All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - #AIS: Palmer Luckey on Anduril

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

This talk was recorded LIVE at the All-In Summit in Miami and included slides. To watch on YouTube, check out our All-In Summit playlist: https://bit.ly/aisytplaylist 0:00 Jason intros today's episode 2:31 Palmer Luckey on Anduril, national defense & the current thing 25:24 Bestie Q&A with Palmer 53:13 Jason gives closing thoughts Follow Palmer: https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Links referenced in the show: https://www.thedailybeast.com/palmer-luckey-the-facebook-near-billionaire-secretly-funding-trumps-meme-machine

Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. We have an exciting show for you today. This is the 15th and the final episode from the all-in summit 2022. I want to take a quick moment to thank my team. They worked tirelessly over 100 days to make the event magical for everybody who was able to make it. Thanks to the audience for coming. Next year we'll try to have twice as many of you there. Just a quick thank you to Amber Ashley Jackie, Nick, Fresh Marine, Molly, Big Mike, Andre Times 2, Rachel Reporting Producer Justin, Jamie, Jimmy D, my brother Josh, everybody who came and supported the event. We had an incredible crew. We had an incredible time. And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't thank the amazing speakers who joined us from all around the world. So candid an incredible time. And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't thank the amazing speakers who joined us from all around the world. So candid. So insightful. My pal, Bill Gurley, Brad Gerson, Adina, Mark, Tandas, Tim, Elon, Antonio Nate, Ryan Clare, my boy, Roboi, Antonio Garcia Martinez, Joalansdale, James, Matt Taibi, Glenn Greenwald. And of course,

Lonzdale, James, Mattieby, Glenn Greenwald, and of course, today's guest, the one and the only Mr. Palmer Lucky. And most of all, I'd like to thank my best these Chimaltzsacks and Freiburg who did an amazing job of hosting the event. Now, a little preamble here before we start this episode, many of you have heard that this is a controversial episode. It is a little controversial. There may be a little twist in it, so I will be coming back after Palmer Lucky's talk

to give you a little context, because it might get a little confusing. I don't want to spoil the surprise for you, so enjoy this episode. But before we go to this episode, a lot of you have questions. You have questions about the future of the All-In-Pontest. And those questions are important, and they're never going to be answered. They're never going to be answered, but just so you know, I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving. The show goes on. This is my home. They're going need a fucking wrecking bolt to take me out of here.

They're gonna need to send in the National Guard because I ain't going nowhere. The show goes on. and David's eyes. And I said, we open-source it to the fans and they just go crazy. I'll be West Nice. Queen of kilowatt. I'm going all in. So my name is Palmer Lucky. I've found two companies. My first was a company called Oculus VR that I founded when I was 19 years old and living in a camper trailer.

Thank you. Thank you. Sold that to it for a few billion dollars to Facebook and then got fired a few years later and then started Andral because I wanted to mark in the national security space for a variety of reasons and I'll get into some of those reasons today So the technology industry for many years has prided itself on being the first to understand where things are heading So that they can build the things that are going to be relevant for the future On national security though and on the rise of our strategic adversaries to understand where things are heading so they can build the things that are going to be relevant for the future. On national security, though, and on the rise of our strategic adversaries, it was one of the last industries to realize where things were going due to a variety of ideological reasons but also business reasons.

Still, Silicon Valley didn't just predict the importance of defense in the 2020s. It largely took the exact wrong position, the opposite position. First of all, you have obvious examples, like big technology companies, explicitly refusing to do work with the Department of Defense. Google is one big example, but the worst examples are really in the startups that don't exist because people didn't want to even get into such a controversial space, less at ruin their careers. When I started, and I already sold the company for billions of dollars, and investors still didn't want to invest. I still had a tough time in a lot of meetings with venture capitalists, and none of the conversations with VCs that I had were about my ability to hire or execute or build products. Everyone believed that I could do those things, even the ones who didn't like me much. The vast majority of conversations that we had were about whether or not it was even

ethically okay to ever build a company that would build weapons. And the people who turned us down, the ones who decided not to invest in an enderoll, actually believed that we had a good team and good people and good product market fit. The issue is that they thought that it was inherently wrong to build tools capable of being used for violence because they believed that the idea of deterring violence through having a strong arsenal was fundamentally obsolete and itself wrong. Even you know, I imagine how hard it would have been to raise money if I hadn't found it Oculus would have been impossible. Even after we raised money and got traction, the negativity continued. There was a really interesting

car story in Bloomberg in 2019 that called us text most controversial startup. This was a year where TikTok was banning users for calling attention to the weaker genocide in China and banning users for posting homosexual content. This is a year in which Adam Newman paid himself tens of millions of dollars for the right to use the word we. It's a year that Uber was under a federal investigation for its workplace culture immediately after a board coup that ejected much of the leadership. It's a time where Facebook was getting hauled in front of Congress

to testify. But of course, as a tiny defense company, making a handful of purely defensive base security systems that committed the crime of building technology for the military, Andro was the one that claimed the belt for the world's most controversial technology company. I'd say that the war in Europe has totally shattered the idea that we live at the end of history. Every few decades, we start to believe that economic ties have ended all the prospect of war. And every few decades, we're reminded that this isn't true. That's not just a very popular idea, especially in DC, that we live at what they call the end of history.

It's this idea that economic ties and interconnections make the prospect of conflict fundamentally unthinkable, ignoring the fact that many people see this as a matter of destiny and economics. In 1909, an English economist and politician, Norman Angel, published an entire book called The Great Illusion. And it was entirely about how war in Europe was impossible and that spending money on building militaries that could deter conflict was a waste of time that could be better spent building

utopia. He was really argued that any European country annexing another would be as absurd as London annexing Hartford. And the book was actually the number one best seller in 1909. Now we've had some version of this argument for a few decades now, ever since the Cold War started and luckily a lot of people are waking up. But unfortunately it's not because they've come to a reason decision based on the fundamental principles it play. It's because right now supporting the military, supporting defense, and supporting Ukraine in particular, has become the current thing. And in current year, current thing

is the thing that you have to support, regardless of what you think of the underpinnings. Unfortunately, for issues like defense and national security, the states are too high, and the relevant timelines far too long for people to start caring about things at the moment that they need to start caring about them So today I want to talk a little bit about why I started androle and why you should all think exactly the same way that I do So why I found it androle I thought that I would work on virtual reality for my entire life I had no plans on leaving Oculus at all and I love virtual Reality, I love Virtual Reality, I started Oculus as a teenager,

and I would have been there for another 50 years. I said as much less than 30 days before I was fired. There's a lot of reasons for that, some of which I'll get into later. But the decision was made for me. I gave $9,000 against the wrong political candidate, and it was pretty unpopular in Silicon Valley. Before I worked on Oculus,

I actually worked in an Army Affiliate Research Center on a program called Brave Mind, which was an Army project to treat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, using virtual reality exposure therapy, basically putting them into virtual reality environments that would set off their symptoms, and then under the guidance of a licensed therapist,

who's also in this simulation, they could be top coping skills, it would reduce their dependency on medication and medical aid. It was a really fantastic program. I wasn't doing anything important on it. I was just a lab technician, a cable monkey, but I got a lot of exposure to both of virtual reality technology side, but also how broken defense procurement was, how slow it was, how old a lot of the technology was, how the incentives were totally misaligned.

