back to indexE34: Wuhan lab leak theory, India's traceability law, Coinbase fact check, Big Tech takes Hollywood
Chapters
0:0 Friedberg recaps Sacks' birthday party
6:47 "Wuhan Lab Leak" theory, did COVID come from a lab? Plus China's fentanyl production
26:9 India's new "traceability" law
33:11 Coinbase & Brian Armstrong debut fact checking blog
41:17 Friedberg's science corner: groundbreaking gene therapies
45:6 Amazon's MGM acquisition, media consolidation
64:45 Biden's $6T infrastructure, Democrat's feeling the inflation pressure & responding
00:00:00.000 |
Okay, so Jason, you're going to send a Zoom link. 00:00:12.740 |
I just puked in my coffee a little bit, but okay. 00:00:14.560 |
It's just that he gets seconds and minutes mixed up. 00:00:28.820 |
Thank you for tuning in to the All In Podcast. 00:00:42.000 |
By the way, that's five seconds includes Chamath brushing his teeth. 00:01:06.080 |
It is another edition episode 34 of the All In Podcast with us today. 00:01:12.180 |
David Friedberg, the queen of quinoa, the science sorcerer of the pod, rain man, David 00:01:19.680 |
Sachs, hot off his 60th birthday bash in Los Angeles. 00:01:27.720 |
And the dictator, Chamath Palihapitiya, fresh off of writing editorials about himself in 00:01:37.200 |
Chamath, give yourself a pat on the back for that exceptional. 00:01:39.760 |
Friedberg is not my favorite bestie because he actually showed up at my birthday party 00:01:45.380 |
David, how do you expect people to react in 24 hours to fly to a different city? 00:01:54.880 |
It was a surprise to all the invitees as well. 00:02:05.680 |
And his wife decides to throw a last minute birthday party after I bought tickets to the 00:02:12.280 |
Knicks and the Nets and invited family members. 00:02:19.340 |
They, you know, they shuttle you on the cars from the plane to the house. 00:02:26.780 |
There's like dudes making like watermelon tequila beverages while you hang out and wait. 00:02:30.860 |
There's some dude from America's Got Talent playing the guitar or playing the violin in 00:02:36.580 |
The bathrooms are nicer than the bathrooms I have at home. 00:02:39.960 |
You know, these porta potties they rented in the driveway. 00:02:44.220 |
Of course, Sachs is late two and a half hours to his own party. 00:02:47.860 |
But then we go into the party, sit down for dinner. 00:02:51.120 |
And then who shows up as our, you know, dinner experience? 00:02:59.000 |
So no one knows who this guy is except 17 year old girls and myself. 00:03:05.720 |
I'm like, oh my God, it's that guy from American Idol. 00:03:08.060 |
I had to rush into the backstage to get a photo with him. 00:03:12.080 |
Um, and then they have like, uh, coolio shows up. 00:03:15.980 |
So we're like sitting down at dinner for course two. 00:03:19.100 |
All of a sudden pop comes out of the woodwork coolio. 00:03:32.200 |
And at this point I'm like seven tequila watermelon tequila's in. 00:03:35.520 |
So I'm like, oh my God, you know, jamming out to coolio. 00:03:43.680 |
I think coolio thought I was Sachs, you know? 00:03:46.180 |
Cause he's like, yeah, he's like, oh, two South African Jews. 00:03:49.660 |
Coolio comes up, starts high-fiving me and hugging me. 00:03:59.960 |
And I like, I'm I'm I'm I've had a little bit of tequila and I, and I whisper in coolio's ear. 00:04:06.920 |
God, I think I saw freeberg throw his panties on stage too. 00:04:27.500 |
I mean, what do you say when coolio's face is in your face? 00:04:30.880 |
Can I go back to the part where you said that you were dancing and instantly the image I had was Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Seinfeld. 00:04:40.500 |
We have to find that security footage of freeberg dancing. 00:04:44.780 |
And then Sachs had like Mark McGrath from Sugar Raid performing. 00:04:47.480 |
And he had that dude from Kool and the Gang performing and the game showed up to give Sachs a birthday wish. 00:04:56.200 |
The game and I was supposed to do a movie together like 15 years ago and, you know, never panned out, but he still remembered me and he came by to say hi on my birthday. 00:05:19.120 |
Uh, 72 hours is generally a shorter window than most, uh, out of city parties, but. 00:05:26.700 |
I had a corporate offsite for my team, so I apologize. 00:05:33.720 |
When Jacqueline sends out an invite for a party, you definitely want to, want to make it. 00:05:41.760 |
Uh, so how does it feel being this old and just looking so exhausted, David? 00:06:10.700 |
I mean, I think just, you do think about, Hey, we're counting down. 00:06:15.580 |
You want to make good use of the time you have left. 00:06:17.720 |
And so, yeah, of course it's something where you're going to consider, you know, your life. 00:06:22.720 |
And just make sure you make good use of the time that you have here. 00:06:25.480 |
I think 40 was just a party, but 50 feels a little bit heavy. 00:06:29.480 |
