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Podcast

2025 Predictions With Bestie Gavin Baker

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

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  • Ski Trip Footage
    • Jason Calacanis shares footage of the besties’ ski trip, jokingly asking Gavin Baker to rate their skills.
    • Chamath Palihapitiya proudly mentions switching to skiing to be with his kids, highlighting his progress. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Oh, here we go. Look at this. Here I come down the mountain. Gavin, I want you to rate everybody’s skiing. Here I come. David O. Sacks Looking great. Jason Calacanis There comes Chamath. Looking good. And then here comes somebody. I think the technical term Joe Lonsdale does that third person is a beep, beep. Okay, here we go. And look at this technique coming down. Look at Chamath. Chamath, you really advanced this last season. Look at him cutting those S-turns, Gavin. What do you think? I think it’s great. Listen to me. Chamath Palihapitiya I made a very strategic decision to stop snowboarding so I could learn to ski with my kids. It is so hard to learn how to do something in your 40s. No, I mean, if you’ve never done it. But I do appreciate what you and your brother did for me last season. I learned a couple things. So it’s been my third. Yeah, you were out there with the Black Bomber. My third season. It was great. Jason Calacanis I am absolutely amazed at the progress you’re making. Freebert, I’m amazed you made it onto the mountain. You were out there a number of days. You’re getting it done. David Friedberg I needed new boots, and I tore my MCL last season. So it got really tweaked when I went out there, but I’m good. It was great. I had a lot of fun. I think I skied four days. Yeah, it was great. You skied four days. Jason Calacanis Okay, I finished my 16th day yesterday, but I took today off just to get prepared here. Yeah, I got 16 days. I do the executive program. I go out for an hour and a half to three hours, sip, sip, sip, 10 runs, and I’m done. David O. Sacks I only ski in the morning. Chamath Palihapitiya Yeah, that’s the way to do it. Same, same, same. End at 12.15, have lunch, relax, get a little work done. David O. Sacks You need a healthy mix of apres, ski, and ski. Jason Calacanis Gavin, how would you compare yourself to what you just witnessed in that video? Your skiing ability, where would you rank yourself? Clearly, it’s me, Chamath, Friedberg in that ranking. Where would you live in the ranking? (Time 0:03:29)
  • 2024 Election Analysis
    • The All-In hosts discuss the 2024 election results, debating the role of independent centrists.
    • Both Chamath Palihapitiya and Gavin Baker believe Trump successfully appealed to centrist voters. Transcript: Jason Calacanis We’re going to do our 2025 prediction for biggest political winner. Now, last year, well, yeah, I think we got it kind of wrong. Friedberg, you said independent third party in the US. And we did see some of that with, you know, the breakout of Robert Kennedy, maybe. Chamath, you said independent centrists. We didn’t get there with that one. And I said dark horse presidential candidates. Maybe I get a quarter point credit there with- Wait, hold on. Chamath Palihapitiya What do you mean we didn’t get there independent centrists won the election for maga independent centrists won the election really that’s what you believe yeah okay i didn’t think That it was the independents but okay i think independent centrists swung the election for biden in 2020 and then i think they swung the election for trump in 2024 huh is that statistically Jason Calacanis Correct? You think, Freiberg? You about that? Independent centrists did the election? Gavin, what do you think? I think it’s right. David O. Sacks I think there are a lot of people, not just centrists, but a lot of people who had been lifelong Democratic voters who voted for Trump. So I do think Trump won the centrists. (Time 0:05:37)
  • Rise of Fiscal Conservatism
    • Chamath Palihapitiya predicts fiscal conservatives will be the biggest political winners of 2025, driven by austerity measures.
    • He believes this will expose government waste and influence state elections. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Yeah. Okay. Shabbat, who’s your prediction for the biggest political winner of 2025? Chamath Palihapitiya My biggest political winner for 2025 are fiscal conservatives. I think that we are going to test a very important concept in 2025, and I hope it works, which is that of austerity. And the reason why austerity has to work is that the only thing left after austerity is to cut entitlements. And I think that in doing this, we’re going to figure out how much waste, fraud, and abuse exists in the United States federal government. I think that that’s going to spill over to a lot of state elections. And I think that the fiscal conservatives that have been clamoring for a more restrained approach to spending will have their day in 2025. Jason Calacanis Okay. Fiscal conservatives from Chamath Freeberg. David Friedberg Shifting younger. So I think that this is something we should expect as candidates start to emerge for the midterms by the end of 2025. We’ll start to see younger new names start to pop up that deliver resonant messages and aren’t part of kind of the old guard of, you know, the aging political class. So I think that’s a trend that’s kind of underway now. (Time 0:06:46)
  • Youth in Politics
    • David Friedberg predicts the emergence of younger political candidates, unburdened by traditional politics.
    • Jason Calacanis agrees, highlighting the rise of Gen X and elder millennial leaders focused on new priorities. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Excellent. Young candidates. So we’ve got fiscal conservatives, young candidates. Gavin, what do you got for the 2025 prediction for biggest political winner? David O. Sacks I would say Trump and centrism. Jason Calacanis For my choice for 2025’s biggest political winner, I went with something similar to you, Friedberg. I said Gen X and the elder millennials. If you look at the notable Gen X appointments, you got Elon with Doge, you got Sachs, obviously, Marco Rubio. My God, it just goes down. And then if you look at the elder millennials, J.D. Vance, Vivek, Tulsi, just a lot of young people. And this is going to be absolutely fantastic, I think, because they’re going to start thinking not just about themselves, as the boomers are doing with social security, taxes, real Estate, all the different issues that they tend to pick for themselves. They’re going to start thinking about maybe their own kids and themselves. So yeah, it’s obviously a sea change is underway. So there you have it, folks, for our predictions for political winter. (Time 0:08:31)
  • Xi Jinping’s Challenges
    • Gavin Baker predicts Xi Jinping will be the biggest political loser in 2025 due to the war in Ukraine.
