Jason Calacanis: Anarcho Capitalism

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast: Jason Calacanis on Anarcho Capitalism
Release Date: August 13, 2025

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Introduction to Guests and Podcast
Timestamp: [03:00]

In this episode of The Bulwark Podcast, host Tim Miller welcomes back esteemed guests David Sacks and Jason Calacanis to discuss the intersection of politics, business, and technology. David Friedberg also makes an appearance. The conversation delves into the current political climate, regulatory impacts on business, immigration policies, and the evolving landscape of AI and cryptocurrency.

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Business Climate Under the Current Administration
Timestamp: [10:07]

Antitrust and Regulation
David Sacks provides a critical analysis of Lina Khan’s antitrust initiatives under the current administration. He acknowledges some positive outcomes while critiquing others:

"When she did actually do a good job, I'll give her credit, is she went after things like dark patterns... and bundling of software, which Microsoft has a really great ability to do."
(10:07)

Sacks argues that while some regulations under Lina Khan were beneficial, others were excessively restrictive, hindering mergers and acquisitions necessary for innovation.

Economic Policies
Sacks contrasts the business-friendly environment of the current administration with the previous Biden-Kamala administration, highlighting reduced regulatory roadblocks and a more fluid M&A market:

"Entrepreneurs create jobs in this country. Innovation has got us where we are. And you need to have a very fluid M and A market."
(12:41)

He credits the current administration’s approach for revitalizing the stock market and fostering a more conducive environment for startups and large corporations alike.

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Immigration Policies
Timestamp: [41:10]

The discussion shifts to the administration’s immigration stance, particularly the goal of achieving net negative migration:

"In 2025 we will have the first net negative immigration number in about 50 or 60 years in the United States."
(41:10)

Tim Miller expresses concern over these policies, questioning their long-term viability and ethical implications. Sacks counters by suggesting that the administration's actions are largely performative and unlikely to result in massive deportations:

"I think they're going to be sitting here in three, four years... You'll see Trump dialing that back."
(47:09)

Sacks emphasizes the economic necessity of immigration for maintaining workforce levels and economic growth, proposing ambitious plans to attract skilled immigrants:

"When I run for president, my position is going to be our stated goal should be to build five new high functioning tech cities in the United States and become the most populous country in the world."
(45:22)

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Management Styles
Timestamp: [26:52]

Tim Miller critiques the administration’s management style, highlighting erratic decision-making and lack of consistency:

"The fact that they can't get these numbers correct and that they're lollygagging around getting them, they need to have a better system."
(16:11)

Sacks describes the administration’s approach as "narco capitalism," a hybrid that straddles authoritarian and capitalist elements, creating an unstable business environment:

"It's a narco capitalism. A narco capitalism? Yeah. So I think we're between a socialist kleptocracy and a narco capitalism."
(29:17)

He advocates for a balanced approach that fosters both business growth and regulatory oversight without tipping into extremes.

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AI and Cryptocurrency Concerns
Timestamp: [50:09]

Tim Miller raises alarms about the rapid advancements in AI, fearing job displacement and societal impacts:

"The LLMs have me freaked. And I guess this does kind of relate to policy because a big trump policy that you are touting and others touting is that like they're not getting the government really too involved in regulation of this stuff."
(50:09)

David Sacks offers a nuanced view, distinguishing between Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and superintelligence. He acknowledges the potential for massive job displacement due to AI advancements:

"There's a very easy framing with two terms that people use interoperably but are in fact very different, AGI and superintelligence."
(52:30)

Regarding cryptocurrency, Sacks is cautiously optimistic about regulatory measures that could stabilize the market and prevent fraudulent activities:

"More regulation and more onshoring is better for crypto. Much better for everybody."
(62:13)

However, he warns against overinvestment and emphasizes the importance of only allocating a small portion of one's portfolio to crypto:

"Only invest what you can afford to lose in this sector and keep it to low single digits."
(62:52)

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Final Thoughts and Future Episodes
Timestamp: [68:22]

As the episode winds down, Tim and David reflect on the broader implications of current policies and their personal stances. They express mutual respect despite disagreements, and hint at future discussions on foreign policy with upcoming guest Michael Weiss.

Sacks concludes with a forward-looking statement on immigration and economic growth, underscoring the necessity of balancing regulatory measures with proactive talent acquisition.

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Notable Quotes

• Tim Miller:
  "I want to make sure we are mixing it up in the show on Wednesdays. Bringing in experts some weeks, bringing in people that disagree with me from my left on a topic, hashing that out."
  (01:30)

• David Sacks:
  "Entrepreneurs create jobs in this country. Innovation has got us where we are. And you need to have a very fluid M and A market."
  (12:41)

• David Sacks:
  "I think what you'll see is massive investigations of this when Trump's out of office."
  (65:21)

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Conclusion

This episode of The Bulwark Podcast offers a deep dive into the current political and economic landscape, highlighting the tensions between regulatory oversight and business innovation. David Sacks provides insightful commentary on the administration’s policies, advocating for a balanced approach that fosters growth while maintaining necessary regulations. The conversation also touches on the future of AI and cryptocurrency, acknowledging both the opportunities and challenges they present.

For listeners seeking a comprehensive analysis of contemporary political and economic issues from a business-centric perspective, this episode serves as a valuable resource.

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Note: Timestamps correspond to the provided transcript and are indicative of where the quotes and topics occur within the episode.

Transcript

[Tim Miller]

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[Tim Miller]

All right guys, real fast here. It's Wednesday, so a reminder, I'm over on the next level. We got the crew back together, Sarah and jvl. Everybody's off vacation. We're going to be punchy. That comes out for you guys on Wednesday evening, so make sure you're subscribed on your podcast app of choice. If you haven't this podcast, well, buckle in. I have been promising and I don't know that I've fully lived up to I promise, but I'm working on it. I want to make sure we are mixing it up in the show on Wednesdays. Bringing in experts some weeks, bringing in people that disagree with me from my left on a topic, hashing that out. We've done that a few times on foreign policy stuff, bringing in people that disagree with me on the other side. And when Jason Calacanis of the all in podcast tweeted last week that he thought that Trump's first six months has been solid, I was like, well, that's a topic that we should hash out together. And so we do over the course of the next hour, talk a little bit about AI and crypto at the end. And I think that you're in for an interesting show, so stick around. Up next, jcal, as they call them from the all in podcast. And we'll see you over on the Next level and back here tomorrow with one of our faves. Michael Weiss.

[David Sacks]

Foreign.

[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back. A journalist turned entrepreneur and angel investor turned podcaster, he co hosts the podcast this week in startups as well as all in with Chamath, Palihapatia. Boo. David Sacks. Boo. And David Friedberg. It's Jason Calacanis. What's up, J?

[David Sacks]

Caleb, it's good to be here. Good to be here. I was just listening to our last conversation, which was October 15, before the election, and we were going at it a bit.

[Tim Miller]

How did it hold up on re Listen? I didn't re listen.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, it's worth a re listen. I think you had a lot of questions at that time of how does Silicon Valley think about Trump? Because remember, that was when the preference cascade kind of had just started. They had done Chamatha and Sachs had done their fundraiser. Elon came out in support of Trump. And I guess many people, I hear back channels that even the administration or people in and around the administration think that that was key to winning the election for Trump.

[Tim Miller]

Certainly didn't hurt. Certainly didn't hurt all the Elon money, et cetera. And I'll be interested in your take on how everybody looks at it now. Like, what's that nine months later? But just really quick, first for people like don't know, all in, don't know you and who maybe weren't listening to this last October, just give us a real quick Reader's Digest on what's your story?

[David Sacks]

Okay, so it's a podcast. It's four dudes started during COVID They're all venture capitalists, slash business builders for the past 30, 40 years. 30 years each. So four incredibly successful in business, guys who would talk about business, technology, media. One of them, David Sacks, is really into politics. He's part of the PayPal mafia. And he went all in for Trump. He originally started with Desantis, I guess was, as he said it, his preferred candidate. And then when Desantis, you know, flamed out. Yeah, flamed out, I guess would be a good way to say it. He went all in on Trump, so to speak. The podcast is regularly in the top 10 episodes.

