E44: USA's Afghanistan embarrassment, China's new algo laws, future of robots + Italy recap!

00:00:00.000 | i am black look at this i'm down i'm up a button oh up a button this is why the all-in pod is

00:00:06.560 | falling apart is we got one bestie who thinks he's having away we got another one who

00:00:10.480 | thinks he's italian nobility we got another one who all he wants to do is geek out about science

00:00:14.880 | and discuss nothing topical i mean you guys are a total mess and you're a little mess

00:00:19.520 | and you are cold open i'm present i've been present present i've been waiting for two weeks

00:00:28.000 | social and we got the guy who wants to be the next tucker carlson oh really velcaster write

00:00:33.840 | that opening for you no what's wrong with your writing team right that's a little bit i'm coming

00:00:37.680 | in hot i've been waiting two weeks to go off three two let your winners ride brain man david sasson

00:00:46.560 | and instead we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy

00:00:56.000 | love you

00:00:57.840 | okay everybody welcome back to the all-in podcast we took two weeks off for vacation uh with us

00:01:04.320 | today vacation from caisson uh sax is off his boat and ready to go uh after the tremendous boat

00:01:12.400 | episode friedberg who david why are you working from an irs office what david sacks is in the irs

00:01:21.440 | office has joined a call center which call center are you looking for this is david sacks from the

00:01:26.880 | call-in app can i set up your podcast for you please you better get here by tonight okay

00:01:31.920 | yeah you better play cards bestie this is best you better show up this line up is a

00:01:36.720 | shit mr beast is showing up mr beast is going to play cards and he plays eight queen eight offsuit

00:01:42.960 | to crack phil it's going to be very entertaining all right i'm flying back this afternoon it's mr

00:01:47.280 | beast alan ship muth this is going to be fireworks tonight fireworks all right i'm going to lock it up

00:01:56.640 | the eight seat your eight seats locked up wait what time does it start seven to seven a.m no it's

00:02:02.000 | good is your uh is your guest house taken no you can stay in the guest house if you want great here

00:02:08.640 | we go no we start we started in the show david we started this is the show yes david we start at six

00:02:13.600 | but we're gonna break for dinner as normal at seven so get here by six i'll come i gotta have

00:02:18.320 | dinner with my kids i haven't seen them in a month so uh all right just so you do you remember their

00:02:24.880 | names it's boop and boop and there's three of them okay yeah yeah there's three i'll come after

00:02:32.160 | dinner okay all right okay good good here we go uh first topic of the day is no you didn't do the

00:02:37.760 | intros go all right three two no no you already did that part just introduced you started with

00:02:43.520 | sax and you didn't say myself when did you become the director okay sit down scorsese all right with

00:02:48.320 | us again the dictator himself chamath palihapitiya back from his italian castle fresh off his

00:02:54.800 | italian castle retreat uh one button up maybe we should call you the duke instead of the dictator

00:03:00.800 | yeah because you've really taken this this italian nobility thing to heart you know

00:03:05.680 | jason invaded my my castle he ravaged my toilets several he literally had he co-opted the butler he

00:03:17.680 | co-opted the chef and when he would bicycle best life i'll be totally honest for a week

00:03:23.040 | he would bicycle he would bicycle

00:03:24.800 | back to the to the house the gate would close and they would scurry out with two little cokes

00:03:31.280 | a huge glass filled with ice i was so confused when i got zero what's going on he's like uh

00:03:36.240 | mr jason mr jason mr jason what percent what percent of your book did you write jkal um well

00:03:43.200 | a non-fiction book typically 60 000 is the target so i'm going to write 60 and then try to edit it

00:03:47.680 | down to 50 and i got the first 10 done guys sorry can i just say on the on the plane as well as at

00:03:54.080 | my house jason read us the intro i'm not going to say what they're about or the title of the book

00:03:58.480 | the first couple chapters it's amazing the idea no no no i legit the idea is amazing

00:04:06.480 | the title is fantastic and what he's written so far is exceptional i was genuinely like

00:04:14.080 | it's great it's really really great well a lot of it was informed by the discussions

00:04:17.120 | we've been having here uh of course back in the mix is friedberg the queen of quinoa uh in front of

00:04:23.360 | some kmart artwork um that he purchased for his new house uh how are you doing queen uh

00:04:30.480 | how are you feeling about your decision to not come to italy with us yeah queen i don't want

00:04:35.440 | to talk about it hey can we uh can we tell our best italy story oh my god i don't know what the

00:04:40.880 | best is a lot of best italy stories well i want to tell two stories and one of them is the joke

00:04:45.360 | i didn't make at the speech which i thought was the best joke and i want to just get your

00:04:50.800 | reaction so i'm just going to tell you okay so just to give a little background here

00:04:53.920 | our friend's 50th birthday two of our friends had 50th birthday it's me and our other friend

00:05:00.320 | and so we were in italy for a week as a group playing cards and celebrating those two birthdays

00:05:06.560 | the joke i didn't make was the following joke which is all right guys i just want to

00:05:10.640 | say this is for friend number one redacted yeah redacted yeah uh i just want to call

00:05:15.600 | out the elephant in the room you know there's really someone very very famous amongst us um oh

00:05:20.560 | oh you know he's known uh to be one of the richest men in the world he's known um you know to really

00:05:27.280 | uh love rockets he throws you know up rockets all the time um the despotic leader of north

00:05:34.560 | korea is here kim jong-un everybody and i point to dc oh my god that is so important

00:05:40.400 | joke i didn't get to me wow you can't tell that joke because because it would in context of you

00:05:47.200 | know obviously it would have been a very yeah uh all right and uh

00:05:50.480 | yeah it was just a great trip i have to say uh i took my yeah my italy story is that so the second

00:05:58.320 | birthday is jcal the first birthday as a friend to remain nameless the second birthday redacted

00:06:03.760 | the second birthday was jcal's 50th then we find out that jcal's birthday was actually like six

00:06:08.480 | months ago six months ago november 28th yeah nobody nobody cared and frankly none of us went

00:06:13.920 | to italy for jcal's birthday we went to the other guys we went to the other guy's party yeah

00:06:20.320 | jcal's birthday is like covid he keeps trying to bring it back in different variants and no one

00:06:25.200 | wants any part of it so on the last night the last night of the trip we had the jcal birthday

00:06:36.240 | party and what do they serve pizza i mean like because it's on jcal's dime i mean the rest of

00:06:41.440 | the week we had this like magnificent five stars you throw my birthday party for me snacks you

00:06:46.400 | didn't even throw in any breadsticks i mean he was like he just door dashed dominoes

00:06:50.160 | we had truffle pizza unlimited truffles it was delicious i think it was the best meal i think

00:06:56.720 | you're just a little jealous because the dinner you hosted maybe didn't hit the notes you wanted

00:07:00.720 | to hit sax oh my god are you serious we brought it he flew in a troop from

00:07:05.760 | blusphan he flew in his first food i was talking about the pizza versus you know by the way i just

00:07:10.240 | want to say that that whole circus thing in the in the water uh i got so mad at one of my kids

00:07:16.480 | because it was so dark and the kids were in the pool yeah and he was like oh my god what's going

00:07:20.080 | on he kept diving yes and i kept saying stop i can't see you and so i was just like he never

00:07:27.520 | none of the kids should have been in the pool i agree with that and the truth of the matter is

00:07:31.200 | you know my five years old was in the pool too and all i could do was keep an eye on him

00:07:35.280 | because i was so worried about it i was playing lifeguard with my friends i didn't enjoy the show

00:07:39.440 | for that reason yeah they had the time of their lives yes they loved it and actually that was

00:07:45.280 | that was definitely worth it and the day before i want to give credit to sax because sax and i

00:07:50.000 | went down to that restaurant we made them open up the wine closet we raided it we found the best

00:07:55.680 | three bottles of wine and we brought them back for everybody oh and then and then i'm not sure

00:07:59.920 | if you remember this we taped an episode of call-in in which uh i was a little drunk yeah

00:08:04.720 | i was drunk i was confused yeah so anyway the whole world can listen to us drunk on call-in

00:08:09.680 | in uh we're launching on september 2nd so oh wow yeah nice congrats yeah that's gonna be a big deal

00:08:16.000 | and uh congratulations to the all-in syndicate members who wet their

00:08:19.920 | beaks and to my syndicate members uh people don't know this but it was the absolute record we've

00:08:25.760 | ever had for any syndicate i believe at the end of the day we had 150 slots and we had 950 people

00:08:31.360 | apply sax amazing we had a million or so in allocation and i think we had seven million in

00:08:37.600 | demand i am really excited i'm really excited about this yes i'm really excited about this

00:08:44.960 | product it's the best i've been involved in creating it's better than yammer it's better than

00:08:49.840 | paypal truly spicy take yeah wow i'm really glad daddy daddy got a little tasty poop sax don't

00:08:59.680 | hurt your um don't hurt your elbow patting yourself on the back there but go ahead continue

00:09:03.840 | you got a little product manager elbow there don't dislocate your triceps the feedback we've

00:09:10.800 | gotten from users has been incredible i mean it's just the reactions i'll tell you what's

00:09:14.800 | good about it here's here's what i think you nailed um as a person who's been in podcast

00:09:19.760 | for over a decade the critical um aspect of this is when you pop up your club or room on call-in

00:09:29.760 | it creates a podcast out of it with an rss feed and you can go listen to the previous show so if you

00:09:38.080 | are listening to this and you wanted to create your own version of all-in you could do it on call

00:09:43.840 | in just get three of your knucklehead friends and talk about your adventures on boats and private

00:09:48.800 | jets and drinking coffee and you could do it on call in just get three of your knucklehead friends

00:09:49.680 | and talk about your adventures on boats and private jets and drinking fine wine wherever you

00:09:50.560 | are and you can start your own podcast yeah it's not really expensive why not included right it's

00:09:55.360 | not the key insight it's not about the room it's about the show you know like everything we think

00:10:00.400 | of as social audio is really just a feature of creating a show creating a new podcast and uh

00:10:06.480 | so anyway people really like it i'm very excited september shows have been created in the beta this

00:10:11.520 | is the thing that's blown me away is like well over a hundred i think maybe a couple of hundred

00:10:15.680 | if you go to the show directory you and and the cover art that people have created is really

00:10:19.600 | really elaborate you know people are really getting into it i've said this before i think

00:10:23.680 | you're a phenomenal you're a phenomenal uh product builder so i think this is really exciting yeah

00:10:29.520 | under underrated product builder i would say but no it's just interesting that this doesn't exist

00:10:33.280 | somebody should have made this already like there's zen caster and riverside for recording

00:10:38.080 | podcasts there's libsyn for hosting them what uh what's happened as a as a protected minority

00:10:43.440 | i'd like to ask this question what happens what's happening to clubhouse um i think it's a real

00:10:49.520 | relevant i'll be i don't i don't want to dunk on founders but um i think that they uh no but why

00:10:56.880 | can't they just do these features it sounds like i mean i'm not i'm not trying to take anything away

00:11:00.560 | they will copy sex's features for sure i think they will copy it at some point yeah but but i

00:11:05.360 | think that it's a good it's a good question and i really think there's different visions here

00:11:08.960 | so i mean i've listened to their founder talk about his vision and it's very much about creating

00:11:14.400 | this live serendipitous type experience like kind of like a cocktail party and that's fine we're not

00:11:19.440 | doing that we're creating long tail podcasting is what we're doing and my experience is informed

00:11:23.920 | by what we've all been doing on the show for last year and a half which is podcasting right

00:11:27.920 | and the thing that i've seen that i didn't know until we did the all-in pod is how much work

00:11:32.160 | goes into what jcal does behind the scenes it's incredible we got nick doing six hours of post

00:11:37.280 | production on the show i want to automate all that work away so anybody can do what we do

00:11:42.160 | and that's like a very different vision no offense nick no i mean not everybody is going to

00:11:49.360 | want to put the type of post-production into this they don't have you know i've got six people on

00:11:54.640 | our podcast team like it's not everybody's got that infrastructure so over time you'll build

00:11:58.480 | that i believe it um i think it will turn out great all right let's get to our first

00:12:01.520 | um topic here uh while we were away the united states started the process of leaving afghanistan

00:12:11.040 | after a 20-year war uh in which i think it's pretty safe to say that was an unwinnable war and

00:12:19.280 | uh we uh have failed like the russians did sax had a uh tweet uh that was a well getting a little

00:12:26.320 | bit of play on the old twitter what we're seeing before our eyes is the collapse of the american

00:12:31.200 | empire because the people in charge are completely corrupt and incompetent but we can't talk about

00:12:37.360 | that because insiders can never criticize other insiders the larry summers rule did i tweet that

00:12:44.320 | you did oh um yeah i mean you might have had a couple of drinks

00:12:49.200 | and then sorry you he actually didn't he just texted that in the group okay so that was a

00:12:53.120 | confidential text to our thought to our group that we're not supposed to even say exist well no it's

00:12:58.160 | okay don't beep it it's okay i mean it's it's it's true it's it's not exactly what i tweeted but it's

00:13:02.960 | similar to things i've been tweeting and tragically uh yesterday um isis k which is an afghan affiliate

