← Next Up with Mark Halperin
Next Up with Mark Halperin
Marc Andreessen on AI and Tech Culture in 2025, Trump Era Myths Busted, Charlie Kirk's Faith Message
00:54:03
Mark Halperin opens today’s episode with a new reported monologue pushing back on the idea that American history began just ten years ago when Donald Trump went down the escalator, highlighting three current controversies with deep roots. He shows how lawfare, the decline of opportunity and purpose among young men, and government shutdown brinkmanship were all entrenched features of American politics and culture long before Trump entered the scene. By tracing their history back decades, Mark explains why these battles should not be seen as Trump-era phenomena, but as part of a much longer story in American life. Then, Mark sits down for a rare conversation with tech pioneer Marc Andreessen about where technology is heading. Andreessen explains why some people thrive with AI while others fall behind – and why it depends less on the tools you have than how you use them. He discusses China’s dangerous edge in AI and manufacturing, reflects on the culture that made Silicon Valley a gl...
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- [00:00]
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- [00:32]
Mark Halperin
Welcome in everybody. Thank you for being part of NextUp as a Nexter. We're honored to have you here. First episode of the week and eager to have this episode roll an unfurl in front of your eyes and ears. I'm Mark Halperin, editor in chief of the interactive video platform two way and the host here for you, your guide to everything. Next up to bring you my exclusive reporting and analysis of all the big stories out there, the ones that matter most and to give you a guide to what's happening next up. Joining us today, super delighted to have Marc Andreessen, the co founder, general partner of the firm Andreessen Horowitz here. He's one of the smartest people I know. Let's be honest, you won't be embarrassed to hear me say it. When he gets here, we're going to talk about everything under the sun related to AI China and the human mind versus the artificial mind. Eager to share Marc Andreessen's wisdom with you. And and that's coming up. But first, my latest reporting and analysis of what's going on here in the country. So struck by the before and after, before and after Trump, if you've got kids, this will probably be the best metaphor for you. People with kids often will say, as I do, can't remember what my life was like before I had a kid or kids. Right. Just changes everything. And Donald Trump has done that, too. It's, it's in the abstract possible to remember before he was in our lives 10 years ago. But he has been such a dominant presence in our politics, has affected how both his supporters and detractors think about American politics, American culture, American economy, that it's a challenge to remember pre Trump and a lot of focus on post Trump. Right. I think it's one of the biggest questions we faced in our lifetimes about American politics and American life. What will it be like when Donald Trump is no longer president or able to run for president? You obviously have the prospect that he'll stick around not running Again, I don't think, but simply being a big force in American politics. And of course, if his hand picked successor, JD Vance, perhaps becomes president, his influence will still be felt, but it's not going to be quite the same. But what I want to talk to you about today is something I've been thinking about and talking to a lot of smart people about in politics and out of politics, which is the tendency in our, in our Internet and social media culture and in the era of Trump to attribute everything to Trump, to think that all the dynamics, all the phenomena taking place on the national town square now are derivative of Donald Trump. That history basically began in 2015 and what we're living through now is very particular stuff related to Trump. It's just not true. And I want to talk about three things. I came up with so many examples, but I want to get to Marc Andreessen, so not going to do every example, but I want to talk about three things that are cast in our media culture and social media and casual conversations again as Trump era phenomena, when in fact again the antecedents go back so much further. And the first is lawfare, right, with James, the James Comey indictment. You see a lot of people saying, well, here's the story. Trump didn't like Comey, Comey came after Trump. So now Trump's going back after Comey. And the left says, well, Trump's escalating things, what Comey did to him. The Trump indictments are not as bad. Indictments of Trump are not as bad as what Trump has done. And what people on the right would say, Trump is just trying not, they say, not for revenge. Trump is simply trying to send a message that the only way to deter this stuff from happening in the future is to show the people on the left in the deep state who did this that they can't get away, who indicted him, that they can't get away with it. Okay, so there's some truth to that. If you just, if you're, if you're zooming the camera in really tight, right, to like 2017 forward to now. But I went and did a chronology of all the lawfare and it really started after Watergate when the independent council law was created because the Nixon, Richard Nixon's conduct made the Congress and elite society say you can't expect a president and Justice Department to honestly investigate the president. So in cases where there's a conflict of interest, you need these so called independent counsels who get picked and, and then have unlimited budgets. And, and we saw administrations in both Parties regret having created this, what they thought saw as a monster. There's so many cases, both during the Independent Council law, then it was allowed to lapse even after, of lawfare. Lawfare has been going on pretty much since Watergate, against people in the executive branch, including presidents, against people in Congress, and it's been out of control. And I've seen in my own life, so many people go through a version of what Donald Trump went through and what James Comey is now going through of once you're investigated and especially if you're indicted, the legal bills, the damage to personal reputation, the strain on your family. I saw people in the Clinton administration who had to lawyer up, who didn't make a lot of money before or after they entered the administration, who had hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills. It was unfathomable to them to have expenses like that, given how much income and wealth they had. And I saw it in the Trump and the Bush administration, too, less than the Obama administration, but some of it. And you saw it with Newt Gingrich. You saw it with Speaker Jim Wright, you saw with the Keating Five. You saw with President Bush's son first, President Bush's son, Neil Bush, brother of George W. He was investigated over his relationship to banks. Saw it with so many people connected to Donald Trump. This lawfare, where you can define it different ways, but the concept of prosecutions done against political enemies or for political purposes is, Is. Is horrible. It's so antithetical to what America is supposed to be, where justice is not supposed to be about political retribution, supposed to be about the opposite. Supposed to be about honest prosecutors making honest decisions that are fair, where no one is charged or persecuted by prosecution because of their political connections or relationships or history. This did not start right now. This goes back to the 1970s. And that's important to put in context, because while the left says nothing like this has ever happened, Donald Trump is doing something no one's ever done. Just not true. It's not true. Now, every case is different. And, you know, as I put my chronology together, I kind of mentally said, well, who was actually guilty or seemed guilty or not? But in some ways, it doesn't matter. Both parties have been the victims of lawfare. Both parties have been the practitioners of lawfare. Didn't start with Donald Trump. I don't know when it's going to end. I don't. I don't suspect it's going to end anytime soon. But when people look at what's going on right now, particularly with Comey, you can't say this is a Trump phenomena. You can't say Trump's taken it to a new level. It's never happened like this before. Just not true. All right, second example is about the economic and spiritual, what do I call it, panic or troubles or decline of young men in particular in this country, and older men and younger women too. It applies to some extent to everybody, but particularly this issue of the lack of economic hope, the search for meaning amongst young men. And we've seen that put in sharp relief in the last couple weeks because of Charlie Kirk, because of the background of the alleged assassin, but also because of the work of Charlie Kirk. And people talk about Charlie's work as you know, they talk about it in different ways, they emphasize different things. But to me, and we saw this when he came on the show in his last interview, he did hear the day before he was killed, he's so relentless, focused on home ownership, on economic opportunity and spiritual renewal. And of course, he saw those as linked. He saw the need for both economic opportunity and the need to feel part of something larger than oneself as an antidote to the long term spiral for so many into hopelessness, spiritual hopelessness, economic hopelessness. And, and, and, and of course, part of why Donald Trump was able to win in 2024 was because a lot of young men of all races voted Trump. And they voted Trump in part because they saw in the inspiration of, of Charlie Kirk and in a rejection of economic and, and cultural policies of the Democrats, an opportunity to try to change the course of the country and change the course of their lives. No doubt if you zoom in tight, the, the agenda, the, the rhetoric, the policies espoused by Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk and others, part of MAGA were a big story of