All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E37: NYC rejects far-left mayoral candidates, new developments in lab leak theory, Apple's App Store breakup potential & more

Starting point is 00:00:00 As you guys know, I get panic attacks at dentist, but she was able to navigate me through where I didn't I only sweat through half my shirt You panic attacks at the dentist. No, but I sweat profusely and I get very nervous Why what is that about we all have weaknesses Jason? We all have weaknesses This is my Achilles heel my Achilles heel is a dentist really yeah, I don't like going to the dentist either No, the dentist really freaks. I don't know why I canaks me out, sex. Why do you think I'm a bad experienced when I was a kid, you know. Tell us more about your channel to trauma. Have you ever seen the movie Marathon Man? It was kind of like that. Is it safe? Is it safe? All right, here Hey everybody, hey everybody. Welcome again to another episode of the all-in podcast episode 37 with us today on his noble crusade conquering Europe,

Starting point is 00:01:06 Chimath Polly Haapatia, calls us from a castle somewhere. I don't know, I can tell by the light switches you're in Europe. And joining us again, the two AIs, A.I. number one, David Saxon, A.I. number two, David Friedberg here. And of course, I'm Jake Hal. Do we want to get right into the show? Or I don't know, Tremoth, if you want to talk about the dueling AIs in the group chat, debating the nature of the pod. I mean, one guy told the other guy, or one robot told the other robot to fuck off.

Starting point is 00:01:38 That's what we know. It's the singularity. But who? This one the robot started. Who are you? See, you don't even know because you don't have any emotions. You told Freeberg to fuck off. That's kind of true.

Starting point is 00:01:50 No. Fairness to science. He was drinking. A bridge with 14% alcohol content. No, no, no, I just think that we, I think the format of the pod is working and I don't think we need to turn it on and it's Ed. That's all.

Starting point is 00:02:06 I think my, so just for the good to do this. So we're doing it. I'm so tired and out of it right now, but let's do it. Just for the listeners benefit on our little group text where we do our incredibly well-prep rehearsal for this show by texting each other maybe for four minutes a week, but the date that I performed. And it's all the each other for three hours. Mostly other stuff is covered over the group chat, but we were kind of debating, maybe

Starting point is 00:02:36 throwing in a spin and you know doing a little group Q&A kind of format, sax doesn't like it. And we were kind of joking with sax that he loves, getting his soundbites in, and then turning them into little short soundbite video clips with his BFF Henry Bellcaster and putting them on Twitter and promoting them around the internet. And my point of view was, I don't think that this show

Starting point is 00:02:59 should be about getting to the soundbite, that this show should be about something very different, which is elevating a conversation and creating the context for people to make decisions on their own. That is to give people multiple points of view in all of the data and consideration when there's a big topic or big debate underway. It's too easy for us to take a sound bite and then use that as the narrative to try and influence people to do things or to have a point of view.

Starting point is 00:03:28 And I think that is largely the problem we've broadly had in the Twitter social media era as we are very reductionist. We bring things down to kind of a one sentence or 140 characters statement. And then we use that as an emotional pivot point for people to get them to go on one side or the other side as opposed to recognizing that many of the topics we address are called, that is the way things are done. I get it. And here, and here is Saks's response. Okay. That is a valid point for you.

Starting point is 00:03:53 No, no, no. However, humans all need to be led. They are sheep. Well, we need to tell the sheep. Well, what to think and to get to the house and into office. Jason, I would like to cut to a segment. The new segment that I called Shamath does a dramatic reading.

Starting point is 00:04:12 So free bird did say this now a dramatic reading from the group chat. I will be playing all characters starting with myself. Free bird, free bird grants to which I say say I'm down with that. David Sacks. You keep trying to fuck with the formats of the show. If you hate him, bro, don't fix it. Fuck off. Fuck off.

Starting point is 00:04:36 Fuck her. You have to be a poms. You have to be a poms. You didn't say that, wait. My response. I'm down with that. Oh no. Am I going to be able to respond here? Yes, but okay, so I can defend.

Starting point is 00:04:52 Okay, so you're running from office, we know. No, no, no, look, I think that the freeberg position on many issues often comes down to the idea that this issue is so complicated, it's so nuanced, we can't have a definitive take. And I just reject that. I think it's true for some issues. I think it's great to have the conversation, but I think there are many issues where it is possible to have a definitive take to come down strongly on one side of it.

Starting point is 00:05:21 And I think the audience wants us to do that. I think it's a little bit of a cop out to say, oh, we're just gonna table all the issues. So the audience wants to hear us give our point of view. And I didn't like see Harry Henry Bellcaster out. He found us. He's our- You just talked to him seven times a day

Starting point is 00:05:40 and direct every frame of the animation. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, his business or something because he's just running way too much time on this. Anyway, so now Henry does run that his like videos buy us as a courtesy, but he comes up with them. He chooses what takes he wants to run with and he puts it all together. Sometimes I'll have a note for him. I'll say, you know, oh my god, whatever. He's never sent me anything. You're gonna get a hold of you. He keeps coming to me and Jason are on a thread. If Jason, don't pretend you're not on the jet with every bell cast. Yes, the three. Yes, because he did it through to you. Is it okay for me to do this?

Starting point is 00:06:33 And we're just like, go ahead. But then David's like, well, actually, if he changed this and cut this word. And David's like, oh, you don't need any editing. Just let the chip flow, they may. And then he's like, Maka Valley and back there, like he's score sezzy he changed every fucking frame of a rebel against her animated gift made it.

Starting point is 00:06:49 Well, I just think it's a courtesy that Henry's running it by us. And you know, David, are you paying him? No. Have you given him any compensation? Okay, well, no separately. Separately, hold on. Let's ask him.

Starting point is 00:07:03 Here it comes. Separately, I, after finding out that Henry and then his partner, Dylan, Okay, well no separately Here it comes Separately I after finding out that Henry and then his partner Dylan they've got like a it is a business for them Okay, so I said listen you guys are doing great work. I think no he does great work Yeah, I said listen Why don't you guys start doing like product videos or videos for startups? You can do the first one for call in so they're working on a video for that I think we're gonna pay them like five grand. And if it's good, it'll be great for their business.

Starting point is 00:07:28 I want that to be successful. No, but let's get to the point. Let's get to the point about reducing the conversation to sound bites. And I want to respond to your point about not taking a position on things. But, okay, so I feel like, first of all, within this group, there are hard takes

Starting point is 00:07:47 within this group of four people. So there are hard takes already in the show. And I think that it's important in many debates and many of the topics we cover, there is more than one side to the story. And we can have our formed opinion, but I think understanding what the other counterpoints and counter arguments might be is critical to get people to actually get to that opinion themselves.

Starting point is 00:08:11 As opposed to just telling them, this is the single point that you should believe nothing else matters. And so I really think also many of these conversations are generally two sides of the same coin, and many more often than not, if you zoom out, there are shared values, and many of the things that we all argue about, broadly a society, and I'm not trying to get too philosophical here, but if you kind of distill things down to different points of view with the same set of values, or recognize that there are actually different values, you can come to a point that allows people to think more progressively

Starting point is 00:08:46 and achieve a point of view on their own. And I think that's critically missing today, broadly in society, that so much is all about like the good and the evil, good and bad them and us. And we don't recognize that in moments where there are shared values, we're just sitting on both sides of the same coin, or recognizing that sometimes having different values

Starting point is 00:09:05 doesn't necessarily make someone evil. It makes them different. And that's why I try and kind of elevate the conversation a little bit and why I care so much about this point because I really think it's worth everyone getting a broader perspective on everything that they're dressing so that they can kind of go into things that is why it's open.

Starting point is 00:09:21 Now, Saks, I will say, on yearly everything, I actually fundamentally agree with you on many of the points on the show. And so it's a little bit kind of, you know, gets a little echo chamber for me to kind of say, I agree with SACs, like that's it. I think it's also worth highlighting why there are other points of view and why there are other arguments to be made out there. And for me, I certainly have strongly held opinions. And, you know, I just don't think that it's worth getting to my opinion without taking the broader context of the conversation.

Starting point is 00:09:47 Did you notice that Freiberg got a little emotional there? I think there was a little emotional emotional. I'm not saying that. I'm talking about my phone. I'm talking about the tune down right now. I was confused. I am. I'm not confused.

