in confidence. Sax told me he's a little

broken up about the empty nest kind of

thing. And by empty nest, I mean his

bulldog Moose is coming to live on the

ranch.

>> Has the moose landed?

>> The moose is landing next week. We're

giving him a 3month trial. If he's on

his best behavior, he stays.

>> He's going to be great. He's so well

trained.

>> What's going on?

>> Moose is our our bulldog.

>> Yeah.

>> And

>> Moose is loose.

>> He needs the space. He needs a ranch.

He's a very athletic bulldog. This dog

is not a couch potato. He's like very

active and he just needs the space to

run around.

>> Why don't you just buy a ranch and give

him his own ranch?

>> Why buy a ranch when a bestie has one

already?

>> Yeah. A bestie who loves bulldogs. But

no, he's a he's a spectacular specimen

of a bulldog. I mean, this is

>> stunning bulldog.

>> Yeah, he's a beautiful dog.

>> Great bulldog. He's

>> This is a trial adoption, a calacanis

adoption cycle. Oh my god, this is sad.

You know these bulldogs resist training

>> like Jason

>> you know like

>> you know they are they are the most

stoic loyal

>> Jason

>> but stubborn individuals they will

>> overweight stoic stubborn

>> overweight this is a spelt dog. How dare

you? How dare you? Moose is a specimen.

>> In terms of personality this is founder

market fit. I mean this is like owner

pet fit.

>> Founder bulldog fit. So what Moose would

do is he would jump on the couch and

just kind of lay there. So we' like,

"Moose, no, go down." So we put him

down. He jumps right back up.

>> We take him down. Jumps right back up. I

mean, he can go on all night doing this.

So finally, you just give in and let him

sit there.

>> It's literally J Couch.

>> It's literally They are.

>> Now it's his couch. Now it's his couch.

>> It's literally J.

[Music]

We'll let your winners ride.

>> Rainman David

>> and it said we open source it to the

fans and they've just gone crazy with

it. Love you.

>> All right everybody, welcome back to the

number one podcast in the world. We got

a banger episode for you today. all the

topics that you want to hear about in

the world. And with us, our amazing

crew, our chairman, dictator from Pio

Hapatia, enjoying the final moments of

summer. How you doing there, brother?

>> Well, I come back in a couple of days.

>> You get a little melancholy there,

brother? You a little sad?

>> I mean, I think

it should everybody should have a two to

three week vacation in August. I think

it should be mandatory around the world.

I think the world should stop

>> and we should all go on vacation.

>> Yeah. Well, you proved that to the

audience by not showing up for the show

for a couple of weeks. Yeah.

>> It's the best time to go on vacation.

>> I agree. I just literally got back from

a little

>> Take your ass off through the end of

July. Take two weeks off with your

family. It's nothing better. I

>> I just did a a little uh visit down to

Mexico City, which was absolutely

delightful. Rome is amazing. Have you

been there before, Jim?

>> No, but I've heard it's incredible. I

heard the food scene in Mexico City is

bananas.

>> It was bananas. And

>> the startup scene there is amazing. It's

kind of like if Spain and Williamsburg,

Brooklyn had a baby, like that would be

Mexico City. It's super hip, super fun.

Lots of young people, lots of energy.

Hey, speaking of uh young people with

lots of energy. Hey, Freeberg's back

with us in his cell working throughout

August to get incredible things done

like our AI summit and the All-In

Summit. Freeberg, uh, you gave up your

summer once again for the all-in crew

and for the audience. How do you feel?

You resentful or you feel good about

your decisions.

>> I live for the work, Jal.

>> You do. How's Aho doing? It seems like

you're um doing a lot of work there. You

got your head down. Just give us a

little update on the company.

>> I appreciate BS. There's a lot going on.

We're very busy.

I actually had a really cool test tube

here that we had a customer visit today.

H

>> I'll go find it. The world's first true

potato seed.

and we are ramping up production. Lot

going on. It's pretty exciting.

>> Yeah, sounds sounds thrilling. Saxs, any

uh thoughts there on potatoes and just

how thrilling this uh exercise has been.

>> What are we talking about?

>> We're just talking about Oh, Freeberg

had a thrilling summer. He's he's got a

new potato in a test tube that he's

working on. Just

>> Wait, did we invest? Is that in What's

going on with that?

>> Yeah, you're a shareholder.

>> I'm in. Okay. All right. Well, okay. I

care about you in

>> uh No, you did not me an investment.

>> I didn't I didn't get

>> Wait, is this a sore subject?

>> No.

>> Why?

>> No, it's a sore subject for me.

>> When this thing becomes worth 10 billion

and I didn't get to slide in a little

250 slice. Not even a slice, huh? Free

bird.

>> Look guys,

>> a slice for your friends.

>> They want They want value added

investors. Jal, what's your value ad?

Exactly.

>> A value ad. How about

>> spreading disinformation on this

podcast?

>> Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, since I'm

not on the cap table, good luck with

your mutant potatoes.

Uh disinformation.

Mutant potato. Oh, we'll get through it,

folks. We'll get through it. Hey, uh

Zach, you and I did a little interview

with a certain senator. Give us an

overview. Yeah, we did a great interview

with Senator Eric Schmidt from the state

of Missouri who previously was attorney

general and wrote a book about his

experience as attorney general. He

brought the lawsuit Biden v Missouri

which exposed the Biden administration's

censorship apparatus that they ran

through social media companies. This was

the government's side of the the Twitter

files and the discovery he brought when

married with the Twitter files that Elon

released really paint a picture of how

the government was in bed with social

networks to basically censor Americans

free speech rights in favor of their

point of view on co and many other

issues. So

>> great conversation.

>> Yeah, it was spicy and uh it's

everywhere where you can find allin. But

we got this big event coming up. The

summit is coming folks. Here we go for

the fourth time in just a few weeks.

September 7th to the 9th. I think uh 8th

and 9th are the main days. Man, this

lineup is stacked. Alex Karp, Vlad from

Robin Hood, my guy, Energy Secretary

Chris Wright and I are going to have a

great discussion part two. Wow. Uber CEO

hitting an all-time high. Circle CEO,

just an incredible lineup here. And

Freeberg, it looks like we've got some

great partners. Yeah.

>> First of all, the event is going to be

very expensive to put on this year. We

actually have in addition to the great

speakers, we have Diplo headlining one

of the main parties,

>> the Diplo.

>> Yeah. Gary Richards and Dylan Francis.

And so we have a huge set of blowout

parties every night. It's going to be

awesome to put all this on. They pay for

the event. We want to thank the

sponsors. So Salana, big shout out. They

were a sponsor last year and they're

stepping up as a big sponsor this year.

Big shout out to our friends at Salana.

They're amazing. They support everything

we do. They're doing over a 100 million

transactions a day. It's unbelievable

what they're getting done over there.

Great team. And they're going to do a

full open bar for us uh Sunday. Juice

Bar Coffee, the works classy team over

there. And we don't just have like these

typical sponsorships of events. What we

do is we ask, you know, our partners,

hey, make an activation, make a place

for the besties and for the fans to

hang. And they've all created these

amazing experiences. And there'll be

matchas and espressos and craft beers

and sushi and all kinds of great stuff.

