Skip to content

Podcast

Trump vs Harvard, Nvidia Export Controls, How DEI Killed Hollywood With Tim Dillon

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

Source ↗ ← All highlights
  • US Export Controls on AI Chips
    • The US export controls on AI chips aim to prevent sensitive tech from reaching China, especially limiting military uses.
    • NVIDIA tried to comply but its H20 chip was still seen as too powerful and was eventually banned from China. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Let’s get to the docket. H20s banned. The US and China trade war has been escalating. On Monday, the White House informed NVIDIA that they were putting an indefinite export restriction on NVIDIA’s H20 chips to China. And so in this filing, NVIDIA said it expects a $5.5 billion hit to the quarterly earnings, stock dropped 6%. For those of you who don’t know, H20 is essentially the weaker version of the H100. It was designed, actually, to comply with these export restrictions on AI chips and allow them, NVIDIA, to sell something into China. NVIDIA CEO, CEO Jensen Huang, was visiting China today. He told Chinese state media, quote, the China market is very important to us, yada yada. Saks, you’re here. I think you got some official information for us on this. What’s the story here? Wasn’t this supposed to be the chip that was made for China? David Sacks In a sense. I mean, there is a long history to this. Okay. So first of all, just to be clear, we’re not talking about tariffs. We’re talking about export controls. And the export controls are designed to prevent certain sensitive technologies, technologies that could have a dual use, potential military, as well as consumer application from Going to China. And this goes all the way back to 2019. The first Trump administration placed a ban on extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment going to China. This is the key technology in the printing of transistors on the silicon wafer in the semiconductor manufacturing process. And there’s only one company in the world that makes these machines that cost like $200 million. It’s called ASML. It’s a company in the Netherlands. In any event, the first administration prevented these machines from going to China, which I think in hindsight was a really far-sighted decision. Because if it weren’t for that, China might today be dominating global manufacturing of semiconductors. And their inability to get that sort of lithography equipment, I think, definitely put a dent in their plans. Subsequent to that, in 2022, the Biden administration started adding leading-edge chips to the expert control list, like you said, the H100. NVIDIA then designed a new chip that was basically a version of the H100, but they reduced the amount of flops or computational power just below the thresholds. They continue selling to China. That was called the h800 the biden administration then added the h800 to the export control list in 2023 so nvidia developed the h20 which again is kind of like a nerf version of the h100 Just has less computational power i think the issue is that flops isn’t the only criteria by which you can measure the power of a chip. There’s also now memory bandwidth. And in the new paradigm of reinforcement learning and test time compute, memory bandwidth actually matters more than the amount of flops. And if you look at the memory bandwidth on the H20, it actually has 20% more memory bandwidth than the H100. So I think there’s a view that this chip is just frankly too good. And the response I’d have to people who don’t think we should be restricting this is, are you against expert controls in general, or you just think that we’re drawing the line in the wrong Place here? Because I’ve heard folks like our friends like Bill Gurley and so forth say that. Jason Calacanis Yeah, it’s about to pull. David Sacks That we’re making a mistake. But I think the question for those people is, would you sell them everything? I mean, if China wanted to buy the latest NVIDIA chip, the GB200, would you sell that to them? Would you sell them a million of those? Would you sell them five million if they’re willing to pay a premium? It seems to me that at some point you have to say that some technologies are just too sensitive to be sold to China. And so then the question is, are you drawing the line in the right place? Jason Calacanis Let me bring Freeberg in on that. Freeberg, friends of the pod like Gavin Baker said, these tariffs and these type of bans are going to essentially guarantee that America will lose AI because, and Gurley as well has This position, that we’re now going to make China force them to make their own chips. Now, you know, necessity will be the mother invention, and it’s going to escalate, and we’d be better off just selling them these instead of the latest ones. What’s your take on that, that, you know, this will be the inspiration for them to build their own NVIDIA? David Friedberg It’s an important question. Last year, China announced and began a $37 billion investment in developing their own three nanometer chip technology. So, you know, the EUV lithography systems that Sachs is referencing require these wavelengths of light at about 13 and a half nanometer, which is, you know, the previous technology Was like 200 plus nanometer. So it’s very, very small wavelengths of light that you have to be able to manipulate very in a very kind of discrete way to print circuits that are just three nanometer scale. And so it turns out that last year, China made a claim that this investment they had made was starting to pay off and they had developed their own EUV (Time 0:06:54)
  • China’s Semiconductor Catch-Up
    • China is aggressively advancing in semiconductor tech, developing their own EUV and 7nm chips.
