NEW: Marc Andreessen on Trump, the vibe shift, and what’s after wokeness

Why don't we just paint a picture of of what winning could look like well I think there's two big steps honestly I mean step one is just stop doing stupid [ __ ] it's always like this whole thing of like why are you becoming involved in government what do you want it's like I don't want anything I want the opposite of things right I I want whatever has been happening to not happen do the opposite of what Europe does this is the Most spectacular unwind of what we refer to as as preference falsification that I've

ever seen like every day literally is like a whole block of people basically coming out and saying the exact opposite from what they've been saying for the preceding 10 years I think it might be literally true that San Francisco is the cultural center of the universe San Francisco was first in on everything that we're talking about and I think San Francisco maybe is first Out take any principle and just identify the date at which everybody in San Francisco decided that they believe that the prediction would be the unwind happens in the exact same form do

you think open AI should be allowed to be a for-profit so this is one of those things where you kind of always wonder if you're there's sort of two Realties and you kind of wonder which Earth you're on it it turns out the road to Mars you know requires going through the US government it turns out the road to flying cars requires going through Twitter what do you think will Define the next era culturally it's not the most obvious thing in the world that kind of the technol libertarian faction would align with sort of a

you know what you might call a nationalist populist faction and it actually turns out that that you know the alignment is not 100% but like it's shockingly close because what both of those perspectives have is Basically yeah let's go [Music] win mark welcome back to the podcast thanks so much for joining hey Eric it's great to be back so first question mark are are you tired of all the winning you know all the appointments all the timeline splitting the preference falsification even the Democrats you talk to are secretly happy are you tired of winning I

was told there would be so much winning that we Would all get tired of winning and I have to say so far I am not in fact tired of winning amazing I mean if you compare it to I remember the days of 2020 when every day we would say this is the craziest thing you know that we've ever SE every day is the new craziest thing we've ever seen and uh just the constant blackpilling and now it's it's just white pill Central the unwind of this whole thing of this last four years is just spectacular

and you know it's Just getting started like okay so my favorite thing I'll just my favorite thing that happened today yeah okay so I like to say that every single day I see something that's just so crazy that I literally blank it out of my mind that I saw it and I forget about it yeah and then I'm scrolling Twitter you know I'm scrolling X like half an hour later and I see it and I'm like no that can't be right I forget about it again and then like three hours later I'm scrolling Again I

say there it is it's the third time that it sticks in my head the Commerce Secretary of the Biden Administration gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal published today in which she said she really believes that the key to beating China in the great geopolitical context of the 21st century um is to out innovate them okay wow this after four years of her Administration did everything possible to do the exact opposite Yeah it's um a cynic would say that she's looking for work yeah I however am very idealistic and I think she's being genuine

in her sentiments yeah it's um it's pretty funny I I met glacius was talking about sort of a a new agenda for the Democrats recently and I remember David saxs quote tweeted him and was like sounds like you're a republican these guys literally as I say you know this there's a set of these Guys some of whom are friends of yours yes um who are all like o like we have to stand for building things after 50 years of standing for the exact opposite yeah yeah but only Democrats can do it it's some incredible it's

really some incredible stuff no look I mean this is the you tell me what you think of this this is the most spectacular unwind of what we refer to as preference falsification that I've ever seen like it it just it feels like every day um in The last you know month now or coming on six weeks every day literally is like a whole block of people basically coming out and saying the exact OPP from what they've been saying for the preceding 10 years and I again let's be generous I I I genuinely believe they actually

believe it they just feel like that they can say it now for the first time and by the way I think this process there there has been so much preference falsification in the last decade I I Think this process the unwind is at the very beginning I think we're like 1% of the way there and I'm really really interested to see how far this thing rips yeah so let's flush this out a little bit what has there been preference falsification about So within tech there was a lot of sort of the the Dei stuff the

activism stuff a lot of these sort of moral panics over the last few years that people had to sort of pay lip service to there's a lot of the Covid stuff there's a lot of just hiding sort of uh incompetence or or or flesh out what was really the preference falsification that that is being sort of uh you know shifted now yeah well you know as you know so there are two components to preference falsification and for the people hearing this for the first time this is the work of a of a professor named Kuran

who is really outstanding very sharp and wrote a book years ago called uh private truth public Lies where he lays out basically this theory of preference falsification which is basically what happens in a society in which people basically have to lie in public but it actually this is the private truth public lies you know kind of part but it turns out there's two parts to the theory there's the part where you think something and you're not allowed to say it and then there's the part about how you don't think something but you must say it

anyway yeah and and So you know the classic example of usav hav the great C Statesman anti-communist wrote a similar book 40 years ago called the power of the powerless before the fall of br wall and he talked about basically in in totalitarian Communist States the slogan was workers of the World Unite you have nothing to lose but your chains and he he writes this whole book about basically how everybody under a Communist Regime basically didn't believe any of that right like certainly By the 1970s 1980s they didn't believe any of the workers of the

world are not going to unite they were not going to lose their chains right in fact the chains were coming from a completely different source which was the Communist dictatorship but Maran talks about he talks a lot about the need for everybody to profess this like everybody has to lie everybody knows that everybody's lying everybody knows that everybody knows is lying and yet everybody is Still lying right and and actually what happens in the extreme is it becomes a what what you call a demoralization campaign right so it's a specific psychological method used by totalitarian

societies to basically grind everybody's psychology into the ground like you what H talked about is you lose all of your self resect like you you lose your Humanity when you're put in a position like that now of course in our society we don't live Under anything you know nearly as Extreme as like Soviet communism but nevertheless we have been living for the last decade under what I refer to as a soft authoritarian of this where the social dynamics are are as intense and then the penalty is not you get sent to the Goole the penalty

is you get canel and when you get canceled you lose your you lose your livelihood you lose your employment opportunities in many cases that we both know people who have lost Friends have lost family yeah and you know some people who literally have like vanished off the face of the Earth and not been her from him again and then every once in a while somebody commits suicide yeah and so it's it's a soft version of a hard dictatorship but it's nevertheless it's deeply authoritarian and then the nature of it is if you talk about it

you get inou so this is the thing happing now which is like you know wait a minute like you Know what do you mean like who got canel it's like well you know there was a decade of scalps nailed to the wall and now we're just going to pretend it didn't happen so that's the general thing I think at this point simply saying that this is the the regime that we've been living under I think makes it crystal clear I think everybody listening to this will have their own example again their own example either of

something that they believed but Couldn't say or there something that they didn't believe that that they were forced to say both sides of that are incredibly pernicious maybe it's a tribute to the flexibility of an actual Democratic Society that this kind of pressure campaign can only stay on so long but you know boy it certainly seems to be cracking now yeah and just one example you tweeted about how you regretted not speaking up publicly for the former I believe CEO of Milla Brandon Mike who made a personal donation um that was controversial at the time

and got him fired but the the cost of speaking up and and standing up for him might have you know yielded some controversy as well and so it feels like a lot of people are sort of realizing hey there were these people sort of cancelled I should have spoke up for them now I can now that it's a different now that it's safe yeah so that was a really key moment we should talk about That just because it was so key and so this was one of the first you know kind of cancellation campaigns intact

this was about 10 years ago and in retrospect this kind of was the firing of the starting gun for a lot of what followed but it was I would say just for myself it was deeply confusing at the time you know what was happening so basically what happened was this guy's name is Brendan Ike he's a longtime friend of mine he's a guy that we recruited to my My first company cape in like 1994 he actually this is true single-handedly created JavaScript like he literally sat down over the summer and like wrote it himself which

is now you know the most popular programming language on the planet and so one of these incredible seminal figures in our industry and and also just like a wonderful human being super nice guy very Community oriented family oriented super warm always there for people you know every everybody Loved this guy he was a key engineer at ncape in the 90s and then in in the 2000s after we sold Netscape to AOL they at that point spun off the Mozilla Foundation to turn what had been the Escape browser into open source which created ultimately Firefox and

a lot of the a lot of the work that that that team has done since Brendan was one of two people who um you know really LED that spin-off and at the time I I was very happy to help them do that you know Fast forward to I think it was you Eric you'll remember this like 203 2013 or 2014 um this there was all of a sudden this like massive blow up at the Mozilla Foundation at his workplace which he was the CEO at the time and basically there was this kind of rediscovery that

in I think 2008 he had given a$ thousand donation to a California ballot proposition that was in opposition to legalizing gay marriage in California and just to set the stage for this I was Pro gay marriage way before then I actually supported Gavin Newsome in 2004 when he was mayor of San Francisco which because he was the early you know that was the first city in which gay marriage happened in the US and so you know this at the time was not my politics but Brenda did this in 2008 what's interesting about that is that

the ballot proposition in 2008 that Brenda donated to was the exact same policy that every major Democrat at that time Was also advocating for and so the people who were anti-gay marriage in 2008 at the same time br did this donation included included Barack Obama Barack Obama Bill Clinton a young woman soon to rise to promin as Hillary Clinton and even then Elder Statesman of Democratic party Joe Biden um right as well as like every major you know Democratic Congress person Senator like basically there there were effectively no Democrats other than Gavin who were Pro

proir at that time and so for the crime of making a thousand donation to a cause that exactly mirrored the Democratic party at the time it was made he was blown to Smither like just completely nuked right and it was one of these you know what the cir Rouge used to call year zero phenomena which is you know as as of 2014 everybody has all of a sudden green lit to pretend that morality started in 2014 yeah and that there was no history at any of these Things and no backstory and and then therefore people

everybody is to be judged by the present moment and nobody gets any Grace there's no hope of redemption there's no hope of forgiveness there's not even a chance to explain yourself you're just like vaporized and that happened BR now Brennan has since gone on to do many great things and has this incredible project grave and has you know continues to be very successful but he got blown Right out of the organization that he had founded and was just like completely trashed at the time and at the time it was just like this weird it was

this thing which is just like you know like in a movie where there's a sudden car crash and you're just like what the [ __ ] just happened yeah right and then and then your reaction afterwards is like well you know okay thank God that's over right you know that was weird like certainly that will never happen again And and that was the foreshadowing and that's you know and I I tweeted your many years later I said one one of the things I most actually regret in my life certainly my professional life is and my

life of of being a friend is not standing up publicly at that point because in retrospect that was you know that was the very beginning of this wave that sort of metastasized throughout the industry and hypothetically if a bunch of us had stood up at that time maybe we Could have held off a lot of what followed yeah and so but you're you're optimistic now that this is that this reign of soft authoritarianism AKA sort of sort of extreme wokeness is is over um because there's a question of hey will it just come back again

in four years or you know now that Trump will take power will they sort of summon the resistance you know antibodies again or talk a little bit about your perspective on this yeah so I think that you know Like wokness is over is a little bit too glib and the main reason why that's the case I think you know maybe is self-evident which is basically the bureaucracies of corporate America and of the government and of nonprofits foundations NOS schools universities the med media companies the Press you know basically the big bureaucracies what we refer to

is sort of the managerial class that sort of Cathedral the cathedral the cathedral Curtis term Curtis Shin's term The cathedral or James Burnham's term the the managerial class the managers who sort of run everything and by everything being like basically all of the large incuman institutions like basically the you know wokeness has become standard policy right and and in like every large organization in the country like the Mandate number one is be compliant right like whatever whatever is requireed to be compliant is like holy right it's like the thing that Cannot be you must be

compliant like you must check off all the compliance boxes like whether you win or not in the market is kind of optional but you must be compliant whether you actually teach students anything is optional but you must be compliant and so you know wokeness has become part of the compliance regime also what what they refer to wonderfully is great orwellian terms the risk management regime incredible the trust and safety Regime yeah you know just take all these words and reverse them so you know this stuff has gotten wired very deeply and then it's been well

