DOGE updates + Liberation Day Tariff Reactions with Ben Shapiro and Antonio Gracias

Summary

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

Episode: DOGE Updates + Liberation Day Tariff Reactions with Ben Shapiro and Antonio Gracias

Release Date: April 5, 2025

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Introduction of Guests

The episode features prominent guests Ben Shapiro and Antonio Gracias, who join hosts Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg to discuss pressing economic, political, and social issues.

Notable Quote:

• Jason Calacanis [00:58]: "I'm doing great and just honored to be here, you know."

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Social Security Administration (SSA) Data and Fraud Concerns

Antonio Gracias introduces his role within the SSA, highlighting a significant increase in Social Security numbers (SSNs) issued to non-citizens, raising concerns about potential fraud and abuse of the system.

Key Points:

• Antonio Gracias [04:32]: Emphasizes the need to identify and eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse within SSA.
• Discovery of a surge in SSN issuance from 300,000 to over 2.1 million in recent years.
• Identification of categories labeled as "unknown" and "general parole," indicating potential misuse.

Notable Quotes:

• Antonio Gracias [07:20]: "The vast majority of the growth was related to asylum programs and parolees..."
• Antonio Gracias [12:31]: "There's no real ID verification. You can..."

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Immigration Policy and Voter Fraud Implications

The discussion delves into how the increased issuance of SSNs to non-citizens may correlate with unauthorized voter registrations and participation in federal elections.

Key Points:

• Antonio Gracias [14:00]: "We found thousands registered to vote in a handful of states."
• Critique of the Social Security system's lax verification processes leading to potential voter fraud.
• David Freeberg [16:47]: Highlights the diversion of resources to non-citizens, impacting American welfare.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Shapiro [15:10]: "This would be incredibly dramatic if it was even 1,000 people."
• Antonio Gracias [28:09]: "The data speaks for itself."

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Economic Impact of Tariffs and Trade Policies

The hosts and guests analyze the recent tariff implementations, discussing their short-term and long-term effects on the U.S. economy, manufacturing competitiveness, and international trade relations.

Key Points:

• Ben Shapiro [24:44]: "We're going to target, say, criminal illegal aliens for removal..."
• Jason Calacanis [42:25]: Compares tariff strategy to a poker bluff, suggesting it's a negotiating tactic.
• Ben Shapiro [41:03]: Criticizes the rollout of tariff plans as contradictory.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Shapiro [41:03]: "It was put out with contradictory justifications..."
• Jason Calacanis [42:25]: "It's like someone in poker is saying, I'm going to play every hand I get..."

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Recession Risks and Corporate Debt Concerns

The conversation shifts to the broader economic implications, including the risk of a recession triggered by current trade policies and the mounting corporate debt in the U.S. economy.

Key Points:

• David Freeberg [53:08]: Discusses the significant impact on corporate debt and potential defaults.
• Antonio Gracias [60:53]: Highlights the structural risk in the U.S. corporate economy.
• Mention of Credit Default Swaps (CDS) as indicators of economic health.

Notable Quotes:

• David Freeberg [53:08]: "This is what the tariff picture and the recession picture will get played out in this chart."
• Jason Calacanis [55:26]: "There's $6 trillion we need to finance in the next nine months."

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China's Economic Strategy and U.S. Competitiveness

Ben Shapiro and other guests discuss China's aggressive economic growth and technological advancements, questioning the sustainability and future competitiveness of the U.S. amidst these developments.

Key Points:

• Ben Shapiro [85:15]: Contrasts China’s focused entrepreneurial efforts with the U.S.'s decentralized innovation.
• Chamath Palihapitiya [85:12]: Stresses the importance of American entrepreneurship and immigration in maintaining competitiveness.
• Concerns about China's advancements in AI and semiconductor manufacturing.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Shapiro [87:21]: "China is attempting to use capitalist methodologies to prop up a very tyrannical government."
• Chamath Palihapitiya [85:12]: "The entrepreneurial spirit of America is what needs to be preserved."

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Future Projections and Strategic Recommendations

The panel offers their perspectives on future economic trends, strategic policy recommendations, and the importance of maintaining a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem to navigate upcoming challenges.

Key Points:

• Ben Shapiro [86:07]: Warns about the potential over-reliance on government protection leading to reduced competitiveness.
• Chamath Palihapitiya [93:00]: Advocates for celebrating entrepreneurship and fostering innovation.
• Jason Calacanis [91:18]: Emphasizes the importance of ambition and leadership in maintaining global economic standing.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Shapiro [89:28]: "The stock market in the short term is a voting machine and in the long term it is a weighing machine."
• Chamath Palihapitiya [93:00]: "Celebrate success, celebrate entrepreneurship."

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Conclusion and Closing Remarks

The episode concludes with lighter banter, reflecting on the serious discussions held, and plans for future events and collaborations.

Notable Quote:

• Chamath Palihapitiya [114:02]: "We need to get merch."

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Summary

In this episode of "All-In," hosts Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg engage with guests Ben Shapiro and Antonio Gracias to dissect critical issues surrounding Social Security fraud, immigration policies, and the economic ramifications of recent tariff implementations. Antonio Gracias presents compelling data indicating a surge in SSN issuances to non-citizens, linking it to potential voter fraud and the misallocation of American resources. The panel critically examines the efficacy and consequences of current trade policies, debating their impact on U.S. manufacturing competitiveness and the looming threat of a recession exacerbated by escalating corporate debt. Furthermore, the discussion touches upon China's strategic economic advancements, emphasizing the necessity for the U.S. to bolster its entrepreneurial spirit and innovation to remain globally competitive. Concluding with forward-looking strategies and a call to celebrate American entrepreneurship, the episode underscores the interconnectedness of immigration policy, economic strategy, and national competitiveness in shaping the future of the United States.

Transcript

[Jason Calacanis]

Just so you know, everything is archived by the White House right now. So everything we say is recorded.

[David Freeberg]

David Freeberg is a muff.

[Jason Calacanis]

Stop. You're being recorded.

[David Freeberg]

Good. I hope this is discoverable there, White House. I just want you to know that stupid also he did not pay his taxes in 2016.

[Jason Calacanis]

Don't you? You really want me to start with you? You want me to start. You want me to put in the archives?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Oh, my God.

[Jason Calacanis]

Here, let me put some in the archives for you. Am I going to be my pet? I think you need to shut the up is what you need to do. Sorry, White House.

[David Freeberg]

I'm gonna be my pants. He did it. He also has some unpaid parking tickets for 2021.

[Jason Calacanis]

You want me to start with you?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Let your winners ride Rain Man David Sachs.

[Ben Shapiro]

And instead we open sourced it to.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

The fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, West Heidi, Queen of Quinoa.

[Ben Shapiro]

I'm going all in.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

All right, everybody, welcome back to the number one podcast in the world. With me again today, Chamath Palihap, your chairman dictator, David Freeberg, our Sultan of science, and two guests, obviously Ben Shapiro, very famous for having the number two podcast in the world. How are you, Ben?

[Ben Shapiro]

I'm doing great and just honored to be here, you know.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yes, more work to do. You could exceed all in in the rankings. No, we always judge ourselves, Ben, on three things in the rankings. When we look at how we're doing, what we see is Ben Shapiro prayer from the Bible. Okay, the New Testament, I don't think you've got it yet. You have the Old Testament, but you haven't gotten the new. You haven't gotten the sequel. And then number three, murder. Also with us from the White House. Yeah. Welcome to all in, where we have a live feed into the White House today. My good friend Antonio, Gracias is here. He is taking, I guess you're taking, would it be safe to say a hiatus or you're from Valor to do a little tour of duty in our government working on Doge? Is that the way to say it?

[Antonio Gracias]

I'm still doing my day job too, man. This is a seven day a week, six to 18 hour a day job. Because I'm trying to do both. I've got some great partners that are covering it for me and my firm has been tremendous in allowing me to do this, but no, I'm still trying to do both.

[Jason Calacanis]

Was it public prior to this week, Antonio, that you were doing this role? Did you announce it anywhere?

[Antonio Gracias]

I didn't announce anywhere. No, the New York Times had wrote a story about me going to ssa, you know, which is sort of New York Times style. Not right. But I was. I have been there.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah.

[Antonio Gracias]

I was out of Woodland, Maryland.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

40% correct. Yeah. Close enough.

[Antonio Gracias]

Close enough for hand grenades?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Close enough. I'm sure they had no agenda.

[David Freeberg]

Antonio, how does it work? So when you volunteered, is it that you and Elon and Steve just kind of figure out? Let's put a senior person at every part of the administration where there's real opportunity. Why did you end up at SSA versus someplace else?

[Antonio Gracias]

Interesting question. And by the way, it's great to see you guys, man. Thanks for having me. I can use your last. You're like. You're really making me laugh.

[David Freeberg]

Really proud of you, man.

[Antonio Gracias]

Thank you.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

It's good to see you.

[Antonio Gracias]

Thank you.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Suit looks great, by the way. Yeah.

[Antonio Gracias]

Oh, thank you. Thank you.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

When do you have to return it?

[Antonio Gracias]

The rental is due at the end of the week. Okay. So, yeah, no, what happened was I had actually volunteered to go to the VA because that's kind of, as you guys know, close to my heart. And Elon said to me, look, great. You can do that next. But will you go to essay first and see what's going on there? Because it's the biggest internal point we have, and see what you find in fraud, waste, and abuse. And so, of course, I said, sure, I'll do that. And I ended up out in Woodland, Maryland, with the good people at the ssa, the Social Security Administration. And that's where I started. That's how all this started for me.

[David Freeberg]

And so do you, Antonio, go in there with a DOGE engineer as your kind of sidekick, per se, or you just go there solo and you show up, and what happens day one, when you walk into the place? What do you do?

[Antonio Gracias]

So I brought with me two great professionals, John and Peyton from Valor, one of them an engineer, the other one, I'd say a finance ninja. Both these guys are ninjas. And there was already a team there, actually, that was working with some great engineers. And once your person, Scott Coulter, who's from. Actually worked at Lone Pine, started his own fund, and then had come here as a volunteer as well. So they were already doing some work, actually, particularly on the enumeration part of the system. So that is the system that you have numbers, the whole cleaning of the database, the numbers. They had already started that project when I got there.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And what is the mandate as given to you, you know, as part of.

[Antonio Gracias]

Doge Broad waste and abuse? I Mean, exactly what, you know, what. What Bill Clinton talked about, what Barack Obama talked about, what all presidents, but maybe President Biden talked about going back in time. It was, go figure out how to save some money. Man, this system's going bankrupt. It's going to be bankrupt 2037. The country overall, as you guys know, talked about many times, is on its way toward bankruptcy. When do something and go figure out we can save money and go find the fraud. And that's what we did.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Let's get to it. You spoke at a rally, I think it was on Sunday, and you pulled up a chart. Here is that chart. Maybe you could explain to the American people here what this chart shows.

[Antonio Gracias]

Yeah. So if I might just step back and say, I got it. I think it's important we map the way we work. You guys know, we're very operational valor. I've worked with all you guys various times. And what we do is we map the entire system from beginning to end. So we map the system from enumeration. So I get your number all the way to the end. Went to the offices and saw the offices operate. And in that process, one of our engineers, Peyton, who I mentioned, he found the data. So we're looking at all the data, enumeration, how it works, what, you know, what's going on, the typical stuff you'd look at. And he found this data called enumeration beyond entry. Right. So that is the. That's. And it had this giant ramp to it. You can see their baseline was kind of, you know, 3, 400,000 people, all the way up to 2.1 million people. And that just jumped out at us. And we're like, what is that? And so we dug into it and that's how this started.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And so what that's showing is Social Security numbers that were issued to non American citizens or non citizens. Am I correct that that's the number we're looking at? So these are none. Citizens getting security numbers. And for people who don't know, just like a little bit of background on the Social Security system, we do this. This is not abnormal for us to give Social Security numbers. This is part of the process that the government does. The Social Security number was created in 1936 for citizens to track their earnings. And in the 90s, we started giving them to non citizens who were authorized to work in the US So that we could collect taxes from them. And so if you are not a citizen and you're a green card holder, which some people in this program I think have been, you have to have a Social Security number in order to work, and you pay into Social Security and Medicare, just like US Citizens. And then eventually, I think you would qualify for those over some period of time.

[David Freeberg]

You can also get a Social Security number if you're a legal immigrant into the United States on a visa. So, for example, when I first came to the United States 25 years ago on a TN visa, I was able to get my Social Security number because I had a valid visa to be in the United States.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Okay, so we have Social Security numbers being given to non citizens. That is not controversial. But there's something controversial about this chart. Antonio, tell us what that is.

[Antonio Gracias]

So I think if you look at the chart, you'll see it starts at, like, called 300,000 or so.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

This is during the COVID period.

