E109: 2022 Bestie Awards Live from Twitter HQ

00:00:00.000 | Hey, everybody, Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. It is the end

00:00:04.360 | of 2022. And once again, we're doing our bestie awards. Yes, at

00:00:10.480 | the end of the year, we do our bestie awards. This is where we

00:00:13.360 | give awards to the biggest winners, losers, and many other

00:00:16.320 | categories that you love with me again, of course, the Sultan of

00:00:20.760 | science, deep in his Kurosawa vibes. How are you doing,

00:00:25.280 | Sultan? It was great to see you guys for dinner last night,

00:00:27.760 | Saks, we missed you. That was a lot of fun. We all got together

00:00:30.920 | twice this week for dinner while we were on vacation. And during

00:00:35.520 | our dinner, we took a vote and Saks you are now the director of

00:00:38.560 | the all in summit. Congratulations. Congratulations.

00:00:41.440 | Yes, the grift is on my first act is to veto it. Okay, sorry,

00:00:46.680 | to the fans. Also with us, of course, is the dictator himself

00:00:52.160 | Chamath Palihapitiya deep in his turtleneck phase and his vibes

00:00:57.560 | tell us about your winter vibes, bestie.

00:01:00.440 | I mean, I can't believe that we all took over Lake Tahoe for a

00:01:05.040 | week together. It's cool. It's been a lot of fun. I gotta say,

00:01:08.680 | Saks, you'll be surprised. J. Cal has the life hack of life

00:01:12.880 | hacks here. He's figured out how to basically get everything

00:01:16.080 | pre wired. All the restaurants all the reservations. It's been

00:01:20.040 | great. I've loved it. We've had a wonderful time. It's an

00:01:22.600 | eight person table for every night. And he does it what

00:01:25.200 | months in advance. So every night, he's got two weeks out,

00:01:29.000 | I get a table vape for five, six nights in a row. And then I

00:01:32.440 | invite my besties out. And oddly, it turned out there was

00:01:34.920 | only one person from Jake outside. Yes. There was always a

00:01:39.240 | room for the rest of us to show. We had a wonderful time. I

00:01:43.840 | picked up the check for the nachos and Chamath brought $6,000

00:01:47.720 | worth of wine. I brought my own also to the restaurant yesterday

00:01:52.520 | so we could open the wine properly. It was wonderful.

00:01:54.720 | We've had a wonderful time. And of course with us looks like he

00:01:58.400 | had to work over the Christmas break. Saks, how are you doing,

00:02:01.720 | brother? You working today? I'm good. I'm just hanging out

00:02:06.400 | somewhere. Well, come on. You could be honest. You're at the

00:02:09.000 | Twitter HQ. I recognize that incredible architecture and

00:02:12.800 | design. They spent so much money on that office space. Beautiful.

00:02:16.240 | That's definitely beautiful office. They've got their own

00:02:19.720 | bespoke coffee shop here called the perch. We're the people that

00:02:24.320 | work there. Too soon. People are working too hard to be hanging

00:02:30.560 | on the coffee shop. Rain Man David Saks.

00:02:36.960 | Okay, so let's get started with our bestie awards. This is very

00:02:51.080 | controversial. We start with a political award. And last year,

00:02:56.560 | you know, this is our just so we're clear, this is not the

00:02:59.640 | prediction show. That next week will be the prediction show.

00:03:02.640 | This week is our winners. Cue the music. Yes, cue the music.

00:03:06.480 | Right there. Okay, here we go. 2022 predictions. This is what

00:03:11.160 | we predicted for the bestie award for biggest political

00:03:15.760 | winner. I said Ron DeSantis and so did David Saks. We predicted

00:03:20.240 | in 20. After me, you said it after me. And the way you

00:03:24.240 | introduced it, you said, What did Tucker Carlson's writers

00:03:26.800 | come up with? I said DeSantis and then you said DeSantis. Are

00:03:30.240 | you starting already? Literally, I'm trying to give you your

00:03:32.840 | flowers. Okay, take it easy. You're gonna get your flowers.

00:03:38.160 | So Ron DeSantis, obviously a big winner. So those were those were

00:03:42.240 | great predictions. freeberg. With a wildcard there. He

00:03:45.960 | predicted Putin would be a winner in 2022. That one fell a

00:03:49.120 | little flat. Did it not our friend freeberg? Not a winner?

00:03:52.080 | No, I think he, you know, I mean, my projection was really

00:03:55.440 | built on what I thought would be a big kind of influence that he

00:03:58.920 | would gain this year. You know, whether he's viewed negatively

00:04:01.440 | or positively, he's certainly at the center of the stage right

00:04:03.520 | now. Now, Chamath, your 22 prediction, this is your

00:04:06.920 | prediction last year for this year, was that the biggest

00:04:09.880 | political winner would be Xi Jinping. Okay. Now we go to our

00:04:14.720 | actual biggest winner. This is where we tell you who we thought

00:04:18.560 | was the biggest winner of 2022. Let's start with you, Saks. Who

00:04:22.920 | is your biggest winner for 2022? political biggest winner?

00:04:26.760 | This was the prediction that I nailed as you mentioned it. So

00:04:31.280 | the red wave fizzled everywhere else, but it crashed over

00:04:33.920 | Florida hard. So DeSantis is my pick. He won reelection by about

00:04:38.200 | 20 points. And his coattails carried for new GOP house seats,

00:04:42.160 | which happens to be the exact size of the GOP majority.

00:04:45.520 | Several polls have now shown him beating Donald Trump by

00:04:48.600 | significant margins for the 2024 GOP nomination. He is

00:04:52.520 | shattering fundraising records. Florida is now the fastest

00:04:55.320 | growing state. So he is my pick for the biggest winner,

00:04:59.360 | political winner of 2022. Great.

00:05:02.520 | Who is your biggest political winner?

00:05:06.080 | Chama. I mean, it's obvious it's usually pink.

00:05:09.080 | You know, there is no single person in the world that is now

00:05:15.040 | as powerful as this one man, he has complete authoritarian

00:05:21.360 | control over 1.2 odd billion people and 20% of the world's

00:05:26.400 | GDP and a large amount of the world's debt, including a lot of

00:05:31.520 | us dollar debt. And so you know, it's pretty, there's there's

00:05:37.640 | it's hard to find anybody that won nearly as much as he did.

00:05:40.960 | Okay, now to you, Friedberg, who is your biggest political

00:05:45.000 | winner of 2022?

00:05:46.760 | I mean, I think your DeSantis and Jeejin ping calls were

00:05:50.840 | really like, good. I think the biggest surprising winner for me

00:05:56.240 | is like, you know, unexpected. And that would be Zelensky from

00:06:00.920 | the Ukraine. I don't think going into this year, people paid as

00:06:04.640 | much attention to him. He was certainly not a song hero. But

00:06:08.360 | coming through this conflict, and I think leading the

00:06:11.600 | storyline, about our common enemy of the West, and common

00:06:16.520 | enemy of democracy being Vladimir Putin, really kind of

00:06:20.200 | made him a superstar and a hero on a global stage. And I think

00:06:23.680 | that's evidenced by the fact that he's in the White House,

00:06:25.440 | and he gave an address to the US Congress yesterday. So I would

00:06:28.760 | make him kind of the biggest winner of the year.

00:06:30.200 | It's hard to go against DeSantis. So, you know, he

00:06:34.360 | clearly has, as sacks correctly pointed out, gone into the lead,

00:06:39.560 | we'll see if he can be Trump in the primaries. I have my doubts.

00:06:42.800 | But he does seem to be pulling in some of those moderates,

00:06:47.200 | right?

00:06:47.400 | I don't understand why you guys say he's a political winner.

00:06:49.800 | What did he win? He hasn't won the nomination yet. He got

00:06:53.920 | reelected to a state that he had before 2022. So what did he win

00:06:58.000 | exactly?

00:06:58.440 | Well, I think a couple of things. One is when he won

00:07:01.320 | election to the governorship four years ago, it was by less

00:07:04.600 | than 1%. It was a tiny margin of victory. This was margin of

00:07:08.760 | almost 20%. He had coattails. And he is now the front runner

00:07:12.840 | for the GOP nomination in 24. I think you can argue you can make

00:07:16.280 | the case that maybe he's peaking too soon.

00:07:18.160 | Well, I'm glad you brought that up. Because if you look at the

00:07:20.440 | data, you know, I think in the last seven or eight nomination

00:07:26.200 | cycles, the person that's been leading the popularity contest

00:07:29.640 | going into the Iowa caucuses has not won the nomination. He's

00:07:32.760 | peaking too soon almost.

00:07:34.000 | That's a possibility. Because when you're the front runner,

00:07:36.640 | everyone takes shots at you. On the other hand, if he stays this

00:07:40.800 | dominant, he will drive out other contenders out of the

00:07:45.160 | primary, and he may be able to solidify it. And if it can just

00:07:48.800 | be DeSantis versus Trump in the primary, he has a much better

00:07:51.800 | shot than if it's Trump versus a bunch of other challengers. And

00:07:54.720 | I think that if he continues to pull this well within the

00:07:59.280 | Republican Party, I think Trump might not run again, because

00:08:02.440 | Trump definitely does not want to risk being a loser in the

00:08:04.880 | Republican primary. So yeah, there's always front runner

00:08:07.920 | risk. But it's hard to say that coming out of this year, that he

00:08:11.640 | wasn't a huge political winner. Okay, if we're going to

00:08:14.040 | challenge other people's picks, I would maybe challenge

00:08:16.880 | Zelensky. There's no question that he's been a global media

00:08:20.680 | hero. But two thirds of Kiev is currently without power. 80% of

00:08:25.240 | Kiev doesn't have water. 30% of the Ukrainian power stations

00:08:28.360 | have been destroyed. Nearly half of the country's without power.

00:08:32.080 | There's something like 8 million displaced Ukrainians in the

00:08:37.760 | country. And over 100,000 Ukrainians have been killed in

00:08:41.320 | this war. So yes, he's been a very strong charismatic war

00:08:44.560 | leader for them. But

00:08:46.240 | Friedberg your response, I'm not advocating for his performance

00:08:50.760 | as a leader, I'm advocating for his accumulation of political

00:08:56.760 | goodwill. And that's it.

00:08:58.520 | Okay, and he is winning the war. So is that winning? Well, in

00:09:05.440 | war, they say there, nobody wins. But it's certainly better

00:09:08.520 | than having your country taken over by Putin. So some would

00:09:10.880 | argue that's winning. Let's go to biggest losers, biggest

00:09:14.280 | losers. In 2022. We predicted again, this is our predictions

00:09:18.920 | from last year. And then we'll go on to our actuals for this

00:09:21.520 | year. Last year, we predicted, Chamath said the progressive

00:09:25.360 | left, SAC said Nancy Pelosi, Friedberg, you said us

00:09:28.880 | influence globally interesting. And I said the extremes, both

00:09:32.240 | Biden and Trump. Let's go with our predictions. I'm sorry, with

00:09:36.200 | our actuals for this year, Chamath wanted you go first this

00:09:38.880 | time, who is your biggest political loser for 2022?

00:09:42.800 | I mean, I don't think it's as written about as much but the

00:09:46.560 | progressive left did see as much failure as the MAGA, right. So

00:09:54.040 | they were a huge loser. I mean, to the extent that anybody

00:09:56.640 | thought that leftist, you know, quasi socialist policies and

00:10:00.800 | politics was a winning strategy. I think that was pretty soundly

00:10:03.480 | refuted, even in places that were pretty staunchly Democrat,

00:10:07.920 | it was really difficult for the progressive left to do much of

00:10:11.720 | anything but lose. So I think that was a really powerful and

00:10:15.040 | important repudiation. And I think it's marginalized as them

00:10:20.960 | to a bunch of, you know, kooks almost. And I think that that's

00:10:25.600 | really healthy for politics going forward.

00:10:27.480 | So your prediction and your actual are going to be the same

00:10:30.520 | the last,

00:10:31.640 | I think they were the biggest political loser in the United

00:10:34.000 | States, at least.

00:10:34.840 | Okay, yeah, Elizabeth Warren, we don't hear people talking about

00:10:37.640 | Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders much this year.

00:10:39.560 | Yeah. And I think that the biggest political loser outside

00:10:42.600 | of the United States was probably the European Union.

00:10:45.480 | Okay, you want to expand on that a little bit, if you just think

00:10:47.520 | about the corner that they painted themselves into how much

00:10:52.360 | they had to basically literally go 180 degrees away from what

00:10:57.160 | their policies were, you know, there was a huge raft of whether

00:11:00.720 | it was green, ESG, kind of woke liberal politics that manifested

00:11:06.280 | itself in all kinds of national security decisions and energy

00:11:09.840 | decisions that in this last year, they literally had to undo

00:11:12.960 | in order to stay alive. And that makes that whole political

00:11:18.040 | construct, I think, very fragile. So they were they were a

00:11:21.600 | pretty big political loser outside of the United States.

00:11:24.000 | Okay, sacks. It'd be hard here to guess this one. But sacks,

00:11:29.320 | who is your biggest political loser in 2022? I have no idea

00:11:34.520 | who you're going to pick.

00:11:35.160 | By the way, I got Pelosi right last year that she did lose the

00:11:38.040 | gavel. So you've got to say that the war in Ukraine was the

00:11:41.400 | biggest event of the year. And obviously, you can spread the

00:11:44.680 | blame around to a lot of people starting with Putin, because

00:11:47.320 | he's the one who ordered the invasion. But I would say this

00:11:50.280 | is a slightly different take on the category, which is biggest

00:11:52.520 | political blunder occurred on January 27 of this year, when

00:11:57.400 | Blinken said that NATO's door is open and must remain open. And

00:12:02.360 | that is our commitment. He basically shut the door. He kept

00:12:05.440 | NATO's door open, but shut the door on any means of a

00:12:08.280 | diplomatic off ramp to end this conflict by promising Russia,

00:12:11.840 | the Ukraine would not become part of NATO. That was the

00:12:14.360 | single biggest diplomatic blunder of this year, or maybe

00:12:17.800 | the last couple of decades, because there's a good chance we

00:12:21.000 | could have avoided this disastrous war, if we had just

00:12:24.240 | been willing to close NATO's door.

00:12:25.880 | Wonderful. Great, crisp answer. Thank you for that nice and

00:12:28.360 | tight. Friedberg, who's your biggest political loser for

00:12:31.680 | 2022?

00:12:32.520 | It was a tie for me between Jerome Powell, and Liz truss

00:12:37.240 | just has to get recognition here for only being in office for 45

00:12:41.200 | days as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I mean, I think

00:12:44.160 | that is cannot be overlooked. The some of the policy and folks

00:12:50.120 | that she put in an office, caused, you know, massive chaos,

00:12:54.400 | it was just a clear dysfunction over a very short period of

00:12:57.920 | time. Jerome Powell, I think this was a big surprise this

00:13:02.480 | year, to see how the Fed chair became so politicized, and his

00:13:09.400 | role became so politicized, both kind of the left and the right,

00:13:13.720 | finding reasons to question his leadership, and his decision

00:13:19.480 | making the failure to raise rates soon enough, led to

00:13:23.240 | massive inflation is what you'll hear from one contingent of

00:13:25.840 | politicians and the public at large. And then the rate at

00:13:29.640 | which he's raising rates now to catch up to the common inflation

00:13:33.680 | is causing people to complain on the other side. So there is

00:13:36.200 | really no one that seems to be happy with Jerome Powell. And I

00:13:38.560 | think that that was a shooting star that seems to have

00:13:42.160 | completely lost its luster.

00:13:43.360 | Okay, so the Fed, yes, good pull there. Okay, mine is pretty

00:13:46.720 | clear. And objectively, it is, of course, the GOP, the red wave

00:13:51.000 | failed, it turned into a trickle. Trump is back. And I

00:13:54.880 | believe there's a good chance he will win the primary Roe v. Wade

00:13:58.800 | a complete unmitigated disaster for Republicans, they caught

00:14:03.120 | the car and plus marriage equality and having to deal with

00:14:07.640 | that women and the LGBT community vote and they have long

00:14:11.760 | memories. The GOP, the biggest political losers for me. Okay,

00:14:17.640 | I'm sure sacks has no rebuttal there. So we will move on to the

00:14:19.960 | next category, which is

00:14:22.240 | by the way, if you say it that way, then you know, the biggest

00:14:25.480 | the biggest political loser in 2022 were women, like, like

00:14:30.040 | fundamental human rights were stripped away from 50% of the

00:14:34.120 | population. So that's not cool.

00:14:36.800 | And they could have left it alone.

00:14:39.160 | And they could have left it alone.

00:14:40.280 | Well, if if what you mean is that the issue was sent to the

00:14:44.160 | states and each state then gets to decide, then you're right.

00:14:47.680 | But but if you look at the battles have happened at the

00:14:50.120 | states, even red states like Kentucky and Kansas have

00:14:53.520 | rejected the subsequent political push to outlaw

00:14:57.520 | abortion. So it has not turned out to be

00:15:01.080 | just by the fact that all of these red states basically re

00:15:05.960 | confirmed and enshrined a woman's right to choose may

00:15:09.520 | actually go more to show that the Supreme Court is totally out

00:15:12.880 | of touch, and that they didn't need to touch Roe v. Wade. And

00:15:16.560 | the fact that they did opened up, you know, a huge can of

00:15:19.480 | worms in 50 states that now go and need to go and adjudicate

00:15:22.880 | this thing, where it looked like actually that decision, even

00:15:27.280 | back in the day, even though the way that it was done, you know,

00:15:29.400 | there was a lot of room for improvement, clearly, everybody

00:15:32.040 | agrees with that, but was actually after, you know, 50 plus

00:15:35.520 | years reasonable law. And so now that you took that law away, now

00:15:38.920 | folks, even in the red states are like, No, it was fine, which

00:15:41.760 | means that this whole thing was a huge political gambit more

00:15:45.240 | than it was actual societal intention.

00:15:48.840 | Okay, so we are going to move on. Now. I just I'll add my

00:15:51.880 | final two cents to that. As I said, I do think women and the

00:15:56.680 | LGBT community have very long memories and the people who are

00:15:59.680 | in the moderate are not going to forget how they were treated by

00:16:02.720 | the GOP in this specific issue. So biggest political surprise,

00:16:07.320 | we didn't do predictions last year. But I'll just run down

00:16:09.960 | what everybody said was their political surprise. I said, the

00:16:13.840 | fact that Kamala Harris was sidelined was pretty surprising

00:16:16.320 | to me. And that's continued. Chamath, you said Joe Manchin

00:16:20.880 | was your biggest political surprise. Glenn yunkin winning

00:16:24.280 | sacks that was your biggest surprise. And Friedberg, the

00:16:28.280 | January six crowd, making it into the Capitol during the

00:16:32.720 | insurrection was your biggest political surprise. So here we

00:16:37.280 | go. Our 2022 biggest political surprise. Saks, let's start with

00:16:41.920 | you. You have a lot to say about politics go.

00:16:44.080 | Well, the biggest political surprise to me was no red wave.

00:16:47.680 | So I admit, I got this prediction wrong. You know, I

00:16:50.760 | got all my previous ones, right, Jay Klaus, I'm gonna admit I got

00:16:53.040 | this one wrong. You know, I believe that the electorate

00:16:56.560 | would focus on the fundamentals three quarters of the country

00:16:58.800 | thought were on the wrong track. Three quarters think we're in a

00:17:01.520 | recession. Nevertheless, the Republicans did not do nearly as

00:17:05.040 | well as predicted, they only gained nine seats in the House,

00:17:07.520 | they actually lost a seat in the Senate. And I think that that

00:17:11.160 | had something to do with candidate equality. And of

00:17:13.400 | course, the whole election denial narrative, basically was

00:17:17.440 | a disaster for them. I hope that the Republicans move on and stop

00:17:22.360 | talking about the past. What voters want to hear about is the

00:17:25.560 | future.

00:17:26.040 | freeberg. Did you have a biggest political surprise for 2022?

00:17:29.080 | freeberg?

00:17:29.560 | Yeah, it's also the failure of the red wave. I mean, that was

00:17:31.920 | my, my pick. I think the consensus going into the

00:17:35.440 | election was with, you know, rising inflation and the disdain

00:17:40.720 | that everyone had for the way politicians kind of managed us

00:17:43.720 | through COVID and then managed us through the economic recovery.

