Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody, we have an exciting show for you

today. This is the 15th and the final episode from the all in

summit 2022. I wanted to take a quick moment to thank my team.

They worked tirelessly over 100 days to make the event magical

for everybody who was able to make it. Thanks to the audience

for coming. Next year, we’ll try to have twice as many of you

there. Just a quick thank you to Amber, Ashley, Jackie, Nick,

fresh marine Molly, Big Mike, Andre times to Rachel reporting

producer, Justin, Jamie, Jimmy, Dave, my brother, Josh,

everybody who came and supported the event. We had an incredible

crew, we had an incredible time. And of course, I would be

remiss if I didn’t thank the amazing speakers who joined us

from all around the world. So candid, so insightful. My pal

Bill Gurley, Brett Gerstner, Adina, Mark, Candace, Tim, Elon,

Antonio, Nate, Ryan, Claire, my boy, boy, Antonio Garcia,

Martinez, Joe Lonsdale, James, Matt, IEB, Glenn Greenwald, and

of course, today’s guest, the one and the only Mr. Palmer

lucky. And most of all, I’d like to thank my besties to mount

sacks and freeberg who did an amazing job of hosting the

event. Now, a little preamble here before we start this

episode. Many of you have heard that this is a controversial

episode. It is a little controversial, there may be a

little twist in it. So I will be coming back after Palmer Lucky’s

talk to give you a little context because it might get a

little confusing. I don’t want to spoil the surprise for you. So

enjoy this episode. But before we go to this episode, a lot of

you have questions. You have questions about the future of

the all in podcast. And those questions are important. And

they’re never going to be answered. They’re never going to

be answered. But just so you know, I’m not leaving. I’m not

leaving. I’m not leaving.

The show goes on. This is my home. They’re gonna need a

wrecking ball to take me out of here. They’re gonna need to send

in the National Guard because I ain’t going nowhere. The show

goes on.

Let your winners ride.

Brain man David.

So my name is Palmer Lucky. I’ve founded two companies. My first

was a company called Oculus VR that I founded when I was 19

years old and living in a camper trailer. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Sold that to for a few billion dollars to Facebook and then got

fired a few years later and then started Andrew because I wanted

to work in the national security space for a variety of reasons.

And I’ll get into some of those reasons today. So the technology

industry for many years has prided itself on being the first

to understand where things are heading so that they can build

the things that are going to be relevant for the future. On

national security, though, and on the rise of our strategic

adversaries, it was one of the last industries to realize where

things were going due to a variety of ideological reasons,

but also business reasons. That’s still Silicon Valley

didn’t just predict the importance of defense in the

2020s. It largely took the exact wrong position, the opposite

position. First of all, you have the obvious examples like big

technology companies explicitly refusing to do work with the

Department of Defense. Google is one big example. But the worst

examples are really in the startups that don’t exist

because people didn’t want to even get into such a

controversial space, lest it ruin their careers. You know,

when I started Anduril, I had already sold a company for

billions of dollars and investors still didn’t want to

invest. I still had a tough time in a lot of meetings with

venture capitalists. And none of the conversations with VCs that

I had were about my ability to hire or execute or build

products. Everyone believed that I could do those things, even

the ones who didn’t like me much. The vast majority of

conversations that we had were about whether or not it was even

ethically okay to ever build a company that would build weapons.

And the people who turned us down, the ones who decided not

to invest in Anduril, actually believed that we had a good team

and good people and good product market fit. The issue is that

they thought that it was inherently wrong to build tools

capable of being used for violence because they believed

that the idea of deterring violence through having a strong

arsenal was fundamentally obsolete and itself wrong. Even,

you know, imagine how hard it would have been to raise money

if I hadn’t founded Oculus. It would have been impossible. Even

after we raised money and got traction, the negativity

continued. There was a really interesting cover story in

Bloomberg in 2019 that called us tech’s most controversial

startup. This was a year where TikTok was banning users for

calling attention to the Uyghur genocide in China and banning

users for posting homosexual content. This is a year in which

Adam Neumann paid himself tens of millions of dollars for the

right to use the word we. It’s a year that Uber was under a

federal investigation for its workplace culture immediately

after a board coup that ejected much of the leadership. It’s a

time where Facebook was getting hauled in front of Congress to

testify. But of course, as a tiny defense company making a

handful of purely defensive base security systems that committed

the crime of building technology for the military, Anduril was

the one that claimed the belt for the world’s most

controversial technology company. I’d say that the war in

Europe has totally shattered the idea that we live at the end

of history. Every few decades, we start to believe that

economic ties have ended all prospect of war, and every few

decades, we’re reminded that this isn’t true. That’s a very

popular idea, especially in D.C., that we live at what they

call the end of history. It’s this idea that economic ties and

interconnections make the prospect of conflict

fundamentally unthinkable, ignoring the fact that many

people see this as a matter of destiny, not economics. In 1909,

English economist and politician Norman Angell published an

entire book called The Great Illusion, and it was entirely

about how war in Europe was impossible, and that spending

money on building militaries that could deter conflict was a

waste of time that could be better spent building utopia. He

specifically argued that any European country annexing

another would be as absurd as London annexing Hertford, and

the book was actually the number one bestseller in 1909. Now,

we’ve had some version of this argument for a few decades now,

ever since the Cold War started, and luckily, a lot of people are

waking up. But unfortunately, it’s not because they’ve come to

a reasoned decision based on the fundamental principles at play.

