Tech Legend Gives His Odds of Elon Musk Successfully Cutting Gov’t | Joe Lonsdale

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rubin Report – "Tech Legend Gives His Odds of Elon Musk Successfully Cutting Gov’t | Joe Lonsdale"

Host: Dave Rubin
Guest: Joe Lonsdale, Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist, Managing Partner of 8VC, Co-founder of Palantir Technologies, OpenGov
Release Date: December 20, 2024

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1. Introduction

In this engaging episode of The Rubin Report, host Dave Rubin sits down with Joe Lonsdale, a prominent figure in the tech and venture capital landscape. Lonsdale brings a wealth of experience from co-founding Palantir Technologies and managing 8VC, alongside his involvement with OpenGov. The conversation delves into the intersection of technology, government efficiency, and the evolving political landscape within Silicon Valley.

2. Joe Lonsdale’s Background and Achievements

[01:00] Dave Rubin: "Joining me today is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, the managing partner of 8VC, co-founder of Palantir Technologies, OpenGov Joel Lonsdale. That is quite a resume. Did I miss anything?"

[01:15] Joe Lonsdale: "I've started a lot of companies, but Palantir is by far the most famous one. And out of OpenGov for the next two and they're doing great."

Joe Lonsdale provides an overview of his entrepreneurial journey, highlighting Palantir's significant impact and his ongoing efforts with OpenGov. His experience at Stanford and involvement with the PayPal Mafia set the foundation for his ventures aimed at improving government operations through technology.

3. The Evolution of Tech Culture and Political Engagement

Dave Rubin raises an important observation about the shift in Silicon Valley’s culture:

[02:32] Dave Rubin: "So you are doing okay. And I thought it would be interesting to have you in as we're wrapping up this year because something has happened with the tech bros this year and you're kind of right term now, huh?"

[01:54] Joe Lonsdale: "Philosopher. Builder. Philosopher. No, you know, it's really fun to see because you had all these smart, ambitious, nerdy guys who... Las Mars people I knew in the small community are now going to help run the country. So overall I'm really excited about it."

Lonsdale discusses the transformation from the stereotypical “tech bro” image to a more philosophically engaged and politically active community. He emphasizes that many in Silicon Valley were initially driven by pure passion for technology and innovation, rather than monetary gains, leading to a culture of builders and thinkers who are now increasingly involved in governmental roles.

4. Government Efficiency and Palantir’s Role

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on how Palantir has interacted with government institutions to enhance data management and operational efficiency.

[05:05] Joe Lonsdale: "Seeing some of the big companies built in the late 90s was very clear. This is like, this is like a revolutionary thing that's gonna change everything."

[14:43] Joe Lonsdale: "Palantir... we were taking the best technology talent in America... applying it to these areas of our country, in our government and our defense world... solving their most important problems and fixing things there."

Lonsdale explains Palantir’s mission to bridge the gap between cutting-edge technology and government operations. He highlights the challenges faced by government agencies overwhelmed by data silos and inefficiencies, and how Palantir's platforms facilitate better data integration, search, and collaborative analysis, ultimately aiming to save lives and enhance national security.

5. Intersection of Technology and Ideology in Silicon Valley

The conversation touches upon the ideological leanings within the tech industry and their implications.

[08:22] Dave Rubin: "So why, when you have you mention all those people, they largely are, I would say, libertarian in belief, at least. At least. Now, why do you think Silicon Valley went so the other way?"

[10:24] Joe Lonsdale: "I've been pretty passionate my whole life about this stuff. I grew up reading Ayn Rand, reading Ludwig von Mizes and Marie Rothbard... I think there's been a few of us in this network, includes Peter Thiel, who have had that kind of philosophy at our core."

Lonsdale attributes the left-leaning culture in Silicon Valley to the influence of top universities and a prevailing leftist norm that became entrenched as the tech industry grew. He contrasts this with his own libertarian-leaning beliefs, emphasizing the importance of philosophical grounding in promoting values like liberty and classical virtues within the tech community.

6. Challenges in Government Collaboration and Bureaucracy

Addressing the inefficiencies in government operations, Lonsdale discusses the obstacles faced while implementing Palantir’s solutions.

[20:15] Dave Rubin: "It's back. We're having an 80s boom."

[20:17] Joe Lonsdale: "We ended up building like a, like a ability to do data integration, search and discovery, knowledge management, collaboration..."

Despite initial resistance and bureaucratic hurdles, Palantir's persistent efforts eventually led to successful integration within government agencies, demonstrating the potential for technology-driven reforms to overcome entrenched inefficiencies.

7. The Role of Philosophers and Educators

Lonsdale emphasizes the need for philosophical and historical understanding among tech leaders to foster a more balanced and effective approach to innovation and governance.

[12:10] Joe Lonsdale: "I grew up reading Ayn Rand, reading Ludwig von Mizes and Marie Rothbard... understanding the classical virtues and... Judeo-Christian values."

He underscores the importance of integrating philosophical education with technological expertise to ensure that innovations are aligned with societal values and contribute to the betterment of civilization.

8. University of Austin and Reforming Higher Education

A substantial discussion revolves around the establishment of the University of Austin as a response to the perceived indoctrination in traditional universities.

[45:01] Joe Lonsdale: "I'm a co-founder of University of Austin... We need more philosopher builders."

[46:36] Dave Rubin: "Do you think we're going through a little bit of a mind shift on that night?"

[45:11] Joe Lonsdale: "We need a very, very small number of examples of really great people who are coming out of the place... competing against Harvard, Yale, Stanford on equal terms."

Lonsdale outlines the vision behind the University of Austin: creating an institution that fosters critical thinking, debate, and philosophical inquiry, contrasting with the current trends of political correctness and lack of accountability in higher education. He highlights the challenges in gaining accreditation and fighting against institutional resistance but remains optimistic about its potential impact.

9. Future Outlook: Government Reform and Technological Advancements

Looking ahead, Lonsdale shares his optimism about the potential for government reform and the positive impact of technological advancements.

[49:21] Joe Lonsdale: "The biggest things that are changing over the next five or ten years is probably back in more of these other areas where I think productivity is actually going to start to go up a lot."

[52:38] Joe Lonsdale: "I was really... a huge weight lifted off my shoulders... but no, it's a huge weight that's lifted."

He envisions a future where AI and technology drive significant productivity gains, enabling more efficient government operations and fostering economic growth. Lonsdale is hopeful that with the right technological tools and visionary leadership, the U.S. can overcome bureaucratic stagnation and achieve remarkable progress.

10. Closing Remarks and Final Insights

In the concluding segments, Lonsdale offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs and emphasizes the importance of sharing ideas and building strong technological cultures.

[57:10] Joe Lonsdale: "Imagine there's five people with the same idea. Four of them are afraid, don't tell anyone. And one of them talks to a bunch of people and keeps telling all of them and getting feedback and making their idea better. Who's going to win?"

He encourages entrepreneurs to actively share and refine their ideas, seek feedback, and collaborate to build impactful ventures. Lonsdale stresses that a strong tech culture is essential for creating valuable companies and driving meaningful change.

[58:31] Dave Rubin: "Great to see you, my friend. Thank you."

The episode wraps up with mutual appreciation between Rubin and Lonsdale, highlighting the collaborative spirit necessary for fostering innovation and societal improvement.

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Notable Quotes

• Joe Lonsdale [05:05]: "Seeing some of the big companies built in the late 90s was very clear. This is like, this is a revolutionary thing that's gonna change everything."

• Joe Lonsdale [10:24]: "I've been pretty passionate my whole life about this stuff. I grew up reading Ayn Rand, reading Ludwig von Mizes and Marie Rothbard... understanding the classical virtues and... Judeo-Christian values."

• Joe Lonsdale [45:09]: "We need more philosopher builders... turn out, I think, like Elon or like some version of him where they both create things, but then they also are thoughtful about our society."

• Joe Lonsdale [57:10]: "Imagine there's five people with the same idea. Four of them are afraid, don't tell anyone. And one of them talks to a bunch of people and keeps telling all of them and getting feedback and making their idea better. Who's going to win?"

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Conclusion

This episode of The Rubin Report offers a deep dive into Joe Lonsdale's perspectives on the intersection of technology, government, and societal values. Lonsdale's insights into the challenges of government inefficiency, the importance of philosophical grounding in tech leadership, and the need for educational reform provide valuable takeaways for listeners interested in the future of technology and governance. The conversation underscores a hopeful outlook towards leveraging technology to drive significant societal improvements, despite existing bureaucratic and ideological obstacles.

Transcript

[Joel Lonsdale]

You told the police that you'd never met my son.

[Dave Rubin]

But you had.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Yes.