inspiration and hope for young men. But I say widen out the aperture, pull the camera back. This has been going on pretty much also since the 1970s and certainly received a supercharge after the economic crisis in 2008, where people felt undermined by confidence in their confidence in America, didn't feel that their, their trust in the United States as a place where they could have opportunity and a spirit of fulfilling, meaningful life was what their parents had. And so I say again, you can say this problem exists now. You can say Trump and Kirk found a way to address this problem for many, but this is a long running problem. We saw it with the decline in American confidence in people in government, you saw with the decline in manufacturing. And then after the financial crisis, you saw with people just fundamentally not believing that business and government and the economy would work for them. This problem will persist after Trump. It certainly is persisting after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. But this is not a new thing. The issue of young men in particular, I said before, it applies to everybody is not a new thing. It's a long running problem that neither party has sufficiently addressed. But the reason why Donald Trump won the election as much as anything else is people. And this happened in 2016 as well. People are not happy with the status quo. And for the people who lay, how could anyone vote for Donald Trump? You all have people like that in your life? I certainly do. The answer is if you're so unhappy with the status quo, if you're a young man and you don't see the opportunities to buy a home, get a job, have a good, a good career, if you don't see spiritual fulfillment, meaning in your life, you'll say, you know a lot of stuff. I don't like Trump, but let's blow up the status quo. That's how he won in 16, it's how he won in 24. But it's not a new issue because the same thing basically got Bill Clinton elected in 92, George Bush elected in 2000, Barack Obama elected in 2008. That search for economic opportunity, that search for meaning and purpose, that has been long running. Vietnam, Watergate, then into the financial crisis, the decline in manufacturing. There are big structural things now that have been going on for decades. Is the Trump decade, is that an important decade in the history of this? No doubt. But I say again, this did not start with Donald Trump and it won't end with Donald Trump either. Lastly, the thing that's in the news now, the economic, the government shut down, the fight over how to solve having a budget for the United States. And you see contention between Trump and then Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader. This is a, this is a familiar fight, but it's covered now as if Trump's bumpy, to say the least. Relationship with the Democrats is a brand new thing that the failure of the relationship of Trump until, until Tuesday or Monday of this week, Trump had never met Hakeem Jeffries. And his relationship with Schumer while long running has become very tense. Tense. This is not new. We've had past government shutdowns and we've had similarly tense relationships between President Clinton and the Republicans, President Bush and the Democrats, President Obama and the Republicans, and Joe Biden and the Republicans. This is not new. People act as if this is the first time, there's been tense personal relationships and really sniping back and forth between the president of one party and the congressional leaders of the other when they need to make a deal to keep there from being a government shutdown. Seen it my whole career. Trump's version, certainly a little different in flavor because of social media and because of Trump's willingness to engage in insults, to make his point, to try to get the upper hand. And there's no doubt that the base of the Democratic Party is super eager for there not to be a deal, because if Trump's for it, they're against it. So they're supercharging in the Trump era of a lot of things, including this. But this is not new. The dynamic's not new. The reason why we're at an impasse is not new. The role of the bases of both parties are not new. The challenge that the leaders have of both parties in Congress to make a deal without pissing off the members of their own party on Capitol Hill, these are not new dynamics. So once again, the press and Trump's opponents in the Democratic Party will say, oh, this is so. You know, this is all just Trump. And Trump's changed everything. He really hasn't. Really hasn't changed everything. And there'll be a solution to the government shutdown, and it will be along the lines of previous government shutdowns. One side will decide they're losing the PR war and they'll sue for peace, and they'll make a deal that they wouldn't have made in this case. Both sides seem pretty confident. So I don't know how long it'll go on, but. But I'll say again, it's not new. Trump's presence, Trump's dominance of the national conversation, that's new. And it causes people to forget that these things, things like lawfare, things like the decline in people's trust in government, decline in hope and meaning, the prospects of a government shutdown, the dynamics of government shutdown, none of that's new. Trump is such a powerful force. Whether you love him or hate him, he's such a complicated force that I get why people get confused. I get why people get hyperbolic and overstate. The case that never been anything like this. Haven't seen anything like this in our whole lives. It's just. Just not the case. It's not the case. I think a lot about what things will be like after Trump. I can't remember very well. Just like I can't remember before I was a dad. I can't really remember pretty well what things were like before Trump, how different they were. And it's tough to say what things will be like after Trump. I get asked about it all the time. I said I think about it all the time. But it's very difficult. It's very difficult to know because we don't know what a hovering presence he'll be and because he's been so dominant. But I can tell you that after Trump, unfortunately, there'll still be lawfare. I can tell you that after Trump, there'll still be a search on the part of young men in particular for economic hope and for purpose and meaning. And I can tell you this will not be the last government shutdown. All of these things started before Trump. All of these things will live after Trump. And again, I could give you a million other examples. The reason I'm bringing you up all of this is it's important to understand history. It's important to be able to think about things clearly and not to get caught into saying this is all because of Trump. The flavor, the specifics of what's happening now, yeah, they're derivative of Trump, but the things that are happening, the phenomena, the long arc of history, what we are like as a nation, good, bad and indifferent, all of that is sustaining. And Trump's just doing his chapter. The book itself, the book itself is a lot longer than that. All right, next up, Marc Andreessen will be here. He is one of the most impressive people I've ever spoken to. He is a smart, smart guy. Doesn't talk a lot about stuff, not always in the media. So honored to have him here. Marc Andreessen's next stop, don't go away. So let me tell you a story. Now, it's about a guy named Leo Grillo who was on a road trip across the country and he came across a dog. It was a Doberman who was severely underweight and clearly in big trouble. Leo rescued that dog and he named him Delta. Sadly, though, Delta is just one of many animals that needed help, which gave Leo the inspiration to start something called Delta Rescue. It's the country's the world's largest no kill, care for life animal sanctuary. They've rescued thousands of dogs, cats and horses from the wilderness. And they provide all their animals with what they need. Shelter, love, safety, and a good home. This dedication, this everlasting love for animals, that's Leo's mission and it's his legacy. Delta Rescue relies solely on contributions from people like all of us. So if you want caring for animals to be part of your legacy, speak with an estate planner. Because there are tax savings and estate planning benefits to giving, you can grow your estate while letting your love for animals live well into the future. Check out the estate planning tab on their website to learn more. And you can speak with an advisor we call a dog man's best friend for a reason. You can help those who need it most. So please right now visit deltarescue.org to learn more. Again today, go to deltarescue.org.
- [19:21]
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- [19:51]
Mark Halperin
All right, next up, Marc Andreessen, innovator, creator and damn successful businessman. Early on he invented the Mosaic Internet browser, co founded Netscape and since then he has been the animating force and investor behind a lot of very successful companies, including some at the multiple billion dollar level. Co Founded his firm Andreessen Horowitz, general partner there. And they do a lot, a lot of stuff about a lot, a lot of stuff. And he knows a lot about a lot. Mark, welcome.
- [20:24]
Marc Andreessen
Thank you, Mark.
- [20:25]
Interviewer
It's great to be here.
- [20:26]
Mark Halperin
Really happy to have you. So much about AI I want to talk to you about. So we're going to spend a lot of the time on that. First off, it's tempting to say right now and when I think about AI, I think about where are we now and where are we going? It's tempting to say it's between really smart, highly educated people who are adapting to it and then people who just don't have the capacity to do that in their jobs easily. But what I'm finding is at people who do what I do, people are well educated, very privileged. There's a have nots there. I'm a baby using it. I'm not using it very sophisticatedly very often. But I am Einstein compared to some of my counterparts. And I'm wondering, is that how you see it? And what do you think differentiates those who understand how powerful it is even now versus those who seem oblivious to it.
