I just want to let Freeberg know. He

told me to stop taking my nicotine

pouches because I had brought too much

energy. Freeberg, you see what I got

here?

>> Nick, blur that out.

>> See what I got?

>> We're not doing We're not doing

promotions.

>> We're not doing any of these promotions.

>> What you need to know is he sent me my

own flavors.

>> Jason,

just so the rest of you guys know,

Jason's trying to get paid side hustle.

I have no He's trying to turn the show

>> into an infomercial and he's trying to

get paid personally.

>> I'm selling this on eBay. If anyone

wants to know about eBay site,

[Music]

>> we'll let your winners ride.

[Music]

>> We open source it to the fans and

they've just gone crazy with it.

>> All right, everybody. Welcome back to

the number one podcast in the world, Be

Allin Podcast. And we were supposed to

take off this week, but no, your

independent moderate moderator said no.

Scrati taking a week off. No weeks off.

So I told my besties, "We're out

gallivanting. We're doing a show on

Friday with or without you all. Of

course, David Freeberg showed up. How

you doing, Davey?"

>> I'm here.

>> You're here?

>> I'm here.

>> But you weren't going to come at first.

You were a little frustrated that the

other boys took the week off.

>> I was annoyed. We were going to record

yesterday.

>> Yes.

>> I had gotten a docket, which we're

supposed to do. What are we going to

talk about? I read it.

>> I mentally prepared. I drank some

coffee. I get dressed in a t-shirt and I

get in front of my computer.

>> And then your co-hosts bail. And they're

like, "I can't talk to your co-host,

too.

>> I can't. I'm in this country. I can't.

I'm on this boat." And um

>> how many hours slash minutes of notice

did they give us? Oh, it was like 5

minutes before we were supposed to

record.

>> It was 90 minutes before. 90 minutes

before the show. That's true

professionalism. But Freeberg, a

consmate professional, is here. And

we've got a full docket for everybody

also with us. My god. Gavin Baker is

here. He's at the beach, I'm sure,

enjoying a little recreation. But you

decided, hey, let me get in here, help

Jay Cow. Let's lock the show down, take

a little time out from the beach, and do

an episode of Allin. Thank you for doing

that, Gavin.

>> Always happy to help. I should say that

I'm working hard at the beach.

>> I mean, it was supposed to be an easy

breezy summer. We had like a busy couple

years, but we're post election.

Everything was supposed to slow down. We

get into a groove. It's never been

busier, right?

>> Uh well, we're just we're in the still

in the thick of public company earnings,

>> right?

>> Which is always busy.

>> Yeah. And of course uh for those who

don't know Gavin is the managing partner

and CIO of a treaties. He invests in

private companies, public companies or

just public uh public and private public

and private. So that makes you a

crossover fund. with us as well today,

my guy, fellow broadcaster

Ben Shapiro, host of the Ben Shapiro

show, co-founder of The Daily Wire,

which uh gosh, makes a mountain of

money, and has a new book coming out in

September. Lions and Scavengers, the

true story of America and her critics.

You gendered America, Ben, in your

subtitle. A bold move. What's the book

about and why are you writing it? Uh so

so basically the the concept of the book

is that we're watching civilization

break down between people who want to

build and people who want to tear down

and and you saw that pretty clearly I

think in the last election cycle but

you're seeing it all over the world. You

know people who actually are innovators

people who want to build social fabric

people who want to defend the

civilization then people who are

interested in getting rid of borders

people who want to destroy businesses

people who are not interested in the

foundations of western civilization and

see them as fundamentally bad. So that

it's really that contrast

>> and see I knew that you had something

you wanted to say because the book

business for a podcast or especially one

as successful as you are now you know

right behind us number two in the

rankings there I kid he's ahead of us

thing but we're manifesting we're right

there right with Ben Shapiro and true

crime that's your and Bill Simmons so

NBA true crime Ben and us but writing a

book is a net loser in terms of your

productivity and time when compared to

doing your daily show and all the other

things the Daily Wire does. Yeah.

>> Yeah, for sure. I mean, it started off

because I honestly things have been so

pathetic lately that I became pathetic

and started journaling uh which is not a

thing that they really should do. And as

I was uh traveling around and going to

like Oxford University a month after

October 7th and debating people who were

telling me about how October 7th was

fine and dandy, I just was keeping

almost a diary of of what that was like.

And so part of the book is is that it's

a much more personal book than the other

stuff that I write, which honestly is

not my it's usually not my bag, but I

felt like uh you know, putting it out

there.

>> It's interesting. You, if I'm reading

into this correct, you probably had some

dismay, anxiety, whatever, hand ringing

over the state of affairs, decided to

use journaling just to get it out of the

system. Hey, no shame in the journaling

game, Ben. I think it's fine. You know,

better than popping some pills. But

>> it's in a trapper keeper with it's got

like a little heart lock.

>> Oh, you went with the trapper keeper.

You went with my little pony trapper

keeper. So, just like when you were in

high school. Oh, that's

>> exactly.

>> But yeah, you get it out of the system.

I too have been journaling and

meditating because just making sense of

the world

>> as Gen Xers here, all of us. I think

you're a Gen Xer. Maybe you're a

millennial. You're you're on the bubble,

I think, Ben.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> It's just weird to see everything be

topsyturvy. And rounding out the

fivesome here today, we got a full

compliment. My guy Phil Deutsch from

NGP, Energy Technology Partners.

This is the smartest guy I know when it

comes to energy. He's my rabbi. When I

have a question about energy, I just

text him. He explains to me why I'm

right about solar batteries being better

than clean coal. But we'll find out

today. We're going to do a deep dive in

energy. Phil Deutsch also with a PC that

Chimath would be in awe of today

and you come from we call him deep state

Deutsch because he comes from a family

of politicians. Yeah, Phil.

>> Government employees I think is better

than politicians or public servants

would be more

>> public servants would be the way to say

it. Yes, public servants would be the

way to say it.

>> Hey, and then just to get a little plug

in here,

>> Freeberg's been working really hard on

the all-in summit. Everybody join us.

Look at this lineup that we put

together. Mostly Freeberg and I. The CEO

of Eli Lily, Dave Ricks, Alibaba's

co-founder Joe Sai also owns the Nets.

My guy Dra from Uber with the $200

billion market cap. We got the ARM CEO

Renee Circles co-founder Jeremy Alair.

Zipline's CEO Keller. That's a $5

billion company really doing cool stuff.

Toma Bravo, co-founder Orlando, Sequoas

Rolof Botha, my guy, Kathy Wood, and

science YouTuber Cleo Abram. One of your

favorites, Freeberg. You got you got a

little friend in the science uh

broadcasting game now.

>> And we're going to have a there's a lot

of big announcements still to come.

Other names, we're saving

>> other names for the days leading up.

Some of them will still be secret

>> and some will still be secret. So go to

allin.com/summit or allin.com/yatta

yatta yada and uh yeah get your tequila

tequila.allin.com.

All right, chat GPT5 just broke. Large

language models continue to drop just

four weeks after Grock 4 Gavin took the

crown. Uh friend of the pod Sammy the

Bull Alman dropped GPT5 and uh two

openweight models. They're not open

source. We'll get Gavin's thoughts on

that in a minute. It was a bit

underwhelming. I'm assuming you all saw

it, gentlemen. And a little bit of a

messy presentation for GPT5 yesterday.

This wasn't like your classic Steve Jobs

keynote. The charts were flat and wrong.

