Grok 4 Wows, The Bitter Lesson, Elon's Third Party, AI Browsers, SCOTUS backs POTUS on RIFs

31:06Okay, I have to label all of these essentially what become boxes, like I've identified objects. Some of the players in the autonomous software space, autonomous vehicle software space, are no longer doing any labeling because the machines are doing it all, just broadly. It'll just be built into the chipset that this is a stop sign. It's like we know what a stop sign is. We don't need the millionth time for somebody to leave the laptop. It's like those captchas. You're like, find the stop sign or what's the traffic light? And eventually, the machines are just way better than humans at identifying these things.

31:41For you to be very practical, when you see a stop sign, you don't have to identify that it's a stop sign. You just see that every human, when they encounter a stop sign 99.9 % of the time, they hit a break. So nobody actually knows it's a stop sign. It's just that hit a break when you see something that looks like this object. It's just a vibe. It's a vibe. I would just say that that's like intuited knowledge versus like the expressly labeled human knowledge. The question for me is, if everybody was so reliant on human labeling initially, if you're an investor now, when you see these grok four results how do you make an investment decision that's not purely levered to just computation so if you look at these results does it mean that the you know there's 300 to a thousand basis points of lag between just letting the computers vibe itself to the answer versus interjecting ourselves if interjecting ourselves slows us down by 300 to thousand basis points per successive iteration, then over two or three iterations, you've totally lost.

32:52So what does it mean for everybody that's not grok? When they wake up today, and they have to decide how do I change my strategy or double down? I think, look, I'm not in the investment game. But if I were, it would be all about scientific breakthrough. So I sometimes get in this place where I'm looking, I'm going down a path. I, you know, I'll be up at four or five in the morning. Uh, my day hasn't quite started, but I'm not sleeping anymore. And I'll start going, like I'll be on Quora and see some cool quantum physics question or something else I'm looking into. And I'll go down this thread with GPT or Grah.

33:32And I'll start to get to the edge of what's known in quantum physics. And then I'm doing the equivalent of vibe coding, except it's vibe physics. And we're approaching what's known and I'm trying to poke and see if there's breakthroughs to be had. And I've gotten pretty damn close to some interesting breakthroughs just doing that. And I, you know, I pinged, uh, I pinged you on at some point. I'm just like, dude, if I'm, if I'm doing this, and I'm super amateur hour physics enthusiast, like, what about all those PhD students and postdocs that are super legit using this tool? And this is pre-GroC4.

34:16Now with GroC4, like, like, there's a lot of mistakes I was seeing GroC make that then I would correct and we would talk about it. GroC4 could be this place where breakthroughs are actually happening, new breakthroughs. So if I'm investing in this space, I would be like, who's got the edge on scientific breakthroughs and the application layer on top of these foundational models that orients that direction? Is your perception that the LLMs are actually starting to get to the reasoning level that they'll come up with a novel concept theory and have that breakthrough or that we're kind of reading into it and it's just trying random stuff at the at the margins it's uh or maybe it doesn't happen no no so what i what i've seen and again i haven't used grok 4 i tried to use it early this morning but for some reason i couldn't do it on my on my app but so let's say we're talking grok 3 and existing chat gpt as it is no it cannot come up with the new idea these things are so wedded to what is known.

35:21And they're so like, even when I come up with a new idea, I have to really, it's like pulling a donkey sort of, you see, you're pulling it because it doesn't want to break conventional wisdom. It's like really adhering to conventional wisdom. You're pulling it out and then eventually goes, Oh shit, you got something. But then when it says that, when it says that, then you have to, you have to go, okay, it said that, but I'm not sure. Like you have to double and triple check to make sure that you really got something. To your point, when these models are fully divorced from having to learn on the known world and instead can just learn synthetically, then everything gets flipped upside down to what is the best hypothesis you have or what is the best question you could just give it some problem and it would just figure it out.

36:11So where I go on this one, guys, is it's all about scientific method, right? If you have an LLM or foundational model of some kind that is the best in the world with the scientific method, game the F over. You basically, you just light up more GPUs and you just got like a thousand more PhD students working for you. Keith, you're nodding your head here. I agree with that. I think that's fantastic because the scientific method also, the faster it is, the more you... When you have a hypothesis, the faster you get a response, you're more likely to dive in and dive in and dive in recursively and recursively.

36:52And every lag, every millisecond lag causes you to lose your train of thought, so to speak. So you get the benefits that Travis alluded to plus speed and you go places you never really get. This happens all the time when you run a company and you're doing analytics and you have a tool that allows you to constantly query quickly, quickly, quickly, double click, triple click. you get to answers that you never get to if there's even a second or two second or three second delay, let alone sending it to a human. Secondly, where you actually see this today, it's already happening. If you look at foundational models that just apply to science, there's lots of things about the human body, let's say in health biology, that humans don't actually understand all the connections.

37:28Like why do we do X? Why do some people get cancer? What other people not get cancer? Why does the brain work this way? Models trained solely on science tend to expose connections that no human has ever had before. And that's because like the raw materials there, and we only have a conscious awareness of thought one, 10%. But when you apply it to other human domains where you're training on human sort of data, human produced data, human produced output, they're limited to that output. So I think you just take the science and apply it writ large and you, you're going to wind up finding things that no human has ever thought before.

38:04and it's the thing about science though is that it's the hypothesis that you then have to test in the physical world so the you're like okay have you got this hive mind this like you know

38:20this computation engine this brain of sorts you wanted to say consciousness but you stopped yourself yeah there's an idea i was like how do i describe the big c word yeah but but you need to be able to test in the physical world. So you could imagine a physical lab connected to one of these systems where then you could say, okay, like if it's a chemistry experiment, you could do chemistry experiments or physics, you get the idea. What could go wrong? It would be, it's yeah, no big deal. It's going to be fine. Okay. So, but, but this is where it goes because if you have a scientific method machine, you still have to be able to test your hypothesis.

