Trump's First Week: Inauguration Recap, Executive Actions, TikTok, Stargate + Sacks is Back!

Summary

Podcast Summary: All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Episode: Trump's First Week: Inauguration Recap, Executive Actions, TikTok, Stargate + Sacks is Back!
Release Date: January 25, 2025

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1. Inauguration Weekend Recap

Fashion and Networking Events
The episode kicks off with the hosts reminiscing about a high-profile dinner attended by industry veterans and top podcasters. David Sacks highlights a humorous moment where they discovered that their favorite podcast was, in fact, their own, "All-In Podcast" (00:00).

Notable Quotes:

• Jason Calacanis: "Well, the funniest thing is my wife thinks I'm bullshitting all the time. I say this is mine too." (00:24)
• Chamath Palihapitiya: "Why do you think I waited to make my world podcast premiere for? All in all, the ankle biters called and I said, no, I'm just gonna wait." (00:32)

Photographs and Highlights
The hosts share behind-the-scenes photos from various inauguration events, including interactions with influential figures like Brendan Carr and Jared Isaacman. Jason showcases his refined wardrobe from the weekend, giving shout-outs to designers like Armani and Luisa Beccaria (07:09).

Notable Quotes:

• Jason Calacanis: "This is what I'm saying. I think the picture is very hard to see, but it's a very refined green paisley." (07:09)
• David Friedberg: "I went for white tuxedo on the first night. I've never had three tuxedos before, but they were incredible." (07:59)

2. Executive Actions Overview

Record-Breaking Executive Orders
President Trump signed 26 executive orders on his first day, breaking the previous record of nine held by President Biden. The hosts delve into the significance of these actions, which include:

• Establishment of DOGE: Creating a new agency with assigned teams comprising engineers, HR specialists, and attorneys. Notably, Vivek is stepping down to run for governor of Ohio (31:36).

• TikTok Suspension: Extending the TikTok ban by 75 days with an aim for the US to own 50% of the company. Trump expresses interest in potential buyers like Elon Musk or Larry Ellison (33:37).

• January 6th Pardons: Pardoning 1,500 participants from the January 6th events, sparking controversy and discussions about their future actions (32:37).

• Ending Birthright Citizenship: A controversial move to revoke citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants, now facing legal challenges from 22 state attorney generals (32:37).

• Energy Initiatives: Launching projects to unleash American energy, emphasizing nuclear power as a critical component for AI and economic competitiveness (86:26).

• Hiring and Regulatory Freezes: Implementing a hiring freeze for federal employees (excluding military and public safety) and halting new regulations to streamline government operations (56:56).

Notable Quotes:

• David Sacks: "We're not gonna ostracize people. We're not going to play favorites." (17:37)
• Chamath Palihapitiya: "We are in an idea business. And when you have a truly revolutionary idea, it can get really big." (34:13)

3. TikTok and US-China Relations

Strategic Implications of TikTok Ownership
The discussion centers around Trump's proposal for the US government to acquire a 50% stake in TikTok. Thomas Lafont provides an in-depth analysis, estimating TikTok's US asset value at around $100 billion, though he acknowledges the uncertainties surrounding its Chinese operations (35:49).

Notable Quotes:

• Thomas Lafont: "It's just a classic when you try and sell a company, what's the value?" (35:49)
• Jason Calacanis: "If the United States treasury wants to hold 50% of an asset that could be worth 100 billion or 500 billion or maybe a trillion, it would make sense for the United States treasury and the United States people to own that at effectively zero." (48:05)

Investor Perspectives and Future Predictions
Chamath Palihapitiya and Jason Calacanis debate the feasibility and potential outcomes of government involvement in TikTok, drawing parallels to historical business acquisitions and emphasizing the need for strategic incentives (50:06).

Impact on Global Trade and US Companies
David Friedberg warns of the precedent set by the TikTok situation, highlighting fears that US companies could face similar government interventions abroad, jeopardizing their global operations and technological advancements (53:35).

Notable Quotes:

• Jason Calacanis: "I find it very hard to see how it gets to the actual value that it is today." (74:13)
• David Friedberg: "Imagine the CCP tells Tesla they have to sell their Chinese operations and give 50% of the Chinese operations to the Chinese government." (55:00)

4. AI Infrastructure and Energy Race

AI and Energy Dependency
The hosts discuss the intertwining of AI advancements with energy infrastructure, stressing the necessity of nuclear power to support the computational demands of AI technologies. They highlight the disparity between US and Chinese investments in electricity production, pointing out that the US is lagging in both capacity and cost-effectiveness (85:00).

Nuclear Power as a Competitive Edge
Chamath emphasizes that AI's success hinges on robust energy infrastructure, particularly nuclear power, which China is rapidly expanding. The conversation underscores the urgency for the US to invest in modern, meltdown-proof nuclear technologies to remain competitive (90:13).

Notable Quotes:

• Chamath Palihapitiya: "You can't power a GPU without a data center, and you can't use a data center without power." (85:00)
• David Friedberg: "The US today is paying roughly 1.5 to 3x the price per kilowatt-hour for electricity over what China's paying." (87:15)

Executive Orders Supporting AI and Energy
Thomas Lafont elaborates on executive orders aimed at accelerating AI development and energy infrastructure. This includes the formation of working groups to lead crypto initiatives and a push to dominate the global AI landscape (112:37).

Notable Quotes:

• Thomas Lafont: "The President's a capitalist country, and it's the greatest one in the world. Equal opportunity. Anybody can make a bet." (115:09)
• Jason Calacanis: "Spending more money doesn't necessarily get you further along if the goal is progress." (75:36)

5. Societal Impacts: Streaming and Mental Health

Netflix's Role in Modern Society
Jason Calacanis draws connections between the rise of streaming services like Netflix and societal issues such as increased rates of depression, anxiety, and declining labor participation. He suggests that the immersive and personalized nature of these platforms can lead to addictive behaviors and decreased real-world engagement (96:42).

Mental Health Concerns and Recommendations
David Sacks and Jason discuss the importance of balancing screen time with activities that promote mental well-being, such as exercise, diet, and meditation. They highlight the need for societal shifts to encourage more active and engaged lifestyles (102:04).

Notable Quotes:

• Jason Calacanis: "What didn't you do? Didn't work out, necessarily." (100:09)
• David Sacks: "Kids are substituting, whether it's TikTok or Netflix or YouTube time for time with their friends." (101:56)

6. Special Guest: Thomas Lafont

Introduction and Expertise
Thomas Lafont, co-founder of CO2 Management, joins the podcast to provide insights into the administration's executive orders and their implications for the tech and energy sectors. With a background in investing in Chinese technology companies, Thomas offers a unique perspective on US-China competition (03:19).

Crypto and AI Initiatives
As the newly appointed head of an internal working group for crypto and AI, Thomas outlines his role in shaping the US's strategy to become a global leader in these fields. He emphasizes the creation of the President's Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) to guide policy recommendations (111:35).

Notable Quotes:

• Thomas Lafont: "We want to be the world leader in crypto." (114:05)
• Thomas Lafont: "The AI order discusses this as well. We don't want AI models to be ideologically biased, have an agenda." (114:45)

Energy Infrastructure Advocacy
Thomas passionately advocates for accelerated investment in nuclear and renewable energy to support the burgeoning AI industry. He stresses that regulatory hurdles are the primary barriers to expanding the US's energy capacity (93:14).

Notable Quotes:

• Thomas Lafont: "If you say yes, what are you getting? Are you getting the algorithm? Are you getting data?" (39:27)
• Chamath Palihapitiya: "This is a national security imperative." (90:41)

7. Reflections and Takeaways

Hosts' Personal Insights
Each host shares their takeaways from President Trump's first week in office:

• Jason Calacanis: Observes a renewed collaboration between private industry and government, viewing it as a positive shift towards economic growth without playing favorites (17:37).

• Chamath Palihapitiya: Highlights the strategic reframing of the energy race with China, noting that the focus should be on the broader energy competition rather than just green energy (18:25).

• David Friedberg: Expresses concerns about long-term policy shifts, particularly regarding cost-cutting and deficit reduction, fearing that political incentives will hinder necessary economic reforms (21:34).

• David Sacks: Shares personal support for Trump’s platform, acknowledging both strengths and areas of disagreement, while emphasizing the importance of aligning private industry with national objectives (25:06).

Notable Quotes:

• David Friedberg: "I was just a little bit bitter. I hope I'm wrong." (21:35)
• David Sacks: "The President doesn't play favorites." (17:37)
• Jason Calacanis: "America's gonna turn a totally new page." (17:37)

8. Closing Remarks and Future Topics

Introduction of Future Discussions
The podcast concludes with the announcement of upcoming topics, including deep dives into semiconductor manufacturing with Hock Tan of Broadcom and the implications of the newly signed executive orders on crypto and AI.

Lighthearted Interactions
Hosts share humorous moments about the executive orders, such as Thomas being given a Sharpie pen from the President and playful banter about the dynamics within the White House (123:35).

Notable Quotes:

• Jason Calacanis: "The downside is the amount of time it takes to adequately build these things properly." (75:39)
• Thomas Lafont: "It's a remarkable moment." (117:02)

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Conclusion

This episode of the All-In Podcast provides an extensive analysis of President Trump's first week, covering the multitude of executive actions taken and their broader implications for technology, energy, and societal trends. With insightful contributions from guest Thomas Lafont, the hosts navigate complex topics such as US-China competition in AI and energy infrastructure, the strategic handling of TikTok, and the societal impacts of streaming services. The conversation blends strategic discourse with personal anecdotes, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of the unfolding political and economic landscape.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Jason Calacanis: "America's gonna turn a totally new page. We're not gonna ostracize people. We're not going to play favorites." (17:37)
• Chamath Palihapitiya: "We are in an idea business. And when you have a truly revolutionary idea, it can get really big." (34:13)
• Thomas Lafont: "We want to be the world leader in crypto." (114:05)
• David Sacks: "The President doesn't play favorites." (17:37)
• Jason Calacanis: "Spending more money doesn't necessarily get you further along if the goal is progress." (75:36)
• David Friedberg: "If you think the President can run this race without building nuclear, then he's a fool." (90:13)

For detailed insights and complete discussions, listeners are encouraged to tune into the full episode.

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Timestamps Reference

• 00:00 — Introduction and off-record dinner
• 07:09 — Fashion and behind-the-scenes photos
• 17:37 — Discussion on executive actions and not playing favorites
• 18:25 — Energy race reframing with China
• 21:34 — David Friedberg's take on cost-cutting policies
• 25:06 — David Sacks on Trump's platform support
• 31:36 — Executive Orders breakdown
• 33:37 — TikTok's grace period extension
• 34:13 — Chamath on TikTok's revolutionary ideas
• 35:49 — Detailed analysis of TikTok's US asset value
• 39:27 — Ownership and government involvement in TikTok
• 48:05 — Government's stake in private assets
• 50:06 — Discussion on DOGE's value and future
• 53:35 — Precedent set by TikTok for US companies abroad
• 55:00 — China's regulatory actions affecting US companies
• 75:36 — AI infrastructure funding and ROI questions
• 85:00 — AI and energy infrastructure dependency
• 90:13 — Nuclear power as a competitive edge
• 96:42 — Societal impacts of streaming services
• 100:09 — Mental health and screen time discussion
• 102:04 — Recommendations for mental well-being
• 112:37 — Thomas Lafont on AI and crypto initiatives
• 114:05 — Crypto initiative leadership
• 117:02 — Inauguration speech reflections
• 123:35 — Lighthearted interactions about executive orders

Note: Timestamps are approximate and based on provided transcript excerpts.

Transcript

[Jason Calacanis]

So we had a dinner where me and Friedberg and jcal were invited to have dinner with the folks from and their other top podcasters.

[David Sacks]

It was an off the record dinner. Let's talk all about it. There was an interesting moment which even Friedberg had to recognize, which was we went around and said, hey, what podcast are you listening to? Which ones are your favorites? We went around the room and I gotta tell you, you know what your podcaster's favorite podcast is?

[Jason Calacanis]

Bingo.

[David Sacks]

All in podcast.

[Jason Calacanis]

Well, the funniest thing is my wife thinks I'm bullshitting all the time. I say this is a mine too. Pretty reasonably successful and well, she doesn't believe it. She thinks we're all bull.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Why do you think I waited to make my world podcast premiere for? All in all, the ankle biters called and I said, no, I'm just gonna wait. I'm gonna wait till the besties call.

[Jason Calacanis]

Can we just say it, Nick? You gotta beef it up. When the podcast called, you're like, nope, can't do it.

[David Sacks]

I'm waiting for the real deal.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I don't need jv. Let your.

[David Sacks]

Rain man, David Sachs.

[Thomas Lafont]

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

[David Sacks]

Love you, West Heidi, Queen of Kenwa. All right, everybody, welcome back to the number one business, finance, technology, science podcast in the world. This is the place where we call balls and strikes, where we tell the truth, where there is zero censorship. Every week we tell you about the truth behind the most important stories. We point out who the heroes are and who the villains are. Who are the delightful ones and who are the disgrazia. With me again on this week's program, the cackling Chairman Dictator, My guy, Chamath Palihapati. How you doing? How was your victory lap? How was your victory?

[Jason Calacanis]

Really, really, really fun.

[David Sacks]

You look like you were in your afterglow. And I have to say, Nat was looking pretty good.

[Jason Calacanis]

We have some pictures, don't worry, we're going to go through behind the scenes in a second. That's our first.

[David Sacks]

Armani came through for Amore. The Amore collection from Armani coming this.

[Jason Calacanis]

Fall, by the way. I mean, Armani couture is like firing on all cylinders. The other one, which you'll see is a great picture of this incredible jacket. Luisa Beccaria. Two shout outs, Armani and Louisa Becker.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, you know, I was just thinking that Armani really has been making it happen.

[Jason Calacanis]

Now that we've talked about that, we'll talk about my wardrobe when the time comes. Just get through the rest of the introduction. All right, all right.

[David Sacks]

And of course, here he is, your sultan of science, David Friedberg.

[David Friedberg]

Move along, jk. Let's go, let's go.

[David Sacks]

We had a wonderful. He's very bitter today. He's got a lot of anger. He is the barista of bitterness today. He's serving up bitterness all day long. And he had a great time at the. Maybe he's a little upset about the Lex Friedman triangle we're in right now. I think that could be part of it. And we have a special guest here. Thomas Lafont is the co founder of CO2 management. They got a 50 billion under management, public, private, yada yada. Before that, he worked at Creative Artist Agency for seven years after he went to college. So he does have the college degree. He signed Captain America, which is Freeberg's favorite avenger.

[Jason Calacanis]

Chris Evans.

