so wait a second you guys I saw that you were at a kotu conference or a tpg conference or at some banking conference sax Brad and I were both at the coaching Summit CO2 kotu is uh and a large investor is it a hedge fund private Equity they're a late stage fund it's being lazy Tron summit's a really big word it was at a summit or was it
more like a meeting well it's like a two-day conference in Santa Barbara oh nice they've done a number of years in a row now last year Brad and I went and we met with SBF never tell you that SPF story no let's go who's got crazier you or SPF give us a quick take that hat off for a second take that Moncler off for a second let's get it side by side oh my God sax is
using no product it's not bad it's not that bad you're starting to look like the emperor like Senator Palpatine from Star Wars I mean people are having a field day with this crazy hair but what was the vibe if you said there was a Vibe two years ago the vibe was crypto Mania SPF was the bell of the ball I suppose he'll be the bell of the ball when he goes in the uh as
well I know it looks like he's getting off he's getting up I thought he was getting off I guess the fix in is the ivy league fixes him oh God I agree can you imagine if he gets off he's almost as protected as Hunter Biden here we go okay everybody freeburg's not here this week insert jokes and conspiracy theories for the mids there's
going to be about 8 000 messages on a subreddit about Freeburg missing this week and sax missing last week I'll let you guys all uh read into it but would you say Brad Brad Garson are back of course Chef bestie Brad what would you say the vibe was at this one if it was SPF lunacy two years ago what was the five this year well you know first they put on
incredible events called East Meets West and it was really about bringing you know CEOs and Founders from China to the states and connecting them with uh Founders and CEOs in the United States um listen I think it's somber right there's a recognition that we've seen about in the public markets you know off of this Devastation in 2022
but I think listen they gave a great tough love speech discussion with the 1400 unicorns that are out there and they said do not expect your unprofitable tech company to bounce like one of The Magnificent Seven right those are highly profitable companies traded 1920 times earnings and if you are burning cash today there you can't come back to the well
so you need to either figure out how to get profitable figure out how to get fit or you need to sell your business because you know the there's not an endless stream of money so I thought it was a sober view you know Larry Summers was there and I think a lot of the people who call 22 right were looking for a hard Landing in q1 of this year
probably including you know Larry was probably more in that camp and I think everybody still views this distribution of probabilities over the course the next four quarters and you know whether it's drucken Miller Stern lit this morning on CNBC or whether it's Larry Summers they're all saying well we could 30 chance of a hard Landing Q4 q1
so I would say it was sober yeah I could tell it was sober snacks go ahead you want to say something well I would say last year it was somber in a different way because you gotta remember in the first half of 2022 you had this huge decline in the markets around growth stocks because interest rates said started going up we had the whole regime
change but I don't think Founders had internalized the way that it applied to them and then the thing that has happened over the past year is that the sales have been hit you know every software company that I know is re-forecasting down it's so much hard to grow customers are consolidating vendors sharpening their pencils seat expansion
has been replaced with seat contraction so negotiations are hard right yes right now to sell software than it was let's say a year ago you know 2x is now the new 3x if you can go up 2x in this environment it's basically it's going through X before it's funny to me that how much the fed's actions impact buying Behavior that's the thing that I
understand psychology is distinctly different yeah yeah the psychology really is different yeah I mean we knew that the fed's behavior influenced valuations and sort of capital markets but the way that it influences the business Outlook and and how willing companies are to spend money and CO2 is no different I see they hired Billy
McFarland from fire Festival to do the food um what is this should be ashamed of themselves look at this Focaccia some vegetable soup with the broth drained out Superstar measures are so wrong look at this I mean it looks like a dog went to the bathroom and I opened our lunch box and we're like uh let's let's go somewhere else on a budget wow it looks like a surprise
had someone to put a surprise in our wow well listen it's good coach LP should be very happy looking at that seven dollar lunch that they put out there I mean right should we tell the SPF story from last year's Summit I mean last year we talked about the maybe Founders hadn't internalized yet but the market said corrected but the one founder who was
super bullish and optimistic and talking about how he was spraying money all over the place and he was acquiring companies and who was followed around by minions and had everyone like a beehive surrounding him and trying to talk to him was SPF and so I remember yeah so I remember thinking like who's going to be this year's SPF you know somebody here
with Sam Altman there so basically the kotu conference went from [ __ ] to dog [ __ ] [Laughter] Brad is like look at Brad it's so uncomfortable Brad's like I like this invite exactly I got a good invite shamoth and I are invited to nothing we give no shits about code 2 or their budget they do put on a really good event incredible firm and I think that
the message they gave to Founders thanks for the invite this year and last year was great it was actually really appropriate whether Founders choose to listen is a different story but the message they've been conveying is similar to the message we've been conveying for the last year and a half hey chamoth any more uh jokes we can
make about CO2 since you and I get invited to nothing no I mean I'm not making fun of kotu I was just making fun of the fact that we went for literally [ __ ] with SPF to what looks like dog [ __ ] by the way I bet they would invite you if you wanted to go I'm pretty sure they would send 10 invitations if I if I even feigned a desire to go
but I'm in Milan right now the pod's very popular there by the way I know you did a focus group tell everybody can we play the focus group or was that I think we could play it well just a fan a fan came up to me I mean when I say fan this is like a very high profile person this woman works at Netflix she's she works at Netflix and her husband is the
founder of a startup she said she was a fan of the Pod so I started asking her questions about it the focus group because you know we've been having this debate over the last couple of weeks about what issues we should be talking about and so people on the Pod never want to discuss politics it's not like I only want to discuss politics I just
don't want to exclude it I think we should just be talking about whatever the biggest issues are in the world in any given week current events yeah I mean whether it's business markets or politics and she confirmed that was basically right don't change it so I I don't know why we would want to change the formula for the pot at this point
every week sax there's a group of people who are like stop talking about politics and then there's another group of people and their feedback is why didn't you talk about Hunter Biden Ukraine Ukraine Putin China whatever and so the docket is the docket just to let the audience know not that it's like all that big of a deal it should be fairly obvious everybody has
equal input on the docket so it's not like anybody uh owns the docket if you want to talk about something you can talk about something but some people want to not talk about politics some people want to talk about a lot of politics The Magnificent Seven for those people who didn't catch the reference is I think something Cramer's been talking
about on CNBC seven stocks make up the mo most of the gains this year meta Tesla Nvidia Amazon alphabet Microsoft and Apple can I tell you guys my welcome back to Milan story oh yeah absolutely so I'm back in Milan for the summer on this Throne Senator Stefano and if you could say hi to um stefanoia all my friends uh Butlers everybody I can tell
you're back in Italy because the buttons are gone I'm working for my office here but this morning I went to Coppola which is my stylist my hairdresser oh and the thing is there's like a hierarchy in the hairdressers and so Roberto this guy Roberto he's like the sort of top of the ticket and Nat has first dibs with Roberto and I have this other guy who's
excellent his name is jokino yes you guys will see tokino in a few weeks anyways the best thing about the haircuts at this place Coppola is you get a hair fluffer which means that as jokino Roberto Cuts your hair a guy comes and he's just like he like does this and then he like you're patting your hair in a very he fluffs your hair he's a very
uncomfortable it's a roughing that doesn't exist anywhere that will never get disrupted by Ai and it's incredible a hair styling the hair fluffer the hair fluffer gets like a 50 Euro tip doesn't matter what he does wow when sax rolls in you're gonna need two fluffers with that hair because I need one on each side I mean the Tufts
are getting crazy sucks tell me if you want your keynote to cut your hair because when you come because he will do it he'll do an incredible job and I'll ask him to bring the hair fluffer all right listen I I think we just going back to the CO2 thing I know we're in a high interest rate lunch environment the herp environment is hard right now for
everybody but we did get the feedback let's play the feedback hey guys I'm at the coach who Summit and uh just met a friend who wants to explain the magic of the Pod because you guys keep wanting to change things and mess things up so everyone um my husband and I were let's listen to your podcast pretty much religiously and
there is this incredible magic that the four of you have of the red party the back and forth it's super informative but you're all sort of rooting for characters almost so it's almost like a scripted show in some way so I have my favorite character my husband has his favorite character I want so who's who because I want you all to stay together
and keep doing the show but it's fantastic and we we love it and you work at Netflix right I work at Netflix back in the day I produce shows so pick up the shows you're telling David trying to get that magic you can put any number of scripts together but once you get the cast on the floor and actually start getting you know that chemistry going that's when the magic