    • Despite restrictions, their investments and reverse engineering show they are catching up fast. Transcript: David Friedberg Their own system. So, JCal, I think they’re doing it either way. I think that they’re going to invest and build their own EUV and chip manufacturing capacity either way. And the question is, does this slow them down or limit their ability on the application or the AI layer to kind of be held back for some period of time? Jason Calacanis Obviously, it accelerates it because they have no choice but to accelerate their commitment to it. So, Tim, you’ve been talking about these EUV technologies in the 200 nanometer one specifically. It’s my entire special. It’s a little crazy that you’d rip me off like this. Tim Dillon My entire special is about the lithograph. And that’s the hour that I do. You know, I’m of the mind if you give a man a chip, he makes one semiconductor or a few. But if you teach a man to make a chip, he makes multiple semiconductors and invades Taiwan. So that’s where I am with this. I think we should keep them dependent. Keep selling it to them. Keep selling it to them. Treat it like purpose. Jason Calacanis You understand how this works. If somebody becomes addicted to the good stuff, then they come back. You don’t want to give them too much. And you hide a little, you backdoor the technology with a little surveillance and stuff. Tim Dillon So have some fun. Have some fun. You know, that’s been done before. Sure. Backdoors all the time. Backdoors the technology, a little surveillance capability, you slip it in there. Yeah. Jason Calacanis Chamath, what’s your thoughts coming around the horn here? You were sort of talking about, I think, publicly, and obviously you’ve got Grok, and so you’re in the space with chips. Does this net-net, end of the day, slow them down, or slow them down short-term, speed them up long-term? Chamath Palihapitiya I think that the technology that they need is extremely non-trivial. And I do think that it actually slows them down quite a bit if they don’t have access to it. Can I just take a step back and up-level this? I think it was in 2017, the State Council of China published this plan, and they were incredibly transparent and honest. They said, this plan is for China to become a global leader in AI by 2030. Okay. And it said, so this is in 2017. And they said, by 2020, we need to have made iconic advances. By 2025, we should be a major engine of the industry. And by 2030, they should occupy the commanding heights, they said, in AI tech. Okay. So why is that important? To be honest with you, I think the real problem that we have is that NVIDIA (Time 0:12:39)
  • Plausible Deniability in Chip Sales
    • NVIDIA revenues show about 47% come from China and related countries, despite export restrictions.
    • Shell companies in Asia likely act as intermediaries, passing chips to mainland China despite controls. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya That we have is that NVIDIA is not doing what is in the best interest of the United States. David mentioned this. When the US banned the sale of the top end GPUs, the A100 and the H100, they quickly introduced the A800 and H800. What does that mean? Well, all it was was just a chip that was basically the same. It slightly reduced the data transfer speed so that it went under the export control threshold, but it was still really usable. Then late last year, they introduced this thing called this H20 that was explicitly designed for China and to be compliant with US rules at the time, which again, gives these guys substantial Performance. Okay, so what do you have? You have a 2017 plan that they’ve been executing against, which is to say we want to dominate this space. And you have an American company that has been working around the guidelines at every turn to try to land silicon into the hands of China. So then you would say, well, maybe there’s not that much going into China. Nick, can you just throw up the chart that I sent you about NVIDIA’s revenue composition? So let’s just call a spade a spade, guys. I think we can all do the math. About 47% of all of NVIDIA’s revenue goes to China and Chinese-related countries. And I think when you peel back this onion, I think what you will find is a whole raft of companies that were stood up to buy these NVIDIA GPUs to essentially act as a way station for China. I think that is the big problem because it doesn’t mean that it was just these chips that David and his colleagues put on an export control list. It was every kind of chip. Now, it explains every single time we have an advance in the United States, how is it that Alibaba shows up with something incredible, DeepSeek shows up with something better? At every turn and at every step of AI, they are at the same rate or one step ahead. And I suspect it’s because that these chips are being used in very sophisticated ways behind the scenes. Jason Calacanis And I think that’s the issue that we need to address. Just to be clear, the insight you have here, the prediction is people are selling these to Taiwan, they’re selling them in Singapore, Hong Kong, and there’s a group that are zipping Chamath Palihapitiya Them over to China mainland or letting them use them. I don’t know if you saw, but I believe there was a report that there was a couple Singaporeans that were arrested for actually trying to bring the chips into China. I don’t think it’s necessarily that. I think what happens is you have some entity that springs up, you know, Acme Corporation, AcmeCorp.com, they show up in Bhutan or Cambodia or Vietnam or Singapore, and they provide A PO, a purchase order to NVIDIA, $300, $500, $800 million. What do you think NVIDIA is going to do? They’re going to think, well, this is a legitimate Singaporean entity. I’m going to sell them the chips, whatever they want. It checks all the boxes and they look away. And what we need to now figure out is what happens once those chips get delivered. It is the only explanation for this. You don’t have this requirement for this number of GPUs for those end markets. There is only one end market. I will say, Tom, that’s an explosive allegation. Jason Calacanis Sachs, what do you think of this theory more broadly? David Sacks I think it is a fact that there have been both legal and illegal attempts to evade the U.S. Export controls. That is true. And there’s a number of companies that have done it. For example, last year, there was a case where TSMC was discovered to have produced (Time 0:15:10)
  • Circumvention of Export Controls
    • Some companies and countries have circumvented chip export controls by creating front companies to hide final destinations.
