All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - Dueling Presidential interviews, SpaceX’s big catch, Robotaxis, Uber buying Expedia?, Nuclear NIMBY

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

(0:00) Bestie intros (2:01) Polls vs Prediction markets, dueling interviews, election update (16:06) Tesla's Robotaxi event and SpaceX's Starship catch (27:36) Uber reportedly looking into acquiring Expedia (45:19) Nuclear Vibe Shift? Big tech is looking toward nuclear solutions to power AI (1:11:10) Lawfare from the California Coastal Commission Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2024?tid=1729285428575 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1846826782797799580 https://x.com/collinrugg/status/1845472475322462468 https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1839424008900477354 https://www.ft.com/content/94a25bf7-e62b-462a-a4f0-e4feb6e244f7 https://www.google.com/finance/quote/EXPE:NASDAQ https://companiesmarketcap.com/expedia/revenue https://x.com/Jason/status/1847016512583786921 https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/16/amazon-goes-nuclear-investing-more-than-500-million-to-develop-small-module-reactors.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/14/google-inks-deal-with-nuclear-company-as-data-center-power-demand-surges.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/20/constellation-energy-to-restart-three-mile-island-and-sell-the-power-to-microsoft.html https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/16/california-coastal-commission-elon-musk-00184017

Freeberg's channeling Tim Walls over there. I know. Wow. He's as excited as Tim Walls. Got your flannel on. Do you know what a venture capitalist is? Oh, he's showing super gut. Well, as of last week, when J Cal decided to turn all in into a commercial, I was

actually going to do a super gut background. We're launching super gut nationwide in target this week. Any target in the United States, you can go into and pick up super gut. You can buy the GLP one booster. You can buy the prebiotic shake. I have that actually. Is that the chocolate or do you have the chocolate? I mean, I like this one's chocolate.

Okay. Moke is good too. All right. Let's get started. Thanks for the support. I appreciate it. Of course, of course, of course. We're cutting all this out.

No way. This is why I do this. Next time, plug a company. I have a stake in. Also, all in election night live stream is coming November 5th. You can watch live. Sax will be hosting. We're doing that.

We're doing it. You're hosting it. Your team said you're doing it. And so you'll either get to see. Are you not going to Mar-a-Lago Sax? Well, if things continue to look good for Trump, I might go to Mar-a-Lago. Yeah. Okay.

So you're maybe. Let's not commit Sax. You're maybe. If you go to Mar-a-Lago. Yeah. Okay, so you're maybe. Let's not commit sacks. You're maybe. If you go to Mar-a-Lago, you're excused. I could livestream from Mar-a-Lago. That would be amazing. Absolutely amazing. I'll go to Mar-a-Lago.

That'd be fun. Yeah, if it looks good, I'll go. So maybe that's- Just go. Jason's like, I'll just go. Of course I'm invited. I talked to Jared. If things look as good as they do right now, then I think I'm going to have to go to Mar-a-Lago.

I think we should all be in Mar-a-Lago. It's gonna be a unique experience. Oh my God, can you imagine being in Mar-a-Lago and he loses? Oh my God. That's why I don't wanna go in. That would be dark. Unless this thing is in the back.

It's gotta be too big to rig. If it's too big to rig, I'm gonna Mar-a-Lago. Too big to rig. Do you guys think Polymarket is like, why do you think it's different from the polls? Are we talking about this today? Polymarket's showing like 60, 40 or 65, 35 now, right? Yeah, because they're measuring different things.

I've explained this before. Polymarket is people betting on the outcome. So 58% think Trump's going to win. Whereas the polls in a particular state show the percentage of how each person's going to vote. So if for sure you knew the election was 5149, the betting markets would swing to 100. But let me ask you this. So Nate Silver's model, which takes the poll from each state and builds a kind of a Monte Carlo of, you know, super poll, like a super model for the whole country. Why is his estimate 50-50 right now while the polymarket is betting at 60-40?

It's possible he's laggy in his estimates and the betting markets. The betting markets seem to go based on momentum. So it indicates the swing in momentum. And then the polls obviously take a week or two. How do you think things are gonna change after the interviews the last couple of days? Trump on Bloomberg and Kamala on Fox. Do you think those are gonna change anything?

I don't think so. I think it's all baked in now. Well, Trump over the past few weeks seems to have had a surge owing to the fact that Kamala's interviews generally don't go well. So I think she started off a little behind, started doing interviews to catch up, and now she's a lot behind.

I don't think the Bear interview's gonna help her. Well, let me ask you this. So my observation as, I don't know, not like a super political person or whatever, a party-oriented person, I looked at a lot of the media on both sides, and it seems like everyone on the left says Kamala did an amazing job on Fox. She defended herself. She showed her skills and her competency. And then everyone

on the rights, like she embarrassed herself. She fell apart. And then the same thing happened with the Trump interview on Bloomberg. People are like, on the left, they say, look at how he couldn't handle the interviewer and he fell apart and all his lies were exposed. And everyone on the rights, like look at him. He got a standing ovation. It's almost like everyone's just kind of like self asserting their beliefs that they already hold when they judge these people on these interview shows at this point. Is it already baked at this point?

Like, is anyone actually gonna change their view based on these interviews happening? Well, the question is what appeals to that small sliver of independence. Yeah. The question I would ask back to you is if the Bret Behr interview was going so well for Kamala, why was her staff on the sidelines waving to try and end the interview?

Apparently they had like four people waving and trying to cut the interview off. Who said that was the case? He did. So it was like in Rocky IV when Apollo Creed's corner is like yelling, throw in the damn towel, throw in the damn towel. They couldn't wait to get off the stage after 26 minutes. I just think that if it was going that great.

Allegedly, allegedly. Yeah. I don't think Brad Bear is going to lie about that. I don't know why he would lie about that. That makes sense. Why would they get off the stage after 26 minutes if it was going so great? I'm not saying it went as horrible as some of the partisans on the other side are saying, but I don't think it went that great. Do you give her any credit for going into the lion's den like she did?

Well, I think that she went, she did the interview precisely to get the talking point that she does adversarial interviews because that talking point was hurting them. And so you saw like all of her fans in the media were saying, well, see, she can walk into the lion's den. But again, she did the shortest interview possible. I don't think she answered the questions directly. I think she filibustered a lot. She deflected a lot. I don't think she was particularly persuasive.

I don't think she convinced anybody. So I think that what you saw there was somebody who just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible to check the box on, okay, does adversarial interviews. Trump on the other hand, he actually likes doing these things. The Bloomberg interview- There's no filibustering there, right? No, he's crisp in his answers.

It's all filibuster. Come on, man. It's all anecdotes. He can do the weaf, he can do the anecdotes, but he's also very good at coming back on the interviewer when they get adversarial. And the audience was with him, they gave him a standing ovation. He went for 64 minutes compared to her 26.

I just think there's no comparison. I think Trump is someone who relishes walking into the lines and doing those interviews. I think Harris did it because she felt like she had to. What do you think, Zach? What do you think, Chamath? You see it or no? Do you have any opinion? I watched the whole interview. It was clear in the interview, he mentioned the fact that

he was being waved off. And then he said it after the fact as well. That's not alleged. I think that that did happen. I would say two things. I thought that she was composed and she maintained her cool. So I think from a stylistic perspective, I thought that she did well. From a substance perspective, it was pretty lacking because if you actually listen to the answers, there was think a lot of people, even if you're not a swing voter, I think would probably want to know the answer to. Meaning, did she have any regrets about what's happened in the last three and a half years? Did she have any regrets about what she's done on the border? Has she not noticed that Biden was wavering before he was hot-swapped? I think that you could have predicted that these questions were going to come. So I think I was

surprised that there wasn't a crisp answer that they had practiced for that. The second thing I'll say is then David is right. Everybody then gets very tribal in how they interpret it. I think I saw one tweet from Elon about how all of the newspapers characterized her interview with Bret Baer as, quote unquote, testy. And it was sort of like, that was the way that the mainstream media framed it. I suspect if somebody looked at how Trump's interview with Bloomberg was analyzed, it probably had some similar verbiage that was repeated there as well. So I think you are right, Jason, that the mainstream media can't be trusted to tell the truth. I would just encourage people to watch it. I think, like I said, stylistically, I think she did well and

remained composed substantively. I think it was nonexistent. Yeah, it would have been nice to have another debate between these two. She still can't really explain how she's different than Joe Biden other than the fact that he's a white male and she's a woman of color. So beyond the sort of the superficial differences, she can't explain on a policy level what she would do differently. She's had so many opportunities to say that. They asked her on The View, they asked her on Stephen Colbert, Brad Bear asked her in his way, and she still can't explain what she would do differently.

