← All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Inside the White House Tech Dinner, Weak Jobs Report, Tariffs Court Challenge, Google Wins Antitrust
01:07:05
(0:00) Bestie intros (0:52) Behind the scenes of the White House Tech Dinner! (28:39) Tariff showdown headed to the Supreme Court (42:44) Other Trump Administration legal battles (46:58) Weak jobs report: what is the state of the economy? (57:52)...
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- [00:00]
Jason Calacanis
All right, Sacks, how you doing, brother? Wait, what's this? Why are you wearing a tie?
- [00:04]
David Sacks
I'm in D.C. today, so it's a government day.
- [00:06]
Jason Calacanis
Ah, so you suited up with the ties. You suited up with the ties. Well, maybe I'll join you. Maybe I'll join you. Oh, look. Oh, look. What is this box I just got? Oh, that's from my guy, Tom. Oh, just for Jcal, Mr. Jason Calacanis. Let's see what's in the box here.
- [00:20]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Oh.
- [00:21]
Jason Calacanis
What's going on here?
- [00:21]
David Sacks
Tom Ford sent you something.
- [00:23]
Jason Calacanis
Oh, Tom sent me a nice tie. Maybe I'll go all blue.
- [00:26]
David Sacks
Oh, I heard that Moose ate your invitation to the White House.
- [00:30]
Chamath Palihapitiya
He did. He did.
- [00:32]
David Sacks
I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry about that.
- [00:35]
Jason Calacanis
Prick. Let your winners ride Rain Man David Sachs.
- [00:44]
David Sacks
And instead, we open sources to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.
- [00:48]
Jason Calacanis
Love you, Best night Queen of Quinoa. All right, everybody, welcome back to the number one podcast in the universe. In the universe. It's been proven time and time again.
- [01:01]
David Sacks
This.
- [01:02]
Jason Calacanis
I'm not putting the tie. It's just that. It's enough already. It's Friday. We moved the show to Friday. Sorry. You're getting this on Saturday.
- [01:10]
David Sacks
That's why you can't come to the White House. You can't figure out a tie.
- [01:13]
Jason Calacanis
Yeah. Well, maybe you could show me how to do this next time I'm in town. I've got to practice with you and go in the mirror. That'd be great. Bit you behind me, showing you how to do a tie. We didn't have ties in Brooklyn. What do you want me to do? All right, well, it was an eventful week. Some of our besties, some not all, were invited, apparently, to a. A little soiree at the White House with the President, Sachs and Chamath. Here's a photo. Some pretty good seating arrangement here. It looks like Zuckerberg got the pole position on the right hand of the father, followed by Saxipoo and Chamath and Amore, sitting right across from Sam Altman and Tim Cook. What a crowd. What a crowd. What was the impetus for this dinner, Sachs? Tell us.
- [02:02]
David Sacks
Well, this was a tech dinner at the White House. I think it originally started with a group that Chamath organized in Silicon Valley, and they were kind of the core nucleus of this. And then more and more people just wanted to come and try to get in. And the President invited some of the top tech leaders, and pretty soon it turned into the room that you saw there. I mean, it's really pretty amazing, President Trump's ability to convene all of these people. You normally don't get these people in a room together. Many of them are competitors, and it's remarkable. You pretty much had, I'd say, like, maybe half the tech industry was there.
- [02:36]
Jason Calacanis
By market cap.
- [02:37]
David Sacks
Certainly by market cap, for sure.
- [02:39]
Jason Calacanis
Yeah. And Chamath, you obviously were involved here, and you got a pretty good seat. Any great inside stories? Any inside baseball? What did they serve, by the way? I'm curious what gets served at a dinner like this?
- [02:51]
Chamath Palihapitiya
That was a very elegant menu, and they try to keep it light so that it's not overwhelming, which I think can get in the way. So it was like.
- [03:00]
Jason Calacanis
So no prime rib, right?
- [03:01]
Chamath Palihapitiya
It was a burrata salad, and then there was a filet, and then a nice raspberry dessert. Okay, here's what I'll tell you. Sack said it well. What was incredible for me, just, frankly, be in the room felt very surreal. You're seeing the leaders of the most important companies in the world sitting together, and I just felt like there was a sense of alignment and cooperation, and that was really cool. I think none of those folks have to really show up anywhere that they don't have to. I think they're at a place in their career and the importance of the businesses that they run. But the fact that the President can convene them, I think says a lot about him and the agenda. And then they, to A1, were incredibly supportive of what he has done and clearing the way and allowing them to build their businesses with a lot more clarity. It was just very clear, the juxtaposition of what it was like and the difficulty under Biden versus what it was now. And you saw some very truly hard cast liberals who have now completely embraced President Trump. Folks like Tim Cook, folks like Bill Gates. And I think that that's an incredible testament to him and his agenda. And then the second thing, which is more personal is I was so proud of Sacks. Every single one of these guys. And you're talking like the titans of titans, they took a moment to say that he was just doing an incredible job, and the President was really proud of it. It was like, as a brother, it's like you're seeing your brother just get completely. I was. It was great. So that was really special.
- [04:31]
Jason Calacanis
Freiburg, any. Any take on this? I. I noticed you didn't make it. You didn't make the cut. My invite got eaten by moose, obviously.
- [04:37]
David Sacks
As we heard earlier.
- [04:38]
Jason Calacanis
But I thought you for sure would get a seat what happened? Friedberg? No seat free.
- [04:43]
David Friedberg
I work in agriculture. Jake. Hal. So we're doing the agriculture dinner next month. It's going to be great. The President and I are arranging a round table. It's going to be fantastic. Yeah, just kidding. No, but I was in D.C. so.
- [04:54]
Jason Calacanis
If I eat my vegetables I can come to that one.
- [04:56]
David Friedberg
No, no, I was in D.C. with the guys. I actually did an interview with Senator Rand Paul which, which I think is out on YouTube now and on our podcast channels. It was great to sit down with the Senator.
- [05:06]
Jason Calacanis
What was the highlight of the, of the, of the Paul interview? I didn't get to watch it yet. Apologies. I was getting ready for the summit. But did you have a highlight or two you want to share with us?
- [05:15]
David Friedberg
I mean he, he's an interesting guy. A lot of people have challenged him because he's an independent thinker. He really is true kind of libertarian views and libertarian beliefs. And he's held firm to them despite bucking with the party, which he did recently on the big beautiful bill. You know, he was one of three Republicans to vote against it. So he's criticized and chastised and you know, ousted in a lot of different circles in D.C. because he doesn't kind of fall in line. But I do think that dissent and debate is critical and important for us to find the better path forward. And I like the role that he plays and I think he's very first principled and I think his talking about his, his ability to get elected despite not being willing to always fall in line with the party is a really important point. And he hopes it will inspire other politicians to follow the same path and for voters to see that there is a role for independent thinkers in Congress.
- [06:10]
Jason Calacanis
Yeah, I mean that is something we need. It seems like these parties just get lockstep. They're expected to vote the same. They vote on party lines and sacks. That is definitely a weakness. I think of the two party system. Your thoughts on Rand Paul and his, you know, being a bit of an agitator, maybe like Manchin was. There's a role for this. Yeah. In our democracy.
- [06:34]
David Sacks
Well, I think it's good to hear from a libertarian voice once in a while. They're gonna have a different sort of.
