All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Google fires protestors, NPR chaos, Humane's AI Pin, Startup tax crisis, sports betting scandal
Fri, 19 Apr 2024
(0:00) Bestie Intros: Chamath recaps the Breakthrough Prize Ceremony, "High IQ foods" (9:49) All-In Summit update, Poker styles of Andrew Robl, Jason Koon, and Phil Hellmuth (14:38) Google fires protestors (35:08) Chaos and culture wars at NPR (40:43) Humane's AI Pin: Marques Brownlee's review, the Ex-Apple issue, polarizing reactions (1:02:28) Startup tax crisis: How a recent provision upended R&D deductions (1:12:39) Sports betting scandal: NBA player Jontay Porter banned for life, explosion of sports betting in the US (1:23:33) How to get better at chess, childhood Bestie schemes Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://twitter.com/Jason https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://twitter.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@all_in_tok Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://twitter.com/NoTechApartheid/status/1780278895058518468 https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/17/google-workers-arrested-after-nine-hour-protest-in-google-cloud-ceos-office.html https://www.notechforapartheid.com https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/17/24133700/google-fires-28-employees-protest-israel-cloud-contract https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1779914595156808045 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-11/ty-article-magazine/.premium/saying-what-cant-be-said-israel-has-been-defeated-a-total-defeat/0000018e-cdab-dba9-a78e-efef6ba10000 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-wins-gaza-battles-but-risks-losing-the-war-c6a3823f https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/19/middleeast/eisenkot-netanyahu-israel-war-politics-gaza-intl/index.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-APSXZy9UI https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-aid-workers-killed.html https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israel-created-kill-zones-in-gaza-anyone-who-crosses-into-them-is-shot/0000018e-946c-d4de-afee-f46da9ee0000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-15/ty-article/.premium/israeli-army-says-killed-three-hostages-mistakenly-identified-as-threat-in-northern-gaza/0000018c-6edd-dbd5-a39c-ffff08470000 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/world/middleeast/israel-idf-soldiers-war-social-media-video.html https://twitter.com/JustStop_Oil/status/1580883249228046336 https://www.npr.org/2024/01/24/1226035539/npr-ceo-katherine-maher-wikimedia https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178659563/our-mission-and-vision https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-extra/2024/04/12/1244456600/from-npr-president-and-ceo-katherine-maher-thoughts-on-our-mission-and-our-work https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/1780695504210567335 https://www.theinformation.com/articles/has-humane-created-the-next-iphone-or-the-next-google-glass https://humane.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TitZV6k8zfA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xWXRk3yaSw https://www.amazon.com/Anxious-Generation-Rewiring-Childhood-Epidemic/dp/0593655036 https://www.amazon.com/Nexus-Trilogy-Book-1-ebook/dp/B00TOZI7FM https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Therapy-Kids-Arent-Growing/dp/0593542924 https://www.wsj.com/sports/basketball/jontay-porter-banned-gambling-5dd9c1a8 https://nypost.com/2024/04/17/sports/how-jontay-porter-orchestrated-failed-nba-gambling-scandal https://dknetwork.draftkings.com/2024/1/31/24054415/lebron-james-joins-draftkings-football-sports https://www.espn.com/espn/betting/story/_/id/39563784/sports-betting-industry-posts-record-11b-2023-revenue https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/38386013/how-nba-new-rules-resting-stars-work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2huVf1l4UE
Tamak, did you go down to the breakthrough thing this weekend?
The breakthrough prize was amazing. It's like observing exotic animals in their natural habitat.
Well, a friend of mine who you hung out with down there called me last night to give me the breakdown on all the individuals he saw and what was going on with them.
I mean, he's like, I don't even know how Nat and I keep getting invited to this, but like to say we were outclassed is an understatement.
The people at that thing were.
What is it? Break the rewards?
The breakthrough prize. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't make it. I got invited to. It's so incredible.
Okay. First of all, shout out to Yuri and Julia. It is incredible. There were two moments where I cried. This woman goes up on stage to give an award to the people that had made this investment in cystic fibrosis. Yeah. And she says, my child was born with cystic fibrosis, and then my second child was born with cystic fibrosis, and then my second child died. She said that, I just burst into tears.
And then you present an award to the person that actually is helping them stamp out the disease. We celebrated the people that found the gene that caused Parkinson's. And then, yeah, I mean, the people at that is pretty incredible. It's in LA, right? They did it in Los Angeles? Yeah. I mean, like, look, Yuri Milner and Julia Milner, Zuck and Priscilla Chan and Anne Wojcicki and Sergey Brin.
Those six people are the ones that organized this breakthrough prize. And I think it's just modern version of the Nobel, which tries to really shine a spotlight on people doing really groundbreaking work in physics and math and life sciences. And so you get people that have just done things that are just very practical, and are very real.
And I think what they do is they make, frankly, these kinds of achievements much more high level in the sense that you're bringing together people from Hollywood and people from Silicon Valley and the awareness is up and it's just incredibly well produced. And yeah, it's really a cool thing to be a part of. But I mean, seeing some of these people are very intimidating. I sat beside Vin Diesel.
Oh, really? That was super cool. He is a super nice guy. And on the other side of me was someone that actually Sachs knows, Toby Emmerich, who was the chairman of Warner Brothers. So just talking to these guys was super cool. Moving it to Los Angeles was a great move.
Great idea.
Yeah, it's just, I was invited. I couldn't make it, so sorry. And thank you to Julia and- Yuri for inviting us again. But it's really great that they're giving it the celebration it deserves and making it, you know, like, dare I say, sexy and cool and hip to be a scientist and solve the world's biggest problems. I think it's just so awesome. And you're right, Sergey Brin and Wojciechowski
Sak and Priscilla and Julia and Yuri are the founders of the Breakthrough Prize.
