E157: Epic legal win, OpenAI licensing deals, FCC targets Elon, Alex Jones reinstated & more

23:42Zach, you told me I was going to get rolled over. But here we are. I wouldn't say I said you were going to rolled over. What I said is the ecosystem is going to figure this out. Okay, let's play the tape. If chat GPT takes a Yelp review and a, you know, a Conda Ness traveler review and they represent it based on the best content that's out there that they've already ranked because they have that algorithm with PageRank or Bing's ranking engine and then they republish it and then that jeopardizes those businesses that is profoundly unfair and not what we want for society and they are interfering with their ability to leverage their own content is profoundly unfair and those magazines and newspipers need to.

24:20What's that you're getting a steamroll Okay, there it is Man, is my hair worse now or then yeah Cut back then I think you were like post COVID back then Yeah, I think it looks much better right now Like a two -pack Nick can you can you just show us a picture of that? That was like a like an early AD. This is like the common area now You know it's that's a two -pack that's a two -pack two It looks like a raccoon. Okay, J .Kale, I'll get some comments on this because I think your fluffer has fluffed too much on the upper parts and unfluffed the bottom parts, which I think I haven't listened. Don't criticize him.

25:00When he was in it in between phase, we all go through it in between phase with our hair, it's part of the process. Now I know why we're talking about this topic, J .Kale's, because you think it's a total non -story or I shouldn't say it's a non -story. Okay, let me finish it off. Okay. So just so we know what's going on here. Open AI announced a licensing deal with Axel Springer to bring real -time news from Politico and the fake news from Business Insider to Chappie Tuti. You literally sound like Alex Jones. I mean, thank you. Thank you for playing all your fake news product. Yeah. That is actually great.

25:32He is right about that. I got one thing right. As part of the deal, Axel Springer can use Chattie PT to improve their products, includes all their European sites. This is on top of the deal that Open Eye did with the associated press, but most importantly, let me just move to probably, I'm going to throw it in a second. Most importantly, when chat GPT relies on these sources, it'll include a summary and a link back. Other examples of licensing are happening all over the industry. Adobe is using stop images for theirs and stable diffusion, as you know, that brazenly used Getty's images are being sued.

26:05So freeberg, you thought this was unrealistic, but here we are. No, I don't agree with your framing and I think that I think it's unrealistic for you to frame this as Validating or justifying the fact that these companies won't be able to access and utilize open data Under fair use to train models. So that's what's born on historically, right? So the open web, you know, we talked a little bit about where folks can get Content from the open web you can browse the internet and you can download all this content. It's all freely available It's readily available. It's in the open domain. Then you can train models, and then the models can ultimately make stuff based on all that training data.

26:43What this deal is is it's actually a content integration deal, and I'll read this with the partnership, ChatGPT users around the world will receive summaries of selected global news content from Axel Springer's media brands, including Yadda Yada, including otherwise paid content. So what ChatGPT is doing is they're accessing content behind a paywall, and instead of training models on it, they're able to fetch that data as a retrieval aspect of the chat GPT service. So now you as a user want an update on, hey, what's going on with Donald Trump, it can search not just use its training data, but it can recognize that, hey, there's a current event news question embedded in this query, and I can go fetch that current event news answer from this content that I've now paid for.

27:28So it's not a training data set that's now being unlocked, which is what the complaint was before, that all the open web data was being used for training. But it's behind Paywall data that can now be fetched and integrated. I think it's more interesting because it really speaks to a new model for how the internet will work, which we've talked about, which is that there may be these new chat interfaces that cannot just send you to another page and link you over somewhere, but can fetch data for you and present it to you in an integrated way in the response it's providing. These services have to pay for access to that.

27:58So open AI, it's a three -year deal. They're paying tens of millions of dollars to Axel Springer to access their closed content and present it to the user. So I think it's quite a bit different than using training data, which is what the complaint was the first time around. And it's more of like a really interesting front -end feature for what chat GPT has become. Satchu wanted to add to that. And I don't really have a lot to add to that. I think Fibro did a great job explaining that issue. I mean, look, I think, Jake, you've had a little bit of Satch with this copyright issue. Well, protecting rights holders, I do believe in.

28:31I don't know, I'm sorry. Freemer makes a really great point, which is there's a difference between copying somebody's copywritten work, which would be a violation of copyright, and using content that's available on the open web to train a model to create entirely new content. And I do think that AI models should be able to use the content that's available on the web under a fair use doctrine to train their models for the benefit of consumers. And I don't see a reason to try and tie that up in a bunch of copyright lawsuits. If chat DVD is producing a plagiarized result, then you may have grounds for a copyright infringement claim.

29:11So what I would say is, you know, when you look at that fair use doctrine, I've got a lot of experience with it, having done this in blogs and other content companies. Here to the fourth factor test, I'm sure you're well aware of this, is the effect of to use on the potential market and the value of the work. And if you look at the lawsuits that are starting to emerge, it is Getty's right to then make derivative products based on their images. I think we would all agree. Stable diffusion, when they use these open web, that is no excuse to use an open web crawler to avoid getting a license from the original owner of that.

29:45Just because you can technically do it, doesn't mean you're allowed to do it. In fact, the open web projects that provide these say explicitly, we do not give you the right to use this, you have to then go read the copyright laws on each of those websites. And on top of that, if somebody were to steal the copyrights of other people, put it on the open web, which is happening all day long, you still, if you're building a derivative work like this, you still need to go get it. So it's no excuse that I took some site in Russia that did a bunch of copyright violation and that I indexed them for my training model.

30:17So I think this is going to be free. FreeBird, can you shoot me in the face and let me know in the segment. Okay. All right. So the segment is now over. I was about to throw it to you. Now it's, I mean, like stop with this naval gazing nonsense. We're in inning one and nobody knows anything. And the most important thing is that this will get sorted out through trials. That's where you will write Jason. It's And I think we should just not opine on this stuff because it's Hasoteric at best and it's kind of like whatever well It's some of it will go to court other ones will be done in the free market like we see here Another thing you care about this more than most people because you're a journalist and you think this kind of put people out of work I am a content creator I'm also an author as you know in a podcast or in a great all kinds of content I do think that you should get permission before you leverage people's work to create different derivative products correct And actually, you're starting to see this in Dolly.

31:16And chat GPT seems to be getting ahead of this because of all the incoming lawsuits. Check this out. I started asking Dolly to make me Star Wars characters of Bulldogs, and I said, make a Jedi Bulldog. It did that, no problem. Then I asked it to make a version of this using and make a Darth Vader. And it said, I'm unable to generate images based on your request due to our content policy from other ideas and concepts you like to fulfill free to share. So I said, make me a cypher cat and it basically made me Darth Vader. And so it's very clear that the team over at OpenAI is now taking prompt engineering.

31:52You're like a clever prompt engineer then. Well, yeah, I got a round copy right here, right? And so it's very clear. But this shows how silly like all of this stuff is. This is just a drag coefficient on development of AI because and on users because now you've got to like word your prompt exactly the right way. Well, I think what they're doing is they know that Marvel and all the Disney characters, all the Star Wars characters They're very protective of their IP Disney is going to launch their own Dolly type stable diffusion product where you can do this put yourself on a Star Media Star Wars character It doesn't matter if they're good or not.

32:24It's their IP and so I mean, the fans can create their own artwork that's in the vein of like a Darth Vader, Amos They can but they can't do it commercially and what chat GPT and open I here is commercial because I pay 20 bottles a month to judge a P .T. So that's what you're missing. A fan of course can make a Jedi cat. Well, all I know is you played this like way back video from episode 15 or something. No, no, no. It's the reason that we're from episode 115 as if you're not going to think of it. I know you guys never want to think of it. I mean, it turns out that Freeberg totally blew up your case.