39:00You have to go through the science and verification yeah exactly yeah wow it's kind of mind-blowing reminds me really mind-blowing if you remember i don't know if you guys remember dark matter and like the discovery of it and everything and as explained to me by lisa randall you know the the discovery was made not by knowing there was dark matter there and observing it but observing there was something you know gravitational forces around this other matter and then they said but wait what's causing that and that's why they found dark matter so these ideas you know the idea that an LLM could actually do that, come up with something so novel, it feels like we might be right there, right?

39:38Like we're kind of on the cusp of it. One of the seven most difficult problems in math with the most important problems in math is proving a general solution to this thing called Mavie Stokes, which is basically like viscous fluid dynamics and conservation of mass. We use it every day in the design of everything. You know what? It hasn't been proved. Isn't that the craziest thing where you're just like, how is this even possible? We use it to design airplanes, to design everything. It hasn't been proof. And so you could just point a computer at this thing and you would unlock all these incredible mysteries of the universe.

40:08And we would probably find completely different propulsion systems. We could probably do things that we didn't think were possible. Teleportation. I mean, who knows what's possible. But remember, remember, you know, how Elon talks about Brock and about AI generally is about why are we here? What is the purpose? Meaning of the universe? What is the meaning of the universe? How does it work? And a sort of fierce, truth-seeking mechanism there. Let me ask you a question, Keith, Travis, Jason. If you guys were running Grok 4, to be so much fun. How do you judo flip open AI? Because they are marching steadfastly towards a billion Mao, then a billion DAO.

40:58It's a juggernaut. So how do you use the better product in a moment to judo flip the less better product? Look, yeah, I mean, here's the thing, right? So you do the Elon way. So you get a bunch of missionary, like full on missionary engineers that work twice as hard. And you have a culture that is ultra fierce, truth seeking. And you don't, you don't get caught up in politics, bureaucracy bs and you just you go for it and and i think you know that that's where you know and then you go wow scientific breakthrough scientific method like you start winning on truth and that will start i believe that will start to give the product awesomeness of open ai a run for its money but like the product of open ai the product department those guys are rushing.

42:01They're really good. They're not only ahead of the game, but they feel like it just, they're just leading in a lot of different ways. But if you are better at truth, you will eventually, you'll eventually have an AI product manager. Yeah. And on a tactical basis too, people forget how good Elon is at factories and physical real world things. What he did standing up Colossus made like, Jensen Wan was like, how is this possible that you did this, right? So pressing that, his ability to build factories, and he said many times, like, the factory is the product of Tesla. It's not the cars that come out of the factory or the batteries, it's the factory itself.

42:41So if he can keep solving the energy problem with solar on one side and batteries, and standing up, you know, Colossus 2, 3, 4, 5, he's going to have a massive advantage there on top of Travis, you know, the missionary individuals, which by the way was what he backed before sam altman corrupted the original missionary basis of opening i made a closed ai in a you know this is nothing derogatory towards him but he did hoodwink and stab elon in the back it's not nothing personal i mean he just screwed him over and would you say he bamboozled him bamboozled him screwed him hoodwinked him you know pick your term here but uh he did it he did dirty the original mission was to be like a thousand years old source all this content that's the other piece i think is a wild card and i'll and then i'll i'm interested in keith's position but open sourcing some of this could have profound ramifications i think open sourcing the self-driving data could have a really profound impact elon wanted to do something really disruptive like he open sources patents for you know um charging if he open source the data set and self-driving does anybody have the ability to produce robo taxis at the scale he can do it i don't think so well if travis's hypothesis is true then everybody will well everybody will what sorry everybody will what shaman if you have access to the money that buys the compute everyone could solve that problem but it's a hardware piece i'm talking which problem he said he said if he if he published all the fsd data could somebody build an autonomous vehicle well yes but could somebody produce 100 million robo taxis from a factory with batteries in them?

44:23Okay, that's a different question. That's the thing I'm saying. And not really, because last time I was a guest on, we talked about vertical integration. Products really require vertical integration. So ultimately, you have a self-driving something that is custom built for knowing it's going to be self-driving. And it interacts differently. The cost structure is different. The controls are different. The seating is different. everything. You build a product taking advantage of where in the stock you have the most competitive advantage, but then you leverage that and it reinforces. It's still why Apple, despite missing the AI wave, still a pretty good company from any empirical standpoint.

45:00I mean, their performance is absolutely miserable on the most important technology through the last 70 years, but the company is still alive and still worth trillions of dollars because it's vertically integrated. OpenAI, at a career point, they do have a good product team and they need to stay ahead on the product level because they can't compete on the factory level. The way to stay ahead of the product level is shipping a device. They've got to ship the device. It's got to be good. It's got to be right. It's got to be the right form factor. It's got to do things for humans that are unexpected.

45:29But then if they do that, they're like Apple plus AI. Chamath, what's the paper you're talking about before? What was the name of it again? The Bitter Lesson. It could apply to autonomous driving is right now it's still like, hey, how do I drive like a human? We talked about that. But the leapfrog moment here could be like, hey, drive a car, make sure it's efficient, don't hit anybody. And just simulate that a quadrillion times. And it's all good. Right? But right now, we're still trying to drive like humans because we don't have enough data. And therefore can't do enough compute. That's the global lesson, by the way, Chamath, you're totally right.

