2023 Bestie Predictions!

The episode opens in early 2023 with the hosts greeting one another and asking about their holidays. One says he is done with cold-weather vacations and spent the break in Florida, which the group jokingly calls the "free state". The banter is light and mostly in-jokes, ending with the announcement that this is the 2023 predictions episode.

A host observes that whatever the show discusses seems to turn up as a big Wall Street Journal think piece some months later. His examples: last year's talk about Sequoia distributing public equities, which he says the paper now covers as venture investors having sat on enormous sums they could have returned to LPs; and his pick of pod shops and Citadel as 2022 winners, now backed by a report that firms with about 56 billion dollars of AUM made almost 45 billion in revenue over two years, with Citadel Securities near 7.5 billion. These figures are the speakers' recollection of the articles, not checked here.

A host then frames the podcast as the "back channel" that journalists try to get into: the late-night conversation after the event. He moves on to the predictions, recalling that last year Sacks and he picked DeSantis, Chamath picked Xi Jinping and Friedberg picked Putin as biggest political winner, and asks who it will be this year.

Sacks expects gridlock in Washington, so he goes outside the box: his biggest political winner for 2023 is Asian American college applicants. He points to two Supreme Court cases heard on Halloween, against Harvard and UNC, brought by a group called Students for Fair Admissions. In his account, the plaintiffs argue the schools violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act because Asian American applicants are far less likely to be admitted than similarly qualified applicants from other groups; lower courts in Boston and North Carolina rejected this, but the Supreme Court chose to hear the cases.

He predicts the majority will strike down the policies, which he says discriminated against Asian Americans, whom he calls the last group in America where discrimination still seems acceptable. Another host chimes in that the Court will repeal affirmative action. This is a forecast and a political view stated by the speakers, not an outcome.

Asked for his view, a host says affirmative action began with good intentions and he still sees a place for it, but that liberal institutions took it upon themselves to decide which minorities counted. In his telling the original aim was to challenge the establishment's ability to get its children into elite schools, and he sees the issue as classism disguised as racism, citing legacy admissions and, as an example he calls well written about, a five-million-dollar check from a father that got the Kushner son into school.

He argues that kids from emerging lower-middle classes should get a chance and that skin colour is the wrong way to pick them; in his account some Black and Hispanic applicants were admitted while Asian Americans broadly were discriminated against, which he calls a stupid outcome. He expects repeal because case law bars discrimination by institutions that take federal funds, and hopes for a more meritocratic system that still draws a plurality of backgrounds. The legal reading is his own.

Friedberg picks MBS, Mohammed Bin Salman, as biggest political winner, expecting Saudi Arabia to have its most important year in the modern era. He cites a Reuters report, from a few weeks earlier, about deepening discussion of an oil-yuan trade in which Saudi Arabia would sell oil to China and be paid in yuan. Because the country has relationships with the United States, Russia and China, he argues MBS could significantly influence where global currency reserves go.

Another host adds that the Biden administration's stance toward MBS is confrontational. In his account, a request last quarter to ease OPEC Plus with supply cuts produced only a nominal 100,000 barrel-a-day cut, and Saudi Arabia is instead doubling down on getting oil out of the ground and monetizing petrochemicals, so supply will be abundant and US influence is at a low. These are the speakers' characterisations, not verified here.

Friedberg adds that Saudi Arabia's stated aim is to diversify from oil into technology and emerging growth economies, which he links to the Vision Fund and MBS's earlier Silicon Valley visit. If the US blocks tech imports and Saudi investment while China and Russia welcome it and ask only for trades in yuan, he says, that shift will happen, and it gives MBS a real chance to change the global economic dynamic.

A host defends the idea of keeping lines open: whatever one thinks of Trump, he says, Trump spoke with North Korea, China, Russia and MBS, and a leader should be able to talk to anyone while still being able to say that dismembering a journalist like Khashoggi is unacceptable. His conclusion is that foreign policy cannot be rigid and has to keep people at the table.

Chamath says he likes spread trades, so he pairs a biggest political winner with a biggest loser for the Republican nomination: long Nikki Haley, short Ron DeSantis. His first argument is that the House speaker race and the midterm results show people tiring of the lunatic fringes of both parties, which favors moderates.

His second is that, across many nomination cycles, leading very early before the Iowa caucuses has been a negative. He reasons that DeSantis, as the clear front-runner, will be attacked and may decay, while a moderate from the south with a record of winning and normalcy could emerge from the back, as he says Trump did in 16 and Clinton and George W. Bush did before. He thinks a first woman president is likelier to come from the Republicans than the Democrats, whom he calls increasingly judgmental, and he thinks Haley has a shot. This is his prediction and opinion.

A host, taking his turn, makes what he calls a crazy prediction about Trump: Trump will lose 40 to 50 pounds on Ozempic, since everyone loves a weight-loss story, be indicted by Garland, and go after DeSantis over weight and height. The source prints the weight as "£50" and has some garbled words around the indictment. In his scenario Trump wins the 2024 nomination, so the race is Trump versus Biden.

He then adds a twist: a settlement in which Trump agrees not to run and receives a pardon, which he compares to Richard Nixon's pardon. He invites Sacks to respond to these two predictions. All of this is speculation offered as a forecast, not a report of events.

Sacks answers that the Trump prediction is proof of projection, and the hosts trade jokes about whether the Ozempic remark is about Trump or about a host himself. Asked whether anyone has tried Ozempic, one host says yes, and another says everybody with weight issues should look into it, calling it a great new option. The exchange is mostly teasing, and the source here is partly garbled.

A speaker widens the point, saying he has been reading a lot about GLP-1 drugs and that statins are a clear wonder drug, backed in his view by about 50 years of data. He adds that metformin, even taken preventively, has shown benefits for cell regeneration, longevity and glucose management, and he asserts that Americans, given their diet, are all prediabetic. These are his claims about health and science, not verified here.