Bond crisis looming? GOP abandons DOGE, Google disrupts Search with AI, OpenAI buys Jony Ive's IO

Summary

All-In Podcast Episode Summary

Title: Bond Crisis Lurking? GOP Abandons DOGE, Google Disrupts Search with AI, OpenAI Buys Jony Ive's IO
Release Date: May 24, 2025
Hosts: Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, David Friedberg

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1. Introduction to Current Economic and Political Climate

The episode kicks off with host Jason Calacanis outlining the major topics of discussion, including the turmoil in the bond market, the GOP's shift away from the DOGE agenda, Google's introduction of an AI-first search product, and OpenAI's acquisition of Jony Ive's design firm, IO.

Notable Quote:

• Jason Calacanis [00:00]: "We have one bestie's got a very interesting take. All that and more on the number one podcast in the world."

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2. Bond Market Crisis and the "Big Beautiful Bill"

The panel delves into the recent chaos in the bond market triggered by the Treasury Department's weak demand for newly issued 20-year bonds. This event led to a spike in bond yields and a significant drop in the S&P 500. The discussion centers on the implications of the recently passed "Big Beautiful Bill," which extends tax cuts but exacerbates the national debt.

Key Points:

• Debt and Bond Yields: The sale of $16 billion in 20-year bonds saw weak demand, pushing yields higher and affecting the broader market.
• Impact of the Bill: While the bill aims to boost GDP, it is projected to reduce tax revenue by $4 trillion over ten years and add $3-5 trillion to the national debt.
• Economic Implications: Rising interest rates could lead to increased government spending on debt servicing, creating a recursive debt spiral.

Notable Quotes:

• David Sacks [04:00]: "The CBO estimates... over the next 30 years or so, US debt to GDP will climb to 203%."
• Chamath Palihapitiya [08:17]: "The current bill... is anti doge. It's the opposite of meaningful reform in government."

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3. GOP's Abandonment of the DOGE Agenda

The Republican Party's apparent shift away from the DOGE (Debt, Overregulation, Growth, and Energy) agenda is scrutinized. Panelists express concern that the passed bill contradicts the original objectives of economic reform and austerity.

Key Points:

• Inconsistent Policies: The bill includes numerous last-minute additions that dilute its effectiveness in addressing fiscal issues.
• Political Fallout: The compromises made to pass the bill may harm Republican prospects in upcoming midterm elections.
• Austerity Measures: There is a desire among panelists for more stringent spending cuts, but political realities make substantial austerity unlikely.

Notable Quotes:

• David Friedberg [14:14]: "If we don't make the perfect the enemy of the good, it's just not in the cards."
• Jason Calacanis [17:11]: "He is putting gasoline on the fire. I think it's bad leadership."

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4. Google's AI-First Search Product Launch

Google's recent I/O conference unveiled an AI-first search mode, aiming to revolutionize the traditional search experience by integrating AI summaries and reducing reliance on advertising.

Key Points:

• AI Mode vs. Traditional Search: The new AI mode presents comprehensive search results with AI-generated summaries, contrasting with the standard list of blue links.
• Business Model Shift: Google is experimenting with subscription-based models, bundling AI tools with services like YouTube Premium to diversify revenue streams.
• Future Implications: The panelists view this move as a pivotal step towards Google's dominance in the AI sector, though questions remain about monetization and user adoption.

Notable Quotes:

• Jason Calacanis [38:04]: "This sets a new direction that Google is likely testing as a business model which is subscriptions."
• Chamath Palihapitiya [44:22]: "This is not the destination but they've taken a really important step and now they have to follow through."

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5. OpenAI Acquires Jony Ive's IO for $6.5 Billion

OpenAI's acquisition of design legend Jony Ive's firm, IO, marks a significant move towards integrating advanced design with AI technology, sparking both excitement and skepticism among the panelists.

Key Points:

• Acquisition Details: OpenAI acquired IO in an all-stock deal worth $6.5 billion, aiming to develop next-generation AI-driven devices.
• Speculations on Product Development: The panel speculates whether IO will contribute to consumer devices like smart glasses or other innovative hardware.
• Panel Reactions: While some express enthusiasm about the potential fusion of design and AI, others critique the high price and question the practicality of the acquisition.

Notable Quotes:

• Jason Calacanis [46:49]: "OpenAI is buying IO, Jony Ive's startup... It literally is like a love story."
• Chamath Palihapitiya [48:13]: "But they have the coolest, most creative design team... I'm excited to see what this thing [device] does."

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6. Energy as the Cornerstone for Economic and Technological Growth

The discussion shifts to the critical role of energy production in addressing the nation's fiscal challenges and powering advancements in AI and automation.

Key Points:

• Energy Production vs. Demand: The U.S. faces an energy deficit, hindering the scaling of AI and robotic technologies necessary for economic growth.
• Comparison with China: China is rapidly expanding its energy infrastructure, adding terawatts of capacity, while the U.S. lags behind, focusing on gigawatts.
• Policy Recommendations: Panelists advocate for aggressive energy expansion through nuclear, solar, and other means to support technological advancements and mitigate debt concerns.

Notable Quotes:

• David Sacks [86:07]: "Automation, which is unlocked by AI, we are going to see an explosion of robots."
• Chamath Palihapitiya [89:06]: "We want this. David. ... Somebody should just go and figure this out."

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7. Science Corner: Breakthroughs in CRISPR Gene Editing

The panel highlights a groundbreaking case where CRISPR technology was successfully used to correct a genetic mutation in a newborn, showcasing the potential of gene editing in medicine.

Key Points:

• Case Study: A baby named KJ was treated for a CPS1 gene mutation using CRISPR, which successfully corrected the genetic defect responsible for ammonia accumulation in the blood.
• Technology Advancements: The use of base editors and liquid nanoparticles represents significant progress in targeted gene therapy, offering hope for treating thousands of genetic conditions.
• Future Implications: This success paves the way for more personalized and effective treatments for genetic disorders, potentially transforming healthcare.

Notable Quotes:

• David Sacks [75:33]: "This technology is the first time that we've seen this kind of custom CRISPR gene editing... applied to a patient in vivo."
• Chamath Palihapitiya [79:50]: "And isn't that incredible? Between 20 and 30,000 conditions are because of an A to G point mutation."

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8. Closing Remarks and Future Outlook

The episode concludes with discussions on the importance of energy infrastructure, the competitive edge in AI and biotech, and a playful banter among hosts about upcoming events and personal anecdotes.

Notable Quotes:

• David Sacks [88:15]: "Automation, which is unlocked by AI, we are going to see an explosion of robots."
• Chamath Palihapitiya [90:31]: "Private markets do all that. Let us. Let us do the energy."

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Conclusion

This episode of the All-In Podcast provides an in-depth analysis of pressing economic issues, technological advancements, and political maneuvers shaping the future. From the immediate concerns of the bond market and national debt to the transformative potentials of AI and CRISPR technology, the panelists offer diverse perspectives aimed at navigating the complex interplay between government policy, market forces, and innovation.

For more insights and detailed discussions, listeners are encouraged to tune into the full episode of the All-In Podcast.

Transcript

[Jason Calacanis]

All right, everybody, welcome back to the number one podcast in the world, the All In Podcast. Today, the original squad is back. No guests, just full contact. Sacks is back. We're going to break down a number of topics today, including chaos in the bond market as Republicans seemingly have abandoned the Doge agenda. And we're going to debate the big beautiful bill, which is going to add trillions to our national debt. And it's a new era for Google as they release an AI first search product. OpenAI has acquired Jony Ives company IO to make some sort of gadget. They've paid over $6 billion. Is this the real deal or not? You're gonna find out today. And is energy the solution to every problem? We have one bestie's got a very interesting take. All that and more on the number one podcast in the world. Stick with us. For the fourth year in a row, we're gonna do the All In Summit. If you guys remember, four years ago, I decided, hey, let's do a summit. And then these three besties, we're like, no, we don't wanna do a summit now. It's become a big thing and Everybody loves it. September 7th to 9th in Los Angeles.

[David Sacks]

I do give you credit for that.

[Jason Calacanis]

J.C. yeah, after you gave me hell for a year. Okay, great, great.

[David Sacks]

It sounds like an apology, but okay, sure, I'm sorry. You're wonderful and I appreciate what you created.

[Jason Calacanis]

Thank you very much. Wow. Finally some credit. Okay, we all know the goal of the summit is to have the world's most important conversations. And this year will be no different. Yada, yada, yada. Allin.comsummit if you would like to apply to come.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Why do you say the most important conversations and then say yada yada yada as a way to dismiss it? Do you think that that increases your salesmanship and effectiveness?

[Jason Calacanis]

I don't want to make any grand pronouncements here, but these have been important conversations we've had and it's been pretty great.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I have to say, yada, yada, yada.

[Jason Calacanis]

No, it's just like they put like 18 things in the plugs now, and I don't want to do too much.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well, why don't you do a modicum of work before you get on camera and actually edit it?

[Jason Calacanis]

Here we go. I get one compliment and then that's exactly it.

[Freeberg]

He doesn't do the homework, so he runs out of words. He's like, we get the biggest names to come to our summit. The vice president came, he said, yada, yada, yada.

[David Sacks]

Elon Musk showed up in person. Yada yada yada.

[Jason Calacanis]

There was an astronaut Freeberg lost his.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Mind, yada yada yada yada yada yada.

[Jason Calacanis]

But this year will be no different. We'll have incredible parties, blah blah blah and let's get to work.

[Freeberg]

Okay, President did a trip to the Middle east, yada yada yada.

[Jason Calacanis]

Maybe world peace, a whole new framework. America's going.

[David Sacks]

World'S greatest moderator. Yada yada yada blah.

[Jason Calacanis]

Executive producer for life. Deal with the Friedberg. Okay, what's in the contract? Let your winners ride Rain man David Sachs.

[Freeberg]

And instead we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

[Jason Calacanis]

Love you, Queen of Quinoa. All right, let's get to work here. The bond market is the captain apparently Treasury Department sold $16 billion worth of newly issued 20 year bonds on Wednesday afternoon and there was weak demand. This pushed yields higher across the board. The 10 year which Bestant has said to focus on because it's the benchmark rate for most borrowing costs, you know, mortgages and stuff like that. It spiked and here it is. It actually hit a five handle at one point. A lot of people were hand wringing about this and the S and P dropped 1.5% in about 30 minutes. Here's that chart as well. And the three major indices were all down between 1.5 and 2% on the day, obviously. In related news, the House passed the big beautiful bill at the 11th hour last night. This makes the TCGJA tax cuts permanent and it's estimated to increase long run GDP by 60 basis points. That's if all the cuts were implemented. It's also going to reduce tax revenue by 4 trillion over 10 years is the estimate. And it's going to add between 3 and 5 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. Friedberg, what's your take on the triple B and the bond? Weak bond market, all of it.