It’s because right now, supporting the military,

supporting defense, and supporting Ukraine in particular,

has become the current thing. And in current year, current

thing is the thing that you have to support, regardless of what

you think of the underpinnings. Unfortunately, for issues like

defense and national security, the stakes are too high, and the

relevant timeline is far too long for people to start caring

about things at the moment that they need to start caring about

them. So today, I want to talk a little bit about why I started

Androal, and why you should all think exactly the same way that

I do. So why I founded Androal. I thought that I would work on

virtual reality for my entire life. I had no plans on leaving

Oculus at all, and I love virtual reality. I loved virtual

reality. I started Oculus as a teenager, and I would have been

there for another 50 years. I said as much less than 30 days

before I was fired. There’s a lot of reasons for that, some of

which I’ll get into later. But the decision was made for me. I

gave $9,000 against the wrong political candidate, and it was

pretty unpopular in Silicon Valley. Before I worked on

Oculus, I actually worked in an army affiliate research center

on a program called Brave Mind, which was an army project to

treat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder

using virtual reality exposure therapy, basically putting them

into virtual reality environments that would set off

their symptoms, and then under the guidance of a licensed

therapist who was also in the simulation, they could be taught

coping skills that would reduce their dependency on medication

and medical aid. It was a really fantastic program. I wasn’t

doing anything important on it. I was just a lab technician, a

cable monkey. But I got a lot of exposure to both the virtual

reality technology side, but also how broken defense

procurement was, how slow it was, how old a lot of the

technology was, how the incentives were totally

misaligned. And ever since then, I’d always wanted to make a

contribution to national security, if I could. Just took

a few years for the right set of circumstances to come up. The

defense industry in America is fundamentally broken. Before

even getting into the specific problems of our defense

industry, the United States has the strongest commercial

artificial intelligence industry in the world, followed closely

by China. But at the same time, the United States military and

the prime contractors that dominate the military industrial

complex have none of the right tools, talent, or incentives to

apply autonomy to the systems they do. There’s no reason to

save costs because they don’t get paid for making things that

work. They get paid for doing work. And in a world where you

get more prestige and more money by having more people working

on bigger things, there’s no reason to use autonomy to reduce

costs and increase capability. The U.S. military is well behind

the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in the implementation of

artificial intelligence. There’s better AI in John Deere

tractors than there is in any U.S. military vehicle. There’s

better computer vision in the Snapchat app on your phone than

any system that the U.S. Department of Defense has

deployed. And other countries are taking notice of this.

Countries like Russia and China do not want to compete with us

toe-to-toe with the tools that we have. People will make fun of

China and say, oh, they don’t have a blue water navy. They

only have one aircraft carrier coming up on two. They could

never fight us. The reality is that’s not where they’re going

to fight us. They’re going to arm proxies or, if they engage

directly, they’re going to use technologies that give them an

asymmetrical advantage in the areas where we are the least

competent. These are the areas where they are putting a lot of

their resources. The reason that Vladimir Putin is saying that

the ruler of the world is going to be the country that masters

artificial intelligence is not because he thinks that they are

going to lose at this. It’s because he thinks that that is

one of the only ways that they’re going to be able to get

the best of us. Now, the people who are building technology for

our military, the large defense primes, I won’t name any names

because I don’t want to rustle too many feathers in that area.

You never know who’s in the room. But the people who are

building the technology for the United States military, the

people who spend all their time do not have access to the best

talent. They do not have access to the people that the

technology industry has largely had a monopoly on in areas like

autonomy, artificial intelligence, sensor fusion,

high-end networking. And then at the same time, the people who

can build good software, the ones who do work in these

technology companies are largely prohibited from doing so. And

even if they’re working on something that the military

buys, let’s say all the people at Apple who are working on an

iPhone that can be sold to the U.S. Air Force, that same iPhone

is also being sold to Russian intelligence. That same iPhone

is being sold to the Chinese Navy. Working on technologies

that help the United States don’t give us a strategic or

competitive advantage if everyone else is getting the

exact same thing. The other problem to consider is that

asymmetric technologies like artificial intelligence are

almost certainly going to empower nations that we aren’t

thinking about today. Some of them are a little more obvious

like Iran. It was a close U.S. ally until the late 1970s and

today obviously is in a very different position. There’s

about a dozen countries in Africa, South America and Asia

that were they to acquire extremely advanced artificial

intelligence either through coincidence or by proxy arming

would almost certainly start to wage war on their neighbors in

a very destabilizing way. It would have been a mature bet

for me to found a second unicorn in a different industry that

wasn’t so fundamentally broken. Gaming, fast casual dining,

fintech, I could have made some ape coins, but there have

actually been more mattress unicorns than defense unicorns

in the last 35 years. But I decided the best thing that I

could do to try and solve this problem was to use the fact that

I had a bunch of money and I had a bunch of credibility to do

something that was hugely unpopular to ignore the fact

that people were belittling me for it and try to convince a

bunch of brilliant people to come along with me so that they

wouldn’t waste their lives spending augmented reality

mustache emojis and instead they could do some work for our

armed forces. But it’s worth looking at the past and

realizing that this is a recent problem. It’s not something that

has been the case for a very long time. Silicon Valley was

largely built on the back of defense. In 1947, half of

Stanford’s engineering budget came from the Department of the

Defense. Fred Turman, Stanford dean, brought DOD contracts and

interest to the West Coast in a way that had fundamentally been

limited almost entirely to the East Coast. And Silicon Valley

helped power a lot of the things that are powering the modern

military machine. In the 1950s alone, we built the Pentagon in

well, sorry, I have an error in my notes. This is wrong. In the

lead up to the 50s, in the early 50s, we built the Pentagon in 16

months. We completed the Manhattan Project in three

years. We put a man on the moon in under a decade. And just

between 1951 and 1959, we built five generations of fighter jets,

three generations of bombers, two classes of carriers, nuclear

powered submarines and ballistic missiles to go on top of them. If

you look at the current state of the industry, we’re lucky to do

even one of these things in a decade. And I can’t really blame

the defense industry for not working with the DOD entirely.

It’s not just an ideological problem. It’s also an economic

problem. When the Cold War ended, the government really

became a pretty terrible customer. The technology industry

drifted away. Most engineers in Silicon Valley do not remember a

great power conflict because they haven’t lived in a world

where a great power was an existential threat to the United

States. And so you have a lot of people who are ideologically

opposed to working with the military. Now, we could spend an

entire talk, I only have a few minutes to talk today, we can

spend a whole talk talking about the ethics of defense and what

the reasonable critiques of the military are and how you can

change what you build for them in a good way. But I’ll throw

out a factor that I think most people don’t think about enough,

even the people who do agree on working with the military.

There’s a lot of companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, who

