All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E36: New FTC Chair, breaking up big tech, government silent spying, Jon Stewart, wildfires & more

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

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 Show Notes: 00:00 Besties intro 03:37 Lina Khan appointed to the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission 07:02 Will Lina break up big tech? Which one will be first? 18:02 Potential repercussions to consumers 27:48 Sacks’ antitrust experience at PayPal vs. Ebay, Visa & MasterCard 29:50 Google’s multi-trillion dollar data trove 35:40 The U.S. government's capability to silently take data while “gagging” Big Tech 53:32 COVID’s psychic shadow, Friedberg’s office landlord is still requiring masks 1:00:17 Jon Stewart’s lab leak bit on Stephen Colbert’s show 1:10:04 California’s wildfire risk increasing with climate change 1:20:57 Besties summer plans Referenced in the show: Chamath's 2019 Annual Letter re: Big Tech breakup https://www.socialcapital.com/annual-letters/2019 Big Tech Gag Order (mentioned by Sacks) https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/13/microsoft-brad-smith-trump-justice-department-gag-orders/ Obama Administration Record Seizure (mentioned by Sacks) https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/us/phone-records-of-journalists-of-the-associated-press-seized-by-us.html?referringSource=articleShare California Forest fire maps (mentioned by Friedberg) https://twitter.com/NWSBayArea/status/1398474379214802951/photo/1 Jon Stewart On Vaccine Science And The Wuhan Lab Theory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfejgwbDQ8 #allin #tech #news

What's going on, sax LP meeting? Is it an LP meeting or are you going to lunch, Peter Tio? What a little layer of food. What's going on? It's 9 a.m. You must be, there must be a call going on here. It's a date, sax. Every week, but Timoth is in Italy, another button gets undone. This is definitely... Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody.

Welcome to another episode of the All in podcast Episode 36. Back with us today on the program, the Queen of Kinwa, science, spectacular, Friedberg is with us again with leading off last episode Friedberg, with a great Friedberg science monologue. The crowd went crazy for it. How does it feel coming off that epic performance in Episode 35? Tell us us what were you thinking going into the game? And yeah. Well, I was thinking I would talk about the Alzheimer's drug approval at Biogen. And I felt like I did it when we were done. Great. Yeah. It's just it's like literally interviewing Kauai Leonard after like a 50 point game. Okay. And with us, Rayneman, David Sacks, with layers for players. He's been styled and groomed, and he's in some random hotel room. How are you doing, Rayneman?

Good, good. I'm not in the hotel room. Oh, your home just happens to look like a five-star resort. God, I forgot that. And give us an idea coming into today's game with the layers you obviously are here to dominate and get your monologues up Gotta be hard for you to look at the stat line and see yourself trailing in monologues behind the dictator I'm preferring to all in statistics. Yeah, where some maniac is breaking down how many minutes we each talk Jason I'm really happy with my performance for me. It's about quality and not quantity. I like to stick in, stick in jab. Okay, got it. What are you talking about right now?

What, what, what, what is the state of the deal? What is the, what the hell are you talking about right now? There is a Twitter account done. You know how the, the all-in stands have a ton of skills. Like, there is an audience for this podcast that has more skills than, you know, it's like the 5% of the most skilled people in the world listen to this podcast. So, in addition to doing the merge, in addition to doing, who's the guy Henry who does all those incredible videos with animations. In addition to those, and we've got castor. Yeah, castor. Every bell castor crushing those things are great.

Those are amazing and then of course you have young Spielberg who led the charge, dropping incredible, credible tracks. And now we have this new crew that is analyzing somebody put, you know, we'll put in the show notes, a link to it, but they do some type of AI analysis of the audio files and they tell us who had the most monologues and then the running time and then historic running time. So they're actually looking at it, trying to figure out who is speaking the most and they thought Freedberg was going to run away with the episode, but it kind of disappeared in the second half of the game.

And Schmoth obviously came around the corner and took his 27%. But they don't have a pie chart of how much we each taught. the second half of the game. And Schmoth obviously came around the corner and took his 27%. But they don't have a pie chart of how much we each taught. I always have a very strong first and third quarter. Yes, absolutely. And then he gets frustrated when he passes the ball and somebody misses a shot.

It's kind of like LeBron in the early days. So kicking off today, Lena Conn has been confirmed to the FTC with bipartisan support, interesting. And this is obviously gonna be be a challenge for big tech on Tuesday. The Senate voted 69 to 28 to confirm. Lina Khan who is a very well established critic of big tech. And this is obviously really unique because she's 32 years old and she's leading the FTC, which is unbelievable. I did a little research on her and watch some videos. She's basically written two amazing papers and the first paper came out in 2017,

Amazon's Antitrust paper. The second one came out in June and was about the separation of platforms and commerce. And when you hear her speak, she is incredibly credible and knowledgeable. It is as if one of the four of us were discussing this. She could come into this podcast and speak credibly about Amazon's businesses as opposed to the shirades we saw at different hearings where the senators and congresspeople just absolutely had no idea what they're talking about. Some of the items I picked up from a talk she gave in Aspen is that she formed a lot of these opinions by talking to venture capitalists who were concerned about

Amazon's dominance and other companies and the competitive space. And she is looking at consumer welfare, one of the lenses of antitrust, which I'm sure David Sachs will have some thoughts on, as our resident attorney here, and the framing of those in terms of harm of the lenses of antitrust, which we'll, I'm sure David Sacks will have some thoughts on as our resident attorney here. And the framing of those in terms of harm of the consumer, she believes there's other harm that happens. And she thinks one remedy is to kill Amazon basics because the marketplace shouldn't own the goods as well. She's concerned about cloud computing, a consolidation because that creates fragility. And that is another type of consumer harm while she freely admits that prices have gone down, services are free, and this is a consumer benefit. So she wants to rethink the entire concept. And she is savvy. She brought up

Facebook buying a NOVO, the reportedly spyware VPN to give them a little advantage as to what was being used on phones and maybe give them a little product roadmap information. She also brought up Amazon studying the cells of other products to inform Amazon basics acclaim that Amazon says they don't do but everybody knows they do do because all that information is publicly available. She talked about Amazon's VC arm using data to invest in buying companies. Why wouldn't they? That makes total sense. That's great signal for them. She seems to want Amazon Web Services spun out, which I think would just double the value of it, or maybe at 50% of the value of it.

And she gave very pragmatic examples, like maybe separating Google Maps from Android. And when you turn on your Android phone, you would have to install Maps, or maybe you would pick from the different maps that are out there, different programs and that there would be integration in them and people could swap out, you know, a map quest or Apple Maps in their Google searches. So a lot of actually very interesting, pragmatic approaches and she doesn't think these need to be decade-long lawsuits. She thinks this is going to be a negotiation and that people will kind of work together on it. But this is all with the backdrop of partisan politics and one group of people looking at this through the lens of wealth

and inequality and another group looking at it through censorship, sacks, since you are our counsel here. What are your thoughts on this appointment? Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing is that, you know, Lena Khan is the Bernie approved candidate. She is liked by the progressive left, but at the same time, she got 21 Republicans to support her. And so this nomination, you know, sailed through confirmation.

I think what she's saying, what she's saying, I think there's a very good argument to it. I've said similar things in the past, which is basically saying, especially in the case of Amazon, you've got this company, Amazon that controls essential infrastructure, AWS, the whole distribution supply chain going all the way from the port to warehouses to logistics and distribution. That is going to be owned by a scaled monopoly player. You have a massive economies of scale. It's pretty clear they're going to dominate that. And what they're doing is systematically going category by category and using the monopoly profits they make by owning the core infrastructure and subsidizing their entry into each of these new categories that Amazon basics and others.

And she calls that predatory pricing and she's afraid that Amazon is going to end up dominating every category that you could build on top of this core infrastructure. I think it's actually a pretty valid concern. I think you see something analogous happening with Apple and Google and the app stores. We had a congressional hearing pretty recently in which you had Spotify on other apps complaining about what Apple was doing to them saying they are making our service non-viable with the 30% rate that they're charging. You remember Bill Gurley had a great post about this saying

just because you can charge a 30% rate doesn't mean you should. Right. Now we're seeing this blowback from this massive 30% rate. And you had Spotify saying, look, Apple is doing this to basically make us infeasible relative to Apple music. So I think there is a legit point here, which is that if you own the monopoly platform, the sort of essential infrastructure, you cannot use it to basically take over every application that can be built on top of that platform. That I think is a very appropriate use of antitrust law. And I think, so I think that's the good here.