- [21:19]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah. So I think there's kind of a fake story and then there's a real story.
- [21:23]
Interviewer
So the fake story is kind of the classic, kind of the classic kind of Marxist story, which is only the rich people have it, only the fancy People have it, the big tech companies have it, everybody else is kind of going to be left out in the cold.
- [21:35]
Marc Andreessen
That's not actually what's happening. And there's a lot of data on.
- [21:38]
Interviewer
This now that has been released by these companies to justify what I'm about to say. So the real story is this is already probably the most democratic, you know, small D technology of all time, in the sense of the very best AI in the world is fully available on the apps that anybody can download. And, you know, take your pick, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, you know, Mistral, any of these, by the way, Deep Seat from China.
- [22:01]
Marc Andreessen
You download any of these apps, you're getting state of the art, like the.
- [22:04]
Interviewer
Full, most sophisticated, powerful AI capability in the world. And, you know, the number of people already who downloaded these apps is north of a half billion on its way to a billion.
- [22:14]
Marc Andreessen
And individual people are figuring out basically.
- [22:17]
Interviewer
How to incorporate this in their lives. And what you see in the data is there's maybe what you'd expect, which is there are a slice of people who just use these new systems all the time, literally all day, for everything.
- [22:28]
Marc Andreessen
And in a lot of cases, they're.
- [22:29]
Interviewer
Reporting that they're getting enormous benefits from that.
- [22:31]
Marc Andreessen
And then there's a lot of people.
- [22:32]
Interviewer
Who are experimenting and trying to figure it out.
- [22:34]
Marc Andreessen
And then there are people who are.
- [22:35]
Interviewer
Just not, for whatever reason, not interested or not engaged.
- [22:38]
Marc Andreessen
But I would say it's incredible out.
- [22:40]
Interviewer
Of the gate how distributed this technology already is.
- [22:44]
Marc Andreessen
And then I just say, like, I.
- [22:45]
Interviewer
Don'T have, you know, with all my resources and with all my connections, I don't have access to a better AI than the one that you just download off the App Store. And so I think this is actually like just an incredible story of the most advanced technology in the world being available to everybody right out of the gate.
- [22:59]
Mark Halperin
You got to get people to use it, to take advantage of it, right? So I've got a friend who's drafted a book and took it to his agent, and the agent said, It's 140,000 words. You got to cut it down to 70,000. And I said, if you try to do that by hand, even if you hire someone, it's going to take you months. I can do it in an hour. And I can say to AI, don't change the style, don't change the tone, don't cut anything that, you know, ruins the story. And he said, that's immoral. The publisher will be mad that I did it that way. It's not right. How should I answer that, person?
- [23:36]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, so the exact same arguments emerged.
- [23:39]
Interviewer
Years ago with the introduction of computers. Right.
- [23:42]
Marc Andreessen
I actually just, I've been watching a.
- [23:43]
Interviewer
Lot of old science fiction movies with my kid. And, you know, there's this famous science fiction movie, Tron from 1982, you know.
- [23:49]
Marc Andreessen
That had the first kind of the.
- [23:51]
Interviewer
First real computer graphics movies. And it was disqualified for an Oscar for special effects because it used computers.
- [23:56]
Marc Andreessen
Right. And so there's this kind of long tradition of like whatever the new tool.
- [23:59]
Interviewer
Is, it's sort of illegitimate and there.
- [24:00]
Marc Andreessen
Must be something wrong with it in this particular case. I mean, there's no doubt there are.
- [24:04]
Interviewer
People who feel the way that your friend feels.
- [24:07]
Marc Andreessen
That issue was actually litigated in the.
- [24:09]
Interviewer
Last Hollywood strikes on the film and TV side of the creative profession.
- [24:16]
Marc Andreessen
The last round of strikes.
- [24:17]
Interviewer
Actually, it's actually funny, they started as streaming strikes and then AI hit and it became AI strikes.
- [24:21]
Marc Andreessen
But the settlement with the studios, actually with the unions was that the following.
- [24:26]
Interviewer
Which is, if you're a writer and you use AI, that's totally fine. What's not allowed is for the studio to basically use the AI and then claim it was a writer. But basically what the unions and studios in Hollywood decided was it's another tool. It's like the word processor, it's like the personal computer. It's like using a printer instead of writing out a manuscript by hand.
- [24:46]
Marc Andreessen
And so I think there are people who feel like your friend does, but.
- [24:49]
Interviewer
I think the world is already adapting very fast to using it.
- [24:52]
Marc Andreessen
And frankly, one of those reasons you.
- [24:54]
Interviewer
Probably pointed out to your friend is.
- [24:56]
Marc Andreessen
I don't even know that anybody can tell anymore.
- [24:58]
Interviewer
Right.
- [24:59]
Marc Andreessen
And so, you know, if you're going.
- [25:00]
Interviewer
To have a moral prohibition on something that people can just do and nobody knows about, like, you know, is that really going to work?
- [25:06]
Marc Andreessen
And so I think those, those sort.
- [25:07]
Interviewer
Of self imposed barriers are probably going to collapse quite quickly.
- [25:10]
Mark Halperin
I hope so. Fortune put out a list of the top American companies using AI. Alphabet, Visa, JPMorgan Chase. Top three we talked about just now. On an individual level, if you were the CEO of a company or advising a CEO, how important is it to be on that list? In other words, how important is it to get your company to adapt? Whether it's for internal or consumer facing? How important is it right now?
- [25:39]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, so this, this goes back to actually where we started, which is, in fairness, the old model of adapting actually.
- [25:44]
Interviewer
Computers and computers came out. The old model was the largest institutions get technology first and then everybody else gets it later.
- [25:51]
Marc Andreessen
And so, you know, the way the.
- [25:52]
Interviewer
Computer rolled out was the government actually got mainframe computers first starting in the 1940s.
- [25:57]
Marc Andreessen
And then big companies got computers, mainframes.
- [26:00]
Interviewer
In the 1950s, 1960s. Small companies started to get computers, mini computers at the time, the 1970s.
- [26:06]
Marc Andreessen
And then we as individuals only got.
- [26:08]
Interviewer
PCs in the 1980s.
- [26:09]
Marc Andreessen
And so it took 40 years for.
- [26:11]
Interviewer
Basically technology to cascade down from the largest organizations in the world to small businesses.
- [26:15]
Marc Andreessen
And to the individual, this technology AI is going the opposite, which is, like I said, the most sophisticated capabilities are.
- [26:24]
Interviewer
Available on the consumer app today day.
- [26:27]
Marc Andreessen
And then what we're finding is consumers.
- [26:28]
Interviewer
Are adapting the fastest, just individuals in their lives.
- [26:31]
Marc Andreessen
The small businesses are then adopting right after that because, you know, a small.
- [26:35]
Interviewer
Business typically is just, you know, a person who's, you know, making decisions for their own business. Very, very easy to do new things.
- [26:41]
Marc Andreessen
Big companies are then following small companies. And so, you know, the companies on that list, some, you know, obviously some of them are doing interesting things. But in general, big companies right now.
- [26:49]
Interviewer
Are pretty tied up in knots internally.
- [26:51]
Marc Andreessen
Kind of in all their processes and.
- [26:53]
Interviewer
In all their legacy systems and all their, you know, organization and training and.
- [26:56]
Marc Andreessen
But their unions and like all the.
- [26:58]
Interviewer
Other issues they have to deal with.
- [26:59]
Marc Andreessen
You know, they're actually relatively slow to.
- [27:01]
Interviewer
Adopt compared to individuals and small businesses.
- [27:04]
Marc Andreessen
And then. And then government is the late adopter.