[David Sacks]

I just want to take a quick primer on how the government gets funded. I know we assume everyone understands it, but I think it's important for folks to really grok it for the federal government to make payments to employees and contractors and buy stuff. They need to put money in their bank accounts. And the way they put money in their bank accounts is they issue bonds, these are treasury bonds. So they'll sell treasury bonds to the public and individuals buy it, companies buy it, banks buy it and foreign governments buy U.S. treasuries and they transfer or wire cash into the federal government's bank accounts. Which they can then use to pay for stuff. And then the Treasury Department needs to continuously sell Treasuries to raise cash to fund the government. When folks don't show up to buy Treasuries, that's a bad thing. And that means that the government needs to increase the interest rate that they're paying on those bonds. So what we saw on Wednesday was a really weak demand signal for Treasuries on this, you know, modest treasury auction. Selling $16 billion of bonds is not a lot. There's hundreds of billions being sold each quarter. And so this was not a big number, but there was no buyer. The market was really dry. And so everyone that participates in financial markets saw this and freaked out. And the big motivation, the big understanding of the relationship here is to your point, that this big tax bill and spending bill is passing out of the House. And that bill, as we talked about last week, has a high deficit. And that'll run up U.S. debt over time, which makes it more difficult for the US Government to pay its bills because it has to issue more debt. Interest payments have to be paid every year and so on. Now, if you just pull up this one slide, this is something I thought was really worth sharing. The CBO estimates, which is what you referenced, Jason, are estimates of what the cost is going to be over time. And this is from Jessica Riedel or Rydle out of the Manhattan Institute, put this chart together.

[Jason Calacanis]

Congressional Budget Office.

[David Sacks]

Yeah. So the Congressional Budget Office, the CBO creates a estimate of the budget, the spending, the deficit, and ultimately the incremental debt that the US Government will need to issue to fund its obligations over time. This is a chart that was put together that the expectation on a baseline basis is that over the next 30 years or so, US debt to GDP will climb to 203%. But what a lot of people don't know and don't talk about is that in the CBO estimates, they assume in all of their models that interest rates are at 3.6%. And with the bond sell off yesterday, what we are now seeing is 30 year treasury interest rates at over 5%. It's 5.1% this morning. And for every incremental 1% above 3.6, you're spending an extra 350 billion a year in interest. 350 billion a year. So as we go up by 1.5% interest over the next 10 years, we're spending another $5 trillion just on interest payments. Half a billion dollars after trillion dollars a year of incremental interest on the difference between 3.6 and 5.1. That's an incredible recursive problem. And I say recursive because the incremental interest that we now have to pay because interest rates just went up because the market is demanding more payments from the government to fund. This means that the government has to issue more debt and it quickly gets away from you. There is a non linear relationship between the deficit and interest rates, which drives up the debt problem in a nonlinear way and it gets away from you and you can't fix it. And that's what the market is telling us is that the current bill that's being passed out of the House is showing such an extraordinarily high deficit that the market does not want to buy the debt from the government. Rates are now climbing and that creates a massive problem for the government.

[Jason Calacanis]

Okay, Chamath, you've been tweeting about this. We thought we were going to get an administration and maybe some focus from the government that we would be have more austerity measures, balance the budget. Now it looks like we're going to pour gasoline on the fire. What are your thoughts?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I think we have to be careful here. So, Jason, the political calculus will be for the President to decide how much credit he actually wants to take for this bill because even though it has his name on it, the contents of the bill are different in actual facts than what I think he intended. And what I mean by that is when you look inside of what happened in the 11th hour last night, it's disappointing. This thing is like anti doge. If Doge was meant to be a reflection of the American voting population's desire for meaningful reform in government, cost controls, some form of austerity, and to get this debt spiral in check. This is the opposite of that. What happened was in the 11th hour you had a handful of people abstain. You had one person that passed away in the last few days, you had one person that fell asleep on the floor of the House, so he wasn't even woken up for the vote. And in the middle of all of that chaos, what happened was all kinds of things were added and attached and canceled at the last minute. Because what happens is you have to have these puts and takes as Freeberg described. If you want to spend over here, you have to find a cut over there. But I think what happened was there was really not a lot of financial literacy used to decide what to actually put in and what to cut. And that lack of discipline is going to create, I think, a negative set of consequences. So what Are those consequences today? The 10 year is around 4.5% at the rate in which it's escalating since Liberation Day. By the end of this year, we're going to be past 5%. The 30 year is on a rate now to get past six and a quarter, maybe even reach 6.5%. Those are way beyond what most people thought was a reasonable place to be for the United States economy. And so what will the implications be as rates go to those levels? You'll delever from the United States. You'll, you'll sell us debt. You'll own things like gold and bitcoin. If you're curious about what's happening to gold and bitcoin, they started to spike in the last few days. You'll have ratings organizations that add to this cascade by downgrading the United States that happened on Friday. You'll have very smart people starting to signal that this is a much harder problem than, than they initially thought. That's how I personally interpreted Elon's comments over the last few days. So what was the House supposed to do? I think what they were supposed to do was implement some form of austerity. They were supposed to, by the will of the people, pass a rescission bill. They were given that rescission bill. It was just $9 billion. They couldn't even pass a $9 billion rescission and instead they passed a $4 trillion inflation to our debt. Now, you hand this to the Senate, the Senate is in a very difficult place as well. Do they want to, quote, unquote, claim victory and say, here you go, President Trump, here's your bill. But they'll further bastardize this thing and it will be even further away from what I think benefits MAGA and benefits Main Street. So who does it benefit? Current course in speed. Right now, this bill is about traditional Republicans and traditional Democrats circling the wagon and putting on a platter a set of things that I think will be hurtful to average Americans. You're going to see energy prices spike. You're gutting the number of electrons that will be available for things like AI. You're going to increase Medicare prices. And the math is wrong. So when you sensitize this thing to a four and a half or five or five and a quarter rate. So, meaning not what the CBO used, but the real conditions on the ground, this thing is an albatross. And I think, unfortunately for President Trump's agenda and for a MAGA movement, this is the worst of all conditions. The financial markets will punish this. And then the last thing I'll say is now to top it all off, I think that Jerome Powell will see the writing on the wall. Many aspects of this thing are inflationary and if they're not handled well by the Senate, he has a lot of room to actually increase interest rates. So I would just say that the Senate has an incredibly difficult job. I think the President has an even more difficult job about what to do right now. But the House did nobody favors. They did not do anybody a favor yesterday.

[Jason Calacanis]

Here's the prediction from Polymarket on what will happen to Fed rate cuts in 2025. It's across the board. It seems like nobody can tell if it's going to be 0, 1, 2 or 3. 2022, 25 and 15% respectfully respectively for those four options. Sachs, you don't speak for President Trump. You're the czar of AI and crypto specifically. So let's put that out there. But I'm curious your thoughts on what happened with Doge. Why are we continuing to spend ourselves into oblivion and what will the downstream issues be here? Because this sounds like it's going to be inflationary. This sounds like it's going to be hard for people to buy homes. It's going to create more austerity in the future. How bad is this? Do you feel? It's as bad as Dave and Chamath are framing it.

[Freeberg]

Well, look, I mean, I Wish we had 435 members of the House who thought like Freeberg, about spending and deficits. We don't. The Democrats all want a lot more spending and a lot more taxes. Remember, if it wasn't for Manchin Cinema, we would have had that $4.5 trillion build back better. And among the Republicans in the House, unfortunately we have a bunch of Republicans who are pretty soft on spending. I mean, you can call them rinos if you want. And we only have what like a three vote margin in the House and the Democrats are not cooperating in any way. So you don't have that many votes to spare. So what I'm saying here is you can't make the perfect, the enemy, the good. I think you have to be realistic about how much we can get done here. And I do think that this bill does contain a lot of good things in it. There are a lot of priorities for the administration in here. Do I wish it cut spending more? Yes. I mean, do I wish that it made all the Doge cuts permanent through? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's outrageous that there were enough House Republicans who didn't want to back up Doge that that wasn't enacted. But there are a lot of good things in the bill and I should just highlight them for balance here. So the number one thing here is that this bill will permanently extend the 2017 tax cuts. And if we don't pass this bill, let's just assume that we do nothing. Okay? If we do nothing, you're going to get the largest tax increase in decades. And it won't just affect the rich, this affects the middle class as well. The 2017 tax cuts increase the standard deduction, which is important for the middle class. It raised the child tax credit. So again, if you do nothing, you get a huge tax increase as soon as the 2017 tax cuts, which Trump passed back in his first term when they sunset. So that's number one. In addition, there are promises here that were made during the campaign to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime that have been enacted. And the President promised to do those things and he is accomplishing those things. So I think that's important. There's funding for the border wall here, 10,000 new ICE officers, more detention beds and so on. On energy, it repeals methane tax and unlocks new oil and gas on federal lands. And there's a bunch of other things as well. So there are a lot of good things in here. Now to toss point, will this bill be bad for the Republicans prospects in the midterms? I guess what I would say to that is I don't understand how you expect to do well in midterms if Republicans preside over the largest tax increase in decades, a tax increase that Joe Biden tried to get during his administration. Biden tried to raise taxes and couldn't get the votes for it. But if we don't make those tax cuts permanent, if we allow the sunset to happen, then you will accomplish what Joe Biden could not, which is to raise taxes on the American people. So look, no bill like this that's passed by a one vote margin on straight party lines when you only have a three vote margin in the entire House, it's gonna satisfy everyone here.

[Jason Calacanis]

Let me, let me ask you a question there. You have Trump at his peak power. You have all these threats of, hey, we're gonna primary anybody if they don't do like what we're saying here. Why isn't Trump just coming in and using his power and just saying, hey, not big enough, get back to work. We need to cut spending, period, full stop. And he's got that power. I don't hear him saying that.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I do think that there are ways to enact the tax cuts and make them permanent. And I think that that is a good part of what this bill did. The problem was what happened from 11pm to 6am and that's all of the nonsense where I'll just be honest. I think the people in the House are not nearly as financially literate as they need to be. And I think what they wanted to do was pass something and throw it over the wall and say mission accomplished. Now it's up to the Senate. And the good news is, look, the Senate has these six year election cycles for a reason. It allows them to think strategically and see past what's right in front of them. So I still think that there's a chance for the President to have his cake and eat it too. But I just want to highlight that as a supporter of his and a supporter of that MAGA agenda, which I think a lot of people voted for. I just want to be honest and say this is not it. And there has to be some meaningful reforms in the Senate version of this thing that gets sent back to the House. So I'll give you an example of 1.81percent of the incremental energy that's generated in the United States last year came from private enterprises that were investing in short term forms of power that have a credit and a transfer market tied to it. This is just the financial machinery. This is how Blackstone and Goldman Sachs and Brookfield and all of these big players move tens and hundreds of billions of dollars around. They changed those rules at the 11th hour. What is the impact of that? Elon foreshadowed it. Nick, maybe you can show the headline of the article. He said we could be running into a power capacity issue by mid next year. Now if we knew that, why would we take the short term incentive away to generate more electrons? All the great things that David has done, that the President has done on AI I mean, we'll talk about what happened in the Middle east, but when the rubber meets the road and you actually have a shortage of electrons, because these financial actors, they're not. And in fairness to them, they're acting rationally. You take the financial incentive away and you can't underwrite this thing, what are they going to do? They're just going to stop doing it. So in the absence of electrons, what happens? Prices go up, it's inflationary, and now you'll have to allocate electrons. Does the electrons go to an AI data center or does it go to a home In a different example, actually on the residential side, places like Florida, I think there was like an incentive for like batteries. So if you are about to get hit by a hurricane, you can buy these big battery systems from Tesla as an example. But there are other ones, Generac and whatever train that was cut out. And so in Texas, all of these impacts will have negative consequences. My point is, I think you have to really look at what happened in the 11th hour and fix those things. Because the problem with these plans is you can't look at gains that are in years 6 through 10 to justify pain in years 1 through 5. You can't do that because I understand how that mathematically makes sense. It doesn't make sense practically for the average American. That's just not how life works. You don't go into a J curve. We do that as investors. But you don't do that as a normal American, which is be on the wrong side of the economy for four or five years in the hopes that year six and seven are good. That's the point that has to get fixed.