Starting point is 00:10:00 Okay. Let me try to find some of the wrong way out there. Let me just ask you one question right now. Because this is getting, I mean, we're kind of in the dugout right now, and I don't know if this is fabulously boring to be able or not. But do you frequently hold back your opinions on the show because you don't want to influence people or you're afraid of being canceled

Starting point is 00:10:18 or at having an adverse effect to your business as it has to David's business? I don't give a shit about that. as it has to David's business. I don't give a shit about that. So, no, I care more about the path to an opinion. Okay, and I'm about to process. No, and I care more about like achieving the objective. So, what I mean by that is if you just say this is my opinion,

Starting point is 00:10:40 take it or leave it, the other half that has a different opinion doesn't change their opinion. If you zoom out for people and you say, here's the broad set of facts and circumstances and why different groups have different opinions, it ends up being a lot easier to actually get people to see what may be the better path forward. I have formed my opinion on many of these matters. I don't think stating my opinion changes anyone's mind. I think zooming out and giving people the broader perspective so making get there themselves is the way to kind of achieve change.

Starting point is 00:11:10 Okay, guys, enough. We're done with the topic. This is Weekend Walk and Chew Gum at the same time. Here's the point. I think that David Sacks has opinions. They are strong opinions, but as I've known him for 20 years, they're also weakly held and he changes his mind. And I think that's powerful. David Friedberg and I've known him for 20 years, there are also weekly held and he changes his mind. And I think that's powerful. David Friedberg and I've known you for a very long time as well is great at explaining things.

Starting point is 00:11:31 All of it is additive. So let's all just keep going. And of course, I support having a nuanced conversation that gets all the point of views out on the table. The point of the pod is not to engage in sort of sound bites. It's just that what Henry creates is the result of a conversation. He boils it down from 30 minutes into one minute. I think that performs a service for the audience. Maybe gets our takes out there in a way that more people can hear them. So I think that's useful.

Starting point is 00:12:03 But do you understand freebergs? I feel like I'm a couple. I think that's useful. But do you understand freebergs? I mean, I feel like I'm a couple, so there are a piece here. But do you understand freebergs, physician David? Yeah. He doesn't want people to look at the podcast as reduction down to a 60 second clip

Starting point is 00:12:17 or a 30 second clip of somebody. So he wants them to hear the full discourse. Yeah, well that's great. When they can listen and do that, but realistically a lot of people don't have time to listen to the full 60 minutes. They made sense of the clip. But look, if there's a meta purpose to me being on the pod, I think it's to expand the parameters of what people think they can say.

Starting point is 00:12:36 Because I actually agree with Freeberg that the debate is shut down in a lot of context. And we want to open it back up. You know, you just take- The over chin window needs to be reopened. Yeah, like look at what happens. It's like- The whole Frank Sluitman thing last week where he puts out a pretty mild statement

Starting point is 00:12:53 about supporting diversity, but not to the point where it jeopardizes merit. You know, there was a giant uproar over that. He has to walk it back in issue and apology. There was no discussion. You're trying to make a CEO of Snowflake. Yeah, there's no discussion or debate there. That was a shutting down in the conversation, because one side of the debate is basically

Starting point is 00:13:11 engaging in moral indictments against the other side. They're not really interested in having a serious debate about the issues. My meta purpose in speaking out on the pod about all these issues that I think are just common sense is just to kind of reopen the debate. Yeah. I mean, it is that merit versus diversity and what is the point of a business and should the business be compromised or throttled? I think that's a very hard thing for people to say, should we throttle this business so

Starting point is 00:13:41 that we have diversity? Should we slow down in order to have more diversity? We can't find the right candidate, but we have a candidate here who's a white male, but God, we already have seven of eight people on this. Right, we've talked about that. My point in giving that example is just to show how shut down the debate is because the day after

Starting point is 00:13:59 Sluitman said CEOs are having this conversation in private, they're telling me this and they're afraid to say it publicly, The very next day, he walks it back and issues an apology. Kind of buttressing his original point that people can't say what they really think. So in my view, like part of the reason why the all-empower is successful is we're getting issues on the table that people want to talk about the field they can't. And I think Freeberg brings a very valuable perspective to that conversation. But my goal is kind of, if I have a medical, besides expressing my point of view, it is to expand, like you said, the over to the window. All right. So speaking of the over to the window, New York City has voted for a, basically, universally, both on the, on the democratic side and on the Republican side for a tough

Starting point is 00:14:43 on crime mayor, 70% of San Francisco feels worse about crime in a separate poll. And Eric Adams is the current borough president of former NYPD officer. And he is looking like he because of this stacked voting, it's going to take a little time to figure out who uh... will become the mayor of new york but he has thirty two percent of first place votes among eight hundred thousand democratic voters this guy is uh... really decent centrist moderate human being uh... grew up

Starting point is 00:15:18 where he was affected and touched by crime decided to fight through that wasn't complaining. Became a police officer, did that. Eventually, Burrow President has done that, runs from air. He goes on television, he gives an interview where they say, what is your perspectives on stop and frisk? The answer he gives was pretty specific, which is that, you know, I believe in stopping

Starting point is 00:15:46 and investigating potential crimes or some such, right? Jason, you can probably find the exactly. Well, I mean, having been in the, you know, in New York City Police Department family, the, and living in New York during stop and frisk, they left out a key word. It was stop question and frisk. So in high crime areas, where there were a lot of shootings or guns they would do stop question and then

Starting point is 00:16:11 possibly frisk obviously all policing techniques can be abused but his feeling on it was when Deployed correctly stopping question is a great technique and I can tell you when I lived in New York previously 70 80% of people, including people of color, including people from the toughest neighborhoods, were in favor of this. This was universally seen as a huge success at the time, because they were taking guns off the street,

Starting point is 00:16:35 illegal guns constantly, because somebody would hop a turnt style, or there would be people hanging out on a street corner, and cops would come up and say, hey, you're hanging out here at three in the morning. What's going on? But the problem, the problem is that he gave a pretty reasonable answer. Yes. And then they tried to cancel him. Yep. And he would not allow himself to be canceled.

Starting point is 00:16:56 Which helps. He went on the breakfast club and all kinds of other media outlets and explained his position. And he couldn't cancel him. Which is, I thought it was an incredible testament to what we're going through right now, which is, right now, nobody knows what to do to solve the things we feel. We've tried the radical right version of a candidate. It didn't work. We're now wondering to ourselves, while we have a custodian in the White House, whether

Starting point is 00:17:24 we go to the radical left, that's probably not going to work either. Because unfortunately, it's average. Unfortunately, it looks like the progressive left or the radical left is really, really judgmental. And none of these folks have really done anything. And so they are easy to complain. It's almost as if they know that they what they want

Starting point is 00:17:46 won't work, so they don't want anything else to work. And so they just want everything to develop into chaos. That's a shame. And so, you know, people tried to literally lie about what this guy said on television, that was taped. No, he did it five times and clarified. I am not for that. I am not for that. There were people, Jason. I don't know if you saw the video link that they were people holding a press conference in front of his office, literally screaming about stop and frisk. When he never said stop and frisk, he said stop and question is a reasonable strategy if somebody, if we think that there is the potential of a crime. And the fact that people could not have that conversation and had to go to basically this guy needs

Starting point is 00:18:31 to either quit or be completely removed from his ability to run for mayor, it's insanity. Yeah, and you can, people seem to have lost a disability to hold two conflicting ideas in their mind, which is you could be for criminal justice reform, you could be against police violence, and you could be for strong policing of violent crimes at law and order. And what seems to be happening in both cities New York San Francisco and other places where crime is getting acute is That they people are voting here's here's two other two be safer. Here's here's another conflicting thoughts you can believe that you know

Starting point is 00:19:21 Asians are awesome, but you can also believe that the Coronavirus may have come from the Wuhan lab. And believing the latter doesn't mean that you're supporting Asian hate. I'm just going to put that out there. Right. Can I chime in on this on the on the on the Adams win? Because I think this is this is huge news. Do you have your notes from Harry to make that? Okay, go. Look, I mean, Eric Adams is going to be the next mayor of New York City. And I think there's like three big takeaways from this. Number one, crime is the issue that I've been saying on this pod that it is for at least six months.

Starting point is 00:20:01 It is the number one issue when people do not feel safe in their homes and in their neighborhoods, nothing else matters. And here comes this really underdog candidate. He is despised by the sort of the progressive left and sort of the elites of the Democratic party. And he wins. I mean, this is a huge underdog victory. He's only a former cop. He still carries a gun. I mean, this is a huge underdog victory. He's only a former cop.

Starting point is 00:20:25 He still carries a gun. I mean, he is packing. And that sent a message to the electorate. I am going to be tough on crime. I'm not standing for defunding the police and deprofacution and decarceration, which are the hobby horses right now that progress is left.

Starting point is 00:20:40 I am going to protect you and the city and the voters. We're eating it up, even in the Democratic Party. So, number one, crime is the huge issue, and I think it's going to reverberate throughout America for the next few years. Number two, it showed how out of touch these sort of progressives, and I'd say predominantly white, progressives are how out of touch they are with the constituencies they claim to represent.