In every sense, I'd always wanted to make a contribution in national security if I could. Just took a few years for the right, for the right set of circumstances to come up. The defense industry in America is fundamentally broken. Before even getting into the specific problems of our defense industry, the United States has the strongest commercial artificial intelligence

industry in the world, followed closely by China. But at the same time, the United States military and the prime contractors that dominate the military industrial complex have none of the right tools, talent or incentives to apply autonomy to the systems they do. There's no reason to save costs because they don't get paid for making things that work. They get paid for doing work. And in a world where you get more prestige and more money by having more people working on bigger things, there's no reason to use autonomy to reduce costs and increase capability. The US military is well behind the Chinese People's Liberation Army and the implementation of artificial intelligence. There's more better AI in John Deere tractors than there is in any US military vehicle. There's better computer vision in the Snapchat app on your phone than any system that the

US Department of Defense has deployed. And other countries are taking notice of this. Countries like Russia and China do not want to compete with us toe-to-toe with the tools that we have. People will make fun of China and say, oh, they don't have a blue water navy. They only have one aircraft carrier coming up onto. They could never fight us. The reality is that that's not where they're going to fight us.

They're going to arm proxies or they engage directly. They're going to use technologies that give them an asymmetrical advantage in the areas where we are the least competent. These are the areas where they are putting a lot of their resources. The reason of Vladimir Putin is saying that the ruler of the world is going to be the country that masters artificial intelligence is not because he thinks that they are going to lose at this. It's because he thinks that that is one of the only ways that they're going to be able to get the best of us.

Now, the people who are building technology for our military, the large defense primes, I won't name any names because I don't want to wrestle too many feathers in that area. I never knew who's in the room. But the people who are building the technology for the United States military, the people who spend all their time do not have access to the best talent. They do not have access to the people of the technology industry has largely had a monopoly on. And the area's like autonomy, artificial intelligence,

sensor fusion, high-end networking. And then at the same time, the people who can build good software, the ones who do work in these technology companies, are largely prohibited from doing so. And even if they're working on something that military buys, let's say all the people at Apple who are working on an iPhone that can be sold to the US Air Force, that same iPhone is also being sold to Russian intelligence, that same iPhone is being sold to the Chinese Navy. Working on technologies that help the United States, don't give us a strategic or competitive advantage

if everyone else is getting the exact same thing. The other problem that it consider is that asymmetric technologies like artificial intelligence are almost certainly going to empower nations that we aren't thinking about today. Some of them are a little more obvious like Iran. It was a close U.S. ally until the late 1970s and today obviously isn't a very different position.

There's about a dozen countries in Africa, South America, and Asia that were they to acquire extremely advanced artificial intelligence, either through coincidence or by proxy arming, would almost certainly start to wage war on their neighbors in a very destabilizing way. It would have been a much more better bet for me to found a second unicorn in a different industry that wasn't so fundamentally broken.

Gaming, fast-casual dining, FinTech, it could have made some eight coins, but there have actually been more mattress unicorns than defense unicorns in the last 35 years. But I decided the best thing that I could do to try and solve this problem was to use the fact that I had a bunch of money and I had a bunch of credibility to do something that was hugely unpopular,

to ignore the fact that people were, but literally before it, and try to convince a bunch of brilliant people to do something that was hugely unpopular, to ignore the fact that people were, but literally me for it, and try to convince a bunch of brilliant people to come along with me, so that they wouldn't waste their lives spending augmenting a reality must-dash emojis. And instead, they could do some work for armed forces.

But it's worth looking at the past and realizing that this is a recent problem. It's not something that has been the case for a very long time. Silicon Valley was largely built on the back of the fence in 1947. Half of Stanford's engineering budget came from the Department of Defense. Fred Termin, Stanford Dean, brought DOD contracts and interest to the West Coast in a way that had fundamentally been almost entirely to the East Coast. And Silicon Valley helped power a lot of the things

that are power in the modern military machine. In the 1950s alone, we built the Pentagon, well, sorry, I have an error in my notes, this is wrong. In the lead up to the 50s and the early 50s. We built the Pentagon in 16 months. We completed the Manhattan Project in three years. We put a man on the moon and under a decade. And just between 1951 and 1959, we built five generations of fighter jets, three generations of bombers, two classes of carriers, nuclear-powered

submarines, and ballistic missiles to go on top of them. If you look at the current state of the industry, we're lucky to do even one of these things in a decade. And I can't really blame the defense industry for not working with the DOD entirely. It's not we're lucky to do even one of these things in a decade. And I can't really blame the defense industry for not working with the DOD entirely. It's not just an ideological problem, it's also an economic problem. When the Cold War ended, the government really became a pretty terrible customer. The technology industry drifted away. Most engineers in Silicon Valley do not remember a great power conflict because they haven't lived in a world where a great power was an existential threat to the United States. And so you have a lot of people who are ideologically opposed to working with the military.

Now we could spend an entire talk. I only have a few minutes to talk today. We can spend a whole talk talking about the ethics of defense and what the reasonable critiques of the military are and how you can change what you build for them in a good way. But I'll throw out a factor that I think most people don't think about enough, even the people who do agree on working with a military. There's a lot of companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere who look at those employees who are ideologically opposed to working with the military.

