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Podcast

The AI Cold War, Signalgate, CoreWeave IPO, Tariff Endgames, El Salvador Deportations

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

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  • Jensen’s Favorite
    • Gavin Baker was the only public equity investor Jensen Huang invited to NVIDIA’s event.
    • Baker has known Huang for 25 years and notes Huang’s consistent personality. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya Soon. By the time you get this and nvidia you were there at nvidia you are the one analyst gavin that jensen pulled up you’re loved by jensen what’s it like to be loved by jensen tell us everything Jason Calacanis Well so first that he did, there was Alfred was from Squia. And then they had a nice sell side guy whose name is escaping me at the moment. But it is technically true. I was the only public equity investor on the buy side that Jensen asked. I’ve known Jensen for 25 years. He’s kind of the same guy he ever was, like just maybe slightly cal. David Sacks Gavin, can I ask you, all this stuff where they talk about the balance sheet questions that some folks have (Time 0:01:45)
  • NVIDIA’s Strategic Investments
    • NVIDIA invested in neoclouds like CoreWeave to diversify its customer base and reduce reliance on hyperscalers.
    • This strategy mitigates the risk of a few large customers controlling NVIDIA. Transcript: David Sacks About NVIDIA, some of the accounts receivable issues and stuff, is there any legitimacy to those issues, the round tripping? Like, what’s the real story of someone that peers into that P&L and understands it? Jason Calacanis Yeah, so I guess maybe to take them in reverse order, I really don’t think, like, if NVIDIA had not put any money into CoreWeave, not put any money into kind of other of these neoclouds, I don’t think it would have impacted their revenues at all. At all. They would have sold more to Meta and more to Tesla. Yeah, more to Meta, more to Amazon, more to Microsoft. So the reason they did it is even three years ago, it was a very stable three-player oligopoly from the cloud computing players in Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. And if you’re NVIDIA, that’s not great to have just three big customers. Those big clouds, particularly in 2023, when there was such a rush to get GPUs, they each kind of want to do their own kind of custom version of an NVIDIA server. And NVIDIA, by giving kind of like a standard reference design, which someone like CoreWeave bought to CoreWeave, you got GPUs in the market a lot faster. And when you use NVIDIA’s reference design, it’s generally smoother and easier to stand them up. And so the big three kind of cloud computing, know, hyperscalers, their incremental share of revenue went down. And that was nothing but good for NVIDIA because they (Time 0:02:34)
  • NVIDIA’s Accounts Receivable
    • NVIDIA’s increasing accounts receivable is due to the complex product transition from Hopper to Blackwell.
    • This transition requires significant infrastructure changes for customers, impacting payment cycles. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Now have kind of a more fragmented base of buyers who have less power over them. David Sacks But what does it mean, Gavin, when like the accounts receivable jumps from a billion five or so to like five and a half billion year over year. Is that concerning or that’s just business? Jason Calacanis So look, it’s never good. But if you think Nvidia has gone through the biggest product transition in history, in terms of Hopper, you know, this is a business doing 10s of billions of dollars at scale. There’s never been a product transition like this in the history of semiconductors going from Hopper to Blackwell, you know, kind of the 2022 generation GPU to this one. The only precedent for this on planet Earth is the iPhone. And there’s something called the Osborne effect, which is, you know, when Apple comes out with a new iPhone for the three months before nobody buys the new iphone and i think the only Reason nvidia was able to grow through this product transition is because of reasoning models like deep seek which are just so compute hungry and this product transition does come Back to the days receivables the cum receivables now is like 23 billion dollars yeah it’s never good when accounts receivables go up. But if this is the most understandable time for it to happen. David Sacks In a product refresh cycle, you’re saying? Jason Calacanis Yeah, and because a hopper server, you know, it’s a rack. It’s whatever it is, seven feet high, it weighs 1,000 pounds. It consumes 60 kilowatts, which is 60 American homes, and it’s air-cooled. So you cool those GPUs, and the biggest problem with GPUs, one of the biggest is they melt. You cool it with air. Blackwell weighs 3,000 pounds, so three times as much the rack. It’s eight feet tall, maybe five feet deep or four feet deep, 3,000 pounds, and it consumes 120 kilowatts, so twice as much power and roughly kind of the same footprint three times as Much weight and it’s liquid cooled so this is like an iphone upgrade cycle you know it was like it’s still a pain that we went from you know lightning to usbc you know i’ll grab a cord and It’ll be lightning instead of usbc this is like an iphone upgrade cycle where to get the new iphone not only do you have to change your connectors you have to put in a new generator you have To put in a new boiler, and a whole house humidification system to kind of make it work. So it’s a monumental product transition. And I think that is a lot of why the receivables went up. You know, they’re recognizing Blackwell revenue, you know, while it was still kind of getting into customers’ hands. (Time 0:04:12)
  • NVIDIA and Intel Inside
    • NVIDIA’s strategy with neoclouds mirrors Intel’s “Intel Inside” program.
