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

00:00:00.000 | Saksibu, how much heat and momentum has Nikki Haley gotten this week?

00:00:03.360 | Oh my god, stop trying to make Nikki Haley happen.

00:00:06.240 | Fetch is not happening. Stop trying to make Fetch happen.

00:00:08.880 | Stop trying to make Fetch happen.

00:00:10.480 | It's happening.

00:00:11.440 | Is it happening because it's your mom?

00:00:13.920 | This is like my long Google short Facebook spread trade of last year.

00:00:17.520 | That's so great.

00:00:18.640 | It's happening.

00:00:19.360 | Fetch is not happening, okay? Stop trying to make Fetch happen.

00:00:22.320 | [Music]

00:00:39.360 | Just as a programming note, we did a Twitter survey and you selected Saks as the person you

00:00:45.840 | wanted to moderate the pod most next. So welcome to Fox News Sunday and here's your host, David Saks.

00:00:54.640 | You're really chafed about this, aren't you, J. Cal?

00:00:56.720 | No, I'm excited for it. I am so excited.

00:00:59.760 | Just to save a keyboard warrior the time, I will never, ever, ever moderate this thing.

00:01:05.200 | So I'm here to talk.

00:01:08.720 | All right, three, two. Welcome to the All In Pod. I am your host, the Rain Man, David Saks.

00:01:14.800 | The famous doomsday clock that atomic scientists used to measure the threat of nuclear annihilation

00:01:19.840 | has never been closer to midnight, not even during the Cold War.

00:01:22.800 | But since the besties think it's more important to discuss their stock portfolios,

00:01:26.560 | we're going to save Ukraine for later in the show.

00:01:28.800 | Priorities, right, gentlemen?

00:01:29.920 | And why not? Who says you can't take it with you?

00:01:33.040 | The dictator, Shamath Palihapitiya, is claiming to be entombed with his money

00:01:36.880 | like an Egyptian pharaoh and with his sweaters too,

00:01:39.920 | even though it certainly won't be cold where he's going.

00:01:43.600 | And of course, he'll throw in the world's greatest moderator, Jason Kalkanis,

00:01:46.640 | in the tomb to be his servant in the afterlife.

00:01:48.720 | It's a role Jake has been preparing for all his life by sucking up to every tech founder

00:01:53.040 | and VC he can get in a room with.

00:01:54.400 | I give better odds to the sultan of science, David Freeburg.

00:01:57.920 | He's just paranoid enough to survive with me in the bunker,

00:02:02.000 | even though he still won't be questioning the Davos elites that got us here.

00:02:05.120 | How much did that intro cost?

00:02:07.680 | Does it come with a money back refund?

00:02:11.520 | I'm laughing. I don't know.

00:02:17.120 | I'm laughing.

00:02:17.600 | Yeah, I thought it was with you or at you.

00:02:19.200 | It's good.

00:02:21.280 | The funniest part was when you almost read aloud.

00:02:24.000 | Like, it's like you were like, and then David Freeburg, insert pause here.

00:02:28.000 | I'm just reading the notes.

00:02:31.200 | It's an intro. It's an intro.

00:02:32.800 | I'm so glad we do an unscripted show.

00:02:34.640 | Okay, go ahead.

00:02:35.440 | Freeburg, I remember when you did the intro.

00:02:38.160 | Come on. Did I read?

00:02:39.600 | Actually, didn't we cut it?

00:02:40.720 | Yeah, you read and then you cut it.

00:02:42.320 | You hated it.

00:02:43.040 | And then we made you put it back in or something like that.

00:02:44.960 | All I have to say to him is job security is here.

00:02:47.680 | All right.

00:02:48.080 | Okay.

00:02:49.840 | Issue one.

00:02:50.800 | Issue one.

00:02:51.760 | Google breakup.

00:02:52.560 | The just department and eight states are now seeking to break up Google's business,

00:02:57.200 | brokering digital advertising across the internet.

00:03:00.480 | This is one of the most important legal challenges the company's ever faced.

00:03:03.280 | Filed a lawsuit on Tuesday.

00:03:05.920 | The just department did alleging that Google abuses its role

00:03:09.200 | as one of the largest broker suppliers and online auctioneers

00:03:12.560 | of ads placed on websites and mobile applications.

00:03:15.200 | The filing promises a protracted court battle

00:03:17.680 | with huge implications for the digital advertising industry.

00:03:21.360 | Of course, Google responded to the lawsuit in a blog post

00:03:24.400 | saying that the DOJ's request for it to unwind two previous acquisitions from a decade ago

00:03:30.160 | is an attempt to rewrite history.

00:03:31.520 | They said the DOJ mischaracterizes how its advertising products work.

00:03:35.760 | They say that people choose to use Google because they're effective

00:03:39.600 | and the company highlights other companies making moves in the advertising industry as well,

00:03:45.360 | such as Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and TikTok.

00:03:47.760 | So I guess I'll kick it to you, Chamath.

00:03:49.600 | Do you think the DOJ has a case here?

00:03:52.560 | Do you believe that Google has a monopoly in online advertising

00:03:56.560 | and is unfairly using it to gain market share?

00:03:59.600 | And is this the right remedy, breaking up the company?

00:04:02.880 | Yeah, I think that this is a totally ill-founded lawsuit

00:04:06.320 | and I think it just shows more of the personal enmity and anger

00:04:12.640 | that some people in the US government has towards entrepreneurs

00:04:16.240 | and entrepreneurship than anything else.

00:04:18.240 | Now, why is that?

00:04:19.440 | Let's just think about what a monopoly is.

00:04:22.960 | A monopoly or a monopolist effectively creates a completely stagnant, non-vibrant market

00:04:30.240 | in which they have pricing power and complete control.

00:04:32.960 | Now, the argument that I think that refutes that just on its face

00:04:38.480 | is if you actually look, number one, at their share,

00:04:41.520 | and number two, how the rest of the share has changed over time.

00:04:44.800 | So Nick, can you just please throw that up from Bloomberg?

00:04:46.960 | This is just in a Bloomberg article that I just shared with you guys, but

00:04:49.680 | Google controls 26.5% of a market.

00:04:53.920 | 43.4% of that market is with a diverse group of others.

00:04:59.840 | Meta has 18.4% and Amazon has 11.7%.

00:05:03.280 | This is not the type of pie chart you would see if you had a monopolist.

00:05:09.760 | So for example, if you went back to the big, big, big

00:05:12.560 | monopolist case in the 1980s, which is when we broke up Ma Bell,

00:05:15.760 | well, what that circle would have shown is that they basically had effectively 100% share.

00:05:21.760 | And what this shows is that there's a huge diversity of people in this market.

00:05:26.400 | The second thing is that if you had done this chart many years ago,

00:05:30.560 | Amazon would not have really even been there.

00:05:33.360 | And over the last five years, they represent almost 12% of the entire market.

00:05:38.080 | And it means that if you forecast it forward,

00:05:41.200 | they could be at 15% to 20% in a few years as well.

00:05:43.920 | So while the pie is growing, and definitely Google takes a lot of the profit dollars,

00:05:48.960 | the distribution is so much more than what anything looks like in a monopoly.

00:05:53.920 | And so I just think it means that the DOJ is more focused on trying to punish these

00:05:58.960 | great American companies than it is in trying to be logical and reasoned.

00:06:03.280 | And so I don't think this is going to work.

00:06:05.440 | The last thing I'll say about this is that if you think about what you should have done,

00:06:10.480 | if I were the US government, I would have actually focused on search,

00:06:14.400 | because search is a monopoly for Google.

00:06:18.640 | And while Google would try to argue that there are other ways of acquiring information,

00:06:24.000 | that is really not true.

00:06:26.080 | And if you could prove that that monopoly then led to pricing power in ads,

00:06:31.680 | I think that's a much more nuanced but logical argument that could work.

00:06:35.440 | But by focusing on this, I think it's going to get deconstructed, it's going to fail.

00:06:39.120 | The Texas version of this exact lawsuit already was thrown out of federal court.

00:06:44.320 | So I think that judges and the legal system don't have a lot of patience for this thing.

00:06:49.360 | It just meant more to kind of scare American companies and try to play bogeyman and

00:06:53.920 | decision maker, and I don't think it's going to work.

00:06:56.640 | Freeware, let me go to you.

00:06:57.920 | I think, you know, Tramont raises a really great point that if you define the market

00:07:02.240 | as digital advertising, that, you know, Google's market share is only about a quarter,

00:07:05.680 | that doesn't seem like a monopoly.

00:07:07.360 | However, what the government says is that you shouldn't look at digital advertising as a whole,

00:07:12.240 | but rather this sort of brokered advertising that, you know, Google does for third-party

00:07:18.080 | websites and applications.

00:07:19.440 | Let me show a chart from their lawsuit.

00:07:23.040 | You can see here that the way they define it, again, they see it as this brokering of

00:07:28.800 | sell-side inventory, which are website publishers, and then buy-side demand, which are advertisers.

00:07:33.840 | Defined this way, it looks like Google has 90% or more market share on the sell side

00:07:41.840 | because of the double-click acquisition.

00:07:43.360 | They've got somewhere between 40 and 80% market share on the demand side with advertisers,

00:07:49.200 | and then in the middle, they have over 50% market share of the ad exchange.

00:07:52.880 | Is this the right way to look at Google's business, or should we be just thinking about

00:07:59.280 | in terms of the overall digital advertising market?

00:08:03.200 | I've been involved in ad networks since about 2002.

00:08:08.960 | Obviously, I'm not directly involved in the business anymore, but I was pretty close to

00:08:13.920 | this and I was pretty close to double-click and the acquisition.

00:08:16.880 | I was a business product manager for a period of time on AdWords.

00:08:19.360 | So the way that that chart kind of shows the connection between advertisers and publishers

00:08:27.280 | is correct, that an ad network, generally speaking, brings buyers of ad inventory to

00:08:34.240 | the sellers of ad inventory.

00:08:36.160 | And the sellers of ad inventory have the option to sell their inventory on an ad network.

00:08:42.000 | And if the money that they're making on those ad slots that they have, whether it's a slot

00:08:46.400 | on the side of a page or the top of a page or an interstitial video ad, whatever it is,

00:08:49.840 | they're going to keep selling their inventory through that network if they're getting paid

00:08:55.200 | the most.

00:08:55.600 | And the real reason Google has won is two-part.

00:08:58.640 | One is because they ran their ad network as an auction, meaning advertisers were competing

00:09:04.080 | with each other to pay the most for an ad spot that was the highest quality.

00:09:08.080 | There's also an ad quality index calculation, a click-through index, a bounce-back index.

00:09:13.360 | So there's all this data that feeds into Google's ad network auction so that the ad that's

00:09:19.120 | shown on the publisher's site is not just the best ad for the publisher, but the best

00:09:23.040 | ad for the consumer.

00:09:24.160 | And then when the consumer clicks on the ad, the publisher gets paid.

00:09:27.520 | And the second thing that Google did, and so the auction dynamic is a really powerful

00:09:31.440 | dynamic, it creates the best price for the publisher, and it creates the highest quality

00:09:37.280 | ad for the user, which translates typically into higher click-throughs and better revenue.

00:09:42.960 | What they also did that was really powerful is they did the highest revenue share in the

00:09:48.080 | market.

00:09:48.480 | So historically, ad networks had like, I think, initially like a 60/40 red share where they

00:09:53.440 | only paid publishers 40% of the revenue the advertiser paid.

00:09:57.040 | Then the network started to move to a 55/45 model, then a 50/50 model, then a 45/55 model.

00:10:02.880 | I believe on average, Google currently is paying somewhere between 70 and 80% to their

00:10:08.400 | publishers.

00:10:08.960 | I got to check my math on that or whatever the latest report is.

00:10:12.880 | I heard high 60s, yeah.

00:10:13.760 | Yeah, but call it 70.

00:10:15.280 | And so it is a very competitive share.

00:10:18.720 | Now, the point being, because it's an auction system and because it's opt-in by the publisher,

00:10:23.680 | if they're not paying the highest price, the publisher can go and get ads from somewhere

00:10:27.280 | else.

00:10:27.760 | And historically, publishers built their own sales force to sell ads and to source advertisers

00:10:32.880 | and to make money off of their ad inventory.

00:10:35.120 | And it turns out it was a lot more effective to use an ad network to do that.

00:10:39.440 | The other ad networks simply haven't been as good at building an auction model and building

00:10:43.280 | competitiveness.

00:10:44.160 | But I will tell you that when you get to a certain volume, and it's not a big volume,

00:10:48.400 | you don't need a million advertisers bidding against each other.

00:10:51.280 | You only need a few dozen advertisers.

00:10:53.280 | And once you have a few dozen advertisers bidding against each other, you start to get

00:10:56.560 | very competitive in inventory.

00:10:58.160 | So Google's real lock in with publishers and the real reason they win in this marketplace

00:11:02.720 | is because they pay the publishers the most.

00:11:05.680 | And if you try and break this up, and if you actually do try and, you know, get into the

00:11:10.320 | weeds of this whole system and change it, the publishers ultimately will make less money.

00:11:15.120 | And this will be a real problem on the publisher side that they're making the most money, they're

00:11:20.640 | getting the highest share of advertiser spend, and consumers are getting the best quality

00:11:24.240 | experience.

00:11:24.800 | That's what makes Google's model so hard to tackle from an antitrust perspective.

00:11:29.440 | Because it's giving...

00:11:30.160 | So basically, it is what you're saying that because fundamentally, this is an auction

00:11:34.880 | model, it prevents Google from extracting monopoly rents.

00:11:39.040 | Correct.

00:11:39.440 | And, and they already pay the highest share on their ad network back to the publishers.

00:11:44.640 | And so you could go in and say, hey, high 60s or 70%, they should be paying 90%.

00:11:48.800 | What's the real right number if they're already paying more than anyone else to the publishers,

00:11:52.640 | they're already making a lower margin than anyone.

00:11:54.960 | And I'll say, let me just let me just add two more things.

00:11:57.040 | Sorry, which I think are just...

00:11:58.080 | Okay, I'll go to Jekyll first.

00:11:59.120 | I just want to get Jekyll in here, even though he wouldn't do the same for me.

00:12:01.920 | Jekyll, do you agree with Freeberg that the reason for Google's success is that they're

00:12:07.360 | hyper efficient?

00:12:08.240 | And this auction mechanism prevents monopoly behavior?

00:12:12.800 | No, there is monopoly behavior going on at Google, obviously, with search and putting

00:12:17.600 | their own content and services up top.

00:12:19.680 | And to Shamaad's point, like that's probably the easier target.

00:12:22.480 | Here, this just feels like they are maybe 10 years behind, they should have just blocked

00:12:28.720 | the double click acquisition in 2008.

00:12:31.120 | And this consolidation of power, the...

00:12:32.880 | What publishers would say to Freeberg's point is, when you're selling your own advertising,

00:12:39.760 | you get a much higher CPM when you go direct to Samsung, or IBM, or Disney.

00:12:44.960 | And so you want to create those direct relationships.