And they use them as a smoke screen, pretending that it's principled opposition that drives their decision. When in reality, they want access to Chinese markets, they want access to Chinese investment, they want access to other countries that are tied into these things. And so they're able to use these people who are ideologically opposed to working with the military, which actually make up a pretty small fraction of the U.S. population as a smokescreen for their real intention,

which is to preserve access to those markets, preserve access to those capital. Our largest companies are not making these decisions based on what is best for the United States. Certainly not what is best for the United States in long term. They're largely making these decisions based on short term ideas that are not based in any kind of long term thinking. If you look at the recent chips bill that Congress passed saying that the United States government is going to put $52 billion into building semiconductors that the United States government is going to put $52 billion into building semiconductors in the United States. You have to compare that with the recent news that, well, it leaked. It wasn't news on purpose. But Apple has pledged

to put $275 billion as one company into Chinese manufacturing. You have one company putting in more than five times as much money into manufacturing advanced technology as what is supposed to be a landmark piece of US legislation. The situation that we're in is pretty weird. This is going to sound hyperbolic, but bear with me. The situation we are in right now would be like if in the build up to World War 2, General Electric had said, you know what, we we really like the United States or actually very bullish on imperial Japan We think it's gonna be a huge growth opportunity for us and our metrics just aren't gonna look the same if we wipe those off of our roadmap Imagine if in the build up to the Cold War if you had Westinghouse and other major US technology companies say Ah, you know, we love manufacturing the United States

But we actually think communist manufacturing is a really interesting experiment that we need to see through. And we're not sure that we really want to take a side on this. The situation that we are in today is as dire or worse. The only reason that it seems ridiculous, and the only reason it seems typobolic is because conflict has not actually broken out yet. If a conflict does break out, we're going to look at the current situation

where we are hugely strategically and economically dependent at the highest levels of our technology industry and government on an adversary that is literally committing genocide and slaving millions of people. We're going to look back on ourselves and feel really stupid. Now, the good news is that because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, defense is now the current thing. In the United States, there is this idea that any problem can be fixed at the last second

with just a really incredible twist. If we just come up with the right thing, but there's a lot of problems out there that cannot be solved that way. National security, economic policy, environmental policy, these are things that require non-political bipartisan agreement on the problem decades before it becomes a really big problem. Those are not things that are acceptable, current things. Shape rotation, this is an

acceptable, current thing to debate. Whether or not Will Smith was wrong to to wrong to take the slap, or if he's just, you know, a representative of warrior culture, you culture, that's a fair debate to have. The idea of the United States having a military that is strong enough to deter conflict should not be in that category. So why is it too late to care about defense now at this exact moment in time? Why is it too late for everybody to suddenly change their minds?

Well, a few things. One, you go to war with the tools that you have, not the tools that you wish you had, or the tools that you start working on when things become a problem. If you look at the weapons that were giving you Ukraine, they were built in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, $40 billion plus worth of them. And for all their differences,

defense is one of the few things that Republicans and Democrats alike have realized transcends the partisan divide. On one level, it's obviously very bad that we don't have more modern weapons to give to Ukraine. But on the other, it shows a level of foresight and planning that we've been stockpiling and building these legacy weapons systems for decades explicitly for a situation like today, which has been war-gamed out to the nth degree. Imagine if the

Department of Defense had done nothing to prepare for war for 40 years, and then as soon as war broke out, they started tweeting a lot and changed their profile pictures to Ukraine and flag, and then started saying, we stand with you crane. The people who are actually tasked with solving these problems are they generally have good planning, but there's only so much they can do without good technology. So I want to reiterate, if you only start building now,

you've lost the chance to deter war from happening. That's the real purpose of the defense industry. It's not to fight wars. It's not to win wars. It's to deter war from happening. That's the real purpose of the defense industry. It's not to fight wars. It's not to win wars. It's to prevent wars from happening. Wars happen when one or both sides misestimate their probability of winning. If both sides agreed that one side or the other is going to win, typically you end up with diplomatic resolution.

It's when both sides disagree about the possibility of winning that conflict actually breaks out. And so if you actually want to prevent conflict from happening in the first place, you have to get involved well ahead of time. If you get involved after conflict breaking out, breaks out like so many companies have, you're ensuring that you're only gonna be a part

of the killing, you're only gonna be a part of the bloodshed, you're only gonna be a part of the war, you're not gonna be a part of preventing the war from happening in the first place. So I would argue that people in the technology industry need to work on defense, not because it's the current thing, but because it's the right thing. I have one more thing that I want to say.

I have one more thing that I want to say. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I talked earlier about NPC thinking that prioritizes popularity over principles. What I'm about to do is in very, very bad taste, but I'm going to do it anyway. Yeah, we'll see. One of the people who I think embodies this type of NPC thinking of going with what's

popular and not being willing to ever reverse their position even when they're proven wrong is Jason Calcanas. Let me read about some of the things he said about me over the years. Just a small sampling. Palmer Lucky. Hidious. What an idiot. A moron. Palmer Lucky, hideous. What an idiot. A moron.

This guy Parker Lucky, Parker Lucky, a complete and utter moron. Jesus, this kid is an idiot. Palmer Lucky is just an idiot and a troll. He is dumb. So, so, so dumb. Oh no, we gotta keep going. For him to pull the plug in the Palmer Lucky experience was brilliant. Kudos, Zuckerberg.

A complete lack of moral character and leadership. Palmer Lucky, a complete moron. Palmer doesn't care about any of his employees, family members, or team members. Now, this doesn't include any of the lies that he's told about me. This doesn't include any of the lies he's told about my businesses. This doesn't include any of the terrible things that his co-host and guest have said about me over the years that went unchallenged and egg-done. If I'm a hideous stupid person with no morals who doesn't care about my family or my employees, I shouldn't be invited here no matter how relevant you create this.

He's had many chances to retract or apologize these statements. Rather than taking any of them, he keeps telling people that the reason I won't be on the show is because I'm too thin-skinned, because I disagree with him on some of the things he said about Oculus. This is not the case. I've explicitly told him why I've refused to be on a show. It's because he and his crew of bullies have been vicious liars who have attacked me for years and berated me for years and spread lies about me for years in a way that I've been able to overcome that very few entrepreneurs would have the money or the resources or the credibility

to do. And being nice to a few people, like I'm sure he's being nice to you, just not excuse this. This isn't debatable whether it happened or not. It clearly happened. These are all direct quotes from things that he said over the years, both while I was ad-oculus and during my time after-oculus. And Jason, like many influential people, some of them even in this room who have treated

me like shit for years, suddenly changed their tune as soon as Andrew was on the upswing. As soon as we were doing good things. They started inviting me on their podcasts, liking all my social media posts, putting me on their innovator lists, all without any acknowledge whatsoever that they were the ones that were attacking me when it was popular, kicking me while I was on the ground and treating me like garbage. It's really pathetic because a lot of my remaining critics at least are basing their opinions on some kind of consistent worldview.

A lot of other people are attacking me and the work that I do because it's popular. When it's popular to attack me, they attack me. When it's unpopular to attack me, when Ukraine is being attacked, they are suddenly friends. And those are the same people that I know are going to go back to shooting on me, the second that it becomes popular again. I'm coming to the end of this and I know that you guys are probably thinking, wow, this guy is pretty thin skinned for a billionaire. That's fair. That's fair. But, I want to remind you of something.