The craziest thing is they give a youth Breakthrough Award. So the Breakthrough Prize is this beautiful globe. And then the junior winner gets like a smaller version, very appropriate. And it was a video of this kid in India who had won it a few years ago and then went off to MIT and then graduated. And then the video is of him coming back to Bangalore because his sister had won this year.
And he presented it to the sister. And all I could think of was, this is an incredible achievement by like a 16-year-old. And literally at the same time, my 16-year-old was like, dad, the chicken tenders from DoorDash have got arrived.
And I was like, I can't find my chicken fingers.
Rain Man, David Sack.
Dad, I said get me the spicy fries, not the regular Cajun fries. The girl that won it, Freebird, did something with Yamanaka Factors.
So it's like, it's really incredible and inspiring. But fortunately, don't worry, my 16-year-old was able to get the chicken tenders and everything was fine. Oh, okay, good.
Yeah, sure. You called ****** and rerouted it? I called ****** and said, ****** can't get his chicken tenders.
What do we do? It's hilarious. By the way, the other thing I'll say is the person that performed is really amazing, Charlie Puth. And the reason I say it is if you Google Charlie Puth, This guy, he's a young guy in his early 20s, I'm guessing. He is so talented. There's all these videos of Charlie Puth where he'll make a random noise, like he'll clink a Coke bottle with a fork.
And then he'll record it. And then he'll put it into these digital editing tools. And then he'll make like an entire five-minute song using that as the base, like as the basic building block. The guy is so talented. Anyways, it was a very cool event.
Fantastic. How are you doing, Sax? You okay, buddy?
I'm good. Let's get started.
There it is, folks. We're back. It's going to be a hell of a show.
Let's go. I got s*** to do. Don't waste time with your pointless banter.
That's why people tweet in. It's the banter.
It's the banter, bro.
How are you doing, Freebird? We got a little scene from the movie, Her. Wow. We're off to a strong start here. Look at all these contributions. I got a shrug from Freeburg. I got a grunt from Saks. Okay, let's get started from Saks. I don't talk about my backgrounds. Let's go. Anything good on the menu tonight, Shamath? I'm coming over for poker. I wanted to know if there's any. Octopus.
Oh, so the Greek comes back and you get the octopus.
You get the octopus. I think that Sean missed you. Yeah. He did. By the way, Sean experimented with some Greek cheese that you grill. That was pretty delicious. Oh, hooli. Hooli cheese. Hooli.
What is it? What's the plural of octopus? Is it octopi? Yeah. Aren't they like sentient creatures or something?
Hooli. Yeah. You know what? It's interesting you bring that up. I had a grilled octopus stand at one of our events, and somebody who is a conscientious consumer of calories lobbied me to take the grilled octopus off of the menu. I won't say who. For what? Wait, what? I got lobbied very strongly.
Not only is it deeply wrong to eat all the animals that you people eat and you will one day realize it or your children or your children's children will realize it. But octopus in particular have the IQ of four to eight year olds. They can actually sign, they can communicate, they can solve problems. You can watch YouTube videos on this. It's pretty incredible. They're amazing creatures.
It's also why in the movie, The Arrival, the future alien race is made out to be cephalopods because they're the most advanced creature that's likely to become a civilized form if humans didn't exist. I have a one word reaction to that. Yum.
Delicious. It's the IQ that makes it taste so good.
Oh, my God. That's dark. That's dark. You're saying the IQ is like the spice?
Yeah, it's kind of like the fat content. You know, it's kind of like the marbling. It's the marbling. It's the marbling of it.
That's dark. I don't know.
Oh, yeah. By the way, thanks, guys. Yeah, I'm fine. Yeah, I'm great. I'm feeling great. Yeah, the tooth is healed. I got the implant. You look like you've been eating well. Just only things with above 120.
Are you off the Wagovi or the, what do you call it?
Well, no, no. You know what I did was I got off the Wagovi so I could eat more animals. And now I'm getting back on it because I feel so terrible about how many, I was in Austin. I ate everything. Jake, let me ask you a question. Yeah, go ahead.
If you eat high IQ foods, does it make you smarter?
Absolutely. Absolutely. This is why the Greeks invented so many things. We invented math, plumbing, cities, democracy. All the great things the Greeks created comes from the fact that we ate so many high IQ creatures. Correct.
Are you able to be vegetarian? Were you able to find good vegetarian or veggie options in Austin? Talking to me? Yeah.
I mean, I see a vegetable and I push it away. I'm like, wait a second.
Jake, I was on a seafood diet in Austin. If he saw food, he ate it. Old joke, but.
It's not inaccurate. The barbecue in Austin is so spectacular. Terry Black's beef ribs. I had with a friend of ours, man, they're just dynamite. And then the salt lick brisket, Franklin's brisket. I mean, it is just extraordinary. Shout out to all my barbecue folks there and sorry for triggering.
Every mammal that wasn't buttoned down, J. Cal battered in barbecue sauce and
The thing that took out the rib was the bison. I'm sorry I was away. Apologies to the audience. It took out a tooth. You know, as far as I feel, worth it. What does a bison rib taste like?
Does it taste like beef?
Man, the beef ribs are very tender. The bison's got a little more chew to it. It's got a little more texture. And they let this thing go at the salt lick for like 12 hours. And they're just barbecue saucing it forever. It's a little chewy. And so that's what took out the tooth. But great job, Freeberg, on moderating. The episode was fantastic.
Yes, I was chomping on the bit quite literally, Sax, to talk about some stuff. Chomping on the bit to the point that I shattered a tooth. But I am back, and I have so much energy. I missed you guys. I actually missed y'all. Freeberg, so much good stuff happening with the summit. And I'm delighted that John is doing all this work. You are doing all this work. And I can just sit back and enjoy it.
So tell us, is there an update on the summit?
Yeah, you're just collecting your coupon. But yeah, we had within 72 hours, I think we had more applications than we have seats, but we're still leaving applications open. And in the next week, we'll start to respond to people. So basically, if you're interested in going to the summit, Sign up now. Get your applications in this week. Apply early is the key.
