Alright, everybody, welcome to Episode 149 of the all in podcast with me again, David Sachs and Chamath Palihapitiya David Freeburg couldn't make it this week, we're going to carry on without him. And it's a difficult week. So just a quick opening statement from me about this episode, like all of you were devastated by the terrorist attacks that occurred in Israel on Saturday.

And I just want to start the discussion here with two important housekeeping notes. First, this is obviously a very dynamic situation. And we're dealing with the fog of war quite literally. So we're going to do our best to make sense of what's happening. But things will change between when we tape this episode on Thursday, and you choose to listen to it in all likelihood at some point over the weekend.

Second, there are going to be some folks out there who claim quite correctly that we are not the experts on this topic. And thus, we shouldn't chime in with our opinions. On the other side, the all in community has told me explicitly, they want to hear us discuss what happened and they want a sense of normalcy.

As one loyal listener explained to me last night at a dinner, the fact that the four of you can debate hard topics, listen to each other, and in the end, have a deeper understanding of the world gives me hope every week. That's why I listen. So we'll do what we do here every week.

We'll have the hard discussion. We'll listen to each other deeply, hopefully. And we'll try to understand the world and each other just a little bit more. And that's worth it, at least to me and apparently many of you. So with those two quick disclaimers, gentlemen, anything you want to say up front before I recap where we are five days into this senseless brutality.

I think that was a pretty good intro, Jason. I mean, you're right, we're taping on Thursday, late morning Pacific time, by the time this drops, it'll be Friday. And so a lot could have happened. Also, it's true that the Middle East in general, and this topic in particular is hugely complicated, we will be accused of not being experts.

But at the same time, the audience seems to appreciate our opinions as consumers of information who are trying to make sense of the world. Yeah. So that's all we can really do. Right. And conversations, I think, are how we make progress. Any thoughts before we get started here? And I'll recap what's occurred to my any, any opening thoughts before we get into the details here, on behalf of somebody who worked in Israel, have a lot of friends there spent a lot of time there.

It's really just a terrible, devastating situation. I've really tried to stay off of social media, just because it's allowed me to kind of think a little bit more logically, it's fast and furious right now, I think on x. And it's just a lot of people trying to make sure that their version of the truth is amplified over every other version of the truth, which I think is like a is the point in the cycle where you just have to almost unplug from the matrix a little bit.

And find a few places that seem to be just telling things in an even handed way, which I also find on x. And then just kind of reconstruct what happened, why it happened. What do we do from here? I don't know. I don't know. I have a lot of thoughts on a lot of the peripheral issues.

But the core issue is just, I'm just stunned that this happened. I don't even know how this is possible that this happened. Like Jamath, I'm not trying to get too weighed in too deeply into the tweets. But I did notice you, by the way, have stopped tweeting. You've done a couple of retweets, but you pause this week, a lot of your tweeting.

Yeah, I mean, I think you're processing time to listen and learn and process what's going on. Right? That's not a great time to be having hot takes. I have posted a few things. First of all, Jason, you've made the analogy to 9/11 being in New York right now. I think that that is the comparison that's been made is that this is Israel's 9/11.

I think that's a justifiable comparison in two respects. One is this was a terrorist attack. It was an atrocity. This was a massacre of civilians. Even if you're somebody who believes in the Palestinian cause, you should be able to recognize that these were war crimes. Yeah, the videos are coming out, the stories are coming out.

In particular, the rounding up and slaughter of 260 attendees at a music festival was really beyond the pale. They're clearing some of these farming villages and so forth. And finding the bodies, the young families basically killed. Anyway, we don't need to repeat all of the details here. But this was, I think, an attack on civilians that is reminiscent of 9/11 and has affected the Israeli people in a similar way.

I think the other analogy to 9/11 that's worth discussing is the reaction to this or what Israel's going to do and what the reaction is by US political figures. You heard people like Nikki Haley basically saying to Netanyahu finish them. It wasn't exactly clear whether she was just talking about Hamas or the whole Gaza Strip or maybe Iran.

And then if there was any ambiguity about that, you just had Lindsey Graham come out and say level the place, meaning referring to all of Gaza. Yeah, it's crazy. I'm very concerned that one of the purposes here of the terrorists was to provoke an overreaction like the US engaged in after 9/11.

Remember, we were viciously attacked, we were wounded. We then lashed out and plunged into two decades of wars in the Middle East. What was the result of that? We lost thousands of lives or own soldiers, we spent trillions of our treasure. Millions of people on the other side died.

And at the end of the day, we only changed the geopolitical map of the Middle East in ways that were ultimately unfavorable for us. Iran became a more powerful country. The region became destabilized. And we squandered the sympathy that the United States had and its moral position that we had after 9/11 in the eyes of much of the world.

So the US I think, fell for the trap that I think bin Laden laid, which was to provoke us into an overreaction. I think that is one of the goals of terrorists is to create such an outrage, such a provocation that they will bait the other side into an overreaction.

I'm quite concerned that could happen here. I think that our US leaders should be, as friends of Israel's should be counseling a cool headed response. I think braying for war with Iran or suggesting that the entire Gaza Strip should be leveled would be doing exactly the wrong thing. It would ignite the Arab street.

And to your point, at least, perhaps that was the goal here. And we're trying to figure out what is the goal of this attack that was planned for years. And perhaps that was the goal is to try to take all the hard for peace and progress that has been made in that process over the over the last couple years, Abraham Accords, and you know, stability, and then just, you know, really create a full scale escalation.

I think that's right. I mean, look, I think Israel is within its rights to dismantle and destroy Hamas. Hamas is an organization that in its charter has said they're committed to the destruction of Israel, they've now committed this atrocity. Again, it was, if they had just limited their attack on uniformed Israeli officers and military, I think that would be one thing, but they went much further than that.

The vast majority of the casualties here are civilians who were murdered in atrocious ways. So I think there are terrorist organization in Israel as well within its rights to destroy them. However, the question is how you do that. Yeah, like, a lot of terrorist organizations, Hamas can kind of melt away into the population of Gaza, they've apparently have these elaborate tunnel networks, they've got bunkers.

