back to indexE39: West coast super drought & climate crisis, Nuclear virtue signaling, chaos in SF & more
Chapters
0:0 Super drought & climate crisis on the west coast
25:53 Nuclear energy, virtue signaling, cognitive laziness, positive signals of optimism
36:50 Friedberg's "anti-science" theory
44:48 San Francisco chaos, "crime is down" controversy, viral crime videos
59:42 Are Israel's recent COVID vaccine findings problematic?
00:00:00.160 |
what did your doctor give you to make you lose all this weight what is your celebrity doctor 00:00:04.160 |
giving you tell the truth do you get that new shot people people on twitter are like your 00:00:08.480 |
your twitter account sounding a lot more like jay count and i'm like i think we're on the same diet 00:00:13.040 |
i think that's what's going on here in three two let your winners ride brain man david sacks 00:00:26.240 |
and instead we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy 00:00:29.600 |
hey everybody hey everybody welcome to another episode of the all in 00:00:38.640 |
pod with us today of course the queen of quinoa and from his castle in italy the cackling 00:00:46.320 |
uh dictator chamath palihapitiya nice gardenias and back from his big 00:00:55.200 |
big battle his brawl unblocked and undefeated the rain man himself david sacks and judging by 00:01:03.600 |
the comments uh i'd say dominant oh you read the comments just another sign of your obsession with 00:01:10.400 |
how you proceed don't like don't even i never read comments don't rule number one don't read 00:01:15.520 |
the comments we're not doing it again it shows because you're not listening to the comments so 00:01:19.040 |
it makes sense oh okay go ahead and you got your whole troll army how many people have you hired on 00:01:24.720 |
your social media team to troll me from anonymous accounts on twitter now to prove your points 00:01:29.760 |
now you're paranoid too all right i'm not gonna don't be paranoid don't be paranoid anyway look 00:01:34.800 |
we've patched things up don't break the peace we have detente all right so freeburg is busy uh 00:01:44.480 |
writing tweet storms now um about the drought in california which seems to be uh just gonna be a 00:01:54.000 |
really bad year basically so freeburg walk us through it how bad is california's drought going 00:01:58.640 |
to be this year so the drought is already very bad um i put out a lot of tweets at two in the 00:02:03.600 |
morning last night i think i drank way too much caffeine yesterday i'm in the mountains and like 00:02:07.280 |
the only way i can avoid having headaches is like drinking caffeine all day and it 00:02:10.640 |
was a mistake it kept me up all night you're sure it's not fair 00:02:13.680 |
maybe you're so excited about this that you just can't sleep when you're up into needles 00:02:23.280 |
nick you could beat this out nick you gotta be no no keep that keep that so 00:02:29.120 |
you know the the big tweet storm i put out at two in the morning last night kind of highlighted that 00:02:35.280 |
there was a paper published in 2018 2019 that showed how you know north america particularly 00:02:42.880 |
the western half of north america is in this you know mega drought that we haven't seen in 00:02:47.360 |
you know 500 plus years and since that paper was published you know um in 2019 conditions 00:02:53.120 |
have only worsened we talked about this a few pods ago but like the snowpack level in california 00:02:59.200 |
reached zero percent throughout the entire state by june 1st that has never happened before 00:03:04.160 |
temperatures in british columbia as you guys know reached over 120 degrees for several days 00:03:09.360 |
in a row last week which has never been seen in history in british columbia um you know there was 00:03:14.320 |
a paper published today that estimates that over a billion um animals and life forms were wiped 00:03:19.120 |
out in the coastal region of british columbia because of this heat wave 00:03:22.960 |
um and the temperatures in in california are obviously excessive as well not as bad as they 00:03:27.200 |
were last year but what matters most is that the moisture conditions in our forest land is lower 00:03:32.320 |
than we've ever seen at this time of year in history and so this all sets us up and and the 00:03:37.920 |
other kind of big consequence the high temperatures is causing an increased demand for air conditioners 00:03:42.160 |
that's the big variable in power demand on all grids and the low snowpack means that we're not 00:03:47.120 |
getting hydroelectric power hydroelectric power is down by 70 percent in the state of california 00:03:52.800 |
over where we were in 2019 because there's no snow that's melting causing the rivers to flow 00:03:58.000 |
and about 11 to 15 percent of our state's electricity comes from hydroelectric power 00:04:02.160 |
so we're going to have more power demand we have less power available we have extremely dry forests 00:04:07.360 |
and so this is setting us up for a number of possible disasters this year and so rather than 00:04:13.600 |
just trying to sound the alarm bells what i'm pointing out is that there may be some things that 00:04:16.880 |
we should be thinking about doing to try and get ahead of some of the consequences of these big 00:04:22.640 |
you know having enough masks for people to breathe outside so we don't have to shut down schools and 00:04:26.560 |
shut down outdoor work and all the things that might happen having community centers that have 00:04:30.960 |
power available the state is scrambling to find excess power on the grid right now but um you know 00:04:36.320 |
it just highlights that there's a moment here that is almost like where we were going into covid 00:04:40.480 |
it may not happen but the probability is high enough that something bad may happen that we 00:04:45.520 |
should probably start to get prepared for it you know we should probably be talking about 00:04:49.920 |
the things we're doing to get prepared for it and we're talking about and we should be 00:04:52.480 |
talking about the things we're going to do to make sure that communities are safe and people 00:04:55.040 |
are safe and businesses can keep operating because if the state of california has 150 aqi which is the 00:05:00.480 |
air quality index workers can't work outside and all the outdoor work which employs three million 00:05:05.760 |
californians has to shut down and you know you kind of start to add these things up it's like 00:05:09.200 |
what are we going to do as this happens not if this happens and we should kind of be planning for it 00:05:13.600 |
and i don't see much happening in terms of planning and and preparation and talking about 00:05:18.880 |
the opportunity history rhymes because if you remember uh 00:05:22.320 |
and this is all going into a recall election in the fall uh this was a different but kind 00:05:27.920 |
of equivalent setup where you guys remember we were having all these blackouts and brownouts 00:05:32.720 |
when uh gray davis was recalled and then schwarzenegger just swooped up out of nowhere and 00:05:38.160 |
you know people thought oh there's no chance and people were just frustrated because the 00:05:42.640 |
quality of life took a measurable step backwards uh in the intervening six or nine months before 00:05:48.800 |
the recall election and so it'll be really interesting to see how gavin 00:05:52.160 |
newsom manages all of this because if he can't get the state's act together and 00:05:57.040 |
you have all of these issues at hand and a credible candidate emerges um you could have 00:06:06.240 |
some really interesting political fireworks in september a big part of this correct me if i'm 00:06:10.400 |
wrong friedberg is that we live in essentially like a lot of desert area here in california and 00:06:16.160 |