look at those employees who are ideologically opposed to working

with the military, and they use them as a smoke screen,

pretending that it’s principled opposition that drives their

decision when in reality, they want access to Chinese markets,

they want access to Chinese investment, they want access to

other countries that are tied into these things. And so they’re

able to use these people who are ideologically opposed to working

with the military, which actually make up a pretty small

fraction of the US population as a smoke screen for their real

intention, which is to preserve access to those markets preserve

access to those capital. Our largest companies are not making

these decisions based on what is best for the United States,

certainly not what is best for the United States in the long

term, they’re largely making the decisions based on short term

ideas that are not based in any kind of long term thinking. If

you look at the recent chips bill that Congress passed saying

that the United States government is going to put 50

billion, $52 billion into building semiconductors in the

United States, you have to compare that with the recent

news that well, it leaked it wasn’t it wasn’t news on

purpose. But Apple has pledged to put $275 billion as one

company into Chinese manufacturing, you have one

company putting in more than five times as much money into

manufacturing advanced technology as what is supposed

to be a landmark piece of US legislation. The situation that

we’re in is is pretty weird. This is gonna sound hyperbolic,

but bear with me. The situation we were we are in right now

would be like if in the build up to World War Two, General

Electric had said, you know what, we really like the United

States, but we’re actually very bullish on Imperial Japan, we

think it’s going to be a huge growth opportunity for us. And

our metrics just aren’t going to look the same if we wipe those

off of our roadmap. Imagine if in the build up to the Cold War,

if you had had Westinghouse and other major US technology

companies say, ah, you know, we love manufacturing in the United

States, but we actually think communist manufacturing is a

really interesting experiment that we need to see through. And

you know, we’re not sure that we really want to take a side on

this. The situation that we are in today is as dire or worse,

the only reason that it seems ridiculous. And the only reason

it seems hyperbolic is because conflict has not actually broken

out yet. If a conflict does break out, we’re going to look

at the current situation where we are hugely strategically and

economically dependent at the highest levels of our technology

industry and government on an adversary that is literally

committing genocide and slaving millions of people, we’re going

to look back on ourselves and feel really stupid. Now, the

good news is that because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

defense is now the current thing. In the United States,

there is this idea that any problem can be fixed at the last

second with just a really incredible twist if we just come

up with the right thing. But there’s a lot of problems out

there that cannot be solved that way. National security,

economic policy, environmental policy, these are things that

require nonpolitical bipartisan agreement on the problem

decades before it becomes a really big problem. Those are

not things that are acceptable. Current things shape rotation.

This is an acceptable current thing to debate whether or not

Will Smith was wrong to just wrong to take the slap or if

he’s just a representative of warrior culture. That’s a fair

debate to have. The idea of the United States having a military

that is strong enough to deter conflict should not be in that

category. So why is it too late to care about defense now at

this exact moment in time? Why is it too late for everybody to

suddenly change their minds? Well, a few things. One, you go

to war with the tools that you have, not the tools that you

wish you had or the tools that you start working on when things

become a problem. If you look at the weapons that were given to

Ukraine, they were built in the 80s, 90s and 2000s, $40 billion

plus worth of them. And for all their differences, defense is one

of the few things that Republicans and Democrats alike

have realized transcends the partisan divide. On one level,

it’s obviously very bad that we don’t have more modern weapons

to give to Ukraine. But on the other, it shows a level of

foresight and planning that we’ve been stockpiling and

building these legacy weapon systems for decades, explicitly

for a situation like today, which has been war, war game

doubt to the nth degree. Imagine if the Department of Defense had

done nothing to prepare for war for 40 years. And then as soon

as war broke out, they started tweeting a lot and changed their

profile pictures to Ukraine flag and then started saying, you

know, we stand with Ukraine. The people who are actually tasked

with solving these problems are they generally have good

planning, but there’s only so much they can do without good

technology. So I want to reiterate, if you only start

building now, you’ve lost the chance to deter war from

happening. That’s the real purpose of the defense industry.

It’s not to fight wars. It’s not to win wars. It’s to prevent

wars from happening. Wars happen when one or both sides

misestimate their probability of winning. If both sides agree

that one side or the other is going to win, typically you end

up with diplomatic resolution. It’s when both sides disagree

about the possibility of winning that conflict actually breaks

out. And so if you actually want to prevent conflict from

happening in the first place, you have to get involved well

ahead of time. If you get involved after conflict breaks

out, like so many companies have, you’re ensuring that you’re

only going to be a part of the killing. You’re only going to be

a part of the bloodshed. You’re only going to be a part of the

war. You’re not going to be a part of preventing the war from

happening in the first place. So I would argue that people in

the technology industry need to work on defense not because it’s

the current thing, but because it’s the right thing. I have one

more thing that I want to say. Thank you.

I talked earlier about NPC thinking that prioritizes

popularity over principles. What I’m about to do is in very, very

bad taste, but I’m going to do it anyway. Yeah, we’ll see. One

of the people who I think embodies this type of NPC

thinking of going with what’s popular and not being willing to

ever reverse their position even when they’re proven wrong is

Jason Calacanis. Let me read about some of the things he said

about me over the years. Just a small sampling. Palmer Lucky,

hideous. What an idiot. A moron. This guy, Parker Lucky, a

complete and utter moron. Jesus, this kid is an idiot. Palmer

Lucky is just an idiot and a troll. He is dumb. So, so, so

dumb. Oh, no, we got to keep going. For him to pull the plug

on the Palmer Lucky experience was brilliant. Kudos, Zuckerberg.

A complete lack of moral character and leadership. Palmer

Lucky, a complete moron. Palmer doesn’t care about any of his

employees, family members, or team members. Now, this doesn’t

include any of the lies that he’s told about me. This doesn’t

include any of the lies he’s told about my businesses. This

doesn’t include any of the terrible things that his co-host

and guests have said about me over the years that went

unchallenged and egged on. If I’m a hideous, stupid person

with no morals who doesn’t care about my family or my employees,

I shouldn’t be invited here no matter how relevant Ukraine is.

He’s had many chances to retract or apologize these

statements. Rather than taking any of them, he keeps telling

people that the reason I won’t be on his show is because I’m too

thin-skinned, because I disagree with him on some of the things

he’s said about Oculus. That’s not the case. I’ve explicitly

told him why I’ve refused to be on his show. It’s because he and

his crew of bullies have been vicious liars who have attacked

me for years and berated me for years and spread lies about me

for years in a way that I’ve been able to overcome that very

few entrepreneurs would have the money or the resources or the

credibility to do. And being nice to a few people, like I’m

sure he’s being nice to you, does not excuse this. This isn’t

debatable whether it happened or not. It clearly happened. These

are all direct quotes from things that he’s said over the

years, both while I was at Oculus and during my time after

Oculus. And Jason, like many influential people, some of them

even in this room, who have treated me like shit for years,

suddenly changed their tune as soon as Android was on the

upswing, as soon as we were doing good things. They started

inviting me on their podcasts, liking all my social media

posts, putting me on their innovator lists, all without any

acknowledgment whatsoever that they were the ones that were

attacking me when it was popular, kicking me while I was

on the ground, and treating me like garbage. It’s really

pathetic because a lot of my remaining critics at least are

basing their opinions on some kind of consistent worldview. A

lot of other people are attacking me and the work that I

do because it’s popular. When it’s popular to attack me, they

attack me. When it’s unpopular to attack me, when Ukraine is

being attacked, they are suddenly friends. And those are

the same people that I know are going to go back to shitting on

me the second that it becomes popular again. I’m coming to the

end of this. And I know that you guys are probably thinking,

wow, this guy’s pretty thin-skinned for a billionaire.

That’s fair. That’s fair. But I want to remind you of something.

Jason and the people like him are the reason I was fired from

Oculus, my own company, the company that was my heart and my

soul for my entire teenage and adult life. For him it was a

game, it was his show, and for me it was everything and I lost

everything. It almost destroyed me. I’m still filled with rage

about it. I always will be. I’ll end with this. I was able to

create Andro because a small group of people were willing to

give me a second chance to let me build something great in an

important but controversial industry that was being

constantly berated by people who thought we lived at the end of

history. They invested in me while Jason was trying to poison

my career and keep me on the ground. Thank God he failed.

