Check out you have a really long nose hair. Thank you on your on your left this one here this side

Yeah, okay. Hold on. You see it Nick you see it see that you can see it. Take care of it every show

We have this issue every show. He’s got all this like I’m getting old man hairs. I feel like sex

You gotta get a grooming tool. I am tired of treasure hunting. I mean for what he is a lawnmower. It’s Kate makes one

I’m gonna get it. Yeah, just look in the mirror. Can you come over on the way to Parker Freeburg and help me man?

Yeah, you’re not coming to poker don’t come to poker you said if I manscape can I come to

Okay, so Jake out you’re gonna be a participant today

The world’s greatest moderator is taking a week off to allow his voice to recoup to recover to see us

So he can come back blaring with his usual

mid-sentence interruptions and

Excellent moderating tactics next week. We with his foghorn leghorn moderation

We are gonna we are gonna miss you at the moderation. Welcome to the top 20 sacks

You’re welcome. Welcome to the top 20 podcasts in the world. Okay. Well, hold on who should be thinking whom?

I mean, you’ve been doing this for 10 years. I walk in here off the street all of a sudden. We’re top 20

Yeah, let me explain something

I created with my guys and gadget

Okay, top five magazine in the world

Then I do a podcast with you three idiots and all of a sudden I drop down to top 20 in this medium

So drop, what are you talking about? Yeah, exactly a drop. This has been a be tested

No, I mean this we can start up is they don’t embarrass you but look at twist ratings compared to ours

This we can start it’s a bout startups

It is a niche audience my design and it’s the number one startup podcast in the world

That’s what you wanted this show to be I didn’t this show is about all topics

All time every time we try to talk politics. You’re like, it’s too much politics axe. I think you’re talking about free bird

I think you’re talking about free bird. Let’s focus on narrow

Legalistic issues true you we had this discussion sacks and I said we should always do the top story of the week

Even if it’s politics and now you’re taking credit for my insight about McLaughlin group

I saw you on some pod. Who was it? I

Absolutely designed this potter. I’m McLaughlin the fact

Group, I’m said McLaughlin group. Okay, it’s possible for two people to have the same idea sacks

We both grew up on McLaughlin group. That’s why we’re both can tankers assholes moderator intervention cut it out

No one is individually responsible for this podcast. It was Tim Ferriss. Yeah, Tim Ferriss. Here’s what happened

So I was on YouTube and you know, I’m not gonna watch some two-hour like podcast with J. Cal, of course, but

Video is called the origin of the all-in podcast. I can’t stand what he don’t got here. We can’t stand what he does that

Yeah, so I’m like, okay

Partnership agreement. He said here’s the the party line and J. Cal will not stick with ya

Going to recreate this I got to see this alternative reality that J. Cal’s trying to create about the origin of the all-in podcast

I wrote I wrote in our legal history. Yes, and I changed

No, the origin story that you signed up to are you saying you change the origin story?

Remains the same. No, it doesn’t you call me after CMB’s the origin story that he told Tim Ferriss

Which is like a 10-minute story of how he created the whole thing

The concept was his it was based on McLaughlin group

Concept is now obviously by default how I moderate the program is by my design

Yes, you didn’t come up with this concept your chagrin. Of course. I did. No, of course. I did not design my moderation

First one who said we should record us having conversations at the poker table. No

That idea came from him, right? That’s why it’s called the all-in pod

No

I came up with the name all-in number one

Number two was his idea to tape a pod because he came out of CBC. Anyway, who cares the pods here. It’s successful

Why do you keep going on podcast telling everyone that you’re the mastermind of the all-in pod?

People are saying you Jake have the game other podcasters

I’ll explain to you other podcasters are in awe of my ability to moderate you three malcontents

You did not have the idea for the foursome based on McLaughlin group that happened that happened

Spontaneously as a result of the fact that no Freeberg was I think the first guest I was the second guest then we did the

Four of us together. Okay, that was

That worked out, okay fine the way the way I moderate this is of note to the world’s greatest podcasters

They want to know Jake out. How do you take three?

misanthropic malcontents

And make them actually palatable to the world and I say, you know what because I am the world’s greatest moderator

And someone like Tim Ferriss wants to know is me. Excuse me. What makes me a misanthropic malcontent?

Exactly your behavior and worldview

What is it? What is my behavior? And what is my worldview your absolute contempt for humanity?

Everybody

No, amazing. I’m it’s a joke. It’s called a job. It’s called a joke

Now you set him off Jake out you really that hurt you should apologize

It’s called a joke, I think you guys are wonderful. I think you guys are one

Well, I mean I may be misanthropic but malcontent. I’m not no sacks and free burger than Malcolm. That’s for sure

I’m pretty damn happy. You’re happy the last descriptor anybody who knows you would ascribe to Friedberg was happy

No, I would say no. I think he’s happy. He’s anxious, but he’s happy. Yeah, he’s anxious, but happy. Did you see the roast?

That was not a happy man. That was tearing you up. That was funny

That was

Yeah, that was venting he was yeah, that was rage

Rage, no, I think I think when free work tries to be funny it comes out kind of mean

Yeah, maybe that’s just a little bit of rage

The only person that sets me off into making me unhappy is you Jay Cal

Go to therapy or we could keep recording this podcast every week

Which is cheaper. I think it’s cheaper for us to just record the pod

You know what? I for one am thankful to whoever gave you whatever sickness you have that causes you to not be able to talk

This week. Okay, great. Yeah, you’re talking a lot for a guy who can’t talk

Coming at me. I’m sick. Be nice to me while we’re talking about all kinds of random stuff

The number two thing that I see in the what’s happening tab on Twitter right now is how Ron DeSantis is getting blasted

for banning AP African American Studies because he thinks

It falls under the stop woke act. That’s this the headlines. It’s going

Absolutely nuclear on Twitter right now

Here’s some of the quotes shocking Ron DeSantis has banned all caps the teaching of AP African American Studies in Florida

Florida has gone from don’t say gay to don’t say black next tweet

Claiming it violates the stop woke act and has no educational value

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has banned AP African American Studies from schools. Let me make a prediction right now

This will all redoubts his advantage

The same people who said that he was death Santas for basically not instituting kovat lockdowns

He was proven correct

Then they said that this bill that prohibited the teaching of gender fluidity to five-year-olds

They claim try to claim that was a don’t say gay bill

70% of Florida supports that that redoubts his advantage. I don’t know the story behind this particular course

But if the question is whether CRT, it’s gonna be funded by the state and he’s preventing that again

I think I’ll be a 70% popular issue. So let’s just wait and see how this plays out fair enough

I just want to claim that my spread trade maybe it’s tough to be the leader in

The Republican nomination process in January of 2022. It’s starting

Yeah

In either party, but I’d say the bigger threat to the Santas is there’s a new poll

Where Trump came out on top so Trump’s still his biggest threat. Yeah, so unfortunately Jay Cobb may be right that

the Republicans may do something stupid here and

Nominate a candidate who’s I think less electable than to Santa’s actually don’t take any joy in it

I actually I think Nikki Haley’s gonna come out of nowhere and win this thing. Well, it’s possible

I you know, I really would like to see some non-political

Non-career politicians run for office the Bloomberg, you know sort of category. It feels like these career politicians

Are just really really bad at executing and I’m bad, you know, yeah who likes Nikki Haley who?

Democrats Democrats guys. Why why do we like her? I’m an independent rising. She’s Polaroid

She’s a safe establishment Republican who basically is not gonna put up any fierce resistance to what the Davos crowd

Wants to do. I don’t think that’s true. I think she was pretty she’s not gonna win the Republican nomination

I don’t think she cares about Davos people to save her life

I think that she is a moderate reasonable person who had to govern in a southern state and got everybody on board

That’s that’s pretty crazy. She’s a pro-life person who negotiated a

20-week support for abortion in

2014 so this is a person that knows how to get stuff done

South Carolina happens to be the state that’s actually at the leading edge of climate transition

she’s had more jobs and more money come in into a southern red state of

People and companies willing to build for climate change than any other state in the country

So you like her as I know she’s just she’s so I just think that she’s actually like normal and sane and not an idiot

Would you vote for her? Absolutely over Biden? Absolutely. Absolutely

Interesting sad a percent. Yeah. Look if you’re really willing to vote for her, that’s interesting

I think really I would she’s you know, she’s young her parents had a small business. She was a small business person

It’s tough to be a winner at all of those levels and she managed to do it

I mean, how do you as a brown woman get elected to governor of South Carolina and do a lot of really good things?

Good stuff. That’s kind of tough. Yeah, so I don’t know

I think she deserves a close look and she’s the only one that didn’t kowtow to Trump

She was able to play the game manipulate him get him to be on her side and then still told him to go pounce in

That’s pretty cool. Well, a lot of a lot of governors managed to do that

I’m saying I’m saying she got she she went to the United Nations. She did what she needed to do there

That’s an important role at that time

Actually Nikki Haley expressly has said she will not run if Trump runs so she’s kowtow to Trump, too

She wanted to be his VP, right? Like she was trying to shank Pence, right? That was her plan

Maybe it’s a smart strategy

but she said she will not run against Trump the main alternative to Trump in the Republican Party is to Santa’s and then I’d say

The number three in the Republican Party after Trump into Santa’s Glenn Youngkin right now

Huh based on what metrics?