- [27:06]
Interviewer
Right?
- [27:06]
Marc Andreessen
And so governments, of course, are already.
- [27:07]
Interviewer
Trying to figure out, you know, kind of how to adapt to this technology, but they're not adopting it very fast because they can't because of all their rules and systems and bureaucracy.
- [27:15]
Marc Andreessen
And so there's been a real inversion.
- [27:16]
Interviewer
Of how technology moves through our society.
- [27:18]
Marc Andreessen
That'S really become, you know, AI is.
- [27:20]
Interviewer
Becoming a case study for.
- [27:22]
Marc Andreessen
And so the answer to your question is, I think big company CEOs, and.
- [27:25]
Interviewer
You know, many of them are doing.
- [27:27]
Marc Andreessen
This, but I think they really have to force the issue on this inside.
- [27:30]
Interviewer
Their companies because these big companies are just such now giant bureaucracies with so many rules that by default they'll smother new ideas.
- [27:38]
Marc Andreessen
And so it's a real act of leadership to get a list like that.
- [27:42]
Interviewer
And be able to actually say kind of with pride, like, we're on the leading edge.
- [27:46]
Mark Halperin
So if your friend owned a bakery and he said, mark, I want you to come in and help me figure out how to use AI. Well, how could someone own a single storefront bakery? Use it now.
- [27:56]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, there's.
- [27:57]
Interviewer
I mean, there's, you know, there's dozens.
- [27:59]
Marc Andreessen
Of ways, you know, it obviously depends.
- [28:00]
Interviewer
On what your business goals are.
- [28:02]
Marc Andreessen
They're.
- [28:02]
Interviewer
They're.
- [28:02]
Mark Halperin
They're. Baker.
- [28:03]
Marc Andreessen
Dozens of ways there are.
- [28:06]
Interviewer
Exactly.
- [28:07]
Marc Andreessen
And so, yeah, I mean, look, the first thing you can do is just.
- [28:09]
Interviewer
Say, look, you know, review. You know, do a performance review for me. Like, just feed in.
- [28:12]
Marc Andreessen
You know, here's my.
- [28:13]
Interviewer
Here, my. Here's my staffing schedule.
- [28:14]
Marc Andreessen
You know, what do you think of it?
- [28:15]
Interviewer
Give me a critique of it.
- [28:17]
Marc Andreessen
You know, here's the last, you know.
- [28:18]
Interviewer
100 emails we've gotten from customers. What are the. What are the. What are the patterns of that?
- [28:22]
Marc Andreessen
Here's the copy for the ad that.
- [28:23]
Interviewer
We'Re going to place in the local newspaper, put up on Facebook or whatever. What do you think of this?
- [28:28]
Marc Andreessen
Let it do it.
- [28:29]
Interviewer
Let it do a performance assessment.
- [28:31]
Marc Andreessen
A lot of people find it very.
- [28:32]
Interviewer
Effective for personal coaching.
- [28:34]
Marc Andreessen
And so the owner might use it.
- [28:35]
Interviewer
That way or might ask the employees to use it that way.
- [28:38]
Marc Andreessen
Then I think where the power really kicks in is, okay, you're a small business owner. You got one bakery.
- [28:43]
Interviewer
Now you want to have two bakeries, and you want to have a brand. And then maybe if that works, you're.
- [28:47]
Marc Andreessen
Going to have five and then 50 and then 500, and then you're going.
- [28:49]
Interviewer
To have packaged products going to supermarkets and so forth. And.
- [28:52]
Marc Andreessen
And then there you basically turn the.
- [28:54]
Interviewer
AI into a thought partner, right? And you basically say, okay, what, you.
- [28:56]
Marc Andreessen
Know, what are the best ways to expand from a single, you know, outlet.
- [28:59]
Interviewer
To, you know, to multiple and, you know, turn this into a larger business.
- [29:02]
Marc Andreessen
And, you know, the AI, you know, it's been, you know, because it's been trained on, you know, some large percentage.
- [29:07]
Interviewer
Of the total amount of human knowledge.
- [29:09]
Marc Andreessen
Like it has within it all the.
- [29:11]
Interviewer
Information on how, you know, Ray Kroc turned McDonald's from, you know, a single.
- [29:14]
Marc Andreessen
Restaurant into McDonald's, and how all these.
- [29:15]
Interviewer
Other, you know, entrepreneurs before actually did this. And so it can, you know, explain with you and help you, you know, figure out how to do this for your own business.
- [29:22]
Marc Andreessen
And then, you know, the thing that you get into is you use it is basically it's just like, wow, it's.
- [29:26]
Interviewer
Like having the world's best coach, mentor, therapist, right?
- [29:28]
Marc Andreessen
Advisor, you know, board member. But it's like, infinitely patient. And so it's like, it's happy to have the conversation. It's happy to have the conversation 50 times. It's happy if you admit your insecurities.
- [29:40]
Interviewer
It'll coach you through them.
- [29:41]
Marc Andreessen
You know, it's happy if you run.
- [29:42]
Interviewer
Wild Speculations that don't make any sense.
- [29:44]
Marc Andreessen
It's happy to do all that at.
- [29:45]
Interviewer
4 in the morning.
- [29:46]
Marc Andreessen
And so the people who are using.
- [29:48]
Interviewer
It a lot are finding it's, you know, it actually turns out to be very supportive in their, in their real life.
- [29:52]
Mark Halperin
Could you say, here's the recipe for our best selling cinnamon rolls. How could I make it better? Would that.
- [29:57]
Interviewer
Yes.
- [29:58]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, you can say, you can say. And by the way, part of the.
- [30:02]
Interviewer
Art of AI, right, Is what questions to ask it, right?
- [30:05]
Marc Andreessen
Because, you know, it turns out, you know, it turns, it can answer, you.
- [30:07]
Interviewer
Know, many, many different questions. So you have to, you have to actually get creative at this.
- [30:11]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah. And so you can say like, here's.
- [30:12]
Interviewer
My current recipe, you know, how might I improve it?
- [30:14]
Marc Andreessen
You can also say, you know, what's.
- [30:15]
Interviewer
The best cinnamon roll recipe in the world? Work backwards from that.
- [30:19]
Marc Andreessen
And then you could also say, look, I want to make the best one.
- [30:21]
Interviewer
In the world, but I need to do it at a 10. You know what, you know what, you know, what are the ways to cost optimize.
- [30:29]
Marc Andreessen
By the way, the other thing you can ask it is, you can ask it, what question should I be asking?
- [30:32]
Interviewer
Right.
- [30:33]
Marc Andreessen
And so you could plug in, I run a bakery, what question should I be asking? And you'll find it, it's actually a.
- [30:38]
Interviewer
Thought partner in helping you figure out what questions to ask.
- [30:40]
Mark Halperin
Right, Brilliant. So the other day I said, I want to know every Republican who voted against any of the articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton. Give me the list of every Republican. And it came back and it listed some Democrats mixed in there and it said they were Democrats. And I said back, I only want Republicans. And it said, oh, sorry, I inadvertently included Democrats. Now I could understand a human being, a junior researcher, doing that, but how could AI make a mistake, have it pointed out to it and say, oh yeah, how could that be in the model?
- [31:14]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah. So this gets technical. And I'd be delighted to get deeply.
- [31:18]
Interviewer
Into the technical details. I'll try to resist.
- [31:21]
Marc Andreessen
It's a new kind of computer. And the way to think about it is computers up until now have been.
- [31:25]
Interviewer
What you might call like hyper literal. Right.
- [31:28]
Marc Andreessen
Where computers up until now, like they do math really fast, but they do the same thing every single time.