Yeah, because it's going to be done in order of when it's received. And they're going to start processing applications this week. We'd love to get everyone that wants to show up, show up. And if you went in the past, your registration window is wrapped up this week. So...
Okay, so alumni automatically get in? Alumni automatically are in. Okay, and then tell us about the scholarship because I'm getting bombarded and everybody who's an up and coming All In fan. We're going to announce it in a couple of weeks.
So no plan yet, but there will be, yeah, we'll still do scholarships because I think they were super successful and helpful to people that otherwise couldn't afford the ticket. I know it's expensive this year, but the reason was we actually spent a lot more per person last year than people actually paying for their tickets.
It's less than 10.
Yeah, we're trying to get the price so that we can make the same break even. And we're going to have scholarship tickets with the balance. So it should be awesome.
I saw a couple of speakers come in. There's two.
Not talking about it yet. Not talking about it yet.
Oh, come on. Can we just tell the two speakers who said yes? Come on.
Not yet. Not yet. We'll do a big announcement.
The Saks landed a big speaker, and I think it's going to be awesome. In a week. In a week, we'll announce a bunch together. Listen, well, one thing I don't want to wait on is today's docket, because it is unbelievable. Welcome, everybody, to episode 175. That's right. It's episode 175 of your favorite podcast, and... The largest and most listened to podcast in the world, officially.
Episode 175 of the All In Podcast starts right now. And, ah, I've got so many feelings about this one.
Is that the largest, most listened to podcast in the world?
I'm manifesting.
Oh, you're manifesting.
I'm manifesting, Chamath. Just like Phil Hellmuth is the world's greatest poker player. And then we watch Robo roll over him. Is that a new word that narcissists use for lying? Manifesting? No, it's just like, you know, the world's greatest poker player. And then we see Phil Hellmuth get dominated by Jason Kuhn.
Just so you know, tonight is a murderer's row and Hellmuth is flying back. You saw the lineup. I'm very excited to see what happens today. Is Jason Kuhn coming or no? Yeah.
I mean, Kuhn and Roble and then the world's greatest Hellmuth playing is so great to watch. It's like a meta ego battle. It is. And those, you know, it's interesting. Two of those three guys are like the most humble guys you would ever meet in your life. Am I correct?
In your life. Just you could not be more low-key and self-effacing than Roble and Kuhn for how good they are.
And if you were honestly going to rank the three of them in a high-stakes cash game, could you just handicap it for the audience? Because we're in the lucky position, you and I, to play with these three epic players in the world. Break down how they play in a home game like ours.
So I would say the most dynamic
would probably be Robo because Robo has the most experience playing super, super high stakes cash.
I think Kuhn is the most precise and like true to GTO.
Hard to exploit. I mean, Kuhn is impossible to exploit. Impossible. No mistakes. No mistakes. No mistakes. Robo knows how to gamble in certain spots. Kuhn knows how to be unexploitable. And the third player is Falamuth. And the third person is Helmuth. And Helmuth just loses his mind.
It is so... No, the thing with Helmuth is he's capable, unlike anyone I've ever seen, of folding in spots that are... And he's correct, by the way. I've seen Helmuth fold ace-king in spots that none of us would ever do it. I've seen him fold kings in spots that are basically impossible. So Helmuth is able to get these soul reads on people that I think... are amazing. Yeah.
But look, the higher and higher the stakes get, the more and more I think Robo will be comfortable and Kuhn will just go to a playbook that he knows and trusts.
I am so excited to be back at the game tonight. All right, listen, the docket is so great this week. We've got a great classic all-in docket. I want to start with Google firing 28 employees who were involved in this protest at their offices. We didn't think that this would happen. We were having a discussion on the group chat.
On Tuesday, about a dozen employees engaged in sit-ins at the company's offices in Sunnyvale and New York City, protesting. the conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. And so they took over, literally took over the offices of the CEO of Google Cloud, and nine employees were arrested after refusing to leave.
The protest was organized by a group called No Tech for Apartheid, and they posted a bunch of clips of this sit-in on X. Those 28 employees were fired on Wednesday after a quick investigation. The VP of Global Security, was pretty direct and candid. I mean, this is based. They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers.
Behavior like this has no place in our workplace, and we will not tolerate it. If you're one of the few who are tempted to think we're going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again. So what were the protests about? Google is involved in a project, Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud contract with Israel's government.
Both Google and Amazon are involved in the project, which was announced in 2021. Google has denied it was doing work for the military, saying it was working with departments like finance, healthcare, transportation.
There's a lot of details to this, but let's start with you, Freeberg, since you were a Googler, and we've been talking about the culture of Google, putting aside what the protests were about. How do you feel about protests in the workplace? We've talked about it before here with Coinbase and others.
And then is this a distinct change in tone that I'm hearing from Google that they've had enough of social activism at the office?
I mean, yeah, there's obviously a line crossed in the view of security, but I think You could look at this two ways.
You could look at this as being a culture of entitlement that let folks feel that our employees that they have permission to stage sit ins and behaviors like this because Google is so infinitely tolerant and giving employees the space and the room to do whatever they want to do and all of their wishes and demands can be met and will be met if they demand it strongly enough.
That's one way to look at this, and that culture manifested this behavior.
Another way to look at it is that these people feel so deeply, strongly, and passionately about the issue at hand that they were willing to risk their jobs and arrest, and they cared so deeply about an issue that they think no one's paying enough attention to that they're willing to put themselves and sacrifice themselves for it.
So I want to be empathetic to that point of view as well, but I do think that there's a belief that there may have been this kind of entitlement culture where anytime Google employees ask for stuff, they get it. Someone told me the other day how at TGIFs at Google now where they do these all hands and people get to ask questions, this person is kind of executive level.
They're so sick and tired of how every question is all about employees asking for more things that they want. So it's like, when are we going to get this bonus? When are we going to get this gym? When are we going to get this? That's so much of the orientation of being an employee at Google. It's all about what Google can do for me and how I can get more. And that becomes what you ask for.
