All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - Google fires protestors, NPR chaos, Humane's AI Pin, Startup tax crisis, sports betting scandal
Episode Date: April 19, 2024(0:00) Bestie Intros: Chamath recaps the Breakthrough Prize Ceremony, "High IQ foods" (9:49) All-In Summit update, Poker styles of Andrew Robl, Jason Koon, and Phil Hellmuth  (14:38) Google fires Pr...o-Palestine protestors (35:08) Chaos and culture wars at NPR (40:43) Humane's AI Pin: Marques Brownlee's review, the Ex-Apple issue, polarizing reactions (1:02:28) Startup tax crisis: How a recent provision upended R&D deductions (1:12:39) Sports betting scandal: NBA player Jontay Porter banned for life, explosion of sports betting in the US (1:23:33) How to get better at chess, childhood Bestie schemes Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://twitter.com/Jason https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://twitter.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@all_in_tok Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://twitter.com/NoTechApartheid/status/1780278895058518468 https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/17/google-workers-arrested-after-nine-hour-protest-in-google-cloud-ceos-office.html https://www.notechforapartheid.com https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/17/24133700/google-fires-28-employees-protest-israel-cloud-contract https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1779914595156808045 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-11/ty-article-magazine/.premium/saying-what-cant-be-said-israel-has-been-defeated-a-total-defeat/0000018e-cdab-dba9-a78e-efef6ba10000 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-wins-gaza-battles-but-risks-losing-the-war-c6a3823f https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/19/middleeast/eisenkot-netanyahu-israel-war-politics-gaza-intl/index.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-APSXZy9UI https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-aid-workers-killed.html https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israel-created-kill-zones-in-gaza-anyone-who-crosses-into-them-is-shot/0000018e-946c-d4de-afee-f46da9ee0000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-15/ty-article/.premium/israeli-army-says-killed-three-hostages-mistakenly-identified-as-threat-in-northern-gaza/0000018c-6edd-dbd5-a39c-ffff08470000 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/world/middleeast/israel-idf-soldiers-war-social-media-video.html https://twitter.com/JustStop_Oil/status/1580883249228046336 https://www.npr.org/2024/01/24/1226035539/npr-ceo-katherine-maher-wikimedia https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178659563/our-mission-and-vision https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-extra/2024/04/12/1244456600/from-npr-president-and-ceo-katherine-maher-thoughts-on-our-mission-and-our-work https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/1780695504210567335 https://www.theinformation.com/articles/has-humane-created-the-next-iphone-or-the-next-google-glass https://humane.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TitZV6k8zfA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xWXRk3yaSw https://www.amazon.com/Anxious-Generation-Rewiring-Childhood-Epidemic/dp/0593655036 https://www.amazon.com/Nexus-Trilogy-Book-1-ebook/dp/B00TOZI7FM https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Therapy-Kids-Arent-Growing/dp/0593542924 https://www.wsj.com/sports/basketball/jontay-porter-banned-gambling-5dd9c1a8 https://nypost.com/2024/04/17/sports/how-jontay-porter-orchestrated-failed-nba-gambling-scandal https://dknetwork.draftkings.com/2024/1/31/24054415/lebron-james-joins-draftkings-football-sports https://www.espn.com/espn/betting/story/_/id/39563784/sports-betting-industry-posts-record-11b-2023-revenue https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/38386013/how-nba-new-rules-resting-stars-work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2huVf1l4UE
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Tamar, did you go down to the breakthrough thing this weekend?
The breakthrough prize was amazing.
It's like observing exotic animals in their natural habitat.
Well, a friend of mine who you hung out with down there called me last night
to give me the breakdown on all the individuals he saw and what was going on with him.
I mean, he's like, I don't even know how Nat and I keep getting invited to this.
But like to say we were outclassed is an understatement.
The people at that thing were.
What is this, the breakthrough prize? The Breakthrough Prize, yeah.
Yeah, I couldn't make it.
I got invited to shout out to Yuri.
It's so incredible.
Okay, first of all, shout out to Yuri and Julia.
It is incredible.
There were two moments where I cried.
This woman goes up on stage to give an award to the people that had made this investment
in cystic fibrosis.
Yeah.
And she says, my child was born with cystic fibrosis, and then my child was born with
cystic fibrosis.
And then my child was born with cystic fibrosis.
And then my child was born with cystic fibrosis.
And then my child was born with cystic fibrosis.
And then my child was born with cystic fibrosis.
And then my child was born with cystic fibrosis.
And then my child was born with cystic fibrosis.
And then my child was born with cystic fibrosis.
And then my child was born with cystic fibrosis.
And then my child was born with cystic fibrosis. And then my child was born with cystic fibrosis. And then my child was born with cystic fibrosis. And then my child was born with cystic fibrosis. And then my child this investment in cystic fibrosis. Yeah.
And she says, my child was born with cystic fibrosis,
and then my second child was born with cystic fibrosis,
and then my second child died.
She said that, I just burst into tears.
And then you present an award to the person
that actually is helping them stamp out the disease.
We celebrated the people that found the gene
that caused Parkinson's and then, yeah,
I mean, the people at that is pretty incredible.
It's in LA, right?
They did it in Los Angeles?
Yeah, I mean, like, look, Yuri Milner and Julia Milner,
Zuck and Prasoa Chan and Anwajig and Sergey Brin,
those six people are the ones
that organize this breakthrough prize.
And I think it's just a modern version of the Nobel, which tries to really shine a spotlight on people
doing really groundbreaking work in physics and math and life sciences. You get people that have
just done things that are just very practical and are very real. I think what they do is they make, frankly,
these kinds of achievements much more high level in the sense that you're bringing together
people from Hollywood and people from Silicon Valley and the awareness is up and it's just
incredibly well produced. And yeah, it's really a cool thing to be a part of. But I mean, seeing some of these people are
very intimidating. I sat beside Vin Diesel. Oh, really? That was super cool. He is a super nice
guy. And on the other side of me was someone that actually sacks knows Toby Emmerich, who's
the chairman of Warner Brothers. So just talking to these guys was super cool.
Moving it to Los Angeles was a great move.
Great idea.
Yeah, it's just, I was invited.
I couldn't make it, so sorry.
And thank you to Julia and Yuri for inviting us again.
But it's really great that they're giving it
the celebration it deserves and making it, you know,
like dare I say, sexy and cool and hip to be a scientist and solve
the world's biggest problems.
I think it's just so awesome.
And you're right, Sergey Brin, Anwar Jecki, Saken Priscilla, and Julia and Yuri are the
founders of the Breakthrough Prize.
The craziest thing is they give a youth Breakthrough Award.
So the Breakthrough Prize is this beautiful globe.
And then the junior winner gets like a smaller version,
very appropriate.
And it was a video of this kid in India
who had won it a few years ago
and then went off to MIT and then graduated.
And then the video is of him coming back to Bangalore
because his sister had won it this year
and he presented it to the sister.
And all I could think of was,
this is an incredible achievement by like a 16 year old.
And literally at the same time, my 16 year old was like,
dad, the chicken tenders from DoorTash have got arrived.
And that was like, you can't find my chicken fingers. I'm going all in. We'll let your winners ride.
Rain Man, David Sack.
I'm going all in.
And it said, we open sourced it to the fans,
and they've just gone crazy with it.
Love you best, Amy.
Queen of Kenwa.
I'm going all in.
Dad, I said get me the spicy fries, not the regular.
Cajun fries.
The girl that wanted that would, Free free bird did something with yamanaka factors
So it's like it's really incredible and inspiring but fortunately don't worry
My my 16 year old was able to get the chicken tenders and everything was fine. Okay. Good
You called rerouted it
Can't get his chicken tenders. What do we do? By the way, the other the other
thing I'll say is the person that performed is really amazing Charlie Puth. And the reason I say
it is, if you Google Charlie Puth, this guy, he's a young guy, in his early 20s, I'm guessing he is
so talented. There's all these videos of Charlie Puth where he'll make a random noise, like he'll clink
a Coke bottle with a fork, and then he'll record it, and then he'll put it into these
digital editing tools, and then he'll make like an entire five-minute song using that
as the base, like as the basic building block.
That guy is so talented.
Anyways, it was a very cool event.
Fantastic.
How are you doing, Sax?
You okay, buddy?
I'm good.
Let's get started.
There it is, folks.
We're back.
It's gonna be a hell of a show.
Let's go.
I got shit to do.
Don't waste time with your pointless banter. That's why people tweet in, it's the banter. It's the. I got to do. Don't waste time with your with your banter. It's my people to it is the banter. They
do enter bro. How you doing free break we got a little scene
from the movie her. Wow, we're after a strong start here. Look
at all these contributions. I got a shrug from freeburg I got
a grunt. Okay, let's get started from sacks. I don't talk about
my backgrounds. Let's go. Anything good on the menu tonight? I just want I'm coming over for poker. I got a grunt. Let's get started from sacks. I don't talk about my back rants.
Let's go. Anything good on the menu tonight? I just want to come in over for poker. I wanted
to know if there's any octopus. Oh, so the Greek comes back and you get the octopus on the octopus.
I think that Sean missed you. Yeah, he did. By the way, Sean experimented with some Greek cheese
that you grill. That was pretty delicious. That may hooli. Hooli cheese. What is it?
What's the plural of octopus? Is it octopi?
Yeah.
Aren't they like sentient creatures or something?
Hooli. You know what? It's interesting you bring that up. I had a grilled octopus stand
at one of our events and somebody who is a conscientious consumer of calories, lobbied me to take the grilled octopus
off of the menu. I wouldn't say who.
For what?
What? Wait, what?
I got lobbied very strongly.
Not only is it deeply wrong to eat all the animals that people eat, and you will one
day realize it or your children or your children's children will realize it. But octopus in particular have the IQ of four
to eight year olds. They can actually sign, they can communicate, they can solve problems.
You can watch YouTube videos on this. It's pretty incredible. They're amazing creatures.
It's also why in the movie, The Arrival, the future alien race is made out to be cephalopods
because they're the most advanced creature
that's likely to become a civilized form
if humans didn't exist.
I have a one word reaction to that.
Yum.
Delicious.
It's delicious.
Yummy.
It's the IQ that makes it taste so good.
Oh my God.
That's dark.
That's dark.
You're saying the IQ is like the spice? Yeah. It's kind of like the fat content, you know? It's kind of like the marbling.
It's the marbling.
It's the marbling of it.
That's dark. I don't know.
Oh yeah. By the way, thanks guys. Yeah, I'm fine. Yeah, I'm great. I'm feeling great.
Yeah. The tooth is healed. I got the implant.
You look like you've been eating well.
Just only things with above 120.
Are you off the Wigovia or what do you call it?
Well, no, no, you know what I did was I got off the Wigovia
so I could eat more animals.
And now I'm getting back on it
because I feel so terrible about how many,
I was in Austin, I ate everything.
Jake, let me ask you a question.
Yeah, go ahead.