And to our friends at OKX,

they're going to be coming back. They're

building an onstage. Got a matcha bar

coming. All these great things by our

partners. Google Cloud's back offering

350K in credits to Google Cloud for

startups. What mentions they are over

there. Google's crazy. Look at this,

man. They're putting out a mini campus

at the summit and uh yeah, 350K in cloud

credits has become Athletic Brewing's

back. They're doing the scholarships

again. We have a couple of scholarship

slots left. Please don't apply for the

scholarships if you have means to buy a

regular ticket. But if you do need a

scholarship, please do apply if you're

an upandcomer. Allin.com/summit

or allin.com/ yada yada yada.

>> Did you guys see this?

>> What's going on now?

>> Apparently, I was in the new South Park

episode.

>> The whole thing was around the sick

offensity of AI.

That's you.

>> Do I say anything in the show or is it

just I'm just in the background?

>> Uh, no. They had a line of people giving

tributaries to the president, you know,

based on the Apple gift that Tim Cook

gave to our amazing president. It's a

funny episode. You know what I like

about the administration? Like JD

actually retweeted all this stuff and

and you know had it's good fun. We we we

get to mock our civil servants.

>> That's the vice president to you.

>> That's was what I said. My guy JD. What

did I say?

>> Suddenly on a first name basis.

>> My guy JD. Hold on a second. Let me just

say hi to JD here and I'll just get his

feedback. I'm going to invite him to the

diplo party. Hold on.

>> Your biggest nightmare is here. Me and

Chris Wright also talking directly now.

I'm directly plugged in.

>> Oh yes. Chris, right? I'm bringing him a

special gift to the summit. You're going

to be you're going to love it. All

right. We got to talk about AI. AI

mainet hit a bit of a detour this week.

All over the, you know, three or four

days, AI stocks were down across the

board because of this MIT study that

went viral as well as Sam Alman's

comments about a bubble and Zuck

instituting a hiring freeze in AI after

going on a complete blitzkrieg. So,

let's get into it. Act one, Monday,

Fortune dug up a generative AI study

that MIT published last week or last

month, I should say. In that study, MIT

found that 95% of Geni pilots are

failing to make it to production because

of employee resistance, poor quality

output, and the most interesting problem

seems to be resource misallocation.

According to the study, 70% of JN AI

budgets are going towards things like

building sales and marketing tools,

which have poor ROI. The highest ROI was

found in back office optimization

like automating tasks that cut back

spends you know on various departments.

Basically

these pilots aren't working. Shamath is

what the study found they evaluated 300

AI implementations and interviewed 150

leaders across 52 companies. You've been

grinding it out with your own software

company now called 8090.

Does this align with what you're seeing

on the field, Jama?

>> I think what I would tell you is that I

think the first wave was just a lot of

boards who read the words AI somewhere

in an article and then went to a board

meeting and turned to the CEO and said,

"What's your AI strategy?"

>> Mhm.

>> And then the CEO turns around and sends

that down into their or eventually hits

the CTO's desk. And I think the first

wave is mostly people just spending

money because they had large existing

budgets. And so they were like, let's

just go and try a bunch of different

things. And I think now we're going

through the sorting function of

realizing that there's a big difference

between probabilistic software and

deterministic software. That's probably

the biggest reason why you're seeing so

many failure modes in sales and

marketing. It's very hard to codify

sales and marketing into a set of

heruristics that never change. But back

office processes,

why they're so good and a great target

for AI is ultimately you have so many

people that have been hired to deal with

edge cases, right? I think like that's

what people do in most companies is

they're in charge of a process and

they're they're dealing with edge cases.

And I think that you can get extremely

high rates of accuracy if you implement

AI correctly in back office tasks.

I think the real question is like what

happens to all of this revenue that has

been generated. You're seeing companies

generating $50 million of ARR in a

matter of months and then raising huge

rounds. I think what we haven't seen is

whether there'll be any sort of either

logo churn or dollar churn as new

companies come in with even cheaper

solutions. the foundational models move

up the stack and just absorb capability

or things just don't work and they get

abandoned. All of that churn happened in

social. I remember when I was in the

middle of helping build Facebook, we

went through that whole cycle. There was

seven or 8,000 social companies

>> and within six years there was five of

us left. It happened in SAS when I was

investing in SAS. There's a couple of

very early and important successes like

Yammer which Sax started which I was

very lucky to be an investor of but then

it took many years for the handful of

winners to get really sorted out and I

suspect we're about to go through that

same cycle in AI. So I think that

article basically paints a very accurate

picture. There's been a lot of triing

and experimentation.

We now need to go through a sorting and

a cleansing and then we'll rebuild from

first principles around the

>> and not surprising

not surprising to our sultan of SAS

David Sachs because the sales and

marketing departments they they're very

promiscuous when it comes to new tools

getting a great lead closing a sale you

can directly connect it so we always see

them test stuff out doesn't surprise me

that we'd see sales and marketing go

after this first but what do you think

about the brittleleness of this revenue

the churn sachs. Are we going to see a

lot of these companies rocket up to 100

and come back down to 50? Is this

something you're seeing uh or your your

firm which I don't know your status at

the firm? Maybe you could tell us how

how that's working out in terms of your

intelligence there, but what is craft

seeing on the field there?

>> I think we're seeing a lot of

interesting AI applications being

developed, but it's still very early

days. And I think that over the past

week or so, there was a correction in

sentiment towards AI, but I think it was

a healthy correction. I don't think this

was the beginning of a bus cycle or

something like that. I I still think

that we're in a boom. I still think

we're in a investment super cycle, but I

think there was a healthy dose of

skepticism applied to some of the more

fantastical claims that have been made

about AI. And I think this is why you

saw there was like roughly what, like a

10% correction in public AI stocks. And

there was that MIT report that said that

95% of projects and companies are are

not making it to production yet and so

forth and so on. So I feel like we're

getting in the weeds a little bit here

and what we should be talking about is

just sort of where we are in this um in

this AI super cycle.

>> And where do you perceive us at? We're

in the experimentation phase. We're in

the pilot phase. But this issue around

probabilistic versus deterministic makes

it hard to trust this software. Is that

what you think the key issue is? Well,

let me tell you why I think that this

correction is actually healthy is that

after Chat GBT launched at the end of

2022 and then throughout 2023, the

dominant narrative in AI is that AGI was

just two to three years away. And

everyone kind of had their own

definition of AGI was, but it was kind

of this idea of smarter than human super

intelligence and kind of magic AI. AI

would be able to do everything. And as a

result of that, you kind of had both

utopian and dystopian narratives really

proliferated. And so, you know, you

started getting this like job loss

narrative that within a few years, 50%

of knowledge workers would be out of

jobs. You got this rapid takeoff

narrative that basically the leading AI

models would be able to turn their

intelligence towards improving

themselves towards recursive

self-improvement and therefore within a

couple of years the leading models would

basically achieve super intelligence and

leave everyone else in the dust and then

capture all the value of humanity and

then based on that narrative which again

it was the same underlying narrative

that fueled both utopian and and

dystopian or doomer takes on AI. You got

I think a huge backlash which has

already been forming where you have a

thousand bills running through state

legislatores right now and you have all

this AI safety legislation. You got

bills like in California the SB 1047

which would have applied tremendous

amount of of new regulation to AI. So

you saw this policy backlash happen as

well. And it was all based on these

fantastical and kind of magic views of

what AI was going to do in just the next

two to three years. And I think that the

reason why this recent skepticism is

healthy is because I think it's rebuting

all of that. And it's showing that, you

know, AI is a powerful tool. I mean, I I

definitely think it's a new and

important form of computing and it is

going to unlock tremendous value in the

economy, but it's going to take us a

while to get there. I mean, you can't

just tell the AI, you know, be a sales

rep, be a customer service rep, and kind

of throw it over the wall and expect

that it's going to replace a human. It

takes a lot of prompting and iteration

and validation to make the AI work, to

make it generate business value. And if

we were on a path towards rapid takeoff,

then what you would see is that the

leading AI models would be increasing

the distance between like the top one or

two models would be increasing the

distance between, you know, the rest of

the models. And instead, what we're

seeing is a clustering of model

performance around the same performance

bench.