It's like you give a kid something, you give them candy, they always ask for candy. And I think that there is certainly an element of that culture kind of being... frothed up over the years at Google. But I do think that this is an issue that people care very passionately about right now, and you're seeing it all over the place.
So certainly not- In the same week, we had the Golden Gate Bridge get shut down. The Bay Bridge gets shut down as well. Chamath, your thoughts on these protests, and then obviously the entitlement issues that Freiburg alludes to specifically at Alphabet slash Google.
There are two separate things, and I think it's important to deal with them individually. Groups of people in society in a democracy should have a right to protest. That's absolutely fundamental, and I think they can raise a lot of issues that could otherwise get swept under the carpet.
When that stuff impedes the public functioning of society for other people, then I think there's a responsibility for law enforcement and other people to act and make sure that that is better managed. So shutting down an entire bridge is not only disruptive, it can be really dangerous. Of course. And it can hurt your cause because then people dislike the cause because it hurt them. Right.
Typically what happens is you're supposed to file for a permit to protest And when you get that, there are areas that are cordoned off and then people are allowed to express their views. That's a really healthy form of democracy.
Going rogue like this will only blow up in people's faces because the folks that are somewhat sympathetic will eventually get burned by this experience and turn against them. So that's one set of issues. I think that's just people going rogue. And I think that you can't be tolerant of that kind of chaos. There should be organized protests, but not disorganized chaos.
Law enforcement needs to get a control of that. Inside of a company, I think this is different. It's this weird thing that I see, which is like what I would call like left on left violence. It's like left leaning people creating all of these distractions and demonstrations inside of left leaning organizations for not being left leaning enough.
And so it's kind of like a little bit nutty because I think it actually shows how totally naive these employees are and what basic business understanding they have. The first and foremost being that they are at-will employees.
These are not people that are contracted players in the NBA or are part of a union, okay, where you have guaranteed employment through some mechanism or some arbitration process to even be let go. The fact that you don't even understand that you are at will means that you are there because you want to be there. And Google allows you to be there because they choose for you to be there.
And at any point, if either of you break a covenant, you can be gone. That kind of stuff I think is very distracting and it just belies a poor understanding of what you're there to do. Google is a for-profit business and they are in the business of generating maximum profit on behalf of their shareholders.
They are also incentivized to do that in a way that achieves a mission and a set of values that the majority of their employees agree with. And the fact that a small cohort of people can try to hijack and sabotage that overall direction, I think is very misguided.
Sacks, I don't know if you have any opinions on this. I didn't see anything in the docket. I'm not sure if you have any strong feelings here. But your thoughts on Google employees and the protests, putting aside you know, the nature of the protest. This could be for BLM. This could be for Trump's indictments. You could be protesting any number of things.
But the protesting at work issue and then Google specifically, which we talked about with the Gemini issues and, you know, this stuff bleeding over into product. I think Freeberg said it really nicely. Hey, are people actually focused on products at Google anymore? Or is the whole place just focused on social issues that have nothing to do with their waning, apparently, product center?
Well, Google had no choice but to fire these employees. They were being disruptive, and they were trespassing, and Google has a business to run. So this is what any business would do, and I don't think they deserve either credit or blame for taking the action they took. In terms of the protesters themselves, I think that
in the fullness of time, we may come to think of them in a slightly different light. And some of this reminds me a little bit of another war, the protesters in another war, the Vietnam War, where they were very disruptive. In some cases, they trespassed. In some cases, they got arrested. They were easy to make fun of in terms of what they look like.
They were sort of unkempt, unshaven, all the rest of that stuff. They were hippies. And at the time, people were, I'd say, very dismissive of them or actually antagonistic. They were seen as giving aid and comfort to the enemy and they were sort of demonized. But now in the fullness of time, we look back on that war and realize that they had a point. In fact, maybe they were right.
In fact, maybe their actions were justified. And I think that how we view these protesters at Google can't just be judged now. I think it's going to be judged in the fullness of time based on how we perceive this war in Gaza. And I want to make two points about why I think this war will eventually be viewed as Israel's Vietnam. The first is that in Gaza, Israel faces a
a guerrilla-style force, and they're in a quagmire. And if you read the latest news that's coming out of Gaza, what you'll hear is that after Israel has supposedly cleared an area like Gaza City or Khan Yunis, they then move south, Hamas has popped back up again. This whole idea that they can clear an area has been proven false. It's like playing whack-a-mole.
They basically hit Hamas in one area, Hamas disappears down the tunnels, they come back in a different area. And this is why you're seeing a lot of articles now in Haaretz, which is an Israeli newspaper, saying the war in Gaza is already lost. You had the Wall Street Journal last week run an article saying that Israel is winning every battle but losing the war.
which is, again, shades of Vietnam here. And you got to understand, the Wall Street Journal is the most pro-Israel of all the major mainstream publications. I don't think the Wall Street Journal has ever written a truly critical article about Israel. And they describe this whack-a-mole dynamic. You also have the General Gotti Eisenkopf, who's a member of
The war cabinet, he's a member of the sort of war government in Israel, came out and said that we can degrade Hamas in Gaza, but we cannot destroy it. And he said, anyone who's telling you that we can destroy Hamas is telling you a tall tale. And that was, I think, an appointed reference to Netanyahu's claim that they would destroy Gaza. Hamas and Gaza.
So you've got shades of Vietnam in terms of it being this unwinnable war. I think the second aspect of a similarity to Vietnam is just the huge number of civilian casualties. You'll recall that in Vietnam, the Viet Cong tried to grab us by the belt buckle. They knew that America had superior firepower, so they tried to get in close, use ambushes, BB traps, snipers. And in response to that,
the Americans used immense amounts of firepower and bombing to try and subdue the Vietnamese. And 3.4 million Vietnamese were killed in that war, according to Robert McNamara. The second thing that happened is the rules of engagement in Vietnam got extremely loose. You took a bunch of scared American kids, many of whom were conscripts, you dropped them in a jungle.