Jason and the people like him are the reason I was fired from Oculus, my own company. The company, it was my heart and my soul for my entire teenage and adult life. For him, it was a game, it was his show, and for me, it was everything, and I lost everything. It almost destroyed me. I'm still filled with rage about it. I always will be. I'll end with this. I was able to create Andral because a small group of people were willing to give me a second chance to let me build something great in an important but controversial industry that was being constantly berated by people who thought we lived at the end of history. They invested in me while Jason was trying to poison my career and keep me on the ground. Thank God he failed. Thank God for investors who ignore him and people like him.

The market conditions suggest there are going to be a lot of founders, hopefully none of the people in this room losing their startups over the next year or so. And I pray that they get a second chance like I did. I pray they aren't deterred from working on important but unpopular problems. I pray that they will successfully claw their way back to success, that they aren't deterred from working on things that really matter. I pray that they manage to do this despite the inevitably stupid and hot takes, sorry, inevitably stupid and spiteful hot takes, That Jason is associates and the many people like him who make money spewing bullshit

are certainly going to be putting out there. Amen, thank you. John! John! APPLAUSE APPLAUSE APPLAUSE APPLAUSE APPLAUSE Oh! Oh!

Ha! Let's talk. Wow. Great to meet you in person. Jason, what lessons have we learned here today? Well, I mean, I guess we were talking backstage and Jason's like, oh, you know, I had to do so much to get the sky here because I think he hates me. And this is before this shit happened.

And I was like, well, maybe you shouldn't talk shit about people. Well, the good thing as I was able to well, maybe you shouldn't talk shit about people. Well, the good thing, as I was able to make into this stage, to say this, most of the people that you've gone after this way will never have that opportunity because they won't start a second unicorn. I'm only here because I managed to claw my way back. And remember, this is personal because it's not just you.

It's you. You're one of the most influential, certainly. But it's you, it really is a small cadre of people that by attacking me ceaselessly, made it impossible for me to continue my tenure at Oculus. I'm really lucky I clawed my way back, because that's exceedingly rare for a company to do. The first thing to do that.

Okay. What? What? I was hoping to talk about your new thing, but I guess since we have no choice but go here, well, what happened at Facebook? And maybe you should just explain that, and what I got wrong about what happened? Well, it's not just what's wrong. This is actually why I went out of my way.

There's actually a lot of lies you told in spread and your co-hosts and your guests. But I'm not even talking about those. The things that I listed, you'll notice these aren't material accusations. These are just personal attacks you've made on my character. These are just things you've said about me personally as a founder and entrepreneur, vicious personal attacks. Separately, there's all of the lies that you've said about how Oculus didn't have any differentiated technology.

It was totally commoditized. Anybody could have done it. It really was just right thing at the right time. We could spend all day talking about why these aren't true, but the real reason that it became untenable for me and the real reason that I'm not in the VR industry is because people like you were enabling those lies and then being vicious about it and attacking me personally. If it became clear I couldn't be a representative in an industry where people are going to treat me like that, fairly or not. Imagine doing a podcast with them. What's not. Imagine doing a podcast with them.

What's that? Imagine doing a podcast with them. Okay. Okay. Alright. Okay. I guess if you have no choice but to keep, I'll just ask you the same question. Do you want us to just describe what Palmer is talking about?

Can I try my best? No, hold on. What? Well, because my memory of the events, uh, you just read all the things you said. Right, but what is he? What were we talking about at the time? Well, there was a lot of controversy at Facebook about some donations, anonymous accounts,

things you said. Well, so those, that wasn't one thing. That was over the course of years. So that was just a small sampling. Um, I had to really find a small sample, you know, you can't, you can't ever do it. But I'll tell you what makes what happened. Fired from Facebook. What was the controversy there? Because that's what I was commenting on in this. Well, no, some of those were after I was fired and you were saying it was great that I was fired. And actually, by the way, one of your co-hosts said on your show that

they're glad I got fired from my politics. And that blind is mysteriously missing from your transcripts, by the way. And we never have added we don't edit any of the things and I didn't have a coast at the time it's probably just one of the news reporters who came on we would have to interview them but there was a lot of controversy on there. Here's what happened I gave $9,000 to a group that ran a single anti-hillary Clinton billboard that was actually the extent of it and then a huge number of people in the tech influencer space, the social media talking heads and media,

they started saying, Palmer Lucky, is this terrible person who's funding all of you? Sorry, just to be clear. So you made a donation and it was on an FEC filing somewhere. Somebody pulled it out and then basically said, Like to a pack or something? It was two, it was two of five oh one C4, I believe, who used that for their political harm.

So it was public filing It was public filing. It wasn't. Yeah. And I actually ended up giving a quote to a reporter about it. So it wasn't something that people understood what it was. But then about people just lied. They said, palm unlucky was funding. People who are attacking Hillary Clinton supporters online.

There were a lot of people who I think were looking for a scapegoat to kind of be the right-wing reaction to correct the record, which actually was paying people to attack the reporter. Why did Zuck Fire you? What's that? Why did Zuck Fire you? Oh, no, Zuck didn't fire me.

He's way off. Why did, I'll just ask the third time. Why did Facebook fire you? There's a lot of reasons. I always had good performance reviews. But what it really boiled down to was this. This is my favorite talk by far. What it really boils down to is this.

It was clear that there were a lot of people in the media and in the tech industry who were going to continue attacking me. We hoped it would blow over, but they kept attacking me for months and months and months. I was put on leave for six months. I don't know if you know that. I was going to put it. This is all on the heels of this one political donation. Correct.

$9,000. Yes. And so on the heels, I had the hope was that it would go away. Now, I think here's the real problem. I think if Trump had lost, people could have said, oh, well, he's just one of those eccentric, impact no imp, he's a loser, he's a voter, yeah. He's a loser, but whatever.

Trump winning is, I think, what made it unthinkable. So you're because people continued to attack me, not for nine thousand. But nine thousand dollar donation was the reason you were fired. Just for supporting Trump. As you know, these things are very complex, but more or less, yes. I mean, there's a direct causal line from that to me being put on leave,

to me not being allowed to come back and then pushed out. We talk a lot about this on the pod on mob behavior. And I think Mark Andreessen said the smartest thing, I've read on Twitter in the year. I retweeted it and I took away. And I think he pointed out that it feels safer to be in the mob than to not be in the mob. Well, it always is. Because when you're in the mob, you're part of the group, but you also get to attack.