32:55He didn't blow up my case. I will be right and continue to be right. Okay. Now let's go to something we can all agree with. We're definitely not striking the segment. I liked it. Let's go. No, no, no, no, no, it's spicy. We like a little spicy here. I didn't even have to refute you. Freeberg just did a little beautiful. No, I mean, listen, okay. You came in, you thought you had the goods. Admit it. No. He's like playing this way back video from like 45 episodes ago. I finally got him. I finally got him. I was finally right about something. You hadn't claimed you'd never used the word steamroll.

33:21I would have never played the clip. Oh my god. I have some life footage. I just want to go through it and just talk about your spanket. I should make it. Anyways, yeah. So guys, there's this copyright thing. I want to, I, okay, let me, let me just refrain. Let me just start that again. Okay, you know copyright issues are okay. Hold on. What listen? There's this thing I want to talk about copyright, which hold on. What are you doing? Oh, these are joys. It's a super popular. It's a just down to the NBA last. When you do a deal for, Oh, okay, hold on. Okay, you write something and you want to get, okay, hold on.

33:57Everybody that writes gets a chance. Okay, hold on. I mean, if I could get up that high, I would miss the dunk and still be listening about it. He's about to steam roll. Thank you. I try. Let's keep it. I'm sure you can. Everything. Come on. Jake, how you teed up the way back clip of yourself? You teed up the way back clip of yourself. So you brought the deny it and I just brought this on yourself. Yeah. But you tried it. Don't get it. It didn't work. Okay. Okay. Okay. Every bit has to take the piss out of me. I don't know. I'm seeing a trend. No. Okay. Oh, don't. Here we go. Don't bring up the way that lips unless you have a clean don't all right.

34:36Here we go. Don't bring it to the hoop and then break it. Break it. Break it. To receive it turned out the credit card was stolen. Here we go. Here we go. You know who actually deserves credit for admitting that he was wrong. I will get to look at you. You'll get your flat. You'll get your flat. Okay. Hold on. Your bed needs coming. Here we go. Great transition. Great transition. Great transition. Here we go. Elon versus the FCC. Another government agency is now targeting Elon. This is a little bit complicated, but let me explain. On Tuesday, the FCC rejected Starlink's application for 900 million in subsidies for rural broadband Starlink originally won these back in 2020 when they agreed to provide high -speed internet to 640 ,000 rural homes across 35 states funding would have come from the RD OF rural digital opportunity fund.

35:32I guess the government is paying for expanding broadband services in rural areas and Starlink obviously is perfect for that. It's actually the only solution for this really. She can't run fiber to these locations. So the FCC found that Starlink quote had failed to meet it's burdened to be entitled to those funds. And here's the quote, FCC has a responsibility to be a good steward of limited public funds, meant to expand access to rural broadband, not fund applicants that failed to meet basic program requirements, Brendan Carr, one of the FCC's commissioners, dissented from the agency's decision, and he did not hold back.

36:11Last year, so the quote, after Elon acquired Twitter, President Biden gave federal agencies a green light to go after him. Today's decision certainly fits the Biden administration's pattern of regulatory harassment. This is a decision that cannot be explained by any objective application of law facts or policy, car went on to explain how his decision was made and why it's unprecedented. Instead of applying nutritional FCC standards to the record evidence, which would have compelled the agency to confirm Starlinks $885 million award. The FCC denied it on the grounds that Starlink is not providing high -speed internet service to all these locations today.

36:48As noted, the FCC's milestone does not kick in until 2025. Let me toss you, SACs, thoughts on the Biden hits what going up to. I mean, I can't remember anything quite like this. This is absolutely extraordinary. I mean, you have a sitting member of the FCC telling us that the FCC is engaging in political retaliation. He sits on the board of the five commissioners, the FCC. They just canceled an $885 million dollar contract to Starlink. What was that contract for to provide rural internet service? Starlink is the only company that has that capability today. It's the only one that has that capability, if you look forward a few years.

37:25It is by far the best and providing broadband from space, which is the best way to get into these rural areas. So what did the commission do? Well, they cherry picked, they took speed test snapshots from two cherry pick moments in time. And so even that probably was not an accurate reflection of where Starlink is today, but they then said, based on those snapshots, that Starlink would not be able to meet the standards in three years. So remember, the requirements that they're saying that Starlink violated don't even have to be met for three years. So somehow they're saying that Starlink will not get through in three years or preemptively judging the service to meet a standard that is not even required to meet today.

38:06And nobody else is even close to meeting the standard. So Elon's response to this was, guys, okay, if you're going to cancel the contract for us, like just save the money because the competitors that you're giving it to have even less of a service than we do. Yeah. So just like save the taxpayer of the money, but they're not doing that. So this is really remarkable. And what Kars said here is that the Biden administration is choosing to prioritize its political ideological goals at the expense of connecting Americans. we can't it should reverse course. This is now a part of a pattern of the federal government harassing Elon and his companies and it all stems from Biden at that press conference saying we got to look at the sky.

38:49You know like Tony soprano yeah we got to look at the sky you know what I'm talking about. I mean it was like and so since that's a nice restaurant you got to be terrible if anything ever happened to it. Yeah Jake how you do the impression. You can't do it. And any event. So Biden says in this press conference, we got to look at this guy. And since then, they've investigated Tesla for supposedly building a glass house, which I didn't know was a crime. That's amazing. SpaceX, which is partially a defense contractor, was sued by the DOJ because they were hiring too many Americans and didn't, they weren't hiring enough refugees into sensitive national security roles that they would surely be sued for doing it the other way.

39:30And now they've canceled a contract for SpaceX having the best service in the space, but somehow missing a goal that they're not required to meet for three years. This is harassment, it's transparent. And the question I have is do we want to live in a country where the government can engage in this kind of naked political retaliation against its critics? And I have to say, you know, there was a time in America where Nixon was roundly attacked for having this quote -unquote enemies list, where supposedly, you know, he had made a list of all his enemies and DiorS was auditing them. Okay, we are so far beyond that point and the media isn't interested at all and no one's really interested unless you like what Elon's doing.

40:16But if you don't, you know, if you're on the opposite side of the political spectrum as Elon, you don't care. And there's nobody who's willing to say in a neutral way that political retaliation is not a part of our system. I mean, for you, we have a presidential candidate running specifically saying, I am your retribution. I mean, this is something that has to stop across all of politics. Nobody should be using their political power to do any retribution against anybody. They should be operating the government efficiently and the best interests of all Americans. To be honest, okay, so maybe I don't like that rhetoric from Trump.

40:47I don't think it's helpful. But what do Trump ever do? That's in this league. I mean, everything they accused Trump of doing, the fascism, the retribution, all that kind of stuff. It seems to me the Biden administration is doing here. Yeah. Well, I mean, he says he's going to do it. He says that the first thing is going to do is go after journalists and do you think Trump did no retribution when he was in office? I mean, we have to look through every single issue. You can't do one. It's interesting. I mean, one doesn't come off the top. I had I'm trying to remember if he ever said I'm going to go after this person or that person.

41:18I don't remember an instance of him saying he said lock her up. That was in the never did it. Trump was all talk in this respect. He didn't actually do it. Yes. This is what Peter Till said, like, you know, his great quote about him, like, just look at his actions, not what he says. He say, buraddles, and he says he's going to do retribution against everybody, but, you know, then he doesn't. So, Tramon, even talking about Trump in this context is a deflection, Jake Cal. The action is being taken by the Biden administration. They've now weaponized multiple federal agencies to go after Elon. On these cases, that seemed transparently trumped up a glass house, not hiring enough refugees to national security roles.