00:13:11.760 | of the islamic state claimed responsibility for uh two suicide bombings outside of the airport and that

00:13:19.120 | tragically killed over 100 people 90 afghan citizens and 13 american service members

00:13:26.160 | i guess you know we're not here to talk about um wars it's not exactly in the mandate but everybody

00:13:33.840 | wants our opinion on this so let's get started sax you have strong opinions we'll start with well

00:13:37.920 | it's yeah i mean how can you not talk about this this feels to me this is one of those events where

00:13:42.320 | you know i was glued to my tv for days i think i was in france at the time the taliban overrun

00:13:49.040 | the country and i was like oh my god this is a terrible thing to happen to people and yeah it was

00:13:53.520 | you know the afghanistan war's been going on for 20 years no one's been talking about it it's just

00:13:57.040 | this thing that's been happening in the background but all along we've been assured by the pentagon

00:14:02.480 | that we're winning hey you know don't worry about this we got this and then you wake up one day and

00:14:07.040 | all of a sudden we've lost the war and the taliban's overrunning the country and you're like

00:14:10.880 | what is going on here you know not only is the the botched withdrawal incompetent the fact that we

00:14:16.960 | were lied to for two decades about what was really happening um the the idea that the botched withdrawal

00:14:18.960 | incompetent the fact that the botched withdrawal incompetent the fact that the botched withdrawal

00:14:19.040 | that we had created you know we were how many times were we told that we had created this

00:14:22.480 | afghan army it was 300 uh strong we spent you know two trillion dollars in the country uh you know

00:14:28.880 | being and we were told the whole time that we were building institutions there uh that you know that

00:14:33.920 | we were creating a democracy in the middle east that we were even you know um promoting gender

00:14:39.760 | equality and uh lecturing the taliban on toxic masculinity or something like that and then we

00:14:44.480 | find out one day that poof the whole thing was just kind of a lie it was this giant debacle

00:14:49.040 | and now we can't even get our uh we can't even get our civilians out of the country

00:14:53.840 | not only that but we we've seen 12 people 12 american servicemen and women killed yesterday

00:15:02.320 | trying to 13 trying to protect the airport uh almost a hundred um afghans

00:15:08.960 | uh now we'd only have to not only contend with the taliban whose positions i don't think any

00:15:13.680 | of us know about but we also have to deal with isis k which is like some you know off

00:15:18.800 | shoot affiliate of isis run by a guy who was actually summarily killed by the taliban but

00:15:24.400 | that didn't clearly stop anybody the the level of honestly just to say the the lying

00:15:34.960 | that we've been doing on this topic is just utterly um it's really really scary

00:15:43.520 | you know how could we have gone 20 years two trillion dollars

00:15:48.720 | 2400 american lives and counting and found a way to just basically waste all this money

00:15:56.160 | and tell ourselves these lies for so long and it turns out none of it was true

00:16:01.440 | um and then the back half of it is that we look like a little bit of a country that's sort of

00:16:09.280 | in decline because we can't even figure out an orderly withdrawal it's not as if

00:16:14.800 | you know this thing came out of the blue out of nowhere this was a negotiated withdrawal so we

00:16:18.640 | had months to plan for this you know and we had months to do the right honorable moral thing for

00:16:24.160 | all of these for for all of these people that helped us in that country just to give you a

00:16:29.120 | small anecdote you know the day that kabul was overrun you know the democrats were actually

00:16:35.120 | tweeting out about uh celebrating librarian day that's what they were focused on jason and i on

00:16:42.720 | the way back you know i we flew back with my with my mom and my sister we stopped in toronto to drop

00:16:47.840 | them off and we were like oh my god we're gonna be like oh my god we're gonna be like oh my god we're

00:16:48.560 | gonna be like oh my god we're gonna be like oh my god we're gonna be like oh my god we're gonna be

00:16:48.880 | and the planes beside us jason do you remember this yeah i think i think brett or paul were

00:16:54.400 | telling us my pilots were telling us these planes uh had been going back and forth

00:16:59.840 | saving refugees in afghanistan and it's like wow what an honor to just be beside these these

00:17:06.960 | amazingly heroic men and women and you know i don't know jason if you saw but as we were refueling

00:17:12.080 | they came and boarded and they were getting ready to leave again meanwhile that america cannot get

00:17:18.480 | their money back and so we're going to have to take that back and we're going to have to give them

00:17:20.480 | back and so i think that's what's so shameful it's like not only did we spend the money not only did

00:17:25.280 | we lose all these lives not only didn't we have an orderly withdrawal we couldn't even at the end

00:17:29.600 | guarantee the safety of americans or do the right thing for all these people who risk their lives to

00:17:35.280 | help us fight clearly a useless war freiburg you have lots watching all this i know you don't like

00:17:41.200 | when we delve into politics too much but what do you yeah you have any thoughts you want to add yeah

00:17:48.400 | i kind of use a little bit of a startup analogy like america never really found product market fit

00:17:55.040 | with what we were trying to do in afghanistan there's some fantastic um gallup polling that's

00:18:03.840 | been done in afghanistan over the past uh 15 20 years already and they've actually had people on

00:18:09.200 | the ground polling there and most recently which has been consistent for over 10 years polling

00:18:15.520 | shown that 87 to 90 percent of afghanistan's population has been consistent for over 10 years

00:18:18.320 | and 90 percent of afghans said that the government is corrupt this is the government you know put in

00:18:24.320 | power put in place by the united states 90 percent say businesses are corrupt and if you go back to a

00:18:31.040 | poll they ran in 2010 the question was in general which of these statements comes closest to your

00:18:37.040 | point of view sharia law must be the only source of legislation 56 percent of the afghan population

00:18:43.520 | in 2010 believed that to be true and another 38 percent said sharia law

00:18:48.240 | must be a source of legislation but not the only source that leaves just seven percent of people

00:18:53.200 | that think that sharia law should not be is it sharia or sharia sharia sorry sharia law should

00:18:58.160 | not be part of the um legislative process uh in defining the afghan laws and constitution

00:19:04.320 | and so um you know it's really telling that you know it's almost like when you when you start a

00:19:08.960 | company and you try and create a product and you sell it to a customer base you got to figure out

00:19:12.160 | what the product is you got to make sure the customers want it and then the the idea for the

00:19:17.520 | startup works

00:19:18.160 | the problem here is our views as a nation and maybe western democracy doesn't necessarily fit

00:19:24.240 | with what that market wants and we can certainly make the case that we believe that our ethics and

00:19:28.560 | our values are superior and provide more of an opportunity for individual freedom and liberty

00:19:32.320 | things that we believe should be available around the world but if the market's not buying it the

00:19:37.680 | customers don't want it you're really just raising a ton of venture money trying to create a product

00:19:42.400 | that no one really wants and at the end of the day you're you're trillion dollars down and you're

00:19:46.080 | going to be able to sell it to a million people and that's the problem

00:19:48.080 | and you have to shut the thing down and it goes bankrupt and that's effectively what went down

00:19:52.400 | here and if you look at the history of afghanistan remember they were in the soviet afghan war in the

00:19:56.160 | 80s nearly the entire decade of the 80s then the taliban came along and provided a degree

00:20:00.800 | of stability in the 90s and then all of a sudden this al-qaeda 9 11 war began um you know after

00:20:07.760 | taliban had been in power for a year and it's been 20 plus years of strife and 20 years of

00:20:13.280 | strife and challenge where the population have increasingly viewed the government's

00:20:18.000 | government to be corrupt businesses to be corrupt and here's a really interesting statistic

00:20:22.080 | which also came out of this polling that gallup does over the last 10 years the percentage of

00:20:28.400 | afghans that are happy with their present household income has gone or are not happy

00:20:34.000 | sorry with their present household income has gone from 60 to 90

00:20:37.120 | nine out of ten afghans as of last year were not making enough money to make ends meet

00:20:43.280 | so you put all of these facts together you've got this long history of strife with this you know

00:20:47.920 | company effectively coming in trying to tell you how to run your government how to run your country

00:20:52.080 | that doesn't match with your beliefs on on your your the way you think a government should be

00:20:56.000 | built you've got all this turmoil that's happened historically you know it really was um i would say

00:21:01.520 | to some degree this inevitable failure of a startup that got overfunded that never found

00:21:06.080 | product market fit that never really got off the ground certainly the exit strategy on how

00:21:10.000 | do you wind something down in this case and it certainly relates to human lives and

00:21:13.520 | the tragedy of the partners that we had on the ground um was was totally

00:21:17.840 | mishandled but the broader picture here is like we i think it's more corrupt than that i think that

00:21:21.840 | we basically engaged in a two trillion dollar wealth transfer from the people of the united

00:21:26.720 | states the citizens of the united states to the military industrial complex that's what we did

00:21:31.040 | well i mean i have two points i want to i want to build on from from your freeburg and now yours

00:21:35.760 | chamath which is the original mandate here was to go and get rid of al-qaeda and to also

00:21:40.800 | you know kill osama bin laden and to not have uh the taliban

00:21:47.840 | giving safe harbor to al-qaeda that quick that mission got accomplished in large part in the

00:21:52.960 | first year or two and then uh when we finally got to osama bin laden in pakistan i think

00:21:59.280 | it it probably would have been a better idea to understand this is an unwinnable war

00:22:03.120 | get in there destroy the taliban leave and then say if you come back we'll do it again

00:22:08.240 | but we're not going to stay here for 20 years to your point freeburg and try to create a

00:22:12.400 | revolution if the people are not ready for it i think that we have to start looking at our

00:22:16.960 | foreign policy and saying we do need we do have a better view of human rights clearly

00:22:21.920 | than the middle east uh and certainly afghanistan and we do want to promote human rights around the

00:22:27.040 | world and freedom we're not doing that we're not we're not we're not freedom fighters of

00:22:30.960 | democracy or justice we should be we should be we are led by motives of revenue and profit

00:22:36.560 | i know that but we should be and when we went and we kicked the nazis asses and we beat japan

00:22:41.840 | when you know they were trying to dominate the world we were doing it to stop communism and

00:22:46.880 | i think when you look at nation building and these these kind of revolutions to friedberg's point they

00:22:53.280 | have to want it as well so we should be working with the countries that are teetering on going

00:22:58.400 | from authoritarianism to democracy and we should take the high ground and we should be the more

00:23:03.200 | authority of the world because if we're not who's going to be i i agree with that part

00:23:07.920 | but i think the right thing to do is just to open our doors and say you know what we're here

00:23:12.080 | there's a draft right and the smart and the capable and the willing

00:23:16.800 | we're willing to basically bring uh inside of our borders so that they can work on our behalf and

00:23:23.760 | that's what other countries i think get right about all of this stuff like again as a canadian

00:23:29.120 | um you know the canadian perspective of this is not that you deploy troops and you get embroiled

00:23:35.120 | in these you know debacles over 20 years and thousands of lives and trillions of dollars it's

00:23:39.680 | the exact opposite they're there to support humanitarian efforts right they're there to send

00:23:45.120 | peacekeeping forces as they go they're there to support humanitarian efforts right they're there

00:23:46.720 | to support humanitarian efforts right they're there to support humanitarian efforts right they're

00:23:47.600 | there to support humanitarian efforts right they're there to support humanitarian efforts right

00:23:47.600 | but otherwise their real response is to actually then open the borders for folks that want to be

00:23:52.400 | there who are then wanting to trade up jason to those values because that's the simple way to

00:23:56.880 | self-select instead of saying i'm going to impose my version of democracy over there i'm actually

00:24:01.920 | going to show you what our version looks like over here and if you want to come the doors are open

00:24:05.760 | certainly being an example is step one and we i think do that largely well but we do need to

00:24:12.000 | sometimes intervene and i think that's the question here is when is it just to intervene when

00:24:16.640 | there is human rights on the line and a country is teetering on authoritarianism or democracy like

00:24:22.320 | where is that line the just cause here was to go get osama bin laden because he attacked us

00:24:28.240 | and we should have gotten out of that country as soon as we realized that bin laden was no longer

00:24:32.400 | there i mean that was basically after the battle of tora bora and if we didn't leave

00:24:37.040 | then we certainly should have left after we got bin laden in around 2010. so what were we still

00:24:42.560 | doing there we were engaged in this exercise of nation building which by the way we spent

00:24:46.560 | six trillion dollars on nation building exercises in the middle east between afghanistan and iraq

00:24:51.840 | for what for not this is why the electorate is in such a foul mood how many of our domestic

00:24:57.120 | disputes are caused by the fact that we squandered that six trillion dollars

00:25:01.280 | that's more than uh biden's entire domestic agenda um you know so we wasted all this money

00:25:07.200 | to freiburg's point we never understood the culture there

00:25:10.320 | and to chamath's point it was a giant money funneling operation to defense contractors there's a

00:25:16.480 | great piece of reporting by an independent journalist named michael tracy and he talked

00:25:21.120 | to frontline grunts about the wasteful spending you know they would send 12 humvees to some local

00:25:28.000 | afghan partner only two of them would ever get there the other 10 would break down and disappear

00:25:32.560 | no one would even know where all the money went it was like an unbelievable orgy of wastefulness and

00:25:38.720 | you know one other important detail on this there there's a a guy who i think should be