we just haven't invested in the desalinization plants we have one that's come on since 2005 00:06:22.000 |
and i think there's another one in socal that was mothballed and they during the last drought 00:06:26.560 |
wanted to open it up again but we now have one in carlsbad the uh claude budd louis carlsbad 00:06:34.480 |
desalinization plant that is now i think that cost us a billion bucks but israel correct me if i'm 00:06:39.920 |
wrong is now they charge three times as much for water than we do so people take water seriously 00:06:45.360 |
and they actually monitor their water usage and they have desalinization and they have more water 00:06:51.840 |
than they need per capita well desal doesn't really solve a number of these problems that 00:06:56.320 |
i'm highlighting you know the probability of the the forest land on the west coast not just in 00:07:01.200 |
california but all up and down the west coast catching on fire is very high no number of desal 00:07:05.440 |
plants is going to put out those fires when that happens the air quality is going to get really bad 00:07:09.760 |
you know like we saw last year i don't know you guys remember i escaped to lake michigan last 00:07:13.520 |
summer when the threads yeah yeah and it was um it was insane you know it doesn't desal plants don't 00:07:21.680 |
solve the air quality problem where people can't work outside your kids can't go to school etc etc 00:07:26.000 |
desal plants don't solve the problem of hydroelectric plants which requires snowpack 00:07:31.520 |
to melt to get rivers to run to turn those turbines to generate electricity for the state 00:07:36.160 |
nuclear would solve that though nuclear would solve that certainly and so you know the point is 00:07:41.440 |
we're kind of reaching this apex of are we going to do climate change adaptation are we going to 00:07:46.640 |
have um you know kind of long-term systemic solutions that we're going to start to put in 00:07:51.520 |
and more importantly from an acute perspective in the near term what are the actions we should be 00:07:56.880 |
taking to protect communities and get ahead of this problem so it's not a scramble after the crisis 00:08:01.920 |
which is what we typically do with these sorts of crises we're not investing in infrastructure 00:08:06.080 |
if we put in some nuclear power plants if we did more desal and we did more forest management or 00:08:11.280 |
put more fire breaks into you know all this i'm talking about the simple solutions like 00:08:16.480 |
i have a community three things would be massive wouldn't they well those are long-term solutions i'm 00:08:21.360 |
talking about like for this summer oh this summer is it even solvable we need we need communities 00:08:25.600 |
no but we need to prepare for what is going to happen this summer so when communities get run out 00:08:29.600 |
what are we going to do you know do we have community centers set up where people can get 00:08:33.680 |
water and power do we have masks available so that outdoor workers can keep working in the state 00:08:39.600 |
you know all of these things that we could be doing to get in front of the inevitable consequences 00:08:43.920 |
of these risks i think are things that we should be actively if you're in california 00:08:47.840 |
you should order your air purifiers now we ordered six 00:08:51.200 |
more of these conway ones that we used last year that were amazing get n95 masks 00:08:56.320 |
we have the n95 masks we ordered them already and we're going to put in a power generator which i 00:09:02.000 |
know not everybody is able to do but you can buy a portable one for as little as 300 or 400 bucks i 00:09:07.840 |
think now so a portable generator in case you lose power stock up on everything else we need those 00:09:12.400 |
solutions like i think there's going to be a big kind of power generator push right like distributed 00:09:16.640 |
power has always been something that's the whole point of solar you get solar on your roof you get 00:09:21.040 |
um but how are you going to keep your ac running when it's 120 degrees outside if you have no power 00:09:25.440 |
you know that that's kind of a very scary um circumstance of heat waves uh and it's um it's 00:09:31.440 |
something that we should have a real plan around and if i were the governor or if i were kind of 00:09:35.520 |
california leadership or leadership up and down the west coast you know the western governors 00:09:40.000 |
um i'd probably be running a daily press conference starting now saying let's just 00:09:44.400 |
get in front of this problem and talk about what are the risks we're seeing what are the problems 00:09:47.360 |
we're seeing and what we're doing about it just so people feel reassured because you know square 00:09:50.880 |
scrambling after a crisis doesn't make anyone feel better you know showing that we're prepared 00:09:55.040 |
and we're taking action to get in front of this crisis which is not 100 certain but it's a greater 00:09:59.840 |
than zero percent probability is something that could helpfully kind of reassure and start to put 00:10:04.160 |
the pieces in place um for the near term by the way just just for those that don't really appreciate 00:10:09.680 |
how interconnected everything is the basics the science basics on drought as i learned about them 00:10:14.800 |
were really really incredible so you think okay well how how is all this stuff connected it turns 00:10:20.720 |
out that you know as we have warmer and warmer temperatures yeah i didn't know this freebreak 00:10:25.280 |
you probably do this but it accelerates soil evaporation and then there's this really terrible 00:10:29.680 |
feedback loop that starts which is you have drier soil which means you have less vegetation 00:10:34.640 |
and then as a result you have less what's called evapotranspiration which means there's less 00:10:40.240 |
regional precipitation and then this whole thing just starts to spin and spin and spin 00:10:45.040 |
you have warmer temperatures that results in less snowpack the snow plaque the snowpack melts earlier 00:10:50.560 |
and we have a situation now in the united states which is just incredible i saw a graph which is 00:10:55.040 |
uh one of soil moisture and it shows basically the western half of the united states is in the first 00:11:02.640 |
percentile of soil moisture looking back over many many decades so well and then all of that 00:11:10.560 |
vegetation dries up and then we're in a position fodder for more fires no jason we're well even 00:11:16.160 |
worse than this we're in a position where you know we are threatening our own food supply 00:11:20.400 |
and just just just to put a a finer point on this it's not just the western half of the united states 00:11:27.680 |
that's now suffering from this it's brazil it's the mediterranean and southern europe and its large 00:11:33.360 |
parts of africa you add up all those number of people there are many countries there that are 00:11:37.520 |
actually self-sufficient which will then no longer be we'll have to import food that food quality is 00:11:43.760 |
you know questionable at best in some cases so we're in a really tough position here and so it's 00:11:50.240 |
with technology i mean if we just tax people a little more for the water usage if we really 00:11:54.320 |
invested in the desal plants if we really invested in nuclear we could actually flip this whole thing 00:11:58.480 |
the same way it's spiraling in the wrong direction it could spiral in the right direction two things 00:12:02.960 |
on the water side i've been looking at water investing for a while there's a there's a real 00:12:07.600 |
problem which is you know when i when i looked at this uh my team found some incredibly interesting 00:12:12.000 |