documented at this point that the foundation for a lot of what we call wokeness is actually baked deeply into the law right and a whole bunch of people have done Richard hanania and Genie grit Rider and Christopher Caldwell and Wesley I've all done great work in kind of documenting kind of how how deep this Stuff is sort of embedded in the law which is a whole another topic and so there's an institutionalization that Tak in place that's going to take you know optimistically 30 years to get out or something like that and by the way

maybe never having said that there's that but then there's what we've been dealing with for the last decade which is beyond that which is sort of the idea of wokness being like the cultural Vanguard yeah and basically being the thing That's like the coolest highest status highest fashion thing you can possibly be and the thing that you have to be if you want to Aspire to rise in the hierarchy and R among the managerial class and and run things and then if you want to get like really good press coverage and if you want people

to think that you're a moral person so kind of that whole thing and then there's the power component of it and this I use the tolken metaphor here the ring of power Which is the ability to call somebody a bad name under the winess regime and like instantly vaporize them and blow them out of their job and take their job like those second parts are like I think fading very fast and in in a lot of ways it's sort of inevitable that would happen because it's just like in fashion whatever is cool and trending now

looks dated five or 10 years later and you wonder how people possibly could have worm bottoms or whatever like you know It's that kind of phenomenon and there's no question like the election basically punched a giant hole in the side of that balloon and it's deflating incredibly quickly and by the way you see it in the reaction you see it in the reaction to the election itself which is there you know this is like the polar opposite reaction to 2016 which is just like complete deflation taking place and I think wokeness is is losing altitude

quickly but let's come back to the legal Part because that that's also there very interesting things that might happened there that we could also talk about yeah so say more what do you have in mind well so if you wanted to pick like the most extreme possible like attorney to put in charge of the Civil Rights division of the justice department to sort of reverse Dei it would be this lawyer named harmit Dylan who's been a California lawyer who's been you know the scourge of w corporations for the Last decade as it happens she has

just been appointed to run the Civil Rights division of the justice justice department and for the the people don't track this the Civil Rights division of the justice department is the federal government basically prosecutorial arm that basically enforces basically wokeness they're the ones that basically have made sure for the last decade that that all these companies have all these crazy policies under Penal of being Investigated subpoena ultimately prosecuted and and by the way there have been lots of prosecutions lots of court cases um the most well the most famous case that the current head of

the Civil Rights division brought was the case against SpaceX for not hiring enough refugees right notwithstanding that SpaceX is a military contractor and is not permitted to hire non-american citizens under a separate law and so the person running that has been a true Activist as you'd expect from this L Administration and then and then miss Dylan uh who by the way I don't know but I've been following for years and is clearly br you know she's the exact opposite of that and so every sort of signal is I don't want to speak for this new

Administration but every signal is being sent that they're going to basically do a 180 and all these things and and they are going to begin Prosecuting companies For violations of civil rights laws in the form of reverse discrimination which is say discrimination against variously white people Asians Jews and many other the unprotected classes as they say um yeah right and so signals are being sent by the appointments that there is going going to be an assault that's going to be the reverse the assault that companies have been under and universities have been under and then

of course the Supreme Court you know ruled Not that long ago that the universities private universities are not allowed to uh do race-based Admissions and it's actually really funny because there's some question there's some question as to whe so you know the demographic shift of of of admissions in the last year was starkly different than the year before as these institutions claim that they're coming in and compliance Supreme Court there's some question as to whether Discovery would show that they're Actually in compliance or whether they're still playing games so that's another thing we may find

out here and then there's a a very open question as to basically whether ESS essentially de facto that decision already has been made or will be made for for private companies as well and there's a lot of private companies that have been trying to figure out quietly how to kind of Dismount from Dei for actually both reasons for legal reasons and for Cultural reasons and now there's a another sort of very interesting thing that's kicking in which is that there I think are a lot of large companies where basically they were already basically done with

Dei to start they were done with Dei for their own reasons which is you know it's backfired in many spectacular ways but now they have any large company that wants to Dismount from it now has the best reason in the world which is we need to be compliant We right illegal yeah because it's illegal because and by the way let me just stay for the record like I think every major corporation in the country is just in flagrant violation of actual Britain civil rights law like you just you cannot have these hard quotas and basically

all these racially and ethnically and religiously biased you know hiring you just it's just it's just flat out illegal and these companies basically all went so extreme on this That they ended up in what I think is clearly Mass illegality and so as Miss Dylan kind of kicks in in her job was say I she she's not going to lack for a shortage of targets and so if you don't want to be a Target it it it is a great kind of you know get out of jail free card to to just voluntarily shut all

this stuff down and I my guess is starting pretty quickly here I mean we're already starting to see it right so Boeing and a bunch of other you know Companies have already put a bullet in their programs and even the University of Michigan which kind of went like completely bananas for this stuff you know actually shut their whole thing down so I think we're going to see my guess is we're going to see a run of companies that are going to take you know quite dramatic action here hey we'll continue our interview in a moment

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demonstrate AI trust and prove Security in real time learn more at v.com nlw that's v.com nlw you University of Michigan my alma matter was doing events that were called nonp only like is just whites only but they nonp as a way to just it's uh it just hilariously ridiculous did they have their own drinking Fountains yeah what old is new yeah how do you like literally how do you end up resegregated in the name of racial like it's just the most extraordinary thing it's just it's most extraordinary thing ever it's what the whole civil rights

basically War of the battle of the 1960s was about was desegregation right and non-discrimination and then like how do you end up thinking you're on the moral High ground and you do that and how do you end up thinking you're not breaking The law like again this is part of this sort of mass Insanity of the reference falsification and and look there are many many lawyers and HR people who have been implementing these policies who are fully aware that they've been breaking the law and so it's going to be very interesting to to see the

unwind you know there's the great uh K Anan idea that we sometimes talk about the woke are more correct than the mainstream and sort of yeah an example of that is like Yeah it turns out I guess we have been being systemically uh discriminatory or systemically racist just not to who uh not to the groups that we just Asians you know to groups that um we didn't you know particularly sort of think that we were yes syic racism has been rather widespread yes this true um the why do you think in in 2024 there isn't

as big of a response as there was in 2016 to is it just the the movement is gone is it just that because it's the Second time like because you know bunch of people were saying hey if Trump wins you're you're gonna you know resummon the old uh sort of you know spirits of the crazy Progressive left but that's not I don't I I hear actually the opposite it seems like they're retreating or don't even exist anymore or converting or I guess you know sort of uh on their you know their own gab and parlor

you know social social networks ghettos Um um no disrespect to Blue Sky yeah Blue Sky yeah exactly um so why do you think are are you surprised by by this or why do you think uh this is I by way I can't resist my friend Yan Lon has got exercised over Elon and X after the election that he bailed on X did this because he's one of the you know leaders and Geniuses super Geniuses in AI but um somebody at X today you know basically pulled up a slide you know goes with this open A3

Release and pulled up a slide from Yan saying that this would never work and basically was like Yan you coward come back here and fight me you know on X Y literally y literally responded by screenshotting it and responding on LinkedIn I guess I guess I guess is now the other the other snowflake snowflake ghetto if blue sky is too intense uh for you you can R you can Retreat to LinkedIn so um the summoning the gods of the old left is is just gone or what Does it turn into so I mean that you

know the political analysis is just the scope of the Republican Victory this time right was not only winning but it was also winning the popular vote and winning both the Senate and the house and by the way also you know having the majority in the Supreme Court from before so you know sort of all four of the formal branches of government you know kind of being taken all at once and so I think it's a big shock and then Obviously obviously just the Arc of Trump coming back is a giant blow to a lot of

the old psychology and then I think so I have kind of two thoughts on this a surface level one and the Deep point so service level one is just like I think things just went too far and I think kind of everybody knows that things went too far a lot of people just know things went too far and so people ended up with basically indefensible positions like that basically there Shouldn't be a border and the you know criminals should be allowed to run wild like it it's just not and people should be allowed to just

you know be set fire to on the subway like it's just not a you know I think a lot of people are trying to Dismount from that so that's one and then the specific thing that's happened as a result of that is the Democratic party over the last six weeks has immediately starting after the loss has basically descended into what I Think is accurately called a civil war where they themselves are trying to figure out basically what the path forward is and you have you know a lot of you have the current chair of the

DNC saying we need to go even harder left you know you have uh people like Rah Emanuel and Richie Torres and others saying no quite the opposite we have to come back to the center and come back to Common Sense and so like I say I would be suspicious that it's a Plot they're about to like jump out at the inauguration or something but I think in reality I think Democrats are having certainly all my friends are Democrats are telling me that there there's like a very sort of severe internal kind of fight that's happening

and by the way this in American politics this has happened before in my lifetime this happened in 1980 which is when Jimmy Carter got beaten by Ronald Reagan and the Democratic party basically went Into a paralyzed state where it tried to figure out whether to go you know even more extreme to the left than it had in the 60s and 70s that kind of come back to the center and by the way it took them 12 years to win another presidential election and which which require coming back to the center but it took them 12

years to do that and I think a lot of my Democratic friends are basically trying to say like how do we shortcut that process so I think that's Part of what's happening but I think the other part of what's happening is it's actually I really believe this I think a lot of what's happening right now is basically the effects of all of the censorship and so you have basically that you know these sort of Elites that we're talking about this managerial class the sort of you know people who have been in power for the last

four years in particular people have been running large institutions they got used To being on the side of censorship and they got used to wielding censorship as a tool against their enemies in the form of these sort of things like you know again orwellian things hate speech misinformation so forth you know there's basically there's a big obvious problem with sensorship which is it's a violation of literally the American way of life it's a violation of the principles of of Western civilization of everything that makes our society great This idea you're going to basically prevent other

people from speaking so there's that but I think there's actually another problem with it which is it actually causes you the way I describe it is it causes you to mount and denial service attack on your own epistemic ability to understand reality right like if in other words basically if you have the ring of power that basically says you can Define anything contrary to your current beliefs as hate Speech and misinformation then you will never receive valid counter arguments to your own views yeah and then sort of that's the sort of intellectual equivalent of taking

a hose hooking up to the exhaust pipe of your car and jamming the other end straight into your mouth right which is just like you're just gonna breathe your own exhaust forever and if you're only breathing your own exhaust if you're only believing yourself right and people who Are like you and you're never listening to contrary information right because it's hate speech or misinformation it's been censored then there is no limit to how crazy you can get because there's no Governor right you you are not required to stay in contact with reality and so I