    • He expects Jinping to decouple from Putin as the war becomes a disaster for China. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Let’s go with political loser here. Prediction for political loser. We’ll start off with you, Gavin. We’ll do this a little round robin here. We’ll snake it around. Gavin, what do you think? Who’ll be the biggest political loser of 2025? David O. Sacks To lose bigly. So if you are Xi Jinping, you know, Xi Jinping, Russia is a client state of China at this point. And if you’re Xi Jinping, what is happening is now a disaster for you, because Europe is starting to rearm, and which will only accelerate this year. That will allow America to take resources out of Europe and put them in Japan and South Korea and all over the Pacific. And that makes it a lot harder for you to do what you most want to do, which is reunify China and Taiwan or invade Taiwan. Let’s call it what it is. And I just think Xi is going to begin decoupling from Putin. If you’re Trump, you want to show that you’re independent, that you’re not enthralled to Putin in any way. So I think Trump is going to be a lot tougher on Putin than people think. And I think he’s going to get a deal that’s very, very bad for Russia and Ukraine. And you’ve lost half a million people. And for what? For what? Jason Calacanis Exactly. And it’s over a thousand days into this. Nobody from the West in NATO or America, no soldiers have lost their lives from our side. We’ve just given them weapons. And so it’s a humiliating defeat so far for Putin. I agree with you. Freeberg, your prediction for the biggest political loser of 2025. Freeberg’s prediction. David Friedberg I’m going to predict the pro-war neocons who are going to go head to head with the J.D. Vance and Elons and others of the world. And I think that they’re going to lose. And I think that there’s going to be this kind of big crack in the establishment of this neocon movement that’s been very pro-conflict around the world. And we’ve heard it in the speeches and in the commentary from JD and others. And I think this is going to be the year that it’s all going to kind of come to a head. (Time 0:09:25)
  • Decline of Progressivism
    • Chamath Palihapitiya predicts progressivism will decline in 2025, citing potential shifts in governments across several Western countries.
    • He anticipates a move away from class-based identity politics. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Your 2025 biggest political loser. Prediction, it’s hard to do. Chamath Palihapitiya The biggest political loser of 2025 is going to be progressivism. So November of last year, right after the election, I flew to London and went up to Oxford and I spoke at the Oxford Union. And my speech was a full-throated defense of MAGA. But it was mostly an explanation of MAGA. Antidote to progressive instincts that had been riddling the Western G8 countries and was starting to basically come on gun. And when you look at what’s about to happen in 2025, in Canada, Justin Trudeau is going to lose massively to Pierre Polyev. In Germany, AFD looks like they will win. In France, if there’s a deadlock and it goes into an election, more than likely Marine Le Pen is going to win. And then in the UK, where you see this unfolding child rape scandal, where allegedly upwards of hundreds of thousands of young girls over the course of 20 plus years were being raped By organizations of Pakistani Muslim men who were then not prosecuted for fears of stoking Islamophobia, as it turns out, by the current Prime Minister Keir Starmer. And if all of that comes to pass in the UK, I think you’re going to see the Labour government fall, and I think you’re going to see Nigel Farage win. So what do all of these countries look like by the end of 25? It’s very much a repudiation of this class-based identity politics, and I think that has enormous ripple effects all throughout the world. And so I think the biggest political loser for 2025, I think, stands to be progressivism, quote unquote, what we labeled progressivism. (Time 0:12:50)
  • Koch Family Influence
    • Chamath Palihapitiya explains his 2024 prediction that the Koch family would lose influence within the GOP.
    • He believes the 2024 election marked the end of the traditional Republican Party. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Freeberg, any thoughts on last year’s? Chamath Palihapitiya Who lost on the Republican side more than the Koch family, do you think? Jason Calacanis I mean, explain for the audience who maybe aren’t as deep into it. Chamath Palihapitiya Well, I think essentially 2024 was the end of the Republican Party as we knew it. And I think what stands in its place is what I would call the MAGA reflection of a coalition of people that will be housed under the label of Republicanism, which is to say that these folks Aren’t necessarily Republicans. These folks are believers of the MAGA philosophy. They’re just using the Republican vessel in order to run their candidates and get elected. And in that overturning of the status quo, what you had was this one family who was at the center for the last few decades of political machinery that essentially decided candidates, That it decided agenda, that it decided policy. And that was the Koch family. And they spent an enormous amount of money to get that, which they stood up, frankly, literally the day after Citizens United happened in the Supreme Court. And I think that in that lens, those billions of dollars of investment have essentially gone to zero because I don’t think it means much of anything anymore. And if you look at the new class of donors who will decide, quote unquote, Republican policy. It’s going to be the Miriam Adelson’s of the world, the Elon Musk’s of the world. And that’s very different than how I think the Kochs used to decide things. Do you think there’s too much money in politics now, Gavin? (Time 0:15:19)
  • Year of the Robot
    • David Friedberg predicts autonomous hardware and robotics will be the biggest business winners of 2025.
    • He highlights Unitree Robotics, a Chinese company, as a key player in this emerging field. Transcript: Jason Calacanis All right. Let’s do our 2025 predictions for biggest business winner. Freeberg, why don’t you start us off? Biggest business winner for 2025. What’s your prediction? David Friedberg So I feel like we’re at a really interesting inflection point that is going to make 2025 the year of autonomous hardware or robotics. If 2024 was the year of kind of compute build out and the rollout of AI systems in software, I think 2025 will be the year of the robot. You know, there’s a company we just placed an order today actually out of china called unitary gavin have you looked at this company yeah it’s pretty wild actually it’s an incredible Business incredible product so their go2 robot is 1600 has an api here it is you can run a payload on it it’s got lidar on it it’s got kind of intelligence guidance systems on it. This is the robot system that was used on some of those videos we looked at earlier this year, where there were machine guns mounted to the back. And it was basically a new kind of field soldier. It’s an autonomous field soldier. But really, you can use it in scientific applications. We’re looking at using them on our test farms, where it can wander the farm and take images and report data back to us. And it’s such a low cost at like less than $3,000, you can do some incredible things with it. So this business just raised a couple hundred million dollars last month from mostly Chinese investors to Chinese company. And I think that there’s going to be, you know, other similar type businesses, you know, kind of takes a long time for things to work. And then all of a sudden they happen faster than you could have ever imagined. I think this is going to be the year where we’re all going to look at humanoid robots and autonomous systems and be like, oh my God, I can’t believe this is here. So this could be the year (Time 0:17:34)
  • FSD Mainstream Adoption
    • Gavin Baker predicts Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) will become mainstream in 2025, improving safety and convenience.