Thank God for investors who ignore him and people like him.

The market conditions suggest there are going to be a lot of

founders, hopefully none of the people in this room, losing

their startups over the next year or so. And I pray that they

get a second chance like I did. I pray they aren’t deterred from

working on important but unpopular problems. I pray that

they will successfully claw their way back to success, that

they aren’t deterred from working on things that really

matter.

I pray that they manage to do this despite the inevitably

stupid and hot takes. Sorry, inevitably stupid and spiteful

hot takes that Jason, his associates and the many people

like him who make money spewing bullshit are certainly going to

be putting out there. Amen. Thank you.

Join us.

Great to meet you in person.

Jason, what lessons have we learned here today?

Well, I mean, I guess we were talking backstage and Jason’s

like, Oh, you know, I had to do so much to get this guy here

because I think he hates me. And this is before this shit

happened. And I was like, well, maybe you shouldn’t talk shit

about people.

The good thing is, I was able to make it to the stage to say

this. Most of the people that you’ve gone after this way will

never have that opportunity, because they won’t start a

second unicorn. I’m only here because I managed to claw my way

back. And remember, this is personal, because it’s not just

you, it’s you. You’re one of the most influential, certainly.

But it’s you and really a small cadre of people that by

attacking me ceaselessly made it impossible for me to continue my

tenure at Oculus. I’m really lucky I clawed my way back

because that’s exceedingly rare for a company to do the person

to do that.

I was hoping to talk about your new thing. But I guess since we

have no choice but go here. Well, what happened at Facebook?

And maybe you should explain that and what I got wrong about

what happened?

Well, it’s not just what’s wrong. This is actually why I

went out of my way. There’s actually a lot of lies you told

in spread, and your co host and your guests. But I’m not even

talking about those. The things that I listed, you’ll notice

these aren’t material accusations. These are just

personal attacks you’ve made on my character. These are just

the things you’ve said about me personally as a founder and

entrepreneur, vicious personal attacks. Separately, there’s all

of the lies that you’ve said about how Oculus didn’t have any

differentiated technology. It was totally commoditized.

Anybody could have done it. It really was just right thing at

the right time. We could spend all day talking about why these

aren’t true. But the real reason that it became untenable for me

and the real reason that I’m not in the VR industry is because

people like you were enabling those lies and then being

vicious about it and attacking me personally, it became clear I

couldn’t be a representative in an industry where people are

going to treat me like that fairly or not imagine doing a

podcast with them. What’s that?

I guess if you have no choice but to keep I’ll just ask you

the same question. Do you want us to just describe what Palmer’s

talking about? Can I can I try my best?

What? What? Well, because my memory of the events, you just

read all the things you said.

Right. But what is the what were we talking about at the time?

Well, there was a lot of controversy at Facebook about

some donations, anonymous accounts, things you said.

Well, so those that wasn’t one thing that was over the course

of years. So that was just a small sampling. I had to really

find a small sample. You know, you can’t you can’t do it. But

I’ll tell you what basically fired from Facebook. What was

the controversy there? Because that’s what I was commenting on

in this.

Well, no, some of those were after I was fired. And you’re

saying it was great that I was fired. And actually, by the way,

it’s like one of your one of your co hosts said on your show

that they’re glad I got fired for my politics. And that line

is mysteriously missing from your transcripts, by the way.

And there’s never we don’t edit any of the things and I didn’t

have a co host at the time. It’s probably just one of the news

reporters who came on we would have interviewed them. But there

was a lot of controversy on there.

Here’s what happened. I gave $9,000 to a group that ran a

single anti Hillary Clinton billboard. That was actually the

extent of it. And then a huge number of people in the tech

influencer space, the social media talking heads and media,

they started saying Palmer lucky is this terrible person who’s

funding all you

sorry, just to be clear. So you made a donation and it was on an

FTC filing somewhere. Somebody pulled it out and then basically

said like to a pack or something.

It was so it was to it was to a 501 c four, I believe who used

that for their political harm. So but it was it was public.

This was it wasn’t a filing. Yeah, yeah. And so and I actually

ended up giving a quote to a reporter about it. So that you

know, it wasn’t it wasn’t. It wasn’t something that people

understood what it was, right. But then a bunch of people just

lied. They said Palmer lucky was funding people who are attacking

Hillary Clinton supporters online. There were a lot of

people who I think were looking for a scapegoat to kind of be

the right wing, the right wing reaction to correct the record,

which actually was paying people to attack. Why did why did Zuck

fire you? What’s that? Why did Zuck fire? Oh, no, Zuck didn’t

fire me. He’s way why did face fate? Why did I’ll just ask the

third time? Why did Facebook fire you?

There’s a lot of reasons.

I always had good performance reviews. But what

here’s what it what it really boiled down to was this my

favorite talk by far.

What it really boils down to is this. It was clear that there

were a lot of people in the media and in the tech industry

who were going to continue attacking me. We hoped it would

blow over. But they kept attacking me for months and

months and months and months. I was put on leave for six months.

I don’t know if you know that.

I’m sorry, this is all on the heels of this one political

donation. Correct. $9,000. Yes.

And so on the heels of that, the hope was that it would go away.

Now, I think here’s here’s the real problem. I think if Trump

had lost, people could have said, Oh, well, you know, he’s

just one of those eccentrics. Impact, no impact. He’s a loser.

He’s a loser, but whatever. Trump winning is I think what

made it so you’re because people continued to attack me not for

the $9,000. The $9,000 donation was the reason you were fired

just for just for supporting Trump.

As you know, these things are very complex, but more or less.

Yes. I mean, there’s a direct causal line from that to me

being put on leave to me not being allowed to come back and

then pushed out.

We talked a lot about this on the pod on mob behavior. And I

think Mark Andreessen said the smartest thing I’ve read on

Twitter in the year I retweeted it and I took away and I think

he pointed out that it’s it feels safer to be in the mob

than to not be in the mob.

Well, it always is.

Because when you’re in the mob, you’re part of the group. But

you also get to attack and it’s safe to attack when you’re in

the group.

Right.

And I think, by the way, what you did there, one of the things

I will highlight, irregardless of the content and the thing

that was very brave, and we don’t see a lot of bravery

nowadays.

I don’t mean that. Honestly, I don’t mean that to disparage

Jason. But like, that sort of behavior where you stand up and

you say something that will be highly controversial and go

against the mob and against the tide and maybe piss off an

entire room is something that we don’t see a lot of. And I

think that that level of bravery is also what’s missing going

back to the mid 20th century, which allowed us to do all the

things you highlighted as a country last century that we’re

not doing anymore. I appreciate your bravery more than anything.

Thank you.