I think the censorship basically regime worked for these people for quite a while and then starting probably I don't know three or four years ago it actually stopped working and it's LED them into a Set of policies that are just bananas and so a big thing that I think that they really have to do is rip off the Band-Aid and stop with all that and get back to being a you know be get back to being able to mark your beliefs to market right to you know to reality just like every business person has to

they do that I don't know but I would say they're you know they're in the beginning stages that I certainly hope they do it it will be obviously much Better for us as a country if they do it I know a bunch of Democrats who are I think very smart and very strong and who are you know working on this very hard and I hope they succeed well I I even see AOC doing some listening and learning to you know about what happened in the election and you know she's going to have a kid and

maybe she moderates a bit at the same time the pro Luigi Mion faction you know the pro killer that sort of sentiment doesn't make one Excited about the future of the party full socialism plus murder in the streets I'm just going to put it out there like it might not be the best electoral platform right for 26 and 28 I I don't know I don't know you know call me crazy maybe I'm out out out of step with the mood of plenty of people on X tell me I'm out of step with the mood of

the people but like are the adults of any age going to step up and basically say no this is not Who we are this is not what we're going to do and it's just it would in many ways it would be the easiest and most obvious thing in the world to do and then it's just this question of whether they can kind of reorient yeah well and I just want to point out just how quick this Vibe shift has happened I mean I remember a couple years ago there was this big debate in our circles

about the Curtis yarvin View and the Chris rufo View and the Curtis yarvin view was hey You know the conditions are not present I'll let you edit the characterization but basically it's don't fight back you'll just lose and you'll Empower them you'll make them stronger um by sort of being the sort of counter opposition or controlled opposition position whereas the Chris rufo view was like you can just do things you can change laws as it relates to you know what's happening in schools as it relates to critical race Theory or as it relates to sort

of the Gender and and sex education Stu like you can have incremental gains and they will be meaningful and curs are saying no they won't be meaningful you'll just they'll change the terms but they'll still have the same people in power and thus have the same views and make you think you won but actually you're you know even further behind what why don't you sort of edit that or the characterization of that debate and then and you know talk about how that's Evolved because my read you can edit is I thought you were more on

the sort of Curtis side of that issue of of like more sort of skeptical of innovation but then at some point shifted to more of the roffo view of like wow things can actually change sooner than we think is is is that fair to say yeah so I think that's a great description I think to give the strongest possible version of Curtis's view which he calls the clear pill I think the the key kind of in There that you alluded to but let's draw it out is not just that if the conditions aren't right you

will lose it's that if you are a if you step up to be an opponent in a situation where you can't win you're not just losing you're becoming what what I think he calls The Agonist in a chemical reaction you're becoming the fuel that the side you hate uses to burn even brighter yeah right um and so you're become you're becoming the bad you're making yourself into the bad Guy right and the sports metaphor is the Harlem glob tters you know spent 40 years winning they W like you know 12,000 basketball games against their opposition

team the Washington generals which W zero um actually the Wikipedia page is really fantastic because it turns out the Washington generals really they won one game and uh like just accidentally like a ball went in the basket the last minute that shouldn't have and like midle clemon who was the Star of the Harlem G is like just apparently completely lost his [ __ ] it was just like insanely angry because right of course that's the thing that's like never supposed to happen it was like super mad and like threatening to fire all the all the

Washington generals and so you know if you're up against the Harlem go Trotters and they have institutional control you don't want to be the the Washington generals like you're wasting your time you'll probably Get vaporized and you're going to make the opponent stronger and so basically don't do that obviously the Chris rufo opposition to that is okay in that case you basically just are signing up to lose and what the hell right how how can you basically do that why don't you get out there and fight and figure out a way to win and you

know they they you know these are both incredibly brilliant guys they fully articulated this I would just say this my partner and I went out a Limb to get involved in the political process but a lot of that went well by the way including by the way candidates we supported in both parties people in the sensible Middle with the prot tech agenda Pro Innovation agenda which apparently now includes the former Commerce Secretary like who knew Miracles Miracles are happening every day I wonder where she's been okay exactly we can talk more about that we did

that the thing though and and I'm Not I'm gonna say this I'm gonna just describe what's happening I'm not going to claim that I'm some world hero here or whatever because I certainly don't think I am and I think there's a lot that I could have done better in the last decade a lot of ways I was it effective but I I will say like I have been in pitched arguments on some of the topics we're discussing tonight over the course of the last you know several years with in some cases with high Degrees of

intensity and basically I had become the Washington generals I I felt like the Washington in generals I was just like I got to the point even through this year where I just felt like I'm going to make the token argument but like it I'm just going to I'm just going to lose and I and I lost over and over and over and over and over again in these discussions and then basically after November 6th all of a sudden like a significant number of people basically Are like oh okay let's do it that way instead I'm

just like what like my arguments haven't gotten any better right like I'm not any more compelling um but you know people it's what we talked about earlier basically people are basically flipping they're flipping a lot of these issues really quickly of course I I give them credit for it not not not myself but it definitely feels like all of a sudden things are happening today and I think we're going To see announcements you know from various companies in the next three months that I think are going to be I think actually quite surprising and so

things are happening that are I think you know put this under under the strict uh yarvin principle that would not be happening and so I think we we need some other model of change of which the preference falsification one is is certainly the best one that I know of hey we'll continue our interview in a Moment after a word from our sponsors hey everyone Eric here in this environment Founders need to become profitable faster and do more with smaller teams especially when it comes to engineering that's why Sean Lenahan started Squad A specialized Global Talent

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at a fraction of The typical cost without the headache of assessing for skills and culture fit Squad takes care of sourcing legal compliance and local HR for Global Talent increase your velocity without amping up burn visit chw squad.com and mention turpentine to skip the wait list of of course Curtis himself I I don't I don't think has accepted uh you know he's a hard person to get to change his views or has a high standard for what FDR 2.0 looks like like he wasn't Impressed when Elon took over Twitter he said oh it won't happen

enough and obviously he's very brilliant but just yeah interesting to well he wants you know to to his credit like he wants real Victory and so anything short of real Victory is basically just give right giving your enemy a chance to retrench and come back at you and and let me say also like I at least I don't think I know how it's going to play out like I I have found political predictive skills Not that great over the last decade so um look it's entirely possible that we're you know look as possible we're we're

still the Washington generals and as possible that basically everything that we've been fighting against comes R back it's also possible that basically everything just moves on and there's some totally new set of issues it's also POS you know who knows right and then by the way if there's one thing that we've all learned I think in our lives and Careers it's you know x-factors matter a lot over the last 20 years you know there's been at least three like really profound reality altering events that have taken place which is 911 the global financial crisis in

Co and each of those was like a fundamental reset to a lot of assumptions and so I've also learned to have a healthy regard for the unpredictability of the world we're going into we do what we can and it would seemed like the x- factor for the Vibe shift was Elon buying Twitter which almost didn't happen because he almost didn't go go through with it and if that didn't happen then we'd all be sort of you know just in the group chats complaining well it's even better it's actually you'll recall this but it's even better

which is not only did he almost not buy Twitter they actually forced him to buy it yeah oh my God yeah I don't if you remember but how how angry basically Everybody got that he was quote unquote trying to get out of the deal and how the judge basically a Delaware sort of activist judge basically you know demanded that he close the deal yeah uh right like that's the part of it that like doesn't get told is like they absolutely demanded that he Clos the deal so anyway yeah that's really funny the um so yeah

Elon basically gave air cover to the vibe shift both in terms of buying Twitter but then also his own Sort of evolution and I think I'm I'm I'm curious basically if you could briefly touch on the role of group chats and how they played a role in the vibe sh after over the past five years because I sometimes see Elon tweeting stuff whether it's about testosterone or crime or you Michael Brown you know like stuff that I I saw in the group chats like years ago he's sort of speedrun this education and I know he

talks to you I know he talks to a bunch of other People as well and so I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about the role of these group chats in kind of the in kind of the vibe shift because what we see in public is the you know the antagonism that Elon received from government officials but it seemed like he got help in getting up to speed and educated on a lot of these and opening his eyes to a lot of these issues what do you have to say there yeah so there's

really interesting backstory to this so You know Elon for a long time was actually much like myself for a long time he's what you just call a normie Democrat um and in fact the origin of Tesla the sort of great mission of Tesla was carbon solve carbon emissions climate change right shift to a carbon freak economy and so any anyway he was not invol you know he was not involved in politics he was building his companies which were certainly plenty plenty hard to be a full-time Focus for Him and so he wasn't really involved in

politics but he had this he was always very curious about culture and then specifically he was always really curious about internet culture right and so he was always tweeting and meming I mean the two people who were like tweeting and meing like all the time basically 105 years ago when basically it didn't have any political salience at all were of course Elon Musk and Donald Trump like literally right like Trump's Twitter feed going back into the like you know if you go back before 2013 which is when everything kind of activated politically on the internet

like Trump was tweeting away and Elon was tweeting away and so Elon got you know super into internet culture you know the the specific proximate event that caused him to actually pull the trigger on buying Twitter was actually not a partisan political thing it was literally The Babylon B which was his Favorite you know satire site getting deplatformed right so the way he thought about at the time I think was it's striking at the thing that I love the thing that I love and he once said somebody finally figured this out and asked him in

some interview and he said yeah he's like this is you know what do I do for fun like I work all the time I spend time with my you know my my family my kids and then basically I like when I have a spare 20 minutes I tweet memes And I remember thinking like okay wow like you know that's interesting I should spend more time tweeting memes and then I saw and I had known Elon for a long time but not we had never worked closely together and so I but I had always followed him

and was watching what he said and he one one day it came out on Twitter he tweeted something to the effect that that he has meme dealers right that there are like some number of people out there basically who Are like arming him with memes and that's how he's coming up with all these funny memes he has meme dealers who are like dealing them to him yeah and I was like wow that's interesting I wonder if I could become one of elon's meme dealers and so I started sending him memes and he started tweeting them

and I was like this is freaking amazing this is just like absolutely outstanding because when he tweeted it it would get a thousand times to you know the likes That when I tweeted it and so I was like okay and so he's been immersed in this culture and as you said like it's sort of a back Channel culture right um right so basically for people who haven't tracked this basically what's happened is as the sort of censorship and cancellation machine kind of kicked in a decade ago BAS basically what happened was that we all organically

you know across many actually walks of life many many different kinds of people created Basically the modern equivalent of what in the Soviet era they called samat and for those of you who don't know the history of of Soviet totalitarianism sasat was basically underground newspapers and so there was harsh formal censorship from the central government and so there there were literally these basically these mimeographed at the m mograph is the copying technology before photocopiers uh they mograph basically newsletters and these dissident writers Would basically write s distributed and if you got caught with sdot by

the way it was a big problem right and you could get you know arrested or jailed or killed and so basically the modern version of sasot is oh and by the way here's how seriously they took that just to give you a sense of how totalitarian regimes think in the USSR through the 1980s it was a capital crime to possess a mograph machine right so if you had a machine in Your basement that was capable of running off copies of a piece of paper you could get executed for it wow and so they knew how

important it was to to maintain total control of content Communications and so the the modern version of that is is the what is basically the WhatsApp group of the signal group started out being the text chain but very quickly became the WhatsApp group or signal group and the reason it became the WhatsApp group Signal group is disappearing messages right right you know God forbid you get caught with the mograph machine God forbid you get caught with a WhatsApp group right uh and in fact there are cases both in the US and and and and I

know there's a bunch of cases in the UK where people have gotten really hung up legally for literally the contents of private WhatsApp groups right like this is not again it's the soft authoritarian version of what the Soviets had but it's You know they they do come at you if they find you have a secret WhatsApp group group and so that started developing but then the but then the running joke became basically therefore as a consequence of this Dynamic the theme of every WhatsApp group was to basically send memes that were as edgy as possible

like right to the point where your friends literally would all like leave the group but like not one step further right yeah um as sort of a Form of social Revolt right against against this increasing level of censoriousness in in the public sphere so what's happened is this s of archipelago of of whatsa groups is lit up and now this is a universal thing and in fact like we for example it turned we found out in the after you know they all these Co hearings afterwards and it turned out basically the UK government for years

now has been been running WhatsApp groups like you know this has Become like a standard thing that people do do a lot of business on by the way interestingly this Cuts directly into a key policy topic which is the war on encryption and you know the the authorities both in the US and in many other countries have been trying to prevent strong encryption from proliferating into the hands of normal people you know for basically my whole career for 30 years I've been fighting it various ways for 30 years but there Was a you know say

there was one Turning Point moment where signal implement true and an encryption and then in the context of of groups and with disappear messages and then there was another sort of seminal moment where actually WhatsApp which is actually built on the signal I think built on the signal encryption technology but WhatsApp Mark Zuckerberg made the policy decision to also Implement those same features in WhatsApp and this like I can tell you And it's been publicly reported that there's been intense pressure from governments to not do that right there there's like a tremendous aversion on the

