back to indexE67: Revisiting Rogan, Canadian truckers' protest, fusion breakthrough, $MSFT's savvy move & more
Chapters
0:0 Bestie Intro: Phil Hellmuth found a new billionaire
1:30 Chamath's new camera positioning
3:58 Revisiting the Joe Rogan/Spotify situation, racism claims, and the video controversy
30:4 Canadian truckers' "Freedom Convoy": root causes, impact, what is this turning into?
45:0 Nuclear fusion breakthrough: Friedberg shares thoughts and theories on what this could mean for the future of energy and life on Earth
54:15 Contrarian energy trade, Chamath's Big Tech play morphing into a long-term investment
61:1 Microsoft's savvy "burn it down" app store strategy, US income not keeping up with inflation, consumer sentiment getting worse, opening up and getting back to normal
75:57 CIA allegedly used an executive order from 1981 to execute warrantless surveillance on American citizens, DHS domestic terrorism infrastructure
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We had a nice dinner. Chamath hosted a little, and we played a little bit of the cards. And 00:00:04.960 |
there's this new kid there. Oh, big shout out to . Co-founder of . 00:00:09.520 |
I'm like, " , how do you wind up here at the game, sitting here, 00:00:13.600 |
having a beautiful dinner with us?" And he's like, "Well," and then Chamath goes, 00:00:18.640 |
and he points to Helmuth. Helmuth found a billionaire. When Helmuth finds a billionaire, 00:00:25.360 |
what happens? He's tied to the hip. He has a billionaire bromance. 00:00:31.840 |
Helmuth is like one of those truffle dogs in Alba in Italy. You send him out into the woods, 00:00:38.080 |
he forages around. He finds a truffle, just digs it out. 00:00:42.080 |
That's it. Then he follows, like a dog. He follows a billionaire around. 00:00:49.440 |
Tail wagging. Waiting for his owner to show up and pick this little billionaire off the ground. 00:00:58.000 |
Helmuth is the most insecure person, but he's such a beautiful human being. 00:01:04.080 |
It's like the tale of two people. He really is a walking 00:01:22.640 |
"We open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it." 00:01:30.560 |
Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the All In Podcast. With us again, 00:01:37.200 |
the new chairman and majority shareholder of Laura Piana, Chamath Palihapitiya. 00:01:44.240 |
Do you like my thin cashmere gilet that I'm wearing? 00:01:52.000 |
Oh, gilet. Okay. Magnifique. Also with us, the viceroy of veganism, 00:01:57.440 |
the sultan of science, David Friedberg, and the regent of the right wing, 00:02:11.600 |
The viceroy of vegans. He came to me in the shower today. I was like, you know what? He needs a new 00:02:15.760 |
I switched my background, guys. Do you like it? I just flipped the camera to look the other way, 00:02:20.240 |
Now we can see your chef picking the vegetables in your garden. 00:02:22.960 |
Well, yeah. Well, before you used to see him pick the herbs. 00:02:26.080 |
Because the herbs are on this side. But now he's, yeah, you can see him pick the veggies. 00:02:30.240 |
Oh, yeah. Oh, there's the sous chef. Okay. There's the prep chef. And there's the head chef. Okay. 00:02:37.520 |
You know, you seem to enjoy the food, Jason, every time you come in. 00:02:42.240 |
But you are always eating when you're at my house. You're always eating. 00:02:47.600 |
He's not just eating. He's sending his notes to the kitchen. Could you just do this a little 00:02:52.000 |
I do give notes. I do. I do. Usually positive ones. It's like three out of four are positive 00:02:57.760 |
You know, when I flew with Chamath a few weeks ago, the chef made gluten-free Nutella crepes 00:03:03.360 |
with homemade Nutella. I mean, it was like the most extraordinary breakfast experience. 00:03:10.480 |
All protein, fat, and it's sweetened with monk flour sugar. 00:03:20.480 |
I've not brought a chef on the plane with me. But I think in fairness, your kitchen's bigger. 00:03:24.240 |
Well, your plane's not that big. Yeah. I mean, you've got a small plane. 00:03:29.840 |
I mean, I don't know if a Cessna 142 can fit a chef, Sax. 00:03:40.320 |
I'm feeling pretty good about myself right now. 00:03:49.920 |
Do you want to start with Rogan or the Canadian truckers? 00:03:52.880 |
I think Rogan probably leads into the truckers. 00:03:55.200 |
No, it might, in fact, lead into the truckers. 00:03:57.920 |
So we covered Rogan and Spotify in episode 66, a whole bunch. 00:04:01.520 |
Since that time, a video surfaced on Saturday with Joe Rogan repeatedly saying, 00:04:10.160 |
well, the N-word, and it's pretty rough to watch. 00:04:19.920 |
And overall now Spotify has taken down 70 episodes of his podcast. 00:04:40.720 |
It's like almost 6% of all of his episodes they took down. 00:04:45.680 |
Yeah, but not all of them were because of that language. 00:04:51.200 |
In his apology, he said, obviously, he was wrong to use that word for the decade or so, 00:04:57.040 |
but he pointed out that he did not use it towards a person as a slur, but was talking about it 00:05:10.880 |
So he said it was taken out of context, apologized. 00:05:14.240 |
He also made a joke that he immediately said, "Oh my God, that's pretty racist. 00:05:21.200 |
I shouldn't have told that joke," where he compared going to see Planet of the Apes in 00:05:26.240 |
an all-black theater in Philly, saying he was in Africa. 00:05:28.960 |
On Sunday, Daniel Ek sent a memo to Spotify employees claiming he is not the publisher 00:05:42.240 |
Thoughts on the latest brouhaha, and do we think that Spotify will be able to handle 00:05:50.960 |
What seems to have died down over the last couple of days, and Rogan is now joking about 00:05:56.160 |
it in his comedy engagements at small comedy clubs. 00:06:06.480 |
So as of the last episode of the All In podcast, we're going to have to wait and see. 00:06:09.520 |
pod, they were trying to cancel Rogan for misinformation. And for the reasons we discussed 00:06:14.140 |
that basically failed, because, you know, so many of the times something starts as misinformation 00:06:19.160 |
eventually becomes the truth. Rogan seemed like a guy who actually just wants to present 00:06:23.240 |
both sides present a balanced viewpoint. In any event, that whole attempt to cancel them 00:06:28.540 |
basements information was fizzling out. And then lo and behold, this 22 second clip comes 00:06:33.040 |
out, and they escalate the charges to racism. If you kind of look at, you know, who's behind 00:06:41.780 |
this clip, it's pretty clear that it was a democratic super PAC put this together and 00:06:46.620 |
sort of Astro turfed it as a viral video. This is part of an organized attempt to cancel 00:06:51.400 |
Rogan. Now, as to the merits of the sort of racism accusation against him. I mean, look, 00:06:59.620 |
let me say that I don't think any body, especially a public figure, would be willing to do that. 00:07:03.020 |
I think that the public figure should be using this kind of language. You know, in this day 00:07:07.340 |
and age, even if you're just sort of quoting something or mentioning it, you know, he should 00:07:15.340 |
have he should he should have known better. However, there are also similar clips that 00:07:20.560 |
are now circulating of Joe Biden doing the same thing using this type of like incredibly 00:07:26.620 |
incendiary language and like a brazen almost offhanded way. You've got clips of how 00:07:33.000 |
you're saying brazen and he said it exactly the same way as Joe would say, maybe in a 00:07:38.600 |
cavalier way. He's he's been late. Let me come back. So you have you have Biden doing 00:07:43.620 |
it. You've got Howard Stern doing it. So what is the difference? I mean, the the reality 00:07:49.640 |
here is that we used to in our culture have a distinction between the use of this type 00:07:55.500 |
of language as an epithet, which was never okay. Or using it. 00:08:02.980 |
And I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. I'm saying that it's a bad thing. But we've 00:08:07.440 |
been using it, you know, for a long time. And we've been using it for a long time. And 00:08:13.040 |
we've been using it for a long time. And we've been using it for a long time. And we've been 00:08:15.080 |
using it for a long time. And we've been using it for a long time. And we've been using it 00:08:16.080 |
for a long time. And we've been using it for a long time. 00:08:17.080 |
And we've been using it for a long time. And we've been using it for a long time. And we've 00:08:18.080 |
been using it for a long time. And we've been using it for a long time. And we've been 00:08:19.080 |
using it for a long time. And we've been using it for a long time. And we've been using it 00:08:20.080 |
you can't say it but the truth is that 10 years ago 20 years ago the rules were a little different 00:08:25.600 |
that's why biden said it that's why howard stern has these episodes and i think it's why 00:08:32.400 |
rogan had said it and i think it's a little bit disingenuous uh for people to now try and apply 00:08:38.720 |
the new rules to this old language and they're doing it very selectively because they're not 00:08:43.440 |
trying to cancel these other people who said these things under the old rules they're trying to 00:08:47.360 |
cancel rogan so i think what you're seeing here is selective cancellation outrage selective 00:08:53.520 |
application of these new language rules for the purpose of getting rogan cancelled why 00:09:00.000 |
for the same reasons we were talking about two weeks ago or last week which is he's an outsider 00:09:06.000 |
he's an independent voice he bucks the establishment he doesn't present the orthodox 00:09:11.440 |
view on covet and that's frankly why they want to cancel him friedberg i'm just looking at the 00:09:17.340 |
so in 1993 howard stern um dressed in blackface and used the n-word in a skit he did uh mimicking 00:09:27.080 |
ted danson talking about whoopi goldberg something and he said i'll be the first to admit i won't go 00:09:32.880 |
back and watch those old shows it's like who is that guy but that was my shtick it's what i did 00:09:36.880 |
and i own it i don't think i got embraced by nazi groups and hate groups they seem to think i was 00:09:40.520 |
against them too so i think you know sax is probably right i mean howard stern's a very 00:09:45.400 |
different character today you know i don't think he's a very different character than howard stern 00:09:47.320 |
i think the question of if howard stern acted that way today would cancel culture kind of mob him 00:09:52.820 |
the answer is probably yes um but i think it's because uh you know rogan is out here 00:09:58.740 |
probably picking a bone with everyone you know he's kind of there's there's there's no alignment 00:10:05.880 |
there's no there's no tribal uh behavior with rogan right he doesn't he he's been pretty public 00:10:13.960 |
about being very liberal he's been very public about being conservative and such but he's been 00:10:17.300 |
very open about being conservative and such but he's been pretty public about being conservative 00:10:17.800 |
and i don't think he kind of aligns himself strongly with anyone and so he's a threat to 00:10:21.640 |
everyone he's got a huge following and you know he speaks openly and honestly in a way that uh that 00:10:27.040 |
is threatening uh certainly his behavior was inexcusable and has been inexcusable but there 00:10:31.600 |
are others right and so it's it's a it's an important question which is why him why now 00:10:36.160 |
it's also interesting with that ted danson he was dating whoopi goldberg at the time 00:10:40.160 |
i believe and ted danson was there was a roast of whoopi goldberg at the friars club ted danson 00:10:47.080 |
dressed in blackface i think which whoopi goldberg was it oh ted danson dressed him didn't 00:10:53.780 |
howard dressed and then howard did a send-up of that yeah anyway the point is the more the the 00:10:59.600 |
standard has changed significantly let's let chamath chime in my book of the year last year 00:11:06.180 |
was this book wanting by this uh author luke burgess um he wrote something on substack um i'll 00:11:13.640 |