46:07Conceptual, the blog post is right, but that's only true when you have enough data. And depending on the use case, the level of data you need may not be possible for years, decades, and you may need to hack your way there through human interactions. Physical world AI is lacking in data. And so you just try to approximate humans. I don't know if you guys have seen this. In related news, OpenAI and Perplexity are going after the browser. Perplexity launched Comet for their$200 a month tier. I actually downloaded it. I'll show it to you in a second. But this is a really interesting category. It's something developers can do already, and they do it all the time, you know, but having your browser connected to agents, lets you do really interesting things.

46:54I'll show you an example here that I just fired off while we're talking. So I just asked it, hey, give me the best flights from United Airlines, and business class from New York City, from San Francisco to New york city it does some searches but what you see here is it's popped up a browser window and it's actually doing that work and you can see the steps it's using and then i can actually open that browser window and watch it do that this is just a screenshot of it and it will open multiple of these so you could i was doing a search the other day saying like hey tell me all the autobiographies i haven't bought on amazon put them into my you know shopping cart and summarize each of them because i like biographies and i like doing it here and when it did this last time it put my flight into like and i was logged in under my account and it basically put it into my account in the checkout so again this isn't like if you're a developer you do this all day long but this really seems to be a new product category i'm curious if you guys have played with it yet and then what your thoughts are on having an agentic browser like this available to you to be doing these tasks in real time you can also connect obviously your gmail your calendar to it so i did a a search tell me every restaurant i've been to and then put it by city and then i was going to open my open table and then pull that data as well what's interesting about this keith and i know you're a product guy and done a lot of product work i'm curious your thoughts on it is you don't have to do this in the cloud.

48:31You're authenticated already into a lot of your accounts, nor do you have to worry about being blocked by these services because it doesn't look like a scraper or a bot. It's just your browser doing the work. Your thoughts on this? Have you played with it at all? Yep. I think it's a great Hail Mary attempt by perplexity. I think up since something like this, perplexity is toast. Like for the start about chat GPT is going to a billion users. It's becoming the verb, the way you describe using AI for a normal consumer, there's nothing left of perplexity if they can't pull this off. So it's a great idea because the history of consumer technology companies is whoever has uphill ground in a military sense, whoever's first has a lot of control.

49:12This is actually what Google should be doing, truthfully. I think Google's search cross-search is toast. And since they have Chrome, and they theoretically have a quality team in Gemini, they should be putting these two things together and hoping to compete with Chad GPT. They are going to lose the search game. The assets that are best at Google right now have nothing to do with search. It's every other product is the only thing that's going to save that company if they can figure out how to use them. Travis, your thoughts on this category? Anything come to mind for you in terms of feature sets?

49:47That would be extraordinary here. I know you like to think about products and the consumer experience. I mean, it's really interesting. So, you know, I've been spending, as you guys know, I've been spending my time on real estate and construction and robotics. And so I've been out of this kind of consumer software game for a long time. But it's super interesting over the last six months, there have been a number of consumer software CEOs. like when I hang out with them or whatever, they're like, you know, how are we going to, how are we going to keep doing what we do when the agents take over?

50:24Yeah. The paradigm shift is so profound that the idea that you would visit a web page goes away and you're just in a chat. You have an agent that's just taking care of your flights for you. So I, I kind of, I think there's a leapfrog over that. I think it's just like you tell something, yo, I want to go to New York. Can you, you know, I'm sort of looking at this time range. Can you just go find something I'm probably going to like and give me a couple options? Yeah. And it's just a whole, you have an interface and then, you know, is perplexed, is this thing that you just showed on perplexedly, is that the interface?

51:02Or do I just have an agent that just goes and does everything for me? And is this the start of that? You know, I just haven't spent enough time. I do know that every consumer software CEO that has an app in the app store is tripping. They're tripping right now. And I mean, big boys. I mean, guys with real stuff. And sometimes I'm doing like almost like therapy sessions with them. I'm like, it's going to be fine. You actually have stuff. You have a moat. You have real stuff that's of value. They can't replace it with an agent. So you're lying to them. You're doing hospice care and you're telling him everything's going to be okay.

51:41But the patient's not missing out of line options on Robin Hood while he's like, yeah, tell me more. Tell me more. He's starting all these things. There's certain things that are protected and there's certain things that aren't. That's all. Well, let's talk about that because you and I are old enough to remember General Magic. This vision was out there a long time ago with personal digital assistants and you would just talk to an agent. It would go do this for you. This feels like a step to that where it does all the work for you, presents you the final moment and says approve. So look, I think you're a butler.

52:15Yeah, I think what you're describing is what we want. But I think more specifically for today, Keith and Travis totally nail it. Look, I think building a browser is an absolutely stupid capital allocation decision. Just totally stupid and unjustifiable in 2025. Specifically for perplexity, I think their path to building a legacy business is to replace Bloomberg. Everything that they've done in financial information and financial data in going beyond the model has been excellent. As somebody who's paid$25 ,000 to Bloomberg for many years, the terminal is atrocious. It's terrible. it's not very good it's very limited and anybody that could build a better product would take over a hundred billion dollar enterprise because i think it's there for the taking i wish that perplexity would double and triple down on that and so when you see this kind of random sprawl let's do it jimoth let's just go do it when you do the random sprawl i think it doesn't work but i just want to say like a browser is like the dumbest thing to build in 2025 because in a world of agents, what is a browser?

