Google fires protestors, NPR chaos, Humane's AI Pin, Startup tax crisis, sports betting scandal

00:00:00.000 | So, Mark, did you go down to the breakthrough thing this weekend?

00:00:02.760 | The breakthrough prize is amazing.

00:00:04.840 | It's like observing exotic animals in their natural habitat.

00:00:08.180 | Well, a friend of mine, who you hung out with down there, called me

00:00:10.680 | last night to give me the breakdown on all the individuals

00:00:14.360 | he saw and what was going on with them.

00:00:15.940 | I mean, he's like, I don't even know how Nat and I keep getting invited to this.

00:00:19.740 | But like to say we were outclassed is an understatement.

00:00:22.360 | The people at that thing were.

00:00:24.160 | What is it, the breakthrough awards? The breakthrough prize, yeah.

00:00:26.440 | Yeah, I couldn't make it.

00:00:27.660 | I got invited to. It's so incredible.

00:00:30.140 | OK, first of all, shout out to Yuri and Julia.

00:00:31.940 | It is incredible.

00:00:33.520 | There were two moments where I cried.

00:00:36.440 | This woman goes up on stage to give an award to the people

00:00:41.120 | that had made this investment in cystic fibrosis. Yeah.

00:00:44.780 | And she says, my child was born with cystic fibrosis,

00:00:49.000 | and then my second child was born with cystic fibrosis,

00:00:52.120 | and then my second child died.

00:00:53.840 | She said that I just burst into tears.

00:00:57.300 | And then you present an award to the person

00:00:59.760 | that actually is helping them stamp out the disease.

00:01:02.600 | We celebrated the people that found the gene that caused Parkinson's.

00:01:06.100 | And then, yeah, I mean, the people at that is pretty incredible.

00:01:09.480 | It's in L.A., right? They did it in Los Angeles.

00:01:11.940 | Yeah, I mean, like, look, Yuri Milner and Julia Milner.

00:01:14.660 | Zuck. And Priscilla Chan and and Wojcicki and Sergey Brin.

00:01:21.660 | Those six people are the ones that organized this breakthrough prize.

00:01:24.040 | And I think it's just. A modern version of the Nobel,

00:01:27.800 | which tries to really shine a spotlight on people

00:01:31.380 | doing really groundbreaking work in physics and math and life sciences.

00:01:35.060 | And so you get people that have just done things

00:01:39.720 | that are just very practical.

00:01:42.760 | And are very real.

00:01:44.720 | And I think what they do is they make, frankly, these kinds of achievements.

00:01:50.400 | Much more high level in the sense that you're bringing together

00:01:54.600 | people from Hollywood and people from Silicon Valley, and the awareness is up

00:01:58.320 | and it's just incredibly well produced and.

00:02:01.480 | Yeah, it's really a cool thing to be a part of, but I mean,

00:02:04.080 | seeing some of these people are very intimidating.

00:02:06.820 | I sat beside Vin Diesel.

00:02:08.900 | Oh, really? That was super cool.

00:02:12.880 | He is a super nice guy.

00:02:15.840 | And on the other side of me was someone that actually sacks

00:02:18.540 | those Toby Emmerich, who's was the chairman of Warner Brothers.

00:02:21.560 | So just talking to these guys was super cool.

00:02:24.560 | Moving it to Los Angeles was a great move. Great.

00:02:27.180 | Yeah, it's just I was invited.

00:02:28.980 | I couldn't make it. Sorry. Thank you to Julian.

00:02:31.020 | Yuri for inviting us again.

00:02:34.280 | But it's really great that they're giving it the celebration it deserves

00:02:39.320 | and making it, you know, like, dare I say, sexy and cool and hip

00:02:44.160 | to be a scientist and solve the world's biggest problems.

00:02:47.400 | I think it's just so awesome.

00:02:49.160 | And you're right, Sergey Brin and Wojcicki.

00:02:51.240 | Saki, Priscilla and Julia and Yuri are the founders of the Breakthrough Prize.

00:02:57.740 | The craziest thing is they give a they give a youth breakthrough award.

00:03:01.540 | So the Breakthrough Prize is this beautiful globe.

00:03:03.660 | And then the junior winner gets like a smaller version.

00:03:06.760 | Very appropriate.

00:03:07.960 | And it was a video of this kid in India

00:03:10.840 | who had won it a few years ago and then went off to MIT

00:03:15.460 | and then graduated.

00:03:17.340 | And then the video is of him coming back to Bangalore

00:03:20.380 | because his sister had won this year and he presented it to the sister.

00:03:25.460 | And all I could think of was this is an incredible achievement

00:03:30.140 | by like a 16 year old.

00:03:31.900 | And literally at the same time, my 16 year old was like,

00:03:35.180 | Dad, the chicken tenders from DoorDash have arrived.

00:03:38.520 | And I was like, I can't find my chicken fingers.

00:03:42.180 | Oh, I love your winters ride.

00:03:45.920 | Rain Man, David Sachs.

00:03:50.500 | And I said, we open sources to the fans and they've just gone crazy.

00:03:55.260 | Love you guys.

00:03:56.500 | Queen of Kinwam.

00:03:59.680 | Dad, I said, get me the spicy fries, not the regular Cajun fries.

00:04:04.640 | The girl that won it, Freebird did something with Yamanaka factors.

00:04:08.640 | So it's like it's really incredible

00:04:11.940 | and inspiring, but fortunately, don't worry.

00:04:14.200 | My my 16 year old was able to get the chicken tenders and everything was fine.

00:04:17.740 | OK, good. Yeah, sure.

00:04:19.620 | You called rerouted it.

00:04:21.960 | I can't get his chicken tenders.

00:04:24.880 | What do we do?

00:04:26.220 | By the way, the other the other thing I'll say is

00:04:30.260 | the person that performed is really amazing, Charlie Puth.

00:04:32.800 | And and the reason I say it is if you Google

00:04:36.020 | Charlie Puth, this guy,

00:04:40.640 | he's a young guy in his early 20s, I'm guessing he is so talented.

00:04:44.360 | There's all these videos of Charlie Puth where he'll make a random noise,

00:04:48.320 | like he'll clink a Coke bottle with a fork and then he'll record it

00:04:52.740 | and then he'll put it into these digital editing tools.

00:04:55.540 | And then he'll make like an entire five minute song using that as the base,

00:05:00.280 | like as the basic building block.

00:05:03.420 | The guy is so talented.

00:05:08.720 | Anyways, it was a very it was a very cool event.

00:05:10.680 | Fantastic. How are you doing, Sax?

00:05:13.020 | You OK, buddy?

00:05:14.060 | I'm good. Let's get started.

00:05:17.480 | There it is, folks. We're back.

00:05:19.280 | It's going to be a hell of a show.

00:05:20.820 | Let's go. I got to do.

00:05:22.400 | Don't waste time with your with your pointless banter.

00:05:25.620 | It's my people. So it is the banter.

00:05:28.160 | They do enter, bro.

00:05:29.200 | How are you doing, Freebird?

00:05:30.120 | We got a little scene from the movie her.

00:05:32.500 | Wow. We're off to a strong start here.

00:05:36.960 | Look at all these contributions.

00:05:39.260 | I got a shrug from Freebird.

00:05:40.840 | I got a grudge. OK, let's get started from sacks.

00:05:44.100 | I don't talk about my backgrounds.

00:05:45.380 | Let's go. Anything good on the menu tonight, Shemoth?

00:05:47.800 | I just want I'm coming over for poker.

00:05:49.180 | I wanted to know if there's an octopus.

00:05:51.300 | Oh, so the Greek comes back and you get the octopus.

00:05:54.840 | I'll get the octopus.

00:05:55.800 | I think that Sean missed you. Yeah, he did.

00:05:58.320 | By the way, Sean experimented with some Greek cheese that you grill.

00:06:01.780 | That was pretty delicious.

00:06:02.980 | Oh, holy cheese. Halloumi.

00:06:04.980 | What is it? What's the plural of octopus?

00:06:07.700 | Is it octopi? Yeah.

00:06:10.280 | Aren't they like sentient creatures or something?

00:06:12.620 | Halloumi. Yeah.

00:06:13.740 | You know what? It's interesting you bring that up.

00:06:16.200 | I had a grilled octopus stand at one of our events.

00:06:19.460 | And somebody who.

00:06:21.380 | Is, you know, a conscientious consumer of calories.

00:06:27.420 | Lobbying me to take the grilled octopus off of the menu.

00:06:32.220 | I won't say who.

00:06:33.520 | What? Wait, what?

00:06:35.800 | I got lobbied very strongly.

00:06:37.520 | Not only is it deeply wrong to eat all the animals that you people eat

00:06:42.520 | and you will one day realize it or your children or your children's children

00:06:45.600 | will realize it.

00:06:46.240 | But octopus in particular have the IQ of four to eight year olds.

00:06:50.820 | They can actually sign.

00:06:52.740 | They can communicate.

00:06:54.280 | They can solve problems.

00:06:56.200 | You can watch YouTube videos on this. It's pretty incredible.

00:06:58.580 | They're amazing creatures.

00:06:59.880 | It's also why in the movie The Arrival, the future alien race

00:07:04.420 | is made out to be cephalopods, because they're the most advanced

00:07:07.920 | creature that's likely to become a civilized form if humans didn't exist.

00:07:11.720 | I have a one word reaction to that.

00:07:14.680 | Yum.

00:07:15.600 | Delicious.

00:07:17.600 | It's the IQ that makes it taste so good.

00:07:19.600 | Oh my God.

00:07:21.600 | That's dark.

00:07:23.600 | That's dark.

00:07:25.600 | You're saying the IQ is like the spice?

00:07:28.600 | Yeah, it's kind of like the fat content.

00:07:30.600 | It's kind of like the marbling.

00:07:32.600 | It's the marbling of it.

00:07:34.600 | That's dark. I don't know.

00:07:36.600 | By the way, thanks guys. I'm fine.

00:07:38.600 | I'm great. I'm feeling great.

00:07:40.600 | The tooth is healed.

00:07:42.600 | You look like you've been eating well.

00:07:44.600 | Only things with above 120 IQ.

00:07:46.600 | Are you off the Wigovie?

00:07:48.600 | What do you call it?

00:07:50.600 | What I did was I got off the Wigovie so I could eat more animals.

00:07:52.600 | And now I'm getting back on it.

00:07:54.600 | Because I feel so terrible.

00:07:56.600 | I was in Austin.

00:07:58.600 | I ate everything.

00:08:00.600 | I was eating bison.

00:08:02.600 | If you eat high IQ foods,

00:08:04.600 | does it make you smarter?

00:08:06.600 | Absolutely.

00:08:08.600 | This is why the Greeks invented so many things.

00:08:10.600 | We invented math, plumbing, cities,

00:08:12.600 | democracy. All the great things

00:08:14.600 | the Greeks created comes from

00:08:16.600 | the fact that we ate so many high IQ creatures.

00:08:18.600 | Are you able to be vegetarian?

00:08:20.600 | Were you able to find good vegetarian or veggie

00:08:22.600 | options in Austin?

00:08:24.600 | Are you talking to me?

00:08:26.600 | Yeah.

00:08:28.600 | I see a vegetable

00:08:30.600 | and I push it away.

00:08:32.600 | I'm like, wait a second.

00:08:34.600 | Jake, I was on a seafood diet in Austin.

00:08:36.600 | If he saw food, he ate it.

00:08:38.600 | It's not inaccurate.

00:08:40.600 | The barbecue

00:08:42.600 | in Austin is so

00:08:44.600 | spectacular. Terry Black's

00:08:46.600 | beef ribs I had with a friend

00:08:48.600 | of ours, man, they are just dynamite.

00:08:50.600 | Then the Salt Lake

00:08:52.600 | brisket, Franklin's brisket.

00:08:54.600 | It is just extraordinary.

00:08:56.600 | Shout out to all my barbecue folks there and sorry for

00:08:58.600 | triggering. Every mammal that wasn't

00:09:00.600 | buttoned down,

00:09:02.600 | J. Cole battered in

00:09:04.600 | barbecue sauce.

00:09:06.600 | The thing that took out the rib was the bison.

00:09:08.600 | I'm sorry I was away. Apologies to the audience.

00:09:10.600 | It took out a tooth. As far as

00:09:12.600 | I feel, worth it. What does a bison

00:09:14.600 | rib taste like?

00:09:16.600 | The beef

00:09:18.600 | ribs are very tender. The bison's got a little

00:09:20.600 | more chew to it. It's got a little more texture.

00:09:22.600 | They let this thing

00:09:24.600 | go at the Salt Lake

00:09:26.600 | for 12 hours

00:09:28.600 | and they're just barbecue

00:09:30.600 | sauce in it forever. It's a little chewy.

00:09:32.600 | That's what took out the tooth.

00:09:34.600 | Great job, Freebird,

00:09:36.600 | on moderating. The episode was fantastic.

00:09:38.600 | Yes, I was chomping on the bit quite literally

00:09:40.600 | sax to talk about some stuff.

00:09:42.600 | Chomping on the bit to the point that I shattered a tooth.

00:09:44.600 | I am back and I have so much energy.

00:09:46.600 | I missed you guys. I actually

00:09:48.600 | missed you all. Freebird, so much

00:09:50.600 | good stuff happening with the Summit.

00:09:52.600 | I'm delighted

00:09:54.600 | that John is doing all this work. You are doing all

00:09:56.600 | this work and I can just sit

00:09:58.600 | back and enjoy it.

00:10:00.600 | Tell us, is there an update on the Summit?

00:10:02.600 | Yes, you're just collecting your coupon.

00:10:04.600 | We had

00:10:06.600 | within 72

00:10:08.600 | hours, I think we had more

00:10:10.600 | applications than we have seats.

00:10:12.600 | We're still leaving applications

00:10:14.600 | open and in the next week we'll start to

00:10:16.600 | respond to people.

00:10:18.600 | Basically, if you're interested in going

00:10:20.600 | to the Summit, sign

00:10:22.600 | up now, get your applications in this week.

00:10:24.600 | Apply early is the key.

00:10:26.600 | Yes, because it's going to be done in order

00:10:28.600 | of when it's received and

00:10:30.600 | they're going to start processing applications

00:10:32.600 | this week. We'd love to

00:10:34.600 | get everyone that wants to show up, show up.

00:10:36.600 | If you went in the past,

00:10:38.600 | your registration

00:10:40.600 | window is wrapped up this week.

00:10:42.600 | Okay, so alumni

00:10:44.600 | automatically get in? Alumni automatically

00:10:46.600 | are in. Tell us

00:10:48.600 | about the scholarship because I'm getting bombarded

00:10:50.600 | and everybody who's an up-and-coming

00:10:52.600 | all-in fan. We're going to announce it in a couple

00:10:54.600 | of weeks, so no plan yet.

00:10:56.600 | We'll still do scholarships

00:10:58.600 | because I think they were super successful and helpful

00:11:00.600 | to people that otherwise couldn't afford the ticket.

00:11:02.600 | I know it's expensive this year, but

00:11:04.600 | the reason was we actually spent a lot

00:11:06.600 | more per person last year

00:11:08.600 | than people actually paid for their tickets.

00:11:10.600 | It's less than $10.

00:11:12.600 | We're trying to get the price so that we can

00:11:14.600 | make the same break-even

00:11:16.600 | and we're going to have scholarship tickets

00:11:18.600 | with the balance.

00:11:20.600 | I saw a couple speakers come in.

00:11:22.600 | Not talking about it yet.

00:11:24.600 | Oh, come on. Can we just tell the two

00:11:26.600 | speakers who said yes? Come on.

00:11:28.600 | Not yet. We'll do a big

00:11:30.600 | announcement. Saks landed a big speaker

00:11:32.600 | and I think it's going to be awesome.

00:11:34.600 | In a week, we'll announce a bunch together.

00:11:36.600 | One thing I don't want to wait on is today's docket

00:11:38.600 | because it is unbelievable. Welcome everybody

00:11:40.600 | to Episode 175.

00:11:42.600 | That's right. It's Episode 175

00:11:44.600 | of your favorite podcast

00:11:46.600 | and the largest

00:11:48.600 | and most listened to podcast in the world.

00:11:50.600 | Officially, Episode 175 of the All-In Podcast

00:11:52.600 | starts right now.

00:11:54.600 | I've got so many feelings

00:11:56.600 | about this one. Wait, what? It's not the largest, most listened

00:11:58.600 | to podcast in the world? I'm manifesting.

00:12:00.600 | Oh, you're manifesting.

00:12:02.600 | I'm manifesting, Chamath.

00:12:04.600 | Just like the world's

00:12:06.600 | greatest poker player and then we watch

00:12:08.600 | Robo roll over him. Is that

00:12:10.600 | a new word that narcissists use for lying?

00:12:12.600 | Manifesting? No, it's

00:12:14.600 | just like the world's greatest

00:12:16.600 | poker player and then we see Phil Hellmuth

00:12:18.600 | get dominated by

00:12:20.600 | Jason Kuhn. Just so you know, tonight

00:12:22.600 | is a murderer's row and Hellmuth

00:12:24.600 | is flying back. You saw the lineup.

00:12:26.600 | I'm very excited to see what happens tonight.

00:12:28.600 | Is Jason Kuhn coming or no?

00:12:30.600 | Yeah. I mean, Kuhn

00:12:32.600 | and Robo and then the world's greatest

00:12:34.600 | poker player, Phil Hellmuth playing is so great to watch.

00:12:36.600 | It's like a meta-ego

00:12:38.600 | battle. It is.

00:12:40.600 | It's interesting. Two of those three guys are

00:12:42.600 | the most humble guys you would ever

00:12:44.600 | meet in your life.

00:12:46.600 | Am I correct? In your life.

00:12:48.600 | You could not be more low-key

00:12:50.600 | and self-effacing than Robo and Kuhn

00:12:52.600 | for how good they are.

00:12:54.600 | If you were honestly going to rank the three

00:12:56.600 | of them in a high-stakes cash game,

00:12:58.600 | could you just handicap it for the audience?

00:13:00.600 | Because we're in the lucky position,

00:13:02.600 | to play with these three epic

00:13:04.600 | players in the world.