opportunities largely it it evolves around owning water rights right and then basically selling them 00:12:20.080 |
states get in difficult situations the problem is i think it's politically intolerable for 00:12:25.680 |
let's just say somebody like me um to own those kinds of water to be a water baron yeah i think 00:12:32.160 |
i think it's i think it's no bueno the the idea then that i had was like well maybe what we should 00:12:36.400 |
be doing is buying these things and sticking them in a foundation so that we can guarantee water 00:12:40.480 |
for people in certain states maybe that flies i'm not so sure that's the government's job 00:12:46.720 |
that's the government's job and but then they're not doing their job but they're incompetent 00:12:49.920 |
they're not doing their job but they're not doing their job but they're not doing their job but they're 00:12:51.360 |
unfortunately not uh not as skilled as you'd want them to be on the stocks how would you spin this 00:12:56.320 |
uh out of this death spiral and into abundance is there a way well i mean the the first thing 00:13:02.960 |
to realize here is that this is not a black swan event i mean this is entirely foreseeable 00:13:08.320 |
um drought conditions have existed in california for a long time in fact 200 years yeah well and 00:13:15.760 |
even maybe going back millions of years i mean geologists have found evidence 00:13:19.760 |
that you know millions of years ago you would have millions of acres of california burning every year 00:13:26.800 |
and so drought conditions have existed for a long time uh has climate change amplified that and made 00:13:33.440 |
it worse yes but this is entirely foreseeable we know we're dealing with these conditions 00:13:38.720 |
and in fact back on his first day in office in 2019 00:13:42.880 |
newsom held his very first press conference about this issue on emergency preparedness for fires 00:13:49.600 |
and he said that he was going to be the first person to be on the call for fire 00:13:52.800 |
and he said that he was going to be the first person to be on the call for fire 00:13:56.080 |
and he said that he was going to be the first person to be on the call for fire 00:13:59.360 |
and he said that he was going to be the first person to be on the call for fire 00:14:02.560 |
and he said that he was going to be the first person to be on the call for fire 00:14:05.440 |
and he said that he was going to be the first person to be on the call for fire 00:14:08.480 |
and he said that he was going to be the first person to be on the call for fire 00:14:11.440 |
and he said that he was going to be the first person to be on the call for fire 00:14:14.320 |
and he said that he was going to be the first person to be on the call for fire 00:14:17.440 |
and he said that he was going to be the first person to be on the call for fire 00:14:19.440 |
this recall is supposed to happen in the october november time frame 00:14:22.160 |
they've moved it up to september because newsom thinks there's a higher chance of fading 00:14:26.800 |
the worst of fire season by doing the election sooner the problem for him 00:14:30.320 |
is that fire season now starts in august and so we could be in the middle of fire season 00:14:34.800 |
when this recall election happens and this thing could boomerang on him but back to the point about 00:14:40.480 |
you know newsom held this press conference back in in january of 2019 00:14:44.800 |
and the problem is there hasn't been any real fall through on 00:14:49.280 |
forest management so you know newsom was recently caught in a lie 00:14:52.720 |
saying that you know they had basically treated 90 000 acres this is what this article i'll put 00:14:58.800 |
in the chat said in reality that only really treated about 11 000 acres even 90 000 would 00:15:04.880 |
be inadequate right they're not doing enough and the way um you know i talked to a very 00:15:10.080 |
prominent person who knows california politics well and knows all the players 00:15:14.080 |
and what he said is look the fundamental problem is that gavin is not operational right he's 00:15:19.120 |
fantastic at fundraising he says all the right things at press conferences but but not everything 00:15:26.000 |
is about running for re-election and the problem is he has not managed to this outcome and and so 00:15:32.880 |
now we're in the situation where to freebrook's point we're going to be scrambling after the fact 00:15:37.440 |
now what is newsom's excuse going to be it's going to be you know climate change can be global warming 00:15:41.840 |
it's kind of the all-purpose dog ate my homework excuse for anything that goes wrong is he can just 00:15:48.240 |
blame it on climate change but the reality is we knew about climate change climate change 00:15:53.200 |
something we're going to have to live with even if we stop it in its tracks from this point forward 00:15:58.640 |
we're not going to be able to reverse the effects it's already had and so we need leaders who will 00:16:04.240 |
step up and and get much more aggressive about preventing this problem i think my 00:16:09.440 |
and by the way my tweet i didn't mention climate change at all i got you know i 00:16:12.880 |
don't think that that's even the point the point is we are facing acute conditions on the 00:16:18.080 |
in the western half of the united states right now that lead to a number of significant and severe 00:16:22.640 |
consequences those acute conditions you know you could blame them on climate change and say that 00:16:27.360 |
they're part of climate change it doesn't change the reality they are here today and we have to 00:16:31.520 |
deal with them um and i think yeah we have a we have a couple of things that are that are 00:16:37.280 |
uh going to happen here in short order that i think can make this thing 00:16:40.480 |
accelerated a little so there's a an organization a department in the united states government 00:16:47.920 |
that's not very well known called the u.s bureau of reclamation usbr and they are the ones that 00:16:54.000 |
will make formal assessments of water levels and there's a really important assessment that's going 00:16:58.720 |
to happen in lake mead at the end of this year and the reason why it's critical is that if the 00:17:04.640 |
u.s bureau of reclamation measures lake mead under 00:17:09.040 |
a certain threshold they can declare a tier one shortage and what that means just practically 00:17:17.760 |
as a whole is that if the state of mead is not going to be able to deal with water levels that's 00:17:23.520 |
going to be a huge challenge for us and so what we're going to do is we're going to start to deal 00:17:27.840 |
with these sort of like rolling i don't know what we're even going to call these water out scenarios 00:17:35.280 |
where uh it's not just about watering your lawn that's not going to be possible it's going to be a 00:17:39.760 |
whole bunch of other things now there is a solution in the water level system but it's not going to be 00:17:44.320 |
a solution that's going to be possible in the water level system as well and i think that's 00:17:47.600 |
the most important thing that we're going to do and that's why we're going to start with the water 00:17:50.640 |
level system because we're going to start with the water level system and then we're going to start 00:17:53.520 |
with the water level system because it's going to be a huge challenge for us to deal with and so if 00:17:57.440 |
we start with the water level system we're going to start with the water level system and then we're 00:18:00.000 |
going to start with the water level system and then we're going to start with the water level system and 00:18:03.120 |