Now, I think that there are some concerns or some potential downsides. The downside that I see is that we used to judge antitrust law in terms of consumer welfare. There was a limiting principle to the actions of government, which is you would just look at prices and the effect on prices. Here, the sort of movement that Lena Conner presents is so-called hipster antitrust movement, they're concerned about power,

and they want to restructure markets to avoid sort of concentrations of power. I don't see the limiting principle there. And so I think what the- Would market share be a limiting principle? Well, it would be a limiting principle in terms of who you could take action on, but it wouldn't be a limiting principle in terms of how you would restructure the market.

And I think what we're in for over the next few years is potentially a hyper-politicization of big tech markets. I think these 20-minute Republicans might soon feel like the dog who caught the bumper in the sense that yes, they're finally going to have the regulation of big tech they've been calling for, but they might not like all of the results because we because what could happen is a very intrusive meddling by government in the markets of technology and it could go well beyond sort of this this this gatekeeper principle that we've been talking about that I think what would be a valid reason to regulate. Jamal, I think, what would be a valid reason to regulate?

Jamal? I think she has to be careful in focusing on Amazon. So if you break down anti-trust law, there are really three big buckets where the attack vectors are, and I'm not going to claim to be an expert, but I think they're relatively easy to understand. So you have the first principal body body which is called the Sherman Act. That's the thing that everybody's looked at. And that's sort of where most current antitrust enforcement action has failed on tech companies because it largely looks at

the predatory nature of pricing power that certain companies have. And you have to remember, this thing was written in the 1800s And so you know what did people do when they control things? They just they drove prices up Tech does the exact opposite right they constantly drive prices down and What's counterintuitive is it turns out that in the olden days? Driving prices up drove out competition Today driving prices down drives out competition. So you make Gmail, infinite storage, nobody else can compete with Gmail. You make photos completely subsidized,

you make certain music products effectively free, and you subsidize that. You create enormous amounts of content, blah, blah, blah. So you have the Sherman Act. Then somewhere along the way we realized, okay, we need to add something we created this thing called the Clayton Act. That was around M&A, right? We added to that a lot of folks that are listening, probably have heard of Harts, Scott Rudino, HSR. We've all gone through it, right?

On M&A events, we have to file these HSR clearances when you make big investments. For example, you know, I just made a climate change thing. We have to file HSR clearances when you make big investments. For example, I just made a climate change thing. We had to file HSR. And then there's this FTCA, which is the Federal Trade Commission Act. That is where she can get, to use a poker term, a little frisky. Why? Because the FTCA has these two specific things, which says you can have an unfair method of competition or an unfair or deceptive act or practice. Now it falls on her and her team to basically build the strongest case around those two dimensions. And my only advice to her, I wrote this in 2019 in my investor letter as well, just thinking about the breakdown of Big Tech. If you're going to go after these guys, that's the body of law that probably is the most defensible, but you probably have to start, you know, whether you like it or not, with Facebook or Google. And the reason is

there are more examples how you can use that language under the FTCA to give those folks a hard time. I think it's much harder. The example would be Chimath that we are giving away this product, losing money on it, to keep you in our store and moat you into our advertising network, etc. That's an example, yeah. Or we then, because then, when you have control, then you can show that then the first part, the Sherman Act part, kicks in. Why? So you've seen 15 or 20 years of Google Facebook, less Apple, by the way, using their edge to decrease price. And for the first time in the last quarter, both of these two companies, and they were the only two a big tech that announced an increase in pricing right they saw a diminishing of cpm inventory and so they had to figure out ways to grow inventory as users started to stagnate and what they really said is we're ramping up cpm's and cpm's I think we're up 28 30% in a quarter. Yeah. And there's a lot of competition right now for Ed. If you put these two ideas

together, which is step one is you surreptitiously basically take all the cost out of the system and then step two raise price over time. There's probably something there. Uh, Friedberg, when we look at her age and her obvious deep, deep knowledge, do you see that as an overall plus? I mean, obviously, if, you know, David framed her as the Bernie approved candidate, but then conceded that 28 Republicans are backing her. What do you, what do you think about the mass of credibility she has freeberg in terms of she's actually understands this deeply? Clearly. I mean, I'm sure she's not dumb. If that, if that's what you're asking, I'm not sure. Well, I mean, it's a 32-year-old.

I mean, have we seen an appointment like that before? I mean, I don't know if that's... Yeah, that's good for her. Yeah. So, I just feel like there's a bit of a cycle underway where we have this kind of anti-wealth, anti-wealth accumulation sentiment as an undercurrent right now. You know, obviously, Bernie and Elizabeth Warren and others are key vocal proponents of

change that's needed to keep this kind of wealth disparity from continuing to grow. And one of the solutions is to reduce the monopolistic capacity of certain business models, specifically in technology. The downside that I don't think is realized and that inevitably comes with this action under this new kind of business model of the technology age or the digital age is the damage to consumers. And so, you know, as Timoth and David pointed out, like historically, antitrust has been about protecting the consumer.

And the irony is the more monopoly or the more monopolistic or the more market share Amazon gains, the cheaper things get for consumers. And it's unfair to small businesses and to business owners and to competitors, but consumers do fundamentally benefit. And so the logical argument she made in her paper that was widely distributed a few years ago was around this notion that in this new world, it's not about consumer harm, and we need to look past the impact of consumers and look more at the fact that this company maybe prevents innovation and prevents competition. But ultimately, if the consumer is harmed in the resolution of that concern, we're not

going to wake up to it for a while. Then consumers one day are going to wake up, and they're going to be like, wait a second, why am I paying five bucks for Gmail? Why am I paying an extra $10 for shipping to get my Amazon products brought to me every day? All the things that I think we've taken for granted in the digital age with the advent of these call it monopolistic business models where they accumulate market share and they can squeeze pricing and keep people out and the bigger they get, the cheaper they get and therefore it's harder to compete.

Consumers have benefited tremendously. I think all of us would be hard pressed to say, I would love to pay ten bucks a month for Gmail, I'd love to pay for Facebook, and at the end of the day, these models, I'd love to pay more for shipping with Amazon. And so, you know, it becomes a value question, right? What do you value more? Do you value the opportunity for competition and innovation in the business world? Or do you value as a consumer better pricing? And I don't think that we're really having that debate. And I think that that debate will inevitably kind of arise over the next

couple of years. If in Friberg, how much does it kind of play out? And I think to be clear, Friberg, what you're saying is this is driven by the extraordinary wealth of Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, et cetera. It's easy to pinpoint that problem and then not involve the repercussions to consumers. If you try and change how business operates in a free market system and these businesses are successful

because they have customers that like their own. And they drive in a competitive way of pricing down and they prevent people from coming in and competing not by entering into contracts and antitrust enforcement, all this sort of stuff. They're doing it because they're scaling and offering lower prices.

I mean, this, like Peter Tiel and Mark and recent have separately argued for this in really intelligent ways, probably in a far more articulated way than I can. But, and they did this early on, which is, we want to find businesses that can become monopolies. Because if you can reduce your pricing and improve your pricing power with scale, it's going to be harder and harder for someone to compete.

And therefore, the capital theory is rush a bunch of capital into these businesses, help them scale very quickly. I mean, this is obviously the basis of Uber and others. And then get really big, really fast. Create the mode. Create the mode. Drop the pricing and then no one can compete with your pricing. Consumers benefit and you've created the big business and you've locked everyone.

Okay, so let me go around the horn here and frame this for everybody. Let's assume that Big Tech does get broken up. This is broken up. This is an exercise. We assume it gets broken up and YouTube and Android are spun out. Instagram WhatsApp are spun out. This is an exercise. We assume it gets broken up and YouTube and Android are spun out, Instagram WhatsApp or Spine Out, AWS is spun out and app stores are allowed on Apple's platform iOS for the first time. I want to know if this is good, bad or neutral for the following two people. So these breakups occur. is it good, bad, or neutral for consumers, and then two, is it good, bad, or neutral for startups, sacks? I generally would lean towards saying yes, I mean, it a lot depends on

better neutral for each party startups and for consumers. I think it could ultimately be good for for both, but it really depends on how it's done. it could ultimately be good for both, but it really depends on how it's done. And I think there is a big risk here that this just generates into sort of hyper politicization. You get intensive amounts of lobbying by Big Tech in Washington that what happens is, you know, you have a good cop bad cop where Lena Khan just becomes the bad cop. She's there to kind of keep big tech in line, threatens to break them up. And then the good cop is, you know, Biden and the administration. And then they become the protection

and the extortion racket they raise on, you know, ungodly amounts of money. And really it'll be a bananza for all elected officials because now big techs have to increase its donations even more. Super cynical. Wow. That's the cynical take. So we could end up with something much worse than we have now. But but I think the legit I think the words you're going to hear a lot. Okay. Our common carrier because what she seems to be saying is look if you're a techman

opley that controls core infrastructure we need to regulate you like a common carrier. You cannot summarily deny service to your competitors who are downstream applications built on top of your platform. Conservatives can get behind that because that is the argument they've been making about Facebook cutting off free speech is you are a speech utility. You should be regularly as a common carrier. You cannot cut off people summarily. You cannot discriminate against people who should be allowed to have free speech on your platform.