00:13:06.600 | Break down how they play in a home game

00:13:08.600 | like ours.

00:13:10.600 | I would say the most

00:13:16.600 | dynamic

00:13:18.600 | range would probably be

00:13:20.600 | Robo, because Robo has the most experience

00:13:22.600 | playing super, super high-stakes cash.

00:13:24.600 | I think Kuhn

00:13:26.600 | is the most

00:13:28.600 | precise

00:13:30.600 | and

00:13:32.600 | true to GTO.

00:13:36.600 | Hard to exploit.

00:13:38.600 | Kuhn is impossible to exploit.

00:13:40.600 | No mistakes.

00:13:42.600 | Robo knows how to

00:13:44.600 | gamble in certain spots. Kuhn knows

00:13:46.600 | how to be unexploitable.

00:13:48.600 | And the third player is Phil Helmuth.

00:13:50.600 | And the third person is Helmuth.

00:13:52.600 | And Helmuth just loses his mind

00:13:54.600 | in his setup.

00:13:56.600 | No, the thing with Helmuth is

00:13:58.600 | he's capable, unlike anyone

00:14:00.600 | I've ever seen, of folding in spots

00:14:02.600 | that are... and he's correct, by the way.

00:14:04.600 | I've seen Helmuth fold Ace-King

00:14:06.600 | in spots that none of us would ever do it.

00:14:08.600 | I've seen him fold Kings in spots that are basically

00:14:10.600 | impossible. So Helmuth is able

00:14:12.600 | to get these soul reads on people that I think

00:14:14.600 | are amazing.

00:14:16.600 | But look,

00:14:18.600 | the

00:14:20.600 | higher and higher the stakes get,

00:14:22.600 | the more and more I think Robo

00:14:24.600 | will be comfortable and Kuhn

00:14:26.600 | will just go to a playbook that he knows

00:14:28.600 | and trusts.

00:14:30.600 | I am so excited to be

00:14:32.600 | back at the game tonight. Alright,

00:14:34.600 | listen, the docket is so great

00:14:36.600 | this week. We've got a great classic all-in docket.

00:14:38.600 | I want to start with Google

00:14:40.600 | firing 28 employees who were involved

00:14:42.600 | in this protest at their offices.

00:14:44.600 | We didn't think that this would

00:14:46.600 | happen. We were having a discussion on the group chat.

00:14:48.600 | On Tuesday, about a dozen employees

00:14:50.600 | engaged in sit-ins at the company's offices

00:14:52.600 | in Sunnyvale and New York City,

00:14:54.600 | protesting

00:14:56.600 | the conflict in the Middle East

00:14:58.600 | between Israel and Palestine.

00:15:00.600 | And so,

00:15:02.600 | they took over, literally took over

00:15:04.600 | the offices of the CEO of Google

00:15:06.600 | Cloud, and nine employees

00:15:08.600 | were arrested after refusing to leave.

00:15:10.600 | The protest was organized by a group called

00:15:12.600 | No Tech for Apartheid,

00:15:14.600 | and they posted a bunch of clips

00:15:16.600 | of this sit-in on X.

00:15:18.600 | Those 28 employees

00:15:20.600 | were fired on Wednesday

00:15:22.600 | after a quick investigation.

00:15:24.600 | The VP of Global Security

00:15:26.600 | was pretty direct and

00:15:28.600 | candid. I mean, this is

00:15:30.600 | based. They took over

00:15:32.600 | office spaces, defaced our property,

00:15:34.600 | and physically impeded the work

00:15:36.600 | of other Googlers. Behavior like this

00:15:38.600 | has no place in our workplace,

00:15:40.600 | and we will not tolerate it.

00:15:42.600 | If you're one of the few who are tempted

00:15:44.600 | to think we're going to overlook conduct

00:15:46.600 | that violates our policies, think again.

00:15:48.600 | So, what were the protests about?

00:15:50.600 | Google is involved in a project,

00:15:52.600 | Nimbus, a $1.2 billion

00:15:54.600 | cloud contract with Israel's government.

00:15:56.600 | Both Google and Amazon are involved

00:15:58.600 | in the project, which was announced in 2021.

00:16:00.600 | Google has denied it was doing work for the

00:16:02.600 | military, saying it was

00:16:04.600 | working with departments like finance, healthcare,

00:16:06.600 | transportation. There's a lot of details

00:16:08.600 | to this, but let's start with you, Freeberg, since

00:16:10.600 | you were a Googler, and we've been

00:16:12.600 | talking about the culture of Google. Putting aside

00:16:14.600 | what the protests were about,

00:16:16.600 | how do you feel about

00:16:18.600 | protests in the workplace?

00:16:20.600 | We've talked about it before here

00:16:22.600 | with Coinbase and others. And then,

00:16:24.600 | is this

00:16:26.600 | a distinct change in tone

00:16:28.600 | that I'm hearing from Google, that

00:16:30.600 | they've had enough of social

00:16:32.600 | activism at the office?

00:16:34.600 | Yeah, there's obviously

00:16:38.600 | a line crossed in the

00:16:40.600 | view of

00:16:42.600 | security, but

00:16:44.600 | I think you could look at this

00:16:46.600 | two ways.

00:16:48.600 | You could look at this as being a culture

00:16:50.600 | of entitlement that

00:16:52.600 | let folks feel that our employees,

00:16:54.600 | that they have permission

00:16:56.600 | to stage sit-ins

00:16:58.600 | and behaviors like this because Google

00:17:00.600 | is so infinitely tolerant

00:17:02.600 | in giving employees

00:17:04.600 | the space and the

00:17:06.600 | room to do whatever they want

00:17:08.600 | to do, and all of their wishes and demands

00:17:10.600 | can be met and will be met

00:17:12.600 | if they demand it strongly enough.

00:17:14.600 | That's one way to look at this,

00:17:16.600 | and that culture manifested

00:17:18.600 | this behavior. Another

00:17:20.600 | way to look at it is that these people feel so deeply,

00:17:22.600 | strongly, and passionately about the issue

00:17:24.600 | at hand that they were willing to

00:17:26.600 | risk their jobs and arrest,

00:17:28.600 | and they cared so deeply about

00:17:30.600 | an issue that they think no one's paying enough attention

00:17:32.600 | to that they're willing to put themselves and sacrifice

00:17:34.600 | themselves for it. So,

00:17:36.600 | I want to be empathetic to that point of view

00:17:38.600 | as well, but I

00:17:40.600 | do think that there's

00:17:42.600 | a belief that there may have been this

00:17:44.600 | kind of entitlement

00:17:46.600 | culture where anytime Google employees

00:17:48.600 | ask for stuff, they get it.

00:17:50.600 | Someone told me the other day how

00:17:52.600 | TGIFs at Google now, where they

00:17:54.600 | do these all-hands and people get to ask questions,

00:17:56.600 | this person is kind of executive-level.

00:17:58.600 | They're so sick and tired of

00:18:00.600 | how every question is all about

00:18:02.600 | employees asking for more things that they

00:18:04.600 | want. So, it's like,

00:18:06.600 | "When are we going to get this bonus? When are we

00:18:08.600 | going to get this GM? When are we going to get this?"

00:18:10.600 | But so much of the orientation of being

00:18:12.600 | an employee at Google is all about what

00:18:14.600 | Google can do for me and

00:18:16.600 | how I can get more, and

00:18:18.600 | that becomes what you ask for. It's like, you give a

00:18:20.600 | kid something, you give them candy, they'll always ask for candy.

00:18:22.600 | And I think that

00:18:24.600 | there is certainly an element of that culture

00:18:26.600 | kind of being

00:18:28.600 | frothed up over the years at Google.

00:18:30.600 | But I do think that this is an issue

00:18:32.600 | that people care very passionately about right now,

00:18:34.600 | and you're seeing it all over the place.

00:18:36.600 | So, certainly not... In the same

00:18:38.600 | way we had the Golden Gate Bridge

00:18:40.600 | get shut down, the Bay Bridge get shut down

00:18:42.600 | as well. Chamath, your thoughts on these

00:18:44.600 | protests, and then obviously

00:18:46.600 | the entitlement issues

00:18:48.600 | that Freeberg alludes to specifically

00:18:50.600 | at Alphabet/Google.

00:18:52.600 | They're two separate things, and I think

00:18:54.600 | it's important to deal with them

00:18:56.600 | individually.

00:18:58.600 | Groups of people in society

00:19:00.600 | in a democracy should have a right

00:19:02.600 | to protest. That's

00:19:04.600 | absolutely fundamental, and

00:19:06.600 | they can raise a lot of issues

00:19:08.600 | that could otherwise get swept under the carpet.

00:19:10.600 | When that stuff impedes

00:19:12.600 | the public functioning of society

00:19:14.600 | for other people, then I think

00:19:16.600 | there's a responsibility

00:19:18.600 | for law enforcement

00:19:20.600 | and other people to act, and

00:19:22.600 | make sure that that is

00:19:24.600 | better managed. So,

00:19:26.600 | shutting down an entire bridge

00:19:28.600 | is not only disruptive,

00:19:30.600 | it can be really dangerous.

00:19:32.600 | Of course. And it can hurt your cause.

00:19:34.600 | Because then people dislike the cause

00:19:36.600 | because it hurt them. Right. Typically what happens

00:19:38.600 | is you're supposed to file for a permit

00:19:40.600 | to protest, and when you get that,

00:19:42.600 | there are areas that are cordoned off, and then people

00:19:44.600 | are allowed to express their views. That's a really healthy

00:19:46.600 | form of democracy. Going

00:19:48.600 | rogue like this will only blow up in people's

00:19:50.600 | faces because the folks that are

00:19:52.600 | somewhat sympathetic will eventually get

00:19:54.600 | burned by this experience and turn against them.

00:19:56.600 | So that's one set of issues. I think that's

00:19:58.600 | just people going rogue, and I

00:20:00.600 | think that you can't be tolerant of that

00:20:02.600 | kind of chaos. There should be organized

00:20:04.600 | protests, but not disorganized

00:20:06.600 | chaos. And law enforcement needs

00:20:08.600 | to get a control of that.

00:20:10.600 | Inside of a company, I think this is different.

00:20:12.600 | It's this weird thing that I see, which is like

00:20:14.600 | what I would call left-on-left violence.

00:20:16.600 | It's like left-leaning people

00:20:18.600 | creating all of these

00:20:20.600 | distractions and demonstrations inside

00:20:22.600 | of left-leaning organizations for not being

00:20:24.600 | left-leaning enough.

00:20:26.600 | And so it's kind of like a little

00:20:28.600 | bit nutty, because I think

00:20:30.600 | actually shows how totally naive

00:20:32.600 | these employees are and what

00:20:34.600 | basic business understanding they

00:20:36.600 | have. The first and foremost

00:20:38.600 | being that they are at-will employees.

00:20:40.600 | These are not people that are

00:20:42.600 | contracted players in the NBA or

00:20:44.600 | are part of a union,

00:20:46.600 | okay, where you have guaranteed employment

00:20:48.600 | through some mechanism or some arbitration

00:20:50.600 | process to even be let go.

00:20:52.600 | The fact that you don't even understand that you

00:20:54.600 | are at-will means that you are there because

00:20:56.600 | you want to be there, and Google allows

00:20:58.600 | you to be there because they choose for you to be there,

00:21:00.600 | and at any point, if either of you break a covenant,

00:21:02.600 | you can be gone.

00:21:04.600 | That kind of stuff, I think, is

00:21:06.600 | very distracting, and it just belies a

00:21:08.600 | poor understanding of what you're

00:21:10.600 | there to do. Google is a

00:21:12.600 | for-profit business, and they are

00:21:14.600 | in the business of generating maximum

00:21:16.600 | profit on behalf of their shareholders.

00:21:18.600 | They are also incentivized

00:21:20.600 | to do that in a way that achieves a

00:21:22.600 | mission and a set of values that the majority

00:21:24.600 | of their employees

00:21:26.600 | agree with, and the fact that

00:21:28.600 | a small cohort of people

00:21:30.600 | can try to hijack and sabotage

00:21:32.600 | that overall direction, I think,

00:21:34.600 | is very misguided.

00:21:36.600 | Saks,

00:21:38.600 | I don't know if you have

00:21:40.600 | any opinions on this. I didn't see anything in the docket.

00:21:42.600 | I'm not sure if you have any strong feelings here,

00:21:44.600 | but your thoughts on Google

00:21:46.600 | employees and the protest, putting aside

00:21:48.600 | the nature

00:21:50.600 | of the protest. This could be for BLM.

00:21:52.600 | This could be for Trump's indictments.

00:21:54.600 | You could be protesting any number of things,

00:21:56.600 | but the protesting at work issue

00:21:58.600 | and then Google specifically,

00:22:00.600 | which we talked about, with the Gemini

00:22:02.600 | issues and

00:22:04.600 | this stuff bleeding over into product.

00:22:06.600 | I think Freeberg said it really nicely.

00:22:08.600 | Hey, are people

00:22:10.600 | actually focused on products at Google

00:22:12.600 | anymore, or is the whole place

00:22:14.600 | just focused on social

00:22:16.600 | issues that have nothing to do with

00:22:18.600 | their waning, apparently, product set?

00:22:20.600 | Well, Google had no choice

00:22:22.600 | but to fire these employees.

00:22:24.600 | They were being disruptive,

00:22:26.600 | and they were trespassing, and Google has

00:22:28.600 | a business to run, so this is what any

00:22:30.600 | business would do, and I don't think they deserve

00:22:32.600 | either credit or blame for

00:22:34.600 | taking the action they took.

00:22:36.600 | In terms of the protesters themselves,

00:22:38.600 | I think that

00:22:40.600 | in the fullness of

00:22:42.600 | time, we may come to think of them

00:22:44.600 | in a slightly different light,

00:22:46.600 | and some of this reminds me

00:22:48.600 | a little bit of another war.

00:22:50.600 | The protesters in another war,

00:22:52.600 | the Vietnam War, where

00:22:54.600 | they were very disruptive. In some

00:22:56.600 | cases, they trespassed. In some cases, they got

00:22:58.600 | arrested. They were easy to

00:23:00.600 | make fun of in terms of what they look like.

00:23:02.600 | They were sort of unkempt,

00:23:04.600 | unshaven, all the rest of that stuff. They were hippies.

00:23:06.600 | And at the time,

00:23:08.600 | people were, I'd say,

00:23:10.600 | very dismissive of them or

00:23:12.600 | actually antagonistic. They were seen as giving

00:23:14.600 | aid and comfort to the enemy, and they were

00:23:16.600 | sort of demonized.

00:23:18.600 | But now, in the fullness of time, we look back

00:23:20.600 | on that war and realize that they had a

00:23:22.600 | point. In fact, maybe they were right.

00:23:24.600 | In fact, maybe their actions

00:23:26.600 | were justified.

00:23:28.600 | And I think that how we

00:23:30.600 | view these protesters at Google can't

00:23:32.600 | just be judged now. I think it's going to be judged in the fullness

00:23:34.600 | of time based on how we perceive

00:23:36.600 | this war in Gaza. And I want to make

00:23:38.600 | two points about why I think

00:23:40.600 | this war will eventually be

00:23:42.600 | viewed as Israel's Vietnam.

00:23:44.600 | The first is that

00:23:46.600 | in Gaza, Israel faces

00:23:48.600 | a guerrilla-style force,

00:23:52.600 | and they're in a quagmire.

00:23:54.600 | And if you read the latest

00:23:56.600 | news that's coming out of Gaza,

00:23:58.600 | what you'll hear is that

00:24:00.600 | after Israel has supposedly

00:24:02.600 | cleared an area like Gaza City

00:24:04.600 | or Khan Yunis, they then

00:24:06.600 | move south, Hamas has

00:24:08.600 | popped back up again. This whole idea

00:24:10.600 | that they can clear an area has

00:24:12.600 | been proven false. It's like playing whack-a-mole.

00:24:14.600 | They basically hit Hamas in one

00:24:16.600 | area, Hamas disappears

00:24:18.600 | down the tunnels, they come back in a different area.

00:24:20.600 | And this is why you're seeing a lot of articles

00:24:22.600 | now in Haaretz, which is an Israeli newspaper,

00:24:24.600 | saying the war in Gaza is already lost.

00:24:26.600 | You had the Wall Street Journal

00:24:28.600 | last week run an article

00:24:30.600 | saying that Israel is

00:24:32.600 | winning every battle but

00:24:34.600 | losing the war,

00:24:36.600 | which is, again, shades

00:24:38.600 | of Vietnam here. And you

00:24:40.600 | got to understand, the Wall Street Journal is the most

00:24:42.600 | pro-Israel of all the major mainstream

00:24:44.600 | publications. I don't think the Wall Street Journal

00:24:46.600 | has ever written a truly critical

00:24:48.600 | article about Israel. And they

00:24:50.600 | describe this whack-a-mole dynamic.

00:24:52.600 | You also have the general

00:24:54.600 | Gadi Eizenkopp, who's

00:24:56.600 | a member of

00:24:58.600 | the war cabinet. He's a member of the

00:25:00.600 | sort of war government in

00:25:02.600 | Israel, came out and said that we can

00:25:04.600 | degrade Hamas in Gaza, but we

00:25:06.600 | cannot destroy it. And he said, "Anyone

00:25:08.600 | who's telling you that we can destroy

00:25:10.600 | Hamas is telling you a tall tale." And that

00:25:12.600 | was, I think, an appointed reference

00:25:14.600 | to Netanyahu's claim that they would destroy

00:25:16.600 | Hamas in Gaza. So

00:25:18.600 | you've got shades of Vietnam

00:25:20.600 | in terms of it being this unwinnable war.

00:25:22.600 | I think the second aspect of

00:25:24.600 | a similarity to Vietnam

00:25:26.600 | is just the huge number of civilian

00:25:28.600 | casualties. You'll recall that

00:25:30.600 | in Vietnam, the Viet Cong tried to

00:25:32.600 | grab us by the belt buckle. They knew

00:25:34.600 | that America had superior firepower, so they

00:25:36.600 | tried to get in close,

00:25:38.600 | use ambushes, booby traps, snipers.

