Mag 7 sell-off, Wiz rejects Google, UBI, Kamala in, China's nuclear buildout, Sacks responds to PG

28:06And fundamentally people want to work. So they'll take that money and then they'll go find ways to work and generate more money and you have this inflationary effect So I think that net UBI does not make sense Sachs participants were 5 % more likely to start a business by the third year Maybe that was the most encouraging part of this people work slightly less 2 % Decrease and labor participation, but that seems negligible People in their 20s had a 2 % increase in enrolling in post -secondary education again very tiny impact There were major benefits to stress and mental health in year one, but by year two, as we talked about, we've heard it to the baseline.

28:42How do you think about UBI in a world where let's say, I don't know, we lost a large amount of jobs in a short period of time because of AI. So in that hypothetical situation, and we hit 20 or 25 % unemployment from the historic low we're at now, how might you think about UBI? Well, that's positive in the future that I don't think is going to happen. at least that's why I tried to. Yeah, that's why I'm trying to give you a hypothetical. Yeah, no, I just, I don't really buy that. And so I think this whole idea of UBI is premature and very expensive and it doesn't work. I mean, I think what we saw from the study just to act on what Freeberg said is that cash transfers don't work.

29:21We saw this in the great society, just handing people money, it doesn't solve poverty. It actually prouff people in conditions of dependence. We also saw during COVID that all those stimme checks in my life had a macro effect in the economy of kind of boosting the economy during what could have been a COVID depression. However, at an individual level, what did we see? We saw people quitting or quite quitting their jobs. They spent more on leisure, alcohol, and meme stocks. In other words, it wasn't tremendously productive. So I think that what we've seen in the past is just handing people money doesn't create the types of outcomes that people want.

30:02And you know. You know, all this virtue signaling, sax is a virtue signaling. Kind of, kind of. I'm kind of getting that type of. Yeah, I think it's a combination of virtue signaling combined with, let's assume that you want to become the first AI trillionaire. And people are concerned about job loss. You're going to virtue signal the direction of, Well, this is given everyone money. And a lot of people in power will love that because it creates a lot of dependence. So it serves the interests of tech moguls and people in the government, but I don't think it serves society. And I think one of the most interesting data points in the study, please confirm if I get this right.

30:45But what it said is that the people who got the thousand a month UBI saw their incomes rise to $45 ,000 on average which while the control group only got $50 a month, increased their average income to $50 ,000, actually just shy of $51 ,000. So the people who didn't get the larger stimuli actually genuinely bettered themselves over the course of the study while the ones who got the $12 ,000 a year stayed in place. And that's kind of what you'd expect, right? Which is if you just hand people money without having to work, it doesn't motivate them to work harder. It actually motivates them to do less.

31:21Yes, and let's say that you're in an important year career where you need to learn you need to get mentorship You need to advance yourself by giving people you be eye you could be kicking out those bottom rungs of the ladder where You know the work isn't necessarily that fun, but you're picking up very important skills That are gonna help you rise up in the ladder and you're not doing like sending your kids to be a cashier at a restaurant We're a bus boy or a waiter like that teaches them a work ethic. I was a dishwasher I did hard work as a child like I was a bartender I mean, look, these are all jobs that have dignity.

31:52I mean, I think work has dignity and you need people to start somewhere. And if you just give them the stimuli or the UBI, it demodemates them from starting their careers and you trap people at this lower level. So I just don't think you're doing it anyone any favors by doing this. And I just want to say, you know, my production companies in full swing and we are actually working on a remake of cheers with David Sacks. Yeah, as the bartender has the lead character. It's a really great job. Looking at the back of the envelope, Matthew had the crack research team take a look at this welfare, $1 .1 trillion budget in 2023, eight different federal agencies.

32:34I'm not Medicare. I'm sorry, Medicaid is in there as well. Unemployment, $33 billion paid across, 1 .8 million participants last year, food stamp safety, $113 billion. We put all those numbers together and we got about a hundred million people participating in these programs in some way for $1 .2 trillion per year. This is all back at the envelope. It's imperfect. But that turns out to be about 12k each, which is exactly what this study did. So not perfect math. But that's totally reasonable. I grew up on welfare. And we needed it to make ends meet. and we would have completely fallen through the cracks without it.

33:11And so I'm glad that I was able to be raised in a country that has welfare. I guess my question to you, Chimoff, is do you think all these agencies put together, you know, with all this administration and all this complexity, would it be better if we take something from this UBI or maybe consolidating down? No. No. No. Okay. No, because I think like you need to be motivated as SAC said. And so even though we got support from I grew up in Canada, so the Canadian government, there was still an expectation where certain things were not covered and you still had to work and so you had to find motivation to pick yourself up and go out and get a job.

33:55And it just so happened that in our situation, even welfare and what my mom made as a housekeeper and then as a nurse of state wasn't enough and my dad didn't have a job. So I went and I started working at Burger King and to Saksis Point, it's pretty eye -opening when you're 14 years old and you know you're working the night shift and people come in after going to the bars, they're drunk, they're puking all over the place. Sometimes you see people that go to your own high school and it's a little bit embarrassing because you're working while they're going out. But at the end of the day it was very motivating and I think Saksis, right, if you take that away from people, I think that you end up with a worse society.

34:34I don't think that you have a motivated group of people that want to go and better themselves. I think they just become really lazy. I think it's well stated. And I think the pressure cooker that immigrants are under or people who have tough situations, like it can create the diamonds. And man, I do think a lot of the folks here on this podcast went through that pressure cooker and does create a chip on your shoulder. And when people criticize these entry -level jobs, and they're, oh, they're not sustainable, well, we do have a safety net in both countries. I think that that's not, I think the problem is not the entry -level job.

35:09I think it's the expectation of people and Freeberg just mentioned this, but what you have is that there is this desire doom loop that we've fallen ourselves into, where what social media does is amplify, in many cases, a fake perception of what your neighbor has that you don't have. And so you're in this constant desire doom loop. So if you go to a job and you're expected to work for four years, I'm just going to make up a number before you get promoted. And the perception is that your neighbor is getting promoted after eight months, you're going to be mad and you're going to be angry and you're going to feel like life isn't working out for you.

35:48And we have to figure out a way of resetting that back to normal so that you know that that is a lie that is being told to get clicks and likes. And the real truth is you're gonna have to just put your nose down and grind at something to get what you want. And life is not perfect and it's complicated and it's messy. And we need to do a better job of that. Let me ask you a question, Friedberg. If you were gonna do a 2 .0 of this study, I was thinking about it, you know, where do you go from here? I just had this idea like, well, what if you put like, half of the money into like a perfect portfolio a wealth run whenever those services and allow people to take out maybe 5 % of it every year, some sustainable amounts.

