TikTok + Oracle, how privacy loss will impact society, economy & COVID outlooks for 2021 & beyond, California wildfires & more
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
§01Segment 1
Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of all in, the podcast. Episode 8 besties are here. to talk about tech, economy politics, the election, and our lives in Silicon Valley.
Welcome back to the pod. David Friedberg, Queen of Kinwa is here. From an undisclosed location?
Always a always a joy. Yes. undisclosed location somewhere in the Midwest.
You you bailed on SF after the smoke. You you lasted how many days into the barbecue, into the Orange Cloud?
I left on the Wednesday of the Orange Cloud. and took it was crazy. Took my kiddos, and we're we're waiting it out the fires in the in the Midwest.
Well, it's beautiful the last 2 days here. Also from an undisclosed bestie location, David Sachs, back on the program. Rainman is here.
Yep.
Definitely here.
Good to be here.
Alright. Well, there you go, man, of many words. And speaking of a man of many words, auto off of 7 keynotes this week talking about Spax, the prince of Spax, Chamath Polyhappatthiya, back on the pod.
How are you besties?
Well, we had a little bestie reunion, which I think we can talk about, Jamal, invited us over to have an outdoor bestie reunion.
Yeah. And you gave one of them gonorrhea, and you gave the other
2. Well, we it it's crazy to say, but I literally had to call Chamov 2 or 3 days after he hosted
So socially, by the way, socially distanced dinner outdoors.
Soci distant dinner outdoors. Wonderful. We had some great rib eye. Fantastic. cracked open a nice bottle or or 2 of 1 and the port.
And but but then, what did you do?
Well, then a family member of mine, who shall remain lameless, decided
to go to a party in
San Francisco, and possibly got the corona, and he tested positive. And then I had to get everybody in my house tested twice, Everybody came back negative, but I had to call Shamoff and tell them, listen. I I wasn't exposed, but some members of my family were, Therefore, I might have second hand exposure. I took 2 tests, came back negative 2 times in a row.
Can can I just say, though? It's really crazy. Like, we have to develop all these new social norms, and you're not sure what to say, and you're not you're not sure how to react. And it's like it's it must have been like when, you know, you got a call, and it's like, hey. Listen.
you know, your girlfriend's like, I may be pregnant or, like, you know, somebody's like, hey. Listen. I have an STD. Like, are you just like, what is going on?
I felt like that when I was texting the group chat. It was, like, three of us and I had to text. With my tail between my legs, I think I've been exposed. I'm really sorry, guys.
I think Calacanis is the Greek word for turd in the punch bowl. You know, it's always
--
Code 13th. Yeah. Exactly. I don't know if we can tell the the code 13th.
Oh, I'm
gonna tell the code 13th. Right? I wasn't even there, but I fucking go there.
These are his legendary.
Jason Jason Jason Calacanis gets invited by David Sachs out of his benevolence to come to stay in Hawaii at the 4 seasons. And at somewhere some point during this weeklong vacation, All you hear Christmas day, you hear a shout from the pool from the lifeguard.
Well, no. No. It was it was even before that. We were sitting at the bar. So me and Jay his brother-in-law, we're sitting at the bar having drinks.
And all of a sudden, there's a commotion, and the bartenders, and the staff. And we started hearing people on walkie talkies saying code 13, code
13, People are running. People are running.
We don't we don't know what to make of that.
We think it's a terrorist attack. I mean, literally, in the 4 seasons, it's on a high alert alarms are going off. Boop. Boop.
And then and then we hear okay. Well, we were like we said to the bartender, well, what's a quote 13? And he's like, well, it means that some kid you know, crapped in the pool. You know? Dead number 2 in the pool.
And we're and we're like you know? And then We're like, okay. Well, you know
It was Jason's kids.
Well, so then then I started hearing something about, like, the Saks kids, and I'm like, oh, no.
Saks code 13th.
Yes. If you can get on Saks They they thought it was us, and then it turns out it was it was Jacob's kid. And we were we were never able to get a a a reservation
--
No. But they
-- --
again to
--
Well, it's so funny. It's like, I I bid I went I went there at one point a few years later, and it's a whole ordeal because they said, so how do you guys deal with, like, you know, a code 13. They're like, oh, a code 13. You have to evacuate the whole world. Yeah.
Half the island gets sent to
Here's what had to happen. This is on just to put the code there to your perspective, I I think my ten year old at the time was two years old. my sister-in-law takes the baby in the pool without telling anybody, and the baby's not wearing a swim diaper. And so Basically, a snicker bar floats out of me, and there's a snicker bar in the pool. Hey.
You guys have kids. You know how big these things could get. You're like, how is that possible? That you know, like, a movie, the inner size snicker, a king-size snicker boy is floating in the middle pool. But this is on the December 25th.
These poor people are spending $3000 a night. There is not a single chase lounge by the pool that's not occupied. It is peak capacity at the Four Seasons Hotel on the Big Island or wherever it was. The pool has to be shut down for 4 hours. person has to get in with a hazmat suit, retrieve the Snickers bar.
King sized Snickers has to get out of the bar. Then they have to throw in every chemical known to man so much so that the pool is ruined for Christmas day. And that's the code 13th story. Alright. Getting back to our topics.
TikTok is on the verge of being banned from additional US downloads. The commerce department has announced that it will ban US downloads and business transactions with TikTok and WeChat somehow we check up holding into this. On Sunday, this will seemingly we're going to allow TikTok to operate until November 12th. So they got a little bit of a stay of execution. But, of course, if they can't update in the store, that means there could be any security vulnerabilities that could found between now and then would not be able to be updated.
And, Steve, we Muchin attempting to push through a TikTok deal that'll enable retaining some Chinese ownership. And there's some sort of agreement now where Oracle will have some kind of an oversight board to do continuous third party audits. What does this say, Chamath, about where we're at? And do you believe that you know, a democratic leader, let's say Obama or Biden, would have taken the same approach here. Does it worry you that the government's getting this involved?
Or is this inspiring that the government's putting their foot down and saying, hey. Listen. We're gonna need to have some basic level of reciprocity from China if we're gonna allow you and our reps here.
You know, I think I think it's kind of like You know, like, if you've ever been driving someplace with your significant other and they're like, turn left and you're like, no. No. No. I'm gonna turn right. and then you realize you should have turned left, but then you keep turning right a few more times, then you take a couple more left.
But then you end up at the the same place, but it was complete shit, dumb luck. I feel like we're gonna end up in the same place here with TikTok, which is that I think that the Trump administration probably is doing this, and Donald Trump specifically probably does this more as a demonstration of power. And, you know, American Exceptionalism which I'm not sure is the right reason to do it, but I think the outcome is right, which is that, you know, for years, China has essentially been shut out to American companies unless you effectively just cout out to these guys. And, you know, some companies have, and some companies like you know, Google have not and other companies like Facebook have been totally basically blocked from entering. And so I think it's completely right.
It's it's it's unfair to have the asymmetric market advantage that that Chinese companies have had, and so you have to play hardball to create a different set of rules. And I think this probably gets us to that place. The reason why it's happening is probably more because the TikTok people played that joke on Trump at the Tulsa rally if you had if I had to guess.
Yeah. what do you think, Friedberg? Is this a good sign for America and the globe that you know, in in the Democratic nations of the world that we're gonna put our foot down with China and say, hey. some reciprocity, or you're not gonna be able to participate in our marketplace, or is this purse a personal vendetta from Trump or a little bit of both?
I mean, I don't see how it's anything but a slippery slope forward in the escalation of you know, what's gonna be kind of transpiring between these 2 nations in the the next couple of years and maybe decades. You know, this goes back to the you know, early 2000 when Google and others wanted to enter China and China has for for those who don't know, China has this great firewall. Right? Chinese citizens can't openly act as the rest of the Internet. And China wanted to censor content and censor what what their citizens are accessing.
And so there there's been a back and forth between the tech industry and China going back almost 20 years now to try and figure out how we can bring our services to China, and then China launches a service that's very successful in the US and and TikTok. And I think it's just a you know, a part of the reciprocity equation, which doesn't resolve anything. It only escalates things. So it's unfortunate, but it's just kind of another step in the path I think it's inevitable in front of us here.
Sachs, we'll give you the the final word here. Is this a good thing for humanity, for international relations that China is, you know, having a little bit of a hand check here like, hey. There's gonna be a limit to how you could operate in the West. Or is this a personal vendetta from Trump? And then what do you see going forward?
