2022 Bestie Awards Live from Twitter HQ
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
Contents21 chapters
§01Bestie catch up!§02Kicking off the 2022 Bestie Awards§03Biggest winner in politics§04Biggest loser in politics§05Biggest political surprise§06Biggest winner in business§07Biggest loser in business§08Biggest business surprise§09Best science breakthrough§10Biggest flash in the pan§11Best CEO§12Best investor§13Worst investor§14Best turnaround§15Worst human being§16Most loathsome company§17Best new tech§18Best trend§19Worst trend§20Best new media§21The Rudy Giuliani Award for Self-Immolation!§01Bestie catch up!
Hey, everybody. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. It is the end of 2022. And once again, we're doing our Besty Awards.
Yes. At the end of the year, we do our Besty Awards. This is where we give awards to the biggest winners losers and many other Categories that you love. With me again, of course, the sultan of science, deep in his kurosawa, Vibes. How are you doing Sultan?
It was great to see you guys for dinner last night, Saks, we missed you. That was a lot of fun. We all got together. twice this week for dinner while we were on vacation. And during our dinner, we took a vote, and Saks, you are now the director of the All In Summit.
Congratulations.
Yes. Congratulations. Yes. The grift is on.
Good. My first act is to veto it.
Okay. There you go. Sorry.
2
of the fans. Also, with us, of course, is the dictator himself, Chamath, Palihapitiya, deep in his turtleneck phase, and his vibes Tell us about your winter vibes, bestie?
I mean, I can't believe that we all took over Lake Tahoe for a week together. It's cool. It's been a lot of fun. I gotta say, Saks, you'd be surprised Jay Cal has the life hack of life hacks here He's figured out how to basically get everything prewired. All the restaurants, all the reservations, it's been great.
I'd love
We've had a wonderful time.
He puts an eight person table for every night, and he does it, what, months in advance. So every night, he's
got an option.
--
out. Every 2 weeks out, I I get a table of
8
for 5, 6 nights in a row, and and then I invite my besties out.
And oddly, it turned out there was only one person from Jake outside just himself.
Yes. The player is always in room for the rest
of us to show up.
We had a wonderful time. I picked up the check for the nachos, and Chamath brought $6000 worth of wine.
I brought my own also to the restaurant yesterday so we could open the wine properly.
It was wonderful. We've had a wonderful time. And of course with us, looks like he had to work over the Christmas break. Sacks, how are you doing, brother? You working today?
I'm good. I'm saying it out somewhere.
Well, come on. You could be honest. You're at the Twitter HQ. I recognize that incredible architecture and design They spent so much money on that office space.
Beautiful. That's
definitely beautiful office. They
got their own bespoke coffee shop here called The Perch.
the people that work there. Too soon.
Too soon.
The people are working too hard to be hanging on coffee shop.
The weather winner is wide. Rainman David Sachs. We open source it to the fans and they've discovery. So let's get started with our bestie awards. This is very controversial.
We start with a political award. And last year, you know, this is our just so we're clear, this is not the prediction show. The next week will be the prediction show. This week is our winners.
Queue the music?
§02Kicking off the 2022 Bestie Awards
Yes. Queue the music. Right there. Okay. Here we go.
2022 predictions. This is what we predicted for the Besty award for biggest political winner. I said Ron DeSantis and so did David Sacks. We predicted in
2022.
after me. You said it after me. And the way you introduced it, you said, what did Tucker Carlson's writers come up with? I said DeSantis and then you said DeSantis.
Are you starting already? Literally, I'm trying to give you your flowers and already who are finding my brothers. Okay. Take it easy. You're gonna get your flowers.
So Ron DeSantis, obviously, a big winner. So those were those were great predictions. Friedberg, with a wildcard there, he predicted Putin would be a winner in 2022. That one fell a little flat. Did it not our our friend Friedberg?
Not a winner.
No. I think he you know, I mean, my projection was really built on Well, I thought it would be a big kind of influence that he would gain this year, you know, whether he's viewed negatively or positively. He's certainly at the center of the Sage right now.
Now, Chamath, your 22 prediction, this is your prediction last year for this year, was that the biggest political winner would be Xi Jinping. Okay? Now we go to our actual biggest winner. This is where we tell you who we thought was the biggest winner. of
§03Biggest winner in politics
2022.
Let's start with you, Saxx. Who is your biggest winner for 2022? Political based winter.
This was the prediction that I nailed as as you mentioned it. So the red wave fizzled everywhere else, but it crashed over Florida hard. So DeSantis is my pick. He won reelection by about 20 points, and his coattails carried 4 new GOP house seats, which happens to be the exact size of the GOP majority. Several polls have now shown him beating Donald Trump by significant margins for the 2024 GOP nomination.
He is shattering fundraising records. Florida is now the fastest growing state. So he is my pick for the biggest winner political winner of
20 22.
Great. Who is your biggest political winner?
I mean, it would sublease. It's Xi Jinping. You know, there is no single person in the world that is now as powerful as this one man. He has complete authoritarian control over 1.2 odd billion people and 20% of the world's GDP and a large amount of the world's debt including a lot of US dollar debt. And so,
you know, it's
pretty There's there's it's hard to find anybody that won nearly as much as he did.
Okay. Now to you, Friedberg, who is your Biggest political winner of 2022 I
mean, I think your DeSantis and Xi Jinping calls were really, like, good. I think the biggest surprising winter for me is, like, you know, unexpected.
And
that would be Zelensky from the Ukraine. I don't think going into this year, people paid as much attention to him. He was certainly not a a son hero but coming through this conflict and I think leading the storyline about our common enemy of the west, and common enemy of democracy being Vladimir Putin really kind of made him a superstar and a hero on a global stage I think that's evidenced by the fact that he's in the White House, and he gave an address to the US Congress yesterday. So I I would make him kind of the biggest winner of the year.
It's hard to go against DeSantis. So, you know, he he clearly has, as Saks correctly pointed out, gone into the lead. We'll see if he can be Trump in the primaries. I have my doubts, but he does seem to be pulling in some of those modern. Right?
I don't
understand why you guys say he's a political winner. What did he win? He hasn't won the nomination yet. He got reelected to a state that he had before 2022. So what did he win exactly?
Well,
I think a couple of things. One is when he won election to the governorship 4 years ago, it was by less than 1%. It was a tiny margin of victory. This was margin of almost 20%. He had coattails and he is now the front runner for the GOP nomination in 24.
I think you can argue that you can make the case that maybe he's peaking too soon.
Well, I'm glad you brought that up because if you look at the data you know, I think in the last
7
or 8 nomination cycles, the person that's been leading the popularity contest going into the hawkuses has not won the nomination. He's peaking too soon almost.
That's a possibility. Because when you're the front runner, everyone takes shots at you, on the other hand, he if he stays this dominant, he will drive out other contenders out of the primary, and he may be able to solidify it. And if if it can just be DeSantis versus Trump in the primary, he understands much better shot than if his Trump versus a bunch of other challengers. And I think that if he continues to pull this well within the Republican Party, I think Trump might not run again because Trump definitely does not want to risk being a loser in the Republican primary. So, yeah, there's always front runner risk, but it's hard to say that coming out of this year that he wasn't a huge political winner.
Okay. If we're
gonna challenge other people's picks, I would maybe challenge the Zelensky, there's no question that he's been a a global media hero. But Two thirds of Kyiv is currently without power 80% of Kyiv doesn't have water. 30% of the Ukrainian power stations have been destroyed. Nearly half of the countries without power. There's something like 8,000,000 displaced Ukrainians in the country, and over a 100,000 Ukrainians have been killed in this war.
So yes, he's been a very strong charismatic war leader for them. But
Friedberg, your response? I'm not
advocating for his performance as a leader. I I'm advocating for his accumulation of political goodwill, and that's it.
Okay. And he is winning the war. So I guess pretty good after that.
Is that winning?
Well, in in war, they say there nobody wins. but it's certainly better than having your country taken over by Putin. So some would argue that's winning. Let's go to biggest losers. Biggest losers.
§04Biggest loser in politics
in
2022,
we predicted. Again, this is our predictions from last year, and then we'll go on to our actuals for this year. Last year, we predicted Tremont said the progressive left. Sachs said Nancy Pelosi. Friedberg, you said US influence globally.
Interesting. And I said the extremes, both Biden and Trump, let's go with our predictions. I'm sorry, with our actuals for this year. Chamath won at YUGO 1st this time. Who is your biggest political loser for
2022?
I mean, I don't think it's as written about as much, but the progressive left did see as much failure as the MAGA right. So they were a huge loser. I mean, to the extent that anybody thought that leftist, you know, quasi socialist policies and politics was a winning strategy. I think that was pretty soundly refuted even in places that were pretty staunchly Democrat. It was really difficult for the progressive left to do much of anything but lose.
So I think that was a really powerful and important repudiation.
And I
think it it marginalizes them to a bunch of, you know, cooks almost. And I think that that's really healthy for politics going forward.
So your and your actual are gonna be the same. The -- Yeah.
That's a black. I think they were the biggest political loser in the United States, at least.
Okay. Elizabeth Warren we don't hear people talking about Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders much this year.
Yeah. And and I think that the biggest political loser outside of the United States was probably the European Union.
Okay? You wanna expand on that a little bit
if you just think about the corner that they painted themselves into how much they had to basically literally go 180 degrees away from what their policies were there was a huge raft of whether it was green ESG, kind of woke, liberal politics that manifested itself in all kinds of national security decisions and energy decisions that in this last year they literally had to undo in order to stay alive. And that makes that whole political construct, I think, very fragile. So they were they were a pretty big political loser outside of the United States.
Okay. Sax. It could be hard here to guess this one. But, Zach, who is your biggest political loser in 2022? I have no idea who you're gonna pick your
By the way, got Pelosi right last year that she did lose the gavel. So you've gotta say that the war in Ukraine was the biggest event of the year. And obviously, you can spread the blame around to a lot of people starting with Putin because he's the one who ordered the invasion. But I would say this is a slightly different take on the category, which is biggest political blonder occurred on January 27th this year when Blinken said that NATO's door is open and must remain open, and that is commitment. He basically shut the door.
He kept NATO's door open, but shut the door on any means of a diplomatic off ramp to end this conflict by promising Russia that Ukraine would not become part of NATO. That was the single biggest diplomatic blunder of this year or maybe the last couple of decades because there's a good chance we could avoid it this disastrous war if we had just been willing to close NATO store.
Wonderful. Great crisp answer. Thank you for that. Nice and tight. Friedberg, who is your biggest political loser for 2022?
It
was a tie for me between Jerome Powell and Liz Cruss. Liz Cruss just has to get recognition here for only being in office for 45 days. as prime minister of the United Kingdom. I mean, I think that is cannot be overlooked. The that some of the the policy and and folks that she put in in office caused, you know, massive chaos.
It was just a a a clear dysfunction over a very short period of time. Jerome Pelle, I think this was a big surprise this year to see how the Fed chair became so politicized, and and his role became so politicized, both kind of the the left and the right, finding reasons to question his leadership and his decision making. The failure to raise rates soon enough led to massive inflation is what you'll hear from one contingent of politicians and the the public at large. And then the rate at which he's raising rates now to catch up to be and to to calm inflation is causing people to complain on the other side. So there is really no one that seems to be happy with Jerome Powell, and I think that that that was a a shooting star that seems to have completely lost its luster.
k. So the Fed. Yes. Good pull there. Okay.
Mine is pretty clear, and objectively, it is, of course, The GOP, the red wave fell. It turned into a trickle. Trump is back, and I believe there's a good chance he will win the primary. Ro V Way to complete unmitigated disaster. 4 Republicans, they caught the car and plus marriage equality and having to deal with that.
Women and the LGBT community vote, and they have long memories The GOP, the biggest political losers for me. Okay. I'm sure Saxx has no rebuttal there, so we will move on to the next category. Which is.
Oh, by the way, if you say it that way, then, you know, the biggest political loser in 2022 were women. Look at like fundamental human rights were stripped away from 50% of the population. So -- Yes. -- that's not cool.
And they could've left it alone.
And they could've left it alone.
Well, if if what you mean is that the issue was sent to the states and each state then gets to decide, then you're right. But eat but if you look at the battles that have happened at the states, even red states like Kentucky and Kansas, have rejected the the subsequent political push to outlaw abortion. So it has not turned out to be
Just by the fact, that all of these red states basically reconfirmed and enshrined a woman's right to choose may actually go more to show that the Supreme Court is totally out of touch and that they didn't need to touch Roe v weight. And the fact that they did opened up you know, a huge can of worms in 50 states that now go and need to go and adjudicate this thing where it looked like actually that decision even back in the day, even though the way that it was done, you know, there was a lot of room for improvement. Clearly, everybody agrees with that, but was actually after, you know, 50 plus years, reasonable law. And so now that you took that long way, now folks even in the red states are like, no, it was fine, which means that this whole thing was a huge political gambit more than it was actual societal intention.
Okay. So we are gonna move on. Now I just I'll add my final 2¢ to that. As I said, I do think women and the LGBT community have very long memories, and the people who are in the moderate are not gonna forget how they were treated by the GOP in this specific issue. So biggest political surprise.
We didn't do predictions last year. but I'll just run down what everybody said was their political surprise. I said, the fact that Kamala Harris was sidelined was pretty surprising to me and that's continued. Shamat, you said Joe Manchin was your biggest political surprise. Glenn Youngkin winning.
Saxat was your biggest surprise. and Friedberg, a January 6th crowd making it into the capital during the interaction with your biggest political surprise. So here we go. Our 2022 biggest political surprise. Sacks, let's start with you.
§05Biggest political surprise
You have a lot to say about Go.
Well, the biggest political surprise to me was no red wave. So I admit I got this prediction wrong. know, I got all my previous ones right, Jake Hall. So I'm gonna admit I got this one wrong. You know, I believe that the electorate would focus on the fundamentals, three quarters of the country thought we're on the wrong track, three quarters think we're in a recession.
