Iran's Breaking Point, Trump's Greenland Acquisition, Solving Energy Costs, Billionaire Tax Backlash

Summary

All-In Podcast Summary – Episode: "Iran's Breaking Point, Trump's Greenland Acquisition, Solving Energy Costs, Billionaire Tax Backlash"

Date: January 17, 2026
Hosts: Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, David Friedberg

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Episode Overview

In this episode, the All-In crew dives deep into four headline topics:

• The breaking point in Iran and prospects for regime change
• President Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland for the U.S.
• The implications of skyrocketing AI data center energy demands and innovative energy/utility solutions
• Growing backlash over proposed billionaire/asset taxes in California, including their economic and societal consequences

The conversation features lively banter, economic analysis, and trademark irreverence as the besties break down geopolitical, tech, and policy developments shaping 2026.

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1. Davos, All-In Live, and Collabs Galore

Timestamps: [00:00]–[04:15]

• Jason and Sacks reveal All-In is heading to Davos to run interviews at the USA House, canceling ski trips and rubbing elbows with the elites.
• Discussion about the Davos environment: lots of media stages, houses sponsored by both nations and companies, everyone interviewing everyone—described as “the podcast circuit on steroids.”
• Chamath jokes about joining the “Deep State era” and doing man-on-the-street interviews in satirical style.
• Memorable Quote:
  • Chamath, joking about the scene:

    "Look at you, rubbing elbows with the global elite, talking, texting with the deep state. This is fantastic." ([02:46])

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2. Iran Protests & Risks of Regime Change

Timestamps: [04:15]–[14:28]

• Jason pivots to Iran’s unrest:
  • Massive anti-regime protests, severe inflation (30% since 2019), food shortages, and a youthful, tech-savvy population with growing access to the outside world.
• Friedberg explains the economic desperation fueling revolution:
  • Average monthly income ~$200, “combo meal at McDonald’s in Tehran is $4.” (Examples of daily hardship.)
  • Predicts regime destabilization is “inevitable” as people can no longer afford basics.
  • Asks if U.S. support (such as attacking IRGC sites) would help or further destabilize the transition.

    "An oppressive regime can keep people down for so long until they're starving or they can't get access to medical care... these are the sorts of things that ultimately lead to these moments." – David Friedberg ([07:20])

• Sacks and Chamath caution against snap judgments, stressing how little reliable info is available due to information warfare; Starlink and VPNs are double-edged swords in spreading and suppressing news.

  "It’s very hard to actually triangulate. Then you had this entire information channel get shut down... it's just important to understand that is the generation of warfare and information we're going to see in every conflict going forward." – Chamath Palihapitiya ([11:00])

• Hosts praise Iranian diaspora’s dynamism; lament regime’s repression and hope reforms succeed, but note real uncertainty about the outcome.
• Reflection on Bourdain’s iconic "Parts Unknown" Tehran episode demonstrating normal life and aspirations despite oppression.

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3. The Data Center Energy Crisis & Solutions for America’s Grid

Timestamps: [14:28]–[31:02]

• The AI/data center boom is straining U.S. power grids, prompting local resistance and PR backlash.
• Trump and Microsoft respond: Microsoft will pay higher local electricity rates, cover grid upgrades, and replenish water drawn by data centers. No more “discounts or tax breaks.”

  "It's a very good first order set of things to do, which is to step into a local area and take all of these energy issues off the table, at least to the extent that you're contributing to it." – Chamath ([16:08])

• Chamath and Friedberg propose bigger, bold solutions:
  • Special “tax equity funds” (hundreds of billions) for solar, battery storage, heat pumps, modernizing homes—freeing residential users from utility bills, and helping Americans directly.
  • Industrial/commercial power users would pay more, driving them to private on-site generation—raising overall grid supply.

  "I think the president should try to create a $300, $400, $500 billion tax equity fund and help eliminate the electricity costs of 50 to 100 million American households." – Chamath ([24:31])

• Sacks points out that data centers creating their own power infrastructure could ultimately lower rates across the grid due to scale, and debunks claims around water usage as largely FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt).
• Friedberg runs the math: U.S. spends ~$750B/year on electricity ($250B residential). “Make it free for consumers, industrial side can absorb more cost—forces modernization and increases supply.”

  "If you make this a pan industrial problem...all the industrial companies would have to take this path." – Friedberg ([25:05])

• Spirited debate about the required scale, complications, and “moonshot” nature of such proposals—hosts agree on the transformative upside of deploying America’s AI profits to benefit everyday people.

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4. The Billionaire/Asset Tax Battle (California)

Timestamps: [31:02]–[55:14]

• Sacks and Friedberg deconstruct California’s proposed asset tax ("Billionaire Tax Act") and why it threatens foundational property rights.
• Detailed constitutional analysis: Many states implicitly or explicitly ban any such tax. California’s is non-uniform, targets a small group (the wealthy), threatens to set a precedent for seizing post-tax assets from any defined demographic.

  "As soon as you give the government the right to collect your post-tax assets... you are basically saying that you no longer have private property." – Friedberg ([37:29])

• The political calculus:
  • Sacks argues the ballot initiative will likely make it, due to SEIU support and low cost to gather signatures.
  • Friedberg sees a “rolling wake-up process” and hopes for a “clear, open debate” about what’s at stake, but admits if it passes: "then I'm out."
  • Sacks warns if not this year, it’ll come back in 2028, better lawyered, targeting more taxpayers.
  • Chamath notes the legal vulnerability is its retroactive application, but future efforts are expected to be more bulletproof.

  "If any version of what we just talked about happens and all of a sudden you have private homeowners that are their own utility... what do the utilities do?... This is a huge economic question." – Chamath ([30:19])

• Broader concern: Taxation trends could shift nationwide, spooking not just billionaires but founders, business leaders—"pre-exit, post-exit, or on your way to an exit, my advice: when a state shows you who they are, believe them the first time." – Sacks ([48:10])
• Debate concludes with warnings about unsustainable union pension promises, state deficits, and how politically powerful government workers’ unions now “monopolize” state finances.

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5. OpenAI’s Compute Arms Race & Silicon Renaissance

Timestamps: [31:02]–[34:39]

• OpenAI strikes a $10B+ compute deal with Cerebras, purchasing 750MW of capacity; Chamath details Cerebras’ unique chip approach (using an entire wafer as a single chip).

  "Young, small teams building decode silicon can make a fortune over the next 10 to 20 years. It's a huge opportunity—it's going to be like the PC wars..." – Chamath ([33:41])

• Group ponders whether AI compute demand will plateau—consensus: demand will remain feverish, and the industry is about to experience a “renaissance in silicon.”

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6. “Greenland Acquisition” – Trump's Geopolitical Real Estate Play

Timestamps: [55:14]–[63:18]

• The hosts riff on Trump’s ambition to buy Greenland:
  • Strategic rationale: as the Arctic opens, Greenland controls vital shipping lanes and is rich in resources.

  "Why does it belong to the Danes? ...Makes a lot more sense for it to be part of the US and we're willing to pay for it. I think we can make them an offer they can't refuse." – David Sacks ([58:50])

  • Friedberg stresses that “pride and sovereignty” might override deals but security guarantees and alliances could sway Denmark.
  • Banter about setting up a “freedom province” or “economic free zone” as a sanctuary for U.S. entrepreneurial values—a new American frontier.

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7. Closing Banter, Government Waste & Podcast Updates

Timestamps: [63:18]–[69:41]

• All-In plugs several new interviews and celebrates crossing 1M YouTube subscribers.
• Chamath triggers a Twitter storm by commenting on “underreported” political stories.
• Friedberg highlights eye-popping government fraud in Minnesota’s transportation program, using it to illustrate the rampant inefficiency and failure of government oversight.
• Everyone agrees: focus on fighting fraud and waste, not just raising taxes.
• Episode closes with tongue-in-cheek jabs about Davos, internet issues in Texas, and hints at All-In’s expanding media empire.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Jason mocking Davos media culture:

  “It’s like the podcast circuit. All these podcasters now have run out of guests, so they just interview each other in a giant circle.” ([02:04])

• On the Iran generational moment:

  “People have no choice but to stand up… an oppressive regime can keep people down for so long until they're starving.” – Friedberg ([07:20])

• On American energy innovation:

  “If you put these two things together, I think step one is you go into a local area... But now I think we need to go in with step two: Here is a bunch of money... for your house to have solar, storage, heat pumps..." – Chamath ([16:43])

• On California’s tax proposals:

  “As soon as you give the legislature the ability to discriminate a group and take whatever percentage they want, you set precedent." – Friedberg ([39:53]) "When a state shows you who they are, believe them the first time." – Sacks ([48:10])

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Key Takeaways

• Iran: The country stands at the precipice, and while Western intervention is uncertain, the population’s desire for modernization is clear. Economic desperation (not foreign influence) is driving unrest, but controlling the narrative and reliable info is impossibly difficult.
• Data Centers & Energy: The AI boom has made data centers a flashpoint in the struggle over America’s electricity grid. Microsoft’s new commitments are a start, but the hosts urge industry-wide participation in “moonshot” residential energy fixes.
• Tax Backlash: California’s proposed asset/billionaire tax faces legal, practical, and societal headwinds, but signals a persistent, dangerous trend toward post-income asset seizures by government.
• Greenland: Trump’s Greenland dream, though improbable due to Danish pride, serves as a springboard for a conversation about new frontiers and the possibility of “opt-out” zones as the U.S. faces political division and socialist policies.
• General Tone: The crew mixes serious economic, policy, and tech debate with playful ribbing and moments of satire, illustrating both gravity and absurdity in American and global political life.