00:25:43.520 | much more famous to all of us uh his name is john f sopko he's the special inspector general for

00:25:49.200 | afghanistan reconstruction uh that short for cigar he was appointed by congress about 13 years ago

00:25:55.280 | to look into what was really happening in afghanistan and to report on quote lessons learned

00:26:00.800 | from the afghan war and so for 13 years sapco has been very quietly diligently interviewing people

00:26:08.080 | from everyone from frontline troops to commanders about what's really been happening in afghanistan

00:26:12.800 | and he's been really good at that and he's been really good at that and he's been really good at

00:26:13.440 | releasing these reports that everyone in dc knows about but nobody in the country knows about

00:26:18.160 | let me just read you these are just the chapter titles from his latest report okay oh jesus just

00:26:25.120 | the chapter titles harmful spending patterns resistance to honesty personnel struggles

00:26:31.520 | willful disregard for critical information incorrect theories of change poor understanding

00:26:37.440 | of local context and by the way that includes ignoring things like the sexual abuse of young

00:26:43.360 | boys by afghan warlords who are our allies okay which the new york times reported on we completely

00:26:48.560 | have swept that under the rug okay that's just a table of contents okay from one of his latest

00:26:54.320 | reports which is about 100 pages so complete incompetence on our in our government complete

00:26:58.240 | waste the pentagon was telling us the whole time i mean while this guy sapco the cigar you know the

00:27:03.680 | special inspector general was telling us the truth of what was happening you've got the pentagon

00:27:08.480 | telling us and the elected leaders the whole time that we're winning this war that things are in

00:27:13.280 | proving they had all these uh bogus metrics to prove it and you know and so it's just it's a

00:27:19.280 | systemic failure but sex what would be their motivation to say it's not working

00:27:23.760 | look i i think i think that well right what would be the motivation you're right you can't you can't

00:27:29.520 | fix what you don't measure and so basically like if you want to lie there there you have it we have

00:27:34.800 | that now for 20 years of lying let's talk about the metrics because this is actually an important

00:27:38.400 | point but this is my point it's like what what's what what's the objective for them

00:27:43.200 | to be measured what's the objective in that case the objective is to demonstrate no the objective

00:27:47.760 | is to demonstrate leadership the objective is to basically say you know what this is really not

00:27:52.240 | working and this is about putting yourself in the position of a person whose child is over there

00:27:59.600 | okay if any of our children were there who signed up because they thought they wanted to do the right

00:28:05.360 | thing and and and you know be in the army or the navy or the marines found themselves in afghanistan

00:28:10.880 | got killed by the military and they were killed by the military and they were killed by the military

00:28:13.120 | god heaven forbid and then that body comes back and this report comes with it which is effectively

00:28:20.320 | what it is okay this is the coda to the death of two point you know 2400 americans and two trillion

00:28:26.560 | dollars i would be so heartbroken i am heartbroken just thinking about this like this is not

00:28:32.720 | that's not what we're about so we can't keep doing this and we can't keep lying we can't

00:28:37.840 | rationalize lying anymore right well i i agree with that and let me

00:28:43.040 | just speak to the point about the metrics because the problem was not that we didn't

00:28:46.240 | have any metrics the problem is that the metrics are bogus now why is that well first of all the

00:28:51.120 | mission was very unclear it's not clear how you measure the success of transforming a country to

00:28:57.840 | afghanistan like afghanistan to our values i mean what what really are the metrics for that so what

00:29:02.720 | the military started doing is not measuring outputs but measuring inputs so you have you

00:29:08.160 | know the commanders on the ground saying well today we trained a thousand new afghanis

00:29:12.960 | and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis

00:29:15.760 | and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis

00:29:17.840 | and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis

00:29:19.680 | and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis

00:29:21.760 | and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis

00:29:23.600 | and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis

00:29:25.440 | and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis

00:29:28.080 | and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis and we're going to train a thousand new afghanis

00:29:31.360 | because the military is a culture that's based on advancement because the military is a culture that's based on advancement

00:29:34.800 | it's basically the pentagon is a big country club it's a big it's basically the pentagon is a big

00:29:37.840 | insiders club there's a dogma the dogma was insiders club there's a dogma the dogma was

00:29:40.960 | we're winning the war and if you want to we're winning the war and if you want to

00:29:42.880 | advance in that organization you're not advance in that organization you're not

00:29:44.560 | going to be the one you're not going to be the skunk at the garden party who

00:29:47.440 | tells the generals that they're full of you're basically gonna be the guy who

00:29:51.040 | gives them the metrics they want to hear gives them the metrics they want to hear

00:29:52.720 | and then their boss the the person who's and then their boss the the person who's

00:29:55.200 | the boss of the front line guy is going to the boss of the front line guy is going

00:29:57.520 | to improve things 20 he's going to shade to improve things 20 he's going to shade

00:29:59.680 | things another 20 and then the next guy in the chain of

00:30:02.160 | command shades things 20 and by the time you get all the way to the top

00:30:06.240 | the chairman of the georg chiefs is telling biden we have a an army that's

00:30:10.240 | 300 000 strong these guys are going to take over the country we're not going to

00:30:13.680 | have a problem we're going to have plenty of time to get our people out and

00:30:16.960 | that is why we had a lackadaisical withdrawal strategy these guys thought

00:30:20.000 | they had all the time in the world because systemically they've been

00:30:22.880 | bullshitting themselves about having a 300 000 man afghan army and then

00:30:27.440 | and then they're going to have a 300 000 man afghan army and then

00:30:27.440 | you know when you actually look under the hood of this thing there is no army

00:30:31.040 | it's just basically a bunch of kleptocracy

00:30:33.680 | i think what happened at the end of this thing

00:30:36.880 | is even more dangerous for the future on top of everything you said david which i

00:30:40.560 | agree with is that what we basically said is that we will

00:30:44.240 | engage in whatever cover-up is necessary because we're not willing to lead and

00:30:49.200 | talk about the mistakes we've made and to do the things that are necessary to

00:30:52.320 | really fix it and that's what's really sad because as he said as you said sax

00:30:57.360 | the minute that you knew that uh bin laden wasn't there we had a choice

00:31:02.320 | then the minute you knew that he was already dead we had a choice and the choice was to do the

00:31:07.280 | right thing and instead what happened was we got caught up in virtue signaling we got caught

00:31:13.760 | up in personal advancement we got caught up in the grift we got caught up in graft we got caught up

00:31:19.360 | in corruption we got caught up in the you know military industrial complex and here's here's

00:31:24.080 | where we are and the crazy thing is biden had a moment

00:31:27.280 | where he could have stepped in and said you know what guys i'm looking at all of

00:31:31.920 | this data here's the new plan and he didn't do it either let me ask you a

00:31:36.400 | question if biden had run an orderly exit and then it spiraled into taliban

00:31:42.880 | and and reverted back to what it was how would you feel about all this i think

00:31:47.040 | that would have been that's the goal right trump wanted to get out yes and

00:31:50.400 | biden both wanted to get out so if we just executed twice as good or 50

00:31:54.080 | better there'd be no problem here we all want to be out correct yes that's

00:31:57.200 | that that decision the decision to get out was a 70

00:31:59.600 | popular decision when biden made the decision in april and then they made it last time because he

00:32:06.080 | did that's right this is a bipartisan decision to get out let's not pretend otherwise it was clearly

00:32:11.680 | the correct decision to get out but here's where biden screwed it up okay and there's some blame

00:32:16.720 | that needs to be apportioned to biden into the to the generals and we don't really know who screwed

00:32:20.960 | it up but collectively they did the big mistake the original sin of this withdrawal is that they

00:32:26.240 | pulled out of biden's decision to get out and then they lost this withdrawal and then they lost this

00:32:27.120 | Bagram Airfield at the beginning of July. Okay, they didn't just pull out, they literally ghosted

00:32:32.640 | the Afghan, I mean, they pulled out in the middle of the night without telling anybody the Afghans

00:32:37.680 | army who are our allies woke up the next morning, and the Americans were just gone. And the

00:32:43.880 | electricity had been turned off. I mean, this was unbelievable. And so the problem is, we then lost

00:32:49.040 | our air superiority over the country, we lost our ability to conduct close combat air support,

00:32:54.300 | we lost our ability to do a mass evacuation. Okay, we basically gave up our central military

00:32:59.060 | asset in the country before we got the civilians out before we got our allies out. And there were

00:33:03.920 | 18,000 of these so called civs, the special immigration visas. These are the Afghani

00:33:09.460 | translators and helpers who are embedded in our combat units. The State Department, meanwhile,

00:33:15.700 | was totally caught up in bureaucracy, slow walking their applications.

00:33:18.820 | Those 18,000 translators are now stuck there. Okay, they have 50,000 dependents,

00:33:23.760 | we're talking about the Afghan army, and they're stuck there. And they're stuck there. And they're

00:33:24.280 | spouses and children and that so they have no way of getting out and then the final thing that just

00:33:28.600 | takes the cake is that we gave a list to the taliban of here's our biggest helpers when if

00:33:34.920 | they go to the checkpoints we want you to let them follow lord it was basically an assassination list

00:33:39.160 | i mean this is really unforgivable and it's and it's and this was it's not like this was

00:33:47.560 | unknown okay there was a bipartisan working group of both democrats and republicans who

00:33:52.040 | wrote a letter to blinken at the state department back in may saying we are afraid of about the

00:33:58.040 | safety of our afghan allies you need to get them out now the state department is taking too long

00:34:03.400 | processing the special immigration visas you're totally caught up in red tape bureaucracies

00:34:07.720 | solve this problem blinken did nothing he was another deer caught in the headlights

00:34:12.840 | they could have also just uh instead of making people fill out all these forms and

00:34:17.400 | all this red tape i heard one commenter saying like the right thing to do in situations like

00:34:21.800 | this is to just get everybody out put them in a holding uh location and then process them there

00:34:27.800 | in other words if this person says they're translating their family and they have you know

00:34:31.400 | relatively good paperwork get them out put them into that holding pattern and then figure out

00:34:36.600 | how to process them later we got to wrap on this discussion get to some other topics

00:34:40.440 | but the interesting thing to watch here is what's going to be the future of afghanistan and i don't

00:34:46.280 | know if you guys saw the financial times story but china is watching this uh like a hawk

00:34:51.560 | and they china and russia are just sitting there laughing well china is even worse they have

00:34:57.480 | aspirations of partnership in this region with pakistan already and afghanistan and building super

00:35:04.040 | highways and expanding their train network and having their own silk road essentially

00:35:09.240 | to to get to the middle east from china and this is going to be the uh axis of uh look at the united

00:35:16.760 | states authoritarianism by biden asked putin if it was okay for us to stage military

00:35:21.320 | resources from you know from from from close quarters in asia then uh putin was like no go

00:35:28.600 | jason i think what you what you just pointed out is the motivating factor for um having a presence

00:35:35.880 | in this and other similar similarly situated territories around the world yeah a lot of

00:35:41.480 | people assume it's about imperialism and imposing kind of american democratic principles and ideals

00:35:47.480 | i think that's the way the narrative is sold internally here at this country but the

00:35:51.080 | truth from the intelligence community and i think the folks that maybe are a little bit more

00:35:55.160 | thoughtful and long-term thinking about this sort of stuff is that the absence of an american

00:36:00.280 | presence in certain parts of the world will enable um the uh the success of what we would consider

00:36:06.840 | competing states globally um and you know there is still that unanswered question ultimately of

00:36:12.120 | how do we compete on a global stage given what is currently a very negative view on our having a

00:36:20.840 | presence overseas a military presence overseas a physical presence overseas um in these sorts of

00:36:25.960 | territories and it begs the question of does that really set us up for challenges and failures in

00:36:30.520 | the 21st century as a nation-state um as the other global players in particular china you know take

00:36:36.200 | advantage of these openings yeah well i i agree with that and let me just let me just say why

00:36:40.760 | china is so smart and we are so dumb china is going to afghanistan right now and cutting

00:36:45.720 | deals with the taliban to build a highway so they can get to the rare earth minerals

00:36:50.760 | which afghanistan is rich in and they're going to use the superhighway they're going to build to get

00:36:55.560 | that out and feed their economy that is how they're going to spend their capital in afghanistan

00:37:00.520 | meanwhile we spent over 2 trillion and we have nothing to show for it you know they go abroad

00:37:05.160 | in search of rare earth minerals we go there to lecture people on toxic masculinity it is absurd

00:37:10.840 | okay now the president well you know what sex is a little too cynical we were also protecting

00:37:20.360 | pronouns don't forget the pronouns yes we don't forget pronouns that's right

00:37:23.960 | they them it's very important that's right we go there to lecture people on their pronouns

00:37:28.680 | no that that is just far too cynical no it's not we went there to protect

00:37:32.920 | some people who wanted democracy and to allow women to read and to be oh we just decided

00:37:38.920 | we just flushed that right down the toilet sorry i know that we do we just not conflate that we

00:37:44.680 | just want to lecture them but david david is right we knew that the minute we pulled out we were

00:37:48.840 | casting 50 of that population to a complete state of stasis that was completely not known

00:37:57.480 | so what are you saying that we should have stayed there with some presence well this is this is like