happens and you guys kind of just nailed it so yeah all right so that's a professional right there so stop screwing with the formula stop protesting oh I mean the camera really does add 10 pounds doesn't it I take two things away from this chamoth number one she's much more charismatic on camera than sax she stole the show she's delightful and then two
that sweater oh my Lord fantastic no the sweater is fantastic the shirt's fantastic I just think they may not have been I don't think the intention was to mesh the two together but too many buttons for future moth no bro when you have a cream colored sweater you can't wear a red checkered shirt it's just not yeah yeah I agree
red striped anyways it's uh yeah I mean it looks like you're wearing an Italian tablecloth under there from a pizzeria combined with like an eight thousand dollar sweater I agree but the hair I mean the hair is out of control I think the hair is fantastic I do don't share do not cut the hair don't let your Kino touch your hair bro I'll just get it
fluffed I'll tell them just fluff it don't just hit it [Music] let your winners [Music] we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with them [Music] let's talk about the zuckily on cage match oh yeah oh my God this is I'm a little worried for my friend here yeah it looks like Elon is completely up to date on what kind of shape Zuck is in
Zuck is in tremendous shape he's got like a dojo at his house he's been getting training in you know mixed martial arts from Jiu Jitsu the Gracies or whoever you know Jitsu he's been competing in events Zuck is in tremendous shape and uh no joke here now elon's a big guy elon's a monster but I mean elon's not elon's not in this kind
of shape you don't have time to work out like this I hope you get some sort of Gracie on your team to train you up for this thing also Elon has a neck injury that he got yeah from that Sumo thing years ago yes and he's had to have surgeries on it so it'd really suck if that would get re-triggered here's the thing though he did take on a sumo wrestler we were
there for that at his birthday party and he held his own against the giant sumo wrestler if Yuan does get on top of and do the walrus on top of Zuck Zuck has no chance he will get worse you're telling me what he should do is abandon the mission to Mars yes stop electrifying the world totally and stop free internet around the world yeah so
he can beat up Zuck I mean if you were to put that to a boat speeding up suck as number one this is the dumbest [ __ ] idea I've ever heard in my life oh my God I love the banter between the two of them and let's just say we can all agree out of all the companies right there's only one Contender to Zuck getting fit right getting that company fit getting himself
fit is Elon yeah 75 80 of the people gone in product velocity is on fire at Twitter so this is this would be a cage match between the two who have defined this era of getting fit all right let's get to the docket here what the [ __ ] are you talking about he's using that Fitness the guy burned a quarter trillion dollars and then found a way to stop it
well there you go that's very different than firing on all cylinders in three companies I didn't say he was firing on also and by the way I am the only one of anybody I think that knows me both well maybe socks well it's kind of like you know if you've got like a faucet running and it's spilling over the sink and then you turn it off that doesn't make you a
firefighter you just make you a plumber stop spending money on there's a feature of a bathtub where when you get into it and the water gushes so violently over the over the outside of it yeah and then there's a drain at the top as well as the bottom and so then eventually it just stops yes yeah but tomorrow is a good point which
is look elon's a big guy if he got training in MMA I'm sure he'd do fine but we don't want Elon spending two hours a day for the next six months or whatever because zuck's been doing MMA I guess for a while a couple years maybe years he's into it yeah all right well listen there's been some updates this uh War between Russia and the Ukraine or the
invasion of Ukraine by Russia you wrote a piece about it in what was it the Federalist I think this week titled the truth about Ukraine's falling failing counter-offensive and the peace that could have been why don't you give us an overview of what you wrote and what your take is on the State of Affairs right now well the the thing that's been going on
since around June 4th or June 5th is this long-awaited Ukrainian counter-offensive this has been touted for a long time as is going to reverse Russian territorial gains uh Ukraine's gonna use all this modern Western Equipment these leopard tanks that have come from Germany and Bradley's from the United States and a
lot of other NATO or American equipment and they're going to push Russia out of their country this has been told to us since the fall of last year since that sort of car keys counter-offensive produce some Ukrainian territorial gains you've had former generals like Ben Hodges and Petraeus say that this counteroffensive is going to be highly
successful where it stands right now is that around 18 or 19 days into it it has produced minimal gains in fact it's been somewhat of a disaster it's hard to get conclusive estimates of personnel and material losses but I think as many as a quarter of the tanks and armored vehicles have already been destroyed and the casualties may be as high as around
10 000 out of an army that was trained up for this purpose of around fifty thousand so so far it has not gone well the the Ukrainian Army hasn't even made it to the first line of defense so what the Russians did is they created three fortified lines or belts of defense and then in front of that is what they call a gray zone or
security zone or crumple Zone which is an area they can test but it's not technically a fortified line the ukrainians are still in that sort of Gray Zone they are not punching through they are not even at the first Russian fortified line to give you some idea of what's involved here the Russians have these obstacles there's basically trenches have been dug
there's ditches that would stop tanks or sort of force them to go in a certain direction steer the traffic there's extensive minefields they've got these things called Dragon Teeth which are concrete bollards that stop tanks or move them in a certain direction then the Russians have massive amounts of artillery they've got infantry on the
ground that helps spot the artillery and if all of that doesn't take out these Ukrainian tanks they've got these attack helicopters that come in almost uncontested because at this point it doesn't look like the ukrainians have any air defense and they've also got fixed-wing aircraft that are capable of dropping Precision munitions so it really seems like the Russians
have fixed a lot of the problems that they had last fall in their army and so far it seems like this counter offensive is not going anywhere we're 16 months into this chamoth and it clearly fatigue is setting in it's not commanding the new cycle here in America and on a percentage basis even the neocons and Republicans are dropping
their support for this at a pretty precipitous rate which is predictable Americans don't want to be in Forever Wars we all know that so what's your take on how this winds up especially in relation to a our budget and B this upcoming election which this seems to be will be a major issue if this isn't resolved by the time we get into the 24 election
cycle that's part of answering this I have a question for sax but is it true that there was a ceasefire like Putin had a press conference where he showed the document that he said was was a ceasefire that then the United States apparently sent Boris Johnson over to Russia Ukraine to basically blow up blow up the agreement yes this is finally
correct this wasn't a ceasefire this was a peace deal before the war started correct there were rounds of negotiation before the war notably there was a round of diplomacy between blinken and lavrov in January the month before the war where blinken said that we cannot compromise on NATO's open door policy that that sort of diplomacy fell apart but then
after the war there was a meeting of the Russian delegation of Ukrainian delegation and Istanbul under the supervision of of erdogan and turkey naphtali Bennett also had a similar process in both cases the West rejected a peace deal allegedly we don't this is Putin we're talking about right hold on a second let me come back to the evidence for it in a second but yeah
what the deal would have provided is that the Russians would move back to pre-war lines if the ukrainians would agree not to become a member of NATO however the ukrainians could still receive specified security guarantees from the West that was the deal now well we have now multiple data points you've got naftali Bennett saying that he
thought a deal was along these lines but it was rejected by the West you also have now Putin showing the very document which was signed by the Ukrainian delegation so this was the definition of the document right nobody else has this document it hasn't been released yet I hope the Russian government releases it for the purpose of History so we can
inspect it but nobody contested this document is real remember if he's just making this up you would think that erdogan would basically come forward and say no this is fake there's too many people who are in that room who'd be able to say this document is fake no one has done that so I think there's every reason to believe this document is real
now it is not a final agreement it appears to be a preliminary agreement or an outline but the outline is that Russia is saying we will move back to pre-war lines if you agree not become part of NATO and that deal was rejected when Boris Johnson influenta Kiev and basically told the ukrainians we do not want to make a deal with Putin we want
to pressure Putin and the source for that is not the Russians the source for that is a Ukrainian publication called Ukrainian Pravda up and they ran an article in May of 2022 that I can put on the screen and it is the source for saying that Boris Johnson came in and told zielinski we do not want to make a peace deal we the West are not ready to
make a deal with Putin we want you to fight Putin or pressure Putin and if you do we will give you Advanced weapon systems and that is when the deal fell apart if you look at the timing of it yes it is this has been lightly sourced here so let's no no no but you have to consider the source here this is a pro-ukrainian publication writing in May of 2022. now
the tone of the article and what they basically say in this article is that zielinski accepted Boris Johnson's offer in other words he took the Gamble and at this point in time you've got to remember this is two months after the war started it looked like the ukrainians were doing well so up was essentially praising zelinski in this