00:12:46.880 | How much do those direct relationships cost?

00:12:48.880 | It's probably 20% or 30%, which is exactly to the percentage that Google is taking off

00:12:54.240 | the top.

00:12:54.560 | So Google is pretty aware of that.

00:12:56.720 | But it's just paradoxical that they're doing this at this time, David, because Amazon has

00:13:03.200 | developed a huge ad business.

00:13:04.480 | Netflix and Disney now have ad tiers for their services to go up against YouTube.

00:13:09.520 | So, and then for the first time, we're even talking about Google search supremacy being

00:13:13.600 | challenged by chat GPT.

00:13:15.520 | So, much like what happened with Microsoft, they're just late, 10 years too late, maybe.

00:13:20.880 | Right, right.

00:13:21.680 | So to use one of your favorite words is the DOJ acting as a rug puller here for Google

00:13:27.280 | in the sense that they're trying to unwind 10 year old acquisitions.

00:13:29.840 | Does that make sense?

00:13:31.760 | Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to me.

00:13:33.840 | Shouldn't the government be able to unwind acquisitions that happened a decade ago?

00:13:36.560 | Does that make any sense?

00:13:38.000 | No, of course not.

00:13:38.560 | No, they should learn from it and not do it again.

00:13:43.120 | Yeah.

00:13:43.360 | Tex, what do you think?

00:13:44.960 | I think it's a pretty bad way to approach things because they create so much uncertainty

00:13:49.680 | in the marketplace and has a chilling effect on future acquisitions.

00:13:52.720 | Yeah.

00:13:53.120 | Like when you get approval from the government, you want to know you're good.

00:13:55.760 | Yeah.

00:13:56.800 | And we have an approval process.

00:13:58.240 | So it seems to me, I agree with Jake out, like if the government is going to have a

00:14:01.600 | problem with an acquisition, state it up front, but then once they approve it, you're approved,

00:14:06.560 | you're done.

00:14:07.040 | Otherwise, you know, companies will be much less likely to engage in acquisitions.

00:14:11.440 | And that's going to have a chilling effect on M&A behavior in the ecosystem, which is

00:14:16.160 | bad for the ecosystem as a whole.

00:14:18.080 | It puts us competitiveness against every other country and any other regulatory regime that'll

00:14:25.280 | be more permissive to this stuff.

00:14:26.640 | I totally agree.

00:14:27.760 | That doesn't make any sense.

00:14:29.040 | And I think this is what's lost on this.

00:14:31.440 | I just feel these lawsuits right now are bordering on the mean spirited because these things

00:14:36.720 | have been tried.

00:14:38.000 | They've generally failed.

00:14:39.600 | And so the real solution, it always goes back to this, and it's ugly and messy is you need

00:14:45.200 | to rewrite the actual laws to reflect how business conditions exist today.

00:14:51.360 | And so it's not the responsibility of the DOJ to try to fit around peg into a square

00:14:56.240 | hole.

00:14:56.560 | It doesn't work like that.

00:14:58.320 | And that's what they're trying to do.

00:14:59.440 | They're trying to manipulate and contort the law to try to go after somebody that shouldn't,

00:15:05.920 | frankly, be gone after because these deals to your point were done a decade ago, and

00:15:10.320 | they were done legally, and they were done rightly.

00:15:12.560 | So if you have an issue with how the market has evolved, change the law.

00:15:15.760 | Right.

00:15:16.960 | I'll also add, I totally agree with Chamath.

00:15:19.840 | I think that this action, you know, as one of our friends put it on our on our text stream,

00:15:26.480 | it's like killing the golden goose.

00:15:27.920 | I mean, this is one of the big job creators, innovators and taxpayers and employers and

00:15:32.480 | drivers of economic growth.

00:15:34.080 | And why would we allow that to go and kind of burgeon offshore as a government?

00:15:40.240 | This is absolutely going to become kind of an opening for some, you know, international

00:15:46.960 | competitor to come in and try and provide alternative services with similar economics.

00:15:51.440 | I'll also say I just sent you guys a link.

00:15:53.440 | I'll send you one more.

00:15:54.880 | The market itself is becoming so much more challenging to operate in as an ad network.

00:16:00.880 | You know, e commerce.

00:16:01.840 | So Amazon's ad business is booming, right, as Chamath pointed out earlier.

00:16:05.600 | But so much more of consumer behavior is shifting where people are going direct to e commerce

00:16:10.720 | sites.

00:16:11.360 | And then the ads that are getting the highest click through and where advertisers are spending

00:16:16.320 | more and more money is on e commerce sites.

00:16:18.640 | I know this from experience on a couple boards I'm at, where companies stopped spending on

00:16:22.560 | Facebook and Google and just started spending exclusively on Amazon.

00:16:25.360 | And that's where you get consumers that are much more likely to purchase the purchasing

00:16:29.120 | proclivity is higher, the click through rate is higher.

00:16:31.440 | So the return on ad spend is much higher.

00:16:33.200 | And then I think that there's a big shift happening right now, as you guys know, with

00:16:37.440 | third party cookies, Google has declared that they're removing third party cookies in 2024.

00:16:41.600 | This means that in 2024, it is going to be very hard to track a user from one website

00:16:48.000 | to the next.

00:16:48.480 | If you go to a website and look at furniture, and then you go to another website, third

00:16:51.760 | party cookies, allow an advertiser to find you on that other website, knowing that you

00:16:56.080 | were just looking at furniture and send you a furniture ad and say, Hey, come on over.

00:16:59.920 | And you're more likely to click on that ad.

00:17:01.360 | It's been very effective for advertising, and particularly in the segment of advertising

00:17:05.600 | called retargeting.

00:17:06.720 | But it is becoming much harder to do this with third party cookies and with the Apple

00:17:10.560 | identifier being yanked.

00:17:11.680 | And Google just made an attempt to try and get this change with a W three C that was

00:17:16.800 | rejected.

00:17:17.440 | And that change is now going to make this hit very, very hard beginning in 2024.

00:17:21.600 | So the ad networks themselves are already being massively hurt by apples.

00:17:25.920 | ID changes, the third party cookies being removed, it's becoming harder to target consumers

00:17:30.400 | harder to make money as a for publishers.

00:17:33.120 | So meanwhile, the market's being challenged.

00:17:34.960 | Amazon's coming in.

00:17:35.760 | This is the inverse definition of a monopoly.

00:17:38.800 | When you have a market where there is dynamism, where companies are changing the rules, and

00:17:43.840 | that is reallocating share gains to different players.

00:17:48.480 | That's the definition of a dynamic market that self regulating.

00:17:51.760 | Totally five years ago, this would have made more sense.

00:17:53.920 | Yeah, much more sense.

00:17:55.280 | So I think this goes back down to one basic thing, which is do our elected and appointed

00:18:01.440 | officials really understand what's going on in the economy.

00:18:05.360 | And I think this is an example that highlights not as much as they should.

00:18:10.720 | And before a lawsuit like this gets filed, they should call us up.

00:18:15.600 | If they called 30 of us into a room one by one and said, Can you please explain how this

00:18:21.600 | works, you would have come to a different conclusion, because we could have articulated

00:18:26.400 | these things, and it would have been clear.

00:18:28.640 | And so why do they not do that?

00:18:30.640 | Or if they do do it, who's actually in there?

00:18:34.000 | Either way, whatever's getting to the conclusion of let's go file this lawsuit in 2023 is late

00:18:40.720 | at a minimum and misguided at best, you know, you have to ask the question, like, how is

00:18:46.000 | this different than Xi Jinping saying, you know what, Jack Ma is too powerful.

00:18:50.160 | Therefore, he's going to learn to pay.

00:18:52.160 | I think this is like, our government saying Google, it is totally different.

00:18:55.840 | Totally different.

00:18:56.640 | Other than that, it's the same.

00:18:57.440 | I think that this lawsuit makes no sense.

00:19:01.920 | You always have to bring it back to China.

00:19:03.440 | Does everything in your brain have to virtue signal like it's like,

00:19:06.640 | No, I'm trying to be intellectually interesting conversation.

00:19:10.160 | Jason, Jason, we could be talking.

00:19:11.280 | He's still manning an intellectually honest position.

00:19:13.920 | Exactly.

00:19:14.480 | Let me finish, let me finish, Tamar, let me finish.

00:19:17.920 | Before you jump the fence.

00:19:19.600 | Very simply, you asked, like, why are they filing something that makes no sense?

00:19:24.720 | My position is, I think they want to have an outcome.

00:19:28.000 | And their outcome is they want to stick it to big tech because it's too powerful.

00:19:30.960 | And then you just said yourself, square peg round hole.

00:19:34.080 | They're trying to find something to get Google on.

00:19:36.480 | This is not it.

00:19:37.520 | How does it relate to China?

00:19:39.040 | I kind of agree with J Cal here, actually, I'll defend him for a second.

00:19:42.960 | Right, just world second, world second greatest moderator.

00:19:45.840 | Yeah, third greatest.

00:19:46.800 | Take China out of it for a second, because that could mean that could mean a lot of different

00:19:50.320 | things.

00:19:50.800 | And so I don't want to get hung up on that.

00:19:52.880 | But it does feel to me like the government is lashing out against companies like Google

00:19:58.720 | because they're perceived as being too powerful.

00:20:00.720 | That's my that's what's going on.

00:20:02.240 | And in fact, I mean, that's Lena Khan's theory is that we have to stop big tech companies

00:20:06.480 | from getting bigger because power.

00:20:08.960 | But in this case, it doesn't make any sense because the auction market for advertising

00:20:14.160 | is very competitive, and the remedy of unwinding 10 year old deals doesn't make any sense.

00:20:18.720 | So yeah, they're just kind of barking up the wrong tree is sort of the idea.

00:20:22.960 | There's two other things that they really should be looking at as these ad networks

00:20:27.120 | are losing their market share in the overall digital ad spend.

00:20:30.640 | There are two other players, Disney, you know, and Netflix doing these digital ads on their

00:20:38.080 | platforms and having ad tiers.

00:20:39.360 | And then you may have noticed Uber is doing an ad business now.

00:20:42.320 | They did $350 million in the first year of that business, a million a day, and they're

00:20:46.800 | projected to do a billion next year.

00:20:48.720 | And those have location information in it because you have your destination.

00:20:52.560 | And so those opportunities are emerging.

00:20:56.640 | It's a dynamic space.

00:20:57.840 | I just want to say like, you guys are making like, I think a really important macro point,

00:21:02.000 | which is like in a marketplace, it's always easy to hate the winners and claim that their

00:21:08.960 | success is unfair, if you're not part of it.

00:21:12.160 | And I think that just because something successful in a marketplace doesn't mean it's a monopoly.

00:21:16.960 | You know, this whole thing of envy, you know, we've, we've heard from like the Berkshire

00:21:23.600 | shareholders meeting, I think there was a good conversation around this, but envy really

00:21:27.840 | is ultimately the doom of innovation and democracy.

00:21:30.640 | It's like you see the success, you want to take down the successful, nothing can be too

00:21:35.040 | successful, or else it has to be destroyed.

00:21:37.520 | And then, you know, as we talked about, it's going to go somewhere else.

00:21:40.560 | Well, I mean, just play devil's advocate with it on that free bird.

00:21:43.280 | It sounds like we all agree that the government has kind of the wrong theory and is barking

00:21:46.640 | up the wrong tree here.

00:21:47.440 | However, isn't it the case that Apple and Google are too powerful, maybe not in this

00:21:54.160 | auction, advertising auction marketplace, but when it comes to the App Store, I mean,

00:21:58.960 | they have an operating system monopoly with iOS and Android or duopoly.

00:22:02.800 | But I think you're, you're bringing up the key point, which is these nuances are the

00:22:06.560 | ones that matter.

00:22:07.360 | There is a body of law today, David, that you can apply pretty intelligently and thoughtfully

00:22:12.960 | to that exact problem, and also to Google search.

00:22:16.640 | And so it's a bit of a head scratcher why the DOJ hasn't spent the time to figure out

00:22:22.080 | to even understand that that's actually where they should be focused, because that is where

00:22:26.080 | there is truly in the app.

00:22:28.400 | True monopoly power.

00:22:29.920 | It's a duopoly.

00:22:30.880 | So it's very clear.

00:22:32.400 | The share shift has already been set.

00:22:34.320 | There is no share shift happening to a third player.

00:22:36.720 | There is no side loading that's really happening.

00:22:38.800 | And so domestically in the United States and Western Europe, there's a de facto duopoly

00:22:43.760 | complete control, completely inflexible inelastic pricing.

00:22:49.040 | That is a monopoly.

00:22:50.640 | And then separately for search in the United States, it is also an effective monopoly.

00:22:55.280 | And those are the things where if you really wanted to go after them because you think

00:22:58.720 | there's some damage being done to people, I would have focused there.

00:23:02.240 | But the ad business has nothing to do with any of this and just means that they don't

00:23:07.200 | understand how the market works.

00:23:08.880 | Right.

00:23:09.200 | Okay.

00:23:09.440 | So shifting gears, Microsoft has just been sued on antitrust grounds, or rather there's

00:23:14.400 | a probe by the EU.

00:23:15.760 | And this was based on a complaint actually from Slack.

00:23:20.640 | Slack filed a complaint back in 2020 that Microsoft was basically engaging in bundling

00:23:27.680 | or tying of products.

00:23:29.760 | The allegation is that Microsoft unfairly ties Microsoft Teams and other software to

00:23:34.960 | its widely used Office suite.

00:23:37.280 | Do you guys think that's a better claim?

00:23:38.800 | Okay, so I mean, I'll just say like, you know, there was an episode that we did, I

00:23:43.200 | think back in September, where I basically railed against Microsoft for exactly this

00:23:48.000 | kind of bundling.

00:23:48.880 | It seems like the EU has picked up that theory and wants to go after bundling.

00:23:54.400 | We did Slack Series A, I was on the board, took it public, blah, blah, blah.

00:23:58.400 | I'll tell you the thing that we talked about a lot.

00:24:01.040 | That was the thing that I was always like the most afraid of, which is how can we compete

00:24:09.040 | with a better product in the face of superior distribution?

00:24:12.000 | I think what Microsoft did was anti-competitive, but I don't think it was monopolistic.

00:24:19.200 | And I think that the EU in that time has a much better framework of laws that they had

00:24:26.080 | demonstrated up until now.

00:24:27.520 | They were willing to enforce around anti-competitive pricing.

00:24:31.200 | And so part of what Slack was trying to do was create some airspace for that to get

00:24:38.400 | into the ether to the discussion that it's like, we could build the best product in the

00:24:42.800 | world.

00:24:43.520 | But if Microsoft gives it away with this other product that is quasi essential, they'll

00:24:48.880 | always beat us.

00:24:49.760 | And there's nothing we can do about it.

00:24:52.080 | What do you think?

00:24:53.120 | And I think that was basically the question that was posed to the European authorities,

00:24:56.480 | because we thought that they would pay attention to it.

