SPEAKER_02: Hey, everybody, Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. It is the end of 2022. And once again, we're doing our bestie awards. Yes, at the end of the year, we do our bestie awards. This is where we give awards to the biggest winners losers and many other categories that you love with me again, of course, the Sultan of Science, deep in his Kurosawa vibes. How are you doing Sultan?
SPEAKER_04: It was great to see you guys for dinner last night, Sax. We missed you. That was a lot of fun. We all got together twice this week for dinner while we were on vacation. And during our dinner, we took a vote and Sax you are now the director of the all in summit. Congratulations. Congratulations. Yes, the grift
SPEAKER_02: is on my first act is to veto it. Okay, sorry to the fans.
SPEAKER_02: Also with us, of course, is the dictator himself, Chamath Palihapitiya, deep in his turtleneck phase and his vibes. Tell us about your winter vibes. Bestie. I mean, I can't believe
SPEAKER_03: that we all took over Lake Tahoe for a week together. This cool. It's been a lot of fun. I gotta say, Sax, you'll be surprised Jay Cal has the life hack of life hacks here. He's figured out how to basically get everything pre wired. All the restaurants, all the reservations. It's been great. I ever loved it. We've had a wonderful time. It's an eight
SPEAKER_02: person table for every night. And he does it what months in
SPEAKER_04: advance. So every night, he's got an option. Every two weeks out, I get a table of eight for five, six
SPEAKER_02: nights in a row. And then I invite my besties out. And oddly, it turned out there was only one person from Jake
SPEAKER_03: outside. Just Yes. There's always room for the rest of us to show.
SPEAKER_02: We had a wonderful time. I picked up the check for the nachos and Chamath brought $6,000 worth of wine.
SPEAKER_03: I brought my own also to the restaurant yesterday so we could open the wine properly. It was wonderful. We've had a wonderful time. And of course
SPEAKER_02: with us looks like he had to work over the Christmas break. Sax, how are you doing brother? You working today?
SPEAKER_05: I'm good. I'm just hanging out somewhere.
SPEAKER_02: Well, come on, you can be honest, you're at the Twitter HQ. I recognize that incredible architecture and design. They spent so much money on that office space. Beautiful. That's definitely beautiful office. Got their own bespoke coffee shop here called the perch.
SPEAKER_05: We're the people that work there.
SPEAKER_04: Too soon.
SPEAKER_05: People are working too hard to be hanging out in the coffee shop. Rain Man David Saccs.
SPEAKER_02: We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy.
SPEAKER_03: Love you besties. Queen of Quinoa.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so let's get started with our bestie awards. This is very controversial. We start with a political award. And last year, you know that this is our just so we're clear, this is not the prediction show that next week will be the prediction show. This week is our winners. Cue the music.
SPEAKER_05: Yes, cue the music. Right there. Okay, here we go. 2022
SPEAKER_02: predictions. This is what we predicted for the bestie award for biggest political winner. I said Ron DeSantis and so did David Sacks. We predicted in 2022. You said it after me. You said it after me. And the way you
SPEAKER_05: introduced it, you said, what did Tucker Carlson's writers come up with? I said DeSantis and then you said DeSantis. Are you starting already? Literally, I'm trying to give
SPEAKER_02: you your flowers. I reviewed the tape. Okay, take it easy. You're gonna get your flowers. So Ron DeSantis obviously a big winner. So those were those were great predictions. Freeburg with a wildcard there he predicted Putin would be a winner in 2022. That one fell a little flat, did it not our friend freeburg? Not a winner? No, I think he, you know, I
SPEAKER_04: mean, my projection was really built on what I thought would be a big kind of influence that he would gain this year. You know, whether he's viewed negatively or positively, he's certainly at the center of the stage right now. Now, Chamath, your 22 prediction, this is your
SPEAKER_02: prediction last year for this year was that the biggest political winner would be Xi Jinping. Okay. Now we go to our actual biggest winner. This is where we tell you who we thought was the biggest winner of 2022. Let's start with you, Sax. Who is your biggest winner for 2022? Political biggest winner. This was the prediction that I nailed as you mentioned it. So
SPEAKER_05: the red wave feels everywhere else, but it crashed over Florida hard. So DeSantis is my pick. He won reelection by about 20 points. And his coattails carried four new GOP house seats, which happens to be the exact size of the GOP majority. Several polls have now shown him beating Donald Trump by significant margins for the 2024 GOP nomination. He is shattering fundraising records. Florida is now the fastest growing state. So he is my pick for the biggest winner, political winner of 2022. Great.
SPEAKER_02: Who is your biggest political winner? Chamath?
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's obvious it's Xi Jinping. You know, there is no single person in the world that is now as powerful as this one man. He has complete authoritarian control over 1.2 odd billion people and 20% of the world's GDP and a large amount of the world's debt, including a lot of US dollar debt. And so, you know, it's pretty, it's hard to find anybody that won nearly as much as he did. Okay, now to you, Friedberg, who is your biggest political winner
SPEAKER_02: of 2022? I mean, I think you're DeSantis and Xi Jinping calls were really
SPEAKER_04: like, good. I think the biggest surprising winner for me is like, you know, unexpected. And that would be Zelensky from the Ukraine, I don't think going into this year, people paid as much attention to him, he was certainly not a sung hero. But coming through this conflict, and I think leading the storyline about our common enemy of the West, and common enemy of democracy being Vladimir Putin, really kind of made him a superstar and a hero on a global stage. And I think that's evidenced by the fact that he was in the White House, and he gave an address to the US Congress yesterday. So I would make him kind of the biggest winner of the year. It's hard to go against DeSantis. So, you know, I think
SPEAKER_02: DeSantis, so, you know, he clearly has, as Sachs correctly pointed out, gone into the lead, we'll see if he can be Trump in the primaries. I have my doubts. But he does seem to be pulling in some of those moderates, right?
SPEAKER_03: I don't understand why you guys say he's a political winner. What did he win? He hasn't won the nomination yet. He got reelected to a state that he had before 2022. So what did he win exactly?
SPEAKER_05: I think a couple of things. One is when he won election to the governorship four years ago, it was by less than 1%. It was a tiny margin of victory. This was margin of almost 20%. He had coattails, and he is now the front runner for the GOP nomination in 24. I think you can argue, you can make the case that maybe he's peaking too soon. Well, I'm glad you brought that up. Because if you look at the
SPEAKER_03: data, you know, I think in the last seven or eight nomination cycles, the person that's been leading the popularity contest going into the Iowa caucuses has not won the nomination. He's peaking too soon almost. That's a possibility. Because when you're the front runner,
SPEAKER_05: everyone takes shots at you. On the other hand, he if he stays this dominant, he will drive out other contenders out of the primary. And he may be able to solidify it. And if if it can just be distances versus Trump in the primary, he has stands a much better shot than if it's Trump versus a bunch of other challengers. And I think that if he continues to pull this well within the Republican Party, I think Trump might not run again, because Trump definitely does not want to risk being a loser in the Republican primary. So yeah, there's always front runner risk. But it's hard to say that coming out of this year, that he wasn't a huge political winner. Okay, if we're going to challenge other people's picks, I would maybe challenge the Zelensky. There's no question that he's been a global media hero. But two thirds of Kiev is currently with outpower. 80% of Kiev doesn't have water. 30% of the Ukrainian power stations have been destroyed nearly half of the countries without power. There's something like 8 million displaced Ukrainians in the country. And over 100,000 Ukrainians have been killed in this war. So yes, he's been a very strong, charismatic war leader for them. But freeburg your response. I'm not advocating for his performance
SPEAKER_04: as a leader. I'm advocating for his accumulation of political goodwill. And that's it. Okay. And he is winning the war. So
SPEAKER_02: again, is that winning? Well, in war, they say there, nobody wins. But it's certainly better than having your country taken over by Putin. So some would argue that's winning. Let's go to biggest losers. biggest losers. In 2022, we predicted again, this is our predictions from last year. And then we'll go on to our actuals for this year. Last year, we predicted chamath said the progressive left. Sachs said Nancy Pelosi, freeburg, you said us influence globally interesting. And I said the extremes both Biden and Trump. Let's go with our predictions. I'm sorry with our actuals for this year. chamath wanted you go first this time. Who is your biggest political loser for 2022? I mean, I don't think it's as written about as
SPEAKER_03: much but the progressive left did see as much failure as the magga right. So they were a huge loser. I mean, to the extent that anybody thought that leftist, you know, quasi socialist policies and politics was a winning strategy. I think that was pretty soundly refuted, even in places that were pretty staunchly Democrat, it was really difficult for the progressive left to do much of anything but lose. So I think that was a really powerful and important repudiation. And I think it's marginalized as them to a bunch of, you know, kooks almost. And I think that that's really healthy for politics going forward. So your prediction and your actual are
SPEAKER_02: going to be the same. Yeah, I think they were the biggest
SPEAKER_03: political loser in the United States, at least. Okay, yeah,
SPEAKER_02: Elizabeth Warren, we don't hear people talking about Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders much this year. Yeah. And I think
SPEAKER_03: that the biggest political loser outside of the United States was probably the European Union. Okay, you want to expand
SPEAKER_02: on that a little bit? If you just think about the corner that
SPEAKER_03: they painted themselves into how much they had to basically literally go 180 degrees away from what their policies were, you know, there was a huge raft of whether it was green, ESG kind of woke liberal politics that manifested itself in all kinds of national security decisions and energy decisions that in this last year, they literally had to undo in order to stay alive. And that makes that whole political construct, I think, very fragile. So they were they were a pretty big political loser outside of the United States. Okay, sacks.
SPEAKER_02: Can be hard here to guess this one. But sacks, who is your biggest political loser in 2022? I have no idea who you're going to pick. By the way, I got Pelosi right last year that she
SPEAKER_05: did lose the gavel. So you've got to say that the war in Ukraine was the biggest event of the year. And obviously, you can spread the blame around to a lot of people starting with Putin, because he's one who ordered the invasion. But I would say this is a slightly different take on the category, which is biggest political blunder occurred on January 27 of this year, when Blinken said that NATO's door is open and must remain open. And that is our commitment. He basically shut the door. He kept NATO's door open, but shut the door on any means of a diplomatic off ramp to end this conflict by promising Russia that Ukraine would not become part of NATO. That was the single biggest diplomatic blunder of this year, or maybe the last couple of decades because there's a good chance we could have avoided this disastrous war. If we had just been willing to close NATO's door. Wonderful, great
SPEAKER_02: crisp answer. Thank you for that nice and tight. Friedberg, who's your biggest political loser for 2022? It was a tie
SPEAKER_04: for me between Jerome Powell and Liz Truss. Liz Truss just has to get recognition here for only being in office for 45 days as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I mean, I think that is cannot be overlooked. The some of the policy and folks that she put in in office caused, you know, massive chaos. It was just a clear dysfunction over a very short period of time. Jerome Powell, I think this was a big surprise this year to see how the Fed chair became so politicized and his role became so politicized both kind of the left and the right finding reasons to question his leadership and his decision making the failure to raise rates soon enough led to massive inflation is what you'll hear from one contingent of politicians and the public at large. And then the rate at which he's raising rates now to catch up to the calm inflation is causing people to complain on the other side. So there is really no one that seems to be happy with Jerome Powell. And I think that that was a shooting star that seems to have completely lost its luster. Okay, so the Fed Yes, good pull
SPEAKER_02: there. Okay, mine is pretty clear. And objectively, it is of course, the GOP the red wave failed, it turned into a trickle. Trump is back and I believe there's a good chance he will win the primary rovy way to complete unmitigated disaster for Republicans they caught the car and plus marriage equality and having to deal with that women and the LGBT community vote and they have long memories. The GOP the biggest political losers for me. Okay, I'm sure sex has no rebuttal there. So we will move on to the next category, which is, by the way, if you say it that way, then you know, the
SPEAKER_03: biggest political loser in 2022 were women. Look at like fundamental human rights were stripped away from 50% of the population. So that's not cool. And they could have left it alone. And they could have left it alone. Well, if if what you
SPEAKER_05: mean is that the issue was sent to the states and each state then gets to decide, then you're right. But eat but if you look at the battles have happened at the states, even red states like Kentucky and Kansas have rejected the the subsequent political push to outlaw abortion. So it has not turned out to be just by the fact that all of these red states
SPEAKER_03: basically re confirmed and enshrined a woman's right to choose may actually go more to show that the Supreme Court is totally out of touch, and that they didn't need to touch rovy way. And the fact that they did opened up, you know, a huge can of worms in 50 states that now go and need to go and adjudicate this thing, where it looked like actually that decision, even back in the day, even though the way that it was done, you know, there was a lot of room for improvement. Clearly, everybody agrees with that. But was actually after you know, 50 plus years reasonable law. And so now that you took that law away, now folks, even in the red states are like, No, it was fine. Which means that this whole thing was a huge political gambit more than it was actual societal intention. Okay, so we
SPEAKER_02: are going to move on now I just I'll add my final two cents to that. As I said, I do think women and the LGBT community have very long memories and the people who are in the moderate are not going to forget how they were treated by the GOP in this specific issue. So biggest political surprise, we didn't do predictions last year. But I'll just run down what everybody said was their political surprise. I said the fact that Kamala Harris was sidelined was pretty surprising to me. And that's continued. Shemagh you said Joe Manchin was your biggest political surprise. Glenn Youngkin winning sacks that was your biggest surprise. And Friedberg the January six crowd making it into the Capitol during the insurrection was your biggest political surprise. So here we go. Our 2022 biggest political surprise sacks. Let's start with you. You have a lot to say about politics go. Well, the biggest political surprise
SPEAKER_05: to me was no red wave. So I admit I got this prediction wrong. You know, I got all my previous ones right Jay Kales. I'm gonna admit I got this one wrong. You know, I believe that the electorate would focus on the fundamentals three quarters of the country thought were on the wrong track three quarters think we're in a recession. Nevertheless, the Republicans did not do nearly as well as predicted, they only gained nine seats in the house, they actually lost a seat in the Senate. And I think that that had something to do with candidate quality. And of course, the whole election denial narrative, basically was a disaster for them. I hope that the Republicans move on and stop talking about the past. What voters want to hear about is the future. Friedberg, did you have
SPEAKER_02: a biggest political surprise for 2022? Friedberg? Yeah, it's also
SPEAKER_04: the failure of the red wave. I mean, that was my my pick. I think the consensus going into the election was with, you know, rising inflation and the disdain that everyone had for the way politicians kind of managed us through COVID and then managed us through the economic recovery. It's, it was inevitable to see a flip and it didn't happen. I think obviously, we talked about why that is. But that was a big surprise for everyone. Chamath, what was your biggest political surprise of
SPEAKER_02: 2022? Chamath Palihapitiya? The absolute toothlessness of
SPEAKER_03: MAGA and Donald Trump. I mean, he was just a scarlet letter. If you were anywhere near this guy, you were going to lose. And that's surprising considering how traditional Republicans were pandering to him up until frankly, just a few months ago. So I think that we exposed the emperor as having no clothes, and that he marginalizes and sidelines candidates into a fringe following that cannot go mainstream. That was a, it was really surprising to see how stark that was this year.