Based on interest in the party and you know, I’ve talked to people and I think the polling will eventually reflect this

He’s very talented Jake out. You talk about appealing to independence. He was able to win a blue state

Remember Virginia went for Biden by 10 points and Youngkin was able to win that state if you ever listen to him campaign

He’s a very talented campaigner. I think Youngkin is very very talented

Don’t get me wrong, and I think that he would be an extremely credible candidate for president

Here’s the thing that Youngkin will get destroyed on is he’s literally not been in the job for but for a few, you know

18 months so he hasn’t done anything and I think that if it does boil down now it may not matter

Right because look Obama was a senator for two years or whatever, right? So it may not matter but to the extent that

Republicans demand some bona fides. I think that you’ll see Trump and DeSantis attack Youngkin more viciously in

a presidential primary than they attack

Haley on that dimension of you have no experience and it’ll be hard for him to back it up just one final point

You know, you’ll man the other side. That’s final final point. We got it

We got to get started final point Virginia has this wonky one-term term limit on governors. So

You know, he’s got no choice but to make a play in

2024 because he’s gonna be termed out. Anyway, okay J Cal as a lifelong independent who’s only ever voted Democrat

Which of these

Republican to be clear

One time he was 12, yeah, no, I voted three times. Yeah, you like playing that young kid three times I voted Republican I

Would like somebody who’s younger and actually I’ve been quite influenced by

Your framing of a person who can control the budget and reduce spending because I do think it’s kind of the most existential

Risk we have right now. So I might be moving to more of a single

Issue vote for this presidential election. I love that issue. I love that about you

Which is I just think like we have to have somebody younger

Who is not going to bankrupt the company and the more these candidates talk about social issues and not economic ones

I think it’s a tell that they’re not the right person for the job

That’s where I’m personally at is like this country has a serious

financial existential

Crisis on its hands and we have to get off social issues and we have to get on to financial

Points, so I assume then you support the Republicans in this looming budget showdown. I actually do. Yes

I do think we should hold the line on

Spending so you support the Republicans?

Voting no on raising the debt ceiling. Yeah, I actually do

I think we should start pumping the brakes on spending and I do think the Tea Party

Yeah, no, that doesn’t mean I like those candidates they’re kind of whack jobs actually but you think George Santos is a whack job

Listen, it’s the Republican Party has turned into some crazy Howard Stern whack pack

Sacks is appalled by it. He just can’t some elements of both parties look that way

Would you would you ever invite tomorrow Santos to your house? Who would you invite? Okay, actually

Who would you be

Not a fundraising dinner, but just invite to the house you can pick between two people. Oh, no, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez or George Campos

Who would you pick? Oh, yes. See what do you think? Sure. I’d rather probably

Meet and talk to AOC, of course, because it would be interesting. Don’t want to fundraise for her. No, but no

No, I’m not asking fundraising who let in the door front door unlock the front door for unlock

AOC

George would you not even return the email if he said David I’m in town

I wouldn’t let him in my house for dinner. Don’t let

Yeah, he might he might steal the silverware or something

I mean, it’s so nuts

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. We got to get started as your moderator. I’m gonna try and keep us on track. Good luck

Yeah, no, look, it’s a it’s an energetic day. I appreciate I appreciate my co-hosts and their enthusiasm

Enough recognition for supporting the Republicans in this budget showdown. I mean, I’m like blown away by this. I think it’s great

I think it’s great as you guys know just to restate. It’s my number one concern on earth today

Yeah

And I think that the importance of this topic

Really needs to kind of rise above politics of all the things you said Freeberg in the last like six months on this program

It’s the one thing that stuck with me and it’s one thing that has like actually now

I realize is the most important thing for this country is fiscal responsibility

austerity measures and looking at how we’re spending money and looking at immigration and looking at economic velocity and

employment and

Competing on the world stage with a solid balance sheet is the balance sheet is how you compete

The balance sheet is how you compete. I think it rises above social issues and it rises above climate change

You you cannot address climate change or social issues or infrastructure or unemployment

Unless we have the ability to operate as a country over the long term and have the ability

To have the continuing credit of the United States dollar and that’s why I think it’s so important free break

I’m dealing this with with startups

I have right now and I tell them the balance sheet is how you compete

If your balance sheet is flipped upside down and you’re gonna be out of business in nine months

You’re not competing with these two other companies in your sector

you have to have a strong balance sheet take the austerity measures make the cuts and

Then compete with a strong balance sheet

It’s just so obvious this country’s balance sheet is getting flipped upside down and we are gonna have so many

Yeah, very complex second and third order effects with the interest payments

if you value austerity, if you value austerity, if you look back in history, and you actually ask of the

Prime ministers or presidents of various countries particularly first world countries that have actually had an impact in implementing austerity

You know what the unifying thing that I can say is women do a much better job than men

Okay, you want austerity you’re better off with it with Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher would then with a dude

aka Nikki Haley

Interstate

It’s a very hard position to be in as a politician because you have to position

Your objective as one of taking things away and the primary way to get elected in a democracy

Just like in junior high when you run for president of the junior high class is I’m gonna make the vending machines free

You get elected and when you run in politics

You always promise your constituents what they’re gonna get that they don’t have today and that’s the model for getting elected

Whatever the issue is of the day, whatever the issue de jure to decade whatever

It’s all about what I’m gonna give you that you don’t have today

And so to flip that conversation around we all have to sacrifice together for the long-term

Viability of our economic prosperity. We need to do we need to give up the following things

That is a very hard platform to running on

When someone on the other side of the podium on the other side of the stage is saying I’m gonna give you these 10 things

And it’s very hard to get like it and that’s why democracies ultimately eat themselves and I forgot who said it

But ultimately all democracies end up realizing they can vote themselves all the money and then you have this big cycle

Republicans did the most brilliant thing ever recently. They moved from stop the steal to stop the spend. This is a genius

Thing they stumbled into nobody wants to hear them talking about the election being stolen

That’s complete nonsense, but stop the spend we all understand that everybody is seeing it in their own personal balance sheets

They’re seeing it in their companies. They’re seeing it in their families. They’re seeing it with their mortgage payment

They’re looking at their you know college tuition bills. They’re looking at their

Car payments going from four hundred to seven hundred dollars and they’re seeing what variable interest does we have variable interest debt?

This stuff is gonna skyrocket

Whether it’s Elon’s payments for Twitter or your payments for your mortgage or our country’s payments for our debt. We have to stop the spend

Effective interest rates. Yes. Yeah, but guys, let’s just continue the conversation and

Talk a little bit about this World Economic Forum

Gathering that that took place in Davos. I know you guys wanted to talk about it this week

Okay, so by Jake Al’s intellectual honesty, I’m like blowing away right now cuz he’s sick. Okay, so look

When I’m trying to get the best out of you sex

The budget conversation is an important one as it relates also to the global economy and growth

So Davos took place, you know over this past week just so everyone knows and I remember

You know working at Google

2004 I remember like how exciting it was for the executives to kind of start to transition into the Davos stage

It became this moment where you’re kind of finally on the world stage

It’s an exciting moment for CEOs for world leaders for global economists to get together

talk about the state of the global economy where the world is headed what we can and should be doing about it and

Davos is also this

This place of pride and prestige for being invited and being a part of the party the global

Elite party as some people are now calling it and that’s what I think is the important conversation

Is that the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos has recently been cast as this gathering of the global elites

Those who are trying to take control and run the world as they see fit and sex

I’d love your point of view on how that transition has happened because one of the important ways that the Davos

Gathering has been cast in the World Economic Forum has been cast is in the negative light of being globalists and

globalism has had a really important role in driving global economic growth and prosperity and

It has had these adverse effects in the US as we’ve seen with wealth inequality loss of jobs offshoring

Gutting of industries and so on. I think that there’s a really important way that Davos has been politicized

But the risk of that is significant because if we do

Lean into this globalist notion and say it’s all about elites trying to take control of our world and we all become

Isolationists that countries around the world can suffer deeply from the economic consequences of that shift

So maybe sacks you can kick this off and especially in light of our

Conversation today about the need for economic growth and the reduction of global debt to support, you know

a more prosperous world in the future

This idea that right now we’re talking about Davos and the World Economic Forum as a gathering of global elites and maybe sacks you can

Kind of give us the history and the point of view on how that positionings come about

Well, it’s a meeting of global business and government leaders. So they are the elites

I mean you add them all together and they do control a substantial portion of the world economy and most of the

You know nations with the biggest economies

So there’s no question

These are some of the most important people in the world a bunch of the articles coming out of Davos

Reported the somber mood and tone of the conference the level of anxiety and worry was very high and I think that

For a brief moment

It looked like these people were staring in the mirror and realizing that their management of the global economy over the last couple of decades

Has been a bit of a disaster

I mean you do have ruinous deficits and debts piling up in

But the US and across the world something like 350 percent

Debt to GDP globally, so we’ve talked about that

You’ve got this war in Ukraine that I and many people around the world think was easily avoidable and was a diplomatic failure

You’re coming off of two years of badly botched kovat

Mismanagement where the governments the world pursued a horrible policy on kovat and made everything worse. You’ve got decades of energy policy

Promoted by the World Economic Forum where they want to get people off

Fossil fuels and natural gas and get them on to

Less dense less reliable energy including promoting things like organic farming in Sri Lanka

Which we talk on the show cause their economy to collapse

You’ve got the World Economic Forum promoting ideas like you’re gonna own nothing in the year