[Tim Miller]

And what about you? How do you fit in? What's your like, you know, give people.

[David Sacks]

A little Jason backstory, moderate yeah, independent, moderate. I hate politics, don't care for politicians.

[Tim Miller]

You talk about it a lot now, though.

[David Sacks]

I've been forced to. And so I've been giving it a lot of thought. And yeah, I bought some domain names. Mayor Jason, Governor Jason, and PresidentJason.com, so I have the three domain names. I'm the only American born member of the quartet. So if they need a Manchurian candidate from the all in podcast, it's going to be by default, me. And I've been offered a couple times to like, they wanted me to run for mayor. Not just them, but other folks. And they put up $2 million for me to run for mayor.

[Tim Miller]

Mayor of what?

[David Sacks]

San Francisco. When I lived there.

[Tim Miller]

Lurie. You got to feel good about Lurie. I mean, he's a Democrat.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, I met with him. I met with him before he was joining and he was such a wet noodle. And like, I was like, you have to go right at London Breed and right at security. All people care about now is safety in that city. Everything else is great. Just go 100% at safety. And that's what he's done. And you know, it's still dangerous there, but I think he's trying. He's trying at least.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, you can give him credit. You can just give him credit just because he's a Democrat now, you know, and you're, I mean, like, he's doing.

[David Sacks]

No, I voted like we talked about last time. I, I think, you know, having been in New Yorker my whole life and lived in LA and San Francisco, now I live in the great state of Texas in Austin on a horse ranch like you, I fled the Bay Area and for better pastures. Quite literally in my case, you know, I vote for the best candidate. I think most people would call me like fiscally conservative, socially liberal, I guess, which is how you would describe the entire Trump administration. In order to win the second term. This is how I tweak everybody. I'm like, in order to win the second term, a Clinton Democrat, Trump had to hire like five or six and get the support of another two or three incredibly high profile Democrats. Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Lutnick Besant, Chamath.

[Tim Miller]

Nutlik was a Democrat.

[David Sacks]

I didn't know that Howard was a New York Democrat. Yeah, all of them are. I mean, I grew up in New York in the 90s, 80s, 90s into the 2000s. And they're all the same exact globalist, pro economy, socially liberal, gay rights, legalized weed, you know, kind of cohort. And Trump just Took over the Republican Party and then gave them those Clinton kind of, I think, vibes, which is why they all joined it.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Okay, so this is what we're going to explore a little bit because I pick up different vibes and that's fine. And so I want just a little context for people. I'm going to do a big wind up here.

[David Sacks]

Sure.

[Tim Miller]

In November. When we started this, I was like, I have a couple of pledges for this podcast in the next year. Not when we started this podcast. When we started the journey of having to deal with Trump 2.0, I was like, 2.0.

[David Sacks]

We talked about that term.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I was like, I want to. I'm only going to talk about things I actually care about. I'm not going to do pretend outrage. I have to just. I'm going to care about what I care about. There'll be plenty to be actually outraged about. I'm going to focus on that and I'm going to want to have people on to challenge me. I've done pretty good about that. On finding people from the left, I would like to do even more, kind of. More in the Zoran kind of lefty camp because that's a natural home.

[David Sacks]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Socialist or even whatever. A populist left, whatever you want to call it, like different, you know, sometimes I guess Zorin's actually explicitly socialist, but. Or folks that just have more lefty populist views than me on foreign policy in particular. But I've struggled to live up to my pledge of trying to get on people to hash out a more positive, if you will, view of what the administration is doing. And the reason for that is that I refuse to have anybody on that is gonna be full of shit. I do not wanna argue with somebody that will not say the same thing to me on the pod that they would say if we were just hanging out at the bar. Right. And I think that there are a lot of Trump supporters who. They're genuine things they like about him, but like, they're hesitant to say the bad things, of course, because of like the culture of intimidation around him or because of whatever they don't want to.

[David Sacks]

You'll be exiled.

[Tim Miller]

Exiled, Right. So that isn't you. In my experience.

[David Sacks]

No.

[Tim Miller]

I don't think you're willing to critique them. And so when I saw you sent this tweet a couple days ago and I DMed you, it said first six months has been solid, still work to do. And I was like, that's actually a good premise to have a podcast on because Jason thinks the first six months has been solid, which implies it not perfect. He just thinks he has complaints. I think it's been not the worst case scenario, but pretty disastrous. I think it's been pretty bad across almost all the metrics. I figured let's just hash it out. I'm sure we have some agreements on the negative, so we'll get to that later. What about the positive? What do you think has been solid?

[David Sacks]

What have you liked about it from a business perspective? And I spend my every year I invest in 100 companies. I have a 21 person venture capital firm. Some of the companies I was the third or fourth investor in Uber, one of the first investors in Robinhood.

[Tim Miller]

Com.

[David Sacks]

And one of the really difficult things of the past four years was the anti business, anti capitalism sentiment of the Biden Kamala sort of administration. And they hired somebody named Lina Khan, as you know, and she basically froze our entire industry, no M and A. And she was going to magically, through being able to predict the future like a precog in Minority Report, predict future competition. I invest for a living. You know, the probably 10 companies I've invested in when they were under $10 million that became unicorns, I would never have been able to predict. I knew they were, you know, great founders, but you can't really predict these things. And I've done 500 investments, so the fact that she could do this was crazy. Since she's been removed and the wrath of Khan has ended, we've seen a flurry of M and A, we've seen a bunch of IPOs, the ST stock market has ripped and you've seen regulation around and there's many reasons for it. So we'll get into that. But you've seen regulation from my friend David Sacks, who actually joined the administration, as you know, which didn't see that coming.

[Tim Miller]

I knew I saw that coming. I don't know, maybe we knew that was happening. I saw that. I'm just happy he doesn't have the Ukraine portfolio, but. Okay, let's continue.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, you and I actually. It's so great. I troll him on that one all the time, as you see publicly. But we'll get into that in a moment. So I think that that's been fantastic because entrepreneurs create jobs in this country. Innovation has got us where we are. And you need to have a very fluid M and A market. You need to have fluid capital markets. And you know, the last administration had contempt for innovators, for entrepreneurs and for business in general. And they threw up tons of Roadblocks and they wouldn't meet with us. So something like crypto is the perfect example. You know, there's very simple rules of the road you could create for crypto. And instead what they did Gensler in the last administration, they said, oh, come meet with us, tell us what you're doing. And then you'd meet with them and then they would file an action against you. So you know those two things alone from a business perspective. Now we have some rules of the road for crypto and you have things like, if you know what stablecoins are, I won't explain them here. This is going to be fantastic for America. And then just having a framework for crypto means the amount of people who are going to lose their money in crypto because they're going to be doing stuff offshore. And there's no repercussions to that. There's no legal system. There's no way for you to try to get your money back on shoring. That now is going to be net net a huge benefit in those cases. I think those are all solid wins. When I look at foreign policy, let's.

[Tim Miller]

Just stick around economic for a second. Then we'll go to foreign just like really quick and we'll talk about economic channel. So you look at the solid part on economic policy, you're saying, all right, it's the changes of the regulatory. Lena Kant People don't pay attention that much. Was really, really kind of dialed it on this antitrust issue. Preventing big mergers, going after big tech on antitrust issues. And frankly, my cards on the table. I'm probably more sympathetic to you than Lena on that issue. In particular, the idea that, for example, it's kind of funny, Google is. Let's just use one example. Google's company that people are going at is a big antitrust massive case. Now seems like a monopoly at the time makes a lot of sense. I understand why it seems that way. Like ChatGPT comes out of nowhere and just like totally disrupts it. All of a sudden Google, it's kind of like silly to think that Google's a monopoly.

[David Sacks]

And now everybody's like, this happens every single time. By the time a regulator can regulate what is thought to be a monopoly, and in Google's case, they do have a search monopoly, something in the free market is going to make it happen. In almost every case, these M and A transactions result in lower prices, more choice for customers because big companies tend to not be great at innovating. Some are good, most are not. They're slower so she wanted to block things like Roombas and you know, being bought by Amazon. Just ticky, tacky, tiny things. When she did actually do a good job, I'll give her credit, is she went after things like dark patterns, which is when you try to unsubscribe, they don't let you. Or bundling of software, which Microsoft has a really great ability to do. They can just add something to the Microsoft Office bundle and kill. And that would be under the category of price dumping, which is illegal. So she wanted to change the law to be we want to prevent future competition as opposed to just here's a rule set for this game of basketball and here's how it's played and we're just going to evenly administer those rules. And so that's been a huge win and I think you're going to see that pay off over the next couple of years.

