I'm very excited to announce that the

vice president JD Vance can be with us

today. The last time that we saw um the

vice president on stage like this at an

all-in summit, he wasn't the vice

president yet. It was about 10 months

ago at the all-in summit that we did

last year and uh obviously a lot has

changed. I think he's been doing a

phenomenal job and making us all proud

and uh it's going to be great to catch

up with him. So with without further

ado, Vice President JD Vance.

Guys, how are you? Good to see you, man.

Good to see you, David.

>> Good to see you. What's up, brother? How

are you? Nice to see you. Good to see

you. How are you, man? Good to see you.

How you doing?

>> Good.

So, the last time I did this podcast, I

think Jason was a huge to me

because the vice president, you seem to

be nice to me now, Jason.

>> Oh, it's on. Well, okay. Let me get my

list of topics.

>> He was hoping you'd give him a White

House tour later today, so we'll see how

this goes. You're you're welcome to have

a White House tour.

>> Really?

>> I know a guy.

>> I asked David three times.

>> I know a guy.

>> His his invitation's been lost in the

mail a few times, but

>> Well, no, actually, listen, if we're

starting it out, um, congratulations on

a great run.

>> Thank you. I appreciate it. It was fun.

>> You know, we can differ on some of the

margins. Um, but I just think all

Americans appreciate the pace at which,

especially in the technology industry,

you're going and the effectiveness. So,

I just want to congratulate you on that.

Sincerely,

>> I appreciate that.

>> Uh, okay. So, let's get into uh some

topics,

>> right?

>> Uh immigration.

>> When we last talked, you said uh I said,

"Hey, you're going to deport 20 million

people all at once. That seems quite

chaotic." And you said, "No, we're going

to we're going to do it like a sandwich.

Take a couple of bites." Uh how's that

going?

>> I think it's going well. I mean, we are

criticized, interestingly, by some folks

on the right who want the pace of

deportations to be higher. And I

certainly understand that, frankly, and

share that frustration. The

counterargument is the courts are trying

to step stop us at every step of the

way. And until about a month ago, we

didn't have the resources for ICE to

actually get this massive invasion that

Joe Biden led into our country. We

didn't have the resources necessary to

actually process a lot of those people.

That has changed because of the big

beautiful bill. We've also gotten some

court case wins. So, I expect uh that

the pace of deportations will increase a

little bit. But importantly, when people

criticize us and they say, you know,

sometimes I'll hear this criticism,

well, the pace of deportations from the

Trump administration is actually lower

than it was in the B administration. And

that's actually a completely fake

statistic. It's based on the fact that

if you come into the country illegally

and then the Biden administration

processes you and sends you out, that

counts as a deportation. It counts as an

illegal immigration and then it counts

as deportation. So, you have to look at

the net number, right? If you do plus

one minus one, I'm not a math expert,

but I'm pretty sure that's zero. The net

number is what really matters. And where

the Trump administration, where we've

been most wildly successful is that we

have I think in 2025, we will have the

first net negative immigration number in

about 50 or 60 years in the United

States. And so there has been a major a

major major shift in immigration policy.

Now again, I I'm I'm like, you know, me

and Steven Miller are probably the two

most hardline people in the entire

administration when it comes to

immigration. So there's always more that

we can do. And like I said, I think that

there is more that we can do. But if you

just look fundamentally what people said

is that if you actually take border

enforcement seriously, the entire

economy is going to collapse.

Inflation's going to go through the

roof. Housing costs are going to go

through the roof. And if you look, while

there's still a lot more to do,

inflation has cooled. Housing costs are

now showing signs of peaking. I think

according to Zillow, over the past 12

months, housing costs have gone up8%. Uh

the previous the Biden administration,

they basically nearly doubled the cost

of a mortgage for an average family. So

there there are a lot of things that

we're showing work and we're showing

importantly that it turns out if you put

your faith in American workers, you can

build great companies, you can build a

great economy. You don't have to build

an entire economy on illegal labor,

which is what the Democrats told us we

had to do. So, we're not just doing a

good job. I think we're also proving out

the use case and proving out what the

Trump campaign said that it was going to

do in the Trump administration.