41:53And now, it's obviously a contract for Starlink, which is by far the best rule internet service. How do you even justify it? These cases on their face are absurd. I'm not just about 100%. I'm in a 100 % agreement. You think there's, this is politically motivated harassment of Elon by the Biden administration? 100%. He said it. He said it and he didn't invite him to the EV summit. So you just take Biden at his actions. If you don't invite, if you don't invite Elon to the EV summit, it's obvious that he's got it in for this guy. And now it's obvious he's told people to investigate him and harass him, it's obvious.

42:27So why do you think they don't like him? Why do you think Biden doesn't like him? Why doesn't he like him? Cause he's non -union, it's obvious. That's the beginning and end of it. I'm sure the freedom of speech things and Twitter doesn't help, but this predates. Biden is a union guy and he will not have non -union people. He will not support non -union people. he is bought and sold by the unions. That's 100 % in Elon said that. That may be how it started, but I think you're underwriting the free speech aspect. Oh, I said it could have to do with that, but it's definitely, that's the number one issue.

43:00And more importantly, you're saying enabling dissenting voices, strongly dissentant voices, right? Absolutely, I think that from the get go, they have sought to exercise control over the Twitter, formerly Twitter now, X platform, because it is the town square for political speech. They succeeded. They succeeded. The FBI, everybody. They had total control of it until Elon somehow bought the company, which was not in their plans. Frankly, that was just a fluke. I mean, that was something that Elon did out of the blue because he cares a lot about free speech. And he opened up the Twitter jails and, you know, stopped the censorship.

43:34And open up the Twitter files, we found out that this was not just a private company acting on its own. It was being directed or encouraged by... Yeah, they were giving him list of... tweets saying, hey, these tweets probably by me. I think that's a service. Yeah. And the FBI acting is the quote unquote belly button of the whole federal government directing all these takedown requests, totally on America. I think that the pattern of actions more than anything mandates that Biden and his team actually have to address publicly why it is not retribution. The absence of doing that at this point is going to be more damaging to them than just letting things go on and claiming down the road, hey, this is all part of the normal courts of business.

44:19Now the guy does. Oh, why would they address it? Why do they have to address the media as a whole to the accountable? The media doesn't report it. The media pretended like the Twitter files and everyone happened. Remember that? Zero mainstream media coverage of the Twitter files. Zero mainstream media coverage of these retaliatory lawsuits. Why would the Biden administration need to explain itself? Why would they even talk about it? The fix is in. Well, I mean, now the question is being, I think, this is - first from one side of the political spectrum, which is precisely the reason why I see this thing.

44:49Precisely the reason why they're so upset with Elon with opening up free speech on Twitter because they had total control of the public discourse until he did that. Did you see that thing this morning where somebody called out the New York Times for selectively editing what Hunter Biden said to make it more broad. Broad? Did you see that, Jason? Yeah, he basically said my father has not financially been involved in my businesses and the New York Times took out the word Financially to make it more broad to say he's not been involved in my business He was involved in his business really yeah There's a clip where they show the article and they show and then they show his interview and the interview is very clear He says it but the New York Times headline emits the word and doesn't doesn't put it in a bracket so that it shows that it was edited it shows that that was the quote.

45:39Can you pull it off? Do you have that thing? It's so crazy. Let me find it. That's crazy. I mean, I would like to think there's a possibility. This was a mistake, but man, it's pretty bad. I mean, this is really bad by the New York Times. And they got to figure out who actually took that word out because it's pretty clear Biden was very involved in Hunter's businesses. And that's why he put that word financially in there because he was on, I think he's on all the documents and says being part of it and he's in the emails. He was a brand J .Kell. Oh, there it is. Thank you, Nick. You're very good at finding these things there.

46:14Okay. So if you look on the left, that's the article in the New York Times. And it's clear that that was the quote. And then if you play it on the right, it's actually what he said. Let me state as clearly as I can. My father was not financially involved in my business. Wow. Yeah. And then the quote says, Let me stay as clear as I can. My father was not involved in my business. Now, if in journalism you could put an ellipsis after involved, you know, three dots, but why would you do that? This is like breaking very basic journalistic standards. This is my point. There's like a format, right? When you edit out a word like that.

46:52Yeah. You put it out a word if it was superfluous and you wanted to have a tighter quote, you have the person said, ah, you can take that out. And if you were taking out a long quote, you put three dots and then you would show that you cut the quote, there was something in between and then you went to that. In the case of something this important, you would never take out a keyword like that. This is just journalism 101. So I mean, if this happens, man, it is, it's the keyword in the sentence, by the way, it's the keyword in the sentence. It is the keyword in the sentence. So if the person took it out, man, who took it out?

47:26And this is the problem with the New York Times is they bury their corrections. They need to, and this is back to accountability. You're saying, Freeberg, the Biden administration has to explain why they excluded Elon from the EV summits. And the New York Times needs to explain why they did this. Where else, you know, the mind wanders that there's some conspiracy going on here or targeting. And I wonder if they changed it. Well, here's the live story. Is it changed in the story? Did they change it yet? Look, broadwater. I mean, look, broadwater. Is that a name from Central Casting? That's not a real name, is it?

47:56I don't know. Let's say they post a correction. Oh, here we go. correction. An earlier version of this article misquoted Hunter Biden. He said, my father was not financial, it was not my father. So the only room I have here is if the person was live transcribing it maybe and they left it out. But this is too important to not have it a fact checker go through it and to have to get called out on it to fix it, it just shows how far the time. This is the equivalent though, Jake, how the putting on the front page. I did not kill that person and then a day later buried in page a 12 I actually did kill that person.

48:28I mean if you the question at the bottom of the story is good. Everybody sees the front page very very people you would agree with me very very few people see the correction. In the old days they would put the correction on like a two a three of the paper and it would be small and be at the bottom. In the digital age you put the correction at the bottom of the article so it's a little bit better but the truth is most people don't go to the bottom of the article. So there's an argument to put corrections at the top of the article. But journalists don't want to admit when they're wrong. I think that I saw a list of all of the organizations investigating Elon and what was surprising was how broad some of these organizations felt that they had a mandate to look into him.

49:10So there was like, I want to say Nick, maybe you can find this on Twitter, but they had a list of them. And it was like the Bureau of Land Management investigation. I mean, it just makes no sense. Like it just does not smell right. In fairness, Elon is involved in many, many very important projects. So there would be a lot of agencies that speaks to over regulation. And then you have to drill down and say, okay, when are they actually targeting him? And so that's going to be a lot of partying. Fishing wildlife, you know, health and human housing. I mean, it's a list goes on. You might be able to see some oration.

49:44Efficient in the wrong pond or what? No, I think my understanding of it is at starbase, there's some estuaries or something. And there is a lot of estuaries. I mean, yes, we protect animals and whatever. This is something that happens all over the country where, and California is actually probably the leader in this. But I think some crabs might have got burned, not in a barbecue, but by the rocket. I mean, literally that, and then this is, this speaks to what risk are we willing to take to make progress as humanity? Freeberg remember we had this discussion about self -driving cars? Like if getting to Mars and being multi -planetary, kill some crabs, I think we should be okay with that.

50:26In fact, if it decimated, I mean, it's not decimated, but let's just say 100 square miles got decimated by getting to Mars on planet Earth. But you'd make that trade off, right? Yeah, it's a, I mean, this is the same standard, I think. I think I feel around, if there's a mouse infestation in my house, I'm not going to let them I live in my house even though I'm completely ethically against killing animals, killing animals to eat when I have other options, I'm against. And I think animal testing and medical applications, I have a totally different standard than I think what is standard in the market today.

51:00So for me, it's like a pretty sensitive topic because my ethics are don't kill animals unless absolutely necessary. And the question is, what is the definition of necessary? And so these sorts of points that you're making about, you know, if it gets all humans to Mars, that might be a trade -off worth making for some of the crabs. I don't, you know, it's like, probably hard to understand the analogy here. Are you saying that you launched the mouse? The rocket may have killed the mouse. The regulator is on the house. Wait, what's the who's the mouse and who's the house? The house is the rocket ship.