It'll still be a great party, but it does feel a little bit metaphysical, I guess. 00:06:37.740 |
So I'll let you know after I figure out what that word means. 00:06:42.240 |
Listen, we didn't get together on Friday, but here we are recording on a Saturday and 00:06:48.560 |
The thing I think I'm most interested in hearing from Friedberg about is the lab leak theory. 00:06:55.020 |
I think it's a little bit of the politicization of science, I guess. 00:07:03.860 |
I think it's more Trump derangement syndrome. 00:07:05.780 |
It didn't allow us to see the forest from the trees. 00:07:08.340 |
And the same words just said by a different president all of a sudden invokes an investigation. 00:07:14.260 |
So, I mean, there is a COVID laboratory in Wuhan. 00:07:26.500 |
But specifically, they've studied COVID viruses. 00:07:32.500 |
And it's the only one in China and it's funded by America and China and the who? 00:07:43.300 |
The Wuhan Institute of Virology was posting job recs two years ago specifically for researchers 00:07:54.040 |
We know they were studying bat viruses at this place. 00:07:55.880 |
And Wuhan just happens to be the place where a novel coronavirus that seems derived from 00:08:02.800 |
I mean, this was such an obvious theory, the idea that COVID might have leaked from this 00:08:12.480 |
particular lab, and yet we were forbidden from talking about it, I guess, till Donald 00:08:18.220 |
I mean, I think there's really two stories here. 00:08:26.900 |
Why were we not allowed to have this discussion? 00:08:30.020 |
Why did the media brand anybody who discussed this leak theory as being some sort of conspiracy 00:08:38.520 |
Why were big tech companies censoring or removing any user generated content from their sites 00:08:50.800 |
But somehow they were telling us it was more racist. 00:08:53.040 |
They were telling us it was more racist to talk about a lab accident than to- 00:08:56.500 |
David, because the person who could have explained it in a de-escalated factual way chose to escalate 00:09:02.980 |
it and be emotional and superficial, and that was Donald Trump. 00:09:06.800 |
And so, I don't think that you could point to us and say we could have changed how the 00:09:12.640 |
All of us are just normal average people on the ground. 00:09:15.480 |
But there probably is sort of, you know, a hierarchy of like information, and there probably 00:09:22.040 |
isn't a single individual beyond the president who has access to more information. 00:09:27.800 |
And so, if he was just more moderate and normal and basically said, "Hey, guys, there is a 00:09:33.280 |
legitimate risk that we need to investigate because fast forward basically 18 months later, 00:09:39.220 |
and this president who is moderate, you can like him or not like him, but he's kind of 00:09:43.540 |
moderate and unoffensive, says basically that, and now we have this news cycle about investigating 00:09:51.300 |
We have this whole thing that we've been investigating 18 months ago just at least to get to the bottom 00:09:56.000 |
But Trump had to make it such a big deal and about himself, and I think that's a takeaway. 00:09:59.540 |
But just because Trump says something doesn't mean it's not true. 00:10:03.500 |
I mean, he is occasionally gonna say things that are true and- 00:10:08.740 |
My point is as the president of the United States, you just have to have more discipline. 00:10:11.360 |
Well, but I think you're right in the sense that the reason this became a forbidden topic 00:10:15.940 |
is because the media had to act like anything Trump said is untrue or crazy or something. 00:10:21.060 |
It's not like Trump said anything crazy or racist or conspiracy theory. 00:10:23.620 |
I mean, the media is failing to be independent critical thinkers, and Trump is failing to 00:10:28.800 |
be a good leader and be clear, and that means you have to be an independent critical thinker. 00:10:33.600 |
The media's first obligation here is to the truth. 00:10:36.000 |
They're not supposed to distort the truth or push forward a false narrative because 00:10:40.260 |
of the political consequences, and they didn't want to be seen as helping Trump in any way, 00:10:45.680 |
and that's really what their motivation was, but I find it equally disturbing that big 00:10:50.820 |
The truth on this issue, the whole point of having a free marketplace of ideas is so 00:10:54.760 |
that we can arrive at the truth, and how is that going to be possible when big tech is 00:11:01.060 |
I think that the big tech's decision to censor this information was a derivative of the first 00:11:07.080 |
I don't think that decision would have happened had Trump been normal, and then media would 00:11:14.580 |
have just listened and said, "Okay, maybe there's a chance this guy is right. 00:11:21.680 |
Then big tech would have basically said, "We don't know the truth one way or the other, 00:11:25.200 |
but it seems legitimate, sane people are on both sides of the issue." 00:11:28.820 |