If you eat high IQ foods, does it make you smarter?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
This is why the Greeks invented so many things.
We invented math, plumbing, cities, democracy, all the great things the Greeks created comes
from the fact that we ate so many high IQ creatures.
Correct.
Are you able to be vegetarian?
We're able to find good vegetarian or veggie options in Austin.
Who? Talking to me? Yeah. I see a vegetable. I push it away. I'm like, wait a second.
Jake, I was on a seafood diet in Austin. If he saw food, he ate it.
It's not inaccurate. The barbecue in Austin is so spectacular.
Terry Black's beef ribs I had with a friend of ours,
man, they are just dynamite.
And then the Salt Lick brisket, Franklin's brisket,
I mean, it is just extraordinary.
Shout out to all my barbecue folks there
and sorry for triggering.
Every mammal that wasn't buttoned down,
Jake Helm, battered in barbecue sauce and stuck in the grill.
The thing that took out the rib was the bison. I'm sorry I was away. Apologies to the audience.
It took out a tooth. You know, as far as I feel, worth it.
What does a bison rib taste like? Does it taste like beef?
Man, it is, it's, the beef ribs are very tender. The bison's got a little more chew to it. It's
a little more texture. Yeah. And, and they let this thing go at the salt lick
for like 12 hours and they're just barbecue sauce in it
forever. It's a little chewy. And so that's what took out the
tooth. But great job, Freeberg on moderating episode was
fantastic. Yes, I was chomping on the bit quite literally sacks
to talk about some stuff, chopping on the bits to the
point that I shattered a tooth. But I'm back
and I have so much energy. I missed you guys. I actually
missed y'all. Freeberg, so much good stuff happening with the
summit. And I'm delighted that john is doing all this work.
You're doing all this work. And I can just sit back and enjoy
it. So tell us, is there an update on the summit?
Yeah, you're just collecting your coupon. But yeah, we had within 72 hours, I think
we had more applications than we have seats, but we are still leaving applications open.
And in the next week, we'll start to respond to people. So basically, if you're interested
in going to the summit, sign up now, get your applications in this week.
Apply early is the key. Yeah, because it's going to the summit. Sign up now get your applications in this week. Apply early. Yeah, is the key.
Yeah, because it's going to be done in order of when it's
received. And they're going to start processing applications
this week, we'd love to get everyone that wants to show up
show up. And if you went in the past, your registration window
is wrapped up this week. So
that's a really nice process. I automatically get in alumni automatically or in okay. And
then tell us about the scholarship because I'm getting
bombarded and everybody who's an up and coming all in fan.
We're going to announce in a couple of weeks. So okay, yeah,
we'll still do scholarships because I think they were super
successful and helpful to people that otherwise couldn't
afford the ticket. I know it's expensive this year, but the
reason was we actually spent a lot more per person last year than people
actually pay for their tickets.
So it's less than 10. So we're trying to get the price so that we can make, um, make the
same break even and we're going to have scholarship tickets with the balance. So it should be
awesome.
I saw a couple of speakers come in. There's two.
Not talking about it yet. Not talking about it.
Come on. Just, can we just tell the two speakers who said yes, come on. Not yet. We'll do a big
announcement. A big speaker and I think it's going to be awesome. In a week. In a week,
we'll announce a bunch together. Listen, well, one thing I don't want to wait on is today's docket
because it is unbelievable. Welcome everybody to episode 175. That's right. It's episode 175 of your favorite podcast and
the largest and most listened to podcast in the world officially episode 175 of the all in podcast
starts right now. And I got so many feelings about this one. It's not the largest most listened to
podcasts in the world. I'm manifesting. Okay, I'm manifesting. I'm manifesting, Chamath. Just like Phil Hellmuth is the world's greatest poker player.
And then we watch Roe Bowl roll over him.
Is that a new word that narcissists use for lying?
Manifesting?
No, it's just like the world's greatest poker player.
And then we see Phil Hellmuth get dominated by Jason Kuhn.
Just so you know, tonight is a murderer's row
and Hellmuth is flying back.
You saw the lineup.
I'm very excited to see what happens tonight.
Is Jason Kuhn coming or no?
Yeah.
I mean, Kuhn and Robo
and then the world's greatest,
Hellmuth playing is so great to watch.
It's like a meta ego battle.
No? It is.
And those, you know what's interesting,
two of those three guys are like the most humble guys
you would ever meet in your life.
Am I correct?
In your life, just you could, you could not be more low key and self-effacing than Robo
Linku for how good they are.
And if you were honestly going to rank the three of them in a high stakes cash game,
could you just handicap it for the audience?
Because we are in a, we're in a lucky position, you and I, to play with these three epic players
in the world,
break down how they play in a home game like ours.
05. Robo-Rainbow
So I would say the most dynamic range would probably be Robo because Robl has the most experience playing super, super high stakes cash. I think Kuhn is the most precise and like true to GTO. Hard to exploit. I mean,
Kuhn is impossible to exploit. Impossible. Doesn't till-
No mistakes.
No mistakes.
No mistakes.
Robl knows how to gamble in certain spots.
Kuh knows how to be unexploitable.
And the third player's for Hal Muth.
And the third person is Helmuth.
And Helmuth just loses his mind.
It is so.
No, the thing with Helmuth is he's capable,
unlike anyone I've ever seen a folding in spots that are,
and he's correct by the way.
I've seen Helmuth fold ace king in spots
that none of us would ever do it.
I've seen him fold kings in spots
that are basically impossible.
So Helmuth is able to get these soul reads on people
that I think are amazing.
Yeah.
But look, the higher and higher the stakes get,
the more and more I think Roble will be comfortable
and Coon will just go to a playbook that he knows and trusts.
I'm so excited to be back at the game tonight.
All right, listen, the docket is so great this week.
We got a great classic all-in docket.
I want to start with Google firing 28 employees who were involved in this protest at their
offices. We didn't think
that this would happen. We were having a discussion on the group chat. On Tuesday, about a dozen
employees engaged in sit-ins at the company's offices in Sunnyvale and New York City protesting
the conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. And so, they took over, literally
took over the offices of the CEO of Google
Cloud and nine employees were arrested after refusing to leave. The protest was organized
by a group called No Tech for Apartheid. And they posted a bunch of clips of this sit in
on X. Those 28 employees were fired on Wednesday after a quick investigation. The VP of Global Security
was pretty direct and candid. I mean, this is based. They took over office spaces, defaced
our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers. Behavior like this has
no place in our workplace, and we will not tolerate it. If you're one of the few who
are tempted to think we're going to overlook conduct that violates our policies,
think again.
So what were the protests about?
Google is involved in a project, Nimbus,
a $1.2 billion cloud contract with Israel's government.
Both Google and Amazon are involved in the project,
which was announced in 2021.
Google has denied it was doing work for the military,
saying it was working with departments like finance,
healthcare, transportation, there's a lot of details to
this. But let's start with you, Freberg, since you were a
Googler, and we've been talking about the culture of Google,
putting aside what the protests were about. How do you feel
about protests in the workplace? We've talked about it before
here with Coinbase and others. And then is this
a distinct change in tone that I'm hearing from Google that they've had enough of social activism
at the office? I mean, yeah, there was obviously a line crossed in, in the, the view of security, but I think you could look at this two ways.
You could look at this as being a culture of entitlement that let folks feel that our employees, that they have permission
to stage sit-ins and behaviors like this because Google is so infinitely tolerant and giving employees the space and the room
to do whatever they want to do.
And all of their wishes and demands can be met and will be met if they demand it strongly
enough.
That's one way to look at this and that that culture manifested this behavior.
Another way to look at it is that these people feel so deeply, strongly and passionately
about the issue at hand that they were willing to risk their jobs and arrest, and they cared
so deeply about an issue that they think no one's paying enough attention to that they're
willing to put themselves and sacrifice themselves for it.
So I want to be empathetic to that point of view as well, but I do think that there's
a belief that there may have been this kind of entitlement
culture where anytime Google employees ask for stuff, they get it.
Someone told me the other day how TGIFs at Google now where they do these all hands and
people get to ask questions.
This person is kind of executive level.
They're so sick and tired of how every question is all about employees asking for more things
that they want.
So it's like, when are we going to get this bonus?
When are we going to get this?
Yeah.
When are we going to get this?
That's so much of the orientation of being an employee at Google is all
about what Google can do for me and how I can get more.
And that becomes what you ask for.
It's like you give a kid something, you give them candy.
They're always asked for candy.
And I think that there is certainly an element of that culture kind of being frothed up over the
years at Google. But I do think that this is an issue that people care very passionately
about right now. And you're seeing it all over the place. So certainly in the same week,
we had the Golden Gate Bridge get shut down. The Bay Bridge gets shut down as well. Shemoth,
your thoughts on these protests, and then obviously the entitlement issues that Freiburg alludes to specifically
at Alphabet slash Google. They're two separate things and I think it's important to
deal with them individually. Groups of people in society in a democracy should have a right to
protest. That's absolutely fundamental and I think they
can raise a lot of issues that could otherwise get swept into the carpet. When that stuff impedes
the public functioning of society for other people, then I think there's a responsibility
for law enforcement and other people to act and make sure that that is better managed. So shutting
down an entire bridge is not only disruptive, it can be really dangerous.
Of course. And it can hurt your cause because then people dislike the cause because it hurt them.
Right. Typically what happens is you're supposed to file for a permit to protest.
And when you get that, there are areas that are cordoned off and then people are allowed to express their views.
That's a really healthy form of democracy.
Going rogue like this will only blow up in people's faces
because the folks that are somewhat sympathetic
will eventually get burned by this experience
and turn against them.
So that's one set of issues.
I think that's just people going rogue.
And I think that you can't be tolerant
of that kind of chaos.
There should be organized protests, but not disorganized chaos. And law enforcement needs to get a control of that.
Inside of a company, I think this is different. It's this weird thing that I see, which is like
what I would call like left on left violence. It's like left leaning people creating all of
these distractions and demonstrations inside of left-leaning organizations for not being left-leaning enough. And so it's kind of like a little bit nutty because I think it actually
shows how totally naive these employees are and what basic business understanding they have.
The first and foremost being that they are at-will employees. These are not people that are
contracted players in the NBA or are part of a union, okay, where you have guaranteed
employment through some mechanism or some arbitration
process to even be let go. The fact that you don't even
understand that you are at will means that you are there because
you want to be there. And Google allows you to be there because
they choose for you to be there. And at any point, if either of
you break a covenant, you can be gone.
That kind of stuff, I think, is very distracting. And it just belies a poor understanding of what you're there to do. Google is a for profit business. And they are in the business of generating
maximum profit on behalf of their shareholders. They are also incentivized to do that in a way
that achieves a mission and a set of values that the majority
of their employees agree with. And the fact that a small cohort of people can try to hijack
and sabotage that overall direction, I think is very misguided.
Sacks, I don't know if you have any opinions on this. I didn't see anything in the docket.
