E170: Tech's Vibe Shift, TikTok ban debate, Vertical AI boom, Florida bans lab-grown meat & more

00:00:00.000 | Why do you always go Christopher Walken whenever you do these

00:00:03.000 | outros? Why do you do that?

00:00:04.000 | Thanks for listening to the all in podcast. Wow. David Sachs

00:00:09.520 | poignant points about regulatory capture. Freeberg loves mock

00:00:16.600 | meats. Not for me. Everyone loves a great day. See you next

00:00:26.680 | time. podcast. Wow. Love you boys. So you're better. Everyone's

00:00:38.280 | got their superpower. That's your nasty nasty Jake. I'm

00:00:43.260 | coming on. I'm coming on. Rain Man David Sachs Hey, Freeberg,

00:01:03.620 | you want to tell them about your new family members? Oh my god.

00:01:07.100 | Did he get more dogs? Is he trying to date Fortnoy this

00:01:09.940 | again? Oh, Miss peachy. So I'm like working all day Friday. I'm

00:01:15.020 | like wiped out. I've been in I can't remember. I was in Santa

00:01:18.460 | Cruz. I made it all the way back up through the traffic. I get up

00:01:22.220 | to the house. I've been texting and calling all afternoon. No

00:01:25.860 | response. I'm like, what the fuck is going on? Normally,

00:01:28.740 | she'll text me like just walk through the door, open the door

00:01:31.340 | to my car, every little thing. So for her to not be calling me

00:01:33.900 | back and something's up. I walk in the house. The kids are

00:01:36.700 | there. They're jumping up and down. Daddy, Daddy, we got two

00:01:39.300 | new dogs. And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? We

00:01:41.940 | didn't get two new dogs. What do you say? Mommy's got two new

00:01:44.740 | dogs. And then mommy took him to the vet. She'll be back in a

00:01:48.300 | few minutes. I'm like, no way. And I had some friends coming

00:01:51.180 | over for dinner. They walk in the house. The kids are jumping

00:01:53.820 | up and down. Two minutes later, walks in the house. These two

00:01:56.740 | dogs that someone found in a parking lot in San Jose, and

00:02:00.860 | they couldn't find a home for these dogs. And they were like,

00:02:03.060 | the dogs don't have a home. decided I'll take them into my

00:02:06.420 | home. And I'm like, you This is why you didn't call me. You

00:02:09.220 | didn't text me. I walked out the room. I'm like, it's over. It's

00:02:13.180 | been nice knowing you. The kids are screaming, Daddy, you can't

00:02:15.860 | get rid of the dogs. There are dogs. Now these are the best

00:02:17.980 | dogs. So now we have four dogs. And which was the vet bill. And

00:02:21.580 | then I come down that night, huge in the dining room, like

00:02:24.460 | multiple diarrhea, plopped all over the floor. I walked

00:02:28.620 | downstairs, the whole house was smelling of poop. My house has

00:02:32.060 | become like, you know, those carnival trains that used to go

00:02:34.420 | from city to city back in the 19th century. If one of those

00:02:37.260 | trains like fell over and spilled open, that's basically

00:02:39.980 | what my house has become. It just smells like poo and hay. And

00:02:44.740 | there's clowns and children running around. And I live in

00:02:48.260 | there ever tell you the story of Chuck Norris the Chihuahua? No,

00:02:53.220 | no, no. So I'm going to a wedding. I'm in like Arizona.

00:02:57.300 | I'm driving like on one of these giant, like Arizona streets and

00:03:01.740 | a chihuahua runs across this like eight lane boulevard,

00:03:06.300 | whatever. And I'm like, Oh my god, I'm like dodging around it

00:03:10.140 | and it goes into the other side of traffic and I see a car. And

00:03:13.660 | he just the dog ducks, he misses the car. I'm like, Oh, thank

00:03:16.380 | God. My wife is screaming her head off. The dog gets whacked

00:03:21.220 | by another car and it goes rolling down the highway. I make

00:03:24.220 | a u turn, I block it. The dogs knocked out on the side of the

00:03:27.500 | road. I run up to the dog, I pick it up. I'm like, this dog's

00:03:30.980 | gonna die. We don't I get in the car. I said, Let's just take it

00:03:36.700 | to a vet or whatever. And I'm saying goodbye to the dog. The

00:03:40.100 | dog's like looking up at me. It's in bad shape. We go to a

00:03:44.220 | vet. I gave it to the vet. We go to the wedding. My wife who was

00:03:48.500 | like, got this big heart decides she's going to stay with the

00:03:53.140 | dog. So I go to the wedding. I go to the you know, opening

00:03:55.620 | night party. She's with she's at the 24 hour event, sitting with

00:03:59.260 | this dog waiting for it to die in hospital. Oh my god, the dog

00:04:03.540 | doesn't die. survives. Now it's Monday. And I get the alert on

00:04:10.380 | my credit card. $12,000 Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, $1,000 on this

00:04:18.740 | dead dog. I'm like, the dog survives. I bring the dog back

00:04:25.060 | to the Bay Area. The dogs find I can't believe it. But you know,

00:04:28.980 | it's got like a broken leg, all this stuff. But you know, he's

00:04:31.100 | generally he's the dog's alive. So I put him on social media.

00:04:34.860 | I'm like, anybody want Chuck Norris, a dog that cannot die.

00:04:37.820 | This is like the toughest chihuahua you ever seen. Some of

00:04:41.540 | these rich people in San Francisco living on like a

00:04:44.700 | certain street, Broadway or something like that turns out

00:04:48.860 | there like their heirs to something famous. They live in

00:04:55.620 | like three states, they got a private jet, all this nonsense.

00:04:58.740 | They say we'll take the dog. They're friends with a couple of

00:05:00.980 | our mutuals. So I'm like, this is great. I'm going to get the

00:05:05.140 | 12 grand from them. Because they got a private jet, they got

00:05:15.180 | three houses. So they come down to pick up the dog with their

00:05:18.500 | driver and everything. And we're delivering the dog. And I tell

00:05:21.980 | Jade, hey, can we let them know about the $12,000 bill? Maybe

00:05:26.420 | they'll pick it up. Like a Larry David. And my wife is like, if

00:05:31.940 | you bring that up with them, I'm divorcing you. We have to pay

00:05:34.420 | the 12,000. So I pay the 12,000. They proceed to then send us

00:05:38.580 | pictures of Chuck Norris on private jets. You know, for

00:05:42.380 | years to this day, Chuck Norris living this life and I paid 12

00:05:47.540 | grand to save this.

00:05:48.380 | Freebird told me the story. I found it so hilarious. But I

00:05:52.340 | told him, you know, after we got Joker when Jason when you came

00:05:56.500 | to visit us in Porto de Madre, Joker had like Jardia. So he was

00:06:00.820 | just everywhere. And you know, we got through it. And then three

00:06:06.460 | months ago, when you guys were at my house for poker, Sean made

00:06:11.500 | octopus and left some raw octopus in a garbage bag

00:06:14.060 | outside and Joker Joker ate it. And he got such terrible

00:06:18.660 | poisoning. We had to take him to the to the emergency animal

00:06:22.060 | hospital where he stayed for like a week. That was by the

00:06:24.340 | way, 17k. But ever since he came back, he's been completely

00:06:30.100 | incontinent. So I was done. Reaper that Nat and I now just

00:06:33.780 | wake up half an hour early. And what we do now from 630 to

00:06:37.340 | usually 645 is we're cleaning up some form of feces that he's

00:06:41.180 | left somewhere to go and find where did he take it? Let's go

00:06:46.100 | clean it up. And the worst one was he once pooped through one

00:06:50.060 | of the grates with this really bad poo and I had to go and just

00:06:54.580 | fetch it all out. It was just right in the grits. Fantastic.

00:06:57.580 | Right? Yeah. So there you have it, folks. Go adopt a pet.

00:07:00.420 | There's your endorsement for the $17,000 in veterinary bills and

00:07:07.180 | cleaning up all day long and replacing carpets. Listen, we

00:07:11.660 | got a big docket today. I know it's a bit early in the year,

00:07:15.580 | but I am going to add a new category. We're proposing a new

00:07:18.700 | category. We'd love to hear your feedback on it for the 2024

00:07:22.140 | besties, most based CEO, lots of options to choose from right

00:07:27.060 | now, which we'll get into in a minute. But there seems to be a

00:07:29.660 | bit of a vibe shift happening in tech during peak Zerp and cancel

00:07:33.220 | culture. 2019 to 2021 era, seemed like CEOs were a little

00:07:39.860 | vigilant about what they would say, you know, the Tim Cooks,

00:07:42.220 | the Sundars, but something has clearly changed. tech CEOs have

00:07:45.060 | gotten radically candid and fired their comms group. Two

00:07:48.940 | great examples this week that we were talking about. Jensen

00:07:52.700 | Wong, the CEO of Nvidia had this awesome clip when speaking at

00:07:56.580 | Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

00:07:58.340 | I think one of my great advantages is that I have very

00:08:01.580 | low expectations. And I mean that most of the Stanford

00:08:04.740 | graduates have very high expectations. People with very

00:08:08.100 | high expectations have very low resilience. And unfortunately,

00:08:12.340 | resilience matters in success. I don't know how to teach it to

00:08:15.580 | you, except for I hope suffering happens to you. To this day, I

00:08:18.220 | use the word the phrase pain and suffering inside our company

00:08:21.140 | with great glee, boy, this is going to cause a lot of pain and

00:08:23.740 | suffering. And I mean that in a happy way. Because you want to

00:08:26.220 | train you want to refine the character of your company. You

00:08:29.140 | want greatness out of them. And greatness is not intelligence is

00:08:31.900 | greatness comes from character and character is informed out of

00:08:34.940 | smart people is formed out of people who suffered.

00:08:37.380 | And then next up Palantir CEO Alex Carr called out the coked

00:08:41.860 | up short sellers on CNBC.

00:08:45.940 | I love burning the short sellers like almost nothing makes a

00:08:49.460 | human happier than taking the glides of cocaine and away from

00:08:54.460 | these short sellers who like are going short on a truly great

00:08:58.540 | American company, not just ours, but it just love pulling down

00:09:01.540 | great American companies so that they can pay for their coke. And

00:09:04.500 | the best thing that could happen to them is we will provide we

00:09:08.100 | will lead their coke dealers to their homes after they can't pay

00:09:11.420 | their bills.

00:09:11.980 | Surely all short sellers.

00:09:15.540 | Yeah, well, you know, go ahead and do your thing. We'll do our

00:09:18.340 | thing.

00:09:18.660 | There you have it, folks. Of course.

00:09:20.780 | We had

00:09:23.500 | Ilan's great.

00:09:26.540 | Good for you. At some New York Times conference, always candid.

00:09:32.620 | And even Zuckerberg, he's been getting a little base. He did a

00:09:36.220 | whole video about how the Apple Vision Pro was when compared to

00:09:40.620 | menace quest to he's getting a little frisky on the social

00:09:44.500 | media. Freeberg is the vibe shift real.

00:09:48.740 | It seems like a lot of people are less worried about cancel

00:09:51.460 | culture as they were three years ago. So I don't know if it's

00:09:55.820 | just in Silicon Valley, broadly in media. And broadly,

00:10:00.260 | culturally, there seems to be a move away from cancel culture

00:10:03.620 | mentality and people are speaking their mind. Which is

00:10:08.660 | yeah, I think obviously positive and refreshing.

00:10:10.860 | Sachs, you're a big fan of freedom of speech. Your

00:10:15.900 | thoughts on this vibe shift? Is it is this related to cancel

00:10:20.020 | culture kind of ending and journalists just not being able

00:10:22.980 | to cancel people because they misspoke or were a little spicy

00:10:27.180 | in their takes?

00:10:27.980 | Well, I like the fact that the CEOs are all being colorful in

00:10:32.780 | their remarks and candid and interesting. And that that's

00:10:35.620 | always a good thing. In each of these cases, I kind of like what

00:10:39.660 | they had to say. But I think that you might, or we

00:10:44.060 | collectively might be reading a little bit too much into this. I

00:10:47.780 | mean, at the end of the day, what secret cows are they

00:10:50.620 | really challenging? What real dangerous truths are they

00:10:54.940 | speaking? What real risks are they taking? I just don't put

00:10:58.420 | any of the things that they're saying or doing in the same

00:11:01.060 | category, as say, what Elon has been doing in terms of taking on

00:11:05.020 | the powers that be, in terms of rolling back censorship, and

00:11:09.380 | promoting free speech on on x. I mean, Elon, I think has taken

00:11:13.900 | some real risks in doing that. And you see that he's paying the

00:11:17.700 | price with all these government investigations and the voiding

00:11:21.380 | of his compensation package. That I think is just in a

00:11:25.700 | slightly different category of true risk taking by speaking

00:11:29.980 | truth to power, or allowing the masses to speak truth to power,

00:11:34.740 | compared to what these other guys are doing. And I'm not

00:11:36.940 | disparaging any of them. But, you know, look at them one by

00:11:39.780 | one. I mean, Alex Karp made a colorful joke at the expense of

00:11:42.700 | short traders. I agree. But it's not really a risky remark.

00:11:47.660 | Jensen Wang is giving some tough love to Stanford students. He's

00:11:52.900 | giving them I think, a good lesson of stopping so entitled,

00:11:56.860 | go get some real life experience. Be resilient. Okay,

00:12:01.220 | great message. I saw the Zuckerberg clip liked it as

00:12:04.380 | well. He's basically speaking from a place of passion about

00:12:07.940 | his own product, and comparing it to Apple. Okay, great. That's

00:12:11.380 | what he's supposed to do. I don't see any of those CEOs take

00:12:14.620 | again, if you want to compare it to Elon, taking a really

00:12:18.860 | dangerous political stance. In fact, remember when Zuckerberg

00:12:22.060 | got dragged to Capitol Hill and gave that testimony, and they

00:12:25.700 | demanded that he give that apology. He did it. I mean,

00:12:29.300 | you're genuflected. I thought that word was banned on this

00:12:32.060 | pod.

00:12:32.380 | Anybody else can be genuflected. I mean, I thought he was just

00:12:39.740 | showing some humanity, which is, you know, kind of paradoxical.