00:17:46.120 | It's, it was inevitable to see a flip and it didn't happen. I

00:17:49.960 | think obviously, we talked about why that is, but that was a big

00:17:52.760 | surprise for everyone.

00:17:53.600 | Chamath, what was your biggest political surprise of 2022?

00:17:57.800 | Chamath Palihapitiya?

00:17:59.080 | The absolute toothlessness of MAGA and Donald Trump. I mean,

00:18:04.040 | he was just a scarlet letter. If you were anywhere near this guy,

00:18:09.360 | you were gonna lose. And that's surprising, considering how

00:18:16.600 | traditional republicans were pandering to him, up until

00:18:20.680 | frankly, just a few months ago. So I think that we exposed the

00:18:24.720 | emperor of as having no clothes, and that he marginalizes and

00:18:30.920 | sidelines candidates into a fringe following that cannot go

00:18:35.440 | mainstream. That was a it was really surprising to see how

00:18:38.800 | stark that was this year.

00:18:40.360 | Fantastic. I'm going to build on your Chamath. I had to hear

00:18:45.880 | number two was Roe v. Wade, but we've beaten that. I think it

00:18:48.600 | would just get us discussed it as much as we possibly could. My

00:18:51.160 | number one, building on your Chamath is that despite what's

00:18:55.320 | happened with Trump, the documents, the his cases in the

00:18:59.560 | United States in New York, and about taxes, despite all of

00:19:03.840 | this, the January 6 insurrection, despite all this,

00:19:06.440 | Trump is still viable. I can't believe he's still viable and

00:19:10.720 | that he is going to be out there in the primaries and he's going

00:19:14.440 | to have to debate to Santas and I don't know that to Santas can

00:19:17.880 | beat him in a debate. I think he might win. So this is completely

00:19:22.080 | scary for both me and sacks. I think it's terrifying. It's

00:19:24.520 | saxes nightmare and mine.

00:19:25.680 | Well, I think he's mainly viable in the minds of the MAGA

00:19:30.440 | deadenders and the mainstream media who want to keep him

00:19:35.160 | alive. And the Biden administration wants to keep him

00:19:37.040 | alive. And they'll do anything to keep him alive and in the

00:19:38.960 | news and you love keeping him in the news. So it's a yes, it's a

00:19:42.720 | codependent relationship between the mainstream media, which you

00:19:46.360 | sometimes front for and Trump.

00:19:48.400 | Be careful telling me what I think.

00:19:50.440 | We need to end this codependency, J. Cal.

00:19:52.160 | Well, I wish the Republican Party would finally take

00:19:57.560 | ownership of this disaster that is Trump and tell him that he

00:20:00.000 | has no business but you guys keep him in the game. And the

00:20:02.320 | fact that he's viable again, your personal nightmare and mine.

00:20:04.960 | Okay, biggest business winner, everybody excited to get off

00:20:09.040 | politics right now and get to our kill zone, which is

00:20:11.960 | business. So last year, we had predictions in this category. I

00:20:18.160 | had said Disney, that's an up and down prediction. I'll get

00:20:20.120 | into that in a moment. Tremont, you said small and medium sized

00:20:22.920 | businesses, the old SMBs. SAC said rise of the rest the fly

00:20:26.360 | over states. And freeberg. You said stripe. Tremont. Let's

00:20:30.600 | start with you SMBs. What did you get? Right? What did you get

00:20:32.560 | wrong here?

00:20:33.000 | I mean, I whiffed it just completely missed the global

00:20:37.160 | macro shift that we embarked on in full force. Starting in q1 of

00:20:43.560 | this year, it was, it is the most important business story of

00:20:46.960 | the year. It's just like we have an absolute complete regime

00:20:50.840 | change. And by the way, that regime change is so complete.

00:20:54.040 | And so, you know, thorough that it even touched Japan just a few

00:21:01.040 | weeks ago, or sorry, just a few days ago, where Japan who find

00:21:04.320 | you know, finally yielded on this idea of, you're gonna we're

00:21:07.360 | gonna have negative interest rates and yield curve control,

00:21:09.760 | even they finally broken it and raised rates. So it is an

00:21:14.120 | absolute worldwide sea change in how we need to think about risk.

00:21:19.080 | And I think that's worth talking about a little bit later in the

00:21:22.040 | show. But that was the single biggest business story of the

00:21:25.920 | yard, which must said I missed this too, even though on another

00:21:29.080 | prediction, when you asked what the biggest business loser would

00:21:31.640 | be, I think I said that it would be asset classes that had been

00:21:35.680 | pumped up by the feds money printing, because you start to

00:21:38.680 | feel now. So I got that part, right. But what I didn't

00:21:41.680 | connected to, were all the asset classes actually got pummeled. So

00:21:46.120 | I kind of conceptually understood that rates were

00:21:49.080 | rising, but I totally underestimated the magnitude of

00:21:53.200 | the shift, the way that growth stocks would get hammered the

00:21:55.880 | way that crypto would get destroyed the fact that like

00:21:59.600 | tiger basically got blown out of the industry. I mean, I had the

00:22:02.920 | right general intuition, but I didn't translate it into the

00:22:07.520 | specific asset types and the magnitude of the shift. And also

00:22:11.040 | the like what you must set a real regime change now, and how

00:22:14.200 | markets are viewing stock performance.

00:22:16.480 | It's really incredible. freeburg. Let's get in on this.

00:22:20.080 | This is somewhere where you can contribute deeply. What do you

00:22:24.080 | think about your take last year? And you still believe in stripe?

00:22:28.280 | Yeah, I mean, look, it's a it's a business that obviously

00:22:31.400 | benefited greatly from the pandemic and the adoption of,

00:22:35.760 | you know, the payment processing infrastructure that they've

00:22:38.800 | built across their across various kind of e commerce

00:22:41.640 | platforms. It's I've been I'm not an investor, so I don't have

00:22:45.240 | any numbers. But there are public reports that have

00:22:47.320 | highlighted that the revenue increased 66%. This year,

00:22:50.040 | they've indicated that they're probably going to experience

00:22:52.800 | significant revenue slowdown with the recession ahead. But it

00:22:56.800 | still seems like a super high quality business. And you know,

00:23:00.560 | valuation wise, who knows what things are going to be worth

00:23:03.880 | when they ultimately come to market. There's certainly no one

00:23:06.360 | going to going public right now. So at some point, we'll see, you

00:23:10.240 | know, whether valuations play out, but it seems like it

00:23:12.040 | continues to be a very strong, one of the strongest private

00:23:15.200 | businesses that's being built in Silicon Valley,

00:23:17.520 | we will get to 2022. biggest business winners in one second.

00:23:22.560 | I will just say for Disney, yeah, man, what a swing, Bob

00:23:26.600 | chapik in and then out. And now Bob Iger back. So I feel like I

00:23:30.240 | got this one wrong and right. At the same time, I still believe

00:23:33.120 | in the company deeply. I think they're gonna have a big win.

00:23:35.440 | Let's get to our actual biggest winner of 2022. Saks, why don't

00:23:41.840 | you lead us off with your biggest winner of 2022. For

00:23:45.360 | business,

00:23:46.000 | I said Lockheed Martin, along with other defense stocks,

00:23:49.920 | Lockheed Martin, which makes javelins and high Mars is up 40%

00:23:53.320 | in the past year when most of the markets been way down. North

00:23:56.400 | or Grumman is also up almost 40%. And even some of the lesser

00:24:00.360 | performers like Raytheon and General Dynamics are up about

00:24:03.000 | almost 20% in a terrible market environment. The fact of the

00:24:07.440 | matter is war is terrible, but it appears to be good business.

00:24:10.760 | We've sent so many weapons to Ukraine, that there's recent

00:24:14.000 | press reports that are the US stockpiles of missiles, javelins

00:24:18.480 | and stingers are now depleted. So these companies are going to

00:24:22.080 | keep doing well for the next year, at least. Now there's a

00:24:24.840 | new appropriation sailing through something like 44

00:24:27.120 | billion of new funding for the war. It's now over $100 billion.

00:24:30.800 | McConnell says this is a Republicans number one priority.

00:24:35.480 | This is now a bipartisan concern. And if you think the

00:24:38.160 | war is expensive, just wait for reconstruction that's estimated

00:24:40.720 | to cost roughly a trillion dollars to build Ukraine back.

00:24:45.160 | Saks, can I ask you a question about that? Are these when we

00:24:48.360 | fund these wars? I've heard different versions of this can't

00:24:51.720 | get a clear answer. When we provide weapons and systems like

00:24:55.880 | this, are they not on account and we asked for money back at

00:24:58.680 | some point? Do you know the answer to that question?

00:25:00.760 | You think we're gonna get money back? Are you kidding me?

00:25:03.160 | It seems to be sometimes that we do. So that's why I was asking.

00:25:06.000 | I think it's something there hasn't been clarity.

00:25:07.800 | Look, I think the the war has been phenomenal business for the

00:25:11.440 | military industrial complex. That's what we're seeing here.

00:25:14.360 | Not so great for us the economy.

00:25:16.960 | freebird. What do you got? Yeah, I mean, I think you guys will

00:25:18.880 | remember last November, I predicted energy and defense to

00:25:22.520 | be the best performing

00:25:23.520 | stocks for this year. sax is right. I think defense is up 40%.

00:25:28.440 | So I kind of went with the bigger oil and gas companies are

00:25:32.520 | up, you know, across the board about 47% in terms of equity

00:25:36.640 | value in the public markets a year to date, compared to the

00:25:40.360 | S&P being down about 20%. So over the short term, I would

00:25:44.160 | argue oil and gas companies, but I think that over the long term,

00:25:47.640 | there were a couple of big breakthrough moments that I would

00:25:51.040 | give kind of, you know, the winner in business that will

00:25:54.680 | benefit over the long term to open AI and to fusion startups.

00:25:57.960 | And we'll talk more about why, for those two, obviously later

00:26:02.240 | when we get to the biggest winner in tech and science. But

00:26:05.320 | yeah, short term oil and gas, they benefited from the supply

00:26:07.600 | constraints and the conflict in the Ukraine. And the longer term,

00:26:10.360 | I think opening I infusion startups.

00:26:11.720 | Well, and by the way, I mean, just just to give freebirth

00:26:13.840 | some credit here, you actually predicted the war or you

00:26:16.640 | predicted a war. I don't know if you predicted this war, but you

00:26:18.880 | predicted

00:26:19.280 | Yeah, I predicted the war and Putin kind of rising to the

00:26:24.760 | center stage and the defense dog.

00:26:27.400 | That was a huge prediction, because I don't think most

00:26:29.320 | people even most analysts, well, they were surprised even when

00:26:31.760 | the invasion happened. I think people were still very surprised

00:26:34.560 | both that Putin would order it. But also, if you say the

00:26:37.360 | situation, I think you got to be surprised that we didn't

00:26:39.920 | negotiate harder to try and prevent it.

00:26:42.120 | I traded it to I bought I bought an energy ETF. So it worked out

00:26:45.160 | for me.

00:26:45.480 | Okay, Chamath, your biggest business winner of 2022.

00:26:49.320 | Nick can throw it up. But it's basically any single person that

00:26:53.240 | understands the following formula. So if you this is the

00:26:56.480 | good, this is the this is the capital asset pricing model. So

00:27:01.040 | what is this? This is like before you make any investment,

00:27:03.720 | what it actually tells you is here's the rate of return that

00:27:07.200 | you need to generate above the risk free rate, in order for you

00:27:11.640 | to justify making that investment. And if you really

00:27:16.040 | understood the capital asset pricing model going into 2022,

00:27:19.840 | it would have been difficult for you to not make money. Because

00:27:24.040 | all of a sudden, as the 10 year flexed up, and as you know, the

00:27:28.200 | volatility, particularly of things like tech stocks, went

00:27:31.120 | crazy, you could have figured out where you to park your

00:27:35.000 | money. And all these people that have built businesses around

00:27:39.200 | this capital asset pricing model. So you have companies,

00:27:42.000 | obviously, so you know, you have sectors of the economy, like

00:27:45.200 | defense, or energy stocks, consumer goods and staples, they

00:27:51.960 | all had moments where they all did well. But if you take it one

00:27:55.480 | step above the organizations that actually ran big macro

00:27:59.400 | books, or really understood how to algorithmically implement

00:28:03.520 | this capital asset pricing model just ran roughshod over the

00:28:07.280 | markets. And, you know, said in a different way, it's sort of my

00:28:11.560 | background, which is, you know, if you understood the capital

00:28:14.640 | asset pricing model, you would have been a massive bear. And

00:28:17.960 | the bear got fed this year to a degree that none of us could

00:28:20.480 | have anticipated.

00:28:21.240 | Okay, so am I correct saying the capital asset pricing model is

00:28:25.600 | the biggest winner?

00:28:26.280 | Or no people that understood it.

00:28:27.960 | People that understood it. Got it. Okay. And for my biggest

00:28:30.680 | winner, I went with chat GPT slash open AI and their partner

00:28:35.960 | Microsoft. Why did I pick that as the biggest winner? Well, on

00:28:39.800 | my other podcast this week in startups, we played a game chat

00:28:42.960 | GPT versus the first result of Google's and Molly and I could

00:28:48.560 | not tell the difference. And in fact, we picked chat GPT is

00:28:52.080 | answers often above Google's Google, one of the greatest

00:28:57.680 | businesses and franchises ever created has no answer at

00:29:02.480 | currently for chat GPT. Because Google's business model is to

00:29:07.880 | get you to click on an ad between links. If you give the

00:29:11.560 | actual answer, then the person doesn't stops clicking. If they

00:29:15.520 | stop clicking, Google stops making money, there is no

00:29:19.760 | business model in search, if the person gets their answer,

00:29:23.000 | because they're done. This is an existential threat like we have

00:29:26.640 | not seen. And our friend Sam Altman has a line chat GPT

00:29:30.360 | slash open AI with Microsoft. Microsoft I think is going to

00:29:35.240 | release a and there's a prediction as well, a search

00:29:38.120 | engine with open AI that has a significant impact on Google's

00:29:45.560 | franchise. We didn't think this would ever happen. And it's

00:29:47.800 | here. Okay, the biggest losers in business. We made predictions

00:29:51.760 | last year. I said in 2020. I predicted in 2021. The biggest

00:29:56.840 | loser in 2022 would be crypto. By the way, Friedberg, you

00:30:00.320 | agreed with me. And we nailed it. You agreed with me? Well,

00:30:05.160 | yes, that's correct. We were in agreement. How about that? We

00:30:08.240 | were in agreement. We were in agreement. independent. You said

00:30:12.200 | a chamath visa slash MasterCard. We'll get into that. And sacks,

00:30:15.480 | you said asset classes benefiting from government

00:30:18.280 | pumps. Very interesting. The Fed stopping QE. Interesting.

00:30:22.880 | Anybody have comments on their predictions or each other's

00:30:25.400 | predictions from last year?

00:30:26.960 | On a percentage basis? David absolutely nailed it. sacks

00:30:31.520 | absolutely nailed it. On a dollar basis, the biggest

00:30:34.320 | business loser of this year was big tech. And I think that you

00:30:38.720 | saw three things happen, which I think are important for the

00:30:42.040 | future. The first was it was the most crowded trade, both by

00:30:49.360 | professional money managers as well as retail. And that fever

00:30:53.400 | finally broke in the last half of in the second half of this

00:30:57.160 | year. And now going into, into these last few weeks, you're

00:31:00.680 | seeing a lot of panicked selling to cover losses and other

00:31:06.680 | things. So I think that number one that happened. Number two,

00:31:11.800 | regulators basically said we're going to go after these guys

00:31:14.520 | every single which way we can. And then number three, I think

00:31:19.560 | it started to change the innovation cycle where people

00:31:21.920 | now actually believe that they can't outspend because folks

00:31:26.000 | won't tolerate it. And the things that they're spending

00:31:28.040 | their money on seem kind of foolish. And so I think the you

00:31:32.200 | know, big tech is probably not discussed enough, but it was a

00:31:35.080 | huge loser for this year, in terms of what happened.

00:31:38.880 | 2022, actual biggest business loser, Chamath says big tech,

00:31:43.600 | freeberg, who is your biggest business loser for 2022?

00:31:47.200 | I mean, this one's just a simple FTX. I mean, that was such a

00:31:51.440 | incredible revelation of the scale of the scam and the fraud

00:31:57.640 | and the craziness that went on. And I think what was interesting

00:32:00.480 | about FTX is it had implications, not just for

00:32:03.600 | crypto, and not just for kind of offshore regulatory and not just

00:32:07.400 | for fraud, but also for the investors, we had a whole debate

00:32:10.800 | about whether the press and journalists failed to kind of,

00:32:14.800 | you know, appropriately investigate this guy rather than

00:32:17.600 | give him accolades, because he said the right things, which he

00:32:20.040 | said he did over I am. And investors fail to do relevant

00:32:23.760 | amounts of due diligence or form a board and have proper

00:32:25.840 | governance over him, because they wanted to be part of the hot

00:32:28.440 | new thing. And everyone had capital to deploy. And I think

00:32:30.920 | what was interesting about the FTX failure is it didn't just,

00:32:33.320 | it wasn't just a failure due to fraud, but it revealed so many

00:32:37.080 | parts of kind of, you know, I call it, you know, systemic,

00:32:42.560 | laziness and systemic kind of blind eye and systemic bias that

00:32:47.800 | allowed and enabled this to happen. It was really a

00:32:50.960 | revealing kind of failure. And that's why I kind of gave it the

00:32:54.720 | the award, Mr. David Sachs, who is your biggest business loser

00:32:58.280 | of 2022?

00:32:59.960 | Well, you kind of mentioned this, I picked Bob J. Peck is

00:33:03.840 | the former Disney CEO, he was Iger's handpicked successor three

00:33:06.920 | years ago, then the pandemic hit, which shut down the theme

00:33:10.480 | parks. But then I think the big mistake was allowing himself to

00:33:13.360 | be mow mowed by woke employees into picking a fight with

00:33:16.200 | DeSantis over the so called don't say gay bill. That caused

00:33:20.160 | DeSantis to retaliate by threatening the special

00:33:22.600 | privileges that Disney enjoys in the state. And then he had

00:33:27.040 | Iger undermining him behind the scenes. This was revealed, I

00:33:29.840 | think, as a Wall Street Journal story, that he was grousing to

00:33:33.720 | insiders that JPEG was not soliciting his advice. And he

00:33:36.200 | was undermining confidence in with the board. And recently,

00:33:40.680 | JPEG was forced out and I was put back in charge.

00:33:42.640 | Fantastic choice for the biggest loser.

00:33:44.360 | How brutal does Iger look in that Wall Street Journal piece?

00:33:47.000 | I mean, would anybody work for him?

00:33:49.680 | Yes, he is incredible. He looks terrible. I agree. I read that

00:33:53.960 | piece twice, actually. The CFO calling him up, she was the one

00:33:58.160 | who stabbed him, you know, in knife JPEG. It's a great wall.

00:34:02.240 | So I don't think that I don't think that that happens without

00:34:04.880 | the support of the person waiting in the wings.

00:34:08.080 | Hey, listen, there's a couple of jobs, you never quit. You never

00:34:11.480 | quit a hit TV show. You never quit a hit band like Roger

00:34:15.160 | Water. It is with Pink Floyd.

00:34:16.160 | Why didn't they just extend his

00:34:17.240 | retire?

00:34:17.720 | Quit the Disney job. It's the best job as a job in the world.

00:34:20.520 | But Jason, why go through never quit? Why go through the

00:34:22.680 | theatrics of like grooming somebody, putting them in your

00:34:25.800 | job and then undermining them? Like I all I'm saying is if

00:34:28.880 | you're I think he made a mistake. I think he made a

00:34:30.800 | mistake. He quit and he wanted to come and also if like if

00:34:33.400 | you're a good up and coming exec I mean, what do you do if like

00:34:37.920 | all of a sudden like, you know, you have the opportunity to get

00:34:40.400 | groomed for that job. It just seems really risky.

00:34:43.400 | Yeah, I mean, I think Bob Iger realized when he in that piece,

00:34:48.640 | they say he went on his yacht, his wife didn't come with him.

00:34:50.840 | The Wall Street Journal piece is incredible. And he's got bored.