00:25:40.600 | And in response to that,

00:25:42.600 | the Americans used

00:25:44.600 | immense amounts of firepower and

00:25:46.600 | bombing to try and subdue

00:25:48.600 | the Vietnamese. And 3.4

00:25:50.600 | million Vietnamese

00:25:52.600 | were killed in that war, according to

00:25:54.600 | Robert McNamara.

00:25:56.600 | The second thing that happened is the rules of engagement

00:25:58.600 | in Vietnam got extremely loose.

00:26:00.600 | You took a bunch of scared American

00:26:02.600 | kids, many of whom were conscripts, you drop

00:26:04.600 | them in a jungle. Pretty much,

00:26:06.600 | because they feared ambushes, they shot anything

00:26:08.600 | that moved. And then finally, I think

00:26:10.600 | partly to justify this, you

00:26:12.600 | had a

00:26:14.600 | dehumanization of the Vietnamese

00:26:16.600 | that they were seen as somehow

00:26:18.600 | kind of subhuman. In any event,

00:26:20.600 | if you watch movies about Vietnam,

00:26:22.600 | like "Platoon," which was made by Oliver

00:26:24.600 | Stone, who was a GI in Vietnam, or if

00:26:26.600 | you watch

00:26:28.600 | Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, "Full Metal Jacket,"

00:26:30.600 | which was based on books about Vietnam,

00:26:32.600 | you can see these dynamics in play

00:26:34.600 | very vividly. Now,

00:26:36.600 | turn to Gaza. All you gotta

00:26:38.600 | do is look at the miles and miles

00:26:40.600 | of video to see.

00:26:42.600 | It looks like a lunar surface. I mean,

00:26:44.600 | even in the words of Joe Biden,

00:26:46.600 | there's been indiscriminate bombing there. In terms

00:26:48.600 | of the rules of engagement, the rules of engagement

00:26:50.600 | have gotten very loose.

00:26:52.600 | A week or two ago, you had the deaths of those seven

00:26:54.600 | aid workers from the International

00:26:56.600 | Kitchen Organization.

00:26:58.600 | And there's an article in "Horetz"

00:27:00.600 | recently about the kill zones have been set up.

00:27:02.600 | Pretty much, if you come

00:27:04.600 | within a certain invisible perimeter of

00:27:06.600 | Israeli troops, you can be shot. I mean, those are the rules of

00:27:08.600 | engagement. And this is why there were three

00:27:10.600 | Israeli hostages who

00:27:12.600 | escaped. And they

00:27:14.600 | were running towards Israeli troops

00:27:16.600 | and yelling in Hebrew, and they still got shot.

00:27:18.600 | And again, this goes back to the rules of engagement

00:27:20.600 | being very loose. And then, the final

00:27:22.600 | piece of it is, you do have this dehumanization

00:27:24.600 | going on of

00:27:26.600 | the Palestinians. You can see this in a lot of the videos

00:27:28.600 | that have been posted by IDF soldiers. So,

00:27:30.600 | look, I think that

00:27:32.600 | these protesters, their actions are gonna

00:27:34.600 | be judged in the fullness of time.

00:27:36.600 | I think there are actually good

00:27:38.600 | reasons to believe

00:27:40.600 | that Israel's war in Gaza,

00:27:42.600 | its shades of Vietnam,

00:27:44.600 | and I think that over the long term,

00:27:46.600 | people may regard these protesters

00:27:48.600 | in a different light. Right now, they're just seeing as

00:27:50.600 | being disruptive and annoying

00:27:52.600 | and interfering.

00:27:54.600 | But if this war ends up

00:27:56.600 | being Israel's Vietnam,

00:27:58.600 | which I think it's on track to be,

00:28:00.600 | again, I think that people may, in time,

00:28:02.600 | give these protesters a little bit more credit.

00:28:04.600 | Jacob, what do you think?

00:28:06.600 | Interesting question.

00:28:08.600 | Putting aside what they're protesting

00:28:10.600 | about, I think they knew,

00:28:12.600 | or some number of them

00:28:14.600 | knew they were gonna get fired. So,

00:28:16.600 | I think they're kind of resigning by sit-in.

00:28:18.600 | And I think, yeah, there could be

00:28:20.600 | nobility to that. If you do not

00:28:22.600 | want to participate

00:28:24.600 | in supporting things in the world, you do not

00:28:26.600 | have to work at Google, and you can

00:28:28.600 | protest, and you can get fired.

00:28:30.600 | And we've seen, like, some pretty intense

00:28:32.600 | protests. I don't know if you guys are aware of, like,

00:28:34.600 | what Greenpeace and other environmentalists

00:28:36.600 | did to stop whaling. I'm sure

00:28:38.600 | you are aware, Friedberg, for your passion

00:28:40.600 | on this subject. Those

00:28:42.600 | people went to jail in Japan

00:28:44.600 | for boarding Japanese whaling ships.

00:28:46.600 | Like, those are really intense protesters.

00:28:48.600 | But then, to your point, Shamaf,

00:28:50.600 | you know, you can really hurt

00:28:52.600 | your cause.

00:28:54.600 | Climate activists have been throwing paint

00:28:56.600 | on works of art. I don't know if you've seen that.

00:28:58.600 | And that's just infuriating. Like,

00:29:00.600 | I have no tolerance for

00:29:02.600 | people destroying works of art or

00:29:04.600 | attempting to get attention. Here,

00:29:06.600 | it is benign to sit in an office

00:29:08.600 | and get fired.

00:29:10.600 | So, I just consider it resigning by sit-in.

00:29:12.600 | If they want to do that, that's fine. I do think

00:29:14.600 | there is something to Google enabling all

00:29:16.600 | this, to your point, Friedberg,

00:29:18.600 | over time. And, listen, they were

00:29:20.600 | parodied on

00:29:22.600 | Silicon Valley, the TV show, because

00:29:24.600 | of how coddled and entitled

00:29:26.600 | people are. So, there's a bunch

00:29:28.600 | of things going on at the same time. And,

00:29:30.600 | you know, if you want to

00:29:32.600 | do these intense protests, you have the right

00:29:34.600 | to do them. And history will

00:29:36.600 | judge you over time. But you

00:29:38.600 | need to be able to pay the price. In this case,

00:29:40.600 | the price is getting fired.

00:29:42.600 | In the case of, like, shutting down the Golden Gate Bridge,

00:29:44.600 | like, you should get a fine for doing that,

00:29:46.600 | I believe. And the fine should be based

00:29:48.600 | on whatever that costs to shut that bridge down.

00:29:50.600 | And that's got to be

00:29:52.600 | a serious fine. And you're right,

00:29:54.600 | Shamaab, people, if there's an emergency

00:29:56.600 | situation, somebody's got to get to a hospital

00:29:58.600 | or something. That's what I always think about

00:30:00.600 | when I see those things, when you block streets

00:30:02.600 | and stuff, or you block airports, or you block

00:30:04.600 | these throughways. There's a lot

00:30:06.600 | of just normal, everyday people trying to live

00:30:08.600 | their life who are probably very sympathetic

00:30:10.600 | to what you stand for.

00:30:12.600 | But when you disrupt their everyday lives

00:30:14.600 | and/or threaten their

00:30:16.600 | physical security,

00:30:18.600 | they're not going to think that that's worth it.

00:30:20.600 | I'm also shocked

00:30:22.600 | that these people actually came to an office.

00:30:24.600 | I mean, these Googlers, I don't think they've actually

00:30:26.600 | been to an office before. They probably had to check that their

00:30:28.600 | badges work. Well, you know, to Sax's

00:30:30.600 | point, I actually would have had

00:30:32.600 | more respect for these people if

00:30:34.600 | they actually protested

00:30:36.600 | the war. But they didn't do that.

00:30:38.600 | They had a very discreet, specific

00:30:40.600 | claim, which was that they wanted to

00:30:42.600 | dissolve a business deal

00:30:44.600 | that Google had to provide cloud

00:30:46.600 | services to the State of Israel

00:30:48.600 | called Project Nimbus. And I think

00:30:50.600 | that's such a discreet thing

00:30:52.600 | that it's hard to understand

00:30:54.600 | that those 28 people would have

00:30:56.600 | even enough knowledge of what that is.

00:30:58.600 | But it sounds like a cloud

00:31:00.600 | hosting deal. Well, what's hosted there?

00:31:02.600 | And it could be any number of things.

00:31:04.600 | And I suspect if it's a billion-dollar-a-year deal,

00:31:06.600 | it's many things. It's probably like the

00:31:08.600 | Israeli DMV. Is that really what you

00:31:10.600 | want? And I think that it would have been

00:31:12.600 | much of a

00:31:14.600 | more powerful thing to do

00:31:16.600 | to protest the actual war if that's what

00:31:18.600 | they cared about. You know, it dovetails nicely

00:31:20.600 | with the discussion you all had last week about

00:31:22.600 | would you back

00:31:24.600 | a, not a defensive, but an

00:31:26.600 | offensive weapons company, a technology

00:31:28.600 | company. And it seemed

00:31:30.600 | like you all had reservations

00:31:32.600 | on if you would not back a defensive

00:31:34.600 | one. Anybody, I think, reasonably

00:31:36.600 | would back a defensive

00:31:38.600 | dome or interception

00:31:40.600 | of bombs coming in. That's an easy one.

00:31:42.600 | But going around the horn

00:31:44.600 | here, how many of us would

00:31:46.600 | back a company making

00:31:48.600 | missiles or bombs

00:31:50.600 | that blow people up

00:31:52.600 | or mines? Would you back

00:31:54.600 | a robot that had

00:31:56.600 | weapon systems on it? I think if you

00:31:58.600 | want to summarize what we said last week, it's like

00:32:00.600 | there are all kinds of businesses

00:32:02.600 | where you'll end up investing in it.

00:32:04.600 | And over time, as it morphs,

00:32:06.600 | some

00:32:08.600 | of us will be faced with some of those decisions.

00:32:10.600 | And it'll frankly depend

00:32:12.600 | on what is the alternative in

00:32:14.600 | that moment. So, I don't think

00:32:16.600 | anybody of us

00:32:18.600 | are going in to

00:32:20.600 | go and build a nuclear bomb. But

00:32:22.600 | you should not be naive that if you're building

00:32:24.600 | nuclear reactors,

00:32:26.600 | you could end up being in a situation

00:32:28.600 | where that thing gets licensed into

00:32:30.600 | a thing that you either agree or disagree with.

00:32:32.600 | So, this is my point, is I think

00:32:34.600 | that those kinds of answers

00:32:36.600 | or those kinds of questions

00:32:38.600 | are missing the nuances.

00:32:40.600 | And the nuances are very important.

00:32:42.600 | So, it's impossible to answer this question

00:32:44.600 | in a thoughtful way, I think, would be my

00:32:46.600 | honest answer. Okay. Sax, any closing

00:32:48.600 | thoughts here?

00:32:50.600 | Well, I think

00:32:52.600 | Chamath brings up an interesting point about

00:32:54.600 | why didn't the protesters

00:32:56.600 | just focus on the war itself rather than Google

00:32:58.600 | doing business with Israel?

00:33:00.600 | My interpretation of that is they're trying to create a nexus

00:33:02.600 | to themselves.

00:33:04.600 | Meaning, they're employees of Google. They're trying to

00:33:06.600 | create a reason for them to stage

00:33:08.600 | the sit-in at Google.

00:33:10.600 | Otherwise, you know, if they just

00:33:12.600 | grabbed picket signs and were on the street, it would just be

00:33:14.600 | much less newsworthy.

00:33:16.600 | So, I think they were just trying to create something newsworthy

00:33:18.600 | here, and it's kind of worked in the sense that

00:33:20.600 | we're talking about it, other people are talking

00:33:22.600 | about it. So, that's my interpretation

00:33:24.600 | of that, is

00:33:26.600 | they were just trying to elevate the

00:33:28.600 | issue in a slightly novel

00:33:30.600 | way. But look, I think that they should

00:33:32.600 | be willing to pay the price of

00:33:34.600 | getting fired or getting arrested. I mean, if

00:33:36.600 | you're going to engage in that kind of

00:33:38.600 | civil disobedience or protest, you should

00:33:40.600 | be willing to accept the price. And I

00:33:42.600 | did see some comments by

00:33:44.600 | the Googlers who got fired saying that they

00:33:46.600 | thought they were being treated unfairly by Google. I think

00:33:48.600 | that's the wrong attitude. I think

00:33:50.600 | the attitude is, "Hey, this

00:33:52.600 | cause is so important to me that I'm willing to

00:33:54.600 | accept the price of being fired."

00:33:56.600 | Saying that you don't deserve to be

00:33:58.600 | fired for disrupting the workplace.

00:34:00.600 | That is kind of an entitled attitude.

00:34:02.600 | So, I think they should have just said, "Yeah,

00:34:04.600 | we did this on purpose because

00:34:06.600 | it's a really important cause." They should say, "I'm proud to get

00:34:08.600 | fired because

00:34:10.600 | that's how much I believe in it. My stock options at

00:34:12.600 | Google are

00:34:14.600 | less important than this issue to me."

00:34:16.600 | And I accept them.

00:34:18.600 | I think they would have gotten just as much press if

00:34:20.600 | they actually protested the war. I

00:34:22.600 | think in a week from now, everybody will forget

00:34:24.600 | what Project Nimbus is. The odds that it

00:34:26.600 | gets cancelled are less than zero

00:34:28.600 | and everybody will move on.

00:34:30.600 | And it will not add to

00:34:32.600 | the drumbeat, as Zak said, of people

00:34:34.600 | that may be eventually on the

00:34:36.600 | right side of this issue, theoretically.

00:34:38.600 | I say "theoretically" because

00:34:40.600 | that stone is still yet

00:34:42.600 | to be overturned on that topic.

00:34:44.600 | So, I think that they missed the mark.

00:34:46.600 | And I think that the part

00:34:48.600 | of the press that people

00:34:50.600 | glommed onto was it was happening inside

00:34:52.600 | of a company in real time and there was video of it.

00:34:54.600 | Mission accomplished

00:34:56.600 | for them. We're talking about it here as the top

00:34:58.600 | story. And, you know,

00:35:00.600 | if they wanted to raise

00:35:02.600 | awareness, they succeeded and they

00:35:04.600 | should just own their firing because

00:35:06.600 | they knew they would get fired, I think.

00:35:08.600 | There has been a ton of chaos

00:35:10.600 | and the culture wars continue over

00:35:12.600 | NPR.

00:35:14.600 | A couple things happened simultaneously this week

00:35:16.600 | that are worth discussing.

00:35:18.600 | Catherine Marr was named NPR's new

00:35:20.600 | CEO back in January. I'm going to have to give a little bit

00:35:22.600 | of a timeline here before I get

00:35:24.600 | comments from the boys

00:35:26.600 | because there's a little setup.

00:35:28.600 | And so she was named the

00:35:30.600 | CEO back in January. She officially started

00:35:32.600 | in March. Okay, she formerly worked at

00:35:34.600 | Wikimedia Foundation. Those are the people

00:35:36.600 | who run the Wikipedia, obviously.

00:35:38.600 | NPR's mission, if you don't

00:35:40.600 | know, is to create a more informed

00:35:42.600 | public. One challenged

00:35:44.600 | and invigorated by a deeper

00:35:46.600 | understanding and appreciation of events, ideas, and

00:35:48.600 | culture. That's their state and mission from their website.

00:35:50.600 | On April 9th, Uri

00:35:52.600 | Berliner, an editor who's been

00:35:54.600 | with NPR for 25 years, wrote

00:35:56.600 | an op-ed for Barry Weiss's

00:35:58.600 | Free Press, friend of the pod,

00:36:00.600 | explaining how NPR lost America's trust

00:36:02.600 | by going hard left and becoming

00:36:04.600 | closed-minded. He said,

00:36:06.600 | "An open-minded spirit no longer exists within

00:36:08.600 | NPR, and now, predictably,

00:36:10.600 | we don't have an audience that reflects

00:36:12.600 | America." Last Friday,

00:36:14.600 | Marr put out a statement

00:36:16.600 | calling his actions "profoundly disrespectful,

00:36:18.600 | hurtful, and demeaning." This Sunday,

00:36:20.600 | conservative activist

00:36:22.600 | Christopher Ruffo—he's

00:36:24.600 | the person who exposed

00:36:26.600 | former Harvard

00:36:28.600 | president Claudine Gay's plagiarism,

00:36:30.600 | he's a vocal critic of LGBTQ

00:36:32.600 | stuff at schools—

00:36:34.600 | started reposting old tweets from Marr, this

00:36:36.600 | new CEO. Her tweets are

00:36:38.600 | super far-left, Trump's a racist,

00:36:40.600 | yadda yadda. There's an interesting

00:36:42.600 | clip of her talking at TED,

00:36:44.600 | talking about how truth

00:36:46.600 | is a bit of a distraction

00:36:48.600 | that prevents people from getting things done. People have

00:36:50.600 | gotten pretty

00:36:52.600 | inflamed about that clip.

00:36:54.600 | And then, on April 16th,

00:36:56.600 | Berliner was suspended

00:36:58.600 | for five days without pay. Wrapping this all

00:37:00.600 | up, Berliner then resigned

00:37:02.600 | after 25 years, saying,

00:37:04.600 | "I cannot work in a newsroom

00:37:06.600 | where I am disparaged by a new CEO

00:37:08.600 | whose divisive views

00:37:10.600 | confirm the very problems

00:37:12.600 | that NPR I cite in my

00:37:14.600 | free-press essay."

00:37:16.600 | Zach, your thoughts? I mean, this just

00:37:18.600 | seems like a dog-bites-man

00:37:20.600 | story. I mean, what is the novel

00:37:22.600 | revelation here? The person running

00:37:24.600 | NPR is a liberal?

00:37:26.600 | I mean— I'm kind of with you, but—

00:37:28.600 | What took 25 years to resign? I mean,

00:37:30.600 | all you have to do is listen to NPR. It's

00:37:32.600 | always been liberal, okay?

00:37:34.600 | This is not some recent capture

00:37:36.600 | of an institution by the left. So why is it going so

00:37:38.600 | crazy viral right now? Why has this become

00:37:40.600 | the topic of the moment?