00:12:42.820 | Look, I get it in that moment. But I'm just saying that, like,

00:12:46.020 | if you want to put it in the same category as Elon, the thing

00:12:48.380 | to do would have been to punch back. And I think in that moment,

00:12:52.100 | it was who it was Josh Hawley, the thing to do would have been

00:12:54.420 | to say no, it's it's you who are exploiting the misery and

00:12:57.780 | suffering of all of these people by trying to score political

00:13:00.660 | points. So anyway, I don't have a super base. Yeah, yeah, that

00:13:04.660 | would have been super base. So all I'm saying is that it's one

00:13:07.460 | thing for these founders and CEOs to be colorful and candid

00:13:13.100 | or whatever, that's all great. But have they really taken

00:13:16.820 | political courage?

00:13:18.180 | Your thoughts, Chamath on based CEOs?

00:13:21.500 | Well, I think Jason, the takeaway, I think you're almost

00:13:26.380 | on the right point, but not quite. I don't think this is

00:13:28.820 | based or not based. I think the point is, everybody is exhausted

00:13:33.060 | with the multiple layers of word scramble gymnastics that people

00:13:39.140 | have had to play. And they're like, enough's enough. I think

00:13:43.060 | the more interesting way to look at this is that there was a few

00:13:46.980 | year period where a lot of companies were under a lot of

00:13:50.580 | pressure. And folks felt that they couldn't say what was on

00:13:55.460 | their mind to really fix the problems that they saw. Now you

00:13:59.540 | have, you know, both of the companies and the CEOs you

00:14:02.180 | pointed out are firing on all cylinders, as far as anybody can

00:14:05.220 | tell from the outside. And there's a certain level of

00:14:08.140 | political capital that comes with that. And they're choosing

00:14:10.980 | to spend it. And I think that's the interesting takeaway, which

00:14:13.660 | is, as these companies become successful, again, as tech

00:14:17.980 | reemerges, again, from this multi year malaise, are folks

00:14:22.700 | going to find their voice or not? And I think that's the big

00:14:28.220 | point, which is that it seems at least that we can see this next

00:14:31.580 | generation of winning companies seems to have CEOs that will

00:14:35.940 | take a different path, they'll be maybe closer to Elon than

00:14:40.420 | closer to a politician.

00:14:41.500 | Yeah, it's, I loved longs comments just about his secret

00:14:46.860 | weapons. He has incredibly low expectations. If you had said if

00:14:50.220 | you had said that comment a few years ago, the whole pain and

00:14:53.580 | suffering thing, what somebody would have said, I felt

00:14:56.380 | triggered, it touched my childhood trauma. You know, I

00:14:59.660 | had x, y, and z happened to me. And it's not that those people

00:15:03.180 | don't have valid claims, but they would have aired it in a

00:15:06.300 | way that tried to get him canceled effectively.

00:15:09.620 | Yeah, he would be out of touch. He would be talking down to

00:15:12.820 | people to be a billionaire telling people like to suck it

00:15:15.700 | up. What is he doing?

00:15:16.660 | In fairness, I bet you there are people that felt that way

00:15:20.140 | even today when listening to his clip. The thing that is

00:15:22.460 | different, though, was the rest of us who also have had pain and

00:15:25.740 | suffering in our lives, retweeted it and was just like

00:15:28.580 | this is 100% awesome.

00:15:29.820 | Yeah, I mean, finally, candid advice. Elon used to always say

00:15:36.580 | happiness equals this was his happiness formula happiness

00:15:40.860 | equals expectation reality minus expectations. And so if your

00:15:48.420 | expectations are really high, and reality doesn't hit it,

00:15:50.500 | you're going to be sad. And if you keep your expectations low

00:15:52.620 | and realities, you know, okay, or good, yeah, you could be

00:15:55.660 | happy in life. But Freiburg, I just love of those quotes, maybe

00:16:01.500 | some thoughts about suffering and how hard it is. You're back

00:16:05.260 | in the CEO seat. How's that been going for you? Generally

00:16:09.660 | speaking, how hard is it compared to being a capital

00:16:12.220 | allocator? Curious. I was going to talk to you about that

00:16:14.620 | offline. Anyway, I probably have an unhealthy affinity for

00:16:20.460 | suffering. I think that if you come from certain backgrounds,

00:16:29.620 | you're sort of trained that that's the place that your

00:16:33.780 | unconscious tends to want to be. And I think that that also some

00:16:39.740 | people call it chips on shoulders. Some people call it

00:16:43.020 | motivation. I mean, look at your friend, Elon, how much suffering

00:16:47.540 | he puts his himself through. I think it's a requisite to to

00:16:52.660 | greatness is you have to really find ways to sacrifice. Now, if

00:16:56.180 | I've said this a lot, there's a reason a lot of people that have

00:16:59.740 | had success in their career, don't end up being great

00:17:02.740 | entrepreneurs. Because as soon as you're faced with failure for

00:17:06.300 | the first time, it doesn't pattern match to what's happened

00:17:09.420 | to you. Historically, I go to a good school, I get good grades,

00:17:12.980 | I go to Stanford, I get a degree, everything about every

00:17:16.020 | step you do, you're told if you do x, you will get y. And then

00:17:19.540 | you do x and you get y and you repeat. And at some point,

00:17:23.220 | you're considered successful in your education in your career,

00:17:26.340 | and so on. If you then decide that entrepreneurship is the

00:17:29.780 | path for you, you realize that entrepreneurship is that there

00:17:33.180 | is no if x, then y, there is if x, maybe y, maybe z, maybe 100

00:17:39.580 | other things, it'll smack you in the face. And that experience is

00:17:42.820 | shockingly different for people that have historically followed

00:17:45.820 | a path of success of what's defined as success culturally,

00:17:48.740 | socially. And I think that that's really what he's speaking

00:17:51.460 | to. If you've grown up where all of your expectations have not

00:17:54.820 | been met, or many of the expectations have not been met,

00:17:56.980 | you realize that persistence, grit, perseverance,

00:18:00.020 | relentlessness, these are the necessary traits to be

00:18:03.420 | successful in entrepreneurship. And I think that I find myself

00:18:06.980 | much happier in that condition than in any other condition. And

00:18:10.020 | it's why I'm actually very happy in the work I'm doing right now.

00:18:13.260 | Yeah, I think that resonates a lot with me and all the

00:18:18.020 | entrepreneurs that I back. They all have that chip. And you got

00:18:22.420 | to be careful not to get caught up in the trappings and really

00:18:24.780 | focus on solving problems. If you think about what a CEO does

00:18:27.820 | all day, you hire the smartest team, you know, you give them

00:18:31.500 | the biggest challenges, as much autonomy as you can. And then

00:18:35.140 | they return back to you with all the problems, the smartest

00:18:37.980 | people you could find to join your team can't fix. So then

00:18:40.820 | your life becomes, essentially, you know, what's left over, that

00:18:45.420 | is the most brutal to solve. And, you know, there's only a

00:18:49.380 | certain percentage of people who can do that day in and day out,

00:18:53.180 | just relentlessly before you reconcile, how do you reconcile

00:18:56.420 | that statement, Jason, with the proposition that people should

00:19:01.620 | become entrepreneurs, generally, I think that this really, this

00:19:05.860 | really challenges me whenever people say I'm thinking about

00:19:08.420 | starting a company, my first response is no, don't, like, you

00:19:12.180 | have to be told over and over again, to not start a company to

00:19:16.220 | test it, they actually have the resilience and grit necessary

00:19:18.780 | just to take the first step of starting the company. I have

00:19:21.380 | gotten that everyone should be encouraged to start a company

00:19:23.980 | and entrepreneurism is a is a career choice, I think is a

00:19:27.100 | false notion. I think that most people are not psychologically

00:19:30.740 | equipped for being successful in entrepreneurship.

00:19:32.940 | Yeah, you're 100%. Right. And I've gotten in my later years,

00:19:36.580 | as we run, like found university, these programs, when

00:19:39.060 | people are applying, and we only accept 10% into the programs,

00:19:42.060 | and then only invest in 10% of those are net net, like less

00:19:45.420 | than 1% get funded. You know, I'll ask them, they're like, Oh,

00:19:49.140 | can you give us money, so I can get a co founder. And I'm like,

00:19:53.420 | you know what, you failed the first test of being an

00:19:55.220 | entrepreneur. You know, the first test of being an

00:19:58.060 | entrepreneur is can you convince two or three people to go on

00:20:00.380 | this crazy journey with you, because it's important, and

00:20:03.420 | without money. And, you know, people expect, oh, you're going

00:20:06.460 | to just give them the money, because they have an interesting

00:20:08.460 | idea. And then I asked him, what's your skill? What do you

00:20:10.540 | do at the startup? Do you sell the product, you build the

00:20:12.900 | product. And a lot of people do not have the wherewithal to add

00:20:18.140 | a skill that the world needs, being a developer, a UX

00:20:22.100 | designer, a salesperson, whatever it is, right, they

00:20:24.380 | don't have any skill. And then they also have no ability to

00:20:28.540 | convince somebody else with skills to start a company. If

00:20:32.380 | you if you can't have marketable, important skills

00:20:35.660 | yourself, that you taught yourself on your own, through

00:20:40.020 | sheer force of motivation and will and opening up YouTube,

00:20:43.340 | which really is not hard people, like anybody can learn to code

00:20:47.300 | to be a UX designer to be a salesperson, all this is on some

00:20:51.340 | online course, some book, some YouTube video, some podcast, or

00:20:54.620 | just learn some marketable skills that a startup needs. And

00:20:57.860 | if you can't do that, you shouldn't be a founder.

00:20:59.980 | I think the point is that everybody's capable of being a

00:21:03.620 | founder. And anybody can and should start a company, it's

00:21:06.500 | just that very few can finish a company. And that is the

00:21:10.300 | resilience part where there's just so many ups and downs. And

00:21:15.180 | you have to be able to roll and survive. And you have to just

00:21:18.700 | problem solve constantly. And yeah, there are very few people

00:21:21.780 | that are cut out for it.

00:21:22.540 | You have to be comfortable with failure, you have to be

00:21:25.380 | comfortable with expectations not being met. That's the

00:21:28.180 | important point that he's making. I can't tell you how

00:21:30.820 | important it was early in my career, I had several cold

00:21:33.780 | calling jobs where I called called college kids, I called

00:21:36.100 | called alumni, I called called CEOs, I had three different cold

00:21:39.540 | calling jobs, and getting rejection after rejection,

00:21:42.940 | failing in my life, I didn't get into any schools except for

00:21:45.700 | Berkeley, because Berkeley didn't take teacher

00:21:48.020 | recommendations to be teachers, I did not do well in school. And

00:21:51.700 | then playing poker taught me a lot. Because playing poker, you

00:21:54.900 | lose hands, you lose hands, you lose hands, you lose hands, you

00:21:57.780 | have to just make sure that you're making the right

00:21:59.380 | decisions. And over time, the money will come to you, the

00:22:01.220 | positive EV will be there. But failure and persisting through

00:22:04.380 | failure, I think was one of the most important traits I had to

00:22:07.700 | develop before I was even ready to start a company. Because all

00:22:10.820 | that's happening every day is failure.

00:22:12.700 | But I have my first magazine, I didn't understand I had just

00:22:15.500 | printed photocopies up and I had like 2000 copies of this

00:22:18.260 | magazine, Silicon Valley reporter. And I didn't know how

00:22:21.220 | to get them in people's hands. So I just got a luggage cart.

00:22:24.540 | Like a literal luggage cart, I put them in the luggage cart and

00:22:28.220 | I walked around lower Manhattan. And I just dropped them off at

00:22:32.380 | internet companies. And I dropped them off at cafes. And

00:22:35.020 | then I went to all the village voice boxes, and I just slotted

00:22:38.420 | them in, in between the village voice. And miraculously, people

00:22:41.620 | found it, and then they would subscribe. And you know,

00:22:44.300 | whatever it took was the approach. All right, everybody,

00:22:47.580 | let's get to our second topic, a mini topic. But did opening I

00:22:51.380 | just get caught with their hand in the cookie jar or the

00:22:53.740 | training data cookie jar. Open AI CTO was interviewed by the

00:22:59.100 | Wall Street Journal this week. During the interview, you

00:23:01.300 | probably saw this if you're on x it trended, she was asked what

00:23:04.140 | data did opening I use to train Sora, if you don't know what

00:23:06.940 | story is, we talked about it here. It's that incredible. You

00:23:10.860 | know, video create, you know, type in a text prompt, get a

00:23:13.740 | video back model. And let's watch this clip and then

00:23:18.460 | discuss it.

00:23:19.340 | What data was used to train Sora? We used publicly available

00:23:24.860 | data and license data. So videos on YouTube. I'm actually not

00:23:32.980 | sure about that. Okay. videos from Facebook, Instagram. You

00:23:39.980 | know, if they were publicly available, available yet

00:23:44.620 | publicly available to use. There might be the data, but I'm not

00:23:51.260 | sure. I'm not confident about it.

00:23:52.700 | Let me start with you, Jamal. What are your thoughts here? And

00:23:56.020 | just her not being super prepared there to answer a

00:24:00.460 | question? Or is this a cookie jar situation? What do you

00:24:03.340 | think? I mean, you got to think the CTO of an organization that

00:24:07.740 | whose job it is to build models based on training data knows

00:24:10.980 | where the training data is from.

00:24:13.380 | My interpretation of that answer is that she is hesitating

00:24:18.100 | because she doesn't want to make a statement against interest.

00:24:20.220 | Right? I want to show you guys something. I had a friend of

00:24:23.420 | mine, somebody we all know, who's deep in the heart of this

00:24:29.340 | AI stuff. He was, he came to my office, and he showed me this

00:24:34.060 | one really interesting thing, which is when you launch chat

00:24:37.220 | GPT. And if you go into the microphone, but you say nothing,

00:24:42.100 | so just wait a few seconds, turn on the microphone, wait a few

00:24:44.380 | seconds and turn it off. I'll just do it right now just to

00:24:46.620 | show you. It comes back and it says thank you for watching,

00:24:49.380 | which is typically what it shows you when you auto watch a bunch

00:24:54.340 | of YouTube videos. Now, why is that interesting? Well, if you

00:24:59.700 | say nothing, right, the model has clearly then is guessing

00:25:03.780 | that whenever you see you hear silence, that probabilistically

00:25:08.500 | the next best thing to translate that into is thank you for

00:25:11.380 | watching, which would mean that the training happened on a bunch

00:25:15.220 | of content where thank you for watching was the next obvious

00:25:18.220 | thing so that when there's silence, and the most obvious

00:25:22.020 | place where that happens is in YouTube. I don't know, I thought

00:25:24.780 | that was an interesting little thing that he pointed out to me.