[Dave Rubin]

Now streaming on Apple TV from Academy Award winner Alfonso Cuaron. Disclaimer.

[Joel Lonsdale]

It was time to bring justice.

[Dave Rubin]

Critics are raving. It's a cunning psychological thriller.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Something happened years ago. What exactly happened? He died.

[Dave Rubin]

Addictive and extraordinary. It's the best TV show of the year. I had to tell the world the truth. Disclaimer now streaming on Apple tv. It's a crazy world Crazy world Somebody gotta have the same view.

[Joel Lonsdale]

It's a crazy world.

[Dave Rubin]

It's a crazy world Somebody's.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Gotta have the same news.

[Dave Rubin]

Joining me today is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, the managing partner of 8VC, co founder of Palantir Technologies, Add a par and open gov Joel Lonsdale. That is quite a resume. Did I miss anything?

[Joel Lonsdale]

That's all right.

[Dave Rubin]

I did miss some things, but it's okay.

[Joel Lonsdale]

I've started a lot of companies, but Palantir is by far the most famous one. And out of our open go for the next two and they're doing great.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah, you are doing okay. And I thought it would be interesting to have you in as we're wrapping up this year because something has happened with the tech bros this year and you're kind of right term now, huh? Yeah, you are a tech bro. You're right in the middle of the tech bro thing. It seems to have scaled to use a word from, from your vocabulary. What is going on with all the tech bros getting all political and outspoken suddenly Tech pros.

[Joel Lonsdale]

I prefer the term philosopher. Builder. Philosopher.

[Dave Rubin]

Very deep thinker. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Joel Lonsdale]

No, you know, it's really fun to see because you had all these smart, ambitious, nerdy guys who a lot of most of them my age and, and above, I think went into technology because they're really interested in it and they're passionate about it. It wasn't, it wasn't like the thing to make the most money when we were kids, you know, programming in the early 1990s or whatever. It was this really dorky thing that we were doing. It was really fun and mostly I wanted to build games. Of course, when I was young, that was the fun thing to do with it. And also wanted to automatically solve my math homework. But, you know, it's really cool to see all these people who ambitious and worked really hard at these things. Las Mars people I knew in the small community are now going to help run the country. So overall I'm really excited about it.

[Dave Rubin]

Tell me a little bit more about that story because I'm a I'm a largely. I would retired gamer. There is a PS5 right behind you over there, but it doesn't get bust out too often. I'm much better at old school Nintendo but. So you're programming, you're kind of a gamer or you want to make games. Like how does the thing evolve into something that ends up making multiple billion dollar companies?

[Joel Lonsdale]

I mean my friends and I were math champions and chess champions were nerdy young guys and I was growing up in Silicon Valley and a bunch of them taught me to program. Gosh, it must have been 10 or 11 years old. We're doing it on RTI calculators, doing it like on the computer. How old are you? How old are you? 42.

[Dave Rubin]

42. So I'm 48. So close enough. We'll get the references.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Yeah, it's very. Exactly these old things. You program BASIC and then you had to learn how to like compile it to assembly to make the game run faster. And there's just all this really fun stuff we were building and automatically doing our homework and stuff. And you know, right around kind of the mid-90s maybe, I guess with 93, we all got AOL, right? It was like this. You start going on the Internet and you start playing with it. And then a few of my friends were learning how to like break into certain things, which maybe is inappropriate. We're like 11, 12 years old. Like they were teaching me, they're 14 or 15. And so it's fun. It's like this hacking thing and you're not. We don't really know what we're doing and we're playing with it.

[Dave Rubin]

What was there even to hack into at that point? There's always companies sending bombs across the world.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Not like War Games. I wasn't as good as some of my friends. I was watching them and they're trying to take credit for their work alongside. I was just a little kid but. And, but a lot of them who are doing that, the Internet, Internet thing got going and people started trying to build Internet companies and they're trying to build like teaching companies, trying to build other sorts of things and, and a lot of them started to be really successful. My friends, older brothers and this is the 90s, late 90s, the bubble. Everyone, A lot of people thought they were rich then, they weren't. But we were into this, we were into building, we were into how the Internet was gonna change the world. And we were very much. And people made fun of it for a while afterwards. The whole new paradigm and changed. But it Was true, in a sense. We were. In some ways, we were 10, 20 years early because a lot of the stuff we were thinking about in the late 90s didn't really happen until the whole SAS wave and everything 15 years later when everyone was online. But it was stuff that was true. And I went to Stanford. Computer science. You know, a lot of smartest guys were going to PayPal. I applied their freshman year. They rejected me freshman year, actually. I was very bummed, and I had to do something else. But then sophomore year, they let me in, and I got to work with these guys. And, you know, the guys at PayPal, of course, went on to. I think they wanted to build everything.

[Dave Rubin]

Teal and Elon and David Sacks.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Yeah, so I'm not really. I'm like, 15 years younger than Peter, than Peter, and 12 years younger than Elon, so I'm a junior member of that whole crew. But then I ended up building stuff myself.

[Dave Rubin]

So what was the first success point for you where you realized, oh, there's like, a career here. It's not just, like, the fun stuff or the dorky stuff or whatever?

[Joel Lonsdale]

Well, I think. I think seeing some of the big companies built in the late 90s was very clear. This is. This is like. This is like, a revolutionary thing that's gonna change everything. That's gonna. I don't know if you're thinking about, like, no one. Like, I never imagined a Palantir would be trading at, like, a 160 billion market cap. That wasn't. That wasn't the point, really, of it at all. You know, PayPal actually sold for $1.5 billion with all these really smart people working really hard on it. And that was, to me, that was like a high watermark of something to aim for, you know? You know, so it's like, so. So I wasn't thinking of it like this as big as it is today, necessarily, but. But it was clearly something that was very important for the world and was going to change everything. It was important to work on.

[Dave Rubin]

What do you make of the fact that so many people came out of the PayPal mafia, as they call it, you know, David and Elon and Teal and many others, that there was this, like, group that suddenly came together. They change how we make payments online. But then they all went to do, like, crazy, crazy, huge things?

[Joel Lonsdale]

Well, the world tends to have power laws, right? So what a power law is in venture capital, A power law is like. It's like your top company is, like, worth as much as the rest of your companies. Combined. And so there were going to be a couple places in Silicon Valley with super talented people that attracted a lot. They were super talented people, right. And it had nothing to do with ideology. Right? I mean, Reid Hoffman ended up being a big backer of the left. He was part of it too, and other people were part of it with different views. So it wasn't about ideology. It was about people who thought differently, people who are really competent, people who worked hard. And and so of course, and you think about it in retrospect, it was Elon Musk. We now know who he is. We didn't know who Elon was back then. He's some crazy guy. But now, now you know, he's a legend. It was Peter Thiel, who's also now really a legend in a lot of ways, similarly. And it was their smartest friends. So it's like no surprise if you go back in time knowing who Elon is, that he had a place with his smartest friends. Peter had a place with his smartest friends. They merged their companies like two of the best companies in this space, rather than trying to destroy each other famously in all sorts of aggressive ways, ended up merging. No surprise. This company becomes a bed of talent for all sorts of things.

[Dave Rubin]

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[Joel Lonsdale]

You the Police that you'd never met my son.

[Dave Rubin]

But you had.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Yes.

[Dave Rubin]

Now streaming on Apple TV plus from Academy Award winner Alfonso Cuaron. Disclaimer.

[Joel Lonsdale]

It was time to bring justice.

[Dave Rubin]

Critics are raving. It's a cunning psychological thriller.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Something happened years ago. What exactly happened? He died.

[Dave Rubin]

Addictive and extraordinary. It's the best TV show of the year. I had to tell the world the truth. Disclaimer now streaming on Apple TV plus. So why, when you have you mention all those people, they largely are, I would say, libertarian in belief, at least. At least. Now, why do you think Silicon Valley went so the other way? You mentioned Reid as more of a lefty, and he's funded a lot of the things that I've been railing against for a long time, including Gavin Newsom. But like, it would have seemed that the tech world would have gone more to a libertarian bent. And yet it seemed, at least in its public sense, that it went to a progressive bench.

[Joel Lonsdale]

So what happened in the tech world is that, first of all, the areas we were building in didn't really intersect very much with government back then. Of course, Spitzer tried to come after PayPal and kill it. So there's some of that where the government was annoying, and it definitely intersected a little bit. But a lot of the stuff we were doing wasn't that political. It was so new that there wasn't really interaction with dc and then the cultures of most of these companies came from the big universities. And so if you look at Google was mostly just like hundreds or thousands of computer science PhDs, you know, from Stanford and MIT and Harvard, et cetera. And so you had. You had this kind of march through the institutions of the extreme left over the previous decades, and that became just like a default culture there. And if you didn't want to have to have fights with people constantly or be canceled or be harassed, you would just go along. I mean, most people are programmed in the areas of their life they're not passionate about just to go along with the norms. The norm was to be on the left in universities. And so, of course, that culture became the norm for much of big tech.