[Jason Calacanis]

I asked Chamath the question, shouldn't Trump use his capital he's built up here and say not good enough, make some cuts here. What would you say to President Trump if he was asking you for your advice? Friedberg?

[David Sacks]

I think the writings on the wall that the system is winning and the rebels came in and they tried to fix the inefficiencies in government with Doge under Elon's leadership and our friend Antonio's participation and a great group of individuals who are true patriots who are spending, trying to help reassess how the government operates. And they, as I've said from day one, from my first visit to D.C. during inauguration weekend and every visit I've done since then, I always leave after meeting with members of Congress deeply worried that they won't actually do what they need to do to make the changes. And the last line of defense ultimately is the President with his veto authority and his ability to tell people to go back, rethink this and cut spending. I feel like we're in a last ditch effort. And I'll tell you why I say it's last ditch. I think that there's a relationship between what's going on in the United States and what's going on in Japan. Nick, if you'll pull up the Japanese government 40 year bond yield chart. So just so you guys can kind of observe, in the last couple of days we've seen Japanese bond yields soar from 2.5% to 3.5%. Remember, Japan owns $1.1 trillion of U.S. treasuries. I'll just read a quote from a guy who's the chief global strategist named Albert Edwards at Societe General. And he said recent developments in Japan may signal the end of the favorable investment cycle that's been established since the 2008 global financial crisis, potentially reshaping global financial landscapes in the coming months.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Can I translate that? Because it's incredibly important what Friedberg said. But I'll translate that what he is saying. So this is a guy from soc gen since 2007, 2008. Every now and then the markets give you free money. One of the most obvious free money trades was the yen carry trade. And in order to execute that trade, you're effectively leveraging Treasuries against the Japanese bond market. What he is saying is that there is increasing risk that that trade unwinds. When that trade unwinds, what you're going to have are net sellers of up to, as Freeberg said, a trillion plus dollars of U.S. treasuries. What will that do? It will further exacerbate the market's reluctance to own U.S. treasuries. Which means yields go even higher.

[David Sacks]

Which means interest rates for businesses and individuals go higher.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Correct.

[David Sacks]

And the only way to keep those interest rates low will be for the Federal Reserve to try and step in and buy those bonds which will devalue the dollar. And in his commentary he went on to say that the 20 year Japanese bond auction that just took place, similar to the US treasury auction that just took place, was the worst they've seen since 1987. That's how significant this event was in Japan over the past week. So the massive climb in bond yields in Japan indicates a massive sell off in credit. And remember, if you look at the historical perspective, when the global reserve currency nation sees their debt sell off, it usually is part of a global sell off that happens. It's not just the US that gets affected. And any one of these markets can cause a cataclysmic follow on to the rest of the global financial markets. Like if Japan sells off too much, we are going to start to see a lot of unraveling happening. That's the consequence, I think, of this particular bill because it signals a lack of a reluctance to actually address.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Let me say something here. I called Freeberg today on the way here. It's very rare that he and I agree about this kind of stuff because normally what I say is you're catastrophizing sure, calm down. But this is where I will say, I'll put my money where my mouth is and I'll put the chips on the table to say this is the moment. This is the moment where we either re underwrite what we voted for or we mistakenly passed this Christmas tree concoction. It does have President Trump's signature on the top of it. It does have some features that he asked for. But what I hope he sees and realizes is the details here matter. And without some technical maneuvering in the Senate, this is a bad bill as constructed. And if it passes, forget what any of us think, the bond markets will act decisively and they're going to go in one direction and it's away from us. And I just hope that we figure this out.

[Jason Calacanis]

Seems like a classic diffusion of responsibility here, Sachs. You have Congress, Senate and POTUS not willing to step up and say, let's cut the spending.

[Freeberg]

Well, I don't think that's fair. I mean, look, the president backed up Elon and Doge, first of all, he created Doge. He gave it the US Digital service. He backed it up in every Cabinet meeting and every public pronouncement. There's a limit, though, to what he can do. Congress has the power of the purse. And we said on a previous episode that at the end of the day, for the Doge cuts to become permanent, Congress has to incorporate that into the budget. And the reality is there are still a number of these old bull appropriators on the Republican side who just are not wired to make spending cuts.

[Jason Calacanis]

But why are we hearing him vocally saying, stop this madness? He is the most vocal guy in the world who mixes every topic on the planet. Why is he doing that?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He's probably working it all in the back channel. There are the things that he wants, and he's in the midst of negotiating as well. But my point is just this. The level of financial illiteracy in this bill will come back to bite America in the ass.

[Freeberg]

Look, here's the problem is that what you guys want to sell right now is austerity. And the reality is that the politicians in Washington just are not buying austerity right now. I mean, that's what you want, is austerity. And the reality is the only way you get true austerity, like a painful set of changes, is when both parties link arms and jump off the cliff together and make those changes. The Democrats right now have no willingness to do that. They're opposed to doing this. This is a straight line party reconciliation vote. I think you're trying to overload this vote with way too much stuff. You're trying to basically say that this vote has to fix America's fiscal problems. Just not gonna happen. I mean, look, I agree with you that the fiscal situation needs to get fixed. This is just not the vote where it's gonna happen.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

You cannot exacerbate it.

[Freeberg]

Well, I don't know. I mean, look, I understand that this doesn't have as much stuff as we want. I mean, like I said, I wanna see the Doge cuts made permanent. But the alternative to this bill. Let's say the alternative is just do nothing that is actually meaningfully worse because you will get a massive tax increase. Massive. I think President Trump inherited a Biden economy that was already feeling pretty shaky. I don't know what the argument is for a massive tax increase in an economy that's not doing great. I'd rather see the tax cuts made permanent. I'd rather see the no tax on tips and overtime implemented. Important campaign promises. I'd rather see funding for the border wall. I mean, these are all important things that we need to have happen. And I just don't think that this bill is how you're going to.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

But what I'm saying is, why do you pay for that with electron supply for homes? And I. I don't know.

[Freeberg]

I mean, you're talking about a pretty esoteric issue. Chamath. This is not the same as solving the US situation.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Why do it by doing Medicaid cuts? Why?

[Freeberg]

Well, let's talk about the Medicaid cuts. First of all. I mean, you're being a little bit schizophrenic about this. I mean, you guys are saying that you want to see more cuts, but then you also believe that the Medicaid cuts are a bad idea. So you got to kind of choose.

[David Sacks]

I'm not saying that I think all cuts are great.

[Jason Calacanis]

All my big spending cuts across the board. Yeah, cuts across the board. Spread it out.

[Freeberg]

You got to decide what you're opposed to. Are you opposed to cuts or you want more of them?

[David Sacks]

I want more cuts. And given the fiscal situation, I'm actually, if someone showed up and said, hey, we're going to increase taxes, I'd say that's what we got to do right now. Everyone's got to take a hit on this. But hey, I know I'm going to be alone in that. So I'm not going to try and make that argument. I guess the question for you. No, you're not alone in that.

[Jason Calacanis]

I agree with you.

[David Sacks]

Well, let me ask a question, Sachs. What do you think is the moment when the two parties lock arms and do jump together? What is the conditions that need to be kind of prevalent for us to take, you know, draconian austerity measures?

[Freeberg]

Probably the bond market forces it on the politicians, force it on Washington.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, I think you're right.

[David Sacks]

You're an economist by background. Do you, do you see that happening right now? Like do you see this, the sell off that's happening not just in the US but everyone that's linked to the US which is Japan and so on. Don't you think that the market's telling us that this might be the moment?

[Freeberg]

It could be the moment. But I remember the first week of April when Larry Summers came on the pod and said that the markets were melting down and that was a different moment that he was trying to sell in favor of his policy. So my point is, Jess, there's market volatility and we won't know for a while whether this means anything. It could just be a blip. So look, you asked me what are the conditions for getting austerity? I think that austerity will have to be imposed on Washington from the outside. Washington's not going to find the will internally. We had a wonderful moment here where you have Elon come in with Doge, which the President made possible. Okay? No other president would even have done this.

[David Sacks]

Agreed, Agreed.

[Jason Calacanis]

Big credit for that.

[Freeberg]

Big credit where you get a total outsider to come in and bring a team of like young, big, bald geniuses and you let them go through these departments line by line and start deleting things. Okay. And they made, I think great progress. I think they found 160 billion a year of cuts that could be made administratively. Beyond that, they need Congress to approve it. And I will acknowledge that there are still a number of soft on spending rhino Republicans and there's just not a majority for the types of austerity and cuts that you guys would like to see. I mean that's just the reality.

[David Sacks]

Yeah.

[Freeberg]

But I still think that the question with this bill is just how pure you want to be. My point is just, are you going to make the perfect the enemy of the good? I don't think you're going to get austerity out of Washington right now. It's just not in the cards. The question is whether this bill is basically better than the status quo. And I, and I think it is because of the tax cuts.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

To your point, without opining on it, I think what's going to happen is the bond market will sensitize this budget at real rates. They're not going to use the 3.6 that Fribourg pointed to. They're just going to re underwrite this at five, five and a quarter, five and a half. That is a very different risk exposure, I think. And so to your point, they'll react. If it looks like it passes as is, then that's what they'll do. And to your point, David, we'll know in the next 60 to 90 days.

[Freeberg]

Let's say that this is just a blip in the market and it's not some larger once in a century type event. The reality is we don't know exactly what's going to happen. Look, I don't like America's fiscal picture at all, but what if the AI and robotics revolution plays out in the most optimistic way over the next decade and it's massively deflationary and we get basically AI powered robots expanding the economy massively.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

You need power for that.

[Freeberg]

I get that. And we need to do power generation for sure. But my point is just what if the new technology provides an answer to the fiscal situation that's not currently on the table?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I think it.

[Freeberg]

So this is my point is, is Washington's not going to embrace.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I understand, but you're going to have brown outs and blackouts of average human homes to do that. No, you shouldn't have to make these decisions. Those are dumb trade offs.

[Freeberg]

You're not going to be able to solve the power generation problem in a reconciliation bill.