2030 and you’re gonna be eating insects because no one should be eating meat. So you’ve got these like wacky

extreme, you know environmentalist ideas and anti

Capitalist anti-property ideas coming out of Davos

So I think the whole thing’s been a bit of a disaster and for a brief moment. It looked like these people

Again, we’re self-reflecting on their role in creating these disasters. But of course the tone quickly shifted to blaming

Disinformation on social media as the root cause of all these problems as opposed to their decades of decision-making

Running, you know

The leading nations of the world and the leading companies of the world and I think that the blame is properly put

Not on social media, but on

These leaders for making you know bad decisions

do you believe in the benefits of global trade where countries trade with one another and

shift the sourcing of supply and labor to the cheaper source so that the buyer can benefit from having things at a lower price and

ultimately the global economy grows as

Kind of being beneficial to the US over the last 30 years or net negative because we talked, you know about the the obvious

Consequences of global trade where we’ve had industries gutted in the United States

And now we’re trying to onshore them again and build redundancy and so on but that’s becoming very expensive and ultimately leads to the inflation

of goods and services and

So as you look at kind of the yeah

The positive agenda of the World Economic Forum over the last 30 years being about

Improving global trade and global relations to enable global trade. Are you an anti globalist?

and you know, do you start to see yourself falling more in that camp as

You see and hear more of what comes out of Davos and from these organizations like them

Well, look all economic prosperity comes from trade

if we didn’t have trade then we would all be subsistence farmers and hunters and gatherers, so we

Basically specialize in

Something and then create an overabundance of that and trade it for the rest of our necessities. The issue is that trade

Not only creates prosperity it creates dependencies because you’re dependent on the people you’re trading with and also it has

distributional effects in terms of geopolitical consequences, so

Trade with China has created some prosperity, but it’s also hollowed out

the American manufacturing

Sector while also making China very rich, which has basically turned China into a major geopolitical competitor for the United States

So I’m not like a free trade fanatic

I mean, I understand the ways that trade creates wealth

But I think it can also create these downsides that have to be managed and the fact of the matter is that this unfettered free trade

ideology contained the seeds of its own destruction because all the revisionist powers who are seeking to revise the US

Led global order they were basically enriched and

built up by the very free trade ideology that

neoliberals were promoting

So this neoliberal world order has kind of created the seeds of its own destruction

I think that it would have been much smarter for us

Two decades ago to be much more restrained in the China trade and to not throw open our markets

To Chinese products we basically gave them MFN status. This is back in the early

2000s and it was a bipartisan

project and a bipartisan decision

But the result of that has been the rapid rise of China at the expense of our manufacturing

Sectors and to the benefit of our consumer class, right?

I mean we do have $600 iPhones because of it and we do have cheap TVs and there has been a consumer market

That’s demanded these low-priced goods

To

Yeah, but so everyone gets cheap goods at Target but in exchange for that we now have a real peer competitor to the United States

Which is capable of disrupting?

Let’s say our primacy in East Asia and you know, it’s creating a much more challenging world

So look I can understand the reasons why people bought into this two decades ago

But I think that if we had it to do all over again

I think most people would recognize that we should not have given China permanent MFN status and we should have been more

Temperate in our willingness to throw open our markets to these countries. Come on. Do you think that the World Economic Forum has kind of?

Transitioned into this kind of neoliberal

organization now that’s promoting these neoliberal beliefs that aren’t really tied to the original construct of

Global enabling and supporting global trade and

Supporting the global economy and creating more prosperity and security around the world. I think it appeals to the insecure overachiever elite

Yeah, you know nobody building anything really gives a shit about Davos. Nobody is thinking what’s going on. Nobody even knows when it happens, right?

so who cares about it people who like status and went to fancy schools and

Wants to feel like they’re in the club and that’s how they’ve made it is going to this place which underneath is

A membership organization where people pay based on the number of people that get to go

So is it really that important?

substantively, no, but

Overachieving surplus elites in the West really valued the signal that it represents to other overachieving surplus elites in the West

So that’s what Davos is that’s what the Allen and company conference has become a lot of these things started off

Much purer than what they are today, but these are all membership driven

Revenue generating efforts in 30 or 40 years the all in summit will probably become that too

It’s just the nature of things so I wouldn’t spend so much time focused on a

Group of people getting together the funniest thing about Davos that I saw was zero hedge

Which said that the amount of prostitution is at record levels in Davos

And so it just kind of boils down to what it is, which is like any other conference

It just happens to be with more security guards and less security guards and the same stupid stuff happens that Davos that happens in

Vegas at name your conference CES. It’s just a different kind of attendee

so I think the bigger thing is that

We are learning that the world tends to have these policy perspectives that swing in a pendulum and

the problem with the pendulum is that it is at extremes and

Saks is right. We went from an extreme where we were very closed off and

We were essentially subsistence farmers all of us were and then the pendulum has essentially peaked probably in the mid-teens of this decade

Or the century where we realized too much globalization actually hollows out local economies

So we need to find the equilibrium point and that inherently has more inflation

that inherently has higher prices and that inherently has

slower progress

but more consistent progress that benefits more people and this is what is so

Ideologically

disruptive to again

Surplus elites because they need the $600 iPhone the idea that they can’t upgrade every year

Drives them into such a tizzy that they need to export all the jobs

Whereas a thousand dollar iPhone or a $1,500 iPhone may just mean that your upgrade cycle is two years

And just ask yourself

How many times have you upgraded as soon as the phone came out to realize man?

this phone is actually worse than the previous version and I probably could have just waited and

There’s a lot of work that actually goes into building these things to actually make them better

So all you’re doing is you’re giving up optionality

You’re allowing your brothers and sisters to struggle to basically feed the profit motives of one company

That in hindsight doesn’t need to happen. So there’s an equilibrium and I think that these next few decades

Will be about finding it. We have decided it’s categorical that that level of globalization that we have had this unitary

singular monocultural way of thinking about things is

over and

David’s right. It’s because that system has created too many threats to the hegemony that brought us there

Jake and you that’s a good thing. I think in general it’ll be it’ll be more prosperity for more people, but it’ll be slower and

It will create points of friction that are represented in inflation and higher prices, right?

That’s right

So as J Cal as you know

Chamath points out like if you’re upgrading every two years instead of one year your economy doesn’t grow as fast

You have less spending. Yeah, if the price of things go up you have inflation the net cost of

De-globalization is higher prices and lower economic growth. That’s just fundamental kind of macroeconomics. No, that’s not true

That’s not true

Because the de-globalization in an individual economy will actually create GDP because you’ll have to rebuild the things that I used to import

That’s right. Yeah and over a period of time theoretically you could catch up and accelerate but

Jekyll like when you weigh this conversation about

Davos and globalization and US security against the one we just had which is why I wanted to talk about this

We’re running into a debt crisis

We have limited spending capacity

We have a significant amount of investment needed if we are going to

Cut global trade ties that we’ve depended on historically and start to build redundancy

can we afford this as a country can the West afford this given the economic slowdowns and inflation right now and

You know, how do we balance kind of these conversations against our domestic challenges economically Davos has a pretty serious PR problem they

have

Dubbed themselves like essentially a self-appointed Illuminati for the rest of us and that they’re gonna set some global agenda

I think this year’s agenda was like

Finding the future or defining the future

nobody asked these people to be in charge and

If you look at what’s happened in the world the chaos of kovat and

you look at what’s happened in terms of energy policy in Europe and

Then this obsession with social issues and being told you know, these farmers these truckers you’re bad people

You’re not woke whatever it is

I think the public looks at Davos as the manifestation of these global elites

Who are lording over them some master plan whether it’s real or not

That they’re not part of and that doesn’t take them into consideration and that takes into consideration only their profits and

When you actually peel it back as Chamath correctly pointed out

Davos is a huge grift. They they recruited me to be part of their world leaders

15 years ago after I’d sold did you go second company and I met Claus the guy who runs it at some New York Four

Seasons event and

Then I got the bill and to be a world

leader

Was forty fucking thousand dollars and I was like what a global future leader. I don’t know what that means

But I’m not giving you forty thousand dollars. Are you and you had to pay?

You had to pay to be a global what future leader and you didn’t have to pay

For a six thousand dollar TED ticket at the time. This was 40 large and

I just thought you know, this is not for me

And what a joke I think people would much rather see

some resiliency in the supply chain and they would rather see

the origins of kovat and why we spent two years in a lockdown and

Was that a cover-up of the United States funding?

gain of research

You know being done in Wuhan like and and why are we shutting down

Nuclear power plants and what exactly is the energy policy in Germany people are looking at

incompetent elites

Going to Davos having a big party and then setting an agenda for them that they don’t understand or want

and I think this is where you know, the the the contempt for Davos is peaking this year and it should if you’re being

invited to Davos and

Other people are not being invited and they don’t have a seat at the table in a voice at the table

You can tell that all the journalists there are on an access journalism pass

What does that mean access journalism?