00:24:58.320 | What's interesting about it is that then, you know, when the acquisition happened to

00:25:02.640 | Salesforce, it sort of waters down that claim, because now Salesforce also has a set of really

00:25:08.640 | essential products that are useful and needed in the market that Slack can go and attach

00:25:14.320 | themselves to.

00:25:14.960 | And in many ways, David, it forced the hand of Slack to be acquired by Salesforce.

00:25:20.480 | And if not Salesforce, it would have to have been somebody else.

00:25:23.600 | But could it have been an independent company had we not had to compete against teams in

00:25:29.120 | that way?

00:25:29.680 | Meaning if we had to compete against another well funded startup, would it still be public?

00:25:33.920 | I suspect so I don't think we would have sold to Salesforce.

00:25:36.240 | Well, that's exactly was my point.

00:25:39.200 | When we talked about this last time is that if Microsoft can basically clone the sort

00:25:46.480 | of the the breakthrough innovative product, you know, just to say they do one every year,

00:25:51.760 | and then they put a crappy version of that in their bundle.

00:25:54.880 | Yeah, 10% or 50% worse, but they give it away effectively for free as part of the bundle.

00:25:59.920 | And then they basically pull the legs out from under that other company.

00:26:03.200 | So it can't be a vibrant competitor.

00:26:05.520 | And then the next year, they'll just raise the price of the bundle, right?

00:26:08.160 | And they've done that with Slack.

00:26:09.600 | They've done that with Okta.

00:26:11.360 | They've done that with Zoom.

00:26:12.720 | You know, Jake, how can we have a vibrant tech ecosystem, at least in B2B software,

00:26:18.960 | if Microsoft can just keep doing that indefinitely?

00:26:22.240 | Yeah, it's it's a difficult question.

00:26:24.320 | I don't know, though, if what the consumer harm is here, if you keep adding great features

00:26:29.600 | to a bundle.

00:26:30.160 | So to take the other side of the argument, you know, Zoom has now added channels like

00:26:34.160 | Slack, Slack has added huddles, which are essentially Zoom calls.

00:26:38.880 | And now they're both going to try to add the coda and notion.

00:26:42.400 | Wiki, wiki style, you know, documents to both Zoom and Slack.

00:26:47.760 | So everybody's copying everybody's features, everybody's incorporating everybody's features.

00:26:51.200 | It takes a little bit of time.

00:26:52.320 | This is actually a lot better behavior for Microsoft than the old days when they would

00:26:58.160 | do something called vaporware.

00:26:59.440 | They used to announce products to chill people from buying them.

00:27:02.640 | So they would announce a Slack two years before Slack came out just to get people to not install

00:27:07.280 | Slack.

00:27:07.520 | They did that with Lotus Notes.

00:27:08.480 | They said that a Lotus Notes competitor coming for two years, and it never materialized.

00:27:12.400 | So I think the marketplace will compete.

00:27:15.840 | And if you look at Slack itself, it's still growing the same percentage growth it did

00:27:21.120 | inside of Salesforce that it did as an independent company.

00:27:25.280 | So it's growing at a similar pace.

00:27:26.240 | I don't know about that.

00:27:27.040 | Wait, Nick, can you pull up this chart?

00:27:28.800 | Yeah, it was like high teens or something.

00:27:30.480 | Was there, was there, it looks like from this chart that Slack has kind of leveled off.

00:27:34.960 | That's the number of users I was talking about revenue.

00:27:36.960 | If you look at Slack's revenue, quarter over quarter, it's basically been the same.

00:27:40.560 | Wasn't there a report that it's been a little bit of a disappointment to Salesforce or no?

00:27:45.280 | Well, I mean, you know, this number here that we're looking at, where it says 75 million

00:27:49.520 | Microsoft Teams members, 12 million Slack members.

00:27:51.680 | By the way, if you wanted to, if you wanted to play conspiracy theorist, maybe that's why

00:27:57.120 | there was a falling out between Benioff and Brett.

00:28:00.240 | I mean, Brett was the champion of this deal, you know, $28 billion acquisition.

00:28:04.800 | And $28 billion, it's threading a needle.

00:28:08.160 | The only one of that scale that's really worked out definitively has been LinkedIn.

00:28:12.160 | So if Slack hiccuped in a moment when we also had a regime change in rates and valuations.

00:28:17.760 | Now look at Benioff is looking down the barrel of a activist investor program from Elliot.

00:28:25.120 | Man, I mean, yeah, maybe it's not doing as well as they needed it to.

00:28:28.640 | I got the sense that Benioff was genuinely sorry that Brett decided to leave and that

00:28:33.120 | it was voluntary, voluntary on Brett's part, and regretted basically, as opposed to,

00:28:37.840 | you know, a non regretted termination.

00:28:40.800 | I have no idea.

00:28:41.600 | Like I said, I was pre qualifying with saying let's play conspiracy for a second.

00:28:45.360 | Fair enough.

00:28:45.840 | Fair enough.

00:28:46.240 | Okay.

00:28:46.480 | I have a suggestion.

00:28:48.800 | Here's a suggestion for the regulators that are listening or watching our podcast.

00:28:54.080 | A really valuable thing for the industry that you could do would be to introduce transparency

00:29:00.880 | on ELAs.

00:29:01.760 | What are those enterprise licensing agreements?

00:29:03.920 | These are these things that these big companies use to throw everything in the kitchen sink

00:29:09.360 | into a deal when they sell to a company.

00:29:11.120 | But if there was transparency, and there was a sense of how those things were priced, so

00:29:16.800 | think of it like the FDA saying, here's you have to publish your ingredients, right?

00:29:20.640 | And what percentage of it is this and that?

00:29:22.560 | It would be really beneficial because it would slow down the tendency of these big companies

00:29:28.880 | to try to kill the small companies with these poorer products.

00:29:32.640 | And something around ELAs and more transparency around pricing to the market could be a good

00:29:36.880 | governor without having to go down the path of all this antitrust legislation after the

00:29:40.800 | fact.

00:29:41.360 | I think there is some good advice for regulators there.

00:29:43.360 | I think they should focus on anti competitive tactics, and like clarifying what those are,

00:29:48.720 | as opposed to some of these crazy lawsuits to break up companies that don't seem to have

00:29:54.720 | well grounded theories.

00:29:56.000 | It'd be I think better to focus on the specific tactics that create the harm and identifying

00:30:00.480 | what those are.

00:30:01.440 | Jake, out of your point about how what Microsoft is doing doesn't seem to be harming anybody,

00:30:06.000 | it seems to be benefiting consumers.

00:30:08.000 | I think that's a valid point, but I would bring up a different example, which is if

00:30:13.200 | you look at the anti competitive behavior of dumping, where a company will basically

00:30:19.680 | dump its product on the market for free, destroy all the other competitors, and once they're

00:30:23.680 | out, they can raise prices because the barriers to entry are high.

00:30:27.040 | There's a huge cost of like, basically entering the industry.

00:30:30.800 | I think that this bundling behavior is a form of dumping, where in the short run, it looks

00:30:36.320 | like consumers are benefiting because they're getting a Zoom clone for free, or a Slack

00:30:41.280 | clone for free.

00:30:42.400 | But then what happens is once they've hobbled those companies, they raise the price of the

00:30:46.960 | bundle.

00:30:47.680 | So I think if we want to have a healthy long term ecosystem, I think this type of like

00:30:51.840 | bundling behavior is bad.

00:30:53.600 | I think it's anti competitive.

00:30:55.040 | It's a great point.

00:30:55.840 | But I think there's a very specific solution for it.

00:30:57.840 | You don't need to break up Microsoft.

00:30:59.440 | What you need to do is require that when they create a bundle, every product in that bundle

00:31:04.880 | needs to basically have an individual price.

00:31:07.040 | Exactly.

00:31:07.280 | And the price of every product in that bundle should add up to the cost of the bundle.

00:31:11.120 | So they can't do, like you said, Chamath, these like transfer payments or subsidies

00:31:15.600 | to basically, you know, take over, systematically take over every SaaS vertical.

00:31:20.400 | I think that would be amazing.

00:31:21.360 | By the way, there are many other markets, David, where that exactly exists, where if

00:31:24.960 | you have the ability to preferentially put your product into your distribution channel,

00:31:31.120 | you have to transfer price it transparently at the market.

00:31:35.760 | And it's what everybody else would be able to get it at.

00:31:40.080 | And that then allows the best product to win in the market.

00:31:44.720 | And it gives the government the ability to say, I understand that these rails are roughly

00:31:49.280 | monopolistic, but I'm going to leave them alone.

00:31:52.000 | As long as you treat everything that sits on top of those rails equally.

00:31:56.400 | And that nuance is missing in software.

00:31:58.320 | So I think the combination of transparency in these enterprise licensing agreements,

00:32:02.720 | and more transparency and accounting treatment for what you just said, would solve a lot

00:32:07.600 | of this problem.

00:32:08.640 | And you would have a more vibrant ecosystem where the big guys can't just snuff out the

00:32:12.800 | small guys whenever they want.

00:32:14.480 | Yeah, I just agree with you guys.

00:32:16.000 | Let me just let me just play.

00:32:17.200 | Let me just play my devil's advocate, which is kind of how I feel as well.

00:32:22.000 | I think these concepts of monopolistic bundling made a lot of sense, I make a lot of sense

00:32:28.320 | in the sense in if what you're bundling and the service or the product or whatever is

00:32:32.560 | a commodity product.

00:32:33.760 | And these statements that you're making, assume that one messaging service is the same

00:32:38.720 | as a must another messaging service that one video app is the same as another video app.

00:32:42.560 | And that by giving a discount, they're going to win the market.

00:32:47.200 | The reality that may have made sense back in the day when there were things like the

00:32:50.640 | day when there were things like trains and trains had a monopoly on where things could

00:32:54.160 | go or electricity or oil production, and all of the kind of origins of kind of monopolistic

00:32:59.840 | antitrust laws and action started to kind of emerge here in our free market in the US.

00:33:06.800 | But when it comes to software, if your product is the same as the other guy's product, maybe

00:33:12.400 | they deserve to win by bundling.

00:33:14.400 | And maybe it's okay for them to offer a discount and beat you on pricing.

00:33:18.080 | Because if your product is actually better, and it provides better ROI for the customer,

00:33:22.320 | it has a better feature set, it's faster, it has a bunch of stuff that the other product

00:33:26.240 | doesn't have, the market will pick it.

00:33:28.640 | It's not that the market's gonna say, hey, we're just a bunch of idiots.

00:33:31.760 | These products are so differentiated.

00:33:33.280 | But because these guys are giving me a discount, I'm going to go over to the discount.

00:33:36.320 | That's not how it works.

00:33:37.280 | And you guys know this.

00:33:38.320 | I'm not saying that Microsoft can't copy Slack and then undercharge a different price and

00:33:42.960 | charge a different price and a lower price and discounted.

00:33:45.520 | What I'm saying is they can't cross subsidize their Slack competitor.

00:33:49.600 | It's the fact that they can copy Slack that makes Slack that means that Slack should lose

00:33:56.000 | the fact that that's like,

00:33:57.360 | I disagree.

00:33:58.160 | Almost all software is look, software, new software is really hard to create, but really

00:34:03.280 | easy to copy.

00:34:04.000 | I mean, the first version of a new product is hard to create, but you can reverse engineer

00:34:10.240 | almost any software product.

00:34:11.680 | Show me where someone's made a better competitor to Google search.

00:34:14.800 | Show me where like consumers don't choose to go to another search engine because Google's

00:34:17.920 | built a better search engine.

00:34:19.040 | No, it's because there's a data network effect there that the more searches they provide,

00:34:22.240 | the more data they get.

00:34:23.600 | It's the reinforcement learning.

00:34:24.880 | I'll say I'll say differently.

00:34:26.080 | It's easier to copy.

00:34:27.440 | There's an asymptote to that quality point, though.

00:34:29.360 | I don't think that that's necessarily true.

00:34:30.640 | No, I think I think there's a nuance here that and by the way, all the social networks

00:34:34.000 | that people thought were had massive lock in effect turns out they don't write David.

00:34:37.040 | No, that's not true.

00:34:38.000 | Look, there's more lock in deeper in the stack that you exist.

00:34:42.080 | There's very little lock in at the application layer.

00:34:44.560 | So workflow apps, which effectively is what most of these enterprise software things are,

00:34:49.840 | are very copyable because there's nothing that really locks it in.

00:34:54.320 | But if you're a social network, or if you're some deep machine learned thing that basically

00:34:59.120 | generates great search results, that's much harder to copy because more and more of the

00:35:03.360 | product and it's like generates the product quality is underneath the waterline.

00:35:07.520 | But I think in enterprise software, it's all thin UI layers on top of very simple.

00:35:13.120 | Don't compete, then don't compete because the bigger guy that offers a discount is always

00:35:16.560 | going to beat you.

00:35:17.120 | What he's saying, which I agree with is you just if you could add transparency so that

00:35:21.600 | you understand what is happening.

00:35:23.360 | I don't think anybody's against transparency.

00:35:25.600 | Nobody should be against it.

00:35:27.120 | And if Microsoft wants to charge a penny a seat for teams, then they should be allowed

00:35:33.360 | to do that.

00:35:33.840 | I don't think we're saying that they shouldn't.

00:35:35.360 | A lot of startups have used the opposite tactic where they've entered with free offerings

00:35:38.960 | or free services, and then they try and upsell later.

00:35:41.440 | And we don't complain about that.

00:35:43.040 | There's a lot of ways to compete.

00:35:44.160 | There's no bundling.

00:35:45.680 | There's no bundling.

00:35:46.480 | There's a lot of ways.

00:35:47.520 | But that's my point.

00:35:48.240 | There's a lot of ways to compete in the marketplace.

00:35:49.920 | If the product you're offering is of parity, the problem is a commodity that no, but build

00:35:54.960 | something that's different enough that people are willing to pay for it.

00:35:57.680 | Well, then, you know, they're willing to pay more than they'll pay the big guy that's giving

00:36:01.360 | them a bundling discount.

00:36:02.400 | Just build a better product.

00:36:03.680 | Then the whole b2b SaaS space should basically pack up shop and go home.

00:36:07.360 | We should just stop funding VC should stop funding new SaaS companies because and all

00:36:12.240 | those productivity gains will just go out the window.

00:36:14.640 | Yeah, why would you fund any

00:36:16.160 | anti competitive them?

00:36:18.400 | Yeah, how's that bad for the customer?

00:36:20.080 | They're paying less and they're getting a better probably fewer new products created.

00:36:23.280 | Yeah, freeberg at the limit.

00:36:24.480 | What you're basically saying is because Comcast is a monopolistic provider of my internet

00:36:28.880 | connection, I should have to take their video offering and will never use Netflix.

00:36:33.120 | No, it's like they have they offer a commodity.

00:36:36.160 | That's my point.

00:36:37.280 | If you're offering a commodity, these things should apply.

00:36:39.360 | It makes a ton of sense.