    • The US must improve enforcement and monitoring to keep sensitive AI tech from reaching adversaries. Transcript: David Sacks For a company called, I think, Sofco. It’s basically a Bitcoin ASICS company. But nonetheless, this did happen. So there have been attempts to set up shell companies to circumvent the export controls. And it is a very big problem. Jason Calacanis Tim, what do you think more broadly about what Trump is doing with this trade war in China? Any takes on China, Taiwan, and just how Americans should look at, hey, maybe we have to buy some more high quality products. Maybe we don’t get things on Timu as cheap with these $850 exemptions, et cetera. Tim Dillon I think roughly Trump’s instincts are correct. I think the way that the tariffs rolled out seem to be incredibly chaotic. I think that’s a huge problem with a lot of what the Trump administration does. They seem to have the correct instincts, but they have like a very sloppy rollout, right? Like everything’s a hard launch. Everything’s incredibly, I don’t know that things are messaged the right way. The whole Doge thing is a little bit of a fiasco because the messaging seemed off. Like nobody was out really talking about what they were doing and why they were doing it. You know, I don’t know how well this works, you know? I mean, you have a very integrated global economy. You guys know more about that than I do. Are you able to unwind that? And if you do, you have to unwind it in certain areas and certain areas you’re going to have to allow to probably remain relatively stable and consistent, right? I mean, if you listen to Ray Dalio, he talks about like a disaster coming with monetary policy, right? The whole unwinding of these economic and political structures kind of happening at once. I don’t know. I think Americans do over consume a lot of crap. I think cheap goods aren’t necessarily the highest organizing of life. I think people have been sold the idea that cheap goods are more important than having a stable functioning job and family. Been sold to Americans as a way to offer them freedom and really in chaos at the expense of the stability that used to come with, you know, a job with benefits that you stayed in for, you Know. But the other component to that is, you know, we have to make sure that like, you know, we don’t have skyrocketing prices that completely decimate people either. So I think you need to find a balance. I want to see my friends work in factories. I want them to get hurt. I want to release the safety standards. I want child labor. Children are terrorists, many of them. They start fights in malls. They have flash mobs. They run around Chicago trying to kill people that are just trying to have shelf-ish showers on the river. So, yes, children should work. My friend should work in a plastics factory. DoorDash is a horrible job. You lose a finger at a factory. It’s a story. Delivering burritos is a hell. Driving Uber. All these horrible, degrading things we make people do. And then tell them it’s great. And then we look, you know, you should destigmatize being an electrician, a plumber, a contractor. All these things that when I was told, you know, when I was growing up, they point to a guy doing construction and go, you’re going to do that if you don’t do your homework. And then the people that did their homework are all, you know, bankrupt. And that construction guy, you know, is killing it. Is killing it. He’s doing pretty well. And so what? He went to January 6th. He went there peacefully. But the whole thing is like, I think you need to figure out, you know, how to kind of reintroduce the idea that this gig economy, where people serve from one unfulfilling nightmare to The next should be rethought. Jason Calacanis Yes. Better to be in a factory, losing a finger. Can I ask a question? Tim Dillon In David’s estimation, when you’re talking about these companies that are set up to get these (Time 0:19:13)
  • Harvard’s DEI Under Fire
    • Harvard is under federal scrutiny for its admissions and DEI programs after Supreme Court rulings against racial discrimination.
    • The administration demands the end of DEI and merit-based hiring and admissions reforms. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya It’s more than the IRS is looking into it. They’re thinking of revoking their tax exempt status. Yeah. How about I tee this up slightly differently? Tim, you brought up something that I think is really important, which is what is the American dream for all these people that are cascading between half jobs and half measures? That’s right. A really important question. And right now, if you look at the top of the educational hierarchy, Harvard, what have we seen over the last few years? They are at the absolute bottom of the rankings with respect to free speech. They have lost all of these cases all the way up to the Supreme Court about how they do admissions. Harvard doesn’t just have a front door. It’s got a bunch of side doors, got a bunch of back doors, and they discriminate. What is the opposite of discrimination? It’s meritocracy. I think with 20 plus years of discrimination, what Harvard did was made it fashionable for other schools to discriminate. If you compound that for 20 years, it doesn’t just touch the universities, it starts to touch the high schools and the middle schools. Where we live at the beginning of COVID, we had some morons at the Board of Education decide to take away AP calculus and AP math because it made people feel bad. It’s absolutely ridiculous. And then we pound these kids with ADHD pills. And what happens is what you described him. So what is the point of fixing Harvard? It’s really important because the opposite of what they do, what they do is discriminate is a meritocracy. And we need to make that fashionable again. And the biggest reason goes back to, again, I’ll just go back to the chip conversation. The Chinese are so well organized. If (Time 0:30:04)
  • Harvard’s DEI Opposes Meritocracy
    • Harvard’s approach has promoted discrimination disguised as DEI, undermining true meritocracy.
