All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
00:12:38 · David Friedberg
[00:12:38] S3: And so if you just zoom out a little bit, the macro condition was there was a moment after the election when when there was this idea of Doge, this idea that government spending would be reduced, which I believe fundamentally would have affected the cost of living. And we can argue about that. People disagree. They wash that point away. I do think it is the fundamental driver on the cost of living is government spending. The more the government spends, the more expensive things get. I believe that. And we can go through the analysis on what happened in France. You know, government spending as a percent of GDP is one metric. How many people are employed or depend on government checks is another metric. But as the government's involved in more of the economy, things get more expensive. So when Doge was coming around, the idea of Doge, the idea of government efficiency, the idea of making sure that every dollar spent by the government has a positive ROI for the people was a great idea. We visited DC in March 2025 and we visited Elon and we talked about Doge and he was struggling. It was pretty clear he was struggling, not just internally, but with congress and with the public perception of what was being done there. And I came away from that visit in March 2025 where I also met with multiple members of congress on that visit, Republicans and Democrats who did not give a shit about improving government spending efficiency, did not care about the total government spending as a percent of GDP. It was not a priority. And on 06/05/2025, Elon left and it was the end of Doge. The idea that Doge was gonna continue was over. And I said China just won because to me at that moment, the day that that this ended, that this administration ended that effort, is the day that it was clear that we were going to have a runaway cost of living and a challenge for progress for the majority of Americans, and the end result of that is voting in more of these kind of socialist principles, socialist policies, socialist politicians. So for me, my tweet on June 5 was China has just won... Was the day that it was announced that Doge was basically coming to an end.
00:14:37 · David Friedberg
And then the one big beautiful bill passed in July 2025, which had some entitlement cost reductions, but all of the fundamental spending of the government has not been reduced, and we're still running a $7,000,000,000,000 a year government budget with a 2,000,000,000,002 trillion dollar a year deficit. So I don't think congress was ever on board. It is a structural fundamental problem, and no one's on board with it. And I think that was key to what happened here. For the majority of Americans, they don't feel like they're getting ahead. They don't feel like they can afford things. They don't feel like healthcare is accessible and they are struggling and it wasn't addressed. My view was it wasn't addressed in the way it should be, and we can all disagree on policy matters, but that's my view. And as a result, people still felt that way, and that's what drove the vote. But I do think on AI, it's this idea of this oligarchy. If I'm not getting ahead, someone else is because, quote, the economy is growing, quote, the stock market is growing. Who is getting all of that growth? Because I'm not getting it. The AI guys are, the tech oligarchs are, and so on. And I think that that's why AI was poised for this. But I do think that there was some external influence that happened on AI, and I'll pull up this chart here real quick, which I shared around on the group chat yesterday, which is an incredible Gallup study that shows AI optimism and pessimism in countries around the world. The most optimistic country for AI is China. 93 of Chinese citizens think AI will mostly help people in the country, and 93% of people think AI will make their daily lives better in China. And we can believe or not believe how Gallup does their surveys in China. The US is fourth last. We are worse than Afghanistan, and we're just slightly better than Malawi and Bangladesh. We're fourth on the list of countries at 36% of Americans believing that. And so I think that in addition to the priming of the pump, which is if I'm not getting ahead, someone's getting ahead and the AI guys, because we create the AI in this country, are getting ahead, made it really easy to attack with this oligarch narrative that there is a group of people that are benefiting and making a lot of money, and then there's a large percentage of people that aren't.