    • He believes AI will give big businesses a significant advantage. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Prediction. I love it. Gavin, what do you got? David O. Sacks Of FSD. You know, I think FSD works today and it’s gonna, it’s, it’s gonna cross into mainstream adoption where I already notice, particularly if I’m taking an Uber late at night, I really, Really prefer to have a Tesla. Just sometimes you get an Uber driver who’s, who’s tired. And I just feel a lot safer if they have the FSD running. And then obviously, using it for yourself is amazing. But I think it’s going to continue compounding at an accelerating rate. I think in a lot of ways, what I’d say broadly is, I think for a while, it’s going to be big businesses are winners, big businesses that use AI thoughtfully. And the reason is, is that with what is happening, what O3 showed us, OpenAI’s new model, the combination of reasoning and test time compute. And you can pay a million dollars to let an AI think for six weeks about the most important question for your business, that’s going to be a profound advantage relative to small businesses That can’t afford that. And by the way, we are the other, like inference compute is going to be the kind of derivative winner of that. We’re going to run out of GPUs, accelerators, compute in 2025, the same way we did in 23. (Time 0:21:20)
  • Stablecoin Dominance
    • Chamath Palihapitiya predicts dollar-denominated stablecoins will thrive in 2025, potentially disrupting Visa and Mastercard.
    • He cites increased stablecoin usage and potential government action against high credit card fees. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Very good. Chamath, do Do you have a prediction for your biggest business winner of 2025, sir? Chamath Palihapitiya I think the biggest business winner of 2025 are going to be dollar denominated stable coins. Ooh. I’ll make two points. In 2024, two critical things happened. The first is that stable coins essentially became uncoupled. You from crypto volatility, and it started to be used for wholesale useful functions in running businesses. And there’s an image here that starts to show that. So independent of crypto volatility, what you saw were stablecoin usage just rising up and to the right. That’s an incredibly important decoupling that happened in 2024. The second, and this data is still just trickling in, but it’s an incredible stat. Stablecoin usage at the end of the second quarter of 2024 was about 1.1 billion transactions that summed to $8.5 trillion of transaction volume. If you compare that to Visa over the same period, it was more than double Visa’s transaction volume. So I think what we have now is something that has fundamentally crossed a point of no return. Similar to how last year, I thought that the big trend was going to be Bitcoin in 2024. I would say that the big trend in 2025 is stablecoin usage. I think we’re going to finally attack the duopoly of Visa and MasterCard. I think you’re going to see an innumerable number of use cases that sit and use stablecoin rails. I think when Donald Trump becomes president, I think you’re going to see him go after incredibly high credit card transactions and costs. You’re already seeing cracks in consumer credit anyways, because of these high APRs. All of this stuff is going to come to a head in 2025, I think. And I think stable coins could quadruple or quintuple by the end of 25. I think it’s just going to be an enormous market. (Time 0:23:06)
  • Stablecoin Regulation
    • Jason Calacanis raises concerns about stablecoins’ use in illicit activities like terrorism and human trafficking.
    • He asks Chamath Palihapitiya about regulating them, prompting discussion on their potential benefits. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Great choice. Should they be regulated, Chamath? We saw at some of these congressional hearings, Tether was kind of dragged for being the primary transfer and monetary tool for terrorism, for getting around sanctions, and for human Trafficking. Should it be regulated? And how? Chamath Palihapitiya I don’t think I’m qualified to say how it should. But I think the point is that there are these immutable logs that sit in between and on either side of all of these transactions. And so I think the knowledge is there. And there are a whole bunch of third party services that add that intelligence layer. I think the thing to really question is, if you just took 300 basis points of drag out of the global economy, how valuable would that be? And I think it would be valuable just in the United States alone to the tune of a trillion dollars. So the idea that you wouldn’t do it at this point is somewhat quizzical to me. So I just think that the economic justification for this now is just (Time 0:25:33)
  • Tesla and Google’s AI Advancements
    • Jason Calacanis predicts Tesla and Google will be big winners in 2025 due to advancements in AI and robotics.
    • He praises Google’s Gemini Deep Research and Elon Musk’s work with Colossus. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Freeberg, you have any thoughts on it? We’ve been talking about currency here a whole bunch over the last couple of years. Any thoughts on stable coins and just the monopoly we have on it? I don’t know enough about stable coins. Well, that’ll be one of our big topics for the year. And we should definitely invite Jeremy Allaire from USD on, or USDC, USDC. Chamath Palihapitiya Jeremy Allaire, I mentioned, by the way, that I had this small little product that I exposed to the world, which is just our research. And we sit it on top of Substack. Again, the tools aren’t very good. And we use Stripe. And Jeremy reached out to me and he’s like, I’ll just rebuild all your payment rails on using US dollar stable coins. And it’s a no-brainer because I’m spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in transaction costs that now I can just save and use to hire somebody else or just pay the team more. Jason Calacanis And so I just think paying 10% to Substack and the 3%, yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya If it’s obvious for me, it’s obvious for everybody else. All (Time 0:27:57)
  • Gemini Deep Research Recommendation
    • Jason Calacanis recommends using Gemini Deep Research, praising its ability to generate comprehensive reports.
    • He provides an example of asking it about replacing US cars with self-driving vehicles. Transcript: David O. Sacks Jason, shouldn’t you, just going with the vibe of the podcast, shouldn’t you explain what it is? Oh, sorry. Jason Calacanis Okay, so what it does is- Good call, good call. Yeah. If you wanted to create a model, let’s say, and I did this, where I said, hey, make me a model based upon what it would take to replace all the cars and trips in the United States with full Self-driving cars. What would that cost to do? And if you ask that to ChatGPT or Brock or Claude, it’s going to give you a decent answer. What deep research does is it goes and it figures out what the subcomponents of each of those questions would be. And then it fires off multiple threads. And then it searches the web in real time, which Google is extremely good at. And then it summarizes it, gives citations, and it produces a report that looks like something that Gartner Group, McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group would have spent, I don’t know, 30 days on Gavin and a million dollars, a half million dollars. It’s bonkers how good this is. But the amount of compute it takes is extraordinary. That’s why ChatGPT released something similar that’s 200 bucks a month, the 01 Pro, I think they call it. And then this one is like 20 bucks from Gemini. Anyway, given what Google has access to, YouTube, your G Drive, your Google Docs, etc., your Gmail, it’s going to do things that you wouldn’t anticipate. Like if you were asking this question, it might look in your Gmail for possibilities to answer those questions, or YouTube videos of channels you subscribe to. So this is going to, I think, knock people’s socks off and solve problems that people didn’t know they had. (Time 0:30:23)
  • Pro Sports Team Valuations
    • Chamath Palihapitiya predicted pro sports teams would be losers in 2024, citing viewership and valuation concerns.