36:28So they see, you know, and get some education around that or maybe put the money into a business formation fund. People can apply to get grants to, you know, maybe form a business and you kind of reframe how this UBI is distributed with milestones and maybe some education baked into it. That was my thought on where to go next. Do you have any thoughts of where you would do a 2 .0 test of this or would you just... Well, that's not UBI, right? And what you're describing, I think, exists. And there are incentives and programs and opportunities out there. People can sign up with Roth IRAs. They can contribute some percentage of their paycheck to a 401K if they have a job that has a 401K set up for them.

37:09There's a lot of systems and mechanisms out there. And you get tax breaks for doing that. So there's mechanisms and incentives out there to do that sort of thing. The concept with UBI is can you pay people a flat amount of money so that they don't have to work and then they end up being able to explore and do other things with their life as the robots and AI does everything for them. And I've just always been of the belief that I don't think that there's this natural border that we hit beyond which humans don't work. I think that AI -based tools and automation tools are the same as they've always been.

37:42When we developed a tractor, people didn't stop farming. They could get much more leverage using the tractor and far more and new jobs and new industries emerge. And I expect that the same thing will happen with this next evolution of technology and human progress. Humans will find ways to create new things, to push themselves forward, to drive things forward, and for the natural market -based incentives that fundamentally are rooted in this internal system of desire. We'll create new opportunities that we're not really thinking about. So I don't believe in this idea of UBI and some utopian world where everyone's happy not working and letting machines do everything for them I think that the fundamental sense of a human is to find purpose and to realize that purpose to drive themselves forward and progress themselves And I think that that's always going to be the case the closest thing to leisure and leisurely pursuits that we have today in modern society is the Neppelbaby And if you look at the no but and if you look at the Neppelbaby, they're the most miserable group of people I've ever met they're so unhappy with themselves.

38:42And so and part of it is because they've only ever lived the life of Shadar to Alex Arons. No, I'm not name checking anyone. I'm just saying when I when I when I observe it, I think that you can see it right in front of you, which is that there's just so much inherent unhappiness because you're not motivated to do anything. And then that's amplified typically by guilty parents because they've been working so hard. And so I don't think you need to run a second study. A different version of an idea that friend of the pod, Brad Gerson, is working on, which I think deserves a shout out is this idea of giving every kid when they're born a retirement account.

39:23And I think that that's an interesting idea, where you give them some amount of money and it just It's mature inside of an index fund that gets unlocked for you when that kid is 65 or 70 years old. That's great because it helps you have a soft landing in retirement. I think that that's very humane and a right thing to do. But it doesn't rob you of that motivation to work in your 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. And that's a much better idea than UBI. And I think, by the way, it's really important to state that UBI can be more of a trap than a benefit. But it takes away the opportunity for individuals to progress because you no longer have a system that says you progress, you get richly rewarded.

40:07It ultimately drives to an outcome where you spend all the money and distribute it equally so everyone ends up having some sort of stasis. And I don't think that that's really human nature. I do think that systems and government programs that support people's ability to succeed, to work hard, to work smart, to progress while providing these necessary safety nets as a better solution, there's no right or wrong way. It's a very complicated system that's needed. And I don't think that this like this UBI concept is fairly naive. And I think that you'll see it play out at both a micro and a macro scale as being I think net net negatives.

40:41Yeah, you know, just wrapping up here so we can get onto the rest of the very juicy document we have today. It does seem demotivating to just have money dropping your head. That's why I like my experiment. I was referring to freeberg. Just forcing people not like having these programs that you have to go find out about and have the social capital and fabric around you, that you know about small business loans, etc. But hey, these three things are happening to you right now. This money's been put into your account automatically and you can decide what to do with it and just raising the education level and empowering people is a much better idea.

41:14I feel like whatever the education system is, schools or whatever, like actually teaching the vocational skills or the skills of how to succeed in the workplace, like here's how you go get a job, Here's how you build a business. How many of you start something. Those are the sorts of skills that are not taught in the educational system that I think are generally lacking. And then people kind of learn a bunch of history or some algebra or whatever they learn in school. And they pop out the other end. And it's like, okay, go figure out how to survive. Go figure out how to get a job. Go figure out how to build a business.

41:43To just build on your idea, we need more healthcare workers. If you paid somebody a thousand dollars a month and you paid for their school for one year to become a nurse doctor and there's practitioner, whatever, that would actually have a dramatic impact and solve a problem for our society while not giving a hand out. I think we all agree on this one. Let's keep moving through this amazingly juicy docket. All right, there is a battle. Right now for Wupermer, docs media empire, the Times reported on a behind the scenes fight for control of Fox News, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and just tons of TV networks in Australia, the UK.

42:17I think we all know the new square poll being set a bit like the TV show's secession which makes sense because they based it on the Murdoch family. It turns out this article in the Times is based on a seal court document that was obtained by them. Murdoch to remind you is 93 years old now and his trust would have given control to his four eldest children. However, he changed the trust to ensure that But Locklin Murdoch, who is more conservative, would take over these assets as opposed to James Elizabeth and Prudence, who are more moderate than Locklin, and they are engaged in a massive court case now that's going to start in September.

43:03The trust is irrevocable, but it contains a provision allowing for changes so long as they're made, quote, in good faith. And with the purpose of benefiting all members, so Rupert argued that the change is in the best interest of James Elizabeth and Prudence, as it keeps them formally separate from Fox News without having to worry about its political point of view. Fox News obviously has massive influence and has been a bit of a disaster over the last couple of years. They did the largest settlement ever in a defamation case with Dominion. $787 million. You remember Tucker Hannity, Laura Ingram, all of them privately trashed the people who lied about the dominion case on Fox News, and that all got shown in text messages, and it was a disaster for them.

43:54And he thoughts on this and how this collection of assets and the GOP have collaborated over the years. I wouldn't necessarily call it collaboration. I call it a market position. I mean, Fox News has carved out a powerful and profitable market niche by being the one cable news network that appeals to conservatives. And now, if, you know, let's say the more liberal members of the family like James take over and change the content and the programming to serve their own political views, they're gonna lose your ship, they're gonna lose their audience. It would be a foolish idea just from a business standpoint.

44:31So I think that Locklin is the right choice. I've met Locklin before, by the way. Nice guy. Look, I think a pretty mainstream conservative type of guy. He's clearly the right guy in the family to run this and the siblings I think could really screw it up. And I'm talking about not just from a content standpoint, I'm talking about from a revenue and profit standpoint if they take it in a different direction. I would already say that Fox News has a market position problem, which is that Rupert is very much a Neocon. Neoconservatism is on the way out in the Republican Party in favor of a more populist conservatism that you see with Trump or now is running made JD Vance, Rupert and Fox waged a really strong campaign to keep JD Vance off the ticket.

