All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E70: EMERGENCY POD! Russia invades Ukraine: Reactions, Putin's ambition, Biden's response and more

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

0:00 Ukraine invasion: how should the US respond? 17:03 Importance of energy independence when dealing with Russia; solutions: Solar, Natural Gas, Nuclear, etc 32:51 Reflecting on the media coverage so far, Putin's ambitions 42:20 Biden's new sanctions, Chamath's Russia story, doing the math on how the US can leverage energy independence 53:19 Markets signaling a potential turnaround, great businesses are available to buy at compressed prices, is Putin mad Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/#3 https://nypost.com/2022/01/27/us-nato-must-never-give-in-to-russias-absurd-demands https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/1496837835743133699 https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/1496716168920547331 https://www.wsj.com/articles/jony-ive-steve-jobs-memories-10th-anniversary-11633354769?mod=e2tw https://www.wsj.com/articles/putin-green-energy-price-independence-gas-lng-fracking-russia-ukraine-invasion-europe-germany-nord-stream-11645650131 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/21/highlights-of-russian-president-putins-speech https://peterbeinart.substack.com/p/bidens-cia-director-doesnt-believe?utm_source=url https://www.nationalreview.com/2003/03/unpatriotic-conservatives-david-frum/  

This is our place going to leave For what your winners ride Rainman David Silence And it said we open source it to the fans And they've just got a reason for me Love you guys, nice queen of kinwa I'm going to leave Alright everybody, welcome to another episode of the all-in podcast episode

Number 70, we made it to 70 episodes Which is just shocking to me and we're recording a little bit earlier because one of our besties had to change their schedule Tremoth and it's A crazy day to be doing this last night Putin decided to invade the Ukraine late Wednesday night early to Thursday morning. Putin started a special military operation in quotes to demilitarize the Ukraine and we've

been watching this build up for weeks. You're missing it. He said to demilitarize and demotsify. And demotsify not supply yes of course uh... because of your grandma's filet so many notses uh... his trolling continues i guess just starting it off um sacks your big putin fan uh... along with tronchen uh... your the right wing so tell us how glorious is uh... this invasion for the Republican Party. Well, it's interesting. Well, it's funny,

but it's also kind of sad because what you're doing right there is exactly what the whole Twitter sphere is doing, which is anybody who wants to actually de-escalate and defuse this war before it escalates and metastases and something much worse, gets to announce as a Putin apologist. I have no dealings in either Russia or Ukraine for that matter. Ukrainian cash is not lining my pockets like many of our politicians, their families in Washington. I have no interest except preserving the safety of the United States of America. And the point is that I think Biden, that the one clear elusive point that he made in his last speech, I know he's giving one today,

is that the United States of America would not intervene militarily in Ukraine. We should all understand that. He made it very clear. The troops that were being sent over there were to defend our NATO allies. Ukraine is not one. We do not have a treaty obligation to defend them. What is happening right now is tragic. Putin is the aggressor. It's a humanitarian

disaster. I do feel bad for the people of Ukraine. Our thoughts and prayers are with them. However, we are not going to intervene militarily in that conflict. Nor should we, because we cannot risk starting World War Three. It is not a vital American interest who rules the Donbass in a way that it is a vital American interest to avoid a war with Russia. And the tragedy here, the second tragedy, is that we did not do everything we could to diplomatically try and solve this problem. And what do I mean by that?

On this pot three weeks ago, I said that Ukraine was never going to be part of NATO. Why? Because Biden just said it. We can't defend them militarily against Russia that Ukraine was never going to be part of NATO. Why? Because Biden just said it. We can't defend them militarily against Russia. We were never going to admit them. Why didn't we give up that card? That, we don't know for sure what would happen,

but if we had been willing to basically affirm that we believe in Ukraine's sovereignty, but they are not going to be part of NATO, that might have diffused this conflict. I think we had consensus on that. We said like, hey, what if, I think actually, I suggested what if we said a five-year, you know, more auditorium on them joining

or something like that? Absolutely. Can I just ask SACS one question on this? Okay, yeah. SACS, do you not think that the US, you know, regardless of the obligations under NATO faces a little bit of an issue on a global stage where we told this leader back down, don't do this, and then we don't respond militarily.

That that action effectively reduces America's influence and credibility when it comes to these sorts of defensive statements in this kind of global theater. And our primacy is being challenged because we lay down the law. We said, this is not allowed. You cannot do this. There's going to be repercussions. And then it happens. And there are economic sanctions.

And maybe we'll talk in a second about some other potential repercussions. But by not doing something militarily, we weaken ourselves and we weaken our position. And it gives permission to others to take action that may be counter ultimately to kind of the US interests abroad. Okay, so in response, I have to, we'll quote what Barack Obama said. We've mentioned this on a previous pot.

He said, the fact is that Ukraine, which is undisputed back in the Atlantic interview he gave, the fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia, no matter what we do. This is an example where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for. The fact of the matter is, none of us on this pod want to send our sons and daughters

to go fight and risk their lives and die to determine who rules the Donbass or even Ukraine. We sympathize with them. We may impose sanctions on their behalf. We may arm them militarily, but we are not willing to fight. And so therefore, us trying to lay down this law to Putin was a bluff, and he called our bluff. And the smart thing we can do right now is not to escalate.

Look, we've already gone to the river. We basically tried to barrel and bluff him at every street we got to the river he has now invaded we're now in a showdown what do you want to do now you want to escalate this even more the only way that we could make this worse is to precipitate a world war now if our absolute priority our absolute priority right now should be to make sure that this war doesn't spread my prediction is as of right, it would be very unpopular to go to war or for the U.S. to enter the war on the battlefield. I do think, and I don't know if we're going to hear more about this today, but I do think

that the cyber war is beginning today. The United States has talked at length about having tremendous cyber capabilities. My understanding is as of this morning, a number of state websites were down in Russia and a number of Russian cyber interests were under attack. We may see the U.S. confront Russia on another battle stage, not on the field. But if over the next couple of weeks, this continues their days. And I was just looking at CNN this morning and BBC, and there were these images that started to come out of Ukrainian airplanes that had been downed. And if you start to see images of children, helpless children, buildings being bombed,

bodies strewn on the street. Does that not change kind of the American opinion on whether or not we should do something here? And will that not kind of lead us potentially into a war that, you know, today I think we all, you know, or many people would say strategically doesn't make sense, economically doesn't make sense, you know, we're only going to lead to kind of escalation. But don't you think that American opinion typically changes when imagery arises, when the sort of brutality of war kind of comes to the-

Well, I mean, that's why I'm talking about images out of some horse and we have in the past, yeah. But even today, it's like the first day and there's like these really gruesome, awful photos coming out and I could see people getting sympathetic to that and starting to kind of, you know, bang the war drum saying, this is ridiculous. We can't let this tyrant do this, it's awful. Well, it's already happening, you know,

but this is why we should not conduct foreign policy by Twitter. We should not Twitterize the situation. Yeah, this is when cooler heads need to prevail. The fact the matter is when Soviet tanks, they rolled into Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968 across the prog spring or Poland in 1981 across solidarity, we did nothing because avoiding war

with the Soviet Union was more important even though we sympathize with those people. And in 2008, we've been in the situation before. 2008, Georgia, the Republic of Georgia, Putin invaded on behalf of these breakaway Russian sort of dissident provinces, South of Sedeia and Abkhazia. Why did that happen? Well, if you remember back in 2008, there was a lot of talk about Georgia, Jordan, NATO, and you had, you know, the War Hawk Senator John McCain go over there and declare we're all Georgians now. And so what happened? All of a sudden in these breakaway provinces, the

Russified provinces of South Ossetia and Opskazia started rebelling. That gave Putin the excuse to roll in there and the tanks. A year later he left, but there was no more talk of Georgia joining NATO. So and again, we, George W. Bush was president at the time. We did nothing militarily. We just sent humanitarian assistance. That was it. So time. We did nothing militarily. We just sent humanitarian assistance. That was it. So we've been in this situation before. We should not keep hearing in the media on cable news

and on Twitter. This is historically unprecedented. We must act. No, we've been in this situation before in 2008 and all those previous times. We were in this situation in 2014 when Putin invaded from here. Let me ask you a question, Zach.