I'm not sure if you have any strong feelings here,
but your thoughts on Google employees and the protests,
putting aside the nature of the protest,
this could be for BLM,
this could be for Trump's indictments.
You could be protesting any number of things,
but the protesting at work issue,
and then Google specifically,
which we talked about with the Gemini issues,
and this stuff bleeding over into product.
I think Freeberg said it really nicely.
Hey, are people actually focused on products at Google anymore?
Or is the whole place just focused
on social issues that have nothing
to do with their waning, apparently, product set?
Well, Google had no choice but to fire these employees.
They were being disruptive, and they were trespassing and Google has a business
to run so this is what any business would do and I don't think they deserve
either credit or blame for taking the action they took. In terms of the
protesters themselves, I think that in the fullness of time we may come to
think of them in a slightly different light.
And some of this reminds me a little bit of another war, the protesters in another war,
the Vietnam War, where they were very disruptive. In some cases, they trespassed. In some cases,
they got arrested. They were easy to make fun of in terms of what they looked like.
They were sort of unkempt, unshaven, all the rest of that stuff. They were hippies. And at the time, people
were, I'd say, very dismissive of them or actually antagonistic. They were seen as giving
aid and comfort to the enemy and they were sort of demonized. But now in the fullness
of time, we look back on that war and realize that they had a point. In fact, maybe they were right. In fact, maybe their actions were justified. And I think that how we view these protesters
at Google can't just be judged now. I think it's going to be judged in the fullness of
time based on how we perceive this war in Gaza. And I want to make two points about
why I think this war will eventually be viewed as Israel's Vietnam. The first is that in Gaza,
Israel faces a guerrilla style force and they're in a quagmire. And if you read the latest news
that's coming out of Gaza, what you'll hear is that after Israel has supposedly cleared an area like Gaza City or Khan Yunis, they
then move south. Hamas has popped back up again. This whole idea that they can clear
an area has been proven false. It's like playing whack-a-mole. They basically hit Hamas in
one area, Hamas disappears down the tunnels, they come back in a different area. And this
is why you're seeing a lot of articles now in Haaretz, which is an Israeli newspaper
saying the war in Gaza is already lost. You had the Wall Street Journal
last week run an article saying that Israel is winning every battle but losing the war,
which is, again, shades of Vietnam here. And you got to understand, the Wall Street Journal
is the most pro-Israel of all the major mainstream publications.
I don't think the Wall Street Journal has ever written a truly critical article about
Israel.
And they described this black and white dynamic.
You also have the general Gadi Eisenkop, who's a member of the war cabinet.
He's a member of the sort of war government in Israel, came out and said that we can degrade
Hamas in Gaza,
but we cannot destroy it. And he said, anyone who's telling you that we can destroy Hamas is
telling you a tall tale. And that was, I think, an appointed reference to Netanyahu's claim that
they would destroy Hamas and Gaza. So you've got shades of Vietnam in terms of it being this
unwinnable war. I think the second aspect of a similarity
to Vietnam is just the huge number of civilian casualties.
You recall that in Vietnam, the Viet Cong tried to grab us by the belt buckle.
They knew that America had superior firepower, so they tried to get in close, use ambushes,
BB traps, snipers.
And in response to that, the Americans used immense amounts of firepower
and bombing to try and subdue the Vietnamese. And 3.4 million Vietnamese were killed in
that war, according to Robert McNamara. The second thing that happened is the rules of
engagement in Vietnam got extremely loose. You took a bunch of scared American kids,
many of whom were conscripts, you drop them in a jungle, pretty much because they feared ambushes, they shot anything that moved.
And then finally, I think partly to justify this, you had a dehumanization of the Vietnamese
that they were seen as somehow kind of subhuman.
In any event, if you watch movies about Vietnam, like Platoon, which was made by Oliver Stone, who was a GI in Vietnam, or if you watch Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece Full Metal Jacket, which
was based on books about Vietnam, you can see these dynamics in play very vividly.
Now, turn to Gaza.
All you got to do is look at the miles and miles of video to see it looks like a lunar
surface.
I mean, even in the words of Joe Biden,
there's been indiscriminate bombing there. In terms of the rules of engagement, the rules of
engagement have gotten very loose. A week or two ago, you had the deaths of those seven aid workers
from the International Kitchen Organization. And there's an article in Haaretz recently about the
kill zones have been set up. Pretty much, if you come within a certain invisible perimeter of Israeli troops, you can be shot. I mean, those are
the rules of engagement. And this is why there were three Israeli hostages who escaped. And
they were running towards Israeli troops and yelling in Hebrew, and they still got shot.
And again, this goes back to the rules of engagement being very loose. And then the
final piece of it is you do have this dehumanization
going on of the Palestinians. You can see this in a lot of the videos have been posted by IDF soldiers. So look, I think that these protesters, their actions are going to be judged
in the fullness of time. I think there are actually good reasons to believe that Israel's
war in Gaza, it's shades of Vietnam. And I think that over the long term,
people may regard these protesters in a different light.
Right now they're just seeing as being disruptive
and annoying and interfering.
But if this war ends up being Israel's Vietnam,
which I think it's on track to be,
again, I think that people may in time
give these protesters a little bit more credit. Jacob, what do you think?
Interesting question.
You know, putting aside what they're protesting about, I think they knew, or some number of
them knew they were going to get fired.
So I think they're kind of resigning by sit-in.
And I think, yeah, there could be nobility to that.
If you do not want to participate in supporting things in the world,
you do not have to work at Google and you can protest and you can get fired. And we've seen
some pretty intense protests. I don't know if you guys are aware of what Greenpeace and other
environmentalists did to stop whaling. I'm sure you are aware, Friedberg, of your passion on the
subject. Those people went to jail in Japan for boarding Japanese
welling ships. Like those are really intense protesters. But then to your point, Shamath,
you can really hurt your cause. Climate activists have been throwing paint on works of art. I don't
know if you've seen that. And that's just infuriating. Like I have no tolerance for
people destroying works of art or attempting to get attention.
Here, it is benign to sit in an office and get fired. So I just consider it resigning by sit-in.
If they want to do that, that's fine. I do think there is something to Google enabling all this,
to your point, Friedberg, over time. And listen, they were parodied on
Silicon Valley, the TV show, because of how coddled and entitled
people are. So there's a bunch of things going on at the same time. And, you know, if you
want to do these intense protests, you have the right to do them. And history will judge
you over time, but you need to be able to pay the price. In this case, the price is
getting fired. In the case of like shutting down the Golden Gate Bridge, like you should get a fine for
doing that, I believe.
And the fine should be based on whatever that costs to shut that bridge down.
And that's got to be a serious fine.
And you're right, Trimah.
People, if there's an emergency situation, somebody's got to get to a hospital or something.
That's what I always think about when I see those things, when you block streets and stuff,
or you block airports, or you block these throughways. There's a lot of just normal everyday people trying to live their life
who are probably very sympathetic to what you stand for. But when you disrupt their everyday
lives and or threaten their physical security, they're not going to think that that's worth it.
I'm also shocked that these people actually came to an office. I mean, these Googlers, I don't think they've actually been to an office before. They probably had to check that
their badges were- Well, to Sachs's point, I actually would have had more respect for these
people if they actually protested the war, but they didn't do that. They had a very discreet,
specific claim, which was that they wanted to dissolve a business deal that Google had to provide cloud services to the
state of Israel called Project Nimbus. And I think that's such
a discreet thing, that it's hard to understand that those 28
people would have even enough knowledge of what that is. But
it sounds like a cloud hosting deal. Well, what's hosted there?
And it could be any number of things. And I suspect if it's a billion dollar a year deal,
it's many things.
It's probably like the Israeli DMV.
Is that really what you want?
And I think that it would have been much
of a more powerful thing to do to protest the actual war
if that's what they cared about.
You know, Dovetail is nicely with the discussion
you all had last week about would you back
a not a defensive, but an offensive weapons company, Dovetail is nicely with the discussion you all had last week about would you back a,
not a defensive, but an offensive weapons company, a technology company. And it seemed like you all had reservations on if you would not back a defensive one. Anybody, I think reasonably,
would back a defensive dome or interception of bombs coming in. That's an easy one.
But going around the horn here,
how many of us would back a company making missiles or bombs that blow people up or mines?
Would you back a robot that had weapon systems on it? I think if you want to summarize what we said last week, it's like there are all kinds of
businesses where you'll end up investing in it. And over time,
as it morphs, some of us will be faced with some of those decisions and it'll frankly depend on
what is the alternative in that moment. So I don't think anybody of us are going into
go and build a nuclear bomb, but you should not be naive that if you're building nuclear reactors,
you could end up being in a situation where that thing gets licensed into a thing that you either
agree or disagree with. So this is my point is I think that those kinds of answers or those kinds
of questions are missing the nuances and the nuances are very important. So it's impossible
to answer this question in a thoughtful way, I think, would be my honest answer. Okay. Sax, any closing thoughts here?
Well, I think Chamath brings up an interesting point about why didn't the protesters just focus
on the war itself rather than Google doing business with Israel. My interpretation of that
is they're trying to create a nexus to themselves, meaning they're employees of Google.
They're trying to create a reason for them to stage the sit-in at Google.
Otherwise, you know, if they just grab picket signs and we're on the street, it would just be much less newsworthy.
So I think they were just trying to create something newsworthy here and it's kind of worked in the sense that we're talking about it.
Other people are talking about it. So that's my interpretation of that is they were just trying to elevate the issue in a slightly novel way. But look,
I think that they should be willing to pay the price of getting fired or getting arrested.
I mean, if you're going to engage in that kind of civil disobedience or protest, you
should be willing to accept the price. And I did see some comments by the Googlers who got fired saying that they
thought they were being treated unfairly by Google.
I think that's the wrong attitude.
I think the attitude is, Hey, this cause is so important to me that I'm willing
to accept the price of being fired.
Saying that you don't deserve to be fired for disrupting the workplace.
That is kind of an entitled attitude.
So I think they should have just said, yeah, we did this on purpose because it's a really important cause.
They should say, I'm proud to get fired because that's how much I believe in it. My stock options
Google are less important than this issue to me. And I accept them.
I think they would have gotten just as much press if they actually protested the war.
I think in a week from now, everybody will forget what Project Nimbus is, the odds that it gets canceled are less than zero, and everybody will
move on. And it will not add to the drumbeat, as Sac said, of people that may be eventually on the
right side of this issue, theoretically, I say theoretically because that stone is still yet to
be overturned, on that topic. So I think that they missed the mark.
And I think that the part of the press that people glommed onto was it was happening inside
of a company in real time, and there was video of it.
Mission accomplished for them.
We're talking about it here as the top story.
And if they wanted to raise awareness, they succeeded, and they should just own their firing because they knew they would get fired, I think.
