back to indexE93: Twitter whistleblower, cloud security vulnerabilities, student debt forgiveness & more
Chapters
0:0 Bestie intros!
1:25 Twitter's former head of security makes allegations against the company
22:8 Foreign countries placing government agents in US tech companies, cloud security vulnerabilities
33:54 Student loan forgiveness
63:25 Red wave or red ripple?
67:57 Science corner: Gut microbiome, fecal transplants
00:00:00.000 |
I want to play the theme music for this episode. Okay, hold on one second. Here we go. 00:00:04.280 |
And you don't know right from wrong, give a little whistle. 00:00:10.480 |
If you let the Indian government plant spies in your office, give a little whistle. 00:00:17.340 |
If you have too many bots, you can come up with your own metric. 00:00:28.420 |
When you want to incent your staff to not look at the bots, give them bonuses based on DAOs. 00:00:43.880 |
When you're on the board and you see metrics that you don't like, turn a blind eye. 00:01:07.660 |
We're getting ourselves into too much trouble. 00:01:18.480 |
We open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. 00:01:28.500 |
Right before, I guess, the big case between Elon and Twitter is about to happen, I guess, in October at some point. 00:01:36.220 |
A Twitter whistleblower has come forward and dropped a nuke into the middle of what was basically the story of the year in business, I think. 00:01:45.820 |
The former head of security hired by Jack himself, an incredibly well-respected Peter Mudge, Zatco. 00:01:57.840 |
One of the most respected people in the security industry. 00:02:01.620 |
Again, recruited by Jack in 2020 after a team of hackers, you may remember, took over all these verified accounts. 00:02:11.060 |
And he was head of security until January of this year, eight months ago. 00:02:15.460 |
And he claims, through explosive documents, a huge document dump, that Twitter execs ignored, these Twitter executives ignored multiple security vulnerabilities. 00:02:28.680 |
Well, obviously, if Obama, Biden, and other heads of state have their Twitter handles, they could say something that could cause an international incident. 00:02:36.300 |
And that's actually happened with hacks before. 00:02:38.560 |
He also says they were not following even the most basic security protocols like safeguarding staff access to core software. 00:02:46.720 |
Of course, all of this comes after there were Saudi infiltrator spies, essentially, inside of Twitter. 00:02:54.820 |
I mean, the list of things here that he has mentioned. 00:02:59.820 |
He dumped these documents to the Department of Justice, the SEC, Congress, and the Washington Post. 00:03:06.360 |
He alleges that the vulnerabilities make Twitter extremely vulnerable to foreign spies hacking and disinformation campaigns. 00:03:12.640 |
And perhaps most importantly, to the acquisition, the complaint also adds that Twitter's policy towards fake accounts incentivize, quote, deliberate ignorance by undercounting spam accounts and giving bonuses to execs for increasing use of fake accounts. 00:03:52.200 |
So, you'll recall on a previous show, we talked about this idea that if you're not using bots, you're not going to be able to find bots. 00:03:57.200 |
And I said, well, I'm not going to be able to find bots. 00:03:57.240 |
And I said, well, I'm not going to be able to find bots. 00:03:57.280 |
If Twitter sues Elon to go after the kill fee or to go after damages, the question will very rapidly become about whether Twitter has a bot problem. 00:04:07.580 |
And we'll discover or reveal documents that show that Twitter executives knew or should have known there was a problem. 00:04:14.740 |
And so I said, you know, the question will very rapidly become, what did Twitter executives know and when did they know it? 00:04:21.080 |
Now, I couldn't have predicted that this whistleblower would come forward. 00:04:27.040 |
Not only is there a bot problem, there is a cover-up of the bot problem. 00:04:31.420 |
He's accusing the company of positively Nixonian tactics here. 00:04:36.860 |
So, just to build on what you said, J. Cal, he said that Twitter executives don't have the resources to fully understand the true number of bots on the platform. 00:04:44.080 |
And their executives are disincentivized to count them properly because doing so would negatively affect their bonuses. 00:04:50.080 |
So, I didn't know that their bonuses were in any way tied to this bot issue. 00:04:56.960 |
So, I didn't know that their bonuses were in any way tied to this bot issue. 00:04:57.020 |
So, I didn't know that their bonuses were in any way tied to this bot issue. 00:04:57.020 |
So, I didn't know that their bonuses were in any way tied to this bot issue. 00:04:57.020 |
So, I didn't know that their bonuses were in any way tied to this bot issue. 00:04:57.020 |
So, I didn't know that their bonuses were in any way tied to this bot issue. 00:05:27.000 |
So, I didn't know that their bonuses were in any way tied to this bot issue. 00:05:56.980 |
So, I didn't know that their bonuses were in any way tied to this bot issue. 00:06:26.960 |
So, I didn't know that their bonuses were in any way tied to this bot issue. 00:06:56.940 |
So, I didn't know that their bonuses were in any way tied to this bot issue. 00:07:26.920 |
board has given incentives to the management team, he's a top 00:07:30.040 |
five top seven member of the management team. So what's going 00:07:33.140 |
on here with this? Dysfunction, where he's hired to tell the 00:07:38.680 |
truth, to fix the problems, the board is turning a blind eye to 00:07:43.580 |
it. And maybe the management team is not giving the board the 00:07:47.080 |
data they need to make better decisions. Who? How do you game 00:07:50.920 |
theory this? Yeah, I'm not sure that it's you can come to all 00:07:54.120 |
those conclusions. Yeah, I'm not coming to the conclusion. I'm 00:07:57.220 |
just my mind is wandering of how this I read the function comes 00:08:00.340 |
up. I read parts of, of his whistleblower. I can't claim to 00:08:04.500 |
have read it all. It actually isn't super supportive of Elon's 00:08:07.860 |
case. The most problematic thing that he points out is the 00:08:12.740 |
following. And this is a quote from his complaint. He said 00:08:16.140 |
Twitter, quote, already doing a decent job excluding spam bots 00:08:20.880 |
and other worthless accounts from its calculation of M 00:08:24.100 |
data. At best, he's alleging that Twitter omitted details, not 00:08:29.800 |
that it lied directly. So if you kind of take that, I think what 00:08:34.840 |
he's really pointing his sights on are, as you said, disclosures 00:08:39.940 |
that have nothing to do with the spam issue, but have a lot to do 00:08:43.760 |
with security. And that is something that typically in a in 00:08:48.000 |
a public company board filters up through the audit committee 00:08:53.920 |
once a quarter from the rep from the right people who talk 00:08:57.940 |
about, here's our cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities. And 00:09:01.400 |
then there is a readout from that committee chair to the 00:09:04.840 |
board. And then those are noted in your quarterly in your 00:09:12.740 |
quarterly reports that the secretary writes down. So I 00:09:17.800 |
think part of why this guy may not have had the audience is, it 00:09:23.900 |
a pretty terrible manager. And there were hundreds of people in 00:09:27.140 |
his organization who were just kind of running here and there. 00:09:30.160 |
And so you know, you guys have all been in the situation where 00:09:32.780 |
we hire somebody who is an exceptional performer. And then 00:09:37.660 |
we miscast that person by putting them in a point of 00:09:40.580 |
leadership, and being a team manager versus, you know, a 00:09:45.380 |
single kind of like, product or engineering expert. And it seems 00:09:50.240 |
that there was a part of that at play as well, which decayed the 00:09:53.880 |
ability for management to actually have enough faith and 00:09:56.320 |
trust in this guy to put them in front of the board. So and 00:09:59.120 |
that's all that's just come up in the last few days. So I don't 00:10:01.860 |
know, my, my reading of the whistleblower claim is really 00:10:05.440 |
that this is the kind of thing that companies like Facebook and 00:10:10.060 |