51:31Clearly the mouse is the mouse. an house, right? Yeah. Yeah. Let's blow up this quote from Brendan Carter is the FCC commissioner. I thought this was amazing. His list is incredible. This is the FCC commissioner. He said he said the DOJ FAA FTC NLRB SDNY and FWS. As I guess, that's fisher wildlife have all taken action. The FCC now joins them. Man, that's incredible. Yeah. It's a little bit nuts. Look at that Biden quote where I didn't actually know about the second part. I knew about the first part where he says we got to take a look at this guy. But then he was out of this guy. And President Biden responded, there's a lot of ways.

52:10There's a lot of ways to get to somebody. Yeah, it's like 20s, I can get to you. You might be able to get to me. I might go to you and maybe you watch your back. You know, and else Biden said there's a lot of ways is when he was talking about the Nord Stream pipeline and he said that pipeline is not going to move forward. And then they said, yeah, but the press reset him. Yeah, but that's that's like a German Russian project like how what's your involvement? He said we got ways. There are a lot of ways we got ways. Wow. Okay, so on the counterpoint, obviously Elon has several pretty sprawling business there.

52:49He has self -driving cars. Right. And they push, they push the envelope on, you know, where there's an existing regulatory framework, same with going to Mars, right, same with transmitting internet services, wireless communications, like, you know, there is a regulatory framework for all of these businesses and he's on the bleeding edge and typically beyond the framework to some degree. So I think it's like worth acknowledging at least that there's an, a necessity of scrutiny and involvement in these agencies given that they do have regulatory authority and responsibility over these various businesses and he's well beyond where anyone else is in each of them.

53:22So I just want to acknowledge that. Hold on, let me respond to that. Yeah. He's well beyond where other people are in his industry in terms of innovation. He's the first to acknowledge, so I've heard him say this many times, that he's in highly regulated industries and they've got massive compliance programs at Tesla and SpaceX and all these different companies. What we're judging these regulatory agencies on is not that there's a need to regulate Elon's companies within the framework of their industries, but rather the specific actions that are being brought. Remember, DOJ suing SpaceX for not hiring enough refugees.

54:01Tesla being sued on this glass house business, whatever that is. Those are voluntary actions. In a FCC cancelling a contract. Three years. Three years. Three years before they even need to judge that contract, whether that contract is meant. 100 % of things that happened this week, which I think is important along this vein, is that the IRS is in charge of making sure that you can claim the $7 ,500 EV tax credit for cars. And a lot of us that have been looking at this issue, the way that they break the EV tax credit is in half. And part of it is about where the materialist source and part of it has to do with the total sum of certain components of the car and how much of those are made in the US, et cetera, okay?

54:47And it was presumed just based on the trend that Tesla would lose half the credit, keep half the credit. And in a bit of a surprising move, the IRS came out and said the whole thing, we're not going to acknowledge anymore. So Tesla had to go and put on the website that the credit ends as of December 31st. So I would add the IRS to this list as well. That's so crazy. So I've got to be investigated. I like Freiburg's suggestion that prove to us that you're not doing this at this point, because it's pretty clear that it is happening. And it's just good luck, good luck getting them to do that. Just on the on that EV subsidy, you know, one of the perverse things about this is that the administration is putting the thumb on the scales against Elon in favor of these less innovative competitors who have worse products.

55:41So like Elon said, if you want to cancel our contract for Starlink to provide this rural broadband, that's fine to save taxpayers the money. But by all means don't then give them money to these other services. I can't deliver. What's the point of that? And same thing on the electric cars. I mean the subsidy is going to these other car companies that make worse products. Yeah, totally. This is the key point. The the fact is all of those people who just had their starling canceled through the government, I Guarantee you they will buy starling because it's the best product. So irony of ironies They're just gonna go spend 60 70 80 bucks a month to put their own starlings and like everybody else around the world who lives really.

56:20I have Starlink one more thing to add. They under pressure from regulators, they announced a recall on Tuesday of two million cars to fix some of the autopilot software. Yeah, but that's an over -the -air update. So the press went crazy about that, right? No, no, no. What I'm saying is if you read the article, that over -the -air update is specifically because of, again, how it's written regulatory pressure to change how the software or behave, some tuning in some edge cases. My point is that one could guess that there is an attempt here to kind of do the death by a thousand cuts approach, right?

56:57So the drip, drip water torture of just like a thing over here, a thing over here, a thing over here, a thing over here. Eventually companies can get distracted and misfire. And so the question I do think is like, does it make us better off if all of these that'll tiki -taki foot faults are enforced by the government. I think we all know what the answer is. We have an example that Microsoft got so distracted by their court cases that the company went sideways for a decade. Well, but I think there was a lot of good bases for that particular entity, that was an entity trust case and Microsoft clearly had them in Opli.

57:34Just on the recall thing, I did see that story at the top of Drudge or whatever last week, whereas it said, every Tesla has to be recalled. And when I see the word recall, I think that means you got to bring it to the dealership and get like some part swapped out. But that's not what happened. You know, well, so what's so interesting is they refuse in these articles, I can show you the New York Times version of it. They refuse to write that it's actually an OTA update. To your breaking news, I don't know if you guys saw this, but a billion five iPhones were just recalled for the 17 .2 update. So everybody's gonna have to bring their iPhones in.

58:061 .5 billion iPhones were called. I'm gonna bring it to the store. Yeah, you gotta bring it to the store and then they give you this new journal app. I don't know if you got it in the latest update, but Apple made a journaling app so that you can have more at - That's a recall. Yeah, that's a recall. Yeah, it's a total recall. All right, listen, now we keep the red meat going. Sax is cooking with oil. Alex Jones, the controversial conspiracy commentator of InfoWorse fame is back on Twitter after Elon did a poll. He got two million people to respond asking if he should be reinstated 70 % said yes.

58:37Of course, Jones encouraged his fans to vote in this poll. So I'm not sure how scientific it is. For background, Twitter permanently banned Jones in 2018 after accusing him of posting direct threats of violence and hate speech. It already received bands from Apple Facebook and YouTube is pretty much the number one person to be deplatformed. As you know, Jones was ordered to pay $1 .5 billion to the families of eight Sandy Hook victims. This was across two cases in Texas and Connecticut. And here is Jones in his own words on the Sandy Hook parents. Sandy Hook, it's got inside job written all over it.

59:15Sandy Hook is a synthetic, completely fake with actors in my view manufactured. I couldn't believe it at first, the new town kids. Oh, they take them, put them in our face, tell us their names, who they were. I heard an ad this morning on the radio, Bloomberg paid for it locally, going, I dropped Billy off and watched him go around the corner. And he never came back all because of the guns. Won't you just turn your guns in from the sun? Why'd you do it to him, gun owners? Forgive my language, but that guy. Okay, there it is, folks. We have a **** that guy, but let me answer him. Unfortunately not, but I absolutely cannot stand that.

1:00:00That is just like heart -wrenching, like evil, awful, spewing out of his mouth. And he still, you know, should have a right to speak, but man, that guy. I was never a big rire. Part of it was just my defense mechanism. And I remember Sandy Hook because I had just become a parent. I had, I think, two kids by that point. And I was uncontrollably crying when that happened. And it was the first time I realized how you change as a parent and you just develop this empathy. And then you realize how precious kids' lives are. And I've become more and more of a cryer as my kids have grown older. And I really appreciate that what my kids have done for me.