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End of Summary – Listen for more freewheeling analysis, irreverence, and insight from the All-In Besties.

Transcript

[Jason Calacanis]

All right, everybody, welcome back to the number one podcast in the world, your favorite podcast, the all in podcast. With me again, the core four, the original four, David Friedberg, Jamal Palihapitiya, David Sacks. We're here and there's a lot going on in the world. Gentlemen. How's everybody's week going? Anybody got big plans for next week?

[David Sacks]

Jake. Al, your ship has finally come in. Your invitation was not lost in the mail.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What?

[Jason Calacanis]

Really?

[David Sacks]

You have been invited to Davos.

[Jason Calacanis]

What? I gotta get my guitar. O Davos Kumbaya.

[David Friedberg]

Don't blow it up.

[Jason Calacanis]

I'm bring my guitar.

[David Sacks]

Don't blow it up.

[Jason Calacanis]

Don't blow it. Explain to the audience what's happening here, Sax. What's happening?

[David Sacks]

Well, as it turns out, one of the houses there is in need of content, so they've offered all in a stage to interview people.

[Jason Calacanis]

All right, so we got stage microphone. You're going?

[David Sacks]

I'm going, yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

President Trump is giving a major talk there on Wednesday. I understand. And so there is a stage and microphones. So I canceled my ski trip in Japan to go to Davos.

[David Friedberg]

Even Jason is going. Even Jason.

[David Sacks]

Even J Cal.

[David Friedberg]

Even J Cal is at Davos.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Even jcal.

[Jason Calacanis]

I mean, it's pretty funny. I was invited to be part of that. Like, you probably got this tuchem off back in the day. Like, they're young leaders for $50,000 a year. So we're going to be doing some interviews, and if you want to be interviewed by me, Endor Sachs, at the USA House, email jasonlln.com if you're there, if you have ideas for speakers. And we're gonna be booking in real time.

[David Sacks]

I haven't been to Davos. I guess the way it works is there's a bunch of houses. So countries have houses, and then companies sponsor houses, and there's stuff happening there. There's like stages set up and there's constant interviews. So, you know, I've gotten a bunch of requests. Basically, everyone's interviewing everyone else at Davos. Does that make sense? I mean, it's like all the attendees are just constantly interviewing each other.

[Jason Calacanis]

It's like the podcast circuit. All these podcasters now have run out of guests, so they just interview each other in a giant circle.

[David Sacks]

That's what it is.

[Jason Calacanis]

It's literally going to be, yeah, heads of state interviewing heads of state.

[David Sacks]

Yes, Everyone else is interviewing everybody.

[Jason Calacanis]

Hey, welcome to the JD Vance Show. I'm JD Vance. With me on the show today is Mondavi. Welcome to the show. Everybody's doing collabs there. The snake has eaten its tail. But I think we'll have a fun time. Me and Sachs are going and we're gonna, we're gonna tear it up and have a good time. The USA house I understand is like on a Main street there. And my understanding is I was talking to the CEO of McKinsey who's one of the partners, I guess, who sponsors a lot of the stuff at Davos.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Look at you rubbing elbows with the global elite, talking, texting with the Deep State. This is fantastic.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, no, I'm going, it's a Deep state. It's my Deep State era going into 2026. And there's supposedly what the vibe is, Sachs is people just kind of walk around the main town and they'll just pop into USA House and they network, have a coffee, they take a coffee. And then what we've got to do is have producer Lisa say, hey, do you listen to all in? Hey, it's great to see you. Would you like to talk to David and Jason? They're gonna be sitting over here and just me and David are gonna hold court. It's gonna be fun. I'm looking forward to it. We have some good.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

It's kind of like a little man on the street.

[Jason Calacanis]

We might, you know, I've done a little vox pop in my day and we might, we might get a wireless microphone and go on the street and see what happens.

[David Sacks]

This is going to last five minutes until people hear that JCAL is being obnoxious and asking tough questions.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well, JCAL people don't know this, but JCAL does an incredible triumph. The insult comic dog impression.

[David Friedberg]

Oh yeah, I do.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Oh my God. If you went around Galos triumph. Oh, dude.

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh yes. It looks like it's the Prime Minister of Germany. I understand you turned off your nuclear at the right time. How's the data center project going? I heard the 15 year old Greta is doing your energy conservation and your strategy. How's that going for you?

[David Sacks]

It's not even going to last half a day.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, we're going to be detained at Davos. All right, I guess we got to talk about what's going on in Iran. Regime change could be happening. There have been massive anti regime protests over the last month. As everybody listening probably knows, Iran has been ruled by an Islamic dictator since the 1979 revolution. Ali Khomeini is in power since 1989. And if you want to understand why this is happening, there's probably two data points that you should know in the short term. Last you know Six, seven years. Inflation has been bonkers. If you think, you know, 7, 8, 9% inflation during COVID was acute and you know, 2.6 now people complaining about. Take a look at this chart, boys. It's been 30% on average since 2019 due to sanctions. Obviously those things can work. There's been food shortages, people in the streets long term. Here's a chart and this is from 2020. So you can add six years to the chart you're seeing here. But there's a lot of young people in Iran and the populace is made up of a lot of 20 somethings and 30 somethings and they have Starlink and they have Access and VPNs and so they want to be part of the future. They want to modernize. Sax, this was a point of contention last year. We were talking about interventions going on, foreign wars and your concerns about that. This one is from the bottom up. So I think that makes it quite different.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, well, look, this is a highly dynamic situation. I don't really want to comment on something except to say that I trust President Trump to make the right decision and handle it. As I understand it, the protests are either fizzling out or being cracked down on at this point. And I tend to think it's dying down, but I'm not sure. And it's a dynamic situation. I really. Look, the problem is whenever I comment on something like this, it ends up being Trump advisor David Sack says whatever.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, you get clipped.

[David Sacks]

And the reality is I'm only involved on two issues and this isn't one of them. So I don't really think I should be commenting.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, Freeberg, you've been talking about this and I think it was part of your predictions from the show last week, the prediction show. Here's your poly markets and then I'll let you give your thoughts on it. Khomeini out as Supreme Leader of Iran. By January 31st that was up around 27% and now has dropped to a 10% chance. And will the regime fall before 2027? $2.6 million in volume, 37% chance. It's been up there as high as I think 50 somewhat percent. And this is before the end of the year. So obviously a breaking news type situation by the time we tape on Thursdays, as everybody knows, come out on Fridays. So this could be radically changing. But just broad strokes, what are your thoughts here, Friedberg?

[David Friedberg]

I mean, I think it's inevitable that there's a break in the country because of the effect of sanctions. The average income is about 200 bucks a month in Iran. And the price of food is roughly the same as the U.S. maybe a little bit less than the U.S. i mean, they're a combo meal at McDonald's. I just pulled this up in Tehran is four bucks equivalent. So, again, if you're making $200 a month and it's four bucks to go to McDonald's, costs catch up pretty quickly. I think that ultimately is what breaks civil society, is when people can't afford the things that they need and people have no choice but to stand up. And an oppressive system, an oppressive regime, can keep people down for so long until they're starving or they can't get access to things like medical care. And these are the sorts of things that ultimately lead to these moments. So it seems like it's an inevitability. The United States has put a lot of pressure on the regime in Iran, and it seems to be starting to break. The key question that everyone's asking, is Trump going to act in supporting the revolution? Which theoretically I would imagine would involve attacking IRGC sites, which are the Revolutionary Guard, that are sort of the internal security force that maintains the regime's control over the people. And if they take out IRGC sites, will that actually result in the people being free? And what's the transition plan? This is obviously a very messy situation. Reza Pahlavi is in Europe, and he said he's ready to come back, and he is the Shah's son. And if he comes back, how are you going to give him influence and control? This is the same question that recently came up in Venezuela. There is a very large infrastructure that needs to be overseen of government agencies, and you can't bring an outsider in and just plug them right in to take over everything. It's a very difficult transition, and that's when things fall apart, when people steal stuff, when things get turned off. So how do you maintain kind of the core functioning of society without breaking it? By bringing someone new from the outside. That's where this gets very messy. So I don't know what's ahead.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. And the strikes didn't happen. Last night, Besant announced some increased sanctions. That always seems to be one of the best ways to handle this, is to increase the economic pressure, as you pointed out, Freeburg. And for people who don't, we're not familiar. Iran is a large country. It's the second largest in the Middle east, behind Egypt, I believe, and close to a hundred million people, 95 million people, I think, live in Iran. This would have a Dramatic impact on the region. If there was a transition here, obviously you've heard about different Houthis and Hezbollah being supported, funded, housed in Iran. So this would be quite dramatic, Hunchamath, if this turned over. Uh, even if it's a 10 to 30% chance this were to happen. Any thoughts on what that would mean? You know, we've been watching this modernization of the Middle east and just Saudi, uae, Qatar, everybody having a seat at the table, increasing influence, increasing modernization in those countries. What would this do in the region?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