45:21Obviously lost that battle. Rupert fired Tucker by far their highest rated and most profitable host ever. And it was over, again, this populism versus neo -conservantism direction. So I think that Fox already has a problem where they are becoming misaligned with their audience. And regardless of what you think of the politics, that's just bad for business. It'll be really interesting to see if Lockland will realign things in a more populist direction, but definitely going in a liberal direction that like James or the other siblings would want to go in, that would be a disaster. Freiburg, Chimath, any thoughts on this media empire and secession planning?

46:06And I think probate and wills and trusts are of the devil's making. Nothing good comes out of these things. And I don't know. I just think some of these assets should just be left to shareholders. Or just sell them and take the money, give it to the kids. Hopefully you raise good kids. They can all go and pursue their own path. Because again, I think the point is like the path and the journey is the fun and these kinds of battles are really brutal and I'll tell you to me the thing that I'm sad when I hear this whole thing is like you have four siblings that I'm guessing grew up together. Yeah.

46:50And now are they ever going to talk to each other again or is it like three versus one or two versus two or? And I just think that that's ugly over what? Power and money? If I was the father, I would have sold the asset given the money to the kids or to charity or whatever. And hopefully they would have found happiness in a different way. But that is what they did with the Disney deal. They took the cash and they distributed it to the kids. So they each got a pretty big win fall. And then I think the concept was this remaining asset would be managed over the long term. Maybe I'm speaking out of school a bit, but I thought that's what happened there.

47:23They did sell Fox, the studio, and the library. And that brings X -Men Fantastic Four, Wolverine back together with the Avengers, which is most important. 20th Century, they didn't. It's all coming back together now. They just gotta get Sony to give up. I mean, we want to talk about interesting IP. Marvel just sold these characters to the highest, better in perpetuity. Such a crazy, weird deal. But it's like it's like me saying you know, I I've collected some really nice belts and so I'm just gonna have like a death match between my five kids to see who gets the best built I yeah, I just I mean and it's not it's not even about money actually because they have enough It's clearly this is about being picked no, and it's about being picked to pass your father.

48:11He loves the picture sibling And not you why would you why would you do that? Yeah, like is there is the asset so important? As I said, these are self -managing because business people will make rational business decisions. So put it in the hands of a rational business person, keep the family intact because if you lose the family, what do you have? Yeah, sure. That's what I don't get. That's what I don't understand. That's what I don't understand. That's what I don't understand. I'm talking about the top long skin. We might as well just go to our next topic. Joe Biden has been hot swapped as no shit and as predicted.

48:41The speedrun primary, maybe that's been subverted as we all know Joe Biden's family has What's your version? Maybe it has been subverted. Maybe possibly could have been subverted inadvertently knocked over, forgotten it could be an oversight. Anything's possible. Job, it informally exited the presidential race on Sunday after donors and party leadership politely asked him to enjoy his retirement. No, they shipped him by most insider accounts Biden was not happy about the decision and felt betrayed. And nonetheless, public has backed his VP, Kamala Harris, who appears to have already wrapped up the nomination survey conducted by APM Monday suggested that Harris already had the endorsement of enough delegates to secure the nomination in the first round of convention.

49:31Boating. So this won't be official until the DNC that starts August 19 in Shaitown so far no one has stepped forward as a rival for Harris. and in fact many of her would be competitors have already endorsed her. That includes Shapiro, Pennsylvania's governor, Newsom, California's governor, Pritzker, Illinois's governor, and Whitmer, Michigan's governor. All of those, I guess, potential VP candidates. She is now the 90 % favorite to get Democratic nomination. I'll stop there and ask our panelists what they think of this turn of events, Timothy, when I started saw? I mean, I don't think the process was super open and transparent and democratic, but I don't think they had much of a choice.

50:20And I think we've talked about that because too much of the money would have had to essentially been returned. And I don't think you can fight a federal election in 2024 with one hand tied behind your back. So she was the de facto nominee the eve when the rumors started. And now I think the whole point is to figure out where does she stand. I think the thing that she will have to overcome is that these last three years, three and a half years, she's been relatively under the radar. MIA, some might say. And I think that now there's this whole controversy. I don't know if you guys have seen this where like she was named the borders are, but then she was not the borders are and I think there's a there's a mainstream media is it's sort of fighting with itself from six months ago about the whole thing but the point is that we don't know what she believes and we don't yet have a sense of her agenda really you know and I think that over these next two months it'll be up to her to really create a very clear case of what she believes in and then it'll be really interesting to see who she picks as her VP candidate and then people I think will be in a position to judge.

51:32And I think that that's what, you know, what if I've been kind of like reading the tea leaves from the folks that I've talked to is sort of what they say, which is TBD and we need to figure out where she's at. Freiburg, your thoughts on this unbelievable 10 days in the history of our country where where President was nearly murdered by an assassin and Joe Biden resigned and a 39 -year -old political neo -fight venture capitalists has picked as VP. I mean, this is consequential. What are your thoughts on this? Ten days in the July stuff. I think we talked about that last week, but the Kamala Harris de facto nomination.

52:20that took place over 48 hours. I think it was a little bit shocking to a lot of people I've spoken with that there wasn't a bit more of a process to identify a nominee besides Kamala that effectively the party lined up. Now, what I think is relevant here is that for the first time, it's exposing people to the way the electoral process actually works in the United States that it's not a direct democracy where every individual in this country votes for their federally elected people. Remember, the United States was set up as a federated republic that there was meant to be these states, the states were in a federation, and then the states would elect electors that would go and figure out who should be the president, who should run the federal office, and the states would elect their representatives, their Congress people, to go represent them in the federal government.

53:13And so I think a lot of people, you know, whether it's just without thinking about it or based on precedent, assume I get a vote and who gets to be president. What you get to have is a vote and who gets to be the delegate to represent your state in picking the president. And so this process where delegates very quickly fell behind Kamala Harris because of the significant coalescing of power and influence within the parties, the two major parties in the United States has, I think, exposed a lot of people to the lack of a democratic process for federal executive role in this country. And I think that's a little bit shocking to people, but it is the way that the nation was set up.

53:56And the same thing with the popular vote versus electoral college, right? People keep getting confused by that. That's right. And in this very unusual condition, where a candidate who's earned all of these delegates drops out of the race, is shocking and surprising to people that they don't get to go and make a vote again individually and I think it feels unfair and I think that a lot of people are feeling that way. I do however think that pretty quickly there's a lot of people who are anyone but Trump that are going to rally behind her and she seems to be pulling well in the polls that have come out in the last couple days here.

54:29So let me hand it over to Saks then. You had a situation where Trump was the runaway favorite and this unbelievable unity at the RNC. And immediately after the RNC, the Democratic Party, a hot swap spiden for Kamala, and they've got a lot of great VP picks that they can choose from. Mark Kelly looking like the possibility, which would obviously give them a lot of support in Arizona, and with moderates and law and order folks. So, SACs were looking at essentially a dead heat. Some polls have been tied. Some polls, Reuters, Ipsos has Harris with the 2 % lead, CNN has Trump with the 3 % lead. What's your take on, forget about how we got here.