00:38:01.560 | the argument in vietnam tell the truth we should have just told the truth we're leaving we don't

00:38:06.200 | have a plan and this is going to risk all women it's going to risk people that helped us and we

00:38:10.520 | are not sure what's going to happen but you know what we decided we're leaving that was the truth

00:38:14.760 | remember remember the vietnam war we killed two million vietnamese

00:38:18.600 | to make the country safe for democracy you know what the vietnamese said at the end of that we'd

00:38:22.520 | rather have our two million people back we see these wars in terms of ideology we think we're

00:38:27.000 | going there to spread democracy they see it in terms of nationalism all they see is a foreign

00:38:31.640 | invader trying to impose their values that's why they don't buy into what we're doing and by the

00:38:36.440 | way the whole idea that we're going to plant madisonian democracy in the soil of the middle east

00:38:42.280 | that was a 20-year folly that cost us trillions and one of the reasons why there are no madisons over

00:38:48.360 | there there are no madisons there are no jeffersons there are no washingtons who is going

00:38:52.760 | to take up that cause what we had in afghanistan is this president ghani who's a crook who was off

00:38:58.600 | on the first helicopter with millions of our dollars that is how stupid we are

00:39:02.200 | it's the last place we should be trying to do democracy there's other places where it's

00:39:07.560 | teetering and we can probably be more helpful the american president john quincy adams this is back

00:39:11.880 | when america had a rational foreign policy he said america does not go abroad in search of monsters to

00:39:18.120 | destroy that used to be our foreign policy now we involve ourselves all over the world to impose

00:39:24.520 | our values for no reasons it is costing us a fortune and has led to the crumbling of the

00:39:30.840 | america of of american wealth and power and it completely erodes our trust in institutions

00:39:38.680 | particularly the institution of the federal government and we're left just scratching our

00:39:43.160 | heads saying if not these guys then who is going to figure this out what are we doing

00:39:47.880 | uh chamath and uh sax if you're don't know if you don't want to support democracy in the world

00:39:54.040 | what happens to taiwan in your world this signed taiwan's death war i'm sorry but you should just

00:39:59.560 | assume we should just let taiwan go no my point is the following taiwan will when the when prc

00:40:05.800 | has the right window be under complete chinese control and we because of how we have executed

00:40:12.760 | this and how we've executed the rest of our middle asia strategy means that we will not really engage

00:40:19.160 | and the reason is because it will be an enormous food fight inside the united states where all of

00:40:25.000 | these past experiences of us this up will come up should we defend taiwan free except

00:40:30.120 | by the way the difference is we're not going to we would not be going to war with a bunch of like

00:40:34.840 | tribal people in the mountains carrying sticks and ak-47s from the 80s this is china

00:40:43.240 | so if we can't if we can't beat and win in afghanistan i mean we also what are our chat

00:40:49.080 | i mean i'm sorry guys but our chances alone it's not worth it with a group of japan south korea

00:40:56.200 | australia and the eu we should be defending taiwan in my mind what do you think freeberg should we

00:41:01.240 | try and defend taiwan when this inevitably leads to the chinese government finding their window as

00:41:06.040 | chamath is predicting again i don't think that the motivating factor could necessarily

00:41:12.200 | be imposing democratic principles as the priority if you were to to to actually weigh that decision

00:41:23.160 | you would realize that you should probably have a presence in some latin american countries you

00:41:29.480 | should probably have a presence in central africa where there are authoritarian regimes that are

00:41:33.000 | doing terrible things but we don't have a competing global interest there to defend against

00:41:39.720 | well to be clear it taiwan is right now

00:41:41.800 | democratic so we would be defending a democracy freebrook jay cal's asking a specific question if

00:41:48.040 | china invades taiwan do you think the united states should get involved

00:41:52.200 | on a principles basis or do i think the united states will get involved either one

00:41:57.080 | yeah i mean i think the challenge is the escalation with china right so that's going to be the big

00:42:01.480 | calculus it's really about what's the what's the long-term cost certainly on a principle basis

00:42:07.000 | you'd say let's go defend the weak and go protect them because they share principles and ideals with

00:42:11.080 | us but the the backlash the challenge would be if we were to do this global trade would stall

00:42:17.880 | there would be um massive um issues at home with people saying that we're getting involved in an

00:42:22.280 | overseas war all of the reasons that from a political perspective it would stall our

00:42:26.360 | economy it would cause all these you know i'm kind of um speculating a bit here but the actual

00:42:31.800 | cost isn't just about sending a few thousand troops over and surrounding the island and

00:42:35.240 | protecting people it's actually much more severe than that and if you were to weigh it it could be

00:42:39.480 | that we end up with 25 percent of the world's population and we're not going to be able to do

00:42:40.360 | it in the next decade because of the economic fallout that occurs um in our doing that and so

00:42:47.640 | on and so forth and a lot of american prosperity that we get to enjoy um you know kind of kind of

00:42:52.520 | declines and so that's the real calculus and i don't know how to do that calculus but i think

00:42:56.920 | that is the calculus that that is being done by the intelligence community to figure out the answer

00:43:00.520 | to that question let's swing it to sax to do a little bit more of this calculus because what

00:43:03.480 | we're talking about here is not giving up an authoritarian state right that wants to be

00:43:07.320 | authoritarian right we're talking about a democracy on the risk board and we're talking about a

00:43:09.640 | risk board that would be taken and flipped from a democracy like hong kong has been flipped i think

00:43:15.640 | it's a i think it's a very important distinction that taiwan is already a democracy they got there

00:43:21.720 | on their own they've done a lot of hard work building that country since uh that basically

00:43:26.200 | the the country became separate from mainland china i think in 1945 it's never been under the

00:43:31.560 | control of the ccp it's uh it's a free enterprise system it's democratic capitalism there's basically

00:43:38.200 | 24 million free soldiers and they're not going to be able to get out of the country they're going to

00:43:38.920 | be in free souls who live on that island and if we show any weakness and we frankly already have by

00:43:45.640 | what we've done in the middle east if we show any weakness they will fall under the boot of the

00:43:50.520 | communist regime so i think there's a big difference between trying to plant democracy or

00:43:56.120 | nation build uh verse in a country that's never had it before in thousands of years and basically

00:44:02.280 | being friends and allies with a country that already is a democracy and just wants to be free

00:44:07.560 | and i think our message to china should just be we like things the way they are we don't want them

00:44:12.520 | to change that's it we have a policy of what's called strategic ambiguity to taiwan it basically

00:44:17.960 | says that we may come to the defense of taiwan or we may not and i think we should just continue

00:44:24.360 | with that policy i think our message should just be we like the status quo we don't think it should

00:44:28.680 | change let's leave things alone i think that that's fine but i think we need to be investing

00:44:33.160 | hundreds of billions the trillions of dollars we wasted in afghanistan could have been better

00:44:37.400 | served building an infrastructure in america for chips and semiconductors and a bunch of these

00:44:42.680 | critical components because then it would give us a lot more bargaining room to uh actually be able

00:44:50.040 | to play out that strategic ambiguity more fully i think the reality is that despite the policy

00:44:55.400 | framework the practical economic reality is that we would be engulfed in a war if if taiwan were

00:45:01.160 | taken over by china because as friedberg said our economy would ground to a halt because those

00:45:06.840 | critical

00:45:07.240 | assets are linchpins for how massive swaths of the american economy work yeah i'll tell you one thing

00:45:14.040 | we should be making plans for i don't know if our military is competent enough but we've talked on

00:45:18.520 | this pod before about how what 70 percent of the advanced chips come out of taiwan companies like

00:45:24.600 | tsmc if china takes over that island i mean those chips are the new oil right we're going

00:45:29.480 | to be dependent on them in a way we never should be for our supply chain you're right

00:45:33.320 | your mouth we never should have gotten this dependent but frankly our military needs to have a

00:45:37.080 | plan to sabotage those chip factories because we can't let them fall under the control of the ccp

00:45:42.520 | i don't know if they're competent enough to do that but but if taiwan falls it needs to be a

00:45:47.400 | poison chalice for the ccp we're going to need to make some decisions here because russia with crimea

00:45:53.080 | and the ukraine and their ambitions and then china taking over hong kong and looking at taiwan i mean

00:45:59.800 | i think the lesson here is if you're a dictator and you are allowed to take over other regions and

00:46:05.880 | other you know

00:46:06.920 | countries you're not going to stop it's the nature of dictators and we have to at least put our foot

00:46:11.480 | down you know afghanistan's a show but these other places we're flat-footed right now jay

00:46:16.360 | kell we're starting i know that's why this is a serious problem and so and so we need to we need

00:46:20.280 | to sort of like recenter ourselves and get momentum you know you to use a poker analogy we basically

00:46:26.280 | just bluffed off half our stack with the jackade offsuit and then what and then when you get the

00:46:31.400 | ace king suited you have no chips to play with yeah right you know and you're just like what was

00:46:36.120 | i doing

00:46:36.760 | credibility basically 9 11 9 11 put us on tilt okay and we've been losing pots for the last 20

00:46:43.560 | years now we just lost the big one and the question is to jama's point are we going to lose the rest

00:46:47.800 | of our stack are we going to go take a walk around the block like mute center center time to recenter

00:46:53.720 | on the recentering thing china is going in the opposite direction in a way that could actually

00:46:59.480 | help us meaning like you know it's uh it's a pretty scary set of things that's happening over

00:47:05.560 | there but it's also a kind of a risk to the economy and so i think that's a really good point

00:47:06.600 | a kind of instructive about how we could recenter ourselves

00:47:09.300 | because there's, they're actually enacting the laws that

00:47:11.600 | we all talk about, we've been talking about for seven months,

00:47:14.040 | but they're actually willing to do it. And they, and so if

00:47:17.140 | American policymakers would

00:47:18.840 | actually pivot to what's going on over there with the China or

00:47:21.280 | should we go to robotics?

00:47:22.380 | Let's Let's finish China and then we can and then we can talk

00:47:25.500 | about China is continuing their crackdown of tech companies,

00:47:29.840 | and has proposed a ban on foreign IPOs. The Wall Street

00:47:33.960 | Journal had some exclusive reporting today, I'll just read

00:47:37.220 | a quote and then hand it over to Chamath. China plans to propose

00:47:40.200 | new rules that would ban companies with large amounts of

00:47:42.800 | sensitive consumer data from going public in the US people

00:47:46.140 | familiar with the matter said, and in addition to that, under

00:47:50.820 | these new rules, they are looking at the algorithms that

00:47:54.300 | are being run, and different services and making them

00:47:57.900 | transparent and the Chinese government will basically control

00:48:00.600 | the algorithms that have caused so much chaos here in the United

00:48:03.960 | States with Facebook and Twitter, and YouTube. And then

00:48:06.960 | finally, they're going to close the loophole on VI ease.

00:48:10.560 | Chamathi want to explain what this means from a market

00:48:13.420 | perspective.

00:48:14.100 | Today's a really big day. Because of these things, Jason,

00:48:17.780 | as you just said, so let me just break this down. Because I think

00:48:20.400 | it's interesting for us to all learn about this together. So

00:48:23.040 | one thing is around the technology, which I'll talk

00:48:25.800 | about in a second, which you just talked about, and then

00:48:29.760 | previewed. And then the second is around the capital markets

00:48:33.060 | and the money flow. And

00:48:33.960 | that in this is a really big deal. So what is a VI e because

00:48:38.460 | you're going to hear this a lot. A VI e is what's called a

00:48:41.880 | variable interest entity. And what it is, is just a massive

00:48:47.640 | workaround. So essentially, what happened was a VI e was a legal

00:48:52.320 | business where you know, an entity had control of a company,

00:48:56.340 | okay, through a contract, but not through equity. So it's kind

00:49:00.480 | of like, you know, sacks, like I had a contract with Colin, that's

00:49:03.960 | it, I can dictate, you know, who does what, etc. But I don't own

00:49:07.440 | any equity. Now, the the company that completely ran afoul of all

00:49:11.700 | of these things was Enron. And back in 2001, Enron went fucking

00:49:15.780 | ham. As we all know, they had a bunch of these VI es, and they

00:49:20.240 | used it to basically shield a bunch of losses and do a bunch

00:49:23.360 | of shady things. So then there was a bunch of accounting laws

00:49:26.320 | that were introduced. China, on a completely separate track

00:49:31.020 | around that same time was like, Hey, listen, we want to

00:49:33.800 | control our economy. So we're going to prohibit foreign

00:49:36.220 | ownership. So just for all you guys to know, China to this day

00:49:40.020 | does not allow a foreigner to own a piece, large sections of

00:49:44.080 | the Chinese economy. Okay, so as of 2018, which is the last

00:49:47.280 | updated list, as far as I could find it, there are 33 sectors of

00:49:50.600 | the economy where China says you cannot be a foreigner and own

00:49:53.680 | any equity. You have to have a local partner. No, you cannot

00:49:57.980 | own any equity. Yeah, exactly. You want to start a business

00:50:00.360 | there, you have to have like a partner like Yahoo did. So all

00:50:03.240 | technology.