All right. There has been a ton of chaos and the culture wars continue over NPR. A couple
of things happened simultaneously this week that are worth discussing. Catherine Maher
was named NPR's new CEO back in January. I'm going to have to give a little bit of a timeline
here before I get comments from the boys
because there's a little setup.
And so she was named the CEO back in January.
She officially started in March.
Okay, she formerly worked at Wikimedia Foundation.
Those are the people who run the Wikipedia, obviously.
NPR's mission, if you don't know,
is to create a more informed public,
one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding
and appreciation of events, ideas and culture.
That's their stated mission from their website.
On April 9th, Uri Berliner, an editor,
who's been with NPR for 25 years,
wrote an op-ed for Barry Weiss's Free Press,
front of the pod, explaining how NPR lost America's trust
by going hard left and becoming closed-minded. He said, quote, an open-minded spirit no longer exists how NPR lost America's trust by going hard left and becoming closed minded.
He said, quote, an open minded spirit no longer exists within NPR. And now predictably, we
don't have an audience that reflects America. Last Friday, Marr put out a statement calling
his actions profoundly disrespectful, hurtful and demeaning. The Sunday conservative activists
Christopher Ruffo, he's the person who exposed former Harvard president's
Claudine Gay's plagiarism.
He's a vocal critic of LGBTQ stuff at schools,
started reposting old tweets from Mar, this new CEO.
Her tweets are super far left, Trump's a racist,
yada yada.
There's an interesting clip of her talking at TED,
talking about how truth is a bit of a distraction
and that prevents people from getting things done.
People have gotten pretty inflamed about that clip.
And then on April 16th,
Berliner was suspended for five days without pay.
Wrapping this all up, Berliner then resigned
after 25 years saying, quote,
I cannot work in a newsroom
where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems that NPR I cite
in my free press essay. Sax or thoughts? I mean this just seems like a dog bites man story. I mean
what is the novel revelation here? The person running NPR, is it liberal?
I mean, I'm kind of with you, but what took 25 years to resign? I mean, all you have to
do is listen to NPR. It's always been liberal. Okay. This is not some recent capture of an
institution by the left. So why is it going so crazy viral right now? Why has this become
the topic of the moment? Well, apparently there are some quotes that this new CEO, Catherine Maher, tweeted or
said that you can point to that seem kind of woke and kind of crazy woke, but they're
just actually pretty standard.
I just don't see the breaking news here.
If they end up firing Catherine Maher, they're going to hire someone just like her.
I mean, they're going to hire someone just like her.
I mean, they're going to have the same views. NPR has always been left of center. And the only change that's happened is that the left has now become woke.
And so it's become obsessively focused with the ideas of white supremacy and white privilege. And she simply reflects that.
I agree. It's like a tempest in a teapot. Like, newsflash. NPR is woke and left-leaning. I mean,
I guess maybe that somebody who was there for 25 years wrote the expose is interesting or,
I don't know. Chamath, any thoughts on this one and why it's taking up so much headspace for people?
I don't think it is. I think it's taking up a lot of headspace
amongst breathless journalists.
I don't think it matters to the public at large.
I don't think anybody cares.
I just had one thing, which is,
I do think that the government
should not be funding this anymore.
I think NPR at this point is mostly funded
by private donations,
but it got started with government money
and the government still funds it.
And given that it is this left
institution at this point, and really always has been, there's simply no reason for the government
to be funding one side of the political debate that way. So I think there is maybe an issue there
in terms of reminding people that, hey, this is like government funded, why? And there's no reason
why NPR can't be funded
with either private donations or private subscription. This is just to give people some
back of the envelope math. NPR's budget is like 320 million. It's a dollar per American. And
they get a bunch of programming fees and some corporate sponsorship. Corporate sponsorship
is like 100 million bucks. The programming fees is what the local radio stations play them.
Net net, this is costing like maybe, I don't know, 30 cents in American.
And if you just swap out, and this is the way I like to look at these to be objective,
if you were saying this was funding Fox News or, I don't know, Ben Shapiro and Daily Wire,
how would you feel about it?
You'd be like, well, why is the government funding that?
They should just cut NPR and all this public broadcasting stuff loose over the next year or two wind it down and
Let them fend for themselves in the new media landscape. Look Jake. I agree with you
They could easily substack it NPR is not gonna go away. Just create subscriptions and you're fine
Yeah, I mean, it's only like they're down to whatever it's it's very hard to find the numbers
There's a little like hiding of the money here, but there's so little at stake here.
I think that's why it's so contentious.
Nobody cares.
The government should not be funding
one-sided ideological institutions
on either side of the political debate.
And you're right, if this was funding going to daily wire
or something like that, people would be up in arms.
So in any event, what's good for the beast
is good for the gander.
The next tempest in a teapot is Humane's AI pin getting barbecued by our modern day Walt
Mossberg, Marques Brownlee, who is an awesome YouTuber.
I love his reviews.
And it's created a bit of a social media raw shock test here, getting a lot of feels from
people in Silicon Valley.
Let's just tee this up here.
Humane is a hardware startup that you may have heard of.
They make an AI powered wearable computer. It's basically a pin you put on your chest.
It's about the size of a pack of cigarettes, maybe half the size of it. Founded by two Apple
execs back in 2018, raised a quarter of a billion dollars or so. And the device is now in the hands
of reviewers. It's pretty innovative and Marquez talks about
how innovative it is in his review.
It will let you talk to it.
It's got a camera on it.
We'll show it here on the screen.
If you're not subscribed to the YouTube channel,
just go to YouTube right now
and you'll see us playing the video of it.
Search for all in.
And really interesting interface.
It does obviously voice.
It connects you to an LLM on the back end.
So if you want to know, you know, some piece of information, it can answer those questions for
you. But Marquez showed it just absolutely failing at a bunch of tests, being overpriced.
And he called it the worst product he's ever reviewed. It's very thoughtful and methodical, but the title is obviously a bit link baiting. As
a co founder of engagement, I can tell you if you want to get
a lot of clicks to say something is the best or the worst ever,
and you get 10 times the views. The pin, according to him,
doesn't do anything better than a smartphone. It's slow. It
doesn't work. It's often wrong. It's slow. It doesn't work.
It's often wrong. It's 700 bucks. The battery sucks. So many different ways to go with this.
Everybody is talking about it on X and in the media. Where do you stand on this one, Friedberg?
Both on how people are responding to it in the tech industry as being like anti-tech,
anti-innovation versus, hey, it's just a reviewer giving his candid feedback on a product that's
clearly not ready for prime time.
I think there's a lot of issues.
One is just the challenge of deep tech.
More specifically in this case, hardware investing.
You have to invest a lot of capital before you even with their first product and it turns out it needs a lot of work because it doesn't do anything that consumers really are compelled by as evidenced by the review.
So, I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point.
I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. with their first product and it turns out it needs a lot of work because it doesn't do anything that consumers really are
compelled by as evidenced by the review. So I think it
highlights that that challenge and why that market finds,
particularly in this environment, it to be so hard to
get capitalized. Now, obviously, there are some
entrepreneurs like Elon, who can take that capital and drive to the
outcome, spending hundreds of millions of dollars before you
get your first rocket into space. And you have a lot of
failings along the way. But the general tone of here is a deep
tech investment is very likely to fail because you spend so
much money before you even know and at that point, you have less money and you can't really make the necessary iteration
to get there.
So it's a tough data point for other deep tech companies that need to raise a lot of
capital.
Then I think it brings up the point about ex Apple people, that there's a degree of
confidence because people come from Apple and a degree of hubris in the employees
that come from Apple that says,
I have worked at the best hardware company in the world,
therefore this person is likely to succeed.
And it turns out that when you don't have
all that built-in infrastructure for testing
and optimization, all of that built-in distribution,
all of the feedback systems that Apple has engineered
into their business model for so long,
maybe you miss some of the data around what makes a product great or not
before you launch.
I think that's your key point, Freeberg.
That is the best point is these folks come from Apple.
They're used to unlimited resources.
And what you don't see is all the product Apple doesn't release, right?
They never released their car, correct?
Freeberg and they get to, I think, I think then there's also this question about
like, where is the value in the product because they thought, hey, if
we have AI on a pin, it'll work without the consumer feedback about whether or not people
are willing to sit around and wait for 12 seconds to get an answer to a question. And then it
brings up the risk. This other really important point, which is half the people in Silicon
Valley are running breathlessly into the conversation saying,
do not disparage a startup that's working really hard
at getting their first product right.
It'll destroy the motivation of other startups
that need to kind of iterate to get there.
And we can't just take the first V1 and say that's it.
Chmop, your thoughts, you're laughing hysterical at this.
Well, no, then the other half of Silicon Valley
are running in and saying, this thing's a piece of shit, what are you you're laughing hysterical at this. The other half of Silicon Valley are running in
and saying this thing's a piece of shit,
what are you talking about?
It doesn't work.
So it is a really interesting kind of, you know, debate.
Yeah, we're shocked test on what's going on.
Chmoth, what do you see in this inkblot of a product?
Neither of those two cohorts.
I think that incredibly motivated, dedicated entrepreneurs don't even know that this is happening and don't care.
Got it.
In other words, the reviewers are going to review products
and you just got to plow ahead and make a better product.
The idea that in 2009, 10 or 11, right,
that when all the rockets weren't working, you know,
and Elon was back against the wall,
that he was reading TechCrunch or getting upset because a product failed, some other
random product that had nothing to do with his, I think is laughable.
I think no great entrepreneur cares.
I don't think Freeberg is going to change what's happening at Ohalo based on, what is
this thing called?
Humane. Right. Freeberg, have you changed? Have you made decisions? at Ohalo based on, what is this thing called?
Humane. Right, Freiburg, have you changed,
have you made decisions, are you sadder today in Ohalo
when you walked into the office to manage your team?
Okay, so there you go, there's your answer.
Sax, your feeling on this?
Yeah, I mean, I'm having a hard time
understanding all the controversies this week.
I mean, reviewers are gonna review,
protesters are gonna protest,
and the NPR presidents are gonna NPR.
Here we go.
What's going on?
Everyone's just doing, everyone's doing their job, yeah.
Here's an idea for the humane team.
Be thankful somebody took the time to review your product
and give you candid feedback
and incorporate it back into your product and make it work.
And irreverent elitists will eat octopus.
Here we are. Absolutely.
Oh, so delicious, so delicious. High IQ foods, we should create a new category. Here we are. Absolutely. Oh, so delicious.
So delicious. High IQ foods.
We should create a new category.
High IQ foods? Oh my God.
Yeah, what are the other high IQ foods?
Acorn fed beef.
Yeah, for sure high IQ.
Pigs, very high IQ.
I saw that cow playing chess
before he was served for dinner.
I was having a pulled pork sandwich from Bucky's and it helped me solve Wurdle for the day
before I ate it.
So I got Wurdle in two tries.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
I didn't want that one to land.
Yeah.
I mean, okay, let me ask this question.
Do we think the world, let's say this thing did respond
in one second. Here's the theme, Jason.