- [06:39]
Jason Calacanis
Conservative once in a while. I got that too, Taman.
- [06:42]
David Sacks
They're gonna have a different sort of viewpoint that could be called conservative. So I like Grand Paul, but can we just go back to the dinner? I wanna just build on a point that Chamath made about the level of sort of comity in the room. I think that the people in the room there, it was remarkable. Even though a lot of these companies are competing with each other, they were largely on the same page with respect to what was happening in the economy, in the world, and with the kind of support they needed for the tech industry to do well and for the US economy to do well. And I think the reason why they were largely happy with the Trump administration is because the Trump administration has been pro innovation, pro infrastructure, which includes being pro energy, pro export, so these companies can sell their products internationally. And then also the thing that's been very important to the Trump administration is pro worker. And you heard the President make all of those points in his critical AI speech that he gave on July 23rd at the AI summit that we co sponsor with Hill and Valley. So I think a lot of the compliments that we received were due to the agenda that the President articulated so well at the AI Summit. And the people in that room are largely supportive of that policy. So I don't know if I would call it a love fest, but I think it was an opportunity for these tech leaders to articulate their concerns where they could use help. And I think the President, he's a great listener and he wanted to take in their feedback and figure out how to make the economy grow even faster.
- [08:16]
Jason Calacanis
I got so many questions from behind the scenes, et cetera, like seating arrangement, how is that discussed?
- [08:23]
Chamath Palihapitiya
The first thing I'll say is the President takes tremendous control over these details. I've said this before about how conscientious he is, but one of the things that he noticed before was it was very difficult to host press conferences or world leaders outside in the Rose Garden. So the way that it started was around 4 o'. Clock. What happened was that David, and I'll tell you, because there was a joke about this at dinner, David asked the President, can we do a tour of the Oval for all of the fans of All In? And the President said, absolutely. So me, Freeberg, Sachs, we went, and Caroline Levitt meets us and walks us in. By the way, if you want to see a Star of Stars, I've met few people like this who exudes this level of competence. I mean, I think it was the first thing that Friedberg said after maybe like two minutes of interacting with her is like, wow, this may be the most competent person I've ever spoken to. She's outrageously good. So she gets us all. She cleans up some stuff that had to be cleaned up, walks us in, and the President gave Us, this tour. And the beautiful thing about the tour, if you are a student of American history, is the history is on the walls. I mean, from George Washington to Abe Lincoln to even Ben Franklin and the Declaration of Independence. Jason. And so we were able to see all of that and see all of that in detail, and he was able to talk about it. And then as it kind of always does, it veers where he does the weave, and he's like, guys, what do we want to talk about? And Friedberg was able to ask some questions in Sachs and I, and then it just became a little bit more freewheeling, like.
- [10:05]
David Sacks
Well, it turned into, like, a hang.
- [10:07]
Chamath Palihapitiya
A hang.
- [10:07]
David Friedberg
Yeah, we hung with the president. And then after we hung, we turned the cameras off, and then we hung, like, another half hour, 45 minutes with him. People are coming in and out of the Oval, but it's literally like an episode of West Wing meets Veep meets, like, you know, it was like everyone's just chatting, going in and out. You meet all the characters.
- [10:25]
Chamath Palihapitiya
So then that ends, and Sachs had to do some meetings in the Oval with the President. So we all leave and we're escorted into, I think it's the Roosevelt Room. Sachs. Is that right? Is that the. So when we get into the Roosevelt Room, this is where it becomes surreal. You're seeing the most powerful people that have built these incredible businesses. I think there was 30 people, but the table can only fit, like, 15 people. And so you have, like, Tim and Sam and Satya sitting on the couch over here by these two chairs is, like, Dylan Field and Alex.
- [10:59]
Jason Calacanis
They're in the blinker swag.
- [11:00]
Chamath Palihapitiya
And it's like the funniest scene because everybody, at that moment, all the heirs are gone because they know the context in which they're there.
- [11:10]
David Sacks
Yeah. In their own worlds. They're like kings.
- [11:13]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Kings.
- [11:13]
David Sacks
In the White House, you're on the.
- [11:15]
Jason Calacanis
Backbencher, but here you're a guest.
- [11:16]
David Sacks
You're sharing the backbench.
- [11:17]
Chamath Palihapitiya
You're an American citizen who's there to meet the President. Right. But there were some incredible people there. Some people I'd not really met before. Safra Katz.
- [11:24]
David Friedberg
Lovely.
- [11:25]
Chamath Palihapitiya
And her husband. And then there were some other people that were just amazing. Jared Isaacman, which is wonderful to see him. There was a whole group of folks that were there, and then they say, hey, guys, can you just get into a single file line? And so, again, it's like a surreal scene where it's like Sundar, Satya, Bill Gates, Sergey.
- [11:49]
David Friedberg
Sergey.
- [11:50]
Chamath Palihapitiya
These people in a single file line.
- [11:52]
Jason Calacanis
I mean, you guys sound like you went backstage at a Zeppelin concert.
- [11:56]
Chamath Palihapitiya
No, dude. And then we're escorted into the Oval. And this is like, what's so kind about what he does. He sits at the Resolute desk, and Meredith o', Rourke, who's incredible, she introduces everybody one by one so that they hear their name. It may sound like a weird thing, Jason, but, like, to hear your name called in the Oval, and then you stand beside the president. He's seated, and they have a photo. They take this beautiful photo. And then the first person was Safra and her husband. And her husband says, could I take a pen? So the president says, of course. That's what they're there for. So he gives him a challenge coin and a pen. Everybody takes one. So again, you're seeing the leaders of these incredible businesses. One by one, they get announced. They go stand by the president, they take a beautiful picture, and they take a coin and a pen. And then we're all just kind of milling in the Oval after that's all done. And he says, well, guys, we're going to talk at dinner, but do you want to just start? And it was amazing because Sergey, does.
- [13:08]
Jason Calacanis
He sit behind the desk then?
- [13:10]
Chamath Palihapitiya
He's still sitting at the desk. So anyways, Sergey asks a few questions, really starts to get the conversation going, which I think was really good. And then he says, okay, guys, let's continue this conversation at dinner. And so we exit into the Rose Garden, and this is where our friend Sonny Madre says on the way, like, as we're walking, says, sir, I hear you have a playlist. Can we hear the music? And so he takes the iPad, turns the music on, and he apparently had been tuning it, and so now it's like, he's got a great playlist, by the way. It's like Fleetwood Mac. I mean, like, you're hearing, like, all the classics, and it's just blasting in the rose. I mean, blasting. Lisa Su posted one of the photos. You can see them all because, like, the Oval is small. Okay, so just to be clear.
- [13:52]
Jason Calacanis
So then that's dinner.
- [13:53]
David Friedberg
Oh, wow.
- [13:54]
David Sacks
There you go.
- [13:54]
David Friedberg
It's stuffed.
- [13:55]
Chamath Palihapitiya
I mean, I'm right to the left of Tim, and Jamie Siminoff is right at the end. And I think it's Vivek Ranadive, who's the owner of the Kings, is right there. The Sacramento Kings started Tipco, and then I think it's me. I think I was standing kind of more in the front there. Anyways, so we leave. So if you just pause there. So that Window, that's Shyam Sankar, who's the CTO of Palantir. Behind him is Dave Limp. And then you can see Dylan Field, the founder and CEO of figma. That's the door. You exit, you go into the Rose Garden, and then you walk through. And we walk down the hallway. You guys have seen that before. And we go into the East Wing, and they say, we want to introduce the First Lady. So what happens is you walk into the East Wing, you walk upstairs, and there's a very elegant seating chart that they make. It's actually a really good way of doing it, because normally what you would do is you would walk around the table. Walk around the table?