00:50:03.800 | companies fall under this all data companies, any education

00:50:07.060 | company, any media company, so you can imagine it's basically

00:50:09.840 | every part of the economy that matters. And so with because of

00:50:13.160 | all these restrictions, you know, the Chinese internet

00:50:15.620 | companies were like, Hey, hold on a second, I need to get

00:50:17.780 | access to the capital markets. What do I do? They dusted off the

00:50:22.100 | VI structure. And they basically created all of these, you know,

00:50:26.600 | Cayman's holding companies. And that's where all the American

00:50:30.580 | investors would go and buy equity from or contribute

00:50:33.800 | equity to. And so you know, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, Didi.com,

00:50:38.660 | JD, all of these folks have these VI es. And what's interesting

00:50:43.560 | about these VI es is, it's written clear as day, but not a

00:50:47.800 | single investor seemed to care. But in the prospectuses of these

00:50:51.500 | Chinese companies, they were clear. It doesn't mean you

00:50:54.140 | actually have a claim on the assets, it doesn't mean you can

00:50:56.660 | actually make a demand of management. I mean, if you saw

00:50:59.660 | this in an American prospectus, you would not put a single dollar

00:51:03.800 | into these companies. But in fact, the exact opposite

00:51:06.440 | happened, because people were greedy and chasing the money.

00:51:09.740 | And, and these risks, by the way, came back to bear because

00:51:13.760 | Jason, I think you were the one that gave the example of the

00:51:16.040 | Chinese tutoring guys, where, you know, overnight, this guy

00:51:19.280 | lost 99% of his net worth, I think this was a one or two pods

00:51:22.940 | ago. The way they did that was that they cancelled the VI es.

00:51:26.400 | They said online tutoring, nope, sorry, these things can't exist

00:51:29.780 | anymore. And so essentially, we have this

00:51:33.800 | situation now where VI es are part of 58 companies, massive

00:51:41.520 | Chinese mega cap companies that are in the huge indexes in the

00:51:45.000 | United States. These 58 companies account for $2

00:51:47.600 | trillion of market cap, we are we are we are now in a situation

00:51:50.860 | now, where the Chinese government basically says, for

00:51:53.780 | online tutoring, we're going to cancel the VI es in a bunch of

00:51:56.700 | other areas, we're going to start with regulation, we could

00:51:59.120 | cancel the VI es later. And so we've essentially put the capital markets

00:52:03.800 | in my opinion, on pause. And so now let's transition to this

00:52:08.000 | other markets in China, capital markets in China, I think now are

00:52:12.140 | the most volatile they've ever been, essentially, the People's

00:52:16.340 | Republic of China, the government, the CCP chooses how

00:52:20.160 | and who will make money. And they are basically putting their

00:52:23.400 | foot down in a big way in the capital, what happens to the 1.62

00:52:27.260 | trillion in existing shares that have been bought by people around

00:52:30.720 | the world, would there be some way to unravel that or a tender

00:52:33.800 | offer, you're gonna have to delist these ADRs, I don't

00:52:36.860 | exactly know what would happen. I think what happens is that I'm

00:52:39.440 | a correct you have capital laws, Jason, because when they

00:52:41.780 | cancelled the online tutoring VI es, the stock prices basically

00:52:44.800 | went to zero. So you could eviscerate $2 trillion of market

00:52:48.500 | cap tomorrow, if they decide you know what that VI for Alibaba,

00:52:51.320 | by the way, Nick, I'll send it to you. But it's a it's a thing

00:52:54.480 | of art. If you look at the VI structure for Baba, I mean, it is

00:52:58.560 | a fucking babushka doll of nesting entities. I don't know

00:53:03.140 | how

00:53:03.800 | to explain it. But the idea is that any investor who bought

00:53:07.760 | shares in Alibaba actually took the time to understand what they

00:53:11.180 | were actually buying, they suspended disbelief because they

00:53:14.240 | were greedy. So So the point is, that's happening. Okay, so the

00:53:17.660 | capital markets are now I think, getting really constrained. The

00:53:21.920 | compliment to this is that they're starting to now

00:53:24.440 | introduce legislation as a prelude, in my opinion, to

00:53:28.160 | cancelling some of these VI es in the most important area that

00:53:31.580 | we care about, which is tech. So Jason, to your point, the

00:53:33.800 | cyberspace watchdog. Today or yesterday I think it was. They

00:53:38.100 | just published a list of draft regulations that will now become

00:53:42.580 | law. I'm just going to read this to you. So let me just just FYI

00:53:46.220 | for you guys. So let me just give you a sense of them. Users

00:53:49.740 | must be provided with a convenient way to see and delete

00:53:52.420 | all the keywords that an algorithm uses to profile them.

00:53:55.700 | Number two providers shall not have that providers shall not

00:54:00.160 | record illegal and undesirable keywords in the user points of

00:54:03.780 | interest, or as user tags and push information content to

00:54:07.260 | them. And they may not become discriminatory or biased based

00:54:11.880 | on that information. Users must be informed that algorithms are

00:54:16.080 | being used on them to recommend content or products to them. And

00:54:19.540 | they must be allowed to opt out and see completely generic

00:54:23.040 | non personalized results. The algorithm recommendation shall

00:54:27.900 | adhere to me this is incredible to mainstream values. I don't

00:54:31.080 | know what that means. They must have harmony in

00:54:33.760 | China, they must actively spread positive energy and promote the

00:54:37.240 | application of algorithms for the better. providers shall

00:54:40.820 | regularly review and evaluate and verify these algorithms

00:54:44.500 | models and data's with these watchdogs. These watchdogs will

00:54:48.920 | now start to increasingly take board seats on the company on on

00:54:52.560 | Chinese companies. So you put these two things together. It is

00:54:56.200 | a takeover moment in China tech. It's a takeover.

00:54:59.500 | Yes, yes. I mean, so some of those provisions sound like

00:55:03.740 | you know, privacy regulations we might want to adopt over here

00:55:06.680 | completely. But I think we should focus on the one towards

00:55:10.220 | the end that you mentioned the algorithm recommendation source

00:55:12.960 | provider shall adhere to mainstream values actively

00:55:15.320 | spread positive energy and promote application for the

00:55:18.680 | better. Now, how do you actively spread positive energy? I mean,

00:55:22.520 | as a business person under that regulation, like what does that

00:55:26.300 | even mean? I mean, it basically means it means what you're not

00:55:29.980 | spreading, David. It means you're not spreading a protest in Hong

00:55:33.720 | Kong. It means you're not talking about the Uyghurs. It

00:55:36.600 | means you're not talking about Tiananmen Square, you're not

00:55:38.960 | creating social unrest. This is a way for them to say, you know,

00:55:42.940 | positive energy means don't criticize Xi Jinping, or the

00:55:45.960 | CCP or bring up topics that are in the no fly zone like the

00:55:49.020 | Uyghurs.

00:55:49.440 | Well, they're they're, they're gonna have content moderation

00:55:51.460 | guidelines. Yeah, they're bringing it all under their

00:55:53.040 | control. That's what it's about. I mean, these, this is the type

00:55:55.720 | of thing that despite all of our problems makes me very happy to

00:55:58.380 | be an American.

00:55:59.100 | Yeah, can you I would I would say though, the first part of what I said about

00:56:03.700 | the regulations to me seem really intelligent. And I think

00:56:06.340 | Americans would want that. And if American policymakers would

00:56:09.520 | actually just suspend disbelief for a second, go to the Chinese

00:56:12.400 | website, meet Nick, we can put a link into the into the show

00:56:15.340 | notes of where the regulations were published, and actually try

00:56:18.100 | to implement those laws. I think we as Americans, we'd all want

00:56:20.800 | most of them except that one.

00:56:22.020 | Yeah, well, that's what the devil does. They mix the lies

00:56:24.520 | with the truth in order to get you to be convinced to give up

00:56:27.400 | your freedoms. Friedberg, what are your thoughts?

00:56:29.020 | I'm getting increasingly convinced that this idea of

00:56:31.640 | like decentralized blockchain

00:56:33.680 | based government governing might work in the 21st century. I just

00:56:38.360 | feel like they're the you know, we keep hearing more about the

00:56:42.380 | overreach and the ineptitude of centralized institutions like

00:56:45.980 | CCP and the US government and you know, I'm not hearing anyone

00:56:52.340 | that says, man, you know, this is a great.

00:56:54.500 | Well, I was seeing progress.

00:56:57.080 | But Friedberg, I think I think the CCP is actually pretty good.

00:57:00.020 | I what they do, we may not agree with them. But I think they're

00:57:02.840 | pretty good.

00:57:03.660 | I agree with you. I agree with you generally. Yeah. But I do

00:57:07.260 | think it creates an incentive and a motivation also, because if

00:57:10.080 | you don't agree with their, their principles, you know,

00:57:14.460 | you're going to find yourself looking for an alternative. So,

00:57:17.820 | you know, I don't know, we, this is probably not the right time

00:57:21.660 | or forum for this conversation, we should probably do it on

00:57:24.040 | another show. But we should talk about some of the innovations,

00:57:28.320 | blockchain innovations that are taking place. And J. Cal, I know

00:57:31.440 | you spent a lot of time on this as well. But, you know, I think

00:57:33.640 | you know, it'd be worth kind of talking about the notion that,

00:57:36.540 | you know, can you see governing move to the blockchain? And what

00:57:41.400 | does society look like in maybe the 22nd century, if this becomes

00:57:44.800 | a reality? And how do we get how does the world kind of evolve

00:57:47.680 | there?

00:57:48.080 | Well, in the crypto world, you would put in some effort, you

00:57:51.320 | would have some skin in the game, and you would, because of

00:57:53.520 | your processing power, your nodes on the network, we get

00:57:57.040 | some votes, it would be like in a democracy, how much money you

00:58:00.800 | had, or how much work you produced, you had some sort of

00:58:03.620 | say, which kind of sounds like ours.

00:58:05.540 | I mean, imagine if the US government instead of, you know,

00:58:08.300 | having some folks go to Congress and say, I want a trillion

00:58:11.500 | dollars and spend 25 years in Afghanistan. You know, it was

00:58:16.180 | more of a distributed decision making process where data was

00:58:18.720 | available in real time metrics were used to make the decision.

00:58:21.240 | And the folks that actually contributed dollars to the

00:58:25.500 | network ended up being the ones that made the decisions based on

00:58:28.280 | how many dollars they've contributed or based on some

00:58:30.020 | other principle of decision making. That doesn't kind of

00:58:33.600 | have to be the case.

00:58:34.600 | So, you know, I think that's kind of the kind of the

00:58:36.600 | aggregate institutional ineptitude, which is kind of part

00:58:38.600 | of the issue we've seen here.

00:58:39.600 | Well, so I think that brings up an interesting point, which is,

00:58:42.600 | you know, when we talk about all the ways that we could have

00:58:44.600 | spent these trillions of dollars better than nation building,

00:58:47.600 | here's, here's the fundamental problem. I agree with that. I

00:58:49.600 | mean, I wish we had spent the 6 trillion that we spent on

00:58:52.600 | nation building in the Middle East, I wish we had spent that

00:58:54.600 | at home domestically on our own priorities. But here's the

00:58:58.600 | problem is I think what Afghanistan is specifically the

00:59:01.600 | military industrial complex shows is how do we actually

00:59:03.580 | get the money? How good these special interests get at

00:59:06.580 | extracting money from the system, while providing so

00:59:09.580 | little value? You know, we spent so these contractors spent, or

00:59:14.580 | we they they charge so much to basically deliver so little

00:59:18.580 | Afghanistan, do you really think it's going to be much

00:59:20.580 | different for the trillion dollar, the $1.2 trillion

00:59:22.580 | infrastructure bill that's coming? You know, and if we

00:59:25.580 | create it, they're licking their lips, they're licking Yeah,

00:59:27.580 | exactly. The people, the groups are going to get that money, we're

00:59:33.560 | are people who their skill set is lobbying okay that is what they spend their time doing

00:59:38.840 | now listen and if you are really good at lobbying why would you even waste your time trying to get

00:59:44.440 | good at delivering value you're not that's your business's lobby that is your value yeah that is

00:59:49.400 | your skillset exactly so this idea that we can basically spend a trillion dollars on some

00:59:54.200 | domestic innovation program the problem is it'll never go to the right people will never go to the

00:59:59.160 | innovators the best thing we could do is just not spend the money quite frankly so smaller government

01:00:06.760 | or how about how about just not a government that's uh 20 trillion dollars in debt

01:00:11.880 | i don't know how it's like smaller or small government to if we were to save six trillion

01:00:17.240 | would still be 14 trillion in debt it's not a small government i think a good jumping off point

01:00:22.120 | here might be the supreme court eviction moratorium uh and the supreme court not upholding

01:00:28.760 | it and

01:00:29.080 | what are your thoughts on that sex because it does relate to this never-ending free money train

01:00:34.600 | no repercussions of personal behavior and you know spending insanely forever it seems like we're

01:00:43.560 | never going to stop with the stimmies yeah i think the stream court threw out uh biden's eviction

01:00:49.240 | moratorium as unconstitutional look i think it's great you know the the government should not be

01:00:55.880 | uh preventing uh eviction

01:00:59.000 | i think it's great you know the the government should not be uh preventing uh eviction you know

01:00:59.320 | especially not the federal government i don't understand how this is supposed to work i mean