So it's not clear that you can destroy them from the sky through bombing. Those kinds of bombs would lead to a lot of civilian casualties, which will inflame the situation and turn a world opinion against Israel. At the same time, if they go in with ground forces, that seems like a really tough situation as well, because Hamas is waiting for them, and they will have to fight a guerrilla war in a very tightly packed, dense urban area where Hamas likely has anti tank weapons, weapons that we've seen that have been so effective against armored vehicles in Ukraine.

Again, if the fighting gets too hot, they can disappear into these tunnel networks, there's going to be IDs everywhere, it's going to be a very, very tough fight for the Israelis. So I think they're in an incredibly tough spot. I'm not quite sure what the right reaction is for them.

But I do think that if the reaction is this, let's call it the Lindsey Graham level the place reaction, I think that could set off a much wider regional war or even a world war. And that is not something that's ultimately going to help Israel. And I hope that our leaders are wise enough to be counseling against that.

I get the sense that they're not going to go that hard. And if you look at the American response to 911, you know, going into Afghanistan and dismantling al Qaeda, a noble mission, and we didn't have any more terrorist attacks on America or very, we thwarted most terrorist attacks, there were attempts, actually.

And our intelligence was very strong over the last couple of decades. And we haven't had another one of those. But you're right going into Iraq. And then, you know, what was the last decade about being in Afghanistan, we went into Iraq, we went into Syria, went into Libya, we stayed in Afghanistan for 20 years, it should have been a quick surgical strike to take out al Qaeda and their Taliban hosts, and then we should have gotten out.

And even that is incredibly difficult as a mission, as you're pointing out here, you know, Hamas can just fade away into the Gaza Strip, and into into Palestine. And, you know, who knows, Shema, I guess where we're at right now is trying to make sense of why this happened, and what the next couple of weeks might look like, right.

And so your thoughts. I think Israel has every right to defend itself, and they should eradicate Hamas. This is not like we woke up and found out that they were a terrorist organization yesterday, or on Sunday. We've known this for years, they've been labeled as such. People have been monitoring their money flows for years, we know where they were funded.

But the thing to keep in mind is that those 30,000 Hamas terrorists have also been keeping 2.2 Palestinians hostage for the last 20 years. And of the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza, half are kids. And so David's right, the thing to keep in mind is, as barbaric as what happened to the Israelis were Israel, in its actions, could cause tremendous civilian casualties, which will just further inflame the ability to find a long term peace in the Middle East.

That's really tragic. And that's probably part of Hamas is kind of sadistic calculus, which is they they probably expected this kind of a reaction, and they probably don't care at the end of the day. So it's important to separate Palestinians from Hamas, but I understand and I know where Israel is coming from, because we face the same reaction after 911.

The question that I have is, Israel is the most sophisticated military and intelligence organization in the world. And the reason is because when everybody talks about priorities, Israel only really has one priority, which is to safeguard the Israeli people survive. And they've been essentially in a conflict zone with this sort of Damocles since the founding of Israel.

So there are three organizations that really have to figure out what happened here, right? There's Mossad, which is the Foreign Intelligence Service of Israel. There's Shin Bet, which is the domestic security apparatus. And there's a man which is the military intelligence group. And it's like, how did this happen?

Because this should have been priority 123 and four, right? And it has always been for them. Other countries, the safeguarding of their people is not necessarily always number one, right? And then things happen. And then you reprioritize it. In many ways, that's what happened in 911. I guess at some level in America.

I mean, we had all the signal before that. And when we did the 911 commission, and we found out they were going to flight school here, you know, and it was pretty clear that it was an intelligence failure for America. Those are the two big thoughts that I have, which is there's just going to be so many civilian casualties, what will that do to actually, I think that that has a huge negative impact on the long term chances of peace, because then radicals will use that information to further or to attempt to radicalize the next generation of Palestinians or other Arabs or whatever.

And so I worry that the progress that was made in the Abraham Accords, all the normalization goes off the rails. And that's tragic, because most of these people, the overwhelming majority of all people everywhere, they just want peace, they just want to live a peace and life, take care of their family, raise their kids.

So that's really tragic. But then the other the other part of my mind is like, how could this have fallen through the cracks? And, and why were the most sophisticated intelligence organizations caught flat footed here? Yeah, it is going to be a lot of information that will come out over time and lessons.

And by the way, the reason why that second piece is important is not to point the finger at anybody. But it's the de escalate because of what sacks it earlier, which is that when people who can articulately gird for war, are given the bully pulpit, and you see American politicians now braying and girding for war.

I don't think they fully recognize the consequences of that they're not doing a full accounting of what America has lived through in the last quarter century. And now to induce other countries to try to do the same, I think is so dangerous. And so if we can understand where these cracks are, at least we can de escalate those specific individuals attempts to escalate.

And if we don't do that, we're going to find ourselves in a really complicated war. And I don't think anybody wants that nobody wins. Nobody wins. Yeah. I mean, at this point, really, the returning of the hostages seems to be the most important, you know, high order mission that has to occur.

After that, clearly dismantling Hamas and this terror apparatus. But you know, having started to spend some time, you know, in the region and talking to people over there. And again, I'm no expert, but I have been talking to people who've been working on this, you know, got people who've been working on trying to create peace in the region for their entire lives.

And this is definitely a setback. But I'm an optimist. And I actually think that in some ways, this is going to create a climate where people are going to really fight to try to resolve the situation, or at least contain the situation, to state solution, the Abraham Accords, and I think they're this is going to renew people's commitment to peace in the region.

And I know many, many of the countries over there are really aghast at what happened. And they've been working really hard to try to normalize relations there and create peace and prosperity and commerce. And you know, between the different countries in the region. So this is just heartbreaking for the loss of human life, and how that occurred.

And then it's also heartbreaking for the peace process and all this progress that's been made recently. And so I think it's, you know, the, there's no silver lining here. But I do think this will, maybe the good people of the world will recommit to trying to resolve this issue and create peace in the region.

That's my hope. I know it's simplistic. And again, no expert, but that's my hope. And I've been spending time over there and learning a lot more about the region. These these are multi generational issues that are going to take generations to figure out. And it's, it's two steps forward, one step back, obviously.