So because Donald Trump published mean tweets, it was okay for big tech, or rather 00:11:33.380 |
the media, to basically portray the correct theory as a lie and a conspiracy, and it was 00:11:39.100 |
okay for big tech to engage in censorship on that basis? 00:11:44.140 |
The President of the United States, independent and whoever it is, has a very specific response 00:11:52.500 |
And I think that's what the President of the United States is responsible for. 00:11:58.420 |
And so the President of the United States has the responsibility to be measured, to be unemotional, 00:12:02.420 |
That's what the President of the United States' responsibility is, no matter who holds the 00:12:04.420 |
And then the media's job is to fact-check that and hold that person accountable and 00:12:17.100 |
I mean, as a scientist, do you think that this is a viable theory? 00:12:20.100 |
This came from a wet market or some accidental exposure, somebody eating bat or some cross-contamination, 00:12:26.680 |
a bat and a pig, and then somebody eats the pig? 00:12:29.280 |
Or do you think somebody from the lab accidentally brought it home with them? 00:12:36.220 |
I feel like we need to kind of recognize that bio-warfare, bioterrorism is a real risk. 00:12:45.940 |
And I think more importantly, that this moment, whether or not it's proven, and it will never 00:12:49.860 |
be proven or disproven one way or the other, so it really doesn't matter. 00:12:52.980 |
What will ultimately happen is we are going to kind of become much more cognizant of these 00:13:02.380 |
A kid in high school could write up some RNA code today on their computer, order that RNA 00:13:10.040 |
to be delivered to them by what's called an oligo printing facility, get this RNA, boot 00:13:14.700 |
it up, turn it into a virus, and they could release that thing into the wild. 00:13:19.860 |
So, there's still very cheap, over-the-counter, internet-based ways that one could do this. 00:13:25.740 |
So the fact that there's some sophisticated government-run lab doing this, I don't think 00:13:30.560 |
What's really compelling in this whole storyline is like, holy shit, this is possible. 00:13:36.420 |
It's possible that there's either an engineered or discovered virus, and it shows just how 00:13:40.620 |
if these things leak out, and they are infectious, and they are transmissible, can become a real 00:13:49.620 |
There are other mechanisms of bio warfare that can be printed and created using similar 00:13:57.000 |
There are proteins called prions, and prions cause other proteins to fold in a mismatched 00:14:08.160 |
And if you eat this particular protein, it ends up in your brain, it causes the other 00:14:11.780 |
proteins in your brain that match that protein to misfold. 00:14:15.620 |
And it basically replicates and creates this cascading effect. 00:14:22.620 |
But I guess my point is like, whether it's prions or viruses, there are techniques and 00:14:27.200 |
there are capabilities and instruments now that all humans have access to that theoretically 00:14:32.660 |
could allow for the booting or the creation and the distribution of truly terrifying tools, 00:14:40.860 |
Now, this comes hand in hand with the incredible optimism and opportunity that these tools 00:14:44.720 |
present, much like chemical engineering presented in the early 20th century to humanity, we 00:14:49.580 |
Like DDT and kill ourselves, or we could create things like artificial fertilizer and 00:14:55.340 |
And so there's this tremendous as there is with any new technology, this tremendous kind 00:15:01.700 |
And it's going to create, I think, a very powerful debate narrative over the coming 00:15:12.040 |
And it's not necessarily just government agencies that we need to kind of be considering here. 00:15:16.080 |
It's the fact that there's a democratization of this tooling, which is enabling our greatest 00:15:20.580 |
Does it, Sax, does it matter if it was leaked or not? 00:15:28.700 |
And the only reason we don't know conclusively that it came from a lab is because the Chinese 00:15:35.300 |
government wouldn't let, they thwarted the investigation. 00:15:40.480 |
And so the smoke is pouring out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and they will not allow 00:15:45.020 |
the firefighters in because those firefighters come from the West. 00:15:49.540 |
We could establish the truth of what happened if they would let us talk to the scientists 00:15:55.500 |
Let's say that you find out that it did leak. 00:15:58.500 |
Well, first of all, we're talking about a virus that's killed millions of people, millions 00:16:02.620 |
It's caused enormous damage to the economy, to our economy, to economies all over the 00:16:08.660 |
You know, we have to think through carefully what the consequences would be, but it matters 00:16:13.120 |
a lot how the Chinese government handled this at a minimum, at a minimum, we need to decouple