    • Restoring meritocracy is crucial to counteract decades of enforced racial preferences in admissions. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya Is the point of fixing Harvard? It’s really important because the opposite of what they do, what they do is discriminate is a meritocracy. And we need to make that fashionable again. And the biggest reason goes back to, again, I’ll just go back to the chip conversation. The Chinese are so well organized. If you look at the Chinese and the Indians together, those are 2.5 billion people swimming in a meritocratic soup from the day they’re born. That’s the only way they climb out. And it’s eat or be eaten. And then when they graduate from an education system that is purely meritocratic, you know what they do? They enter a workforce that’s also meritocratic. So it’s compounded into their psyche that you just have to perform. Whereas what we do is we do all of these fake things that make people feel really bad about themselves. They look at other people that think that shouldn’t deserve to be in places, get places. And so we have to turn that tight. And so whatever it takes, the most severe and extreme measures must be undertaken to fix this. That’s my point of (Time 0:31:32)
  • Harvard’s Vast Endowment Questions
    • Harvard’s enormous endowment and revenue overshadow the need for federal funding.
    • The bulk of income goes toward investments and buildings, not just educating students. Transcript: Jason Calacanis In them losing their IRS status? David Friedberg Harvard’s endowment is $53.2 billion. Huge. They make 7% return. They’re making $4 billion a year in income generated from those investments in that endowment. I think there’s a couple of two really important questions. One is, should the role of the federal government be to give out money equally to institutions, or should the role be to give money to the institutions that are going to provide the highest ROI for America? Or is the goal to redistribute wealth? And is that the point of federal spending and federal expenditures? So, you know, you could kind of think about Harvard, MIT, and a few other institutions that have truly great research institutions embedded within them as being the best ROI for America From a grant perspective when you’re giving out research grants. That’s the best place because it just like any other great technology company, it accumulates capital because it accumulates talent. And that has a network effect. And now you’ve got a few institutions that have a monopoly on high quality talent. And as a result, it’s the best ROI for America. Is that what the federal government is investing in? Or is should the federal government be trying to support universities all over the place that are more in need, particularly a university that has 53 billion of capital? Do they really need the federal funds? So then the next question, I think, is like, what is the limit on the government’s ability to influence whether or not an institution gets their capital? Is it statutory? Is it mandated by law? Or does it become politically motivated, socially motivated, etc? Because in other parts of how we’re seeing decisions being made, we’re saying Chevron doctrine was thrown out. And when Chevron doctrine gets thrown out, we can’t rely on the regulatory scrutiny of the administrators of the Capitol. We have to rely on the law. And is there a law that they’re relying on? And I think that’s the key question is to have the administration point to the laws that they believe are being violated to kind of make, I would say, a strongly defensible argument about Why they would withhold the capital to make sure that they’re compliant with the law and whatnot and have it not be kind of, you know, just we would prefer to see you do things differently Because we think it’s socially better. So I think those are kind of the two key points, whether or not these institutions deserve nonprofit status. I don’t know why an institution that has 53 billion of capital and is making probably four or five billion a year shouldn’t pay taxes on that income. That income is being used in a variety of ways to build nice buildings. And there’s IP that’s held by these institutions. That IP is used to start startups. They get equity in the startups. They have income streams on their IP. I mean, they really do operate like technology development (Time 0:36:52)
  • Legal Basis to Challenge Harvard
    • Legal precedent states tax-exempt status can be revoked if institutions engage in discriminatory practices.