>> And President Trump, I think, um, came

out and said, "Hey, we maybe should

appreciate some of these immigrants

who've been here for 20 years and maybe

give them a path to citizenship. Maybe

think about restaurants and farms and

maybe show some compassion to those

people." And I think the objection

perhaps uh that some of us have is the

the style in which you're doing it a

little aggressive what happened in LA

and um you seem to maybe internally in

uh the administration found a middle

ground maybe and listen to the other

side and maybe our opinions on it.

>> Well, first the the Trump administration

obviously is a big group of people with

a lot of different opinions and we all

have to talk about this stuff and try to

come up with the right decision. But the

the Trump the administration the

decision maker is of course one man.

Yeah.

>> And while he listens to everybody he's

ultimately going to make the decisions

that he thinks are best for the country

and then we go and execute that after of

course having a big a big conversation

around the inner circle. You know what

what the president has said is number

one we're not going to do amnesty in

this country. We're we're actually not

going to tell people who have come into

the country illegally that they're

allowed to break our laws and be

rewarded for it. We're just not going to

do that. But there are a whole host of

other ways when we talk to you know

agricultural um industries and others

where they say well you know we really

need labor. Well there are a whole host

of ways in which you can try to solve

those problems. My favorite solution for

those problems is automation right. Uh I

actually think there's a lot of evidence

that the American agricultural economy

is a little behind the eightball when it

comes to using technology. There are

ways where we're talking about

facilitating the use of automation. So

we're not going to have amnesty. We also

recognize that there are a lot of

industries out there we want to thrive

and I think the president is trying to

strike the right balance. And Jason, you

said something about compassion and I

think this is really important. I I do

think that we we we have to make a

stronger argument here. There's nothing

discompassionate or there's nothing

hateful about enforcing your own

borders. It's a question of do you

facilitate

Thank you guys. But do you facilitate

these Mexican drug cartels, the drug

trafficking that they're engaging? Of

course not. the hundreds of thousands.

I'm not saying you would ever say this,

but the hundreds of thousands of missing

children under the Biden administration.

The fact that some of these young girls

are being sex traffked by Mexican drug

cartels. When you enforce the nation's

border laws, that is the most

compassionate thing to do both for your

own people, but also for the people who

are legally.

>> Yeah, I agree on the border.

>> Let me uh shift to AI for one second. In

I think it was February, I want to get

the date right. Um you went to France

and then you went to Germany and these

were two incredibly iconic speeches. one

on AI and then one at the Munich

Security Conference. Um, and I think it

was a in many ways an incredible moment

where you just started to establish

American priorities again abroad. Can

you just go into the strategy of those

speeches and where they came from and

just the bigger arc of the first six to

nine months and what the goals were?

>> Yeah. So for the AI summit, the

president really wanted me to do this

and of course, you know, happy to go to

Paris and give a speech and talk about

American priorities. But there there was

this big moment we thought we had an

opportunity to sort of p plant our flag

and say America is done with the

overregulating

with the constant worrying about the

future. We're going to lean into the

future. We're going to embrace the

future and try to make sure America

dominates in the future. And that's such

a radical departure from both the

safetyism of the Biden administration,

but also frankly the safety of a lot of

our friends in Europe. And I had been,

you know, there for about 24 hours. I

had met with with with Emanuel Mcronone,

the leader of of France. Had a good

conversation and and a lot of the other

people in Europe. And the thing that I

kind of picked up is that they're so

terrified about the problems with AI.

And to be clear, there are problems with

AI. But if you're so terrified with the

problems with AI, you don't actually

embrace the potential, then you're going

to get the worst of the problems without

any of the benefits, the upside of it.

And that's what I think was so broken

about our administration's um approach

during the Biden years. And it's what's

so different about our our actual

administration here uh during the Trump

years. So our attitude is yeah, there

are some consumer protection issues.