i'll send you guys a link you can put it in here but he said he said the 00:11:17.060 |
following he said as we regress to a superstitious quasi-pagan world of witch burning civil 00:11:25.080 |
discourse will be replaced with superstition and scapegoating um and he was talking about 00:11:31.000 |
rogan i think that the the thing that i was the most proud of in this whole thing uh was danielek 00:11:38.620 |
i mean disclosure he's a friend of mine so maybe this is biased however i think that spotify 00:11:45.680 |
had been a part of the history of the world and i think that spotify had been a part of the 00:11:47.040 |
history of the world and i think that spotify had been a part of the history of the world and 00:11:47.060 |
business principles um and this was similar to what brian armstrong did at coinbase i think they 00:11:52.380 |
stuck to those principles they made a well-reasoned decision that they explained to their 00:11:59.940 |
employees and shareholders and then they did the most important thing that saxe has always 00:12:06.340 |
been saying around free speech which was which is more speech and so what spotify said when they 00:12:13.660 |
explained the decision to not de-platform joe rogan 00:12:16.420 |
was that they would take the exact equivalent economic value of what they were paying them 00:12:21.160 |
him a hundred million dollars and invested in underrepresented historically underrepresented 00:12:26.840 |
groups to tell their stories to tell you know to make their music etc and so effectively doubling 00:12:33.120 |
you know the universe of that kind of content and so i think if the if people are really willing to 00:12:39.260 |
listen i think what we should take away from this is here's a really clear-eyed example of the 00:12:45.420 |
solution to free speech and i think that's a really clear-eyed example of the solution to free speech 00:12:46.400 |
which is just to get more of it on your platform to have the right disclosures and disclaimers 00:12:52.620 |
and then for you know people to go along with their lives so that they can then choose 00:12:58.700 |
and i think that that's um that was the that was the one positive outcome that that i saw from this 00:13:05.500 |
entire episode the rest of it was uh another attempt at you know uh being morally absolutist and 00:13:15.100 |
you know scapegoating and then the uh that was before obviously the the n-word thing and then 00:13:25.040 |
the n-word thing just brought to light that we live in a very different age where the rules have 00:13:29.880 |
changed and i think the open question is um you know if you're going to judge people for past 00:13:35.520 |
behaviors on current rules are we allowed to do it selectively or does it apply to everybody 00:13:40.580 |
and i and i think that you know this is why i think you know we saw people like david simon 00:13:46.580 |
you know came out and david simon was very um you know basically excoriated joe rogan but then 00:13:55.180 |
david simon wrote the wire you know and if you if you watch the wire which is a you know an 00:14:00.400 |
incredible piece of television that people point to all the time is one of probably the greatest 00:14:03.920 |
shows on television you know every probably you know 13th or 14th word was the n-word yeah i have 00:14:10.700 |
like two observations here though and then i'll get to you sax i know you have something you want 00:14:16.160 |
to chime in on i i always like to think about intent and then i like to look at the apology 00:14:22.140 |
and think is this like sincere or not and when you look at the intent does anybody actually think 00:14:28.960 |
joe rogan is a racist and i think it's pretty clear he's not from all of the behavior collectively 00:14:33.820 |
in his life and then you look at the apology i thought i felt it was incredibly sincere 00:14:38.960 |
uh and there were many learning moments in it and he's a comedian which is kind of this other space 00:14:45.040 |
where we we ask comedians to make us laugh and make us feel uncomfortable and now we're also 00:14:49.680 |
asking them to live by a standard that changes every year and and words come on and off the 00:14:55.600 |
allowable list would anybody here does anybody here actually think or anybody listening to me 00:15:03.800 |
i i think the answer is i don't think anybody thinks that and then number two i i felt the 00:15:07.480 |
apology was incredibly thoughtful um and well done sax what are your thoughts yeah i mean i agree i 00:15:14.260 |
agree with those things um nobody was accusing joe rogan of racism until the cancellation mob 00:15:20.660 |
started throwing stones and the misinformation stones didn't work so then they escalated to 00:15:26.200 |
racism i think the generalized thing is just take take the context out of rogan for a second 00:15:33.780 |
if i can point to this of cancel culture is now i think pretty well understood which is 00:15:40.040 |
um if you don't like somebody you need to throw some ism label on them until that ism label sticks 00:15:48.480 |
and eventually you will find an ism label but the the thing that this cancel culture doesn't 00:15:54.500 |
appreciate is everybody has some ism that that can be attached to them yeah now some isms are 00:16:03.260 |
but you know we're all infallible right i go back to like if you want to quote the bible right 00:16:09.660 |
there's a there's a beautiful passage into the bible uh the book of john and the whole thing and 00:16:15.240 |
you guys have heard this quote many times before but let me just give you the setup so in the law 00:16:19.980 |
of the land back then adultery was illegal but only for the woman right and so there's a very 00:16:25.640 |
famous example of a woman who is accused of adultery and uh you know she was about to be 00:16:31.420 |
uh stoned to death which was a very famous example of a woman who was accused of adultery 00:16:33.240 |
and she was accused of adultery and she was accused of adultery and she was accused of adultery 00:16:33.260 |
essentially the punishment and jesus basically draws a line and says you know he who is without 00:16:40.620 |
sin should cast that first stone and uh nobody does it de-escalates that conflict and everybody 00:16:47.700 |
leaves right and there's a very famous essay uh that renee girard wrote that basically compared 00:16:53.220 |
that to it to a different example in a more paganist context where people did stone people 00:16:57.900 |
the idea of all of this is that there's some amount of 00:17:02.020 |
you know sin that everybody carries and i think that at some point cancel culture will realize 00:17:12.240 |
that you have to de-escalate and you have to see through some of this noise you have to have some 00:17:19.500 |
point of moral resolution to really move on because this sort of like fatalistic judgment 00:17:25.740 |
doesn't work anymore so whoever people wanted to cancel rogan they must be very frustrated today 00:17:31.320 |
because for all in all they're not going to be able to do anything they're not going to be able to 00:17:32.000 |
intents and purposes, he got off the hook. Maybe try again in the 00:17:35.500 |
future with some other ism. He may just as well get off the 00:17:38.260 |
hook in the future, right? So what what is the real solution? 00:17:41.480 |
The real solution is to figure out how to de escalate and 00:17:43.820 |
actually have a conversation about the things that he's doing 00:17:46.600 |
that really upset you. And that is still not what's happening 00:17:50.180 |
and a path perhaps to resolution, let's get free 00:17:53.960 |
I'll say two things. One, I think I want sat next to Tony 00:17:57.440 |
Blair for dinner, you know, he was the Prime Minister of the 00:17:59.980 |
UK. And he told me it was a really funny conversation 00:18:03.400 |
because he was talking about his youth. And he's like, if there 00:18:05.500 |
were iPhones when I was young, I would not have ever been elected 00:18:08.320 |
to public office. Like, you know, he was in a rock band. He 00:18:12.440 |
I don't know if you guys know his history, but you know, he 00:18:14.620 |
was pretty freewheeling kind of guy. And his point was really 00:18:17.720 |
broader than that. It was that, you know, all of us have 00:18:20.140 |
something that people can look to us for and use against us in 00:18:23.500 |
some way. But I think what's really important with this Joe 00:18:26.260 |
Rogan thing, and I think the bigger picture for me, dissenting 00:18:29.960 |
and critical voices and outspoken voices are extremely 00:18:33.260 |
important in the discourse that makes society progress. It is 00:18:37.040 |
not a good society, when people that have dissenting of voices 00:18:40.880 |
or offensive voices are shut down. Society has a better 00:18:44.540 |
opportunity to chart a new course and to identify new pads. 00:18:48.900 |
Sometimes when the dissenting voice is wrong, and sometimes 00:18:52.700 |
when it is right, but in both cases, it is important to have 00:18:55.840 |
that dissenting voice because it allows us to have the dialogue 00:18:59.480 |
collectively to figure out what is wrong, and what is right. And 00:19:03.200 |
so this notion of cancel culture and the way that people like Joe 00:19:06.500 |
Rogan are and have been attacked for things that they have said 00:19:10.400 |
in the past or do say today, I think is really contrary to the 00:19:15.020 |
opportunity that the United States presents with this, you 00:19:17.660 |
know, founding principle of freedom of speech. 00:19:21.280 |
Yeah, so I agree with that. I want to build on what Chema said 00:19:24.680 |
with the Rene Girard analysis of this. I mean, what we're seeing 00:19:29.000 |
here is the modern day equivalent of a primitive, you know, archaic 00:19:34.700 |
stoning ritual. This is a modern day virtual stoning, in which 00:19:39.080 |
we're not killing somebody, but we're trying to kill their 00:19:42.680 |
digital avatar. I mean, we're basically trying to remove and 00:19:45.320 |
destroy their online presence. I mean, that was really the goal 00:19:48.620 |
here. And, and the mechanics of this thing, it only works to the 00:19:58.520 |
mechanism of the scapegoating. As soon as they become aware that 00:20:01.520 |
this person's being targeted selectively as a scapegoat, it 00:20:04.820 |
stops working. And that was the situation we were in last week 00:20:08.840 |
where you had, you know, Neil Young through the first, he cast 00:20:12.140 |
the first stone, despite being guilty of misinformation many 00:20:16.020 |
times himself, he's got like a weird history of saying weird 00:20:19.040 |
things about GMOs and gay people and some of the stuff got dredged 00:20:22.740 |
back up. And I think that was fair, because let he who is 00:20:28.040 |
And then he got some of his friends, you know, the these 00:20:31.880 |
aging, you know, rockers like Joni Mitchell, and Crosby, 00:20:36.740 |
Stills and Nash to throw the next stones. And then the media 00:20:40.520 |
got in on this and through CNN and MSNBC, they were throwing 00:20:44.000 |
stones. And it was all motivated by the fact that Rogan is 00:20:48.680 |
simply does not refuse, he refuses to parrot their orthodoxy 00:20:52.220 |
because, you know, we can see people like Howard Stern, who I 00:20:57.560 |
today, Howard Stern has become a full fledged COVID hysteric. I 00:21:00.800 |
mean, he is fully on board with the COVID restrictions and 00:21:04.160 |
mandates in this area. That's why he gets diplomatic immunity 00:21:07.040 |
to this. So this whole, the whole scapegoating ritual around 00:21:11.720 |
Rogan was about to fail last week. And that's why they 00:21:14.780 |
escalated it is because they saw first of all, Rogan was getting 00:21:18.200 |
away. And then second, our ability to to run these sorts of 00:21:23.840 |
like witch hunts. If people start to reject that we lose 00:21:27.080 |
all of our power. And so that's why this thing escalated into 00:21:30.320 |
the most sensitive area that we have in our society, this 00:21:33.920 |
language around race, this very hurtful, these hurtful epithets. 00:21:38.060 |