00:37:42.600 | Well, apparently, there are

00:37:44.600 | some quotes that this

00:37:46.600 | new CEO, Catherine Marr,

00:37:48.600 | tweeted or

00:37:50.600 | said that you can point to

00:37:52.600 | that seem kind of woke

00:37:54.600 | and kind of crazy woke, but they're

00:37:56.600 | just actually pretty standard.

00:37:58.600 | I just don't see the

00:38:00.600 | breaking news here. If they end up firing

00:38:02.600 | Catherine Marr, they're going to hire someone just like

00:38:04.600 | her. I mean, they're going to have the same views.

00:38:06.600 | NPR has always been

00:38:08.600 | left of center, and the only

00:38:10.600 | change that's happened is that the left

00:38:12.600 | has now

00:38:14.600 | become woke. And so

00:38:16.600 | it's become obsessively focused with

00:38:18.600 | the ideas of white supremacy

00:38:20.600 | and white privilege.

00:38:22.600 | And she simply

00:38:24.600 | reflects that. I agree.

00:38:26.600 | It's like a tempest in a teapot.

00:38:28.600 | Newsflash. NPR is woke and

00:38:30.600 | left-leaning? I mean,

00:38:32.600 | I guess maybe that somebody who was there for

00:38:34.600 | 25 years wrote the expose

00:38:36.600 | is interesting, or I don't know.

00:38:38.600 | Chamath, any thoughts on this one and why it's

00:38:40.600 | taking up so much headspace for people?

00:38:42.600 | I don't think it is. I think it's

00:38:44.600 | taking up a lot of headspace amongst

00:38:46.600 | breathless journalists. I don't think it

00:38:48.600 | matters to the public at large. I don't think

00:38:50.600 | anybody cares. Can I just add one thing, which is

00:38:52.600 | I do think that the government should not

00:38:54.600 | be funding this anymore. I think NPR

00:38:56.600 | at this point is mostly funded by private

00:38:58.600 | donations, but it got started

00:39:00.600 | with government money, and the government still

00:39:02.600 | funds it. And given that it is

00:39:04.600 | this left

00:39:06.600 | institution at this point,

00:39:08.600 | and really always has been, there's simply

00:39:10.600 | no reason for the government to be

00:39:12.600 | funding one side of the political

00:39:14.600 | debate that way. So I think there is

00:39:16.600 | maybe an issue there in terms

00:39:18.600 | of reminding people

00:39:20.600 | that, "Hey, this is government-funded. Why?"

00:39:22.600 | And there's no reason why NPR can't

00:39:24.600 | be funded with either private

00:39:26.600 | donations or private

00:39:28.600 | subscription dues. Yeah, this is, just to give people some

00:39:30.600 | back-of-the-envelope math,

00:39:32.600 | NPR's budget is like $320 million. It's a

00:39:34.600 | dollar per American, and

00:39:36.600 | they get a bunch of programming

00:39:38.600 | fees and some corporate sponsorship. Corporate

00:39:40.600 | sponsorship is like $100 million.

00:39:42.600 | The programming fees is what the local radio stations

00:39:44.600 | pay them. Net-net, this

00:39:46.600 | is costing like maybe,

00:39:48.600 | I don't know, 30 cents an American.

00:39:50.600 | And if you just swap out,

00:39:52.600 | and this is the way I like to look at these to be objective,

00:39:54.600 | if you were saying this was funding

00:39:56.600 | Fox News or, I don't know,

00:39:58.600 | Ben Shapiro and Daily Wire, how would

00:40:00.600 | you feel about it? You'd be like, "Well, why is the government funding

00:40:02.600 | that?" They should just cut NPR

00:40:04.600 | and all this public broadcasting stuff loose over the next

00:40:06.600 | year or two, wind it down,

00:40:08.600 | and let them fend for themselves in the new

00:40:10.600 | media landscape. Look, Jake, I agree with you. They could

00:40:12.600 | easily sub-stack it. NPR's not going to go away.

00:40:14.600 | Just create subscriptions,

00:40:16.600 | and you're fine. Yeah. I mean, it's only

00:40:18.600 | like, they're down to whatever. It's

00:40:20.600 | very hard to find the numbers. There's a little, like,

00:40:22.600 | hiding of the money here, but there's so

00:40:24.600 | little at stake here, I think that's why it's so

00:40:26.600 | contentious. The government should not be funding

00:40:28.600 | one-sided ideological

00:40:30.600 | institutions on either side of the

00:40:32.600 | political debate, and you're right. If this was

00:40:34.600 | funding going to Daily Wire

00:40:36.600 | or something like that, people would be

00:40:38.600 | up in arms. So, in any event,

00:40:40.600 | what's good for them is good for the gander. The next

00:40:42.600 | tempest in a teapot

00:40:44.600 | is Humane's AI pen getting

00:40:46.600 | barbecued by our modern

00:40:48.600 | day Walt Mossberg. Marques Brownlee,

00:40:50.600 | who is an awesome YouTuber,

00:40:52.600 | I love his reviews, has created

00:40:54.600 | a bit of a social media Rorschach test

00:40:56.600 | here, getting a lot

00:40:58.600 | of feels from people in Silicon Valley.

00:41:00.600 | Let's just tee this up here. Humane is a

00:41:02.600 | hardware startup that you may have heard of.

00:41:04.600 | They make an AI-powered wearable computer.

00:41:06.600 | It's basically a pin you put on your chest.

00:41:08.600 | It's about the size of a pack

00:41:10.600 | of cigarettes, maybe half the size of it.

00:41:12.600 | Founded by two Apple execs back in 2018,

00:41:14.600 | raised a quarter of

00:41:16.600 | a billion dollars or so,

00:41:18.600 | and

00:41:20.600 | the device is now in the hands of reviewers.

00:41:22.600 | It's pretty innovative, and Marques

00:41:24.600 | talks about how innovative it is in his review.

00:41:26.600 | It will let you

00:41:28.600 | talk to it. It's got a camera on it.

00:41:30.600 | We'll show it here on the screen. If you're not subscribed

00:41:32.600 | to the YouTube channel, just go

00:41:34.600 | to YouTube right now, and you'll see us playing

00:41:36.600 | the video of it. Search for "all in."

00:41:38.600 | And really interesting

00:41:40.600 | interface. It does obviously

00:41:42.600 | voice. It connects you to an LLM

00:41:44.600 | on the back end, so if you want to know

00:41:46.600 | some piece of information,

00:41:48.600 | it can answer those questions for you.

00:41:50.600 | But Marques showed it

00:41:52.600 | just absolutely failing

00:41:54.600 | at a bunch of tests, being

00:41:56.600 | overpriced, and he called

00:41:58.600 | it the worst product he's

00:42:00.600 | ever reviewed.

00:42:02.600 | It's very thoughtful and methodical,

00:42:04.600 | but the title

00:42:06.600 | is obviously a bit link-baiting.

00:42:08.600 | As a co-founder of Engadget, I can tell you,

00:42:10.600 | if you want to get a lot of clicks, just say something

00:42:12.600 | is the best or the worst ever, and you can get

00:42:14.600 | ten times

00:42:16.600 | the views.

00:42:18.600 | The pen, according

00:42:20.600 | to him, doesn't do anything

00:42:22.600 | better than a smartphone. It's slow.

00:42:24.600 | It doesn't work. It's often wrong.

00:42:26.600 | It's 700 bucks. The battery sucks.

00:42:28.600 | So many different ways

00:42:30.600 | to go with this. Everybody is

00:42:32.600 | talking about it on X

00:42:34.600 | and in the media.

00:42:36.600 | Where do you stand

00:42:38.600 | on this one, Friedberg?

00:42:40.600 | Both on

00:42:42.600 | how people are responding to it in the tech

00:42:44.600 | industry as being anti-tech,

00:42:46.600 | anti-innovation, versus

00:42:48.600 | "Hey, it's just a reviewer giving his

00:42:50.600 | candid feedback on a product that's clearly not

00:42:52.600 | ready for prime time."

00:42:54.600 | I think there's a lot of issues.

00:42:56.600 | One is just the challenge of

00:42:58.600 | deep tech.

00:43:00.600 | More specifically, in this case,

00:43:02.600 | hardware investing. You

00:43:04.600 | have to invest a lot of capital

00:43:06.600 | before you even have your first

00:43:08.600 | product, and then you don't really know

00:43:10.600 | how well it works until you've already burnt through

00:43:12.600 | a lot of capital. I mean, this is

00:43:14.600 | one of these stunning stories of a startup

00:43:16.600 | that has raised a quarter billion dollars,

00:43:18.600 | and then they come out with their first

00:43:20.600 | product, and it turns out it needs a lot of work

00:43:22.600 | because it doesn't do anything

00:43:24.600 | that consumers really are compelled

00:43:26.600 | by, as evidenced by

00:43:28.600 | the review.

00:43:30.600 | I think it highlights that

00:43:32.600 | challenge and why that market

00:43:34.600 | finds, particularly

00:43:36.600 | in this environment, it to be so hard

00:43:38.600 | to get capitalized.

00:43:40.600 | Now, obviously, there are some entrepreneurs

00:43:42.600 | like Elon who can

00:43:44.600 | take that capital and

00:43:46.600 | drive to the outcome,

00:43:48.600 | spending hundreds of millions

00:43:50.600 | of dollars before you get your first rocket into space,

00:43:52.600 | and you have a lot of failings along the way.

00:43:54.600 | But the

00:43:56.600 | general tone here is

00:43:58.600 | a deep tech investment

00:44:00.600 | is very likely to fail

00:44:02.600 | because you spend so much money before you even know,

00:44:04.600 | and at that point, you have less money, and you can't really

00:44:06.600 | make the necessary iteration to get

00:44:08.600 | there. So it's a tough

00:44:10.600 | data point for other

00:44:12.600 | deep tech companies

00:44:14.600 | that need to raise a lot of capital.

00:44:16.600 | Then I think it brings up the point about

00:44:18.600 | Apple people, that there's a degree

00:44:20.600 | of confidence because people come

00:44:22.600 | from Apple, and a degree of hubris

00:44:24.600 | in the employees that come from Apple

00:44:26.600 | that says, "I have

00:44:28.600 | worked at the best hardware company in the world, therefore

00:44:30.600 | this person is likely to succeed." It turns out

00:44:32.600 | that when you don't have all that built-in infrastructure

00:44:34.600 | for testing and optimization,

00:44:36.600 | all of that built-in distribution,

00:44:38.600 | all of the feedback systems that Apple

00:44:40.600 | has engineered into their business

00:44:42.600 | model for so long, maybe you miss some of the

00:44:44.600 | data around what makes a product great

00:44:46.600 | or not before you launch. I think

00:44:48.600 | that's your key point, Freeberg. That is the best

00:44:50.600 | point, is these folks come from Apple,

00:44:52.600 | they're used to unlimited resources,

00:44:54.600 | and what you don't

00:44:56.600 | see is all the product Apple

00:44:58.600 | doesn't release, right? They never release their car,

00:45:00.600 | correct, Freeberg? And they get to...

00:45:02.600 | Well, I think then there's also this question about

00:45:04.600 | where is the value in

00:45:06.600 | the product? Because they thought,

00:45:08.600 | "Hey, if we have AI on a pen,

00:45:10.600 | it'll work." Without the consumer

00:45:12.600 | feedback about whether or not

00:45:14.600 | people are willing to sit around and wait for 12

00:45:16.600 | seconds to get an answer

00:45:18.600 | to a question. And then it brings up

00:45:20.600 | this other really important point, which is

00:45:22.600 | half the people in Silicon Valley are running

00:45:24.600 | breathlessly into the conversation saying,

00:45:26.600 | "Do not disparage a startup

00:45:28.600 | that's working really hard at getting their first product

00:45:30.600 | right. It'll destroy the motivation

00:45:32.600 | of other startups that need to

00:45:34.600 | iterate to get there.

00:45:36.600 | And we can't just take the first V1

00:45:38.600 | and say that that's it." Chamath, your thoughts?

00:45:40.600 | You're laughing hysterically at this stuff.

00:45:42.600 | The other half of Silicon Valley

00:45:44.600 | are running in and saying, "This thing's a piece of s***. What are you talking

00:45:46.600 | about? It doesn't f***ing work."

00:45:48.600 | So it is a really interesting kind of

00:45:50.600 | debate. Rorschach.

00:45:52.600 | Yeah, a Rorschach test on what's going on.

00:45:54.600 | Chamath, what do you see in this plot

00:45:56.600 | of a product?

00:45:58.600 | Neither of those two cohorts.

00:46:00.600 | I think that incredibly

00:46:02.600 | motivated, dedicated entrepreneurs

00:46:04.600 | don't even know that this is happening

00:46:06.600 | and don't care. Got it.

00:46:08.600 | In other words, the reviewers

00:46:10.600 | are going to review products and

00:46:12.600 | you just got to plow ahead and make a better product.

00:46:14.600 | The idea that in 2009,

00:46:16.600 | 10, or 11,

00:46:18.600 | that

00:46:20.600 | when all the rockets

00:46:22.600 | weren't working and Elon was back

00:46:24.600 | against the wall, that he was

00:46:26.600 | reading TechCrunch or

00:46:28.600 | getting upset because a product

00:46:30.600 | failed, some other random product that had

00:46:32.600 | nothing to do with his, I think is

00:46:34.600 | laughable. I think no great entrepreneur

00:46:36.600 | cares. I don't think Freeberg is going to

00:46:38.600 | change what's happening at

00:46:40.600 | O'Halo based on

00:46:42.600 | what is this thing called?

00:46:44.600 | Humane. Right.

00:46:46.600 | Freeberg, have you changed? Have you made decisions?

00:46:48.600 | Are you sadder today in O'Halo when you walked

00:46:50.600 | into the office to manage your team? No.

00:46:52.600 | Okay, so there you go. There's your answer.

00:46:54.600 | You're failing on this. Yeah, I mean, I'm having

00:46:56.600 | a hard time understanding all the controversies

00:46:58.600 | this week. I mean, reviewers are going to

00:47:00.600 | review, protesters are going to protest

00:47:02.600 | and NPR presidents are going to NPR.

00:47:04.600 | Here we go. What's going on?

00:47:06.600 | Everyone's just doing

00:47:08.600 | their job. Yeah.

00:47:10.600 | Here's an idea for the Humane team. Be

00:47:12.600 | thankful somebody took the time

00:47:14.600 | to review your product and give you candid

00:47:16.600 | feedback and incorporate it back into your

00:47:18.600 | product and make it work.

00:47:20.600 | An irreverent elitist will eat octopus.

00:47:22.600 | Here we are. Absolutely.

00:47:24.600 | So delicious. High IQ

00:47:26.600 | foods. We should create a new category.

00:47:28.600 | Yeah, what are the other high IQ

00:47:30.600 | foods? Acorn

00:47:32.600 | fed beef. For

00:47:34.600 | high IQ. Pigs

00:47:36.600 | very high IQ. I saw that cow playing

00:47:38.600 | chess before he was served

00:47:40.600 | for dinner.

00:47:42.600 | I was having a pulled pork sandwich from

00:47:44.600 | Bucky's and it

00:47:46.600 | helped me solve Wordle for the day

00:47:48.600 | before I ate it. So I

00:47:50.600 | got Wordle in two tries.

00:47:52.600 | Oh, I'm so sorry.

00:47:54.600 | Oh, that one landed.

00:47:56.600 | I didn't want that one to land.

00:47:58.600 | Yeah, I

00:48:00.600 | mean, okay, let me ask this question.

00:48:02.600 | Do we think the world let's say this

00:48:04.600 | thing did respond. Here's the theme.

00:48:06.600 | One second Jason. Here's

00:48:08.600 | a theme Jason. The problem is that I think people

00:48:10.600 | right now, the

00:48:12.600 | real Rorschach test is if you are so

00:48:14.600 | easily distracted, you probably

00:48:16.600 | don't have enough to do.

00:48:18.600 | Right. That's the entitlement is

00:48:20.600 | that you don't have enough work. I don't want to call it.

00:48:22.600 | I don't want to call it entitlement. But I think

00:48:24.600 | the reality is that if you get caught up

00:48:26.600 | in all of these silly

00:48:28.600 | little fake battles or

00:48:30.600 | decisions, I think what it really

00:48:32.600 | means is that you're not busy enough and

00:48:34.600 | or you're not working on something that matters enough

00:48:36.600 | to you. Because when either of those

00:48:38.600 | two things are true, people tend

00:48:40.600 | to be tend to have blinders on and

00:48:42.600 | they are super focused and

00:48:44.600 | they just don't have an opinion. They don't care. Like

00:48:46.600 | honestly, many of these topics today, I

00:48:48.600 | really don't care. And it's not because I'm better

00:48:50.600 | or worse or smarter or dumber. It's because I'm

00:48:52.600 | so overworked right now. I don't

00:48:54.600 | have time to have an opinion on this stuff.

00:48:56.600 | Your boss got a CEO job and now he's

00:48:58.600 | overworked. And I think that anybody else

00:49:00.600 | trying to do their job well is probably in

00:49:02.600 | the same category. I

00:49:04.600 | hadn't even heard of this reviewer. What's his name?

00:49:06.600 | Mark, Mark, Mark, Marquez

00:49:08.600 | Brown. I never

00:49:10.600 | heard of him. If you're on YouTube, he's

00:49:12.600 | kind of like the new Walt Mossberg.

00:49:14.600 | He does 20, 30 minute

00:49:16.600 | videos. They get millions of views.

00:49:18.600 | He's huge. I don't

00:49:20.600 | know that he makes or breaks a product though.

00:49:22.600 | By the way, he does not make or break a product.

00:49:24.600 | The product makes or breaks itself. Yeah.

00:49:26.600 | Look, when I was running

00:49:28.600 | companies, I wouldn't care about what one reviewer

00:49:30.600 | said. I would care about the totality

00:49:32.600 | of the reaction to the product, which

00:49:34.600 | would include customers as well

00:49:36.600 | as reviewers and so forth.

00:49:38.600 | So I don't think there's any point getting

00:49:40.600 | too bad out of shape about one review.