And I think that is the fundamental problem she has in her campaign is voters still don't know who she is or what she would do. Yeah. What did you think of JD Vance saying he wouldn't have certified the election? They seem to be going after him on that over and over again. You're the only person talking about that. No, no. Literally every interview, they've been chasing him down the hall asking him, I'm not the only person talking about that. No, no, literally every interview they've been chasing him down the hall asking him.

I'm not the only person. I may have started it, but what did you think of him saying he wouldn't have started it? That is kind of like when he's in a combative reporting moment, that is the question he gets a lot. That's not the interview I saw. I saw the interview he just did with Martha Raditz was she was saying that Trump was exaggerating. No, no, the question I asked you, Sax, was I asked you, Sax, about him saying

he wouldn't certify January 6th. You're the only one who's fixated on it. No, I'm just serious. Me and the other journalists. What do you think, Freeberg? No one who is persuadable, who doesn't have TDS, cares about that topic anymore. What do you think, Freeberg, about him saying

he wouldn't certify January 6th? Is that concerning? It's not what they're asking, JD. If you want to talk about interviews that JD Vance has done, talk about the one that's actually going viral right now. And that was the interview he did with Martha Raditz, where she starts saying that,

we've only had a few of these apartment buildings taken over by foreign gangs. And he's like, do you realize what you're saying? You know, there's no comeback from that. He destroyed her. It was very compelling what he did. It was very compelling. And every interview he does is like that. Yeah.

I mean, she was basically saying that she spoke to, what was it, the city manager. And she's like, he said only a handful of buildings have been taken over. And JD Vance was like, what do you mean? Yeah, one's too many. Only a handful of buildings. Like, isn't that anything more than zero, like too much?

Or anything more than one is obviously a problem. Like, it was just such an obvious rebuttal to the narrative that they're kind of over-exaggerating a particular issue. I have no data on this, but he was very compelling in that response. I thought it was pretty strong, but I will say like generally neither candidate seems to be introducing a new message or seems to be introducing new content, they're just kind of standing up, you know, kind of repeating things that they've said,

showing that they can handle and manage different kind of combative reporting tactics. And that's kind of what's going on. And everyone seems to have made up their mind. I see a lot of people on both sides say, again, this side, this person did great. My person did great against this combative reporter. And. My person did great against this combative reporter and the other person did poorly

against their combative reporter. And everyone's kind of biased in their view. It just feels like this election's baked and we should just go to the polls and be done. Yeah. What did you think Freeberg though? But there's no October surprise coming out, right, Sax? Chamath, Jake?

Oh, so three weeks. Yeah, anything can happen. But there hasn't been anything, right? Like that's kind of the shocking moment yet this month. but free break the question I was gonna ask you is yes, you're not like hosting Trump You know fundraisers Do you think what did you think when JD Vance said he didn't think that Trump lost the 2020 election? Is that concern you know? There's no there's no way to answer this. With with the kind of clean framing I think you're looking for. What I saw from JD is that he wants the reporter and the people that

he's talking to and I hear this from him to zoom out a little bit and recognize that there are significant control and control systems and biases that he believes and others believe are strongly affecting the election process and as a result, the election outcome. And I think that that message is lost because people want him to say, Trump lost the election, you're not admitting it, you're bad. But those people also aren't hearing the point that he's making, which is that there are

biases. And we heard these biases, by the way, with Democrats in prior elections as well, where they highlighted that they believe that there were biases with respect to misinformation being amplified on social media. And then the next election cycle, they were able to step in and influence what was being changed on those social media platforms. And so there's this big kind of war, media war going on. Yeah, that's why we're asking that. Through social media platforms. And I think that that's what both sides are highlighting,

is their big concern. And now there's this other big concern about is there appropriate voter verification that the people who are voting, and it's a question to ask that shouldn't be dismissed It is a good question to ask. Yeah, that's a great question as a person who doesn't have a like a strong bias for a political party here I feel like I want to hear answers to those questions like You know, what is the structure of how the the way that most people are getting their media today? Which is through social media platforms. what is the mechanism for censorship? What is the mechanism for filtering, for moderation,

and be public and transparent about it? And then separately, what are the mechanisms for deciding who gets to vote and how they get to vote? And I think those are both really good things to ask. I would just like to take a step back and say that that was one of the most incredible answers I've ever heard, Freeberg. That was one of the most incredible answers I've ever heard, Freeberg.

Unfortunately, it may not land for the reductive masses, but it was exceptionally powerful and thoughtful. Thank you. Yeah. I think that- That's what I'm here for Chima. I'm here for you. Well, I mean, independent of who wins, we need to get this rules of elections really tight starting next year, I think make it a federal holiday. require

people to have ID that doesn't seem like such a big deal. I don't know, Sax, what else should happen? federal holiday right now you've got Biden's DOJ is literally suing the state of Virginia, which is required by Virginia law to clean the voter roles of illegal immigrants. And they've been doing that. And Biden's DOJ has sued to stop that. In California, like you said, we now have a new law signed by Gavin Newsom to make it illegal to ask for voter ID. So Democrats seem to be

undermining the integrity of elections, not fortifying it. So when you ask, you know, why do Republicans distrust elections, maybe it has something to do with the way that Democrats are acting. But I agree with you. I think that cleaning up the voter rolls, having a minimum standard for voter verification is something that I think should be done.

The corner of the constitution, the states basically run their own elections, but it doesn't make sense to me that in a one party machine politics state, where basically one party controls the state, that they could set up a system that effectively entrenches their power forever in federal elections.

It just seems to me that the federal government has a compelling interest that must be constitutional in ensuring a minimum standard of honesty in federal elections. So, I think it would be great to do something about this next year. I think that if you want people to stop questioning elections or engaging in election denial, you need to make the elections above reproach. So, let's do that. So anyway, Heritage Foundation, which is obviously right

leaning has a bunch of election fraud cases they've been documenting and they basically cannot come up with like actual evidence that this is changing any election results, but we should make it a broad reproach. I agree. All right, our boy Elon had a big week Tesla unveiled two new concepts at its we robot event and Elon Elon caught a 23 story rocket the Starship. Here's the robo taxi and the robo bus. Both of them look really awesome. And he caught one of the I think this is the

fifth Starship or the fourth launch fifth off the fifth, right? So incredible. Look at this. It's so unbelievable. It's like chopsticks catching whatever your issues are with Elon and his politics, just to appreciate and we can talk about why this is so important in this segment, but technically the achievement of this like skyscraper falling out of the sky and perfectly aligning itself to go into that chopstick catching device,

it is an absolute marvel of human ingenuity. I mean, and the work and the effort that people put into this over, you know, several decades, it's just such an incredible feat. Look at this thing. I don't know if you guys were as emotionally moved by this than I was. I thought it was incredible.

It was incredible. I think I probably watched this a hundred times. Totally. From every angle. Every angle. And so the reason this is so important is because these things cost a lot of money. And when they land here, you can clean them up.

And I guess his goal is to have them take off again after he fills them with propellant an hour later free bark. So on a science base, this is extraordinary what you know, if this works and you start lifting more specific, you don't want it to have feet. A it's heavy. And then B, you have to lift them up in a way that just complicates the entire refueling and cycle time process. So by catching it, you put it right back into place

and just go again. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Right, you just catch it and go again. I can kind of walk through these numbers. So obviously the big objective over time is how cheap can you get it to put material into space? We need a lot of material to go into space if we're gonna do things into space, we need a lot of material to go into

space if we're going to do things in space, particularly if we're going to go build a colony on Mars. And so this shows you over time, the cost per kilogram, which is the key metric in this industry to launch material into low Earth orbit. And you can see here how SpaceX has dramatically reduced the cost. I remember when the small sat era began in the 2010s, you guys remember all these startups that were starting to build like little small sats and put them up to do

imaging and comms and stuff. When this took off, it was about 10,000 bucks a kilogram to put a small sat into space or to put material into space. And then SpaceX has dropped the cost to the point that it's now close to a thousand dollars a kilogram. So a 10X reduction in cost in just the last decade or so. And that's why SpaceX just dominates the launch market. But Elon's always said that a thousand dollars a kilogram is too high, that his objective has been to get the cost

down to 10 bucks a kilogram. Cause at 10 bucks a kilogram, you could launch what some people estimate is needed to get the cost down to 10 bucks a kilogram, because at 10 bucks a kilogram, you could launch what some people estimate is needed to get to Mars, which is about half a million tons of material and people to set up a colony on Mars. And it actually becomes feasible to get, you know, half a million tons of material at 10 bucks a kilogram. So if you look at this new Starship

and Starship Heavy booster, it's about 150 200 ton payload, the booster holds, you know, 3400 tons of propellant. And the cost of that propellant is pretty low, you know, it's, it's only about $1 million in fuel. So then if you can get the cost of the booster and the Starship down enough, and you can reuse it enough and you amortize the cost of making that device over the lifetime of the device, the cost per launch comes down. And that's what brings the cost per kilogram down. So the booster, there's a group called payload, and they do estimates on this.