01:01:02.600 | all you do look i don't want to see anybody get evicted but the reality is you have to pay your

01:01:06.920 | rent and if and if there are groups of people who can't pay their rent and the government decides

01:01:12.600 | that uh that those people should be helped the right way to help them is to give them the money

01:01:17.080 | to pay their rent not just to tell landlords sorry like you can't collect the right congress could

01:01:21.960 | give more stimulus to those people yes it's a taking it's a clear taking from landlords to say

01:01:28.120 | that oh your tenants don't have to pay you anymore how does that make sense well how do we unwind the

01:01:33.160 | free money train because there's 10 million job openings right now that are not getting filled

01:01:38.280 | and then we have unemployment starting to unwind or the bonus unemployment's online and then we

01:01:44.040 | have all this uh free rent concept or just you don't have to pay your rent at some point it

01:01:50.040 | feels like we have to let the free market come back and maybe people can't pay their rent so they

01:01:56.920 | go take one of the 10 million jobs i know that sounds cold-hearted

01:02:00.680 | you've talked about this before in california we have a labor shortage in california

01:02:07.480 | we've basically run a controlled experiment in the uh ubi the universal basic income

01:02:12.840 | where we've basically been paying people not to work or paying them regardless of whether

01:02:16.760 | they work guess what they don't take jobs and so we actually have a labor shortage in

01:02:20.840 | california despite having high unemployment at some point the government's gonna have to say to people

01:02:26.760 | like look covet is not an excuse for shirking your adult responsibilities you know we all have a

01:02:32.280 | responsibility to go to work to pay our rent you know to pay our parking tickets and covet has been

01:02:39.080 | this excuse for suspending you know this this sort of normal life and the problem is covet's going to

01:02:44.920 | be around forever it's like the cold or the flu it can't continue to be this excuse for people

01:02:49.400 | not working not paying rent not doing what they're supposed to be doing i think on top of that though

01:02:53.880 | i think jason maybe you want to talk about this i think on top of that i think jason you're right i'm

01:02:55.560 | going to talk about this i think on top of that we uh are amplifying that by taking people's agency

01:03:01.800 | away and we are prop 22. and prop 22 is a perfect example of that which you should talk about but

01:03:07.800 | when you put these two things together on the one hand you have a government that basically

01:03:11.400 | wants to subsidize uh opting out of the system and then you have a set of laws that if they're not

01:03:19.880 | unwound reinforce that dynamic and you put these two things together

01:03:24.360 | and folks just want to sit on the sidelines yeah let's get freeburg about freeburg you want to talk

01:03:28.440 | about the prop 22 um supreme court decision etc yeah there was an appeals court appeals court

01:03:36.360 | um you know appeals court that uh overturned some elements of the california prop 22 which

01:03:42.520 | was a heavily lobbied california proposition lobbied by uber and lyft and other um businesses

01:03:50.200 | that have built effectively marketplaces for independent contractors like the california

01:03:53.400 | contract which is a big employees union that had um you know fought very hard to pass legislation

01:04:00.360 | in california that made it um effectively very difficult for people to operate as independent

01:04:05.560 | contractors and forcing companies like uber and lyft to treat them like full-time employees

01:04:09.240 | or to treat them like employees and so prop 22 was to counter the union-funded legislation

01:04:16.360 | which basically provided a lot of room for people to operate as independent contractors

01:04:22.200 | which basically provided more freedom and flexibility to workers where there weren't

01:04:25.720 | all these very arbitrary random rules that if you're a writer you can be an independent

01:04:29.240 | contractor but if you're a driver you cannot you know all this nonsense that took place because the

01:04:33.560 | unions were trying to increase the scale and scope of their union base um and so prop 22 was passed

01:04:41.000 | in california after much spending and lobbying and it passed by a pretty decent margin and then this

01:04:45.960 | court ruling basically in the appeals court overruled the constitutionality of some elements

01:04:51.080 | of prop 22 which brings into question whether that prop 22 is actually going to hold in california

01:04:55.800 | therefore are all these people who are drivers for uber delivery people for doordash

01:05:00.040 | and all these companies that are creating like thumbtack and you know all these companies that

01:05:05.400 | are creating marketplaces for individuals to have flexible work to go and work where they

01:05:10.520 | want when they want to find gigs to find you know short-term jobs to find

01:05:14.760 | um you know tasks and projects that they can run are they now going to be seeing that those marketplaces

01:05:21.080 | have stopped working because when you have to start treating those people like employees

01:05:24.840 | the flexibility and freedom that those marketplaces enable stalls out and and kind of you know as we're

01:05:30.040 | already seeing so it's it's super nasty and the implications are that we're now seeing um

01:05:34.840 | you know we're now facing once again this crisis of you know our basically lower income people

01:05:41.880 | people that want to have flexible labor going to be restricted from having access to gig jobs

01:05:48.920 | because the unions want to force everyone into a full-time job which you know as our friend bill

01:05:52.920 | girley pointed out it's kind of like an archaic element of yeah the 19th and 20th century i mean

01:05:57.240 | this is like let's play a little bit from uh bill girley and here it is there's one big issue that i

01:06:03.240 | don't think is talked about enough which is you know that if you poll the drivers they're not

01:06:09.160 | looking for any changes they're really happy with the flexible work product if you look at

01:06:14.200 | the voters of california they stepped up and voted and made it very clear in a in a very clear way that

01:06:16.760 | voted and made it very clear in a state that voted two to one you know in favor of biden they came

01:06:22.760 | down very strong 60 40 that they didn't want this to happen and there's one uh entity that's really

01:06:30.360 | been pushing this the whole time going all the way back to ae5 and that's the seiu it is a single

01:06:36.760 | union but to call them a single union understates it because they are the granddaddy of special

01:06:41.720 | interest groups i i sent along some data maybe you can put on the screen um they spend more than a

01:06:46.600 | million dollars on the union and they're not even in this industry so they're taking the dues from

01:06:51.480 | their members and using it to fight these battles because they want to expand their footprint what

01:06:56.360 | they're really after is putting 400 420 which is the minimum member union fee for the two million

01:07:03.080 | dollars that they're really after is putting four hundred dollars four hundred twenty dollars which

01:07:07.640 | is the minimum member union fee for the two million dollars that they're really after and

01:07:12.040 | then they're going to put in the money that they're going to put in the union fee and they're going

01:07:16.440 | to put in the money that they're going to put in the union fee and they're going to put in the

01:07:18.440 | money that they're going to put in the union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member

01:07:20.200 | union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the

01:07:22.200 | minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to

01:07:23.560 | put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and

01:07:25.320 | they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member

01:07:27.320 | union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the

01:07:28.600 | minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to

01:07:29.560 | put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and

01:07:31.560 | they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member

01:07:35.240 | union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the

01:07:37.080 | minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to

01:07:38.360 | put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and

01:07:41.320 | they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member

01:07:43.320 | union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the

01:07:45.480 | minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to

01:07:47.240 | put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and

01:07:49.320 | they're going to put in the minimum member union fee and they're going to put in the minimum member

01:07:51.960 | enables us to quickly find short term jobs, short term opportunities to work on things

01:07:56.160 | and make some money and figure out how we want to build our lives in a more flexible

01:07:59.440 | way.

01:08:00.440 | Figure out how workers want to build lives in a more flexible way across all industries.

01:08:04.140 | And it's really... Frankly, a non progressive policy to say that everyone has to be pigeonholed

01:08:13.080 | into working full-time 40 hour week labor jobs, be employees and not have the flexibility

01:08:19.300 | of running their own business in their own way with their own time and choosing what

01:08:23.420 | they want to go do and work on.

01:08:25.380 | And so this sort of legislation and this sort of battle is a really important one for defining

01:08:30.060 | the future of work in the United States, which will ultimately represent the future of work

01:08:34.060 | globally.

01:08:35.060 | And the craziness of all this, David, is that Uber drivers, Lyft drivers, DoorDash drivers,

01:08:40.200 | etc, are getting paid a fortune now because there's a labor shortage and these ride sharing

01:08:46.500 | companies have given a minimum...

01:08:49.280 | $21 an hour fee.

01:08:52.700 | So I don't know exactly what's going on here, but it seems to me like it's a union grab

01:08:57.600 | because everybody else who's affluent or rich, real estate folks, doctors, whoever, can be

01:09:05.520 | freelance.

01:09:07.140 | But if you're a ride share driver or a freelance writer, you don't get to be.

01:09:13.100 | And it seems just incredibly unfair.

01:09:15.780 | It is.

01:09:16.780 | And one of the best things about COVID, I think for all of us, is that we're not going

01:09:17.460 | to be the same.

01:09:18.460 | We're going to be the same.

01:09:19.000 | We're going to be the same.

01:09:19.040 | We're going to be the same.

01:09:19.100 | We're going to be the same.

01:09:19.140 | We're going to be the same.

01:09:19.160 | We're going to be the same.

01:09:19.220 | that we learned that we could do our jobs from anywhere. We didn't have to go into an office,

01:09:23.540 | we didn't have to work the standard whatever, nine to six hours. We could be anywhere;

01:09:27.460 | we had flexibility and I think it's one of the lasting consequences of COVID that's actually

01:09:32.340 | been very positive for a lot of people. Here you have the government basically

01:09:36.420 | trying to take away and prohibit freelance work, flexible hours, gig-type jobs; these are the sort

01:09:42.740 | of modern, flexible working relationships that people want. Why are they getting rid of it?

01:09:47.060 | Because of lobbying pressure from the SEIU, which only has two million members, it's not even a big

01:09:52.020 | union, but they got Lorena Gonzalez in their back pocket, she passed AB5 in California. The people

01:09:57.780 | of California didn't want it. Remember, 58% of Californians said, "We don't want this," so they

01:10:04.340 | overturned it in this ballot initiative and now you got this activist judge basically inventing

01:10:10.660 | these specious grounds for overturning Prop 22, which is what the people want. So, it's ridiculous.

01:10:16.900 | And, you know, the common thread to me on this show that I've come to realize about American

01:10:21.780 | politics is just the degree of special interest corruption. And, you know, people are used to

01:10:26.580 | thinking in terms of left versus right. It's not. There's a special interest corruption

01:10:30.180 | that pervades everything. You've got this union that is destroying freelance work and

01:10:35.460 | flexible working relationships because of corruption, because it benefits them.

01:10:38.580 | You got defense contractors in Afghanistan who are just looting,

01:10:42.180 | looting the Pentagon and the federal budget because it's in their interest. You've got these special

01:10:46.740 | interests of both the right and the left. This is a central problem in American politics. And,

01:10:51.300 | you know, what they do to cover up the naked self-interest is they disguise it in a kind of

01:10:56.740 | woke virtue signaling. So, they'll start, you know, talking about, you know, how what they're

01:11:01.940 | doing is for the benefit of these drivers when the drivers don't even want it.

01:11:05.460 | And to build on that, I'd say, you know, my great realization from having this

01:11:10.020 | conversation with you all every week is that we are starting to propose a nanny state in which people

01:11:16.580 | have no agency. Even if they want to have agency over their life and career, you are taking it away.

01:11:23.060 | And then if there's no repercussions to people's behavior and they have no agency, they become,

01:11:28.020 | you know, disenfranchised from society. And why are they going to participate? And then what kind

01:11:34.660 | of society do we have if people can't make their own choices? And you see it also in, you know,

01:11:41.620 | accreditation laws and you see where only rich people can invest. And now you're seeing it with

01:11:45.940 | this freelancer.

01:11:46.420 | We're, you know, my dad would have loved to have an extra shift or two to make extra money,

01:11:52.260 | and he's not allowed to? 80% of drivers want flexibility.

01:11:56.100 | They're willing to participate on things that ultimately

01:11:58.900 | on things that they think matter, but don't necessarily solve the core root cause problems.

01:12:08.580 | The people right now in America, I think, are focused

01:12:11.540 | too much on symptoms. Meaning, you know, they want to fight for the right hash

01:12:16.260 | tags. They want to fight for the right pronouns. They want to make sure that,

01:12:19.940 | you know, this person gets canceled for things that happened eight or 10 years ago.

01:12:23.620 | And I think what they don't understand is these are all symptoms. And this is not what solves the

01:12:31.300 | problem, right? We have a water crisis in America. We have a food impending food crisis as we shut

01:12:40.100 | off the water. We have a climate crisis that's engulfing the entire nation. We're still in the

01:12:46.100 | middle of a pandemic that we can't control. We have an economic system that's fragile,

01:12:51.700 | that's dependent on a country who's sometimes our friend and sometimes our foe in China.

01:12:57.140 | These are huge transformational issues that we can't get organized around. And so instead,

01:13:04.420 | we spend our time at the edges on the symptoms. And we think the symptoms are,

01:13:08.420 | if we get the pronouns right, everything's going to come together and everything's going to get

01:13:11.700 | fixed. The looting will stop. The graft will stop. The corruption will stop.