[David Sacks]

Chris Evans. And has Freebie CAA client, by the way. Yes. And you're still in touch with him?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I am not.

[David Sacks]

You're not.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

But I've watched with wonder at what he's achieved after I left being his agent. It's been incredible. Great career.

[David Sacks]

Now behind you we see this. Incredible.

[Jason Calacanis]

You're missing the one part which is that Thomas was one of the highest rated speakers that we had at the all in summit.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, that's true. Actually. He did really great last year.

[Jason Calacanis]

Really crushed it.

[David Sacks]

Crushed it, crushed it. Of course.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And I think I'm in the seventh bestie position and hoping potentially after the podcast to at least move up by one.

[David Sacks]

Okay, there you go. Let's see what happens here. Now. What's this view behind you?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

This is Los Angeles.

[David Friedberg]

I definitely put you ahead of jcal, Thomas. So you're. Wow, you're up the spot.

[David Sacks]

Oh, my God.

[David Friedberg]

He really is serving up the bitterness today.

[Jason Calacanis]

So mad.

[David Sacks]

He's so mad.

[Jason Calacanis]

You know why? You know why he's mad? I'll tell you why. Because, okay, this is for the audience. Jason is complaining all week in the group chat that he has influenza A. He's sending pictures of him getting IVs. And so Freeberg, the conscientious guy and co founder of the pod that he is, says, I will moderate. And. And then he invests his time. Okay, he's got a lot of things going on. He's got.

[David Sacks]

He does potatoes, three kids plus one.

[Jason Calacanis]

He's running a company, Strawberries. He prepares. And then you wake up after a dose of Tamiflu and decide, no, I'm ready to moderate.

[David Sacks]

Of course.

[Jason Calacanis]

And you can't just do that. Because it's not nice.

[David Sacks]

All right. Hey, Madame Producer, can you come on the horn for a second here? Are we really going to do this?

[Jason Calacanis]

Yes, we are.

[David Sacks]

We're going to do it. We're doing it, Madame.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

This is so stupid.

[David Sacks]

Papa Booie. Did I tell you to get Freeberg involved? No, no, I did it myself. Ok, you went rogue. Can I say why you can go rogue? I'm fine. I said, hey, Jason, how are you feeling?

[Jason Calacanis]

You said, horrible.

[David Sacks]

I have the flu. I'm getting an IV tomorrow morning.

[Jason Calacanis]

To me that was like, oh, okay.

[David Sacks]

There's like a 50% chance he misses the show. So I reached out to Freberg. I said, hey, Jason's really sick with the flu. Maybe you should just prepare yourself to moderate tomorrow. Okay. Now, when did I find out about this? When did I find out?

[Jason Calacanis]

I think that was a smart decision. But you, sir, are a small, bitter man. And so what you did was you wanted to just blow. Yeah. You wanted to blow up Friedberg's preparation.

[David Sacks]

I found out about this this morning. I found out about this like an hour ago.

[Jason Calacanis]

How are you feeling?

[David Sacks]

I feel 80% of a normal JCAL, which is 110% of any other moderator. I mean, get yourself Andrew Rorsorkin. Oh, I'm sorry. He's genuflecting at Davos to a bunch of mids.

[Jason Calacanis]

Well, we're gonna get Lex soon, so. We're gonna get Lex soon.

[David Sacks]

Oh, that'd be great. Hello, I am Lex Friedman. Welcome to the number one podcast in the world today. On the program we have Thomas Lafon, investor in such great companies as. All right, listen, enough shenanigans. We had so much fun we tore DC apart.

[Jason Calacanis]

Let's start with actually just Thomas. Did you watch any of it on tv? Did you think about going? It was really like there were so many tech people in Washington this weekend.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I saw the livestream. I talked to Sacks last night to get the download and my takeaway just from watching especially the executive orders was democracy in action. Democracy self correct and dictatorships double down. And to watch in real time, a country of our scale and a democracy decide to make a change. I think that's why we've been great for 250 plus years and will remain great. So it was fun to watch. I'm really curious to see what your takeaway was.

[Jason Calacanis]

Okay, well, we'll just go behind the scenes. First of all, it's hard to see that this was me dressed up for Sax's ball. I really brought the heat. This is by the Way. Luca Rubenacci is the tailor here. It's hard to see. Is that a jacket?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Blue coat.

[Jason Calacanis]

So this is what I'm saying. I think the picture is very hard to see, but it's a very refined green paisley.

[David Sacks]

Ooh, subtle.

[Jason Calacanis]

Hard to bring it out. Now I will say this was the most popular shirt over the entire weekend. This is just a simple Brioni tuxedo shirt. It was 200 versions of it. I felt bad when I saw. Cause normally I don't like to wear things that other people are wearing.

[David Sacks]

Correct. What did Michael Saylor think of this when you saw Michael Saylor at the. At the. You know, I met.

[Jason Calacanis]

I met Michael, cfo. Wonderfully nice guy. So this is us at the. This is us at the crypto ball.

[David Friedberg]

I. I went for white tuxedo on the first night. I've never had three tuxedos before, but they were.

[Jason Calacanis]

David looked. David looked really great. I really love. David looked like. And Saks had this incredible tux, which was more crypto themed. It sort of looked like the opening scene from the Matrix. So there was like this cool print. You can see my green in there a little bit. Thomas.

[David Sacks]

Okay.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yep. Yeah, got it.

[Jason Calacanis]

There's sky and new money. Sunny, the President of GROK.

[David Sacks]

Sandeep Madra X.com Sandeep Here are the besties.

[Jason Calacanis]

Here are the besties.

[David Sacks]

Let's be honest, guys. Even in all your bitterness, Freeberg, you felt the love at this moment when we were all back together, did you not?

[David Friedberg]

Well, in about five minutes before this, when the three of us took a photo. It was great. Yeah.

[David Sacks]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

Okay.

[David Sacks]

Great that he's so bitter. Do you want to let you moderate? You can moderate if you want. If you're that. No, no.

[David Friedberg]

You're doing a great job, J Cal. You're keeping us on track. We're 18 minutes into this and we're doing fashion still Sky.

[Jason Calacanis]

Diego Burdekin, the co founder of Cloud Kitchens.

[David Sacks]

Oh, so handsome. That Diego for a second.

[David Friedberg]

This is the crypto ball.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, this was the crypto ball. This is like. This is Sachs's event. It was incredible.

[David Sacks]

It was a large number of people there. I was shocked at the number of people at the crypto.

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh, it was huge. Next level. Here's a little poker afterwards.

[David Friedberg]

Behind the scenes with Pinkish tk Travis.

[Jason Calacanis]

Klein is the co founder, the founder of Uber.

[David Sacks]

Oh, look, that's the founder.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Hold on. We gotta see who's got the biggest stack.

[David Sacks]

Look, it's the founder of Uber next to the third investor in Uber. And the founder of Cloud Kitchens. Next to the investor in.

[Jason Calacanis]

This is Peter Thiel's house. This is Katie Han and Kyle Samani, my wife and Kyle's wife, Amore. This is at Peter's house. Peter had this. Peter Thiel had this person going around taking pictures.

[David Sacks]

Not good lighting for you powder there. This was great.

[Jason Calacanis]

Also Peter Thiel's house.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, that was great. I have to say, Chamath, putting aside.

[David Friedberg]

Jason likes being a Republican.

[Jason Calacanis]

Here's a dinner that we had. There's Lex Friedman, Julius Genachowski, who's the former chairman of the fcc.

[David Sacks]

Little known Brad Gerstner, the former roommate of Obama.

[David Friedberg]

That's by the way, following this dinner, all those streets were blocked off and there was no way to get around.

[David Sacks]

You see it there? Look. You see the barricades?

[David Friedberg]

It was like 10 degrees Fahrenheit. So we walk out.

[David Sacks]

Yes, it's terrible.

[David Friedberg]

It was like you were gonna die. After two seconds out there, it was so cold. Vinny and I started walking to try and like, get our car. And after walking for like half a mile, we're like, dude, there's no way out of this downtown area. And Vinny was shaking. He's like, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die. He turns around, he goes running back to the restaurant, jumps in, and basically like huddles down in the restaurant. And then after about 10 minutes, there's no way out. He's like, you know, it's sort of like you're in a military zone. He's like, I'm gonna go for it. He runs out, jumps on a scooter, and he disappeared into the distance. And I swore I would never see Vinny again. I'm like, that's it.

[Jason Calacanis]

I think it's very smart that Lex wears the same outfit. The black suit with the white shirt with the black tie. I really like the consistency of it. Actually. It looks really good.

[David Sacks]

It was incredible. He was getting stopped. Here's Armani in two minutes. It was unbelievable.

[Jason Calacanis]

Here's the jacket. This is Luisa Beccaria. And then here's the box from Armani. Thank you.

[David Sacks]

Unboxing.

[David Friedberg]

Whoa.

[David Sacks]

Wawa. We wah.

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh, look, there's a little side boob there with Nat. I didn't notice that. That's. This is. I'm wearing Tom Ford shout out.

[David Sacks]

Tom Ford shout out to you. Perfect male form.

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh, here's a huge shout out to two guys that I had really wanted to meet in person. I finally got the chance to meet. This is at Zuck's party. This is Brendan Carr, who's the incoming chairman of the fcc. Actually this picture was taken right after he had gotten confirmed. So this was his first day as the chairman. And then this is a guy who I've been following for a couple of years, Jared Isaacman, who is now going to run NASA. He's the founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments. But both of these guys are pretty epic. You should follow them on Twitter.

[David Friedberg]

He did a spacewalk, the first civilian spacewalk he did.

[Jason Calacanis]

He's really, really impressed.

[David Friedberg]

Brendan was really nice. I met him at Peter's event and he told me he's a big fan of the pod. He listens to show everywhere.

[Jason Calacanis]

Brendan amazing. I mean, by the way, if you want to see like some really amazing tweets, he had some real bangers. He's a very smart guy.

[David Sacks]

He's. I've had Brendan on this week in startups a couple times. He's the guy who fought for Starlink.

[Jason Calacanis]

That's right.

[David Sacks]

Over wasting 5, 10, $20,000 per home to install broadband. I mean this guy's a hero. And he did that when he was in office under Biden and all that crazy corruption and grift.

[Jason Calacanis]

This is a picture of Mike Johnson and his wife. This is a crazy story. So there was a G7 summit in Italy and Mike and his wife was seated beside my father in law, Nat's dad, at a dinner. They got to know each other. He as a proud grandpa showed Mike and his wife pictures of Nat and myself and our kids and how we actually met in this moment was his wife was like oh my God, I recognize you. You're Sergio's son in law. You're Sergio's daughter. It's amazing. And then we had a cool conversation. So that was cool. And then this is Bill Pulte who is nominated to run fhfa which for folks that know will be in control of the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And really great guy. Also a co investor with me and MrBeast. Nat.

[David Sacks]

Oh, you're an investor in Mr. Beast.

[Jason Calacanis]

There you go. This is Mr. I did the Series A.

[David Sacks]

This is the first time I think.

[Jason Calacanis]

You'Ve said here's this thing. So this is where JCAL is at his peak. Go ahead Nick, just play the video.

[David Sacks]

I don't even know what this is.

[Jason Calacanis]

Go. What? What is that? What, what did you order?

[David Sacks]

All right, I've given it some thought and I'm going to order the $95. Do ordering the $95 do I mean, having such a great time tearing it up. I did order the $95 Dover Show.

[Jason Calacanis]

This is. Oh, sorry. Oh, that's me and Bobby Kennedy. But this is. This is walking into the Capitol for the inauguration.

[David Sacks]

Oh, wow.

[Jason Calacanis]

So basically, you have to get off all these buses were taking us in because of the security. And then you walk underneath and underground to get into the. And this is Bobby. And the guy right there, Callie, means another great American. Make America healthy again.

[David Sacks]

All right, here's a couple of my picks. This is me with somebody who's gonna be in the administration. I'm not big on politics, but Tulsi Gabbard is. Tulsi Gabbard.

[Jason Calacanis]

She's so strong. She came to our party. I like her. This is the picture of our party. She is incredible.

[David Sacks]

When she came up to me and she, you know, you can always tell who a real fan is, and she came up. I just want to tell you, Jake Howe, I am a huge fan of the pod. I love what you do. I love the balance you bring to the program. She really liked new details about the podcast, and so I wanted to get a picture with her. So as a joke, I said to her, do you want to take a selfie? I said, I'm okay with the selfie. She goes, I was going to ask. I was like, nah, I'm preemptively asking. We took it together.

[Jason Calacanis]

She's such a funny star.

[David Sacks]

I think she's going to be great. I like her a lot.

[Jason Calacanis]

She's such a star.

[David Friedberg]

Oh, well.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, this is.

[Jason Calacanis]

Hello, I am Lex Friedman.

[David Sacks]

Today, with love and peace in my heart, I am interviewing dictator IDI Amin, who has eaten half of his enemies. We will share love, kindness, and a fatty liver.

[Jason Calacanis]

Enjoy.

[David Sacks]

So, yeah, that was us just tearing it up after the YouTube party where we hung out with Sundar and Neil from YouTube. They've been very good to us. And then here's one more. I guess we have one more.

[Jason Calacanis]

And golfer Bryson Dechambeau.

[David Sacks]

Oh, there's me. And the presidente of Twitter. And, yeah, this is the podcast crew at the Free Press party.

[David Friedberg]

Okay, let's talk about key takeaways. Chamath, what is your big takeaway from the weekend?

[Jason Calacanis]

I think my biggest takeaway is that if you look in the past, there was a very tight coordination, I guess I would say, between private industry and the private sector, and the public sector, meaning the president and then people who were in charge of managing huge, vast swaths of resources in America. And somewhere along the way, that became either unfashionable and uncool, particularly under Democrats. And what I saw was a very broad based embrace of business people because I think that the president understands how important it is to make sure that economically America is just firing on all cylinders. The one thing to remember, for example, in the inauguration, I know that you saw the picture and it was basically like Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, Tesla, kind of CEOs, et cetera. Founders Arnault was there, Mukesh Ambani was there. So it's just business people from the entire world were there. And so I think what it says is America's gonna basically turn a totally new page. We're not gonna ostracize people. We're not going to play favorites. That's the other thing. Elon was there right at the beginning, but if you saw all the CEOs of the major companies were there. It's not like he excluded Zuck because of his past issues or anything.

[David Friedberg]

Or Sam Altman.

[Jason Calacanis]

Or Sam Altman. That was the biggest.

[David Sacks]

That would be the more notable one.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah.

[David Sacks]

To exclude.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. That the President doesn't play favorites. That this is Team America kind of thing. And it was a projection of tremendous power to the rest of the world. This is what America's about. I loved every minute of it. And I think that this is exactly how the American government should be working, which is hand in hand with private industry to basically set the pace for the rest of the world.