It's it it it's true that I mean, first of all, our social network are not allowed over there. So I don't think we need to feel bad about, you know, not allowing their social networks over here. But Besides reciprocity or or the lack of it, I think the deeper reason for this is just around data security and and how the You know? And I think the the the CCP has given us adequate grounds here to ban not just TikTok, but, you know, apps like that. because president Xi himself declared this policy of civil military fusion, which means that any business in China, any business asset there, including data, can be appropriated to serve the the ends of the Chinese military or the communist party.
§02Segment 2
And, you know, the the CCP has set up this vast surveillance apparatus over its own citizens. It's asserted extraterritorial sovereignty over former Chinese citizens, meaning dissidents. So the the Chinese diaspora anywhere in the world. They've asserted sovereignty over that. And, you know, recently, there was a pretty remarkable speech by the FBI director, Christopher Ray, describing, you know, operation Fox hunt, which is the Chinese effort to track down and presumably ultimately punished Chinese dissidents anywhere in the world.
And as part of that, the the Chinese have sort of weaponized AI and social media. And so He also described I mean, this is, like, pretty amazing. I didn't you know, that the that the Equifax hack, which collected data on something like sensitive data on over a 100,000,000 Americans, the Chinese were behind that. I didn't know that. And so, you know, it it it's true it's true that, you know, no one piece of data poses by itself a risk to to to the security of of America or Americans.
But it's sort of the systematic collection and aggregation of the data and hacking collectively that I do think pose a security threat. And and I think
You gotta stop right there, Zach. actually an individual's data could absolutely be compromised if they have access to your passwords because through the clipboard, they have access to your phone role. If a young person had photos that were, say, compromising in their photo role, the phone is, you know, basically given access to that. They upload that. Now you could use that as Compromat against a senator's child or against a senator themselves.
And this seems like an abstract thing, but this is exactly what the Chinese and Russians have been doing for a very long time. If you've seen the series, the Americans, and you go back to the eighties to see the weaponization of you know, somebody who is in the closet who is gay during that time or somebody who's having extramarital tear, you could compromise anybody with just sexual comprimont And you hear we're giving access to hundreds of millions of people's photo libraries
by the clipboards.
By the way, you just said something that's really scary, which is, like, if you're if you're the Chinese and You know? They have the patience to play the long game. You just aggregate and collect this thing for 30 years. On the off chance that one of these people becomes important, I mean, what is the real problem?
-- that train candidate.
Just you you just surveilled
300,000,000
Americans and just say, you know what? We'll take our shot. I mean, it's gonna cost us a few $1,000,000,000 a year in storage. Who cares?
Yeah. I'm not like, is is there really a case that what they're doing in the TikTok app? I don't know how much you guys have read some of the studies on on what they are actually pulling. But is there really a case that what they're pulling is particularly different than what would be pulled by pretty much any other social app or photo sharing app on your phone. There was some, you know, kind of insight that, hey.
They were capturing the Mac address, but that was up until last November. After November, they the the app kind of refreshed and stopped doing that, and it was a hack that some number of apps out there were already doing. But my understanding is the way that they've built the app. It's the same kind of ad tracking type approach that that a lot of apps are taking.
I I think you I think it's a naive position that because we haven't caught them doing something nefarious that they aren't actually doing something nefarious right now. If you look at what MBS did to Jeff Bezos sending that I guess it was a movie file or an image that then wound up hacking his WeChat in his phone. Like, Yep. I think they've built the software. I think it's purpose built, whether it's WeChat or TikTok to have these backdoors.
It there's no way the Chinese government is not influencing that.
Guys, Look. If you if you had to bet, David, what do you think the odds are between 0 and a 100 with a 100 being absolute certainty? that there are foreign national spies that work at Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft.
That's my point. it's is it I mean, look. I think that there are -- No.
No. But do you think it's a
100%? Oh, of course, it's a 100.
Yeah. I think at at every one of them, it's probably a 100%. Yeah. At least one you know, foreign national that has a connection to intelligence in China, yeah, it's probably a
100%. 100%.
So my point is TikTok is a 100 chine 100% Chinese. So we don't even have to guess whether it's Excuse me.
It's on my company.
My my my point is, like, if if if there is some, you know, access to personal data that we're all concerned about being compromised, at literally every other fucking app company
-- Yeah. But every other app company is not connected to You know?
But the
point that Shamov just made is that they very well could be. The fact is we as individuals have exposed all of our personal and private data to 6 or 7 companies.
I think you're saying the mini really right thing. It is a this is a canary in the coal mine for a bigger issue. This is why I'm saying, I think that, you know, Trump is probably acting out of an expression of power, but I think what we're realizing is actually this is about core fundamental privacy and the safety and security of each of us as individuals, and it should start a bigger conversation like Privacy I I I I really do think this. Privacy is the killer feature of the
2020.
Right.
You know what David just said about, like, you know, if you're if you're a Chinese x National, the idea that you're like, look. I've been a citizen of 3 countries. The idea Sri Lankan government, all of a sudden, may not like what I have to say and can spy on me or, you know, root my phone or steal my data, It really disturbs me like, I'm sorry, but no. Go fuck yourself. Like, I left that country for a reason.
Yeah. So I think I think the republican to watch on this is well, besides Trump, I guess, is there's a senator Josh Hawley who is -- Crazy. Well, he's he he's sort of a a critic of of big tech. And I think he's got some interesting things to say. But but in this particular area, he is proposing legislation to regulate the types of information that can be collected by applications that are based in countries that are fundamentally hostile or adversarial to the US.
And that to me seems like the right policy because, you know, it's not just about TikTok. It's about all the apps that collect information on Americans that can be appropriated by you know, the Chinese Communist Party or Russia or Iran, places like that. And so I think we need a more holistic policy here than just banning TikTok. And it may not be necessary to ban TikTok if you had the right limitations placed on them. But but I but I but I but I do think this this this whole sort of a compromised solution with Larry Ellison and Oracle, that makes no sense to me.
This idea that, you know, Ellison will own percent of the company, but nothing else really changes. It'll still be based in China. A Chinese company will still be Chinese engineers based in China who you know, and they still own 80% of it. I mean, how how does that really address the the data security issue?
Don't you think, David, that that's just basically a way of just it's a wealth transfer to Larry Ellison, which I think is amazing. I mean, if I could totally
do it.
Yeah. It's ByteDance. It's no. It's it's it's it's ByteDance.
-- put it in your lap. Yeah.
No. It's it's ByteDance it's ByteDance paying political protection money
--
Yeah.
--
to Larry Ellison to be their bodyguard in this political process. But And I but that's why I I don't think it's gonna fly. I mean, Hawley has already said that it's not good enough for him. And so even if I think. And it doesn't live up to to Trump's stated criteria even though he seems to be supportive.
--
ultimately a CFIUS ruling sex? Is that who's gonna make the final call on this or Trump have sole executive kind of authority on on foreign security on security grounds to kinda block it. Does it go to CFIUS?
I don't know. That's a good question. I think CFIUS disapproves m and a. Right?
It has it has to approve it. Yeah. I mean, so you're right. I mean, there are there are members of Congress that are all gonna need to be convinced to get this thing done.
Well but Cynthia's approve m and a. I didn't think they could, like, block applications
--
This as of as of last year, every investment triggers CFIUS. It's it's a weird new thing that happened. I was involved in a company recently -- Yeah.
But that's a secondary to the national security power that the --
The Trump may have?
So this is almost like a two tier kind of thing. One is to approve one is for it to you know, for but Israel to be cool with it. National Security terms have been second is the antitrust issues.
if we just go back a second, talking about the broad, you know, as Timoth called it, kind of his canary in a coal mine, you know, I don't know how many of you guys use Amazon Echo or a Google Home or Amazon Fire TV or Nest Thermostat. Every every single every single one of them has ambient audio listening on it. Every single one of them, even And another thing people don't realize is every speaker is actually a microphone as well as a speaker. You can actually listen on any house speaker, whether it's a Sonos device or or what have you. And so we've got you know, our homes are already wired.
Amazon Fire TV runs on fucking Android. I mean, there is a hundred ways into your home as it is. It seems to me, like, there there's a significant concern about how much data we are already exposing that's being highlighted here, I don't think that there's you know, it's sort of like playing the where you try and pop the hamsters in the game. It's like, at some point, we're gonna realize these things are here everywhere, and it's not just a a company. But it is how we are living our lives now and how technology is kind of capturing every piece of information about everything we do.
This is this is, I go back to this. Somebody will take this, or many people will take this and run with it. But I think that there is an enormous amount of money that consumers will pay for the assurance of anonymity and privacy. I don't really know how it's expressed, David, but, like, you know, for example, like, if I could get a phone that was completely locked down and encrypted and
Like, a burner phone is what you're talking about, and, like, a lot of people are now doing this. They take a second phone. They put a v p VPNs are the are the first step notes.