But man, for the politicians and the people negotiating this piece, and they work so tirelessly on this for their whole lives. You know, keep at it. I mean, that's all we can do, right? I mean, Jason, I think disrupting the process that was happening towards normalization of relations between Israel and Arab states, specifically the Gulf monarchies, I think was one of the objectives here.

Yeah. So I mean, Israel's contention for a long time is they want to negotiate peace, they want to negotiate, but they don't have a partner to negotiate with. Whether you believe that or not, that was that was their position. And with the Abraham Accords, we saw that they started to be able to negotiate again, normalization with three Gulf Arab states, without involving the Palestinians.

And it looked like that issue was being put to one side, and that they were kind of going around it. And the idea being, look, if you won't negotiate with us, then we'll figure out a way to move forward without you. The big news that, you know, it's been going on in the last few months is that supposedly Israel, and Saudi Arabia were close to working out some sort of normalization.

And I think that process has been put on hold until I think this has been dealt with. And so I think one of the takeaways here is the idea that you're going to be able to get to Middle East peace without resolving this Palestinian question. I think this is basically a return to the reality that that issue is simply going to have to be dealt with.

I don't think we're going to get to a larger deal in the Middle East, we're not going to resolve all these problems until this long festering problem of the treatment of the Palestinians is is dealt with. I think you're right that the two state solution is the only possible solution that makes sense.

I mean, what's the alternative? A one state solution means that either it's run by the Israelis, but presiding over hostile Palestinian minority that may eventually one day be the majority and you're forced into some sort of apartheid state, or the Palestinians are running that one party state and it means that the Jews have been pushed into the sea.

So neither one of those solutions looks very good. So that leaves you with a two state solution, however hard, however impossible it seems to negotiate that. It's the only option. Yeah, it's the only option. And it's a real opportunity. I think the my hope is that instead of pushing Saudi away, this actually pulls Saudi closer and says, Okay, this is a chance to really normalize the global perception of the Middle East.

Because if there can be a way for Israel and Saudi to build a bridge here, I have a lot of hope that there can be a lot of stability and a lot of the good work. I mean, again, like, man, as a democrat who has been left homeless, who is now definitely in the center, but probably leaning increasingly right, I'm left yet again with an appreciation, despite the messenger of the message of the Trump administration, because what those guys did was pretty incredible.

In hindsight, these Abraham Accords, the Accords with Israel and the GCC, the almost accord between Israel and Saudi. To really be able to like, find a long lasting peace is just a real example for the world. And those guys did a lot of really good work. And it's a miracle, actually, when you when you look at it, what they did, you know, despite the fact, listen, I'm no fan of Trump.

And I am to a homeless. But if you want to objectively look at what they did, that was hard work. It was you have to, you have to. And in fact, this is a moment where you have to start to re underwrite like, is your not your Jason, but I'm just saying collectively is one's Trump derangement syndrome, causing more damage than anything that Trump could have actually done.

And I think the answer is yes, because like, it's now causing us to not see that good work and then embrace and extended so much of the work that happened in that administration. Turns out to have been right. And that's what's so frustrating for me. The work on the border wall, we didn't like the messenger.

So we killed the message. Turned out it was right. issuing long term debt to refinance when rates were at zero, we didn't like the messenger. So we killed the message. A structural piece in the Middle East, we didn't like the messenger. So we killed the message. When are we going to stop shooting ourselves in the foot?

And when are we going to actually see and take the time to look past who is saying things and actually listen to them word for word. I'll give you an example. I started to tweet three links a day over the past three days. And the only reason I did that was I thought things were so hyper contentious and hyper partisan that I just wanted to show a few sides, right.

And one day I found a couple links, two of which one was from Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL, who I thought had a very powerful message. And one was from Mike Flynn. And his message was also actually pretty powerful if you just read it. And if you took the names off, all the content was so valuable both points of view, but the minute it goes into the world, people immediately judge and they kill the message because of the messenger.

And this is exactly a moment where you have an opportunity to just stop doing that because the stakes are so high. It's infuriating, actually, quite honestly, it's infuriating to see it. We had this last week on the show when we were talking about reducing spending, the Mac gates is not the perfect messenger, but his message was the message we've been talking about, which is, hey, we have to control spending.

So I can understand people not liking that gets gates, there's a lot of things to not like about I can understand people not liking Trump and get over it. Well, and then you know, it's it's bizarre that his son in law went to do all this work. But yet he did it.

And it had success. That's another example. It's weird, if you listen to your son in law to do it, but I listened to the notes. You know what, it's not weird, because at the end, if you listen to this podcast, the most important thing that is resoundingly obvious about Jared Kushner is that he is incredibly thoughtful and incredibly competent.

And right, why did we have to spend years being fed all of these stupid lies? Because one can judge for oneself, but Jared Kushner is thoughtful. He's smart. And I thought to myself, I was fed all these lies for years about how this guy was like, moping around in the shadows and this and that and it was all not true.

Well, no, when I say it's non traditional, if you sent, you know, any president's son in law, daughter in law, whatever child to go to the Middle East, on its surface, this seems insane. But in fact, he they did good work. And so it's not traditional. It's not what you would expect thoughtful and competent.

That's what I thought after I that's what I got out of it as well. And so he's thoughtful and competent. Yeah, he brought some fresh ideas, just so the audience is clear. What we're talking about is he just did an interview with Lex Friedman. And the first hour was on what's happening with Israel and Hamas must must watch.

I think I thought it was excellent. Excellent, excellent. It was excellent. He did it just in terms of having fresh eyes. He did things like focus groups. He's like, Okay, what does what does the Arab street think about various topics? And he actually did focus groups in various countries to find out.

So I mean, I think Kushner made a number of really interesting points showing how difficult it's going to be to get to a two state solution. But first, you have to set up what is the the Palestinian side say, and what they say is, look, Gaza is effectively an open air prison, you've got over 2 million people packed into this very tight area.

There's something like 50% unemployment, it's impoverished, the conditions are deplorable. And they don't have their own state, they don't have rights. And it's been like this for a long time. So that's sort of the the basic pro Palestinian argument. Kushner's response that was, well, yeah, but you know, Israel left in 2006, it left Hamas in control, gave them the keys effectively.