They get to come there and they get to hang out with elites if and only if their coverage fits a certain

Profile and if you find me the top 10 most critical

Anti-globalization journalists in the world. I can guarantee you that they don’t have credentials. I think it’s like a bankrupt organization

They should just be shut down and the people who are going there are involved. No, I think it’s culturally bankrupt

You guys have so much disdain. It’s interesting. No, I do

Not what the world wants right now the world wants transparency and the world wants ownership of

all the screw-ups

You know from kovat. Yeah to energy policy

We want ownership of those issues not a bunch of elites drinking champagne

I’d rather spend a week with entrepreneurs or frankly spend a week with my kids or Frank

Yes, and a week playing poker with my friend. Of course, let’s do it

They’re they’re like umpteen things that are above the list. So it’s kind of like let them get together

I think it’s fine for them to get together. They should do it

I just think that if you’re not there

I would not weigh these things so heavily because it speaks more to your own insecurity

Than it does to their actual influence on things. Yeah, the term elite is an interesting one

You you companies need a CEO to run the company. It’s not run by 10,000 employees and

Governments need a president to oversee the government

And I think the idea that some small number of people that are in charge getting together is now being cast as

An elite gathering and elitism in itself is the failure

Is I think I don’t think it’s an elite gathering. I think it’s very important to get this nuance, right?

It’s a gathering of elites

and that’s very different than an elite gathering an elite gathering is when like

Michael jordan and lebron james and steph curry get together and work on their basketball game. That’s an elite gathering a gathering of elites

Is what’s happening in devils?

But they are the presidents of their companies and the presidents of their countries

So I would differentiate between the people who are merely attending who are paying the forty thousand dollars

Probably a bunch of hangers on it’s now 250 by the way

$250,000. Yeah, anyone willing to pay that is like, you know, totally an insecure, you know, surplus elite

By the way, I just got back from davos. Oh, you did. Okay. Well, congratulations

Looks good on you though

Did you spend your own money or your lp’s money? No, I didn’t go to davos

I mean one person that went to davos that spent their own money. It’s like probably not right exactly

So then there’s the hangers on you’re spending 250 000 to feel important

But then there’s the people who are invited who probably don’t spend any money who are basically speaking, right?

and you got to say that the the group of people who are speaking at davos individually and collectively are

quite influential they are the leaders of

Countries and and fortune 500 companies sure, but you can agree that they literally don’t say anything

That’s noteworthy because they’re not allowed to they’re not saying anything

That’s that different of what they would say the previous week or the following week. So but it’s it’s a forum

It’s a platform for it’s a it’s a yeah, it’s a forum

Yeah to get together

Look in terms of the critique of it

Freeberg you asked how far back does this go? It’s this is not like a new thing

The the term davos man was coined back in 2004 by a harvard professor named sam huntington

who wrote a book called clash civilizations, he’s the

Professor of international relations at harvard and he coined the term davos man to refer to a globalist

Who quote had little need for national loyalty who viewed national boundaries as obstacles that are thankfully, uh vanishing

that’s how huntington defined davos man and

There’s been a reaction to

these

Davos men that’s been growing for a couple of decades. I mean obviously the election of trump was a reaction to that

Brexit was a huge reaction to that

and I think that the

Resistance to the imposition of their again their globalist policies, which I guess you could define as believing in this like borderless world

You know economically and politically. I think that’s been receding in favor of more nationalist leaders

Who want to promote their own country’s interests?

And I think that that trend is going to continue

Well chamath, let’s let’s transition this to the the broader question that I think

We got into it a couple episodes ago

on how can we

afford this transition

If there is this mounting

Kind of trend against globalization this mounting

De-globalization movement and effort particularly in the us and again as sax pointed out global debt to gdp is something like

300 to 350 depending on how you count

And we’re running into a debt ceiling here in the us

I guess the question is how do we afford to build the infrastructure redundancy?

And make the investments at home

To replace global trade

Can we afford to do it and how’s this going to play out as we run into this?

You know debt ceiling vote. I don’t think that’s the right question. I think it’s the inverse of that question

How can we afford not to?

with the amount of discontent and the amount of economic strain that people feel

If you want to really quell populism, you’re going to have to create economic vibrancy at home when people are making money and they find

purpose

They’re less agitated. They’re not storming the capital. They’re not electing

fringe candidates

they’re not

Doing domestic terrorism. They’re just going to work and building a life

Right. We know that so how can we afford not to how can we afford not to like bring back jobs to the heartland of america?

so

the reality that I have and I think a lot of people have is that

This debt to gdp thing is a bit of an intellectual red herring

And the reason is people talk about this thing constantly in these absolute terms

With no historical precedent that relates well to our current moment

There is no magic number at which thing this experiment that’s called america fails

So I think that you have to be a little bit more intellectually honest and say that at best it’s a relative problem

and it’s relative to

The countries that have already established dominance of which there are eight or nine

And then the emerging economies and then thinking about what critical things will they bring to the table in 15 or 20 years from now

And in that context

I think that people will him and haw

But ultimately they’ll capitulate they will raise the debt ceiling and they’ll continue to fund

This transition away from globalism and I think that’s the argument that will get the republicans over the line

Because it’s going to bring a lot of spending and stimulus and jobs

To frankly a lot of red states that would otherwise kind of continue to wither and die on the vine

I think here’s my biggest concern

We’re either trying to walk a tightrope or there’s no tightrope to walk

and

If we make these investments and they’re not economically viable investments

It’s a path to ruin

And what I mean by that is if we’re building

factories manufacturing facilities

Infrastructure that relies on yesteryear’s technology and systems of

production and

kind of economic systems

And there are alternatives that are competing on a global stage that are better more productive more advanced

Then we lose and we’ve made an investment in a negative roi way, but hold on a second

Can I ask you a question?

Yeah, see when you say that though, you’re making a very basic assumption, which I think you can question which is you are underpinning that

On fundamental economics that can change if we choose to for example, let’s take like natural resources

Okay

Every time you do a plan the industry and I define the industry as every for-profit company and wall street and the debt markets

They refuse to underwrite this thing at a higher cost of capital. They use a whack

Of six or seven or eight and they will fight tooth and nail

To use the smallest discount rate possible because it allows them to capture more of the profit dollars

But if you actually had a realistic whack of like 10 on an on a massive infrastructure project

Guess what?

You’re actually pretty equivalent to a government and in fact in many cases the government becomes cheaper

So I think the thing that is worth debating and i’d like your reaction to this. It’s not that what you’re saying

It’s we refuse to change the guardrails on our profit making ability

And if you extended the window if you change the discount rate if you said pes can be different

You would have a very different economic justification for what you just said

It completely changes a hundred basis points changes everything you’re saying by tens of years one way to describe that. Yeah is

Another way to reframe what you just said

Is that the useful lifespan of an investment isn’t 40 years or 50 years, but it may be 12 years

And if you if you recast the investment decision as this has to be a 12-year return

Instead of allowing it to be modeled as a 40-year return

Then you start to really filter out a lot of the nonsense and you can actually see real payback

It doesn’t make sense to spend a hundred billion dollars

On a train to take people from la to fresno or whatever craziness the the california

High-speed rail program has turned into it was originally like a billion dollars to go from la to san francisco

There was economic justification to get payback on 100 billion dollars or whatever. It’s ballooned into

The whole system should be shut down

So I guess there’s a from a policy perspective and accountability framing that’s missing but also bringing in

The time horizon on which we need to get paid back for these things

My point was that in china and i’ve made this point many times

But I just think it’s a really important one that’ll play out over the next couple of years

They’re building 450 nuclear power plants

They’re going to get the cost of industrial power below five cents or four cents a kilowatt hour

And they’re electrifying all their factories as they do that. It’s no longer a unit of human labor

That’s needed to produce goods

It’s a unit of electricity and if they’re driving down the cost of electricity and all products can be made using electricity

You have a huge economic advantage. It’s not the cure-all that you think that is even if you have free energy

You have to think about the inputs and the thing that china, but no, sorry. I’m not talking about energy

I’m, just saying a general framing like no, I understand my point being like the investments

We should be making or where is the puck headed not where has the puck been?

No, no

So I just I just wanted to comment on where the puck is heading

Even if energy is zero in china, you have to think about inputs meaning factories make things with inputs

And if you look for example in natural resources the inputs by and large don’t exist in china

and so all i’m saying is that all of these inputs whether

Again, you can take natural resources that proliferate massively in the united states. It turns out that india is

Utterly utterly utterly poorly addressed in a geographical survey perspective and we’re finding that india’s raw resources

Are off the charts. Okay, there’s certain places in africa tons of stuff in indonesia and australia

all of those things

May not have to go to china because there are subsidies or there are equivalently cheaper

Decisions that governments can make so that they choose not to send it and all of a sudden

All of that spending doesn’t matter as much because the australian government makes a trade-off that says, you know what?

I’d rather have these jobs here and i’m willing to have a longer payback cycle for these jobs to be here

Then instead of ship it to china

And he they tell that they tell the australian citizens

I’m, sorry guys, but you’re gonna have to replace your car every seven years as opposed to every five

I hope you’re okay with that

But that’ll mean full employment and it’ll prevent fringe candidates and populism

And let’s go forward. Where do you invest?