00:49:42.600 | I think what's kind of happening in terms of the

00:49:44.600 | reaction here is that

00:49:46.600 | people want to give this company

00:49:48.600 | mercy points for

00:49:50.600 | being innovative. So

00:49:52.600 | my guess is the product just isn't ready for prime time

00:49:54.600 | but everyone wants to kind of

00:49:56.600 | want their reviewers to take it easy on them

00:49:58.600 | or something because they are being

00:50:00.600 | innovative and they're breaking new ground in this

00:50:02.600 | area of wearables. But

00:50:04.600 | the reality is, in the real world

00:50:06.600 | where you want to charge people

00:50:08.600 | for your product, customers

00:50:10.600 | don't have mercy points. Nope.

00:50:12.600 | If the car breaks

00:50:14.600 | down, the car breaks down. By the way,

00:50:16.600 | Marquez got a little bit of heat

00:50:18.600 | just a month ago because he reviewed the Fisker.

00:50:20.600 | The Fisker is just a piece of

00:50:22.600 | garbage car. He said it's the worst car he's ever reviewed.

00:50:24.600 | And you know what? Reviewers

00:50:26.600 | exist in the world

00:50:28.600 | to inform customers

00:50:30.600 | about what products and services they should buy

00:50:32.600 | and then they should inform you to make a better product.

00:50:34.600 | Period. Full stop.

00:50:36.600 | There is an easy solution to this, by the way, which Apple

00:50:38.600 | did. They

00:50:40.600 | released the Vision Pro as a developer

00:50:42.600 | kit. They put a bunch of caveats

00:50:44.600 | on it and said, "Hey, we understand

00:50:46.600 | this is high priced. It's a developer

00:50:48.600 | kit. This is in beta."

00:50:50.600 | What Humane should have done is they should have said,

00:50:52.600 | "This is the Humane beta for

00:50:54.600 | developers." I still don't know what it is.

00:50:56.600 | What is this? Okay, it's a wearable.

00:50:58.600 | It's a square. It has

00:51:00.600 | a projector on it. You put your hand out, it

00:51:02.600 | projects a little screen that shows

00:51:04.600 | you like a computer screen

00:51:06.600 | and you can talk to it and ask it questions.

00:51:08.600 | Yeah, the primary function is like a chat

00:51:10.600 | AI assistant that sits

00:51:12.600 | on you and has a camera.

00:51:14.600 | And so you can say-- Camera is it's taping

00:51:16.600 | everything that it sees?

00:51:18.600 | It doesn't do that by default, but it could.

00:51:20.600 | Sorry, let me just give the quick overview.

00:51:22.600 | Basically, you ask it questions

00:51:24.600 | and it can go get the answers. The problem is

00:51:26.600 | that it has to go make a request

00:51:28.600 | to the internet, run an AI

00:51:30.600 | model, and come back. So it takes like

00:51:32.600 | 12 seconds to get results. Most

00:51:34.600 | of the time, according to the reviewer, the results

00:51:36.600 | are actually wrong because it's a

00:51:38.600 | hallucinating model. The voice-to-text

00:51:40.600 | translation is wrong. There's a lot of

00:51:42.600 | things that are wrong about it. So it takes a long time.

00:51:44.600 | It's clunky and then the battery burns out

00:51:46.600 | every two hours and it gets super

00:51:48.600 | hot because of the way they get it to magnetically stick

00:51:50.600 | to your clothes. So it gets very hot.

00:51:52.600 | So there's all sorts of issues and it's $700.

00:51:54.600 | Other than that, how

00:51:56.600 | is the play, Mrs. Lincoln? And by the way,

00:51:58.600 | most importantly to you, Chamath,

00:52:00.600 | it will screw up your fabrics.

00:52:02.600 | If you wear this with a Lora Piana sweater,

00:52:04.600 | it's going to drag your sweater down. Hold on.

00:52:06.600 | You would never attach it to a $6,000

00:52:08.600 | sweater. Yeah, it's

00:52:10.600 | basically what you're telling me is it's

00:52:12.600 | an overpriced device that could give you

00:52:14.600 | 50 degree burns.

00:52:16.600 | And it will ruin your sweaters.

00:52:18.600 | It doesn't answer the questions that you ask.

00:52:20.600 | Yeah, basically. But then do

00:52:22.600 | I think the questions or do I have to say it out loud

00:52:24.600 | so it looks like I'm talking to myself?

00:52:26.600 | You look like a lunatic. Yes, you're walking around

00:52:28.600 | like a crazy person talking to yourself. That was the other

00:52:30.600 | thing he said is like when you're in a crowd and

00:52:32.600 | there's a voice around you can use your hand and

00:52:34.600 | hand gestures to control it and do

00:52:36.600 | things with the projectors thing that it does.

00:52:38.600 | And it damages your clothes. It's some really cool

00:52:40.600 | interesting features. It's just like it's not

00:52:42.600 | who invested in it. Let's not make fun of it. Let's

00:52:44.600 | make fun of the investors.

00:52:46.600 | Sam Altman, shout out

00:52:48.600 | to Sam. He's coming on the program I think.

00:52:50.600 | Yeah.

00:52:52.600 | Listen, the concept

00:52:54.600 | I think is good. Wearables are

00:52:56.600 | going to provide some distinct value when they

00:52:58.600 | work because you don't have to

00:53:00.600 | take your phone out. And so the idea behind

00:53:02.600 | wearables like your watch

00:53:04.600 | is, you know, like there are some things I do on

00:53:06.600 | my watch now where I don't take my

00:53:08.600 | phone out. I'll take the other side of this.

00:53:10.600 | I'll take the other side when you're done. Yeah. I use

00:53:12.600 | Fitbit company we invested in

00:53:14.600 | and it puts all my workouts on my watch

00:53:16.600 | when I'm doing weights. I started doing weights now. That's

00:53:18.600 | why I look so buff, folks. Subscribe

00:53:20.600 | to the YouTube channel to see. And

00:53:22.600 | I do my sets and I log them all with

00:53:24.600 | my my watch. I don't have to take my phone

00:53:26.600 | out. That's like the first thing. And then when I'm skiing,

00:53:28.600 | I can see each run. I showed you slopes.

00:53:30.600 | I'm not an investor in

00:53:32.600 | Chamath where I could see my speed and all that stuff.

00:53:34.600 | You're saying something totally different. That's

00:53:36.600 | utility. Of course you'll find

00:53:38.600 | a device will give you utility.

00:53:40.600 | I thought you were saying something else, which is everybody

00:53:42.600 | is going to have wearables and I

00:53:44.600 | want to take the exact opposite side of that.

00:53:46.600 | Yeah, I don't know that everybody will have wearables,

00:53:48.600 | but I do find a couple of little things

00:53:50.600 | that work for me. I totally get that,

00:53:52.600 | you know, the use of an accelerometer or whatever

00:53:54.600 | in a watch or in a band that you

00:53:56.600 | wear on your wrist for a workout. And

00:53:58.600 | I think that that's valuable or heart rate,

00:54:00.600 | a glycemic monitor

00:54:02.600 | so that you could all of that stuff makes super

00:54:04.600 | sense for you as an individual. But that's

00:54:06.600 | not an experience where you're

00:54:08.600 | engaging with it to

00:54:10.600 | something like

00:54:12.600 | to replace some other social interaction.

00:54:14.600 | That's just you getting utility as you live your life.

00:54:16.600 | What I'm saying is the idea that

00:54:18.600 | you start to rely on a device

00:54:20.600 | as your interface into the world.

00:54:22.600 | I would take the exact

00:54:24.600 | other side of that, which is I think that

00:54:26.600 | humans are getting so

00:54:28.600 | sick and tired of being

00:54:30.600 | of only

00:54:32.600 | communicating in these

00:54:34.600 | very rigid ways. Like I'm telling

00:54:36.600 | you, like if you look at our children's generation,

00:54:38.600 | they don't know how to make eye contact.

00:54:40.600 | They don't know how to talk. And I think

00:54:42.600 | it's going to come back and bite them in the ass.

00:54:44.600 | And so I think the pendulum is going to

00:54:46.600 | swing in the other direction where it's like, okay,

00:54:48.600 | enough of this stuff. Let's

00:54:50.600 | actually look each other in the eye and talk to each

00:54:52.600 | other the way that humans were meant to be.

00:54:54.600 | And I think that in that

00:54:56.600 | devices like a glucose monitor

00:54:58.600 | or a band has value, but I

00:55:00.600 | don't think it's going to be this interface where you're

00:55:02.600 | sign languaging it while you're at Coachella.

00:55:04.600 | I think you're going to rip the devices off and

00:55:06.600 | actually be a Coachella without any devices.

00:55:08.600 | Did any of you guys read Jonathan hates book

00:55:10.600 | Anxious Generation. It is

00:55:12.600 | unbelievably awesome. Not right

00:55:14.600 | yet. Stop what you're doing

00:55:16.600 | and just listen to the audio book on your

00:55:18.600 | walks on audible. This book is super

00:55:20.600 | important and awesome. The

00:55:22.600 | Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. I cannot

00:55:24.600 | tell you how important it is. Saxon

00:55:26.600 | and closing feelings here. You have to take any

00:55:28.600 | hot take. Well, I would slightly

00:55:30.600 | disagree with you guys about

00:55:32.600 | this device. So first of all, I

00:55:34.600 | think that humans are becoming more and more cybernetic.

00:55:36.600 | We're getting more and more immersed with

00:55:38.600 | computing power, and I agree

00:55:40.600 | it creates this anxiety and all these problems.

00:55:42.600 | But on the other hand, I think it's an irreversible

00:55:44.600 | trend. So I think that

00:55:46.600 | I would not bet against things that make us

00:55:48.600 | more cybernetic. I think the problem

00:55:50.600 | here is that this company is trying

00:55:52.600 | to do two difficult things. The first

00:55:54.600 | thing is it's trying to capture

00:55:56.600 | everything that's happening in the world around you to

00:55:58.600 | feed it into an AI model so

00:56:00.600 | it can make you smarter. The other

00:56:02.600 | thing is trying to do is reduce your dependence

00:56:04.600 | on your phone by creating

00:56:06.600 | this new projection surface.

00:56:08.600 | And, you know, in my experience

00:56:10.600 | when you try to do two hard things,

00:56:12.600 | you actually square the complexity

00:56:14.600 | and you square the difficulty as opposed

00:56:16.600 | to adding it. So I think

00:56:18.600 | of these two things, the one that sounds interesting

00:56:20.600 | to me is taking in all the information

00:56:22.600 | from the physical world and putting in

00:56:24.600 | an AI model that can be helpful to you.

00:56:26.600 | But I see no reason to replace the phone.

00:56:28.600 | I think it should just work with your phone.

00:56:30.600 | The problem they're going to have is that

00:56:32.600 | that pendant will compete

00:56:34.600 | with the Apple glasses and all the other

00:56:36.600 | wearables that are going to be created

00:56:38.600 | to, you know, suck in all this

00:56:40.600 | information, this computer vision

00:56:42.600 | from the world. Nonetheless,

00:56:44.600 | I do think that is the opportunity. It's

00:56:46.600 | not replacing the phone. It's layering

00:56:48.600 | a new platform on top of

00:56:50.600 | the phone that can kind of,

00:56:52.600 | you know, again, give you that Terminator mode

00:56:54.600 | in the real world. And that was

00:56:56.600 | a complaint about this device specifically was that

00:56:58.600 | it was detached from the phone. I understand

00:57:00.600 | why they want to make it standalone, but

00:57:02.600 | and then this opens up all the privacy.

00:57:04.600 | Let me ask the panel here.

00:57:06.600 | What do you think about this concept

00:57:08.600 | of recording the entire world, all these

00:57:10.600 | conversations and video with these

00:57:12.600 | devices? I think it's a quick way to get yourself

00:57:14.600 | punched in the face. I mean, we saw that with Google

00:57:16.600 | Glass. People showed up at bars

00:57:18.600 | in San Francisco and parties with these Google

00:57:20.600 | Glass things on and literally

00:57:22.600 | got punched in the face. Well, this is

00:57:24.600 | massive privacy things recording your entire

00:57:26.600 | life with a pendant, man. No, thank you.

00:57:28.600 | This is why I said what I said. I do think Saks

00:57:30.600 | is right that ultimately

00:57:32.600 | you'll have some kind of brain

00:57:34.600 | interface because I do think a chip

00:57:36.600 | implant of some kind is very valuable.

00:57:38.600 | But what I'm also saying is that I think

00:57:40.600 | that that will actually lessen

00:57:42.600 | the social

00:57:44.600 | acceptability of these

00:57:46.600 | visible devices that are constantly

00:57:48.600 | getting in between you and another person.

00:57:50.600 | And so the idea that we're

00:57:52.600 | kind of already in a quasi surveillance state

00:57:54.600 | and now we're going to increase

00:57:56.600 | that by n factorial

00:57:58.600 | to the number of people, I think is

00:58:00.600 | very depressing. It is depressing

00:58:02.600 | and you know what? In Jonathan Haidt's book,

00:58:04.600 | he talks about phone lockers

00:58:06.600 | for schools and the transformative

00:58:08.600 | power they have had. When you go to a school,

00:58:10.600 | there are some schools now, high schools,

00:58:12.600 | where the students put their phones in specific

00:58:14.600 | phone lockers. They do it in my kids.

00:58:16.600 | It's actually, Jason, these special

00:58:18.600 | pouches. Pouches.

00:58:20.600 | Those are the pouches comedians use, like

00:58:22.600 | Chappelle at his shows. Chappelle uses it, Kevin

00:58:24.600 | uses them. Yeah, exactly. And they're

00:58:26.600 | great. And then

00:58:28.600 | what the school now also teaches

00:58:30.600 | the kids, at least our school, which I found

00:58:32.600 | really interesting, is the graduated

00:58:34.600 | form of that is they actually now

00:58:36.600 | allow you to put it in a envelope

00:58:38.600 | because they're training the kid.

00:58:40.600 | It's like the pouch you can't get access to.

00:58:42.600 | You have to go back. It locks.

00:58:44.600 | Unlock device. And then I

00:58:46.600 | saw that my son last week had it actually

00:58:48.600 | in a white envelope, and he had to

00:58:50.600 | close the envelope and just keep it with him

00:58:52.600 | as a way of graduating

00:58:54.600 | from the prison form

00:58:56.600 | of keeping the phone away to

00:58:58.600 | having it in your pocket. So the schools

00:59:00.600 | are trying to do a lot to try to teach these kids not

00:59:02.600 | to be so dependent on it. They should ban these devices at

00:59:04.600 | schools 100%. And then at the poker game tonight,

00:59:06.600 | we should make people stack their phones

00:59:08.600 | and charge somebody $1,000 whoever takes the phone

00:59:10.600 | first. Let's do it tonight.

00:59:12.600 | Let me give a shout

00:59:14.600 | out to one of my favorite sci-fi

00:59:16.600 | book series. It's called Nexus by

00:59:18.600 | Ramesh Naum, and it's kind of this cyberpunk

00:59:20.600 | futuristic series.

00:59:22.600 | But what he talks about is

00:59:24.600 | when we have this brain-computer

00:59:26.600 | interface, you'll be able to upload your memories.

00:59:28.600 | And so you talk about

00:59:30.600 | this idea of recording your whole

00:59:32.600 | life through a pendant. Well, eventually

00:59:34.600 | you'll be able to record your whole life based

00:59:36.600 | on just through your eyeballs.

00:59:38.600 | And you'd be able to upload

00:59:40.600 | in theory a first-person view

00:59:42.600 | of whatever

00:59:44.600 | conversation you've been in.

00:59:46.600 | So there's a certain... Look, this

00:59:48.600 | is pretty far off, but there is maybe

00:59:50.600 | a certain inevitability to that.

00:59:52.600 | And we're going to have to figure out how to deal

00:59:54.600 | with the privacy implications there. There was a Black Mirror

00:59:56.600 | episode on this exact idea.

00:59:58.600 | Yeah, you have the DVR of your entire

01:00:00.600 | life, and it is

01:00:02.600 | gnarly to think these things will exist. And I think

01:00:04.600 | humanity's going to have to make a decision

01:00:06.600 | I think to fight this or embrace it. I think

01:00:08.600 | we should fight it. I think it's going to ruin

01:00:10.600 | social existence,

01:00:12.600 | and it's already ruined poker games,

01:00:14.600 | etc., when everybody's on their phone. It's ruined dinner parties

01:00:16.600 | when everybody's on their phones. The constant

01:00:18.600 | distraction is just horrific,

01:00:20.600 | and it's having a horrible impact on this

01:00:22.600 | generation. I'll double down on what you're saying.

01:00:24.600 | It is so lovely to be able to have a dinner

01:00:26.600 | where everybody just talks to each other and looks each

01:00:28.600 | other in the eyes. Yes. And then when you have a

01:00:30.600 | handful of people always on their phone,

01:00:32.600 | it's depressing.

01:00:34.600 | It's actually not even

01:00:36.600 | neutral. It's a net negative and a drag

01:00:38.600 | on the entire night.

01:00:40.600 | Absolutely. I am trying to

01:00:42.600 | come up with ways to remove these devices

01:00:44.600 | from the social settings I'm in.

01:00:46.600 | I've been to a couple of parties with high-profile people where

01:00:48.600 | they have everybody check their phones

01:00:50.600 | at the valet at the door. I gotta

01:00:52.600 | say, those are the best nights of my life. Those are the best nights.

01:00:54.600 | They're incredible. And, you know,

01:00:56.600 | no offense to people who are addicted to their phones.

01:00:58.600 | I am to a certain extent. I put

01:01:00.600 | my social media at one hour on my phone.

01:01:02.600 | My lord, it is hard

01:01:04.600 | to do less than an hour of social media in

01:01:06.600 | our job positions.

01:01:08.600 | I deleted TikTok

01:01:10.600 | about a month ago.

01:01:12.600 | It's been liberating. I was a

01:01:14.600 | slave to that app. I couldn't believe

01:01:16.600 | how much TikTok

01:01:18.600 | I was consuming after

01:01:20.600 | it was gone because I couldn't find anything

01:01:22.600 | to replace it. And then I stumbled

01:01:24.600 | into the fact that YouTube has YouTube

01:01:26.600 | Shorts and there is a lot of that content, but

01:01:28.600 | it's terrible and the algorithm is really

01:01:30.600 | bad. And so

01:01:32.600 | fortunately, I just stopped using YouTube.