But, but look, I don’t know about the specifics with with

J Cal, but it certainly seems that there’s a lot of this we

talked about this, like with with Brian Armstrong standing up

at Coinbase, and all the stuff that’s gone on that we think I

would argue is probably made Twitter a highly complacent

place is everyone wants to be, you know, you don’t want to

stand up and you don’t want to make that change. And you don’t

want to be brave. And you want to be part of the mob of the of

the crowd attacking the right people see what happens. I mean,

what happened to me has like this is this is I can’t I can’t

back this up. Obviously, this is getting into personal anecdote,

which is never a good way to support any idea. But, you know,

I know a lot of people who remain at Facebook, and they

will not say anything. And they will not donate to any

politician. Yeah, it’s crazy, who’s left of Bernie, because

they saw what happened to me. And they’ve explicitly said, I

saw what happened to you. Because remember, it wasn’t just

the public. It was the internal reaction, where people were

saying, Oh, my God, like, I will not work for a Trump supporter.

This is terrible. I mean, actually, one great example,

Andrew Bosworth. He ran ads at Facebook for 14 years, he was

put in after my departure as the head of Oculus. And he was the

guy who was putting things on social media. Like, I think the

exact wording was, if you support Donald Trump, because

you don’t like Hillary Clinton, you are a shitty human being.

And he’s the person who’s allowed to lead Oculus now. So

it’s it’s not a problem of being aggressive on the right side.

It’s being on the right side of politics. And so there’s a lot

of people where they’re just they’re not going to say

anything, because they see what happens to me. Now, I’ve sex is

loving this.

When I hear somebody to disagree with, I’ll let you guys know.

The real irony here is, my contributions have been very

open. But my advice to founders who are on the right has

actually been, don’t be public about your political leanings,

because you won’t accomplish anything, you will just you will

be terminated by the mob, you should focus on building, you

should focus on creating value. And then after you don’t need

the rest of the industry, you can kick them to the curb and do

something. How do you how do you implement that philosophy

differently now, at Andrew so that you have a more inclusive

place where folks on the left and folks on the right come

together work on things that really matter. I mean, I think

everybody agrees, you’re building really important things

in the world. So how do you do that this time around? That’s

different from the Facebook experience.

So a few things. One, I think that building working in

national security has been a great filter where people

aren’t going to come work for you unless they’re okay working

in a bit of a controversial field. I’m actually somewhat

concerned about the Ukraine conflict in that regard, in

that in the making, in making defense mainstream, it makes it

possible for people to potentially say, oh, that isn’t

controversial. Now I’m going to go to this place. And then I’m

going to potentially attack people with their views. But I

think when you run a company that is inherently working on

something that’s controversial, people on the right and on the

left, both feel like they’re on the side of this important

bipartisan issue. And all of these other policy differences

can kind of go to the side and the culture at Andoril is

everyone is free to have whatever politics they want.

Like, I’m a Republican, our CEO, Brian Schimpf is a Democrat, we

both make significant contributions to our respective

sizes, and we have employees.

And I think also, it’s it’s nipping it in the bud. You know,

it’s about when somebody says something that is out of line,

it’s about getting it early and say, hey, that’s not okay at

this company. We’re, we’re here to work on a common mission. For

example, if we had a manager who then publicly went and said,

the half of my employees who support this political candidate,

they’re terrible people. They’re shitty humans. They’d be fired.

Yeah, yeah. I’ll give you a counterfactual to what this is,

which is very aspirational, which is seven or eight years

ago, we funded a business that actually makes seafaring drones.

And the whole point was to actually measure the surface

flux in the oceans, which you can use to get a really good

sense of climate change. And somewhere along the way, we had

the chance to do a contract with the DoD. But invariably,

there’s a faction of folks inside this company that said,

under no circumstances, are we going to put our efforts towards

that. And as a result, then the company spent a three year

detour, trying to build a weather app, which turned out to

not be the right thing. And three years later, you know,

they’re doing a bunch of stuff now with these government

agencies. And it turns out that’s the right thing to do,

because now they’re that much closer to actually mapping the

world’s oceans, which creates a repository of data. And there’s

all these positive knock on effects that sometimes folks

don’t see. And you need strong leadership to kind of say, it’s

what Elon said yesterday, you know, companies are there to

make products that people and organizations want to need, not

necessarily to fight over political ideals.

I think one of the interesting things, the example you just

gave, like I mentioned earlier, I have some empathy for people

who work in companies who don’t want to work in defense, like, I

think broadly, the technology industry needs to support the

military. And I’m glad that the conflict in Ukraine has changed

at least the thinking around that. But at the individual

level, people should have the right to choose to work on what

they think is important. And so the Google example was

interesting, because it was Google employees saying, hey, I

didn’t sign up to work on weapons. And I can understand

that maybe they’re pacifist. And they say, you know, for

religious reasons, for philosophical reasons, I cannot

work on this. And they were upset that their work was put to

work on defense without it being clear. And I suspect that when

the situation you’re talking about, it’s similar objections

were raised, hey, this isn’t what I joined the company to do

this isn’t what I signed up for. And so at Andro, one of the

ways that we’ve been able to get around this is being very clear,

like you are signing up to work with the Department of Defense,

that is that is the mission that you’re signing up for. And I

mean, we’re we’re about a third US service veterans at Andro,

which is higher than any company that I’m aware of. And we’re

about 1000 people now. And so these are people who they

understand the importance of the mission, right?

Just shifting gears for a second, I want to ask you about

drone. First, let me just say that the first time I tried VR,

which was Oculus, I thought it was one of the most magical

computing experiences I’ve ever had. So I don’t have you guys

tried it, you put the goggles on. I did the thing you’re in

the Oculus trailer. And it’s like, it was amazing. I did the

thing where you show like a big hole, like Facebook had this

demo for a while or whatever. And I thought I was going to

fall into the hole. I fell forward.

You’re on the ledge of the cliff.

I didn’t want to like tiptoe beyond it. I’m like, I’m like,

wait, I know this is not real. But

anyway, VR VR is that it’s so funny. These are I feel these

mental circuits that haven’t activated for years activating.

So I’ve got my talking points. But yeah, VR is the final

computing platform. It’s not the next one. It’s the final one.

And people talk about augmented reality. And it’s very

interesting. I love AR, we did a lot of great AR foundational

work. But at the end of the day, if you can make a tool that

allows you to experience anything, and in any way that

can emulate every other medium, it is going to be the whole

parker like caught on.

But yeah, no, no question. Go ahead. Yeah, I was gonna actually

ask about drones.

Well, maybe we should ask why isn’t it caught on? Yeah, it’s

not good enough yet. People ask. I’ll have this debate with

people like, Oh, I’m not sure VR is ever really going to be a

thing. But explain the dimension when you say it’s not good

enough. Okay, is it wait? Is it physical interface? It’s a whole

bunch of latency, it’s content being available, you need a

self sustaining ecosystem of a broad enough variety of content

that enough people can use it to create further network effects.

