Artemis II, Jamie Dimon’s “American Dream,” Snap’s Crucible Moment | Diet TBPN

0:00John Coogan:We got to kick it off with this video from NASA Administrator and more importantly, former TVP and guest Jared Isaacman. He says tomorrow we launch at sunset. Tonight, Artemis 2 waits on the pad, ready to carry astronauts, potentially farther than any humans have traveled in more than half a century. The next era of exploration. And we have the countdown here right next to John. So it is about four hours and 20-something minutes until the launch starts. You know, they might delay by a few minutes. Who knows? They might scratch entirely. But if things go to plan, the official NASA stream is up now.

0:36John Coogan:But stay with us. And then once we wrap in about three hours, head over there and watch NASA take you through the final stage of the Artemis II launch. But let's play NASA Administrator Jared Isaacsman's video. Because. It's very exciting. This is what I lived for as a young child and what I live for today.

1:04John Coogan:Fifty years. A lot of people have been going back and forth, SpaceX versus SLS. I think it's more rockets, the better. More space launch capacity, the better. I want 10 of these companies. I want them all to be successful. Apo Structura says, you can hate SLS for being obsolete, massively late and over budget. I certainly do. But you got to concede, it looks incredible. And I couldn't agree more. Importantly, some people were joking around saying the space shuttle is launching today. They're not using the space shuttle because they're going farther than they normally go with the space shuttle.

1:41John Coogan:And the space shuttle was decommissioned. So then the astronauts will be in a pod on top, a capsule mode. Exactly. Blake Scholl shares, I'm genuinely excited to see America headed back to the moon, back around the moon, but Artemis is a moon dog. That's a good wombo. That's a really good wombo. Wombos are the new meta. We'll be breaking it down soon. You don't even need to Lorraine it. You don't. It's just plainly. Yeah, it's obvious. Lorraine is lore and explain. Lore plus explain. Yeah. Remember that Apollo did not result in durable progress in space. It marked a literal high point for more than half a century.

2:13The cost of space access remained prohibitively high until we had a rebirth of space entrepreneurship. Thank you for showing the way. SpaceX, Apollo, was history's greatest tech demo, the moon landing. This is inspiring. It shows the triumph of ingenuity, science, and reason. But also, Apollo led to half a century of stasis and regression.

2:32John Coogan:Yeah, complacent. It was fundamentally uneconomic, contributed to creation of a cost-insensitive space agency and supply base, all more concerned with perpetuating their own existence, more concerned with make-work jobs than accelerating human progress. Now we're going back to the mood, essentially the same way we did in 1969. Again, uneconomically, again with central planning. A disposable rocket, no answer to how we create a self-sustaining lunar economy. Again, we're taking communist approaches in competition with the communists. Communism didn't work for the Russians, and it won't work for America either.

3:05The sooner we can get done with this moondoggle, the better. But there's also reason to be optimistic. This time around, there's a nascent commercially led vision for the moon. Lunar hotels, mass drivers, data centers in space, Helium-3, the commercial programs that gave SpaceX an early assist show a different and better path forward. This is where the better future lies, and this is where America should be focused. America should take the moon, and we should take it the same way we took the American West. Let's encourage and protect lunar value creation. How about a Homestead Act for the moon?

3:33Most important, let's stop dumping money. and more importantly, the time of our engineers and scientists on glory projects that will never lead to a better future. It is indeed time for another space race. Last time we fought communism with communism. This time, let's remember what made America great. This time, let's fight communism with capitalism.

3:50John Coogan:There's some good points in here. I think the flip side of this is that we are in a wildly different position than 1969 in terms of the maturity of this lunar economy, the space ecosystem. We have SpaceX filed for IPO today. You're looking at a trillion dollar company. It will instantly be one of the largest companies in the world. It already is, but in the public markets when it goes out. And so you have a lot of companies and startups and venture capitalists that are fully ready to commercialize any findings that come out of this and see this as an inspirational moment. And overall, it just feels like 1969, the capital markets, the entrepreneurship, the capitalism was not quite ready for, okay, let's take this to the next step.

4:36John Coogan:Let's privatize this. Let's build businesses around this. It was much more of a science experiment that went off into its corner and then was not immediately capitalized on. But I think this time could be different. At the same time, I do understand what he's saying. Yeah. Ryan and Hunter over at Pirate Wires shared this mission in Pirate Wires today, and they shared a quote from Jared last week saying, this time he said the goal is not flags and footprints. This time the goal is to stay. America will never again give up the moon. So generally aligned with what Blake is saying. Tyler, what's your take on this?

5:16Yeah, I was just going to say, I think Blake is kind of underestimating the value of just like vibes. Yeah. People have been like pretty black-pilled on the moon. Totally. I think basically since like everything kind of stopped.