[Jason Calacanis]

And I want to just add my 2 cents at the end here. Leadership starts at the top. This president acts unilaterally all the time, whether it's immigration, dei, he has no problem. And this is what he is doing. He's endorsing this bill. He's saying it's big, it's beautiful. He is saying this is historic. I think this is bad leadership. I'll just say it straight out. He was elected to balance his budget and to have austerity. He's going to put more onto the debt. And we sat here on this very podcast, the four of us, and said this was the most important issue on the world. And Trump is putting gasoline on the fire. I think it's bad leadership. Let's continue on the docket.

[Freeberg]

I suggest you look at the Constitution because the power of the purse rests with Congress.

[Jason Calacanis]

He's endorsing this, he's endorsing it. When it comes to not even putting up a fight.

[Freeberg]

When it comes to immigration, these other areas, the president has far more unilateral power, and he's used that every chance he gets. But when it comes to spending, you have to get Congress on board. This is a bill that passed with a one vote margin. I don't know where you think the opportunity is to squeeze out more concessions from Congress. I don't think so.

[Jason Calacanis]

He could speak up. He could speak up and say, do better. He's doing the opposite. He's doing the opposite.

[Freeberg]

This bill passed by one vote margin. It was hanging on by a thread. And if it failed, you get basically hundreds of billions of tax increases, which we don't need right now. It's not even true in terms of. I think he's trying in terms of Republican prospects. Look, people vote for Republicans to do two things, cut taxes and cut spending. I wish that this bill did two out of two. It does one out of two. With some of the second one, like with the Medicaid stuff. If we didn't at least cut taxes, there'd be no reason to vote for Republicans. None.

[Jason Calacanis]

Y' all are much closer to him than I am. You all should be challenging him to not endorse this and to do the opposite. That would be the profile in courage.

[Freeberg]

Then we get the biggest tax increase in decades. Great.

[Jason Calacanis]

No, he should just go to everybody and say, do better.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I don't agree with that tactic. I think the better tactic is to do what he did, but then work behind the scenes and help the Senate implement the technical guardrails that make the bill better than it as is. Look, nobody thinks that this bill is gonna pass as is. It's going to go through its own set of changes in the Senate. Now, I think the opportunity is to understand these puts and takes with a little bit more detail and a little bit more mathematical precision and fix it. So I still hold out hope that we're going to get to a better place. But he's going to have much more influence, Jason, by actually taking the positive path than throwing everybody under the bus. The real question will be in 30 days or 45 days, what is the final version of this thing. And whatever gets passed and signed by him, there will have been enough time to understand it and you'll see the real time reactions. All I'm trying to indicate is I think that this was a moment where people were very pensively optimistic that the approach of Doge would really be embraced and that we'd see some broad scale attempts to at least. And Freebrook said this just to go back to 2019. Even if we don't do anything else, just go back to 2019, pretend Covid didn't happen.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah.

[David Sacks]

And we would be, by the way, if we did that, we would have a budget surplus and the bonds would be trading down to 2% yields again. I mean, we would be in such an incredible condition. We've got 2% inflation right now anyway. We don't need to beat the dead horse.

[Freeberg]

Let's move on. I wish, I Wish There were 218 members of the House who thought like.

[David Sacks]

I hear you, I hear you.

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh, gosh, Listen, this guy is saying he's going to primary anybody who is, you know, Jake does it.

[David Sacks]

I don't think it's right.

[Jason Calacanis]

He should be speaking up right now.

[Freeberg]

I'll tell you what, give him the line item veto and then let's talk.

[David Sacks]

Right.

[Jason Calacanis]

How about you saying guys spend less money? It doesn't have to throw him under the bus. Chamath. It could be something very subtle, but.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

You make it that way. What you. The way that you position it is like you make it such a black and white thing and it's ironic.

[Jason Calacanis]

Speak up. Is it black and white?

[David Sacks]

He's no, there's a lot going on.

[Jason Calacanis]

This is a great bill.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

No, but what I'm saying is he is. I'm guessing, I don't know, but I'm gonna assume working behind the scenes. And what you're saying is he should virtue signal and prognosticate in public. And I'm saying that I never say virtual signal. That's what you're asking him to do.

[Jason Calacanis]

No, I'm not. I'm asking him to say reduce spending in the bill because that's good for America.

[Freeberg]

This bill cuts 880 billion for Medicaid over a decade, which is something that already is politically tough and controversial. It imposes work requirements for able bodied adults. This is similar to what Bill Clinton did back in 1996 with welfare reform. Basically saying that you can't be a layabout and get welfare. So these are relatively tough things to do politically. It's like, do I want to see even more cuts? Yeah, absolutely. But again, when you have a one vote margin, whose vote are you going to pick up by doing more cuts? I guess you get Thomas Massie maybe, but you probably have to go all the way to balance the budget to get his vote. I don't know what it takes to get a Thomas Massie. Vote. So I don't know what votes you think you're going to pick up by cutting even more. And we can't afford to lose even one vote.

[Jason Calacanis]

It's literally the art of the.

[David Sacks]

Jason, we got to move on.

[Jason Calacanis]

I will move on, but if you're going to tell me it's. I'm asking. Virtual signal. You're going to lie about my position? I will correct it.

[David Sacks]

It's been 40 minutes.

[Jason Calacanis]

So my position is not to virtual signal. It's to go flip a couple people and say, do better. Okay. It was a huge week for AI Again, Google and the ghost of Steve Jobs took center stage. Let's start with Google here. They had their IO conference on Tuesday. This is where they show a bunch of new stuff. They get developers to come together to embrace their products. And the stock ripped 5% on the day, which might be a turning point for Google.

[David Sacks]

Up again today.

[Jason Calacanis]

And up again today. Search was the big announcement, and we had a discussion with Sergey about that in Miami, and we had multiple discussions about it here over the last couple of months. They demoed something called AI mode. No, not founder mode. AI. AI mode. And they compared it to regular search. Here it is on the screen if you're watching us on YouTube or Spotify, a very elegant app. And so here you have somebody searching, and what you can see is in AI mode, it looks like a nice comprehensive search instead of 10 blue links and tons of advertising. So you can flip over and see all or you can do a perplexity like search. Here we're showing you what this search would have looked like. The AI summary at the top and then your 10 blue links. It's distinctly different. It is exactly Chamath, what you talked about. Somebody has to have the courage to flip the switch here. And so that was the big drop. And I think that in your interview, Dave, didn't Sundar say, we're going to integrate ads into that kind of result? Yes, the comprehensive search result.

[David Sacks]

I think there were a couple of things that Sundar said in the interview that showed up in a really important way at I O. The first was exactly this, which is to make AI mode more ubiquitous in search and effectively, over time, replace search with this AI mode experience, which they've been testing in a small group. And now they've expanded very specifically to kind of Chamath's point. A couple weeks ago, they should try and flip the switch. Well, it appears they've done that. The key question, and the challenge has always been, what's the revenue per Query, how are you going to make money? And I think one of the other kind of interesting announcements that we saw come out of IO which indicates the business model opportunity here is not just AI mode and search but some of the other tools that they've launched bundling them together. And they have this product offering called AI Ultra for $250 a month that includes, you know, YouTube Premium. It includes 30 terabytes of storage on your Google account. It includes access to Flow, which is their movie creating AI model where you can use. They have VO3, Gemini and Imagen below it. Those are the three models that contribute to this movie creation studio tool. And they've launched a number of other kind of high value Gemini models as standalone research apps and you can get access to all of these kind of high powered tools for $250. So I do think this sets a new direction that Google is likely testing as a business model which is subscriptions. You're saying can we make. Yeah, very high dollar volume subscription model for consumers that over time could create a very meaningful shift in the revenue mix for Google away from ads and more towards subscription revenue that we already see in some of the consumer services like YouTube and YouTube TV. This is I think a really important turning point, I would say if anyone were to identify the week that Google really pivoted into the AI business model, it might be this week. They launched over 15 products at this thing. And another important one I'll highlight, Sundar talked about this in the interview I did with him in the early days of Google. From 2002 till about 2011, Google had this kind of playground of products called Google Labs where they would introduce new stuff. I don't know if you guys remember checking out new stuff. So they relaunched Google Labs like a year ago or so. And as Sundar said, they're putting a lot more stuff in Labs. So Labs is now becoming the new test bed. And they launched a bunch of the announcements in Labs. So that becomes the place where they'll say what's the business model? What's the use case? Do people like it? Do they love it? If they do, it graduates out of labs into full production. And I think that opens up the opportunity for some of the things like Chamath was talking about where they could experiment new ideas, new modalities and then productize them if they work.

[Jason Calacanis]

And they Discontinue Labs in 2011. They just brought it back last year.

[David Sacks]

They just brought it back. Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

Sax you I think mentioned, hey, they have the. I'm feeling Lucky button here. They put the AI search up in the top bar where you have images, video shopping, et cetera, news. We're all familiar with that. What do you think? Just swap out I'm feeling lucky for delight me with AI or maybe just if you are a product manager there because you've done a lot of great product work in your career before you were in politics, would you just ab test this and say anybody who let's say doesn't click on ads, let's send them to the AI search and just see how they do because they don't click on ads anyway and then just let the ad clickers keep going to the ad product.

[Freeberg]

Well, I think we were all calling on previous podcasts for Google to risk disrupting their dominance in search by moving to more of an AI based model. And I think they've taken an important step in that direction. They've sort of thread the needle here between keeping their old UI and product and then also incorporating the new sort of AI ui. So this is a compromise. I mean they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. It ultimately feels a little bit like a transitional move. I doubt that this will be the endpoint, but given their need to protect their search business while also developing their AI business, this feels like a pretty good compromise, I think. I mean it certainly shows that they're in the game and they're not going to get caught totally flat footed and let the whole world disrupt them while they're trying to figure out AI. I mean they are responding now and the market seemed to like it. I think they were up like 5% on this news.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, and then up again today. Chamatha, you talked about having some design sense and maybe some bravery here. Looks like they're pretty much on the cusp of doing that. The search reloads results in AI look elegant. They look, dare I say, perplexity. Like when you look at them. I would say I would like to have that as my default. I think when I'm doing search. What do you think of the product? We're showing it here again. And what do you think the roadmap will be? I gave one possibility.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Sax is totally right. I think that this is not the destination but they've taken a really important step and now they have to follow through. We all know what has to happen, so I think we're all just going to debate when it happens and I think what the market is betting is that it's going to happen in the next 18 months. So what is it exactly. It's when AI mode becomes the default for a large swath of existing Google users. How will we know that happens? They're probably running a B tests right now. They're probably gauging behavioral patterns of which kinds of users, what the actual impacts to search are and what impacts exist to CPCS to cost per click, which is one of the inventory types that they sell. But I think this is the beginning of a process. I suspect it'll be done in less than a year and for a large swath of users they are going to put AI in the front door. I think that's a fait accompli. I think we're just now debating the mechanics of getting there per how Sachs alluded to it. That's a really powerful step. But here's Jason I think I go back to what they also have to keep in mind. What you don't want to have when you are going through an innovator's dilemma is to have the competitor be onto the next lily pad while you are figuring out the current lily pad. And the reason I bring this up and I'm sure we'll talk about this is it's impressive what Sam Altman is doing right now at OpenAI. I don't know if it was a troll or not, but to buy I.O. jony I've's firm at the end of Google I.O. and I read an article that said OpenAI has been trying to do this for a couple years in a row but what Sam alluded to in that video was some next gen whiz bang device that they've been working on. That was the industrial logic for the M and A. I think what you don't want to have happen if you're Google is to finally get the search thing right and then now have to play catch up on some device. So I would encourage them to just run the A B tests and shorten the window of measurement. I think we all know what has to happen so it's probably better to just do it sooner than later and then start to allocate the incremental resources to these new form factors and other things so that they shortened the distance between them and OpenAI.