The reason why there's such high unemployment is because Hamas is corrupt and doesn't enforce property rights. And they scare away all the investment. Nobody wants to invest there. And Israel did give work permits so people could leave Gaza to go to work and look what happened. I mean, when they try to open up the walls, you have a massacre.

So these are the points that he made. Look, I think both sides of this have legitimate arguments and points to make. I think that the conditions of the Palestinians in Gaza is deplorable. And you have to feel for the civilians who live there, of course, but then, you know, the Israelis have a right to live without fear, the fear that their security is in jeopardy, and that this territory can be the launching pad for terrorist attacks on their soil.

So it's going to be an extremely difficult thing, I think, to to reconcile this, but you know, Kushner made a couple other interesting points. He said, Listen, the Gaza part of this is not that hard, because the boundaries, the territory lines are not in dispute. There's no religious areas that are in dispute.

For example, you don't have the status of the Temple Mount or, you know, East Jerusalem, and there's an economic plan to revitalize Gaza strip. So you really just need a negotiating partner for the Israelis to figure that out. And of course, now the problem is, who do you negotiate with?

I mean, Hamas is is a terrorist organization that is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. So it's really a tragic situation, you look at it, and you're like, this should be easy to work out, but it's not. It's a relatively small area. It's a relatively small number of people.

It's 2 million people, we should be able to figure out the rest of the free world, how to at least have a path towards this. And the first step is getting rid of Hamas, right? Like, there's no choice, but they have to go. I don't really know if that's feasible, Jason.

I mean, look, if there was a button that Israel could push to eliminate every member of Hamas, yeah, sure, they'd be within the rights to push that the problem is that Hamas is now deeply integrated, yeah, embedded in a civilian population of over 2 million, that's densely packed, how do you root them out?

It's going to take decades, it's going to take decades. And they're basically supported by that population, as far as we can tell. Yeah. And, you know, again, if you if you take measures that are perceived as too drastic by the rest of the world, then you will inflame the opinion of other countries, you'll turn it against Israel.

So, again, it's a really tough situation. But I think that the US should not only affirm its support for Israel, it should only denounce the atrocity that happened on 10.7. But I think it needs to reiterate the Biden administration does its support for a two state solution. I think that the US has to be on record that what's in everybody's long term interest, including Israel is ultimately a two state solution.

And the Palestinians are eventually gonna have to have their own state. There's simply no way around that. Right? Yeah. And the free world, I think, is in the process of getting engaged in making this happen, because it's in everybody's interest, this can't keep going on. And so hopefully this, again, I don't want to say silver lining, but I hope that this, the good that comes out of this is that the world focuses on resolving this conflict, or containing a prize that all Jason by the amount of people that seem to be almost justifying that was happening to me.

I mean, the fact that people could make any kind of equivalence between terrorist activity and the level of brutality, I can't even describe it, because it'll trigger my PTSD, which I had after 911. And it still affects me, I'm sitting here not far from ground zero. And, you know, for people, you know, educated people, on colleges, campuses, or just otherwise to blame the Israelis for the murder of children, for people being and then justifying rape and torture, kidnapping.

I mean, there is no justification and there's no equivalency. There's no equivalency here. And this is one of the big problems. And, you know, these dopey kids on Harvard's campus or whatever, they have never experienced evil, stance suffering. We can we literally just dismiss these idiots, because these are kids who have never faced I don't think you can, I think one of the things that was shocking to me was the level of basically either subtle or latent anti semitism, unconscious, yes, subtle, whatever, that it unlocked.

And I was also shocked at just saxes use this word before, but it's true. But our leading educational institutions have really become woke madrasas. They are inculcating kids with just some virulent poison. I think the reaction is always to go after to support the underdog. I think in this group of people, what is that even receive that is that is a gas that is an idiotic simplification that the smartest schools in the world educating the smartest kids in the world should be that's how they think.

That's how they think that can't be that's my feeling. I can't be that there's, it's half anti semitism. It's half they just think who's the underdog? I'm taking that side. Yeah, I think it's that simple. It is in the woke mindset. Yeah. Well, look, I think it was disgusting and disturbing to see these organizations and these elite institutions being unable to denounce Hamas terrorist attack and the atrocity that took place, or turning out in the streets to celebrate what happened.

And we saw a lot of that to look even if you support the Palestinian cause, even if you believe that they've been mistreated, even if you think that their land has been occupied, they deserve their own state. Even if you believe that war against the State of Israel is justified on that basis.

These were still war crimes. These were beyond the pale of war. Again, Hamas did not just attack some military installations on the border and kill soldiers or capture soldiers, the vast majority of the people who were killed were civilians, and there was no conceivable military purpose. And for example, paragliding into a music festival, a festival for peace, by the way, and then rounding up and slaughtering the concert goers.

There was no conceivable military justification for going into these kibbutzes or farming communities. You know, families, not arranged, it's deranged, so strange. It's terrorism. And the fact that they can't frame it as terrorism is insane. But think about what happened. Okay, I just want to frame the order of events.

Okay. 10 seven happens. And I think within 36 hours or less, let's take Harvard as an example, okay, the the pinnacle of the woke madrasas, they had all these student organizations immediately come out trying to justify this thing without any information, right? Because in the first 36 hours, obviously not nearly as much information was available as to exactly what happened.

Then it's been available now as an example, I should read the statement just so people have clarity, please join us joint statement by Harvard, Palestine, Palestine solidarity groups on the situation in Palestine. We the undersigned student organizations hold Israeli the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence. Today's events did not occur in a vacuum.

The last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open air prison. Israeli officials promised to quote open the gates of hell and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced Palestine, Palestinians in Gaza have no shelters or for refuge, and nowhere to escape in the coming days, Palestine, Palestinians will be forced to bear the full brunt of Israel's violence.

This is deranged. So show pathic my point is you thought you have like 15 or 20 of these student organizations of all ilks, okay, so it's not just pro Palestinian groups. It was like the Harvard Sikhs Association, okay, like Sikhs in South Asia are the most peace loving people in the world.