Pretty much because they feared ambushes, they shot anything that moved. And then finally, I think partly to justify this, you had a a dehumanization of the Vietnamese, that they were seen as somehow kind of subhuman.
In any event, if you watch movies about Vietnam, like Platoon, which was made by Oliver Stone, who was a GI in Vietnam, or if you watch Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, Full Metal Jacket, which was based on books about Vietnam, you can see these dynamics in play very vividly. Now, turn to Gaza. All you got to do is look at the miles and miles of video to see. It looks like a lunar surface.
I mean, even in the words of Joe Biden, there's been indiscriminate bombing there. In terms of the rules of engagement, the rules of engagement have gotten very loose. A week or two ago, you had the deaths of those seven aid workers from the International Kitchen Organization. And there's an article in Haaretz recently about the kill zones have been set up pretty much
if you come within a certain invisible perimeter of Israeli troops, you can be shot. I mean, those are the rules of engagement. And this is why there were three Israeli hostages who escaped. And they were running towards Israeli troops and yelling in Hebrew, and they still got shot. And again, this goes back to the rules of engagement being very loose.
And then the final piece of it is you do have this dehumanization going on of the Palestinians. You can see this in a lot of the videos that have been posted by IDF soldiers. So look, I think that these protesters, their actions are going to be judged in the fullness of time. I think there are actually good reasons to believe that Israel's war in Gaza, it's shades of Vietnam.
And I think that over the long term, people may regard these protesters in a different light. Right now, they're just seeing as being disruptive and annoying and interfering. But if this war is ends up being Israel's Vietnam, which I think it's on track to be. Again, I think that people may in time give these protesters a little bit more credit.
Jacob, what do you think?
Interesting question, you know, putting aside what they're protesting about, I think they knew, or some number of them knew they were going to get fired. So I think they're kind of resigning by sit-in. And I think, yeah, there could be nobility to that. If you do not want to participate in in supporting things in the world.
You do not have to work at Google and you can protest and you can get fired. And we've seen some pretty intense protests. I don't know if you guys are aware of like what Greenpeace and other environmentalists did to stop whaling. I'm sure you are aware, Friedberg, for your passion on the subject. Those people went to jail in Japan for boarding Japanese whaling ships.
Those are really intense protesters. But then to your point, Shamath, you can really hurt your cause. Climate activists have been throwing paint on works of art. I don't know if you've seen that. And that's just infuriating. I have no tolerance for people destroying works of art or attempting to get attention. Here, it is benign to sit in an office and get fired.
So I just consider it resigning by sit-in. If they want to do that, that's fine. I do think there is something to Google enabling all this, to your point, Friedberg, over time. And listen, they were parodied on Silicon Valley, the TV show, because of how coddled and entitled people are. So there's a bunch of things going on at the same time.
And if you want to do these intense protests, you have the right to do them. And history will judge you over time. But you need to be able to pay the price. In this case, the price is getting fired. In the case of shutting down the Golden Gate Bridge, you should get a fine for doing that, I believe. And the fine should be based on whatever that costs to shut that bridge down.
And that's got to be a serious fine. And you're right, Chamath. People, if there's an emergency situation, somebody's got to get to a hospital or something.
That's what I always think about when I see those things, when you block streets and stuff or you block airports or you block these throughways. There's a lot of just normal everyday people trying to live their life who are probably very sympathetic to what you stand for.
But when you disrupt their everyday lives and or threaten their physical security, they're not going to think that that's worth it.
I'm also shocked that these people actually came to an office. I mean, these Googlers, I don't think they've actually been to an office before. They probably had to check that their badges were.
To Sax's point, I actually would have had more respect for these people if they actually protested the war. But they didn't do that. They had a very discreet, specific claim, which was that they wanted to dissolve a business deal that Google had to provide cloud services to the state of Israel called Project Nimbus.
And I think that's such a discreet thing that it's hard to understand that those 28 people would have even enough knowledge of what that is. But it sounds like a cloud hosting deal. Well, what's hosted there? And it could be any number of things. And I suspect if it's a billion dollar a year deal, it's many things. It's probably like the Israeli DMV. Is that really what you want?
And I think that it would have been much of a more powerful thing to do to protest the actual war if that's what they cared about.
You know, it dovetails nicely with the discussion you all had last week about would you back Not a defensive, but an offensive weapons company, a technology company. And it seemed like you all had reservations on if you would not back a defensive one. Anybody, I think, reasonably would back a defensive dome or interception of bombs coming in. That's an easy one.
But going around the horn here, how many of us would back a company making missiles or bombs that blow people up or mines?
Would you back a robot that had weapon systems on it? I think if you want to summarize what we said last week, it's like there are all kinds of businesses where you'll end up investing in it. And over time, as it morphs, some of us will be faced with some of those decisions and it'll frankly depend on what is the alternative in that moment.
So I don't think anybody of us are going into go and build a nuclear bomb, but you should not be naive that if you're building nuclear reactors, you could end up being in a situation where that thing gets licensed into a thing that you either agree or disagree with. So this is my point is I think that those kinds of answers or those kinds of questions
are missing the nuances, and the nuances are very important. So it's impossible to answer this question in a thoughtful way, I think, would be my honest answer. Okay. Sax, any closing thoughts here?
Well, I think Chamath brings up an interesting point about Why didn't the protesters just focus on the war itself rather than Google doing business with Israel? My interpretation of that is they're trying to create a nexus to themselves, meaning they're employees of Google. They're trying to create a reason for them to stage the sit-in at Google.
Otherwise, you know, if they just grab picket signs and were on the street, it would just be much less newsworthy. So I think they were just trying to create something newsworthy here. And it's kind of worked in the sense that we're talking about it. Other people are talking about it. So that's my interpretation of that is they were just trying to elevate the issue in a slightly novel way.