And these people are playing games with that with with that 00:21:41.920 |
type of language. And it's very destructive. And but I think 00:21:49.040 |
I really agree with this. I think like the the scapegoating 00:21:56.600 |
I think it's a way to resolve things in a way that is very, very 00:22:00.860 |
effective. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the 00:22:02.840 |
key to solving things. And I think that's the key to solving 00:22:05.360 |
things. And I think that's the key to solving things. And I think 00:22:07.360 |
that's the key to solving things. And I think that's the key to 00:22:08.980 |
solving things. But I think that's the key to solving things. 00:22:11.600 |
And I think that's the key to solving things. And I think that's 00:22:12.380 |
the key to solving things. And I think that's the key to solving 00:22:13.100 |
things. And I think that's the key to solving things. And I think 00:22:13.640 |
that's the key to solving things. And I think that's the key to 00:22:14.360 |
solving things. And I think that's the key to solving things. 00:22:14.860 |
But I think that's the key to solving things. And I think that's 00:22:15.300 |
working. And it's not nearly as effective anymore. It's a burnt 00:22:18.940 |
out tactic, you know, we see this in startups. And it's like 00:22:21.520 |
this marketing channel has been overburdened everybody knows 00:22:23.920 |
like, okay, I'm being marketed to and to give it some context 00:22:26.840 |
for those people who are wondering, you heard renesha on 00:22:29.400 |
like three or four times here. It's a philosopher. And he 00:22:33.160 |
taught at Stanford, he had a big impact on Peter Thiel. I don't 00:22:36.360 |
know if Saks actually took any courses with them. And there's a 00:22:38.820 |
book me Peter David. I mean, like, if you take courses with 00:22:42.340 |
him, I never took any courses. But Peter told me about his 00:22:45.960 |
ideas in college. I read some of his books. Yeah, 00:22:48.020 |
his books are incredible. I mean, he is one of the most 00:22:51.400 |
powerful thinkers of this. I mean, he's he passed away 00:22:55.600 |
and reminds me of Joseph Campbell, the power of math, 00:22:57.740 |
like they were really thinking about the sort of basic basic 00:23:02.140 |
tenants of like human, the human condition and how people 00:23:05.080 |
behave. It's really worth double clicking on. I think also 00:23:08.920 |
interesting, in terms of forgiveness and blackface. 00:23:12.680 |
Justin Trudeau has appeared no less than three times in his 00:23:17.340 |
youth in blackface. And it's not a joke. It's literally true. 00:23:21.780 |
Justin Trudeau, like the reason why the the racism label was 00:23:27.060 |
planted on Rogan is because he's heterodox. The reason why that 00:23:31.520 |
racism label has not yet really been planted on Justin Trudeau is 00:23:35.880 |
because he's Orthodox. He's quite he's quite part of the 00:23:39.180 |
ingrained establishment. He comes from royalty. In Canada, 00:23:42.180 |
growing up peer trudeau you know we were we were liberals growing up we were members of the 00:23:46.740 |
liberal party we'd made donations to the liberal party you know in our lore there is no greater 00:23:53.780 |
symbol than pierre trudeau his father and so when you're the son of somebody like that you 00:23:58.340 |
get an enormous amount of credit in your bank account that you're born with and he was able 00:24:04.100 |
to burn through so much of it by doing things that anybody else in any other situation may 00:24:09.060 |
have been judged much more harshly for and he wasn't um and he becomes prime minister and then 00:24:14.180 |
he's able to get re-elected but you know his day of reckoning reckoning is coming um because he is 00:24:20.820 |
revealing himself to be a part of this establishment with these views that are actually 00:24:27.060 |
really uncomfortable and you know quite grotesque because of how judgmental they are of everybody 00:24:33.300 |
else and that's a great segue and then just finally sax it correct me if i'm wrong here 00:24:39.300 |
joe rogan has voted democrat his whole life he holds largely democratic beliefs uh he's for 00:24:45.940 |
universal health care he's pro-trans he's pro-gay he's supporting bernie sanders and he was a voting 00:24:51.940 |
for bernie sanders he's a really stupid person for the democrats for democratic politicians like 00:24:57.620 |
biden to alienate because he's a hero to young people he's a hero to the working class and his 00:25:04.260 |
views are fundamentally i'd say more progressive yeah they're 100 percent progressive yes 00:25:08.740 |
so it's stupid for them to do this but it's also stupid for them to be alienating these truckers 00:25:13.220 |
because democrats were supposed to be the party of the working class so let's pivot to that issue can 00:25:17.300 |
i just say one last thing i just want to reiterate this sax because i just i just want to really give 00:25:21.780 |
you a chance to say it again you've always said and it's so true the solution to free speech and 00:25:27.060 |
to protect it is more speech and i just want to say to danielak and the team at spotify you guys 00:25:32.180 |
must have been in a really difficult spot but the decision to take that hundred million dollars to 00:25:38.260 |
increase the funnel for other voices and historically underrepresented voices is so good 00:25:44.980 |
and i hope you guys get to the other side of it but i thought it was a really really really 00:25:49.300 |
good decision yeah i mean so on eck and the spotify decision let me say i want to think 00:25:53.140 |
to that so i applaud them for not cancelling rogan they must have been under enormous pressure to do 00:25:58.820 |
so including from their own you know employees um the only thing i didn't like in x statement 00:26:03.540 |
was when he talked about the user safety and how they need to do a better job of 00:26:07.780 |
of user safety that's a concept that doesn't make a lot of sense to me i mean rogan is not sneaking 00:26:14.180 |
into people's living rooms and turning his show on and pressing play if people don't like it i'm 00:26:20.340 |
talking about users if users don't like the content they don't have to listen you don't have 00:26:25.220 |
to click play he's not literally turning the channel safety yeah but we've still bought into 00:26:29.780 |
this idea of psychological safety that being confronted with any view you don't like is a 00:26:35.060 |
threat to your safety that is actually a threat to your safety and that's why i think that's a threat 00:26:37.300 |
actually a threat to free speech because it's giving the most hysterical people in our culture 00:26:41.380 |
the ones who are most prone to being offended a veto over any idea and speech they don't like 00:26:46.580 |
yeah if you're uncomfortable you're unsafe you could remove yourself from that situation 00:26:51.060 |
if it's a piece of media you don't need to read every book you don't need to see every quentin 00:26:54.580 |
tarantino film you don't need to listen to joe rogan or whatever else that you find 00:26:58.020 |
offensive to you personally i just don't think we should be feeding that idea that that psychological 00:27:02.580 |
safety is a legitimate idea we talked about this before with like you know people at work 00:27:06.820 |
if they say they feel unsafe that's instantly like an hr like oh my god you feel unsafe yeah 00:27:12.340 |
red alert hr right now everybody has a legal requirement if someone's creating a safety issue 00:27:18.020 |
in the workplace they have a legal requirement to remove that problem that's why this language 00:27:22.660 |
got started is it triggers the machinery of hr to remove people who are doing nothing wrong 00:27:28.340 |
what if i told you as an employee like saxon hey listen your work product is not good enough you're 00:27:33.060 |
like i feel unsafe right okay anyway let's go to the truckers because i think we're going to talk 00:27:36.340 |
about this because i think we're beating this to death i just want to have one final comment on 00:27:39.300 |
spotify i think and i appreciate what daniel did with 100 million dollars that's great and i think 00:27:47.940 |
it's great that he's supporting free speech and he's holding his ground there i know that's not 00:27:51.220 |
easy however i think he's intellectually dishonest saying they're not the publisher of joe rogan 00:27:56.100 |
i have a three-part test to see if you're a publisher do you pay for the content do you promote 00:28:00.420 |
it do you produce it if you do two or more of those you're de facto a publisher in my mind they 00:28:05.380 |
pay a lot of money for joe rogan they promote the heck out of him and while they don't produce it in 00:28:10.420 |
advance by picking the guests they do have a production-like veto uh on what content they 00:28:17.060 |
put out there and so if netflix has to own the people they pay uh even if they don't produce it 00:28:23.220 |
and they promote then spotify does need to have the same standard and disney and netflix all are 00:28:29.700 |
producers of content nobody would argue that and i believe spotify is the producer daniel's not being 00:28:34.580 |
honest final thought on this let me just defend spotify for a second okay you guys have been 00:28:38.580 |
through this i've i've been through this many times at several of my companies but when you 00:28:42.340 |
are in the middle of a firestorm it's very rare that you can put out these you know press releases 00:28:50.660 |
where the pride of authorship is one person and in many ways you have to write these pr releases 00:28:58.980 |
and i think that's something that you know you may not have the ability to do in a really good way but 00:29:03.300 |
i think that's something that you know we can do it and i think that's going to be a very good way to 00:29:07.300 |
get people to buy into spotify and i think it's going to be a very good way to get people to buy 00:29:11.940 |
into spotify because i think that's going to be a very good way to get people to buy into spotify 00:29:15.940 |
and i think that's going to be a very good way to get people to buy into spotify as well so i think 00:29:19.620 |
that's going to be a very good way to get people to buy into spotify and i think that's going to be a 00:29:22.900 |
very good way to get people to buy into spotify and i think that's going to be a very good way to get 00:29:28.260 |
people to buy into spotify and i think that's going to be a very good way to get people to buy 00:29:30.260 |
into spotify and i think that's going to be a very good way to get people to buy into spotify and 00:29:31.620 |
you know i didn't particularly like sometimes you know brian's essay i could have written it better 00:29:36.100 |
but at the end of the day what i saw through it and i admitted this later 00:29:39.060 |
the substance of what brian armstrong did was incredibly profound one of the most important 00:29:44.260 |
things that actually happened in the last few years in silicon valley culture and i would just 00:29:48.340 |
say that i think that daniel did something really powerful here and i think that both spotify and 00:29:52.660 |
coinbase deserve and the employees and the leaders there deserve a round of applause i think it was a 00:29:57.540 |
i think it was a very very hard decision and i think they stuck to their guns irrespective of 00:30:01.940 |
what you believe they stuck to their guns canadian truckers are protesting as many of you know vaccine 00:30:08.180 |
mandates just breaking today ontario's premier has declared a state of emergency for the entire 00:30:15.060 |
province and ottawa police have braced for thousands of protesters to descend for the third 00:30:21.300 |
consecutive weekend usa today also reported the convoy could disrupt the super bowl by the state of 00:30:26.820 |
the union etc the protest has been self-titled the freedom convoy and has been underway since 00:30:32.500 |
january 29th 29th it appears it uh has spanned several thousand vehicles across the country 00:30:39.380 |