They're not pro war of any kind whatsoever or pro terrorism. So all these people write this thing, which blames Israel, okay, then the school is totally silent. The school doesn't say they neither they neither completely disavow that statement, nor do they come out with a more reasonable statement. All these ex faculty and ex individuals, Larry Summers, sort of leading say, this is outrageous, have an opinion, they come out with something that's milk toast in middle of the road, then they get soundly rejected by everybody yet again, then the administration comes out and gives a cleaned up version that tries to allay everybody's anger, because that the first statement, I think basically essentially pissed off everybody on both sides.

Then a bunch of alums who've already graduated or who've given money say, these student organizations are outrageous, we will not hire anybody who's part of this because their views are so immoral, that we would never want these people part of our organization. And so here it is, Bill Ackman, just so we people have yes, Bill Ackman said, I have been asked by a number of CEOs of Harvard will release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for a massive heinous acts to Israel.

So as to ensure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members. In other words, you must own your words, which is okay. So then for so then what happens is individual students actually have to come out who are part of these associations that were signatories to the first release, had to disavow the statement, and said, Actually, I'm just an Indian student at Harvard Law School.

There's a Nick, maybe you can find this tweet of this like, Indian woman from Colorado or of Indian heritage. And she's like, you just get auto recruited into these organizations. When you join Harvard. So I'm like, Well, wait a minute. This is a place that's supposed to be for like modern free speech, progressive thinking.

And instead, what happens is based on your skin color, you get auto drafted into some association, then you auto sign any press release written by some person that you don't even see or approve. What is going on at these places. And these are the places that parents and kids are tripping over themselves, trying to get into kids will kill themselves if they don't get into.

And these are the worst institutions in America, because back to Jason, what we talked about earlier, which is, we need people who can think from first principles, those kids are not it. And those institutions are not making them. And so if we want to have a point in time, where when things like this happen, we can really figure out what happened in the past that was right.

And what can we do in the future? It's not this. And it's not this kind of thinking. And if you're going to a school, Harvard, Cornell, UPenn, Stanford, that are spitting out these kids, I think it's a real shame. You're spot on. I mean, how sacks Could there any be any question about the difference between military terrorists, you know, with machine guns, gunning down people dancing peacefully at a music festival at sunrise, and then make some equivalency there it and you cannot actually ascertain for yourself that is a terrorist act.

If you can't from very basically opening your eyes and seeing what occurred and you know, thank God in some ways for for x not being censored, because you can actually see these things. And I know it's very difficult for people to watch. I don't have any judgment on people who don't want to watch it.

But I think when the world sees these videos, and you're going to write this letter, you should very quickly be able to discern military terrorist fighters from hippie kids dancing at a music festival. It's plain as day there's there's nothing. There's nothing to confuse you here. This is the most easy test.

You have to be brainwashed to see something other than that. These schools are woke madrasas. Yeah, so a couple of points on that. So if you look at their statement, I think it's it's appropriate and fine to express concern about the people the civilians living in Gaza and what the Israeli response might entail.

I think it is fine and good to do that both for humanitarian reasons and for self interested reasons if you're a supporter of Israel, because this could all spiral out of control. However, these people completely lit their credibility on fire from the first paragraph, by saying that Israel is entirely responsible for what happened and not having one word of condemnation for the atrocities that had just been committed.

They cannot even see the war crimes that have occurred. Yeah, so I don't even mention Hamas. They don't even mention the actual people that perpetrated the crime. Right. So the question is, what is it about their ideology that blinds them to this atrocious massacre? And, and I think it is this, I do think it has to do with this this woke mindset.

The, the woke ideology is a form of cultural Marxism in which people are divided up into oppressor and oppressed groups. So in Marx's original teaching, you had the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, basically the oppressed and the oppressor. This kind of went through this cultural identity filter with woke where again, people are divided up into identity groups.

And so you've got men versus women, white versus black and brown, you've got straight versus gay, and so on down the line. And the the idea is that there's a power structure. And if you are in one of these groups, and you are by definition, oppressed, and if you're in one of the oppressor groups, then by definition, you are guilty in a collective way, you're suffering from yes, collective guilt, the people who are oppressed are the righteous ones.

Right. But I think that what you see is that when you divide up the world this way, first of all, it's just not a very accurate way of looking at the world. I mean, there are lots of minority groups in the United States that have done great. So for example, there's a book written recently about Asian Americans, the United States called the inconvenient minority.

Why is it inconvenient? Because Asian Americans have done spectacularly well, they get into elite colleges and institutions at higher rates than than whites do, which is why they're the primary group that's discriminated against by affirmative action before it was overturned by the Supreme Court. But the reason why the author called them the inconvenient minority is because their success in America refutes a lot of this sort of simplistic woke delineation between if you're a minority group, you're oppressed.

And if you're, you know, in this white group, you're the oppressor. I think Jews have fallen into a similar type of categorization, which is they're an inconvenient minority. They've been historically very successful in America, despite their being existence of anti semitism. And I think that the woke ideology has reacted to this by saying, No, you know, Jews are not really an ethnic group, they're just whites.

And so that's been the response, right is, well, let's just put them in the oppressor group. So we don't need to explain away their success. One of the problems with that is that you have to ignore the existence of anti semitism. And so they do, they just pretend like it doesn't exist.

So here you have a situation where all of these things are in play. They've already predefined the Palestinians as being an oppressed people. And look, and I think in many ways, they are, but they are not incorrect. But they've defined it in racial terms, really, right. And they've defined the Israelis and Jews really, more generally as being part of an oppressor group.

And so everything fits into that larger narrative. And so when members of one of these woke oppressed groups commits an injustice, they just can't see it. I mean, their version of social justice is always defined in terms of collective guilt. And if you're a member of an oppressed group, by definition, you're not capable of committing an injustice because you don't have the power.

Do you guys think that Bill Ackman was out of line by saying, I don't want to hire kids from these organizations and these schools, because it's just like these kids and these schools will bring, basically, I think what he's implicitly saying is distraction, and it will lower the probability that I achieved by corporate goals.

So these are not good workers based on your comment about thinking from first principles and, you know, being able to assess the situation. I think that's probably what happens at a hedge fund, you have to place bets, and you have to be able to think from first principles and be intellectually rigorous.