[Antonio Gracias]

Yeah, coming right out of it. So 21 is coming right out of COVID Right. So if you go back even a couple of years, 19, you'll see that it's about 4,000. Yeah, exactly. Right there. So what happened was this program was designed for. So we're talking about, you know, people that got visas. This is at numeration beyond entry, since after you're in, there are some people in here that have H1B screen cards, etc. And the way we thought about this was that's the baseline number. That's the three to 4,000 a year you see. And that should be happening. That's. You know, there are programs for Afghans, example, the translators that came in after the war. Right. The people who brought in, they would be in these kinds of programs. And so the baseline number and the program goes back. This particular program goes back all the way to 17. And it had a legitimate use, which was the kind of people you're talking about, people that we want to let in, like the CARE program. I'll make an example. Which are the Afghans. They would be in this number. And so what jumped out at us wasn't that this is here because it has legitimate use. It's that it's the growth. Why did it grow this fast? And what happened? That's what we dug into.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Have you figured that out yet? Is it because of, like a Covid overhang? The one criticism I did see of the chart that I wanted to bring up with you is, hey, people want to see the 10 years, 20 years before this? What would we see if we were to look backwards a little bit? And do you have some theories? And is the COVID overhang theory valid or is this just. Biden opened the Border as we saw especially like in maybe it was that third year of his term, the 2023 year. And this is the overhang of the 2023 surge. What are your theories?

[Antonio Gracias]

Well, the answer is no. Category no. Because the program really started, started in 2017. So they probably worked on it before that. Right. It takes a few years to put these into place. They worked at it by guesses back during the Obama administration. It actually became active in 17. You see a few numbers in 18 and it starts to get a little bigger in 19 and 20. Right. So that's how we get this baseline number of 1920. That's where we're using that data here. So there isn't, I can't go back 20 years, it doesn't exist. And then when we dug into it, what we found was the vast majority of the growth was related to asylum programs and parolees and people that came in on ntas this notice to appear into the country either at the border, at the airports, mostly at the border. And then we dug further into it, excuse me, dug further into it, we found that there were, this is about 5.4 million people total. There were about 1.2 million people that the status is marked as unknown and about 1.2 million people that were marked as general parole. And they should have markings of what the program is they're under because if you claim asylum, you're supposed to claim a real fear I'm going to be tortured by my country, something's bad is going to happen. That's why I can't go home. What we find here is that a legitimate program was in the word I use, abused. The requirements were super opened so that more people come through. And the example I'll give you, you know, I have here actually the form, this, the form used to be going back in time, a four page form that the officer had to fill out in the field. And the person that was claiming Solomon had to actually prove that they were had a really credible fear of being murdered, tortured by their government, that something bad wouldn't happen. That's what the sign's for. It turned into a form which I can't give you, but I'm going to show you here. If you zoom in on it, it has four questions. That's it. And the four questions are super leading. I'll just read the, you know, the, like one of the important ones here. Right. So do you have any reason for a concern about being returned to your home country or being removed from the United States? I mean, could that be More leading. Right. What they did is they opened. They just opened the aperture on these programs dramatically. So they allowed people that were illegals at the border to come in legally. And as we've dug further into it, we found this took us. So you guys know me, man. I do. Like, I'm very methodical. Lean business process mapper. And we went all the way to the border, literally to Brownsville and Laredo, to ask what happened. We couldn't find the data on what these unknown categories were. And it turns out that when the folks at the border, who were great, by the way, they really tried hard and they suffered a lot in this. This is a human tragedy I haven't talked about. They were giving people, at times notices to appear. This is the nta. And what that allows you to do is come in the country, and then you're scheduled a court date, which is like six years out. So now you're in the country with some quasi legal status. You're waiting for your court date. And while you're waiting for your court date, which could be six years out, is the average, by the way, could be longer than that. You're waiting for your court date. You could fill out an asylum application. So without even interview, just an application, by filing a form. Once application's in, you can file another form, 765, to get a work authorization. Once you get that, you get a 766, which is the authorization, and we automatically send you a Social Security card in the mail. No interview at all. That is the majority of the growth you see in these numbers.

[Jason Calacanis]

Is there any ID verification along the way, Antonio? Do we know that there are no duplications happening by validating that one individual is getting one Social Security number at any point in this process?

[Antonio Gracias]

So it's a great question. No, the answer is there's no real ID verification. So you can. You know, one of the things we found, we looked at this was the. The people that some people showed IDs, some people didn't. And one of the things.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

These would be IDs, Antonio, from their home country. This would be a Venezuelan driver's license or something.

[Antonio Gracias]

Yeah. I mean, it could be a passport, a driver's license. But here's what really sort of tipped us off and disturbed us. When we looked at the birth certificate data that was presented at the border, the number one birth date was 1:1, and it was four times more likely to be born on 1:1 than any other day of the year. Now, we all know this is a.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So they just Hit enter on that part of the form.

[Antonio Gracias]

They also could come with nothing if you could do nothing.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Do we take biometrics of people at the border? Do we take, like an iris scan, fingerprints and all that stuff?

[Antonio Gracias]

This is one of the issues. I mean, we do have photos of people. We found that 23% of the records looked at did not have fingerprints. And look, the folks at the border were overwhelmed. And we're not sure why this happened. I will tell you guys, just to understand. When I went down there, both Border Patrol and Border Protection told me they had the highest suicide rates of all time during the surge. Okay. Over 70 of these agents committed suicide in this period. It's truly tragic because they knew what was going on.

[Ben Shapiro]

Given the fact that all this has happened, is the Trump administration going to try to claim the Social Security numbers back, invalidate them? What will be the proper action? Or is it too late? Are they already sort of in the system and now you can't do anything about it?

[Antonio Gracias]

So, Ben, it's a great question, right? And the first question was, what are they doing? You know, like, where are these people? Where are they? How are they? And we've gone through a whole process of mapping this. So we mapped it through to the benefit programs. We found in the benefit programs that every benefit program we looked at was being accessed by these people. 1.3 million of them are on Medicaid right now, today. And by the way, it's just ramping. It's just starting, just to give you a point. And then out of curiosity, I woke up at night, like 2 in the morning. I couldn't sleep. My mind was right on this. I sent the engineers a note saying, hey, guys, let's just look at the public voter rolls, who we find in some friendly states. And we looked at the voter rolls, and we found that thousands of them were registered to vote in a handful of states. And then we went any further with those friendly states and found that many of those people had actually voted. It was shocking to us. And if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it. And so now the question we're asking ourselves is, what do we do? We referred some to prosecution. That's ongoing. Right now we're thinking through how to do it. And the reality is they have various kinds of status. And it's a very detailed analysis legally that we're working through right now about how to deal with it.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So thousands of those people registered to vote yes. In the election, which is a federal.

[Antonio Gracias]

Crime by the way.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well, yeah, I mean, the interesting thing is, like, the Heritage foundation has a very good project. You know, it's obviously right leaning where they're studying all cases of fraud. I looked at it before. We're here. There's only been 24 cases since 2003 of somebody who's a non citizen trying to vote. Now, those are people caught. So this would be incredibly dramatic if it was even 1,000 people.

[Antonio Gracias]

Oh, no, Jason, it's more than a thousand. I've seen it. I've seen the data myself. And it's more than a thousand in just a couple of states. I mean, it is shockingly bad. And this is the tip of the iceberg, guys. It's the tip of the iceberg. This doesn't include these 7.8 million people that ICE has that have come in illegally and know are here. And all the people that came illegally, we don't know are here. I mean, this is not a political issue. I want to be really clear about this.

[David Freeberg]

Yeah, Antonio, this is about America. Let's just take one step back because I just want you to repeat this so. Because I think it's important, and we may have just run over it a little too quickly. When you get a Social Security number, what you're saying is there's all of these important downstream consequences. One of the downstream consequences is you could show up, register to vote, and that's an illegitimate action. That's breaking federal law. That's one. But the second is that without knowing who this person is, they can start to absorb resources that could have otherwise gone to an American. I guess that's like a fundamental part of this. So how do you quantify that? Can you just maybe explain it a little bit more about all of the different ways in which you think now the United States ends up leaking services to these folks?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And also they could be contributing, too. Right. They could be paying taxes into the system. And so I guess there's both of those possibilities, and both of those have fingerprints to mop. So. Yeah, good question.

[Antonio Gracias]

You know, look, we need to figure this out. This is a very. It's massively complex. You can see the map I have on the whiteboard in our office. It's huge. And we're figuring it out right now. But let me just tell you this. And every benefit we looked at, and this is just a handful of states, we found people on all the benefit programs, and we found them on unemployment. We find them on Medicaid. So adjacent to your point, the people on Medicaid, unemployment, they're not contributing. They're taking out, they're mooching. Right. There are criminals. I mean, look, we sent this data list to the national targeting center, and I don't want to get too far into the data, but I can tell you they found hard hits in the targeting center of very bad people, criminals and people on the terrorist watch list that are in this group. And so, yeah, I mean, it's a problem. We got to figure out how to deal with it. And of course, there are people that also have jobs and paying in the system. That's also true. All these things are true. And we're trying to surf the data and figure out how to actually deal with it.

[David Freeberg]

Now, Antonia, one of the things about the data that you triggered, which because the data is so important, frankly, is a lot of people started to try to find a way to nitpick and say, antonio, you're cherry picking. Or Antonio, this is not really representative. And you had some pretty big names, right? People that have credibility. Jim Chanos probably being one of the more prolific people, a very well known hedge fund manager. But I think you tried to articulate why their objections didn't make any sense. I think it's important to maybe give you a few moments here to identify what they said and maybe debunk it.

[Antonio Gracias]

The chart that they're using, and you can see this, I posted something on X about this. It was apples to oranges. You could see it here. They took a chart that included all enumerations. Not the EB program, the Enumeration Bound entry program, all enumerations and compared to our chart. So they put this.

[David Freeberg]

So just to be clear, this would have included somebody like me coming in on a TN visa or somebody on an EB1 visa.

[Antonio Gracias]

Yeah. So those people would be in our data too, but just enumerated beyond entry, the data on the left of 2020 with the big bars, that includes people in the offices. That include people who got. They got Social Security numbers because they went to a consulate and like you probably did, applied ahead of time before they came in. You know, those kinds of people.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So we need a stacked bar chart so there's some fun with numbers going on.

[Jason Calacanis]

Can you flip back again? So your number for 24 was how much? 2.1 million, right?

[Antonio Gracias]

Yep, Yep. What they did is took. They took our data. So this was, you know, look, I don't want to impute negative motives. They just maybe were confused. They took our data and they compare. They added the total data.

[David Freeberg]

Right.

[Antonio Gracias]

This is just subsection. This is EB And I'm just going to use acronyms. Okay, guys, this is EB only Enumeration Beyond Entry, which is a program, as I said, started in 2017, and then it kind of ramped up into 19. They took our data and then they added the total data before that. Right? That is apples to oranges. That's why it doesn't work. And I went through a whole analysis of this on X. And you know, the person, the first person that posted the chart actually deleted it and sent me a post saying, hey, you know, I'm deleting it because I get it, you're right, and apologized and asked me some questions. I don't want to get into, you know, you guys know I don't post a lot on X. I don't want to get into basic people. It's not worth it.

[Jason Calacanis]

There was.

[Antonio Gracias]

The data speaks for itself.

[Jason Calacanis]

It basically, it basically became like a Rorschach test where people that did not want to believe the points you were making latched on to that chart that was shown, even though it was disproven. And that became the narrative for a good chunk of the Internet and a good chunk of. For media responses.

[Antonio Gracias]

I mean, look, you guys know me. You know me for a long time. This is not political, man. This is, this is.

[Jason Calacanis]

Tell us about your political background again. We haven't talked about this on the show, Antonio, but I think it's worth letting everyone hear about your background a little bit, just so folks understand where you're coming from.

[Antonio Gracias]

Yeah, I was a Democrat for 20 years. I mean, I, you know, I knocked on doors for, really Clinton, Iowa. I was from Illinois. And look, I've got lots of good friends who are Democrats. And when I explained this data to them, they're as shocked as I am. I don't believe this is.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I mean, to say you're a Democrat, you were a Democrat is an understatement. You are a major donor and majorly involved with the Democratic Party.

[Antonio Gracias]

Yes.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Ben, you tend to call balls and strikes on the program. What are your thoughts on immigration generally and how it should work here in the US and how maybe we can resolve this and get to. And Antonio, I want your answer to that question as well. Maybe some reconciliation here between the moderates, maga, original classic GOP Democrats, and the woke lunatics. Is there any way out of this? And maybe perhaps what we're seeing here with somebody like Antonio, who is a lifelong Democrat, who now is helping the government, maybe there's some way with data and logic we can get through this.

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, I think that what Antonio is doing here is so important specifically for that, because it seems to me there's actually been a fairly wide consensus among the American population for a very long time what to do about immigration, particularly the southern border, which is, number one, just stop the illegal immigration at the southern border. After Biden blew that out, a lot of Democrats turned to President Trump specifically because of that issue. And that has been the signal success of the Trump administration. Among all the other successes, the numbers at the border have just plummeted to almost zero. I mean, the lowest numbers in recorded history. And that is an unmitigated success. And then I think everybody knows that we have to sort of figure out who gets to stay and who gets to go, who's already in the country and what Antonio's doing by being able to discern who is here and is a net draw on the resources of the American people versus maybe who is a net taxpayer or who's actually contributing, who's a criminal. Right. There's always been this bizarre supposition in the political realm that there's no way on a one to one level to figure out who is who. You have to treat everybody as a class. Either everybody stays, everybody goes. And the reality is that even the way the Trump administration is doing this, by first targeting, say, criminal illegal aliens for removal, and then maybe moving on to people who are net drawn resources, who came in falsely under claims of asylum and now are receiving Medicaid or disability. I've made the argument for, I think, my entire career actually on this, that we should be treating immigrants, illegal immigrants who are in the country, the same way we would treat people who are trying to get into the country, which is to say, are you going to benefit the United States or you're not gonna benefit the United States? And the counterargument was always, well, how exactly are you going to determine who is who? And the answer I always give was, well, the IRS does it with our tax returns literally every single year, so why should we not be able to do that? And so the kind of work Antonio is doing, showing you actually can do that, by tracking the Social Security numbers of people who came in illegally. Because the truth, the number of unknown getaways is actually really, really compared to this, it's a small number. Most of the people who are coming across the border, at least during the Biden term, I went down to the border last year and visited a Native American reservation that's right along the border where the Border Patrol basically was Not. And they said that what was happening is people were arriving at the border. They were doing exactly what Antonio's talking about. They would literally say, I fear to go back to my home country. They'd be processed, they'd be let into the country with a future date to come back. And that was all happening within 72 hours. So being able to track those people and find out who should be in, who shouldn't be, that's huge. And I think that's the consensus.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So should we. Are you in the camp? We should deport everybody? This sort of. Stephen Miller. Deport 20 million people, Ben, or are you in the. Hey, let's get rid of the criminals and that will get us to where we need to be?