I -- And
you're seeing --
Like, I tried
to -- -- very popular.
Well, like, I try to use signal. I try to use FaceTime audio. I'll even use WhatsApp now just because these things are end to end encrypted. And I have nothing particularly important or interesting to say or hide, but I just don't like the idea that in the in the open wild, I'm I just feel very vulnerable to data breaches more than any other kind of breach. I mean, I had this conversation with somebody that was you know, sort of helping me lock down my WiFi network.
§03Segment 3
You know? And for a long time, I only had one endpoint. And all of a sudden, he's like, look, let's have a a home and a guest. But but in that conversation, what he was saying is the the the biggest form of theft isn't like burglaries anymore. It's basically people just having packet sniffers outside your house because they can get access to everything
and anything. And -- Can I ask you can I ask you a
question? There's a there's a book by a guy named Stephen Baxter is a science fiction book years ago in Arthur Clark called The Light of Other Days, and these guys developed a wormhole technology. They could put it in any house and they could see and listen to everything. And suddenly, the technology became kind of ubiquitous, so everyone could create a wormhole anywhere and see and hear everything. So effectively, information was completely transferable and free and available to everyone.
And the book kind of highlights how society changed in that context So in a world where you see where everyone is and what everyone is doing and saying, there's no longer any notion of information asymmetry And the way people operate and behave changes, because so much of our life is dependent on people not knowing things about us that we know. So when your when your employee is gonna go interview for another job, and they tell you they'll go to the dentist, you can say, like, hey. That's not true. And the guy says, you know what? I'm actually thinking about looking for another job because I hate working for you.
You suck. So everyone starts changing kind of how they behave. Do you think that 50 years from now, that's where the world heads? Do you really think it's possible to stop this train in its tracks and not end up in a world of what I would call kind of like hypertransparency where all information becomes kind of because it's already being collected everywhere about everyone, and it's only
-- I think it's fine. --
rising a financially.
People are gonna start I I I think that people are gonna start turning their homes into, like, those skiffs, you know, sensitive compartmented information facilities always here about, like, senators going into the skiff kind of situation for private stuff. I think, like, people are gonna start taking this very seriously. as they get compromised, you know, time after time and embarrassing. And you could see it with Apple making it their marketing strategy. Apple's marketing
strategy now. -- the society changes.
Oh, I think it will.
-- already changed already with, like, people getting their phones hacked and their, you know, news being leaked. People are now normalize that.
I think it makes the world a much shittier place because it basically robs us of our own independence and our fundamental right to privacy. And I just think that's a really bad outcome. And so you know what? Like, if if, like, the need for likes and tweets and followers leads me to a place where I lose privacy, I would just say shut them all down now. Because I think that people's self worth is much bigger than what they understand it to be if they're willing to make that trade off.
But, yeah, most people appreciate that.
Well, I don't know. I I would also I I would also just add that just because there's more transparency doesn't mean that it serves the interests of truth. Like, Jason said earlier, this information can be used to create, you know, ops, you know, and -- Right.
--
manipulate. And you know, it's and so yeah. I don't you know, it like like Trotsky said, just because you're not interested in war doesn't mean war isn't interested in you. I mean, this data can be collected to run operations on people that don't serve, you know, the interests of greater transparency or the
trust. I think people don't think from 1st principles on this topic. This is sort of like the the idiotic orthodoxy of Silicon Valley, which is like they they wrap themselves in the flag of transparency like it needs something, but they have no real idea what it really means at scale and at the limit. And -- Right.
--
you know, there's one thing about getting access to a fucking Looker dashboard. Who cares? Totally. You know? And but the word transparency is used for that the same way that it's used for David exactly what you just said.
And there are 2 completely different things that completely different meanings and The latter's implications are so much more important. And we need to think about this from 1st principles because I think people's inherent identity as human beings ultimately gets put at risk over time.
It should absolutely be the case that the social network or anybody collecting data gives an op this is the way I would form the legislation. If you are running a service like Facebook, Twitter, Google, for free and you're monetizing through advertising, you have to provide an off like, what what they do provide -- Does it monetize? -- monetize.
Oh, listen. If you
monetizing your service to advertising services, then I think you should be forced to give a option for whatever the amount of that monetization is a year to pay us a subscription. So for example, if Facebook makes $80 per person,
You you lost you lost this at monetization, Jason. Sorry. I think let's it's it's over. It's over. Next segment.
Next segment. Next segment.
Next segment.
Next segment. Next segment. Alright. Well, just as we wrap up here on this segment, Kevin Systrom might he's in the running apparently to take over for TikTok. Is that a good idea, Saks?
He's I I think you noticed Systrom.
I I think it's a pretty It's a it's a dumb idea unless the company literally becomes an American company. I don't know why. You've made this point in the context of Kevin Mayer. Like, if if the if he's working for ByteDance, he's working for the ByteDance board directors, which reports the CCP. It's just why why would someone who's in his position when a sacrifices, independence to do that.
Yeah. It makes no sense. I mean, that's this is becoming the big task on everybody's moral compass, especially Hollywood, which is changing the ending of movies to satisfy the CCP. Like, literally the people who are the biggest virtuous signals in the world Celebrities, Hollywood.
China China knows how to use its market access. We don't. We just threw open our markets to their products. which caused, you know, us to lose our whole, you know, industrial, you know, manufacturing capacity. We didn't demand anything really in exchange for that.
Whereas in order to get access to China, you have to say and do the right things or certainly to to not criticize them. And so they they know how to u as we saw with the NBA and the whole Daryl Morey thing. you know, they they know how to use their market access.
Alright. Well, let's go on to the economy here. We've been sheltering in place essentially for 6 months. And now people are starting to talk about, hey, maybe we need to do another lockdown. And Obviously, this economic challenge is being felt very differently.
In some places, it's an opportunity Obviously, a lot of people with SaaS software and, you know, people who work behind keyboards are having a renaissance and a lot of the economy is pouring into their keyboards, while restaurants, retail, and anybody who has to work in the real world is part of what's becoming essentially a permanent unemployed class that perhaps this is starting to look like a dry one of UBI. What are your thoughts, Jamaf, on this permanent unemployment situation?
I have a I have a bunch of thoughts here. Let me just go give you this stream of consciousness. Like, Jerome Powell gave a speech. I think it was 2 or 3 weeks ago in Jackson Hole, and he basically said, like, look. the Federal Reserve is taking a completely new posture on rates.
And, you know, they they basically clarified that in explicit detail just just a few days ago. And they basically said, we're keeping rates where they are until at least 2023. you know, my personal view is for rates are gonna stay basically at 0 for the next half decade. And I think it's probably pretty likely that we're gonna see rates stay at 0 probably a full decade. So what does that mean?
Okay. Well, in a typical recession, what happens is you don't know where the bottom is. Right? Things sort of sort of decay. They get a little bit worse.
They get a little bit worse. They get a little bit worse. Then things bottom out and then, you know, you start to grow. And you can use interest rate policy to kind of help navigate how soft the landing is as well as how fast the recovery That's sort of like classic economics and how bankers in the markets and all these folks used to work, and it eventually would trickle into Main Street. Now we just have none of those things.
We have rates 0. They're not gonna go anywhere. They're not gonna go up. They're probably not gonna go down. They're gonna kinda just stay where they are.
That's one thing. 2nd is we priced in the bottom, which is the 1st month of the coronavirus. We took the markets basically assuming, oh, there's no growth. And now we've priced things back as if they'll recover. The rating agencies are out to lunch.
They've basically said, you know what? I'm gonna look out till 2021 or 20 to give me a reason to justify not to downgrade you so that you can continue to raise more debt, which, by the way, is free. So you have all these dynamics where I think the capital markets are in an expansive mood and an expansive mode. And in that, I actually think there's a real bid to employment because there isn't really that many ways now you can, without just getting completely ripped apart, put money to work. And so the the the real earnest capital allocation strategy that's left for most CEOs is to actually buy things, invest in things, try more things, and all of those, I think, leaked in net employment.
So in general, I'm kind of constructive and bullish. And I don't think that this idea that there's a permanent unemployment class sticks around.
Freeberg, what are your thoughts? Obviously, a lot of Americans work in retail. You know, we obviously have all these restaurant workers who are out of work, and travel is now hitting the end of the furloughs at a lot of these different airlines, etcetera. What's your thought on this unemployment, Middle America? catastrophe?