[David Sacks]

Thomas, did you have a takeaway after the weekend?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I did. I'm curious what you guys thought, but to me, what was notable from Scott Besant, the new Treasury Secretary? He was asked in one of the exchanges about the green energy race with China. And he reframed the debate, I thought incredibly well, where he said, we're not in a green energy race with China, we're in an energy race with China.

[David Friedberg]

That's right.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Right. And he made the point that China is adding 100 coal plants, it's adding nuclear. And to me, it was kind of.

[David Friedberg]

Just 137 gigawatt hydro facility, which is exactly unbelievable.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And it was such a good framing of the debate because I think chamath to your point, it's about reframing the right issues. And I think that just that little piece of dialogue to me is exemplified and was a really important takeaway and I think more of what we'll see over the next coming year.

[David Sacks]

Freiburg, did you have a takeaway coming out of this?

[David Friedberg]

There was just so much. It was so impressive to be there. I definitely echo the sentiment about seeing the strength of America represented between the entrepreneurial engine that has driven this country for 250 years and the government that's meant to serve the people working together to try and take America forward. It was just really inspiring. The one thing that was the biggest kind of observation for me, which was a bit of a disappointment, unfortunately, is I feel like Doge and cost cutting is going to be a lot harder to realize than folks assume. Nearly everyone I met with who works in government or is entering government had this, if not disdain for Doge, a concern that it doesn't really align interests with the political objectives of politicians, that they need to get more stuff for their constituents in order to get reelected, and that they're not going to vote programs away, they're not going to vote themselves out of a job, which is effectively what they would do if they cut programs. In fact, I was watching Brooke Rollins, Secretary Ag Confirmation hearing this morning, and Mitch O'Connell was given the opportunity to ask her questions. You know what his question was? He said, in the last farm bill, I was able to get $60 million to build an ag research lab at the University Kentucky, and it hasn't started being built yet. It's been four years. What are you going to do about that? This is literally the intention of so many of these conversations. If you sit and watch. And then I watched a similar conversation with a senator from Minnesota who, you know, I won't get into all the statements, but every single conversation you hear, and we even talk with Ted Cruz about this is all.

[David Sacks]

He was great, by the way. I love Ted Cruz.

[David Friedberg]

It's all about. It's all about what can I get for my constituents, how do I get more jobs and how do I get more money? And ultimately, that incentive is what gets people elected. And I don't think it's going to change. And so that was the biggest kind of shock for me. I thought that there was a moment of the importance of cost cutting, the importance of debt deficit reduction, the importance of debt reduction. And I was just a little saddened to kind of see that there's no stop in the train. So that was my takeaway. It's a little bit bitter. I hope I'm wrong. I really do hope DOGE is effective, and I really do hope that policymakers start to recognize the importance. By the way, Ray Dalio has a new book coming out. We'll talk more about his book once it's released publicly. But it speaks very clearly to the challenge the United States is now facing with respect to spending. So I know I've talked about this. I know we all felt like there was a big reprieve with this election, but for me, it was a little bit bittersweet.

[Jason Calacanis]

Can I say a little bit on that first topic? I just want to double down on that, because one of the things that some folks said, and I guess it makes sense now that you think about it, but when you look at the confirmation hearings, there are certain folks for whom the resource allocation is relatively modest inside of America. They tend to just do much better in general. And if you saw Marco Rubio's confirmation process, there was, you know, it was like 99 to 0. Right. And to your point, what. What they say is that folks that actually allocate the internal spending in the United States gets a lot more scrutiny because there's all of this horse trading because they want some of this money to get allocated into their specific area. It is going to be a very complicated thing. The one thing, though, that changed, I don't know if you saw, but DOGE was meant to be outside the auspices of the government, and it wasn't actually a government department. And it'll be interesting to understand when it's explained. But in the 11th hour, the EO that established Doge established it actually as a governmental agency.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, we're going to get into that in just a moment. And to build on your point there, Dave, Senator Sanders had a tweet today, Nick. I just sent it to you already. The discussion of who should take the brunt of these cuts is starting to happen. And he's pointing out, you know, as he should, and, you know, hey, what's going to happen with the va? And you're, you're putting a freeze on hiring people. We have to make sure our vets are taken care of. We have a shortage of doctors, a shortage of nurses. But we do have people, you know, responding to him, saying, hey, how are we going to pay for all this? So even if it's going to be hard to do, it's going to take courage because you're going to be faced with situations like this. Where does anybody want to see the VA's budget cut? And these veterans who are coming back, they should get all the services in the world. And these hard discussions are now happening, and it's not taboo. So the Overton Window is wide open now to discuss even the budget of the VA and where is the money going to come from? So I think we're actually going to make progress on it. This was like a sacred cow, and now we're talking about it to the to Bernie Sanders point. I don't know if you saw there was a note on there, Nick. Community notes pointed out that Trump put that none of the cuts should impact vets. And so I thought that was a good use of community notes there.

[Jason Calacanis]

The one comment I'll say about Bernie Sanders is when Russ Vogt, who is the nominee to run omb, went through his confirmation yesterday, Sanders asked a similar question around Medicare and Medicaid. And what was interesting is Russ tried to actually answer the question and give the details around where there can be waste, fraud and abuse. Sanders really didn't want to hear it. He just wanted a soundbite. So I think these confirmation processes are performative. They're hugely performative. Yes, I do think that and this applies, I think, to both sides, Democrats as well, when they are eventually in power. I think that when you're given a very clear mandate as a president, I think you should be able to get to pick your team because it's clear that the American people have voted an agenda. It's not like he hid that agenda. And so the people that then want to implement that agenda should be put on the field.

[David Sacks]

It seems like the point of these should be if somebody could get compromised or there was something really gnarly in their background. But otherwise, yeah, let people build their team and then they have to own their results.

[Jason Calacanis]

Tell us about your feelings and takeaways about the weekend.

[David Sacks]

Well, you know, it's obviously mixed. I was a never Trumper and now I am rooting for him wholeheartedly to do great work. You know, for me.

[Jason Calacanis]

You kind of like him. Come on. You do kind of like him.

[David Sacks]

I mean, anybody who's met anybody who's interacted with Trump likes.

[Jason Calacanis]

Before you go, your diatribe, just say it. Just say you like him.

[David Sacks]

There are aspects I like about the platform. I like probably 80% of the platform. And I will tell you today, the 20% I don't like, I'm always going to call balls and strike.

[Jason Calacanis]

No, no, but you take away. You kind of like him. Just say you kind of like him. You do like him.

[David Sacks]

I like 80% of his platform this time around.

[Jason Calacanis]

No, him. Him as a person.

[David Sacks]

You know, there's things I really don't like and I'll talk about them today. But anyway, let's put it aside. The personal thing doesn't matter. What matters is what he does for the American people.

[Jason Calacanis]

Because you like him. I know you can't say it yet, but they're deep down Inside you like Jake has. You're happy to be there until you.

[David Sacks]

Have to say, I had a lot of fun. Jkow brings the heat to a party.

[Jason Calacanis]

Republicans are fun.

[David Sacks]

I will say Republicans are fun. Fashion was off the hook.

[Jason Calacanis]

Off the hook.

[David Sacks]

A lot of great fashion and it was great.

[Jason Calacanis]

Make America beautiful again. My gosh. I mean, listen, no more jogging pants and white fox. Get rid of it. Burn it to the ground.

[David Sacks]

What I'll say my takeaway was as somebody who had concerns and I'm not going to make the show about me, but the important thing for me is who is Trump going to lead with this time around? Is it going to be the people from the sort of 1.0 movement or the 2.0 movement? There was not a 1.0 person.

[Jason Calacanis]

Couldn't be found.

[David Sacks]

Couldn't be.

[Jason Calacanis]

Couldn't be found.

[David Sacks]

And so like on the margin one or two, and they were not the focus. And who you put in the front row speaks volumes. Who'd he put in the front row? Sundar, Elon Zuck, Lawrence Sanchez. He's got his priorities straight here. The priorities were very clear as to what's important for this administration. And I'm fully behind all of his priorities. Both of those priorities. All those priorities seem incredibly important to me.

[Jason Calacanis]

You said control.

[David Sacks]

I mean, I don't want to draw too much, but that's the big takeaway for me. And if that is, you know, indicative of where he wants to go with this, which is business first. We're proud of our leaders, we're proud of innovation. I think he's sticking to it. Did you see him at Davos today? He did a. I mean, this guy's got, you know, just crazy energy.

[Jason Calacanis]

Who?

[David Sacks]

Malay Trump zoomed into Davos and just dunked on them for 45 minutes.

[Jason Calacanis]

He did, yes.

[David Sacks]

And he just destroyed everybody at their dying conference in their irrelevance as they genuflected, begging him to come next year.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Did you see the photo of the half empty conference room to. Yes. Most of the events were just empty chairs.

[David Sacks]

It's irrelevant. I mean, these people are irrelevant.

[Jason Calacanis]

Now, Thomas, you guys remember when Davos used to be a really big deal? Is it dead?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I think it's worse. Chamath. I think it's a counter indicator now.

[David Friedberg]

It is. And there was a good conversation yesterday. Graham Allison, who spoke at our summit, was on this panel and they basically said we lost. They won. Our group here at Davos lost. It's over. And they're no longer, to your point, on the right side of History. They said we had a point of view on the future. We believe we were going in the right direction. And everyone told us in this last couple of months that we were wrong.

[Jason Calacanis]

The gentleman, by the way, that spoke after Graham, watch, this is also very good.

[David Sacks]

This is incredible. This is the greatest comeback in political history of a politician. And then therefore he thinks he can do anything. We need to also factor in not only who's won, which is Trump, but who's lost, which is to say us.

[David Friedberg]

And then he has a whole. The guy has a whole long monologue on why they lost and what they lost, which I think is pretty relevant that that kind of elite, if you will, has been replaced with a populist vote and a populist leader.

[David Sacks]

All right, let's get to our docket today and just want to give a special shout out. We did our inauguration livestream and it was awesome and fun. Special thanks to air call Abra and Hims. Thomas, if you've ever got an issue with weight or other issues that men have, you can go to hims and use the code all in to get something hims.com all in. I want you to write that down, Thomas. Okay. In case you ever have any issues.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What makes you think I haven't already?

[David Sacks]

Well, it's. Anything's possible. Like, I mean, maybe we could talk. I mean, are you on the chews or the pills? Which. Anyway, we'll talk about it offline. But that's a full head of hair.

[Jason Calacanis]

It is a really incredible head of hair.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Thank you. All natural, baby.

[Jason Calacanis]

What product you put in it?

[David Sacks]

Yeah, do you put sea salt or you got pumice?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What are you doing all in one? All in one Prow shampoo plus conditioner, one bottle, easy.

[Jason Calacanis]

But you don't, you don't use any product afterwards?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

None.

[David Sacks]

Jesus. Do you blow yourself or do you have it blown? It's a question both.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

But in this case, it's, you know, like Cuba Gooding in Jerry Maguire. I. Air dry, baby.

[David Sacks]

Oh, air dry. Gotcha. So when you're driving to that Santa Monica office, you just put the top down on whatever convertible, living that full lifestyle. Okay.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. This is where I do have to admit, unfortunately, after you appeared on the summit, I had all these women, they were like, oh, my God, Thomas Lafont is so good looking. And I was like, no, he's not. Because I'm very competitive in zero sum when other men around me. But you were the smash hit. And then I figured out it must be the hair and also the glasses. I Think the glasses were a huge hit. It looked very Clark Kentish.

[David Sacks]

Are they real glasses or you just wear the clear ones to get the actual intelligence points?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Only time I've ever been been stopped in the street in my life in the Presidio, a very nice lady tapped me in the shoulder and said, I loved your all in talk. It's never happened before. So that says more about all in than me. But the reach is increasing.

[David Sacks]

It's a little.

[David Friedberg]

By the way, shout out to Akash Singh, who joined us on the live.

[David Sacks]

Oh, yes, Akash was hilarious. Thank you, Akash. Filling in our DEI department. We lost Chamath and they sent Akash. So he did great.

[Jason Calacanis]

Get him back to guest host.

[David Sacks]

Absolutely.

[David Friedberg]

Yeah. There's a moderator slot open, so he's going to be.

[Jason Calacanis]

Absolutely.

[David Sacks]

If you know anybody who knows science. All right, in our first topic, President Trump smashed the record for day one executive orders. 26 in all, beating the prior record of nine by Uncle Joe Biden. No other president signed more than one EO in day one since the Federal Register started tracking this in 1937. Let's go through them. If you want to comment on one, we'll stop and pause. Or we can just run through them. Gentlemen, DOGE officially was established and people are making note of the DOGE SWAT team. DOGE will assign an agency head to each federal agency. The agency head will build a four person team. This will include an engineer, an HR specialist and an attorney. It was separately announced that Vivek. Hmm. Was leaving DOGE to run for governor of Ohio. Fascinating. Interesting. I don't know if anybody's got a take there. They suspended the TikTok ban for 75 days. There's a lot more to get into this, so we're gonna break that down a little later.

[David Friedberg]

Let's talk about TikTok.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, okay, we'll go right to that in a minute. The January 6th pardons. They pardoned 1500 January 6th participants, including some that savagely beat cops. Very controversial. We'll get back to that in a moment. Ending birthright citizenship. This is a controversial one that is being fought legally. Those born in the US to illegal immigrants would no longer be considered citizens. If this holds up, the birthright citizenship is codified in the 14th Amendment. And 22 state attorney generals have already sued over this executive order. So it might be a performative one. Energy. Unleashing American energy. We're going to jump into that one for sure. And then federal employees, a hiring freeze and a full return to office. And the hiring freeze doesn't apply to military, immigration enforcement or public safety and then a regulatory freeze on regulations. Gentlemen, where do we Want to start January 6th? TikTok. Doge TikTok. Thomas, you're our guest. Where do you want to start?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I'm happy to chat about TikTok.