00:25:26.860 | I don't know if anybody's actually explored this. But if

00:25:30.540 | it is true, and Google decides they have an issue with it,

00:25:32.620 | that's not good for these folks.

00:25:34.980 | For your thoughts. I think it's fine. I don't know why this is a

00:25:39.300 | controversial thing.

00:25:40.900 | Well, I mean, it's obvious she's kind of lying on camera.

00:25:44.180 | She definitely knows where the training data came from. And it

00:25:46.620 | feels like see, see why.

00:25:47.860 | I mean, what YouTube is public. So what's wrong with watching

00:25:52.980 | YouTube to teach a model stuff?

00:25:55.300 | Well, you'd have to get a license to make a derivative

00:25:58.020 | work. As we've seen, OpenAI has been doing that. They're in a

00:26:00.820 | lawsuit right now with the New York Times. And they failed to

00:26:03.740 | negotiate their license.

00:26:05.060 | So the assumption is they're making a derivative work.

00:26:08.740 | Yeah, I mean, they've licensed other people's data, right?

00:26:11.460 | Yeah, to get access to it that's not publicly available. You can

00:26:15.300 | go to YouTube downloader and download all this data. You know

00:26:17.860 | what's crazy? I heard from someone at Google that under the

00:26:21.020 | terms of service, Google's not allowed to train on YouTube

00:26:23.660 | data. Remember my I made this point a couple weeks ago about

00:26:26.260 | how important YouTube data is. I think there'd be this really

00:26:29.580 | ironic handicap that Google's done to itself, where anyone

00:26:33.060 | else can access and download and watch YouTube data to train

00:26:36.100 | models, but Google cannot. I don't know if there's any

00:26:39.180 | clarity on that. But it's a pretty crazy fact pattern. But

00:26:41.580 | yeah, YouTube's on the internet. And I feel like anything that's

00:26:44.100 | on the open internet should be watchable by these models. I

00:26:46.300 | don't consider training models to be generation of derivative

00:26:49.340 | work. That's my position.

00:26:50.740 | And that's a position that OpenAI is taking the other side

00:26:54.740 | of that position because they're going around licensing data.

00:26:56.700 | Saks, any other thoughts here about this kerfuffle?

00:26:59.340 | Well, look, I kind of agree with both you and Freeberg. In terms

00:27:03.660 | of the part that I agree with Freeberg, I think that this

00:27:05.700 | issue is kind of more of the same of what we've been talking

00:27:08.500 | about for a while, which is clearly OpenAI trained its model

00:27:12.260 | on publicly available data that was available on the on the

00:27:15.180 | internet. I agree with Freeberg that fair use doctrine should be

00:27:19.380 | applied to that. I know that you have a different point of view

00:27:21.740 | on that, Jake. I don't know if we need to rehash that. I

00:27:24.460 | understand that you don't think fair use should apply. In any

00:27:27.380 | event, I think it's pretty clear that OpenAI trained SORA using

00:27:33.460 | you know, available data on the internet, and that probably

00:27:36.260 | included YouTube. The part where I agree with you, Jekyll, is

00:27:40.420 | that, I don't know if I would say that she's lying per se, but

00:27:44.900 | I think she's probably concerned that if she comes right out and

00:27:50.540 | answers the question as directly as she could, that it could be a

00:27:54.620 | problem for them and all these lawsuits that they're now

00:27:56.500 | facing. You know, again, I think that I would take the side in

00:28:00.860 | those lawsuits that fair use should be allowed. But I think

00:28:03.860 | that probably she is being careful here, because they are

00:28:07.660 | facing so many lawsuits about this training data.

00:28:09.740 | It's gonna be pretty clear, Chamath, I think what the courts

00:28:12.140 | will decide here, which is whose opportunity is it to make a

00:28:16.340 | SORA in the world? If Disney owns a massive collection of IP,

00:28:20.340 | and somebody should be able to use that IP to make derivative

00:28:23.700 | works? Should it be SORA? Or should it be Disney itself? And

00:28:27.220 | so I think the journalists know full well, what they're doing.

00:28:32.260 | And now the journalists have their hooks into this for a very

00:28:35.060 | real reason. The journalists are also content creators. So now

00:28:38.900 | we're gonna have this, you know, two sides forming journalists

00:28:42.460 | worry that folks are not technical enough to make this

00:28:45.260 | decision. And you know, when it goes into a court, how is a

00:28:49.140 | judge really going to understand the nuances of this to make a to

00:28:52.220 | make a call on this, or the jury? It's going to be a big

00:28:55.500 | education process. Yeah, yeah, or the jury. Yeah. Speaking of

00:28:58.980 | AI, vertically, I startups are starting to make some noise. We

00:29:03.060 | all know about large language models. We've talked about them

00:29:05.940 | here. If you listen to this program, you know about OpenAI,

00:29:07.980 | Google's, Gemini, previously known as Bard, Anthropic, Claude,

00:29:12.260 | all this stuff, their general purpose, they've been trained on

00:29:15.420 | the open internet, as we were just discussing, so they can

00:29:18.380 | answer questions about almost anything. And yeah, sometimes

00:29:21.940 | it's correct. Sometimes they're incorrect, but it's showing

00:29:24.700 | promise. There is another school of thought here that's emerging

00:29:28.420 | in startups, vertical AI. These companies are kind of taking a

00:29:32.300 | job title, a role in society, and they are building vertical

00:29:37.660 | apps. Harvey is AI for lawyers, a bridge is doing an AI

00:29:41.820 | notetaker for doctors, saves them hours a day, according to

00:29:45.820 | them. Tax GPT is an AI tax assistant, and Sierra's AI for

00:29:50.380 | customer support. That's Brett Taylor's new startup. This week,

00:29:54.260 | a startup called cognition debuted a tool called Devon,

00:29:57.020 | they're calling it an AI software engineer, the demos

00:29:59.460 | went viral on x, you've probably seen them all over the place. And

00:30:02.340 | in the news, if you watch it, you can see Devon fixing bugs in

00:30:06.300 | real time fine tuning an AI model building apps and and, and

00:30:10.380 | people are speculating Devon was built on GPT for from OpenAI.

00:30:14.660 | That's not confirmed. But according to the CEO, Devon was

00:30:18.980 | built by tweaking reasoning and long term planning into an

00:30:22.500 | existing LLM. Here's how it ranks against other major models

00:30:27.220 | on coding benchmarks. They're building all these benchmarks to

00:30:29.820 | test each language model. And as you can see, it's according to

00:30:33.980 | this chart, and according to their data, doing much better

00:30:37.780 | than just a generic language model kind of makes sense.

00:30:41.100 | Schmaltz, did you see these demos this week? I think I saw

00:30:43.940 | you on the group chat talking about it. And what was your take

00:30:47.140 | on these role based vertical startups?

00:30:50.940 | Oh, I think this is so powerful. I mean, it's incredible, because

00:30:54.980 | we're measuring this progress in like, what, week over week?

00:30:58.060 | Feels like that. Yeah.

00:30:59.860 | I think the point that you should take away is that the

00:31:03.620 | most of these very difficult in impenetrable job types, for the

00:31:11.860 | average person, if there's if you said to them, hey, become a

00:31:14.260 | developer, that's like a complicated journey, right? It's

00:31:19.300 | just going to be now like a command line interface where you

00:31:24.820 | just kind of describe in English what you want to do. And all of

00:31:28.140 | this stuff will just happen behind the scenes, and it'll be

00:31:30.380 | totally automated. So that'll grow the number of people that

00:31:34.980 | can use these tools. At the same time, it'll make the developers,

00:31:39.420 | I think even more valued, because you're going to need

00:31:42.460 | people in the guts of these models, and in the code that it

00:31:46.220 | generates, because it's not always going to work perfectly,

00:31:48.500 | there's always going to be some kind of hallucination, some

00:31:50.780 | stuff is not going to compile. Now, the demos that they did,

00:31:53.820 | though, were incredible, they were able to find errors, they

00:31:55.940 | were able to remediate errors in code. I mean, I just, I think

00:32:00.260 | it's really, really special.

00:32:01.700 | So you you've been on copilots for the past year talking about

00:32:05.940 | that. This is slightly different. We're moving from,

00:32:08.740 | hey, here's a copilot, somebody helping a developer to, hey,

00:32:12.460 | here's a developer working, and now they have a supervisor. So

00:32:16.580 | what do you think of these sort of role based agents? And how

00:32:19.700 | quickly we went from year one copiloting to, okay, now they're

00:32:24.460 | the pilot, and we're sitting in the copilot seat watching them

00:32:27.180 | fly the plane?

00:32:27.900 | Yeah, well, look, first of all, everyone's working on autonomous

00:32:31.740 | coding, or working towards that this is like one of the core,

00:32:34.940 | most obvious use cases of LLM because code is text. And it can

00:32:40.580 | also be run through a compiler to debug it. So you can also get

00:32:44.420 | to, in theory, you can get to high levels of accuracy yet,

00:32:47.100 | although, in the example that you gave, Jason, this new

00:32:50.660 | product was only at 13%. So there's still a long way to go.

00:32:53.900 | But the potential is clearly there. So a lot of companies are

00:32:59.100 | working on some variation of this idea. Devin is, I guess you

00:33:04.380 | call it an agent first approach. And I think that's very cool for

00:33:08.900 | generating new software projects. But where I think this

00:33:13.740 | gets much trickier, and is much more difficult, is when you're

00:33:17.220 | working in existing code bases. And just to talk my own book for

00:33:20.780 | a second, we're an investor in a company called source graph,

00:33:23.740 | they have a product called Cody, and their whole approach is

00:33:26.700 | context first, as opposed to agent first, it's all about

00:33:29.020 | getting the copilot to work inside of existing code bases.

00:33:33.100 | So different companies are coming at this from different

00:33:35.460 | approaches, GitHub copilot, I think is kind of more like Cody,

00:33:38.700 | where it's all about making an existing code base more useful.

00:33:43.820 | Whereas Devin, again, is starting with, I think, net new

00:33:46.340 | code bases, but that's going to demo really well. And so that's

00:33:49.580 | what you're seeing is like these really cool demos. In any event,

00:33:52.700 | the larger picture here is that we are going to get better and

00:33:56.140 | better at coding autonomously, I guess you could say. And I don't

00:34:01.620 | know if it gets ever gets to 100%, where you don't need

00:34:03.540 | coders anymore. But it's going to make coders much more

00:34:07.540 | productive over time, you're gonna get this huge multiplier

00:34:10.460 | effect on the ability to write code. And that's really

00:34:13.220 | exciting for a bunch of obvious reasons.

00:34:15.740 | For a while, we've been tracking this evolution from, you know,

00:34:19.940 | Gmail, guess the next word, guess the next phrase, guess the

00:34:23.420 | next sentence to copilots. Now we have these role based agent

00:34:27.740 | based solutions that startups are pursuing. What's next? If we

00:34:35.260 | follow this thread, what would the next evolution here? Well,

00:34:38.540 | the big push has been for this notion of AGI to replace a

00:34:42.300 | human. And I think what we're seeing is software that

00:34:49.820 | replaces a specific human doing a specific thing, like being a

00:34:56.060 | lawyer, being an accountant, being an art director, if you

00:35:00.060 | think about the internet, when the internet, which was like

00:35:03.300 | networking software, and the capabilities that arose from the

00:35:06.220 | connection of all these computers, during the internet

00:35:08.460 | era, the innovation was everyone tried to create a business model

00:35:12.340 | which was how do you take an existing vertical business and

00:35:14.900 | put it on the internet? I think what we're seeing in this era is

00:35:18.340 | everyone's taking a vertical human and creating a vertical

00:35:21.580 | version of a human in the AI era. And so I think like the the

00:35:27.700 | success will probably accrue to one company that replaces one

00:35:33.820 | set of core human services, like being a lawyer, being an

00:35:36.700 | accountant, you know, being an artist in whatever way. And that

00:35:42.100 | that ends up being the specific vertical tool that people will

00:35:46.900 | use to automate and scale up their ability to do that task in

00:35:51.420 | an automated way. Because I think that there's like a great

00:35:54.020 | deal of capability that emerges in the fine tuning and the

00:35:58.380 | unique data that certain people may have to make that one tool

00:36:01.820 | better than the rest. And therefore, everyone will end up

00:36:04.340 | using this one lawyer service, or this one accounting service or

00:36:08.020 | what have you. So I definitely think that's kind of what we're

00:36:10.260 | seeing. Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious where this is

00:36:12.460 | going. You got co pilots assisting a developer, or a

00:36:16.700 | lawyer, then the next were writer, then they got the next

00:36:19.780 | phase, okay, you've got a peer, so you're doing peer programming

00:36:22.860 | or somebody's kind of working alongside you, you're checking

00:36:25.100 | their work, and maybe they're even checking your work, seeing

00:36:27.380 | if you have bugs, where this is going to be next year is there's

00:36:30.300 | going to be a conductor, there's going to be somebody who has a

00:36:33.660 | role or a piece of software has a role, where you say, Hey,

00:36:36.980 | you're a CEO of a company, you're a founder, a product

00:36:39.660 | manager, here's your lawyer, here's your accountant, here's

00:36:42.700 | your developers, here's your designer. And now you will

00:36:45.780 | coordinate those five people. Now imagine how that changes

00:36:49.620 | startups when you as an individual have a conductor

00:36:53.260 | working with you and says, You know what, I don't know if I

00:36:55.780 | agree with this legal advice that's coming in in relation to

00:36:58.260 | the tax advice. And maybe we should not even add this feature

00:37:01.660 | to the program. Let's talk to the product manager, the agent

00:37:05.420 | product manager about taking that feature out. So we don't

00:37:07.700 | have these downstream legal issues. And we don't even have

00:37:09.820 | to file taxes in this area, it's gonna get really interesting

00:37:13.300 | next year when they have a conductor.