[Jason Calacanis]

Let me tee up exactly what happened. OpenAI they're the makers of ChatGPT bought Jony I've's startup. The startup is called IO. They bought it for 6.5 billion in an all stock deal. If you remember Jony I've was Steve Jobs collaborator and designer, iPhone, ipod, iPad, all that beautiful stuff. So OpenAI is buying IO IO is not loved from. If you've heard about that. That's his design agency. And so they did a really interesting rom com video. I don't know if you guys saw this. It's incredibly ridiculous. Let's play it. Here are two people having a meet cute.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Dude, you're right. It's like a love story.

[Jason Calacanis]

It literally is like a meet cute. Here comes Sam. He's walking around San Francisco and he's a genius according to this video.

[David Sacks]

Here's what I said about Sam Johnny. I was like, I've never met a man who's so brilliant and so humble.

[Jason Calacanis]

I mean it's embarrassing. The langu. The responsibility that Sam bears is actually honestly beyond my comprehension.

[David Sacks]

He's a co founder of I.O.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. OpenAI already owns 20% of it.

[David Sacks]

Yes.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

No, no, no.

[Jason Calacanis]

23% as all Sam Altman deals. Have you learned anything? They're conflicted but the copy here, I just want to get the general's comment on what I see you worrying about are other people or about customers, about society, about culture. And to me that tells me everything I want to know about.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

You guys are such haters on this. I'm excited to see what this thing.

[Jason Calacanis]

But I just thought this.

[David Sacks]

You guys was like you're falling for it. Honestly, I don't know what is.

[Freeberg]

There's two guys.

[David Sacks]

I don't know why we're even. Two guys.

[Jason Calacanis]

But they're going to get nine minutes though.

[David Sacks]

I watched the nine minute video. I wanted my nine minutes back. Nothing happened.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I want the device. They say they have a device. Okay. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. They've invented something that they say is world changing.

[Jason Calacanis]

Okay.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

But they. This is again, I'm just using their words. And he's sipping a macchiato there. So that's important.

[David Sacks]

Oh my God, you are so falling for the espresso video. This is your problem. Chamath.

[Jason Calacanis]

Look at his glasses. I think the clue is in the video. Look at Jony Ives.

[David Sacks]

The fact that we're even talking about this. Those are problems.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Let me. Let me tell you my 2007. My 2007 Apple iPhone moment. Steve announced the iPhone. I got one of the. I don't know first like few hundred, few thousand. I was going to Vegas, so I got it on a Friday and I had it in my hand. The way that people looked at me for those three days. I've never been looked like at that ever or since.

[Jason Calacanis]

They liked you. People liked what you were feeling was love. And admiration.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

All I had was music. There was no multiple screens. You couldn't.

[Jason Calacanis]

There were no App Store.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

But it was so, so mesmerizing. And my point is, you're right. I may have fallen for it, which may seem crazy, but when I saw that video, I thought, hey, hold on. All I'm saying is if there is a next generation device that they or somebody else. My only comment is I think Google is so wonderful. I love the people there. I just want them to be on the forward foot and I just don't want them to be reacting for the next five years. That's all I'm saying.

[Jason Calacanis]

Here's what Sam said about Jony. I've. Johnny is the deepest thinker of anyone I've ever met. I mean, this was a love story.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I'm not justifying what they said about each other.

[Jason Calacanis]

Okay, let's handicap it here. I'll tell you exactly what's happening. It's the glasses. He's wearing the glasses in there. They're making smart glasses. Sax, what are they making? What are these two guys up to? You know these guys, you know both of them for 20 years. Come on now, you know what's going on. Just spill the beans.

[Freeberg]

Let me spill it. Let me express a hot take here, but let me express in the form of a question because I don't want to. I don't want to be too definitive, which is rhetoric.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Okay, go.

[Freeberg]

Which is, is. Jony, I've just a media creation. I mean. No, seriously.

[Jason Calacanis]

Just did Steve Jobs manifest him?

[Freeberg]

Well, I know he did good work at Apple. Okay, don't get me wrong. But the software was done by someone else. Right. So he did the beautiful ediq. So you know the whole.

[Jason Calacanis]

And Scott Foerstol industrial design.

[Freeberg]

Yes. The hardware looks beautiful with the beveled edge. It's a painted glass with a beveled edge. Okay, great.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

It's so dispensary.

[Freeberg]

He has this beautiful English accent which everyone associates with intelligence. Right. So he could describe anything and it's gonna sound amazing.

[David Sacks]

And taste.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And taste 15% smarter.

[Freeberg]

Right? So I don't know, I mean, maybe he's like parlayed this incredible reputation that he's built in the media into 2% of OpenAI.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

OpenAI. It's incredible.

[Freeberg]

I mean, what a trade.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What a trade. Do you think it was done at that $300 billion price? You think it was done at like a cheaper price?

[David Sacks]

Yes. Yes.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. I mean, there is an argument. I'm going to go in Sachs's corner here. I'm going to go into conspiracy corner here. I am going to say Dieter Rams designed the iPhone. Not Jony I've pull it up, Nick.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well I'm going to say Tony Fadell designed the iPhone.

[Jason Calacanis]

Okay, but if you don't know who died of Rams is. I mean if you look at the transistor radio made the ipod. If you pull up the Braun radio, here is the power Mac. If you look at the imac, basically what did Steve Jobs.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Are you accusing Jony I've of ripping off a German industrial designer? Is that what I'm saying right now?

[Jason Calacanis]

What I'm saying is immature artists copy and mature artists steal. I am saying 90% of what Apple did was steal Dita Ram's design. I will die on that hill. 90% stolen.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Johnny. I've is Ben knighted? He's Sir Johnny. I've.

[Jason Calacanis]

He took Dieter Ramses knighthood, that's what he did.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Sir Johnny.

[Freeberg]

I mean Sir John. He did put the handle on an imac, right? I mean, so you got that?

[Jason Calacanis]

He did. You can move those imacs around. So slanderous.

[David Sacks]

Stop you guys.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

This is so brutal.

[David Sacks]

So great.

[Jason Calacanis]

This one. Pull this one up.

[David Sacks]

Nick.

[Jason Calacanis]

Everybody knows the iconic imac. I hate to break your hearts folks. Totally ripped off from Dieter. It was all inspired by the Germans.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Sorry, so you're saying Dieter Braun is like the Kaiser Soze of our entire physical world.

[Jason Calacanis]

Look, here's the speaker on the left, look at the imac on the right. These guys took every design that Dieter did in the 60s and 70s, even the 50s. And they photocopied it and they put an Apple logo on and I could.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Stop, stop, stop, stop.

[Jason Calacanis]

Sacks, am I wrong? Stop.

[Freeberg]

I didn't know about the Dieter Braun.

[Jason Calacanis]

I mean, listen, it is what it is.

[Freeberg]

I mean look, everyone at Apple did amazing work. There's. I don't understand this, but I, but I'm just saying like I don't quite get this like design God reputation that's been created a little bit. But. But I would say that it's certainly making for a brilliant idea to parlay that into 2% of by the way.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Is that I don't know what San Francisco looks like. Like I never thought. Every time I go to San Francisco it's so disgusting and it's cloudy and cold. But yes. Did they find the one day where like the sun was shining in that hellscape?

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. There were no homeless people and there was no fentanyl. I don't know what happened.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yuck.

[Freeberg]

On a serious note, what I would Say is maybe what this deal indicates is, I mean, obviously is that OpenAI is going to do something with hardware.

[Jason Calacanis]

Sure.

[Freeberg]

It could be a new kind of phone that is AI first as opposed to the wall of applications. Or maybe it's like some sort of like pendant thing that like tracks what's going on around you and feeds it into AI so it can give you more context, you know, maybe like in the movie her, who knows? But it seems like they'll do something with devices and the physical world. So that would be the play, I guess.

[Jason Calacanis]

I guess the question you have to ask is, will it make OpenAI 1% more valuable if it's a $300 billion company, 2% more valuable? Yes. Thank you. Will it make it more than 2% more valuable? If it makes it 1% more valuable is worth the swing, I guess. Right.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I heard an interesting factoid yesterday, which is by somebody who was looking at OpenAI equity. All of the rounds before the $300 billion round from SoftBank had essentially a feature where there was like a hard rate of return and the ability or something. No, but the ability to put the stock back if they weren't able to do the conversion to a for profit company, et cetera, et cetera. And in the $300 billion round, apparently it's much cleaner and it's essentially like sub new co that is owned and I thought to myself like, wow, at those valuations I would have expected the terms to ratchet up and instead it seems like the terms have ratcheted down, which is, I don't know, it's either commentary on the negotiating prowess of OpenAI and their team and or the risk management philosophy of SoftBank and the lack thereof.

[Jason Calacanis]

I do think he is a great designer and he will make it 1 or 2% better. Design matters. So if he makes it, I mean, there's a chance, right, Sax, that he could make the product 5 or 10% better through design.

[Freeberg]

I don't think it's going to be 1 or 2% better. I think it's going to be either zero or a doubling of the company's value, something like that. Either he developed an iPhone like amazing hit product. No one suited for some new consumer device that really could take the company to another level or probably they do something that kind of doesn't work. So it's more of like a 2% option against a strike of doubling the value of the company.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I'm surprised it hasn't leaked because in Sam's update or whatever, he said that the executive team was shown the device and that he has it. So what is it?

[Jason Calacanis]

It's definitely going to be a pendant or glasses. It's got to be those two form factors.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Okay, that's what you think.

[Jason Calacanis]

He was the investor in Humane, remember? Wasn't that the pending from the Apple people?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I will take the field against that. What are the odds and how much money do you want to bet?

[Jason Calacanis]

Okay, here we go. So I think it's a pendant. Like a wearable. We'd have to define that. So, like humane?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I'll say. It's not a pendant.

[Jason Calacanis]

Okay. Glasses I get. What are you going to give me?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

You give me odds, I'll give you.

[Jason Calacanis]

Give me odds.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well, we'll just do even money. Let's do even money. I don't know. Whatever you want. However many thousands of dollars you want.

[Jason Calacanis]

To bet even money. How about you give me two to one ten times? Because you have every option. I have to pick them.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

No, no, no, no.

[David Sacks]

That's a pretty good bet.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

This is my respect here.