    • Gavin Baker challenges this, believing institutional investment will drive further growth. Transcript: Jason Calacanis New York Times stock is up as well. And they fired off that lawsuit with OpenAI. All right, now we’re going to move on to the 2025 biggest business loser predictions. In 2024, Shamat said pro sports teams because they hit peak valuations. That’s looking like a pretty good prediction. Freeper, you said vertical SaaS companies because of AI disruption. That’s another one that seems like a great prediction. I said smartphone manufacturers. Apple stock was up 30% in 2024. But I think we’ve all seen that these smartphones aren’t advancing and people are taking their times. The sales of those are down, services are up. David O. Sacks I would take the other side on pro sports teams. It feels like that market is about to be institutionalized and funds are going to start buying pro sports teams that ultimately and ultimately capital markets have way more resources Than kind of the wealthy individuals done it for now to date. (Time 0:32:39)
  • Warriors Game Incident
    • Jason Calacanis recounts an incident at a Warriors game where he was almost ejected for arguing with players.
    • The incident involved Andrew Bogut and David Lee, highlighting the passionate fan experience. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Just want to- On behalf of Phil Hummuth and I, we appreciate you made that vanity investment for the number of times we got to sit in your court side seats. Yeah, because I never went to the games. It’s the friendships we made with NBA players. It’s great. Chamath Palihapitiya I never went to the games. I should have gone to more games. I went to your games and almost got thrown out of your seats. I got a red one time it’s true is it true you did oh you don’t know i got a no i got a call i got a call i think it was from the warriors or from the nba something to the effect of this guy that was Sitting in your seats was almost kicked out and i said excuse me because i knew that it was the next game in fairness and and he was like jawboning our own players. Jason Calacanis I was getting into it with Bogut and with David Lee because- It was unbelievable. I told Steve Kerr, listen, you’re up 30 on my Knicks, sit these guys down. This is Bush league. What if Steph Curry gets hurt out there? And Bogut told me to shut up on Andre Iguodala. Chamath Palihapitiya Bogut told him to basically go pound sand in a more- He basically did. Was the funniest thing ever, Gavin. Jason Calacanis This is what happens when you get- Boca’s one of our friends. He’s one of our good friends, so that’s why it’s so funny. But they come over, Freedberg, and they tap you on the shoulder. I’m with my wife. She’s mortified. And the guy hands you a card. And the card says, you’ve been warned one time and one time only about abusive you know uh behavior if we have to warn you one more time you will be excreted out so i look at the guy and i say But he goes read the card i read the card i say he goes give me a thumbs up that was it i never that was it you’re not supposed to then three years later i’m sitting in the same seats i’m interacting With draymond during the finals games and everybody’s hokey-dokey with it. (Time 0:35:34)
  • Banking Crisis Prediction
    • Chamath Palihapitiya predicts a potential banking crisis in 2025 due to high debt levels and rising interest rates.
    • He suggests this could create reserve issues for major banks. Transcript: Jason Calacanis To actually check the bill. You never know. Chamath, do you predict will be the biggest business loser of 2025? Chamath Palihapitiya Well, this is a little bit precarious, but I don’t know what the percentage drawdown from here will be. But I think when we look back, the absolute dollar drawdown of the MAG7 will be in the trillions of dollars. And the reason is not necessarily because of the underlying fundamentals of these companies. Little bit worried, and I tweeted this a few days ago, about just the general concentration of the top seven, eight, nine, 10 companies in the indices. I think it’s approaching 40%. And I think that when you look at these historic concentrations, they’ve generally foreshadowed a big drawdown. And unfortunately, I don’t see how you can inoculate yourself from that risk. So independent of the quality of these companies, because I think these companies are exceptional businesses, I do think you’ve just had too much concentration. And I think it is a setup to retrade and give back. And in that, it could even be 10%, but 10% in the MAG-8 will be a couple trillion bucks. And so on an absolute dollar basis- 102% would be a lot. (Time 0:39:46)
  • OpenAI’s Potential Downfall
    • Jason Calacanis predicts OpenAI will be the biggest business loser of 2025, citing competition and potential legal challenges.
    • He believes OpenAI’s high valuation is unsustainable. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Yeah, an absolute dollar. It’s a lot. Okay. Freeberg, who do you predict? You predict MAG-7, government service providers for you, Gavin. Freeberg, who do you predict will be the biggest business loser of 2025? David Friedberg I’m sort of on the same vein as Gavin. I went with the kind of old defense and aerospace providers, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon. Defense 1.0. Driven by kind of China dominance, driven by US defense budgets that I think are going to need to shift towards a more kind of tech-oriented and ROI-driven rationalization and pricing And spend. So the Palantir’s and Andrews, obviously, the world will benefit. And I also just think like there’s a lot of failure at scale with these businesses. They’ve gotten too clunky and too bureaucratic as we’ve seen with Boeing from their space program failure in 2024 to the challenges with their airplane business. But I think that this government contracting business across the board is going to be deeply challenged this year with all the new blood. Jason Calacanis So the cost plus are going to suffer is what you’re saying, and the andrels will thrive. Would you guys add, just a question, would you guys add the traditional consulting companies then to the mix as well? David Friedberg That’s a good point too. Chamath Palihapitiya That’s a great one. Yeah. We think what we talked about with deep, like the Y pros, the Tatas, the HCL, the Accenture. Cognizance. HCL. Cognizance, the EMYs. All these folks that are in real trouble if that also happens. That’s right. Jason Calacanis The efficiency that they’ll gain will also be felt by their customers and their customers might not hire them. David Friedberg When you got a bunch of software entrepreneurs that are now advising and informing the federal government on how to run their operations, I’m pretty sure that some of these service Providers are going to get washed out. So that’s a good idea. Chamath Palihapitiya The thing to keep in mind is like cost plus is a fancier way of saying time and materials. And time and materials is a fancy way of saying human labor arbitrage. And I think that all of that stuff will get extremely scrutinized in 2025. Because if you are buying $800 wastebaskets and $9,000 umbrella hangers, because of time and materials and all of this other crazy stuff that’s in the system, and all of that gets washed Out, then a lot of these folks and their business models will get put under severe stress. Jason Calacanis The alignments, you know, you show me an incentive, I’ll show you the outcome. The alignment of cost plus is to just keep being inefficient and waste. And these defense contractors are taking 60, 70, 80% off the price of each piece of munitions or vehicle. David O. Sacks Yeah. Cost plus is terrible. No, just cost plus is terrible. Jason Calacanis That’s all right. For my biggest business loser prediction, I had to go through a lot of the people I’ve criticized. I didn’t start fights with over the past year. Commercial real estate came to mind because these leases are going to keep coming up. And I think like they kicked the can down the road a little bit. So I started there. Then I looked at micro strategies and that made no sense to me that they were trading at two, three, four times the book value of their Bitcoin. And I think that’s not sustainable. I looked at Truth Social, which is like doing four or $5 million in revenue and is valued at 7 billion. That makes absolute no logical sense. But I think the one that is the most overpriced of all of this, and I think is going to see their peak valuation is OpenAI. I think the headwinds for OpenAI are being absolutely underappreciated. Like I said before, in my previous prediction, is kicking ass. XAI is just getting started and building out so much big iron. Microsoft was basically on another podcast almost laughing at OpenAI for selling them the source code and that they didn’t even need OpenAI anymore because they had it all. They don’t need them and they own all the big iron. I think OpenAI’s valuation made no sense. I don’t think they’re going to be able to keep charging the prices they’re charging. And I think AWS, Apple, Google, XAI, this cohort are going to really take that $157 billion valuation and make it the peak valuation of the company. (Time 0:41:18)
  • Auto Industry Consolidation
    • Chamath Palihapitiya predicts a wave of auto mega-mergers in 2025 as traditional automakers struggle.