[Dave Rubin]

When did you realize that something was a little out of whack with that? Because. Because I should note, actually, you were one of our first investors in locals. And at that time, this is now, you know, like six years ago, it was. We were fighting for free speech. We were trying to get off the big tech wires. That's all what everyone's doing now. But it was very risky at the time. And A lot of people, I'm not gonna mention, I just mentioned one off camera, but like a lot of major people took meetings with us and just closed the door immediately after. But not only were you one of the first ones in, but I just said to you, the kindest thing that I could say to investor Rich is you always took my. To give us advice.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Yeah, well, I've been pretty passionate my whole life about this stuff. I grew up reading Ayn Rand, reading Ludwig von Mizes and Marie Rothbard, just really interested in the ideas of liberty and why our society works. So I think there's been a few of us in this network, includes Peter Thiel, who have had that kind of philosophy at our core and been very interested in how and why Western civilization works and what the threat is from these other things. And if you look at how Western civilization works, there's really. We were speaking about it before you came out. There's a few threads that really matter. You have to understand, to understand the west, the classical world and the classical virtues and, you know, courage, things like that would be really, really important to have. And, and we can go into that. And then you have to understand, I think, the Judeo Christian values and I think a lot of that's a really positive foundation for our world that enabled a lot of things in really good ways. I mean, I mean, the way, you know, with you, if you, if you just understand the classical virtues, you get some very scary, like Nietzschean kind of Nazi type stuff you can get to, if you don't have the dignity of every human life. Right. And then, and then of course, those combined with the Enlightenment and with the kind of radical ideas that came out of the 17th and 18th centuries that created this thing in the west that was totally unique in history and gave us an amazing last 300 years. And what's really unfortunate is a lot of the people in the tech world just weren't, just, just haven't grown up with any kind of economics, history, philosophy, background. And so they've just become like on that part of their life, they're NPCs just going along with this leftist nonsense. I think there have been a few of us. So I was the editor of the Stanford Review, for example, which Peter Thiel started 15 years before me. And because I was really passionate about these ideas and about fighting back against this nonsense. So there are some of us who've had that obsession our whole lives, I think other people, only after the whole DEI stuff took over, only after this kind of rot infected our space and started to break things. Did they start to wake up to this? Right, so. So this is great that they're woken up. They weren't really focused on it before.

[Dave Rubin]

Right. Do you think it's also. And I don't even mean this in like, a really judgy, judgy way, that it was just like, oh, we're kind of rolling in dough. Our companies are working. It's just. It just doesn't matter. Like, our life's pretty good. We got a plane and what.

[Joel Lonsdale]

I wouldn't say it's quite like that, because most of these guys, if you look at what entrepreneurship's like, it's like most of these people have, like, struggled for many, many years to get to where they are. It's like there's very few companies that are just like, I hit it rich and I'm rolling and dough and I don't care. That's like a very rare exception. Most of the time, it's like everyone treated me like. And I had to, like, fly, you know, commercial, lowest, cheapest ticket on JetBlue, like, twice a week back and forth to D.C. to try to convince them of something for three years, which is what I was doing with Palantir. It was just this, like, very long, very painful journey. And it's just like, you're not the. Most people are just not focused on politics. You're just focused on giving every last ounce of energy you have to, like, get this thing across the line before it dies and make it work. And. And then once it does and you've got to this platform, then there's always other existential threats to your business here. So even though it looks really good, you're still trying to scale it and build in. A lot of these people in my world, I think, have really strong work ethics, and that's what entrepreneur is. You have to be a little bit crazy. You have to want to work, like, really hard. And it's just that I think for most of them, because they didn't have that philosophical background, they don't have the interests in government. They just. It's just not something they spent time on. They just virtue signaled, not because. Just not because they're cowards even, but because, like, I'm doing this really hard thing, and I just want this other thing to stay out of the way. And I want to think about it. I think that's what their attitude was.

[Dave Rubin]

What do you think it says about Peter Thiel? That he was sort of the outlier, the most public outlier in this and as you said a few years ahead of you on this, that he was always the guy that was like kind of going against the grain when it came to political correctness and Stanford Review and all of these things.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Yeah.

[Dave Rubin]

And Sacks was with him, I think, co writing 100%.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Peter and David Sachs both had these views, both worked together on the Review, published that book. That's partly what attracted me to want to work with him. I was sort of his right hand for quite a while, you know, early in my career, in my early 20s. And it was because he was someone who was courageous about his values and that I think it's really important as a role model to show people we do need to be courageous about our values and that we do need to care that these things actually matter. Like, Peter lives in a world where ideas really matter. And I think him having done that inspired a lot of others.

[Dave Rubin]

You've mentioned Palantir a couple of times. So you were co founder of Palantir now? I mentioned Palantir on the show every now and again, usually because lately we've been playing a lot of clips of Alex Karp, who's the CEO, who I think is just absolutely knocking it out of the park. And I'm sure you'll have some thoughts on that. But first off, can you, in the most simple terms, explain what Palantir does? Because every time I have to do it, I feel like I'm slightly butchering it. So can you give me, like.

[Joel Lonsdale]

It'S not a simple company to explain. It's not. No, it's, you know, so Palantir, I hired probably most of the first two or 300 people, which I'm really proud of because we're ranked number one for technical talent. And what we were doing, there's a few different ways of looking at it. One way of looking at it was we were taking the best technology talent in America in a very top tech culture that was, you know, very competitive with Facebook and Google for talent, many times beating them and applying it to these areas of our country, in our government and our defense world and in large corporations that didn't have access to these top technologies cultures and solving their most important problems and fixing things there. So that's one high level way of thinking about it. If you want to get like one.

[Dave Rubin]

Can you give me an example of something like that?

[Joel Lonsdale]

Yeah. So the government, when we started at that time, there was almost a million people who are analysts in some form of the defense world or intelligence world. There's a lot of people working on Data. And they have data. They're spending over $36 billion at the time. I'm sure it's much more now gathering data for some sort of different projects. And by the way, everyone thinks it's like, oh, the CIA and the FBI. It's not the CIA. It's like 2,000 different groups in the CIA which many of them don't like each other and many of them don't share data with each other. And then there's all the other groups too. Right.

[Dave Rubin]

I have a feeling we'll be finding out a lot more about this next year to come.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Well, that'll be fun too. But, but there's so many of these groups, so many people, so much data, so many silos, and it's just totally dysfunctional. So how do you have. Let's say there's a, maybe a smart guy who's, you know, in his 30s, didn't study computer science, but he's, he's worked hard and senior in the military, he's an analyst and he, he's trying to stop an attack and he's trying to work with different groups, stop and attack. And there are these $36 billion of data and these 20,000 databases or whatever, and different rules for accessing each of them. How the hell is he supposed to do that work? How's he supposed to like, is he supposed to go write the code himself to look at this thing over here? Like what do you do? So, so what's the, what's like the interface for that person that's intelligible that lets him do that work, lets him build the graph of the 30 people around Osama bin Laden with the different payments and structures and information, let's them set that to be monitored so that if some data does come into a database from MI6 from Britain later and we have access to it, and it actually ties one of the guys near somnolent to something going on. Like how does that automatically ping him and he can connect the dots and share it with someone else. This is a hard problem, especially because these guys aren't coders. And so, so, so, so we're building. So basically you ended up building like a, like a ability to do data integration, search and discovery, knowledge management, collaboration, and to have a platform that does that and that plugs into everything else.

[Dave Rubin]

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[Joel Lonsdale]

It was an insane.