00:16:44 · David Friedberg, Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya
And so I think it's pretty clear that this this vector was a really effective one. Whether it persists or not is TBD, and I think we should talk a little bit about what's next later in the show because I do think AI is gonna play a major role in how the politics are gonna play out over the next year. [00:17:01] S0: That's two incredibly concise and candid recaps of what happened there, Chamath. And just as a side programming note, great job on Rick Rubin's podcast this week. You haven't checked that out, Chamath was on Rick Rubin and it was awesome. [00:17:14] S2: Thank you. [00:17:15] S3: Chamath, did you sit barefoot in his backyard with him, Chamath? [00:17:18] S2: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, by the way, when you go to Rick Rubin's recording studio, he walks you around and he's like, oh, Chamath, here's Bob Dylan's old touring van. That's where we recorded Adele's album. And then he's like, this is where Kanye and I laid down this album, and then here's where Jay Z and I... I mean, it is the craziest place, but it puts you in a totally centered state of mind, I gotta say. Yeah. And we sat around in his studio barefoot, sitting across each other just talking, and then they they put it out as
00:17:18 · Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis
[00:17:18] S2: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, by the way, when you go to Rick Rubin's recording studio, he walks you around and he's like, oh, Chamath, here's Bob Dylan's old touring van. That's where we recorded Adele's album. And then he's like, this is where Kanye and I laid down this album, and then here's where Jay Z and I... I mean, it is the craziest place, but it puts you in a totally centered state of mind, I gotta say. Yeah. And we sat around in his studio barefoot, sitting across each other just talking, and then they they put it out as [00:17:50] S0: a conversation. Telling people this is where I introduce them, Polymarket. So greatest stock market highs of our lifetimes, lowest unemployment of our lifetimes, and we still had the tsunami. When you look back on it, Chamath, what do you think happened here? And you said you were... I mean, in a moment of great candor and self reflection during the livestream, you said, hey, listen. I had a blind spot here. [00:18:16] S2: I got it totally totally totally wrong. I got it totally wrong. [00:18:20] S0: Okay. Unpack.
00:18:22 · Chamath Palihapitiya
[00:18:22] S2: I'll go through all the ways in which I got it wrong but I I just wanna first acknowledge what my blind spot is. Like most people's blind spots, but I can just speak for myself, is through the lens of my own lived experience and very narrowly what is in my best interests. And I think what we had was a move away from the culture wars. That was very much in my best interest. But I think it was in everybody else's best interests as well. I don't think that was on the ballot. But what I don't understood clearly enough, and I think that this election has made extremely clear, is that since COVID, we have moved past political ideology. And I wanna say this again. I do not think Democrats or Republicans matter. That is my real takeaway after this election. There is a central bloc of people that vote the prescient issues of our time. It was a gargantuan win for Biden, then it was a gargantuan win for Trump, and then it was a gargantuan win for the Democrats in these midterms. What are these people voting for? I think what they are shouting now, they were trying to signal and now they are shouting, is a broad based belief that the economy has completely decoupled from reality and is broken. The economic reality in America is broken. There is a small percentage of people, the four of us on this pod and all of our friends, who are the asset owners of America. And we have benefited in every weather condition. When rates were zero, we benefited because we were able to build our businesses with very cheap capital. When rates were high, we benefited because we had pricing power. And in every condition in between, whether there was tariffs, whether there were not tariffs, whether there were subsidies, whether there were not subsidies, we've all managed to continue to accumulate and grow assets. But we are few and far between. And then there's everybody else who are wage earners, and the structural capacity of the American economy to support and grow wage earners is broken. It's clear. Why do I say that? I do not think, and I disagree with Friedberg, I don't think this has anything to do with socialism. I don't think the far left one particularly more than they were expected. I don't think the far right one particularly more than was expected. This was a complete and total repudiation about the state of the economy. The economy is broken.
00:21:05 · Chamath Palihapitiya
I have a few charts to support my point of view. Number one, if this was ideological and if ideology mattered, money in politics would have had a more direct impact on the election. But when you look at the amount of money that was spent, all of this money was wasted. All the money that went into Texas was wasted. All the money that went into senate raises in Ohio was wasted. The better bet was to look who was being spent money on. If you had taken the opposite candidate who had no money, you would have been overwhelmingly more right. So money follows ideology. Money did not work in this election. Ergo, in my opinion, ideology did not matter that much. Next chart. Redistricting and gerrymandering also follows ideology. You try to set up the geographies in a way so that you could gain more seats. Look what happened. Of the 15 Republican seats that were redrawn so that they could capture all of them, Democrats won 11 of them. Republicans only won one. So, again, ideological gerrymandering also totally failed. So we have ideological spending in politics, failure. Ideological gerrymandering, failure. Next chart. And what you had were centrists, normal people. These are not people running around talking about communism. These were people that very narrowly focused on one thing and one thing only, which was affordability and the functioning of The United States economy. And they spoke to a large block of people that were both Democrats and Republicans. Initially supported Biden, overwhelmingly supported Trump, and then overwhelmingly went to the Democrats largely to vote the displeasure with the economy. That's it. I don't believe Iran really had much to do with it. I don't believe Israel had much to do with it. I don't believe AI had much to do with it. This is the American society asking for a reset on the economic principles on which we operate. And I think the obvious thing to do for the ambitious candidate on the left or the right is to take these three charts together and have one very precise takeaway, which is the economic populist platform will be the one that you can take to the presidency in '28. And the path is really straightforward.