We had this concept of, hey, maybe if we said, hey, we won't admit them into NATO. And do you think that if we had actually made that concession, or said we're not going to let them into NATO for a decade and whatever, do you think that would have changed Putin's behavior as well? Well, it's honestly it's hard to know. I mean, I can't prove a counterfactual.

However, I think it was tragic not to try. I do think I think it's really the goal of diplomats. Sure. To try and again, as I said on previous part, it was the sleeves off our vest. Ukraine is not going to be a member of NATO. So to give that up, what it was basically giving them nothing, it was almost meaningless to us. instead of making a concession what happened blink and came out with the statement nato's door is open and will remain open it was perhaps a most provocative thing he could have said in that situation

and they they would have been voted in that would have happened anyway let me ask you this question you've been complaining about the media and democrats uh... banging the drum of war and you're saying they're more hawkish. On the other side of the table, you have, Trump came out and said that Putin's move on the Ukraine is genius and the guy is very savvy and then you have Pompeo saying,

I have enormous respect for him. And that is a very talented statesman has lots of gifts. And he knows how to use power, we should respect that. So your party, your crew is praising Putin. Do you think the praising of Putin is wise in this kind of situation? No, look, here's what's going on. First of all, the war hawks and the people being the drums of wars happening on both sides of the aisle and on both sets of cable news.

I was watching Fox last night and they were all, but, you know, cheerleading for war basically saying, we have to go on our offense. I'm excited. I watched it too. Yes. They were saying we have to go on offense. That what, what is Biden doing saying that we're not going to intervene militarily?

I'm like watching these people who are acting, you know, it reminded me of Dr. Strange love, where you have slim pickens, the cowboy riding the atomic bomb on the way down. They were excited. And I'mens the cowboy riding the atomic bomb in the way down They're excited and I'm watching the cable news and all these people are acting this way And I'm like what in the world is going on? You know it's it's all this is a big part of what I tried to point out our prediction show at the end of last year You know that the if a country is happy if the economy growing, if there isn't significant risk of inflation,

no one wants to go to war. When those are not the case, there is a tendency to say we got to do something. And if you're anxious, and if you don't have anything to do, and some conflict arises, that's a good place to kind of apply your energy and your pressure. Let me bring the dictator himself into this, Tremata. You've been silent thus far Any thoughts on what we're seeing here. I was letting the proletariat speak Are you the bourgeoisie or what? Yeah

That sweater is very bourgeois I have to say I mean sweater Karen right now Traffiting she's She's melting. I think they're gonna be a go-fun me to Revoke that sweater from you. What is a story with that sweater? That's what that's what true No true to true to will read broken a state of emergency to stop that yes Willing will see the go-fun me. I mean this feels like we're processing this chama so quickly that the Ukraine just asked on Twitter today for everybody to tell at Russia how they feel about what they're doing

and the Ukraine, this is happening in real time, is tweeting memes now about Putin. This seems almost surreal and is getting very strange in terms of how we're interpreting it. I mean, is there an off-fram here, or are we just going to have to deal with Putin doing this every number of years? And this is just going to be, you know, a year or two of, you know, conflict. I don't know. But here's what's important to, um, two points. One is the economic sanctions have begun and the economic damage to Russia

had been started in Florida and Germany basically suspended the certification of more extreme change. That is a huge economic impact. Right. I think the approval against the dollar was off nine or ten percent this morning. That's a time woke up. It's here in Europe, so it's down even more. It's cool. So now the interesting thing about that was that I read an article on the Wall Street Journal, maybe Nick, you can get this up. But this was a few years ago. Preceding this, Russia had built massive amounts of US dollar reserves. In fact, they had been depleted over like the last little crisis that they went through.

And then they had rebuilt all these dollar reserves. So in some ways, it's made them the case that these guys had this plan all along. And they put some, you know, they built up their bank accounts. It's just in case because they knew that this would happen. The other thing is there's a quote from the Chairman Master. He said that deterrence is a simple equation. It's the product of will and capability, right? Will times capability. And so, you know, if you're going to be deterrent on the world stage, you know, it's early,

not only do you have to have an incredible military capability, you also have to have the will to go to wars, but he's, and I think in America, you know, what Friedberg said is, I think if you pulled a lot of people, you know, people are pretty exhausted after all of these different conflicts, and so I'm not sure that the will is there to go to war. And so the best off ramp is to try to find some amount of economic pressure points and then to negotiate some sort of release style for all of that economic pressure in return for some normalization. I think that's really the best chance. I have to be honest with you, and I was thinking about the odds of this just from a financial perspective and whether I should be doing something different or putting

something on. I thought that there was zero chance that this would happen. Literally, I put it as close to zero as possible because I thought in 2022, it just didn't seem like this could be possible. And here we are, and it seems like it is. I hope everybody will clean a safe. But I think that Biden's gonna announce some pretty crippling stages.

And I think the West is gonna be very punitive financially, and that's probably awkward. But it depends on, it depends on long-left, the suffer-lastic, because again, like I said, I think Russia's foreign currency reserves are pretty strong, going into this conflict. Let me then pass the bolt to you, Sax. There's going to be a lot of people who are going to die, both Russians and Ukrainians, sadly, if this thing keeps escalating there's a hundred ninety thousand russian troops on the border or making their way into the ukrain is there an off ramp here

in your mind in any way do you think the sanctions will work and and got this the the poor citizens of russia i mean are they gonna crack at some point and is this gonna blow back onto Putin? Because what do they seem to get out of this? I guess there's a question. Do the Russian people support this? And will they support an unextended basis? Well, okay, so there's a few questions there. Okay, so the fact of the matter is, so I think you're right that Putin has bought himself a headache here, right? I mean, the Eastern parts of Ukraine that are ethnically Russian, the areas of the Donbass,

they will, those people will support him, but the Western part of Ukraine that wants to be free, that's not ethnically Russian, that is going to be a headache for him to manage. I don't think he wants this problem long term. It's probably going to be more like the situation we had in Georgia in 2008. He goes in for a year. He institutes perhaps some sort of puppet government or some government that's more favorable to him. And then he gets out probably. This is if there's no escalation. I think it's very important. I keep making this point. The most important thing Biden can do is to make sure that this does not escalate militarily and that we do not get militarily involved. I think sanctions will happen. I mean, that's pretty clear

probably we have to move forward with that, but at the same time, the wall sanctions work in terms of being a strong deterrent. No, I don't think so. There was a very good article by Neil Ferguson and Ken Griffin, actually in the Wall Street Journal, talking about what we should do. They made the point that sanctions don't usually work. However, what we should really be striving for is energy independence. So.