[Dave Rubin]

And the systems, literally the systems are old and dysfunctional. So how do you even do that? Like you walk into an office and basically say, guys, we got to blow this thing apart. We're taking over. We got to throw out a bunch of old assignment.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Like you just got to start building and you got to design it in a way that you can to deploy at one place, but you know that if you deploy another place, then you can flip a switch and have them coordinate and collaborate and you know, you know what it is? So. So in the 1990s, we had a lot of defense companies. America had a lot of the best defense companies. The cold war ended and they all had to consolidate. So you got all. They're called the primes, the prime contractors. They consolidated. So it went down from many, many dozens to maybe like 8 to 10 that really mattered in the 90s. And then those guys, because they're only 8 to 10 of them and they were lobbying and there was lower spend, they just captured everything and they put all these rules in place to make sure they owned everything right. And so nothing else had broken in for quite. But then we both talked about it and Then in the late 90s, all the top software engineers went to Silicon Valley. And so these primes, which had been dominant forever, started losing all their best software engineers, losing their best technical cultures. They started becoming more and more like government, because that's who they work with every day, and that's who's going in and out of them. So you have these kind of dysfunctional, bureaucratic government, like, things that don't know software. And then 911 happens, and then they have to try to react. And all of a sudden the administration says, let's spend billions of dollars. Let's fix this, this. But these guys just started, like, wasting the money on stupid shit. So we see this, and, you know, we had been at PayPal, and at PayPal, one of the biggest challenges was that the Chinese and Russian mafia were stealing all of our money. And we actually had to build systems to help our investigators stop that. And. And we. And a lot of other competitors went bankrupt. They couldn't do it. And so that lesson from PayPal, by the way, when you catch the bad guys at PayPal, who do you call? There's two groups. It's the Secret Service and it's the FBI. And so we got to know a bunch of these groups, and then we saw them spending this money after 9 11, and we said, oh, my God, this is like. This is, I guess you can say the word retarded now. This is retarded.

[Dave Rubin]

It's just like, it's back. We're having an 80s boom.

[Joel Lonsdale]

We're trying to bring it back. So it's like, this is ridiculous. They're just lighting money on fire, doing things in really outdated ways that are way behind what we did at PayPal. And so let's take the lessons from PayPal. Let's extend it much more broadly for how you do it with the government data. And let's just start building it and showing them and start flying back and forth. And every time we fly there, they say, well, we can't use it for this, this, and this reason. So we'd go back, we'd like work like crazy with the team. We'd come back two weeks later, and we'd say, well, now we solved those problems. What's next? And they said, actually, that's really good. But then you can't do it because of this, this, and this. And so literally, we iterated like this for a couple years, and finally they just couldn't have any objection anymore, and they started to use it, right?

[Dave Rubin]

Because it sort of seems like the way the Government's operated. It's basically like in some sense what you guys were trying to do, make them more efficient, would be the exact reverse of what they would want done. So the amount of pushback at different levels must have been nuts.

[Joel Lonsdale]

That's a good point. There are are a lot of bad actors in government. There are a lot of these players on the side that are going to want to sabotage you and get rid of you. There's a lot of very lazy people who don't care. But this is what's really interesting about government. There are some really great people who do really care in there. And maybe it might be one of our 10 people, might be one of every 50 people in some places. But you find those few people who really care and other co workers and their bosses kind of could tell, like, that's our guy who actually knows what the heck she's doing, what she's doing, the guy who knows what he's doing. And so as you partner with those people and you know, we created an analyst groundswell where a bunch of the best people were all saying, we need this, we need this. And you know what we really figured out? This is something Karp really figured out. You need to go to the places where the problem is existential. Because what you just said is right. If it's just like a general problem that's just. You're never going to get through, you know, if you're way better, right? But if you go to the team where there's literally people dying, for example, the special forces teams that are army brigades that are dying to IEDs because their software is not good enough to map out what's going on and find where the explosives are. And if you're actually saving their lives, which is what we started doing, we started saving a lot of lives on the special operations teams. Then everyone says, wow, we need this too. And the army brigades actually ask, can you give this to us? They won't let us pay for it because of course our general is going to work with this big contractor and they're paying billions of dollars on our thing. But can you at least let's use it for now and we'll show you the lives we're saving. So we started doing that. We started letting people see all the lives we're saving in different areas, coordinating.

[Dave Rubin]

So you guys were literally saving lives because they had better data on the ground as to where the enemy was or what 100.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Because there's a massive sigint in humans and database gathering thing, and you actually Literally started saving and they actually started showing us the lives we were saving and, and it was a big deal. And then they put contract got forbid and they, and they gave it to the, to the old company. And you know what we did?

[Dave Rubin]

Wow.

[Joel Lonsdale]

This is, this is the one time.

[Dave Rubin]

You bought the old company.

[Joel Lonsdale]

No, this is like a giant prime. We sued the government and we won because the law said they had to consider the outsiders that were already working. We actually had something off the shelf that was already working and they wanted to pay someone $5 billion to try to build it.

[Dave Rubin]

Wow.

[Joel Lonsdale]

And they wouldn't have been able to build it anyway. But anyway. So we wanted got in there but it's like it was just like a mess to get in. We had to be extremely persistent. We had to just like iterately crazy every unfair advantage, every ally we could find to break in and eventually we broke into these places. We won. People love that. Everyone thanks us who we meet who's worked in these places. But it took, it took a long time, it took, it took like over a decade of just like persistent work to break in. And, but, but you know, because Palantir broken and by the way because SpaceX similarly broke in similar types of problems added to the government too. You know, because they broke into.

[Dave Rubin]

Now I'm pretty sure the government's suing them. So.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Wow. No, but no, it's good. The government's saved so much from them, give them lots of money. It's good. Like SpaceX and Palantir have saved the government each tens of billions of dollars have solved all these problems. Palantir stopped tons of attacks that would have happened otherwise. But because we did that, we've now created this situation where a ton of other companies have a pathway to compete which is, which is happening now. It's very exciting.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah, I sense you don't mind that actually.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Right.

[Dave Rubin]

Because that's what'll spark innovation.

[Joel Lonsdale]

I built a few other billion dollar companies in the space so I'm actually able to build things now that I never could have built 15 years ago. Because we've really. Because we've now taught the generals and the admirals in Congress that we do need to be open and have competitions and to let the new best solutions.

[Dave Rubin]

So I want to talk about Alex Carr for a minute because I have played a couple videos of his lately.

[Joel Lonsdale]

He's one of my, one of my favorite people.

[Dave Rubin]

So first off he looks like the guy who created Oasis in Ready Player One. So that already it's like he seems like a character out of a movie. But what was interesting, we played a clip of his a week or two ago, and I did not realize that, I mean, he largely, I think, is still a Democrat. If I'm not. He voted for Biden, if I'm not mistaken, voted for Kamala. And yet he seems to get all of the issues right and explain them quite well. That says something about the intellectual diversity, you guys.

[Joel Lonsdale]

I think, I think, I think, think he voted for Biden. I don't, I was unclear who he voted for in this last election. We can't say.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah, okay, so maybe, maybe I'm wrong on that. We tried to do a little bit.

[Joel Lonsdale]

He may, he may have given some money. So left list.

[Dave Rubin]

I, I, I mean, listen, either way, doesn't specifically.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Alex is one of my very favorite people. He's a, he's a philosopher king. He actually was, he was the, he was the top philosophy student of the person who was a top philosopher in the world when he got his PhD, right. So he's, he's like, he's a genius about like, very, very high level, abstract ways the world works. Works. He deeply cares about Jewish people in Israel. His mother is African American, his father's Jewish. And if you come from that background, I think you kind of grow up as part of the people on the left. That's just the culture that he came from very much, especially the culture that his parents were enmeshed in and deeply cares about that. At the same time, I think he's been brought around to see that there are a lot of people who are not very nice to Israel and the Jews and others on the left and who are not necessarily doing the right things for America. So I consider him a modern it and, and I consider him someone who, as you've heard, he's, I think he adds the conversation very well because he is pushing back on a lot of this nonsense from the far left that all of us need to fight from every direction.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah, well, you must be particularly happy about that because you've obviously been involved in University of Austin and there are things now waking up, at least seemingly waking up at the educational layer of all this. How did, how did the Austin thing.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Yeah, well, yeah, well, and, and just, and just to say on, on, on Alex, on Alex, you know, he, you know, he, he was, he's a very important mentor to me. And, and he, he's one of those people who just like, deeply, deeply cares about our civilization and what's right and like helping people around him. And he was the only, he was the only non technical person, you know, when we started the company. Everyone assumes he's like a crazy computer scientist, but he's like, he actually really is a philosopher who understands and cares about people.

[Dave Rubin]

So was he really brought in as the CEO to be the. So he was really brought in as the idea guy, not necessarily the.