And it's safe to attack when you're in the group. Right. And I think, by the way, what you did there, one of the things I will highlight, irregardless of the content and the thing, that was very brave. And we don't see a lot of bravery nowadays. And I don't mean that to describe Jason, but that sort of behavior where you stand up and you say something that will be highly controversial

and go against the mob and against the tide and maybe piss off an entire room is something that we don't see a lot of. And I think that that level of bravery is also what's missing going back to the mid-20th century, which allowed us to do all the things you highlighted as a country last century that we're not doing anymore. I appreciate your bravery more than anything. Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But, but look, I don't know about the specifics with with jcal But it certainly seems that there's a lot of this we talk about this like with with Brian Armstrong standing up at coin base And all the stuff that's gone on that we think I would argue is probably made Twitter a highly complacent place Is everyone wants to be you know? You don't want to stand up and you don't want to make that change and you don't want to be brave And you want to be part of the mob

of the crowd attacking the right-wing. Well, people see what happens. I mean, what happened to me has, this is, I can't back this up, obviously. This is getting into person lionic dough which is a never a good way to support any idea. But, I know a lot of people who remain at Facebook and they will not say anything and they will not donate any politician

who's left of bernie because they saw what happened to me and they've explicitly said i saw what happened to you because it wasn't just the public it was the internal reaction where people were saying oh my god like i will not work for a trump supporter this is terrible i mean actually one great example andrew bazaar he ran ads at Facebook for 14 years, he was put in after my departure as the head of Oculus, and he was the guy who was putting things on social media like, I think the exact wording was, if you support Donald Trump because you don't like Hillary Clinton, you are a shitty human being. And he's the person who's allowed to lead Oculus now. So it's not a

problem of being aggressive. It's being on the the right side it's being on the right side of politics and so there's a lot of people where they're they're not going to say anything because they see what happens to me now i've tax is loving this and i tell i i hear so you disagree with all of you guys know The real irony here is my contributions have been very open, but my advice to founders who are on the right has actually been, don't be public about your political leaning, since you won't accomplish anything. You will be terminated by the mob.

You should focus on building, you should focus on creating value, and then after you don't need the rest of the industry, you can kick them to the curb and do something else. How do you implement that philosophy differently now at Andrewville so that you have a more inclusive place where folks on the left hand, folks on the right come together, work on things that really matter. I mean, I think everybody agrees, you're building really important things in the world. So how do you do that this time around? That's different from the Facebook experience. on things that really matter. I mean, I think everybody agrees, you're building really important things in the world.

So how do you do that this time around? That's different from the Facebook experience. So a few things. One, I think that working in national security has been a great filter where people aren't going to come work for you unless they're okay working in a bit of a controversial field. I'm actually somewhat concerned about the Ukraine conflict

in that regard. In that in the making defense mainstream, it makes it possible for people to potentially say, oh, that isn't controversial now, I'm going to go to this place, and then I'm going to potentially attack people with their views. But I think when you run a company that is inherently working on something that's controversial, people on the right and on the left both feel like they're on the side of this important bipartisan issue, and all of these other policy differences can kind of go to the side.

And the culture at Andral is, everyone is free to have whatever politics they want. Like, I'm a Republican, our CEO, Brian Schimpf is a Democrat. can kind of go to the side. And the culture at Anderl is everyone is free to have whatever politics they want. I'm a Republican. Our CEO, Brian Schimpf, is a Democrat. We both make significant contributions to our respective sizes. And we have employees across the country. And I think also it's nipping it in the bud.

You know, it's about when somebody says something that is out of line. It's about getting it early and say, hey, that's not okay. At this company, we're here to talk to work on a common mission, for example, if we had a manager who then publicly went and said, the half of my employees who support this play, they're terrible people, they're shitty humans, they'd be fired. Yeah, I'll give you a counterfactual to what this is, which is very aspirational, which

is seven or eight years ago we funded a business that actually makes seafaring drones. And the whole point was to actually measure the surface flux in the oceans, which you can use to get a really good sense of climate change. And some are along the way, we have the chance to do a contract with the DOD. But invariably, there is a faction of folks inside this company that said, under no circumstances, are we going to put our efforts towards that. And as a result, then the company spent a three-year detour trying to build a weather app, which turned out to not be the right thing.

And three years later, you know, they're doing a bunch of stuff now with these government agencies. And it turns out that's the right thing to do because now they're that much closer to actually mapping the world's oceans which creates a repository of data and there's all these positive knock-on effects that sometimes folks don't see and you need strong leadership to kind of say it's what Elon said yesterday, you know companies are there to make products that people and organizations want and need not necessarily to fight over political ideals. I think one of the interesting things that the example you just gave, like I mentioned earlier, I have some empathy for people who work in companies who don't want to work in

defense. I think broadly the technology industry needs to support the military and I'm glad that the conflict in Ukraine has changed at least the thinking around that. But at the individual level, people should have the right to choose to work on what they think is important. So the Google example is interesting because it was Google employees saying, hey, I didn't sign choose to work on what they think is important. And so the Google example was interesting because it was Google employee saying, hey, I didn't sign up to work on weapons. I can understand that.

Maybe they're pacifist. And they say, you know, for religious reasons, for philosophical reasons, I cannot work on this. And they were upset that their work was put to work on defense without it being clear. And I suspect that in the situation you're talking about, it's similar objections were raised. Hey, this is when I joined the company to do. This isn't what I signed up for.

And so at Andral, one of the ways that we've been able to Get around this is being very clear like you are signing up to work with the Department of Defense That is that is the mission that you're signing up for and I mean we're we're about a third US service veterans at androle Which is higher than any company that I'm aware of and we're about a thousand people now And so these are people who they understand the importance of the mission right And so these are people who they understand the importance of the mission. Right. Just shifting gears for a second, I want to ask you about drone. First of all, to say that the first time I tried VR, which was Oculus, I thought it was one of the most magical computing experiences I've ever had. So I don't have you guys tried it, you put the goggles on.

I did the thing. And you're in the Oculus trailer and it's like it was amazing I did the thing where you show like a big hole like Facebook had this demo for a while or whatever and I thought I was gonna Follow the whole and I fell forward I didn't want to like to be on did I'm like I'm like wait, I know this is not real, but Yeah, he already said yeah, it's so funny These are I feel these mental circuits that haven't activated for years activating so I've got my talking real, but I mean. VR is so funny. I feel these mental circuits that haven't activated for years activating. So I've got my talking points.

But VR is the final computing platform. It's not the next one. It's the final one. And people talk about augmented reality. And it's very interesting. I love AR. We did a lot of great AR foundational work. But at the end of the day, if you can make a tool that

allows you to experience anything, and in any way, that can emulate every other medium, it is going to be the whole lot. Parker likes to make a tool that allows you to experience anything. And in any way, that can emulate every other medium, it is going to be the whole lot of work. Parker, like, can we? We caught on. Yeah, no question. Go ahead. I was going to ask you ask about drones.