Nevertheless, the Republicans did not do nearly as well as predicted. They only gained nine seats in the house. They actually lost a seat in the senate. And I think that that had something to do with candidate quality and, of course, the whole election denial narrative basically was a disaster for them. I hope that the Republicans move on and stop talking about the past.
What voters wanna hear about is the future
Friedberg, did you have a biggest political surprise for 2022? Friedberg? Yeah. It's also the failure of the Red Wave.
I mean, that was my my pick. I think the consensus going into the election was with, you know, rising inflation and the disdain that everyone had for the way politicians kind of managed us through COVID and then managed us through the economic recovery. It's it was inevitable to see a flip, and it didn't happen. I think, obviously, we we talked about why that is, but that was a big surprise for everyone.
Chamath, what was your biggest political surprise of 2022? Jamath Polyhabitiam.
The absolute toothlessness of MAGA and Donald Trump. I mean, he was just a scarlet letter if you were anywhere near this guy, you were gonna lose. And that's surprising considering how traditional Republicans were pandering to him up until frankly just a few months ago. So I think that we exposed the emperor of as having no close and that he marginalizes and sidelines candidates into a fringe following that cannot go mainstream. That was it was really surprising to see how stark that was this year.
Fantastic. I'm gonna build on your Chamath. I had 2 here. Number 2 was Roe v Wade, but we've beaten that, I think, in Redeska, discussed it as much as we possibly could. My number 1, building on your swamp, is that despite what's happened with Trump, the documents, that the his cases in the United States and New York and about taxes, despite all of this, the January 6th insurrection, despite all this, Trump is still viable.
I can't believe he's still viable and that he is gonna be out there in the primaries, and he's gonna have to debate DeSantis and I don't know that DeSantis can beat him in an abate. I think he might win. So this is completely scary for both me and Saxx. I think terrifying Saks's nightmare and mine.
Well, I think he's mainly viable in the minds of the MAGA dead enders and the mainstream media who want to keep him alive. And the Biden administration wants to keep him alive, and they'll do anything to keep him alive. And in the news, and you love keeping him in the news, So it's a -- Yes.
--
it's a codependent relationship between the mainstream media, which you sometimes front for. And Trump.
Oh, be careful telling me what I
think -- -- to hand this coach, Tennessee Jay Cal.
Well, I wish the Republican Party would finally take ownership of this disaster that is Trump and tell him that he has no business. But you guys keep him in the game and the fact that he's viable, again, you're a personal nightmare and mine. Okay. Biggest, business winner. Everybody excited to get off politics right now and get to our kill zone, which is business.
So last year, we had predictions in this category. I had said Disney, that's an up and down prediction. I'll get into that in a moment. Tremont, you said small and medium sized businesses, the old SMBs, Saxx said rise of the rest, the fly over states. And Friedberg, you said Stripe, Chamov, let's start with you, SMBs.
What did you get right? What did you get wrong here?
I mean, iWIFT. It just completely missed the global macro shift that we embarked on in full force starting in q 1ofthisyear. It was it is the most important business story of the year. It's just like we have an absolute complete regime change. And by the way that regime change is so complete and so, you know, thorough that it even touched Japan just a few weeks ago or sorry, just a few days ago were Japan who, you know, finally yielded on this idea of you're gonna we're gonna have negative interest rates and yield curve control even they finally broke in it and and raised rates.
So it is an absolute worldwide sea change in how we need to think about risk. And I think that's worth talking about a little bit later in the show, but that was the single biggest business story of
the -- Yeah.
I'll add to what Shamal said. I missed this too even though on another prediction, when you ask what the biggest business loser would be, I think I said that it would be asset classes that have been pumped up by the Fed's money printing because you just have to feel Now that So I got that part right. But what I didn't connect it to were all the asset classes actually got pummeled. So I kinda conceptually understood that rates were rising, but I totally underestimated the magnitude of the shift, the way that growth stocks would get hammered the way that crypto would get destroyed, the fact that, like, Tiger basically got blown out of the industry. I mean, I had the right general intuition, but I didn't translate it into the specific asset types and the magnitude of the shift.
And also the like what Shamas said, a real regime change now, and how markets are viewing stock performance.
It's really incredible. Friedberg, let's get in on this. This is somewhere where you can contribute deeply. What do you think about your take last year and you still believe in Stripe?
Yeah. I mean, look. It's a it's a business that obviously benefited greatly from the pandemic and the adoption of you know, the the payment processing infrastructure that they build across their across various kind of ecommerce platforms. It's I've been I I'm not an investor, so I don't have any numbers, but there are public reports that have highlighted that the revenue increased 66% this year. They've indicated that they're probably gonna experience significant revenue slowdown with the recession ahead, but it still seems like a super high quality business and, you know, valuation wise.
Who knows what things are are gonna be worth when they ultimately come to market? There's certainly no one going to going public right now. So at some point, we'll see, you know, whether valuations play out of it. It seems like it continues to be a very strong one one of the strongest private businesses that's being built in Silicon Valley.
We will get to 2022 biggest business winners in one second. I will just say for Disney, yeah, man, what a swing. Bob Chapic in and then out, and now Bob Iger back. So I feel like I got this one wrong and right. At the same time, I still believe in the company deeply.
think they're gonna have a big win. Let's get to our actual biggest winner of
§06Biggest winner in business
2022.
Sachs, why don't you lead us off with your biggest winner of 2022 for business.
I said Lockheed Martin along with other defense stocks. Lockheed Martin, which makes Javelins and Hi Mars is 40% in the past year when most of the market's been way down. Northrop Grumman's also up almost 40%. And even some of the lesser performers like Raytheon and General Dynamics are about almost 20% in a terrible market environment. The fact of the matter is war is terrible, but it appears to be good business.
We've sent so many weapons to Ukraine. that there's recent press reports that are the US stockpiles of missiles, javelins, and stingers are now depleted So these companies are gonna keep doing well for the next year at least. Now there's a new appropriation sailing through something like 44,000,000,000 of new funding for the war. It's now over a $100,000,000,000. McConnell says this is a Republican's number one priority.
This is now a bipartisan concern. And if you think the war is expensive, just wait for reconstruction. That's estimated to cost roughly a $1,000,000,000,000 to build Ukraine back.
Sax, can I ask you a question about that? are these when we fund these wars, I've I've heard different versions of this. Can't get a clear answer. When we provide weapons and systems like this, are they not on account and we ask for money back at some point? Do you know the answer to that question?
You think we're gonna get money back? Are you kidding me?
It seems to be sometimes that we do. So that's why I was asking. I think it's something that hasn't been clarity on.
Look. I think the the the war has been phenomenal business for the military industrial complex. So that's what we're seeing here. not so great for the rest of the economy.
Freeburn. What do you got? Yeah. I mean, I think
you guys will remember last November, I predicted energy and defense to be the best performing
Mhmm.
Stocks for this year. Saks is right. I think defense is up 40%. So I I kinda went with the bigger oil and gas companies are up, you know, across the board about 47% in terms of equity value in the public markets year to date. compared to the S and P being down about 20%.
So over the short term, I would argue oil and gas companies, but I think that Over the long term, there were a couple of big breakthrough moments that I would give kind of, you know, the winner in business that will benefit over the long term to OpenAI and to fusion startups. And we'll talk more about why for those 2, obviously, later when we get to the biggest winner in tech And Science, But, yeah, short term oil and gas, they benefited from the supply constraints and the conflict in the Ukraine. And the longer term, I think, OpenAI infusion startups.
Well, by the way, I mean, just just to give FreeBird some credit here, you actually predicted the war. Or you predicted a war. I don't know if you predicted this war, but you predicted war in 22. caught Yeah.
Pretty good the war. And Putin kind of rising to the center stage and the defense energy. -- dog.
That was a huge prediction because I don't think most people even most analysts Well, they were surprised even when the invasion happened. I think people are still very surprised both that Putin would order it, but also if you study the situation, I think you gotta be surprised that we didn't negotiate harder to try and prevent it.
I traded it too. I bought I bought an energy ETF, so it worked out for me.
Okay. Chomat, your biggest business winner of
2022.
Nick can throw it up, but it's basically any single person that understands the following formula. So if you this is the -- This
is so good.
This is the this is the capital asset pricing model. So what is this? This is like before you make any investment, what it actually tells you is here's the rate of return that you need to generate above the risk free rate in order for you to justify making that investment. And if you really understood the capital asset pricing model going into 2022 it would have been difficult for you to not make money because all of a sudden as the 10 year up and as, you know, the volatility particularly of things like tech stocks went crazy, you could have figured out where you to park your money And all of these people that have built businesses around this capital asset pricing model, so you have companies obviously, so know, you have sectors of the economy like defense or energy stocks consumer goods and staples, they all had moments where they all did well, but if you take it one step above, the organizations that actually ran big macro books or really understood how to algorithmically implement this capital asset pricing model just ran rough shot over the markets. and, you know, said in a different way, it's sort of my background which is, you know, if you understood the capital asset pricing model, you would have been a massive bear.
and the bear got fed this year to a degree that none of us could have anticipated.
Okay. So am I correct saying the capital asset pricing model is the biggest winner?
Or no. People that understood it.
People that understood it. Got it. Okay. And for my biggest winner, I went with chat gpt/openai and their partner Microsoft. Why did I pick that as the biggest winner?
Well, on my other podcast, this week in startups, we played a game chat GPT versus the first result of Google's. And Molly and I could not tell the difference. And in fact, we pick chat GPT's answers, often above Google's. Google, one of the greatest businesses and franchises ever created, has no answer at currently for chatgpt because Google's business model is to get you to click on an ad between Links. If you give the actual answer, then the person doesn't stops clicking.
If they stop clicking, Google stops making money. There is no business model in search if the person gets their answer because they're done. This is an existential threat like we have not seen, and our friend Sam Altman has a line chatgpt/openai with Microsoft Microsoft, I think, is going to release a, and this is a prediction as well, a search engine with OpenAI. That has a significant impact on Google's franchise. We didn't think this would ever happen, and it's here.
§07Biggest loser in business
Okay. The biggest losers in business We made predictions last year. I said in 2020 I predicted in 2021, the biggest loser in 2022 would be crypto. By the way, Friedberg, you agreed with me, and we nailed it. Oh, were
you agreed you agree you agreed with me.
Check us. That's correct. We were in agreement about that? We were in agreement there. We were in agreement.
Saks, you said and Chamath Visa slash Mastercard. We'll get into that. And Saks, you said asset class is benefiting from government pumps. Very interesting. The fed, stopping QE.
Interesting. Anybody have comments on their predictions or each other's predictions from last year.
on a percentage basis David absolutely nailed it, Saks absolutely nailed it. On a dollar basis, the biggest business loser of this year was Big Tech. and I think that you saw 3 things happen which I think are important for the future. The first was It was the most crowded trade both by professional money managers as well as retail, and that fever finally broke in the last half of in the second half of this year. And now going into into these last few weeks, you're seeing a lot of panicked selling to cover losses and other things.
So I think that number 1, that happened. Number 2, regulators basically said we're gonna go after these guys every single which way we can.
Mhmm.
And then number 3, I think it started to change the innovation cycle where people now actually believe that they can't outspend because folks won't tolerate it and the things that they're spending their money on seem kind of foolish. And so I think the, you know, big tech is probably not discussed enough but It was a huge loser for this year in terms of what
happened with them.
2022
2's actual biggest business loser, Chemut says Big Tech, Friedberg, Who is your biggest business loser for 2022? I
mean, this one's just a simple FTX. I mean, that was such a incredible revelation of the scale of the scam and the fraud and the craziness that went on And I think what was interesting about FTX is it had implications not just for crypto and not just for kind of offshore regulatory and not just for fraud, but also for the investors. We had a whole debate about whether the press and journalists failed to kind of, you know, appropriately investigate this rather than give him accolades because he said the right things, which he said he did over I am. And investors failed to do relevant amounts of due diligence or former board and have proper governance over him because they wanted to be part of the hot new thing and everyone had capital to deploy. And I think what was interesting about the FTX failure is it didn't just it it wasn't just a failure due to fraud, but it revealed so many parts of kind of, you know, I call it, you know, systemic laziness and and systemic kind of blind eye and systemic bias that allowed and enabled this to happen, it was really a revealing kind of failure.
And that's why I kinda gave it the the the award.
Mister David Sachs, who is your biggest business loser of
2022?
Well, you kinda mentioned this. I picked Bob Chapeck. He's the former Disney CEO. He was Eiger's hand picked success of 3 years ago. Then the pandemic hit, which shut down the theme parks.
Then I think the big mistake was allowing himself to be malmoed by woke employees into picking a fight with DeSantis over the so called don't say gay bill, that caused DeSantis to retaliate by threatening the special privileges that Disney enjoys in the state. And then he had Eiger undermining him behind the scenes. This is revealed. I think it was in a Wall Street Journal story that he was grousing to insiders that JPEG was not soliciting his advice, and he was undermining confidence in with the board. And recently, JPEG was forced out in August put back in charge.
Fantastic choice for the biggest loser.
How brutal does Eiger look that Wall Street Journal that he sent me. Would anybody work for him?
Yes. He is incredible. He looks terrible. I agree. I read that piece twice, actually.
The CFO, calling him up, she was the one who stabbed him, you know, in knife, Chapic. It's a great wall I
don't think that that I don't think that that happens without the support of the person waiting in the wings.
Hey. Listen. There's a couple of jobs you never quit. You never quit a hit TV show. You never quit a hit band like Roger Water is with Pink Floyd.
Why
didn't they just extend this retirement?
--
quit the Disney job. It's the best that's best job in the world.
But, Jason, why go through
this? Never quit.
Why go through the theatrics of, like, grooming somebody, putting them in your job and then undermining them? Like, I I all I'm saying is you're good.
I think he made a mistake. I think he made a mistake. He quit, and he wanted it.
And, also, if, like, if you're a good up and coming exec I mean, what do you do if, like, all of a sudden, like, you know, you have the opportunity to get groomed for that job? It just seems really risky.