So I won't speak out of turn in terms of like having inside knowledge, but the payload has estimated that Starship and the booster cost about 90 million bucks today, and they think that they have a path to getting it down to 35 million. So if you can reuse that thing 10 times, that's a $3.5 million cost per launch. Plus a million for fuel. You could easily see, and this thing can launch 200 tons. That's how you start to get to 10 bucks a kilogram over the next couple of years.

But it was critical to be able to reuse that heavy booster. And that's what Elon just demonstrated is we can actually catch that heavy booster, refuel it, and launch it an hour later. And if you can do that over and over again, you're spending 10 bucks a kilogram to put material into space, you can get fuel into space and then get those starships to fly off to Mars and deliver all this material, including setting up a base that would allow you to actually make more fuel on Mars, because everything we need to make fuel is on Mars.

So it's the beginning of the next series of really important milestones that'll hopefully get humanity onto Mars. It was just so amazing to see it come together. The economics are legit. I mean, this is like a thousand X reduction in cost. It's incredible. Yeah, it's gonna be amazing.

And they're gonna do some, I guess, new stuff with Starlink, some even lower earth orbit satellites that go even faster and have less latency. So that's gonna be super exciting. Starlink's apparently, I mean, I know everyone here is a shareholder in SpaceX, but Starlink's running at 4 million subs right now. That's like a hundred bucks a month, 4 million subs.

And if you do the math, I mean, how many people have ISPs that are slower than Starlink, right? How many people have cell phone providers that they're paying roughly the same amount that aren't as good as Starlink? If we can get satellite to phone and you can get Starlink more broadly available, this could be a hundred million subscriber business. I mean, this could be one of the biggest businesses on the, on the, on the earth. It could be the largest subscription business in the history of humanity. I think the largest

ones right now are like Netflix, you know, 250 Disney plus 150 Verizon, a hundred million. So yeah, it's could be hundreds of millions of subscribers. It could be the first 500 million subscriber product in the world. We could look back one day and be like, why did we run all this copper wire everywhere? Like we don't need it. Yeah, obviously. It's crazy.

Especially if it can get to the crumbs. It would be like crazy that we were like ever, I mean, the whole nutty thing about this past week, it's like we could look back one day and be like, why did we ever drive cars? And why do we ever have copper wire laid all over the earth to like move internet signals around? You know this uh, this efficiency game that's going to be realized over the next decade is and

just incredible just incredible chamath any thoughts on the robo van or the Cyber cab the model two I guess some people are calling it but it's you know, the cyber cab specifically not calling it Number two and it doesn't have a steering wheel or pedals. I would have bought two of those immediately if it had a steering wheel and pedals. I want to drive it. Yeah. It looks like the hybrid of like a model Y and the cyber truck. So I kind of really love the aesthetics of it.

So beautiful. Yeah, you like my my my reaction was actually, I don't know, just seeing these releases now over 10 or 15 years, plus of knowing him, nothing, I guess it's like not that surprising. It's weird to say, like I just expect him and his teams to figure it out. Like they're just all so good. It's the thing to remember, it's not just him. That's incredible, but he attracts a kind of technical and operational wonder kind people for sure. And that's just, that's just a really special thing. So I had that reaction, which was, I was really proud and happy for them. For the team, yeah, for sure.

For the team and for him. These guys are like incredibly fearless. Fail bigly, right? Yeah. If you're going to fail, fail bigly. Yeah. And then the other thing that I thought was crazy was how many people were trying to dunk on him this weekend.

And that surprise me caught me off guard because I think that they were personalizing a lot of anxiety that they are feeling through these companies successes, which didn't make much sense to me. Well, in fairness, he did hurt some people's feelings with posting of memes. So yeah, I mean, it makes no sense.

Like the guy's like gonna save 30,000 road debts a year in the United States with self-driving and people are losing their minds over a couple of memes or who he's voting for for president. I don't think you have to worry about that. You can just look at the products they speak for themselves. Anything, Saks, any response on the on the test the front? Any thoughts on the the bus or Optimus? I mean, they're both very exciting products. I don't think I've got a lot to add.

Yeah. I love the bus, Freebird. I think that thing could become like mobile homes or ADUs, and you could just send them to- Wait, can we buy them or no? Well, no, not right now. But I think that might be you know, that that's gonna be a big question. kids in one. I need it for all my kids. Yeah. Well, see, if this was a platform like the Mercedes Sprinter vans have become that you see a lot in Europe, then you could buy an empty one of these. It's got

enough battery life to last a month. And then let's say you had your in laws over and there was one that was set up as like a one bedroom, you could click on Airbnb or, you know, Tesla BNB, press a button and the thing could drive to your driveway, you can rent it for a week and then it can leave. Or let's say 1000 people or 10,000 people were displaced because of a hurricane free bird, you could send 100,000 of these to the parking lots at Walmart, which typically does a good job in feeding people and getting them supplies after hurricanes, since those are so ubiquitous. You can put 100 of these in every parking lot and have a place for people who are fleeing natural disasters to stay. So I thought that was like the most compelling product of the whole thing for me was the possibility of a sled, like a skip that you could do anything

you want with would be really exciting for society. So congratulations to the team. And it's going to take a while, but I could see them having that robo taxi. Also, I think congrats to Amid. He just got promoted. I saw that. He's in charge of all AI? I think he's in charge of all manufacturing and sales in North America. Oh, okay. Well, there it is. Shout out to Amit Apshar.

Yeah. I mean, listen. Guys, I have big news. I just bought my first Tesla. Oh, you did. Did you go with a Plaid, Model S? Model S Plaid, yeah. Yeah, that's a perfect car.

I test drove it for two weeks and sold itself. And are you using the FSD? I use FSD every day. I use FSD and it was like really impressive. So super impressed. I've tried Tesla a couple of times over the years and I never really, never really worked for me. The quality just didn't feel like what I like, given what I had before the car wise, you were an Audi guy, right? But Audi guy. Yeah. Yeah. That's like, anyway, it's a, it's a big milestone. I really, I thought the FSD was the selling and then the speed on the plot is, it's just

insane. It's better than my RS7. Like I am with all of my test. I put it in show mode because when it's in that plaid mode or whatever, like coffee, it's my favorite. I love it. But if you have passengers, the kids in the back seat would hit like literally nauseous because it's too fast.

You gotta be, you gotta be careful with the because it's too fast. You gotta be careful with the passengers there so fast. It was awesome. Awesome. All right. Well, there you have it. Robo Taxi Star. We didn't get to it last week. We almost put the show back a day or two just to do it. In other news, Uber is exploring a bid to purchase Expedia breaking news. This was dispelled as we got here on the show. They said this was like very preliminary third party here on the show they said this was like very preliminary third-party talks and that there's no serious talks going

on about this financial times reported that advisors were trying to look at if a deal structure would be possible between uber and Expedia Expedia's got a 20 billion dollar market cap they popped 8% on the news obviously uber on the other hand trading at 170 billion market cap or so that dropped 3%. If you didn't know, Dara was the CEO of Expedia from 2005 to 2017. He's still on the board. And it looks like this was a trial balloon. You know, Uber's two biggest businesses rides and Uber eats, but they also do freight and train bookings. Dara has been pretty clear he wants to create a super app like you have in China or some other markets. Expedia has got a lot of cool products, hotels.com or bits

travel velocity or and I think the most interesting one free burger and I were talking about this is VRB of vacation rental by owner it was like Airbnb before Airbnb existed and if you look at this chart since there are left the Darra effect Expedia has gone exactly sideways the revenue has grown modestly what do you think of this deal? Chaman I'll just go right to you with this one since you like to. Stupid. Stupid. Okay. There you have it folks.