01:13:15.940 | And it turns out, actually, it emboldens those people to say, "Hey, wait a minute,

01:13:20.980 | I'm tricking these people. Everything that I wanted to happen can happen. Let them focus on

01:13:25.940 | the pronouns while I continue to loot the American treasury for another trillion dollars." That's

01:13:30.180 | where we are. Yeah. And the perfect representation of that is Gavin Newsom. He represents both of

01:13:35.140 | these trends. He is one of the most corrupt governors we've ever had. As soon as COVID

01:13:39.540 | happened, they suspended all sorts of, you know, the process for contracting

01:13:45.780 | and recruiting so that his campaign contributors could get all these special contracts. He cut a

01:13:51.140 | sweetheart deal to PG&E to absolve them of liability for all the fires they've been causing.

01:13:55.780 | And on and on it goes, the $12 billion to the homeless industrial complex. And then he disguises

01:14:00.980 | it with all this woke virtue signaling. And so, you know, I would just give a shout out to the

01:14:05.140 | recall campaign. The election is on September 14th, but the ballots have gone out. If you want

01:14:09.620 | to send a message to the political class that this special interest corruption has got to stop, let's cut the head

01:14:15.620 | off the snake here. Just vote to recall Gavin Newsom on question one. Period.

01:14:20.180 | All right. You guys want to end on Jeff Bezos? Let's talk about the AI bot first and then Bezos.

01:14:27.780 | All right. So if you haven't been watching, Boston Dynamics tweeted a video which we'll

01:14:33.940 | play right now as I talk over it. And it's basically their robots, which have been

01:14:40.420 | picking up heavy objects and walking around doing parkour. If you don't know what parkour is,

01:14:45.460 | it's basically people jumping off the side of objects and flipping and

01:14:49.220 | doing balance beams and vaulting themselves all around. It is basically robots.

01:14:55.060 | It's like break dancing in France.

01:14:56.580 | Yeah, but from heights and jumping over things as well.

01:15:00.100 | No, but the French are like parkour experts.

01:15:03.140 | Yeah, I mean, it's I think parkour is French for jumping. I made that up. But

01:15:07.780 | have you seen Sax do parkour?

01:15:11.700 | No, absolutely. I haven't.

01:15:15.300 | Never seen him.

01:15:16.020 | We'll show that video.

01:15:17.140 | I have seen him so drunk that he's on the floor. I've never seen him do parkour.

01:15:21.540 | But don't get in the way of Sax.

01:15:25.060 | Don't get in the way of Sax.

01:15:27.460 | This robot looks more dexterous than any of the Terminators we saw in the films. And then adding

01:15:34.020 | to that, oh, if you didn't know Boston Dynamics got bought by Google. I'm sure Freeburg has some

01:15:38.020 | inside information on that. And then they got sold again, SoftBank had bought them and now they are

01:15:44.180 | owned by...

01:15:45.140 | Hyundai, the South Korean...

01:15:46.260 | Hyundai, yeah.

01:15:46.580 | Hyundai, the South Korean automaker. Because apparently, the

01:15:50.500 | softies at Google didn't want to be involved in government contracting with robots, i.e. making

01:15:58.580 | soldiers of the future, which obviously the Chinese have.

01:16:02.180 | I wouldn't characterize the whole story like that. I mean, remember like...

01:16:04.740 | Well, what was it?

01:16:06.340 | Well, Google bought Boston Dynamics in 2013.

01:16:09.620 | And remember, Boston Dynamics had been around for over a decade prior to that. They spun out of MIT,

01:16:14.980 | like in the 90s, I think. And they were... Had always been working on advanced neural nets being

01:16:21.140 | applied to automation systems so you could get things to mimic real life.

01:16:26.260 | And the idea at Google... This was when they had set up Google X and were starting to do

01:16:32.180 | a lot of this moonshot type tech investing as a separate entity outside of the core Google.

01:16:39.540 | And it was like leveraging their cash flow to start new projects. The idea was let's build

01:16:44.820 | this into a next-gen robotics platform. They had Andy Rubin, who previously started and ran Android.

01:16:50.740 | The company was called Danger. Google bought it, turned into Android.

01:16:54.340 | Run the unit and they made several other acquisitions. They rolled them all up into this

01:16:59.620 | robotics platform. They had spent, I think, $400 million on Boston Dynamics and hundreds

01:17:04.580 | of millions more on these other companies. And ultimately, I think the challenge was less about

01:17:09.220 | who does or doesn't want to do contracts with us. But it was more about the fundamental question that

01:17:14.660 | was still the question mark today, which is, do we really need general purpose automation?

01:17:20.580 | Or do we need special purpose automation for industries, for customers? Where do you find

01:17:25.300 | product market fit? Do people really need a robot that does parkour? Or do they need an

01:17:30.100 | automation system that can lift boxes and pack and place things? Or an automation system that

01:17:34.740 | can move things from point A to point B? And so if you're solving for a customer's problem,

01:17:39.300 | you typically find that the special purpose automation solution is a more elegant, cheaper,

01:17:44.980 | solution that you can get to market right away, like building an automated little truck that moves

01:17:48.580 | things around, or building a machine that lifts and puts boxes in the right place.

01:17:52.420 | Parallel the discussion between narrow AI and general AI.

01:17:55.940 | Correct. And this is exactly the same question, Jake. I was like,

01:17:58.500 | is general purpose AI really what the market needs? Or are there specific

01:18:05.460 | applications of neural network or machine learning technologies that

01:18:09.380 | allow us to solve for the problems that customers have without needing to replicate the human

01:18:14.340 | being? So when you're lifting boxes, you don't necessarily need all the other things that humans

01:18:18.260 | have. You don't need to mimic a human. When you're moving a package, you don't necessarily

01:18:22.420 | need to have 4 legs to do it. You can have it on 4 wheels and just have a simple system that moves it

01:18:27.380 | around. And so I think SoftBank, Masa's son had this whole belief with Vision Fund 1 when he raised

01:18:34.020 | 100 some odd billion dollars that the singularity where machines were going to be smarter and better

01:18:38.420 | than humans in every way, intelligence and dexterity and all these things, was about to

01:18:44.180 | be the best way to do it. And then you have the idea of a robot that can do it. And then you have

01:18:47.940 | the idea of a machine that can do it. And then you have the idea of a robot that can do it. And then

01:18:50.260 | you have the idea of a machine that can do it. And then you have the idea of a robot that can do it.

01:18:52.260 | And then you have the idea of a machine that can do it. And then you have the idea of a robot that can

01:18:53.620 | do it. And then you have the idea of a machine that can do it. And then you have the idea of a robot that

01:18:56.660 | can do it. And then you have the idea of a robot that can do it. And then you have the idea of a robot

01:18:58.820 | that can do it. And then you have the idea of a robot that can do it. And then you have the idea of a robot

01:19:00.260 | let's be honest, they can't even walk a dog because they wouldn't

01:19:02.900 | know how to deal with the edge cases. If the dog had diarrhea.

01:19:06.300 | And so I think there's I think there's core IP Boston Dynamics

01:19:10.100 | that's certainly critically valuable for businesses that are

01:19:12.200 | in special purpose automation, which Hyundai is, there's going

01:19:15.140 | to be a great set of applications for leveraging that

01:19:17.120 | IP into some of the existing product lines and customers that

01:19:20.480 | they serve.

01:19:20.980 | In a related story, Elon then revealed the Tesla bot plans that

01:19:26.020 | his AI day he's in a couple of days, and I think they're

01:19:29.060 | primarily designed to get AI talent, which is some of the

01:19:33.560 | hardest developers to find in the world. And they said that

01:19:37.580 | their Tesla bot will weigh 125 pounds, five, eight, so I'll be

01:19:41.160 | a half inch taller than it. But it will weigh significantly less

01:19:44.420 | than me and will move up, up to five miles per hour and can

01:19:47.900 | carry 45 pounds. Elon said the reason he was doing that is so a

01:19:51.800 | human can easily overtake it in case it becomes sentient, which

01:19:54.920 | was quite entertaining. Chamath, do you think this

01:19:57.860 | is what are the chances Elon has a robot like this and it's

01:20:02.720 | operating the real world? I saw a bunch of journalists dunking on

01:20:05.540 | him that this would never ever happen, which is kind of hard to

01:20:08.820 | believe when there's a million Tesla's on the road.

01:20:10.860 | Yeah, no comment. And I think it's awesome.

01:20:13.460 | Oh, okay. Can't comment. All right, leave it at that.

01:20:16.040 | Sachs, you have any comments on this?

01:20:18.080 | Um, I was

01:20:20.420 | Elon at PayPal.

01:20:21.620 | Yeah, I thought it was a little bit of a surprise that he was

01:20:23.600 | working on a robot. But, you know, obviously, this has been

01:20:27.620 | an interest of his. He's talked a lot about it. And so it kind

01:20:30.860 | of makes sense. It's just another innovative thing he's

01:20:33.500 | doing. Should we talk about Elon versus Bezos on the space?

01:20:36.940 | Yeah, well, I just wanted to let people know, by the way, the

01:20:39.680 | robot going at five miles an hour, it's not as outlandish as

01:20:43.340 | I think some of the journalists and idiots out there who don't

01:20:45.500 | build anything in the world who were kind of dunking on him like

01:20:48.680 | we're saying, if you think about those cars going 65 7585 miles an

01:20:53.940 | hour on the road processing the world, doing a neural network,

01:20:57.380 | machine learning on the fly to figure out where the car should

01:21:00.020 | go. A robot going five miles an hour is an easier task.

01:21:04.160 | I think all those people dunking on him should have just taken a

01:21:07.160 | step back and actually asked the question, Am I just being really

01:21:10.040 | insecure right now? And if so, why am I making fun of this guy

01:21:14.840 | who just seems to be, you know, firing on all cylinders? And

01:21:19.020 | maybe it's maybe it's me. Maybe, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe

01:21:23.180 | I'm writing this article out of my own insecurity. Maybe I'm

01:21:26.060 | feeling a little impotent.

01:21:27.140 | You know, and also to dunk on a guy for the version one or even

01:21:32.580 | the version 0.1 of a product is so ridiculous. I mean, I

01:21:35.880 | remember the version zero of Tesla. Now look at the company.

01:21:39.840 | I mean, you know, it's about iterating. That's how you get to

01:21:42.920 | product. So it's just so stupid and short term. And by the way,

01:21:46.200 | he's on the current product capabilities.

01:21:48.020 | And his his, his style of doing these things, I think makes a

01:21:51.380 | ton of sense when when you know, he started with Starlink. It was

01:21:54.200 | the same reaction, people were dunking, dunking, dunking,

01:21:56.900 | dunking, dunking, and dunking. And, you know, it's just, you

01:21:58.500 | know, I'm not saying that they're too slow, too expensive,

01:22:00.400 | not going to work. And what you find through these events are

01:22:03.740 | really technical people building companies that could help him

01:22:07.580 | want to be a part of the mission. Right? And so you know,

01:22:11.060 | for whatever it's worth, it's like, I think Starlink is going

01:22:13.100 | to be a real thing, I think this is probably going to be a real

01:22:17.180 | thing. I think great companies will get absorbed into this,

01:22:20.420 | these efforts, I think, I think it's great. And I really think

01:22:24.020 | that people that

01:22:26.660 | are doing this, I think that they're going to be able to do a

01:22:29.120 | lot of things. And I think that I think that it's a great thing.

01:22:32.100 | I think it's a great thing. And I think that it's a great thing.

01:22:34.520 | And I think that it's a great thing. And I think that people are

01:22:35.360 | going to be able to get absorbed into this, I think that it's a

01:22:36.120 | great thing. And I think that it's a great thing. And I think

01:22:36.500 | that it's a great thing. And I think that it's a great thing.

01:22:36.980 | Larry Page owning and running Boston dynamics, then masa owning

01:22:41.700 | and running Boston dynamics, and then Elon trying to take on the

01:22:44.120 | same project from scratch. You know, why were these other two

01:22:48.120 | kind of well capitalized influential businesses that have

01:22:51.920 | attract great partners not been able to turn Boston dynamics

01:22:55.200 | into kind of a successful business?

01:22:56.320 | into kind of a successful business? But but you guys

01:22:57.940 | believe Elon will,

01:22:58.960 | if I had to just categorize them, I would say, Larry is

01:23:02.940 | absent and is sitting on $100 billion fortune with no idea

01:23:06.880 | what to do. I think seven islands. Yeah, I mean, he's just

01:23:11.880 | absent. So he's irrelevant. I don't think anybody knows what

01:23:15.720 | the fuck he looks like. I mean, we do. But you know, he's

01:23:20.240 | frittered away enormous potential, I think. I think

01:23:23.620 | masa is a master capital

01:23:26.140 | Alex.

01:23:26.240 | Alex.

01:23:26.300 | He's a master capital, but he's not an engineer. And I think Elon

01:23:29.000 | is the most important technical product and business mind of our

01:23:32.780 | lifetime.

01:23:33.180 | I think the answer is even simpler. He's the customer of

01:23:35.660 | the robot. So he understands what the spec should be because

01:23:38.960 | he has so many robots working in the factories. So he's gonna buy

01:23:42.680 | the first 1000 to go colonize Mars or work at a space station

01:23:46.480 | to build shit in space. And he's gonna have them working in the

01:23:49.280 | Tesla factory and for the boring company carrying rocks out of

01:23:51.800 | tongues. He's the customer, of course he knows. And masa wasn't

01:23:55.280 | the customer. Masa was

01:23:56.120 | looking to increase whatever money

01:23:59.180 | he has to do. But it's also it's also skill set like masa, of

01:24:02.780 | course, is an incredible visionary and investor, but he's

01:24:05.120 | not going to be the guy in the engine room making the robot.