53:31It's a glorified markup reader. It's like handling HTML, it's handling CSS and JavaScript, it's doing some networking, it's doing some security, it's doing some rendering, but it's like, this is all under the water type stuff. I get it that we had to deal with all that nonsense in 1998 to try Lycos or Google for the first time. But in 2025, there's something that you just speak to. And eventually, there's probably something that's in your brain, which you just think, and it just doesn't you're thinking, I need a flight to JFK, or at the maximum today, in a very elegant, beautiful search bar, you type in get me a flight.

54:14And it already knows what to do. Keith, in some ways, this is a step towards that ultimate vision. So you'd think it's worth it to, you know, sort of perplexity to make this waypoint, perhaps, if you look at it as a waypoint between the ultimate vision, which is a command line and earpiece. How do you get distribution, Jason, for the 19th web browser in 2025? Well, yeah, that is a challenge. And I think most people are speculating Apple, which has a lot of users might buy perplexity or do a deal with perplexity and give them that distribution because of the Justice Department case against Google.

54:51So there's been a lot of speculation about that. But Keith, what do you think? Well, I don't think they'd buy anything worth it. What is Apple going to get? And we continue this failed strategy of Apple. Apple has missed every possible window on AI and continues to miss it. And it has cultural... I think the CEO has challenges. I think culturally they have challenges. I think they have infrastructure challenges. So it's not an easy fix. But buying perplexity is not going to help. Chabas strategy is actually a pretty coherent one for perplexity, co-op perplexity. So I think that's not about it.

55:20Pick a vertical and own it strategy. Not a bad idea, especially because you need unique data sources. Some of those data sources may or may not license their data to open AI. So you can do some clever things there. But I don't think there's any residual value that Apple would get out of perplexity, except there's some product taste. But what are you going to spend? Like a billion dollars for product taste? I mean, Mark's spending hundreds of billions of dollars or whatever he's spending these days. And, you know, Grok, if anything, Grok 4 shows that Mark really does need to spend money to build a whole new team because everything they've done in AI has also missed the boat.

55:55Well, I mean, Keith, the way you phrase it there almost makes it worth it for Apple to throw a Hail Mary, have a team with some taste, because that's how they tend to do things is something that is elegant. And why not just throw your search to it? Throw 10 billion at what's elegant is if there would be a bunch of what's elegant would be if there's a bunch of agents and just a chat box. seeing a bunch of visual diarrhea is not elegant it's lazy on our on our little bloomberg clone i'll give you naming rights so you can call it like you like polyhapetea so hey can somebody can somebody uh bring up the polyhapetea you know what's actually it just rolls right off your tongue tk listen we were trying to do a screen of companies and it maxes out at five companies on a specific type of screen where you're like, you're trying to compare stock price to EBIT and you're like, okay, I can only choose five, I guess.

56:51So which five should I choose? That happens when LaFont was on, right? Like two episodes ago, he was like, I can't pull this up. It's limited to six companies. Dude, so what do people use Bloomberg for? Yeah, the back five. They use it for the messaging. Now, like my team has traded huge position via text message on Bloomberg. So there is something very valuable there. But the core usability and the core UI of that company has not evolved. I have my contribution. And Perplexity is very good at that, by the way. They do a very good job. I got a new domain named Travis. Let this one just sink in here.

57:22This is my way to weasel my way into the deal. Begin.com. Begin.com. You own that, don't you? I do. I'm just a little, I snipe some good ones once in a while. I got begin.com and I got annotated.com. Those are my two little domains. Bro, you're like one of these old people that show up at those flea markets. Oh, like the road show? And then all of a sudden you got a Picasso? show and you're like oh i have this thing that i bought 1845 guys jason jason is jason is the daddy and go daddy okay that's just what it is your daddy hey speaking of daddy let's go on to our next story oh it's now the right time for a third party elon seems to think so last week he announced that actually would be creating a new political party i'll let you decide who daddy is in this one.

58:13He said, quote, when it comes to bankrupting our country with waste and graft, we live in a one party system, not a democracy. He's not yet outlined a platform for the American party. We talked about it here last week. I listed four core values, which seem to get a good reaction on X. Fiscal responsibility slash doge, sustainable energy and dominance in that, manufacturing in the US, which Elon has done single-handedly here, pronatalism, which I think is a passion project for him. And Shabath, you punched it up with the fifth technological excellence. According to Polymarket, 55 % chance that Elon registers the American party by the end of the year.

58:54And one thing I was trying to figure out is just how unpopular are these candidates and these political parties. This is a very interesting chart that I think we can have a a great conversation around. It turns out we used to love our presidents. If you look here from Kennedy at 83%, his highest approval rating, his lowest was 56%. That was his lowest approval rating. So he operated in a very high band. Look at Bush too. During, after 9-11, 92 % was his peak. His lowest was 19, right? Wartime president. But then you get to Trump one, Biden, and Trump two, historically low high approval their high watermark 49 for trump one 63 for biden one of one and then 47 for trump two and their lowest 29 31 40 so maybe it is time for a third party candidate let's discuss it boys i have no idea how to read this graph I'm like, what is happening here?

59:58This is the worst formatted chart. This is a confusing chart. But the reason I'm putting it up is for debate. So you should be saying thank you for debating that it's creating great debate. Why did you put it up? Here's another one. Gallup poll Americans desire for a viable third party. 63 % in 2023. So it's bumping along at all time. Hi. Okay. I'm really concentrating on this one. Okay. Anyway, I'm going to stop there. What's the grade? I'm going to let you... Those are the different presents during that time period and how popular parties were. Let's stop here. This is a good place to stop. I just blew a GPU.