[Tim Miller]

We'll just say that that's a Lena Khan agreement. I should have Lena on, by the way. Actually Katie, remind me, we should invite Lena to come on to give the opportunity.

[David Sacks]

I would love to talk to her.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, we should give the other perspective on that if she wants to chat it out. So I understand if you're a single issue Lena Khan voter, if you're an antitrust voter, maybe you see some good things happening. Crypto, some better administration. Like I said, we're table crypto to the end. I thought we were aligned on crypto. So we'll have to fight about that on the end. The thing that is really confusing to me and that I asked Cuban about this when I had him on a couple of months ago is like the business environment was booming under Biden.

[David Sacks]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Like, I mean the market was flying.

[David Sacks]

Unemployment at a 50 year low.

[Tim Miller]

The big tech guys, like all these big names were talking about people that ended up getting red pills or whatever started pivoting more towards the MAGA side. Yeah. Elon Andreessen, every and all of these guys were making billions. I'm making more money than anybody has had in the history. Like unimaginable Gilded age type levels of money was happening. These companies were succeeding. S and P, the biggest companies are succeeding. It's like the idea that people looked at that and thought, oh man, the environment was so hostile before. I just don't see it again in a specific. If I had an M and A, I was trying to do that. Got blocked by Lina Khan.

[David Sacks]

Okay.

[Tim Miller]

But just broader in the economy things were going very well. And then you look at Trump and now and which we'll get into. And there you have all these risks with tariffs, with instability. Explain that to me. It doesn't feel like things are better.

[David Sacks]

So the contempt issue is partially the outward contempt and what they would say and their actions. So we talked on the last episode when you and I talked on October 15th about not inviting Elon to the EV summit.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I know people's feelings get hurt.

[David Sacks]

It's, yeah, super disrespectful. And it matters, I think, to the business community because we take them at their word when they say we should ban billionaires or we should look into that guy, which was Biden's big thing. When you see the Delaware courts take.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, Trump was just shitting on the intel CEO yesterday, calling him like a Chinese crypto Chinese asset or something. And so it's not a one way. If we're talking about people being a little mean to business guys, it's not like Trump.

[David Sacks]

But the perception is, you know, if you wanted to talk to them, they weren't available to talk to you. And no amount of donations, lobbying, or even just, hey, I want to have a goodwill discussion were allowed. And that socialist, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, now Mondame, that whole group, I think, is how the business community, finance community, tech community started to look at the Democratic Party. This was their biggest mistake because Clinton didn't feel this way, Obama didn't feel this way. This was like a kind of a new thing. And all the people I mentioned earlier, they all supported Obama, they all supported Clinton. So we, we were essentially as a business community told, you know, need not apply, need not to be involved, and we're just going to make things difficult for you and there's no conversation. And so, yes, we will get into Trump's mercurial, you know, shaking of the snow globe of business is the way I look at it and the impact that has. But net. Net. Any business person you talk to, any CEO behind closed doors, will say this is a much better situation for business right now.

[Tim Miller]

You think August 12, 2025 is better for business than August 12, 2024?

[David Sacks]

100%.

[Tim Miller]

No way.

[David Sacks]

100%. No.

[Tim Miller]

Come on. Even with the uncertainty because of the tariffs?

[David Sacks]

Absolutely. And the way you can know that interest rate is the stock market is the backstop.

[Tim Miller]

Stock market's basically even since he's been in. I mean, it went up and then down.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, it's up a little bit.

[David Sacks]

It's bouncing along the ceiling. And here's the good news. Trump wants to be loved. You know, I've been Studying Trump now. I met him for the first time two weeks ago, you know, and I've been studying my friends and my associates who cozied up to him or have gotten close to him. And, you know, I think he has a unique way of doing negotiations, but at the end of the day, he wants to be loved. I think he wants to be respected. I think we all know this, right?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I've always said the thing that's gonna save us from Trump killing the whole democracy is the fact that his dad didn't hug him enough. Fred Trump, like he does.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, Whatever.

[Tim Miller]

The trauma is, he's got, like, a hole inside of his heart somewhere. And fingers crossed on that one, I guess.

[David Sacks]

I think. Actually, you know, we're kind of goofing here.

[Tim Miller]

I'm serious.

[David Sacks]

His biggest peak was being a reality star. I mean, you only become a reality star or a podcaster. No offense to the two of us. Want to be heard, right?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, no, I see it. I'm just saying he's got it at the megalomaniacal level, you know, like, we've got it at the podcaster level.

[David Sacks]

Exactly, exactly. We want to have good conversations. He truly wants to be loved, and he truly wants to be respected. And the stock market is his scorecard. And so when he did his, you know, I call it shock and bore. I don't like the taco thing. I think that's like trying to provoke him, and it's stupid to do that because then maybe he won't back down. I think he does shock and bore. I'm going to say something crazy, outrageous. I fill the void, you know, I flood the zone. Whatever term you want to use. It shakes everything up. And then Howard Lutnick comes in and does a reciprocal tariff. You know, hey, you're charging us 15%. We'll charge you 15%. And they try to negotiate something in between. And I think it's a way for them to consolidate power. It's a way for them to get themselves involved in everything, so they get to be involved in everything with this tariff tool. And they brought in $125 billion in the last three months. It is completely possible, and this is their plan, that they could bring in an incremental 500 billion a year. So, you know, we could all say it's crazy and it's going to cause massive inflation if they do the tariffs at about 15%. That's the just noticeable difference in psychology and perception. And it also applies to pricing. And so if you were to buy a million dollars worth of sneakers and the person selling it to you has a 20% margin and you have a 20% margin. If you find 15% in there to split, it doesn't get passed on to consumers, which is what's happened to date. If it's around 50%, then obviously the tariff is greater than the profit margin. It's busto, right? You can't solve that. So that's where they'll wind up. They will have hundreds of billions of dollars and they're on track to do that. And their belief is growth plus this tariff revenue plus less regulations, which drives growth plus M&A will at the end of the day, balance the budget, slash, not add to the deficit.

[Tim Miller]

That's crazy.

[David Sacks]

I don't buy it.

[Tim Miller]

That's insane.

[David Sacks]

It's not exactly my best strategy, but that's what I mean.

[Tim Miller]

Check out. We can just say that's insane. They're not going to balance. I mean, they just, they passed a, they passed a bill that's going to, they're going to add to the deficit. I mean, the tax bill. You guys talked about this. You got Friedberg. You guys are very good on this on your podcast. Like, look, between the tax cut for, you know, the extension of the trunks tax cuts, whatever you think about them as a policy, the tax on tips, the fact that we have a shrinking base, really tax base, because we're going to have net migrate, we're going to get into that later. And just the numbers are the numbers. Like there's no way that he's going to tear off our way to a balanced budget when they're adding trillions to the deficit.

[David Sacks]

However, if it went from 2 trillion a year, which is what it's averaged over the last eight years across both, if you just look at 16 to 34, 35, 36, 37, which is kind of where we're been bouncing around. I do think they could get it down to a trillion added to the deficit each year and they can cut it in half. That would be on the road to success. I have been pushing friends who might want to create third party third parties.

[Tim Miller]

Or other things that America Party, maybe.