SPEAKER_02: Fantastic. I'm going to build on your chamath. I had two here. Number two was Roe v. Wade, but we've beaten that. I think we just got to discuss it as much as we possibly could. My number one building on your chamath is that despite what's happened with Trump, the documents, the his cases in the United States in New York, and about taxes, despite all of this, the January six insurrection, despite all this, Trump is still viable. I can't believe he's still viable and that he is going to be out there in the primaries and he's going to have to debate DeSantis. And I don't know that DeSantis can beat him in a debate. I think he might win. So this is completely scary for both me and sacks. I think it's terrifying sacks is nightmare and mine. Well, I think he's mainly viable in the minds of
SPEAKER_05: the maggot deadenders and the mainstream media who want to keep him alive. And the Biden administration wants to keep him alive and they'll do anything to keep him alive and in the news. And you love keeping him in the news. So it's a yes, it's a codependent relationship between the mainstream media, which you sometimes front for and Trump.
SPEAKER_02: Be careful telling me what I think. And then this codependency J. Cal. Well, I wish the Republican Party would
SPEAKER_02: finally take ownership of this disaster that is Trump and tell him that he has no business. But you guys keep him in the game and the fact that he's viable again, your personal nightmare and mine. Okay, biggest business winner, everybody excited to get off politics right now and get to our kill zone, which is business. So last year, we had predictions in this category. I had said Disney, that's an up and down prediction. I'll get into that in a moment. Trammoth, you said small and medium sized businesses, the old SMBs. Sachs said rise of the rest, the flyover states. And freeburg, you said stripe. Chammoth, let's start with you SMBs. What did you get right? What did you get wrong here? I mean, I whiffed, it just completely missed the global
SPEAKER_03: macro shift that we embarked on in full force, starting in q1 of this year, it was, it is the most important business story of the year. It's just like we have an absolute complete regime change. And by the way, that regime change is so complete. And so, you know, thorough, that it even touched Japan just a few weeks ago, or sorry, just a few days ago, where Japan who finally, you know, finally yielded on this idea of, you're going to work and have negative interest rates and yield curve control, even they finally broken it and raised rates. So it is an absolute worldwide sea change in how we need to think about risk. And I think that's worth talking about a little bit later in the show. But that was the single biggest business story of the year. I'll add to what Chammoth said, I missed
SPEAKER_05: this too, even though on another prediction, when you asked what the biggest business loser would be, I think I said that it would be asset classes that have been pumped up by the Fed's money printing, because you start to feel now. So I got that part right. But what I didn't connect it to were all the asset classes actually got pummeled. So I kind of conceptually understood that rates were rising, but they were going to be pummeled. So I kind of thought that the rates were rising, but I totally underestimated the magnitude of the shift, the way that growth stocks would get hammered, the way that crypto would get destroyed, the fact that like, Tiger basically got blown out of the industry. I mean, I had the right general intuition, but I didn't translate it into the specific asset types and the magnitude of the shift. And also the like what Chammoth said, a real regime change now, and how it's really incredible. freeburg. Let's get in on this.
SPEAKER_02: This is somewhere where you can contribute deeply. What do you think about your take last year? And you still believe in stripe?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, look, it's a it's a business that obviously benefited greatly from the pandemic and the adoption of, you know, the payment processing infrastructure that they've built across their across various kind of e commerce platforms. It's I've been I'm not an investor, so I don't know how many numbers but there are public reports that have highlighted that the revenue increased 66% this year, they've indicated that they're probably going to experience significant revenue slowdown with the recession ahead. But it still seems like a super high quality business and you know, valuation wise, who knows what things are going to be worth when they ultimately come to market. There's certainly no one going to going public right now. So at some point, we'll see, you know, whether valuations play out. But it seems like it can be a very strong, one of the strongest private businesses that's being built in Silicon Valley. We will get to 2022
SPEAKER_02: biggest business winners in one second. I will just say for Disney. Yeah, man, what a swing, Bob Chapic in and then out and now Bob Iger back. So I feel like I got this one wrong and right at the same time. I still believe in the company deeply. I think they're going to have a big win. Let's get to our actual biggest winner of 2022. Sax, why don't you lead us off with your biggest winner of 2022 for business? I said Lockheed
SPEAKER_05: Martin along with other defense stocks. Lockheed Martin, which makes javelins and high Mars is up 40% in the past year when most of the market's been weighed down. Northrop Grumman is also up almost 40% and even some of the lesser performers like Raytheon and General Dynamics are up about almost 20% in a terrible market environment. The fact of the matter is war is terrible, but it appears to be good business. We've sent so many weapons to Ukraine that there's recent press reports that the US stockpiles of missiles, javelins, and stingers are now depleted. So these companies are going to keep doing well for the next year at least. Now there's a new appropriation sailing through something like 44 billion of new funding for the war. It's now over $100 billion. McConnell says this is the Republicans' number one priority. This is now a bipartisan concern and if you think the war is expensive, just wait for reconstruction. That's estimated to cost roughly a trillion dollars to build Ukraine back. Sax, can I ask you a question about that?
SPEAKER_02: Are these when we fund these wars? I've heard different versions of this. Can't get a clear answer. When we provide weapons and systems like this, are they not on account and we ask for money back at some point? Do you know the answer to that question? You think we're going to get money back? Are you
SPEAKER_05: kidding me? It seems to be sometimes that we do. So that's
SPEAKER_02: why I was asking. I think it's something there hasn't been clarity on. Look, I think the war has been phenomenal
SPEAKER_05: business for the military industrial complex. So that's what we're seeing here. Not so great for the rest of the economy. Freiberg, what do you got? Yeah, I mean, I think you
SPEAKER_04: guys will remember last November I predicted energy and defense to be the best performing stocks for this year. Sax is right. I think defense is up 40%. So I kind of went with the bigger oil and gas companies are up across the board about 47% in terms of equity value in the public markets a year to date compared to the S&P being down about 20%. So over the short term, I would argue oil and gas companies, but I think that over the long term, there were a couple of big breakthrough moments that I would give kind of the winner in business that will benefit over the long term to open AI and to fusion startups. And we'll talk more about why for those two, obviously later when we get to the biggest winner in tech and science. But yeah, short term oil and gas, they benefited from the supply constraints and the conflict in the Ukraine. And then longer term, I think opening AI and fusion startups. Well, and by the way, I mean, just just to
SPEAKER_05: give free birth some credit here, you actually predicted the war or you predicted a war. I don't know if you predicted this war, but you predict. Yeah, predicted the war and Putin
SPEAKER_04: kind of rising to the center stage and the dog. That was a
SPEAKER_05: huge prediction, because I don't think most people even most analysts, well, they were surprised even when the invasion happened, I think people were still very surprised both that Putin would order it. But also, if you say the situation, I think you got to be surprised that we didn't negotiate harder to try and prevent it. I traded it too. I bought I bought an
SPEAKER_04: energy ETF. So it worked out for me. Okay, Chumath, your biggest
SPEAKER_02: business winner of 2022. Nick can throw it up, but it's
SPEAKER_03: basically any single person that understands the following formula. So if you this is the good, this is the this is the capital asset pricing model. So what is this? This is like before you make any investment, what it actually tells you is here's the rate of return that you need to generate above the risk free rate in order for you to justify making that investment. And if you really understood the capital asset
SPEAKER_03: pricing model going into 2022, it would have been difficult for you to not make money. Because all of a sudden, as the 10 year flexed up, and as you know, the volatility, particularly of things like tech stocks went crazy, you could have figured out where you to park your money. And all these people that have built businesses around this capital asset pricing model. So you have companies, obviously, so you know, you have sectors of the economy, like defense or energy stocks, consumer goods and staples, they all had moments where they all did well. But if you take it one step above the organizations that actually ran big macro books, or really understood how to algorithmically implement this capital asset pricing model just ran roughshod over the markets. And, you know, said in a different way, it's sort of my background, which is, you know, if you understood the capital asset pricing model, you would have been a massive bear. And the bear got fed this year to a degree that none of us could have anticipated. Okay, so am I correct saying the capital asset
SPEAKER_02: pricing model is the biggest winner, or no people that understood it? People that understood it? Got it. Okay. And for my biggest winner, I went with chat GPT slash open AI and their partner Microsoft. Why did I pick that as the biggest winner? Well, on my other podcast, as we can startups, we played a game chat GPT versus the first result of Google's. And Molly and I could not tell the difference. And in fact, we picked chat GPT answers, often above Google's Google, one of the greatest businesses and franchises ever created, has no answer at currently for chat GPT. Because Google's business model is to get you to click on an ad between links. If you give the actual answer, then the person doesn't stops clicking. If they stop clicking, Google stops making money, there is no business model in search if the person gets their answer because they're done. This is an existential threat like we have not seen. And our friend Sam Altman has a line chat GPT slash open AI with Microsoft. Microsoft I think is going to release a and there's a prediction as well. A search engine with open AI that has a significant impact on Google's
SPEAKER_02: franchise. We didn't think this would ever happen and it's here. Okay, the biggest losers in business. We made predictions last year. I said in 2020, I predicted in 2021. The biggest loser in 2022 would be crypto. By the way, Friedberg, you agreed with me. And we nailed it. You agreed with me? Well,
SPEAKER_04: yes, that's correct. We were in agreement. How about that? We were in. We were in agreement. SACS independent. You said, and
SPEAKER_02: Chammoth visa slash MasterCard. We'll get into that. And SACS, you said asset classes benefiting from government pumps. Very interesting. The Fed stopping QE. Interesting. Anybody have comments on their predictions or each other's predictions from last year? On a percentage basis, David
SPEAKER_03: absolutely nailed it. SACS absolutely nailed it. On a dollar basis, the biggest business loser of this year was big tech. And I think that you saw three things happen, which I think are important for the future. The first was it was the most crowded trade, both by professional money managers, as well as retail. And that fever finally broke in the last half of in the second half of this year. And now going into these last few weeks, you're seeing a lot of panicked selling to cover losses and other things. So I think that number one, that happened. Number two, regulators basically said, we're going to go after these guys every single which way we can. And then number three, I think it started to change the innovation cycle where people now actually believe that they can't outspend because folks won't tolerate it. And the things that they're spending their money on seem kind of foolish. And so I think the, you know, big tech is probably not discussed enough, but it was a huge loser for this year, in terms of what happened. 2022 choose actual biggest business loser. Chumat
SPEAKER_02: says big tech freeberg, who is your biggest business loser for 2022? I mean, this one's just a simple FTX. I mean, that was
SPEAKER_04: such a incredible revelation of the scale of the scam and the fraud and the craziness that went on. And I think what was interesting about FTX is it had implications, not just for crypto, and not just for kind of offshore regulatory, and not just for fraud, but also for the investors. We had a whole debate about whether the press and journalists failed to kind of, you know, appropriately investigate this guy rather than give him accolades because he said the right things, which he said he did over IM. And investors fail to do relevant amounts of due diligence or form a board and have proper governance over him, because they wanted to be part of the hot new thing, and everyone had capital to deploy. And I think what was interesting about the FTX failure is it didn't just, it wasn't just a failure due to fraud, but it revealed so many parts of kind of, you know, call it, you know, systemic laziness and systemic kind of blind eye and systemic bias that allowed and enabled this to happen. It was really a revealing kind of failure. And that's why I kind of gave it the award, Mr. David Sachs, who is your biggest business loser of 2022? Well,
SPEAKER_05: you kind of mentioned this. I picked Bob J. Peck, who's the former Disney CEO. He was Iger's handpicked successor three years ago, then the pandemic hit, which shut down the theme parks. But then I think the big mistake was allowing himself to be mou-mou by woke employees into picking a fight with DeSantis over the so-called don't say gay bill. That caused DeSantis to retaliate by threatening the special privileges that Disney enjoys in the state. And then he had Iger undermining him behind the scenes. This was revealed, I think it was in a Wall Street Journal story that he was grousing to insiders that Jay Peck was not soliciting his advice and he was undermining confidence in with the board. And recently Jay Peck was forced out and I was put back in charge. Fantastic choice for the biggest loser. How brutal does
SPEAKER_03: Iger look in that Wall Street Journal piece? I mean, would anybody work for him? Yes, he is incredible. He looks terrible.
SPEAKER_02: I agree. I read that piece twice, actually. The CFO calling him up. She was the one who stabbed him. You know, in knifed Jay Peck. It's a great wall street. I don't think that that
SPEAKER_03: happens without the support of the person waiting in the wings.