01:01:34.600 | It just shows you how the algorithm

01:01:36.600 | is such a key component of that TikTok

01:01:38.600 | experience because I had the same experience.

01:01:40.600 | Shorts

01:01:42.600 | serves up garbage. Instagram

01:01:44.600 | serves up garbage.

01:01:46.600 | And then TikTok is just like right

01:01:48.600 | into your brain. It kicks ass.

01:01:50.600 | It kicks ass. By the way, I want to give

01:01:52.600 | another shout out to a book. I miss TikTok. TikTok,

01:01:54.600 | I miss you. Yeah, whatever. If that's

01:01:56.600 | going away. I miss you. Another incredible book.

01:01:58.600 | I think we should book this speaker

01:02:00.600 | for All In Summit. Bad Therapy.

01:02:02.600 | Why the kids aren't growing

01:02:04.600 | up. Abigail Schreier.

01:02:06.600 | This book is incredible.

01:02:08.600 | And if you read these two, every

01:02:10.600 | parent, read these two books

01:02:12.600 | and we need to have a conversation on it

01:02:14.600 | as parents here. Everybody read these two

01:02:16.600 | books. These are my two top

01:02:18.600 | choices for the All In Summit.

01:02:20.600 | I think it's going to be the topic

01:02:22.600 | of our time. Alright, let's keep

01:02:24.600 | going down this incredible docket. Very important

01:02:26.600 | issue for us to talk about.

01:02:28.600 | Silicon Valley startups having a bit of

01:02:30.600 | the R&D tax

01:02:32.600 | problem. Thanks for putting it on the docket here,

01:02:34.600 | Freeberg. It's a bit inside baseball

01:02:36.600 | but very important topic. Let's

01:02:38.600 | say a company like Acme Corporation

01:02:40.600 | generated a million bucks in revenue and

01:02:42.600 | they spent a million bucks on their software developers

01:02:44.600 | last year. Let's say they had, I don't know,

01:02:46.600 | five developers getting paid 200 grand each.

01:02:48.600 | Well, traditionally, this company would pay nothing

01:02:50.600 | in income tax, right? They spent a million.

01:02:52.600 | They deduct that million from the million dollars

01:02:54.600 | in revenue that came in and

01:02:56.600 | everything's good. But

01:02:58.600 | due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs

01:03:00.600 | Act of 2017,

01:03:02.600 | starting last year, a provision

01:03:04.600 | kicked in, forcing companies to amortize their

01:03:06.600 | R&D expense over five years.

01:03:08.600 | So in this hypothetical situation,

01:03:10.600 | the Acme Corporation

01:03:12.600 | would amortize 200k a year

01:03:14.600 | and pay income tax on the 800k in

01:03:16.600 | profits. This is brutal

01:03:18.600 | obviously for a startup. Profits, air quotes.

01:03:20.600 | Air quotes, profits, correct.

01:03:22.600 | And this is absolutely brutal.

01:03:24.600 | And a lot of companies

01:03:26.600 | took a wait-and-see approach, hoping Congress would

01:03:28.600 | fix the issue in January, a bipartisan

01:03:30.600 | tax bill that would reverse these changes

01:03:32.600 | passed in the House. But the bill

01:03:34.600 | has stalled in the Senate. And we've got to get this

01:03:36.600 | thing fixed because it's going to sink a lot of startups.

01:03:38.600 | Maybe people will start putting

01:03:40.600 | their companies in other countries.

01:03:42.600 | But it's attached

01:03:44.600 | to this child tax credit, which Republicans

01:03:46.600 | don't want to pass. So no reversal

01:03:48.600 | has happened. Freeberg, you highlighted this for us.

01:03:50.600 | Very important topic. Thank you for doing so.

01:03:52.600 | As our

01:03:54.600 | great

01:03:56.600 | contributor here, what are your thoughts on it?

01:03:58.600 | This became law in the

01:04:00.600 | 2017 Jobs Act,

01:04:02.600 | as you highlighted.

01:04:04.600 | And basically it means that companies,

01:04:06.600 | not just like tech companies,

01:04:08.600 | but life sciences companies,

01:04:10.600 | defense companies, are pushing

01:04:12.600 | Congress to change this law

01:04:14.600 | because you can't actually

01:04:16.600 | deduct the expenses

01:04:18.600 | that you use to run your business.

01:04:20.600 | You have to only deduct them over five

01:04:22.600 | years, 20% a year. So

01:04:24.600 | like you pointed out, if you're making a million dollars, but

01:04:26.600 | you're spending a million dollars, you made no profit.

01:04:28.600 | But you've got to pay taxes as if you made

01:04:30.600 | 800 grand in profit. And a lot of

01:04:32.600 | these small companies don't have that cash.

01:04:34.600 | So venture capital-backed companies

01:04:36.600 | and public companies that are

01:04:38.600 | profitable, they can afford to do this because they have

01:04:40.600 | large balance sheets. So it doesn't affect them as much

01:04:42.600 | as it does the literally

01:04:44.600 | hundreds of thousands

01:04:46.600 | of small businesses that work in

01:04:48.600 | the life sciences sector, the defense sector, the

01:04:50.600 | tech sector, that are struggling

01:04:52.600 | this year to make the tax

01:04:54.600 | payments that are required

01:04:56.600 | under this law that went into effect last

01:04:58.600 | year. And Congress promised that they

01:05:00.600 | were going to repeal this law

01:05:02.600 | leading up to April 15th, which happened

01:05:04.600 | obviously a few days ago,

01:05:06.600 | and make it retroactive to 2023,

01:05:08.600 | but they didn't. But, Freeberg, they know basic

01:05:10.600 | math. Congress knows basic math.

01:05:12.600 | How do they...

01:05:14.600 | What loophole do they think they're closing?

01:05:16.600 | So the original intent

01:05:18.600 | was that this was one of the ways... You guys know

01:05:20.600 | whenever you pass a bill, it gets

01:05:22.600 | run through the OMB and the CBO

01:05:24.600 | that figures out what's the budgetary cost

01:05:26.600 | of the bill. And one of the ways

01:05:28.600 | that they made this work, this bill,

01:05:30.600 | the 2017 Trump Tax and Jobs Act, you guys

01:05:32.600 | may remember in that bill, they also

01:05:34.600 | made it impossible to deduct

01:05:36.600 | entertainment and dining expenses when you take people

01:05:38.600 | out to dinner anymore. That sucks.

01:05:40.600 | And they did all those things to make up some of the money

01:05:42.600 | they were using for basic general

01:05:44.600 | tax breaks for companies.

01:05:46.600 | So they used this as a way to say, "Look,

01:05:48.600 | in a couple of years, we're going to kick in this R&D

01:05:50.600 | expenditure thing, and it'll trigger

01:05:52.600 | a lot more revenue for the federal

01:05:54.600 | government. It'll create a lot more taxes

01:05:56.600 | and a lot more revenue." So that was the idea.

01:05:58.600 | And everyone was like, "Yeah, okay, sure. We'll do

01:06:00.600 | that. Great. It makes the accounting work.

01:06:02.600 | And then in a couple years, nudge, nudge, wink, wink,

01:06:04.600 | we're going to come back and repeal it." Except

01:06:06.600 | Congress has stalled out.

01:06:08.600 | There's this ineptitude where anytime

01:06:10.600 | someone tries to pass a bill in Congress,

01:06:12.600 | someone else says, "I want to get money."

01:06:14.600 | And so the Democrats showed up

01:06:16.600 | and said, "We want this child tax credit thing

01:06:18.600 | to show up," which basically

01:06:20.600 | was passed during

01:06:22.600 | COVID. And they want to extend

01:06:24.600 | it going forward. And the child tax

01:06:26.600 | credit says that you can get

01:06:28.600 | a check for $1,800 a year in

01:06:30.600 | 2023, $1,900 in 2024,

01:06:32.600 | and $2,000 in 2025

01:06:34.600 | for each child you have.

01:06:36.600 | And the Republicans in the Senate are saying,

01:06:38.600 | "Wait a second. For people to get this

01:06:40.600 | thing, we want to make sure they're working. We want to

01:06:42.600 | make sure it's not as retroactive." So now

01:06:44.600 | there's this big debate about how big the child tax

01:06:46.600 | credit should be. And that's keeping

01:06:48.600 | this R&D thing from

01:06:50.600 | going through. And meanwhile, I've gotten tons

01:06:52.600 | of emails from CEOs of tech companies

01:06:54.600 | that are breaking even. These are not tech

01:06:56.600 | companies that are making a ton of profit. They're not public.

01:06:58.600 | They're not venture-backed. They're just

01:07:00.600 | people running their

01:07:02.600 | business. And now they're going to have

01:07:04.600 | this huge tax bill, even though they didn't make any money

01:07:06.600 | this year. And it's crippling

01:07:08.600 | businesses around the country, and it needs to be fixed.

01:07:10.600 | They're going to write a check.

01:07:12.600 | They're going to borrow money. They're going to go to the bank, borrow

01:07:14.600 | money, or they're going to incur penalties at the

01:07:16.600 | IRS because they don't have the cash to pay the

01:07:18.600 | tax bill. Because they don't have any profit. They didn't

01:07:20.600 | make any money. If they just ran the business

01:07:22.600 | break-even, which a lot of these companies do, is just

01:07:24.600 | make a little bit of money or break even.

01:07:26.600 | And then they've got this huge tax bill and profits

01:07:28.600 | they didn't actually have. They've got to go figure

01:07:30.600 | out how to write a check. And also, how do you define

01:07:32.600 | R&D? I was talking to an accountant. He's like, "Yeah, I don't know

01:07:34.600 | if that's R&D." I'm like, "You don't know if it's R&D?"

01:07:36.600 | Like, okay, so if I make some piece

01:07:38.600 | of software... Yeah. Yeah.

01:07:40.600 | There's all this writing in the...

01:07:42.600 | If you get audited by the IRS,

01:07:44.600 | they have the ability to basically

01:07:46.600 | capture everything. So, like, let's say you're a

01:07:48.600 | mobile app developer. And you

01:07:50.600 | make a million dollars a year, but you spend

01:07:52.600 | a million dollars a year on your developers.

01:07:54.600 | Okay. They're going to count that.

01:07:56.600 | They have the ability to count that as an R&D.

01:07:58.600 | So, the accountants, the tax accountants, tell

01:08:00.600 | you, "Book it all as R&D." Because

01:08:02.600 | otherwise, you could get audited and actually get in trouble.

01:08:04.600 | Because anything that involves the development

01:08:06.600 | of technology now is considered R&D.

01:08:08.600 | Again, a company working in life sciences

01:08:10.600 | as a research company doing lab

01:08:12.600 | work can kind of... Yeah, but if I do bug fixes,

01:08:14.600 | is a bug fix R&D?

01:08:16.600 | If I make a new feature in an application

01:08:18.600 | this year, does it have to be

01:08:20.600 | amortized over five years? If I put a new

01:08:22.600 | filter on a photo... I'm not a tax attorney. My understanding

01:08:24.600 | is most of this stuff is getting

01:08:26.600 | captured, and that's why it's hurting everything from defense

01:08:28.600 | to life sciences

01:08:30.600 | to lab equipment to

01:08:32.600 | startups that make software to everything.

01:08:34.600 | And Congress can't get out

01:08:36.600 | of its own way, where this bill passed,

01:08:38.600 | by the way, bipartisan in the

01:08:40.600 | House. Then it went to the Senate,

01:08:42.600 | and now it's getting taken apart in the Senate, and now

01:08:44.600 | it's stalled out, and everyone's freaking out that it's stalled out

01:08:46.600 | past April 15th. And

01:08:48.600 | it's actually going to hurt a lot of small businesses

01:08:50.600 | in this country. And here's the other problem,

01:08:52.600 | is it actually limits

01:08:54.600 | our ability to invest in innovation in this

01:08:56.600 | country. Because now you're better off...

01:08:58.600 | There's no other country in the world that does this.

01:09:00.600 | Every other country in the world tries

01:09:02.600 | to incentivize investment in innovation,

01:09:04.600 | and here in the U.S., we're basically saying

01:09:06.600 | no, we're going to tax

01:09:08.600 | you for investing in technology

01:09:10.600 | development and innovation. And the

01:09:12.600 | other thing that's actually not being talked

01:09:14.600 | about, is even in this bill

01:09:16.600 | where they're repealing this, they're

01:09:18.600 | leaving in the fact

01:09:20.600 | that if you invest in R&D outside

01:09:22.600 | the U.S., you have to amortize

01:09:24.600 | it over 15 years.

01:09:26.600 | So let's say that you're a U.S. developer, and you

01:09:28.600 | hire people offshore,

01:09:30.600 | you've got to basically amortize

01:09:32.600 | the offshore stuff over 15 years,

01:09:34.600 | which means you'll never make a profit, you're always

01:09:36.600 | going to have to pay taxes.

01:09:38.600 | We're trying to kill innovation in this country,

01:09:40.600 | and the two things they've got to solve

01:09:42.600 | is this one, and then M&A.

01:09:44.600 | We've got to have a

01:09:46.600 | better solution for allowing

01:09:48.600 | companies to be bought and sold

01:09:50.600 | or merge in this country.

01:09:52.600 | These two things are putting a lot

01:09:54.600 | of headwinds on

01:09:56.600 | the startup ecosystem and on the venture

01:09:58.600 | and the risk-taking capital ecosystems.

01:10:00.600 | If you're in

01:10:02.600 | Washington, D.C.

01:10:04.600 | or you're involved in our government, please

01:10:06.600 | solve these two issues. You've got to figure

01:10:08.600 | out a way to allow companies to be bought and

01:10:10.600 | sold. You've got to figure out a way

01:10:12.600 | to fix this

01:10:14.600 | tax issue, or else we're going to kill a lot

01:10:16.600 | of startups, and these are the companies

01:10:18.600 | that pay a lot of taxes,

01:10:20.600 | and these are the capital gains that fund

01:10:22.600 | a lot of states' treasuries.

01:10:24.600 | It's also an illustration of

01:10:26.600 | just how hungry we are for tax

01:10:28.600 | revenue in this country.

01:10:30.600 | It's only going to grow, and I'm not sitting here

01:10:32.600 | complaining about taxes. The Trump

01:10:34.600 | tax cut that he put in place in 2017

01:10:36.600 | added $1.5 trillion

01:10:38.600 | to the federal deficit.

01:10:40.600 | Tax cuts in general are not

01:10:42.600 | great when you're spending a lot, but it

01:10:44.600 | does highlight just how much we are spending at

01:10:46.600 | the federal level and the demand for tax

01:10:48.600 | revenue, and that demand causes

01:10:50.600 | this counter-cyclical problem,

01:10:52.600 | which is now we're going to eat into innovation,

01:10:54.600 | but it's supposed to get us out of

01:10:56.600 | the problem, the spiral that results

01:10:58.600 | from this debt. So,

01:11:00.600 | it really highlights just the challenges

01:11:02.600 | that are going to emerge, particularly in the decade

01:11:04.600 | ahead, because we have all of the spending

01:11:06.600 | that's coming in front of us over the next decade,

01:11:08.600 | and how we're going to start to demand more and more tax

01:11:10.600 | in all these weird ways that can really

01:11:12.600 | hurt industry. Unintended

01:11:14.600 | consequences are very real.

01:11:16.600 | Shamath, you were going to say something?

01:11:18.600 | Well, doesn't it mean, though,

01:11:20.600 | that if you run it at breakeven

01:11:22.600 | and without a lot

01:11:24.600 | of growth, by year five, you'll be back

01:11:26.600 | to where you were, so you really have to cover

01:11:28.600 | the taxes in years one through four?

01:11:30.600 | That's right. But if the business

01:11:32.600 | is growing, you're always going to be in a hole.

01:11:34.600 | Right.

01:11:36.600 | Right. So, if your revenue is growing and your

01:11:38.600 | OPEX is growing, you're always going to be in a hole.

01:11:40.600 | I think Jason mentioned it earlier, and I think

01:11:42.600 | it's the key thing, which is, what is R&D then?

01:11:44.600 | Yeah. And maybe

01:11:46.600 | you just move things to COGS

01:11:48.600 | and just be done with it. I mean, that's what I would do.

01:11:50.600 | Remember, businesses,

01:11:52.600 | and you guys know this, when you look at a public

01:11:54.600 | company's financials, what you're seeing

01:11:56.600 | is their GAAP financials, Generally Accepted

01:11:58.600 | Accounting Principles.

01:12:00.600 | And that's the way that you present

01:12:02.600 | the financials of a business. That's different

01:12:04.600 | than the way you present financials to the IRS.

01:12:06.600 | You don't have a lot of discretion

01:12:08.600 | in your tax financials.

01:12:10.600 | Your tax financials are actually quite different

01:12:12.600 | than your GAAP financials. Yes.

01:12:14.600 | So, when you file your taxes,

01:12:16.600 | there's a lot of rules on what you are allowed to deduct

01:12:18.600 | and aren't allowed to deduct that's quite different

01:12:20.600 | than how you present your corporate financials to investors.

01:12:22.600 | And that's really where people get screwed.

01:12:24.600 | You don't have that sort of discretion that you do

01:12:26.600 | in kind of

01:12:28.600 | sharing your financials with investors.

01:12:30.600 | This is not financial or accounting advice.

01:12:32.600 | Get great representation. I just hope Congress

01:12:34.600 | resolves this because it's... Yes.

01:12:36.600 | Super important. Alright, sports betting has

01:12:38.600 | gone mainstream, if you don't know.

01:12:40.600 | Two out of three colleges have placed a bet in the

01:12:42.600 | last year since the

01:12:44.600 | Supreme Court struck down the Amateur

01:12:46.600 | Sports Protection Act. 38 states

01:12:48.600 | have legalized sports betting.

01:12:50.600 | I think that's a great thing, but we're starting to see some

01:12:52.600 | weird behavior because of it.