So that’s part of it. It’s just a content thing. You have to

build a self sustaining flywheel until you have that. Yeah, it’s

not good enough yet to draw people in. They’re not good

enough. And they don’t they don’t have broad enough appeal.

There’s a particular niche where we have a flywheel. Like there’s

a dozens of developers that are making many millions of dollars

making games for Quest two, but that’s its own little niche. The

other thing is quality, its weight and its cost. Like the

example that I like to use when arguing with people who say that

VR is not going to be a thing that they spend their whole life

in. So okay, wait, imagine this. What if for $99 you compare it

by a pair of sunglasses, and it gives you an experience, the

quality of the matrix or sort of line or whatever your sci fi

pick is. And you can do anything and there’s endless content will

get there. And it’s people like, Oh, well, of course I would use

that. Right. But but but but that’s not what VR is. Well,

then that’s just a tech disagreement. philosophically

agree. So how fast we’ll get there. So I mean, listen, you

created the category half far away, are we? It depends on the

experience. So the hardest things to simulate are going to

be the ones that are kind of like these multi haptic multi

element things that rely on scent and motion, like surfing

is going to be really, really hard. On the other hand, being

able to perfectly simulate the experience of being in a

brightly lit for a fluorescent fluorescent conference room,

that’s going to happen within 10 years, like the resolution will

be there, the weight will be there, you will be able to

perfectly simulate that experience. And you know how

much of my life I’ve spent flying to the other side of the

world to sit in fluorescent lit conference rooms, and then

flying back, if I can just eliminate that part of my life,

totally, it’s way better for me. But it’s good. It’s gonna start

by simulating that experience where it’s low dynamic range,

you don’t need haptic, and then it’s gonna go from there.

Wait, it’s actually gonna talk about drones.

Yeah, let’s just shift gears for a second to drones. So

obviously, in Ukraine, right now, the, the Russian military,

specifically their armors has been pulverized by the

combination of the javelin, plus this Turkish drone, this, I

guess, by rocker. Yeah. So I guess this has raised the

profile, I would imagine it’s raised the profile of drones and

the use of drones in the military. Also, it points out

the weakness of having kind of a large platform strategy in the

case of the Russian military, their platform is this Russian

tank, but so is our military were built around aircraft

carriers, and the F 35. Yes. And you know, the Abrams tank, all

these things, I would imagine are susceptible to drones. And

the thing that’s destroying the Russians is their tank costs a

couple million bucks, and it can be destroyed by a drone that

costs 200,000. Oh, many more than a million, even 10s of

millions. EMP.

We just want a billion dollar contract with us. So com

Special Operations Command to, to do counter drone work. And so

to a certain extent, the what you have to do is then say,

okay, we’re gonna have these, these armored systems, we’re

gonna have these vessels. And then we need to have technology

that allows us to counter drones and is possible to counter

drones. What’s going on with Russia is they don’t have the

technology to counter drones. And so they’re, they’re largely

just totally

can I can ask you something about this contract? Just

general terms, you said something very important before,

which is, the military industrial complex today is

basically paid to do work, right? Not to get to a result?

Yes. How do you fight that when you’re like, when you when you

hear a billion dollar contract, is that cost plus that D o D

just is willing to give you.

So this is, we can do a whole talk on this. But fundamentally,

for people don’t know, a cost plus contract structure is the

way that most work for the Department of Defense has done

that means you get paid for your time, your materials, your

people, and then a fixed percentage of profit on top,

even if you’re way, way, way, way, way over your budget until

Congress eventually takes them and then there’s layers of

subcontractors. So the costs all exactly. And so the bad, the

bad thing about this is that not only the prime contractor owns

the contract, but everyone under them is incentivized to come up

with the most expensive way of solving a problem that they can

convince the government to fund. So they wanted to build the most

expensive system with the most expensive parts with as many

hours as possible. And the bids are so complex that you’re only

gonna have one or two real bids. Yep. And they’re basically

gonna be the same price. And those top bids, the worst part

is they’re not just trying to come up with the most

expensive solution. They’re even encouraging the subcontractor

under they get a percent of because they get a percent of

that. And so if I’m getting, let’s say 6% profit margin, I

want to make it as big a number as possible. And I want to drag

it out. And that’s why this budget’s balloon like crazy

despite the lack of more money when they do poorly, because

they’re not being paid to make things that work. They’re being

paid to do work. That’s what I said. It’s just the act of the

doing is what gets for you. What do you do different? So we use

our own money to decide what to build, how to build it when it’s

done, we’re using building our own products. And when we’re

going to the customer, we’re not going to them like first of all,

I can’t just build whatever I want. I can’t build a Batmobile

and then try to sell it to the army. But I we talked to them

about their problems. They understand their problems. They

don’t it would be cool. He’s so big. But, but, but I’m sorry,

sorry. Would you build someone in this room at Batmobile if he

could come up with the money? If it’s if it solved a real

problem, I mean, if that was the right way to solve my office.

All right. I probably not. But the nice thing about this is

that when we go to customers, we’re not going to them with a

white paper saying, Hey, let the taxpayers pay for us to try this

out for years and years. We say we’ve already proven that this

works. It will not be a boondoggle for you. It will

work. We go to them with a working system with a full

delivery goods and services already de-risked. Exactly. Yeah.

And the thing is, this is popular with the customers and

politicians alike, because it removes the risk of them getting

into political boondoggles like the F35 program being a trillion

dollars. So this creates, this creates new budget line items,

because now folks are saying, I can actually get shit out of

this. I’m going to move money from whatever bullshit pot of

money I’m spending over here, move it into this sort of a

structure. And then that creates competitive dynamics on market.

That’s right. Yeah. So how does it how does it actually close

the loop? So for example, you deliver a drone to the DoD, it

costs 10,000, I’m making up a number, it costs $10,000. And it

works on ABC dimension. And then there’s whoever makes general

dynamics makes the hellfire drone. Again, I don’t know the

specifics. Of course. And they want to charge 90,000 or 110,000.

How do they still not get picked? Because it seems if you

look at their performance as public companies, yep. It’s an

incredibly steady, it’s almost like an inflationary line item,

you know, that you can predict six, eight, nine, 10% growth

consistently every year. Correct. It is the defense

companies are not high growth, high margin companies, they’re

extraordinarily predictable. People basically see them as an

extension of the US government. It’s like buying bonds of the US

federal budget. Yes, exactly. And when the budget goes up, you

see a direct proportional and linear increase.