part of these centralized governments the centralized authorities to basically make sure that citizens don't have the ability communicate in private groups without being able to be without being being able to be surveilled um and and you know the signal folks deserve you know the medal Of freedom for carving the the path on that and then quite frankly this is an area where I think Facebook has done you know 100% the right thing by by holding the line on that against you know tremendous pressure and so anyways it just so happens that we actually have these

digital technologies that actually make this possible now I I to your point I think when the history of our time is written it's going to turn out that these groups were actually very Important and then of course people are going to like whine and complain because it's like oh my God like all these terrible people are having all these private conversations it's like well no [ __ ] like they're having all the private conversations because they weren't allowed to have the public conversation right if it hadn't been for all the censorship all these conversations would

have just been had in public which is which would have been like much better Right but they weren't allowed and so they were all driven underground and what did you think would happen and and I think that's sort of been a key mechanism for the unwind of the preference falsification right yeah I remember when one of our groups started in 2020 June wait a minute wait wait wait wait I just want to be clear Eric I don't know what groups I'm not in any of these I'm not I just want to be clear I am

not in any each other yeah have only Heard about this from friends I myself only communicate one-on-one and barely even that so I just want to claim just to be totally clear I don't know you I don't know your name yeah exactly I certainly don't have your phone number okay go ahead me and other friends now you June 2020 I was basically you know having activist uprisings in my company I saw that 10,000 medical professionals said it was okay to for you know people to protest during George Floyd but Weren't allowed to go to their

you know grandparents funeral or whatever and I was you know had to say certain things on social media and I I could go to these group chats with maybe five or 10 people and just ask hey is this is it am I crazy you know is this is this crazy what what's happening here and not only could people tell me no you're not crazy this is a crazy time but also and we could sort of laugh at all the crazy Times that that were to come but also there was like a education happen there were

these antibodies being built and then gradually the support for pushing back I remember you know Mike salana and B is some of the earlier people that were able to push back and then this sort of preference falsification went from there yeah that's right and yeah it's a time monored thing it's basically you need groups of people to be able to get together and actually have open Discussion you you always need every society You' always needed that it's always the Catalyst for change if change is ever going to happen it's how change happens it's absolutely crucial

by by the way like I've read the Constitution like it's actually something we are allowed to do yes yes exactly we are we are allowed to freely speak and Associate and that's why right I mean that's the core fundamental reason why those rights are you know are the Literally the First Amendment to our Constitution and so it it's been great yeah it's I think it's an incredible unalloyed positive good news aspect of this new technology and and now those same chats that were 10 people are now hundreds of people and now you know now you're

you're tweeting again and now it's just glorious it's uh glory in America you know morning in America which going back to 2024 imagine there's a Twitter files for government or Imagine Elon does a t file like what do we expect to find yeah so first of of all again I don't want to in any way speak for the new Administration but I would not be remotely surprised if that's exactly what happens and of course being the government it will be spectacular like if it happens it will be amazing right and and the reason is just

and the and the reason the if it happens the reason will be the reason it'll be so spectacular is just the Government just has so much power yeah it's actually been in a lot of ways like in a lot of way there's a lot of things that happened the last you know 10 years and people of course have lots of different opinions on but like one of the things I think people should think about I try to keep in mind is just like some sometimes you actually need a Civic like like sometimes you actually need

an applied lesson at Civics you it's all the stuff you if you grew up in the US You have a certain generation you were in social studies class and they taught you how how all this stuff is supposed to work and then you go to the real world and you're like oh my God it doesn't work like that at all right like that's not even remotely what it works like um but you know that's what that's what we were told in school how a bill becomes a law and all these other things and every now

and then you need an applied lesson in social studies like You need to see how these things actually work and I think what's happened is that the government you know for reasons that we could go talk about at length is just uh you know it aggregated just enormous amounts of power in particularly enormous amounts of power when it chooses to to implement this kind of soft authoritarianism and repression and that the two most you know well maybe three most Vivid ways well four that have played out over the Last decade is you know just you

take them right off it's censorship ACD Banking and then it's you know Dei and then it's the whole constellation of ESG and just this like application of just like incredible Force to mandate these things often in the face of you know actual federal law is amazing and then my other thing is like I don't know what exists inside you know inside the you know the government files but I do know what came out in the Twitter files and I Do have a pretty good sense of the kinds of things that exist in other companies and

I think the nature of these managerial organizations is people just can't help themselves but talk freely about these topics they Journal right they lull themselves I think into a false sense of safety that they can you know basically freely talk about censoring their political opponents debank their political opponents breaking civil rights law they they just Start to think that these things are fine and then they need to implement the directives and so they need to actually do all the work and do that they need to communicate and they need to be compliant which means they

need to like document their decisions and then they need to do you know document retention so they need to hold on to all the documents right and so what we learned in the Twitter files is that there's just there was just like extensive Written records of all of the bad behavior like and and not like sophisticated like clever like oh my God I can't believe how smart they were and how they did all this you know instead of the opposite it's like the most cartoonishly malicious version of it that you could possibly imagine right just

like the dumbest possible things of whatever was in the New York Times that day was just believed absolutely uncritically and applied with just the Greatest just blunt for stupidity um over and over and over and over and over again and then documented and so I suspect that like for example the de banking files if we get this to Administration chooses to subpoena the banks and then also chooses to open up the files at the federal at the many different Federal Banking Regulators there's you know there's at least eight which is amazing in and of itself

but there's at least eight involved Regulating federal agencies involved regulating the banks I think if we get all those internal files relative to De banking I think we will be I think it'll shock our shoes off number one at the pervasiveness of the practice and then number two just the sheer like ham-handed idiocy of it like this is not going to be the sophisticated version this is going to be just like I cannot believe that these people like this crude in their own views were allowed to Basically exercise their own personal biases with the full

force of government power and banking cartel power behind them yeah let's paint more of a picture of what winning looks like over the next few years or like if if you could wave a wand and change and have the administration do anything what are some examples of things that might be that might look like one just example for inspiration is I I think at one point you said something like if a few hundred People we could wholesale replace them that would or get them out with generous retirement Packages Etc that might have a massive change

why don't we just paint a picture of of what winning could look like well I think there's you know two big steps honestly I mean step one is just stop doing stupid [ __ ] right like just stop with the stupid stuff right um and so if there's just like flat out relief like like in a lot of way it's always like you know it's always like This whole thing of like why are you becoming involved in government what do you want it's like I don't want anything I like I want the I want the

re I want the opposite of things right I I want I want the opposite of something happening I want whatever has been happening to not happen and like the default form right of change is like just simply stop like for God's sake just simply stop right um and so just stop this a whole bunch of these things this all these Different you know kind of crazy things have been happening that we've been talking about and so that's one and then yeah look the other would be you know an actual proactive an actal you know positive

productive proactive strategy which you know clearly they're developing and I think will put in place I think they'll do both of these but the simplest way to think about it is just what the president has always said and what he'll be saying a lot from here on In which is his line quot I just want America to win like I just want us to win I just like want us to be strong and I want our enemies to fear us and I want to not get like screwed with and like I don't want people like

taking hostages of our people or our allies and I don't want Wars and I don't you know I just I don't want those things but then I want America to win I want America to be like the strongest economy to be the strongest technologically the strongest Militarily I want maximum freedom I want people to be able to be able to you know live and succeed in their lives like all these things and so having a regime that is actually focused on the success and flourishing of the actual population of the country and not trying to

solve you know every other problem in the world and not trying to manipulate and orchestrate every social outcome it is this amazing alignment I mean one of the really remarkable things is you know There were years ago one of the sort of unusual things about what what's happened politically in the last year is it's not the most obvious thing in the world that kind of the technol libertarian faction would align with sort of a you know what you might call a nationalist populist faction and it actually turns out that you know the alignment is not

100% but it's shockingly close because what those what both of those perspectives have is Basically yeah you know let's go win yeah do you think politics is Downstream of culture or the other way around um I think it's a probably a little bit of both um you know the argument the Richard hanani and others argument that basically laws also Drive culture in particular like you know there's politics but then there's laws yeah and I think one of the things I've been trying to WRA my head around a lot as we've discussed is kind of what

have Been the roles of actual laws kind of every step of the way here so and I think maybe for those of us who aren't lawyers I think people like myself like I think maybe we just persistently underestimate the importance of the actual laws and so that's one but I mean look the argument for culture driving politics is I think very strong as we talked about earlier political views have a cultural social component like any other form of fashion and like any Other cultural phenomena and you know they're just like music or anything else or

clothing like you know things going out of fashion by the way patterns repeat I saw bell bottoms are coming back yeah U right but they repeat in a lag like they repeat when everybody forgets why they didn't like them right and then they kind of go through that same process of of rediscovery and then these politics seem to play out on a generational time frame in the same way The culture seems to play out in a generational time frame and you have this concept of eras that's never quite totally right but like has a lot

of substance to it and so I think there's a lot to that and then you know maybe the sort of smartest thing you could say about it is politics and culture very clearly are kind of combined at the point of the media which means politics and culture very clear clearly are combining at the point of social media And social media spreads culture and politics equally and then in combination I'm really struck I'll give an example I'm really struck our friend uh Katherine D has this great she's an analyst she's an internet writer and thinker and

she's an analyst of she started out being an analyst of what she calls fandoms so fandoms is like you know Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom right and I remember when he actually first started on the internet because They first started actually in news groups and so you'd have like alt. tv. like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then all the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans would get together and they'd have these flame Wars and these big arguments and they'd have you know their fan sites and their all all this stuff and if a character died they

they'd all grieve and then they would be sending Furious email campaigns to get the show uncancelled and all this stuff and so This concept of a fandom and then basically Katherine's kind of big thing is like it turns out everything is everything else is also now a fandom right and so the way we now relate to politicians is as fandoms in basically the exact same way and we either like love that guy right and we cheer him on and we're part of his fan club or like we hate that guy like and our our fan

club wants to take his down right right um and and look group formation group Psychology group even you know battles in the street are you know that's been the case of politics forever as kind of group formation and then the group's fighting and so there there's some of that that's not new but her her point which I think is very valid which is on the internet the the similarity or the overlap with that and any idea of cultural formation basically they basically become the exact same thing right so I I think basically from here On

out they they're absolutely like in inextricable inextricably connected and so for the people asking how do we transcend that Etc you know how do we get past that is is that just missing the point or not even wrong or or just naive or that just means losing I mean yeah like that just means losing it's like bip it's like bipartisanship like what does bipartisanship means it means that you're signing up for your side to lose like a bipartisan Republican is Somebody who just does what Democrats want which is why the Press is constantly pushing for

bipartisanship right you know in the eyes of the press the ideal Republican is somebody who just does what Democrats want that's bipartisanship it never never goes in the other direction and so yeah I don't want to be in that fight is equivalent to saying I'm fine with the outcome um you know and fair enough I don't know the politics I'm not certainly Advocating politics should consume everybody's lives and I certainly hope it doesn't consume mine but opting like if there is a fight to be had opting out is this losing well too late for you

correct the uh we're not interested in politics but politics is interested in us as it say um I mean to that point if if 2013 to 2024 was the sort of sort of wokeness era what's the next cultural Renaissance is it patriotism is it meritocracy is it normal see like what Do you think will Define the the next era culturally yeah I mean clearly that's the the new the way I would describe it yeah so the culture you know for the first like half of my life the culture basically was the culture of the 50s

kind of extending into the you know the 80s or 90s which was the cliche but the cliche of like you know it's kind of nixonian social conservatism traditional families all these aversion to social change you know all the all the things The sort of hippie movement and the new left and the social Revolutions of the 60s and 70s did their best to tear to the ground and so ever hair super short need or do we have our hair long and scraggly and you know that's a statement of our political beliefs and our what culture we