Yeah. I mean, I I think Bob Eiger realized when he in that piece, they say he went on his yacht. His wife didn't come with him. The Washington Journal piece is incredible, and he's got bored. And he's seventy something years old.
He looks like in early seventies. Why would you give up the greatest job in the world? So he went back and he took it back.
Did Disney have a mandatory retirement age?
But this is my point is he was so he was so prolific. He could have extended it. Why not just extend it and be done with it?
Yeah.
Did you guys read the book he wrote? Oh. That that rhymed our lifetime? What is it?
Yeah. And I think that what was interesting about that book was the entire thing was built around a series of deals that he did. It was like, I did this acquisition, then I did this acquisition, then I did this acquisition. And everything for him was building this this this empire by doing deals, and someone whose storyline and narrative that they tell of themselves that's built as a series of deals is a deal junkie. And you're not gonna be a deal junkie where where that's your excitement, that's the thrill, that's the adventure that you get out of life.
and then you go and sit on a yacht. You're not doing any deal sitting on a yacht, and you're gonna wanna get back to that. And I think it's less about kind of management and product, and it was much more about being in the midst of doing deals, and that's probably why why it came back.
If this was part of Eiger's diabolical strategy to get back, let me just say, like, one of the ways he did it. I mean, JPEG had the right instincts, which is when this whole Florida debate happened over Don't say gay, highly contentious.
No comment.
He no comment. His instinct was just to stay out of it. But then Eiger made some statements about how companies have to live up their values and not gun stuff. And then the employees started, you know, again, you know, mal mowing him to get involved. And he took the bait, and he got involved.
And what he didn't expect, is that DeSantis wasn't gonna just roll over. DeSantis hit him back really hard, and it cost them economically. And then -- Yeah. That one thing is unraveled.
And in the first interview that Iger gave when asked about this question, he was like, no comment. So he went away. Yeah.
He's like, we're not gonna get involved in politics anymore.
We're not get involved in politics anymore. It was hilarious. That was in -- He
announced JPEG to basically get involved in politics, and then JPEG basically became cannon fodder for DeSantis.
Exactly. And
then and then I just like, oh, yeah. We're we're
out of this now. I mean, how diabolical is that?
Oh, So gynecological. So dirty.
The other two of
these were Chapek said we're going to take away your p and l's to each of the leaders. That is like just neutering them. They he basically said everybody's under the CFO. Everybody's gonna be on one p and l. That infuriated all the creatives.
And then he went to war with Scarlett Johansson over a $10,000,000 settlement for her black widow. He couldn't handle talent. He couldn't handle the politics, and he wanted to control everybody's p and l, just unforced error after unforced error. Congratulations to my guy by a biker. I own the stock.
Do you
think it was diabolical at all?
Oh, in the best possible way. In the best possible way, which means that Disney stock is gonna go up. Yes. I'm buying more Disney stock this year.
Is is all, like, the woke progressive politics that he projects is that all just a game to mask what a Viper's nest, their Executives suite really is?
Are you telling me that Disney is a political corporation after Eisner and Bob Eiger and all of this, Michael Obits, I mean, is the history of Disney. It's the greatest job in the world. It is Game of Thrones to get that job. and Bob Eiger got it back. He's my guy.
I'm sticking with him.
Okay.
They have the best IP in the business. I I don't care how he gets that job back. He's awesome.
I gotta say the IP at WarnerMedia is a real strong contender. I mean, that
white lotus
we we were talking about this yesterday how good white lotus season 2 was. Alright.
Let's open up the ratable discussion.
It is incredible how HBO produces extraordinary hit after extraordinary hit. The quality and the consistency of that quality coming out of HBO is like nothing else You'll go I mean, look, Avatar 2, I did not like Avatar 1. I thought it was junk. Avatar 2 is getting panned for being junk as well. Not everything that comes out of Disney, a hit.
They certainly have the best franchises. But, man, WarnerMedia has a lot to contend with, and, you know, they could end up being a real challenger. to Disney in the years ahead.
Sacks, did you watch the White Lotus season 2? Yes or no.
Sorry. I'm having on there.
No problem. It is absolutely fantastic. We have to do a little fan service here. What did you love? Tremoth about White Lotus season 2?
Give the fans a little service here.
Oh, wait. It's on season 2. I didn't even see season 1. even know what you guys are talking about.
Okay. So how how to show in television?
Well, I'll I'll tell you what's incredible is there's a diversity of characters, and they weave the super, like, you know, interesting story together, but each of the characters are so distinct, and the characters are played so well I mean, we were talking about well, you know, we were kind of at dinner last night talking about who our favorite character was on the show, and everyone has a different answer, and everyone has a different reason. And then there are characters that you hate, but the fact that you hate them and the fact that you despise them draws you in, you're drawn into these characters I think that the the the way that they kind of portrayed and the way that the characters were acted by the by the actors, and then the way that they all kind of weave together to tell this extraordinary story, it was really it was really compelling, and it was, like, just super impressive. Directing, acting, writing, everything.
There were
a handful of scenes in season 1 and season 2 which I would say are unbelievably psychologically violent. and there's just no other way to describe like how they just expo and and and by the way, they do it with simple shots, very simple dialogue. It's almost nonchalant in the way that they present these truth bombs. And you have to sit there and process it, and you're just like, oh my god. It's just it's wave after wave.
It's an credible, incredibly well written show.
The character development is extraordinary. Amazing.
Production and set design, by the way. Also I mean, when you when you watch Don't you want it? You want a
cool one to go to those locations?
Do you guys remember in season
1?
Saks will remember this because Saks watched it season 1. the family is sitting at the table where they're watching the Hawaiian dance, and Paula -- Yes.
--
the guest of the family gets up and leave. She can't take it anymore. And then the next day they're in a discussion about it and the father says something about, I think hierarchy or imperialism or something and it goes around the table and she's just dead pan. She says, well maybe it's just time for others to eat talking about, you know, like fixing these wrongs. and I had to listen to it two or three times.
I'm like, oh my god. That is that is a line that just sticks in your brain. There's a few of those in in that show that I think I heard it say.
And I was saying, like, they they they really draw you in the set design. The production design is so compelling. you wanna be there. You wanna be in that experience with those characters. The Pineapple Suites.
Yeah. You're -- -- totally drawn. The Pineapple sweet. I mean, and then in this season, that whole hotel I looked up the hotel, by the way, online. They hadn't you know, they're they're on set design people come in and redo the hotel, but it is an actual hotel.
It's a real hotel.
--
made it so magical. Yeah. It was such an incredible
--
Oh, Friedberg, we should make that the host of the all in summit
2023.
Sorry. I'm working on my Jennifer Coolidge.
Tell your director, David Sachs. What what you'd like him to do for Yeah.
My biggest loser was crypto, and I think there'll be a subsequent domino to fall, which is now that Gary g And then the SEC has FTX and the FTT tokens as the grift. He's gonna go down the list of other tokens and He is going to start doing more prosecutions of GIFs in crypto, biggest loser for me. Alright. Biggest business surprise. Let's see if we can get Saks back engaged in the conversation now that we're not talking about art and life.
§08Biggest business surprise
Sachs, but last year, your biggest business surprise.
Sachs just produced a movie about Dolly.
I know. He is I'm joking with him. He's a chore artist. And he sold it to Mark Cuban. Congratulations on the sale, David.
I guess me and Cuba besties now.
Fantastic. In 2021, our selections for business biggest business surprises. I was very surprised by DAOs. Chamath, by Moderna, Sachs, by tech moving to Miami and Friedberg, you were surprised by NFTs. What were we price by in 2022, Friedberg.
We'll start with you.
Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, I think, took everyone by surprise. It kind of went I mean, this is such an obvious one, but it went from a whimsical fantasy and idea to suddenly, you know, cold hearted reality with, you know, a a huge kind of negotiating saga. that took place and court battles and all the drama that ensued. And here's what I think was most surprising about it. It wasn't just the acquisition.
and the and the fact that the acquisition closed. But it was the the incredible veracity of the head cutting cost cutting, the demands that people return to work, return to the office. And then what was most surprising that followed that is the fact that that seems to have had on the rest of Silicon Valley, where now nearly every VC I speak with, every CEO, every board is looking to Elon's behavior for right or for wrong, for, you know, moral moral or not, and saying that's a model for how you can challenge your team to achieve the impossible, in an impossibly difficult environment, which is what we find ourselves in. And so I think it was a a series of surprising events. He bought Twitter.
He made these incredible changes, and then everyone seems to be looking to that as a model, and it's really resonated. It's created a rippling effect. I'm not saying it's good. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm not saying it's moral right or wrong.
But the whole thing was really an incredible, surprising, unexpected saga this year. So I I give the Elon acquisition of Twitter kind of the the award
Chamath, do you have a biggest surprise?
I would say it's Jerome Powell and the Fed and their staunch hawkishness on inflation. I think everybody wants all of this to be over and I think we're definitely in the last few innings of it. but I think what was surprising was how consistent and how hawkish and how bearish Jerome Powell was every chance he got. He didn't capitulate or waver from the key message which he was saying from the beginning. which is we have the tools to fix a broken economy but we don't have the tools to fix runaway inflation And so we will raise rates higher than anyone expects and keep them there longer than anybody wants because on the back end of it, we can fix a few broken bones, but if left unchecked, this could really do a lot of damage.
And I think that that was an enormous surprise that all the political pressure in the world, all of the financial capital markets pressure in the world did nothing to change his position.
Sax, what was your biggest business surprise of 2022. David Sachs's biggest prize?
it was a pretty big surprise that Adobe bought Figma for 20,000,000,000. That price tag in this environment, pretty big surprise. But I gotta say I think Friedberg nailed it Gotta say that the business saga of the year was Elon buying Twitter. First, the liberal media was up in arms that he might do then they insisted that he must complete the deal. In any event, he he did ultimately buy the company and now he's affecting his changes.
I agree. That's the big business story of this year. certainly was a big surprise for me that I got deposition for 6 hours.
Isn't it a surprise that you're sitting in Twitter's headquarters today right now? Yeah.
It is a surprise. But just by the way, the rumors and speculation are getting out of hand. I am not a candidate for CEO of Twitter. So I wanna put the kibosh on that because it's starting to get out of hand.
Jay Kjell, the job is yours. My friend, congratulations. Alright.
I guess, sir. Let me
know, sir. You've earned
my star.
Okay? You've worked hard.
You just wasted. You're so fancy.
You're hurt. Yeah. Jay Kalb, the the last man standing. Last man standing.
Outwit outlast.
Now that Saks has said Dee is not taking the job. A bunch of libs have just Stop taking Xanax. The lib's biggest fear was Saxon's gonna get that job. We just canceled a bunch of Xanax prescriptions. Congratulations to the lib.
Saks is not gonna be your overlord on Twitter. For me, it's obvious. The Twitter acquisition is the biggest surprise by far and away. Friedberg, I couldn't have summarized it better. I will say, in 6 weeks, what we have seen there is nothing short of extraordinary.
Have there been bumps in the road? Has it been a little chaotic at times perhaps? But the features that are coming fast and furious are gonna be the story going forward. You've seen a Twitter for business. Saxx had his fingerprints all that.
You may fingerprints all over that. You may have seen hashtags for stock tickers. I was briefly involved in that. There are gonna be so many features coming. And this is what Elon zone of excellence is.
Product. He is an engineer. He's a product genius. the proof is in the pudding, whether it's rocket ships or the cars, we're gonna see a parade of features. I predict in another 6 To 18 weeks, we will see people talking about all the great features in Twitter, not any of the transitional issues.
And people will be shocked my runner-up Medistock collapsing. That was my runner-up for the biggest business shock is that they just absolutely collapse.
I was just gonna add to what you're saying about new features launching. While we've been sitting here on this pod and I've been checking my Twitter feed, there's a new feature where there's a view count on all of your tweets and all of everybody else's tweets as well. So you can see how many views a tweet is generating. So this tweet that I posted yesterday has 1,500,000 views. It's like incredible.
So it really shows the incredible reach of Twitter and anybody who's thinking about going to, like, some knock off, like, Massimo or something is gonna have to contend with the fact that it doesn't have nearly the distribution. So I think this really shows the power of Twitter. And then Dave Rubin noticed my I tweeted this just a second ago and Dave Rubin noted that the New York Times doesn't have anywhere near the views for its tweets because they bought all their followers, which is interesting. I didn't know that. But I just went over to the New York Times profile and my tweets are routinely getting 10 to 20 times more reach, more views than theirs.
So this is a super interesting indicator of who actually people are paying attention to on Twitter is fascinating.
This is fascinating. I'm looking at my own. I just did how do you give a $30,000,000,000 fraud Bell referring to SPF, and that was just less than an hour ago. No. It's 30 minute yeah.
An hour ago. And I have 50,000 views already, which is 10% of my follower count. So this is an extraordinary. You see right next to likes, retweets, Botweets. The feature train is coming.
And this will change the dialogue. All these haters who are like, Twitter's gonna go down, who are rooting against Elon. Let me tell you something. If a guy can land 2 rockets at a time, and he can literally restart the electric car movement, and he becomes the number one car in any category he releases a car in how on earth would you bet against him to build software? You have to be idiotic.
This is way too I mean, you guys, like, we should
--
Sorry. Keeps up the truth.
Keeps a product. I get
it. It's like an ad.
Yeah. You're selling a product for a company that you guys are working at. Like, I mean, come on. I'm not working Well, you guys are advisers. Right?
I mean
--
Nick, can you pull let me show you another feature. So I think it's cool. Nick -- No.
Let's go. Yeah. Keep on features. Let's go.
Pull up my profile quick.
Welcome to this week in Twitter.
Oh my god.
Twitter now has affiliate badges. You can see, I've got a little crowd ventures badge next to my name. So if you you should be able to click on it actually to get to the Craft Ventures profile. Yeah. So you're gonna be able to affiliate users with business accounts and it creates kinda secondary badges after the blue check.