And so I think there is, I think the left and the right here can cut a deal where they regulate these guys, these big tech companies, it's common carriers. I think that is what we're headed towards. So bakery can deny service as we talked about previous issue to a gay couple who wants a cake because it's a tiny little company and there's other choices. But when we're talking about Facebook and Twitter, there are not other choices. And once you're removed like Trump has been from the public square, there is no recourse. You are essentially zero out. Chimath is a good for startups, bad for startups, neutral, same thing for consumers. If one chunk of every company got cleavered

off, it's unanimously good for startups in any scenario in which they get involved. And I think in most cases in which the government gets involved, it's good for consumers as well. And why in both cases? So for startups, it's just because I think right now we have a massive human capital sucking sound that Big Tech creates in the ecosystem, which is that there is an entire generation of people that are basically unfortunately frittering away their most productive years, getting paid what seems to them like a lot of money, but what is effectively just, you know, payola to not go to a competitor or go to a startup

by big tech. So to explain that clearly, for example, if you're a machine learning person, right? Those machine learning people, you know, can get paid $752 million a year to stay at Google. And instead, they won't go to a startup because they take the bird in the hand, right? You multiply that by 100 or 150,000 very talented, you know, technical people. And that's actually what you're seeing every day.

Now, those numbers are actually much higher. If you're a specific AI person, you can get paid $5, $10 million a year. My point is they could have started to start up. They could have, and frankly, they just, they look, let's be honest, they go to Google Facebook and whatever. I don't think anybody sees the real value of what they're doing in those places, except getting paid. Now, they're making a rational economic decision for themselves, and so nobody should blame

them for that. But if startups had more access to those people, or if those engineers finally said, you know what, enough's enough, I'm actually going to go and try something new, that's net additive to the ecosystem. It's net additive to startups, right? That's for them. And then for consumers, I think the reason why it's positive is that it'll start to show you in which cases you had been giving away something that you didn't realize was either valuable or you didn't realize you were giving away

in return for all of these product subsidies that you were getting. And I think that's the next big thing that's happening. You can see it in the enormous amount of investment, Apple, for example, is making in both advertising the push to privacy as well as implementing the push to privacy. This last WWDC, they really threw the gauntlet down. They were really trying to blow up the advertising business models of Google and Facebook. As consumers become more aware of that, they're probably willing to pay more. So a simple example is there are a lot of people now

who will pay higher prices for food if they know it to be organic, right? There are people who will pay higher prices for electricity or for an electric car because of its impact or the lack they're of in the climate. So it's not to say that people always want cheaper, faster, better. Right. I mean, sometimes people will buy an iPhone because it's obviously protecting

their privacy and they know it's not an ad-base model. And in fact, Apple is now making that part of their process. So, uh, Freeberg, I asked the other gentleman, uh, if they thought some large unit being chopped off of every company YouTube AWS Instagram you pick it would be a net positive for startups or negative or neutral and the same thing for consumers. What do you think? Which gentleman did you ask? I mean, sex. I was specifically referring to the ones who are wearing layers. Hello, sir. I'm using the term lightly. So if you guys go back a few years ago, you'll remember there were these, I think there were congressional hearings and Jeremy Stopelman from Yelp was pretty vocal

about how Google was redirecting search engine traffic to their own kind of reviews and they were pulling Yelp content off the site. But then they said to Yelp, if you don't want us to pull your content, you can turn the web crawler toggle off and we won't crawl your site, but your site is publicly available,

we can crawl it and we show snippets on our homepage, but then their argument was, well, you're using our content to drive your own reviews, and they made this whole kind of case that Google's kind of monopoly in search was harming their ability to do business. The counter argument was, well, if you guys have a great service, consumers will go to your app directly or your website directly to get reviews. They won't go to Google.

It created a little bit of this kind of noise for a while. I think there was some follow-up, and this is all very much related because ultimately, if he was able to get Google to stop providing a review service, his business would do better because Google would effectively redirect search traffic to his site as opposed to their own internal site. So it is inevitably the case that in-house apps or in-house services that compete with third-party services when you're a platform business are, you know, if they're removed, it's certainly

going to benefit the competitive landscape, which is typically startups. You know, imagine if Apple didn't have Apple Maps pre-installed on the iPhone. Everyone would download and use Google Maps, right? I mean, they're like, yeah, MapQuest, whatever. Or MapQuest or whatever. And so, you know, or whatever startup came along in like ways and said, hey, we've got a better map. But because they have this ability to kind of put that Apple Maps in front of you as a consumer, and it's a default on your phone, you're more likely to just click on it

and start using it and you're done. It certainly opens up this window, but I think the question is, what's ultimately best for the consumer? If you believe that consumers will choose what's best for themselves, you're starting to kind of manipulate with the market a bit.

And, Saks, I don't know, I think you've got a different point of view on this. But... Yeah. Well, I'm a free market type of guy, but my experience at PayPal really changed my thinking on this because PayPal was a startup that launched effectively as an involuntary app on top of the eBay market at that time. eBay had a monopoly on the auction market, and that was the key sort of beachhead market for online payments. So we launched

the top of eBay. We were constantly trying to dislodge us and remove us from their platform. And really, the only thing keeping them from just switching us off was an antitrust thread. We actually spun up, you could call it a lobbying operation, where we would send information to the FTC and the DOJ and say, listen, you've got this auction monopoly here that's taking anti-competitive actions against us, this little startup. And so we were able to rally the saber and sort of brush them back from the plate from taking a, you know, a much more dramatic action against us. And frankly, we did something kind of similar with Visa Mastercard because PayPal was essentially an application on top of Visa Mastercard as well. We offered merchants the ability to accept Visa Mastercard, but also PayPal payments, which were gradually

eating into and supplanting the credit card payments. out payments, which were gradually eating into and supplanting the credit card payments. And so, you know, Visa Mass Card had a very dim view of PayPal, and they were constantly, you know, they were constantly making noise about switching us off. And I do think that without the threat of antitrust hanging over these big monopolies or duopolis, it would have been very hard for us as a startup to get the access to these networks that we needed. And so it really kind of changed my thinking about it because, you know, if you let these giant monopolies run, run, run, run a mock, they will absolutely stifle innovation.

100% yeah, they will become gatekeepers. And so you have to have the threat of Anti-trust action hanging over their heads or you will stifle innovation Absolutely, I mean if you just look at the interesting Google flights over time I'm looking at a chart right now. We'll put it into the notes Google flights, you know, I know some of us don't like commercial anymore But you know for somebody who's looking for flights on a regular basis, watching Google intercept flight information, put up Google flights, and it's an awesome product.

And just Expedia and bookings.com. That was a company called ITA software based out of Boston, and ITA was acquired by Google. ITA was the search engine behind flight search for most companies. It was like 70 PhDs. They were all statistics guys. And they basically built this logistical model that identified flights and pricing and all this sort of stuff. Wow. So they should never have been aligned. Well, they created a white label search capability that they then provided and they were making plenty of money providing this as a white label search capability to Expedia and Kayak and all the online travel agencies.

And Google wanted to be in that business because travel search was obviously such a big vertical. And rather than just buy a travel search site, they bought the engine that powers travel search for most of the other customers. So gangster. And then they also revealed the results in their own search result homepage

Which effectively cut off the OTAs and the OTAs are big spenders on Google ads So basically Google this is how nefarious it is if I'm hearing what you're saying free bird correctly They watched all this money being made by those OTAs They watched where they got their data from then they bought their data source and then they decided, you know what, we won't take your cost per click money, we'll just take your entire business. I don't know. So let me just say it another way. What's best for consumers?

So does a consumer, because what happens a lot in online... But never the dictatorships, I guess, that don't want to make money. In online advertising, there are a lot of these ad arbitrage businesses, is one way to think about it, where a service provider will pay for ads on Google to get traffic. The ads will come to their site, and then they will either make money on ads or kind of sell that consumer.