But look, I think that they should be willing to pay the price of getting fired or getting arrested. I mean, if you're going to engage in that kind of civil disobedience or protest, you should be willing to accept the price. And I did see some comments by the Googlers who got fired saying that they thought they were being treated unfairly by Google. I think that's the wrong attitude.
I think the attitude is, hey, this cause is so important to me that I'm willing to accept the price of being fired. saying that you don't deserve to be fired for disrupting the workplace. That is kind of an entitled attitude. So I think they should have just said, yeah, we did this on purpose because it's a really important cause.
They should say, I'm proud to get fired because that's how much I believe in it. My stock options at... Google are less important than this issue to me.
Yeah. And I'm accepting it. I think they would have gotten just as much press if they actually protested the war. I think in a week from now, everybody will forget what Project Nimbus is. The odds that it gets canceled are less than zero and everybody will move on. And it will not add to the drumbeat, as Zach said, of people that may be eventually on the right side of this issue, theoretically.
I say theoretically because that stone is still yet to be overturned on that topic. So I think that they missed the mark. And I think that the part of the press that people glommed on to was it was happening inside of a company in real time and there was video of it.
Mission accomplished for them. We're talking about it here as the top story. And, you know, if that was their, if they wanted to raise awareness, they succeeded and they should just own their firing because they knew they would get fired, I think. All right. There has been a ton of chaos and the culture wars continue over NPR.
A couple of things happened simultaneously this week that are worth discussing. Catherine Marr was named NPR's new CEO back in January. I'm going to have to give a little bit of a timeline here before I get comments from the boys because there's a little setup. And so she was named the CEO back in January. She officially started in March. Okay, she formerly worked at Wikimedia Foundation.
Those are the people who run the Wikipedia, obviously. NPR's mission, if you don't know, is to create a more informed public, one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas, and culture. That's their stated mission from their website.
On April 9th, Uri Berliner, an editor who's been with NPR for 25 years, wrote an op-ed for Barry Weiss's Free Press, friend of the pod, explaining how NPR lost America's trust by going hard left and becoming close-minded. He said, quote, an open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR. And now, predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America.
Last Friday, Maher put out a statement calling his actions profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning. This Sunday, conservative activist Christopher Ruffo, he's the person who exposed former Harvard president's Claudine Gay's plagiarism. He's a vocal critic of LGBTQ stuff. At schools, started reposting old tweets from Maher, this new CEO.
Her tweets are super far left, Trump's a racist, yada, yada. There's an interesting clip of her talking at TED, talking about how truth is a bit of a distraction. And that prevents people from getting things done. People have gotten pretty inflamed about that clip. And then on April 16th, Berliner was suspended for five days without pay.
Wrapping this all up, Berliner then resigned after 25 years, saying, quote, I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems that NPR I cite in my free press essay. Sacks or thots?
I mean, this just seems like a dog bites man story. I mean, what is the novel revelation here? The person running NPR is a liberal. I mean, I'm kind of with you, but what took 25 years to resign? I mean, all you have to do is listen to NPR. It's always been liberal. OK, this is not some recent capture of an institution going so crazy viral right now.
Why has this become the topic of the moment?
Well, apparently there are some quotes that this new CEO, Catherine Marple, tweeted or said that you can point to that seem kind of woke and kind of crazy woke, but they're just actually pretty standard. I just don't see the breaking news here. If they end up firing Catherine Marr, they're going to hire someone just like her. I mean, they're going to have the same views.
NPR has always been left of center. And the only change that's happened is that the left has now become woke. And so it's become obsessively focused with the ideas of white supremacy and white privilege. And she simply reflects that.
I agree. It's like a tempest in a teapot, like newsflash. NPR is woke and left-leaning. I mean, I guess maybe that somebody who was there for 25 years wrote the expose is interesting or I don't know. Chamath, any thoughts on this one and why it's taking up so much headspace for people?
I don't think it is. I think it's taking up a lot of headspace amongst breathless journalists. I don't think it matters to the public at large. I don't think anybody cares.
I just had one thing, which is I do think that the government should not be funding this anymore. I think NPR at this point is mostly funded by private donations, but it got started with government money and the government still funds it. And given that it is this left institution at this point, And really always has been.
There's simply no reason for the government to be funding one side of the political debate that way. So I think there is maybe an issue there in terms of reminding people that, hey, this is like government funded. Why? And there's no reason why NPR can't be funded with either private donations or private subscription.
This is just to give people some back of the envelope math. NPR's budget is like 320 million. It's a dollar per American. And they get a bunch of programming fees and some corporate sponsorship. The corporate sponsorship is like 100 million bucks. The programming fees is what the local radio stations pay them. Net-net, this is costing like maybe, I don't know, 30 cents an American.
And if you just swap out, and this is the way I like to look at these to be objective, If you were saying this was funding Fox News or, I don't know, Ben Shapiro and Daily Wire, how would you feel about it? You'd be like, well, why is the government funding that?
They should just cut NPR and all this public broadcasting stuff loose over the next year or two, wind it down, and let them fend for themselves in the new media landscape.
Look, Jake, I agree with you. They could easily sub-stack it. NPR's not going to go away. Just create subscriptions and you're fine.
Yeah. I mean, it's only like they're down to whatever. It's very hard to find the numbers. There's a little like hiding of the money here. But there's so little at stake here. I think that's why it's so contentious.
Nobody cares. The government should not be funding one-sided ideological institutions on either side of the political debate. And you're right. If this was funding going to Daily Wire or something like that, people would be up in arms. So in any event, what's good for the good is good for the gander.
The next Tempest in a teapot... Is Humane's AI pin getting barbecued by our modern-day Walt Mossberg? Marques Brownlee, who is an awesome YouTuber, I love his reviews. Let's create a bit of a social media Rorschach test here. getting a lot of feels from people in Silicon Valley. Let's just tee this up here. Humane is a hardware startup that you may have heard of.
