All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Antonio Gracias: DOGE updates, Voter fraud arrests, Finding 'Big Balls' | All-In Live from Miami
Wed, 21 May 2025
(0:00) The Besties welcome Antonio Gracias! (0:30) DOGE updates: Government complexity worse than imagined, how to fix it (9:00) Talent acquisition: How Elon attracted 10x engineers for DOGE, a better model for civil service (15:54) Voter fraud findings: illegal immigrants voting in elections, building a zero-defect voting system (22:12) Fixing immigration in the US Thanks to our partners for helping make this happen! Check out OKX: https://www.okx.com Check out Circle: https://www.circle.com Follow Antonio: https://x.com/AntonioGracias Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect
Chapter 1: What are the latest updates on DOGE?
So if Twitter was like the JV league, this is like the NBA. It's the most complex thing I've ever seen.
How is he able to find big balls? Where do they show up? Do they just apply out of the blue? I mean, where do these guys come from? You found some people who were illegal immigrants who registered to vote?
Yes, this is actually true. Every vote that is cast illegally in America nullifies the vote of an American citizen.
So Antonio, we know you're very busy because you decided, like a couple of our other friends, to take a second job working in our government for 100 or so days. You can give him a round of applause for that. You know, Trump is a unique individual in all the world. There's maybe polarizing in some ways, but one thing that's not polarizing is Doge.
I think everybody wants to see waste, fraud, and abuse and controlled spending in government. Maybe there's some questions about how fast it's going, but we all know you and Elon like to go, you know, at a brisk pace. You laid back and you joined a little later in the process. Like a stat, you joined maybe what, 15, 20 days ago?
I've been there for eight weeks.
Eight weeks. Okay. So it's been like, yeah, 60 days. And you went public with it maybe a couple of weeks ago.
Yeah. I was in Woodlawn, Maryland for the first four weeks. So you didn't know I was there.
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Chapter 2: How does Elon Musk attract talent for DOGE?
Yes, stealth. So how bad is it? How messed up is our government? How insane are the processes? You're a process guy. We both worked on the Twitter acquisition and the transfer there and did all the zero-based budgeting. I mean, maybe compare and contrast it to that, which was maybe one of the most horrific corporate entities I've ever seen in my life and how that was being run.
It was tough. Oh, let me start by thanking you guys. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It's great to be down here and see everybody. And let me also say that it's an honor to serve America. Like, whatever I am doing, I am grateful to be able to do it. I'm grateful to my partners for allowing me to do it and my clients for supporting it. And it truly is an honor to be there.
There's many great people in the government trying to help. So let me just start with that. Okay. Yeah, please. Yeah.
This is sacrifice, right? You're taking time out of your day job.
It's definitely sacrifice, but it really, I feel very grateful that I have the capacity and 30 years of training in lead operations that I can be useful. You know, that feels very, I feel gratitude. Yeah. How bad is it? So if Twitter was like the JV league, this is like the NBA. It's the most complex thing I've ever seen. I have in our office in DC, I have a, I've mapped now as an example,
the entire system of basically from the border to the benefits programs. It's about a 40-foot board, and it looks like a Basquiat. I mean, it's an incredible, like, spaghetti-gram of stuff. And, yeah, I've never seen anything so complex in my life.
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Chapter 3: What are the findings on voter fraud in the US?
So the answer to your question is it's worse than I thought, much, much worse than what we saw at Twitter Now X. And America, Americans, and all of you, we deserve better.
Okay. If we were to... And I'm sure Shamath has some questions in Freebury, but if we were to look at $1 spent by our government, waste, fraud, abuse, how many pennies of the dollar is it? If you had to, just based on what you've seen so far, a range.
Here's what I'd say. If you go into any company, any company you guys have ever seen that is not super well run, it probably is like easy cut 15%. Easy, easy, easy. This is where the trillion dollar number came from, 15% of $7 billion. I think if we had the political will, you'd easily get that 15%, no problem, not without any problem at all, and without cutting the core entitlement programs.