SPEAKER_02: Hey, listen, there's a couple of jobs you never quit. You never quit a hit TV show. You never quit a hit band like Roger Water did with Pink Floyd. Why didn't they just extend this record with the Disney job? It's the best job job in the world. But Jason, what why go through never quit? Why go through the
SPEAKER_03: theatrics of like grooming somebody putting them in your job and then undermining them? Like I all I'm saying is if you're I think he made a mistake. I think he made a
SPEAKER_02: mistake. He quit and he wanted to come also if like, if you're a
SPEAKER_03: good up and coming exec. I mean, what do you do if like all of a sudden, like, you know, you have the opportunity to get groomed for that job? It just seems really risky. Yeah, I mean, I
SPEAKER_02: think Bob Iger realized when he in that piece, they say he went on his yacht, his wife didn't come with him. The Wall Street Journal piece is incredible. And he's got bored. And he's 77 years old. He's like in early 70s. Why would you give up the greatest job in the world? So he went back and he took it back to Disney have a mandatory retirement age. But this is my
SPEAKER_03: point is he was so he was so prolific, he could have extended it. Why not just extend it and be done with it? Yeah. Did you
SPEAKER_04: guys read the book he wrote? That ride of a lifetime? What is it? Yeah. And I think that what was interesting about that book was the entire thing was built around a series of deals that he did. It was like I did this acquisition, and I did this acquisition, then I did this acquisition. And everything for him was building this this this empire by doing deals. And someone whose storyline and narrative that they tell of themselves, that's built as a series of deals is a deal junkie. And you're not going to be a deal junkie where that's your excitement. That's the thrill. That's the adventure that you get out of life. And then you go and sit on a yacht, you're not doing any deal sitting on a yacht. And you're going to want to get back to that. And I think it's less about kind of management and product. And it was much more about being in the midst of doing deals. And that's why he came back. If this was
SPEAKER_05: part of Iger's diabolical strategy to get back, let me just say like, one of the ways he did it. I mean, Jay Peck had the right instincts, which is when this whole Florida debate happened over Don't Say Gay highly contentious, no comment, no comment, his instinct was just to stay out of it. But then Iger made some statements about how companies have to live up their values and that kind of stuff. And then the employees started, you know, again, you know, a Mao, Mao him to get involved. And he took the bait, and he got involved. And what he didn't expect is that DeSantis wasn't going to just roll over to Santa's hit him back really hard. And it cost them economically. And then that was a huge, and in the first
SPEAKER_03: interview that Iger gave when asked about this question, he was like, no comment. Yeah, he's like, we're not getting involved in politics anymore. We're not getting involved in politics anymore. It was hilarious. That was hilarious.
SPEAKER_05: He nudged Jay Peck to basically get involved in politics. And then Jay Peck basically became cannon fodder for DeSantis. Exactly. And then Iger's like, oh, we're out of this now. I mean, how diabolical was that?
SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's so diabolical. So dirty. The other two things were, Jay Peck said, we're going to take
SPEAKER_02: away your PNLs to each of the leaders that is like just neutering them that he basically said, everybody's under the CFO, everybody's going to be on one PNL. That infuriated all the creatives. And then he went to war with Scarlett Johansson over a $10 million settlement for her black widow. He couldn't handle talent, he couldn't handle the politics, and he wanted to control everybody's PNL just unforced error after unforced error. Congratulations to my guy, Bob Iger. I own the stock. Do you think he was diabolical at all?
SPEAKER_05: Oh, in the best possible way. In the best possible way, which
SPEAKER_02: means that Disney stock is going to go up. Yes, I'm buying more Disney stock this year.
SPEAKER_05: Is all the woke progressive politics that he projects, is that all just a game to mask what a Viper's nest? Their executive suite really is.
SPEAKER_02: Are you telling me that Disney is a political corporation after Eisner and Bob Iger and all of this Michael Ovitz? I mean, it's the history of Disney. It's the greatest job in the world. It is Game of Thrones to get that job. And Bob Iger got it back. He's my guy. I'm sticking with him. Okay. They have the best IP in the business. I don't care how he gets that job back. He's awesome. I gotta say the IP at Warner media is a real
SPEAKER_04: strong contender. I mean, that was we were talking about this yesterday, how good white Lotus season two was. Let's open up the discussion. It is incredible how HBO produces extraordinary hit after extraordinary hit the quality and the consistency of that quality coming out of HBO is like nothing else. You'll go. I mean, look, Avatar two. I did not like Avatar one. I thought it was junk. Avatar two is getting panned for being junk as well. Not everything that comes out of Disney is a hit. They certainly have the best franchises, but man, Warner media has a lot to contend with and uh, you know, they could end up being a real challenger to Disney in the years ahead.
SPEAKER_02: Sax. Did you watch the white Lotus season two? Yes, sir. Okay. No problem. It is absolutely fantastic. We have to do a little fan service here. What did you love about white Lotus
SPEAKER_02: season two? Give the fans a little service here. Oh, wait.
SPEAKER_05: It's on season two. I didn't even see season one. I don't even know what you guys are talking about. Okay. It's the
SPEAKER_02: hottest show in television. Well, I'll tell you what's
SPEAKER_04: incredible is there's a diversity of characters and they weave the super like, you know, interesting story together, but each of the characters are so distinct and the characters are played so well. I mean we were talking about um you know we were kind of at dinner last night talking about who our favorite character was on the show and everyone has a different answer and everyone has a different reason and then there are characters that you hate but the fact that you hate them and the fact that you despise them draws you in you're drawn into these characters. I think that the the way that they kind of portrayed and the way that the characters were acted by the um by the actors uh and then the way that they all kind of weave together to tell this extraordinary story. Uh it was really um it was really compelling and it was like just super impressive uh directing acting writing everything. There are a handful of scenes in
SPEAKER_03: season one and season two, which I would say are unbelievably psychologically violent. And there's just no other way to describe like how they just and and and by the way they do it with simple shots, very simple dialogue. It's almost nonchalant in the way that they present these truth bombs and you have to sit there and process it and you're just like oh my god. It's just it's wave after wave. It's an incredible, incredibly well written show. The character
SPEAKER_02: development is extraordinary. Amazing production and set
SPEAKER_04: design by the way. Also, I mean when you when you watch this, don't you want it? You want to go to those locations. Do you
SPEAKER_03: guys remember in season one? Sax will remember this because Sax watched it season one. The family is sitting at the table where they're watching the Hawaiian dance and Paula, the guest of the family gets up and leaves. She can't take it anymore. And then the next day they're in a discussion about it. And the father says something about I think hierarchy or imperialism or something. And it goes around the table and she just deadpads. She says, well, maybe it's just time for others to eat. Talking about, you know, like fixing these wrongs. And I had to listen to it two or three times.
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh my god, that is that is a line that just sticks in your brain. There's a few of those in that show that I think are exciting. I was saying like they really draw you in the set
SPEAKER_04: design. The production design is so compelling. You want to be there. You want to be in that experience with those characters. The pineapple suite. I mean, and then in this season, that whole hotel, I looked up the hotel, by the way, online, they had it, you know, they're they're on set design, people come in and redo the hotel, but it is an actual hotel. It's a real, they just made it so magical. Yeah, it was such an incredible, Oh, free book, we should make that the host of the
SPEAKER_02: wall in summit 2023. Wonderful. Sorry, I'm working on my Jennifer Coolidge. Tell your director, David Sachs, what you
SPEAKER_04: like to do for you? Yeah, my biggest loser was crypto. And I
SPEAKER_02: think there'll be a subsequent domino to fall, which is now that Gary G, head of the SEC has FTX and the FTT tokens as the grift, he's going to go down the list of other tokens, and he is going to start doing more prosecutions of grifts in crypto biggest loser for me. Alright, biggest business surprise. Let's see if we can get sacks back engage in the conversation now that we're not talking about art and life. Sachs. Last year, your biggest business surprise. Zach just produced a movie about
SPEAKER_04: Dolly. I know he is I'm joking with him. He's a true artist and
SPEAKER_02: he sold it to Mark Cuban. Congratulations on the sale. David, I guess me and Cuban are besties now. Fantastic. In 2021
SPEAKER_02: our selections for business biggest business surprises. I was very surprised by dows. Chamath by Moderna, sacks by tech moving to Miami and freeburg. You were surprised by NFTs. What were we surprised by in 2022? freeburg? We'll start with you on Musk's acquisition of Twitter, I think took
SPEAKER_04: everyone by surprise. It kind of went I mean, this is such an obvious one, but it went from a whimsical fantasy and idea. To suddenly, you know, cold hearted reality with, you know, a huge kind of negotiating saga that took place and court battles and all the drama that ensued. And here's what I think was most surprising about it. It wasn't just the acquisition and the and the fact that the acquisition closed, but it was the the incredible veracity of the head cutting, cost cutting, the demands that people return to work return to the office. And then what was most surprising that fact was that the most surprising that followed that is the impact that that seems to have had on the rest of Silicon Valley, where now nearly every VC I speak with every CEO, every board is looking to Elon's behavior for right or for wrong for you know, moral moral or not, and saying that's a model for how you can challenge your team to achieve the impossible in an impossibly difficult environment, which is what we find ourselves in. And so I think it was a series of surprising events. He bought Twitter, he made these incredible changes. And then everyone seems to be looking to model. And it's really resonated. It's created a rippling effect. I'm not saying it's good. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm not saying it's moral right or wrong. But the whole thing was really an incredible, surprising, unexpected saga this year. So I give the Elon acquisition of Twitter kind of the award. Chamath, do you have a biggest surprise?
SPEAKER_03: I would say it's Jerome Powell and the Fed and their staunch hawkishness on inflation. I think everybody wants all of this to be over. And I think we're definitely in the last few innings of it. But I think what was surprising was how consistent and how hawkish and how bearish Jerome Powell was every chance he got. He didn't capitulate or waiver from the key message, which he was saying from the beginning, which is, we have the tools to fix a broken economy, but we don't have the tools to fix runaway inflation. And so we will raise rates higher than anyone expects and keep them there longer than anybody wants, because on the back end of it, we can fix a few broken bones. But if left unchecked, this could really do a lot of damage. And I think that that was an enormous surprise that all the political pressure in the world, all of the financial capital markets pressure in the world did nothing to change his position. Sax, what was your biggest business surprise of 2022? David
SPEAKER_02: Sax's biggest. Well, it was a pretty big surprise that Adobe bought
SPEAKER_05: Figma for 20 billion. That price tag in this environment, pretty big surprise. But I got to say, I think Freeberg nailed it. Got to say that the business saga of the year was Elon buying Twitter. First, the liberal media was up in arms that he might do it. Then they insisted that he must complete the deal. In any event, he did ultimately buy the company and now he's affecting his changes. I agree. That's the big business story of this year. Certainly, it was a big surprise for me that I got deposition for six hours. Is it a surprise
SPEAKER_04: that you're sitting in Twitter's headquarters today right now? Yeah, it is a surprise. But just by the way, the rumors
SPEAKER_05: and speculation are getting out of hand. I am not a candidate for CEO of Twitter. So I want to put the kibosh on that because it's starting to get out of hand. The job is yours,
SPEAKER_04: my friend. Congratulations. All right. I guess let me know when I start. You've worked hard. You're the last man standing. Last man standing outwit outlause. Now that Saks
SPEAKER_02: has said he is not taking the job. A bunch of libs have just stopped taking Xanax. The libs biggest fear was Saks was going to get that job. We just canceled a bunch of Xanax prescriptions. Congratulations to libs. Saks is not going to be your overlord on Twitter. For me, it's obvious. The Twitter acquisition is the biggest surprise by far and away. Freeburg, I couldn't have summarized it better. I will say in six weeks, what we have seen there is nothing short of extraordinary. Have there been bumps in the road? Has it been a little chaotic at times, perhaps? But the features that are coming fast and furious are going to be the story going forward. You've seen Twitter for business. Saks had his fingerprints, all that you may fingerprints all over that you may have seen hashtags for stock tickers. I was briefly involved in that. There are going to be so many features coming. And this is what Elon's zone of excellence is product. He is an engineer, he's a product genius. The proof is in the pudding, whether it's rocket ships or the cars, we're going to see a parade of features I predict in another six to 18 weeks, we will see people talking about all the great features in Twitter, not any of the transitional issues and people will be shocked my runner up meta stock collapsing. That was my runner up for the biggest business shock is that they just absolutely collapsed. I was just gonna add to what you're
SPEAKER_05: saying about new features launching while we've been sitting here on this pod, I've been checking my Twitter feed. There's a new feature where there's a view count on all of your tweets and all of everybody else's tweets as well. So you can see how many views a tweet is generating. So this tweet that I posted yesterday has 1.5 million views. It's like incredible. So it really shows the incredible reach of Twitter. And anybody who's thinking about going to like some knockoff like Mastodon or something is gonna have to contend with the fact that it doesn't have nearly the distribution. So I think this really shows the power of Twitter. And then Dave Rubin noticed my... I tweeted this just a second ago and Dave Rubin noted that the New York Times doesn't have anywhere near the views for its tweets because they bought all their followers, which is interesting. I didn't know that, but I just went over to the New York Times profile and my tweets are routinely getting 10 to 20 times more reach, more views than theirs. So this is a super interesting indicator of who actually people are paying attention to on Twitter. It's fascinating. This is fascinating. I'm looking at my
SPEAKER_02: own. I just did, how do you give a 30 billion dollar fraud bail, referring to SPF, and that was just less than an hour ago. No, it's 30 minutes. Yeah, an hour ago. And I have 50,000 views already, which is 10% of my follower count. So this is an extraordinary. You see right next to likes, retweets, quote tweets, the feature train is coming. And this will change the dialogue. All these haters who are like, Twitter is gonna go down, who are rooting against Elon. Let me tell you something. If a guy can land two rockets at a time, and he can literally restart the electric car movement, and he becomes the number one car in any category he releases a car in, how on earth would you bet against him to build software? You have to be idiotic. This is way too much. I mean, you guys like we
SPEAKER_04: should sorry. It's like an ad. Yeah, you're selling a product for a company that you guys are working at. Like I mean, come on. I'm not working at the company. Well, you guys are advisors, right? I mean, Nick, can you show one other feature?