55:19You know, how does this affect the race itself? This is a dead heat now. What are your thoughts on the race going forward? Who's the VP pick that you're most worried about going up against the Republicans? Well, look, this clearly reshuffles the race to some degree. I don't think it's dead to eat the polling so as that Trump is still ahead in most of the swing states. But look, Harris has more upside than Biden does because she can actually campaign. I mean, Biden clearly was a short -fire loser. And that was exposed in the presidential debate. And that's why there was a total panic in the Democratic Party after that debate.

55:55They're like, we gotta get someone new and they drove them out. I do want to just say a word about that process. You know, throughout that process, remember, it started with Biden doing that stuff in Opel's interview. He said that even God Almighty won't get me out of this race. Then he said, nobody's pushing me out. I'm not going anywhere. I'm campaigning next week. He expressed that what was happening in the party was a revolt against him. And then boom, all of a sudden he's out. And all we really know from the public reporting is that Nancy Pelosi said, you know, Joe, we can do this easy way or the hard way.

56:29And he was out, again, less than 24 hours after he said, I'm in and I'm campaigning next week. And even his surrogates on the Sunday morning shows were saying that he's definitely in the race. The White House staff didn't know his campaign staff didn't know. It kind of came out of the blue. It's a very strange process. And it happened via him just posting a photograph of a letter that was on personal stationary, not even like an official White House memorandum. And we didn't get an update. We didn't hear directly from the president about one of the most consequential decisions of his life and of his presidency until Wednesday.

57:07Well, he did have COVID so that for an 80 year old is pretty hard. Fair enough. That was the story, but still I mean for us to be left in the dark wondering was really going on for three days. It was very strange. It certainly was not what you would call a democratic process. There was no speedrun primary as you wanted Jason. There was no open convention. What happened is the delegates fell in line instantly. As I predicted, because I said that they would not be able to handle the chaos, that they wanted to basically fall in line immediately and end the chaos. And they fell in line behind Kamala Harris who has never gotten even one primary vote.

57:41Who are you supposed to do? Who are you supposed to do? Who are you supposed to do? Who are you supposed to do? Who are you supposed to do? Who are you supposed to do? the one I would pick is Josh Shapiro. He's the governor of Pennsylvania, rising star. Look, if he can deliver Pennsylvania for the Democrats, that's powerful because one way for Harris to eke out a victory is if Shapiro can get her Pennsylvania. And then if she sort of tax back to appealing to the Arab and Muslim vote in Michigan, to eke out Michigan and then eke out Wisconsin with this one point. In other words, if she can hold on to the blue wall and then she loses the swing states that Trump is very much ahead in like Arizona and Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, she can still win this election by 270 electoral votes to 268.

58:32It'll be the closest margin in presidential history. So that's the scenario and it's probably her best path to the two victories to win by one one electoral vote. That's the scenario I'd be most worried about as a Republican. Now, the other candidate you hear a lot about is Mark Kelly, the center from Arizona, who on paper, it looks fantastic. He's an astronaut, his wife was a victim of a gunshot moderate, right? Super moderate. I personally don't think he is that moderate, but I think he presents as one. And he's made noises. He comes across this tough and comes across as someone who's wanted to be tougher on the border, which is a huge weakness for Harris.

59:16Yeah. If he can deliver Arizona, then he becomes a strong contender. But I'm not sure that he can. So if it were me, I'd probably go with Shapiro. I mean, I hope they're not listening to me. I hope they go with Kelly. Chimata, obviously, even in this heated thing, the good news is that both sides are going to accept the election results. We have that fairness and that honorability in both parties where we'll except even a close election. There'll be no drama after it. But what's your thought on the strongest ticket? Do you think Shapiro, do you think Kelly, CNN said, hey, and this went viral, do we think a Jewish vice president, the country's ready for it?

59:56They got kind of dragged for that. What do you think is the right VP pick here, Tcha'mah? What do you think the right VP pick here is? And which one is the scariest? Two, I Trump JD Vance ticket, which is a very strong ticket. it in and of itself. So if you look at Trump's VP pick, it's about aligning a philosophy. Donald Trump created the MAGA movement, this populist conservative right wing movement. And I think JD Vance has an opportunity now to carry that torch post Donald Trump. And that is an ideology that spans states. I think this idea that you pick somebody because they can deliver a state is pretty misguided.

1:00:46I just don't think that that in reality is what happens. So I think that Kamala has to decide what she stands for and figure out whether she needs somebody on her flank that represents a slightly different set of ideas that will then maximize her appeal or she wants to double down. And then she has to pick somebody that sort of like aligns with her philosophically. And again, I would just say that it's not superqueer yet what she thinks. I think that Joe Biden was more of a traditional centrist that had to appeal to the progressive left -wing order to get his work done. So that kind of makes sense.

1:01:26You can understand it. You don't have to agree with it, but it's pretty obvious. I don't know what she... Where she's at politically. So I think that that's the first thing. She needs to explain herself. Is she a centrist? Is she more of a moderate Democrat? Is she more of a progressive Democrat? And then we can then understand who the best person to align her with should be. But if I was if I was in the Democratic kind of like star chamber. Yeah. I would kind of try to figure that out first because I think the Donald Trump pick makes makes a lot of sense because it basically moves the Republican party in a very firm direction that die is cast for the Republicans for many years to come now.

1:02:08Okay, Freiburg, your thoughts. Who is the VP candidate? What do you think of this race and give us a prediction? You're famous for your incredible insights and predictions in politics. Give us your prediction, Freiburg. Who should you pick? Who will she pick? I think there's a lot of talk about Roy Cooper and North Carolina. I'm gonna say, Saxon mentioned Cooper, but sounds like could be in the running, and could be a leading contender for the slot. I think the Harris Trump poll is not out, or there's a recent one that shows Harris, yeah, 44 -48 from in the lead in North Carolina. So there's some room there.

1:02:56if you can get the governor in that spot, that's a lot of electoral votes. In terms of who I think should be, I'm not sure, but I do think that might be a top contender from folks I've talked to. Any thoughts on Shapiro and CNN's positioning that the country's not ready for a Jewish Vice President? So, I was shocked recently to hear about a board, a pretty important board, because it represents a large organization and there was an individual on the board who's supposed to be elected chairman. They went in for the vote. And in that board meeting, this individual who happens to be Jewish, there was a conversation that ensued about you can't be the chairman at this time because having a Jewish chair would be really difficult in this current climate.

1:03:42And I was shocked to hear this. It was not expected by folks going into the meeting. Things were supposed to be quite different in the vote. and ultimately the decision was made that a Jewish person should not be the chair of the board at this time. Jake, out to your question, I think that behind closed doors, these are the sorts of conversations that are going on that there's a perception given the Gaza conflict that there is a risk of having Jewish leadership being put into powerful positions right now. Jewish leaders being put into powerful positions. Wow. That is shocking. That's insane. That's insane.