Well, I don't think happiness comes from, you know, absolute standards of living. I think happiness arises from one's relative standard of living, whether that's relative to how you lived last year or how you're living relative to your neighbor. and and seeing some progression over time is the only thing that keeps people happy. It's otherwise society decays. So the notion of some sort of flatlined or even flatlined at inflation adjusted basic income level for a large number of people will inevitably result in kind of what we're trying to prevent, which is, you know, some sort of decay.
§04Segment 4
It's societal decay. we have to resolve the the opportunity framework for people, which is how do you give people an opportunity to kind of progress in their lives. and earn more over time and have access to, you know, doing more with themselves while they're here on planet Earth. I mean, that's just what humans need. So, you know, maybe there's a short term fix, but I think we've got some structural things to fix to kind of enable opportunities and and give people kind of an inherent, you know, kind of a step ladder in life.
I heard a really dark theory a few years ago, which is if we do this, we're gonna resolve to a world where we're gonna have a bunch of people playing video games because then only way you can get people to feel like they're progressing in their lives is to give them more medals on their video games and give them a higher ranking and score. And that's where society kinda gets to to kinda keep people psychologically kind of satiated. And it's a pretty dark, you know, sad place if that's where we end up. It's like a bad episode of Black Mirror, but we've had a few episodes of Black Mirror this year. So -- Mhmm.
-- you know,
we'll see.
-- like Ready Player 1 with the masters. We're playing video games instead of actually going out in the world.
Totally.
Yeah. Saks, what what's your thought on, you know, just the next 2 years, let's say, and how this all shakes out. and this will give us a good segue into the coronavirus and and where we stand right now with this potential second lockdown and the impact that might have psychologically on people. and also on the economy.
There's not gonna be a second lockdown. It doesn't make any sense. And even if there were people aren't gonna support it, certainly any of the red states aren't gonna do it. I guess the blue states may they they still haven't, you know, sort of unlock downs. So maybe that gets more protracted in places like California.
But but it we're we're not gonna go back into lockdowns and people won't support it. And I think thing that we basically figured out that should have been obvious months ago now is that coronavirus is really like 2 different diseases in terms that affects on on people. So for elderly people and for people with risk factors, it's very dangerous. You know, I'm very worried about my parents and you know, for for people in that group, they have to take, you know, extreme precautions. But for young, healthy people without risk factors, it's it's not been that deadly It's it's very unpleasant.
It's a very bad 2 weeks. But but, you know, for example, if you look at the data now on on colleges coming back, there's been some reports that the virus is spreading like wildfire and college campuses. That's true. But hospitalizations and and deaths have not gone up. And so because this is not that It's just not that deadly to to to younger people.
And so I think this idea of shutting down the whole economy to protect people at risk is This seems like overkill. And I think if we had to do it all over again, we wouldn't have done lockdowns. We just would have protected that risk people.
We've still consistently had a 1000 deaths a day. We thought this might go down. Were your thoughts on Americans just being k with that that basic death toll sex.
Well, I mean, any death is is obviously bad and tragic and, you know, and statistically, there are gonna be people who who die even who are in the, you know, Loders group. So for sure. But, you know, but we've had about 200,000 deaths. The original estimates from this virus were 2 to 3000000. So it's I guess my point is not that it's not bad, but it's you know?
But that it's, you know, much less deadly than I think was originally thought.
There was an argument that that's not deaths directly attributable to coronavirus. Right? And that the vast majority of of those folks had comorbidities and that, you know, the the primary driver this is an argument many have made. I'm not gonna take a strong point. But, you know, 85 percent plus of folks have significant comorbidities.
And, you know, this virus may be kind of has a contributing factor to their death. But if let's assume everyone in the United States had coronavirus today, then every death that was reported today would be reported as a coronavirus death. And so they're testing a lot of folks you know, in the hospital finding that they have coronavirus, it's un you know, it's very difficult to then prove that the reason that they died or the sole reason that they died was coronavirus.
If you had to pick a percentage free break, where would you put it? Half of all deaths, if you didn't have to guess.
But that's my point is I don't think it's one thing. Right? I I'm not sure that it's someone goes into the hospital with coronavirus, and they've also got severe diabetes, heart disease, cancer. They're on chemotherapy. I mean, you could list the other things they might have, what caused their death?
You know, you can't as as a coroner, it's very difficult to say this one thing caused the death. But when they test that person and they find that their coronavirus positive, they're that number is now being counted in the statistics that say that was a coronavirus death that day, and coronavirus is so prevalent in the United States right now it's such a significant part of the population. It's also very difficult to say, hey, guys. Like, you know, these deaths are so I I'm not trying to belittle the fact that people are absolutely dying and they wouldn't have died if not for coronavirus. That is absolutely happening.
But it's very difficult to say what is the net effect on life right now we're still learning a lot about how this virus interacts with different people based on their genetics and based on their disease state and and and other factors.
let me ask you one more way for you, Freeburger, and then I'll I'll give it over to Chamath, which is Freeburger, your estimation as a scientist and somebody is a, I would say, a man of science on the call here. are you optimistic about us coming out of coronavirus in 2021? And what's your best outlook for a return to normalcy. If you had to pick a time when it feels like we can go to a warriors game or play cards regularly or go to the world series of poker, Wendy, do you have a a a time period where you think that could possibly happen?
It's all politics and social behavior. It has nothing to do with science. Like, after 9:11, there were no more serious, like, terrorist attacks on the United States, but our fucking lives changed dramatically. We go sit in TSA lines and know, get our asses swabbed when we get on an airplane now, and that's still going on 20 years later. So I'm I'm pretty sure there's a lot of change that's here to stay in the US because of coronavirus and will be even after everyone gets vaccines and the deaths drop below 10 a day and yada yada.
So you know, I'm I'm not convinced that this is like, hey. Here's the date. We're all gonna be out of it, and then we're safe because people are psychologically scarred. Behavior has changed businesses have changed. The landscape of how we work as a society has changed, and that's not going away.
So it's it's it's it's not like we're gonna go back. I think like we're going forward into a different world where we operate differently much as what happened after
9:11. Wait. What's your take on that, Chamath?
I think that David's right that, you know, were it but for coronavirus, I think a lot of these people that died would still be alive. And so, you know, I don't think it really matters how much of the blame we're trying to ascribe to it. It's just that it was a meaningful nontrivial contributing factor. So these debts are avoidable, and we have to deal with that. The second is I don't think what we know what the peak to trough looks like because we haven't really gone through a real full blown flu season yet.
You know, coronavirus came to America at the tail end of the winter. and it's gonna be, I think, tough to figure out what it's gonna do in October, November, December, January, February when it's really cold in many parts of the United states. And, you know, whatever effects again, we still don't know it in totality, but whatever effects the warm weather had in muting it or whatever mutation muted it, may change. So I tend to think it's another 18 to 24 months of this posture, but Friedberg is really right, which is, like, this is what's so sad, which is when you could point a finger and look at somebody and say, you, you're the cause. it was much easier to react and create rules and create boundaries as uncomfortable or as inconvenient as they were and live by them.
And because this is more nameless and faceless, it's impossible.
So -- Alright. Well, here's some good news. I was able to acquire I've been on a little investigative journalism kick asking people if they have access to rapid testing kits i e. they have them in Korea. And I was able to get and I'm curious your thoughts on this, Friedberg, the rapid response, Liberty COVID 19 IgG slash IgM tests cassettes.
And they cost 15 to 20 bucks each, and they take 10 minutes They're easy to use.
I mean, I've had those since March, and they cost 50¢ each. So
So these are now officially available though in the United States. You had those from some other country. Correct?
I got from China, and I got from the US, and I got from Korea. And and and there these things are just made everywhere. Do and they're like, There these are the antibiotics. Right? Yes.
Yeah. The so there's a paper that was published at UCSF. I I got an acknowledgment because of my donations to support the research, and it showed that it these tests have actually very good specificity and the sensitivity is is gonna be, call it,
85%,
but these are antibody tests in and further research has shown that not everyone has the same antibody response after getting infected, and there's a relationship between how severe the disease is for you and and various other factors. So and these will only show up typically, you know, days to weeks after you get infected. the antigen tests, which are the more common kind of ones that everyone's looking for now, are these tests that can actually find the virus itself and so they'll take a swab of your nose or some saliva from your mouth and see if there's any virus in there. And it's a much, much lower sensitivity than the PCR test, which is the expensive, you know, lab test. But it can be done on a stick, and it's a good enough thing for letting people in to say a football game.
§05Segment 5
And our our a good friend of ours just texted me and told me that they're doing this at the the UT Austin game. They're using this antigen test to let people into the the football game today, so or this weekend. So it's getting kind of more widespread use.