[David Sacks]

Okay. As we mentioned earlier, Trump extended TikTok's grace period by 75 days. Trump said he wants to get a deal done. He also said at a press conference that he'd like the US to own 50% of TikTok and that it could be a trillion dollar asset. That's unique and interesting. He was also positive about the idea of Elon possibly buying it or maybe Larry Ellison or anybody. So he wants to make a deal. What are your thoughts, Thomas, on what should happen with TikTok and what will happen?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I don't know what will happen, but I do think it'd be interesting to share. You guys, we are investors in TikTok. We invested back. It was obviously just a Chinese company, and investing in China was very different back then. But what resonated to me when I met the founder and he just had a very simple idea, which is his view was, if I have a piece of content and it's a great piece of content, how can I have it be shared? And his view was that if you share it on Instagram, the only way people see it is if you had a, you know, a lot of followers. And so he just had a really simple idea and he said, what if I take every piece of content that's uploaded into the system and I show it to at least one other user? So no matter what that content is, at least one person will see it, even if you have no followers. And then based on whether that person views it or how long, I might show it to another user and then a third and a fourth. And it was such a revolutionary idea and it really resonated with me at the time. And it just goes to show how we're in an idea business. And when you have a truly revolutionary idea, it can get really big. And so the whole genesis of TikTok came from that really simple concept of your content will be shown, and if people like it, it will be shown to a lot of people. So obviously, I mean, if you look at TikTok in the US we can just kind of very back of the envelope, look at the math, right? So if we look at Daus, Mother Blue or Meta, as we love to know, the Facebook hat roughly has about 200 million DAUs in the DAUs Daily.

[David Sacks]

Active Users for folks who don't know the terminology.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, correct. Right. So if you look at Facebook Flints, Instagram, you'll see it's about 200 million DAUs. And you can look at the time spent. What's interesting about TikTok's time spent is the DAUs are about half of combined Meta and Insta. So we get about 100 million DAUs in the US but the time spent on the platform is the equivalent of Facebook plus Instagram. So obviously incredible, not just scale in terms of DAUs, but also on time spent. So if we think about, okay, well what would that mean the business is worth? So if we look at Meta today, the market cap is roughly one and a half trillion. I think Internet investors generally assume about roughly half the market cap is us. So if we take the one and a half trillion, maybe that's 750 billion right? Now we know that the time spent is equivalent, but the DAUs are half. So maybe we cut the 750 in half. Right? That would tell you that the max value would, you know, if you monetize the way Meta does and ran it the way Zuck does, might be 375 billion for the US asset alone. I think from that point you kind of start to apply a couple discounts, right? One is, if that's my kind of long term value, what kind of return would an investor want potentially to get to that? 375, is it 50%? So maybe you cut that by 50% and then I think the devil would be in the details. What exactly are you getting? Are you just getting users? Are you getting the algorithm? Are you getting data? Maybe you also want to apply a more severe discount to that. But I think you put it all together, you know, is 100 billion a reasonable scenario? You know, I think the math proves it. And then could it be a trillion dollar asset the way Trump has mentioned? I mean in a world where Facebook's one and a half, right, and the penetration of TikTok in the US is 50% of what meta is, I don't think it's unrealistic. So let's see what happens. I don't have any particular insight on what will happen, but what I do know is that it's an incredibly valuable franchise.

[David Sacks]

So let me ask you the obvious question. People are looking at this and saying, wait, you're going to take 50% of your shares and in this case we actually have somebody here who has shares. So are you comfortable with the government seizing 50% of your shares, I guess, is one way to frame it.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well, I don't know. I mean, first of all, there's kind of no deal. So it's a little bit hard, I.

[David Sacks]

Can tell you, that deal he proposed. So if, in that scenario, would you. Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

We never attributed much value to the, you know, the TikTok US asset in the sense of our. Our analysis was always based on the value of the Chinese business, specifically because it's just hard to know what the, you know, the TikTok asset, X China, would be worth. Right. Is it worth zero because it's so compromised regulatorily, is it worth a lot more? It's just very, very difficult to know. So we always took a very kind of conservative view of really looking at the Chinese and some of the other assets as the core value of ByteDance, the holding company. Ultimately, what TikTok happens, I mean, it's the classic when you try and sell a company, what's the value? Where it depends, is there one bidder or five bidders? Is the government the only bidder for that asset? In that case, it will indicate a value of X. Or are there other companies that potentially could be an acceptable bidder to both sides?

[David Sacks]

Well, the Trump deal, though, is he's saying the government, the United States government, the citizens of America, would get half of the company. So that would be the equivalent of you giving your shares the US Company. Yeah. So what do you think of this proposal? Because this seems like, unique in all the world. So if in order to have it spin out and maintain half your shares, would you be willing to give all of us, the government, the citizens of the United States, half your shares?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well, I mean, if you think about it, what, what, what did we learn a couple days ago? Yeah, we learned that it might just get shut down and be worth zero. Right. So in one sense, anything that's greater than zero by definition is kind of better. Right. I think ultimately it will kind of come down to, does the government want to be the only bidder for the asset, or would the comfortable. Would the government be comfortable with either Elon owning it and merging it to X or Microsoft owning it or, you know, what do you mean private equity?

[David Friedberg]

Well, Thomas, let me ask you a question. Can you just tell the audience a little bit about. Because you guys have been involved as investors in China for a long time, I would love for you to share behind the scenes what has gone on with respect to being an investor in China, in technology over the last couple of years. What has changed and why and what goes on Today you guys made a fantastic investment in ByteDance, which is the parent company of TikTok. You've made other incredible investments in China. Are you still investing in China? If not, walk us through what happened and why.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I think if you look, David, most of our, virtually all of our investments in China were Chinese companies catering to the Chinese market. Right, right. And there was a massive trend of a very significant economy that was adopting technology. Right. And so we can think about whether that be smartphones, companies like, you know, Huawei, whether it was companies like Meituan that were doing food delivery or Tencent that were doing gaming. And so, you know, all our approach was basically based on these companies. And by the way, a lot of them were public, which is what people don't remember. Chamath, you may remember, but Tencent at one point was a public company listed in Hong Kong. The market cap was 200 million.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, I do remember.

[David Sacks]

So, wow.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What was interesting about it, Dave, is a lot of that played out. Baidu was an early ipo. Right. So a lot of that trend of Chinese companies catering to the Chinese market really kind of played out across public and private markets for over 20 years.

[David Friedberg]

Yep.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I think to me what's significantly changed over the past five years is technology really became a matter of national security. And I don't think that when we were early investors in Meituan that we necessarily viewed that as a national security threat as an example. And I think as companies got bigger, as AI came to be, it became pretty obvious that there were national security implications. And our view as investors is we don't set the rules of the road, we rely on government and regulators to do so. It was pretty clear, I think, to obvious that the regulatory regimes were changing in both countries. And so for us as investors, we were just, well, we're just going to follow what the rules are and what the governments are. So my only regret through this whole thing is, and I don't know if you guys had some exposure to this, but the quality of the entrepreneurs that came out of that era was unbelievable.

[David Sacks]

Strong cohort.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, absolutely. When you think about the founder of Meituan, Wang Shi, and just how brilliant he was and what he's done with that franchise and not just doing food delivery, but also the software operating system for restaurants. Right. It's truly incredible. Pony Ma from Tencent. Right. It was such an incredible group of entrepreneurs. They were a lot of fun to be around. They were excited and passionate about bringing technology to their country.

[David Friedberg]

Is it over? Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Hard to know if you look at the capital markets. You can see we've not seen a tremendous amount of innovation or new companies coming out. So I think the key question is, is it a pendulum? And does the Chinese regulatory regime kind of move one way and then it kind of moves another way, or is it kind of fixed in this state?

[David Friedberg]

Is it your, Reid, is it correct to say that the CCP wanted to stop this extraordinary wealth creation by a subset of individuals in the country, that this was kind of becoming too much of a capitalist, enterprising system and challenged some of the foundations of the ccp? Is that what was going on and why this all got throttled back? I mean, is there or is there something else, some other kind of, you know, security regime?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I don't really know, Dave, because as an investor, it's, you know, it's not a regulatory regime that you have any interaction with. Right? You're really talking to the entrepreneurs and you're kind of reflecting off of their energy and their business ideas, right? So we would meet businesses and we would meet founders, and if. If the idea was kind of interesting to us, we would kind of fund it. Right?

[David Sacks]

So it's a black box in some ways. You know, in terms of a market to invest in, you only have a limited amount of information. And after Jack, I mean, you got to think, after Jack, Ma kind of disappeared for a couple of years. If you're an entrepreneur and you want.

[Jason Calacanis]

To, like, the message was sent, the.

[David Sacks]

Message was sent, message received. And then you start thinking about Chamath. You know, what Trump just did and what Xi Jinping just did. You put those two things together. Trump put all of our top guys, top dogs on stage here.

[Jason Calacanis]

They are the exact opposite of China. The message is very clear, and it's what Thomas said. Technology is a national security imperative. And so we're going to embrace these guys. We're not going to play favorites. We're not going to pick one and not the other. We're not going to have summits and have the founder of an entire category not be invited. That's just. Honestly, it's patently stupid and immature. And that's what the Biden administration did, picked favorites. And that is dumb. Based on the implication and importance of technology. I just want to go Back to the TikTok thing. I want to make three points. One is from the past. I'll give you my sense of the TikTok thing, and I'm going to make a prediction for the future. In 1984, the way that LVMH began was through a deal that Bernard Arnault architected. There was a business owned by the French cotton king Marcel Boussac, and inside of that empire was Christian Dior. Long story short, his empire was crumbling, and Arnault did a deal where he bought that dying business essentially from the French government for one franc. Fast forward now 40 years of very hard work and tremendous execution. That's a $350 billion public company. Now, imagine back then, in 1984, if the French government actually had done a deal where they said, we'll sell it to you for 50% of whatever you build, take it for a dollar, but we're going to own 50% of the upside, and they would have an extra $175 billion today. I think that that's very important in terms of what is possible today. I like Thomas's math. I believe it. I do think it's about $100 billion asset. But at the end of the day, the President was very clear that it is completely and entirely worthless without his permit, and he wants to own 50% of this asset. Now, if you're a buyer of something, you're not going to pay $100 billion if you control whether it can exist or not. You're basically going to pay today's equivalent of one franc, which would be $1. Now, I'm not saying that it is going to be a dollar, but if the United States treasury wants to hold 50% of an asset that could be worth 100 billion or 500 billion or maybe a trillion, it would make sense for the United States treasury and the United States people to own that at effectively zero. So I think that the incentive is there. And I think he has essentially said that he is going to do the best deal in his interests, which is the United States interests, which I suspect means a price that is as low as possible, approaching $1.

[David Sacks]

And ultimately, won't this be the Chinese government's decision? Because they could always say, you know what?

[Jason Calacanis]

Let it die, maybe. But my point is, it may not be a dollar. Maybe it could be 25 billion, maybe it could be 10 billion. But my point is, I find it very hard to see how it gets to the actual value that it is today. So then I think, let me just make a prediction for the future. There's a question that this raises, which is, does it make sense for the American government to be a little bit smarter going forward about how it allocates incentives and resources? The American government is still the largest single landowner in America. We give concessions to Private companies to drill, to build things. And it just turns out that if you apply this example more broadly, wouldn't it make sense where, when you create incredible economic incentives and upside for private investors and investment, for some portion of that gain to go back to the American people, is that a bad thing? I don't think so. For example, if you said we're going to accelerate permitting for all these data centers, we're going to make any form of energy, which was the opposite of what the Biden EO said on his way out the door, he had all these conditions. But if the President Trump CEO on data centers says any kind of energy, but we want to own a 5% royalty and we'll allow you to put it on federal lands, or 10% or 15%, would it really change the underwriting that Blackstone and all these other companies will do? I don't think so. Would it enrich America? I think so. Would it make it easier for people to feel like they're participating in all of these incredible gains? I also think so. So my prediction is that this becomes more of a template for the future. It'll be less about permitting, it'll be more about creating incentives and allocating those incentives for a share of the upside. And I think that there is a really strong economic argument for America to.

[David Sacks]

Do that chamath to build on that. People don't remember, But Tesla got $465 million from the Department of Energy. That was called the ATVM program, which was the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing. That was a very visionary program at the time.

[Jason Calacanis]

Visionary. But it took no equity.

[David Sacks]

But it didn't take equity.

[Jason Calacanis]

That was dumb.

[David Sacks]

So dumb. They should have gotten some portion of equity, some portion of a loan. Tesla did so well, thanks to Elon and the team's hard work. I think the president back early. They paid it back early. Early. That's how well they did. If they had owned 10% of Tesla, but 10%?

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. I think the President has sniffed this out, by the way, and you may not think that these are related, but when he said that he's considering eliminating federal income tax and funding this thing from tariffs, and he just had a press conference today where he's inviting every single company to come and make things in the United States because he will create economic incentives to make it here cheaper. But if you make it abroad and bring it in here, he's going to charge money and a tariff. All of this are part and parcel of, I think, this broader economic realization. And unlike 2008, 9 and 10 when we were allocating money or 20, 20 and 21 and 22 where we were just sending money out the door with frankly no consequence and no accounting this time around, I think he's got some incredibly sharp business people. This is by the way, the upside of having folks that have actually been successful in the real world working inside of government is they're going to help him get to this realization. And I think it's a really good one.

[David Sacks]

I don't think Tim, Tim Waltz would.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Have a pushback to you chamath on that would be. I just think it's a dangerous game for the government to start picking winners. For example, if it owns 50% of a TikTok, does it disadvantage a meta as an example? Right. And I do wonder is the value capturing mechanism for the government taxes essentially. So the way you capture the portion of the value creation of these companies is through a tax system. And I do think we just have to be careful of the government all of a sudden picking different companies to win. I do think having a good set of incentives, a level playing field, let the competitive dynamics of different companies fight each other and then capture the value through taxes.

[Jason Calacanis]

I think you're right and I think that that part is absolutely fundamental. But I think there is a way to architect this. For example, you have these RFPs that by design have to be published in the open source and available for anybody to bid on. My only point is just to say that when there is an ultimate winner, why not have a small stake in the upside? Look at the amount of money that the DOE gives in grants. I'll give you an example. One of these companies that I helped start a few years ago to make advanced battery materials, we got $150 million grant. I'm very appreciative of that grant. But if they also asked for 5 or 10% of the equity, I would have still said yes.

[David Sacks]

Of course you would have. Yeah, it's a great deal. And why not give a little upside to the taxpayers? I agree with that.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

By the way. A parallel to that would be spectrum. Right. If you think about wireless. Right. Kind of got built. The government auctioned off spectrum and then allowed public, you know, private companies to kind of come and bid on it. And you know, so there's a lot of different interesting mechanisms you can bring to that.

[David Friedberg]

Yeah.

[David Sacks]

Friedberg, which EO would you like to go to next?

[David Friedberg]

Well, I'll just wrap on the TikTok.

[David Sacks]

Sure.