01:12:54.600 | Tons of sites like DraftKings, FanDuel,

01:12:56.600 | ESPNBet,

01:12:58.600 | BetMGM, all of these have broken out.

01:13:00.600 | But this week,

01:13:02.600 | we started to see some weird behavior. The NBA

01:13:04.600 | banned a 24-year-old player,

01:13:06.600 | John Tay Porter,

01:13:08.600 | for life after a scandal.

01:13:10.600 | This one is bizarre

01:13:12.600 | and interesting. Porter was

01:13:14.600 | a bench player for the Toronto Raptors,

01:13:16.600 | averaging about 14 minutes per game.

01:13:18.600 | It's important. On these gambling

01:13:20.600 | apps, you can do all kinds of prop bets. For those

01:13:22.600 | of you who don't know, prop bets

01:13:24.600 | could be things like Steph is

01:13:26.600 | going to hit five threes in

01:13:28.600 | a game, or LeBron's going to score under

01:13:30.600 | 30 points. You're just betting on unique

01:13:32.600 | things that could happen, and then you can parlay

01:13:34.600 | them together. You can put multiple bets together,

01:13:36.600 | and it automatically gives you a price,

01:13:38.600 | and you can do really

01:13:40.600 | deep

01:13:42.600 | numbers doing this.

01:13:44.600 | The NBA found out that Porter was telling

01:13:46.600 | people to bet his unders

01:13:48.600 | for points and rebounds during certain games.

01:13:50.600 | During those games, he'd play a few minutes,

01:13:52.600 | then check himself out of

01:13:54.600 | the game with an "illness."

01:13:56.600 | Technically, the bet would still

01:13:58.600 | count since he played the game, but everybody

01:14:00.600 | who bet his unders would win. Normally,

01:14:02.600 | nobody would notice this, of course,

01:14:04.600 | because he doesn't play that much. He's a bench player.

01:14:06.600 | But DraftKings, because they

01:14:08.600 | have all the data,

01:14:10.600 | ripped everyone off because

01:14:12.600 | Porter was

01:14:14.600 | the biggest moneymaker on March 20th.

01:14:16.600 | This led to an NBA investigation.

01:14:18.600 | DraftKings will give you a leaderboard of the

01:14:20.600 | biggest bets, and they saw that somebody

01:14:22.600 | placed an $80,000 bet that Porter would

01:14:24.600 | hit the unders on a bunch of different categories.

01:14:26.600 | Crazy outlier bet.

01:14:28.600 | DraftKings canceled the bet.

01:14:30.600 | The NBA found that Porter separately

01:14:32.600 | placed dozens of bets on NBA

01:14:34.600 | games using his friends' accounts,

01:14:36.600 | winning a whopping $22,000.

01:14:38.600 | And this idiot

01:14:40.600 | now is banned from life from the NBA.

01:14:42.600 | Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly.

01:14:44.600 | But, obviously,

01:14:46.600 | the NBA has

01:14:48.600 | the receipts with DraftKings. Chamath,

01:14:50.600 | you owned a NBA team for

01:14:52.600 | a little while, and you watched as David

01:14:54.600 | Stern—for a decade—you watched as

01:14:56.600 | David Stern, who was

01:14:58.600 | absolutely opposed to

01:15:00.600 | gambling, and then Adam Silver

01:15:02.600 | embraced it. Tell us, from

01:15:04.600 | your front-row seat, your thoughts

01:15:06.600 | on wagering in the NBA.

01:15:08.600 | And wagering writ large.

01:15:10.600 | Okay, look,

01:15:12.600 | I remember when

01:15:14.600 | I joined

01:15:18.600 | the ownership group of the Warriors, I had to file

01:15:20.600 | this enormous document.

01:15:22.600 | And one of the things that they really

01:15:24.600 | dig into is

01:15:26.600 | whether you've bet before.

01:15:28.600 | And they make it

01:15:30.600 | really, really clear that

01:15:32.600 | it is completely

01:15:34.600 | not allowed to bet.

01:15:36.600 | And the only way that you can bet is if you're betting

01:15:38.600 | on non-basketball and if you were in

01:15:40.600 | Vegas and you go to a casino and a troop

01:15:42.600 | sportsbook. That's the only time it's

01:15:44.600 | tolerated. The thing with all

01:15:46.600 | of these sites, FanDuel and

01:15:48.600 | DraftKings, is they did deals

01:15:50.600 | with the leagues, where

01:15:52.600 | part of the feature is that when

01:15:54.600 | there is really crazy, asymmetric

01:15:56.600 | betting on something that's obscure,

01:15:58.600 | they report it back to the leagues

01:16:00.600 | so the leagues know how to look at it. Because

01:16:02.600 | typically what happens is,

01:16:04.600 | if you're talking like

01:16:06.600 | a very well-contested basketball chaser,

01:16:08.600 | you have a relatively

01:16:10.600 | balanced book, right?

01:16:12.600 | And what the goal is, is to figure out where

01:16:14.600 | are the sharps betting, meaning the really smart money

01:16:16.600 | guys, and everybody else is a

01:16:18.600 | square, and most of retail is a square.

01:16:20.600 | Okay, they're going to lose their money. And so

01:16:22.600 | the goal is to always find out where the sharps are

01:16:24.600 | going. But there are some of these bets,

01:16:26.600 | and in this case, this is why they found out,

01:16:28.600 | when you have something being

01:16:30.600 | bet that's very obscure in size,

01:16:32.600 | these apps immediately

01:16:34.600 | go back to the league and say, "This just

01:16:36.600 | happened." So compare

01:16:38.600 | that to, Chamath, what would happen previously

01:16:40.600 | before sports betting was legal

01:16:42.600 | in the US. Before what would

01:16:44.600 | happen is like, all of these

01:16:46.600 | bookies would be able to have relationships

01:16:48.600 | with some of these players. Sometimes

01:16:50.600 | they would also have relationships

01:16:52.600 | with some of the refs, and it has

01:16:54.600 | spilled over. So the NBA has had to deal

01:16:56.600 | with an example where one of

01:16:58.600 | the refs were, I think he was betting on

01:17:00.600 | some games. Tim Donaghy, yeah. Tim Donaghy, and then

01:17:02.600 | he was point shaving. So this has been

01:17:04.600 | going on for a long time.

01:17:06.600 | It moved into the realm of

01:17:08.600 | it being automated with

01:17:10.600 | algorithms looking out.

01:17:12.600 | The fact that this kid

01:17:14.600 | didn't have anybody on his team that

01:17:16.600 | explained that DraftKings

01:17:18.600 | and FanDuel are going to send

01:17:20.600 | this data to the NBA

01:17:22.600 | is inexcusable, because maybe the kid

01:17:24.600 | would not have done it.

01:17:26.600 | Do you agree with the lifetime ban? Or do you think this should be...

01:17:28.600 | Yeah, it has to be lifetime.

01:17:30.600 | Has to be for the NBA to have integrity.

01:17:32.600 | Has to be.

01:17:34.600 | Yeah, it's really...

01:17:36.600 | What do we think about

01:17:38.600 | this becoming legal in the US and

01:17:40.600 | people embracing... The other thing I'll say,

01:17:42.600 | and I mentioned this a few weeks ago,

01:17:44.600 | everything

01:17:46.600 | is being gamified.

01:17:48.600 | You have an entire population

01:17:50.600 | that seemingly, in America,

01:17:52.600 | consumer spending still goes up.

01:17:54.600 | Folks are relatively

01:17:56.600 | still flush with cash.

01:17:58.600 | There's lots of free cash flow.

01:18:00.600 | There are new and more

01:18:02.600 | aggressive forms of

01:18:04.600 | stimulus constantly coming down the pike.

01:18:06.600 | Whether it's student loan

01:18:08.600 | forgiveness or something else, right? Governments are

01:18:10.600 | inventing new and new ways of buying votes.

01:18:12.600 | That's going to put more and more money in people's

01:18:14.600 | hands. That means

01:18:16.600 | a larger and larger percentage of it will bleed

01:18:18.600 | into these kinds of things. And it's not just sports

01:18:20.600 | gambling. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal

01:18:22.600 | about this woman who's a

01:18:24.600 | well-respected lawyer who became

01:18:26.600 | totally addicted playing like

01:18:28.600 | a bingo app, right? And lost

01:18:30.600 | her entire life. So, these

01:18:32.600 | forms of gambling and addiction are just

01:18:34.600 | going to skyrocket, I think, because

01:18:36.600 | you have these apps that are really

01:18:38.600 | incredibly well-engineered

01:18:40.600 | to get you super-hooked.

01:18:42.600 | And then, the adrenaline

01:18:44.600 | rush and the dopamine rush of

01:18:46.600 | actually winning money is a thing that, for some

01:18:48.600 | people, they can't turn off once they

01:18:50.600 | feel it for the first time. Yeah, we know some of those people, and

01:18:52.600 | you know, it's hard for them to control

01:18:54.600 | their sports betting,

01:18:56.600 | blackjack playing, other things.

01:18:58.600 | They just get too into it.

01:19:00.600 | They get too into it.

01:19:02.600 | But other societies, other

01:19:04.600 | geos, Australia, New Zealand,

01:19:06.600 | and the UK, they've had this for a

01:19:08.600 | while, so they've figured out how to deal with this.

01:19:10.600 | This is what I'm going to tell you. The last thing I'll say on this is

01:19:12.600 | when I was in high school, so in the early '90s

01:19:14.600 | in Ontario and Canada, they

01:19:16.600 | introduced sports betting as a way of

01:19:18.600 | generating revenue for the government.

01:19:20.600 | What I will tell you is that

01:19:22.600 | my entire high school,

01:19:24.600 | all the boys, not the girls,

01:19:26.600 | we became instant gambling

01:19:28.600 | addicts. We were

01:19:30.600 | figuring out how to put bets on. Most of it

01:19:32.600 | was betting in hockey because that's the sport

01:19:34.600 | that we all knew the best growing up in

01:19:36.600 | Ottawa.

01:19:38.600 | But it was all day

01:19:40.600 | every day. It consumed us.

01:19:42.600 | And I think when you look inside

01:19:44.600 | of these apps, you're seeing a lot of young men

01:19:46.600 | with a lot of free cash and a lot of time

01:19:48.600 | getting sucked into the gamification

01:19:50.600 | of this thing. I think it's going to be a big problem.

01:19:52.600 | I will tell you, Sax, I'm interested in your

01:19:54.600 | position on this because there is a whole system, an

01:19:56.600 | ecosystem emerging here. The states

01:19:58.600 | are getting massive amounts of revenue.

01:20:00.600 | $11 billion generated last

01:20:02.600 | year, up

01:20:04.600 | 44.5% from 2022.

01:20:06.600 | The league is printing

01:20:08.600 | money from this, all the leagues. The NBA will generate

01:20:10.600 | $167 million from

01:20:12.600 | betting this season, up 11% year over year.

01:20:14.600 | The sportsbooks, obviously killing you.

01:20:16.600 | DraftKings got a $20 billion

01:20:18.600 | market cap and bettors obviously love it.

01:20:20.600 | It's more fun. It's making the games more engaging.

01:20:22.600 | And the media

01:20:24.600 | is loving

01:20:26.600 | this. All of the podcasts,

01:20:28.600 | Bill Simmons, ESPN,

01:20:30.600 | you can't watch a game, you can't hear sports commentary

01:20:32.600 | without this being integrated.

01:20:34.600 | And it's being integrated at a very fundamental

01:20:36.600 | editorial level. They're asking

01:20:38.600 | the host of these shows their spend

01:20:40.600 | and what they're betting on.

01:20:42.600 | And they're doing something very smart, which is they're paying

01:20:44.600 | huge endorsement deals to the players

01:20:46.600 | as well. I think DraftKings did

01:20:48.600 | something with LeBron. This is genius because

01:20:50.600 | when you get that ingratiated, you'll never get ripped

01:20:52.600 | out because if they become a huge

01:20:54.600 | part of the off-court revenue

01:20:56.600 | model for these players...

01:20:58.600 | We're locked in. It's like the new

01:21:00.600 | Air Jordans.

01:21:02.600 | Sax, what do you think about this just in

01:21:04.600 | terms of on a societal basis

01:21:06.600 | and the United States?

01:21:08.600 | It's sort of like cannabis.

01:21:10.600 | This is a new thing for Americans to

01:21:12.600 | have access to. There's a lot of

01:21:14.600 | weird behaviors going on, edge cases.

01:21:16.600 | But what do you think, net-net, as a society,

01:21:18.600 | you take away from

01:21:20.600 | the emergence of sports betting

01:21:22.600 | and this next generation being so addicted to it?

01:21:24.600 | Well, I think cannabis is the

01:21:26.600 | right analogy. I think adults

01:21:28.600 | should be allowed to bet on

01:21:30.600 | sporting events, just like they're allowed to

01:21:32.600 | drink or

01:21:34.600 | smoke pot or engage in other mild

01:21:36.600 | vices. Some people

01:21:38.600 | handle it responsibly and some don't.

01:21:40.600 | Probably on a societal basis, it's probably

01:21:42.600 | not a great thing, but it's something you

01:21:44.600 | allow to happen

01:21:46.600 | because of personal freedom and

01:21:48.600 | hopefully people use it responsibly.

01:21:50.600 | Freeberg,

01:21:52.600 | do you have any thoughts? You place any bets,

01:21:54.600 | Freeberg? Do you place any bets on sports? I'm curious.

01:21:56.600 | I do not. You do not.

01:21:58.600 | I don't place bets on sports, but

01:22:00.600 | I love playing cards because it's social.

01:22:02.600 | Chamath, do you do any sports betting

01:22:04.600 | now and again? Maybe on the Super Bowl you get

01:22:06.600 | once in a while, you place a bet?

01:22:08.600 | A wager? When I got admitted to the ownership

01:22:10.600 | group in the NBA, I stopped.

01:22:12.600 | I probably made

01:22:14.600 | three bets since then.

01:22:16.600 | All three were on the Super Bowl

01:22:18.600 | at a casino, so it was

01:22:20.600 | legal when I was still an owner.

01:22:22.600 | I've not done it since.

01:22:24.600 | I've refused to download these apps because

01:22:26.600 | I love sports

01:22:28.600 | and I think that if I

01:22:30.600 | added this to it,

01:22:32.600 | I just don't think it would be good for me,

01:22:34.600 | so I don't want to do it. That was my exact

01:22:36.600 | take, too. Sac, do you ever place any

01:22:38.600 | bets? You're not a wager. I'm not a sports bettor.

01:22:40.600 | Do you ever bet on chess?

01:22:42.600 | No,

01:22:44.600 | no one bets on chess because it's so obvious

01:22:46.600 | who's going to win. There's a very precise

01:22:48.600 | rating system.

01:22:50.600 | Poker is very

01:22:52.600 | different because you can have

01:22:54.600 | players at the same table and you know who are the

01:22:56.600 | great players and who are not the great players, but

01:22:58.600 | still, in any given hand,

01:23:00.600 | the underdog can win because

01:23:02.600 | you can basically suck out or whatever.

01:23:04.600 | There's a significant luck component on

01:23:06.600 | every single hand. Over the long term,

01:23:08.600 | you believe that the luck kind of

01:23:10.600 | evens out and you reach your expected

01:23:12.600 | value, but on any given hand,

01:23:14.600 | you can believe that you're the winner.

01:23:16.600 | So there's a lot of gambling in

01:23:18.600 | poker, even though it is a skill game.

01:23:20.600 | In chess, that just doesn't

01:23:22.600 | work. I mean, if I play

01:23:24.600 | Magnus Carlsen or any

01:23:26.600 | 2,000 rated player, I'm just

01:23:28.600 | never going to win, so there's

01:23:30.600 | no point in betting. Sax, what's your rating?

01:23:32.600 | 1,400.

01:23:34.600 | I'm a little better than that. I'm like,

01:23:36.600 | I'm probably more like 1,600.

01:23:38.600 | Last time I played, it was 1,400. I stopped playing

01:23:40.600 | him because he would just... I would get to the middle

01:23:42.600 | game with Sax. I'd get like 30 moves in and then

01:23:44.600 | he would just smash me. I'm like 800

01:23:46.600 | or something. How do you get better at chess?

01:23:48.600 | Freebird, do you have a rating?

01:23:50.600 | I don't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to talk.

01:23:52.600 | Freebird, what's your rating?

01:23:54.600 | Are you still upset about the octopus stuff?

01:23:56.600 | No. Oh, okay.

01:23:58.600 | But what's your rating?

01:24:00.600 | It's too personal a question.

01:24:02.600 | It's too personal a question.

01:24:04.600 | Do you never share information where people

01:24:06.600 | can actually like root for you?

01:24:08.600 | Yeah, be vulnerable, dude.

01:24:10.600 | Ask me other questions.

01:24:12.600 | Just don't ask me about my chess rating.

01:24:14.600 | Don't ask me about my chess rating.

01:24:16.600 | Ask me anything else. What is the lowest rating?

01:24:18.600 | What's the best way to get better? Should I get a coach or something, Sax?

01:24:20.600 | The chess.com app has

01:24:22.600 | very good lessons on it, too. It's actually

01:24:24.600 | quite good. Yeah, you could get a coach

01:24:26.600 | and that would definitely help. There's also these

01:24:28.600 | exercises you can do called puzzle rushes

01:24:30.600 | that teach you how to spot tactics.

01:24:32.600 | That's all tactics. That's probably half the game.

01:24:34.600 | Yeah.

01:24:36.600 | Like you learn how to do a knife fork or something

01:24:38.600 | like that, how to do pins. You just need to spot

01:24:40.600 | tactics quickly is really the key. My puzzle

01:24:42.600 | rush scores are pretty good.

01:24:44.600 | Oh, you're over a thousand?

01:24:46.600 | No, it's like how many you can get in a certain period

01:24:48.600 | of time. And it gets

01:24:50.600 | sequentially harder as you complete

01:24:52.600 | the puzzles and you have

01:24:54.600 | a limited period to do it.

01:24:56.600 | Yet you feel shame.