1:04:17It's just this is this is what is going what this is just yeah, it's shocking and deranged and the anti -semitism right now on social media and What we're seeing online is just absolutely heartbreaking and infuriating in equal parts Saxony anyone add to this as we wrap up our what the Well, I mean just talk about Shapiro sacks. It is the country ready for this that you saw the CNN clip and you know sort of Can I take what you're asking? Can I just ask that? I'm sorry, man. Go ahead. What does it solve? What does it accomplish? Less heat coming into that board. Less protests. Less protests. The protesters now have, I guess, what I would read into this, correct me if I'm more here free bird, is the protesters have now won in that they've intimidated people to an extent that they don't want to go near Jewish leadership?

1:05:14Am I interpreting correctly a possibility here? Sorry, say that again the protestor is what? So these protests, the Gaza conflict, have reached a point where people do not want to have Jewish leadership because it would be polarizing and create more protests. That's right. And that's the conversation that I hear going on behind closed doors or I'm hearing about. And so, you know, it's almost like a cancel culture against Jews because of the risk of a Jewish person being in a leadership position that could live. Yeah, which is exactly what's in that place. Bringing up with the VP choice or Shapiro.

1:05:55And that's right. I think it's totally crazy. However, I definitely have seen people online, I mean, articles online, like saying, like is this an issue with putting ship here on the ticket? Now, I can't believe this is a problem for the voters of the country. However, I think if you're one of the democratic masterminds and you're trying to engineer enough electoral votes for Harris to win, like I said, you're trying to win that blue wall. You're trying to get not just Pennsylvania, but Michigan. And the problem that Biden had and now Harris has in Michigan is that the large Arab and Muslim population of Michigan is really against the administration's support of Israel.

1:06:37Now this is why Harris just snub Netanyahu when he came to Washington. So they are immediately trying to reposition that issue and remember the margin of error in Michigan is like 2%. So if they can win back that vote by obscene to be more progressive on the whole Israel Gaza war, then there's a big electoral advantage for them. So I have to wonder if this is where this talk about, you know, is it an issue for Shapiro to be Jewish on the ticket or whatever? Again, it's nuts to me that we could be even having that conversation in this country, but it's possible that that is what's going on is it's like, can you win Pennsylvania, but not lose Michigan?

1:07:20Well, the inevitable outcome of identity politics by giving everyone a definition on their race or their gender or their background or their religion is that you ultimately end up picking winners and losers and you don't just get to pick winners. When you make selections or prioritize things based on identity like this, you also de facto pick losers and that's where this unfortunate snowball. When Jonathan Kenner picked him for president, it was a big issue that he was Catholic. I mean, you guys don't remember this, but I do. I was in 1960. It was a major thing in our family. There was a major point of pride that we had an Irish Catholic in the White House.

1:07:58Yeah. And specifically, what people asked is, would he be loyal to the United States or be loyal to the Vatican and the Pope? You know, who was his ultimate authority? And he made a really clear look. I'm going to do what's right for the United States and he neutralized that issue. I think that what matters about Shapiro or any VP is their views and their accomplishments their policies and whether he's Jewish or not really is secondary, even if even if your principal concern is Gaza, there are still plenty of Jews who have a wide spectrum of views on that issue. So it is nuts to me that this conversation is seriously happening.

1:08:36All right. There has been a kerfuffle, a Donnie Brook online between program and our bestie, David It's sacks here, here, Paul Graham threatening you sacks on X. Do you really want the full story of what you did to Parker being told publicly? Because it's the worst case of an investor now treating a founder that I've ever heard. And I've heard practically all of them. This is Paul Graham, the founder of White Combinator. I was talking recently to another investor about whether you are the most evil person in Silicon Valley, Frank Jr. David sacks. He thought about it for a few seconds and agreed.

1:09:12And he couldn't think of anyone worse. The second tweet about you being the most evil person David Sacks in Silicon Valley has been deleted Well, that's nice to know. It's nice to know. Yes. That's nice to know there was also another unhinged tirade that he had against me a few months ago Okay, where he was commenting in the Ukraine debate and was responding to Ukrainian partisan who This guy is like a propagandist for Ukraine who is embedded in the Azov battalion and people may know what that is. Any event Paul went out of his way. The thing is, I've never met Paul Graham. I don't know him. I've never done business with him.

1:09:53So it's as weird to me that he has this animus and this vitriol towards me. It's hard to know exactly what this is based on. I think that part of it is that he thinks he knows what happened at Zenefits, even though he wasn't involved at all. And he's just listening to one guy who's been nursing this Ventetta for many years. And then other people are speculating that there could be other things involved. I don't quite know. You want to set the record straight on Zenefits and just say what happened? What is it that you guys want to know? Parker apparently has done several public interviews where he kind of made claims.

1:10:29I think, I don't know if I've listened to him, I've just read the summary, but Jake, I probably know that Parker's client is useless. I just said he ran a coup on him, obviously for folks who don't know, there was an SEC investigation. and Parker was ousted from Xenifits as the founder CEO. He's very bitter about that. Ditter revenge, start up, rippling, which is doing quite well from what I understand. And he blamed SACs for all of this, even though he was sanctioned for doing essentially assurance fraud by helping people lie on a test for their insurance. Certifications and he got sanctioned by the SEC for it.

1:11:08And as you pointed out, Zach, he was the only person who was sanctioned for that. So he broke some rules and he got pretty, pretty serious penalty, yeah. But do I have that basically? Yeah, I mean, that whole experience was like the, easily the worst year of my entire professional career having to deal with that mess that he created. And look, anybody can now say anything almost 10 years later in a podcast, but the situation there was thoroughly investigated by regulators who had subpoena powers who did extensive discovery. They looked at everyone's emails throughout the whole company. They also interviewed something like a dozen people under oath and took witness testimony from them and then they sanctioned him.

1:11:55They find him and they published an account of what happened. I personally think it's a huge waste of time to be like rehashing events are almost a decade old but I guess I'm being forced to by this smith campaign that he and Paul Graham have engineered against me. If you want to know what happened, just read what the SEC said, read what the other regulators said. There was only one person who was named as being aware of the misconduct and there was only one person who was fined and held accountable by regulators. In fact, he was fined more than the company. Now, if he just said, Yeah, I look, I learned from that mistake and I made some mistakes moved on and apparently does have a successful company.

1:12:40So I don't really understand why he's so bitter. He seems to have like a, he's like disturbed about it. Then it would be fine. I mean, there would be no reason to be talking about this. But the guy refuses to admit that he did anything wrong and instead he's created this elaborate story that his departure from Xenifus wasn't related to massive compliance issues. and that somehow it was related to him seeing a sales target or being the victim of a coup. That's not what happened. This was a regulatory crisis that unfolded over many months and kept getting worse and worse and we kept discovering new compliance violations and this created a 50 state insurance investigation that could have shut the company down.