So it's a, um, maybe we should answer. Why isn't it caught on? Yeah. It's not good enough yet. People ask, obviously, maybe people are like, well, I'm not sure VR is ever really going to be a thing. But explain the dimension when you say it's not good enough. Is it weight? Is it physical interface?

It's a whole bunch of things. It's content being available. You need a self-sustaining ecosystem of a broad enough variety of content that enough people can use it to create further network effects. So that's part of it. It's just a content thing. You have to build a self-sustaining flywheel until you have that. Yeah, I'm sorry, good enough yet to draw people in. They're not good enough and they don't have broad enough appeal. There's a particular niche where we have a flywheel. Like, there's a dozens of developers that are making many millions of dollars, making

games for Quest 2, but that's its own little niche. The other thing is quality, it's weight and it's cost. Like, the example that I like to use when arguing with people who say that VR is not going to be a thing that they spend their whole life in, say, okay, wait, wait, imagine this. What if for $99, you compare it by a pair of sunglasses and it gives you an experience to quality of the matrix or sort of line or whatever your sci-fi pick is And you can do anything and there's endless content It'll get there and it's like people like oh well of course I would use that right but but but that's what we are

Well, then that's just a tech disagreement feel a soft. Yes, you agree so how fast we'll get there So I mean you listen you created the category half far away. Are we? It depends on the experience. So, the hardest things to simulate are gonna be the ones that are kind of like these multi-haptic, multi-element things that rely on scent and motion, like surfing is gonna be really, really hard. On the other hand, being able to perfectly simulate

the experience of being in a brightly lit fluorescent, you know, fluorescent conference room, that's gonna happen within 10 years. Like, the resolution will be there, the weight will be there, you will be able to perfectly simulate that experience. And you know how much of my life I've that's gonna happen within 10 years. Like, the resolution will be there, the way it will be there, you will be able to perfectly see the late-effect experience. And you know how much of my life I've spent

flying to the other side of the world to sit in fluorescent late conference rooms and then fly back, if I can just eliminate that part of my life, it's way better for me, but it's gonna start by simulating that experience where it's low dynamic range, you don't need tons of haptic

and then it's gonna go from there. So wait, it's actually gonna talk about drones. Yeah, let's just shiftars for a second to drones. So obviously in Ukraine right now, the Russian military, and specifically their armors has been pulverized by the combination of the Javilan plus this Turkish drone, this, I guess,

the Iraq director, yeah. So, I guess this is raised the profile. I would imagine it's raised to profile of drones and the use of drones in the military. Also, it points out the weakness of having kind of a large platform strategy. In the case of the Russian military, their platform is this Russian tank.

But so is our military. We're built around air-pig-iron. Prevention, air-pig-iron. And the F-35. Yes. And the Abrams tank all these things I would imagine are susceptible to drones and the thing that's destroying the Russians is their tank costs a couple million bucks and it can be destroyed by a drone that costs

200,000 oh many more than a million even ten million say mp we just want a billion dollar contract with us so calm, special operations man, to do counter drone work. And so to a certain extent, what you have to do is then say, okay, we're going to have these armored systems, we're going to have these vessels, and then we need to have technology that allows us to counter drones. And it is possible to counter drones. What's going on with Russia is they don't have a technology to counter drones. And so they're largely just totally... Can I ask you something about this contract? Just general terms, use it something very important

before, which is the military industrial complex today is basically paid to do work. Not to get to a result. Yes. How do you fight that when you're, like when you hear a billion dollar contract, is that cost plus that DOD just is willing to give you? So this is, we can head you a whole talk on this,

but fundamentally for people don't know a cost plus contract structure is the way that most work for the Department of Defense is done. That means you get paid for your time, your materials, your people, and then a fixed percentage of profit on top, even if you're way, way, way, way, way over your budget until Congress eventually takes them out. And then there's layers of subcontractors to the cost solid out. Exactly. The bad thing about this is that not only the prime contract or owns the contract,

but everyone under them is incentivized to come up with the most expensive way of solving a problem that they can convince the government to fund. So they wanted to build the most expensive system with the most expensive parts with as many hours as possible. And the bits are so complex that you're only going to have one or two real bids. Yep. And they're basically going to be the same price. And those top bids, the fourth part is they're not just trying to come up with the most expensive solution. They're even encouraging the subcontractors under them. They get a percent of, yeah. Because they get a percent of that. And so if I'm getting, let's say, 6% profit margin, I want to make it as big a number as possible.

And I want to drag it out like, And that's why this budget's ballooned like crazy despite the lack of it. And they make more money when they do poorly because they're not being paid to make things that work. They're being paid to do work. That's what I say. It's just the act of the doing is what gets. Okay, but I'm saying now it's not a big deal. What do you do different? So we use our own money to decide what to build,

how to build it, when it's done. We're using building our own products. And when we're going to the customer, we're not going to them. But first of all, I can't just build whatever I want. I can't build a Batmobile and then try to sell it to the Army. But we talked to them about their problems.

They understand their problems. They know it would be cool. It's so big. But, but I'm sorry, sorry. Would you build someone in this room at Batmobile if he could come up with them? If it's solved a real problem, I mean, if that was the right way to solve a problem.

Going to my office. All right, I probably not. The nice thing about this is that when we go to customers, we're not going to them with a white paper saying, hey, let the taxpayers pay for us to try this out for years and years. We say, we've already proven that this works. It will not be a boondoggle for you.

It will work. We go to them with a working system with a full technical. Delivering goods and services already de-risk. Exactly. And the thing is, this is popular with the customers and politicians alike because it removes the risk of them getting into political boondoggle. It's like the F-35 program being a trillion dollars. So this creates new budget line items because now folks are saying,

I can actually get shit out of this. I'm going to move money from whatever bullshit pot of money I'm spending over here, move it into this sort of structure, and then that creates competitive dynamic market. So how does it actually close the loop? So for example, you deliver a drone to the DOD, it costs 10,000, I'm making up a number. It costs 10,000 dollars,'m making up a number. It costs 10,000 dollars and it works on ABC dimension. And then there's whoever makes general dynamics makes the health fire drone, again I don't know these specifics. Of course. And they want to charge 90,000 or 110,000. How do they still not get picked? Because it seems if

you look at their performance as public companies. It's an incredibly steady, it's almost like an inflationary line item, that you can predict 6, 8, 9, 10% growth consistently every year. Correct. The defense companies are not high growth, high margin companies, they're extraordinarily predictable. People basically see them as an extension of the US government. It's like sign box. The US federal budget?

Yes, exactly. And when the budget goes up, you see a direct proportional or leading your increase. Let me ask you a question about something very pragmatic, knowing what you know and the tools you're building. And I do appreciate the work you're doing defending the country. I think it's important work. And I told you that.