5:26John Coogan:Yeah. So if you can just have like a white pill, everyone's like sure like maybe it's not a good idea to to continually launch these to the moon they're not economical yeah but if you can just get one and say like yeah we actually we can still do this yeah it's also i mean it's it's over budget but as a percentage of gdp it has to be a fraction of what we spent in 1969 so on a relative basis it's a it's a maybe a better investment yeah i i do think that there's something that's just inspiring about being able to do something like this and prove that we still got it i also like from hunter and ryan's post, you know, they're dropping the article.

5:57It's just moon, right? It's not the moon. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

6:00John Coogan:We only got one, so we can just say moon. It has its own name. You know, you don't say the California, the Texas, the Florida. You just say moon. You say Texas, Florida. Let's watch this video of Neil Armstrong injecting just seconds before his lunar training vehicle crashed. Space cowboy. Space cowboy. True heroism here. This is such a crazy video. I had no idea this happened. Good music too. What is this? Interstellar? Yeah? Oh yeah. Like how did he know it was not going to go? Oh, it's tipping. Okay. I would definitely know. That would be very obvious that you would want to get out of there at that point.

6:39John Coogan:Wow. And he gets out on the parachute. I wonder, I wonder how much of that was like planned to be, okay, we're testing the ejector seat or he just knew, okay, I got a, it was called nickname Flying Bedstead for good reason. It looked like a bed frame and it flew like one too. Yeah, flying that on Earth, it's not exactly the most aerodynamic vehicle. But Kalshi has a market on when will Artemis 2 launch. It is soaring. We are now at 89 % before April 2nd. So 89 % chance it launches today, basically. 92 % chance that it launches before April 4th. So Jamie Dimon's been on an absolute tear. He is hiring people.

7:22John Coogan:He's restating his vision for America. There's an article in the Wall Street Journal here. He has a plan for J.P. Morgan to rescue the American dream. That's a very exciting, exciting idea. Let's run through Jamie Dimon's plan for America. He's running. I think he should. Jamie Dimon thinks the American dream is on life support, and he is planning for JPMorgan Chase to step in. The nation's largest bank announced the American Dream initiative on Tuesday, a commitment from JPMorgan to support small businesses, homeownership, access to health care, and other economic priorities that Dimon believes are crucial for the well-being of Americans.

7:58John Coogan:The bank already finances all of the above and says it's ready to put more resources into the effort. Diamond, 70 years old and CEO of J.P. Morgan since 2006, has long worried about the future of the American economy and wealth inequality. More recently, he has warned that the country is sleepwalking into economic stasis thanks to bad policies and rules that make it hard to invest in new ventures and run companies. I am deeply frustrated by our own policies in America, he said last week at the Hill and Valley Forum. We've become like Europe. We're unable to move and change. That's strong words.

8:28John Coogan:J.P. Morgan hasn't been slowed, bringing in more profit than any bank in the U.S. history. in U.S. history, but it reaches across Main Street and Wall Street and does better when the whole economy is chugging along. Diamond has a habit of making big commitments. I'm going to take this off a little bit. It's a big commitment, having that on. Diamond has a habit of making big commitments in tune with the zeitgeist. J.B. Morgan announced a$1.5 trillion investment platform focused on national security and supply chains last year. Just as the federal government started to invest in critical suppliers, it made a$30 billion racial equity commitment after the murder of George Floyd and a$2.5 trillion climate change plan in 2021.

9:07John Coogan:Now, the bank is committing to adding 3 million new small business customers on top of 7 million today. They want to get to 10. And it wants to lend them up to$80 billion over the next 10 years through loans and support for community-oriented banks and investment funds. The bank reported$33 billion of loans to small businesses and other customers at the end of 2025. So they want to expand significantly. It's just a 30 % bump in total number of small businesses, but they wanna basically triple the amount of the loan book broadly. The American dream means you can buy a home, start a business, you can build wealth, and you can afford healthcare for your family.

9:42John Coogan:J.P. Morgan's head of corporate responsibility, Tim Berry said in an interview, we want to bring our capabilities and make that more real to families and customers. They're helming the new American dream initiative and acknowledge that a lot of it isn't really new. J.P. Morgan has been looking to grow deeper roots in the cities and towns where it does business, rolling out specialty branches focused on community education for years. It has invested big in cities where it has found business-friendly leadership, including Detroit and San Francisco. The initiative and ambitious goals are supposed to jumpstart JPMorgan bankers and employees to do more.

10:14John Coogan:When we think about the impact that we've had locally in a place like Detroit, we know that success can be replicated in other places. So they are opening up the pocketbook to spur small business. Very exciting. In other Jamie Dimon news, he just hired or recently hired Warren Buffett's protege. There's a profile in Barron's by Andy Serwer. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon doesn't usually make high profile outside hires for his senior executive team, preferring instead the homegrown variety. That makes Todd Combs, formerly a top investment manager at Berkshire Hathaway, poached and brought in to head up JPMorgan Chase's new$10 billion strategic investment group an exception.