So it's definitely there. The question is, do people want to do it or not? And remember, every dollar we take, we are taking from an NGO or a Beltway consultant.
know it's it's actually the people are screaming about this because we're taking money from them uh and it is whatever you read the news media i gotta tell you it isn't true i mean um the cots i think it's 88 of the people that have left the government have taken packages the packages are very lucrative uh there's you know nine months or so of severance um and they're they're voluntary so yeah i tell you i'd also say the people that work in government who are good there's lots of good people in the government that i have met and appointed this at all this stuff they deserve better
Okay, imagine trying to be a civil servant. You want to do the right thing. You're working there because you care about America and you're in this like massive bureaucratic morass with all this stuff on top of you. And man, I've seen like, I've seen OIG reports where the people have reported to OIG like sex trafficking and they turn it in and nothing happens. Like literally nothing happens.
Okay, so that's very frustrating and they stick it out, they keep going and they keep working hard for America. So I think it's not just about the cost cuts, it's about the culture. Like the culture change of allowing good people who are in the government to understand that someone's listening,
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Chapter 4: How can we fix the immigration system in the US?
that when they want to make improvement change, or when they find fraud, waste, and abuse, they can do it, and there's an avenue now to do it. I think that's actually going to be one of the most important lasting thing we leave, is this idea that your voice matters in the government, that there are good people in the government, and when they want to do the right thing, there's a way to do it.
And you got people coming back to work in the office.
I have to tell you, so we have been pilloried often in the press for subscription administration where I started. And here are the facts. When I got there, just like at Twitter, the parking lot was empty. And I'm talking about stadium-sized parking, okay? Empty. The office was empty. There was no one in the corporate office, the headquarters office in Woodland, Maryland.
And then because we follow our process of mapping from end to end of the system, we went to visit a couple offices. I went to one myself. The one that I went to, there were about 20 people in the waiting room. There were seven people in the windows. Of the seven people, three had their shades half down.
Those people were taking phone calls because during COVID, they turned everyone into phone operators. What we learned is they were still running on COVID operations. So we have now, through our efforts and efforts of the interim administrator, brought everyone back to the office, and back to the offices in the field. We haven't closed one field office, not one since we've been there.
Everything you're reading about service levels is not true. What I saw, imagine how frustrating that is if you're waiting in the waiting room, you see seven windows out of 25 open, and three of the people are taking phone calls, and you're waiting.
I mean, talk about customer service. So look, in all the companies that we all run, we always talk about
using incentives to shape the outcome you want and i think you keep insisting which i think is right that civil servants by and large want the right things to happen that's why they chose to go and work for the government so what is the incentive we need to change is it a compensation incentive is it like what like what is it look i think the people that work in the government it's a normal distribution everything right it's two and a half million people the government plus contractors
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Chapter 5: What is the current state of government operations?
And some people are great, some people aren't great, and a lot of people in the middle. And the people in the middle react to the incentives, as you point out. I think the most important thing here is transparency of the metrics, because these folks aren't there for the money. Mainly, they're very good, because we're making money somewhere else.
The incentives we should create are transparency and some basic metrics. They know how they're doing. As an example, at Social Security, we were criticized for the web setup time. Well, it turns out web setup time has been better since we got there than after. Imagine we have engineers. And we've now published the metrics on the website publicly so people can see it.
So the engineering team now manage the website, can see that they're doing a good job or not doing a good job. And the public can see if they're doing a good job or not doing a good job. Financial incentives are always useful, but this is not just about money.
Like for example, if you look at Singapore, the Singaporean approach from Lee Kuan Yew was, let's create a government that is extremely empowered, but let's also make it quite small, let's make them more compensated, and let's try to find sort of an elite cadre of folks. Is that approach possible in the United States, or should we even think that we should try something like that?
I mean, Singapore is a unique experiment in the world. It's also a place where you never mind getting caned if you drop chewing gum on the ground. In America, we have a different level of I would say, of freedom and rights. We should strive for a civil service that is professional, well compensated, and mission-oriented. And that mission orientation is serving the United States.