[David Sacks]

I call it the responsible party. I got the domain name. I like to buy domain names. I think there needs to be a responsible party, but even more importantly a pledge. So like the Grover Norquist, you know, I'm not going to add to taxes pledge and how effective that's been. I think there should be a pledge that we lobby candidates through donations to agree to not add to the deficit and to you know, unless it's a war and Congress approves it. So I think that there's a possibility that individuals who care and have their primary concern being the deficit, which is actually my number one concern because I think the whole experiment stops if we do 2 trillion a year for somewhere between 2 and 6 more years. It'll be bust out, like we'll flip, the country will be broke. So I think that's the best attack vector here to get people back to the middle.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, well let me just give a different then breakdown of how I see it because we're looking at the same. I mean, this is not on the top of my concern list. I have some other concerns that are higher than this, but it's a legit concern about just the substance of the policies he's put forth. You put together huge cuts in investment coming from government into key industries, into green industries, into batteries and industries like Elon was one of the things he was concerned about, about the one big beautiful bill. So huge cuts in that cuts in just public sector generally, which, okay, that is not creating jobs, that's contributing to the economy. And we're just adding all these things together. So you've got. That is putting limits on the growth of the economy, both of those things. On top of that, you got tariffs, which is also stifling the economy. On top of that, we're going to have negative, I think population growth this year.

[David Sacks]

The tariff thing you're saying is not true yet. So you might want to get a little bit true.

[Tim Miller]

I was saying it a little bit like they're slowing the gdp. And the last, the last report that came out, I mean like the only areas that are growing jobs are like AI, data centers and healthcare.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, but GDP was on a tear in the second quarter. If you average it out with the first.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, well, we'll see. It's kind of, I think most economists. Tbd, I think most economists say that'll slow the economy migration. We don't. We're going to have net negative migration this year. We're going to talk about that in a second. So if you put all of that together, how are you growing in such a way to attack the deficit problem when simultaneously you're extending the tax cuts.

[David Sacks]

$2 trillion added to the deficit, minus this is in their mind, 500 billion in tariff income puts you at 1.5 trillion. They think the economy will grow, there'll be more efficiency in the economy through unleashing AI and unleashing more material and that that will make us create More Apples, more Ubers, more Airbnbs, more coinbases, et cetera. And that that will ultimately create more jobs. And that tends to be true. So the good news, Tim, is that we can sit here and debate the finer points of it, but they have to live with their track record. And their track record is going to land at the midterms. We're going to know in six months what reality is. Right now we have three months of tariff data to look at. We'll have nine months soon. And we will also have the inflation numbers, unemployment numbers.

[Tim Miller]

Totally fair.

[David Sacks]

And they're going to have to sleep in that bed. And if you want Trump out of office, or if you want MAGA out of office and they get this wrong, and they know that if they get this wrong, it's going to be cataclysmic for that party. So I think they're acutely attuned into it.

[Tim Miller]

That's fair. We'll see how that kind of stuff turns out. I'm not optimistic, but fair enough. What about just the management style stuff, though? Like, I just. I mean, this is not really a apples to apples analogy, but, like, you look at what we saw with the jobs situation last month. The BLS comes out, they fire the guy, they're bringing in some hack now. I mean, I think it was a woman, actually. The guy, your investors, or they fired the woman, that bring in the hack guy. Yes. Thank you, thank you. That was my internal misogyny show. I get corrected by Jason Calacanis. Happy to take it. They fire the woman who is Commissioner of Labor Statistics, replace him with this guy who by all accounts is not exactly the most accomplished in the field, to say the least. You know, you look at these companies, if you look at the companies with a founder, and this founder is so erratic that, like, numbers come out at the quarter, it shows the numbers aren't looking good for the P and L. And then they say, well, I'm just going to fire the cfo. We're going to bring in somebody that's going to put out better numbers next month. You'd be like, this is insane. And then they're tweeting all caps, tweets at night about how the person is. About how the person is crazy. You'd be like, this is not.

[David Sacks]

Yeah. So stylistically, and the timing is obviously ridiculous, but the intent. There has been a long dialogue about how terrible the government is at forecasting stuff and how we need to sort of innovate there. They should have just done this at the top of the administration just said, hey, we need to get new people in there, new technology in there. The fact that they can't get these numbers correct and that they're lollygagging around getting them, they need to have a better system. So two things can be true at the same time. I don't like the way he did it either. I don't think any reasonable person thinks it's the right way to do it. I would say the majority of the people who support Trump don't like his style, but they do like the action. Right. And you've said this before on the pod. I listen to you once in a while. It comes up in my YouTube feed.

[Tim Miller]

It's erratic, though. I mean, I just think it's just.

[David Sacks]

Like terror shock and bore.

[Tim Miller]

And I keep thinking like, look, if this was the print. Look, my daughter's going back to school today. First day of school.

[David Sacks]

Me too.

[Tim Miller]

I went in and I met the teacher. And then it's like I started looking at their Twitter feed and they go home at the end of the day and they start tweeting all camps about how stupid one of the students is. I'd be like, okay, I don't. Anyway, it's a judgment thing. One of the things stylistically though, the Tim Cook stuff that you mentioned, the kind of, the suck up stuff we're going in there, this is also the thing that I just. That I really. It's hard for me to wrap my head around, which is like, you're like, we're mad at Biden that he doesn't invite Elon to the party. It's like, okay, all right, I get it. But like, on the other side of the coin, the Democrats are not making, you know, they're not making CEOs come in and bring gold, frankincense and myrrh in order to get stuff.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, can you imagine?

[Tim Miller]

And also the identity politics stu, like, you guys like all the MAGA stuff and on your show, but also MAGA get mad at identity politics stuff. Tim Cook comes in and just does mag identity politics. He's just like, sir, we have this Marine who made this for you. And I was like, you know, if Tim Cook had gone into the Biden Harris White House and said, you know, Kamala, I had. I had this indigenous woman of color make you a 24 Garrett carat gold plaque, and in exchange, I hope that you'll give me a break on the taxes. You guys would be have lost your minds about that. I mean, right?

[David Sacks]

Tim Cook's playing the game on the Field.

[Tim Miller]

So as crazy that he has to. Isn't it crazy that he has to do that? That's insane. That's not a free capitalist country.

[David Sacks]

It's a narco capitalism. A narco capitalism? Yeah. So I think we're between a socialist kleptocracy and a narco capitalism. Neither of them.

[Tim Miller]

That's bad.

[David Sacks]

Both of those are bad things. You don't want Mondami and you don't want the narco capitalism. We need to find somewhere in between this. Too hot, too cold, temperature switch. I 100% concur.

[Tim Miller]

So you didn't like it. It made you uncomfortable, the Tim Cook thing? It was a little weird.

[David Sacks]

I mean, I was fine with him going there. And I don't mind the presidency.

[Tim Miller]

It feels un American. I guess it feels a little bit more like it should be happening in, like, some banana republic.

[David Sacks]

Okay, here's what I'll say. Getting invited to the White House as a business leader, Fantastic. The President encouraging you to invest in America, Fantastic. Bringing a gold bar. Super weird if they did. In fact, if Qatar actually gave him that plane, no bueno, right? So I think we have the emoluments clause. I think what we'll probably see with this warfare stuff is if the Dems win again, if any of this stuff is not tight, it's all going to be another wave of lawfare, just like we're seeing the wave of lawfare now from Trump to the Biden administration. And you're going to see a whole bunch of global pardons like Biden did for Fauci and his son, and then you're going to see Trump do that on his side. And so, yeah, neither of these two trends are good. And we have to really rethink when we have new leadership in the pardon power, because it does seem like we're now using that as a way to get out of jail before anybody has a chance to even look at what you're doing.

[Tim Miller]

Look, I agree with that. I was against 100 Biden pardon and went after it, but I just. Just on the business side of this, because we're. I'm sorry. This is why I'm just obsessed with this, right? Because it's like if the complaint was that Biden was being too hostile to them, Trump is bullying them. Trump is bullying them. He's bullying them into doing stuff in exchange for better treatment from the government. Like, that is not a free market system.

[David Sacks]

You're seeing the term bullying, I think.

[Tim Miller]

What else would it be?

[David Sacks]

I think people would say negotiating and Horse trading. That's how people look at it. And so for somebody like Tim Cook, you want $100 billion in investment over the next 10 years? Sure, we'll do it. You want us to make something here? Fine, we'll make some chips here.

[Tim Miller]

A bad precedent. I can't. We see this starting to go wrong. It's like I'm going to attack intel because they won't genuflect and Tim Cook brings me the gold bar and then some other competitor can't do, you know, doesn't have the resources to pay out the payoff to Trump. Right. Like, I guess my point is it's not capital. It's not the free market. It's. And it's, and it's anti. And it's hostile to business.