[Joel Lonsdale]

I wouldn't say the idea guy. I wouldn't say the idea guy. So the actual story, which I've only told a couple times and a long time ago, was that my roommate Stefan and I were the full time founders along with someone named Nathan who's in the background, who's helping us, who's an older programmer who's really smart. And Peter was a co founder but not working at it. He was more backing us and giving us advice and stuff. And we were building these things, flying back and forth to dc. And Alex at the time had just finished being the philosophy student. And a lot of the philosophers in Europe like to pretend. Sorry, A lot of the billionaires in Europe like to pretend they're philosophers, which is kind of funny. It's like a high status thing to be. And so he was like, he said, it's like being a basketball star in the us you have all these women and everyone interested in him. It was very funny. From Europe. And so he's helping raise money for interesting causes running around the world and he gets to know all these powerful people. So he was hard to advise us. I met him through Peter. They'd gone to law school together and he was helping Peter raise money for the fund I was helping Peter with. And he started to advise me for Palantir, like, oh, here's how you meet these people. And I'm 21 at the time. So he says, Joe, if you want to come across the right way, don't get the introduction that way, get it this way. And here's what you say. Induce you're taken seriously by the institution because if you say it this way, they'll know you're a kid. And it's just stuff like that, that. And at the time, Peter was trying to get an adult to come into Palantir and there'd been a bunch of military guys, generals. He kept introducing Stefan and I to and Stephanie, like, no, these generals just don't get it at all. They were, they're going to ruin the company, right? Because it's such a different culture than our tech culture. And we were talking to Alex about this and I flew out to London. At one point I said, alex, Peter was trying to get these other people in. He's right that Stefan and I are 21. We're not the right people to go talk to senators and sell this. Can you come pretend to be CEO for a few years and just like to be. No more pressure to have to have an adult and you can kind of advise us on these things and then you figure it out. And he said, sure, I'll do it. I'm interested. And he came and at first, like he didn't really know what was going on in the tech world at all. It's like a, it's like, I think he said, like anthropological experience. They come to a certain place. But he learned really quickly and he started helping, he started advising and it was first called the triumvirate with Stefan and Carpenter for a long time. But he just very quickly became this like, why his leader who was able to figure out how to make things work for the company. And it turned out he's just an amazing CEO who figured out how to do the job. And he's still doing it 20 years later.

[Dave Rubin]

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[Joel Lonsdale]

Yeah. I mean there's really, there's really two opposing forces in our country. And I think the good guys won. I think, I think, I think the, that, I think there's one side that's pro censorship, that's like this very elitist, kind of very authoritarian group that works based on cancel culture, works based on a lot of the Maoist principles. And that kind of went along with a lot of very scary things from the far left, nor the gang power. And I think there's another side that is much more about society working bottom up, fighting for the working class, fighting for innovators and builders, and to be able to change and fix things as opposed to be able to have permits and restrictions on everything and stopping anything from changing. And so, so, you know, so naturally in the tech world, like you have these two big sides in society. And so nationally, the tech world, kind of the top builders are on the good guy side, and then bottom up and the liberty side. And then a lot of the people who are kind of the bureaucracy at the big companies is on the other side and they're the people enforcing you like the HR ladies and everyone, they're on the other side. Right. And so, so yeah, I think that, I think having we in America have this builder class that is the best class of builders anywhere in the world by far, are like, these are the best builders. These are the best innovators in the world. A lot of them were born here. I'm proud to be born here. But a lot of them came here and, you know, we should not turn away Elon Musk. Like, it's good, it's good that he came here. Right. This is a great thing. And, and so to have that set of people fighting for our country and fighting to fix like, these like, crazy broken things that this, like, this, like, kind of corrupt class has put in place. Yeah, it makes me very bullish on America.

[Dave Rubin]

You think there's any risk there that so many people kind of coming from the same thing will have, have this kind of influence?

[Joel Lonsdale]

We're not really the same people, though. You know, I, I think, I think, I think Elon's a very different person than David, who's a very different person than me. And we all have our views and there's, there's certain things that as builders, we've learned how they work to apply them. But I think we all have different backgrounds. So I, I, you know, I think you got to be careful. I think you got to be careful that everyone's being represented in terms of the classes in America. I think JD is very good at this, by the way. I think he's. Some people say it's populism, but he came from a background where he's able to represent some working class people and people who are struggling. And I think a lot of the issues that they're struggling are tied to mistakes we've made in terms of how our country works and how our government works. I think it is very important that we're highlighting these issues of the people in our society who are not doing as well and struggling and making sure we help all of them. But in terms of how you help them, how you build, how you create the only solution for our country, if you look at the debt, debt and the deficit and like all these messes, is we need to grow, we need a lot of growth. Growth pays. It makes everyone work. If you grow correctly, we can help everyone, especially at least well off. Like if you look at everywhere in the world, where do poor people suffer the most? It's if you stop growing and if you don't bring these builders in and fix a lot of this stuff, we are not going to be able to grow.

[Dave Rubin]

Do you remember a couple months ago when Elon said that there'll be a certain pain point with some of this and people were going crazy on it and I thought, oh, it was a rarely refreshing moment of someone being like, oh, we're going to have to cut back on some things and that might affect some people. Do you think that the American people will only have like a tolerance for a certain amount of whatever that pain point is?

[Joel Lonsdale]

You know, it's going to be really.

[Dave Rubin]

As things change, it's going to be.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Really important, Dave, that we communicate really well what we're doing and why we're doing it. And there's, there's a lot of government money right now that's being spent very wastefully. It causes a lot of inflation, right? Inflation is caused by government spending, government overspending. We have like, we have an insane amount government overspending and a lot of that needs to be cut back to allow our society to thrive and allow us not to go through a debt crisis and allow us not to hurt everyone more in the process of cutting back some of that waste. Some of that waste is sustaining certain things that are helping certain people. But that, but, but it's a very dysfunctional way of doing it. It's like, it's like there are cells in your body. If you have cancer and you're going to get rid of the cancer, there's going to be certain cells around that cancer, they're going to suffer a little bit. Now I'm not saying in this case it's me as a bad analogy because we're not going to, we're not killing people, so we're to fix this, but we are going to, we are going to kill some programs and we are going to kill some other things in order to make this whole system healthy.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah, I had Rand Paul on last week and basically I asked him that question and he said, well, I'm not that concerned about the person who has the job unjustly at the government because I'm more concerned about the person who's having their garnishes way, their wages garnished to keep that person job. I thought that was the right 100%.

[Joel Lonsdale]

You know, in Elon Vivek, I think they're very clear along with the President that the goal is not to even hurt the bureaucrats. Like they want to be very generous with the bureaucrats. However, you know, if you look at the federal level right now, I think we have about 3.1 million or so full time employees. We have another 4 million or so contractors. We have another 1.7 million or so people paid for who work at the states, paid for by the federal government. So just a massive number of people and you probably don't need more than half of them, right?

[Dave Rubin]

Or I mean just go to D.C. and there's these massive buildings and no one's there, no one's there.

[Joel Lonsdale]

We're spending about $15 billion a year maintaining buildings and spending money on these buildings that no one's in.

[Dave Rubin]

It's crazy. So, so the numbers go on.

[Joel Lonsdale]

It's over 100 billion nos. I mean I get, I'm obsessed with this stuff. It's like, like so much, so much. It's like we're paying for like trans activism in Niger. Paying. It's just playing for climate activism in Brazil. Why are we doing this? It's crazy.

[Dave Rubin]

So, so what are like the obvious things that if you were advising these guys you'd be like, go in and chop away.

[Joel Lonsdale]

So the obvious things are that there's $3.8 trillion in entitlements, of which over $300 billion seems to be fraud. So getting, and that's a hard data problem by the way. We, but we could do it. We can get rid of big number, get rid of the Frau obvious. That's obviously the right thing to do. On top of that, there's over $100 billion to NGOs I'm, I'm so excited. It's finally open season on NGOs. These are the most corrupt groups in America, right? They're completely conquered by the radical left. These are pro Hamas people. These are anti market people. These are like the worst people that we don't want in charge of our society. And we're just like funneling money to them. Like, you see how the Obama administration sent money to these people? Are you familiar with the mechanism they used to do it with the, with the, with the settlements?

[Dave Rubin]

I'm not sure.

[Joel Lonsdale]

So like, so like Kamala's brother in law, Tony west, like, he was helping run the DOJ under Obama. He was helping run for a campaign too, by the way. And this guy, they figured out that if you're going to like sue from the doj, a big company for doing something wrong, rather than the big company having to like settle with the government or whatever else you say, don't worry, you could pay half as much. Just give it to one of these approved NGOs.

[Dave Rubin]

God, it's insane. It's like the craziest mafia move ever.

[Joel Lonsdale]

It's. I mean, it's genius. From a corrupt angle, right? I mean, I wouldn't ever do that because it's immoral. But if you're not, if ethics is not your problem, it's genius because you're genius. Filtering money to your far left friend friends. And these groups are like the left of the left. And they're, and they're the ones who are like funding activists to fund people to burn buildings. And blm, they're the ones like, they're doing all this crazy. They're bringing more homeless to our cities in order to raise funding for progressive causes is the whole thing.