and the truckers are blocking key roadways and bridges including the ambassador bridge 00:30:43.860 |
they're seeking an end to canada's vaccine mandates and 00:30:50.740 |
it feels like this is now morphing into something a little bit wider than just vaccine mandates 00:30:57.620 |
maybe it's becoming a occupy wall street type of uh protest open to many people with many different 00:31:04.580 |
uh things that they have uh grievances about a reporter from uh barry weiss's common sense 00:31:12.980 |
newsletter slash media operation uh wrote what the truckers want jason you're you you just nailed it 00:31:19.860 |
um i do think that this is actually occupy wall street 2.0 yeah look it it turned out just to get 00:31:26.180 |
root some facts so it's not just truckers this is a broad-based coalition of people across every 00:31:32.420 |
single race and gender and age group in canada that's participating in this thing in fact the 00:31:37.620 |
barry weiss article you know she profiled men women of all ages seeks you know whites i mean 00:31:43.860 |
everybody blacks there is so there's a there's a coalition of people second is this really isn't 00:31:49.860 |
about vaccination rates because it turns out truckers are 90 vaccinated they're vaccinated at 00:31:54.500 |
a higher percentage than the average population of people who are vaccinated in canada and the 00:31:56.120 |
other thing is that truckers are 90 vaccinated they're vaccinated at a higher percentage than the 00:31:56.120 |
average population of people who are vaccinated in canada and the other thing is that truckers are 90 00:31:56.160 |
broad based population of Canada, which is about 78%. I think the the point of this and again, I care about this so much as a Canadian, but I just want to read a quote from Justin Trudeau because I think it encapsulates what this is really about. The quote is the small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa, who are holding unacceptable views that they are expressing do not represent the views of Canadians. And I think it's that phrase, 00:32:25.960 |
unacceptable views that really points to what the real issue here is, which is that there are a lot of people who now say it's been two years, enough with mask mandates, enough with all of this, you know, almost police state that's developed all of the emergency use power that politicians have taken. Let's reclaim our democracy and let's have, you know, freedom again. And under the 00:32:55.940 |
political viewpoint of the ruling Liberal Party, which by the way, is now going into revolt as well. A bunch of liberal MPs have just completely flipped because of this statement. It summarizes what Trudeau is saying, which is what you believe is unacceptable to me. And so now I will quash you or that Canada has one viewpoint. Freeberg. Did any of you guys listen to the New York Times Daily podcast that our friend sent out the link to this morning? Yes. You know, to me, these are the same story. It was actually an interview 00:33:25.560 |
with a reporter who highlighted some work that she had done and identified that Phil Murphy, the Democratic governor of New Jersey, had done some, some some polling and some some focus group discussions with some of his constituents. And the overriding tone was one of emotion, one of feeling left out of the life that they believe they should have been living over the past two years. And ultimately, I think the tone speaks very clearly to what the Trump 00:33:55.540 |
Rutgers are saying, which is everyone feels more than ever, incredible overreach into 00:34:00.020 |
their personal lives by the government, and by different governments, whether it's local 00:34:04.180 |
or federal here in the US, or by this Canadian government, or, you know, go to Australia 00:34:08.980 |
or the UK and the sentiment seems to be similar everywhere. I don't think that anytime since 00:34:13.640 |
World War Two, have we seen the government create such restrictions and such mandates 00:34:19.040 |
in in democratic republics, like the United States, that we just saw over the past two 00:34:25.180 |
years. And I think the fact that it's continuing when folks are now seeing, you know, on the 00:34:29.600 |
ground every day, you know, the mildness of Omicron, or like, you know, the big, the challenges 00:34:36.780 |
that their kids are facing in school, and you kind of put these things together, and 00:34:39.680 |
you say to yourself, why is my government restricting my life and causing the challenge 00:34:49.000 |
everyone feels everywhere in the West today, I think in the East, it's a little bit different, 00:34:53.040 |
right? Because of the the mindset there, but I think here, collectivism, collectivism. 00:34:58.500 |
And I think here, we're we pride individual liberty and freedom, as kind of the foundation 00:35:04.120 |
of these democracies, to have the government tell us what we have to wear shots, we have 00:35:09.140 |
to put in our arms, where we can go and when how we can behave in ways that were never 00:35:13.920 |
legislated in ways that were never kind of debated and discussed publicly, just feels 00:35:18.960 |
like a little bit of a shame. And I think we're reaching at this point, I think everyone's 00:35:20.220 |
hit their breaking point. And this is another one of these examples, this trucking thing 00:35:23.920 |
is another one of these examples of people manifesting their breaking point. 00:35:27.340 |
And sacks to the point we've been discussing over and over again, things have changed radically 00:35:31.780 |
since the beginning of the pandemic, you believed in mask mandates early, because hey, no downside. 00:35:35.960 |
We talked about that. And we didn't want hospitals to be overrun, which is reasonable, you want 00:35:41.420 |
to have oxygen, we were all, you know, trying to make plans for Hey, how bad is this going 00:35:45.860 |
to be? But we're sitting here two years later, and it's pretty clear Omicron, which I've 00:35:48.920 |
had, thank you, sacks is is a nothing. Thanks, sacks. 00:35:54.320 |
Sacks of Cron. I helped you. Superhero. Thank you. I've ever gotten a sick when I've been 00:36:00.420 |
around you. Yeah, I went to sacks party. And all I got was an $8,000 gift bag and Omicron. 00:36:07.800 |
No, I think I think getting Omicron helped you because it enabled you to see that this 00:36:12.240 |
for you was largely a nothing burger. And so you could come out of your house and start 00:36:15.360 |
acting normal. I think there's a lot of people all over the country. You're saying that you 00:36:18.880 |
left your house for two years. Do you remember the photos of sacks at the beginning of COVID 00:36:30.120 |
Well, look, I supported mass mandates at the beginning of the pandemic. When Fauci was 00:36:34.440 |
telling us mass didn't work. Let's let's not forget that. You know, I was supporting when 00:36:38.640 |
the health officials told us they didn't work. Why? Because it was the only thing we had. 00:36:43.140 |
David, David, David Cohen, he was he was doing us a favor by lying to us by his own admission. 00:36:48.840 |
I lied to you so that we could preserve these masks for frontline workers. Well, thank you. 00:36:54.780 |
One of many one of many look noble lies that he's been telling. 00:36:58.080 |
Here we go. He's in he's a noble liar. He's in right by May of 2020. I would say 00:37:03.320 |
biggest political loser pick from 2020. Go on. Take it easy on your picks. I know you 00:37:08.580 |
want to do your victory lap. It's only February. Give us till like June for the check in. Okay, 00:37:13.380 |
Colonel Kurtz continue mass were the main alternative to lockdown. So that's the way 00:37:16.740 |
I saw it in the summer of 2020. And I think that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to 00:37:18.800 |
take a look at the numbers. And I was saying and these crazy lockdowns just do mass and 00:37:22.040 |
then once we had the vaccine and all COVID restrictions that was a year ago. And now 00:37:26.880 |
we still have these restrictions a year later. And that is what the truckers are rebelling 00:37:31.440 |
against. Just like you said, these are ordinary people who are sick and tired of having to 00:37:36.300 |
show their papers and have to deal with these mandates. And, and for that they've been like 00:37:42.760 |
absolutely demonized. I mean, Trudeau comes out and says that they're basically white 00:37:50.560 |
Sorry, to your point, he used every he did use every ism. He really did try to cancel 00:37:54.400 |
them at first. And this is what's really painted him in a corner. He went on national TV. And 00:37:58.820 |
he said, these people are racist and misogynist. That's, that's specifically what he said. 00:38:03.800 |
And it actually turned out that the overwhelming majority of them were not they were just normal, 00:38:09.120 |
ordinary law abiding Canadians who are just fed up with the overreach. And then, then 00:38:13.380 |
what happened was the polling said, you should bring these convoy leaders in, sit them down 00:38:18.720 |
and talk to them. And then the political calculus, though, was impossible for him, because he had 00:38:23.960 |
already called them racist and misogynist. So then how could he bring them in? 00:38:27.480 |
Right? Exactly. Yeah. How do you negotiate with Nazis, basically? 00:38:30.680 |
So then what he did was he ran out of Ottawa. So instead of staying in Ottawa, 00:38:34.280 |
now he's under in a secure location for his seat. 00:38:37.320 |
Oh, my God. Oh, he feels unsafe. So trigger warning. But in fairness, when you bring 8000 people 00:38:43.240 |
together, and you get a wide enough group of people, there was swats, tickers and whites, Confederate flag 00:38:48.680 |
flags that were flown. So it might have been two of 8000. But that did happen within the 00:38:54.740 |
protest movement, which I just said, yes, with any protest movement, there's always gonna be a 00:38:59.420 |
handful of people who go too far and are too extreme. But they did not represent the vast, 00:39:05.360 |
vast majority of the people who turned out which are ordinary citizens. And Trudeau seized on a 00:39:11.000 |
handful of isolated examples to try and demonize these guys. And I think it's blowing up in his 00:39:15.800 |
face. The fact of the matter is, the truckers did not get away with it. 00:39:18.640 |
They did not start this fight. It's the zealotry of our elites of our professional class that 00:39:23.740 |
started this fight. They will not give up on these mandates. That's the fundamental problem. 00:39:28.000 |
Well, and while they go to the Super Bowl with no mascot, 00:39:30.580 |
I think what you're seeing here with this trucker thing, I think it's going to have huge ripple 00:39:33.760 |
effects because it's showing the schism in the Democratic Party between the professional elites 00:39:38.800 |
and the working class. Here you have the working class. Remember, these were the essential workers, 00:39:44.200 |
these are the people bringing us our food. Most of them have already had COVID over the last couple 00:39:48.600 |
of years. They couldn't sit behind a computer and do their job in their pajamas on Zoom all day. 00:39:54.360 |
Okay? So, these guys know the reality of COVID, just like you learned the reality, Jason, when 00:39:59.520 |
you actually got it. And yet we've got this neurotic class of professionals within the 00:40:04.680 |
Democratic Party who are these COVID dead-enders, don't want to give this stuff up. And that's the 00:40:10.260 |
fundamental divide. And I think Biden's going to have to choose which side are you on. Are you on 00:40:14.160 |
the side of the working class or the professional class? Trudeau has chosen his side. He is the 00:40:18.560 |
defeat elite face of these COVID dead-enders. And Biden's going to have to choose who he supports. 00:40:25.520 |
And those are dwindling. You have governors now who are Democratic governors in many states who 00:40:30.920 |
are saying, "Listen, Omicron is obviously different. And look at the charts, look at the 00:40:36.260 |
data. We don't need masks." We have to talk about this New York Times story on how New Jersey and 00:40:41.360 |