Miscalculations, typos, all kinds of

stuff. Uh, but the model did top some

leaderboards in fairness in the chatbot

arena, but many people were

disappointed. Said the performance was

underwhelming

and especially since when chat chatbt

4.0 came out and obviously 3.5. These

were major jumps. So, and and part of it

might have been Sam not managing the

hype. He tweeted, "Fellow Star Wars fan

Ben Shapiro will get a kick out of

this." He uh tweeted the Death Star. I

think this is a Rogue One shot where the

Death Star is coming up. And uh don't

get triggered, Ben. I don't want you to

get into a sequels rant, but you loved

Rogue One, correct, Ben?

>> I did like Rogue One. Rogue One is good.

>> Rogue One,

>> it's exceptional.

>> Exceptional.

>> Rogue One. Rogue one is like the last

good Star Wars movie that's been made.

>> Okay, so let's do it. Empire Strikes

Back is my number one. Then Revenge of

the Cis, then Rogue One. What do you

got, Ben? Who's your top three?

>> Oh, I mean I I go Empire and then New

Hope

>> as everyone should

>> and then New Hope and then probably

Rogue One.

>> Wow. Okay.

>> I like Rogue One a lot. I think it's

really good.

>> Me, too. It's a perfect film. Gavin,

>> 100% agree with Ben, but Empire Strikes

Back is just so much better than all of

the others.

>> Yes.

>> Yeah. Freick, what do you got in your

ranking? I know you're going to rank. I

remain adamant in my point of view that

the entire Star Wars franchise is built

around an anti-technology,

anti-utopian view of the world,

anti-progress, and um the Death Star is

the ultimate manifestation of

technology. And of course, it's used for

evil. That's kind of the main message of

the the the series.

>> Wow. Way to bring the show down, Dave.

Way to ruin all our childhoods. I did

like the last one.

>> We just had a Gen X moment. He's like,

"Yeah,

>> I did like the last one though."

>> I'm terrified to ask you who you think

of like The Wizard of Oz, but uh I'm

going to go with the original.

>> It was a dystopian gender

take on Free Will.

>> That was the first uh Epstein Island.

>> Uh the original Jake, I remember my mom

taking it to me when I was a kid. It was

awesome. So, I'm going number one.

Number one.

>> Okay, there you go. And so, anyway, Sam

did this tweet. It kind of built a lot

of expectation that this would be like

otherworldly. It wasn't. Anybody

get a chance before we go on to the open

uh models or the open weight models I

should say? Anybody get a chance? And

Gavin, I think you're at the tip of the

spear here. Any of your thoughts? Are we

hitting like either the trrow of despair

or maybe diminishing returns in the LLM

space where maybe it's feeling

incremental, not

like groundbreaking when we release

these iterations?

>> Maybe for OpenAI,

but if you look at Gro 4 versus Gro 3,

that was a pretty giant leap. And I

think what was surprising to me is this

is the first time that you know OpenAI

has released a new model that was not

decisively the best. Here's Gro 3. It

comes out. It's it's the purple line.

This is in this is artificial analysis

and then you know shortly thereafter

maybe 6 to 8 weeks 03 comes out and it

is clearly significantly better. It's

that black dot and they've had that flex

anytime they've been surpassed in the

past and you know Google and and Grock

have surpassed OpenAI at times which

shocked me on the next slide and I do

think some of the loss of talent may be

beginning to weigh but um you know a big

problem in AI is what's called benchmark

saturation which is just these models

are getting so smart

that benchmarks that were optimized even

for you know human graduate students are

not sufficient to measure their

intelligence. So, we've developed these

new benchmarks. There's humanity's last

exam on the left and you can see

>> Can you explain what that is to the

audience? It's got such an evocative

name. What What does it mean?

>> It is a list. I Everybody, you could

just Google it, but I mean the questions

are ridiculously hard. They're extremely

hard questions from a wide range of

disciplines. And you can see Gro 4 when

it came out and it has improved since

since its release roughly a month ago

was at 44.4% 4% and GPT5 was at 42 and

similarly RKGI2 which is another

benchmark

there's something called the jagged

frontier in AI where things that are

very easy for AIs like maybe math are

really hard for humans and vice versa

and RKGI measures tasks that are

relatively easy for humans maybe you

could almost think of you know there's a

lot of like geometric puzzle solving but

very hard for AIs and here again Gro 4

is, you know, significantly better than

GPT5. Now, in fairness and, you know, to

be balanced and accurate, it is narrowly

very narrowly ahead in artificial

analysis on on the right,

but this is this is the first time they

have not released a model that wasn't

decisively better. And the progress for

Grock 4 was exceptional.

Grock 5 is coming soon. you know, they

have more and I I should note my firm is

a shareholder of XAI. So, you know, as

much as I try to be objective, I am for

sure biased because I am human and to be

human is to be biased. But, um, they

have the largest Blackwell cluster. So,

I'm I'm optimistic for Gro 5. But, you

know, we're we're waiting on Gemini. I

would expect there to be a very, you

know, an impressive new Gemini model and

we'll see how that lands relative to

both Grock and GPT5. But I do think it's

significant that this is the first time

that OpenAI has not been able to clearly

beat a competitor on all metrics, you

know, a month after a new frontier model

was kind of released from one of their

chief rivals.

>> Freeberg, let me ask you a question. And

have you have have you played with it

yet, Dave? Have you gotten into Chat

GP5? So, I'll get your initial thoughts,

if any, but I'm interested in leveling

up the conversation to this concept of

why would they release it if they

weren't a definitive winner? Because

hey, Sam the Bull Alman, Sammy the Bull

is pretty competitive. He took he knew

that this was going to be the reaction

that it wasn't definitively better, but

yet he released it anyway, which means

hey, maybe he's having a hard time

making those innovations and there has

been the brain drain. So, sort of

two-parter there and take whichever one

you want first.

>> I don't know how much this quote brain

drain is affecting things,

but I think one of the big milestones

that was realized with this upgrade is

it's kind of multimodal. So, if you guys

remember a couple weeks ago, if you're

using chat GPT and you have a pro

account, you have to select the model

using the drop down which model do you

want to run? And so you know if you're

doing a research task or a very simple

kind of search task, you would choose

the right model to increase speed or

increase depth. Part of the factor that

I think was a big upgrade with this

system is that it kind of recognizes

which underlying model to call and which

underlying path to to draw from. I

actually tried by asking a very

complicated research question and then I

asked a very simple kind of information

retrieval question and the information

retrieval question it very quickly

pulled the answer and the deep research

it said it got into the thinking mode.

So it it's self- selected. I think this

is really important from a user

experience perspective for AI to work.

You don't want users going in and

technically choosing which model. No one

understands what those letters and

numbers mean. You want to have a very

simple, clean, basic interface where the

model figures out on its own which

underlying set of models to pull from,

which reasoning process to follow to

give you your answer. So I think from a

product experience point of view, this

was actually a pretty big upgrade for

chat GPT and it'll give them a real

advantage as people start to access it.

It's also, I think, why they're making a

lot of the research functions more

broadly available on a limited use basis

to the to the wide population so people

can start to see the depth of what's

possible. That was kind of the key

milestone for me less about the actual

performance of the underlying model on

the benchmarks and more about this kind

of big UX upgrade. Kevin, I don't know

if you feel similarly, but

>> I do. Well, I mean, in all fairness to

OpenAI, the the router that kind of auto

selects the right model was apparently

broken for the first kind of

>> 12 or 16 hours of the model's release.