Reason number one, it's stupid. And reason number two, it's stupid. I mean, this is a $20 billion market cap business. You probably have to pay a control premium of 50%. So the question is, if you were going to spend $30 billion today in the public markets, what would you spend it on? And I think the most important lens that you have to use to answer that question is what reinforces a note that I have while also being inoculated from the risks of AI, and I cannot think of a more fragile business model than the UI layer

on top of widely available data. So the problem that Expedia has is the same that booking and a bunch of these other folks have, which is that the principal heartbeat of the company, flight information and other things, are licensed to them by third parties. And so what they are is a UI and a front door. I think it's way too early in the evolution of AI to know that that's safe. And in fact, I think a more reasonable assumption is that those things are pretty fragile. And part of what may explain the doldrums of the stock is that I think people are anticipating a world where,

for example, I don't know if you saw, but Perpexity launched something this week. It's just in test mode. They white listed me into it, but it's basically a checkout concept. So you tell Perplexity what you would like it to buy, and then it will go and complete the transaction for you. So in the example of flight bookings,

you could go directly to United because A, Perplexity will just show you all of the flights. They'll show you the exact prices and then it'll go and execute that for you with your payment method. In a world that looks like that, where these companies have the money to pay for the data feeds, the existing V1.0 generation UIs, I think, are in trouble. So it would just be a very bad capital allocation decision. Now that's okay to get things wrong, but not for $30 billion wrong.

You can probably do it for a couple hundred million dollars wrong or maybe even a billion dollars wrong, because you can absorb that as a 150 or $60 billion company, but 30 billion is too big of a price to pay for that kind of risk. I would agree with you. And there's other things they could buy, like WeRide or Pony AI and a bunch of these AI

companies that are doing self-driving. So why not double down on that? Freeberg, the one thing you and I talked about was kind of VRBO, which is a very cool marketplace. And that feels directly in the Uber kill zone. What do you think about them just maybe carving out and buying VRBO and having an Airbnb contemporary? Wait, why don't they just buy Waymo? Why don't they just go to Google

and give them $30 billion of Uber stock and just carve in Waymo? Isn't that a better idea? I think that's what's gonna happen. I've been hearing rumblings of that. So I think that Dara knows Expedia better than anyone. He ran the business for what, a decade or so? Yep.

And so he knows how that business operates. And so if he's looking at this thing and the stock price has been flat, roughly, since he left in 2017, if you look at the underlying financial performance, you could kind of start to construct a rationale for buying Expedia this cheap. And it would be very accretive to Uber, even if there are these big strategic risks on the horizon.

So just to give you some numbers on it all, Uber has got about 150 million monthly active users. Expedia has about 45, 50 million customers a year that use the service and pay for stuff. 5, 50 million customers a year that use the service and pay for stuff. So there's a real opportunity to think about the Uber customer base that's installed as being almost an opportunity to market to them Expedia services and Crossell. So Expedia on an annualized basis is spending about $8 billion a year in sales and marketing and about $720 million

a year in G&A costs. And they're running about $3 billion EBITDA right now. So if you cut about half the G&A in an acquisition, because you don't need all the people that overlap with Uber's people, and you cut about 30% of the sales and marketing dollars because you can cross-sell into the Uber install base, you could see a scenario where you could increase Expedia's EBITDA by 75 to 100%, maybe getting it as high as $6 billion.

And while Expedia's market cap trades at $20 billion, this is off of obviously the recent news that they might get acquired, if you kind of assume a 40%, 50% price premium to the last 90 day average of the stock price, which is kind of typical or common for a deal like this, they're probably paying 26 billion for the company. And they got about 4 billion in that cash. So you're kind of paying about 22 billion enterprise value to buy Expedia. So 22 billion of enterprise value. And if you can bump the EBITDA up to 6 billion a year,

that's a pretty low multiple. I mean, you could kind of see yourself rationalizing this just from a financial basis that you're paying four times EBITDA to buy this thing. And Dara knows this thing and he would have great command over what needs to be done over there. And he would have a great sense of what to change and what's gone wrong. And there's a lot of interesting assets inside of Expedia VRBO is a great one That's been under monetized and underutilized. I don't know if you've used the UX on VRBO versus Airbnb There's obviously some influence Dara could have with people that he knows

well that could go in and fix that that interface and make it a better service and even as AI starts to step in and hotels maybe integrate better with agents and so on and They show up in a more ubiquitous way, there's other things that Expedia does, like build vacation packages and travel packages that are high margin products that they sell that are a little bit different than what you're used to with just booking a flight.

Booking flights makes no money for anyone, but vacation packages is where all the money's at. And so theoretically Expedia could be smarter about how they build vacation packages and personalize them for families. And that's where they can make real margin like 20, 30% margin. So I could see a story where this all starts to click for the board at Uber saying maybe it makes sense. Dara knows what he's talking about. We could buy this thing for four times, you know, pro forma EBITDA. This could be hugely accretive for us. So I think that's why this is happening, why this conversation may be happening.

That's just me trying to understand. I think it's a good steal, man. You know, what the rationale might be. Can you just go back and explain how would they drive up Evidas so much? So they're spending about eight billion a year run rate on sales and marketing at Expedia right now. And Uber has got 150 million active installed users

that are using the Uber services every month. Customers, actually. So the idea would be customers. Yeah, yeah, actually paying customers So if uber could cross sell some number of Expedia services to their installed base at uber which they could test and you know Do a little experiment and see if it works They may be able to reduce the marketing dollars that Expedia spending to acquire customers through other third-party sources like Google and Bing and other places. So there's a rationale. That's where I think the logic breaks down.

I don't think Uber customers wanna be cross sold on booking a hotel. See, this is where I think like MBA thinking is very different than product thinking. Like an MBA looking at this would say, well, Expedia and Uber are both in the travel business, their apps both involve booking trips. So we can, we can cross sell Expedia from Uber and then cut Expedia as marketing budget. I think that's how an MBA would sort of

hand wave over it. I think the way like a product manager would look at this is to say, what does the user want to do? And I know that when I use the Uber app, I just want to basically make a couple of clicks, set my destination, get my car, and then move on. And there was a product initiative a few years back at Uber where they tried to capture the user's attention during the ride. And they added that whole ad thing that adds. Yeah, and it's actually printing money. It was like an entertainment stream or something inside the app. No, but they dialed it way back because I don't see it anymore.

It was just clutter. Would you trust Dara's judgment on this, Sachs? If Dara were to think about what the Uber user would want and he could rationalize some percentage of them, they could cross-sell Expedia services into. Ultimately, I think it's his decision, right? Like, well, I mean, what you're describing is basically a private equity play. Like, Dar is going to come in as like a private equity buyer effectively. And he knows the business and we'll run it to reduce costs, maybe boost some

revenue and maybe there is a justification for that, but if you're trying to justify it based on cross-selling, I don't think users of the Uber app will want to be cross-sold when they book a justification for that. But if you're trying to justify it based on cross-selling, I don't think users of the Uber app will want to be cross-sold when they book a taxi, okay? They just want to be able to affect their transaction as efficiently as possible. And just to finish the point I was making on that whole entertainment stream that they had,

they dialed that product way back, because it got in the way. You'd be in the Uber app trying to figure out how to change your destination or something, and all of a sudden you're being shown like some entertainment product. It's not what users wanted. And it was always kind of a bananas idea

to think that just because the user books an Uber, that you own their attention during that ride. Because during that ride, you're really competing with every app on the iPhone, right? I mean, and that's the problem is you wanna get in and out of the Uber app. It's about transacting efficiently. What about not the moment when you're writing in an Uber,

but the moment when you say as an Uber user, hey, I need to book travel. I gotta go on a vacation to Austin this weekend to play poker. I'm never gonna think to go on my Uber app for that. The only time I open- But what if they put that feature in there? What if they had a tab that said book your travel here?

You know when I opened the Uber app, when I wanna hail a taxi, that's what. It's like I'm bringing a guy. There are a large number of people who maybe don't have an assistant to book their hotels in advance and like. That would be most people, J.K.L. I would not think to go into Uber to do that.