Google and others have had issues with the FTC in the past. 00:10:14.440 |
They typically settle those claims, they pay a fine snap. 00:10:18.120 |
But those things take three to five years to play out. So I 00:10:24.540 |
that this body of content, more leads to that outcome, then is a 00:10:30.640 |
smoking gun that really helps Elon. In fact, this, the fact 00:10:34.380 |
that he's actually affirmatively stating that their calculation of 00:10:38.280 |
MDOW is actually pretty decent, actually hurts the claim that 00:10:43.020 |
I don't know if I agree with that, actually. Okay, 00:10:46.200 |
go ahead. So I agree with with Chamath that the claims he's 00:10:49.420 |
making are far broader than the bot issue, and far broader than 00:10:53.860 |
the issues that Elon's raised. So I agree with you about that, 00:10:57.180 |
Chamath. However, I don't agree that what he's saying isn't 00:11:01.200 |
specifically helpful to Elon's case. So what he said is, so 00:11:04.680 |
this is from a CNN Business article, he said, Zatko's 00:11:08.740 |
disclosure argues that by reporting bots only as a 00:11:12.220 |
percentage of MDOW, rather than as a percentage of total number 00:11:15.360 |
of accounts on the platform, Twitter obscures the true scale 00:11:18.760 |
of fake and spam accounts on the service, a move Zatko alleges is 00:11:24.800 |
So wait, what you're saying here, Sachs, just to do the math, 00:11:27.800 |
the denominator matters here. If the denominator was all 00:11:30.800 |
accounts, the percentage of bots would be much higher. If the 00:11:33.800 |
denominator is monthly MDOWs, whatever they created, it would 00:11:37.180 |
be a much lower denominator, and the percentage would change. I 00:11:41.580 |
I'm just reporting what CNN is reporting in terms of what Zatko's 00:11:45.800 |
alleging. I just want to get it out on the table. CNN broke the 00:11:51.000 |
Washington Post. Yeah. Basically, what happened is this guy got 00:11:53.740 |
fired in January and started working with these whistleblower 00:11:56.500 |
lawyers. They put together a big report, and then that report got 00:11:59.500 |
leaked to the Washington Post and CNN, as well as people on Capitol 00:12:03.100 |
Hill. So that's kind of what happened here. So CNN goes on to 00:12:06.220 |
say, Zatko says he began asking about the prevalence of bot 00:12:10.620 |
accounts on Twitter in early 2021, and was told by Twitter's 00:12:15.360 |
head of site, Integrity, that the company didn't know how many 00:12:18.500 |
total bots are on its platform. He alleges that he came away 00:12:23.680 |
with the understanding that the company had, quote, "no appetite 00:12:27.100 |
to properly measure the prevalence of bots," end quote, 00:12:30.580 |
in part because if the true number became public, it could 00:12:33.820 |
harm the company's value and image. So this is, again, the 00:12:38.800 |
I mean, at a minimum, David, you have to agree, this guy is 00:12:42.100 |
basically speaking on both sides of his mouth. I mean, these are 00:12:44.440 |
both direct quotes from his complaint. So his complaint, at 00:12:47.740 |
best, is very confusing and a little schizophrenic. 00:12:50.200 |
Well, it's also just coming out. So there'll be more data that's 00:12:54.460 |
Yeah, by the way, I'm not saying that I believe him or disbelieve 00:12:57.040 |
him, but I'm saying if you look at the quotes, the quotes aren't 00:13:00.220 |
the smoking gun one would want if one was trying to- Look, I 00:13:05.200 |
think we have to remember, the lawsuit has really nothing to do 00:13:08.920 |
with this problem. The lawsuit really boils down to one very 00:13:12.880 |
specific clause, which is the pinnacle question at hand, which 00:13:17.320 |
is there is a specific performance clause that Elon signed up to. 00:13:23.560 |
Right? Which his lawyers could have struck out and either chose not to or couldn't get the deal done 00:13:31.720 |
without. And that specific performance clause says that Twitter can force him to close at 5420 a share. 00:13:39.220 |
And I think the issue at hand at the Delaware Business Court is going to be that, because 00:13:45.340 |
Twitter's going to point to all of these gotchas and disclaimers that they have around this bot issue 00:13:53.500 |
you know, their cover story. And I think that really, you know, this kind of again builds more 00:14:00.400 |
and more momentum in my mind that the most likely outcome here is a settlement where you have to pay 00:14:08.560 |
the economic difference between where the stock is now and 5420, which is more than a billion 00:14:15.040 |
dollars, or you close at some number below $54 and 20 cents a share. And I think that that is, 00:14:23.440 |
like, you know, if you had to be a betting person, that's probably and if you look at the, 00:14:27.040 |
the way the stock is traded, and if you also look at the way the options market trades, 00:14:32.020 |
that's what people are assuming that there's a seven to $10 billion swing. And if you impute 00:14:38.020 |
that into the stock price, you kind of get into the $51 a share kind of an acquisition price. Again, 00:14:43.480 |
I'm not saying that that is right or should be right. That's just sort of what the market says. 00:14:47.740 |
Friedberg, what's your take on this? Do you find this person credible, highly credible? And how 00:14:53.380 |
Do you think this is to Twitter, independent of the deal to sell the company? 00:14:58.120 |
I think there's two tests. One is the materiality of what they've reported. So and really, 00:15:04.600 |
that comes down to just the the end out reported numbers. So if there really is some misstatement, 00:15:11.320 |
knowing misstatement based on what he's saying. That's an issue. The other one is the duty of 00:15:17.440 |
care responsibility of the board meaning did the information that he's providing actually find 00:15:23.320 |
its way to the board. If it was blocked by management, you know, it's a judgment call on, 00:15:29.920 |
you know, whether or not management was trying to deceive or whether they were trying to investigate 00:15:34.840 |
and identify more. If the information was brought to the board, and the board did not act, then 00:15:40.000 |
there's an issue with the board's meeting their duty of care responsibility as fiduciaries of the 00:15:47.200 |
he did pitch the board at some point or explain this, but not in writing. 00:15:53.240 |
did not make its way to the board, then it's hard to say that the board was in 00:15:59.720 |
breach of their duty of care. If the CEO and if the if the CEO blocked it, then there's a question 00:16:06.620 |
on what then the CEO can be fired, right, then there's a good case for the CEO to be fired. I see. 00:16:10.340 |
So I see, you know, probably one of three scenarios here. One is, you know, nothing happens to is that 00:16:16.580 |
the board is actually violating their which I doubt knowing this board. I mean, knowing who's 00:16:21.080 |
on this board. It's probably more than likely. Yeah, I mean, I think it's probably more than 00:16:23.180 |
likely that the CEO or some executives that block this information from getting to the board, 00:16:27.620 |
the board then has to act now that they have the information. And they say, Hey, 00:16:30.920 |
you block this information from getting to us, we need to act. And maybe they removed the the 00:16:37.940 |
Sachs in terms of board governments, how much of this has to do with the fact that nobody really 00:16:41.540 |
owned on the board any significant equity in Twitter? Is that true? 00:16:46.340 |
Yeah, I mean, I think I mean, on the board was the highest, right? He owned two or 3% much did Silver Lake own Jack owned two or 3% of the board. 00:16:51.140 |
How much did Silver Lake own? Jack owned two or 3% of the board. 00:16:51.260 |
How much did Silver Lake own? Jack owned two or 3% of the board. 00:16:51.260 |
How much did Silver Lake own? Jack owned two or 3% of the board. 00:16:51.320 |
How much did Silver Lake own? Jack owned Silver Lake, Egon's on the board. I mean, 00:16:55.040 |
they're they're they're owners on the board, right? 00:17:00.800 |
To be clear, Zacco doesn't seem to be pointing his finger at the board. In fact, quite the contrary, 00:17:05.780 |