several other of these blue states dropped the mask mandates. It was absolutely extraordinary. 00:40:44.960 |
I mean, it's not extraordinary. The risk assessment is different, David. 00:40:50.320 |
I mean, I think it's kind of obvious more than extraordinary. If Omicron is less deadly, 00:40:55.000 |
it's an upper respiratory, doesn't kill people who are vaccinated, and most people are vaccinated, 00:40:59.320 |
pretty obviously, it's time to pivot and open everything up. It sounds like an obvious decision. 00:41:03.040 |
Biden really missed his moment here. So I think, like Freeberg said, it was Phil Murphy. He's 00:41:07.780 |
the Democratic governor of New Jersey. He was supposed to have an easy reelect win by 20 to 30 00:41:11.980 |
points. He narrowly squeaks by, by two to three points. So then he conducts the focus groups to 00:41:18.480 |
Why were we so off on this thing? And they find out that people are tired of these mandates. He 00:41:23.580 |
goes to the White House, okay, and shows these findings and says, "Guys, we have to get off this 00:41:28.380 |
losing position on COVID." And the White House sits on his hands and does absolutely nothing. 00:41:33.060 |
So Murphy is like, "We can't wait anymore." So he unilaterally goes without White House support. 00:41:38.340 |
This is all in the New York Times article. This is not like some right-wing publication saying 00:41:42.540 |
this, okay? So he unilaterally says, "Okay, we're getting rid of the mask mandate." Okay? And then five 00:41:48.440 |
other states do the same thing because they realize we can't wait anymore. And Biden is 00:41:52.580 |
just nowhere to be found. And Psaki is saying, "Well, we're deferring to the CDC." They're 00:41:56.960 |
deferring to Rachel Walensky at the CDC and Randy Weingartner at the teachers unions and these 00:42:03.380 |
health officials like Barbara Furrier in LA County, all of whom are saying, "We cannot lift these 00:42:08.000 |
mandates yet." They don't want it. So they are completely on the wrong side of this. And then 00:42:11.780 |
Biden really steps in it by saying to Trudeau and Canada, "Listen, you guys got to clear this bridge. 00:42:18.400 |
Do whatever you need to do to clear this bridge." Basically implying that the civil disobedience 00:42:24.040 |
needs to be met by force. And then you've got Harvard professors and CNN analysts saying, 00:42:28.840 |
"Slash their tires, take away their trucking licenses, starve them out." 00:42:32.860 |
You know? So this has been the response. And the response to that is now there's a trucker convoy 00:42:37.780 |
getting started in the US and they're going to march on Washington. They're going to drive to 00:42:42.580 |
And between now and then, Biden better figure out what side he's going to be on because if he doesn't 00:42:47.740 |
handle this right, he's going to be on the right side. 00:42:48.360 |
I think it's going to be the end of his presidency. 00:42:49.920 |
Peaceful civil disobedience is fine as long as they're not blocking ambulances, 00:42:53.280 |
getting people to and from hospitals. That's fine, especially the unvaccinated. 00:42:56.880 |
Joe Biden, is this Scranton Joe, the guy who said he would take us back to normalcy, 00:43:03.180 |
the representative of the working class, is that who the president of the United States is? Or is 00:43:08.580 |
he in the Trudeau camp, the Fauci and the Walensky and the Barbara Ferreres? 00:43:15.420 |
I think you're asking a rhetorical question. I think 00:43:18.320 |
that the polling data makes the answer pretty clear, which is that the Democratic Party is 00:43:25.700 |
lurching towards establishment insiders and working normal ordinary people have in larger 00:43:34.040 |
and larger numbers started gravitating towards to the Republican Party. Minorities in far larger 00:43:42.320 |
numbers than we ever expected have started lurching towards the Republican Party. And so the answer 00:43:48.280 |
is sort of in the polling data and what what the actual facts on the ground have been, you know, 00:43:54.040 |
I mean, we forget. Because we were also ready to to to cast away our Trump derangement syndrome, 00:44:01.180 |
syndrome, but he did get I think, what was it 9 million more people to vote for him in this past. 00:44:06.400 |
Yeah, the working class, whether they're the white working class or the non white working class are 00:44:11.920 |
moving in huge numbers. I think I think I think the margin of non white working class who moved to the 00:44:17.560 |
Republicans last election was 18 points. They got 18 points more share than eight years ago. So the 00:44:23.920 |
working class, regardless of their race is moving towards the Republicans while the Democrats are 00:44:29.140 |
becoming this more a feat elite professional class party, this woke elite party. And, you know, 00:44:35.440 |
I think Biden sort of is caught in the middle of this. And I think he's running out of time to try 00:44:40.720 |
and reestablish that he's going to have a centrist presidency that is not completely Kowtow. And, 00:44:47.520 |
you know, I think he's going to have to defer to the left of his party to this sort of woke elite 00:44:50.460 |
thinking, you know, you see democratic political scientists like Roy to share writing about this, 00:44:54.120 |
like, every week, saying, this is your last chance. This is your moment to save your presidency. I 00:45:01.240 |
Freedberg, we made some great progress in science this week in nuclear fusion. 00:45:05.820 |
You want to tee this up for us? I'm happy to. So let me just give a little background 00:45:12.120 |
for maybe a minute on fusion. So you know, the, the way energy is made in the sun, and in all stars 00:45:19.380 |
is through this process of nuclear fusion, where hydrogen nuclei, the protons inside of hydrogen 00:45:25.860 |
atoms shoot around, it's such a high energy, and they're so dense, because of the amount of 00:45:29.880 |
hydrogen, it all causes gravity to pull them all together, they get really dense, they start slamming 00:45:34.320 |
into each other, when they slam into each other, they fuse into helium and ultimately the heavier 00:45:37.800 |
elements and release energy in the process. And that is what fusion is. 00:45:41.160 |
So you know, we talked about nuclear energy on Earth, all nuclear energy that we generated on 00:45:45.960 |
Earth, as a species to date has been through fission, where we take much heavier elements, 00:45:50.880 |
like plutonium and uranium, and they break apart by squeezing them together, and they release energy. 00:45:55.080 |
But this creates radioactive material, it's dangerous, it's very, very expensive, and so on. 00:46:00.480 |
So there's always been a question since roughly the 1950s, on whether or not we could recreate 00:46:05.700 |
the conditions of the sun or stars on planet Earth, by creating a plasma, 00:46:10.200 |
by creating the same sort of plasma that exists inside of stars, very hot, very fast, very dense 00:46:16.260 |
hydrogen that can slam into itself and slam into atoms and fuse into helium and release energy. 00:46:26.100 |
Yeah. God, you're gonna give him a wedgie. Let science boy finish. Come on. 00:46:34.920 |
Was it 69 megajoules or 420 megajoules? Go ahead. Sorry. 00:46:38.820 |
Well, plasma fusion's always been this kind of holy grail of energy, because if you can actually 00:46:42.540 |
generate plasma fusion, the amount of energy it takes to create the plasma is less than the energy 00:46:47.400 |
that comes out of the plasma. So it's effectively infinite, free, cheap plasma. And so the system 00:46:54.180 |
that people have been building for the last 25, 30 years is these donut-shaped systems called 00:47:00.000 |
tokamaks. They're like a circle, like a donut, and they spin the plasma around inside. And so 00:47:05.220 |
it generates a lot of energy and magnets and so on to try and make this work. 00:47:08.040 |
You know, there's a company we talked about a few months ago called Commonwealth Fusion Systems, 00:47:12.000 |
which uses a new superconducting material to control that plasma and use instead of 00:47:16.500 |
using expensive magnets, may just raise $1.8 billion. 00:47:19.260 |
And, you know, more recently, the joint European Taurus, which is managed by the 00:47:27.060 |
Atomic Energy Authority in the United Kingdom, just this week demonstrated energy output from their 00:47:35.100 |
tokamak plasma fusion system, where they generated, you know, 59 megawatts of energy in five seconds, 00:47:40.920 |
which is a record. The prior record was set in 1997. By that same agency, they generated 16 00:47:47.880 |
megawatts of power output. So it was a great breakthrough. And you know, to make this all 00:47:52.680 |
possible has required technical breakthroughs in electronics, technical breakthroughs in sensors 00:47:59.520 |
and computing and hardware and material science and superconductors. And so all of this is starting 00:48:04.980 |
But plasma fusion might actually become a reality. And the ITAR system, which is the biggest 00:48:10.320 |
construction project in Europe, 35 nations have contributed a total of roughly 50 to $60 billion 00:48:15.840 |
to make this system is it's going to go online around 2027. They've been building it for 20 years, 00:48:21.960 |
it's going to be a 500 megawatt demonstration system. And if it works, then it opens up the 00:48:27.240 |
door that in the future, we may actually be able to turn plasma fusion into an energy source for 00:48:32.040 |
all of humanity. It basically would use water, 00:48:34.860 |
plasma fusion is made from taking hydrogen, which you would get from water, spinning it around, 00:48:38.880 |
heating it up, getting it to be really, really dense, and ultimately driving power out of it. 00:48:43.080 |
The implications are extraordinary, right. So over the next few decades, it is appearing more likely 00:48:48.780 |
that we will have plasma fusion systems working on Earth. And as that happens, energy becomes free, 00:48:53.880 |
and it becomes unlimited. And with unlimited free energy, we can terraform Earth, right, 00:48:59.040 |
we can take ocean water, desalinate, turn it into fresh water, we can pump that into deserts, turn 00:49:04.740 |
it into rainforests. You know, the total annual production of energy on Earth today is about 170 00:49:10.920 |
terawatt hours, that amount of energy can be generated from just a 10 foot by 10 foot by 10 00:49:15.660 |
foot cube of water. That's the amount of energy, the amount of material that would be turned into 00:49:20.400 |
photons that would drive all of the electricity we need on Earth. So it's an incredible technology, 00:49:24.660 |
an incredible breakthrough, we're starting to see this stuff happen. One area that I wanted 00:49:28.860 |
to kind of just highlight, which no one talks about, but which I think is extraordinarily important, 00:49:34.620 |
about 100 years from now, let's say, as these plasma fusion systems work, it's certainly going 00:49:40.500 |
to be true that we'll have abundant free energy during the back half of this century. And that'll 00:49:45.480 |
change everything will decarbonize the atmosphere will terraform the planet, we can make whatever we 00:49:49.980 |
want, we can build things, etc. But the same system of plasma fusion theoretically could be used to 00:49:57.240 |
fuse heavier elements than just helium. So fast forward 100 or 200 years, if we can actually make 00:50:04.500 |
we could also and to make helium to make energy, we could also use them to make heavier elements, 00:50:10.080 |
like the rare earth metals that we talked about being so important here on Earth to make batteries 00:50:14.940 |
or phosphorus, which you know, we're going to run out of on planet Earth in about 100 years, 00:50:20.280 |
which is a critical component of agriculture and feeding ourselves. So you know, over the next call 00:50:25.920 |
it 100 years plasma fusion systems, I think back half of this century come online, provide us with 00:50:30.540 |
abundant free energy. And then in the 22nd century, I think this idea of nuclear 00:50:34.380 |