11:01John Coogan:Except that Holmes is hardly a bolt from the blue. I like that. That's a good turn of phrase. Having served on JPMorgan's boards since 2016. Okay, so he's a board member, so he clearly knows everyone already. He says, I know the company well, Combs tells Barron's in his first interview as a bank employee. I know everyone from Jamie to the operating community and the next layer of management. I'm well aware of the balance sheet, the excess capital, and how Jamie and the team think and operate. Like the bank's other top executives, Combs, who's been CEO of Berkshire Geico Insurance Unit, is still settling into his new office on the 47th floor of J.P.

11:35John Coogan:Morgan's new Manhattan headquarters. I hope you don't mind the warm office, says Combs, a tennis-playing Florida native. I don't like the cold, he says. Combs mapped out his new gig, which began in January on a two-column chart he sketched on a notepad. Interesting. He's old school, old school. Powerful. He's not creating a second brain. He's just ripping it on a notepad. On the left are five rows of industries, such as defense, supply chain, reindustrialization. On the right are their future manifestations, such as defense tech, U.S. semiconductors, respectively. The plan is to invest in everything our country has outsourced and abdicated over recent decades.

12:17John Coogan:We want to invest in places where the puck is going so that America can control its own future. That means deploying the group's$10 billion into middle market and large companies in U.S. defense, aerospace, health care, and energy sectors to help them grow. Recent investments include mining company Perpetual Resources and defense tech startup Shield AI. Combs, who reports to Diamond, will also act as a special advisor to the CEO. So Combs Endeavor is part of the Security and Resiliency Initiative, JPMorgan announced in October, in which the bank will commit to facilitating$1.5 trillion in investments for companies deemed critical to the national economic security and resiliency.

12:52John Coogan:We want to be a good partner to the government regardless of who's in charge. It's the GOP now. It can be someone else in the future. We're trying to let capitalism send the right signal. We'll look at every opportunity on its own merit. We want an impact and a return. Highly regarded as an investor, Combs is a boyish-looking 55. He helped return GEICO, which was burdened with outdated technology and bloated costs to profitability. Berkshire watchers thought he might play a role in the company's post-Warren Buffett era, either overseeing its multibillion-dollar investment portfolio or its massive insurance operations, or he could have been up for other high-profile jobs.

13:25John Coogan:But why this one? It's a unique opportunity with both Jamie and the institution and the mission of the job. Combs says, this is critical to the future of the country. You want to find things in life that are big and important that are worth doing and doable. Combs has an anti-bucket list for his new role. I had about 10 or 12 things that I didn't want. The anti-bucket list is sort of underrated. Your anti-bucket list is just never go skydiving. I don't want that to happen. Never buy a supercar. Never visit 30 countries. Become supercar-less. It's just the dumbest thing. Why is no one talking about Snapchat?

14:04Explain. Irenic Capital came out with a well-executed activist campaign.

14:13John Coogan:It does feel like there's a big opportunity with AI, better targeting. I'm receptive to this pitch, but I want to hear it from Irenic. I know that this is an activist shareholder. This could be very confrontational. Yes, they come out with a website. SaveSnapNow.com. You land on the website. They hit you with Snap back to reality. Yep. So taking a fun approach here. They say Snap has the potential to be a great company and a double AI winner through meaningfully improved operating efficiency and monetization. Irenic has outlined six steps to 7x Snap's share price to$26 per share. They put together a presentation as well as a letter.

14:57I'll kind of read through some of the highlights. They say it snaps crucible moment. AI creates a dual-pronged opportunity for significant cost cuts and accelerated product development. So they go into cost improvements, monetization, governance. On the cost side, they want to spin or shut down specs. I'm sure Evan is not. It's sort of like already happening, right? The spin is seemingly in the works. There were some leaks over the last six months around that. So I would expect that to happen. They want to rationalize cost. AI can and should replace many existing roles. Now, remember the constant criticism of Snap has been the stock-based comp.

15:34If you actually look at it, from the kind of rough math we were doing, like every 10 years, they're basically giving the entire company to the team. And so investors, long-term investors, have been very frustrated by that.

15:49John Coogan:And it always has been weird because I understand that, like, back in the day when they were competing directly with Twitter and Meta and Instagram and Reddit and all these different upstart, high growth social networking companies, I believe the talent war thesis, it makes sense that they would have to probably pay top dollar. But you have to imagine that as the business has stabilized, there are people that would come into the organization that would be happy to just have a salary and just do the work because it's better than working at another company. It's not necessarily like the AI talent or, um, or that, that, you know, the social media talent war that I'm sure happened, um, you know, back 10 years ago, it's a different time.