he's saying he wasn't allowed to present to the board in the amount of detail that he wanted in 00:17:10.100 |
written form like he wanted. So in a way, he seems to be exonerating the board. He is pointing the 00:17:15.080 |
finger at Twitter executives. And the timeline here is instructive. Basically, what happened is he was 00:17:21.260 |
by Jack Dorsey back when Jack was CEO. This is in, I think, November of 2020. And at that time, 00:17:29.420 |
Jack had Zacco report directly to him. He actually took responsibility away from these issues away 00:17:36.380 |
from Parag, who was running engineering, gave it to Zacco. Zacco reported directly to him. Now, 00:17:41.960 |
fast forward about a year later, and Jack steps down, Parag becomes CEO. And then two months later, 00:17:51.200 |
Zacco. And it's in that time period, that couple of months, where Zacco alleges that he's prevented 00:17:58.220 |
from providing a written report to the board, that Twitter executives instruct him to cherry pick, 00:18:03.860 |
that they basically try to amend this third-party consulting firm's report in order to make the 00:18:11.060 |
situation look better in order to hide the extent of the company's problems. 00:18:15.020 |
So I think this is, I think the allegations, as far as they go, are mainly a problem for Twitter 00:18:21.140 |
And look, I don't know the truth of these things. They're just allegations. I think this guy is a 00:18:26.840 |
respected sort of white hat hacker in the cyber community. At the same time, I don't know, maybe 00:18:32.540 |
he is a bad manager, or maybe there are other reasons for removing him. 00:18:37.940 |
Yeah. And you can't ignore the fact that under whistleblower laws, 00:18:40.820 |
if Twitter gets fined as a result of these allegations, he could get 30%. 00:18:45.440 |
So listen, we don't know the truth of it. However, I do think that this whole 00:18:51.080 |
thing is a windfall for Elon's case because it does seem to provide substantiation for 00:18:59.000 |
Elon's assertion that there's a bot problem at Twitter. 00:19:05.660 |
And a cover up that would basically potentially invalidate the company's 00:19:13.940 |
Now, there's a question of law and a question of fact with regard to Elon's case. 00:19:17.960 |
So in other words, at the end of the day, what they're going to be 00:19:21.020 |
stating in Delaware is a contract dispute. Is Elon contractually required to close? And 00:19:28.100 |
Elon's assertion is I'm not because this bot issue. So there's a question of law where if 00:19:33.320 |
everything Elon says about the bots is true, is he required to close? And I don't know what 00:19:39.380 |
the legal ramifications that are. But I think with respect to the question of fact, which is, 00:19:44.180 |
is Elon right about the bot issue? There's no question that this is a bombshell that can only 00:19:50.960 |
to your point, the the the stock was kind of pricing in a 70% likelihood of this thing closing, 00:19:57.980 |
if you looked at just how all this stuff was trading, and it went down to 60%. Once that 00:20:02.240 |
whistleblower report came out, and people had a chance to digest it. So to your point, 00:20:06.800 |
it definitely moved the goalposts a little bit towards towards in Elon's favor. 00:20:10.880 |
There is a you know, an important thing to point out here, which sex just touched on, 00:20:15.320 |
there was a whistleblower program that was created in 2012. And by the SEC, 00:20:20.900 |
as part of Dodd Frank, I believe, or in part of the evolution of Dodd Frank, 00:20:24.740 |
and they've given out now over $1 billion in whistleblower awards, these awards come out 00:20:31.640 |
of the SEC fine. So you often wonder like, hey, they give this huge SEC fine, who got it? Well, 00:20:36.500 |
it turns out whistleblowers now are massively incentive, because if you're a whistleblower, 00:20:40.340 |
it's a career ending, potentially, Jason, you're not you're not seeing the other part, which is 00:20:44.900 |
when you go to these organizations to now help develop a whistleblower lawsuit, what has actually 00:20:50.180 |
happened is you're not whistleblowing, moral or ethical breaches, you're whistleblowing things 00:20:55.460 |
that can come back to an issue that the SEC and the FTC can make an issue up because that's where 00:20:59.900 |
the financial fines come. And that's where their remuneration and motivation. So for example, like 00:21:04.280 |
you could have a company that's illegally, I don't know, killing dogs, how horrible. 00:21:10.400 |
But, you know, the whistleblower claim will be about, you know, their disclosures in a 10k 00:21:15.620 |
of how many dogs they killed to the SEC, right? In this case, you know, how many, what did they do? 00:21:20.120 |
They tell the Yeah. And that's why he gave this to the SEC, DOJ. The other interesting wrinkle here. 00:21:25.340 |
And by the way, there's been to the whistleblower program, I did a bunch of reading on it this week. 00:21:28.940 |
They also don't disclose who the whistleblowers are. So this isn't a case where you have to come 00:21:34.100 |
out like Francis did, or much did you, a lot of these awards are being given quietly. So there's 00:21:40.160 |
been two rewards over $100 million. And they don't say what the award was based on, you know, 00:21:46.100 |
who did who, who the whistleblower is, or who the company is, they've been doing this in a 00:21:50.060 |
very stealthy way. And it seems to be highly effective. The big difference, I think with 00:21:54.800 |
Francis, compared to this one is Francis just a PM, you know, who was not a top five or 10 employee, 00:22:00.740 |
not even close to that. This is a top five, top seven employee who had access to the board and 00:22:06.080 |
was giving reports to the board, at least orally. The final point on this, I would like to get 00:22:10.520 |
everybody's commentary on if it is true, that they essentially were forced Twitter was forced by the 00:22:20.000 |
government to put a government agent on the payroll. I think agent means spy, how explosive 00:22:24.440 |
is that? And then how many countries that to me is the most important thing that is not getting 00:22:28.760 |
nearly enough coverage. It's like you had a government come to a company that's based in 00:22:33.920 |
America. And it's not it's not the United States government that did it. And basically said, 00:22:39.260 |
we need you to place an agent of our intelligence services inside of your company. And it seems like 00:22:44.420 |
they were like, Okay, where do you want them to sit? Now, sacks, if that's true, 00:22:49.940 |
would I wonder if they would be required to tell the CIA and our government that their arms being 00:22:54.860 |
twisted? Like, this seems unprecedented to me. And if they didn't, well, I think this is all alleged. 00:23:02.480 |
So but if true sacks, what I think the bigger but no, Jason, you should also ask the next one, 00:23:06.860 |
which is if they did it to Twitter, which is kind of small. What about the big honeypots of users, 00:23:12.800 |
Google, Apple, Google, Facebook, TikTok, snap. And what about 00:23:19.880 |
Trump countries outside of just India? What about the United States? No, I mean, 00:23:25.400 |
what about the United States? Well, yeah, we have access to the stuff, you know, through the courts, 00:23:30.320 |
it's supposed to be a process, there's supposed to be the process is you go to court and you get a 00:23:34.640 |
warrant, not that it's a high bar, but a prosecutor has to go show probable cause and get a search 00:23:40.220 |
warrant, present it to the company, and then they turn over the data. This you're right, 00:23:45.260 |
it's explosive in the sense that what they're saying is that these government agents, 00:23:49.820 |
this is what Zacco says, according to Time magazine, the purported agents had direct, 00:23:56.900 |
So it means DMS, when the accounts are created, who owns which account the IP addresses, 00:24:02.600 |
that's what I'm guessing. They had access to which is you do not want to trust I'm guessing, 00:24:08.000 |
I'm guessing what don't put anything in your DMS, folks. I'm guessing what it doesn't mean is the 00:24:11.960 |
Twitter menu in the cafeteria. Yeah, no. Not that I mean, not that anybody's been to that cafeteria 00:24:23.120 |
They had direct unsupervised access to the salad bar. 00:24:26.960 |