100%. So yes, but the crazy thing is America, despite having these huge natural gas reserves, 7% of our natural gas is going from Russia right now. So why? Because we stop fracking, we stop the Biden-Cancellular Keystone pipeline, and then in Europe, the situation is even worse, which is they're completely dependent on on Russian natural gas. Germans are in the UK, not France.

The op-ed made the point that we could be investing in liquefying natural gas and exporting it to Europe to create more energy independence. And that would remove their dependency on Putin. That's energy independence here. The problem with energy independence is it takes too long and we went through a massive capital under investments like over the last six or seven years. And so, in the order to start with this, you need to have started actually putting money in the ground six or seven years.

And the problem today is if we put money into the ground now, that's not going to yield any sort of return on investment capital for another six or seven years. And so when you look at these net gas companies, every single one to a name, as is that you go fully alternative and to go to renewable energy because you can today, right, deploy solar vastly more aggressively in the United States. Look at the end of the day, the thing that is completely abundant and has the best implications all around is solar. And it's gotten cheaper than coal and and and and and and and you also feel stuff like why why are we only 3% penetrated in the United States? Right? We can manufacture these panels, we can deploy them broadly. Right now, you know, we're in this situation where California is actually

revisiting the ITC credit or the the net metering law, sorry, rather, which would have huge implications for the California solar market. It could actually destroy that whole market. And so, you know, we have to get really organized, David, to your point, but there is a path to energy independence. I think it's alternative energy. It's wind and solar because we can do it today, and you can do it really quickly. And you can basically leap from the entire capital and that's

the cycle that you need to do for that gas week. We've already missed the training. Well, and also you could have Germany could start turning back on nuclear power plants if they could get their citizens to pick nuclear over war and that seems like a pretty easy choice. It takes to one. Well no, they recently were having their 20 years. No, they've been doing it for 20 years.

They've been turning them off for 20 years. I know, that means they don't have to rebuild them, Tramoth. They could just turn them back on. It's not a light switch, Jason. No, but that's not how it works to rebuild them, Tremoth. They could just turn the back on, which is a crime which we have. That's not how it works. It's not a light switch. I know, but it's not the same as building a new one in the US. That's the point.

They could. It's still years between these things. That's the threat of doing it. But you got to think, Tremoth, the threat of doing it would terrorize the Saudis and the Russians. If all of a sudden the EU said we are going to go massive solar, massive nuclear, and we're going to be energy independent. I'm not sure any country, dramatic effect.

I'm not sure any country is going to really have a massive reaction to any other country talking about a multi-year investment cycle. I do think Jason's your point. Solar is not a multi-year investment cycle. It can literally happen to bucks. Yes. And it's cheaper as much more disruptive. So for example, if you took $3 trillion of field back better and instead said, you know what, we're just going to actually put solar everywhere. Everywhere. That would be, you take $3 trillion of solar and you put it literally everywhere in the United States. I think everybody would support it. You would have domestic job creation like nobody's business. You would take so much carbon out of it there.

And you would have enormous energy defendants. Well, it would give you a degree of freedom so that the next time you're pushed a war, you can actually evaluate it under a very different risk talk to us. And if you absolutely need the energy from the confiates at the point. Yeah, that's the point. And just for a fact check here, nuclear power in Germany accounted for 13.3% of German electrical supply in 2021, France, by the way, 70, 80%. And that was generated by six power plants, of which three were switched off. At the end of 2021, they literally just turned these off, Chimoff. And the other three, I know, but the decision was not made yesterday, Jason.

Why point it? This is these are 20 year decision. No, it was Fukushima that pushed them actually in the sentiment of, and they also had 70% of their electricity on a couple of weeks come from renewables. So the Germans suddenly thought that they didn't live in a shady area and they could get by with just solar, which is a big mistake. And it's turning these off Germany. If they didn't turn these off,

they would have a different approach here too. You can be sure of that. So look, I'm a fan of solar, but I'll just make the point that natural gas burns from a climate standpoint. It burns much cleaner than oil, and oil burns much clearer than coal. So natural gas is a way better than a lot of the alternatives. And the main problem with it is that when you frack,

you can get the release of that. Well, that, but that's of the alternatives. And the main problem with it is that when you frack, you can get the release of... Well, that's in the ground, but in terms of the release of methane, which is a greenhouse gas, that's actually worse than CO2. And so you can actually get methane release, but in the US, we have techniques for recapture of it, whereas I don't think Russia cares about that.

So we'd be a lot better off. I think solar is part of the answer, but I don't think we should be turning our backs on the enormous reserves of natural gas that we have here in this country. Friedberg, what do you thought you're hearing? Three of us talk about energy. Give us your science, boy, superpowers here. And what do you think is the clearest shot on goal here for energy independence has an option to war. I'll just point out that the notion that there are countries that are jockeying or positioning. To stop the train towards renewable alternatives for energy production this century.

The number of countries in that bucket are close to zero. You know Saudi Arabia took. in that bucket are close to zero. Saudi Arabia took Saudi Aramco public specifically so that they under kind of MBS's strategic direction diversify away from the fossil fuel dependency of their economy and diversifying to other assets. So they are gonna sell down their equity interests in Saudi Aramco over time and invest in things,

they probably made their first bet and regret it with Softbank, but they'll probably make other bets to try and invest in kind of next-gen industries. And so, if you look at the money that's going from even Exxon, and there's a guy locally here in San Francisco who ran a very significant board proxy fight to get on the board of Exxon, and he won. And he's jockeying for continued and increased investment from an R&D perspective in renewables and alternatives. And we're seeing this across the board.

There's going to be in the next couple of years, if not already, many of these fossil fuel dependent businesses and countries have or are making a massive shift towards alternative renewable sources of energy. So I don't think that there's any enemy here. There's no evil. Like all the folks that have been dependent on it in the past are aware of the fact that this is not where the future is. We do have to transition. So the reason I bought energy stocks in December and the reason I made this point was threefold one is because we have, as a result of this general consensus view, under invested in energy infrastructure, and the demands that are going to come out of the X COVID economic growth cycle cannot be met with the current energy infrastructure, and you're going

to see energy prices continue to climb, coupled with the fact that when war or conflict arises, typically you see stockpiling, and you see trade routes being shut down, typically you see stockpiling and you see trade routes being shut down and you see energy prices climb. And so, I think generally we're in a little bit of a transitionary state. Everyone knows where the puck needs to be. Everyone's headed there. But for now, I think everyone's trying to navigate. How do we get through the next couple of years?

And in this particular year, you know, get through the season of uncertainty, you know, how fast is the economy growing? How much have we actually invested in infrastructure and how much renewables do we have coming online? Now I think the right answer, if I were to be president of the world, I would immediately deregulate nuclear and make nuclear-fission reactors a mainstay of energy production here in the US. I think that there are a number of techniques we can undertake for safer building without all the regulatory cycles and process needed to get these things stood up. China, as I've mentioned in the past, is over the next 30 years committed to building,

check this number out. I think we talked about this, 140 nuclear power stations. Their estimated cost, I believe, is on the $3 billion per station range. They are gonna increase their total energy production capacity with these nuclear power stations on the order of 15 to 20%.