SPEAKER_05: So I think it's cool. Nick, let's go. Yeah, keep going. Features. Let's go pull up my profile real quick. Welcome to
SPEAKER_02: this week in Twitter. Oh my god. Twitter now has affiliate
SPEAKER_05: badges. You can see I've got a little Kraft Ventures badge next to my name. So you should be able to click on it actually to get to the Kraft Ventures profile. Yeah. So you're gonna be able to affiliate users with business accounts, and it creates kind of secondary badges after the blue check. I think even the corporate journalists are gonna love this because if you're a New York Times writer, you'll have a little NYT badge next to your name, Wall Street Journal, whatever, you'll have that little badge. So more and more people are gonna get blue checks, and then people are gonna have secondary or even tertiary badges that are basically specific to their affiliations. Okay, so I think let's make sure we get let's get an all in badge. We are gonna have all in badges really soon. Awesome. Okay, let's go for
SPEAKER_02: free work. Free works. That was our biggest business surprises. And we just canceled your account free work. It's locked out. We just took away. No one goes through it anyway. It's
SPEAKER_04: all good to work out. Okay, best science breakthrough. Here's
SPEAKER_02: an easy one for us to do 2022 biggest science breakthrough. What have you got Sultan of science we call of course have to start with you 22 biggest science breakthrough freeburg. Yeah, I'm gonna give it obviously to the the
SPEAKER_04: demonstration of net energy gain from the National Ignition Facility in plasma fusion that we talked about last week. I wouldn't call it a breakthrough by the way, I think we we use that as a misnomer last week, but I'm still gonna put it in this category. It's more of a milestone along a very long path, a very arduous path, a very difficult work that's been taking decades. So it's a great milestone. But I think what was so important and impactful and powerful about it is that it's really catalyzed a change a sea change in the investing in the outlook that this is becoming more reality. As I mentioned last week, we've seen an increase of nearly 40% in the number of fusion startups, and the amount of capital that's flowing in is now reaching 10 billion a year. So this is becoming you know, a real investable or an area that's getting real investment. Some people might not think it's very investable. But that's why I think it's been an important year for fusion. And I think, you know, it's something I highlighted last year I was excited about, and I too picked
SPEAKER_02: fusion. Also, just point of clarity last week, some people chamath before you go to your prediction, we're saying, hey, you're talking your book on solar when you were in your disagreement with freeburg. That's obvious. You've been very upfront that you're investing in solar, you placed your bet.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, so just everybody knows he made
SPEAKER_02: that bet. He's talked about it incessantly. Plus, those idiots
SPEAKER_03: that were saying that are stupid. But yes, let me let me further clarify what I said last week and why it's important. If Nick, can you bring up the capital asset pricing model again, the most important thing for me is to make sure that we don't misallocate human capital into endeavors that I think are best left for research institutions funded by the government. And I think when you look at a capital asset pricing model and try to build one out for fusion as an example, the expected rate of return that you need to get from this is just astronomically high because of the beta of that investment risk and the market risk premium you have to generate. And so, you know, from my perspective, I think that there are probably four or five labs in the world that are capable of actually getting us to a positive energy equation. I think freeburg, I really thank you for actually saying that it wasn't a breakthrough and more of a milestone. I think the real breakthrough is when we have positive, not just joules, but we actually convert that into electrical energy, right? And we actually talk about power and watts. And I think that most people listening probably don't even understand the difference between joules and watts or don't even care and they want to jump around here or there. So the point is that there's an enormous path we need to take in physics. And I think it's best done in governments. And I don't want to see a bunch of billions of dollars get wasted to get marginal cost of energy to zero right now. I think there is a point in time where private startups can take the last 20 or 30%. But I think about this like the internet, which is you needed DARPA to build V1, and then it could be handed over to private industry. And I think fusion, when we look back, will look very similar. And all the folks that try to build, you know, versions of the internet that were private, I think found themselves lagging because there's just a level of investment that's required, that's best served in government. So anyways, that's, let's clarify that for all the folks who got their panties in a bunch yesterday. But in any event, my science breakthrough of the year is that there was a 13 year old girl, this was, you know, because of all of this fusion stuff, actually, we didn't even get to cover it because it happened in the same week. And I think this is infinitely more impressive and is an actual breakthrough, which is a 13 year old girl in the United Kingdom, who had a heretofore uncurable form of leukemia, T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. So typically, you start in chemotherapy. If chemotherapy doesn't work, you move to bone marrow transplants. And it was uncurable. And a lab in the UK, basically using CRISPR, edited these transplant T cells to go in and wipe out her cancer. And now her cancer is literally undetectable. Now, if you bring
SPEAKER_03: up that capital asset pricing model, again, Nick, what I'll tell you is, the rate of return on a human life, in my opinion, is infinite. And so here is an unbelievable breakthrough that got very little attention because everybody was wrapped around the axle of fusion. It happened in the same week. So maybe it's understandable. I didn't understand it. But I think this is the single most important thing that happened in science, not just this year, but frankly, in the last decade, because if you can actually now do base editing, and eradicate, at least in this case, a blood based cancer, and eventually we'll be able to bring that and use that towards solid state tumor cancers. It's a huge breakthrough in just human longevity and human quality of life. And that happened just a few weeks ago. Okay, and of course, for David Sachs, his biggest science
SPEAKER_02: breakthrough is I don't care. So moving on. Sachs, go ahead, tell us.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, no, this category reminds me of when Biden had that moment where he's like, America can be defined in a single word. And then he's like, that's kind of how I feel about this category. America is a nation that can be defined in a single word. I was
SPEAKER_01: gonna put him. Amazing how you figured out a way to be
SPEAKER_02: derogatory about Biden in the science section, a new low even for you, Sachs. To go in sex. I like it. Alright, biggest flash in the pan 2021. This is what we said were the biggest flash in the pan. I said the woke socialist leadership of cities, ie chess, a boudin. Freeburg said the Constitution Dow, Sachs said the word transitory very well played. And Shammaugh said the metaverse also very well played. Everybody take that. Yes, very good. Everybody get your flowers. Enjoy all of those seem like pretty good selections. But this year is what everybody wants to hear about. Freeburg. Tell us now who is your 2022 biggest flash in the pan. The undisputable who we
SPEAKER_04: got biggest flash in the pan of 2022 was the all in summit. Oh, that hurts. That will always be a strong and significant memory. It was such a hot thing for a minute. And then it died. So to the all in summit, I I raised my glass, I pour one out. I toast to you to Miami. And unless David Sachs carries it from here. It was a flash in the pan. It was a flash in the pen. Sachs, who's your flash? Which Democrat is a flash
SPEAKER_02: in the plan for you? This is where I had Liz Truss. As you
SPEAKER_05: guys mentioned, she only survived 44 days as PM. I mean, that's only for Scaramucci's. She was basically fired by the
SPEAKER_05: bond markets after she combined a Thatcher S tax cut with massive energy subsidies to counter the price spikes caused by the war in Ukraine that's just been actually committed to. This was deemed untenable by the UK Central Bank and the central bank. It crashed the pound. And I think there is a serious point here, which is that as much as Thatcher and Reagan were the two towering heroic figures of the 1980s, I think zombie Thatcherism is not going to be electrically viable in the UK, just like zombie Reaganism is not going to be viable in the United States. I think that the conservative movement has to stop living in the past. We have to develop fresh ideas to meet the economic and foreign policy challenges of today. Chamath, do you have a flash in the pan? I actually
SPEAKER_03: think fusion literally was a flash in the pan. It lasted 10 to the negative 10 seconds. So that less of a flash you can't have without being a flash in the pan.
SPEAKER_02: Ah, they haven't. Hey, uh, Saks, I see somebody who's here. Oh, look who it is. Oh, is it the proprietor?
SPEAKER_03: The proprietor, the owner.
SPEAKER_00: Twitter customer support at your service. Saks, you spent the last 15 minutes selling your new features
SPEAKER_04: on the podcast. Pretty exciting. Well, the, the, like the views are like incredible. Yeah. I
SPEAKER_05: mean, and I saw Dave Rubin already made an observation that if you look at New York Times, their views are maybe one 10th, like my views, just me as a lone tweeter. And he said that their followers are inflated by just basically buying a bunch of follower accounts. Yeah, the views thing is huge. That's why I pushed the views,
SPEAKER_00: which is like actually a lot harder feature to implement than you'd think, because the sheer number of transactions per second, like it's, I think it sort of requires system wide on the order of three, 3 million transactions a second to actually calculate the view to, you know, calculate and display the view count, if I put Twitter, Twitter global. So it's like 3 million per second. It's a lot. For those of you listening, Elon Musk is having a lot of
SPEAKER_02: questions about Twitter. Elon Musk has had joined the pod. Elon, how's, how's the first six weeks been generally speaking
SPEAKER_00: of owning Twitter? Well, it's been quite a roller coaster, which obviously you've witnessed and been on the roller coaster as well.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, the drama mean I've taken the drama mean it's it's quite
SPEAKER_00: up. Yeah, I mean, it's exciting. But I think it's sort of has its highs and lows to say the least. But overall, it seems to be a little bit, you know, we've got the the expenses reasonably under control. So the company's not like on the in the fast lane of bankruptcy anymore. And we're releasing features faster than Twitter's history, at the same time as having contained the costs and reduce the cost structure by a factor of three, four. So, you know, the verified is obviously that's that's that's huge. It's revenue stream as well as a means of identifying of like knowing that it's a real person and not a border or trial situation. The having the affiliation, organization affiliation, which I suspect you talked about that was a idea of it's that was great to have organization affiliation. So you can know that somebody is an actual professor at Stanford or an that this particular handle is actually Disney, not someone simply putting I work at Disney in my in their bio. So I think that's gonna be really helpful. It just really just having detailed and nuanced verification. So of all the various things that you say you are, are these things validated by other people and organizations? Can you tell us
SPEAKER_04: how you do product iteration, Elon, because one of the things that I think some people got jolted by over the last couple of weeks is like a bunch of things got taken away or change or rules change, their policies change, and there was very quick action. And then people had all this negative feedback about the the quick action without communication. But your extraordinary talent is to iterate product to success. Can you just maybe share with people how you do product iteration in this context, to help them understand how some of these decisions get made and why moving quickly is so important and just you know, how you're doing this, I'm a big believer in like, you want to look at the net output.
SPEAKER_00: So it's sort of like, you know, what's the batting average? If you're like baseball? The point is, is not that you like, you know, hit the ball, but it's like, well, how many home runs you get? And how like, what's your actual your slugging percentage? Yeah, so you have said it. Yeah, it's like, you've got to swing for the fences, you're gonna, you know, strike out a bit more, but we're gonna swing for the fences here at Twitter. And we're gonna do it quickly. So and I think, generally, like my error rate, and sort of being the chief twit will be less over time. But, you know, in the beginning, we'll make obviously, sort of a lot more mistakes. You know, because it's, I'm new to the I'm like, hey, I just got here, man. So I mean, if you look at like, the actual amount of improvement that's happened at Twitter in terms of like, like, having costs that are not insane, and getting an actually shipping product that on balance is good. I think that is a that. That's great. Like, we're actually executing well and getting things done. I think we'll have fewer, fewer gaps in the future. How did you get to your intuition on what
SPEAKER_03: the efficient frontier of employees needed to be to make the product better? Well.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Well, I was part of this where you basically asked the
SPEAKER_05: question, who here is critical? And who here is exceptional? Yes, I mean, so I mean, really, the what the criteria is trying
SPEAKER_00: to apply, and obviously, you're gonna be perfect. If you're moving fast, and there's a lot of, you know, people you're talking about here is that anyone who is exceptional at what they do, where the role is critical, they have a positive effect on others. And they are trusted, meaning they put the company's interests before their own should stay pretty straightforward. Yeah. And I also and it also is up for
SPEAKER_00: working, you know, working hard, like, that would not that would not just this, this, that's not was not Twitter's prior culture. Yeah. Were you surprised that that the intersection
SPEAKER_03: of that circle, and the people that left was basically 25%? Were you surprised it was that deep? Or did you think your intuition was like, it's probably somewhere in here? Well, I think you could just stand back and say, without knowing
SPEAKER_00: how many employees Twitter has at all, and say, how many people are really needed to run Twitter? Like they say, you don't know what the employee headcount number is, but you don't know what the employee headcount number is at all. How many people are needed to keep the site operational? Like, let's say, excluding product, product evolution, you basically have to keep the servers going. And you have to have customer sort of a support function to take down material that is in violation of the law. How many people? What's the minimum number of people? That's in the hundreds probably. It's not
SPEAKER_00: exactly, it's not it's not like a giant number. Yeah. Twitter still has like 2000 people, right? Yeah, we still have 2000 people. It's not nothing. And actually, there's, there's actually on the order of like, almost 5000 contractors. Like
SPEAKER_00: like, almost, yeah, almost all of the, what's called trust and safety work, which is like, the support functions for the site are done by contractors. You're doing a lot more to take down
SPEAKER_05: hate speech than the company previously was doing. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00: absolutely. Like, hey, speech impressions are down by a third and will get even lower. Maybe you could speak a little bit to
SPEAKER_02: the what we discovered, I think in those early weeks, which was the incentive. The incentive previously was to create as many accounts as possible. And there were a lot of quick fixes to lowering all these, you know, what people might call bought accounts. In some cases, it was people opening many millions of accounts. But we discovered this very early. How easy was it for you with the tech team to maybe lower the bot count and all the fake accounts? Maybe you could speak a little bit to that, because people have seemed to think that, gosh, it's a really hard thing to get rid of bots. And it turns out it isn't.