- [14:51]
Jason Calacanis
Yeah.
- [14:52]
Chamath Palihapitiya
No, this is a much better system. So you actually have a small model of the table. And so what happens is you go. You. You can see where everybody is sitting, and then you see where you're sitting, and then there's an escort that takes you to your seat. So it's a really. It's done really well.
- [15:10]
Jason Calacanis
It's very thoughtful.
- [15:11]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Yeah, it's very thoughtful.
- [15:12]
David Sacks
It was in the East Room, where we also did the Crypto Summit at the White House, and there's been other events there. But let me just give a shout out to the First Lady, Melania Trump. She's very interested in this topic of AI. And in fact, earlier that day, we did an event at the White House with the AI Education Task Force, which she's chairing, and she's very passionate about making sure that every school child in America has access to AI so they can get AI education. And we had dozens of companies there at the White House making pledges of resources to make sure that teachers and students and families will be able to have everything they need for kids to learn AI so they have the skills for this critical tool. So this is a topic she's very interested in. So she wanted to be at that dinner.
- [15:58]
Chamath Palihapitiya
So then we get seated, and people are talking a little bit, and he goes, guys, if it's okay with you, we're just gonna let the press in. And I thought what that meant was a few people. I mean, I've never seen anything like this before. It's like a zoo entered the East Wing. Cameras, boom, microphones, goes the gaggle, the gaggle. And they start screaming because, like, everybody's trying to shout over each other to try to be able to ask questions. But then the president kind of imposes control and says, guys, hold on. And then he allowed the CEOs of the big companies to say something, and Then Gates said something and then that kind of set the tone. And obviously he said something. And then he said, anybody have any questions? And then they just start screaming. I mean, and there are people running around with mics. I don't know how you pick who gets to say something, quite honestly, because.
- [16:55]
Jason Calacanis
It should be a procedure. It's out of control.
- [16:56]
Chamath Palihapitiya
No, but you know what's crazy is the questions are so all over the place. I don't know how you can be prepared. Like, he knows what he's saying. He's very purposeful with what he's saying. I don't know how you do that because the questions are all over the place. And you could tell because one of them asked Zuck questions. Zuck was like, what's going on?
- [17:12]
Jason Calacanis
Zuck, Zuckerberg, Zach. What about your 12 houses in Palo Alto, Zach?
- [17:17]
Chamath Palihapitiya
I mean, no, it was a tougher question, dude. It was about. It was about free speech in the uk and he did a pretty good job.
- [17:23]
Jason Calacanis
Zach, my Instagram account's locked. Can you help me? My Instagram.
- [17:27]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Anyway, so then, so then they leave and then.
- [17:29]
David Sacks
Well, by the way, they have to be like thrown out. You know, they don't just leave.
- [17:32]
David Friedberg
They're out of control.
- [17:33]
David Sacks
They make, you know.
- [17:35]
Jason Calacanis
Yeah.
- [17:35]
Chamath Palihapitiya
And then we had this lovely three course dinner and then right after the appetizer, I think like he starts going around and people just start talking and saying things and things that are on their mind. And I'm not going to share anything from that, but I thought that was pretty illuminating and pretty awesome.
- [17:50]
Jason Calacanis
Let me ask you a candid question.
- [17:51]
Chamath Palihapitiya
And then there was a jockey.
- [17:52]
Jason Calacanis
Challenge him on any topics? Were there any. I mean, we saw. There's a lot of adulation, people. Thank you, Mr. President. There's a lot of deference. Anybody throw him a fastball, curveball? Is there any challenge question in that format?
- [18:03]
Chamath Palihapitiya
It's not about asking him questions like you're interviewing him, but there are people that brought up challenging things that they are dealing with.
- [18:10]
Jason Calacanis
Yeah, that's what I mean.
- [18:11]
Chamath Palihapitiya
But that, no, that is not what you said.
- [18:13]
Jason Calacanis
So it's something that maybe is not aligned with maybe how the administration is doing things. That's what I'm sort of getting at.
- [18:20]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Okay, no, but that's again, you're trying to like, nobody's there to gotcha. People are like, sir, I'm dealing with this specific issue in this specific country. Can you help?
- [18:27]
Jason Calacanis
Ah, got it. Well, I was thinking like immigration, High skilled immigration. That seems like a topic everybody cares about in our industry.
- [18:34]
Chamath Palihapitiya
I'LL tell you what we talked about. The issues that they had are many, and they have to deal with how American companies can build businesses in a seamless, straightforward way. And what they said is, since Biden, what Trump has done is clean the decks and allowed them. They all said that. They weren't forced to say that. They all said it, which I thought was really cool. This is, again, why I said earlier, super proud of what David has done. It was palpable, the respect that all these guys had for him, which is awesome. But then what the President says is, I could take care of this. I can do that. That's not gonna stand. What you see is you have these American titans of industry. I've said this before, Jason. The whole premise of the American dream, I think, rests on economic and military supremacy that is derived from technical supremacy. That group of people are the geniuses that create the technical supremacy for the world. And he is their biggest advocate. And that's inspiring because it's like they are like, sir, here's what we need. And he's like, great, I'm going to go to bat for you and try to get what you need. And so there was that conversation, and then there was a joke, and he said at the end something along the lines of, ah, you know, I had to. It's a tough day or something. Like, I had to. I had to film a segment for David's dumb podcast. Just said it, like, as a joke. Everybody, everybody, everybody starts laughing. And then Zuck piles on. He goes, well, the only dumb parts are Chamat's parts laughing. But when Zuck said it, he's leaning back. And then he loses his balance.
- [20:18]
Jason Calacanis
Sacks.
- [20:19]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Sacks with the tism is just looking straight ahead at Tim Cook. I. I am like, you kind of suck. I don't know what to do. Not kod Zuck not pulls her arm. I don't know how she got there. It was a really sweet moment, and.
- [20:32]
Jason Calacanis
I had a favorite moment, actually. It occurred after you guys left the White House. Here it is. This is Chamat's greatest moment. There is a Chamas superfan, as you can see there.
- [20:42]
David Friedberg
Get.
- [20:43]
Jason Calacanis
That's a Chimatsu fan, and he's signing multiple pictures from all different eras. Those will be on ebay later. So be on ebay later. Look at this guy.
- [20:53]
David Sacks
I just want to back up and say one of the reasons why I thought it would be cool for us to kind of do this interview in the Oval where the President kind of gave us a tour of the changes he had made to The White House is. I was getting a tour with my family one weekend of the White House. And the guides who do these tours were telling us about how much care the President takes in the condition of the White House and all the upgrades that he's made. And they've seen him walking around, and he'll pick out paintings and art. He'll move things around. He got a whole bunch of paintings out of storage. All the paintings that are now in the Oval Office are ones that he directly picked out. And they also said that when he sees something wrong, like with the landscaping or he'll call a gardener over and give him notes on how to make it look better. And the President himself posted a truth a few days ago where the new pavers on the Rose Garden patio got damaged. There was, like, a big scratch.