[David Friedberg]

I do worry a lot about the precedent being set here with respect to foreign government actions. On US Companies in their, in their local countries. Imagine the CCP tells Tesla they have to sell their Chinese operations and give 50% of the Chinese operations to the Chinese government because of their concerns about security. Where Tesla is now able to track Chinese citizens driving around and where they are. And you can see very quickly how this whole kind of overall, I think presentation of the security risk that we face with TikTok and therefore we will shut it down or own it, creates, I think a counter that could really hurt American companies. You could see this going to Google, to Apple, to Tesla, even food manufacturing companies that have operations overseas where local governments say, hey, we need to, for local security purposes, we need to take ownership of your business. I think one of the things that's really benefited Americans in global trade is our ability to sell and export our technology, our goods and our services around the world through open trade. And I do think that we've used this kind of TikTok security thing to say this is a rationale for us doing this as a one off. But it also opens up a lot of other people to say this is a one off. And so I'm just generally very wary about this whole TikTok situation. Opening up a can of worms.

[David Sacks]

You're 100% right. And by the way, the CCP's done it already. They did it to Apple. And if you follow what happened when they introduced icloud, I don't know if you remember gcbd. GCBD is the Chinese state owned data company, the cloud provider there. And they just told Apple we get all the data and they just had to roll over. And all citizens in China who use an iPhone, in order to use an iPhone in China, your data is owned by the government, period, full stop. And Apple had no choice but to do that. So if you want to play in a certain market, you got to play by the rules.

[Jason Calacanis]

The thing to keep in mind here is I hear all of these kind of like theoretical qualms about how it's unfair, but this stuff happens all the time and it's just that we don't benefit from it. So Jason brought up an excellent example with Tesla. The other example, just to remind you guys, is during the pandemic, the Federal Reserve stepped in and started buying commercial corporate bonds. They own a ton of Ford bonds so that these things wouldn't default. There's all kinds of action all the time where the federal government is involved in private companies. My point is, if you're going to be involved, have some legacy ownership on the back End of it. So that in case this stuff really works, that it's broadly value creating for more Americans. I think it would create a way to de. Escalate the sensation that a few people are winning and everybody else is just kind of staying still.

[David Friedberg]

We should talk about Stargate and the AI project, because I do think it tees off on one of the.

[Jason Calacanis]

I want to talk about Big Gen 6, though.

[David Friedberg]

Okay. But it does tee off of one of the other kind of key things that I heard a lot about in D.C. and I know Thomas is passionate about like I am, which is energy, electricity capacity build out in the United States because it's critical. And like, building AI infrastructure means that we need to build energy infrastructure.

[David Sacks]

All right.

[David Friedberg]

And so, anyway, let's.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, we'll go. We'll go right to that after we wrap up these. We wrap up these executive orders. And I, too, wanted to talk about January 6th, just to give people the update here. JD Vance had said that the people who committed violence on January 6th, quote, obviously shouldn't be pardoned. And this is a parade of people who are on the Republican side who are coming out against how President Trump handled this. I think you all know where I would fall on this side of it. What are your thoughts on this?

[Jason Calacanis]

Where do you fall on it?

[David Sacks]

I come from a family of cops, and I feel like he's betrayed the blue on this one. And, you know, if there are people who. I think he should have taken his time with this. It is possible that some people had sentences that were too long. The justice system, you know, is imperfect in our country. And the pardon power is theirs, I think, specifically to do a very granular job of looking at each case. Right. And so I think we have to look at pardon power generally after what we saw the Biden family do. And now we see Trump doing this. So I think the pardon power is not being used as it's intended. It's being used politically now by both parties. So I'm trying to call balls and strikes here. But, you know, as somebody who's in law enforcement, a family that's in law enforcement, and my chosen career was to be a cop and an FBI agent. And, you know, just looking at it, it's just heartbreaking to see people beat cops and then be treated as heroes. Treated as heroes. And some of these people are very dark people, you know, the Oath Keepers. And some of these people are extremely violent. And they're coming out now after this has all been said and saying that they're gonna double down. They're gonna buy more guns and that they're gonna get their retribution. And so I think you have to be really careful with violent people, that you give them this coronation and that they were justified because they'll go do more violent things. And so I understand he made this promise to people. I think he should have been very granular in doing this. I totally understand there could be people who got sentences that were too long, and I would have liked to seen him do this thoughtfully. This was not done thoughtfully. I have a certain amount of goodwill towards the new president, and this has lowered it.

[Jason Calacanis]

I knew that this would be really important to you, so I took a few minutes to try to collect my thoughts. I've been kind of walking myself through it since yesterday. This is not an explanation other than to you, Jason, my friend, about how I think we got here. Okay? So I just wanted to take a few minutes to explain that to you. I think that before you can look at January 6th, I think you got to go back to what happened during the COVID lockdowns and what we started to see in a bunch of these.

[David Sacks]

Liberal cities talking about BLM riots, the.

[Jason Calacanis]

BLM riots, the Antifa riots, what happened in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, the lawlessness that you see in places like New York, the decarceration movement. And I think that what started to happen was a sensation that for the same weight, there were different measures. So, for example, if you start to look at some of the deportations that are happening now, it's really quite shocking. I sent Nick a clip of them. Nick, you can just maybe show the first few seconds, but you are talking about some incredibly, incredibly violent offenders that were just walking randomly down the street.

[David Sacks]

I'm not going back to Haiti.

[David Friedberg]

One of those threats is this illegal alien from Haiti. Ice says he's a gang member with.

[David Sacks]

17 criminal convictions in recent years. Trump, you feel me?

[Jason Calacanis]

Yo, Biden forever, bro.

[David Sacks]

Take Obama forever. Everything that he did for me, bro.

[Jason Calacanis]

There's more after this, but there was, like, a rapist that they picked up in Boston. There's a person that was charged with assault. So there was this sensation, Jason, that was building up for a long time, that all of a sudden the law was being applied in very odd ways, where depending on what you did, you would get adjudicated in totally different ways based on your political affiliation or your leaning or based on the desire of district prosecutor to go after one thing or another. Let me just pause. So that's sort of like the thing that was sort of building and cascading I do agree with you that I think January 6th is kind of like a stain. I think there's nothing to be proud of there. But I think what we found out since January 6th is somewhat important. I think the first thing we found out was that there was a bunch of these folks whose convictions were very speculative. I think the Supreme Court already ruled that in June of last year. It was like a 6 to 3 vote that said at least 350 of these convictions should probably just be thrown out. So there was one body that was that. Then there was a whole bunch of them. Where to your point, you took a misdemeanor, you trumped it up to a felony, you had all kinds of things where procedural motions were denied for the defense, approved for prosecution, and you had sentences that didn't match the crime. And then you have a president who frankly was the subject of lawfare himself. So I think that what would have been better was a more methodical approach to this. I agree with you. But I do think that what's happening here is essentially a moment where we can close this entire chapter and we can get back to a focus on observing the law and adjudicating it equally for everybody. And I think that that's probably the best way that we can all deal with this because I think that there was a bunch of pardons that were 100% obvious, and then there was a bunch that were just had to be done because the court was perverted in how they dealt with some of these folks. Then there was a small number, and I don't know the exact number to be fair, Jason, where these folks did some really bad stuff. Now it's also mixed in with this thing where there was a bunch of informants, then there was a bunch of folks that were.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, the informant stuff. We have to wait for that to come out because that's inconspiracy.

[Jason Calacanis]

My point is, I just went and I collected that as a way to try to explain to you.

[David Sacks]

Well, I appreciate you understanding my passion on it and wanting to how we got here.

[Jason Calacanis]

I think it's sort of like I'm.

[David Sacks]

Well aware of it.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, I think we got to put a pin in this and say both sides should now have enough experience to say we're going to apply the law equally to everybody going forward from this moment out, let's just go forward and not look back. I think that's the best thing that we can all do.

[David Sacks]

Let's hope. I'll just leave you with this. The proud boy leader, Enrique Tarrio, this is his quote on getting out. I'm happy the president's focusing not on retribution and focusing on success. But I will tell you that I'm not going to play by those rules. They need to pay for what they did. These are some seriously bad hombres, the proud boys and the Oath Keepers, and so don't be surprised if they do something worse.

[Jason Calacanis]

I also want to talk about the citizenship thing, and I just want to just provide a little color for people. I'm sure that there's a lot of folks that are listening who have people that work for them that, you know.

[David Sacks]

Maybe the birthright thing. If you came here illegally and had a child, you get to be a citizen.

[Jason Calacanis]

Just to be clear, this is going to the Supreme Court. And just to put a little bit of color on it, in the 14th amendment, there's this very important part that says birthright citizenship is applied to people who are subject to the jurisdiction of America. And for a long time, that phrase was not really considered in how the supreme court administered the 14th amendment. I think what this EO did and the lawsuits that happened almost instantaneously as a result will now send this back to the Supreme Court very quickly.

[David Sacks]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

And people will opine on what that means. So if it means nothing, it means that if you are here, however, you're here, and if you have a child, they're going to be a citizen of America. If that qualifier is now part of the administration and the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, I think what President Trump has written is what will happen, which is if you are here illegally, it doesn't apply. If you are here under a visa, that necessarily means you're still subject to the jurisdiction of somebody else. It may not apply, but I think the Supreme Court is going to get to decide this in pretty short order.

[David Sacks]

Okay, a couple more issues I want to get to on the docket.

[David Friedberg]

Sorry, let me just make a quick comment on the.

[David Sacks]

Oh, sure, Dave, go ahead.

[David Friedberg]

The January 6th. I just generally don't like this power of pardon.

[David Sacks]

Agreed.

[David Friedberg]

We saw what Biden did. He gave. I mean, how many Thousands, Nick, you could pull the number up, but 8,000 pardons. And I feel like the original intention of the power of pardon, which is in the Constitution, was meant to kind of protect the union, the civility in the union at times of, you know, we need to kind of come back together and realign ourselves. And it has been so far abused beyond that original intention. It's almost like. Feels like an extraordinary injustice. It almost gives the president the ability to rewrite the law, that many of the kind of actions from the executive branch can simply supersede the actions of the judicial branch, which is really meant to protect and execute the laws of the nation. And I think it's gone too far. It feels like there's a necessary amendment to address this, that these presidents can come out and preemptively pardon people for things that might be found in the future because they're close with them. It has nothing to do with the original intention. If you go back to the arguments for the pardon being in the Constitution, you can see that Alexander Hamilton wrote deeply about it in Federalist paper number 74. And in that paper he talked a lot about and emphasized that the justice system, which is designed to be fair, may occasionally result in overly harsh or unjust outcomes. And the pardon allows for acts of mercy to correct these situations. A lot of these sorts of actions that we saw happen with Biden do not fit the bill for that definition. I will tell you there's a quote from Federalist Paper 74 from Hamilton. It goes as follows. In seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments when a well timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquility of the commonwealth. So to counter my point, Hamilton's argument is that when the nation is divided, the act of the pardon may actually help bring the nation back together, as may have been the case with respect to the January 6. But it may not necessarily be about or Nixon justice or Nixon, and it may not necessarily be about justice, but it's much more about restoring tranquility of the union and allowing the nation to move forward. Even though it may not seem just it may be the right thing for the nation. So I'm not trying to defend the action or defend the pardon. I really don't like the act of pardoning as a kind of tool that's being used in a hundred different ways. And it certainly seems like it requires change.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, and just programming note Here, research note, 6,500 people. Of those 8,000 seem to be convicted of marijuana possession or dispute.

[David Friedberg]

And you know what's needed. And they were pardoned, then the law should have been changed and the courts should have overturned all of those convictions. It does not necessarily need to fall, and it shouldn't fall on the executive branch to take that action. I think the reason the courts need to do their job and the legislators need to do their job.

[David Sacks]

I don't disagree, but I think there is some compassion in the pardon concept. For how long do they have to agree with that. Wait for that. Yeah. I mean, how long do you have to wait for that? You know, and then like, the people who were, you know, convicted of selling dime bags or having an ounce of weed on them were black and brown. And then all my white friends who started weed companies are now taking them public in Canada. So. Shout out, Trudeau. All right, let's keep moving here. I think we did some good job here on the reconciliation on the pod. Where do we want to go next? Stargate project.

[Jason Calacanis]

Stargate.

[David Friedberg]

Stargate.

[Jason Calacanis]

Stargate.

[David Friedberg]

Stargate and energy. Yeah, Stargate.

[David Sacks]

Energy.

[Jason Calacanis]

Stargate.

[David Sacks]

Okay, so here we go. And I'm gonna go to. To our guest here, Thomas. Thomas. Anything on January 6th or controversial topics like smoking weed, but you want to jump in on there now? Okay, great, sure. Help your LPs. Just breathe. Hey, you're coming on the all in podcast.

[Jason Calacanis]

When his LPs, they're gonna be so happy. But then when, when they hear the J6, they're just gonna be clenched, waiting.

[David Friedberg]

They're click.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Oh, wait, hold on. My mic went out. Oh, never mind. I missed it.

[David Sacks]

Okay, all right.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

It was well said. Honestly, I don't have anything to add. You guys. You guys summed it up.

[David Sacks]

Anything on Lauren Sanchez's outfit? Okay, let's continue. Another big story from week one. We are literally not even three or four days into this. It's going to be a crazy four years. According to OpenAI's press release, the Stargate project is a new company which intends to invest 500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. Friedberg, we gotta find out what's going on here with the Stargate movie and TV series. If they got IP permission to do this. SoftBank and OpenAI are the least. I mean, I'm just thinking out loud and we have to talk about where this ranks on your list of great.

[David Friedberg]

Sci fi and top 40 sci fi.

[David Sacks]

Okay, Right up there with the Star Trek original series and the next generation. SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners, with Oracle and MJX also participating. Oracle, Nvidia and OpenAI will build and operate the infrastructure. Microsoft is sort of involved, although. We'll see about that. Masha Yoshi San was at the announcement. He's going to be the chairman. However, Gavin Baker and Elon both called cap on X saying they don't actually have the money. Gavin did some back of the envelope math. And of course, as always, Sam and Elon have been spicy in the replies. Sam is hurt Elon is dunking. It's just their relationship is so fluid. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella jumped into my thread with Elon saying he was good for the 80 bill and then he was ready to build other products and services and that was what was important. What do you think here, Thomas? Are you an investor in OpenAI? I guess let's get that out there or in XAI? Just so we know where you're coming from here, if you're talking your book.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

But I am an investor in OpenAI. Okay, so there's three points I want to make here. Go point number one, going back to the origins of this podcast and sitting watching both public market investors and venture investors. One notable difference is I think venture investors tend to be very tribal. So if you're in one tribe, you are by definition not in another. And I think there's a lot of domain specific reasons for that. For me, as my legacy as a public market investor, I'm very comfortable being both Pro OpenAI and Pro Tesla and Pro X. And so I just kind of caveat that kind of as a first point. My second point is can we do a slight detour on Masa for one minute? And I'm curious to get your guys opinion, but is Masa the goat? Because when I started in the growth business I met with Yuri Milner and he said, Thomas, you get in the hall of fame if you can have one deal that gives you a billion dollar return. That is whatever you invest plus what you take out is a billion dollars or more. And he actually kept a tracker in his mind of who had made those deals and what share he had and et cetera. So let's go to Masa for one minute. Masa is the hundred billion dollar club.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Okay. And not only that, he's actually done it twice. He did it the first time with SoftBank and Alibaba, which at its peak was a $200 billion win. And I think he ultimately netted like 80 plus billion out of it. So that's one. He did it again with ARM that he bought for 30 and now is sitting on a gain of 100, I think 35 billion. And he could have done it a third time with Nvidia if he hadn't sold.