00:37:14.860 | The other way it may go Jason is you have a lawyer that has 50

00:37:20.140 | associates working for them through the AI. So you don't

00:37:23.260 | replace the lawyer, you don't replace the software engineer,

00:37:26.260 | the software engineer levels up. And now the software engineer

00:37:29.100 | has 50 engineers available 50 agents running, doing tasks for

00:37:32.540 | them. You do still you do still need humans with domain

00:37:35.900 | expertise, and creativity to think through architecture to

00:37:39.100 | think through process and to make sure that the AI agents are

00:37:42.820 | doing their job. So I think what it creates is extraordinary

00:37:45.700 | leverage for people and organizations, which is why

00:37:48.260 | generally economic productivity goes up, people don't lose jobs,

00:37:51.260 | they level up.

00:37:51.940 | In this phase, the the op ex of companies will probably be cut

00:37:56.500 | in half. At the limit, I think Jason is actually absolutely

00:38:02.300 | right. I think you find that there'll be millions of

00:38:05.220 | companies with one person, and then a whole layer of software

00:38:08.300 | and conductors and agents and bots. That's the future. So you

00:38:12.060 | won't have these engineering people, that person should be

00:38:15.020 | running their own company. And so you'll just have millions and

00:38:18.100 | millions and millions and maybe billions of companies. And I

00:38:20.540 | think that that's really exciting. Not all of them will

00:38:23.660 | work, many of them will fail, and a few of them will be

00:38:26.340 | ginormous. And it'll be up to the person who can navigate and

00:38:31.100 | be a conductor, as you said, you know, yeah, really interesting.

00:38:34.860 | The solo entrepreneur movement of last couple years, there were

00:38:37.620 | all these kind of like independent hackers, building

00:38:40.460 | one item like Phil Kaplan did with distro kid, he said, like

00:38:44.220 | two or three people working on that got very big. You know, I

00:38:47.660 | was telling you guys about that slopes app I showed you, I

00:38:50.460 | reached out to the founder of that. I was like, Hey, tell me

00:38:51.980 | about the business, like, it's enough of a business to support

00:38:54.220 | one person or two people, like, there will be a lot of these

00:38:57.100 | apps or services, one conductor. And yeah, it makes what half

00:39:01.500 | million a year, 3 million a year, whatever, it's enough to

00:39:03.580 | support 123 people working on it. But previously, you know,

00:39:07.620 | you'd be going to the venture community like, Oh, what did it

00:39:10.180 | take a modern app company, sacks to kind of build an Android and

00:39:15.060 | a, an iOS app, just, you know, 510 years ago, if we were

00:39:18.980 | funding 110 years ago, what would the footprint look like?

00:39:23.260 | For, you know, a consumer app company,

00:39:25.740 | if you're going to go all the way back to like the late 90s

00:39:29.140 | during the.com era, I remember that with PayPal, just to

00:39:33.580 | launch, really, what was an MVP, we had, I'd say a dozen

00:39:38.380 | developers, and it was pretty expensive. And we had to set up

00:39:40.940 | our own colo. There's all this infrastructure that all got

00:39:44.020 | abstracted away with AWS, then you move to the mobile era. And

00:39:48.380 | the app stores provide. There's just a lot more developer tools

00:39:52.740 | for more API's. Yeah, it was well as distribution, but it's

00:39:56.220 | far easier to code these apps. So definitely things have

00:39:59.100 | gotten easier and easier. That's the trend. If that's the

00:40:01.620 | point you're trying to make. It's certainly never been easier

00:40:04.980 | to get started in creating something if you're a solo

00:40:08.220 | developer. Yeah. That being said, I think that depending on

00:40:11.980 | what you're trying to do, it's still usually the case that if

00:40:16.860 | you're trying to do something interesting and profound, you're

00:40:19.260 | going to need a small team of developers and a couple million

00:40:23.060 | bucks to get you started.

00:40:24.220 | Yeah, it used to be rule of thumb, I think 12 people for an

00:40:27.580 | app company, you get two or three working on each platform,

00:40:29.740 | a couple designers could be testing and design UX, you get

00:40:35.460 | to 1012 people to run a modern one. Alright, everybody, next

00:40:39.900 | issue, the house just passed a bill that would either ban tick

00:40:44.340 | tock or force a sale. We talked about this bill being proposed

00:40:48.220 | last week, and things had moved really slowly on the tick tock

00:40:52.140 | band. Now they're moving really fast. On Wednesday, the house

00:40:54.540 | passed the bill with a bipartisan vote of 352 to 65.

00:40:59.420 | Making this one of the few subjects that members of

00:41:01.940 | Congress can agree on. Biden has also signaled his intent to sign

00:41:05.980 | the bill into law should it pass the Senate passing the Senate

00:41:08.620 | that could be an obstacle Democratic majority leader Chuck

00:41:11.140 | Schumer has signaled a lack of interest in the subject and

00:41:14.340 | said he'll review the bill with committee chairs before deciding

00:41:16.940 | on the path forward arguments for and against the bill have

00:41:19.820 | centered around a few main points reciprocity. We talked

00:41:22.660 | about that here. You can't use Instagram x or any of our

00:41:26.500 | domestic social networks in China. And if they won't allow

00:41:30.100 | us in their country, why should we give them unrestricted access

00:41:32.700 | to our stifling debate, progressives fear this isn't

00:41:36.580 | really about national security. Their position is mainstream

00:41:41.380 | politicians are hoping to shut down political discourse,

00:41:43.860 | particularly among the youth who are mostly on tick tock,

00:41:48.140 | particularly pro Palestinian and anti Israel discourse,

00:41:51.500 | which seems to flourish on tick tock versus other platforms.

00:41:55.140 | Coincidentally, Joe Biden launched a tick tock account

00:41:58.940 | last month, and his comments were instantly flooded with pro

00:42:02.580 | Palestinian remarks, some calling him genocide, Joe. Third

00:42:08.460 | argument overreach some sex, I think you've pointed out that

00:42:12.060 | the language in this law is a bit vague, it needs to be

00:42:14.940 | tightened up. Maybe the President could go after

00:42:19.220 | companies supposedly aligned with foreign interests who

00:42:21.540 | aren't our esteemed patriot and friend Keith were boy argued

00:42:25.220 | with you sacks on this on x. And then there are guys like Trump

00:42:29.140 | and Vivek, who I believe are flip flopping based on securing

00:42:32.580 | bags, Vivek called tick tock digital fentanyl. And Trump

00:42:37.100 | issued an executive order calling for ByteDance to divest

00:42:40.500 | tick tock in 2020. Now, they're both opposing the ban. And

00:42:44.980 | interestingly, both Trump and Vivek have ties to the

00:42:48.340 | Republican mega donor Jeffrey. Yes, who is a major shareholder

00:42:53.020 | in ByteDance with a reported 15 to $30 billion stake he gave

00:42:57.820 | Vivek 5 million bucks, who knows what Trump's gotten. But they

00:43:02.540 | said they're back in love. Sachs, you had this big back and

00:43:05.500 | forth with Keith for a boy on x. Are you in support of the

00:43:10.740 | divestiture or not? I haven't been able to track exactly where

00:43:14.380 | you're at of this.

00:43:15.100 | Well, I think my take on this, and I'm gonna have to revise and

00:43:19.780 | extend my remarks from last week, because I didn't know as

00:43:21.940 | much about the bill, I hadn't actually read the language yet.

00:43:24.740 | And now I have. And my take on this is that the bill poses

00:43:29.740 | significant risk of being Patriot Act 2.0. So in other

00:43:33.780 | words, you know, a threat to the security of the United

00:43:37.580 | States is basically hyped up, some part of it may be real,

00:43:41.140 | some of it may be threat inflation. And then we give the

00:43:44.420 | intelligence community and the government new powers, which can

00:43:48.220 | then be abused. And that's exactly what happened with the

00:43:50.780 | Patriot Act, they ended up spying on Americans. Now, what

00:43:53.780 | is the potential abuse here? This is the thing that I've

00:43:56.340 | debated with Keith. And there's also other people who I respect

00:44:01.820 | a lot. And Keith, by the way, is a very talented lawyer, in

00:44:04.180 | addition to other things being a successful founder and investor

00:44:09.820 | and investor. And then you know, I saw that cigar and Jenny whose

00:44:13.900 | show I was just on thinks that the bill is just fine. So look,

00:44:17.220 | there are people, very legit people who disagree with me

00:44:20.860 | about this. But I went last night, I read this bill, like

00:44:23.380 | four times to try and like parse the language. And I've just come

00:44:27.660 | away concluding there's no, the way I see it, there's no way to

00:44:32.220 | argue that this language isn't vague, and could invite abuse.

00:44:36.060 | And you really have to dig into it. But let me just kind of walk

00:44:39.740 | you through, I think a key part of it. So first of all, this

00:44:44.600 | bill doesn't just ban or force the divestiture of Tick Tock, it

00:44:49.460 | goes after what it calls foreign adversary controlled

00:44:53.980 | applications. Now, what is a foreign adversary, there are

00:44:57.220 | four countries that are defined as foreign adversaries, it's

00:45:00.780 | basically, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, I'm not super

00:45:05.500 | worried about that list of foreign adversaries growing,

00:45:08.620 | because that does take a bunch of procedural hoops to go

00:45:11.940 | through it. What I am concerned about is when the bill talks

00:45:15.600 | about what makes a company controlled by a foreign

00:45:20.260 | adversary. And if you go to that language, which is then

00:45:23.780 | definition, so you know, what frequently happens with these

00:45:26.820 | bills is that a lot of the meat is actually in the definitions,

00:45:29.300 | you have to look at this very carefully. It says here, the

00:45:32.540 | term controlled by foreign adversary means with respect to

00:45:34.820 | a covered company, that such company or entity is and then

00:45:38.340 | there's three categories. The first category is a foreign

00:45:41.420 | person, which can also mean a foreign corporation that's

00:45:44.100 | domiciled in or is headquartered or has its principal place of

00:45:46.980 | business, or is organized under the law of foreign adversary

00:45:49.900 | country. So that would be like ByteDance. Okay, ByteDance is a

00:45:53.380 | Chinese company, okay, then it says, or it can be an entity,

00:45:57.740 | where 20% of the ownership group is in that foreign person

00:46:02.940 | category. So that would be like you, let's say you had a US

00:46:06.060 | company, but 20% of the company was owned by, I don't know if

00:46:10.940 | Chinese VCs or by ByteDance, okay, that would also be a

00:46:16.100 | controlled by a foreign adversary, then you get to the

00:46:19.040 | provision that I think is the most problematic, which is, it's

00:46:22.740 | a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign

00:46:27.380 | person or entity. The novel language here is where it says

00:46:30.900 | subject to the direction of, okay, it's not just saying under

00:46:35.700 | the control of it's saying subject to the direction of, in

00:46:39.460 | my view, that's very vague. And it creative prosecutor, creative

00:46:45.260 | Attorney General could try to say, well, wait a second, if

00:46:48.500 | Elon has a major Tesla factory, in Shanghai, is he subject to

00:46:55.700 | the direction of the Chinese Communist Party, because they

00:46:58.460 | could influence him, they could leverage him. If Donald Trump is

00:47:03.180 | accused on virtually a daily basis of being a Russian asset,

00:47:07.300 | is he subject to the direction of Vladimir Putin, David from

00:47:11.820 | just tweeted very recently that he said that not only Trump, but

00:47:15.100 | the entire Republican Party that works for Trump is under the

00:47:19.060 | direction.

00:47:19.660 | Yeah, that's a partisan hack, though, that's not like actual

00:47:23.140 | factual in a court, right. So this would have to be proven

00:47:26.220 | factual in the court. Okay, do you think or no?

00:47:29.380 | Well, the ag could open an investigation, based on the

00:47:34.260 | theory that, for example, Trump owns true social, and Trump is

00:47:38.820 | under the direction of a foreign adversary, ie Putin, because the

00:47:42.860 | mainstream media continues to normalize this idea and spread

00:47:46.980 | this idea on virtually a daily basis. So the point is that

00:47:50.340 | look, first, the ag would open an investigation, you think

00:47:53.860 | about the sledgehammer type of remedy here that an Elon or a

00:48:00.500 | Trump or a you take rumble, for example, which is also accused

00:48:04.700 | of being a Russian agent, they could be forced to divest the

00:48:08.620 | company or to have it be banned. So it gives huge, I think new

00:48:13.900 | powers to the executive branch to pursue political opponents

00:48:19.660 | and political enemies, whether they actually win in a court of

00:48:22.860 | law down the road is kind of secondary because they can vex

00:48:27.140 | and harass their political enemies using this power. So my

00:48:31.100 | point is that at a minimum, I think this language needs to get

00:48:33.660 | cleaned up. I think it is way too vague. And you still have

00:48:38.780 | the issue of whether it's a good idea or not, to force the

00:48:42.340 | banning or divestiture of tick tock. But this bill goes way

00:48:45.540 | beyond it. Again, it creates this novel category of foreign

00:48:50.020 | adversary controlled applications, which also, like I

00:48:52.580 | said, includes websites. And that means not just foreign

00:48:56.460 | companies, but domestic companies as well that are set

00:48:59.980 | to be under the direction of a foreign actor. So again, I, I

00:49:03.980 | don't know how anyone can look at this language and not say

00:49:07.140 | it's too vague.

00:49:08.020 | Yeah, it's easy enough. Tighten it up. And if it was tightened

00:49:10.900 | up, you'd be in favor of the tick tock, man, I take it sex or

00:49:14.500 | divestiture. I should say, I keep saying ban, you would still

00:49:17.060 | want the Chinese government to not have control of this or, or

00:49:19.900 | by dance. Yeah.

00:49:20.860 | I still have very mixed feelings about the idea of just the tick

00:49:25.260 | tock ban. Because look, you're talking about an app that 100

00:49:28.060 | million Americans use for something like 90 minutes a day.

00:49:32.940 | So people obviously get a lot of value out of this. I've yet to

00:49:35.820 | see the the hard proof that this app is under the control of the

00:49:41.300 | CCP. I mean, I know that allegation is made. I can

00:49:44.380 | understand why journalists are ready. Yeah. But it's it's very

00:49:49.180 | unclear to me that they have the goods on that. And I do think

00:49:53.440 | that depriving Americans of the right to use this app that they

00:49:57.260 | clearly enjoy and love, based on a threat that has yet to be

00:50:02.860 | proven. That makes me I'm deeply ambivalent about that.