Here's the theme, Jason.
The problem is that I think people right now,
the real Rorschach test is if you are so easily distracted,
you probably don't have enough to do.
Right, that's the entitlement
is that you don't have enough work on your plate.
I don't wanna call it entitlement,
but I think the reality is that if you get caught up
in all of these silly little fake battles or decisions,
I think what it really means is that you're not busy enough
and or you're not working on something
that matters enough to you.
Because when either of those two things are true,
people tend to have blinders on and they are super focused.
And they just don't have an opinion, they don't care.
Like honestly, many of these topics today,
I really don't care.
And it's not because I'm better or worse
or smarter or dumber.
It's because I'm so overworked right now.
I don't have time to have an opinion on this stuff.
Trombone's got a CEO job and now he's got to work.
No, but and I think that anybody else
trying to do their job well
is probably in the same category.
I hadn't even heard of this reviewer. What's, by the way, he does not make or break a product. The product makes or breaks itself.
Yeah, look, when I was running companies,
I wouldn't care about what one of the companies
is doing, I would care about what the other company
is doing, I would care about what the other company
is doing, I would care about what the other company
is doing, I would care about what the other company
is doing, I would care about what the other company
is doing, I would care about what the other company
is doing, I would care about what the other company is doing, I would care about what the other company I don't know that he makes or breaks a product though, by the way, he does not make or break a product. The product makes or breaks itself.
Yeah, look, when I was running companies,
I wouldn't care about what one reviewer said.
I would care about the totality
of the reaction to the product,
which would include customers as well as reviewers
and so forth.
So I don't think there's any point getting too bent
out of shape about one review.
I think what's kind of happening
in terms of the reaction here
is that people want to give this company
like mercy points for being innovative.
So my guess is the product just isn't ready for prime time,
but everyone wants to kind of like,
they want their viewers to take it easy on them or something
because they are being innovative
and they're breaking new ground in this area of wearables.
But the reality is in the real world where you want to charge people for your product,
like customers don't have mercy points.
Nope.
So that's this reality.
If the car breaks down, the car breaks down.
And by the way, Marquez got a little bit of heat just a month ago because he reviewed
the Fisker.
The Fisker is just a piece of garbage car.
He said it's the worst car he's ever reviewed. And you know what reviewers exist in the world to inform customers about
what products and services they should buy. And then they should inform you to make a
better product period, full stop. There is an easy solution to this, by the way, which
Apple did. They released the vision pro as a developer kit. They put a bunch of caveats on it and said, hey,
we understand this is high priced. It's a developer kit. This is in beta. What humane should have done
is they should have said, this is the humane beta for developers. I still don't know what it is.
What is this? Okay. It's a wearable. It's a square. It has a projector on it. You put your hand out.
It projects a little screen that shows you like a
computer screen, and you can talk to it. Well, the primary function is like a chat AI assistant
that sits on you and has a camera. Yeah. And so you can say it's taping everything that it sees.
It doesn't do that by default, but it could. But sorry, let me just give the quick overview. And
basically you ask it questions, and it can go get the answers
The problem is that it has to go make a request to the internet run an AI model and come back
So it takes like 12 seconds to get results
Most of the time according to the reviewer the results are actually wrong
Because it's alien models suck the voice to text translation is wrong. There's a lot of things that are wrong about it
So it takes a long time
It's clunky and then the battery burns out every two hours and it gets super hot because of the way they get it to magnetic Voice to text translation is wrong. There's a lot of things that are wrong about it. So it takes a long time.
It's clunky and then the battery burns out every two hours
and it gets super hot
because of the way they get it
to magnetically stick your clothes.
So it gets very hot.
So there's also a special issue and it's 700 bucks.
Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?
And by the way, most importantly to you Chamath,
it will screw up your fabrics.
If you wear this with a Laura Piana sweater,
it's gonna drag your sweater down. Hold on, I was just thinking Hold on. I was never attached to a $6,000 sweater. Yeah. It's basically
what you're telling me is it's an overpriced device that could give you first degree burns
and it will ruin your sweaters. It doesn't answer the questions that you ask. Yeah, basically.
But then do I think the questions or do I have to say it out loud so it looks like I'm talking to
myself? You look like a lunatic. Yes it out loud so it looks like I'm talking to myself?
You look like a lunatic.
Yes, you're walking around like a crazy person talking to yourself.
That was the other thing he said is like when you're in a crowd and there's a voice around,
you can use your hand and hand gestures to control it and do things with the projector
thing that it does.
And it damages your clothes.
It's some really cool, interesting features.
It's just like, it's not quite there yet.
Who invested in it?
Let's not make fun of it, Let's make fun of the investors.
Sam Altman, shout out to Sam. He's coming on the program, I
think.
Yeah, listen, I the concept I think is good wearables are going
to provide some
I don't know when they work, because you don't have to take
your phone out. And so the idea behind wearables like your
watch is you know, like there are some things I do on my watch now, where I don't take your phone out. And so the idea behind wearables like your watch is, you know,
like there are some things I do on my watch now where I don't take my phone out. I have
I'll take the other side when you're done. Yeah. I use Fitbit company we invested in and it puts
all my workouts on my watch. When I'm doing weights, I started doing weights. Now that's why I look so
buff folks subscribe to the YouTube channel to say, and I do my sets and I log them all with my my watch,
I don't have to take my phone out. That's like the first thing and then when I'm skiing,
I can see each one I showed you slopes. I'm not an investor in Tramoth where I could see my speed
and all that. You're saying something totally different. That's that's utility. Of course,
you'll find a device will give you utility. I thought you were saying something else,
which is everybody's going to have wearables and I I want to take the exact opposite side of that.
Okay, go ahead.
Yeah.
I don't know that everybody will have wearables, but I do find a couple of little things that
work for me.
I totally get that, you know, the use of an accelerometer or whatever in a watch or in
a band that you wear on your wrist for a workout.
And I think that that's valuable.
Or heart rate.
A glycemic monitor so that you could, all of that stuff makes super sense for you as an
individual. But that's not an experience where you're engaging with it to, like to replace some
other social interaction. That's just you getting utility as you live your life. What I'm saying is
the idea that you start to rely on a device as your interface into the world, I would take the exact other side of the bat,
which is I think that humans are getting so sick and tired of being,
of only communicating in these very rigid ways. Like I'm telling you, like if you look at our
children's generation, they don't know how to make eye contact, they don't know how to talk.
And I think it's going to come back and bite them in the ass. And so I think the pendulum is going to swing in the other direction where it's like, okay,
enough of this stuff. Let's actually look each other in the eye and talk to each other the way
that humans were meant to be. And I think that in that devices like a glucose monitor or a band
has value. But I don't think it's going to be this interface where you're sign languaging it while
you're at Coachella. I think you're going to rip the devices off
and actually be at Coachella without any devices.
Did any of you guys read Jonathan Haidt's book,
Anxious Generation?
It is unbelievably awesome.
I have not read it yet.
Stop what you're doing and just listen to the audiobook
on your walks on Audible.
This book is super important and awesome,
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.
I cannot tell you how important it is.
Sax, any closing feelings here?
You have a take?
Any hot takes?
Well, I would slightly disagree with you guys
about this device.
So first of all, I think that humans are becoming
more and more cybernetic.
We're getting more and more immersed with computing power.
And I agree, it creates this anxiety
and all these problems, but on the other hand,
I think it's an irreversible trend.
So I think that I would not bet against things
that make us more cybernetic.
I think the problem here is that this company
is trying to do two difficult things.
The first thing is it's trying to capture everything
that's happening in the world around you
to feed it into an AI model so it can make you smarter.
The other thing it's trying to do is reduce your dependence on your phone
by creating this new projection surface.
And in my experience, when you try to do two hard things,
you actually square the complexity
and you square the difficulty as opposed to just adding it.
So I think of these two things,
the one that sounds interesting to me
is taking in all the information from the physical world
and putting in an AI model that can be helpful to you.
But I see no reason to replace the phone. I think it should just work with your phone.
The problem they're going to have is that that pendant will compete with the Apple
glasses and all the other wearables that are going to be created to suck in all
this information, this computer vision from the world. Nonetheless,
I do think that is the opportunity.
It's not replacing the phone.
It's layering a new platform on top of the phone that can kind of, you know, again, give
you that Terminator mode in the real world.
And that was a complaint about this device specifically was that it was detached from
the phone.
I understand why they want to make it standalone, but...
And then this opens up all the privacy.
Let me ask the panel here, what do you think about this concept of recording the entire
world, all these conversations and video with these devices?
I think it's a quick way to get yourself punched in the face.
I mean, we saw that with Google Glass.
People showed up at bars in San Francisco and parties with these Google Glass things
on and literally got punched in the face.
Well, this is why-
This has got massive privacy things, recording your entire life with a pendant.
Man, no thank you.
This is why I said what I said.
I do think Sachs is right that ultimately you'll have some kind of brain interface because
I do think a chip implant of some kind is very valuable.
But what I'm also saying is that I think that that will actually lessen the social acceptability of these visible
devices that are constantly getting in between you and another person. And so the idea that
we're kind of already in a quasi surveillance state and now we're going to increase that
by n factorial to the number of people, I think is very depressing.
It is depressing. And you know what? In Jonathan Haidt's book, he talks about phone lockers
for schools and the transformative power
they have had.
When you go to a school, there are some schools now,
high schools, where the students put their phones
in specific phone lockers.
They do it in my kids.
It's actually, Jason, these special.
Pouches?
Pouches.
Yeah, so those are the pouches comedians use,
like Chappelle at his shows.
Chappelle uses it.
Kevin uses them. Yeah, exactly. are the pouches comedians use, like Chappelle at his shows. Chappelle uses it, Kevin uses them.
Yeah, exactly.
And they're great.
And then what the school now also teaches the kids,
at least our school, which I found really interesting,
is the graduated form of that is they actually now allow you
to put it in a envelope because they're training the kid.
Like the pouch you can't get access to.
You have to go back to the-
Right, it locks.
It locks. You have to go back to the locks and lock device.
Yeah. And then I saw that my son last week had it actually in a, in a white envelope and he had to
close the envelope and just keep it with him as, as like a way of graduating from the prison form
of keeping the phone away to like, you know, having it in your pocket. So the schools are trying to do
a lot to try to teach these kids not to be so dependent on. They should ban these devices at
schools a hundred percent. And then at the poker game tonight,
we should make people stack their phones and charge somebody a thousand dollars.
Whoever takes the phone first, let's do it tonight. Let me, let me give a shout out to one of my
favorite sci-fi book series is called Nexus by Ramiz Nam. And it's kind of this like cyberpunk
futuristic series. But what he talks about is when we have this brain computer
interface, you'll be able to upload your memories.
And so you talk about this idea of recording your whole life
through a pendant.
Eventually, you'll be able to record your whole life based
on just through your eyeballs.
And you'd be able to upload, in theory,
a first-person view of whatever conversation you've been in.