    • Both aim to diversify their customer base and promote their reference architecture. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya Got it. Because it’s a new thing. Yeah, but it makes total sense to have accounts receivable. Jason Calacanis It’s just that here, the accounts receivable have gone up more than sales. And that’s just a function of the complexity of this product transition. David Sacks The other part of what I would say is the first part of what you’re saying is very similar to what Intel did to scale their chip dominance in the 80s and 90s with this Intel inside program. They didn’t really need to do it probably in hindsight, but it helped them support an ecosystem and it helped diversify their buyer base so that fewer people had power over them. And so a lot of this quote unquote round tripping from your perspective is diversifying the ownership pool of NVIDIA is what you’re saying. Jason Calacanis Absolutely. And sending NVIDIA GPUs to people who are adopting NVIDIA’s reference architecture, which they believe is the best architecture for those GPUs. Whereas each hyperscaler has their own slight tweaks to that server, that hyperscaler does it so it looks more like their other servers, but maybe doesn’t run quite as well as the standard NVIDIA reference architecture with all of their chips, not just the NVIDIA GPUs. (Time 0:07:55)
  • CoreWeave’s Advantage
    • Running large training clusters is more complex than perceived.
    • CoreWeave’s expertise in managing these clusters is a key differentiator, despite market skepticism. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya So any other thoughts, Gavin, on the CoreWeave IPO, which will have happened by the time people listen to this episode? Jason Calacanis Yeah, I would say, you know, the sentiment on X, investors on X are pretty negative on CoreWeave. I think there’s maybe a little bit of, you know, negativity in the market, they had to, you know, reduce the range, lower the price. And everyone is very convinced this is a commodity business, loads of debt, loads of CapEx, you know, one really concentrated customer, and that they’re completely undifferentiated. And I guess I would just make a point, which is, in America, if you can pick any category, any retail category, and if you can run 1,000 in stores in 50 different states with different preferences And have those stores well-lit, clean, stocked by friendly employees with the right stuff in stock, you will create a business that is worth well over $10 billion. And that sounds easy, but very few companies have been able to do it. I think what may be underappreciated about CoreWeave is it’s actually really hard to run these big training clusters. Everybody thinks it’s easy, but to synchronize tens of thousands of GPUs where they’re melting or cables are being unplugged and you lose a bunch of training data when it happens. I just think it’s not, it may not be the commodity that everyone thinks it is. And it may turn out that it’s much harder to do than people think. Chamath Palihapitiya Would there be an analogy for that? When they’re like, people thought AWS would never work at the beginning, they were like, who’s going to trust Amazon with their compute? And it was difficult. And, you know, developers didn’t understand how to abstract their services into the cloud. Jason Calacanis Yeah, the world was convinced AWS, well, a lot of the world was convinced AWS was a terrible business for the first few years. When Microsoft announced they’re going to transition to the cloud, it was very controversial because you go from a CapEx light model to a CapEx heavy model. So Wall Street consensus has been wrong before. And I do think CoreWeave runs these big GPU clusters as well as anyone. And there aren’t that many people on planet Earth who can run them well. And, you know, it’s kind of easy. You can just look at the NPV of their contracts and the asset value. And so everyone, you know, who’s kind of, you know, confidently putting out all the negatives here, like, I just think there are some offsetting positives that it’s good for, you know, I think people to be aware of and consider. (Time 0:12:41)
  • China’s Chip Development
    • Export controls incentivize China to develop its own semiconductor industry, potentially creating a stronger competitor.