I think I think I think you have to make an assumption that if if governments are doing 00:24:36.080 |
this to one company, they're doing it to all companies. Yeah, but you would think, 00:24:39.440 |
right? That Google would put up a fight or Apple would put up a fight. But who knows? 00:24:45.260 |
You think they put up a fight when they went into China? The opposite. 00:24:49.700 |
You think they do the opposite? Well, actually, what they did was there's actually even sneaker way 00:24:53.840 |
to do it. What Apple did when they went there is they said, we're not providing cloud services in 00:24:58.640 |
China. But all the cloud services are provided by this third party company. So then they could have 00:25:03.380 |
plausible that that's not what this is about. This is about being an example of how this is. 00:25:08.180 |
I understand. But I'm asking you a question. Do you think that foreign governments have put pressure 00:25:13.820 |
on the largest American tech companies to place agents? And do you think they exist in there? 00:25:18.200 |
They've definitely put. So they've put agents in there. They've definitely put agents in there. 00:25:19.640 |
So the first part, they've definitely put pressure. We see that obviously, then the question is, 00:25:23.240 |
would our would the would Apple or Google do this and not inform the government or not put up a fight? 00:25:29.420 |
I don't know. Well, I think it's fair to say that the the Senate Intelligence Committee is going to 00:25:33.860 |
haul Twitter and have like a closed door meeting. And then the question is, you know, will they 00:25:38.660 |
haul everybody else in and is just is I think what what is what is an important question is, 00:25:43.880 |
is this a dirty girl kind of business tactic at the highest levels of every company? And we 00:25:49.580 |
just don't know it and are typically not read into it. And we would never know in the absence 00:25:53.180 |
of this whistleblower thing. And my question is, do does our government know that our companies 00:25:57.980 |
are acquiescing to these governments? Well, that's been a problem for a long time, actually. So there 00:26:02.420 |
was an op ed by Microsoft executive talking about this a number of months back where the argument 00:26:07.340 |
was, well, the government has to go get a search warrant to get your data from these companies. 00:26:11.060 |
But these companies don't put up a fight like they don't. They don't challenge the warrant at all. 00:26:15.320 |
And why because they don't have an interest, they have an interest in in being called. 00:26:19.520 |
Cooperative, right? The article is basically saying that if you're the subject of a search 00:26:24.620 |
warrant, meaning they're going to Google to get information about Jason, the government should 00:26:29.900 |
have a duty to inform Jason so that your lawyers can go challenge it. And that was the legal change 00:26:35.240 |
that needed to be made. We had this conversation, I think last year. That is a change that should 00:26:40.640 |
be made because in the old days when the government would present you with a search warrant, they'd 00:26:44.960 |
have to go to you because all of your documents were in your possession, they would be at your 00:26:49.460 |
house. So they would come knocking on your door, give you the search warrant, you could give it to 00:26:53.480 |
your lawyer, they could challenge it. That doesn't happen anymore. Now the government just goes and 00:26:57.680 |
gives a search warrant to a big tech company, because your data is in the cloud. But their 00:27:01.580 |
argument is you don't own that data, the big tech company does. The big tech company has no 00:27:05.420 |
incentive to fight the government. And they just get access to all of your data. And you don't even 00:27:09.260 |
know. Well, it's not an investigator. It's not an argument. You agree to that when you sign their 00:27:13.460 |
terms of service. Yeah, the current situation is bad enough that essentially, you have very little 00:27:19.400 |
rights over your data. But what's happening here, the allegation is even worse, which is that 00:27:25.700 |
government operatives are working with the company in a way that provides them access. 00:27:29.360 |
And they have a search warrant. Yeah, they can just buy on their ex girlfriend, 00:27:33.260 |
their you know, brother in law, whoever they can just spy on a celebrity do whatever they want. 00:27:37.940 |
I'd always, I'd always assumed that this was happening covertly, meaning like, look, 00:27:43.940 |
if you're a tech company, and you know, you have a very bright, I don't know, PhD on a visa, 00:27:49.340 |
and you hire that person to work in computer vision, I'm just making this up. 00:27:52.640 |
How do you really know that that person is not an agent of another foreign country? And obviously, 00:27:59.180 |
the overwhelming majority are not. But once you have hundreds or 1000s of people, 00:28:05.600 |
you know that that you brought into your company, all it takes is one person, you know, for example, 00:28:11.840 |
we just saw I think in Apple, there were two people that were just recently arrested for stealing all 00:28:19.280 |
autonomous auto data and documents and design schematics and all of that stuff. And one of 00:28:27.080 |
the guys was arrested right before he was trying to fly back to China. 00:28:31.400 |
And so somehow they figured it out, they were able to get him he was not a US citizen. But 00:28:36.380 |
then another guy that did it was a US citizen, but both were of Chinese origin, it just goes to show 00:28:41.120 |
you that the covert nature of industrial espionage is probably at an all time high. Right. And I think 00:28:49.220 |
that's, that's a risk that every company has to manage and do the best that they can. But this is 00:28:54.860 |
different. This is an overt risk. This is just an overture and saying, open the door, give us a badge, 00:29:00.560 |
we're coming in. And this is why I think you have to deal with this case very delicately and in a 00:29:05.180 |
Yeah. And for people who don't know, Google does what's called the transparency report, Twitter 00:29:10.160 |
also has one. So they do try to put out by category search warrants, subpoenas, etc. Exactly how many warrants 00:29:19.160 |
are getting and the tech companies are at least trying to be transparent about it to the extent 00:29:24.740 |
they can. But this is going to lead to a lot of people moving off of the cloud, I predict. 00:29:28.700 |
We're seeing, in fact, Apple is now storing your data. And a lot of your privacy information 00:29:35.540 |
locally on your phone. And if it's encrypted, they can't hand it over, as we saw with the 00:29:40.340 |
the terrorist shooting in it was at San Bernardino, where they couldn't unlock the 00:29:45.260 |
phone and they went to the Israeli spy company to do it. So you know, I think I think the 00:29:49.100 |
the companies here, at least in the United States want to defend their users. But this is could be 00:29:53.240 |
make people rethink the cloud. And I've seen a couple of pitches from start, 00:29:57.080 |
I think you're confusing issues. Of course, they're going to try to defend their users in 00:30:00.440 |
the United States. But what if you have if you let somebody into a different country and that 00:30:04.100 |
Oh, yeah. It's not as if it's not as if servers are not accessible. 00:30:07.160 |
Yeah, I'm not confusing. I'm just talking about the United States here for a minute. I do think 00:30:11.360 |
you're going to see people buy many servers to put or rent their own cloud services that are encrypted 00:30:19.040 |
to unlock. And so look for that trend to come or more companies to encrypt it and say, 00:30:25.820 |
isn't it crazy that like, you know, we spent the last 20 years pushing the cloud. And the 00:30:30.500 |
thing that may actually unwind the cloud is just the utter lack of privacy that we all have now. 00:30:36.020 |
I've just had like, we've just created these massive honeypots, where you know, any state or 00:30:42.740 |
non state actor can essentially just have an incredibly detailed understanding of who you are. 00:30:48.980 |
why because we weren't willing to pay five bucks a month for storage. 00:30:57.500 |