- [31:33]
Interviewer
They exhibit no creativity whatsoever.
- [31:35]
Marc Andreessen
And if you expect them to exhibit.
- [31:36]
Interviewer
Creativity, they just can't do it.
- [31:38]
Marc Andreessen
And then if they make a mistake.
- [31:40]
Interviewer
It'S because the human programmer made a mistake.
- [31:42]
Marc Andreessen
And that has made computers super useful for running large math exercises, doing A.
- [31:46]
Interviewer
Lot of things that computers do. But of course, computers have never been creative. Computer's never been able to write you poetry or work with you on your cinnamon butter recipe.
- [31:55]
Marc Andreessen
Like it's just never even been a.
- [31:56]
Interviewer
Thing that we can think about.
- [31:57]
Marc Andreessen
So it's never had kind of that.
- [31:58]
Interviewer
Human element of creativity to it.
- [32:00]
Marc Andreessen
This is just a completely different kind.
- [32:02]
Interviewer
Of computer that has these characteristics that.
- [32:04]
Marc Andreessen
Are frankly more like a person, which is it's right most of the time, it occasionally gets things wrong. When it gets things wrong, it's able to self critique and you have to kind of work with it the way.
- [32:13]
Interviewer
That you work with a person.
- [32:16]
Marc Andreessen
And so you have to basically figure out as you use it, like you.
- [32:18]
Interviewer
Want to take advantage of the fact that it's creative and then you want to be tolerant of the fact, fact that it's not always correct, just like you're working with a person.
- [32:25]
Marc Andreessen
Now, having said that, when it makes.
- [32:27]
Interviewer
Easily avoidable mistakes, where it's just like makes boneheaded fact mistakes, you know, we call those hallucinations.
- [32:33]
Marc Andreessen
The latest systems are much, much, much better at not doing that.
- [32:36]
Interviewer
They're, they're, they're much more accurate. And in particular for anybody watching this, if you want to kind of see.
- [32:40]
Marc Andreessen
This in action, just give an example. If you, if you buy the, the.
- [32:44]
Interviewer
Full version of ChatGPT, there's a model called GPT Pro, GPT 5 Pro, which is the latest one. And then there's something called Deep Research, which is a switch that you turn on.
- [32:52]
Marc Andreessen
And if you use GPT5Pro with deep.
- [32:54]
Interviewer
Research and you ask a question like.
- [32:55]
Marc Andreessen
That, like at this point, I think.
- [32:57]
Interviewer
It'S, I wouldn't say it's bulletproof, but like it's really good at staying fastly grounded.
- [33:02]
Marc Andreessen
And literally you can watch it work.
- [33:03]
Interviewer
And it'll literally go out on the Internet. It'll like check all the authoritative sources.
- [33:06]
Marc Andreessen
And it'll, you know, It'll go on.
- [33:08]
Interviewer
Congress.gov or whatever and check the voting records and verify that.
- [33:11]
Marc Andreessen
And so I think that problem is.
- [33:13]
Interviewer
Being ironed out kind of as we speak. Yeah.
- [33:15]
Mark Halperin
For people watching, listening, who haven't used it or not used it much, the thing you said about good prompts is so key. And that does differentiate, you know, the people really getting productive at it from not. And one of the things that you and I have talked about is it is hilarious. It can write, if you give it the right prompts, it can write stuff that is so funny. And, and where does that come from? How does it have the capacity to understand, because humor involves metaphors and sophistication and humanity. How can it do that?
- [33:49]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, so this gets to this idea.
- [33:51]
Interviewer
Of how it's trained.
- [33:53]
Marc Andreessen
So basically what these systems are is they're basically the accumulation of human knowledge.
- [33:58]
Interviewer
Over time, sort of.
- [34:00]
Marc Andreessen
And by the way, most of the.
- [34:01]
Interviewer
Training data is just literally the Internet, right?
- [34:03]
Marc Andreessen
So one of the reasons that this is happening now and not 20 years.
- [34:05]
Interviewer
Ago is because the Internet finally got big enough, but just the web finally.
- [34:09]
Marc Andreessen
Got big enough to have like all.
- [34:10]
Interviewer
This information in it, right?
- [34:11]
Marc Andreessen
And so if you go out on.
- [34:12]
Interviewer
The Internet today, you know, you can.
- [34:14]
Marc Andreessen
Find, you know, all kinds of written.
- [34:16]
Interviewer
Material online that's, you know, it's, you can find like, you know, classic screenplays from, you know, the golden age of cinema 400 years ago.
- [34:22]
Marc Andreessen
You know, you can find, you know.
- [34:24]
Interviewer
Literally, you know, people joking with each other on social media all day long. You know, you can find, you know, professional comedians doing oral histories of, you know, how they did great comedy.
- [34:32]
Marc Andreessen
So there's just like, there's incredible amounts.
- [34:34]
Interviewer
Of information that are online about comedy and about what's funny.
- [34:37]
Marc Andreessen
And then all of that information is.
- [34:39]
Interviewer
In the training data.
- [34:39]
Marc Andreessen
So it's all kind of fed into.
- [34:41]
Interviewer
The AI during the training process. And the AI basically processes it through like any other kind of data and.
- [34:46]
Marc Andreessen
Comes out the other end and just.
- [34:47]
Interviewer
Basically is like, oh, you know, now the AI is a world class expert in humor, right?
- [34:52]
Marc Andreessen
And of course, you know, look, you could be an expert in humor and.
- [34:54]
Interviewer
Not actually be funny, right? And they're, you know, they're, I don't know, probably professors of comedy or something like that in colleges who aren't very funny.
- [35:00]
Marc Andreessen
But like, it just, it knows so much about what humor is.
- [35:04]
Interviewer
It knows so much about the pattern of jokes.
- [35:07]
Marc Andreessen
It knows so much about what make people laugh.
- [35:09]
Interviewer
It has so many examples, you know, to be able to learn from.
- [35:13]
Marc Andreessen
And you know, the professional comedians will tell you there are patterns to comedy, right? You know, there are, you know, I worked with a professional comedian once with.
- [35:19]
Interviewer
Something and he said, you know, the.
- [35:19]
Marc Andreessen
Key to it is specificity.
- [35:20]
Interviewer
Like you need to get, you just like nail the reference.
- [35:23]
Marc Andreessen
You know, another comedian will say the.
- [35:24]
Interviewer
Key is, you know, timing or pacing or the callback to the previous joke or whatever, you know, the punchline, whatever it is.
- [35:29]
Marc Andreessen
And so it just, it knows all that. And then it's just, you know, it's.
- [35:32]
Interviewer
Now so powerful that it's actually.
- [35:34]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, yeah. Quite honestly, I find, especially at like.
- [35:36]
Interviewer
2 in the morning, I find these things hysterical.
- [35:39]
Mark Halperin
Yeah. All right, just a minute left. Before we take a break, what's your advice to an individual who's barely used it or hasn't used it? What's your advice to them to sort of how to get started?
- [35:49]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, so I mean, by far, the best way to do it is just download it and use it.
- [35:53]
Interviewer
And like I said, you know, there's several good. You know, Elon's got grok, you know, which is. Which is now fantastic, by the way.
- [35:58]
Marc Andreessen
You know, it's actually interesting how these.
- [35:59]
Interviewer
Things are getting built into products now.
- [36:01]
Marc Andreessen
So the, you know, the new versions of X, you know, formerly Twitter, actually, if you go to any post on.
- [36:08]
Interviewer
X, there's a little rock icon that looks like a little. A little black hole icon in the upper right corner of the post.
- [36:13]
Marc Andreessen
And if you click on it, it actually calls up the grok AI to.