>> Incremental, right? They're

incrementally

>> the progress to be a little bit more

incremental. It's more evolutionary

rather than revolutionary. And I I think

this really crystallized around the

launch of chat GPT5 where a lot of

people were expecting GPT5 to be this

huge breakthrough. Sam Alman was sort of

teasing this concept by posting photos

of the Death Star that the idea that

this model was going to blow everybody

else away and the reviews ended up being

very mixed and then we saw that on the

performance evaluations.

>> It's not that the model didn't represent

progress, it just fell short of these

lofty expectations that have been

created. So Freeberg, let me get you in

on this

>> just to sorry I've been kind of

longwinded here, but just let me just

sum this up, which is please I think

that what people can now see is that

we're not in like a a loop of recursive

self-improvement. We're seeing that

there are a handful of of great model

companies, but the development of this

technology is going to be a more normal

technology race. It's not like the

leading players just all of a sudden get

achieve AGI just very quickly. And as a

result of that, I I think because it is

a more normal technology race, I think

we can apply a more normal logic to it

from both an investment and a policy

standpoint. And I think that a lot of

the narratives that were hyped up about

imminent doom or imminent utopia,

depending on what side you were on, were

just massively overhyped. And this is

why I think it's just a very healthy

thing. By the way, the other concerning

thing is it's concerning when models

successively don't get meaningfully

better, especially because there's a

tendency for incremental models to get

overfit to benchmarks. That's another

concerning thing that I think people

were like scratching their heads about.

And if you look at the last big set of

model updates, X of Grock, they didn't

really meaningfully improve their

separation from the last generation

model on the big benchmarks that matter.

And that's also very concerning because

they tend to overfit to begin with.

>> Yeah. And I would just say that, you

know, another just piece of evidence

here is that the model companies are

still leaprogging each other to some

degree with their latest versions. And

again, that should not be possible if

one model achieved rapid takeoff. The

other thing you're seeing is that it's

not like one model is dominating all the

other models. You're seeing that models

are developing areas of competitive

advantage. They're becoming increasingly

specialized. They have different

personalities. If chatbt has been

accused of being sick of fantish, grock

is maybe more based. I mean they have

different modes that they excel at.

Google I think has gotten really good at

video for example. Anthropic is is

really good at coding. The

specialization really belies this idea

of one model becoming all knowing and

all powerful. We're seeing a

proliferation now of specialization.

>> Let me try to get Freeberg in here.

Altman appeared to compare the AI craze

to the dotcom bubble according to CNBC.

Here's the quote. Are we in a phase

where investors as a whole are over

excited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is

AI the most important thing to happen in

a very long time? My opinion is also

yes. And then a quote from Sam Waltman,

another quote, I think we totally

screwed up some things with the roll out

of GPT5. So he's kind of admitting that

Freeberg. What does this mean in terms

of the massive investment opening out

was talking about $500 billion. So is

this in do you think if you were to game

what Sam is saying here maybe he wants

it to cool off maybe these investments

are too large given the problem and the

progress. What what's the game on the

field here, Freeberg, in terms of the in

massive investment that people are

claiming this is going to require if

we're not seeing the results in

corporations

>> like the big capex investment because

most of the capital that's been raised

has been raised by the model companies

and most of it's been deployed into

chips, right, in data centers,

>> right? So does that make sense right now

or do we does that need to cool off as

well while these companies prove hey we

can get some things done in corporate

America?

So I think one one of the key things

that's being understood so you know the

internet was

being connected there was connectivity

and and fiber being deployed

in a rate that exceeded the economic

value creation by the end users on the

internet during the dotcom boom and so

as a result the dot boom was a became a

bubble that burst but the ultimate

promise of the internet was realized

many orders of magnitude greater than I

think you know most folks

declared and proclaimed at the time. It

was just delayed by a few years. I think

it's likely to be the same here. Whether

this particular capex cycle is going to

have that ROIC or not, I think is is a

bit TBD. But I think there's kind of

three big trends

underway that are worth noting. The

first is that there's a realization now

that you need to pair humans and human

engineering with the generative tools

that these generative AI systems are

providing. So you can get a bunch of

code written, but you still need to

debug the code. You still need to get it

into production. You still need to get

it to integrate. So this kind of pairing

of humans with AI is something that's

being learned. What's the right model?

It's not that you just turn on

generative AI and it runs your business

for you. It's like where does it fit in

the org? Who are the people that run it?

How do they use it? Etc. And then

similar to that, I think we're seeing a

lot of partner models being developed.

So rather than have like a Sora or a

video model just generate a movie, it

turns out that you can use the

generative AI to generate the objects

and then use an existing rendering

engine like Unity to actually make the

video. So those sorts of pairing models

where you use what's being called a

deterministic system or an existing

piece of software that integrates with

generative AI can accelerate outcome. So

filmmakers can now make AI movies by

coupling the AI generative tools with an

existing offtheshelf kind of rendering

system. And that works a lot better than

just telling the AI make a bunch of

video where then all the people look

different. You can't control the

objects, you can't change the camera

angle, you can't change the framing, the

color, the lighting, all the features

that you may want to otherwise control.

So layering AI on top of the existing

system seems to be the right answer. And

I think we're seeing that not just in

film making or digital content creation,

but in other areas as well where the AI

provides almost like a substrate that

can sit on top of existing tools and

just be like a marionette and do a

better job.

>> And I think I think the third key thing

that we're seeing that's causing a bit

of the observed hiccup is this movement

to SLMs. And you guys have seen a bunch

of these papers from Nvidia and others

that have shown performance improvements

by actually moving away from one large

model that does it all to much smaller

specialized models that work in a

specific task in a specific application

or that work together as a network of

models. And my personal belief on this

is actually that these models are going

to move towards SLMs that we don't

understand how and why they work the way

they do in a network fashion because

today we're designing the SLMs in a

deterministic way. We're saying this is

an SLM that does X, Y, or Z. But if the

models eventually get developed by other

models, those SLMs will become really,

you know, not well understood, but

they'll work in a network. The reason

that's important is because this

rearchitecturing of these systems

dramatically reduces the energy cost and

the dollar cost per token generated. And

so it brings down the cost and the

runtime of these systems. So to your

point Jal, the capex investment suddenly

gets much higher ROIC rather than the

challenged ROIC that it's dealing with

today because the systems are so energy

and cost inefficient today. So if the

architectural redesigns work, then these

systems become much more efficient, 10x

100x more efficient. And I actually

think at that point token production

will go way up, not way down. So those

are three big trends that I see kind of

underway right now that might be

architecting the overall kind of

ecosystem and and probably causing some

of the observed hiccups. Jac, what do

you think? Is it like do you think

there's a big slowdown underway? I mean,

>> yeah, I mean it's this is following

exactly

the technological curve that we see.