01:24:08.420 | Larry now, in fairness to Larry Page, he could be that good. And

01:24:12.380 | there was a moment in time where Larry was that good and frankly,

01:24:15.500 | better than Elon. But that window has closed and it's well

01:24:19.360 | passed. And now, you know, it's kind of like the player that

01:24:21.800 | just keeps getting better and better. I think that's Elon

01:24:23.800 | Musk.

01:24:24.200 | Good sex. Your thoughts.

01:24:25.940 | I mean, nothing to add to that. I think you both make great

01:24:27.800 | points. I mean, the amazing thing is that Elon is still

01:24:30.560 | working so hard doubling down coming up with new ideas, new

01:24:33.500 | initiatives. I mean, it's working harder than ever, when

01:24:35.900 | most people are, you know, doing most people would do it Larry

01:24:39.020 | did, you know, go buy an island or seven and yours and hang out,

01:24:43.400 | you know?

01:24:44.000 | All right, Bezos is lost his way. And he left his position

01:24:49.640 | as CEO of Amazon to focus on Blue Origin. And then he sued

01:24:55.760 | NASA over the moon program accusing NASA of wrongly

01:24:58.820 | evaluated its lunar lander proposal, giving all the funds

01:25:03.360 | to SpaceX. He then did a series of like infographics talking

01:25:06.980 | about how terrible SpaceX his plans were. This lawsuit has

01:25:11.600 | delayed SpaceX his work on the project according to the verge

01:25:14.060 | and if that's true or not, Amazon urged the FCC to dismiss

01:25:18.920 | the newly submitted plans for SpaceX to launch another cluster

01:25:21.540 | of satellites to power Starlink.

01:25:24.140 | And Elon tweeted, turns out Bezos retired in order to pursue

01:25:30.500 | a full time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX, which is

01:25:34.880 | hilarious.

01:25:35.840 | What? How sad is this that

01:25:38.960 | it's a huge miscalculation in the following way, which is that

01:25:42.200 | in order for Jeff to achieve his ambitions, he needs deeply

01:25:45.780 | technical people. And this is the simplest way to basically

01:25:49.220 | turn them off because this is not what technical people do.

01:25:52.940 | What a technical people do.

01:25:53.600 | What a technical people do.

01:25:53.700 | What a technical people do.

01:25:53.960 | We don't we don't take our toys and run from the sandbox crying

01:25:57.640 | like a bitch. We stay there and we keep iterating trying to make

01:26:00.780 | things work.

01:26:01.360 | Yeah, we don't act like patent trolls. I have a new I have a

01:26:04.640 | new slogan for you J Cal.

01:26:06.180 | Go ahead.

01:26:06.680 | Winners do and losers sue.

01:26:09.080 | Winners do and losers sue. Okay, folks, they have it. It's the

01:26:13.520 | all in podcast. We're back. We're back from vacation.

01:26:16.720 | Yeah, make the banger.

01:26:19.940 | Make a banger. All right, everybody. What's your free

01:26:22.900 | bird? Do you have any thoughts on these?

01:26:23.940 | I feel bad for Bezos. I feel like he's just getting so beat up

01:26:28.140 | on this shit. It's, it's honestly, it's a little

01:26:31.080 | disappointing, because I think he's got all the right

01:26:32.700 | intentions. He's an incredible engineer, obviously an

01:26:34.660 | incredible operator. I'd love to see him and Elon succeed in the

01:26:38.620 | work they're trying to do as well as all the other startups

01:26:41.100 | that are pursuing this. I am concerned about frankly, the

01:26:44.120 | lack of commercial readiness for this industry. I feel like in

01:26:47.160 | terms of the hype cycle, we're at that early point where the

01:26:50.520 | investment dollars and the number of companies exceeds the

01:26:53.740 | market demand. And therefore, there's this fight over the one

01:26:58.660 | or two customers, which is basically NASA and the federal

01:27:00.880 | government. And it's creating this really nasty set of

01:27:03.640 | circumstances. Because that's where the money comes from.

01:27:06.340 | That's where the customers are right now. And so they're all

01:27:09.180 | fighting over one or two customers. And you know, Elon

01:27:11.560 | filed suits against, you know, federal agencies when he lost

01:27:16.060 | contracts.

01:27:16.800 | He did that when they know bid them.

01:27:18.880 | I get it. I get it. And slightly different. I get it. But still,

01:27:22.540 | like, I think at the end of the day,

01:27:23.700 | you know, Bezos is willing to put his money where his mouth is,

01:27:27.480 | he's offered to put up a billion dollars or more to fund this, I'd

01:27:30.660 | love to see multiple companies simultaneously going to the moon,

01:27:34.380 | multiple companies simultaneously going to Mars. But

01:27:37.440 | rather than have, you know, single contracts with one

01:27:40.560 | customer, or have, you know, private industry figure out ways

01:27:43.900 | to make money from this and fund it. The challenge is just, it's

01:27:47.700 | another product market fit question, right? The market is

01:27:49.740 | one customer today.

01:27:50.940 | And

01:27:52.400 | Bezos is almost

01:27:53.500 | 60 years old, he's got 150 $200 billion, it's going to cost him

01:27:57.820 | two or $3 billion 123% of his net worth to do all this just

01:28:02.320 | fucking do it Bezos and stop crying and you're right. He may

01:28:05.720 | end up doing that. Yeah. But the problem is, he's losing a

01:28:09.260 | competitor. No, but he's losing the human capital that's

01:28:11.940 | required. So there was a great there was a huge cycle about

01:28:16.540 | this one person who was like, the the leader of the of the

01:28:20.680 | lander project who just quit and went to SpaceX. My point is,

01:28:23.440 | other engineers don't want to see that this is the way to win.

01:28:27.920 | He's got he's got he's got a lot of that hole now. Yeah, build,

01:28:32.200 | iterate and solve. Build, iterate solve,

01:28:35.500 | it certainly seems the case that his PR stunt with shooting

01:28:38.900 | himself into space didn't do him any favors either. You know,

01:28:42.200 | it's almost like everyone sees the great work you want to us

01:28:44.440 | when he does these PR events. And he gets all this attention

01:28:47.260 | and publicity and gets positive press and accolades. And then

01:28:50.140 | Bezos does them and he's like, oh, he has no besties. There's no

01:28:53.400 | best taking Bezos aside. He's bestie list.

01:28:55.940 | No, he may have besties, but they're not they're not doing

01:29:01.320 | the job that other besties do for other people. If they're

01:29:03.480 | yes, men and women, and they're not being true besties, they

01:29:06.120 | need to tell him when he's got something that's a blind spot.

01:29:08.820 | He needs a real spot. Here is he was dunking on Richard Branson

01:29:13.760 | and be like, Oh, you didn't go to the right height. Here's an

01:29:16.360 | infographic. Stop with the fucking ink graphics. Bezos,

01:29:19.860 | what are you 12 years old? And you're like going to the teacher

01:29:23.040 | with like,

01:29:23.340 | a drawing like I I should technically get an A plus and I

01:29:26.500 | should be singing the solo for the choir practice and like some

01:29:30.120 | other person is like got the solo. You get the fucking solo

01:29:33.120 | next year basis

01:29:33.960 | offered you a huge consulting fee. J Cal would you be his best

01:29:38.460 | the consigliere for sure.

01:29:41.160 | By the way, I hired I hired this fucknut. He flies back with me.

01:29:49.320 | I mean, he literally ate everything on the plane. And

01:29:52.460 | then

01:29:53.280 | I'm like, what are you talking about? And then let me say we're eating tiramisu. Let me finish. Let me finish on the term. So I single said to me, Chmoth, you have some great toiletries in the back. I said, Yeah, sure. You know, there's Marvis there's great toothbrushes. And then out of his pocket he pulls some scope bottles that he had more of my bag. I was shocked Eric it's the real scope. This motherfucker was looting. I looted looting.

01:30:23.220 | I looted all your lactate. We all take advantage of see. Oh my god, this this other guy, this motherfucker free bird once was so buried. He got so fucking mad. He grabbed all the lactate in my little medicine cabinet and ran out back. He was angry and he was like, I'm so fucking angry because he had lost a big pot right during poker. Then he took all the pistachios and shove them in his pocket.

01:30:48.000 | It's like an Afghan warlord.

01:30:53.100 | Yeah.

01:30:56.100 | I remember that.

01:30:57.100 | And the last day he's like, fuck it. I lost 10 dimes. I'm gonna get back $37 in.

01:31:03.680 | Oh my god.

01:31:04.680 | So sad. So sad.

01:31:05.680 | Oh my god.

01:31:06.680 | Wait, free bird. You want me to prepare the house? You want me to prepare the the the

01:31:09.680 | room?

01:31:10.680 | I think so. I think I Yeah, I think so. I think so. That'd be awesome. You could do

01:31:13.680 | that.

01:31:14.680 | Oh my god.

01:31:15.680 | I'll bring some tests some Binax tests.

01:31:17.680 | Yeah.

01:31:18.680 | I mean, just as an aside, I Bill Gurley was talking about this. We talked about this early

01:31:21.980 | in the pandemic.

01:31:22.980 | Why don't we have fucking $1 test Friedberg? Oh, my god. Everybody not have a hundred everywhere.

01:31:28.360 | Binax now tests are literally lateral flow strips. They cost pennies to make. It's insane

01:31:33.260 | to buy 20 bucks.

01:31:35.940 | Why is it a dollar? Why didn't Biden or Trump get that done? Is it some grift? graft? greed?

01:31:41.860 | Yeah, you should like, you know, to talk about this. He's the guy to talk about it. But I

01:31:49.600 | mean, if people were taking those every day, we could I think you guys may remember this.

01:31:52.860 | I tweeted about this over a year ago, like last April, where we could actually print

01:31:57.260 | these antigen tests for pennies in the US. I mean, when we had that, like whole emergency

01:32:01.120 | authority thing, and we were making masks and liquid oxygen tanks and all this shit.

01:32:04.980 | We should have been printing antigen tests on strips of paper. We have the facilities

01:32:07.940 | in the US to do it. And we could have made you know, 100 billion 50 cent tests, and made

01:32:14.560 | them just free and available to schools to workplaces to everything. It's absolutely

01:32:19.860 | insane.

01:32:20.860 | But people can't people can't be freelance riders or. Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean,

01:32:21.860 | we can't be freelance riders or drive an Uber for two hours a day in California. We can

01:32:25.760 | we can mandate that but we can't mandate a 25 cent 50 cent test and put them in everybody's

01:32:30.420 | fucking mailboxes. I'm on fire now. It's fucking stupid. Everything is so dumb. Everybody's

01:32:34.980 | a grifter in this government incompetent assholes.

01:32:39.460 | I would like to I would like to vote news. I would like to go to war with Fiji because

01:32:45.220 | it's beautiful.

01:32:46.540 | I'd like an island. And I think it's beautiful. I think it's beautiful. I think it's beautiful.

01:32:51.740 | I think that Fiji probably has a lot of them. Well, Fiji is not respected. I think it's

01:32:56.800 | a little closer. Yeah. Yeah. So go there and spread pronouns. Also, I'd like to go to war

01:33:02.960 | with Iceland but only in the summertime because I hear it's beautiful.

01:33:06.740 | I'm going to war with Tuscany over the gelato. I'm going to war with Florence over gelato.

01:33:11.740 | I'm going to occupy Tuscany for the pizza and the pasta. I'm occupying Tuscany.

01:33:16.740 | You'll need to build a Bagram in all these places just to accommodate all the private

01:33:21.420 | jets that are going to come in.

01:33:22.420 | Bagram. Bagram.

01:33:23.420 | I mean, but just in closing, let's just let's just say thank you to the amazing people of

01:33:30.520 | Italy for having the greatest country for adults to go on vacation in.

01:33:36.280 | What an incredible country.

01:33:37.280 | Florence is amazing. Tuscany is outrageous.

01:33:40.200 | Rome is beautiful. Venice is incredible.

01:33:42.460 | Everything is delightful. I love you. I love you, Italy. I love you so much. And I'll be

01:33:46.620 | back next year. All right. We'll see you all next time. I'll see you next time on the All-In Podcast. Bye bye.

01:33:54.500 | Let your winners ride. Rain Man David Sacks. And it's said we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you. I'm the queen of Kinwa. I'm going all in. Let your winners ride. Let your winners ride. Let your winners ride. Besties are here.

01:34:16.500 | Gold thirteen

01:34:18.500 | - I was playing on a dog to I noticed your driveway

01:34:21.400 | - No - Oh no

01:34:23.400 | - Oh man

01:34:25.400 | - My avatager will be me at playt punishment

01:34:27.440 | - We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy

01:34:29.440 | - 'Cause they're all just useless

01:34:31.020 | - It's like sexual tension, but we just need to release them

01:34:33.020 | - Oh.

01:34:35.020 | - What the bee what the!

01:34:37.020 | - Your bee

01:34:39.020 | - We need to get merch