    • While unlikely in the short term, China could eventually surpass NVIDIA in 10 years. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya So you said another way, if we squeeze too tightly on letting them buy the NVIDIA chips, they might make a better NVIDIA. I mean, I think they’re resilient. I think they’re doing it now. They’re trying now. Yeah. Well, they’re trying, but I guess, what are the chances they succeed in your mind, Gavin, in creating something competitive with or better? And then what would that say about the AI race? Jason Calacanis In the next five years, I think zero. I think it’s really, really hard. But over the 10 years, who knows? If you’re the ccp 10 years isn’t that long if you’re america 10 years as an eternity yeah (Time 0:18:36)
  • The Rise of AI Agents
    • Widespread adoption of AI agents depends on compute availability and cost.
    • Manus’s emergence signifies a potential “ChatGPT moment” for agents, but compute remains a limiting factor. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya But we have a company that seems to be, you know, having a moment. It’s called Manus, M-A It’s currently in private beta, but they’re creating agents. And we’ve been talking about this agentic revolution, basically little, you know, jobs going out, we used to call them cron jobs back in the day, but going out and doing things for you. And it seems to be working, and it’s pretty impressive. What do you think about this company specifically, if anything? And are we getting to a point where we’re going to have the same chat GPT 2.5 moment, but with agents? And then if we do have that, Gavin, what will that look like in terms of employment and how companies are run? Jason Calacanis Look, I do think if agents materialize as a reality, and, you know, Manus is maybe a little bit of a chat GPT moment for that. I would say OpenAI and Anthropic. Anthropic developed something called the model context protocol that OpenAI just adopted. I think it will become a standard. And it makes it really easy for an LLM like Stripe can just integrate with MCP. And then any LLM that uses MCP can interact with Stripe. This is solving a big, big problem for agents in terms of just making them much easier to use, much more standardized. But if agents become a reality, one, the ROI on AI and Blackwell is going to be very high. Two, it’s not good for human employment, but what will be kind of, I would say, the rate limiting factor is just compute. In a world where we all have agents doing things for us all day long, it’s going to be a long time before we have enough compute in the ground for that to be a really, really widespread reality. (Time 0:19:25)
  • AI Agents for Complex Tasks
    • AI agents can unlock complex projects previously requiring large teams, potentially revolutionizing industries.
    • Focus on using agents for difficult tasks, not just replacing simple human jobs. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya Freberg, your thoughts on these agents and the impact they could have on running businesses, employment, and just generally efficiency. We’re now starting to have some standards. MCP stands for model context protocol. Your thoughts, Freeberg, on how this might impact, you know, architecting a business, which you’re doing right now with Ohalo. How might this change how people work on a day-to basis? Let’s maybe give some examples for the audience. David Friedberg Look, I’ll take a slightly different view than gavin i’ve said this in the past but maybe i’ll try and contextualize it a little bit i think that the big unlock with these kind of agentic Systems is not necessarily about replacing the easy human tasks which everyone kind of thinks are kind of the obvious application of them. I think what we’re missing is the ability to unlock really complex tasks that are not really manageable today. I can’t come up with a very grand project planning exercise with the team I have today, I have to go hire 30 people. Let me give you an example. I want to go build a plant breeding facility under the ocean. Okay, so how do I do that? So to do that today, I’m like, well, I got to go hire people that understand oceans, I understand engineering that understand how to do underwater engineering, I have to hire material Scientists, I have to hire physicists, I have to hire construction project planners. There’s a whole group of complicated people I would need to kind of put together to be able to kind of execute on that opportunity. But now a smaller group, maybe three or four people or two people can say, okay, let’s use these agents to help us build that project plan and spec out every step of the process to find how Much everything will cost, what workloads are needed, who’s going to do what. So suddenly that difficult project becomes a reality. Here’s another good example, the California high speed rail program that’s ballooned to this hundred billion dollar. What if we had agents organizing and running that program? Well, maybe the cost of that program and the reality of that program makes it a reality now. So it suddenly becomes a program that we launch, we get it done, we build this railroad, whereas all the people, all the complication, all the confusion, and whatever grift has been Going on has led to $100 billion balloon budget with no outcome. So I think complex projects can actually be tackled in an easier way, that actually unlocks a tremendous amount of building, a tremendous amount of opportunity for new employment, For people to come in and small teams of three or four to get hired that can now do the work of three or 400 really deeply sophisticated, highly technical people with a very small, less Technical group. So I think there’s going to be a tremendous amount of opportunity in biotech, in engineering, in manufacturing, in urban design, in transportation, and on and on and on, where small Groups are going to get spun up that can use these systems to do really complex projects. (Time 0:21:36)
  • The China Threat
    • China’s rapid adoption and adaptation of US technologies, coupled with government subsidies, pose a significant threat.