00:34:53.960 | And he's 70 something years old. He's like an early 70s. Why

00:34:57.280 | would you give up the greatest job in the world? So he went

00:34:59.280 | back and he took it back.

00:35:00.200 | Didn't Disney have a mandatory retirement age?

00:35:02.680 | But this is my point is he was so he was so prolific, he could

00:35:05.400 | have extended it. Why not just extend it and be done with it?

00:35:07.840 | Yeah.

00:35:09.040 | Did you guys read the book he wrote? That lifetime? What is it?

00:35:14.040 | Yeah. And I think that what was interesting about that book was

00:35:17.360 | the entire thing was built around a series of deals that he

00:35:20.800 | did. It was like I did this acquisition, then I did this

00:35:22.920 | acquisition, then I did this acquisition. And everything for

00:35:25.840 | him was building this, this this empire by doing deals. And

00:35:30.160 | someone whose storyline and narrative that they tell of

00:35:32.720 | themselves, that's built as a series of deals is a deal

00:35:36.600 | junkie. And you're not going to be a deal junkie, where that's

00:35:39.800 | your excitement. That's the thrill. That's the adventure

00:35:41.800 | that you get out of life. And then you go and sit on a yacht,

00:35:44.400 | you're not doing any deal sitting on a yacht. And you're

00:35:46.480 | going to want to get back to that. And I think it's less

00:35:48.120 | about kind of management and product. And it was much more

00:35:50.840 | about being in the midst of doing deals. And that's why he

00:35:54.360 | came back.

00:35:54.840 | If this was part of Iger's diabolical strategy to get back,

00:35:57.480 | let me just say like, one of the ways he did it, I mean, Chapek

00:36:00.440 | had the right instincts, which is when this whole Florida

00:36:02.840 | debate happened over don't say gay, highly contentious, no

00:36:05.880 | comment. No comment, his instinct was just to stay out

00:36:08.960 | of it. But then Iger made some statements about how companies

00:36:12.680 | have to live up to their values, not good stuff. And then the

00:36:15.160 | employee started, you know, again, you know, a Mau Mau him

00:36:18.920 | to get involved. And he took the bait. And he got involved. And

00:36:22.280 | what he didn't expect is that DeSantis wasn't going to just

00:36:25.200 | roll over to Santa's hit him back really hard. And it cost

00:36:28.520 | them economically. And then

00:36:30.360 | and in the first interview that Iger gave when asked about this

00:36:34.840 | question, he was like, no comment.

00:36:36.200 | Yeah, he's like, we're not gonna get involved in politics

00:36:40.120 | anymore. We're not gonna get involved in politics anymore. It

00:36:42.600 | was hilarious. That was

00:36:44.080 | an hilarious Chapek to basically get involved in politics. And

00:36:47.480 | then basically became cannon fodder for DeSantis. Exactly.

00:36:54.960 | I mean, how diabolical is that?

00:36:57.000 | It's so diabolical, so dirty. The other two were cheap. It

00:37:02.040 | said, we're going to take away your PNLs to each of the

00:37:05.880 | leaders that is like just neutering them that he basically

00:37:08.880 | said, everybody's under the CFO, everybody's going to be on one

00:37:11.200 | PNL that infuriated all the creatives. And then he went to

00:37:15.200 | war with Scarlett Johansson over a $10 million settlement for her

00:37:19.560 | black widow. He couldn't handle talent, he couldn't handle the

00:37:22.600 | politics. And he wanted to control everybody's PNL just

00:37:26.120 | unforced error after unforced error. Congratulations to my guy

00:37:29.240 | Bob Iger, I own the stock.

00:37:30.440 | Do you think it was diabolical at all?

00:37:31.960 | Oh, in the best possible way. In the best possible way, which

00:37:34.800 | means that Disney stock is going to go up. Yes, I'm buying more

00:37:37.680 | Disney stock this year.

00:37:38.560 | Is all the woke progressive politics that he projects? Is

00:37:42.080 | that all just a game to mask what a vipers nest their

00:37:45.640 | executive suite really is?

00:37:47.000 | Are you telling me that Disney is a political corporation after

00:37:50.560 | Eisner and Bob Iger and all of this? Michael Ovitz? I mean, it's

00:37:54.400 | the history of Disney. It's the greatest job in the world. It is

00:37:57.520 | Game of Thrones to get that job. And Bob Iger got it back. He's

00:38:01.240 | my guy. I'm sticking with them. Okay, they have the best IP in

00:38:03.800 | the business. I don't care how he gets that job back. He's

00:38:06.320 | awesome.

00:38:06.680 | I gotta say the IP at Warner Media is a real strong

00:38:10.200 | contender. I mean, that was a lot as we were talking about

00:38:12.560 | this yesterday, how good White Lotus season two was, let's

00:38:15.280 | open up the discussion. It is incredible how HBO produces

00:38:19.680 | extraordinary hit after extraordinary hit the quality

00:38:22.800 | and the consistency of that quality coming out of HBO is

00:38:25.920 | like nothing else. You'll go I mean, look, Avatar two, I did

00:38:29.320 | not like Avatar one, I thought it was junk. Avatar two is

00:38:31.960 | getting panned for being junk as well. Not everything that comes

00:38:34.840 | out of Disney is a hit. They certainly have the best

00:38:36.920 | franchises. But man, Warner Media has a lot to contend with

00:38:41.120 | and you know, they could end up being a real challenger to

00:38:44.040 | Disney in the years ahead.

00:38:44.960 | Saks Did you watch the White Lotus season two? Yes or no?

00:38:49.440 | No problem. It is absolutely fantastic. We have to do a

00:38:51.960 | little fan service here. What did you love Chamath about White

00:38:55.280 | Lotus season two, give the fans a little service here.

00:38:57.360 | Wait, it's on season two. I haven't even seen season one. I

00:39:00.400 | don't even know what you guys are talking about.

00:39:01.840 | Okay, it's the hottest show in television.

00:39:04.200 | Well, I'll tell you what's incredible is there's a

00:39:06.720 | diversity of characters and they weave the super like, you know,

00:39:09.920 | interesting story together, but each of the characters are so

00:39:12.680 | distinct. And the characters are played so well. I mean, we were

00:39:17.520 | talking about, you know, we were kind of at dinner last night

00:39:20.480 | talking about who our favorite character was on the show. And

00:39:23.160 | everyone has a different answer. And everyone has a different

00:39:25.160 | reason. And then there are characters that you hate. But

00:39:28.760 | the fact that you hate them, and the fact that you despise them

00:39:31.320 | draws you in, you're drawn into these characters. I think that

00:39:34.160 | the the way that they kind of portrayed and the way that the

00:39:37.240 | characters were acted by the by the actors, and then the way

00:39:40.960 | that they all kind of weave together to tell this

00:39:42.720 | extraordinary story. It was really, it was really compelling.

00:39:46.600 | And it was like, just super impressive. Directing, acting,

00:39:50.040 | writing everything.

00:39:50.800 | There are a handful of scenes in season one, and season two,

00:39:54.560 | which I would say are unbelievably psychologically

00:40:00.120 | violent. And there's just no other way to describe like, how

00:40:06.560 | they just expose and by the way, they do it with simple shots,

00:40:11.400 | very simple dialogue, it's almost nonchalant in the way

00:40:15.360 | that they present these truth bombs. And you have to sit there

00:40:19.360 | and process it. And you're just like, Oh my god, it's just it's

00:40:23.320 | wave after wave. It's an incredible, incredibly well

00:40:26.480 | written show.

00:40:27.120 | The character development is extraordinary. Amazing.

00:40:29.840 | Production and set design, by the way. Also, I mean, when you

00:40:33.040 | when you watch it, don't you want to cool?

00:40:35.440 | Do you guys remember in season ones? Saks will remember this

00:40:40.440 | because Saks watched it season one, the family is sitting at

00:40:43.240 | the table where they're watching the Hawaiian dance. And Paula,

00:40:46.840 | yes, the guest of the family gets up and leave, she can't

00:40:49.280 | take it anymore. And then the next day, they're in a

00:40:52.320 | discussion about it. And the father says something about, I

00:40:56.320 | think, hierarchy or imperialism or something. And it goes around

00:40:59.720 | the table, and she just deadpan. She says, Well, maybe it's just

00:41:02.440 | time for others to eat. Talking about, you know, like fixing

00:41:06.440 | these wrongs. And I had to listen to it two or three times.

00:41:10.520 | I'm like, Oh, my God, that is that is a line that just sticks

00:41:14.200 | in your brain. There's a few of those in that show that I think

00:41:17.360 | Eric said, and I was saying, like, they really draw you in.

00:41:20.200 | The set design, the production design is so compelling. You

00:41:24.440 | want to be there. You want to be in that experience with those

00:41:27.200 | characters.

00:41:27.960 | Yeah, you're totally the pineapple sweet. I mean, and

00:41:32.760 | then in this season, that whole hotel, I looked up the hotel, by

00:41:35.440 | the way, online, they hadn't, you know, their their own set

00:41:37.600 | design, people come in and redo the hotel, but it is an actual

00:41:40.280 | hotel. It's a real, they just made it so magical. Yeah, it was

00:41:43.040 | such an incredible,

00:41:43.920 | Oh, free book, we should make that the host of the wall in

00:41:46.800 | summit 2023. Wonderful.

00:41:50.040 | I'm working on my Jennifer Coolidge.

00:41:53.720 | Tell your director, David Sacks, what you'd like to do for you.

00:41:57.400 | Yeah, my biggest loser was crypto. And I think there'll be

00:42:01.120 | a subsequent domino to fall, which is now that Gary G, and

00:42:06.360 | the SEC has FT x and the FT t tokens as the grift, he's going

00:42:11.280 | to go down the list of other tokens, and he is going to start

00:42:16.120 | doing more prosecutions of grifts in crypto biggest loser

00:42:20.840 | for me. Alright, biggest business surprise. Let's see if

00:42:24.120 | we can get sacks back engaged in the conversation now that we're

00:42:27.120 | not talking about art and life. Sacks. Last year, your biggest

00:42:32.640 | business surprise,

00:42:34.360 | Saks just produced a movie about Dolly.

00:42:36.120 | I know he is. I'm joking with him. He's a true artist. And he

00:42:39.160 | sold it to Mark Cuban. Congratulations on the sale.

00:42:41.680 | David, I guess me and Cuban are besties now. Fantastic. In 2021

00:42:46.600 | are selections for business biggest business surprises. I

00:42:49.520 | was very surprised by dows. Chamath by Moderna. Saks by

00:42:55.040 | tech moving to Miami and Friedberg. You were surprised

00:42:58.360 | by NF T's. What were we surprised by in 2022? Friedberg

00:43:02.160 | will start with you. Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, I think

00:43:04.760 | took everyone by surprise. It kind of went I mean, this is

00:43:07.160 | such an obvious one, but it went from a whimsical fantasy and

00:43:10.680 | idea to suddenly, you know, cold hearted reality with, you know,

00:43:15.680 | a huge kind of negotiating saga that took place and court

00:43:19.520 | battles and all the drama that ensued. And here's what I think

00:43:23.200 | was most surprising about it. It wasn't just the acquisition and

00:43:26.520 | the and the fact that the acquisition closed, but it was

00:43:28.840 | the the incredible veracity of the head cutting, cost cutting

00:43:35.400 | the demands that people return to work return to the office.

00:43:38.280 | And then what was most surprising that followed that is

00:43:41.320 | the impact that that seems to have had on the rest of Silicon

00:43:44.040 | Valley, where now nearly every VC I speak with every CEO, every

00:43:48.040 | board is looking to Elon's behavior for right or for wrong

00:43:51.800 | for you know, moral, moral or not. And saying that's a model

00:43:55.560 | for how you can challenge your team to achieve the impossible

00:43:58.720 | in an impossibly difficult environment, which is what we

00:44:00.880 | find ourselves in. And so I think it was a series of

00:44:03.720 | surprising events. He bought Twitter, he made these

00:44:05.880 | incredible changes, and then everyone seems to be looking to

00:44:08.280 | that as a model. And it's really resonated, it's created a

00:44:10.840 | rippling effect. I'm not saying it's good. I'm not saying it's

00:44:12.880 | bad. I'm not saying it's moral right or wrong. But the whole

00:44:15.560 | thing was really an incredible, surprising, unexpected saga this

00:44:19.360 | year. So I give the Elon acquisition of Twitter kind of

00:44:22.480 | the award.

00:44:23.000 | Chamath, do you have a biggest surprise?

00:44:26.480 | I would say it's Jerome Powell and the Fed and their staunch

00:44:31.040 | hawkishness on inflation. I think everybody wants all of

00:44:36.200 | this to be over. And I think we're definitely in the last few

00:44:39.120 | innings of it. But I think what was surprising was how

00:44:42.760 | consistent and how hawkish and how bearish Jerome Powell was

00:44:48.640 | every chance he got. He didn't capitulate or waiver from the

00:44:54.120 | key message, which he was saying from the beginning, which is, we

00:44:58.080 | have the tools to fix a broken economy. But we don't have the

00:45:02.000 | tools to fix runaway inflation. And so we will raise rates

00:45:06.160 | higher than anyone expects and keep them there longer than

00:45:10.400 | anybody wants, because on the back end of it, we can fix a few

00:45:13.120 | broken bones. But if left unchecked, this could really do

00:45:16.800 | a lot of damage. And I think that that was an enormous

00:45:19.560 | surprise that all the political pressure in the world, all of

00:45:23.320 | the financial capital markets pressure in the world did

00:45:26.160 | nothing to change his position. Saks, what was your biggest

00:45:29.960 | business surprise of 2022? David Sachs biggest?

00:45:33.480 | Well, it was it was a pretty big surprise that Adobe bought

00:45:36.240 | Figma for 20 billion. That price tag in this environment, pretty

00:45:40.000 | big surprise. But I gotta say, I think Freeberg nailed it. Got to

00:45:43.560 | say that the business saga of the year was Elon buying Twitter.

00:45:48.120 | First, liberal media was up in arms that he might do it, then

00:45:51.760 | they insisted that he must complete the deal. In any event,

00:45:55.640 | he he did ultimately buy the company. Now he's affecting his

00:45:59.080 | changes. I agree. That's the big business story of this year.

00:46:01.400 | Certainly was a big surprise for me that I got deposition for

00:46:04.160 | six hours.

00:46:04.840 | Is it a surprise that you're sitting in Twitter's

00:46:06.640 | headquarters today right now?

00:46:08.400 | Yeah, it is a surprise. But just by the way, the rumors and

00:46:11.480 | speculation are getting out of hand. I am not a candidate for

00:46:14.000 | CEO of Twitter. So I want to put the kibosh on that because it's

00:46:18.040 | starting to get out of hand.

00:46:19.400 | Jay Cal, the job is yours, my friend. Congratulations. All

00:46:22.160 | right, I guess. Let me know when I start. You've worked hard.

00:46:25.800 | You're you're Jay Cal, the last man standing last man standing

00:46:31.840 | out with outlaws. Now that sacks has said he is not taking the

00:46:35.040 | job a bunch of libs have just stopped taking Xanax. The libs

00:46:39.640 | biggest fear was sax was gonna get that job. We just canceled a

00:46:43.800 | bunch of Xanax prescriptions. Congratulations to the libs. sax

00:46:47.200 | is not going to be your overlord on Twitter. For me. It's

00:46:50.120 | obvious. The Twitter acquisition is the biggest surprise by far

00:46:54.280 | and away. Freeberg I couldn't summarize it better. I will say

00:46:58.200 | in six weeks, what we have seen there is nothing short of

00:47:01.760 | extraordinary. Have there been bumps in the road? Has it been a

00:47:06.360 | little chaotic at times perhaps, but the features that are coming

00:47:10.920 | fast and furious are going to be the story going forward. You've

00:47:14.480 | seen Twitter for business. sacks had his fingerprints all that

00:47:18.360 | you may fingerprints all over that. You may have seen hashtags

00:47:22.320 | for stock tickers. I was briefly involved in that. There are

00:47:25.520 | going to be so many features coming. And this is what Elon

00:47:30.160 | zone of excellence is product. He is an engineer. He's a

00:47:34.800 | product genius. The proof is in the pudding, whether it's

00:47:37.400 | rocket ships or the cars, we're going to see a parade of

00:47:40.280 | features, I predict in another six to 18 weeks, we will see

00:47:44.960 | people talking about all the great features in Twitter, not

00:47:48.760 | any of the transitional issues and people will be shocked my

00:47:51.560 | runner up metastock collapsing. That was my runner up for the

00:47:56.920 | biggest business shock is that they just absolutely collapsed.

00:48:00.800 | I was just gonna add to what you're saying about new features

00:48:03.640 | launching while we've been sitting here on this pod and I've

00:48:06.080 | been checking my Twitter feed. There's a new feature where

00:48:08.600 | there's a view count on all of your tweets and all of everybody

00:48:12.240 | else's tweets as well. So you can see how many views a tweet

00:48:14.960 | is generating. So this tweet that I posted yesterday has 1.5

00:48:19.680 | million views. It's like incredible. So it really shows

00:48:23.400 | the incredible reach of Twitter. And anybody who's thinking about

00:48:26.960 | going to like some knockoff like mass or something is gonna have

00:48:30.200 | to contend with the fact that it doesn't have nearly the

00:48:33.800 | distribution. So I think this really shows the power of

00:48:38.560 | Twitter. And then Dave Rubin, notice my I tweeted this just a

00:48:42.600 | second ago. And Dave Rubin noted that the New York Times doesn't

00:48:46.600 | have anywhere near the views for its tweets, because they bought

00:48:50.840 | all their followers, which is interesting. I didn't know that.

00:48:53.520 | But I just went over to the New York Times profile and my tweets

00:48:56.440 | are routinely getting 10 to 20 times more reach more views than

00:49:01.440 | theirs. So this is a super interesting indicator of who

00:49:05.680 | actually people are paying attention to. On Twitter. It's

00:49:09.040 | fascinating.

00:49:09.720 | This is fascinating. I'm looking at my own I just did how do you

00:49:13.200 | give a $30 billion fraud bail, referring to SPF. And that was

00:49:18.040 | just less than an hour ago. No, it's 30 minutes. Yeah, an hour

00:49:20.560 | ago. And I have 50,000 views already, which is 10% of my

00:49:24.680 | follower count. So this is an extraordinary you see right next

00:49:27.480 | to likes retweets, quote tweets, the feature train is coming. And

00:49:32.080 | this will change the dialogue all these haters who are like

00:49:35.160 | Twitter is going to go down who are rooting against Elon. Let me

00:49:38.440 | tell you something, if a guy can land two rockets at a time, and

00:49:41.600 | he can literally restart the electric car movement, and he

00:49:45.600 | becomes the number one car in any category, he releases a car

00:49:48.760 | and how on earth would you bet against him to build software,

00:49:53.720 | you have to be idiotic.

00:49:55.260 | This is way too much. I mean, you guys like we should sorry,

00:49:58.340 | he's a future. Second ad. Yeah, you're selling a product for a

00:50:02.940 | company that you guys are working at. Like, I mean, come

00:50:04.860 | on. I'm not working. Well, you guys are advisors, right? I mean,

00:50:09.020 | like, Nick, can you let me show another feature? So I think it's

00:50:11.460 | cool. Nick, let's go. Yeah, keep on feature. Let's go pull up my

00:50:14.380 | profile real quick. Welcome to this week in Twitter. Oh, my

00:50:17.260 | god. Twitter now has affiliate badges. You can see I've got a

00:50:20.780 | little craft ventures badge next to my name. So if you you should

00:50:25.020 | be able to click on it actually, to get to the craft ventures

00:50:28.500 | profile. Yeah. So you're gonna be able to affiliate users with

00:50:35.520 | business accounts. And it creates kind of secondary badges

00:50:39.220 | after the blue check. I think even the corporate journalists

00:50:41.940 | are going to love this because if you're a New York Times

00:50:43.900 | writer, you'll have a little NYT badge next to your name, Wall

00:50:46.980 | Street Journal, whatever, you'll have the little badge. So more

00:50:49.940 | and more people are gonna get blue checks. And then people are

00:50:52.260 | gonna have secondary or even tertiary badges that are

00:50:55.420 | basically specific to their affiliations. Okay, so I think

00:50:59.340 | let's make sure we get let's get an all in badge, we are gonna

00:51:01.660 | have all in badges really soon. Awesome. Okay, let's go for

00:51:05.420 | free work free works. That was our biggest business surprises.