    • Harvard’s use of DEI policies likely constitutes racial and viewpoint discrimination, risking funding. Transcript: David Sacks Get to the nitty-gritty of the legal issue here. In 1983, there was a case called Bob Jones University versus the IRS, in which the IRS challenged the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because Bob Jones had this bizarre and Reprehensible policy banning interracial dating on campus and interracial marriage based on a strange interpretation of scripture. At least that’s what they said it was. In any event, Bob Jones lost that case and they lost their tax-exempt status. As far as I know, they kept the policy and they continued to operate as a private university. But the Supreme Court found that if you enshrine a racially discriminatory policy in violation of the civil rights laws, then you cannot get tax-exempt status. So that was the precedent. Fast forward to 2023, we have the case Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard. This is the Supreme Court case a few years ago that said that affirmative action policies that use race as a factor in admissions are a violation of the 14th Amendment’s protection against Racial discrimination. So Harvard lost that case. They were found to be racially discriminating in admissions. Now, what Harvard did in the wake of that is that they claimed that they removed access to information about an applicant’s race from the admissions process so that the admissions readers Don’t know what race a student is. This is their claim. But at the same time that they did that, they updated their application, replacing the long form essay that all of us filled out decades ago when we went to school with five shorter questions Asking how applicants will contribute to a diverse student body. It’s suspiciously similar to these DEI statements where prospective professors who are applying for jobs, these universities get asked, you know, how will you contribute to diversity On campus, things like this. And it’s used as a way to discriminate against conservatives or people who just think that race or diversity should not be a factor in teaching on campus. Anyone who answers that question, I believe in judging people based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin, they’re going to get weeded out, right? I mean, or someone who says, well, I’m going to contribute to diversity on campus by contributing intellectual diversity. Those are the types of applicants who get weeded out by these DEI statements. And we see that. And another part of what the government is claiming is that Harvard is engaged in viewpoint discrimination against conservatives. And you can see this in polling of the Harvard faculty, more than 80% of surveyed Harvard faculty identify as liberal. So my point is this, these DEI statements have been used in faculty hiring to discriminate on the basis of viewpoint and to use race as a factor in hiring. I think in a similar way, they’ve now updated their admission application to make all the essays about race. So I think this idea that they’re not playing a game here and they’re not trying to engineer the student class around race, it’s hard to believe, right? I mean, these are people who have not changed their ideology. They believe what they were doing before that 2023 case was trying to engineer the percentages of each student class to match the percentages of each race in the American population. Right. And these are people who are doctrinaire about that ideology. So the idea that they’re not still doing it, I think is hard to believe. Of course. Of course. So we all know what they’re doing. And the alternative to the administration saying, just get rid of DEI, is that every year or two, we’re going to have new litigation where there’ll be some whistleblower, and it’ll Come out that Harvard’s still engaging in racial discrimination. And then Harvard will be found guilty, like they were in that 2023 case and they’ll change their policy and they’ll manipulate it and they’ll play some new game and there’ll be a new court Case and we’ll keep going back and forth with them. Or we can just say, stop it right now. Stop the DEI nonsense. Actually abide by both the letter and spirit of the Supreme Court decision, Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard, and stop engaging in racial discrimination. And this is why I think the administration is correct here in pressing Harvard on this. Now, look, if Harvard wants to keep playing these games, they can. No one is saying that they have to get rid of DEI. They just have to give up their federal funding the way that Bob Jones University did. But the problem is that Harvard wants to have his cake and eat it too, right? They want to basically keep engaging in racial discrimination through these DEI policies, but they want federal funding and you can’t have both. David Friedberg Do you think that these universities (Time 0:40:14)
  • Make Education Practical and Purposeful
    • Higher education must be practical, guiding students toward realistic skill-building and career paths.