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, I don't think it's just the criminals. I mean, I think you also need to go after the folks who are here to take advantage of the welfare benefits, for example, who are just draw on the system. But I don't think that the number is 20 million. I don't think President Trump actually thinks the number is 20 million. I don't think anybody realistically thinks the number is 20 million.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Got it. Okay. They said it over and over again. All 20 million are going. And it's like.

[Ben Shapiro]

But they say a lot. Yes, it's a political campaign and people say that sort of stuff all the time.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Antonio, let's talk maybe about reconciliation here. You spent your life as a Democrat and now you've spent, I don't know, six months as a Republican here and helping this administration. How do we get the country to sort of get back together here and maybe reconcile on this issue? Because it seems like an unnecessary. To Ben's point, I think the number is 80% of people believe the border should be just shut, period, full stop, and everything should be legal. And I don't know the other 20 if they're just don't know how to take a survey. I have never met anybody who said there should be an open border at the southern border. So what are your thoughts on. Given your inside knowledge, and I would describe you as a Clinton Democrat, fiscally conservative, socially liberal. Correct me if I'm wrong. There's. What are your thoughts on reconciliation here? Because you really do care about that. Your parents, both immigrants. My bestie's here. Three of the four people who host this program, immigrants. This is an immigrant country built by immigrants for immigrants, has always been. So how do we reconcile this issue and put it behind us?

[Antonio Gracias]

And Jason, I have asked myself this question and I think we gotta follow the truth. And that's the point. Follow the truth. And the truth is in the data. And as Ben said, the numbers don't lie, right? And so people are productive. We got to find a way to allow them to be productive and stay. People that are taking the system should not be allowed to stay. And I think I don't want to get into the policy at all because it's above my pay grade. I mean, the reality is, for me, my remit is, as Ben said, it's criminals, terrorists, and then people mooching off the system. And then a political question needs to be answered about what happens to the rest of those people. I don't know. It's not my remit. Freeburg, I will say this. I think that all my friends who are still Democrats that I have been able to explain this data to, they all say the same thing you guys are saying, man, this is a problem. We've got to figure this out. And let me tell you why. The bigger problem, the biggest problem here, and it definitely is taking off the system. But you got to realize we gave 13 to 15 billion dollars a year to the human traffickers. That's what this system did. And the money magnet that attracted these people here, it wasn't like it was some crisis, environmental crisis, the money magnet attracting these people, and many of them died on the way up. I mean, think about what that's like. Think about the.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So this is a human suffering, a human rights tragedy. You have people who are getting sold into slavery and being abused at the border. At a minimum, every American should be against that.

[Antonio Gracias]

Everyone is. Every American is. Man, this turned my stomach when I went to the board and I heard the stories. It turned my stomach, man. We are America, okay? We protect people like this. We don't give incentives to people to pay traffickers. If you pay 20,000, I heard 20,000 to 500 bucks just across the border. $20,000. I mean, where does someone who's coming from Central America or Africa get 20 grand to pay the traffickers that are walking them across the border? It's not free to walk up Mexico, okay? It's controlled by the cartels. What happens? I mean, they got to pay that back. How do they pay it back? They're basically dentured servants. This is terrible. This isn't what we do in this country. This country is about freedom, and we are here to protect it. We protect it around the world, protect it in our home country. And I don't think any American that I know, none of them Democrats, Republicans, or anyone Thinks this is good, it's not good. It's bad for America and it's evil behavior. We shouldn't send it. We shouldn't give people a reason to do it. We should find legal ways to come in the country. And I think that's how we come together.

[Jason Calacanis]

Do you believe that there is a Democratic Party motive to increase voter base for the Democrats behind all of this, as has been proclaimed by some.

[Antonio Gracias]

Look, as I go through the data and I see it's all about the data. Okay, David? And I know you love the data when you have just in a handful of states, man, I'm talking about four states, we looked at the voter rolls. We found these people, thousands of them, on the voter rolls. And we found many of those people had voted. Right. In one state in particular, well over a thousand voted. Yeah, I think this was a move to import voters.

[Jason Calacanis]

But really importantly, I just want to make sure, because when I talk to politicians from the Democratic Party about this, they say there's aspects of human rights, doing the right thing for people in need that is motivating some of this behavior. Is that a lie and they actually have a different motive or do some in the party think that way? But there are real, kind of call it a small group of highly influential folks at the top of the Democratic Party that recognize that this is going to grow the voter base and they're kind of motivating this. What do you think is the construction of what sounds to some to be a conspiracy and how much of this is really widely understood?

[Antonio Gracias]

Look, Ben, I'll tell you what I have seen. I've told the actual information. If you look at Social Security Administration, we set all the defaults to kind of max open, no ID requirements.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Right.

[Antonio Gracias]

You get a Social Security number before we got here by walking in office, answering with a medical record and a school ID that had your name and your date, the date of birth on it. That's it. Okay. We opened up, we set the defaults to open on Social Security. We set the defaults to open on pay paying people out, and we set the collection defaults basically to zero. So that's how the system looks. That's. I'm just reporting, reporting the facts. Do I think that the average person is a Democrat in Illinois or. The guys I knew, I grew up in Chicago, they know this. They don't know this. They don't know this. So were there people at the top of the system that did this? Yeah, people created this policy. The former administrators of these agencies created these policies. I'VE seen them. I've read them myself. I've gone to the data myself. They've seen them. Now, this isn't everybody. If you're the average person out there who's a Democrat and you see what I've seen, you, I believe you concluded. I concluded, which is, this isn't right. These policies are wrong. They're evil. They're wrong. We gave an incentive for people to get trafficked. That's terrible. I just don't think people know the reason I'm even willing to do. All you guys know me. I'm pretty private. I come on your podcast because we're buddies. But, like, man, the reason I'm talking about this is not political. It's because it's a human rights issue. And the human rights issue is being confused. We are incenting people to pay traffickers to come to America. We were doing this right. We gotta find better ways to do that. And I just. I don't believe any American. The 80% of people Jason's talking about that would say close the border. That's the 80% who come together on this issue, which is, man, we gotta take care of people.

[David Freeberg]

Antonio, can you talk about what the next big push of effort from you and your team will be? Is there some next chart? I'm not trying to be reductive, but is there something that you can demonstrate that is going to be equivalently as powerful as this first chart, which then helps us start to move these gears towards doing the logical and right thing?

[Antonio Gracias]

I think the right thing is to figure out who's who. Right? Who are the criminals, who are the terrorists, number one. And number two, who's mooching off the system. And then number three, the people that are working that Jason's talking about, you know, what we do with them. That's the right answer.

[David Freeberg]

I would add a fourth, because I think that there is probably no more electric issue than this idea of voting impropriety. And I think it has become so brazenly partisan that everybody has suspended logic. If it turns out that there was a manipulated effort in 2020 and there is even a thread of legitimacy to Trump's claims, you would never be able to see the light of day because so many Americans just turn, turn off. Right? And that's because of the rhetoric that they've been fed. This is a really important thing that I would just offer to you, is that if it is true that these people illegally voted, I think it's a thunderclap, and I think it opens wide the aperture on voting illegality and voting reform. And I think that irrespective of who you are, you should want to make sure that people who are not allowed to vote are not voting. Just to put it simply.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah. Wow. What an incredible concept.

[Antonio Gracias]

It's amazing. I can't get an airplane in America without id, but I can go vote in some states that id. I think that's crazy. I think it's totally crazy.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And we're down to like, Ben, you know the number, it's 15 states now are the ones that don't have voter ID. So this is becoming like a very obvious issue and a loop of ours to close. I think the best next thing for you to do is actually publish this list of people who voted, get it to the Heritage foundation and put sunlight on it. The truth shall make you free. And sunlight is the best disinfectant. Because I think the whole issue is absurd. Because if you look at the votes in the swing states, it would take 100,000, it would take tens of thousands, and it's illegal. I've spoken to the person at the Heritage foundation who does this. They found like 2,400 cases of over 40 or 50 years. The number of people voting illegally is minuscule. In order to swing even. But one state, you would need a coordinated effort. Hold on, let me finish. You would need a coordinated effort. I'm just giving you data. Chamath. I am not partisan. There are tens of thousands of votes that would need to be manipulated in each of these markets. It's impossible here.

[David Freeberg]

Well, there's the key word. Here's what I would ask you to consider.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Sure.

[David Freeberg]

Your results are only as good as your prompts. Your results are only as good as your prompts.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Say it in plain English. What do you mean?

[David Freeberg]

I suspect that if you put three or four of the smartest data scientists in the world, they would get to a very different answer than the answer that has been arrived to. I don't know whether that'll validate or invalidate the claim, but the quality of the people that are able to interrogate this data is directly correlated to the output that is created.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well, listen, we all want the data clean. Ben, maybe I'll let you kind of answer the question from your perspective. Do you think there is any chance that a swing state could be swung by this strategy? And in addition to that, Trump is a populist, all these people. And his biggest gains were with people from South America, Mexicans, et cetera, in this last election. So. And non college educated. So if you were gonna plot this incredible strategy. It seems like the Democratic strategy of importing a bunch of voters is the stupidest possible strategy because the Republican Party has won those people.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, I don't think that it would be a great short term strategy because of the problems that you mentioned in terms of the size of the voting gaps even in closed swing states. Although obviously you have outlier cases like Florida in 2000, where the entire state is being decided by hundreds of votes. And there you actually could see a state actually shift on that basis. It's a rarity, but it does happen and in some cases decides a presidential election. When you're talking, however, about the long term play, I think the question that needs to be asked is if you are importing a bunch of people who are more dependent than average on the American government, for example, or who are not interested in assimilating to free market values, for example, or free speech values, or who come in and then many of these people are gonna get married, many of these people are gonna have kids, they're gonna marry American citizens, they're gonna have children who are American, and then they stay. Now you're talking about actually generating a change in the voting population. And that isn't a right wing point. That's a point that was made by Roy Teixeira all the way back in 2004 when he was a Democrat and he was making the case essentially that there was a demographic wave that was going to shift the electorate in the United States in the direction of Democrats permanently. Now, the point that you're making is that even as a long term strategy, that might be a bad play, because it may be that these populations shift over time. That doesn't mean that that's not the intent in the moment. Meaning maybe they're wrong. Maybe they're wrong.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

They could have gotten it wrong. They could have made a very bad strategic decision. Antonio, I think we have to drop you off here. Any closing comments you want to make. And I just want to thank you. I know you've got other things you could be doing in your life, but just on behalf of the American people, who I speak for here on the program, we want to thank you all Americans for your service to this country. And I know that you are balls and strikes and you're going to let the data speak. So I just want to thank you.

[Antonio Gracias]

Thank you, Jason. I would close this on this conversation, which is go look at California. Look at California. Okay? Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan came to California. Ronald Reagan signed amnesty. And some 40 years later, it is Now a solidly blue state. And I think some of us on this program, I know you, Jason, are a refugee from California because of that, because of some of those policies. And I want you to be careful about this because it is actually the tip of the iceberg, man. We have a very small sample of data in a couple of states. It's the tip of the iceberg. And so I don't know what the unattended consequence will be long term, but I can tell you it's already happened in America, where an amnesty program actually turned a very large state from one party to another. And I want to leave you guys this thought. This is not political. I'm not doing it. There's no political motivation. In my mind. This is about America. It's about securing the American democracy. And we will shine light onto the data when we can. We preferred these people to prosecution. And we're gonna keep looking, we'll keep going, and the data will lead us, and the truth will lead us, and it'll eventually come out in the sunlight. You're right. But we're gonna follow the truth. That's our primary motive. That is our operating parameter, and what we're gonna do.

[David Freeberg]

Right on.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

All right, thank you, Antonio. Gracias and continued success. And I'd love to talk to you in 30, 60 days when you have your next finding. Thanks.

[Antonio Gracias]

Thanks, guys.

[Jason Calacanis]

Thank you. You're a refugee from California, too, aren't you?

[Ben Shapiro]

Yes. Yeah, we took off in 2020 during. During COVID We took off. My company took off. We all got the hell out. I was born in California, So I spent 30, 36 years there before. Before I moved. And, yeah, they certainly did a good job of wrecking that state.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I mean, I did the same thing you went to. Oh, I don't know.

[Ben Shapiro]

I'm in Florida, where you're from. I'm in Florida. Yeah. My company's in Tennessee. I'm in Florida.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah. Got it. Yeah. I mean, it's just. You can't raise kids in California, and you just think about the crime and taxes and what you're getting for your dollar. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, I don't.