It's really hard to tell. It's an incredibly vibrant people. If you look at the Iranian diaspora, they're really a dynamic part of every culture they join. If you know, Persians in la, or.

[Jason Calacanis]

Persians, I mean, you and I played poker with the diaspora in la. These are the most people in Westwood. They're the greatest.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

They're the greatest people.

[Jason Calacanis]

They're shutting the club down. The last people out at the game.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, they're really great. The thing that I would say is that I don't think that you can paint the Middle east with the broad brush here. It's a very different culture than the other Middle east countries. It's a fundamentally different religion. It's a fundamentally different language. So I would just say that I don't know what's actually going on in Iran. There's been so much information containment that I take Sachs's point of view, which is, I think the only people in the United States right now that have an accurate sense are probably the military and intelligence apparatus of the United States. And the rest of us are underreacting or overreacting to small pieces of information without really knowing the context and the mosaic of the whole.

[Jason Calacanis]

In a breaking news environment, it's best to do some research and, yeah, be humble and thoughtful.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

But by the way, your positions. Yeah. The crazy thing about this, if you shift away from Iran, was specifically the information warfare game is totally different. So what did you have? You had SpaceX enable Starlink over Iran, and then there was the attempt to use that mechanism to get information out to fill in the mosaic. Right. So was what was happening 90%? Was what was happening 10%? Was there counter revolutions that were supportive of Khomeini? None of us knew anything because you would see these snippets and it was very hard to actually triangulate. Then you had this entire information channel get shut down and you had all kinds of blocking mechanisms that essentially drove the packet loss down to like 80, 90%. And it's just important to understand that is the generation of warfare and information that we are going to see in every conflict going forward. Especially when you have something as ubiquitous as Starlink and other things in the sky to help you get the information out, you're just going to see these tactics increase.

[Jason Calacanis]

And I don't know if you guys ever saw it. Anthony Bourdain, Rest in Peace did a really great Parts unknown in 2013 or 14.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Anthony Bourdain I've ever watched. If you want to see Iran, it looks so amazing. Look at the Anthony Bourdain, Parts Unknown in Tehran. It looks like a party.

[Jason Calacanis]

Well, yeah. And young people there.

[David Friedberg]

Total vibe there.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. The young people are like, really living their life under this oppression. And you really get the sense that they're not much different than us or any other folks in the world. And the journalists who took him around were later detained. And I really respect Anthony Bourdain for even doing that episode. Man, they took a lot of risk doing that.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Remember, there was a period where one of the most popular accounts on Instagram was the rich kids of Tehran.

[Jason Calacanis]

Right.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

If you follow them, you'd be like, man, this looks like LA or New York.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, Hong Kong, London, Dubai. Great potential rooting for the people of Iran to have their freedom. And yeah, I actually. And I'll say, Sachs, I trust Trump in his targeted neocon era. I'm trying to phrase it properly here to not offend anybody, but I think he's Trump Doctrine. Well, I mean, he. He, I think, doesn't have a problem using our military and the force. We have to take a dictator out if it doesn't cause World War III. And if two dictators and two societies are freed in first quarter of 2026, I mean, what does that even mean for his legacy? This could be the defining moment of his legacy.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah. Means there's only a few of us left.

[Jason Calacanis]

Jason Dictators. Yes.

[David Friedberg]

He'll be coming for you.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Shabbat.

[Jason Calacanis]

All right. Microsoft is going to pay its own way on data centers. We've been talking about this energy needs for AI data centers for a long time now. And there's been this theme, hey, if the data centers are gonna take all this energy, it's going to spike local power consumption. We saw a number of data centers gentlemen maybe pull out of projects where there was local pushback on them. On Monday, President Trump, our President Trump addressed this PR crisis on Truth Social, calling out Microsoft and never want Americans to pay higher electricity bills because of data centers. Two words, data centers. I added the last part. Microsoft will make major changes beginning this week to ensure that Americans don't pick up the tab for their power consumption. Microsoft President Brad Smith announced they will pay higher electricity rates where they are building data centers to cover the cost of the new power generation and grid upgrades. Seems like a pretty simple idea. And they're also going to pay to replenish water that it draws from the reservoirs. That issue has also been a little bit overblown. Friedberg, you probably, or actually you probably know a lot about that. And you can explain the data center recycling, water issues and the misperceptions, and they're not. Microsoft has announced they're not going to accept any tax breaks or electricity rate discounts. So that era seems to have ended. Shavati are involved in a number of data centers. And obviously David Sacks, you're involved in this, as our AIs are. And Silas. So Shabbat, why don't you start us off here?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

You guys can find the clip. But we talked about this a few weeks ago that these kinds of things were in the offing. I really like it. It's a very good first order set of things to do, which is to step into a local area and take all of these energy issues off the table, at least to the extent that you're contributing to it. The problem is that the data centers are only part of the problem. The reality is that we have a whole new way of living that is drawing more and more electrons. We are at a shortage for what we need. The reaction of the utilities is to now build, which is the right reaction. The problem is that for the last 20 years they've been under building. So as they catch up, even if you have the data centers that are willing to pay their fair share, rates will still go up. So what do we need to do that is beyond what Microsoft just announced? I think all the hyperscalers should copy what Microsoft did. I think it's great that the President was able to get these guys to the table to agree to it. What is the next major thing? The next major thing is when you actually create 100 or $200 billion tax equity vehicle and you have them completely subsidize and pay for the electricity costs of homeowners. How do you do that? You do that by paying for them to get solar and storage. Why would they do that? They would do that for two reasons. Number one, and the most important is that it will give them a social license to operate throughout the country. The second reason is that the President preserved the ability to make those kinds of investments and be tax advantaged for doing it in the one big beautiful build. So if you put these two things together, I think step one is you go into a local area, you tell the local residents, we'll pay for the water, we'll make sure there's minimal noise, and we'll make sure that we take absolutely no discount. We pay our fair share, even if it means paying more than you do for electricity. That's step one. But now I think we need to go in with step two. Here is a bunch of money that we have allocated to go and fit your house out with solar, with storage, with next generation heat pumps, with a modern set of infrastructure so that you are totally resilient. And now you are completely ambivalent to what the grid has to do in reaction to all the demand that's coming.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, I had Zach Dell from Basepower on this Week in startups, I don't know, a year ago now, and we were talking about this and I said, hey, why wouldn't you just. And what they do is not solar because solar takes time. You got to rip up your roof. It's just some complications with solar. You need to have the space for it expensive to install. They just put a battery, like a little R2D2 outside your house. They fill up that battery when energy is cheap and plentiful and they deploy it when it's expensive. And the grid has challenges. And he said those kind of deals are in the works or the discussions were happening and that was back then. So this is a really easy win, win, win type situation. Chamath, you're describing Sachs. This feels like proactive now, thoughtful ways to communicate to the populace of, hey, the AI boom is here and you have concerns. We're going to get ahead of them. So have you been involved in any of these discussions? Are you talking with Chris Wright and like overlapping in terms of the communication here, or is it just a free market solution?