00:50:06.580 | Martha, if we were to look at, say, media channels, newspapers,

00:50:11.020 | there's been rules about foreign ownership of those do you

00:50:14.580 | believe tick tock kind of falls into that as Zack said,

00:50:17.060 | Americans are enjoying this in a massive way 100 million plus 90

00:50:21.740 | minutes a day, the statistics are crazy. That actually, I

00:50:24.540 | think argues for, you know, not having a foreign adversary own

00:50:29.060 | this or have access to it, we wouldn't allow them to own CNN,

00:50:31.940 | Fox, New York Times, Washington Post, etc. We have rules against

00:50:36.060 | that already. So are you in favor of this tick tock

00:50:39.260 | divestiture? Yes or no? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Freeberg.

00:50:47.380 | I like to hear I like to hear him expand on

00:50:53.020 | I'll tell you before I tell you why. I'll tell you a quick

00:50:55.900 | story. Two or three months ago, after Joker was sick, we started

00:51:00.760 | to make his own dog food, right. So to have like a super bland

00:51:04.700 | diet, we had the service that was sending us food and we got

00:51:08.100 | rid of it and we would just make it ourselves. And part of the

00:51:12.580 | meal was like some raw apples and carrots that I would that I

00:51:17.540 | would cut up. And I would always complain to my I hate peeling

00:51:22.060 | these apples or whatever, slicing them and taking the core

00:51:25.300 | out. Just just said that. For the next month and a half, all I

00:51:30.540 | got was apple coring utensils on tik tok. And she was like, Oh,

00:51:35.580 | you know, we should get rid of XYZ food service. And she would

00:51:38.900 | just get plastered with these ads. And it was just a reminder

00:51:42.860 | to me that these apps are constantly listening. Now that's

00:51:45.500 | a benign example. But my phone is on my desk when I'm talking

00:51:49.540 | about some really important stuff. Again, important related

00:51:54.300 | to me both personal and professional, where there's lots

00:51:57.180 | of money on the line. There's moments where for certain parts

00:52:01.220 | of my business, like with crypto, we have like 19 layers

00:52:04.860 | of people that have to you have passwords upon passwords upon

00:52:09.340 | passwords to do stuff. The phone is always there. It was just a

00:52:13.900 | reminder to me. So I deleted tik tok, it's gone, which sucks

00:52:17.740 | because I would relax with that app at night. Like, you know, I

00:52:21.220 | would have 1520 minutes where I would press. It's super fun.

00:52:24.660 | It's a great app. I have to be honest with you. I love it. But

00:52:29.340 | as a consumer, that was the decision I made as a business

00:52:33.860 | person. What I'll say is it is inconceivable to me that our

00:52:41.940 | voice signatures aren't being mapped. And there isn't a

00:52:46.660 | massive sort of file and repository that is

00:52:50.660 | understanding what we're all saying. And it's then further

00:52:55.260 | inconceivable to me that there isn't a service that's an

00:52:58.860 | identifying that this is probably David Sachs. And this

00:53:02.140 | is Chamath and this is free bird. And we're not really all

00:53:05.580 | that important. But let's take a better example. This is Elon

00:53:08.500 | Musk. This is the President of the United States. This is or

00:53:11.740 | the waiter that works for the president who has his phone in

00:53:14.540 | his pocket while he's sitting inside the you know, the the

00:53:18.900 | residences of the White House. So I think it's happening. I

00:53:23.820 | think they're not the only one though. I think there's

00:53:26.100 | American companies that are doing it too. And so I think

00:53:30.340 | that we need to start somewhere until we can have our apps in a

00:53:35.940 | market. They shouldn't have their apps here. And I think

00:53:40.900 | that should be the end of it.

00:53:41.740 | Completely reasonable. I think I'm gonna disagree. I think a

00:53:45.140 | couple points. I don't believe in the notion of like

00:53:50.340 | reciprocity for reciprocity sake. China blocks access to US

00:53:55.100 | content. Does that mean the US government should block access

00:53:58.180 | to international content? I think the answer is no, because

00:54:01.100 | this country is different than China. We have afforded

00:54:04.980 | ourselves freedoms and liberties that don't exist in

00:54:07.700 | other countries, freedom of choice, freedom of speech,

00:54:11.020 | freedom of the press, and so on. So I don't think that the

00:54:13.580 | government should be restricting access to content. Because

00:54:16.940 | another country restricts access to our content, I think that we

00:54:20.260 | should make decisions based on what's right for the citizens,

00:54:23.580 | what's right for the country, what's right for national

00:54:25.300 | security, what about spying apps? So that's, that's, that's

00:54:28.540 | my, my next point. So I do think that if there is a case to be

00:54:31.900 | made, that there is spying or data acquisition that's going on

00:54:35.700 | through these apps, we're not talking about rice noodles over

00:54:38.260 | here, you know, we're talking. And so I think if that's true,

00:54:42.220 | then I would imagine that there are multiple paths to alleviate

00:54:45.900 | that, like move all the servers to the US and separate the

00:54:48.580 | entity force a sale, you know, like, I think I don't think that

00:54:52.100 | it's necessarily appropriate to say that there aren't other

00:54:56.020 | courses or other options available to try and prohibit

00:54:59.820 | what should generally be prohibited, which is spying on

00:55:03.300 | American citizens, and capturing data that people, you know,

00:55:07.780 | haven't opted into being captured, I do believe that

00:55:11.140 | citizens and people should have the right to decide if they want

00:55:13.900 | to have their data used to be able to access an app, I

00:55:16.740 | actually am not a big believer that we should be paternalistic

00:55:20.100 | in the government sense and saying, having the government

00:55:22.620 | come in and say, here's an app, and we have determined that it

00:55:26.460 | is not good for you, because this data is being used in a

00:55:28.860 | manipulative way against you. I think that citizens should be

00:55:31.620 | afforded transparency and make a decision about whether or not

00:55:34.340 | they want to participate.

00:55:35.500 | And I don't think I don't think citizens have the

00:55:37.220 | sophistication to understand what foreign adversaries, again,

00:55:40.980 | we only have four, so they were named there for a reason, are

00:55:44.140 | doing with our data. And I don't think that they should have to

00:55:48.340 | be forced to choose. I think that, you know, this is not

00:55:50.660 | dissimilar to how the FDA says, you're not qualified to decide

00:55:54.540 | whether this drug is good, we will tell you, and people are

00:55:57.180 | okay with that. Because you are saying this is part of the

00:56:00.140 | government infrastructure that's full of experts who know the

00:56:03.180 | totality of a subject. And so the problem is, in order for

00:56:06.340 | anybody to make a reasonable decision, you'd have to share so

00:56:08.740 | much as to just completely blow up a bunch of national security,

00:56:12.140 | which is not going to happen.

00:56:12.980 | Well, look, I think we can have audit rights, and we can have

00:56:15.260 | rights that protect our citizens. I think that that's

00:56:17.220 | appropriate. I'll also say my final point on this, I think

00:56:20.940 | that whether it's intentional or not, this sort of action leads

00:56:26.300 | to inevitable cronyism and regulatory capture. Who does

00:56:29.340 | this benefit? If tick tock gets banned in the US, it's going to

00:56:32.060 | benefit meta, it's going to benefit Instagram, it's going to

00:56:35.380 | benefit a few other, you know, social networks going to benefit

00:56:38.020 | Elon at Twitter, there's a few folks that are going to benefit

00:56:41.020 | pretty significantly if tick tock is banned, because all

00:56:43.860 | those users are going to migrate. I will also say by the

00:56:46.180 | way that many 1000s of people make their living on tick tock,

00:56:48.740 | like it or not, it's a big income stream for a lot of

00:56:51.300 | people in the US, and a really important part of their

00:56:53.580 | livelihood.

00:56:54.060 | And just to be clear here, this is not about banning tick tock.

00:56:57.020 | This is about divestiture. Then if it's not divested, then it

00:57:01.100 | gets banned. So if you just think from first principles

00:57:03.220 | here, why wouldn't they divest? Why would you keep this? The

00:57:09.340 | reason is, this is a incredibly powerful tool. Under no

00:57:13.380 | circumstances, would the Chinese government ever allow us to have

00:57:17.860 | this kind of reach into their populace. And if you want to

00:57:20.140 | judge a person, you can just look at their behavior. Citizens

00:57:23.740 | in China live either in a complete police state where

00:57:27.780 | everything they do is tracked every transaction, facial

00:57:31.060 | recognition, every step they take, every purchase they make

00:57:34.340 | is tracked, or you're in a literal concentration camp.

00:57:37.740 | That's how the people of China live today. We are their

00:57:41.700 | adversary, they have noted that we're their adversary. Under

00:57:45.860 | what circumstances would you think they would treat us any

00:57:48.780 | differently than they treat their own citizens? It is

00:57:51.540 | absolutely insane that anybody would take the side of the CCP

00:57:56.220 | on this, you are asking them to divest, you're not asking them

00:57:59.860 | to shut it down. That is a partisan sort of angle on this.

00:58:04.260 | And there's a lot of partisanship going on, on the

00:58:07.140 | edges on this. But what we have to realize is they would never

00:58:10.140 | allow us to do this to their citizens, and how they treat

00:58:13.100 | their citizens is obvious.

00:58:14.740 | As an example, we've tried, you know, we tried to export sugar

00:58:17.980 | via McDonald's and Coke, and actually, they have domestic

00:58:21.300 | brands that they were able to support and prop up. So they

00:58:23.460 | have more control of that, too. So even, even even our downstream

00:58:26.820 | attempts to actually send products that theoretically over

00:58:30.100 | long periods of time aren't necessarily beneficial. They've

00:58:33.140 | they're smart enough to actually blunt

00:58:35.180 | Yeah, and they don't let their kids play video games or use

00:58:37.260 | Tick Tock.

00:58:37.820 | Well, even video games, they saw video games are bad. It's not

00:58:40.900 | like they're like, Oh, Activision, come on in the doors

00:58:43.020 | are open. They're like, you can use it an hour. No, I think it's

00:58:45.660 | like three hours a week, and certain kids. And then the

00:58:48.540 | weekends and certain kids are totally bad. They have an

00:58:51.140 | ability to make strategic decisions that benefit their

00:58:53.740 | population. And I think that we have never attempted to I'm not

00:58:58.300 | saying that this law is going to be great. But you'd have to be

00:59:01.820 | extremely naive to assume that there is nothing bad going on

00:59:05.820 | here with this app. It doesn't mean that there's nothing bad

00:59:08.420 | going on with all the other apps. I am assuming that all

00:59:11.660 | these apps have foreign actors that have infiltrated them. I

00:59:14.780 | think that's the right posture to have. I don't have Instagram

00:59:18.380 | on my phone. I don't have Facebook on my phone. I don't

00:59:21.060 | have Tick Tock anymore on my phone, the only thing that's

00:59:23.340 | left is x. And at some point, if those apps can prove that there's

00:59:30.060 | a chain of custody, so for example, you know, one thing

00:59:32.580 | that I thought of you could do is you could put some kind of

00:59:35.860 | like ITAR regulations around this so that only US citizens

00:59:38.980 | could work on these apps, any app that is ambiently observing

00:59:43.620 | you. I think the overwhelming majority of people there's, it's

00:59:47.620 | very benign implications. But the whole point is that if you

00:59:51.140 | have 300 million people that are being observed, you're going to

00:59:55.380 | get also the 1000 or 10,000 that are super important. And you're

01:00:00.660 | going to catch stuff that you're not allowed to know. And that's

01:00:03.860 | not ready doing this, pull up the article, Nick, Tick Tock has

01:00:08.140 | already admitted to and been caught with their hand in the

01:00:11.540 | cookie jar spying on journalists. We know that

01:00:14.980 | they're doing this already. And we know their track record for

01:00:18.260 | spying on their own people. This is the no brainer of no brainer

01:00:21.900 | decisions, just divest. And if they won't divest, it tells you

01:00:25.580 | everything you need to know, this is super valuable to them.

01:00:28.980 | And that algorithm is so valuable that they know they can

01:00:32.220 | program the US citizenry.

01:00:34.380 | I think the other problem is, I'm not sure that the people

01:00:37.500 | with the technical sophistication will have the

01:00:40.420 | time to then actually go and audit the code base to really

01:00:43.660 | know that there aren't any Easter eggs in here. And there

01:00:45.860 | aren't real backdoors. And they won't. So this is my point. I

01:00:49.100 | think divestiture should not be allowed. I actually just think

01:00:51.820 | unfortunately, this app should just be shut down. And the

01:00:54.420 | people will migrate to Instagram, and the people migrate

01:00:57.180 | to YouTube, and new products, and or new products. And the

01:01:01.660 | thing there is that at least these are American controlled.

01:01:04.860 | And are there data leaks happening in those apps?

01:01:07.300 | Probably. But it's at least not so brazenly obvious.

01:01:12.340 | sacks your thoughts.

01:01:13.260 | I'm a little confused here. Are you guys saying that the Chinese

01:01:16.700 | government uses to talk to spy on its own population? Or they

01:01:20.100 | ban it because they think it's harmful?

01:01:21.660 | No, they ban tick tock there because it's harmful. No, they

01:01:24.980 | complete control over tick tock. Yes. And they control that in

01:01:27.980 | their country. They use camera sacks. And you know this full

01:01:31.820 | well on every single corner with facial recognition, and every

01:01:35.900 | one of their phones is tracked. You know this full well sacks

01:01:39.140 | they are spying on their pockets or not. No, they have bad tick

01:01:42.940 | tock. They have a different version called a different

01:01:45.100 | version. And in that version, and by the way, and they push

01:01:49.500 | Matt doions algorithms are very different. They push educational

01:01:52.780 | content. There's so basically, like on the on the ByteDance

01:01:56.260 | board, what happened with this whole thing is the the CEO and

01:02:00.140 | the founder had to step down effectively, right, they brought

01:02:04.020 | in effectively new management. And in that the CCP hat is a

01:02:08.220 | board of board director and has what's called the golden vote.