- [21:50]
Jason Calacanis
And I did see that video.
- [21:52]
Chamath Palihapitiya
He caught him on the.
- [21:53]
Jason Calacanis
He caught the. He caught. He caught the delivery guys.
- [21:56]
David Sacks
He went to the tape to figure out who did it. Yeah, yeah.
- [21:59]
Jason Calacanis
That's a New York developer, and not.
- [22:02]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Only that, he fired them, and he's.
- [22:04]
Jason Calacanis
Making them pay for it, and they got a buffet or something. Yeah.
- [22:06]
David Sacks
It's funny. He tells the story at the dinner that the. The contractor who got fired was devastated, so he's probably going to have to hire them back because he. He's. He's too nice.
- [22:14]
Chamath Palihapitiya
And he asked everybody. He's like, you guys think I should hire him back? We're like, yes, hire the guy. He's like, yeah, I'll probably hire him back.
- [22:20]
David Sacks
It started as a tour. Well, it was supposed to be a tour. We were going to see the Rose Garden and other things, and then it rained, and so we just stayed in the Oval, and then it became like more of like a hang slash interview.
- [22:32]
Jason Calacanis
Oh, wow, you guys are going to make that into an episode. That's going to be an episode. Oh, that's incredible.
- [22:36]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Okay, so, Jason, like, look, you see the couple days before. And the President tweeted about this. Nick, I sent that to you, but you have India, Russia, and China kind of like fraternizing. And then one or two days later, the President convenes this dinner of, I think, some incredible entrepreneurs building a lot of the really important things that the world needs in the future. I don't know what your reaction is when you see the kind of.
- [23:01]
Jason Calacanis
Well, yeah, there's a legion of doom there to see Putin and she. And not Modi, maybe, but he's obviously making a point. But, you know, overall, I had a lot of thoughts about it. I did a Press hit. Of the 20 people there or so, I'm not sure what the exact number was. I'm just 29.
- [23:19]
Chamath Palihapitiya
I think we're 2930.
- [23:20]
Jason Calacanis
I think about 19 of them are lifelong Democrats who have switched to this party. And I think the Democrats need to look at this. This opportunity was always there for the Democrats. But what did they choose? They chose to take the position of ban the billionaires and an agenda that makes no sense. And if you had invited this group of people, if you were Biden or Kamala and you invited this group of people to come to the White House, they would have come as well. And you could have a really thoughtful conversation about them. What the Democratics positions might be, you know, wages, health care. And this same group of people would have engaged but they were not allowed to access the White House, they were not allowed to have a dialogue. And I think they pursued a very weird agenda. And they got Nancy Pelosi out there day trading on AOC and the socialists pursuing some crazy agenda. What do you expect people to do if you tell them, we don't want to hear your concerns, we don't want to engage with you in debate. You can have all kinds of differences with Trump on style. I do. You could have policy issues. I do. But as a moderate, when I see something like this, I just gotta give you a lot of credit, Sachs, for being able to give access to the President and give the President access to these individuals and let all these important discussions happen and then the group can act as one in the American people's interest. And I think it's very important for the Democrats to learn something here which is 90% of Americans aspire to be billionaires and 10%, maybe they're, you know, socialists, communists, whatever they are, it's fine. They can pick and choose what they believe is important in the world. But Americans love these individuals, they love these products and services. And 70% of the top 50 companies in the world by market cap are American companies. This is the best of America. This is the best of the American dream. And it's great that they can go and have debates with the President. That was to my earlier question. I know a lot of these guys have some issues with the President, President or certain issues, tariffs, et cetera. This is an important, I think moment in time to just say Trump 2.0 is engaging the business community and meeting them where they are and saying, how can I help you grow faster? How can we compete? America is not the only game in town. Now as you saw with Modi creating this alliance with Xi and Putin. It's imperative for the American companies to excel and create jobs. And we have the lowest unemployment. We'll talk about employment today. There's some new statistics. We have the lowest unemployment of our lifetimes. It's for a reason. It's not because of any president. It's because of these great companies. We should be celebrating them. And the President's done an exceptional job of doing what all Americans do. We celebrate these companies. We love the iPhone. We love Teslas, we love these products and services people are building. People love Google, they love ChatGPT. It's fantastic. And so it's easy to be cynical about business or business leaders, but this was really, I think, a great show of force. And it shows the countries getting in sync on what matters and that has. It should be independent of political parties. So I was very proud of you, David, that you built this bridge and you built it brick by brick. And I think to come, just to.
- [26:38]
David Sacks
Be clear, I mean, obviously the President already had access to all these people and in fact, many of them were already on speed dial and he already knew them and he's the one who convened them at the White House. I've just been helping with policy, so I don't want to just be clear about that.
- [26:52]
Jason Calacanis
Well, I'm not overstating it, but I'm even going back six months when you guys held the fundraiser. And then just, you see, like a very close friend of mine, Mark Pincus, lifelong Democrat, has donated probably eight figures to the Dems in total over the years. And he got frustrated at a certain point that he couldn't get his calls returned or he couldn't have important discussions. Well, here we are. He was at that dinner. I think that's a very important lesson. The Democrats need to field moderates, business leaders. They got their Bob Igers, they got Jamie Dimon, they got a bunch of people who could help build an agenda. That's not lunacy.
- [27:26]
David Sacks
Yeah. And what I would say is, look, maybe half the people at the dinner have actually moved to the center or to the right relative to where they were. And I think Mark Pincus has basically put himself in that category. So there's people who have like been red pilling and moving over to our side. And then I'd say the other half of the people in the room haven't necessarily changed their politics and they're just there to do business. They want to have a good relationship with the government. But the same is true on the part of the President. I saw some conservative influencers saying, how can the President meet with this person or that person? He's been such an opponent in the past. I mean, look, the President is doing business as well. He asked all the attendees of the dinner, how much are you investing in America? What do you need to invest more? He wants to see the infrastructure investment. Why? Because it benefits all Americans, not just software companies. It benefits the construction industry, the trades, the electricians, the carpenters, the energy companies, fracking and so on. So he's there representing the interests of the country, and then many of those CEOs are representing the interests of their companies, and there's a dialogue going on. That doesn't mean that everyone has to suddenly become a Republican or change their politics. But it's constructive. And this is all in furtherance of having the US Economy grow better.
- [28:39]
Jason Calacanis
All right, perfect segue. We got lots to talk about in terms of the economy. And first story here, Trump's tariffs got overturned in court. Federal appeals court ruled 7, 4 that Trump exceeded his authority when it comes to the Emergency Economic Powers Act. Okay, we'll get into the details here. Historically, Congress was in charge of tariffs, but under an emergency, a national emergency, the President can get involved with tariffs. And they cited the 47th administration, fentanyl crisis at the borders, Mexico, Canada, China, et cetera, and the trade deficits. Well, the White House got sued by a group representing small businesses. In May, two federal courts ruled that he wrongfully invoked the ieepa. And the White House appealed that they've now lost. And Trump's tariffs will remain in effect until October 14, allowing the Supreme Court to appeal this. These tariffs have been tremendously unpopular in the business sector. I think maybe 70, 80% of business leaders. In a recent survey, Sachs, said that they're not crazy about them, but they have, on the other side, generated over $150 billion in revenue in a couple of short months. So they could generate trillions of dollars in the next decade, according to estimates. I guess the question I have for you, Sachs, is you guys are moving at the White House, there in this administration, the executive branch, at startup speed, moving fast and break things is something we talk about doing in our industry. And is this just the natural extension of that? The President is doing a lot of aggressive things, and sometimes they're going to be allowed, sometimes they're not. What's your take?