[David Sacks]

Well, Jason, the President's been ahead of the curve on this issue really since the beginning of the administration. I don't know if you recall, but he said that he was going to make AI companies into the biggest power companies because he understood that the data centers that they needed required a lot of power, but they were going to stand up their own power generation and they wouldn't just draw off the grid. And so I think this understanding has always been there. When I've talked to the hyperscalers, they also tell me that their plan is not to draw from the grid, is to basically set up their Own power generation behind the meter. It's called colocation. And in fact, I think ultimately this will bring down rates for residential consumers for two reasons. One is that when the data centers create their own power, they can sell back or donate back to the grid. When they connect, they don't have to connect to the grid, but once they do, they can donate back. And then second, there's a number of fixed costs in power generation. It's not just variable, right? There's these large fixed costs. And so as you increase scale, those fixed costs get amortized over a greater amount of supply and that brings down the variable rate, basically the metered rate for everybody. So scale is good. And I think the deceptive nature of the criticism here by like Bernie Sanders and people like that is what they say is, well, we just have to shut down all the data centers, period. When the real problem here is that he and others like him have over regulated power generation to death so that it's too hard to set up net new power. Right. I mean, if power generation were easier, there wouldn't need to be a limit on what the data centers could use. They could just bring their own power. So that is the obvious solution here. And it's good to see Microsoft make this pledge and sort of formalize that. I think all the other hyperscalers will do that again. It was never part of their plan, I think, to draw on the grid for their power needs. They always, I think, understood that they'd have to stand up their own power. And the issue is just regulations getting in the way of that. And just one final point on this is that there are a bunch of regulations by ferc, for example, that interfere with the ability to do co location. Co location is when you put a data center and the power generation next to each other or you do them together. And Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy, has directed FERC to make a bunch of changes to make behind the meter and co location easier so that these data centers can stand up their own power. And the only reason that hasn't happened is just because of the usual bureaucratic delays. But that is well on its way to happening. All right, does that make sense?

[Jason Calacanis]

It makes total sense. And you know, if we start thinking about incentives, incentives obviously matter. And I don't think a lot of people know this, but and I think I talked about it when we were talking about nuclear Freeburg in France. The people who live near the Avon, I think is how it's pronounced. Reactor, they pay 0.1% tax versus the 12% regional average. And so they. And then I think the UK has also talked about these sort of danger zone or proposals and payments. You can give people a discount to incentivize them and reward them, giving them free local electricity, et cetera, for living near a nuclear power plant that hasn't come up here in the United States. And there's been a lot of fud, fear, uncertainty and doubt freeberg around these data centers. People throwing around a lot of talking points. I think you and I discussed offline the misperceptions about water usage and that the water usage is largely recycled in these data centers. If you know about that, would you, would you inform the audience about that piece of data?

[David Friedberg]

Well, we got a lot of water, just goes around in a circle, so I don't think that's an issue.

[Jason Calacanis]

But clean water and the cost of clean water increasing for a local population is the way the misperception there.

[David Sacks]

The modern cooling systems in these data centers, the water recirculates and transports the heat out of the data center. So it's not like the water is used up. I guess there's a separate type of evaporative cooling that does use up some water, but modern data centers don't use that. So the water issue is really a total hoax and it's really kind of a sub hoax of this larger affordability issue. I'm not saying that affordability isn't an issue, but it was caused by Biden's 9% inflation and now Democrats are trying to make it an issue when it comes to the power for data centers. Again, this all comes back to the fact that the regulations make it too hard to generate net new power. So again, scaling demand on its own, not a problem if you also scale supply of electricity. In fact, it brings down prices for everyone because scale creates economies of scale.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, and 90% of that water is reused. And there's closed water loop systems. And here's my pitch.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I think the president should try to create a 3, 4, $500 billion tax equity fund and help eliminate the electricity costs of 50 to 100 million American households.

[Jason Calacanis]

Amazing.

[David Friedberg]

Well, here's the. Let me give you the math. So we consume in this country about 4 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity. Average price is 18 cents a kilowatt hour. So it's about, call it $750 billion of spend on electricity every year. One third of that 250 billion is residential consumption. Two thirds of that 500 billion is industrial and commercial consumption. Theoretically, you could increase the price on industrial and commercial consumption. By call it 50% and make all residential electricity in the United States free. If you're a residential user you get a cap of free electricity every month. And if you use more than that cap you get charged. But below that cap you're free based on whatever square footage of your house. I don't know, whatever. And then on the commercial and industrial side, the reason you would then have an incentive to build private power systems would be that you can bring your cost down. And instead of centralizing all of this with the utilities, what it can do is it can flip force a market demand for industrial and commercial users to build their own power systems which would increase overall electricity supply in the United States. The data centers are the tip of the iceberg. But if you make this a pan industrial problem then all of the industrial companies would have to take this path.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

The problem is it doesn't change the net consumption model. If you actually go to solar and storage, for every 15 million homes you take a terawatt hour of demand off the grid. That's an extra terawatt hour that you don't need to build. But you can't build that quickly. So the reason why I like solar and storage is you make these folks so self reliant. Now all of a sudden we're actually catching up to China faster than we would have otherwise.

[David Friedberg]

You're talking about residentials.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah. Your idea. Which is a good one. The problem is they're still using grid services.

[David Friedberg]

Right. Or they don't have to. That's the point. Like if they end up the industrial users will then invest in solar systems.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

You don't know that for sure. My point is today the homeowners are using. There is a solution to not using.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah.

[David Friedberg]

If the industrial price goes up by 50% you've now created a market force to drive them to make.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I understand.

[David Friedberg]

Particularly if you've, if you deregulated.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I understand the math but my point is this.

[David Friedberg]

And you get this first year capex depreciation so they actually get a benefit. And instead of putting all of the.

[Jason Calacanis]

Guys guys, you're talking through each other. Chamat's point is that you're still taxing the growth grid. His proposal adds another layer to what you're saying. So he's in agreement with you Freeberg. Hey yeah, let's have the businesses pay a little extra and, and not. Or, and let's have him take them off the grid. Take him off.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Take them off the grid to reduce the grid.

[Jason Calacanis]

Well there's 80 million freestanding homes in the United States. And it's about 15k to put these battery packs in like base power zooing. You can probably get it down to 10. And if you just do back, back of the envelope math, you're talking about a trillion dollars. So basically for 100 billion, you could do 10% of the country. If you were to do that over some time period, we would have, we would stop worrying about the grid, I think is Chamath's point. And you could do it with battery, you could do it with Solaris.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well, you would not stop worrying about the grid. But Jason, just to refine what you're saying, because you're directionally very right, the consumers would feel less of these issues. And instead of all of us worrying how to underwrite terawatt hours to catch up to China, we actually get a two for one. The consumer homes don't have that anxiety anymore. They don't have the bill. And because they're generating their own power, they're off the grid. And now what that means is that extra terawatt hour can actually go to the commercial and industrial applications, including these data centers. And you're right, Friedberg, we should raise their tariffs.

[David Friedberg]

I just think it's a lot, it's a lot more complicated and a lot more expensive. Everyone's complicated.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Okay, listen, none of this is free.

[Jason Calacanis]

None of it's free. However, we have such an amazing opportunity with AI that it makes sense to do this. That I think is the big picture. AI is such a huge opportunity. There's so much investing. Why wouldn't you do this? Is the question. And if we want to live in the age of abundance and we want to bring the bottom half of the country up and we want affordability, where do people spend their money? Food, groceries, their rent and their electricity and the utilities. So if we want to figure out a direct way to do this, and for all the hippie dippies who care about the environment and clean energy, this is a win there as well. And it doesn't come out of Americans pockets and their taxes. It comes out of corporations which are printing money. If you want to talk about redistribution of wealth, this is a way for the great American max seven corporations to give something back to Americans. And you talked about this, right, maybe three or four weeks ago, that hey, maybe there would be some way for great corporations to do great things for Americans. The fact that Americans don't think about their water bill that much is, is a, is a mitzvah. It's a great thing. Now if they didn't have to think about electricity. Wow. Amazing.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

We will look back and I think that we will want to have seen these big companies who are unbelievably profitable step up on behalf of American homeowners.

[Jason Calacanis]

More, some might say obscenely profitable.

[David Friedberg]

I just think. I just think it's a great mission to the moon style framing to say what if we could make all residential electricity free in the United States and over the next decade, if we can do that, not only do we help Americans with their wallet, but we actually can enable a distributed investment scheme in American energy production and we force the corporations to step up and do their part rather than centralize it. So I just like the framing of making this whole thing free, making residential electricity free in the US as a core benefit.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

The other thing is we've talked about this, I've mentioned this a couple times before. I think the single biggest dollar short, it's not clear when that one will be able to make will be on these utilities. Because if any version of what we just talked about happens and all of a sudden you have private homeowners that are their own utility and then Freeberg CNI being their own power utility, what do the utilities do? What does all this capex go to? How do they pay back their bonds? What happens to their rate base? This is a huge economic question that I think will come up if even a small modicum of what we just talked about materializes.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. And people having their first X number of kilowatt hours a year free. Obviously you're not going to have unlimited free. That's going to be pretty transformative for America. It's aspirational. We all like the idea. I like it. Okay. OpenAI has struck another compute deal. This one's worth over 10 billion. OpenAI is buying compute capacity from Cerebras. That's C E R E B R A s. They committed to purchase up to 750 megawatts over three years. Cerebras, like Rock, makes specialized chips for AI inference. Cerebras is in talks to raise 1 billion at a $22 billion valuation according to reports. And they're expected to IPO this year, potentially in the next couple of months. Sam Altman's an investor in the company, so he knows it well.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And there is he really stuff.