    • The current system misleads students into costly debt without clear employment prospects. Transcript: Tim Dillon Up your Indian-ness with Jerome Powell. The idea of that is the best thing I’ve heard all week. I’ve asked him. Chamath Palihapitiya He was told to play up his Indian-ness. And he was like, well, what does that mean, my Indian-ness? And they were like, well, you know, talk about your love of Indian dance and Indian food. And he was like, are you kidding me? Like, is this a serious conversation? Tim Dillon Jerome Powell sitting there and go, we were on the fence about you. But you showed up with this butter chicken. Jason Calacanis The chicken mockney. I was going to bring it up. You came in here with Zag Panir. He was like, he wrote a sitar. He starts playing the sitar. And it’s like, what are you doing? Tim Dillon Chai masala. Who’s that guy? He’s showing up at a rickshaw. Jason Calacanis It’s the chairman of the mortgage market. It’s absolutely worked out. Hey, Tim, if you were in charge of this, because we do have some ins with the administration, maybe you should be directing some of this research. What would you tell me? Tim Dillon If I wanted to study anything at Harvard, it would be Brigitte Macron’s gender. But I think we do have to focus on disease to an extent. But here’s what I would say to add to that conversation. I would say that these schools exist for a multitude of reasons, but one of them is to create a consensus among the wealthiest and obviously people that are expected to be the most powerful In society and to create a consensus about the values that are important to America at any given time. And I think the question should be, why are these values so important and to whom? I don’t think this is altruism and it’s about helping the working class or helping minorities or helping people get more economic justice. It actually seems to me quite a transparent attempt for certain people to keep positions of power and certain structures to stay in place while offering people this idea that there’s A lot of change because there’s a few ceremonial, optical choices made where we’re putting in a female CEO of color or someone who’s Indian, but the internal structure stays the same. And if you just look at a school like Harvard, you go, oh, well, they’re, yes, socialist in some respects, but in some respects, actually, you know, if you challenge the Ukraine war, If you challenge aspects of the American empire, if you challenge certain, look at all the wars, all of our wars are being sold with social justice. A lot of our wars are being sold because, you know, if we don’t see a national security interest in it, we’re told that, well, people in that country are not being treated well. That country has values that we don’t have in the West. And that may be true, but in many cases, it’s not worth going to war over. And most Americans would say that. So who exactly is benefiting from these programs and these values being instituted? It isn’t low-income people in the inner city. It seems to be kind of a lot of establishment. Chamath Palihapitiya It’s the opposite of inclusion. Tim Dillon It’s the opposite of inclusion. It’s the opposite of inclusion. What has happened? It’s the establishment trying to preserve itself by shutting out certain ideas and certain people and, you know, giving very ceremonial nods to, you know, play up your Indian-ness, Play up this, play up that. But, you know, it’s like when the CIA goes and she goes, I’m the first female drone pilot. And a lot of Americans are going, what exactly is our national security interest in a drone strike in whatever country? And do we need to be doing this? And should the money be better spent somewhere else? But instead of having that conversation, it’s always ends up being hijacked. So this DEI to me just seems like a way for a lot of the same establishment people to keep their power and influence by offering these very optical advancements to people that may, you Know, pay lip service to certain ideas. But when it comes down to it, they’re very loyal to the same power factions that, you know, have always kind of driven the narrative in our country. Completely agree. Jason Calacanis What happened during comedy to you, Tim, and your cohort during that peak DEI, peak cancellation? It felt like the Overton window was closing pretty harshly on you guys. There’s a lot of attempted cancellations of comedians, people trying to secretly record you. Tim Dillon You got those yonder, I don’t know what those are called, those bags that you put the phones in. What was that moment in time like? I was told by countless executives to play up my Indianness, and I tried. You tried. But it was just in bad taste. Yes. It was in terrible taste when I came in and I tried to be Indian, and it just wasn’t good. No, I think here’s what it was. I started having more of a career in let’s say 2016, 2017, 2018. And then we were kind of on this path where you’d go have a meeting in Los Angeles with people about doing a show or whatever. And they would start, all of these words and verbiage would creep in. They go, we’re really interested in marginalized voices, elevating voices that haven’t been heard. We’re interested in empowering. And these are LA executives. They’re monsters. They care nothing about anything. And that’s where they’re good at their job, right? The only reason you can be good at your job as an executive in the entertainment business is to really not look at human beings as humans. You have to look at them as objects. That’s what you do. Jason Calacanis Manipulate, pawns on the chessboard. Tim Dillon It’s what it is. You know what I mean? If I called my agent today and said, I’m really tired doing everything I’m doing, he’d say, have you tried drugs? Jason Calacanis Like they. Right. This would be. I was wondering about that because you have such high energy. I don’t know why you’re not embracing the cocaine. I don’t need it. I don’t need it yet. Tim Dillon But if I do, and by the way, if I do, they’ll provide it to me. Here’s the deal. The way that town works is you have a bunch of people that believe in nothing and they can’t. They can’t and be effective. They have to go whichever way the wind is blowing. So when you have these people pulling up in Porsches with their houses in Malibu and they’re coming and they then have a sudden interest in empowering people. These people were throwing women off into the Santa Monica Canyon for years. So it was this weird time where you had the worst people in the world trying to convince you that they had an interest in marginalized voices because they thought there was money there. Well, guess what? It turns out Americans don’t really like to be patronized. And they were never making TV that minorities wanted to watch. They were making TV that guilty white liberals wanted to watch. And it didn’t make any money. Nobody really liked it. A lot of it kind of faded away. And as soon as it stopped being profitable, (Time 0:52:40)
  • AI Revolutionizes Education
    • AI enables personalized education tailored to students’ pace and learning styles.