00:51:08.940 | And we just canceled your account freeberg. It's locked

00:51:12.660 | out. We just took away your goes to it. Anyway, it's all good.

00:51:14.740 | Don't worry about it. Okay, best science breakthrough. Here's an

00:51:18.020 | easy one for us to do 2022. biggest science breakthrough.

00:51:22.740 | What have you got? Sultan of science we call it of course,

00:51:25.740 | have to start with your 22 biggest science breakthrough

00:51:27.620 | freeberg.

00:51:28.100 | Yeah, I'm gonna give it obviously to the the

00:51:31.220 | demonstration of net energy gain from the National Ignition

00:51:34.140 | Facility in plasma fusion that we talked about last week. I

00:51:38.740 | wouldn't call it a breakthrough. By the way, I think we we use

00:51:41.780 | that as a misnomer last week, but I'm still gonna put it in

00:51:43.820 | this category. It's more of a milestone along a very long path

00:51:48.420 | a very arduous path of very difficult work that's been

00:51:50.500 | taking decades. So it's a great milestone. But I think what was

00:51:53.620 | so important and impactful and powerful about it is that it's

00:51:56.660 | really catalyzed a change a sea change in the investing in the

00:51:59.700 | outlook that this is becoming more reality. As I mentioned

00:52:02.180 | last week, we've seen an increase of nearly 40% in the

00:52:05.300 | number of fusion startups, and the amount of capital that's

00:52:07.700 | flowing in is now reaching 10 billion a year. So this is

00:52:10.180 | becoming you know, a real investable or an area that's

00:52:13.020 | getting real investment. Some people might not think it's very

00:52:15.220 | investable. But that's why I think it's been an important

00:52:17.740 | year for fusion. And I think, you know, it's something I

00:52:21.620 | highlighted last year I was excited about.

00:52:23.020 | And I to pick fusion. Also, just point of clarity last week,

00:52:26.260 | some people Chamath before you go to your prediction, we're

00:52:28.300 | saying, hey, you're talking your book on solar when you were in

00:52:30.300 | your disagreement with Friedberg. That's obvious.

00:52:33.860 | You've been very upfront that you're investing in solar, you

00:52:36.180 | placed your bet.

00:52:36.940 | Yeah, 100%.

00:52:40.180 | Yeah. So just to everybody knows he made that bet. He's talked

00:52:43.460 | about it incessantly.

00:52:44.300 | Plus, those idiots that were saying that are stupid. But

00:52:47.260 | yes, let me let me further clarify what I said last week

00:52:51.860 | and why it's important. If Nick, can you bring up the capital

00:52:54.300 | asset pricing model again, the most important thing for me is

00:52:57.580 | to make sure that we don't misallocate human capital into

00:53:03.060 | endeavors that I think are best left for research institutions

00:53:06.540 | funded by the government. And I think when you look at a capital

00:53:09.900 | asset pricing model and try to build one out for fusion, as an

00:53:14.900 | example, the expected rate of return that you need to get from

00:53:19.060 | this is just astronomically high, because of the beta of

00:53:22.900 | that investment risk, and the market risk premium you have to

00:53:25.820 | generate. And so, you know, from my perspective, I think that

00:53:29.660 | there are probably four or five labs in the world that are

00:53:32.660 | capable of actually getting us to a positive energy equation. I

00:53:36.420 | think Friedberg, I really thank you for actually saying that it

00:53:39.620 | wasn't a breakthrough and more of a milestone. I think the real

00:53:42.020 | breakthrough is when we have positive, not just jewels, but

00:53:45.780 | we actually convert that into electrical energy, right. And we

00:53:49.020 | actually talk about power and Watts. And I think that most

00:53:52.100 | people listening probably don't even understand the difference

00:53:54.100 | between jewels and Watts or don't even care. And they want

00:53:56.100 | to jump around here or there. So the point is that there's an

00:53:59.780 | enormous path we need to take in physics. And I think it's best

00:54:03.660 | done in governments. And I don't want to see a bunch of billions

00:54:06.380 | of dollars get wasted to get to to get marginal cost of energy

00:54:10.180 | to zero right now. I think there is a point in time where private

00:54:14.500 | startups can take the last 20 or 30%. But I think about this,

00:54:18.860 | like the internet, which is you needed DARPA to build v one. And

00:54:22.460 | then it could be handed over to private industry. And I think

00:54:26.140 | fusion when we look back, will look very similar. And all the

00:54:29.780 | folks that try to build, you know, versions of the internet

00:54:32.740 | that were private, I think found themselves lagging, because

00:54:35.780 | there's just a level of investment that's required.

00:54:37.940 | That's best served in government. So anyways, that's,

00:54:40.420 | let's clarify that for all the folks who got their panties in a

00:54:44.020 | bunch of dunes. But in any event, my science breakthrough

00:54:47.060 | of the year is that there was a 13 year old girl, this was, you

00:54:49.660 | know, because of all of this fusion stuff, actually, we

00:54:52.020 | didn't even get to cover it, because it happened in the same

00:54:54.140 | week. And I think this is infinitely more impressive and

00:54:58.100 | is an actual breakthrough, which is a 13 year old girl in the

00:55:02.100 | United Kingdom, who had a heretofore, uncurable form of

00:55:08.100 | leukemia, T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. So

00:55:11.380 | typically, you start in chemotherapy. If chemotherapy

00:55:14.340 | doesn't work, you move to bone marrow transplants. And it was

00:55:18.940 | uncurable. And a lab in the UK, basically using CRISPR edited

00:55:26.940 | these transplant T cells to go in and wipe out her cancer. And

00:55:31.180 | now her cancer is literally undetectable. Now, if you bring

00:55:36.180 | up that capital asset pricing model, again, Nick, what I'll

00:55:38.740 | tell you is, the rate of return on a human life, in my opinion,

00:55:42.460 | is infinite. And so here is an unbelievable breakthrough that

00:55:48.060 | got very little attention, because everybody was wrapped

00:55:50.700 | around the axle of fusion. It happened in the same week. So

00:55:53.740 | maybe it's understandable, I didn't understand it. But I

00:55:56.820 | think this is the single most important thing that happened in

00:55:59.300 | science, not just this year, but frankly, in the last decade,

00:56:02.900 | because if you can actually now do base editing, and eradicate,

00:56:07.980 | at least in this case, a blood based cancer, and eventually

00:56:12.380 | we'll be able to bring that and use that towards solid state

00:56:15.420 | tumor cancers. It's a huge breakthrough in just human

00:56:20.820 | longevity and human quality of life. And that happened just a

00:56:25.340 | few weeks ago.

00:56:26.580 | Okay. And of course, for David Sachs, his biggest science

00:56:30.180 | breakthrough is I don't care. So moving on. Go ahead, tell us.

00:56:35.340 | Yeah, no, this category reminds me of when Biden had that moment

00:56:39.780 | where he's like, America can be defined in a single word. And

00:56:43.220 | he's like, that's kind of how I feel about this category.

00:56:46.420 | America is a nation that can be defined in a single word. I was

00:56:51.820 | gonna put him in.

00:56:55.220 | Amazing how you figured out a way to be derogatory about Biden

00:56:58.980 | in the science section, a new low even for you, sex.

00:57:02.060 | Oh, it's a good one. Thanks. I like it. All right, biggest

00:57:05.660 | flash in the pan. 2021. This is what we said were the biggest

00:57:09.900 | flash in the pan. I said the woke socialist leadership of

00:57:14.380 | cities, ie Chesa, Boudin. Friberg said the Constitution

00:57:18.700 | Dow. SAC said the word transitory very well played. And

00:57:22.780 | Shemot said the metaverse also very well played. Everybody

00:57:25.940 | take that. Yes, very good. Everybody get your flowers.

00:57:30.220 | Enjoy all of those seem like pretty good selections. But this

00:57:34.020 | year is what everybody wants to hear about. Friberg. Tell us

00:57:37.780 | now. Who is your 2022 biggest flash in the pan, the

00:57:41.940 | undisputable who we got his flash in the pan of 2022 was the

00:57:47.100 | all in summit. Oh, that hurt. It went. That will always be a

00:57:53.380 | strong and significant memory. It was such a hot thing for a

00:57:56.900 | minute. And then it died. So to the all in summit, I raised my

00:58:02.580 | glass, I pour one out. I toast to you to Miami. And unless

00:58:07.660 | David Sachs carries it from here. It was a flash in the

00:58:10.500 | pan. It was a flash in the pan. A sex Who's your flash? Which

00:58:13.620 | Democrat is a flash in the pan for you?

00:58:16.300 | This is where I had Liz truss. As you guys mentioned, she only

00:58:20.020 | survived 44 days as PM. I mean, that's only for scaramoochies.

00:58:24.300 | She was basically fired by the bond markets after she combined

00:58:32.340 | a Thatcher s tax cut with massive energy subsidies to

00:58:37.060 | counter the price spikes caused by the war in Ukraine that she

00:58:39.500 | was financially committed to. This was deemed untenable by the

00:58:42.740 | UK Central Bank and crashed the pound. And I think there is a

00:58:46.020 | serious point here, which is that as much as Thatcher and

00:58:49.940 | Reagan were the two towering heroic figures of the 1980s, I

00:58:53.420 | think zombie Thatcher ism is not going to be electorally viable

00:58:57.100 | in the UK, just like zombie Reagan ism is not going to be

00:59:00.780 | viable United States. I think that the conservative movement

00:59:03.580 | has to stop living in the past, we have to develop fresh ideas

00:59:07.220 | to meet the economic and foreign policy challenges of today.

00:59:10.300 | Chamath, do you have a flash in the pan? I actually think fusion

00:59:15.100 | literally was a flash in the pan. It was it lasted 10 to the

00:59:19.140 | negative 10 seconds. So that more less of a flash you can't

00:59:22.820 | have without being a flash in the pan.

00:59:24.220 | They haven't. Hey, Sax.

00:59:26.660 | Oh, look.

00:59:28.420 | Oh, is it the proprietor?

00:59:31.460 | The proprietor, the owner

00:59:33.460 | for customer support at your service.

00:59:36.020 | So actually spent the last 15 minutes selling your new

00:59:39.820 | features. Yeah, on the podcast. Pretty exciting.

00:59:42.700 | Well, the like the views are like incredible. Yeah. I mean,

00:59:46.300 | and I saw Dave Rubin already made an observation that if you

00:59:50.460 | look at New York Times, their views are maybe one 10th like my

00:59:54.220 | views, just me, yes alone, Twitter. And he said that their

00:59:57.900 | followers are inflated by just basically buying a bunch of

01:00:00.380 | follower accounts.

01:00:01.180 | Yeah, the views thing is huge. That's why I pushed the views,

01:00:04.900 | which is like actually a lot harder feature to implement than

01:00:07.660 | you'd think because the sheer number of transactions per

01:00:11.380 | second, like it's, I think it sort of requires system wide on

01:00:17.300 | the order of three, 3 million transactions a second to

01:00:20.860 | actually calculate the view to calculate and display the view

01:00:23.820 | count. If I put Twitter, Twitter global, so it's like 3 million

01:00:28.420 | per second. It's a lot.

01:00:30.700 | For those of you listening, Elon Musk has joined the pod. Elon,

01:00:34.380 | how's a how's the first six weeks been generally speaking of

01:00:38.020 | owning Twitter?

01:00:38.540 | Well, it's been quite a roller coaster, which obviously you've

01:00:41.340 | witnessed and been on the roller coaster as well.

01:00:45.420 | Yes, the drama mean I've taken the drama mean it's quite up.

01:00:48.540 | Yeah, I mean, it's exciting. But I think it sort of has its

01:00:53.660 | highs and lows to say the least. But overall, it seems to be

01:00:58.100 | going in a good direction. And, you know, we've got the the

01:01:02.700 | expenses reasonably under control. So the company's not

01:01:04.980 | like, on the in the fast lane of bankruptcy anymore. And we're

01:01:10.420 | releasing features faster than Twitter's history, at the same

01:01:14.820 | time as having contained the costs and reduce the cost

01:01:19.180 | structure by a factor of three, maybe maybe four. So you know,

01:01:25.980 | the verified is obviously that that's, that's, that's huge.

01:01:29.860 | It's revenue stream as well as a means of identifying of like,

01:01:37.180 | knowing that it's a real person and not a barter or trial

01:01:39.740 | situation. The having the affiliation organization

01:01:46.060 | affiliation, which I suspect you talked about that was a idea of

01:01:49.220 | David's that was great to have organization affiliation. So you

01:01:54.940 | can know that somebody is an actual professor at Stanford or

01:01:59.220 | that this particular handle is actually Disney, not someone

01:02:03.140 | simply putting I work at Disney in my in their bio. So I think

01:02:08.940 | that's gonna be really helpful. It just really just having

01:02:12.180 | detailed and nuanced verification. So of all the

01:02:19.540 | various things that you say you are, are these things validated

01:02:22.940 | by other people and organizations?

01:02:24.500 | Can you tell us how you do product iteration, Elon,

01:02:27.420 | because one of the things that I think some people got jolted by

01:02:31.060 | over the last couple of weeks is like a bunch of things got taken

01:02:33.860 | away or changed or rules changed or policies change. And there

01:02:37.460 | was very quick action. And then people had all this negative

01:02:40.540 | feedback about the quick action without communication. But your

01:02:44.420 | extraordinary talent is to iterate product to success. Can

01:02:47.380 | you just maybe share with people how you do product iteration in

01:02:51.700 | this context, to help them understand how some of these

01:02:54.060 | decisions get made and why moving quickly is so important

01:02:57.860 | and just you know, how you're doing this?

01:03:00.020 | I'm a big believer in like, you want to look at the net output.

01:03:03.500 | So it's sort of like, you know, what's the batting average? If

01:03:08.900 | you're like baseball? The point is, is not that you like, you

01:03:14.780 | know, hit the ball, but it's like, well, how many home runs

01:03:18.100 | you get? And how like, what's your actual

01:03:20.220 | your slugging percentage?

01:03:21.420 | Yeah, slugging percentage? Yeah, yeah. It's like, you've got to

01:03:23.380 | swing for the fences, you're gonna, you're gonna, you know,

01:03:25.460 | strike out a bit more, but we're gonna swing for the fences here

01:03:28.060 | at Twitter. And we're gonna do it quickly. So I think,

01:03:34.140 | generally, like my error rate, and sort of being the chief

01:03:37.740 | twit will be less over time. But, you know, in the beginning,

01:03:43.780 | we'll make obviously sort of a lot more mistakes. And, you

01:03:49.180 | know, because it's, I'm new to the I'm like, hey, I just got

01:03:52.540 | here, man. So, I mean, if you look at like the actual amount

01:03:56.780 | of improvement that's happened at Twitter in terms of like,

01:04:01.180 | sort of like having costs that are not insane, and getting an

01:04:05.500 | actually shipping product that on balance is good. I think that

01:04:09.300 | is that. That's great. Like, I think we're actually executing

01:04:15.300 | well and getting things done. I think we'll have fewer, fewer

01:04:19.340 | gaps in the future.

01:04:20.500 | How did you get to your intuition on what the efficient

01:04:23.260 | frontier of employees needed to be to make the product better?

01:04:27.340 | Well,

01:04:28.060 | yeah.

01:04:33.940 | Well, I was part of this, we're basically asked the question,

01:04:39.100 | who here is critical? And who here is exceptional?

01:04:41.940 | Yes, I mean, so, I mean, really, the what the criteria is trying

01:04:49.180 | to apply, and obviously, you're gonna be perfect. If you're

01:04:53.180 | moving fast, and there's a lot of, you know, people you're

01:04:57.260 | talking about here is that anyone who is exceptional at

01:04:59.780 | what they do, where the role is critical, they have a positive

01:05:03.180 | effect on others. And they are trusted, meaning they put the

01:05:06.820 | company's interests before their own should stay pretty

01:05:10.140 | straightforward. Yeah. And I know, you know, also, and it

01:05:13.300 | also is up for working, you know, working hard, like that

01:05:19.540 | would not that would have not this, this, this, that's not was

01:05:22.660 | not Twitter's prior culture.

01:05:24.100 | Yeah. Were you surprised that that the intersection of circle

01:05:28.460 | and the people that left was basically 25%? Were you

01:05:32.180 | surprised it was that deep? Or did you think your intuition was

01:05:34.860 | like, it's probably somewhere in here?

01:05:36.820 | Well, I think you could just stand back and say, without

01:05:40.540 | knowing how many employees Twitter has at all, and say, how

01:05:45.700 | many people are really needed to run Twitter? Like, let's say

01:05:50.020 | you don't know what the playhead count number is at all. How many

01:05:52.860 | people are needed to keep the site operational? Like, let's

01:05:56.020 | say, excluding product, product evolution, you basically have to

01:06:00.340 | keep the service going. And you have to have customer sort of a

01:06:07.780 | support function to take down material that is in violation of

01:06:11.780 | the law. How many people? What's the minimum number of people?

01:06:18.460 | That's in the hundreds, probably.

01:06:19.860 | It's not exactly it's not it's not like a giant number.

01:06:22.940 | Yeah. Twitter still has like 2000 people, right?

01:06:25.380 | Yeah, we still have 2000 people. It's not nothing. And actually,

01:06:28.420 | if there's, there's actually on the order of like, almost 5000

01:06:34.180 | contractors. Like, almost, yeah, almost all of the what's called

01:06:39.980 | trust and safety work, which is like, the support functions for

01:06:44.060 | the site are done by contractors.

01:06:46.980 | You're doing a lot more to take down hate speech than the

01:06:50.140 | company previously was doing.

01:06:51.260 | Yeah, absolutely. The hate speech impressions are down by

01:06:55.140 | a third, and we'll get even lower.

01:06:57.740 | Maybe you could speak a little bit to the what we discovered, I

01:07:00.740 | think, in those early weeks, which was the incentive. The

01:07:04.700 | incentive previously was to create as many accounts as

01:07:07.540 | possible. And there were a lot of quick fixes to lowering all

01:07:12.300 | these, you know, what people might call bot accounts. In some

01:07:15.140 | cases, it was people opening many millions of accounts. But

01:07:18.740 | we discovered this very early. How easy was it for you with the

01:07:23.140 | tech team to maybe lower the bot count and all the fake accounts?

01:07:26.260 | Maybe you could speak a little bit to that, because people have

01:07:28.220 | seemed to think that, gosh, it's a really hard thing to get rid

01:07:31.420 | of bots. And it turns out it isn't.

01:07:33.020 | We still have a fair number of bots in the system. But the like,

01:07:39.180 | I think the incentive structure, the way Twitter set up

01:07:42.420 | previously was this relentless focus on what they called

01:07:44.900 | MDAL, which is monetizable daily active users, although I would

01:07:49.380 | say the monetizable part is dubious. But at least things

01:07:54.540 | that appeared to be monetized or could be passed off as

01:07:57.300 | monetizable daily active users. So this, I created an incentive

01:08:01.620 | to turn a blind eye to a fake accounts. So if the incentive

01:08:06.580 | structure is like, you know, maximize the appearance of

01:08:11.100 | monetizable daily active users, then you're just it's a

01:08:14.700 | strong incentive to pretend that a bot is real. And that's what

01:08:19.460 | happened. So we're taking a lot of steps to reduce the bots and

01:08:27.100 | trolls situation. So many. And I think you're seeing that in the

01:08:37.420 | usage, like, it's not it's not like relatively rare to have

01:08:41.260 | your replies filled with crypto scams.

01:08:44.500 | I'm not seeing any anymore. freeberg, you had a question.

01:08:46.620 | Yeah, I mean, just on your earlier question, you know,

01:08:48.860 | Elon, when you first started making changes at Twitter, after

01:08:52.620 | you bought the business, a lot of people kind of took notice at

01:08:56.900 | how extraordinarily swift and significant those changes were.