This is the most intellectually lazy approach. I'm just going to sign a piece of paper without even thinking. So no, I don't think he's out of line. I think it's an important lesson for people. Freedom of speech. I was owning your words, you must own your words in position.

And it's important that young people learn this. Now, you have to own your words, whether it's on social media, or signing some stupid petition that you didn't read. And there's a lot of backtracking going on right now, by the way, I can't believe that if I got into Harvard, I would get auto drafted into the brown men's association just because of the color of my skin.

That's gonna be in the factory I've ever heard. Gree group. I mean, let's point out the double standard here that these elite Harvard students want to be exempt from their their words, their statements, they don't want to be canceled for that. However, you know that when some hapless schmuck basically post some tweet, or posted a tweet 10 years ago, that gets resurfaced.

They're the first ones clamoring for their cancellation. Right? Yeah, they would like for their firing. They would like amnesty for their idiotic opinions. Yeah, well, it's good. Good for the goose here is good for the gander if they're gonna create a cancel culture, where people get canceled for their decade old tweets and so forth, and they should be prepared to live by that standard.

Now look, personally, I would have some degree of forgiveness for a college student being part of an organization that puts out a statement, they're claiming they didn't know, okay, but then why didn't you resign? Look, I don't think there's a good excuse for this, other than useful stupidity. So I wouldn't cancel them forever.

But look, I do think that it's fine for inappropriate for someone like Bill Atkins. I don't want to hire you people. Yeah, and I would just be careful for you to add the word youthful because I think it's as get out of jail free card. It's definitely stupidity. The question is, is the cake baked?

And if the cake is baked, then there's a big argument to never hiring these people. I mean, look, I just say your frontal lobes are still developing into your 25 years old. So I would give college kids a bit of a pass if they do stupid stuff. You're there to learn you're there to make mistakes.

But that's not what I'm saying. Huge mistake. You're saying the bakes fully baked. You mean like their, their opinions and who they are, what I'm saying is you learn a lot from actions drink too much, don't drink, don't exercise enough, you get a little sluggish, maybe a little overweight, I get all of that.

I'm not convinced that when you have this fundamentally specific way of thinking, that you can unwind that so easily, Jason. So I'm not convinced. Okay, sure, that this mind virus gets fixed, because you all of a sudden need a job, I actually think like maybe it's the struggle of realizing that there are deep consequences to this vein of thinking that this oppressed versus oppressor or the other way that it was framed in our group chat is that woke ism and the embracement of socialism is basically running away from excellence.

It's this idea that everybody has to be the same, what communism says, we all are the same, nobody is special. We're all going to work together, do the same things, we're all going to dress in the same ways. It's the collective we, there aren't going to be exceptional outliers.

But the problem is, that's not how the world works. And so the other part of why these woke madrasas are so terrible is that it teaches, I think, to work away from excellence, and instead of striving for excellence to strive to be part of a collective. And I think that that is fundamentally corrosive to America, it's corrosive to what God is here, that's corrosive to all the great countries in the world.

And so then again, it's like, why would you hire kids who fundamentally don't want to be excellent, who are afraid that if they were excellent, they would be guilty of something? That's ultimately the question. Why, why would any of these kids go to such an elite school to basically be taught that it's wrong to excel?

All right, well, let's say I think, perhaps a good segment as a result, not think for yourself. And then as a result, sign something like this, which is just stupid. We'll continue to discuss this topic, I guess, in the weeks ahead. Again, hopefully this conversation was productive for the community, the all in community.

I understand that, you know, people might have very strong feelings about, you know, us discussing it, but we're here to discuss difficult topics. There's one other aspect to this, I think we should talk about, which is the United States is larger geopolitical situation right now. I mean, things seem very tenuous.

I did an event with Palmer lucky, actually, from the front of the pod, Thomas. And my invite got lost. Yeah, we actually had a nice debate slash discussion on on Ukraine. But the thing that I think we agree with is that the US better bring more innovation into the military, military industrial complex and, and figure out, like procurement, because our whole cost plus system right now is so broken.

There was an article recently in the New York Times where it said that the cost of the United States of producing an artillery shell is $6,000. For Russia, it's $600. So in other words, it costs the US 10 times what it costs Russia to produce an artillery shell, even though Russia is considered to be this super corrupt kleptocracy, where everyone steals everything.

And yet our procurement system is 10 times more efficient than they don't have competition. And all the politicians are captured, correct. We have this cost plus accounting system where every year the price opportunity to explain that. Yeah. So in every other part of technology, price goes down over time, right?

You can produce more of something for less. We've seen this with Tesla, we seen it with PCs, we've seen it with television sets, whatever it is, the price goes down over time servers. Yeah. Or if the price goes up, it's because you've developed some fundamentally new capabilities, some new version, you know, the more powerful chips, your storage, actually, faster speed, but you know, we're still making the same artillery shells, the same Stinger missiles, the same javelins and so forth.

I don't think the capabilities have changed that much. But the price goes up every year, because it's cost plus. And so explain cost plus, people may be hearing that for the first, you know, most companies sell something, and then they have a profit margin. But right, the way that government procurement works is the profit margin is controlled.

They're only allowed to market up a certain amount above their costs. But the thing that's happened in the defense industry is there's been huge consolidation over the past couple of decades, where now you've got a handful of defense companies, and it's an oligopoly. And many of these key armaments are single source.

So there's only one producer, and they just keep raising the price every year. Now, one of the kind of crazy things about this is, and Palmer made this point is, it's not like anyone's getting rich because of cost plus, it's not like the money is basically making these companies there's no incentive to lower the price.

If you lower the price, and you're a 10%, and you got your $6,000 down to 4000 10% of 4000 is a lot less than 10% of 6000. What's happening is not perverse incentive, Google like margins, what's happening is that these companies keep building their bureaucracies bigger and bigger. So they hire lots of staff, they make a lot of campaign contributions, they fund think tanks.

And so their cost structure just keeps getting more and more bloated, right? They're incentivized to do that. The more they charge, the more they make. Right now, why am I bringing this up? Well, we're in a situation now where Israel might be on the precipice of well, they've declared war against Gaza, and this thing could spiral out of control and become a regional war.