It would just be clutter. Well, no, but they already have a hotels.com partnership. And then the Uber One membership's been growing pretty nicely. And the advertising's doing a billion dollars a year. And that is just a money printing machine, because you know that this person's in an Uber Black. You know that they're going to the Four Seasons,

these users who are, you know. They have a real ad business at Uber. Yeah, yeah. The more Uber tries to promote some unrelated product. And what I mean by unrelated is it doesn't help you get to where you're going that moment it's clutter in the app. What about Uber Eats, Saks? Yeah.

It's working pretty well. It's working great. Yeah. Another cross promotion is working. That is highly related to this. Basically booking a car to pick up some food. Yeah. It's still the taxi business, basically.

I think the hotel's integration is good. I think there's something here. We have gone through a cycle where apps and attention were highly consolidated with a few. Now the pendulum has swung the other way and apps are very narrow features that are really well described. Okay. so that's sort of where we are. That's why we have the billions and billions of apps in the App Store. The question is, does the pendulum swing back to these super apps?

And I think the big question is not whether it swings back to the super apps, but whether there's a new substrate that puts itself between the user and all of these services so that they become data oriented services. And this is where the question is, if you rely on an agent or you rely on a beef tub version of search, whether that's chat GPT or Gemini or whatever, why would you care where all of this stuff was done? You're not going to care.

And this is, I think, the big mistake in this thinking is that that real estate is actually much more fragile than I think we all think it is. And I think a much better way to think about this is in the future, none of this UI real estate is actually worth anything. The question is, do you have a data asset that's valuable or do you do a service that's valuable?

Because agentically, there'll be all of these unemotional bots and workflows doing this work for you. So I think Sachs is right in the sense that whether it's there or not, it won't matter. Could he run it like a private equity business where now Uber corporation owns two services? Sure, but you're probably just better off for these agents to go and cannibalize all of

search because you'll be able to just get a data feed for what Expedia has to create Expedia for a few million dollars or tens of millions of dollars. You don't need to pay 20 or 30 billion dollars for this. Yeah. The thing that I've talked to Dara about is when they said, he told me when they do something that's adjacent to what they're already doing, it explodes in terms of engagement. So like they're doing like teens and rental cars and then package delivery. And every time they do one of those adjacencies, it just takes off with the membership. And to your point, Freeberg, they have those 150 customers who have their credit cards in there. And man, it just, it's explosive. So that's what I think they're doing. I think hotels would be, I don't think flights would be, because

I think the flights work really well with the existing apps, but things where you have proprietary inventory like VRBO or hotels, I think those would be very powerful. And those have 20, 30% commissions, which are in line with the commissions that Uber's already getting. And the commissions on things like flights is very small, like a couple of dollars. So I think for hotels and VRBL would be brilliant. For the other stuff, I'm not so sure, to your point, Chamath.

Well, just to finish my thought. Yeah, yeah. Was that you'll notice that Uber eats in a separate app from Uber, right? I mean, I know you can get to the Eats part within Uber, but they created a separate app for a reason. It's because whether you're using Uber Eats or Uber, the goal is immediate gratification.

I wanna get to where I'm going. I don't book it six hours in advance. I call it right now. And the most important thing to me is wait time. This is why Uber is beating Lyft is the wait time. Oh, and the wait time is lower. Same thing with food. I'm not thinking about booking my dinner right now.

I'm not going to do it in advance. If you browse through the restaurants, the most important piece of data they show you, in addition to the rating, is the number of minutes it takes for it to get to you. So those apps are all about immediate gratification. And that's why you don't want other things getting in the way of them.

Now, I guess the claim is somehow you're going to be able to cross sell the booking of a vacation or a hotel that you have to think about days or weeks in advance. This is a completely different state of mind. I just don't think that there's much opportunity to cross sell that. Or to use the technical jargon, I don't think the attach rate is gonna be high. What about the brand value, Zach? Cause you know those people are going to another app to book their flight in their hotel.

What if that other app was called Uber Travel? There might be some value in that. I can see that. I think that would be the rationale, where I could see the Expedia brand. Yeah, so maybe what you could do is take VRBO, rebrand it as Uber Hotel or Uber Travel, whatever you want to call it.

Exactly, exactly. And then maybe you could push people to download that app. Well, the thing I would, the counter I would give to this. You could quantify the value of the installs, right? So. Yeah, exactly. I mean, well, you could quantify because Expedia is spending on it every year right now. I use the Bomboy app to book hotels.

I use United to book my flights and I use Uber to do my rides. And obviously for eats, when you are using it, there's a tab up top in the UI is quite nice and Uber where it's rides and eats right next to each other. I could see a third one like hotels or travel being right there. And all of a sudden, yum, yum, you just get all that inventory right in there. And I frequently will book my hotel and I'll book my ride for the next day in advance on Uber. And I do those things. And then when I get to my hotel, I'm ordering food to my room. So I think this actually could work really well as a third tab in the app for travel. And you could actually,

because when you use eats in the Uber app, it's its own tab. And it's the exact same experience. I believe in super apps. And they just launched a bus that's like a bus service in New York for 18 bucks to go to JFK. That's really awesome. I think we're a little bit disconnected because we don't book our own travel. But okay, let's keep moving here. Down the docket. All right, this big tech investing in nuclear power is off to the races. Chema Amazon just announced a $500

million investment in three nuclear power projects. All of these are focused on SMRs. Those are the small modular reactors. Amazon is working with Dominion Energy to develop a small modular nuclear reactor near an existing nuclear power plant in Virginia. In total Amazon plans to invest 35 billion in Virginia based data centers by 2040. And they want to power these by SMRs. And this is a big trend Google is purchasing energy directly from Kairos power another company building SMRs Microsoft as you, was reviving one of the three mile island nuclear power plants. So this is kind of interesting, Shabaf, we went from nuclear not being on the table, everybody being against it, the Germans

shutting down their reactors post Fukushima. And now Big Tech is the customer for these with AI, and they're putting down very large deposits and payments to build them in America. And I haven't heard any opposition. Maybe you could just speak to Chamath, what we've seen here in terms of opposition to these versus the opportunity and everybody's writing checks. Yeah. Well, they're not writing checks. So this is what I don't want to be a Debbie Downer

here, but these press releases need to have an asterisk on them. So in the hierarchy of deals, right, just to unpack this for a second, there are deals where you give me X and I give you money. That's not what this is. Then if you degrade that kind of deal structure in a lot of heavy industry, you have deals that are called take or pay, which is there is something that's working and you need to basically take this or you need to give me the monetary equivalent

of what I'm selling you. That's not what this is. What this is, is sort of this conditional obligation where the beginning of the deal starts with a very important statement, which is if it works and if these approvals happen and there's a whole bunch of nested ifs, then payments can happen. So while these are important deals, because they show that there are potential buyers at the finish

line, what it doesn't do is solve the two things that you need to get to the finish line, which is the actual risk capital to finish building these things and technically de-risk them, and then the regulatory approval that you need to make sure that they're allowed. So I think that these deals are good. I think it's a great signaling, but I think it's important to understand the nuances of these things. These are not things where there's money really trading hands. And until that you see that where irrespective of what happens, the balance sheet is investing from an Amazon or a Google, where there's corp dev folks writing $100 million or billion dollar checks into these companies, it's not yet quite there. This is more the step before,

which is sort of, can you create some marketing and some buzzy-ness to hopefully induce somebody to then rip in billions of dollars of risk equity capital? Freeberg, your thoughts on SMRs and these customers showing up, and then I guess you could comment on the nature of the deal structure here, because some of them are contingent on the nuclear power

plant turning on. Some of them do have deposits, is my understanding. We'll look that up and fact check it. There could be a range of deals here. Yeah, I don't know the nature of the deals. I did, I think, talk about this a year ago. It was also like my prediction for the year was to buy the uranium stocks predicated on what I think is a really important point, which is as GDP per capita

grows, energy consumption per capita grows. And if you looked at the projections of GDP per capita in industrialized nations, there was no way, there is no way to meet the energy demand. And this was even pre all this crazy AI build out, which is probably part of the GDP growth. But there is no way to meet the energy demand without nuclear. There is not enough solar geothermal or wind buildout potential that's happening that the stopgap measure is going to have to be in probably the right long term solution is to have a significant