So they will take coal offline as they bring those online, or they will kind of start to have a cleaner mix of energy rather than building an action infrastructure. So if we as the United States intend to be an economic challenge to China this century, if we intend to compete effectively with them, we are gonna have a really hard time with energy prices being what they are here. In this country, China is already 30 to 40% cheaper than that's on an industrial scale basis

with their current energy infrastructure. And when their nuclear comes online over the next decade, their prices are gonna drop even further. Nuclear should be in the four to five cent per kilowatt hour range. Today China is in the kind of 7 to 8 cent per kilowatt hour range, the US for industrial. I think is in kind of a 9 cent 10 cent range, 10 cent depending on where you look. So, they're already cheaper, they're going to get even cheaper. And so not just from like what's the right transition from a security point of view, but energy is going to be so critical in this next century for us to maintain our footing as a competitor

to China, particularly as big about this for a second. If automation is the future of manufacturing, then electricity and energy ends up being the biggest cost driver for those systems. And if everything is on parity, everyone's got the same automation systems, whoever's got the cheaper energy wins. And to dovetail, you and Shamaq's both positions, a friend of ours said, hey, nobody wants to live near nuclear power plants. And they've already got the grid going there because it has to be there. Surround the nuclear power plant with a solar farm because it's the most efficient way. So actually pairing these two things,

perhaps even with some batteries, solves the entire problem. And what do we think SACs is the eventuality here in terms of the relationship between Russia and China now that we've wrapped up the energy and then, you know, are all of us, I think, don't want to go to war here. So I guess there's two questions here of escalation. I'll let you pick which one you want to go for. Escalation with Taiwan, or does, if Putin is not held, we don't hold the line here, you know, Putin picks another country to, or another region to go after in 2023, 2024. At what point do you say we gotta hold the line?

Well, I mean, I think the line is that we have existing NATO treaty obligations to protect the members of NATO under Article five. We have to come to their defense. Ukraine is not one, Georgia is not one. So to me, that's the line, or is there existing treaty obligations? And this is why we should not want to add

some of these countries to NATO is because it involves us in their disputes and drags us into war. You know, on Twitter, all I hear is that this is 1938 all over again and we cannot appease a dictator and that is one lesson of history. It's an important lesson. However, there are other lessons of history and it seems to me that the situation we're in could be more like 1914, which is World War I. What happened in World War I? Basically conflicts between minor powers dragged major powers into wars. And basically Germany gave Austria a so-called blank-check war guarantee. And then that led to a war with Russia, and then that dragged Britain and France in and eventually the United States.

So it was a case where nobody, none of these powers wanted to be in a war with each other, and yet somehow inertia and threats and escalations and miscalculations and folly all sort of tumbled their way into it. And that I think may be the historical precedent here that we want to avoid. I think we need to be very careful, not to let every conflict all over the world drag us into these types of wars and disputes.

Sachs, do you think American primacy is coming to an end? I hope not, but if our goal is to preserve American primacy, which I think it should be, then we need to be smart about how we use our strength. And we don't want to free it away. And what have been doing for the last 20 years, freeing away our strength in wars we didn't need to be in the Middle East. We spent how many trillions on nation building there that turned out to be a total folly and waste of money. out to be a total folly and waste of money. Look at this, we have a $30 trillion national debt. If we want this century to be an American century like the last one, we need to preserve our strength and use it wisely and not involve ourselves in every conflict. And, you know, so look, we need to protect our NATO allies. I agree with that, but we don't need to be creating

disputes and involving ourselves in wars that we have no obligation to get involved in. We need energy independence and we need to deliver our balance. The most important American policy to do. Absolutely. And it's possible, but it's going to require a lot of focus and sacrifice. I really think the same that I just made up as actually really quite genius, which is redirect that $3 trillion bill, that better bill, to just pure solar everywhere in the United States.

It would just be so disruptive. I mean, it would just be so disruptive. It would be so. It becomes a dividend. It's like it's you be I in a way. Everybody gets no electrical bill. I don't think it would allow people to have electricity forever, but I do think it would subsidize basically the deployment of energy infrastructure

to every single household in America in a way that would just completely shake up, frankly, the political world order. Because what you guys said is so true, a lot of this tough rests on the politics around natural resources, right? So today it's oil. Tomorrow it's going to be some rare earth in you know, in 10 years it could be copper and lithium. And we want to find ourselves with the ability to be clear, wide, and focused in our response to these issues. But if we need critical resources that can only come from one other place or two other places and we don't have the engineering ingenuity, that figured out how to, you know, deliver our reliance. And we're going to get dragged into not just

this conflict, but a whole bunch of other conflicts going through. I'd say yes. And we could be energy independent for free right now if we were just to repeal some of these executive orders. I mean, we were energy independent, like a year or two ago, until we banned fracking. Why do the fracking when solar is available? It seems to me like we want to actually preserve the environment, stop global warming. So if solar is available and nuclear is available, why would you advocate for fracking and ripping up the earth and polluting it? I'm a fan of solar.

It's really just about cost and time to deployment. Got it. Okay. So you see it as a bridge. Hey, maybe we do it for five years, ten years. Long term, I think solar is the answer, but I think that's a long term strategy. The other thing that is confounding is like Americans, and this is another thing I was just watching the media, and I did exactly what you did, David, is I put on Fox.

I was like, let me get their interpretation of this, because the Trump folks are praising Putin, and then these guys are wanting to go to war. So it feels like there's some Interconflict or some war going on in the republic inside of things But even on the yeah, and then on the left you have this craziness They were I mean wolf blitzer and everybody was so excited about this war They were like stay tuned and oh my god. We're gonna be 24 hour coverage. They were like orgasmic in their coverage. Remember CNN got their big star-court?

Yeah, the Gal4, that was it. Well, that was the shine. I remember being a kid watching that. That is the language free break. It's interesting to me. That was the language they were using. So Don Lem was saying, and we have the full resources to give you blow-by-blow coverage

of everything happening. Stick with CNN, this is where we do our best work. And it was literally like war porn and it was really uncomfortable to watch combined with, Saks. And this is what I wanted. Well, maybe Freeberg, I'll throw this one to you. They kept talking about how Americans were going to suffer at the pump. And I just thought, this is so crazy and just hoping there's 190 hundred ninety thousand young Russian men who are gonna die countless Ukrainian Civil civilians who are gonna die potentially and this thing could escalate a sacsad

You know you can't play games with war. It could the dominoes can fall in all directions You have no idea when you light off these grenades and And we're talking about our pain at the pump very weird Very weird times. Freeberg any thoughts? America's weird. It's weird. I want to.