article for taking the West up on this deal to pressure Putin rather than make peace now a year later it looks like this gamble was a disaster yeah and so that is the real conclusion here a deal was available but the West chose not to take it by the way Fiona Hill who is a Russia Hawk and you could almost put her I'd say neocon adjacent has basically
said that this type of deal was available the West did not want this deal I think Jason may be to give you an answer my thought is that this week was a very bad week for establishment politics and institutions because on the one hand if you take the Russia incident and the Ukraine war what you saw was that there were ample
numbers of off-ramps that we chose frankly to not take so that we could engage our enemy in some long drawn-out war on the hopes that it just depletes their resources that's kind of rolling the dice I think in a very dangerous way I think this week we also saw some published stuff on kovid and the covet vaccine which also debunked
a lot of widely held truths and it turned out that folks that may have been conspiracy theorists quote unquote were right there as well so I think it's just an uncomfortable set of facts that again just reinforce that if you're not really thinking for yourself you're not going to see the totality of what's actually going on I think with respect to Russia Ukraine
everybody has moved on and so sadly the only people that are left over are the people that have to fight the war who are so separated from their families there's the people that are dying there was an article I think today they recruit prisoners right so obviously some of the prisoners of Russia uses are still pretty crazy that person went on some Rampage inside of a
train killed a couple people stabbed some other people there was just pictures of blood everywhere I mean this is just a horrible situation and it's still not clear to me why we didn't take the offering if in fact it's real so I just want to keep putting that disclaimer out there because Putin flashing her back and it doesn't make
all this true uh it doesn't mean it's not true well Jason I would say I am just being clear here that none of this is confirmed data points do you need I would say what are you talking about enough tolly Bennett confirmed it what incentives the Israeli former Israeli leader have to lie about this here's what I would say Jason I think that
something like that is so profoundly important that if it were not true I think it would have been very important for the powers that be to discredited almost immediately so that they didn't have to look like they were warmongering unnecessarily can I also up level and connect to this point about the establishment because I think
there's been a lot of pushback to even challenging the status quo even having a conversation about Ukraine or having a conversation about coven and I think if there's one thing this pod represents the fight going on at Twitter represents is the need to have this conversation if we look at the wars the U.S has engaged in since September 11th it's estimated three to
four million people have died in Iraq Pakistan Afghanistan we spent eight trillion dollars inflation adjusted we spent four trillion in World War II 8 trillion represents 25 percent of our entire national debt and I've yet to meet a single parent who said to me I care so much about this Ukraine situation I would be willing to put my
children In Harm's Way to fight for the defense of Europe okay so those data points tell me at a very minimum we need more of this discussion more of this debate not less the idea that that we could be tiptoeing closer and closer to some land war in Europe unnecessarily and I think the bigger issue is and you can't trust what you're being told and I
think that that's what's very problem that is a bigger picture and just so we're clear here I'm not saying I'm on either side of this I'm just pointing out that this is all still very thinly sourced no it's not until the West confirms any of this and they expect the West to do you expect the state department to issue a press release
saying yup we [ __ ] up it's on me my theories has been I and I've been very clear on this podcast my theory has been since the beginning they want to deplete Russia and they want to deplete their army capabilities and have regime change in Putin I'm not saying I'm for that just for the people Putin that was the crude language what they that is what they plan on doing yes
I think that's what they're doing and I think Floyd Austin our secretary of defense said that our purpose was to weaken Russia so to knock it out yes but I think they want regime change yes that's what Boris Johnson went to Kevin said we want to pressure Putin not make a deal with him so they courted this war they they prefer that's been my
Fury they prefer to fight a problem of choice that was not my position I actually agree with you if you're saying that that was our government's objective which was to weaken Putin I agree with you they've chose to fight an optional proxy war of choice that was easily avoidable if they just taking NATO expansion off the table because
they thought it would weaken Putin but here's the rub on this it has not weakened Putin and is weak in the United States and our allies any way you want to look at this thing look at just the weapons and Munitions so we are out of 155 millimeter artillery shells we cannot produce enough this is the crazy thing we spent 800 billion a year plus
on the Pentagon in our National Defense we're out of ammo I mean we must be getting so royally ripped off by the military industrial complex okay we cannot produce ammo fast enough that's why Ukraine's losing this war the balance of artillery favors Russia Russia is basically using about 20 000 shells a day the ukrainians are using
somewhere between three and six thousand we are out of ammo we cannot produce enough and this um actually dovetails nicely with another story this week there is a journalist named Matt Iglesias is that is how you pronounce his name exactly yeah Iglesias and he said I mean he literally said the quiet part out loud and I'll just quote because he was criticizing
you and chamoth uh for hosting RFK we'll get to that in a second but he basically said this is actually a really good idea for us basically NATO Equipment Plus Ukrainian lives are being traded for Russian equipment and Russian lives which leaves NATO coming out ahead that's doubly true because NATO is much richer than Russia so we win a long-term
game of everyone explode their weapons as fast as they can make them again though what makes that really true is NATO material is killing Russian soldiers while Russian material is killing Ukrainian soldiers that's a deal in our favor I mean that is a cynical summary of that yeah he wrote that last year in defense of the war basically
like all the neocons you serve an establishment approved intellectual they think he's smart I think he's really foolish he basically wants to fight the last Ukrainian here for the sole purpose of blowing up Russia's stockpiles the reason this is so dumb is Russia can always make more those lives aren't coming back but they can always produce
more artillery more weapons and in fact the Russian war machine is now ramping up to full production okay they are ramping up the number of people in their army I think it's estimated that by the end of the year they're gonna have 750 000 men under arms they've ramped up artillery shells production they're at something like one and a half million at
the beginning of the war we were only producing 14 000 artillery shells a month mostly for training purposes in the United States we've since ramped that up to 20 000 but that's still massively Trails what the Russians can do and they're trying to hold on they're trying to ramp it up to 90 000 a month but that's going to take till 2028
because you know it takes time to build you got to build up new factories new production lines you got to issue contracts to suppliers or vendors it takes time to do this ramped up their War Machine and then the other thing that's happened is that Russia and China have entered a de facto Alliance and including Iran so you now have the cementing of this giant
Alliance in Asia between China Russia and Iran they're sharing equipment now together Iran is producing drones for Russia Russia is now going to be giving advanced fighter jets to Iran so this idea that this war has made the West Stronger is depleting the West over an objective we didn't need to fight the war was easily avoidable and we have now
created I think the most fearsome opponent that America has ever faced we have never faced a adversary with a combined manufacturing capacity and raw materials of China Russia and Iran if we were to get in a war a new world war against this sort of new axis we could lose they actually have more manufacturing capacity to produce
weapons of war and Munitions and ammo then the United States does China has been clear that they're not going to provide weapons to Russia and so I'm not sure that that Alliance is exactly accurate they've given us no such Assurance all they've said is they haven't done it yet it's a theoretical thing that you're talking about here that could be very serious I think your
point and this is to Brad's point we should be having a very thoughtful discussion here because if China did pick Russia which they haven't and they went to war it would be warwicks well we should talk about the China relationship actually yeah okay Lincoln just went to China and this was the first trip for an American Secretary of State
since 2018 obviously things have been strained with the Spy balloon and the visits to Taiwan Lincoln gave some basic goals for this engagement with China the fentanyl problem some detained Americans and protecting U.S citizens working in China those were kind of the easy check boxes but they wanted to create also an open line of communication between our
militaries which China wasn't super stoked on or wouldn't agree to Tony did a great job yeah okay I think what's really disappointing is that while Tony's over there doing this hard work which must be tough to do because it must have been a little bit like dancing on eggshells a little bit right he had to be it's intense yeah he had to
be very thoughtful very measured but as far as I could tell he did a fabulous job now full disclosure he's a friend of mine so maybe I'm biased but then over here Biden at some mid-level fundraiser in California is calling XI a dictator how hard must it be for you to try to do your job when your boss is just like completely undisciplined like here and
here's the problem with that is that if the United States actually thought that g was a dictator do you think that a mid-level fundraiser that we were all invited to in Northern California that none of us said yes to is the place to announce a foreign policy shift like that absolutely not so it just means that again there's just more evidence