[David Freeberg]

White House is off the zoom, boys. Now we can start to open it up.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Okay, now we can open up the aperture.

[Jason Calacanis]

Foia.

[David Freeberg]

Okay. What do you guys think about what you just saw?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Ben, I'll let you go first as our guest.

[Ben Shapiro]

I wish the entire Trump administration were rolled out as well as Antonio just rolled that out, is what I would say.

[David Freeberg]

Totally.

[Ben Shapiro]

I think that that is high levels of competence and expertise and a meticulous message that is data first and difficult for anybody to deny. I think that the success of the Trump administration, the successes that they've had, are taking the 80 side of 8020 issues. And I think that the success of President Trump in 2024 was that he oddly became the normie candidate. He was the guy who was a return to normalcy candidacy in the face of Biden and the bizarreness of Harris. And I think that as we see many of Trump's policies rolled out, the ones that are rolled out, the way that Antonio is rolling it out, are incredibly well received by the American population. Cuz they're seeing serious people doing serious work that needs to be done. And the ones that are not rolled out that way, I think are gonna be a little more unpopular with the American people. And that's kind of. I want President Trump to succeed at a lot of these agenda items and I don't want his good agenda items getting essentially railroaded and run over by the bad rolled out of other agenda items.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So you think thoughtful is good and well thought out, constructed and communicated. When you talk about this being done right, what do you think's being done wrong? It could be done better, I guess would be a generous way of saying it. What could they communicate better?

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, not to jump into the pile of rakes that is the tariff plan, but I think that the way that the tariff plan was rolled out is about as bad a rollout as you could do. The reason I say that is not just because of my disagreements on the actual policy. I'll either be right or I'll be wrong on that. But the way that it was rolled out with essentially kind of a surprise announcement. I don't mind a surprise announcement if what is then rolled out is not replete with sort of contradictory justifications, statistics that are labeled one thing, but really are not that thing. And so it opens itself up to all sorts of critiques from every possible side of the. If you want to make the argument, make the full, make the full scale well thought argument. And then we can argue over whether it's true or not. But there's, there's four or five different claims that are being simultaneously made about the tariffs when they're going to raise revenue, two, they're going to reshore, three, that you are going to somehow rejigger the world trading system. Some of these are mutually exclusive. If you're going to, if you're going to reshore, you're not going to Raise as much revenue, for example.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Right.

[Ben Shapiro]

Those two things are mutually exclusive and they're both being trotted out at the same exact time. If you're gonna put out a giant chart that the president holds up that shows tariff rates plus unspecified variable, then what I'd like to know is what the actual tariff rate is as opposed to what the calculation seems to be, which was the trade deficit with a country divided into the imports to that country. That has nothing to do with the tariff rate. I mean, just technically speaking, it has literally nothing to do with the tariff rate. And so what that means is now you're boxed in logically. If President Trump wants to do a reciprocal tariff reduction, for example, how do you do that? Cuz he actually has used a statistic for the tariffs that have nothing to do with the tariff rate and are actually just trade deficits. So the only way to actually rectify that statistic is to have Madagascar buy a bunch of American product, for example, in order to get their quote, unquote tariff rate down. That sort of stuff seems badly calibrated, even if you like the policy, for example.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

All right, yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

So let's see this. Unless from a poker point of view, they spent many months declaring they're gonna do tariffs, and everyone thought they were bluffing and everyone said there's no way you're going to do tariffs. It's like someone in poker is saying, I'm going to play every hand I get. I'm going to be crazy. You don't believe them. And they actually have to do it in order to get the negotiating leverage that they need to be able to negotiate trade deals ultimately. And they have to look a little crazy maybe. I mean, that's your position, Friedberg.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

They're in the 4D chess or.

[Jason Calacanis]

I'm trying to rationalize one kind of rational reason for why a lot of smart people would end up putting that board up, that poster board up where? To your point, Ben, they said that these are kind of the. The tariffs that are being levied upon our country, when in fact it is simply the math of imports minus exports divided by imports. That's what the number was. And it was. And it was maxed out at that number or 10%. And that's what they did. So they did that basically as a way, in my opinion, it looks like, and I'm just trying to take a read on this, that they're using this as a way to anchor for negotiations going forward to make the case we are declaratively, crazily off the frigging ship, going to do whatever the heck we want to do here in this administration. Now everyone takes them seriously. Now everyone shows up to the negotiating table, and now they can actually negotiate and then announce a series of win after win after win and say, we got this set of countries to capitulate today. This is the deal we worked out. It's a totally unique deal. This set of deals we worked out today, this set of deals we worked out today, and basically getting all the trade representatives to the table by making the case that they're actually willing to go all the way to the wall on stuff. So that's the only way I can kind of rationalize this rollout, Ben. That's what it feels like to me. For months they've been very declarative. We are going to do tariffs. Bessant said it to us on our interview. Lutnick said it to us in our interview, and no one took them seriously.

[Ben Shapiro]

I did.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I did.

[Ben Shapiro]

By the way. I will say that I took them totally seriously so much that I called my financial advisor after the State of the UN Union address and told them to rejigger my stock and bond ratio in my portfolio because I figured that something like this was going to happen.

[Jason Calacanis]

You went heavy Treasuries?

[Ben Shapiro]

Yes, I went light stocks. I'll say that. And the reason for that is because, again, I think that the thing about President Trump is that he may not be serious in every single thing that he says, but he is very clear that when he says the thing over and over and over, there is no hidden motivation. And this is the part that I always have trouble with, with sort of the 40 chess reads. On President Trump, there's almost never a hidden motivation. He pretty much just says the thing that he thinks. Right. It's one of the things that makes him so popular and authentic is that there isn't a 40 chess game being played. If he says that he wants a thing to happen, it's because he actually wants the thing to happen. Now, the thing about President Trump is he's also a realist. So if a bunch of bad headlines hit him, he may then change his mind and decide that he wants to drive a truck directly through the center of the tariffs because the prices are going up too much on, for example, semiconductors. So one of the big exemptions from these tariffs is, in fact, in the area of semiconductors. Again, there you see a sort of couple of different justifications that are mutually exclusive, that are fighting each other. One of them is the idea we need to reshore Semiconductor production because it's a national security asset. And the other is we need to raise revenue on semiconductors. So he exempted them, which kind of bollocks up the logic. And I think that there are a couple of tells that that isn't what's happening. Listen, I think it may end up being the thing you're saying. I think the most likely result of these tariffs is that within the next few weeks, the headlines are not good. President Trump starts driving trucks through the center of the tariffs and then he starts getting wins from various parties outside that allow him to find an off ramp on some of these tariffs. A company in Belgium says they're going to build a factory in the United States. He has them to the White House, they have a big ceremony. And then he says, and as a result of this, we're now lowering the tariffs in sort of the same way he did with, with Columbia when he said not the university, the country, when he said he was gonna hit them with tariffs unless you accept these illegal immigrants. And then they did. So that very well might be the. I don't think that's what's going on right now. I think what's going on right now is the strategy that Lutnick has repeatedly expressed, which is that they actually kind of like the tariffs. They actually think that this is good economic policy. And that between 1880 and 1910 was an amazing time in American history. And so they.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Do you agree?

[Ben Shapiro]

I think that that is a bad read on economic history because there are a lot of confounds there that are being ignored. Among those confounds would be the fact.

[Jason Calacanis]

That actually the Industrial Revolution.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yes, So a few, just to name a few in the Industrial Revolution. Extraordinarily high levels of immigration, by the way, during that period. So you had an incredibly cheap labor base that was actually coming in into the United States at that time. Massive expansion tax of the American population. No income tax. So free flowing capital, a newly discovered continent. Right. Like, like, like truly like many, many confounds. Right. And by the way, less international trade generally. So tariffs aren't going to have the same sort of impact on global supply chains as they would now where every product that you buy has gone through 10 different countries in 10 different ways. So, so I, no, I don't, I don't think that that is a comp. But that doesn't mean that, that Lutnick doesn't think that it's a comp, for example. And, and I think that when it comes to, you know, the rollout, again, a Methodical rollout. I totally get the crazy man theory, and I think that sometimes President Trump does that. I'm hoping that that's what he's doing. But a good example of an off ramp he could have taken if that's the thing he's trying to do. So yesterday, in anticipation of this, Israel, which had very, very low tariffs on United States goods, anyway, announced they'd removed all tariffs on American goods. Right. There were no tariffs on American goods anymore. And the administration that afternoon listed their tariff rate at 33% and then hit them with a 17% tariff for a country that has zero percent tariffs.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And just use them as an example of a great partner.

[Ben Shapiro]

Exactly, exactly.

[Jason Calacanis]

Didn't. Didn't Canada do the same? Didn't Canada drop tariffs? Like, the morning of they were on.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

CNBC and they said, we're totally willing to go to zero. And then the anchors, correctly on CNBC were like, well, then why haven't you done that already? To Ben's point, Israel did do that.

[David Freeberg]

And.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

But I think your theory, Ben, is like, absolutely correct. If you make this analogy to what he did with overturning Roe v. Wade, it is the same exact thing he told us over and over again. I'm gonna put two, maybe three people on the Supreme Court. I'm gonna overturn it. And then afterwards, he kind of wiped his hands through it and was like, listen, it's up to you guys. I had nothing to do with it. He will tell you what he's gonna do. He told you he was gonna do these tariffs. He's done them. And I do think there's something embedded in what you said, Ben, which is, I think he likes everybody to come to Mar a Lago or to come to the White House. And he loves doing deals. He's addicted to it. He wrote a book, the Art of the Deal. He loves people coming to him hanging out and chamath. Maybe you could give us your perspective. Crazy man theory. Crazy grandpa. Or this is a negotiating tactic. Everybody has to come through him. Or Lutnick believes it, as he said very clearly, I'm going to add a trillion dollars in taxes here. What do you think is going on here? Because if, when I went through all the top people on the Internet, all our group of friends who are deeply in finance, I can't find anybody deeply in finance who's not in the administration who thinks this is well executed or a good idea. What's your thought?

[David Freeberg]

Let me start by saying a couple things. To use the Donald Rumsfeld quote, I do Agree with Ben tremendously that this was a known. Known. We mentioned this last episode. Donald Trump has been speaking about tariffs for 40 plus years.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yep.

[David Freeberg]

So this is not a new thing. And I think that he tried this in Trump 1, but to your guys point, it didn't really go well because he didn't have the team around him that had his back. And so it was inevitable that he would have tried it in Trump too. He said it and he's been able to do it. So if you weren't planning for it, whoever was vested in this outcome, you really needed to be focused on this. It was a known. Known. And so there was a little dereliction of duty if you were caught off guard. I think that's one. The second is, and we've said this all year since January, we're on this pod. We started it even with that Poly market bet that I made, which is the Trump administration does not care about the stock market. And by the way, the trade actually closed out. So congrats to all these people that won $650,000 on poly.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And let me just explain. Polymarket put a betting market suggested by Chamath Palihapitiya. They are partners of ours. Magnificent Seven shrinks below 30% of S&P 500 in 2025.

[David Freeberg]

This was free money. This was like the stock market giving out free money. But why did this happen? This happened because it was very clear to me early on that the rhetoric had shifted to say we care about maga, we care about people that have working class and middle class jobs. None of those folks are deeply invested in the asset economy the way maybe some of us are. And so it was directionally clear. And by the way, Scott Besant, what a cold ass quote yesterday. The equity market sell off is a Mag7 problem, not a Maga problem. So they're again putting all of this into the realm of this is a known. Known. So I think it's pretty clear, one, Trump has had a 40 year view on tariffs. They're gonna go through with this and they're gonna see it through. I don't think you're gonna see this grand capitulation. Two, they are okay with the volatility in the equity markets. And then three, which is the other thing that we've been talking about a lot is where does this move our practical financing costs? What is this? Right. We've talked about this. We have $6 trillion we need to finance in the next nine months. So the singular goal, in my opinion of the White House has been move the 10 year as aggressively and as quickly as possible. And look what they've done as of yesterday. It's unbelievable what's happened in the 10 year. You know, you are kissing 4%. And we talked about this. If it had gone in the other direction, guys, 30 or 40 basis points and it touched 5%, you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of extra money that would not have been found, that would have had to be printed, right? And now this is hundreds of billions of dollars that we will save.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So if we cut rates, if the Fed cuts rates, that's all predicated.

[David Freeberg]

No, no, no, no. This doesn't matter anymore. No, this is this.

[Jason Calacanis]

The Fed cuts, doesn't have control the back end of the curve on the treasury, the treasury markets, the government sells.

[David Freeberg]

Treasuries, governments 10 years and the auctions will clear at around 4%. That is an enormous. Like as an American, what we should all be thinking is irrespective of what you think you know or what you think you like about tariffs, we should all have a moment where we exhale because the long end of the curve is giving us a respite in a storm. And we should be incredibly thankful because.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What I'm referring to Chamath, is you said yesterday, Jerome Powell, you're on the clock. So maybe you could explain what you meant by that.

[David Freeberg]

Okay, so that's a different part of the curve.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So I understand it's a different thing, but I'm just trying to put these two things together because those are the two things we're saying this action took, which will enable.

[David Freeberg]

Okay, so let's play the ball where it lies.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Okay?