[Jason Calacanis]

I mean guys, there's nobody like him.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

There's nobody like.

[Jason Calacanis]

Incredible. You're 100% right. You got to give the man his flowers. He is so I'll tell you what.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Chamath, I am never betting against Masa ever because you got to give the man credit. For what he's done. And so now let's go to kind of OpenAI. You guys mentioned we do own some OpenAI. I am bullish on OpenAI, which I guess is now a counter against the grain kind of view. But guys, my point of view on OpenAI and the reason I'm so bullish is really kind of chatgpt. And I do think when OpenAI gets, you know, we do conf. It does have different businesses, right? It's got the model business, it has the API business and then it has the ChatGPT business, right? And if you look at the downloads, maybe Nick bring up the charts. But it is really interesting to watch the market share of ChatGPT versus Google, Gemini and Grok. This is both in the US and international. It really is a dominant kind of franchise, right? It is maintaining 80% plus market share. Jcal, if this was ride sharing, we would say, wow, this company is the winner. To me, I think the quality of the ChatGPT franchise, I think they disclosed 300 million weekly actives, over a million enterprise users. It has become a core part of my own workflow. I have it on my phone, I have it on my desktop, I use it all the time. I can't even quantify the value that it brings. It's so important for what it does for me. And I do think that it just keeps getting smarter. Every query that I ask, it learns more about me, it learns more about our system. So I do think the ChatGPT franchise inside of OpenAI is one of the great, most successful, fastest growing stories. So that's kind of the underpinning of my OpenAI thesis on Stargate specifically. Look, I think the real question to me isn't whether they have the 500 billion, right? Because we know that the 500 billion could come from equity, it could come from Masa. If you look at Gavin's tweet, by the way, he does caveat it saying that assumes that Masa doesn't want to sell ARM and SoftBank, right?

[Jason Calacanis]

So I'm not just lever it up and use debt.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Correct. So you have debt. I think to me the real question, guys is do we ultimately believe that you can get an ROI on that 500 billion? Because if you can, there will be people that will want to fund it, right? You can do a data center by data center. You can do it actually at the GPU level, right? So the financing is there. To me, the 500 billion doesn't scare me from an absolute number. I think the question we really have to ask ourselves is do we believe that the market is big enough that the opportunity is big enough that investors can get a return on the 500 billion. So to me that's the real question.

[David Sacks]

I think you framed it perfectly and since you bring up ride sharing and the 80% there, I really think that's an important thing to take a moment to, to settle on. Because in that case you didn't have Uber being challenged by Google, Microsoft and Elon Musk, you know, at the same time in a digital product as opposed to a real world product. And so you know, when I use Gemini or Xai and ChatGPT and I use them all daily and Claude, the difference, the difference between the products right now is really narrow and I think, you know, if the equivalent would be somebody who had a hundred million cars on the road already competing against Uber, which you know, doesn't exist or didn't exist at the time. So that, that I think is the, the way I look at this as a slightly different type of race. I do believe the ChatGPT franchise has some, is worth something but I think enterprise folks, when I talk to them want the open source product most of all. So anyway, I think it's still anybody's, I think it's anybody's game right now. And I don't know how you get a return on 500 billion invested in this. That's the other thing and I don't know if that's the real number. Freiberg, what do you think?

[David Friedberg]

I don't know.

[David Sacks]

This is out here in some crazy.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I think guys, the way these, I just don't know. Right. Is you don't fund it all equity upfront. Right. I think these things get funded facility by facility, data center by data center across four years. And to chamas point it's not just equity, it's site level debt and et cetera. It's a complex capital structure to these things. But look, we live also in a world where I was just looking at this chart, the cloud CapEx chart. We know that in total 2025 CapEx for the top five players in the US is going to be 312 billion. So that's this year, that's in one year. So we can also kind of frame this in saying hey, does that number make any sense versus what others are spending? It's at least in the order of magnitude, right. When you think about it's over four years. By the way, another really interesting kind of corollary on this point is the US Internet companies spend 20x what the Chinese companies spend on capex. Really interesting as we think about our competitiveness. Dave, to your point, it's not just power, it's also kind of compute. I mean, pretty powerful that you're spending 20x what your competitor is on these kind of advanced technologies.

[David Sacks]

Chamath, how do you look at this?

[Jason Calacanis]

I think that value and money are correlated in some industries like real estate or heavy industry, but I don't think that it's very correlated in tech. And I tried to say this in my tweet, I don't know. Nick, can you find this tweet where I was just talking about the Deep SEQ model. So what did we see last week? We saw a model that got released by the Chinese under, by the way, a totally open source MIT license that you can run on a laptop. And it turned out to be as good as OpenAI's 01 model. So a couple of versions old. But the point is that this model cost millions of dollars and was able to compete with a model that took billions of dollars to train. So my takeaway from that was that these costs are falling really precipitously. So that's sort of my one observation is spending more money doesn't necessarily get you further along if the goal is progress. And I think that that's very true in what we're learning about AI because we're learning as we go along. So then I think it just brings up this question of what is the point of saying all these grandiose numbers? And this is where if you look at a different industry, if an oil company came into the Oval and said they were about to spend 500 billion, you kind of know that it's real because you know what these things cost and you know what the entire infrastructure will be.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And you know, it's so we know, we know what goes on.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. So the deeper the oil is in the ground and the harder the rock is that you got to break through to get there, the more you have to spend. So those numbers become very grounded in reality. If you were a rocket company and you wanted to build a rocket and send it to Mars, you can also be very detailed in what the costs are and you can assume some amount of reductions of scale. If somebody said you'd have to spend 500 billion, the thing is that when in this world it seems that there are these advances that are happening that allow you to do things cheaper and cheaper almost overnight by spending 1 1,000th of what you spent even six months ago, I think the spending Money part, to be honest, is more of a gimmick than it is a technical commitment. So I guess if they want to spend the money, go ahead. But it doesn't actually tie to whether they're going to be able to make custom vaccines, whether they're going to cure cancer. So I kind of thought that these things were just joint. And so my takeaway was entirely different. It was not a commentary on Masa or Larry or Sam. I think all of those three companies are, frankly, very good. It was more a comment that you have to be very careful to protect the president's legacy. If I were them, to make sure that the things that get announced are actually further down the technical spectrum and are actually going to be real, because if they achieve. Achieve these things, but it costs you a billion dollars and you only hire 50 people, there's going to be a little bit of egg on the face. And so that was sort of my own takeaway. I think that the things were decoupled. It just seemed more marketing and sizzle and kind of hastily put together.

[David Sacks]

It was definitely put together.

[Jason Calacanis]

You know what I mean?

[David Sacks]

Yeah, you got that sense.

[Jason Calacanis]

But I think it'll be great if OpenAI builds in another incredible model, whatever comes after 030405. But it's not clear that you have to spend 500 billion to do it.

[David Sacks]

You know, I think people are playing to what Trump likes, which is a big number and which is his influence on growing the number. So there was specific details where Masa said, you know, I told you 100 billion. You challenged me to get two. I came back with five. Right. And so this is the sort of Trump ethos is, hey, we're going to swing for the fences in a way. You know, you could be critical of it and be like, well, Trump's a BS artist or whatever, or if you're from Silicon Valley, you could say, hey, listen, he's moonshotting it. He's going to just shoot for the stars and get the moon. So if these guys wind up spending 50 billion or 100 billion, it makes us more competitive, more power to it.

[Jason Calacanis]

The question I had was, did Elon have any insight that this was happening? Probably not from the reaction on X.

[David Sacks]

I bet he did. I have no insight either. But I do think if you were gonna be critical of Trump, that he was putting his thumb on the scale for any one company or individual. This shows that he's not. It's an open platform. The Trump administration's an open platform. Highest bidder gets to come to The White House. Whoever spends the most, whoever buys the most military, buys the most ammunitions from us. You're gonna get your time in the White House. This is a capitalist country, and it's the greatest one in the world. Equal opportunity. Anybody can make a bet.

[David Friedberg]

One of the obvious. The obvious consequence of this data center and chip infrastructure effort, which is obviously going to happen with or without government involvement, is an increase in electricity demand. Thomas, I know you've got some slides. Do you want to pull those up and show them? Because I think they're something I've talked a lot about on the show, which is the difference in electricity production capacity in the US versus China historically and then prospectively going forward ultimately, as I've talked about in the past. Right. The U.S. today is paying roughly, call it one and a half to 3x the price per kilowatt hour for electricity in the United States over what China's paying. We have, I believe, half of the electricity production capacity of China. They're adding more. The cost to add is 1/10 of what our cost to add is. Call it 1/10 to 1/2 our cost to add per new gigawatt of production capacity. Everything is in the wrong direction. And ultimately, if AI and automation are the critical factors for economic growth going forward and electricity is the critical input to that, we are hugely disadvantaged and aren't going to catch up. It seems like you've pulled this analysis together, which kind of indicates the same. If you think it makes sense to walk through this now.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, I'd be happy to. I mean, Dave, you're 100% right. If you think of the GPU as the atomic unit of the future. Right. And the key competitive advantage and the key kind of ingredient. You can't power a GPU without a data center, and you can't use a data center without power. So I do think at the end of the day, it really comes down to the grid and it comes down to power. So I think that's kind of constraint number one. The other thing, Dave, that I think is really important is in an inflationary era, you do not want to increase or have this industry be perceived to be increasing electricity prices for the consumer. Somehow. We need to add capacity. We need to make it so the consumer kind of doesn't go bonkers by having their bills go higher. And we can. Nick, run through a couple of the slides, but the data shows exactly kind of your point, Dave. Right. Which is we basically did not invest for a very long period of time in our grid and China did. And if you keep going, we can kind of run through these a couple of times. But that wasn't always the case during kind of like the post World War II boom era, during the information age. You know, we did invest and we did a lot of it. And then suddenly in 2000, we just kind of stopped.

[David Friedberg]

And this is globalization, you're saying is why we stopped.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Exactly.

[David Sacks]

Right.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

We start to outsource.

[David Sacks]

My interpretation of that, that we didn't have factories, we didn't have factories, so we didn't need as much power. What's the reason we didn't invest or we didn't need to?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I think we just outsourced a lot of our hardcore manufacturing.

[David Friedberg]

You know, the USD industrialized.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Correct.

[David Friedberg]

That's.

[David Sacks]

So no factories equals no need for additional electricity. Now the new factories are H100 factories.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

We need exactly our AI factories. Right. AI factories. And by the way, the way to think about it is almost like a subscription business on a net add basis. Right?

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So this makes it even more stark. Right. Because this is kind of net additions and it just kind of speaks for itself. Right.

[David Friedberg]

Just read the numbers out so the audience that's listening can get a sense here.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah. I mean, you can see. I mean, since 1985. Right. The delta roughly between China and the US is almost. What's the quick math like? It's almost 7x. Right.

[David Friedberg]

In 2000, the US and China were both roughly 1000 terawatt hours. Today the US is 1600 terawatt hours and China is 9000 terawatt hours.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah.

[David Friedberg]

And this is just an extraordinary ramp up relative to correct.

[Jason Calacanis]

On the AI side. There was a Biden EO last week. I spoke about this on Tucker because it happened the day I went on Tucker. But the EO basically said we will allow the permitting of power plants on federal lands to power these AI data centers, which started off like a very intelligent eo, but right in the second paragraph. Started to talk about DEI and all this other stuff and how you had to have a certain percentage of it from certain sources. But just today it looked like President Trump overturned it and now it's full steam ahead. If you have it permitted, then it's all about just get the power however you need the power, which I think is the smart decision. Back to your earlier point, like we are in a race here in your.

[David Sacks]

Analysis, Thomas, can we do this without nuclear?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

No.

[David Sacks]

Can we catch up without nuclear? Okay.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

In fact, we can't.

[David Friedberg]

Why would we buy uranium?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I think you can speak to that better. One of the really Interesting parts. I mean, you can see by the way, just the percentage of nuclear, it kind of needs to go higher. I don't know if you guys have been following this stock in the public market, guys called Constellation Energy. Oh, yeah, it's a really interesting idea. What's interesting of what Amazon and Microsoft is they're actually signing deals directly with these companies to do what's called back behind the meter types of deals. So they have direct energy access to your point, chamath on the Biden administration. At the end of last year, a deal got announced, publicly announced, that federal agencies were also contracting directly now with CEG to power some of their facilities. And even though the in total the number was small, we took it, and I think the market took it as a clear indication that the government, even under Biden was acknowledging that nuclear is the best path forward. So we expect, and we think just the trend generally towards nuclear energy is going to continue. It's been proven in China, it's been proven in Europe. I think it will show to be a key player part of the AI kind of arms race over the next 10, 20 years. Yeah, this is to me kind of the story in one slide. Right. Which is if you look at basically the nuclear capacity in the U.S. it's basically been flat for 25 plus years. Right.

[David Sacks]

Ridiculous.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Right. And so when Scott Besson was asked, are we in a, in a, you know, green energy arms race with China, he was thinking about chart number on the right, which basically shows how much nuclear China has added over that time period. I think it's pretty clear what the answer is. I think China is leading the way in that measure and I think we need to follow.

[David Friedberg]

Well, I think what's really important to note is over that same period of time, Thomas, we're in a different era on nuclear than we were when we had Three Mile island and prior to that, Chernobyl. We have new Gen4 technologies that are meltdown proof that have a totally different architecture where there isn't a setup where you have runaway heat and ultimately a collapse of the reactor and a release of radioactive material, which is what happened at Chernobyl. These new systems which we highlighted on the show a couple of months ago, like the pebble bed reactor that's been in production making electricity in China, are incredible new technology architectures. And they're here and they're running and China's rolling out dozens or hundreds of these and the United States is rolling out zero. And that needs to change. And I think we only have a couple of months to get the engine stood up. That will allow us to make the material, that will allow us to make the production technology needed to actually deploy these stations to try and have a shot at catching up. And if we don't, we're going to be hugely disadvantaged on an energy cost basis. We're going to be hugely disadvantaged on an ability to actually deploy AI technology competitively. That's key.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And by the way, you also can look at France, right? My home country, not known as a technology leader, but 70% of its energy, of its electricity comes from nuclear.