I think even the corporate journalists are gonna love this because if you're a New York Times writer, you'll have a little n y t badge next to your name, Wall Street Journal, whatever, you'll have that little badge. So more and more people are gonna get blue checks, and then people are gonna have secondary or even tertiary badges that are basically specific to their affiliations.
Okay. So
I think Let's make sure we
get let's get an all in badges. We
are gonna have all in badges really soon.
Awesome. Okay. Let's go -- It's
over Freeway. Freeway is running down.
That was our biggest business surprises, and we just canceled your account Freeway. You've -- It's
all good.
--
locked out. We just took away your
--
No one goes anyway, it's all good. Don't worry about it.
§09Best science breakthrough
Okay. Best science breakthrough. Here's an easy one for us to do. 2022 biggest science breakthrough What have you got Sultan of Science? We, of course, have to start with you.
22 biggest science breakthrough Friedberg.
Yeah. I'm I'm gonna give it obviously to the the demonstration of net energy gain from the national ignition facility in Plasma of Fusion that we talked about last week I I wouldn't call it a breakthrough, by the way. I think we we we used that as a misnomer last week, but I'm still gonna put it in this category. It's more of a milestone. along a very long path, a very arduous path, a very difficult work that's been taking decades.
So it's a great milestone, but I think what was so important and impactful and powerful about it is that it's really catalyzed a change a sea change in the investing and the outlook that this is becoming more reality. As I mentioned last week, we've seen an increase of nearly 40% in the number of fusion startups, and the amount of capital that's flowing in is now reaching 10,000,000,000 a year. So this is becoming, you know, a real investable or an area that's getting real investment. Some people might not think it's very investable, but that that's why I think it's it's been an important year for fusion. And I think know, it's it's something I highlighted last year I was excited about.
And I too picked fusion. Also, just point of clarity last week, some people, Chamath, before you go to your prediction, were saying, hey. You're talking your book on solar when you were disagreement with Friedberg, that's obvious. You you've been very upfront that you were investing in solar. You placed your bet.
Yeah. A
100%.
Yeah. So just to just for clarity, everybody knows he made that, but he's talked about it incessantly.
plus those idiots that we're saying that are stupid. But
--
Yes.
--
let me let me further clarify what I said last week and why it's important. If Nick, can you bring up the capital asset pricing model again? The most important thing for me is to make sure that we don't misallocate human capital into endeavors that I think are best left for research institutions funded by the government. And I think when you look at a capital asset pricing model and try to build one out for Fusion as an example, the expected rate of return that you need to get from this is just astronomically high because of the beta of that investment risk and the market risk premium you have to generate. And so, you know, from my perspective, I think that there are probably 4 or 5 labs in the world that are capable of actually getting us to a positive energy equation.
I think Friedberg, I really thank you for actually saying that it wasn't a breakthrough and more of a milestone. I think the real breakthrough is when we have positive, not just joules, but we actually convert that into electrical energy, right? And we actually talk about power and watts. And I think that most people live probably don't even understand the difference between Jules and Watts or don't even care and they wanna jump around here or there. So the point is that there's an enormous path we need to take in physics And I think it's best done in governments, and I don't wanna see a bunch of 1,000,000,000 of dollars get wasted to get to to get marginal cost of energy to 0 right now.
I think there is a point in time where private startups can take the the last 20 or 30 percent, but I think about this like the Internet which is you need a DARPA to build V One, and then it could be handed over to private Industry. And I think Fusion when we look back will look very similar. And all the folks that tried to build, you know, versions of the internet that were private, I think found themselves lagging because there's just a level of investment that's required that's best served in government. So anyways, that's that's clarify that for all the for all the folks who got their panties in a bunch of shit. doing But in any event, my science breakthrough of the year is that there was a thirteen year old girl.
This was, you know, because of all of this fusion stuff actually, we didn't even get to cover it because it happened in the same week. And I think this is infinitely more impressive and is an actual breakthrough, which is a thirteen year old girl in the United Kingdom who had a heretofore uncurable form of leukemia t cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. So typically you start in chemotherapy, If chemotherapy doesn't work you move to bone marrow transplants and it was uncurable. and a lab in the UK basically using CRISPR edited these transplant t cells to go in and wipe out her cancer and now her cancer is literally undetectable. Now if you bring up that capital asset pricing model again, Nick, what I'll tell you is the rate of return on a human life in my opinion is infinite.
And so here is an unbelievable breakthrough that got very little attention because everybody was wrapped around the axle of fusion. It happened in the same week, so maybe it's understandable, I didn't understand it, but I think this is the single most important thing that happened in science, not just this year, but frankly in the last decade because if you can actually now do base editing and eradicate at least in this case a blood based cancer and eventually we'll be able to bring that and use that towards solid state tumor cancers It's a huge breakthrough in in in just human longevity and human quality of life, and that happened just a few weeks ago.
Okay. And, of course, for David Sacks, his biggest science breakthrough is I don't care. So moving on. Sacks. Go ahead.
Tell us.
Yeah. I know. This category reminds me of remember when Biden had that moment where he's like, America can be defined in a single wart. then he's like, that's kinda how I feel about this category.
America is a nation that can be defined in a single word. I was gonna foot him foot foot excuse me. Amazing how you figured out a way to be worry about Biden in the science section. A new low even for you, Saxx. It's a good win, Saxx.
I like it. Alright. Biggest flash in the Pan 2021, this is what we said. We're the biggest flash in the pan. I said the woke socialist leadership of cities, i.
e. Chesse Boudin. Friedberg said the constitution Dow, Saks said the word transitory very well played. And Tremont said the metaverse also very well played by everybody. They have that.
Nailed it. Very good. Everybody get your flowers. Enjoy. All of those seem like pretty good selections, but this year is what everybody wants to hear about.
§10Biggest flash in the pan
Friedberg, tell us now who is your 2022? Biggest flash in the pan. The undisputable oh,
here we go. Biggest flash in the pan of 2022 was the all in summit. Duh. Oh, wow. That hurts.
It went. Gotcha. -- always be a strong then a significant memory. It was such a hot thing for a minute. and then it died.
So to be all in summit, I I I -- Pour one out.
--
removed my glass. I pour one out. I toast to you to Miami, And unless David Sachs carries it from here, it was a flash in the pan.
It was a flash in the pan. Sex, who's your flash? Which democrat is a flash in the plan for you.
Well, this is where I had Liz Trust. As you guys mentioned, she only survived 44 days as PM. I mean, that's only for Scaramucci's. Scaramucci's. She was basically fired by the bond markets after she combined a fast RS tax cut with massive energy subsidies to counter the price spikes caused by the war in Ukraine that's just been actually committed to.
This was deemed untenable by the UK Central Bank. It crashed the pound. And I think there is a serious point here, which is that as much as Thatcher and Reagan where the 2 towering heroic figures of the 19 eighties, I think zombie thatcherism is not gonna be electrically viable in the UK just like zombie raganism. is not gonna be viable in the United States. I think that the conservative movement has to stop living in the past.
We have to develop fresh ideas to meet the economic and foreign policy challenges of today.
Chamath, do you have a flash in the pan?
I actually think fusion literally was a flash in the pen. It was it lasted
10
to the negative 10 seconds. So that more less of a flash you can't have without being a flash in the
They haven't. Hey.
Saks -- -- look us here.
Oh, look who it is.
Oh, is it the proprietor?
the proprietor, the owner. Through our customer support at at your service.
So I
actually spent the last 15 minutes selling your new features. Yeah. On the podcast. Pretty exciting.
Well, the the, like, the views are, like, incredible. Like, the I mean and I saw Dave Rubin already made an observation that if you look at New York Times, their views are maybe 110th like my views. Just me -- Yes.
--
as a
lone Twitter. And he said that their followers are inflated by just basically buying a bunch of follower accounts.
Yeah. The the the the views thing is huge. That's why I I I pushed the views which is like actually a lot harder feature to implement than you'd think because the sheer number of transactions per second like it it's I I think it sort of requires system wide on the order of of 33,000,000 transactions a second. to actually calculate the view to, you know, calculate and display the view count FYI for Twitter Twitter global. So it's like 3,000,000 per second.
It's a lot.
For those of you listening, Elon Muskis had joined the pod. Elon, how how's how's the 1st 6 week spin, generally speaking, of owning Twitter. Well,
it's been quite a roller coaster, which, obviously, you've witnessed and been on the roller coaster as well.
Yes. The Dramamine, I've taken the Dramamine. It's it's it's quite up to me.
I mean, it's exciting. But I think I sort of has its highs and lows to say the least. But overall, it seems to be going in a good direction. And, you know, we've we've got the the expense is reasonably under control, so the company is not like on the in the fast lane of bankruptcy anymore. and we're we're releasing features faster than Twitter's history at the same time as having contained the costs and and reduce the cost structure by a factor of 3, maybe maybe 4.
So you know, the the the verified is obviously that's that's that's huge. It's a revenue stream as well as a a means of identifying of, like, knowing that it's a real person and not a bother or a trial situation. the having the affiliation organization affiliation, which I suspect you talked about, that was a an idea of David's, that was great to, you know, have organization affiliation. So you can know that somebody is an actual professor at Stanford or an that that this particular handle is actually Disney, not someone simply putting I work at Disney in my in their bio. So I think that's gonna be really helpful.
It it it just really just having detailed and nuanced verification. So of all the various things that you say you are, are these things validated by other people and organizations?
Can you tell us how how you do product iteration, Elon? Because one of the things that I think some people got jolted by over the last couple of weeks is, like, a bunch of things got taken away or changed or rule changed or policies changed, and there was very quick action. And then people had all this negative feedback about the the quick without communication. But your extraordinary talent is to iterate product to success. Can you just maybe share with people how you do product iteration in in this context to help them understand how some of these decisions get made and why moving quickly is so important and just, you know, how you're doing this.
I'm a
big believer in, like, you wanna look at the net output. So it's sort of like, you know, what's the batting average? if if you're it's like baseball. The the point is is not that you, like, you know, hit the ball, but it's like, well, how many home runs do you get? And how like, what what's your actual
--
You're slugging percentage.
Yeah. Slugging percentage. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you've gotta for the fences, you're gonna you're gonna, you know, strike out a bit more.
But we're gonna swing for the fences here at Twitter and we're gonna do it quickly. So and I think generally, like my error rate and and sort of being the chieft, will be less over time. But, you know, in in the beginning, we'll we'll make obviously sort of a lot more mistakes and, you know, because it's new to the I'm like, hey, I just got here, man. So mean, if you look at, like, the actual amount of improvement that's happened at Twitter in terms of, like, sort of, like, having costs that are not insane, and getting an actually shipping product that on balance is good, I think that is that that's great. Like, I think we're we're actually executing well and getting things done.
I think we'll have fewer fewer gaps in the future.
How did you get to your intuition on what the efficient frontier of employees needed to be to make the product better?
Well, Yeah. Well, I I I
I observed part of this where -- Yeah.
--
you basically asked the question, who here is critical, and who here is exceptional.
Yes. I mean, is so, I mean, it really the what the criteria trying to apply, and obviously, you're not gonna be perfect if you're moving fast, and and there's a lot of you know, people you're talking about here is that anyone who is exceptional at what they do, where the role is critical, they have a positive effect on others and they are trusted, meaning they put the company's interests before their own should stay.
Pretty straightforward.
Yeah. And and, you know, also and it also is up for working, you know, working hard. Like, that would not that would not because these these that's not was not Twitter's prior culture.
Yeah. Were you
surprised that that the intersection of that circle And the people that left was basically 25%. Were you surprised it was that deep, or did you think your intuition was like, it's probably somewhere in here?
I think you could just stand back and say, without knowing how many employees Twitter has at all and say, how many people are really needed to run Twitter. Let's just say you don't know what the employee head count number is at all. how many people are need needed to keep the site operational. Like, let's say, if if excluding product, product evolution, You basically have to keep the servers going, and you have to customer sort of a a support function to take down a material that is in violation of the law. How many people what's the minimum number of people?
That's in the hundreds, bro.
It's not a not exactly. It's it's not it's not like a giant number.
Yeah. Twitter saw is like 2000 people. Right?
Yeah. We saw 2000 people. It's not nothing. And and actually few there's there's actually on the order of like, almost 5000 contractors. Like like -- Cool.
--
almost, yeah, almost all of the what's called trust and safety work, which is like the the support functions for the site are done by contractors.
You're you're doing a lot more to take down hate speech than the company previously was doing.
Yeah. Absolutely. Like, hate speech impressions are down by third, and we'll get even lower.
Maybe you could speak a little bit to the what we discovered, I think, in those early weeks, which was the incentive. The incentive previously was to create as many accounts as possible, and there were a lot of quick fixes to lowering all these, you know, what people might call bot accounts. In some cases, it was people opening many millions of accounts. But we discovered this very early. How easy was it for you with the tech team to maybe lower the bot count and all the fake accounts?
Maybe you could speak a little bit to that people have seemed to think that, gosh, it's it's a really hard thing to get rid of bots, and it turns out it isn't.
But we still have a fair number of bots in the system. But the like, I think the the incentive structure, the way Twitter set up previously was this relentless focus on what they call Emdau, which is monetizable daily active users, although I would say the monetizable plot is de dubious. But at least things that appeared to be monetizable or could be passed off as monetizable to daily active users. So this I created an incentive an incentive to turn a blind eye to a fake accounts. So if if the incentive structure is like you know, maximize the appearance of monetizable daily active users, then you're just it's a strong incentive to pretend that a bot is real, and that's what happened.
So
we're we're taking a lot of steps to reduce the the Bot and Troll situation, so many. And I think you're saying that in in the the usage. Like, it's it's not it's not like relatively rare to have your replies filled with crypto scams.
I'm not seeing any anymore. Friedberg, you had a question. Yeah. I mean, just on
your earlier question, you know, Elon, when you first started making changes at Twitter after you bought the business, a lot of people kind of took notice at how extraordinarily swift and significant those changes were. Yeah. And there's a lot of technology companies that have CEOs and investors and boards, and we all talk to a lot of them, and they're all now having a conversation like, look at what Elon did at Twitter. How can we do something as aggressive, as swift, as deep? Do you think much about kind of the the the model you're playing for other businesses and other business leaders, particularly in Silicon Valley and how you're operating Twitter?
you ever kinda talk about that? because I know you you mostly talk about your business and you talk about the businesses you're running. But you're having a big influence, I think, in how other people kind of act and behave that are other business leaders and and run other technology companies.