And so when we have those tests that scales, what will the world look like for Brieberg?
I don't know. You'll get just like the TSA. You'll get swabbed and, you know, these things. It it's great business to be in, by the way. If you guys, you know, wanna spark a Korean antigen test is these things are gonna sell, like,
crazy. Yeah. There's a company that I heard of through a friend which had it's an Israeli company. I never followed up on it. which was effectively a breathalyzer, which would be could you just imagine that would be incredible.
Right?
Right.
You just breathe in few seconds.
We've talked about this in our chat group. There are there are startups like was it Quidel, Hemodius, Q, who've got these little, you know, 2 or $300 little handheld readers, and the cartridges are basically mouse swabs or lower nails nasal swabs, you know, cost 10 bucks. And I think, you know, I think that they'll be they're gonna be rolling out over the few months. And assuming we can scale the production of them, I think they will be everywhere. And, you know, it'll I don't think it'll be a government mandated thing.
So I don't think the government will get us act together. But it'll be the kind of thing where you go shopping at a store or whatever, and they'll they'll be early adopters or a restaurant. They'll start using it. People will realize, well, wait. I don't wanna get swapped three times a day, so then they'll get some sort of, like, receipt or voucher they can take with them to the next place.
And so I I think, you know, I I'm I'm, like, actually like I think I'm more optimistic than you guys about COVID right now. I think that whether it's because of these rapid tests or because of treatments coming, Or just this fundamental fact about comorbidities, again, not absolving not not saying that COVID isn't serious, but this is the fact that we've learned. that it's, you know, that it it's it's really deadly primarily for people who have comorbidities. I think for all of these reasons, I think COVID's gonna be a distant memory by next summer. I really do.
I think I think -- -- too? What's that?
You've you think behavioral changes as well, like businesses and movie theaters and -- Yeah.
Yeah. I think I think people we I I think people will largely be back to what they were doing last summer or by next summer. I think we're gonna have, like, you know, call it a 6 month period where, you know, we we do these rapid tests just to make sure. And But but I but I think as the case rate starts dropping off, things will kinda revert back to to where they were. I mean, the the the question to ask is kind of, you know, Which trends were there before COVID and have been accelerated?
Like, I would say, the the move from, like, death of retail, the shift to ecommerce, That feels to me like it's here to stay. But, you know, food delivery, things like that. But there was no trend of people not going to sports games anymore. You know? The and I think, like, stuff like that will just snap right back.
I don't know. I don't know about you guys. I'm still, like, feeling fucked up by the whole thing. You don't really realize how much you're psychology has changed until you kinda reflect on decisions and behaviors. Like, there's still a fear factor that I think needs to kinda be ironed out, but you know, we'll see how long it takes for people.
It's just, like, it's so different when you're so used to just waking up and hopping on Zoom for work and avoiding people and putting masks on when you go walk your fucking dog. I mean, it's like
--
Yeah. -- you know, it's it's gonna be hard to kinda change out of that overnight.
Well, I think there there's get I think this idea of the greater flexibility around working arrangements, ability to work from home. I think offices will become a little bit more like co working spaces for a single company where people come in 3 days a week and work from home a couple days a week. I think there'll be a permanent flexibility. But but I also think that people wanna get back to work, and they want it back to offices, and they wanna interact people, and I think everyone's gonna be excited to do that again. It's not like everyone's just gonna be working from home forever.
So I, you know, I I think, again, I next summer is kind of my my date for when things are are back to Back to normal?
Well, this has been certainly driving a lot of our politics right now. You've probably saw the book that came out with the tapes of Trump saying that, you know, he was trying to play it down. Sacks as a lifelong Republican? What were your thoughts when the Republican presidential candidate and the Republican president said, hey. I'm trying to play this down when he was at the same time saying he was deadly serious.
Does that make you worry about Trump as a candidate? And and what do you think that's gonna how that might play into the must have been disappointing for you to hear your candidate, Trump say, at the same time, this is deadly, and I wanna play it down.
Well, Trump Trump's leadership on this has been a little bit erratic for sure. And and by the way, let's go back and remind the viewers here that in the first pods we are doing back in April, I think we kinda nailed what the right policy response should be. I wrote a blog on April 2nd talking about that mass should be required that that was the right response. But we also said that lockdowns very quickly after the start of lockdown so that it was excessive. You know?
And that what we should do is be be going all in on mass, not lockdowns. I certainly would have liked to have seen Trump get that right several months earlier. That being said, let's not get everybody else who got this stuff wrong too. I mean, you look at CDC, you know, or WHO, we hit talked about this on a previous pod. I mean, WHO was was also unclear about mass and and Fauci, I guess, now retroactively saying that he didn't think that mass were necessary because he was trying to prevent a run on supplies.
I mean, the whole the whole response of the health care establishment, they were all they were all, like, really bad. And so I have a greater degree of forgiveness for people who made mistakes back in March or April. But what I think is hard to forgive now are these people who are promoting the wrong policies now that we know so much more? And, I mean, at this point, I would I think that COVID is COVID policy is a net plus for Trump in this campaign because the the other side of it is is is is these permanent lockdowns. You know, there's just an article in was a foreign policy saying that we need to go back to lockdowns.
And I think Biden's said that we need to have lockdowns again. And, you know, his policy would be to listen to the experts, but all these experts again we're wrong about so many things. And and so, you know, again, I think this this idea of permanent lockdowns, if that is the alternative to Trump will help Trump win.
And so you don't think that this one word bug and and that kind of stuff plays into the election or the debates in the coming weeks?
I I think it's sort of priced into the stock. You know? I mean, look, if it weren't for COVID, I think that If you go back to, like, January, February when Trump gave that state of the union speech, his ratings were the highest they had been. The economy was on fire. You know, he kinda it looked like he was on cruise control to winning reelection, and then COVID happened and, you know, and his ratings went down to their to their lowest point.
And and so I think he already paid the price for, you know, the the let's call it inconsistent leadership that that Woodward described. So I think that's priced in. And and now the question is if the economy gets good enough fast enough And the other side is on the side of lockdowns, and Trump is on the side of reopening. You know, I I again, I think COVID policy becomes a net plus for him.
Shamatha, 538 has in its simulation, 77 wins and a 100 for Biden. You think that's accurate?
Yeah. I mean, I I I think that until the debates, I think that this thing is basically where it's been for a long time. And if if Biden flubs the debate and basically comes out as, you know, intellectually too inconsistent to be voted in by a morality of Americans. He's done for and Trump's gonna win. So he can't have these, you know, verbal gaps and it's basically seem like he's a you know, a senile octogenarian.
If he does come off that way, he's going to lose. But if he doesn't, then look. Many of the moments you see him now, he's actually pretty crisp That probably gets the job done because like I said, I think more people just want a non Trump alternative than want the Trump alternative. even within the Republican Party. And look like preference falsification can cut both ways.
All the people that said they weren't gonna vote for him, but then did. you know, there's also probably a cohort of people that now feel obligated when they came out of the woodwork as supporting him. Now they just feel like it's easier to be publicly supporting him, but then in the they may go the other way. So it all kind of works in both directions. But I I still think on the margin, Biden is the Biden is a favorite.
And, you know, as a
-- How different will the world look, Chamath, in your estimation, yeah, under a Biden presidency? We get to January 1st. How different does the country feel? Is it gonna be some great relief? Is it gonna be some great joy like when Obama won?
No. No.
No. What do you think
the feeling is in the country and the reality is? No. All these things are emotional overreactions in both directions. The reality is that if you if you actually graft substantive policy that affects your everyday life, the magnitude of the impact of the presidency has been shrinking since the 19 eighties. I think the most impactful president of our lifetimes our lifetimes.
So, you know, seventies onwards was Reagan, and it's basically been decaying ever since. And so I think, you know, I think that the the job of the presidency is mostly window dressing except for foreign policy. That matters less and less, and I'll tell you why that matters less and less because all the things that the president used to, you know, really govern. Like, foreign policy was a byproduct of a whole bunch of other things. For example, our entire posture on the Middle East, which has been a fucking shit show, where our entire posture on Russia was in part because of our energy policy.
And in a world of sustainable energy, those entire regions are not important anymore.
So it doesn't matter. them fend for themselves. We do not need to be involved.
They're they're going to. They're going to devolve because they're gonna have to suck out all the oil out of the ground to try to monetize it before wind and solar and everything else become the dominant form of of energy. And so if you take energy policy off the table, all of a sudden, the national security interests to care about large spots of the world go to 0. Right? So so then there's less and less from present to it.