[David Sacks]

It's a narco capitalism. It's, it's a, it's an, it's an anarchist version of capitalism. Certainly.

[Tim Miller]

I don't like that. All right, one more. This will pivot us into the, to the foreign policy.

[David Sacks]

I would dial it back 20%. I like the idea of being, of inviting Tim Cook. I don't like the idea of the gold bar.

[Tim Miller]

20%. Yeah. I dial back 80%. I think Tim Cook got invited to the Biden White House, didn't he? I'm pretty sure Tim Cook was there.

[David Sacks]

I mean, maybe for some DEI celebration. It certainly wasn't too increased investment in America, you know, Definitely not.

[Tim Miller]

Well, I mean, Tim Cook, Apple did quite well during the Obama Biden years, I think.

[David Sacks]

Yeah. Buying back 700 billion in stock, getting an end of it, certainly not releasing cutting edge projects.

[Tim Miller]

They did fine. Anyway. Okay. The risk is he never had to bend the need. All right. Got to tell you, in the afternoons, that afternoon coffee, that evening coffee, when I got to go on tv, when I got to be on MSNBC and flap my jaw at 8:40pm like it did last night. It doesn't make a lot of sense to do a cold brew before that if you want to get to bed anytime soon in your 40s. And so I've been excited to try this product that is a sponsor of this very podcast. It's Mud Water. Their OG blend is a mix of cacao chai, turmeric and adaptogen mushrooms to help you feel focused without the crash. And the best part, it's amazing over ice. Seriously, you just mix it with cold water or milk. I like the milk. Shake it up, pour it over ice and boom, you got yourself a refreshing feel good boost that actually helps you stay balanced. The best part about Mud Water is it provides sustained energy without the spikes and crash of traditional coffee. There's also caffeine free blends available. Each ingredient in Mud Water serves a purpose. Their OG blend contains cacao and chai for a hint of caffeine and hot chocolate like flavor Lion's Mane for focus, Cordyceps to promote natural energy and both Chaga and Reishi to support a healthy immune system. You know I've gone full lib when I'm talking about a product that has Chaga in it. Ready to make the switch to cleaner Energy? Head to mudwtr.com and grab your starter kit today. Right now our listeners get an exclusive deal. Up to 43% off your entire order plus free shipping and a free rechargeable frother when you use Code the Bulwark. That's right up to 43% off with code the Bulwark at M U d w t r.com after your purchase, they'll ask how you found them. Please show your support and let them know we sent you. Keep your energy natural and refreshing all year long with Mud Water because life's too short for anything less than clean, delicious energy. The Doge stuff I want to do a little quick Doge reflection. So we've talked about the spending side. You can talk about it more if you want. The foreign aid side is really bad. It just is. Like the USAID stuff is really bad, right? Like it's just that corruption part of it.

[David Sacks]

Or the no not sending food to.

[Tim Miller]

People who are starving, not sending the food to the people who are starving part of it. It's like this is such a tiny budget item. Sure, we could. I'm for reforms. Just going in there and just cutting it. And you've seen the stories. You're a well read person. You've seen what's happening in some of these countries. Like the most vulnerable people in the world. We can't feed them. That is not Clinton Democrat policy. This is very harsh policies and that is causing real damage.

[David Sacks]

I think there is a bit of a sadistic red meat trait of this administration, which is their Achilles heel. And we saw it blow back on them when they started doing these raids at Home Depots, et cetera. And even the Joe Rogans of the world were like, yeah, didn't vote for that. Shut the border. Yes. Drag somebody out of the country with no due process who's been here for 20 years and send them to a sadistic prison that Amnesty International can list 17 different torture violations there. That's their Absolute Achilles heel. And it's blowing back against them. And that's why you see Trump, you know, I think, dialing that back. And he even went to the point of saying, yeah, maybe we should do something for these farmers here and give them a work visa, which is like, that's something we had 20 or 30 years ago. Why do we have to go send a bunch of masked men? I mean, how could they possibly be allowed to wear masks into Los Angeles to take people who've been here 20 years, you know, putting people's adus in or cleaning their gardens or, you know, cooking and whatever, taking care of people's kids. It's abhorrent. They know it's abhorrent. And I think that Stephen Miller, sort of part of the camp and the Bannon part of the camp, I think they're being contained.

[Tim Miller]

But the USAID cuts, were you. Because we're just creating a little mental ledger here about everything. Because you were saying pretty good, and that's a pretty big one on my bad list.

[David Sacks]

I would say the Doge stuff. Overall, I think Doge was necessary. I think probably Elon stayed a month or two too long there. He should have been back at his companies. But I think what we learned from that is the system. There's so many people in on the take from both parties, that the idea of cutting significantly is really hard. It's really hard. And to do it in a shock and awe kind of way, which is what we do in the capitalistic world, is going to face massive antibodies in politics. And in that sector, private sector, you can come into Twitter and be like, yeah, nobody's showing up for work. Great. If you don't show up for work, you don't get paid. And then. And at Doge, I think they were like, can you come to the office at least? And people were like, no, I'm not coming to the office.

[Tim Miller]

I was. For the coming to the office. I'm talking about the plumpy nut for the poorest people in the world, the children. That feels like a bad mistake.

[David Sacks]

What I'll say is I think how you treat the weakest people speaks volumes, I think, to character. And so I think while there was a lot of abuse in that system, I would have liked to see it be more thoughtful. My view of doge was cut 10% a year for four years, and we're gonna be at 50 or whatever it is, and that would be success. I think they went in and tried to do the shock and awe campaign, and I think they probably learned some Good lessons. But we shouldn't throw out the concept of doge. The things the government's responsible for, where they overregulate, tend to be the least efficient in our society and cause the most problems. If you look at housing, education and healthcare, the less the government could be involved in those three things, the better off everybody in America would be because you would actually have competition to lower the prices of college, to lower the price of housing, and to make healthcare more efficient. And you're seeing it. Entrepreneurs are doing it anyway. You know, Amazon doing telemedicine, hims, you know, selling people, whatever, directly. All of that is. All of that's a reaction to trying to get around the regulation. The regulators and the government fight that just like they fight adus. We've had, you know, California fighting what they call in law units, but accessory dwelling units like crazy. Just building here in Austin, like putting in a. A four unit townhome, they fight that same in the Bay Area.

[Tim Miller]

You know, it tickles my pickle. You know, how to pivot a convo into a topic that I'm going to agree with you on. All right, we can just do red tape cutting all day long. We could do. We could do one hour of agreeing on red tape. Well, the healthcare I think is more complicated, but on housing and educate, totally agree. Hey, y'. All, I was having dinner with a friend last night who, like many people is having some questions about his America status, is looking around, just thinking, you know, maybe I should spend a year or two someplace else, see how, see if that takes. He didn't have a problem though. He said he was trying it out in France last month and, you know, the French weren't exactly thrilled with his language skills. Made it a little hard to connect, made it hard to bridge the divide. Well, our advertiser today is trying to help with that. You can start speaking a new language with confidence thanks to Babbel's conversation based technique. It quickly teaches you useful words and phrases about the things you actually talk about in the real world. There's over a dozen languages available to learn at your own pace, so you can achieve your goals with material tailored to your individual proficiency level, interests, and time availability. I've been testing it out with my daughter a little bit, playing a game here and there. Babel makes it nice and easy. It's fun to learn. You can learn the easy words first. I'm not trying to move to France, so I'm not going for proficiency. But, you know, being able to say some fun phrases is fun. Order At a restaurant. No matter which level you're going for, Babel can help you out. Studies from Yale, Michigan State and other leading universities continue to prove Babel works. One study found that using Babel for 15 hours is equivalent to a full semester at college. Take it from me, this is a product you should use. I want you to learn another language. So I'm teaming up with Babel to give you a 55% off subscription, but only for our listeners. @babbel.com bulwark get up to 55% [e-mail] bulwark spelled b a B-B-E-L.com bulwarkbabble.com bulwark rules and restrictions may apply. The immigration thing, which you mentioned, you sort of said something interesting. We think maybe the Stephen Miller wing is losing a little power. You did a very interesting interview with the vice president. I encourage people to listen to that. I just want to play one clip from it. It really jumped out to me is.