1:00:34Yeah, a couple of points. Yes. The idea of Elon creating a third party is for any other human being absolutely absurd and ridiculous. Elon has obviously done incredible things. So dismissing anything he's touching is a bad idea. However, I think the best metaphor I've seen is it's a little bit like Michael Jordan tried to play baseball. and he became a replacement level baseball player, which is actually really hard to do, by the way. Elon is probably a replacement level politician. He's Michael Jordan for entrepreneurial stuff, but the third party stuff is not going to work. First of all, that chart is misleading.

1:01:10It's a flaw of average. It's both badly designed and it's a flaw of average. Trump is incredibly popular among Republicans. He actually has the highest approval rate of any Republican ever measured in recorded history. it's 95 reagan was peaked out at 93 it's just democrats don't like them which is perfectly fine being polarizing is is an ingredient to being successful including with people on the show like the point of accomplishing things in the world is you don't really care what half the world thinks you need to make sure that there's a lot of people who like you and really approve and are enthusiastic about what you do and trump is about as popular with his party as anybody's ever been ever, period.

1:01:48No exceptions. Secondly, MAGA has kind of already changed the Republican Party. Trump is sort of like a third party takeover of the Republican Party. And so it's kind of already happened. And maybe you can do this every 20 years or 30 years. I don't think you can have this kind of transformation on one party within a too compressed period of time for a lot of reasons. Third is really smart parties absorb the lesson of political science. Unfortunately, I studied political science. I wasted kind of my college years. And instead of saying CS, and maybe then I'd be coding stuff and doing physics like Travis.

1:02:25But one thing I did learn is smart parties absorb the best ideas of third parties. So the oxygen is usually not there because there's a Darwinistic evolution. If you get traction on an idea, it's really easy to to conscript some of those ideas and take away the momentum. No third party candidate that's a true third party has won a Senate seat since 1970. And that's actually Bill Buckley's brother. And so he has some name ID. The other thing Elon, I think, is missing in the proponents of what he's doing is people vote not just for ideas, they vote for people. It's a combination. The product is, what do you believe and who are you?

1:03:07And you can't divorce the two. Trump is a person and that generates a lot of enthusiasm. And it's one of the reasons why he has challenges in midterms, because he's not on the ballot. His ideas may be on the ballot, but he is not specifically on the ballot. So unless, because Elon can't be the figurehead of the party, he literally can't constitutionally, you need a face that's a person, Obama, Clinton. There's reasons why people resonate. Reagan, without that personality, specific ideas just are not going to galvanize the American people. Okay. So the counter to that and what people believe he's going to try to do is win a couple of seats in the House, Travis, win maybe one or two Senate seats.

1:03:50If you were to do that, those things are pretty affordable to back a couple of million dollars for a House race, Senate, maybe 25 million. If Elon puts, I don't know, 250 million to work every two years, which he put 280 million to work on the last one, he could kind of create the Joe Manchin moment. And he could build a caucus, a platform, Grover Norquist kind of pledge along these lines. So what do you think of that? If he's not going to create a viable third party presidential candidate, Could he, Travis, pick off a couple of Senate seats, pick off a couple of congressional seats? Okay. So first, I have this axiom that I'm making up right now.

1:04:34Okay. Okay. It's called Elon is almost always right. Okay. All right. Elon was right about everything. Seriously, let's just be real. And like, honestly, the things he's upset about and that he's riled up about, especially when you look at the deficit, like, man, I am right on board that train. part one, part two. we've never had somebody with this kind of capital that can be a quote unquote party boss outside of the system. right and there's a lot of people that agree with the types of things he's saying and he knows how to draw you know he elon in his own right kind of has a populist vibe like he does his thing and he's turned x into what it is and he's he's a big part of x and so i think it's the i think it's great and honestly there's there's the moves you can make on senate and house and just having a few folks and then being you being levers then to get the things you want done that's part one and then part two of that is the threat of that happening can make good things happen separately even if it doesn't go all the way i just love it i'm on the train yeah i'm in love with this role for elon more than picking a party because he's picking a very specific platform that i think resonates with folks which is just balance the budget don't put us in so much debt and let's have some sustainable energy, you know, job done.

1:06:09Great jobs in America. The problem with that is like, he's actually wrong about the reason why we have a deficit or debt. It's not because we're undertaxed. It's we're massively overspending. If we just - No, I think he believes we're overspending. They should have been supporting the last, you know, beautiful bill. Because if you just held federal spending to 2019 levels, so 2019 is not like, you know, decades ago. literally with our current tax revenues, we would be in a surplus. 500 billion. Yeah. So all we need to do is cut spending. Now I admit that - Why didn't that happen with the big, beautiful bill?

1:06:45So this is where details do matter. I think there is a willingness and a discipline problem on both parties. And I think maybe he can help fix that. The second thing is that we have these arcane rules, particularly in the Senate, and you need 60 votes in many ways to cut things, except through very hacky methods. And that's a reality. So the best thing truthfully you can do is help get a Republican party to 60 votes. And then in theory, he could be absolutely furious if you didn't cut back to 2019 levels. But it's very tricky or you can just overrule. Like the filibuster is an artifact of history.

1:07:24And at some point, some majority leader is just gonna say we're done with the filibuster and just steamroll through all the cuts at 50 or 51 votes, which you can do. There's no constitutional right to a filibuster. It is an artifact of centuries of American history. And at some point, it's going to go away. So maybe the time is now. Maybe we should just fix everything now. I think you're exactly right. I think that the filibuster, it's just a matter of time. I think it's on borrowed time. And I think in a world where it is on borrowed time, Jason, I think your path is probably the one that gives the American party, if it does come into existence, the most leverage, which is if you control three to five independent candidates, you gain substantial leverage.