§06Segment 6
It's pretty pretty pretty short, isn't it?
Yes. So so my my my my point is the the surface area of the impact of the president is shrinking, and it shrinks as technology like, if you think about it, what is driving foreign policy and national security policy changes over the last 10, 15 years, definitely over the next 40 or 50 is technology. Right? If we get if we get, for example, if we get any form of, like, carbon sequestration at scale broadly available, you're gonna have a complete resurgence of Western Economies if that technology is invented in the United States or Western Europe.
Friedberg, quickly, you'd think that Biden is gonna win? And then what do you think the country feels and looks like into a Biden presidency? And then let's move over to energy and sustainable energy and carbon after that?
I don't know. You know, I'll say the same thing I've said in the past. I I don't think the the notion of a sense of relief is is realistic. I I don't think this is about people think it's about Trump, but Trump is the product of what it's all really about. So I'll just, you know, kinda highlight, I think, you know, Biden is is a call them instead of thinking about things as Democrats and Republicans and left and right, if we think about it as kind of populism and free marketism and in the middle of centrism, you know, we're probably taking a notch towards centrism.
And at the end of the day, the march towards populism seems to be continuing. And, you know, whether Trump is kind of the product of that march or maybe the next one will be Elizabeth Warren or AOC. It's kind of the same thing in my opinion. But I I think that's the bigger kinda concern is, you know, how do we, again, keep general generally keep most people in the United States like they can progress in life, feeling like they can find happiness in life, and feeling like there's opportunity for them to kind of you know, achieve their objectives. And if they don't feel like they're getting it, they're gonna try and wrap it all up.
And unions will continue to scale and AOC will become the vice presidential nominee in 2024, and, yeah, they gotta
-- A free break, what are your thoughts on the wildfires, global warming, and the politics of all that, and then we'll go to cancel culture with you, Saks.
California has
33,000,000
acres of forest land. It's about a 100,000,000 acres in total land. So forest make up about a third of our land So far, we're we're burning 3a half 1000000, so about 10% of our acres. When we burn an acre, we release about 15% of the carbon that's stored in that acre into the atmosphere. So thus far, if you do the math on that, we've released about as much CO2 as we've as the California cars release in a year by the wildfires.
And the politics we're seeing play out. So it's it's it's a significant problem, but Over the last 40 years, we've added about a quarter ton of carbon to each acre per year. And the reason we've done that is we haven't kind of, you know, lit fires and managed the forests and cut down trees and There's been all these restrictions in California. So there's an argument that some are making that this is about forest management, and then there's an argument that others are making that this is climate change and dry weather and hot weather causing the fires. And the reality is it's both, but it's as everything else in this country right now becoming highly politicized that and, you know, Trump visited Newsom in a very kind of symbolic gathering this week.
I don't know if you guys saw the packet that was handed out to Trump. It was awesome. It was, like, 24 point font. And it was, like -- Poor word? The -- Why is that bad?
Yeah. Wire. Good. Temperature. Weather hot.
Fire is burning state. You know, it's like and it was I mean, you guys gotta see it. It's awesome. The little packet y guy And and then and then Yusim sat, like, exactly 6 feet from him with the mask on and Trump sitting there without the mask on. I mean, it's such a fucking political circus.
And, you know, I think all things are true and all things are false, and we can move on.
Well, the the the the the debate on the fires is I mean, it what what it's the the debate has has become sort of climate change versus force management. you know, that's sort of the debate about it. And like most of these debates, you don't necessarily have to choose. There can be an element of truth on both sides. you know, regardless of how much climate change has caused these fires, we've done a very, very poor job in the state managing them.
And, you know, this idea that we can just fix global warming and or or wait, you know, not have good forest management until, you know, and just kinda wait for global orange to be fixed as I mean, that's a really stupid idea. So regardless of how much climate change is to the cause of this, I think we need a much more competent state reaction to, you know, to to the the fact these fires
-- Do you believe in global warming, David Sachs?
I I believe in the you know, in greenhouse the greenhouse gas theory and that, yeah, that it's you know, that man made c 02 emissions are gonna have an impact on the environment. I think that, you know, what what's a little bit hard to know is that the exact timing and magnitudes of some of these things. But I agree with what Elon said, which is that we're running a very high risk experiment here, continually putting out, you know, CO2greenhouse gases into into the atmosphere.
Why is it so difficult for the Republican Party? And I I feel like you're almost straining and couching your words there, David, that You believe in global warming. You believe in what Elon is saying. It's not worth doing this risk. Why do Republicans seem to have such an aversion to just saying, hey.
Global warming's a thing, and we need to fix it.
Because because because Democrats wrapped those words around them like a flag, and so it became a political issue, like with everything else.
I mean, I I think so so, again, as we have this false choice now of whether you want to save the environment or or save the economy. And and the the problem is I think I think that a lot of Republicans don't wanna concede the issue. Oh, hey, little guy. A lot of Republicans don't wanna concede the because they're afraid it'll lead to something like the green new deal. And so what we need to do is figure out some responses to the problem that don't require us to destroy the economy.
Right. And for you, if we did incentives, if the if the country spent incentives, Zach, to get solar on roofs and stuff like that, you wouldn't be opposed to it, would you?
You mean, like, taxing carbon emissions?
Or just giving discounts on putting solar and subsidizing solar for people's houses. or maybe the middle ground of creating more nuclear reactors, which seems like something that neither party can agree to.
Hold hold on, little guy. Sorry.
Hey. Got a little
memory. -- podcast. Okay? Sorry.
No problem.
Yeah. Look. I think I I think to the extent that carbon emissions are an externality. The traditional way of dealing with this is you would internalize the externality by placing sort of tax or penalty on that. But so look.
When I rather tax carbon emissions than something else? Yes. I mean but the only way you're gonna get something like that through is if you agree to something like a 1 for 1 tax reduction in other areas. Right? Because there's a there's this other larger debate about whether, you know, what else should be taxed.
What about you, Shamal? What are your thoughts on solving global warming and this polarized sort of Republican Democrat. If you're for a global if you're if you believe in global warming, you're not a Republican
There's a I I I think that this is the most correlated thing with a healthy economy because I think that whoever solves climate change or the set of solutions that solve climate change. First of all, they'll be unbelievably economically successful. They will employ enormous numbers of people, and they'll have a really profound legacy in the world. So the the question is how to do it. And I think the problem is right now, there's there's as David, I think, actually puts the best lens on the topic, which is right now, we don't even have enough canonical data so that there's a single source of truth that we can all rely on.
And not having to judge it as climate change, I think, is an important step, which would just mean having a longitudinal measurement of temperature. And, you know, having a longitudinal measurement of everything from PM2.5topm10to, you know, carbon, methane, all of the other normal sort of emissions, nitrous oxide, all this stuff so that then you can just understand what men and women as part of the human race are doing to fuck with the counterfactual because the counterfactual is if we were just like living normal chill lives. And so once you understand that, then you can figure out how to at least mitigate that back to what the counterfactual would have been or do it even better. I think the best thing again we talked about this in a pod a couple weeks ago or a couple couple months ago. The best thing the governments can do is introduce incentives.
And I think the the most meaningful incentives here are not at the consumer level, but they're more upstream. So, you know, if you take something like cement, you know, cement, which is responsible for, I think, 20% of all the carbon emissions, is a really pernicious industry because, you know, they all They are very local. They operate within 300 local kilometers of every place where you ship cement to make concrete and whatnot. And when you look at sort of where the emissions are, they're at a very specific part of the chain, which is effectively impossible to mitigate. So you have to have a level of material science you know, improvement to really move things away from cement altogether.
Well, just knowing that, you're gonna have to have the incentives that a government creates to pull that forward. Another example is when you look at, like, manufacturing, all the shit that we all love, you know, I don't care whether you like fucking normal pants or hemp pants you know, when you go back and you look at how H And M makes those pants, there's our high temperature processes that are burning fossil fuels. They're emitting all kinds of really terrible junk into the environment, and so it doesn't matter whether you're vegan per se. You know, you're not gonna go around unclothe. You're not gonna not use spoons.
§07Segment 7
Right? So all of that, the totality of all of that, we need to completely reinvent high temperature manufacturing. that's not gonna happen unless the government steps in because, like, for example, take something as simple as steel.
You know? It's a tragedy of the comments. Right? I mean, basically, is if if if no individual can make a major impact, maybe they won't. Friedberg, you think we have all the technology we need to do this, and it's really just a matter of incentives and deployment right now in terms of global warming or stemming global warming.
Is that a correct statement that we have the technology? We just haven't
Correct. And I think it's
a 100%. I I I it's unpacking.