So that's the way. And so that's effectively what the OTAs were, is they became online search engine intermediaries that were arbitraging Google's ad costs versus what they could get paid for the consumer and so Google, look at this and they're like wait a second, we're only capturing half the pie and consumers don't want to have to click through three websites to buy a flight or buy a hotel and by the way if they did they would keep doing it. So why don't we just give them the end result right up front

and then consumers will be happier the less time they have to spend clicking through sites and looking at other city ads the happier they'll be. And the product just works incredibly well. Consumers, consumers, lives, less arduous. Yeah, but building a power base that then could make their lives miserable. I'll say,

What I think Lena Khan is saying though, is you can't just look at the short-term interests of consumers. You've got to look at their long-term interests. What's in the long-term interests consumers just have competition? In the short-term interest. What's in the long-term interest consumers does have competition. In the short term, these giant monopolies can engage in predatory pricing to lower the cost

for consumers. And so just looking at the price on a short-term basis isn't enough. And they can trick people to giving them something else that they don't know to be valuable. So in the case of these, a lot of these companies, what are they doing? They're tricking them to get enormous amounts

of user information, personal information, user-generated content, and they get nothing for it. And then on the back of that, if you're able to build a trillion, look at the value that YouTube has generated, economic value, and then try to figure out how much of that value is really shared with the creator community inside of YouTube

I'm guessing it's less than 50 basis points 55% a revenue, but you're saying downstream with all that data Google's making a massive amount of money. I just want to if you if you impute the value of all of the PII that Google Basically, yeah, I personally the PII, the Google basically gets, personally identifiable information, all the cookies that they drop, all that information, and you equate it to an economic enterprise value, not necessarily in yearly revenue. Like a discounted cash flow over 20 years, you would be in the trillions and trillions of dollars. And then if you discounted the same 20 years of revenue share that they give to their content producers, it will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars at best.

And so you're talking about an enormous trade-off where Google basically has built a multi-trillion dollar asset and has leaked away less than 10 or 15% of the value. But that's an example where they are giving people something that they think is valuable. But in return, they're able to build something much, much more valuable. Right. I just want to address, like, Sachs' point, which is the regulators are now going to start to think about the long-term interest consumer over the short-term interest of the consumer. As effectively giving the regulatory throttle to elected officials. And this means that you're now giving another throttle, another controlled joystick to folks that may not necessarily come from business,

that may not necessarily have the appropriate background, and that may have their own kind of political incentives and motivations to make decisions about what is right and what is wrong for consumers over the long term. And ultimately those are going to be value judgments, right? There's no determinism here. There's no right or wrong. They're going to be decisions based on the kind of opinion and nuance of some elected people. And so it is a very dangerous and kind of slippery slope to end up in this world where the judgment of some regulator about what's best for consumers long term versus the cold hard facts. Oh, prices went out, prices didn't, you know, but really saying, well, this could affect you in the future in this way. Starts to become kind of a really, you know, scary and slippery slope if we kind of embrace

this new regulatory order. All right. Moving on, big news this week. Apple had a gag order. It has been revealed. This is unbelievable. It's pretty crazy. And we only have partial information here, but the Justice Department subpoenaed Apple in February of 2018 about an account that belonged to Donald McGann, who obviously was the Trump's White House counsel at the time. And obviously it was part of the campaign. He is very famously known for being interviewed by Mueller.

And at that, this is the time period, by the way, we're talking about here in February of 2018, when Mueller was investigating Matterfort, who of course was super corrupt and went to jail, and then was suddenly pardoned. Because he was also involved in the campaign in 2016, it's possible that this hadn't related to Mueller. It's unknown at this time.

Many other folks were also caught up in this dragnet. Rod Rossenstein was a second and it's unclear if the FBI agents were investigating whether McGam was the leaker or not. Trump had previously ordered McGam, the previous June to have the Justice Department remove Mueller, which again refused and threatened to resign. And again, later revealed that he had in fact leaked his resignation threat to the Washington Post, according to the Times, disclosure that agents had collected data of a sitting White House counsel, which they kept secret for years is extraordinary. Go ahead, Sacks.

Well, I just think, let's get all the facts out here. I think you're missing some of the key facts. So the Justice Department under Trump starts this investigation into leaks of class of information. They're on a mole hunt effectively, and they start making, they subpoena, the DOJ subpoenas records from Apple, and it goes very broad. And they end up subpoenaing the recordsJ subpoenas records from Apple and it goes very broad and they end up subpoenaing the records, not just of McGand, who's the White House Council, which is very bizarre and curious, so they'll be investigating their own White House Council. But they also... Well, it was a little shift, actually.

Yes, but they're also subpoena records of Adam Schiff and Swallwell and members of the House Intelligence Committee. And so you have now an accusation, which is being breathlessly reported on CNN and MSNBC that here you had the Trump administration investigating its political enemies and using the subpoena power of the DOJ with Apple's compliance to now spy on their political enemies. Those are some big jumps. those are some big jumps. Those are some big jumps.

Yeah, and those are some big jumps because according to Pete Bajara and some other folks who are in the industry who have done these actual subpoenas, they could have been subpoenaing, you know, one of Manafort's corrupt partners in crime. And then those people, he could have been talking to many people in the Trump administration

and then subsequently family members and others. So he might have not been the target, he could have been caught up in the metadata of other people. So this might not be Trump saying, get me his iPhone records. It could be, there's some dirty person, they know they're dirty and that person had reached out to other people

and they might have even done one more hop from itch math thoughts. I mean, okay, that's one version. And then, you know, the other version, which is important is you subpoena your own lawyer by going to Apple, getting basically, God knows what data associated with this man's account. And then, you know, Institute of the gag order on that company so that they can neither tell the person until now when the gag order expired, nor tell anybody else, nor have any recourse to the extent that they think that this is illegitimate. That to me, smells really fishy.

And so, you know, like, there are other mechanisms that that we know of, like, physical requests and other things that these big companies have to deal with all the time. This, at least the way that it's written and how it's been reported is something outside of the pale. And so I think you have to deal with it with this question of like, what the hell was going on over there? It does seem like they were going,, maybe, mull hunting, more nefariously, witch hunting, but they were trying to pin it on people, and they may have used this blanket, sort of deniable plausibility of the Russia, you know, in Brolio, but really what these guys were doing, they were investigating anybody that they thought was a threat And that is a really scary thing to have in a democracy and then the fact that these big tech companies

Basically just turned it over and didn't have any recourse to protect the user or to inform the public Forget Trump for a second. I think we don't Necessarily want that to be the precedent that holds going forward Yeah, and the interesting thing here is that, SACS, Jeff Sessions, Rosenstein, and Barr all say they're unaware of this. So, what would be the charitable reason they were unaware of it, or what would be the nefarious reason? Or is that important at all?

Well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, because that's really strange, that they would go after the White House Council and Adam Schiff, and those top three people would have no idea. Are they lying? I mean, what's next? Are we going to basically go to a point where like, every single post that one makes on Facebook is basically surveilled. If you make an anonymous post on Twitter, will you be tracked down? I remember like as much as everybody thinks there's anonymity on the internet, there really isn't.

And you should just completely assume that you are trackable, our being tracked, have been tracked. Everything is in the white open. It's just a matter of whether it's disclosed to you or not, or whether it's brought back to or not. So yeah. So look, I mean, I agree with Jamal that the stinks and it's, it's an invasion of people's civil liberties, but I would not make it too partisan because the Obama administration was engaging

in similar activity back in 2013. And I don't think people realize this. There's an old saying in Washington that the real scandal is what's legal. And the fact of the matter is that what the Trump administration did was certainly suspicious and it might have been politically motivated. We don't know, but it was legal. The DOJ convened a federal grand jury, got these, got these subpoenas, present them to Apple and got this information. And in a similar way, back in 2013, the Obama

administration did something similar. It's quite extraordinary. They subpoenaed the records of the AP. They for two months, they got the records of reporters and five branches of the AP and all their mobile records and they were on a mole hunt to try and find leakers of classified information. So the Trump administration basically did exactly what the Obama administration did. The only new wrinkle is that they'd only went after reporters.

They actually well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well So it is slightly different. I don't think it's that different in the sense that Trump used powers that were pioneered by the Obama administration. They just took them, they just took them. Well, in addition to that, in addition to that, when Obama did it, all the top brass at

the Department of Justice were aware of this. And in this case, you have three people who are running the Department of Justice. No, the Obama administration is. All claiming they don't know. No, in 2013, there's a New York Times article on this. I'm going to post on the show notes, but it said that when first of all, the AP was not informed about the subpoenas until a number of months later. So it was a secret seizure of records, same thing here with the gag order. And so you have people being investigated,

or even know they're being investigated, investigated, they can even get a lawyer spun up to oppose the invasion of their rights. Okay. I agree with you, but the attorney general knew about that. Maybe the attorney general did, but the White House claims that it didn't know. So in any event, I mean, look, what we, I, my view on this is that we shouldn't try to make this too partisan. What we have here is an opportunity to hopefully get some bipartisan legislation to fix the issue. And I think the fix should be this that when you investigate somebody, when you subpoena records from a big tech company, you have to notify them.