Starting point is 00:21:06 You know, the mostly black and Latino neighborhoods who voted in large numbers for Eric Adams were having none of this sort of elite, woke progressive thinking around de-carceration, deprosecution. They are interested in real solutions for the problems that they see, not engaging in this sort of like, one of the identity socialism. There's actually an interesting nugget in what you're saying,

Starting point is 00:21:33 which I think you can broaden out, which is the radical left, I don't even call them the progressive left, because that would mean they were making progress and they're thinking, I think it's just this radical left, they seem to be white, rich affluent people. Yes. And they seem to be super, they're super guilty about something totally disconnected from

Starting point is 00:21:50 what actual people of color want. They're totally disconnected. They're almost like they're speaking for a group of people who maybe are like, that's not actually my position. I want people to be safe on the way to school. I want guns off the street. If somebody, you know, and I think that I want to read the quote that he had because this is really important is to go to the

Starting point is 00:22:09 source material, not the headlines from, let's face it, the radical left is running these news publications and they're determining how they frame him. And here's the question from Vanity Fair. So you think there is a way to use stop and frisk that isn't abusive. It's a reasonable question. And his answer, well, there's a word that's missing in there. It's called stop question and frisk. So two o'clock in the morning, you look at your door, you see a person standing in front of your house. It places a gun in his waistband. You go to call the police. I hope. That police officer responds. He needs to be able to question that person.

Starting point is 00:22:48 What are you doing with that gun? If we're telling police officers, you can't question people. We are jeopardizing the safety of the city. I mean, this is the most common sense, logical framing of the discussion. It's not like they're saying, just pick a random person on the subway and say empty your pockets and get up against the wall

Starting point is 00:23:07 like the Gestapo. Somebody called something and you questioned people in the area. We've seen this in San Francisco that you've got these social justice crusaders who claim if they're helping minority communities and you see an increase in the number of victims from those communities.

Starting point is 00:23:21 And what Erica Adams said is, listen, we can't just care about the cops abusing their power. We also have to care about violence against these communities, when it's perpetrated by criminals. And people responded to that message. And I think the final point that I think that the Eric Adams win represents is that Twitter is not-

Starting point is 00:23:40 Well, likely win, likely win. Okay, fair enough. Is that Twitter is not real life. Okay, Eric Adams has 14,000 Twitter followers Yang has two million okay Yang came in fourth okay and you know Yang was sort of the darling of the you know sort of the Twitter elites you know he's sort of I mean look when he first got into the Democratic primary for president he was a little bit of a breath of fresh air but ultimately he kind of adopted

Starting point is 00:24:05 the generic progressive positions on things. That did not resonate with the people of New York. They wanted someone tough on crime. And so I think, you know, Eric Adams, he had another great quote, I think on election night, he said, social media does not pick a candidate. People on social security pick a candidate, okay? Great line.

Starting point is 00:24:24 And I mean, so here's the thing is, I think we all are distorted in our thinking based on what this very loud but ultimately small number of voices on social media says. And I think it's not just politicians. By the way, it's not just Eric Adams who won because he ignored Twitter. I mean Biden won because he ignored Twitter, right? I mean, Biden was not on Twitter, and he was able to win the Democratic primary for president. So, you know, I think there's a lesson here for politicians, which is

Starting point is 00:24:54 ignored Twitter. Moderates can win anything and everything as long as they show up and they do the work. But if you, to your point, spend all your time trying to curate your Twitter image, all you're going to do is validate a bunch of people that really at the end of the day are trying to punch up. Right? If you think about all the people that are spouting off, trying to cancel, trying to judge, there's a great quote in many Drake songs, which is like, these people have more followers than dollars. And what he's trying to say is like,

Starting point is 00:25:26 you make them important when they don't need to be important. Totally. Now do CEOs, right? You've got CEOs of some of the biggest companies in the world, like Tim Cook, like Frank Soutman, who are making their company policy based on what this small number of loud voice on Twitter are saying, it's ridiculous. I mean, I think the Eric Adams win is a watershed

Starting point is 00:25:48 because it shows the Emperor wears no clothes. These very loud progressive woke voices ultimately do not have that many supporters and all people have to do is start listening to them. Not when it goes into the privacy of the ballot box. You have a lot of people, again, similar to the to the to the to what we saw in the in the Trump election in 2016, where all these people

Starting point is 00:26:11 quietly said, Oh, I cannot support Trump. And then one in two people went into that ballot box and said, fuck you to everybody. And this is the exact same thing that's playing out except the opposite, which is now if you are not completely progressive at least in your posture in your vocabulary, there's this threat of being canceled. And so you adopt this stuff almost to make your life easy, but when push comes to shove and we see it here in New York City and we'll probably see it all over the country, you get into the ballot box, you're going to go for somebody, moderate and reasonable that does the simple things that you want to get done. And by the way, they tried to cancel the New York Times, tried to cancel Andrew Yang because he had made very, he basically said that mentally ill men who are addicted to

Starting point is 00:27:02 drugs basically are punching people in the face, and we need to address that. And the New York Times framed it really interestingly, and I'll read you the tweet, watch, Andrew Yang's response to a question about how he would handle mental health during Wednesday's New York City Marl debate. Drew Fyer on social media from people who said

Starting point is 00:27:24 it lacked empathy or understanding. And when you look at that framing, he said how he would handle mental health. He wasn't talking about mental health generally and broadly. He was talking about people suffering from mental health on the streets who were homeless, who were addicted to drugs, and who punched people on the face.

Starting point is 00:27:42 A massive subset. But they framed this to attack them. Then let me just finish the other way they framed it. It drew fire on social media. So instead of saying this person said this, they literally, the New York Times is trying to get Andrew Yang canceled and to get more people to subscribe by being part of the woke mob. Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:06 Literally their Twitter handle doesn't. I could find 10 times as many people who said, yeah, we can't have people who are mentally ill and violent on the street punching people. It was Andrew Yang's, it was Andrew Yang's single best moment of the campaign is he talked honestly about the risk to the public of mentally ill people living on the streets and attacking people. It was his single best moment. The reason he did it is because he saw the traction

Starting point is 00:28:30 that Eric Adams was getting on the safety issue. And if Yang had done that from the beginning of the campaign, he might be the next mayor. Yeah, let me read this from Eric Adams. He was, he was, Yang cared too much. Ultimately, his Achilles heel was caring too much about the very online voices on Twitter, like the New York Times.

Starting point is 00:28:49 And we've just seen that Eric Adams has proved it's all a house of cards. Nobody really cares what they think. Here's the quote from Eric Adams. If the Democratic Party fails to recognize what we did here in New York, they're going to have a problem in the midterm elections and they're going to have a problem in the midterm elections and they're going to have a problem in the presidential election. The Brooklyn

Starting point is 00:29:09 borough president said, America is saying, we want to have justice and safety and inequality. And we don't want fancy candidates. We want candidates. Their nails are not polished. They have calluses on their hands and their blue collar people. Common sense. Common sense. It's a return to common sense. Freeberg, I had a CCG on this thread where somebody said they found missing sequencing of the COVID genes that were submitted to a database.

Starting point is 00:29:41 Did you have a chance to review that at all? I did. that were submitted to a database? Did you have a chance to review that at all? I did, and since you sent that, it's become a little bit of a story. A lot of people have kind of picked it up and followed up on it because it did ignite quite a bit of interest. So the story is a guy named Jesse Bloom, who's a researcher at the Hutchinson Cancer Center

Starting point is 00:30:01 in Seattle and has been studying COVID as a lot of scientists have kind of shifted their attention over the past year, but has a background in virology. He was trying to pull some early genomic samples that may have been taken from patients early in China. So what this means is, you know, when patients kind of, in the early days, were emerging as potentially having SARS-CoV-2, they were swapping them, and then doing a genomic read of the RNA they find from the virus in that swab. And around the world, a lot of scientists contribute to this openly available genomic database,

Starting point is 00:30:43 and they contribute their whole genome samples when they run studies and so on. So other scientists can use it in the future for research. And what this guy found was that there were a few dozen of these samples that had been on this genomics database that were now missing, and they had been pulled down. And using a little technical sleuthing, he realized they had been pulled down from the directory,

Starting point is 00:31:04 but the raw genomic sample read data was still available on the Google Cloud. So he used the Google Cloud API to pull that actual data down from the servers and then ran a study on it. It turns out that the interesting kind of intrigue around the story is why did that data get deleted? Who deleted it? And it turns out the only way it gets deleted

Starting point is 00:31:24 is if the original kind original authors go in and make a request to have it removed. And these were some random scientists in China who had submitted this data. And so in the days following this publication of this guy, this guy published this on a pre-print server called Bioarchive. So it's not a peer-reviewed journal. It basically is a place for bioarchive is a place where biology scientists can submit early versions of their research papers or to get a new finding out really

Starting point is 00:31:52 quickly and then the world can kind of study it. And you don't have to wait for the journalistic kind of cycle of getting things approved, which is common now. And so he put this thing out there. And everyone's kind of questioning, well, OK, where did these samples go? Turns out that these Chinese scientists had submitted them and now it has shown or it has come

Starting point is 00:32:11 out that apparently some US officials made the request to have it taken down after being asked to do so by some Chinese officials. What? To put this data down. And so there's a really weird kind of intrigue going on right now around this whole story. Now, so that's kind of thread number one, which is why was this request made to pull this data down? What was the motivation, et cetera?