[David Sacks]

This when he calls me an asshole?

[Tim Miller]

It's not when he called you an asshole, actually. It's just I thought it was very revealing about how he sees himself.

[David Sacks]

Where the Trump administration, where we've been most wildly successful, is that we have, I think in 2025 we will have the first net negative immigration number in about 50 or 60 years in the United States. And so there has been a major, a major, major shift in immigration policy. Now again, I'm like, you know, me and Stephen Miller are probably the two most hard line people in the entire administration when it comes to immigration. So there's always more that we can do. And like I said, I think that there is more that we can do.

[Tim Miller]

It's a strange brag for me on both fronts. I don't think you want to be a country that has negative net migration. If you look at the list of those countries in the world, they're like the worst places in the world because nobody wants to go there and people want to leave. And so I don't understand why that's an applause line and I don't understand why you'd want to call yourself the Stephen Miller of the administration. But what did you make of the immigration stuff?

[David Sacks]

So you know what I've learned watching the last, this administration, the last one, and being up close and personal to friends joining it is they really get you to speak with one voice. And dissent is not encouraged. They might say it is, but we saw that with the COVID up of Biden's health and we see it now, with, you know, I. I don't believe JD or anybody in that administration, with the exception of maybe Stephen Miller, actually wants to deport 20 or 30 million people. What everybody agrees on is nobody wants an open border. Nobody wants the suffering happening on the southern border. So I always try to break immigration into like, those three pieces, close the border path to citizenship for people who are illegally. They pay a fine, whatever. But there's just some.

[Tim Miller]

Well, they don't want that, though.

[David Sacks]

They. Trump actually said he thinks there should be a. No, no, no. Actually, I think.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, I think we gotta look at their actions now. Trump says everything. Trump, blah, blah, blah.

[David Sacks]

Trump says a lot of things.

[Tim Miller]

Look at what they're doing.

[David Sacks]

I think.

[Tim Miller]

Look at what they're doing.

[David Sacks]

You see Trump come out and say, hey, we're gonna look at, you know, farm workers and restaurant workers. I think that's actually his true position. And I think the Maga position, deport 20 million people, is to get. To win the primary and get elected and to get people.

[Tim Miller]

Well, he's already elected. He's not running again, right? He's not running again, right?

[David Sacks]

No. And I think that's why he's willing to say that. I don't think he would have said that in the first.

[Tim Miller]

So why don't they just do it then? Well, they're just adding 10,000 more ICE members and all their plans are to harass more people. They're turning it up, I guess. I just don't disagree. Your assessment that you think that they're backing off. I think they're turning it up.

[David Sacks]

I think they're playing both sides, and that's why it is unclear. And there's ambiguity. Right now. They're on a pace to deport less people than the last couple of administrations, so.

[Tim Miller]

Well, but the total net. Cause JD Corrected you on. Or not corrected you, but corrected the record on this point. Excuse me. On that same interview where he's explaining why that was the boomerang stuff. So that, that's why I played that clip in specific, like, the stated goal of the administration is to have net negative migration in the country. That's insane. As you said, the three very special people in your podcast. Yes. You guys should be the most pro immigration people.

[David Sacks]

We are. And you remember when I interviewed Trump, I got him to do that whole thing about stapling card. And I followed up with that a couple times. That's actually how they all believe. They're scared to death of the MAGA base. They basically unleash that MAGA Base. They let that genie out of the bottle and it helped them get elected. But I do think they have a hard time containing it. So I think they throw them red meat. They do this ICE actions, it's performative. But at the end of the day, I doubt they're going to actually deport that many people because it's too expensive. And we need those people here and we need the economy to grow, per our last discussion. So they know the reality in the game on the field is they need more people working and they need more productivity because they need more gdp. And if they want to build more fabs here in factories and they're not completely automated, which they can't be all automated, we actually need to have more people. When I run for president, my position is going to be our stated goal should be to build five new high functioning tech cities in the United States and become the most populous country in the world. We should try to become as big 1 billion Americans.

[Tim Miller]

Great.

[David Sacks]

A billion Americans was my idea. Yeah. And we should try to, you know, make recruiting our number one pursuit. And we should never let people call it immigration when we choose to recruit somebody to our team. Just like if you want to recruit Dirk Nowitzki or Yao Ming, that's for the benefit of the league. We should be recruiting more Elon Musk's, more David Sachs, more Dave Friedbergs, more Chamath Palihapitiyas and straight on down the line because they create lots of jobs. And so.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, so there's my question for you. And then I want to get to tech stuff after this. But this is like my main disagreement.

[David Sacks]

Between you and I. Our disagreement?

[Tim Miller]

Well, no, well, between. As it's. I guess between you and I, we agree on the policy. I guess my main disagreement is about how you could assess the first six months as solid. Because for me, and I guess I get a little bit confused about why. And I promise you, I wouldn't make you speak for your colleagues. I'm not going to. But why people that are actually immigrants less upset about this than me and people that are, I guess, pretending that they have a different position on this to appease the MAGA base. Because everything else being equal, if Trump gave me exactly the tax policy I wanted, exactly the regulation policy I wanted, everything about Ukraine that I wanted, which he hasn't, whatever, everything on social issues that I wanted, and he put in place the immigration policy they've put in place for the first nine months where they disappeared people to a foreign gulag abhorrent, where they're yeah, they're asking people outside Home Depot. But I guess my point is that like that is a red line to me. It is so un American and it is so wrong and unacceptable that there's no other policy that really could rationalize it. And I guess I'm just confused by like why and if J.D. vance coming on to Yalls podcast being like I want negative net migration and then for them to be like, well, you know, that's not really what, that's not really the policy. I just explain to me why Silicon Valley of all places is a more up in arms.

[David Sacks]

Oh, they don't agree. They don't agree.

[Tim Miller]

But. There's no but. Last time there were protests at Google in the offices, there were protests in San Francisco.

[David Sacks]

If you're asking why business people are not going to touch that issue is they're probably just going to quietly say, hey, we need more of this immigration and they'll get it.

[Tim Miller]

Why whatever.

[David Sacks]

They're not going to touch the third relevant.

[Tim Miller]

It's the top priority of the most powerful two people in the White House, J.D. vance and Stephen Miller.

[David Sacks]

Well, you're looking at what they're saying, not at what they're doing.

[Tim Miller]

I am looking at what they're doing. They're harassing people outside Home Depots. They harassed an old Iranian lady in New Orleans.

[David Sacks]

I think it's as abhorrent as you and I agree it is. I think it's performative. I think we're going to be sitting here in three, four years.

[Tim Miller]

They just added a budget to make ICE the biggest funded. ICE is going to have a bigger budget than the Israeli military this year.

[David Sacks]

They know that if they, what are.

[Tim Miller]

They going to do? Just sit around, watch old Superman episodes?

[David Sacks]

I think they're going to just try to find as many criminals as they can, that they don't have anybody complaining about a violent criminal being deported, you know, gang member. I really do think it's performative. That's my belief.

[Tim Miller]

I think it's crazy. I could be. I wonder if the next administration deported. I don't know. I don't know. Let's say like a prominent supporter of Donald Trump decided to deport, take away their green cards, decided that they wrote some op eds or, or said some podcasts that were wrong and then deported them. I don't know. I think the Democrat administration did that. I think that a lot of folks would be pretty up in arms. But that's what's happening in this administration.

[David Sacks]

I mean, if your expectation is business people are going to put their personal beliefs and morality above their balance sheets. I think you haven't been paying attention.

[Tim Miller]

Fair enough. I guess I would just expect immigrant business people to want to make sure that they're safe, their families are safe out of because I don't know. I gotta tell you, it's a pretty interesting prospect. The idea that writing a bad op ed could get you to port it.