- [30:26]
David Sacks
Well, I'm not concerned about the fate of tariffs at the Supreme Court, even though it's probably a coin flip whether the Supreme Court's going to allow the tariffs under ieepa, but there are five different laws under which the president has the authority to impose these tariffs. So there's a chart here that we can throw up on the screen. There's section 232, there's section 201, section 301, section 122, section 338. There are at least five different bases for the President's authority to impose tariffs. So at the end of the day, I think it's actually quite unlikely that the Supreme Court's going to force a change in tariff policy. And I don't think the Supreme Court sees it as this urgent matter that requires a quick resolution. So I'm not particularly worried about it. In terms of the popularity of the tariffs, my guess is that they're not going to be reversed in the future by a future president, because I think they actually are quite popular with the country, with workers, among the business elite. It's more mixed, I'll grant you that. But if you change the way you ask the question from are you in favor of these tariffs to are you in favor of raising 4 trillion in revenue over the next decade through tariffs to fund, fund a tax cut like we had in the big beautiful bill, then that might change people's perception of it. So that's really the question is how do you want to raise revenue for the government? And between big beautiful bill and the tariffs, what you see is a substitution from taxing Americans to taxing foreign companies, unless those foreign companies then make a big investment in America. So, look, there's no great, great way to extract revenue from the private sector. All taxation is unfortunate and undesirable and be better if we didn't have to tax so much. But the reality is, I think that if you have a choice between taxing American people or imposing tariffs, I think tariffs may be the better way to do it. And I just want to note that the CBO has now increased their projection of what tariffs will raise to 4 trillion over the next decade.
- [32:35]
Jason Calacanis
It's 400 billion a year. It's pretty significant, right?
- [32:38]
David Sacks
And initially it started as a lower number and it completely pays for the one big beautiful bill.
- [32:43]
Jason Calacanis
Chamath, here's the chart. Trump's tariffs were meant to help manufacturers. Do manufacturing firms think they're helping? Has your business been impacted by higher tariffs this year? And here, negative impact. 72% of manufacturers, 3.7% think it helped. And 72% said no impact. 7% don't know yet. Your thoughts on tariffs? They're obviously unpopular with people in retail manufacturing in those businesses. But as Axe points out, hey, maybe the American people like them and they like the idea of a new revenue stream. What are your thoughts?
- [33:14]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Shimon I think that the tariffs on balance are a pretty smart masterstroke of strategy. I think that we did not understand what the impact of tariffs would be except for hypothetical econ wonk talk. And so that hypothetical econ wonk talk basically said that tariffs were always going to be a disaster. And if you ask them, well what is the actual practical data that you would point to? They didn't have any. It was just more hypotheses. But what is the practical data now? I think that the United States is going to book probably close to half a trillion of incremental revenue. It's actually forced a stabilization in the dollar which I think that people were always very concerned with what's going to happen to the dollar complex. Everybody always screams like their hair is on fire. But the dollar complex has stabilized I think because of tariffs. So there's been some real positives and what Sachs says is right, which is whoever is president over the next 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years there'll be some Democrats, there'll be some Republicans. It's going to be very hard to justify why you would undo this now because this source of revenue is going to be an incredibly important one.
- [34:41]
David Sacks
Well and also it's not just the fact that the revenue is very important. You raise a great point which is the US Government's going to become dependent on that reven just workers. I think the tariffs are very popular with blue collar workers. Certainly the auto workers really like it.
- [34:54]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Well here's what I was going to the pie chart that you showed is not accurate and the reason it's not accurate is that the investment cases that you would underwrite because of tariffs and the big beautiful bill haven't happened. So I'll give you an example. I am a person that started a business that is building a factory to make batteries in my specific example in Michigan. So to delever away from China for the battery supply chain. And what I will tell you Jason is after the big beautiful bill and because of tariffs it is much easier now for me to underwrite. Why? Because I have 100% depreciation across all my capex it's a complete changer on the irr of these projects. So before where I would have to raise billions of dollars from outsiders I can subsidize a lot more of it internally because I can actually underwrite to A better gain because the tax savings are so meaningful. Same thing for this data center that I'm building in Arizona. So in all of these cases, I think that A, you have this uptick in revenue because of tariffs on the short term and B, the important thing is to redo this pie chart in probably a year. For example, our groundbreaking in Michigan will be in July of next year for that factory. It'll be online two years after that. The real story, Jason, of all of this will be really known in that period. But right now, what I'll tell you is the underwriting case for putting a ton of money into the United States has changed to the positive because of.
- [36:27]
Jason Calacanis
These, because that 100% depreciation, it's a huge deal. Yeah. Whether you're buying a huge plane.
- [36:33]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Yum yum.
- [36:34]
Jason Calacanis
All in aviation. Freeberg, here's your poly market. Will tariffs generate greater than 250 billion? It's peaked at like 30%. It's come back down to 5. Most people are betting. So this could be a case of free money if people want to go get it on polymarket because it has a pretty good chance of hitting that.
- [36:51]
Chamath Palihapitiya
But the number I said, Jason, is like a yearly run rate. So technically, if you just look at the calendar 25, you, you only get a stub of eight months because it started April 1st.
- [37:00]
Jason Calacanis
Eight months, 50k a month. 50 billion a month. You get to 400 billion. So they should be able actually think they're going to hit that bogey. But Freeberg, the reports from people who have been impacted by tariffs, obviously these could become inflationary. But the people who are being impacted said they've been eating them to date, but they're not going to be able to eat them forever. So it could become inflationary. What are your thoughts on the tariff kerfuffle here and the legal battle over them, as well as the impact it might have on inflation, which is something we do not want to see come back. And we have been teetering just under that 3% number, which then puts the Fed obviously in difficult position with their mandate to get to 2.
- [37:43]
David Friedberg
Friedberg, I'll address the legal kerfuffle point, which I think is a good one, because I do think that the great debate that's going to happen from this presidency and will likely shape the next set of presidencies will be the right for presidents to declare emergencies to move forward their legislative agenda. And arguably the tariff institution by many members of Congress should have gone through a congressional process in the meeting I did with Rand Paul this week, which is now been posted, he talked about the challenge that they have had with Democratic Presidents, Biden and prior to that, using emergency authorization vested to them under the National Emergencies act, which is a 1976 statutory authority to take action. And then in order for the emergency powers to be turned off, Congress actually has to vote. And they can only do so after 30 days. And when Congress makes that vote, the President can veto their vote. So the President can then say send it back. So then they have to get a 2 3rd super majority to get it to pass. So it creates a system whereby the President can have this emergency authorization to progress much of their legislative agenda under the guise of emergency powers, which for many people, they would say is not the right way to do it. So Senator Paul and others have proposed bills, for example, that the President has to get any emergency power reauthorized after 30 days and then it can only be a maximum of 90 days without Congress enacting a renewal. And so it requires actual congressional action to continue the authority of that emergency power. Depending on what the Supreme Court does or doesn't do. I think it is going to catalyze a legislative push. And the Republicans are likely not going to embrace it, this presidency or this term because President Trump is in office. But I think the conversation that some, you know, out of the box Republicans like Senator Paul and others are saying is, well, what's going to happen next time? What's going to happen when there's a Democrat president and we don't think the.