They may be asking for weapons in they may be asking for weapons, we've already donated some however, earlier this year, we used to have an ammunition stockpile in Israel. The United States did it belong to us, but it was there potentially in case of a problem in the region.

And that artillery stockpile was basically taken and given to Ukraine. And remember, we ran out of the key type of ammunition in the Ukraine war, which is 155 millimeter artillery shells. That's why we gave them cluster bombs. So the US is already dangerously low on ammunition. And that's before we get potentially another war, or another front in this larger, global conflagration that's happening in other countries war.

And to be clear, we're not at war, but we've been right asked to donate weapons to Ukraine. And we've been asked to do that. I think Israelis have asked for weapons. I don't know if they formally asked, but we are obviously going to I think there's a bill making its way through right now.

It's going to give some aid to military assistance to Israel. By the way, we have Israel also is a major builder of weapons to I mean, their drone technology is incredibly refined, and they sell weapons to Russia. Oh, yeah, Israel is nowhere near the Ukraine situation. Ukraine is 100% dependent on the United States for its military and for its economy.

Israel has a vibrant military and economy without the United States, but the United States does make long term security guarantees to Israel not to fight its wars. There's no mutual defense treaty. However, we do agree to provide them with weapons in the event of a war. So we do have obligations like long standing obligations to them.

This is an ally we've had for 75 years. However, our stockpiles are dangerously depleted now, because of the Ukraine war. And on top of that, our procurement system is hopelessly broken. So in a world of rising multi polarity, where there are other great powers now, in the system where there are going to be more and more global threats, I don't think we have a chance of maintaining our global position and supporting our allies unless we fix this.

I mean, making artillery shells at 10 times more than what it costs Russia. That's ridiculous. In Silicon Valley, we have now the funding of military startups, and there's a whole new class of warfare, supersonics, drones, innovation is the only advantage we have. It's the only advantage we have, right.

I mean, this is one of the great things. I mean, I understand Palmer is not a huge fan of mine, but I'm a huge fan of the work he's doing and other entrepreneurs are doing to make new weapons to keep us competitive, because you can be sure China's making them.

And so I think it's absolutely fantastic. I thought it was always very weird that Google speaking of work madrasas like Google was for Google employees were refusing to provide services like even basic cloud hosting services to the military. That that to benefit from democracy and living in America while then not supporting the military just seemed like the ultimate luxury belief to use Rob's term from the all in summit mafia thoughts.

What does it take guys to for this fever to break for for all of these people to realize that that level of corruption is not sustainable, that these ways of thinking are not sustainable, that it's not a path to peace and prosperity that we actually want excellence in society, we want people to be outliers.

We want the whole of humanity to move forward. And that's not going to happen when we move, necessarily as one blob, but a few people need to sort of clear the brush and lead the way and the rest of us will come in and fill it in behind them.

I think Vivek is the manifestation of it. I'll be totally honest, like I think the reason he is going up in the polls, and the reason people are drawn to him is because he's smart, and he's exceptional. And he represents one of the great things about America is that there's people who want to win and they're smart and excellent.

He represents excellence, right? He represents. I think that's why people are drawn to him. And I think people are tired of an industrial complex, they're tired of corruption, they're tired of geriatric, you know, 80 year old politicians, we need young, successful people to take leadership positions. And by the way, I really agree with what you're saying.

I think that there's like, excellence can show itself in different forms. I think why Obama was so profound. And Joe Rogan said this was, he was such a statesman, he was the best of us. But he demonstrated excellence in being composed and measured and thoughtful and strategic. He was just so excellent.

The Clinton as well. Clinton as well. Clinton was incredibly steeped in policy. He was excellent. He was intellectually a massive outlier. Obama is an intellectual outlier. Vivek is an intellectual outlier. Let's get these people to change and run our system of government, please. I think we're soaking in it.

Yeah, we need smarter, more capable people. I mean, you look at Biden, he when he gave that speech, in support of Israel, I mean, a lot of the words were right, but he was like slurring his way through it. It certainly did not inspire confidence. It was it was his best speech.

And it was concerning the fact that he's clearly in cognitive decline, you can see it in his ability to or it and you know, it was his best speech. And it was also troubling for me as somebody who voted for him to watch him slur his words are just not it was clear he wasn't all there.

And you're like, geez, what are we showing to the world if this is the guy who's running the country and if we reelect him? Now we're saying, hey, we want to have an 84 year old running the country who's not all there and is in cognitive decline. Let the guy retire.

Let him spend time with his grandkids. I think it's more people who are willing to vote for not for what they want, but to prevent something else. And I think that that's, that's what's so tragic about how we're thinking as a country right now. Yeah, just just to dish it out equally.

I mean, I saw Trump give a recent speech where look, he's nowhere near the cognitive decline of Biden. I think he's still compass mentis, but he's not as sharp as he used to be either. I mean, listen, I think America's basic situation and this has really been reaffirmed over the past week is that we're no longer in unipolarity anymore.

We're no longer the sole superpower. Yeah, not for some time. China is now a superpower. They're probably the low cost manufacturer of the world. So when we talk about being able to make things like armaments and artillery shells and weapons, they have the ability to outproduce us. That is very scary.

There are other great powers in the system. Now Russia has proven over the last five months through his victory and this counter offensive, that is a power to be reckoned with. We cannot disregard their concerns anymore. And not only does America need, I think, top flight leaders like intellectually who are at the top of their game.

But we also need new thinking, we need to be able to sidestep challenges and conflicts as opposed to walking into every single trap the way that Lindsey Graham wants us to. Again, I'll go back on the Ukraine war. I think it's really clear that we could have avoided that war if we had taken NATO expansion off the table.

And whether you believe that or not, it was criminal not to try. If it was a 5% chance it was worth trying. So you and I look at our situation, we're already mired in the Ukraine proxy war. Now Israel's on the brink. We need smarter people and smarter thinking in Washington, we are no longer the only superpower, we're gonna have a really tough time in a multipolar world.

If we do not look for ways to de escalate conflict when we can, or putting aside conflict, why are we not building deep ties with as many countries as possible? deep cultural ties, deep economic ties, deep diplomatic ties. Every time we are in dialogue with a country, and we're building a relationship with that country, that means free people of the world are winning, you know, and every time we isolate a country that does not go right, we're sanctioning half the world.