So there's a certain, look, this is pretty far off,
but there is maybe a certain inevitability to that.
And we're gonna have to figure out
how to deal with the privacy implications of that.
There was a Black Mirror episode on this exact idea.
Yep, yeah, you have the DVR of your entire life.
And it is gnarly to think these things will exist.
And I think humanity's gonna have to make a decision, I think, to fight this or embracenarly to think these things will exist. And I think humanity
is going to have to make a decision, I think, to fight this or embrace it. I think we should
fight it. I think it's going to ruin social existence. And it's already ruined poker games,
et cetera, when everybody's on their phone. It's ruined dinner parties when everybody's
on their phones. The constant distraction is just horrific. And it's having a horrible
impact on this generation.
I'll double down on what you're saying. It is so lovely to be able to have a dinner where everybody
just talks to each other and looks each other in the eyes. And then when you have a handful of
people always on their phone, it's depressing. It's actually not even neutral. It's a net negative
and a drag on the entire night. Absolutely. I am trying to come up with ways to remove these
devices from the social settings. I've been to a up with ways to remove these devices from the social settings.
I've been to a couple of parties with high profile people where they have everybody check their
phones at the door. I gotta say those are the best nights of my life.
Those are the best nights.
They're incredible. And no offense to people who are addicted to their phones. I am to a certain
extent. I put my social media at one hour on my phone. My Lord, it is hard to do less than an hour
of social media in our job positions.
I deleted TikTok about a month ago.
It's been liberating.
I was a slave to that app.
I couldn't believe how much TikTok I was consuming
after it was gone.
Because I couldn't find anything to replace it.
And then I stumbled into the fact that YouTube
has YouTube Shorts and there is a lot of that content,
but it's terrible and the algorithm is really bad.
Yeah, it sucks.
And so fortunately I just stopped using YouTube.
It just shows you how the algorithm
is such a key component of that TikTok experience
because I had the same experience.
Shorts serves up garbage.
Garbage. Instagram serves up garbage. And then TikTok
is just like right into your brain.
Kicks ass.
It kicks ass. By the way, I want to give another shout out to a book.
I miss TikTok. TikTok, I miss you.
Yeah, whatever. That's going away.
Another incredible book, I think we should book this speaker for All in Summit. Bad Therapy,
Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up, Abigail
Schreier. This book is incredible. And if you read these two, every parent read these
two books, and we need to have a conversation on it as parents here. Everybody read these
two books. These two, these are my two top choices for the All In Summit. I think it's
like the going to be the topic of our time. All right, let's keep going down this incredible
docket very important issue for us to talk about. Silicon
Valley startups having a bit of a R&D tax problem. Thanks for
putting it on the docket here. Freeburg. It's a bit inside
baseball, but very important topic. Let's say a company like
acne corporation generated million bucks in revenue, and
they spent a million bucks on their software developers last
year. Let's say they had, I don't know, five developers getting paid 200 grand each.
Well, traditionally, this company would pay nothing in income tax, right?
They spent a million, they deduct that million from the million dollars in revenue that came
in and everything's good.
But due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, starting last year, a provision kicked in
forcing companies to
amortize their R&D expense over five years. So in this hypothetical situation, the ACME
Corporation would amortize 200K a year and pay income tax on the 800K in profits. This
is brutal, obviously.
Profits, air quotes, profits, air quotes.
Air quotes, profits, correct. And this is absolutely brutal.
And a lot of companies took a wait and see, approached this hoping Congress would fix
the issue in January, a bipartisan tax bill that would reverse these changes passed in
the House.
But the bill has stalled in the Senate.
And we got to get this thing fixed because it's going to sink a lot of startups.
Maybe people will start putting their companies in other countries.
But it's attached to this child tax credit, which Republicans don't
want to pass. So no reversal has happened. Freeburg, you
highlighted this for us very important topic. Thank you for
doing so. As our great contributor here, what are your
thoughts on this became law in the 2017 jobs act, as you
highlighted, and basically it
means that companies, not just like tech companies, but life
sciences companies, defense companies are pushing Congress
to change this law because you can't actually deduct the
expenses that you use to run your business. You have to only
deduct them over five years, 20% a year. So like you pointed
out, if you're making a million dollars, but you're spending a million
dollars, you made no profit, but you got to pay taxes as if you made 800 grand in profit.
And a lot of these small companies don't have that cash.
So venture capital back companies and public companies that are profitable, they can afford
to do this because they have large balance sheets.
So it doesn't affect them as much as it does the literally hundreds of
thousands of small businesses that work in the life sciences
sector, the defense sector, the tech sector that are struggling
this year to make the tax payments that are required under
this, this law that went into effect last year, and Congress
promised that they were going to repeal this law leading up to
April 15, which happens obviously a few days ago, and make it retroactive to 2023, but they didn't.
But Freeberg, they know basic math. Congress knows basic math. How do they, how do they
what? What was the intent here?
Yeah. So the original intent was that this was one of the ways you guys know, whenever
you pass a bill, it gets run through the OMB and the CBO that figures out what's the budgetary cost of the bill.
And one of the ways that they made this work,
this bill, the 2017 Trump Tax and Jobs Act,
you guys may remember in that bill,
they also made it impossible to deduct entertainment
and dining expenses when you take people
out to dinner anymore.
That sucks.
And they did all those things to make up some of the money
they were using for basic general
tax breaks for companies.
So they use this as a way to say, like, look, in a couple of years, we're going to kick
in this R&D expenditure thing, and it'll trigger a lot more revenue for the federal government
will create a lot more taxes and a lot more revenue.
So that was the idea.
And everyone was like, Yeah, okay, sure.
We'll do that.
Great.
It makes the accounting work.
And then a couple of years, you know, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, we're going to come back and repeal it. Except Congress has stalled out.
There's this ineptitude where anytime someone tries to pass a bill in Congress, someone else says,
I want to get money. And so the Democrats showed up and said, we want this child tax credit thing
to show up, which basically was passed during COVID. And they want to extend it going forward.
And the child tax credit says that you can get a check
for 1800 a year in 2023, 1900 in 2024,
and $2,000 in 2025 for each child you have.
And the Republicans in the Senate are saying,
wait a second, for people to get this thing,
we want to make sure they're working,
we want to make sure it's not as retroactive.
So now there's this big debate about how big the child tax credit
should be. And that's keeping this R and D thing from going through. Meanwhile, I've
gotten tons of emails from CEOs of tech companies that are breaking even. These are not tech
companies that are making a ton of profit. They're not public. They're not venture backed.
They're just people running, running their, their business. And now they're going to have
this huge tax bill, even though they didn't make any money
this year.
And it's crippling businesses around the country.
And what do they do?
They're going to write a check.
They're going to borrow money.
They're going to go to the bank, borrow money, or they're going to incur penalties with the
IRS because they don't have the cash to pay the tax bill because they don't have any profit.
They didn't make any money.
If they just ran the business break even, which a lot of these companies do is just make a
little bit of money or break even and then they've got this huge tax bill and profits
They didn't actually have they got to go figure out how to write a check and also how do you define R&D?
I was talking to an accountant. He's like, yeah, I don't know if that's R&D. I'm like, you don't know it's R&D like, okay
So I need some software
Yeah, yeah, there's all this writing in the if you get audited by the IRS
They have the ability to
basically capture everything. So like, let's say you're a mobile app developer, and you make a
million dollars a year, but you spend a million dollars a year on your developers. Okay. They're
going to count that they have the ability to count that as an R&D. So the accountants, the tax
accountants tell you, book it all as R&D, because otherwise you could get audited and actually get
in trouble. Because anything that involves the development of technology now is considered
R&D. Again, a company working in life sciences as a research company doing lab work can kind
of get it.
But if I do bug fixes, is a bug fix R&D? If I make a new feature in an application this
year, does it have to be amortized over five years? If I put a new filter in my photo?
My understanding is most of this stuff is getting captured
and that's why it's hurting everything from defense
to life sciences, to lab equipment, to startups,
that's software to everything.
And Congress can't get out of its own way
where this bill passed by the way, bipartisan in the house.
Then it went to the Senate
and now it's getting taken apart in the Senate.
Now it's stalled out and everyone's freaking out that it stalled out past April
15th. And it's actually going to hurt a lot of small businesses in this country. And here's
the other problem is it actually limits our ability to invest in innovation in this country
because now you're better off. There's no other country in the world that does this.
Every other country in the world tries to incentivize investment in innovation.
And here in the US, we're basically saying, no, we're going to tax you for investing in
technology development and innovation. And the other thing that's, that's actually not
being talked about is even in this bill where they're repealing this, they're leaving in
the fact that if you invest in R and D outside the US, you have to amortize it over 15 years.
So let's say that you're a US developer and you hire people offshore.
Yeah. You got to basically amortize the offshore stuff over 15 years,
which means you'll never make a profit. You're always going to have to pay taxes.
We're trying to kill innovation in this country. And the two things they got to solve is this one
And the two things they got to solve is this one and then M&A. We got to have a better solution for allowing companies to be bought and sold in this or
merge in this country.
These two things are putting a lot of headwinds on the startup ecosystem and on the venture
and the risk taking capital ecosystems.
If you're in Washington, DC or you're involved in our government, please solve these
two issues. You got to figure out a way to allow companies to be bought and sold. You got to figure
out a way to fix this tax issue or else we're going to kill a lot of startups. And these are
the companies that pay a lot of taxes. And these are the capital gains that fund a lot of states,
treasuries. It means that-
Well, it's also an illustration of just how hungry we are for tax
revenue in this country.
You know, it's only going to grow and I'm not sitting here complaining
about taxes.
You know, the Trump tax cut that he put in place in 2017 added one and a half
trillion dollars to the federal deficit.
So tax cuts in general are not great when you're spending a lot, but it does
highlight just how much we are spending at the federal level and the demand for tax revenue and that demand causes
This counter cyclical problem, which is now we're gonna eat into innovation
Which is supposed to drive get us out of the problem the spiral that that results from this debt
So it really highlights like just the challenges that are going to emerge
particularly in a decade ahead
Because we have all of this spending that's coming in front of us over
the next decade, and how we're going to start to demand more and more tax and all these
weird ways that can really hurt industry.
Unintended consequences are very real.
Chamath, you were going to say something?
Well, doesn't it mean though that if you run it at break even, and without a lot of growth, by year five,
you'll be back to where you were. So you really have to cover the taxes in years one through
four.
That's right. If the business, but if the business is growing, you're always going to
be in a hole. Right. Right. So if your revenue is growing and your OpEx is growing, you're
always going to be in a hole.
I think Jason mentioned it earlier, and I think it's the key thing, which is what is
R&D then. Yeah.
And maybe you just move things to cogs and just be done with it.
I mean, that's what I would do.
Remember, businesses, and you guys know this, like when you look at a public company's financials,
what you're seeing is their gap financials, generally accepted accounting principles.