It wasn't working.

>> Yeah. It was not working consistently

for all users.

>> Yeah. So, you know, the scores may

improve, but yeah, I mean the one thing

OpenAI is like they are a very good

product.

>> Just really really good. And I just

always go back to the statement from

Eric Fishria, you know, uh, who's a

venture capitalist at, uh, at Benchmark,

brilliant man, and he just, he said, it

was on X, you know, it might be that if

OpenAI never releases another model,

they're still a really valuable company

because they have so many users and

they're so good at product and they do

have a lot of distribution.

Phil Deutsch, what inning are we in

here? And how much of your research and

do you rely on or can you rely on these

language models now being in a a very

you know specific vertical every day

studying energy etc and those

opportunities has it made its way into

your workflow and did you get to play

with chat GPT5? Yeah, I mean I think for

investing we use it all the time and it

really is very efficient but uh one

thing I'll cite is Nvidia did and

Freeberg I don't know if you've played

with it or not but it's uh climate in a

bottle sea bottle. Nvidia has done a

climate model of the earth and put that

out there. So I would say we're in like

the first half of the first inning when

we start seeing uh AI really help us

with the thorniest problems and the

trade-offs in and around energy. Uh, so

I think for us very early and we're

using it just like any other investor

would.

>> Yeah. Ben, has it made its way into your

workflow at Daily Wire? And are you

monitoring this as a business owner with

I think you have a couple hundred

employees and, you know, do you see a

bifurcation of the people who use the

tools and who don't?

>> Yeah, I mean I I it's definitely

bleeding into workflow in terms of, you

know, being able to gather information

obviously very quickly or even using

some editing tools via via AI. We we put

out Jeremy's Razer commercial two months

ago that was entirely AI. You know, it

still had the kind of AI slop feel to it

a little bit, but it but it's it was it

was doing a thing and it was obviously a

lot cheaper than having to to shoot

something. But I kind of want to, you

know, again, I'm the dumb guy in this

part of the conversation for sure in

many conversations. But I just have a

general question which is do you think

that the productivity gains are going to

bleed over fast enough to justify the

investment? I mean, that's like the dumb

guy question, right? Yeah.

like like so much money is pouring into

this and I'm looking at the valuation of

of these companies and I'm seeing that

like 60 70% of all S&P 500 gains are

happening in the Magnificent 7 and I'm

thinking to myself I mean when you look

at the internet the internet was working

by 99 2000 and it took until maybe 2006

2007 for all that productivity to really

enter the marketplace. Is this stuff

going to going to hit fast enough to

actually justify the amount of

investment or you going to see a crater

here? I think there's a good question

for Gavin and just to sort of set it up

we are now seeing hundreds of billions

low hundreds of billions per year being

deployed and we'll see a trillion or two

deployed I think in the next 5 years on

data centers and this and we put the TAM

or I put the TAM last year for just

business or last week just for business

at about $50 to $100 per business user a

billion business users in the world it's

going to put you at a billion dollars in

revenue which would be like a you know5

to10 trillion TAM just for the business

side. How do you calculate it? Gavin, do

you have a back of the envelope way to

answer this question? And if we catch up

or do we even need to catch up, is there

enough capital in the world that they

can be patient?

>> I think estimating the TAM this early,

it's hard to do it with any precision.

You know, I think your your methodology

is as good as any, but we can measure

the economic return on these

investments.

you know most of the companies investing

these big dollars into AI data centers

are public the report quarterly

financials you can calculate some you

know something called return on invested

capital and it's actually gone up

since they started making these AI

investments and at first a lot of it was

maybe through opex savings but that is

what you would expect with AI um kind of

you know silicon to replace you know

silicon opex to replace human opex

But more recently, you were starting to

see some really significant

accelerations in revenue growth. Um, you

know, Meta just reported a quarter with

revenue significantly ahead. And I think

a lot of that was due to AI. AI making

uh people spend longer and AI improving,

you know, the quality of their ad

targeting systems such that advertisers

get a better rorowaz and spend more. But

the economic return thus far has been

here. And it is, you know, even

Microsoft, I mean, for me, Copilot is

not the best product, but even Microsoft

on their call talked, you know, they

shared some pretty astonishing stats

about C-pilot uptake.

So, I do think the economic returns are

here thus far and that is a good sign

because, you know, this early in the

internet, the economic returns weren't

there. And I think maybe the, you know,

the the biggest difference between this

and the internet is a lot of the capital

that went in during the internet era,

which is often called the tech bubble,

it was really a telecom bubble. It was

deployed into something called dark

fiber. And that means exactly what it

sounds like, fiber optics that people

spent tens of billions of dollars laying

and then it was dark cuz it was not

utilized, but there was an expectation

it would be utilized. completely

different here with AI where one of the

biggest problems with GPUs and you know

AI data centers is the GPUs are used so

intensively that they melt. So all of

the dollars that are going into the

ground are being used. We're not

building ahead of demand. In fact, we're

clearly still behind demand you know. So

it it can all

>> which is really interesting observation

Gavin because

>> this idea of training a model there's no

analogy to that in the docom era you

know it's not like you had to I don't

know upload all these video files and

you needed all that dark fiber to do it.

It's a silly analogy I know but but that

also did lead to um you know the com

bust.

>> Ben the other side is the energy side of

this. if the I think that the energy

implications of AI are probably bigger

than the inflation reduction act and

certainly will be longerlasting. And so

just to kind of give you to give credit

where credit's due, I think all the

stuff we're seeing on the small module

reactors at some level owes its uh

renaissance to uh AI and the energy

demands of AI. to focus on energies

we'll get to later really wouldn't exist

except for the hyperscalers giving very

specific concrete and immediate demands

for energy that have changed the energy

landscape uh as they say probably bigger

even than the legislation under the B

administration give an example of what

they're asking for because you are uh

active and investing in these projects

you know what was what's a pre what's

like a large pre

AI boom project versus a post AI boom

project in terms of scale footprint

investment.

>> Well, well, a quick way to say this, and

Freeberg knows this stuff as well as I

do. Anthropic just released a paper this

month saying we want 50 gawatts of power

uh for the AI uh in America and over the

next three years. And so that's about as

much power as was added of all this

year. So you're talking, you know, huge

amounts that in our lifetimes, you've

basically been able to say the

electricity demand has been zero uh in

the United States. Now it's 2 to 3%. And

a data center needs continuous power in

specific locations

and it's relatively price insensitive.

So that's what's and the hyperscalers

and bed, you may or may not like this,

but they're they want carbon-f free

power. They're willing to pay for it.

not because of the government, just

that's what they want for their

workforce. So when you say you hit the

market with, you know, 50 gawatt of

demand, much of it clean, that changes a

lot, uh, in a very exciting way. And for

reasons we may get into later in the

pod, it's a real pleasure not to have to

rely on the government, be it Democrats

or Republicans, as we think about those

things.

>> 50 megawws, that's a small town. Gawatt

gawatt g you say gig g.

>> So what is that? If 50 megawatts is

>> that's 5% of the total US electricity

production. So

>> my lord. So

>> free I think it's about what you add a

year right in in new a new capacity

>> the US.

>> Yes.

>> Yeah.

>> Meanwhile China is adding one terowatt a

thousand gawatts every 18 months.

>> Well okay I want to say one thing about

that David. Um,

but where is China getting its gas and

coal from?

That's being imported.

>> It's imported.