[Freeberg]

All right, let's move on.

[Jason Calacanis]

All right, we covered Trump's trip to the Middle east last week, but our bestie Sachs was there as well. And you got a couple photos to show, and you met a lot of friends there. Tell us about the experience of. Did you go, first of all, did you go on Air Force One? That's what everybody wants to know. Or did you go on Air Sacs?

[Freeberg]

I took my own plane, so I know that sounds a little bit like a flex, but.

[Jason Calacanis]

Were you in formation with Air Force One? Were you like, you know, just right behind it, or on your own travel? You were on your own travel schedule?

[Freeberg]

I was. I was doing my own. My own thing.

[Jason Calacanis]

But did you have the option to go on Air Force One?

[Freeberg]

I probably could have if I wanted to, but I actually wanted to get to the region a little bit early because I hadn't been before, and I kind of checked it out, and so I was waiting there when the President arrived.

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh, wow. So it was your first time in the region?

[Freeberg]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

Well, tell us about your impressions generally, and what were you trying to accomplish there as the czar?

[Freeberg]

Well, I call it AI Diplomacy. First of all, these countries are obviously, they're very resource rich. They've got a lot of capital to deploy, and they're also very interested in diversifying their economies. They're very interested in high tech, and they want to do things in AI They've got very significant aspirations there. And so I was over there just to kind of listen and learn and See what they're interested in doing. And I also got to see some of their tech scenes and just understand garage in Riyadh. Right. I've been there. Oh, you've been there. Okay.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, yeah. No, it's. They are really pushing entrepreneurship, trying to generate more ideas and teach people how to start companies and co working spaces, all kinds of incentives in terms of visas to come to Riyadh, to come to uae, you know, Dubai, Abu Dhabi specifically. So.

[David Sacks]

Yeah.

[Freeberg]

Right.

[Jason Calacanis]

I'm curious your impression of the individuals who are leading a lot of these different groups. I was really taken back by how much time they had spent in the West. It seemed like every single person I had met had taken one of these scholarships to go to Oxford, to Harvard, to Caltech, whatever it was. They all had spent massive amounts of time in the west and then come back to either Saudi or UAE or Oman, et cetera. So maybe you could talk a little bit about the people and their knowledge base, motivation, et cetera.

[Freeberg]

I had the same observation. The elites of all these countries have all been educated in the west, usually in the United States, some in the uk. The leadership tends to be young, visionary, future oriented, intensely interested in AI, like I was saying, and they want to do big things in AI. The thing that's been in their way is that in October 2023, the Biden administration basically put a blanket on the whole region, acquiring semiconductors, GPUs. And it required that every export of a GPU or a server that contains a GPU had to get a specific license from the Commerce Department. And it put a major damper on their efforts to do things like build data centers in the region or to have their own local AI efforts. So they've been kind of in this holding pattern where the Biden administration decided to kind of alienate them. And it wasn't just AI, there was other things too. Remember the fist bump? And the Biden administration was very, I'd say, hostile, standoffish, cool too, and even hostile towards these states in the region. And I think from a geopolitical standpoint, it was just stupid because we're in an intense competition, a high tech competition, a security competition, economic competition with China. And these states want to be aligned with the US and we are pushing them into China's arms. And if we don't give them the ability to buy the American tech stack, it's not like they're going to sit on their hands and do nothing. They're going to be forced to buy the Chinese tech stack.

[Jason Calacanis]

They're going to participate one way or the other.

[Freeberg]

Right. And China still has some limitations on how many chips it can produce, but they clearly are building their own Chinese tech stack. It's a Huawei plus deep sea tech stack. There's actually a story in Malaysia just in the last couple of days where they were talking about building a local data center using the Huawei Ascend GPU plus Deep seq. And then they walk back that story because I think they're afraid of getting in trouble with, with the US Government. But the point is that if we drive these countries away, if we alienate them, they will end up partnering with China instead of the United States. I don't understand how that's in the United States interest. Now. As part of this trip, we rolled out a new framework for an AI acceleration partnership with these countries. And there's a few very important terms that I think it's worth going into. So, first of all, the purpose of the framework is to replace the Biden export control to the region with a framework that gives them the ability to buy GPUs and build data centers. But there's a few very important provisions. Number one is there's a matching investment provision. So for every dollar of investment they make in terms of building out data centers in the region, they have to invest a dollar in the United States and building out our AI infrastructure. So it's a huge win for the United States in terms of accelerating our own infrastructure build out. So that's point number one. Number two is even with respect to the data centers they're going to build in the region, at least 80% of the chips have to be owned and operated by American cloud service providers or American hyperscalers. So even with respect to the data centers they're building, the vast majority of the compute is going to be run by American companies. And so I mean, this to me is just a huge.

[Jason Calacanis]

Were people critiquing it, like, you know, this expansion, I guess Ro Khan has said, like, hey, we should build more data centers here. That was sort of a light critique maybe, or a misunderstanding.

[Freeberg]

There's two types of critiques. One is the one that Roe was making and Rose a friend, but just, you know, I respond to him on On X, which is we are building out data centers in the U.S. we want to do as much as we can. It's the Trump administration's policy towards energy that's making that possible. We're making it easier to spin up new power generation and we're making it easier to permit both, both those things. Were virtually impossible during the Biden administration. So we are building more here in the U.S. in addition to that, you've got these countries who are resource rich and they have their own AI dreams and aspirations. And we can either partner with them or drive them into the arms of China. And the deal we've made is to enable their aspirations while getting them to fund more AI infrastructure in the United States and even the infrastructure they're building over there. First of all, it's going to be on an American tech stack, right? We want it to be Nvidia and AMD and those types of companies that improves our balance of trade. It also ensures that these data centers across the world are going to be built on American technology. We want American technology to become the standard. Of course, if you allow those data centers to be built on Huawei plus Deep Seq, that will become the standard. So I think this is something that people in Silicon Valley intuitively grasp, but people in Washington don't. Which is the way that you win these technology battles is you create the largest ecosystem, right? You want to have the most partners, you want to have the biggest app store, you want to have the APIs. Everyone uses the most data. Exactly. So the point is we want to involve the whole world on our tech stack. I think export controls on China, that makes sense, but we don't want to reduce our market share in the rest of the world. We want them getting hooked on our platforms, making those platforms to standard and getting lock in before China can catch up to us.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Sachs, did Jensen just say that he thought export controls were kind of pointless? Did he just say that recently?

[Freeberg]

Yeah, he's against all export controls. And where I would split the baby here is that I think that most people in Washington believe that the export controls on China make sense because we simply can't allow our most powerful semiconductors to be used by China because of the dual use. Now where I agree with Jensen is that I think we should not place undue restrictions on the rest of the world using the American tech stack because we will simply concede the market share to China. And so I think he's right with respect to the Middle East. Now the other concern that you heard a lot is around this quote, diversion. The idea that somehow the GPUs or somehow the IP, if we allow it to be used in data centers in the Middle east, will somehow find its way to China. And yeah, I mean, the expression on your face, jcal, shows that that makes no sense.

[Jason Calacanis]

These guys have unlimited resources, they have unlimited ambition. That's just a naive point of view. They want these for themselves. They understand the power of AI. They don't want to give it to China. They want it for themselves.

[Freeberg]

They make trillions of dollars selling oil and gas. They don't need to smuggle our GPUs. It doesn't make any sense. The other thing is that people don't understand. You know, they're called chips, but really, these things are now the size of mainframes. The Nvidia Data center product, NVL72, is this giant server cabinet. It's 8ft tall. It weighs 3,600 pounds. It's not like diamonds you smuggle in a briefcase. Right. All you have to do is send.

[Jason Calacanis]

You're not putting them up and getting them across the border. That's definitely not happening.

[Freeberg]

No, it's not happening. All you have to do is send an inspector to the data center to count the servers, and you can see that they're there.

[Jason Calacanis]

Ridiculous.

[Freeberg]

So this idea that somehow they're going to get smuggled, it's like this totally fake concern that's been created. It's almost like a totally fake narrative, you know? Then people say, well, they won't physically smuggle the servers, but the IP will somehow be transferred to China. Look, there's nothing in a data center that China hasn't already seen. They have at least one of everything. The issue is that they can't reverse the advanced semiconductors just from the chips. Right. Because it's about the process technology that it takes to create an advanced semiconductor. There's hundreds or even thousands of steps in that process, and you can't figure out the recipe just by seeing the end product.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I would like to say that I'm very proud of my bestie. I got three calls. I do want to tell you, Sax, you crushed it. I think you.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, it was pretty impressive.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Put your best foot forward, and people were really impressed. But I got calls. I got three calls from the powers that be. They were very psyched to meet you and spend time with you, and they thought you were super impressive. So it was awesome. Thank you for doing that.

[Freeberg]

Well, I appreciate that.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, it's an incredible region, and I think you're doing, like, a really patriotic thing. If you look at that region, like you said, it could tip one way or the other. They could be involved with the West. We could be building businesses together. And if we build businesses together, that's better than them building businesses with China. Pretty obvious, I think.

[Freeberg]

Totally. And this is the thing is, I just don't get the opposition in Washington to this. And I especially don't get how the opponents of this can call themselves China hawks, because at the end of the day, this is a tech battle between the US and China. And we can have these countries be aligned with us and in our orbit, or we could push them into the arms of the Chinese. The choice is do we want these countries to be the piggy bank for American AI or for Chinese AI? It's like that's something I'm saying.

[Jason Calacanis]

They have an investment level that they can do that dwarfs anybody else in the world, with the exception of Norway and the United States. I mean, they can put a lot of money to work. And here's the thing they want to.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

It just hit the wire that OpenAI is partnering on a 5 gigawatt data center cluster in Abu Dhabi with G42.

[Freeberg]

Well, hold on, let's just be clear about. So the 5 gigawatt cluster, or it's more of a campus that's going to support many American hyperscalers and cloud service providers and they're going to be one of the tenants. So I think they're saying that they're going to have 1 gigawatt. There's still 4 gigawatts to go that they plan on supporting.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

The most interesting part of the deal, it said, was that as part of the deal, G42 plans to make a reciprocal dollar for dollar investment in AI infrastructure in the US. So to your point, Sax, it's like perfect. Cooperating like this, I think just makes a ton of sense.

[Jason Calacanis]

Absolutely. And this is not dumb money, by the way. These are very smart people who are investing very strategically with a very crisp group of individuals, like you said, who have been educated in the West. When people explain to me, oh yeah, just go to Abu Dhabi and come back with a suitcase full of money. No, these are folks who want to be on the board of companies. They want to company build. They see themselves as owners in business, not just investors. And then they want to do it domestically and abroad. The amount of investment that they're going to do in the next 30 years is going to dwarf what we see out of universities and retirement accounts. I think people understand the scale of what's happening.

[Freeberg]

This is why I just don't understand the point of the Biden policy of alienating these countries and making them feel uneasy about their place.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Because you don't know who it was that made the decision. I mean, let's face it, that guy was confused.

[Jason Calacanis]

We can have Bernie's.