And that's the way that you present the financials of a business. That's different than the way you present financials to the IRS. You don't have a lot of discretion in your tax
financials. Your tax financials are actually quite different than your gap financials.
Yes. So when you file your taxes, there's a lot of rules on what you are allowed to deduct and
aren't allowed to deduct. It's quite different than how you present your corporate financials
to investors. And that's really where people get screwed is you
don't have that sort of discretion that you do in kind
of sharing your financials with investors. So this is not
financial or accounting advice, get great representation. I just
hope Congress resolves this because it's yes, super
important. All right, sports betting has gone mainstream. If
you don't know, two out of three colleges have placed a bet in
the last year. since the Supreme Court
struck down the Amateur Sports Protection Act. Thirty-eight states have legalized sports
betting. I think that's a great thing, but we're starting to see some weird behavior
because of it. Tons of sites like DraftKings, FanDuel, ESPN bet, BetMGM, all of these have
broken out. But this week, we started to see some weird behavior. The NBA banned a 24 year old player,
John T Porter for life after a scandal. This one is bizarre and interesting Porter was bench player
for the Toronto Raptors averaging about 14 minutes per game. It's important. On these gambling apps,
you can do all kinds of prop bets for those of you who don't know prop bets could be things like Steph is going to hit five threes in the game or LeBron is going to score under 30
points. You're just betting on unique things that could happen. And then you can parlay them
together. You can put multiple bets together and it automatically gives you a price. And you can do
really, you know, deep wagers doing this. The NBA found out that Porter was telling people to
bet his unders for points and rebounds during certain games during those games, he'd play
a few minutes, then check them out self out of the game with an illness quote unquote.
Technically the bet would still count since he played the game, but everybody who bet
his unders would win. Normally, nobody would notice this, of course, because he doesn't play that
much. He's a bench player. But DraftKings, because they have
all the data tipped everyone off, because Porter was the
biggest moneymaker on March 20. This led to an NBA
investigation. DraftKings will give you a leaderboard of the
biggest bets. And they saw that somebody placed an $80,000 bet
that Porter would hit the unders on a bunch of different categories. Crazy outlier bet DraftKings cancelled
the bet. The NBA found that Porter separately placed dozens of bets on NBA games using his
friends accounts, winning a whopping $22,000. And this idiot now is banned from life from the NBA, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly.
But obviously, the NBA has the receipts with DraftKings.
Chamath, you owned a NBA team for a little while,
and you watched as David Stern, for a decade,
you watched as David Stern,
who was absolutely opposed to gambling,
and then Adam Silver embraced it.
Tell us from your front row seat, your thoughts on wagering in the NBA.
And then wagering writ large.
Okay, look, I remember when I joined the ownership group of the Warriors, I had to file this
enormous document. And one of the things that they really dig into is whether
you've bet before. And they make it really, really clear that it is completely not allowed to bet.
And the only way that you can bet is if you're betting on non-basketball and if you were in
Vegas and you go to a casino and a true sports book. That's the only time it's tolerated.
if you were in Vegas and you go to a casino and a true sports book,
that's the only time it's tolerated.
The thing with all of these sites,
FanDuel and DraftKings is they did deals with the leagues
where part of the feature is that when there is really crazy
asymmetric betting on something that's obscured,
they reported back to the leagues
so the leagues know how to look at it.
Because typically what happens is
if you're talking like a very well-contested basketball Jason, you have a relatively balanced
book, right? And what the goal is, is to figure out where the sharps betting, meaning the really
smart money guys, and everybody else is a square and most of retail is a square, okay, they're
going to lose their money. And so the goal is to always find out where the sharps are going.
But there are some of these bets. And in this case, this is why they found out
When you have something being bet that's very obscure in size
These apps immediately go back to the league and say this just happened. Hmm
So compare that to Chamath what would happen previously before sports betting was legal in the US
before what would happen previously before sports betting was legal in the US. Before what would happen is like all of these bookies would be able to have
relationships with some of these players.
Sometimes they would also have relationships with some of the refs and it has
spilled over.
So the NBA has had to deal with an example where one of the refs were,
I think he was betting on some Tim Donahue, Tim Donahue,
and then he was point shaving.
So this has been going on for a long time. It moved into the realm of it being automated
with algorithms looking out. The fact that this kid didn't have anybody on his team that explained
that draft kings and FanDuel are going to send this data to the NBA is inexcusable because maybe
the kid would not have done it.
Hmm. Do you agree with the lifetime ban or do you think there should be?
Yeah, yeah. It has to be lifetime.
Has to be for the NBA to have integrity.
Has to be.
Yeah. Yeah, it's really... And what do we think about this becoming legal in the US and people
embracing it?
The other thing I'll say, well, the other thing I'll say, and I mentioned this a few weeks ago,
and people embracing. Well, the other thing I'll say,
and I mentioned this a few weeks ago,
everything is being gamified.
You have an entire population that seemingly in America,
consumer spending still goes up,
folks are relatively still flush with cash,
there's lots of free cashflow,
there are new and more aggressive forms of stimulus constantly coming down the pike,
whether it's student loan forgiveness or something else, right? Governments are
inventing new and new ways of buying votes. That's going to put more and more money in
people's hands. That means a larger and larger percentage of it will bleed into these kinds of
things. And it's not just sports gambling. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal about
this woman who's a well-respected lawyer who became totally addicted playing like a bingo app, right,
and lost her entire life. So these forms of gambling and addiction are just going to skyrocket,
I think, because you have these apps that are really incredibly well engineered to get
you super hooked. And then the adrenaline rush and the dopamine rush
of actually winning money is a thing that for some people,
they can't turn off once they feel it for the first time.
We know some of those people and it's hard for them
to control their sports, betting, blackjack playing,
other things, they just, they get too into it.
They get too into it.
They get just, you know, but other societies,
other geos,
Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, they've had this for a while. So they figured out how to deal
with this. This is what I'm going to tell you. The last thing I'll say on this is when I was in high
school, so in the early nineties in Ontario and Canada, they introduced sports betting as a way
of generating revenue for the government. What I will tell you is that my entire high school, all the boys, not the girls, we became
instant gambling addicts.
We were figuring out how to put bets on, most of it was betting in hockey because that's
the sport that we all knew the best growing up in Ottawa.
But it was all day, every day, it consumed us.
And I think when you look inside of these apps,
you're seeing a lot of young men with a lot of free cash and a lot of time getting sucked into
the gamification of this thing. I think it's going to be a big problem.
And I will tell you, Sachs, I'm interested in your position on this, because there is a whole system,
an ecosystem emerging here. The states are getting massive amounts of revenue,
$11 billion generated last year, up 44.5% from 2022. The league is printing money from this,
all the leagues. NBA will generate $167 million from betting this season up 11% year over year.
The sports books, obviously killing it. DraftKings got a $20 billion market cap and betters,
obviously love it. It's more fun. It's making the games more engaging. And the media is loving this.
All of the podcasts, Bill Simmons, ESPN, you can't watch a game, you can't hear sports
commentary without this being integrated. And it's being integrated at a very fundamental
editorial level. They're asking the hosts of the shows their spend and what they're
betting on.
And they're doing something very smart, which is they're paying huge endorsement deals to
the players as well.
Yes.
I think DraftKings did something with LeBron.
This is genius because when you get that ingratiated, you'll never get ripped out.
Because if they become a huge part of the off court revenue model for these players.
No, we're locked in.
It's like the new Air Jordans.
Sax, what do you think about this just in terms of on a societal
basis and the United States? You know, it's sort of like cannabis, you know, this is a
new thing for Americans to have access to. There's a lot of weird behaviors going on,
edge cases, but what do you think Net-Net as a society, you take away from the emergence
of sports betting and this next generation being so addicted to it?
Well, I think cannabis is the right analogy.
I think adults should be allowed to bet on sporting events
just like they're allowed to drink or smoke pot
or engage in other mild vices.
Some people handle it responsibly and some don't.
It's probably on a societal basis,
it's probably not a great thing,
but it's something you allow
to happen because of personal freedom and hopefully people use it responsibly.
Curt Jaimungal Freberg, you have any thoughts you play? You place any bets? Freberg? Are you place
any bets on sports? I'm curious. I do not. You do not. I don't I don't place bets on sports,
but I love playing cards because it's social. Chamath, you do any sports betting now and again?
Maybe this maybe on the Super Bowl you get once in a while you place a bet, a wager?
When I got admitted to the ownership group in the NBA, I stopped and I probably made
three bets since then, both, all three were like on the Super Bowl at a casino, which
so it was legal when I was still an owner and I've not done it since. And I've refused to download these apps
because I love sports.
And I think that if I added this to it,
I just don't think it would be good for me.
So I don't wanna do it.
That was my exact take too.
Saks, you ever place any bets?
You're not a wager on this stuff either, right?
I'm not a sports better.
Yeah, you ever bet on chess?
Is there any gambling?
No one bets on chess because it's so obvious who's going to win.
There's like a very precise rating system. And so in poker, the poker is very different because you can have players at the same table and you know who are the great players and who are not the great players.
But still in any given hand, the underdog can win because you can basically suck out or whatever.
There's a significant luck component
on every single hand.
Over the long term, you believe that the luck kind of
evens out and you reach your expected value.
But on any given hand, you can believe that you're the winner.
And so there's a lot of gambling and poker,
even though it is a skill game.
In chess, like that just doesn't work.
I mean, if I play Magnus Carlsen or any 2000 rated player, I'm just never gonna
win. So yeah, there's no point in betting.
Sax, what's your rating? 1400?
I'm a little better than that. I'm like, I'm probably more like
1600.
Last time I was 1400, I stopped playing them because he was just
I would get to the middle game with Sax, I get like 30 moves in
and then he would just smash me. I'm like 800 or something. I
Rating I
Don't want to talk about it doesn't want to talk. Well, what's your rating? Are you still upset about the octopus stuff?
No, okay. What's your but what's your rating? It's too personal question
It's too personal a question. Do you too personal a question. Do you never share information
where people can actually like root for you?
Yeah, be vulnerable, dude.
Come on.
Ask me other questions.
Just don't ask me about my chest rating.
Don't ask me about my chest rating.
Ask me anything else.
What is the lowest rating?
What's the best way to get better?
Should I get a coach or something, Sax?
What's the best way to get better?
The chest.com app has very good lessons on it too.
It's actually quite good.
Yeah, you could get a coach and that would definitely help.
There's also these exercises you can do called puzzle rushes
that teach you how to spot tactics, which is probably-
That's all tactics.
That's probably half the game.
Yeah.
Like you learn how to do a night fork or something like that,
how to do pins.
You just need to spot tactics quickly is really the key.
My puzzle rush scores are pretty good.
Oh, you're over a thousand? No, no, you play, it's like how many you can get in a certain period of time. Just need to spot tactics quickly is really the key. My puzzle rush scores are pretty good. Yeah.
Oh, you're over a thousand?