- [39:51]
Jason Calacanis
AOC is going to have emergency powers to do something you might not like.
- [39:55]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Right.
- [39:55]
Jason Calacanis
Is that your point?
- [39:56]
David Friedberg
Yeah. And so as it relates to both the IEEPA of 1977, which is the act that this case is about, but also the national emergencies Act of 1976, should they go back and pass a new law that basically forces the President to have to get congressional approval for any emergency to last longer than 30 days? So I do think that's going to be the big debate that's going to come out of this. As it relates to the tariff revenue, I am most worried about the fact that we use the tariff revenue, as I said before, to offset spending and basically keep a baseline of spending without actually getting ourselves to that deficit target. Right now we are going to vaporize and create debt of $2 trillion this fiscal year. So we're using the tariff revenue under the CBO scoring to basically say, hey, we can do these tax cuts because it's offset, but the goal shouldn't be to offset the goal should be to get cuts to actually reduce the deficit. And so that's the biggest concern I have with respect to the tariffs long term is it's now a new revenue source that we don't actually treat as incremental to reduce deficit. We just use it as a way to introduce new spending or continue spending.
- [41:05]
Jason Calacanis
Sachs, just to talk about three branches of government, wouldn't it also be an option for the president just to go to Congress with some of these tariffs and say, hey, can I get these approved? Would that be the worst thing in the world? Wouldn't it be worse?
- [41:18]
David Sacks
Don't it take forever?
- [41:20]
Jason Calacanis
But, yeah, things take time. Do you have concerns that President AOC might do some things with executive powers that the Republican Party might be opposed to if she winds up winning in 2028?
- [41:31]
David Friedberg
That's an important question, Sachs, is if AOC is president and then she uses her emergency authorization to do things that you disagree with, wouldn't the Republicans then feel regret that they didn't pass one of these acts that limits emergency authorization and power?
- [41:45]
David Sacks
Well, look, I think that in general, when you have a policy that you have want to last for a long time, the best thing to do is to codify it into law, because executive orders obviously only last until the next president decides they don't want them anymore. So, yeah, it may make sense after the administration hopefully wins its case to seek to codify these things into law. We have a few years to do that. But I don't think it makes sense to wait for Congress to act because they may never act. And in fact, it was President Trump who shifted the whole debate on this topic. I mean, the whole establishment of both the Republican and Democrat parties were very against tariffs. And it's pretty obvious that nothing would have happened on this issue. And he's completely moved the debate. So this is just one where I think he's acted unilaterally because he had to. But I think that once these tariffs are in place for a few years, I don't think they're going to get pulled back by a future president, because I think they're going to.
- [42:43]
Chamath Palihapitiya
It's too much money.
- [42:43]
David Sacks
Quite popular.
- [42:44]
Chamath Palihapitiya
It's too much money.
- [42:45]
Jason Calacanis
Okay. In the other cases, two more lower courts have ruled against Trump. One said the deployment of the Marines and the National Guard were illegal. One said he can't freeze research funds for Harvard. So again, back to moving fast and breaking things. These cases are making their way through the courts, and there has been some resistance to sending in the National Guard, which is something there's been a bit of saber rattling. Chamath, about maybe going into Chicago next. What are your thoughts on the National Guard issue?
- [43:16]
Chamath Palihapitiya
They should. Look, here's the thing. Who is against safety and security? Who and why? I don't understand. So if you can't do your job. Look, you have to remember, Jason, let's take where we live in California or you used to live at.
- [43:34]
Jason Calacanis
Yeah. Not anymore.
- [43:35]
Chamath Palihapitiya
13% of our income goes towards state coffers, and then we pay real estate taxes and all of the stuff that goes to local municipalities. What are you doing with that money if you're not making the places we live safe? And then the second thing would be making the schools good. So if you can't do it, if you can't do it, of course somebody else should step in. And frankly, what I have heard consistently is even though the talking point has to be, oh, my God, woe is me, we can do the job. Everybody behind the scenes, like, oh, thank God they're here.
- [44:07]
Jason Calacanis
Anybody who is being impacted by crime would like to see the National Guard come in and remove encampments or drug dealers or get drugs off the streets. Sachs, you know, you're a. My perception would be that you think that there should be separations between the executive branch and maybe the states and that this rule breaking of sending in the National Guard, that would go against the rules of the sovereignty of the states. So putting aside Chamath's point, which is completely valid, that they haven't done a good job here and it is illegal, as the judges are pointing out. You have concerns about that.
- [44:43]
David Sacks
Okay, well, first of all, I reject this characterization that is the Trump administration that's moved fast and breaking things, if you recall.
- [44:51]
Jason Calacanis
Let's just say moving fast.
- [44:52]
David Sacks
Well, I think the president is taking swift executive actions that are popular. And you see this actually in his poll ratings. He got the highest approval rating he's ever had just in the last week. And a big part of it is because of the reduction in crime in D.C. i think he got to 55% approval, one poll rating. And even in D.C. by the way, the mayor and her staff have said all sorts of positive things about the help they've received now from the National Guard and from the federal government. And the citizens are extremely happy. Crime is down. I think we had the first two weeks where there was no murders and the Capitol in a long time. The residents are very happy. So this is definitely working. Now, with respect to California, let me just point out that the National Guard wasn't called in specifically to enforce laws on the street. What happened was that you had ICE and Homeland Security agents and workers were doing their job and they were conducting some deportations and then you had protests turned into riots and those protesters were threatening to burn down their headquarters and that's why the National Guard had to be sent in. So it wasn't the Trump administration breaking things, it was rioters who were breaking things. I can't understand for the life of me why the administration wouldn't be able to send in the National Guard to protect federal workers against rioters. But apparently that's the case. So look, I think the court reached a very specific decision about what happened in California. We still haven't had a case adjudicating the question of whether the proposed interventions in these blue states to clean up crime will be allowed over the objections of Democrat governors. We don't know. I think it's pretty clear that the D.C. intervention will be allowed and it's extremely popular.
- [46:37]
Jason Calacanis
And look, the DC one, he's legally allowed to do so. Yeah, he's got, what is it, a 30 day mandate. He can take it over. And so here's your popularity from the Economist. It is ticking up but Trump and the country still seems pretty divided. 41% approved, 55% disapproved, 3% unsure. But he has moved up significantly in the last week. Today some big news came out Friday with the soft jobs report pretty much bad across the board. Jobs came in super light. 22,000 added versus 75,000 expected. Most of the gains came from part time jobs. US lost 357 full time jobs while gaining 597,000 part time jobs last month. And this is after a bunch of revisions. You guys remember we talked about here a couple of times with these revisions and we'll show up some charts with long term revisions. July Revised up slightly by 6K 73,000 to 79 and June was revised down significantly. Remember that impacted the market by 27,000. This makes June the first month with a net loss of jobs since July of 2021. So there's an account on ExCo VC letter and they did this revisions chart. It's pretty crazy. As you can see, May and June revisions were in the six figures and they're constantly revising these down it seems. All right, Freebright got some Internet connectivity issues apparently. But chamath, let's talk about the revisions here and the softness in the job market concerning did maybe the Fed take too long to get towards cuts in September. What's your read on this and the endless revisions.