Let me ask you, hold on, hold on. Let me ask you a question

about something very pragmatic, knowing what you know, and the

and the tools you’re building. And I do appreciate the work

you’re doing, defending the country. I think it’s important

work. And I told you that. And I lobbied you to be here to have

your platform and to have your voice. And I’ve probably sent

you no less than 30 or 40 invites to come on the pods,

can’t deny that. And so I told you, I’m willing to have any

debate anytime I’m going to put aside the personal stuff. But

knowing what you know, doing this very good work, the

situation in Taiwan, if it does materialize, what would it look

like today, given the tools we have? And would we be able to

put Taiwan be able to defend itself? What would that look

like? Because that seems to be the next hotspot that we may

have to do weapons get shipped in there like they are in the

Ukraine? No, that we were able to ship weapons into Ukraine,

because we had countries like Poland that were willing to at

massive existential risk to themselves. Step forward. Yeah,

yeah. Poland has been so paint the picture unsung hero in this

and getting weapons through. But Taiwan, what’s going to happen

is there’s a few ways this could go, it could either be just a

blitzkrieg, where they go in destroy the ports, destroy the

airports immediately occupy. That’s that could happen. The

other way this could happen could be a more drawn out

blockade where they blockade the island, like, is the US willing

to pull the trigger on a blockade? It’s unclear. But if

you can stop trade, if you can economically strangle them, make

sure new weapons don’t get to them, they can be in a very,

very bad position. It’s not clear that we or anyone else be

able to do that. No, there’s different opinions on how things

are going to go. I can’t pretend that I know exactly what it is.

I can say Taiwan does not have the tools today that they need

to deter Chinese aggression. They might have had the tools

they needed to deter it a decade ago. But Chinese Chinese

military has been ascendant. They’ve been investing so

heavily in new technology, distributed, distributed swarms,

high end electronic warfare systems, and all of the

amphibious landing craft that they’re going to need to

perform an invasion. They’ve just they’ve built the

capability that they need. It’s just how vulnerable are aircraft

carriers? How vulnerable are aircraft carriers? They are

extremely vulnerable to the point where we feel like we

can’t use them. The problem is aircraft carriers were not

designed to be a peer to peer, a peer to peer great powers tool

for us to go toe to toe with the Soviets or the Chinese. Like

the reality is, if each side launches 200 missiles, one of

them is going to get through and it’s going to end up hitting

them. And this is especially true with satellite targeting

systems. They were designed in the modern day to project power

to places where you have air superiority uncontested. So

there, it’s great to have a mobile base that can go

somewhere and project power, but you cannot stop the Chinese

that way. And also, if we send a carrier out there, and they

managed to sink it, that’s 5000 lives lost in one hit.

Hey, Palmer, we got to wrap, but I’ll say this.

Wait, I got to say one more thing on Taiwan.

Hold on a second. Oh, not about me. Great. Go.

No, no, no. Not this time. Not this time.

I was bracing for impact. I don’t have any anti-Palmer

drone systems.

I will say, I will be working on them next week.

I will say this about J-Cal. If you did that to Kara Swisher,

she would have, she would have like not, she would have pulled

you off stage.

Keep going. You’re so right. Yeah.

I think, I think, I think, I will say, so fair. And J-Cal,

J-Cal is, he’s an incredibly loyal friend. He’s got an

incredibly good heart. And I think that, you know, whatever

he said or did, it was really brave of him to come out here

and also have the conversation. And he wants to have the

conversation, wants to have a dialogue. And he always wants to

do that with all of us. Sometimes he conflicts a bit and

he, and he butts heads. But I will say this about J-Cal. He

means well, and I want to kind of say that for him.

But anyway, finish your point about Taiwan. Let’s talk about

the important stuff.

Kara says I’m a douchey man boy and a fourth Reich bro Nazi. So

not that you remembered.

Got a long memory. I think your cosplay stuff is cool. I was

brave enough to do cosplay. I’m a little jealous of that. I’ll

be honest. And I would love to go cosplay with you sometime.

You tell us your final point on Taiwan.

Not the way to wrap the…

I want to hear his point on Taiwan.

All right. Yes. The big difference between Taiwan and

Ukraine is that we still have a chance to make a difference. So

what I’m so terrified of is that all these people who say, Oh, we

stand for Ukraine, we have to do this. This is the fight of,

fight of, you know, fight of our generation. And then they’re not

going to do anything. And then immediately after Taiwan is

invaded, they’re going to change their profile pictures to a

Taiwanese flag and say, Oh, we stand with Taiwan. No, that’s

not good enough. If you care about this issue, there’s things

you can do right now. And what’s really amazing to me is you have

people who are saying like, Oh, man, I say with Ukraine, we’re

cutting off all of our Russian business. I’m like, Oh, wow, so

brave. You cut off an entire country. That’s a regulatory

nightmare has an economy smaller than most US states. Sorry, not

most many. Yeah. It’s like, Oh, wow, you’re so so brave for

cutting off Russians. And then at the same time, they say, Oh,

but all of our expansion is in China. And I’m not gonna say

anything about that. I think that worse than the people who

change their profile pictures are going to be the people who

remain silent when Taiwan is invaded. And they say they just

can’t say anything because their business interests are so

intermeshed and so intertangled. And that like that China has

been fighting a strategic and economic war against us for a

long time. And it is extraordinarily good. The last

thing I’ll say on this, I talked about it earlier, there’s a

uniquely American delusion, probably from our own Hollywood

films, that we can solve any problem, the last second, they

will come in, and we just think, boom, de sex machina. We

win. That isn’t how Taiwan is going to go. There is no de sex

machina. We know exactly what’s going to happen. The war planners

have figured out exactly one of several scenarios that’s going

to go. And when it’s happened, we can’t pretend like we didn’t

know. And and there isn’t going to be anything that flies into

safe. So okay, so I just want to say one more thing, and then

I’ll let you close. You and I can debate anti Hillary ads, the

Donald Trump subreddit, all of those things. What we cannot

debate is how important it is that the United States win, and

that democracy wins, and that freedom comes to all of these

countries. You and I are 100% aligned on that, even if we

disagree about the anti Hillary ads or any of that stuff.

Amen. I appreciate you coming. And I’ll debate you on anything,

anytime, anywhere. I do care about my family, by the way.

That was the worst thing you said. Okay. And fair enough.

I will apologize for that statement. If I did say it,

wait, take out a letter, a letter. I just said, if I said

something that hurt your feelings about that, and it was

out of line, I apologize. But what’s more important right now

is that you’re here talking about the work you’re doing. And

you and I will debate to the cows come home this other stuff.

I can’t stop you. I can’t stop your career. No commentator, no

journalist can stop a founder. I disagree with that.

Oh, I disagree. You can stop a lot of people.

Well, I think we’re overestimating my influence in

the world. You’re a force of nature. The work you do is

undeniable. We can debate politics as much as we want.

This country needs to be protected. The people at Google

are cowards for not doing DoD contracts. You’re not a coward.

You came out here, you’re gonna take me on straight up as a man.

I appreciate it. It was a little bit of a blindside, but I can

take it. What’s most important is the work you’re doing. That’s

what’s most important. I mean, it’s a sucker punch, but I want

to pay. I’m from Brooklyn. We appreciate you coming. We

appreciate you coming. Bottom line.