You should not be able to do that secretly because the fact of matter is that Apple and these other big tech companies don't have an incentive to oppose the subpoena. They're not your lawyer. And actually Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, had a great op-ed in the Washington Post that we should post, that we should put in the show notes, where he said these secret gag orders must stop. He said that in the old way of the government's subpoenaing records

is that you would have essentially offline records. You'd have a fall cabinet. And the government would come with a search warrant that present the search warrant to you, and then you could get a lawyer to oppose it. Well, they don't do that anymore because your records aren't in a fall cabinet somewhere. They're in the cloud. And so now they don't even go to the person who's being investigated. They just go to a big tech company, see the records, and then put a gag order on top of this. You don't even know you're being investigated. That's the part of it that's.

And by the way, it's even more pronunciating that, because to combine this with the previous story, what incentive does Apple have to say to an administration that could break them up? We're not going to cooperate. Of course. Zero incentive. They are not your agent in this, and here's the thing, those are your records.

They're in the cloud, but they're your records, and every other privacy context, we say those records belong to you, not to Big Tech. So why? This is why people's moving everything to your phone. But just reach this point, why should the government be able to do an end-around around you the target of the investigation go to big tech get your records from because they're not your records well first

of all they're not your records these companies tricked all of us by giving it to us for free so that we gave them all of our content they are fair point just that they are not just the custodian they are the trustee of our content, and it's a huge distinction in what they're allowed to do. And Jason brings up an incredible point, which is which is that of course they're now incentivized to have a back door and live under a gag order, because their defense in a back room is, you guys, you know, when in the light, somebody says we should break you up, in the dark they can say, guys, come on, we got a back room is, you guys, you know, when in the light, somebody says we should break you up, in the dark, they can say, guys, come on, we got a back door, you just come in, gag order us,

give us, we'll give you what you want, you want a honey pot, you don't want this thing all over the internet. And can you imagine how credible David that is to your point, because that is a body of concentrating power that I think is very scary. In fairness to Apple, Friedberg, they have locked down the phone and they've moved all of this information from the cloud or they're starting this process and saying, we're going to keep some amounts of data encrypted on your phone. And of course, with the San Bernadino shooting, they refused in a terrorist shooting, a known terrorist shooting, to not give a back door.

Well, that's a crazy standard. It's like, you know what? Okay, there was a San Bernie Dino shooter and they were like Nope, sorry. That's a bridge too far, but you know Don McGann and basically like, you know Political espionage. They're like here you go. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. How do you make these decisions? Let me let me ask you guys a question. Go ahead Fribber. Would you be? Could you see yourself thriving in a world where all of your information was completely publicly available, but also all of everyone else's information was completely publicly available? Yes. Oh, everybody has all their news on the web?

Is what you're saying? Everyone has their... Yes. Oh, everybody has all their new ads on the web. Is what you're saying? Everyone has their ad. There's a book by Stephen Baxter called The Light of Other Days. It's one of my favorite sci-fi books. I set it out to all of my investors. This last, we do like a book being every year. And I reread it recently.

But the whole point of the book is that there's like a wormhole technology that they discover and they can figure out how to like look in. You can boot up your computer and look in anywhere and see anything and hear anything you want. And so all of a sudden society has to transform under this kind of new regime of hyper transparency, where all information about everything is completely available. But I think the fear and the concern that we innately have with respect to loss of privacy is that there's a centralized or controlled power that has that information, but what if there was a world that you evolved to where all of that information is generally available quite broadly and i'm not advocating for this by the way i'm just wanting out that like the sensitivity we have is about our information being concentrated in the hands of either a government or a business. information being concentrated in the hands of either a government or a business. I think you have to accept the fact that more information is being generated about each of us every day than was being generated by us a few weeks ago or months ago or years

ago. Basically, in a few minutes, and everybody's the Truman show is what you're saying. Well, in a geometrically growing way, information, which we're calling PII or whatever is being generated about us. And I think the genies out of the bottle, meaning like the cost of sensors, the access to digital, the digital age and what it brings to us from a benefit perspective,

is creating information about us and a footprint about us that I don't think we ever kind of contemplated. But as that happens, the question is, where does that information go? Can you put that genie back in the bottle? And I think there's a big philosophical point, which is like, if you try and put the genie back in the bottle, you're really just trying to fight information, wants to be free, information, wants to grow.

What's the name of the book you were talking about there? The Light of Other Days by Stephen Bessester and Arthur C. Clark helped write it. But the book is most interesting about the philosophical implications of a world where all information is completely freely available. Transparent. Yeah, completely transparent. And so like, do we see ourselves, because I think there's two paths.

One is you fight this and you fight it and you fight it every which way, which is I want my PII locked up. I don't want anyone having access to it. Yada, yada, yada. You'll either see a diminishment of services or you will see. And the other one is you do a...

Or you'll see the selfie on Twitter, where you're taking a shirt off. Or you'll see this concentration of power where we all kind of freak out where the government or some business has all of our information. The other path is a path that society starts to recognize that this information's out there. There is.

You know, whatever it is. It's not just about PII here. This is about due process. This is about our fifth Amendment right to due process. You have the government secretly investigating people. They could never do this if they had to present you with a search warrant. They are doing an end run around that process

by going to Big Tech, just to put numbers on this. Big Tech is getting something like 400 subpoenas a week for people's records. They only oppose 4% of them. Why? They have no incentive to oppose them. How many of those you should be able to see? Do you know how many of those are secret or not? We don't know how many of them have a gag order. They are required to tell the target what happened, but not if there's a gag order attached to it. We don't know how many have a gag order. You should have the right to send your own lawyer to oppose the request not to go. If you want to see an amazing movie, the Lives of Others, which is about the State Security

Service in East Berlin, Germany, also known as the Stasi and the impact of literally in your apartment building. There are three people spying on the other 10 people and they're the postman and you know the housewife and the teacher and they're all tapped and secret We're recording to each other. It leads to chaos and bad feelings and obviously when East Berlin When the walk came down all of this came out and it was really dark and crazy Yeah, I mean look to me connect this to the Sunstrip because I, in my view, they're both very similar civil liberties issues, which is in the case of the censorship issue, you have the government doing an end run around the first amendment by demanding that big tech companies engage in censorship that the government itself could

not do. You have something very similar taking place here with these records. The government is demanding secrecy about its seizure of records. They're imposing that on big tech. They're making big tech do its dirty work for them. They can never do that directly if they had to go to the target of the investigation and ask for the and to submit and subpoena the records that way. So what you have here is a case where we don't only need to be protected against the power of big tech, we need to be protected against the power of government usurping the

powers of big tech to engage in, you know, behavior they couldn't otherwise engage in. And let's be honest, big tech and the government are overlapping and incahutes or they're in some, yeah, they're in some really crazy dance. The money is flowing freely from lobbyists and- It's a very, very complicated relationship. It's a very complicated relationship. It's a very complicated relationship. All right, seven day average for COVID deaths

is now at 332. Finding cases of people who have had COVID is now becoming like almost shocking. I don't know if you guys saw, but the point guard Chris Paul, who was having an incredibly winning season in the NBA, he basically cut COVID. They said he was vaccinated, so it could be a mild case, but he's been pulled out indefinitely and he's about to play in the Western conference finals. So it's pretty crazy. And Freeberg, obviously, California's opened up after 15 months, and we were the first to shut down the last open up, and we were hit the least,

I think, of any state or amongst the least of any... certainly the least of any large state, and you're being asked to still wear a mask at your office. I'm also being asked to take off my shoes when I get on an airplane. Yeah. 20 years later. And I don't think Al-Qaeda exists anymore. Yeah, maybe some... Yeah, maybe parts of it.

Explain what's happening to you in the Presidio, which is a lovely state park here in California under the Golden Gate. Well, my office in the Presidio. California, San Francisco, County and the federal government have all removed mask mandates, but our landlord has determined in their judgment that everyone should still wear a mask to go to work. And so to go into my rented office and work, I have to wear a mask. And I think it's an issue for a lot of people, like those are people that, I've been probably a couple of restaurants this week, and you go to some restaurants,

and everyone's just chilling, the employees are not wearing masks. There's other restaurants where they're being told they have to keep wearing masks by their manager, their boss. And so this brings up this big question, which is like we've now got the kind of psychic shadow of COVID that's good.

It's going to it's going to cast a very long shadow. You predicted it. You predicted it. And and so people that that are in power want to continue to kind of impress upon, you know, whatever, you know, employees or tenants or what have you they might have in whatever they deemed their judgment to be, which is obviously in in many cases, an under informed, un informed, non-scientific, and non-mandated judgment about effectively what people should have to wear.