I feel like if freeberg doesn't want to respond to that, I want to, I want to talk with the media coverage. I'll add to that. I mean, you flip over to MSNBC. John Bolton is on MSNBC. And one of the weirdest things happening in our politics now is that all the Neocons who used to be members of the Republican Party, who work for Georgia, W. Bush, and come out us into the Iraq war, have now all become Democrats, and they're all over, they're

supposedly the conscience of the country over on CNN and MSNBC and beating the drums of war, it's absolutely unbelievable. And one of the tactics they use that I think we should talk about is, and this goes all the way back to the Vietnam War, is that anybody who merely tries to, let's say, understand the other side or wants to de-escalate or get out of a conflict, they try to portray as unpatriotic. I mean, this, again, this goes all the way back to the Vietnam War where the Vietnam protestors or portrayed as un-American and unpatriotic, well, it turns out they were right, that was a mistake for us to get embroiled in Vietnam.

And similarly, the Iraq war, it turns out that was a gigantic mistake. But in 2003, David Frum is like one of the leaders of this group wrote an article called unpatriotic conservatives in which he attacked and sort of mal-mout, the conservatives like Papu can and Robert Novak who were against the Iraq War. And he called them unpatriotic and implied that they were un-American and somehow in the pocket of Saddam Hussein because they were against us are involved in the Iraq War. Well, they turned up to be right and yet they were demonized and called them patriotic. And where are we today, those same people I'm seeing David from? On Twitter now,

impune the patriotism of people who merely want us not to escalate this, not to get involved, and maybe to try and understand our enemy. Because, I mean, this is one of the problems with Twitterizing our foreign policy is, look, we can see Putin as an aggressor, we can see him as a thug or an authoritarian or as a dictator. But nonetheless, we should still try to understand our enemy and anybody who tries to promote a greater degree of understanding or diplomacy gets attacked by these people as being putin apologists. Tomat, you said you didn't see this coming. You thought this was a very small probability. I think we all felt it was a pretty small probability that Russia would actually go through this.

You thought it was actually something, actually I do. Freeberg, you did think it was going to happen as a certainty. Yeah, we wait. You thought it was a certainty that America would get involved because of the wagged the dog scenario or that Putin would do it because both. Okay. Yeah, but this is not like a surprise that Putin did this. I mean, this has been a long time coming.

Yeah. I mean, it just felt like I thought that he would say a barato and we come to some resolution here. But what does he want? It seems like nobody, and this is what everybody keeps saying. And I think that's a really, by the way, I think that's a really complicated question. I feel like there's decades of, and layers of like, to this story, it's like, you know, war and peace.

And then you read like one half of the final chapter and you're like, oh,, okay, like there's a lot to the story that's going to be really hard for us to unpack. So, you know, I'm not sure there's a very simple like, what does Putin want as much as there is a significant narrative that that that that backs the history, you know, post-Soviet history with Ukraine and the relationships. I mean, you guys may remember that there was a president, a presidential candidate or president that was poisoned by Putin at some point. I mean, you guys may remember that there was a president, a presidential candidate or president that was poisoned by Putin at some point. I mean, there's been like a long history to this

that I don't think is something that we can some real estate. What communication is what most people would put that under. Well, there's an economic, there are social, you know, there are individuals, cultural motives. I mean, there's a lot driving this. There's a lot of influence within that country that I don't think we really fully grasp

within the country of Russia. I mean, that we don't fully grasp related to some of the cultural relationships with some of the population in the Ukraine. And so, it's a very difficult question to simply answer. Can I tell you a shot at it? Yeah. Sure.

OK, what is Putin want? So, I want to, there's an article by Peter Baynart who was an editor of the NeuroPublic he's not, you know, some far right conservative or whatever. He published this quotes from a memo that was written by Bill Burns back in 2008. So Bill Burns is the current DCI as a director of central intelligence that had a CIA. He is also a Russian expert. He speaks Russian fluently. He is the, and he spent many years over there in our government, and he works for Biden. He is Biden's head of the CIA. So he is the highest ranking Russian expert in our

government. In 2008, he wrote a memo to Condoleez Arise who is in the sectarian state. And what he said is, this is about Ukrainian entry into NATO. He said, Ukrainian entry into NATO is a brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite, not just Putin. He says, in more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players from knuckle-dragers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin's sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine and NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests. So Burns pointed out to the then-secretary state that this was a huge red line. And since then, since 2008, Putin has been very consistent that Ukrainian entry into NATO

has been a red line. And even in the speech that he gave last week, he talked about this. And he said that I'm quoting Putin from his speech. He says, if Ukraine was to join NATO, it would serve as a direct threat to the security of Russia. So, you know, in response to Putin's speech and on Twitter, I keep hearing that Putin is this madman, we can't understand what he wants, that the only possible explanation for his behavior is either senility, he's gone crazy, he's gone mad.

And I'm looking at this and I'm like, okay, maybe those things are true, but you can't say that he hasn't been clear about what his red lines are. He's been saying this for 20 years that Ukraine joining the NATO alliance is an absolute red line. And I mentioned before on this pod, that imagine if the Cold War is still going on and the Warsaw Packs will exist it. And Justin Trudeau was gonna lead Canada

into the Warsaw Packs, we would absolutely be up in arms about that, we would not let that happen. It is that kind of issue for Putin. And we just act like this guy is insane, has no point of view. We don't have to believe he's right, but to basically say that he has no interest in Russian security that we need to give any weight to, that we just need to dismiss all of his concerns out of hand. It just, you know, this is not the history of the situation. Yeah.

Did you read anybody read Madeline Olbright's New York Times piece? It was pretty interesting because she was in the position when they first met him and he's been talking about the Ukraine and reunification for 20 years and it's probably a good lesson for the entire planet that dictators are gonna, you know, they have a certain, to your point, you're moth of like having will and capabilities. A lot of people have capabilities.

A lot of people don't have will to start wars anymore on this planet. And he clearly is in that group. I think that's how it is. But Jason, we don't know, here's the thing, by not taking NATO off the table as an issue, we don't know whether his true aim here is the restoration of the Russian Empire or merely to avoid this border country being part of a military alliance that he uses as a threat.

So I don't know what the answer is. Or Dora number three, he wants more attention, he wants to be more globally relevant. Right. But we made the mistake of not taking this issue off the table. And so if we had taken the issue off the table, then we could get to the real heart of the issue. Maybe it would have diffused the situation. Or if the EU and NATO had done it, right? It's not just us in this, like the people in Europe have a big say here. As we're discussing this on a Thursday, February 24th, Biden has announced a coalition of partners, EU, Australia, others are doing pretty significant sanctions. It seems limiting Russia's ability to do business in dollars, euros, and yen imposing major sanctions on the Russian banks,

trying to cripple the rubble, blocking form major Russian Russian banks freezing all of their assets in America, adding sanctions to Russian elites. I guess that's the oligarch class. And Russia's largest state on enterprises will no longer be able to raise money from coalition of governments Biden assumes this will be great, their military advancement. And I have a funny Russian story to tell. So when I was still running, when I was managing not just my money, but other people's money and I was raising funds, eventually, you know, you get LP commitments from all kinds of people interested in investing with you if you're generating great returns, right? Meaning, you know, rich family offices all around the world want to give you capital.

And there's a very strict processing America where when you get capital in, you have to make sure that those folks basically pass an anti-money laundering check and know your customer kind of check. K-1-1 of these checks. And one of these checks is actually a gray list in a black list that Treasury and the DOJ kind of manage. And every now and then they'll put people on and off the list.