>> So, I don't I I get the stat on China

increasing things quickly, which I think

you're right on, particularly the

nuclear side, but on the gas and coal

side, unlike us, they are looking to

others for their source of their fuel. I

think their biggest ad, isn't their

biggest ad in hydro right now?

>> Well, I'm talking about imports versus

ads, but the hydro and nukes presumably

are al-Qaeda's non import dependent, but

the coal and that gas, it's not a great

story for them on that side of it.

David, by the way, just my understanding

was by far the biggest source of China's

incremental electricity was solar.

like this is a verifiable stat that we

should just be able to quickly verify

that that Gavin I that let me just say

one thing you got and Freeberg's knows

this you got to be a little careful when

you say what where the electricity is

coming from and what the additions are

right so the US our additions are like

80% solar to wind but the installed base

it's under so I think that stat you're

citing is probably at best additions not

>> oh no for sure it's additions for sure

it's additions

But they're, you know, they're bringing

on a lot of power every year relative to

the installed base in the United States

and a lot of it is solar.

>> There is um here's an interesting chart.

This is China's uh solar surge. This

comes from Bloomberg. China added more

panels last year than any other country

has in total.

>> So in other words, they added more than

the US. It looks like uh US, India,

Japan and Germany they add it in one

year

>> and that's a 2023 number. I think 2024

took a massive jump.

>> So here's the question. See D see Jay

Cal and and Freeberg here's the question

that I would have asked Secretary Right.

Do you care about that slide? Because if

you care about that slide

then you would have done different

things than the one big beautiful bill.

You might not care about that slide, but

we're not we're certainly not attacking

the problem on that slide.

>> Uh so

>> as well as we could be,

>> right? And they're also putting they

have 150 plus nuclear actors in some

state of deployment. We've talked about

that here countless times.

So, circling back to you, Ben, winning

AI, do you consider that existential for

America as somebody who's not in the

industry? When you hear this discussion

that we had in in DC last week, when you

hear technologists like ourselves who

obviously are investing in this, this is

our book of business right now.

Do you think we are in an existential

race for humanity to win the AIS race

with China or do you think that's like a

construct? Maybe that's just everybody

wins and it's it's not an existential

race that one person wins and the other

person loses.

>> Well, as as you might imagine, I'm

definitely in the existential race

category. I I just look at how China has

has utilized Tik Tok as a as a SCOP

weapon in in a myriad of ways, gathering

data, putting out its own propaganda at

scale. And and think about how they

would do that with control of, you know,

the tools that everybody uses in all

their businesses. And that's putting

aside the military connotations. I was

talking to my friend Mike Gallagher who

was a congressman on the subcommittee on

China and who's now over a palunteer

doing policy over there and he was

pointing out correctly that you know

China's capacity if they if they win the

IA rights militarily is going to explode

and that's and that's going to mean an

awful lot for things like freedom of the

seas. It's going to be a lot for for our

allies, for America's economic dominance

in the world. And and so, you know, that

opens up a whole can of worms as you

know, as goes to the Trump

administration's policies with regard to

Nvidia and what kind of chips we should

be allowing Nvidia to ship over to

China,

>> which we're going to get to on the

docket in a moment. Interestingly

enough, I did you did you gentlemen see

the luck and coffee announcement in New

York City and the socialist reaction to

it by chance?

Nobody saw it. Okay, so people are not

spending too much time on uh on the Tik

Tok. Tik Tok has a bunch of like young

socialist New Yorkers in communist

t-shirts going to Luck and Coffee and

talking about how Starbucks,

you know, is a, you know, are capitalist

and that they're glad that the Chinese

company Lucken, which does $2 coffees,

has come to America to destroy the

American company Starbucks and Duncan

because communists know how to do

capitalism better than America.

Americans, that is like the central

position in my hometown of New York City

right now. Here's the Tik Tok. It's

hilarious. Watch this. Pull this up for

a second, Nick. It's It's a It's a

worthy diversion. This should There's

some red meat for you guys.

>> Get a $2 cup of communist coffee. So,

this specific coffee shop has more

locations in China than Starbucks does.

Um,

okay. I'm going to come back to make a

video there later. But no, this company

went through a $300 million accounting

scandal where they faked their profits

because capitalism sucks. And then they

started paying their workers and putting

the money back into the coffee and what

actually matters. And now they are more

successful than Starbucks. Back in Soho.

Of course, this location is right by NYU

campus.

Should have paid your workers.

>> All right, I think we get the idea. I I

have a new theory, Ben, that the Chinese

cuz I do I'm with you on the existential

uh threat of that competitor. I have a

theory. They're going to try to beat us

on capitalism and then use brands like

we've used brands like Apple and Google

to defeat us. BYD producing cars now for

half the price of American cars and

they're shipping them on their own

shipping containers. Lucking coffee

infecting the US now. And I had a third

example. Oh, and Tik Tok the example you

just gave competing with and and and

using that. What do you think of my

theory, Ben? No,

>> I think that that's totally right. And

and the truth is that what you're

talking about in China obviously isn't

communism. It's it's state sponsored

corporatism. And so you can pour

extraordinary resources into, you know,

one path dependent part of industry and

and you could out compete in coffee if

you decide to subsidize that at

extraordinary cost and then you can

undercut the rest of the market. And

this is one of the things President

Trump is totally right on when when you

talk about the tariff wars. I've always

been in favor of tariffing the living

out of China. I think that's that's

actually quite right. My my problem when

it comes to the tariffs, I know I'm

jumping ahead in the in the docket here.

My problem is that if if you're going to

do it, what you really ought to be doing

is boxing in China with with free trade

networks with literally everybody else

and exclude China from that network. You

have to do all the preliminary steps

before you box in China. Otherwise,

China's able to sort of climb out the

window, which is I think what they've

done on everything from Nvidia chips to

Tik Tok to, you know, their actual

tariff rate, which I believe is now

lower than the tariff rate we have

against Canada. Let me bring it to you

Freeberg because I think this is like a

super inter interesting discussion. Our

bestie Bill Gurley has a position that

hey everybody can win. It's not an

existential they win or we win. I mean

obviously it's a competition but there

could be many winners. What's your take

on all this Dave and if any?

>> Well I'm in the place like I've said

before it's kind of like who's going to

win the internet if we said that back in

1996. Like no one quote wins the

internet. It's an open standard. It's a

platform. It's an evolution of uh access

for markets, of productivity for the

world. I think AI is very similar. I

don't think that there's um you know

there's this concept that you end up in

some sort of state of super intelligence

that perhaps reigns supreme and creates

superiority,

but there's many vectors of competition.

So within drone warfare as an example,

there's going to be a massive vector of

competition. It's pretty clear that

remote autonomous devices are going to

be the kind of front lines in battles

going forward and China has both a

manufacturing productivity materials

advantage over the United States on that

front. So it's not about having the best

model, it's about having a supply chain

that can support their ambitions in

warfare. And similarly in economics or

in business there's many dimensions upon

which we're going to have advantage over

China and China may have advantages over

us that are going to be enabled

accelerated magnified by by tools and

AI. Actual models I think are going to

be this continuously kind of evolving

set of systems that

it's unclear where things are going to

head. But to to kind of bring up your

point, I do think that the CCP has a

unique ability to throttle up and

throttle down entrepreneurship to drive

productivity in that nation.

When they throttle it up, you end up

seeing massive gains in individual

capital accumulation, which is counter

to the Communist Party's intentions. And

so then they throttle it back. And as

you can see in this image from the

Financial Times, this shows the number

of companies founded in China by year.