    • He cites the Honda-Nissan merger as a sign of things to come. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya That hasn’t happened yet. Totally riffed on that one. Yeah. Jason Calacanis Totally riffed on that one. Chamath Palihapitiya I think that this is the year that we will see the collapse of the traditional auto OEMs. And I think that the deal that happened at the end of 2024 with Honda, Nissan, I think is a bit of a signal to what the industry has to do, which is to go through a massive wave of consolidation. I think that Tesla is just in an incredible position with the quality of their vehicles and the quality of their software and the quality of their autonomy with FSD. So I suspect that after a couple of more meaningful product releases, it’s just going to trigger the realization by the public capital markets that these auto OEMs are uninvestable. And I think the result of that will be a wave of auto mega mergers. (Time 0:47:04)
  • US Hardware Manufacturing Boom
    • David Friedberg predicts major funding deals for US hardware manufacturing in 2025, potentially with government support.
    • This will focus on autonomous and robotic systems, driven by competition with China. Transcript: David Friedberg Was it just Reddit? I should probably look it up. What do you got to show? I’ll just follow on my year of the robot theme. I do think that there’s going to be massive funding deals. Similar to what we saw this past year for compute buildout, I think we’re going to see massive funding deals for hardware-based manufacturing buildout in the United States. And I think that those deals may take the form of kind of traditional equity from private markets, or they may have some component that includes government support to kind of motivate And drive and accelerate onshore manufacturing. We’re not going to go in the US to making stuff that is like last century. I think we’re going to need to move manufacturing to the next decade, next century of production. And I think that’s going to mean making some of these autonomous and robotic type systems that are going to become really critical for us, particularly with China doing this massive Ramp up and build out for both drones and robots and autonomous vehicles. So I think we’re going to need to kind of onshore a lot of this. And so that’ll be a big amount of capital that’s going to move. And so you’ll see a bunch of these big blockbuster deals for hardware build out in the US. (Time 0:49:45)
  • Autonomous Vehicle Partnerships
    • Jason Calacanis predicts major partnerships in the autonomous vehicle space, involving Tesla, Amazon, and others.
    • He suggests potential acquisitions like Tesla buying Uber and DoorDash. Transcript: Jason Calacanis We are about 18 days away from figuring out if the Supreme Court will do just that. My prediction for this year, I was looking at all the media companies, gentlemen, there were so many possibilities there. Warner Brothers, we talked about Apple and Disney, you know, a couple of years ago. But I think the age of autonomy is here. And I think there is going to be some partnerships that will happen between Amazon, DoorDash, Uber, Tesla, Waymo, and that cohort. And I would not be surprised to see Tesla could buy Uber right now for but 10% of its market cap. And Waymo could spin out and partner with Uber. Amazon could buy DoorDash fairly easily. And with the wrath of Khan being over, the wrath of Lena Khan being over, Gavin, it is possible that mega deals like these could go through. And if a couple of mega deals go through like this, whoever, you know, teams up here could win autonomy, delivery, food delivery, and e-commerce. This is a ginormous space. And I think, listen, I don’t, I haven’t spoken to, obviously, my friend about it, but Tesla buying DoorDash and Uber or Amazon buying DoorDash and Uber could be the greatest service Ever created if you wanted to build a super app. (Time 0:52:17)
  • Waymo’s Potential
    • David Friedberg suggests watching Waymo closely in 2025, predicting a potential major deal, IPO, or acquisition.
    • He emphasizes Waymo’s rapid market share growth in San Francisco and expansion plans. Transcript: David Friedberg Well, we talked about this like two weeks ago. You know, Meituan in China has got this, and they have food delivery happening with these drones. By the way, just kind of dovetailing off of this, I think the other big deal potential in 2025, just to be very specific, is a deal with Waymo. Waymo launched in SF in August 2023 in kind of an open market way. Uber and Lyft were 66% and 34% market share at the time. And in 15 months, in November of 2024, Waymo is now a 22% market share of rides in SF, which is the same as Lyft and Uber is now down to 55. So Waymo ate into both Uber and Lyft’s market share by on the order of 12 points in just 15 months. And now they’re launching in LA, in Austin, all over the country. They’re already in Phoenix. So I think you could see a massive… And by the way, they also just moved the hardware platform over to a new device that’s supposedly going to bring the CapEx significantly down for new launches. So you’ll see much improved ROIC metrics, which means that there’s a much more efficient way to use capital to scale. So the system works. It is scaling. They are opening up a new market. So you could see something happen with Waymo this year that could either be something like a massive financing, an IPO, or a merger or acquisition with one of the big ride-sharing companies. I don’t know if that makes as much strategic sense as I’ve thought about it a little bit. But I do think you could see a big deal with Waymo. This company is, if you guys have not been in a Waymo, I think we all talked about this, but it’s an incredible experience. And everyone I know of every age group that has been for a ride in Waymo comes out of it saying, that is the future. (Time 0:54:20)
  • US GDP Growth
    • Gavin Baker’s contrarian belief is that the US will achieve over 5% real GDP growth within the next four years.
    • He believes AI and deregulation will boost productivity. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Great contrarian take. Small chance, but big impact. Gavin, what do you got? David O. Sacks Well, first we should use Gemini Deep Research to just ask it to look at the total, you know, Pax Americana debt outstanding, apply the current market interest rate to it, and then look At that, you know, interest expense relative to gdp and generate that chart over time that would be a cool chart that would be interesting i don’t i don’t i don’t disagree with chamath You know any anything is possible and um you know there there could for sure be be a problem at a big bank. I don’t know that I would say it’s likely, but anything is possible. My most contrarian belief, so I think that America over the next, at some point over the next four years, will print at least one year of greater than 5% GDP growth, real GDP growth. I think productivity is going to go vertical because of AI and deregulation. And I think there could be a world where this is the late 90s. And it doesn’t sound like a big difference, you know, 5% or 6% versus 2% or 3%, but it is a massive difference. You know, at 5% or 6%, you know, the economy is doubling, you’ll call it every 12 years roughly, versus 24 years at 3%. I mean, it’s just, it’s a massive difference in terms of kind of the wealth of the country and individual Americans. That will happen. (Time 1:03:10)
  • Rise of Socialist Movements
    • David Friedberg’s contrarian belief is a rise in socialist movements in the US despite the perceived rejection of socialism in recent elections.