And there's a very famous person in Russia, who I will not say when I was raising money for my last fund, this was probably in 2014 or 2015. He was on the list, you know, very well in the person. And I thought, well, this is a great opportunity to get somebody who seems to be doing a lot of really interesting good work in the end. Not less than two or three weeks after we had signed our

LP agreement, I think it was DOJ or Treasury. Put them on this list and we get a, you know, an email basically saying, hey, tear up the LPA and you can't take the capital. And we had to undo the entire limited partner agreement. And crazy. What percentage of the fund would that person have been both? I don't remember, but he was a significant person

investing in a significant. 5, 10% or something, so I guess. Hey, Jason, I just want to go back on a point I made about energy and energy independence earlier, because I actually pulled up the numbers. So, the average cost per kilowatt hour in China right now is about nine cents for energy production. It is estimated that nuclear power production should drop to about four cents, but could be as low as one

cent per kilowatt hour if operated at scale with perfect efficiency, just to give everyone a sense of where not just security risk and kind of, you know, the green opportunity lies, but also where economic advantage lies in investing in nuclear infrastructure. And so as China builds out 140 nuclear plants here over the next two to three decades, they are going to see their energy cost decline from about nine cents for industrial use, potentially into the sub five cent per kilowatt hour range, which makes them tremendously competitive

on a manufacturing point of view. So a lot of Bitcoin servers, there's a lot of hash. I think it's never going to happen. I'm not. I love. I think America's if America's ability to steal nuclear, I think is a very difficult proposition. And I think our real solution is solar. It's practical. It can be done today. And it can be done right now. And just to look at the EU versus the US in terms of gas mileage, which

is just stunning. The EU has mandated that. America doesn't have the result. It's like, we have to cross so many bridges. And we have to really confront a bunch of issues that have been riddled with so much inaccuracy. For example, the environmental impact, the understanding of how nuclear energy works.

Beninb is in Jason that you refer to about not being able to build these things all around the country. So reducing the form factor in my opinion is a technical challenge that I think we can overcome, but it still leaves the policy and the societal level challenges that I think are very difficult to overcome. Because you're talking about rewriting history in many ways and convincing hundreds of millions of people that things that they had sought for true

were no longer true. And I think that's much, much harder than we give it credit for. And cars is the perfect example. Americans now were averaging 24 miles to the gallon. The EU is mandated 57 miles per gallon in 2021. They're getting it done in the EU. They're twice as effective.

I tweeted, hey, listen, Americans, we need to buy better gas mileage cars and move to EVs. And I was faced with a backlash. I mean, it was insane. The fact that the company was in a family trip because California did pass their own legislation. Yes. And then there was this issue because the car companies pushed back and said, you know, it's too expensive for us to build two different skews, one for California and one for the rest of America. They're already building ones for the EU, just to give you one counterpoint to your statement about energy independence arising potentially from solar to generate a gigawatt of capacity

and industrial scale solar farm would take about 7,500 acres. You know, so that's about 30. I don't think that's how it's, I don't think that's how it's done. I think a very simple solar insulation and everybody's home with a simple battery is more than enough to basically give people the power they need. And then these big C and I installations have slapped any on top of all these big buildings will cover the rest. And I think that you'll still have some amount of Nat gas peepers usage.

And maybe you can have some amount of solar or hydro or wind. But people are experimenting and figuring out the battery storage capability to supplement this. I think what we don't have is that at 3% Residue Solar, we don't have a credible alternative. But at 80% Residue Solar, with battery systems in everybody's home, which is a tractable solution that costs thousands of dollars per home, which the government could subsidize would be a great use of capital. I think it would be transformational furniture. It would completely be right. The energy calculus. So, again, to do that today would cost, because when you do something on a residential roof,

it costs a lot more than doing it on an industrial scale. So when you build out a 7,500 acre solar facility, you get economies of scale, you get single tubes, everything can run off one wire. When you build it on a roof, you need contractors to come in, you got to wire the home, you got to put batteries in. So the actual amortized cost over the lifetime of that solar installation works out to something on the order of 15 cents a kilowatt hour, whereas if you do it on an industrial scale, it works out to about 3 cents a kilowatt hour. So, you know, your point makes sense, but it makes things more expensive. So then the question is who's gonna fund the Delta

and is someone actually gonna pay for that Delta? The government. Yeah. I'm sure over the next few years, we're gonna spend trillions and trillions of dollars on nothing. Those trillions and trillions of dollars could probably, whatever your gap is,

I don't know whether your map is right or wrong. But whatever the gap is that gets us to China, as an example, in terms of the cost per kilowatt hour, the government could substance. And there is a quantifiable number. And if we decided whether it was worth it or not, we could decide.

All I'm saying is it's something that we need to put on the table because every time a new president comes into town and gets elected, they generally get this one big shot on goal. You know, the last few presidents have tried to either, you know, cut taxes for basically to give these classes, you cannot extend your list packages. And the net dollar effect of these things is now measured in the billions of dollars. And I suspect that the net, you know, cost of subsidizing an up-shoulder energy, that you get a broad view of the point is also the billions of dollars.

And we should just decide whether that is in the better use of a model. All right, just to do some quick math here, to Booster Trimalt's point, he almost nailed it exactly. There are 85 million standalone homes in the US, Trimalt. I'm just going to assume none of them for the sake of this argument have solar on them, but 3% do, I think.

Average cost of putting solar on homes, 20 to 35,000, I picked the number, 30,000. Yes, yes, hold on a second, but, but in Australia, it costs 5,000. Okay, they have a cheaper system or something? No, it's because of all the nonsense that exists in the United States. It's subsidized, yeah. So, but just to give the raw cost here, if it was $30,000 to put on, you know, you can do it for 5, put on you can do it for five thousand dollars home because australia which is one six the size of america is able to do it with no subsidies direct

to the consumer for five thousand dollars in the solution so that price is possible i'm going to pick the thirty thousand dollar crazy price in america by two point five5 trillion to put solar on every home. At the end, like we're 30 trillion dollars in debt. 10% of our debt would make us energy independent forever. The plan gets better when you do math. Sorry. And think of the amount of savings you do to the environment. Think of the lack. I don't know if you saw this, but there was a new and report about the criticality and

importance of emerging wildfire threats to our ecosystem and our ecology. You know, for all of us that lived in California, do you guys remember how the sky was orange and red two years ago or goes crazy? Yes, from Los Angeles. So if you have less of a reliance on these aging utilities and these utilities infrastructure. There will be less forest fires. The air will be cleaner. People will be more resilient. I think of the times that, for example, in Texas, where there is massive freeze, right? Where people were shut out of, they couldn't have power because the actual

traditional utilities were shut down. If it's only $2.5 trillion, I think we should have done this yesterday. I can't believe the numbers that low actually. Considering the things that when we put to an app trillion dollar price tags on things that's been spent with. The cost of upgrading, I'm just pulling some numbers

here off of the internet, but replacing our electrical grid would be five trillion. So if you think about the replacement cost of the actual grid, which we're going to have to do at some point, and the upgraded cost of 500 billion a year, or the maintenance of five hundred a billion a year, this actually starts to seem very reasonable and achievable if we had the will, which means we need to have some politicians who actually aren't in the pocket of big white.