It peaked in 2018, which by the way

aligns pretty well with the peaking of

venture capital investment in China from

the United States and from VCs around

the world. And then it began its rapid

decline because there was a set of

policy changes and you guys may remember

Jack Ma disappeared and these other

sorts of things happened around that

time. And so there's this challenge to

the CCP that resulted in them throttling

back the entrepreneurship. I don't think

you can have massive true natural market

progress without having

entrepreneurship, without having a more

free market. And so they are, I would

say, rate limited at this point by this

particular chart in terms of their

competitiveness. We can argue about

their resourcefulness and their ability

to do central planning and central

command of the economy, but at the end

of the day, much of what brought the

Chinese, there was a great um podcast on

this by the guys from the Brookings

Institute years ago, uh where they talk

about what got China out of poverty um

you know, where their GDP per capita

went from whatever it was 3,000 to

30,000 in a very short period of time.

And it wasn't the government central

planning. It was the entrepreneurship of

the peasants and their ability to kind

of self-organize and self-mobilize and

build build business and create better

productivity from the ground up. And it

was the individual Chinese citizens that

that drove that economic boom, not

central planning. Central planning had

some enabling factors, but that was

really important. And so I do think one

one of the challenges ahead is is this

entrepreneurship suppression that's

manifest.

>> And I'm sure you have a point on this.

Yeah.

>> Yeah. Well, I was going to say Gavin,

the East West Conference that our

friends at KOTU do was named after like

this really amazing boom period we had

15 to 10 years ago before Americans were

not allowed to invest in China. And not

only that, people had to American

companies had to like basically divest.

They shut down in China all the

education companies that were

venture-backed, nationalized those.

Jackmaw went for painting lessons, etc.

So, and he's incredible painter right

now, by the way. Some of those oil

prints, I think, are going to be much

bigger in their impact than Alibaba. But

Gavin, you would I I think agree like we

an investment in China, we were on a

really great track that got shut down.

Do you think when super intelligence

comes that that is the race because

we're looking at general intelligence,

you know, a lawyer, an accountant, a

developer, but super intelligence, I

think, is where people get to the

existential piece. Yeah.

>> Yeah. Well, they for sure believe it's

existential. I have it on good authority

that if you work for Deep Seek, you are

not allowed to be in the same room as an

American while you're in China and you

have kind of a CCP minder um with you

most of the time. And that's that's kind

of astonishing. Um you know, so they

believe it's existential. Um the second

thing I would say is I do think they are

making an effort to throttle it up. You

know, Xi Jinping had a uh a dinner with

kind of, you know, 20 um entrepreneurs.

I think Pony Ma from Tencent was there.

You know, the Deep Seek CEO was there,

but they kind of gave pride of place to

the people who were making physical

goods plus Deep Seek and maybe

deemphasize some of the social networks.

And the last thing I would say just a

stat that just builds on what David just

said about, you know, how

entrepreneurship amongst kind of like

rural Chinese is kind of what jumpst

started China's economy. I think at the

towards the end of the Soviet Union,

they could not produce enough food using

kind of um socialist systems. So, they

let 2% of the acreage in the Soviet

Union kind of like be, you know, more

entrepreneurial and self-organized and

that 2% of the acreage produced a

majority of their food. You know, it

just kind of shows the superiority of

kind of capitalism to socialism in in a

world in which there are resource

constraints.

>> What's better? What's better, Phil?

Capitalism and democracy, capitalism and

communism. Do you know long term, I

think we would all agree we have the

winning combination? I hope. But in the

short term, this sounds like an

incredible

>> advantage to put your finger on the

scale and say, "Hey, BYD cars

>> can lose money forever. We just want to

kill the American car industry. We want

to kill the German car industry."

>> Well, first of all, nothing can lose

money forever. But but the one thing I

think is implicit in what Dave and Gavin

said is you need rule of law. You can't

just have innovation. You need rule of

law. And it's yet to be shown that China

can do that in a way that will create

long-term success absent government

propping it up. And I'll give you an

example. We've had factories in China,

one making wind blades, and basically

every day was a renegotiation on terms,

no matter what you wanted to do. And if

you didn't control the chop, the the the

the thing that made the stamp, you

didn't actually control the factory.

That is not a long-term recipe for

success. And I think eventually, no

matter how strong the centralized

government is, you've got to have a rule

of law if you really want to see decades

and decades of of uh innovation.

>> Okay, Gavin, go ahead.

>> Just 100% agree. You need rule of law.

It's essential for, you know, any system

of government and but particularly for

capitalism. I mean, in some ways,

capitalism is the rule of law with

private property. But I would say going

back to 2018 being like kind of glory

days for China, they were working. you

know, the these kind of internet

entrepreneurs, they did create kind of

the only kind of internet companies that

were capable of challenging American

internet companies, not just in China,

but globally. And obviously, most

American internet companies aren't

allowed to part to participate in China.

But, you know, the problem was those

those, you know, CEOs became so powerful

that they were started to feel

comfortable challenging the CCP.

And, you know, Jack Ma made some

comments in 2000. I I don't remember

exactly when that were he just vaguely

critical and you know that was it. You

know then he disappears.

>> Okay. Can we Gavin can we stop with the

Hey, wait. Hold on a second. Pull up my

Hold on. Pull up this picture. Gavin,

you keep saying he disappeared. He opted

in to oil painting this beautiful

painting which did here. Went at auction

for $5.4 million to an environmental

nonprofit. I mean, he didn't just

disappear for saying that the old people

in the I think the quote was something

like, "Oh, we got to pull it up." That

the government was a little old and

didn't get it. Ben, you've been a little

quiet here, but in politics is your

wheelhouse. Question for you. We've seen

a centralization of authority in the

federal government and we're sitting

here talking about, hey, central

government plus capitalism doesn't work

as well as rule of law. Do you worry

sometimes, hey, Biden wanted to use

executive orders to do the student loan

thing and you know, Trump obviously has

taken tariffs and there's a big

question, maybe the tariffs are, my

understanding is they're supposed to

reside with Congress and there's a

lawsuit about that. Maybe that goes back

to the Congress. He has been

centralizing, Biden was centralizing.

Even Obama was centralizing and

consolidating power. Is that necessary

for us to compete? because we're kind of

seeing overtones o overtures like that.

Even at our AI summit two weeks ago, uh

there was this point that you know Sax

has made on this podcast and the

president made which is we have to have

federal AI legislation. We cannot allow

the state you know states to have any

say in AI the most important technology

in the world. I'm I'm kind of torn about

that. So I'm curious what you think of

centralization occurring here and then

the bigger picture with China.

>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think that when it

comes to sort of the the bigger picture,

the the temptation in politics is always

to look at again corporatist states

which always get out of the box really

really quickly because they look good.

It's like you mobilize an enormous

number of resources on on this one

target. I mean what capitalism does of

course it allows you to mobilize

extraordinary resources across a wide

range of targets. But corporatism allows

the government to basically put you over

one target and one target alone. And if

you're just looking at that target, it

looks great at the very beginning. And

this is true for this is true for Italy

when when Mussolini took over. This is

true actually for Hitler's Germany at

the very beginning. Economically

speaking when you were seeing

extraordinary rates of growth

corporatism starts to look really good

particularly in a messy democratic

system like ours where where the human

beings you know at the top don't have

full control. I think one of the things

that that I think is frightening to

people like me about AI is because you

are seeing such a consolidation of AI.