- [48:18]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Look, I think that I've said this. Yes, last week, I think. Right. So I'll just say it again this week. You can't run the most sophisticated economy in the world if you have data that is completely unreliable in either direction. And so the problem with this jobs report is there are already two competing versions of the truth. One group of people are trying to paint the jobs report as everything is working. There's nothing to see here. Another group of people are saying, oh well, hold on, there's a births deaths number where if you extract that out, the jobs number is actually negative. I don't know which one is actually better in terms of where we want to be right now going into a rate cut cycle. So my general commentary is the following. The BLS and their approach is incredibly brittle. It doesn't work. I think commerce has taken the first right step, which is to start publishing useful economic data into the blockchain. I think we need to figure out a way, and this is where Congress should get their act together and pass an incentive or a requirement for certain parts of the critical economic infrastructure of America to report their data in an anonymized way into a broad set of blockchains. And the reason is that you will have very astute and precise pricing oracles help distill that information. So if you're adp, if you're American Express, if you're Stripe, there's an imperative now for you to contribute the information you have into a broad collection of information so that we have an accurate sense of what the hell is actually going on. Because I can't react to this number because I don't know how it's going to change. It could literally swing by 200,000 in either direction.
- [50:16]
Jason Calacanis
Jason, this is a, I think a really good point. Here's some research. I had my. Put one of my researchers at launch on this. Here's 2021 and the initial reading, first revision. And we did this for the year SAC. So as you can see, in 2021 they missed it by 1.9 million, which was about 15%. 2022, they miraculously nailed it. 2023, they were off by 10%. 2024, it looks like they were off again by 10%. All this is revising down, by the way, in the first half of this year. Let me just finish the chart. First half of this year, initial reading 985, first revision 732, second revision 497. So they were off by 50% so far this year.
- [50:57]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Alone, this chart is itself inaccurate. The table is, and it's because it's coming from the same people that measured. So you're asking the people that measured to grade themselves. And I suspect that the answer is actually much worse than all of this. Now, what is the implication of it? The implication of it is if you take the most positive view possible, it's that the people that then control the levers of the economy don't actually have accurate data. So they'll be hesitant to act until the data is overwhelming. The most important lens of that will be the Fed and what they do with rates. And so everybody's like, oh, wow, there's a 99% chance of a 25 basis point cut. That may be wildly, wildly, wildly conservative in terms of the total amount that they need to be thinking about and how they should phase that in. But how would I actually prove that to you? I can point to a whole litany of private data, but the problem is the federal actors use public data and this data is not useful. And I think that when you get private data into your hands, which I know that other folks have, hedge funds, banks, the White House, what they see is different than what the Fed sees. So what I would tell you from this jobs report is it's going to start again. This clamor of what is your plan? Clapping is not a Strategy. So a 25 basis point cut to a $32 trillion economy is not a strategy. And I think that the reason they don't know what to do exactly is because they have extremely faulty data.
- [52:42]
Jason Calacanis
Again, this is not. I'm not taking a position on this. You're framing it as if I'm taking a position. I'm just reporting the data here as they've reported it. So I'm just doing that here. Just to be clear here that I'm not endorsing any side of this. I'm independent, I'm moderate. I'm just giving you the data as it stands. Here's the Fred chart, just so we can zoom out and see unemployment since the 50s. We're still at historic lows and there's a slight uptick, 4.3%, which is the highest unemployment since 2021. But it's absurdly low historically. So even we're looking historically Sachs, we're still at very low. But do you have concerns that the economy could be slowing and that we could have a jobs issue? That, I guess, is the question that is filling the airwaves on CNBC and that everybody's talking about. In group chats are we maybe didn't make the Fed cuts in time for what clearly is some amount of slowing. Now we could argue over if they're getting the data right or not. The Fed says they look at all data, not just this data. They say they look at the private data as well. But what are your thoughts here Sachs?
- [53:44]
David Sacks
Well, we had 22,000 jobs added in August and yet while the number of jobs went up, unemployment rose, like you said, from 4.2 to 4.3%, which is a little bit of a contradiction. But that happened because more people started looking for jobs. But there are huge error bars around this data like Chamas said. I mean, like you showed, there's roughly 50% revisions to all of this data over time, over the course of a year. So we don't really have great visibility in what's going on. And that's why you see such huge disparities in how people are interpreting this data. So if you want to look at some of the people who are pessimistic, you've got Kobe EC letter, but they're pessimistic about everything you've got. Moody's economist Mark Zandi, he says we're on the precipice of a recession and he has a bunch of reasons why. But then if you look at polymarket, people on polymarket are strongly betting against a recession this year. I think the number's at about 8%. So it appears that most people still feel like the economy is doing well. And remember we just had a 3.3% GDP growth rate for Q2. So I'd be surprised if there's a recession. I think there's a lot of factors against it, I guess. I would also note that if there's any weakness in the job numbers, it's coming from foreign born workers more than native born workers. Around 2 million more American born workers have jobs in 2025 so far. And I think meanwhile about a million foreign born workers roughly have lost jobs. So the net increase is about a million. But what you're seeing is a repatriation in a way of jobs within the economy. The other thing that's happening is a re privatization of the economy. So in August the federal government shed in about 15,000 jobs and there's been 100,000 federal jobs lost over the course of the whole year. So that makes the overall numbers look worse than they are. But a lot of us would argue that having fewer federal workers is a good thing for the economy. So you've got those factors then you've got blue collar. Real wages are rising, the second fastest in history. You had 3.7% wage growth this year versus 2.7% average inflation. So you have a net 1% wage growth during most of the Biden presidency. It was negative. And then I would also point to, I think, several factors which would make me optimistic about the economy moving ahead. You've had massive investment in the US by both private companies and foreign governments according to these new trade deals. I think roughly $8 trillion of new investment. You've got this AI boom you're seeing.
- [56:24]
Jason Calacanis
And that's going to land over the next year. Right. That hasn't actually been dumped in. So we should see that in 2027, in maybe late 2026.
- [56:32]
David Sacks
Yeah, yeah. This is the outlook for 2026 and beyond. I mean, this would be the bull case is, number one, $8 trillion of new investment in the U.S. economy by private companies and by foreign governments. Number two, the AI boom. You've got this massive build out of data centers and AI infrastructure underway, and that includes energy and the manufacturing sectors are going to boom alongside tech. Number three, this has been the most affordable summer at the pump since 2021. And low gas prices don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, so lowest gas prices since 2021. Number four, you have these huge new tax incentives for business expansion. You've got the accelerated depreciation on equipment purchases on R and D. I think those are going to kick in once the big beautiful bill goes into effect. And then the last thing I would say is that interest rate cuts are coming. I would say that now, in light of the latest job support, Powell should really cut 50 basis points. I doubt he will.
- [57:29]
Chamath Palihapitiya
In September.
- [57:29]
David Sacks
Yeah, in September. Yeah, I doubt he will. It's probably gonna be 25 and then hopefully another 25. But I think you could make the case that they should do 50 now and then 25 after that. But regardless of what it is, I think that most people think interest rates are coming and that's gonna juice the economy and further improve our fiscal position. So look for 26. I think there's a lot of bullish factors here.