Starting point is 00:32:32 Thread number two is what is the data show us? And what the data shows us, unfortunately, is a little bit inconclusive. So a guy named Trevor Bedford just put out a tweet earlier today analyzing this. He's a world-class virologist. Also worked at the Fred Hutchinson Center in Seattle. And he basically highlights that in the early days of the SARS-CoV-2 explosion in China, you can really identify from a genomic variant perspective

Starting point is 00:32:58 two lineages of the virus. That means we're trying to get back to origin or patient zero. And it turns out there were kind of like these two families of the virus that were emerging. And even with that new data, you could kind of reconstruct the family tree in such a way that the Wuhan meat market could have been the origin, meaning the root virus could have come out of that Wuhan market. Or the Wuhan meat market could have been one of the two branches of the tree that emerged early on. So there may have been an even earlier origin.

Starting point is 00:33:28 And Wuhan market was just one place where it started to take off. So, you know, he said, look, he still thinks that it's about a 50-50, you know, there's no clear evidence one way or the other based on these newly uncovered samples. But, you know, there is still this question of does the Wuhan market kind of paint the patient zero story or is it one of the places where the explosion happened and patient zero was in fact much earlier than woohand market? I will say a couple episodes ago,

Starting point is 00:33:55 I kind of made a comment with respect to the origin of this virus that I don't know, don't care. And I just want to clarify, because I know that some people kind of reach out to me about that. I didn't really, my intention with that statement was that this was really meant to be, I think a little bit more of a canary and a coal mine for us broadly about, you know, hey, what we should be looking forward to is what's next, not just about,

Starting point is 00:34:17 but what happened in the past. This has happened already. Let's move on to the next thing is what you're saying, not being callous that it doesn't matter. Yeah. I think I think what's more important is that we need to get prepared for how do we prevent these things happening in the future and and what are the You know the key kind of checkpoints we have Around us in the future because one thing I am most concerned about a huge step back But I'm concerned about our normalization of cancel

Starting point is 00:34:40 You know, we kind of have started to cancel people, but we're also you but these shutdowns have been normalized. The normalization where shutdown is the response to an emerging variant or emerging virus is really scary because how is society going to function properly when there's going to be a proliferation of these viruses, a proliferation of risks with new technologies being available to us, and then shutting down becomes our immediate response. How do you feel about shutting down borders, Friedberg, as the first course of action? If everybody in Unison had shut down the borders

Starting point is 00:35:11 in February, it said no inter-country travel, it would have obviously been devastating for the airlines, but it might have stopped the pandemic and it tracks. There was no way to stop the pandemic. Once the genies out of the bottle, the genies out of the bottle. And we saw this in states that had lockdowns and states that didn't have lockdowns where we saw a quivalent.

Starting point is 00:35:31 But why wasn't Taiwan and Australia and those kind of places that are islands that lockdown? Why were they spared? I don't know if you can really say that they were spared. And I don't know if you can really say that people are happy with the life that they led for that year, right? I think what we need to solve for is how do we have these vaccines come to market much faster and be much more variable in their efficaciousness because we are going to have a lot

Starting point is 00:35:54 more of these kind of emerging variants over the next couple of years with SARS-CoV-2, but also with potentially engineered bugs that we can be careful about. Question for Trimoff and Sax then. In Friedberg's sort of analysis there, and what was explained on the web about these new sequences, the US was allegedly involved in taking this down with the Chinese. If the USA, and I'm just creating a hypothesis here, just to do a little game theory, if the US was allowing China to

Starting point is 00:36:26 take this down, what would the game theory be? If the US was involved in dare I say a cover-up or being opaque like the Chinese have already sacks? Why did why did the MBA shut down Dero Mori? But that may not be that may not be national policy, Jake, all right? So like a scientist, an American scientist or an American official right could have made that request. It doesn't mean that

Starting point is 00:36:59 it was a conspiratorial process to remove this. Yeah, no, I want to jump the gun. I want to jump the fence and say, if in fact, some US people were involved, so to your point, it could be an individual covering it up, or it could be an organization in America, or it could be some set of organizations, but it's actually wanted to...

Starting point is 00:37:18 Well, look, I don't believe the wet market theory, precisely because there is a cover-up. I mean, the wet market theory was the official CCP WHO party line about where the virus came from. If that was the case, why would they just throw up in the gates to investigators, let them go into Wuhan Institute of Virology, why all the cover-up?

Starting point is 00:37:42 Why? And wouldn't they shut down all wet markets maybe i mean but i mean the logical but but but but why why obstruct the investigation why ask these american researchers to delete these sequences of um... dna or whatever and in terms of why would the researchers do it because they were asked to and they've got a relationship well Well, why would Americans be, if in fact they were, why is it W.H.O. been carrying water for the Chinese government? Because they get their money from them.

Starting point is 00:38:13 No, because I think the W.H.O. is stupid. I mean, let's... Well, they've all got all these institutional incentives. They all work together and money. There's money involved. There's sort of relationships involved, there's bureaucracy involved. And then there's a level of incompetence. Yeah. So it could be incompetence.

Starting point is 00:38:33 Could it also not be that we funded that laboratory in some way, right? We had given some money towards it. That's, I think, established. Yeah, gain a function resource. I think it's a, if, look, I am a better, so to say. And then it hang on our face if they were in fact doing this. So we don't want to look at, or we don't want to be in conflict with them because, no, I think Americans in the West might demand we be in conflict with China.

Starting point is 00:38:56 No, no, no, I think it's, I think it's what Friedberg said, which is like, look, what seemingly a low level request is made to basically delete an entry in a table. You do it. You know, not thinking anything of it. I think it's pretty clear that this was something that leaked out of that lab. The thing that we will never, ever know is how and why and whether it was purely accidental or something more nefarious in that. And I think this is why to Friedberg's point,

Starting point is 00:39:29 we just have to put a pin in all of that and move on and try to figure out a way where we set ourselves up so that the next time, for example, we hear about the Delta variant now, we're gonna hear about other variants in the fall, it's gonna be a tough winter. We cannot shut down. Yeah, well, I think we need to know

Starting point is 00:39:51 what happened here in order to inform our plan for the future. So I think to your point, walking and chewing gum at the same time, why can't we do both? Yeah, well, I mean, think about it. If the, so I've never, I've never heard anyone seriously argue that the lab leak was intentional.

Starting point is 00:40:09 I mean, I think, because that would have posed, I think a risk to China itself, but let's say it was an accidental lab leak. What that suggests is look, the Chinese knew everything about this virus for months. While we were all here pulling out our hair, trying to figure this thing out, what is it? Who does it affect? What are the risks? We're all having these debates in the United States and trying to get to the bottom of the sink.

Starting point is 00:40:34 No, no, no, no. I didn't knew everything about it and they weren't telling us. But I'm not freeberg. I mean, I think I read this somewhere, but Moderna had characterized the vaccine 48 hours after getting an email of the DNA sequence of the... Anyone can do that. Yeah, within 48... So, this was done in January. As soon as we got...

Starting point is 00:40:51 Yeah, but it didn't make it to David's point. Why don't they tell us how they made it? It's almost... It's almost months to understand the pathology of the virus, right? Yeah, that's not what matters, Jake. You can read the code. It's very readable. You can read the code. It's very readable. You can read the code within a day.

Starting point is 00:41:06 And then you can pick the area that the spike protein, which we already knew about. And you can say, let's go build some, you know, target. So how they got there doesn't matter. Is what you're saying, Freiburg? How they how they created it? How they got to this? I read it as if the Chinese you're saying you're asking

Starting point is 00:41:20 how the Chinese edited the virus in a lab? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, how they was just like a three year project, is this the 17th version they worked on or the second? There's so many things. Jason, you're speaking about your characterizing this as if it was a designed weapon. Is that what you're saying?