    • This may transform education and workplace integration, shifting away from traditional degree paths. Transcript: David Friedberg My God. I want to add, Jamal. Jason Calacanis Go ahead, Freeberg, and then I got a breaking news story. David Friedberg I want to just address this because i think it’s there’s a moment here that i think will define a very different future for education which is kind of a movement away from the current model Of a school ai is such a profound tool. The ability for AI to get to know your personality and just like teach my kids the way they want to be taught through conversation, through engagement, through dialogue, knowing that Some kids want to ask questions and some kids want to just be told stuff. Some kids work at one pace, other kids work at another pace. And I know this idea of personalized education using computing has been around now for decades. But we really are in this moment, where the idea of spending, you know, your first 18 years of life in a classroom where you’re being told stuff that is quote, the truth versus learning How to engage with the world, ask questions, explore your world, find and identify things that are interesting to you, it delivered to you in a very personalized, meaningful, rich Way that also makes you excited about certain things and helps usher you on to the next phase of your life of what do you want to do with this and get kids out of this idea that you’ve got to Go get the degree in order to get the job. And then I think that the workplace will adjust to that. I forgot who it is, whether it was Palantir or someone just started doing this. Pal They just did a program where they’re like, skip college, come and do your, basically, your apprenticeship here. So instead of going to college, you’ll continue your education here. 56,000. You’ll work on projects, you’ll make money, and you’ll continue to have your development be done while you’re learning a valuable skill. So I do think like as AI kind of takes over education, I do expect that the workplace will change, Tim, and we will start to see more of this integration between education and workplace Enabled by this AI driven kind of, you know, development system, which is going to be radically different than what we have today. (Time 1:03:01)
  • Comedian’s Humble Beginnings
    • Tim Dillon worked as a New York City double-decker bus tour guide while pursuing comedy.
    • This job allowed him freedom to improve his craft despite low pay and risks. Transcript: Tim Dillon Years ago i was a tour guide on a double not five years ago but seven or eight years ago i was a tour guide on a double decker bus in new york city while i was learning how to be a comedian and I was showing people the empire state building and like all the 9-11 memorial whatever and these are the types of jobs making 13 an hour. And I was obviously, you know, it wasn’t well-paid. It wasn’t an amazing job, but it offered me the freedom to get good at something else. But I was taking a lot of risk to do it. And I tolerated that level of risk because I believed what I was doing was the right thing, the right course of action. But it’s jobs like that, that allow some of the most interesting, you know, like weird lives that people should be able to live if they want to. I don’t think everybody may want or need to have a full-time job. There are people that have retired and go, I’d like to be a tour guide or I’d like to work at a museum a few days a week. Is that where you refined your standup was being on the double-decker bus? Jason Calacanis You know, were you able to put one-liners in there? Tim Dillon I was able to do all kinds of stuff like that. So to me, it’s like those jobs, right? Yes. Some of those, I don’t think the entire economy should be the gig economy, but I do think some of those jobs are going to be eliminated by AI are the jobs that allow people to get good at other Things while they’re doing them. So people that are in entertainment and music and stuff like that, we want them to be able to support themselves while they enrich us culturally in other ways. Jason Calacanis Crazy breaking news story right (Time 1:06:25)
  • Mitochondrial Therapy Breakthrough
    • Mitochondrial dysfunction drives aging and disease, impacting energy production in cells.
    • New therapies growing mitochondria via stem cells show promise to heal tissue and treat diseases. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Science corner. Mitochondria or- Today is mitochondria therapy day. David Friedberg So every cell in our body has mitochondria. Tim, you know that, right? Tim Dillon Yeah, it’s the powerhouse of the cell. Powerhouse of the cell, exactly. David Friedberg And it’s a little organelle. Is this the last segment? David Sacks Yeah, you can drop off Sax. Okay, see you last later. David Friedberg Sax, I’ll see you in Moscow. David Sacks Okay, yeah. Excellent. I’ll see you at the Putin Film Festival. Tim Dillon You forgot to say what is Putin Film Festival. I’ll see you at the Moscow Film Festival. I mean, yeah, I need to run to Sean Hannity’s show, unfortunately. Sorry, no, unfortunately. Don’t say unfortunately. You can leave that in. I like him. Absolutely. He’s amazing, yes. I really enjoy you guys. Thank you for having me on. I really learned this was amazing. I’d love to do it again. I appreciate all of you. I think you’re all great. And whatever you’re doing on the side, whatever you people eventually get arrested for, I support you. Just know that. Jason Calacanis I’m a supporter of whatever happens to the Orland podcast. Tim Dillon Whenever it comes out that there’s a reason why you knew so much about the Bhutan company, it doesn’t matter to me. It’s not. I’m a fan. Thank you. Jason Calacanis Thank you, guys. Thank you, Tim Dillon. Everybody watch Tim Dillon’s special on the Netflix. Hopefully he can finally eclipse love on the spectrum. Love on the spectrum. Yeah, definitely. David