[David Freeberg]

The Wall street smart money thought this was a $250 billion event. They were wrong. This is part of why the stock market has reacted so violently today. This is a $750 billion to trillion dollar event. Okay? This is a big moment in the market. So what does it create? It creates the risk of a recession. How do you minimize that risk? That is all about how easy it is for the average person to be able to borrow money. Where is that dictated? That is more dictated by the Fed and how they price the front end of the curve. So what we need to have happen now is while Scott is out financing $6 trillion on the back end, we now need to get Jerome Powell to cut the front end. And if you do it aggressively enough, you can introduce liquidity in a moment where small and medium sized businesses can go and get financed to weather the storm.

[Jason Calacanis]

Chamath, I want to add on to your point, just so you guys know, there's roughly 12 to 16 trillion dollars of private corporate debt in America. So this is debt held by small businesses, medium businesses, partnerships that have on average call it a 15% operating margin. So they're going to be under pressure if there is some recessionary risk to make sure they have access to capital. And if you remember the interview that Besant gave to us a couple of weeks ago, he was very clear that one of his mandates is to enable the releveraging of the financial system. Meaning he wants to give banks the ability to issue more debt, to introduce more capital and more liquidity into the markets by taking away some of the regulatory restrictions that have made it more difficult for the banks to issue credit to business owners and to individuals. So if they are successful in their deregulatory efforts, it will introduce more liquidity into the market coupled with deregulatory work that they're making in the other parts of the administration. As this is their declaration, not mine, their intention is to make sure that that capital flows into building businesses, building new businesses, underwriting new jobs, creating more employment. That's the theory that they're trying to execute. Obviously it's part of this three legged stool, but if it doesn't all work, the stool falls over.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Okay, Chamath, give us an example here. And I'm trying to get you to paint the entire picture here because the tariff cudgel is not making sense. Okay.

[David Freeberg]

It's not all good news.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yes.

[Jason Calacanis]

Right.

[David Freeberg]

So let's, let's paint the. Let's. So I'll give a very specific example. A friend of ours runs a hundred plus year company. I'm just going to say it in generic terms so that I don't betray his confidence. But, and this is a business that's been built over 100 years, owned by an American family, an incredible family. And they make products that we all know and love. And what did this action do? So in their example, they're in a very difficult position because they have, as David said, a very tight operating margin because they have to compete ferociously against China. And they've done everything possible to maintain their capabilities in America. Hire American workers in the heartland, but still compete against China. It's tough. And, and this action today swings them from profitability to a potential yearly loss in a meaningful order of magnitude like hundreds of millions of dollars. So Jason, that's the other side of this tariff coin. So we have to find a way of finding those examples and as Ben said, excluding them somehow or giving them reprieve, because that wasn't the intention, I think, of what Trump was trying to do yesterday. That's an example of a company that should be winning and should continue to win and fight the good fight against China and try to continue to employ thousands of Americans. But this thing, because they had some capacity in some other countries, not China, by the way, got it. Blows the thing up. And so now you have to fix those things.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

All right, Ben, let me get you involved here. I'm going to play a quick clip from Rand Paul, and I want to get your feedback on executive power and then on terrorists themselves. And if it's a good idea or a bad idea, play the clip. What's the rationale for getting behind this?

[David Freeberg]

Well, one, we should not live under emergency rule.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

The Constitution said taxes are raised by Congress.

[David Freeberg]

Most specifically, taxes originate in the House and come to the Senate.

[Antonio Gracias]

Some against emergency rule.

[David Freeberg]

We are richer because of trade with.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Canada, and so is Canada.

[David Freeberg]

Whenever you trade with somebody, when an.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Individual buys somebody else's product, it's mutually.

[David Freeberg]

Beneficial or you wouldn't buy it. If the trade is voluntary, it's always beneficial. There is no Canada versus the US the consumer wins when the price is the lowest price.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Tariffs raise prices, and they're a bad.

[David Freeberg]

Idea for the economy.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Ben, your thoughts on the two issues? Is trade good for consumers? This is what, you know, I think is on top of everybody's mind that, yeah, the whole Trump presidency, and he won in large part due to inflation and Biden economics and that he was gonna reduce inflation. And I think a lot of people believe inflation's about to come roaring back. Your thoughts on the two issues?

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, I mean, obviously on a macroeconomic level, I totally agree with Senator Paul. And when it comes to the powers of the presidency, I think that it's pretty extraordinary that we should be able to use the trade deficit as a national emergency sufficient to put down what effectively amounts to a $700 billion defense tax increase on the American people. If you're talking about them paying the price of the tariffs on the other end, Congress, you know, I think that if things get bad enough, there are a bunch of streams obviously here that cross. One of the big things here is that Congress is up for reelect in a year and a half. And if the Republicans lose Congress in a year and a half, then whatever tricks President Trump is trying to pull in terms of being able to rejigger the rate at which we are paying back our national debt, all that stuff goes by the wayside because If Democrats win Congress, pretty much everything comes to a crashing halt. And there are a lot of Republicans who are in swing districts or in say R +5, R +10 districts who are suddenly gonna feel pretty vulnerable. A recession takes everybody with it. It takes Secretary Besant, it takes the President, it takes JD Vance, it takes everybody with it. Recessions tend to crush the President who is in power at the time, regardless of what their long term plan is. When they say short term pain for long term gain, again, I think that there are a few factors here that I would like to see played out. For example, if there is an inflationary effect to the tariffs in terms of price, does that mean that Jerome Powell is going to eject additional liquidity into the markets by decreasing interest rates? It's hard to see how. I mean, he's holding the interest rates steady right now without decreasing the interest rates, despite President Trump basically blasting him publicly since before he was even the President formally. He's just the President's elect at that time. So again, it's hard for me to see how all of this squares into what looks like a really well calibrated policy. And then beyond that, in the long term, tricks that we play with regard to the rate of interest paying back our national debt are not going to be sufficient to pay back our national debt unless we have robust economic growth. And so a lot has to be bet on the robust economic growth out earning essentially the levels of debt that we are currently racking up. And while I love what DOGE is doing, these systemic drivers of our national debt are not actually being touched at this point by doge. I mean, it's the means tested welfare programs that are really the systemic long term drivers of our national debt.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And military I think would be number two. Yeah, military.

[Ben Shapiro]

Military, as a percentage of the GDP or as a percentage of the budget has been relatively stable and in some cases decreasing since the end of the Iraq war. But when it comes to the means tested welfare programs, those continue to grow as a percentage of the budget and over time are increasingly unfunded.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, as our population ages and the population grows. Friedberg, putting aside executive power in the midterms, which, yeah, that would change everything. What are your thoughts on just inflation and tariffs and the chance that this comes back and explodes in the administration's lap?

[Jason Calacanis]

Well, I think there are three consequences, not necessarily related to inflation, that are just worth spending time on, one of which I don't think gets talked about enough. The first is just the challenge of tariffs in general. And I shared this Clip with you guys over the group chat yesterday from Ronald Reagan talking.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Oh, it's so funny. I have it chewed up. I actually edited. Let's do that. Let's play this clip and get your reaction. And today, many economic analysts and historians.

[Antonio Gracias]

Argue that high tariff legislation passed back.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

In that period called the Smoot Hawley Tariff, greatly deepened the Depression and prevented economic recovery.

[Antonio Gracias]

You see, at first, when someone says.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Let'S impose tariffs on foreign imports, it.

[Antonio Gracias]

Looks like they're doing the patriotic thing.

[Ben Shapiro]

By protecting American products and jobs.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And sometimes for a short while, it.

[Antonio Gracias]

Works, but only for a short time.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What eventually occurs is first, homegrown industries.

[Ben Shapiro]

Start relying on government protection in the.

[Antonio Gracias]

Form of high tariffs.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

They stop competing and stop making the innovative management and technological changes they need.

[Antonio Gracias]

To succeed in world markets.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And then while all this is going.

[Antonio Gracias]

On, something even worse occurs.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

People stop buying. Then the worst happens. Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs. The memory of all this occurring back in the 30s made me determined when I came to Washington to spare the.

[Antonio Gracias]

American people the protectionist legislation that destroys prosperity.

[Jason Calacanis]

So let me just say three things that I think are gonna be important consequences, one of which doesn't get talked about much at all. The first is the important point about the decline in competitiveness that arises when you use protectionist tactics like import tariffs. So ultimately, in order to be competitive in the market, you need to have a free market to test how good you are relative to your competitors. And if you use tariffs or other taxes or other government intervening systems to distort the natural forces of markets, meaning there's a buyer and a seller, there may be multiple sellers, and ultimately the buyer will choose the best seller, then you're creating a disincentive for American enterprise to be more competitive. We lost manufacturing because we weren't competitive in manufacturing. Putting a tariff on other manufacturing countries does not make Americans more competitive. It basically gives American businesses a crutch and ultimately.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

David. Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

So let's talk about manufacturing. So if I'm using a traditional assembly line with low efficiency systems, I'm going to be more expensive to make a device than a Chinese factory that's built with a lot of automation, high efficiency systems, et cetera. And so if I'm saying, well, to buy the Chinese product, you got to pay twice as much because there's a tariff. Now, the American company does not have an incentive to invest in automating or building better technology or adopting new technology to make themselves competitive in the marketplace. So that's the challenge with tariffs long term is that they distort economic consequences that arise in a traditional free market system. The second consequence I think is important is under this guise and in the near term, the effect of some of these tariffs is going to be the loss of revenue for a significant chunk of the American businesses in particular. I'll use one example. People may not remember this because it wasn't that big of a thing, but between 2016 and 2020, during the last Trump administration, there was a continued kind of tariff and trade escalation between Trump and China. And during that time, China stopped buying American ag exports. And China is the biggest buyer of American agricultural products. As a result, the Trump administration had to issue two support payment checks to farmers that totaled $28 billion in 2018 and 2019. Just because of that, China stepping out of the buying market. American farmers represent a large amount of the voting bloc for the Republican Party. And so I think that the second consequence is going to be that there is going to need to be financial support, which means increase government spending if we intend to keep the tariffs in place and the global market stops buying American exports. That's the second consequence. The third consequence, which is the one I am most worried about, which I think about a lot, is China had the State Council meeting a couple days ago, and in that State Council meeting, they announced a series of measures and a series of steps that they would be willing to take on IP infringement in the case of retaliatory tariff escalation in a trade war. What that means is that China may step up and say, you know what? We are disregarding all of the IP rights held by IP rights holders around the world, and they could steal IP more openly, more brazenly, and because they have a lower cost of manufacturing, they have a larger manufacturing base, a lower cost of power, they could basically take the only thing that much of American enterprise relies on, which is our IP rights, and say we're just going to. While people might say, oh, they already do that, they already do that. They do it to an extent. But imagine if China just made copies of Microsoft Word and started selling it around the world for $5.

[David Freeberg]

Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I mean, they did that internally for some period of time, then they started to respect it internally, but they've never done it. Great point. And then shipping Disney films overseas.

[Jason Calacanis]

That's right. And so now imagine if they started taking all of American manufacturing, drawings, blueprints, designs, and they have all this manufacturing capacity and they sold everything at 10 cents on the dollar to all of the global markets that the US Is now cutting trade ties with because of the tariff escalation. And China says, we don't care about your IP rights anymore. We don't care because you've cut us off. The rest of the world needs someone that will sell to them. I will also say China, one thing that's not talked about, which I'll add in, seems to have developed 3 nanometer semiconductor manufacturing technology, which is going to go into production in Q3 of 2025 and will end up being in full production in 2026. This will move the base from Taiwan potentially into China. They are developing lithography systems, they are developing advanced semiconductor manufacturing systems, and they will effectively have everything from energy to the minerals to the manufacturing capacity to support and service all. And the software now all of technology. And so we are in a really disadvantaged position if China does choose in this moment to disregard the IP rights of American businesses. So that's a big.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

They have the ability to. To swing back at us. Chamath, you want to wrap us up here and.

[David Freeberg]

Yeah, I'll take the other side of all of this. Yeah, I'll start with. Again, there's no point prognosticating when they're just telling you what they intend to do. Nick, you want to play the clip?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I could see in the next few years that we are going to have to have some kind of a grand global economic reordering, something on the equivalent.

[Antonio Gracias]

Of a new Bretton woods, or if.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

You want to go back, like something back to the steel agreements or the Treaty of Versailles.

[David Freeberg]

I mean, what is that? Just a kind of like, refresher? What are we talking about? We're talking about commercial relations between, at the time, 44 countries. Right. This is a big statement. I don't think that these kinds of things are said casually at a Manhattan Institute cocktail hour. And I think that people understand, if you're kind of like, steeped in the history of it, how important these kinds of statements are. So I think I take this similarly to how I take Trump's rhetoric on tariffs. And I'm spending some time trying to now understand how are the scenarios that could play out, because I think David is right. If you assume the status quo, meaning what are the risks? But what they're saying is we're going to question this. We're actually going to go here and just totally rewrite that. If that happens as part of this, all bets are off, in my opinion. I don't think any of us know with any certainty what a new economic framework would look like. And if Scott is basically prepping himself to say, hey, put me in coach, I'm ready, I would take that seriously.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Ben, what should be let's talk about on shoring and bringing these jobs, bringing these factories back to America. It seems to me a bit crazy that we're going to make fast fashion and people's Coachella wear and their anchor, you know, USB C cables here, pharmaceuticals, sure, we need that for strategic purposes. We obviously need the military and chips. But outside of that, is there some rationale here when we have the lowest unemployment of our lifetime and everybody wants to come here to immigrate to this country to doing these tariffs and trying to create jobs here that we don't necessarily need? We have too much employment right now in the market and not enough bodies to fill all the open job wrecks. What are your thoughts?