1:13:23And he controlled the board. He didn't have to leave if he didn't want to. He ultimately perceived that it was in his interest to leave and let us clean it up. And then he went on to go do this other startup, which I think he was planning to do all along. So his plan worked out for which is he left a big mess for us to clean up. And that is very successful now with the new company, so. Right. Right. Sax, I remember, I will just say I remember how hard you worked at that after you were in the COO seat and then you were promoted to CEO. And I was really impressed watching it and seeing what you did because you chose to step up and take care of this company at a time where you expressed to all of us privately how hard it was and what a challenge this company had found itself in.

1:14:05And you had investors that were friends of yours that were involved in the company that were on the board. And I think you did what felt like at the time and from my experience interacting with you during this time, the right thing, which was to step up and address this rather than just throw your hands in the air and say, this guy screwed things up or this company screwed up and walked away from it. You had personally put money in, your friends had put money in, and you worked hard to try help the business recover after this miserable period of time. And it was really impressive to watch you do that work.

1:14:33So I just want to highlight my kind of experience watching you and telling you your entire life. It was miserable and obviously pretty thankless. And I did it for no compensation. I did it because like you said, I had a lot of friends who were best in the company. I just thought it was the right thing to do to do this clean up. The lawyer said it would take two years. We managed to get it done in one year. We got a clean bill of health and regulators. We had to remediate all the compliance failures. years. And when I then handed the torch to the new CEO, we had $200 million of the bank and 60 million of ARR with a clean bill of health.

1:15:04So, you know, but I didn't know I'd have this like crazy founder like lobbying bombs at me the whole time. And frankly, if I had known he was going to do this, I would have just said, listen man, you clean up your mess. And he would have continued playing games and stonewalling the regulators and it would have been a much worse situation for sure. or Tremoffee wanted anything here before we wrap up on this, because I'll have two points to make, but I'll let you in the first one. Look, I think that part of what happens in Silicon Valley is that there's these tweaks and there's definitely a YC clique and they protect their own in absolute terms.

1:15:42And so I think there's a level of morality that everybody else has to live by that's not necessarily the rules that apply if you're a YC CEO. So now that was accepted in Silicon Valley because in the early days, they were, frankly, one of a very, very small handful of games in town with respect to high quality deal flow when you started to do series A, B and C. And as a result of that, I think venture capitalists essentially looked the other way because the returns were so good. The companies that that were coming out of the incubator were so good. But as with all things, when you're successful and you try to scale, returns decay.

1:16:23And this is not a slight on YC's returns, but it's what happens to everybody. So if you look at black stones returns, they were incredible when they started. And then they're okay today. When you look at Sequoia's returns, they were incredible when they started. They're okay today. YC's returns were incredible when they started. They're okay today. And this is nothing against any of these folks. It's that in the business of building an organization and scaling, that's what happens. And when that happens and a lot more competition emerges on the scene, the old tactics that you use to run a protection racket, if you will, just doesn't work anymore.

1:17:04And I think part of what's spilling out in public here is that kind of immature form of and intimidation is just kind of dumb because it doesn't hang together anymore. So I don't know, I thought the whole melee, if you will, Ruckus Jason, practice, practice. Donnie Brock, Bruhal, a clash. Yeah. Was more about a guy that was engaged in this, trying to do what he perceived to be the right thing for a YC founder in his community, but probably just he just needs to get back to work and do something productive and process wouldn't happen the next time. I'll just make two points here. Y -combinator has always, like much of our industry, they're not unique in this, been in favor of rule vendors, breakers, and Naughty is actually something in their interview process that they optimize for.

1:18:03Sam Altman has talked about this very publicly, I had a YC alum who was trying to get funding for me, hack my voicemail and change my outgoing voicemail. And that was like a big brew, ha ha, and hacker news, et cetera. And you know, we kind of celebrate a little bit of bending and breaking of rules and what everybody needs to understand is sometimes if you bend or break a rule, like insurance certification, like Parker did here, that can be fatal for a company which it was and it can be really, really dangerous. And so then you superimpose on top of this to your point, Chema, Y -combinator, very big, powerful organization.

1:18:41Some folks say, Amafia, and they described it as a bully stack. Y -combinator does circle the wagons. They do bully people. And they do put out a presentation that we are the only people in Silicon Valley who are found are friendly, even though they're getting 7 % for 125K, like we do in our accelerator or tech start us. while also saying everybody else is the enemy, everybody else is taking advantage of founders. The truth is we're all working really hard. Every founder is going to hack their way to success. Sometimes you take it too far, like Parker did here. He learned a lot of lessons. Like some people say Uber did.

1:19:19Like some people say Airbnb did. There's always been rule breaking and bending in the entrepreneurial class and then you superimpose on it, You know, in the Middle East, Sachs, your strong feelings about Ukraine and politics. And now the footprint of Silicon Valley is just so powerful, so influential on the global stage when it comes to politics. It just reaches a level of toxicity here that it doesn't need to. We're all on the same team. Let's all build great companies. Let's put this ugliness behind us and get back to work. That's my final statement, Nostra Kanas' spoken. I like that statement and if we were just talking about somebody who had learned their lesson, this wouldn't even be an issue.

1:19:59This is like events that happened a decade ago, such a waste of our time and energy even be talking about. The problem is that you have people, really we're talking about Parker and Paul Graham, who are trying to smear somebody as a way to exalt, yeah. They're trying to damage your business. Let's be honest. They're trying to get founders to not work with you. For sure they're doing that. And that's bullshit, by the way. Look, Parker has this very complicated story, and the whole purpose of it is to exonerate himself to basically say that he didn't engage in any wrongdoing, and somehow he was set up.

1:20:31Okay, it's ridiculous. I mean, I don't have that kind of power over the SEC. The SEC, they sent us a list of people they wanted to talk to. I was not on the list. And I was like, well, wait, don't they want to talk to me? I'm the new CEO of the company. And the lawyer said, no, your discovery was clean as a whistle. They don't have any questions for you. They only want to talk to people who, you know, they saw in the discovery. there was an issue. So the regulators prosecuted, they basically conducted this investigation. I had no impact over that. It was a very serious issue. This was not made up.

1:21:01So I just think it kind of defies belief to now say that this, you know, all the regulatory compliance issues, which played out over months were not an existential issue for the company, it certainly was. But look, we have better things to talk about. Do you see Ali Resnick's tweet? This is pretty dark. Ali Resnick tweeting here, Paul Graham reached out to the key SV firms, Silicon Valley firms, to attempt to get Jewish VCs fired post -October 7. No idea if that's true or not, but there has been this, Paul Graham is anti -Semitic, sort of meme going around. I don't think he's anti -Semitic, but this is a pretty bold charge.