1:00:50So when I hear him talk like that, I, yes, he has a right to say what he wants, but he is a complete piece of ****. Yeah. Okay. So let's get into this very difficult question and sack. I don't want to force you to defend, you know, one of those horrible humans. I think we can all agree. Well, my position is pretty similar with the other guy's said, which is what he said was ODS, however, that doesn't necessarily mean he should be censored. We have standards, but we have first and moment standards around this stuff. I agree with that. So first of all, me back up. I mean, I didn't even really know who Alex Jones was.

1:01:25I mean, I only knew him because of the controversy. I've never actually listened to a show. I'm not really interested in what he has to say. I do think that if you're going to play this clip of his mistake going back many years, you should supplement it by playing a clip of what he says now. And what he says now is he's apologized. He's admitted he made a mistake. He basically bought into a conspiracy theory. But it wasn't just him saying it apparently he had some people on the show who I don't know if they were purported experts or what but they were making a case that the whole sandy hook thing was a hoax and it was being done to basically you know get people's guns.

1:02:04I mean look it's nutty stuff I'm not defending it in any way but he explained that he bought into that into that theory or hoax or whatever and he thinks it's a terrible mistake and he's apologized for it. And the question is, are you gonna have a lifetime ban on somebody for saying things that were wrong and odious when they have now apologized? And for me, it's not about Alex Jones. It's about censorship. Remember, when this case happened way back in 2018, it was really hard to defend keeping this guy on the platform in light of what he had said and done, because everyone's reacting very emotionally to it.

1:02:43And it was people like defenders of free speech like Len Greenwald who said that listen if you take Alex Jones out now if you have a permanent ban It will basically be a slippery slope and it will create a precedent and other people will get banned and sure enough just two years later Twitter was banning people like Jay Bauder Chariah stand for doctor for saying dissident things about COVID that turned out to be completely correct. Marie authored the Great Burntin Declaration, talking about how lockdowns wouldn't work and so on. And so even within two years of this decision around Alex Jones, the censorship was totally out of control.

1:03:22And so I think the people who warned us that Alex Jones would become a slippery slope ended up being completely correct. To me, that's the symbolism of the restoration of Alex Jones's account. It's not endorsing what he did. It's not saying that what he said wasn't odious. I mean, look, again, I have zero interest in even listening to the guy. But the point is that free speech does requires to put up with people who are wrong, people who are even hateful sometimes. And stating misinformation. People who put out misinformation. That's what free speech requires as to do. And if you want a different standard, it's going to become a precedent for a lot of censorship that you don't like.

1:04:05I agree with SACs. The only place where I disagree with SACs is on Twitter not having a right to do this as a private enterprise. I think Twitter had a decision to make on what kind of editorial liation they wanted to do with the content on their platform, on their product. And they made a choice. I don't think that I think it was the wrong choice personally. And we've talked about this in the past. I think it's great that Elon's making a different choice and catering to a different audience, perhaps, with a different product that has more open speech. But that's not a government -free speech mandate.

1:04:41That's a private enterprise mandate. And I do believe in the right to free speech. I think it's a little bit ironic to say that it's inappropriate when someone says something that is misinformation because it's incorrect or unprovable when we have an entire group of people that believe in something called religion. And much of religion is based on this concept of faith and belief without necessarily hard proof or evidence. And we allow religion, religious speech, you know, in many forums without saying, hey, that's misinformation or hey, it's not true or hey, it doesn't meet the standards of exor wires, ease, scientific if they can assessment or understanding.

1:05:23And so I think it's just worth acknowledging that this whole concept that someone has to ultimately be the police of the truth and the police of fact and the police of information is gonna lead to a bad place. And I'd rather have more free speech with people saying misinformation and saying awful, putrid things than one where a few people get to decide what everyone gets to hear. So as much as I absolutely despise has got to have. You may be right that Twitter as a private company had the right as our laws currently exist to decide who they were going to suspend in ban from the site. However, once that censorship power was created, it attracted powerful entities from our government who wanted to co -opt and use that power.

1:06:02That's what we saw in the Twitter files with the 80 FBI agents sending take down requests. That's what happens is when you create the censorship power, people will be people abuse it, but more to the point, it's such a tempting power to use by people in authority, right? It's like the Ring of Power. Those tools that Twitter created, it's like they released a fair amount or something that attracted all these powerful shadowy actors from the federal government in the FBI and all these agencies. And so that is why I think it's just very dangerous for even private companies to create these since supergeams is that they can be co -opted and abused.

1:06:42Being co -opted and abused is the issue. I don't think that the issue is their choice in what kind of content they wanna put out. You can go to the Netflix kids version of Netflix and kids they control what content is on Netflix and they provide a different version than what they provide to adults. And I think like editorializing the content platform that you're making available, whether it's user generated or paid for or whatever, is a totally reasonable like approach to running a business, a content business, the point you're making is the right one, which is the point at which you allow government agencies to intervene and have control and manipulation over private citizens, either generated content is where I think it crossed the line.

1:07:20So I don't disagree with you on that point. May I ask to clarify in question, Sarah? Because I'm curious how you would handle this. If you were the CEO of X, formerly known as Twitter, would you have reinstated Alex Jones, yes or no? and then number two, if Alex Jones then, as a new member of the community who's been reinstated and forgiven, because he apologized, and then he did this again. This exact same thing again, with another school shooting with parents, would you remove him for the platform? I don't know that these are yes or no questions. What I would say is that I've written, what I think should be a speech policy for social media platforms in a blog post I did several years ago.

1:08:00And what I said is that I would take first moment case law and operationalize it for Social media platforms. There are nine categories of speech that the Supreme Court has said are not protected speech because they're dangerous in some way So for example, and slightment of violence is one of them, you know harassment is one of them. So I would use Well, this clearly falls under those two Well, people, his fans went and knocked on the door. His fans did. His fans did. So as I understand the whole thing, the whole thing, what happened is he said the whole thing was a hoax. Obviously, it wasn't true.

1:08:36He paid a huge price for that. His fans then, some of his crazy fans went and harassed the parents, which obviously is not right, but according to him, he didn't, and I don't know that anyone's shown that he did that. I don't think he encouraged that. It just happened. I barely got some on his fans. Well, of course he does. It's a conspiracy show. So knowing it's a conspiracy show, knowing that incitement of violence is one of your criteria, if his fans, after him saying it's fake, then went to the house, knocked on the door, and asked the parent to see little Suzy because you know she's alive.

1:09:14Would you kick him off the platform? Listen, the barrenton declaration. That's what happened. The Burnt and Declaration was declared to be a conspiracy show. The idea that COVID originated in a lab was considered a conspiracy show. I don't think you can pre -judge in advance that a show is quote unquote, factually wrong conspiracies. As I understand it, again, I haven't watched this show but I did watch a clip by Joe Rogan who provided something of a character reference for Alex Jones. I don't know if Nick can find that and play that. It was actually quite good. And what Rogan said is, look, I've known Alex Jones for like 30 years.

1:09:51He's had problems with alcohol abuse, substance abuse, whatever. He's had mental health issues and he's acknowledged and sometimes he goes off the rails. At the same time, he's also been way ahead of the curve on certain things. For example, he told me about the Epstein Island, like 10 years before the story broke. I don't know how he figured that out, but somehow he did. Now, that was a conspiracy theory until it was proven true. And it probably would have been a good thing for the public if that story had come out a lot sooner so that it could have been shut down a lot sooner So I don't think you can just judge in advance that somebody is a conspiracy theorist and basically blackball them from the internet One other data point I want to bring up is that is something that Elon mentioned is that He looked at the Twitter tools the admin tools To seek to look at Alex Jones's account and the third strike he received that that caused him to be banned from the Twitter platform by the former management was he actually insulted a reporter, which was a very borderline case.