belong in and so that was sort of the culture counterculture you know kind of thing that I grew up in and I of course just always assumed the counterculture was the correct one right Because who would want to be part of the dominant thing you obviously want to be a rebel and then you know the the other kind of thing you can always see I think in this culture counterculture kind of thing is the side that is winning is the one that uses censorship um right and so when I was growing up it was the

right that was using censorship right in the 80s right and so the all a censorship campaigns were right-wing and the left which was the counterculture at the time Basically kept saying no censorship is anti-American right and we need to be able to have free speech and then the other you know kind of clue of like culture versus counterculture is who's funny right and and of course the culture is never funny right because the culture is totally serious right the culture is like absolutely the way things are and can never change and can never ever be

the subject of a joke right which like the most threatening Thing in the world to somebody in power is humor is a joke is being ridiculed and undermined so the counterculture is the funny one right so that therefore the phenomenon of a Saturday Night Live or something like that which was all you know which was irreverent it was irreverent and funny because it was challenging the the the dominant culture especially if you go back and watch the original Saturday Night lives from like the 1975 I watched the very first one a While ago just to

see it I never seen it and literally it's like a it's like what they used to it's like what they used to call it what was it like a they had these terms like sit in and then I think they had like I don't know what was it like lovein but it was literally like it was like a it was like a it was like a circular thing it wasone it was just like all hippies it just like 100% goodies and then they're basically sitting it's a circular stage and They're literally all sitting around with

their leg sitting with their legs crossed as these young kids come out with all these irreverent counterculture jokes of course in our time we could debate when the inversion happened but it certainly happened by by Obama and probably before that where you know it flipped and The Counter Culture became the culture yeah um when Steven coar stopped being funny or John Stewart stopped being funny yeah when that kind Of Comedy went from what you know there's actually turn it went from laughter to what they call clapter right actually comedians talk about this there there's two

responses there's two responses to comedian on staging from the audience one is you can get laughter and the other is you can get Applause and if you're a real comedian you always want laughter and you're horrified if you ever get Applause because if you say Applause it Implies that you have said something that basically where you want approval from the audience Bas right where you're you're appealing to the dominant norms and the audience was rewarding you for your compliance to the dominant Norms yeah and so like a real comedian is horrified when he gets he

just wants laughter and of course the thing that generates laughter is something true right the thing that generates laughter is something true the thing that Generates Applause is something that everybody is required to agree with right those are like the opposite Concepts right and so yeah when late night comedy such as it is or what it is it used to be referred to went from laughter to clapter like the humor drained straight out of it it became basically State media it basically became state media right it became basically reinforcing every night the set of the

preference falsification the Set of things that you must believe the set of things you must say even if you don't believe them and then certainly attacking people who say things that that uh that should not be said and so this incredible they have become this incredible mechanism of cultural enforcement you know quite regime media and it's amazing by the way it's amazing because it happened to literally all of them yeah right it didn't happen to one of them it happened to all of them right At the exact same time that that's what all the newspapers

turned into and all television news turned into right and every University right and every Foundation like they just all went like straight into this lock step anyway so long-winded way of saying now we're in a very interesting spot right which is okay what so like I I would think the question behind your question is like okay now for the next whatever period of time what's culture and what's Counterculture I think it's going to be really interesting to see like if the left gets really funny again it's going to be a sign it's going to be

a sign of a couple things one is this going to mean that the right is ascendant right so the right is becoming the culture again and then the left is going to respond with humor and so maybe maybe that's the thing to look for is when left and when when Saturday Night Live gets funny again like that will be a Significant Turning Point moment you know so that's one is that gonna happen I don't know I think there's going to be a to your point I think there's going to be a big swing here for

a while of a much more I mean there is now already obviously patriotism American flags pride in the country um uh you know by the way veneration of the military by the way veneration of the police pride and law enforcement pride and civil order yeah um and and then obviously you Know coupling that with you know obviously pride in free speech free association yeah and and not having to lie and so that you know there there will be a lot of that what will that be balanced by I'm not sure by the way will that

go too far you know are we going to be sitting here in you know out of five or 10 or 15 years saying oh my God we've you know we've reverted back to 1982 or something and it's it feels like this crippling monoculture in the other Direction you're know kind of back to that I don't know I kind of doubt it I think maybe the inter yeah I kind of doubt it I mean number one is like we kind of had that you don't tend to get the exact same thing again and then the other

thing is like look the form of media itself has changed and so you know this is like a classic like Marshall mclan which is you know the culture is shaped not just by the content but by the actual medium itself and what we Think of as like 1960s through 2000s culture was very determined by the specific form factor of television and that's never going back in the box like ever actually somebody made an argument on X the other day that I thought was very striking forget who it was but it was very bright and said

there's a case being made that 2020 may have been the all-time peak of top- down authorit message control for the rest of time right you mentioned like what that Felt like right like how how it right how intense that felt and we all live through that but the argument this person made was that was the point when number one TV was actually still relevant like TV still mattered which clearly is like collapsing right now like but like TV was still hanging in there and then the other was the internet censorship regime was still fully intact

right so this is pre Elon buying acts and it's when the government Was just like doing their full scale censorship campaigns and forcing the social media companies to censor and so and basically the argument goes that in the last four years both of those basically preconditions for that level of sort of thought control have collapsed TV is never going to recover like it's on its way to zero right was you see that very clearly the ratings and then the internet is never going to get recentralized the way that it was Before it's always going there

it come under more pressure in the future than it's under now like there may be more censorship in the future but you know at least the theory goes certainly it's not going to get back to how crazy you know how ruthlessly effective the the sort of C censorship was in 2020 so I don't know maybe that's a white pill which is what whatever we're gonna get it won't be that I remember uh we've been laughing about this sort of I think it's a South Park clip maybe it's a with Netflix executive they sort of uh

you know showing one of the shows that they're creating and then someone is saying you know put a gay woman in it or put a black woman in it just sort of a parody of kind of the sort of pandering that these networks have done and you know we've talked about sort of the Silicon Valley Vibe shift I'm curious if there is or might be a Vibe shift in Hollywood and I know you're obsessed with Hollywood and enjoy you know sort of movies that portray how messed up uh sort of sanctimonious but hypocritical Hollywood has

been do you see any sort of self-awareness there or uh just you know spiraling yeah no I see a lot so should start by saying I actually have a lot of friends in that industry and I I say that because I'm refer to things that people have told me behind the scenes and I just don't want any specific person to get blamed for it yep Um so these are I'll just give you the the gal view but I I do talk to people in that world a fair amount so one is I I think they

went even more over the top on all this stuff than we did in Tech like I I think it got even more extreme and I I think that you you can see that in a whole bunch of ways but the clearest way is the quota system the Dei quotas got even more extreme and so the major Studios if that's even possible the the major Studios literally put out Literally statements of literally like 50% quotas in all these jobs both in front of the camera behind the camera and again like I just you just a surface

reading of that is those are all to completely illegal but uh they they didn't hesitate for a second when when the fashion became to put them out the quota systems and the all all that stuff became very extreme and then obviously the content you know changed radically and you know became very you know kind Of ideological and politically loaded so you know that that went very over the top behind the scenes essentially at least in the last three years I think most of the people in positions of responsibility behind the scenes in private basically think

it went like it just all went way too far and they were saying that a while back and I I think part of that is just you know they were kind of aware of what had happened and They didn't like it they didn't like the consequences on the product that they make and then also part of that is th things just started to fail it's like one thing to make you know a bad movie or something it's another thing to make a movie that loses money right in in that system legitimately so because these things

are expensive to make and there have been there have been a long run now of high-profile projects that have tanked very badly for you know what Certainly look like reasons related what we're talking about and then you've also had these like anomalous successes and the big one of course was the Top Gun sequel which was just this like stratospheric home run which is like basically as Direct in 1980s throwback as you could possibly get and just like a good oldfashioned unabashed pro-american patriotic pro-military Pro like you know America's a source of form of moral good

in the world like Competence Merit hyper aggressive people being incredibly ambitious and doing great things like it just to sort of Contra the current times since you can get and it was this giant hit and everybody loved it and so there's that and so about a year and a half ago the sort of word went out maybe two years ago now it's been a little bit but the word went out the code in Hollywood for the last couple years has been Dad shows or Dad movies and you've probably Seen some of these and so it's

like the reacher show on Amazon is like a an example or the or the other one is with the terminal list the really dark na seals show I think also on Amazon and so the Dad shows has been like a double meaning it's something that you can say because you're like well dads are a market segment and so we we you know we need to as we streaming services starty to PE all market segments and so we need to go get the dads but of course what it Means underneath that is not woke right right

because the dads don't want like you know they don't want the lectures they don't want the preaching what they want is like to see like a guy going around like killing bad guys like you know like good oldfashioned good old fashion rightwing entertainment so the call has been out for a while for that and so you know it's like amazing because you have these you have these projects where you're Still seeing the trailers hit now for the projects that were like green lit over the course of the last five years where the projects are coming

out now and you can just literally tell it's like up 2019 oh 2022 you could just tell like exactly when the thing was written and pitched um by the politics um but you're also going to see I think a lot more just you know Straight Up Entertainment uh B Bob iger's obviously grappling you know Disney's in crisis because of this and this is Bob's public statement since he came back which is you know we just need to be in the business of entertainment we just need to like make shows that people want to watch which

is funny because like in Hollywood 2024 that's like a radical statement right that's like a heretical and every by the way and that's code right for non-woke and everybody knows that he can't actually say non-woke like he he can't admit that The term woke even exists as far as I can tell like these guys can't they can't actually talk about the thing but they can use the code right so you're two years behind us you we couldn't talk about it a few years ago but yeah yes exactly so yes the Doppler effect is Real by

the way that's another thing that I think is you you mentioned cultural changes that's the other thing I've been thinking a lot about that the Hollywood thing is an example of which Is I you know this is going to sound very hubristic but I I think it might be true and I I hear this a lot from my friends overseas which is I think it might be literally true that San Francisco is the cultural center of the universe H like I I think like San Francisco was first in on everything that we're talking about and

I think San Francisco maybe is first out yeah right and then Hollywood immediately followed and hly was going to work their way out And then the rest of the East Coast it was then you know came in after that it's going to take them longer to get out and then whatever happened in the Southeast or whatever is going to be on a lag after that and then the UK is going to happen two years after after that when Canada and Australia right and then it's you know ultimately so you're bullish it's going to happen even

there those places seem so hopeless and uh on a on a lag so the strong form of the Theory the strong form of the theory is take any principal you know take any of these preference falsification things take any any that everybody was absolutely required to say despite uh knowing that it was not true and just identify the date at which everybody in San Francisco decided that they believe that and then establish that on a timeline and then the date when that same belief was taken up in all these other locations as sort of the

wave Spread okay and and then you've got like a stack rank of like places over time and so the prediction would be the unwind happens in the exact same form that's funny right and so there's gonna be like there's G to be like schools in like rural I don't know rural Louisiana like eight years from now yeah that are gonna like get the memo and all of a sudden nobody's gonna have purple hair anymore right right it's just going to be like this incredible Long Reach lag Depending on your cultural proximity to San Francisco I

don't know if this is all literally exactly right but I'm very suspicious that this is how it's going to play out fascinating well will you see Elon just today recently supporting some of the sort of similar movements in Europe like he's not just trying to change what's happening in America but also you know similar movements around the world which I guess was similar to what Bannon was doing maybe eight years Ago or kind of yeah there's a similar sort of populism or whatever you want to call it and it'll be interesting to see if there's

enough momentum and energy in Europe for it to happen yeah there's a lot of so talking to a lot of friends of mine in Europe there's a lot of similarities and so I do think like this Doppler effect I was talking to a friend in Sweden actually so a few years ago actually it's after yeah no it's after 2020 a friend in Sweden and he said yeah It's weird he's like all of a sudden in Sweden we only talk about American politics right it's like everybody's completely obsessed with the 2020 election and he said like

literally never happened before like it was not what they did in 2016 or 2012 nobody had an opinion nobody in Sweden had an opinion on Mitt Romney right you know they probably thought he was a perfectly nice guy it just what they were focused on Swedish politics right right and he Said something happened something changed around 2020 where basically the narrative throughout Europe became became became American politics and so this is going the theory of these sort of cultural bow waves and so yeah I think that there's a lot to that now the circumstances are

different and there's a bunch of ways that we could talk about the differences that are important but I think there's some some similarities to it and then I would say like with Respect to what Elon is doing or work that we might do as we get involved in policy issues outside the US the other just very practical thing is the US is not an island and many other countries actually I mean first of all many American companies are multinationals and so if you're an American company if you're an American car company you are selling cars

in Germany and like what happens in Germany actually matters right for your business and they may do Things that are very destructive that you have to try to INF uence having said that there is also something that has become I think an even more pricious pattern that is actually I think developed into a real problem which is that the other countries in this specifically is the UK and then the major countries in Europe and the EU they now fully think that they can regulate us companies direct directly right and so they now think that they