Yes, extraordinary spending but that

extraordinary spending is relegated to a

relatively small number of companies

again. And not just that, you're seeing

it's so much spending going to to one

thing. And so the race for super

intelligence that you're talking about,

which China clearly, Gavin is totally

correct, sees as as adversarial. You

know, if they get there first, then

corporatism wins. And so the temptation

is to sort of imitate that from our

side. And maybe you do have to imitate

that. Maybe it's more like maybe it's

more like the Manhattan Project for AI

than it is like a market driven thing if

you actually do see it as a true

existential threat. and we should treat

it more like a military program than

like anything else. I think the

temptation is to extend that across the

rest of the economy to industrial policy

to steal and copper tariffs to to

everything else. And and as far as sort

of the the federal AI versus state AI

thing, I think that that may be slightly

a red herring just because what you're

really talking about there is not the

federal government usurping state

authority. What you're talking about is

the federal government trying to preempt

state authoritarianism. I think that

that's what that's that's I think what

David is pushing is is sort of the idea

that the federal government ought to

prevent the state of California from

filling the field with some really bad

AI legislation that essentially destroys

competition among all the various

players.

>> Go ahead, Phil. Yeah, get in there.

>> I have a question as an investor, not a

policy guy.

I don't quite get

Democrat versus Republican on the topic

of how they give support to the private

sector and what counts as picking

winners and what doesn't count as

picking winners. When I look at this

administration, the previous I'm not

sure I see I think they're both very

activist. They both kind of seem to pick

winners and losers and I I feel like

that distinction's kind of lost a little

bit. Is that is that make any sense to

you? like one had the IRA, but then the

other has like rare earths or this or

that. Like it's very hard when they

switch like that, Ben, it's really hard

to know where solid ground is as an

investor.

>> I mean, listen, I I totally agree with

you on that and I do think that the

centralization of power in the federal

government and the choosing of the

winners and the losers over the course

of the last several decades actually has

been really denigrating for for private

industry. I mean, I'd prefer that that

nobody was picking winners and losers,

but I I think that, you know, if if you

basically are now relegated to a choice

between the winners that are picked by

the Trump administration and the winners

picked by the Biden administration, you

know, from a political point of view,

I'm going to pick the winners picked by

the Trump administration. I think

they're doing a better job picking the

winners. But just on a principled level

and and a general market level, I prefer

that nobody be be doing these sort of

subsidies. I don't like industrial I

don't like centralized planning and

central industrial policy this way. And

so let me just I think I would I agree

with you almost 80% and and David this

is where I think

>> I disagree with both you a little bit.

The subsidies right have really helped

solar, wind, EV and and other industries

outside of energy as well. So I think

what I would love to see is rational

subsidies that consistently last through

Republican and Democratic

administrations. And we had that a

little bit with Bush and Clinton with

some of the renewable stuff, David, like

Governor Bush put in wind requirements

in Texas that carried through. But if we

keep flipping back and forth, we inhibit

one of our greatest strengths, which is

our technology and innovation. And Gavin

>> Freeber wants to get in this. Go ahead.

Great point, Phil, by the way. Great

point.

>> Here's a counterargument I'd make. The

subsidies, while they may have benefited

those two particular industries, created

a financial disincentive for investing

in nuclear. And so there's always a

loser. And the loser isn't always

necessarily the target. The target was

oil and coal or oil and gas and coal or

whatever it was, carbon- based energy

systems. That was the target when there

were subsidies for solar and wind was

let's accelerate these deployments and

get this market to start moving. It does

two things. One is it doesn't force a

natural market dynamic where you have to

ultimately get the cost of solar or the

cost of wind turbine production low

enough that it makes economic sense from

an ROIC basis that investors would

natively want to make that investment.

They're making the investment because

the government's paying half the cost.

And the second thing is it then makes

nuclear non-competitive. And therefore

the the R&D investment dollars that were

supposed to go into nuclear that would

have allowed us to accelerate to Gen 4

systems which by the way China has now

done went away. And so now we are

several decades behind where China is

with respect to nuclear which is

ultimately the most scalable energy

production system we have.

>> Phil go ahead and then Phil I want to

get through a couple of the charts you

you took the time together to put

together here as we wrap energy. Before

we go into energy, I do have a politics

kind of question I would love to pose to

Ben if that's okay.

>> Yeah, please.

>> So, um I my my parents were visiting me

for the last week and um we we had a lot

of lively political debates and you know

this trend of the imperial president in

America, you know, which I think really

accelerated with Biden and now is you

know further accelerated with Trump.

I their hypothesis which I think is

correct but I'm curious for Benz is that

is a function of the fact that Congress

by and large can no longer effectively

legislate. Every once in a while they'll

do the IRA or the one big beautiful bill

but by and large Congress is not doing

their job. So for 30 or 40 years a lot

of the governance was done actually by

the judicial branch and if we have to

choose by being governed between the

judicial branch which is unelected and

the executive branch which is at least

elected and accountable I would rather

have an imperial president um who we can

judge and vote out of office than an

imperial judiciary. Just curious for

your thoughts Ben.

>> Yeah I mean I obviously think that's

true but I think the trend goes back you

know more than a few decades. I think

that if you're really going to go to the

deep roots of this, you have to go back

to the roots of the administrative state

in the early 20th century because the

reality is the reason you have an

imperial presidency is because the

federal government just does way too

much. I mean, the federal government is

just way too big. They're way too

intrusive. Uh they're they're way too

powerful. And so once that becomes a a

giant grab bag of cash, then whoever

controls the federal government wins.

And now if you're a legislator and you

can kick all responsibility for your

policym over some unelected bureaucrat

in the executive branch, that's

precisely what you're going to do. The

founders gamed for ambition checking

ambition. They never really gamed for

people trying to kick responsibility

from one branch to the other. They they

they thought the other way. They thought

Congress is going to defend its own

prerogative against imperial overstep by

the presidency. And instead, thanks to

the administrative state, Congress

people and senators started to realize,

hey, what if I just pass like this very

vague omnibus package and then I kick it

over to a bunch of regulators and the

regulators do all the work and take all

the heat and I can go back to my

hometown and tell them how much money I

brought home.

>> Yeah, it's fascinating.

And when you kick it back to home, I

don't know if you guys saw this uh town

hall um that went explosive. There's

been a number of them. Ben, you must

have covered it.

>> While you're pulling it up, I I I do

want to say that I do think we don't

want to throw the baby out with the

bathwater. That is to say, the

government and a number of government

employees and career civil servants are

doing God's work, whether it's on safety

or uh defense or intelligence. And what

I don't love is

a tone of critical criticizing lifelong

government workers when none of us would

really do that job at the pay they're

taking. And maybe I don't mean to make

it, let me not say the people on this

call I don't know as well, but many of

my friends and I I do think there needs

to be a a beat for those people that are

doing incredible work

>> for little or no recognition or pay and

they we can't pay with too broad a

brush. And I

>> I'm not blaming I'm not blaming you

about that. I just say we don't hear

enough of that. It's all I'm not blaming

the bureaucrats who are there to and are

given responsibilities to do a thing.

I'm blaming Congress for having kicked

them the authority in the first place.

If you're going to place, you know,

blame with with somebody, you have to

give it to the the branch that actually

abdicated its duty and decided to

construct an entirely different branch

and then throw off all all

accountability.