Nick, you can pull it up here where

we've seen this with smartphones and the

internet itself, but the trough of

disillusionment is probably where we're

living right now because there were so

many expectations. you know, this

innovation comes out, people get really

excited, massive amounts of money is

invested, and then people wonder, hey,

was this a good investment or not, and

then it just takes incremental

improvement over time. We saw this with

Uber, as an example, where people were

like, oh, it'll never be profitable,

never be profitable, profitable, Door

Dash will never work. And then they just

added a couple of bucks and it scaled

globally. The network effects kicked in.

We're going to see it again with

self-driving. self-driving is actually

probably just getting through the peak

of inflated expectations where people

are starting to realize, oh, these edge

cases are pretty serious. You probably

don't want these things going too fast.

You're going to need to be very

thoughtful about putting them on roads.

And um that leads to a really intact

we should have at some point on this

program about should that be federal or

local. Should the local states get to

decide self-driving rules on their roads

or should the federal government come in

and make a blanket one? But looking

specifically at the sales one, we're

seeing on the field that maybe the

salespeople aren't being replaced by AI,

but the SDRs are becoming 10 times like

literally 10 times more effective at

finding the next lead at organizing

leads and targets. So, it's definitely

happening, but it's incremental inside

these organizations and it's just going

to take specialization and people have

to actually embrace the tools. That's

probably the biggest thing is there's a

lot of resistance to these tools

already. And um once you get people

actually embracing them, they start to

work. But if people aren't going to

embrace them and there's some

resistance, it's kind of like what we

saw with the internet. Yeah.

>> Here's a big question that I have. You

know how at some point like you get so

invested

in a way of doing things that

when things change, it's almost too hard

to change the way your company orients

and you see it in every single phase of

these big innovation cycles. The

question is, is there a point at which

these foundational model companies have

invested too much money in LLMs

where so many of their employees only

understand that and all of a sudden

there are completely different ways of

building these models. State space is

one example, but then you know some new

entrant decides to build a completely

different kind of representation. They

may also then build custom silicon for

it. All of those things have yet to

happen and the reason is we're really

only a few years into what should be a

multi-deade innovation cycle. So those

are like some really important questions

because then you have this problem of

the sunk cost fallacy of well we spent

all this money on this LLM based

approach and now all of a sudden there's

this thing that comes around the corner.

That's the thing that I'm really curious

about and waiting for is will there be

these small teams

and it may take advantage of what

Freeberg said. He uses an LLM as a

jumping off point but then builds an

entirely different approach is able to

generate entirely different and cheap

silicon. That hasn't happened yet. And

the reason it hasn't happened is not

because it doesn't make sense but it's

because we're so early into it.

>> Yeah.

>> And then what do these big guys do? The

big guys have spent tens of billions of

dollars.

>> Yeah.

on all kinds of stuff, human capital,

opex, capex.

So it's going to be it's going to be

really interesting.

>> Well, this study actually addresses this

purchasing of AI tools from specialized

vendors. Those succeeded two out of

three times. So the statistics in that

early study seem to um indicate you're

right about that Shimath is if you're

doing something very specific and we've

got a couple of companies doing very

specific things like Tax GPT is one of

our uh companies we incubated and

they're only going after you know tax

and CPAs and being a co-pilot for them.

Those things seem to be succeeding

faster than going to a general model and

asking tax questions to it. There's also

all this other stuff that people never

talk about that are very practical

realities of building a So, for example,

we've been selling into the enterprise

at 8090. We'll do this year, this is our

first full year of business. We'll do

about $40 million of bookings

>> in the first year.

>> Yeah, that's crazy.

>> And it's all back office type stuff. But

our first customer where we delivered

enormous gains, we were fired.

And the reason we were fired was not

because the technology wasn't working,

but it's because as it goes lower and

lower from the board and the CEO into

the bowels of the organization,

you actually run into huge push back.

And I think that there's going to be

that cycle that we have to deal with as

well, which is in all of these AI

businesses, there's all kinds of stuff

that scare people. And there are many

people in decision-making roles at many

of these companies that will have to

sort out where's their comfort level.

And it was like one of these things

where I was like, well, what are we

supposed to do? We escalated and blah

blah blah and it got resolved. But my

point is that I think is a cycle that

has yet to play itself out in all of the

Fortune 2000, global 2000. I would not

expect that the AI boogeyman that has

been created doesn't have some negative

ramifications over the next couple of

years as well as this stuff gets sorted

out.

>> The last piece is the talent war. On

Tuesday, the New York Times reported

that Meta was looking at downsizing its

AI division as part of a larger

restructuring. Wall Street Journal then

reported Meta has a hiring freeze across

the AI divisions, which is just crazy

because just eight weeks ago, Zuck went

crazy. He was trying to buy Ilia's uh

super intelligent startup. You remember

Ilia declined. So Zuck poached Daniel

Gross. Meta Aqua hired the scale AI team

and then they agreed to invest 14

billion in that. Sam Walman claimed Zuck

was making hundred million offers

regularly for open AI talent. I'm

curious, you know, what you think of

that Sachs is the talent war seemed to

go insane for a couple of months and now

is pausing. What's your take on all this

I don't know uncertainty boom bust cycle

in such a compressed period of time or

is this just

>> I mean you you were seeing founders

turning down multi-billion dollar

acquisition offers for startups that

hadn't even released a product yet as if

those types of offers grow on trees and

they don't I mean these types of hundred

million or billion dollar job offers

>> they don't come along very often I mean

you have to be at kind of the sweet spot

of a boom cycle and you need a huge

company with tons of money that feels

like it's strategically vulnerable and

is at risk of being left behind. And if

you get a confluence of those factors,

then you can get kind of crazy offers

like that. But they don't come along

very often. I think that what Meta is

doing is probably digesting a little

bit. They've now made a bunch of talent

acquisitions. They've done some aqua

hires at, you know, very expensive aqua

hires and they're probably just

consolidating a little bit. Like I said,

I don't think this is the bust part of

the cycle. I don't think that a bubble

has popped or anything like that. I

actually think that we're still probably

early to the middle of this investment

super cycle. And it's just a healthy

correction in sentiment here that people

are realizing it's going to be a little

bit harder and take more work than just,

oh, the AI is going to figure out how to

improve itself and we get to super

intelligence. That was always a little

bit of a fantasy.

Mera should have taken the billion

dollar offer from Zach or Ilia should

have taken the 30 billion Sachs. I mean,

these things never happen. And as you're

saying,

>> I mean, I guess it depends how much they

have in the bank account. You know, if

if they're already like billionaires

from whatever they did before, then then

maybe it doesn't matter. But if you were

just starting out, for example, and

didn't have any money in the bank,

that's a pretty hard thing to turn down.

I mean, realistically,

>> yeah,

>> they probably they probably sold a bunch

of OpenAI equity at 300 and 500 billion.

>> They're both Open AI co-founders, so

>> they seem like they're free rolling, so

they have no incentive to sell.

>> Yeah. Which is fine. It's just that

there's a lot of people who've never

been through a bus cycle before. And if

they think that this is the normal state

of the world, they're going to be sorely

mistaken.

>> By the way, you're right, Sax. It's hard

to build as you know cuz you did a a

billion dollar company that then exits

for more than a billion. It is hard

>> right where you justify that valuation

based on fundamentals. So right now

we're in a part of the cycle where you

can justify that valuation

>> based on it strategic value to a multi-t

trillion dollar market cap company. But

that only lasts while those companies

are in the market for strategic

acceleration.

>> Yeah. if they're behind, if they're

stuck,

>> then you have to make your company work

on its own as an actual business.