then we're going to start with the water level system and then we're going to start with the 00:18:05.760 |
water level system and then we're going to start with the water level system and then we're going to 00:18:07.680 |
start with the water level system and then we're going to start with the water level system and then 00:18:10.160 |
we're going to start with the water level system and then we're going to start with the water level system 00:18:12.080 |
the aquifer to deliver drinking water to folks that are lacking 00:18:17.580 |
water. And this has been a multi year, you know, bordering on 00:18:23.580 |
multi decades slog because of California politicians, because 00:18:28.220 |
water has become highly politicised, no one wants to pay 00:18:33.200 |
the full cost for a commodity that they frankly view is a 00:18:35.960 |
right, but then they don't want to step in to do the work to 00:18:39.500 |
actually make it reasonable and viable. So this whole thing is 00:18:43.760 |
just again, as David, as you said, the dog ate my homework. 00:18:46.640 |
And now we're really playing with some very complicated 00:18:49.260 |
things that are really out of the control and intellectual 00:18:51.280 |
capacity of the frankly state governments, which is the 00:18:54.280 |
interconnectedness of weather, temperature, water or soil or 00:18:58.640 |
food supply. It's a I think what's so frustrating. This is 00:19:02.960 |
this is so easily solvable. And we are not doing the blocking and 00:19:09.260 |
David Wright: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a really 00:19:11.260 |
important point. And I think that's a really important point. 00:19:13.260 |
Because if you look at just monitoring our water usage, I 00:19:17.260 |
invested in two companies, one of them didn't work out. But both 00:19:21.260 |
of them were to monitor water usage. And what we learned was 00:19:25.260 |
at a campus like Stanford, they have like four water meters, 00:19:29.260 |
like they're not going down to the building level, in some 00:19:32.720 |
cases, they'll be like four buildings on one water meter. 00:19:35.480 |
And you can very easily at each sink, at each, you know, 00:19:39.140 |
put a device that cost 25 bucks installed, it just wraps around 00:19:44.060 |
the the water, the pipe, and it could tell you how it's flowing. 00:19:49.140 |
And we lose 2030% of our water to leaks. Nobody is monitoring 00:19:54.740 |
their usage because there is no cost to it to schmutz point. And 00:19:58.580 |
then you look at these crazy insane, almond and other 00:20:03.120 |
agriculture in the middle of California. They are using flood 00:20:09.020 |
I'm sure Friedberg can give us an education at versus what you 00:20:12.080 |
know, the trip irrigation that they use and other reclaiming 00:20:14.780 |
methods in Israel and other places. So we look at water as 00:20:19.040 |
like, to Schmutz point, some crazy, God given right that we 00:20:22.980 |
can just splash it everywhere, we can take 20 minute showers. 00:20:26.240 |
And then we allow how crazy is this, we allow the bottling of 00:20:30.560 |
water in California, we allow these companies to bottle water 00:20:33.440 |
and then sell it. And we don't even monitor usage we have well, 00:20:39.860 |
Newson's biggest donors, who's that family that grows all the 00:20:44.780 |
Whoever they are the resnick's the resnick's single biggest 00:20:49.820 |
Oh, Linda Resnick and those palm people with the palm stuff. 00:20:53.000 |
It's total political corruption, right? I mean, they get 00:20:56.380 |
Chinatown. It's literally the movie Chinatown. 00:20:58.700 |
Yeah. Well, I think so to this point about why aren't 00:21:01.640 |
politicians solving the problems? I mean, to make a meta point, 00:21:04.340 |
there's a great tweet from Thomas soul or the person who manages 00:21:08.780 |
Where he said no one will really understand politics until they 00:21:13.300 |
understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. 00:21:18.020 |
Which are getting elected and reelected. That's number one, 00:21:21.560 |
number two in office. That is their only goal three is far 00:21:24.320 |
behind. And that's basically the situation we have is, I think 00:21:28.380 |
Newsom actually is a little bit like Trump, not in his personal 00:21:31.440 |
style, but in that he thinks he can talk his way out of 00:21:34.500 |
problems. And he's not going to focus on solving a problem. And 00:21:38.660 |
he's not going to focus on solving a problem when he can just 00:21:41.340 |
By the way, I just think you guys should know the you know, 00:21:44.300 |
because a lot of people talk about residential water use, 00:21:46.880 |
that is also kind of an acute and local problem, where 00:21:50.180 |
depending on your water supply, how much water you have 00:21:53.300 |
available to your community. But in terms of aggregate water 00:21:57.020 |
use, the vast majority of water in California is used in 00:22:00.020 |
agriculture. It's about 10x, what is used for residential 00:22:08.540 |
So it's a huge part of our agriculture. By the way, it's not 00:22:10.880 |
a bad thing. It's a huge part of our economy, that water has 00:22:14.420 |
generally been fully available in aquifers, people bought that 00:22:16.940 |
land with rights, they paid a premium for those rights to 00:22:19.160 |
those aquifers. This is a very complicated problem in 00:22:22.400 |
California. And that, you know, supports a large part of the 00:22:24.740 |
California economy. So you know, you can't just kind of blow them 00:22:27.560 |
away. But 90% of water use in California is associated with 00:22:30.500 |
AG. And it's not just a generally we need to save water 00:22:33.500 |
problem. It's very specific to a region and a community and their 00:22:38.420 |
the water. So it's a very complicated problem. And it's a 00:22:41.360 |
very complicated problem. And it's a very complicated problem. 00:22:42.680 |
And it's a very complicated problem. And it's a very 00:22:43.640 |
complicated problem. And it's a very complicated problem. And 00:22:44.120 |
so it's a little bit more complicated. But yeah, but we 00:22:45.200 |
should be focused on abundance freeberg. If you look at the 00:22:47.600 |
new nuclear power plants that you know, Bill Gates has invested 00:22:50.660 |
in, and then you look at desalinization, which is an 00:22:53.060 |
energy issue. We can desalinize for roughly two or three times 00:22:57.260 |
the cost that we're getting water for now. So just put a 00:22:59.720 |
nuclear power plant next to a desalinization plant and you're 00:23:04.460 |
Great. That's a 20 year project. And you got to why Why is it a 00:23:08.300 |
20 year project? China does it into you got to be more bold in 00:23:11.840 |
this country. It is completely ridiculous that we accept that 00:23:15.620 |
everything has to take 20 years. We need this now. Where's the 00:23:18.740 |
leadership that says, fuck it, let's do it immediately. Let's 00:23:21.740 |
set a goal of two years to build 10 of these. Fucking money. 00:23:26.060 |
I'm not sure it solves our acute problems. It solves long term 00:23:29.300 |
problems associated with climate change and energy. 00:23:34.400 |
Sure, we should do everything. But right now, the you know, 00:23:38.180 |
the conditions indicate that there are some specific things 00:23:40.760 |
that we can and should be doing to kind of support the state in 00:23:43.220 |
terms of what's going to happen in the next year or two. And 00:23:45.560 |
yes, we should also be funding long term projects that create 00:23:48.380 |
water security and energy security for everyone in the 00:23:50.600 |
United States. But SACS to your point, and by the way, if you 00:23:53.120 |
guys ever want to read an interesting book about how the 00:23:55.220 |