- [36:15]
Interviewer
Explain the post to you.
- [36:18]
Marc Andreessen
It literally is like it can explain to you that if there's some post.
- [36:21]
Interviewer
On politics or something, you don't understand what's happening. You just lost the threat of the topic. You just bought that button.
- [36:27]
Marc Andreessen
And you get in a dialogue with the AI.
- [36:29]
Interviewer
Little AI window pops up and explains the post and you can ask it for more details.
- [36:33]
Marc Andreessen
It's built into that product.
- [36:34]
Interviewer
Google's actually built AI now into search. And so now when you do searches, it has this thing called AI mode, and you bunk on it. And it, you know, in addition to getting the 10 blue links for Google, you now get into an AI dialog.
- [36:45]
Marc Andreessen
And so you just start using those products or you just download one of.
- [36:48]
Interviewer
These apps and start using it.
- [36:49]
Marc Andreessen
And like I said, a really great.
- [36:50]
Interviewer
Question is like, okay, how do I use you?
- [36:52]
Marc Andreessen
Right, Like. Or you can teach. Teach me works really well. You can say, you know, teach me.
- [36:56]
Interviewer
How to use you in the best.
- [36:57]
Marc Andreessen
Way you know, you know, teach, teach. You know, teach me how to use.
- [37:01]
Interviewer
You for my business, you know, for this project.
- [37:03]
Marc Andreessen
And it'll, you know, these things left.
- [37:05]
Interviewer
To talk, and it'll. It'll happily sit there and chatter away and take you through it.
- [37:09]
Mark Halperin
Yeah, just my. My sort of analog to the way you just said it. Ask it for what you want as specifically as possible. Don't hold back. Be really specific, and it will do what you ask. All right, more with Marc Andreessen. That's next up. Stay tuned. If you're 64 years old or older, this is an important announcement. The Department of Justice recently sued three major Medicare brokers for claiming they were unbiased while allegedly pushing people into plans that got them the biggest kickbacks. It's true. So many insurance agents, they just can't be trusted. But you also cannot rely on the government to give you the best information that you need either. That's why I want you to know about something called chapter. CHAPTER was started by people who went through all of this personally after their own parents were pushed into the wrong Medicare plan by an agent who was more focused on commissions than on good care. Chapter's mission is very simple. They want to give every American the honest, straightforward Medicare advice that they deserve. And here's what makes them different from everybody else. They're the only Medicare advisor that compares every plan nationwide, not just a few. That saves their clients an average of $1,100 a year. There's really no reason not to call. It's quick, it's easy, and they can review your options in under 20 minutes. If you're in the right plan already, they'll let you know that. But if there's a better plan, they'll help you make the switch. This could be the most important call you make this year. Dial pound 250 and say chapter Medicare to get peace of mind. Again, that's £250 and say chapter Medicare. At Designer Shoe Warehouse we believe that shoes are an important part of, well.
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Mark Halperin
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- [39:19]
Marc Andreessen
All right, welcome back.
- [39:20]
Mark Halperin
We're here with Mark Andreessen. Still. Mark, are you of the school that says that we're in an exit? The United States is in an existential struggle with China. Do you subscribe to that point of view?
- [39:31]
Marc Andreessen
Say, I hope that's not true. Right. You know, I hope this is not.
- [39:35]
Interviewer
Going to walk all the way to the situation that we ended up in with the Soviet Union, you know, like.
- [39:39]
Marc Andreessen
Mars, like, you know, like you, I.
- [39:40]
Interviewer
Grew up in an era, I'm sure. See if you remember this like, you.
- [39:44]
Marc Andreessen
Know, I growing up thinking there was.
- [39:46]
Interviewer
A significant chance that like we're all going to die, you know, from nuclear war.
- [39:50]
Marc Andreessen
And so I hope it doesn't get back to that level of intensity. But, but I do think there are a lot of historical parallels to what happened between the US and the USSR.
- [39:58]
Interviewer
In the 20th century. Happening right now.
- [40:01]
Marc Andreessen
And you have two hegemonic superpowers that both have visions.
- [40:06]
Interviewer
They both have visions of how society should be structured and how the global political system should be structured. And obviously, I think America's is better.
- [40:14]
Marc Andreessen
But they both have visions and they're.
- [40:17]
Interviewer
Both working to that end. And then they both have national strengths and weaknesses, militarily, technologically, economically, culturally.
- [40:25]
Marc Andreessen
And, you know, there is that kind.
- [40:26]
Interviewer
Of geopolitical fight happening.
- [40:29]
Marc Andreessen
So I hope we stay in this kind of, I don't know what you.
- [40:32]
Interviewer
Call it, mode of, like, coopetition, you know, tension without, you know, without military strife. You know, I hope we stay, you.
- [40:39]
Marc Andreessen
Know, in that mode, but, like, it's.
- [40:42]
Interviewer
A sufficiently fraught situation, you know, that we certainly need.
- [40:45]
Marc Andreessen
And you know, and by the way.
- [40:46]
Interviewer
Have a national strategy for how to win that. And we need to make sure that we do. Right.
- [40:50]
Mark Halperin
Do they have any one or two advantages over us in terms of AI?
- [40:54]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, they do. So they have all.
- [40:56]
Interviewer
They have two advantages.
- [40:57]
Marc Andreessen
And by the way, I should say we have many advantages. I'm very bullish on the US And.
- [41:01]
Interviewer
I think we're better positioned.
- [41:03]
Marc Andreessen
I wouldn't trade places with them.
- [41:05]
Interviewer
And we could talk about that.
- [41:06]
Marc Andreessen
But having said that, they do have strengths. And in particular, they have two key strengths. Number one is they do have the advantages of a command economy. And generally speaking, or 100%, I'm on.
- [41:18]
Interviewer
The side of free markets and decentralization and having a dynamic economy. And we have advantage. We have much better entrepreneurial ecosystem and so forth.
- [41:27]
Marc Andreessen
Having said that, they do have this advantage where when their government decides if.
- [41:31]
Interviewer
Something'S a national priority, like, they just do it.
- [41:34]
Marc Andreessen
And by that I mean, not only does the government do it, but they.
- [41:36]
Interviewer
Just tell the private sector you do the following, right?
- [41:38]
Marc Andreessen
And so sort of, you know, they have this thing the Soviets had where.
- [41:41]
Interviewer
You know, the entirety of society is able to, you know, go up against. Go up against single missions.
- [41:45]
Marc Andreessen
You know, we're just a lot more fractious than that. And so, you know, we kind of.
- [41:48]
Interviewer
Navigate our way through this in our own way, but not, you know, we don't have anywhere near that level of organization.
- [41:52]
Marc Andreessen
So that gives them the ability to.
- [41:54]
Interviewer
Execute against specific areas of focus in arguably a superior way.
- [41:59]
Marc Andreessen
And then the other advantage that they.
- [42:01]
Interviewer
Have is.
- [42:03]
Marc Andreessen
We in the US voluntarily.
- [42:05]
Interviewer
Be industrialized starting 30, 40 years ago.
- [42:09]
Marc Andreessen
And that industrialization, the making of physical.
- [42:12]
Interviewer
Things, in particular the making of machines, has moved substantially to China.
- [42:16]
Marc Andreessen
And the way that we think about machines now is that they're Basically, the.
- [42:20]
Interviewer
Hardware version of software. They're the embodied version of AI.
- [42:24]
Marc Andreessen
And so, you know, the car is.
- [42:25]
Interviewer
Not just steel and glass anymore. It's a. You know, it's a. It's a robot on wheels.
- [42:30]
Marc Andreessen
You know, the drone isn't just a.