[Dave Rubin]

I mean, literally, they have these NGOs sitting at the border telling people how to get to different cities.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Billions of dollars teaching people how to falsely claim asylum. This is billions of dollars funded from the government to teach people how to falsely claim asylum. I mean, this stuff is crazy. So, so yeah, so NGOs are going to take out fraud. We're going to take out, you know, the bureaucracy itself is not that expensive. It's only about $400 billion, but you still probably want to cut 25 to, you know, 40% of it just because a lot of them are the ones doing the nonsense. And then the real cost, we're not talking about here. It's not just the money, it's the regulatory state. There's a million commands at the federal level and this stuff is slowing Growth massively. So there's, there's probably hundreds of thousands of regulations to cut. We're going to use Loper vs Bright, which is Chevron deference thing. And then, you know, a couple other rulings. We're going to go in, in and try to turn off a bunch of this stuff they shouldn't be doing. You saw there's a great, there's a great thing. It just came out of the fifth Circuit. I don't know if you saw it would be last week when this is shown. That basically says the SEC was not allowed to work with NASDAQ to force everyone to have to report on the gender diversity of their board. Do you see this?

[Dave Rubin]

I didn't specifically, but I, but thank God.

[Joel Lonsdale]

It's a great judge. It's great judge Andy Oldham on the fifth Circuit. Amazing work. Basically, like the SEC clearly should not have been forcing every company. It's a very funny thing because, you know, know Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen are on the Facebook board and so the lawyers had to meet with them and they had to say, Peter, you count as a diversity candidate because you're gay. Isn't that funny?

[Dave Rubin]

He literally, I think I, if I'm not mistaken, I had dinner with him that night and he really was very conflicted about it because they basically were like, use your gayness now because that's how we can keep you on the board.

[Joel Lonsdale]

That's how we keep you on the board is here. And, and Mark was saying, what about this Persian person? They say, no Afghani counts as divorce, but Persian doesn't. And Mark's and Marx just said online, he's like, if I say that I'm bisexual, is that okay?

[Dave Rubin]

Right?

[Joel Lonsdale]

And they're like. And he's like, but they're like, they might make you prove it, Mark. He's like, ridiculous.

[Dave Rubin]

Well, that's why I made a joke about it a long time ago that Elon retweeted. It's like you're going to keep saying, okay, so we're going to let all these gay people through the border. It's like there's going to be a lot of guys given first time hand jobs at the border. Like, it's just. So how are you going to prove it? It's so insane.

[Joel Lonsdale]

And it's, you know, and if this had been a law that Congress had passed, I would have also made fun of it. But at least, okay, fine, it's constitutional. They're doing something stupid. But.

[Dave Rubin]

Right.

[Joel Lonsdale]

It wasn't even a lot. It was just the bureaucrats. I don't like the bureaucrats just making this shit up.

[Dave Rubin]

So would you see something like what, what they tried to force Elon to away his package or what do you even call it, his incentive?

[Joel Lonsdale]

That Delaware judge is just a terrible activist. So that's going to screw Delaware. It's really bad for America.

[Dave Rubin]

It already is screwing.

[Joel Lonsdale]

This is really bad for America because this is a place that is one of our most valuable things is that we're able to have a trusted rule of law that everyone wants to use. I'm literally talking all the time to people all around the world like, yeah, we're going to do this on Delaware law. And now they're asking me, well, can we trust the judges, basically?

[Dave Rubin]

Can you just quickly explain the story for people that haven't fully got it? What they. They basically did.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Yeah. So. So, so Elon. Elon basically agreed to work at Tesla for nothing. I think he's like a dollar a year or whatever. You know, he's a shareholder, but he's not going to get paid anything more. And usually when you're CEO, you're getting paid like a bunch per year. You get to own more of the company each year. He's like, no, don't give me anything at all. I only want to get things based on milestones that are crazy hard. And if I. So I might get nothing, right, but if I achieve these milestones, then I'll get a certain percent of the company.

[Dave Rubin]

And they were insane, an insane milestone.

[Joel Lonsdale]

So actually, so it ended up being that they owed him over $50 billion for creating this insane several hundred billion dollars of value. But if you look at the value at the time of the option of like, of like the chance that he were to get that it was worth like 1 to 2 billion dollars, not 55. So it was totally fair, totally reasonable thing to give a CEO. And everyone voted for it and they approved it. The vast majority approved it. The judge then said, oh, well, the board are kind of insiders and they're your friends. And so it shouldn't have been allowed, even though everyone else approved because they didn't know your friends are pushing it.

[Dave Rubin]

And nobody on the board was upset, right?

[Joel Lonsdale]

No one on the board said, no one's playing it. Some random got 10 shares, basically suing, it's complaining total accident activists. And then, so, so that was ridiculous. But they finally said, this is ridiculous, but we're going to vote for it again after the fact that our shareholders agree and the vast majority shoulders agreed. When everyone's like, whoa, okay, they did it. And then she came back and said, still not approving it, which is very clear. And this is a person in Delaware, Biden's home state. Clearly, Democrat activists tied to Biden. This is purely Democrats saying, we don't. We want to punish Elon. We don't want him to get this money that he's owed for his work. It's totally insane.

[Dave Rubin]

Are you hopeful that people will kind of do a little reset on their thinking about how money works and how they should maybe keep a little of their. More. A little more of their money and not be always chasing after other people's money for their pet projects? Do you think we're going through a little bit of a mind shift on that night?

[Joel Lonsdale]

I think there's a. I think there's a slight reset in our country that things got way too crazy. And this WOKE nonsense was kind of like this, like, hysteria that needs to be pushed back on. It's kind of like in the Salem, which trials, everyone was hanging, which is. And maybe we shouldn't be hanging witches anymore. There's a little bit of that kind of a reset, which is very healthy. But I think, Dave, we can't rest on our laurels. And here's what I'm really worried about. Most of the universities in our country, Most of the NGOs in our country, most of the government institutions in our country are still conquered by people with this WOKE mind virus. They marched through these institutions and they took them over. And these people do not believe in America. They do not believe in markets. They do not believe in the freedom the constitutions gives, the freedoms we have. These people are against all those things. Things. And. And, you know, so there's still, for example, and red states think they're doing well in almost every red state today. If you're a teacher at a K to 12 school and you want to get paid more, you have to go get a master's degree at Woke U. So the vast, vast majority of education departments everywhere are taking over. So you literally have in the red state tax dollars from people in the red state paying for a university that has 100% woke people in their education department, which your teacher is forced to go to in the red state state to get her master's degree in something education that really just tells her how much they hate America and how not to leave a market. So then go back and indoctrinate the students.

[Dave Rubin]

Right?

[Joel Lonsdale]

And this is happening every Wednesday. So. So do I think that.

[Dave Rubin]

I'm pretty sure Florida has done Some things.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Florida fixed one or two of your universities. You still have 12 more with local education departments. So you know what I love to see on this and we're going the right direction, but it's not even nearly enough. There are wok education departments everywhere. Here you're talking, we can go, we can go through like the 12 state schools. You all tell me the education departments aren't woke.

[Dave Rubin]

No, no. But I know we've done more than.

[Joel Lonsdale]

You'Ve done more than anyone else. Love Florida and I love the people here. And we have to be like, 10x is bold. It is not enough. And, and the fact that you. Florida is the best, but the fact that no one else is even doing it, it's crazy. Like, we are going to lose this culture war over the next 20 years. It's like, it's like a cancer where you've beaten back some of the cancer, but it's still a bunch of these cells, and then we're just going to like, ignore it and it's just going to grow back and kill us.

[Dave Rubin]

So is that really what the fear is? Is that we got sort of this temporary win? We're going to do some good things here. But you still, it's okay, you defund these nos, you get some out, but it's still so deep in the system. The thing, the way I've kind of been telling my audience, it's sort of like Hollywood's not done yet because there are still things in the can from a year ago that are going to come out in two years. So you might think woke is over, but suddenly we're going to get hit with like a next wave of stuff that's just ready to be made.

[Joel Lonsdale]

These people have conquered your community colleges, they've conquered your universities, they've conquered a lot of your government departments. Like, we need, we need regulatory sunsets everywhere. We need the dollars to be tied accountably when they're spent. If you're, if you have a vocational school or community college, only fund it based on how the students do. If you just fund it in general without, without accountability, then you just. These woke cancers grow inside of it, which is, they are now. So, I mean, we need a much more aggressive side of moderates and Republicans to just root out this stuff. Otherwise it's going to come back. We're going to be fighting it again and talking about it again. And I love coming and talking to you, but I don't want to talk.

[Dave Rubin]

About this in 20 years.

[Joel Lonsdale]

I want to crush it.