1:08:06I just want to take a step back and just note something. I don't know if you guys know this, but the only reason we're even having this conversation or this is even possible is because in 2023, the FEC, Federal Elections Commission, they actually released guidance and they changed a bunch of rules. And the big change that they made then was it allowed super packs to do a lot more than just run ads. Up until that point, all you could do if you were a super pack is just basically run advertising, television and radio. I guess online as well. But what they were allowed to do starting in 23 was they were allowed to fund ground operations.

1:08:49They were allowed to do things like door knocking, phone banking, you know, get out the vote. So in other words, what happened was a super PAC became more like a full campaign machine. And Trump showed the blueprint of using a super PAC, specifically his to win the presidential election. So he was able to fund this massive ground game, he built infrastructure across the swing states, he was obviously incredibly effective. And now that playbook can actually be used by other folks. And so to the extent that Elon decides to use those changed FEC rules, Jason, I think what you said is the only path.

1:09:29But I just I thought I just wanted to double click on Keith's point, because it's so important. I do think the filibuster is going to go away. And it is because the the arcaneness of these rules, having to do a reconciliation bill, then, you know, needing a super majority veto proof super majority. And the other case, it just means that nothing gets done. And I think somebody will eventually get impatient and just steamroll. this thing. We've never had so many people say they feel politically homeless as we did the last two cycles. And that includes many people on this podcast, people in our friend circle.

1:10:00And I think just the idea that Elon could create a platform that people could opt into and support, just the existence of that would make the other two parties get their act together. By the way, the other thing that we need is a little bit of a stick there and a carrot. Hey, if you don't control spending, there's this third option and if Travis and I are in it and Keith I know you'll never leave the Republican Party but Chamath you know you're probably set where you're where you want to be right now but I can tell you we go to our top 10 20 friend list out of those 50 percent will join Elon's party well look the other the other thing Jason that that Keith said which I think is is really important is if he were to run people I think they have to transcend politics and policy and I think they need to be straight up bosses, people that have enormous name recognition so that effectively what you're voting is a name and not an agenda.

1:10:58Equivalent to, I think, what happened to Schwarzenegger when he ran. He ran on an enormous amount of name recognition in the Great Davis Recall. He didn't run on the platform. I don't think any of us could mention. J.D. Vance had this great book, Capture People's Imagination. He's an incredible speaker. he pisses off a third or two thirds of the country depending on where you are in the country but you can't ignore him i think elon can find 10 jd vance type characters and back them fairly easily he is a magnet for talent people will line up i have been contacted by high profile people i was actually thinking of running can you put me in touch with elon i was thinking more like actors and sports stars meaning where they just come with their own inbuilt distribute like i think you almost have to rank x followers and instagram followers and do a join and say okay these are do you know what i mean like i think it's like totally different guys it's painful like let's not get more celebrities as politicians like let's get like people who've led large large efforts large initiatives complex things ideally but they still have to communicate right Keith, they have to be able to communicate on a podcast.

1:12:10That's the new platform. If they can't spend two hours, three hours chopping it up on a podcast like this or Joe Rogan, you know, that's Kamala's, the reason she couldn't even contend was because she couldn't hang for two hours in an intellectual discussion. If you can't hang, you're out in today's political arena. It'll be interesting to see if he can tune his algorithm for talent, which is epic, to tune for politics because it's a slightly different audience. But if you can tune the algorithm and quality, that might work. I think you can win a few House races. I think that's doable. I don't think you can win a Senate race.

1:12:46Well, there it is, Elon. Keith doesn't think you can win a Senate race, but he thinks you can win a couple of congressional ones. Thanks for giving him the motivation, Keith. I appreciate it. I'm sure he's going to love that. That is the biggest mistake you've ever made. He's not going to win two. People in the Republican Party right now are going, oh no, don't poke the tiger. Listen, that's how Trump got into politics. So I don't want to be Obama here. You just Obama. Elon, right. Yeah. Congratulations. All right. Listen, SCOTUS made a big decision here. This is a really important decision. They've sided with Trump for plans for federal workforce rifts, reductions in workforce, for those of you who don't know.

1:13:25So as you know, Elon, Trump, they wanted to downsize the 3 million people who are federal employees. This is just federal employees we're talking about. We're not talking about military and we're not talking about state and city. That's tens of millions of additional people. If you remember, Trump issued this executive order back in February, we got an office implementing the president's Doge workforce optimization initiative. and he asked all the federal agencies hey just prepare a rift for their departments consistent with applicable laws was part of this eo okay in april the american federation of government employees afge sued the trump administration saying the president must consult congress on large-scale workforce changes this is a key debate because the congress as you know has power of the purse they set up the money but the president and the executive branch they have to execute on that.

1:14:18And that's what the key is here. So they accused Trump of violating the separation of powers under the Constitution Act. AFGE has 820 ,000 members. In May, a San Francisco-based federal judge sided with the unions blocking the executive order. The judge, who was appointed by Clinton, said any reduction in the federal workforce must be authorized by Congress. This is a key issue. And the White House submitted an emergency appeal, yada, yada. Eight of nine Supreme Court justices sided with the White House in overturning this block. And so the reasoning, it's very likely the White House will win the argument of the executive order.

1:14:54They have the right to prepare a rift. The question is, can they actually execute on that rift? And who has that power, Chamath? Does the power reside with the president to make large scale rifts? Or do they have to consult Congress first? Your thoughts on this issue? It's an incredibly important ruling, incredibly right. I think President Trump should have absolute leeway to decide how the people that report to him act and do their job. If you take a step back, Jason, there are more than 2 ,000 federal agencies. Employees plus contractors, I think number almost 3 million people. If you put 3 million people into 2000 agencies, and then you give them very poor and outdated technology, which unfortunately, most of the government operates on, what are you going to get?