01:09:00.380 | Yeah. And there's a lot of technology companies that have

01:09:04.860 | CEOs and investors and boards. And we all talked to a lot of

01:09:08.740 | them. And they're all now having a conversation like, look at

01:09:11.820 | what Elon did a Twitter, how can we do something as aggressive

01:09:15.420 | as swift as deep? Do you think much about kind of the model

01:09:20.340 | you're playing for other businesses and other business

01:09:23.580 | leaders, particularly in Silicon Valley and how you're operating

01:09:26.380 | Twitter? Do you ever kind of talk about that? Because I know

01:09:28.580 | you you mostly talk about your business and you talk about the

01:09:30.820 | businesses you're running. But you're having a big influence, I

01:09:33.820 | think, and how other people kind of act and behave that are other

01:09:36.380 | business leaders and run other technology companies.

01:09:38.700 | I mean, to be frank, I'm not I'm not really, you know, active,

01:09:42.500 | I'm thinking about that much, because I'm just thinking about

01:09:44.340 | like, how do we just, you know, just get Twitter to be a

01:09:51.580 | financially healthy place and, and and fix the engine of

01:09:54.900 | engineering so we can have a rapid evolution of new products.

01:09:59.340 | So and, you know, I mean, I guess I'm in sort of, in some

01:10:05.300 | ways, an unfortunate position where I don't have to answer it

01:10:09.180 | is not public. And we don't have a board really. So I mean, so I

01:10:16.780 | can just go, you know, and I can take actions that are drastic.

01:10:25.220 | And obviously, if I make a bunch of mistakes, then the Twitter

01:10:32.020 | won't succeed. And that'll be pretty embarrassing and sad. But

01:10:38.060 | as long as like I said, as long as the batting average is is

01:10:40.940 | good. That that the wins out, you know, significantly outweigh

01:10:48.260 | the mistakes, then, you know, it'll be a great future. And I

01:10:53.580 | think I'm very optimistic about where things are.

01:10:55.500 | I think a lot of people want to talk about your understand,

01:10:59.420 | Ilan, your position on freedom of speech and your principles.

01:11:03.020 | I'm curious, you've been pretty upfront about it. How do you

01:11:06.060 | think about it? post acquisition? You know, what

01:11:09.260 | speech should be allowed in the platform? Kanye came back, he

01:11:12.140 | just went insane. His account got revoked. What have you

01:11:15.260 | learned, I guess, now that you own it, because you must be

01:11:17.740 | getting a lot of inbound from people asking you, hey, how are

01:11:21.220 | decisions going to be made, etc. You've been clear,

01:11:24.020 | transparency is super important in this. But what are your

01:11:26.540 | thoughts on free speech and speech on a platform like this?

01:11:29.620 | Well, I mean, the general principle, I think, is that we

01:11:32.060 | should hear close to the law in any given country. So the law is

01:11:35.420 | very quite a lot by by country. And so I think we should be

01:11:40.740 | doing free speech that's that's close, close to the law. And

01:11:47.860 | that's, that's, that's the general principle. The, I think

01:11:54.020 | there are other things where it's like, okay, we like, for

01:11:59.100 | example, like, if you're an advertiser, you don't want to

01:12:03.220 | necessarily you don't you don't want your ad, like, let's say

01:12:05.860 | it's a family movie, next to some, you know, NSFW content,

01:12:13.900 | even if that content is text. You know, it's like, they'll be

01:12:21.140 | like, that's probably that's we don't, you know, so. So that's,

01:12:26.180 | so that's, you know, part of what you know, like, like, so

01:12:30.420 | there's, there's more of an allowance for what you might

01:12:33.180 | call what some I call hate speech on the system, but it's

01:12:35.460 | just, it's not going to be promoted. It's not like it's

01:12:38.380 | we're not going to be recommending hate speech. It's

01:12:41.620 | just a risk of stating the obvious. And we're not going to

01:12:46.900 | monetize hate speech. So or negative speech like that's not

01:12:54.540 | what advertisers want us to, you know, any any, I think it's

01:12:57.860 | going to be a rare product that wants to be next to seriously

01:13:01.220 | negative stuff.

01:13:01.860 | I was gonna say you referred to it as hey, freedom of speech,

01:13:04.260 | but not reach because this is a very nuanced discussion. Like,

01:13:06.860 | should this stuff be able to hit the trends, you know, and that

01:13:09.380 | kind of stuff?

01:13:09.940 | Like, it's only possible that some things that will be

01:13:12.460 | regardless, hey, speech will hit will hit will hit trends. But I

01:13:15.860 | think it's gonna be relatively unusual, especially as we are

01:13:19.540 | doing a better job of controlling the bots and trolls

01:13:22.580 | situation. And, and I do want to emphasize like there's

01:13:26.620 | difference between bots and trolls like bots like fully

01:13:28.420 | automated accounts, but like a troll phone would be where

01:13:30.940 | you've got like, you know, 100 people in a warehouse somewhere

01:13:33.700 | each with 100 phones. And so they're actually humans, and

01:13:36.780 | they're going to pass a capture test or you know, and they can,

01:13:39.420 | you know, reply, reply, and they're because they're actually

01:13:42.740 | good humans, but it's actually 10,000 accounts that are just

01:13:47.660 | that are obviously not operating as as as real people. So that

01:13:56.580 | that's, you know, stuff like that can cause things to trend

01:13:59.700 | negatively. That's why I'm like a big proponent of having just a

01:14:03.260 | low cost verification capability. And, yeah, so, but

01:14:12.260 | like, this is definitely a work in progress. So there's, like,

01:14:16.780 | so there's gonna be, and I did, like, one of the first things I

01:14:19.540 | said, after the acquisition closed was like, we're gonna

01:14:22.580 | make a bunch of mistakes, but then we'll try to recover from

01:14:25.300 | them quickly. And that's, that's what we've done. I think we've

01:14:29.300 | generally succeeded in recovering from them quickly.

01:14:34.020 | And it's been going pretty well.

01:14:37.780 | Was the Paul Graham and journalists suspensions

01:14:40.460 | mistakes? Have you talked about this publicly about how that all

01:14:43.900 | kind of got resolved at the end?

01:14:45.100 | Oh, yeah, I mean, the program suspension was definitely a

01:14:47.340 | mistake. And actually called program to apologize personally

01:14:49.980 | for that. Yeah, great. Yeah. So, you know, on the journalist

01:14:55.340 | front, the I think the journalists essential suspensions

01:14:58.140 | were not not a mistake, in that, for some reason, a bunch of

01:15:04.540 | journalists thought they were better than regular than

01:15:09.540 | everyone else. And that if they engage in doxing and, you know,

01:15:14.060 | other and break the rules in various ways, that that they're

01:15:17.140 | not subject to suspension, even though your average your average

01:15:20.740 | citizen is, and I think that's just messed up. The same rules

01:15:24.260 | should apply to people who call themselves journalists as to,

01:15:27.660 | you know, anyone else on the system. They shouldn't be sort

01:15:32.460 | of above the rules. For some reason, they thought they

01:15:35.500 | should be that's, that's, that doesn't make sense. I don't

01:15:38.700 | think that's right. Yeah. And the rules being transparent and

01:15:41.780 | upfront. I think that's what everybody's looking forward to

01:15:44.700 | maybe some just complete clarity and transparency. And you've

01:15:47.900 | said from the beginning, when somebody gets suspended, or this

01:15:51.020 | shadow banning of this sort of would tips into this really

01:15:54.140 | weird stuff that we discovered during or you discovered where

01:15:57.540 | the journalists discovered during the Twitter files, it's

01:15:59.740 | it's kind of a bummer that people are being sanctioned or

01:16:02.780 | shadow banned. And they don't know it. If we're going to have

01:16:06.060 | a system, the rules should be clear to everybody.

01:16:08.300 | Yeah, absolutely. So the something I've committed to,

01:16:11.660 | and we'll, we'll, I think, probably be able to roll that

01:16:14.900 | out in January. Just by the way, there is like a bit of a, you

01:16:18.820 | know, we are not going to be rolling out a ton of new

01:16:20.980 | features over, you know, Christmas and New Year's and

01:16:23.220 | stuff. So there's like a, you know, was the next sort of

01:16:30.180 | feature set will probably roll out mid to late January. And

01:16:35.460 | hopefully in that will, we can include information about why an

01:16:40.180 | account is suspended, or has what is called within Tesla

01:16:46.580 | Twitter visibility filtering, aka shadow banning. So and some

01:16:56.900 | of these things like, are like this, there's a lot of things

01:17:00.420 | that just happen accidentally, where there's, you know, the

01:17:04.700 | rules in the system that are meant to detect whether

01:17:07.740 | someone's a sort of bot or troll or like, brigading, whether

01:17:12.220 | like, you know, and then an account is sort of innocently

01:17:16.020 | caught up in that. So, like, there was some accounts just

01:17:23.500 | suspended yesterday, because, but temporarily suspended, like

01:17:29.300 | they got like 12 hour suspensions, because someone in

01:17:33.300 | customers is someone in trust and safety thought that they had

01:17:37.980 | posted a nude photo of Hunter Biden, something. But they

01:17:49.460 | hadn't, they hadn't actually done that. I don't know, it was

01:17:52.380 | just basically a mistake. There were some accounts that were

01:17:53.940 | there were got a 12 hour suspension yesterday for it in

01:17:57.980 | error. And they weren't sure why it why it happened. It was just

01:18:01.820 | essentially a mistake. In the Twitter customer support that

01:18:06.300 | was corrected.

01:18:06.980 | Yvonne, let me, let me ask you just a slightly broader

01:18:10.260 | question. One of the things we just talked about was the regime

01:18:14.180 | change that's happened where, you know, we all have to act

01:18:17.580 | differently now that the risk free rate is probably going to

01:18:20.420 | get to 5%. And I'm just curious, across all your businesses. So

01:18:24.780 | Twitter, yes, but really, more importantly, Tesla, SpaceX, are

01:18:28.220 | there decisions that you will make differently or not at all,

01:18:32.060 | or will make that you wouldn't have made otherwise, in this new

01:18:35.300 | regime? And how often do you think about that kind of stuff?

01:18:38.380 | Well, I think it's more like, like, it does seem like we're

01:18:44.220 | headed into a recession here. In 2023. The magnitude that

01:18:48.780 | recession is debatable, but I think it's at least a light to

01:18:52.980 | moderate recession, potentially, it's on the order of 2009. So

01:18:59.300 | that's, so I think it's, it's, it's wise to kind of like,

01:19:02.900 | prepare for the worst, hope for the best prepare for the worst.

01:19:06.860 | Don't get too adventurous, like, like, watch out for margin debt.

01:19:11.140 | Like, I really advise people to not have margin debt in a

01:19:18.020 | volatile stock market. And, you know, from a cash standpoint,

01:19:25.100 | keep keep powder dry. You can get some pretty extreme things

01:19:29.540 | happening in a down market. Like Brett Johnson, who was a CFO,

01:19:34.220 | who is a CFO, CFO of SpaceX was at Broadcom in 2000. And he said

01:19:43.460 | that, and that's a good company making good products. And he

01:19:47.460 | said that, that from from peak to trough, I think in less than

01:19:50.740 | 12 months, Broadcom went down 97%. So like, even if you had a

01:19:56.620 | small margin loan there, you got you got crushed. And

01:20:00.820 | subsequently recovered, and I think, you know, to much higher

01:20:04.180 | levels, but you know, if there's like mass panic in the stock

01:20:08.580 | market, then you got to be really be careful about margin

01:20:11.740 | debt. So but I mean, this is just as we know, this, the

01:20:20.180 | economy is cyclic. So you and it's somewhat overdue for a

01:20:26.020 | recession. And my best guess is that, you know, we have sort of

01:20:33.780 | stormy times for a year to a year and a half, and then things

01:20:38.180 | start to dawn breaks, roughly in Q2 24. If I were to get it,

01:20:46.180 | that's like my best guess. recessions don't like booms

01:20:51.420 | don't last forever, forever, but neither do recessions.

01:20:53.940 | And it's a 14 year boom. So a six quarter recession seems like

01:20:57.780 | that may that might actually bounce out the last time it was

01:21:00.140 | what four or five quarters. So it's not easy. Hey, the Twitter

01:21:06.500 | files. How much longer are these going to go on? It seems like

01:21:11.500 | every week, another drop. And these are pretty controversial.

01:21:16.700 | How much longer are the Twitter files going to go on? In your

01:21:20.860 | mind? Yeah. And maybe why is this important to you to make

01:21:25.140 | sure that people understand the stuff? Yeah,

01:21:26.820 | I think it's important to like, you know, if we're going to be

01:21:29.100 | trusted in the future to kind of clear the decks for stuff that's

01:21:33.740 | happened in the past. So I mean, to be totally frank, almost

01:21:41.060 | every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned

01:21:43.620 | out to be true. So is there a conspiracy theory about Twitter

01:21:51.180 | that didn't turn out to be true? So far, they've all turned out

01:21:54.340 | to be true. And if not, more true than people thought.

01:21:58.300 | Is there a part of the files that really shocked you more

01:22:00.860 | than the rest of them? Like of the things that have been

01:22:02.660 | disclosed?

01:22:04.020 | Of all of these things? Is there something that really sticks out

01:22:06.180 | with you as like, holy shit, I had no idea this was happening.

01:22:08.820 | Or is the whole thing just a big dumpster fire? They were just

01:22:13.780 | looking at one huge thing. Um, you know, like psyops versus the

01:22:18.940 | Hunter Biden thing versus the Yeah, the number of FBI people

01:22:22.980 | involved. That was pretty intense. Yeah, the FBI psyop

01:22:27.220 | stuff, to me was probably the one that was the most insidious.

01:22:29.900 | Like, the rest of it, I could think of, like, you know, a

01:22:32.620 | bunch of overzealous libs got used. Yeah, got it. You know

01:22:36.140 | what I mean? Sure, sure. But to have like a secure skiff that

01:22:39.940 | essentially sends things that, you know, government agents want

01:22:43.740 | the populace to basically think seems like kind of like a really

01:22:48.180 | bad dystopian novel. And then it turns out it existed. And then

01:22:52.460 | it also the thing is, it couldn't have just existed at

01:22:54.780 | Twitter. So what do we do about all the other places where this

01:22:58.540 | shit's happened? YouTube, Facebook?

01:23:01.220 | It did. None of it seemed that surprising to me. I mean, I

01:23:03.820 | don't know, maybe I just believed all the conspiracy

01:23:05.900 | theories, but I've also been inside some of these companies

01:23:08.620 | and seen how they operate. So honestly, none of it was a

01:23:11.500 | surprise to me. Was it a big shock to you? You want?

01:23:14.260 | Well, you, you, Faber, you were I think you can claim that you

01:23:18.380 | weren't surprised that these companies were shadowbanning,

01:23:20.660 | although they denied it. But did you really suspect that the FBI

01:23:24.780 | was playing a role in flagging content for these companies to

01:23:29.060 | take down? Like that blew me away?

01:23:31.100 | Like content that's got nothing to do with like, terrorism?

01:23:34.100 | Yeah, they're not investigating crimes. There's no crime.

01:23:36.460 | Right? Yeah, they literally flagged satire. Maybe they

01:23:43.420 | didn't get the joke. I don't know.

01:23:44.900 | They don't seem to be a humor driven group. But they don't

01:23:50.220 | seem to have the best senses of humor. But aren't they supposed

01:23:52.700 | to get warrants? Isn't that how it's supposed to work in a

01:23:55.940 | democracy? They want information.

01:23:59.420 | They're all sitting that's troubling to me. Put yourself on

01:24:02.220 | either side of the extremes.

01:24:03.420 | We have Michael Schellenberger here who broke the FBI story in

01:24:07.020 | the Twitter file. So let's look at him and to see. I can, because

01:24:11.180 | I think maybe the audience isn't caught up on like what was

01:24:14.220 | discovered. So

01:24:15.260 | you're not gonna follow Elon Musk. That doesn't seem fair.

01:24:18.700 | Hey, guys.

01:24:19.620 | Hey, guys.

01:24:27.940 | Hey, Michael, how are you? Okay. Just a quick question for

01:24:31.100 | Michael. First of all, first of all, who makes that sweater?

01:24:33.460 | I'll send you mine, man. Do you want it? Are you making fun of

01:24:37.780 | it?

01:24:37.940 | Raise from you, brother. I pray.

01:24:42.020 | Ask him.

01:24:42.500 | Just briefly, Michael. Isn't the FBI supposed to get warrants to

01:24:48.420 | Yes, take actions with folks. And then I guess is that at the

01:24:51.340 | crux of this? Are they doing this at other companies? You

01:24:53.700 | think? Are they just like embedded in YouTube? Yeah, we

01:24:56.300 | expect they're embedded at meta, and that they don't get

01:24:58.660 | warrants. And they're kind of tipping the scales. And is that

01:25:01.820 | a good thing for society or a bad thing for society? It's a

01:25:03.740 | bit of a basic question.

01:25:04.740 | Yeah. Well, I think there's a there's multiple issues relating

01:25:08.180 | to FBI that I think have to be unpacked a bit. But the first

01:25:11.340 | one is that yeah, FBI was constantly pushing the

01:25:14.940 | boundaries of what is legally and ethically acceptable in

01:25:18.580 | terms of requesting information. Now, I think what you saw over

01:25:22.100 | the last three weeks was a shift. And I think our own

01:25:26.660 | understanding that we did see more pushback from Twitter

01:25:29.300 | executives against FBI, and some alarm bells being rung in terms

01:25:33.980 | of the requests that were being made from the intelligence

01:25:35.980 | community. But these guys were really persistent, they kept

01:25:39.860 | asking for more, they kept getting more and more

01:25:41.580 | cooperation. It's very troubling. It does look like

01:25:44.500 | Congress is going to look into this, the two heads of the

01:25:47.220 | committees that are tasked with this or have said that they're

01:25:50.300 | going to look into it next year. I think the other thing

01:25:52.700 | that we saw that I think is is more troubling was this

01:25:55.940 | persistent effort to basically communicate to Twitter

01:26:00.580 | executives, but also to news media, national security

01:26:03.900 | correspondence, that there was this heavy foreign infiltration

01:26:07.500 | going on this, this Russian disinformation. And it appeared

01:26:11.420 | to me looking at all the evidence both that we saw from

01:26:13.900 | within Twitter and from outside of it that this was pretty

01:26:16.460 | organized effort to convince key executives at Twitter and

01:26:21.260 | Facebook, but also these key reporters, that they should

01:26:25.180 | expect a hack and leak operation sometime right before the

01:26:29.740 | elections having to do with Hunter Biden. I find that very

01:26:33.620 | suspicious.

01:26:34.380 | Can I make an observation? I think that maybe what we're

01:26:37.860 | finding out is that the mainstream media tried to go

01:26:41.860 | back to its 1980 Cold War playbook and turn Russian to a

01:26:46.580 | boogeyman. But as we're seeing in the Ukraine war, you know,

01:26:50.140 | they're not nearly the formidable foe that we thought

01:26:52.740 | they were. And so it could probably be the case that in

01:26:55.940 | 2016, they were as inept technically as as they are

01:27:00.340 | militarily right now. And so we may have just built up this

01:27:03.700 | monster that is kind of more like, you know, a much smaller

01:27:10.380 | thing to be worried about. And we all ran with it because we

01:27:13.140 | had no evidence, but the Ukraine, Russia war is evidence

01:27:15.740 | that you know, this highly sophisticated war machine and

01:27:18.620 | propaganda machine is not that good at their job.

01:27:21.780 | Right? Yeah, I mean, I think that what's there's a lot of

01:27:26.220 | interest that we're being served by hyping the so called

01:27:29.460 | Russian misinformation threat. I mean, one of them was just to

01:27:32.260 | simply explain away the Trump phenomenon, as a consequence of

01:27:36.460 | foreign interference. Certainly, the people that ran

01:27:39.300 | Hillary Clinton's campaign had an interest in doing that. But

01:27:41.940 | then you saw it become a sort of way, I think, to condition

01:27:45.940 | people for the release of the Biden laptop. And again, we

01:27:51.900 | can't I can't prove that. But it is striking that the Yole Roth,

01:27:56.620 | this means Twitter executive, who I think was the object of

01:27:59.580 | this misinformation campaign, testified under oath that he was

01:28:03.460 | being bombarded with these messages all throughout 2020,

01:28:06.540 | that they should expect some sort of a hack and leak

01:28:08.460 | operation. So when the New York Post finally did report on that

01:28:12.300 | computer, in 2014, it was briefly censored by Twitter, but

01:28:17.460 | I think more importantly, it was discredited in the minds of many

01:28:20.780 | voters, including myself, I really didn't think that that

01:28:24.380 | laptop was what they said it was. And it turned out that it

01:28:27.460 | was. So I do think it's there's a real troubling pattern of

01:28:31.100 | behavior by both the FBI agents, but also by the former FBI

01:28:36.060 | executives, including the Deputy Chief of Staff and the Chief

01:28:38.420 | Counsel from FBI that that were at Twitter as executives at the

01:28:41.740 | time.