And I think that gets back to, look, there are very good people that want a great thing, serve their country, that's why they're there. And I wouldn't make it about the money. I would make it about the mission. There are very good people that are there on mission. I've met them. They are the ones pointing all this stuff out to us.
Can you talk about, you guys went on Fox the other day with the Doge team. Big Balls. And Big Balls was there. We were talking about this backstage. All of those guys were like 12 years old. What is it about the role, the opportunity, the way it was presented that attracted this group of what were incredibly well-spoken, highly intelligent, clearly extraordinarily motivated individuals?
It's the sort of caliber of talent that all of us aspire to hire and, first of all, find. higher and then they're on the mission. Is it Elon's inspiration and the reach he has that made this happen? Is this a particular moment in American history?
Because I was looking at that table and I was thinking about like the founding fathers and the age of the founding fathers when they wrote the Declaration of Independence. They were all super young. And I was like, man, this is an opportunity to kind of rewrite how government operates in America today.
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Chapter 6: How can we improve government accountability and transparency?
And I think one of the disturbing things about the data and most controversial issues in America today is the border. Yeah. And why did Biden let so many people through the border? It was kind of a question if it was even happening. Should we trust these border encounter numbers? It doesn't seem real. And there's a lack of trust in the government.
One side is saying, hey, we let all these people in. There's 15, 20 million extra people here. in order to vote Democratic. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me since the Republicans have become the working party, but putting all that aside, you started looking at this and we had a discussion privately about, hey, are these people signing up to vote?
Because that would be an indicator that this theory that people were streaming across the border in order to vote, you found some people who were illegal immigrants who registered to vote? This is confounding.
Yes, this is actually true. So we have sampled a handful of states. And in those handful of states, we found people registered to vote. And we have found people who actually voted. And this is all being done by sampling, OK? So we are sampling DHS data.
and then have to go to the voter rolls, check the voter rolls, and then give that to HSI, Homeland Security Investigations, who goes and checks the voter record by subpoena and the voter and the cards you sign when you vote. We had already three arrests here in Florida, actually, and one indictment in New York.
And is that publicly known?
Yes, we posted it. The DOJ posted it.
But the media has not covered it. I haven't seen much about it.
So you're saying these are three individuals who illegally secured, or no, legally secured a social security?
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Chapter 7: What is the role of young talent in government reform?
Should we care more?
Yes, I want to separate the questions. I think people care more. My guess is everyone here cares a lot about this. I think for some reason the news media doesn't care more. Now, should you care? Yes. There's this idea like there's always a little bit of fraud, it's pervasive, it's not a big deal. Wrong. Here's the reality.
Every vote that is cast illegally in America nullifies the vote of an American citizen. It is your constitutional right to vote in America. And if we don't have a zero-defect system, we are violating your constitutional rights. And I will tell you, you deserve, the American public deserves, that we strive for a zero-defect system. We make medical devices in America with a zero-defect system.
We shouldn't make votes with a zero-defect system. If we don't strive for a zero-defect system, we will get a lot more fraud. This is why the real idea is so important. We should strive for this. And it doesn't matter if it's one vote.
It's easily solved with the last 15 states that don't require voter ID to simply do that. And that would pretty much end this debate, I think.
I mean, well, I want to tell you, there are states that do require ID. I think real ID will solve it. Because one of the things that our engineers are building, and it was already there, but they're cleaning it up and making it work properly, is a thing called SAVE. There's a database called Save that is available to the states.
In the Biden administration, they raised the price from, I think, about $1 an API call to $3 and change the API call, and all the states stopped using it. Save is a database that has the actual citizenship data for the entire country, okay? We're cleaning it up now and making the actual UI much better. If the states have real ID and they use Save, you'll solve this problem. And I cannot understand
Why a state would not do this?
Whose decision would it be to just change the cost of that API?
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