Can pass these laws and they can enforce these laws in a way that it will force Global change in the part of the US companies and they do that for you know a lot of tech policy these AI laws I mean it's almost impossible to believe but literally the people rule Europe came out a couple years ago and said we know we now recognize that Europe cannot become the Innovation leader in AI so we therefore are going to become the the regulation lead right right which which At first you're like okay that's clearly insane because

like if you don't if you don't have any Ai and if you pass laws to drive it out of Europe which is what they've done anybody who's any good at AI with only a few exceptions people who are any good at AI in Europe are leaving and coming to the US um because it's just the AI act has made it impossible to function there on the one hand it's like okay that you might view that as self-destructive but they they do have a Point which is they they do say Global leader which is like okay

you if you're an American company and you want access to Europe like you have to enforce these policies and and and first of all companies are not necessarily going to enforce different policies by country they often end up just doing low lowest common denominator and then two is Europe increasingly just asserts that they have the ability to regulate for the world and and a great example that Is uh antitrust mergers and Acquisitions which is to if you're trying to do a tech merger of any size right now in the US you also need sign off

from the UK competition Regulators um and you need sign off from the EU competition regulators and so you have three primary Regulators by the way any one of them can veto an acquisition which is one of the reasons why Acquisitions have all all but stopped in Tech it's like even if the US regime doesn't do it one of The one of these other ones will and they are like fully activated to punish American te I mean they're extremely angry that the tech companies are all in the US and they've just you over the last several

years just really been out for blood so anyway point being like because the critique elon's already getting is how in arrogant inappropriate for an American like Elon to get involved in German Poli it's like that's one way of looking at it the other is Germany and the EU chose to become involved in American politics and are and have chosen to do things that are relevant to all of Elon companies no question and if they don't want people like Elon showing up in Germany maybe they should reconsider that yeah just while we're on the AI topic

was seg way back do you think open AI should be allowed to be a for-profit so this is one of those things where you kind of always wonder If you're there's sort of two realities there's Two Earths and you wonder which Earth you're on because like on Earth one there are very clear laws on this and this has to do with federal tax law and among other legal regimes and there are a lot of different ways in which somebody can inappropriately sort of cross the line with what they do with the economic value of of

a nonprofit and you know historically uh in the US when you cross those lines you go to jail Somebody who have Cons with or hijacks or misappropriates or inappropriately leverages uh nonprofit for personal wealth that's like a absolute like but way you or I do it we're going to jail yeah right like I hope our friends visit us we're going to be in jail then on Earth two it's like maybe you can do whatever you want right and like you know YOLO right and like you know why not and if you don't like your this

or that or Whatever you just go ahead and do it and who knows see what happens and like I think this is one of those um right so you know if I'll just give you the very specific thing and not just I'm trying not to get too specific on open but just in general to your question like the idea of a nonprofit becoming a for-profit there actually is a legal regime in the US through which that can happen it does occasionally happen the usual scenario by the way historically Is hospitals where they start out as

nonprofits then at some point they become for-profits and the way that happens is you have to create a new for-profit company denovo from scratch and then you have to raise money to buy the assets in the nonprofit at their fair market value right and so if the nonprofit owns a hospital that's worth $100 million then to take turn that hospital in for-profit you have to create a for-profit you have to raise $100 million and buy the hospital and then at least in theory that you're not clean when you do that by the way the people

involved in the nonprofit very much cannot be the recipient of the money on the other side because that would be again sort ofing you know with corporate Resources with the resources of the nonprofit but you can do that so that those transitions can happen but you know hypothetically if you had a nonprofit that was worth $150 Billion it raises this interesting question which is number one do you need to do any of this or can you just YOLO it but like if you're going to try to do it by the book do you basically create

a new for-profit then do you go raise $150 billion in cash right to to to buy that thing out right or you know do you try to figure out some Theory under which it's actually not worth $150 billion even though you know dot dot dot like what's It worth and then again you're you're right back in tax law territory and then again you know the third rail is 100% that you can't you know none of that money can go to you and so this is a really good test it's going to be a good test

for the IRS by the way the California State Attorney General has oversight over this there's a variety of this is a potent enough a topic area with enough just nonprofits there's government scrutiny on nonprofits Because there's all kinds of ways that people try to siphon money out and they get the tax break and so they're actually quite sensitive to this and a bunch of different branches of state and federal government uh get focused on this then there's the other thing which is whatever happens here will be a precedent and the precedent is actually quite interesting

because if let's just say hypothetically there's a YOLO and the YOLO Works it will set a very interesting precedent because and again just think basic incentives if we could if Andre and herwitz could instead because we fund all of our companies it's actually really fun we call them unintentional nonprofits when they don't make profit yeah like they're Delaware SE corporations they just you know I mean they're not technically you understand they don't make money but anyway you get what I'm saying they are legally For-profits and we invest in them as a for-profit and you know

we invest in them using taxable money and that the returns that come out of it are are taxable and so forth if in the alternate scenario if we live on earth to instead what we would do is we would not do that what we would do is all startups would start out as 501 c3s right and so You' basically and the reason for that is the the funding then would come in and it would be a tax deductible and so you Would start a foundation that would basically make these things on on a tax deductible

basis you get the TA the tax credit for it which would be much more Capital efficient and then if they don't work you just it's just a charitable deduction that you've gotten the tax credit on and if they do work you YOLO and you flip it into uh being a for-profit and often way you go the precedent that is going to be set here is going to determine like you know Potentially a lot of how basically startup formation happens and a lot of what people like us do and you know I would just let me

H hypothesize that I don't think there are very many El in the political system that want people like me to be able to just like nakedly evade federal tax law and so I I suspect that some of these things are not maybe going to be quite as easy as people might think and and and normally when you have an AG grieved funer who gave Money to such a thing but didn't get upside you would just settle and you know give him a chunk of equity or something but when that person happens to be the wealthiest

person in the world and also has started a a different company in in the space perhaps there's no there's no amount of of equity or you no nothing that could be given that would uh inspire such a settlement so it would be interesting to see what happens but again I think that's all right but Again there might be an even deeper problem and I'm not a lawyer so don't take this you know for granted I would say double check this with Claude before you make any before you make any legal decisions but through Claude Esquire

but like I'm not sure that in I'm not sure they can just I'm not sure that a nonprofit that has taken a non a tax deductible donation can turn around and settle with a chunk of equity and a for-profit right like I think that in And of itself might actually not I I I would be surprised if that were even permissible again unless we're in the YOLO world where it's h whom and you know just yeah yeah yeah maybe that's maybe that's a YOLO right maybe every time I donate to a nonprofit now I can

hope that in the future some chunk of for-profit he comes back to me like yeah why not um so yeah my mental model of the IRS is that they'll never permit this to happen and the California AG Will never permit this to happen but you know it's like I said maybe we need a good cfish lesson now and then and so we'll see uh we we'll see who's mining the store go going back to the vibe shift one group perhaps that's either had the biggest Vibe shift or perhaps even responsible for the vibe shift in

some ways I'm thinking about Bill Amman and his work on universities is Jews post October 7th and a lot of Jews but not as many as I would have thought Became you started to support Republican Administration for the positive work that they've done towards Israel when Trump was in office and also in opposition to some of the negative work that the Democrats had done empowering Iran and other things um but you we also had this ation a while ago I believe even before October 7th where it's not just about which part supporting but also there's

this idea that some Jewish people are perhaps who who and Jews tend To skew I think more more leftwing at least in in America are perhaps confused because the very idea of Israel to the extent that they're pro-israel the idea of a Nation you know for people is perhaps antithetical to the left and I thought that was an interesting argument for Jews who are kind of wondering how to think of themselves politically do you want to comment on it sure so to start with just for clarification I am not myself Jewish yes I may be

the least Jewish person in the world you're you're a jefile you're I am I am I have a great deal of affinity yes and many many friends I occasionally indulge in a little speculation and hope that my Jewish friends will be very forgiving and will will cross check me when I get things wrong so um there's just been this incredible pattern a lot of people have seen this but there's just been an Incredible pattern among the Jewish people I know and just start by saying American Jewish people I know which is I think you know

like significant number of Jewish people I know after October 7th were absolutely shocked and horrified obviously first by the attack in Israel but then after that shocked and horrified discovered the people they thought were their allies in the US actually were not and that played out maybe most visibly on the college Campuses but it also played out inside a lot of companies and there was kind of this you know sudden discovery that you know kind of Dei as a movement is inherently anti-jewish in essence by definition it has to be for for reasons we can

talk about and it turns out that that it is and it turns out lot of the kind of Dei proponents are not shy about expressing that and making that clear so basically if people haven't been tracking this whatever you Saw what you know if you watch what happened to universities about a year ago just assume that's been happening in a lot of other a lot of other settings too and so that that's been a you know very I think rude awakening to to a lot of people we've talked about this is a debate that has

actually happened inside kind of Jewish say intellectual and political Society for a very long time there's this famous Jewish intellectual policy guy really brilliant guy named Norman poitz and he actually wrote a book like 20 years ago with this incredible title Why are Jews liberal you know this you know PR predates all of everything we've been talking about and he kind of went he actually went through this question and this argument basically in that book and basically predicted that it was just a matter of time until American Jews but and and then also Israel discovered

that basically the people who they thought Were their friends were probably not and the people who they thought were their enemies might well be their best friends by the way the other chart that gets passed around in s WhatsApp groups is Pew research did this uh incredible Pew research did you know just normally kind of super woke but they every every once in a while they do a piece of research that's like really revealing and it's always never quite clear if they understand how revealing it is they did This incredible we should post a link

to this they did this incredible survey that is a survey of religious groups in America about their opinions of other religious groups in America and so this is like I don't know whatever the ultimate Dave Chappel skit or something where it's just literally they segmented Americans by religion and then they ask them what they think of all the other religions right and it's just you know which is just like wow that would be Amazing and so they did this and part of the humor of it what happened is they had to be very careful which

religions they could include so like there's all these like weird gaps you know because there's all these like differences because I don't I'm not even going to speculate as to why they made the choices it's it's a subset of the of the choices because they they wanted to do a 2 by two grid and maybe there were some more inflammatory topics in there but They did the 2 by two grid and then they did they expressed it with a numerically as positive or negative sentiment you know basically what does group X think of group Y