I mean, to Frank, I'm not I'm not really, you know, I'm thinking about that much because I'm just thinking about like how do we I just, you know, just get Twitter to be in a financially healthy place and and and fix the engine of engineering so we can have a rapid evolution of of new products. So and, you know, I I mean, I guess I'm in sort of, in some ways, in a fortunate position where I don't don't have to answer as it's not public, and we don't have a board really. So I mean, so I can just go you know, and and and I can take actions that are drastic And and obviously, if if if if I make a bunch of mistakes, then the then then Twitter won't succeed. and that'll be pretty embarrassing and sad. But as long as, like I said, as long as the batting average is is good, that that that the wins out, you know, significantly outweigh the mistakes then, you know, it'll be a great future.
And I think I'm very optimistic about where things headed.
I think a lot of people wanna talk about or understand, Elon, your position on freedom of speech and your principles. I'm I'm curious. You've been pretty upfront about it. How do you think about it post acquisition? You know, what speech should be allowed in the platform?
Kanye came back. He just went insane. his account got revoked. What what have you learned, I guess, now that you own it? because you must be getting a a lot of inbound from people asking you, hey.
How are decisions gonna be made, etcetera? You've been clear. Transparency is super important in this, but
--
Yeah. -- what are your thoughts on free speech and speech on a platform like this?
Well, I mean, the the general press I think is that we should hue close to the low in any given country. So the lowest vary quite a lot by by country. And So I think we should be doing free speech that that's close close to the lore. And that's that's that's the general principle. The I think there there are other things where it's like, okay, we we like, for example, like, if if you're an advertiser, you don't want an s you don't you don't want your ad, like, let's say it's a family movie next to some you know, NSFW content, even if that content is text.
You know, it's like
--
Yeah. They they they'll be like, that's probably that's we don't you know? So So that that's so the the the that's, you know, part of what, you know, we're like we're like, so there's there's more of allowance for what you might what's not I call hate speech on the system, but it's just it's not gonna be promoted. It's not like, it's we're not gonna be recommending hate speech. It's a risk of stating the obvious.
And we're not going to monetize hate speech. So or or negative speech. Like, that's nor would advertisers want us to. You know, any any, I think, it's gonna be a rare product that wants to be next to seriously negative stuff.
I was gonna say you referred to it as, hey, freedom of speech, but not reach. because this is a very nuanced discussion. Like, should this stuff be able to hit the trends, you know, in that kind of stuff?
Like, it's it's certainly possible that some things that will be regarded as hate speech will hit will hit will hit trends, but I think it's gonna be relatively unusual, especially as we are doing a better job of controlling the the bot's control situation. And I don't I don't wanna emphasize like this dermascreen of Boston Trolls like Boston like fully automated accounts, but like a troll foam would be where you've got like, you know, hundred people in a warehouse somewhere each with a hundred phones. And so they're actually humans, and they're gonna pass a capture test or or, you know, and and they can you know, reply replying their because they've actually got humans, but it's actually
10,000
accounts that are just that are that are obviously not operating as as as real people.
So that that's, you know, stuff like that can cause things to
to to trend negative. That's why I'm like a big proponent of having just a low cost verification capability And yeah. So but, like, this is definitely a work in progress. So there's like I said, it's gonna be and I I did like one of the first things I said after the acquisition closed was like we were gonna make launch mistakes, but then we'll try to recover from them quickly. and that's that's what we're done.
And I think we've generally succeeded in in recovering up from them quickly. And It's been going pretty well.
Was the Paul Graham and journalists suspensions mistakes from have you talked about this publicly? about how that all kind of got resolved at the end? Yeah.
I mean, the program suspension was definitely a mistake and actually called program to apologize personally for that one.
We did. Yeah. Great.
Yeah. So, you know, on the generalist front, the I I think the generalist the suspensions were were were not not a mistake in that, for some reason, a a bunch of journalists thought they were better than regular than everyone else and that if they engage in doxing and and, you know, other and break the rules in various ways, that that they're not subject to suspension even though your average your average citizen is. And I think that's just messed up. the same rule should apply to people who call themselves journalists as to, you you know, anyone else on the system. they shouldn't be sort of above the rules.
For some reason, they thought they they they should be. That's that's that doesn't make sense I I don't think that's right.
Yeah. And the rules being transparent and upfront, I think that's what everybody's looking forward to. Maybe some just complete clarity and transparency. And you've said from the beginning, when somebody gets suspended or this shadow banning of this sort of would tips into this really weird stuff that we discovered during or you discovered where the journal's discovered during the Twitter files. It's it's kind of a bummer that people are being sanctioned or shadow band, and they don't know it.
If we're gonna have a system, the rule should be clear to everybody.
Yeah. Absolutely. So the the something I've committed to and we'll we'll we'll we'll I think probably be able to roll that out in January. Just by the way, there is, like, a bit of a you know, we are not gonna be rolling out a ton of new features over, you know, Christmas New Year's and stuff. So there's like a, you know, the next sort of feature set will will probably roll out mid to late January.
And hopefully, in that, we'll we can include information about why an account is suspended or has what is called with Intezel to Twitter Visibility filtering, aka shadow banning. So and and some of these things like like, are like there's there's a lot of things that just happen accidentally where there's, you know, the rules in the system that are meant to detect whether someone's a a sort of bot or troll or or like regating where they're like, you know, and and then an account is sort of innocently caught up in in that.
So, like, there were
some accounts just suspended yesterday because were temporarily suspended. Like, they got, like, 12 hour suspensions because someone in customers someone in trust and safety thought that they had posted a a nude photo of Hunter Biden or something.
No. No. But they
hadn't they hadn't actually done that. I don't know. It it was just basically a mistake. There were some accounts that would that would go to
12
mentioned yesterday for an error. And then they weren't they weren't sure why why it happened. It was just essentially a mistake in in the with Twitter customer support that was corrected.
Elon, let me let me ask you just a slightly broader question. One of the things we just talked about was the regime change that's happened where, you know, we all have to act differently now that the risk free rate is probably gonna get to 5%. And I'm just curious across all your businesses. So Twitter, yes, but really more importantly, Tesla, SpaceX, are there decisions that you will make differently or not at all or will make that you wouldn't have made otherwise in this new regime? And how often do you think about that kind of stuff?
Well, I think, like, it's more like like it does seem like we're headed into a recession here in 2023 the magnitude of that recession is debatable, but I think it's at least a a a a life to moderate recession. Potentially, it's on the order of
2009.
So that's so I think it's it's it's wise to kind of like prepare for the worst, hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Don't get too adventurous. Like, watch out for margin debt. Like, I would really advise people to not have margin debt. in a volatile stock market.
And, you know, from a cash standpoint, keep keep powder dry. You can get some pretty extreme things happening in a down market. Like, Brett Johnson, who is a CFO, who is a CFO, CFO, is SpaceX was at Broadcom in 2000. And he he said that and that's a good company making good products. And he said, the the prom prom peak to trough, I think in less than 12 months, board call went down
97%.
So like even if you had a small margin loan there, you got you got crushed. It subsequently recovered and I think, you know, to to much higher levels, but you know, if there's like mass panic in the stock market, then you've got to be really be careful about margin debt. So But, I mean, the the this is just as as we know, this the economy is cyclic. So Yeah, you and it's worked somewhat overdue for a recession. And my best guess is that, you know, we have sort of stormy times for a year to a year and a half, and then things start to Dawn breaks roughly in q
2 24,
would if if I were to get that's like my best guess. Recessions don't like like booms don't last forever forever, but neither do recessions.
And it's a 14 year boom. So a 6 quarter recession seems like yeah. That may that may actually bounce out. The last time it was, what, four or 5 quarters. So it's it's it's not easy.
hey. The Twitter files are how how how much longer are these gonna go on? It seems like every week, another drop, and these are pretty controversial. How much longer are the Twitter files gonna go on in your mind? Yeah.
And maybe why is this important to you to to make sure that people understand the stuff yet? I think
it's important to like, you know, if if we're gonna be trusted in the future to kinda clear the decks for stuff that's happened in the past. So, I mean, to be totally frank, Almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true. So, Is there a conspiracy theory about Twitter that didn't turn out to be true? So far, they've all turned out to be true. And if not, more true than people thought.
Is there a part of the files that really shocked you more than the rest of them? Like, of the things that have been disclosed, Of all of these things, is there something that really sticks out with you as like, holy shit. I had no idea this was happening. Or is the whole thing just a big dump fire, they were just looking at one huge thing. You know, like, scioops versus the Hunter Biden thing versus the
--
Yeah.
the number of FBI people involved, that was
pretty shocking. -- stuff is pretty intense.
Yeah. The FBI SIop stuff to me was probably the one that was the most insidious. Like, The rest of it I could think of, like, you know, a bunch of overzealous lips got used.
Yeah.
Got it. You know what I mean?
Sure. Sure.
But to have like a secure skiff that essentially sends things that, you know, government agents want the populace to basically think seems like kind of a like a really bad dystopian novel and then it turns out it existed. And then it also the thing is it couldn't have just existed at Twitter So what are we gonna do about all the other places where this shit's happening?
YouTube, Facebook ads. Yeah. It's not as
it did none of it seemed that surprising to me. I mean, I don't know. Maybe I just believed all the conspiracy theories, but I've also been inside some of these companies and seen how they operate. So, honestly, none of it was a surprise to me, Was it a big shock to you you want?
Wait. Wait. You you Freight, you were I I I think you can claim that you weren't surprised that these companies were shadow banning. Although they denied it, But did you really suspect that the FBI was playing a role in flagging content for these companies to take down? Like that blew me away.
Content that's got nothing to do with like terrorism.
Yeah.
They're not investigating crimes. Like there's no crime. Right.
Yeah. They literally flagged satire Maybe they didn't get the joke. I don't know. But -- They
don't seem to be a humor driven group, but They don't seem to have the best senses of humor. But aren't they supposed to get warrants? Isn't that how it's supposed to work in a democracy they want information? They're asking favors
of their foul. Yeah. They're all friends. That's
something that's troubling to me. Put put yourself on either side of the extremes.
We we have Michael Schellenberger here who broke the FBI story in the Twitter files. So Let's flip to him and to see -- Okay.
--
we can because I think maybe the audience isn't caught up on, like, what was discovered.
So You are Now I know I have
to follow Elon Musk. That doesn't seem fair.
Yeah. Hey, guys. Hi, Michael. I head back to work. So Alright.
Thanks, guys.
See you later,
Sean. Take care,
guys.
Oh, hey, Michael. How are you?
I'm good.
Just a quick question for you.
Michael, first of all, first of all, who makes that sweater?
I'll I'll send you mine, man. Do you want it, or you make fun of it.
No. I'm asking you. I'm asking you. I'm trying to make fun of you.
--
high praise from you, brother.
High praise. Just briefly, Michael. Isn't the FBI supposed to get warrants? to
--
Yes.
--
take actions with folks? And then I guess, is that at the crux of this? Are they doing this at other companies, you think? Are they just, like, embedded in YouTube?
Should we
expect they're embedded at Meta? And that they don't get warrants, and they're kinda tipping the scales. And and is that a good thing for society or a bad thing for society? It's a bit of a basic question.
Yeah. Well, I think there's a there's multiple issues relating to FBI that I think have to be unpacked a bit. But the first one is that, yeah, FBI was constantly pushing the boundaries of what is legally and ethically acceptable in terms of requesting information. Now I think what you saw over the last
3
weeks was a a shift in, I think, our own understanding that we did see more pushback from Twitter executives against FBI and some alarm bells being wrong in terms of the request that were being made from the intelligence community. But the these guys were really persistent. They kept asking for more. They kept getting more and more cooperation. It's very troubling.
It does look like congress is going to look into this. The 2 heads of the committee's that are tasked with this or have said that they're gonna look into next year. I think the other thing that that we saw that I think is is more troubling was this persistent effort to basically communicate to Twitter executives, but also to news media, national security correspondents. that there was this heavy foreign infiltration going on, this this Russian disinformation. And it appeared to me looking at all the evidence both that we saw from within Twitter and from outside of it that this was pretty organized effort to convince key executives at Twitter and Facebook, but also these key reporters that that that they should expect a hack and leak operation sometime right before the elections having to do with Hunter Biden, I find I find that very suspicious.
Can I make an observation I think that maybe what we're finding out is that the mainstream media tried to go back to its
1980
cold war playbook and turn Russian to a boogeyman, but as we're seeing in the Ukraine war, you know, they're not nearly the formidable foe that we thought they were. And so it could probably be the case that in
2016,
they were as inept technically as as they are militarily right now. And so we may have just built up this monster that is kind of more like, you know, a much smaller thing to be worried about. and we all ran with it because we had no evidence. But the Ukraine Russia war is evidence that, you know, this highly sophisticated war machine and propaganda machine it's not that good at their job.
Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that what's there's a lot of interest that were being served hyping the so called Russian misinformation threat. I mean, one of them was just to simply explain away the Trump phenomenon as a consequence of foreign interference. Certainly, the people that ran Hillary Clinton's campaign had an interest in doing that.
But then you saw it become a sort of way I think to condition people for the release of the Biden laptop. And, again, we can't I can't prove that. But it is striking that the Yole Roth, this means Twitter executive who I think was the object of this misinformation campaign, testified under oath that he was being bombarded with these messages all throughout 2020 that they should expect some sort of a hacking leak operation So when the New York Post finally did report on that computer in 2014, it was briefly censored by Twitter. But I think more importantly, it was credited in the minds of many voters, including myself, I really didn't think that that laptop was what they said it was. and it turned out that it was.