    • He anticipates increased inequality due to technological advancements leaving some behind. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Do you have a contrarian belief? And I did put into Gemini Advance 1.5 Pro with deep research the question, which banks have the biggest chance of being insolvent or having a financial collapse or crisis? So it’s doing its research right now. It’ll be done in about 10 minutes, I think, which gives you an idea of how much research it does. It’s nuts. David Friedberg Freber, what do you got? I think that the party line is that socialism was defeated in this election cycle, and that there was a resounding kind of vote from the American populace against socialism. And I actually think my contrarian belief is that we’ll see a rise, a dramatic rise in socialist movements in 2025 in the United States. And I think that we are going to see, as Gavin pointed out, an acceleration of progress. We’re going to see an unleashing of economic growth because of deregulation and AI. But I do think that some markets, we’ve also talked about the downfall of US auto manufacturing and some other industries, there’s going to be a real significant shift in 2025. Some industries and some companies are going to be huge winners and some companies are going to be huge losers. There’s going to be some parts of the economy that are going to be big winners and some parts of the economy that are going to be big losers. When you have this sort of a change this fast, there are often large contingents of people that are left behind. And when that happens, I do think that the socialist policies and the socialist movements gain steam. When Perón came to power in Argentina in the mid 1940s, that country was experiencing 8% GDP growth to Gavin’s point about accelerating growth. Growth does not mean that it benefits everyone equally. And I think that some folks will see people go from being billionaires to 100 billionaires to the world’s first trillionaire, and it will also start to fuel this rise. So I think that we will see an increase in the breadth and depth of socialist movements in the United States. By the way, particularly with Doge cutting government funding to programs that benefit individuals, employment being cut in the federal government and through federal contractors, There’s just a lot of rapid change that’s about to kind of really upset a lot of people. David O. Sacks I totally agree. I think AI, you know, people are fond of saying that we’re in a world of AGI or ASI, money will be meaningless. But for a short period of time, money will matter more than it’s ever mattered before. Because the amount of money you can spend on AI, on test time compute, is going to give you a massive advantage, whether you’re a company or an individual. So I just think AI is going to really amplify inequality for some period of time. Yeah. I hope I’m wrong. I hope AI leads to all sorts of opportunities being created for low-income people. That would be awesome. David Friedberg There’s just going to be a lot of employment and income disruption in 2025. And it’s going to fuel socialist movements. And I think that this is going to be a more difficult year. Everyone thinks it’s kind of rosy red because we’re all working in the tech industry in Silicon Valley, but the reality on the ground for most Americans could be a lot harsher than any Of us anticipate. And that could make for a very difficult political environment and social environment. (Time 1:05:12)
  • High-Bandwidth Memory
    • Gavin Baker predicts companies producing high-bandwidth memory (HBM) will be the best-performing assets in 2025.
    • He cites its crucial role in AI compute and current supply shortages. Transcript: Jason Calacanis They’ll run it right into the ground. They’ll double down. Okay, best performing asset. Everybody loves this one. Best performing asset. Hey, you can put a price on this. Best performing asset. Last year, Chamath did a spread trade. He was long public tech stocks, short private, late stage tech stock index. NASDAQ top 100 tech stock ETF was up 10% in 2024. Freeberg, you went with your uranium ETF, not Uranus, uranium ETF. And URA was down 1% in 2024. I know. Sideways. You know what? David Friedberg I looked at the components of that ETF last week when we were preparing for this. It has absolute junk in it. It was not the right way to trade uranium. But anyway, that was my outcome for the year. Jason Calacanis I went with the on-demand economy with Uber, Airbnb, and DoorDash. Uber was up 30%, but now it’s only up 3% with the robo-taxi headwind. Airbnb is basically flat. And DoorDash up big, 74%. Shout out to Stanley Tang. Great job to the team over there. So, Chamath, get your flowers there. Let’s do our best-performing asset. Let’s let our guests go first. Gavin, what would be the best-performing asset of 2025? David O. Sacks I think the companies that make high bandwidth memory going back to we’re gonna run out of compute it’s it’s um it’s actually a pretty shocking stat high bandwidth memory is a bigger Part of nvidia’s cogs on gpus than taiwan simi is and today there’s two companies that can make it, Hynix and Micron. We’ll see if Samsung gets their act together. But HBM memory, it’s in NVIDIA GPUs, AMD GPUs, Amazon Terraniums. And particularly in a world of test time compute and inference being so important, bin with memory is arguably more important than it ever was. And it’s been sold out for the last two years. So high bin with memory would be my (Time 1:12:54)
  • Credit Default Swaps
    • Chamath Palihapitiya suggests a contrarian, high-risk trade: buying credit default swaps (CDS) as insurance against market volatility.
    • He acknowledges it’s likely to lose money but offers huge upside if a crisis occurs. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya Pick. Okay. Good pick. Great pick. In fact, what do you got, Shema? So let me preface this by saying that this is a pick that 92 times out of 100 goes to absolute zero. Okay. And six out of the remaining eight times, you make 10 extra money. And then the final two times you make anywhere between 100 to 1,000 extra money. Okay. Sounds like Bitcoin. Okay. So this is a loser trade. But I would be long CDS. So what am I buying? I am buying insurance. I’m buying insurance using credit default swaps. I’m buying what’s called protection, that there is no default event in 2025. Again, I’m not going to tell you which companies or what maturities, but just the general idea for me is I would like a little bit of an insurance policy in 2025 so that the men and the women That we have voted in have the chance to do their work in peace. I think that there is a small chance of some volatility next year. I hope it doesn’t happen. I hope that this trade, like I said, 92 times out of 100 loses money. I hope it loses money. But if it hits, it will be the best performing asset of 2025. It will be the equivalent of Ackman buying CDS right at the beginning of the COVID crisis. How does one buy those? You have to have an ISDA. You talk to the big investment banks, and they’ll price it out for you. But again, and I just want to be clear, this is not something I think will happen. It’s not something I want to happen. But I do think that if you look back, in terms of just the tonnage of dollars you can make, and the massive risk asymmetry that it presents to you, when you look at the concentration of the S&P, when you look at just the total gross amount of debt that we have, when you you look at rate spiking, all of these things say having a little insurance may not be a bad thing. So I (Time 1:15:00)
  • Chinese Tech Stocks
    • David Friedberg predicts Chinese tech stocks will be the best-performing assets of 2025.