what does group y think of group X positive or negative you know zero is the Baseline and then you know positive 10 means favorable by 10 points negative 10 negative by 10 points and so it turns out that the one that's just like I just I cannot stop I laugh so hard I start crying is it's Jews and Evangelical Protestants um and well so there's two funny ones so one is the Mormons just love everybody the funniest one is the Mormons are literally positive on every other group and then the other groups are like not

so sure but but it's just validation the Mormons are like the warmest hearted people in the world they're positive on every other group maybe so this why I love all my Mormon Friends so much but the other thing is the XY comparison of Jews and Evangelical Christians and the funny thing is Jews and America according to this survey Jews and America have a negative 40 view of Evangelical Christians and Evangelical Christians have a positive 40 VI of [Laughter] juice so it's it's one wow that's hilarious it's like the most polar and it's by far these

are like the most Polarized numbers on the chart like it's like an 80 point spread right in the two directions and so literally and I'm just going to cliche I'm I'm I'm going to cliche here for a second you've literally got you know I don't know Woody Allen in New York imagining there's some redneck in Arkansas who just thinks like Jews are terrible and the red neck in Arkansas is like I freaking love juice there's no way there's no way like If you could get them all in a room together I mean you know I'm

sure if you could get them all in a room together they would all love each other so much the numbers would all go to 100 but it's just this weird it's just this thing right and so anyway so this is this is one of I think great discoveries a lot of my Jewish friends have made which is like they're actually their best allies yeah American politics both for life in America and also to the extent that they Care about it which many do the sort of future of Israel their main Ally is actually like straight

up just a stereotypical Trump voter like by far right like if they drove through the Deep South everybody would love them yeah right m fente is in the Deep South there's maybe some online you know anti-semites but there like a tiny fraction of the PO none I was actually I mean I'll tell you another version of the story more serious version of the Story I was at a and this again it breaks your brain in terms of what you've been told these years but I was actually at I was a guest speaker at the last

Republican house offsite at the Green Brier North Carolina so this is all of the Republican house members to go off site and it's a closed thing there's no press and so it's literally Republican house members it's their spouses and then it's it it just happened to be I was a speaker so there Were two speakers back toback there were only two nonous members in the room or or spouses which was me and then the other speaker which who turned out to be the Israeli ambassador to the us and we were because we were both speakers

we sitting at the front table so I met him and talked to him for a bit and so I got to see him give his talk in front of the House Republicans and it was this is probably 9 months ago so this is you know obviously post October 7th but with And everything is still tense but you know everything was like super tense back then as well and he gave this incredible talk on what's happening in Israel and it was the most palpable display of like uniform unanimous love like I think I've ever been in

a room like the congressman and their spouses and one after the other got up and spoke and they just like this this tremendous outpouring of like we love you all so much and we we're behind you and we Support you and we'll do whatever you need and tell us what like it's just this incredible level of like love and support obviously it's not obviously there are a lot of Democrats who are also very pro Israel but like this actually happened at the same time the university stuff was happening and so it was it was such

a stark kind of lustra of difference and so I don't know maybe this has always been the case I don't know maybe things are you know tectonic Place are shifting maybe the whole Dei thing just got so intense that it kind of Knocked this stuff off kilter another theory is you know it's now been the last Holocaust Survivors are are passing away now you know they're they're like literally in their 90s and the last World War II veterans are are passing away and so you know maybe there's a generational thing here which is just the

memory of World War II and the Holocaust is fading and and everybody's Just naturally going to recalibrate what they think on things because they're not going to have that as sort of the foundational kind of memory of the creation of the state of Israel so like this all seems very open now you know you as you said like we have a lot of friends who you know like Jewish friends who are it's not like that all of a sudden they're like hardcore Trump supporters or something but um well and let me also say like this

goes back to What we talked about earlier like there certainly some Jewish Americans who were not Trump supporters who are or something like that but also you know I think it'd be for the country I think it'd be great if you know if a fairly you know if a fairly large number of American Jews also stay in the Democratic party and help the Democratic party kind of get back back to sense and so may maybe that's the other thing that will happen right and by the way and and I don't want to speak for any

of these guys but I think the you mentioned Bill Atman but also Mark Rowan yeah and these guys who became these sort of board members and major donors to these universities we started to see the amount you know we saw what it meant when guys who are that respected and are that significant to those institions have the real power of moral weight behind them right they can really start to change things and so we you know We'll see what happens maybe that continues yeah it's interesting another perhaps diagnosis of why this it was the way

that it was is that you know sometimes the people who are your friends aren't the people who you want to be your friends so to use the Woody Allen example like yeah maybe the redneck likes him but he doesn't want his love he wants the love of Hollywood and you know even if they're uh sort of you know less Pro isra In that way so maybe as the cultural culture changes in the way that we were talking earlier about what's cool what's high status maybe that will influence things as well and make it easier to

to to switch one thing I also just want to comment you know we talked about in our last interview a year ago how SBF in a famous Tyler Cowan interview talked about how because he's a utilitarian he would keep doubling taking the odds double or nothing of you know do you bet The world and even risk it all if there's a positive EV it feels like in his own way Elon has done his own version of of of going Allin multiple times of course when he started his companies going into debt and taking immense risk

on all of his previous gains but also most recently in the election there was that interview with Tucker Carlson where he was joking if Trump doesn't win am I ever GNA see my kids again or what what's gonna happen What's gonna happen to me are they gonna try to take me in jail just was he taking a a massive risk and what do you make of this of his behavior to just keep going all in um and just keep betting yeah so you know the joke online has been that this is obviously not his first

time through the Sim exactly right this is like Bill Murray and Groundhog Day having like you know there all these calculations online for how long Bill Murray was it was Repeating days in gr Hog Day and and online and it's like the consens it's like if you add it all up it's like 30,000 years yeah and he's just been like running every experiment every day to kind of see what works best and so it looks like he's doing it effortlessly and El kind of the same thing which is just like at least for the last

several years it's just like he just tou everything he touches works just been an extraordinary run you know how it Started I mean he Peter teal talks about how who worked with them at PayPal talks about how when Peter said he was going to write a book at one point about the PayPal experience and he said the chapter about Elon would be called the man who knew no risk right he's just like flat out just like missing the wrist genan like I don't know though I really struggle with that because there's this real question around

like taking risk you know because Like you take risk every time you like step out into this across the street it's like take risk this a sort of conventional view is you roll the dice and maybe it goes one maybe it goes the other like what the great Founders tend to do and you're like that and I'm like that and I think everybody we know is like is like yeah when you start a company or try to do a new thing like there there is risk but what you spend all of your actual time doing

is trying To take the risk out right right and so you are trying as hard as you possibly can to figure out all the different things that can go wrong and all the things that are inadequate you know for the challenge ahead and you're trying to like get in front of those things and fix those things before the risk kills you right you're trying to take the risk out out and and I often Andy R taught me years ago this idea that I call the Onion theory of risk this is his idea But I can't

remember if you came up with the name but it's sort of the idea basically is you can think of a company as like on day one it has every possible risk right so it has team risk and product risk and Market risk and pricing risk and margin risk and competitive risk and Regulatory risk and then basically what you're trying to do as a Founder like one of the ways the conventional way of think about what you do as a Founder is you're trying to like Get things down to hit Milestones but the other way of

thinking about it is those things if you're doing it right they're peeling layers of risk of the onion and basically success in a startup one way to think about it is when you've eliminated all the risk right You' figured out something to do that solves every single one of those risks and so and we often you know we often analyze companies this way and so you know one of one of the things that Elon is really Really good at is doing that you know he's really really good you know he identifies St for team risk

okay I'm just going to go hire all the smartest people in the world it's like okay you know can we ship the product well I'm just gonna Hammer you know I'm just going to be involved every step of the way every week and make sure that we ship the product is the product going to be good well I'm going to be the guy who beta tests the self-driving thing and You know the news software patches are going to download to my Tesla first and write every single thing or you know the government is threatening to

regulate me out of existence oh I know I'll go you know I'll go do what I'm doing you know with with the new government and so you know a way to think about it is it's the reverse is he he's actually reducing risk every step of the way and I think that a plausible telling of the Elon story in the fullness of time is that You know each of the things that he does over time with his companies and now more broadly is everything about it is taking away layers of risk from the ultimate goal

and by the way The Arc there is particularly compelling since the ultimate goal is quite literally Mars yeah um right and so the way to think about it is what if you know think about the ark as basically the goals to get to Mars that to get to Mars is every I mean it's every possible risk in the World for doing anything right getting to Mars and so how do you strip away all those risks right and so how do you you know okay we're going to need to like build a lot of stuff on

Mars how do you do that well we need robots Okay we're gonna do that how do you need like what's going to control the robots we need AI it's just step after step after step after step taking risk out so I I think ironically he might be one of the greatest risk reducers at this point in History I I love the the Tweet about how it would make more sense for John G to take over the government rather than just concede it and go to some other country so so Alish shrug which by the way

so atas shrug is this incredible so atas shrug to start with I actually didn't read atas shrug until like four years ago it was weird when I was a kid this is the truth when I was a kid I read the Fountain Head and I was like all right it didn't resonate with me at All because it's all about like Artistic integrity and like get like basically pissy over artistic compromises and like burns down his own buildings or tears down his own buildings I'm like well that's absurd like no that's not so it didn't resonate

and I always heard about outlas Shug I never read it and then my friends kept telling me no no no no you you like you need to read it because we're literally living in it right now I was like all right fine and so I started The audiobook and I was like I literally would just sit for hours just I it's just like it's so incredibly Vivid you know the story that it tells and now I understand the negative reaction that it gets right which is it is just absolutely unabashedly Pro it's to start with

it's pro-america right which is of course enough to you enough to get it critically condemned forever but it's unabashedly Pro capitalism it's Pro Enterprise it's pro- industrialism it's Pro energy it's Pro building things it's Pro it's like Pro all it's Pro Merit it's pro trade you know it's Pro all the things that the you know modern Academy literary establishment is against and it's just an incredible painting of that and then the other thing that's just like utterly shocking is the degree to which the villains are all real yeah right and you I'm sure you've done

this like you you can just go down the Wikipedia entry of like the villains and You're like oh yeah I know that I know I know Ellsworth I know Elsworth tuy and by the way I know you know Ellsworth tuy also we don't have to say who it is but we both have the same name in our in our heads exactly um and so I know these people and then the two most amazing you know the sort of equipo of the whole thing the two characters ultimately you know one is John G who's the for

people hav he's the great industrial genius who basically Essentially goes on strike he goes on strike he literally goes on strike and creates a whole separate I'm going to spoil it he creates his whole separate you know World isolated out from the rest of the world called G gch and you sort of takes all the world's Geniuses and pulls them out of society and then but so that's one character but the other character is that do you remember this Eric the other character is the character of the United States President and the character United stat

I might get the name wrong is it was a deliberately vague name but it's like Mr Johnson yeah and the thing with the character of Mr Johnson because all of the characters in that novel are like incredibly vividly drawn all the good ones and all the bad ones like they have these incredible personalities they're Larger than Life they're like these superhero like figures the one exception is the president of the United States is Mr Johnson who's deliberately painted basically as a non-entity like he barely even exists and like he's basically just a figurehead of this

just like totally screwed up system you know this government that's completely out of control that's like crushing private Enterprise just you know trying to impose socialism doing all the worst things it could possibly do but the guy in charge is like the the exact opposite of like Alex Luther he's just like a Complete nobody completely interchangeable and anybody else could be in that job Mr Smith could be in that job it wouldn't matter at all and every time he's in the novel it's like he's not even a character he's just like this complete zero right

now I don't know just like hypothetic this would never happen of course in our world for real but just hypothetically imagine that someday we had a president where literally it's like he doesn't even Exist like is he awake is he asleep is he alive is he wandering around the West Wing in his bunny slippers like who knows now that would never happen in real life no don't know of course not no but if it ever did it would be this character in this novel right um and so like her novels are so unrealistic right that

would never Happ exactly um and so can't even finish a sentence Um and everybody just lies about it oh my God so anyway both of those characters like you know maybe those characters you know like okay but like that's not like the president character might be real but like the actual John G would not do it John G did the as John G would do what elon's doing right the exact opposite of the John G plan and for I'm gonna spoil the novel like in the end of the novel I'm G to spoil and it's

actually very poignant which is Basically all the Geniuses basically just go to G Gulch and they basically go into seclusion and they basically wait for industrial civilization to collapse and for the rotten system that rules it to basically cave in under the theory that then they'll be able to like come back out and fix it properly and basically you know basically prove to the normal man that he actually needs you know these sort of industrial super Geniuses And So It Ends very poly with Like literally the lights going out right like literally the lights of