00:36:40.480 | But what you're saying, but what you're saying effectively, and what you just said is that

00:36:43.600 | b2b software is effectively a commodity.

00:36:45.680 | Anyone can copy it.

00:36:46.640 | Anyone can replicate said to you, I'm turning this off.

00:36:49.840 | You only have one choice and it's mine because these is my rails and I built it.

00:36:53.760 | You would turn to the government to help you because you would say but Netflix is a better

00:36:58.240 | product.

00:36:58.720 | And what David is saying is the exact same argument.

00:37:02.560 | So my point is, unless you also believe logically that you're allowed to turn off Netflix, if

00:37:06.720 | you're Comcast, and take their crappy VOD service, then you're you're at least intellectually

00:37:12.560 | consistent.

00:37:13.600 | Well, if you don't believe me to steal as a commodity to and you can't engage in dumping.

00:37:18.000 | I mean, this is the argument is that, for example, you know, with respect to China,

00:37:22.880 | the argument was that they were dumping cheap steel in the US market to drive all the US

00:37:27.360 | producers out of business.

00:37:28.720 | And then once they were out of business, they'd raise the price.

00:37:30.640 | The point is, there's all these examples where we have had the intelligence and the

00:37:34.480 | ability to be nuanced about this to see that these things are possible and they shouldn't

00:37:38.240 | exist.

00:37:38.960 | We don't let Comcast turn off Netflix.

00:37:41.200 | Okay, we have a law around that.

00:37:44.080 | I understand.

00:37:44.720 | So my so I think what we're saying is embrace and extend this law for these new markets

00:37:50.000 | that didn't exist 50 and 100 years ago when these laws were written, so that the same

00:37:54.480 | benefits that we have in the steel market, and in the cable market, we have in the software

00:37:59.680 | market, it'll just create a healthier ecosystem.

00:38:01.840 | Jekyll, you want to get in on this?

00:38:02.880 | I just I wonder when you install teams, does it automatically when you install the Microsoft

00:38:09.600 | Office suite, does it automatically install teams?

00:38:12.240 | Because it does seem the default there matters.

00:38:14.240 | Do people have to actively turn it on?

00:38:16.000 | Or is it actively built in?

00:38:17.520 | And so the bundling of it, I think matters.

00:38:20.000 | And then interoperability matters.

00:38:21.520 | So there are other vectors here to force some interoperability.

00:38:26.160 | So if you open your Windows machine, do you have a choice of it depends which browser

00:38:31.120 | let's just, let's just say that you use exchange for certain things.

00:38:36.640 | But in other things, for example, to manage your namespace, you may use Okta.

00:38:40.480 | But then they say, actually, no, we need you to use our version of Okta.

00:38:45.280 | It all becomes complicated.

00:38:46.720 | I think it's too complicated for a government to understand.

00:38:49.200 | So I think the general thing is, can we extend the definition of these basic rules that we've

00:38:55.600 | agreed to in other markets to include technology?

00:38:58.880 | And would we be better served?

00:39:00.320 | And I think for the most part, I do think it would be it would better serve startups,

00:39:05.360 | it would better serve the folks that want to build

00:39:07.840 | how would that work in practicality, though, you would, you would

00:39:10.400 | have office, they'd say, here's no, I think when they've turned it on for $1 a person

00:39:14.720 | or something, here's introductory price.

00:39:16.640 | I think the combination of what David said, and I said would do the trick, which is if

00:39:20.000 | you force these highly complicated license agreements to be transparent, it would not

00:39:26.240 | allow them to dump.

00:39:27.280 | And then the second thing is that all of that transfer pricing that goes into that license

00:39:32.640 | cost needs to sum up to the cost itself.

00:39:35.200 | Now, why is that important?

00:39:36.640 | You can learn about how they prevent this in healthcare.

00:39:40.640 | So let's take Pfizer, good example.

00:39:42.320 | Here's a company with $30 billion on the balance sheet, right?

00:39:46.480 | And Pfizer has a need still to subsidize all of the R&D of their drugs.

00:39:52.240 | And you would say, well, yeah, they have $30 billion.

00:39:54.320 | So they should just take the money off the balance sheet and do it.

00:39:56.480 | Why don't they do it?

00:39:57.680 | It's because the accounting laws and all of the complicated anti competitive laws say,

00:40:01.280 | well, if you want to take this cash pile and use it over here, it goes from an asset liability

00:40:07.600 | item, 30 billion of cash, and all of a sudden, I'm going to net it against your EPS.

00:40:12.640 | Alright, Chama.

00:40:13.200 | There's an actual cost for these companies to do this stuff, to bundle to cross to all

00:40:19.920 | of this stuff.

00:40:20.320 | And so what do they do?

00:40:21.040 | They go into the market, they ask startups to build stuff, and then they buy it.

00:40:24.960 | That's the kind of market I think is better for us.

00:40:26.960 | Yeah, let's have that be the last word on this topic, because we've been going for a

00:40:29.680 | while.

00:40:29.760 | But I'm glad you brought up Pfizer, because this brings us to issue two, which is and

00:40:36.240 | I think we can show this credit meet for David.

00:40:38.400 | Yeah, so Albert Bourla, who's the CEO of Pfizer went to Davos last week, and he probably

00:40:43.440 | expect to Davos, you know, the conference of the surplus elites.

00:40:47.840 | And he expected probably nothing but softballs and fawning treatment from the establishment

00:40:53.120 | media.

00:40:53.600 | And instead, he probably had the most uncomfortable walk of his life when two reporters from

00:40:57.760 | Rebel News approached him outside the Brunner and started asking him some tough questions.

00:41:03.520 | Let's roll tape.

00:41:04.480 | What's Rebel News?

00:41:06.000 | Bourla, can I ask you, when did you know that the vaccines didn't stop transmission?

00:41:11.680 | How long did you know that without saying it publicly?

00:41:14.480 | Thank you very much.

00:41:15.200 | I'm sorry.

00:41:16.000 | Good question.

00:41:16.800 | I mean, we now know that the vaccines didn't stop transmission.

00:41:21.600 | But why did you keep it secret?

00:41:23.280 | Good question.

00:41:25.360 | You said it was 100% effective, then 90%, then 80%, then 70%.

00:41:30.000 | But we now know that the vaccines do not stop transmission.

00:41:34.240 | Why did you keep that secret?

00:41:36.080 | Have a nice day.

00:41:36.800 | I won't have a nice day until I know the answer.

00:41:40.320 | Why did you keep it a secret that your vaccine did not stop transmission?

00:41:45.280 | We should cut this.

00:41:47.280 | Okay, we can stop from there.

00:41:48.240 | Wow, welcome to Info Wars.

00:41:50.560 | All in Info Wars.

00:41:51.440 | That's what real journalism looks like.

00:41:52.880 | First of all, you know what's about to happen.

00:41:53.280 | That's what real journalism looks like.

00:41:54.880 | Not a bunch of New York Times reporters covering for powerful people, but asking them tough

00:41:59.280 | questions.

00:41:59.760 | Okay, is that a legitimate question, Freeberg?

00:42:02.560 | Is that a legitimate question?

00:42:03.040 | That is a totally legitimate question.

00:42:04.160 | Freeberg, what do you think of the question?

00:42:06.240 | You guys are about to get us downranked on YouTube and Spotify.

00:42:10.160 | We're about to get warning labels.

00:42:11.920 | Why is YouTube covering for this sort of thing?

00:42:13.920 | By the way, you're right that YouTube banned that video.

00:42:19.040 | We had to watch it on Twitter because Elon Musk's Twitter is still free.

00:42:22.720 | Okay, listen, why is YouTube protecting...

00:42:24.640 | Why, hold on.

00:42:25.520 | Why is YouTube abridging freedom of the press in order to protect the powerful CEO of Pfizer

00:42:31.840 | from answering questions that are legitimate?

00:42:34.640 | Yeah, just look at the questions.

00:42:36.080 | Isn't it a legitimate question of, did they cover up the fact that the vaccine didn't

00:42:43.840 | transmit?

00:42:44.240 | I think it's a legitimate question that I would actually want to know the answer to.

00:42:47.600 | I don't know why he didn't just answer that.

00:42:49.200 | No, we didn't cover it up.

00:42:50.160 | Freeberg?

00:42:52.800 | You're asking me if I know whether Pfizer did a cover up?

00:42:56.720 | Is that what you're asking?

00:42:57.760 | Well, no, it's a legitimate question is what I'm getting at.

00:43:00.640 | Why are you unwilling to question the Pfizer CEO?

00:43:03.600 | Oh, no, I'm not.

00:43:04.640 | I'm not unwilling to question at all.

00:43:05.920 | But I'm not.

00:43:06.480 | I don't think that this is a fight.

00:43:07.920 | Look, first of all, Pfizer is a commercial enterprise.

00:43:12.320 | So they have the incentive to make money.

00:43:14.240 | 100%, right?

00:43:15.200 | So their objective is to sell a vaccine.

00:43:16.960 | I think they're making 10 to $15 billion on this vaccine this year.

00:43:20.640 | You're absolutely right that the economic incentive is there for Pfizer to continue

00:43:26.880 | to push and rationalize the sales of this vaccine.

00:43:30.400 | The efficacy of the vaccine waned very quickly.

00:43:33.600 | As this virus evolved and mutated, it became pretty evident pretty fast that

00:43:37.600 | the rate of transmission in vaccinated people continue to go up.

00:43:45.360 | And you know, this may be a function of the quality of the vaccine or the efficacy of

00:43:50.080 | the vaccine, more likely a function of the fact that the virus as predicted, evolved,

00:43:55.920 | and therefore the antibodies that are produced and the T cell response that's induced by

00:44:01.200 | the original vaccine becomes less efficacious over time.

00:44:04.880 | So the real question is a policy question, a behavioral question.

00:44:07.760 | But look, Pfizer didn't have another product to sell.

00:44:10.000 | So it certainly makes sense for them to continue to sell their product.

00:44:12.880 | And there is still good data that represents that there is some immune response and some

00:44:18.240 | benefit in certain populations to continuing to get a booster and all this stuff with the

00:44:22.720 | original.

00:44:23.280 | Yeah, let me ask you about the data.

00:44:24.560 | The fact that Pfizer only has this product to sell is not exactly a ringing endorsement

00:44:28.720 | of their behavior.

00:44:29.280 | But let's stay on the data for a second.

00:44:31.600 | There was a study in Nature, which is, you know, one of the most preeminent scientific

00:44:36.080 | journals about the risks of myocarditis and pericarditis, which is basically inflammation

00:44:42.080 | of the heart tissue, which can basically lead to heart attacks, saying that the risk among

00:44:47.600 | young people, especially young men in 18 to 24 years was elevated.

00:44:52.400 | If they got the vaccine, this was a study out of France.

00:44:56.320 | So it's pretty clear that the vaccine was efficacious, we thought, but is it less safe

00:45:04.720 | than we thought as well?

00:45:05.600 | I generally don't know the answer to this.

00:45:07.680 | I would like to know.

00:45:08.960 | It's an important question.

00:45:10.080 | And there's a lot of work being done to uncover it.

00:45:12.560 | And here's a link to a paper that was published in the journal circulation is the name of

00:45:19.440 | the journal, not too long ago, by a team led by a researcher at Mass General.

00:45:24.800 | And what this and so just to address the myocarditis question.

00:45:29.440 | And just so everyone that's listening knows, I take a very objective view on all this stuff.

00:45:35.360 | I don't have a strong bias one way or the other.

00:45:38.240 | So the Mass General team identified 16 people that had myocarditis that were vaccinated

00:45:43.200 | and 45 people that didn't work part of their control group.

00:45:46.000 | And they tried to understand what the difference was between these two groups.

00:45:50.160 | There have historically been three kind of theories about why there is incidents of myocarditis

00:45:54.880 | in certain populations that get the COVID vaccine.

00:45:58.320 | And by the way, the incidence rate is still typically less than two out of every 100,000

00:46:03.600 | people that get the vaccine.

00:46:05.200 | But as you saw in the paper you just shared, and others have validated it, it can be as

00:46:08.960 | high as 30 times more likely to happen in young people that take the the Moderna vaccine,

00:46:14.320 | which is still a low incidence, but but 30 times higher is significant and worth worth

00:46:18.480 | understanding.

00:46:19.360 | So the three kind of reasons are the three ideas 30 times higher.

00:46:22.560 | That sounds like a lot.

00:46:23.920 | Yeah, so the reason and also small base, but yes.

00:46:26.880 | And so the three ideas are the three theories around why this is happening.

00:46:31.040 | Number one is what's called protein mimicry, where certain people, the protein on their,

00:46:35.680 | their heart tissue, for example, or certain proteins found in the cells in their heart

00:46:39.440 | tissue, maybe look like the some element of the spike protein that's created by the vaccine.

00:46:45.680 | Therefore, when you make antibodies to bind to and clear your body of spike protein, it's

00:46:50.720 | also binding to your own cells and causing an auto immune response.

00:46:55.280 | And those are called kind of auto antibodies.

00:46:57.920 | The second is just general immune system activation that maybe genetically some people are predisposed

00:47:02.160 | to having a very active immune system in response to the vaccine.

00:47:05.040 | And therefore, with a very active immune system, they get inflammation and damage.

00:47:07.920 | And then the third is this idea that there's just massive proliferation of your B cells,

00:47:12.640 | some of which have auto antibodies and some of which therefore destroy your heart tissue

00:47:16.000 | and cause this inflammation.

00:47:17.440 | So what this team did is they looked at the blood difference between people that had myocarditis

00:47:21.760 | and people that didn't, they found no auto antibodies, they found no big changes in the

00:47:26.560 | T or B cell populations, meaning that there isn't a big immune system activation difference.

00:47:30.960 | The big difference that they found was that the people that had myocarditis actually had

00:47:37.520 | a lot of the spike protein floating around in their blood, whereas the people that didn't

00:47:42.160 | did not have the spike protein floating around in their blood.

00:47:44.400 | So this answers one question, but but opens up many more doors, which is what's really

00:47:49.040 | going on.

00:47:49.600 | So if you have spike protein in your blood, and your body's not clearing it,

00:47:53.440 | right, well, how long after getting vaccinated?

00:47:55.840 | Were the spike proteins still floating around?

00:47:57.600 | Because I remember when the mRNA vaccine first came out, they said it was the spike proteins

00:48:01.680 | would go away after a couple of days, three weeks, three weeks, have they done a study

00:48:07.120 | like, you know, six months after a year after?

00:48:09.600 | Not yet, but that's that's being done right now.

00:48:11.520 | So what they're identifying is what's going on with the immune system of these this population,

00:48:16.560 | where their body is not able to clear the spike protein.

00:48:19.120 | And when their body doesn't clear the spike protein, a bunch of cytokines and other

00:48:22.800 | inflammatory things start to get released.

00:48:24.960 | And it causes inflammation on the heart tissue.

00:48:27.280 | Because, you know, there's a particular reason,

00:48:30.000 | Jake, I'll ask you, I remember, I remember when, you know, the vaccine first came out.