synthesis, the idea that we can actually make the rare earth or the heavier elements that are limited 00:50:39.780 |
natural resources here on Earth, where we could turn water into gold or water into lithium or 00:50:44.940 |
water into molybdenum, or you know, into beryllium or whatever, starts to become a reality. And so 00:50:50.700 |
this to me, like I feel like we're on the eve of plasma fusion being a reality, you know, based on 00:50:54.840 |
some of the results we're seeing, and it's one after the other I tear is going to come online, 00:50:58.380 |
you know, Commonwealth fusion had their materials breakthrough and on and on and on. So this seems 00:51:02.820 |
to be building up. And so the 2030s a tipping point. Yeah, that's right. I think the 2030s and 00:51:07.860 |
the 2040s are where this becomes real. And all these problems and concerns we have about climate 00:51:13.020 |
change, and carbon in the atmosphere, all of this stuff can be reversed with infinite energy. And so 00:51:18.900 |
so I'm optimistic, and I'm excited about a lot of what we're seeing. Let me ask you one question. 00:51:23.160 |
Obviously, when people start hearing about nuclear reactors and fission, and then they 00:51:27.840 |
start learning about fusion, they immediately have the Chernobyl's of the world and Fukushima 00:51:32.700 |
has come to mind and nuclear bombs. In this case, when this reaction occurs, my understanding, 00:51:38.400 |
I've interviewed a couple people working on these reactors, is that the reaction just fizzles out, 00:51:43.680 |
it just stops. And then it's not radioactive. So these, these are not radioactive materials that 00:51:49.140 |
naturally decay into radioactive ions or particles that can damage the body or damage. These are 00:51:57.000 |
literally just hydrogen atoms that are spun around so hot and smashed into each other. So if the 00:52:01.620 |
machine breaks, everything just turns off. That's it. And the output, even when it's working, my 00:52:06.360 |
understanding is some natural, like just air and water. So there's no output. There's no, there's 00:52:12.840 |
nothing radioactive. There's no environment. Let me fast forward 200 years. So now assume these 00:52:18.600 |
systems work. As you guys know, all technology over time gets better, faster, cheaper, smaller. 00:52:25.620 |
So in 200 years, we could find that we have plasma fusion reactions in every pocket in 00:52:31.500 |
every computer in every phone. Imagine a world where we no longer need batteries, 00:52:35.460 |
where we no longer need transmission lines, and where a system can literally pull hydrogen out 00:52:40.440 |
of the air, generate electricity on the fly. And it sounds crazy. But people thought people would 00:52:45.300 |
have never thought that the batteries that we put inside of phones would have existed when the first 00:52:49.140 |
flow cell battery cell was made, you know, whatever, you know, during the early days of 00:52:53.040 |
chemistry, electrical chemistry. So you know, the idea that we've been able to shrink batteries as 00:52:58.020 |
we have the idea that we've been able to make generators like we have today, 00:53:01.380 |
these were concepts that would have been so foreign. So I do think that in 200 years, 00:53:05.340 |
if plasma fusion systems work, there's nothing about the laws of physics that says they're 00:53:09.120 |
limited in scale to only being large, they theoretically could be reduced down to there's 00:53:13.860 |
no limit to the size they could drop down to. And so there could be a world 200 years from now where 00:53:18.300 |
plasma fusion reactors exist in every component that needs electricity. And so ultimately, you 00:53:24.540 |
could see putting these systems on spaceships, and using them to convert elements from one form to 00:53:31.260 |
another. And we could live for, you know, 100,000 years on a spaceship, and just recycle the elements 00:53:36.420 |
on that spaceship to produce all our food and our air and everything. And yeah, for sure, we could 00:53:40.860 |
get to Uranus with that. Absolutely. The summary and back, you can back you could circle his anus. 00:53:46.980 |
So that was my diatribe on plasma fusion. I'm super excited about some of the right now. Sax is 00:53:52.560 |
wondering how we want our beaks. Just tell us where to place the bet. It's there's nowhere yet. 00:53:55.680 |
This is being honestly, I don't place bets on things that take 100,000 years. 00:54:01.140 |
100 years. Oh, 100 years. Sorry. 100,000 things that might materialize in four years. Sorry. 00:54:15.960 |
A big part of the, you know, just speaking markets for a second, I mentioned to you guys at the end 00:54:21.300 |
of last year that I made a bet on energy stocks. And the reason I made a bet on energy stocks is 00:54:25.260 |
because some of the breakthroughs that we're seeing in decarbonization and renewable energy has driven 00:54:31.020 |
in capital improvements across energy infrastructure, because people are so optimistic 00:54:35.820 |
about what's over the horizon. And they're so pessimistic about carbon intensive energy systems 00:54:40.740 |
that we actually have under invested over the past few years in energy infrastructure that it's 00:54:46.020 |
turning out today is critically needed. So while this is a great long term kind of optimistic world 00:54:51.360 |
scenario, and it's going to decarbonize energy production and energy systems in the near term, 00:54:56.340 |
we're actually struggling a bit to meet our energy demands. And there's a lot of leverage that energy 00:55:00.900 |
producers have over those that are the consumers as we're seeing currently with the Russia, Ukraine, 00:55:04.920 |
Europe, crisis and so on. And so part of the reason for the climate energy stocks over the 00:55:10.020 |
last couple of weeks has been largely driven by the fact that we're realizing that this under 00:55:14.220 |
investment in capex has created a decline in productivity of these assets relative to the 00:55:18.240 |
demand. And so suddenly, everyone's like, Oh, my gosh, these things are gonna be able to charge 00:55:21.720 |
more commodity prices are going up, and so on. So you know, it's very hard to think about playing 00:55:26.940 |
an investment cycle around this stuff, because in the near term, there's still significant 00:55:30.780 |
demand. And we only have carbon intensive systems to produce energy. 00:55:34.680 |
Well, I was gonna ask you, if does this mean on an investment thesis, you might see a massive spike 00:55:39.720 |
in carbon based fuel systems and these sovereign wealth funds and then a dramatic drop off? 00:55:47.280 |
The nobody will support anybody investing in pulling more oil out of the ground. They'll, 00:55:52.380 |
they'll support trying to get more from what we have. But you know, I don't know if you guys saw, 00:56:00.660 |
you know, there's no support for this, whether you're an investor, and you go activist on some 00:56:07.080 |
of these oil companies. You know, whether you're I think they're Biden had a big setback because 00:56:12.120 |
you know, he had cleared a whole like millions of acres of offshore 00:56:16.620 |
land for some kind of some kind of energy extraction that was then just reversed by 00:56:23.400 |
the courts. No, no, but nobody has support for this stuff. 00:56:26.100 |
But that's it. But what you're saying is exactly right. And it's exactly the reason oil prices are 00:56:30.540 |
climbing. I just sent you guys a link to what's going on today. 00:56:32.940 |
They're but they're climbing for the wrong reasons. So look, let's just be realistic here. 00:56:36.840 |
We, you know, we have a cartel, it's called OPEC, you know, and what they do is they decide output. 00:56:44.220 |
And we have some balance checks and balances to OPEC, namely Russia and a few other actors, 00:56:49.860 |
who will try to then regulate supply and demand so that there's mutually assured destruction. 00:56:56.280 |
The net result of all of that right now is that we do have some constrained 00:57:00.420 |
supply for the amount that we need to get to get back to the level of production we had pre pandemic. 00:57:05.520 |
So we are going to have some sustained energy prices. But you saw something really important 00:57:09.660 |
this past week. Everybody was waiting for this big CPI print, right, the consumer price index print. 00:57:14.580 |
Everybody thought it was going to be a bad number. It was a pretty bad number. 00:57:18.360 |
But the markets were pretty responsive to it. And, and then it's been pretty responsive the rest of 00:57:26.280 |
the week, despite a whole bunch of stuff. I don't know if you guys saw but like yesterday, there was 00:57:30.300 |
where, you know, one of the Fed governors was like, we should raise by 100 basis points by July. 00:57:35.100 |
And, you know, we should do eight, eight raises. And the markets were like, what are you talking 00:57:40.020 |
about? And why is that? Because now people have started to look, you know, I've mentioned this 00:57:45.480 |
before, when you go into a rate cycle, we're kind of past worrying about how many we kind of look to 00:57:52.800 |
the end, and decide what we want to believe about the future. And one of the most interesting things 00:58:00.180 |
Of this inflation was actually lower month over month. And so if you think about it that way, 00:58:06.420 |
we had a bad CPI print, but it's actually not going up as much. And in fact, it's starting to 00:58:11.940 |
trail off. And a lot of economists now forecast basically this inflation peaking or already having 00:58:18.600 |
peaked over the last few weeks. Consumer sentiment is not so good. A lot of us are now shifting our 00:58:25.020 |
consumption away from goods to more services, we're we're stopping, you know, the hoarding, 00:58:30.060 |
the hoarding of the toilet papers of the world, if you will. And so I'm not a big buyer of this trade, 00:58:35.340 |
to be honest with you, freeberg, I think that it works in the short term, I don't think it's 00:58:38.700 |
an investment, I think, at some point, you're going to have to make a decision about what your 00:58:42.600 |
view on energy is. I agree, I don't think this is a long term trade, trade, not an investment. 00:58:46.920 |
That's right. But I do I do, I do think that the macro sentiment sent the market in one direction, 00:58:50.880 |
it creates this optic, it created a buying opportunity, which I was pretty clear about. And 00:58:54.780 |
I do think that some of this global tension stuff we're seeing is only going to drive it up for a 00:58:59.940 |
that the the, this big tech spread trade is moving from a trade to an investment, actually. And that 00:59:10.680 |
I didn't expect. And the reason is, I talked to a bunch of folks on Wall Street over this past week. 00:59:16.440 |
And they told me two things. And one of them is a segue, because I think we should talk about 00:59:20.700 |
Microsoft, which is another brilliant move in the lexicon of business. But 00:59:24.180 |
what they said was, Facebook has become a funding short. 00:59:29.820 |
For other investments. Now, what does that mean? 00:59:32.520 |
Everybody was crowded into big tech, we talked about this before, right, 00:59:36.660 |
those five stocks were broadly owned, they were effectively the index. 00:59:39.900 |
But after that, after that earnings report, a lot of investors, including retail investors had to 00:59:48.660 |
decide where to reallocate their capital, and had to decide where to invest, where the money 00:59:54.900 |
was going to come from to invest in these other names that were really beaten up. And what folks on 00:59:59.700 |
Wall Street have been telling me is that, you know, Facebook has become what's called a funding short, 01:00:03.660 |
meaning there is no bid to buy that from institutional owners, they'd rather on the 01:00:07.980 |
margin sell it to generate the cash to then take and invest in other things. And what you saw over 01:00:13.380 |
this past week is the bottoming out of a lot of these growth stocks that were beaten up, 01:00:18.480 |
right, they rallied pretty significantly every day, three, four, five, 6% rallies. 01:00:23.160 |