[Freeberg]

I actually Have a pretty good idea at this point of who is controlling the auto pen on AI. There was a group of very powerful staffers in the Biden administration, about half a dozen people who kind of controlled AI policy. And the interesting thing is none of them have ever worked in Silicon Valley. They're all basically lawyers and they don't really have a good understanding of the idea of a platform or technology ecosystem or a stack. And I don't think they realized that by alienating these very resource rich countries that they were creating a huge opportunity for China to come in and serve the region. And this is why I think this, again, what I call AI diplomacy is so important, is it boxes out China. It's good for America, it's good for our companies, it's good for our trade balance, it makes us the standard, and it boxes out China. What's not to like about this? I really don't get it.

[Jason Calacanis]

I think they were living in a world where they put people into very rigid buckets. If you wanted to look at human rights as an issue, which I think is what some people were doing in that administration, I look at the progress that's being made. And if you go to these societies and you look at what's happening in that region, the pace at which human rights and individual freedoms is growing and the rate at which those societies are moving forward, it's going in the right direction. So what do we want to do? Do we want to steer people towards collaboration and working together to build the future, or do you want to have it devolve? I mean, such a stupid decision by the Biden administration. It was perplexing.

[Freeberg]

Yeah. I really don't get it. I don't understand what the point of alienating these Gulf states was.

[Jason Calacanis]

Well, I like Trump's approach there. When he said, listen, you're going to make decisions in your own time. That's what they want to hear. They want to be respected as they respect us. Hey, we're going to make decisions in our own time. What's right for our people, that's a process that we'll decide. Now, if you want to collaborate on building a company, a data center, a technology platform, hey, we're here for that. But you can't tell us how to run our society. And just like we wouldn't want them to come here and tell us how to run our society. Right.

[Freeberg]

So I agree with what you just said, J. Cal. And I thought the best part of the President's speech, which the whole thing was excellent, but the best part was when he talked about how the neocons and the interventionists had come into the region and lectured people. People and come in with this very moralistic point of view and made all these interventions that basically wrecked countries. And it wasn't the neoconse interventionists who have led to so much progress in the Middle east and in the Arab world. It's been the countries themselves whose own leaders have set the path and have had the vision.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

That was an incredible speech.

[Jason Calacanis]

Incredible.

[Freeberg]

It was incredible.

[Jason Calacanis]

That was Trump for me. Yeah, he did a great job. Credit.

[David Sacks]

What credit?

[Jason Calacanis]

And that's the message they've wanted to hear for a long time, and that's the message that moves society forward. All these other messages just sort of set it back. And I think I'm super hopeful about the region. Okay, let's do Science Corner. You know.

[Freeberg]

Oh, by the way, I was just checking X here, and it looks like there is a announcement on what the OpenAI device is going to be.

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh, here we go.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Oh, the puck. The little puck. I saw that puck, but it hasn't been confirmed yet.

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh, it's a puck you put on your desk and it.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, it's like a puck with a camera and a hole for a microphone.

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh, that's a pin. Yeah, that's a pendant. It's a pendant. I could have made $10 straight up versus you. That's a pendant.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

That's a puck.

[Jason Calacanis]

It fits in the palm of your hand. It's too small to be a puck. A puck's like the size of your hand. It looks like your thumb. Okay. This is AI generated. It's not actually the device. They haven't shown the device from Jony I've yet. Somebody just took what's in the Wall Street Journal report. They mocked it up. This is their best guess as to what it might look like. This is already out. And by the way, this is gonna get you punched in the face. You show up with a listening device to a party or a meeting, I'm gonna knock you out. This is ridiculous. And it's got a camera in it, too. I don't want this surveillance device anywhere near me.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

How are you gonna do it? Like this? Yeah, get that buck away from me.

[David Sacks]

Okay.

[Jason Calacanis]

Anytime.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

How dare you record me, violate my privacy.

[Jason Calacanis]

I was literally at dinner the other day, I kid you not, and somebody came up with one of these things, and it was clipped on his thing. I said, hey, what's the thing on your lapel? He said, it's an AI recording device. It does. It summarizes what we're doing? I said. He goes, oh, do you care? I said, do you care if I punch you in the face for covertly recording me? And he said, yes. I said, well, then turn it over. Turn it off.

[David Sacks]

I mean, literally, let's talk about science.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Let's talk about science.

[Freeberg]

Well, you raise a good point, J. Cal, that these new devices. No, these new devices requires a level of trust that is kind of unprecedented. I mean, you already had to trust Google and iPhone and so on, because they do have a huge level of access to your data. But the new. Let's call them AI Connected devices. I mean, they are surveillance devices. I mean, their whole point is to listen and see everything that you can hear and see and, you know, and then to give that data to AI to do something with. And, man, you better trust that company completely.

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh, yeah? Which company's doing it? Oh, right, that company. Yeah, the company that had every leader leave because they didn't trust the founder. Okay, all right. Yeah, go ahead and wear the puck. And by the way, with these pucks, I'm gonna make one more point. Friedberg. I'm sorry. These devices need to have a red flashing diode on them when they're recorded. We need to pass legislation that it does that. If it's recording, it should have a flashing red light on it. Let's go to science corner because everybody, chamath loves science corner. Friedberg, some breaking news. Some innovations in crispr.

[David Sacks]

Yes, it's got a lot of press coverage, but there was a baby born named KJ in the research paper that was published, was born with a mutation that was inherited from the mother on a specific gene called CPS1 and the same mutation inherited from the father, which resulted in the fact that this gene has a deficiency in it. CPS one produces a protein that's part of the urea cycle. So basically breaking down nitrogen or protein compounds in the blood so that they can be excreted. And in the absence of this protein, if this protein is not being made in the body, ammonia accumulates in the blood, and that has extraordinarily harmful consequences, including brain damage and ultimately death. This gene had a G that was mutated into an A on both of the copies of the gene meant that the protein wasn't being correctly produced, and as a result, the breakdown of nitrogen and ammonia was not possible. This leads to a very short life for the very few people that have ever had this double mutation that this particular child was unfortunately born with. We have technology today, CRISPR gene editing technology in Fact, CRISPR gene editing technology is what we use to do some of the work we do at Ohalo, the company I run. Some advanced forms of gene editing technology include what are called base editors, where you can change a single letter on a strand of DNA into another letter. So in this particular case, changing an A to a G was the goal. So the physician, Rebecca Ahrens Nicholas, giving her a big shout out for the incredible work she did in partnership with scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, they developed very quickly a very specific gene editing target to go in and find the letter A and turn it to G in this particular patient's body. Now, remember, we have the same DNA in all of our cells in our body, but specific cells have specific functions and genes are expressed in only those cells. So in this case, it's the liver that makes this CPS1 protein. And so they had to get the gene editing into the liver cells to edit the liver cells. And if they could edit the liver cells, then those liver cells would start to become more functional and you would have a functional protein. So they quickly tested dozens of base editors. These are different proteins that can go in and edit. They tested different guide RNAs. These are the guides that tell that editing protein where to go, what part of the DNA to go to, which is trying to get it to this exact same site. They tested it in petri dishes, then they tested it in mice, men and monkeys to make sure that the selection that they came up with worked. They then put it in the child. And so basically by putting it in the blood, found its way into the liver. And that's the, the, the, the fortunate benefit here was at the end of the day, you're trying to edit specific cells. And we can get to the liver by putting the CRISPR and the guide into the blood. It made its way to the liver, and they coated the gene editing system with liquid nanoparticles, which helped it get into the cells. It got absorbed by the liver, it got, went into the cells, it found its way to the site on the DNA, converted the A to G. And as a result, those liver cells became functional to make the protein that breaks down the ammonia in the child's blood. And so they did the first one just to make sure the child would handle it. It worked. The child didn't have any adverse effect. They then did the second dose, able to take the child off some of the medicines and compounds they were giving the child to break down ammonia in the blood. And then they gave it the third dose and they're monitoring. So this is the first time that we've seen this kind of custom CRISPR gene editing for a genetic mutation being applied to a patient in vivo in the blood for a specific target for a specific particular treatment.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I just asked Grok how many diseases are because of an A to G point mutation and it says it's hard to estimate through the Human Genome Database or Clinvar, but it estimated between 20 and 30,000 conditions are because of an A to G point mutation. And isn't that incredible?

[David Sacks]

Yeah. And I'll tell you one other story about this. I saw a geneticist here at UCSF a couple years ago and he was telling me about all of these kids that come in and they don't know what's wrong with them. And he can see on the kid's face, he can see a disease condition. They have all these weird lab tests and the kids are dying or they're really deficient in some way and they can't afford to do the DNA sequencing because the child is on medi cal or some other sort of like healthcare plan. And it costs like $5,000 to do the DNA sequencing needed to figure out what genetic mutation this particular child has. So there aren't easy off the shelf targeted tests or lab tests you can run to figure out when people have genetic disease. And so this is an incredible like undiscovered set of problems. Chamath to your point that there are likely millions of people out there that have some health condition that they've not yet been able to identify because it's a genetic mutation. And not everyone can afford to go out and just get their genome sequence to figure out where the mutation might lie in their body. And so as we discover more and more genetic mutations, we build targeted tests for identifying that people have them and hopefully over time can start to build more targeted therapies like this one to go after and make the changes at specific sites to fix the genetic mutations.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Badass.

[Jason Calacanis]

It's incredible. Okay, somebody wakes Zachs up. Zachs.

[David Sacks]

Just so you know, one thing about America is we've got a pretty good advantage in gene editing technology today and China is a on its way coming after the US on this technology front as well as AI.

[Jason Calacanis]

You woke him up. You should piqued his interest. China's coming for Uranus.

[David Sacks]

And you will see some very good posts recently on people talking about how a lot of technology that's been developed in the United States is being transferred to China. And they are building biotech companies and biotech solutions that take American IP and put them into market. And this has also had a very big dampening effect on the biotech market.

[Freeberg]

So what do you think we should do about that?

[David Sacks]

It should be in the trade negotiations, some tighter IP controls.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I can tell you, Sachs, that a very large company, I had a conversation with their CEO and they said this exact thing, which is that the amount of IP that's available for purchase or for licensing, questionable provenance. But how effective and good it is is causing them to figure out how to establish more of a presence to just buy stuff. There's. It's kind of like.

[Freeberg]

So wait, what does that mean?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Meaning that. Let's just say you have an R and D effort in the United States. You can almost hedge your bets by having an outpost in or near China, let's say Hong Kong, where there's an equivalent project for almost anything that we're working on happening there at the same time in real time. And so if you can't figure out how to get it here, you can get it there. And it's much murkier and the laws are sort of unclear, and it's just different enough where you can kind of get to the same place. So it's just to say what Friedberg said, which is that the amount of R and D that the Chinese are doing is roughly equivalent to the amount of R and D that the United States is doing.

[Freeberg]

Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And so, as a result, everything that we discover, they discover. And so it really is a foot race, and we're kind of neck and neck for sure. This is a perfect time to make sure that we have an electricity deficit. Perfect time.