grid operates, there's a book called the grid. And it talks 00:23:58.940 |
about how the electrical power grid system was built in the 00:24:01.700 |
United States and how inefficient it is and all the 00:24:03.500 |
problems. There are a lot of structural problems that need 00:24:05.960 |
to be solved. Not just, you know, dropping and cheaply. 00:24:08.060 |
Cheap power. SACS, who is the good operational candidate that 00:24:11.240 |
you've seen that's running for governor of California in this 00:24:13.220 |
recall? Is there someone that stands out in your mind? Because 00:24:15.740 |
I don't seem to hear anyone talking about, hey, there's a 00:24:18.320 |
good alternative to Gavin Newsom at this point. 00:24:20.840 |
Yeah, I mean, we don't a clear alternative has not emerged yet. 00:24:24.440 |
You know, I guess the end part of the problem is that because 00:24:28.580 |
there was no Republican primary, you haven't sort of consolidated 00:24:32.360 |
the opposition to a leading candidate. There are a couple of, 00:24:37.940 |
candidates on the Republican side, I need to spend more time 00:24:41.120 |
getting to, you know, know them. I mean, I have never met them or 00:24:44.600 |
talk to them. But the two who are I think, mentioned quite a 00:24:47.780 |
bit are this guy, Falconer, who's the mayor of San Diego, 00:24:51.380 |
who is sort of a socially liberal Republican. And then 00:24:57.860 |
there's a state assemblyman named Kevin Kiley, who, who I 00:25:04.640 |
think says a lot of interesting things. And he just announced 00:25:07.820 |
he's running. There's another guy as well, John Cox, but he got 00:25:12.020 |
trounced by Newsom in the last election, I think it's time to 00:25:14.540 |
let somebody else take a shot against him. And then of course, 00:25:17.780 |
you've got Caitlyn Jenner, but I think people are still trying to 00:25:19.880 |
figure out if her campaign is real or how real it is. So yeah, 00:25:23.960 |
look, we the opposition has not consolidated against Newsom, the 00:25:29.180 |
way it did with Schwarzenegger, you know, back in 2001. 00:25:34.460 |
just to create a counterbalance. I don't care who it is. And I'm 00:25:37.580 |
not a Republican. I'm an independent. But I'm voting 00:25:40.280 |
across the board. I'm just going to go to Republican for every 00:25:43.040 |
position in California. And I'm going to just run my finger down 00:25:46.100 |
the line. How does it feel to be a radical Trump supporter? 00:25:50.840 |
I listen, I am not for Trump. But Chamath, talk to us about 00:25:55.400 |
nuclear and what we can do to get to reverse with these hippie 00:26:00.560 |
dippy well intentioned no nukes concert set us back 50 years. 00:26:06.200 |
And let's be honest, we're going to have to do a lot of work. 00:26:07.460 |
And I'm going to be honest, a lot of the climate change 00:26:09.020 |
problems we have today we would not have if we had invested in 00:26:11.600 |
nuclear Yeah, I said, Well, I sent her on an image, Nick, 00:26:15.920 |
maybe you can stick it in the show notes or something so that 00:26:18.560 |
people can see but if you if you look at if you graph the 00:26:21.740 |
construction of nuclear reactors from the great 60s 1960s to 00:26:26.720 |
today, essentially what and you color code them by country, what 00:26:30.620 |
essentially you see is a transition from the able from 00:26:36.380 |
the frankly, from countries that are not nuclear reactors, from 00:26:37.340 |
countries that are not nuclear reactors, from countries that 00:26:37.820 |
basically were just right at the leading the pack, and it was 00:26:41.480 |
really the United States, building building building, and 00:26:44.600 |
then two things really happened. There was Three Mile Island, and 00:26:47.960 |
then there was Chernobyl. And there was an incredible over 00:26:52.400 |
reaction to not really understanding either the cause, 00:26:56.660 |
and or the remediation to two events. Now, could you imagine 00:27:02.240 |
if there were two airlines that crashed and we stopped flying? 00:27:07.220 |
How basically we would have, you know, retarded the progress of 00:27:11.240 |
the world. And now you impose it on something like nuclear energy, 00:27:16.160 |
which is consistently proven to provide an enormous, the 00:27:20.240 |
abundant, cheap, and clean form of sustainable energy. And it 00:27:25.640 |
actually solves a bunch of the problems we talked about before. 00:27:27.800 |
So for example, if you look at the power consumption for 00:27:30.680 |
desalination, it's off the charts, quite honestly, okay, 00:27:33.440 |
that's why people say that it can't be done credibly. If you 00:27:36.860 |
look at even nuclear power consumption, it's off the charts, quite honestly. Okay, that's why people say that it can't be done credibly. If you look at 00:27:37.100 |
in just like the amount of energy that's required to clean water and to, you know, 00:27:41.500 |
sanitize water and make it drinkable, the, the standards that are defined by the government 00:27:46.940 |
are incredibly stringent, but the implication of it operationally is an enormous amount 00:27:52.140 |
But Jason, you are right, which is that if we have small forms of sustainable abundant 00:27:58.220 |
energy that can be basically hyper localized and located where we can do these jobs, the 00:28:07.020 |
It doesn't happen because the same folks who really want to sound the alarm bells on climate 00:28:11.740 |
change, which is the progressive left are not really willing. 00:28:15.340 |
They're intellectually lazy when it comes to nuclear, they don't do the work. 00:28:18.940 |
They make a brand sort of broad based prognostication about how we need to do something 00:28:25.900 |
Then they will point to solar and wind without really understanding the contamination of 00:28:35.180 |
Rare earths and the actual metal and mineral inputs that are required for solar. 00:28:49.740 |
And it's like, if I could show you what, what tailings are and like the dirty after effects 00:28:56.220 |
of mining copper and nickel out of the ground, which is what we need for batteries and how 00:29:00.940 |
countries like Indonesia are literally dumping it into the ocean. 00:29:05.660 |
Dumping it faster that they can get their hands on it so that they can sell copper and nickel 00:29:10.140 |
and cobalt to us so that we can make batteries. 00:29:13.980 |
You would actually say to yourself, if you knew all these facts, you'd actually say to yourself, 00:29:21.580 |
You just have to look at the laziest group of individuals and society. 00:29:26.780 |
The French, they want to take the laziest route and do the least amount of work and 00:29:39.180 |
They said, how do we take more time off and not work and have unlimited electric 70% nuclear. 00:29:48.140 |
Well, the French are actually smart because after they're smart, because after Fukushima, 00:29:53.180 |
what happened is if you had, you know, sort of like woke politicians, Germany, a bunch 00:29:58.700 |
of Germany, they completely unwound their entire nuclear agenda, which was down, which 00:30:06.780 |
And so now here they are, they're writing laws faster than they can make them up. 00:30:10.780 |
They're basically pivoting entire industries to try to now adopt batteries and storage 00:30:17.180 |
without any real understanding about the downstream implications to the earth that they are going 00:30:24.860 |
If they had just stayed the course on nuclear, they would be in a much better place. 00:30:29.580 |
And to France's credit, they were like, what the fuck are you people overreacting about? 00:30:34.540 |
I'm not saying that they're going to make a big impact on the future. 00:30:35.660 |
They're going to make a big impact on the future. 00:30:35.980 |
I'm not saying that they're going to make a big impact on the future. 00:30:35.980 |