So I do think it's there's a real troubling pattern of behavior by both the FBI agents, but also by the former FBI executives, including the deputy chief of staff and the chief counsel from FBI that that were at Twitter as executives at the time.
And in fairness, Michael, this has been brought up many times. But I just would like your take on it because you're a lifelong Democrat. Correct?
Until until last year,
Great. So it would you know, just lest anybody think that you are like some MAGA supporter here.
Just wear my sweater. Exactly.
This was all in the backdrop of Trump asking for the Russians, you know, during that debate to hack Hillary for him interfering with Zelensky and trying to get him to give dirt on Biden. and the fact that Hunter Biden was obviously dirty. So to expect a hack, there was massive precedent for it So that set the stage for this. Correct?
For sure. And there is definitely that going on. And and maybe that's all there was to it. It is just striking, of course, because and I didn't even mention in my and this was by the way, this is Twitter thread part 7 that I did on this issue. I didn't even get into the fact that, you know, within a few days, the men many former senior heads of intelligence organizations and others came out and said that it was the result of a Russian disinformation campaign.
So yeah. Sure. I mean, I I I guess we could find some other explanation for it whether it was innocent or coordinated, but it is it is striking also. I think the other thing that we found was the contrast between the the threat inflation and what what Twitter was finding themselves. I mean, there was, you know, you'll repeatedly, Joel Roth would would respond to FBI that Yeah.
We looked into these accounts that you mentioned, and they were all very low follower accounts with very little activity. So they just weren't finding very much foreign influence on the Twitter platform. And so I just think it was grossly inflated either for kind of good reasons or bad reasons, I would say.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's there there's no perfect way to police this stuff, obviously. And okay. Well, listen.
appreciate your reporting. Thanks for doing it. And if you haven't read Michael's book, San Francisco. You did some great reporting there as well and continued success in your investigative journalism. Correct?
Michael. Thanks, guys. Appreciate
it. Alright,
Michael. Sorry. Lost him. It's alright.
What were
you gonna
ask? He's still here.
Oh, okay.
Hey. You did an interview on I think I saw it on YouTube or something where you interviewed someone who was homeless in San Francisco, and they were addicted to drugs. And they kind of said some narrative about how they were in this condition because San Francisco basically pays them to be homeless and pays them to do drugs on the street. Did that ever get published? And did that come out?
Because it was such a compelling couple of minutes that you got on tape there. It really, for me, sent home a message of how far kind of progressive policies can take a society, and it's such a beacon for where things might go as other people start to think about adopting similar policies around the world, which is why I thought it was such important reporting. What whatever happened with that, and and where can folks see that because it was such a moving interview for me.
Yeah. If you just google Michael Schellenberger YouTube homeless, you'll be able to find all my videos. There's a lot of them that we did with people on the street. all of them, of course, people asking and wanting to do them. But yeah.
I mean, what we I also wrote about that in my book, which is basically a San Francisco pays a cash well for a payment of somewhere between 6 to $700 plus you can get $200 in in food stamps. And a lot of people sadly use that to maintain their addiction. And this gentleman, James, with the tattoos on his face, was very honest about how he was playing the system. In fact, he was himself we found this increasingly kinda horrified by the incentives that San Francisco was creating for people to live on the streets and and live on the streets in their in their addiction. So, yeah, you can find that on YouTube.
Like so many people say incentives drive behavior. And, unfortunately, these policies all came from a good face from a a kind heart and the idea that we could help people in need. And, unfortunately, the way that the incentives get structured, they can actually cause more harm than good. It's such an important lesson. I just wanted to say that because I think you're reporting on this really hit that home.
So so thanks for doing that. I think it's really important because we have we have to do the right thing for people we also have to be careful that the policies are done in in the right way.
So so thank you. Yeah. So well said, Friedberg, because when you're Michael and I I I just think you're very courageous for doing it because it's very easy for somebody to say, oh, well, you are being callous. The truth is incentives matter. And we saw we've seen this over and over again.
If you pay for something, you get more of it. And really, San Francisco is bearing the burden. I think this is what your book and you know, in in a lot of the videos you've made, at least the message I got was San Francisco has the lowest price of drugs, the lowest enforcement, and the most incentives. Therefore, they suffer because every person who is, you know, addicted comes here because they speak to each other, and 90% of the people who are in San Francisco are here because we have created an incentive structure. Is that directionally correct as we wrap here?
Yeah. 100% correct. Including just the non enforcement of laws against sleeping on the sidewalk, doing drugs in public, not requiring ultimately three times more people die living outside as an unsultured homeless person rather than live than being in a shelter. And for me, that's all you need to know to know that you you we cannot allow our brothers and sisters just to sleep on the street. no matter how desperate they sound about wanting to avoid going inside, it's three times deadlier to to be on the street than inside.
So the compassionate thing is to force people into housing. Yes. And and that's a great talk for people to say. But, you know, because you're we have this perception that people have Friedberg. They should have the right to do this.
But a person who's taking fentanyl in your research is not thinking correctly. And if it was any family member of ours, We would not want them to make that decision for themselves. We'd want somebody else to make that decision for them. Correct?
Abs I would want that from if I was on the street, so desperate that I was, you know, smoking fennel and breaking multiple laws every day. Of course, I would wanna be hospitalized. You know? And usually and, you know, people overcome their addiction. That's the good news.
We always leave out of it, but it is possible people do overcome their addiction all the time, but they often need some some an an intervention from family and friends. And if that's too late for that, then you need the intervention from the from the city.
Alright. Michael, thank you, Michael. Appreciate it.
Thanks, guys.
So as we get back, to the all in news network. We've now gone 24 hours a day. The all in news network has launched. We'll just have a road change.
--
sit at various offices throughout Silicon Valley, letting executives and CEOs and
founders -- Imagine we did, like, a 12 hour marathon show for charity where just people showed up, and we did a what what what do they call those on TV?
What is the charity?
--
on. By Jake Calaplane.
Pick up by Jay Cal. Yeah. No. No. Just a yeah.
Telephone. Jay Cal has to still fly commercial. We'll do a telephone. Hey, Zach. Thank you for setting up those amazing drop ins.
Well done.
Yeah. Thanks, Sax. Nice.
Thanks, Sax. I said, excuse me.
--
your jacket. That's a great jacket. Is that custom?
That is an Isiah.
Paul Stewart. Isiah.
This is the Christmas or holiday jacket.
Who is it by?
It's Valentino.
Alright. Well, that's that's that's nice also. Okay. No. It's not.
But okay. Let's keep going here. We gotta go to lightning round. Alright.
Let's move.
Biggest flash in the pan. We were was our last I went with crypto. Pretty easy to say that. I'm I'm not gonna give myself a big high 5, but crypto
is -- -- guys think of the Elon conversation real quick?
Well, he's very talkative.
And he and he's anything interesting or surprising for you? I mean, he
he said the biggest, you know, thing that people wanna make sure to avoid is margin debt. I know that was
--
I mean, he's working hard. And
--
He's just such a product a focused guy. He just gets his he's, like, so deeply into it. He's like
--
Yeah. -- just do two
things. He's gotta do it.
--
wins. Right? Friedberg? I mean, if anything's -- Oh
my god. Of course. Everything. That's it. That's it.
Yeah.
So, I mean and then, you know, products are made by Teams. So the what I think is distinctly different here. I'm just giving my personal opinion. I don't have
a formal role. Teams?
No. No. No. Teams make products. so what I just wanna say here is, you know, like, the cybersecurity for
sure. -- suck.
No. That I'm not you know, don't trigger the bundle. But I just wanna say, you know, like, this is a takeover as opposed to building a company from scratch. He's had to assemble a team and then work at this incredible product pace And I think those 2 things are starting to click. Week
--
Yeah.
-- 16
is gonna look very different than week the 1st 6 weeks. So -- Yeah.
The products are really looking awesome. And it was nice to him to give me that shout out. on the, you know, the affiliate badges, but I'll just give a shout
out to
--
I didn't hear it. What was it?
Oh, well, he gave me he he gave me some credit for the affiliate badges, but I wanted to give credit to the PMs who approached me about
that idea.
--
troll. I win again.
Oh, okay. Fine. Whatever. The truth is, there were -- Let me give let me give credit to the actual PMs, Evan Jones and Patrick Trauger who they approached me about this idea they had and then I helped, you know, give it some momentum.
Here's the truth. When Dave and I spent the 1st couple weeks there, now that it's a little more public, Elon has been on the program. What we found over and over again was that there were great features that were ready to be released, that were being held back by management, and there were brilliant people with all the ideas that you think should have been released, and they just weren't allowed to release a lot of these products. Why? Who knows?
But now that ease in charge, I think you'll see the product cycle is gonna go much quicker
most important thing I saw, which is such an important lesson for anyone running a business in Silicon Valley, is that the pace of decision making matters far more than the accuracy of decision making. It's always been, like, one of my 3 big models
for, like, startup. For for
me, like, my number one like, I my three things are always, like, grit biased action and then narrative. But, like, biased action, the rate at which you can make decisions is a far greater predictor of success than the accuracy of the decisions you do make. And so you have to be willing to embrace failure. You have to be willing to make decisions that could result in something not being done correctly or making a mistake and even getting embarrassed on the Internet, you know, by making mistakes and having to call people like Paul Graham and apologize for them. And that was a big moment.
But the thing is -- -- as a
as a business scales, as professional managers are brought in, their incentive is to not make mistakes. Their incentive is to do things that are predictably going to work and are predictably not gonna fail, and therefore, they avoid taking the risks and they reduce the rate of action, the rate of decision making. And that's why so many businesses ultimately don't scale past some sort of inflection point. Or when founders that are willing to push that envelope step out, everything starts to fall apart. And it's so critically important, I think, to look at that as being, I think Elon's defining trait and characteristics that this regardless of the scale of the organization in the enterprise, he's still willing to act with that level of bias to action that you typically see in a small start up.
Okay. And put his reputation on the at risk. Yeah. Just sum that up
by I sat in a meeting yesterday. He said that if we're not rolling back 10% of the time, we haven't pushed hard enough.
Right. Wonderful. There you go.
So, I mean, it's like if you're never rolling anything back because you never make a mistake, maybe you're just not Right. Moving fast enough. You don't have another
--
Not ambitious enough. You're not fast enough. You don't
have enough of a bias towards action. You're too afraid of making a mistake.
By the way, here's here's what's so interesting about the views feature is that A bunch of websites, I think it started because Instagram did a bunch of apps, deprecated, you know, likes because they felt that it was too It was part of this negative cycle, and so they they took all this stuff away, and basically views is going sort of back in that direction and giving more granularity in terms of outside in social engagement on a post. which is I think interesting to see. It's happening in a moment where all these other sites and apps are actually going in the opposite direction.
Well, it's it's like a standard feature on YouTube and it's very powerful for YouTube's network effects because it shows you how many views you get. So it discourages people from using other sites because you know you get the most distribution on YouTube. So it's weird that Other social networks don't wanna follow suit. I mean, in 1 hour -- But
they they had it, but they deprecated. That's what's so interesting.
But I I guess, you know, my point is we've only had feature for an hour, and I didn't realize how much distribution my tweets were getting. And it definitely undermines my incentive to wanna go use some other platform when I see the distribution I'm getting on Twitter.
Well, if you if you're getting 10 times more distribution than New York Times, you know what's gonna happen as people stop listening and reading them.
Well, I mean, sort of like this podcast itself. Like, I mean, people ask us to go
--
And my point is we have to rely on social proof and anecdotes about the actual scale and the breadth and the reach because it's impossible for us to get one holistic view that shows across all of these different modalities whether it's Spotify or Apple Podcasts or YouTube, how many people listen or watch. And, you know, we add it all up and, you know, we think it's in this you know, sort of 3 to 5000000 range of people, but if you just had a numerical canonical number that was irrefutable, you just run over everybody.
This turns it into a meritocracy. This is gonna be terrifying to some blue check marks when they see that the people who they report on get ten times as many views as they do.
Of course.
Which is why when when people look at Sean Hannity
--
Look at Sean Hannity. Go to Sean Hannity's profile. And for the number of followers he has, how pathetically engaged his audience is. It's all bots. It's all trolls.
It's all nobodies.
I looked at Mitt Romney just put out a video, whatever. In the first, like, half hour, he had a hundred thousand views, like, every politician who starts seeing this is gonna go wait a
second. I mean, the world
is I'm getting more views here than I am on MSNBC or Fox.
The world is so more rat place if Mitt Romney actually has more influence than Sean Hannity.
Let's hope okay. Let's move on. We gotta get through this quickly. It's our longest episode ever. Here we go.
We are gonna do next up, this is very this is a very important category. Best CEO of
§11Best CEO
20 22.
In 2021, I went with Frank Slutman and Elon Musk. Chamath went with Satya Nadella, Sachs went with Brian Armstrong and Friedberg went with Jack Dorsey. Now we go on to
2022.
Sachs, who? Everybody wants to know. Sachs is best CEO of 2022. Go ahead, Saxx.
Every founder took my advice to get leaner, sit down there, burn, create runway, you know, whether the storm down, you know So
you're giving a generic answer, not a person?
Yeah. Exactly. I mean, look, I think actually, a lot of the names one of the names well, here's the problem is that, you
know You didn't let him do it.
Yeah. Yeah. Can I finish Jacob? The the names that you mentioned from last year would be the top candidates for this year. I mean, I think Sachin Adela had a good year.
Obviously, what Elon's doing, we just talked about this amazing Brian Armstrong. I think the stock hasn't done great, but he's been strong CEO. But I don't wanna repeat the same names. I think that, you know, every CEO who responded to the regime change by cutting costs, getting leaner, extending runway, I think it deserves to be on this list. And unfortunately, a lot of them are just resisting and they're just not yet taking the medicine.
Or they've been taking the medicine in little drips and drabs instead of just, like, swallowing it whole and getting a move on.
Yeah. Just drink the whole two tablespoons of medicine. Don't sip it. You gotta just take it
not getting better. I mean, the stock market today should be a wake up call. I mean, this is one of the worst days in the market the whole year. So things are getting worse before they're getting better.