Starting point is 00:41:37 Well, I'm saying it was designed not as a weapon, but they were doing, what it's done, it's done a evolutionary, remember, it's function research. But yeah, research but yeah gain a function means that it there was there is a gain a function in plain English Freeberg so so when they say Biology in virology they're gonna study what changes in the genome might do to Biology to to an animal to a biological system. And that study gives them insights into how a virus may evolve,

Starting point is 00:42:08 or how certain parts of a virus may affect humans ultimately in different ways. And so understanding viruses, and really important when you're studying viruses, is you wanna understand where they're headed, not just where they're coming from. And so to understand where they're headed, you may make genomic changes,

Starting point is 00:42:23 and study how those genomic changes affect the virus. So they enhanced, can I use the word enhanced or evolved? You could say evolved, you could say enhanced, you could say engineered, but very much it's about understanding where the changes in the proteins and the virus can affect biology in different ways in the future

Starting point is 00:42:40 so that we can better understand, what these viruses are capable of and prepare ourselves against. Here's a stupid found out. We found out the implications of COVID-19. Right. Thank God we didn't have to find it out for 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:42:57 Yes. So that's my point, Friedberg. Would it not be helpful to open Camona, look at every single enhancement they made and what the results of those were. Like, they did something in that lab for the last couple of years. Who's got that in for me? Thank you.

Starting point is 00:43:13 They knew. The name is the same. That's what the name is the same. They knew how to do that. But the name is the story. The bio weapons look. Come on, are you? Move on. What this database thing represents is, look, They move out of that nail in this store. The bio-weapons look. Come on, are you moving?

Starting point is 00:43:26 What this database thing represents is, look, there was a cover up here and that cover up has fingerprints and the information is leaking out and we are seeing more evidence. And more information is gonna come out. I actually disagree with you guys that we're not gonna learn more about what happened. I think we're gonna learn a lot more.

Starting point is 00:43:44 We're gonna learn a lot more. And it's going to get worse and worse. It's going to be. But, Saks, where does it head? So, like, let's say we discover that was my original question. Let's say we discover that there's an accidental lab leak out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. A scientist got infected, left the lab, gave it to her boyfriend, people spread it in the street, suddenly became a whole pandemic.

Starting point is 00:44:03 What do we do? What do you think the response is? Do you think Americans basically now impose sanctions on China and we lead to a cold war? Like where is this all headed? And what are the motivating principles of politicians who are gonna respond as that is that comes out? Yes, that's what I wanna know.

Starting point is 00:44:19 Okay, number one, I've said before we got to reassure the whole pharmaceutical industry cannot be dependent on China for our pharmaceutical supply chain or antibiotics, our PPE. That is insane. Second of all, I mean, we got to be more realistic about the nature of the regime that we're dealing with. They knew everything about this virus for months while we're trying to figure it out. Where does it take us? Like, let's say we find out that to be true. Where does this, what happens next? De-coupling. De-coupling. Here and here's another thing that I think needs to happen,

Starting point is 00:44:47 which is a... De-coupling. But I guess that's sorry, Chimoff, once I, but doesn't decoupling happen either way? Like why do we need all this? Because there is such a motivating principle on both sides of the aisle to decouple from China. And there is a motivating principle to... No, there is a reason to not decouple. It's called money. There is a group of elites who do not want the decoupling to happen from the NBA to iPhones, and people, the NBA and Disney do not want a decouple. They want to integrate these two societies

Starting point is 00:45:17 so that we can make money. I'm not sure that they are accomplishing. Is my theory of what people are scared of. No, okay, wait, I just want to say. People are scared of a decoupling. I just want to say two things. I don't think that there's a group of elites that want that to happen necessarily,

Starting point is 00:45:31 because I think that their lives are complicated and what they would love to have, I think, is actually two end markets. You have to remember, if you go from one global market to a duopoly market and you're a seller of services, you actually have more pricing power in a duopoly than you do in a monopoly, into a monopoly. So, you know, if you're a Disney theoretically

Starting point is 00:45:53 and you have the ability to differentially price two different pieces of content, you're gonna do that. So I tend to think in general, it's better for economic systems to have this bifurcation. So I just want to go back to the thing that I wanted to- Well, we define bifurcation. You're saying two different markets,

Starting point is 00:46:13 but what if there is, hey, we're going to sanction, we're not gonna send Disney movies, or they're not gonna let Disney and NBA and like they don't let Google and Twitter and where iPhones are not gonna be made there and Apple's gonna start making iPhones to be at non-impactepak restaurant in Sri Lanka. I actually think what happens

Starting point is 00:46:27 is it accelerates democracy. Because again, you have an enormously difficult and thorny issue inside of China, which is they have a cataclysmic demographic bombshell going on. They have, we have the average age in China versus the average age in the United States is now the same. Yep. Which is an unbelievable thing because China was 15 or 20 years younger in the

Starting point is 00:46:54 early 90s when all of this off-shoring started to happen in full scale. By the end of 21s, by the end of this century, China's population, I think, is projected to shrink to about 700 million people. So they are in a hugely difficult demographic situation where there's no young people, people are getting older and older and older. And so there's just going to be a lot of upheaval. You just saw, by the way. And the people cost a lot of money to much, much more money. And China pan has learned. China just, you know, relaxed their one child policy to two. Then within a month, they relax their two child policy to three.

Starting point is 00:47:30 And now they're paying people to have kids. I mean, we give tax incentives. Well, and now they're floating a policy which says unlimited kids. Okay, so, so that's what they can do. I just want to go back to what, one of the practical things we can do coming out of Wuhan is all this new data

Starting point is 00:47:45 comes out is instead of vilifying China or trying to enter some cold war, which is stupid, we should just go and reshore everything as SAC suggested. One thing that you can say is wherever there is this kind of research happening in the world, every single variant needs to go to some basically open source repository that virologists all around the world can basically watch what's happening in lockstep. So that what the fuck was going on here then? Yeah, they deleted it. Deleted. But to be clear,

Starting point is 00:48:17 to not that is what are they doing? No, that is exactly the principle. And that is exactly what goes on within the academic and research communities worldwide. There's very open and cooperative dialogue with academics around the world about these matters. And generally that is absolutely true and the way things are done because scientists don't care about politics, they care about human health and progress.

Starting point is 00:48:39 Answer this question, please. Is every single variant of COVID that led up to COVID-19 well characterized and well understood by a broad class of scientists and virologists all over the world or a small subset of people, the plurality of which we're working at the Wuhan Lab for virology? We didn't know, the argument goes, you don't know that you have SARS-CoV-2 in those early days. And so you see some people getting sick and then suddenly you put your head up and you're like, wait a second, what's going on here? That's not what I'm asking.

Starting point is 00:49:10 My point is you're not running a genomic sequencing on all those people in those early days. No, no, I'm asking something else. You have this original virus that you've been testing and mutating and reprogramming, you're testing. You're basically doing a massive Monte Carlo simulation on an original virus. Are all the intermediate instantiations of that virus well characterized? Well, okay, that's my point. That's probably available like a crazy.

Starting point is 00:49:36 Okay, if there were probably available, wouldn't that be super dangerous? Also, also, by the way, like, wouldn't it make sense that if you were doing these iterations of these viruses that the DNA sequences should go to places like Pfizer and Moderna, where you are mandated to create vaccines just in case? Well, we are gonna enter a stage here in the next decade where we will have vaccine printers around the world. They're gonna be small buyer reactors, they're gonna be able to effectively ship code to them.

Starting point is 00:50:02 They're gonna print vaccines. There's several companies pursuing this. I'm just gonna go over a little. Oh, I like, Chimoff, I like your idea though. I'm just gonna go over a little. I'm just gonna let me see. This system is immature, naive, and inefficient. And I think that's something that we can fix.

Starting point is 00:50:16 That's why what matters most in my opinion and based on the comments I made a few episodes ago is that we need to focus on how to get there versus trying to trace back the origins. Because I think, honestly, tracing back the origins is just going to put kindling on a fire that's already burning. And so this has been my point about this whole like, you know, blame China. We want to get to a point where we can quote unquote blame China for this.

Starting point is 00:50:39 But the decoupling in the onshore, there is already enough motivation there. And there is already on both sides of the aisle. There is already kind of an obvious trajectory that we're headed this way. I'm not sure, this is a catalyst maybe, or it's a little bit more kindling, we're already headed there, and it doesn't actually answer our forward-looking question, which is how do we secure our future? And how we secure our future is really more technology and industry and some of these things.

Starting point is 00:51:02 Let me build on Chimac's idea. What if the mRNA vaccine creation and the research laboratory were the same facility and you had a cross-disciplinary approach to a real idea? Where they're making stuff and then they're curing it next door in real time so that they can trade notes. Why would that be a terrible idea?