amount of base load come from nuclear. And so what's the fastest way to do that nuclear build out? Well, in China, they have the regulatory authority and the mandate stated they're going to build 300 gigawatts with 300 facilities or whatever the number is. And that's what they're doing very large facilities that make a gigawatt of power each. In the US, it seems that because of the regulatory structure here, and the way that utilities are regulated, and the way that the states have authority and the environmental laws and all the other things, that it might be the fastest path to solving this energy gap problem is SMRs. And that's why we and these things produce tens of megawatts. So again, a gigawatt is 1000 megawatts. And, you know, we need to kind of probably grow our energy production in the United States by several terawatts over the next decade or two. So this SMR may be the fastest path. Now that could change, meaning we could end up

seeing much larger facilities get built out if there's regulatory change in the US and there's more availability. But fundamentally, we are going to need to use uranium to make electricity to meet the demand of the growing the GDP that it seems we're going to be growing it. I think this is just such a necessity. It's great to see the SMR is getting some attention. I just don't know if they're actually

going to get turned on how long it's going to take. And, you know, I don't know what this election cycle is going to bring in terms of regulatory change. I think we talked about it with several of the candidates when we were doing the interviews, sacks, if we are able to get a bunch of these SMRs built here in the United States, maybe if Europe follows suit, what would this do on a geopolitical basis into our relationship with the Middle East, our energy independence, and of course the AI race to, you know, general intelligence? I'll let you take it whichever direction you

want to go. Well, I don't think we're going to. Because I don't think anyone wants a nuclear power plant in their backyard. It's really simple. I mean, no matter what the benefits are for AI, or for America's global competitiveness, I just don't think your typical community wants a nuclear power plant in their backyard. And I don't think it matters that much if it's a small modular one either. So you think they'll get blocked by local communities? Yeah, and probably for good reason. I mean, I don't want a nuclear power plant in my backyard.

Do you? I feel like this has suddenly become a little bit of a luxury belief where liberal elites are always talking about how we need to have nuclear power now. But they know they're not going to have a nuclear power plant in their backyard. So it's easy for all of us to genuflect about what a great idea this is, but let's face it, these things are going to be built probably in poor or working class communities. And inevitably, there's going to be some accident. I mean, you can tell me how safe they are to your

blue in the face. I don't believe it. You know, planes aren't supposed to fall out of the sky either and it does happen. And you know, they're going to set up a power, one of these power plants somewhere. And you know, it's probably going to have a DEI program and something's going to happen. I mean, something's going to happen.

And then the fallout is literally going to fall out on the people in that poor community. So I don't think this is going to happen. And then the fallout is literally going to fall out on the people in that poor community. So I don't think this is going to happen. This show really has a diversity of views, doesn't it? Yeah. Like, look, this is a perfect example of liberal business elites demanding something that isn't going to affect them. It's not going to affect them.

Your take on a non binary trans lesbian with purple hair, whatever you're saying, no comment. Putting a small nuclear reactor 200 miles outside of Austin, Texas. Go. Put your tinfoil hat on, Freberg. How close do you want it to your ranch, J. Cal? I mean, I think there's plenty of land outside of the triangle here in Texas, where there is no density and you could put one and I'd have no problem with

there being one a hundred miles, 200 miles. Who's going to work there? Who's going to service it? I mean, literally you would have to, it doesn't take that many people to service these. So yeah, I mean, I think there's plenty of space in the United States to put these and maybe Freeburg, you could talk and educate us on the safety here.

Do you believe what Sachs is saying that it's going to have a meltdown? I think Sachs' point of view, to be honest, is the point of view that will be held by a large number of people, just like they have been with a lot of other- Is it the right point of view though? Tell us from a science perspective. Well, no, no, I don't think it is. I think that the same argument would have been made around we shouldn't have airplanes at all because they can fall from the sky. We should keep everyone on the ground where they're safe. Why would you want to get on an airplane? Why would you want to have airplanes flying over your home? We should all ban airplanes

flying over our home. They could crash in our home. It's the same sort of argument. And the reason I'm not going to argue the point is because I because of the point I made earlier, which is that it ultimately becomes an economic necessity, that for us to meet all of the demands of AI, all of the demands of industry, we want to re industrialize the United States, etc, etc, we need to increase electricity production capacity on the continent. And there is no way to generate enough electricity on this continent fast enough using other means than there would be if we just got these systems set up. So you believe they will go through out of necessity. That's your take. I think globally, this is the case and we're seeing it in China. Now,

where the US whether the US ends up becoming a lot of worry about a NIMBY problem. That's right. That's what we're gonna do. Yeah, that's right. And we may end up being the- China is the M in NIMBY, my. And we may end up being the Luddite state and we'll end up just saying, you know what? We're not gonna adopt new technology,

including things like gene editing and cell therapies. And I'll go through the list of new technology sets. I think there's a- You could make the argument that there's a low probability of a high risk event. But the fact is that the progress that it enables is worth so much more than the risk that we would be taking on.

There's a simpler solution to all of this without having to go and create these reactors, which is I don't think that we have a very good grasp of the material science, broadly speaking. I don't think we really understand how to build next generation materials. I don't think we really understand how to build next generation materials. I don't think our specialty chemicals capabilities are all that strong, the way that they're going to be over the next five or 10 years just with better compute. So I think that there's going to

be a lot of interim steps that increase the generally available energy density without going to nuclear. I think there's going to be a lot of businesses to do that. That'll be much safer, easier to regulate, easier to test, easier to underwrite. And I think there's gonna be a lot of businesses to do that. That'll be much safer, easier to regulate, easier to test, easier to underwrite. And I think the government will get behind those. So I'm not as negative as you are on the only solution being nuclear. The countries and the businesses that have a lower cost of electricity

and a more abundant source of electricity will end up winning as the economy continues to progress towards a much more kind of digital state and an automated state over the next decades. So if we're going to be slower, we're going to suffer the consequences of that as a country. So we'll see how it plays out. I just think that economic incentives will ultimately drive, hopefully, a change. Would a possible solution be to give an economic incentive to the people who would be in the surrounding areas? Obviously, these things could be 50 or 100 miles from, you know, anybody's homes, but even the people who work there

or people who might have, I don't know, some homes that weren't near it, could you give them no taxes, etc, etc, essentially give them incentives to allow this to go through Freiburg in your mind, you think that kind of incentive would work? Taxes or some kind of payoff or subsidy? I'm not sure. I haven't thought much about like what the incentives or subsidies would be.

I think that- Yeah, you're gonna have to give them an incentive because no one's gonna wanna live within 200 miles of one of these things. What would be the number of free berg in miles? I think tax is right. I think that people have a very deep fear of what is deemed to be cataclysmic technology. I do think a lot of this was rooted in the evolution of the atomic age, where

we basically have these nuclear warheads mounted to missiles that can travel at 20 times the speed of sound and land on your city and wipe out your city. I mean, that, that is also nuclear technology and people can slate the two as being similar. And even three mile Island, there were no deaths. It was a shocking, scary thing for people. But statistically speaking and historically speaking and technically speaking, it's a lot more complicated

to explain to people what happened and why, and why now is different. And no one has the time for that. No one wants to hear that. They wanna hear a very simple, do you really want a nuclear power plant in your backyard? No way.

What about you? No way. All right you? No way. All right, let's vote to stop it. And they're right. I mean, you compare it to commercial airlines, but commercial airlines, that's the technology that's been around for what? Like a hundred years.

Sext, do you have any data on the safety record of nuclear technology? Cause I'm not sure you do. I think my point is like, you're just making a statement out of fear. Okay, let's see the data. Where's the data? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it right now. I mean, I think this is an important discussion you're just making a statement out of fear. Let's see the data. Where's the data? Let's do it.

Let's do it right now. I mean, I think this is an important discussion. I'd like to actually- My point about commercial airlines is we've had that technology for over 100 years. It was honed and refined over many decades and commercial airlines now have become- This is going on almost 100 years of use, right? You know that. There've been incidents every decade or two,

and that is why- That's not true. That's not true. You're saying something that's not true. The reason nuclear has been discredited is because of Three Mile Island and Fukushima. First of all, it's not been discredited. Chernobyl, I mean, these names live in infamy.