So if the threat or the risk has been removed, and all of the health officials and all of the government agencies are saying the threat has been removed, you no longer need to wear masks, but your boss or your manager or your landlord tells you you have to wear a mask to conduct boss or your manager or your landlord tells you you have to wear a mask to conduct your business or to go to work. It's going to bring up this whole series of challenges and questions I foresee for the

next couple of months at least and maybe for several years about what's fair and what's right. There will always be the safety argument to be made on the other side, so it's very hard to argue against that. It will be inconvenience as just a mask. It's not a big deal. But for, you know, a number of people to now kind of be told, you know, what to do and what to wear.

It'll take a year to sort all these things out because they'll all get prosecuted, or not prosecuted, but litigated. And they're gonna go to court. They will get litigated. For sure, they won't be lawsuits on this. And what's gonna happen is that you're gonna basically have, again, Jason, back to that example of the the bakery in Colorado.

Private institutions will be allowed some level of independence in establishing, you know, certain employee guidelines and so on. Exactly. And you you'll have to conform to those and It is what it is. I mean, I was very strange in Austin in terms of these COVID dead enders who just will not let it go. I'm in Austin where nobody is wearing a mask. And then there were like, I went into Lulu Lemon and they, like two people charged me with masks in hand and they were like, you have to wear a mask.

And I was like, do I? And they're like, yes, it's our policy. I was like, fine, I'll put it on. I don't care. You know, no big deal. This thing has really fried a bunch of people's brains. I mean, it's crazy. I mean, it's basically like you've taken

an entire group of folks and kidnap them. And kidnap them essentially. You're a Stockholm syndrome. It's incredible. No, everyone's been held in a prison for the last year And so you've kind of accepted that this has been your reality. I got to wear a mask. I got to wear gloves And you know, it's the similar sort of shift in reality that I think was needed going into this where people didn't believe what it was And now it's hard for them to believe what it's become

We we fly it's just. Well, we, we, we flag this. That's just human nature. Yeah. Yeah. We, we flagged on this pod a few months ago, the threat of zeroism. Yeah. Which is that we wouldn't let, you know, all the special rules and restrictions lift until there were zero cases of COVID. And we all know that's never going to happen.

COVID will always be around in the background. And just to add a layer to what's happening here in California is, yeah, on June 15th, we left the restrictions, but Governor Newsom has not given up his emergency powers. And he says he will keep them until COVID's been extinguished. So he's now embraced zeroism on behalf of this sort of authoritarianism. Yeah. And, you know, so we've got this like golden state Caesar. And now, I, what's interesting is I don't think this is just because he's a tyrant, although he's certainly been heavy handed. I think it's because that the, I think it's more about corruption than ideology, because federal funds, emergency funds from the federal government keep flowing to the state,

as long as we have a state of emergency. And so the longer he keeps this thing going, the more money he gets from the federal government that he can then use in this recall year to pay people off. And so we've already seen he's been buying every vote he can, right? He gave 600 bucks to everyone making under 35,000. He's forgiving all the traffic fines and parking tickets. He's doing this lottery ticket thing for getting the vaccine And so he just wants to keep the the the gravy train from Washington's California even It's what government to governor to mouth what had done

I mean it reminds me of 9-11 where people would just like hey, we can keep this gravy train No, I mean like 9-11 is people were just like, hey, we can keep this gravy train. No, I mean, like 9-11 is the perfect kind of psychic scenario, you know, replaying itself with COVID. There are behavioral changes that have lasted forever. There are regulatory changes. This, you know, Department of Homeland Security. I mean, you go through the amount of money that gets spent by the TSA every year and the

qualified risk and the qualified benefit completely unquantified, like the amount of money that flows into these programs because you can make the subjective statement, there is a threat, there is risk. Therefore, spend infinite amounts of money. Like, it's because you never kind of put pen to paper and say, what is the risk, what is the probability, what is the severity of loss, and therefore, let's make a value judgment about how much we should spend to protect against that downside. And we're now doing the same thing with COVID. We're not having a conversation about how many cases, how many, what's the risk?

Should we really still be spending billions of dollars of state funding to continue to protect a state where 70% of people are vaccinated? And we have a massive surplus and we're still giving people money who may or may not need it. And we're doing it, and we're still giving people money Who may or may not need it and we're doing it and discriminately speaking of Discussions and hard topics and being able to have them YouTube which kicked off a ton of people on the platform for talking about things that were not approved by the

WHO has taken professor Brett Weinstein's Podcast down because he had a very reasonable discussion about Ivermectin and its efficacy or lack of efficacy. This is a doctor, a PhD, talking to an MD and the video was removed. Apple did not remove it. It's really, it's scary. This episode. These people should not be the gatekeepers of the truth.

They have no idea what the truth is. Let's talk about the John Stewart appearance on Stephen Cole. Well, that's what I was about to do. Tell us which is yeah, he killed. He killed on Stephen Colbert, but the things he was saying about the lab leak would not have been allowed on YouTube. If it was three months ago that you would have been removed for it, even as a comedian, the performance was amazing. He basically says, you know, the Wuhan COVID lab is where the Wuhan, you know, no, the disease is named after the lab. So where do you think it came from? It was like a panel in, you know, made it with a bat. I mean, this isn't any goes on this whole

diatribe. It's incredibly funny. Yes. But then at the end of it, well, I had to take away, so I don't know if you guys felt this. At first, first I was like I had John Stuart's a little unhinged here like I mean there was a part of it That was funny and then there was a part of it which is like wow John Stuart's been trapped endorsed a little too long For 15 months. Yeah. Yeah, so I thought that as well to be honest But then the second thing which I saw on Twitter was all these people reminding Anybody who saw the tweet that this exact content would have not been allowed on big tech platforms were it said three or six months ago. And I was like, wow, this is really nuts,

meaning it takes a left leaning smart, funny, comedian to say something that are, if the right would have said, it would have just been instantly banished and that's like that's kind of crazy yeah, the great fall was I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science science has in many ways helped ease a suffering of this pandemic which was more than likely cause by science yeah, it was a funny line where he said something like if there was an outbreak of chocolate goodness and Hershey pencil Versaversia Pennsylvania would be it wouldn't be because you know Whatever the pangolin kissed a bat. It's because there's a fucking chocolate factory

Like I don't know made a Steve show of a mated with a cocoa bean I glitched moss takeaways, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, was, I think, visibly nervous. A very uncomfortable, yeah. Very uncomfortable. We do not know what was coming. And he was trying to, and when John Stuart kept pushing this, he was like, well, you're just trying to qualify. Well, so what you're saying is, now that Fauci has said, this might be a possibility, you're saying it might be a possible. And John Stuart was having none of it. He ran right over that said, no, the name is the same.

It's obvious. Come on. And, yeah, like the Colbert kept challenging. I don obvious, come on. And then the co bear kept challenging him. I don't know if you saw this part where he said, hey, listen, is it possible that they have a lab in Wuhan to study the coronavirus disease because Wuhan, there are a lot of novel coronavirus diseases because it's a big back population.

And then Stuart is like, no, I'm not standing for that. He goes, I totally understand. It's the local specialty and it's the only place to find bats. You wouldn't find bats anywhere else. Oh, wait, Austin, Texas has thousands of them out of a cave every night at dusk. And he wouldn't let it go. So it's just great watching. It was, it was our reminder, frankly, of how funny both John Stewart and Stephen Colbert were about 15 years ago. And I frankly, I don't think Stephen Colbert is funny anymore because no, because he's got to

keep his job. He's carrying out. And he's also also too woken and yes, he's become very polemical and and what Stewart reminded us is that comedy is funny when it's making fun of the people who are pretentious and basically who aren't telling the truth. And Stephen Colbert has become so polemical that he's lost sight of the comedy. And John Stewart brought it back. And I hope you know what they said. By the way, Colbert had this element of satire, which even Stewart,

because Stewart was in your face funny, whereas Colbert was like subtle and dry and you had to think about it, there was layered. And for sure, he's totally lost it, totally, totally lost. Well, if, and then, and then, and then I Thought Stuart came out swinging hard. I do think though it sucks. You have to agree Did it seem to you though like Stuart had not like he just needed more human to human interaction?

He was a cage tiger man He was a cage tiger. They let him out. He was like you know going to off-daffity Is what I would do with the world tour But it was the funniest thing John sur, surfs done him many years. And the reason is because he connected with the fact that here is this obvious thing that we're not allowed to say. And that's what comics should be doing. Yes, put it light on that.