Starting point is 00:51:22 It seems like a brilliant idea. You could just transfer the data from the research and print the vaccines with the people that are really good at making vaccines, right? You don't need to have an intricate understanding of the biology to actually be effective at making vaccines, right? No, but isn't there something about scientists who are cross-disciplinary sharing space and having collisions building relationships? Isn't that part of the science process that's worked over the last couple years. You talk about how in synthetic biology and all this, you want the mathematicians, computer programmers, and the biologists in the same area in the chemists.

Starting point is 00:51:52 Resolving to a world where we have very cheap, very fast, and distributed production of vaccines is an engineering problem. And the engineering work is kind of being undertaken now by several companies and will be fueled by this new bill that Biden is trying to get passed. This infrastructure bill is a ton of money in there for it. And as that happens, that engineering process is effectively think about them like printers and they can take code and that code allows the that printer to

Starting point is 00:52:20 that print whatever you want to print. The question of what you want to print is going to be determined by the research that's being done over here, which is, okay, here's what we're discovering, here's what we should print, here's what we should protect against and why. But I think that there's a separate engineering exercise which, let's build this distributed production system. I'm going to go on a limb and say

Starting point is 00:52:38 that these labs are immature, naive, and unsophisticated in the checks and balances that exist. And I think we've seen that and we need to fix it and you need to do something more than just have a bunch of folks that are focused on science going ham in whatever way they want. All right, so just to wrap, sack anything else on this as we put a cherry on it? Well, you asked the question, what do we do about China? I think that is a question, that's a generational question. We're gonna be asking that for decades. This is an area we would need freed Berge and nuance

Starting point is 00:53:13 because it's something that we're gonna have to navigate as a country for decades. You are really good book about this is the Thucydides trap, by Graham Allison, his Harvard professor, and he discusses different strategies we can take. He quotes Lee Kwan-Yu, who is the president of Singapore, who has a great quote about this. He said, Lee Kwan-Yu said, that the size of China's displacement of

Starting point is 00:53:39 the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world. That was the Lee Kwan Yu quote. So we were dealing with this issue even before COVID, but I do think that COVID has unmasked this regime a little bit and caused people across both sides of the political spectrum to look at this regime, I think more realistically.

Starting point is 00:54:06 All right, so in somewhat related news, Apple obviously building all their phones over there and now having servers and data over there has led to a lot of scrutiny of big tech. But the more pressing issue is the antiitrust bills that seem to be fast tracked on Wednesday, US House Judiciary Committee discussed six, six proposed antitrust bills. One bill sponsored by a Democrat from Rhode Island would call for Apple to allow third party app stores seems reasonable and provide iPhone technologies to third party app stores, seems reasonable, and provide iPhone technologies to third party software makers. So I think that means maybe opening up an iMessage, which would be delightful. I'm not sure exactly what they mean there.

Starting point is 00:54:55 And so Apple and Tim Cook is in a panic. He apparently called Nancy Pelosi and said, can you pump the brakes? Just to give you an idea of what's going on here, Apple's revenue, even though it's a small percentage of just 10% of their $274 billion in 2020 revenue, it's obviously pure profit margins. In the notes here, it says 75%, but I would think it's even more clearly services at the app store inside of Apple is I think analogous to the AWS for Amazon is the money printing machine that's growing really fast. What do we think about Apple being forced to put other app stores on there? Fallen's just like you can on your Android phone. I support it. I've been bluepilled on this issue. Actually, that's what the

Starting point is 00:55:48 commenter is on, the all-in fans have said is that why is that taking bluepills on this issue? And look, the reality is because I'm not in the business of helping $2 trillion market cap companies. I'm in the underdog business. I'm in the business of helping the entrepreneur get started with a new company. And the fact of the matter is, is that Apple has the market power, the same market power greater than Microsoft did in its heyday with the Windows monopoly.

Starting point is 00:56:18 They are total gatekeepers of what applications can be built on these iOS devices? It's worse than Windows. Windows, you could, Windows was open. It was open Windows Windows you could Windows was open. It was open. Right. It was open. They didn't have an app store. Right. So this proposal by Representative Sicilyen.

Starting point is 00:56:32 Right. So this proposal by Representative Sicilyen, the Democrat from Rhode Island, would allow this side loading. It would basically loosen the grip that Apple has over the apps that can be loaded onto Apple devices. It would at least create some degree, some potential for competition.

Starting point is 00:56:50 No, it would create tremendous competition. And it's very easy to execute. Great, Chema. I think you said it really well. I am also in the underdog business, so I think the faster they ram this thing through the better off it'll be. The thing that is important to recognize is that Apple will make this argument that, well, look, there's always Android.

Starting point is 00:57:12 And also, look, there's the open one. And that's structurally not true for a couple of reasons. The overwhelming amount of development, at least in Silicon Valley, and broadly speaking in tech, starts on the iPhone. Sure. And it's only then as an afterthought almost. I mean, you have to remember, it took Snapchat three or four years of being a public company

Starting point is 00:57:34 before they actually had a reasonable Android app, right? And so Android has always been sort of the low RPU afterthought, even though it has meaningfully more users. They're just not available. Average revenue per user. Exactly. It's a baseless argument. The overwhelming revenue, the North Star for Developers, where all of the venture capital

Starting point is 00:57:57 money goes into, is the funding and developing iOS apps. In that world view, iOS is a complete monopoly. And breaking up the ability for them to basically dictate a 30% take rate. And also loosening the technical guardrails, I think is a huge step forward. There's only one thing that I would say, however, Apple has done an incredible job at par-ivacy, locking down the phone sandboxing instances and we'll have to find some technical alternative to fortifying. Oh, no, actually, they don't, Tremoff. Actually, I think what they do is when you go to your settings, you say

Starting point is 00:58:38 unlock iPhone, you now are not protected. Apple is not responsible. You've decided to side load stuff. And it's basically like putting your phone into jailbreak or dev mode where they are not going to support you. That's the way I think Apple should execute it is. That would be like there, you know, if you want to load anything you want, when you get viruses and your privacy gets hacked, it's not on us. You just essentially, all the, we have one warranty for people who are not jailbroken and

Starting point is 00:59:04 side loaded and one warranty for people who decide to jailbreak their phones. What's incredible to me, the other point on this is how quickly these guys pass this bill and actually, actually all six, and then how reasonably well they were written. I mean, this is one topic where sometimes, you know, politicians can really kind of get it wrong or they can get lobbied in one way or the other. And these bills come out, they don't make sense. I mean, if you have to remember where how far we've come, you know, wasn't the first antitrust thing where like some guy adds a question about like a model T Ford or something. I mean, it was just so stupid.

Starting point is 00:59:36 They were so dumb. And they've gone from there to this. It's really incredible how fast they've caught up. I think this is just a terrible precedent. I think if you guys weren't going to make money by weakening Apple and Alphabet, you guys put your free market hats on. You'd kind of acknowledge that this is just a big one. We were not angel investors. We did not do the series of either of those companies, freeberg.

Starting point is 00:59:59 Yeah, I recognize that. I think if you guys had a bunch of shares in Alphabet or Amazon or Apple, your opinion would be a little bit different, but I'm just observing exactly where you say. I have shares in Amazon and Facebook. Yeah. Well, look, I think in this particular case, you know, it's that- He's in the process of selling them. No, no, sorry. At the end of the day, if Apple and Alphabet didn't make incredible products for consumers and

Starting point is 01:00:23 focused on consumer happiness. They wouldn't be as successful as they are. And much of, if you remember kind of the early days of the Apple App Store ideology, it was about curating apps and curating the quality of those apps so that the quality of the overall iPhone experience would be superior to anything else out there and consumers would love it. It wasn't about blocking out competitors and blocking out rivals and blocking out other platforms. It was about making something that consumers would absolutely love. In the same, and the same idea. In the correct freedberg, they blocked third-party book stores and

Starting point is 01:00:57 book readers. They blocked browsers. They blocked, they wanted to open source players. They did that because they wanted you to use their own products They said standards they said standards on the app store and as long as you met those standards those apps got in there So YouTube's in there Google Chrome is in there, you know, I've got Chrome installed on my Years free years and they realized they had to give that up they had to give up the browser Because that's what it They had to give up the browser. Because that's what consumers wanted.

Starting point is 01:01:23 Because they don't know. No, no. Because they only recently promised they're on their back. No, the only reason that Chrome is there is because of the amount of money that Google pays Apple for search. Yeah. Look, and that was a quid pro quo in that search deal.