It's social fear-mongering, like you were doing right now, with no data and no facts, to try and make it a political issue that drives everyone to one side, shut their minds down, and not listen to the actual facts and data. And this fear mongering is what keeps us from being competitive,

what keeps us from having progress. You talk a lot about people talking shit about Elon. Listen, listen, I'm just saying I don't want one near me. Now, if they're, hold on a second. I'm not saying you can't go on. There were 46 deaths at Chernobyl. I'm not against doing it somewhere where the community is in favor of doing it. So if you can find a place that wants to

do this, I would not stop it. Just to be clear. I'm just saying I don't want one near me. Let's get to facts. Yeah, we got you. J. Cal, just give me a second. Yeah. I don't think you're going to find many takers, even among poor communities.

It's a great adversarial point. Let's go to the facts. There's 440 nuclear power reactors operating in 32 countries around the world. Since the time that we first had nuclear reactors, which has now been almost a century, there have been three incidents, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island. At Three Mile Island, there were zero deaths. At Fukushima, there was one death.

And at Chernobyl, there were 46 deaths. The fallout from those events has been that we shut down energy production. We shut down the power plants. At Fukushima, there was one death, and at Chernobyl, there were 46 deaths. The fallout from those events has been that we shut down energy production, we shut down nuclear reactor technology, and we fear mongered our way into losing the most abundant available low cost source of energy.

Do those deaths actually include the second and third order effects of all this radiation? At Chernobyl, there were 15 people who got thyroid cancer, 35 operators and first responders who got radiation sickness. And then the background radiation effects, there's a lot of kind of noise around this, but it's not a significant number

as you may otherwise think. Same with Fukushima. Why is it that whole region is still uninhabited then? They had a radiation event. There's radioactive material that has covered that area that will be radioactive for a long period of time. Now, to understand what happened there and why that won't happen again requires talking about the difference in the technology between Gen 1, Gen 2, Gen 3, and Gen 4 systems. A lot of what's being rolled out now are these Gen 3 nuclear reactors, and the Gen 4 systems, which we highlighted a little while ago, do not have a meltdown possibility.

We talked about this, the one that went online in China in December. Those new systems, the Gen 4 reactors, cannot melt down. You cannot have an incident like you did with the Gen 1 and Gen 2 systems. And the Gen 3 systems are abundantly safe. China is building hundreds of them. It is a totally understandable science.

If we want to spend the time looking at the data and understanding the engineering and the material science work and all the effort that's gone in billions of dollars over decades, the biggest stumbling block and the biggest wall has been the fact that people have this fear mongering activity that they tell people just dismiss it. It's too scary. We don't want it in our backyard. Let's move on to the next opportunity.

That's what's killed it. And if you just put these things 50 miles away, the radiation, even in the meltdowns, didn't go past those, is my understanding. So even if you want to, just the easiest steel man- The new systems don't melt down. You don't have that possibility. And the SMRs- I am in 100% agree with you.

The new systems don't even work. These SMRs, they don't work. That may be another point. If there's a new, how can you say for sure what the safety record's gonna be? Oh, that's- Just to be clear, SMRs don't work yet. We have theoretical ways in which we can profile

and model that they work, but we don't have a functional one that people can look at and inspect. As part of that, we haven't been able to test how they fail. Those are also theoretical. So I think, let's put SMRs off and let's just be very accurate. We don't have a functioning working version of one because they don't work yet. Maybe they'll work in the future.

Let's hope that they do. What you're talking about, Freeberg, is a step before that, which is the Gen 3 reactor, which has a different safety. There are SMRs operating in China, Russia, and India today. And there's about 65 being built at this moment, right? So, and that's outside the US. So that's why the US is kind of observing

and trying to catch up and adopt these technologies that are being used by, call it economic competitors and economic partners around the world. It's important for economic prosperity in the US for us to have a degree of competitiveness in electricity prices. If China races towards 5 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity, and we're sitting here at 20 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity, what's that going to do to our economic competitiveness?

We are at five cents in the generation. And you're saying solar, right? We can fix that tomorrow. We already rely on a nuclear reactor that works. And to Sachs's point, it just happens to be millions of miles away. So if it goes, we're all going to go anyways. Yeah. The scalability of solar in terms of getting us to a terawatt of production capacity is the limiting

block to mop that in order to get to a terawatt of- I think that's a material science problems. I don't think that's, you don't need to run heads long into- Maybe it's not such a bad thing that other countries are taking the early adopter risk of this technology. Well, I was about to say, that would be- That's decades in the making, Sachs. Yeah. That's gonna be, that's gonna be the forcing. This is decades in the making, Sam.

But if China runs away with this and they have so many of these running and then they're able to power AI and solve problems we're not, we're gonna have to get our act together and start standing these up. I don't think power is the limiting. Every Navy submarine's got a nuclear reactor on board.

That's how it gets powered. And we have so much space in this country, these things could be 100, 200 miles away. But I don't think energy is a limiting factor in our ability to innovate. I don't think it is today. In these data centers? Certainly it is.

It's not the limiting factor in our ability to innovate. It's not the limiting factor in, like for example- We're asking us to charge up every car, every night with electricity, with a battery, rather than using gasoline. Let me just make my point. So we just saw OpenAI launch strawberry. Is the reason why Microsoft or Google or Meta

not responded with their own version an energy problem? No, we're still rate-limited by innovation and just raw intellectual horsepower and capability. Meanwhile, we are trying to solve the energy problem and people are taking different approaches. There's storage that's coming online very aggressively. The solar capability itself is ramping up aggressively. We're also forcing these utilities to actually be deconstructed so that there's more efficiency in the energy markets. All of this, if you unpack why it costs 20 cents

a kilowatt hour, it's not because of a generation problem. It is not. It's graft, it's corruption, it's old legacy infrastructure. All of it can be replaced in a much simpler and safer way. So I think by the time that you are rate limited by energy, you'll have a plethora of solutions. My issues with the SMRs is the ones that are promising these next-gen whiz-bang performance characteristics, they're all theoretical free-proof. So even when you say there are SMRs working abroad,

there's no next-generation reactors working abroad. They don't work. Where is an example of these modern next-generation reactors actually working? Where? Well, we talked about the Gen 4 one that went live in China. There's several SMRs in several countries that are active producing power. You can call it a small modular reactor. What I'm talking about these next gen materials, the things that Kairos and these other guys are trying to do, where is a functioning working version? Here, I'll show you. They have them. We have one in India, we have one in China, I'll show you the I'll send you the links to them here. There's about 50 of them that India is

actively building right now. And they're they're competitive with Kairos, right? They all have kind of common design concepts, but they're different companies. Anyway, I'm just saying, like, they're getting rolled out harm, in just free, maybe you can educate us in the distance, it could be from a city reasonably in terms of building a grid to move the energy from could it be 200 miles from a major city 300 100. What's it? What's it? You can put power production wherever you want. But it

has to travel as long as you got the copper to move it right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just trying to think reasonably move it is I guess what I was getting at, but okay. Well, there you have it folks. A good debate here on the all in. A good debate. A good debate. I still love you all. We'll lay copper from some country that has an SMR all the way to Washington state. I was just thinking like if Canada and Mexico have, you know, economic incentive to do this or they're more bold, maybe they build them in their countries and they'll be selling it to the United States, right? They'll take the, I mean, if you're Kairos and you can't put this in the United States, but you could put it in Mexico and then come up with a, you know, a way to get it

past Trump's border wall. You may be able to put her into the United States, but we won't know until we know it works. Just, I'm sorry, I keep going back to this tricky little issue of it doesn't work. Well, I mean, I think, Freiburg, I'm with you in that even with the disasters that have happened, those are with gen one and gen two reactors. There hasn't been one in a long time. And the fallout from them haven't been.

I believe those things, if we can spin those up right now, these gen two, gen three reactors, do them all day long. I think that they're very safe. They're very reliable. No, the 3 and 4. You want one in your backyard? The 3s are what we should be rolling out everywhere. I would be fine with one being 100 miles from my backyard.

No problem. 100. It's 4 that's producing 100. China is producing a gigawatt of power. Would you want one 10 miles outside Austin? I don't think you should put it 10 miles outside of any city. I know that they're doing that in India. They're doing that in China.

I would think, if you look up the footprint of Fukushima, I mean, that was a complete disaster. They put that below sea level, they told them not to put it there. And they put it near a bunch of people who were living within miles of single digit miles of it. There's no reason for this to be any closer than 50 or 100 miles. And I would be totally fine with it being 50 to 100 miles from where I'm on my ranch right now. Absolutely no problem with that. I think this is a classic luxury belief where it's easy for you to espouse this for everybody

else for the nation because you know the downsides aren't going to fall on you. No, but 50 miles or 100 miles can be any way from where we use them and everyone will be safe. Would you be comfortable with putting them in the desert? Yeah, but in that case, there won't be a... Okay, then we're done. That's how we're running wind and geothermal today. We're putting these sites in random places and solar, and then we're running cable and we're producing power and delivering it to...