[Jason Calacanis]

But France held the line, right, when Europe tried to really deprecate its use of nuclear, Germany did. But France held the line.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, it's too important, Chama. You know, it's 70% plus. So I think there's examples, it's doable. And I think now with AI, it's a matter of national security.

[Jason Calacanis]

National security.

[David Friedberg]

We gotta get it done.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

By the way, that'll dovetail into fabs, right, which is obviously another key component, which is a short term for semiconductor manufacturing facilities, right, which is another, in my opinion, key strategic area that we need to ramp up in the US.

[David Sacks]

The thing that I noticed about that chart is the trend line. I mean, look at how fast they're building these. And this is where I don't know what government incentive we need to create or what red tape has to be moved here, but if we can't build multifamily housing in some states, this nuclear is going to really need to. We're going to have to figure out a way to change that trend line. Friedberg. Yeah, I mean, what would it take to build these nuclear power plants at an accelerated rate?

[David Friedberg]

I will tell you that there is a lot of capital, and we mentioned this last time, a lot of intellectual capital in the United States that's eager, hungry and ready to get moving on, build out. The only thing that's challenged and the only thing that's holding it back is regulatory challenges, regulatory roadblocks. And if those get removed through emergency action, I view this to be more of a national security threat, frankly, than the border. I think we need to get energy increased in this country in an accelerated way for the United States to even be in a position to be able to challenge China with respect to manufacturing and AI in the decades ahead. And the United States needs to consider this. An emergency, emergency declarations may be needed to drop the regulatory roadblocks that are keeping the proliferation of electricity production in the United States at bay. I think it's time for that sort of action. So I think that's the only thing that's getting in the way.

[David Sacks]

So we have the tech, we have the physics, we have the will, we have the talent, we have a blocker. And the blocker is regulation. And that regulatory blocker needs to have leadership in government to remove it. Am I summarizing correctly here?

[David Friedberg]

That's right. And look, you have an energy czar that I think is very aligned with that intention in Doug Burgum. Obviously we have this big AI arms race that's underway. We have an automation and manufacturing demand which will massively increase energy demand in this country. And we have, I think, a deregulatory administration. The stars are aligned. And I think that this is a moment where this could happen.

[David Sacks]

Chamath or Thomas, what's the downside to removing the regulation and going for it and building this extra capacity? Can we define any possible downside?

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, the downside is the amount of time it takes to adequately build these things properly. The thing that China has had, as Thomas's chart shows, is decades of practice in building things safely and quickly. We can build things, but we haven't had the practice to build them either safely or quickly because we haven't built any. So that's a complicated thing to just acknowledge.

[David Sacks]

That's a valid concern. If there is any resistance. Resistance this, Thomas, what would be on the top of that list? Just theoretically, how could anybody want to block this? What would be the resistance?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

One other element. Guys, I think you know that we are blocking the ability of China to get access to the latest GPUs, right? And the whole point is we don't want them to use to develop systems that could be used against us. But if China, if one day China had 10x our power capacity, it won't even matter, right? Because they'll just have so many more, whether they're not quite the same advanced GPUs or not, they'll just have so many more of them. Their industrial AI capacity will be so much larger that even if we have the best H1 hundreds and the latest technology that Jensen and others can provide, it won't matter. So in order to make our strategy effective, we need to be able to build this power base.

[David Sacks]

I think it's a very astute point. Hey, Chamath, I don't know if you've been watching Netflix, but I am a shareholder and I am delighted. I don't know what's going on over there, but they seem to be getting their subs right. And that Descartes of a fight seems to have somehow driven the stock price up. And there's some strategy that's working over there. Maybe you could just riff on it for a moment.

[Jason Calacanis]

I have the opposite take.

[David Sacks]

Okay.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. I mean, it's obviously a very good company. I think it's been incredibly performant, but I think it has a little bit of a dark commentary on American society and productivity. So I asked Nick to just put up these three charts. I'll show you the first one. So this is the Netflix stock price from 2010 to 2020 and it's only gotten up since 2024. Okay. The only reason I did it at 2020 was because the other data, I went to the CDC and I said, well, show me the percentage of people Americans taking SSRIs over that same period.

[David Sacks]

For depression. Absolutely.

[Jason Calacanis]

For depression, anxiety, et cetera. And what you see that it's also gone up. And then the last chart, I went to the U.S. bureau of Labor Statistics and I said, what has happened to the labor participation rate over the same period? So I'm not blaming Netflix, but I think that this is a bit of a commentary on sort of what's happening in society. It's a little bit of a leading indicator where as the company does better and better. The reality is that that company wins by being a sink for people's time. It's where you go to Netflix and chill. It's a phrase that we all understand, but the dark underbelly of it is that there's just a lot of people that are a little bit more dejected. There's a lot of people that just opt out and just don't decide to work. I think you could graph the fertility rate and it's gone down ratably as well. So it's all of this soup that is about people living in a life that unfortunately just doesn't exist. So I mean, it's a well run business and I wish them all the best at some level. But at some other level, I think it's a commentary that as this company does better and better, there are more and more people that are living a shell of what their life could be.

[David Sacks]

So cause and correlation aside, so obviously.

[Jason Calacanis]

Correlated, this is not causal.

[David Sacks]

Netflix is not causing depression, but it's just the thing.

[Jason Calacanis]

And there's other things that obviously you can put on this plate.

[David Sacks]

Sure.

[Jason Calacanis]

But that was my reaction is I just think that the more time people are sort of detaching and plugging out, the more that you're going to see these companies that provide ways of Distracting yourself do? Well, I'm not sure that society benefits.

[David Sacks]

What do you think, Thomas? Opioid for the masses or just the golden era of television?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What I'm curious, chamath, is how much of it is a substitutive effect away from kind of traditional media. Right. I mean, I've kind of looked at it different ways that at least the way it's measured, time spent watching television has not really increased over 20 years. To me, it's more a reflection of. I could overlay the stock chart of Fox and Comcast and CBS and just have all of those have imploded. I think people have been kind of substituting right away. I think the question then that you have to ask is, is there a reason that maybe the Netflix product is fundamentally more unsafe or detrimental to someone's health than the prior broadcast?

[Jason Calacanis]

The one thing that I would say is, and this is not a Netflix commentary, but a general commentary, which is online products versus linear products have the power and the benefit of this algorithmic targeting and personalization. And I think that what Netflix has successfully figured out and a bunch of other products have successfully figured out is that you can hypertune to what people think they want, but what people think they want is not necessarily what they need. I think when you had linear television, you kind of had to take what was given. You didn't love Cheers, but you watched Cheers. You didn't love saying elsewhere, but you watched it. Now it's that you can go into a place where the thing really feeds you and it gives you a very visceral feedback loop, and you can stay there, binge watching something for an entire weekend. And what didn't? I think the question is, what didn't you do? Yes, necessarily. Didn't work out, necessarily.

[David Sacks]

Didn't eat well, didn't spend time with friends.

[Jason Calacanis]

And by the way, I'm not saying that I don't do it. I've done it as well. Like our group chat, one of the interesting things, when Jason, he's very good about television and stuff, he says, this series is amazing. Our other friend, Rob Goldberg, does the same thing. It's hard for me to start it and then not end it.

[David Sacks]

It's addicting. Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

But I have to really check myself because then for those two days, I'll be tempted to not leave my bedroom. My kids are like, where's my father? And so I think it happens to all of us. It's just a thing that, again, I'm not trying to pick on Netflix. I'm just trying to Say, societally, I think we want people that are vigorous and engaged in the real world and, you know, there needs to be a balance.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. And I think you have to schedule these things. You have to make it a permanent part of your life. Playing poker on a certain night of the week, doing certain things on the weekends with your kids, having certain rituals. You know, the real damage to our kids is not that the screens are damaging them, it's that it's replacing time, I think, which we were alluding to there, Thomas, this. This anxious generation as Jonathan Haidt. And we had a great interview with him, myself and Freeberg in the all in interview series. That is what's happening. Kids are substituting, whether it's TikTok or Netflix or YouTube time for time with their friends, time doing physical activities. So you really just have to limit the screen time so that those other things and the boredom can emerge. And we will be having a talk in the coming years about dopamine. It is something that these algorithms have gotten really good at doing, which is firing your dopamine every time you swipe that TikTok every time you get to the cliffhanger in a series or a Mr. Beast video. Not singling anybody out. He's just a master of it as well. They're just all really good at giving you that hook, that amazing moment. And musicians are doing this now, too, with the hooks. And then the hooks go on. TikTok, the dopamine addiction. When you get burnt out late at night getting those dopamine hits, the next day you feel depressed. Then you go to a doctor, and the doctor said, oh, well, you have, you know, depression. So here's your Wellbutrin or here's whatever the. I don't know what the things are of the moment. I'll just tell you what I focus on and what I focus on with my family. Sleep, hygiene, diet, exercise, meditation. Do these four things and you will reverse these trends. You don't need to listen. I don't want to tell you what to do.

[Jason Calacanis]

Meditation's hard for kids, but I get the first three.

[David Sacks]

You know what? Try it. Get the. And listen. I'm not talking my own book, by the way.

[Jason Calacanis]

You know what's great?

[David Sacks]

Get the comm app.

[Jason Calacanis]

It has a bunch of stuff for kids. When I was growing up, I grew up Buddhist. My father would make us sit there at 9:00 every night, and my sisters and I would have to say this Buddhist prayer. And then he would make us close our eyes for 15 minutes. And he said, meditate. And I was like, I don't know what meditation is, but I was forced to just keep my eyes shut. And I would just daydream. But I suspect that there was some reasonably grounding value in that. So I get what you're saying. I just have such a negative connotation from it. I've never been able to come back to it because of that experience. But I would just daydream. And by the way, what I daydreamed was getting out of that house. I was like, I gotta be.

[David Sacks]

So you got a vision.

[Jason Calacanis]

A vision came to you. I gotta manifest success here because this sucks.

[David Sacks]

Hey Thomas, thanks for coming on the show. Great first appearance here as a bestie. We'd love to have you back. Unless the king returns at some point.

[Jason Calacanis]

You're the best. You should come back. And you should also come back to the all in Summit.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Come back for both. And I know we still have some great topics like Hock Tin and others that I want to get to someday.

[Jason Calacanis]

Actually when you come back, which we will do at some point in the next few months, I would love for us to double click into Hock Tan. So. What for folks that are listening.

[David Sacks]

Wait, what?

[Jason Calacanis]

We were going back and forth. Hock Tan is the CEO of Broadcom. And the reason when he, when Thomas brought this up. Hey guys, let's double click into Broadcom and the CEO. The reason why I was excited is that it is the only trillion dollar company that nobody talks about. Everybody knows Nvidia, everybody knows Amazon, Meta, but Broadcom is a $1.12 trillion business and it started basically through a whole series of roll ups. Anyways, we'll double click into this with you because I think it's so no.

[David Sacks]

This is not the Broadcom we're all thinking of from the telecom era, is it?

[Jason Calacanis]

It is, yeah. Henry Samueli. Yeah, correct.

[David Sacks]

The same one. Still around.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I will leave you guys with a with a teaser to tease the next episode when we talk about it. And I'll tell you the story that when Hawk bought Broadcom, jcal, to your point, Broadcom is the pride of Orange county. Founded by Henry Nicholas and Henry Samueli, kind of legends in semiconductors, a legendary name. So it meant a lot to them that the combined company Avago was buying Broadcom, keep the name Broadcom. And so Hawk being who he is, you know, got a little bit of a price discount to name the company Broadcom to him. That was a great deal. That's who Hawk is. He's a Great businessman. But what is the ticker of this particular company?

[Jason Calacanis]

Avgo.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And so I said, hawk, why is the ticker still Avgo? And you know what he said to me? Turn to me. He said, thomas, they forgot to negotiate for the ticker.

[David Sacks]

Oh, never forget the ticker. Interesting.

[Jason Calacanis]

I mean when he started it was. What was the market cap?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

3.5 billion, Chamath. Not only was it an orphan, because it was a, it was a spin out of hp. It was a spin out of a spin out of HP. It was a double orphan 300X.

[David Sacks]

Look at this.

[David Friedberg]

Yeah, well what's interesting is in the last five years the market cap's grown by 8x, Nvidia's grown by 20x. But intel over the last five years is what, down 70%. So I think there's a big divergence. Thomas, do you think this is a function of. Well, I don't know if it's directionally investing in the right things or is it about like making long term investments and thinking down the road? I mean obviously the compounding advantages.

[Jason Calacanis]

He's an M and a master. This is less about. There was a product that won and more of a portfolio approach and a portfolio construction.

[David Friedberg]

But did he buy well ahead of the curve. Did he buy over the horizon, Thomas? Like, is that where intel really missed?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I think intel really missed. It's a complete abdication of corporate governance at the board level and the CEO level.

[David Sacks]

Guys, breaking news story coming across my feed. I don't know if you can pull this up, Nick, but there's a video trending on the Internet. Apparently an executive order has just gone across the President's desk and it was delivered by none other than a gentleman, David Sachs. Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

[Thomas Lafont]

Crypto.

[David Friedberg]

Eo.

[Thomas Lafont]

We're going to be forming a internal working group to make crypto, to make America the world capital in crypto under your leadership.

[Jason Calacanis]

Which is really going to going up, right?

[Thomas Lafont]

Absolutely.

[David Sacks]

Here we go. Whoa, look at this. What? He's using a sharpie there to sign these executive orders. Oh, Sax gets to keep the pen. There it is, an executive order. I love how he holds them up. It's so great. I wonder if Sax gets to keep that. They might not be accept, but they're going to make a lot of money.

[Jason Calacanis]

For the company country.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Thank you, sir.

[Jason Calacanis]

And so is David.

[David Sacks]

Oh, your reaction, Chamath?

[Jason Calacanis]

I think this is great.

[David Sacks]

So we're going to make crypto great again.

[Jason Calacanis]

I'll be a little bit more specific. So I think that there are a handful of ideas that, if we can implement them correctly, are really revolutionary. I think that gets good to have a stockpile of crypto. I have less of an opinion on that. I think a set of stablecoin rails that makes payments instantaneous and costless is an enormous acceleration to gdp. It would cut fraud. And I think that David's going to go and figure that out and he's going to.

[David Sacks]

You're talking about stablecoins?

[Jason Calacanis]

Specifically stablecoins. I mean, I talked about this at the beginning of the year as my sort of one of my predictions. But I do think that the United States stablecoin rails will be hugely disruptive and value added. He's going to have help from the head of the SEC and the head of treasury to do it. I just think it's great. I think Sachs is already off to a hugely fast start.