1:10:52So, you know, the things that you're saying that he was banned for a war and even the reason he was banned. Yeah, no, that's true. I mean, I think, yeah, so that's why I was framing it to you as, you know, and this is at the issue that I think, and maybe what some people are missing here, a mentally ill person like himself, if he's admitted to mental illness and substance abuse, when they go on these tirades or they go off their meds or whatever it is or they're just evil and they do this for ratings to make money, it starts to cause real world harm. People start showing up on these people's doorsteps.

1:11:24And so then are you going to wait 10 years for the courts to do this $1 .5 billion judgment and then make the decision while real world harm is occurring? And if you own the platform, my believe is you have a higher standard, obviously believe and freedom of speech, he can make his own website. But if you own the platform and the platform enables him to reach a large number of people and those people are being harmed and parents' doors are being knocked on, demanding to see their children because Alex Jones said that child is still alive and they're trying to take our guns. And he knows his fans are crazy.

1:11:53There's responsibility that comes from it and there's responsibility that comes with owning a platform like this. I know Elon's going full freedom of speech, but I would be very careful about this. Steve Scalise, the House Republican whip was shot by a crazy birdie Sanders supporter. Does that blame go to Bernie Sanders? I think we have to separate you. If Bernie Sanders, hold on, there is a legal standard for incitement. Okay. There's a legal standard for judging that. You're saying that these crazy people were incited, but there is actually a legal way of determining that. I don't think that's been proven.

1:12:25I would do a common sense one, which is, do we see real world happening? I would just use common sense. Do we see real world happening? Okay, real world is happening. We own the platform, we need to stop this, which is what happened. That's a judgment standard, right? Yeah, I would make the judgment. If I was to see how I'd make the judgment and I would make the judgment based on, you know, the courts are going to take years to adjudicate this and it's my platform. I don't want this happening. I would operationalize a content moderation policy based on first -moment case law. You're right that you can't always wait for the courts to adjudicate it.

1:12:56There's going to be judgment calls. I would have been fine, I think, with the suspension of Alex Jones in that context, because it does seem pretty egregious and he's apologized for it. The question is whether there should be lifetime bands. And I'm pretty much, I think I'm against lifetime bands. I'm okay with timeouts. I'm okay with suspensions for egregious behavior. When somebody has apologized, they've, I mean had to pay, I mean, I think he's been bankrupted. He's had to pay all these fines. I think he's paid his price to society, so to speak. And he's admitted he was wrong. The question is, you saw the Lifetime Band.

1:13:34It seems to me he's acknowledged this mistake. If he doesn't like this again, then you can suspend him. Maybe you do the band, but I do believe in giving a few second chances, and I'm just sort of viscerally against the Lifetime Baning people. I don't like the standard of what can be deemed dangerous speech, because I think that as SAC said, there's a clear way to measure whether someone's inciting violence or inciting harm versus saying speech that can be deemed dangerous in some contexts and then not be deemed dangerous after the fact. COVID vaccine conversations are the perfect example, telling people that there's health risks associated with taking a vaccine in the period when everyone was worried about a pandemic, killing us all was deemed too dangerous to allow.

1:14:21And after the fact, it wasn't dangerous because there were suddenly clear evidence that there may be some costs and benefits associated with the vaccines. And so I really don't like this standard of dangerous speech. In fact, I think that the biggest changes that are necessary in society initially start with dangerous speech, and then they eventually become true and then they become a standard and then things change. My repeated calls for reduction in fiscal spending at the federal level and lack of accountability and fiscal spending at the federal level by some measure could be deemed dangerous speech and an incitement against the government.

1:14:55But really, my point is to call out the importance of this issue. And after the fact, I may be right, I may be wrong, and I need to be able to say that. I think it's critically important to say those sorts of things. And I think that other people in their own domains will find other things that are critically important to say. And that would be deemed by some standard to be dangerous at the time. So as much as I have great disdain for certain people and certain things that they may say, I do think that what might be deemed dangerous speech is a critical element of the kind of Progressivism that's allowed the United States to prosper.

1:15:30I think it was dangerous speech To promulgate the false conspiracy theory that Trump was an agent of Putin I mean that was in the steel dossier. They basically said that Putin had compromise on Trump and Trump was basically working for The Cremeland. I mean he was a traitor I mean what if there were people out there who tried to assassinate the president on the grounds that we can't have a trader in the White House. That was a private document, right? That wasn't like a public talk show. No, the talk show theory was absolutely leaked during the campaign. You make it my point exactly, it's leaked, right?

1:16:01So this is like a private document by somebody. I edit it. But then it was printed by BuzzFeed. And then once it was in the echo chamber, it was enlisted by the mainstream media. So the idea that like only people like Alex Jones promote conspiracy theories, the mainstream media promotes a lot of conspiracy theories and some of those theories, if acted upon by crazy people would be just as dangerous as the things that Alex Jones has said. You know, we're in hypothetical and but actually I think you and I are not too far apart. You wanting to take these harms and operationalize them is sort of what I'm saying.

1:16:33And in each of these cases it's a judgment call. And this is where I think, you know, in many ways I'm proud of what you want is doing and saying like freedom of speech is an absolute thing and that's what the platform is going to be his right to do it, it's his platform. And so I'm fine with that. I would do something different if it was my platform. Everybody's different. You know, everybody can take their stance. I would have some basic humanity as my stance. And I'll be willing to give up a little freedom of speech in my restaurant in my cafe in order to have it be more delightful for everybody there.

1:17:05I wouldn't go as far as banning people talking about COVID. But yeah, if somebody was trying to claim that parents of murdered children were liars and actors, that would be fine for me to say, yeah, no good. And then, of course, there's Kanye. So, you know, Elon banned Kanye. That was under his realm. And this is what Kanye said. And I think this falls into hate speech and real world harm. I'm a bit sleepy tonight. But when I wake up, I'm going death, death, Khan three on Jewish people. The funny thing is, I actually can't be anti -Semitic because black people are actually Jew. Also, you guys have toy with me and tried blackball anyone who ever opposes your agenda.

1:17:38So when you see this tweet, Would you have banned him sacks or is that a long time ban? I'm not a given him a timeout I think his family wanted him to get a timeout because it he was having an episode I certainly wouldn't give him a lifetime ban give me your something look I don't really know this Alex Jones guy. I certainly don't know my person. I don't even listen to him It's not a show I'm interested in even now. I only know I like knowing the truth I like hearing facts and I don't believe that factual information like the lab leak theory should be censored by labeling it a conspiracy theory.

1:18:13Yeah. For example, but what I would say about Alex Jones is there is some humanity in allowing him a forum to apologize for what he did, an acknowledges mistake, and explain why he thought what he did and why he was wrong. And that's what he did on X. And I went on the Twitter spaces and I asked him a follow -up question which he wouldn't answer. I said, how have you changed your behavior? Yeah, but honestly, Jake, I was, because you can't do it. You can't bounding in in the last five minutes. I didn't get that. I'm asking him a bunch of questions about what he did, when it had already been covered at the top of the pod.

1:18:47And I listened to it, and he had not answered the question, how is your behavior changed? And so he doesn't want to talk about it. But the first half hour of relitigating Sandy Hook and you weren't aware of that, you weren't going to go over it again. It was the first 10 minutes. But he wouldn't answer questions on how he would change his behavior. And so I think that's one of the things I would want to see from him. and how have you changed your behavior and how you do shows? And I don't think he's answered that question anyway. We're gonna disagree on this one. Any final thoughts, Tremop as we wrap here?

1:19:14On this issue. The free speech litmus test is very simple. It's this exact thing. It's when the person that you dislike says the thing that you find very displeasing, what do you do? And I am a free speech absolutist on this. I just think it's a very slippery slope and I don't think we're very capable of making these delineations. And so I agree the right solution are timeouts. But lifetime bands, I think again, go down this path where human judgment gets involved and then it's about the person in charge and then it becomes a power play and then it eventually always gets corrupted. So I can hold two thoughts in my head.