By the number of jobs that Biden would create, if he actually ran with this, then because you do need a lot of local installation capability and other jobs, you would create hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of jobs in the United States. They would be really well-paying, and you would be pushing us towards a completely energy independent energy, zero carbon future. That'd be transformation. Yeah, I wonder how many hours of work it is to install. You could actually do that math as well, and figure out how many jobs you create, and then how much tax those people pay and then how much they spend of that money to put it back into the economy. You're probably getting a 30, 40% rebate on that

$2.5 trillion. So it becomes even better because of the high paying jobs. All right, the markets are tanking, obviously, over the last couple of months. Dow is down 11% year to date. And of course, a lot of the growth stocks we talked about this over and over again from Zoom to Netflix, Facebook, Spotify, Coinbase, Twilio all down over 50%. Today the market went down five, six percent on the news

and then rebounded. Is this all priced in? And is this the bottom of the market? Kathy Wood is supposedly buying, and I don't know if it's net buying or she's just reallocating, but are we now in the bargain hunting period of the market and we've bottomed out. The smart folks that I talk to, who I really look up to in respect, think that the bottom in the S&P is around $3,800. And what we still need to do is it's one last flush. And that last flush will really touch the big cap companies, but that growth is largely done, sort of, getting taken to the woodshed.

So in general, I think that, so generally buyers have growth now, sellers of value, and waiting for this one last, you know, 200 point, moved down the S&P, and I think people think it's roughly the bottom. Now if there's a world war, obviously, who knows, all that's wrong, but yeah. So SACS, what's more shocking that we're almost at the bottom or there's people in the markets that trim off really respects Which is well speaking speaking of people that we respect so I think Brackerson has a really interesting take on this which is that I should also be clear that I'm recruiting this one person Oh, I really respect you know, so they're both got it so that I'm recruiting this one person, and I really respect you know what I mean. So they're post- you both got it. So, Brad Gerser has published a couple of charts showing basically multiples in the internet index

and among SaaS companies over the last whatever, dozen years or so. And what you can see is that over the last two years during COVID, there was a huge spike in multiples for internet companies and for SaaS companies. And that over the last, really, since November, the last three, four months, has now come down. And as of, I would say, last week, it was right at about the historical trend.

And now it's starting to go under the historical trends. So from a bargain to hunting standpoint, you'd have to say that this is the first time that we've been below the the average For a few years now. That's not to say it can't go down even more because in the same way that you can be above trend You can also be below trend and if this war escalates and it hastens is it will go down more but if this conflict can stay localized and the economy doesn't go into a recession because of everything that's happened, then yes, this might be bargain hunting. Here's the chart for everybody to take a look at from January 22, 22, the two years of

the pandemic. And I think this is times forward-looking sales. If I'm reading a correct, I don't have the full chart here. I just have a screenshot of it, a portion of it. Yeah, I think it's enterprise value. Yeah, it's enterprise value divided by like for looking revenue, which is you kind of say is like ARR. Yeah, it's sort of like ARR.

It's like for a revenue. And so yeah, we had this 15X. We went up to 40, 50X, private market deals going at 100, 200X. Those days are over a big time. And we've talked about that ad. Now I see one of the interesting things that I'm seeing is I think people are looking at businesses

that have been corrected. And saying, hey, what is the true value of this? And I think the best example is Peloton, new CFO. The CFO of Netflix. Oh, I got a Netflix. I got a good, I got a good, I love you. Love you, love you too. I'm to go, Jacob. I love you. I love you too.

I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick.

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I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, Rick. I love you too, market, there would probably have, or if you looked at the the trading prices of bonds, you probably would have assumed a 95% chance of a half-point rate hike in March. And as of today, my guess is that the probability of that is below 5%. And you're probably assuming, you know, a quarter point rate hike or maybe even a deferral at this point. And I think that's one of the things that's keeping the market up instead of tanking so much. People are predicting that it's been such bad news that they'll

push it out. Yeah, they're assuming that under the conditions of great uncertainty like this, the Fed cannot act as aggressively as they were planning to act. Interesting. And as a result, that rate hike would be pushed out and it would continue to kind of keep prices somewhat inflated and continue to support the market with cheaper capital and liquidity. So a lot of capital around the world is going to get locked up as armed conflict kind of constable there. And when that happens, markets will tighten up and prices will be affected.

And so the Fed in traditional, in typical times, would want to have an incentive or would have a motivation to inject liquidity into the markets. And so this is not a great time to do a half point rate hike. And so it's almost certain at this point that they're not going to do a half point rate hike. It feels to be like a huge point rate hike. And so it's almost certain at this point that they're not gonna do a half point rate hike. It feels to be like huge setup right now. People have capitulated the markets, gotten demolished. I just think there's some, these companies are still great.

Like, there's still a great company. There's some great businesses out there and some great companies to invest in, some great stocks to buy. For all the way from technology through to industrials, through to, you know, even some of the energy companies that are gonna to benefit greatly from this commodity cycle we're kind of in the middle of.

And so there's going to be, I think, an opportunity to move away from speculative behavior into real kind of cherry picking, productive, cash generating businesses in the next, or even growth businesses that are actual value craters. So versus being like 10 year speculative kind of bets. So this is a great time to kind of be looking for businesses you really like to own, to identify them, to make investments and to hold those investments for a very long period of time. You're not gonna find a lot of market conditions like this.

I mean, if we all went back to March of 2020 and you remember the S&P was at $20,000, $2300,000. I was going to buy Disney. I never got around to it. So, like, if at that point you pick businesses that you knew were going to be durable businesses and that you loved and you thought we're going to have legs to them, you bought everything from alphabet to Disney to Lockheed Martin, you know, you could have done tremendously well. So now's a great time to kind of be looking for businesses that you really like and to buy a stake in them. Forget

about trying to time the bottom. That's a fool's errand. Right. No, no. If you want to buy stuff, you want to hold for 10 years. Things are relatively cheap, relative to a time horizon that sacks pointed out and and Gertzner pointed out. So things are relatively cheap, fine businesses you like to own and buy them cheap. They could get cheaper, but they're kind of at the bottom end of the whole, I think the whole time frame around, like speculative stuff is kind of wiped out. Like I think that that that era's gone now.

What do you think, sir? Well, it's that plus, I think one of the things that happened is that people are realizing now that the burst of activity, especially like in e-commerce type companies that happened during the pandemic, that was not ongoing, sustainable growth. It was one time growth. In fact, in many cases, it was sort of worse than one time growth, which is it was pool-forward growth, meaning that growth in the future will be lower because you pulled forward all of that revenue. Well, I think Peloton might be a good example.

I mean, everyone bought them during the pandemic, but then after the pandemic, everyone who needs one has got one already. So it could also be cars, right? Right. Yeah, it's pretty much by cars and now there's not a full moon. Right. So what happened is not only have multiples gone down, but these companies were being comped based on growth rates that were unsustainable.

And so now they're all revising their forecasts down. So it's the double whammy and Brad's made this point. But what's interesting right now is the markets are actually rallying. And I think it might be because of this latest Biden news at this press conference. So the important point here is that Biden did not sanction Putin directly. There's talk about sanctioning him personally. Or, and he also did not remove Russia from the swift system, which is sort of the key banking system.