I mean, if comedy is tragedy plus time, I think that this is a great moment for us to reflect on. Like, I think we're going a great moment for us to reflect on. I think we're going to go back to normal pretty quick. If you remember after 9-11, there was this idea that comedy was over forever. You were not going to be able to make fun of things, and that this was the end of satire. People were, this is a bridge too far, et cetera. I think we're back. We're back, and that's it. You know, we can joke about the coronavirus. We can talk about it. We don't need to censor people for having an opinion. We're all adults here. You know, the idea that, you know, we have to take down people's tweets because they

have some crazy theory or put a label on them. Like we went a little crazy during the pandemic and tried to stifle discussions for what reason? Exactly, like when we look back on this, it's gonna look really strange that we demanded that we put labels on people questioning or having a debate, including doctors. Doctors were not allowed to debate to the public on YouTube or Twitter about what was the

drug that Trump kept promoting? Hydrocycleroquine. Hydrocycleroquine. Like, remember that whole chloroquine? I think this, I've ever mectin and whatever it is, is just triggering people because it feels like that last drug, which is a drug that may or may not work to slow down the progression of COVID. But anyway, this is all over.

If you haven't gotten your goddamn vaccine, please get it. Stop denying science. Stop denying science. And climate change is not real. And remember, oh my God, the YouTube just canceled our account. Chumal, what are you doing? You can't say that. It's not science, my gosh.

We talk about science as if science is a definitive answer to a question. Science is a process by which you come to answers. You test them. And look, hydroxychloricin may have been completely wrong, but let the debate happen. The answers came out anyway. I'll tell you a fundamental premise of science is to challenge assumptions. And so when you challenge an existing hypothesis or kind of an existing thing that we hold to be true,

you are engaging in science and the rigorous debate around what works and what doesn't work was notably absent over the past year because everything became about the political truth. You're either true or your false based on your political orientation and we reduced everything down to kind of this one dimensional. I'm adding politics.

This one dimensional framework, which we have attended to even politics. Let me just point this out to you guys. down to kind of this one dimensional frame work, which we have attended. Let me just point this out to you guys. I was going to mention this a few weeks ago, but like think about every conversation you have, how common it is now to immediately think about what the person on the other side that you're talking to just said, and then trying to put them on a bluer-red spectrum.

It's how we've all kind of been reprogrammed over the past decade or so, where it used to be about the topic itself and the objective truth finding or the specifics of what we're talking about. And now it's become about you immediately try and resolve them to be in conservative or not red or blue, Trump or not, purple. And so every conversation, you kind of try and orient around that simple, ridiculous, one-dimensional framework. And it's a complete loss of the discovery of objective truth in all matters in life. And all matters in that effect, all of us.

And it's really quite stark and sad. This is why we need a new political party. I think it's less about that. I think it's more about everyone just reorienting themselves when you have a conversation. Just notice yourself doing it. And then recognize that maybe that's not the way to make a decision about the conversation or about having an opinion or a point of view, but have an opinion or a point of view about the topic itself, not about the orientation of the topic on a single-dimensional spectrum. itself, not about the orientation of the topic on a single dimensional spectrum.

And then layer identity politics into that. So not only your politics, but your gender, your race, your sexual preference, the color of your skin. And now how is anybody supposed to have a reasonable argument when I have to process like, Oh, Chabots from Sri Lanka, but he went through Canada and he worked for, I mean, it's so reductive that no one gets. And well, I mean, it's so reductive that no one gets to, it's so reductive that no one gets to have an identity anymore. Right? Because we are all complex and all issues are complex and they are all nuanced. And when you reduce everything down to kind of this one

dimensional framework, you lose any ability to have depth, to have nuance, to have, set another way. The issues are complex enough. We don't have to put identity politics or political leanings on top of it. All right, so we had the worst fire season in California ever last year.

Obviously, as Trimot said, global warming is a conspiracy by the Chinese as per your guy Trump, Sacks. And there is climate change in Switzerland. There is a center called the center for climate change. There is a reason that there's climate change in Switzerland. It's coming from that lab. Ah, the center did it. The center did it.

Look at the side. Look at the side. It says climate change on the bill. They're getting paid to propagate this conspiracy theory. Yeah. All right. So it's going to be the worst. The reason we are, well, we are at risk more than theory. Yeah. All right, so it's going to be the worst that we're interested in. Well, we are at risk more than ever, right?

So we're entering June. So as of June 1st, the California snow pack is down to 0% of normal. That's never happened before. So it's the lowest it's ever been. There is absolutely like no snow pack in the entire Sierra and the entire state. 40% of the state is in a state of extreme drought right now.

We've had 16,000 acres burned as of a few weeks ago, up from 3,600 during the same time period, the same day of the year last year. And so the tender is there. Now, remember last year was the highest California's ever seen. We burned 4 million acres last year. California has about 33 million acres of forest land, representing about a third of our total land size in the state. 60% of that land is federal, 40% is private. So the big variable drivers this year are going to be a wind and heat. We're already seeing a few heat waves, but it's the wind that

kind of kicks these things off, but the tinder is there, right? So like the state is dry. The snow pack is gone. We're on severe water restrictions and a lot of counties throughout the state. It's worth, I think, talking about the carbon effect. Last year, based on the forests that burnt in California, we released about one and a half times as much carbon into the atmosphere from our forest fires as we did from cars burning fossil fuels in the state.

And so, wow. So, here's some statistics for you guys, which I think are just worth highlighting. There's about 2 billion metric tons of carbon stored in California, Forestland, which is about 60 tons per acre. So there's about 9 million new tons of carbon sequestered per in California by our Forestland per year. When there's a fire, we release about 10 tons per acre. So about 1, 6 of the carbon in that forest land. The rest of the carbon doesn't burn up. So remember, when there's a forest fire, typically the outside of the tree burns, the whole thing doesn't burn to ash.

And so a forest fire can actually, if you look at the longitudinal kind of effect of it, burning forests can actually preserve the carbon sequestration activity versus just removing forest or removing trees. And so there is, to some extent, an effort that has been shut down several times, which is to do these kind of controlled burns through the state, but it's met with such resistance

given that it's so controversial. No one wants to have smoke in their neighborhood. It shouldn't be controversial. The problem is you can't present simple data and have people have a logical conversation about it. And the cost per acre to clear land and to forest land in California is, it ranges depending on the complexity of the land, but it's somewhere between $50,000 and $1,000. So call it a couple hundred dollars per acre. So you can very quickly kind of do the math on a carbon credit basis, Chimalt. So it's about 40 bucks per ton

for carbon credit today. So you're actually, you know, you can kind of preserve about $400 per ton by not putting carbon into the atmosphere. And if you can actually manage forest land clearance and forest land preservation from fire at a cost of $400 or less, and there was an active carbon credit market, you should be able to cover the cost of managing that forest land back. But we're incredibly high risk this year. It doesn't mean that we're necessarily going to have a fire because weather is the key driver. The weather is highly very wind.

We need wind. We need wind. And we need to heat wave with wind and then there will be fires. But the key driver. And then what do they do when the wind kicks up right now? The electric company turns off power in California because they don't want to be blamed when a power line goes down and starts a fire. So this is regular moments. This is not just a California. We just lose power. Yeah, this is not just a California problem. I know everyone wants to beat

up on California, but like the whole Western US, go look at Google Maps. You'll see how much green stuff there is on Google Maps. It's green up and down the Western half of the US. Friedberg, it was Trump right that raking up the forests to put it in layman's terms or simple terms is an actual vang that helps. 60% of forest land in California is a federal land. And it was the federal government's responsibility to manage that, that cost down, to manage that risk down.

What is the incentive? What is the motivation? You know, what are the key drivers. Those are obviously it does work to clear it though. It theoretically, when you reduce the amount of tender, you will reduce the risk of a burn, right? And so the cost, but the cost of doing so, as we mentioned, it's probably a couple hundred dollars per acre. And so who's good at, let's say you want to do that on five million acres, you know,

we're going to put it on. We're going to create a bunch of jobs. Oh, wait, we're paying people to stay home. Yeah. Like, it would created a bunch of jobs. Oh, wait, we're paying people to stay home. Yeah, like it would create a ton of jobs. I mean, I hate to be like that guy, but like, could we, this is about your $35 an hour jobs for people?

I've heard scuttle but that Newsom is so worried about fire season that they're gonna try to accelerate the recall election so it happens before. There is, you know, the conventional wisdom, the conventional wisdom. All the way to do that too. He's so smart.

Well, if you're not dead, it would be strategic. Well, the conventional wisdom, the conventional wisdom was that you'd want to wait as long as possible. Do the recall because the longer you wait, the longer you get the rebound of the economy from COVID, right? But now they're talking about accelerating it to beat fire season because it's looking really bad and free burst life. I need this ice that we needed much more aggressive force management. It's not just climate change. It's also force management. We don't do it in California anymore.