Well, what I will say is we have the science the the engineering and the resourcing and then the market are the are the kind of unresolved. Right? And so resourcing is is capital The market can be created artificially by putting in place government subsidies or having the government be a customer, or you just have to wait a long enough period of time If you listen to the Tim Ferriss interview with Coke, which one was it? Charles Coke. He talks about how Ultimately, consumers will vote with their dollars if climate change is real, and global warming is starting to have an effect on planet Earth.
And we're seeing that. Right? We're seeing people make a switch to a vegetarian diet. We're seeing people buy Teslas. We're seeing people make choices for sustainability.
So the free market is resolving and will resolve climate change is the argument that some libertarians might make. And then I think be
it -- Is that true in your mind, Friedberg? You buy that?
I think it's I I I I'll be honest with you. I've been fucking shocked by how many people are choosing to pay a premium for vegetarian meat alternatives. I was wrong on this. I I bet against these companies 8 years ago. I didn't bet against them, but I chose not to bet for them because I made the argument consumers will only buy stuff that's cheaper and taste as good, and I was wrong.
Millions of consumers are going to Burger King and buying a veggie burger now, which wasn't the case, and we're seeing this across the world.
And they're doing out of a crisis of consciousness. Right? Like, what you're saying?
That's right. It's a it's a behavioral change.
Wow.
Because they yeah. That's what they want in the market. That's what they want to spend their money on. They wanna spend their money on having a nicer world. It's just like when people will spend a premium amount of money on a nice suit, it makes them look good and feel good.
It's the same sort of notion. I I I feel good when I'm buying Tesla, I feel good when I'm buying a veggie burger instead of a meat burger knowing that it is harming my people around me.
I couldn't bring myself to buy a a carbon based ice engine. Recently, I was thinking about, you know, if I'm in Tahoe and I need to go off road or there's no conditions, I need to have a and I wound up I'm picking up the model y with the dual engine and putting snow tires on it as opposed to getting the new, you know -- Right. -- Jeep Wrangler or the the new defender.
But whether it's bio manufacturing or, you know, synthetic meats, or I I think we're we're not just in a point where we have to create luxury markets. I think we are gonna disrupt commodity markets, and I think we're gonna do that this decade. and it's gonna blow people's fucking mind when everything you're eating looks tastes and and feels the same, and it's cheaper, and it was just made in a more animal way using bioengineering, which is kind of, you know, the ability to to write the physical world with software except it's realized through and it's it's an incredible thing that we're
-- How much of this is the generational shift? I mean, Gen X seemed pretty absorbed with our own project a little bit of consciousness. But these millennials are now getting into their thirties, and they're thirty five years old. These the oldest millennials, and they seem to be incredibly focused on the environment and doing what's right. This is a generational shift in your mind, Freeburn?
No. I I think this is just the slow march of of humanity's ability to master our world in technology. And, you know, look, let me just give you a scenario. Timov kinda says we're gonna decarbonize the atmosphere. If we could build an algae or a seaweed, from scratch or using some basis and use software to resolve what's the right sort of seaweed to create that will grow like crazy in the oceans When it gets heavy, it sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and it literally just pulls carbon out of the atmosphere and drops to these forty thousand foot d or, you know, four thousand foot deep kind of wells we have already built around 70 Percent of planet Earth.
We have the tools to do that. Again, the engineering and the capital to do that, and then the market for is there a market for that? It doesn't if if governments are like, it's a crisis, let's put a $1,000,000,000 into this like we did in the Apollo program, we will get that done in 5 years. I mean, there's just there's no shortage of tools and science to be able to resolve that sort of a problem today. much like we're about to produce a coronavirus vaccine in a matter of months after discovering the virus, which is unprecedented.
So our ability to kinda read genomics and right genomics. And as a result, create biological machines that can do things in the physical world and self propagate gives us this incredible toolkit human never had at its disposal before, and it will be the way that we'll resolve climate change. And it will in the meantime, we're gonna bridge the gap between here and there by creating these nice the market
-- By the
way, here's a
-- --
and so on.
Here's an incredible example. So when you look at sort of where, you know, methane is a really problematic greenhouse gas. And most of the methane emissions are from cows, but it's from enteric fermentation, which is, you know, fancy language for burping. And what's incredible is there are now efforts to use CRISPR to genetically engineer, you know, cows that don't necessarily have that same gut biome dynamic so that you're burping methane. The there's also feeds.
that you can actually give a cow that'll minimize methane emissions burping by 30 or 40%. All these things are to your point, David. They're they're so fantastical if you think about it, but they're possible today. And we just need to organize and get us kind of like a center of gravity around these things and they'll happen.
Can we get can we get Jason the human version of that?
Does it also cover tuning? Does it work for
flatulence? interestingly, Chris Saka tweeted about investing in a company called Running Tide, which grows Kelp, and we'll suck carbon from the atmosphere. and he just syncs it to the ocean floor and they're selling carbon offsets by putting seaweed on the ocean floor. So --
Such such a no brainer. Right? I mean, like, the ocean is so big, and it's this per and, like, it's not getting in the way of land where you don't have to go figure out licenses and rights. You gotta you gotta basically get carbon to go into the ocean. And so then you basically need an organism that can grow and self propagate quickly and radically accumulate biomass in the ocean.
and then figure out how to get rid of it. So the the best way to get rid of it is have it sink. It's gotta be some sort of seaweed or kelp or algae, and you just put it in the open ocean, and it'll propagate. I mean, That that's just such a great obvious and there's a 1000 scenarios like that that I think, you know, we're gonna kind of creatively come up with and and resolve there.
-- nuclear not even on the discussion, Friedberg. I'm curious. Like, is it just too tainted? Look. Look.
The the work I've done the work I've done on nuclear, it used to cost something like some number of dollars to get a nuclear power plant through the regulatory barriers in the United States, and now it is so cost prohibitive. It's something like $10,000,000,000 now. from maybe, you know, a 100000000, you know, 2 decades ago. There's something about the regulatory barriers.
Yeah. Well, there's a huge there's a huge nimbi problem. Right? I mean, who wants a nuclear power plane in their backyard. Nobody.
I mean, nobody wants it, Jason. But but I agree with, like, the larger point here that the solution to is ultimately gonna be all these new technologies, these innovative solutions, not making people feel bad for consuming and, you know, being alive You know, you you look at Tesla and it's moving the whole world to electric cars, not with the government mandate, but just by creating a better car. And so it's ultimately gonna be technology companies, you know, in increasing the solution set and giving people new choices, that's how we're gonna ultimately solve the problem.
And, interestingly, in the news, NuScale is creating small nuclear reactors and they just got approval. And this is a the Portland based NuScale powers. They had a small module reactor That has been approved by the US Department of Energy for a site in Eastern Idaho. We'll see if that ever comes online, but It does seem like small nuclear reactors could solve part of the Navy problem in that. They're smaller.
So if something were to go wrong, we would have some ability to contain or have a smaller footprint in a disaster like situation. Let's wrap with the Overton window. Shamoff talked about it closing and Saks There was a good article, the taxonomy of Fear that you shared with the group. Tell us a little bit about that article, a taxonomy of Fear by Emily Yuff, think it's her name.
Yeah. She's a writer for the Atlantic who wrote this I guess, called tax army of fear and and persuasion. I think it's an important article. What it does is analyze cancel culture in the language that's used to cancel people. And one of the you know, when one of the things she diagnoses is is what she calls safetyism, which is anytime somebody doesn't like what, you know, an idea or what somebody else is saying, they claim that their safety is being threatened by that idea.
And it's kind of invoking these magic words that HR you know, has come up with where, you know, if anyone is is creating an unsafe work environment or an unsafe college campus, well, the the the source of the problem has to be removed immediately. And so this is the the the language of cancel culture. And, you know, the the the problem with it is that it doesn't really matter what the intent of the person was or, you know, intent sort of irrelevant. or whether the objection is reasonable or not, you know, whether it it it it causes whether it actually, you know, threatens anyone's safety. And so there was an example of this when 50 prominent sort of writer's intellectuals wrote a letter to Harper's magazine including JK Rowling and Matt Aglacias, who's a cofounder of Vox.
And so there was a, you know, there's a trans writer there's a writer on who's a a trans person at Vox who claims that her her safety was threatened. because one of the cofounders had signed this letter. The letter didn't discuss trans issues. It was simply the fact that A Glacy's had signed it along with JK Rowling. And so JK Rowling apparently is is, you know, had
§08Segment 8
Pretty proactive.