    • This creates a disruptive economic force, especially for incumbent American companies. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya Let’s level this up and just talk about the bigger picture, which is our giant rival in China. They’re actually catching up, in some cases, exceeding us. If they get to AI first, and then are able to execute on this, given their top-down controls, given the size of their population, given their advantages in manufacturing that we’re Seeing now with Xiaomi making cars, you know, what BYD is doing in self-driving and cars, what we’re seeing now with chips versus NVIDIA. It’s kind of getting set up that almost everything we’re building here in the US, China’s copying at a very fast pace and then exceeding. So what’s at stake here, big picture? And then I guess we’ll then look at what should our philosophy be in a geopolitical way. (Time 0:24:46)
  • China’s Disruptive Strategy
    • China’s strategy is to disrupt incumbent American companies by leveraging AI to drastically reduce operational costs.
    • This allows them to undercut American businesses without prioritizing profit. Transcript: David Sacks Let’s just do an economics lesson. Why does anybody invest? They invest because you, let’s just take a dollar. You want to generate a rate of return that’s better than all your alternatives. And the riskier it gets, the more of a return you want, right? That’s the basic idea. So if you invest a dollar in bonds, you can get five or 6%. If you invest a dollar in an early stage startup, you want to get 50 or 60% returns. Okay, that’s obvious. But the return that you generate is in part driven by how profitable is this company, obviously. And if you have a 300 person group of people that has to do something, it’s a lot harder for them to generate profit and then to generate a rate of return than it is if you have two or three People. So the Chinese strategic imperative is no different than small startups versus an incumbent, which is to be as hyper disruptive economically as you can. So I think the big risk is not necessarily Chinese, but many of these alternatives will come from China, which is to say that where are the incumbents? Most of the incumbents are American companies. If you look at SaaS software, that’s a perfect example of where there is trillions of dollars, the software industrial complex, as I call it, that’s like a three and a half, $4 trillion Industry. It grows by 10% a year. So every year it’s adding 300 billion of quote unquote enterprise value. Is that value that is being created? I think a lot of the customers would say no. So if you’re a startup or if you’re China, what is the most disruptive thing you could do? Well, you could take a three-person team to disrupt a 30,000 team and blow a hole right in the side of that trillion-dollar economy. That’s the big risk. So whether the risk comes from here or whether it comes from the Chinese, I think what you’re seeing is that if these agents can scale, the opex, the actual load of making something will Go down by an order of magnitude. And maybe even two orders of magnitude. That is incredibly disruptive because the existing incumbents cannot compete with that cost scale. And (Time 0:25:37)
  • Trump’s Consistent Stance
    • Trump’s stance on trade imbalances has been consistent for decades, as evidenced by a 1987 interview with Larry King.