I am investing I am investing a lot of money

In those places that control the natural resources that are poorly understood meaning

there are places like india where

Our geological survey capacity is relatively naive and it turns out that

in critical parts of the energy supply chain or other places

They can play a huge role and the indian government’s cost of capital

Has an element they’re sophisticated enough

to add

An element to the formula that accounts for full employment

If I build it in this state and if I try to get this many jobs created

The full circle feedback of that allows me to actually transfer price it into the indian market at this price

Which is cheaper than anything that china can do even at zero energy

That’s the kind of sophisticated decision making that is emerging because of this deglobalization trend and it’s happening everywhere

So the indians are doing it the germans are doing it

And then the us is doing it and then on top of that what they’re what they’re doing in terms of game theory

Which I think is even more sophisticated is

They’re not letting china be alone. They’re actually now slowing china down

Because china turns out actually needs inputs from these western economies and they’re like we’re just not going to give them to you anymore

So do the best you can for example in semiconductors the dutch the germans the americans

We’ve now essentially embargoed all of our most sophisticated equipment from ever getting in there

That will increase even with zero energy

the cost of what comes out of there and that will

Balance the playing field so that the germans the dutch the americans can bring other partners in

at a different cost of capital

To make it economically neutral and at parity and the reason they’ll do it is to create jobs for americans

Or the dutch or for the germans, okay, I think the most yeah, go ahead. Freeberg

I I just I I think the most important thing here isn’t like energy

I don’t think it’s infrastructure

I don’t think it’s natural resources at least for america. It’s entrepreneurs

And that’s what it’s always been for this country

And it’s immigration

Is the silver bullet here?

And inspiration and the freedom that this country has

For entrepreneurs and founders to pursue a vision to start a company

That’s why we’ve won so big historically is the the combination of immigration

and the inspiration that these entrepreneurs

Do on a global basis to get more entrepreneurs to come to this country to go to stanford to start companies

And that’s why china is now losing

they

cribbed this incredible formula we had of letting

Jack ma do alibaba and then they decided to for whatever, you know

Insecure or stupid reason or pragmatic reason to consolidate power

And that’s what will push the world forward and and make our country thrive

We have to fix immigration we have to keep letting entrepreneurs

Define the future because the government can do so much they can underwrite a couple of chip factories here or there

Sure, we could put money into nuclear or fission or fusion and whatever the next technology is

but you need a singular person who wants to make it their life’s mission who wants to have

their

Sense of pride and innovation push the world forward and those people are rare and we are in a competition globally

That we are not focused on

The that we need to get refocused on to recruit the greatest minds in the world who want to change the world to do it

on

American soil. I do not disagree with you. J cal I think

You know to my earlier comment about how do we walk the tightrope of the debt burden the deglobalization and populism movements?

And the and the challenges and opportunities ahead it has to come through innovation. I think that’s how you

You have to invent a new tightrope. Basically. I think the challenge though is freeberg that

It takes a recognition that there are singular individuals in the world

One in a million one in 10 million one in 100 000, whatever it is

Who can just drive an entire economy forward whether it’s gates with microsoft or steve jobs with apple

There are singular individuals who come to this country bam bam brogan with uh, the tunneling company

Nice Paul, nobody knows what you’re talking about except for me

There are people who will push these things forward and and take risk and we have to yeah

Recognize that it’s a small number of individuals

Backed by a large amount of capital

That create massive jobs and great prosperity

It’s an uncomfortable conversation for people to realize that it might just be a couple of dozen people a year

Immigrating to this country that change the fate of this country

Yeah, why do you need to allow three million migrants to stream across the southern border every year because you don’t know

Which one it’s going to be

That’s why really

You know, that’s that’s your immigration policy is open border. So that one is a million. I said recruitment

That’s the opposite of it

Explain that it’s a great question sax. There are there are two things to look at here. There is a pragmatic

Hold on. Let me finish my sentence. No, I’m just going to ask you to just clarify as you say

It’s your are you saying that the phd student that starts google is streaming across the border or actually applying for

No, absolutely not

Let me parse it for you

There’s immigration and then there’s recruitment and if we frame this process with those two different words

There are people who are yes immigrating streaming across the border. However, you want to frame it sax

I don’t look at it

In a political way and then there’s recruiting the most elite talent in the world

We can do both of these things

one of them, you know, uh helps

Farmers have people to work the fields to have people take entry-level jobs to work in the service industry

We should bring in two or three million of those people per year. We should make it legal

And we should celebrate it because we have so many of those positions open that americans don’t want to take we should then also

in parallel

And without confusing the issue for political reasons recruit people to come to our universities and when they graduate

Have their citizenship staple to that diploma and not let them leave the company country and let them start companies here

Instead what we do is we make them fight to stay here

We should be recruiting the smartest most talented people. That will be hundreds of thousands of people per year

Well hundreds of thousands. Okay, and then we should have millions coming across the border sick. J cal is very reasonable

No, shit. J cal is great. Yeah, I I think he’s so much better when he doesn’t moderate. Yeah

Yeah, go ahead sex

You know, i’m an immigrant

You know, my dad came over. Yeah, my dad came over in

1977 when I was five years old, of course, he had an md. He was a doctor

He actually had like skills and wasn’t immediately can become a net government dependent. So

I think that it makes sense to allow immigrants who can actually add something into our economy and bring skills and all the rest

Of it, but the problem we have is that if you want to take that reasonable position

You’re told that you basically have to accept

A situation of de facto open borders, which is ridiculous. No, you don’t these are two separate things and

They’ve become conflated

Is the number one

Party that conflates these two issues, you know, they’re two separate issues. The democratic party has conflated these issues

Okay, both parties are conflating them here at the all-in podcast. Can we agree that? Yeah, let’s

People could recruit people for phd programs one group of people allows people across the border service jobs

Yes, obviously the more nuanced policy is the way to go. But but look let me tie this back to davos man

What was the definition of davos man? It was somebody who was pushing

This ideology of free trade and open borders to such an extent that it creates a nationalist

Backlash or populist backlash enough. Yeah, that’s exactly what’s happened at our southern border is

You have the people who believe in immigration push that ideology to such an extent that they won’t create a rational sensible

Southern border and process at our southern border. It’s chaos down there

Yeah, i’m in favor of bringing in the dream team

But the response of open borders is the creation of this nationalist movement, right?

The nationalist movement only exists in the face of open borders. I think that’s that’s the point right like the extreme

Bears the extreme I think the immigration system should be based on points

Just like canada those men don’t if the davos men don’t start taking start taking into account these national considerations

around the defense of their borders and

These issues around trade hollowing out the middle class

Then there’s going to be an intense backlash and I don’t think those elites have been managing the situation very well

It would it would have been better for them to pursue the more nuanced policy you’re talking about

Why are we conflating the issue then?

Why do the democrats and the republicans sacks make this such a polarizing issue instead of stating it the way I did

Recruitment, it’s so easy. It’s so easy

You know when you when you conflate them you can incite an emotional response from your voting base

That’s it. That’s why all of these issues. That’s why all of these issues get based out

They get based out to the point that then you can drive someone to vote for you

Because you’ve now framed the other side as this extreme side

And that’s how you earlier said hold on before you got suddenly very reasonable

You said that we have always been this reason why you haven’t listened

I’m going to quote something you just said a minute ago. You said that we had to allow two to three million

Two to three million completely destitute

Practically illiterate migrants to stream across our border because one in a million of them might be an elon musk

No, no, there could be no. No, hold on. I was talking about you can take it back

No, no, i’m not

Immigration typically includes when you say that word

The corpus of people coming in for education and the people coming across the southern border

So if you were to say immigration, most people would reasonably say that’s both of those buckets

I separated them out here so we could have a reasonable discussion recruitment of higher education talented people with low

education

Migrant workers they are two different buckets and you have to be able to say

These are two different buckets and that we should have a point-based system

If and this is the conversation that doesn’t happen amongst politicians, but can happen here. Look at canada

Look at australia. They have what’s called a point-based immigration system

They give you points for everything

That you bring to the country if you bring money

If you speak the native language if you have a degree if you have a higher education degree

Or you have skills that that country needs

Our country needs to move to a point-based system

If you’re coming across the board and you don’t speak the language and you don’t have an education

You have zero points if you have a master’s degree, how about we just speak two or three points and you can let in buckets

of people based on compassion

Based on needing service workers and based on needing

The next elon musk or the next david sachs or trim off poly hoppity

I think the the argument jcal is that the compassion argument falls on deaf ears

In a time where people feel we cannot afford it and it’s a luxury to embrace that model of immigration right now

Just pick a number we can reasonably absorb. This is what finland did the southern border and see chaos

Obviously, they want to get that under control before they’re going to adopt your you know point-based system

We can do two things at once we could do no the point-based system

Point-based system. I like the idea of I don’t know if my points are the same as your points, but in concept I like

No, no, we don’t need to I like the idea of admitting

immigrants based on skills the country actually needs

Great and a simple recognition that is better to bring in people who are immediately productive

Hold on and can add to our economy as opposed to being net government recipients dependence. We’re done. We’re done

There are countries. I just want to make a point. There are countries

the scandinavian country specifically

That have said we can accept up to this many

folks

Who are uneducated who don’t speak the language because we have this many teachers and this many slots in school

And so I think it was finland and sweden

They said we can accept 50 000 per year of this type of immigration based on compassion

That’s the reasonable discussion that has to happen here

Did you just say that we have to do these two things at the same time meaning that until we impose a

An overhaul of our entire immigration system to be based on skills and points

That we can’t enforce the southern border

No, I think you can’t enforce the southern border and do it. I think you can do these things at the same time

It’s not

Let me just tell you there’s gonna be no

Canada and australia are already doing it

Let me just tell you there’s not going to be a broad-based constituency in this country for the type of immigration reform

You’re talking about until you get the southern border under control because people look at that on the news and see chaos

And there’s no excuse for that. They should be thoughtful

They should be thoughtful and they should just look at what canada and australia have done

Those countries have actually controlled this and it’s not a polarizing issue there. It’s a pragmatic issue. Okay guys, i’m going to move us forward

to the uh

The banning of tiktok. So I want to kind of change the the tone a little bit

this uh

story recently

Is that tiktok has been banned for use on the campus wi-fi network?