Chamath, who is your best CEO there?
Well, the numerical answer is Vicki Hollub, who's the CEO of Occidental Petroleum. stocks up like a 140 percent this year. It's technically the best performing stock of the year,
$63,000,000,000
company. But that's just a numerical answer who I I actually wanna double down on David's answer, Saks's answer because I agree with that. I have been guiding our portfolio company CEOs to be atcashflowbreakevennow or extend runway to q
12025.
And they're -- 25. Yes. Because I I mean, I you on
24 --
While Elon and I are kind of roughly in the same place we have been for a while, which is like, you know, mid 24 is when the recession ends, and you need to give yourself 2 to 3 quarters of buffers so that you can go and raise around which takes a quarter to 2 quarters. And once you start to get kind of get escape velocity out of a recession, having money through end of q12025 I think is a is a minimum requirement. And you know, of the companies that I think were the most precariously position, there was 5 of them that got their acts together and really did it. But these are all CEOs of companies that, you know, I mean, if you had said them, you would know some of them. But I I do agree with David.
I think the CEO that bit the bullet. So maybe publicly what I would say is, you know, the CEO of Klarna deserves a huge You know metal for having the courage to do it before anybody else did. The CEO of check out.com just took a huge write down. These CEOs are making sure their companies survive.
Friedberg, best CEO
2022.
My vote for best CEO is Warren Buffett, and I think it is just simple arithmetic. He has for years and now for decades, proven himself to be just not just an exceptional investor, stock picker, whatever the kind of typical Quip is about what he does for a living. But I think what's so extraordinary about Buffet is that regardless of the market conditions, he can kind of remain steadfast in his intent and in his mission, and he doesn't kind of waver. And you know, he doesn't take an active role in ranting and complaining about markets and politics. And I think that that's what makes him such an extraordinary leader.
He stays within his zone competence. He doesn't do things that he doesn't know about. He doesn't let the macro drive him and cause him to be kind of, you know, affected by and he says, this is what I know how to do, this is what I can do, and that is all that he does do. And he does it so exceptionally well. And to Chamath point, he is the largest shareholder of Occidental Petroleum, along with many other incredible businesses, and I think he's proven in a market like we just had this year why he is kind of the most extraordinary CEO or one of the most extraordinary CEOs, but one of the, you know, best kind of capital allocators of all time.
I'm going to go in a similar fashion as Chamath and Sachs and go with the money losing CEOs who have dedicated themselves to free cash flow. and to getting to profitability from the last cycle Airbnb and Uber were the money losers. And now Airbnb is my number 1. They become a money printer. They are now making bank.
And they're still growing very quickly. And then Uber, I put in my second, They need to do another riff. They need to cut some expenses, but they too are hitting the free cash flow and the network effects. So I'm giving it to Chesky and then Dara. 12.
§12Best investor
Okay. Let's keep moving. Best investor. For me, I'm going with the investors, like a general category. who are demanding governance and doing diligence again or or who never stopped.
Let me say it that way. There there's a generation of investors who've raised their funds in the last 5 years and didn't do diligence, didn't demand board seats, didn't demand boards. Those idiots are now paying the price and they created a lot of this mess of entitlement and a lack of governance. I wanna give a shout out to the Bill Gourley's of the world. who fought for governance and fought for diligence in the face of being told, okay, boomer, you don't get it.
Who do you have best investors Chamath, Polly Hopatia.
I will pick the, what are called, the pod shops. So these are folks that have strategies where they have hundreds of investing pods underneath an umbrella, and they have this very sophisticated risk infrastructure. So this is what Ken Griffin owns in Citadel This is what Izzy Yglinder owns in Millennium. Reven Howard is another one. DE Shaw is another one.
So they have all kinds of strategies, but better essentially run by computers that allocate risk, you know, scale UI scale you back, turn you on, turn you off, fire you overnight, and those strategies as a whole ran over the market this year. They were the best performers. They are giving back 1,000,000,000 of dollars. They've generated double digit positive returns. They're raising their fees in some cases.
Some of these folks are moving their annual fee up to 4% a year, they're a carry up to 40% a year, incredibly, incredibly well run performing businesses. They were, by and away, the best investors this year.
We're gonna go lightning round from here. Sachs, do you have a best investor?
Yeah. I said Stan Druckenmiller he got through a call last year, he predicted that inflation would be lasting. This is the spring of 2021 when transitory was the word of the day. this year, he predicted that bear market rally we had in July August. And I remember back at the co 2 summit in May, there were around that time he was interviewed and he basically was saying that as soon as there was a bear market rally over the summer that he would then put a short position on.
I don't know if he actually did that, but he said he's gonna do that. And then it turns out that the summer rally that we had was a dead cap bounce. So he was right about that. And now he is predicting a hard landing in 2023 with a deeper recession than many expect. So, sadly, I suspect he may be right yet again.
Friedberg, best investor for you,
2022.
I I had Drucken Miller. I I indicated that he's been doing interviews pretty much every quarter for the last 2 years, and he's been pounding the table everyone what's gonna happen and it all happened. And he even told people the trades, in mid 2021, he said he was short, long dated treasuries, and he was long commodities. And if you had put those 2 trades on at that time and held them to today, you would have made a fortune. And so I think he's extraordinary in his ability to kinda see macro in a way that others don't, but also to take extremely brave action with his portfolio.
He's he's renowned for how big the bets are that he makes. and how quickly he can change his mind when he's wrong and make another big bet to and still get himself out of the hole. He he's incredible. So definitely give it to Stanley Druck and Miller this
2021,
we did our best turnarounds. I picked Disney, Jamoff Ford, Freeburg, WeWork. Should we stack this category? Or do
you guys wanna do
What about the worst investor of 2022? Can we do that?
Good job, you want a freestyle? Tell us your worst investor of
2022.
I mean, I'll put myself in the category along with anybody else who was long tech Basically of Nick, if you can just bring please back up this capital asset pricing model. Any of us that didn't understand this got run over, this year, and just to put some very specific numbers here, there was a decent little tweet thread that Elon was a part of where they act calculated what the expected rate of return of Tesla was, and it turned out to be almost 14% a year. And so, you know, when you start to compound 14 percent over 3, 4, 5 years, these numbers get very big, very quickly. and the reason why is that it has a huge beta and we're in a world now where the risk free rate is quite high. So all of us benefited from this equation essentially being upside down for the last 15 years.
§13Worst investor
And all of us who were over allocated into things that benefited from those dynamics, frankly, got run over this year. So we were as a class, the worst investors of
2022.
Okay. Here we go. Let's do our best turnaround. I am gonna go with For me, it's Meta. They were losing money, hand over fist.
§14Best turnaround
They refused to do a rift. And then finally, Betsy Braggersoner said, let's get fit. He did a memo. And finally finally, Zuckerberg made some cuts Reportedly, rumors he's making a 15 10 or 15% cut I heard in the back channels right now based on performance, so he's not calling it a riff or a layoff. just gonna cut the bottom 10 or 15 percent again.
So I think Zuck's gonna turn it around. Anybody have a best turnaround?
So you're saying Zuck mission accomplished?
You will not turn around at Facebook. around this year.
I'm going with Meta. So your answer is Meta was turned around by Zuck this year?
Yes. They've got down to
$85,
and now they're up at what what? 110, 115? Yes. He turned it around at the end of the year. It was like a hell mayor at the end of it around, I think he's gonna continue to.
Yes. That is my position.
Who shot? That sounds good.
Okay. Listen. I bought the stock at 94. Go with that, Jacob.
Okay. So if we're talking about very partial turnarounds here, I would say I would say that a -- You
could measure the turnaround. as of October 24th to now.
Yes. Exactly. So San Francisco is still overall a mess, but there were few positive events that happened over the past year. And since we were looking back, we should call these out. So first of all, back this is towards the beginning of the year.
We were called 3 members of the school board, most particularly Allison Collins. Remember her? This was done by something like a
70 30
margin and eighty 20 on on Collins. This was the school board that had dragged his feet on school reopenings. They destroyed the merit based Lowell High School. They wasted hours of meetings on a silly plan to remove the names of names like Abraham Lincoln from the from the schools. In any event, they were removed.
Then, Jake, how you referred to this. We got Chasebudin recalled to buy a 60.40 margin at San Francisco DA, This was the DA who whose agenda was decarceration. He tried to release as many repeat offenders as possible. the voters in San Francisco had enough. And then most recently, the far less supervisor, Gordon Mar, just got rejected by his own community this November.
And the new tough DA Brooke Jenkins got reelected in her own right after being appointed by London Bridge. So There's still a long way to go in San Francisco, but there are definitely some green shoots that the electorate here has had enough and is looking for the let's say called the centrist -- Okay.
--
Democrats as opposed to the radicals.
Okay. We're in the lightning round here. We're in hour 3 of the all in podcast. marathon, this telethon. Jamal, you got a best turnaround for 2022.
Hard hard hard one to give. So any green shoots for 2022 is Sachs would say.
No. I mean, the every everything has just gotten destroyed. Great. Great.
anything that you
there may be no turnaround award until
2025.
Fine. Okay. Yeah. We're we're a little split on this Friedberg. You got anything any gracious.
If you're you're incisive fucking viewpoint, and I'll pick Zoccan Meta. That made so much sense.
--
at 94. It's at a 117. It's one of my best j trades. I'm gonna take -- Again, what Didn't
you also say Disney was your pick of the year or something?
I'm buying more. I'm buying more Disney. I'm buying more. This is -- That's what I'm doing.
--
you met at the the -- I pray for you. Disney I'm telling you Disney Warner which you've talked about before. Yeah. And Facebook are 3 of my bit and and, you know, are 3 of my big ones. Let's say worst human being here.
§15Worst human being
Well, I think look. Given that this is supposed to be the year 2022. I mean, you gotta say this. Yes. In 2020, I'll say SPF.
SPF was the winner of this hands down.
Okay. Congratulations to SPF. You are consensus worst human being
--
For this year. I mean, not ever. But just
for sure -- -- only for this year. Right. Yeah. We we all hate you equally.
k. Who's who's number
2?
Why do you hate them? Why do I hate them? because all those people lost their money. And, you know, there's some it it's causing chaos. I feel terrible for all these people who lost money.
That's why I hate them. It's disgusting.
Did did you
see that the second most frozen person?
The 2 guys popped to please Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang.
--
like pancakes.
They flipped, and but it turns out that they actually did engineer a backdoor into FTX an Audi that has been doing this for years.
Oh my god. Oh my god. That's game over.
You're getting 10 years. He's getting my game over.
Well, they're they're should we talk about an interesting defense strategy that we were discussing in in the Chamath?
Oh, yeah.
That apparently I think this is actually a fascinating defense I think this is their only shot.
1
of our besties had this theory that he was prescribed
2
prescription drugs. 1 was Adderall. What was the other one called? This was not a
He sent? The patch.
It's it's a drug I wasn't familiar with. I guess it's a patch. But when you combine these 2 things, apparently, it basically shuts down or kills the part of your brain that deals with
--
Inhibition.
--
inhibition.
It's cocaine. Yeah. What if his defense strategy was, yeah, like only an insane
person would do this and I was acting insane because I was prescribed these drugs that had these drug conflicts and it like killed part of my brain. I mean, when you think about it -- -- every
criminal on Wall Street said cocaine is my defense.
But this, you could say he was maybe he was legally prescribed if you could show the prescription. And by the way, I'm not saying -- Yes.
--
this should get him off. I'm just we're basically workshopping what his only shot of his defense would be. Right?
Well and think about it, Saxx. He acted manic after FTX collapsed. So that mania of doing 20 Twitter spaces would be
There's something so insane about what he did. Right? That you that all it's almost like a like a prescribed insanity defense. Like I was prescribed a drum combination that made me insane.
Anybody have a most loathsome company as we wrap?
The only way that you could come up with that is, like, you'd you'd have to have 2 parents that were, like, law professors or something.
Alright. Most most loaves company FTF for me. This
is his defense, you know?
Yeah. Mike Parents, boohoo,
No. No. No. He'll claim insanity, Jacob. He'll say
--
Of course. Yeah.
--
and they'll have a I mean, do we think that his parents aren't gonna help his defense?
You know, at this point, this this kid's gotta go away for life. That's it.
You think life? Wow.
I think
it's gotta be life. I think it's gotta be 30 plus years. I mean, it's just gonna be 1,000,000,000 of dollars. What what kind of justice system do we have? When people go away for 20, 30, 40 years?
years per billion would you sentence?
A decade per billion at least? Yeah. I mean, just you got some
--
That's a 100 years. -- sucks. You gotta don't you think that justice Sisham needs to look at other people who are in jail for selling cocaine, for selling marijuana, for for robbing a a convenience store. They'll put somebody away for robbing a convenience store for a decade or 2. Where are they gonna put him in jail for?
Just because somebody came in with a gun and robbed a convenience store, they get 20 years. This kid's gonna get off. screw that.
Look. I think what what do you guys think the over under is here? Do you think it's a lot?
I'll set it at I'll set it at 35 years.
I'll take 30. I'll take the over.
I'll take 30. I think 30 is the over.
Okay. This is made off.
I said a good line then.
What's your age?
I think this is made off
I agree.
--
over on 30. Yeah. I think I think it's
30 5.
I think it's gonna be a hunt multiple 100 of your sentence.
I agree.
and you'll be gone for life. Yeah.
I think it's gonna be life, but I set a good line. Okay. Most lows, some company is FTX. Anybody wanna go for a second?
§16Most loathsome company
Mostly -- Keep moving.
No. I'll add one. I'm gonna this year, I'm gonna give my last year, I gave it to Tyson Foods, one of the largest slaughter of animals on earth. This year, I'm gonna give it to a company called Inotiv in OTIV. This is the company that was busted by the feds for their animal abuse in their dog breeding facility.
where 4000 beagles were rescued, one of which I adopted, and this is a publicly traded company. Stocks down 90 some odd%, which I'm thrilled to see terrible business, awful, awful kind of, you know, inhumane behavior. And so I I I wanna kinda give them a special shout out this year.