00:48:35.120 | I remember Rogan almost got cancelled for saying that if he was a young person, a young

00:48:42.000 | man, he's like 50.

00:48:43.040 | So he got vaccinated, but he said that if I was a young person, in my 20s, I would not

00:48:47.280 | get vaccinated.

00:48:48.720 | Yeah, because I don't think the risk return makes sense.

00:48:52.320 | And he almost got cancelled for that.

00:48:53.600 | Was Rogan right about that?

00:48:54.880 | So, you know, I have been thinking a lot about this decision to get vaccinated or not, and

00:49:04.080 | how we came to that decision.

00:49:05.520 | And then I think what Freeberg said earlier is super interesting.

00:49:08.480 | The because the virus mutated, the efficacy of these vaccines, obviously, changed and

00:49:16.400 | wasn't necessary.

00:49:17.680 | And so I think it was a moving target to understand if you should take it or not.

00:49:22.960 | It was a very personal decision, clearly, for people who were over 65 years old, the

00:49:27.920 | chances of dying were pretty significant.

00:49:30.000 | For people under that a certain age, it was lower.

00:49:33.040 | So everybody had to make a very personal decision here.

00:49:35.440 | Was it a personal decision when you had vaccine mandates?

00:49:42.240 | And then on top of that, on top of that, you had the media were dunking on anti-vaxxers

00:49:49.200 | throughout 2021.

00:49:50.320 | Remember that?

00:49:50.880 | I mean, they were saying about anti-vaxxers that that if you didn't get the vaccine, you

00:49:54.880 | got sick, there wouldn't be a hospital bed for you.

00:49:57.440 | There was, you know, a lot of like dancing on the graves of these people.

00:50:00.000 | Where, you know, there were like all these articles, you know, there'd be like some

00:50:04.000 | preacher who, you know, said don't get vaccinated, and then they would die of COVID.

00:50:08.160 | And there's a lot of like morbid sort of ghoulish like articles dancing on their graves.

00:50:12.880 | I mean, it was not this objective personal decision.

00:50:15.520 | There was tremendous social and legal pressure to get vaccinated.

00:50:19.280 | You're right.

00:50:19.760 | Was there not?

00:50:20.480 | You're right.

00:50:21.120 | There was.

00:50:21.600 | And I think part of the reason I myself got vaccinated was because I wanted to be able

00:50:26.240 | to travel again.

00:50:26.960 | I wanted to be able to go to Madison Square Garden and watch the Knicks.

00:50:29.600 | And I also thought, well, I don't want to be if I'm overweight, like one of the people

00:50:33.360 | who dies from this.

00:50:34.640 | So, you know, we all sat here, we all got vaccinated.

00:50:37.840 | Do we regret our decision to get vaccinated now that we see this, you know, studies like

00:50:42.400 | maybe it wasn't necessary.

00:50:43.600 | And also, it was apparently oversold.

00:50:46.560 | So when the Pfizer CEO won't say when they knew it wasn't going to stop transmission,

00:50:51.040 | I think it's a valid question to investigate what Pfizer knew and when and just keep everybody

00:50:56.720 | accountable for this for future things that happen.

00:50:59.360 | Because right now, we're in a position where if Pfizer is not being honest with us, if

00:51:04.800 | the origin story of COVID isn't being honest with us, these conspiracy theories are now

00:51:08.800 | starting to start to look like reality.

00:51:11.360 | Let me go to you Chamath.

00:51:12.400 | I mean, so we were all felt this tremendous pressure in 2021 to get the vaccine, right?

00:51:20.000 | We all care about our health.

00:51:21.600 | You care a lot about your health.

00:51:24.160 | We all thought we could trust the experts that the vaccine was both efficacious and

00:51:29.360 | safe.

00:51:30.160 | We know it was not efficacious in the sense that they're telling us that we have to get

00:51:34.080 | revaccinated every two months for it to work.

00:51:36.880 | On safety, I don't want to get over my skis because we only have some data.

00:51:41.360 | But clearly, like this myocarditis data is not good.

00:51:44.560 | So were we basically stampeded into making a decision that was not actually good for

00:51:51.280 | us?

00:51:52.000 | And would you make that same decision today?

00:51:53.760 | Let's just lay the foundation for understanding how we got here.

00:51:58.640 | So there are these pathways inside the FDA to get drugs approved.

00:52:04.400 | And if you take a normal pathway for a normal drug, you're going to spend nine or 10 years,

00:52:10.160 | maybe more 12, 13 in some cases, and more than a billion dollars to get a drug approved.

00:52:16.160 | And the way that it works is in phase one, you do a study on toxicology, effectively,

00:52:21.840 | like is this safe or not safe.

00:52:24.000 | And you have to have enough people take it.

00:52:26.160 | And you need to observe them for enough time, where that phase one outcome essentially says

00:52:31.360 | this won't hurt people.

00:52:32.800 | It's benign.

00:52:34.000 | We don't know the mechanism of action.

00:52:36.000 | We don't know whether it's going to solve the problem, but we know that it's safe.

00:52:39.440 | And then in phase two, you then try to really understand the mechanism of action.

00:52:45.760 | And if that works, you go into phase three, where you actually scale it out, you create

00:52:51.920 | a double arm study, you may do a control group, you may do an open label companion, you may

00:52:56.160 | overpower it with 1000s of people.

00:52:58.160 | And the FDA is incredibly rigorous.

00:53:00.800 | Okay, even down to like, it's incredible, by the way, like how you're allowed to open

00:53:05.680 | the results.

00:53:06.320 | And they have all of these services that make sure that you can influence the results or

00:53:10.880 | manipulate them.

00:53:12.560 | It's incredible.

00:53:13.120 | The FDA has an incredible process.

00:53:14.720 | The thing is that they also have a way to jump around that fence.

00:53:20.000 | And that is what we use for the COVID-19 vaccines.

00:53:23.120 | So in a molecule 13 years, if it's for a really important drug, you can shorten it to six

00:53:30.720 | or seven with this thing called breakthrough designation for a biologic 12 or 13 years.

00:53:38.160 | But if you get this thing called our mat, six or seven years, so you're still talking

00:53:43.440 | years and 1000s of people, David.

00:53:45.840 | But then there's this one special asterisk that exists inside the FDA called emergency

00:53:50.800 | use authorization.

00:53:51.760 | And in moments of deemed emergency, you can shorten even six years down to in some cases,

00:53:58.960 | six, seven, nine months, a year, two years, right?

00:54:02.080 | Are you you're describing operation warp speed.

00:54:04.240 | So that emergency use authorization fast track these vaccines to market.

00:54:10.960 | Now, the thing to keep in mind is there are still two classes of vaccines.

00:54:15.040 | There are the messenger RNA vaccines, that's the biontech and Pfizer ones.

00:54:18.480 | And then there are the more regular ones that in many cases, the West was dumping on Astra

00:54:22.880 | Zeneca and Johnson and Johnson, as we used to, we used to ship those to developing countries

00:54:27.520 | and say, we'll just keep the mRNA once you guys think Dave Chappelle had this funny joke,

00:54:32.000 | I was like, I took the J&J vaccine, right?

00:54:34.320 | But it turns out that now when we're looking back, the long tail of issues may actually

00:54:41.120 | apply to these things that were fast tracked these mRNA vaccines that were fast tracked

00:54:45.280 | under emergency use.

00:54:46.160 | Why?

00:54:46.480 | Because of what freebrook said, this protein mimicry thing is something we don't understand.

00:54:50.720 | Now, why don't we understand it?

00:54:52.000 | It's because our tools are not precise enough to exactly know when we engineer these solutions,

00:55:01.200 | that it only binds to this specific protein.

00:55:06.880 | And what we're learning is that there, these proteins are some, they're so similar, that

00:55:12.400 | there can be a little collateral damage, that this other thing that looks 99% will also

00:55:17.440 | all of a sudden, attract this, this antigen.

00:55:22.000 | So this is a very complicated body of problem.

00:55:25.760 | And because we didn't give it enough time to bake in the wild, we're learning about

00:55:31.120 | this thing in real time.

00:55:32.560 | If you, if we had gone to what you had suggested, which is a massive masking mandate, while

00:55:38.480 | this stuff played out, could the outcome be different?

00:55:41.440 | Well, we don't know because we didn't make those decisions.

00:55:44.400 | But I think that's what people will be debating.

00:55:46.160 | The last thing I'll say on this is specifically to myocarditis.

00:55:49.200 | I have an interventional cardiologist in LA.

00:55:52.480 | I've seen him every three years, ever since Goldie passed away, out of respect for Goldie

00:55:58.320 | and Cheryl, who initially asked me to go, but it's been a great thing that I've done.

00:56:02.480 | I've learned a lot from him.

00:56:03.600 | He introduced me to PCSK9 inhibitors and a bunch of things.

00:56:07.520 | He called me two years ago and said, "Shamath, I want to do a study that," or a year ago,

00:56:11.760 | "I want to do a study that looks at actually myocarditis and the effects of this vaccine."

00:56:18.240 | And Nick, I don't know if you can just throw it up, but we published something.

00:56:21.120 | And basically, you know, what we see, David, is that for folks with myocarditis,

00:56:24.960 | you're releasing troponin.

00:56:27.920 | And this is a protein that you would otherwise use to figure out whether you're having a

00:56:33.120 | heart attack or severe, you know, some sort of heart abnormality.

00:56:37.200 | And so it just goes to show you that there is some collateral damage in some cases.

00:56:42.480 | In this example, this is one case that we published, which is a 63-year-old white woman.

00:56:47.600 | I'm saying that implicitly so that people understand that these things really matter

00:56:51.200 | on age, gender, and race.

00:56:54.560 | All of the data that comes out of France really was focused on, I think it was 18- to 34-year-old

00:56:59.840 | males of all racial persuasions.

00:57:02.960 | And we thought that this issue is prevalent only in males, but we've had a few cases that

00:57:09.040 | we've talked about now that touch women as well.

00:57:11.680 | So it's a complicated set of things because our tools are not fine-grained enough to engineer

00:57:19.280 | the drug for incredible specificity.

00:57:23.200 | And I think that's the thing that we're dealing with now.

00:57:26.160 | And by the way, last thing, because of all this, it probably is reasonable to take a

00:57:31.920 | step back and have a commission that just uncovers all of this stuff.

00:57:35.600 | Look, we've had commissions for things as benign as steroid usage in baseball.

00:57:39.920 | Like if steroid usage in baseball...

00:57:42.320 | And this goes back to Rebel News asking Berla a very simple question, which is, what did

00:57:49.120 | you know and what did you know with respect to the efficacy and safety of these vaccines?

00:57:52.800 | If they did not tell the public that these vaccines did not work the way they were supposed

00:57:56.960 | to because they want to keep minting money, that is a legitimate scandal and we have a

00:58:00.800 | right to know.

00:58:01.520 | But Freeberg, let me ask you a question here.

00:58:03.360 | I think Chamath talked about this sort of sped-up process to cut through red tape and

00:58:09.840 | get a vaccine to market more quickly.

00:58:12.320 | I personally actually think that that kind of process is fine for patients who want to

00:58:16.880 | assume the risk.

00:58:18.160 | As sort of a libertarian, I support that.

00:58:21.120 | But I go back to the fact that people in many places were not given a choice.

00:58:26.400 | They had to get vaccinated or they could lose their job or their freedom to participate

00:58:32.160 | in society.

00:58:32.960 | And now we're finding out that they may have been forced to do something that in their

00:58:38.800 | particular case may not really have been a great cost-benefit decision for them.

00:58:43.520 | What do you think that the sort of impact is going to be of this just like socially?

00:58:50.800 | I mean, you've talked about, I think that there's a decline in trust of institutional

00:58:56.960 | authority in the US.

00:58:58.160 | And that's a huge problem.

00:58:59.920 | I mean, isn't this going to contribute to that?

00:59:01.520 | Yeah, look, I mean, I think that there's been institutional authority overreach that's been

00:59:08.080 | building for quite some time.

00:59:10.000 | And, you know, look, I mean, you guys can go back to our first episode and our earliest

00:59:14.160 | episodes and I wasn't and haven't been and I think the first time I tweeted, I tweeted

00:59:19.920 | about the adverse impact that lockdowns could have and we should be weighing the cost of

00:59:24.320 | the lockdowns against the benefit.

00:59:26.240 | And ultimately, the benefit was zero, because we ended up accumulating, call it $10 trillion

00:59:31.440 | dollars of, you know, $4 trillion dollars of net costs that we have to pay off at some

00:59:36.400 | point and not to mention the economic consequences of the lockdowns.

00:59:40.560 | And, you know, the benefit was negligible because the virus continued to spread and

00:59:47.360 | evolve and there was no way to really stop the virus in its tracks.

00:59:50.800 | Hindsight is 2020 fog of war lawmakers made decisions.

00:59:56.080 | Was it the right decision?

00:59:57.680 | Would you have made the same decision?

00:59:58.800 | It's really hard to say you feel like you're saving the world.

01:00:01.200 | When the world is ending.

01:00:02.160 | It's easy to kind of act with some degree of what is now viewed as overreach.

01:00:06.800 | I do think that the mass vaccination requirement may have also been deemed overreach given

01:00:12.480 | the limited data that was available and the rapid evolution that was pretty apparent in

01:00:16.400 | the virus at the time as well.

01:00:18.080 | But vaccines are required for a number of other illnesses in a number of school systems

01:00:25.200 | around the country.

01:00:26.800 | You know, you start to question, I think we will start to see people question whether

01:00:31.680 | those are appropriate.

01:00:32.480 | But again, those are longer studied, better understood.

01:00:35.280 | The cost benefit analysis is much there.

01:00:39.280 | Yeah, actually, I think I think you're right that one of the costs of this policy is going

01:00:43.920 | to be that people will stop trusting vaccination in general, even though I think that these

01:00:50.640 | COVID vaccines, I'm not even sure you can really call them vaccines.

01:00:53.680 | I mean, every other vaccine that I've ever heard of completely prevents that disease.

01:00:59.520 | The polio vaccine ended polio.

01:01:01.760 | The MMR vaccine ended measles, mumps and rubella.

01:01:05.200 | The COVID vaccine just didn't work.

01:01:06.720 | I don't think it was a vaccine.

01:01:08.240 | But I think now what's going to happen is people are going to have a lot more distrust.

01:01:12.640 | There's a tremendous amount of post activity rationalization going on where once you kind

01:01:20.400 | of made a statement that the vaccine will stop transmission of the virus or stop hospitalizations,

01:01:25.840 | and suddenly it doesn't and you've made that statement with such surety and brevity and

01:01:31.520 | funded it with so much money and cost such cost in doing so at that point, you're too

01:01:36.880 | far removed to go back and say, you know what, it doesn't.

01:01:39.600 | And as we're seeing now, the consequences of not being willing to say that you were

01:01:43.120 | wrong, maybe far greater than the consequences of kind of continuing or kind of, you know,

01:01:50.640 | making this change.

01:01:51.280 | So it's a good point.