about Biden being very undisciplined now again that could be an age issue it could be a mental acuity issue we don't know because we're not given a chance to really prosecute that problem meanwhile Tony's there trying to do the best job he can and the Sands shift underneath him thank God he was able to get the trip done before this thing happened is
what I think but that Gap was a very big gap and a very big problem I think because whatever Goodwill he built up was practically flushed on the toilet if you saw the reaction from the Chinese which was to be deeply offended when he went to see NBS and they had to negotiate a fist bump versus a handshake like what is all of this either
unplanned or undisciplined theater why are we engaging in any of this stuff it doesn't make any sense Joe Biden's always been known for being a liability in terms of these statements when he worked for Obama he was the VP he also said things you know he shot from the hip a lot you should not be calling him a dictator when you're trying to do this
critical work it's a stupid move I think everybody can agree you were gonna say something Brad yeah I was just going to say you know kind of Market reaction going in so the K web the Chinese index was up about 20 heading into these series of meetings now notably blinken was not scheduled to have a meeting was she and so what happened is on day one
there's a meeting with the foreign minister right and it seems that there was some positive trend lines coming out of these first two meetings with the top Diplomat with foreign minister which led to the meeting and notably in the meeting he did say the United States has not changed his policy on Taiwan we don't support Taiwanese Independence
now the market reaction post visit was down 10 percent and I think this is owing to what shamas said that people felt like maybe we took a step forward here that we at least had a meeting but then it was a another step back and so I think where we sit at the moment is they're probably going to be some follow-on meetings coming out of
this this was not you know a a path back to where we were but I think it was a stabilizing moment and you know again we were just at the East Meets West Conference where there are a lot of Chinese CEOs and Founders who were there and I think the idea there was like things are stable like not getting worse and by the way six months ago there was a real concern that
things were deteriorating quickly so I think it's you know you can see something constructive coming out of this not getting worse was how I felt coming out of it and then Biden then makes it worse is it really it is a I agree it's just a stupid Gaff let me tell you about some of the reporting from the the Chinese side so after these
diplomatic events and and you're right blinken met with Wang Yi for seven hours then he got an audience with Xi Jinping they do these readouts where each side basically produces a public summary of the meeting in the Chinese readout they said that U.S Chinese relationships are at the lowest point they've ever been I mean since I guess diplomatic
relations were kind of re-established under Nixon so that from the Chinese standpoint they believe that relationships aren't the worst they've ever been moreover the U.S sought to put Ukraine on the agenda the Chinese response to that was we are not interested in discussing our relationship with Russia that is none of your business so this idea there's been this neocon
fantasy that somehow China would help us in this war between Russia and Ukraine and I've said all along that the last thing China wants is for neoconso achieve their objectives with respect to Russia because then China alone will be in the gun sites of U.S Hawks so China will do what it has to do to support and even prop up Russia if they have to
remember China and and Russia and specifically she and Putin they are the two leaders who've met with each other more often than any other leader and they've called each other their best friends or most I think the language they used was most Muslims well most bosom friends was what they called it okay that's a little weird buddies yeah
but yeah awesome bought a great TV show good point yeah exactly just to give people exactly what happened Biden when he was at this campaign fundraiser in NorCal that uh again yeah we were probably invited to people on the show he was talking about the military Chinese spy balloon and he said she got very upset quote that this was a great
embarrassment for dictators when they don't know what happened and he continued to say that she didn't know the balloon had been over the continental U.S and was off course near Alaska and this is the kind of thing where he's basically saying she is stupid or you know whatever or there's some level of incompetence over there it's exactly the wrong message you want
to send clung of a dictator and calling him stupid and saying he was embarrassed like why would you provoke that to raise money or to be a tough guy it makes no sense I mean it sounds like Trump's version of foreign they thought the whole balloon thing was a travesty I mean I don't know what the truth of it is but they feel like it was just this
continuous uh drumming up of outrage on the American side against China and they wanted to put that behind us in terms of the relationship I heard Lincoln interviewed about this jamath I agree with you I have no complaint with blinken in terms of how he handled this meeting but but not Beijing but they wanted to put this balloon
business behind them my guess I've always said that it never made sense to me that the Chinese would use such a ham-fisted way of conducting Espionage to fly a deliberately fly a balloon over the years it never made sense to me yeah of course and it became this cost celeb in the U.S and I think the Chinese at a minimum wanted to put it behind us and
then Biden reopened the issue like the submarine tragedy the balloon is like made for network television because it's a live event where you can put live cameras up and you can cover it 24 7. it's just like Trump it's for the media it's catnip for them we have to be very careful now I think In our relation with China because again you now have this Asiatic alliance
between China Russia and and Iran it is the most capable let's say adversary United States has ever faced remember that when we Face the Soviet Union their economy was never bigger than one-third the US economy the Soviet Bloc versus the Western Bloc the Chinese economy on a purchasing power parity basis is roughly the same size as the U.S and
they've got more manufacturing capacities if you think about the type of manufacturing capacity United States had during World War II that now belongs to China not the us we have hollowed out I just don't understand manufacturing why are foreign policy Brad I'll bring you into discussion why our foreign policy isn't being driven by some of the
things that we could do together to collaborate on like we have global warming we have you know issues on this planet that we could collaborate on and it seems like we're spending no time on those issues and saber annoying Cuba another example why can't we set a goal for the United States to normalize relations with Cuba and get them on our
site since they are the equivalent of let's say Ukraine David to America you've you've brought up that comparison why don't we make peace with Cuba why can't we have a peace-based foreign policy where we're trying to build Bridges God Cuba and United States could do amazing things together and we should be trying to win that relationship
instead of living 50 years in the past over it I don't I'm not sure there was legitimate outrage over the past week because we discovered that China was planning on they already have an intelligence Outpost listening Outpost but also they're thinking about doing training of troops in Cuba and that would be a violation Monroe Doctrine and
we should basically get our backs up over that the Monroe Doctrine states that no dis and great power can bring troops weapons or bases into the Western Hemisphere the United States spent over 100 years basically enforcing the Monroe Doctrine it would greatly diminish U.S security if we allowed any foreign great power to have troops in the Western Hemisphere so
we deserve to have our horns out over that the problem is that we have our horns out over everything and so we're not really taken seriously we've cried wolf so many times I don't think we're really taken seriously by the Chinese on this and this should be a teaching moment to the foreign policy establishment because this is Russia's objection
Russia's objection is to having American troops weapons and bases directly on their border this is our objection to what China is seeking to do in Cuba okay Brad you want to add something to that or can we move to Chicago but just real quickly I would say yeah there's a real appetite in the business community to be engaged this idea that we're going
to decouple the world never have to deal with these folks right is just a farce bite dance bought a billion dollars worth of Nvidia chips announced this week right like like the world is entangled and I think we would be better off having our political and Business Leaders in more sync over how to achieve this long-term safety and prosperity as
opposed to what feels like a disjointed foreign policy relative to the global reality around Ai and and what's happening on the business front I agree well said yeah and I mean it's just so obvious why can't we be collaborating on stuff and we see uh when you and I made our trip to the UAE and then we see the Saudis you know
bringing movies back we have certain regions we're doing a pretty good job of engaging with engagement you know reasonable engagement is a good idea it's because and I think RFK has said this we have created a very dangerous revolving door between our most critical institutions and the largest industrial companies in the United States and that revolving
door creates all kinds of conflicts of interest and those things get sorted out via revenue and dollars and profits incentives and so those incentives will drive us if it's the military-industrial complex to go to war and you're seeing that it'll complicate our foreign policy so this is why I've always said the most important thing
that we're doing is something that the military-industrial complex cannot stop which is our energy Independence and when you have energy Independence and abundant Costless energy I do think that the biggest thing you get is this peace dividend you stop fighting these wars you become much more rational abroad and you're like okay I don't need to fight
with all these people because you know things are so great within our borders you're so right because we actually have stopped those Wars and now we've created two other ones Russia or Ukraine we can't help Taiwan China what's that we can't help ourselves and we'll use the scarcity of Commodities as a boogeyman to basically incentivize us to go in