And other names in big tech have rallied really well, including Microsoft. And, and so I'm, I'm, 01:00:29.580 |
I think that there is the potential, a small potential, that that's going from a trade to 01:00:34.200 |
an investment, actually a sustainable trend that you can bank on for, you know, several years, 01:00:38.040 |
investment, hold the stock for 510 years, the trade that spread trade, you can get for a long 01:00:42.300 |
period of time, but for the winners to be the winners in that just so people get refreshed. 01:00:45.720 |
Google's Microsoft, Google, Microsoft, Google, and then you feel Amazon, Facebook, obviously. 01:00:51.120 |
And Netflix are the losers in that trade. Still feel that way. 01:00:56.040 |
I think that Microsoft and Google are far and away the winners, far and away, 01:00:59.460 |
the winners. And look, you saw you saw you saw this Microsoft thing today, or sorry, 01:01:03.900 |
this past week, so smart, you know, yeah. So just to give catch people up on that Microsoft 01:01:07.980 |
has made another savvy move to get approval for their $75 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition, 01:01:14.400 |
they promised their video game app store would operate with open market principles. 01:01:19.080 |
CEO of the year Satya Nadelle and others travel to Washington in the Dell Nadella right at the end, 01:01:29.340 |
which is the largest one in the world. And so they are going to be the first to launch this week to meet with regulators regarding the acquisition. So they are proactively going to Washington as opposed to other people who maybe are not quote for Microsoft President Brad Smith, we are more focused on adopting, adapting to regulation than fighting against it. That's some really interesting. 01:01:47.640 |
Yeah, yeah. There's a famous story about this Explorer named Hernando Cortez, where, you know, we've all heard this analogy, or this, this, this little phrase before, where, you know, when they were exploring, coming from Europe, and you know, they hit the Caribbean islands, and then, you know, looking for America, etc. The famous phrase is burn the boats. Yep. Right. Can't go back, we have to find our way make it work. The, the way that that's been extended in business is sort of what we would call scorched. 01:02:17.620 |
The earth. And there's a competitive move that a lot of businesses if they're smart enough can execute, which is to effectively take a key market and take an economic view of that market, where you say that we're going to take all the economic value away from it. And I think this is a first step towards a really interesting play that Microsoft could pull, which is essentially to scorch the earth of app stores, which is Google's and Apple's really big money printer to make a completely open permissible 01:02:47.600 |
And I think that's a really interesting move, because if you look at the market, it's a completely open platform, with very little to no take rate. And in a market as big as video games, I think what it does is it creates pressure on all these other mega platforms to essentially copy them. And I think Friedberg mentioned this before Google has actually been the best in doing this by finding these key markets, or I think it was sacks, you know, Chrome and other things and giving them away for free. Google is in a position to make the app store effectively free. And then that puts Apple on a little bit of a desert island. So Jason, back to why I think you can keep Apple free. 01:03:17.480 |
Apple in that basket of shorts, the competitive pressures are 01:03:20.780 |
mounting by by the moves of Microsoft that I think are 01:03:23.400 |
easier for Google to copy, and very difficult for companies 01:03:26.240 |
like Apple to copy because it creates an incredible 01:03:29.960 |
Mark Leary: Yeah. And also as part of this open App Store 01:03:33.200 |
concept, they would let you use any payment system. So if you're 01:03:36.380 |
on an iPhone, and you wanted to use Apple Pay with a Google app 01:03:39.740 |
purchase, you could do that. If you're on, you know, Microsoft, 01:03:44.600 |
Alex Levy: Sax, what do you what do you think about inflation? 01:03:46.560 |
Mark Leary: Okay, there was a really interesting chart on 01:03:48.320 |
inflation that actually zero hedge tweeted. And I threw it up 01:03:51.900 |
in the notes here, where they said real hourly earnings are 01:03:55.560 |
negative 1.7%. It's the 10th month in a row where US incomes 01:04:00.200 |
aren't keeping up with inflation. So the problem here 01:04:03.600 |
is that, you know, people's incomes have increased with 01:04:08.220 |
inflation, but not as much as the inflation rate. So the net 01:04:11.560 |
effect of it is that people are feeling worse off when they go 01:04:16.360 |
groceries or whatever they need, they don't feel as rich. That's 01:04:20.120 |
the fundamental problem here. And I think there's a lot of 01:04:22.740 |
people out there who think that there's a free lunch that if we 01:04:26.680 |
printed 2 trillion worth of STEMI checks, this is the whole that 01:04:30.760 |
$2 trillion bill last year, they shoveled through I think the 01:04:33.940 |
idea was, we're going to print as much money as we can for the 01:04:36.340 |
election. And it's going to help us in the midterms. Actually, as 01:04:39.800 |
it turns out, it boosted inflation so much that people 01:04:42.800 |
are feeling worse off, even though their wages went up 01:04:46.160 |
Because on a net basis, their earnings are down. So I just 01:04:49.520 |
think it's a good reminder that you can't just like print wealth, 01:04:59.840 |
Or we're going to create addiction to universal income or 01:05:03.840 |
universal subsidy. That's the alternative is people are going 01:05:07.100 |
to basically try and vote to make some programs that were 01:05:09.260 |
initially meant to be temporary and more permanent in order to 01:05:11.900 |
keep up the lifestyle that they've become accustomed to 01:05:15.960 |
build on taxes point, the University of Michigan consumer 01:05:19.140 |
sentiment was released, I think it was today this morning. And 01:05:22.340 |
it shows exactly what he's saying, which is that, you know, 01:05:24.600 |
consumers propensity and confidence in the economy has 01:05:26.920 |
been falling off a cliff. You know, the month over month 01:05:30.200 |
change was almost it was down 8.2%. The year over year change 01:05:34.880 |
is down almost 20%. Current economic conditions was down 20%. 01:05:40.400 |
And then index of consumer expectations, down 19%. So to 01:05:47.860 |
Yeah, well, we've been we've been talking on the show for the 01:05:49.720 |
last, I'd say a couple of months about balancing the risk of 01:05:52.340 |
recession versus the risk of inflation. Inflation, I think 01:05:55.700 |
has gotten slightly worse. The print went from the last print 01:05:59.480 |
was like 7.1%. Now it's 7.5%. So to Jamal's point earlier, it's 01:06:05.000 |
getting worse, but the rate of how fast it's getting worse is 01:06:07.720 |
slowing. But the risk of recession I think is increasing. 01:06:10.840 |
Because what's keeping this economy going is the consumer. 01:06:15.560 |
sentiment now all of a sudden is tanking, and people feel poor 01:06:18.680 |
because of inflation. I just you know, now that the risks are 01:06:22.880 |
sentiment as sentiment goes down, this is where governors 01:06:26.160 |
play a critical role. Because if they don't open up these 01:06:28.400 |
economies, we can't actually have a consumer led consumption 01:06:32.120 |
rebound of the economy because there aren't any services to buy 01:06:34.840 |
because you can't actually be around anybody. So if the 01:06:37.460 |
economy remains effectively closed, and people are done 01:06:40.340 |
buying, you know, tubs of margarine and toilet paper, 01:06:45.520 |
isn't coming as we were worried it would, what are we supposed to 01:06:49.180 |
be doing? So this is how these things interplay. So we have to 01:06:52.000 |
get these again, going back to where we started, we have to get 01:06:54.460 |
this economy open. And we have to just get back to some sense 01:06:58.000 |
of normalcy. And the consumer will lead us out. But I think 01:07:01.800 |
sacks, you're right on the margin, I think the risk is 01:07:04.060 |
towards a recession because people don't see this Thomas 01:07:06.160 |
Sowell, who's a well known Stanford, he's a I think he's a 01:07:09.140 |
senior fellow at Hoover. You know, he has this comment, which 01:07:15.100 |
For the rich, and the poor, but inflation is bad just for the 01:07:19.700 |
poor. And the reason he says that is because, you know, if 01:07:23.860 |
you're wealthy, you can transition to assets that are 01:07:26.320 |
sort of inflation adjusted or inflation protected, right, you 01:07:29.380 |
can consume assets, or you can purchase assets to protect 01:07:31.760 |
yourself. But inflation is an exceptionally regressive means 01:07:36.040 |
of the government taking compensation away from your 01:07:38.120 |
current compensation, and it disproportionately affects 01:07:40.480 |
working class ordinary people. And so if you have real wages 01:07:43.880 |
that are negative, inflation, you're going to have to pay a 01:07:45.060 |
lot of taxes. And if you have a situation that's high, that's 01:07:47.820 |
confiscatory, right? You are you are meaningfully less well off 01:07:51.840 |
than you were before. And, you know, the wealthy folks have a 01:07:54.660 |
way to hedge but normal ordinary working class people do not. And 01:07:58.020 |
on the margin, then if they then do not go out and spend, the 01:08:01.800 |
problem will be some sort of recessionary effect. 01:08:03.900 |
I also think if we open up, more people might, since they're so 01:08:07.980 |
lonely and getting weird staying at home, I think they might 01:08:10.320 |
actually want to go do jobs to socialize and do things I'm 01:08:15.020 |
do, you know, trips with their teams and they're and they're 01:08:18.560 |
sick of staying home. Salesforce just bought a retreat center 01:08:21.020 |
and we saw this out of the city, the Bay Area. And because 01:08:24.800 |
Bennion, he's got a concern, I guess that all these employees 01:08:27.920 |
he hired over two years who've never met another Salesforce 01:08:30.200 |
employee are getting weird and lonely. And, you know, 01:08:33.960 |
it's gonna be very, I think David, you're right, I think 01:08:36.720 |
history is going to be really judgmental of Biden. If he is 01:08:40.080 |
the last person to basically give the green light and all of 01:08:43.920 |
these democratic governors basically revolt and open up 01:08:47.580 |
under underneath, you know, either silence or the complete 01:08:52.660 |
opposite point of view. This is a really bad setup. 01:08:55.080 |
Well, National Journal, which again, is not some right wing 01:08:58.440 |
publication, they're just sort of a an analyst of what's 01:09:01.100 |
happening in Washington said that Biden had an article Biden 01:09:03.540 |
is blowing his COVID moment, he was elected to lead us back to 01:09:06.300 |
normalcy. All you had to do was say, guys, it's time for the 01:09:08.980 |
restrictions to come off and take credit for the fact that we 01:09:12.820 |
were that the whole country was ready to move on. And he's kind 01:09:15.760 |
of missed it. And but this trucker convoy is coming to 01:09:19.760 |
Washington gives him one more chance, I think, to get on the 01:09:23.980 |
right side of this, because there's really two ways he can 01:09:26.740 |
react. One is to treat them as, you know, domestic terrorists, 01:09:30.920 |
you know, racist, white supremacist, insurrectionaries, 01:09:34.060 |
or he can, you know, embrace them. And all he has to do is 01:09:39.640 |
say, Listen, we love you, we respect you. We love you, we 01:09:42.040 |
respect you. And we're going to do this. And we're going to do 01:09:42.280 |
this. And we're going to do this. And we're going to do this. 01:09:42.820 |
We respect you, we hear you, we agree with you, it's time for 01:09:45.760 |