[Freeberg]

Well, I agree with you. We need to build out power, but I think the administration's committed to doing that. Drill, baby, drill.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I'm not questioning Trump's desire. I'm talking about the actual congressional bill details I saw yesterday.

[David Sacks]

The Tennessee Valley Authority filed the first ever application for small modular reactor. Let's go. Hopefully it gets approved very quickly. This is, by the way, I will watch this. I think others should watch this to see how quickly they're able to get through the regulatory process to get that thing approved. And that will be a very good indicator if it gets approved and they can get fast, Permitting fast deployment. That would be an incredible insight on how quickly the US will be able to scale power production for AI over under 2032.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What do you say?

[David Sacks]

Let's do a polymarket. Great.

[Jason Calacanis]

Let's do a poly market. And you should create a special Trump designation, like a Speedrun designation. When Something's super important. He puts the Speedrun designation on it and they actually attempt to do it as fast as possible.

[David Sacks]

I don't know if you guys watched my interview with Burgum, but he said that there's a permit for a copper mine that's been outstanding for 30 years. They've been trying to get through the permitting process. 30 years to get this copper mines started to run. And now he and the team are trying to fast track this thing. But 30 years it's been sitting through a permit process. Here's the good news.

[Jason Calacanis]

The manila folder has made its way down the elevator. So it's down there in the sub basement, ready to be.

[David Sacks]

But let's go ahead and get rid of Doge. Let's get rid of Doge and keep things.

[Freeberg]

Let me ask Friedberg. Well, I don't want to get rid of Doge, but let me ask Friedberg a question.

[David Sacks]

No, I'm joking.

[Freeberg]

I'm like, yeah, I know. Given the amazing advances that you see coming with CRISPR biotech, but also AI robotics, what are the odds that we can grow our way out of this fiscal problem?

[David Sacks]

Yeah, yeah. I'll be honest. I think the limiting factor, so the CRISPR side, it's going to have profound effect in longevity, human health and food abundance. So those are, I think about abundance in four ways. One is abundance of food or calories. One is an abundance of labor through automation. One is in abundance of lifespan or longevity. And one is an abundance of what I think is the most important and gating factor, which is energy, which leads to everything else. So you can't have the labor savings without the energy and the productivity improvements without the energy. So the thing I do watch is the most sacks. And that I do think, you know, I have talked about this, that I do think is the critical linchpin for all of those other points of abundance being unleashed is the energy equation. And this is where I look very clearly and plainly at what China's doing versus where we're at today. We've got stated intentions, but the actions are where we're still, you know, we got to start showing up. That's it.

[Freeberg]

But let's assume that we have enough power. I mean, my point's really about, yeah.

[David Sacks]

If we have enough power, the 38 trillion of debt doesn't matter.

[Jason Calacanis]

Really? You're saying that in a no, I'm.

[David Sacks]

Very, very serious way.

[Freeberg]

That's a pretty important conclusion because if that's true and we can grow our way out of this problem, then that's an alternative to having this austerity approach where there's you're right. For which there's no political will.

[David Sacks]

Sachs, listen, if I saw us adding a terawatt of electricity production capacity per year in the us I would shut the up about the debt. I wouldn't care.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Terawatt. We're talking about gigawatts.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, I'm talking about one terawatt.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

No, I know, but I'm saying like.

[David Sacks]

China, you guys know China right now.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Dealing in, in gigawatts.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, I know. We barely have a terawatt and China's dealing in terawatts. China is moving. I mean, we've been through the numbers, but they're going. They're adding an entire United States every 18 months.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Every 18 months? Yeah.

[David Sacks]

So every 18 months, China adds all of the power production capacity of the entire United States additional to their grid.

[Jason Calacanis]

Mostly in nuclear and solar.

[David Sacks]

Solar is a big component. Hydro, hydro's.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I mean, look at the, look at the number of times they're adding like.

[David Sacks]

Hundreds of gigawatts just on the, on the Yangtze.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, look at the number of times that Elon has said this. Like, it's like the amount of energy that's available if we just harness it from the sun and redirect it with some storage would solve all of our problems. But the problem is that we're at like just a little over a terawatt. We're inching along in gigawatts, whereas China is in the terawatts, adding terawatts.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, they're in the chart. There are three, literally on the corner.

[Jason Calacanis]

Of Arizona or Utah, there's three going.

[David Sacks]

To eight and we're at one going to two. Yeah, I've shown this many times before on this show.

[Jason Calacanis]

It's crazy.

[David Sacks]

This isn't. This is total production over a year. So this is terawatt hours. And this shows 4,000 terawatt hours is where the US is at. If you break that down on basically a continuous production, you measure it in watts. So the number of watts that the U.S. can make at any given point in time or is making any given point in time is 1 terawatt, 1 trillion watts. Meanwhile, right now China is making 3 terawatts and they're scaling up to make 8. We are at 1 going to 2 over the next 15 years.

[Freeberg]

So you consider this graph to be more important than the budget deficit graph?

[David Sacks]

I do, and I'll tell you why. I've got another chart. I can pull it up for next time.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So now do you think it's esoteric Sacks to add these line items that this market.

[Freeberg]

Well, I just don't. I mean you're talking about. I'm not sure. You're going to have to provide a lot more information about what exactly is.

[David Sacks]

No, but I mean, look, it's obvious. It's obvious.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Don't talk to Brookfield and Black, they'll tell you.

[David Sacks]

And I just want to translate this. It's so obvious that automation.

[Freeberg]

I've seen any reporting on that Chamath, I just haven't seen anything.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

It just happened last night. This is the point.

[David Sacks]

I'll just say one thing because I think it's. I just want to add it at the end.

[Jason Calacanis]

Sure.

[David Sacks]

Automation, which is unlocked by AI. We are going to see an explosion of robots. They're not going to all be humanoid robots, but like robotics allows humans to get an incredible amount of work done. Imagine having the cost to build a giant building go down by 50x. That's what this unleashes.

[Jason Calacanis]

Is all of this automation optimus doing it?

[David Sacks]

Yes, we'll have Optimus, but we'll have these robotic devices doing it. You can see it in China. Go look at how they build bridges. It takes like three days to build a multi mile bridge in China because the whole thing is automated. They do automated drilling, they do automated mining, they do automated building, all of that. If we unleash that capacity in the United States, we can build things that are economically productive for America. All of this gets unleashed. The technology is here today. The only thing that's missing is the power.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

We want this. David. I would just then ask folks, go talk to like Duke Energy, go talk to Constellation Energy, go talk to the drillers. But they'll all tell you the same thing. If you want a NAT gas turbine, we have to wait until 2030.

[Freeberg]

Why?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Because China owns them all. They make them all. So if you say hey Chamath, drill baby, drill and use NAT gas and I say, okay, I'm waiting in line for five years to get a turbine. So then it's like, okay, what can I do? Nuclear, I can't because that'll take till 2035. So then I'm like, okay, I'll go into the tax equity markets and I'll finance myself residential or industrial, solar. And when that goes away, there is no energy. Somebody should just go and figure this out.

[David Sacks]

By the way, this is our Manhattan Project. There was a Manhattan Project, then there was the Apollo Project. This generation's Manhattan and Apollo Project is energy production scaling in the United States, that's it. All the other shit flows. We don't need the government to do AI. We don't need the government to do automation.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Private markets do all that. Let us. Let us do the energy.

[David Sacks]

We need to figure out how to get energy.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And you can't decapitate the markets that finances it. We're all willing to put up the risk capital. That's the crazy part. We don't even need the government.

[David Sacks]

I don't know any of the details of what you're talking about, but I mean generally, like, how do you think.

[Jason Calacanis]

And your chairman Dictator.

[Freeberg]

Ductator.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. Chairman Ductator.

[David Sacks]

Who you duct tape?

[Jason Calacanis]

We are Chairman dictator. I'm trying to close the show for the seventh time. Your chairman dictator. Chamath Payahapitiya. Your czar, David Sacks, sultan of science. I am the world's greatest moderator. I'll be in Singapore next week. If anything's popping off jasonllin.com hit me up.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Why do you broadcast your location? I don't understand. What are you.

[Jason Calacanis]

Because I'm going to Singapore. I'm doing a bunch of public events.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

People know you're the same one that wants to like for the pin. And then you're just telling people where you're at. I don't care.

[Jason Calacanis]

See what happens, tough guy. Put the pin on.

[David Sacks]

I'm sorry. You took all in.com as your email address.

[Jason Calacanis]

Jason. We each have that.

[Freeberg]

Wait.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

But don't broadcast that out, bro. Come on.

[Jason Calacanis]

Just email me [e-mail].

[David Sacks]

That'S your domain.

[Freeberg]

That's not your domain. That's on the show.

[Jason Calacanis]

You ungrateful pricks.

[David Sacks]

Oh, my God.

[Jason Calacanis]

I can't even goddamn email.

[David Sacks]

It's not in the contract that you get the email, Jason.

[Jason Calacanis]

Allin.com for life.

[David Sacks]

I think we should charge you 50k a month for that.

[Jason Calacanis]

Email for life. Executive producer for life. And email for life. We'll see you all next time.

[David Sacks]

What are you going to Singapore for?

[Freeberg]

He's trying to engineer 25 grand. What do you mean? This is a plug. This is a plug. Whatever.

[Jason Calacanis]

He's. I'm in Singapore next week. That's it. You were in the Middle east last year.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Thousand dollars.

[Freeberg]

Yeah, but I didn't pre announce it.

[Jason Calacanis]

You didn't pre announce it? You were on cnn.

[David Sacks]

You don't pay for your business class ticket. J Cal to come to a talk. Is that what's going on here? You got a free ticket? Let's go.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

First of all, first of all, let me just tell you.

[Jason Calacanis]

I speaking gigs are six figures now, bitch.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I've flown private to Singapore. Never again. That is the dumbest thing. Fly Singapore Airlines.

[David Sacks]

The best.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

The best.

[David Sacks]

Are you doing Singapore first, jc?

[Jason Calacanis]

I think.

[Freeberg]

Yeah.

[David Sacks]

I don't know.

[Jason Calacanis]

I think I'm United, actually.

[David Sacks]

But do not fly United. Do not fly United to Singapore.

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh, really? Okay, I'll switch it out.

[David Sacks]

Like Singapore.

[Jason Calacanis]

What do you think? Raffles. You like Raffles?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Raffles is the best.

[David Sacks]

The best. It's what I keep hearing.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

The best.

[David Sacks]

The best.

[Jason Calacanis]

This looks beautiful. All right, everybody, we'll see you next time. Bye bye.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Love you guys.

[David Sacks]

Let your winners ride Rain Man David.

[Freeberg]

And it said we open source it to the fans and they've just. Just gone crazy with it.

[Jason Calacanis]

Love you, Queen of Kin. Besties are gone.

[David Sacks]

Thirteen, this is my dog taking a.

[Freeberg]

Notice in your driveway. Oh, man.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

My habitat will meet me at. We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just useless. It's like this sexual attention, but they just need to release somehow.

[Jason Calacanis]

We need to get merch.