philosophy behind decentralized services that you know, yeah, I mean, I don't like using that term, 00:31:07.400 |
but just decentralized services where the data doesn't sit on some centralized enterprise 00:31:12.860 |
controlled servers, but the data is distributed either on a chain or in your phone or in some way. 00:31:18.920 |
You know, your identity, your information, your content isn't isn't centrally controlled. 00:31:26.180 |
And that that fundamental principle may actually come to kind of bear over the next couple of years 00:31:32.360 |
and decades that a consumer model, yeah, that model is more appropriate for us for me. And 00:31:37.880 |
therefore, the services that are built that way are going to win in the market. The challenge is 00:31:42.440 |
ultimately how do you finance those because those services, right? I mean, they don't have as much of 00:31:48.860 |
You know, if you're willing to pay five or $10 a month for your privacy, 00:31:52.880 |
consumers are doing it for you. But I use the brave browser and VPNs. And these are becoming 00:31:58.580 |
a major category. You hear it on podcast advertising all the time. DuckDuckGo brave VPNs 00:32:06.020 |
are like VPNs aren't just for hackers anymore. They're like real like, 00:32:09.560 |
probably bringing up something that I think that's really important, which is that you know, 00:32:14.000 |
in over the last 20 years, for all of us, we've been building these products on the internet. We've 00:32:18.800 |
been building these products on the internet. And we've been building these products on the internet. 00:32:19.880 |
And we've been building these products on the internet. And we've been building these products 00:32:20.420 |
on the internet. And we've been building these products on the internet. And we've been building 00:32:20.840 |
these products on the internet. And we've been building these products on the internet. And we've 00:32:20.840 |
basically created these expectations of consumer surplus. And we've never given people true sets of 00:32:27.500 |
trade offs. We've always said, Oh, you'll get more. And it's essentially free, because we'll 00:32:31.820 |
back into an advertising model that that supports us being able to give you more and more for free. 00:32:36.980 |
But it turns out that it has some real consequences. And I do think that not enough of us 00:32:42.020 |
actually understand why privacy is important. But when you start to hear these examples, 00:32:46.460 |
and it'll be important to see what what the true details are, and then we'll get to the real details. 00:32:48.740 |
of this Twitter situation are. I think that the pendulum starts to swing in the other direction, 00:32:54.500 |
where we say, Okay, you know what, I'll eat out at Chipotle one night a week less. And instead, 00:33:00.920 |
I'm going to reallocate that money to making sure that I have, you know, some amount of privacy, 00:33:05.240 |
you can do it for 25 bucks a month, you know, two or 300 bucks a year, which is a big number for, 00:33:09.680 |
you know, maybe the average Joe, but it's, it's, it's, it's being packaged and bundled 00:33:14.360 |
right now. So you're seeing the VPNs, the anonymous search engines, 00:33:18.680 |
the browsers, all starting to bundle, they're bundling a set a suite of services. And so I think 00:33:26.480 |
this is upon us now and consumers get it, and they want to protect their privacy. So an Apple has said 00:33:31.340 |
this is going to be our reason for you to choose our cloud is that we're going to put the local 00:33:36.500 |
settings, we're gonna put your data on your phone, encrypt it, we don't have access to it. Use use 00:33:41.900 |
Apple for this reason. Of course, they're also building a multi billion dollar ad business at 00:33:45.980 |
the same time in Apple news, and they're going to be able to use it for their business. So I think 00:33:48.620 |
that's a big part of the reason why they're building this app store. So there's that I guess 00:33:53.480 |
we should move on here. We'll we'll see what happens with this. The other big news story that 00:33:58.280 |
people are talking about this week, and we talked about I guess last year was student loan debt 00:34:03.080 |
relief. Interestingly, about 85 days before the midterms Joe Biden has decided to unilaterally give 00:34:12.380 |
10 to 20k of debt relief to people who have student loans, you have to have a student loan, 00:34:18.560 |
have under 125k in yearly income as an individual 250 as a household. And the student loan pause 00:34:28.100 |
program which happened during COVID has been extended to the end of this year. I'm not sure why. 00:34:33.380 |
they explained why. Apparently, it takes four months for them to turn on their co ball written 00:34:40.280 |
software that runs these loan services. Mighty change takes four months, 00:34:45.080 |
it's gonna take it's gonna take four months to restart the software that that 00:34:48.500 |
calculates your loan balance and is able to print a bill. 00:34:51.440 |
We're so incompetent. Okay, anyway, you have to apply for this. And as we know, student loan is 00:34:56.720 |
student loan debt is 1.75 trillion. This is gonna cost us another 300 billion. Can't imagine what's 00:35:04.460 |
going to happen with this 1020k people buying NF T's and stocks and housing and we're going to 00:35:10.760 |
hit the I guess we're gonna Bloomberg Bloomberg had a report that said that, look, we we passed the 00:35:18.440 |
inflation reduction act, we talked about it last week. But one of the key pillars of that is that 00:35:22.220 |
there's a 300 billion of expected revenues coming in. And we essentially turned around and just gave 00:35:28.520 |
that back to a very, very small segment of the American population. Bloomberg's analysis was 00:35:35.300 |
that it's going to create somewhere between point one and point 3% extra inflation on top of all of 00:35:41.780 |
that. And so you know, you really have to ask yourself like what, what was the White House trying 00:35:48.380 |
to accomplish? I think number one, they made a campaign promise. And so you know, I think Biden 00:35:53.360 |
needed to make sure that he fulfilled that. But nobody was really happy, right? The progressives 00:35:59.960 |
wanted something extreme. Everybody else said, you know, this is not really the right thing to do. 00:36:04.460 |
Because it doesn't really solve the the the root cause of what we're dealing with, 00:36:10.460 |
you know, if it would have been much better if you'd said, Hey, listen, 00:36:13.460 |
you know, we're going to make this stuff expungable on bankruptcy, that would have been really useful. 00:36:18.320 |
What happens if you actually tried to I don't know, you were from the inner city, 00:36:21.980 |
and you worked your ass off, you became a doctor, you have 300,000 in debt. But now you're a, you 00:36:27.020 |
know, a resident and you make 126,000. Well, now you're, you know, you're kind of SOL here. So 00:36:32.780 |
there's a lot of folks that they probably wanted to wanted to help that they didn't help. Then 00:36:38.120 |
there's all the blue collar folks who are like, why this giveaway only to these folks, then they're 00:36:43.040 |
the people that paid off their loans thinking, why did I pay my loans off? Then there's the incentives, 00:36:48.260 |
that it creates for colleges, which is, well, I'm just going to keep jacking up tuition, because if 00:36:52.520 |
they did it once, they may do it again. So all of these things, I think, are sort of a little bit of, 00:36:58.340 |
you know, it's a little bit of a head scratcher. And then the last thing which we can talk about 00:37:03.800 |
at the end is, I don't think this is what gets people out to vote. And I don't think it's what 00:37:08.660 |
people care about, ultimately, at the polls, which if there was a political calculation to 00:37:12.860 |
make, that's important. And specifically, when you look at what happened last night, 00:37:18.200 |
a bunch of these districts, every progressive candidate got absolutely shellacked. They lost 00:37:26.480 |
across the board. And so the progressive talking points around this stuff, fundamentally, when push 00:37:32.420 |
comes to shove, doesn't work for democratic voters. And then second, is there was a really hotly 00:37:38.780 |