>> And to get to a $30 billion valuation

based on fundamentals, that is

extraordinarily difficult. I mean, that

implies, you know, multiple billions of

revenue, actual revenue.

>> Does somebody want to underwrite 500

billion for OpenAI common shares?

Anybody think that that is a good trade?

>> I'll make the I'll make the bull case.

I'll make the bull case.

>> Yeah, please. Yeah. I think the simplest

way to make the bull case is if you look

at the kager on their mouse and the

conversion from ma to dows.

You essentially take a small minor

percentage of the Facebook or Google

terminal arpoo and apply it to some

number of ma dows 3 4 years from now. So

if I had to guess, if you take 4 500

million MADO growing at I'm guessing,

let's just be conservative%

>> 700 million weekly active users right

now.

>> 750. Okay. So then so then I would

probably put that at like 500 DAO to be

conservative. It's probably doubling

every two years. So 500 goes to a

billion, billion goes to two in four

years. And at 2 billion DAO, they

generate a tenth of Facebook's revenue.

Just to be very conservative and you

probably get to a trillion five

valuation there,

>> right? So it's you could you could

triple up on that bet.

>> Yeah. I mean, look, OpenAI has actual

revenue. I mean, they they have actual

revenue because they have subscriptions

and they appear to have the dominant

position in the consumer space and it is

a replacement for a lot of people for

search, which is the most lucrative

franchise on the internet. And this is

one of their applications. So I actually

think that you can make that case,

you know, pretty comfortably. But can we

could we go back to a point you were

making before Jal about in the survey

that the attempts to just apply some

sort of generalized AI model didn't work

very well like 95% of the time it didn't

succeed in these large enterprises. But

if they used a more specific vertical

application or vertical model or an SLM

approach which is more a smaller

specialized model then it showed much

greater success. I mean that makes a lot

of sense to me is that in order to drive

business value there's a lot of what I

would call last mile problems right like

LLMs need context and so you have to

first of all connect to all of your

enterprise data sources and you have to

prompt them in a very detailed way in

order to get to a good answer and then

you have to validate that answer to make

sure it's not a hallucination and then

you need to iterate on it and so this

idea that you're just going to have one

super intelligence that just figures all

this stuff out it's just not the way

it's playing out in the real world.

You're seeing again a lot of very

specific business problems that have to

be solved. But I I think that this is a

great thing ultimately for the ecosystem

because it implies that you're going to

get lots of vertical applications and

lots of specialized models that capture

value in lots of different markets. And

that that's actually the way that we're

going to drive this throughout the

economy as opposed to it just being one

foundation model eating all the value.

So I I think this is a very healthy

thing for the ecosystem.

>> Yeah, it makes total sense that the

vertical systems would feel more

deterministic sacks because they're

giving they have a tighter problem set,

a tighter data set to actually come to

an answer. Whereas the, you know,

probabilistic,

you know, just asking an LLM to come up

with a business plan for you, it it just

feels like it could be 80% correct, 90%

correct as opposed to 99% correct, which

the vertical ones are actually getting

very good at getting the correct answer.

Okay, let's talk a little bit.

>> That last 10% is fundamental and that's

where you get all the the last mile

problems. And you have to understand the

the industry in order to solve the the

problems of how you kind of go from

let's say 90% accuracy or effectiveness

to 99 which is where the business value

is.

>> Well, and you use last mile sax. I think

it's quite appropriate if you look at

self-driving which is the tip of the

spear I think in this argument. Whimo

has a bit more deterministic model.

They're they don't have uh safety

drivers. Robo taxi has safety drivers

for a good reason. They're using a

probabistic model and they're getting an

intervention every, you know, x hundreds

of miles, let's say, which means if you

were to use it daily, you're going to

have, you know, an intervention, I don't

know, every week or two. And obviously,

they'll iterate and they'll get that

down to the same level as Whimo. But on

what timetable, Freeberg, on what

timetable do you see a probabilistic

model like Elon is pursuing with his

robo taxi program versus the more, you

know, deterministic one? When do you

think those cross over? Do you have any

insight as a scientist or any guess?

>> I don't know.

>> Yeah, that is the 10 trillion dollar

question is when will that problem be

solved? All right, let's talk a little

politics here. According to Poly Market,

Gavin Newsome is the early favorite in

the 2028 Democratic

presidential race. So, who gets the

nomination? So, here's some background.

Newsome is surging in a couple of polls

this week. Uh, here's one from Politico

that asked California Democrats and

left-leaning independents who their

preferred candidate would be in 2028.

Newsome came in first with 25% of the

vote. Then, Kamla, your favorite Sachs

and Pete Budajedge, AOC, your favorite

uh Chimath there. Tim Waltz, another one

of Sax's favorite. And the odds have

jumped about 9 percentage points on Poly

Marketers for Poly Market Newsome at 28,

AOC at 14, and a bunch of people, you

know, in the single digits that you

could probably guess. So, your thoughts

on the early information here? Does this

is any of this even valid, Sax, in your

mind, or is it just too much time

between now and then? Well, I think it's

valid in the sense that you're seeing

Democrats react positively to what

Newsome is doing. And what what Nuome is

doing is mirroring Trump's style in an

attempt to to again give Democrats what

they want, which is they they they want

a Trump of their own. And despite

Democrats figning objections to Trump's

style, that this is really what they

want is they they want someone who they

perceive to be a fighter. That said, I

think there are two problems with

presumptively crowning Gavin as the

nominee three years in advance. One is

that what Nuome is doing here is

completely performative. Everyone can

see that he's acting and he's aping

Trump's style or what he thinks is

Trump's style. Whereas Trump is

completely authentic. Trump is always

Trump and everyone understands that and

there's something very authentic and

likable about that. Whereas I think that

Gavin comes across as being synthetic or

plastic and you don't really have a

sense of who the real person is. And I

think trying to pretend to be the left's

version of Trump only I think reinforces

that that problem that he already had.

So one is authenticity. The other is

that I think that Democrats make a huge

mistake if they think that Trump's

popularity is based on his style. I

mean, it's true that Trump has a

trillion dollar personality and that is

very helpful in politics, but ultimately

I think the reason why Trump has done so

well for a decade is because he's been

on the right side of a bunch of core

issues in American politics that other

people just weren't focused on or

weren't talking about.

>> Cities seems to be one that heads up

versus

Gavin Newsome will become one of the

attack vectors or one of the grand

debates. Jeffreyburg, you have

California's,

you know, descent into madness in the

major cities and then obviously Trump is

cleaning up DC from a very first

principled basis like, hey, you can't

camp here. Period. Full stop. So, what

do you think the chances are here,

Freedberg, that this new strategy going

on the podcast, having a podcast, being

spicy on social media is going to work

for Gavin or you in Sax's camp? It's a

bit performative and maybe not fake. And

by the way, Gavin Newsome, can't wait to

have you on the pod. Go ahead, Freeber.

>> I would say that the current polling is

a reflection of the nonTrump aligned

markets response to Trump.

And so it will change certainly over

time as the results of the

administration's actions bear out, etc.