- [42:31]
Interviewer
Toy, a toy anymore. It's a. It's a computer, you know, that flies.
- [42:34]
Marc Andreessen
Through the air, you know, that navigates itself. You know, robots are coming, you know.
- [42:39]
Interviewer
You know, we're gonna. We're gonna live in a world that's just like, completely awash with. With robots in the decades ahead.
- [42:44]
Marc Andreessen
And China's just like. As a consequence, in the last 30.
- [42:46]
Interviewer
Years of policy, China's just like, way ahead on everything involved in building physical things.
- [42:51]
Marc Andreessen
And, you know, then, you know, this administration and others have had visions of.
- [42:54]
Interviewer
How to recapture that. But, you know, we have a long.
- [42:56]
Mark Halperin
Way to go as the US Tries to become more of a manufacturing country. It would seem to me AI integrated into manufacturing is extremely powerful. Are they. Are they ahead of us on that? As you said, our biggest companies here are slow adapters of AI. Are there big manufacturers now using AI more than we are?
- [43:19]
Marc Andreessen
So, I think unleashed, we could do.
- [43:20]
Interviewer
That faster and better.
- [43:21]
Marc Andreessen
Like, if we could manufacture in the.
- [43:23]
Interviewer
US the way that we used to.
- [43:25]
Marc Andreessen
30 or 40 years ago, we could.
- [43:26]
Interviewer
Definitely do that faster for a variety of reasons, including the fact, I mean, we have better software engineers, we have a more flexible and dynamic economy.
- [43:34]
Marc Andreessen
We could do that faster. The big issue is just we have.
- [43:36]
Interviewer
Chosen to not be a manufacturing economy. We chose to move that. To move that offshore.
- [43:41]
Marc Andreessen
And for a very long time, we.
- [43:43]
Interviewer
Were very proud that we moved that offshore for a variety of reasons.
- [43:47]
Marc Andreessen
And so the challenge is not so much that, you know, that we couldn't.
- [43:50]
Interviewer
In theory, do exactly what you just described better than they can. It's just like if. If you just.
- [43:54]
Marc Andreessen
If you're not manufacturing things, then you.
- [43:56]
Interviewer
Can'T do that at all. Right? Which. Which is a situation that we've worked ourselves into.
- [43:59]
Marc Andreessen
And so, you know, just, you know, they're. They're, you know, their car, just to pick one.
- [44:03]
Interviewer
Their car industry is, like, moving, like.
- [44:05]
Marc Andreessen
Incredibly fast at this, you know. And look, we have to, you know, we have our superstar companies, we have Tesla, you know, in particular, that.
- [44:11]
Interviewer
That's world class of this and, you know, still, you know, better than. Better than the Chinese today.
- [44:14]
Marc Andreessen
But, like, the Chinese are moving really fast. And if you talk to people, we don't have a lot of exposure to Chinese cars in the US because the.
- [44:21]
Interviewer
Trade barriers are so high that they really are not cost effective to sell here. But it's like if you go to the Middle east and talk to just like normal affluent people, they're not driving Chinese cars by choice. Not because they can't afford a Mercedes, because the Chinese cars are better.
- [44:33]
Marc Andreessen
And the Chinese cars are like full.
- [44:35]
Interviewer
Self driving, electric, autonomous, voice AI. They're state of the art. They're exactly what you're talking about.
- [44:42]
Marc Andreessen
And we still have car companies, but X Tesla, mainly what they do is.
- [44:46]
Interviewer
They assemble third party parts that are coming from other places.
- [44:51]
Marc Andreessen
The Chinese are just doing a much.
- [44:53]
Interviewer
More specific, advanced level of unified hardware and AI manufacturing.
- [44:56]
Marc Andreessen
By the way, you see that in drones. Virtually the entire global drone industry, and.
- [45:00]
Interviewer
Virtually the entirety of the drone industry in terms of people using drones in the US virtually 100% of those drones are made in China.
- [45:06]
Marc Andreessen
And again, that's not because we couldn't make them.
- [45:08]
Interviewer
It's because we chose a set of policies that drove that industry offshore.
- [45:13]
Mark Halperin
We better start making them. I want to talk to you about Silicon Valley. As much as it's been covered for the last quarter century, I don't think the coverage is even close to explaining how significant it has been. They're great stories like yours of people who have, have been so successful, but the influence over our culture, our government, our economy, it's just, and the world is just so massive is if someone like you understands engineering markets, economics, technology. There was a long period where you had to live in Silicon Valley if you, if you wanted to succeed and have the, the relationships and the interactions. Is that still the case? Is Silicon Valley still a place you have to physically be if you want to excel? Someone with those skills?
- [45:59]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah. So I should start by saying I'm an import, right? So I'm from out of town.
- [46:03]
Interviewer
You know, I grew up in the rural Midwest in northern Wisconsin, you know.
- [46:06]
Marc Andreessen
Kind of, you know, in the tundra. And you know, I didn't grow up here.
- [46:11]
Interviewer
I didn't get to participate kind of in the heyday of, you know, back when we actually, by the way, it.
- [46:15]
Marc Andreessen
Was called Silicon Valley because they originally made chips here.
- [46:17]
Interviewer
Right. You know, speaking of manufacturing, they of course, lock blocks. I stopped doing that, you know, that's now thoroughly illegal in California.
- [46:25]
Marc Andreessen
And so, you know, I wasn't here for that. I wasn't here for the personal computer. And so I'm an inheritor of the.
- [46:30]
Interviewer
Phenomenon that you're describing that other people built.
- [46:33]
Mark Halperin
What year did you show up?
- [46:34]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, so I showed up in 1994. And you know, Silicon Valley is really.
- [46:38]
Interviewer
Dated, you know, it sort of dates to the early 50s, you know, with Hewlett Packard in particular as sort of the original company.
- [46:45]
Mark Halperin
But the 90s is when so much of what we think of now in terms of consumer facing, social media, Internet, right. I mean, that's a pretty big dividing line. So yeah, you missed the Hewlett Packard days, but you were there for the phase we're in now, right?
- [47:00]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, but I just bring it up because basically the history of Silicon Valley.
- [47:03]
Interviewer
It'S a sequence of waves, right?
- [47:05]
Marc Andreessen
And so this is part of what makes it special is AI is like wave 9 or wave 10 of these, just major basic microprocessors and smartphones and kind of cloud and social and mobile, all these kind of the PC kinds of, all these ways of hit. So anyway, my point is in the Valley we're the inheritor of a tradition.
- [47:24]
Interviewer
And a system and a model that.
- [47:25]
Marc Andreessen
Was built by other people. And then to your question on geographic focus, this is very interesting thing playing out right now. So a couple of things. So one is like, look, like I said, the technology that's built in Silicon Valley is diffusing nationally and globally into.
- [47:38]
Interviewer
Ordinary people's hands, like at a far faster rate than in the past.
- [47:41]
Marc Andreessen
So, so you don't have to be in Silicon Valley to get access to.
- [47:44]
Interviewer
The best technology like you. You can now get that from everywhere.
- [47:46]
Marc Andreessen
And that, and that's very important because.
- [47:47]
Interviewer
That didn't used to be the case.
- [47:49]
Marc Andreessen
Having said that, if you want to.
- [47:51]
Interviewer
Be at the company or start a.
- [47:53]
Marc Andreessen
Company that's going to build the leading edge technology itself from scratch, I would say at this point, like maybe you don't need to be in Silicon Valley proper, but like you better strongly consider.
- [48:03]
Interviewer
And if you're not, there's maybe three or four other places in the country where you can give it a shot.