    • This consistency highlights a long-held belief about unfair trade practices affecting America. Transcript: David Sacks That’s true. And the one thing I’ll say about Donald Trump is you may not agree with the tariffs, but he’s been incredibly consistent. I was on YouTube yesterday, and I stumbled into an interview he did, Nick, maybe you can find this, with Larry King in 1987. And he ran a full-page ad in the New York Times talking about this exact issue, and then went on Larry King, and he walked through the entire trade imbalance 40 years ago. Yeah, he’s been on this. So this is not a fly by night thing. So what do they want? What they want is to create the economic incentives to reshore as much industry as possible into the United States. The delicate balancing act though is that after 20 years of globalism and a perverted version of free trade, because it’s not what it is today, it’s been perverted. It is incredibly difficult to do that without these whack-a problems emerging in other areas, right? Whether it’s inflation or whether it’s retaliatory tariffs or consumption taxes, all of these complexities, I think, are what has to get figured out. But the structural reason of why tariffs make sense is not necessarily to overly penalize one country over another, but it’s simply to say, if you charge 5%, we charge 5%. If you charge 10%, we charge 10%. Nick has a clip. Just listen to this from 40 years ago. Jason Calacanis We don’t have free trade right now because if you want to go to Japan or if you want to go to Saudi Arabia or various other countries, it’s virtually impossible for an American to do business In those countries, virtually impossible. So the fact is that you don’t have free trade. We think of it as free trade, but you right now don’t have free trade. So (Time 0:30:42)
  • Deregulation and Tariffs
    • The administration should emphasize deregulation alongside tariffs to maximize reshoring success.
    • Deregulation offers common ground and mitigates potential negative impacts of tariffs. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Now, maybe Wall Street is wrong and the administration is right. One thing everyone agrees on is deregulation is good. So every time they say the word tariff, they need to say the word deregulation two or three times. Because the best way to, I think, maximize the odds of this policy succeeding, despite the headwinds from automation, I think it’s going to be a long time before we have hundreds of millions Of robots. You know, even between China and Tesla, I think it’s going to take a long time to make vast numbers of humanoid robots. The best way to encourage this reshoring is just making it easier to do business in America. (Time 0:34:04)
  • Signalgate’s Security Breach
    • Signalgate highlights the Trump administration’s accidental sharing of war plans due to a journalist’s inclusion in a Signal group.
    • This incident raises security concerns and questions the use of personal devices for sensitive information. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya We got such a full docket. I want to talk about Signalgate. David Sacks Bro, text our bestie and talk to him about it. I think that’s a good idea. Chamath Palihapitiya Yeah, I mean, maybe I should go in there. Because listen, I don’t even consider this like a Trump administration now. I consider it a Democratic, moderate administration. Everybody around Trump now is a Democrat. I think I might be in. I might be in. You guys look like you had a good time. You guys look like you had a good time last week. I kind of want to be included. It looked like fun. Did you vote for Trump? I don’t want to bring in my vote. I did not vote for Kamala. Let’s keep moving here. I’m going to keep dropping. Wow. My God. I did not vote for Kamala. I couldn’t vote for her. She said, I don’t want to say it, but. Anyway, let’s keep going. I don’t want to vote for somebody who was selected. I wanted to vote for somebody who had a primary. And the Democrats, disgrace the odd for not having a speed run primary. Signal Gate. That’s the biggest story in America right now. I think J. Cal is turning. David Friedberg This is incredible. What a day. Chamath Palihapitiya No, I mean, listen, I’m going to call balls and strikes. Right now, 70% of what they’re doing, I agree with. 30% I don’t. I’m going to get to the 30% on a human rights basis. David Sacks I think you just admitted you voted for Trump. It’s really incredible, actually. Chamath Palihapitiya Anyway, let’s keep moving here. I’m from the great state of Texas. I’ll leave it at that. Signalgate, Signalgate, Signalgate. On Monday, the Atlantic published a story titled The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me to War Plan. Somehow, Atlantic Editor-in Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a super high-profile signal group with our Secretary of State, our Vice President, Tulsi Besant, the CIA Director, the Secretary of Defense. How is this possible, folks? They added a journalist, the editor-in of the Atlantic, to their war planning signal group. They shouldn’t be using signal, obviously, to do this stuff. And inside this group, they discussed the plans to strike Houthi targets across Yemen. Nobody noticed, nobody checked that the editor-in of The Atlantic was in the group chat. They included the exact targets, the actions, the timing of all of this. It was apparently cut and pasted from some other system by Hegsen, our Secretary of Defense and former Fox commentator. That’s not a dig. It’s just a fact. I’m not saying it as a dig. Chamath, people are losing their mind over this. I could get into all the details. I think most people know it because it’s taking up the whole, all the oxygen in the room, in the media, in the group chats. Number one, what’s your general take on what happened here? How stupid is this? How ridiculous is it? Does it matter? Go ahead, (Time 0:51:56)
  • Signal’s Security Flaw
    • Signal’s desktop app’s vulnerability increased attack vectors, contributing to the Signalgate incident.