01:02:11.820 | So they effectively decide. And so what you saw were the

01:02:15.060 | algorithms morph over time from pure entertainment, to things

01:02:19.020 | that pushed a lot of educational content. They also then imposed,

01:02:23.540 | broadly speaking, limits on content that they didn't like,

01:02:27.700 | they would only allow in other apps, experiences where they

01:02:32.340 | also have a board seat now and a golden vote. As Jason said,

01:02:35.940 | games can only be played in certain apps for certain amounts

01:02:39.380 | of time. So they've made their own decisions about what's good

01:02:42.500 | for their own population. The flavor of the app that's here,

01:02:46.060 | my my biggest point is that, again, you have to pick the

01:02:49.820 | lesser evil. I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that all

01:02:53.380 | these apps are infiltrated. But this one is more brazen, because

01:02:58.380 | it is really the only one that's completely and obviously foreign

01:03:01.100 | control. And I don't think that if you tried to divest it, you

01:03:07.420 | will get any assurance that that code is reliable. And so you'd

01:03:10.460 | have to build the whole thing from scratch all over again, for

01:03:12.740 | what it's worth, the company has said that they're willing to

01:03:14.860 | move all of their hosting in the US to Oracle data centers in the

01:03:21.380 | US,

01:03:21.900 | David, you and I know what that means. I could you imagine a

01:03:24.780 | migration like that, who is going to look at every single

01:03:27.540 | endpoint, every single line of code, that is a joke that's

01:03:30.300 | meant to allay people who are not technical.

01:03:32.300 | Right? Yeah. I kind of agree with that.

01:03:34.740 | All right. It seems like we're I don't know if we're 2v2 here.

01:03:38.540 | But look, I you may or not been sacks with the language is

01:03:41.700 | corrected. Are you banner divest or what?

01:03:43.580 | I'm ambivalent about it, because I'm open to the idea of banning

01:03:48.900 | a foreign app in this way. But the reason why I'm a little bit

01:03:55.340 | ambivalent about it is because a I think that what they're doing

01:03:59.780 | has to be proven, as opposed to just a bunch of hand waving over

01:04:03.020 | it. And when you start talking about what's happening to the

01:04:05.500 | Uyghurs, a concentration camps, and spying that has nothing to

01:04:08.980 | do with this particular app. And in fact, you've revealed this

01:04:11.780 | app doesn't even function in China. I think there's just a

01:04:14.540 | lot of hand waving going on a lot of hard proof. And I don't

01:04:18.180 | think that one little story in the New York Times, I would

01:04:21.300 | consider hard proof.

01:04:22.180 | I agree with sex.

01:04:23.220 | Yeah. So that's number one is I'm open to this idea. But I

01:04:26.580 | want to see hard proof. Number two is,

01:04:29.060 | I don't think you're gonna get it. I think the NSA and the CIA

01:04:32.020 | will read in the Intelligence Committee. And there's a sub

01:04:35.980 | committee that's probably been read in. But I can guarantee

01:04:38.260 | you, the American public will not get ridden on what

01:04:40.140 | Manchin said on CNBC today, by the way, that, you know, he has,

01:04:44.340 | based on his information, he believes strongly that they

01:04:47.260 | should divest, whether it's to his group or another group.

01:04:49.580 | These guys have lied so many times about so many things. I

01:04:52.700 | mean, I just think the public has a right to know, look, if 100

01:04:55.660 | million Americans are going to be deprived of using an app they

01:04:57.860 | love, why can't we get a little bit more information? Well,

01:05:00.180 | they're not exactly what I think they're saying is done wrong.

01:05:03.140 | They're saying it, they're saying it's in control. It's

01:05:05.860 | it's being controlled by a foreign adversary. They are

01:05:07.900 | saying it, the bill says it. What is debatable, they're

01:05:12.460 | telling you means all that means is that the app is owned by

01:05:15.820 | ByteDance, which is, here's what's unique about this,

01:05:18.940 | which is incorporated in China. Here's what here's what's

01:05:21.300 | unique about this bill. It got out of committee 50 to zero. It

01:05:26.780 | was overwhelmingly approved by both sides of the house. And it

01:05:30.220 | looks like in the Senate, there may be some refinements that

01:05:32.860 | happened, but it's going to get largely overwhelmingly approved

01:05:35.580 | there as well. It's like the Patriot Act. Hold on. It's a

01:05:38.580 | very unique moment in time, where you see in today's

01:05:42.340 | political landscape, such uniformity. And again, I'm not

01:05:48.300 | going to go and defend these folks. But except to say that

01:05:51.340 | where there's smoke, there's probably fire. And I think that

01:05:55.860 | in this specific narrow case, again, we're not talking about

01:05:59.460 | foodstuffs or lumber, right, we're talking about a

01:06:02.780 | technological application that is observing a lot of people on

01:06:06.780 | a continuous 24 by seven basis. I suspect this, this law would

01:06:11.580 | not have gotten out of committee 50 to zero, had they not been

01:06:14.900 | read in by the NSA and the CIA. And that will never see the

01:06:18.740 | light of day because we will never be disclosed that

01:06:20.780 | information. Okay, so it could have been 49 to one, David, you

01:06:24.540 | know what I mean? Another question.

01:06:25.740 | I want to respond to that ideological, I could see it

01:06:29.420 | being 40 to 10. If it's ideological, I could be seeing

01:06:32.820 | it 35 to 1548 to two, it was 50 to zero.

01:06:36.740 | So what's the Patriot Act? Look, there's an old saying in

01:06:39.900 | Washington that the worst ideas are bipartisan. These guys were

01:06:43.860 | all being stampeded into this act, they brought it up and

01:06:46.980 | passed it with hardly any debate. I've already shown you

01:06:50.140 | how the language of the bill is overly broad. It's not just a

01:06:53.620 | tick tock ban. It says that any app or website, did you know

01:06:58.500 | that any app or website domestically, that's subject

01:07:02.580 | subject to the direction of a foreigner, one of these

01:07:07.340 | countries,

01:07:08.020 | four countries, North Korea, Russia, China,

01:07:09.820 | I said a foreigner from one of those countries. Yeah, no, I'm

01:07:12.220 | trying to be clear for the audience. All you got to do is

01:07:14.300 | make that argument. If you're an eg who wants to go after one of

01:07:18.540 | our domestic platforms, that's all you got to do to bring them

01:07:21.220 | under your thumb, what would be the proper route? If a US

01:07:25.500 | platform was in fact compromised by the Chinese, North Koreans,

01:07:29.100 | or Iran? What would be the proper path in your mind?

01:07:32.180 | Wouldn't that concern you?

01:07:33.060 | If an app is sharing us data in a way that it shouldn't, then

01:07:38.540 | why wouldn't it be prosecuted?

01:07:40.060 | Yeah, which is what this is saying, right? The ages would

01:07:42.780 | go? It's not it's not it's not even it's banning tik tok. Okay,

01:07:46.140 | subject to maybe divestiture happens. But there's a lot of

01:07:48.940 | people who think that the six months they're giving for the

01:07:51.140 | business is not going to work. And the Chinese government may

01:07:53.500 | not go for the idea of allowing tik tok to be bought by an

01:07:57.540 | American company, because they may not like the precedent that

01:07:59.780 | creates. So again,

01:08:01.700 | I think you're answering your own question. I think you're

01:08:03.460 | making a very important and good point, which is, there's so much

01:08:07.100 | body of business law here. And there's so many state agees who

01:08:11.300 | would want to make their bones. And you see the state agees

01:08:14.780 | trying to build their credibility, going after

01:08:17.300 | Facebook for sexual exploitation, and all of this

01:08:19.780 | stuff. They're to your point, David, there is such a body of

01:08:23.740 | lawsuits and law and precedent, that tik tok could have been

01:08:27.540 | prosecuted under, it's very odd and rare that there's been a

01:08:31.220 | complete detente, where this thing came on from up above, and

01:08:35.420 | everybody just got on board. And all I'm saying is, in these very

01:08:39.140 | rare and unique instances where somebody shelled their own

01:08:42.660 | personal political aspirations.

01:08:44.380 | No, I think that we don't know.

01:08:48.980 | Alarm bells go off when DC acts with this kind of unanimity,

01:08:52.140 | because the only time they ever do that, when they become a unit

01:08:55.300 | party is when the national security state wants some new

01:08:58.020 | power. I agree with this is how we got into the

01:09:00.540 | almost unanimous. This is how we got into the Patriot Act. I'm

01:09:04.780 | not saying it's right. I'm not saying

01:09:06.780 | every dumb idea that gives the federal government more power

01:09:09.660 | ends up being almost unanimous.

01:09:12.940 | You're absolutely right. And I'm agreeing with you. They were

01:09:16.060 | read in at a national security level that got them to become a

01:09:19.340 | unit party on this topic. We are never going to get and I'm just,

01:09:22.900 | you know, responding to Fribourg, we are never going to

01:09:25.260 | get read in

01:09:25.940 | we the people because of this, like, phony concern about you,

01:09:29.940 | they always like classification when they don't want the public

01:09:31.780 | to know something. Now, by the way, this should be secret. But

01:09:34.660 | by the way, give us the proof. Why can't they give us a proof?

01:09:37.260 | I don't think it needs to be proof. It's the potential damage

01:09:40.140 | here that they're saying is the problem sacks, they could wake

01:09:43.780 | up this algorithm at any point in time. And they could steer

01:09:47.220 | people's thinking they have already steered it. Your party

01:09:51.060 | has talked incessantly about how tick tock has steered cultural

01:09:56.140 | issues in a certain direction, thus libs of tick tock, all this

01:09:59.580 | kind of stuff. There is ample evidence that these social

01:10:04.300 | networks and these videos do influence young people. So if

01:10:08.140 | young people are addicted to this, which they clearly are,

01:10:10.380 | and if young people are influenced by this, which they

01:10:13.060 | clearly are, those are just facts that are indisputable. The

01:10:16.900 | Chinese could wake this up at any time, and steer political

01:10:20.180 | issues left, right center cause chaos. It is the potential harm

01:10:24.140 | here sacks. That is the concern. It's not just that they're doing

01:10:28.060 | it now. It's that they could do it in the future. And if you

01:10:31.660 | were to take this and you were to put, let's say this was North

01:10:34.540 | Korea or Iran, would your would you allow North Korea, or Iran

01:10:39.300 | to own this app in the United States?

01:10:41.340 | Of course, he would. I think my point would be the same, which

01:10:44.740 | is I want to see some proof. Hold on, let me make a couple of

01:10:47.340 | points. Number one, I want to see some proof that this is

01:10:50.620 | actually spyware. That to me has been alleged. And if it's as

01:10:54.660 | such a slam dunk case, as you say, why is there no proof of

01:10:58.140 | this? So that's point number one. And by the way, if if the

01:11:02.960 | phone is just sitting there passively listening to you, and

01:11:05.100 | that's the spyware, Apple should really address that, because

01:11:07.940 | apps shouldn't be able to do that. Right? So that's like

01:11:11.140 | Apple's problem. With respect to the data, supposedly being

01:11:15.060 | leaked to the Communist Party. Again, I want to see what data

01:11:18.900 | we talking about, like, like what to talk videos I like what

01:11:23.460 | what's important about that data. There are bundles of data

01:11:27.700 | that are available on the open market that they can buy about

01:11:30.700 | users.

01:11:31.180 | I don't think that's what it is. These microphones are on 24

01:11:34.860 | seven, these apps are allowed to passively listen in the

01:11:37.400 | background, though, I would just tell Apple not to allow that.

01:11:40.020 | Think that that could be a partial solve to what about

01:11:43.860 | Android

01:11:44.300 | should not be passively listening to you should have to

01:11:46.100 | like stick in your face and talk to it if you want to activate

01:11:49.400 | the microphone.

01:11:49.940 | The problem is when you download these apps, you create these

01:11:52.520 | settings. And so you try to you have to try to convince 100

01:11:54.920 | million people that, hey, you shouldn't do that. Maybe you

01:11:58.760 | should only do it when you use the app in a specific way. And

01:12:01.380 | it kills the usability. And so people get lazy. And they're

01:12:04.300 | like, default on

01:12:05.500 | look, what I'm saying here is that the way the microphone

01:12:08.160 | should work

01:12:08.800 | on Apple products is that I think it does work that way.

01:12:14.560 | Yeah, it shouldn't work that way. I don't know if that's

01:12:18.120 | okay. Listening is like the key issue here. Well, I mean, who

01:12:22.540 | knows what's possible in terms of hacking and spyware. You know,

01:12:26.160 | those are all, you know, unknowns. So

01:12:29.500 | okay, so so one by one, we're kind of knocking, knocking out

01:12:32.620 | all these issues. It's not passively listening. The data

01:12:35.920 | that we don't know, we don't know, it doesn't seem that

01:12:38.320 | important. With respect to steering, I agree. I guess

01:12:41.800 | that's a theoretical problem. But you could say that about any

01:12:44.520 | of these apps, and you're on a slippery slope to basically a

01:12:47.800 | First Amendment problem, because they're not letting users get

01:12:50.400 | the content that they actually want.

01:12:52.660 | All right, like,

01:12:53.880 | and then and then look, and then one final point about the

01:12:57.800 | reciprocity argument is, if you want to make this about

01:13:01.640 | reciprocity, then put it in a trade bill. That's where you

01:13:06.460 | deal with reciprocity is you say, okay, these products from

01:13:10.500 | China gets to play in US markets, our products to the

01:13:13.580 | United States gets play in Chinese markets, you do it

01:13:15.860 | through a trade bill. This is not a trade bill. This gives a

01:13:18.380 | new power to the government to define foreign adversary

01:13:21.540 | controlled applications or websites.

01:13:23.840 | February want to give you a chance to answer the two

01:13:25.500 | questions. Are you in favor of divestiture? If it was Iran who

01:13:29.240 | owned the app, would you feel differently?