One way to think about this or forecast

this is what is the reaction going to be

to this administration? I think there's

a, as I've talked about many many times,

a very high probability that someone

who's a little bit more socialist

aligned is going to end up being kind of

thrust forward here. And I think AOC

fits the bill there. So then I think the

question is what's the Republican

response going to be to the choice they

may have in trying to prop up or frame

up one of those two candidates. And I

think frankly there may be some group

that would say we would rather be up

against the socialists because they're

going to look like idiots and we're

going to win. And so there's going to be

weirdly support for a socialist-like

candidate. The other side is the honest

moderate question which is who would you

rather have as president? A socialist or

Gavin Newsome? And I do think a lot of

moderates would say if I had to pick

between those two excluding the

Republican candidate, I would want to

pick the moderate. I would want to pick

Gavin

>> Chimath. What issue will determine the

midterms and then the 2028 election?

Look at your crystal ball there,

Chimath. And

>> tell us what you see.

>> Yeah, midterms might be easier to to

think about. Right.

>> I think the midterms are going to be

about the economy, but the economy is

going to be a window into a lot of these

other issues, the safety security issue,

the immigration issue, the tariff issue.

rates. I think rates are going to be an

enormous swing factor here. I think

Powell is really holding on white

knuckled to a position that probably

doesn't

underly the the data. So, I think in the

short term it's just going to be more of

an economic up or down vote for the

Trump administration. Many things I

think are positive and in their control,

but there are a few things that are not

in their control. In 2028, I don't know.

The one thing I would say about the

candidacy though is like I I don't know

if you guys remember, but when the

Republican

primary process started, the person at

the top of the polls at the time was Ron

DeSantis. And I said, "You do not want

to be ahead early. These people never

win. They never win.

>> They take all the arrows and peak too

early."

>> No, it's it's not even that. It's just

like they never win. So if I had to

apply that rubric here, what I would say

is

the practical choice

that the Democratic voters will have is

to actually ask whether they want a

replay of California

on an American 50-state scale.

And if you look at it through that lens,

I think Gavin Newsome is going to have a

very difficult path because of what has

transpired over his tenure as the

governor. And he's going to have to

explain away a lot. So I think that in

the absence of real choices, I think

that he's the clear winner. What is that

phrase? In the land of the blind, the

oneeyed man is king sort of a thing.

I think when you actually go into the

election cycle starting after 26 in 27

honestly it's going to be up in the air.

What I will tell you is that the way

that the electoral college is set up and

the voting dynamics for the presidency

is set up a socialist cannot win.

But the way that the democratic

primaries are set up a socialist can

absolutely win. So this is the sort of

Saxis point which is I think for the

Republican side the best outcome is a

very radical agenda that isn't really

supported by substantive

facts and is more supported by vibes.

This is what I feel. I just feel it

should be right. And I think that those

things may win a primary but will just

get destroyed in a federal election.

What about you? The world's greatest

moderate. What do you think? pretty

clear that the socialist movement is

happening and that is going to inspire a

lot of young people to come out like

they did in New York from Mandami and I

think you have to think about what the

platform is. I agree the economy will

determine the midterms, but I would look

ahead at the core issues we've discussed

here many times, Freeberg. And if I was

advising the Democrats, I would smash

the Republicans where they don't speak

up about important issues to the

American

voter and where young people feel they

are being ignored. So, what would I say

if I was them, if I was running their

platform in 2028? I would go with real

wages that are stagnant and Trump

doesn't talk about that. In fact, he's

cutting taxes on the rich. They got a

credible attack vector right there that

nobody's talking about the minimum wage

and Trump doesn't care. JD doesn't care

about you or the minimum wage or your

wages. I would go after education being

unaffordable and again Trump and JD

don't talk about that. Then I would go

after housing. Republicans don't talk

about that. They don't talk about

housing. And then I would go right at

the immigrant issue and I'd say,

"Listen, America's for immigration. This

country was built off of immigrants and

JD and Trump want to pull up the ladder

behind everybody and not allow other

people to immigrate to this country

after they benefited from it." That's

the perfect attack vector for beating

the Republicans in 2028. Housing, wages,

education, and healthcare. These are

things you never hear Trump talk about.

You never hear JD talking about these.

And I think that that's the way to if

they want to beat them all the time.

>> It's it's way down the bottom of the

list.

>> No, they talk they don't they when's the

last time what's Okay, so tell me Jim,

what is the proposal?

>> Wages went up significantly in Trump's

first term and then they started

stagnating again under Biden and that's

the whole purpose of his trade policy is

to encourage reshoring of manufacturing

in the United States.

>> Tax bill,

>> he passed a huge tax bill that locked in

all these gains. No tax on tips. You can

debate the impact to the broad

population, but there are enough

examples where actual take-home wages

are higher than what they would be in a

counterfactual.

>> Yeah. And by the way, Gavin Newsome has

a supermajority in the California

legislature. He can run the state

however he wants. He also has a very

compliant court that will rubber stamp

his decisions. Completely different than

Trump who has a very narrow majority and

and he has a court that basically tries

to stop everything he does. So Gavin

Newsome can run the state. He could be

operating the state for the benefit of

its citizens instead of holding all

these performative press conferences and

doing podcasts and tweeting all day. So

where where is the program that you're

talking about? It doesn't exist.

>> It's a fine criticism, but if if the I'm

talking about the Democrats as a group,

if the Democrats came out and just said,

"We're going to add a dollar to the

federal minimum wage every year for the

eight years we're in office," that would

fly with the American public. They said,

"We're going to build." That's not a

strategy.

>> You can make that argument. I'm just

telling you what the winning argument

is. The winning argument is

>> Well, no, you're just saying whatever it

takes to get elected, but giving stuff

away is not adults make hard decisions.

>> You mean like giving people no tax on

their overtime and no tax on their tips?

Those kind of giveaways, Jamal,

>> those that's helping middle class and

working class. I

>> I don't disagree, but to the point of

giving away free stuff doesn't work, it

actually does. It does get people out to

vote. People were very motivated when

they heard those proposals by Trump. I'm

saying they should just take that

proposal and 10x it. That's a way to

win. I'm not saying it makes sense. I'm

not saying I'm endorsing it. I'm just

giving you the playbook.

>> Okay. Well, what I would do to to fight

your your playbook of empty promises is

I would actually talk about the record

of the candidate.

>> Exactly.

>> And I think we're talking about a state

like California, which is thoroughly

blue and has been run by Democrats now

for a long time. And Gavin probably will

be the nominee because I do think that

his performative antics are working with

the base. I mean, they wanted an

anti-Trump, but the the way to attack

this is to talk about the record here.

So,

>> let's just go through some of the

numbers. So, as we all know, we pay the

highest taxes in the country for the

worst public services. Gavin's spending

turned a $75 billion surplus into a $20

billion deficit in just a couple of

years. And somehow none of that money

went to fill the reservoirs or fire

hydrants. And so, we had entire

neighborhoods burned down as a result.

And they can't get permits to rebuild.

California has the fourth largest

economy in the world. So that's good.

But we have the highest rates of

poverty, homelessness, inequality,

illiteracy, and wage stagnation. So yes,

wage stagnation, JCAL, is the highest in

the country. And we have the third

highest unemployment among the 50

states. We're second only to Hawaii in

housing costs. So, you want to talk

about making promises to lower housing

costs, but if you look at blue states

like California, they're among the

worst. We're the worst in energy costs,

and we have the highest rate of both

retail crime and frivolous lawsuits. And

that's why businesses are moving out of

the state. You may have seen that Bed

Bath and Beyond said that even as

they're opening 300 more physical

stores, they're not going to return to

California. And this just got the CEO

mocked by Nuome because he never

actually takes any of the criticism to

heart. He just sort of deflects it. So

until the Democrats, I think, confront

why they really lost. Okay. And it's

it's not just because of the style of

Trump. They want to just attribute it to

Trump's style, but the reality is it's

because of the the policies

>> and it's about the record. And until

they're willing to confront those things

and change their policies, then I think

they're going to continue losing.