    • The administration should prioritize secure communication protocols and avoid personal devices for sensitive matters. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya That’s the context of why they did the attack. David Sacks Great. I find it crazy that we still actually for 95 articles though, Jason, on Signal, we have only less than one article on this. So I just wanted the smart people to listen to our pod to actually understand it. Chamath Palihapitiya The second thing, the second thing I’ll say send the bill to Europe because this is really a European problem because we have the whole Pacific Ocean we can accept things through. We can go to ports in Texas. So the point is we’re on a shot clock. David Sacks So the point is we’re on a shot clock. People had to act quickly. Here’s my big problem with Signal. I think it was a fuck up. Okay. Straight up. I think it was an important set of decisions that had to be made, but I think using Signal was a mistake. But there’s very one narrow reason why. And we’ve said this in our group chat, the Signal desktop app is total and complete garbage. Okay. And when you build apps, somewhere along the way, we were all told, all of us as app developers, oh, you need to have an app on every endpoint. It needs to be available for Android, needs to be available for the iPad, it needs to be available for your phone, it needs to be available for the desktop. And the problem is, now, you’ll have a computer at home, you’ll have a computer in your den, you’ll have a computer at the office, some IT person comes and helps you install this stuff. And now all of a sudden, instead of having one attack vector, you have seven, right so this is insanity so you it’s a mistake it’s a stupid mistake but i think it’s a mistake and so i think Like you know let’s give it two scaramuchis i think we’ll forget about it give (Time 0:56:58)
  • US-Europe Relations
    • Despite political rhetoric, the US intervention in Yemen benefits Europe significantly more than the US.
    • This action reveals underlying alliances and shared interests beyond surface-level disagreements. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya I think it’s important note. Okay, let’s move on to our final two stories. The Trump administration has deported 238 alleged gang members to a pretty severe prison called CECOT, C-E prison in El Salvador. Here’s a clip of them being dragged out of the United States and put into this extremely notorious prison. This was all done under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. This allows the president to detain and deport individuals without due process from, quote, an enemy nation during an invasion or, quote, predatory incursion. It’s been used before, but only during actual wars. FDR used it to deport thousands of Germans, Italians, Japanese during World War II. The Trump administration is claiming that the gang members were sent to the U.S. Intentionally calling them a hybrid criminal state. Not surprisingly, most of them were not. All of them had criminal records in the U.S. This was confirmed by ICE. And obviously, some number of them appear to have been misidentified as gang members or terrorists, I can tell you, you know, coming from a law enforcement family. And just looking at the statistics, out of 238, you’re not going to bat 1,000. So maybe you get a couple of these wrong. Former pro soccer player, Jersey Reyes Barrios, he fled Venezuela after being tortured by the government for protesting. He’s a refugee. He has been mistaken for a gang member, according to his people, because he’s got an arm tattoo supporting his favorite club, Real Madrid. And there is a social media post that ICE officials believe featured him making gang signs, but it was actually the language for I love you, according to his attorney. Second example, a shoe salesman and social media influencer, Noberto Rodriguez. He fled Venezuela for Colombia out of desperation because he and his family were starving. He’s a father of three. He was also suspected because of a tattoo, which features playing cards and dice. His family says he got it to cover a scar on his forearm. And third and final example, stylist and makeup artist Andre Hernandez. He is being represented by the Immigration Defenders Law Center. He claims he has no criminal history. He sought asylum after fleeing Venezuela, where he was persecuted for being gay. Again, his arrest was based on tattoos that his attorneys claim are not gang-affiliated. This has caused a U.S. District judge to pause these deportations. The administration has apparently continued these deportations, and they’re even gloating by doing videos, highly produced videos, threatening people with the prison in El Salvador, Again, the CICOT. (Time 1:09:40)
  • Deportations and Human Rights
    • Trump’s deportation of alleged gang members to El Salvador raises human rights concerns due to potential misidentification and lack of due process.