    • He believes a deal between the US and China and China’s manufacturing advantages will drive growth. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Do you got, Freiburg? David Friedberg So I went with Chinese tech stocks, Chinese tech ETFs. Wow. I think that the market, everyone’s kind of dumped Chinese tech stocks over the last couple of years. Everyone’s taken this isolationary stance on positioning portfolios and saying, hey, we can’t do business with China. It’s over. But I do think that the Trump administration, particularly with their recent request on TikTok, the ban on TikTok being kind of halted, they’re trying to line up what I would call kind Of like the great deal with China. So I don’t know anything about what they’re actually trying to do. But I think that Trump and leadership in the US government want to kind of open up the Chinese market to American companies in order to give Chinese companies access to the American market. And I think that they’re going to get a deal done given the position with china i think that they’re very likely to kind of get a deal done that’s one driver i think there’s three drivers The second driver is that obviously the cost of build out of electricity production in china is unfathomable they recently approved 137 billion dollar hydro electric dam facility Which is going to add another i think a couple hundred gigawatts of electricity production in that country not to mention all the nuclear build-out we’ve talked about in the past. So the cost per kilowatt hour is already lower. The amount of electricity available is going up. And then I think that the Chinese Communist Party have this incredible ability to throttle up and down free markets and entrepreneurship. And this is a moment where you could kind of see them making the throttle go the way towards enabling more innovation, more free market activity. And it’s going to be one of the motivators for them to do a deal. So when you put all of this together, I do think that there’s a lot of Chinese tech companies that have been beat up under the assumption that this is going to be a very difficult conflict With the US in the years ahead. And I think that that may not be the case going into 25. And I think that these stocks are pretty cheap. I was just looking at Alibaba, and it trades at a pretty decent multiple. It seems like these stocks could be poised for a pretty good run in 25 if the macro works out. (Time 1:17:36)
  • Enterprise Software Decline
    • Gavin Baker predicts enterprise application software will be the worst-performing asset of 2025.
    • He cites the rise of AI agents controlled by large tech companies as a major threat. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Worst performing asset of 2025, Gavin. David O. Sacks Enterprise application software. This is basically just about 2025 is going to be, I think, the year of agents, particularly in the second half. Agents just being AI models that can take action on your behalf, that can do anything online that a human can do online. And if the labs and the big cloud providers dominate agents, which seems likely, going back to the low-cost producer is going to win, enterprise application software, I think, is going To be in a lot of pain. And, you know, some of these companies are talking a big, big game about agents. But at the end of the day, they don’t have their own models, they don’t own their own compute. And I just don’t see them being ultimate winners in the world of agents, you know, I could easily, I could be wrong, because they do, you know, they, they, they have some customer data, Maybe a little bit of a data moat, and they do have strong customer relationships. But most companies have relationships with AWS, Google, or Microsoft as well. So I think enterprise application software will be in pain. (Time 1:23:31)
  • Legacy Cars and Real Estate
    • Jason Calacanis predicts legacy car companies and real estate will be the worst-performing assets in 2025.
    • He explains that consumers are facing record debt and these sectors are overbuilt. Transcript: Jason Calacanis So that’s my worst performing asset trade. Enterprise was my other choice, but I’ll go with something slightly different. Most anticipated trend for 2025. Last year, Chamath, congratulations. You said last year that Bitcoin would hit 100K for the first time. Nailed it, half court shot. Well done. I think at the time you made that prediction, it was probably trading at- It felt like a layup. Felt like a layup to you, up 112%. Freeberg, you said predictive models in AI-driven discovery and pharma and bioengineering. How did that do, that prediction? David Friedberg Well, there was a lot of funding and Demis won the Nobel Prize. And a Nobel Prize. There you go. So it worked out. Jason Calacanis I picked efficiency in the form of AI advancements in labor and outsourcing. And I’ve seen that a bunch with our investment in Athena. Go to athenawow.com. Okay. Got my plug in there. (Time 1:30:14)
  • Regulatory Changes
    • Chamath Palihapitiya anticipates arcane regulatory changes to manage US debt as a key trend in 2025.
    • He sees potential maneuvering around regulations like the supplemental loss ratio. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Let’s go for most anticipated 2025 trend. What do you got, Chamath? Chamath Palihapitiya I think that there are a handful of, not to overuse an overused term, but canaries in the coal mine for the end of the deep state. And I would like to point to one, which is this obscure thing called the supplemental loss ratio. And essentially what it is, is a mechanism that the banks can use to include or not include treasuries and how they calculate reserves, et cetera, et cetera. Now, why is this an interesting thing? It’s not interesting for many people. It’s very arcane. But if we are unable to manage the debt situation in 2025, I think what you’re going to see is maneuvering at the edges of these arcane regulations that effectively kick the can down the Road. And there is a chance that that could happen to help the banks, because we believe that we meaning collectively, America, that maybe Doge won’t be as effective as it needs to be, that There’s still going to need to be $10, $20 trillion of debt issuance to refinance the 10 that’s maturing this year, and to plug holes in the coming years. My point in all of this is we don’t need to understand the details except that if we don’t move the goalposts here, it is a great sign that the folks that are running the show are the ones That we all elected. So that is my most anticipated trend. Small, arcane, regulatory changes that allow us to kick the can down the road stop in its tracks. This is an example. (Time 1:30:59)
  • Accelerated AI Progress
    • Gavin Baker anticipates rapid AI advancements in 2025, exceeding previous years’ progress.
