Wagner rebels, SCOTUS ends AA, AI M&A, startups gone bad, spacetime warps & more

After an opening in which Friedberg hosts in place of Calacanis and the group jokes that the show has become 'the All conspiracy podcast,' the panel turns to the Wagner Group's armed revolt of the prior Friday. Jason sets the factual frame: the Russian paramilitary outfit led by Yevgeny Prigozhin seized parts of Rostov-on-Don, a regional capital of over a million people and headquarters of Russia's southern military district, then advanced toward Moscow before stopping roughly 200 kilometers short. A deal brokered with Belarus's president followed, Prigozhin stood down, was given immunity, and Wagner's fighters were offered the choice of going home or signing with the regular army.

Sacks argues the event was a mutiny with 'coup optionality' rather than a staged show or an imminent regime collapse. His claimed trigger is concrete: Wagner was being folded into the Ministry of Defense, and Prigozhin's men were being made to sign MoD contracts that would have cost Prigozhin income and status. Sacks notes Prigozhin had spent months attacking defense minister Shoigu and general staff chief Gerasimov while pointedly avoiding direct criticism of Putin, and that he marched what analysts now estimate at about 8,000 men, roughly a quarter of Wagner, taking the ministry headquarters and sending a convoy toward Moscow.

The decisive evidence Sacks cites for why it failed is that no one joined Prigozhin: regional governors, Duma members and other generals rallied to Putin, who went on television to call it treason and 'a stab in the back.' Prigozhin's options then collapsed, and Lukashenko brokered exile in Belarus in exchange for his life. Sacks reads Putin's choice to cut a deal rather than crush the revolt as a cool-headed move to avoid images of Russians killing Russians that might have fractured the front.

A sharp disagreement breaks out over Russian opinion. Sacks claims Putin's approval has risen from roughly 65% before the war to about 83%, citing the independent Levada Center, which he stresses Western outlets themselves trust. Jason counters that no one honestly answers a survey from 'a murderous dictator who kills all of his enemies' and controls the entire media apparatus, dismissing a viral patriotic song topping Russian charts as 'complete propaganda.' Sacks concedes he does not know Levada's exact methodology, framing the number as a fact of a public rallying around the flag rather than an endorsement of the war.