Let’s go at a number of universities including ut austin auburn boise state the university of oklahoma

So college students can’t access the app when they’re on the campus network

This is following 19 states that recently banned tiktok and government devices as everyone knows tiktok is a product

from bytedance, which is a chinese-based company and there’s been quite a lot of

Political and regulatory huffs and gruffs about bytedance having this level of insight and access

To users in the united states with the assumption being that much of the data that they’re pulling out of the app

is available to the chinese communist party, which

creates a security

threat to the united states

That’s one argument

I think there is also a significant tie-in to bytedance

There’s over eight billion dollars of capital invested in bytedance by firms that we know

Well, like sequoia capital tiger global co2 susquehanna

And others they’re trying to find a way to monetize their investment in what is truly

The most viral fastest growing highest revenue growing biggest startup in the world right now in bytedance

So there is a restructuring proposal apparently underway that’s being discussed in washington dc right now

to try and restructure the organization and the ownership structure and the oversight of

Tiktok and bytedance such that us regulators and us companies can oversee the data the use of the data the algorithms

Underlying tiktok and monitor them from within the united states question for this group here on the mclaughlin group

of 2023 is

Does that do enough for you mclaughlin?

Do you guys think that that’s enough?

first up is uh

Chamath who’s been silenced for a bit. I think this is really bad news for bytedance. Basically what’s happening is that and tiktok

All the frustration that all these legislature legislators and politicians have had over

Facebook and google

and other sort of big tech companies

Is going to get focused on bytedance because you have this common enemy that you can point to as a boogeyman of sorts

And i’m not saying that it’s right, but I think that what you’re starting to see is it’s much easier

To pick a fight with a chinese company and win

And get broad-based support than it is to pick a fight against an american company with a bunch of

American employees an american market cap and american know-how and american ip that gets impacted

so

I don’t think this is going to end well for tiktok and

I think the goal if I were any of these people on the cap table

Would be to sell it

In secondary to somebody else and get out. I think the next big shoe to drop

Is going to be advertisers who come under a lot of pressure

So for example, think of all the advertisers that have left twitter

There is a point of efficiency where you can live with all of the mess that twitter has

Because it comes with a lot less scrutiny and oversight and political pressure than advertising on tiktok

And that

I think is the next kind of like big wave here. So I think it’s very very bad

I think the enterprise value of this company is

quite challenged

and

These guys should try to sell and get up who are the buyers in that secondary market though

I mean, that’s a lot of capital. The thing is the cap tables haven’t been segregated

So what you own is equity and bite dance, right?

But the problem is the look-through ownership would will discount

A lot of tiktok if they see a lot more of this stuff happening

You guys have to remember this is the first three or four weeks of 2023

Wait till we’re here in september and october and november wait till the election year starts

It’s not good. So

It’s a discount on bite dance that probably

Takes bike dance down by 70 or 80 billion. So that’s a 35 40 discount to their last mark

So, you know if somebody can sell in the high 100 billions of dollars

I think you should I think they should probably they should consider it. There’s

It’s worth it. I think jk. I know you got strong opinions. Well, no, I think you have to be incredibly pragmatic here

This is the same as the 5g issue. You cannot trust the chinese government to not

Steal intellectual property or to put back doors into the software. It is common business practice there

Huawei was banned. They basically stole the source code from cisco that was proven

And it was proven that they were spying on people

Canada the uk the united states vietnam. Everybody has banned

using

5g technology from china for a reason because they will use it to spy on you. This is uh, the nature of

An authoritarian government. It is far too powerful to have a uh

Not only the surveillance capabilities that are built into owning tiktok in the hands of the chinese communist party

to have the ability to

Very in a very nuanced fashion

Trends certain videos that would steer the united states in a certain direction

Politically or yeah towards stupidity is one of course, right?

They’re letting their you need to look at 60 minutes. That 60 minutes clip is incredible, right?

It’s like they show they’re showing science videos to the kids in china exactly and they’re showing stupid nonsense to the kids in america

What do you think over millions of videos?

Our children versus their children you can be a hundred percent certain they’re doing psyops on our children as we speak

They are trying to make us dumb and distracted while they get smart and sharp, by the way

It’s very simple if you’re if you’re a sucker, you know, that’s not the choices of our kids

The algorithm just gives you more what you want

Exactly, of course, but that’s like saying if you gave kids a choice between broccoli and chocolate bars, of course

If you put the kids in the supermarket and say eat they’re going to go right to the cereal

The job of the parent sacks is number one know their name and then number two differentiate

You need a pen and pad sacks good things and that’s your question I agree with chamath that the future is not bright

For tiktok here because it’s gotten caught up in the geopolitical rivalry between china and the united states

And that’s only going to keep getting more and more intense

The u.s and china are headed for a big security competition and by dance is caught in the middle

So I agree with chamath about the future. But you know, this claim is made that

Tick tock is spyware

And you know, it’s listening to you it’s surveilling you it’s keeping track of you

Like what is the evidence for that claim?

I just want to understand that a little better like has anyone ever proven

That like tick tock is spyware and if it is why does an apple stop it?

Could you explain that to me? Yeah, I think apple has a complicated relationship with china. So the claim

That they’re not going to do it

So jk your claim is let me I just want to pin jk down on this for a second your claim is that?

100

Tick tock is spyware and apple is letting it happen because their relationship with the ccp

I do not have the evidence of specific instances of them spying

But I do know that this is what the chinese government

Uh his aspiration is is to be able to have back doors to spy on all americans

That’s why they you know are trying to get huawei

Well

You don’t even need to know that because you can just open your eyes and look at and I mean that’s an insult

But you can just look at what tick tock has the access to it has access to your location

Has access to your camera roll and it knows

You know, uh everybody in your social circle because it has your address book

So by having your address book having your location and having access to your photo roll

They have you compromised by default the default settings when you install tick tock it turns on local network turns on microphone turns on camera

Turns on background app refresh and turns on cell data. So

Tick knock is no worse than anybody else

In that because a lot of other apps are very aggressively trying to harvest all that data as well sax

Like it’s like alexa is always listening to you, right?

but you feel but you feel safer with alexa because it’s a

It’s an american company or the perception of safety is there so I don’t think there’s a huge

Thing to prove other than yeah, there’s a setting that allows you to turn on the microphone

And it’s a default and they do it but they were caught

I just want to make sure you guys understand this according to the new york times by dance the chinese parent company of tick tock

Said on thursday that an internal investigation found that employees had inappropriately obtained the data of us tick tock users including

That of two reporters over the summer a few employees on a bite dance team responsible for monitoring employee conduct

Tried to find the source of suspected leaks of internal conversation and business documents to journalists in doing so

The employees gained access to the ip addresses and other data of two reporters and a small number of people connected with the reporters

By the tick tock accounts. They were trying to determine if those individuals were within the proximity of by dance employees according to the company

So there’s an example of them using the technology to try to track down leaks. Hold on a second. That’s exactly what any app

A company can do the photos the screenshots we got from twitter

Um that were shared and all those files or whatever that happened a few weeks ago

Showed that that many twitter employees were able to log in and just view

The direct messages between twitter users and that there’s no necessary logging or um access privileges required to have access to that information

There are these holes in all of these social networking and consumer

Digital consumer product companies that allow individuals to go in and do things with consumer data. It’s not a hole. It’s a feature

It’s a feature sure, but it doesn’t reference like some systematic

Um, yeah, but those aren’t controlled by a government agency

No, that’s that’s the key thing what jkal just said is a key thing

Everybody tries to get these things turned default on every app

Tries to get access to your camera roll to your contacts to turn on the microphone

The problem isn’t that those settings exist because apple created them and apple created a privacy framework where you have to opt out of it

Okay, the issue is that that data instead of going to an american company with american

On with american data centers and american service it’s going to somebody in china or it’s the perception that that’s happening

that I think is a death now and

This is also excluding all of the work

That every single big tech company must be doing to point the finger away from them

And this is something they can all agree on if you got if you got andy jassy and zuck and sundar and satya nadella in a room

What do you think they could all agree on?

Hey guys, are we better off pointing the fingers at each other or should we just point it over there to a company based in china?

So do you think do you think that tick tock in a way is being scapegoated here?

Or do you think it’s a real security threat both both?

Yeah, that’s yes to both and you know what I think what we saw with the the twitter files for me personally

The one that uh was most concerning

Was the fact that the fbi?

Was being treated

They didn’t have control of it. Like the chinese government has control over by dance at a wholesale level

But they were being given

you know pretty um

Close to they weren’t giving god privileges, but they had more influence than they should have and they should have gotten subpoenas

Right. So even in a democracy like the united states, you can see the fbi

Using techniques to get employees on their side

To get information on specific users. Imagine if the fbi just had god mode for twitter or facebook

Like what would happen even in a democracy? We see it happen. We see abuse

the chinese

Government is a communist party. They have no problem sucking the data down of every single person and using it. However, they want

I think the the problematic thing is that when you look at the capital structure of these chinese companies post now

g being ruler for life is

The chinese government has typically a seat on all of these boards

They also typically have a golden vote

And so when you think about the governance the governance of these companies has tilted

far away from

a normal cap table where it’s one shareholder one vote to

You are allowed to exist on this cap table at the benevolence

Of the government and so I think that you have to factor that in as well sack. So, you know, is it amplified?