    • While El Salvador’s strict measures reduced crime, the US should prioritize due process and avoid potentially inhumane treatment. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya Your thoughts, Chamath, on this extradition process, if any? David Sacks I mean, as long as there’s a mechanism for these mistakes to get rectified, Seems like the overwhelming majority of these folks should not have been in the United States and were part Of illegal criminal organizations. Okay, so there should be a mechanism. Gavin, your thoughts? Jason Calacanis If innocent people were sent to a prison, like that’s a terrible mistake. And you know, that happens. And it shouldn’t happen and hopefully it gets rectified. But I guess my bigger thought is a little bit, you know, this administration, as we discussed, they have a really ambitious agenda. They want to fundamentally change America in ways that they think will be better for kind of blue collar, normal working Americans. And things like this, you know, signal gate, if you if they made a mistake and sent innocent people to this prison, there’s only so many of those mistakes they can afford before they lose Kind of the mandate necessary to accomplish their goals. And, you know, hopefully it’s, you know, we’re we’re whatever we’re not even into the, you know, third full month. 66 days. 66 days. We’re into the third month. Chamath Palihapitiya But we’re 4.5% of the way through the second term. And it feels like six Garamuchis in. Yeah, six. It’s brutal. It ain’t easy here. This is such a good point, though, Gavin. Continue. Jason Calacanis They just, matters. Like if they say to accomplish their goals, they need to execute at a high level and communicate clearly and effectively. And just if innocent people were sent to, you know, this prison mistake signal gate. Look, you know, hey, maybe it’s a big mistake. Maybe it’s a small mistake, depending on where you sit. I thought Marco Rubio’s response was good. But just like I think execution is important for them to accomplish their goals. David Friedberg Great. Freeberg, any thoughts here? Or a detention center without due process. I felt similarly about Guantanamo Bay, because I don’t think it matches the rights and the values that the United States should stand for. I think it’s different if you believe that they’re here illegally, they’re part of a criminal enterprise, and we don’t want to try them in courts here. Then we should ship them back to a port of departure somewhere else in another country. Maybe it’s back to Venezuela and let their courts try them. But I will talk a little bit about this El Salvador motivation. As you guys know, the El Salvador prison that they set up for putting the gang members in had a radical impact on living standards in the country. In 2015, the homicide rate per capita in El Salvador was 103 people per 100,000. So one out of every thousand people were murdered every year. They introduced this aggressive policy of rounding people up without due process and putting them in this prison. And through that action, they were able to reduce the homicide rate per capita below two per 100,000, which is what it was last year, 1.9. So it had a radically positive effect on society, but obviously at the cost of a value that we in the United States hold dear, which is the value of due process and the importance of due Process, because all it takes is one innocent life being locked up. David Sacks I’m sorry, you’re saying El Salvador, there was no due process? There was no due process. David Friedberg And so there are plenty of stories. If you watch the documentaries on this prison, there are plenty of stories of people that later were released when they were found to be completely innocent and randomly rounded up Or caught up in a sweep or something that they shouldn’t have been at. And there was actually one fascinating interview I saw of one of the guys who spent over a year in the prison was completely innocent. But he said, you know what, it was worth it because the government’s been able to clean up the streets. I got to find this clip. But I was really like shocked. I couldn’t believe that a guy that spent a year in this prison actually had something positive to say because it was such a profoundly. Chamath Palihapitiya Maybe he had to say that to get out. Who knows? David Friedberg Well, it was such a profoundly difficult place to live in El Salvador. And we’ve all heard these stories. But I do think that there is a cue being taken by this administration. That there is a way to kind of very quickly resolve to a positive outcome with respect to immigration and crime. But I do think Gavin’s point is right, that we do have to have some boundary conditions, particularly as it relates to human rights that we do value here in this country. And as long as there’s a court trial, as long as there’s a judge, as long as there’s some sort of, it doesn’t need to be a jury of peers, but as long as there’s some evidentiary hearing to Make the determination that someone is, you know, likely this criminal, it makes sense. But again, I’m much more in favor if there’s going to be forced movement of people, I don’t think that they should necessarily be moved into a prison as much as move to a port of departure And have them tried in another country. (Time 1:12:30)
  • Ends vs. Means
    • The deportations exemplify the tension between achieving positive outcomes (reducing crime) and upholding core values (human rights).