these foreign Misadventures and it really has to stop by the way just two quick points on that on Taiwan there's an election next year and it looks like right now that the pro-china party might actually take power right now the party that's in power is more of a pro-western party and the reason I think is that the
Taiwanese are looking at what's going on in Ukraine and they're looking at the corpse of the Ukrainian youth pile up and they're thinking maybe it's not such a great idea to be an American proxy state or in the words of Henry Kissinger he once quipped that it's dangerous to be an American enemy but it's absolutely fatal to be an American friend I think
that this war may be backfiring in terms of the incentives is creating around Taiwan remember Biden said that this war would basically help protect Taiwan by deterring China it might actually deter Taiwan from opposing China so we'll have to see how that plays out all an able-bodied person in Taiwan a voting age needs to do is read the newspaper and understand it
in the last two and a half years we've essentially started a multi-trillion dollar program to de-lever ourselves from all the critical resources that China and Taiwan gives us and so if you're a Taiwanese citizen the writing is unfortunately on the wall which is that we are giving ourselves the optionality to not have to do anything
so to your point David if you're a rational thinking Taiwanese person unfortunately you're forced to be in a position where you may have to hedge your bets and if the United States can basically have a chip Supply that comes from Europe and Mexico now all of a sudden the criticality of tsmc goes away to win I publish his tweet yesterday about Buffett and his trades
in Japan right he bought these five trading companies and it's just a really novel carry trade that I've really fallen in love with just understanding it but the code out to that is that when he did this and going long Japan what he actually also did was he delivered himself from China he had a long position in tsmc and he said I'm out and
when they asked him why he sold tsmc he said this is a very complicated thing and he basically said that it's not a bet that's worth making and I think underneath that if I had to guess what he's trying to say about Taiwan indirectly through his sale of tsmc is the odds are that we are not going to get into a land War over there which
means that that asset and its Equity value is in danger and I don't want to own it and I think that that's a very clinical summation of his rational action so to your point well here's our blinking people speak with their dogs I think it's very important you know the one China policy says Taiwan is part of China it's not an independent country
but we've had a very ambiguous intolerance for this ambiguity of Taiwan acting as its own Nation while saying we support the one China policy and that ambiguity has served us very well in the China relationship here's a blanket set at the press conference quote we do not support Taiwan Independence we remain opposed to any unilateral changes to the status quo
by either side the status quo he's referring to here Brad is that they get to be independent in Taiwan but we don't say they're independent they are obviously acting in an independent manner but it is not our business to tell the Taiwanese people that they're independent or not it's their decision to determine if they're independent or
not any any thoughts on the the trade by Buffett and press conference and this ambiguity I think we want to maintain the ambiguity I think we're basically saying to China don't change the status quo at least for now right while we rebuild these chip Fabs in Arizona and other parts of the world I think most of the wealthy families I've talked to from Taiwan believe that
five or six years from now the U.S will no longer be in the position where they will need Taiwan and Taipei as much as they do today and they're how many years do you think it will take to be independent say it one more time and explain it well it's not about being independent it's how much longer will Taiwan have what they believe to be de
facto protection from the United States and I was told by one very influential Taiwanese family that they believe won the fifth chip Fab comes online in Arizona which I think is scheduled for 25 or 26. they intended to have most of their family members out of Taiwan at that period in time now I think most Taiwanese don't Envision this being you
know a violent invasion of Taiwan it's more of a take under in the same way that Hong Kong was and so I don't see an American president frankly going to war nor would I want them to go to war over Taiwan but I think it's in all of our interests to maintain that status quo which is why taunting the Chinese over the course of
the past few years over Taiwan has seemed like uh a policy that's not fit with our goals right well if you look at skin in the game the fact that the chips act went through so quickly the fact that Warren Buffett as you pointed out schmoth made his bet and this family that has obviously you know uh skinned in the game quite literally are making these
decisions I think we know where this is headed you can just follow the bets and if you look at the bets in five years follow the dollars I mean and also where people put themselves uh geographically everybody left Hong Kong when the turnover happened or before it they went to Singapore they went to UAE they voted with their feet and their dollars and
that's obviously what's going to happen here this is a good pivot because this criticism of the Ukraine policy by Matt that sax pointed out came because there is a belief on his part and others that the Pod here all in is putting its unilateral support behind RFK that is not true there are two people on the pod who hosted a fundraiser last week
and here is what Matt incorrectly said because I have not put my support behind RFK I think he's very interesting and I'm glad he's in the race and neither has Friedberg but shmoff and sax did host one and I'll hand it over to them but here is what Matt said in his sub stack and even though it's not the subject of this post I do want to say that I think
it's really Sleazy and gross for the host of the oil and podcast to be engaging in this Kennedy boosterism as a bank shot way of harming Joe Biden's re-election prospects and I would say in the recent conversions around Russia policy Kennedy represents precisely the strand of progressive thought that right-of-center business people
have highly have rightly spent the better part of the century bemoaning his is an anti-progress anti-technology ultimately anti-human twirl view that stands against biomedical progress against Energy progress and Against Humanity wants to blow up as many ukrainians as possible yeah exactly anti-human listen I don't even think we should be giving him this
much time well no but I think it is important because people now have connected this pod with the rise of RFK this was the first major Iglesias is accusing us somehow of do of of supporting RFK not because of issues but somehow because it's a bank shot for Donald Trump which is ridiculous none of us support Donald Trump he's not even my
preferred candidate in the Republican Lane well what he said was a bank shot against Biden just to be clear you're against I prefer RFK to Biden it's that simple what's what's wrong with that he's not even making any arguments here look we've explained in a lot of detail and I explained in my response all the issues where I support RFK supports
free speech over censorship he supports civil liberties over the surveillance State he supports peace instead of War he supports sealing the southern border virtually alone among Democrats and talking sense on that issue and I believe that he's completely correctly diagnosed what we're doing in Ukraine so on the YouTube on some issues right you disagree with
him on nuclear and you may disagree with him in his anti-vaxx stance if he is in fact anti-vaxxed can I just hold on let's sex finish those I think he was right about covet lockdowns and I think he was right about right covet the so-called covet shot that wasn't even a vaccine that that should not have been required but what about those two issues
you obviously disagree with him on some things do you disagree with him on his anti-vax stuff and his nuclear stuff I don't know enough about those issues to have like a Firm Stance what I would say is that every candidate represents a bundle of issues and you support the ones who are aligned with you on the issues that are most important to you on
the issues that are most important to me which are these questions the great questions of War and Peace and the questions of free speech and censorship and even I would say the question of the economy and who do we prioritize because he wants to prioritize the middle class on those big questions I feel like I'm aligned with
RFK perfect so that's why I support him let me go to church by the way do you think Jack Dorsey is is supporting RFK as a bank shot something or other no he's supporting it because he agrees with RFK on these questions of War and Peace okay and Free Speech correct I'm just letting everybody be very clear about their position since this is
becoming the support of RFK by this podcast or two of the four people in the podcast is now becoming kind of national news Iglesias is even making any arguments here he's just applying derogatory labels to us what this is this is a disciplinary tactic or a shaming tactic yes by these sort of enforcers for the establishment right you want to prevent
independent thinkers from stepping out a lot I agree that's what this is about it looks like this Outsider went to the dolphin School in Harvard University so there you have it yeah you got a two million dollar education doesn't know what a basis point is he's the guy with the basis points right he graduated Harvard oh good luck with your sub statue oh my God you are
pro-nuclear you've been very clear about that although you're a pro Renewables mostly uh you've been clear about that on this podcast and many conversations I've had with you you are also pro-vaccine but you're anti what happened with the lockdown so maybe you could expand upon your support of RFK why you held a fundraiser firm and what
things you agree with them on and maybe what things you don't necessarily agree with them on well first I actually did what I think a lot of people haven't done which is just listen to him just stop talking zip the old yapper and there is an enormous amount of long-form content where you can really understand where he stands on some of these topics
he's right about the war on Ukraine we shouldn't be in he's right about Free Speech which is we should have it he's right that the covet vaccine was not a vaccine and really what it's done is actually discredit the word vaccine unfortunately in a lot of people's minds he actually is a person that is pro-vaccine for all these other vaccines