[David Friedberg]

I mean, it's in the notes.

[Jason Calacanis]

It's in the notes.

[David Friedberg]

You can't say this stuff if you don't know if it's true.

[Jason Calacanis]

It's in the notes.

[David Friedberg]

It's in the notes.

[Jason Calacanis]

Take it out and post. If it's not. I reported by the misinformation. I don't know. It could be information, could be misinformation. Shout out.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Okay.

[Jason Calacanis]

To our friends at the Information. These were your competitors at Grok. Yeah, Chamath. They were contemporaries.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, they're fantastic. We both started at the same time. We took slightly different technical approaches. The big difference that what Cerebra said initially from the start. And this is my friend Andrew Feldman, so I'll give him a shout out. Very smart guy. If you see a chip, what you actually see is a wafer. And a wafer is full of little chips, right? And you literally tear them off. That's why they're called chips. Andrew was like, no, I'm just going to make one ginormous chip the size of a wafer.

[Jason Calacanis]

Wafer.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And so if you look at it, Nick, maybe you can find a picture of it. These things are huge. And at the time, people were like, I don't think they really understood what the power of what Cerebras was building and what Andrew was building. And then the first folks that really got on board were the Emirati. So MGX and G42. And you started to run these models and what you started to see was, man, their inference is blazing fast. Again, back to what we talked about last week, because when you have the compute and the memory in the same place, physical distances are now minimized and the complexity is minimized. So you just have incredible speed. What I can tell you is that OpenAI is aggressively trying to diversify so that they have multiple paths of inference available. They have a huge deal with amd, they have a huge deal with Nvidia, they now have a huge deal with Cerebras. If you look at the trail of breadcrumbs, my belief there's going to be a renaissance in silicon. Young, small teams building decode silicon can make a fortune over the next 10 to 20 years. It's a huge opportunity. It's going to be like the PC wars, Dell versus Compaq versus all of these companies. It's super exciting. Congrats to Cerebras. They deserve it.

[Jason Calacanis]

Is there any argument that compute needs will level off in some way? We will have have built so much capacity and the software will get better. There's been some talk about anthropic being resource constrained as the contemporary to OpenAI, and I think there's pretty much uniformity amongst elite AI users. That Claude is a much better product now than OpenAI. And the models are better, the applications are better. But they're doing it with less. So could the build out be. Could it slow down? Is that a scenario that's out there or is this always going to be up into the right for the next five, 10 years? What's your crystal ball say? Sachs, are you still there?

[David Sacks]

I'm here.

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh, okay.

[David Friedberg]

Why is he on? Why is this video off? Turn it on.

[Jason Calacanis]

I mean you can turn it back on and then when you talk, we'll just go back and forth.

[David Sacks]

Texas still has a ways to go, I have to say.

[Jason Calacanis]

All right, there you go. All right. So anyway, Abbott, this is your best Internet.

[David Sacks]

Texas infrastructure is.

[David Friedberg]

Oh my God. Sachs is going to do this. I just tweeted Abbott.

[Jason Calacanis]

Abbott will send someone over immediately. They're. They're pretty responsive in Texas.

[David Friedberg]

My prediction is there'll be a big meme by the end of this year called the Texas Bounce Back. And it's a bunch of billionaires, they do a little jiggy as they dance back from Texas, back to California. You're there for good, huh?

[David Sacks]

Well, here's the thing. So. Okay, well maybe we should just talk about bta because that's where this is going.

[Jason Calacanis]

Well, I mean, listen, you move houses. Move houses. You could have a little Internet issue. It's okay.

[David Sacks]

Well, I mean I'd rather have an Internet issue and keep 100% of my money than lose 5% plus 13.3 per year. And it's not going to be a one time tax. That's the biggest lie. It's 5% now, 5% later, 10% after that. There'll be an exit tax. They're coming for all of it.

[David Friedberg]

Yeah.

[David Sacks]

So the Internet can get fixed? The Internet. Let's put it this way. My Internet can get fixed a lot more easily than California can.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What are the 10 states that constitutionally ban asset taxes?

[David Friedberg]

Yeah. So it's direct and implicit in those states constitutions. Or they have an amendment to the Constitution that makes it direct or implicit that you can't do a wealth tax or an asset cease.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Which are they?

[Jason Calacanis]

Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas.

[David Sacks]

According to grok, only Texas explicitly bans wealth taxes.

[David Friedberg]

Yes, that is correct. But because of some of the other state constitutions, it's implicit. So Texas has in their Constitution a prohibition on quote, tax on wealth or net worth. Washington has a uniformity clause which treats income as property, which bans non uniform rates. Florida's Constitution bans any sort of personal tax. Pennsylvania has a strict uniformity clause which would make it impossible to have graduated tax rates or distinguished tax rates amongst populations. Illinois has a strict constitutional mandate for a flat non graduated tax rate. So you cannot do a separation and then asset seizure is referred to as a civil asset forfeiture, which is a separate legal issue, but implies in states like New Mexico, Nebraska and North Carolina, you cannot actually have an asset taken from you by the state. So there's a bunch of states that this would be constitutionally protected against.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Friedberg, has your mind changed since last week about whether this is going to make the ballot?

[David Friedberg]

I don't think it's going to make the ballot. I mean look, I think it's not, I'm not saying 100%, I'm saying slight overweight, that it's not going to get there.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So nothing has changed in your perspective.

[David Friedberg]

I think we're going through the rolling wake up process right, right now, which is people are waking up to the fact that the asset seizure tax is an elimination of private property rights. That fundamentally what you're saying, and I wrote this in my tweet, that private property now becomes public property. Because as soon as you give the government the right to collect your post tax assets through a legislative vote, you are basically saying that you no longer have private property. Because at any point in the future the government can vote to say I'm going to take your private property, which is different than an income tax, which is when you earn something that you didn't have before and they take a percentage of your earnings of your income. The statement now is after you've made your income, it's now your private property, they can come and take it. And so that is a distinction that has never existed in the United States. And I will make the retort right now to property tax because people always say to me, what about property tax? A property tax is a service fee on a particular specific asset. The money that is collected provides services for that asset to make it more valuable. So you get roads, infrastructure, policing, school care, schools, all the stuff that comes with property tax makes that asset more. And you have the option at any point you want to sell that property and stop paying that property tax. You have the option at any point to downgrade your property and get a cheaper property and pay it lower. But and here's the other important point about property tax, it's uniform. Uniform means that everyone pays the same percentage, the same price. Property tax rate in a county. This asset seizure tax that's being proposed is a demographic tax, meaning that the state or the legislature defines a specific group of individuals. In this case, they're saying anyone with a net worth over a billion dollars and then they can go and take assets from only that group. That is non uniform taxation. It means that for the first time we're saying based on the demographics of a person, meaning whatever you want to use to define that person, in this case their wealth, you are going to be treated differently. And that is different than an income tax. Because remember when you have graduated income tax rates and you say high earners get taxed more, what you're taxing is the earnings, not the individual. You're not looking through to the individual to determine whether or not they're wealthy. All you're doing is looking at the independent earnings amount that's coming in. And so a uniformity clause is supposed to protect people from being demographically discriminated against. And you may roll your hand and be like, oh, who cares about the billionaires? Eat the rich. That's great. But fundamentally you're giving the government, the legislature, the ability to in the future take any demographic definition they want and go in and take any percentage they want of after tax property from you. That is why this is so troubling. And we can harp all day long about eat the rich. And obviously this group is, is biased. But the general population should be very much aware of the fact that as soon as you give a legislature the ability to discriminate a group and take whatever percentage they want, you set precedent.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah.

[David Friedberg]

And it's over. You're now, now what you've done is you've made all private property public property because the government is simply giving you permission every year to keep your stuff.

[Jason Calacanis]

And the government shouldn't even know. It's like they're coming onto your ranch and calculating how many tractors you got. You got an old Corvette. How much is that worth? What's your old roadster worth?

[David Friedberg]

What's your grandma jewelry worth?

[David Sacks]

How much moose is worth?

[Jason Calacanis]

Moose is. Yeah. They're gonna take 5% of moose.

[David Sacks]

Very valuable thoroughbred there.

[Jason Calacanis]

Absolutely he is.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

There'll be a new job category. Tax appraisers.

[David Friedberg]

Tax appraisers. And then you don't know whether the.