Just because they don't want it to be an eyesore, right? That's why we're doing that with solar is we don't want people to look at a giant solar thing. Solar, right. Like I said, I'm not against doing is we don't want people to look at a giant solar thing. Not against doing it. If you can find a community that's willing to do it. And if you put it where there's no humans, then yeah, that that's gonna work. So there we go. We've resolved our issue. We got the compromise here. Here we are.

solving world problems. Yes. Get my guitar and we're gonna sing Kumbaya. You better get some robot employees. I can't wait for you guys to lay millions of miles of copper cabling now as a solution to truck all this energy. I'll lay that pipe. Genius. You need me to lay pipe?

I'll do it. No ditty. Sax, do you want to go visit a nuclear power plant? Let's do it. Zero interest. Let's go. How's that going to improve our life? Any progress, Sax is not interested in any progress.

Okay? If we can go back to the 50s, that's what he wants. Let's get some whole. You're like virtue signaling. I'm virtue signaling because I'm pro-nuclear? Yes. It's a luxury belief. You're promoting something where- Nuclear power is a luxury belief.

You heard it, you're first. Because they're going to put these things in poor communities. No, they're not. And so it's never going to affect your life. They're putting them next to data centers, Sachs. Everything is not identity politics. In like Oregon, like, yeah.

It's easy for you to say, oh, I support nuclear. Look how progressive I am. Look how smart I am. You haven't internalized the downsides. I just want cheap, abundant electricity, Sacks. That's what I want. Is everything identity politics for you, Sacks? Everything you see in the lens of poor and rich, everything.

I'm defending the poor. You're going to put these things in poor communities. You're genuflecting, Sacks. Looking out for the poor, looking out. Mr. Robin Hood over here. I'm defending the right of communities to say no to this. You are my favorite.

You're my favorite after all. I'm defending the right of local communities to say no to your science experiment, okay? That's what it comes down to. Oh, Freeberg. Freeberg is trying to put this episode 200. I love it. Wow. The 200 shows. Sack, let me ask you a serious question.

It's not serious when you start like that. If Trump loses, what's the next four years on this pod going to be like? What are we going to do here? He's moving to New Zealand. There's going to be like? What are we going to do here? We lose. He's moving to New Zealand. There's going to be lawfare all over the place. Absolutely. They're going to come for you.

Do you really think so, David? Yeah, I do. I mean, look, I'm definitely not the top of the list. Elon's at the top of the list, right? Yeah, he's a concern. He has no choice but to go all in. They're already doing lawfare against him. It's ridiculous.

But I think the point is just that if they're not defeated, they're going to keep doing it because there's no downside for it. I will comment on the California Coastal Commission ruling that was based on Elon's political tweets, which is why they stopped additional launches out of Vandenberg. First of all, how the California Coastal Commission has authority over Vandenberg and the operations just seems to me like there's something wrong. The Coastal Commission was set up with the Coastal Act in 1976 in California as a way to give the beaches back to the people and the public and create a commission to regulate

building along the beaches. It has since grown into effectively a much larger entity with much more authority, which potentially after the Chevron ruling in the Supreme Court may get peeled back and may get dialed down. We'll see what happens. But as of now, they have the ability to block launches out of Vandenbergh, which they did. And in their decision, they said it was because of Elon's political tweets. Again, starting at the beginning of the show about the success that they had with the Starship

this week, it's incredible. It deserves to be recognized on the merits of what they accomplished. But to bring in his political tweets to make a decision about the progress of SpaceX and allow public space to be used to further that cause and further that activity seems to me abhorrent and it's ridiculous. And it's exactly what's wrong with the bureaucratic morass that a lot of these institutions have grown into. And this was a split. They're going to be pro or con

SMRs. Exactly. Yeah. No, I'm serious. Do you do you think they're going to be con for sure? What the Coastal Commission does is they block everything. And they do pictures of the entire coastline. If you build like a shed on your beachfront property, they will know it and they come to you

and they're like, no sheds, you cannot build any structures on the beach. They're just like really, really hard core. It's a values decision that the state of California made in 1976. The state of California, the citizens voted and said, we want to preserve the coastline. And I think that that's a reasonable value for them to assume and vote for and it was a

majority vote. And so they established the Coastal Commission. But how the Coastal Commission extended into having authority over Vandenberg and launches from there for SpaceX to me, is part of this kind of administrative, you know, growth like we see all these administrative bureaucracies get started that have a very simple objective, preserve the California coastline, but now they have authority to determine whether or not launches can happen. And this is one person at the coastal commission referenced his tweets and the

vote was six, four to increase these. So who is this one person? In an official context, I think she was like retweeting it. There's like a tweet from her. Yeah, this is what I'm doing. She was taking credit for it. I mean, in a way, she's proud of it. She said the quiet part out loud. In a way she does a favor, which is she acknowledged that all of this lawfare against SpaceX and Elon is political. She basically pleaded

guilty to it. Look, she's proud of it because she doesn't think there's anything wrong with it. She thinks this is her job is as a bureaucrat, she's supposed to punish people who tweet things that you're not supposed to say. That basically is what it comes down to. And I mean, this is the truth about lawfare. They're using the agencies of the federal government

to exact reprisals against their political opponents. And if there's not a punishment for that, it's going to keep going. And they filed a, Elon's filed a lawsuit and it's a six-word decision. So I think there's... By the way, the Biden-Harris administration could stop that. They could say no more lawfare, but they don't do that because the tone was set from the top. And Trump is saying he's gonna be a dictator He's gonna do a bunch of lawfare when he gets in there. So Gotta settle it down. That's exactly what he said. This has been another

Okay, Jake, you can't wrap a show like that. That's just not cool. I'm just trying to wrap up so we can move on Well, then don't make a slight comment. It's like just do something else Talk about something else besides Trump at the end like I'm just giving my opinion I'm not allowed to get my opinion on the show. What are you grateful for right now in your life? I'm grateful for you doing all the work on the events and making them spectacular. I'm really excited for Saks Live from Mar-a-Lago.

Oh God. I will totally go to Mar-a-Lago for election night. Can we get a booth there? That would be hilarious. You keep saying it. It's not clear you would be invited. Yeah, exactly. Of course I I'm invited Trump

Everybody neither you nor I gave the hundreds of thousands of dollars per ticket to go to dinner with Trump loves me. He enjoyed his time. It's very selective for friends Okay, I'll do it remote You don't want Jake out there Go with me. Wait, when is the I don't want to be I don't want to be at a party I mean, okay, I'll do it remote. That's fine. You can do it remote. That's fine. You don't want Jake out there? That's fine. Go with me. Wait, when is the election?

I don't want to be at a party I'm not invited to. That's for sure. It's in two weeks and three days, Portis. Yeah, coming up. November 5th. Please, I'm just wondering. It's like just waiting every day for it to drop, whatever it's gonna be.

I just hope whoever wins, wins like significantly. So we don't- Significantly. Yeah, please. Please win by- Totally by 30 electoral votes. Four Supreme Court decisions. Right now, the only candidate who looks like he could get a landslide is Trump. Otherwise it's gonna be very close.

So you're rooting for Trump if you want a landslide. I mean, I'm going to, I'm going to reveal my vote on the election special. I will have my vote. That's gonna be really hard to figure out. I'm sure the audience will be held in great suspense by that. Did you guys vote yet?

Did you guys vote yet? I have my ballot on my desk here. Yeah. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go. All right, everybody. This has been another wonderful episode. Oh, meetups.

There are 200 episode meetups happening. Thank you to all the fans who got together take pictures and share them on social and at mention us all in comm slash meetups every couple episodes. Fans get together around the world and talk about their favorite bestie. It's typically free bird. And we'll see you next time. Bye bye. Love you guys. Bye bye. What your winners line? What your winners line? What your winners line? Besties are gone That's my dog taking a notice in your driveway

Sex Oh man My avid Azure will meet me at the latest We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy cause they're all just useless It's like this sexual tension that they just need to release somehow What your the B? You're the B. What? You're the B. B? We need to get merch.

The B's are back. I'm doing all in. I'm doing all in.