Yeah. I I missed this part of Harry Potter, but apparently, the the trans movement is
-- Yeah. Heart positions that women who were bought women who were born biologically female are different than women who transition. Right. But this is but since -- That that's the key points.
So so Right. And that's her position, but her position is being attributed to the glaciers by by association. Yeah. Exactly. And so
I would be like saying that I'm in support of Trump just because I'm on this podcast with you guys
to be clear. Yes. It's contamination contamination by association is what she calls
-- -- on this sort of, you know, cancel culture and -- This -- -- everybody being scared of words and -- Did
this will be if if Trump wins in November, it'll be because this whole thing just gets too much for too many people. There is a massive plurality of people in the middle who think this overarching sensitivity by the extreme left and the extreme right are are just completely out to lunch. And -- 100% agree.
I don't say it harder.
And and and I and I think that, by the way, the extreme left and the extreme right, they should all just get a room and just have a one big, you, Georgi, because they're all just useless fuck wits, anyways.
All of them. Both of them.
On the extreme light like, when Antifa and the alt right are fighting with each other, it's like this, like, sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.
Thanks for tuning in to the all in progress.
I I I I mean I mean, most people are in the middle. Most people don't need to have this, like, us or them you know, it's it's it's like you're not allowed to have an opinion. Like, I actually learn more from people that I disagree with, just by hearing them and not trying to judge them. And I think that most of us as well have our views that are sort of moderately in the middle. So for example, there was a USC professor that got sanctioned because he was trying to he was teaching a language class, and he used the Chinese work for that.
which sounds like the n word. And I think he didn't preface it correctly or what have you, but then, you know, he apologized. He was suspended. and folks wrote a letter. Now everybody has a right.
The the people who felt offended have the right to write the letter. The administration had the right to react. And then I think people read that article and think to themselves, is this actually the has the pendulum swung too far or not? And and mark my words. If people feel that the pendulum has swung too far, They will elect Donald Trump because he is the complete antithesis of giving a shit about any of this stuff.
So that will be the bellwether.
No. That's exactly right. So I think it it's really important. I think that there's a large part of the country that feels that Trump is a shield, not a sword. that he is their protector against this this type of cancel culture.
And I know Trump seems like an instigator, and he's very threatening to a lot of people on the other side. But again, to these people, he's he's more of a shield. And I think it's it's not just the fact that he speaks out and denounces cancel culture that makes him a hero to these people. It's his His superpower is his uncancel Palihapitiya. It's this, you know, it's the the fact that the left has done everything they can to try and get rid of this guy to impeach him, what have you.
And he keeps
and he keeps surviving. And so it it's it's his very, you know, uncancellability that makes him such a hero to these people. And I think this is the the thing that the the the left or the media doesn't quite understand is that denouncing Trump in ever more historical terms doesn't you know, it doesn't work. because it kinda feeds into this.
It actually hurts. -- versus it adds more -- Right. -- it adds more people --
Right.
-- to his cohort who say you're overreacting
Right. And
the hystericalness of what we're acting. Like, I tweeted I've I've been on this, you know, mini tweet effort to tell people, listen, there are Chromebooks in the world. They're very cheap. 90% of the Americans are, excuse me, on the Internet high speed And there are so many online resources for you to get ahead in life. Go try to be a marketer.
Go do Khan Academy. Go learn UX and design. These are the clearest patents of the technology industry, and I get hysterical Liberals who say, people don't have access to the Internet, people don't have access to chromebooks, and people don't have the free time or the motivation to improve their lot in life. And it's like, are you who are you talking about? Because 90% of the country has to the Internet and uses it already.
And if you go and do a search for a Chromebook on eBay, use 1. You can find one for 50 to a 150 bucks. So we we have this narrative that people cannot rise up, and people cannot improve themselves. And every time I say, I believe people can improve themselves. People say, that I'm, like, a racist that I believe that people could improve themselves, and it just makes me further away from the Democratic Party.
It makes me further away from the left that
I think I think this I'm gonna put other crazy idea, which is that I think if Donald Trump wins in a meaningful way in November. I don't think he will, but if he does, the actual silver lining for for everybody is, I think, the Republican party will disintegrate, and the Democratic party will disintegrate. And in its place, I think you'll probably have
3
or 4 parties, and I think that that would be amazing.
So it's the burn it all down vote, which was Peter Till again in the beginning. It was, like, I think Saxs and t o when they coordinated this Trump election. It was all burn it down burn it down. Right, Zach? That was your star chamber discussion with Teal.
Was you wanted guys wanted to burn it all down?
I think you're trying to I I think what you're doing is contamination by association there.
Yeah. Just because you went to college of Peter Thiel. When's the last time you talked to Peter Till?
No. Peter Peter's a friend of mine, but I don't but, again and and I agree with him about some things. I just hear about other things. But this idea
-- You disagree. --
this idea but but this idea that we can't hang out with people, you know, or or that hanging out with people means that we must endorse every view they have. Like, why is it even relevant that,
you know,
I'm friends with Peter?
Look. We're like, for example, we're friends in our group chat with a couple guys who are very far right. We're not gonna name who they are. But I would say that I think that the group chat is better off for them being able to say what they believe and push back And just like there's a bunch of us who are in the middle and we waffle back and forth between the left and the right, and then there are folks that are more on the far right far left. or on the left.
So I I just think that we forget that there is enormous value in the diversity of thought. And and people think that there is some sort of safety and conformity And in fact, I'll tell you, that's actually the exact opposite. You're more likely to be in conflict with someone that you are very similar to because eventually you will always end up competing for the exact same resource and that resource becomes scarce. If you are actually spending time with people that are divergent and different from you, you actually end up not competing for the same resources because you're One second. You're built differently, so there's just less conflict.
So this is why multiparty systems work. This is why you have less fighting when there's, you know, in Canada and and Europe than you do in the United States because States tries to reduce things down to 2 choices. And so we we all, all of a sudden, like, just go on into these pools that are seemingly similar, and we just end up hating each other.
Friedberg any final thoughts on cancel culture?
Yeah. I think it's just gonna be bad. Like,
I I totally I totally agree with Jamal that if Trump wins the election, this will be the reason. The the same thing happened when the Republicans overplayed their hand with Bill Clinton.
Right.
And it was said at that time that, you know, Clinton was always very fortunate in who his enemies were because no matter, you know, what he did wrong or how badly he screwed up his enemy. He's always made too big a deal of it, and they overreacted. And it played into his hands. And I, you know, I have to wonder if that's what's happening right now with this whole cancel culture.
Yeah. Alright. Well, we'll leave it at that. We've gone over an hour. If you're listening to the all in podcast and you'd like to advertise, It's not possible.
There's no ads on this podcast. And if you like to be a guest on the podcast, that's also not possible. There's no guest. So send your advertising and guest requests to Tremont.spack.spack.org. Breaking news right now.
There is a tech crunch story that just broke while we're on air. Can't stop, won't stop, social capital, just followed for its 4th spack. If you're into spacks
No. That's not the that's not that's not the article. The article
Oh, no. The article is Shamat launches Spack. No. That's not the same. As he spacks, the world with spacks.
Yeah. We just announced 3. Yeah.
Oh, you just announced number 3? Yeah. No. No. No.
33, d e n f. Oh, DENF got approved?
No. Yeah. They're filed the with the SEC now.
Yeah. And when would DENF be available for people to buy shares in it then? that, like, a 60 day or a 100
day? 15 days.
Oh, okay. Great. Alright. Well, there you have it. And then you confirmed that the second spec was open door.
Right? Is that confirmed? Or is that -- Yeah.
That was announced on Tuesday.
Yeah.
Okay. So congratulations on that.
Thank you, sir.
And how do you feel about all these people stealing your thunder with specs?
I think it's
I think it's
great. No. No.
It's it's great. I think it's growing the market. It's good for entrepreneurs.
It's amazing. I mean, what this is gonna mean that companies with 52 a 150,000,000 will be able to go public on a a clear path?
I hope so. I've I I've said this before. We've gone from 8000 public companies to 4020 years. So let's reverse the tide It should
be double the number of companies. That's right.
I mean, we should have gone down.
We should have gone up. You would think it would we've gone -- --
in a world with 0% interest rates it has to.
Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Well, here we go. Please, for the love of god, somebody convinced Kam, Robinhood thumbtack, a dated tax to go public.
because I've got kids to put through school. Alright, everybody. For Best DC, the rain man himself, David Sacks, and the queen of Kinwa, Friedberg Burgers. This is the all in podcast. We'll see you next time.
§09Segment 9
Bye bye.
Love you, Bessees.
Love you, Bessees.