[Dave Rubin]

No, no, no. Trust me. I will be gladly. If we do it, I will disappear. That will be fine.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Like, you're gonna have other stuff to talk about, but we need to crush this stuff. And, and we're not being nearly aggressive enough. I think Doge is going to be aggressive enough. It's going to shock people. I love it. Like, I think Elon is aggressive. I think most of these people are not being aggressive enough, especially not other states right now.

[Dave Rubin]

Well, do you think that basically, if Elon and Vivek basically go in and they're like, all right, we can cut 2 trillion and we're going to fire all these people and all this stuff happens and suddenly people are like, oh, it can be done. That. That might spark the next round of suddenly people. Because I don't think people think anything can be done. But once they see, oh, it's a month later and we haven't, you know, ships aren't, you know, planes aren't falling out of the sky and things aren't blowing up, and we did get rid of a lot of this nonsense that then it gives room basically for other people to do the whole world.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Listen, I. I was over in Europe recently as well, in London, our places, like, the whole world in terms of, like, smart business people, people who are politically aware, even a lot of moderate political people, they are rooting for these guys to prove it. Because, I mean, it's not just the US that's trapped under this bureaucratic class. This is like a problem in the entire West. So these bureaucracies have grown out of control and they're just dominating us, and they just, they want to rule even though they're not elected. And so can we push back against analytic bureaucracy? I think it's possible. But yes, I think. I think we need to be shown that it can be done. I'd love to have a few more states. Be bolder. There have been some great things that Santa's has done. There's been some great things that we've done with Governor Kemp and Governor Abbott and others. So we do have some strong governors, but we need to step it up, like 10x with our legislators and really push these things.

[Dave Rubin]

Let's talk about University of Austin for a second, because about two months ago, I was doing some estate planning with my financial people, and they were asking us about what kind of college fund we want for the kids. And I literally was like, well, I'm not doing the college fund. I think maybe they could go to the University of Austin. But I'd rather figure out another mechanism to put money aside for them to do whatever it is they want to do in the future. But you've had a lot to do with the University of Austin.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Yeah, so I'm a co founder of University of Austin. It's our president's panel. Canalist has been running it. My two other friends, we built it with Barry Weiss and Neil Ferguson.

[Dave Rubin]

Both amazing, amazing.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Both amazing people. I think two of the most amazing people I know. And you know, we need more philosopher builders, frankly. We need more people to turn out, I think, like Elon or like some version of him where they both create things, but then they also are thoughtful about our society, want to fight for society. And by when I say turn like Elon, I don't mean they have to agree with me on everything. But I want people who think for themselves. I want people who understand the great conversations, great debates of the last thousand years and have that grounding kind of in philosophy and history and are really able to be part of that conversation and push our civilization forward. And you know, you know, it's really important, important that adults, when they go to colleges right now, you basically learn to shut up to virtue signal, stop causing problems. Why are you, why are you speaking out? Like, they would bring me at Stanford to the dean and say like, oh, you're speaking out again. And it's really offending people. And I really just need you to stop doing that as if you're a.

[Dave Rubin]

Catholic school or something.

[Joel Lonsdale]

It's just crazy. Like, what is this place that I can't. There's things going on in my dorm that I think are ridiculous. I'm going to call them out. I'm sorry. And it's like, you're just discouraged, like you're a bad person for doing that. That's the opposite. We should be treated, Creating courage. We should be, we should be. We should be, you know, teaching people how to debate. And everyone should have to debate and defend their ideas. And so I, I think our, our civilization right now is like pushing our smartest people to be these little NPCs who go along. And I think if you can have like a very, even a very small number of examples of really great people who are coming out of the place, even a few hundred each year you can get up to, that's going to completely affect the culture because these guys are obviously going to be the people you want running things and that's going to force other schools to be more like us.

[Dave Rubin]

What's been the biggest challenge? Trying to put this together. Because if you would have asked anyone that sort of wasn't woke four years ago like, oh, we should build colleges or places of higher education. Like basically everyone would have said yes, but nobody was doing it.

[Joel Lonsdale]

It's a lot of work.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah, no one wants to do the work, man.

[Joel Lonsdale]

It's thousands of pages of, of thousands of pages of regulation. It's insane. There's lots of cartels trying to block you from doing it. You're not allowed to be officially accredited till after you've graduated your first class. So every troll online is like, oh, haha, is that the unaccredited university? Like yeah, that, that's that you're not allowed to be credit.

[Dave Rubin]

You guys just did graduate your first class, right?

[Joel Lonsdale]

No, we just admitted.

[Dave Rubin]

You just admitted your call to university.

[Joel Lonsdale]

We're allowed to operate as a university, but you don' Official accreditation until you graduate the first class.

[Dave Rubin]

Do you think that even matters at this point? I mean, I know Peterson has Peterson Academy. I, I don't think it does matter.

[Joel Lonsdale]

To some people because they want to go to law school or they want to go get a PhD or they want to. So, so we have to make sure we get the accreditation so they can count the degree because then the other schools all want to keep you out if you're not gone, if you haven't gone to accredited university or something.

[Dave Rubin]

Unless you are able to really unfurl the entire system, which at some point you could do.

[Joel Lonsdale]

But our goal is to compete against Harvard, yield Stanford on equal terms and actually be better than them. And there's, there's all these fun things we're going to be able to launch. Like think imagine a journalism school where the journalists aren't taught to hate America by default, you know. Oh no, by the way is they're all crazy activists, right? Like you. If you're in journalism school and you love America, I think you're washed out these days. Imagine education school that believes in like accountability and measuring outcomes as opposed to just going along with the teachers union, right? Literally there's none of them right now. Like, tell me one education school that loves markets and that loves measuring outcomes and they can measure school choice appropriately. Like there's literally nothing in America. Like, like, like imagine, imagine a business school instead of doing corporate drones is like teaching you with the top people from the innovation world. So there's, there's so much stuff we can build here that's really fun.

[Dave Rubin]

How much of the, the educational stuff should we blame on Harvard specifically? Because I've been around a lot of powerful people and Important conversations. And years ago everyone was constantly like what the hell is going on in Harvard? And I always thought it was odd. I was like, I don't really care what's going on Harvard. And in some sense like I don't care. I didn't go to Harvard. Like I know it's an important place, but somehow Harvard became like the epicenter of all of the lunacy.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Well, this is the power law thing. It's like with PayPal, where the top people came from one place. Harvard has been the winner of the power law the last 50 years. Overall, I think the majority of top leaders, like more of them are than anywhere else. Then shortly below that is places like Stanford and Penn and Yale and others like that. And so. But I think, I think all of them pretty equally have been conquered. I think some are even worse conquered. I think Columbia for example is much worse than these place has been very little backbone in these people because they're very afraid. But no, I think Harvard as the leader does take a lot of the brunt and should get a lot of the blame for allowing radicals to conquer and to break its campus.

[Dave Rubin]

How different do you think the world's going to be in say five or 10 years?

[Joel Lonsdale]

Well, the biggest things that are changing over the next five or 10 years is probably back in more of these other areas where I think productivity is actually going to start to go up a lot over the next 10 years. You're actually finally seeing AI and tech get applied in ways that are adding productivity. And so I'd be very shocked if in five or ten years years you don't see that pick up in the statistics. So I mean I think Elon and Vivek are going to be successful. I think we're going to cut back. I don't know if it's going to cut back 2 trillion year, but we're going to cut back a lot. We're going to fix a lot and make it more efficient and get rid of a lot of regulation. We're going to. I love Mark Row and Polo's models on this. I think we're going to grow a lot and then I think this productivity thing's going to kick in. It's going to grow even more than it would have and we're going to be in an amazing, amazing place. And whenever a country is doing too well, it creates its own problems. So, so what were the problems be? I think if we fight this stuff successfully, hopefully the problems will be something very different than the problems that we were facing 10 years ago. I don't think we're ever going to be in a place without problems, but I do think we're going to be an area where, thanks to AI, it's very clear how you address and how you personalize solutions for everyone that I think would be in a lot better place.

[Dave Rubin]

Well, are you afraid that the problems will be something like, oh, Skynet turned on and now we're just kind of slaves to this stuff? I mean, I think that's a genuine, real issue to think about.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Right. It's very important that we design AI in a way where we do pursue truth and we do make things very transparent. I, I mean it's fascinating, right, because you do want, you do want AI to help guide a lot more of the things that we do to make them more efficient. Whether it's in healthcare we're talking about or whether it's in, you know, how we give a permit or other government work. You, but you definitely want competing AI systems and you, you definitely want lots of them. You know, you want, I think open source, this is one area where I think Zuck is doing the right thing. I don't know if it's for the right reasons, but he's doing the right thing for sure. We do want very powerful open source AI is one of the possible solutions. And, and, and you know, that way that you don't, you don't get this authoritarian thing at the top that's just controlling everyone as easily.