16:33John Coogan:So maybe different structure. Save Snap now is recommending a thousand person riff to get fit and competitive and to empower your highest performers. Um, if you're Evan reading empower your highest performers, you're probably thinking like, Oh geez, I never, I never thought of it. But, uh, again, They do have 5 ,261 employees as of late 2025. So this would represent roughly a 20 % RIF, not block level cuts, but more in line with what we're seeing at Oracle, Meta, some other tech companies that are going through a transformation. On monetization, the recommendation is to improve monetization, which I think is a good idea for any business.

17:12But they say AI will massively accelerate product development and enhance advertising monetization tools. again you know everyone by this point should be well aware that meta has done a fantastic job in leveraging ai ml to just make a better and better and better ads product yep and they say product-led improvements across users advertisers and subscriptions to break out of snaps monetization ceiling then they say deploy ai prop properly monetize snaps proprietary ai data sets and then concentrate AI partnerships on clear winners like Gemini, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Again, Snap partnered with Perplexity.

17:53It seemed like Snap got a fantastic deal out of that. It was something like a$400 million deal, if I remember correctly. Some of it was stock and Perplexity, but there was a huge cash component. And unclear if the other companies mentioned Gemini, OpenAI, or Anthropic would have been able to match that, how aggressive perplexity was getting. And so it's possible Snap's logic was, hey, we can do this deal with perplexity. And then it's native in our app. It's easy enough to swap it out at a later date. It's like basically take the cash while we can get it. Yeah.

18:28John Coogan:I saw this post from Sean Frank that somewhat relates. He was talking about one of our sponsors, AppLovin, which I will tell you about in a second. But he said, in less than 12 months, I've spent$2 ,872 ,000 of my own money profitably on AppLovin. I don't own the stock. I don't trade the stock. This is the net amount that left my bank account. And he shares a couple other points. And he says he's spending$17 ,000. So$2.8 million on AppLovin, clearly like a scalable large platform, spent$17 ,000 on Pinterest,$266 ,000 on Reddit. You have to imagine that meta ads are up there. But the question is like, for a lot of advertisers, Snap has not become this like, oh, sure, maybe you don't get, maybe it's not going to be your number one platform, but it's like in the marketing mix very regularly.

19:15John Coogan:And I think a lot of that should start working. Even if the pool isn't super deep, even if you don't have 99 % of your customers there, maybe only 20 % of your customers are there. But even if they're there, you should be able to find them. And AI can help that. And so I would expect that if this works, you'd see like really solid data from Ridge saying like, oh yeah, we're spending on Snap. Yeah, and they've been experimenting with Snap as far back as 2018. I'm sure. When I was hanging out with Sean and Connor back then, they were getting results on Snap, but there was a ceiling. Yeah. So then finally, they want to, on the governance side, commit to investing in safety and capital return, use newfound cash and profitability to further invest in privacy, safety, and parental controls, and allocate new cash flow generation to capital return and demonstrate conviction in Snap's creation.

20:03Yeah, it's interesting on the parental control and safety side, I think Snap has been able to stay out of at least Lanier's target. Oh, they ended up settling.

20:14John Coogan:Yeah, they settled before it went to trial. Meta and Google fought it. Interesting. And so, yeah, I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I think that they've been trying to sort of like step back from all of that. Yeah. And then on the corporate government side, giving shareholders a vote can unlock a multiple re-rate through broader index illusion. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And enabling one vote per Class A share still preserves Snap as a founder-controlled company. Yeah, I think it probably has like 10x voting power or something like that. Well, the market's reacting really positively to this.

20:44John Coogan:And I think Evan Spiegel has shared some statements that sort of mirror this, actually. It seems like there's maybe a little bit more reception than you might expect. The stock's up 14 % one day after publishing this piece, says Bose Weinstein. Adam is a rock star in the making, so smart, definitely worth a follow, and that's Irenic Cap. Kerry, no, interest gave some feedback on Irenic. He said, a few critiques feedback. Daily opens are not equal to time spent on app. App, love, and and meta clearly have higher time spent on app, but therefore parity on monetization is flawed. Arguing that Snapchat can hit targeting levels of meta is farciful.

21:22The amount of data that Meta has on me versus Snapchat is astronomically different. I guess I'm open to being proven wrong since you compare it to AppLovin, who IMO has always used other targeting sources. Three, proprietary data slide is a one-time flash and a pan moment. Sure, some companies are selling deranged amount of data, but that's not lasting MRR, ARR, monetization, although it is fair to call them out on it. I like the monetization per user slide. I think my feedback around Snap's ability to monetize relative to those peers stands. literally screen time is much lower and you don't have data for targeting the way peers do.