[David Sacks]

The entire country knows that we need to win the AI race. The numbers are the numbers. You put up a chart like that, Thomas, there's only one way for us to win, and that's to build more nuclear power plants. And so I think he's just gotta hammer this through and let's see who tries to stop it. I don't know if AOC or Elizabeth Warren, Pocahontas, Bernie Sanders, who wants to jump in front of this Trump train right now? But I think you'll get slaughtered. If only there was somebody who could comment on this executive order. That's what I need. You know, Chamath, if I had the bat phone, if I could call somebody.

[Jason Calacanis]

Who would call it. You don't phone a friend, who would you call?

[David Sacks]

I don't know. You know, I had my Saxypoo was always on speed dial. We used to hang in between, have these great battles here on the pod. Then we go play chess together. We go have some drinks at the Battery. But, you know, that was a different era and you know, I don't got my boy anymore. He's busy.

[Jason Calacanis]

Oh, do we got everybody?

[David Sacks]

Thanks for tuning in to the all in podcast. I'm your host, Jason Calacanis. We will see you next time. Bye.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What?

[Jason Calacanis]

So what? There he is.

[David Sacks]

There he is.

[Jason Calacanis]

He's back.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Back to reclaim his seat. It's yours.

[David Sacks]

We miss you, buddy.

[Jason Calacanis]

You look so handsome.

[David Sacks]

Gonna cry. 61 days, you're not my bestie. We miss you.

[David Friedberg]

Were you just in the Oval Office?

[Thomas Lafont]

I was just in the Oval Office.

[David Sacks]

First time in the Oval Office. Let me ask you a question. Was that your first time in the.

[Thomas Lafont]

Oval well, technically it was my second.

[Jason Calacanis]

But how was it? Sucks. How's it been so far?

[Thomas Lafont]

It's pretty incredible. Yeah, it's really been pretty incredible.

[David Sacks]

Well, tell us what are the vibes and what's it like to go in to the Oval Office and to have that executive order signed? Take us, tell us what the moment was like and then tell us what's in the executive order.

[Thomas Lafont]

Well, we actually, we did three executive orders today. So we did one on crypto, one on AI and than one on PCast, which is the President's Council of Advisors for Science and Technology. The one on crypto. I guess we can start there. The main thing it does is it forms an internal working group with the goal of making the US the world leader in crypto. So it's not one specific action, it's basically authorizing and creating a working group with the goal of achieving that objective. Right. And the members of this working group are going to be, there's me, there's the head of the sec, the Secretary of the treasury, and all the agencies and departments that have an interest in crypto. So we formed this working group. I'm actually chairing it, or I will be. And again, the goal here is to identify and make recommendations that the departments would then take back and they could execute. And just again with the goal of making America the world capital of crypto, as the President said at Davos today.

[Jason Calacanis]

And then the other two, Sachs.

[Thomas Lafont]

Yeah, so that's crypto. Next one's AI. So the number one thing that that EO does is rescind the Biden eo, which we talked about on this podcast, I don't know how many episodes ago, but remember, it was this 100 page monstrosity of burdensome regulation. And the President had promised on the campaign trail to repeal that and he did, so it got rescinded. Actually, there was a master EO on Monday that contained dozens of Biden era EOs that got mass rescinded. This one provided a little bit more detail on. It basically said that EO was unnecessarily burdensome. It said that we want to be the world leader in AI. In fact, it uses the word dominate. We want to basically have global dominance in AI. And similar to what we're doing on the crypto side, it directs the creation of an AI action plan. And that study will be led by three people. The National Security Advisor, who is Mike Waltz, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, who will be Michael Kratzios as soon as he's Senate confirmed. And then the third person is me. So the three of us are going to work together on this AI action plan. And the idea is to figure out what is it that the industry actually needs to make us number one globally in AI. So it's putting a little bit more substance behind like what this R role means.

[David Sacks]

And the last one is to build a science council. I don't know if everybody's familiar with that, so maybe you could just describe what that is generally for the audience.

[Thomas Lafont]

Well, PCAST has been around for a long time. I mean, I think it's been around for decades. And the goal of PCAST is to assemble a group of top science and technology minds to provide the President with advice. So this was already announced, but basically me and Michael Kratzios, who I mentioned before, is going to be the director of ostp. We're going to be co chairing that. And this is an EO that provides the authorizing language to set that up and then it provides some direction around what PCAAS is going to do. I think some of the language that Friedberg may like is just it talks about the need to return to kind of truth telling in science and kind of getting away from woke science. The AI order discusses this as well. We don't want AI models to be ideologically biased, have an agenda. I don't know if it uses the word woke AI, but that's basically what it's talking about. We want AI models to be as politically unbiased as possible.

[David Sacks]

Well, if you need a recommendation for somebody for the council, I know somebody who is extremely well versed on science. He's got a broad array of science knowledge.

[Jason Calacanis]

Hear, hear.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, I have an idea. Then we could have two besties in and around the White House. Hey, well, you know, thanks for including us in so many aspects of the weekend. And the audience really wants to know what are the chances we get Sacks back on the pod now and again in 2025. And we do appreciate the sacrifice you're making. We're doing it right now. But the audience is, you know, not going to just accept this little drop in here. They want to know what's the long term plan for David Sachs and the.

[David Friedberg]

Podcast and what's happened like with media overall in the administration now that confirmation hearings are underway, Sachs and closing out. Does that mean folks are going to be able to get back on social and things that they were kind of restricted by over the last couple of weeks?

[Thomas Lafont]

Sure, but I think that if you're working for the White House, there kind of needs to be a reason for you to be out there, because you don't want to be making news that you're not supposed to. So in the case here today, the President signed these executive orders on crypto and AI, and they want me explaining them, so it makes sense for me to go out there. I've got a appearance on Fox Business in about an hour to talk about the EOs as well, so that might come out before this podcast comes out, but you guys are the first ones I'm actually talking to. But so there's a reason for me to come out and do it, and I think that there probably will need to be a good reason for me to come on the pod, but I'm going to try and come on the pod every chance I get.

[David Sacks]

All right, well, this is our appeal to DJT to let you come on and just chew the fat, and maybe there's some upside to it for him.

[David Friedberg]

Do you miss being on the pod, Sax?

[Thomas Lafont]

Oh, yeah, sure. Of course.

[David Sacks]

We miss you so much.

[Thomas Lafont]

Look, I'll be back. Don't worry. At some point.

[David Sacks]

Are you a little emotional right now?

[Jason Calacanis]

Saxon, what are your favorite memories from the inauguration weekend?

[Thomas Lafont]

Well, the inauguration ceremony itself was really pretty spectacular. You were there in the capital Chamath. Yeah, it's funny. Jack and I kind of took our seats in the rotunda, like, kind of in the back in the peanut gallery, and I thought that's where I was gonna be sitting. And then somebody comes up to me and says, Mr. Sachs, we have a seat for you up front. And so they put me on the.

[Jason Calacanis]

Day you were with the big boys.

[Thomas Lafont]

Yeah, it was like the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Treasury, and then me, you know, and then we were just. We were behind the Trump family. You may not see me because those Trump kids are pretty tall, but that whole family is very tall. So I kind of disappeared a little bit. But in any event, they put me on the dais, which was really pretty crazy. I wasn't.

[David Sacks]

Wow. I didn't realize that.

[Thomas Lafont]

Yeah, it was a huge honor.

[Jason Calacanis]

There was a shot where David and Jacqueline were in the front. They looked amazing, and they were kind of looking around for where to sit, and I was like, this can't be right, because he must have had, like, a name. So it's good that it all got sorted out. But what was the vantage point from your side? Basically, you're looking out.

[Thomas Lafont]

Yeah, I mean, I was looking out, and I could see the faces of the Democrats as the president came out. President biden and Kamala Harris, they didn't look too happy.

[David Sacks]

No, I wish they had a fixed camera on them the whole time. I wanted to see the reaction shot side by side.

[Thomas Lafont]

I've seen some of the reactions, shots.

[David Friedberg]

You know, it sucks. Just.

[Thomas Lafont]

I mean, that was really unique to have. I mean, I thought that speech was really incredible because, well, first of all, it was completely consistent with everything the president had said during the campaign. And so you really felt like he has a mandate here because this is everything he said during the campaign. It reminded me a lot of. There's that famous quote by Abraham Lincoln, that public sentiment is everything. With it, you can accomplish anything. Without it, you can't do anything. And it really felt like that inauguration speech was full of substance, but it was substance that the President had delivered on the campaign trail. And so when he won this victory, where he not only won the presidency, he won the popular vote, he won seven out of seven swing states, he won the House, he won the Senate. It really feels like he has a mandate. And I think he reiterated that mandate in his speech. And then, of course, just the cherry on top is just that the losers just have to sit there and listen to it.

[David Sacks]

Well, kudos to them for coming out and keeping the tradition.

[Thomas Lafont]

Yeah, well, yeah. And when he's talking about the corrupt establishment that tried to put him in prison through this lawfare, I mean, he's talking about some of those people who are sitting behind him. I just thought it was remarkable, a remarkable moment.

[David Friedberg]

That was a crazy visual. Do you want to take us back, Zax, on how you. Because you haven't talked about this publicly, but how did you end up, I guess, getting the offer for the role, deciding to take the role? Anything you want to share anecdotally on the path to get here?

[Thomas Lafont]

I don't know that there's that much to rapport. I was helping with the transition. I got offered the role and decided to do it. Look, it's not something I was expecting or planning, as you guys know. I didn't even know there was going to be such a role. But when they decided to create it and they offered it to me, and so I decided to do it. Just one thing I should clarify, just to make clear is there's still some things I can't do yet in the role because there's a whole government ethics process that you have to go through, and I'm in the midst of that process. So we've signed these EOs. It's given me certain responsibilities and authorized me to do Certain things. And that process is going to begin as soon as I complete this, I guess you'd call it onboarding. So just to be clear about that, there's things I can do, there's things I can't do. I can kind of be in listening mode. I can't be necessarily shaping policy yet. So that's all going to be worked through over the next couple of weeks.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

All right, Sacks, I got to ask, first time in the Oval, what's going through your mind?

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, great question.

[Thomas Lafont]

My head was on a swivel. One of those moments, you're like. You can't really believe that you're there. It does feel a little bit like you're on a movie set. I mean, it's so famous, obviously, to be in the ocean.

[Jason Calacanis]

Is it bigger in person, or is it smaller in person? What is it?

[Thomas Lafont]

I thought it seemed about the right size. I know that's that one of the things people say about it is that it's smaller than you expect. I didn't feel like it was smaller, but it also didn't feel bigger. It felt. Felt like the Oval Office, that you've always seen the other people who are in there, who've been in there, the staffers who've been in there 100 or 1000 times, obviously it wears off, and it's just where they do their work. But, yeah, I've got to admit, the first time you go in there, you're pretty awestruck. There was a post that JD Vance, now the Vice President, had, where he actually. Do you guys see this? Mike Johnson.

[Jason Calacanis]

I saw the video.

[David Friedberg]

Yeah. With Mike Johnson.

[David Sacks]

Yeah. It's pretty crazy. Walking in, and he's in shock because.

[Thomas Lafont]

He had never been in there, I guess. You know, I guess he became a senator a few years ago, and we've had a Democrat president, so he never had. Yep.

[David Sacks]

Here's the video. Yeah.

[Thomas Lafont]

And he said that he was honored and humbled to be there. I mean, that's the way I felt as well. Those comments by the vice president resonated with me. I think probably every American would feel this way. The first. First time you're in the Oval Office, it is pretty incredible.

[Jason Calacanis]

You want me to repeat the words that the President said about you? There's nobody like this guy. They said, how did you get David Sacks? How did you do that? He's doing it for the country more than anything else. We appreciate it, David. Thank you very much.

[Thomas Lafont]

He's been really nice to me. It's really incredible. He's been just incredible. To me. And he gave me the pen from the signing, which is pretty cool.

[Jason Calacanis]

Can we see the pen? Can we see the pen? Brand of the pen?

[Thomas Lafont]

Well, it's not branded. Basically it says the White House on one side and it's got his signature on another. And so look, I wasn't expecting the trophy case.

[Jason Calacanis]

Is it like a Sharpie? What is that? Is it a Sharpie?

[Thomas Lafont]

It is. It is a Sharpie. You've seen him see sign, right? Yeah, yeah, so it's what, you know, I assume it's what he likes, but. So he gave me the pen, which is pretty incredible.

[Jason Calacanis]

Have you guys seen that? There's all these ASMR videos of the President signing where you can just hear the pen.

[David Sacks]

The side pen.

[Jason Calacanis]

No, the pen on the paper. It makes.

[David Friedberg]

Yeah, the.

[Jason Calacanis]

Exactly. There's like all these ASMRs of that.

[David Sacks]

Well, Freeberg wants to know if you could assign his new Tesla. He wants you to sign it with that pen. He wants you to autograph it. So when you get back to the Valley you can start doing autographs with that all around.

[Thomas Lafont]

No, no, I think only the President's allowed to use this pen.

[David Sacks]

Only the presence allowed to use. Okay, well, put it somewhere safe. Okay. Don't lose the pen. Gotta put it in a glass box or something. And sacks, there's thousands of commenters who are just begging for you to come back. Do you have a message to your legions of commenters?

[Thomas Lafont]

Well, I thank them and I'm back right now. I know maybe it's not enough, but soak it in. It would help if you guys could just do a better job on the pod so they weren't complaining all the time.

[David Sacks]

We'll do the best we can without you. All right, get back to work. Get back to work. Come on. Just taxpayer. You're on the taxpayer clock here. Go back to work here and save America. Make America great again. Listen, we wish you great success. We miss you greatly and we thank you for the service to the country. We wish you all the best as you go handle two of the most important issues for our country. AI and help advise our President on cryptocurrency as well.

[Jason Calacanis]

Love you, Saxy.

[David Friedberg]

And PCast.

[Jason Calacanis]

Congrats.

[David Sacks]

And PCast. Yes, of course.

[Jason Calacanis]

And PCas as well, boys. Love you very, very much, David. Love you. Hopefully see you on Tuesday.

[David Sacks]

Yes. Thomas, thanks for coming in.

[Jason Calacanis]

Thanks for the opportunity, Thomas. Thank you very much.

[David Sacks]

Thank you, podcast.

[David Friedberg]

Thank you, Thomas.

[David Sacks]

Bye bye.

[Jason Calacanis]

Love you boys.

[David Sacks]

Let your winners ride Rain Man David Sachs.

[Thomas Lafont]

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

[David Sacks]

Love you at night, Queen of Quinoa. Besties are gone.

[David Friedberg]

That is my dog taking a notice in your driveway.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Oh, man.

[Jason Calacanis]

My habitat will meet me at place. 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, but they just need to release somehow.

[David Sacks]

We need to get. Murkies are back.