1:21:45and I don't know if it's true or not. Well, I can speak to some of it. Okay, go ahead. Yeah. I've talked to a few people who are involved in this. Look, I think what happened is that in the wake of October 7th, there was obviously a very heated debate online. PG is on one side of that. He got into a supporters of Israel on the other side. They accused him of saying anti -Semitic things. He took offense to that and basically went over their heads to their bosses of a couple of different VC firms, at least two that I know of, where he basically went to the heads of these firms to express his displeasure, I guess, with these exchanges.

1:22:24And I think the feeling on the part of the junior VC's, because the people he was going over the heads of were not senior partners, whatever. These were lower level to mid -level VCs at firms. You can understand how they would receive that. The head of YC is going over. Yeah, Paul Graham is a giant. Yeah, so he's basically going to the heads of their firm to seek a correction in their behavior even though this wasn't like a workplace activity. And so they certainly felt intimidated and silenced by that. Or in the worst case that he was trying to get them fired. In his case, I guess he's trying to, you know, say, hey, this isn't cool to call me an anti -Semite on Twitter publicly.

1:23:04And the truth maybe somewhere in between, I mean, the great irony of this, of course, is he's out. He's concerned about his reputation being damaged. And I know YC took it very seriously. The claims that they're anti -Semitic and Paul Graham's anti -Semitic. They took that very seriously as they should. But here he is out there trying to damage your reputation. So it's a little bit of hypocrisy here, I think, if he's outwardly trying to destroy your reputation with founders. and then he's concerned about his reputation. Well, clearly there's a double standard here because PG doesn't like being called names on Twitter.

1:23:40Yeah. He doesn't like his use being labeled and he's willing to take those debates offline, go over the heads, not talk to the people who said those things, but then go to their bosses, the heads of their firm. Yeah. Maybe not threaten them, maybe not say, yeah, I don't think he said, fire this person or whatever, but like you said, there's always an implication of retaliation because people understand the way that YC operates, and certainly those junior level ECs experienced it as a form of intimidation. I mean, this is the classic cancellation playbook, right? And this is what people will do to the left or the right, or they'll do it to advertise, or they'll try to get advertisers to cancel.

1:24:19It feels similar to that cancel culture, even if that's not how PG intended it. Well, it's also like rather hypocritical when he's super -sensitive about this type of thing. But then he's instigating this pylon when on this whole zenith it's thing He's basically single source from a disgruntled founder who has this fendetta who's been nursing this thing for years He's never talked to me like I said he's never even met me But he's willing to call me the most evil person in all of Silicon Valley and then again instigate this pylon with like all these other people from YC Yeah, I mean how dare him call you the most evil person.

1:24:56That's my job here on the podcast Yes, exactly. And then I saw like other people from YC, like Michael Seable, who I think is actually a really cool guy. He's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, super supportive founders. And then he's tweeting that like I somehow I put up my founders who were, there are a lot of founders who basically spoke up. And actually said, including many founders who came out of YC, say, you know, actually David's been a great VC to us. And he's saying, oh, saxomist, I put them up to it. No, I never asked anybody to do that. And a good reason of why is I don't want to trouble my founders or like, like, Dragon into this.

1:25:28Yeah. So I'm not going to make them do that. So I had nothing to do with it. But frankly, you know, old saying that every accusation is a confession. Maybe the reason why people at YC think that I might have done that is because that's kind of their playbook is they create these online mobs. But like, what gives him the right to do that? I can tell you. Go for it. He doesn't have enough to do. He's sitting around. He's got a lot of money. I mean, he's been very successful. and as far as I can tell, he's just getting into dust up on Twitter and then like I think there's a lot of amazing people we all know them that are so good when they're under pressure focused and grinding and then when you take a little bit of the pressure off they just go crazy and they don't have enough to do and it's amplified by money and it's amplified their own perceptions of themselves so I don't know maybe maybe she's just go back to work.

1:26:21So everybody back to work When these things get heated, here's an interesting idea for everybody. Go get a cup of coffee with the person you disagree with. Sit down like we do here at the All in Podcast. And have a vibrant debate. It makes life richer. It makes you smarter. It gives you more perspective. And so PG, Sacks, anybody else involved. Just sit down and have a cup of coffee. Try to hash this out. Good coffee in San Francisco. That's my RX. Freeberg, I've been talking to Sacks privately. He has been complaining to me for weeks that we've had too much politics on the program and not enough science corner.

1:26:54So I act we asked who sacks is appeals to me and all of his supporters to get a science corner in today. Let's talk about nuclear power. Everybody has got nuclear power on their mind. Obviously, China is doing a really good job of executing on it and there's some new science here. So, listen. That's the way sacks look so engaged. Let's go. Well, sacks might like it because it's a bit of an economic story and a bit of a China competitive story, which I think is the main point here. The story is rooted in a paper that was published out of China on their new high temperature gas cooled pebble bed reactor, which is a new type of nuclear reactor technology that shows that this thing cannot melt down, which is an amazing new technology.

1:27:40But I want to just take a step back and talk about general electricity production in the US versus China and where it's headed. So today the US has roughly one terawatt of total electricity production capacity. China today has about three terawatts of total electricity production capacity. And about, you know, two to three percent of that is nuclear today for China. So by 2050, the US is projected to build out an additional terawatts to getting us to two terawatts of capacity. So we're gonna double our total electricity output by 2050. China, meanwhile, has a plan stated to increase electricity production to 8 .7 terawatts.

1:28:20So basically tripling between now and 2050. 88 % of their power by 2050 will be renewables. And by 2060, they've stated this goal that they want about 18 % of their overall power to come from nuclear reactors. They currently have 26 nuclear reactors in the construction phase. They've got planning going on around building 300 of these. And they've already got stated plans around 500 gigawatts of capacity. Just to give you a sense of that, 500 gigawatts, which is what China's got plans for is half of the total US electricity production today. That's in their nuclear buildout. Today, just to give you a sense of the relative cost of electricity, China's about 7 to 9 cents a kilowatt hour.

1:29:03The US is 17 to 25 cents a kilowatt hour. And China is projected to drop their price to less than 6 cents due to the expansion of renewables and nuclear power in the country. So the US cost is about triple what it is in China to build out new electricity capacity. That's a really important point. So currently we have about a third of what China has. China is going to triple. We're going to double by 2050. Their cost is already lower than ours and it's going to get lower. And their cost to build out new electricity is a fraction of what it is in the US. So this is a massive difference. The international energy agency estimates that the electricity from nuclear power cost cost 65 bucks per megawatt hour in China compared to 105 in the US and 140 in the EU.

1:29:51And recent data has US costs looking at they might be anywhere from five to up to 10 times what it costs to build out in China. So this is a real important long term competitive point. China has more electricity production. It's cheaper to make electricity and it's cheaper to build new capacity and they're building at an accelerated rate. And this really highlights the industrial challenge the United States is going to have in the decades ahead. We talk a lot about wanting to ensure manufacturing in the US, build out new manufacturing technologies, but ultimately all of these industries, particularly AI, are going to be driven by the cost of power.