01:01:53.120 | All right, final question to Jake on that point.

01:01:55.120 | So, I mean, Jake, I'll look you were dunking or at least concerned trolling on anti vaxxers

01:02:01.600 | during this time period.

01:02:03.120 | Do you reconsider that?

01:02:04.880 | I mean, in other words, everybody was saying that the anti vaxxers were these stupid,

01:02:08.880 | unsophisticated people?

01:02:10.160 | Well, yeah, I, I think that maybe but maybe it was the elites who were the ones suffering

01:02:16.480 | from groupthink.

01:02:17.200 | I mean, look, and I put myself in this bucket, we will all heard it into this idea, we all

01:02:22.480 | took the vaccine, being an early adopter of a product.

01:02:25.520 | And now we're finding out that it's really didn't do what it said.

01:02:28.400 | Yeah, we in fairness, we said we knew this was experimental.

01:02:31.360 | We knew this was the first time mRNA.

01:02:33.440 | But we also knew like a billion people had gotten them or we when we got ours, we knew

01:02:37.680 | hundreds of millions of them are in a hold on, let me just ask the question.

01:02:41.440 | So let me finish.

01:02:42.000 | And so I think people made a risk assessment, knowing this was an experimental vaccine,

01:02:48.720 | knowing that the COVID was mutating at the time.

01:02:51.840 | And yeah, it could have been oversold.

01:02:54.640 | Of course, that seems to be the case.

01:02:56.640 | I Nick pull up this tweet.

01:02:58.560 | But you know, we need to I, I think we have to look at because we had this conversation,

01:03:04.720 | you and I have you were very much in favor of everybody getting the mandate and everybody

01:03:12.320 | being forced to get the vaccine.

01:03:14.560 | I never supported the mandate.

01:03:16.000 | You did.

01:03:16.240 | We had a conversation about that.

01:03:17.440 | Like if should people be able to work?

01:03:18.800 | Should people go on trains and your position was trains?

01:03:22.480 | No, I did not support a mandate.

01:03:25.520 | I thought it should always be people's choice.

01:03:27.040 | I did.

01:03:27.360 | I made the mistake.

01:03:30.800 | I made the mistake of believing the experts in the mainstream media.

01:03:34.720 | I think if the last couple years have taught us anything, it's that they can't be trusted.

01:03:38.560 | The level of distrust we should have is even greater than we thought.

01:03:41.200 | I never supported a mandate.

01:03:42.640 | I thought it should be people's choice.

01:03:44.320 | And I certainly wasn't I don't think I was dunking on the anti vaxxers.

01:03:49.440 | Let's pull up this tweet, Nick.

01:03:50.720 | Yeah.

01:03:51.760 | My Lord, Trump has cronies of Fox News are killing their own constituents with this anti

01:03:57.040 | vax nonsense.

01:03:57.920 | Yeah.

01:04:00.320 | Do you retract that?

01:04:01.280 | Do I retract it?

01:04:05.280 | I'm trying to look at the date, by the way, this is this is a tweet that Jason put out.

01:04:10.400 | What was the date?

01:04:11.040 | January 4th.

01:04:13.040 | Twenty twenty two that sex pulled up just so yeah, that was only a year ago.

01:04:17.760 | Yeah, I know at this point people were saying that.

01:04:20.960 | No, I get it.

01:04:22.400 | I get it.

01:04:22.880 | Look, this is not this is not a rare this was not a rare sentiment, but I'm saying just

01:04:27.760 | to give this content by this.

01:04:29.360 | Well, hold on a second.

01:04:30.160 | I'm just reading it.

01:04:30.800 | This was showing the deaths of from COVID were happening at a magnitude more by people who

01:04:38.960 | didn't take the vaccine and we know the vaccine was had reduced deaths.

01:04:44.800 | So we still know that correct freeberg the vaccine reduced reduces the cases of deaths,

01:04:49.760 | correct?

01:04:50.080 | Yeah, this new byvalent booster, Eric Topol put out a tweet, I gave you guys the link here,

01:04:56.480 | where he covered a paper that was done recently.

01:05:00.080 | And the paper shows a reduction in hospitalization rate and death rate for folks that are getting

01:05:05.040 | this new byvalent booster.

01:05:06.400 | So but again, that is a benefit.

01:05:08.240 | That is the benefit.

01:05:10.160 | Yeah.

01:05:10.720 | In one's own kind of personal safety.

01:05:12.720 | And there's a risk profile associated with that, as sex is pointing out.

01:05:15.680 | But this notion that the vaccines stop the virus and are a true vaccine in the sense

01:05:21.120 | of how we talk about polio and chicken pox or smallpox and this other stuff.

01:05:25.840 | Not equivalent.

01:05:26.560 | Very freeberg.

01:05:28.400 | Wait, that data, how long after vaccination was that data?

01:05:31.200 | Because I thought that with respect to the vaccine, one of the big problems is that the

01:05:35.680 | benefits only last for two months, unless you're willing to get revaccinated every two months.

01:05:40.320 | No, look, it's not really realistic.

01:05:43.120 | Generally speaking, this is not like a vaccine in the sense of a smallpox or

01:05:51.280 | this is a shot.

01:05:51.920 | It's a it's a it's a modest muting of the effects.

01:05:56.560 | And it's one that people need to take kind of a risk based decision on for one's personal

01:06:00.560 | thing.

01:06:00.720 | But having mandates on whether or not you can go to school and whether or not you can,

01:06:04.880 | you know, be in places and whether or not it's appropriate for workplace setting.

01:06:10.240 | There's still high degrees of infectiousness with this ever evolving virus.

01:06:13.280 | The virus that we have today is not the virus that we had in February of 2020.

01:06:18.160 | It's a very different virus.

01:06:19.680 | And it has evolved to such an extent now and it's continuing to evolve

01:06:24.000 | that it's very difficult to say there's a vaccine for this virus.

01:06:27.600 | It's a it's a why won't you just say that this the so called vaccine has been a failure?

01:06:33.920 | We don't know.

01:06:34.400 | Hold on.

01:06:34.720 | I'm gonna fail.

01:06:36.080 | You're we don't we don't know the full safety implications.

01:06:40.080 | Like I said, I don't want to get too far out of my skis on that.

01:06:42.800 | However, yeah, we know the efficaciousness of it has been a failure for that.

01:06:47.520 | It doesn't last long enough unless you're going to get jabbed six times a year,

01:06:53.120 | which I don't think anybody here would do that.

01:06:55.120 | So it's not necessary because it's we hold on.

01:06:58.240 | There was a time period where it was effective, correct, Friedberg,

01:07:03.440 | and it did reduce deaths massively.

01:07:05.280 | So I think that's the issue that we're talking about here is that now the COVID strains are so weak

01:07:09.760 | that maybe it's not as necessary.

01:07:11.920 | But there was a time period where people were not taking the vaccine.

01:07:15.760 | And Republicans specifically weren't taking the vaccine.

01:07:18.400 | And they were dying at a much higher percentage.

01:07:20.480 | So it didn't if you're defining the vaccine is not getting not transferring the disease.

01:07:25.680 | Sure, it was a failure.

01:07:26.960 | It didn't block like we thought it was.

01:07:28.480 | Reducing death, it did work for a period of time.

01:07:33.280 | If it only lasted for two months, and COVID is still around, and it's basically endemic,

01:07:38.320 | it's everywhere.

01:07:39.120 | How did the vaccine make any difference whatsoever?

01:07:41.040 | I think now it's too much.

01:07:42.160 | But back then it wasn't.

01:07:43.280 | But you know, freeberg freeberg.

01:07:45.120 | Is that true?

01:07:45.600 | What's the question?

01:07:47.600 | I'm losing track of how long does the the lowering the percentage of deaths the benefits of it?

01:07:55.040 | Oh, yes, of low reducing what we've learned is they only last two months.

01:07:58.560 | Is that true?

01:07:59.440 | Yet, it depends on the population.

01:08:01.840 | And yes, there is a decline in the benefit over time, as well as the fact that the virus is

01:08:07.280 | evolving.

01:08:07.680 | Those are both two, yeah, kind of independent things.

01:08:10.160 | And as a result, over time, you know, like, yeah, we got to keep getting boosted or shots and

01:08:14.880 | Pfizer is making a great business out of it.

01:08:16.320 | You're right.

01:08:16.720 | There's a massive economic incentive here for them and Moderna to keep this gravy train rolling.

01:08:22.080 | And there's a massive incentive for government officials, politicians to continue to stand by

01:08:27.360 | what they said before, because otherwise, they're going to be called wrong.

01:08:30.160 | And they're going to get beat up.

01:08:30.960 | Totally.

01:08:31.460 | I feel like I feel like you're making an effort, you're making an effort to stand by what you

01:08:36.080 | previously said, the market, I think we should just come out and say that, look, regardless of

01:08:40.880 | where the safety data ultimately comes out, just based on efficaciousness, we can say that this

01:08:45.680 | thing didn't work.

01:08:46.800 | And therefore mandating it was even worse thing.

01:08:50.480 | Because hold on, we put every we put the drug through this rapid process.

01:08:53.840 | And we didn't let people make an individual cost benefit decision.

01:08:57.440 | We basically herded them into this.

01:08:59.520 | And at best, it didn't do very much.

01:09:02.800 | I don't think that that decision if you if you make that conclusion, I'm not sure that

01:09:06.560 | it gives us a toolkit to do better the next time.

01:09:10.640 | And I think we've all said this, and Friedberg was the one that first really taught us about

01:09:14.320 | this, there will be a next time, unfortunately.

01:09:17.200 | So I think that we have to focus our energy here in acknowledging that the tools that we have

01:09:24.800 | to create these messenger RNA vaccines, and other types of solutions, we are pushing the

01:09:31.760 | boundaries of science and the body is still very poorly understood.

01:09:35.520 | And so the sensitivity and specificity of these drugs may not be what we think up front.

01:09:40.640 | And as a result of that, maybe we need to find a different way of using emergency use

01:09:47.520 | authorization in the future.

01:09:49.600 | And I don't know, David, to your point, I'm beyond my ski tips on scientific

01:09:54.800 | knowledge to know how

01:09:57.680 | I would say as a minimum, that if we're going to do emergency use, it shouldn't be mandated,

01:10:04.240 | let patients decide on their own.

01:10:06.480 | Okay, let's move on.

01:10:07.360 | So we have a moment of agreement question for free.

01:10:09.680 | Would you advise or in your life, would you would you continue to get a booster?

01:10:15.520 | Or are you going to consider getting a booster every year?

01:10:17.920 | No, if they keep them with them.

01:10:19.360 | And now would you advise parents or, you know, adults over 65 or 70 to get one because those

01:10:25.520 | seem to be the high risk group, right?

01:10:27.200 | So if your parents said, should I get it or not,

01:10:30.000 | I would advise advise them to talk to their doctor and their doctor would advise them to do it.

01:10:33.920 | What do you think most doctors would tell somebody above 65 or 70?

01:10:37.760 | At this point, it depends what state they're in at this point, but

01:10:40.240 | basically would be split on political lines.

01:10:43.760 | Unless this virus turns into Ebola, I'm never getting boosted again.

01:10:48.000 | I'll tell you that right now.

01:10:49.040 | What about you guys?

01:10:51.360 | I'm not getting boosted again.

01:10:52.960 | No, I'm not getting I think that speaks volumes.

01:10:55.520 | That's volumes right there.

01:10:56.640 | That's it.

01:10:58.580 | Like we could have just done this in 10 seconds.

01:11:01.200 | What about guys?

01:11:01.760 | We are literally not this year will be banned on every platform.

01:11:04.640 | We're not.

01:11:04.960 | Let's move on.

01:11:05.520 | No, hold on.

01:11:06.320 | Freeberg, but the fact that all of us can arrive at that and then we're worried about

01:11:11.040 | getting banned tells you how screwed up you're right.

01:11:14.560 | Our society is like, you're right.

01:11:16.400 | What we can't like have an honest conversation about this, by the way, the other thing this

01:11:20.000 | is going to do, it's going to inflame a large number of people just hearing us say this.

01:11:23.360 | And it's because people have these deep what's happened is this has now become a sense of

01:11:27.760 | identity, a sense of tribalism and a sense of it's a belief system.

01:11:30.960 | It's no longer about an objective decision.

01:11:32.960 | We saw this with the mass, the mass became the blue became the blue of the red.

01:11:37.360 | So now vaccine is basically, you know, it's become tribal, but that's not going but but

01:11:43.680 | people need to move beyond that because this is a scientific question of cost and benefits

01:11:48.320 | related to this medical treatment.

01:11:50.960 | Okay, let's just move on.

01:11:51.760 | There's too much.

01:11:52.240 | I was speaking to your doctors, not for venture capitalists about your vaccine.

01:11:59.200 | Yeah, speak to us.

01:12:01.360 | By the way, by the way, speak to your doctor and just remember, vaccine manufacturers have

01:12:09.440 | a business to run and politicians have to get reelected.

01:12:11.920 | All right, let's move on because we've gotten stuck on this.

01:12:14.720 | Okay, look, there's been some important developments in Ukraine.

01:12:16.880 | I think we should just cover quickly this week.

01:12:18.640 | There were a bunch of things the Biden administration said they're going to send Abrams tanks as

01:12:22.960 | well as Bradley's and leopard twos.

01:12:26.320 | The Abrams tank in particular is our best most expensive tank.

01:12:30.800 | At the beginning of the war, they said they would not send them.

01:12:33.200 | So they reversed their decision on that.

01:12:35.040 | Now the Ukrainians are saying they want jets as well.

01:12:37.600 | That's sort of the next issue that's going to come up.

01:12:39.440 | The Biden administration also in a New York Times article that came out earlier this week

01:12:44.640 | said that they were warming to the idea of supporting an invasion of Crimea.

01:12:50.320 | Some Europeans like Peter Hitchens are getting very nervous about this level of escalation.

01:12:55.360 | He had a pretty amazing piece talking about the risk of this creating nuclear war.

01:13:00.080 | And even if the Ukrainians prevail in this war, there was a really interesting statement

01:13:05.680 | by Larry Fink at Davos last week saying that he estimated the cost of reconstruction at

01:13:11.280 | $750 billion.

01:13:12.480 | And Fitch Ratings Agency says that Ukraine is headed towards default.

01:13:17.280 | So major, major developments, I think in the war this week, I want to get your guys opinion

01:13:23.280 | on this.

01:13:24.800 | We know from history that wars tend to escalate and to be far more costly than the participants

01:13:30.480 | ever thought.

01:13:31.520 | Is that the track we're on now?

01:13:33.200 | And in hindsight, knowing what we know now, should we regret that we didn't use every

01:13:38.080 | diplomatic tool we had to prevent the war, most notably taking NATO expansion off the

01:13:42.160 | table?

01:13:42.640 | Freeberg, I'll go to you.

01:13:43.600 | It's such a tough situation.

01:13:49.280 | Is the situation escalating to a point where we should be concerned?

01:13:54.320 | You know, there's a lot of information we don't have.