And so I think we are in for a really hellish fire season. We are going to have a terrible, we're going to have a terrible fire season. There's going to be brownouts, probably throughout a lot of the Western states, what played out in Texas that affected folks a few months ago, I think, will some version of that will happen in many places in the US. This is, and it's all roughly avoidable and the critical principal act to share is the progressive left. They need to marry their disdain for climate change and their disdain for the things that need to happen to prevent it. Because right now these two things for them are just like it's cataclysmically not possible for us to agree on, for example, as Friedberg says, a control-burn program

as a mechanism of sort of like fighting climate change. Or, you know, investing more in the greenification of the economy so that we can actually eliminate the use of a lot of these non-sustainable energy sources. All these things basically just come down to a group of individuals deciding that they can both have an opinion on something as important as climate change, but then are also willing to then go and act. Right now they won't, and until they do, it's just going to spill over everywhere. It's going to be a very bad fire season. And the only reason I know that it is, is that every year before it has been, every single year has gotten warmer.

It's not getting better. Yes. By the way, let me just correct the statistic I said, because the statistic I gave was a few weeks ago. But as of today, we were actually at the average, the historical average in terms of number of acres that are burnt in California, as we have seen historically.

I will also say that close to one-six of California's forest land burnt last year. So there is a tremendous amount of tender that has been removed from the risk equation. And we typically burn about a million acres a year. I think we burnt like four million last year, a little over four million last year. So, you know, as you look at the cumulative kind of reduction of burnable acres, we're actually, the good thing that's going on is we're actually at a lower risk scenario going into this year in terms of total amount of Tinder.

The risk of the Tinder catching is higher, because it's drier. NASA. But when you have to add this all up, there's certainly a high probability of a bad fire season, but there could be a scenario here where we end up with less than a million years ago. Zero scenario that's going to happen. NASA publishes temperature studies. They do measured measurements

of how much warming there is in the earth. Last year we set yet another record. It was the seventh year in a row where it was warmer than all the previous successive years. It's just going in the same place. I mean, and so if we're all of a sudden supposed to bet that are trend that has effectively been reliable for the last decade is going to turn, I'm not sure that that's a bet you'd want to make, or that the wins is not going to be a It's stupid bet. Or be a stupid bet. There's no reason to make that bet. I mean, this is like betting on a one-outer.

We need the left to take control of this issue and solve it. Get ready for Martian skies over California. I mean, literally, I'm thinking about an escape plan from California, and I'm putting a generator in this month. I bought six new air filters, you know, like, beautiful car ways. That's not good enough. Well, my house is totally sealed, and I have the air purifiers in, I have a built-in air purifier of the house, and I have six portable ones in each every two bedroom and my car. Are you coming back in August?

In the end of August, but by the way, let me tell you where it really, the rubber meets the road. Just again, I'm speaking to the progressive left. They care, apparently, so much about minorities. I just want to make sure you guys understand that, you know, air quality disproportionately affects minorities. Why? Because we, or not me anymore, but, you know, minorities are the ones that typically live near

industrial output, near transportation through ways and through workers. It is Statistically proven that blacks, brown, other minority people are the worst people to suffer from respiratory diseases and airborne illnesses and these are things that are happening today. So again, I want to go back to the same group of individuals who apparently believe in climate change, but don't believe in nuclear. They don't believe in control burns. They believe in inequality, but they don't want to do what's necessary to regulate

a mission. What are we doing guys? Just at some point do the job. Do the job. I think you're a fucking job. I What you're saying is correct from out, but I think it's a sad statement about the progressive left That the only way to reach them through an argument is to argue for that the spirit impact on a minority the reality is all Americans Yes, exactly exactly it's it's bad Bill make it was red pills

Come on, Satcher hold it out of me, but to my top of off But to mouth understands that audience. He is making the argument. They're gonna respond to but the argument that yeah Come on, Sack, you're holding out of here. No, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but Like I rented a house in Chicago and like Michigan last year and I went there and it was great escape for a month to get away from fire season. But I don't I don't I'm very scared to be in California during all of this to be completely honest with you. I don't just want to be there. Um, yeah, I'm out. I'm going to try to figure out some stuff. Come back in late of August and hopefully everything has come down by then.

Although it won't because it gets very, very hot. It was September. September was the heart of it. It's typical. It's the heart of it. Jake, how do you think you're going to go to Miami or Austin or something? You know, I went back to Austin for a wedding and I met the governor and you went sweating and you met Greg. Oh,

you had to beat that out. You went to sweating about the governor. Yes. And You had to beep that out. You went to sweating about the governor, yes. And going to Austin in 2021 is like when I would come to San Francisco and go to the battery in 2003 and Sac 2013 and Sac was saying, why don't

you live here? There's so much going on in San Francisco, come to San Francisco. And I did. And I got the last five years of the peak, but Austin very appealing to me. And then got the last five years of the peak, but Austin very appealing to me. And then I've been looking at beach houses in Miami. And I'm 50% of the way there, folks. Oh my God. I mean, the fact that you can now buy a beach house. I mean, it's God bless America. God bless America. I had a 71-year average. I had a 71-year average at high school. I had 1150 of my SATs, and I'm going to buy a beer challenge. Okay, last checkout.

And I forgot that I convinced you to move up to San Francisco, yet another way in which I have contributed to the monster. You're here a career towards the next. Absolutely. I'm going to use Colin every day. Colin's syndicates underway. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm going to use call in every day. Call in syndicates underway. Everything. You would even be a VC if it wasn't for me. You'd still be a mute digger. That's right. We do a conference producing. You're you're you and Navale really pushed me towards it and then special thank you to you and Jamoth Billy for anchoring

and Dave Goldberg. We love you, Jake. We love you. You know what? I mean, I tweeted the other day at the end of the day, our lives are a collection, when we look back on them of memories with our friends, and I include family and friends, and this podcast, not to get all gushy and whatever, is been a delight over the really hard pandemic that's now ending.

And I'm really happy that we get to spend this time every week together. Every week, know, a little bit of excitement, like I used to get when we go, you know, you're host poker, uh, sax or or chimop, you know, those days when we'd have a poker game, uh, skydating would tell me and, you know, uh, I get a little tingly feeling, uh, like, oh my God, I'm going to see my friends tonight and play poker and laugh. And, and, you know, we got that amazing note from the woman who said she was really having a hard time during the pandemic and that the podcast All in podcast really helped her and you know shout out to Sam. Thanks for that. Yeah, Sam that really made our week. So shout out to Sam Long way of saying I love you sex

Jake I'll you you are the Stephen Colbert to my John Stewart. I think it's the opposite. I have to come on your show and red pill you and make sure that you're saying the truth and not going to wrapped up in your Trump derangements syndrome or whatever. At the end of the day, we are, I think, all of us working through complex issues to Friedberg. I really loved your contribution today about how complex these issues are. And layering more complexity onto them of our identities, our wealth, you know, our history is immigrants, not whatever, politics.

These issues are so hard. And in some ways, also so easy with technology and world class execution that the world needs to have more reasonable conversations. And I think that what we've demonstrated here is that for friends can have reasonable discussions and laugh about life and enjoy life. And that should be for everybody listening. That's what Sam said and her note to us, which was very heartwarming. So thank you. Yeah, that was great. Yeah, I mean, love you guys. Love you, Saks. Back up. Back up.

Back up. Back up. Back up. That's for God. It's a brutal. I must download new directions to escape forest fires. Love program. Love, love program. Love L O V E querying dictionary, a feeling of a faction for another entity or Fumus I like playing video games still to a m and my dog can I say it to a very similar to coding or

Problem solving using my computer to and like mock hb 17b subroutine overheating must play chat with Peter teio and stop saying I love you to jcache My shirt was so expensive I'm looking because I've gained 15 pounds. I just make up for it with a $1200. How do I look with four collars? Four you say? No, it's more to but also two chins. Two collars make up for my double chin. Two sure. Two sure. No. Two sure. Two sure. Two sure. Two sure. Two sure. One.

What? Oh, everyone twice as good. Oh my, this is good. Hahaha. Hahaha. Hahaha. Hahaha. Saks is adding chance to Mazda's video. Oh, next time I'm gonna talk to you guys. Bye bye.

Love you guys. Hahaha. We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it I'm U.S. I be queen of Kenwai I'm going home, yeah What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? I'm going home, yeah Besties are gone

I'm going home, yeah That's my dog, can you give it a wish? You're driving, sit next Get it off Get it off Oh man, my ham is the actual meat, the apple is the actual meat We should all just get a room and just have one big hug or because they're all just like this like sexual tension But we just need to release that I'm doing all it!