I'm not saying that they're going to make a big impact on the future. 00:30:36.060 |
I'm saying that they're going to make a big impact on the future. 00:30:36.460 |
I'm not saying that they're going to make a big impact on the future. 00:30:37.660 |
If we stopped flying after two airline crashes, where would the world be? 00:30:46.300 |
Do we want to deal with high energy prices and brownouts and all kinds of problems and 00:30:53.100 |
rolling blackouts or do we want to put this issue behind us? 00:30:57.980 |
If we just go on a Manhattan Project literally to make new nuclear, we would be, this issue would 00:31:04.620 |
be behind us and we could focus on something else like education. 00:31:09.580 |
The very scary thing about nuclear is despite all of the progress, 00:31:12.780 |
it will get bogged down in litigation and bureaucracy. 00:31:18.540 |
These are the last two things that should be in front of science and physics, 00:31:22.540 |
especially when it comes to energy independence. 00:31:28.460 |
Any way we can get people to, what's the best way to convince the American public to embrace 00:31:44.300 |
He said we're living in a "Vetocracy" as in the word veto. 00:31:47.900 |
I think it was an interesting interview with Antonio Garcia Martinez on his blog. 00:31:54.060 |
Anyway, yeah, they were talking about the inability of the US to build anything 00:31:57.660 |
anymore, especially when you compare us to some place like China. 00:32:00.700 |
And whether you want to call it NIMBYism or VETOCRACY, there are just too many people and 00:32:06.780 |
groups who have the right to say no to anything and block anything important from happening. 00:32:12.220 |
But we got to stop letting our politicians off the hook by making excuses. 00:32:18.700 |
Just because there's climate change doesn't mean that the politicians can't do anything about it. 00:32:24.380 |
I mean, welcome to the downstream consequences of a 00:32:29.420 |
Like a democracy over time doesn't reduce the number of laws it has. 00:32:33.500 |
Every year, politicians need to do their job and they create new laws. 00:32:36.860 |
As new laws accumulate, like the things get clogged up, right? 00:32:39.740 |
Like, when have you seen a law that gets passed by a local government, 00:32:43.980 |
a state government or federal government that makes it easier to do something? 00:32:48.300 |
But where does it say in the Constitution of the United States that being part of a 00:32:52.380 |
democracy also means shutting your brain off and becoming a dumb cynic? 00:32:57.340 |
That's not part of what being part of a democracy is. 00:32:59.980 |
By the way, I want to talk about that for one second. 00:33:02.620 |
There was this thing that I sent you guys in the chat, and Nick, hopefully you post that in the 00:33:08.620 |
But there was a study that was done about cynicism. 00:33:12.300 |
And it went back and it did like a qualitative assessment of more than 200,000 people and their 00:33:20.060 |
attitudes and their measured IQ, their measured literacy, their measured numeracy, and their 00:33:28.860 |
Cynicism is associated with lower IQ, lower literacy, lower numeracy and lower earnings. 00:33:36.140 |
The idea of cynical individuals being more competent appears to be a widespread, yet 00:33:50.460 |
I was shocked by that study because I actually generally think cynical people must be smarter. 00:33:57.020 |
They're smarter because they're thinking more rationally and maybe I'm being emotional. 00:34:02.860 |
There's cynicism and then there's people who are cantankerous and not content. 00:34:06.780 |
And I think people sometimes conflate those two things. 00:34:10.860 |
But constant pervasive cynicism is not a feature of democracy. 00:34:14.620 |
It means that you just stop thinking for yourself as a protective mechanism. 00:34:19.020 |
But the people we know who have changed the world and who- they seem to be- 00:34:26.860 |
They're actually delusional and optimistic or else they wouldn't have started a company 00:34:30.940 |
to make electric cars or whatever piece of software or climate.com or synthetic biology. 00:34:40.220 |
I mean, we're literally trying to attack our incredible capitalists who are actually solving 00:34:47.260 |
these problems while our politicians can't get their shit together and make desal plants 00:34:52.860 |
The private market seems like the only solution Sachs had ever- 00:34:56.700 |
there's an old saying that pessimists get to be right and optimists get to be rich. 00:35:05.980 |
I mean, if you think about it, pessimists don't create companies, right? 00:35:20.620 |
Sachs, what do you think about this idea that if we get into the throes of it for water, 00:35:26.540 |
the folks that own water rights, I think that this is going to be like an eminent domain 00:35:30.940 |
issue where the government is at some point just going to say, "Sorry, need it back. 00:35:39.020 |
But I mean, I hate to use the words, "I agree with J-Cal," but 00:35:45.980 |
you know, look, there's not a shortage of water in the world, right? 00:35:51.260 |
I mean, the world is mostly water, so it is a function of building desalination plants if, 00:36:00.780 |
And Freiburg's right that maybe it does take a decade or two to put in place all that 00:36:05.740 |
infrastructure, but then why didn't we start 10 years ago? 00:36:08.300 |
You see, we should be starting a program where we convince the American public 00:36:12.780 |
that abundance would lead to them having more freedom and our country being stronger. 00:36:19.660 |
Electrical abundance with nuclear, water abundance with desalinization, and 00:36:26.220 |
agricultural abundance with those previous two. 00:36:29.660 |
Because if you had unlimited nuclear energy and you had unlimited clean water, 00:36:33.420 |
the price of agriculture would go down and we'd have more free food for everybody or lower cost 00:36:39.340 |
I'll tell you, I'll tell you a theory I have on this. 00:36:41.580 |
And it's basically an anti-science theory, which is that, you know, culturally, 00:36:46.700 |
we've kind of developed this anti-innovation, anti-science mentality, broadly speaking, across 00:36:56.060 |
and I think it has its roots in the Cold War, you know, out of when World War II ended, 00:37:02.860 |
You know, this country, everyone bought the same stuff. 00:37:07.660 |
We all kind of, you know, were excited about our homes that look like everyone else's home 00:37:13.340 |
And technology was empowering all of this, right? 00:37:16.940 |
There were plastics that were suddenly allowing us to make all sorts of amazing things. 00:37:21.820 |
There were chemicals that were creating new drugs for humans and new applications for our 00:37:25.900 |
agriculture that was making an abundance of food and increasing lifespans and so on. 00:37:30.540 |
But then what happened in the late 60s and 70s is we realized we got ahead of ourselves. 00:37:42.220 |
There was a number of pollutants that got into the environment that permanently damaged 00:37:51.420 |
And we started to wake up and say, like, wait a second, all of this technology that we thought 00:37:55.740 |
And was giving us this extraordinary abundance, it turns out is really risky and can cause 00:38:02.460 |
And if you watch, I think I talked about this on our podcast once, but one of my favorite 00:38:05.980 |
videos to watch, there's a video on YouTube from the Disney Channel History Institute. 00:38:10.540 |
And they show the history of Tomorrowland at Disneyland. 00:38:13.100 |
When Tomorrowland opened in 1955, every ride was all about adventuring into space and like 00:38:19.740 |
And they even had a ride for Monsanto where you would go into the micro world and look 00:38:26.540 |