1:30:26So Nick, if you pull up this chart, so what's going on in nuclear? Well, there's effectively considered to be four generations of nuclear reactors. The first generation was all the early prototypes, and I've got an image up here to show this comes from the Department of Energy. The second generation, which was the first kind of commercial power reactor, started to get built out in the 1960s, 70s, 80s. And then these Gen 3 reactors were these lighter weight reactors that were kind of more advanced. Gen 4 is the next generation of nuclear power reactors. And their next generation, because they're meant to be much more safe, where they cannot theoretically have a meltdown.

1:31:03You can't have a nuclear meltdown like you had with Fukushima or with Remile Island. And to be clear, middle -cashima was generation two. Those are the boiling water reactors, yeah. Yeah. And so these old reactors have this risk where you pump water in to cool down the reactor and to drive the turbine. And if the water pumping system fails and you can't get the rods out of the reactor, then The reactor keeps reacting, the uranium keeps having this kind of chain reaction, gets hotter and hotter, and eventually gets so hot, it melts all the walls and all the surrounding materials of the reactor, and all of the nuclear rods start to evaporate, and all this nuclear material is released into the environment.

1:31:47That's the risk of a meltdown, ultimately. This is not a nuclear bomb, just to be clear. This is just about really high temperatures melting the facility, and then radioactive material escapes the facility. The Gen 4 reactors are designed where that isn't possible. And so one of the first, if you go to this next slide, you'll see just kind of an image here. This is the new reactor called the Pebblebed reactor. China started this facility. I don't want to butcher the name, but I think I will. It's at the Shia Dowang site in Shandong Province. It's a 210 megawatt electricity production reactor. They started construction in 2012.

1:32:22They finished and started doing operational tests in December of 22. They ran all the safety tests in the summer of 23 where they turned off the cooling and basically simulated that the system failed to see if it would melt down. And that's the results that they just published, which was the tests they ran last summer. And even when they turned everything off, the system did not fail, it did not have a meltdown. It maintained its ability to control its temperature and not have a meltdown. And the way it works, as you can see here, is that these little pebbles, they're kind of like billiard ball sized pebbles have uranium in their core.

1:32:57These pebbles kind of drop into this the center reactor chamber. And when the uranium is close to other uranium, a chain reaction starts to generate heat. That heat is actually in this reactor concept captured by a helium gas that circulated inside around the reactor. That hot helium gas heats up water turns a turbine generate electricity. And then these billiard balls fall out the bottom. So what they did is they simulated that the system stopped circling, that the power went out and measured what happened ultimately. It was able to recover. It didn't melt down. And this is quite different. Nick, if you show an old model of an old nuclear rod system.

1:33:33So here's nuclear rods. They're made of uranium. They go inside these chambers that have other uranium. And when they touch each other, they get close to each other, they heat up. And you have water that has to be pumped continuously to keep it cool to maintain a low temperature. What happened in Fukushima and other facilities where we've had meltdowns is that the water stopped pumping Everything kind of evaporated away and the rods didn't get pulled if the rods can't get pulled out and the water can't keep pumping You have a meltdown with things get so hot it melts everything around it and collapses.

1:34:03So this Chinese site Just demonstrated this pebble bed reactor, which is a Gen 4 reactor and It has extraordinary safety profile. There's is basically no condition where the system would have a meltdown. So these Gen 4 reactors are smaller, they're more modular, they're much, much safer, they're more efficient, they have much less waste. You still have to store those used billiards somewhere, so you still have to kind of take them and put them somewhere and keep them underground for 10 ,000 years. But compared with previous reactors, this plant is designed to be much more efficient, much safer.

1:34:40and they completed the safety test. They published the results on the safety test. And I think it really shows the performance is there. And this was always meant to be future technology, these Gen 4 reactors. China opened up commercial operations with this reactor in December of 2023. So it's running, it's producing power, it's on the grid. And this design, funny enough, was first proposed in the 1940s. And it took us nearly 100 years to get it to market, which makes me also point out why I'm so optimistic 100 years from now on fusion technology, which seemed crazy up to today. And this sort of technology seemed crazy at the time, but 80 years later, we've gotten there.

1:35:16So, this was an exciting outcome, but I really do want to highlight the competitiveness with China, lower cost to produce, lower cost to run. And the downstream, and they're expanding like crazy. And the downstream is they can power more H -100s. The U .S. This is why I asked Donald Trump when he came on the show, and I want to make my passion a plea. This is why investing in and deregulating nuclear reactor technology in the United States to enable a competitive playing field with the United States and China in the decades ahead is so critical because if we don't China will beat the United States in just really and we will eventually find ourselves in a greater point of conflict with respect to this rising power that is going to be driven by low cost highly abundant power and the United States does not have that power equals AI.

1:36:01You don't think that distributed energy can basically deliver effectively the energy at a marginal cost of zero? Yeah, so the solar build at Jamak is in the US forecast where we could get in an optimistic scenario, a doubling of power outputs from one terro up to two. So that's in the system today, in the forecast. But how do we get to nine? That's where China's gonna be at by 2050. And we have to have this ability to more rapidly kind of accelerate, you know, high power output systems like nuclear because while solar is great, it's a low power output. You need, you know, a much more volume. So this is highly concentrated system and the cost per megawatt hour, you know, can be significantly competitive if you use the small modular reactors and accelerate a lot about China.

1:36:48What about carbon based solutions as it fall back? Difficult to scale. I mean, we're not going to open up 500 more coal power plants in the next couple of years. What about oil and that gas? Yeah. So today, that gas is 44 % of US power production capacity and we are going to build out and we are building out new Nat gas facilities but that's in the forecast. So all of our forecast today for the US are mostly Nat gas going out and a lot of solar and wind going out to 2050 to double our capacity and it's already a stretch for us to be able to double our capacity. So the only solution is to rewrite the regulation.

1:37:25We have to get nuclear going in the United States and these systems are safe, they are scalable. And if the United States embraced this and we took a public policy perspective that this is about competitiveness with China, it's about national security. I'm hopeful that whoever comes in to lead the executive branch in this next administration will be really thoughtful and make this a top priority. So that's my plea and my reason for going through this today. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, this has been another amazing episode of the all -in podcast for. What are we learn, Jason? It's important to have a job.

1:37:59Otherwise, everything just goes to Yeah, through your not -retire. Keep your mind sharp and shout out to our friend Phil Helmuth, doing really great at the World Series of Poker. Happy birthday, Zander. Happy birthday to our guys, Zander. Yada Yada. And for the German dictator, the Sultan of science and your rainman architect, yeah, David Sacks. I am the world's most moderate moderate. We'll see you all next time. Bye bye.

1:38:31David Sackett said. And it said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Lumby West, I squeeed a king of wine. I'm going on a beach.

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1:39:20I'm doing all it.