>> What's the solution there? Is it the

American party doing what the Tea Party

did, getting, you know, or the America

Party, I guess, is what Elon calls it

not American. The America Party saying,

"Hey, you know what? Forget about the

presidency. Elon did that worked pretty

effectively. I think we'd all agree he

had a significant if not the deciding

factor in getting Trump re-elected.

Probably also something to do with the

other the Democrats ran. Putting all

that aside, if an America if the America

party or another party were able to

secure couple of Senate seats, couple of

House seats, could that reverse this

trend where maybe the House takes back a

little responsibility in your mind, Ben?

Is that a is that a strategy worth

pursuing for moderates? I I I think that

actually this is not going to get solved

at the federal level. I think what's

actually going to happen is that the

federal government is going to lock up

and it's going to be essentially

rotating elected quasi dictators uh

until until the end of time except that

the American people are going to be

unhappy with that and you're seeing

already more authority now now kind of

being taken up by state actors which is

why you're seeing a necessity for things

like federal legislation on AI to

preempt the states. what what you've

seen over the course you saw this during

the Biden administration a lot I moved

from California which is obviously a

very leftgoverned state to Florida which

is very rightgoverned state but the

difference in governance are massive and

you're seeing governors pick up the the

mantle of saying okay well the federal

government is unworkable they're not

doing what we want to do so we're going

to do our own thing down here we're

going to challenge the federal

government in a wide variety of ways and

and I think that's actually the the

proper solution that's that's actually a

reversion to what the founders wanted in

the first place when the federal

government was essentially so small that

you could walk into the White House and

just talk to the president and and state

governments were the ones with the vast

majority of authority. So trying to

solve it, what I would love to see for

the America party actually is to instead

of try to take over the federal

government, try to take over some state

legislatores, right? That that's

actually an easier lift in some ways.

Try try to win a governorship, try try

to actually do some of these, you know,

libertarian-minded policies at the state

level, which is where most of the power

resides, and then bleed that up into the

federal government as an ethos.

>> It seems to me like nobody's happy. If

you if you missed it, there was this

like crazy town hall. It occurred in um

Nebraska

and everybody was upset. Freeberg, I

wanted to make sure you saw this. I

should have sent it to you earlier. I'm

not sure if we talked about in the group

chat, but you had people who were at

once upset

>> in Nebraska about the government

spending too much, then not the Medicare

cuts, Medicaid cuts. People were

universally on both sides absolutely

infuriated at the state of affairs.

Nobody's happy now. Freeberg, your

thoughts on this sort of you kind of

predicted with the socialist side, but

it does feel like my prediction.

My my prediction will ring truer than

any of us hope. Socialism will sweep

over this nation. I fear and I think

it's a cancer and it's going to be worse

than what we saw with woke stuff. It's

going to be just like I'm losing out on

everything. I mean, people are stagnant

in wage growth.

There is no one in the United States,

including wealthy people, who haven't

taken significant notice of the

increased cost of groceries, in the

increased cost of buying home goods.

Jason, I'm assuming you must have

noticed as well how much groceries have

gone up in price. Everyone's rent goes

up every year. There was this Tik Tok

rant that went viral this week about

this woman that's like, "Why does my

rent go up every year? my salary doesn't

go up. We're in this really difficult

moment because of what Ben pointed out,

which is that we've basically funded the

government to do everything for us. And

by my calculation from last year, I

think nearly half of Americans are

employed directly or indirectly by the

government at this point. And as a

result, because of that and the

inefficiency of government allocation of

capital, everything inflates in cost.

And we're entering this era where some

people make the joke that the train has

left the station. You know, it's

>> all right. Let's finish up with these

two charts here, Phil, on energy and

then I want to get into I just want to

say one thing to David. I still think

when it comes to innovation, rule of

law, capitalism,

freedom,

we are the best at it. I think that

>> still gravity. There's still gravity,

Phil. At the end of the day, arithmetic

is arithmetic. When Jimmy Carter lost

the presidency, there was 12 years of

Republicans and then there was

Democrats. It may be that socialist

I don't think socialism ever the United

States the way left let's say the left

side of the Democratic party wins for 12

years David maybe. I don't see that but

if you want to see that you can but it

will swing back. This country is

incredibly resilient and I have complete

faith in that resilience. the love it

optimism. Hold on. Let me just get these

two charts out of the way real quick.

>> Finish up the energy charts here. Um and

then we'll we'll we'll continue the

discussion as we pivot over to tariffs,

which is obviously related to all this.

>> All right. All right. So, Dave, David,

>> yes.

>> I want to go back to this because I

think I can't I want to I can't

emphasize enough how much I love you and

think how smart you are. And I also

think the last argument made was

absolute

>> regarding

>> the idea the idea that the subsidies

that went to wind and solar were at the

expense of nuke is nutty. And let me

give let me tell you why. The issue with

nukes and you say this so wonderfully on

China. The issue with nukes is

regulation

and what Ben was saying over we're

stifling innovation there and we've got

to figure out a way and I think the

secretary of energy and the president

have done a great job of this to

rationalize the regulatory framework

around nuclear power that what's bother

what hurts nukes is not their cost per

kilowatt subsidy it's the massive

amounts of bureaucracy around them so if

you were to give the nuclear power

industry

five or 10 cents a kilowatt hour. That

doesn't help them with their big

problem. So, and wind and solar, that's

what you gave them. And the sizes are

different as well. And one's a

distributed resource and ones are

centralized. So, I guess what I'd say is

I don't think we have to treat them the

same. I'm 100% with you that we should

be subsidizing nuclear power. It's

clean. It's base load. It's reliable. We

could do small module reactors. They can

be used for data centers. All of the

above. We don't have to pit our children

against each other. And in this case,

they really aren't against each other.

Just

>> and the chart you're showing, explain

the chart you just showed. Sorry. Why

should we? And then I have a second

question for you, which is why should we

>> subsidize nuclear when we have hundreds

of billions of dollars being spent by

the most powerful mag companies in the

world and sovereign wealth funds who

want to invest in it? Why why do the

taxpayers have to pay for that? You can

get to that in a second, but walk me

through this global electricity

generation chart you pulled up here just

real quick.

>> So, so, so what this chart shows um is

how quickly electricity has come on uh

from solar, the growth rate of solar.

And so, actually, Katherine, there may

be a chat GPT chart on the uptick in AI,

but what you see is the yellow, the

hyperbolic growth of solar. And so, this

goes to the fact of it really has been a

success. cost about 80 or 90% and it's

beginning to grow. And I agree with

David, eventually you have to have

storage with solar. So, you can't quite

uh uh match gas to solar, but we've had

incredible success reducing costs of

solar and wind and incredible growth.

And so, that's what the result of those

incentives have been. It's been

successful that way. So

>> now the second chart here, the OBB

chart.

>> Yeah, the OBB chart, this just goes to

show that when you take away incentives,

you lose some generation. And so the

point of this chart is if we really need

all we can eat on energy for artificial

intelligence. And if artificial

intelligence the race is the you know

race for national security uh and

dominance in the world I this is saying

we're taking a step backwards on this

supply and again it's not either or

David I would say do as much solar and

wind as you can as much SMRs as you can

do as much energy to make us a dominant

player uh in artificial intelligence as

well as other things your response sorry

that's that's what I'd say no problem

free your response

Yeah. So again, I I think the point I

was trying to make, Phil, is by driving

the private market capital into solar

and wind because it is now discounted.