[Ben Shapiro]

I think one of the things that's really fascinating is the difference in messaging that you hear between the Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick and the Commerce Secretary and the President. I mean they're all messaging kind of different things. I think Secretary Besant is making the strongest case for what's being done with this sort of long term what does reordering look like? And even there I'm still lacking clarity on what a reordered world trade relationship actually what is the end of the rainbow there? What does that actually look like when all is said and done so that I can kind of grasp exactly what he wants that to look like? I think that Secretary Lutnick seems to actually just like tariffs and President Trump seems to have a picture in his head when it comes to factories, that we're going to revitalize the steel mills, that we're going to be doing the kinds of jobs that we did back in the 1950s. It's sort of a nostalgia that President Trump has in sort of his own mind about these sorts of jobs that by the way, nobody in modern life actually wants to work at. If you were to work at a ford factory in 1953 in a non air conditioned factory riveting for a living, you would actually be quite unhappy and you should be very happy that actually there are machines that do that now. And you hear this kind of talk sometimes bandied about not just with regard to offshoring, but with regards to technology and machines. And I've talked to, I remember a few years back in 2018, I talked to Tucker Carlson on my program and he literally said that he would outlaw self driving cars because it would get rid of white trucker jobs, blue collar trucker jobs in Ohio and Michigan. And when I said, well, that sounds kind of Luddite, he said, well, the Luddites had a point and then suggested that on the basis of safety he would ban it. And I remember asking him, but those self driving cars will presumably be more safe than humans driving instead.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Safer, yeah.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yes. And what he actually said was, well, you know, you asked me on what grounds I would ban it, not whether that was true or not, but I think that, that, that is, I think this is the danger that particularly tech runs when we're talking about these sorts of things, is to believe that the animus for trade relationships around the world or the anti competitive nature of many of the activities that are being taken are relegated solely to, to sort of the foreign sphere. I think that you could easily see that turn on job loss that is caused by AI or job loss that is caused by technological gain. I mean, the truth is that if you're talking about job loss in the manufacturing sector in the United States, the vast majority of job loss in the manufacturing sector is not due to offshoring, it's due to technological advancements. Manufacturing productivity in the United States has actually dramatically risen since the 1980s.

[David Freeberg]

Okay, so let's play conspiracy theorists for a second because, okay, you're right, Ben, you want that clarity. I want that clarity. Freeberg wants it, jcal, everybody wants it. But if this moment, if it's a catalyst to your point where everybody is forced into the room and Trump leads a grand bargain across the 50 or 60 most important trading partners in the world, what does that look like? It's almost like, okay, we're reestablishing something that's akin to the United nations and what the United nations was meant to be post World War II, but that institution has totally failed. So this new thing exists purely on economic lines and cooperation. I don't know, I struggle actually to your point, to kind of imagine what are the outcomes. But there's so many unbelievable outcomes in that scenario. If they were able to get the top 50 commercial mercantile countries together in a room and say, let's hammer something up.

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, I totally agree with that. I think one of my questions, however, is if you take a look at some of the examples that Scott is using there when he talks about the Bretton woods agreement, or if you're going to talk about, you know what, Nixon in debasing the dollar, Versailles, if you're talking, I mean, Versailles at least would be a better example in the sense that you didn't have a global hegemon at the time. If you're talking about the Bretton woods system, literally the rest of the world effectively did not exist in the post World War II era. So what is everybody going to bet on? They have to bet on the American dollar. There's no other choice. By the time that Nixon decides to go off the gold standard, essentially he has to rely on the organization of the petrodollar in order to make sure that people don't dissociate from the United States. What is the thing that's going to draw people to the United States as opposed to looking to a rising competitor like a Trump?

[David Freeberg]

That's a great question. So what is that thing? What do you think that. That's a great question.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What does that comes to mind?

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah, I mean, AI is the only possibility, which is why I think the AI regime inside the Trump administration is so deeply important. I also think this is why I'm warning about, you know, the possibility that these sort of anti free market forces that are, that are related to tariffs aren't just related to tariffs in some quarters. This is where populism can kind of run out of control and start to actually turn against some of its tech masters in some of these cases. And so one of the things that I'm very concerned about is I was talking with Danielle Smith, who's the premier of Alberta, the other day, and she was talking about the fact that Canada, she's very conservative. Alberta tends to be a more conservative area of Canada. And she was talking about how if Mark Carney were to become Prime Minister of Canada instead of Pierre Poiliev, that he actually is eager for the tariff war because it allows him to reorient toward China and away from the United States. And there are countries that absolutely would love to do that. I mean, there's a case to be made that the EU would love an easy off ramp with Russia and China and use this as an excuse, as a way of reorienting back toward Russian oil, for example, and then Chinese markets, because that Chinese market inputs, right?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I mean, you have lower input costs, which makes life better for citizens. And citizens like cheap things. They like cheap oil in their cars and they like cheap car. They'll be bringing BYD cars to Europe.

[Ben Shapiro]

And the thing that I'm worried about is when I look at the forget about Europe and forget about Canada for a second, the tariffs that kind of shocked me when I looked at that list were all the tariffs on the Southeast Asian countries, all of those countries where production has Been shifting out of China to places like, for example, Vietnam or Cambodia. The production has been shifting to those places specifically because companies know that the United States. Yeah, because the United States is going after China. Well, now, why exactly would you manufacture in Vietnam when Vietnam is going to be with a 46% tariff rate on the basis that we have a 90?

[David Freeberg]

That's more than that, Ben. It's like they've made those investments over the last five or six years. And so you have tens and hundreds of, you know, millions of dollars, billions of dollars of sunk cost. Now what do you do in that moment?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

These were specifically designed, Ben, to be a diversification strategy. Japan was paying their companies to build factories outside of China, and Apple was doing India, Vietnam to build AirPods and laptops and even the iPhone being made outside of China. That diversification strategy.

[David Freeberg]

Jakel did you watch the. Did you watch the presser yesterday? The worst part for me, I only had one moment where I was like, oh, gosh, he stopped on Sri Lanka and he goes, sri Lanka, Good old Sri Lanka, 88% Chamath.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Amazing Sri Lankan. But Sri Lanka, very tough on us. Not very.

[David Freeberg]

I was like, sir, I'm a bear accepting.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Go ahead, Ben. You can do yours. You can do your dueling about Sri Lanka.

[David Freeberg]

Just do a great Trump.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Okay? And that's the reason why Ben Shapiro's podcast number two to all in now, because of the Ben Shapiro Trump impersonation. Ben Shapiro, great American. Have you been to the White House?

[Ben Shapiro]

I have actually, yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Have you been invited in this or are you still.

[Ben Shapiro]

Can I Trump? I've not been a Trumper.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Who is a nasty never Trumper now he's pro Trump.

[Ben Shapiro]

Exactly. I had the same exact trajectory as J.D. vance, except I didn't end up Vice President of the United States. But, you know, I think that, you know, again, when we talk about the rollout, the fact that, for example, the meme online right now, and I know we all kind of live in meme world, that the meme is The President and J.D. vance lecturing a penguin. Because on that chart is the heard islands.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Have you even apologized for eating all that mackerel?

[David Freeberg]

No, no, Wait, what are you guys talking about?

[Jason Calacanis]

There's an island that got a 10% tariff, but there's nothing on the island except penguins. Yeah, it's a nature state.

[Ben Shapiro]

This is where I started this.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Come on now. Have you even apologized?

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, you got no cards. There are no cards. This penguin has no cards.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

It's just you have no cards to play.

[David Freeberg]

Okay, stop, stop.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

You've got a great tuxedo. At least you showed up in a tux. Okay, good stuff.

[David Freeberg]

Oh, my God. By the way, I think that Ben's framing of this. Thank you for that, because that was really helpful to me. You're right. If we try to reconvene a new Bretton woods, we have to have an anchor asset. So it's a really great question. What is that anchor asset? It has to be AI. But then underneath that AI thing, we have these two very complicated problems. One is a meaningful energy problem. I've been talking about this now incessantly. We don't have enough electrons. We just don't. And then the second is what Friedberg mentioned before, which is that we have a very delicate technological supply chain to make the underlying silicon we need for these things. Neither are trivial. These are not things that can be easily solved.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

The AI supply chain is electricity. We're going from 1 terawatt to 2. China's going from 3 to 8 over the same time period, just to be clear. So they're accelerating. The second is rare earth materials that we don't mine for. We've outsourced mining. And Doug Burgum told me an interesting stat. He's our Secretary of the Interior. He said we only graduate 200 people a year in the United States with degrees in mining, because beginning in the 90s, when globalization took off, we basically stopped mining in this country and moved everything to all the places because we had this NIMBYism. We didn't want to have mining in our backyard. The third, obviously, is the manufacturing of semiconductors, which we don't do the components to do the manufacturing. So there's a company called asml, which everyone that works in tech knows about. They have these advanced lithography systems to make the semiconductors. They don't sell to China. So now China's got their own homegrown lithography systems.

[David Freeberg]

The worst.

[Jason Calacanis]

And we don't. Yeah, we don't make any of that in house, so we don't mind. We don't have enough power. We don't have the materials, and we don't make lithography. And we don't have any fabs.

[David Freeberg]

I said this before, but one of the biggest national security threats that we created out of nowhere was when the Wall Street Journal was allowed to do a detailed article on asml. And one of the craziest and scariest stats is that there's a person, literally one person, that can operate these machines that are trained by asml. And. And then Forward deployed. And there was a woman that was profiled. And I thought, this is a national security risk. You should not be outing who this woman is.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

She's going to be kidnapped.

[Jason Calacanis]

Brianna Hall.

[David Freeberg]

Exactly.

[Jason Calacanis]

At the end of the day, what the US has is the weights. We've got 70 billion parameters and we call that an AI model. That 70 billion parameters. If someone gets a copy of it, they've got an AI model. So how much of an advantage do we really have?

[Ben Shapiro]

And the other thing that we had.

[Jason Calacanis]

Was meanwhile China's got the whole supply chain and now they're making their own models.

[Ben Shapiro]

And the thing that we had was our trade relationships with all the places that had all of these things that we actually needed. Right. This is.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And it was super high functioning.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yes, it was quite high functioning. And then beyond that, you also have the problem of what happens if there's just less demand for dollars on the world stage. I mean, the exit of the dollar as the world's global reserve currency is gonna have some pretty nasty spillover effects and it's gonna require the government to start sucking in more dollars from the American population in order to pay off all of these, these debts that we're racking up. So I mean, all these things tent like you could see a world where we magic our way out of this.

[Jason Calacanis]

But this is what I've been saying to Jake out the dollarization is what ends up happening.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I mean, I think that's what the stable coins I think is set up to counter. People are now saying, hey, we're going to have. There's two stablecoin acts that are going around here. One of them doesn't require like know your customer, anti money laundering terrorism stuff, which is, you know, tethers, according to many reports, bread and butter. And then the other one is to domesticate all this business, give it to circle, give it to stripe, give it to American companies and force them to buy a certain percentage of treasuries and allow them to give interest, which the stablecoin bills are now debating if they should give that. So I don't know if you guys are watching that, but that would be. So there's a way to keep a buyer for our currency.

[David Freeberg]

There's an analog to this that I think is important. Like when you look at the debt to GDP of Japan, one of the critical questions is how can you have a functioning economy at 250, 260% debt to GDP, right? And we're at sort of like 100 teens, right, 120 something, whatever. And one of the critical advantages that they have is that they export a lot of incredible goods abroad, but they have an incredibly deep domestic pool of buyers for their own Japanese bonds. And so there's this permanent bid that exists because the net buyer can be a Japanese person on the margins and they're always there. And it's not necessarily a person, it's an insurance company, it's a pension fund, et cetera. The thing that US dollar stablecoins does is it starts to replicate one of those advantages which again, if you think about having a release valve for the US economy and if we needed to all of a sudden scream to 200% debt to GDP, the real question is, where's the incremental net buyer of the US Bond? And it could be the person that has to back the stablecoin which would then say the people in charge of the crypto strategy. We won't name names.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

No.

[David Freeberg]

If anybody knows anybody, that legislation needs to be incredibly permissive because to your guys point, we would want the bid to US Treasuries to exist and to be as ferocious as possible. Right?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah. But I don't think you should give. Let Tether do it until they do an attestation, until they do a proper audit and they stop doing money laundering, terrorism and all the crazy stuff.

[David Freeberg]

No, I'm not going all the way there, allegedly. But what Circle does is I think quite structured.

[Jason Calacanis]

And you know, Circle, that's.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I mean, I think that Circle's usdc, that's their pitch. And I think the Trump family now just launched their own stablecoin this week. So you're gonna see 10 stablecoins. That is a great way to create competition.

[Jason Calacanis]

And I think it's a really, it's the right question that this administration has a responsibility to articulate. What is it that makes America the linchpin of the global economy, of the Western democracy of the world, is we enter this new era with this rising power in China. And I'm not sure that there's clarity today, I'll tell you.