Hey, everybody, that was pretty crazy. What an amazing moment. I

think we all learned a lot. But I actually wanted to show you

the clip of the comments that Palmer referenced, just to

provide some context. For those of you who are unaware, the clip

was from a show in March of 2017. Episode 721 of my other

podcast this week in startups. And listen, I’m super aware that

this could come across as defensive. But I think some

people might not know what Palmer was talking about. So

I’ll let you decide for yourself. We recorded that

episode, Episode 721, the day Palmer Lucky was fired from

Facebook. And it was a news roundtable of the podcast. I’m

talking to Austin Peter Smith, who worked at inside at the

time, and Ian Thompson of the register. He’s a great

journalist. And just to clarify some facts here on the timeline.

These are from the Daily Beast article in which Palmer was

interviewed, you can go read that it’s in the show notes. And

the facts are pretty basic. Palmer Lucky donated some amount

of money to a pro Trump political organization was

called nimble America, right before the 2016 election. And as

you just heard during the all in summit talk, Palmer said it

was like $9,000 nimble America was part of the infamous sub

Reddit page, the Donald if you remember that nimble America,

they basically made anti Hillary and pro Trump memes, and they

were self proclaimed shit posters. As we now talk about

on the internet. The organization said it was

dedicated to proving quote shit posting is powerful and the

magic is real. Palmer was posting to the R Donald under

the anonymous Reddit account called nimble rich man here was

one post which Palmer confirmed writing that was referenced in

the clip you’re about to see the American Revolution was funded

by wealthy individuals. The same has been true of many movements

for freedom in history. You can’t fight the American elite

without serious firepower. They will outspend you and destroy

you by any and all means. And here is what Palmer told the

Daily Beast in 2016. When asked about supporting nimble America,

I’ve got plenty of money money is not my issue. I thought it

sounded like a really jolly good time. Again, if you’re listening,

you might hear some other voices talking. Those are the two guests

that I mentioned before. You can watch this three minute and 22

second clip, which is just a mashup of my commentary. I’ll see

on the other side of three minutes.

He was supporting

like, I was a violent trolling, but extreme trolling would be the

way to do it.

That’s right. And his comment about it was really insensitive

kind of that it was it was almost maybe not super

ideologically driven as much as it was like fun for him.

What an idiot.

Well, it actually lost it lost them a fair amount of business.

There are about three or four game studios that said, right,

we’re no longer developing for the Oculus on this one. Because

he came out and said, basically, well, to overturn a trenched

elite, then you need to be able to fund it and fight back. And

you’re like, that’s not you’re not a revolutionary. This is

just HIT posting about politicians. This is not

constructive dialogue. This is not an attempt to get reform the

American political scene. This is just Oh, let’s be a troll.

Yeah, if you want to see like a person’s true character, give

them a pile of money or a bunch of power. And then you will see

two bottles of vodka works very well on that as well. It’s like

the sort of quick way of being a billionaire or whatever. But I

mean, can you imagine I just want to stop for a second and

just give everybody in my portfolio or the people I work

with just a public service announcement. If you are lucky

enough to hit the jackpot and make hundreds of millions of

dollars, behave yourself. You moron, you hit the jackpot. It’s

like somebody winning the mega ball lottery. And then just

going on the street and randomly punching people in the face.

Like, this guy, Parker Lucky, is a complete and utter moron. For

somebody to be a visionary to create something like Oculus and

make VR. I bought the Oculus. It’s pretty impressive. I have

to say, I believe that VR is at least two years away from being

a meaningful business opportunity. But that’s about

the window where I like to invest. So it’s, it’s kind of on

my radar now. In fact, we have one company in our incubator.

But Jesus, this kid’s an idiot. But this case, Palmer Lucky is

just an idiot and a troll. So dumb. Here’s the other thing, I

think on a leadership basis, if you represent the company, so

you represent your company first Oculus and your vision of the

world, behave yourself. Number two, if you represent the

company that’s worth a couple $100 billion that made you a

billionaire, and you represent Mark and Jason who invested in

your company and Jason Horwitz, and you represent all the

employees and all their families and everybody whose entire net

worth is locked up in this, you have a higher duty of service.

And this is a complete lack of moral character and leadership

for someone like Palmer Lucky to be doing this shit posting

effort. I’m going to say so. Let’s move on to the next

Facebook story. Now that we got over the Palmer Lucky is just a

complete moron who doesn’t appreciate his success or care

about any of his employees, family members, team members. If

you’re going to do that kind of shenanigans, if you don’t,

here’s a clue. I hate to get totally crazy. If you’re doing

something like this anonymously, you might want to think that the

anonymity plus Reddit, plus you would be ashamed about it. Like,

think about what you’re doing if it’s anonymous. In other words,

if you have to put a mask on, and then you throw the brick

through the window, you may not want to throw the brick through

the window because you weren’t willing to do with your mask

off.

Okay, so closing thoughts. I respect Palmer Lucky for his

incredible innovations, both with Oculus and his new company. We

actually agree on many things, which actually people in the

tech industry might not, which is, hey, producing weapon

systems to protect America and democracy around the world is a

beautiful and important thing. I respect Palmer for what he’s

doing there. And we have a disagreement about, you know,

this meme action that he did. But yeah, all’s well that ends

well. It was an interesting moment in time. I don’t regret

exactly what I said. I think what I said was fair. And when I

talked about it in context, I was, you know, coming from a

place that if you’re going to post stuff posted under your

real name, not anonymously. And so there you have it, folks,

that’s the entire controversy. Thank you to Palmer Lucky for

coming. Thanks to my besties for having my back. There was this

big question of if I would go out and engage the discussion.

Of course, I want to go out and engage the discussion. I want to

talk I don’t mind a hard discussion. And in fact, that’s

what this podcast is about having hard discussions and then

keeping our friendships and keeping it moving forward. I

look forward to hosting this podcast forever. They’re gonna

have to take drag me out of here. And I hope we can host

another all in summit and all of you can attend either virtually

or in person. It’s great to have had farmer at the event. And

actually, I hope he comes next year and shares more of the

exciting work he’s doing at Andrew and I wish him the best

of luck.

Let your winners ride

Rain Man David

We open source it to the fans and they’ve just gone crazy with

it. Love you.

Queen of

besties are

dog taking a notice your driveway

will meet me.

We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy

because they’re all just like this like sexual tension that

they just need to release

what you’re about to be

waiting to get

are

Nick, Nick, can you cue the Can you cue the photo? What photo?

Oh, no. backstage. This is what happened at the last break.

I think we got there. Well, this is what I said. I said,

you’re you don’t have drones over my house, right? Just to

confirm. And he said, can someone tagline that said

cannot confirm or deny