>> I put into Grock the following question.

And the reason I asked the question this

way is I think that the three most

credible candidates that have a record

to run on on the Democratic side are

Gavin Newsome, Gretchen Whitmer, and Wes

Moore. So I asked Grock, rank Michigan,

California, and Maryland. So three

Democratic states run by three very

popular, well-known Democratic governors

on three metrics. quality of life, cost

of living, and crime

and summarize that into a ranked overall

list. Right? So, pretty standard plain

vanilla question. And at the end, I I

can publish this later if you want, but

at the end, the final overall rankings

were Maryland first excels in quality of

life and has the lowest estimated crime

rates with a moderately high but

manageable cost of living. Michigan,

most affordable with decent quality of

life and moderate crime, making it a

balanced choice.

California, high quality of life in

terms of opportunities and lifestyle,

but severely hampered by high costs and

elevated crime rates. And there's all

kinds of detail, but I was just giving

you the final summary. So, I think that

when you get into a Democratic primary,

those are three people that will run.

And I think Democratic voters will have

to choose what record do I want to put

up to vote for the broad voting American

public. Is it California's? Is it

Maryland's or is it Michigan's? And if

you just do a quick AIdriven analysis,

Wes Moore, then Gretchen Whitmer, then

Gavin Newsome, just on the facts.

>> Yeah, makes sense. Freak, your thoughts

on the the platform I put out there or

anything else with this 2028 discussion

as we wrap up? No, I think the

socialists are going to continue to grow

their momentum and

you know it'll be fun. See what happens.

>> Okay, here we go. So, Trump had a busy

week. He met with Putin, then Zalinsky

and some of the leaders in Europe.

Sachs, this is your time to shine. We

didn't talk about this yet because it

happened after we taped, but last

Friday, Trump met with Putin in Alaska.

A lot of hand ringing around that.

Lasted about three hours. No ceasefire

was reached. That was uh the stated goal

of it. And on Monday, Trump

>> the state of the goal.

>> Okay, I'm just going by what Trump said

when he was on his way there that he

wanted a ceasefire. And then the on

Monday, Trump met with Zilinsky and a

bunch of European leaders at the White

House. first inerson meeting since that

argument. You remember back in the

overall office in February and uh

included the EU president,

NATO secretary general, chancellor of

Germany, Italy and UK showed up as well.

your your thoughts on where we're at

with the Ukraine and if we're going to

get a ceasefire, a peace negotiation or

a peace settlement or if the United

States is just going to walk away

because it seems like Trump is a little

perturbed by the progress here and he

has said, you know, maybe it's just up

to them to figure it out and he'll be

done with the whole thing.

>> Your thoughts, Saxs?

>> Well, I think that the the Alaska summit

was major progress. I think that first

of all, the president deserves enormous

credit for reestablishing diplomacy and

communication with the Russians. There

literally hasn't been a meeting between

the US president and the Russian

president since 2021 while this war is

going on and while the war has continued

to escalate. I guess the Biden

administration's policy was just to

ignore the Russians and roll their dice

and hope that the war didn't escalate

out of control. In any event, I think

Trump deserves a lot of credit for again

reestablishing that diplomatic

connection and trying to use diplomacy

to end the war. And it was shocking to

see how much Democrats in the media were

openly rooting for him to fail in these

efforts to end this war. And

effectively, they're rooting for

hundreds of thousands of more people to

die or get maimed.

>> They were pretty hysterical, right, on

the news. It was pretty crazy.

>> Yeah. And by the way, they they claim

that they care about the Ukrainian

people, but the Ukrainian people by

large majorities now want this war to

end and they're willing to make

meaningful concessions to do it. So

there was a poll by Gallup, which Nick,

maybe you can throw this on the screen

where a year or two ago something like

70% of Ukrainians wanted to keep

fighting the war. Now that number is

down to 24%. Again, the vast majority

are looking to achieve a peace. And I

think that President Trump and President

Putin made some important progress in

terms of getting to an eventual peace

deal. And I think there are a few planks

here. Number one was the recognition

that we should try to get to a

comprehensive peace deal, not a

ceasefire. A ceasefire is temporary. And

the Russians have already said they

wouldn't do it because they understand

from their point of view that this would

just give the Ukrainians time to regroup

and rearm and try to reset, but it

wouldn't end the war. And the truth of

the matter is that when you're fighting

a war and losing, you don't get to call

a timeout. So the Russians have been

rejecting this idea of a ceasefire for

months. And I think that it was wise, if

our ultimate goal is to get to a deal,

to recognize that the comprehensive

peace deal is what we want to get to. So

that's point number one. Point number

two is that President Trump acknowledged

that Ukraine would not be joining NATO,

which was the key source of the friction

and the thing that ultimately led to

this war. So I think that definitively

taking NATO off the table I think was a

very important precondition to getting

to an eventual peace. And then I think

the third thing was that the parties

both the Russians and the Americans

agreed that there would have to be

territorial concessions of some kind.

And we don't know all the details yet.

There was some conversation about land

swaps. But the point of the matter is

that we're not going back to the prewar

status quo ante. The Russians have taken

the big chunk of territory. The

Ukrainians have not been able to get it

back. People are trying to blame Trump

for this somehow. But the real cause of

this is the failure of the counter

offensive in the summer of 2023.

Remember, we gave the Ukrainians

something like hundred billion dollars

worth of weapons to retake that

territory. And it was an abysmal

failure. They didn't even make it past

the first Survivican line. That is the

real cause of why the Ukrainians are

going to lose territory in this war is

they're simply not able to retake it.

And I think there was a a general

recognition coming out of that Alaska

summit that there would have to be

territorial concessions. And I think in

these three pillars, I think you have

the basis for a comprehensive peace

deal, which is again, number one, we're

going for a peace deal, not a ceasefire.

Number two, no NATO. And number three,

we have to recognize the realities on

the ground. Now, I think the big

question mark, I think we could get to a

peace deal pretty quickly if Zalinsky

and the Europeans were willing to

acknowledge these three points, but so

far they have not been willing to

acknowledge those three points. And I

think this is one of the things that if

you're listening to the remarks the

following Monday when the Europeans came

to the White House, there was no

recognition. They were still clamoring

for a ceasefire, you know, again, which

the Russians had rejected as opposed to

a comprehensive peace. They were still

clamoring for NATO and they were still

rejecting the idea of any territorial

concessions including even Crimea which

was lost over a decade ago. So I think

that the issue we have right now is that

Zalinski

and the Ukrainian government, not the

people, but the Ukrainian elite and some

of these European countries that are

backing him are not willing to make the

compromises necessary to achieve a peace

deal. And as President Trump has said,

at the end of the day, you need the

Russians and the Ukrainians to agree. So

I think that President Trump deserves

enormous credit here for reestablishing

diplomacy, for making substantial

progress towards a comprehensive peace

deal. But at the end of the day, unless

Zinsky starts being willing to make

compromises, I don't know how you're

going to get to that deal.

>> Yeah. Freeberg, Dave, any thoughts on

this?

>> No.

>> Negotiation? Shim, anything? Well, I was

pretty curious about the

historical pattern of this. So, I just

went back and here's what I learned.