Starting point is 01:01:36 I will bet you dollars to don't us that that's the only reason for me to promise it. I'm gonna say don't buy us. Yeah, I don't think Apple is that dumb. I'm pretty sure that these guys recognize that if consumers want something, they better give it to them. And if consumers wanted a bunch of shitty apps on the phone

Starting point is 01:01:49 that didn't work and broke down all the time, you will then go through the process of jailbreakers. Should you be able to jailbreak your phone and hack it? Friedberg? I don't think that I should be telling Apple how to make their friggin hardware. They should make their hardware and I as a consumer in the free market should decide

Starting point is 01:02:04 if I want to buy it or not. And if I want to buy it, if I want to buy it, if I want to have a free market, if I want to have a free, I can go buy a friggin Samsung or I don't know, if HTC still makes phones or Nokia or Blackberry, I guess these guys are all dead because they're product suck. But at the end of the day,

Starting point is 01:02:17 if there's an alternative out there, I will buy it. And if you guys wanna go fund a hardware company that builds a software platform on top of the hardware and make them a new one over here. I'm not a monopolist, I just want to get a a hardware company that builds a software platform on top of the hardware, and make it to the main office over here, not a monopolist, just for Robert Barron. Now I know why you didn't want to say your opinion, you're a goddamn Robert Barron. You're, you know, it's really, it's really interesting that Free Brook actually on this issue is actually the free market, monster, red pill.

Starting point is 01:02:40 No, and everybody else is sort of blue pill, but, but, but, I get, I don't know, I'm speaking to that red pill blue pill, like, you know, books. know, I'm speaking about Red Pill Blue Pill, like, you know, books. No, I'm speaking my book. I completely agree. I really like creative destruction. I think it's better for startups. I don't particularly have a lot of trust or faith that these big companies when they get this big are particularly well run or have the best interests of the broad market in their minds. And so, yeah, I'll be honest with you.

Starting point is 01:03:09 I hope these companies get broken up. I think it's great for what we do. I think it's great for entrepreneurship. I think it's super phenomenal for the innovation cycle we could be a part of. And I would hope to participate in that and make a bunch of money on it. I think the best way to destroy a monopoly is to build better technology that disrupts them. And that has always been the case throughout history.

Starting point is 01:03:30 And any time government gets involved and tries to break up a monopoly in a way that is not natural to the way the market forces might demand, you end up declining an innovation standard. We have to disrupt Apple, we have to disrupt Amazon, we have to disrupt Alphabet using technology if we want to have an advantage to go win in the market. And by having government come in and intervene, I feel like it ends up being

Starting point is 01:03:50 like this cronyism, which ultimately affects markets in an adverse way. Here's the problem is that the developer network effects around an operating system in Opel-E are insuperable. You cannot overthrow them. There are now thousands and thousands, maybe even millions of apps have been developed on the iOS system. And no competitor can ever get that kind of traction. It is the Windows monopoly all over again. And by the way, Microsoft and Windows might have dominated the internet if it weren't for the government coming down with the whole net scape litigation. Net scape didn't survive, but it kind of froze Microsoft and its tracks

Starting point is 01:04:29 and prevented them from dominating the nascent internet. And so, I think that turned out to be a good government intervention in terms of allowing innovation to move forward. And by the way, just on the Sicilian proposals, I think part of the reason why they make so much sense is because we can't break up Apple. How would you break up Apple, right? I mean Apple sells one product, which is iOS on different sizes of supplies.

Starting point is 01:04:51 The only way to break up Apple is to force them to use their operating system to be licensed to other hardware. And that's not breaking them up. That's not breaking them up. So it would certainly create downward pressure on their margins if Dell could make a competing Apple desktop. Okay, fair enough. What I'm saying is there's no natural fault lines within Apple, like there are at Amazon or Google, right? Amazon. Amazon could spend out AWS very easily, Google could spend out YouTube or maybe enterprise. Apple is not going to separate iPad and iOS.

Starting point is 01:05:23 Yes, of course. So what that means is because you can't split up the company, if you want to address their power, the only way to do it is with proposals like side looting. I feel like you're either looking at a capitalist monopoly or you're looking at a government monopoly. So if you think about what's happened in financial services in the United States, the regulatory burden on being a service provider in the financial services industry is so high

Starting point is 01:05:47 that it is very difficult for startups to come in and compete and look at what emerged Bitcoin. I feel like there is always gonna be a consumer innovation model that will supplant the monopoly and you can't just say, hey, the government's gonna come in and side load or break up these big businesses. What ultimately happens when you do that is you create a regulatory burden that makes it equally difficult for competition to arise over time or to reduce innovation that's

Starting point is 01:06:12 going to benefit consumers. This is the Princess Leia basic with theory. The tighter you squeeze, the more galaxies slip through your fingers and maybe TikTok and Snapchat are examples of that with Facebook, but there aren't many. And I don't know who's coming up to fight against Amazon at this point. So it's Shopify. And Shopify is crushing it.

Starting point is 01:06:34 And they're incredible. And they're going to create this long tail of stores that ultimately couldn't end up competing really effectively with Amazon. And we've seen it, right? And consumers choose it. And just because Shopify is making a lot from SaaS revenue does not mean that the majority of goods are not gonna go for a long time.

Starting point is 01:06:49 I will tell you, the consumer experience on Shopify stores is fantastic. I mean, we all don't realize it, but we're buying a ton of stuff on Shopify stores. It's pretty good, it's pretty good. And it has forced innovation. And I will also highlight that one of the benefits of these scaled businesses is that they end up having

Starting point is 01:07:04 the resourcing to fund new and emerging businesses that otherwise wouldn't be fundable. I don't think that AWS would have emerged and therefore Google Cloud and all these other alternatives wouldn't have emerged. If Amazon didn't have this, yeah, didn't have this incredible. The Chromium open-source project. And think about the industry that emerged from the way Mo. And drop.

Starting point is 01:07:22 But nobody, David, nobody's suggesting to have broken these thing up in 2007. But it's 2021 and things have changed. I don't know. What's down the road that we're going to miss out on, right? I mean, I guess my point is, like, you know, let the consumer make the decision as opposed to create regulatory burden that over time has its own cost. What is the downside to allowing somebody who wants to put an app store on their iPhone? What's the downside, Freberg?

Starting point is 01:07:46 What's the downside to letting me have Amazon's app store or Android app store and me to pick that I want to just have one set of subscriptions and I prefer the Android store. The Apple argument. I'm not making it personally. The Apple argument is that the quality of the app, the quality of the app,

Starting point is 01:08:03 I think it just think it's a little bit short-sighted for us to all jump to say, let's break up big tech. Like the quality of what's coming up is- No, no, no, no, I think it's incredible. And then you products that have come out, it's just mind blowing, and we all kind of miss the fact that these are the beneficiaries of scaled businesses. And you can't really see a startup go-

Starting point is 01:08:20 Free break up. We are not saying break up big tech. We're saying get rid of the 30% app store fee because that negatively impacts our portfolios. Let's be clear here. This is screwing with the mortgage and a lot of the companies we invested. We want that take rate lowered.

Starting point is 01:08:38 I mean, if Apple just made the take rate 15%, this entire thing goes away. Epic games feels great, Spotify's feel great. That's what they should have done when you overplay your hand. And then all of a sudden you create a group of enemies from Netflix to Spotify to Epic games. That was Apple's big mistake. They should have given those people a lower rate and just slowly lowered the rate, which is what everybody's doing now with creator percentages. And I think that's what YouTube should do now.

Starting point is 01:09:07 The 45% they're taking, just lower that to 30. Just give up a little bit of the take rate and people will feel more reasonable about what you're taking. Can I bring in that substack article by Antonio Garcia Martinez? It was called that. You wanna end on that? You wanna end on my happy getting killed by the blue sauna?

Starting point is 01:09:22 I don't wanna, I just want to, I wanna see see pay. I wanna end the to end on my happy getting killed by the son. I don't want to dissuade. I want to end the Apple segment on on on AGM's article, which was called bad Apple, although great article, great article. Yeah, I mean, it was it was unbelievable. But the David was so quick. I just want to let people know how excited David was about this. David, I think is like ready to be in a full blown romance with Antonio. I mean, what's Taylor talking about? I'm talking about you, Sacks.

Starting point is 01:09:49 You are, are you in love with Antonio? It's a big pause. Oh, he's got cut out. We lost a pun zoom, but I asked him if he's in love, Apple came in and it breaks parts. I have a pun on this. He's really frozen. We look really froze and looked at his eyes.

Starting point is 01:10:07 Oh my gosh. That's the look of love. Jamal, did you read that? The look of love. I thought it was really well written too. It was well written, right? He's a great writer. He's a really, really good writer.