No, no, you play, it's like how many you can get
in a certain period of time.
How many, and it gets sequentially harder
as you complete the puzzles
and you have like a limited period to do it.
So.
Yet you feel shame.
You feel shame.
If you want to get better at chess,
I've watched a lot of chess videos on YouTube
and there's a very good series by
John Bartholomew called climbing the ratings ladder and
For each level of ELO ratings. He has a series of videos. So like I don't know if you're like at 1200 There's a whole series for 1200s and he'll play a bunch of games against 1200s showing what they typically do wrong
And you can learn from it. It's actually
Have you spent time, Sacks, like studying,
like openings and like studying like specific lines?
I don't even know if I'm using the right language here.
Like openings is right.
I haven't spent a ton of time studying them,
but I'm certainly familiar with a number
of the most common openings.
So I guess yes, I guess on some level I've studied them. I would say that depending on where you are in your development, that may not be the most pressing thing for you to do.
You know, I think you probably do want to just know a few basics of a few of the most common
openings, but there's probably other things for you to learn
first. You don't need to memorize a bunch of complicated lines. I think it's really cool that
kids are learning this. I know this may be a counter or a contrarian view, but I think kids
having access, or young adults having access to sports betting, poker, is kind of a good thing
because if controlled, because they're learning
about odds and gambling and framing it, I, um, with my 14 year old are doing an allowance
and then I decided to do an investment club. And so I'm putting a hundred dollars every
month into like a Robin Hood account and we're going to do like two meetings every month,
one to buy a new stock and one to examine our existing stocks. And I'm just
starting an investment club. So if anybody's kids are in that
age group, and they want to join it, let me know because I'm
going to do like a with the cousins like a zoom call every
month where we just talk about stocks. And then I'm going to
have them actually buy it so that they can be prepared for
the real world and how companies are going. But how do you think
about your kids, Chamath?
Because you got to do this gambling when you were young.
Didn't that help you ultimately as an adult?
I mean, I ran a casino in my high school.
Was that the-
Yeah, I mean, I ran a little blackjack game
where the rich kids could play and I was the house.
And I would make a few extra hundred bucks a week.
Nice. And that was great because like, you know, between that and my job at Burger King, it really helped. And then I would go and take that. And I
actually came pretty decent at Blackjack and I would go, they would, there would be these,
what's called charity casinos. So casinos in Ottawa, Ontario were illegal, but if they were
to raise charity for various charities, they were allowed. And so
my friend and I would show up at these things and just run them over.
Anybody else run an illegal business as a kid? I'll tell you about mine. After SACS,
you run any illegal businesses as a kid? No comment.
Come on, it's Statute of Limitations. What did you do? You must have been running some scams. Come
on, tell us. I'll tell you my two scams after you tell us yours.
Well, by the way, I'll tell you, I had a bad debt situation in my,
in my lunch game. You know, I used to, I used to let people bet up to a buck. Okay. So four or five
guys up, you know, 25 cents, 50 cents or a dollar. And one guy, he like demanded an expanded credit
line. And so I gave him up to two bucks. How many boxes of ZD did he go down? And one lunch, he lost 80 bucks and it took me three months to
get paid. It was the worst experience.
80 boxes of Ziti?
I had to, no, $80.
I had to-
No, I know. I'm just doing a soprano.
I had to, I had to sweat this guy for three months to get my $80.
He was rich too.
His parents were rich.
What'd he do? Did he have to do your term papers or something?
Did he have to do your essays, clean your bike?
I wouldn't have gotten this guy to do anything. Come on, Zach, give it up. What was your what was your scam? You were running?
Let's move on.
I had two scams. Free break. You have a scam when you were running? You were a kid?
Any scams?
I used to go to the recycler newspaper. Do you guys remember that? Yeah, the recycler and I would buy used like electronics equipment, computer equipment, and then I would sell it.
So I would then post other ads.
I basically did ad arbitrage as a way to think about it.
So I would go and find people selling stuff
that I thought was underpriced.
But did you fix it?
And then I would buy it.
And there was nothing to fix.
It was underpriced.
And then I knew the better market to go sell it
and make more money.
So then I'd buy all these old-
Like a broken receiver,
this disc man and a receiver, good speakers,
speakers that I knew were good,
but they were like steep, deeply discounted.
I drive around in my white van, I pay people cash,
I'd load it up and then I go sell it to like other people
by putting ads in.
Yeah, it's like a flipper.
No wonder you wound up at Google.
I had two really good scams when I was a kid.
The first was this guy owed my dad some money for backgammon.
My dad was a backgammon shark and he would play in his bar when I would show up at six
in the morning.
My dad would be playing blackjack with guys.
They would get, you know, in deep with him.
And so this guy who was in the mob owed my dad some money.
And for the VIG, he gave him a copy of the Empire Strikes Back on VHS. And
I was like, what? You know, this is before it was out. They had recorded in the movie
theaters in 1984 or something, or three, whenever that came out. And it was a really bad copy.
So my dad comes home, he gives me the copy. We watch it. It was incredible. It's like,
thanks, dad. And I got my friend to bring over his VHS. I made 10 copies of it.
I go to school in McKinley junior high school in Brooklyn
and I sell them for 30 bucks a pop.
Oh my God.
Selling like hotcakes.
And then I get pinched.
Math teacher says, what's going on
with these empire strikes back?
And I said, what do you mean?
I don't know what you're talking about.
It's like, I heard you got empire strikes back.
You kept your mouth shut.
I looked them dead in the eye. And I said, Are you interested?
The teacher goes, Yeah, how much are they? I said 30 bucks, but I'll give you one for 10.
And he said, Okay, pull that 10 bucks. I sold my math teacher. I kid you're not the Empire
Strikes Back for 10 bucks. Can you do this whole thing again, but in the Christopher Walken voice?
But I'll give you the other one I did. No, it's the Joe Pesci voice.
Do this one in the Christopher Walken voice. And so the name of it was Jason's Hot Tapes.
And so I made a business card and laminated Jason's Hot Tapes. And I would hand it to people.
And I'd hand him the Jason's Hot Tape card. And they'd say, give me my card back. But I would
just show them that I had a card. That reminds me, I was also in the fake ID business. Who? Say more.
Yeah, I don't know, I grinded out fake IDs
with a buddy of mine.
All right, that was mine, that was mine.
Oh, Zach was in the fake ID business too?
We used Harvard Graphics.
Zach, what were you using?
I was using Harvard Graphics.
Well, this was in the days before Holograms,
and it just wasn't that hard to, you know, cop.
So we just made like boards or whatever and Polaroids.
So we did it for ourselves and we did it for friends.
Yeah, same.
Here's the thing about the fake ID business.
The bouncers were like,
if you've got money, show us any piece of paper.
They knew, they knew.
We have plausible deniability.
That's right, they just wanted plausible deniability.
Exactly, that's the key to the racket.
Did you put McLovin in University of Hawaii? Yeah. He just wanted plausible deniability. That's exactly right. That's the key to the racket.
Did you put McLovin in University of Hawaii? Yeah.
Actually, well, it's kind of funny
is sometimes the bouncers would go, what's your name?
And you'd be like, you'd be stumped
because you didn't remember what was on there.
He was so drunk, you don't even remember.
Like, I am, I am, and then it's Bob.
Mine was like, my name was like,
mine was like Raj Patel.
Mine was Raj Patel.
Or they'd ask you, what was your birthday?
And you don't remember what's on your ID.
Yeah.
You don't know what's on your ID,
because it's fake. I don't remember.
I don't remember.
The key.
I had one drink.
Now the key in the fake ID game is to use your month
and day that's yours, and then just change the year. Yes. That's the key in the fake ID game is to use your month and day that's yours.
Yes.
Just change the year.
That's the key.
That's the key.
All right.
So I'll give you the second one.
Do it in the Christopher Walken voice.
So my friend, his brother had a DeLorean.
He I can't do it.
I can't say.
Anyway, this kid who I grew up with, I should say, anyway,
his name was beep that out. He lived up on 13th Avenue. I go to his house, his brother's
got a DeLorean. It was incredible. And we're in junior high school. And I'm talking to
his brother and I go into the garage and there's all DeLorean parts on the wall. And I said, Why do you have all these parts? And he said,
Oh, you know, there was a DeLorean that, you know, fell apart. And we picked up the pieces.
They had stolen another DeLorean because DeLorean stopped producing and they just chopped it
up. But he had in his garage. So anyway, we're playing chess master at the time. And I had
hacked a copy of chess master is very easy to do. And the guy said, you got chess master? Can you get me more copies of
that? I said, sure. How many copies you want? He's like, how many can you make? I was like,
well, floppy disk costs four bucks. He's like, I'll give you 10 bucks a copy of chess master.
I said, fine. I go with my friend. We go steal floppy disks from the store. So we don't want
to pay the four bucks for them. Not the, not the three and a half to five and a quarters. These are five and a quarters. And we go into the store. And we take the flyer. And I hold the flyer open and I hold it behind my back and my friend takes the discs out of the sleeve at stables or whatever. So I'm sitting there, we made copies of it. And then we were selling chess master for 10 bucks a pop at scale and giving them to the guys on 13th Avenue who were then reselling them for 20 bucks is when chess master was like $100 product. Shout out to chess master for 10 bucks a pop at scale and giving them to the guys on 13th avenue who were
then reselling them for 20 bucks this one chess master was like a hundred dollar product shout out
to chess master um well that was my second scamp this is some degenerate yeah and that's not even
the best one the best i'll give you the best one this is the best and i'll give you the last scam
we ran there were parking permits in the late 80s. In Manhattan, they were hard to get. But they were
legit. If you had a parking permit in your window for the
fire department police, you know, you could park in
Manhattan in a lot of different areas. And so we went and we
took a picture of these. Then we got on page maker or whatever.
And I went down to canal street and I bought
at Pearl paints like the same color, orange, and that lamination kit. And we got on Photoshop,
I kid you not, we held the picture up and we tried to figure out the fonts they used.
And we made a copy of the placards to park. And then we sold those for like 50 bucks and
people use them and they wouldn't get tickets. They worked. So we
sold police placards that had to be super illegal in 1988. All
right, everybody. For your sultan of science, the
exception to Friedberg, the chairman dictator from
Alphabit, haptia, the Rain Man. Yeah, David Sacks. I am your
world's greatest moderator. J Cal Kyle, we'll see you on episode 176 and hopefully in September at the All In Summit.
Bye bye.
Bye bye. And instead we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it Love you, S.K.
The queen of kin
I'm going all in
What your winner's line?
What your winner's line?
What your winner's line?
Besties are gone
That's my dog taking notice of your driveway
Sex?
Oh man
Oh man
My habitat sure will meet me at once
We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy cause they're all just useless
It's like this sexual tension that they just need to release somehow
What? Your? Beak? What? Your? Beak?
Beak? What?
We need to get merch
I'm doing all in
I'm going all in I'm going all in