he himself has vaccinated his children are vaccinated you would all know this stuff if you just took two minutes to just listen to it he is against the covet vaccine and what I would say is I'm very sympathetic to that I'm very sympathetic to the job the FDA had to do and I think they generally did do a great job but we Ram something through and we
allowed it to be labeled a word that misappropriates what it is it's not a vaccine and the problem with that is that it now makes people mistrust the measle mumps and rubella vaccine that's crazy you shouldn't mistrust the MMR vaccine or DTaP but because those things are lumped in with the same thing as a coveted vaccine that
is at best 30 or 40 percent efficacious we have these problems he calls that out pretty honestly so I like the fact that he actually speaks in nuance I like the fact that when I listen to him I find that the talking head think police are generally lying it confirms what I believe about them because he just says things in a very plain spoken intelligent way
and I think that there are a lot of folks who don't want to think who want to be given the simple answer who want to just reject what he stands for and just take the establishment view in the hopes that they'll get I don't know maybe accepted by The Establishment The Establishment just wants to curate power and I just think that people should be
thinking for themselves if you listen to the Rogan podcast if you listen to the Jordan Peterson podcast there are millions and millions and millions of links and Page views and discussions and thoughts and there's probably thousands of minutes of RFK explaining what he thinks on basically any topic you can imagine you can get to
your own conclusion and now I think what I think you'll find and this is true for me is there's 10 of stuff you are just vehemently supportive of seventy percent of stuff that's like quite reasonable and fair and then there's the rest which is a spectrum of things I disagree with but then you're left with a blended expected value where you're like man this guy is
really better than all the other Alternatives Brad I'll let you go and then I'll give my position what I find most Insidious about the opposition to this discussion is people are upset that you're not swearing an allegiance to a dogmatism right the truth of the matter is this group has hosted dinners for rokana for Senator manchin we've hosted dinners for DeSantis right
had I been here I would have put my name on the dinner for Kennedy because I want to gather information I'm an analyst I want to think for myself how can we spend trillions and put ourselves into potentially Harm's Way without having a real conversation in Congress and on these pods about the risk of War why can't we have an authentic
post-mortem about the efficacy of the covet vaccine without being shamed the Revolution going on in this country which is fantastic from my perspective is that there is no longer a monopolistic control over the discussion and that's why this podcast and this friendship and the conversation we all had here is resonating with people because they also
want to hear all the different sides because most people are capable are way smarter than the elites on the coast think you know I'm from Indiana lots of smart folks who think for themselves in Indiana but they're told by Coastal Elites what to think and they reject this and that's what you're seeing in this discussion and so many of these
others it's not about that it's not about vaccines it's not about a war it's about their control over how you think and them wanting to force you to swear to an Orthodoxy I think that's really well said yeah yeah that is well said but the way they try to control what you think is by labeling candidates so as to exclude them or make them sound
crazy so jaycal I mean you kind of introduced RFK as an anti-vaxxer I don't think that is the correct way to describe its position or the singular way that he should be labeled no I don't I don't believe that I said here are the things he believes that we agree with and then I gave the things that the media is saying you know so I was trying
to present the totality of it and I said he is obviously in favor of the middle class and all this stuff so so I am in support of vibrant long-form debate like we have here and I'm in support of anybody who takes on the establishment because there are crazy incentives as we talk about here incentives matter and we are long overdue for a discussion on vaccines
but it's very important that everybody understand here that everybody on this podcast took the coveted vaccine and everybody here our kids have been just such a vaccine it's not a vaccine exactly so they took the projected experimental mRNA treatment because we got Hoodwinked by the media into thinking it would prevent us and from
Ever Getting covet which it did not do I think two months later I got that experience vaccines are good and the covid thing was not very good and it reduced death in older people and probably was the only group of people and we'll we'll know when we do a postmortem but do not worry about this mRNA like flowing through our bodies who knows it
might be a time bomb well and then for percussions the the hypocrisy of the media I think is very important to look at here because the media is going to be attacking this podcast over and over again not that it matters but when we moved into the top 100 top 50 top 10 that's when the knives came out and I I would like to remind the media of the
long history of investigative journalism and debates what was once a conspiracy theory often goes on to win a Pulitzer Prize and you know the the hypocrisy here is crazy because if you look at some of the greatest stories an investigative journalist pieces they started with these debates rumors Etc Abu ghab that was the New Yorker
supporting that was signed versus reporting and he came right he can't get the time of day for his report on who really destroyed Nordstrom the Catholic Church sex scandal the Boston Globe the mainstream media does not perform the function that you're describing anymore they act as The Bodyguard for the elite for the establishment they actually have even of
late antonographers for the people in power not exactly true they have actually done incredible reporting but there is a group of them which is Towing the party line because you have the New York Times and their expose on the Taxi commission that won a Pulitzer in 2020. I know you don't follow pulitzers or investigative journalism in 2020 Brian
Rosenthal at the New York Times did a massive expose on the predatory uh New York City Taxi industry and then at the same time there's a few other issues that might be more important to the nation it was an example of protectionism and rent seeking uh the Enron Scandal big tobacco 60 Minutes what about the pretzel Monopoly in the South part of the Bronx
what about that hot dog vendor on you guys are uninformed didn't have all of his licenses up to date I thought there was a hello botulism is at the same time the New York Times CNN were attacking what Uber was doing the New York Times won a [ __ ] Pulitzer for their coverage of predatory loans by Rich powerful people in New
York City I bet they also did a great story on the guy selling trinkets outside Penn Station without a license for somebody who's a man of the people like yourself sex you should actually be more informed okay she should be reporting on for example what the if they really if the pulitzers work the way they should is where patient zero
came from on covid because Michael Schellenberg just reported this over the last week and it got picked up by the Wall Street Journal that patient zero it turns out was a researcher at the wu-shan lab who was performing Gana function research yeah shocker another conspiracy theory proven true and we'll wind up being a Pulitzer he deserves a Pulitzer
he does and the crazy thing about this quote-unquote conspiracy theory it turned out to be true is like it brought together the most odd bedfellows Rand Paul and Jon Stewart when rank Paul and Jon Stewart can be in a room and agree on basically the totality of a topic we should all just pay attention because it's not it's not a normal World in
which these two guys would otherwise get along right and both of them nailed it from day one right they have the same name okay now connect the dots further okay why was the truth suppressed why did it not come out because fauci had funded gain a function research at the Wuhan lab via Eco Health Alliance so he knew that if at the beginning of this pandemic it
turned out that he had been partially responsible for the creation of this virus that had now turned into a pandemic around the world his career would have been over and it's worse sacks it's even worse than that 46 of the advertising on TV news comes from farm and we did not always allow Pharma spending and this is may not be one to
one it may not be that a specific person doing a report at CNN or fox or any of the networks is saying oh I'm going to lose my job if I write something critical of Pharma but they're not doing the investigative pieces on I can tell you this on the people who have 46 percent of their advertising Revenue unless it really
you know gets to the final Inning on something and right and that is something that we need to question right the media is funded 46 by Pharma companies and Pharma companies were given a pass and if you criticize any of the Pharma companies the media is going to come for you and so listen I'm not a tinfoil but you do have a little bit listen the media is
funded by big Pharma and its primary sources are these high-level government employees who've been there forever who leak them information that is why the New York Times was carrying water for fauci and big Pharma this is the marriage of state power and corporate greed that RFK Jr denounces yeah well uh there you have it folks so and he
believes he could be assassinated by the CIA no he didn't say it like that he didn't say it like that he was asked what what is his strategy on campaigning and all of that stuff and he said look I'm going to do as much as possible the one thing that I'm going to avoid are like these open-air parades just because there's just a lot of folks that we can't control crowd control
yeah okay reasonable yeah I mean the conversation on Rogan went something like this Rogan was asking questions about the Kennedy assassinations and RFK believes like something like 60 of the American public believes that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone then Rogan asked him well do you ever feel afraid running for office and his answer was
basically no not really it's not something that I'm preoccupied with but yeah I'll take precautions does that mean he thinks the CIA is going to assassinate him no that's not what he said but that is how the media reported it including Fox News that became the sound bite well the sound bite from this podcast was that he believes his uncle