Starting point is 01:10:18 Well, here's the thing. He is getting paid probably $300,000 to $700,000 to write on Stubstack after getting fired and after getting a giant settlement from Apple, whatever that's gonna be. So he is making out like a bandit. But I thought the funniest part was like, I'm not being silenced here

Starting point is 01:10:38 because I'm now being paid to talk about Apple for the next year, my Stubstack. But I thought his most salient point was, Steve Jobs would not have been able to exist in the Apple that exists today. He would have run out of apples, what he said. He would have been canceled. I mean, Steve Jobs would have 100%.

Starting point is 01:10:56 David, you broke up with me. Yes, sorry. If you were in love with Antonio, you just, I think you got. Apple cut you off, yeah. Yeah, exactly. No, look, I think, I don't agree with everything, AGM writes, but I do think he is a fantastic writer

Starting point is 01:11:08 with a lot of interesting perspective. And that ending of that article, the reason I want to mention it, is it kind of goes to Freiburg's point about, how much innovation is there really at Apple now that the genius who created it is gone? And he ends his article by saying, when Apple launched the Mac computer in 1984,

Starting point is 01:11:28 you know, they famously ran that Super Bowl ad that featured a solitary figure flinging a sledgehammer into a big brother-like face spuing propaganda at the Huttled ranks of some drab dystopia. And then AGM says, the tech titans nowadays resemble more and more the harang figure on the screen rather than the colorful rebel going against the established order whether it be hiring policy or free speech Silicon Valley has to decide whether it becomes what it wants

Starting point is 01:11:54 about to destroy. The reality is the great genius who founded Apple is long gone. It is run by HR people and woke Moss. Supply chain manager. Exactly. And so there is no more innovation there. They are just a gatekeeper collecting rents. And, you know, FreeBurger, right to raise the issue

Starting point is 01:12:15 of what's going to create the most innovation. But the thing that's going to create the most innovation is letting entrepreneurs create new companies without needing apples from mission. I will tell you something. I think that over the next decade, because of exactly what you guys said, that Apple is run by managers who don't want to see loss, but aren't driven to gain, you're going to end up seeing Amazon Hicular and Apple likely as well, lose to the likes of Shopify and

Starting point is 01:12:40 Square and Stripe. Shopify, Square and Stripe are all formidable threats to Amazon over time. And now that Bezos is actually going to step out, and it is going to be run by a bunch of managers, and you have these founders of these three companies still running all three of those businesses, and all three of those businesses are going to be incredible competitive threats from different angles on Amazon. That is where innovation went, and you will see it because leadership driven by founders at those businesses could take them to compete directly with this guys and you don't need the government

Starting point is 01:13:08 to come in the intervening. All three of them are building and are going to continue to build better experiences for consumers and for merchants that could end up disrupting the Amazon. I'll give you a different take. I think that all four companies are going to win. Including Amazon. Yeah, they're going to continue to win. And I think what it shows is that Shopify and Stripe and Square had to have very precise entry points in markets. And in many ways, the things that they are allowed to do is still quite constrained because

Starting point is 01:13:37 Amazon exists. I think that that's fine. That should be allowed. But I don't think that's what's going to get legislated and then litigated over the next 10 or 15 years. It's a handful of very specific practices that can strain what folks can do. I think the App Store is a constraint. The algorithmic nature of Facebook's newsfeed and Google search are constraints, and people are going to test those things. And I think that in testing it, you're probably going to do what the government was successful as SAC said in 2000, which is just slow these guys down.

Starting point is 01:14:13 You have to remember, at some point, there were probably more DOJ lawyers inside of Microsoft and product managers. And everything, if I remember correctly, from a feature perspective, had to go to the DOJ for approval for some time. That's probably the best thing that can happen to these companies, which is you completely gum up the product infrastructure. Then, you know, Friedberg, you're right, the human capital equation changes. People leave.

Starting point is 01:14:37 It's not that fun to be there. They go to startups. But again, you needed the government to step in. And they're not going to necessarily solve it, but they can really slow down the overreach of these companies for the next 20 years. And I think that that's net additive for the world. Here's my prediction. I think the pirates are assembling themselves whether it's Coinbase saying we're not going to have politics at work or Antonio and the end of cancel culture, the end of taking the historical

Starting point is 01:15:07 left or the historical or the trolling right seriously, I feel like that is ending. And this great nightmare of hysteria is going to end and the over to windows going to blossom and open up and people are going to be more innovative and accepting of new ideas and be reasonable and not cancel people who wrote something five or ten or twelve years ago. Go go reasonable this. Let's go reasonable. Yeah. Well reasoned. All right everybody. This has been another episode of the all way what podcast you want to do. Nobody. What am I doing today? Yeah. What you are you inviting us somewhere? No, just wondering what or is it a flex? Are you gone?

Starting point is 01:15:47 How did you get an electric you got an electric start or didn't you say 30 PM for me? So I got to go hang out with my family. I've got the accelerator and a board meeting and that's it. I'm in the Mediterranean general area. Yes, I'm actually conquering Europe. But I did but I did again I just want to say I did go to the dentist and my film pretty good. Overcame my sense.

Starting point is 01:16:10 Are you hearing about people moving back from Miami? This like little thing going on about people saying, no, that's BS. People are so happy here. Yeah. Do you think you're going to end up living there? No, I mean, we'll see. Just a part. Maybe.

Starting point is 01:16:23 No, maybe. Did you get orthopedic shoes when you bought that shirt? No, I mean, we'll see maybe no, maybe Did you get orthopedic shoes when you bought that shirt? Did you join a golf club are you in a retirement community right now? Guys, I'm on a I'm on a diet. I break by the end of the summer. I'll be thinner than Jason. Yeah. Oh, wait. Is there a way back? Come on. Go to Dexascan. Wait, okay. Let bring it. Go to Dexascan.

Starting point is 01:16:49 No, Dexascan would have hurt. Dexascan. Dexascan. And let's go. Next episode, show your Dexascan. Oh, wait. And do it. Do it.

Starting point is 01:16:58 Dexascan. And do it. Do it. Do it. What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you it. What are you waiting for? No, check out. Check out what's your ways. I think I'm 194. Okay.

Starting point is 01:17:07 195, something like that. And what's your height? And what's your height? Five, foot, neck. Foot, neck. Five, nine. What are you? You do look thinner.

Starting point is 01:17:15 You do look thinner. Yeah, I think I've lost about five pounds already. I'm about 185 right now. And what's your height? For five, nine. Oh, we're the same height and you weigh 10 pounds less. You look good. Are you want any pharmaceuticals to lose weight?

Starting point is 01:17:28 No, I'm doing intermittent fasting. I'm doing no carbs. And I'm trying to be as plant-based as possible. So. Go sex. Yeah, go for you, go sex. You do look better. You do look better.

Starting point is 01:17:38 You feel good? More energy? Yeah, I mean, yes, I was getting like, does that extra five pounds like kind of tip me over? I think I got like another 15 to go, but you think it could be 170. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's my goal. Have you cut back on drinking? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:17:54 You can only take on so many things as I was. We had some incredible wine last night, you know. Well, I thought you were a vodka guy. Can't you just do like a vodka and soda and be good? I don't know, I can't give a wine, you know. I can't wait to be playing poker and drink some more to my wine. That's so fun. Oh, I can't wait, other.

Starting point is 01:18:17 Love you, love you, Sacks. Love you, Harry. Love you, Harry videos. Love you, old Stats. Back at you. All right. This has been The All-In Podcast. Brought to you Harry videos. I'm the only one that's that's back at you. That's right. All right, this has been the All in Podcast, brought to you by Nobody.

Starting point is 01:18:29 And if you'd like to join the All in Chat, you can join our I message group. The first 10 people, it's $10,000 a month. We're going to monetize by all of them. And 10 people, to be in the I message Chat for 10,000 a month each. To break off. It's only 300 bucks a day to be in the,

Starting point is 01:18:45 I gotta figure out a way to monetize this. All right, we'll see you all next time. Bye, bye. Bye. Bye. We'll let your winners ride. Bring man David Sattas. I'm going on the way.

Starting point is 01:18:57 I'm going on the way. And it said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. I'm the West. I'm the Queen of King. I'm going on the way. I'm going on a beach! What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What?

Starting point is 01:19:10 What? What? What? Besties are gone! That's my dog, can you give it a wish? You're driving so fast! Oh man, my ham is actually a wimpy athlete. We should all just get a room and just have one big hug, because they're all just like this like sexual tension that they just need to get more attention. We should all just get a room and just have one big hug or something. Because they're all just like this like sexual tension that we just need to release that out. What you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, what you're the big, I'm doing all it.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E37: NYC rejects far-left mayoral candidates, new developments in lab leak theory, Apple's App Store breakup potential & more

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