SPEAKER_00: But we still have a fair number of bots in the system. But the like, I think the incentive structure, the way Twitter set up previously was this relentless focus on what they called MDOW, which is monetizable daily active users, although I would say the monetizable part is dubious. But at least things that appeared to be monetized or could be passed off as monetizable daily active users. So this, I created an incentive to turn a blind eye to a fake account. So if the incentive structure is like, you know, maximize the appearance of monetizable daily active users, then you're just, it's a strong incentive to pretend that a bot is real. And that's what happened. So we're taking a lot of steps to reduce the bots control situation. So many. And I think you're seeing that in the usage, like it's not it's not like relatively rare to have your replies filled with crypto scams. I'm not seeing
SPEAKER_02: any anymore. Freeburg, you had a question? Yeah, I mean, just
SPEAKER_04: on your earlier question, you know, Elon, when you first started making changes at Twitter, after you bought the business, a lot of people kind of took notice at how extraordinarily swift and significant those changes were. And there's a lot of technology companies that have CEOs and investors and boards. And we all talk to a lot of them. And they're all now having a conversation like, look at what Elon did at Twitter. How can we do something as aggressive as swift as deep? Do you think much about kind of the model you're playing for other businesses and other business leaders, particularly in Silicon Valley, and how you're operating Twitter? Do you ever kind of talk about that? Because I know you you mostly talk about your business, and you talk about the businesses you're running. But you're having a big influence, I think, and how other people kind of act and behave that are other business leaders and run other technology companies? I mean, to be frank, I'm not I'm not
SPEAKER_00: really, you know, active, I'm thinking about that much, because I'm just thinking about, like, how do we just, like, you know, just get Twitter to be a financially healthy place, and fix the engine of engineering, so we can have a rapid evolution of new products. So, and, you know, I mean, I guess I'm in sort of, in some ways, an unfortunate position where I don't have to answer it. It's not public, and we don't have a board, really. So, I mean, so I can just go, you know, and I can take actions that are drastic. And obviously, if I make a bunch of mistakes, then Twitter won't succeed. And that'll be pretty embarrassing and sad. But as long as like I said, as long as the batting average is good, that the wins significantly outweigh the mistakes, then, you know, it'll be a great future. And I think I'm very optimistic about where things are headed.
SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of people want to talk about, or understand, Elon, your position on freedom of speech and your principles. I'm curious, you've been pretty upfront about it. How do you think about it post acquisition? You know, what speech should be allowed in the platform? Kanye came back, he just went insane. His account got revoked. What have you learned, I guess, now that you own it? Because you must be getting a lot of inbound from people asking you, hey, how are decisions going to be made, etc. You've been clear, transparency is super important in this. But what are your thoughts on free speech and speech on a platform like this? Well, I mean, the general principle I think is that we
SPEAKER_00: should hew close to the law in any given country. So the law is very quite locked by country. And so I think we should be doing free speech that's close to the law. And that's the general principle. I think there are other things where it's like, okay, we like, for example, like if you're an advertiser, you don't want to necessarily, you don't want your ad, like, let's say it's a family movie next to some, you know, NSFW content, even if that content is text. You know, it's like, they'll be like, that's probably that's, we don't you know, so. So that's the case. So that's, you know, part of what you know, like, so there's, there's more of an allowance for what you might call hate speech on the system, but it's just, it's not going to be promoted. It's not like it's, we're not going to be recommending hate speech, the risk of stating the obvious. And we're not going to monetize hate speech. So, or negative speech, like that's, nor would advertisers want us to, you know, any, I think it's going to be a rare product that wants to be next to seriously negative stuff. I was just saying you referred to it as, hey, freedom
SPEAKER_02: of speech, but not reach, because this is a very nuanced discussion. Like, should this stuff be able to hit the trends, you know, in that kind of stuff? Yeah. Like, it's certainly
SPEAKER_00: possible that some things that will be regarded as hate speech will hit, will hit, will hit trends. But I think it's going to be relatively unusual, especially as we are doing a better job of controlling the bots and trolls situation. And do you want to emphasize like there's a difference between bots and trolls, like bots are like fully automated accounts, but like a troll phone would be where you've got like, you know, 100 people in a warehouse somewhere each with 100 phones. And so they're actually humans, and they're going to pass a capture test or, you know, and they can, you know, reply, reply, and they're, because they're actually good humans, but it's actually 10,000 accounts that are just, they're obviously not operating as, as, as real people. So that, that's, you know, stuff like that can cause things to trend negatively. That's why I'm like a big proponent of having just a low cost verification capability. And, yeah, so, but like, this is definitely a work in progress. So there's, like I said, there's going to be, and I did, like one of the first things I said, after the acquisition closed was like, we're going to make a lot of money, and we're going to make a bunch of mistakes, but then we'll try to recover from them quickly. And that's, that's what we've done. And I think we've generally succeeded in recovering from them quickly. And it's been going pretty well. Was the Paul Graham and journalists suspensions mistakes
SPEAKER_04: from, have you talked about this publicly, about how that all kind of got resolved at the end?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, the Paul Graham suspension was definitely a mistake and actually called Paul Graham to apologize personally for that one. Oh, he did. Yeah, great. Yeah. So, you know, on the journalist front, the, I think the journalists suspension suspensions were not a mistake, in that, for some reason, a bunch of journalists thought they were better than regular, than everyone else, and that
SPEAKER_00: if they engage in doxxing and, you know, other, and break the rules in various ways, that they're not subject to suspension, even though your average citizen is. And I think that's just messed up. The same rules should apply to people who call themselves journalists as to, you know, anyone else on the system. They shouldn't be sort of above the rules. For some reason, they thought they should be. That's, that's, that doesn't make sense. I don't think that's right. Yeah. And the rules being transparent and upfront, I think
SPEAKER_02: that's what everybody's looking forward to, maybe some just complete clarity and transparency. And you've said from the beginning, when somebody gets suspended, or this shadow banning of this sort of tips into this really weird stuff that we discovered during or you discovered, or the journalists discovered during the Twitter files. It's, it's kind of a bummer that people are being sanctioned or shadow banned, and they don't know it. If we're going to have a system, the rules should be clear to everybody. Yeah, absolutely. So the something I've committed to, and
SPEAKER_00: we'll, we'll, I think, probably be able to roll that out in January. Just by the way, there is like a bit of a, you know, we are not going to be rolling out a ton of new features over, you know, Christmas and New Year's and stuff. So there's like a, you know, the next sort of feature set, we'll probably roll out mid to late January. And hopefully in that, we can include information about why an account is suspended, or has what is called within Tesla, Twitter, visibility filtering, aka shadow banning. So and some of these things like are like this, there's a lot of things that just happen accidentally, where there's, you know, the rules in the system that are meant to detect whether someone's a sort of bot or troll or like, brigading whether like, you know, and then an account is sort of innocently caught up in that. So, like, there was some accounts just suspended yesterday, because, but temporarily suspended, they got like 12 hour suspensions, because someone in customers, someone in Trust and Safety thought that they had posted a nude photo of Hunter Biden, something. But they hadn't, they hadn't actually done that. I don't know, it was just basically a mistake. There was some accounts that were, that got a 12 hour suspension yesterday for it in error. And then they weren't sure why it
SPEAKER_00: happened. It was just essentially a mistake in the, in the, with Twitter customer support that was corrected. Elon, let me, let me ask you just a slightly broader
SPEAKER_03: question. One of the things we just talked about was the regime change that's happened where, you know, we all have to act differently now that the risk free rate is probably going to get to 5%. And I'm just curious, across all your businesses, so Twitter, yes, but really, more importantly, Tesla, SpaceX, are there decisions that you will make differently or not at all, or will make that you wouldn't have made otherwise in this new regime? And how often do you think about that kind of stuff?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it's more like, like, it does seem like we're headed into a recession here in 2023. The magnitude of that recession is debatable, but I think it's at least a light to moderate recession, potentially, it's on the order of 2009. So that's, so I think it's, it's wise to kind of like, prepare for the worst, hope for the best prepare for the worst. Don't get too adventurous, like, like, watch out for margin debt. Like, I really advise people to not have margin debt in a volatile stock market. And, you know, from a cash standpoint, keep powder dry. You can get some pretty extreme things happening in a down market. Like Brad Johnson, who was a CFO, who is a CFO of SpaceX, was at Broadcom in 2000. And he said that, and that's a good company making good products. And he said that from peak to trough, I think in less than 12 months, Broadcom went down 97%. So like, even if you had a small margin loan there, you got crushed. It subsequently recovered, and I think, you know, to much higher levels, but, you know, if there's like mass panic in the stock market, then you've got to be really careful about margin debt. So, but I mean, this is just, as we know, the economy is cyclic. So, you know, and it's somewhat overdue for a recession. And my best guess is that, you know, we have sort of stormy times for a year to a year and a half, and then things start to, dawn breaks roughly in Q2-24. If I were to get, that's like my best guess. Recessions don't, like booms don't last forever, but neither do recessions. And it's a 14 year boom. So a six quarter recession seems
SPEAKER_02: like that may actually bounce out the last time it was what four or five quarters. So it's not easy. Hey, the Twitter files. How much longer are these going to go on? It seems like every week, another drop. And these are pretty controversial. How much longer are the Twitter files going to go on? In your mind? Yeah. And maybe why is this important to you to make sure that people understand the stuff? Yeah, I think it's important to like, you know, if we're going to be
SPEAKER_00: trusted in the future to kind of clear the decks for stuff that's happened in the past. So, I mean, to be totally frank, almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true. So is there a conspiracy theory about Twitter that didn't turn out to be true? So far, they've all turned out to be true. And if not, more true than people thought. Is there a part of the files that really shocked you
SPEAKER_03: more than the rest of them? Like of the things that have been disclosed? Of all of these things? Is there something that really sticks out with you as like, holy shit, I had no idea this was happening? Or is the whole thing just a big dumpster fire? They were just looking at one huge thing. Um, you know, like psyops versus the hunter Biden thing versus the Yeah, the number of FBI people involved that was pretty intense. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00: the FBI psyop stuff to me was probably the one that was the
SPEAKER_03: most insidious like, the rest of it, I could think of like, you know, a bunch of overzealous libs got used. Yeah, got it. You know what I mean? Sure, sure. But to have like, a secure skiff that essentially sends things that, you know, government agents want the populace to basically think seems like kind
SPEAKER_03: of like a really bad dystopian novel. And then it turns out it existed. And then it also the thing is, it couldn't have just existed at Twitter. So what do you do about all the other places where this shit's happened? YouTube, Facebook?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. None of it seemed that surprising to me. I mean, I
SPEAKER_04: don't know, maybe I just believed all the conspiracy theories, but I've also been inside some of these companies and seen how they operate. So honestly, none of it was a surprise to me. Was it a big shock to you? You are you free, you were I think you can claim that you weren't
SPEAKER_05: surprised that these companies were shadow banning, although they denied it. But did you really suspect that the FBI was playing a role in flagging content for these companies to take down? Like that blew me away. Content that's got
SPEAKER_00: nothing to do with like, terrorism. Yeah, they're not investigating crimes. Like there's no crime. Right? Yeah,
SPEAKER_00: they're literally flagged satire. Maybe they didn't get the joke. I don't know. But they don't seem to be a humor driven
SPEAKER_02: group. But they don't seem to have the best senses of humor. But aren't they supposed to get warrants? Isn't that how it's supposed to work in a democracy? They want information. They're asking favors of their friends. Yeah, they're all that's the thing that's troubling to me. Put yourself on either side of the extremes. We have Michael Shellenberger here who broke
SPEAKER_05: the FBI story in the Twitter file. So let's look at him and to see. Because I think maybe the audience isn't caught up on like what was discovered. So you know, I know I have to follow Elon Musk. That doesn't seem fair. Hey, guys. So thanks,
SPEAKER_00: guys. Hey, guys. Hey, Michael, how are you? I'm good. Just a
SPEAKER_02: quick question for Michael. Michael. First of all, first of all, who makes that sweater? I'll send you mine, man. Do you
SPEAKER_01: want it? Are you making fun of it? You're the master of sweaters. Praise from you, brother. I praise asking. Just
SPEAKER_03: briefly, Michael, isn't the FBI supposed to get warrants to
SPEAKER_02: Yes, take actions with folks? And then I guess is that at the crux of this? Are they doing this at other companies? You think? Are they just like embedded in YouTube? Yeah, expect they're embedded at meta, and that they don't get warrants and they're kind of tipping the scales? And is that a good thing for society or a bad thing for society? It's a bit of a basic question. Yeah. Well, I think there's a there's multiple
SPEAKER_01: issues relating to FBI that I think have to be unpacked a bit. But the first one is that, yeah, FBI was constantly pushing the boundaries of what is legally and ethically acceptable in terms of requesting information. Now, I think what you saw over the last three weeks was a shift in I think our own understanding that we did see more pushback from Twitter executives against FBI, and some alarm bells being wrong in terms of the requests that were being made from the intelligence community. But these guys were really persistent. They could ask for more. They kept getting more and more cooperation. It's very troubling. It does look like Congress is going to look into this. The two heads of the committees that are tasked with this have said that they're going to look into it next year. I think the other thing that we saw that I think is more troubling was this persistent effort to basically communicate to Twitter executives, but also to news media, national security correspondents, that there was this heavy foreign infiltration going on, this Russian disinformation. And it appeared to me looking at all the evidence that we saw from within Twitter and from outside of it that this was a pretty organized effort to convince key executives at Twitter and Facebook, but also these key reporters, that they should expect a hack and leak operation sometime right before the elections having to do with Hunter Biden. I find that very suspicious. Can I make an
SPEAKER_03: observation? I think that maybe what we're finding out is that the mainstream media tried to go back to its 1980 Cold War playbook and turn Russia into a boogeyman. But as we're seeing in the Ukraine war, they're not nearly the formidable foe that we thought they were. And so it could probably be the case that in 2016, they were as inept technically as they are militarily right now. And so we may have just built up this monster that is kind of more like, you know, a much smaller thing to be worried about. And we all ran with it because we had no evidence. But the Ukraine-Russia war is evidence that, you know, this highly sophisticated war machine and propaganda machine is not that good at their job.