1:15:53You're going to get incredibly slow processes. You're going to get a lot of checking and double checking. And you're going to ultimately just get a lot of regulations because they're trying to do what they think is the right job. So since 1993, what have we seen? Regulations have gotten out of control. It's like 100 ,000 new rules per some number of months. It's just crazy. So eventually, we all succumb to an infinite number of rules that we all end up violating and not even know it. So if the CEO of the United States, President Trump, isn't allowed to fire people, then all of that stuff just compounds.

1:16:37So I think that this is a really important thing that just happened. It allows us to now level set how big should the government be. But more importantly, the number of people in the government are also the ones that then direct downstream spend that make net new rules. And if you can slow the growth of that down, you're actually doing a lot in many ways, I wish Elon had come in and created Doge now. Like, could you imagine if Doge was created the day after this Supreme Court ruling? It would have been a totally different outcome, I think, because with that Supreme Court ruling in hand, these guys probably would have been like a hot knife through butter.

1:17:22Travis, so I think it's a big deal. Except that ruling doesn't happen without doge that doge caused that ruling to occur true well the eo did you could have passed right right that was all doge style though you know what i'm saying yes if they wasn't firing people yeah they probably wouldn't felt the need to your point travis to actually file this but travis if you are living in the age of ai efficiency right now operations of companies is changing dramatically can you imagine telling somebody you can be ceo but you can't change personnel that's the job you get to be ceo but you just can't change the players on the team you can buy the knicks but you can't change the coach you know you can grow it you just can't shrink it it's like running a unionized company which actually does exist are large companies where you can't do any of these things right do they still exist or are they all gone i think they're going quickly yeah probably i think this just gets back to what what is actually congress authorizing when a bill occurs and there's certain things that are specific and certain things that aren't.

1:18:26And I don't, I'm not sure that in a lot of these bills, it's not very specific about exactly how many people must be hired. And so if it's, I'm just doing the common man's sort of approach to this, which is like, if, if the law says you have to hire X number of people, then that is what it is. If the law says you, here's some money to spend here, the ways in which to spend it, but it's not specific about how many people you hire, then that is different. Yeah, it should be outcome-based. Hey, here's the goal. Here's the key objectives, right? Travis is totally right. There's a variety of different laws, some with incredible specificities, some with very broad manage.

1:19:08The Constitution clearly says that all executive power resides in the president of the United States, period. There's no exceptions there. However, Congress does appropriate money. And post Watergate, many people think Congress has the power to force the president to spend the money. And you can debate that and you can debate it on a per statute basis. And that will be more nuanced and that's going to get litigated whether the president can refuse to spend money that Congress explicitly instructed him to spend, sometimes called empowerment. That's a very interesting intellectual debate. This one's a little bit easier.

1:19:41It'll get more complicated again. And this EO is only approved to allow for the planning. I think the vote might be closer. I think there's still a majority on the Supreme Court for the actual implementation, but it may not be 8-1 when there's a specific plan that has to navigate its way through the courts again. Yeah, it's super fascinating. Yeah, I wonder if they're going to get to the point where they're going to say in every bill, you need to hire this number of people to hit this goal. I don't know if they can. Like that's where it gets borderline unconstitutional, like where you actually prescribe that the president in the exercise of his constitutional duties has to hire a certain number of people.

1:20:22That feels pretty precarious. Well, I'm not sure, Keith. It's just like they prescribe a whole bunch of other things. You must appropriate money to this specific institution to do this specific work. But that's not an executive function. Like if you said, like the secretary of state has to have X number of employees doing something, the secretary of state is your personal representative to conduct foreign affairs on behalf of the president of the United States. It gets a little bit more messy as you translate it to people that the president should. I mean, yes, Congress does set, you know, which people are subject to Senate confirmation, what their salaries and compensation bans are.

1:21:07So it's never going to be fully binary where the president can do whatever he wants. And it's never going to, I don't think it'll be constitutional for Congress to mandate and put all kinds of handcuffs on the president. Well, then you also have performance that comes in here. What if you look at the Department of Education and say, scores have gone down. We've spent this money. We're not getting the result. Therefore, these people are incompetent. Therefore, I'm firing them for cause and I'm going to hire new people. How are you going to stop the executive from doing that? There's been a bunch of litigation in parallel to this litigation about the president's ability to fire people.

1:21:41And for the most part, the Supreme Court's basically, with maybe the exception of the Federal Reserve chair, said that the president can fire pretty much anybody he wants. I mean, that's the way to go. I mean, I hate to be cutthroat about it, but if the results aren't there, then you fire people. Yeah, if they're a presidential appointee, the president should be able to fire you at will. Just like if you were a VP at one of our companies, the CEO should be able to fire you at will. But what about, Keith, if the whole department sucks? Hey, you guys were responsible for early education. You had to put together a plan.

1:22:13The plan failed. Everybody's fired. We're starting over. You should be allowed to do that. How are we going to have an efficient government? Some of these departments were created by congressional statute, like the Department of Education in 1979. And you're right. every single educational stat has got worse in the United States since the department was created. But there is a law on the books that says there shall be a department of education. So you may have to repeal that. All right. Listen, we're at an hour and a half, gentlemen. Do you want to do the FICO story or should we just wrap, Jamal?