There are some data privacy issues. We

don't want the AI companies to do what

the big tech companies did in 2020 and

2021, which is steal people's data and

then censor an entire large swath of the

American people for saying things that

were said to be conspiracies, but later

turned out to be true. We're not going

to do that, but we're also going to

embrace innovation. We're going to make

sure that America stays at the the the

leading edge of the artificial

intelligence boom. And we think when

that happens, it's going to create a lot

of jobs. It's going to create a lot of

productivity. We talked about

agriculture. I think it's going to lead

to a new food revolution where we can

grow a lot more food on a lot less land.

There there's just a whole host of

things that being forward focused on

technology can bring to this country.

And that is the story. I think the story

of American entrepreneurship and

American economic growth is that when we

grow through technology and development

and productivity that enters to the

benefit of all Americans and makes us

more powerful and more wealthy. When we

try to grow our economy, frankly,

through importing cheap labor, that I

think is a dead end. We've taken that

pathway for far too long in this

country. The Trump administration is

going to take a different path.

>> What about relativism? So, uh, just

framing up the big open question about

our relationship with China. There's

there's trade discussions going on, but

China this week, it was it was revealed

or announced has sold off half their

treasury, US Treasury holdings. Um, as

you look at the technology uh curve in

China, the fiscal situation and the

difference between the two, how much

should our policy be informed relative

to China where we sit with China versus

>> forget about China, let's just make

America great and focus on creating jobs

and moving our industries forward.

>> Yeah, it's it's got to be a little bit

of both. And I you know, it's always

tough to strike the right balance. I

mean, look, China is our biggest

economic competitor in the entire world.

uh when you look at their technology

industry, I think it's the only tech

industry, especially when it comes to

things like AI where they're even sort

of knocking on the door of America. Now,

I still think that we have the best

hardware. I think that we have the best

software. I still think that we're the

most technologically forward economy. Uh

but our but our, you know, our edge is

not something we can sort of rest on our

laurels. So I think it is useful to look

to the Chinese to benchmark our own

progress and to say that if we're

regulating ourselves to death and

allowing the Chinese to catch up to us.

That's not something frankly we should

blame the Chinese for. That's something

we should blame our own leaders for for

having stupid policies that allow other

countries to catch up to America. So

it's a useful benchmark, but I still

think fundamentally we have to take the

attitude of, you know, we want the world

to be built, I think, on an American

technology stack, not on a Chinese or

some other country's technology stack.

And if you're too focused on the

relative comparison and not focused

enough on just building and creating

great things, I think that it can become

a little bit of a crutch and a little

bit of a I I don't know, an impediment

to focusing on your own stuff and doing

your own thing. And it's why we have a

great AISAR here and David Sachs. But

we're we're really focused on how does

America just do as well as we possibly

can. Yes, we want to stay ahead of

China, but we want to stay ahead of

everybody else because this is America

and we want it to stay the greatest

country in the world.

>> And related to that, does that mean

American businesses should be allowed to

sell into China, participate there as a

customer market? And if so, in the trade

negotiations, is there a push for par so

that American businesses can operate in

China or elsewhere in the world as

easily as those companies can operate in

America?

>> Yeah. So, as the president said, it's

it's a bit of a balance, right? There

are certain critical elements of our

technology stack. There are certain

critical technologies. We know that some

Chinese firms engage in IP theft. So, we

don't want to give them our very best

stuff because we're worried a little bit

that they might steal it. But of course

there are certain industries that we

want to sell into China. We actually

want to broaden American workers access

to the world. And part of our

frustration with China is on the one

hand they steal some of our newest

technology and on the other hand they

don't let Americanmade products into

their country. What we want to do is

actually reverse that. We want to sell

Americanmade products into China but we

don't want to allow them to steal our

critical intellectual property. And we

have to strike that balance in a much

better way than not just the Biden

administration, but better than the the

the the Obama administration and the

Bush administration did, too. But

striking that balance is something I

think the president's very focused on.

I'm certainly very focused on. And we've

now got a much better approach now than

we have in a long time in this country.