They make an AI-powered wearable computer. It's basically a pin you put on your chest. It's about the size of a pack of cigarettes, maybe half the size of it. It was founded by two Apple execs back in 2018. Raised a quarter of a billion dollars or so. And the device is now in the hands of reviewers. It's pretty innovative. And Marquez talks about how innovative it is in his review.
It will let you talk to it. It's got a camera on it. We'll show it here on the screen. If you're not subscribed to the YouTube channel, just go to YouTube right now and you'll see us playing the video of it. Search for All In. And really interesting interface. It does obviously voice. It connects you to an LLM on the back end.
So if you want to know, you know, some piece of information, it can answer those questions for you. But Marquez showed it. just absolutely failing at a bunch of tests, being overpriced, and he called it the worst product he's ever reviewed. It's very thoughtful and methodical, but the title is obviously a bit link baiting.
As a co-founder of Engadget, I can tell you, if you want to get a lot of clicks, just say something is the best or the worst ever, and you can get 10 times the views. The pin, according to him, doesn't do anything better than a smartphone. It's slow. It doesn't work. It's often wrong. It's 700 bucks. The battery sucks. So many different ways to go with this.
Everybody is talking about it on X and in the media. Where do you stand on this one, Friedberg? both on how people are responding to it in the tech industry as being like anti-tech, anti-innovation versus, hey, it's just a reviewer giving his candid feedback on a product that's clearly not ready for prime time.
I think there's a lot of issues. One is just the challenge of deep tech More specifically, in this case, hardware investing, you have to invest a lot of capital before you even have your first product. And then you don't really know how well it works until you've already burned through a lot of capital.
I mean, this is one of the stunning stories of a startup that has raised a quarter billion dollars. And then they come out with their first product. And it turns out it needs a lot of work because it doesn't do anything that consumers really are compelled by, as evidenced by the review.
So I think it highlights that that challenge and why that market finds, particularly in this environment, it to be so hard to get capitalized. Now, obviously, there are some entrepreneurs like Elon, who can take that capital and drive to the outcome, spending hundreds of millions of dollars before you get your first rocket into space. And you have a lot of failings along the way.
But the general tone here is a deep tech investment is very likely to fail because you spend so much money before you even know. And at that point you have less money and you can't really make the necessary iteration to get there. So it's a tough data point for other deep tech companies that need to raise a lot of capital. Then I think it brings up the point about X Apple people.
that there's a degree of confidence because people come from Apple, and a degree of hubris in the employees that come from Apple, that says, I have worked at the best hardware company in the world, therefore, this person is likely to succeed.
It turns out that when you don't have all that built in infrastructure for testing, and optimization, all of that built in distribution, all of the feedback systems that Apple has engineered into their business model for so long, maybe you missed some of the data around what makes a product great or not before you launch.
I think that's your key point, Freeberg. That is the best point is these folks come from Apple. They're used to unlimited resources. And what you don't see is all the product Apple doesn't release, right? They never released their car, correct, Freeberg?
And they get to... Well, I think then there's also this question about like, where is the value in the product? Because they thought, hey, if we have AI on a pin, it'll work. without the consumer feedback about whether or not people are willing to sit around and wait for 12 seconds to get an answer to a question.
And then it brings up this other really important point, which is half the people in Silicon Valley are running breathlessly into the conversation saying, do not disparage a startup that's working really hard at getting their first product right. It'll destroy the motivation of other startups that need to kind of iterate to get there. And we can't just take the first V1 and say that that's it.
Chamath, your thoughts?
You're laughing hysterically at this.
The other half of Silicon Valley are running in and saying, this thing's a piece of shit. What are you talking about? It doesn't work. So it is a really interesting kind of debate. Yeah, Rorschach test on what's going on.
Chamath, what do you see in this inkblot of a product? Neither of those two cohorts. I think that incredibly motivated, dedicated entrepreneurs don't even know that this is happening and don't care.
Got it. In other words, the reviewers are going to review products and you just got to plow ahead and make a better product.
The idea that in 2009, 10 or 11, right, that when all the rockets weren't working, you know, and Elon was back against the wall, that he was reading TechCrunch or getting upset because a product failed, some other random product that had nothing to do with his, I think is laughable. I think no great entrepreneur cares.
I don't think Freeberg is going to change what's happening at a hollow based on, what is this thing called? Humane. Right. Friedberg, have you changed? Have you made decisions? Are you sadder today in Ohala when you walked into the office to manage your team? OK, so there you go. There's your answer. You're failing on this.
Yeah. I mean, I'm having a hard time understanding all the controversies this week. I mean, reviewers are going to review. Protesters are going to protest and NPR presidents are going to NPR. Here we go. What's going on? Everyone's just doing their job. Yeah.
Here's an idea for the humane team. Be thankful somebody took the time to review your product and give you candid feedback and incorporate it back into your product and make it work.
An irreverent elitist will eat octopus. Here we are.
Oh, so delicious. So delicious. High IQ foods. We should create a new category. High IQ foods?
Yeah, what are the other high IQ foods?
Acorn-fed beef. Yes. For sure, high IQ. Pigs, very high IQ. I saw that cow playing chess before he was served for dinner.
Actually... I was having a pulled pork sandwich from Bucky's and it helped me solve Wordle for the day before I ate it. So I got Wordle in two tries. Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, that one landed. I didn't want that one to land. Yeah, I mean, okay, let me ask this question. Do we think the world, let's say this thing did respond in one second.
Here's the theme, Jason. Here's the theme, Jason. The problem is that I think people right now, the real Rorschach test is if you are so easily distracted, you probably don't have enough to do.
Right. That's the entitlement is that you don't have enough work on your plate.
I don't want to call it entitlement, but I think the reality is that if you get caught up in all of these silly little fake battles or decisions, I think what it really means is that you're not busy enough and or you're not working on something that matters enough to you. Because when either of those two things are true, people tend to have blinders on and they are super focused.