[Jason Calacanis]

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[Tim Miller]

All right, I want to pick your brain on stuff. You're smart about that I'm not out really quick. I'm pretty worried about the AI stuff. I want to be an optimist. I know that listeners of the show find that hard to believe because I have a lot of things I'm negative about these days. But. But I was kind of a tech dorky optimist for a while. Not at like your level but you know, I was into all that and I'm not a Luddite. I'm always trying the new stuff that's coming out. The LLMs have me freaked. And I guess this does kind of relate to policy because a big trump policy that you are touting and others touting is that like they're not getting the government really too involved in regulation of this stuff. But man, you see the story just out this week. The one example of the ChatGPT going from 4 to 5 and people like thinking they lost their lover or they lost AI psychosis. That's people not being able to understand what's real and fake is concerning to me. I understand there's going to be a lot of Cool AI advancements in some other areas that maybe are in some of the portfolio companies of yours, but in the public discourse stuff, I'm pretty worried about AI making things worse, not better. What do you think?

[David Sacks]

Yeah, you're not wrong to have concerns. And there will be massive job displacement. For the audience who's not like super tuned into this, there's a really easy framing with two terms that people use interoperably but are in fact very different, AGI and superintelligence. AGI, which is artificial general intelligence, that means the ability to write the docket, or summarize a news story, or do some basic legal work or make an image. Jobs that humans do, drive a car, work in a factory and sort boxes at Amazon factories, or deliver those to you that we're in the middle of. And that is absolutely in the end game, all of those jobs will be replaced with technology. Question is when and how quickly, and then how quickly do people ride in the streets? Whether it's in Wuhan, where people are literally, you know, starting to protest over self driving cars and that's sort of their capital of it. Paradoxically, of all cities to do it in, maybe they're trying to recover the brand name of Wuhan. So you have to ask yourself about that job displacement. Now we go to super intelligence. The bets that are being made now are not on AGI. That's kind of the table stakes.

[Tim Miller]

AGI for people who don't listen to know, is just artificial general intelligence.

[David Sacks]

It just means your ability to play chess, be a lawyer, an accountant, just.

[Tim Miller]

Go to Turing test, kind of like an updated version of that. Like, you know.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, it's not even being able to trick somebody or human. It's being able to do the human chores is how I look at it. Do things that are chores, do things that are not uniquely human, like have a conversation or make jokes or do art. So that's going to happen. And what that means is the number of jobs needed to accomplish a task is going to go down. One person as an attorney using this or a developer using these technologies in what's called a copilot to kind of assist them, they're going to be 10% better, probably every two or three months. Which if you compound that, you know, it means basically every two years people will be twice as good as their jobs. That means you just need less lawyers at your company, you need less accountants, you need et cetera, or you find more projects to do and more problems to solve. And that's the tension. Everybody's trying to Figure out how quickly do those jobs get displaced, how quickly more ambitious to founders and entrepreneurs, which is 0.1% of the country, the people who actually do these things, certainly less than 1%. How motivated will they be to create more and more businesses and products and services? And that's what we've seen. We've seen an explosion of startups that are trying to address every possible problem. Now when you go to superintelligence, which is like that's the grand prize, right? That's the mega prize, that is an existential prize. Because superintelligence, the idea is it will be able to answer questions we couldn't even think of answering. They could figure out the secrets of the universe, figure out things in our chemistry or biology to solve aging.

[Tim Miller]

I was listening to the all in a couple months ago and David Sacks said that superintelligence was going to solve climate change. So we don't have to worry about it.

[David Sacks]

I mean solar's going to despite this administration with their clean coal. And you may have seen me get into a little bit with the energy secretary about solar. Solar's by far and away the best solution, along with nuclear. Nuclear gives you great baseload solar and batteries.

[Tim Miller]

Anyway, I'm sorry I made a gag and got you distracted. But anyway, the superintendent intelligence will take us.

[David Sacks]

So the super intelligence is where things could get really nutty. And that's where like the doomsday scenarios, Terminator ones kind of come out of that group. So what happens if all drivers go away? Well, every self driving car is four full time jobs and every humanoid robot in a factory is five jobs, maybe six. Because those jobs you can work for maybe seven hours as a just physical limitation. As humans who are driving, you can work a 12 hour shift. And those are going to be here folks, before 2030. You're going to see Amazon, which has massively invested in this, replace all factory workers and all drivers. The idea that when you order something from Amazon, a human would touch it at any point in that supply chain is insane. It will be 100% robotic, which means all of those workers are going away. Every Amazon worker. All those jobs, UPS, gone, FedEx gone. All of those are going to be gone. And those companies will be more profitable. And when you order something, it's going to come faster and cheaper and better and your Uber will be half as much. But somebody needs to retrain these people. And that's actually a very valid fear that technologists will tell somebody like you don't worry about it, there'll just be more jobs created. The question is, what happens to those people who get caught in the gap, right? And when we had this happen in the industrial revolution, that happened over 40 years, 50 years, and you know, the agricultural revolution, you know, again that was multi decades. This one will happen in a decade and so it'll be very different. And yeah, you should be concerned. I wouldn't worry about the psychosis stuff. People always take new technologies too far.

[Tim Miller]

What about people not knowing what's true and what is fake? I'm pretty worried about that. That's already kind of a problem.

[David Sacks]

That was a problem with social media and media and AI is not going to solve that problem. And there'll be bias in all of these systems and in fact, fact you're going to be able to pick or program in the bias. So you and I could say, hey, we're fiscally conservative, socially liberal, give me my answers based on this. And these things are such sycophants that they will know what your preference is and they're going to literally target to you because I don't know if you've rewatched the movie her, but I'm watching some clips from it like they want to appease you. And I think actually Sam Altman is making this technology to be addictive and to be sycophantic so that he wins the race. And so you have.

[Tim Miller]

And he's a pleaser, so it kind of matches him in a weird creepy way.

[David Sacks]

I think that's like a profound insight. I was at a dinner the other day and somebody was saying this exact same thing which was, you know, you always kind of put your stamp on it whenever you see a great movie. You know, it's got some of Scorsese's childhood in it or Kurosawa's childhood in it, whatever it is, you know, they bring, you know, to their songs what they lived or whatever. And yeah, he's a negotiator and a pleaser.

[Tim Miller]

You are more of an optimistic person than me on this stuff generally. Is there anything cool out there in AI world? You saw some neat technology I might not know of, because I'm not.

[David Sacks]

Here's the thing, that's going to be amazing. And you and I are dads. Our kids are going to be able to learn things with adaptive tutors that will be absolutely mind blowing. So I was in the car and I did my 9 year old twins and a 15 year old where I said give us a slang, keep it PG of like Gen X slang, Gen Alpha slang, millennial slang. And quiz us. And then here are the four people in the car. And then go around in a circle and give questions to people, and then we'll answer them and keep score. And it did it perfectly. And then I was like, wow, I want to benchmark my vocabulary. And so I started doing a vocabulary quiz when I was driving here in the hill country. And my vocabulary is going up because it knows where I'm at. It gives me new words. It knows the words it got wrong. It retests me on that.

[Tim Miller]

Which one are you using?

[David Sacks]

I using Groq is now in the dashboard of every Tesla. So you just press a button. It's in there. Or you can use ChatGPT for it. Claude is also exceptional at this, if you haven't used Claude. But all these language models are starting to hit parody, so they're becoming like cars. You might have stylistic differences or aesthetic differences of why you want a BMW or a Mercedes or an Audi or a Ford, but they're all going to take you from point A to point B. And the ability to learn anything quickly in an adaptive way is going to change education forever in a very good way, if the tools are used well. And that's going to make it continuous lifelong education. And all of these pockets of education that are siloed or behind paywalls, they're all going to be free. And so you're going to be able to, as a person in India, get a PhD in Physics or the law from an equivalent of Harvard or NYU or Yale, and do it at your own pace and be as smart as any other person. And so I think you could see people having two or three careers in their lives. I think you'll see our health spans. You and I will be skiing at 100. You know, if you're under.

[Tim Miller]

You think I'm going to be skiing at 100?

[David Sacks]

100%. Yeah. There's no doubt. I mean, unless something tragic happens to you, like random, you die in a plane crash, the health span will get you easily to 100 skiing, because all the degenerative diseases are going to be slowed down and reversed. A lot of the issues we have is we just don't have enough humans to work on these projects.

[Tim Miller]

I'm a little worried I'm on the wrong side of this age, of this age gap. Understand too much.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, no, you can get the Peptides now. Get The Wolverine Protocol, BPC157. You're good.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know. I don't know about.

[David Sacks]

Don't take health advice from a podcast.