[Jason Calacanis]

Knocking on your door. I'm here to walk around your ranch and calculate everything.

[David Friedberg]

I mean, and it doesn't solve the geometric debt problem. Right. We have a problem where every year if we keep funding things with a deficit in California, we're looking at a 30 billion a year deficit. We've got 500 billion of debt and we have a nearly $1 trillion pension obligation that is not funded.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yes.

[David Friedberg]

That money is going to come from somewhere or it is not going to get paid. It is more likely that they're going to do everything they possibly can to get that money from somewhere rather than not pay it. And the same is true for all pension obligations across the country. Illinois has a big problem like this as well.

[David Sacks]

Well, can I take the other side of that bet that you mentioned about it not getting on the ballot, please?

[David Friedberg]

Yeah, go for it.

[David Sacks]

Well, I've never understood why this wouldn't get on the ballot. And I've never understood why once it's on the ballot, it wouldn't pass, which is why I left. So let's take the first one of these in terms of it getting on the ballot. You only need about 8 million bucks to collect the signatures. 850,000 signatures. It's not that many in California. There's definitely millions of people in California who would love to stick it to billionaires. So they're gonna gather the signatures. SEIU has the money. The only way that it wouldn't therefore make the ballot is if Gavin Newsom and the political machine bribe the SEIU with enough political benefits that they'll withdraw it. But what the SEIU is asking for is whatever it is, the $30 billion. And I don't know if Gavin Newsom has that much money laying around somewhere that he can just give. Furthermore, if you're the guy running the seiu, I understand his name is Dave Regan.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Regan. Dave Regan.

[David Sacks]

You gotta be looking at what's happening on X right now and you gotta be gleeful. You got all these billionaires are panic tweeting all day long.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

It's not all day long. I tweet in the morning from the bathroom.

[David Sacks]

Well, we're all doing it.

[Jason Calacanis]

Morning constitutional.

[David Sacks]

I went on a base tweeting spree this morning. So if you're this guy Regan, you're like, oh my God, look how much leverage I've got. Twist a pig's ear, watch him squeal. He's twisted these billionaires ears and they're all squealing. So why wouldn't you increase your leverage by spending the $8 million, put it on the ballot and then negotiate with.

[Jason Calacanis]

Was that a Deliverance reference? I hope not.

[David Sacks]

No, it's just an expression. In any event, I don't know why your mind's going to Deliverance.

[Jason Calacanis]

I know you squeal out of, but.

[David Sacks]

You got Deliverance on the brain.

[David Friedberg]

Maybe I do, Sax. I'll tell you why. So I've obviously been a believer. I've been a believer in the long cycle, and I've said this for a long time, we are going to end up in either a socialist or some sort of fascist. Either way, it's a tyrannical system to get us out of the debt spiral that we've been in for some time. So that is true. But I still want to retain my sense of individual agency and I do think that those of us who are in California who actually care should retain some sense of agency rather than suspend our ability to have an influence in the outcome here. I think we need to speak openly and honestly about where this leads to. Let people hear it and let the people in California decide. And frankly, if we've done our job, we've spoken loudly, we've spoken clearly, we've revealed to people where a private property seizure tax leads to for everyone in this country and the deletion of private property rights in this country and they still sign up to it, then I'm out.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, I get it.

[Jason Calacanis]

If it was a cent of millionaire tax, you would have been out.

[David Sacks]

I agree that we should fight it. I'm not being fatalistic. I don't think the outcome is predetermined. But I don't understand why it wouldn't get on the ballot. Because that has nothing to do with how persuasive you and the opponents of BTA are. It's just about whether SEIU, UHW will spend the requisite amount of money, 8 million, 10 million, 12 million, whatever, to gather the signatures. And I mean, we've heard they have the money, right? So why wouldn't they? It only increases their leverage to demand more concessions.

[David Friedberg]

They have $14 million to gather the signatures, which the estimate was they'll need somewhere between 5 and 15. So they have the cash they need to gather the signatures.

[Jason Calacanis]

It's a good bet.

[David Friedberg]

And they have roughly $10 million to run an ad campaign. And their estimate is they need between 50 and $100 million to run an ad campaign. Sounds like a good bet. The next step will be that the try and get this thing signed up. Now, the polling data, it shows that there's room for influence sex. So I do think that if people can understand where this is headed. And look, if America wants to sign up to this, Godspeed, man. Like, that's where America's going to end up in the socialist death spiral loophole. Like, good luck, have a good time. I'm going to Terminus to start the foundation. I don't know where the hell that is, but I'm out.

[Jason Calacanis]

You're out. I'M out.

[David Friedberg]

And in the meantime, all we can do is speak truth to it and try and shine light on it and see where it goes.

[Jason Calacanis]

Hey, maybe 51st state, Greenland. Maybe we'll just do the 51st state.

[David Sacks]

Look, I'm not saying it's going to pass, although I do think it's probably slightly more likely than not to pass once it's on the ballot. I just don't understand why it's not going to be on the ballot. And once it makes the ballot in, let's say, April, I think there's going to be a big freak out and rush for the exits because there's a lot of people who, you know, this is my theory is I'm going to.

[David Friedberg]

Beat the mushroom before the end of the party. People don't realize this. It's not billionaires. I have received dozens of texts, emails, calls from people, founders, business leaders, CEOs that are out if in April this thing ends up on the ballot because they're like writings on the wall. If no politicians in California are willing to stand up and talk about private property rights and no one's willing to say like this leads to a death spiral for the state and potentially for the country, and no one's gonna say that, then it's only a matter of time before this happens and it's only a matter of time before it hits me. And so everyone is looking for a place.

[David Sacks]

And let me give you a data point on that. There are other unions who weren't part of this ballot initiative who are preparing similar ones for 2028. And those ballot initiatives are gonna be more bulletproof, they're gonna be better lawyered, all that kind of stuff, more likely to survive constitutional challenges. The only reason why there is political opposition, I believe, to the BTA is because it was done by only one union, the seiu. Uhw, this guy did it on his own. And the loot, all the proceeds from this confiscation would go, almost all of it would go just to this one union or its causes. So they didn't cut in the other unions on the loot. They didn't wet the other unions beaks. As a result of that, the other unions are actually against it. And this is why Newsom and the other politicians feel relatively unconstrained in saying they're opposed to it. And that's why I think that if we defeat this in 26, it doesn't mean it's dead for good. It just means it's going to come back in a new form in 28, but with much more broad based union support. All the unions are going to do it together. So I just think this is inevitable. And I think that, you know, for all the founders and whether you're pre exit, post exit or on your way to an exit, my advice would be that to quote Maya Angelou, when a state shows you who they are, believe them the first time. This is the direction of travel in California. And whether it's SEIU or whatever they do in 28, this is where they'd.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Love to see something. Sachs, you said something that resonated with me, which is the next versions of this will be better lawyered and more bulletproof. I've had a team of people looking at this. The thing that is the biggest weakness here is looking at the fact that this is a wholly new tax that is applied retroactively. And when you look at the Supreme Court at the federal level, the case law on this, this is the strongest challenge that people will have. And this is where there is a preponderance of evidence in the favor of people saying that this is unjust and this is a taking. And being able to use the Supreme Court to bat this back now, that'll take five and 10 years to litigate because it'll be there drawing itself through the courts forever. But when you look at the fact that that will be the angle of attack that people will take if this passes, I 100% agree with you, Sachs. If this union were smart enough, what they would have done is say, this is going to start January 1st of 2027. It probably would make the ballot, it probably would pass and they would get all the loot and it would be very difficult to legally challenge this thing. It was a huge miscalculation by that union. But in 28 or 30 or 32, this will rear its ugly head. It will be better architected and there will be no way around it. And at that point, why create an artificial line at one with nine zeros after it? Why? Why?

[David Friedberg]

By the way, stupid.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Go to 100 million. Get everybody.

[Jason Calacanis]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Move that number up a little bit. Let's get to. Let's get it to 250.

[David Friedberg]

And if what we're saying is right, then why would it not happen at a national level?

[Jason Calacanis]

Of course it will. Yes, they're going to start chasing you around the country. It's disgraceful.

[David Sacks]

And I'll tell you why. Because we still have plenty of conservatives in the rest of the country. California is screwed. But we got to start stacking sandbags around the rest of the states.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Friedberg, you said something that I really liked in your post, which is it begs the question, what will happen when California goes BK and then they go to the Feds and it doesn't actually matter who is in charge at that time. But let's think about it. If Trump were in charge for a second, California knocks and says, hey, I need you to bail us out. The deal that California would need to do with the President for that to even be palatable so that he could build a coalition of Republicans around it. Man, California will go through tremendous pain.