was and his father were that the ca was involved Nations Jason a lot of people I am not giving my opinion on I'm giving his opinion on it he said it on this podcast and the CIA won't release all the information to this day even though they've been commanded to do so so you make your own decision folks according to Bloomberg there is a ton of action
for startup shares in secondary markets if you don't know what a secondary Market is that's when one investor buys shares in a company that's not yet public directly from another investors on the cap table so if stripe which is not yet public or Reddit there are shares floating around in those companies either previous
employees or previous investors one firm might see an opportunity there and buy them as this process of bottom me out has occurred pitchbook reported tiger Global told secondary investors and that's a class of people who like to buy these that they could bid on any individual private company in its portfolio they tried to sell a bundle of
these uh shares about 30 startups at a time but they couldn't find buyers according to the reports so now they're allowing people to bid on per company on a per company basis some of these are being marked down a third 50 percent Etc here's the quote from Bloomberg as of May 31st shares of startups were trading at a median discount of 61 compared to
valuations at their latest funding rounds according to report by Forge Global Holdings a16 according to the report is actively buying shares in secondary Excel Bain Bessemer Kleiner are also using secretary to grow stakes in their existing Investments doubling down as it were crossover firms by kotu Tiger grow Global and even Brad's altimeter
are actively searching for deals so Brad your thoughts on this is this sign of a bottom and why are you doing this you're doing it yeah yeah it is it is true I mean our job is to look at all these companies understand their value okay you know I'm sitting here looking at a list that I was given this morning 125 companies secondary you know the Goldman Sachs
unprofitable Tech index in the public markets uh is down 64 as of this one unprofitable Publications they put together a basket they track unprofitable public companies down 64 P percent off of its peak as of this morning so you just quoted the Bloomberg article saying yeah these unprofitable tech companies in the private markets
are down about 60 61 percent that smells right to me the repricings have to occur these have to occur right there are 1400 unicorns at the end of 2022 and a hundred percent of them will likely do a down run and if you said what is the average that they're going to be down it's over 50 percent you saw the repricings out of some of the best ones like a canva or a
stripe where it was down let's go out 30 40 50 but you know they're going to be companies like in the public markets that are down 80 or 90 percent and disappear all together so we didn't see the repricings okay and by the way when we say you know that article quotes Forge that is what the sellers are offering to sell shares for
that is not where transactions are clearing right so why has an altimeter purchased any of this because the prices aren't low enough to induce me to get off the sidelines to purchase the shares but we're within kind of you know we're starting to get in the zone where we can underwrite to a margin of safety competitive or better than the public
markets for companies that we think are great companies now out of those 4 1400 unicorns at the end of 22 they're probably less than five percent of those companies I would even want to own at the right price right so it's a small subset of companies the price has to get to this clearing point but you know I think over the course of the next uh 18 months we're going to see
an acceleration of market clearing events as these companies need to raise Capital as their employees want to get liquid on shares and it's it probably see some great opportunities but most of these things that get put on sale should not be purchased right most of them even you know the first sale price is never the last sale price the
markdown on the black t-shirts will continue tomato sax any thoughts are you buying in secondary are you looking at this yeah we'll look at secondary deals it's not primarily what we do but we're open to it but Brad if you were to categorize the 1400 unicorns into one of three categories what do you think the percentages would be those three
categories being zombie corns like unicorn companies that just don't deserve to exist they don't have a product Market fit and they're going to go away category two would be viable companies that are just overpriced and are headed for a Down Round And the number three would be the ones that are actually headed for an up round yeah I would say 30 to 40 percent
are these companies that were valued over a billion dollars that don't have product Market fit they'll disappear zombie companies that will disappear right and listen walking down just to be fair let's explain most of these companies right have less than 200 million a preference preferred shares that Venture capitalists invest into the
company and many of those companies in that 30 40 percent there's a team there's some asset of value they may be able to you know sell the talent of the team and recoup David let's call it 30 40 of the pref stack right in that transaction we're starting to see some of those occur then I think the Lion's Share of the companies that are left let's call it
you know another 40 these are companies that should never have been marked at these prices right but they do have a business and they're going to be marked down you know 50 to 80 percent but all of those like none of those have been able to grow through it then there's less than 10 percent of the companies right whose growth has been so
robust through this period that they've actually grown into or within 10 15 of those prior prices and if you do all of that work it puts us back on trendline right the only thing unusual here is how far off trend line we had 1400 unicorns right in 2020 we had I think 145 IPOs in the last two years we've had four okay so there's a huge backlog these
companies aren't getting public why because Public Market buyers like ourselves we're not willing to pay the prices that were in the private market so the first step is to just have these clearing events and as David you and I heard silver talk over the course of the last couple days I think they you know said to the founders very clearly you
need to sell your businesses or you need to get profitable there is no middle ground in other news Ford has been issued a conditional 9.2 billion dollar loan from the U.S department of energy to build out three one two three EV battery factories specific loan is coming through the department of Energy's lpo that's the loan programs office they've got about 400 billion to
lend out you might remember this from 2010 when they gave solyndra A123 batteries which eventually went bankrupt and got bought by a Chinese company I believe and Tesla a 465 million dollar loan Tesla paid it back the other two didn't anticipated back with interest [ __ ] Shaw the director of The Loan program office described The
Lending moves as a way to onshore and reshore Manufacturing the goal of the program is not Innovation but to get more of the supply chain to be manufactured in the U.S guess some people are criticizing this just out of the gate with um why should we be giving these loans to companies shouldn't this be the private sector doing it moth what are your thoughts
here is this a good idea a great idea a neutral idea it's a great idea explain it's us using our balance sheet to make sure that we get to energy Independence so this is actually a perfect role for government it's shaping incentives so that capitalism can do its job what this does for forward is for it as a partnership with SK
and so SK has a lot of capability in Korea but they can bring that know-how now domestically onshore to the United States you'll be hiring thousands of people you'll be building battery factories Ford needs batteries their forecast is they'll be selling two and a half million electric vehicles by 2026 2027. so whatever Ford does you can expect GM will also do
you can expect all of the other big companies to do so this is all just great and at the end of the day for people to not over this is 9.8 billion I guess it sounds like a lot but we're probably spending 9.8 billion dollars a day fighting Wars so this is a day of just taking a pause on all these dumb Wars and actually becoming energy Reliant carbon neutral
fixing the climate it's great jobs energy Independence and less dependency on autocratic Nations it seems like a good idea yeah everything should be how about instead of thinking about it in terms of Wars let's think about it in terms of so if if the the dod budget is 800 billion dollars okay per year what is at 2.6 billion a day
2.7 billion a day okay so we're talking about three days four days Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday I agree with jamas about the wars but this is all money we don't have I mean we shouldn't be spending the money on Wars and we shouldn't be spending it I think on Industrial policy so first of all one of our friends who's an energy
investor uh we should peep his name but was telling me that the energy subsidies that were in the you know misnamed inflation reduction act it is like the biggest Bonanza of all time he said that the energy sector is going crazy now trying to figure out how to exploit these incentives and his view is that although I think it was supposed to cost
about 350 billion dollars he thought that it would ultimately cost the government somewhere around a trillion because the way these subsidies work is that you just qualify for them and then you get the subsidy it's not like the credits run out so if you qualify you get it so this could end up costing the government way more than than it was
originally projected and so the question is what are you going to get for all this money and in this article on Ford they were talking about these seven thousand jobs they're being created at a cost of 440 000 per job so it's great that the jobs are being created but if you look at the efficiency of that that spend per job doesn't really make sense I don't
understand how you get that number you take that the article said it the article said for 440 000. do you take 9.8 billion and divided by seven thousand what do you do I'm just quoting that paragraph for the article so yeah so the job creation is good but you got to look at the efficiency of the job creation the other thing is the question I would
ask you guys actually is who wants one of these Ford EVs do you want an EV by Ford um I think there are a lot of people that drive a Ford pickup truck we talked about this before Saturday's coming yeah very popular there was a an article in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago which talked about the brand consideration cycle that has been going