1:22:47And we got plenty of show here. It's a great episode. Anything else you want to hit? I don't really have much to say on the FICO story. I thought these other topics were really good though we did great today this is a great panel i'm so excited you guys are here let me just ask you guys um any off-duty stuff that you can share with us with the audience any recommendations restaurants hotels trips movies you watch books you read keith i know that you are an active guy what what's on your agenda this summer anything interesting you can share with the audience that you're consuming conspicuous or otherwise well i don't want to share any good restaurants or hotels because oh you're gatekeeping you're gatekeeping come on it's like if you had a babysitter yes can i get your nanny's email there are there are things that are what do you call it no marginal cost consumption like netflix so for example um you know this documentary on osama bin laden is phenomenal like i don't know I don't know if any of you have seen it.

1:23:48I haven't seen it. And, you know, I'm a student of this stuff. And I thought, you know, I knew the whole story and et cetera. Watch episode one. Just start with episode one. And it just blew me away with new information, new footage, just absolutely incredible stuff. So highly, highly recommend it. What was the big takeaway for you so far? I don't know if there's any like specific takeaway, but just like so many parts of the story are misunderstood and not really understood and how the various confidences of somewhat random things lead to a very catastrophic result but it's it's like as um dramatic as the best movie but it's a full documentary and you will learn things and absorb things i i just i've had friends while i've been recommending it to friends and for a story you think you know it's incredible incredibly revealing okay travis anything you got on your plate there that you're enjoying a restaurant, a dish.

1:24:43I mean, look, you know, I mean, Jason, you know, I go to Austin a lot. Yes. Like basically from March till October, I do about 15 weekends in Austin. I have a lake house. Jason's hung out a couple of times. So I, I love water skiing. That's my whole thing. That's my like, that's, I just love it. It's just my thing since I was a kid. Very zen. Yeah. And it's lake, it's, I call it lake life. So that's a thing. And then I recently, this little bit of like a side quest, I recently purchased the preeminent backgammon engine. XG. XG. That's right. It's acronym is it's extreme gammon. And so the preeminent engine, so all the pros rate themselves based on this.

1:25:34it was done it was built by this amazing entrepreneur this guy zavier who is just a full-on sort of ultra ultra i mean just what's the word i'm looking for it's not savant like a savant essentially but hasn't worked on it for many years so i'm getting back into it and love it and making it like taking modern machine learning sort of deep learning techniques and like big compute and saying, can we push the game of backgammon forward? So super exciting. And ultra training apps to get people up to speed quickly. I played in my first backgammon tournament in Cashed. So that was pretty cool. No, wait.

1:26:20Okay. Yeah. All due respect, you found Uber, you're very high profile, you go to this back and, is this like held at the Motel 8 in like a conference room in the back? It was amazing. It was like a month ago or so. There's like a big tournament and it was so that the United States Backend Federation had this big tournament. I guess it was. At the Los Angeles LAX at the LAX Hilton. And it was in the basement of the Hilton. Great. And it was like. Next to the Dungeons and Dragons convention. It had those kinds of legit vibes. I love it. So I went in super low pro, just did my thing, but eventually was recognized.

1:27:08But I was not recognized as the founder of Uber. I was recognized as the owner of XG. Ooh, the owner of XG is here, well. And then there was like a full-on melee that basically occurred. They're like, oh, the owner of XG, Travis is here. Chamath, I feel like we've got a window here to do the all-in backgammon high-end tournament. We got to lock this down now. We've got to lock down the all-in backgammon set. I get the co-branding rights on this, okay? Absolutely. XG. Well, no, the all-in XG. You know, because I love a great backgammon set. If we could make like a$10 ,000 one, Chamath, we could kill turtles or white rhinos, all the animals that, you know, Freeburg's trying to protect.

1:27:50We could murder them and then make - That would be so great. Yes. Like maybe the white could be, you know, rhinos and then you could take something else, elephant skin, something, you know, just really tragic and then eat the meat and make the back heaven set for you. I love backgammon. Honestly, like, if I wasn't attempting to be like expert poker player, that is the game. I mean, if you're talking about a Pandora's box where once you open it, oh my God, you can go down the rabbit. Let's go, dude. Let's do that. Backgammon is a beautiful, beautiful beautiful game i love the vibes of sitting travis and i sat i got some cigars out you know we pour a little of the all in tequila tequila.allin.com uh we get that going a couple of uh the all in cigars and then we have the all in back it's a wonderful hang yeah keith would you consider giving us some of your money playing back absolutely absolutely we gotta we gotta get some of that i'd be much more money on the table because you don't play poker with us i don't play poker, but backgammon, yeah, that sounds great.

1:28:53I'll bring better tequila. I'll bring better tequila. We're going to upgrade. We'll do a little taste-off. So you've insulted now Elon with the Senate seats and sacks with his tequila? My tequila's much better, trust me. Wait, what? Okay. Who is left in the PayPal mafia you'd like to insult before this episode? Yeah, and you can also read Hoffman. Or Peter. Anything about Peter? He could join Elon's party. He's collecting a bunch of misfits, so we might as well take Reid too. Alright, listen. This has been another amazing episode of the number one podcast in the world, the all-in podcast for your sultan of science who couldn't make it today.

1:29:29He's at the conference that we don't mention. And David Sachs, who is out making America safe in AI and crypto. Shemath Paliopatia, world's greatest moderator. Travis. Keith, thank you for coming. Thanks for pinching. You guys were great today. What a pat. See you all next time. Bye-bye. We'll let your winners ride. Rain Man, David Sack. And it said, we open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, Westies. Queen of Kid Wad. I'm going all in.

1:30:11Besties are gone. That is my dog taking a notice in your driveway. Oh, man. We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just useless. It's like this like sexual tension that they just need to release somehow. What? You're the bee. What? You're the bee. We need to get merch. I'm doing all in.

1:30:44I'm doing all in.