Look at you. And you're getting the virtue signaling points of rescuing the dog to increase your 2 factor amongst besties. Well done.
Max Q factor.
Max Q factor.
Max Q factor.
Yeah. Anybody else have a Losum?
Yes. I'd like to pick this company. which destroyed the environment for a bunch of endangered species that I would otherwise have used for various fur pelts for mice, sweaters, and such.
Yes. And I would like to go with blah, blah, blah, blah, which was torturing puppies, 18 of which I rescued, and I am now have them in the Jay Cal puppy rescue. I am the most sensitive and caring person. Also, I would like to add SeaWorld, I am in the process of raising money to build bigger pools to eventually release all the orcas in captivity. That is my new focus for next year.
Okay. Moving on. Oh god. Do we wanna do best meme? Do we wanna do best new tech?
§17Best new tech
I'll do best new tech. I don't have the best meme.
going with Fusion for Best New Tech. I'm going with
--
I'm gonna go with Chat GPT. I think what was so impressive about Chat GPT And and the experience that everyone's had using it is that it really for the first time, I think elucidated where these kind of machine learning tools can take us and what the kind of new product experience can be, what generative AI can yield things beyond, I think, the scope of what a lot of people were imagining before. So it was really so revealing. And as you guys know, there's an absolute friggin title wave of people trying to start companies that are leveraging tools in generative AI to kind of reinvent everything from what workplace tools, enterprise software, all the way through to media, games, and entertainment. So that's why I think Chat GPT was the most impressive new technology -- Best new tech Shamoff.
-- of 2020. And
then Sax, lightning round, please. Best new tech.
alpha full 3, which basically has almost near perfect accuracy in protein folding.
Saks best new tech.
I can't improve on the Chamath GBT. So yeah, let's keep rolling.
§18Best trend
Best trend. Best trend in business and in the world. Mine is startups getting back and investors getting back to reality and the what I call the age of austerity, the age of focus after the age of excess, that's the best trend in our world, the age of austerity. What's your best trend? for
2022.
Marginal cost of energy generation and storage is now in the low single digit pennies per kilowatt hour, which basically means that not only will energy be free in abundant, but it will, I think, over the next decade or 2, create a massive peace dividend. It will rewrite our foreign policy. It will rewrite national security. That is the reason why people should care about energy transition, not necessarily climate change although that's important. It's a distant second to keeping men and women out of war and keeping our borders safe.
Well said. Anybody else have a best time to play catch up with a bird?
Last year, I'm I said the creator economy, which I think referred to all these kind of creators, creating new products and and businesses beyond their content. This year, I I think that the trend that was again enabled and demonstrated through Chat GPT is the narrator economy. I think this is gonna be a really important trend going forward. We'll talk about it in the prediction episode. But I think the idea that people are get are and they're starting to experience this in using Chamath, GPT, and Dolly, and other kind of generative AI tools is how much you can kind of narrate the product you wanna see created and have it created for you on the fly.
And I think that that's a really kind of powerful mind shift for people and frame shift for people. And I think it it really starts to change a lot of the way that people behave, entertain themselves, businesses operate and so on. So I I'd call it the narrator economy, and I think it's really kind of starting to emerge.
Okay. Do you have a trend? Sachs.
Yeah. I would say best friend is the growing realization that the corporate media is failing and does not tell the truth. It has an agenda. More and more people are opting out of it and going with independent media. I think, you know, what Elon mentioned, we're we're gonna start holding these corporate journalists the same standard on Twitter as regular citizens.
They're outraged by that, but that's a huge step in the right direction. The fact of the matter is is that the press or the media is the prism through which reality is refracted. And if it's not giving us an accurate representation of the world, we can't begin to solve our problems since we don't have accurate information. And I think more and more people are waking up from the matrix and realizing that we're living in this media controlled simulation. And again, I don't think we're gonna make progress until the this power that the media seems to have over our reality gets gets broken.
§19Worst trend
Okay. Let's go for worst trend. My worst trend is the Fed. trying to play catch up. The Fed trying to play catch up.
Sorry, buddy. The Fed trying to play catch up is the worst trend for me. overestering into the crash. What do you got Chmouth for the worst trend of
2012?
trend was the continued, profligate spending by the federal government. We have record deficits, record debt, and this year we're ending the year by adding another one point $5,000,000,000,000 of spending that nobody can seemingly account for. It is truly the Christmas tree of Christmas trees in terms of bills. So we have not gotten religion yet around being measured in how we spend money.
Good one.
Worst trend, sex.
Last year, my worst trend was authoritarianism, growing all over the world. and I think it was pretty decent prediction. This year's worst trend is the government colluding with Big Tech to engage in censorship. This is how they're gonna do the authoritarianism. We talked about it with Schellenberger and Elon, this whole series of revelations, known as the Twitter files, We can see this collusion, this cozier relationship between the censors at Twitter and Big Tech and the bureaucrats at the FBI and DHS and Pentagon.
this is a really disturbing dystopian relationship as we talked about earlier. And, you know, I feel like we spend all this time talking about the authoritarianism in Russia and China. We seem to be obsessed with combating that and going to war with that. But we don't spend enough time talking about this growing authoritarianism. at home.
The media doesn't seem to wanna report
all the
Twitter files at all. Let's focus on stopping authoritarianism here.
Well, said, Friedberg, what's your worst trend I've seen?
--
trend for 2022 is what I would call interest rate mania. And I think that this is the mania that we've been caught up in on this show that other people on our thread people in the business community and the investing community, where everyone's obsession with did the Fed act soon enough or late enough, and that interest rates ultimately drive success or failure with building businesses and making good investments. Alright. Sure. And the truth is when interest rates go the wrong way, good investments, you know, can kind of strengthen their way, can can can make their way through those environments, bad investments cannot.
Good businesses can make their way through and bad investments cannot. And so I think our Armenia around the fact that interest rates and the Fed ultimately drove bad outcomes in businesses and investments is a flawed kind of assertion, and we all wanna kinda get back to the drunken days where, you know, a low interest rate environment enables us all to be successful and wealthy. and I think that that's kind of changed. So I think it's time for us to get away from the interest rate media and and focus more on solid investing and solid business pulling.
§20Best new media
Okay. Here we go. Lightning round. We got 2 to go. Favorite media of 2022.
For me, it was Top Gun, House of the Dragon, White Lotus 2. But I'm gonna pick my favorite here. Something you may not have heard of. The Film Tarr. I highly recommend it, but I did like those other 3.
tremendously. What do you got? Saxx for your favorite media of 2022. The
house of the dragon, I I guess, I enjoyed quite a bit like you did. I'll give a shout out to my movie, Dolly Lamb, which will be coming out next we're gonna include podcast episodes, I would give a shout out to the unheard episode where Freddie Sayers interviews John Mearsheimer, the professor of international relations, he explains the origins of the Ukraine war and has some really pessimistic predictions about what might happen next. I suggest everyone watch it if they wanna understand this conflict and where it may be going next year.
Jamath, do you have any favorite media for 2022 you wanna share?
I thought Yellowstone kicked ass. Absolutely incredible. There's a I think it's on Hulu, but there's a show with Steve Corel of a little short series called The Patient Oh, very good. I'm watching. A serial killer that kidnaps his psychologist and locks him in his basement to try to help him prevent him killing more people.
And I I thought it was really, really well done. Never have I ever, the
latest season, another just brilliant
offering from Mindy Kaling. She's unbelievable. Those are those are probably the top ones.
What do you got? Friedberg Any media?
Yeah. I read a book this year that I really liked. It's called The Vital Question by a guy named Nick Lane. Someone recommended it to me. It's he's a biochemist, and he kinda talks a a little bit about the origin of life on earth.
It really ties into this idea that there are certain call it principles of physics and statistics that make life predictive and predictable, but I think the way that he kind of walks through how a lot of things emerge in life and and how life ultimately kind of developed on this planet are are are really well showing. So, yeah, I give I give his book a shout out. It was a it was a really good read.
So that book, the vital question is incredible. The other one that he wrote, which is called life ascending, those two books, you must read if you don't wanna be a luddite, in my opinion. Alright. I will -- Also, for those people who don't understand the difference between power and energy, you will learn what that is.
Very good. I have 2 book recommendations putting the rabbit in the hat is Brian Cox. You may know him from secession. He has a great book, and he reads the audio book very enjoyable. I'm halfway through Quintin Tarantino's cinema, speculation, and enjoying it very much.
Sachin will enjoy it tremendously. Okay. And now we do the Rudy Giuliani Award for self immolation. This is for the person who poured lighter fluid and gasoline over themselves and lit themselves on fire for no apparent reason. I go with Kevin O'Leary who secured a $50,000,000 bag from FDX and then decided to try to defend it 18 ways to Sunday, burning whatever reputation he had.
§21The Rudy Giuliani Award for Self-Immolation!
Who do you have? in your Rudy Giuliani Award.
This will be controversial for you guys. I'm gonna go with Elon Musk. I don't think that Elon put himself in the position that he did with bad intentions or without paying attention. I think he's taken on a role in buying and running Twitter that is, you know, principled. And, you know, in his mind and many other people's minds, a really important role that someone needs to play.
Unfortunately, I think his reputation has gotten really hurt because of, you know, that role. He he's not making a lot of friends. and he's not he's causing a lot of reputational damage. He obviously had a lot of good and important things he was working on prior to taking on the additional burden of Twitter And while many people appreciate his doing it, I think that it's causing him a lot of reputational damage. And so yeah.
And I I don't mean to kind of be offensive in saying that, but I think he's he's gotten the
the biggest -- It's certainly been a hard thing to do. It's certainly been a hard thing to do, Zach.
But you're saying self immolation free brew because he took it on himself. He could have just
--
He took it on himself. I'm not saying it's just, like, don't do myself. -- interpretation. Yeah.
Yeah. It's not
it's not like the Rudy Giuliani Giuliani idiocy. I think he's taken on the burden of doing this, and I think it's causing
him a
lot of reputation a lot.
It's an interpretation of the award. What do you got, Shamah? A Saxon, Chamath?
Well, I mean, if if I were to interpret the award, I think way it was originally intended. I think I gotta give it to Hershel Walker this year, unfortunately. And I I wish Republicans would stop winning this award at least Herschel never gave any speeches next to a Dildo shop, but nonetheless.
I am so sorry that I'm so delighted, Saks, that you've been so self aware about the follies of the dying MAGA The last throes of the imagination.
I wanna find some Democrats to give this to. I wanna give it to that brain dead senator from Pennsylvania. What's his name?
Fatterman. Fatterman.
Thank you. I wanted to give it to Fetterman, but he won. So I don't know what I'm supposed to do. You know? It's like, no.
Listen. When when a Republican self emulates like Rudy or Herschel or something like that, they get laughed out of town. And when the Democrat does it like a federal man, they just get elected. So I don't I don't know what to say. Alright,
Shamak. Do you have any final words here?
I mean -- You gotta end
this episode. It's gonna be the longest episode ever. I think it's poor poor producer, Nick.
Whoever signed the papers for the whole search and seizure at Mar a Lago looks kind of like an idiot. So that that was not politically astute.
Okay. I think. You would say the FBI then. Okay. poorly happy, perhaps?
That's actually your brain. That's a great one actually. If we're gonna get serious for a second, the combination of revelations if we're gonna look over this whole year, Remember, Jason, when I I basically spoke up at the time they raided Mar a Lago and said that it was heavy handed and unnecessary. And now you tell my
--
For years, Donald Trump is an idiot Savant minus the Savant. Why all of you guys just project all of this, like, insane genius, evil level stuff. He's not capable of that. this is a simpleton who likes attention. He stole a bunch of souvenirs that he didn't read when
he was invited.
was my position. Hasn't read now, kept in a box downstairs just to say he had them.
That's exactly right.
I was the one who Chamath the souvenir. I know he's a souvenir guy.
You said he was selling secrets to the south?
No. I did not say that. I said my job was souvenirs.
No? You suggested it.
You say I did not.
You did not. No. It's my favorite news. Hold on.
But you
were treating Jared Kushner in a elaborate conspiracy theory.
I'm saying that doesn't look
like it. not a conspiracy theory when you do it.
And and, guys, and this is the same person that basically in the in the beginning of his presidential campaign in 2016, in front of Hillary Clinton, said, absolutely, I bend the laws that you created the tax laws to my favor because I'm not stupid. when she called him a tax dodger. And it turns out after all these years, he was telling the truth.
He basically Once again, the show ends with Trump He's been a great 2022. No.
No. But, honestly, like, it's like, did we learn anything except that these tax laws are egregiously stupid?
And -- Yes.
The only people that are consistently guaranteed to make money in these tax laws are real estate investors. If you put these two things together, a real estate investor who happened to be very poor at his job, which Trump turned out to be, packed 1,000,000,000 of dollars of NOLs that he was able to use to wash his taxes for years years And by the way and he was clearly proud of it. He was just goading the Democrats in not releasing them. They went through all this rigmarole and what did we find out? He had huge NOLs He had huge deductions, and he paid no taxes.
Is that shocking to any of us?
It's like it's like Chapelle said. He came out of the house, told everyone everything you think is going on inside that is going on.
And
went back -- And
then he walked back inside the house.
Yeah. It was pretty great. She probably got it. Alright. Listen.
For David Sachs, The rain man.
4,
the queen of Kinois, Sultan of Science, David Friedberg, and to dictator himself Jamal Polyhopatia. It has been an honor and a privilege. To do this podcast with you gentlemen, this is the longest show in the history of the pod. Enjoy everybody. RIP, producer, Nick's next 48 hours and we'll see everybody next year.
Love you, guys. Happy holidays.
Love you, Basa.
I gotcha. We'll let year winner's ride.
Rainman, David Sattice. We open store sits to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.
besties are gone. That is
my dog I'm have one big huge ordeal because they're all just useless. It's like this, like, sexual friendship that we just need to release somehow. What? You're the big bee. What?
Pure feet. What? We need to get mercies are back.