01:28:42.140 | And in fairness, Michael, this has been brought up many times.

01:28:45.580 | But I just would like your take on it, because you're a lifelong

01:28:48.500 | Democrat, correct?

01:28:49.260 | Until until last year.

01:28:50.780 | Great. So it would, you know, just less anybody think that you

01:28:54.180 | are like some MAGA supporter here.

01:28:55.700 | Just look at my sweater.

01:28:57.100 | This was all on the backdrop of Trump asking for the Russians,

01:29:02.060 | you know, during that debate to hack Hillary for him interfering

01:29:05.140 | with Zelensky and trying to get him to give dirt on Biden

01:29:08.300 | and the fact that Hunter Biden was obviously dirty. So to

01:29:11.780 | expect a hack, there was massive precedent for it. So that set

01:29:17.140 | the stage for this, correct?

01:29:18.300 | For sure. And there's definitely that going on. And maybe that's

01:29:23.340 | all there was to it. It is just striking, of course, because I

01:29:27.620 | didn't even mention in my this was, by the way, this is

01:29:29.780 | Twitter thread, part seven that I did on this issue. I didn't

01:29:33.740 | even get into the fact that, you know, within a few days, the

01:29:36.820 | many of former senior heads of intelligence organizations and

01:29:40.860 | others came out and said that it was the result of a Russian

01:29:44.220 | disinformation campaign. So yeah, sure. I mean, I guess we

01:29:47.860 | could find some other explanation for it, whether it

01:29:51.620 | was innocent or coordinated, but it is it is striking. Also, I

01:29:55.700 | think the other thing that we found was the contrast between

01:29:59.300 | the the threat inflation and what what Twitter was finding

01:30:02.980 | themselves. I mean, there was, you know, you'll repeatedly

01:30:05.980 | you'll Roth would respond to FBI that, yeah, we looked into

01:30:09.500 | these accounts that you mentioned, and they were all

01:30:11.380 | very low follower accounts with very little activity. So they

01:30:14.860 | just weren't finding very much foreign influence on the Twitter

01:30:18.900 | platform. And so I just think it was grossly inflated, either

01:30:23.380 | for kind of good reasons or bad reasons. I would say, yeah.

01:30:28.180 | Yeah. And it's, there's no perfect way to police this

01:30:31.820 | stuff, obviously. And okay, well, listen, we appreciate

01:30:34.700 | your reporting. Yeah, for doing it. And if you haven't read

01:30:38.780 | Michael's book, San Francisco, you did some great reporting

01:30:44.260 | there as well. And continued success in your investigative

01:30:48.060 | journalism. Thank you, Michael. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

01:30:50.900 | All right, cool. Sorry. Awesome. Sorry.

01:30:55.100 | He's still here.

01:30:56.620 | Hey, you did an interview on that. I think I saw it on

01:31:01.300 | YouTube or something where you interviewed someone who was

01:31:03.220 | homeless in San Francisco, and they were addicted to drugs. And

01:31:06.340 | they kind of said some narrative about how they were in this

01:31:10.500 | condition, because San Francisco basically pays them to be

01:31:13.260 | homeless and pays them to do drugs on the street. Did that

01:31:15.980 | ever get published? And did that come out? Because it was such a

01:31:18.380 | compelling couple of minutes that you got on tape there. It

01:31:21.260 | really, for me sent home a message of how far kind of

01:31:25.740 | progressive policies can take a society. And it's such a beacon

01:31:30.700 | for where things might go as other people start to think

01:31:32.980 | about adopting similar policies around the world, which is why I

01:31:35.780 | thought it was such important reporting, whatever happened

01:31:38.780 | with that. And where can folks see that? Because it was such a

01:31:40.900 | moving interview for me.

01:31:42.420 | Yeah, if you just Google Michael Schellenberger YouTube homeless,

01:31:45.860 | you'll be able to find all my videos. There's a lot of them

01:31:48.100 | that we did with people on the street. All of them, of course,

01:31:50.740 | people asking and wanting to do them. But yeah, I mean, what we

01:31:54.500 | I also wrote about that in my book, which is basically a San

01:31:57.060 | Francisco pays cash welfare payment of somewhere between

01:32:00.180 | six to $700. Plus, you can get $200 in food stamps. And a lot

01:32:04.940 | of people sadly use that to maintain their addiction. And

01:32:08.660 | this gentleman, James with the tattoos on his face was very

01:32:13.580 | honest about how he was playing the system. In fact, he was

01:32:16.900 | himself, we found this increasingly kind of horrified

01:32:20.780 | by the incentives that San Francisco was creating for

01:32:23.340 | people to live on the streets and, and live on the streets in

01:32:26.380 | their in their addiction. So yeah, you can find that on

01:32:28.620 | YouTube. So many people say incentives drive behavior. And

01:32:31.820 | unfortunately, these policies all came from a good place from

01:32:35.340 | a kind heart. And the idea that we could help people in need.

01:32:38.820 | And unfortunately, the way that the incentives get structured,

01:32:41.420 | they can actually cause more harm than good. It's such an

01:32:43.860 | important lesson. I just wanted to say that because I think

01:32:46.260 | you're reporting on this really hit that home. So so thanks for

01:32:49.660 | doing that. I think it's really important because we have we

01:32:51.540 | have to do the right thing for people. But we also have to be

01:32:53.940 | careful that the policies are done in the right way. So I

01:32:56.340 | think it's so well said Friedberg because when you're

01:33:00.180 | Michael, and I just think you're very courageous for doing it,

01:33:03.580 | because it's very easy for somebody to say, Oh, well, you

01:33:05.940 | are being callous. The truth is incentives matter. And we saw

01:33:09.660 | we've seen this over and over again, if you pay for something,

01:33:11.740 | you get more of it. And really, San Francisco is bearing the

01:33:14.580 | burden. I think this is what your book and you know, in a lot

01:33:17.740 | of the videos you've made, at least the message I got was, San

01:33:20.380 | Francisco has the lowest price of drugs, the lowest

01:33:22.620 | enforcement, and the most incentives, therefore, they

01:33:25.260 | suffer, because every person who is, you know, addicted comes

01:33:29.780 | here, because they speak to each other. And 90% of the people who

01:33:33.420 | are in San Francisco are here because we have created an

01:33:36.060 | incentive structure. Is that directionally correct as we wrap

01:33:38.780 | here? Yeah, 100% correct, including just the non

01:33:41.820 | enforcement of laws against sleeping on the sidewalk doing

01:33:45.420 | drugs in public, not requiring ultimately three times more

01:33:49.100 | people die, living outside as an unsheltered homeless person

01:33:52.940 | rather than live than being in a shelter. And for me, that's all

01:33:55.780 | you need to know to know that you cannot allow our brothers

01:33:58.660 | and sisters to sleep on the street, no matter how desperate

01:34:01.620 | they sound about wanting to avoid going inside, it's three

01:34:04.460 | times deadlier to be on the street than inside. So the

01:34:07.060 | compassionate thing is to force people into housing. Yes. And

01:34:10.500 | that's what's right. People to say, but you know, because you're

01:34:13.700 | we have this perception that people have freedom, and they

01:34:16.420 | should have the right to do this. But a person who's taking

01:34:18.340 | fentanyl in your research is not thinking correctly. And if it was

01:34:22.100 | any family member of ours, we would not want them to make that

01:34:24.820 | decision for themselves. We'd want somebody else to make that

01:34:27.060 | decision for them, correct?

01:34:28.180 | Abs, I would want that from if I was on the street, so desperate

01:34:32.180 | that I was, you know, smoking fentanyl and breaking multiple

01:34:34.620 | laws every day. Of course, I would want to be hospitalized.

01:34:37.780 | You know, and usually, you know, people overcome their addiction.

01:34:41.100 | That's the good news. We always leave out of it, but it is

01:34:43.620 | possible people do overcome their addiction all the time.

01:34:45.900 | But they often need some some an intervention from family and

01:34:49.940 | friends. And if that's too late for that, then you need the

01:34:51.740 | intervention from the from the city.

01:34:53.500 | All right, Michael, thank you, Michael. Appreciate it. So as we

01:34:57.260 | get back to the all in news network, we've now gone 24 hours

01:35:01.580 | a day, the all in news network has launched. We'll just have a

01:35:05.020 | road we should sit at various offices throughout Silicon

01:35:07.940 | Valley, letting executives and CEOs

01:35:11.060 | imagine we did like a 12 hour marathon show for charity, where

01:35:16.740 | just people showed up. And we did a what do they call those on

01:35:19.820 | TV? What is the charity? Calipane? Yeah, no, no, just a

01:35:25.700 | t. Yeah, tell about J. Cal has to still fly commercial. We'll do

01:35:29.220 | a telethon. Hey, sacks. Thank you for setting up those

01:35:31.700 | amazing drop ins. Well done. Thanks, sacks. Thanks, sacks.

01:35:35.180 | I think that was good. Your jacket. That's a great jacket.

01:35:37.140 | Is that custom that isn't he? Sorry, I'll Stuart. He says,

01:35:39.780 | this is the Christmas or holiday jacket. Who is it by he say?

01:35:43.660 | It's Valentino. All right. Well, that's that's that's nice. Also.

01:35:48.100 | Okay, that's nice. Okay, let's keep going here. We got to go to

01:35:52.100 | lightning round. All right, let's move biggest flash in the

01:35:54.180 | pan. We were was our last. I went with crypto. Pretty easy to

01:35:58.540 | say that. I'm not going to give myself a big high five. But what

01:36:01.180 | do you guys think of the Elon conversation real quick? Well,

01:36:03.580 | he's very talkative. And he's anything interesting or

01:36:05.860 | surprising for you. I mean, he said the biggest, you know,

01:36:08.380 | thing that people want to make sure to avoid is margin debt.

01:36:11.060 | That was I mean, he's working hard. And he's just such a

01:36:14.980 | product of focused guy. He just gets his he's like, so deep

01:36:17.900 | deeply into it. It's like, yeah, just do the things right,

01:36:21.500 | Friedberg. I mean, if anything's Oh, my God, of course,

01:36:24.100 | everything. That's it. That's it. Yeah. So I mean, and you

01:36:27.540 | know, products are made by teams. So what I think is

01:36:31.300 | distinctly different here, I'm just giving my personal opinion.

01:36:33.180 | I don't know what Microsoft Teams. No, no, no. Teams make

01:36:36.780 | products. And so what I just want to say here is, you know,

01:36:38.980 | like, Microsoft Teams suck. No, that I'm not, you know, don't

01:36:42.380 | trigger the bundle. But I just want to say, you know, like,

01:36:45.140 | this is a takeover. As opposed to building a company from

01:36:48.700 | scratch, he's had to assemble a team, and then work at this

01:36:52.260 | incredible product pace. And I think those two things are

01:36:55.460 | starting to click week. Yeah, six is gonna look very different

01:36:58.780 | than week the first six weeks. So yeah, the products are really

01:37:01.460 | looking awesome. And it was nice to him to give me that shout

01:37:03.660 | out on the you know, the affiliate badges, but I'll just

01:37:06.700 | give a shout out. I didn't hear it. What was it? Oh, well, he

01:37:09.540 | gave me he gave me some credit for the affiliate badges. But I

01:37:13.140 | wanted to give credit to the PMs who approached me about that

01:37:16.220 | idea. I went again. Okay, fine. Whatever is there? Let me give

01:37:20.860 | me give credit to the actual PMs, Evan Jones and Patrick

01:37:24.420 | Trauger, who they approached me about this idea they had. And

01:37:28.140 | then I helped, you know, give it some momentum. Here's the truth.

01:37:32.220 | When Dave and I spent the first couple weeks there. Now that

01:37:34.580 | it's a little more public, he wants to be on the program. What

01:37:37.100 | we found over and over again, was that there were great

01:37:39.780 | features that were ready to be released, that were being held

01:37:42.900 | back by management. And there were brilliant people with all

01:37:45.820 | the ideas that you think should have been released. And they

01:37:48.660 | just weren't allowed to release a lot of these products. Why?

01:37:51.940 | Who knows. But now that he's in charge, I think you'll see the

01:37:55.420 | product cycle is going to go much quicker.

01:37:57.260 | The most important thing I saw, which is such an important

01:37:59.460 | lesson for anyone running a business in Silicon Valley is

01:38:02.180 | that the pace of decision making matters far more than the

01:38:05.540 | accuracy of decision making. It's always been like one of my

01:38:08.100 | three big mottos.

01:38:09.100 | Say more about that for entrepreneurs.

01:38:11.140 | Unpack for me, like my number one, like my three things are

01:38:13.980 | always like grit, biased action, and then narrative, but like

01:38:16.620 | biased action, the rate at which you can make decisions is a far

01:38:21.020 | greater predictor of success than the accuracy of the

01:38:23.740 | decisions you do make. And so you have to be willing to

01:38:26.340 | embrace failure, you have to be willing to make decisions that

01:38:29.060 | could result in something not being done correctly, or making

01:38:31.380 | a mistake, and even getting embarrassed on the internet, you

01:38:34.140 | know, by making mistakes and having to call people like Paul

01:38:36.060 | Graham and apologize for them. And that was a big moment. But

01:38:39.580 | that was interesting. As a business scales, as professional

01:38:44.460 | managers are brought in, their incentive is to not make

01:38:47.140 | mistakes, their incentive is to do things that are predictably

01:38:50.540 | going to work, and are predictably not going to fail.

01:38:53.060 | And therefore they avoid taking the risks and they reduce the

01:38:55.700 | rate of action, the rate of decision making. And that's why

01:38:58.340 | so many businesses ultimately don't scale past some sort of

01:39:01.300 | inflection point, or when founders that are willing to

01:39:03.540 | push that envelope step out, everything starts to fall apart.

01:39:06.380 | And it's so critically important, I think, to look at

01:39:08.580 | that as being I think, Elon's defining trait and

01:39:11.060 | characteristics that this regardless of the scale of the

01:39:13.500 | organization and the enterprise, he's still willing to act with

01:39:16.140 | that level of bias to action that you typically see in a

01:39:18.700 | small startup. Okay. And put his reputation on the at risk. Yeah.

01:39:23.100 | Just

01:39:23.700 | I sat in a meeting yesterday, he said that if we're not rolling

01:39:30.500 | back 10% of the time, we haven't pushed hard enough. Right?

01:39:33.940 | Wonderful. There you go. I mean, it's like, if you're never

01:39:37.260 | rolling anything back, because you never make a mistake, maybe

01:39:39.700 | you're just not right. Moving fast enough. You don't have

01:39:41.780 | enough, not enough, you're not fast enough, enough of a bias

01:39:44.380 | towards action, you're too afraid of making a mistake.

01:39:46.700 | By the way, here's what's so interesting about the views

01:39:49.260 | feature is that a bunch of websites, I think it started

01:39:52.780 | because Instagram did a bunch of apps, deprecated, you know,

01:39:56.020 | likes, because they felt that it was too. It was part of this

01:40:01.180 | negative cycle. And so they took all this stuff away. And

01:40:06.220 | basically views is going sort of back in that direction and

01:40:10.780 | giving more granularity in terms of outside in social engagement

01:40:14.460 | on a post, which is I think, interesting to see it's

01:40:17.260 | happening in a moment where all these other sites, and apps are

01:40:20.500 | actually going in the opposite direction.

01:40:22.140 | Well, it's like a standard feature on YouTube. And it's

01:40:25.860 | very powerful for YouTube's network effects, because it

01:40:27.900 | shows you how many views you get. So it discourages people

01:40:31.220 | from using other sites, because you know, you get the most

01:40:34.620 | distribution on YouTube. So it's weird that other social

01:40:38.300 | networks don't want to follow suit. I mean, in one hour,

01:40:40.980 | they had it, but they deprecated. That's what's so

01:40:43.100 | interesting.

01:40:43.540 | But I guess, you know, my point is, we've only had this feature

01:40:46.540 | for an hour. And I didn't realize how much distribution my

01:40:49.220 | tweets were getting. And it definitely undermines my

01:40:51.940 | incentive to want to go use some other platform when I see the

01:40:55.460 | distribution I'm getting on Twitter.

01:40:56.700 | Well, if you're getting 10 times more distribution in the New

01:40:58.820 | York Times, you know, what's going to happen is people stop

01:41:00.660 | listening and reading.

01:41:01.500 | Well, I mean, it's sort of like this podcast itself. Like, I

01:41:04.460 | mean, we people ask us to go

01:41:06.460 | and my point is, we have to rely on social proof, and anecdotes

01:41:11.300 | about the actual scale and the breadth and the reach because

01:41:14.740 | it's impossible for us to get one holistic view that shows

01:41:18.620 | across all of these different modalities, whether it's

01:41:21.140 | Spotify, or Apple podcasts, or YouTube, how many people listen

01:41:25.500 | or watch and you know, we add it all up. And you know, we think

01:41:28.780 | it's in this, you know, sort of three to 5 million range of

01:41:32.100 | people. But if you just had a numerical canonical number that

01:41:36.580 | was irrefutable, you just run over everybody.

01:41:39.140 | This turns it into a meritocracy is gonna be terrifying to some

01:41:42.660 | blue check marks when they see that the people who they report

01:41:46.180 | on get 10 times as many views as they do, of course, is why when

01:41:49.580 | when people

01:41:50.220 | journalists, rather, look at Sean Hannity, go to Sean Hannity

01:41:53.340 | his profile and for the number of followers he has, how

01:41:55.820 | pathetically engaged his audience is it's all bots. It's

01:41:58.420 | all trolls. It's all nobody's

01:41:59.900 | I looked at Mitt Romney just put out a video, whatever. In the

01:42:02.540 | first like half hour, he had 100,000 views, like, every

01:42:05.700 | politician who starts seeing this is gonna go wait a second.

01:42:07.620 | I mean, the world is getting more views here than I am on

01:42:10.060 | MSNBC or Fox, the world is

01:42:11.860 | I need to do this rational place if Mitt Romney actually has more

01:42:14.860 | influence than Sean Hannity.

01:42:16.740 | Let's hope Okay, let's move on. We got to get through this

01:42:19.620 | quickly. It's our longest episode ever. Here we go. We are

01:42:23.940 | going to do next up. It's very this is a very important

01:42:28.140 | category. Best CEO of 2022. In 2021. I went with Frank

01:42:34.020 | Slutman and Elon Musk. Chamath went with Satya Nadella. Saks

01:42:39.500 | went with Brian Armstrong and Freeberg went with Jack Dorsey.

01:42:42.660 | Now we go on to 2022. Saks who everybody wants to know Saks is

01:42:49.020 | best CEO of 2022. Go ahead, Saks.

01:42:52.580 | Every founder took my advice to get leaner. So down there burn,

01:42:56.460 | create runway, you know, weather the storm down, you know,

01:43:00.460 | generic answer, not a person. Yeah, exactly. I mean, look, I

01:43:03.740 | think actually a lot of the names names. Well, here's the

01:43:07.020 | problem is that, you know,

01:43:08.140 | can I finish J. Co. The names that you mentioned from last

01:43:12.980 | year will be the top candidates for this year. I mean, I think

01:43:15.300 | Satya Nadella had a good year. Obviously, what Elon's doing, we

01:43:18.100 | just talked about it's amazing. Brian Armstrong, I think the

01:43:21.420 | stock has done great, but he's been a strong CEO, but I don't

01:43:23.820 | want to repeat the same names. I think that, you know, every CEO

01:43:27.380 | who responded to the regime change by cutting costs,

01:43:30.540 | getting leaner, extending runway, I think deserves to be

01:43:34.700 | on this list. And unfortunately, a lot of them are just resisting

01:43:37.620 | and they're just not yet taking the medicine, or they've been

01:43:41.020 | taking the medicine in little drips and drabs instead of just

01:43:44.180 | like swallowing it whole and getting a move on.