>> How do you think it plays out for not

China or the United States, but all of

the other sort of smaller countries when

AI gets to scale? Can how do you think

strategically the chessboard ends up

being organized? Is there a new form of

the United Nations? Is there a new form

of NATO but more productive? Like how do

you think it plays out for the 180th

country in the world when they need

things?

>> Yeah, it's it's a very interesting

question and I don't want to you know

predict the future too much here. It's

always a fraugh business especially in

politics. But you know what one of the

things that's interesting a foreign

leader came to me relatively recently.

This is actually last week. um small

country but very important country

strategically very good ally of the

United States and basically pitched me

on creating a NATO alternative outside

of Europe but where countries that were

aligned with the United States built on

the same technology stack there was a

shared sort of you know shared access to

technology shared access to certain

weaponry and so forth and he was like we

really want to be part of team America

but there isn't even an existing

infrastructure that would allow us to be

team America And I had never thought

about it in that way. I haven't even

talked to the president yet about it.

But it's interesting that world leaders

are coming and saying this is how we're

thinking about the future. And and the

technology piece of it is a very

critical angle because as you guys

probably appreciate, I assume the

audience appreciates is that you know

sometimes when you build with with

Chinese firms or Chinese technology, it

seems like a pretty good deal, right?

Larry Summers once had this famous quote

that you know when in Africa when

developing countries talk to the United

States and talk to um China. The the

Americans show up with a moral lecture

and the Chinese show up with a bag of

money. Well, you know the bag of money

obviously I prefer that to the moral

lecture. But you realize that bag of

money sometimes comes with debt

servitude. It sometimes comes with a

sort of neoc colonial control of the

host country. What a lot of nations are

realizing is they're not just showing up

with a bag of money and we'd much rather

be on team America, but it does require

much more forward leadership. And you

the B administration I I don't know what

it was, but there was just this

deepseated fear of the future. I'm sure

it was motivated by having a president

who didn't necessarily know where he was

from from day to day, but there was

there was

on the Sorry,

>> it's over. You won, JD. You won.

>> We still get to have a little fun with a

couple. It's okay. But look, but there

was just this really weird fear of the

future that I think is totally absent in

the Trump administration. It makes our

politics much better.

>> Are you comfortable with a multi-olar

world or do you still think that there

should be American primacy on a global

stage?

>> I I mean I I I I think it's an abstract

question that's interesting, but

fundamentally in some ways the world is

going to be multipolar in the sense that

there are different Yeah, we want

regional allies to step up. I mean,

you've heard the president say this

before. you know, we we'd love a Middle

East where we have to spend a little bit

less time and a little bit less money

and our regional allies, both, you know,

Israeli and Arabs, step up in a bigger

way. We'd like to see that, of course,

in Europe. And I think one of the big

accomplishments of the president in the

first term, something that the media

still doesn't give him enough credit

for, is he actually got NATO to step up

and make major security commitments

about their own sector of the world.

Now, that's sometimes interpreted as,

well, America doesn't like Europe

anymore. No, we like Europe so much that

we want Europe to step up and take a

little bit more self-control of its own

continent. Of course, we're going to be

their friends and of course we're going

to work with them, but we we definitely

see a world where some of our regional

allies step up a little bit more. I

think that's a good thing. Of course,

they're going to be ali allied with the

United States, aligned with the United

States in important ways. But other

countries taking a bigger

a bigger role in their own self-defense

and in their own region. That's

fundamentally a good thing for America.

>> It also feels, I think, more fair to the

American people when the president is

able to negotiate the rare earth deal

with Ukraine and say, "Hey, if you want

weapons, that's fine, but it's on a loan

lease. You got to pay for them. They're

not free." Um, I think one of your great

strengths is your empathy for the

working men and women of this country.

And uh one of the big discussions we're

having in our industry, which will fall

on your plate, um in your career is

going to be job displacement. So I'm

wondering how the administration thinks

about that. For every self-driving car

we put on the road, that's four drivers

who are going to have their jobs

retired. They'll be displaced. For every

Optimus robot or humanoid robot that

eventually makes it into a factory,

that'll be five or six factory jobs. Uh

you spoke about the agricultural jobs as

well. So how do you think about that

automation and the pace at which it's

going to happen? Because if you ask

anybody in technology, none of us have

the answer of how quickly this will

happen. We are optimistic of course, but

there could be displacement. If there is

displacement, who's responsible? The

administration, the technologists who

cause it, the free market, nobody. And

we'll just let the chips fall where they

may. What do you think, JD?

