New SEC Chair, Bitcoin, xAI Supercomputer, UnitedHealth CEO murder, with Gavin Baker & Joe Lonsdale

The hosts say the episode was recorded before news broke that David Sacks would become White House AI and crypto czar, so it does not discuss the appointment. Reading from Trump's Truth Social post, they say Sacks will guide administration policy on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency and lead the president's council of science and technology advisors. Gavin Baker and Joe Lonsdale substitute for Sacks and Chamath.

this is going to be awesome for America, for markets, for the world

Baker, a hedge fund manager, says that if the administration executes its stated plans, markets benefit. He compares the moment to Satya Nadella taking over Microsoft, where stopping dumb behavior was enough to start winning. He says Americans of all political stripes agree there are too many regulations, and cites the Harris administration's $42 billion for rural broadband and $40 billion for EV chargers, which he says built little because the program's own rules blocked it.

Lonsdale likens parts of government to a bankrupt company kept alive by money. He argues that tough civil-service hiring tests, introduced in 1883, were later abandoned, and claims firing protections and identity-based hiring made the problem worse. His two-step plan is to cut broken programs with a chainsaw, as Elon Musk put it, then build safeguards. He says federal rules number over a million, and that solar and wind builders face lengthy studies.

a data driven system that forces regulations to defend themselves

The host suggests regulations sunset after five years unless renewed, and Lonsdale agrees on condition that renewal is hard and driven by data.

David Friedberg describes a three-layer problem: inefficiency and weak accountability lead to excess spending, which produces a debt spiral. He says the arithmetic response is to grow GDP, perhaps 4 to 5 percent, since debt cannot shrink fast and only so much of GDP can be taxed. The host credits Friedberg for warning about the debt early.