[Tim Miller]

You're going to have to DM me offline. JC okay, I'm sorry we're out of time but I promised you we get back to crypto and just, just so, just as you could.

[David Sacks]

My two favorite.

[Tim Miller]

Well, we have an agreement on Ukraine and neither of us are really Ukrainian experts, so we'll take. I got Michael Weiss on Thursday. He can handle Ukraine.

[Jason Calacanis]

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[Tim Miller]

Yeah, just on one particular point. We also agree on the Trump coin being a total scam and that's outrageous. So that's just table stakes. I'm concerned about the stablecoin. What I'm concerned about is that during this administration crypto is going to get so entwined into the rest of the banking system that if there is ever a crypto crash because the value of it is inflated, let's say. Which is something I believe at least some of them are inflated.

[David Sacks]

Sure, it could be a bubble. Bitcoin could be a bubble.

[Tim Miller]

Sure, that's a worry. And I think that yeah, we created some rules around stable coins. It didn't create a lot of rules on the other stuff and I think that the rest of the financial system is just kind of accepting it. You've been kind of skeptical of crypto at times, so I was surprised to hear you kind of felt good about that. Do you do not share my worries about crypto getting intermingled.

[David Sacks]

I would be worried if we didn't create regulations for it and have people be responsible in American corporations with boards of directors and in proper insurance and regulation in place. So the reason an FTX can happen is because it was offshore and they weren't playing by the rules. And when you start on shoring the stuff, then the board of directors is an American board of directors, as opposed to, I was pitched on doing like a Panama foundation board and nobody would know who was on the board because of safety concerns. I mean, this stuff was seriously, seriously dark money scams. And who knows whose money is in tether, for example, an offshore stablecoin that.

[Tim Miller]

Gave a lot of money to Donald Trump, by the way.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, well, I mean, if you were trying to get onshored, you would want to clean up your act. And according to, if you look at their history of all the different, different actions that were taken, they've been banned in a lot of markets. There was a lot of accusations of human trafficking. And know your customer kyc, knowing whose money's in there. And that organization now is going to face stiff competition from people like Circle, which I happen to know the founder of, but I'm not an investor in, because this is all onshore. And what this will do for the American dollar dominance is you're going to be able to move dollars so quickly and easily at such low cost or no cost, that this idea that the BRICs, remember this whole dialogue, oh, the BRICs are going to create an alternative currency, it'll be like the EU or whatever, and then people aren't going to use dollars anymore. They'll get off the dollar standard. The reason they're doing this is to ensure the dollar standard and it will actually do that. So then the rest of crypto regulation is going to happen soon. When that happens, you're going to have to be either an accredited investor or take a test to be an accredited investor in order to participate in these things. And their approach is no crying in the casino, which is like, if you choose to go into this, you're choosing to go into a casino, you're choosing to use a sports book, okay? You should know that if you're buying something that has no inherent value, then you could lose all of your money. I always tell people, only invest what you can afford to lose in this sector and keep it to low single digits. And in that case you can't really get harmed. The people who are going to get harmed are the greedy. Right? The pigs will get slaughtered. Kind of thing applies here. So for anybody listening, it will slowly become more regulated and there'll be a ramification for doing illegal things, which there hasn't been A lot of people have Gotten away with a lot.

[Tim Miller]

I'm skeptical of what you said. I'm open to it. We'll see how the genius act and whether future regulation happens. I'm open to your argument on that. But like, objectively speaking, they've stopped enforcement. So if something bad was happening and is already endemic in one of these companies, if there's another FCX out there and the Trump administration has dropped all white, DOJ is not anymore looking into coinbase on several potential issues. That were they looking to before? They're not looking into tether.

[David Sacks]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

They're not looking into Justin Sun. Right. Like, there are a number of folks that have, that have bought into Trump's coin that are now off the hook, and that's not good.

[David Sacks]

I think what you'll see is massive investigations of this when Trump's out of office.

[Tim Miller]

Democrats.

[David Sacks]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Here's the problem with being the Democrats. This is why it sucks to be a Democrat right now. Jk, we can end on this. It's like they got to be their irresponsible ones. It's like, oh, great, we come back in, we investigate the fucking Chinese crypto scammers that are screwing people over. And what's going to happen all in podcast guys are going to be like, look at the Democrats coming after crypto, coming after the innovators.

[David Sacks]

Nothing can stop.

[Tim Miller]

That's what's going to happen.

[David Sacks]

We all government, the federal government, you know, not cracking down on stuff doesn't stop local attorney generals or any civil actions. And I think what you're seeing now is the crypto. I have an inside line to this because I invested startup companies, they're all very conservative now in the US because they know the stakes. And if you were to, even now, if you were to promote like as a celebrity, your coin or this, that and the other thing, you could still get people suing you on a civil basis. So, you know, there's still ways this will be regulated. But overall, more regulation and more on shoring is better for crypto. Much better for everybody. It doesn't mean I don't share the same concerns with you of don't put more than like 2% of your money in Bitcoin, even if you're like a cab driver or whatever. Like if you work at McDonald's and you want to put 5% of your net worth in it or 5% of your paycheck in it, I don't suppose, you know, working an extra 5% a week is going to change your life so you can, you can catch up but don't. Don't mortgage your house to buy crypto.

[Tim Miller]

Last question.

[David Sacks]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Trump called. Trump came to the all in podcast summit. We have the audio. We don't play his voice on here, though, because that triggers some of our people. So we're not going to do it. Trigger them. Yeah. Okay, fine. Put it in post. I don't have it ready. We'll put it in post.

[David Sacks]

I want to also.

[Tim Miller]

Say hello and.

[David Sacks]

Thank to Chamath and his wonderful wife Nat. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you very much. It was great seeing you again.

[Tim Miller]

Great couple.

[David Sacks]

David Friedberg and even, as we know, Jason Calacanis. I say even. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Jason. I appreciate that.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, he's a good person, as you heard. He says J Cal a good person. Even Jason, Caleb says you're a good person.

[David Sacks]

Yeah, he trolled me pretty hard.

[Tim Miller]

Even Jason Cal Kanis, you know, so it shows you that he knows you are the troublemaker, which we appreciate. I guess my question for you is, though, is Donald Trump a good person of our country? A good person?

[David Sacks]

Wow. I can't see into the man's heart. Yeah. I think if you looked at his behavior, you would find a lot of behaviors that would be suboptimal.

[Tim Miller]

Is there something that you got, the three kids we talked about? Is there something you would look at the three kids and say, you know, I wish you could really model yourself after Donald Trump on this.

[David Sacks]

I mean, he's quite charming. I will give him that. That guy is a charmer. I mean, I have seen him tink take very, very strong men and just.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, he's gonna like this too much. He's gonna like that compliment too much. We're done with this. Jason Calcanis. Thank you, man. I appreciate you doing this. I really, I genuinely do. Some of your other guys and I love your pod.

[David Sacks]

You do a great job.

[Tim Miller]

I'm welcome anytime. I don't. I don't.

[David Sacks]

Let's just do it like a regular check in every six to nine months. Like, if any of our predictions or hand wringing turns out to be true or false, it's going to be exciting.

[Tim Miller]

I look forward to it. We'll see in J. Maybe we'll do it. Maybe we'll go skiing. Maybe we'll do it at a. In a mountain town in person in January. We'll talk about that. We'll figure it out. All right, That's J. Cal. Everybody else, see you back here tomorrow.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

White shirt now with my bloody. No sleeping on your tippy toes. Creeping around like no one knows thank you so much Bruises on both my knees for you don't say thank you oh please I do what I want when I'm wanting to my soul so cynical so you're a tough guy like it really rough guy just can't get enough guy just always so puff guy I'm that bad type make your mama sad type make your girlfriend mad type my sister seduce your dad type I'm the bad guy duh I like it when you take control Even if you know that you don't hum me I'll let you play the role I'll be your animal My mom me likes to sing along with me but she won't sing this song if she means hopefully she the men I know so you're a tough guy like a really rough guy Just can't get enough guy Just always so puff guy seduce your dad type I'm the bad guy the Bulwark.

[Tim Miller]

Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

[Katie Cooper]

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[Jason Calacanis]

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