>> Well, a a couple of thoughts on this. So

f first of all, I am a little bit more

optimistic about automation. And I if if

you look at some of the doom narratives

about automation, you know, the robots

are coming to take all of our jobs. If

the robots were coming to take all of

our jobs, you would see labor

productivity skyrocketing in this

country, but you actually see labor

productivity flatlining. And what that

means actually is that our country is

underexed in technology and not

overindexed in technology. Maybe we're

overindexed in software, but we're

underindexed in the real kind of

technology that boosts productivity. So,

I'm not saying there won't be job

displacement, but I always think of the

example of the bank teller. And in the

1970s, when the ATM machine, the

automated teller machine was created,

there was a whole host of articles about

how this would destroy a ton of middle

class jobs in the banking sector. What

actually happened is we have more bank

tellers now than we did in the 1970s.

they do slightly different jobs and

they're more productive and they earn

higher wages, but I think that's the

story of technology. Productivity is

fundamentally good. Now, now there is a

a displacement that I worry about and I

I you know I was frankly not even aware

this was an issue until a couple of

weeks ago and I'm trying to dig into it

a little bit which is where on the one

hand you see some Silicon Valley

technology firms especially the big

firms say that they are desperate for

workers that they can't find for work

workers that they have to use you know

overseas visa programs to find workers

and yet at the same time the college

educated employment rate for STEM

graduates in this country seems to be

declining. Yep.

>> Well, wait a second. If you're not

hiring American workers coming out of

colleges for these jobs, then how can

you say that you have a a massive

shortage in these jobs? And by the way,

you see some big tech companies where

they'll lay off 9,000 workers and then

they'll apply for a bunch of overseas

visas. And I I sort of wonder that

doesn't totally make sense to me. The

math doesn't that that displacement and

that math worries me a bit. And what the

president has said, he said very

clearly, we want the very best and the

brightest to make America their home. We

want them to build great companies and

so forth. But I don't want companies to

fire 9,000 American workers and then to

go and say we can't find workers here in

America. That's a story.

>> What did Microsoft say when you uh

brought that up with Microsoft?

>> I have I I it's

>> Have you talked to them about it?

>> I have I have not. I just became aware

of this a couple weeks ago. Somebody

sent me an article about this and they

said, "Well, you know," and it maybe it

was Microsoft

that fired, I think, 9,000 people. And

then I was like, "Wait a second."

>> Record profits, record market cap,

>> and but also saying they're they're

desperate for workers. So, I have not

yet had that conversation with

Microsoft. In my defense, I just found

out

a four-year college degree the wrong

answer. So the this is this is really

important because like so much of our

system the American dream sorry to cut

your mouth off but just a follow on to

this like has been degraded by this idea

that everyone should get a college

degree then they end up with $100,000 of

debt and they can't get enough of an

income to get themselves out of that

debt. What's the right solution in this

evolution in the workforce and this

evolution under this uh this AI

transition that we're experiencing?

>> Yeah. So one I I agree with that though

I think it's it's a slightly different

question right you can believe that you

want American firms to hire American

college graduates but then also wonder

if the college education system we have

in this in this country is broken and I

certainly think that it is. I mean, you

know, one, I I really, you know, when I

went to I went to Ohio State for

undergrad and then Yale Law School. When

I was at Yale, I guess this is 2010 to

2013, I felt like it was a very

leftleaning place, but it was still

fundamentally a place where you could

debate ideas, where you wouldn't be

penalized for stepping outside of the

orthodoxy. When I talk to college kids,

when I talk to 21-year-olds at some of

these universities, some of them feel

like they're living in like a North

Korean totalitarian style dictatorship

where the social unemployment cost of

saying anything outside of the Overton

window is so severe. That's not a useful

social institution. Like I want colleges

to promote free thinking, even dangerous

ideas. You know, challenge those ideas.