contested seat, which was a Democrat versus a Republican. I think it's Pat Ryan versus this guy, 00:37:48.140 |
Yeah, he was a Republican. He was leading the entire way. And then this guy won 51 49. And 00:37:52.340 |
this is a very centrist down the middle. Damn. So all the signs are like, this may not have been 00:37:59.240 |
the smartest thing to do. But I don't think Joe Biden had a choice because he made the promise 00:38:03.980 |
Freeberg, is this a fair thing to do? A smart thing to do a cynical thing to do to buy votes? 00:38:10.400 |
This is absolutely moronic. I think that the fact that 8 million, 00:38:18.080 |
9 million households are eligible for this relief. And 10 to $20,000 is relief is provided to a 00:38:26.360 |
minority of Americans is exactly what Chamath said, which is kind of distorted politics at its worst. 00:38:34.100 |
There. This is a $300 billion bill to the US taxpayer. And the ultimate beneficiary of that 00:38:42.080 |
bill, while we all might want to say it's the people that are getting debt relief that have 00:38:45.260 |
taken out these student loans, that money was transferred to the United States. And that's 00:38:48.020 |
transferred to somewhere. And you know where it was transferred to university endowments and the 00:38:53.060 |
profit and the pockets of for profit educational institutions. If there were a free market for 00:39:01.040 |
education in the United States, and the government was not involved in the process of funding and 00:39:05.960 |
supporting the educational infrastructure in this country, individual citizens would have the right 00:39:11.300 |
and the obligation to make decisions about whether or not the money that they're spending on tuition 00:39:17.960 |
ROI for them. By spending 10,000 or $100,000. Am I going to make more than that much money back 00:39:23.420 |
when I graduate. And unfortunately, we've lulled our citizenry, we've lulled our country into 00:39:29.900 |
complacency, where that decision and that calculus is no longer required. Because Uncle Sam is there 00:39:35.540 |
to give you all the money you want to go to college. And the hungry money hungry institutions 00:39:39.740 |
that are there to educate you are taking that money, putting it in their endowments or in the 00:39:44.120 |
pockets of their shareholders. And at the end of the day, it turns out that that decision may not 00:39:47.900 |
have been the best decision. And we're no longer holding ourselves individually, to take 00:39:52.880 |
responsibility for the decisions that we've made. And we're creating miss incentives, because of the 00:39:58.580 |
government programs that have been created by telling people you need to get a higher education, 00:40:02.480 |
the government is going to pay for it for you. And it doesn't matter if it does or doesn't work, 00:40:06.560 |
because at the end of the day, if it doesn't work, we're just going to pay it back for you anyway, 00:40:09.860 |
we'll bail you out. And there's a middle class in the United States of America, 00:40:13.820 |
that is going to end up paying the tax bill primarily, because that's where most tax dollars 00:40:17.840 |
come from, for the minority of people that made a bad decision. And it's not necessarily their fault. 00:40:23.660 |
They made that decision because the infrastructure in the system was set up to tell them duped, 00:40:29.060 |
yeah, go to college, get a good degree, it always works having a good life, 00:40:33.440 |
you'll make more money. And the and the reality is that they aren't, and that they don't the ROI 00:40:38.300 |
for many of these degrees has been negative, you make less money than you would have if you were 00:40:43.520 |
actually in the workforce, earning an on the ground experience and progressing your career. 00:40:47.780 |
You do not need a degree in philosophy or history or German studies, to be able to go and be 00:40:53.180 |
effective in the technology workforce, or in the services workforce. And I think that we're seeing 00:40:57.380 |
that play out. The biggest challenge now is if we're going to provide this loan relief, 00:41:02.060 |
and not reform the educational infrastructure and the and the requirements for whether or not 00:41:07.700 |
an educational system is eligible for support from the federal loan program, we are not actually 00:41:13.520 |
solving the fundamental problem. We are keeping this gravy train running. And we're 00:41:17.720 |
not actually getting to the root cause of where this money is flowing. And this is exactly what 00:41:21.140 |
happens. I will rehash my point that I've made 100 times at the end of empires, everyone sees 00:41:26.780 |
that the money train is leaving the station, and everyone jumps and grabs what they can. And that's 00:41:31.580 |
exactly what's going on. We think that we're a rich nation, but we're becoming complacent. And 00:41:35.660 |
this is unfortunate. And it's a really sad sign. I think we need to fix this educational 00:41:39.140 |
infrastructure, we need to make eligibility requirements for whether or not loans are 00:41:43.100 |
actually going to have a positive ROI for students. And then individuals ultimately need to be educated 00:41:47.660 |
and held accountable to whether or not they're making the right decisions for themselves. 00:41:50.960 |
Sach should each American pay $1,000 to let these 8 million people off the hook, 00:41:56.360 |
because that's what this is going to cost. No, of course not. I mean, 00:41:59.600 |
I think people say I don't like you, I just gave you the softball of all softballs. 00:42:02.900 |
No, I mean, look, I think this is an issue where all four of us are on the same page. I agree with 00:42:07.580 |
everything that Jamasa and what Freeberg said, I mean, this bill is unfair, or it rewards 00:42:12.200 |
relatively well off college grads over working class people, it's going to add 00:42:17.600 |
$300 billion to the deficit. I mean, Joe Manchin should feel like a sucker right now because they 00:42:22.400 |
just spent the $300 billion of supposed savings that he just agreed to. Just to add, it's 00:42:30.200 |
unconstitutional. I mean, the Constitution expressly says, "No money shall be drawn from 00:42:35.960 |
the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law." So I don't understand how Biden can 00:42:42.020 |
even do this by an executive order. I expect this will be challenged and taken to the Supreme Court. 00:42:47.540 |
And I think there's a very good chance that it'll end up like Biden's other executive orders that 00:42:51.140 |
were ruled unconstitutional. Remember, there was the vaccine mandate that he tried to do, 00:42:54.920 |
and there was the eviction moratorium that he tried to do, and they were both ruled 00:42:58.280 |
unconstitutional. I think there's a good chance that this will also be ruled unconstitutional. 00:43:02.660 |
And like you guys mentioned, it's inflationary. I mean, these are basically STEMI checks, 00:43:07.820 |
which we don't need right now. And it's going to make tuition go up because the 00:43:11.360 |
more government subsidizes something, the more those providers have an incentive to raise the 00:43:16.880 |
cost. So this is a very good chance. And I think there's a very good chance that it'll end up like 00:43:17.480 |
this. And this is just a jump-the-shark moment, I think, for policymaking. The question is, 00:43:21.380 |
why are they doing it? And I think it really speaks to the nature of the Democratic Party 00:43:26.780 |
today, which is the Democratic Party has shifted from being a blue-collar, sort of more economically 00:43:34.220 |
populist party, economically left party, to being a professional class that is college-educated, 00:43:41.360 |
culturally left, more woke party. And this is the ultimate example of that, where the Democratic 00:43:47.420 |
passing this payoff and giveaway to their sort of woke college graduates at the expense of 00:43:53.720 |
their blue-collar, the blue-collar part of their coalition. And a Democratic political scientist 00:43:59.300 |
that I like to read, Roy Tushara, just today, he had a blog post called The Democrat Shifting 00:44:04.400 |
Coalition, where he pointed out that if you look at polling, if you look at the generic ballot among 00:44:10.760 |
white college graduates, they favor Democrats by 12 points, whereas the white working class, which is, 00:44:17.360 |