Sacks All right, see you guys. Jason Calacanis Okay, Freeberg. And then there were three. You know what? Freeberg, I’m staying with you to the end. David Friedberg Freeberg, end. As a standalone show, and we’re going to launch it in the next month. I’m Corner with you. Jason Calacanis You do Task Corner with me. I’m going to eat lunch. I love you guys. Nick, what episode is… We’re doing Science Corner. Let’s go. I got it. I got your Science Corner. I’m with you to the end, brother. David Friedberg Free burdens. Me and you, buddy. Tell me about Science Corner. I’m interested. You’re interested. We’ve got no listeners. We’ve got no audience at this point. I’m here for your segment. Chamath Palihapitiya Go ahead, Dave. David Friedberg For the four of you and Chamath. Okay. So mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell, as Tim just told us, educated us, right? So every cell has hundreds of mitochondria. Mitochondria are what are called organelles. They have their own DNA. In fact, evolutionarily, mitochondria were bacteria that basically ended up in the symbiotic relationship with what became our cells. So we each have mitochondria, hundreds of them in each one of our cells. Each mitochondria has its own nucleus and has its own DNA. And the mitochondria make the energy that the rest of the cell uses. That energy is called ATP. And it eats up glucose or it eats up ketones if you’re in ketosis, and it uses that to make the ATP. So every cell in our body gets its energy, which is what it uses to function from the mitochondria. And so there’s been a lot of research into the relationship between mitochondria and aging, and that dysfunctional mitochondria, as they start to break down and stop working and have Damage may actually be a key driver for many diseases that we experience as humans, including many cancers, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, features of autism, muscle tissues being Weak, etc. So as the cells get older and the mitochondria stop working, we make new mitochondria. But over time, the DNA degrades and the mitochondria become less effective. And there are fewer functional mitochondria per cell. The cell stops working right. Wait, can I ask you a question? And eventually the organism stops working right. Chamath Palihapitiya Have you learned anything about the connection of creatine to mitochondrial health? David Friedberg It’s part of some of the processes, but there’s some separate research on this, but it’s definitely worth spending time on. Jason Calacanis We can talk about it. People are crazy about hitting five grams or 10 grams of protein. It’s becoming like a trend. Yeah, I think it’s, oh yeah, no, five grams. Chamath Palihapitiya Yeah, something like that. Jason Calacanis It’s trending on Twitter. I think it’s kind of like a meme or a joke in addition to being serious. I don’t think it’s a joke. Is it, but does it, is there any science that backs that up or not really for mitochondria? David Friedberg There are questions on this, like, do you want to focus on things that are increasing biogenesis, which is creation of new mitochondria? Does that create a better benefit? On the creatine work, I’ve read some of these papers. I actually tried it for a while. I personally had an allergy to it, which is kind of rare, but happens. But anyway, we can talk about it further. So one of the key things was there are three papers that I wanted to just highlight that kind of follow an interesting theme. The first one was from 2023 from Wash U in St. Louis. And this paper, Nick, if you could just pull up that image of mitochondria being transferred, these folks identified and demonstrated that mitochondria can actually transfer from One cell to another. So if you’ve got a cell that’s got damaged or dysfunctional mitochondria, they’ve identified three mechanisms by which mitochondria can move into a cell that needs more mitochondria That are working and are more functional. That’s something that’s been theorized for a long time. People have said, oh, well, we think mitochondria transfer, but there wasn’t really evidence of this. So as of two years ago, these guys provided very good evidence of mitochondria that we can now put into cells. If it’s floating around, it can make its way into another cell. And as a result, it can rejuvenate or provide energy to a dysfunctional cell, which might improve dysfunctional tissue or improve disease. The second paper was done last month out of Columbia University. And this was the first mapping of the mitochondria in the human brain. And so these folks created 703 tiny cubes of brain from a person that passed away, a 54-year donor. And then they analyzed the mitochondria in each of those cubes, and they used that to make a map of mitochondria in the brain. And what it showed was that different parts of the brain, different cells had different amounts of mitochondria and different mitochondrial function, which actually starts to highlight How that difference in energy production in different cells in different parts of the brain may actually cause some of the things like memory loss or speech impairment or as we age the Fact that we end up being you know kind of forgetful or start to lose some of our capacity that the mitochondrial dysfunction in the brain might actually be the key driver of that aging Symptomology. The third paper, which just came out, came out of a team at Shenzhen University in China. So what these guys did, which was really incredible, is they took stem cells, so stem cells that they got out of human blood, and they took those stem cells and they figured out a way to Treat the stem cells so that those stem cells would start to make an excess amount of mitochondria than they normally would make. In fact, they were able to get those stem cells to make 854 times the number of mitochondria that those cells would normally make. And those mitochondria were on average 5.7 (Time 1:24:37)