on and there was a large look we're friends with Elon but we should acknowledge there's a large number of people that are frankly a little bit turned off by him and they've been very clear that they want an alternative to Tesla because they don't want to buy Tesla because they don't necessarily prefer him as a brand ambassador
for their car and the reality of life is that even if you're like maximally incredible unless you find some clever way of creating a monopoly in which case you can be a douche or evil you're only ever going to capture 30 plus 40 maybe of a market Coke Pepsi is a good example and so there's always going to be long tail Alternatives and you know I had a
chance for example in Vegas to drive a rivian I was surprised at the Quality or drive in Arabian I was surprised at the quality of Ravine only because I've been so focused on Tesla my whole life so yeah I think there are a lot of people that'll buy forwards doesn't well take anything away from what elon's doing but I do think there are a lot of people that'll
buy it my problem with industrial policy is this you think about that EV Summit that the White House did they didn't even invite Elon and that that was for political reasons Union reasons yeah partly because of his views on speech but I think mostly because he's not a union shop right and so that's the real reason why Ford is being doled out this
sort of nine point something billion dollar loan is because they're politically connected with the right people in this current Administration and that's the problem with industrial policy is that the money gets handed out by government to the politically connected in this case to the companies that may be producing the best products
the fact is Tesla did get one of these loans in 2010 when it was a very nascent company so you got to give them some credit they took a big risk there let's think about that for a second okay because I know that example comes up a lot and A123 and solyndra yeah so Elon was basically a fluke I mean you get like a once in a generation entrepreneur
who happens to be working on this EV problem and he got that loan if you're to take Elon out of that government portfolio it all looks like solyndra yep so the question is like what is this portfolio going to look like is there really going to be another Elon in there because if not there's going to be a lot of cylinders but even if they break even
there's gonna be a lot of subsidies to companies like Ford which are politically connected and I think a point Freeburg would make if he were here is that at some point you're going to turn off the subsidies because we can't afford it and then at that point is that factory going to be self-sufficient Brad you wanna you've heard the two sides of
the story here and listen while generally against industrial policy I I come down on jamas side I think this is a once in a generation opportunity to reduce our national security risk profile and to achieve what is really a national security imperative which is energy Independence it's not going to happen just according to the Invisible Hand of the market
we see our you know great power competitors who are using this against us frankly and have robust industrial policies so I'm willing to stipulate that there will be those inefficiencies in this system but I was lucky lucky enough last night I was having dinner with the deputy secretary of the treasury Wally adiyama who was out here
meeting with Founders including battery Founders in Silicon Valley on this very subject and I know some of the companies who are getting checks from the US government to scale up right Innovative battery technologies innovative chip manufacturing and I have to say this is the best of America I see some really great public-private Partnerships
that are onshoring vital national interests in chips and batteries and so I'm happy to see it happening but I also know there will be grift and there will be waste along the way but compare that David to the 8 trillion we've spent over the last 20 years on war policy and what we've gotten from that so you know uh yeah I'd rather see us take
chances here on Innovative battery technologies potential waste but not as wasteful as a war well of course I mean the first thing we got to do is turn off all these crazy Wars but that can't be the bar because that's a very low bar anything's more productive than War wasting the money blowing up other countries that we don't need to be involved in
I mean remember we do have a 32 trillion dollar debt I think a great thing to do here is what they should have done with Tesla which is when they give that 500 million dollar loan to Tesla they should have gotten 10 of that in warrants to buy Tesla shares at the IPO 50 million at that IPO would have gone what 200x and that would have been an incredible
payday so if they give this 9.2 billion to Ford why not get 900 million governments become a VC no I want them to get a little participation in the uh upside of the company I don't want them to own it I want that's a potential participation well I I'm giving a modest number here so right now there are VC without participation but right now
they're alone that gets paid back with interest and I'm saying give them some upside in the equity even if it's a small piece would you object to that sex you basically want to make them a venture debt provider like svb basically yeah like Venture debt like give them a pot sweetener yes yes give them a pot sweetener why does it work out so good
for svb you may not remember that but it would have worked out incredibly well with their pressings that's all my problem you might drive a better deal for the US government in that case which is fine with me but it doesn't solve my objection which is at the end of the day these decisions are going to be made based on political criteria awesome got
it okay and we're going to end up with chronic capitalism and state capitalism as opposed to entrepreneurial capitalism but this is in support of that because this is a deal where that 9.8 billion does come over but these are basically like loans and Loan guarantees and you saw have to put up the equity yourself that doesn't solve anybody's problem
meaning you need to still be entrepreneurial and there needs to be risk capital in this case the risk capital is coming from Ford and SK and I think that that's my understanding of this chart is really suspicious or 95 of the cost so there's not much risk Capital here from Ford or SK I mean it might be opportunity costs but it's not the full cost of these three
factories almost 13 billion dollars so there's still a non-trivial amount of risk risk Capital that has to get put to work here man I would love to only have to put up 20 on the dollar with 30 cents on the dollar my investments I think Brad does make a good point about the security of our supply chain I'm more willing to use this sort of industrial
policy when we're talking about something that is vital to the security of the United States I think you could make that argument with chips I don't think electric vehicles rise to that quite that level batteries might I don't know I wouldn't say batteries do but I think obtaining a secure supply of the rare Earths that are needed to make
batteries there's maybe a role for government David the reason batteries must is because the only way to wean ourselves off of the dependence we have on fossil fuels around the world and even though we produce and we're now a net exporter of of oil the reality is we're still in entanglements around the world because the world is dependent
upon those fossil fuels and so I I do think that that is a national security interest having you know energy Independence not only for ourselves if Germany was energy independent and kept their nuclear running it didn't have North stream we'd have a different situation here right now we've got plenty of oil and gas over here all right everybody there you have
it from the architect that was a really good tweet shout out to you oh my god the number of number of people I I mean did the mids like it or the mids hated it what happened can I just address what this means so when I think of somebody as a mid it's somebody that is just a hapless impotent cuck that can't think for themselves Matt Iglesias
oh and so what I do what I don't mean is that you know you're gonna write about us every week you know what this is It's the all-in podcast for clicks if you 10 people have started can I finish yes it has nothing to do with your financial status it's just everything to do with your open-mindedness and there are these people that are just so
reactive on Twitter I feel a little bit sad because like in a few years they'll still be very unaccomplished and yet still be wondering who they can blame now and it'll just be them blame themselves so I would just encourage these people to just [ __ ] do some work put your head down do the work my god build something make something so anyways most most of the
comments were really great and interesting and then there's a couple of people who are like oh my God how dare you you know uh and it's like how dare I what how dare I what exactly you can tell that this podcast has truly become successful when the mainstream media fights up and punches up to try to get us to respond to them to get more people
to subscribe to their substack while playing Matt I'll tell you the funniest thing the funniest thing was I did this tweet about Buffett and then people are like oh but I thought you compared yourself to Buffett and I was like no no comparison just benchmarks and then they get tweaked about the word comparison versus benchmark
and then Carson block jumps in and I texted Carson on the side I was like bro I'm just trolling the mids just don't worry this is all [ __ ] it's not just for [ __ ] together I do it when I'm either pooing or I'm jet lagged it's one of the other it's on Ambien where while taking a dump or both no ambient for the dictator the architect
and bestie Brad the fifth bestie and our Mass our new mascot Matt the mascot who will be writing three more sub Stacks about us I am the world's greatest moderator can we make that [ __ ] bread logo our logo yes to coach who's uh starting measure lunch We Salute You The Olive lunch will not be uh by the way should you guys touch it do you know
what it was was it Brett did you touch it I didn't touch it no what was it I abandoned it immediately it's a vegan pretzel I don't know that was a vegan is that what they call poop dog poop now a vegan pretzel Friedberg was gonna be there a vegan [Music] honestly is great I'm gonna buy some fake doodoo actually you know what they should do
they should put that kotu should make fake doo-doo and put it in the gift bag for all in Summit that would be a great little merch item all right we'll see you all next time bye bye love you boys [Applause] we'll let your winners ride [Music] we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy [Music] somehow [Music] waiting to get Mercies [Music] I'm going all in