01:13:56.880 | And there's a lot of intelligence gathering and conversations and chatter that we're not

01:14:03.760 | privy to.

01:14:04.260 | So to sit here and kind of be an armchair mechanic on this stuff, I don't know what

01:14:11.280 | diplomatic conversations have gone on or are going on.

01:14:14.400 | All I know is what we're reading on the internet, right?

01:14:17.360 | So I'm not, I don't have private, I don't have private, look, this war is extremely

01:14:22.480 | well covered.

01:14:23.520 | And there are no diplomatic conversations going on.

01:14:26.000 | Yeah.

01:14:26.640 | So I think we're escalating the war.

01:14:29.360 | I mean, we got Jake Ellertramoth in here.

01:14:31.680 | Do you guys have any concerns about the direction this is headed at all?

01:14:35.680 | Yes, I'm concerned.

01:14:36.960 | I also agree with Freeberg that I don't think we have all the information.

01:14:40.480 | But I'm not exactly sure what we can do right now.

01:14:45.200 | It's it seems like they have decided that there is a play to exert a lot of pressure

01:14:52.160 | come the spring.

01:14:53.600 | And that's something that you've mentioned as a very likely thing.

01:14:56.960 | And so I guess the calculus on the ground is that there's a way to really push Russia

01:15:01.680 | into a corner.

01:15:02.400 | And the only way to do that is with more military support.

01:15:09.600 | And then on the heels of that, David, the link that you sent is then it's not just the

01:15:14.240 | war machine that is now spinning up, but it's the aftermarket financial services infrastructure

01:15:20.240 | that's also spinning up or Larry, Larry Fink, even the grift aspect of this war.

01:15:24.080 | Well, yeah, we're Larry Fink was like, hey, they're gonna need three quarters of a trillion

01:15:28.400 | dollars of reconstruction support.

01:15:30.080 | We saw that play out in Iraq as well, where at first it was the war machine, and then

01:15:35.360 | it was the reconstruction machine.

01:15:37.040 | And together, it was trillions and trillions.

01:15:38.880 | By the way, you know what that's called?

01:15:40.320 | Those are called infrastructure funds.

01:15:42.720 | And those infrastructure funds raise hundreds of billions of dollars to make investments

01:15:47.440 | to build new infrastructure in markets that need it and that are willing to pay for it.

01:15:51.520 | And it will likely end up being kind of long term debt assumed by that region to pay to

01:15:56.320 | do this work and the beneficiaries will be the investors and owners of those infrastructure

01:16:00.400 | funds.

01:16:01.200 | I think there's two sides to this sacks that are worth kind of noting one is the telegraphing

01:16:05.440 | of this decision, because it's not being done secretly, it's being done out in the open.

01:16:10.320 | There's certainly a calculus to that.

01:16:12.400 | Why are they telegraphing this?

01:16:13.600 | And what do they intend to do with that messaging being put out there like this?

01:16:18.480 | And it may be that it's to assert or assume a stronger negotiating position, certainly

01:16:23.680 | to go into some sort of, you know, mild, modest exit or settlement coming out of this thing.

01:16:28.960 | But you're right, the flip side is and the cost here is one of extreme outcome, which

01:16:33.520 | is there may be a France Ferdinand moment here, where one thing goes too far and triggers

01:16:40.080 | a cataclysmic outcome.

01:16:41.760 | And in this case, the cataclysmic outcome is tactical nuclear weapons and tactical nuclear

01:16:48.080 | weapons as we've talked about.

01:16:49.360 | And I think I've I had some conversations and some dinners I shared with you guys with

01:16:54.080 | some folks in the intelligence community.

01:16:56.480 | And this has been talked about by ex intelligence community folks publicly are a key part of

01:17:01.440 | the Russian war playbook that this is there is a tactical nuclear weapon response system

01:17:08.080 | that is in place.

01:17:08.880 | And you know, these are very possible paths that we could find ourselves kind of walking

01:17:15.360 | down.

01:17:15.920 | Obviously, were that to happen, it would be a massive escalation.

01:17:18.720 | And you're right, there could be a France Ferdinand kind of moment that emerges by shaking

01:17:24.560 | the cage and lighting a fire.

01:17:26.480 | And there may be a stronger negotiating position to get to a settlement faster by doing this.

01:17:31.680 | I don't have a strong point of view on the probability of either of those and why but

01:17:36.560 | I think you know, maybe both are certainly in play here.

01:17:40.080 | Yeah, it was interesting to me that the Wall Street Journal on the heels of all of this

01:17:43.360 | stuff also published an article about Roman Abramovich.

01:17:47.760 | And the interesting thing about it was a quote in the article that effectively said something

01:17:51.760 | tantamount to well now that he's proven not as useful, we need to target him with sanctions.

01:18:01.360 | So I just think that what all of this is, is now sort of they're entering the endgame,

01:18:06.160 | David, to use a chess analogy.

01:18:07.840 | And it looks like they're setting the wheels in motion to kind of put all the pieces together

01:18:17.200 | for a negotiated settlement.

01:18:18.800 | Do we know that?

01:18:20.400 | I mean, well, but is it the endgame or is it continual escalation?

01:18:23.840 | I mean, J. Cal, at the beginning of the war, we didn't want to give the Ukrainians Abrams

01:18:27.840 | tanks because they were that was considered too provocative.

01:18:31.280 | Now we're giving them to them.

01:18:32.400 | I think what's going on here is and I suspected this, you know, from the beginnings that we are

01:18:39.760 | trying to engage them in a war of attrition, and it's working.

01:18:43.200 | And so I think the West collectively is trying to further that goal of just making Russia

01:18:49.680 | economically, politically, militarily, culturally, irrelevant or ankled in some way.

01:18:55.760 | And if you think about what's now happening with energy, you know, his primary export,

01:19:02.000 | he is going to lose those customers and his customers will be, you know, bottom feeding

01:19:06.480 | India, China, low cost, you know, oil, and he is going to be a pariah.

01:19:11.280 | So what I'm looking at is if there's going to be a negotiated settlement this year,

01:19:14.160 | what is the next five or 10 years going to look like for Russia?

01:19:16.880 | What is their place in the world going to be?

01:19:18.800 | The West is never going to trust them again.

01:19:20.880 | The Germans are never going to buy their oil again.

01:19:22.960 | Everybody is going to be looking for ways to distance themselves from so how does he

01:19:27.200 | have an exit ramp?

01:19:28.000 | And we talked about this from the get go here on this podcast is what's the golden bridge

01:19:32.320 | for him to retreat across.

01:19:33.440 | And we really need to find that golden bridge quickly, because I do think this is starting

01:19:39.360 | to look desperate for him.

01:19:40.640 | The West keeps giving better and better munitions, he keeps losing.

01:19:44.720 | Economically, he's going to keep losing.

01:19:46.960 | And politically, who would ever want to engage Putin in anything with, you know, any kind

01:19:52.240 | of cultural or international trade, it's going to be a disaster for him.

01:19:58.000 | So this war of attrition has to resolve itself with some sort of settlement.

01:20:03.760 | But we just can't go on for two or three years, can it?

01:20:06.560 | I mean, it has to settle at some point.

01:20:08.400 | Dr. Ken Savage I think that it certainly can go on.

01:20:12.080 | And I think that history proves that wars tend to escalate and the costs incurred are

01:20:16.560 | much greater, in many cases, than participants ever dreamed of.

01:20:20.880 | And if they had to go and do it all over again, they wouldn't have gotten into it in the first

01:20:24.560 | place.

01:20:25.520 | So yeah, I think this is concerning.

01:20:28.800 | I think, you know, the crazy thing is-

01:20:30.240 | Dr. Ken Savage Do you think it is a war of attrition strategy?

01:20:31.840 | Dr. Mark McClendon Yeah, I think it has developed into a war

01:20:34.640 | of attrition.

01:20:35.200 | And I think you're right that-

01:20:36.480 | Dr. Ken Savage Do you think that was by design?

01:20:39.040 | Dr. Mark McClendon I think there's two possibilities, J. Cal.

01:20:41.280 | I think that the maybe the more cynical or realistic members of the administration think

01:20:47.520 | there's benefit in wearing Russia down and grinding them down.

01:20:51.040 | However, I also think there's kind of a true believer camp that sees pushing Russia out

01:20:56.080 | of Ukraine, nothing less than that will do.

01:20:58.080 | And we have to punish their aggression, maybe they want regime change.

01:21:02.000 | I think there's dueling factions in the administration.

01:21:03.920 | Remember, General Milley, several months ago said that everything that the Ukrainians could

01:21:08.480 | achieve militarily just about had been done, and they should negotiate.

01:21:12.160 | And even Jake Sullivan had said that they should take Crimea off the table.

01:21:16.080 | That was just the leaks a few months ago.

01:21:18.640 | Now the administration is leaking that they're going to support a Crimean invasion.

01:21:22.320 | So I think there's these both schools within the administration, the true believers, the

01:21:27.680 | more cynical folks.

01:21:29.920 | And it feels to me like the true believers are on top right now, because we just keep

01:21:34.800 | escalating this war more and more.

01:21:36.880 | And I think that's dangerous.

01:21:38.160 | That polarizes the outcomes, right?

01:21:39.760 | So I think, J. Cal, if you had your way, it sounds like you would grind the Russians down.

01:21:44.720 | But at a certain point, you would say enough is enough.

01:21:47.600 | And like a poker player, like you do at the poker table, you'd say, "I won my Prius for

01:21:54.000 | the night.

01:21:54.880 | I don't need to risk that to win a Tesla.

01:21:56.960 | So I'm going to cash in my chips and get away, walk up, walk away," right?

01:22:00.960 | Yeah, I wish I could do that.

01:22:03.520 | I wish I could do that consistently.

01:22:05.120 | Yeah, exactly.

01:22:06.480 | Getting up from the table is a rare skill.

01:22:08.800 | That's right.

01:22:10.000 | But I'm not sure the administration is getting up from the table.

01:22:12.480 | I mean, I think we've achieved, the American position on this, I think has largely been

01:22:17.680 | achieved.

01:22:18.080 | We've prevented Russia from taking over Ukraine.

01:22:21.680 | We've prevented, we've basically shifted Europe onto American natural gas.

01:22:26.560 | We've destroyed Nord Stream.

01:22:27.840 | I think we're close to achieving our major objectives.

01:22:31.680 | But I'm not sure we're going to stop there.

01:22:34.080 | Yeah.

01:22:35.600 | All right.

01:22:36.640 | Anyway, all right, let's move on.

01:22:37.600 | Freeberg, you have a science corner.

01:22:39.120 | I was going to share the, this was last week, I think we talked about, talking about it

01:22:44.640 | this week.

01:22:45.120 | So there was a paper that is a pretty compelling paper published by a team led out of Harvard

01:22:52.400 | on identifying what may be the core driver of aging and demonstration on an ability to

01:23:01.760 | kind of reverse aging.

01:23:03.280 | So I'll just start really quickly that, you know, in the human body, we have many different

01:23:08.480 | types of cells, right, we have 200, roughly different kinds of cells, an eye cell, a skin

01:23:12.640 | cell, a brain cell, a heart cell, they all have the same DNA, the same genetic code,

01:23:17.920 | the same genome at the nucleus of that cell.

01:23:20.880 | What makes those cells different, and the reason they act and behave differently, is

01:23:24.560 | they have different gene expression, meaning different genes in that cell are turned on

01:23:29.440 | and off.

01:23:30.240 | And when a gene is turned on, the protein that that gene codes for is expressed and

01:23:35.440 | made in the cell, and the genes that are off those proteins are not made.

01:23:38.880 | And remember, proteins are the biochemical machines in biology.

01:23:42.720 | So when certain proteins are produced, they do stuff and other proteins don't do stuff

01:23:46.560 | and the cell acts and behaves very differently.

01:23:48.720 | So some cells when you turn genes on and off, you get a neuron, some cells, you turn them

01:23:52.800 | on and off, you get a muscle cell in your bicep, some of them, you get a heart cell.

01:23:56.000 | And so all of these cells are differentiated by the genes that are expressed.

01:24:02.640 | The general term for the expression of genes is the epigenome.

01:24:06.400 | And an epigenome basically refers to these systems whereby certain parts of the DNA,

01:24:14.000 | certain segments of genes are uncoiled a little bit.

01:24:18.720 | So if you zoom in on DNA, you know, there's 23 chromosomes, they're tightly wrapped in

01:24:23.680 | these coils.

01:24:24.880 | And when you go even closer, you see that there's these segments called nucleosomes.

01:24:28.640 | And a nucleosome means it's like a bead, and a bunch of DNA is wrapped around the bead.

01:24:32.960 | And how closely those beads are together, how much the DNA is wrapped, allows a segment

01:24:37.760 | of the DNA to be opened up, and then expressed, meaning copies of the DNA are turned into

01:24:43.040 | RNA, which floats into this thing called the ribosome and the ribosome is the protein printer.

01:24:48.000 | So the more these little segments of genome are exposed, the more they're expressed.

01:24:52.240 | And there are certain chemicals, these methyls and acetyls that kind of attach to the genome

01:24:57.120 | and certain elements that allow parts of the chromosome to wrap up and get really tightly

01:25:01.920 | bound or to unwrap and to express the gene.

01:25:05.360 | So the epigenome is almost you can think about it like the software, and the genome or the

01:25:10.880 | DNA is the hardware.

01:25:12.000 | And so the hardware basically defines what you can make.

01:25:15.280 | The epigenome defines what is being made, what stuff is turned on and what stuff is

01:25:18.720 | turned off.

01:25:19.200 | So this paper and this work that was done, historically, we've always thought that aging

01:25:24.560 | meant that over time, the DNA in our cells was mutating, and errors were accumulating

01:25:29.280 | in the DNA.

01:25:30.160 | And as a result of those errors, the cells start to dysfunction.

01:25:33.280 | And what these guys really did a good job of proving with this paper is that it may

01:25:38.080 | not be mutations in the DNA that's causing aging, but actually changes in the epigenome,

01:25:43.520 | and that the DNA remains pretty stable and pretty consistent over time.

01:25:48.000 | And the way they did this is they broke the DNA and just so you guys know, every second

01:25:52.080 | of your life, about a million breaks in DNA in cells throughout your body are happening,

01:25:56.960 | your DNA is being broken up.

01:25:58.160 | And then there's all this machinery in your cell that fixes the DNA when it breaks.

01:26:02.640 | Now, what happens when it fixes it, it turns out it's actually really good at fixing it

01:26:06.560 | and the DNA doesn't change.

01:26:07.840 | And we historically thought that the DNA changed a lot, and mutations accumulate over time.

01:26:12.480 | But in reality, what may be happening is as your DNA gets fixed, the epigenome, the acetyl

01:26:18.640 | and methyl groups on the gene on the chromosome, don't get put in the right place.

01:26:24.720 | And over time, what happens is the epigenome degrades.

01:26:29.120 | And this is considered and a lot of people refer to this now as the information theory

01:26:32.720 | of aging, you can kind of think about making a lot of copies of software, a lot of copies

01:26:37.120 | of a photo in a photo printer over time.