- [48:07]
Marc Andreessen
But primarily the people that want to do that are coming to Silicon Valley. And the important thing in the last five years that happened actually was during COVID we all thought actually that the.
- [48:15]
Interviewer
Silicon Valley geographic concentration was actually unwinding. And we thought that virtual work and remote work and you're going to be able to start companies everywhere. And you had all these kind of booms happening in places like Miami and Austin, other places with lots of high tech entrepreneurs, and it felt like the whole thing was really distributing out.
- [48:31]
Marc Andreessen
AI basically has snapped everything right back.
- [48:34]
Interviewer
Into the 20 mile square radius around.
- [48:36]
Marc Andreessen
Where I sit to just an incredible degree. So I would say like almost 100%.
- [48:41]
Interviewer
Of the actually interesting AI companies in the west are happening at sort of ground zero right here in Silicon Valley.
- [48:47]
Marc Andreessen
And then, by the way, and this is good news and bad news, by the way, the other place in the.
- [48:50]
Interviewer
World where these things are happening is basically the Shanghai, Beijing Access and China.
- [48:56]
Marc Andreessen
These are the two places. And then you also say a very important thing which is it's just not.
- [49:02]
Interviewer
Happening elsewhere in the world.
- [49:04]
Marc Andreessen
And there's, there's kind of high tech clusters in other places. But if you're a sharp AI person, and I'll just pick on one.
- [49:11]
Interviewer
London. You have already moved to California or.
- [49:14]
Marc Andreessen
You'Re going to, because they have just.
- [49:17]
Interviewer
Essentially decided to outlaw it. The EU has decided to outlaw it.
- [49:20]
Marc Andreessen
And so people are being driven to.
- [49:22]
Interviewer
The US and to California, I think.
- [49:24]
Marc Andreessen
In a way that's even more concentrated.
- [49:25]
Interviewer
Than it was when I first got here.
- [49:27]
Mark Halperin
All right, last question. Name inventions in human history that have more benefited the lives of individuals than the iPhone.
- [49:37]
Marc Andreessen
Oh, well, I mean, if you go far enough back, electric lighting was a big deal. Steam power was a big deal. Obviously antibiotics are the easy call. I mean, the Internet itself, electricity.
- [49:55]
Interviewer
Indoor.
- [49:55]
Marc Andreessen
Plumbing, it's hard to question those. And people sometimes say, you guys aren't inventing important things.
- [50:00]
Interviewer
Why are you inventing something as important as indoor plumbing? And it's like, well, that was a big one, I can see. But like, you know, we did, we did solve that problem. We can move on to other things.
- [50:08]
Mark Halperin
I would, if you said, if you said give up your iPhone or switch to an outhouse, I would switch to an outhouse.
- [50:14]
Marc Andreessen
I think, you know, I think there's a lot to that. And maybe the serious point underneath, underneath that which I. Oh, I was being serious.
- [50:20]
Mark Halperin
I was being serious.
- [50:22]
Marc Andreessen
Well, no, so maybe say that the generalization you can make for that is.
- [50:26]
Interviewer
I think people maybe systematically underrate the importance of communication.
- [50:30]
Marc Andreessen
So being able to be connected with.
- [50:31]
Interviewer
Other people and then being able to actually be able to learn things, be.
- [50:34]
Marc Andreessen
Able to get access to information, like those two things. There's something in the culture, I was just saying, in Silicon Valley culture, there's.
- [50:40]
Interviewer
Something where those are like, looked out on as less important.
- [50:42]
Marc Andreessen
Then I actually think to your point, like, they're actually incredibly important and they're.
- [50:45]
Interviewer
Foundational for everything else that people do. I mean, human connection and human learning, both of those are at the center of everything that we do.
- [50:52]
Marc Andreessen
And so, yeah, I would make that same trade.
- [50:55]
Mark Halperin
Here's my idea for a reality show. You put someone like us in Cleveland for a week without their smartphone and give them, and give them a series of tasks which they would otherwise conduct with their smartphone. Good luck.
- [51:08]
Marc Andreessen
By the way, I had relatives in the 70s who still had outhouses. Right. Like, yeah, it's fine 100%. Well, it's fine in Iowa in January. You start to reconsider whether that's fine in the middle of the night when it's 40 below. But the past, the past was not that long ago.
- [51:29]
Mark Halperin
All right, Marc Andreessen, very grateful to you. Scratched the surface. I had a list of about 15,000 questions that AI winnowed down to me to 1500, but we didn't get to them all. Very grateful to you, though, for making time and again, just not many people on the planet who understand this stuff as well as you do. So grateful to you for sharing and hopefully we inspired a few people to learn how to use the latest technology. Thank you. Good.
- [51:53]
Interviewer
Fantastic. Thank you, Mark.
- [51:58]
Mark Halperin
All right, one more thing. Next up is last up. I've been surprised and disappointed with how little the voice and sounds and pictures of Charlie Kirk himself have been played since he was assassinated. I think it's important for people, particularly in parts of the country who never heard from him to get to see him. Here's a clip I like. It's vintage Charlie from the American Comeback Tour speaking at Florida State University. This is from this past February.
- [52:24]
Charlie Kirk
We will not save the country just through politics. Politics is a means towards an end, a means towards liberty. But liberty is not man's idea, it's God's idea. And we are only able to experience that liberty if we are a moral and religious people. And I'll close with the statement with this, that the Constitution is incompatible. Incompatible with a faithless nation. You will not have a free society if the country goes atheist. You will not have a free society if the country goes secular. That sounds provocative, but it's true, is that liberty and freedom cannot coexist with a nation that does not believe in a higher power because eventually you're going to want to have some form of meaning in your life. And usually that meaning is left in politics. And I'm not trying to pick on all those people chanting out there because they're actually crying for help. And I mean that, because how many of them, and I mean this, how many of them do you think go to church on a regular basis? Almost none. And that's not, that's not me picking on them, but there's a reason, because they're having a quasi religious experience right now. They're all chanting at the same time, they feel like they're part of something bigger. They think they're fighting evil, which of course they're not. But there's a religious element to that. When America was at its best, when you didn't march in the streets, but instead you went to the church and bowed before your creator to go find your meaning. And so when they're chanting out here, you should love on them, be like, you know, do you believe in God? Like, have you been to church? And I guarantee, almost to a person, 99% of the activists left on this campus does, has either a bad experience with religion, doesn't think that God loves them, doesn't think that God is good, or they're an atheist. So you fill that void with like left wing politics, because left wing politics mirrors religion. It feels like a religious experience. So there's a thinker by the name of Emile Durkheim, which some of you guys may or may not know, who talked about what is religion? And he says the things that have in common of religion is that people will all say the same thing. They'll meet on a regular basis. They'll agree on an objective, that is the Black Lives Matter movement or the trans movement or whatever. And we should say, hey, instead of making those things your God, you should believe in the God of the Bible, the God that loved you enough to send his son to die for you so that you let me, let me live forever. Thank you so much.
- [54:39]
Interviewer
Appreciate it.
- [54:39]
Charlie Kirk
Thank you.
- [54:42]
Mark Halperin
Brilliant guy. And again, if you want to understand him, if you didn't know him, or if you want to remember him, I recommend his own words rather than the words of his critics and others. That's it for today's show. We'll be back Thursday. Brand new episode. In the meantime, I always like to hear from you. You tell me what you thought of today's episode. Send me an email@nextup halperingmail.com you can always find the program on X Instagram, TikTok our handles there. Next up Halpern and watch us on YouTube like subscribe etc etc etc YouTube.com NextUp Halperin and of course subscribe, download, go to CSR, listen to us on all the podcasts, platforms, Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your finer podcasts, we want you to always know what's coming up. Next up.
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