What's interesting to note is that since

1945,

so not assuming, you know, conflicts in

Africa because they are not really quite

part of the western political global

order per se, it's important to ask the

question like how have other

territorial disputes panned out. So

there are disputes that end in

stalemates and when you end up in a

stalemate you basically arrange a DMZ

demilitarized zone type arrangement. So

there's one in Korea right 1953 to now.

There's one in Cyprus 1974 to right now

and there's one in Kashmir 1947 to

today. And then there's this kind of

thing in between Israel and Lebanon. And

then second, there are disputes where

there's some action taken by one country

to take something by force, but then

there's no consensus

internationally

as to who owns a territory. So Crimea,

as Saxs mentioned, 2014 to present, and

then Israel and West uh East Jerusalem,

sorry.

So I think the point is that unless

President Trump figures out a way to do

something that's frankly truly

unprecedented, the historical pattern is

that it's been nearly impossible for

even the most powerful and influential

person in the world to frankly draw

deals

in these kinds of situations, especially

when they become protracted. And I think

that's what he's getting to when he

reinforces these things never would have

started or gotten this far had I been

president. You know, that's what he says

in quotes. And I think this is what he's

referring to, which is that the longer

these things get drawn out and

particularly with Russia, Ukraine, and

Israel, Gaza, you're talking about

conflicts and historical

issues that have been simmering for

hundreds of years and in some cases

thousands of years all the way back to

the antiquity. So, I don't know. I I

just think that it's an incredibly

incredibly difficult position and

I just don't know what's going to

happen. But I think that for modern

progress to happen, I think it's

important for both of these two issues

to get put to bed as quickly as

possible.

>> Jake Al, what do you think? And we saw

the media attacking Trump for even

daring to hold negotiations with the

Russians. Do you think this was a good

idea or do you think that somehow uh

Trump was caving to Putin?

>> I give Trump a lot of credit. He is

incredibly good at foreign policy and

specifically with dictators. If you look

at our past presidents, they didn't want

to meet with Putin. They didn't want to

meet with Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il. They

thought uh isolation was the best

policy. It's not. I think talking to

these folks and trying to find common

ground is the best policy. Even if it's

a 5% chance of it actually working out,

which is what I think any president

dealing with a dictator and a death spot

like,

you know, Putin is going to have. I

think you have a 5 or 10% chance. And I

think Trump and Biden actually had a lot

in common that worked. the lone leasing

of the weapons and not costing the

American taxpayer any money where a lot

of partisan people said, "Oh my god,

this is costing the Americans so much."

It's actually Trump has figured out a

way to make it profitable. He's selling

more weapons to Ukraine and he got us

the mineral rights. It turns out Trump

was able to turn a cost center or a

supposed cost center into a profit

center in terms of this specific war.

And if you look at the sanctions, Trump

has increased the sanctions. So Trump

had my exact position that I fought for

here on this podcast for the past couple

of years in this conflict, which was

keep the pressure up on Putin. And Trump

took it over the top by going to Putin's

main client for his oil now, which is

India, and putting a massive tariff on

them and threatening them with a huge

tariff. That was a bold, audacious way

to deal with Putin. So, I give Trump a

ton of credit for trying to make peace

here. And Putin has been, Hold on, let

me just finish. And Putin has been

absolutely humiliated. He can't even get

to Kev, let alone take over Finland or

Poland. And this has cost Russia, their

greatest customer, which is the EU,

Germany. These people are never going to

buy his oil again. Not after what

happened here. And that you can give a

lot of credit to Trump because he told

them when they built their oil pipelines

that the Germans were lunatics for doing

that and for creating a massive

revenue stream for a dictator who is in

my mind a war criminal. What he did in

invading Ukraine makes him a war

criminal. What he did in kidnapping

these children makes him a war criminal.

I think it's awesome that Trump is doing

this intervention even if it has a 5 or

10% chance of working and then making

the NATO alliance pay their fair share

and selling them more weapons. I think

also brilliant. So I I give Trump a lot

of credit here. He's aligned exactly

what I said we should be doing, which is

holding dictators who invade other

countries accountable for it. And he's

added to it the fact that he can connect

with people. So I give him a ton of

credit for it, Zach. I know that's maybe

not the answer you want, but that's how

I

>> look. I think you use this highly

moralistic language and you engage in a

lot of name calling and I actually think

that's

>> which one which name is inaccurate,

please. Dictator or war criminal?

>> Well, look, you're complimenting Trump

for engaging in diplomacy with Putin,

but then at the same time, you want to

call him a dictator and war criminal,

and that's not going to be conducive to

actually trying to reach a peace

agreement. Now, it's fine.

>> But I'm not doing the negotiation. If I

was doing the negotiation, I wouldn't

come in and say, "Hey, dictator, war

criminal, let's fight for peace." I'm

giving you my personal belief person not

>> negotiating. So you're praising and

you're praising Trump for increasing the

pressure and leverage that he has with

the Russians which I think is fine. My

question for you is would you increase

the pressure or leverage with respect to

Zalinski? So for example would you tell

Zalinski in no uncertain terms listen

stop demanding to be part of NATO

because it's not happening. In fact the

president has done that. Uh what about

um

>> yeah the the answer to that question is

yes. I would say listen, it's not

realistic to join NATO. You can get some

security guarantees.

There's sort of talk of this NATO light.

So, I would agree with that. I would say

listen, we're going to take and I said

this on a previous episode, we should

just take off NATO inclusion for like 20

years.

>> Okay.

What about territorial concessions?

>> I think that's a decision Ukraine has to

make. We should encourage them to make

whatever decision is best for them. But

if they want to keep fighting this

thing, that's going to be up to their

people to decide if they want to fight

for their land.

>> Well, the people have said they don't

want to keep the the problem you have

right now is that 70% of Ukrainians say

they don't want to keep fighting.

They're ready.

>> Sounds like they're ready to make

concessions.

>> Yeah. So, it sounds like Zilinsky should

listen to his people. Yes.

>> That's his decision to make. I think he

has sovereignty and the people get to

make that decision in his country.

>> Well, but the the problem you have is

it's not just Zilinsky, right? It's his

ruling click. They have canceled

elections and they will remain in power

as long as the war continues. So they

there's a conflict of interest there and

there's a lot of money flowing into

Ukraine because of the war. So what if

the ruling elite wants to keep the war

going forever while the people want it

to stop?

>> Yeah. They're going to face a revolution

right quick. And so I think they have to

take the

citizens of Ukraine into account. And

it's a tough decision for them to make.

But it's not our decision to make for

them. Is that a reasonable position? It

sounds like a reasonable position.

>> I think it's reasonable.

>> Yeah. I mean, I don't I

>> look, at the end of the day, the

Ukrainians and the Russians have to

agree.

>> Yes.

>> And I I think that of of the major

parties, I think President Trump cares

the most about peace. I mean, I think he

is pushing the hardest for there to be a

peace deal.

>> I I I you know, I know people are like a

little flabbergasted that I really

believe that Trump is great at this. I

think he's great at this. He is great at

negotiating with difficult people and I

think he's going to get it done. I think

he's got a 50-50 chance of getting this

done and I think other people didn't

even

>> admit it. Just admit it. You like them.

>> You really like him.

>> It's not about whether I personally like

Trump or not.

>> It has nothing to do with that. I think

I I call balls and strikes here. It's

all balls and strikes for me.

>> No, no, no. You You're in like with him.

You may be in love with him.

>> I loved it. I loved it. love with my