And the guy, the narrator on the video says, beginning in the late 60s, early 70s, we changed 00:38:32.300 |
And the rides all became about the fear of technology. 00:38:37.020 |
It was all about Captain EO was like, you know, the world became robotic and got taken 00:38:43.500 |
Even Star Tours was about a robot that went awry and the robot doesn't know what it's 00:38:47.740 |
So it drove us off course and we had to survive the robot. 00:38:50.300 |
And so everything became subconscious or subliminally a little bit, this negative technology 00:38:58.860 |
People take for granted the abundance over time because you get used to it, but you feel 00:39:03.500 |
the acute pain of the loss when technology goes awry. 00:39:11.900 |
Well, you know what, Freeberg, are we not experiencing this right now, everybody, with 00:39:17.580 |
COVID, where there's one group of people who are like, oh, my God, the science we were 00:39:22.380 |
able to deploy in COVID and get through this so quickly. 00:39:25.260 |
It's so promising that the world's going to be better, net net after the pandemic, even 00:39:31.900 |
with all the suffering, you could make an argument that that suffering is going to lead 00:39:37.500 |
And there's another group of people who are like the Delta variant. 00:39:44.780 |
As an individual, I don't want harm done to me or my kids or my environment. 00:39:49.420 |
That's that's the I think the general kind of conscience. 00:39:57.100 |
And so now I find myself as an individual saying, you know what, we shouldn't do nuclear 00:40:02.060 |
because look at what happened in Fukushima, forgetting the fact that you've been living 00:40:05.980 |
off of free electricity practically for decades or whatever the case might be. 00:40:11.580 |
And I think that the abundance that technology delivers to humans because humans are only 00:40:17.260 |
They're not programmed to recognize absolutes. 00:40:20.060 |
There's a lot of good socio psychological and evolutionary. 00:40:24.940 |
If you go to the store every day and you're used to just getting a $1 can of Coke, you don't say, 00:40:30.460 |
oh my God, I feel it's an amazing world I live in. 00:40:36.300 |
Now, if you went to the store and the can of Coke went up to $2, you'd be like, what the heck? 00:40:45.180 |
so we habituate, but but you habituate to the great things in our life. 00:40:52.540 |
And then you get used to the price of Coke being 50 cents. 00:40:54.780 |
And a few weeks later, if it goes up, you're upset, but you're not as happy on the other way. 00:40:59.100 |
So human emotion is kind of asymmetrically, you know, defined by these negative consequences. 00:41:04.220 |
And I think over time, you accumulate these negative consequences as your core psyche, 00:41:08.860 |
and you have an aversion to doing, you know, innovative things as a whole, not all people, 00:41:14.220 |
And it's why technology kind of gets lambasted over over time. 00:41:20.140 |
Chamath is that we have so many amazing things happening in technology, and nobody will 00:41:24.620 |
10x or 100x on them from the government perspective or the public. 00:41:30.060 |
I had a company called Zero Mass on my podcast, which I think is now called Source. 00:41:36.140 |
Maybe you could talk a little bit about the impact hydro panels would make 00:41:42.140 |
Well, I mean, Source is an incredible, incredible company. 00:41:45.820 |
Basically, there's a there's a guy who runs a Cody Friesen, who when he was at MIT, basically developed 00:41:54.460 |
a essentially a material, a membrane that can absorb the ambient water that's in the atmosphere, 00:42:02.380 |
and basically allow you to collect it and to separate it into its components and to basically 00:42:08.300 |
create potable salinized or potable drinkable water in a panel that looks like a solar panel. 00:42:17.180 |
And out of the back, you put a little pipe and it collects the humidity in the ambient air and 00:42:27.980 |
And, and the thing is, he can go anywhere because again, he doesn't need anything, right? 00:42:35.180 |
And it makes you if you I think he told me at the time when I interviewed him two or three years ago. 00:42:40.300 |
He said you could put two of these on your roof and get like four cases of bottled water a day, 00:42:48.940 |
And by the way, he's moving to a place which is really cool. 00:42:52.060 |
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say it, but I'll say it anyways. 00:42:58.140 |
No, he'll have an eventual app where you can kind of direct the hydro panel to make the kind of 00:43:04.700 |
So if you love or if you love, um, dial it in water, or if you love smart water or you're on 00:43:13.340 |
Specifically because it's the most expensive. 00:43:16.460 |
I, I have a very gratuitous reason why I remember when I met jobs, he drank smart water. 00:43:23.980 |
And I thought, boop, it's good enough for him. 00:43:34.780 |
We used to play poker in his garage, in his little 3000 square foot Palo Alto house. 00:43:42.460 |
He had this little tiny house and we're in the garage and he's like, look, I'm putting up a flat 00:43:47.980 |
No, we had a little, uh, you had a little, uh, easel and you'd write on chalk how much you owe. 00:44:01.420 |
He's like, oh, Jake, how you want a beverage? 00:44:03.900 |
And, uh, he goes, oh, and he walks over to a rack. 00:44:06.300 |
And in the rack, like, you know, those things you push wine on, there's a rack for water. 00:44:17.340 |
And you're not like the Evian that you get at the regular supermarket. 00:44:20.700 |
Like somebody sourced the Evian bottles, that restaurant. 00:44:23.180 |
And then he had the smart, I mean, there's 60 and I'm like, I just wanted a glass of water, 00:44:27.820 |
but okay, I'll take the Evian in the glass bottle. 00:44:44.700 |
I'm talking about any of those sound good to me. 00:44:46.940 |
I mean, the, the, the, it might be time for a chase update because we haven't done that 00:44:54.300 |
Oh, by the way, I just want to say, I found the journalist, you know, the journalist 00:44:58.700 |
And she is setting up her LLC and the $60,000 we raised from the GoFundMe is going to go 00:45:03.900 |
to her to cover the DA's office for the next six to 12 months in a newsletter website. 00:45:09.820 |
And just to be clear, because I think people kind of misinterpreted what you were trying 00:45:22.860 |
On public policy on what should be public facts with respect to what the DA's office 00:45:29.180 |
is doing, how chase is performing in his job. 00:45:32.220 |
Isn't it interesting though, how the left journalists, when I hired investigative 00:45:36.380 |
journalists to cover criminal justice accused me of hiring an oppo researcher and these 00:45:43.580 |
And I told them explicitly, I'm just hiring an investigative journalist to cover crime 00:45:49.500 |
And they insisted on saying, I wanted to get into Chessa's personal life. 00:45:57.180 |
There aren't too many journalists anymore who are investigative, who are actually in 00:46:01.500 |
the business of turning up new facts about elected officials. 00:46:08.220 |
And actually we saw a really good example just to tie into, to what's happened, what 00:46:12.460 |
happened over the past week is you had this story in the San Francisco Chronicle, which 00:46:17.020 |
is basically pure propaganda, uh, from, you could see that the, 00:46:22.540 |
the, um, the passing from Chessa to this reporter of this, this farcical, uh, claim 00:46:36.460 |
This is the same week we saw viral videos of 10 robbers bursting out of Neiman Marcus, 00:46:49.500 |
You had the viral video of the, the guy going into, 00:46:52.380 |
into CVS and just, you know, it wasn't even shoplifting. 00:46:56.780 |
Did you see Brian Sugar's, uh, video of the person who broke into his house, 00:47:01.180 |