And they just don't have an opinion. They don't care. Like, honestly, many of these topics today, I really don't care. And it's not because I'm better or worse or smarter or dumber. It's because I'm so overworked right now. I don't have time to have an opinion on this stuff.
Tramon's got a CEO job and now he's got to work.
Hmm.
I hadn't even heard of this reviewer. What's his name? Marquez Brownlee? Marquez Brownlee. I never heard of him.
If you're on YouTube, he's kind of like the new Walt Mossberg. He does 20, 30 minute videos. They get millions of views. He's huge. I don't know that he makes or breaks a product, though, by the way. He does not make or break a product. The product makes or breaks itself.
Yeah, look, when I was running companies, I wouldn't care about what one reviewer said. I would care about the totality of the reaction to the product, which would include customers as well as reviewers and so forth. So I don't think there's any point getting too bent out of shape about one review.
I think what's kind of happening in terms of the reaction here is that people want to give this company mercy points for being innovative. So my guess is the product just isn't ready for prime time, but everyone wants to kind of like, they want their viewers to take it easy on them or something because they are being innovative and they're breaking new ground in this area of wearables.
But the reality is in the real world, where you want to charge people for your product, like customers don't have mercy points. Nope.
So if the car breaks down, the car breaks down. And by the way, Marquez got a little bit of heat just a month ago because he reviewed the Fisker. The Fisker is just a piece of garbage car. He said it's the worst car he's ever reviewed. And you know what? Reviewers exist in the world.
to inform customers about what products and services they should buy, and then they should inform you to make a better product, period, full stop. There is an easy solution to this, by the way, which Apple... did. They released the Vision Pro as a developer kit. They put a bunch of caveats on it and said, hey, we understand this is high priced. It's a developer kit. This is in beta.
What Humane should have done is they should have said, this is the Humane beta for developers. I still don't know what it is. What is this? Okay. It's a wearable. It's a square. It has a projector on it. You put your hand out. It projects a little screen that shows you like a computer screen and you can talk to it and ask questions.
Yeah, the primary function is like a chat AI assistant that sits on you and has a camera. And so you can say things.
It's taping everything that it sees. It doesn't do that by default, but it could.
But sorry, let me just give the quick overview. And basically you ask it questions and it can go get the answers. The problem is that it has to go make a request to the internet, run an AI model and come back. So it takes like 12 seconds to get results. Most of the time, according to the reviewer, the results are actually wrong. Because it's hallucinating models.
Because LLMs suck.
The voice-to-text translation is wrong. There's a lot of things that are wrong about it. So it takes a long time. It's clunky. And then the battery burns out every two hours. And it gets super hot because of the way they get it to magnetically stick to your clothes. So it gets very hot. So there's all sorts of issues.
And it's $700. Other than that, how is the play Mrs. Lincoln?
And by the way, most importantly to you, Chamath, it will screw up your fabrics. If you wear this with a Laura Piana sweater, it's going to drag your sweater down. Hold on. You would never attach it to a $6,000 sweater.
Yeah, it's basically what you're telling me is it's an overpriced device that could give you first degree burns. And it will ruin your sweaters. And doesn't answer the questions that you ask.
Yeah, basically.
But then do I think the questions or do I have to say it out loud so it looks like I'm talking to myself?
You look like a lunatic. Yes. You're walking around like a crazy person talking to yourself.
That was the other thing he said is like when you're in a crowd and there's a voice around, you can use your hand and hand gestures to control it and do things with the projectors thing that it does.
It's some really cool, interesting features. It's just like, it's not quite there yet. Who invested in it? Let's not make fun of it. Let's make fun of the investors.
Who invested in it?
Sam Altman. Shout out to Sam.
He's coming on the program, I think.
Yeah. Listen, the concept, I think, is good. Wearables are going to provide some distinct value when they work because you don't have to take your phone out. And so the idea behind wearables, like your watch, is, you know, like there are some things I do on my watch now where I don't take my phone out. I'll take the other side of this.
I'll take the other side when you're done.
I use Fitbit. company we invested in and it puts all my workouts on my watch when I'm doing weights. I started doing weights now that's why I look so buff folks. Subscribe to the YouTube channel to see And I do my sets and I log them all with my, my watch. I don't have to take my phone out. That's like the first thing. And then when I'm skiing, I can see each run. I showed you slopes.
I'm not an investor in Chamath where I could see my speed and all that stuff.
You're saying something totally different. That's, that's utility. Of course, you'll find a device will give you utility. I thought you were saying something else, which is everybody's going to have wearables. And I want to take the exact opposite side of that.
Yeah. I don't know that everybody will have wearables, but I do find a couple of little things that work for me.
I totally get that, you know, the use of an accelerometer or whatever in a watch or in a band that you wear on your wrist for a workout. And I think that that's valuable. Or heart rate. A glycemic monitor so that you could... All of that stuff makes super sense for you as an individual. But that's not an experience where you're engaging with it to... to replace some other social interaction.
That's just you getting utility as you live your life. What I'm saying is the idea that you start to rely on a device as your interface into the world, I would take the exact other side of the bet, which is I think that humans are getting so sick and tired of being of only communicating in these very rigid ways.
Like I'm telling you, like if you look at our children's generation, they don't know how to make eye contact. They don't know how to talk. And I think it's going to come back and bite them in the ass. And so I think the pendulum is going to swing in the other direction where it's like, okay, enough of this stuff.
Let's actually look each other in the eye and talk to each other the way that humans were meant to be. And I think that in that, Devices like a glucose monitor or a band has value, but I don't think it's going to be this interface where you're sign languaging it while you're at Coachella. I think you're going to rip the devices off and actually be at Coachella without any devices.
Did any of you guys read Jonathan Haidt's book, Anxious Generation? It is unbelievably awesome.
I'm not right yet.
Stop what you're doing and just listen to the audio book on your walks on Audible. This book is super important and awesome. The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. I cannot tell you how important it is. Sax, any closing feelings here? You have a take? Any hot takes?