[David Friedberg]

But then go through the other side. So now imagine AOC's president. AOC's president.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So she says, I gotta do this. And then when it goes to Congress, how does this actually happen? This is again where I think Sachs is right. As long as there is a 49, 51 kind of a balance, I don't think anything can really happen without meaningfully deep austerity in California.

[Jason Calacanis]

I think there's a way out for.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Now if the filibuster's gone by that time and it's simple majority and then if there's a Democrat in the Oval plus a Democratic Congress. David, you're right, because that is the one shot on goal that they have a two year window to run that play at the federal level and they will be able to get it done.

[David Friedberg]

Now ask yourself the question, what happens to the citizens of Florida, the citizens of Texas and the citizens of North Dakota and the citizens of all these states that pay federal taxes have not had this problem in their state and they're basically paying due to Laskas.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Alaska has a surplus.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, but why should we allow.

[David Friedberg]

Why would all those citizens. And this is where the union starts to unravel. And that's where I get very concerned about where this leads. As soon as you allow this asset seizure tax to pass, even on a state level, the economic ramifications are. On a national level, the economic ramifications are inevitable that some states are gonna have to bail out other states. And that's where things get very ugly.

[Jason Calacanis]

The bill will come due at some point. This is super easy out here for the Democrats or people who are supporting this. Just go after fraud first, taxes second. That's gotta be the mantra going forward. We're gonna eliminate fraud and waste and then we'll have a discussion about taxes. That's the only way for them to find an escape hatch here.

[David Friedberg]

Okay, we will tell you in the moderates. Yeah, I mean like that's what I'm talking about.

[David Sacks]

But just some interesting stats here. So California collects roughly double per capita what Texas and Florida do. So California collects about $10,319 per taxpayer, whereas Texas 5,469, Florida 4,914. So there's not an issue here of California not collecting enough taxes. The issue is all on the spending. And on that front, the California budget has doubled over the past decade while the population stayed flat. And in fact.

[Jason Calacanis]

And services got worse.

[David Sacks]

Services got worse, test scores got worse. Crime prevention, where's the money going?

[Jason Calacanis]

Where the law enforcement got worse, where's it going?

[David Sacks]

They let convicts out of jails. Everything's gotten worse.

[Jason Calacanis]

Where's the money going, Sachs? Say the word.

[David Sacks]

It's going to these government worker unions who have accumulated too much political power. Look, you go all the way back to FDR and he was opposed to, even though he was four unions. He was opposed to government workers unions because he thought they would accumulate too much political power. And they elect the politicians and then the politicians are the ones paying them. So they just end up extracting more and more and more iteratively with every election cycle.

[David Friedberg]

It's the same as an antitrust monopoly in a corporation. It's the same ultimate dynamics as having a monopoly in private industry and corporations. It basically gives you a monopoly on political power and it gives you the ability to monopolize assets. And that's effectively where we are now. They're at the point where one union is saying, I'm going to take the assets, $100 billion of assets from a small minority of people in the state.

[David Sacks]

The reality is that a lot of it is the pension obligations. You can work for the state for 20 years, retire in your 40s and you basically what you get like 90%.

[David Friedberg]

It'S got to go for the rest of your life. It just doesn't work.

[Jason Calacanis]

It doesn't pencil out. It's got to end.

[David Sacks]

They use your last year's W2. So you stuff it with overtime, your last year and you end up retiring with like 150% of your annual salary for life. It doesn't even apply to your spouse too.

[David Friedberg]

But this was the promise. This was the promise that was given in order to get the votes that have gotten us to the point we're at today. Because that is how the unions operate, right? It is a system that drives political influence by making these sorts of benefits law and brings them to bear.

[Jason Calacanis]

If the average retirement age is 50, 50 and your lifespan is 80, like this is way, this is not how it was intended. People used to get these at 60, and they would die at 68.

[David Sacks]

It was like real estate at 22, and you can retire at 42. Actually, what a lot of people do is they'll go then take a second government job and stack a second pension. But, yeah, you could retire at 42 if you stuff it with overtime. You can stuff it with overtime. And I think it applies to your spouse as well. Just fact check me on that.

[Jason Calacanis]

But I know, I'm aware of it in New York, where a little bit of this stuffing on the margins does occur. I've heard.

[David Sacks]

I'm not against police officers and teachers and people getting reasonable.

[Jason Calacanis]

You need to do superannuation funds. You have to have people buying into the market over time. And the government shouldn't be managing this. It's just the government is terrible at whatever it does, and there's too much for them to do. Let it stand alone. Take it out, carve it out. You're forced to put 12% into this or your employer puts a little bit into it, and then we'd have a very happy society, more participation in the market. It would solve so many problems. Okay, I just want to hit one last topic. Congratulations to Greenland on accepting a very generous offer from President Trump. We welcome you as the 51st state. Maybe that'll be happening any day now. U.S. officials met with reps from Denmark and Greenland at the White House on Wednesday to discuss how the US could take control of Greenland. This has been something Trump's been talking about for years. And remember my rule number one of President Trump, he says a lot of things. One way or another, we're going to get it. March 4, 2025. I need it for psychological reasons, to actually own it. 2021, he said that we're going to do something with Greenland, either the nice way or the more difficult way. January 9, 2026. Denmark doesn't seem to want to play ball. They say they have a fundamental, fundamental disagreement about this. That being said, there's only 50,000 people there, and it's Polymarket's got it a 17% chance that we acquire it, which is significant. As a starting point, 50,000 people getting a half million or $1 million each would probably be a pretty good deal. It's a very strategic piece of land. If you look at what's happening with the ice caps, melting sacks, and Russia positioning a lot of their ships up in the Arctic, there's a pretty clean shot going past Greenland to the northeast of America. So Maybe you could just talk about why this is. And again, you're not speaking for the administration and it's not your lane. But why is Greenland so important?

[David Sacks]

Well, it is becoming more significant from a national security standpoint as those Arctic ices melt and you have new shipping lanes that have opened up. So it is important on that dimension. But look, American politicians have wanted to acquire Greenland for a long time. The great Secretary of State William Seward wanted to acquire it. He acquired Alaska. He wanted to get Greenland, too. Was unable to make that deal. But FDR and Truman both were interested in acquiring Greenland. It didn't work out, obviously. So this is an old idea that's new again, thanks to President Trump. I think he makes a great point.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Point.

[David Sacks]

Why does it belong to the Danes? It's a small country in Europe. It's not part of North America. And I think if we can acquire it for national security reasons and resource reasons, we should. And I think the odds of him pulling this off are much greater than 17%.

[Jason Calacanis]

Chamath or Freeberg, you have any thoughts on the 51st state?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I don't know anything about it.

[David Sacks]

Well, they don't have to become a state, to be clear.

[Jason Calacanis]

No, No, I don't.

[David Sacks]

They can become a success story.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. I mean, territory, whatever it is. Yeah. Could be like a country club, whatever. It's important that we get memberships.

[David Sacks]

This is a huge piece of real estate in the Western Hemisphere. It doesn't really make a ton of sense for Denmark to own. Makes a lot more sense for it to be part of the US and we're willing to pay for it. And I think that we can make them an offer that they can't refuse.

[Jason Calacanis]

Absolutely. And it has.

[David Sacks]

We're gonna send Luca Brasi over there.

[Jason Calacanis]

I thought, Luca Brasi. Make him an offer. It's got a lot of railroads, minerals. There's a lot of oil offshore. Their big export now is fish, obviously. But this has lots of potential. Friedberg, in terms of the resources and. Yeah, why not get it done? Trump loves real estate. We got him for another three years. I say let President Trump cook. And if he wants to buy some other land, I'm here for it. I love building the empire. This is my favorite Trump Freiberg. You love this, Trump or not?

[David Friedberg]

The old adage is there's always a deal, there's always a price, except when you're negotiating with government. So I don't know how that's going to go. My understanding, my experience is that they do not want a deal. They're not interested. There's a whole bunch of national pride associated with that. You can't break national pride. As we know as patriots of America. It is very hard to fight national pride. I don't know if the economics are right, really going to play out. But security guarantees, maybe other benefits for the great kingdom of Denmark. There could be a strong alliance and partnership for the United States.

[David Sacks]

I think it could be important for the US to have a new frontier. Maybe what we can do is send all these progressive socialists off to Greenland to tame this new frontier.

[David Friedberg]

I want to go.

[Jason Calacanis]

We need that. Send Mondame there.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

They get that.

[David Sacks]

We need that spirit of the frontier, of. Of cowboys, of exploration.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yes. Then Mondami seems like a very resilient, gritty guy. He'll come with his whole crew, the socialists. Ro Khanna, let him set up there.

[David Friedberg]

Let's see what the idea of having what's called a freedom province or freedom state or freedom city.