1:19:52One, Alex Jones should be able to say what he thinks and two, it was disgusting and he should be ashamed of what he said. Yeah, you know, the bands doubling every time is probably a good precedent as well. So I mean, we should do it like we do at our poker game that finds go up. Yeah, foam penalty doubles. Expansible back off. I mean, you're gonna you're gonna put your phone down and play the goddamn game if it gets to 800 or 1600 because that's things a little bit. So there it is. Yeah, it totally does. But maybe that's the right solution Jason. It's like you have a finding mechanism somehow and it just like it increases.

1:20:26And so there's a financial penalty of nothing else as well as a time out when you violate these laws, at least that's a scalable way to solve the problem in a way that's hard to corrupt and gain. But if it goes down to the person to an individual or a group of people's judgments as we saw with the previous management of Twitter, I think it's going to be a very difficult problem. I don't think that those were bad people, but I think that they were led astray. Yeah, I mean, Nick, do you have that clip from Rogan? Because when I listened to this clip from Rogan, it did have an impact on what I thought because it does show.

1:21:02It does show the human complexity. And again, you're judging him based on the worst thing he ever did. And Rogan presents a more balanced viewpoint about this guy. Again, I have no dog in this hunt. I don't really care about Alex Jones, but I'm just saying that if we're going to sit in judgment of people, I think maybe we should have a more balanced for you because I mean it does buy us the conversation to play the clip at the worst thing you ever did. This play rugged for a second. I think it's interesting. Look at the way people look at Alex Jones now because Alex Jones has been on my podcast a few times.

1:21:33The people that have watched those podcasts think he's hilarious and they think that he definitely fucked up with that whole sandy hook thing but he's right more than he's wrong and he's not an evil guy. He's just a guy who's had some psychotic breaks in his life. He's had some genuine mental health issues that he's addressed. He's had some serious bouts of alcoholism, some serious bouts of substance abuse, and they've contributed to some very poor thinking. But if you know the guy, if you get to know him, like I have, I've known him for more than 20 years. And if you know him on podcasts, you realize like he is genuinely trying to unearth some things that are genuinely disturbing for most people.

1:22:20Like, is the guy that was telling me about Epstein's island decade ago, at least? Yeah. I mean, this platforming mentally ill people during an episode is a whole nother can of worms. I mean, I told this to Lex Reed when he had Kanye on during that episode. And I said, I think it's a very bad idea to spend two hours with somebody who's having an episode and sure enough, what did he do? More anti -Semitic insanity on his podcast. and I just told Lex, like leave the guy alone. It's not worth it. Let him get help. I think you have a point there, but that will be an argument for a temporary suspension on a ban in my opinion.

1:22:59Yeah. All right, SACs, in other news, something insane has happened on the internet. It's never happened before, but somebody has apologized for getting something wrong. This is breaking news, we're in year 34 of the internet. And somebody says, is it my wife? Is it my wife? No, she's never gotten anything wrong. I've been there for this whole relationship. She has been 100 out of 100 times correct. So you're just frustrating. It's so frustrating. I mean, she makes a mistake, well, no, but it hasn't happened yet. It's actually paradoxically same with my wife. She's been right for 22 years. No, my wife has been wrong four times and I've gotten three on voice memory.

1:23:39I taped them, I pulled out the phone and I'm like, hold on, I need you to say it again. Yeah. So I've gotten three on voice, But this because it's been only three did those three have something to do with deciding to marry you or to When with you and make children and start a life together. It's so frustrating. How can one person be so wrong? IE me all the time Well, I mean at least you're self -aware everybody loves self -aware chat God it's a new trend. We're on but yes, Nassim to lab public he admitted. We're gonna pull it up here sacks Here we go he publicly admitted that techno watermelon, that's your name, Sacks.

1:24:15That was his insult. I don't really understand the insult. I never understood either of that. I think he's saying your head is the size of a watermelon and that you're involved in technology. That's my interpretation. I don't think you have a melon head. Or does it mean like I'm green on the outside and right on the inside or something like somehow I'm supporting how I mean the sum or I don't really understand it, but. That has come up. Well listen, it's better than mine. I'm a psychotic enuramous. So he, he, he, I mean, I've never attracted that for some reason. not yet, not yet, but at some point I'm sure he would, but here it is folks.

1:24:44Well, you just said I can see that David Sacks is correct about the relative strength of the parties in the Ukraine war and I was wrong, all counts. Russia is not as weak as it seemed to have staying power. This means the settlement is likely outcome. Anyway, it's so rare on the internet for anyone to admit they were wrong. And what they usually do is, does memory hole at which is why I always like to produce receipts. I only do that for the people who strongly to announce me about something and then I end up being right. They never can see. It's not just about the fact that I was right. It's about the fact that they attacked me personally and they never come back and apologize or correct the record and Taleb did that.

1:25:26So kudos to him. I mean, I met when I read this. I was like, you know, like a senior. Yeah. I'm like, okay, what's the gotcha? It's going way for it. I thought I thought a trap door is going to open under my feet. I thought a cartoon piano was going to follow my head. I just I thought this can't be it and the bed up. That was it. So that was it. There it is. By the way, just I mean, the reason why I understood what was going to happen in this, you know, counteroffensive of why the war is not going to go as well as people thought. But it's not because I purport to be some sort of Ukraine expert or foreign affairs expert.

1:26:08I mainly just spent the time to figure out who the real experts were. And the real experts are never the people who the media tells you. You actually have to spend the time to look at people's track records. What they said in the past, did it come true or not? You know, it's basically a falsifiability standard. Look at what they predicted, look at what actually happened. And you can figure out who the real experts are. And that's what I did in the case of Ukraine. It was possible to figure out who were the foreign policy scholars who got this right who were the military bloggers Who are accurately reporting information and who are the ones who are basically putting out propaganda if you spend the time to do that on virtually any issue you can Effectively become an expert.

1:26:48It's a great point. That's really good point. Yeah Well, you have to you have to find your own process of finding the truth today because I don't think you can trust the journalists out there to do it You definitely can Yes, 100%. And by the way, as a VC, people say, well, what does a VC think? You know, in a way, like what VCs do is, when you get an incentive topic, you kind of go deep, you're trying to simulate a lot of information, you're trying to figure out who are the real experts in the space, so that those that people I should listen to, and then you develop a take. It's not the worst skill set in the world for doing a pod or tweeting out hot takes on Twitter.

1:27:20Again, I'm not saying I'm an expert. I'm just somebody who is independent minded enough to get the bottom of an issue without disrelying on what I'm supposed to believe. And I just try to figure out who the real experts are. All right. Producer Nick, are you there? You did a tweet about questions that people might want to have to ask the besties here as we wrap it this up. So we'll take two. You're two favorite questions, producer Nick. The law is on the Harvard board standing behind President Gay despite her transgressions. Okay. That's a good question. That's a very good question. That's a good one for Jamal.

1:27:48Here's what I'll say. I think that the Harvard board was probably in a really difficult position in the following way. You know, when you hire somebody and you realize that that person has some faults, you have three choices, right? One is to fire them. Two is to be unequivocal in their support. and three is to basically give a milk toast, CYA kind of a statement to give yourself time. The reason why I think that President Gay wasn't fired was probably because of the board for whatever reason didn't want to seem like they were a cowtowing to Bill Ackman and all the other people that were asking for her resignation.

1:28:40But what they didn't do is equally important. They may not have fired her, but what they also didn't do was come out with an unequivocal statement of support. I think it was kind of a little bit wishy -washy and acknowledging her mistakes, which seems to be a setup to allow her to basically make a couple more mistakes so that then they can fire her and they can all seem like they did the right thing. So I suspect that that's what happens. She probably won't be in that job any year from now. Or, you know, she kind of bottles along and in two or three years, she quote unquote retires to spend more time with her family.