Probably but is there also non-trivial risk that we would never give to any other company?

Absolutely, like, you know take the opposite example

How would we react if the government had a golden vote and a board seat on meta?

Going into an election

I mean one party would be crazy and the other party would stay mum’s the word

That’s what I mean. Let’s talk about but let’s let’s let’s be pragmatic the news reports that came out this week

Indicate that they’re talking about restructuring by dance

So let me propose this to you guys if tiktok us were set up as tiktok us inc

It’s its own c corp. It’s based in the u.s. And by dance owns

passive non-voting shares

In tiktok us all the software all the services the algorithms are all run in the u.s

The data is only sitting on servers in the u.s

And the chinese have an economic interest ultimately and what happens with that asset, but that asset is entirely managed

Run, it’s totally fine. That should be a goal in the u.s

And I think either shut it down or do that

And if that happens you trigger syphilis, so you’d have to then make an exception

That sounds like it’s part of the discussion that’s underway right now is how do we get past this regulatory hurdle?

Because I don’t know guys i’ve said this in the past

I don’t know how you turn off tiktok for 100 million people that are using it for two hours a day guys

We’re we’re making their background. We’re instagram and youtube replicated it. We’re rejecting deals

Left right and center at much much smaller thresholds because of syphilis because

It’s we’re not and we’re not even dealing with china

I assume you get past syphilis chamath assume that there is no that they figure out a way

It’s a bad assumption, right?

But like that’s obviously there’s eight billion dollars of capital because can I tell you what’s in this right the minute that if you let?

the chinese government

Around and do an end around on syphilis to own 30

Passively then everybody who’s had a deal rejected for a much smaller threshold for a much more benign

Issue will sue

Except that they started with this asset versus buying into it, right?

That’s the difference and what they’re doing is they’re seeding the difference here is they’re seeding control of the asset

To us investors and oversight by the u.s. Government versus the reverse which is trying to come in and buy an economic

I don’t think that that’s not what syphilis adjudicates. It doesn’t adjudicate. Where was this originated adjudicates in this cap table?

Does this person exist should they exist at what threshold?

What do they know and are we giving something that we shouldn’t give and i’m saying?

Yeah, let me give you another way of saying if the pragmatic answer is you can’t just make up a bunch of stuff that

Blows up a bunch of other stuff. Let me frame it differently. What if by dance?

Sold tiktok us to a u.s. Own private equity consortium a u.s

Run private equity consortium that effectively bought tiktok us and operated in here in the u.s

That’s exactly what should happen. But my point is those people are smart enough to not pay full price

They’ll say you’re fucked that asset is worth zero

I will buy it for 10 billion dollars take it or leave it and you know what they’ll have to do

They’ll have to take it. So my point is the equity value is so impaired in this thing

Will you buy that for 10 billion? Of course i’m a buyer

But these guys are smart enough to drive a huge bargain a hard bargain

So if you’re existing on the cap table, and you’ve marked it at 320

I would be fucking selling it. Okay. Well look something like this is going to happen

so it’ll be interesting to watch and

If any group of people got together and tried to actually buy it for what the fair market value

Is worth via a spreadsheet is a horrible investor in this moment

You should hold a gun to their head and you should extract a massive pound of flesh

That gives you a huge margin of safety and makes you money

We know people who are shareholders if they could have sold it at 320 or 120. They would have sold already

Well, no, there are there are people that will buy this thing in the hundreds

That’s in size

Then sell everything you can and then put it into another company

Now the problem is you have to show a markdown because you’ve already marked it at 320

I gotta take a 65 discount

Yeah, if you’re if if you’re underwater you’re underwater, but for anybody who got into the sub 1 billion round

You can’t eat irr and you can’t eat paper markups. You can only eat the distribution

So get the dpi and move on is what I get the dpi and move on

It’s another bet you could place why try to okay be greedy and get the last 3x out of this investment

I want to move away from software meets leisure to software meets human health and productivity

A couple weeks ago. We were going to talk about this last week

It was announced that bio and tech was buying insta deep insta deep is a broad horizontal ai or machine learning tools company

Services business they partner with big businesses

to help them build out

ml driven infrastructure

To improve their products and their operations and their businesses

one of their

customers

Was bio and tech the company that?

designed and owned the ip

for the original pfizer covid vaccine one of the original originators of

Mrna based technology bio and tech

Doesn’t just focus on mrna technology. They also focus on cell and gene therapies the the novel

new kind of modalities that are emerging in

in therapeutics

And you know, it was a really interesting acquisition

It was a 250 I think person team that they bought the company for about 600 million dollars

Specifically to improve how ai can be used to accelerate drug discovery

I’ll just make a comment on this and then sax i’d love to kind of hear your point of view

on these types of businesses broadly

The capabilities of machine learning when applied to a particular vertical are quite profound

I you know, i’ve certainly been involved in this space in agriculture and increasingly doing more of this work in pharmaceuticals and biotech

And you know when you can have large

Unique data sets that you can then model using these tools and these capabilities

And be predictive about what the next product iteration should be

It can really change the value and the trajectory of your business

One of the big trends in pharma right now is to move from in vitro testing

Meaning you’re running biochemical experiments in labs in assays

iterating testing experimenting to see what molecules work or what protein

Does what and if it binds to the target and doing more of this in silica as it’s being called

Which is in software and rather than just doing testing and software

You can actually use tools like alpha fold that can be predictive of large molecules and how they can drive outcomes

To make decisions about what to put in your pipeline

So if you take 99% of the junk out of the top of your pipeline

And you only focus on the 1% that the software predicts will be more successful

You much more quickly get drug discovery through the pipeline and you have a much higher hit rate

So the roi is extraordinary particularly when you’re talking about multi-billion dollar revenue streams coming out the other end of that pipeline

And so I think you know the way this reads these guys raised 100 million dollars in a round last year

Sold the company for 600 million. It seems very similar to deep mind being bought by alphabet a few years ago

Where the application of the team is pretty broad across a number of opportunities

But bio and tech bought them to focus on the kind of pharma space

So I guess that’s you know in in the earlier stage and you know

I see a lot of teams now that are like hey, we’re ai for this or ml for that

a lot of

Pharma and biotech deals have to have the catchphrase ml or ai

Uh in their writing now because of the economic improvement of those businesses

Are you looking at enterprise software businesses that aren’t necessarily about the typical?

Subscription model where you sell a seat license and people pay for that

But have this broad tool set and toolkit where these folks are earning revenue share or participating in a services revenue stream

For enhancing the value of their their their partner in the ai or ml space and what’s the better business model?

Because I think this is where so many new teams are starting out

Is what’s the business model and what should we be focused on with our ml toolkit?

I mean the short answer is no. We haven’t done any deals like that

Uh, I mean, we’re not pharma investors

So I don’t know how I would be able to evaluate even if it is a software product. I don’t know how to evaluate its

effect on

pharma outcomes

So I mean we haven’t any deals other verticals

I mean like do you look at ml and ai companies that are more services or partner oriented versus just selling seat licenses to a software

tool, I mean, is that a big trend you’re seeing I don’t think we have enough data to

Tell you what the trend is. We did a deal called pearl which is creating an ai for dentistry

So what it’ll do is it scans in?

all of the x-rays and you know dental records from from dental practices and it gives a

Kind of a second opinion it can spot

Things like cavities and things like that or just changes in the condition where it’s really powerful is over time, right?

If it’s got your last

six sets of x-rays over a

Whatever six-year period it can detect changes that are probably, you know hard for a human to see

So they think they can get to like better than human sort of diagnosis

by using computer vision

and then we invested in

It sort of after that where we realized okay. This is kind of like a powerful application

So we invested in a company called robo flow

Which creates tools for computer vision so pearl created its own

tools for taking

A large number of you know x-rays and classifying them and then creating their own ai tools

Robo flow gives you that same tool set but you can run it on any computer vision project

And they seem to be building a pretty big universe

Of software developers who are using their tools and in this case, this was a team that was bought

They bought a 250 person team for 600 million dollars that just had this capability set really and a toolkit

Does that change your outlook for investing in ml ai companies when you see a 600 million dollar?

Exit for effectively a capability. They didn’t have you know a core product that was in market

They were doing kind of these co-development deals

But I mean, how much does this sort of?

Ai is already the hot thing and everyone’s kind of looking at this now

Yeah, I don’t know like I you never want to base an investment decision on the fact that

Some acquirer might come in and buy you for a large amount of money when you have no

revenue or

business model, I just think like that’s not really a

Sustainable, although it does seem that

Ai engineers go for 2 million each. I think is kind of your point. Dave on an m&a basis

Yeah, I mean your deep mind got bought for what 600 by google and I think they had 200 people. I think it was like 400

It was like 400. Yeah, so yeah

It does seem like and I think deep mind did not have a business

Concept in mind when they were funded. They just wanted to do research, right?

That was kind of the unique thing about that company platform capability similar to instant deep

I mean, there’s a lot of these that’s what i’m pointing out is like some of these platform capabilities end up just getting bought for

You know huge sums. Yeah

It’s a dangerous strategy as sax points out the amount

You can’t invest in a company hoping for an unreasonable acquisition meaning unreasonable meaning that reasonable acquire. Yeah

Yeah, like unreasonable meaning that your own metrics don’t

Reflect that valuation as a business. You might be worth it as a strategic acquisition of somebody else, but you you actually raise interesting

Question which is is a seat model

The right way for one of these companies to price their product and you may be right that that the seat license model doesn’t

really work because

Like how many seats do you really need to buy for these companies?