And I lobbied you to be here to have your platform and to have your voice and I've probably sent you no less than 30 or 40 invites to come on the pods. Can't deny that. And so I told you I'm willing to have any debate any time. I'm going to put aside the personal stuff but knowing what you know, doing this very good work, the situation in Taiwan. If it does materialize, what would it look like today, given the tools we have, and would we be able to, would Taiwan be able to defend itself?

What would that look like? Because that seems to be the next hotspot that we may have to do. Well, weapons get shipped in there like they are in the Ukraine. No, that we were able to ship weapons in the Ukraine because we had countries like Poland that were willing to, at massive existential risk to themselves, step forward. Yeah, Poland has been,

so paint the picture on some hero in this and getting weapons through. But Taiwan, what's gonna happen is there's a few ways this could go. It could either be just a blitzkrieg where they go in, destroy the ports, destroy the airports, immediately occupy, that could happen.

The other way this could happen could be a more drawn out blockade, where they blockade the island. Like, is the US willing to pull the trigger on a blockade? It's unclear, but if you can stop trade, if you can economically strangle them, make sure new weapons don't get to them, they can be in a very, very bad position.

And it's not clear that we or anyone else will be able to do that. No, there's different opinions on how things are gonna go. I can't pretend that I know exactly what it is. I can say, Taiwan does not have the tools today that they need to deter Chinese aggression. They might have had the tools they need to deter at a decade ago, but Chinese military has been ascended.

They've been investing so heavily in new technology, distributed swarms, high and electronic warfare systems, and all of the amphibious landing craft that they're going to need to perform an invasion, they've just, they've built the capability that they need. It's just how vulnerable are aircraft carriers? Sorry, again. How vulnerable are aircraft carriers?

They are extremely vulnerable to the point where we feel like we can't use them. The problem is aircraft carriers were not designed to be a peer-to-peer, a peer-to-peer great powers tool for us to go toe-to-toe with the Soviets or the Chinese. Like, the reality is, if each side launches 200 missiles, appear to appear great powers tool for us to go toe to toe with the Soviets or the Chinese. Like the reality is if each side launches 200 missiles, one of them is going to get through and it's going to end up hitting things. And this is especially true with satellite targeting systems.

They were designed in the modern day to project power to places where you have air superiority uncontested. So it's great to have a mobile base that can go somewhere and project power. But you cannot stop the Chinese that way. And also if we send a carrier out there and they manage to sink it, that's 5,000 lives lost in one hit. Hey, Bomber, we got a rap, but I'll say this. I got to say one more thing on Taiwan. Hold on a second. Oh, not about me.

Great. No, no, no. Nothing's coming. Nothing's coming. I was bracing for impact. I don't have any anti-pomber drone systems I will I will be working on them next week. I will say this about j-cal if you did that the carouswisher She would have she would have like not she would have pulled you off date Keep going you're so right. Yeah

And I think I think I will take so fair and and and j-cal J- Cal is He's an incredibly loyal friend. He's got an incredibly good heart and I think that you know whatever he said or did It was really brave of him to come out here and also have the conversation and he wants to have the conversation and wants to have a dialogue and he always wants to do that with all of us Sometimes he conflicts a bit and he but's heads, but I will say this about J-Cal, he means well. And I want to kind of say that for him. Yeah, that means. So there you go.

Finish reporting about Taiwan. Let's talk about the important stuff. Kira says, I'm a douchey man boy and a fourth rike bro Nazi. So not that you remembered. I've got a lot of memory. I think your cosplay stuff is cool. I was brave enough to do cosplay. I'm a cosplay stuff is cool. I always brave enough to do cosplay.

I'm a little jealous of that. I'll be honest, and I would love to go cosplay with you sometime. Tell us about Taiwan. Not the way to wrap the... I want to use point at Taiwan. Okay. Yes. The big difference between Taiwan and Ukraine is that we still have a chance to make a difference.

So what I'm so terrified of is that all these people who say, oh, we stand for Ukraine, we have to do this, this is the fight of our generation, and then they're not gonna do anything, and then immediately after Taiwan is invaded, they're gonna change their profile pictures to a Taiwanese flag and say, oh, we stand with Taiwan. It's like, no, that's not good enough.

If you care about this issue, there's things you can do right now. And what's really amazing to me is you have people who are saying, oh man, I stand with you, Craig, we're cutting off all of our Russian business. I'm like, oh wow, so brave. You cut off an entire country that's a regulatory nightmare. Has an economy smaller than most US states, sorry, not most many. Yeah.

It's like, oh wow, you're so brave for cutting off the Russians. And then at the same time, they say, oh, but all of our expansion is in China. And I'm not gonna say anything about that. I think worse than the people who change their profile pictures are gonna be the people who are in silent when Taiwan is invaded. And they just can't say anything because their business interests are so intermatched

and so intertangled. And that like that, China has been finding a strategic and economic war against us for a long time. And it is extraordinarily good. And the last thing I'll say on this I talked about it earlier There's a uniquely American delusion probably from our own Hollywood films that we can solve any problem the last second They will come in and we speak boom Day of sex machina we will ah That isn't how Taiwan is gonna go there is no day of sex machina. We know exactly what's gonna happen

The war planners have figured out exactly one of several scenarios is going to go. And when it's happened, we can't pretend like we didn't know. And there isn't going to be anything that flies in to save. So, I just want to say one more thing, I'll let you close. You and I can debate anti-hillary ads, the Donald Trump subreddit, all of those things. What we cannot debate is how important it is that the United States win and that democracy

wins and that freedom comes to all of these countries. You and I are 100% aligned on that, even if we disagree about the anti-hillary, I'm joining that stuff. I appreciate you coming. And I'll debate you on anything, anytime, anywhere. I do care about my family, by the way. That was the worst thing you said. Okay.

And fair enough. I will apologize for that statement if I did say it. Wait, take out the letter, say letter. I just said, if I said something that hurt your feelings about that, and it was Adelana, I apologize. But what's more important right now is that you're here talking about the work you're doing, and you and I will debate to the cows come home this other stuff. can't stop you I can't stop you're here no commentator no journalist can stop a founder I disagree with that oh I just you guys you

can stop a lot of people I they were overestimating my influence in the world you're a force of nature the work you do is undeniable we can debate politics as much as we want this country needs to be protected. The people at Google are cowards for not doing DOD contracts. You are not a coward. You came out here, you take me on straight up as a man. I appreciate it. It was a little bit of a blind side, but I can take it.