    • The administration should acknowledge potential mistakes and prioritize due process to maintain credibility. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Administration. Gavin, you had some thoughts? This whole debate is a question of ends versus means. And it’s like, we all agree that the homicide rate down 99.9%. And El Salvador is a good outcome. It’s a good end. And this is one of the great philosophical questions. And it’s, you know, we can debate it endlessly. And there has to be a balance between the two. Human rights are a core American value. And I agree, I think, with a lot of what David said. But I also think if you are, you know, going back to that homicide rate, the Trump campaign, you know, they spoke to the mothers and the families of people who were brutally murdered or Raped and murdered by people who were illegal immigrants and were convicted criminals in their home country and were known convicted criminals and somehow still were not apprehended And then committed terrible crimes that were very similar to the crimes they committed there. You have a lot of compassion for the victims too, but all they have to do, like one of, I thought, Elon’s best moments, and I think, you know, it’s what Doge is doing is great. These are brilliant people working hard for free to do things that have never been done before in the government in terms of efficiency and kind of modernizing IT. But, you know, Elon said at one of the first press conferences, listen, we’re going to make mistakes and then we’re going to quickly correct them. So to me, I think all the administration needs to say, and I do think more due process to David’s point is good, is like, listen, if we made a mistake, it’s terrible. And we’re going to fix it immediately. And it just it gives you so much credibility when you say that. (Time 1:20:30)
  • Communication and Credibility
    • The administration should prioritize clear communication and acknowledge mistakes, especially regarding human rights.
    • Releasing promotional videos about brutal prisons undermines their credibility and alienates supporters. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya There was some concession here, hey, if we made a mistake, we’re going to fix it, that would be a lot better than putting out promotional videos lauding how brutal this prison is. That would go a long way with me. But we’re seeing the opposite. They’re releasing videos that they’re producing. We’ll play one here for you to see. David Friedberg By the way, I think an important point about this is And perhaps the key part of the strategy of the administration is that this isn’t the beginning of a continuous process. But they’re sending a signal, which they expect will cause people to naturally emigrate out of the country that are committing crime or at risk of being caught for being associated With gangs and while being in the United States as a way to kind of chase folks out. So I think that there’s some calculus and what’s going on here with respect to the risk and the actions being, hey, look, if we do this to the first 240 people, and even if three or four innocent People get caught up, there’s a net benefit ultimately, because it will reduce the immigration, immigrants kind of coming to this country that are parts of gangs. And perhaps some of them will choose to go home. Jason Calacanis You know, they clearly believe that this is going to save innocent lives in America. That is their clear belief system. Chamath Palihapitiya Well, yeah, and everybody wants that. Here’s Secretary Christie Noem from the prison itself. Here at Seacottem from the prison itself. And you will be prosecuted. But know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people. Harsh words. She’s trying to make it a deterrent, clearly. All right. Another amazing episode of All In is in the can for Gavin Baker, David Freeberg, and Jamoth Polyhapitiya. I’m Jay Cal, Jason Calacanis, and we will see you all next time. (Time 1:24:22)