1:29:15Anyone else want to get it on this? Yeah, I mean, I think this university president's debate has been a little bit of a roar shock test. And I've seen people that I generally agree with fall into one of two camps. Some see it as a free speech issue. Other people see it as a kind of woke double standards or DEI issue. I think for those who see as a free speech issue, they're emphasizing the motivations of people like Elise Daphonic, the person who asked the University President's the question in saying when she said, basically the question was, does your code of conduct allow calls for genocide of Jews?

1:29:51And their argument is that's a loaded question because there is not an epidemic on campus of people calling for genocide of Jews. And so this is basically all kind of an invented hysteria and the purpose of it is to suppress debate about this Israel -Hamas war in Gaza and its design to expand campus speech codes so that it's harder for Palestinian supporters to protest in favor of their cause. So that's one way of looking at it. My view on that is if it ends up being the case that Campus speech codes get expanded in that way. That'd be a bad thing. I don't think we need to restrict speech on campus.

1:30:35So I agree with them on that point. However, there's a different way of looking at this, which is the motivations of the University presidents in answering that question. And yes, it was a loaded question, but they flubbed the answer. And the question is why? Because as we talked about last week, if they were asked about calls for the murder of any other group, a racial group or friends, people or something like that. Asian people. Again, I don't think their answer would have been the same. And I do think that that comes back to the fact that they have a preconceived notion of which groups deserve protection and which ones don't.

1:31:09And that is a double standard. And I think anything we can do to get rid of that poisonous ideology that wants to treat people differently on campus, I think is a good thing. And so I support what Bill Akman is doing on that basis. But if Bill Akman goes too far and demands restrictions on the ability of students to protest, then I think it would be a bad thing and that's going too far. So this would be a great thing to ask him, like what his motivations are, you know, if he comes on the pod. I think that's crazy is just the crazy hypocrisy. Like these are the same people who were firing people or not letting them speak on campus.

1:31:46if they had a microaggression where they missed gender at somebody or they used a different pronoun or they had a different feeling about what defines a woman versus a man or gender differences, whatever. They're massive intolerance and the crazy hypocrisy which you're alluding to here, Saks, is the thing that I think has broken everybody's brain. This is bizarre. And the DI stuff is a road to nowhere. I tweeted today about the absolute gripped that was going on attack not long ago, which was call out a company venture firm whatever it is for their DEI stance. Then quietly contact them after you've done this, bring a dooning of them and say, hey, we can solve your problem.

1:32:27Higher us as consultants and speakers to come in and fix your DEI and tell you what you've done wrong. Then publicly come out and I saw this happen, publicly come out and then tell the same group, hey, this person is now an ally. Rinson repeat, it was a crazy grip and it's all coming out now and there's a yeah that that deal Acman thing, Jake, how about you retweeted is crazy that story Yeah, so we could just go down this rabbit hole forever, but I think you call a cul de sac. I call it a road to nowhere or dead end Identity politics and DEI it's just a dead end. We just start judging people based on You know any criteria other than their character and performance in the world.

1:33:04Do we know if there was a response by Am I T is this one? Am I T? Yeah. I don't think yet there has been. So anyway, we'll cover that story next week for sure. And don't have to be like when this doing his brave because he is taking on DEI. And that is historically that's been one of the most dangerous things you can do. I mean, that is what people get canceled for. Now I know there are people who I am fans of, like Ling Rienwald who's been very critical of Ackman because he thinks that Ackman's trying to restrict free speech and prevent, again, the propals union cause from protesting or saying its piece.

1:33:45And I guess Bill can clarify that, but I think this issue is less about foreign policy and more about domestic policy, these DEI policies. And finally, we have someone who's willing to take it on and challenge it at an ideological level and then challenge it at like a, does it grift level? Yeah, shout out to Brian Armstrong. He got this right and he went right up the hill and took the arrows for it. And I think we've turned a corner. If you, the tweet I did today, I would not have done two years ago because I just didn't want to risk my firm or the companies I work with to kind of expose that drift because we could blow back on people.

1:34:23But now I feel totally comfortable doing it. So Uber's at 70. Well, that all started. We're going to 76 points me and I don't care about that's for sure. He's got a few money now. Actments got a lot of firepower, you know, that bond call was totally right. You know, the 10 years now. So let's say, yeah, I will say that does your bank account does give you the ability to go. Okay, final question. Please, we must wrap. We must have a final question. And please throw it to Friedberg. First, I got Friedberg involved early on offense today. It's a great job. from mom cooks fast and slow on X for freeberg, I guess.

1:35:00What is the correct way to hire kids out of school now that an elite university degree tells you very little about the applicant. And will you follow this path in your companies? Oh, I have a great answer. Come on, go ahead. No, freeberg. Call them. You got to go to the schools with co -op. Why? Because it allows you to evaluate these kids in C2 on a real time basis without a obligation to hire. You can find the ones that can really do the work. have the energy and then higher than. Explain co -op programs please. It's for good. I went to a co -op school University of Waterloo in Canada. The way that it works there, not everywhere, but there at least is you go to school for the first eight months and then you never get a break.

1:35:41You're either in working for four months or you're in school for four months and you go back and forth until you graduate. So instead of graduating in four years, you graduate in five, but you graduate with basically two full years of work experience. And depending on the employers that you work at, you typically get two to three job offers from those folks if you do a good job. When I was helping to build Facebook, we went there, we had never hired an intern before and we started to hire people. And I think now, it happened in Microsoft, it happened in Google, I think it's happened in Facebook.

1:36:17If you look at the number of kids that work at those schools now from co -op schools, they're higher than any other school. There's a bunch of schools in the United States that have co -op, but I would go and find those schools and hire those kids. Freeberg any thoughts? You're now running a company. You're back in the saddle. How are you gonna hire people? And tell everybody the name of the company again. It's called Ohio. Oh, hollo. Not moho. Oh, hollo. And you're a hollo. If Mahalo was taken, who owns that domain name now? I still have it. Yeah, if somebody wants to, you have it. I have Mahalo and I have Kukua.

1:36:55Happy to sell it to somebody if they want to. But tell us, which are hiring criteria, and how do you think about this now? Just like to start an enterprise software business called Kukua. It means to help or to guide in Hawaiian. So probably the third or fourth most important word. Go ahead, Freiburg, please. I have criteria around raw horse power, skills or experience and then motivation. And I have systems for how we try and assess those. And then matching our principles is kind of the fourth bucket of things. Horsepower you can test. Skills is based on experience and fits the role in the need.

1:37:29But motivation is one that there's a lot of question marks around. Does this person have they demonstrated that they've had a not just a desire but an action that they've taken that has pushed them beyond the limits of the systems that they've operated in. And that's what I would typically look for, regardless of the schooling background, the education background is some demonstration of that because that's necessary in business building. So that's my framework for hiring. We call it smarts or horsepower skills, motivation and principles. And we score each one of those and then try and come up with hiring.

1:38:06You started to do that with the CEO candidates. I got that email from you and I was very intrigued. So I like that. All right everybody this has been another amazing episode of the all -in -pogs for the King of Beep and the dictator and The Rayman himself. I'm your boy Jacob. We'll see you next time. I love you guys. Bye -bye

1:38:30Rayman David

1:38:34We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy I'm going to the toilet. I'm going to the toilet. What? What? What? What? Besties are gone. Go dirty. That's my dog. Take it away. Wish you a driveway. Sit next. Get it off. Oh man. My ham is a bit asher. We need to be at the place. We should all just get a room and just have one big hug. Because they're all like this. It's like this like sexual tension that we just need to release. What the.... What is your peak? What the bees? What is your peak? Maybe you're, we need to get Seoul Let's go get succeed I'm doing I'm doing I film