SPEAKER_01: Right. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a lot of interests that were being served by hyping the so-called Russian misinformation threat. I mean, one of them was just to simply explain away the Trump phenomenon as a consequence of foreign interference. Certainly, the people that ran Hillary Clinton's campaign had an interest in doing that. But then you saw it become a sort of way, I think, to condition people for the release of the Biden laptop. And again, I can't prove that, but it is striking that the Yola Roth, this main Twitter executive, who I think was the object of this misinformation campaign, testified under oath that he was being bombarded with these messages all throughout 2020 that they should expect some sort of a hack and leak operation. So when the New York Post finally did report on that computer in 2014, it was briefly censored by Twitter. But I think more importantly, it was discredited in the minds of many voters, including myself. I really didn't think that that laptop was what they said it was. And it turned out that it was. So I do think it's there's a real troubling pattern of behavior by both the FBI agents, but also by the former FBI executives, including the deputy chief of staff and the chief counsel from FBI that that were at Twitter as executives at the time. And in fairness, Michael, this has
SPEAKER_02: been brought up many times. But I just would like your take on it because you're a lifelong Democrat, correct? Until until
SPEAKER_01: last year. Great. So it would, you know, just let anybody
SPEAKER_02: think that you are like some MAGA supporter here. Just look at my sweater. This was all in the backdrop of Trump asking for the Russians, you know, during that debate to hack Hillary for him interfering with Solanski and trying to get him to give dirt on Biden. And the fact that Hunter Biden was obviously dirty. So to expect a hack. There was massive precedent for
SPEAKER_02: it. So that set the stage for this, correct? For sure. And
SPEAKER_01: there's definitely that going on. And maybe that's all there was to it. It is just striking, of course, because and I didn't even mention in my this is by the way, this is Twitter thread part seven that I did on this issue. I didn't even get into the fact that, you know, within a few days, the many of former senior heads of intelligence organizations and others came out and said that it was the result of a Russian disinformation campaign. So yeah, sure. I mean, I guess we could find some other explanation for it, whether it was innocent or coordinated. But it is striking also. I think the other thing that we found was the contrast between the threat inflation and what Twitter was finding themselves. I mean, repeatedly, Yul Roth would respond to FBI that, yeah, we looked into these accounts that you mentioned, and they were all very low follower accounts with very little activity. So they just weren't finding very much foreign influence on the Twitter platform. And so I just think it was grossly inflated, either for kind of good reasons or bad reasons. I would say, Yeah, yeah. And it's, there's no
SPEAKER_02: perfect way to police this stuff, obviously. And okay, well, listen, we appreciate your reporting. Thanks for doing it. And if you haven't read Michael's book, San Francisco, you did some great reporting there as well. And continued success in your investigative journalism. Thank you, Michael.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. All right, Michael, sorry. Oh,
SPEAKER_04: lost him. All right. He's still here. Oh, okay. Hey, you did an
SPEAKER_04: interview on that. I think I saw it on YouTube or something where you interviewed someone who was homeless in San Francisco, and they were addicted to drugs. And they kind of said some narrative about how they were in this condition, because San Francisco basically pays them to be homeless and pays them to do drugs on the street. Did that ever get published into that come out? Because it was such a compelling couple of minutes that you got on tape there. It really, for me sent home a message of how far kind of progressive policies can take a society. And it's such a beacon for where things might go as other people start to think about adopting similar policies around the world, which is why I thought it was such important reporting. Whatever happened with that and where can folks see that because it was such a moving interview for me. Yeah, if you just Google Michael
SPEAKER_01: Shellenberger YouTube homeless, you'll be able to find all my videos. There's a lot of them that we did with people on the street. All of them, of course, people asking and wanting to do them. But yeah, I mean, what we I also wrote about that in my book, which is basically a San Francisco pays a cash welfare payment of somewhere between six to $700. Plus you can get $200 in food stamps. And a lot of people sadly use that to maintain their addiction. And this gentleman, James, with the tattoos on his face, was very honest about how he was playing in the system. In fact, he was himself, we found this increasingly kind of horrified by the incentives that San Francisco was creating for people to live on the streets and and live on the streets in their in their addiction. So yeah, you can find that on YouTube. So many people say
SPEAKER_04: incentives drive behavior. And unfortunately, these policies all came from a good place from a kind heart. And the idea that we could help people in need. And unfortunately, the way that the incentives get structured, they can actually cause more harm than good. It's such an important lesson. I just wanted to say that because I think you're reporting on this really hit that home. So So thanks for doing that. I think it's really important because we have we have to do the right thing for people. But we also have to be careful that the policies are done in the right way. So I think it's so well said
SPEAKER_02: freebird because when you're Michael and I just think you're very courageous for doing it because it's very easy for somebody to say, Oh, well, you are being callous. The truth is incentives manner. And we saw it, we've seen this over and over again, if you pay for something, you get more of it. And really, San Francisco is bearing the burden. I think this is what your book and you know, in a lot of the videos you've made, at least the message I got was San Francisco has the lowest price of drugs, the lowest enforcement, and the most incentives. Therefore, they suffer, because every person who is, you know, addicted comes here, because they speak to each other. And 90% of the people who are in San Francisco are here because we have created an incentive structure. Is that directionally correct as we wrap here? Yeah, 100% correct,
SPEAKER_01: including just the non enforcement of laws against sleeping on the sidewalk doing drugs in public. Now requiring ultimately three times more people die living outside as an unsheltered homeless person rather than live than being in a shelter. And for me, that's all you need to know to know that you usually cannot allow our brothers and sisters to sleep on the street. No matter how desperate they sound about wanting to avoid going inside. It's three times deadlier to be on the street than inside. So the compassionate thing is to
SPEAKER_02: force people into housing. Yes. And that's just very tough for people to say. But you know, because you're, we have this perception that people have freedom, and they should have the right to do this. But a person who's taking fentanyl in your research is not thinking correctly. And if it was any family member of ours, we would not want them to make that decision for themselves. We'd want somebody else to make that decision for them. Correct. Abs I would want that from if I
SPEAKER_01: was on the street, so desperate that I was, you know, smoking fentanyl and breaking multiple laws every day. Of course, I would want to be hospitalized, you know, and usually, you know, people overcome their addiction. That's the good news. We always leave out of it. But it is possible people do overcome their addiction all the time. But they often need some some an intervention from family and friends. And if that's too late for that, then you need the intervention from the from the city. All right, Michael, thank you, Michael. Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02: So as we get back to the all in news network, we've now gone 24 hours a day, the all in news network has launched. We'll just have a road to sit at various offices throughout Silicon
SPEAKER_03: Valley, letting executives and CEOs. Imagine we did like a 12 hour marathon show for charity where
SPEAKER_02: just people showed up. And we did a what do they call those on TV? What is the charity telethon by Jake? Cal the plane?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, no, just a T. Yeah, telethon. Jake, how has to
SPEAKER_02: still fly commercial? We'll do a telethon. Hey, Sax, thank you for setting up those amazing drop ins. Well done. Thanks, Sax. Thanks, Sax. I think that was good. Your jacket. That's a great jacket. Is that custom that is an East Ia all Stewart
SPEAKER_04: East is the Christmas or holiday jacket. Who is it by East Ia?
SPEAKER_02: It's Valentino. All right. Well, that's that's that's nice. Also,
SPEAKER_02: okay. Okay, let's keep going here. We got to go to lightning round. All right, let's move biggest flash in the pan. We were was our last. I went with crypto pretty easy to say that. I'm not gonna give myself a big high five. But what did you guys think of the Elon conversation real quick? Well, he's very
SPEAKER_04: talkative. And he's anything interesting or surprising for you? I mean, he said the biggest, you know, thing that
SPEAKER_03: people want to make sure to avoid is margin debt. Oh, that was I mean, he's working hard. And he's just such a product, a
SPEAKER_04: focused guy. He just gets his he's like, so deeply into it. It's like, yeah, just do product wins. Right. Friedberg. I mean, if anything's Oh my god, of course. That's it. That's it.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. So I mean, and you know, products are made by teams. So what I think is distinctly different here, I'm just giving my personal opinion. I don't know what Microsoft Teams. No, no, no, teams make products. And so what I just want to say here is, you know, like the Microsoft Teams suck. No, that I'm not, you know, don't trigger the bundle. But I just want to say, you know, like, this is a takeover, as opposed to building a company from scratch, he's had to assemble a team, and then work at this incredible product pace. And I think those two things are starting to click week. Yeah, sure, is gonna look very different than week, the first six weeks. So yeah, the products are already looking awesome. And it was nice to him
SPEAKER_05: to give me that shout out on the you know, the affiliate badges, but I'll just give a shout out. I didn't hear it. What was it?
SPEAKER_03: Oh, well, he gave me he gave me some credit for the affiliate
SPEAKER_05: badges. But I wanted to give credit to the PMs who approached me about that idea. troll. I went again. Okay. Let me give
SPEAKER_03: let me give credit to the actual PMs. Evan Jones and Patrick
SPEAKER_05: trogger, who they approached me about this idea they had, and then I helped, you know, give it some momentum. Here's the truth. When David and I spend the first couple of
SPEAKER_02: weeks there now that it's a little more public, you know, it's been on the program. What we found over and over again, was that there were great features that were ready to be released, that were being held back by management. And there were brilliant people with all the ideas that you think should have been released. And they just weren't allowed to release a lot of these products. Why? Who knows, but you know, but now that he's in charge, I think you'll see the product cycle is going to go much quicker. The most important thing I saw, which is such an important
SPEAKER_04: lesson for anyone running a business in Silicon Valley is that the pace of decision making matters far more than the accuracy of decision making. It's always been like one of my three big mottos. For entrepreneurs, I'm for me, like my number one, like my three things are always like grit, biased action, and then narrative, but like biased action, the rate at which you can make decisions is a far greater predictor of success than the accuracy of the decisions you do make. And so you have to be willing to embrace failure, you have to be willing to make decisions that could result in something not being done correctly, or making a mistake, and even getting embarrassed on the internet, you know, by making mistakes and having to call people like Paul Graham and apologize for them. And that was a big moment. But the as a business scales, as professional managers are
SPEAKER_04: brought in, their incentive is to not make mistakes, their incentive is to do things that are predictably going to work. And are predictably not going to fail. And therefore they avoid taking the risks and they reduce the rate of action, the rate of decision making. And that's why so many businesses ultimately don't scale past some sort of inflection point, or when founders that are willing to push that envelope step out, everything starts to fall apart. And it's so critically important, I think, to look at that as being I think, Elon's defining trait and characteristics that this regardless of the scale of the organization in the enterprise, he's still willing to act with that level of bias to action that you typically see in a small startup. Okay. And put his reputation on the at risk. Yeah. I sat in a meeting yesterday, he said that if we're not rolling
SPEAKER_05: back 10% of the time, we haven't pushed hard enough. Right? Wonderful. There you go. I mean, it's like if you're never
SPEAKER_02: rolling anything back, because you never make a mistake, maybe
SPEAKER_05: you're just not right moving fast enough. You don't have enough. You're not fast enough enough of a bias towards action. You're too afraid of making a mistake. By the way, here's here's what's so interesting about the
SPEAKER_03: views feature is that a bunch of websites, I think it started because Instagram did a bunch of apps, deprecated, you know, likes, because they felt that it was too, it was part of this negative cycle. And so they took all this stuff away. And basically views is going sort of back in that direction and giving more granularity in terms of outside in social engagement on a post, which is, I think, interesting to see. It's happening in a moment where all these other sites and apps are actually going in the opposite direction.
SPEAKER_05: Well, it's like a standard feature on YouTube. And it's very powerful for YouTube's network effects, because it shows you how many views you get. So it discourages people from using other sites, because you know, you get the most distribution on YouTube. So it's weird that other social networks don't want to follow suit. I mean, in one hour, they had it, but they deprecated. That's what's so interesting. But I
SPEAKER_03: guess, you know, my point is, we've only had this feature for
SPEAKER_05: an hour, and I didn't realize how much distribution my tweets were getting. And it definitely undermines my incentive to want to go use some other platform when I see the distribution I'm getting on Twitter. Well, if you're getting 10 times more
SPEAKER_03: distribution than the New York Times, you know, what's going to happen is people stopped listening and reading that. Well, I mean, it's sort of like this podcast itself. Like, I
SPEAKER_02: mean, we people ask us to go. My point is, we have to rely on social proof, and anecdotes
SPEAKER_03: about the actual scale and the breadth and the reach because it's impossible for us to get one holistic view that shows across all of these different modalities, whether it's Spotify, or Apple podcasts, or YouTube, how many people listen or watch and, you know, we add it all up. And you know, we think it's in this, you know, sort of three to 5 million range of people. But if you just had a numerical canonical number that was irrefutable, you just run over everybody. This turns it into a meritocracy is gonna be terrifying to some
SPEAKER_02: blue checkmarks when they see that the people who they report on get 10 times as many views as they do, of course, which is why when when people's journalists, look at Sean Hannity, go to Sean Hannity's profile. And for the
SPEAKER_03: number of followers, he has how pathetically engaged his audiences. It's all bots. It's all trolls. It's all nobody's looked at Mitt Romney just put out a video whatever in the
SPEAKER_02: first like half hour, he had 100,000 views, like every politician who starts seeing this is gonna go wait a second in the world is getting more views here than I am on MSNBC or Fox, the world is I need to do this rational place if Mitt
SPEAKER_03: Romney actually has more influence than Sean Hannity.
SPEAKER_02: Let's hope Okay, let's move on. We got to get through this quickly. It's our longest episode ever. Here we go. We are going to do next up. It's very this is a very important category. Best CEO of 2022. In 2021. I went with Frank Slootman and Elon Musk. Chamath went with Satya Nadella. Sachs went with Brian Armstrong and freeburg went with Jack Dorsey. Now we go on to 2022. Sachs who? Everybody wants to know Sachs is best CEO of 2022. Go ahead, Sachs.
SPEAKER_05: Every founder took my advice to get leaner so down there burn, create runway, you know, weather the storm down, you know, generic answer, not a person. Yeah, exactly. I mean, look, I think actually a lot of the names, a lot of the names. Well, here's the problem is that, you know, can I finish J.co? The
SPEAKER_05: names that you mentioned from last year would be the top candidates for this year. I mean, I think such an Adela had a good year. Obviously, what he wants doing we just talked about. It's amazing. Brian Armstrong, I think stock hasn't done great, but he's been a strong CEO, but I don't want to repeat the same names. I think that, you know, every CEO who responded to the regime change by cutting costs getting leaner extending runway, I think deserves to be on this list. And unfortunately, a lot of them are just resisting and they're just not yet taking the medicine, or they've been taking the medicine in little drips and drabs instead of just like swallowing it whole and getting a move on. Yeah, just drink the whole two
SPEAKER_02: tablespoons of medicine. Don't sip it, you got to just take it. It's not getting better. I mean, the stock market today should be
SPEAKER_05: a wake up call. I mean, this was one of the worst days in the market the whole year. So things are getting worse before they're getting better. Chamath, who is your best CEO of the year?