say, non-college voters, they favor Republicans by 25 points. So one of the biggest gaps in the 00:44:23.420 |
electorate is college versus non-college. That is the fundamental gap. It's bigger than any other 00:44:30.500 |
gap, than racial gaps or anything like that. This is really the key gap in the electorate. And this 00:44:35.300 |
is a payoff to the, basically, to the new foot soldiers of the Democratic Party. If you think 00:44:40.760 |
about it, the old stereotype of a foot soldier of the Democratic Party would be a union representative. 00:44:46.820 |
They were the ones getting out the vote. That person's been replaced with sort of a woke college 00:44:51.800 |
graduate who joins the Democratic Socialists of America, and they go out and they're the ones 00:44:56.420 |
pounding the pavement and doing the ballot harvesting. So there's been a real change in 00:45:00.740 |
what this party is about, and I think that's the explanation for why they're passing this really 00:45:04.820 |
horrible piece of legislation. The MFAs, Chamath, and then we'll go to you, Freeberg. 00:45:07.580 |
The MFAs from Sarah Lawrence College have taken over the 00:45:10.700 |
Democratic Party. Yeah, all right. Well, let me ask you guys a question. 00:45:16.640 |
everyone went to undergrad. Chamath, you went to undergrad in Canada, right? 00:45:20.660 |
I have no grad degree. Right. But when you guys graduated college, 00:45:26.060 |
what do you think the ratio 80/20, 90/10, 50/50, 0/100 was the first two years of experience you 00:45:33.560 |
guys had in the workforce versus the education and knowledge you garnered in college? How important 00:45:40.640 |
workforce. 90% workforce. I went to school at night, so I was working while I was at school. 00:45:45.800 |
Right. I would say 100 and zero. I went to a school, University of Waterloo, 00:45:51.320 |
that has a program called co-op, where you have to alternate school and work. It takes an extra 00:45:56.240 |
year to graduate, but you end up getting 24 months of full-time work experience. 00:46:00.980 |
So it was the same. And you graduate with a lot less debt. I graduated with half the 00:46:05.540 |
debt I would have otherwise. Sacks. I mean, do you feel the same? I mean, you went and got a law degree. 00:46:09.860 |
That's different. I mean, look, I think that it used to be the case that people would go get these 00:46:16.220 |
degrees and they would take out these loans because there was a perceived ROI of getting 00:46:21.020 |
this education. And I think one of the deeper issues we have today is it's very unclear what 00:46:26.240 |
the ROI is. I mean, what is the return on getting a degree in social studies or art history or, 00:46:34.580 |
frankly, some woke studies at one of these prestigious universities? Their graduates go out 00:46:38.900 |
and they're not... They're not going to be able to get a degree in a major university. They're not 00:46:39.800 |
going to be able to get a degree in a major university. They're not going to be able to get a degree in a major university. 00:46:39.860 |
They're not going to be able to get a degree in a major university. They're not going to be able to get a degree in a major university. 00:46:39.860 |
They're not going to be able to get a degree in a major university. They're not going to be able to get a degree in a major university. 00:46:39.860 |
They're not going to be able to get a degree in a major university. They're not going to be able to get a degree in a major university. 00:46:39.920 |
They're not going to be able to get a degree in a major university. They're not going to be able to get a degree in a major university. 00:46:39.960 |
They're not going to be able to get a degree in a major university. They're not going to be able to get a degree in a major university. 00:46:40.040 |
qualified for a higher-paying job. Actually, I think one of the really revealing parts of this 00:46:45.320 |
executive order is not just the debt forgiveness part. We haven't really touched on it. There's 00:46:49.440 |
another provision that caps repayment levels. Basically, it says that the monthly payments 00:46:55.060 |
on undergraduate loans will be limited to 5% of monthly income. Now, who is that the payoff to? 00:47:00.420 |
That is the payoff to the art history major from Amherst who ends up being a barista at Starbucks 00:47:05.720 |
or the Democratic political operative who works for the DSA gathering votes. That is who this 00:47:13.380 |
is a payoff to. Let me give the counter-argument to you, Saxon. I want to hear your response to 00:47:18.080 |
this. The counter-argument is, hey, listen, the airlines got bailed out for a trillion dollars 00:47:23.840 |
cumulatively. 2008 financial crisis, $700 billion or something to that number. 00:47:30.480 |
There is a caveat to that, which is we actually made money on that bailout. 00:47:35.680 |
Hold on. And number three, airlines, banks, and then the Trump tax break, $1.5 billion. 00:47:43.320 |
So why can't a bunch of students get but $300 billion? That is the counter-argument. We don't 00:47:51.000 |
complain when the rich people get bailouts and the rich corporations and airlines do, 00:47:55.640 |
but now we're suddenly complaining about this little pittance here. 00:47:57.960 |
What's your best response to that, Freeberg? I'm not saying that's my position, by the way. 00:48:01.800 |
Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary of the United States, 00:48:04.980 |
said a tweet storm about this, and he said, you know, the student loan issue arouses passion. 00:48:10.580 |
Here are some observations and some responses. There is no analogy with bank bailouts. Student 00:48:16.120 |
loans are grants that cost the government money. The bank bailouts were loans at premium interest 00:48:22.280 |
in which the government actually turned a profit. And it's important to think about 00:48:26.900 |
all government services being infrastructure funding, where you are funding some underlying 00:48:32.680 |
tubing or mechanism that allows you to do that. And I think that's a great question. 00:48:34.280 |
that allows society and the economy to progress 00:48:50.120 |
at the price of that home at the fair market price 00:48:53.100 |
because they paid a premium taking on the risk 00:48:56.500 |
of a hurricane or a flooding event hitting their home. 00:48:58.440 |
Why should the US government and the US taxpayer come in 00:49:01.320 |
and say, you know what, I'm gonna reimburse you 00:49:04.780 |
which frankly should have been 50% of what you paid for it 00:49:08.560 |
And that's a big problem that we generally have 00:49:19.480 |
And I think that there's a very clear distinction 00:49:21.540 |
that you can make when you decide whether or not a, 00:49:24.060 |
and we use the term bailout anytime we're spending money, 00:49:26.600 |
but the reality is if you're making an investment 00:49:29.180 |
that has some payoff for economic growth and for people, 00:49:33.060 |
and for this country to progress in some measurable way, 00:49:38.000 |
whether or not that is a reasonable investment 00:49:43.360 |
And when you do that, we're actually burning money 00:49:45.820 |
and we're putting ourselves deeper in a hole as a nation 00:49:52.660 |
and make the investments that allow us to move forward. 00:49:57.880 |
And frankly, the list of things that people say, 00:50:02.740 |
go down that list and ask yourself that question. 00:50:05.020 |
Is it a positive ROI to progress our country forward? 00:50:10.020 |
that had some liability they took on that they can't cover? 00:50:12.720 |
And I think for all those things that are unfair, 00:50:19.680 |
of making up for other people's unfair benefits 00:50:25.660 |
Because at the end of the day, that's a road to nowhere. 00:50:32.460 |
And that's the state that we're in right now, 00:50:44.580 |
And at the end of the day, everyone's what about me 00:50:47.200 |
is gonna drive us into an infinite black hole 00:50:54.400 |
and recognize that the dollars that we're spending 00:50:56.740 |
have to have an ROI for progression of us as a whole. 00:51:12.180 |
I mean, the fact that you have passion about something 00:51:22.140 |
Guys, this stuff really bugs me, I'll be honest. 00:51:26.360 |