Look, I mean one of my like one prompt engineer. Yeah, it’s true

I mean, we’ve seen this we’ve even seen we’ve had these debates inside

the companies I mentioned where

Like, you know charging a ten dollar even a hundred dollar a month seat

Doesn’t nearly reflect the value of the insights that are being created

And so yeah, they’re like, you know, they’re I don’t think this has been figured out yet

But this is the big question in mlna. I when I was at monsanto, you know, we had all this ip licensing deals

We do or um new products would come to market and it was never cost plus or simple pricing

It was always about value capture if in an enterprise setting, you know, because we sold to farmers

It’s like how much value are you delivering for the farmers if it’s a hundred dollars of profit an acre

You try and charge an incremental thirty dollars an acre for that product

And it was always a one-third value capture model and the same is true in biotech and pharma

The producer of the product or the co-developer of the product is often trying to value capture

And it’s not a site seat license and it’s not a service fee

It’s more ultimately we want to get a royalty on the outcome on the improvement that we can deliver to you

And so there’s all these novel business models that are emerging at least that i’m seeing in pharma and biotech

To participate more meaningfully ultimately in the drug development outcome

Versus just getting charged a fee for doing a service or a fee for a license to a software packet

The value of these companies has gone down. I was a early investor series a investor in company called flat iron health

We sold it for 1.9 billion dollars to roche. That’s the biggest exit in this space for this machine learning enabled stuff

It happened in 2018

And so what’s really happened is the value of acquisition and m&a has gone down

Even as the technology capability has gone way way up

And why is that it’s because this stuff

Has yet to be proven to actually meaningfully

Improve the hit rate for these drug companies. So whether it’s biotech or roche or anybody else the biggest problem we still have

Is getting the design space?

Guessing that

Better and these machines are better at doing raw calculations, but they’re not necessarily better at

Veering towards this design space over this design space. And so as a result, you’re not improving

the

Either the slugging percentage

Or the batting average of these pharma companies and that’s why they’re paying less and less

So everybody will have this capability as an adjunct

the thing that you have to do is sort of what

What you guys have said which is if there’s a company that can actually do better guessing at the top of the funnel

The thing that you should probably do is just give it away in return for a back-end rev share

And a royalty and that business also exists so, you know

The best performing company in pharma is a company called royalty pharma

It’s a 22 and a half billion dollar company that has 90 ebitda margins. It exists in ireland

It’s run in new york by this wonderful entrepreneur pablo lagareta

But that’s what he does. He buys small pieces of royalties and his whole thing is like the paul graham thing at yc

I’ll give you just that little amount of support and all you need is a little lift in valuation to justify giving me the six

And the tooling company the ai company that does that

Could win who would go to roche and buy on tech or lily or somebody else and just say look use my tools

And whatever drug you generate off of me

I just want a three percent royalty and all you need to do is just show a three percent lift across a portfolio of assets

That would be a killer business model because if you look at what pablo’s done

Over a large number of successes. That’s a ginormous company

J cal I mean, are you investing in the seed stage ml ai companies and are there novel business models that you’re seeing?

We’re not seeing too many yet. To be honest. We have we are seeing people play with chat gpt and kind of

Do you know?

Experiments but you know

The more i’ve used chat gpt. We’ve connected it

to our slack

so

You can actually ask a question in our slack in a channel called ai testing

And it will give the answer and everybody can see people like playing with it

You know, it’s kind of like a parlor trick

Now i’m in like

That phase where i’m like, yeah, this is impressive

But it didn’t actually solve my problem

and it’s slightly faster than doing a google search, so

I am thinking there’s going to be

A really good business, uh created in taking

The open source projects and forking them and verticalizing them like, you know sax’s

One that’s doing dental work, you know, like this makes sense to me

Somebody should do it in accounting. Somebody should learn all of gap accounting, which is pretty simple because it’s published

FASB all of this nonsensical accounting rules

And give you a hundred percent guarantee of no malfeasance

So, for example, you guys saw this brazilian company you want ai accounting that’s your that’s your look at this company

Logistics

Look at this company americanas in brazil, which just torched 20 billion dollars of enterprise value. Why?

Because these guys were using excel to do a bunch of complicated capitalization and cost accounting

Made two or three years of mistakes. It added up to two or three billion dollars

And they’re basically going to file bankruptcy in the next few days

That’s completely avoidable human error. That should never happen

And an ai would be perfect for that. Like this is not super controversial to just follow gap accounting, right?

I don’t know if you need ai for that. I think you just need software like a database would be good

But no the problem is the database exists today. Like everybody sits on top of oracle gl or workday

It doesn’t prevent these errors

So my point is you got to get humans out of the system and the ai should be the accountant the ai knows the rules

Generates the pnl and says this is it and by the way

That’s way better risk management for the ceo and the cfo because as you guys know if you’re the ceo of a public company

You have to sign your signature that these things are legitimate

And how do you know?

I would way better know that a computer did it like an open ai algorithm tells me chamath this pnl is perfect

Than some dude, I don’t know at ernst and young

Okay

I have a question for sax

Saxipu, can you please explain to me why alec baldwin is going to get charged with manslaughter for this rust thing?

That seems really crazy

Can you just say can you just explain what happens on a set with guns and how the hell did this happen?

Like what the hell is going on?

Well, i’ve produced two movies, but neither one of them involved, you know guns or shootouts or anything like that

So I haven’t had like first-hand experience with this. I have you’re a gun owner

So you’re an intersection of movie producer and gun owner. So it’s a good yeah

I understand the rules of gun safety and and that kind of stuff

look

Alec baldwin did not follow the rules of gun safety

the first thing I would do if I was ever handed a gun would be to

Clear it. I’d like check to see if it was loaded and clear it

And you never pointed at you at somebody you always treat a gun as if it’s loaded even if you think it’s not but

He was in a very specific situation, which is he’s on a movie set

And the person who’s handing him the gun is the armorer

And said cold gun

Yeah, exactly. It’s somebody whose job it is to make sure that the gun is handled properly and unloaded and all that kind of stuff

And they’re using it on a set. So I agree with you. I don’t quite understand why alec baldwin is liable

in that

Situation for the gun going off the person who screwed up here. The person who screwed up is the armor is the armor

I have a question person whose job it was to never allow live ammunition on the set

But to handle the guns properly, but he hired this person. I thought the whole point of guns and movies was that they were fine blanks

Yeah, they were firing blanks, but they had

Blanks and regular ones

In their kit for whatever reason because they were shooting real ones as well

But this is involuntary manslaughter and I think baldwin is also the producer of the film

So, I don’t know if this has to do with his hiring of the armorer, you know what i’m saying

That I can that I can speak to listen. Yeah, you you frequently give stars in an independent movie a producer title

He’s not responsible for the physical production of the movie. I bet anything

He’s not there’s a guy called the line producers responsible for the physical production

And my guess is he wasn’t even responsible for the business side of the production

They’ve got other producers for that

So it doesn’t make sense to me if they’re going to charge him

For having some sort of overall liability as a producer to then not charge the other producers

That just doesn’t make any sense. So I think this producer credit thing’s probably a red herring

Like I said, I think the armorer is the person who is singularly responsible

For this situation. They’re the ones who screwed up

They’re the ones who had a responsibility to make sure that the gun handed to an actor. I mean alec baldwin’s an actor

Yeah, look conservatives in social media are dragging the guy because they think he’s a douchebag and he doesn’t know how to handle guns

But that’s not his job. He doesn’t

He’s hired

In movies, why would you ever have live ammunition on a movie set? You shouldn’t they shouldn’t have you shouldn’t it’s a mistake

I was so so it’s not as if like the scene is different if you have a real bullet versus a blank

No, it should as far as I know

If I remember right there was a story about how the gun armory people

were taking

Members of the cast and crew and they were shooting guns for fun in the desert

And they were doing like they were doing like targets and messing around and teaching people gun stuff and just playing around

But using live ammunition and that that led into an accident that there wasn’t good kind of transition

That’s really bad. That sounds like the kind of negligence that caused this but I unless there are facts we don’t know about

I don’t know why

By the way

That sounds totally legit to me

So guys listen, I need to run look another call

I was going to talk about this really fantastic paper

on the

One of the driving forces of aging as demonstrated by a team from harvard

in in collaboration with many others

on epigenetics

And the loss of data integrity in epigenetics really being the core driver of aging in mammalian cells

It’s an incredible paper. It speaks a lot to what we talked about last year yamanaka factors and partial epigenetic reprogramming of cells

How that can reverse aging these guys have demonstrated it in a really powerful way

I’d love to spend some time on it. Maybe we pump that science corner to next week wrap up for today

I think we’ve talked about all sorts of fun stuff

It’s been

A real pleasure and an honor to be in the seat of the world’s greatest moderator. We miss him today

We honor him. We look forward to having his return next week. It’s been a pleasure

Chatting with you gentlemen’s and on behalf of the all-in pod and my co-hosts jamal polyhapitiya david sacks. Jason calacanis

Thank you for listening. Bye. Bye. Love you, boys. Bye

Rain man david

And instead we open source it to the fans and they’ve just gone crazy with it

Love you

We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they’re all just useless

It’s like this like sexual tension, but they just need to release it

Your feet

I’m going