01:26:39.440 | And every time you make a copy, there's a little error, a little error, and those errors

01:26:42.560 | accumulate.

01:26:43.520 | And the errors that accumulate cause the epigenome to change.

01:26:46.400 | And as a result, certain genes are turned on, that are supposed to be off, and certain

01:26:50.720 | genes are turned off that are supposed to be turned on.

01:26:53.440 | And then those cells start to get dysfunctional, because the wrong proteins are being made

01:26:57.840 | in the cell can no longer do what it's supposed to do.

01:27:00.240 | So what these guys could be the ribosome as well that gets screwed up over time, the printer,

01:27:05.600 | the ribosome is a pretty, you know, static protein, it just does its thing.

01:27:11.440 | And there's hundreds of ribosomes in a cell.

01:27:13.120 | So you know, if one of them's dysfunctional, it just doesn't do anything.

01:27:16.560 | And then the other ones kind of step in and do it.

01:27:18.080 | So the ribosomes are constantly running.

01:27:21.280 | What these guys did is they basically took two mice, two populations of mice, and they

01:27:25.280 | gave the one population of mice a certain thing that caused its DNA to break at three

01:27:30.640 | times the rate of the other population.

01:27:32.880 | And then as the DNA broke, they could, they could see that this mouse population got older

01:27:38.000 | and older faster.

01:27:39.760 | And by a bunch of measures on how do you measure age.

01:27:42.480 | But what they did is they then measured they then sequence the DNA of the two populations

01:27:46.880 | of mice.

01:27:47.920 | And what they showed is that the older mice, the ones that had their DNA changing a lot,

01:27:53.040 | by the way, these were genetically identical mice, the ones that had their DNA broken a

01:27:57.040 | lot more, they had the correct genome, their genome was the exact same as the other mice

01:28:01.920 | that stayed young.

01:28:03.840 | And so what that tells us is that it's the epigenome and not the DNA itself that's changing.

01:28:09.400 | So then here's what they did.

01:28:10.760 | Remember, last year, we talked about Yamanaka factors, which are these four proteins, these

01:28:14.920 | four molecules that can be applied to DNA to a cell.

01:28:19.080 | And they cause all of the gene expression to reset back to looking like a stem cell.

01:28:23.880 | Remember, all of those differentiated cells come from a stem cell.

01:28:27.360 | And when they did that, the older population of mice suddenly started to act younger, and

01:28:32.240 | all of the measures of age reversed.

01:28:34.880 | And they did this across different tissue types.

01:28:37.040 | They measure this in a lot of different ways, cognitive function, health, cellular health,

01:28:42.040 | etc.

01:28:43.040 | And so it is not just a fantastic new proof point of how Yamanaka factors can actually

01:28:48.360 | reverse age, but it demonstrates that the epigenome itself is what is the core driver

01:28:54.320 | of aging.

01:28:55.880 | And you guys remember Altos labs raised $3 billion in a seed round last year.

01:28:59.520 | And remember, at the end of 21, I said like Yamanaka factors and aging research is going

01:29:03.480 | to be kind of the next hot thing.

01:29:04.800 | I think this paper is going to be one of the seminal papers that really kind of illustrates

01:29:08.960 | and proves the point that this epigenome is the driver of aging.

01:29:13.320 | And as we now are investing a lot of money in figuring out how Yamanaka factors and other

01:29:17.840 | transcription factors like the Yamanaka factors can be applied in specific ways to actually

01:29:22.800 | reverse aging and cause the cells to start functioning correctly again, and then people

01:29:27.600 | will start to act and resolve in a healthy way.

01:29:30.680 | Once again, there's a lot of work to go between here and there.

01:29:34.060 | But now we have a much more kind of definitive proof point that this information theory of

01:29:37.160 | aging may be real, that it's tied to the epigenome, and that there are solutions that can work.

01:29:42.560 | And we have to figure out how to put them together and how to engineer a fantastic outcome.

01:29:46.360 | So really great paper by a team led out of Harvard, I think really validates a lot of

01:29:51.840 | the work and the money that's going into the space, both in the public and the private

01:29:55.560 | sector.

01:29:56.980 | And obviously a lot of new startups kind of chasing this opportunity to figure out how

01:30:00.560 | we can use these transcription factors to reverse aging, and that this may end up leading

01:30:05.320 | us to, you know, a much kind of healthy life.

01:30:07.640 | And by the way, when they applied those Yamanaka factors to the mice, the mice lived 107% longer

01:30:14.120 | than they were supposed to.

01:30:15.440 | But more importantly, the health span as it's defined, improved.

01:30:18.680 | So the mice not only lived longer, but they actually lived healthier, they're all the

01:30:22.560 | measures of healthiness in the body improved.

01:30:24.880 | So it's a really kind of freeberg, is this going to help us in the next 10 years?

01:30:28.840 | It may, yeah, it's very well made.

01:30:30.480 | There are now some therapeutic

01:30:32.520 | I feel like science quarter should only discuss things that can happen in the next few years.

01:30:42.200 | Let's put it that way.

01:30:43.200 | Or is that the wrong way to look at it?

01:30:44.320 | I'll tell you, I'll tell you one way, one thing for sure, you can make you can make

01:30:46.760 | money as an investor over the next 10 years, in finding the right teams that are going

01:30:50.320 | to have the highest likelihood of progressing clinical trials in this space.

01:30:53.480 | I will say that there may be clinical trials that can come to market really fast, particularly

01:30:57.480 | with kind of these ex vivo therapeutics, where you take cells out of your body, apply the

01:31:01.440 | Yamanaka factors, and then put them back in your body for certain tissue types, like i

01:31:05.600 | cells, for example, or T cells in your blood.

01:31:07.520 | There's a lot of ways that this may come to market faster.

01:31:10.160 | And it's not just about reversing your age overall, but reversing the age of certain

01:31:13.920 | cell types in your body that can then have profound health impacts in the near term.

01:31:17.880 | So that's the kind of stuff that's going to start to come through clinical stage sooner

01:31:21.140 | than later.

01:31:22.140 | And then maybe, you know, some number of years down the road, we figure out a way to reverse

01:31:25.320 | the age and all the cells in our body, and the whole body becomes more youthful.

01:31:29.040 | But for now, it's going to be targeted cells in a very specific way to reverse aging and

01:31:32.800 | improve health.

01:31:34.680 | Very powerful, very interesting, lots of investment opportunity.

01:31:38.480 | And, you know, certainly some some some very smart folks.

01:31:42.000 | What do you think the realistic timeframe is for like, you know, reversing aging?

01:31:47.280 | Because we need that.

01:31:49.080 | 30 years.

01:31:50.080 | 30 years?

01:31:51.080 | Shit.

01:31:52.080 | But I think I'll be 80.

01:31:53.080 | But that's when you'll need it the most.

01:31:54.080 | But so, wait, so if we live to 80, does that mean we're gonna be able to like live to 100?

01:32:05.220 | Because we'll be able to like reverse age?

01:32:06.540 | Well, it depends.

01:32:07.540 | I think the question is, can you live well to 100?

01:32:10.540 | I think that's the question.

01:32:11.540 | We don't know.

01:32:12.540 | But if you could reverse aging?

01:32:14.340 | Yeah, but we don't know what that means.

01:32:16.760 | Because there's all kinds of things that you inherit over time that this may not, for example,

01:32:20.860 | like if you have long term heart disease, I could see how the cells could get healthier,

01:32:26.060 | but it can't eliminate the plaque in your arteries.

01:32:29.180 | Right, you know, that's hard calcium.

01:32:32.420 | So that should that shits there.

01:32:34.820 | So you have to live well.

01:32:36.540 | Same with Alzheimer's, like Alzheimer's has plaque, there's a plaque element, but the

01:32:40.900 | cause of that and the cellular dysfunction may be reversible.

01:32:44.400 | It could definitely be that like injury rates of older people, hips, knees, shoulders, arms,

01:32:50.340 | all the sort of like soft musculoskeletal stuff you can you can really do a good job

01:32:55.260 | of because at the same time as you get older, like people intake less protein, they process

01:33:00.460 | it less well, you lose a lot of muscle mass as you get older.

01:33:03.520 | Those are things that I think are like short term solutions.

01:33:06.540 | But no, to be honest with you, Saks, the stuff that really can screw you, which is heart

01:33:10.660 | disease and brain function, this probably won't do much for a long time.

01:33:15.220 | So check out Screwed.

01:33:16.620 | I'm in the best shape I've been in 20 years.

01:33:20.340 | I feel great.

01:33:21.340 | Can you reverse whatever is wrong with J. Keller is that in the pot category?

01:33:24.740 | Can I do a quality of life shout out?

01:33:28.860 | I got an email, we all got it from a guy who I won't say just to not to violate his privacy,

01:33:37.020 | but he's in Saskatchewan.

01:33:38.620 | He listens to the pod or his father is and made him get a prenuval scan, flew the father

01:33:44.940 | to Vancouver, they found a five centimeter cancerous tumor on his kidney.

01:33:49.540 | And three days ago had it removed and looks like guys totally healthy and well, eliminated

01:33:56.100 | here saying so another live saved.

01:34:00.300 | But I wanted to show you guys a picture.

01:34:01.580 | So yesterday, I went to Los Angeles to see my interventional cardiologist.

01:34:07.380 | And what they do is they do the what's called a contrast CT scan.

01:34:10.400 | So they put you into an IV and they put this contrast inside of your neck.

01:34:14.660 | You want to put throw the picture up, please.

01:34:17.300 | And then they use all the software to actually create an extremely accurate 3d model of your

01:34:22.060 | heart.

01:34:23.540 | And what they can do is go inside of your arteries and actually measure the calcium

01:34:27.620 | buildup.

01:34:28.620 | I've mentioned this before this, this is a service called heart flow h e a r t f l o

01:34:34.180 | w.

01:34:37.260 | In any event, my calcium score is still zero.

01:34:39.500 | Thank God touchwood keep grinding.

01:34:43.280 | But I just wanted to put this out there for anybody who has a history of heart disease

01:34:48.100 | in their family for them or for their parents or what have you.

01:34:52.340 | If you go and ask your doctor, this is a third party service that they can do it, you go

01:34:56.300 | get a contrast CT.

01:34:58.820 | And you can get a very accurate sense of your heart health.

01:35:02.620 | This is amazing.

01:35:03.620 | They they found it's incredible.

01:35:05.580 | They found that you have a heart.

01:35:07.660 | They did find that I have a heart.

01:35:09.380 | This is this is incredible technology.

01:35:11.020 | Because all of us we would try to find if you had a heart for all this 112 episodes,

01:35:16.500 | Dr. Carlsberg was shocked.

01:35:18.140 | They found a heart.

01:35:20.140 | It looked huge.

01:35:21.420 | It looked like secretariat.

01:35:22.420 | He's got a big heart.

01:35:23.420 | Yeah.

01:35:24.420 | I do have a big heart boys, as you guys know.

01:35:28.420 | No, I mean, this is shocking for the audience.

01:35:30.980 | Actual size that can't be actual size.

01:35:33.420 | It's bigger than this brain.

01:35:34.740 | It's got a big heart.

01:35:35.820 | Okay, glad you're healthy, bestie.

01:35:38.820 | That's fantastic.

01:35:39.820 | So go get go get a heart flow.

01:35:41.020 | If anybody has heart disease, go talk to your doctor.

01:35:43.140 | All right.

01:35:44.140 | Well, for David Sachs, was it was a moderation?

01:35:46.860 | Okay.

01:35:47.860 | Yeah, I mean, listen, it was funny as if you were doing a J. Callum.

01:35:51.820 | All right, fairness.

01:35:53.020 | I'll come back to moderate next week.

01:35:54.340 | I'll model.

01:35:55.340 | I'll be honest with you.

01:35:56.340 | I would give both the Davids a robotic B minus C plus.

01:36:02.700 | I think they're better off opining than moderating.

01:36:06.100 | Okay.

01:36:07.100 | And I think that Jason really doesn't have anything interesting to say.

01:36:09.820 | So he's better off moderating.

01:36:10.820 | I don't know.

01:36:11.820 | Do you want to like my comments last week?

01:36:14.660 | And then we can minimize the number of times he finds any random way to take it back to

01:36:19.620 | virtue signaling and genuflecting about China.

01:36:22.060 | I was going to ask Jason what he thought about the Cowboys 49ers game where Kittle was an

01:36:29.100 | ineligible downfield receiver and they didn't call a penalty.

01:36:32.580 | Very important catch for that game that again, the Cowboys now losing every single time they

01:36:36.860 | get to the playoffs.

01:36:38.780 | But I didn't want to ask you because I was I thought that you'd veer towards Xi Jinping

01:36:42.420 | and some China comment.

01:36:44.700 | No.

01:36:46.220 | Any genuflecting would you like to do before you go back to your I will admit that the

01:36:51.100 | moderation thing is harder than it looks.

01:36:53.900 | Well, it's harder than it looks to be entertaining.

01:36:57.000 | I think that's the thing.

01:36:59.220 | I think J. Cal an A to A plus on is entertaining.

01:37:03.180 | Thank you.

01:37:04.180 | A plus.

01:37:05.180 | A plus moderator.

01:37:06.180 | Get back to your job, J. Cal.

01:37:07.180 | I will come back next week and moderate.

01:37:09.580 | I have been under the weather.

01:37:11.860 | Pass the ball and let us put the ball in the basket.

01:37:14.540 | I will put the ball exactly where you each like it perfectly.

01:37:18.660 | Look for some great assists coming next week when J. Cal is back at 100% strength.

01:37:22.300 | Thanks to the Davids for filling in for me for the last two weeks and we'll see you all

01:37:26.260 | next time.

01:37:27.260 | Love you all.

01:37:28.260 | Love you, boys.

01:37:29.260 | Love you, guys.

01:37:30.260 | We'll let your winners ride.

01:37:31.260 | Rainman David Sasson.

01:37:32.260 | We open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

01:37:33.260 | Love you, Weston.

01:37:34.260 | I'm the queen of King Kong.

01:37:35.260 | Besties are gone.

01:37:36.260 | That's my dog taking a notice in your driveway.

01:37:37.260 | What are you doing?

01:37:38.260 | I'm just trying to help.

01:37:39.260 | I don't know what you're doing.

01:37:40.260 | I'm just trying to help.

01:37:41.260 | I'm just trying to help.

01:37:42.260 | I'm just trying to help.

01:37:43.260 | I'm just trying to help.

01:37:44.260 | I'm just trying to help.

01:37:45.260 | I'm just trying to help.

01:37:46.260 | I'm just trying to help.

01:37:47.260 | I'm just trying to help.

01:37:48.260 | I'm just trying to help.

01:37:49.260 | I'm just trying to help.

01:37:50.260 | *music*

01:38:09.800 | *music*

01:38:15.840 | BESTIES ARE BACK

01:38:16.900 | *music*

01:38:27.660 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

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

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