So you get a high rate of return by

applying your capital there. You're not

likely to put that capital in the

development or the extension of nuclear

technology. and the the lack of

investment in improving nuclear

technology. Yes, you could argue there's

regulatory burdens and so on, but it's

largely been inhibited because there

have been these other subsidized paths

to market with energy. And as a result,

we missed a window to catch up to Gen 4,

which is just so everyone understands

what that means. These are these very

clean, meltdown proof nuclear energy

production systems that are being

deployed at scale in China now. And the

US doesn't have any and we have no path

to getting these deployed. Secretary

Wright's going to speak at the all-in

summit. He he has said at the Department

of Energy that in the United States we

are likely going to have a Gen 4 reactor

deployed or started production in 18

months. But we'll see. But we are so far

behind because no capital went into it.

And that's because the capital was

redirected into these subsidized

markets. And that's the disincentive

that arises when the government gets

involved in markets. the government

creates these these financial incentives

that number one create bubbles in those

markets and number two take away the

incentives for capital to flow to the

best path for long-term returns which is

what's happened in energy in the United

States.

>> Yeah. So it in in in this small module

reactor Gen 4 stuff

we as well others have investments there

uh great company we like called X energy

talk about the book there Jason but I

think it's fair to say that the money

flowed into those sectors when the

hyperscalers committed to them and

showed they were serious about the

demand side from the private sector and

they have been there's been a catalyst

from the administration because that's

had four or five executive orders trying

to get rid of the bureaucracy. So I

guess I would say David in my experience

as an investor in the space the dollars

flowed when the market spoke and the

hyperscalers said they wanted and were

behind the SMRs and second it was

further uh invigorated when as Ben says

the government took a step back and

stopped being a yoke on the industry.

Neither of those have anything to do

with subsidies to solar and wind. Can I

just say one thing about socialism

because I thought it was a really

important thing that David said sure

that it's inevitable. I would just say

to me so much of it comes down to mom

Donnie. Um if like I disagree with every

one of his policies.

>> Well admittedly they're dumb. So

>> they're dumb but yeah I mean they're

obviously stupid but if you have not

watched him he is an incredibly

charismatic effective politician. Yes.

Um, an absence,

>> as has been every socialist

revolutionary leader

>> for sure,

>> but just I think the key question will

be one, you know, unless Adams or Cuomo

pulls out, he's almost certainly going

to win. And then if he wins, you know,

does he go through with these policies

cuz if he goes through with them,

they're going to be epic failures. We

know what happens when you defund the

police. You know, there is a

governmentrun um grocery store somewhere

in Kansas and it's a disaster. So, they

won't work. And I think that'll be a

quick that'll be like a quick end to

socialism.

>> I I disagree with this. I mean, sorry,

I'll finish.

>> No, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. Please go ahead.

>> Here's the problem. It'll take a year,

two years for for those policies to

actually hit and and destroy all of New

York and it'll be like the end of of

Planet of the Apes and we'll all be

wandering on the beach looking up at the

Statue of Liberty asking why we blew it

up. But, you know, I I but the problem

is

>> you did it. You mad men. You did it. You

did it. Shut up crazy bastards. You did

socialism in New York City, the

financial capital of the world.

>> But but the bigger problem right now,

and this is why this does go to tariffs.

It also goes to crypto policy. It goes

to the it goes to AI right now. The the

kind of normie in America who who

doesn't know that much about AI, doesn't

understand how crypto works, doesn't

understand even how financial markets

work. Right now, they're all willing to

kind of stand back and say, "Okay, well,

I trust President Trump. I trust the

administration. I don't want, you know,

full-scale redistributionism and

government control because, you know,

things are kind of okay. They're kind of

okay. If things take a downturn, then

the backlash is going to be a lot

stronger than anything that that any of

us can say about the failures of of

Zoran Mamani because what it's going to

be is look, the rich got richer and we

got poorer and it's going to be a redux

of 2002 2007208,

but with a much even further to the left

than Obama ever was. and and and that

I'm deeply afraid of because

>> so if the market crashes, if

unemployment goes up, then this

exacerbates and makes the point. And for

a socialist, all you have to do is say,

"Don't you want free X, Y, and Z,

whatever the popular thing is, a free

phone, less rent, free buses. It's the

easiest pitch in the world.

>> Cheaper food, free food. I mean, it and

if you fall for it, it takes a while to

selfrect from socialism, too, right?

This idea that we kind of immediately

flip back after you see Zorn Bum fail or

something." I mean, San Francisco has

yet to have a Republican governor.

They've been trying this crap for for

several decades. I'm from LA. I spent my

entire life in LA. The last Republican

mayor of LA was Richard Rearen, right? I

mean, like this like it you can always

blame those crazy those financers who

who got rich and they all moved down to

Florida to avoid our tax rates and

that's what's really cleaning out the

base of the rest.

>> To follow up on Ben, I'm sorry to

interrupt, but like something that's

really important about what you just

said is it's not a binary switch that

gets flipped. You're socialist or you're

not. What happens is these policies

where you have big government policies

that provide greater and greater

economic, financial and social support

to the population are slow burning

policies. The big policies in the

federal government started 50 years ago

and they've gotten bigger and bigger.

It's a snowball effect because when

they're not working, if I'm not getting

enough money in the food stamp program,

for example, the solution isn't, hey,

let's cut the food stamp program. The

solution is let's make the food stamp

program bigger. When rent control didn't

work in San Francisco to bring housing

prices down, the solution was let's get

the government to start building

housing.

The solution is never let's reduce the

government's role. The solution is

unidirectional which is to get the

government to do more to solve the

failings of the policies. So whatever

policies he does enact if they don't

work the answer and the response from

that socialist type movement will be

let's do more let's have the government

do more and then you increase the burden

on the people because you end up

increasing taxation increasing

regulatory burdens and as he said in one

of his interviews ultimately you seize

the means of production and that's the

end goal of his government

>> it's so simple to solve this problem I

hate to make it too too difficult here

but if we had the super funds like in

Australia and people had the directional

ownership ship and social security gets

retired for people actually having you

know being in the market and we just

crack the regulations on housing and

build much more housing. this will

change everything. And the the housing

issue is so oppressive to this

generation and the cost of their

education is so oppressive now. They

have opted out of education. They're

starting to look at and go, I'm going to

UT. I'm going to be in a state where I

can pay, you know, 50k in total for my

degree. So young people are getting

smart about this, thank goodness. And

they're going for trade degrees where

plumbers and electricians are making

150k a year. But you have to solve

housing. I have watched this so so

acutely in my move to Austin. I suppose

Ben, when you moved to uh Nashville and

Florida, you saw the same thing with

your teams. When people don't have to

spend 60% of their nut on their housing,

their anxiety level goes down massively.

And when they feel they have ownership

in a home, it goes down massively. Why

we cannot fix this problem or why

neither president just says, "I am going

to make housing when I run for

president." President Jason.com. I am

going to just make housing my thing.

We're building 10 million homes and the

government's going to build two new

cities and we're going to make h we're

going to make housing affordable.

>> Although I got to tell you, you know,

one of the things I think this goes to a

deeper malaise actually and this is

maybe just a human problem. You know,

one of my kind of favorite charts, it's

it's a sad chart, but one of my favorite

charts with regard to the the American

populace is geographic mobility over

time, how much people move. Because what

what what you actually see is that that

has wildly decreased in the United

States. There's this impression that

everybody, you know, now because you get

on a plane, you can go somewhere and

it's you can get a a truck and all no

one moves now. People basically I mean I

mean I think one reason is because

originally people were moving from, you

know, rural to to cities and now they're

in the cities and so they sort of stay