New York like start to Blink out right yeah and again it's like okay like you could say like that's like really unrealistic of course except that's like literally what's happening in Europe yeah right like the prices of energy and your price of energy what is it in the it price of energy in Scandinavia is like up like 20x this week it's like you get these crazy things and then the price of Energy is so high in the UK and in Germany now that they're both in literally Germany is deindustrializing right the the price of energy

in Germany is so high that literally they're shutting they're literally shutting down the factories right and if this keeps going if the trends continue they they will end up en rolling blackouts and by the way California we have our version of that we've been through you know phases we have our own rolling blackouts Which is remarkable but it's like okay that's one option if you're John G but the other option is no you just go do what needs to be done and the there's actually a character in Atlas Shrug that actually does that or tries

to do that which is the Dy tager character and in the end she's ultimately convinced by John G that she should actually also give up um but elon's like the John G character that decided the opposite of of giving up he just decided to take on The bigger and bigger challenge to make sure the problem gets fixed and I don't know it's like the old line used to be like the thing with ir Ran's novels is the the heroes are fake but the villains are real and you know that might be wrong like we might

actually every once in a while get a randan hero and and that point maybe a couple points let or a couple more questions let you get out of here but this idea of some people have said something like oh you know the Sila Valley Vibe shift is so hypocritical because a few years ago they were saying you know get out of politics and now everybody's you know in politics and I think the easy response to that is well a few years ago sort of all this activism in our companies were destroying our companies and now

or this past administration all these sort of crazy capricious arbit overbearing regulations we're killing our companies and so we're doing this sort of self From the company's perspective company best interest thing of hey it was let's get that get rid of politics in our a few years ago but let's get more involved in the political system as a way to protect our companies yeah so look I think you mentioned earlier I've been quoting there's an old Russian joke proverb Soviet era which is you may not be interested in politics but politics is interested in you

and so look I was in and out of politics in sort of the Traditional light fashion mostly as a Democrat from 1994 through to whatever 2016 I won't do the long version I just kind of assume you just have you're just a you're just kind of a good person you're a good Democrat you make money you give it away it's everything's great you know so I was around it but like never really centrally involved and and frankly it didn't really matter like it didn't your point like it didn't really impinge on our companies that much

like No no there was never a government policy about the router like or the database right Oracle never had there were never hearings on Capitol Hill at Oracle saying what data is being stored in your database Mr Ellison like that it wasn't politically Salient in that way you know it just we all or at Le I just thought you could take it for granted that you could kind of be tangentially involved if you wanted to be or wanted to argue about Immigration or something but you didn't you certainly didn't have to and you could spend

your entire life being blissfully removed from it and it was totally fine and then yeah like to your two points like basically like no it turns out politics is interested in us and and yeah that that took two forms one is it took the form of this very specific kind of activism inside these companies this started to really wreak havoc and then it took the form of an Administration that just decided to be like extremely destructive like they just woke up one morning and they just decided to be destructive and they just decided to do

everything they could to try to wreck American Tech and American startups and I understand like I try to channel the other guys thought process and I understand the sort of this sort of extreme kind of anti- markets anti-tech anti Free Speech kind of ideology that got all consumed all these People but like they really acted on it they ended up a lot of power and they caused a lot of damage um and so this very much is like a war that was brought to us and I I don't want to speak for Elon but I'm

certain he you know feels the exact same way I'm certain this is the last thing that he ever wanted to do he'd be much happier if he could spend all of his time working on Mars but it turns out the road to Mars requires yeah well and actually it's actually really Interesting the Mars thing is actually really funny very interesting which is it it turns out to actually get to Mars there's only specific Windows because because of the rotation the planets have to be in alignment they have to be close enough where you can actually

get there and there's only a launch according to Elon there's only a launch window like every two years and so a bad Administration with bad policy can basically set Mars back four years very Easily by just preventing those you know two launch Windows and so it turns out the road to Mars you know requires going through the US government it turns out the road to flying cars requires going through Twitter yeah right like you know flying cars this last Administration you know basically outlawed the American drone industry um and guaranteed that China would win right

this kind of administration that we've been living with is certainly never going to Legalize flying cars I mean not a chance in the world and so it turns out if you want flying cars you also need an Administration that's actually also prot Tech and so it turns out yes it turns out they promised us flying cars and we needed to get 140 characters before we could get the flying cars it just is what it is yeah or to quote you from you know 15 years ago or so you know software ate the world it started

with all the parts that we could do digitally In the world of bits but then once we approach the world of atoms and of course in fintech too we faced you know regulatory headwinds that we weren't used to and so in order to actually build our companies we we had to to to get much more involved yeah what shocked me so much over the last four years which is I you know Peter and I Peter teal and I've had this long running debate about you know his thesis on Innovation and we actually kind of agree

For the most part or I would say I've come around to his point of view on most things but I think what he would say that I would agree with is innovation in Adams has basically been made illegal over the last 60 years innovation in Bits good news it was allowed to continue but that's not enough like just just bits is not enough I always tried to make the argument you could get more done with bits than he thought and thinking in the future about things like AI but then you know and then I just

sort of assumed and again this is based on everything I had seen over 25 years or whatever of exposure to the government I just assumed that the status quo of all right Adams are illegal but at least bits are legal would just continue and then these people decided to try to make bits illegal and like you know and again they just like voluntarily one one one morning woke up and decided to do that And they came at bits in the form of crypto and in the form of fintech and in the form of AI and

then they were coming for the very Foundation of even the software business model in the form of unrealized capital gug taxes yeah and so yeah and at that point if they're able to eliminate having eliminated Innovation at ads if they were able to also eliminate Innovation and bits like we're done like we're done economic growth stops right Society goes into Decline economy certainly stagnant growth will lead to negative growth all politics for the rest of our lives are zero sum the country becomes an incredibly impoverished bitter place and the lights start going out you like

you just like you step by step by step you can just project this forward it's just Crystal Clear what'll happen and it's literally happening in Europe you can actually see it happening in Europe and like so like The like policy development for the United States has become very simple it's do the opposite of what Europe does right it's just shocking it's like Europe is like a giant Jim Kramer right it's just like it's like Scott Galloway yeah Scott Gallow Paul Krugman just do the opposite just do the opposite and so anyway maybe I missed all

the drama of the last year maybe just that Central fact is becoming clear maybe that's the Turning Point well maybe the last point I leave so one is a question which is first reflection which is in the Barry Weiss interview with Peter teal she says hey there's a lot of people who think that Trump has exhausted The A Team from the last Administration what's left is sort of the C team and the D team is that true and then Peter says not at all which is both a reflection of the of what he thinks of

the past administration but also the type of talent that that's that's coming into Office right now and also add a question to that which is FDR 2.0 the best analogy for what's possible or or what is the best uh analogy of of of what's possible yeah this has been a giant upside surprise I assume that the appointments would be good but like in the last like six weeks I've just been shocked at how good they are like absolutely shocked including by the way today a whole run of appointments today that were just like fantastically good

Um the group chat yes yes yes exactly and a bunch of people we wish were in the group chat yeah so look I I think a couple things I think one is to the credit of the Trump team there were actually a there were a lot of young people in the first term between first Trump term second 16 to 20 second term starting now in the first term there were a lot of young people in there who kind of got educated maybe the Hard Way like under enormous pressure And many of those people are now

maybe they were in their early 30s now they're in their 40s they're very spun up you know they know what to do they've been through the process they understand how to get things done they understand the kinds of ways people are going to try to stop them and then they have 10 years of maturity and they're ready to go and many of those people people are in there and they're really good um and then by the way there's another set of young People there's another set of young people in their 20s and 30s volunteers who've

come in who I've met who are just extremely good very sharp then there's Eric what you were alluding to which is the people from the outside who are coming in I are pound-for-pound like it's the best it's the best Staffing I've ever seen it's like light years I mean number one it's like a million times better than the last four years right but it's like better it's clearly Better than the administrations that you know my first exposure was in the beginning of the Clinton Administration I've kind of been exposed sense and this is clearly the

best team by by by Leaps and Bounds I think you have to go back to 1930s FDR when you know FDR put out the bat signal and all these incredibly talented young people showed up and created and ran all these departments or maybe you have to go back and I mean this seriously maybe you have to go back To Lincoln with the Team of Rivals with these incredibly capable people but even you know just today two of my partners who you know Shri R Krishna and Cooper who are both amazing and then um who else

was the Michael Kos is amazing yeah oh Emil Michael into defense Steve fineberg by the way one of the Legends of private equity and an incredibly capable person going in to be deput deputy secretary of defense I forget who there was like three other just Incredible people today um and then over the course of the last like month you know the people Jay bataria going in run NIH and Marty Macker for FDA and Jim Jacob hellberg Jacob hellberg you see God I'm so excited Ken so Ken Harry um Ken Harry is the new ambassador to

Denmark I think and his specific assignment is to buy Greenland so so so the joke online Trump you know variously has said we should buy Greenland we should reclaim the Panama Canal and then we should make Canada the 51st state and the joke online today was no no people are misinterpreting it he doesn't actually mean that this is just the art of the deal this is just his this is his Roba doe because what he actually just wants us to buy England so good which by the way he just appointed this is another thing I

think this is a genius moovie he appointed a guy I actually know Mark brunette who is literally the creator of reality Television and literally the producer of the of The Apprentice is going to be the US Special Envoy to the UK wow Mark being a Brit by by background long sense long sense American eyes but you know one of the great think and whatever people think about reality like one of the great thinkers of business and media and it's just like an incredibly brilliant polymath incredibly capable guy just like like a mark Bernett is just

at a level of Firepower just like Way Beyond the the kinds of people who normally get pulled into these things and then even people in the prior Administration who in these some special roles Rick grenell I think is the special special Envoy I think to Ukraine I believe or maybe like to like the trouble spots he's amazing who else is in there it's just like it's just this it's just this list and then there's a bunch more that are in process and if they land they're equally good and so It's yeah Michael Anton into the

state department David saaks into the White House and then who else into the state department oh this guy Bridge Colby into the state department today who's one of the best foreign policy thinkers of our time incredibly brilliant guy yeah and so it's just like pound-for-pound these people are just off the charts so yeah I no longer believe I can predict politics but I cannot imagine a better team than this and it's extremely exciting yeah Well they not of optim is a great one to end on Mark as always it's been a fantastic conversation thanks so

much for coming on the podcast good awesome fantastic thank you [Music] Eric hey everyone Eric here at turpentine we're building the First Media outlet for tech people by tech people we're the network behind the show you're listening to right now we have a slate of hit shows across a range of Topics in Industries from our Ai and investing cluster of podcasts to shows that drive the conversation in Tech with the most interesting thinkers Founders investors and influencers like econ 102 with Noah Smith we're launching new shows every week and we're looking for industry leading sponsors

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