i

01:10:24

tweeted anybody want to donate for an

01:10:26

investigative journalist to cover

01:10:28

chester boone's office because we

01:10:29

couldn't find anybody covering it

01:10:31

60 000 showed up for that gofundme page

01:10:34

and we just gave it to a journalist who

01:10:36

started this week and she's reported

01:10:38

in the first 10 days on three different

01:10:40

like

01:10:41

tragic cases in san francisco that have

01:10:43

not been followed up on by the dea's

01:10:45

office so that was just a little you

01:10:47

know example of dipping our toes and

01:10:49

obviously chamath

01:10:50

you know being uh pushed to run for

01:10:52

governor caught fire like we thought

01:10:55

that was a joke it was literally

01:10:56

somebody who listens to the pod put the

01:10:58

website up he tweeted as a joke and then

01:11:00

all of a sudden it's on cnbc but the

01:11:03

best thing has been the feedback we've

01:11:04

gotten from people like you brad and

01:11:05

everybody in the audience bill gurley a

01:11:07

lot of other people here and uh we have

01:11:09

thought about hey what do we use this

01:11:11

platform for in terms of making change

01:11:13

like that and i think that that'll be

01:11:14

your tool it's the right question and

01:11:15

the right challenge brad it is

01:11:17

appreciate it i appreciate it

01:11:18

all right david we should let everybody

01:11:20

get to pizza i want to say thanks to the

01:11:21

besties to jay cal jamal sacks

01:11:32

yeah and um

01:11:34

just thanks for listening to the show

01:11:35

thanks to friedberg if um you want to

01:11:37

make things truly uncomfortable uh david

01:11:39

loves to give a long embrace a nice hug

01:11:42

tell him come on you're his favorite

01:11:44

family

01:11:45

this [ __ ]

01:11:47

he there's another friend who shall not

01:11:48

be named

01:11:50

who is a side hugger nobody likes us who

01:11:53

likes a side hugger anybody side hugging

01:11:55

you want to get the full frontal hug

01:11:56

when you full frontal hog with sacks

01:11:58

give it to him but i had to force him

01:12:00

today because he comes into you like

01:12:01

stand up i'll show you he comes in like

01:12:03

this

01:12:04

and then he does this the hip hug like

01:12:06

he does he does kind of to him yeah it's

01:12:07

called asparagus so nice to see you

01:12:10

it's called that's burgers

01:12:12

looks like he's going to a night at the

01:12:14

roxbury absolutely

01:12:23

i mean you look horrible thank you thank

01:12:26

you really [ __ ] horrible okay i

01:12:28

appreciate it is that your fault

01:12:30

here we go all right let's wrap it up

01:12:32

all right uh well this has been the

01:12:34

all-in podcast and enjoy your time at

01:12:36

the

01:12:41

[Music]

01:12:49

the conference and they've just gone

01:12:50

crazy

01:12:54

[Music]

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Episode Highlights

Ivermectin Controversy Unpacked
A deep dive into the misinformation surrounding ivermectin and its portrayal in media.
“This was basically a doctored up conjured article.”
@ 02m 37s
September 14, 2021
Double Standards in Censorship
Discussing the unequal application of censorship across political spectrums.
“There's two sets of rules.”
@ 10m 07s
September 14, 2021
The Cost of Testing
Questions arise about who will pay for weekly COVID tests if vaccination is mandated.
“Who's going to pay for those tests?”
@ 19m 14s
September 14, 2021
A Wartime Mentality Needed
We lack a wartime mentality to address climate change and other crises effectively.
“We should be acting like we're in a wartime phase.”
@ 24m 48s
September 14, 2021
Regulatory Capture in Healthcare
The ratio of administrators to doctors in the U.S. healthcare system is staggering.
“900 to 1 administrators to doctors?”
@ 25m 52s
September 14, 2021
Entrepreneurship vs. Government Solutions
The discussion centers on whether entrepreneurs can solve societal problems better than government. "We have massive entrepreneurship in the country... it's not going to happen by government."
“Entrepreneurs in startups are our only solution.”
@ 38m 11s
September 14, 2021
The Cost of War vs. Venture Capital
A comparison of the two trillion dollars spent in Afghanistan to the investment in venture capital over the same period. "For the same amount of money, we created the entire technology ecosystem as we see it today."
“How did we squander so much money in Afghanistan?”
@ 43m 13s
September 14, 2021
The Role of Government in Innovation
Discussing how to elevate the role of government to attract smarter individuals for change.
“We started with that idea in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.”
@ 55m 26s
September 14, 2021
Decentralized Finance and the Future
Exploring the potential of decentralized finance and its implications for the future of finance.
“The DeFi movement will catalyze a movement against the open internet.”
@ 01h 02m 37s
September 14, 2021
The Challenge of Political Engagement
Addressing the need for a strategic plan to engage in political processes effectively.
“We have no strategic plan for California or America.”
@ 01h 07m 13s
September 14, 2021
That's Burgers
A quirky mention of a burger place adds a fun twist to the conversation.
@ 01h 12m 10s
September 14, 2021
Night at the Roxbury
A nostalgic reference that brings a smile to the audience.
@ 01h 12m 14s
September 14, 2021

Episode Quotes

Key Moments

Media Misinformation02:30
Ivermectin Debate02:37
Testing Mandate Debate19:14
Healthcare System Issues25:52
Climate Change Action36:14
Political Responsibility56:04
That's Burgers1:12:10
Wrap-Up1:12:32

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown

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September 04, 2021

01:24:00

E45: Theranos & VC fraud risks, China bans video games, Texas SB8, Apple app store, CA fires, Rogan

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October 16, 2021

01:33:25

E51: Supply Chain Shortages, Inflation, DeSantis, Ted Sarandos Netflix Memo, Cancel Culture, Fan Q&A

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January 22, 2026

45:04

Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers on dismantling the "Censorship Industrial Complex"

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01:06:37

E3: Modern Cold War, politicizing the pandemic & more with David Sacks & David Friedberg

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January 08, 2022

01:06:39

E62: Elizabeth Holmes verdict, fraud origins & takeaways, navigating "The Great Markdown" & more

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January 27, 2023

01:38:30

E113: DOJ tries to break up Google, vaccine questions, Ukraine escalation & more

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January 22, 2022

01:37:14

E64: Antitrust standards & enforcement, tech repricing, lab leak obfuscation, E63 reactions & more

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October 16, 2020

01:04:12

E10: Twitter & Facebook botch censorship (again), the publisher vs. distributor debate & more

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01:33:32

E134: Ukraine counteroffensive, China tensions, COVID Patient Zero, RFK Jr reaction & more

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01:10:33

E24: Markets trend down, political pandemic manipulation, stimulus breakdown, biological Patriot Act

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October 09, 2021

01:23:12

E50: Crypto investing deep dive, Facebook's whistleblower fallout, Chappelle's new special & more

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01:31:14

E1: US Response to COVID-19 & Impact on Startups, VC & Public Markets with David Friedberg