And I don't know if this is because Biden doesn't want to do it or because Europe wants to support the move. Pretty clear, Europe doesn't want to do it. So, no one is willing to suffer too much economic loss here to defend Ukraine, never mind sending troops. So it seems to me that the signal here is that both militarily and in terms of economic interest, Europe does not want further escalation

and that may be why the market is rallying. Also, the Fed may hold off on interest increases while this is all going on. So sometimes markets can act in funny ways. Well, they're forward looking. People are putting money at stake so they have skin in the game. People can talk all they want about what's going to happen with the markets, but unless they're placing bets, that's kind of cheap talk.

And here, people are actually placing bets on stocks. They think we'll do well in the future Skin of the game people look Their economic interests are skin of the game having people's sons and daughters Go off to fight and die in a foreign war that is real skin of the game What is not skin of the game is people tweeting? You know, there are more operation condemnation and whipping things up and, you know, we should not be listening to the, and calling everyone who disagrees with them, traders, because that's happening to, you know, this is a time for cooler heads to prevail.

You and I are going to actually agree on this, and we're both going to agree that Trump and Pompeo should not be falling over Putin. Yeah, but you've never commented on that. Well, people want to hear us get into it. Well, I mean, you can't support them falling over Putin like that. Do you? I can't imagine you doing that.

Look, I heard what Trump said when he was saying. I didn't hear the Pompeo quotes, I can't speak to that. The Trump is saying is a genius. Look, listen, you know, sometimes Trump is being sarcastic when he says things like, oh, what a beauty, you know, he means the opposite. And I think the point Trump was making wasn't really about Putin being so great. The point I heard Trump making was that if he were president, this wouldn't be happening. Now, you can disagree with that.

It may be true or untrue. But that was the real point he was making. I think that you're letting the political partisans try to whip this thing up and it's part of this meme of anybody who doesn't support what I want, must be a traitor, and must be in the pocket of Putin. We have to use this meme warfare to get people freeberg to shame these politicians into backing the solar plan and doing something meaningful like this, like backing nuclear. How do we get the politicians to reflect energy independence as a priority?

It feels like it's not a priority for them. Well, I mean, one of the good things about American democracy is that politicians are generally pretty responsive to what their constituents want to believe. So they use polling data and that polling data drives, you know, if they want to get reelected, they better do what the polls are telling them people want them to do. And so ultimately, if you can kind of influence people broadly in the United States, and that can go both ways by the way.

We have special interests too, and you have people with weird ideas, right? Yeah, but generally, like if something is deeply unpopular, politician risks not getting reelected, they're not gonna kind of run to do that. And if something is very popular, even though it may not be the right thing by some objective framework, they would still run to do that. And if something is very popular, even though it may not be the right thing by some objective framework, they would still run to do that. So I do think

that there's some degree of work to be done around framing for people broadly via the work, maybe that we do on our podcast, but I think more importantly, on a repeated way and in a way that's kind of inspiring and inclusive, we'll drive people to kind of want to see these changes happen and ultimately politicians should respond. Coming one other point to your thing about, you know who today would be considered, you know, in the words of Jemper Socki, parodying Russian talking points, Barack Obama. If Obama today were out there saying exactly what he told the Atlantic magazine back in 2012 or 14, if he was saying that today he'd

be accused of being in Putin's pocket and being a Putin apologist and a traitor and all this kind of stuff because he said that in interview, he said, listen, Putin was always very business-like, he was punctual, he showed up, he wanted to negotiate and deal. Basically, he sounded like a guy who, look, we made disagree with him about everything, but he wasn't a madman, he was someone you could talk to. A rational actor, he was a coldly ruthless but rational actor, and that's basically what Obama said. He's someone you could talk turkey with. And if you say that today, that, hey, maybe we could negotiate our way out of this with Putin.

You're accused of being, you know, a puppet of his. Yeah. Well, the concept of starting a war in this day and age is just, it's crazy's crazy like and it is crazy that he's starting this war putting all these people at risk and we don't even know what the goal is you know that he's not even asked for anything like what is he exactly asking for so it he may not be you may have been rational that or maybe obama was trying to steer him towards rationality and praising him publicly to get that more rational food to show up this feels like irrational that we don't know what his goal is like the fact that the world can't say

If we gave him X he would do why is I think his strategy Putin's always like to be this like unpredictable madman, right? No, I mean we just said that he's a coldly ruthless rational actor as sort of the opposite of a madman I mean his red lines have been clear, he's been stating them for years. The problem is that again, we're conducting- I'm referring him to murdering opponents of his. Oh, there's no question that he's ruthless, he's an authoritarian, call him a dictator if you want. I've tweeted in support of Alexine Navalny.

Yeah. So I get it, but that doesn't mean he's a madman. He has desires and interests, and it's the job of diplomats to figure out how to conduct diplomacy and negotiation with people you disagree with. One of the problems we have today is, again, we've Twitterized everything. We basically figure out the first step is who are the people who should be canceled? Who's wearing the white hat? Who's wearing the black hat?

Let's all rise up in virtue signal and moral denunciation and stick our fingers in our ears and not listen to the other side. And listen, that is a way to find yourself in greater conflicts, not avoid them. All right, so just wrapping up here, let's wrap with Saks's favorite part of the show. Saks's favorite moment where he's super engaged in learning. He's got his thinking cap on. He's taking notes. And that is the science corner. No, not. What about Vendetta Corner? I thought you were going to say Vendetta Corner. Yeah, what about you? If you're going to say Vendetta Corner, this way. Vendetta Corner is actually my favorite part of the show. It is. Now, what I want to hear. You're going to have a corner this week. The corner is actually my favorite part of this. So it is now people love Vendetta corner.

Yeah, they are community spaces. Who do you love? Where Twitter loves it? Because Twitter is all about vendetta's. But I have no vendetta's this week. Vendetta free week. The vendetta free. What are you doing with your time?

Yeah, I'm trying to advocate that this is time for cooler heads prevail. And so, um, oh, fuck say starfight fight with somebody aren't you fight with Paul Graham? there's nobody here in your you're you're just following out of that are you guys taking the week off for a ski week? I don't think we're fighting over anything I just not I can not that I can think of all right for the dictator Trimoth Polyhapatia Sultan of science David Friedberg and

the rainman himself David Sacks I'm J. and we'll see you all at the all-in summit in May 15 16 17 You can go to the website summit dot all in podcast.co where you just type all-in summit The all-in summit into Google and find it May 15 to 17th and Miami Florida we're doing it at the New World Symphony and we have a page there where you can vote on speakers. It's gonna be three days of fun. We have a scholarship there if you can't afford the regular ticket and you can apply for a scholarship if you're a super fan and we'll look forward to seeing you there

and go vote for some speakers. Bye bye, I love you besties. What? What will let your winners ride? Bring man David Saqq And it said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. I'm the west. I just queen of kinwap Besties are gone. Go for it. This is my dog. Can you give it a wish?

You're driving away. Sit down. Oh, man. I might have a gesture when we eat the apples. We should all just get a room and just have one big hug. Or because they're all just like this like sexual tension. We just need to release that. What?

You're the beef. What? You're the beef. Beef. What? We need to get my cheese. I'm going all in. Bebe, what your Bebe? Bebe, what your Bebe? What are you doing? Where did you get merch from? I'm going all in! I'm going all in!