- [57:51]
Jason Calacanis
All right, just before we wrap here, Google, as we know, was found liable in this antitrust case. But the sanctions seem to not be as harsh as people thought they would be. Judge Mehta rejected the request that Google have to spin off Chrome Android and pointed out that Google is having massive competition. So we had four, four years of Lina Khan. You know, in these aggressive cases, there were, there were tactical Things we talked about here, like dark patterns, et cetera, that we all agreed with. I think there was consensus there, but this one we found a little confusing because, gosh, Google's under so much pressure. What are your thoughts on?
- [58:34]
Chamath Palihapitiya
I thought this ruling was excellent.
- [58:37]
Jason Calacanis
Unpack it all.
- [58:39]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Essentially the crux of the ruling was, look, there are some restrictions that Google has to live by, don't get me wrong. But the most punitive remedies that were suggested were thrown out. And the reason they were thrown out was because the judge very eloquently cited competition in a fair and free and open market. And that is incredibly refreshing because the real question is, would this judge have had the wherewithal and the courage to actually be able to rule this way a few years ago when there would have been an enormous amount of political pressure, they probably would have found a way to run this case in a different place, et cetera, et cetera. But now what you saw was just very simple logic intervene. And at the core of it was when we started this lawsuit, things like OpenAI and ChatGPT didn't exist. And when you fast forward, it's incredibly fast moving. We are reallocating hundreds of millions or billions of users intentions as a byproduct, we're reallocating tens of maybe hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue. And so the judge said the most severe remedies aren't necessary because the free market is doing this job. Yes, I just think that's incredibly refreshing because we forget that if the market is left to deal with these issues on its own, they do a very good job of cleaning things up. And it's because as you said earlier, Jason, consumers want creative destruction. They want the next best thing.
- [60:07]
Jason Calacanis
They want to be able to buy better services. It happens by the free market and.
- [60:12]
Chamath Palihapitiya
They'Re willing to reward better companies and better products. So I think the great news for Google is that this takes an enormous risk off the table. And now I think that they probably have even more ambition and energy to just go for it and try to compete because they're not going to be worried about everybody on the outside and probably some percentage of employees on the inside who are always trying to slow things down.
- [60:38]
Jason Calacanis
Yeah, correctly, and I'll just comment on this Sacks, is that they did get some tactical penalties here and they make sense doing deals that are exclusive. When you are a Monopoly player, like getting Firefox and Apple to only do an exclusive deal with you, they're not going to be allowed to do that. And man, that would change the game on the field if somebody like DuckDuckGo or Bing or a new entrant Perplexity whoever who's doing search would be able to say to Apple, we will outbid Google for 10% of the searches. We'd like to buy 5% of the searches from the Safari browser. Going to Firefox and saying, hey, we'd like to one up and we'd like some percentage of that. So that seemed like a good part of the ruling. Your thoughts overall about this?
- [61:27]
David Sacks
So on this podcast, I think it was two or three years ago when this case first came up. I think I took the position that Google street broken up into two or three companies because I thought it was this invulnerable monopoly. And I don't think monopolies are great for the SARP ecosystem. And what I mean by that is they had the Google search monopoly and the YouTube business, which was basically a monopoly and so forth and so on. So I was in favor of breaking this up, but I've got to admit I was wrong about that for the reasons that the judge said, which is Google for the first time in a long while is existentially threatened by what's happened with AI. I mean, their cash cow, the core of their business is search. And people are starting to substitute in droves from traditional Google search, which they own, or keyword search, where they have this monopoly or dominant share to AI. And if you look at AI revenue, I think something like 90% of it is going to OpenAI. I mean they have the dominant position among consumers.
- [62:27]
Jason Calacanis
For now.
- [62:27]
David Sacks
For now. And there's, let's say five major AI companies that are hot on their heels and very competitive and performing equally if not better on performance benchmarks. So the point is just I think everyone can now see that the search business is either going away or transforming into something else, which is it's basically merging with, it's called AI Chatbot business.
- [62:50]
Jason Calacanis
It's an answer's business. Now. It's not a like give me links, it's just give me the damn answer.
- [62:54]
David Sacks
Right? And we've been talking about this for a while where it's so obvious that having AI just give you the answer is better than 20 blue links, especially as the quality improves and it gets better at synthesizing those 20 blue links into the exact right answer and the speed improves. One of the things that Google's really good at is this fast responses. They've always shown you in milliseconds how long it takes to give you the search result. And obviously, if you're looking for something quick and an AI chatbot's going to take 30 seconds, you're going to go with Google, but that's going to get better too. So I think Google is kind of in the fight of its life right now, and I think this is why Sergey's come back. We saw him at the dinner at the White House yesterday and he said he's very involved in Google DeepMind.
- [63:38]
Jason Calacanis
He's going to the office. Yeah, all the time. Yeah.
- [63:40]
David Sacks
Right. And so you're seeing that founder involvement again, because they know that they've got a real existential threat to their business. And this is the argument that opponents of strong antitrust enforcement have always made, which is that the free market will eventually break up even the strongest monopolies if you just give it the chance to do it. And that's what appears to be in motion right now, by the way. I'm not saying that Google's going to get destroyed. I'm not saying it's going away. I'm just saying that they have to pivot here in a big way. Their business is being disrupted and they suddenly have competition, I think, in their core business like they've never had before. So I do think that we don't need to bring the hammer down on them in the same way that maybe we did a few years ago. I still would not let them pursue anti competitive tactics against, say, applications in the Android Store, where they basically have a duopoly. So I'm not saying I would let them do anything, but I certainly agree with this judge that we don't need to break up that company right now.
- [64:40]
Jason Calacanis
Yeah, and there's, there's rules in the field that need to be adjudicated. So having a very simple approach with the FTC of saying, hey, these exclusive deals, when you have 90% market share, that's not allowable, but you can compete and you can fight versus the five new entrants and have at it and, and give consumers a better product at a cheaper price. That's really the goal of the ftc, is to have some basic rules of the field. We saw it in the media business as well. We spent a decade or two trying to fight the consolidation of media companies and then Netflix has trounced them all and YouTube as well. In terms of viewership, Netflix and YouTube are crushing the cable monopolies that we spend all this time trying to regulate. All right, everybody, there's your episode. We have to get back to work and get to Los Angeles for the amazing fourth edition of the All In Summit. It's going to be amazing. And all the great content, including some surprise speakers that'll be released over the next week or two after the event. So you're going to get massive amounts of content. Make sure you go to the YouTube channel. Subscribe and click that bell so you get alerts. Go to all in.com, put your email in. We'll invite you to more events. Chamath and I might be doing something in the poker space that could be a lot of fun. My guy TK and I, we might be doing a little backgammon tournament. All right, everybody, thanks for tuning into the all in podcast. We're finished. Bye. Bye, besties.
- [66:04]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Love you. Love you guys.
- [66:07]
Jason Calacanis
We'll let your winners ride Rain Man David Satch.
- [66:14]
David Sacks
And instead we open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.
- [66:18]
Jason Calacanis
Love you, Queen of Quinoa. Besties are gone. That is my dog taking a notice in your driveway.
- [66:35]
David Sacks
Oh, man.
- [66:35]
Chamath Palihapitiya
My habit will meet me at Glencoe. We should all just get a room and just have one big, huge orgy.
- [66:40]
David Sacks
Because they're all just useless.
- [66:41]
Chamath Palihapitiya
It's like this, like, sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.
- [66:51]
Jason Calacanis
We need to get merch.