this stuff just makes me feel like, what are we doing? 00:51:29.760 |
- Did you put chia seeds in your cereal this morning? 00:51:41.440 |
It's just, you're just waiting for the wave to hit. 00:51:45.020 |
you're gonna be in power. - I have two comments. 00:51:45.960 |
Comment number one is, I think the thing that shows 00:51:58.080 |
The ability to discharge that is the single biggest change 00:52:02.280 |
you could make to the system to be fair to everybody 00:52:13.240 |
We're in agreement. - This is in all debt markets. 00:52:19.080 |
there is an assumption of risk that you're taking 00:52:21.840 |
and that fits on a curve of highly likely to default, 00:52:28.860 |
so a FICO score, but in the debt markets, right? 00:52:31.040 |
And there's these companies that provide that, 00:52:38.400 |
You're a junk debt, so you're a triple B minus," 00:52:42.840 |
And depending on where you are, you pay different rates. 00:52:53.200 |
But in all of those cases, if you go upside down, 00:53:04.340 |
this debt will stay with you forever, which is deeply unfair. 00:53:21.000 |
is that that would then create the forcing function 00:53:28.520 |
And so who do you think is really against the ability 00:53:33.800 |
It's the universities and the university endowments. 00:53:39.380 |
the thing that I would have pushed more than a handout 00:53:41.960 |
to a few people, which by the way, didn't even, you know, 00:53:49.560 |
and it also served to piss off everybody else, 00:53:52.560 |
I would have focused on this bankruptcy issue, 00:53:57.700 |
And the second is why don't you go and actually get 00:54:15.160 |
and the ROI that comes from it as a second class citizen. 00:54:24.680 |
and then even the threat of actually confiscating 00:54:38.920 |
where administrators would think to themselves, 00:55:12.560 |
or a different interest rate than we would for, 00:55:21.080 |
You just give a different one based on the outcome. 00:55:38.060 |
to the underwriter so that they would have to actually assess 00:56:18.660 |
And that spans across different racial groups 00:56:22.560 |
So the fact of the matter is that if you go to college 00:56:27.000 |
and get a degree, you are much, much more likely 00:56:47.920 |
- It's kind of like Harvard has become like Al Qaeda. 00:56:59.840 |
- They graduate the new clerics of our woke theocracy. 00:57:37.940 |
- So wait, so if you're in the Democratic Party, 00:57:41.420 |
which is run by woke progressive political operatives, 00:57:52.900 |
One is I think that the university and the college degree 00:58:07.020 |
and J. Cal, I know you can speak to this because, 00:58:09.640 |
you know, you come from a family that works blue collar, 00:58:26.320 |
you're no longer blue collar, you're now white collar. 00:58:28.420 |
And the reality is that the quality of that degree 00:58:30.620 |
varies greatly based on where you go, the major, 00:58:34.880 |
and the experience you get to accompany that degree. 00:58:37.160 |
And as a result, you may not necessarily transfer 00:58:40.740 |
but you have the degree, you say you're now white collar, 00:58:50.780 |
And what we need to examine is why that heuristic 00:58:53.540 |
is no longer true and what we can do about it. 00:58:57.180 |
- Secondly, I do want to make a defense for college. 00:59:02.820 |
to broadening individuals' exposure to topics, 00:59:06.460 |
research, and areas that they may need to explore. 00:59:10.580 |
to broadening individuals' exposure to topics 00:59:12.580 |
that they may not have naturally been interested in 00:59:14.580 |
or that they will not necessarily get trained in. 00:59:19.580 |
in allowing us to be a more enlightened populace, 00:59:24.840 |
we can understand the things that shaped our world 00:59:27.580 |
and our livelihoods and what makes us who we are today. 00:59:30.080 |
And we can understand the sciences and the maths 00:59:32.080 |
that affect us so we can better understand the world 00:59:35.580 |
So there is a role, but the real question is, 00:59:42.800 |
- Skills that basically make an educational system 00:59:51.800 |
and maybe that's the requirement with federal loans, 00:59:54.800 |
is that there should be some skill or some workforce-based-- 00:59:58.800 |
- I don't want to lose the important breadth of exposure 01:00:06.800 |
Go ahead, Chamath, and then I'll wrap up with my final comment. 01:00:14.520 |
if you were able to discharge your student debt in bankruptcy. 01:00:17.520 |
It is the most powerful market function we could create 01:00:24.520 |
And I think if you guys look at my annual letter, 01:00:28.520 |
but part of the problem that we have in these universities, 01:00:47.240 |
the average person is in their mid to late 70s now 01:00:50.240 |
who are the administrators of our leading institutions. 01:00:56.240 |
and they are focused on the power and the influence 01:01:16.960 |
And you will identify the insider establishment 01:01:28.960 |
who have young people making these decisions. 01:01:32.960 |
college was $9,000, $10,000, $11,000 a year in tuition. 01:01:35.960 |
And if you came out with $10,000, $10,000, $10,000, 01:01:37.680 |
and you had an average job or a salary of double 01:01:49.680 |
Number one, there is a website, Grow with Google. 01:01:53.680 |
They're allowing people to get professional certificates, 01:02:00.680 |
they've identified five different paths to jobs. 01:02:03.680 |
One of them is digital marketing and e-commerce. 01:02:09.400 |
They have essentially looked at what's needed in the world 01:02:13.400 |
and aligned a three to six months online course 01:02:24.400 |
can do this first before you make the decision 01:02:27.400 |
to go $100,000 in debt and then get a $50,000 a year job. 01:02:31.400 |
Here, these jobs average, you know, 60, 70, 80k a year, 01:02:38.120 |
The next piece that the private market is doing, 01:02:40.120 |
you and I looked into this, Chamath, actually, together, 01:02:45.120 |
We were lucky enough to invest in a company called Meritas. 01:02:53.120 |
What this means is they will give you your tuition for free. 01:02:59.120 |
If you go to one of these colleges for nursing, 01:03:04.120 |
and you're capped at paying back like two times whatever the loan is, 01:03:07.840 |
But they take the risk, as opposed to Harvard with $40 billion. 01:03:12.840 |
And so the free market, I think, can also solve this. 01:03:15.840 |
But you have to sit down with your kids and say, 01:03:28.840 |
but what do you guys think about this, you know, 01:03:31.840 |
Republican tidal wave becoming a Republican ripple? 01:03:39.560 |
It was an odd set of outcomes, don't you think, for... 01:03:44.560 |
Look, Biden has had a good run over the last few weeks. 01:03:48.560 |
I'm sorry, my audio cut out one more time, Sachs. 01:03:52.560 |
The Cook Political Report says that the red wave looks more like a red ripple. 01:03:57.560 |
Well, look, I think a couple of things happened. 01:04:00.560 |
So first, Biden has got some wins legislatively. 01:04:04.560 |
I don't think this executive order is good policy. 01:04:06.280 |
I don't think the $750 billion of climate that pretends to be an Inflation Reduction Act, 01:04:13.280 |
But nonetheless, he has delivered some goodies for his base, for his donors. 01:04:18.280 |
And that has basically ameliorated the story in the press that Democrats are in disarray. 01:04:24.280 |
In addition, I think Biden's got two things going for him, Dobbs and Jobs. 01:04:28.280 |
I mean, Dobbs, there's no question, Dobbs has helped the Democrats quite a bit, 01:04:36.280 |
Look, I think overall, the economic data is mixed. 01:04:39.600 |
Real wages are not keeping up with inflation, but Jobs has so far been strong. 01:04:44.060 |
So yeah, there's no question that Democrats are in a materially better position than they 01:04:49.960 |
That being said, the election is still 10 weeks away. 01:04:55.460 |
And I think the economy is still in a pretty fragile state. 01:05:02.400 |
So where things are looking right now, things are a lot better for Biden. 01:05:05.000 |
And by the way, I do think the Republicans have some issues with candidate quality. 01:05:11.500 |
And so there's a couple of races that should have been more slam dunks than that are not. 01:05:31.400 |
Weren't a lot of these wins for Biden bipartisan? 01:05:33.400 |
The Inflation Reduction Act was passed on straight party.