01:13:31.960 | I don't know about divestiture. Until to Saksa's point, I just I

01:13:38.960 | haven't heard a clear point of view or clear, like piece of

01:13:42.720 | information about what this app uniquely does that other apps

01:13:47.000 | don't do. That creates a threat. It's just not clear to me. So in

01:13:52.320 | general, I'm not in fan of like forcing companies to divest and

01:13:56.240 | forcing things to be shut down and taking away human consumer

01:13:59.600 | choice. I just don't think those are good things generally. Okay,

01:14:02.540 | and I'm not to Saksa's point, I'm just not compelled that

01:14:05.180 | there's something here based on what I've seen. And then like if

01:14:07.880 | Iran own tik tok, I don't care who owns it based on my prior

01:14:12.440 | statement, I think people should have choice to use what they

01:14:15.620 | want to use a provided that there is no spying. If there's

01:14:18.680 | spying, I want to know that there's spying and how it's

01:14:20.360 | happening. We need to technically fix that if someone

01:14:22.880 | can passively turn on a microphone on an app and listen

01:14:25.800 | to people in a room. Yeah, pretty smart scientists, we've

01:14:28.920 | we've proven that it's possible and they can also we should fix

01:14:31.160 | that. That's a bigger problem, then you need to shut down all

01:14:34.840 | the iPhones we have with there's an Israeli software company. We

01:14:37.920 | all know what it's called. We all can go and license the

01:14:40.280 | software from them. Okay, they they will help you do this. So

01:14:44.760 | yeah, I'm sorry, guys. But that's an Apple needs to patch

01:14:49.160 | it. That's exactly right. That's how I don't want a domestic app

01:14:52.880 | to be able to do that to me. Yeah, exactly. It is happening

01:14:56.400 | and it hasn't been fixed. And it's not that it hasn't been

01:14:58.960 | fixed. The point is, when you have a large technical surface

01:15:01.800 | area, you guys know this, there are bugs all the time, like we

01:15:05.160 | deal with, for example, thread factors all the time into like,

01:15:09.000 | Microsoft has dealt with these for 50 years, right? Every new

01:15:12.400 | update of Windows, every little thing has all of these little

01:15:15.720 | backdoors and little threads that weren't cleaned up

01:15:18.000 | properly. So this is an ongoing whack a mole problem. And the

01:15:21.680 | reality is that a very small technical team has an always

01:15:25.760 | been able to stay a few steps ahead of Apple, and many of

01:15:30.680 | these apps. And all I'm saying is, you should just not be so

01:15:33.280 | naive as to assume that this Apple is something that this is

01:15:36.160 | something Apple can fix. I think that a small talented team of

01:15:39.400 | hackers, whoever they work for, will always be able to find

01:15:43.320 | these backdoors in every single new release of every single

01:15:45.920 | operating system. And they will be a few steps ahead. So

01:15:49.040 | that we're screwed anyway, because all the data is already

01:15:51.640 | out there. So I think the point is, so knowing that, if you want

01:15:56.200 | to maybe minimize the surface area of how bad this data leaks

01:16:00.240 | to just the foreign actors that have infiltrated our American

01:16:03.520 | companies, you can ban tick tock. Okay. If you want to just

01:16:07.520 | open the door to it, keep it around. Look, I like I said at

01:16:11.040 | the beginning, I'm ambivalent about this, because if you can

01:16:12.960 | prove to me that there's really a national security threat, and

01:16:16.280 | that your remedy for dealing with it is narrowly tailored,

01:16:19.720 | then I'm potentially on board with this. But I don't believe

01:16:22.560 | the threat has been proven. And I certainly don't think the

01:16:24.640 | remedy is narrowly tailored. In fact, it's expansive, and it's

01:16:28.040 | going to lead to weaponization. And I don't trust the government

01:16:30.640 | to define new new categories of foreign controlled applications

01:16:36.360 | and websites.

01:16:37.080 | I think you're probably right, which is the unfortunate part.

01:16:39.600 | But I do think that there's enough of these folks that have

01:16:43.640 | been read into something that we're not being told.

01:16:46.680 | And I have zero faith in that.

01:16:48.160 | Yeah, I'm not I'm not gonna say that it's accurate or not. But

01:16:52.480 | I'm saying, I suspect that some body of work from a three letter

01:16:58.080 | agency has made its way to enough of these people under

01:17:01.920 | confidentiality, where they've all agreed,

01:17:05.240 | the national security state has a secret reason for wanting to

01:17:08.400 | expand its powers. That just doesn't fill me with any

01:17:11.600 | confidence. Again, Patriot Act 2.0. That's where I started with

01:17:15.040 | this. I don't think this is the Patriot Act, because the Patriot

01:17:17.080 | Act was like, I'm going to have now a broad license to probe

01:17:20.240 | anything I want. This is about saying, this thing that is here

01:17:23.360 | can no longer be here.

01:17:24.480 | So it's not focused on Tick Tock. It's focused on, again,

01:17:29.800 | first, what I'm saying is, applications, websites,

01:17:33.920 | the Patriot Act was about the government being able to go

01:17:37.800 | proactively wherever they wanted when they weren't allowed. That

01:17:42.040 | is not what this bill says this bill is more reactive and

01:17:44.600 | saying, Okay, you out, out of the sandbox. And all I'm saying

01:17:49.160 | is you're right that that could be abused. But that's very

01:17:51.440 | different than the Patriot Act, which was very aggressive.

01:17:55.160 | All right. So they have folks, two people looks like agree with

01:18:01.720 | the divestiture. Two people have a difference of opinion.

01:18:05.240 | Well, I don't agree with the divestiture. I think it should

01:18:07.560 | be shut down. Okay, shut down. Yeah. So shut down divestiture.

01:18:10.560 | Looks like lots of opinions. That's good. Lots of opinions.

01:18:12.920 | That's good. Okay. I think we just had more debate over this

01:18:15.680 | than the entire US Congress did.

01:18:17.040 | Perhaps. I mean, I think that's why people listen to this

01:18:20.120 | program is because we're literally getting into the

01:18:22.520 | absolute finest details and asking really probing questions

01:18:26.560 | sex that you love 100 million people are soon gonna be asking

01:18:29.960 | when Tick Tock gets shut down 100 million people who used it

01:18:33.160 | every day are gonna be like, why did this happen?

01:18:35.320 | I'm gonna say something about that. One of my kids and I'm not

01:18:39.240 | gonna say who it is. We recently had them tested for ADHD. They

01:18:43.720 | weren't doing particularly great in school. The response by some

01:18:48.360 | of the folks in the school was Oh, there's meds for that. We're

01:18:52.360 | like no meds. And what we did was we took away their iPad. And

01:18:59.280 | we completely deprived them of all these apps and video games.

01:19:05.040 | I cannot describe to you the magnitude of the turnaround in

01:19:09.280 | this kid. grades. Incredible word, they were getting 60% and

01:19:16.960 | 70% now getting 90% totally engaged, interesting, charming

01:19:23.200 | kid that had lost a little bit. And I think that there was a

01:19:28.000 | little bit of a daze. And I just want to say that in general as a

01:19:31.160 | parent, whether the app is banned or not, who cares my lived

01:19:35.200 | experience right now is that video games and these apps are

01:19:40.600 | horrible for kids.

01:19:41.680 | This is a known fact actually, Jamal, I looked into this as

01:19:45.960 | well. It turns out students who used iPads and digital media

01:19:50.920 | many times a day, they show the exact signs of ADHD inattention

01:19:55.200 | and hyperactivity and impulsivity. So whether you

01:19:59.800 | think it's a real diagnosis or not, it's inducing those

01:20:03.320 | symptoms.

01:20:04.000 | I'm willing to say that my child probably had a very light form

01:20:07.200 | of it. Maybe it was exacerbated by these video games and the

01:20:10.240 | iPad. And these apps and you know, they were getting all the

01:20:14.560 | tick tock content. But they were getting it on YouTube alerts,

01:20:20.200 | all this anyways, went to zero, not like you can have a little

01:20:23.880 | bit here, they're zero. And the transformation in this last

01:20:27.000 | month and a half, two months has been incredible. I don't know if

01:20:30.480 | other parents are dealing with this. But what I'll tell you is

01:20:32.920 | these apps are not good. So this whole consumer choice thing, I

01:20:37.160 | think my view is a little tainted, because I get agitated

01:20:39.840 | as a responsible parent, I'm like, just get this app out of

01:20:42.520 | here. And I already know that I'm addicted to it. And it's not

01:20:44.760 | good for me. I have no idea what it's doing to my, my kids. And I

01:20:48.720 | just don't want to deal with it.

01:20:49.800 | If you if you look at the correlation between all of these

01:20:54.000 | symptoms showing up in kids, it's basically the introduction

01:20:56.720 | of the iPhone. And so people are kind of reaching consensus that

01:21:01.080 | the iPhone and distraction, ADHD, spiking, depression, all

01:21:05.040 | this stuff, anxiety, and kids is correlating with too much

01:21:07.600 | screen time. You can do your own research, folks.

01:21:10.040 | Maybe it correlates with prescription of SSRIs. Maybe it

01:21:14.840 | well, no, that is part of it with schools going totally woke

01:21:20.240 | and bananas. I call it a lot of things.

01:21:22.800 | The COVID exacerbated correlates COVID exacerbated it when you

01:21:26.920 | look at the the trend lines for sure. And the SSRIs and those

01:21:31.400 | kind of things being prescribed is probably as a result of these

01:21:37.440 | ADHD symptoms coming from screen time. And then it's probably

01:21:40.960 | unnecessary.

01:21:41.680 | I think people just got a lot more prescription happy, like

01:21:45.200 | they're just definitely that over prescription. They're

01:21:47.040 | willing to put kids on drugs for I mean, you talk about ADHD for

01:21:51.600 | young boys, that's kind of like this normal behavior.

01:21:54.280 | Yeah, no, absolutely. Like, kids running around outside and

01:21:58.480 | having energy. If I had to pick an age, I would say 16 1718 years

01:22:01.920 | old for social media. And for phones, I would say 15 or 16.

01:22:05.360 | You know, with a very controlled phone. So as this is one

01:22:09.160 | person's opinion. All right, Florida's on the verge of

01:22:11.680 | banning lab grown meat. Freebird. Can you tee this up

01:22:14.200 | for us?

01:22:14.560 | Yeah, so Florida has been debating a bill in their state

01:22:19.120 | legislature since November. And it just passed the house and the

01:22:23.080 | Senate vote of 8627 in the house 2820 in the Senate to prohibit

01:22:28.440 | the manufacturing sale, holding or distribution of cultivated

01:22:32.400 | meat. And it basically makes the sale or ownership of cultivated

01:22:36.440 | meat a second degree misdemeanor. This is lab grown

01:22:38.760 | meat. And this bill is now on to Santa's desk for signing. You

01:22:46.960 | know, I'll kind of highlight a little bit of the motivation and

01:22:49.280 | and some of the technical background and my point of view

01:22:51.080 | on it. If that's okay, but do you do you see him eating the

01:22:53.960 | meat while you're talking about it? Did you see the beach? I'm

01:22:57.600 | paying attention. Unlike you guys. He's got this like

01:23:00.640 | Flintstone size ham hock. We're all this and good. It feels like

01:23:04.680 | a like a non issue to folks who eat meat and don't care. But I

01:23:07.960 | just want to point out how much of this is generally a challenge

01:23:11.400 | to enabling choice in new innovative technology, which you

01:23:17.000 | know, we've seen attempts at this in the past. But what is

01:23:20.200 | the reason with you? What is the reason to ban lab grown meat?

01:23:24.080 | They love to ban in Florida. The motivation is that Florida

01:23:27.920 | ranchers felt the guy who just has been advocating for banning

01:23:32.320 | Tick Tock this whole show is now accusing Florida of being into

01:23:35.920 | banning your boy loves to bitch. I'm the only person on this pod

01:23:40.400 | who actually free burgers to who are skeptical of like, does

01:23:44.080 | knee jerk banning everything, ban everything? I would not ban

01:23:47.360 | this. I didn't say to ban everything. Where's that?

01:23:50.240 | We're just joking. We're joking. Don't label me with your J cal

01:23:53.800 | brush.

01:23:54.360 | Let's say bad everything.

01:23:57.040 | I just definitely becoming a minority position to be against

01:24:01.880 | government intervention in free decision making and commerce by

01:24:06.640 | individual citizens. Florida ranchers felt that their

01:24:10.240 | livelihood was threatened. They have a billion dollar ranching

01:24:12.640 | business a year in Florida. Good for them. They should go ahead

01:24:15.880 | and compete with whatever new technology is emerging. I would

01:24:19.000 | say try a little role reversal. Imagine if you know, governments

01:24:22.520 | and states tried to ban the use of the tractor for fear of

01:24:25.560 | putting agricultural workers out of business, or you know,

01:24:29.000 | software companies that did accounting software got banned,

01:24:32.120 | because it could put accountants out of business, or electric car

01:24:35.680 | production and use got banned, because it could put traditional

01:24:38.480 | automotive manufacturers out of business, you could go down the

01:24:41.360 | list, and you could create this position on nearly any new or

01:24:44.160 | emerging technology that feels threatening to an incumbent

01:24:46.960 | industry. And ultimately, it really only yields to regulatory

01:24:51.240 | capture, and to a lack of choice, and opportunity for new

01:24:55.480 | innovation and for consumers to make decisions about what they

01:24:58.080 | want. And the irony here is that so much of what's being consumed

01:25:02.120 | in the market space today, part of their their rationalization

01:25:05.720 | is, oh, well, it's new technology. We don't know if

01:25:07.400 | it's good for you. We don't know if it's going to work. The truth

01:25:09.840 | is, there are federal regulatory bodies that have oversight on

01:25:12.320 | this sort of thing. 20 years ago, almost all the cheese that

01:25:15.880 | we ate in the United States was made from rennet. rennet is an

01:25:19.280 | enzyme that converts the protein and milk into cheese. We got

01:25:22.560 | rennet from the stomach of calves, we would scrape it out

01:25:25.800 | and sell rennet and it would be used to make cheese. Then

01:25:29.040 | recombinant engineering where we could put we could get bacteria

01:25:33.040 | or yeast cells to make proteins. This technology unlocked the

01:25:37.200 | opportunity to make rennet more affordably. So rather than go

01:25:40.360 | and slaughter calves and get the rennet out of their stomach, we

01:25:43.120 | engineer the bacteria or the yeast cell to make the exact

01:25:45.640 | same protein. And that is now the entirety of the rennet

01:25:48.640 | industry is recombinantly produced rennet. And the

01:25:51.400 | entirety of cheese that we all consume is made using this

01:25:54.720 | genetically modified yeast that makes this enzyme that converts

01:25:57.720 | milk into cheese. The same is true across other industries. We

01:26:01.080 | used to use animal fat for laundry detergent turned out it

01:26:04.240 | was a lot cheaper to make enzymes using the same process I

01:26:07.600 | just described instead of making animal fat. And now all of our

01:26:10.200 | laundry detergent is recombinant enzymes. So I think like this

01:26:13.280 | notion that we're going to ban this stuff is a regulatory

01:26:17.240 | capture incumbency moment. It's totally wrong. It denies

01:26:20.560 | consumers choice. And frankly, it flies in the face of what has

01:26:24.160 | historically been a real economic opportunity to bring

01:26:27.280 | cost down to bring new innovation to market and to try

01:26:30.120 | and stall out innovation is going to leave the state or this

01:26:33.120 | country. You're right in a real kind of challenge compared to

01:26:35.400 | other countries. I just think it's wrong. I think it's really

01:26:37.480 | on this topic. You are 100% right. You're right. This is a

01:26:42.280 | dumb thing to legislate. And it is meaningless and unimpactful.