[Jason Calacanis]

Economic free zone. Yeah.

[David Friedberg]

Yeah. And I do think if we are looking down the barrel of socialism in the United States, which I think socially leads to a destruction of individual liberties and a degradation of the social fabric in America. Before that happens, it's important that those who are on the other side and before they get overwhelmed with the votes and the elected officials that will fight against them. Before this all happens, it's important to think about carving out a legal territory. And that legal territory should allow for the resurrection of the great American union, of the great American spirit.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Spirit.

[David Friedberg]

And we should find a place within our sphere of influence before we get overwhelmed. To call something up.

[David Sacks]

Call Texas. Dude. It's called Texas. Remember the Alamo? We're making our last stand here.

[Jason Calacanis]

Absolutely. The 50 calibers are up on the ranch.

[David Friedberg]

I think it would be helpful to get something that's federally set up. Sacks that you could have untouchable legislation that says this is not to be touched, this pioneering, whatever it is.

[Jason Calacanis]

Join the militia. We got a militia.

[David Friedberg]

And maybe Greenland is the place. But it's something that feels. It's gotta be something that feels difficult, something that feels open, something that feels a little bit untouched. And it's regionally encased with a set of legislated things like Guam or Puerto Rico or something where you set it up and you're like, look, this is untouchable. It takes a big action to change it. Something where people can have protection against the socialist milieu. That's on the way.

[David Sacks]

You know, it is kind of interesting. As I remember from my high school history, I think the frontier was officially over by 1910. I think that was meaning every longitude basically had been fully explored. Every latitude and longitude had been sort of settled. And that is when the Progressive era kind of began. And I do kind of wonder whether the frontier was this like, escape point valve for pressure that builds up, resentments that build up in the economy. People could always just go west and become pioneers and find new territory.

[David Friedberg]

That's right.

[David Sacks]

And in a way, that's what America was for Europe. Right. I mean, Europe was sort of this overcrowded place. It was oppressive, and people just left that they could opt out by going to America and settling over in what would become the United States. And I kind of wonder whether maybe we need something like that again.

[David Friedberg]

And by the way, I think it's all the discontents. You're right.

[David Sacks]

So they don't become democratic socialists of America.

[David Friedberg]

And for a while, the digital frontier became that escape valve. But now that's being shut off and it's being closed down, and the place where it's been run from is being subjugated to the socialists. So the question is, what's next? I think it's a very good question.

[David Sacks]

Well, the problem is that the socialists, they're not explorers, they're not pioneers, they don't create anything. They're not builders. What they are is they're really good at hijacking existing institutions. And that's what they do, is they take things that were created by great people and they subvert them and they seize control. And that's what they're going for is total control, first in California and then in Washington. But I do wonder whether the existence of some sort of release valve might defer that day. Right, because you get less pressure building up in the system.

[Jason Calacanis]

All right, another amazing episode and just want to give a shout out. Chamath did an amazing interview with my guy, Howard Lutnick. That was fun, huh? Yeh.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Chimoth, that was awesome. He's awesome.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, I'm really impressed by him and Freeberg. On a bit of a heater here today, we dropped an incredible interview with FDA Commissioner Marty Makaray. Am I pronouncing correctly?

[David Friedberg]

Makary.

[Jason Calacanis]

Makary. Great job there. And also, you got to hang out with your childhood hero. We grew up on Howard Stern on the east coast, but you grew up with Adam Carolla and you got to interview him. You were fangirling a little bit there at the start, weren't you?

[David Friedberg]

Well, it was great. I'd never met him, so it was great to interview him. I mean, he has a lot of interesting ideas. I got a lot of texts about his coined term gyno fascism, or which.

[Jason Calacanis]

I think some people explain to the audience.

[David Friedberg]

One guy, watch. Watch the interview.

[Jason Calacanis]

Watch the interview. We don't want to get a.

[David Friedberg]

He was great.

[Jason Calacanis]

You got to see the start of this interview. Javon Freeberg's like, Mr. Carolla, I used to watch you and Dr. Drew talking on Loveline, and it really was formative in my years as a broadcaster. And now I too, am a broadcaster. It was really cute.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

It was really cute.

[David Friedberg]

You. I never said, I'm a broadcaster. I would never. You were like, I would never. I would never degrade myself like that.

[Jason Calacanis]

Jp. I actually am doing random acts of broadcasting. The sun never steps on the all in empire. And I also did a fun CES interview with the CEO of McKinsey, Bob Sternfels, and Hemant from General Catalyst. And that's up on the feed. So 4, 4 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 interview shows waiting for you in your feed. And to the mainstream media trying to keep up with this. Gfy. Gfy. Good for you. Have fun trying.

[David Sacks]

You guys believe that JC has been invited to Davos.

[Jason Calacanis]

Davos.

[David Friedberg]

I can't wait to see this.

[Jason Calacanis]

I'm bringing my acoustic.

[David Friedberg]

I can't wait to see. I'm gonna tear it up.

[Jason Calacanis]

We're gonna have fun.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Did you guys see me rage bait Twitter two days ago? No.

[Jason Calacanis]

What did you do?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I put this thing where you showed your legs. No. Remember when we did the interview at the Alwyn Summit where Tulsi talked about the Obama documents?

[David Friedberg]

Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well, this guy did a rant. I thought the rant was great, but I just retweeted it and people lost their mind. Basically, he was calling for Obama's arrest. Oh, God.

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh, God.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I said very casually, gosh, this is a really underreported story.

[David Sacks]

Oh, I saw that one. I was wondering who that guy was, though. I'm like.

[David Friedberg]

Did Nat make you take it down?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

No, it's still up there. Still up there.

[David Sacks]

Wait, who. Who is that? Streamer.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I don't know who he is.

[David Friedberg]

Yeah, I don't.

[Jason Calacanis]

I think he. He said he met.

[David Friedberg]

Did you guys watch Nick Shirley's new video?

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh, no.

[David Friedberg]

He goes looking for. Check this out. There's these transportation companies, they get $10 million a day in Minnesota.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

A day?

[David Friedberg]

A day for non emergency medical transportation. So the state will pay if you transport someone that's autistic to Target to get them groceries, 50 bucks a ride. And there's a website where the transportation company gets to log into the website, and they're registered as one of the transportation companies. And they're like, I took someone from this place to Target. And you get. And you fill out all these forms, and then you get a check immediately on the Minnesota.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

It's a trust system.

[David Friedberg]

They never investigate. They don't audit, they don't check nothing. So Nick Shirley starts going around looking for the transportation companies, and it's like a liquor store. He's like, where's the. Where's the transportation company? Liquor store, guys? Like, there's no transportation here. It's like, you know, a burrito place, like a deli. Like all of these places.

[Jason Calacanis]

What are we doing, folks?

[David Friedberg]

Transportation companies. Tens of millions of dollars a week just being given out. And by the way, this is not a race thing. It does no one any good to cast this as being a Somali thing. And that, I think, is what's getting everyone in trouble. No, it is. And by the way, it's what shuts off a lot of people to actually being able to look at the fraud. And it's not about the Somali people. It's about the fact that fraud is allowed by the government, and it's about the fact that the government either is implicit or complicit in this fraud. And I think that that's what people need to pay attention to and ignore all of the rattlings about what community or what group or who's doing it and just focus on the fact that the government lets this shit happen. If you think about the state of California spending $350 billion a year, and you ask yourself the question, are those government agencies and the agents in those agencies doing their job of making sure that there's no fraud taking place. There is no way anyone's going to raise their hand and say, yes, they're great fiduciaries of taxpayer money, and that's what we should all be paying attention to and get out of the political divide on all this and the racism and all the bullshit and focus on the fact that the government does this shit.

[Jason Calacanis]

All right, everybody. Another amazing all in episodes. Thanks. Thank you for tuning in. Like, oh, by the way, guys, we hit a million subs on YouTube. They sent me a gorgeous plaque. I'm putting it up in my office. It's amazing. And it's at the Million plaque. It's great. All the team autographed it and wrote a really nice note. Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Can I say something? Yeah, you're welcome.

[Jason Calacanis]

You're welcome. Jamal would like to say you're welcome.

[David Friedberg]

J's like, you're welcome.

[Jason Calacanis]

All right, see you at Davos. Kumbaya. Davos. We'll see you there. We'll let your winners ride Rain Man David Sack.

[David Sacks]

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

[David Friedberg]

Love you, Queen of the can.

[Jason Calacanis]

Besties are gone. 13.

[David Friedberg]

That is my dog taking a notice in your driveway. Oh, man.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

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

[David Friedberg]

Wet your feet.

[David Sacks]

Be wet your feet.

[Jason Calacanis]

We need to get Murphy's. Our going all in. I'm going all in.