01:43:45.860 | Yeah, just drink the whole two tablespoons of medicine. Don't

01:43:50.100 | sip it, you got to just take it.

01:43:51.620 | It's not getting better. I mean, the stock market today should be

01:43:54.220 | a wake up call. I mean, this is one of the worst days in the

01:43:58.460 | market the whole year. So things are getting worse before they're

01:44:01.860 | getting better.

01:44:02.500 | Chamath, who is your best CEO of the year?

01:44:05.060 | Well, the numerical answer is Vicky Holub, who's the CEO of

01:44:08.660 | Occidental Petroleum stocks up like 140%. This year, it's

01:44:11.860 | technically the best performing stock of the year. $63 billion

01:44:16.940 | portfolio company. But that's just a numerical answer who I I

01:44:22.180 | actually want to double down on David's answer, sexist answer,

01:44:24.980 | because I agree with that. I have been guiding our portfolio

01:44:29.740 | company CEOs to be at cash flow break even now or extend runway

01:44:35.740 | to q1 2025. And they're 25. Yes, because I mean, I think, well,

01:44:42.820 | Elon and I are kind of roughly in the same place we have been

01:44:44.900 | for a while, which is like, you know, mid 24 is when the

01:44:47.700 | recession ends, and you need to give yourself two to three

01:44:50.180 | quarters of buffer so that you can go and raise around which

01:44:52.780 | takes a quarter to two quarters. And once you start to get kind

01:44:56.260 | of get escape velocity out of a recession, having money through

01:44:59.940 | end of q1 2025, I think is a is a minimum requirement. And, you

01:45:06.940 | know, of the companies that I think were the most precariously

01:45:12.460 | in the recession, there was five of them that got their acts

01:45:15.500 | together and really did it. But these are all CEOs of companies

01:45:19.820 | that you know, I mean, if you said them, you would know some

01:45:21.980 | of them. But I do agree with David, I think the CEO that bit

01:45:25.260 | the bullet, so maybe publicly, what I would say is, you know,

01:45:27.940 | the CEO of Karna deserves a huge, you know, medal for having

01:45:34.420 | the courage to do it before anybody else did the CEO of

01:45:36.620 | checkout.com just took a huge write down. These CEOs are

01:45:40.140 | the ones that helped companies survive. Friedberg, best CEO

01:45:44.380 | 2022. My vote for best CEO is Warren Buffett. And I think it

01:45:50.300 | is just simple arithmetic. He has for years and now for

01:45:55.700 | decades proven himself to be just not just an exceptional

01:46:00.180 | investor, stock picker, whatever the kind of typical quip is

01:46:04.260 | about what he does for a living. But I think what's so

01:46:07.340 | special about Warren Buffett is that regardless of the market

01:46:10.380 | conditions, he can kind of remain steadfast in his intent

01:46:14.940 | and in his mission. And he doesn't kind of waver. And, you

01:46:18.660 | know, he doesn't take an active role in ranting and complaining

01:46:21.940 | about markets and politics. And I think that that's what makes

01:46:25.220 | him such an extraordinary leader, he stays within his zone

01:46:27.700 | of competence, he doesn't do things that he doesn't know

01:46:29.620 | about. He doesn't let the macro drive him and cause him to be

01:46:33.700 | you know, affected by it. And he says, this is what I know how to

01:46:36.660 | do, this is what I can do. And that is all that he does do. And

01:46:39.980 | he does it so exceptionally well. And to Chamath's point, he

01:46:42.700 | is the largest shareholder of Occidental Petroleum, along

01:46:45.300 | with many other incredible businesses. And I think he's

01:46:48.300 | proven in a market like we just had this year, why he is kind of

01:46:51.940 | the most extraordinary CEO, or one of the most extraordinary

01:46:54.780 | CEOs, but one of the best kind of capital allocators of all

01:46:58.780 | time, I'm going to go in a similar fashion, as Chamath and

01:47:03.340 | Sachs and go with the money losing CEOs who have dedicated

01:47:08.140 | themselves to free cash flow, and to getting to profitability

01:47:12.020 | from the last cycle, Airbnb, and Uber were the money losers. And

01:47:15.900 | now Airbnb is my number one, they become a money printer,

01:47:19.260 | they are now making bank. And they're still growing very

01:47:24.580 | quickly. And then Uber, I put in my second, they need to do

01:47:28.340 | another riff, they need to cut some expenses, but they too are

01:47:31.340 | hitting the free cash flow and the network effects. So I'm

01:47:34.420 | giving it to Chesky and then Dara one and two. Okay, let's

01:47:38.820 | keep moving best investor. For me, I'm going with the

01:47:43.060 | investors, like a general category, who are demanding

01:47:47.020 | governance and doing diligence again, or who never stopped. Let

01:47:51.340 | me say it that way. There's a generation of investors who

01:47:55.140 | raised their funds in the last five years and didn't do

01:47:57.380 | diligence, didn't demand board seats, didn't demand boards.

01:48:00.500 | Those idiots are now paying the price. And they created a lot of

01:48:05.220 | this mess of entitlement and a lack of governance. I want to

01:48:08.500 | give a shout out to the Bill Gurley's of the world, who

01:48:11.700 | fought for governance and fought for diligence in the face of

01:48:14.940 | being told, okay, boomer, you don't get it. Who do you have

01:48:18.420 | best investors? Chamath Palihapitiya.

01:48:21.300 | I will pick the what are called the pod shops. So these are

01:48:26.140 | folks that have strategies where they have hundreds of investing

01:48:29.020 | pods underneath an umbrella. And they have this very

01:48:32.700 | sophisticated risk infrastructure. So this is what

01:48:35.660 | Ken Griffin owns in Citadel. This is what Izzy Englander owns

01:48:39.220 | in Millennium. Brevin Howard is another one. D.E. Shaw is

01:48:44.180 | another one. So they have all kinds of strategies, but that

01:48:48.540 | are essentially run by computers that allocate risk, you know,

01:48:51.820 | scale you up, scale you back, turn you on, turn you off, fire

01:48:55.540 | you overnight. And those strategies as a whole ran over

01:48:59.340 | the market this year. They were the best performers. They are

01:49:03.540 | giving back billions of dollars, they've generated double digit

01:49:06.980 | positive returns. They're raising their fees, in some

01:49:11.380 | cases, some of these folks are moving their annual fee up to

01:49:14.460 | 4% a year, their carry up to 40% a year. Incredibly,

01:49:19.940 | incredibly well run performant businesses. They were by and

01:49:24.740 | away the best investors this year.

01:49:27.220 | Okay, we're gonna go lightning round from here. Saks, do you

01:49:30.300 | have a best investor?

01:49:31.940 | Yeah, I said, Stan Druckenmiller. He does your

01:49:35.500 | recall, last year, he predicted that inflation would be lasting

01:49:38.820 | this is the spring of 2021. When transitory was the word of the

01:49:42.420 | day. This year, he predicted the bear market rally we had in

01:49:46.220 | July and August. And I remember back at the CO2 summit in May,

01:49:51.460 | there were around that time, he was interviewed, and he basically

01:49:54.620 | was saying that as soon as there was a bear market rally over the

01:49:59.020 | summer, that he would then put a short position on I don't know

01:50:01.980 | if he actually did that. But he said he's going to do that. And

01:50:04.500 | then it turns out that the summer rally that we had was a

01:50:07.700 | dead cat bounce. So he was right about that. And now he is

01:50:10.740 | predicting a hard landing in 2023, with a deeper recession

01:50:15.500 | than many expect. So sadly, I suspect he may be right yet

01:50:19.220 | again.

01:50:19.580 | Friedberg best investor for you.

01:50:22.020 | 2022. I had Druckenmiller I indicated that he's been doing

01:50:25.860 | interviews pretty much every quarter for the last two years.

01:50:28.060 | And he's been pounding the table telling everyone what's going to

01:50:29.940 | happen. And it all happened. And he even told people the trades

01:50:32.460 | in mid 2021. He said he was short long dated treasuries, and

01:50:36.460 | he was long commodities. And if you had put those two trades on

01:50:39.300 | at that time and held them to today, you would have made a

01:50:41.620 | fortune. And so I think he's extraordinary in his ability to

01:50:45.540 | kind of see macro in a way that others don't, but also to take

01:50:48.340 | extremely brave action with his portfolio. He's he's renowned

01:50:51.700 | for how big the bets are that he makes, and how quickly he can

01:50:55.260 | change his mind when he's wrong and make another big bet to and

01:50:58.100 | still get himself out of the hole. He's incredible. So I

01:51:00.780 | definitely give it to Stanley Druckenmiller this year.

01:51:02.780 | 2021. We did our best turnarounds. I picked Disney

01:51:07.660 | Chamath Ford, Friedberg, we were

01:51:09.580 | this category.

01:51:10.900 | What about the worst investor of 2022? Can we do that?

01:51:15.260 | Good. You want to freestyle? Tell us your worst investor of

01:51:17.540 | 2022.

01:51:18.060 | I mean, I'll put myself in the category along with anybody else

01:51:20.980 | who was long tech based if Nick if you can just bring please

01:51:23.980 | backup this capital asset pricing model. Any of us that

01:51:28.580 | didn't understand this got run over this year. And just to put

01:51:33.340 | some very specific numbers here. There was a decent little tweet

01:51:37.660 | thread that Elon was a part of where he they actually

01:51:40.540 | calculated what the expected rate of return of Tesla was and

01:51:44.820 | it turned out to be almost 14% a year. And so you know, when you

01:51:49.780 | start to compound 14% over three, four or five years, these

01:51:53.060 | numbers get very big very quickly. And the reason why is

01:51:57.460 | that it has a huge beta. And we're in a world now where the

01:52:00.340 | risk free rate is quite high. So all of us benefited from this

01:52:04.980 | equation, essentially being upside down for the last 15

01:52:08.620 | years. And all of us who were over allocated into things that

01:52:13.540 | benefited from those dynamics, frankly got run over this year.

01:52:17.220 | So we were as a class the worst investors of 2022.

01:52:21.500 | Okay, here we go. Let's do our best turnaround. I am going to

01:52:25.900 | go with me for me. It's meta. They were losing money. hand

01:52:32.820 | over fist, they refuse to do a rift. And then finally, bestie

01:52:36.340 | Brad Gerstner said, Let's get fit. He did a memo. And finally,

01:52:40.380 | finally, Zuckerberg made some cuts. Reportedly rumors he's

01:52:44.820 | making a 15 10 or 15% cut I heard in the back channels

01:52:48.580 | right now based on performance. So he's not calling it a riff or

01:52:51.460 | a layoff. They're just gonna cut the bottom 10 or 15% again. So I

01:52:55.500 | think Zucks gonna turn it around. Anybody have a best

01:52:59.020 | turnaround? So you're saying Zuck mission accomplished?

01:53:01.660 | You're gonna turn around this year. I'm going with meta.

01:53:06.380 | So your answer is meta was turned around by Zuck this year.

01:53:09.540 | Yes, they got down to $85. And now they're up at what? 110 115?

01:53:14.220 | Yes, he turned it around at the end of the year. It was like a

01:53:16.500 | Hail Mary at the end of the year. He's turned it around. I

01:53:18.100 | think he's going to continue to Yes, that is my position.

01:53:19.900 | Was your

01:53:21.740 | cousin I bought the stock at 94.

01:53:25.500 | Go with that, Jacob.

01:53:26.540 | Okay, so if we're talking about very partial turnarounds here,

01:53:29.620 | I would say, I would say that you can measure the turnaround

01:53:34.060 | as of October 24. To now. Yes, exactly. So San Francisco still

01:53:39.900 | overall a mess. But there were a few positive events that

01:53:43.620 | happened over the past year. And since we're looking back, we

01:53:46.420 | should call these out. So first of all, back, this is towards

01:53:50.180 | the beginning of the year, we recalled three members of the

01:53:52.260 | school board, most particularly, Allison Collins, remember her,

01:53:56.900 | this was done by something like a 7030 margin and 8020 on on

01:54:03.300 | Collins. This was the school board that had dragged his feet

01:54:05.940 | on school reopenings, they destroyed the merit based Lowell

01:54:09.420 | High School, they wasted hours of meetings on a silly plan to

01:54:13.020 | remove the names of names like Abraham Lincoln from the from

01:54:16.580 | the schools. In any event, they were removed. Then Jake, how you

01:54:20.020 | refer to this, we got chase a buddhine recalled by a 6040

01:54:24.380 | margin as San Francisco da. This was the da who whose agenda was

01:54:28.860 | decarceration. He tried to release as many repeat offenders

01:54:33.020 | as possible. The voters San Francisco had enough and then

01:54:35.940 | most recently, the far less supervisor Gordon Marr just got

01:54:39.820 | rejected by his own community this November. And the new tough

01:54:43.980 | da Brooke Jenkins got reelected in her own right after being

01:54:47.940 | appointed by London breed. So there's still a long way to go

01:54:51.340 | in San Francisco. But there are definitely some green shoes

01:54:54.100 | start that the electorate here has had enough and is looking

01:54:57.420 | for the let's say called the centrist Democrats as opposed to

01:55:01.900 | the radicals.

01:55:02.780 | Okay, we're in the lightning round here. We're in our three

01:55:06.260 | of the all in podcast, marathon, this telethon. Shemoth, you got

01:55:12.180 | a best turnaround for 2022. Hard, hard, hard one to give. So

01:55:15.860 | any green shoots for 2022? As Saks would say,

01:55:18.740 | no, I mean, everything, everything's just got a

01:55:21.980 | disaster.

01:55:22.540 | Great. freeberg anything that you

01:55:25.540 | there may be no turnaround award until 2025.

01:55:28.940 | Fine. Okay. Yeah. A little split on this freeberg. You got any

01:55:32.780 | green shoots

01:55:33.140 | your your incisive fucking viewpoint. I'll pick Zack and

01:55:36.500 | meta that made so much sense.

01:55:37.980 | 94. It's at 117. It's one of my best j trades.

01:55:41.140 | Didn't you also say Disney was your pick of the year or

01:55:45.180 | something? I'm buying more. I'm buying more Disney. I'm buying

01:55:47.660 | more. This is

01:55:48.340 | I'm telling you Disney Warner, which you talked about before.

01:55:53.580 | Yeah. And Facebook are three of my bit and you know, are three

01:55:57.580 | of my big ones. Let's say worst human being here.

01:55:59.620 | Well, I think look, given that this is supposed to be the year

01:56:02.420 | 2022. I mean, you got to say that.

01:56:04.420 | SPF was the winner of this hands down.

01:56:07.580 | Okay, congratulations to SPF. You are consensus worst human

01:56:11.260 | being for this year. I mean, not ever, but only for this year.

01:56:14.980 | Right? Yeah, we all hate you equally. Okay, who's who's

01:56:19.020 | number two? Why do you hate him? Why do I hate him? Because all

01:56:22.020 | those people lost their money. And you know, there's some pot

01:56:25.420 | it's causing chaos. I feel terrible for all these people

01:56:27.780 | who lost money. That's why I hate him. Oh, it's disgusting.

01:56:31.900 | Did you see anybody have a second most person? The two guys

01:56:35.180 | copped to please Caroline Ellison and Gary like pancakes

01:56:40.540 | flip and but it turns out that they actually did engineer a

01:56:44.020 | backdoor into FTX and has been doing this long. Oh my god. Oh

01:56:49.820 | my god. That's game over. You're getting 10 years. He's getting

01:56:52.340 | life game over.

01:56:53.620 | Well, there's an interesting defense strategy that we were

01:56:57.900 | discussing in the chat. Oh, yeah. I think this is

01:57:01.820 | actually a fascinating defense strategy. I think this is their

01:57:04.300 | own shot. One of our besties had this theory that he was

01:57:07.500 | prescribed to prescription drugs. One was Adderall. What

01:57:10.900 | was the other one called? This was

01:57:12.500 | he said, the patch is it's a drug I wasn't familiar with. I

01:57:17.180 | guess it's a patch. But when you combine these two things,

01:57:19.780 | apparently it basically shuts down or kills the part of your

01:57:23.540 | brain that deals with inhibition inhibition. It's cocaine. Yeah.

01:57:28.860 | What if his defense strategy was Yeah, like only an insane

01:57:32.260 | person would do this. And I was acting insane because I was

01:57:36.180 | prescribed these drugs that had these drug conflicts. And it

01:57:39.820 | like killed part of my brain. I mean, and you think about it

01:57:42.700 | every criminal on Wall Street said cocaine is my defense. But

01:57:46.820 | this you could say he was maybe he was legally prescribed if he

01:57:49.460 | could show the prescription. By the way, I'm not saying yes,

01:57:52.700 | should get him off. I'm just, we're basically work shopping.

01:57:56.300 | What is only shot of his defense would be right? Well, and think

01:58:00.140 | about it, sex. He acted manic after FTX collapsed. So that

01:58:05.980 | mania of doing 20 Twitter spaces would be there's something so

01:58:11.300 | insane about what he did, right? That you that all it's almost

01:58:14.820 | like a like a prescribed insanity defense. Like I was

01:58:19.460 | prescribed a drug combination that made me insane.

01:58:22.460 | Anybody have a most loathsome company has we wrapped the only

01:58:26.140 | way that you could come up with that is like you'd have to have

01:58:28.340 | two parents that were like law professors or something.

01:58:30.300 | Right? Most most loathsome company.

01:58:33.860 | This is his defense, you know,

01:58:35.900 | yeah, my parents boohoo. No, no, no, he'll claim insanity. J.

01:58:40.420 | Cal. He'll say, of course, yeah. And they'll have a I mean, do we

01:58:44.380 | think that his parents aren't going to help his defense?

01:58:46.900 | You know, at this point, this, this kid's got to go away for

01:58:50.940 | life. That's it.

01:58:51.740 | You think life? Wow, I think it's got to be life. I think

01:58:54.380 | it's got to be 30 plus years. I mean, it's just going to be

01:58:57.060 | billions of dollars. What kind of justice system do we have?

01:58:59.820 | When people go away for 2030?

01:59:01.660 | For many years per billion, would you sentence?

01:59:04.980 | A decade per billion at least? Yeah, I mean, just you got

01:59:09.980 | some proportional sacks, you got to don't you think the justice

01:59:13.660 | system needs to look at other people who are in jail for

01:59:16.620 | selling cocaine for selling marijuana for for robbing a

01:59:20.220 | convenience store, they'll put somebody away for robbing a

01:59:23.060 | convenience store for a decade or two? What are they going to

01:59:26.100 | put him in jail for just because somebody came in with a gun and

01:59:28.420 | robbed a convenience store, they get 20 years, this kid's gonna

01:59:30.700 | get off?

01:59:31.260 | Screw that. Look, I think what do you guys think the over under

01:59:34.180 | is here? You think it's like set it at I'll set it at 35 years.

01:59:38.260 | I'll take the over. I'll take 30. I think this is made up. I

01:59:43.620 | said a good line, then which I think this is I think this is

01:59:45.820 | made up. No, I agree over on 30. Yeah, I think I think I said

01:59:48.860 | 35. I think it's gonna be a multiple hundreds of years

01:59:52.460 | sentence. And you'll be gone for life. Yeah, I think it's gonna

01:59:55.340 | be life. But I said a good line. Okay, most slow some company is

01:59:58.460 | FTX. Anybody want to go for a second?

02:00:00.460 | No, keep moving. No, I'll add one. I'm gonna this year, I'm

02:00:04.020 | gonna give my last year I gave it to Tyson foods, one of the

02:00:06.660 | largest slaughter of animals on earth. This year, I'm going to

02:00:09.740 | give it to a company called innovative I n o t IV. This is

02:00:13.620 | the company that was busted by the feds for their animal abuse

02:00:17.740 | in their dog breeding facility, where 4000 beagles were rescued

02:00:21.860 | one of which I adopted. And this is a publicly traded company

02:00:25.060 | stocks down 90 some odd percent, which I'm thrilled to see

02:00:27.780 | terrible business, awful, awful, kind of, you know, inhumane

02:00:32.900 | behavior. And so I want to kind of give them a special shout out

02:00:36.260 | this year.

02:00:36.660 | Look at you. And you're getting the virtue signaling points of

02:00:40.780 | rescuing the dog to increase your Q factor amongst besties.

02:00:44.420 | Well done.