these mandates to end. And you know what, thank you, Rachel 01:09:48.980 |
Walensky and Anthony Fauci, for your service. We understand 01:09:52.760 |
you're just trying to keep the country safe. But thank you very 01:09:55.180 |
much. We're ready to move on. We're getting rid of all these 01:09:57.660 |
restrictions. His popularity would like bounce five points, 01:10:02.320 |
Yeah, I'm betting he's going to I mean, he's he's always 01:10:04.660 |
represented the working man and woman of this country. That's 01:10:07.340 |
been his thing from the beginning. I bet you he does 01:10:09.180 |
embrace them. And if you look at Omicron, remember the scariness 01:10:12.280 |
thing is spreading 3040 50 times faster, I wonder if it's 01:10:16.000 |
gonna have the same death rate, and we didn't know. And now we 01:10:18.400 |
know. And it's February. Two months later, we know that the 01:10:21.500 |
curve in South Africa, same as a curve in New York and 01:10:24.160 |
California up and down. And then the only people who die 01:10:28.040 |
seemingly are immunocompromised or unvaccinated or both. So 01:10:33.660 |
really led us back to normalcy. I mean, we really need to give 01:10:36.220 |
credit to all the people who fought to it's the moms who went 01:10:40.300 |
to these school board meetings were denounced as domestic 01:10:42.040 |
terrorists. They're the ones who put pressure to repeal these 01:10:44.920 |
mass mandates on their kids, which by the way, aren't even 01:10:47.420 |
fully off in New York and California. Adults don't have to 01:10:50.320 |
wear a mask anymore. But the kids do. It's the scientists is 01:10:53.260 |
the scientists of the Great Barrington Declaration who were 01:10:55.300 |
demonized and called fringe and kooks and conspiracy theorists. 01:10:59.260 |
They're the ones who provided the real data against lockdowns, 01:11:01.660 |
not the NIH. It's these truckers who are basically opposing 01:11:05.320 |
mandates. These are the people who are dragging us back to 01:11:07.920 |
normalcy. And as the politicians who are reacting to that when the 01:11:11.800 |
change. And I think what the people want now is some real 01:11:14.800 |
leadership. It's a politician who gets up there and leads us 01:11:20.860 |
There's a great article in the Times and they profiled, you 01:11:23.480 |
know, a couple people and one of them was a mom in New York who's 01:11:26.200 |
running for Congress against, you know, an intention and 01:11:29.040 |
entrenched Democrat. And she's, I mean, you know, she's just a 01:11:33.700 |
good hearted mom who was like, this is enough. Enough's enough. 01:11:37.560 |
I need to get back to normalcy. My kids need to get back in 01:11:41.560 |
mask mandates here in California. Kids are still wearing 01:11:44.660 |
it's becoming tribal warfare amongst the Democrats in 01:11:47.340 |
California, because even when you know, the governor basically 01:11:52.680 |
said, Okay, mask mandates can go on X date. The county 01:11:57.460 |
supervisors have not decided. So for example, in Santa Clara 01:12:05.020 |
in LA County, there's a health director, an unelected 01:12:08.120 |
bureaucrat, a health director named Barbara Ferrer, she calls 01:12:11.860 |
After Newsom basically said that the masks can come off, she says, no, they can't, not until April. 01:12:19.420 |
She told this to the Board of Supervisors down there, and we're all just supposed to listen? 01:12:23.240 |
Now, the reason why she has this authority is because Newsom is granted to her under Newsom's state of emergency. 01:12:32.840 |
The Super Bowl is happening this weekend in the state, and everyone's going to be there maskless. 01:12:36.800 |
I mean, I was at the Warriors game last night, and you had people wearing the most flimsy of masks that does nothing to protect, 01:12:44.080 |
people taking them off while they're eating and drinking, and then people walking around with signs. 01:12:47.720 |
The security guards had signs that said, please put your mask on. 01:12:50.940 |
And they were walking up to people, I kid you not, and putting this little round sign in people's faces and not talking to them. 01:12:57.820 |
And they would stand there until you put your mask back on, and you're literally eating a hot dog, 01:13:02.160 |
and then you put the hot dog down, and then they come up and put the sign in your face, 01:13:04.800 |
and you put your mask up, you take another bite of your hot dog. 01:13:06.440 |
I mean, it was getting unnecessarily confrontational and just weird. 01:13:13.400 |
And then you go to a restaurant, and the employees are wearing masks, and nobody else is. 01:13:20.440 |
There was this clip on Twitter when the mask mandate was lifted in Nevada, 01:13:25.660 |
and it was a clip of kids in like grade two or three, and they went crazy. 01:13:38.340 |
And the explanation, I had never heard this more beautifully said, 01:13:43.680 |
these children can finally see their friends as emotions on their face. 01:13:49.620 |
Can you imagine if you're four, five, six, seven years old, and you cannot understand the emotions of other kids? 01:14:02.860 |
My six year old has never attended a day of school without a mask. 01:14:07.140 |
There's kids out there who I never had, I put the clip-- 01:14:11.380 |
I was at Horse's with one of my kids last weekend. 01:14:13.900 |
And there were a bunch of kids out there riding. 01:14:15.900 |
It's sunny, it's outside, they're on a horse, 01:14:36.240 |
and there's two or three parents who show up at the house. 01:14:40.920 |
Two or three of the 10 kids will have masks on, 01:14:45.300 |
and like the most intense N95, like sealed masks. 01:14:48.580 |
And I'm like, you wanna take your mask off for a picture? 01:14:50.760 |
And one of the kids refused to take her mask off 01:14:57.720 |
- Listen, I mean, when I supported the mask mandate 01:15:03.220 |
If I had known that people would wanna continue this thing 01:15:06.180 |
forever, there's no way I would have supported it. 01:15:08.680 |
- But it also probably was effective in the early days 01:15:10.600 |
with the first virus. - I don't think we know 01:15:13.860 |
when they don't understand other people's emotions 01:15:22.980 |
And so at some point we need to look at the risks, 01:15:38.340 |
the teachers unions need to understand that calculus. 01:15:43.500 |
I don't think the state legislators, governors, 01:15:47.040 |
and the federal bureaucracy yet understands this calculus, 01:15:51.600 |
- It's time to return. - And it's time to return. 01:15:53.140 |
Sorry, and on this point, I would like to bring up something, 01:15:56.180 |
the ACLU thing, just 'cause I think I would love 01:16:00.520 |
to get your take on talking about civil liberties 01:16:03.440 |
and freedoms, there are things that are happening 01:16:14.100 |
that to me, when I saw this on the ACLU Twitter feed yesterday 01:16:17.480 |
was shocking, Jason, do you wanna tee that up? 01:16:21.900 |
the CIA has been secretly conducting surveillance programs 01:16:27.000 |
On Thursday, Democratic senators Wyden and Heinrich 01:16:36.000 |
calling for greater transparency into the CIA's data collection 01:16:42.040 |
Basically, the CIA used executive order 12333, 01:16:55.820 |
"that Congress and the public believe govern the collection 01:17:01.160 |
"or even executive branch oversight that comes from FISA," 01:17:04.620 |
that's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, 01:17:09.480 |
"is that many of the same concerns that Americans have 01:17:13.400 |
"also apply to how the CIA collects and handles information 01:17:16.200 |
"under executive order and outside of FISA law. 01:17:18.820 |
"In particular, these documents reveal serious problems 01:17:21.700 |
"associated with warrantless backdoor searches of Americans, 01:17:25.700 |
"the same issue that had generated bipartisan concern 01:17:35.880 |
Where are they to report and to hold accountable this stuff? 01:17:40.340 |
And where are politicians actually doing their job? 01:17:43.880 |
But, you know, I don't think there's ever been 01:17:46.520 |
this kind of overreach that's just constantly been going on 01:17:49.760 |
with zero accountability or transparency into it. 01:17:52.640 |
You know, the FBI is responsible for domestic laws, right? 01:18:00.620 |
in order to be able to surveil U.S. citizens. 01:18:07.820 |
- Yes, the CIA is supposed to work only on international, 01:18:18.880 |
especially in a world now where executive power 01:18:23.380 |
And there's zero transparency or accountability. 01:18:25.920 |
If I didn't randomly see this on an ACLU tweet, 01:18:30.920 |
And the other thing that's crazy about it is, 01:18:33.600 |
I think the way they get away with this, Chamath, 01:18:35.760 |
and this has been something that the Patriot Act had, 01:18:51.780 |
well, anybody they contact in America is fair game. 01:18:58.900 |
And I think that's how a lot of this gets justified. 01:19:02.820 |
there's a broad scale surveillance program against U.S. citizens 01:19:18.680 |
this infrastructure to go after domestic terrorists. 01:19:21.680 |
Well, look, if they mean people who actually set off bombs 01:19:29.680 |
The media is defining routine political dissent 01:19:37.600 |
We've heard these truckers even described as insurrectionists. 01:19:41.320 |
So, you know, how are these programs gonna be used 01:19:50.440 |
this trend towards criminalizing political disagreements 01:19:55.240 |
have been putting their partisans in jail for years, 01:20:01.800 |
Can they use these powers to go after truckers 01:20:17.680 |
because you might have some people on the right 01:20:19.760 |
who are protesting something in a very valid way, 01:20:22.840 |
and then you get some whack jobs like the Oath Keepers 01:20:31.140 |
with all those weapons the Oath Keepers brought 01:20:37.560 |
who are there are probably just there to have fun 01:20:42.900 |
- Do you think these truckers are engaged in an insurrection? 01:20:45.120 |
- Well, I mean, we don't know, and I don't think so, no. 01:20:52.280 |
- The slippery slope is when you have an executive order 01:20:55.620 |
that is not governed by the standard guardrails 01:21:02.960 |
and the people and the elected officials that we elect. 01:21:05.460 |
Here's how it basically gets in a really tricky place. 01:21:09.300 |
You have, I'm just gonna use Justin Trudeau's quote, okay? 01:21:12.460 |
But replace that person with any politician in power. 01:21:15.420 |
Hey, there's a small fringe minority of people 01:21:20.880 |
Well, you know what that person is going to do? 01:21:23.660 |
That person's gonna wanna do everything in their power 01:21:35.400 |
- Right, when you have this overheated political rhetoric 01:21:37.900 |
that describes your political opponents, your dissenters. 01:21:42.900 |
- Yeah, as enemies, as white supremacists, as Nazis, 01:21:45.900 |
as insurrectionaries, as domestic terrorists. 01:21:49.400 |
Why wouldn't then the law enforcement arms of our government 01:21:54.320 |
I mean, does the Department of Homeland Security 01:21:58.120 |
do they understand that the politicians are just engaging 01:22:07.840 |
to what we have to investigate and stop these people? 01:22:11.180 |
the Department of Justice has done a pretty good job of that. 01:22:20.040 |
- You have a responsibility to actually double click 01:22:22.500 |
into this issue and figure out what's going on, please. 01:22:28.760 |
I mean, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BBC, 01:22:41.160 |
I mean, the journalists are clearly leaning in 01:22:43.720 |
to identify, you know, the evidence behind the story. 01:22:49.860 |
is the Justice Department doing this even-handedly? 01:22:57.260 |
because they had a coordinated, they're a militia. 01:22:59.780 |
They literally refer to themselves as militia. 01:23:02.180 |
And those people are getting treated very different 01:23:07.100 |
Those people are getting three months suspended sentences, 01:23:13.360 |
they call themselves a militia, they're dangerous. 01:23:16.940 |
And they're the only ones who are being charged 01:23:18.940 |
with the more serious 10 to 20 year sentences. 01:23:23.020 |
All right, everybody, this has been an amazing journey