01:24:58.600 | If you want to get better at chess, I've watched

01:25:00.600 | a lot of chess videos on YouTube and

01:25:02.600 | there's a very good series

01:25:04.600 | by John Bartholomew called

01:25:06.600 | Climbing the Ratings Ladder.

01:25:08.600 | And for each level

01:25:10.600 | of Elo ratings, he has

01:25:12.600 | a series of videos. So like, I don't know, if you're

01:25:14.600 | like at 1200, there's a whole series for

01:25:16.600 | 1200s and he'll

01:25:18.600 | play a bunch of games against 1200s

01:25:20.600 | showing what they typically do

01:25:22.600 | wrong and you can learn from it.

01:25:24.600 | It's actually, it's a good series.

01:25:26.600 | Have you spent time, Sax, like

01:25:28.600 | studying like openings

01:25:30.600 | and like studying

01:25:32.600 | like specific lines? I don't even know if I'm using

01:25:34.600 | the right language here.

01:25:36.600 | I haven't spent

01:25:38.600 | a ton of time studying them

01:25:40.600 | but I'm certainly familiar with a number

01:25:42.600 | of the most common openings.

01:25:44.600 | So I guess, yes, I guess on

01:25:46.600 | some level I've studied them. I would

01:25:48.600 | say that depending on where

01:25:50.600 | you are in your development

01:25:52.600 | that may not be the most pressing

01:25:54.600 | thing for you to do.

01:25:56.600 | You know, I think

01:25:58.600 | you probably do want to just know a few

01:26:00.600 | basics of a few of the most

01:26:02.600 | common openings but

01:26:04.600 | there's probably other things for you to learn first.

01:26:06.600 | You don't need to like memorize a bunch of

01:26:08.600 | complicated lines. I think it's like really cool

01:26:10.600 | that kids are learning this. I know

01:26:12.600 | this may be a counter

01:26:14.600 | or a contrarian view but I think kids having

01:26:16.600 | access, you know, or young adults

01:26:18.600 | having access to sports betting, poker

01:26:20.600 | is kind of a good thing because

01:26:22.600 | if controlled because they're

01:26:24.600 | learning about odds and

01:26:26.600 | gambling and framing it.

01:26:28.600 | I, with my 14-year-old

01:26:30.600 | am doing an allowance and

01:26:32.600 | then I decided to do an investment club

01:26:34.600 | and so I'm putting $100

01:26:36.600 | every month into like a Robinhood account

01:26:38.600 | and we're going to do like

01:26:40.600 | two meetings every month, one to buy

01:26:42.600 | a new stock and one to examine

01:26:44.600 | our existing stocks and I'm just

01:26:46.600 | starting an investment club so if anybody's kids are

01:26:48.600 | in that age group and they want to join it

01:26:50.600 | let me know because I'm going to do like a

01:26:52.600 | with the cousins like a zoom call every

01:26:54.600 | month where we just talk about stocks

01:26:56.600 | and then I'm going to have them actually buy it

01:26:58.600 | so that they can

01:27:00.600 | be prepared for the real world and how companies

01:27:02.600 | are going but how do you think about

01:27:04.600 | your kids Chamath because you got to do this gambling

01:27:06.600 | when you were young. Didn't that help

01:27:08.600 | you ultimately as an adult?

01:27:10.600 | I mean I ran a casino in my

01:27:12.600 | high school.

01:27:14.600 | Was that the thing?

01:27:16.600 | Yeah, I mean I ran a

01:27:18.600 | little blackjack game where the rich kids

01:27:20.600 | could play and I was the house and

01:27:22.600 | I would make a few extra hundred bucks

01:27:24.600 | a week. Nice.

01:27:26.600 | And that was great because like you know between

01:27:28.600 | that and my job at Burger King it really

01:27:30.600 | helped

01:27:32.600 | and then I would go and take that and I actually

01:27:34.600 | came pretty decent at blackjack and I would go

01:27:36.600 | there would be these what's called charity

01:27:38.600 | casinos so casinos in Ottawa, Ontario were

01:27:40.600 | illegal but if they were to raise

01:27:42.600 | charity for various

01:27:44.600 | charities they were allowed and so

01:27:46.600 | my friend and I would show up at

01:27:48.600 | these things and just run them over.

01:27:50.600 | Did anybody else run an illegal

01:27:52.600 | business as a kid? I'll tell you about mine

01:27:54.600 | after. Zach, did you run any illegal businesses

01:27:56.600 | as a kid? No comment.

01:27:58.600 | Come on, it's Statue of Limitations. What did you do?

01:28:00.600 | You must have been running some scams. Come on, tell us.

01:28:02.600 | I'll tell you my two scams after you tell us yours.

01:28:04.600 | By the way, I'll tell you I had a bad debt situation

01:28:06.600 | in my lunch game.

01:28:08.600 | You know I used to let people bet

01:28:10.600 | up to a buck. Okay, so

01:28:12.600 | four or five guys up

01:28:14.600 | $0.25, $0.50 or a dollar and

01:28:16.600 | one guy he like demanded

01:28:18.600 | an expanded credit line.

01:28:20.600 | So I gave him up to two bucks.

01:28:22.600 | How many boxes of ziti did he go down?

01:28:24.600 | One lunch he lost $80 and it took me

01:28:26.600 | three months to get paid. It was the worst

01:28:28.600 | experience. $80 boxes of ziti?

01:28:30.600 | No, $80. No, I know I'm just doing

01:28:32.600 | a soprano. I had to

01:28:34.600 | sweat this guy for three months to get my $80.

01:28:36.600 | He was rich too.

01:28:38.600 | His parents were rich. What did he do?

01:28:40.600 | Did he have to do your term papers or something?

01:28:42.600 | Did he have to do your essays, clean your bike?

01:28:44.600 | I wouldn't have gotten this kind of money.

01:28:46.600 | Come on, Sax, give it up. What was your scam

01:28:48.600 | you were running as a kid? Let's move on.

01:28:50.600 | I had two scams.

01:28:52.600 | Freeberg, you have a scam when you were running

01:28:54.600 | when you were a kid?

01:28:56.600 | Any scams? I used to go to the

01:28:58.600 | recycler newspaper. Do you guys remember that?

01:29:00.600 | Yeah. The recycler. And I would buy

01:29:02.600 | used electronics equipment,

01:29:04.600 | computer equipment, and then I would

01:29:06.600 | sell it. So I would

01:29:08.600 | then post other ads. I basically did

01:29:10.600 | ad arbitrage as a way to think about it.

01:29:12.600 | So I would go and find people selling

01:29:14.600 | stuff that I thought was underpriced.

01:29:16.600 | And then I would buy it. There was nothing to fix.

01:29:18.600 | It was underpriced. And then I knew

01:29:20.600 | the better market to go sell it and make more money.

01:29:22.600 | So then I'd buy all these old

01:29:24.600 | blocks. Like a broken receiver.

01:29:26.600 | Discman and a receiver.

01:29:28.600 | Speakers that I knew were good, but they were

01:29:30.600 | steeply discounted. I'd drive

01:29:32.600 | around in my white van. I'd pay people

01:29:34.600 | cash. I'd load it up and then I'd go sell it to

01:29:36.600 | other people by putting ads in.

01:29:38.600 | No wonder you wound up at Google.

01:29:40.600 | I had two

01:29:42.600 | really good scams when I was a kid.

01:29:44.600 | The first was this guy owed my dad

01:29:46.600 | some money for backgammon. My dad was

01:29:48.600 | a backgammon shark and he would play in his bar

01:29:50.600 | when I would show up at six in the morning.

01:29:52.600 | My dad would be playing blackjack with guys. They would get

01:29:54.600 | in deep

01:29:56.600 | with him. And so this guy who

01:29:58.600 | was in the mob owed my dad some money.

01:30:00.600 | And for the vig, he gave

01:30:02.600 | them a copy of The Empire Strikes Back

01:30:04.600 | on VHS.

01:30:06.600 | And I was like, "What?"

01:30:08.600 | This was before it was out. They had recorded

01:30:10.600 | it in the movie theaters in 1984 or

01:30:12.600 | something, whenever that came out.

01:30:14.600 | And it was a really bad copy.

01:30:16.600 | So my dad comes home, he gives me the

01:30:18.600 | copy. We watch it. It was incredible. I was like, "Thanks

01:30:20.600 | Dad." And I got my friend to

01:30:22.600 | bring over his VHS. I made 10 copies of it.

01:30:24.600 | I go to school, McKinley Junior High School

01:30:26.600 | in Brooklyn. And I sell them for 30

01:30:28.600 | bucks a pop. Oh my God. Selling

01:30:30.600 | like hotcakes. And then

01:30:32.600 | I get pinched.

01:30:34.600 | Math teacher says, "What's going on with these Empire

01:30:36.600 | Strikes Back?" And I said,

01:30:38.600 | "What do you mean? I don't know what you're talking about."

01:30:40.600 | He's like, "I heard you got Empire Strikes Back."

01:30:42.600 | He kept your mouth shut.

01:30:44.600 | I looked him dead in the eye. And I said,

01:30:46.600 | "Are you interested?"

01:30:48.600 | The teacher goes, "Yeah.

01:30:50.600 | How much are they?" I said, "30 bucks.

01:30:52.600 | But I'll give you one for 10."

01:30:54.600 | And he said, "Okay.

01:30:56.600 | Pull that 10 bucks." I sold my math teacher.

01:30:58.600 | I kid you not, the Empire Strikes Back for 10 bucks.

01:31:00.600 | Can you do this whole thing again but in the

01:31:02.600 | Christopher Walken voice?

01:31:04.600 | I'm not going to do it. But I'll give you the other one I did.

01:31:06.600 | No, it's the Joe Pesci voice. Do this one

01:31:08.600 | in the Christopher Walken voice. And so the name of it

01:31:10.600 | was Jason's Hot Tapes. And so I

01:31:12.600 | made a business card and laminated Jason's Hot Tapes.

01:31:14.600 | And I would hand it to people. And I'd hand

01:31:16.600 | them the Jason's Hot Tape card.

01:31:18.600 | And I'd say, "Give me my card back." But I would just show

01:31:20.600 | them that I had a card. Oh, that reminds me.

01:31:22.600 | I was also in the fake ID business.

01:31:24.600 | Ooh. Say more. I don't know.

01:31:26.600 | I granted out fake IDs with a buddy of mine.

01:31:28.600 | All right. That was mine. That was mine.

01:31:30.600 | Oh! Zach was in the fake ID

01:31:32.600 | business, too? At Stanford? We used Harvard Graphics.

01:31:34.600 | Zach, what were you using? I was using Harvard Graphics.

01:31:36.600 | Well, this was in the days

01:31:38.600 | before holograms. And it just

01:31:40.600 | wasn't that hard to copy.

01:31:42.600 | So we just made boards or whatever

01:31:44.600 | and Polaroids. So we did it for

01:31:46.600 | ourselves and we did it for friends. Yeah, same.

01:31:48.600 | Here's the thing about the fake ID business.

01:31:50.600 | The bouncers

01:31:52.600 | were like, "If you've got money,

01:31:54.600 | show us any piece of paper

01:31:56.600 | so we have plausible deniability."

01:31:58.600 | They knew. That's right. They just wanted plausible

01:32:00.600 | deniability. That's exactly right.

01:32:02.600 | That's the key to the rack.

01:32:04.600 | Did you put "McLovin" in University

01:32:06.600 | of Hawaii? Yeah.

01:32:08.600 | Actually, what was kind of funny

01:32:10.600 | is sometimes the bouncers would go, "What's your

01:32:12.600 | name?" Hmm. And you'd be like,

01:32:14.600 | you'd be stumped because you didn't

01:32:16.600 | remember what was on there. You were so drunk, you don't even

01:32:18.600 | remember.

01:32:20.600 | You're like, "My name is

01:32:22.600 | Christopher Walker." Mine was like,

01:32:24.600 | "Raj Patel."

01:32:26.600 | "My name is

01:32:28.600 | Raj Patel."

01:32:30.600 | Or they'd ask you, "What was your birthday?"

01:32:32.600 | And you don't remember what's on your ID.

01:32:34.600 | You don't know what's on your ID because it's fake. I don't remember.

01:32:36.600 | I don't remember.

01:32:38.600 | I had one drink.

01:32:40.600 | Now, the key in the fake ID game is to use

01:32:42.600 | your month and

01:32:44.600 | day that's yours and then

01:32:46.600 | just change the year.

01:32:48.600 | That's the key.

01:32:50.600 | I'll give you the second one.

01:32:52.600 | So, my friend,

01:32:54.600 | his

01:32:56.600 | brother had a

01:32:58.600 | DeLorean.

01:33:00.600 | I can't do it. I can't sustain it.

01:33:02.600 | Anyway, this kid

01:33:04.600 | who I grew up with.

01:33:06.600 | I should say. Anyway, his name was

01:33:08.600 | beep that out. He lived up on

01:33:10.600 | 13th Avenue. I go to his house.

01:33:12.600 | His brother's got a DeLorean. It was

01:33:14.600 | incredible. And we're in junior high

01:33:16.600 | school and I'm talking to his brother.

01:33:18.600 | I go into the garage and there's all

01:33:20.600 | DeLorean parts

01:33:22.600 | on the wall. And I said,

01:33:24.600 | "Why do you have all these parts?"

01:33:26.600 | And he said, "Oh, you know,

01:33:28.600 | there was a DeLorean that

01:33:30.600 | fell apart and

01:33:32.600 | we picked up the pieces." They had

01:33:34.600 | stolen another DeLorean because DeLorean stopped producing

01:33:36.600 | and they just chopped it up. But he had it in his garage.

01:33:38.600 | So, anyway, we're playing

01:33:40.600 | Chess Master at the time and I had hacked

01:33:42.600 | a copy of Chess Master. It was very easy to do.

01:33:44.600 | And the guy said, "You got Chess Master?

01:33:46.600 | Can you get me more copies of that?" I said, "Sure. How many copies

01:33:48.600 | you want?" He's like, "How many can you make?"

01:33:50.600 | I was like, "Well, floppy disks cost $4."

01:33:52.600 | He's like, "I'll give you $10 a copy

01:33:54.600 | of Chess Master." I said, "Fine."

01:33:56.600 | I go, "My friend, we go

01:33:58.600 | steal floppy disks from

01:34:00.600 | the store so we don't want to pay

01:34:02.600 | $4 for them." Not the 3 1/2's?

01:34:04.600 | The 5 1/4's? These are 5 1/4's.

01:34:06.600 | And we go into the store

01:34:08.600 | and we take the flyer

01:34:10.600 | and I hold the flyer open and I

01:34:12.600 | hold it behind my back and my friend takes the disks

01:34:14.600 | out of the sleeve at Staples

01:34:16.600 | or whatever, dumps them in there. We made

01:34:18.600 | copies of it and then we were selling Chess Master

01:34:20.600 | for $10 a pop at scale

01:34:22.600 | and giving them to the guys on 13th

01:34:24.600 | Avenue who were then reselling them for $20.

01:34:26.600 | This is when Chess Master was like a $100 product.

01:34:28.600 | Shout out to Chess Master.

01:34:30.600 | That was my second

01:34:32.600 | scam business. This is some degenerate

01:34:34.600 | sh*t. Yeah.

01:34:36.600 | And that's not even the best one. I'll give you the best

01:34:38.600 | one. This is the best and I'll give you the last scam

01:34:40.600 | we ran.

01:34:42.600 | There were parking permits in the late '80s

01:34:44.600 | in Manhattan. They were

01:34:46.600 | hard to get, but they were legit.

01:34:48.600 | If you had a parking permit in your window

01:34:50.600 | for the fire department, police,

01:34:52.600 | you could park

01:34:54.600 | in Manhattan in a lot of different areas.

01:34:56.600 | And so we went

01:34:58.600 | and we took a picture of these.

01:35:00.600 | Then we got on Pagemaker or whatever

01:35:02.600 | and I went down to Canal Street

01:35:04.600 | and I bought at Pearl Paints

01:35:06.600 | the same color

01:35:08.600 | orange and that lamination

01:35:10.600 | kit and we got on Photoshop.

01:35:12.600 | I kid you not. We held the picture up and we tried

01:35:14.600 | to figure out the fonts they used and

01:35:16.600 | we made a copy of the

01:35:18.600 | placards to park.

01:35:20.600 | And then we sold those for like $50

01:35:22.600 | and people used them and they wouldn't get

01:35:24.600 | tickets. They worked. So we sold

01:35:26.600 | police placards that had to be

01:35:28.600 | super illegal in 1988. All right, everybody.

01:35:30.600 | For your Sultan

01:35:32.600 | of Science, the exceptional

01:35:34.600 | David Friedberg, your Chairman Dictator

01:35:36.600 | Chamath Palihapitiya,

01:35:38.600 | Rain Man, yeah, David Sacks,

01:35:40.600 | I am your

01:35:42.600 | world's greatest moderator, J. Kyle.

01:35:44.600 | We'll see you on Episode 176

01:35:46.600 | and hopefully in September

01:35:48.600 | at the All In Summit.

01:35:50.600 | Bye-bye.

01:35:52.600 | We'll let your winners ride.

01:35:54.600 | Rain Man,

01:35:56.600 | David Sacks.

01:35:58.600 | I'm going all in.

01:36:00.600 | And instead, we open-sourced it to the fans

01:36:02.600 | and they've just gone crazy with it.

01:36:04.600 | I love you, Weston. I'm the queen of quinoa.

01:36:06.600 | I'm going all in.

01:36:08.600 | We'll let your winners ride.

01:36:10.600 | We'll let your winners ride.

01:36:12.600 | Besties are gone.

01:36:14.600 | That's my

01:36:16.600 | dog taking a notice in your driveway, Sacks.

01:36:18.600 | Oh, man.

01:36:20.600 | Oh, man.

01:36:22.600 | He should all just get a room

01:36:24.600 | and just have one big huge orgy

01:36:26.600 | because they're all just useless.

01:36:28.600 | It's like this sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.

01:36:30.600 | Wet your

01:36:32.600 | feet.

01:36:34.600 | Wet your feet.

01:36:36.600 | We need to get merch.

01:36:38.600 | I'm going all in.

01:36:40.600 | I'm going all in.

01:36:48.600 | you

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