SPEAKER_03: Well, the numerical answer is Vicky Holub, who's the CEO of Occidental Petroleum stocks up like 140% this year, it's technically the best performing stock of the year. $63 billion company. But that's just a numerical answer who I, I actually want to double down on David's answer, Saks's answer, because I agree with that. I have been guiding our portfolio company CEOs to be at cash flow break even now or extend runway to Q1 2025. And they're 25. Yes, because I mean, I think, well, Elon and I are kind of roughly in the same place we have been for a while, which is like, you know, mid 24 is when the recession ends, and you need to give yourself two to three quarters of buffers so that you can go and raise around which takes a quarter to two quarters. And once you start to get kind of get escape velocity out of a recession, having money through end of Q1 2025, I think is a is a minimum requirement. And, you know, of the companies that I
SPEAKER_03: think were the most precariously positioned, there was five of them that got their acts together and really did it. But these are all CEOs of companies that, you know, I mean, if you said them, you would know some of them. But I do agree with David, I think, the CEO that bit the bullet, so maybe publicly, what I would say is, you know, the CEO of Klarna deserves a huge, you know, metal for having the courage to do it before anybody else did the CEO of checkout.com just took a huge write down. These CEOs are making sure their companies survive. Friedberg, best CEO 2022.
SPEAKER_04: My vote for best CEO is Warren Buffett. And I think it is just simple arithmetic. He has for years and now for decades proven himself to be just not just an exceptional investor, stock picker, whatever the kind of typical quip is about what he does for a living. But I think what's so extraordinary about Buffett is that regardless of the market conditions, he can kind of remain steadfast in his intent and in his mission, and he doesn't kind of waiver. And, you know, he doesn't take an active role in ranting and complaining about markets and politics. And I think that that's what makes him such an extraordinary leader. He stays within his zone of competence. He doesn't do things that he doesn't know about. He doesn't let the macro drive him and cause him to be kind of, you know, affected by it. And he says, this is what I know how to do. This is what I can do. And that is all that he does do. And he does it so exceptionally well. And to Chamath's point, he is the largest shareholder of Occidental Petroleum, along with many other incredible businesses. And I think he's proven in a market like we just had this year, why he is kind of the most extraordinary CEO, or one of the most extraordinary CEOs, but one of the best kind of capital allocators of all time. I'm going to go in a similar fashion, as Chamath and
SPEAKER_02: Sachs and go with the money losing CEOs who have dedicated themselves to free cash flow, and to getting to profitability from the last cycle Airbnb and Uber were the money losers. And now Airbnb is my number one, they become a money printer. They are now making bank and they're still growing very quickly. And then Uber I put in my second, they need to do another riff, they need to cut some expenses, but they too are hitting the free cash flow and the network effects. So I'm giving it to Chesky and then Dara one and two. Okay, let's keep moving best investor. For me, I'm going with the investors like a general category, who are demanding governance and doing diligence again, or who never stopped, let me say it that way. There's a generation of investors who raised their funds in the last five years and didn't do diligence didn't demand board seats, didn't demand boards. Those idiots are now paying the price and they created a lot of this mess of entitlement and a lack of governance. I want to give a shout out to the Bill Gurley's of the world, who fought for governance and fought for diligence in the face of being told okay, boom, or you don't get it. Who do you have best investors? Chammath Palihapitiya,
SPEAKER_03: I will pick the what are called the pot shops. So these are folks that have strategies where they have hundreds of investing pods underneath an umbrella. And they have this very sophisticated risk infrastructure. So this is what Ken Griffin owns in Citadel. This is what Izzy Englander owns in Millennium. Brevin Howard is another one. DE Shaw is another one. So they have all kinds of strategies, but that are essentially run by computers that allocate risk, you know, scale you up, scale you back, turn you on, turn you off, fire you overnight. And those strategies as a whole ran over the market this year. They were the best performers. They are giving back billions of dollars, they've generated double digit positive returns. They're raising their fees. In some cases, some of these folks are moving their annual fee up to 4% a year, their carry up to 40% a year. Incredibly, incredibly well run performance businesses. They were by and away the best investors this year.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, we're gonna go lightning round from here. Sax, do you have a best investor? Yeah, I said, Stan Druckenmiller. As you recall, last
SPEAKER_05: year, he predicted that inflation would be lasting. This was the spring of 2021, when transitory was the word of the day. This year, he predicted the bear market rally we had in July and August. And I remember back at the Coachee Summit in May, they were around that time, he was interviewed. And he basically was saying that as soon as there was a bear market rally over the summer, that he would then put a short position on, I don't know if he actually did that. But he said he's going to do that. And then it turns out that the summer rally that we had was a dead cap bounce. So he was right about that. And now he is predicting a hard landing in 2023 with a deeper recession than many expect. So sadly, I suspect he may be right yet again.
SPEAKER_02: Friedberg best investor for you 2022. Same I had Druckenmiller I indicated that he's been doing
SPEAKER_04: interviews pretty much every quarter for the last two years. And he's been pounding the table telling everyone what's going to happen and it all happened. And even told people the trades in mid 2021. He said he was short long dated treasuries, and he was long commodities. And if you had put those two trades on at that time and held them to today, you would have made a fortune. And so I think he's extraordinary in his ability to kind of see macro in a way that others don't, but also to take extremely brave action with his portfolio. He's renowned for how big the bets are that he makes, and how quickly he can change his mind when he's wrong and make another big bet to instill get himself out of the hole. He's incredible. So I definitely give it to Stanley Druckenmiller this year. 2021 we did our best turnarounds I picked Disney, Jamal Ford,
SPEAKER_02: freeburg, we were should we start this category? What about the worst investor of
SPEAKER_03: 2022? Can we do that? Good. You want to freestyle? Tell us your worst investor of
SPEAKER_02: 2022? I mean, I'll put myself in the category along with anybody else
SPEAKER_03: who was long tech based if Nick if you can just bring please back up this capital asset pricing model. Any of us that didn't understand this got run over this year. And just to put some very specific numbers here. There was a decent little tweet thread that Elon was a part of where he they actually calculated what the expected rate of return of Tesla was, and it turned out to be almost 14% a year. And so, you know, when you start to compound 14%, over three, four or five years, these numbers get very big very quickly. And the reason why is that it has a huge beta. And we're in a world now where the risk free rate is quite high. So all of us benefited from this equation, essentially being upside down for the last 15 years. And all of us who were over allocated into things that benefited from those dynamics, frankly, got run over this year. So we were, as a class, the worst investors of 2022. Okay, here we go. Let's do our best turnaround I am going to go
SPEAKER_02: with me for me, it's meta. They were losing money, hand over fist, they refuse to do a rift. And then finally, bestie Brad Gerstner said, let's get fit. He did a memo. And finally, finally, Zuckerberg made some cuts, reportedly rumors he's making a 15 10 or 15% cut I heard in the back channels right now based on performance. So he's not calling it a riff or a layoff. They're just gonna cut the bottom 10 or 15% again. So I think Zuck's gonna turn it around. Anybody have a best turnaround? So you're saying Zuck mission accomplished? You
SPEAKER_03: think Zuck turned around this year? I'm going with meta. So
SPEAKER_04: your answer is meta was turned around by Zuck this year? Yes, they've got down to $85. And now they're up at 110 115. Yes, he
SPEAKER_02: turned it around at the end of the year. It was like a Hail Mary at the end of the year. He's turned it around. I think he's gonna continue to Yes, that is my position. Listen, I bought the stock at 94 go with that, Jacob. Okay, so
SPEAKER_04: if we're talking about very partial turnarounds here, I
SPEAKER_05: would say I would say that you can measure the turnaround as of
SPEAKER_03: October 24. To now. Yes, exactly. So San Francisco still
SPEAKER_05: overall a mess. But there were a few positive events that happened over the past year. And since we're looking back, we should call these out. So first of all, back, this is towards the beginning of the year, we were called three members of the school board, most particularly, Allison Collins, remember her, this was done by something like a 7030 margin and 8020 on on Collins. This was the school board that had dragged his feet on school reopenings, they destroyed the merit based Lowell High School, they wasted hours of meetings on a silly plan to remove the names of names like Abraham Lincoln from the from the schools. In any event, they were removed then Jake, how you refer to this, we got chaser Boudin recalled by a 6040 margin as San Francisco da, this was the DA who whose agenda was decarceration, he tried to release as many repeat offenders as possible. The voters San Francisco had enough and then most recently, the far less supervisor Gordon Mar just got rejected by his own community this November. And the new tough da Brooke Jenkins got reelected in her own right after being appointed by London breed. So there's still a long way to go in San Francisco, but there are definitely some green shoes start that the electorate here has had enough and is looking for the let's say called the centrist Democrats as opposed to the radicals.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, we're in the lightning round here. We're in hour three of the all in podcast marathon. This telethon. Shambhava you got a best turnaround for 2022 hard, hard hard one to give. So any green shoots for 2022 as sacks would say,
SPEAKER_03: no, I mean, everything, everything's just disaster.
SPEAKER_02: Great. Freeburg anything that you have,
SPEAKER_03: there may be no turnaround award until 2025. Fine. Okay. Yeah, we're a little split on this freeburg you got
SPEAKER_02: anything? I'll just go with your your incisive fucking viewpoint. I'll
SPEAKER_03: pick Zuck and meta that made so much sense. 94 it's at 117. It's one of my best J trades.
SPEAKER_02: Didn't you also say Disney was your pick of the year or
SPEAKER_04: something? I'm buying more. I'm buying more Disney. I'm buying more. This is the
SPEAKER_02: I'm telling you Disney Warner, which you talked about before. Yeah. And Facebook are three of my bit and you know, three of my big ones. Let's say worst human being here. Well, I think look, given that this is supposed to be the year
SPEAKER_05: 2022. I mean, you got to say that. SPF was the winner of this hands down.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, congratulations to SPF. You are consensus worst human being for this year. I mean, not ever, but
SPEAKER_05: only for this year. Right? Yeah, we all hate you equally. Okay,
SPEAKER_02: who's who's number two? Why do you hate him? Why do I hate him? Because all those people lost their money. And you know, there's some pot. It's causing chaos. I feel terrible for all these people who lost money. That's why I hate him. Oh, it's disgusting. Did you see that? The two guys copped to please Caroline
SPEAKER_03: Ellison and Gary fling like pancakes flip. And but it turns out that they actually did engineer a backdoor into FTX. And he has been doing this for years. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
SPEAKER_05: That's game over. You're getting 10 years. He's getting life game over.
SPEAKER_02: Well, there's an interesting defense strategy that we were
SPEAKER_05: discussing in the chat. Oh, yeah. I think this is actually a fascinating defense strategy. I think this is their own shot. One of our besties had this theory that he was prescribed to prescription drugs. One was Adderall. What was the other one called? This was Sam. He sent the patch is it's a drug I
SPEAKER_05: wasn't familiar with. I guess it's a patch. But when you combine these two things, apparently it basically shuts down or kills the part of your brain that deals with inhibition inhibition. It's cocaine. Yeah. What if his defense strategy was Yeah, like only an insane person would do this. And I was acting insane because I was prescribed these drugs that had these drug conflicts. It like killed part of my brain. I mean, and you think about every criminal on Wall Street said cocaine is my defense. But this you could say
SPEAKER_05: he was maybe he was legally prescribed if you could show the prescription. By the way, I'm not saying yes, should get him off. I'm just we're basically workshopping what is only shot of his defense would be right? Well, and think about
SPEAKER_02: it, sex. He acted manic after f f t x collapsed. So that mania of doing 20 Twitter spaces would be there's something so insane
SPEAKER_05: about what he did right that you that all it's almost like a like a prescribed insanity defense like I was prescribed a a drug combination that made me insane.
SPEAKER_02: Anybody have a most loathsome company has we wrap the only way
SPEAKER_03: that you could come up with that it's like you'd have to have two parents that were like law professors or something. Right.
SPEAKER_02: Most most loathsome company. His defense, you know,
SPEAKER_02: my parents boo hoo. No, no, no, no, he'll claim insanity. J cal, he'll say, of
SPEAKER_03: course, yeah. And they'll have a I mean, do we think that his parents aren't going to help his defense?
SPEAKER_02: You know, at this point, this this kid's got to go away for life. That's it. You think life? Well, I think it's got to be life. I think it's got to be 30 plus years. I mean, it's just going to be billions of dollars. What kind of justice system do we have? When people go away for 2030 years per billion? Would you sentence?
SPEAKER_02: A day per billion at least? Yeah, I mean, just you got
SPEAKER_02: proportional sex you got to don't you think the justice
SPEAKER_02: system needs to look at other people who are in jail for selling cocaine for selling marijuana for for robbing a convenience store? They'll put somebody away for robbing a convenience store for a decade or two. What are they going to put him in jail for just because somebody came in with a gun and robbed a convenience store they get 20 years this kid's gonna get off. Screw that. Look, I think what do you guys think the over
SPEAKER_05: under is here? You think it's like set it at I'll set it at
SPEAKER_02: 35 years. I'll take the over. I'll take the over. I'll take
SPEAKER_05: 30. I think made off. I said a good line then which is made off of over on 30. Yeah, I think I think I said 35. I
SPEAKER_03: think it's gonna be a hundred multiple hundreds of years
SPEAKER_04: sentence. I agree. And you'll be gone for life. Yeah, I think it's gonna be life but I said a good line. Okay. Most loathsome
SPEAKER_02: company is FTX. Anybody want to go for a second? Most of us keep moving. No, I'll add one. I'm gonna this year I'm gonna
SPEAKER_04: give my last year I gave it to Tyson foods, one of the largest slaughter of animals on earth. This year I'm going to give it to a company called innovative I n o t IV. This is the company that was busted by the feds for their animal abuse in their dog breeding facility, where 4000 beagles were rescued, one of which I adopted. And this is a publicly traded company stocks down 90 some odd percent, which I'm thrilled to see terrible business awful, awful, kind of, you know, inhumane behavior. And so I want to kind of give them a special shout out this year. Look at you. And you're getting the virtue signaling points of
SPEAKER_02: rescuing the dog to a dog. You're rescuing the dog to increase your two factor amongst besties. Well done.