    • He cites improvements in reasoning as a key driver, enabling AI to think more effectively. Transcript: Jason Calacanis A leading indicator for sure. When smart people do something with their time, that’s a great indicator. Gavin, what do you got? David O. Sacks I think AI, Nick, I sent you a chart. I don’t know if you can flash it up, but I think AI is going to make more progress per quarter in 2025 than it did per year in 23 and 24. And the reason is just with 01 and 03, this is Arc AGI. It’s designed, you know, we keep changing the goalposts for the Turing test and AGI. And I’m sure we’re going to change it again, because we’re going to blow through this. And I just think what has happened is, we were scaling around on one axis, which was pre-training. And then we started scaling around inference time compute. And it’s very clear that we have now added a third axis of scaling performance. And that is reasoning. And what this is, is these models, the internet is composed of answers, people giving answers. And what the models really benefit from is kind of the internal monologue of somebody getting to that answer. And this is, you know, in AI terms, they call it a reasoning trace. And it’s one reason, you know, 18 months ago, everybody was like, oh, wow, the more code you train a model on, the better it does and all sorts of things that have seemingly nothing to do With code. But all code, you see kind of the reasoning, the internal monologue, the thought process, the step by step. And so what’s happening is you’re using models to generate synthetic data that contains these reasoning traces. So you ask a model, solve this problem. It has to be a problem that is functionally verifiable, that has an answer, or we know the answer. And we say, show your work. And we have it do that many, many different ways and times. And then you pick the best ones and you kind of feed those back into the model. You apply some reinforcement learning to it. And so now you’re scaling along three axes that are multiplicative with each other. And I just, I, you know, a guy on the Google team said, tweeted maybe five days ago, it’s going to be a straight shot to ASI, artificial superintelligence. And I think that might be right. Ilya gave a talk at NeurIPS, Ilya Sutskever, one of kind of the original pioneers of this field. And he said something that I thought was scary. And he said, these models that reason are inherently unpredictable. So the best reasoning models in the world today are the ones that play games, the kind of AlphaGo, AlphaZero style models. And they are constantly making unpredictable moves that no human grandmaster ever could have come up with. And now these models are going to be making similarly unpredictable leaps in all sorts of domains. (Time 1:33:54)
  • Legacy Media Shift
    • Jason Calacanis anticipates a shift in legacy media outlets owned by billionaires toward the political center.
    • He expects to see newsrooms adding right-wing voices and a return to classic journalism. Transcript: Jason Calacanis James Gunn’s DC Universe with Superman coming out this year, I think is going to be amazing. Andor season two could be amazing. I predict they’re going to do a Clone Wars live action series. If you don’t know the Clone Wars, watch it with your kids. It’s amazing animated series that takes place during the prequels. But I went with a little of a weird choice here. I think my most anticipated media is seeing what happens with legacy media outlets owned by billionaires and or people who no longer want to pick a side. Washington Post, CNN, and LA Times specifically are steering towards the middle and trying to get back to classic journalism. The editors are revolting. Karen Swisher is upset. And they’re adding some right-wing voices. It is going to be popcorn time for everybody. So enjoy whatever you want to enjoy. Star Wars, I got a little Star Wars for you with Andrew season two. (Time 1:39:05)
  • Declassified Files
    • Chamath Palihapitiya anticipates the release of declassified files by the Trump administration will be a major media event.
    • He expects revelations about JFK, Epstein, and other topics. Transcript: Jason Calacanis I got a little Superman, or you can watch the chaos in the editorial newsrooms at Washington Post and LA Times. What do you got for most anticipated media, Chamath? Chamath Palihapitiya It is the enormity of the files that are going to get declassified and released by the Trump administration. I think it’s going to be unbelievably interesting, salacious, useful, good, earnest, all of the above. So the JFK files, the Epstein files, the Diddy files, the moon landing. Who knows what they find across all of these other fringe, quote unquote, conspiracy theories that may turn out to actually have some shred of truth. But all of that, let’s call it content, for lack of a better word, that gets released in 2025 by the Trump administration, I think will be incredibly interesting. What (Time 1:39:57)
  • Trump Deportation Prediction
    • Jason Calacanis proposes a prediction market on whether Trump will deport over 750,000 people in his first year.
    • He bases this on Trump’s campaign promise of deporting 15 million. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Incredible. All right. We’re going to do our prediction markets here. I’m going to put up a prediction market, which is based upon immigration and the promise that Trump made to have 15 million people be deported from the country. I think in the first year, I’m going to set the over under at 5% of that stated number, which is 750,000. So after one year in office, will Trump have deported 750,000 less or more? That’s my first prediction. How are you going to measure that? David Friedberg There has to be a source of truth on these things, right? Jason Calacanis We’ll do it based on the White House’s reporting of deportations. David O. Sacks Yeah, it’s reasonable. Jason Calacanis And we’ll check with the Polymarket team if there’s a way to do that prediction market, obviously. But I think that was the biggest issue of the election. So I’m putting it up there with just 5% in the first year. (Time 1:43:02)
  • UFO Discussion
    • Gavin Baker wants to discuss UFOs and drones, citing increased reports in credible media.
    • He mentions a New Yorker article quoting people who claimed to have seen extraterrestrial materials. Transcript: David Friedberg What’s your sense on federal debt next year? David O. Sacks I think like most things, it’ll take like immigration, it’ll take time to get going. Yeah. It just, it’s going to take a little bit of time, but I think they will make progress. By the way, at some point, if I’m here on the all in again, I want to talk about UFOs and the drones. Jason Calacanis Let’s talk about it now. Do it right now. Are you going full conspiracy theorist? Are you are you trying to get your seat here by being a little more Alex Jones? Do you believe those drones were aliens? What’s going on? David O. Sacks So I don’t know. And I think it’s very clear if you look at all the statements from the New Jersey mayors and governors, you know, who’ve met with the police, the FBI, the Defense Department, that they Don’t know. Now, you know, Trump said someone in the government knows what they are. He also said he was not going to go to Bedminster anytime soon. His resort there. I just think over the last, I’d say, eight years, every 18 months, there’s a big story in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, very credible media sources With dozens of interviews with fighter pilots and commercial pilots talking about seeing things with advanced sensors that made no sense to them. And then there’s kind of a taboo that went away. There was an article in the New Yorker where they quoted from a bunch of people who were at, you know, kind of the skunkworks laboratories in the 1950s and said they absolutely saw extraterrestrial Materials that have been recovered from a crash. That’s one reason the US made such big leaps in material science. And, you know, there was the Uamana thing where essentially a lot of, you know, astronomers said, hey, this is clearly a UFO of some sort, including the head of astronomy at Harvard. And then just the conspiracy theory I would have is if, if, if, if, if these are actually UFOs and not, you know, government drones, either from the United States or China, you know, it Seems like the most likely explanation in New Jersey is that it’s some sort of a drill. And obviously, once this hysteria gets going, people misidentify commercial airplanes as drones. And why would UFOs have blinking green and red lights? But it is just interesting that there was, you know, a big concentration of these reports as we were scaling into nuclear technology, 1945 to 1960. And then now that AI is getting going, which is the next kind of technological phase shift for humanity, there’s another big kind of bolus of reports. This is great. (Time 1:46:40)