back to indexE71: Russia/Ukraine deep dive: escalation, risk factors, financial fallout, exit ramps and more
Chapters
0:0 David Sacks: Man for the people
0:50 Escalating tensions over Russia/Ukraine; nuclear scare; evolving forms of warfare
16:27 Assessing impact of economic sanctions: first, second and third-order effects; exit ramps for Putin and Russia
34:23 Reflecting on if taking NATO expansion off the table would have prevented war; Putin's risk of ruin; lessons learned so far
46:12 New version of economic warfare; possibility of a regime change; comparisons to the Cuban Missile Crisis; realist vs. idealist; lessons for Taiwan
65:22 Market impact, increased volatility, thinking in decades, managing risk
79:22 Car T-cell therapy breakthroughs and approvals; CRISPR patent controversy; Sacks makes a final point
00:00:11.880 |
It is a really, really horrendous shirt that you're wearing. 00:00:15.860 |
I mean, that was the same shirt Tucker was wearing last week. 00:00:51.240 |
Welcome to another episode of the All In Podcast. 00:00:58.880 |
There's really only one topic to talk about this week, 00:01:01.840 |
and that's the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. 00:01:07.160 |
I'm going to take it from a couple of different angles. 00:01:25.360 |
How do you know it's flannel instead of cashmere? 00:01:28.300 |
How do you know it didn't come from one of Chamath's little... 00:01:33.420 |
If you sent that shirt to Chamath, he'd burn it. 00:01:37.780 |
I wouldn't burn it, but I would wipe my butt with it. 00:01:43.180 |
And hot off the launch of the Kana beverage printer replicator, 00:01:48.300 |
the sultan of science himself, David Freeburg, 00:02:00.040 |
Tell us about the Jedi robe that you elected for this week, 00:02:15.140 |
I have to wear through the rest of my few garments, 00:02:24.480 |
So you're enjoying the final days of cashmere. 00:02:32.240 |
You know, you can wear them probably until April, 00:02:40.380 |
And is there a specific date that you shift over to the linens? 00:02:44.920 |
To be honest with you, I have a team I consult with. 00:02:53.740 |
It's kind of hard to talk about other topics when a war has broken out. 00:02:57.320 |
I don't know if I have to go too deep into recapping what's happening 00:03:04.520 |
But there's been massive fallout from the war, 00:03:20.740 |
the largest one in Europe, was involved in a firefight. 00:03:23.880 |
It seems to have been secured and the Russians have taken control of it. 00:03:26.840 |
So I don't know if I have to go too deep into recapping what's happening. 00:03:30.700 |
I think maybe, Sax, you can start us off with a little bit of your assessment 00:03:39.520 |
I mean, when we broke up last week, this war was just breaking out 00:03:43.060 |
and we were still talking about ways that we might defuse it. 00:03:46.520 |
And I think everybody, probably Putin first and foremost, 00:03:53.320 |
The resistance by the Ukrainians has been fierce. 00:03:56.540 |
And it's been sort of galvanized by their leader, Zelenskyy. 00:04:02.040 |
You know, at the very beginning of the hostilities, 00:04:05.900 |
He had that video that came out with his cabinet standing behind him. 00:04:10.080 |
That galvanized all the people of Ukraine to stand behind them. 00:04:13.620 |
And then the West now wants to stand behind the whole country of Ukraine. 00:04:17.620 |
So it's really been, you know, amazing leadership by Zelenskyy. 00:04:22.580 |
And, you know, it's too bad in a way we didn't have that kind of leadership 00:04:26.520 |
Our allies in, say, Afghanistan, you know, we had this guy, Ghani, 00:04:30.280 |
who got in the first helicopter out of there when the trouble started. 00:04:33.100 |
So, you know, his leadership has been strong and admirable. 00:04:39.560 |
And I think that Putin, I think, must have underestimated the level of resistance 00:04:44.240 |
he would face and also the unity of the West in terms of sanctioning him 00:04:52.580 |
All that being said, I think we're now at a very dangerous, 00:04:56.360 |
sort of, crossroads because the situation is very volatile. 00:05:00.200 |
And you've got so much variance in the outcomes that can occur now. 00:05:04.240 |
I think you're seeing people prognosticate everything from, you know, 00:05:09.280 |
Kyiv gets turned to rubble in the next week and the Russians basically power 00:05:14.540 |
through and win, to this turns into a long term insurgency, to, you know, 00:05:20.220 |
there's going to be some sort of uprising in Moscow and, you know, regime change there. 00:05:24.520 |
And I think because of that, you know, the Russian government is going to be able to, you know, 00:05:26.200 |
because the variance is so high, because all the sort of, you know, 00:05:29.040 |
because the two sides are playing for all the marbles, so to speak, 00:05:32.840 |
and you've even got, I think, intemperate and insane remarks by Lindsey Graham, 00:05:37.820 |
basically calling for, you know, calling for Putin's ouster, you know, 00:05:46.760 |
Yeah, it's going to give the Kremlin, I think, a propaganda tool, 00:05:52.560 |
But the point is just where it seems like we're playing for all the marbles. 00:05:56.540 |
And I think that's a very dangerous place to be. 00:05:59.940 |
And I'm seeing, you know, insane rhetoric and commentary by people trying to push us into war. 00:06:06.480 |
And so just the other day, you know, one of the one of the things I tweeted about is one of the craziest things you hear is we're already in World War Three. 00:06:15.760 |
I mean, he's kind of a known to be a little bit of a hothead. 00:06:19.060 |
But you also had Fiona Hill, who's supposed to be a Russia expert from the State Department, who frequently is the go to source for CNN. 00:06:25.880 |
And other publications also saying we're already in World War Three. 00:06:29.920 |
I mean, if we were in World War Three, you'd see the mushroom clouds assuming you were still alive and not vaporized. 00:06:34.120 |
So it is incredibly reckless for people to be saying things like this. 00:06:39.000 |
And there is just, you know, this drumbeat of war that is being pushed by cable news and by the Twitter sphere. 00:06:46.260 |
And just today, thankfully, this morning, NATO announced that it would not be imposing a no fly zone over Ukraine. 00:06:57.720 |
Well, because because there's all these people who are saying, well, we shouldn't send boots on the ground to Ukraine. 00:07:05.600 |
But let's let's do a no fly zone to basically help the Ukrainians. 00:07:09.800 |
What a no fly zone means is that you're going to shoot down Russian planes. 00:07:17.600 |
So had we done that, had we given in to the emotional appeals and I think we all feel the tug on our heartstrings. 00:07:25.560 |
And had we given into that, we would be potentially in a shooting war with Russia. 00:07:30.560 |
And that would be the most serious we're already in, I think, the most serious foreign policy situation in my lifetime. 00:07:37.240 |
And, you know, I'm almost half a century old. 00:07:44.040 |
And, you know, I've been saying for the last month on this podcast, I've been actually advocating for the cause of not getting militarily involved. 00:07:50.920 |
And a month ago, it seemed like an argument I didn't need to make. 00:07:55.400 |
Because both sides are sort of this is there's almost a unanimity in Washington that we need to continue escalating the situation. 00:08:04.600 |
My concern is less about the Washington intent to put boots on the ground or boots in the sky. 00:08:15.160 |
And I'm much more concerned about NATO allies. 00:08:20.860 |
And if any one of them does something stupid, if there's any one of them does something stupid, they're going to be in trouble.