[Dave Rubin]

How worried would you be that we're basically just going to like tech ourselves out of humanity? Like there will be just nothing for us to do or it's not exactly that Skynet turns on, but they're just, you know, there we won't need workers anymore. Like people literally will just not know what to do with themselves. Or is that, do you think that's like what the next evolution of humanity is sort of supposed to be?

[Joel Lonsdale]

And then I think there's dignity in work and I think it's good for us to have, you know, uses. I guess I, I, I have more confidence in, in humanity, I guess than that. For, for, I think, I think it's going to take a long, long time, if ever for AI to get to the point where it could do everything that we can do. And you know, if you, one of the, one of your, but what if.

[Dave Rubin]

It, what if it was doing 30%? I mean that's enough probably to get a huge amount of people.

[Joel Lonsdale]

There's going to, yeah, work, but there's so, there's so much there's 5 million unfilled vocational jobs right now. And AI is going to train people. So the thing is, AI could be used to make you more productive, to help you do things. Things. And I think, I think at a very high level when we work, we're like, we're repairing the world in some way. I mean, it sounds a little bit too fluffy, but it's like, it's this Jewish idea of Tukona long, which I think is actually very beautiful, which is that six days a week you're supposed to repair the world in some way. When you work and then seventh day, you pretend your job is done. You pretend you're in heaven. And that's, that's, that's the Sabbath. And so there's six days a week. The work is that, is that you're repairing things in some way, you're helping people in some way. So the question is, you're really asking is, is there going to be a point where there's no way to help each other, where there's no way to repair the world, there's no way to do anything. And I think the universe has like a lot more steps than we realize and a lot more depth than we realize. And there's going to be ways for people to do good things and help each other in the world. And I think AI is going to help us do that more.

[Dave Rubin]

Have you ever been more hopeful than you are right now? I mean, I can kind of see it in you. And I think a lot of people are feeling that right now that we got pretty damn close to what could have been the end.

[Joel Lonsdale]

I was really. My wife was telling me it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. The more crass way of saying it, which I'm sure I'm supposed to say on this show, is I was talking to J. Cal and he said that Sax was like in his seventh week of an orgasm.

[Dave Rubin]

You can say it on the show, it's okay. But like, but seven week orgasm, I'm sure, I'm sure AI is working on that too.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Yeah, exactly. But no, it's a huge weight that's lifted. It was, it was terrifying. Where, I mean, I think Elon commissioned a thing with the fork in the road you could show. And he's like, you know, because this really was a fork in our civilization. I, I was proud to put the first money in his pack and to help and stuff and love supporting what he did. I thought, I thought it was just so important and, and a lot of other friends stepped up and did it as well, because we really did believe this was key for our civilization. So listen, are things going to be perfect? Definitely not. But it's definitely the direction that is sustainable and that can fix things and can help us thrive.

[Dave Rubin]

What else is on your mind that maybe we didn't get to here? Feel like there's got to be some other things bouncing around in there.

[Joel Lonsdale]

You know, it's a scary world out there. I think. I think I work a lot in defense and I'm really glad that Israel is able to destroy a lot of serious, serious army. But these Islamists are scary people. It's not clear what they're going to do next. We got to make sure we defend the king of Jordan, because if these Islamists go after him, I think that's going to break things in that part of the world. Turkey really scares me. I don't know. Turkey is like there was a, this kind of sort of fake coup that Erdogan, you know, did like eight years ago. You know, Turkey was set up basically as the only, like non Islamic, Islamic country and the army was supposed to protect against crazy Islamists. And he knew that, and so he triggered something to kill and arrest tens of thousands of people and kind of got rid of the anti Islamic stuff that had been put in for 100 years. And now he's running this and he has nuclear weapons and he's in NATO and I think there's some really scary next steps there. We really got to make sure this administration cracks down on them. I think we should be giving the Kurds their own territory and state and defending them. But they're being ethnically cleansed right now and they've been helping us there for years. So I mean, it's tough because I am very much on the side of America not going on adventures. But at the same time, I'm also on the side of stability and of people not being slaughtered, of making sure these things, things don't spread in a way where there's nukes in the hands of crazy people that can hurt us, you know.

[Dave Rubin]

Do you think a lot of that can be solved by technology? I mean, just that wars are going to look very, very different, say 10 years from now than even what they look like right now.

[Joel Lonsdale]

This is a big thing. So I think we wasted a ton of money in Afghanistan. I think we had stupid adventures. I mean, I was very. For obviously our technology helped fight and kill like thousands of terrorists. Like, I was very for eliminating the bad guys. I was very against like putting like trillions of Dollars into these areas to try to rebuild a broken civilization, which is not our job to do. We should be building our civilization. So I'm very, very pro American America. But part of being pro America is fighting these wars without sacrificing American lives and of keeping people very scared of us that we don't have to fight. And they do what they're supposed to do. So yes, you know, we have a bunch of companies right now that are kind of replacing the way the primes work. And so for example, like in the water, you want to have thousands or tens of thousands of smart and abled autonomous weaponized vessels of different sorts that coordinate together, Right. That's what you want. And then you want on the land, you know, we sent 31 tanks to Ukraine and 20 of them are destroyed for the same cost or even less cost. You could have sent like 10,000 tiny little nickels that are smart, that have weapons on them, that fight, that are coordinated. There's all these new ways you use. You use mass production with advanced manufacturing, you use AI and you don't put American lives at risk. And for much cheaper, you deter the bad guys. And the other one is really cool. Just mentioned. So we have, the enemy also has like you see China where they fly those hundreds of thousand drones. Crazy. So we have something called epis, which is now deployed, which is a, it's like a force field, but it's a burst of microwave radiation in a cone and we could turn off hundreds of the drones per shot.

[Dave Rubin]

Wow.

[Joel Lonsdale]

Miles away.

[Dave Rubin]

So there's, so that seems, well, that seems like sort of the next version of the Iron Dome or something. In some sense it's, it's like, yeah.

[Joel Lonsdale]

It'S a little bit like Star Trek is. But you, you need these sorts of things to fight back rather than waste like million dollar one hundred thousand dollar missiles to shoot down one of these drones. And there's so many of them. What you need is, you need, you need, you need electronic warfare. So there's all sorts of new things there we're doing that are really cool that taking the best of Silicon Valley, combining it with the best. And by the way, like, who doesn't want a really great shield? This is a great thing for civilization that it's easier to build shields now. So there's things like this we need to be doing.

[Dave Rubin]

All right, one last one for you. So for everyone watching this that want, that has some idea, but they don't know what to do, they don't know where to turn, they don't know who to call. They don't know where to start. They don't. All of this stuff, like what do you think is like, like what's like the biggest or the most like kind of precious kernel you could give them on how to build something properly if they've just got the idea. They're watching this and they've got the idea idea.

[Joel Lonsdale]

So what you need to do if you have an idea and you're passionate about it is there's two things. First of all, Peter Thiel always used to tell me this. Imagine there's five people with the same idea. Four of them are afraid, don't tell anyone. And one of them talks to a bunch of people and keeps telling all of them and getting feedback and king feedback making their idea better. Who's going to win? Not the people who are afraid to tell you. So first of all, your idea is not worth that much. Your intelligence, your brain, your execution is worth a lot. Make your idea better by sharing and innovating. That's one. And then two. It's impossible to create a really valuable company without a really great technology culture. So if you're not a technologist, that's a high bar. But you're going to have to find someone who is understands it. If you are, you're going to have to learn and study. Try to expose yourself. Like I was very lucky to work hard at Stanford to get to PayPal rejected me the first time, they let me in the second time. Seeing how a great technology culture works, like learning from all those things, it's very hard just to read about it. You really want to be part of a great technology culture culture, help build it up. And that experience then will help you build your own, is my view.

[Dave Rubin]

You don't have to say like the best joy that I've gotten out of my entire career is that I get to talk to people who know more about certain things than me. And then I've been able to integrate some of that into my life. And what you just explained right there is exactly what I did with Locals. I had an idea, but I didn't think, but I knew other people had a similar idea. But I had a talk show, I started talking about it. My brother in law was a tech guy, we can, you know him, we connected and then we started just building things and talking to people and then next thing you know it all worked.

[Joel Lonsdale]

You just crushed it.

[Dave Rubin]

So you have a small sense of what you're talking about is absolutely. Pleasure, my friend, great to see you. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to the Rubin Report. Don't forget to review, share and subscribe to this podcast. If you're looking for early and exclusive content, you can join me on [e-mail].