[David Freeberg]

But what do you think it is? Oh, do you think it's both of you guys? What do you guys think?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, no, I mean, it's pretty clear what it is. The reason we keep winning and the reason China keeps stumbling is because we have rabid entrepreneurship and an investment and crazy investment infrastructure. The fact that we will bet on entrepreneurs and allow them to become billionaires or allow them to flame out and start again tomorrow, that entrepreneurial spirit of America is what needs to be preserved. That's what created SpaceX? That's what created Circle. We just talked about Stripe. We need the American exceptionalism and it has to be backed by recruiting, AKA immigration of brilliant people like Sachs, like Friedberg, like Chamath, who were not born in this country. You can't do it just based on Ben Shapiro and JCal. You need to be looking around the world for the smartest people and then plugging them into the entrepreneurial system here. That's the magic. And David, that's the golden Greek of America.

[David Freeberg]

David, what do you think it is? That's a very good. I mean, I think that's credible.

[Jason Calacanis]

I honestly don't know if I can be dismissive of China. Like J. Cal says, they keep stumbling and blah, blah, blah. I think that's absolutely wrong. There's a very good interview. What are those guys, names from the Brookings Institution that do that podcast? Ben, you might know these guys. The three guys.

[Ben Shapiro]

Midas Touch. Is that who you're talking about or. That's a different podcast.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

It's not in the top 100. They're liking it better. I don't know. Yeah, it's not in the top one.

[Jason Calacanis]

They talked about China and they talked about actually the rise in China where they 30x GDP per capita and call it 30 years because they allowed entrepreneurs.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Are you talking about Goodfellas?

[Jason Calacanis]

Goodfellas, sounds right. Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, that's the Stanford.

[Jason Calacanis]

That's right, the Stanford Good fellows. Goodfellows. Yeah, I think that was it. Pretty good podcast. A good talk on.

[David Freeberg]

It's Waldorf and Statler. I think that's their names.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Waldorf and Statler. Those. No, the Hoover Instruments are Good fellows. That's H.R.

[David Freeberg]

Mcmaster, Niall Ferguson and Nick, find a picture of Waldorf and Styler for Friedberg to jog.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

They're so great. They're so great.

[Jason Calacanis]

So anyway, they made the point that because China allowed the entrepreneurism of the individuals to let the market run free and they have this throttle when they let the people run free, they let entrepreneurism thrive and then sometimes they pull the throttle back. Jcal and you know, they just did.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

That and they crashed the whole thing.

[Jason Calacanis]

Now they've pushed it forward again and that's what drives the growth and the improvement in productivity and this extraordinary abundance in energy in mining and now in manufacturing. And it's, I think, going to lead to a great era of prosperity for China. It's pretty clear with or without the conflict with the US They've dramatically improved the conditions in that country over the last 30 years. In a really profound, historic way. So I'm not going to be dismissive and say that they're stumbling.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Let's give it to Ben. And then I'll tell you when I'm dismissing.

[Ben Shapiro]

So, first of all, I think that China does face some serious, real serious structural problems, ranging from demographics to debt. And I also think that. Yeah, and I also think that if you take a look at sort of the history of economic fascism, which is what they're attempting to do, which is sort of using capitalist methodologies in order to prop up a very tyrannical government that will.

[Jason Calacanis]

In a centrally planned way.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah, exactly. And so for a short period of time, that seems like that will work. And then, and then the problem is you can find yourself in a blind alley fairly quickly. And right now AI is not a blind alley, but we also don't know exactly which way AI is going to develop in the most profitable way. I mean, the amount of money that's been poured into AI has not yet been justified by the amount of net on the return on the actual investment, obviously. And so if you don't, this is the benefit of the American market is that you have everybody chasing everything all the time. And one of those things is going to hit the benefit of the Chinese market is you have everyone chasing one thing all the time. If that's the thing that actually hits, they'll do amazing. But it's possible that they completely miss it. But the problem is, I think, and this is where you get back to the political in the United States and the necessity of avoiding a recession is that, to me, the scariest thing that is happening inside the Trump administration is not something that's bad. When President Trump was inaugurated, there was one picture that spoke of the, that kind of summed up the inauguration. It was President Trump there with Tim Cook and with, and with Zuck and with Elon and with all the billionaires behind him, all the tech bros right behind him. If there is a recession, what comes next is not going to be salutary to innovation, to investment, to technology, to anything remotely like that. And so the idea of short term pain, it better be really, really short term. The American people do not have patience for this. And if it goes sideways, then what you're gonna get is a populist revolt on the left and a populist revolt on the right that is going to take down everybody who is even remotely connected with this idea of free market capitalism. And so I think that one of the dangers in sort of attempting to manipulate the economy this way is that we're saying, okay, we're going to try these kind of methodologies of government control in which we rejigger the world economy in this way and that way, and then we'll magic our way out of it with stablecoin and AI. Maybe. Or maybe the best way to do this would actually be to allow the thing to thrive that has always thrived in America, which is lower the regulations, let people innovate, let people fail, let people succeed, get the hell out of the way. And yes, actually do the things that you need to do in cutting government debt by doing the hard things. And the only way you're going to be able to do all those things is through continued success, not paying to get to some long term gain.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

It's got to be entrepreneurship and there are some sub factors of it. In order to have a vibrant entrepreneurial community, you need to have immigration. That's why I asked Trump on this thing, on this program, can we get green cards? Can we get people who have degrees here, especially coming out of Stanford, to stay in the country? He said yes, he'd staple them on the degrees. Great. The next thing is getting Lina Khan out and ending the wrath of Lina Khan. We need M and A because when you have M and A, the companies get bigger. The fact that YouTube and Android and AdSense were purchased by Google made it into the massive success it is on a global basis today. And the fact that Meta was able to buy things. She may not like it when these companies get too powerful, but what happened to Jack Ma is the reason, Freeberg, that I don't believe a dictator will ever compete with our country if we stay entrepreneurial and not socialist. Socialism is a cul de sac, as you're saying, Ben, and it might work for a short period of time, but then someone like Xi Jinping is gonna do what dictators do, which is implode. He saw Jack Ma get popular. He sent them to get re educated and do some painting and he took off oil painting. He got rid of every educational company. And pull up the chart of Chinese investment. Nick, if you have it, boom. It just got smashed. And this is what dictators do. They do what Putin did. He invades Ukraine, his economy goes off the rails, and this is what Xi Jinping did. Always implode.

[David Freeberg]

Let me give you a stepladder to get off your soapbox so I can ask Ben a question. Ben, when you said that in a recession, definitely not.

[Jason Calacanis]

That's exactly right.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

How come I'm passionate or something? You guys have to give me a hard time. When you go on your passionate rant.

[David Freeberg]

I give you signaling eight ball. What do you do? You just shake it and some totally, some stupid statement aphorism comes out.

[Jason Calacanis]

No, Ben agrees with me.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Ben agrees. American exceptionalism. M and A. Ben and I. That's it. I'm leaving the program. Ben and I are doing.

[Jason Calacanis]

Let me rant against dictators for a minute and earn my kudos. Go ahead, Ben.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

No, okay, you should just go rant about the Trump administration and get your cabinet position.

[David Freeberg]

Go ahead, Ben. When you talk about in a recession, they go after tech companies. Can you just explain that more? Just explain that. I'm not sure I understood that Totally.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, so there's a recession and President Trump. Just the way that people tend to think of politics is not on a granular level. They tend to see it on sort of a pixelated level because most people don't engage with politics on a granular level. They see a Seurat painting. They don't see all the dots, they just see Sunday in the park with George.

[Jason Calacanis]

Right.

[Ben Shapiro]

And so when it comes to a recession, the image that's going to come to mind for the Trump administration is that this is an administration that is extremely friendly to business, particularly when it comes to tech. And so whoever is standing next to President Trump, if there is a serious recession, gets nuked, gets caught in the fallout. And if that happens, then you will see a resurgent left led by a Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, not a sort of technocratic Obama esque, Ezra Klein abundance liberalism wing. You're gonna get a resurgent Bernieism on the left that basically says these rich people screwed you in order to get ahead. You can feel it because you're feeling the recession. They're still rich, you're still poor. And so what you really need is a complete rejiggering of the American economy along the lines of fairness. And you're gonna see something similar happen on the right, by the way. So my friend Matt Cottonetti, who is the former editor of the Washington Free Beacon, I believe he has a great point about presidential elections. He makes the point that candidates don't become president unless they run against their own party. In order to actually capture the imagination of the American people, you almost always have to run inside your own party against your own parties. You saw this most obviously with President Trump, but this was clearly true with Barack Obama. It was true to a certain extent with George W. Bush even, who ran a compassionate conservative campaign against these sort of hard hearted Gingrich. Dole Republicans, Clinton. Clinton for sure did this. So I think it's a great point because then you have to start thinking, okay, look at the returning to the right side of the aisle. Now, let's say that you have a politician on the right side of the aisle. What does he run against in the. Because Trump has obviously taken command, tremendous command of the Republican base and the Republican Party. What is there to run against? Well, if there's an economic downturn, do you think that they're gonna run against Trump being not capitalist enough, or do they think they're gonna run against Trump being too capitalist, too friendly? Exactly. And that's how you get a populist uprising on the right. And what you end up with is a horseshoe theory politics where both parties are in favor of. Right. Both parties are in favor of Lina Khan. And by the way, this is not a rarity. I mean, socialism. I think that the vice president is an amazingly brilliant guy. He has also expressed kind of public support for Lina Khan from time to time. Right. And that's inside the Republican Party and on the left, obviously, there's tremendous support for Lina Khan. So if what we're saying here is one of the things we need is not Lina Khan, we should be very careful not to step on the rake. And then the thing that hits you in the face is Lina Khan. Right?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah.

[David Freeberg]

Right.

[Jason Calacanis]

And this is why I said my contrarian bet for this year was this rise in socialist policy and the response to some of the actions the administration might take.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

But how do we avoid making the bottom half of society feel included in all this wealth generation, et cetera? Like, what is the plan here? Is it universal healthcare? Is it lowering their taxes? I mean, the administration says no taxes for people under 150k. We have to give something to the working man and woman of this country, the people who feel that they can't get rich, who can't get to the middle class. Does anybody here have a suggestion for that?

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, I do. I actually do have a suggestion, and it's actually shockingly easy. President Trump has a visceral connection to blue collar workers in this country. Yes, clearly has a visceral connection. He should stop preaching that blue collar workers are getting screwed and start preaching that they're succeeding because it's actually true.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Tell the truth.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, yes, yes. I mean, I think that the fib the politicians always make bank on is the idea that, for example, the middle class in America is completely dissolved. That is not statistically true. The middle class has turned into the upper middle Class, okay? And actually, all Americans, I say this on my show all the time. People have this, again, this sort of rosy eyed view of the 1950s, which again, was a historical outlier because the rest of the world didn't exist, it had been destroyed. But they also have this bizarre idea that you are better off to be 30 years old in 1980 than you are to be 30 years old in 2025. And all I can say is in 1980, the only dude with a cell phone was Gordon Gekko and it was a shoebox and he was holding it to his head. The reality is that everything in your life is better in 2025 on a material, economic level than it was in 1980. And the lie that politicians tell in order to gain power is they say, you're getting screwed. Somebody is screwing you. I can unscrew the screwing. And so there's this constant sort of race to the bottom in terms of this rhetoric. And what you end up with is, in the end, what can I promise you that I can then blame somebody else for not having fulfilled the promise? President Trump, I think, could avoid that because of this unique connection that he has with blue collar people where he could say, listen, we're all on the same side here, right? What we're doing here is innovation. I thought the most important line that I heard from President Trump during his victory speech the night that he won was when he said to Elon, and it was kind of a throwaway line when he said, we love our geniuses. He said, we love our geniuses. And I thought, yes, that's the thing we need celebrate. We love our geniuses.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Celebrate success, celebrate entrepreneurship.

[Ben Shapiro]

And this could be you. And we're gonna have hiring programs, as Marc Andreessen has talked about. We need to have hiring programs that are specifically designed to find the best people, not just abroad, but also in the United States who might be under serviced in rural areas of the country or in blue collar areas of the country. Find the next JD Vance. Find the next guy who really needs, you know, that, that hand up. Like all those things can be done. A rising tide will lift all ships. But this is the problem with the short term pain plan. Americans have a long memory. And when it comes to politics, I think this happened with the Biden administration people. Their relationship with politicians is sort of like a married couple. And good married couples, you know, they kind of talk through the minor problems that they're having in their marriage and then, and then things, you know, continue to maintain and grow and, and get better. Bad Married couples, what happens is that they sort of ignore the kind of minor annoyances for years at a time and then something bad happens and the bottom just goes right out. And this is the thing that I'm afraid of for the Trump administration. Everybody's willing to ignore the things that are kind of mildly annoying, like penguins at the White House or whatever, up until the point where there's a serious recession. At that point, everybody kind of looks around and goes, why are we even doing this? I think that's exactly what happened with Biden with the Afghanistan withdrawal, for example. Making a misstep is the. It's why I'm being critical of the tariffs. It's not because I want Trump to lose, it's cuz I want Trump to win. Right. I think he's doing too many important things, like the stuff that Antonio is doing. There are too many important things happening to roll the dice on a strategy that isn't even being articulated. If you're going to make the case for a long term gain, I need to know what the long term gain is so I can make the case to the American public as to why they should endure the short term pain. You know you're having surgery because after the surgery you're gonna feel better. But if I say you're having surgery, it's gonna be some short term pain. You say, okay, how am I going to feel after the surgery? And say, well, I don't know, maybe, who knows? Then why am I having the surgery?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

We have so many job openings. We have the lowest unemployment of our lifetime. As you said, consumers today can get and live an incredible lifestyle that the rich didn't have in 1980. The car you can buy today can Drive itself for 20, 30, 40K. You can buy a used Tesla and have this car that's better than any car made in the last 50 years. So you gotta keep it positive. And then think about generation tool belt. You've got all these plumbing jobs, electrician jobs, construction jobs that pay massively hourly wages that are available for people today. We have too many job openings today. And you never hear Trump say that. To your point, it's always this like, everything's a disaster and I'll save you, when in fact you don't need saving. Go ahead, Freeburn.