SPEAKER_03: I'll do that. Max Q factor. Max Q factor. Yeah. Anybody else have
SPEAKER_03: a loathsome? Yes, I'd like to pick this company Z blue do babes. Which destroyed the environment for a bunch of endangered species that I would otherwise have used for various for pelts for my sweaters and such. Yes. And I would like to
SPEAKER_02: go with blabberly blabberly block, which was torturing puppies, 18 of which I rescued and I am now have them in the J Cal puppy rescue. I am the most sensitive and caring person. Also, I would like to add SeaWorld I am in the process of raising money to build bigger pools to eventually release all the orcas in captivity. That is my new focus for next year. Okay. Moving on. Oh, God, do we want to do best meme? Do we want to do best new tech? I'll do best new tech. I don't have the
SPEAKER_04: name. I'm going with fusion for best new tech. I'm going with
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to go with chat GPT. I think what was so impressive
SPEAKER_04: about chat GPT and the experience that everyone's had using it is that it really for the first time, I think elucidated where these kind of machine learning tools can take us and what the kind of new product experience can be, what generative AI can yield things beyond I think, the scope of what a lot of people were imagining before. So it was really so revealing. And as you guys know, there's an absolute friggin tidal wave of people trying to start companies that are leveraging tools and generative AI to kind of reinvent everything from workplace tools, enterprise software, all the way through to media games and entertainment. So that's why I think chat GPT was the most impressive new technology, new tech, and then sacks lightning round, please
SPEAKER_02: best new tech alpha fold three, which basically has almost near
SPEAKER_03: perfect accuracy and protein folding sacks best new tech. I
SPEAKER_05: can't improve on the chat GPT. So yeah, let's keep rolling. Best trend best trend in business and in the world. Mine
SPEAKER_02: is startups getting back and investors getting back to reality and the what I call the age of austerity, the age of focus after the age of excess. That's the best trend in our world, the age of austerity, what's your best trend for 2022 marginal cost of energy generation and storage is now in
SPEAKER_03: the low single digit pennies per kilowatt hour, which basically means that not only will energy be free and abundant, but it will, I think over the next decade or to create a massive peace dividend, it will rewrite our foreign policy, it will rewrite national security. That is the reason why people should care about energy transition, not necessarily climate change, although that's important. It's a distant second to keeping men and women out of war, and keeping our borders safe.
SPEAKER_02: Well said anybody else have a best trend? I'll pick it up. Last year, I said the creator economy, which
SPEAKER_04: I think referred to all these kind of creators creating new products and businesses beyond their content. This year, I think that the trend that was again enabled and demonstrated through chat GPT is the narrator economy. I think this is going to be a really important trend going forward. We'll talk about it in the prediction episode. But I think the idea that people are and they're starting to experience this and using chat GPT and Dolly and other kind of generative AI tools is how much you can kind of narrate the product you want to see created and have it created for you on the fly. And I think that that's a really kind of powerful mind shift for people and frame shift for people. And I think it really starts to change a lot of the way that people behave, entertain themselves, businesses operate and so on. So I'd call it the narrator economy. And I think it's really kind of starting to emerge. Okay, do you have a trend?
SPEAKER_02: Sacks? Yeah, I would say best friend is the growing
SPEAKER_05: realization that the corporate media is failing does not tell the truth. It has an agenda, more and more people are opting out of it and going with independent media. I think, you know, what Elon mentioned, where we're going to start holding these corporate journalists the same standard on Twitter, as regular citizens, they're outraged by that, but that's a huge step in the right direction. The fact of the matter is, is that the press or the media is the prism through its reality is refracted. And if it's not giving us an accurate representation of the world, we can't begin to solve our problems because we don't have accurate information. And I think more and more people are waking up from the matrix and realizing that we're living in this media controlled simulation. And again, I don't think we're gonna make progress until the this power that the media seems to have over our reality gets gets broken. Okay, let's go for worst trend. My worst trend is the Fed trying
SPEAKER_02: to play catch up the Fed trying to play catch up. Sorry, buddy. The Fed trying to play catch up is the worst trend for me over steering into the crash. What do you got to mouth for the worst trend of 2020? The worst trend was the continued profligate spending by
SPEAKER_03: the federal government. We have record deficits, record debt. And this year, we're ending the year by adding another $1.65 trillion of spending that nobody can seemingly account for. It is truly the Christmas tree of Christmas trees in terms of bills. So we just have not gotten religion yet around being measured and how we spend money. Good one. Worst trend, sex. Last year, my worst trend was authoritarianism growing all
SPEAKER_05: over the world. And I think it was pretty decent prediction. This year's worst trend is the government colluding with big tech to engage in censorship. This is how they're going to do the authoritarianism. We talked about it with Shellenberger and Elon, this whole series revelations, notice the Twitter files, we can see this collusion, this cozy relationship between the censors at Twitter and big tech and the bureaucrats at the FBI and DHS and Pentagon. This is a really disturbing dystopian relationship, as we talked about it earlier. And, you know, I feel like we spent all this time talking about the authoritarianism in Russia, and China, we seem to be obsessed with combating that, and going to war with that. But we don't spend enough time talking about this growing authoritarianism at home. The media doesn't seem to want to report on the Twitter files at all. Let's focus on stopping authoritarianism here. Well said, Friedberg, what's your worst trend?
SPEAKER_02: My worst trend for 2022 is what I would call interest rate
SPEAKER_04: mania. And I think that this is the mania that we've been caught up in on this show that other people on our thread, people in the business community and the investing community, where everyone's obsession with did the Fed act soon enough or late enough, and that interest rates ultimately drive success or failure with building businesses and making good investments. All right. The truth is, when interest rates go the wrong way, good investments, you know, can kind of strengthen their way can
SPEAKER_04: can can make their way through those environments, bad investments cannot, good businesses can make their way through and bad investments cannot. And so I think our mania around the fact that interest rates and the Fed ultimately drove bad outcomes in businesses and investments is a flawed kind of assertion. And we all want to kind of get back to the drunken days, where, you know, a low interest rate environment enables us all to be successful and wealthy. And I think that that's kind of changed. So I think it's time for us to get away from the interest rate mania and focus more on solid investing and solid business building. Okay, here we go lightning round, we got two to go favorite media of 2022. For
SPEAKER_02: me, it was Top Gun house of the dragon, White Lotus two, but I'm going to pick my favorite here something you may not have heard of the film tar. I highly recommend it. But I did like those other three tremendously. What do you got sacks for your favorite media of 2022? House of the Dragon, I guess I enjoyed
SPEAKER_05: quite a bit. Like you did. I'll give a shout out to my movie Dolly Land, which will be coming out next summer. If we're going to include podcast episodes, I would give a shout out to the unheard episode where Freddy Sayers interviews John Mearsheimer, the professor of international relations. He explains the origins of the Ukraine war and has some really pessimistic predictions about what might happen next. I suggest everyone watch it if they want to understand this conflict and where it may be going next year. Chamath, you have any favorite media for 2022? You want to
SPEAKER_02: share? I thought Yellowstone kicked ass. Absolutely incredible.
SPEAKER_03: There's a I think it's on Hulu. But there's a show with Steve Correll, a little short series called The Patient, which is about a serial killer that kidnaps his psychologist, and locks him in his basement to try to help him prevent him killing more people. I thought it was really, really well done.
SPEAKER_03: Never have I ever the latest season, another just brilliant offering from Mindy Kaling. She's unbelievable. Those are those are probably the top ones. What do you got freeburg? Any media? Yeah, I read a book this year that I really liked. It's
SPEAKER_04: called the vital question by a guy named Nick Lane. Someone recommended it to me. It's he's a biochemist, and he kind of talks a little bit about the origin of life on Earth. It really ties into this idea that there are certain call it principles of life. And I think that's a really good idea. I call it principles of physics and statistics that make life predictive and predictable. But I think the way that he kind of walks through how a lot of things emerge in life, and how life ultimately kind of developed on this planet are really well shown. So yeah, I give I give his book a shout out. It was a really good reason. So that book, the vital
SPEAKER_03: question is incredible. The other one that he wrote, which is called life ascending. Those two books you must read if you want to be a lot of in my opinion. All right. I will also for those people who don't understand the difference between power and energy. You will learn what that very good.
SPEAKER_02: I have two book recommendations putting the rabbit in the hat is Brian Cox. You may know him from secession. He has a great book and he reads the audio book very enjoyable. I'm halfway through Quentin Tarantino's cinema speculation and enjoying it very much. Saks you will enjoy it tremendously. Okay. And now we do the Rudy Giuliani Award for self emolation. This is for the person who poured lighter fluid and gasoline over themselves and lit themselves on fire for no apparent reason. I go with Kevin O'Leary who's secured a $15 million bag from FTX and then decided to try to defend it. 18 ways to Sunday, burning whatever reputation he had. Who do you have in your Rudy Giuliani award? This will be controversial for you guys.
SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna go with Elon Musk. I don't think that you put himself in the position that he did with bad intentions or without paying attention. I think he's taken on a role in buying and running Twitter. That is, you know, principled. And, you know, in his mind, and many other people's minds are really important role that someone needs to play. Unfortunately, I think his reputation has gotten really hurt. Because of, you know, that role. He's not making a lot of friends. And he's not he's causing a lot of reputational damage. He obviously had a lot of good and important things he was working on prior to taking on the additional burden of Twitter. And while many people appreciate his doing it, I think that it's causing him a lot of reputational damage. And so yeah, I don't mean to kind of be offensive in saying that, but I
SPEAKER_04: think he's he's gotten a hard thing to do. It's certainly been a hard thing to
SPEAKER_02: do sex. But you're saying self immolation free break because he
SPEAKER_03: took it on himself. He could have just took it on himself. Yeah, I'm not saying it's just like
SPEAKER_04: one interpretation. Yeah, it's not it's not like the Rudy jelly, Giuliani idiocy. I think he's taken on the burden of doing this. And I think it's causing him a lot of reputation.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, it's an interpretation of the award. What do you got your mouth a sax and chamath? Well, I mean, if if I were to
SPEAKER_05: interpret the award, I think the way it was originally intended, I think I got to give it to Herschel Walker this year, unfortunately, and I wish Republicans would stop winning this award. At least Herschel never gave any speeches next to a dildo shop. But nonetheless, I am so sorry that I'm so delighted sacks that you've been
SPEAKER_02: so self aware about the follies of the dying maga. The last throes of the maga nation, I want to find some Democrats to
SPEAKER_05: give this to I want to give it to that brain dead senator from Pennsylvania. What's his name? Fetterman? Thank you. I wanted to give it to Fetterman, but he won. So I don't know what I'm
SPEAKER_05: supposed to do. You know, it's like, no, listen, when when our Republican self emulates, like Rudy or Herschel or something like that, they get laughed out of town. And when the Democrat does it like a Fetterman, they just get elected. So I don't know what to say. All right. You got any final words here? God, I
SPEAKER_02: mean, I end this episode to be the longest episode ever. Who think it's poor producer Nick, whoever signed the papers for
SPEAKER_03: the whole search and seizure at Mar a Lago looks kind of like an idiot. So that that was not politically astute. Okay, I think you would say the FBI then okay. poorly handled. That's
SPEAKER_02: actually a great that's a great one. Actually, if we're gonna
SPEAKER_05: get serious for a second, the combination of revelations if we're gonna look over this whole year. Remember, Jason, when I I basically spoke up at the time they rated Mar a Lago and said that it was heavy handed and unnecessary. And now you guys for years, Donald Trump is an idiot savant minus the savant.
SPEAKER_03: Why all of you guys just project all of this like insane genius evil level stuff. He's not capable of that. This is a simpleton who likes attention. He stole a bunch of souvenirs that he didn't read when I was in the White House. He hasn't read now kept in a box downstairs just to say he had them. That's exactly right. I was the one who championed the
SPEAKER_02: souvenir. I know he's a souvenir guy. You said he was selling
SPEAKER_05: secrets to the south. I did not say that. I said that. I said souvenirs. No, just that you suggested it. You know, hold on you were telling Jared Kushner and elaborate conspiracy theory. I'm saying I know it's not a conspiracy theory when you do it and and guys and this is the same person that basically in
SPEAKER_03: the in the beginning of his presidential campaign in 2016 in front of Hillary Clinton said absolutely I bend the laws that you created the tax laws to my favor because I'm not stupid. When she called him a tax Dodger and it turns out after all these years he was telling the truth.
SPEAKER_03: He basically once again the show ends with Trump. He's been a
SPEAKER_02: great 2022 No, no, but honestly, like, like, did we learn
SPEAKER_03: anything except that these tax laws are egregiously stupid? And the only people that are consistently guaranteed to make money in these tax laws are real estate investors. If you put these two things together, a real estate investor who happened to be very poor at his job, which Trump turned out to be packed billions of dollars of nols that he was able to use to wash his taxes for years and years. And by the way, and he was clearly proud of it. He was just goading the Democrats and not releasing them. They went through all this rigmarole. And what did we find out? He had huge nols. He had huge deductions, and he paid no taxes. Is that shocking to any of us? It's like it's like Chappelle said he came out of the
SPEAKER_05: house told everyone everything you think is going on inside that house is going on and went back and then he walked back inside the house. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: It's pretty great. All right, listen, for David Sachs. The rain man for the queen of Kenwa Sultan of Science, David Friedberg, and the dictator himself, Jamal poly hop idea. It has been an honor and a privilege to do this podcast with you gentlemen. This is the longest show in the history of the pod. Enjoy everybody. RIP producer next next 48 hours and we'll see everybody next year. Happy Holidays. Love you best.
SPEAKER_05: Your driveway. We should all just get a room and just have one big huge door because it's like this like sexual tension but we just need