stole his kids' iPads and everything while they were in the house? 00:47:05.340 |
And Cyan Bannister, who had another home invasion, just tweeted. 00:47:08.620 |
Home invasions are now, um, not prosecutable crimes in San Francisco. 00:47:15.740 |
Well, no, what they're doing is, so what Cyan reported about her case is, and by the way, 00:47:22.940 |
So it's very brazen for the DA to be doing this, but what they did is they dropped the home 00:47:27.740 |
invasion charges and they're just treating it as basically a, a theft of, you know, a few hundred 00:47:34.220 |
dollars, you know, that does not capture the violation of breaking into someone's house and 00:47:41.420 |
But I originally, I thought, okay, why is the DA's office doing this originally? 00:47:45.660 |
I thought, well, maybe it's just because, you know, 00:47:47.660 |
Chasey doesn't want to incarcerate anybody, but it's more than that. 00:47:50.700 |
You see, if they drop the charge, they're going to be in jail. 00:47:52.780 |
They're going to be in prison for a long period of time. 00:47:53.740 |
It's like, Oh, well, what's going on with this case? 00:47:54.940 |
And then, you know, they're going to be in prison for a long time. 00:47:56.620 |
And then they're going to be in prison for a long time. 00:47:57.340 |
So they're going to have to go through all these charges down to petty larceny. 00:48:01.580 |
You see home burglaries are up by some gargantuan amount, like 50% year over year. 00:48:05.660 |
They want to be able to claim crime is falling. 00:48:07.340 |
It's now they're juking the stats by reducing the charges from the more serious crime to the less serious crime. 00:50:05.820 |
You had this senior policy advisor to Chesa Boudin who works for the DA's office named 00:50:11.340 |
Kate Chatfield, attacker basically implying her views were KKK values for having the audacity 00:50:22.620 |
to warn that people are worried about crime in San Francisco. 00:50:27.180 |
By the way, this Chatfield person, the top of her profile is the clenched fist of the 00:50:36.460 |
But look, it's not just trolling, and it's not even just slander. 00:50:41.900 |
It's I think an abuse of power for someone in the DA's office to go after and attack 00:50:53.980 |
Because she basically is, the people who have experienced home invasions are concerned 00:51:01.980 |
And what this woman did, Michelle, I believe is her name, she just- 00:51:05.780 |
She just said, like, people are scared for their families. 00:51:09.100 |
And then Kate Chatfield referenced Birth of a Nation and compared her to, oh, our wives 00:51:25.740 |
Everybody understands what Birth of a Nation is. 00:51:26.740 |
Yeah, the original name of Birth of a Nation, I think, was the Klansmen. 00:51:38.700 |
This is a public policy advisor who's now hiding her account. 00:51:41.740 |
Well, I mean, a public official should not do that. 00:51:51.600 |
And I thought it was out of bounds for not just a public official, but someone in the 00:52:09.700 |
I donated another $50,000 to the Recall Chasing Campaign. 00:52:21.020 |
Every American should have the right to criticize their government without having its law enforcement 00:52:29.120 |
And so here you have a legitimate concern expressed by a private citizen and the DA's 00:52:39.480 |
I didn't want to talk about this publicly, but I'm so outraged now that I think I should 00:52:45.980 |
So while I- after the- in the weeks after I started that campaign to hire an investigative 00:52:52.420 |
journalist for Chester's office, this is breaking news. 00:52:55.100 |
I haven't talked about this publicly, but I'm going to break it now. 00:53:08.100 |
They were investigating a startup that I had invested in. 00:53:13.500 |
And they wanted to interview me about my involvement with that startup because that startup had 00:53:19.580 |
some complaint from a downstream investor who felt that they were committing some type 00:53:32.460 |
They literally tried to intimidate me and I didn't want to bring it up. 00:53:35.580 |
I talked to the person on the phone, the person from the DA's office who was investigating 00:53:40.620 |
this, and I was like, "Do I need an attorney for this? 00:53:45.160 |
And he said, "Well, you know, we just want to talk to you about this." 00:53:52.640 |
I'm not, you know, file something and I'll come in with my attorney to talk to you, but 00:53:55.960 |
I'm not going to talk with you on background. 00:54:01.900 |
And I kind of let them because I didn't want to make it public, but I'm making it public 00:54:05.580 |
And this is two weeks after I said, "Let's hire the journalist." 00:54:27.700 |
Now that I think about it, like I didn't do anything wrong here. 00:54:33.480 |
I put 50 or 100k into a company that didn't work. 00:54:39.540 |
And they're trying to tie it back to me somehow. 00:54:40.540 |
But Jason, of course, you're going to be intimidated. 00:54:41.540 |
The chief law enforcement officer of San Francisco is basically trying to make you the target 00:54:47.580 |
of an investigation because of what you said publicly. 00:54:52.540 |
Guys, isn't it possible that they're just interviewing you about a fraud claim? 00:55:07.500 |
A police officer drove past my house last night. 00:55:12.500 |
Wait, it's the first and only time I've ever been contacted by a law enforcement officer 00:55:23.620 |
He's almost two years in office now, and he has not had time to successfully prosecute 00:55:30.900 |
But his office has time to run down whatever they're trying to run down with J-Cal. 00:55:35.460 |
They don't have time to prosecute the home invader who broke into Cyan Banister's home. 00:55:43.460 |
They don't have time to do that, but they somehow have time to contact J-Cal. 00:55:50.460 |
I think one of which is becoming very well understood, but the other one is not. 00:55:53.460 |
The first one is the Gothamization of San Francisco. 00:55:59.460 |
Cynicism and resignation, people are just kind of given into it. 00:56:02.460 |
It feels like San Francisco has become Gotham City. 00:56:04.460 |
These viral videos of the robbers brazenly committing daylight theft. 00:56:14.460 |
But there's a second thing happening, which is the Orwellianization of San Francisco government 00:56:21.460 |
You not only have the crime, you've got the brazen lies about the crime. 00:56:25.460 |
You've got this insistence on this Animal Farm Commandment that crime is falling. 00:56:31.460 |
And if you question it, you are a bad person. 00:56:35.420 |
And then they get their, you know, the Kate Chatfields to push this out. 00:56:39.420 |
And then they get academics to back this up, okay? 00:56:42.420 |
There are now, they get their friends in the media and in the academy to give these spurious claims credence. 00:56:49.420 |
And then the final step is that the rich virtue signalers pay these people off. 00:56:58.420 |
The Dustin Moskovitz's, the Mike Krieger's, the Reed Hastings. 00:57:03.420 |
And, you know, even actually the biggest contributor to Chesa right now is a guy who's under SEC indictment for the Ripple scandal. 00:57:16.420 |
So, people who need to curry favor either because they've got their own problems or they just like to virtue signal. 00:57:29.420 |
Brian Sugar released the video and that person's not going to be prosecuted. 00:57:33.420 |
You get somebody on camera and they won't prosecute them. 00:57:34.420 |
And people forget these are organized gangs that are doing this. 00:57:37.420 |
These are not poor people who are stealing bread for their families or trying to make their rent. 00:57:42.420 |
Did you see the getaway cars for the Neiman Marcus heist? 00:57:45.420 |
They're driving great, beautiful cars with their license plates off. 00:57:47.420 |
And if you give credit to the people who are doing this, they're going to get a lot of