That's another big part of this problem. Yeah. And so you know, it's the normalization of relationships, and the deepening of relationships, that is the high order bit and you need somebody in office who can do that. And you know, if you look at how the you know, the hawks in the GOP or the hawks in the Democratic Party think they think that we have to be at war with everybody.

They think we have to isolate everybody. You know, the fact that Trump went, and that famous moment where he walked over the in the DMZ in North Korea and was talking to Kim Jong Un, that moment you see on Kim Jong Un's face, we can put it in here.

He is so happy to be recognized. Now listen, I understand. He has like, suffering. He has a shocked look on his face. Like I can't believe this is happening. Right. The same way he did when Dennis Rodman came over. No, it's like, it's like a fan meeting Taylor Swift.

If you look at those videos, and you compare it to this, it's the same. And culture is our export. And I know this sounds about Jason is simplistic. Yes. I'll be it can't all be hard power because other countries have it too now. So we have to work on our soft power, but you're not going to enhance American soft power with all this belligerent rhetoric, really this omnidirectional belligerence that's coming out of Washington.

And this is why I think the smart thing for Blinken to do, or the Biden administration is, yes, you reaffirm that you stand with Israel in the face of this unspeakable atrocity, at the same time, and you don't have to do this right now, because it is a little bit tough to do it right now.

But it's 100 hostage. You have to reaffirm your support for the two state solution. I think the United States has always supported and by the way, I think I think Tony's done a really good job. But again, at the end of the day, Tony works for President Biden. And it's like, Biden hasn't been nearly as definitive as he could have been, and Tony's had to clean it up.

So one example of this is like in the Wall Street Journal, they immediately on Sunday, that was sure went to blaming Iran, right. And then both the Israeli military intelligence and American intelligence, they had to do an entire press circuit to try to disarm this in a way that was not seen in a long time.

And you have to ask yourself, why, why is that even happening? And it's like, well, whatever special interests wanted to get that on the front page of the Wall Street Journal was able to do it. But it has dangerous implications. And then what you need is a really strong leader that can step up and say, this is false, this is not happening.

This is what we need. You needed an Obama in that situation. And I think that this is Clinton, or Clinton, Reagan. And I think that this is an opportunity for us to ask ourselves, okay, who is the most dynamic, excellent candidate that can give us this and be open minded and not make this line about Republican versus Democrat right now, because the world is getting super complicated.

We need someone hyper, hyper, excellent and intellectually competent. Well, I will say this for Trump is that he's the only president in recent memory who didn't give us any new wars. Best quality. Yeah, I think he has a despite despite all of his issues. I think he has a unique ability to project strength to the American public.

While not being one of these super hawks. He's actually, I'd say relatively dovish. He actually walked through his secret plan. He's he said, I can't remember where this clip but he said whenever he met with these folks, he basically left a 10% chance that he would nuke them. That's what he said.

And it turned out that that 10% was just enough for the for everybody. Just enough crazy for everybody to stay alive. It was just enough. I see. I think the US already has enough deterrence. I think we've maxed out on deterrence. I think the thing that was smart about Trump was that he was willing to do business.

Yes, he was willing to negotiate and he didn't feel the need to make these moral condemnations all the time he was willing to meet with Kim Jong Un, he was willing to meet with Putin and and Xi Jinping and he avoided criticizing them personally. He didn't call them dictators.

He talked about how smart they are. Yeah, it's the art of the deal, right? I mean, at the end of the day, he's looking to do business. And we need a little bit more of that. And I think this is why Jared Kushner was successful is he went in there with the mindset of a businessman.

Yeah, how do we find something that's beneficial to both sides? Totally right. I think that when Trump was elected, I was told that it was the end of the world. And that's what I thought. And I'd already underwritten him as an F. Okay. And then four years into the presidency, he was probably like a C in my mind.

And then as I get a little bit of distance away, I realized no, hold on a second, this guy was like a BB plus like he was pretty good. And unfortunately, the few things that if he if he could have just pushed through, would have really saved America, the biggest one being these 100 year bonds, it, it would have kept America from getting to the precipice of fiscal ruin.

And we'd be in a highly different situation. And I'm not sure we could have ever given him credit for it. But the further and further I get away from him, and the less emotional I am. He did a pretty good job. He was a pretty good president. Don't forget that he tried to overturn the election and steal the election.

I voted for Hillary Clinton, I voted for Joe Biden. But this is the honest assessment the guy did for the things that he was supposed to do a good job. And for where every other president found a way to frankly make our situation a little bit worse, specifically around wars, he did not do that.

And that is a huge accomplishment that I think needs to be acknowledged. And he would have ripped up the Constitution and taken the presidency and stolen it. So just give that in mind as well. Less we get him. That's it. Yeah, that's why he's not. That's why he's not an A.

He's a B plus. Okay, so you have to admit if it weren't for the black swan of COVID, he would have been reelected in a landslide landslide. It's quite possible he would have been reelected. Yeah, I mean, I and also, yeah, it's by the way, I mean, it's great the way things are going in this country right now, both economically and internationally.

He's gonna waltz into the White House, he's gonna spend all of his time in the next year in in the courthouses, battling all these lawsuits, the lawfare against him. He's not gonna be able to campaign and it won't even matter. Because people are going to be so done with this.

And nobody wants him as president again. So I think that's that nobody wants that. Everybody wants new choices. All right, everybody, if you do not want to hear us talk about complex issues in the world, you can unsubscribe from the pod, we're going to be here every week having hard discussions, listening to each other and learning together.

You don't have to agree with any one of us. But we are. We're happy to have the difficult conversations and learn every week here. And yeah, our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and the friends of those impacted by this heinous terrorist attack. And I don't know if anybody has any other closing remarks here.

But obviously, we're heartbroken. And we hope that peace prevails and that the hostages are released as quickly as possible. Well said. All right, everybody, this is Episode 149 of the All In podcast. Next week, we'll we'll talk about all the different topics. But for this week, we're gonna let it sit where it is right now.

See you next time, bye-bye.