Maybe some of them are wrongs, maybe

some of them are right. But if you as a

college are actually promoting social

conventional thinking, then you're not

serving your fundamental purpose. And I

think the entire university system in

this country is broken because of that

fact.

>> I want to go back to building great

companies for a second. Um, America, I

think sometimes we lost our footing over

the last 20 years because we weren't

able to think strategically outside the

lenses of just the United States. And

what I mean specifically is if you look

in China, they were able to pick eight

or nine industries and say we need to

have national champions because they are

just so fundamentally critical to

national security, population health,

economic vibrancy, etc. I think it was a

couple weeks ago and Jim Latinsky is

going to come on later, but we did a

version of that deal where the DoD

partnered with an American company who

has a mine in America. We're going to

bring these rare earths. We're going to

manufacture them here. We're going to do

the entire supply chain here. Do you

think that that's a one-off thing or how

do you see the public private

partnership in that gray area in the

middle evolve when we think about these

strategic priorities like AI?

>> Yeah. So Shabbath, if you think about

the great era of American economic

dominance, right? It's the 40s, it's the

' 50s, it's the 60s, it's when we were

so far ahead of the rest of the world

that, you know, e economically it just

felt like nobody could possibly catch up

to us. And back in that area era, one of

the great things that worked was true

public private partnerships where we let

the free market, we let private

industries do what private industries

were really good at. But we had a

discrete goal in public policy and we

tried to facilitate it. Right? There

were certain basic research things that

didn't make sense in a um in a private

sector context, but maybe they made

sense for the country overall. There are

certain, you know, weapon systems that

maybe weren't profitable. We were going

to make them profitable because they

were important for American national

security. Of course, the entire moon

landing is a story of a great public

private partnership that produced a

whole host of great technological

development and economic benefit

downstream. I I I I do think that we're

taking a very discreet view of certain

industries, of certain core

technologies, certain core weapons

systems, and saying the United States is

not going to allow our industrial base,

our technology base to atrophy anymore.

You've seen some stuff out of that. I

mean, we're only six months into this

thing, and I think we've done a hell of

a job. I'm obviously biased, but we

we're only six months into this. You're

going to see a lot more over the next

three and a half years.

>> You've been working with uh as we wrap

here. I know you're very busy. Um you've

been working with David for the last 6

months at the White House. Take us into

uh you know the cafeteria, the messaul,

you and Sachs and Trump. Do you have do

you have a recollection of a great Sax

story behind the scenes with the

president yourself maybe going

downstairs getting like a little Mickey

De's or something? I know you're a fan.

>> Well, okay. I I I have one David Sach

story. I was actually in the Navy mess,

which is sort of the cafeteria and the

White House. And we're sitting down

there and we're eating lunch and uh some

some young kid, I don't I I don't know

if it was a White House intern or

somebody walks over, they see David Sax,

oh, David Sachs. And they were so

impressed and they look at me and they

go, "Oh, shit."

>> Also impressive.

>> Yeah. And so like, oh, there's there's

the vice president. So, you know, even

even for the vice president of the

United States, we're all just shadows

and this is not famous.

>> You can always, you know, start a

podcast.

>> That's where you get real fame is

podcast.

>> It's it's crazy how many people watch

these things.

>> It is. It is. It's definitely crazy. And

>> JD, we are uh rooting for you. We

appreciate your service. you've been

working very hard and uh we really

appreciate how open you are to having

these discussions full contact uh and

being um just really supportive of our

industries and that was something uh we

didn't have uh in the Biden

administration uh not to make it

political but we didn't have a seat at

the table and now we have David Sachs in

the White House. So this is a real

turnaround and and we really appreciate

you um

>> and what you've done I think you have

done an incredible job

>> as a vice president. I don't think you

go back in history like the last 10 15

who's had as many icon iconic moments as

you have had. It's really incredible.

>> So thank you.

>> Appreciate you guys. Appreciate. Good to

see you guys.

Good

>> stuff.

>> Thank you. Thank you.