What's most important is the work you're doing. That's what's most important. I mean, is this soccer punch? But I would say pay. I'm from Brooklyn. Thank you. Of course. We appreciate you coming. We appreciate you coming. Bottom line. I get out. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I'm going to hug. I Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, reference just to provide some context for those of you who are unaware. The clip was from a show in March of 2017, episode 721 and my other podcast this week in startups. And listen, I'm super aware that this could come across as defensive. But I think some people might not know what Palmer was talking about. So I'll let you decide for yourself. We recorded that episode, episode 721,

the day Palmer lucky was fired from Facebook. And it was a news roundtable of the podcast. I'm talking to Austin Peter Smith, who worked at Inside at the Time, and Ian Thompson of the Register. He's a great journalist. And just to clarify some facts here in the timeline, these are from the Daily Beast article in which Palmer was interviewed. You can go read that.

It's in the show notes. And the facts are pretty basic. Palmer Lucky donated some amount of money to a pro-Trump political organization. It was called Nimble America, right before the 2016 election. And as you just heard during the all-in-summit talk, Palmer said it was like $9,000. Nimble America was part of the infamous subreddit page, the Donalds. If you remember that, Nimble America, basically made anti-hillary and pro-Trump memes,

and they were self-proclaimed shit posters as we now talk about on the internet. The organization said it was dedicated to proving, quote, shit posting is powerful and me magic is real. Palmer was posting to the R Donald under the anonymous Reddit account called Nimble Richman. Here was one post, which Palmer confirmed writing that was referenced in the clip. You were about to see the American Revolution was funded by wealthy individuals.

The same has been true of many movements for freedom and history. You can't fight the American elite without serious firepower. They will outspend you and destroy you by any of all means. And here is what Palmer told the Daily Beast in 2016 when asked about supporting Nimble America. I've got plenty of money. Money is not my issue. I thought it sounded like a really jolly good time. Again, if you're listening, you might hear some other voices talking. Those are the two guests that I mentioned before. You can watch this three minute and twenty two second clip, which is just a mashup of my commentary. I'll see on the other side of three minutes. He was supporting, like, when I was a violent trolling, but extreme trolling would be the

way to do it. That's right. And his comment about it was really insensitive. It was almost maybe not super ideologically driven as much as it was like fun for him. What an idiot. Well, it actually lost a loss to him for a month of business. ideologically driven as much as it was like fun for him. What an idiot. Well, it actually lost a loss from a fair amount of business. There were about three or four game studios that said,

right, we're not longer developing for the Oculus on this one, because he came out and said, basically, well, to overturn on a trench delete, then you need to be able to fund it and fight back. And you're like, that's not a revolutionary. This is just HIT posting about politicians. This is not constructive dialogue. This is not H-Y-T posting about politicians. This is not constructive dialogue. This is not an attempt to get reformed the American political scenes. This is just, oh, that's

be a troll. Yeah, if you want to see like a person's true character, give them a pile of money or a bunch of power, and then you will see. Two bottles of ochu works very well on that. As well, it's like the sort of quick way of being a billionaire or whatever, but I mean, can you imagine, I just want to stop for a second and just give everybody in my portfolio or the people I work with, just a public service announcement. If you are lucky enough to hit the jackpot and make hundreds of millions of dollars, behave yourself. You moron, you hit the jackpot.

It's like somebody winning the megaball lottery. And then just going on the street and randomly punching people in the face. Like this guy Parker Lucky is a complete and utter moron. For somebody to be a visionary to create something like Oculus and make VR, I bought the Oculus. It's pretty impressive, I have to say. I believe that VR is at least two years away

from being a meaningful business opportunity, but that's about the window where I like to invest. So it's kind of on my radar now. In fact, we have one company in our incubator, but Jesus, this kid's an idiot. But this case, Palmer Lucky's just an idiot and a troll. So dumb. Here's the other thing.

I think on a leadership basis, if you represent the company. So you represent your company first, Oculus and your vision of the world. Behave yourself. Number two, if you represent the company, that's worth a couple of a hundred billion dollars that made you a billionaire and you represent Mark and Dresden

who invested in your company and Jason Harwitz and you represent all the employees and all their families and everybody who's Entire network there's a lot of them in this you have a higher Duty of service and this is a complete lack of moral character and leadership for someone like Palmer lucky to be doing this Shitposting Ethan. I'm gonna say so let's move on to the next Facebook story. Now that we got over the Palmer Lucky is just a complete moron who doesn't appreciate his success or care about any of his employees, family, members, team members. If you're gonna do that kind of shenanigans, if you don't, here's a clue.

I hate to get totally crazy. If you're doing something like this anonymously, If you're doing something like this anonymously, you might want to think that the anonymity plus Reddit, plus you would be ashamed about it. Think about what you're doing if it's anonymous. In other words, if you have to put a mask on and then you throw the brick through the window, you may not want to throw the brick through the window because you won't willing to to do with your mask off. Okay, so closing thoughts. I respect Palmer

Lucky for his incredible innovations both with Oculus and his new company. We actually agree on many things, which actually people in the tech industry might not, which is, hey, producing weapons systems to protect America and democracy around the world is a beautiful and important thing. I respect Palmer for what he's doing there. And we have a disagreement about, you know, this meme action that he did. But, yeah, all as well, that ends well. It was an interesting moment in time. I don't regret exactly what I said. I think what I said was fair. And when I talked about it in context, I was coming from a place that if you're gonna post stuff, post it on your real name, not anonymously.

And so there you have it folks, that's the entire controversy. Thank you, Topom, we're lucky for coming. Thanks to my besties for having my back. There was this big question of if I would go out and engage the discussion. Of course, I wanna go out and engage the discussion. I wanna talk, I don't mind a hard discussion.

And in fact, that's what this podcast is about. Having hard discussions and then keeping our friendships and keeping it moving forward. I look forward to hosting this podcast forever. They're going to have to drag me out of here. And I hope we can host another all in summit and all of you can attend either virtually or in person. It's great to have that farmer at the event.

And actually, I hope he comes next year and shares more of the exciting work he's doing at Andrewl when I wish him the best. What are you doing? We're like your winners, right? Bring man David Sack. I'm going on with it. And it said we open source it to the fans

and they've just gone crazy with it.'m US, I speak weed of kinwap I'm going on a YouTube What? What? What? What? What? Besties are gone, go through the teeth

That is my dog taking a wish to drive away To the sex Wait at all Oh man, my hamlet has your meat and the ass We should all just get a room and just have one big hug or two Because they're all just like this sexual tension Oh man, my hamlet is actually a meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-me I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! I'm doing all in! backstage. Does it happen at the last break? I think we got there.

Well this is what I said. I said you don't have drones over my house right? Just to confirm. And he said can I confirm or deny?