02:00:44.980 | As a factor, max Q factor. Max Q factor. Yeah.

02:00:49.340 | Anybody else have a low sum?

02:00:50.660 | Yes, I'd like to pick this company zebra to Babuza, which

02:00:54.500 | destroyed the environment for a bunch of endangered species that

02:00:58.580 | I would otherwise have used for various for pelts for my

02:01:01.500 | sweaters and such.

02:01:02.420 | Yes. And I would like to go with blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

02:01:05.420 | which was torturing puppies, 18 of which I rescued and I am now

02:01:10.700 | have them in the J cow puppy rescue. I am the most sensitive

02:01:15.140 | and caring person. Also, I would like to add SeaWorld. I am in

02:01:19.860 | the process of raising money to build bigger pools to eventually

02:01:23.660 | release all the orcas in captivity. That is my new focus

02:01:26.780 | for next year. Okay. Moving on. Oh, God, do we want to do best

02:01:31.180 | meme? Do we want to do best new tech?

02:01:34.220 | I'll do best new tech. I don't have a best name.

02:01:35.980 | I'm going with fusion for best new tech. I'm going with

02:01:38.460 | I'm gonna go with chat GPT. I think what was so impressive

02:01:41.500 | about chat GPT. And the experience that everyone's had

02:01:46.060 | using it is that it really for the first time I think

02:01:48.100 | elucidated where these kind of machine learning tools can take

02:01:53.260 | us and what the kind of new product experience can be what

02:01:56.940 | generative AI can yield things beyond I think the scope of what

02:02:00.340 | a lot of people were imagining before. So it was really so

02:02:03.220 | revealing. And as you guys know, there's an absolute friggin

02:02:06.340 | tidal wave of people trying to start companies that are

02:02:09.580 | leveraging tools and generative AI to kind of reinvent

02:02:12.900 | everything from what workplace tools, enterprise software, all

02:02:16.100 | the way through to media games and entertainment. So that's why

02:02:18.740 | I think chat GPT was the most impressive new technology

02:02:21.540 | new tech. And then sacks lightning round, please best new

02:02:24.500 | tech,

02:02:24.780 | alpha fold three, which basically has almost near

02:02:28.340 | perfect accuracy and protein folding.

02:02:29.940 | Saks best new tech. I can't improve on the chat GPT. So yeah,

02:02:34.020 | let's keep rolling. Best trend best trend in business and in

02:02:38.020 | the world. Mine is startups getting back and investors

02:02:41.580 | getting back to reality and the what I call the age of

02:02:43.860 | austerity. The age of focus after the age of excess. That's

02:02:46.780 | the best trend in our world, the age of austerity, what's your

02:02:48.820 | best trend for 2022

02:02:51.100 | marginal cost of energy generation and storage is now in

02:02:54.900 | the low single digit pennies per kilowatt hour, which basically

02:02:58.100 | means that not only will energy be free and abundant, but it

02:03:01.980 | will, I think over the next decade or two, create a massive

02:03:05.980 | peace dividend, it will rewrite our foreign policy, it will

02:03:09.420 | rewrite national security, that is the reason why people should

02:03:12.900 | care about energy transition, not necessarily climate change,

02:03:16.340 | although that's important. It's a distant second to keeping men

02:03:20.660 | and women out of war, and keeping our borders safe.

02:03:24.540 | Well said anybody else have a best try.

02:03:27.180 | Last year, I said the creator economy, which I think referred

02:03:32.740 | to all these kind of creators creating new products and

02:03:35.420 | businesses beyond their content. This year, I think that the

02:03:38.860 | trend that was again enabled and demonstrated through chat GPT is

02:03:42.140 | the narrator economy. I think this is going to be a really

02:03:44.340 | important trend going forward. We'll talk about it in the

02:03:46.260 | prediction episode. But I think the idea that people are and

02:03:49.460 | they're starting to experience this and using chat GPT and

02:03:52.260 | Dolly and other kind of generative AI tools is how much

02:03:55.580 | you can kind of narrate the product you want to see created

02:03:59.060 | and have it created for you on the fly. And I think that that's

02:04:02.180 | a really kind of powerful mind shift for people and frame shift

02:04:05.060 | for people. And I think it really starts to change a lot of

02:04:08.140 | the way that people behave, entertain themselves, businesses

02:04:11.060 | operate, and so on. So I'd call it the narrator economy. And I

02:04:14.220 | think it's really kind of starting to emerge. Okay, do you

02:04:16.780 | have a trend? Saks?

02:04:18.220 | Yeah, I would say best friend is the growing realization that the

02:04:23.540 | corporate media is failing does not tell the truth. It has an

02:04:26.420 | agenda, more and more people are opting out of it and going with

02:04:29.020 | independent media. I think you know what Elon mentioned, where

02:04:32.260 | we're going to start holding these corporate journalists, the

02:04:34.340 | same standard on Twitter, as regular citizens, they're

02:04:37.020 | outraged by that, but that's a huge step in the right

02:04:39.740 | direction. The fact of the matter is, is that the press or

02:04:44.020 | the media is the prism through which reality is refracted. And

02:04:46.980 | if it's not giving us an accurate representation of the

02:04:49.900 | world, we can't begin to solve our problems, because we don't

02:04:52.660 | have accurate information. And I think more and more people are

02:04:55.340 | waking up from the matrix and realizing that we're living in

02:04:57.780 | this media controlled simulation. And, again, I don't

02:05:02.220 | think we're going to make progress until the this power

02:05:06.100 | that the media seems to have over our reality gets gets

02:05:08.980 | broken.

02:05:09.460 | Let's go for worst trend. My worst trend is the Fed trying to

02:05:13.220 | play catch up the Fed trying to play catch up. Sorry, buddy. The

02:05:18.100 | Fed trying to play catch up is the worst trend for me

02:05:20.140 | oversteering into the crash. What do you got to mouth for the

02:05:23.260 | worst trend of 20? worst trend was the continued profligate

02:05:28.140 | spending by the federal government. We have record

02:05:32.020 | deficits, record debt. And this year, we're ending the year by

02:05:36.380 | adding another $1.65 trillion of spending that nobody can

02:05:40.140 | seemingly account for. It is truly the Christmas tree of

02:05:43.060 | Christmas trees in terms of bills. So we have not gotten

02:05:47.620 | religion yet around being measured in how we spend money.

02:05:51.020 | Good one. Worst trend, sex. Last year, my worst trend was

02:05:54.220 | authoritarianism growing all over the world. And I think

02:05:58.140 | that's pretty decent prediction. This year's worst trend is the

02:06:02.340 | government colluding with big tech to engage in censorship.

02:06:05.100 | This is how they're going to do the authoritarianism. We talked

02:06:08.020 | about it with Schellenberger and Elon, this whole series of

02:06:10.740 | revelations, notice the Twitter files, we can see this collusion

02:06:15.020 | this cozy relationship between the censors at Twitter and big

02:06:18.260 | tech and the bureaucrats at the FBI and DHS and Pentagon. This

02:06:23.100 | is a really disturbing dystopian relationship as we talked about

02:06:26.740 | earlier. And you know, I feel like we spent all this time

02:06:30.380 | talking about the authoritarianism in Russia, and

02:06:34.500 | China, we seem to be obsessed with combating that and going to

02:06:37.460 | war with that. But we don't spend enough time talking about

02:06:39.900 | this growing authoritarianism at home. The media doesn't seem to

02:06:42.940 | want to report on Twitter files at all. Let's focus on stopping

02:06:46.780 | authoritarianism here.

02:06:47.980 | Well said Friedberg, what's your worst trend?

02:06:50.780 | I was trying for 2022 is what I would call interest rate mania.

02:06:54.860 | And I think that this is the mania that we've been caught up

02:06:57.620 | in on this show that other people on our thread, people in

02:07:01.780 | the business community and the investing community, where

02:07:04.020 | everyone's obsession with did the Fed act soon enough or late

02:07:06.620 | enough, and that interest rates ultimately drive success or

02:07:09.460 | failure with building businesses and making good investments. All

02:07:12.100 | right. The truth is, when interest rates go the wrong way,

02:07:15.580 | good investments, you know, can kind of strengthen their way can

02:07:19.980 | can can make their way through those environments, bad

02:07:22.620 | investments cannot, good businesses can make their way

02:07:25.260 | through and bad investments cannot. And so I think our our

02:07:27.900 | mania around the fact that interest rates and the Fed

02:07:30.340 | ultimately drove bad outcomes in businesses and investments is a

02:07:33.980 | flawed kind of assertion. And we all want to kind of get back to

02:07:37.100 | the drunken days where you know, a low interest rate environment

02:07:40.940 | enables us all to be successful and wealthy. And I think that

02:07:43.540 | that's kind of changed. So I think it's time for us to get

02:07:45.380 | away from the interest rate mania and focus more on solid

02:07:48.300 | investing and solid business building.

02:07:50.260 | Okay, here we go lightning round. We got two to go.

02:07:52.220 | Favorite media of 2022. For me, it was Top Gun, House of the

02:07:55.900 | Dragon, White Lotus two, but I'm going to pick my favorite here

02:07:59.100 | something you may not have heard of the film tar. I highly

02:08:03.100 | recommend it. But I did like those other three tremendously.

02:08:05.860 | What do you got sacks for your favorite media of 2022

02:08:08.380 | House of the Dragon, I guess I enjoyed quite a bit. Like you

02:08:11.420 | did. I'll give a shout out to my movie Dolly land which will be

02:08:14.380 | coming out next summer. If we're going to include podcast

02:08:17.420 | episodes, I would give a shout out to the unheard episode where

02:08:22.820 | Freddie Sayers interviews john Mearsheimer, the professor of

02:08:25.100 | international relations. He explains the origins of the

02:08:28.260 | Ukraine war and has some really pessimistic predictions about

02:08:31.700 | what might happen next. I suggest everyone watch it if

02:08:34.620 | they want to understand this conflict and where it may be

02:08:37.260 | going next year.

02:08:37.980 | Timothy, have any favorite media for 2022? You want to share?

02:08:41.540 | I thought Yellowstone kicked ass. Absolutely incredible.

02:08:46.820 | There's, I think it's on Hulu. But there's a show with Steve

02:08:50.540 | corral, a little short series called the patient, which is a

02:08:55.060 | serial killer that kidnaps his psychologist and locks him in

02:08:58.660 | his basement to try to help him prevent him killing more people.

02:09:01.900 | I thought it was really, really well done. Never Have I ever

02:09:08.460 | latest season, another just brilliant offering from Mindy

02:09:12.100 | Kaling. She's unbelievable. Those are those are probably the

02:09:15.220 | top ones.

02:09:16.340 | What do you got freeberg? Any media?

02:09:18.100 | Yeah, I read a book this year that I really liked. It's called

02:09:22.100 | the vital question by a guy named Nick Lane, someone

02:09:24.340 | recommended it to me. It's he's a biochemist, and he kind of

02:09:28.140 | talks a little bit about the origin of life on earth, it

02:09:30.540 | really ties into this idea that there are certain call it

02:09:33.540 | principles of physics and statistics that make life

02:09:36.220 | predictive and predictable. But I think the way that he kind of

02:09:40.300 | walks through how a lot of things emerge in life, and how

02:09:46.380 | life ultimately kind of developed on this planet are

02:09:49.460 | really well shown. So yeah, I give I give his book a shout

02:09:51.900 | out. It was a really good read. So

02:09:53.660 | that book, the vital question is incredible. The other one that

02:09:56.460 | he wrote, which is called life ascending. Those two books you

02:09:59.420 | must read if you don't want to be a lot of in my opinion. All

02:10:02.380 | right. I will also also for those people who don't

02:10:05.380 | understand the difference between power and energy, you

02:10:08.420 | will learn what that is.

02:10:09.380 | Very good. I have two book recommendations putting the

02:10:11.940 | rabbit in the hat is Brian Cox, you may know him from

02:10:15.060 | secession. He has a great book and he reads the audio book very

02:10:19.180 | enjoyable. I'm halfway through Quentin Tarantino's cinema,

02:10:22.100 | speculation and enjoying it very much. So actually will enjoy it

02:10:24.820 | tremendously. Okay. And now we do the Rudy Giuliani Award for

02:10:29.140 | self emulation. This is for the person who poured lighter fluid

02:10:33.780 | and gasoline over themselves and lit themselves on fire for no

02:10:36.060 | apparent reason. I go with Kevin O'Leary, who's secured a $15

02:10:38.980 | million bag from FT x and then decided to try to defend it 18

02:10:44.420 | ways to Sunday burning whatever reputation he had. Who do you

02:10:48.540 | have in your Rudy Giuliani Award?

02:10:50.940 | This will be controversial for you guys. I'm going to go with

02:10:53.060 | Elon Musk. I don't think that he won't put himself in the

02:10:56.620 | position that he did with bad intentions or without paying

02:11:00.860 | attention. I think he's taken on a role in buying and running

02:11:05.180 | Twitter. That is, you know, principled. And, you know, in

02:11:10.740 | his mind, and many other people's minds, a really

02:11:12.340 | important role that someone needs to play. Unfortunately, I

02:11:15.700 | think his reputation has gotten really hurt. Because of, you

02:11:20.460 | know, that role, he's not making a lot of friends. And he's not

02:11:24.380 | he's causing a lot of reputational damage. He

02:11:27.340 | obviously had a lot of good and important things he was working

02:11:29.460 | on prior to taking on the additional burden of Twitter.

02:11:32.060 | And while many people appreciate his doing it, I think that it's

02:11:34.900 | causing him a lot of reputational damage. And so

02:11:38.700 | yeah, I don't mean to kind of be offensive in saying that, but I

02:11:42.940 | think he's he's gotten

02:11:43.700 | a hard thing to do. It's certainly been a hard thing to

02:11:46.860 | do. But you're saying self immolation, Freeberg, because he

02:11:49.740 | took it on himself. He could have just took it on himself.

02:11:51.780 | Yeah, I'm not saying it's just like, interpretation. Yeah,

02:11:54.580 | it's not it's not like the Rudy Giuliani, Giuliani idiocy. I

02:11:56.940 | think he's taken on the burden of doing this. And I think it's

02:11:59.300 | causing him a lot of reputation.

02:12:00.500 | It's an interpretation of the award. What do you got your

02:12:03.580 | mind? Saxon? Well, I mean, if if I were to interpret the award, I

02:12:08.340 | think the way it was originally intended, I think I got to give

02:12:10.380 | it to Herschel Walker this year, unfortunately, and I wish

02:12:13.100 | Republicans would stop winning this award. At least, Herschel

02:12:16.700 | never gave any speeches next to a dildo shop. But nonetheless,

02:12:21.060 | I am so sorry that I'm so delighted, Saks that you've been

02:12:26.340 | so self aware about the follies of the dying MAGA. The last

02:12:32.380 | throws of the MAGA nation. I want to find some Democrats to

02:12:35.020 | give this to I want to give it to that brain dead senator from

02:12:38.940 | Pennsylvania. What's his name? Fetterman. Thank you. I wanted

02:12:43.220 | to give it to Fetterman, but he won. So I don't know what I'm

02:12:47.900 | supposed to do. You know, it's like, No, listen, when when a

02:12:50.860 | Republican self emulates like Rudy or Herschel or something

02:12:54.580 | like that, they get left out of town. And when the democrat does

02:12:58.340 | it like a Fetterman, they just get elected. So I don't know

02:13:01.340 | what to say. All right, you got any final words here? Good. I

02:13:04.220 | mean, I end this episode to be the longest episode ever. Who

02:13:07.580 | thinks poor, poor producer, Nick, whoever signed the papers

02:13:10.780 | for the whole search and seizure at Mar-a-Lago looks kind of like

02:13:15.900 | an idiot. So that that was not politically as to Okay, I think

02:13:18.940 | you'd say the FBI then okay. poorly handled. That's actually

02:13:22.900 | a great, that's a great one. Actually, if we're going to get

02:13:25.300 | serious for a second, the combination of revelations if

02:13:28.620 | we're going to look over this whole year, remember, Jason,

02:13:31.500 | when I basically spoke up at the time they raided Mar-a-Lago, and

02:13:35.620 | said that it was heavy handed and unnecessary. And now you

02:13:39.380 | tell me guys, for years, Donald Trump is an idiot savant minus

02:13:43.420 | the savant. Why all of you guys just project all of this like

02:13:48.140 | insane, genius, evil level stuff. He's not capable of that.

02:13:54.620 | This is a simpleton who likes attention. He stole a bunch of

02:13:58.620 | souvenirs that he didn't read when I was in the White House

02:14:01.060 | position hasn't read now kept in a box downstairs just to say he

02:14:04.460 | had them. That's exactly right. I was the one who championed the

02:14:07.180 | souvenir. I know he's a souvenir guy. You said he was selling

02:14:10.860 | secrets to the sound. No, I did not say that. I said,

02:14:13.260 | souvenirs. No, just did it. You said

02:14:15.980 | news. Hold on. You were doing Jared Kushner and elaborate

02:14:20.860 | conspiracy theory. I'm saying I know it's not a conspiracy

02:14:24.260 | theory when you do it. And and guys, and this is the same

02:14:27.580 | person that basically, in the in the beginning of his

02:14:30.860 | presidential campaign in 2016, in front of Hillary Clinton said,

02:14:35.060 | Absolutely, I bend the laws that you created the tax laws to my

02:14:40.100 | favor, because I'm not stupid, when she called him a tax

02:14:43.540 | dodger. And it turns out after all these years, he was telling

02:14:47.860 | the truth.

02:14:48.420 | The show ends with Trump. He's been a great 2022.

02:14:54.060 | No, no, but honestly, like, like, did we learn anything

02:14:56.700 | except that these tax laws are egregiously stupid. And the only

02:15:01.500 | people that are consistently guaranteed to make money in

02:15:03.700 | these tax laws are real estate investors. If you put these two

02:15:06.420 | things together, a real estate investor who happened to be very

02:15:10.380 | poor at his job, which Trump turned out to be packed

02:15:14.260 | billions of dollars of nols that he was able to use to wash his

02:15:17.180 | taxes for years and years. And by the way, and he was clearly

02:15:20.460 | proud of it. He was just goading the Democrats in not releasing

02:15:23.820 | them. They went through all this rigmarole. And what did we find

02:15:26.820 | out he had huge nols. He had huge deductions, and he paid no

02:15:30.100 | taxes. Is that shocking to any of us?

02:15:32.300 | It's like it's like Chappelle said, he came out of the house,

02:15:35.020 | told everyone everything you think is going on inside that

02:15:37.860 | house is going on and went back and he walked back inside the

02:15:40.260 | house. Yeah.

02:15:41.180 | Pretty great. All right, listen, for David Sachs. The Rain Man

02:15:48.780 | for the Queen of Kenwa Sultan of Science, David Friedberg,

02:15:53.660 | and the dictator himself, Chamath Palihapitiya. It has been

02:15:57.180 | an honor and a privilege to do this podcast with you

02:16:00.820 | gentlemen. This is the longest show in the history of the pod.

02:16:04.380 | Enjoy everybody. RIP producer next next 48 hours and we'll see

02:16:10.100 | everybody next year. Happy Holidays. Love you bestest

02:16:13.700 | Rain Man David Sachs

02:16:20.180 | I'm going all in

02:16:23.060 | And it said we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone

02:16:26.140 | crazy with it.

02:16:26.900 | Love you bestest

02:16:27.980 | Queen of Kenwa

02:16:29.300 | I'm going all in

02:16:30.860 | What your winners line? What what your winners line?

02:16:33.620 | Besties are gone

02:16:37.220 | Go 13

02:16:37.860 | That's my dog taking a nudge in your driveway

02:16:40.780 | Sachs

02:16:41.300 | Oh man

02:16:44.540 | My avatars will meet me at the police station

02:16:46.660 | We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy

02:16:49.140 | because they're all just useless. It's like this like sexual

02:16:51.460 | tension that they just need to release somehow

02:16:53.300 | What your beat

02:16:56.100 | What your beat

02:16:58.100 | Beat

02:16:58.700 | What your beat

02:16:59.700 | We need to get merch

02:17:00.700 | Besties are gone

02:17:01.300 | I'm going all in

02:17:03.020 | I'm going all in

02:17:11.020 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

E109: 2022 Bestie Awards Live from Twitter HQ

Chapters