01:26:46.680 | And people should just decide based on what tastes better.

01:26:50.680 | It's that's different than a listening device or cheaper.

01:26:55.000 | freeberg is it is the criticism of this that it's regulatory

01:26:59.720 | capture, or it's part of like this anti woke kind of vibes in

01:27:03.960 | Florida,

01:27:04.520 | there's a conservative movement in Florida, which has taken

01:27:06.960 | hold, which I think this is key to. Now, in some ways, I would

01:27:11.760 | argue that conservative movement has really important sociological

01:27:16.520 | points of view. In other cases, I think it denies necessary

01:27:21.920 | innovation, it denies necessary advancement to move industry

01:27:25.200 | forward versus social change. And I think the the ability to

01:27:29.000 | kind of obfuscate the two that Oh, you know, transgenderism in

01:27:32.520 | schools and elementary schools is the same as the woke leftists

01:27:36.280 | from California, making, you know, lab grown meat, and they

01:27:39.280 | all get kind of jammed together as one big tribal group. And

01:27:42.760 | therefore, we should ban it all. What will likely end up

01:27:44.760 | happening here is this will find its path to federal preemption.

01:27:47.320 | Historically, when we've seen states try to impose these

01:27:51.800 | sorts of bans, the companies that are ultimately affected the

01:27:55.120 | innovators that are affected, go to the federal government, and

01:27:58.120 | they try and legislate for a bill that says this stuff is

01:28:00.680 | legal and should be broadly available. That federal

01:28:03.000 | preemption then stop states rights on having a ban in place.

01:28:06.680 | And so it's very likely that we'll end up seeing some

01:28:09.040 | legislation here over the next couple of years. If this

01:28:11.400 | technology is ultimately beneficial. The problem is now

01:28:13.720 | that Florida has done this, I guarantee you're going to see

01:28:15.840 | Texas, which is a huge ranching state, and many other states

01:28:19.040 | step up to do it, it creates a really bad precedent for all

01:28:21.600 | other disruptive kind of industries to be blocked by

01:28:23.920 | their local economies that that believe that they're under

01:28:27.020 | threat. And, you know, it just creates like a lot of

01:28:29.800 | unnecessary chaos. So

01:28:31.240 | sacks, what is the sentences be with fake meat?

01:28:34.000 | I don't know. I don't know. But let me let me state clearly what

01:28:40.640 | I think, which is I think it's really terrible. When a bunch of

01:28:44.320 | incumbents in an industry get together, and try to shut out

01:28:48.360 | the innovative solution by inventing some unproven threat

01:28:52.600 | that they turn into some sort of

01:28:54.000 | Tick Tock.

01:28:55.040 | Right, but exactly. But

01:28:56.720 | I can see that coming around the corner.

01:28:59.200 | I wanted to talk about this, because I think the two are so

01:29:02.240 | similar. And they're not similar at all. Well, they're not

01:29:06.360 | just go ahead. So regulatory captures regulatory capture. But

01:29:08.920 | this is a far

01:29:09.600 | that's just the term of art. We're just you know, fair enough.

01:29:12.920 | Yeah, we disagree on Yeah, that's fair. I think you guys

01:29:15.680 | have to have the intellectual honesty to say these are

01:29:17.560 | different issues. One is lab grown meat versus ranchers in

01:29:20.640 | America. This is typical corruption and cronyism. Fine,

01:29:24.480 | whatever. Okay.

01:29:25.720 | Oh, yeah. But you don't think you don't think that the the

01:29:28.960 | other tech companies that compete with Tick Tock are

01:29:31.360 | secretly banning together to basically gin up this bill.

01:29:35.320 | I don't think I don't think they're secretly banning. I

01:29:37.840 | think that they're being over there overtly organizing.

01:29:40.200 | Yeah, just like the ranchers.

01:29:42.960 | But again, that typically still always gets cut on partisan

01:29:46.840 | lines. And what I'm saying is this is totally different than

01:29:49.440 | lab grown meat versus ranchers.

01:29:51.240 | I just want to say one thing, the

01:29:52.800 | knowledge, the similarities.

01:29:55.960 | I think I just want to make a point here. I think the

01:29:58.400 | intellectual discourse on this program is second to none. I

01:30:01.880 | mean, we are getting into the most refined details of this

01:30:04.960 | issue. And you just don't hear this anywhere else. So I just

01:30:07.400 | want to give myself and the rest of the crew a pat on the back.

01:30:10.320 | You just want to ask a bit. I just want to Yeah, no, I mean,

01:30:14.040 | we really did get in a pretty in the weeds here.

01:30:16.480 | J Cal, do you agree that the Florida bill is ridiculous? And

01:30:19.720 | that it sets a terrible precedent?

01:30:20.920 | I didn't read it. But I would think that's exactly there's

01:30:26.920 | nothing special about it. I can't imagine why somebody would

01:30:30.240 | want to ban mock meat other than crony capitalism, of course. And

01:30:34.960 | my question to you is when is this going to taste good? When

01:30:37.200 | are you gonna make this mock me?

01:30:38.240 | Well, by the way, this bill makes no sense. Because the

01:30:40.440 | only reason they would do it is if they were afraid that the lab

01:30:43.600 | grown meat was just so much cheaper. And frankly, so much

01:30:48.160 | tastier than what they make. And Freiburg, you've you've said

01:30:51.000 | this many times, like, we are so like orders of magnitude away

01:30:55.360 | totally. Yeah, we're 10 years out. But

01:30:57.760 | but by the way, why try and stop it from competing? Let the VCs

01:31:01.240 | that want to throw money at it, throw money at it, let the

01:31:03.200 | scientists pursue it. Let the let the thing that's made

01:31:06.640 | America so successful, be successful. By the way, imagine

01:31:10.560 | Elon got the Starship up today. You guys saw this thing and went

01:31:13.800 | into orbit. It was incredible. Imagine if Boeing and a bunch of

01:31:18.360 | defense contractors got together 10 years ago and said we got to

01:31:21.080 | stop SpaceX. These guys are trying to do stuff in an unsafe

01:31:24.200 | way. We don't try and they tried and they tried and they will

01:31:27.040 | keep trying. And the freedom that we afford people and

01:31:30.680 | businesses in the United States of America is what allows us to

01:31:33.720 | have our unique edge and our unique ability to create

01:31:37.000 | progress that you don't see anywhere else on planet Earth.

01:31:39.760 | And this is the sort of that takes us backwards. I just had

01:31:42.480 | the key word we us America, America, back to the tick tock

01:31:46.600 | thing. That's not an us thing. That's a Chinese thing. I get

01:31:49.760 | the point. I'm not like, I'm not pro CCP. But yeah, I get the

01:31:53.360 | point. Anything American? God bless us. Let's go American

01:31:57.080 | exceptionalism. No, I saw the headlines. I think CNBC reported

01:32:00.080 | that the rocket blew up on entry reentry.

01:32:02.920 | I mean, they didn't say that, did they? I saw one headline

01:32:08.480 | where they had to put a little nag in the end of the sentence

01:32:10.720 | or a starling starling video for like an hour. It's not video

01:32:15.240 | was so crystal clear. It was like HD of this rocket coming

01:32:19.360 | back down to Earth. It was bonkers. So congrats to E.

01:32:21.880 | Can I show you guys the most incredible tweet related to

01:32:26.440 | this? I'm just gonna send this to you, Nick.

01:32:28.560 | Friendly reminder that Google's annual catering budget is 72

01:32:32.560 | million about twice the cost of sharkship. Today, today, Ilan

01:32:39.160 | made the entire human race multi planetary. Yeah. And it costs

01:32:44.680 | half as much as what Google spends on food. That's

01:32:49.560 | incredible. It does seem like a lot of money to spend on food. I

01:32:53.720 | don't know. It doesn't seem like these rockets take two or three.

01:32:56.160 | The new each time there's a new platform, it seems to take you

01:32:59.440 | on exactly like two or three to nail it. And here we are

01:33:02.360 | again, you know, you know, congrats to our boy. Great job.

01:33:06.080 | This is going back full circle, the persistence and the

01:33:08.880 | resilience that was needed to get this thing to happen. It's

01:33:12.000 | just like 20 years of step by step iterative, nothing about

01:33:16.680 | the initial kind of instantiation or concept of, you

01:33:21.040 | know, what SpaceX needed to walk to get here was right, everything

01:33:24.440 | had to change along the way Starlink came along, etc, etc.

01:33:27.920 | And here he is at the end of this period of time, with this

01:33:31.120 | incredible craft, the largest object to ever fly in outer

01:33:34.440 | space, it really is like an incredible moment in human

01:33:37.480 | history. And it took the degree of persistence, resilience, that

01:33:40.280 | was, I think, marks what makes American entrepreneurship so

01:33:43.520 | powerful. It really is an incredible day. It was an

01:33:45.920 | amazing thing to watch. I don't know if any of you guys have

01:33:48.240 | ever gone watch and watch any of the old Saturn launches on

01:33:50.880 | YouTube. But I think this is a new era. It's really incredible.

01:33:54.160 | I think this was like five or six years ago. I got cleared to

01:33:58.360 | basically fly and hug Radenberg when they were doing a launch.

01:34:05.160 | And so I was able to see it as the thing like kind of like,

01:34:08.800 | tried to approach Max Q it's one of the most incredible things

01:34:12.920 | I've ever done. So I think we made some progress. If you look

01:34:15.960 | at the Google News links. A lot of praise for this launch soon.

01:34:21.000 | Yeah, looks like people are kind of getting it. Yeah, just

01:34:26.080 | incredible. I mean, this thing is so huge. I don't know if

01:34:29.240 | you've ever been inside of one of these things. But the the

01:34:33.240 | starships Yeah, I've been inside. I was inside the first

01:34:36.160 | one they built. It is so large. The capacity of this thing is

01:34:39.960 | like, think you could fit like three, four or 500 human beings

01:34:43.440 | inside of it.

01:34:44.280 | Maybe when we do our our Austin poker night, we can stop over

01:34:47.600 | and see it be really walkers. And when you see it stacked, the

01:34:51.460 | height is like, it almost feels like you're looking at CGI and

01:34:57.380 | real in the real world. It is incredibly tall, like incredibly

01:35:01.600 | tall. All right, listen, this is your favorite podcast in the

01:35:04.180 | world. Episode 170 of the all in podcast. We never asked for

01:35:08.180 | this. But if you have a chance, we do this show on video. So if

01:35:11.260 | you're listening to audio, just type in all in podcast in

01:35:14.140 | YouTube. And you can see the four of us. I don't know if

01:35:17.300 | that's a bonus feature or not. But we do all the graphs and the

01:35:20.660 | charts and everything here. Alright, for David sacks, the

01:35:24.900 | rain man. David freeberg, your Sultan of science, Chamath

01:35:30.340 | polyhypertia. Chairman Dictator, I am the world's greatest

01:35:36.180 | moderator as David sacks would test with all those incredibly

01:35:39.340 | sharp questions go Christopher Walken whenever you do these

01:35:41.980 | outfits. Why do you do that?

01:35:42.940 | Thanks for listening to the all in podcast. Wow. David sacks,

01:35:50.300 | poignant points about regulatory capture. freeberg loves mock

01:35:57.060 | meats. Not for me. Everyone loves a great dictator. See you

01:36:06.300 | next time. podcast.

01:36:09.980 | Love you boys. So you're better.

01:36:14.860 | Everyone's got their superpower.

01:36:20.260 | Nasty, nasty. jk. But I'm coming on. I'm coming on. Saxon by

01:36:26.860 | saxophone invited me.

01:36:28.260 | It's better than your Trump.

01:36:30.580 | I got to work on I turned the Trump off for three years. Give

01:36:33.380 | me a break. I'm gonna do a job. Can you do a job? Do I have a

01:36:37.100 | job? passion?

01:36:38.020 | I feel like you do a good job. I do. I do. I'll bring you a Joe

01:36:43.500 | Pesci. Next. I take requests. I'll do a job. Sure. Why not?

01:36:46.140 | He only does the Pesci involuntarily when he gets

01:36:48.900 | in the chopper. Everybody got a short time. I'm running for I'm

01:36:52.860 | running for president. You got to change the laws.

01:36:55.300 | You have to change it. So a German can be president Austrian

01:37:02.340 | Austrian Austrian. Yeah. All right. Oh, yeah, rate and

01:37:07.380 | subscribe and all that other bullshit.

01:37:08.660 | Rain Man David

01:37:17.380 | Sax. And it said we open source it to the fans and they've just

01:37:23.500 | gone crazy with it.

01:37:24.380 | Love you.

01:37:25.140 | Queen of

01:37:26.140 | besties are

01:37:34.340 | a dog taking a notice in your driveway.

01:37:38.340 | We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy

01:37:46.740 | because it's like this like sexual tension that they just

01:37:49.900 | need to release

01:37:50.500 | waiting to get

01:37:58.100 | merch.

01:37:59.300 | Oh,

01:37:59.980 | man.

01:38:00.500 | I'm going

01:38:07.540 | ♪ I'm fallin' ♪

01:38:09.960 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

E170: Tech's Vibe Shift, TikTok ban debate, Vertical AI boom, Florida bans lab-grown meat & more

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