[Jason Calacanis]

I'll answer to Moff's earlier question about what America can anchor to to attract the rest of the world. And I think it's what's been the American story from the beginning, which is ambition. We pioneered the west, we launched the industrial Revolution. We went to space, we landed on the moon. We had the Manhattan Project. We unleashed the information technology revolution with the development of the transistor. The ambition is what's been kind of consumed by China in the last 20 years. They've built 30,000 miles of high speed rail. In the next 15 years, they're going to add more electricity production capacity than the United States times two has today. There's nothing short of ambition coming out of China, and it's what we're lacking. All of our political gambits, all of our debates are all centered around what we're trying to fix that went wrong in the past, what we did wrong and what we got to do to make it right. And we don't talk at all about the ambition of where we can lead the world to next. China's the only one that's doing that. And I think that's where we need to kind of have a bit of an important pivot on the global stage if we want to be able to kind of attract partners and also to have Americans think outside of this week, where are we headed? And I just, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if you guys agree, but I just feel like that's one of the key things that we've kind of lost track of.

[David Freeberg]

NERC put out a study just like this is very tactical, but it's part and parcel of what you and Jason are talking about. Do you guys know that about 25% of all of our utility workers in America became eligible for retirement between 2017 and 2022?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I did not, no.

[David Freeberg]

So most of the people, 56% of all utility workers now have less than a decade of experience. You know what that's Resulted in? In 2021, the average US customer of an electric utility experienced 7 1/2 hours of service interruptions. And it's just growing.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I think the average plumber's age now is 50 something. We can't get people to become plumbers.

[David Freeberg]

NERC says that 19 states now in the United States can face rolling blackouts during normal peak conditions if these issues aren't addressed. And by the way, that's a human capital problem. But if you multiply that by 10 and 20 and 30 times. There was a different tweet, I don't know, Nick, if you could find it, that talked about an organization trying to find people to help build nuclear submarines. Did you guys see this quote where they needed 100,000 people to build nuclear subs in the United States and they could barely Find a few hundred.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, we need to get better at this stuff. I mean, the good news is we're going to have robots to do this. Ben, if I run for president, I'm one of the few people here on the pod who can. My position is going to be build three new cities with 5 million homes in each, because starter homes. Families can't buy starter homes. You ever consider running for office? And if you did, what would be your platform?

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, it would be pretty horrifying to run for office. It seems like a terrible job. And I think the. The age to run for president is now in your 70s. So I have, like three decades to consider it. But if I were gonna run, I would be running on the basic idea that in this country, the only thing that you are promised is the adventure. And I'm not gonna make you promises that. I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm not gonna make you promises that I can't keep about how I'm gonna fix your life, because the truth is, I really can't. All I can do is help get the obstacles out of the way. So you can fix your life and you can make your life better. And I can help break the institutions that have a stranglehold on your future. And there, when you're talking about electricians and plumbers, the truth is that we have set up an enormous con game that is our higher education system, particularly in the liberal arts, subsidized by the taxpayer, when most jobs that we're talking about right here do not require a college degree. There's so many things that the Trump administration should be doing and is doing again that are great, that they could break the stranglehold on some of these things that allow for more opportunity. But I think the thing that people really, you know, the thing that I would say that I really think that maybe no other politician would say, and I can say, cause I'm not a politician, is your future is in America. Your future is in your hands. It is not in somebody else's hands. It is your responsibility. It is your responsibility to go out and strive. It is your responsibility to go and succeed. We want you to be able to try again if you fail, but we want you to go and we want you to try and individualism. And also the kind of case that was, that was being made a little bit earlier about China, that basically China is saying that it can do things. One of the things that drives me up a wall is when politicians say, I created X jobs, or we created X jobs, you didn't create a job. Okay? The government does not create jobs. The government can take money from people and then give it to other people, but it is only entrepreneurs who can create jobs. And so the way that you fight China off is not by the power of a centralized government directing people in a particular direction. The way that you fight off China is by unleashing the collective knowledge, wisdom and ambition of the American people on an individual level to go out and do all of these unbelievable things. And that would be the promise that I'd make to the American people, is I'll get everybody the hell out of your way so you can succeed. That would be the only thing I promise.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Guys, we got breaking news here. It turns out the more reciprocal tariffs have dropped. Look at this. Complaining about the docket. JCAL has put a 500% reciprocal tariff on that. Purchasing dogs from a breeder is now 100% tariff. Friedberg. Oh, that's pretty. That's pretty stiff. And Chamath has put one on Laura Piana slippers. Yeah, too many people have them. 200% tariff and oh, looks like Ben Shapiro got in on it. Having Candace Owens on your podcast is now at 200%. Ben, what are you doing here?

[Ben Shapiro]

Unkind, guys. Unkind.

[Jason Calacanis]

What's the Palmer Lucky one. Can you read that one?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Jacob, put a thousand. This is the biggest one that you drop. Thousand percent tariff. I'm working with JC4 Chamath. Polyhopatia.

[David Freeberg]

Oh, you want Chairman Dictator? I have to. Do you want to hear about.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Oh, would you like to do a little memory lane? We got so much show here. I'm trying to get this out, but okay.

[Jason Calacanis]

By the way, I created a poly market on GDP. Annualized GDP growth in Q3 of this year being below 5. Negative 5%.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Negative 5%. Yeah. That's brutal.

[Jason Calacanis]

Check it out on polymarket. What's the probability of that happening? Make your bets.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Oh, make your bets with our partner Polymarket. Chamath. Do you want to do Victory Lab? We're going to wrap here. What do you want to do?

[David Freeberg]

Well, I actually think it's fun because we're going to kick off a different poly market around this because I think it's interesting. So the thing that we haven't talked about is with all of the tariffs, with all of the financing questions, with all of the recession questions, short term rates, long term rates, the one thing that we haven't sufficiently talked about, it's not really in the press, but it needs to be talked about, is there is a tremendous amount of corporate debt that supports these businesses today. And you would say, well, if long term rates go down, there's no real risk. But the tariff picture actually impacts revenues. Right. And the problem with that is that there's a lot of companies that have debt covenants tied to revenue and ebitda. And so this is what I spoke about at the beginning of January, which is the one risk that is uncontrollable is what happens to corporate debt. And could we see a wave of defaults and a wave of action? Nick, you may want to just play the clip and we can talk about what we can do about this. This is my pick for the best investment idea.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

All right, here we go. What do you got, Chamath?

[David Freeberg]

So tell me, preface this by saying that this is a pick that 92 times out of 100 goes to absolute zero and six out of the remaining eight times you make 10 extra money. And then the final two times you make anywhere between 100 to 1000 extra money. This is a loser trade. But I would be long cds. So what am I buying? I am buying insurance. I'm buying insurance using credit default swaps. I'm buying what's called protection that there is no default event in 2025. I would like a little bit of an insurance policy in 2025 so that the men and the women that we have voted in have the chance to do their work in peace. I think that there is a small chance of some volatility next year. I hope it doesn't happen. I hope that this trade loses money. But if it hits, it will be the best performing asset of 2025. And I just want to be clear, this is not something I think will happen. It's not something I want to happen. But I do think that if you look back in terms of just the tonnage of dollars you can make and the massive risk asymmetry that it presents to you, when you look at the concentration of the S and P, when you look at just the total gross amount of debt that we have, when you look at look at rates spiking, all of these things say, having a little insurance may not be a bad thing. It has hit. Nick, you can show the CDS graph. So this thing, for every billion dollars of risk you would have put on, every billion dollars that you put on would have cost you about $1 million. And that million dollars would have made you about $7 million in about three months.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Did you put it on?

[David Freeberg]

I'm not going to comment on my trades, Jason.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Oh, okay.

[David Freeberg]

But we talked about it off air already.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

But if you did put it on, does that mean you're taking us all to Italy this summer?

[David Freeberg]

No.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What's happening here? Are you getting a boat for us to record from the all in yacht?

[David Freeberg]

No, but there may be some boats for sale if this trade keeps going this way. Why is this important? The CDS actually represents the structural risk in the United States private economy, in the corporate economy. And so, Nick, if you just put it back on. So when you see these spreads blowing out, this is actually a very important warning sign. And this is actually a thing that I think Scott understands well, Howard understands well, I think they'll translate this to the president. If I have an opportunity to explain it, I will. But this is a really important market to pay attention to. This is what was the canary in the coal mine for the great financial crisis. This was the stuff that showed us that there was a big default event happening in the mortgage side of the market, but then that spilled over to the broader economy. And so the tariff picture and the recession picture will get played out in this chart. And I think it's something that folks can and should probably pay tremendous attention to because I think now that this trade is in the money, the question is, I don't think we want this to happen. That 1sigma 2sigma event where all of a sudden this trade returns 1000x is really bad.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well, you know, let's keep our eye on the markets. And as of the taping here, we're down about 5% across the boards.

[David Freeberg]

And Ben, you're excellent. You should come back.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah. Well done, Ben.

[Jason Calacanis]

You fit right in. We're in Florida. Are you? We're doing an event in Miami at the end of the month.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Okay.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah, you should be. Yeah, that'd be fun. Let's do it.

[Jason Calacanis]

You want to come to Miami and hang out? We've got like this nightclub. We're doing a stage. We got the Trackside of Formula One's.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Got a. Ben's got a table at 11. It's got his name.

[David Freeberg]

We're going to live. We're going to live. Stop.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Live. Okay, sorry, sorry.

[Ben Shapiro]

I don't know.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I don't know which strip club is sponsoring all in this trip, but we'll figure it out.

[Jason Calacanis]

That was awesome, Ben. Thanks for doing that.

[Ben Shapiro]

Thanks, guys. That's a blast.

[Jason Calacanis]

Wait, J. Cal, take us out. Take us out.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

This is my favorite with Ben. Ben's like. And you know there are security issues in Ukraine and you have security issues as well. That's why you should use life, man. You are the master of the Segway. I have never.

[Jason Calacanis]

I thought I was good.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Ben Shapiro is like, and of course we have the tariffs and that's going down. But you know what won't go down? If you buy gold. Buy your gold [e-mail] you are great at this. Is it true? 100 million in revenue for Daily Wire. Is that true?

[Ben Shapiro]

Nine figures, actually. Last year was 2. 220.

[David Freeberg]

Oh my God.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What's going on? I saw some headline. You're going bankrupt. How do you go bankrupt at 220?

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah, we're not going bankrupt.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, restructuring.

[David Freeberg]

Actually, Ben, now that you saw what's happening with Newsmax, I mean, any thoughts to maybe raising.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah, I mean it has, it has, let's just put. It has crossed our minds. Yes, for sure.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

You're making 50 times the revenue of Truth Social. Congratulations.

[David Freeberg]

But actually, then, what do you think when you see the, this Newsmax thing, trade like this? I mean, it's incredible. What is it saying, do you think? Think?

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, I think it's saying a couple of things. I mean, one, it's saying, obviously, look, I think the PE ratios on the Newsmax trade are ridiculous in the sense that it's going to revert back to something closer to normalcy. I think that it was supposed to trade at 10 bucks and it came out at 14. It spoke to like 240. So it's more like Gamestop than anything else. There's a lot of retail traders who are fans of Newsmax who bought the stock and then it left and I think it was today back down in the 40s, something like that. It'll end up being, you know, total market cap will probably be somewhere when it, when it lands in like the two to three bill range, somewhere three to four bill, something like that. I think what it says is that, you know, the, the stock market in the short term is a voting machine and in the long term it is a weighing machine. And I think that, you know, when, when you, when you look at stocks that have name brand recognition, then you're going to get a lot of voting in the early going and then it's a question of whether you keep that up. So it turns into Wang.

[David Freeberg]

Right, fair enough.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

39 million in quarterly revenue. So they're at 150, $160 million a year and their valuation. Right now, I don't have the market cap here, but what did it peak out at? 3 or 4 billion or something?

[Ben Shapiro]

Oh, no, when it went in, peaked. It peaked above 20. Bill the market cap.

[David Freeberg]

Yes. 170 bucks or 200 bucks.

[Ben Shapiro]

240 bucks. 245 bucks. Yesterday. Yeah. Or two days ago.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Something weird going on there. Okay. All right, well, the all in and daily Wire merger and IPO coming soon. The ticker symbol is all Daily in wire. All In Daily in Wire. The merger is complete and we'll see you all next time.

[David Freeberg]

Love you folks on the all in podcast. Well done.

[Jason Calacanis]

Thanks, guys.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

We'll let your winners ride Rain Man David.

[Jason Calacanis]

And instead we open source it to.

[Ben Shapiro]

The fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

[David Freeberg]

Love you.

[Ben Shapiro]

Besties are that is my dog taking it out.

[Jason Calacanis]

I see your driveway. Oh, man.

[David Freeberg]

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

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

We need to get merch.